For the last few moths I've been studying the ideas of moral psychologist Jonathan Haidt, especially his new book The Righteous Mind.  I've done one post already about how his concept of sacredness might help make sense out of the conflicts between the various autism communities.  After Joe Scarborough's comments linking autism and murder, I want to use Haidt's ideas as a framework for a lengthy discussion related to autism, morality, and scapegoating.

I will begin with a series of posts explaining the arguments that Haidt is making about morality and society, structured around a talk that he gave to the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education.  Although I am highly skeptical of many of the things he says here, I am going to hold off on critique because these ideas are complex and need to be understood before they can be picked apart.

He is introduced by neuroscientist James Doty and his own talk begins at about seven minutes into the clip below.

Click here to watch.

Click here to watch on YouTube.

He begins by expressing his enthusiasm for CCARE's mission of encouraging compassion, but says he thinks that could be more effective if they approached it in some different ways.  One of his goals in the talk is to explain differences between how liberals and conservatives think about society and to convince his liberal audience in the conservative belief that individuals need to be constrained for groups to flourish.

He quotes Doty:

If compassion if so good for us, why doesn't everyone pursue it?

Haidt says there are psychological, moral, and political obstacles to universal compassion.

I will continue with his explanation of what morality is in my next post.