Israel e o dilema da guerra na Ucrânia - Tania Krämer (Deutsche Welle)

 

Israel e o dilema da guerra na Ucrânia

Tania Krämer

Deutsche Welle, 23/10/2022

Ataques à capital ucraniana indicam ingerência do Irã no conflito, estimulando Ucrânia a voltar a pedir ajuda militar a Israel. Até agora basicamente neutro, país oscila entre valores morais e relações com Rússia

Pouco depois de a Rússia bombardear Kiev com drones Shahed-136, de presumível proveniência iraniana, o ministro ucraniano do Exterior, Dmytro Kuleba, anunciou a Israel que faria um pedido oficial ao país para o fornecimento de sistemas de defesa aérea. Por sua vez, o Irã refutou como falsas as notícias de que haveria fornecido drones a Moscou.

Não é a primeira vez que Ucrânia pede apoio militar a Israel, que, no entanto, até agora evita a exportação direta de armas para o país sob ofensiva militar russa. Em vez disso, tem ajudado os ucranianos com recursos humanitários, entre os quais também coletes à prova de bala e capacetes.

Ao colocar em cena o arqui-inimigo israelense, Teerã, contudo, a mais recente guinada evidenciou de novo o dilema de Tel-Aviv quanto à invasão da Ucrânia sob ordens de Vladimir Putin.

Desencadeou-se um novo debate sobre como Israel pode prosseguir com seu atual malabarismo: por um lado, o governo do primeiro-ministro Jair Lapid tem criticado a invasão, em parte severamente, e concedido cada vez mais ajuda à Ucrânia; por outro, até agora tem evitado conceder apoio militar direto, a fim de não comprometer suas relações com Moscou.

"Onde está o Irã, Israel deve estar do outro lado"

Em telefonema com o ministro Kuleba, na noite de quinta-feira, o premê Lapid comunicou que recebera uma atualização relativa ao progresso da guerra, e reforçou que Israel "está do lado do povo ucraniano". O requerimento formal de sistemas antiaéreos não foi mencionado no comunicado.

Na véspera, discursando a embaixadores da União Europeia em Israel, o ministro da Defesa Benny Gantz assegurara que seu país "está do lado da Ucrânia": "Nós dissemos isso no passado e repetimos hoje: a política de israel consiste em apoiar a Ucrânia com auxílio humanitário e com o fornecimento de equipamento defensivo para salvar vidas."

Gantz ressalvou que, embora não vá haver entrega de sistemas armamentistas "por uma variedade de considerações", Israel poderia ajudar a "desenvolver um sistema de alerta precoce que salvará vidas".

Também entre analistas se debate acaloradamente a presente atitude israelense quanto à guerra na Ucrânia. "Israel segue se comportando de modo que, no fim, vai se dar mal de ambos os lados", criticou o jornalista Nadav Eyal no diário Jediot Achronot. "Os ucranianos estão furiosos por Israel não ajudar. E os russos, ao aceitar a ajuda do Irã, também ajudam os iranianos, e operam contra Israel em diversos níveis."

Amos Yadlin, ex-diretor do serviço secreto militar Aman, comentou: "Devemos ficar do lado dos que partilham nossos valores: com as nações democráticas da Europa e com os Estados Unidos, que são contra a agressão russa contra a Ucrânia." Desde o início da ofensiva no Leste Europeu, ele se posicionou por um apoio israelense mais ativo: "O Irã é nosso maior inimigo. E sempre que o Irã está do lado de alguém, devemos estar do outro lado."

Ministro Benny Gantz persevera na ajuda humanitária à UcrâniaFoto: Ariel Hermoni/MOD

Comunidade judaica na Rússia e segurança à porta de casa

Desde o começo da invasão russa, em 24 de fevereiro, Tel Aviv presta assistência humanitária à Ucrânia, ao mesmo tempo que tenta manter as relações diplomáticas com Moscou. Paralelamente, corre no país um debate sobre os deveres morais, também de acolher os refugiados e imigrantes da Ucrânia e da Rússia. No entanto a abordagem israelense segue suas próprias considerações políticas e diplomáticas, com ênfase no destino da comunidade judaica na Rússia.

Na década de 1990, após o colapso da União Soviética, mais de 1 milhão de judeus russos imigrou para Israel. Agora, apenas em 2022, já chegaram outros 20 mil, entre os quais jovens tentando escapar da mobilização militar parcial decretada por Putin. O processo em curso sobre a ameaça de fechamento da semiestatal Jewish Agency em Moscou, que assiste judeus na emigração para Israel, ilustra bem a atual pressão sobre as instituições judaico-russas.

Também têm grande peso as considerações de política de segurança à própria porta de casa: desde que deu apoio ao regime de Bashar al Assad na guerra civil da Síria, a Rússia passou a controlar parte do espaço aéreo sírio. Por sua vez, Israel executa regularmente ataques aéreos contra assim chamados alvos iranianos na Síria, e contra entregas de armas à pró-iraniana milícia libanesa Hisbolá.

A coordenação militar estreita – uma espécie de "telefone vermelho", através do qual Israel informa à Rússia sobre ofensivas aéreas iminentes – garante às Forças Armadas israelenses a urgentemente necessária "liberdade de ação" para executar tais ofensivas aéreas.

Uma "Cúpula de Ferro" para a Ucrânia?

A Ucrânia gostaria de dispor de sistemas antimísseis poderosos como a "Cúpula de Ferro", a "Funda de Davi" ou o "Barak 3". Certos especialistas em segurança israelenses ressalvam, contudo, que seu país não dispõe de suficientes sistemas de defesa para poder exportá-los.

Além disso, frisa Yadlin, a "Cúpula de Ferro" é operada com uma tecnologia secreta, "que Israel não deseja que caia nas mãos dos russos ou, acima de tudo, dos iranianos que agora se encontram na Crimeia" – a península ucraniana ilegalmente anexada por Moscou em 2014.

"A boa notícia", prossegue o especialista israelense, "é que os drones iranianos são alvos fáceis, pois voam a altitude e velocidade baixas". "Portanto pode-se ajudar a Ucrânia com sistemas de defesa aérea menos sofisticados, que Israel já vendeu a outros países."

No momento, os indicadores são, antes, que Israel manterá seu presente curso. "Estamos acompanhando a participação do Irã na guerra na Ucrânia. Vemos que num presente próximo ele possivelmente fornecerá sistemas adicionais", afirmou o ministro Benny Gantz aos embaixadores da UE. Teerã está ativo "no Iraque, Síria, Líbano, Iêmen e outros locais", e Israel "vai continuar desenvolvendo e mantendo suas próprias capacidades", garantiu o chefe da Defesa israelense.

Xi Jinping, o PCC e a nova "Xina" - Dang Yuan (Deutsche Welle)

 

Xi Jinping, o PCC e a nova "Xina"

Dang Yuan

Deutsche Welle, 23/10/2022

A nova equipe de liderança do Partido Comunista está definida, o presidente chinês assegurou seu inédito terceiro mandato. Na potência asiática, a veneração a um líder degenera em culto à personalidade, opina Dang Yuan.

Habemus Xi! Que Xi Jinping almejava um terceiro mandato como secretário-geral do Partido Comunista da China (PCC), não era segredo para ninguém, antes mesmo do 20º congressopartidário. Desse modo, o político de 69 anos extrapolou o limite de idade – de 68 anos – e de exercício – de dez anos –, até então vigentes para o cargo. Tampouco surpreende a composição do recém-eleito Comitê Permanente do Politburo, o círculo de poder do PCC:

Até agora, no PCC liderança significava continuidade. Em sua política de pessoal a sigla pensava no longo prazo, sendo até então notória por indicar bem cedo para o politburo a próxima geração, encarregando-a, assim, de tarefas estatais importantes. Em geral, os políticos trazidos para o grêmio não passavam dos 58 anos de idade.

No novo Comitê Permanente, contudo, o político mais jovem já conta 60 anos. Não há como se falar de mudança de geração, na acepção do termo. A nova esquadra de liderança não é significativamente mais jovem, três dos sete membros permaneceram no cargo e assumirão novas funções no aparato estatal, quatro subiram de posto.

O carrossel do pessoal apenas deu uma volta. Na verdade, não está claro quem assumirá o leme do PCC no próximo congresso, para definir os destinos da China, dentro de cinco anos.

Nasce a "Xina"

No Comitê Permanente, está claro que o secretário-geral não precisou fazer qualquer concessão nas decisões de pessoal no topo da liderança, onde colocou exclusivamente seus seguidores mais fiéis. Até então, esse grêmio sempre fora o local de equilíbrio dos interesses intrapartidários e de distribuição de poder. Segundo observadores, o PCC comporta diversas facções; porém no novo Comitê só há lugar para submissão incondicional.

O exemplo clássico é Li Qiang, o novo número dois de Pequim, que formalmente deve ser eleito primeiro-ministro em março de 2023. Como líder partidário de Xangai, no começo de 2022 ele paralisou a vida pública da metrópole financeira por dois meses, devido ao aumento dos casos de covid-19, sendo alvo de duras críticas, tanto internas quanto internacionais. No entanto, garantiu para si a confiança de Xi, por estar aplicando impiedosamente a estratégia de zero covid do presidente.

De resto, há sérias dúvidas quanto à capacidade de governar de Li. Apesar de líder partidário e governador de Xangai, Zhejiang e Jiangsu, no delta do rio Yangtse, as regiões chinesas economicamente mais poderosas, ele não tem qualquer experiência no governo central, ao contrário do atual primeiro-ministro. Aos olhos de Xi, entretanto, ao que tudo indica nada disso foi um argumento contra: ele se impôs e nomeou Li, apesar de toda resistência.

A veneração de um indivíduo no mais alto grêmio decisório do PCC vai se degenerar, por todo o país, em culto pessoal a Xi. A vida política da China não é mais pensável sem um juramento de lealdade a ele. A troca do Comitê Permanente não passa de uma formalidade, vinho velho em frascos novos. Entender a potência asiática significa entender Xi. E assim a China se transforma em "Xina".

---

Dang Yuan é jornalista da DW. Ele escreve sob pseudônimo para proteger a si e a sua família na China. O texto reflete a opinião pessoal do autor, não necessariamente da DW.

Xi Jinping is seduced by a vision of greater isolation. A mistake that will make China poorer - Rana Mitter (the Guardian)

 Xi Jinping is seduced by a vision of greater isolation. A mistake that will make China poorer 

Rana Mitter

The Guardian, October 23, 2022

n August, there was an unexpected stir in China about a scholarly article. The piece, published in a respected but specialist journal, argued that during the Ming dynasty (1368-1644) and Qing dynasty (1644-1911), China had been a country relatively closed off to the outside world. Most recent scholarship has assumed that this was a bad thing and that greater openness in the modern era had led to China’s rise in global standing and growth. But the article took a contrarian position, suggesting that there were economic and social advantages to the doors being closed in large part. The argument might have stayed in the realms of the academic. But it was then sent out on the social media feed of a thinktank closely linked to the Chinese Communist party (CCP). There was plenty of social media comment, mostly wondering whether the CCP was hinting that today, too, China should think about whether openness was quite such a good idea.

Travel in and out of China has become much harder. China is now the only major country with a zero-Covid strategy

At first glance, it might seem that the opening speech last Sunday by Xi Jinping at the 20th party congress was giving a very different message: indeed, there was a specific pledge praising the idea of openness in the next five years that will mark Xi’s third term. And attention at the end of the Congress has been on the sudden, still unexplained escorting of former president Hu Jintao out of the meeting, and the new Politburo standing committee whose members owe their standing almost entirely to Xi. But there are other signs that the China of the 2020s may be considerably less open than the one we have known for some four decades from the 1980s to 2020. China since the 80s has been defined by the idea that “reform” and “opening” have gone together. Yet that openness created an anomaly in the first two decades of the present century. China became a society highly connected with the outside world but also deeply controlled and monitored at home: open but illiberal, a combination that many theorists of democracy thought impossible. Unlike the old Soviet bloc, there was little sense that China tried to restrict its citizens, except political dissidents, from travelling abroad. The Chinese of the reform era studied in Britain, did deals in America, and saw the sights and bought luxury goods in Italy. Nobody stopped visitors from observing democracy in all its guises in the liberal world, but they understood that open discussion of the concept stopped when they arrived back at Beijing airport.

That open but illiberal Chinese world ended – at least for now – in March 2020 when China shut down and closed its borders against Covid. Now, its population moves around at home with relative freedom, as long as their regular PCR test remains negative, but always aware that a stray Covid case may cause a sudden lockdown for days or weeks. But travel in and out of China, for foreigners and Chinese alike, has become much harder. China is now the only major country with a zero-Covid strategy. The decision is not entirely political: part of the problem is that China continues to have a huge proportion of unvaccinated older people and its patchily effective domestic vaccines do not prevent infection or transmission very well. But the zero-Covid policy is very much associated with Xi personally and his speech made it clear that there is no prospect of it changing in the short term at least.

Why go overseas, the implication goes, when China is the most advanced society in the world?

The effects are clear. Chinese students are returning in decent numbers to UK universities; yet once here, they know that they had better make the most of their time abroad, as when they get home, they will have to wait days in a hotel, hoping that the green light shines on their app. Meanwhile, the foreign business people, students and tourists who used to flock to Chinahave become a real rarity. People will go there and stay in quarantine if they have urgent business to conduct. But the quick in and out visits that global entrepreneurs regularly take to other countries are no longer possible and over time this may well affect China’s international competitiveness as it seeks to attract talent and finance in areas such as tech.

Instead, the existing technology has created a new Chinese cyber world. China remains connected to the outside world largely through the virtual environment, in particular social media and video apps. Yet the vision of the world created within the country is very partial. State media pumps out images of the west still devastated by the virus. As China’s own technology sector becomes much more sophisticated, a new message is emerging: China’s population is encouraged to work, study and play at home. (Why go overseas, the implication goes, when China is the most advanced society in the world?) Ironically, Chinese technology is becoming more widely spread as its 5G systems are rolled out across the global south, but the Chinese themselves are much less visible in the world they are creating.

The economic policy that Xi has put forward contains a similar sort of contradiction. The central idea of the “dual circulation” policy is that China should increase its trade surplus with the wider world, while simultaneously becoming more dependent on its domestic economy to drive consumption. Many economists think that this will be a hard balance to manage. But, in a sense, the strategy should not be seen as an exercise in economics but in politics. It mirrors precisely the idea of being highly connected to the world while closed to it physically.

However, isolation brings its own problems. Being virtually connected to the world can provide rich data in the abstract, but lived experience matters, too, and there is a tone-deafness to much of China’s recent international forays. Diplomacy, academic links and trade can’t really function if one of the partners is only rarely willing to step into the wider world.

The Ming dynasty analogy tweeted out in August is not a simple one. Yes, the era was one where China was, in general, not openly accessible to the outside world. But there were plenty who did make it in, including the Jesuits. There was also considerable private maritime trade with the wider world. China’s seclusion was porous – yet it was also real. A “Sinosphere” in which China itself remains harder to access for outsiders, even while it engages with the outside world on its own terms, is a real possibility. Yet compared with real openness, it is one that would leave both sides poorer.

 Rana Mitter is professor of the history and politics of modern China at Oxford University.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/oct/23/xi-jinping-is-seduced-by-a-vision-of-greater-isolation-a-mistake-that-will-make-china-poorer?CMP=share_btn_link 

https://t.co/kyigAGjMsm

As cartas trocadas entre Celso Furtado e Roberto Campos Por Arnaldo Sampaio de Moraes Godoy (Conjur)

Dois intelectuais, diversos no pensamento, opostos em muitos métodos em como fazer o Brasil avançar, mas respeitosos um do outro. Sobretudo liam intensamente os economistas de escola e orientação diferente da sua, para melhor argumentarem. O livro de correspondência intelectual de Celso Furtado, anotado por Rosa Freire d’Aguiar, é uma preciosidade, sobretudo nas palavras de Arnaldo Godoy.

EMBARGOS CULTURAIS

As cartas trocadas entre Celso Furtado e Roberto Campos

Por Arnaldo Sampaio de Moraes Godoy

Em 2021 a Companhia das Letras publicou a "Correspondência Intelectual" do economista Celso Furtado. Ler cartas dos outros, escritas para os outros, é uma bisbilhotice deliciosa. Adoro, por exemplo, as cartas do Rubens Gomes de Sousa para o Aliomar Baleeiro, nas quais se tem a história da construção do Código Tributário Nacional. Ainda publicarei essas cartas, se tiver editor e autorizações necessárias. Os comentários já estão prontos, exatamente o que disse Rubens Gomes de Souza, na expectativa (longa) de aprovação do Código. Adoro também cartas imaginárias, como as "Cartas Persas", de Montesquieu, que acho que já comentei aqui na ConJur. Montesquieu ria do Rei, cuja amante tinha 70 anos e o conselheiro 20.

