Book 147 - A Year of Magical Learning (Part 1 / 2)

Reflection Title: Be an Elephant Whisperer!

Book – The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion (Reflection 1/2)

Book Description: In The Righteous Mind, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt explores the origins of our divisions and points the way forward to mutual understanding. His starting point is moral intuition - the nearly instantaneous perceptions we all have about other people and the things they do. These intuitions feel like self-evident truths, making us righteously certain that those who see things differently are wrong.

Haidt shows us how these intuitions differ across cultures, including the cultures of the political left and right. He blends his own research findings with those of anthropologists, historians, and other psychologists to draw a map of the moral domain, and he explains why conservatives can navigate that map more skillfully than can liberals. He then examines the origins of morality, overturning the view that evolution made us fundamentally selfish creatures. But rather than arguing that we are innately altruistic, he makes a more subtle claim - that we are fundamentally groupish. It is our groupishness, he explains, that leads to our greatest joys, our religious divisions, and our political affiliations

Reflection:

Why did I ever doubt Jonathon Haidt???

I LOVED his first book I read called The Happiness Hypothesis. It is one of my top 5 favorites that I’ll be writing a 5-part reflection for eventually. However, for as much as I loved his first book, I was very apprehensive to take this journey with him. The title of this book is so misleading, and it caused me to avoid reading it for a really long time.

I used to care a lot about politics and religion before I met Emilia. Now, those 2 words trigger me with all kinds of bad memories of unnecessary pain and strife those 2 words have brought into our world. I think of all the arguments I’ve watched on Fox News and CNN about right vs. left. I think of my friends that literally cut some people out of their life if they did or didn’t vote for Donald Trump. I think about my Mom and Dad fighting about the Catholic church and it’s place in our world seemingly every day of my childhood growing up. I think about Muslims flying planes into the twin towers on 9/11. Basically, the words Religion and Politics bring nothing but thoughts of pain into my mind.

After we lost Emilia and this journey I’ve been on these past few years, I’m happy and content in our shared world of living our values. I rarely engage anymore in the nightly news programs, I try to refrain from political conversations with friends, and I certainly do everything in my power to make sure I’m explicit that when I’m talking about God and Spirituality that I’m not talking about organized religion as to not trigger anyone. I do everything I can to keep myself focused on my Mission of Living for 2 in as much as I can, and I’ve never been happier.

So, when I saw the title of this book, I thought, “I don’t want to engage in these institutions anymore” and pushed it aside. I don’t know what made me finally crack it open, but I did and I’m so glad.

I say this title is misleading because, in my mind, this book had nothing to do with Religion and Politics for 90% of it. It was about breaking down the fundamentals of human cultures, brain evolution, how we think, and why we do what we do for ourselves and for one another. This is EXACTLY the type of stuff I love most these days, and I was fascinated by this journey with Jonathon Haidt. Again, why did I ever doubt this in the first place?

I loved this one so much, that I’m breaking the rules again and I’m going to write a 2 part reflection vs just the normal 1.

In Happiness Hypothesis, I learned about Haidt’s analogy he uses for our intuitive and rational nature he calls the Elephant and the rider. Visualize an Elephant walking around with a little tiny rider sitting on top. The Elephant is our intuitive nature. The Elephant represents all the incredible things and way of how our brains and bodies function that have developed slowly over the course of time. The Elephant is truly incredible and a sight to behold as it unconsciously does it’s thing. The Rider sitting on top represents our rational thinking mind. The rider can’t do much, but it can help to point out blind spots that the Elephant can’t see and slowly help to course correct over time with deliberate action and training applied. We need both the Elephant and the Rider in this world.

With that explanation out of the way, Haidt spent a lot of time diving way deeper into this analogy throughout most of this book. Somewhere along the way, he said something that struck me to my core. He said, “Be an Elephant Whisperer”.

It just all clicked when I heard that. If you spend enough time understanding Elephants in general, you can make magic happen in this world for not only yourself, but others.

My mind immediately went back to books I've consumed already like the 48 Laws of Power, How To Win Friends and Influence People, Who Moved My Cheese, Endure, Alchemy, Atomic Habits, Why Buddhism is True, The Warrior Within, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Sapiens, The Body, The Culture Code, Nudge, Thinking Fast and Slow, The Black Swan, Humankind, Nonviolent Communication, Why We Sleep, and so many more that I’ve enjoyed on this journey.

ALL OF THESE BOOKS have basically been about that damn Elephant in some form or another! Whether it be about how to master your own Elephant or how to communicate with other Elephants, understanding that damn Elephant is fundamental to accomplishing anything in this world.

The more I learn about this incredible Elephant of ours, the more thoughts and ideas that fill my head of how to design the most effective environment and ecosystem to let these Elephants thrive. Trieu an I call that Ecosystem ClubAny!

ClubAny is an ecosystem where we will ensure that everyone’s elephant and riders will be able to engage in the meaningful work and develop the meaningful relationships they need in order to live a purpose driven existence that we all crave so much.

It is going to be epic!

I’m not a fully certified Elephant Whisperer yet, but I’m hoping to one day soon get my learner’s permit to start trying some things out in this world. Stay tuned!

Question: What do you know about how your Elephant works?

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Links:

What is The Year of Magical Learning? An Introduction

YOML Podcast Discussion - Coming Soon

YOML Bookstore - The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion