The Jewish Art of Constructive Disagreement with Dr Jonathan Haidt

welcome everyone good evening we're gonna get started on fight you too come take a seat take a cup of coffee then to come take a seat I'm rabbi Xu Li Paso I'm the director of community engagement he reppin a Jeshurun so glad you're joining us tonight this is the third in the lecture series for our faith and public life initiative a year-long initiative here at BJ that is trying to do a number of things I would say two main things on the one hand we're trying through this work to build on the legacy and the ethos of the BJ community this community is historical involvement in social and political action and to recommit at this moment at this political moment to the Jewish values that call us to act in the face of suffering and in the face of injustice and then on the other hand one of the goals of this initiative is to forge another kind of commitment a commitment to having nuanced and respectful conversations about what is going on in this country and in the world and to draw from another set of Jewish ideas and Jewish values the values of hash bond huh nephesh self-reflection looking at our own role in the current situation the value of Donna Huff's hoot of giving the benefit of the doubt the value of humility the value of derech Eretz civility and to draw from this aspect of the Jewish tradition to open ourselves up to other perspectives in order to listen to other stories without demonizing people whose positions and opinions are different from our own and we might think of this as the spiritual practice of humble conviction humble conviction of being righteous but not self-righteous of being uncompromising on values and of standing for something but without being dismissive or arrogant and so when we ask the question and one of the animating questions one of the four animating questions of the faith and public life initiative is what is BJ's role as a Jewish spiritual institution at this political moment when we ask that question I think we need to be asking it both in terms of what action we take how we speak out against bigotry and discrimination and injustice of all kinds and in terms of what action we can take to heal some of the political and social breaches the intense divides the polarization we need to be asking how can we best cultivate humble conviction and our speaker tonight is an expert in humble conviction or at the very least and why it's so hard for people to hold a posture of humble conviction and why it that may be so important and we're really thrilled to be learning from his wisdom and expertise dr. Jonathan Hite is a social psychologist at the NYU school Stern School of Business his research examines the intuitive foundations of morality and how morality varies across cultures including the cultures of American progressives conservatives and libertarians he uses his research to help people understand and respect the moral motives of people with whom they disagree his four TED Talks which have been viewed more than six million times are on the topics of political psychology religion the causes of America's political polarization and how America can heal after the bitter 2016 election dr. heit is the author of several books including the upcoming being published in July 2018 the coddling of the American mind how good intentions and bad ideas are setting up a generation for failure please join me in welcoming dr. Jonathan hi [Applause] well thank you so much Julie that was an absolutely perfect introduction I didn't have my pen out in time to write down all of the Hebrew words for those civic virtues I'll have to get them from you later but in terms of you know setting the stage for the the urgency of this problem and the unique resources that Jewish communities have had to address them so I I grew up in Scarsdale I we were members of the Scarsdale synagogue I became an atheist a year or two after my bar mitzvah I never really never really looked back and and then lived and worked at various universities and kind of on a fluke I moved back to New York in 2011 to take a one-year position at NYU and they liked me and I liked them and I loved in New York and so took took the job at NYU and suddenly remembered what it was like to live in a place where it seems like half the people are Jewish and and I've really been enjoying it the the intellectual life the the intellectual life at at so many of the synagogues when once my son reached age at which I had to make the decision was I going to give me Jewish education and I and I said yes I must my wife and I joined joined central synagogue and it was through and Rabbi booked I was just is just wonderful and she was engaging in she you know after the election a very difficult political landscape she what was interested in these topics she was given some great sermons on it and that I forget what the exact origin of the project that we did it central with rabbi Auerbach but I came in to talk to a rabbi book Dahl and just looking at the ways that the Jewish tradition had these resources these intellectual resources around the benefits of viewpoint diversity the benefits of argument these are the exact things that I was studying and working on in my work at NYU I run an organization called a heterodox Academy which we'll talk about talk about later Jeremy's our communications director but the the genius the brilliance of the Jewish tradition on recognizing how limited and biased we each are and how much we benefit from a good argument or conversation partner that's the origin of this whole project so I'd like to do now is show you I'll give you a little overview of some things in moral psychology and direct them towards this question you're engaged in as a community these questions of faith and public life and what I'm just so I was on your website and I saw that that you would somebody had put together this as the thing on your website and I was looking at the picture like oh wow that was a long time ago I still had some some black in my hair that was like that was 2011 2012 and and I was getting all nostalgic like you know boy you know think of what our public life was like back then you remember that that really nasty election we had in 2012 remember that remember the 47% versus you didn't build that man those were low blows that was nasty vicious stuff you know of course things have gotten a little worse since then it's just hard to believe how how far our civic life our public life has fallen how much the polarization and anger and hatred has increased and so that is the context for what is happening to us that is the context for it for my talk now of course Trump went on to win the election and we just had the most astonishing year of my life the things happening that nobody could nobody could have thought would be back you know some of the worst things of the 20th century all sort of seems to show up in 2017 to put some numbers on it I want to show you this this graph from Pew from the Pew survey showing where we are as a country this is really quite astonishing Pew has collected survey data nationally representative survey data on the views of Americans they have a set of questions that they've been asking since the early 90s and so there are 10 that they can trace all the way back to the 90s what are you views on on you know aid to the needy a couple of race issues immigration government environmental regulation homosexuality peace through stress they have a whole think about a whole basket of survey items and then ask how far apart are different groups on take the absolute value of the difference whether it's up or down how far apart on average are different groups so for example so here's the it's hard for you to see but I'll just I'll walk you through it there's a bunch of lines they're all values between 5 and 10 they go up and down a little bit but just to illustrate I guess you can you see that so what maybe something's wiping out like red or some particular color is there yeah can we turn off the light on the screen is there if anyone can find that control but I'll just tell you what this is this is how far apart men and women are on average on these 10 items and what it shows is that in 1994 men and women were 5 or 6 points apart and now there are 6 or 7 points apart so no change many women are not further apart and then you go up by age it's not much more so that let's see if the next line will show up a little better ok and then the only one of those lines that has gone up is religious attendance if you compare people to go to church or religious services every week versus those who rarely or never go they were I think 7 or 8 points you know for five points apart and now they're 11 so that's this line here that's theirs so you can see that we are becoming more divided by religious participation not by religion but religious choose religious Catholics religious Protestants are moving apart from secular what more secular members of their groups and that's important but notice the magnitude of that from you know 4 points to 11 that's big but look at this one that's party look how far apart we are by party and almost all of that has come about since 2004 if you knew that somebody was a Republican or Democrat in 1994 or earlier you could guess some things about them but you didn't know everything about them and now you kinda do at least in terms of their attitudes on tinder or 20 different issues we have sorted ourselves into parties those parties now have much less variance than they ever did before people in a congregation like this versus a congregation in Brooklyn just more homogeneous in terms of their attitudes and they would have been 20 years ago that's happening all over the country now importantly religious congregations I think hold out the most hope for actually doing something about this they're different from other kinds of settings so in their book American grace Robert Putnam whom you may know of for Bowling Alone and social capital Robert Putnam and his co-author David Campbell after reviewing the data on what affects two religious communities have on their on their larger communities they conclude that religiously observant Americans are better neighbors better citizens than secular Americans they're more generous with their time and money especially in helping the needy and they're more active in community life being part of a congregation pulls you away from your iPhone away from your TV out into engagement with other people and you we generally bring out the best in each other in such communities so as a country we have I think an existential crisis we have a national emergency and how we deal with it we have limited resources to deal with it but I think some of the most important areas or groups is where the just communities of all sorts so I was very pleased about your your initiative here at BJ so and so to see this faith in public life initiative I won't read it to you you know the text but I know you're engaged with the community of Michigan corrections officers presumably most of whom voted for Trump and have very different attitudes on gun control and almost everything else from you and so that's wonderful so let's talk about moral psychology and how it can help you in what you're trying to do as a congregation and in your lives where you talk with people who have different politics where you are part of a corporation or university or whatever institution you're part of moral psychology can help you interact more effectively with people oh this is the cover of my book in the UK it's a different cover I'm glad that that's not the cover that I'm glad they didn't use that cover in America but I enjoyed being able to show it when I give talks and then this is the paperback version which I did the design I suggested well can't we get like an angel devil because this is really about polarization and how much we hate each other so so very briefly moral psychology there's really three principles that you need to know and if you keep these in mind you'll understand a lot of other wise mysterious stuff that you see going on around you or when you read the newspaper so the first principle intuitions come first strategic reasoning second here's how to think about this every society that has writing has left us almost all every society with the wisdom tradition has left us the idea that the mind is divided into parts that sometimes conflict a common metaphor is that our mind or soul is like a charioteer pulling on horses that was plato's version of it and Plato's metaphor was that reason the charioteer can and should rule over the passions and and that's what maturity is reason coming to control the passions but as a social psychologist in graduate school as a social psychologist in graduate school I came to believe that Plato was not a very good psychologist that David Hume was actually much better David Hume famously said that reason is and ought only to be the slave of the passions and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them now the metaphor of a slave is not right is not ideal because reason is actually reason is has has more powers more insights it's not a better metaphor I believe is a press-secretary reason is the press secretary of the emotions reason is out there to justify what it is that the emotional part has has already made up its mind about so I've been using this metaphor of the press secretary for about seven or eight years and two days ago two days ago we got a much this is absolutely amazing there was an interview Peter Navarro is Trump's trade secretary or something has some role in it in trade and he said he was interviewed by Bloomberg and I have to read this to you here's what he said he said because here he is he's an economist defending tariffs defending tariffs on steel and aluminum other things with all the rest of the world's economists saying are you crazy and Navarro said this is the president's vision my function really as an economist is to try to provide the underlying analytics that confirm his intuition and his intuition is always right in these matters yeah that's my face looks prescient - she's got her jaw her jaw is down like that I mean this is this is the definition of sycophancy did I pronounce that right sycophant anyway I love I mean I'm so grateful to him this is like the best possible illustration of my of my thesis anyway the broader principle here is called motivated reasoning we all do it we all want to reach certain conclusions and we don't say is that conclusion justified we say how can I get there we all do what Peter Navarro is doing so I'll just show you one experiment in one study students they're taking psych 101 actually how many of you have read my book raise your hand if you read the righteous man okay actually a lot of you have all right I know they're just just meeting with the reading group so in one study students are in a psych class they're learning experimental methods they're given a study as part of a an outside class study to evaluate how good are the methods and the study seems to show that caffeine consumption is associated with breast cancer and they're supposed to critique it so who do you think finds a lot of flaws in that study coffee drinkers yeah coffee drinkers hate it right yeah all coffee drinkers women who drink coffee women who drink coffee hear that and they say must I believe it so this is the thing our mind is always asking either must I believe it or can I believe it if we want to believe something we're asking can I believe it can I some scrap of justification that will permit me to believe it and I don't want to believe it I'm asking must I believe it am i forced to believe it or could I maybe discredit the the scientist like maybe they were paid off maybe who knows but nowadays with Google you can discredit anything you just look for something and then put the word fraud and you'll find some article claiming it's a fraud so and then very brief another one people come into the lab and they're there they sit in front of a monitor and they're paid a certain amount that's mean five cents let's say every time they spot a letter on the screen so a lot of stuff flashes up and if they saw that what was that right so that's that's a B but half the people are paid if they spot a number and for them it's a 13 so we're not crazy we don't make stuff up it's ambiguous it could be a b or a 13 if you want it to be a B it's a B if you want to be a 13 it's a 13 if you want to see support for trade tariffs in the data somewhere you can find it so this has this principle remember its intuitions come first strategic reasoning second has a lot of implications for our discussions as passions rise on both sides of a discussion and this is true among the Democrats and Republicans among left and right wing Jews among you and your spouse has passions rise so does motivated reasoning and this is a big part of the reason that we have post truth politics yes social media has a lot to do with it but if we didn't hate each other so much we wouldn't be so gullible second principle is that you have to speak to the other person's emotions and intuitions in my first book the happiness hypothesis I use the metaphor that the mind is divided like a rider on an elephant the rider is conscious reasoning the elephant is very big very smart automatic processes including emotions if you want if you have an argument with someone have you ever noticed that no matter how good your reasons are they don't actually change their mind and admit your brilliance because if you're just speaking to their reason you're not going to do it but if you speak to their intuitions and emotions and get them to see something different or feel something different about you now you've taken them out of the state because before they were in a must I believe it mindset whenever you're in an argument the other person is thinking must I believe it and you cannot convince someone if they are thinking must I believe it but if you can get them to can I believe it or there is you know you can be sort of in neither state maybe if you can just sort of reduce that then you have a chance to persuade okay that's the first principle keep that in mind it will make you much more effective also read Dale Carnegie how to win friends and influence people he really understood this second principle there are six and 202 foundations of morality raise your hand if you filled out that questionnaire online about your moral foundations okay number of you did good all right so I'll just run through it very briefly in graduate school I was really blown away by to two things that seem so powerfully true I I got my PhD at the University of Pennsylvania studying morality and I first read cultural psychology and anthropology and my god is it true that morality varies around the world and I also read evolutionary psychology and my god is it true that the same basic kinds of mechanisms are found everywhere so how do you reconcile that how is it that we are one species with with one common evolutionary history yet we construct these radically different moralities and so the theory that I came up with drawing on my postdoc supervisor richard shweder and many others is that the moral mind is sort of like the way our tongues have five different kinds of taste bud we have almost like moral taste buds and so the way to think about this is because we are mammals we have a arm amount mammals go back 200 million years or something mammal brains well obviously mammal bodies feet the female body is specialized to give milk so you have a long childhood with a lot of nurturance and in most species the female does all the work the man does nothing but some species including ours the male brain retains the nurturance instincts and males are very good nurturers so when we see cruelty especially towards a helpless creature we feel something not just to our own kids we don't want to see cruelty animals so we have this taste but about care and harm and what I found empirically is that if you look at any left-wing group and you listen to them and you look at their signs there's a lot of reference to care and compassion so these are photos for that I took at Occupy Wall Street compassion is a new currency let's get rid of money free empathy I can't hurt another without hurting myself okay so these are beautiful sentiments you would never see these at a right wing or Tea Party rally they just don't talk that way now they love their children and their dogs it's not that they're cold but their politics when they think how should the nation be they don't think care and compassion we have to care for people they don't think that people on the Left think that second foundation fairness every society every person other than Psychopaths cares a lot about fairness but there's a lot of different ways to interpret fairness so on the left equality is very important including equality of outcome so the one percent owned forty three percent if you're on the left that is an argument that is an astonishing statistic saying that things are really unfair but if you're on the right you don't think about equality of outcome at all you'd think about proportionality and you would think well did the one-percent generate 43 percent forty three times more than you know then others I mean maybe I don't know so my point is that this argument works on the left or tax the wealthy fair and square how can they let us go hungry so if they're hungry people then the wealthy are not being taxed enough on the left that makes sense as an argument on the right it does not make sense as an argument because on the right they see fairness overwhelming there's proportionality do the crime do the time I think of it informally as like the law of karma you should reap the fruits of your action and if those actions are good you should be rewarded but if you do something bad you need to be punished and so this sign Emily Eakins took the set of tea party rally stop punishing success that's why the Republicans are always proposing these flat taxes how about if everybody pays nine percent why should rich people have to pay a higher percentage that's unfair it's disproportionate that argument makes no sense on the left but to some people on the right that makes sense to them converse they stop rewarding failure why should we bail people out if they fail due to their own laziness where if they borrowed too much money to buy a house let them suffer they'll learn a lesson those arguments seem cold and cruel on the left but they seem intuitively obvious to many people on the right third foundation Liberty oppression everybody has it left and right but they're Impe they implement in different ways this is the the seal on the flag of Virginia and do you ever notice that verge it the flag of Virginia has a dead person on it raise your hand if you raise your hand if is the first time you're noticing that the flag of Virginia is a dead person on it okay so I don't think I noticed until I moved to UVA in 1995 but it makes sense once you understand the flag was made and I think 1778 when the English people in North America were rebelling against the English king these were not American these were English citizens were British citizens say these were British citizens throwing off their king and what they were doing is they were they were using this really powerful psychological button that we all have and that even chimpanzees have which is when you're being bullied by an alpha alpha male you don't just want to fight back that's often suicidal the instinct is unite with everyone else and take him down there's an instinct to unite in the face of a bully and take him down and if you look at the Declaration of Independence it's almost all a list of grievances that precedes a plea for us to all join our blood and treasure or whatever the phrases so it's the Declaration of Independence is exactly this psychological tastebud against tyrants Sic Semper Tyrannis now on the left this is used to write the rich especially back in occupy times it's the rich who are the bully if this image says if the 99% could get together they could crush and kill the one percent so a violent image about killing the rich in in this country on the right it's the same psychology only it was the government that was seen to be so bad now this is Trump has upended things if this is not it's not the Tea Party or social conservatives in control now it's actually the authoritarian so things are kind of getting scrambled now but before Trump what I'm showing you was exactly the left-right divide now it's kind of mixed up fourth foundation loyalty betrayal there are many animals that can cooperate but they're always siblings they're always sisters and brothers there's only one species on earth that can cooperate in large groups that are not related that's us we evolved for war we evolved for violent intergroup conflict and we have instincts that allow us to form large groups to fight other large groups we're very this then causes a feeling of loyalty we love war so much with our minds are evolved to think about intergroup conflict that we invented sports which is just ritualized war and maybe you could understand why people like to play sports but we love it so much that we like to watch it and when we watch it some people do stupid things and expose themselves not just to the elements but to ridicule because we have tribal minds we like doing this stuff we like becoming a larger a larger group a larger unit don't show it I don't show it there but there's evidence that the right likes doing this more than the left now the left can do it against the right but in general the right goes more in more for Teague bish their team sports things like that the fifth foundations authority and subversion has primates we evolved to show deference and respect we bow a little bit differently than other primates but some similarities so we show we've evolved for authority and subversion this is a church outside Charlottesville God's in charge so shut up now it's a joke it was meant as a joke but you know that it's not a Unitarian Church I mean they would you know a Unitarian Church would well I should have dopants all people but if so be it so they're playing with it there but the point is that the left tends to be more anti-authoritarian and the right tends to think that authority is generally a good thing and then the last foundation and degradation this is an image of the Madonna but she's basically in a rock chastity belt with water flowing beneath her legs and lions guarding the stream of pure water here's another image of Madonna very different Madonna from the 1980s the the idea on this the cultural conservatives tend to want to hem in especially female sexuality the left sees that as oppression the the social conservatives see it as guarding something that is pure and must must be protected from being sullied or dirtied this is a photo and a bumper sticker in charlottesville your body may be a temple but mine's an amusement park and it's it's Jim Webb could this is a Democratic senator so the left loves to laugh at the right for its its prudery around sex but then the right actually likes to laugh at the left for its prudery around food and all the obsessive you know this and that and fair-trade this and recycled that you know can be very hard to order imagine so actually very hard to order breakfast here in the Upper West Side sometimes there's just so many decisions to make about the eggs and the bread and not the bread but so a photo would Occupy Wall Street nothing is sacred I you know I don't really know what it means but this is you this we would not see this at a at a right-wing rally so to put this all together and now to bring it to that survey I have a my colleagues and I created a website you were morals or you can go there register take all kinds of surveys one that you were asked to take but with link was sent around drawing on questions from our moral foundations questionnaire what we find overall is that when people come to the site and they register and say they're on the Left very liberal on the left side they give the highest score very strong endorsement to every item about care care and compassion very high scores as as we go across the spectrum on the right you see that line for care goes down conservatives still value it but not as highly as those who say they're on the left conversely unfairness it depends on the kind but I have proportionality graphed there everybody cares about proportionality the right cares a little more about it if I had won for equality would tilt the other way but it turns out there's not an equality foundation quality is not a very deep moral into proportionality is much deeper whereas if you look at the bottom three lines loyalty Authority sanctity the left says no those are not morality those I disagree with those statements that's like xenophobia racism sanctity Puritanism no I reject all that stuff but the slope is fairly steep as you could become more conservative people endorse them and that's most of our cultural or items most of the cultural you point to anything immigration abortion anything and it usually is going to be a difference that we can point to easily on those on those dimensions so so here are your scores here are the scores from how many of you this is 76 members of your congregation and let me walk you through what this shows so these are the regional five foundations this doesn't have the Liberty foundation was added later we don't have items for that on this