Moral Tribes: Emotion, Reason, and the Gap Between Us and Them

Moral Tribes: Emotion, Reason, and the Gap Between Us and Them

â€œSurprising and remarkableâ€¦Toggling between big ideas, technical details, and his personal intellectual journey, Greene writes a thesis suitable to both airplane reading and PhD seminars.â€â€”The Boston Globe

Our brains were designed for tribal life, for getting along with a select group of others (Us) and for fighting off everyone else (Them). But modern times have forced the worldâ€™s tribes into a shared space, resulting in epic clashes of values along with unprecedented opportunities. As the world shrinks, the moral lines that divide us become more salient and more puzzling. We fight over everything from tax codes to gay marriage to global warming, and we wonder where, if at all, we can find our common ground.

A grand synthesis of neuroscience, psychology, and philosophy, Moral Tribes reveals the underlying causes of modern conflict and lights the way forward. Greene compares the human brain to a dual-mode camera, with point-and-shoot automatic settings (â€œportrait,â€ â€œlandscapeâ€) as well as a manual mode. Our point-and-shoot settings are our emotionsâ€”efficient, automated programs honed by evolution, culture, and personal experience. The brainâ€™s manual mode is its capacity for deliberate reasoning, which makes our thinking flexible. Point-and-shoot emotions make us social animals, turning Me into Us. But they also make us tribal animals, turning Us against Them. Our tribal emotions make us fightâ€”sometimes with bombs, sometimes with wordsâ€”often with life-and-death stakes.Â

A major achievement from a rising star in a new scientific field, Moral Tribes will refashion your deepest beliefs about how moral thinking works and how it can work better.
Country USA
Manufacturer Penguin Books
Binding Kindle Edition
ReleaseDate 2013-10-31
Format Kindle eBook

Country	USA
Manufacturer	Penguin Books
Binding	Kindle Edition
ReleaseDate	2013-10-31
Format	Kindle eBook

Moral Tribes: Emotion, Reason, and the Gap Between Us and Them

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