Em “Correspondência Intelectual” lemos cartas que revelam personagens de primeira grandeza intelectual. Com primorosa apresentação e notas de Rosa Freire D’Aguiar, jornalista, que foi correspondente da Manchete e da IstoÉ em Paris, e que já havia editado os “Diários Intermintentes”, viúva de Celso Furtado, o livro é um passeio pela história das ideias. Há interlocutores brasileiros (Antonio Callado, Antonio Cândido, Darcy Ribeiro, FHC, Francisco Iglesias, Francisco Weffort, Helio Jaguaribe, Márcio Moreira Alves, Maria da Conceição Tavares, e tantos outros), estrangeiros (Raúl Prebisch não poderia faltar). Um posfácio de Luiz Felipe de Alencastro fecha o livro.

Comento hoje a sessão das cartas trocadas entre Celso Furtado e os liberais, mais objetivamente, com Eugenio Gudin e Roberto Campos. Essas cartas mostram relações cordiais, respeitosas e prospectivas entre protagonistas de pensamentos distintos. Essas cartas são datadas de 1952 a 1958. Celso Furtado vivia em Santiago do Chile, onde trabalhava na Comissão Econômica para a América Latina, a CEPAL.

No Brasil havia sido criado o Banco de Desenvolvimento Econômico, dirigido por Roberto Campos, que convidara Celso Furtado para trabalhar nesse importante marco do desenvolvimentismo brasileiro. Furtado mostrava-se interessado, ainda que comprometido com as tarefas e projetos que tocava na CEPAL. Campos tinha carta branca para montar sua equipe.

Porém, havia a exigência de concursos de provas e títulos, que acreditava ser necessário apenas a seleção de um economista júnior. Um sênior, no caso do convidado, era uma ave tão rara, que havia necessidade de adulá-lo e seduzi-lo, a peso de ouro, ao invés de examiná-los. Contornaria a rigidez da lei, prevendo apenas a apresentação de títulos e trabalhos feitos, suplementando-os (a linguagem é do missivista) com um exame oral que se limitaria a “uma agradável tertúlia econômica”. Campos acabou se desentendo com demais gestores do Banco, deixando a empreitada, para a qual volto mais tarde. Furtado não pode aceitar o convite, do modo como proposto, no sentido de ficar definitivamente no Brasil, dado seu envolvimento com o projeto cepaliano.

Em outra carta Furtado avisava a ampos que o economista Nicolas Kaldor poderia vir até o Brasil dar algumas conferências e estudar o sistema fiscal brasileiro. Lembremo-nos que estávamos numa época anterior ao CTN e à emenda constitucional dos anos 60 que fixou um modelo tributário cujas linhas gerais até hoje são mantidas. A CEPAL resistia em liberar Furtado para o Brasil, segundo Campos, porque havia uma tradição contrária à designação de nativos (Furtado era brasileiro e havia resistência para que trabalhasse no Brasil), a par de um êxodo de economistas de Santiago, o que tornava necessário o reforço do pessoal que trabalhava no Chile.

Campos insistia. Lamentava os economistas que liderava, que confundiam sociologia com economia, e que interpretavam o mundo “não mais em termos de alocação de recursos, mas em termos de categorias ideológicas, e sobretudo possuída de uma frenética hostilidade à exportação e de um fervor passional pela inflação”. Campos dizia-se cansado de pregar o evangelho da produtividade. Ninguém ouvia, ou praticava, ou defendia essas pregações. Furtado insistia que o Brasil precisávamos de uma profunda reforma fiscal.

Mais tarde, Campos convidou Furtado para presidir a Superintendência da Moeda e do Crédito-SUMOC, entidade antecessora do Banco Central. Furtado respondeu que Campos era um sádico, e que, com o convite, tinha a prova. Um desencontro entre os missivistas resultou na indicação de outro nome, que Campos temia ser um “paulista rico e analfabeto”.

A correspondência entre Furtado e Campos mostra-nos que pessoas inteligentes, e divergentes nas ideias, ainda assim se completam e se elevam. Certa vez ouvi o filho de Campos dizer que o pai lia compulsivamente as pessoas em relações às quais pensava diferentemente. Esperava ser convencido, buscava argumentos e contra-argumentos. Refratário à tradição marxista, Campos conhecia o materialismo histórico como poucos. De igual modo, desenvolvimentista, e distante da tradição liberal, Furtado conhecia os pensadores do livre-mercado como poucos. Essa disponibilidade para ouvir o outro, o contrário, o opositor, para melhor compreender e argumentar, é o que marca o intelectual autêntico, cuja autenticidade o faz também uma pessoa de ação.

https://www.conjur.com.br/2022-out-23/embargos-culturais-cartas-trocadas-entre-celso-furtado-roberto-campos

Arnaldo Sampaio de Moraes Godoy é livre-docente pela USP, doutor e mestre pela PUC-SP, advogado, consultor e parecerista em Brasília, ex-consultor-geral da União e ex-procurador-geral adjunto da Procuradoria-Geral da Fazenda Nacional.

Revista Consultor Jurídico, 23 de outubro de 2022, 8h00

The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion - Jonathan Haidt

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

Edição Inglês  por Jonathan Haidt  (Autor)

4,6 de 5 estrelas    6.246 avaliações de clientes

Why can’t our political leaders work together as threats loom and problems mount? Why do people so readily assume the worst about the motives of their fellow citizens? 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. In a stunning final chapter on ideology and civility, Haidt shows what each side is right about, and why we need the insights of liberals, conservatives, and libertarians to flourish as a nation.

 

Descrição do produto

Sobre o Autor

Jonathan Haidt is the Thomas Cooley Professor of Ethical Leadership at New York University's Stern School of Business. He is the author of The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom. He lives in New York City.

Trecho. © Reimpressão autorizada. Todos os direitos reservados

Introduction
 
“Can we all get along?” That appeal was made famous on May 1, 1992, by Rodney King, a black man who had been beaten nearly to death by four Los Angeles police officers a year earlier. The entire nation had seen a videotape of the beating, so when a jury failed to convict the officers, their acquittal triggered widespread outrage and six days of rioting in Los Angeles. Fifty-three people were killed and more than seven thousand buildings were torched. Much of the mayhem was carried live; news cameras tracked the action from helicopters circling overhead. After a particularly horrific act of violence against a white truck driver, King was moved to make his appeal for peace.
 
King’s appeal is now so overused that it has become cultural kitsch, a catchphrase1 more often said for laughs than as a serious plea for mutual understanding. I therefore hesitated to use King’s words as the opening line of this book, but I decided to go ahead, for two reasons. The first is because most Americans nowadays are asking King’s question not about race relations but about political relations and the collapse of cooperation across party lines. Many Americans feel as though the nightly news from Washington is being sent to us from helicopters circling over the city, delivering dispatches from the war zone.
 
The second reason I decided to open this book with an overused phrase is because King followed it up with something lovely, something rarely quoted. As he stumbled through his television interview, fighting back tears and often repeating himself, he found these words: “Please, we can get along here. We all can get along. I mean, we’re all stuck here for a while. Let’s try to work it out.”
 
This book is about why it’s so hard for us to get along. We are indeed all stuck here for a while, so let’s at least do what we can to understand why we are so easily divided into hostile groups, each one certain of its righteousness.
 
###
 
People who devote their lives to studying something often come to believe that the object of their fascination is the key to understanding everything. Books have been published in recent years on the transformative role in human history played by cooking, mothering, war . . . even salt. This is one of those books. I study moral psychology, and I’m going to make the case that morality is the extraordinary human capacity that made civilization possible. I don’t mean to imply that cooking, mothering, war, and salt were not also necessary, but in this book I’m going to take you on a tour of human nature and history from the perspective of moral psychology.
 
By the end of the tour, I hope to have given you a new way to think about two of the most important, vexing, and divisive topics in human life: politics and religion. Etiquette books tell us not to discuss these topics in polite company, but I say go ahead. Politics and religion are both expressions of our underlying moral psychology, and an understanding of that psychology can help to bring people together. My goal in this book is to drain some of the heat, anger, and divisiveness out of these topics and replace them with awe, wonder, and curiosity. We are downright lucky that we evolved this complex moral psychology that allowed our species to burst out of the forests and savannas and into the delights, comforts, and extraordinary peacefulness of modern societies in just a few thousand years. My hope is that this book will make conversations about morality, politics, and religion more common, more civil, and more fun, even in mixed company. My hope is that it will help us to get along.
 