in this survey what this shows is in blue well so if you take it you'd find your own score here in green but I guess surely or somebody just given gave me it like a just feel pretended to feel that I'd left it all blank but what this shows is this is this is the average score on the care or harm foundation from a hundred ninety eight thousand people who say that they're on the Left so the average score is three point seven and this is the score for 57,000 people who say they're on the right so as you can see people on the Left score higher on care then then people on the right and here's your congregation you're out higher even then so you're yeah you are more liberal than the Liberals same story on fairness exactly the same story three point seven versus three point four and you're like three point nine or so for four okay now on loyalty and authority you're right there with the national average okay but interestingly on purity or sanctity you're actually high higher than the Liberals now this is interesting to me because what you see in red and blue are the two standard patterns the left is high on these two and low on those three that's the standard the right is the red is it sort of simply you know fairly flat they're sort of the same on all all of them but what I found is that when you look at the religious left which is mostly Christians look at religious left they're really they're like this they're right there with the Liberals on those but they're actually up there with the Conservatives on those so they have like all the slightest which is turned up and if so I don't have a lot of data I could look actually but I don't I haven't looked carefully at different subtypes of Jews and Jewish congregations but if we would look at a conservative congregation I'm guessing that it would most look more like the more like the the red the Conservatives but I think this might be the fact that in a people people who people have the idea that there is something sacred that things are not just matter such a person is more likely to join a congregation than someone who's low on it that's what I make of this okay all right now there's a really useful shorthand here this wonderful article do you know this have you heard this this distinction between poram Jews and Pesach juice it's a really useful so Yossi Klein halevi in Israel where's he he said some think-tank Hartman's Hartman's do so he was this wonderful essay that someone gave to me when I first came to New York and started talking to to Jewish groups and he says he says Jewish history speaks to our generation in the voice of two biblical commands to remember the first voice commands us to remember that we were strangers in the land of Egypt and the message of that command is don't be brutal that's the lesson of Passover the second voice commands us to remember how the tribe of Amalek attacked us without provocation while we were wandering in the desert and the message of that command is don't be naive that's the lesson of poram and so he continues the first command is the voice of Passover of liberation of social justice I would say the second is the voice of poram commemorating our victory over the genocidal threat of Haman a descendent of Amalek Passover Jews are motivated by empathy with the oppressed that's the Care Foundation and the Liberty foundation poram Jews are motivated by alertness to threat that's those military adaptations group loyalty respect for authority maintain the purity of our culture of our of our land the integrity of it guard it from attack from outside build a wall both are essential one without the other creates an unbalanced Jewish personality a distortion of Jewish history and values so what are you what kind of Jew are you I just spent you know ten seconds on your website and it's not just the social justice page it was also this was the real giveaway if you can do intensive yoga with Rabbi Miriam cloths this is definitely a Pesach Jew kind of place so okay so so so the Jewish community is split has the American as the American nation is split the last foundation that morality binds and blinds why do we have morality in the first place it serves a lot of functions it's complicated but one of the functions I believe is that it binds groups together and then blinds them to nuance so they can just be part of the group fighting other groups so as I said before cooperation is very rare on this plan I should say large-scale cooperation is very rare you only really find examples of individual organisms coming together to build something large if they all have the same mother so bees ants wasps termites that's a giant beehive this is a gigantic termite mound in Australia they're all siblings they all have they're all laid by a single queen and then they're sterile so they're all in the same boat it's a brilliant evolutionary strategy these creatures are so Hardy they never go extinct no phylum are not viable there's some at some level none of no ultra social insect has ever gone extinct they're very Hardy they're very it's a very good strategy the only exception to the rule I just gave you is that there are these structures that have appeared on earth in the last you know the three to seven thousand years you get some large things being built by people who are not siblings it always starts with a temple civilization always starts with a sacred building so we humans we have this neat trick we're not all descended from one mother I mean way way back in a sense but what I mean is we can cooperate without being siblings if we circle around a sacred object together so that's what we do so that's that's Babylon on the Left that's Tenochtitlan on the right so you see it most visibly in Muslim worship in the in the Hajj the pilgrimage to Mecca what do they do they circle around the sacred object and I love metaphors I love physics metaphors for some reason now if you remember high school physics you if you move a wire if you move a wire through a magnetic field it makes the electrons move it generates electricity and the sociologist Emile Durkheim said that religious rituals generate social electricity if a group moves together especially in a circle if you and it doesn't have to literally be a circle if you worship together it binds you together and now you can fight others better you trust each other more you're more effective it has huge implications for your social relationships so of course unfortunately we can navigate the you know we can't go around in a circle but it's certainly you know if this is a sacred site it doesn't have to be a religious object anything we do this to if we treat it like it's sacred and we say no don't let it touch the floor people get that and then they treated as sacred and if you are all members of the same cult treating something sacred then you're you're a group it binds you together when we do that what we do is we generate this electricity which means that our side is perfectly good and the other side is perfectly evil it we have a moral charge and this I'm an icky ISM is that the ancient view out of a somewhere in Persia I believe that life is a battle between the forces of good and the forces of evil that's why I suggested to the publishers that they use angels and devils on the book and what we generally want to do with heretics traders nepotistic apostates is not reform them not educate them it's not even enough to punish them we want them to either burn or be exiled those are the two most satisfying things to do with it with an apostate aura or heretic so this has many implications for constructive disagreement as you might imagine as our politics is becoming more tribal more passionate more like a fundamentalist religion I said in the beginning religion is good at least in America studies of congregations religion it has all kinds of good effects fundamentalist religion is different what we see in that RINO Phelps Church in Florida I mean that Heath might be he's mentally disordered but as things get fundamentalist now they become incompatible with different with religious diversity now you get more problems coming in and that's what's happening in our politics and I don't have data on whether Jews are becoming polarized but it has to be happening since it's happening everywhere else if if our religious community is becoming more tribal and more passionate then becoming more tribal it's really really bad for us very dangerous for Jews in America and in Israel to not be unified to be at each other's throats but now here's where things should turn around because you know religious communities have certain resources but Jews in particular have some really specific resources that should make Jews great at this and I think Jews can be great at this and there's a lot of potential so let me show you so Jews more than any other any other people on earth I think understand the necessity of disagreement an argument to find truth maturity and wisdom so just a couple of quotes this came out of working with uh with rabbi Auerbach at Central so I've been a big fan of John Stuart Mill I think he's he's now my favorite philosopher he's the one that we most need on campus as we are excluding non left viewpoints as students are saying no we will not allow conservative speakers on campus I've been arguing that we need we every buddy needs to be John Stuart Mill and so just one of my favorite quotes from on Liberty he who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that his reasons may be good no one may have been able to refute them but if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side if he does not so much as know what they are he has no ground for preferring either opinion and if you can imagine a college education where you don't hear both sides of many arguments you're told here's how it is what's the next topic you just report it back on the exam that's terrible so John Stuart Mill really understood what makes a liberal democracy tick what makes it stable what allows it to advance John Stuart Mill was a true liberal in the philosophical sense and in the progressive sense he was on the progressive side in most most issues well Jews really really get this point so here's Babylonian Talmud there's the story about and enraged the Kish so I'll read this part so they were they were what study partners debating partners rabbi yohanan says in Midas's oh I'm sorry this this takes place after rabbi yohanan has what has passed away and and rabbi other way around so I ran after Fred yeah so rabbi yohanan is left without a partner and he's disconsolate and they said they're rabbits they send him someone else to study with and this person agrees with him on everything oh yes rabbi your reading is correct and then a rabbi yohanan says in my discussions with reish lakish when i would say to matter he would raise 24 difficulties against me in an attempt to disprove my claim and I would answer him with 24 answers and the law by itself would become broadened and clarified in the process of challenging the law becomes broadened and clarified and yet you say to me there is a ruling that supports your opinion do I not know that what I say is good being rebutted by rash latesh served a purpose you're bringing proof to my statements does not and what does that make you all think of yes Peter Navarro this is not the way to get good policy having a bunch of lackeys firing everybody who will not but your Lackey is a really really bad way to run a country another point mill says the only way in which a human being can make some approach to knowing the whole of a subject is by hearing what can be said about it by persons of every variety of opinion studying all modes in which it can be looked at by every character of mind no wise man ever acquired his wisdom in any mode but this nor is in the nature of human intellect to become wise in any other the steady habit of correcting and completing his own opinion by collating it with those of others is the only stable foundation for adjust reliance on it we each have a piece of the truth we need to collate what we know with what others know and some of what we know is false and some what they know is false but if we collate it we can get the truth so here's a quote that actually sent to me from rabbi kook there are those who erroneously believe that the work that world peace will come only from a common character of opinions and qualities world peace will only come when we all think the same way when we all agree we find common ground we right know he says in reality this is not the case because the only way true peace will come to the world is precisely through the multiplicity of peace the multiplicity of peace comes when all possible sides and opinions and perspectives are seen and it will become clear how each one has a place according to its value its place and its topic so the Jewish tradition of engaging with so many texts which are contradictory has created a Jewish way of thinking that is perfectly suited to our present time and that should be very useful in building bridges so Jews should be great at constructive disagreement cuz we can handle contradiction paradox and uncertainty and here's I think this is such a beautiful beautiful passage a beautiful section you know the legendary battle in the house of Shimei in the house of Hillel a person might think since the house of Shimei declares something to be ritually impure and the house of Hillel declares it to be pure how then can I learn Torah but all the words have been given by a single Shepherd one God creates them the Lord of all deeds blessed blessed be he has spoken them so God set all these things there are contradictions in what God said and this is the beautiful line so make yourself a heart of many chambers I love that bring into it the words of the house of Shimei and the words of the house of Hallel the words of those who declare impure and the words of those who declare pure and boy do we need hearts of many chambers to to live in the country that we now have and my third point Jews should be great at constructed to scream because we understand the value of humility and generosity of spirit and it may not be the stereotype of New York Jews but at least our tradition like many religious traditions talks about humility and generosity of spirit so then Zoma says who is the wise one he who learns from all men as it says I have acquired understanding from all my teachers who is the mighty one he who conquers his impulse slowness to anger is better than a mighty person and the ruler of his spirit is better than the Conqueror of a city so again the resources that should make us good at this kind of discussion let's see actually I'm gonna I'm gonna skip this skip this is the interest of time this was already in your and your reading so let me see where we are on time okay okay so what can you do as a community so if you have a community here which is largely Pesach juice that's least the dominant way of being the dominant morality here um what can you do and so I'd like to end with this beautiful story that that Shirley sent her I guess I don't know how many of you read it was sent out as an email too little congregation so we you've seen it but she was listening to the Brian Lehrer show as she liked the guest I thought he made some sense and then she learned that it's Arthur Brooks who was the president of a AEI which is kind of a libertarian Pro free-market think tank in Washington and then Shirley writes I a rabbinical student committed to the values of justice and peace who had not long before LED an Occupy Rosh Hodesh services of Cote Park was not an along with that Arthur Arthur Brooks had to say and that's where the moment of personal growth happened she says it occurred to me that all I really knew about the American Enterprise Institute was what I had told myself it was about based on pretty much nothing the only reason I thought he was opposed to everything I care about was that I convinced myself that he was opposed to it based on the labels by which he defines himself I'd never really read any of a policy papers never heard him speak before it then occurred to me that had I known from the outset that I was listening to Arthur Brooks that morning my progressive biases would have prevented me from being open to his ideas remember intuitions come first strategic reasoning second had she known he was a conservative she would have been thinking must I believe it and the answer that question is always no but because she didn't know she was open and she thought oh this makes some sense and and that I assume was the learning experience was realizing how much you have missed because of these labels that we all apply and I hope you'll speak about this in the in a moment we go to the discussion section so I began learning more about AEI after that listening to Brooks speak it turns out he cares an awful lot about poor people income inequality and the dangers of unbridled individualism we have some different perspectives about the best way to achieve certain goals and we use different language but there's a lot of common ground between him and me this is the kind of attitude that that we need this is what moral leadership I think is going to look like in the coming decades so I'm gonna end with three suggestions for for your community one is try out this wonderful new app this new program we've developed at heterodox Academy called the open mind app try it out within your congregation and see if it makes it easier for you to talk about difficult or are divisive topics here's how it works if you go to heterodox heterodox academy org that's the opposite of orthodox academy org which doesn't exist except at many universities so we've created a whole bunch of things that we think are useful one of them is called the open mind app and if you what it takes you on a walk through moral psychology you learn about motivated reasoning you learn why we have trouble agreeing and then you learn skills for talking across divides so it's five steps you we first make the pitch for why you'll benefit from understanding viewpoint diversity we then have some steps to cultivate intellectual humility learn some psychology break free from your moral matrix and finally skills to prepare for productive disagreement so if you you can find it from heterodox Academy at org or you can go directly to open mind platform org to another suggestion for you my reading of Talmud is basically only the quotes that I showed you there I've never read the Talmud otherwise I love chapter 2 of John Stuart Mill's on Liberty and at heterodox Academy next week we're going to publish a version of just chapter two edited to be really readable with beautiful illustrations so I would suggest if you have any sort of Torah study groups or any sort of reading groups get look at mill look at the torte just look you know there must be differences and similarities and then maybe bring in I there's also several Buddhist traditions like the Dalai Lama is from a tradition that really does a lot of debate and argument so I think religious traditions beaching would be a perfect place to do a project on how various religious traditions have come to the same conclusions about the value of debate and disagreement and so just we this is illustrated edition which you can find at heterodox academy the last the advance credit assignment this one is I think more difficult but think what would you actually have you reached out have you done things with really conservative congregations so that would be that's the advanced credit part if you can do the first two then consider you know I don't know how this would work I don't it would be benefits but consider what you might do now they would probably be a lot less open to it than you the left is more open to novelty to connections so in general I do a lot of things with bipartisan groups you get a lot of people on the Left get one or two people who are sort of just barely center right and then it's bipartisan it's harder to find conservatives to engage in so than it is progressives but try it try try conversing about about Jewish topics in America about Israel see what happens okay so I'll just end o I'll end with a no you know what I won't i won't show the video i have a three minute video you know wait should people like vide i'll show it he'll show okay so we a heterodox academy we created this three-minute video to illustrate graphically why viewpoint diversity is so essential for finding truth so let's see if this let's see if it what is reason philosophers have long told us that as humanity's highest and noblest attribute it's what separates us from other animals it's what allows us to separate truth from falsehood there's just one problem when psychologists study real people trying to reason what they find is that reason is a gigantic crippling flaw it's called the confirmation bias people don't use their reasoning abilities to find the truth they use reason to confirm the views that they already hold now put people into teams where everyone holds the same beliefs and the confirmation bias grows into a collective mania everyone helps everyone else find reasons why their side is right further deepening shared bonds heaven help an individual who thinks for herself or who looks for evidence on the other side such people are called traitors and groups have many ways of shutting them up when everyone's beliefs line up and when dissenters are punished that's the definition of Orthodoxy orthodoxy can be great if you're heading into battle and you want everyone marching in lockstep but what if your goal is truth rather than victory what if you actually wanted to help students overcome their confirmation bias and learn about the perspectives of others what if you wanted to create a community of researchers who could actually study and solve social problems in other words what if you wanted to create a university would you want orthodoxy or would you want its opposite heterodoxy where multiple views are not just permitted but encouraged in a heterodox university each person can still use the reasoning powers to find reasons why they are right and others are wrong but here's the brilliant thing each person becomes the solution to someone else's confirmation bias this is why universities must have viewpoint diversity viewpoint diversity is the only reliable way to get around confirmation bias viewpoint diversity is the secret to a great education it may not always be comfortable but when ideas collide we learn we grow together everyone gets smarter the alternative campuses that try to protect students from unapproved ideas books and speakers a politically Orthodox university discourages dissent creativity empathy and truthfulness that's why more than a thousand academics from across the political spectrum have joined heterodox Academy working with students professors and administrators heterodox Academy is rebuilding the culture of free inquiry and open civil debate that turns universities and engines of discovery growth and progress support free inquiry share your voice stand up for viewpoint diversity visit heterodox academy dot org [Applause] thank you so much I have to say I'm a little bit speechless because not only did you answer all the questions that I was going to ask I did not know that I was going to make an appearance in your presentation and you have also laid out all of the work that I need to do over the next five years so I'm a little bit at a loss for words and we'll open it up in just a moment to to Q&A from from the audience here I want to do two things first first to introduce Simon Greer who will also be coming around with me with the handheld mic to help folks ask and ask questions and engage in discussions Simon has been doing some consulting to BJ on the faith and public life project he's also worked with dr. heit and previously John on previous projects around this this type of issue how do we dialogue across difference I do want to ask you one question kind of touching on the last the last few points that you made about next steps for a congregation like this so it seems to me that the three things that you noted have largely are related to discussion how can we have discussions within our congregation or reach out to to Purim Jews to other types of Jewish congregations or perhaps other types of faith congregations this is also a community that's very big on action we have a history of being involved in all kinds of campaigns and political work and direct service do you have thoughts on how how some of the ideas and the lessons that you are bringing to us through your presentation could influence or impact some of the action that we take the extent that you're as a community you're undertaking actions that are helping the poor you're you're you're helping people there's you don't need to discuss you don't need to learn anything to know where that's the right thing to do but I'm thinking a lot about campus activism these days do there's a lot of activism among young people and normally that's a good thing and we're all supposed to say what a good thing it is but I've been thinking recently that if you get a group of experts together to address a problem and they come up with a fix from some sort of social policy solution and then it's implemented there's a very good chance it's going to make things worse it's really really hard to to fix social problems and if people are really thinking their best they've got a lot of experience it's better than 50% chance that they'll make progress but they really might not and so now if you think about a group of young people we're very passionate who are pushing for some solution some change of policy on campus some change of the laws and these are young people who are very passionate and who Jen will not allow much dissent so they know what they need to do there's no argument about it and they're gonna press people to do it there's a good chance they're gonna make things worse and I think that's a lot of what happens on campus is that we then implement these policies that I think often make the climate they make trust worse so I'm actually I actually think that the very idea of activism needs to be rethought because activism generally presupposes we know what's right we know that we're right you're wrong now sometimes that will be correct but sometimes it's exactly backwards and so I'm no longer much of a fan of activism unless it is tied to some sort of a community that is at least open to critique that can show that it evolves over time that is responsive to evidence so if you are such a community and then you choose to act and that's great you actually have a real basis for your action so that's all I would say is discussion and openness to outside critique should be a should be a necessary stage before you actually try to act on the world other than helping the poor and the hungry that doesn't need much discussion I was going to ask one thing but actually you just sort of touched on it and so I'll make it a little bit broader I find that I I can have constructive disagreement or dialogue with people who are willing to enter into a dialogue or a conversation or a debate but there are people who for example say there's no such thing as evolution or Jews or Devils or women should never be allowed to run a country or a corporation or any of these other things in which case I honestly don't know what the weigh-in is and the last thing that you just said as long as people are open to dialogue based on evidence sounds to me like people who are therefore committed to some degree of Reason so evidence is a part of a reasoned dialogue not necessarily an intuitive dialogue okay so tell me exactly when or what year it was when you last tried to have a conversation with the person who thought that Jews are Devils what year was that two years ago where was it tell me a person who thought you were devil Jews are definitely not me personally they said it they said that they thought Jews were Devils okay and when did you meet a person who thought that a woman shouldn't be allowed to run a country oh I hear it on TV really sure I didn't hear that at any point in the last but the point is there are such people so okay but wait yeah yeah I don't doubt that there are such people in the world but you presented this as though you're open to debate and you draw on evidence but those people on the other side a lot of them have views that are so reprehensible that I can't possibly talk with them and what I'm trying to establish is whether you think that's 1% of those people or 50% what do you think I have no idea okay it's probably closer to 1% maybe 2% what we do is we construct the worst possible version of the other side and they're doing exactly the same thing to us and they're having the same well yeah they're also saying you know I could talk with a reasonable liberal but there aren't any reasonable liberals left so I'm sorry too I just want to push back because in how we frame in how we frame the situation that's where you see our biases and so you're not alone here a lot of people probably think that way that you're open but the other side is just such such close-minded troglodytes that I can't talk with him and what I would say is even if even if you meet someone who has the most reprehensible views you can imagine you can still have a great conversation with them and I would commend you I would point you to Jimmy what was the the black musician who befriended the Klan members what's his name anyone know Darryl Davis thank you amazing guy he