Can a divided America heal?

Chris Anderson:
So, Jon, this feels scary.

Jonathan Haidt: Yeah.

It feels like the world is in a place
that we haven't seen for a long time.

People don't just disagree
in the way that we're familiar with.

The left-right political divide.

There are much deeper differences afoot.

What on earth is going on
and how did we get here?

Jonathan Haidt: This is different.

There's a much more
apocalyptic sort of feeling.

Survey research by Pew Research shows

that the degree to which we feel
that the other side is not just --

we just don't dislike them,
we strongly dislike them,

and we think that they are
a threat to the nation.

Those numbers have been going up and up,
and are over 50 percent now on both sides.

People are scared because it feels
like this is different than before.

It's much more intense.

Whenever I look
at any sort of social puzzle,

I always just apply the three
basic principles of moral psychology,

and I think they'll help us here.

So the first thing
that you have to always keep in mind

when you're thinking about politics,

is that we're tribal.

We evolved for tribalism.

One of the simplest and greatest
insights into human social nature

is the bedouin proverb:

me against my brother,

me and my brother against our cousin,

my and my brother and cousins
against the stranger.

And so that tribalism
allowed us to create large societies

and to come together
in order to compete with others.

That brought us out of the jungle
and out of small groups,

but it means that
we have internal conflict.

And the question you have to look at

is what aspects of our society
are making that more bitter,

and what are calming them down.

CA: That's a very dark proverb.

You're saying that that's actually

baked into most people's
mental wiring at some level.

JH: Oh yeah, absolutely.

This is just a basic aspect
of human social cognition.

But we can also live together
really peacefully

and we've invented all kinds
of fun ways of, like, playing war.

I mean, sports, politics --

these are all ways that we get
to exercise this tribal nature

without actually hurting anyone.

We're actually also very good at trade
and exploration and meeting new people.

So you have to see our tribalism
as something that goes up or down.

It's not like we're doomed
to always be fighting each other,

but we'll never have world peace.

CA: The size of that tribe
can shrink or expand.

JH: Right.

CA: The size of what we consider us

and what we consider other or them

can change.

And some people believe

that that process
could continue indefinitely.

JH: That's right.

CA: And that we were indeed expanding
the sense of tribe for a while.

JH: So this is, I think,

where we're getting at what's possibly
the new left-right distinction.

I mean, the left-right
as we've all inherited it,

comes out of the, you know,
labor versus capital distinction,

and the working class, Marks --

But I think what we're seeing
now increasingly

is a divide in all
the Western democracies

between the people
who want to stop at nation,

the people who are more parochial --

I don't mean that in a bad way --

people who have much more
of a sense of being rooted,

they care about their town,
their community, and their nation.

And then those who are antiparochial

and who --

Whenever I get confused, I just think
of the John Lennon song "Imagine."

"Imagine there's no countries.
Nothing to kill or die for."

And so these are the people
who want more global governance,

they don't like nation states,
they don't like borders.

You see this all over Europe as well.

There's a great metaphor guy --
actually, his name is Shakespeare --

writing ten years ago in Britain.

He had a metaphor:

"Are we drawbridge-uppers
or drawbridge-downers?"

And Britain is divided
52-48 on that point.

And America is divided
on that point, too.

CA: Hmm. And so --

those of us who grew up with The Beatles
and that sort of hippie philosophy

of dreaming of a more connected world --

and it felt so idealistic, and how could
anyone think badly about that?

What you're saying is that actually

millions of people today
feel that that isn't just silly,

it's actually dangerous and wrong,
and they're scared of it.

JH: I think the big issue,
especially in Europe, but also here,

is the issue of immigration.

And I think this is
where we have to look very carefully

at the social science
about diversity and immigration.

Once something becomes politicized,

one it becomes something
that the left loves, and the right --

then even the social scientists
can't think straight about it.

Now, diversity is good in a lot of ways.

It clearly creates more innovation,

the American economy
has grown enormously from it.

Diversity and immigration
do a lot of good things,

but what the globalists,
I think, don't see,

what they don't want to see,

is that ethnic diversity
cuts social capital and trust.

There's a very important study
by Robert Putnam,

the author of "Bowling alone,"

looking at social capital databases.

And basically, the more people feel
that they are the same,

the more they trust each other,

the more they can have
a redistributionist welfare state.

Scandinavian countries are so wonderful

because they have this legacy
of being small, homogenous countries.

And that leads to a set
of progressive welfare state --

a set of progressive left-leaning values,

which says, "Drawbridge down!
The world is a great place.

People in Syria are suffering.
We must welcome them in."

And it's a beautiful thing.

But if --

and I was in Sweden this summer --

if the discourse in Sweden
is fairly politically correct,

and they can't talk about the downsides,

you end up bringing a lot of people in,

that's going to cut social capital,
it makes it hard to have a welfare state

and they might end up,
as we have in America,

with a racially divided --
visibly racially divided society.

So this is all very
uncomfortable to talk about.

But I think this is the thing --
especially in Europe, and for us, too --

we need to be looking at.

CA: You're saying that people of reason,

people who would
consider themselves not racists,

but moral, upstanding people,

have a rationale that says,

"Look, humans are just too different."

We're in danger of overloading
our sense of what humans are capable of

by mixing people who are too different.

JH: Yes, but I can make it
much more palatable

by saying it's not necessarily about race.

It's about culture.

And so there's wonderful work

by a political scientist
named Karen Stenner,

who shows that when people have a sense

that we are all united,
we're all the same,

there are many people who have
a predisposition to authoritarianism.

Those people aren't particularly racist

when they feel there's no threat
to our social and moral order.

But if you prime them experimentally

by thinking we're coming apart,
people are getting more different,

then they get more racist, homophobic,
they want to kick out the deviants.

