The Righteous Mind
Article
The Righteous Mind is a recurring book in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 4 times across 4 issues between May 23, 2022 and September 02, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as “The Righteous Mind (BW’s review)”; “I didn’t read The Righteous Mind for a long time after I knew about it”; “I was completely wrong. I found The Righteous Mind to be a frustrating book”. It most often appears alongside Consciousness and the Brain, Making Nature, The Anti-Politics Machine.
Metadata
- Category: Books
- Mention count: 4
- Issue count: 4
- First seen: May 23, 2022
- Last seen: September 02, 2022
Appears In
- Open Thread 225
- Your Book Review: The Righteous Mind
- Open Thread 239
- Book Review Contest 2022 Winners
Related Pages
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- Consciousness and the Brain (3 shared issues)
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- Making Nature (3 shared issues)
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- The Anti-Politics Machine (3 shared issues)
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- The Castrato (3 shared issues)
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- The Dawn Of Everything (3 shared issues)
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- The Internationalists (3 shared issues)
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- The Outlier (3 shared issues)
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- Viral (3 shared issues)
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- ACX (2 shared issues)
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- God Emperor of Dune (2 shared issues)
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- Jimmy Carter (2 shared issues)
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- Kora In Hell (2 shared issues)
External Links
Source Context
Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.
1: The full list of Book Review Contest finalists is: Consciousness And The Brain, Making Nature, The Anti-Politics Machine, The Castrato, The Dawn Of Everything (EH’s review), The Future Of Fusion, The Illusion Of Grand Strategy, The Internationalists, The Outlier, The Righteous Mind (BW’s review), The Society Of The Spectacle, and Viral.
I didn’t read The Righteous Mind for a long time after I knew about it. This was partly because I don’t get through much in the way of new reading material. A friend of mine told me yesterday that he’d read something like 130 new books this year. That was on February 20th. I’ve read one, and it was The Righteous Mind. Another friend releases Spotify playlists every Friday of the greatest hits from the many new albums he’s listened to that week. I’ve listened to one new album this year. It was Selling England by the Pound, which he recommended. It was my first foray into Genesis and I loved it. I now have to keep telling him that, no, I haven’t listened to any more Genesis or Peter Gabriel since then, but I’m sure I’ll get round to it within the year.
This is to make the point that I’m starting from a low base rate of reading things. I still think I put off reading The Righteous Mind for unusually long, though, given how interesting I find the subject matter. The reason, I think, is that I sort of felt like it wouldn’t be very interesting, because I’d kind of know and agree with all of it already. Given how slowly I absorb new books, I like them to either be challenging, or a new and informative look at things I just don’t know very much about yet. I don’t mean to come across as some sort of sage of intellectual piety and good habits of mind who scorns the comforting embrace of being validated. I read plenty of political bloggers that I mostly agree with! I just don’t tend to use books for that.
I had a general feeling that The Righteous Mind sits in the background of a lot of the political or meta-political content that I know and love. It had the aura of a sort of foundational text for the loose family of political views and affiliations I have. I don’t consider myself a centrist, which I think is how Haidt identifies himself, but I do share his disdain for tribal partisan politics and general sense that so much of what passes for political debate is just people yelling foundational definitional disagreements past each other mostly for the benefit of their own fans. I felt like I’d probably picked up most of its insights further downstream, and wouldn’t get much out of reading it.
The Righteous Mind, reviewed by Ben Wōden. Ben is an analyst from Reading, UK.
Inline links: The Righteous Mind