decided that he was going to try to actually persuade Klan members to give up their robes hey go up to them and he'd meet them and you know with it how he found them but he would talk to them about music and it turns out they'd never really had a black friend or whatever it is he was able to have great conversations with them and many of them gave up their robes so I would say that even if someone has reprehensible views if you start off on the wrong foot it's gonna go badly but if you start off on the right foot it you actually can have a conversation with anyone the right foot is I think is usually acknowledging something that they're right about which it might be hard in these cases but even still you can do it if you think hard so okay you think a woman shouldn't be able to somebody who's anti-hillary you might say so you know I I'm guessing that you think it's very important to have a really steady stable hand you know at the helm oh yes absolutely and you know if you just start even that it's just acknowledging it's not just that you hate women it's that you think that there's something that we need I'm just saying there's always a way when you can start off positively or praise or criticizing your side so there are ways to do it again Dale Carnegie is the best guide for that yeah I'm sorry shoot I'm gonna what should I call okay yeah no sir privileges become all the rage in the Academy and while there is some truth to it or there's there's a there's a valid idea there which is that certain people will carry themselves with certain expectations and other people can't make those expectations so it's not a terrible notion there it is rooted in some truth but I think it has some very pernicious effects so one thing that it does when because young people in many colleges now are educated from orientation and even now it's really so all over high school a lot of you price send your kids to private schools fancy left-leaning private schools raise your hand if you have wager and if you have kids in high school raise your hand okay for those of you have your kids come back talking about privilege is that something that they talk about yeah when we are a tribal species really really good at dividing things into good and evil and we made a lot of progress in this country it used to be that if someone looked at you and they saw your race or they saw your religion or they saw your last name they make a judgment about you and that's the world my parents were raised in in New York in the 1930s and so and boy if we made progress on that unfortunately last two or three years I think we're reversing progress because young people are learning just look at someone I can see you're a white man that means you and somebody else is a black woman they are marginalized on two counts and you're a marginalized sir I don't know what we think the phrase marginalized people marginalized communities it locks in the idea that America is a matrix of oppression in which some people based on their race gender and a few other traits are the marginalized and oppressors and the others are the victims now imagine having a multi-ethnic multiracial democracy which we teach people some people are good some people are evil you can tell by their color this is a terrible terrible thing to do this is one of the reasons I think there is so much anger and activism on campus because even though America is getting better and safer and juster over many decades now young people see it as being so irretrievably racist sexist homophobic universities homophobic have you been to a university in the last 10 to 20 years I mean so it's kind of losing touch with reality I think it's having a lot of pernicious effects into the might and in what university what I'm curious about though is your theory is stated as a truth the only way what you are recommending to us thank you what's you're recommending to us is that we try out our truths by presenting them to people who will disagree with them so that our truths can get clarified extended I'd like to hear a bit about your engagement with the heterodox Center Academy you set up and folks on campuses who really disagree and has that been constructive engagement have you tried to initiate that I think it would be helpful to hear about the walk you've walked with your you know what's you're talking to us sure okay so first um did I say that something was the only way if I did I'd probably misspoke what did I say was the only way it might have been Mill's whose quote said the only way and I you know that's a very when I see you right when I was reading that I noticed that - you're right he should not have said the only way he should have said the best way he could he could have said the best way which would be his assertion so no you're right and I try to avoid that but I don't know we succeed right got it okay on the larger question about engagement so this fall started when I gave a talk in 2011 to my community of social psychologists about this problem and there was a debate and I refined my views and they refined their view so that was all very productive within the community of social psychologists we then formed ultimately formed heterodox Academy 2015 and that was September 2015 just before everything blew up with the Yale Halloween protest and all of that since then things have been very very tense on campus and in this whole space and there's been surprisingly no argument against us there was one station one nobody is like debated to us nobody has really challenged us there have been certain slurs directed at us there was a philosopher at Yale who wrote something bad about us but it wasn't at all disagreeing with what we're saying is just you know accusing us of punching down that sort of thing so there are arguments about there are argument about my race and my sex but nobody is in the Academy has really argued with me that I know of now we're gonna we're trying to push that we're hoping that we'll get pushed back so in other words can you can you think of an argument against you point diversity that we should all think the same I think if you came to Columbia and talked to activist student groups on campus they would make arguments against Porter saying oh no I would love that again my prediction is that they would not my prediction is that they because what's happening to young people in activist circles is they learn a style of rhetoric which is all about placement it's not about the arguments it's about placement so yes they would talk about my privilege yes they would talk about the experiences of various people in marginalized communities but if I'm making a set of arguments about identity politics that there was a good kind a bad kind and I make psychological arguments about the importance I have an overarching encompassing identity I'm making a psychological argument about how to achieve the goals that they want and I don't think my prediction is that they would rarely argue back they were just so it happened look at what happen to mark Lilla so mark lilly makes an argument for columbia makes an argument about how identity politics is destroying the left he is on the left lost left to win he writes this that the left will do better identity politics and what happens one of his colleagues at columbia doesn't argue back she says something like take what his wearing he's got a white mask on or something like that's not an argument that's a slur but pletely please push back what have i have i addressed your concern do you think you know it's an empirical question how it would work if you took this out to activist groups they might not be approaching you but i think it would be really interesting for you as well as for them to have the dialogue about this approach yes that will happen because my book comes out on july 17th and i'll be speaking at many college campuses and I'm hoping that I get protested and boycotted that would be a lot of fun I thanks for your talk I want to take this in a little bit different direction you were talking a lot about religion and you started out with a quote saying how religious people in some ways are better citizens and they show more compassion you also showed a set of graphs which show at least amongst liberal congregations that they sort of track with liberal values but they also track with the sacred so there's this idea that amongst religious peoples that you might you might get some advantage as far as the types of progress that you're trying to make the kind of progress you're trying to make on the other hand you talked about this kind of circling this electrical circling that happens and you gave the example of Mecca which is obviously a pious religion so wondering if you could talk a little bit about the tensions between this idea that religion is going to help you or religion is going to divide you and also keeping in mind that in earlier in the very first graph you gave you talked about how differences changed with religion but that left out that in this country I think that eight to ten percent actually there is a drop of participation in religion in the country overall so it kind of works against that okay thank you so I would have been oversimplifying if I said religion is good period like so let me clarify as these sociologists studied religious congregations in the United States they found that the effects of religion were positive on many many metrics but as you I think what's behind your question is that we look around the world and we see all kinds of atrocities committed in the name of religion in America we have a free market in religions people Christians in particular switched Congress switch denominations all the time so denominations have to be really really appealing one reason it's thought that Americans are more religious than Europeans is that our religions are much much better in Europe they