So it's in part that you get
an authoritarian reaction.

The left, following through
the Leninist line, the John Lennon line,

does things that create
an authoritarian reaction.

So we're certainly seeing that
in America with the ultraright.

We saw it in Britain,
we're seeing that all over Europe.

But the more positive part of that

is that I think the localists,
or the nationalists are actually right.

That if you emphasize
our cultural similarity,

then race doesn't
actually matter very much.

So an assimilationist
approach to immigration

removes a lot of these problems.

And if you value having
a generous welfare state,

you've got to emphasize
that we're all the same.

CA: OK, so rising immigration
and fears about that

are one of the causes
of the current divide.

What are other causes?

JH: The next principle of moral psychology

is that intuitions come first,
strategic reasoning second.

And you've probably heard
the term "motivated reasoning"

or "confirmation bias."

So there's some really interesting work

on how our high intelligence
and our verbal abilities

might have evolved
not to help us find out the truth,

but to help us manipulate each other,
defend a reputation.

We're really, really good
at justifying ourselves.

And if you bring
group interests into account,

so it's not just me,
it's my team versus your team,

you know, if you're evaluating evidence
that your side is wrong,

we just can't accept that.

And so this is why
you can't win a political argument.

If you're debating something,

you can't persuade the person
with reasons and evidence.

Because that's not
the way reasoning works.

And so, now give us the Internet.

Give us Google.

You know, "I heard that Barack Obama
was born in Kenya,

let me Google that.

Oh my God! 10 million hits!
Look, he was!"

CA: So this is an unpleasant surprise
to a lot of people.

The social media has often been framed
by technooptimists

as this great connecting force
that would bring people together.

And there have been
some unexpected countereffects to that.

JH: That's right.
And that's why I'm very enamored

of sort of ying-yang views
of human nature and left-right.

That each side is right
about certain things,

but then it goes blind to other things.

And so the left generally believes
that human nature is good,

bring people together,
knock down the walls and all will be well.

The right -- social conservatives,
not libertarians --

social conservatives generally believe

people can be greedy
and sexual and selfish,

and we need regulation,
and we need restrictions.

So yeah, if you knock down
all the walls --

a lot of people communicate
all over the world --

you get a lot of porn
and a lot of racism.

CA: So help us understand.

These principles of human nature
have been with us forever.

What's changed that's deepened
this feeling of division?

JH: You have to see six to 10 different
threads all coming together.

I'll just list a couple of them.

So in America --
actually, in America and Europe --

one of the biggest ones is World War II.

There's interesting research
from Joe Henrich and others

that if your country was at war,

especially when you were young,

then we test you 30 years later
in a commons dilemma,

or a prisoner's dilemma,

you're more cooperative.

Because of our tribal nature, if you're --

You know, my parents were teenagers
during World War II

and, you know, they would go out
looking for scraps of aluminum,

to help the war effort.

I mean, everybody pulled together.

And so then these people go on,

they rise up through business
and government,

they take leadership positions.

They're really good
at compromise and cooperation.

They all retire by the 90's.

So we're left with baby-boomers
by the end of the 90's.

And their youth was spent
fighting each other within each country,

1968 and afterwards.

So the loss of
the World War II generation,

the greatest generation, is huge.

So that's one.

Another in America
is the purification of the two parties.

There used to be liberal Republicans
and conservative Democrats.

So the mid-20th century,
that was really bipartisan.

But because of a variety of factors
that started things moving

by the 90's we had purified
liberal party and conservative party.

And so now the people
in those parties really are different.

And now we really don't want
our children to marry them,

which in the 60's didn't matter very much.

So the purification of the parties.

Third is the Internet.

And as I said,

it's just the most amazing stimulant
for post hoc reasoning and demonization.

CA: The tone of what's happening
on the Internet now is quite troubling.

I just did a quick search on Twitter
about the election

and saw two tweets next to each other.

One against a picture
of a sort of racist graffiti.

"This is disgusting,

Ugliness in this country,
brought to us by #Trump."

And then the next one is:

"Crooked Hillary
dedication page. Disgusting!"

So this idea of disgust
is troubling to me.

Because you can have an argument
or a disagreement about something,

you can get angry at someone.

Disgust, I've heard you say,
takes things to a much deeper level.

JH: That's right. Disgust is different.

Anger, you know -- I have kids,
they fight 10 times a day,

and they love each other 30 times a day.

You just go back and forth.
You get angry, you're not angry.

But disgust is different.

Disgust paints the person
as being subhuman, monstrous,

deformed -- morally deformed.

Disgust is like indelible ink.

There's research from John Gottman
on marital therapy.

If you look at the faces,

if one of the couple
shows disgust or contempt,

that's a predictor that
they're going to get divorced soon.

Whereas if they show anger,
that actually doesn't predict anything.

Because if you deal with anger well,
it actually is good.

So this election is different.

Donald Trump personally
uses the word "disgust" a lot.

He's very germ-sensitive,
so disgust does matter a lot.

More for him,
that is something unique to him,

but as we demonize each other more,

and again, through
the Manichaean worldview,

the idea that the world
is a battle between good and evil,

as this has been ramping up,

we're likely not just to say
they're wrong or I don't like them,

but we say they're evil, they're satanic,

they're disgusting, they're revolting.

And then we want nothing to do with them.

And that's why I think we see --

We're seeing it, for example, on campus.

Now we're seeing more
the urge to keep people off campus.

Silence them, keep them away.

I'm afraid that this whole
generation of young people,

if their introduction to politics
involves a lot of disgust,

they're not going to want
to be involved in politics,

as they get older.

CA: So how do we deal with that?

Disgust. How do you defuse disgust?

JH: