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It's maybe not a stretch to say this book blew my mind, and in the best possible way. Some context: I'm a liberal far to the left of Obama, and I religiously read the New York Times and the Guardian - so I'm true blue pink. However, 30% of the country in which I live, including many well educated and erudite people hold views that I find completely incomprehensible, if not reprehensible. But, I think it's fair to say that they actually honestly believe they are right. Haidt promises to explain how this paradoxical state of affairs could be - and I think he delivers, drawing on his own extensive research, and the research of others. And at this point I think I should say, while my instincts are Far Left, I think I value evidence more than ideology; and thus this book, with it's page-after-page of experiments and results was overwhelmingly convincing to me. This isn't to say that the terrain Haidt describes won't change (and possibly change a lot over the next 20 or 30 years) but it feels like moral psychology is well on its way to being biologised (a good thing to my mind) and is approaching fully scientific status.

And this is where the conundrum hits. Haidt describes the innate variation in the moral "tastes" of individuals in a population. These dimensions are emphatically not ad hoc entities. Much of the book (past the first fluffy chapter) is devoted to describing how Haidt and others came to construct and validate these moral "tastes", through extensive ongoing questionnaires and experiments. I won't spoil it, but the experimental sections were a whole lot of fun to read. Some (lefties) base moral judgments on only 2 dimensions - liberty and care. Others (most conservatives) use an additional 3 or even 4 dimensions of morality - in-group loyalty, authority, sanctity, and fairness. Others (say Libertarians) emphasize a different subset of these values (fairness and liberty).

When we argue morally, many times we argue past each other, because we assume things about what is right or wrong, and take for granted some kind of shared logic. But when someone makes an argument to me that appeals to (for instance) the sacred status of the priesthood, or the divine right of kings, my response is normally incredulity. Because to my mind these things have no moral status (or even a negative moral status).

Where I think the book becomes challenging, then for me personally, is that if I believe all the former (and I do) it becomes imperative to actually exercise my understanding of others' arguments. Partly, this is so that I can formulate better counterarguments. Partly, this is because (as Haidt suggests) I might find that other people see things that I miss. For instance, many rituals that I find, well stupid, and maybe harmful, serve purposes of group cohesion that I simply don't understand - to my detriment. Other rules concerning purity and sanctity likewise serve social functions that we tinker unawares with to our detriment.

A good example here is probably the idea of gay marriage. I think I have come to see that the conservative horror at the idea has more grounds than I would have believed. Gay marriage isn't simply extending a right, in fairness, to a group that deserves it (though it's that, too). It really does change the whole meaning of marriage quite a lot. For most people marriage is a sacred institution. It might be that we need to argue that accepting gay marriage actually changes marriage, *as a sacred institution*, for the better. (My use of "sacred" here is theologically content free).

This is all very interesting, but tricky. And frankly I think Haidt gives too much away sometimes. I especially took exception to his chapter on Libertarians and health care. But, I think (I hope) I do so on narrow points of economic feasibility (health care is arguably different from other commodities.) But this is the point. Hopefully if we learn to really see things from other points of view, we can be respectful, and move the dialogue to a point where we're arguing based on evidence and not mutually incompatible (and blind) biological instinct.