had state religions what happens when you have a state supermarket it has terrible stuff to offer but if you have a free market religions where every congregation is competing to lure people in so when I taught at UVA I would assign my students to go visit a moral community that they reject that's very different from them and I did it myself a couple I much like an Assemblies of God Church you go to these fundamentalist churches and you were just loved bombed I mean they are so pleased to meet you they welcome you like American religions are really really positive not every single one necessarily so that's so I'm time America in America it's evolved that's one of one of the great guys so America is along history with freedom of religion tolerance of religion other countries don't okay so that that's a great first start to the answer there's also a kind of when you were asking about for instance is this congregation engaged with conservative congregations and there's a kind of split of authoritarianism or respect for authority I shouldn't say sorry tardiness we reflect with Authority and morality in certain types of targets and a different type of respect for other things and you end up having a reenactment of that liberal conservatives split in the general culture within these congregations you see the same thing and in Catholicism with with conservative Cardinals versus the current papacy and so you end up with same kinds of tension so I was just wondering if you could address sure well why are you sending people to Michigan to talk with correction officers when you could be sent him to Brooklyn to talk with Jews seriously why yeah please maybe maybe Simon can speak to that since he's the one who came up with the idea of going to Michigan we're going you know for I think many folks here know that there's a small group of us who are going to be going to Michigan and then folks from Michigan who are coming here to visit BJ at the end of June from the Michigan corrections officers Corrections organization which is a union of corrections officers in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and we're going there for two reasons one because Simon has done a lot of work with that group and there's a relationship there and they have a whole program around conservative member engagement and there's a group of people who we know are really interested in open to having a dialog in some kind of in exchange with people from our type of community a largely liberal community in on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and I would say there's value in the project of travel of going really outside of our environs what we're familiar with and going to a totally new place and you could think about this anytime that you've been to a new country or you've been to someplace that's been completely foreign it shakes off some of your blinders and some of your perhaps preconceived notions and and just puts you in a new environment and a new mental space to be able to encounter new ideas so I think there's value in that as well I wasn't pushing that there's value I do agree there's value especially from the American project of reaching across the American political divide absolutely there's what I was trying to suggest is that is that any sort of encounter like this it's gonna go better to think you can draw a circle around it and say we are all X we are all Jews we are all Americans we all something and so I again as I said I don't know how this would go it might be very awkward but but the extent that you you might say you know look I mean anti-semitism is on the rise hate crimes are on the rise what's happening with this country that you know but you know we Jews have to at least be talking to each other and again I don't know how would go I'm just saying that to extent that you can point to a common economy identity that is an advantage in these talks and what I see happening a lot of diversity policies on campus is they're getting rid of any common identity they're focusing on differences that I think from a social psychological perspective I think is is is not the wisest way to do it do these conversations so I think we're gonna take one last question and someone in the front has the microphone where's the other microphone okay thank thank you just two points that that have come to my attention one the initial conversation about engaging with someone who says old Jews are Devils I mean from my experience and as a psychotherapist also yes you can engage that person but like I'm remembering years and years ago I dated a Frenchman who had grown up very anti-semitic and he said to me oh you're really not like other Jews you're fine but that person can bounce back into their default just because they meet someone who breaks what their prejudices are doesn't mean you're going to totally change their opinion like the Ku Klux Klan of all black individuals you know I've had friends who are Catholic and I agree with you about the Jewish expansion of being able to see many sides I mean many people grow up as fundamentalist grow up and more punished for asking questions and for wanting to have many different gradations rather than black and white so those people are growing up into fundamentalism and it's very hard to alter their position you can try certainly and I admire you're trying but it's it's really sometimes like hitting a brick wall and I guess as a woman I also resent in some ways you know I've been worked with many victims of sexual abuse where they been told to think about their abusers to see the other side to forgive and as women we often are told to be the mediators to forgive to be compassionate but what is happening from that other side where are those people doing the work we are being asked to do a lot of the work so I'm I'm just wanting that okay sure so when there's the case of an abusive relationship and especially if there's physical violence and especially if research shows there were recurring patterns in which the woman tries to accommodate or apologize then no I'm not saying that that the woman should just try to make peace there are often traps there are patterns that are abusive and the only thing to do is get away and get a restraining order so this is not a claim that everyone should always capitulate or anything like that this is this is a an argument focused on political disagreements which is what's tearing our country apart the difference between left right Republican Democrat has gotten larger and larger in recent decades we have a few fissures in this country race gender class and politics of those four two are I've gotten a lot better race and gender gotten a lot better class is getting worse and politics is getting worse those the two I think we should be focusing on class and politics but what we focus on on campus at least is the first two so it's not that they're not important what I'm saying decade by decade we should be reevaluated what are the real problems this country I think the left-right problem is the one that might do us in if America ends and it could end there might not 50 years no there might not be a single country called America anymore with the same 50 states I'm not betting on I'm just saying it's now possible five years ago I would not have hoped it was possible if it ends it's because we allowed a couple of divisions probably the political division to fester so I'm not saying that there are there are true victims but just because someone holds a stereotyped view of you does not mean they're a bad person or that you were victim we all have stereotypes people on the Left tend to focus on stereotypes as one of the worst things a person could have but we all have stereotypes your brain will make stereotypes no matter what you do you cannot stop your brain from having stereotypes and you have stereotypes about all kinds of people including various kinds of conservatives so I take your points and I don't want to be saying you know oh never judge although of course a lot of ancient wisdom Buddha not Jesus so much but a lot of ancient wisdom is never judge I'm not saying that but in general if you had a switch on your kid's head that said wherever they're set I'm gonna turn it up so that they're more responsive more angry they react to more stuff they don't let anything get by I'm gonna turn down but sometimes it's gonna happen that someone insults them and then I'm gonna notice or they're not gonna respond raise your hand if you would turn the switch up so that no one ever gets anything over on your kid but there'd be false positives raised you and if you turn it up to make them more angry and more outraged raise your hand raise your and if you turn it down if you could okay that's where we are as a species and as a country we need to turn it down there are exceptions and so I take your point that there are exceptions thank you thank you thank you so much thank you everyone for being here tonight I just want to very briefly in closing on I ask you to raise your hands again raise your hands if you heard something tonight that resonated with you that you were nodding along with at some point great and raise your hand tonight if you heard something that that didn't resonate that challenged or agitated you that you thought must I believe that okay a lot of people so I think this evening would be a success so John I want to thank you again for being here there's some upcoming faith in public life events that are on the handout on your sheet and also there's a table on the side for some of our activism and invite you to go take a look at that thanks for being here tonight everybody

Channel: B'nai Jeshurun

Views: 14,107

Rating: 4.7714286 out of 5

Keywords: livestream, BJ Sanctuary, Faith & Public Life, Lecture

Id: YQ3d4kLkZk8

Length: 86min 22sec (5182 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 13 2018