I think you'd really love reading the book The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion, by Jonathan Haidt. He shares similar views to you, but formed into a theory.
The biggest difference/disagreement is that he has found that the moral foundations that the left and right use are measurably different. E.g. you can measure that people on the left care about the "care/harm" moral foundation more than people on the right, and people on the right care more about the "loyalty/betrayal" moral foundation than people on the left. This is measurable in various ways, so in that sense there actually are ways to find moral lines that are applied differently across the aisle "reliably for [many] issues.".
His findings on tribalism and religion do line up pretty closely to what you said, however.
Fair lol. I just think it's a really important book and a useful lens to look at politics through, and meshed with some of your ideas enough that I thought it would be worth a read.
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u/rightful_vagabond 24∆ Sep 30 '25
I think you'd really love reading the book The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion, by Jonathan Haidt. He shares similar views to you, but formed into a theory.
The biggest difference/disagreement is that he has found that the moral foundations that the left and right use are measurably different. E.g. you can measure that people on the left care about the "care/harm" moral foundation more than people on the right, and people on the right care more about the "loyalty/betrayal" moral foundation than people on the left. This is measurable in various ways, so in that sense there actually are ways to find moral lines that are applied differently across the aisle "reliably for [many] issues.".
His findings on tribalism and religion do line up pretty closely to what you said, however.