http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/17/opinion/17brooks.html?partner=rss&emc=rss Great feel good op-ed. Though that last paragraph extolling us humans could equally apply to ants and bees. Except they'll not likely nuke each other in the near future.
(Haidt quote): Human beings, Haidt argues, are “the giraffes of altruism.†Just as giraffes got long necks to help them survive, humans developed moral minds that help them and their groups succeed. Humans build moral communities out of shared norms, habits, emotions and gods, and then will fight and even sometimes die to defend their communities. Different interpretations of evolution produce different ways of analyzing the world. The selfish-competitor model fostered the utility-maximizing model that is so prevalent in the social sciences, particularly economics. The new, more cooperative view will complicate all that... I'm not clear what Haidt argues, but sounds like Kantian philosopy of morality. For me the upshot is moral minds provide peace, order and cooperation and like-mindedness that could also be called society? Without morality, I think we have chaos.