BORN TO BE RIGHTEOUS
 
I could have titled this book The Moral Mind to convey the sense that the human mind is designed to “do” morality, just as it’s designed to do language, sexuality, music, and many other things described in popular books reporting the latest scientific findings. But I chose the title The Righteous Mind to convey the sense that human nature is not just intrinsically moral, it’s also intrinsically moralistic, critical, and judgmental.
 
The word righteous comes from the old Norse word rettviss and the old English word rihtwis, both of which mean “just, upright, virtuous.” This meaning has been carried into the modern English words righteous and righteousness, although nowadays those words have strong religious connotations because they are usually used to translate the Hebrew word tzedek. Tzedek is a common word in the Hebrew Bible, often used to describe people who act in accordance with God’s wishes, but it is also an attribute of God and of God’s judgment of people (which is often harsh but always thought to be just).
 
The linkage of righteousness and judgmentalism is captured in some modern definitions of righteous, such as “arising from an outraged sense of justice, morality, or fair play.” The link also appears in the term self- righteous, which means “convinced of one’s own righteousness, especially in contrast with the actions and beliefs of others; narrowly moralistic and intolerant.” I want to show you that an obsession with righteousness (leading inevitably to self- righteousness) is the normal human condition. It is a feature of our evolutionary design, not a bug or error that crept into minds that would otherwise be objective and rational.
 
Our righteous minds made it possible for human beings—but no other animals—to produce large cooperative groups, tribes, and nations without the glue of kinship. But at the same time, our righteous minds guarantee that our cooperative groups will always be cursed by moralistic strife. Some degree of conflict among groups may even be necessary for the health and development of any society. When I was a teenager I wished for world peace, but now I yearn for a world in which competing ideologies are kept in balance, systems of accountability keep us all from getting away with too much, and fewer people believe that righteous ends justify violent means. Not a very romantic wish, but one that we might actually achieve.
 
WHAT LIES AHEAD
 
This book has three parts, which you can think of as three separate books—except that each one depends on the one before it. Each part presents one major principle of moral psychology.
 
Part I is about the first principle: Intuitions come first, strategic reasoning second. Moral intuitions arise automatically and almost instantaneously, long before moral reasoning has a chance to get started, and those first intuitions tend to drive our later reasoning. If you think that moral reasoning is something we do to figure out the truth, you’ll be constantly frustrated by how foolish, biased, and illogical people become when they disagree with you. But if you think about moral reasoning as a skill we humans evolved to further our social agendas—to justify our own actions and to defend the teams we belong to—then things will make a lot more sense. Keep your eye on the intuitions, and don’t take people’s moral arguments at face value. They’re mostly post hoc constructions made up on the fly, crafted to advance one or more strategic objectives.
 
The central metaphor of these four chapters is that the mind is divided, like a rider on an elephant, and the rider’s job is to serve the elephant. The rider is our conscious reasoning—the stream of words and images of which we are fully aware. The elephant is the other 99 percent of mental processes—the ones that occur outside of awareness but that actually govern most of our behavior. I developed this metaphor in my last book, The Happiness Hypothesis, where I described how the rider and elephant work together, sometimes poorly, as we stumble through life in search of meaning and connection. In this book I’ll use the metaphor to solve puzzles such as why it seems like everyone (else) is a hypocrite and why political partisans are so willing to believe outrageous lies and conspiracy theories. I’ll also use the metaphor to show you how you can better persuade people who seem unresponsive to reason.
 
Part II is about the second principle of moral psychology, which is that there’s more to morality than harm and fairness. The central metaphor of these four chapters is that the righteous mind is like a tongue with six taste receptors. Secular Western moralities are like cuisines that try to activate just one or two of these receptors—either concerns about harm and suffering, or concerns about fairness and injustice. But people have so many other powerful moral intuitions, such as those related to liberty, loyalty, authority, and sanctity. I’ll explain where these six taste receptors come from, how they form the basis of the world’s many moral cuisines, and why politicians on the right have a built- in advantage when it comes to cooking meals that voters like.
 
Part III is about the third principle: Morality binds and blinds. The central metaphor of these four chapters is that human beings are 90 percent chimp and percent bee. Human nature was produced by natural selection working at two levels simultaneously. Individuals compete with individuals within every group, and we are the descendants of primates who excelled at that competition. This gives us the ugly side of our nature, the one that is usually featured in books about our evolutionary origins. We are indeed selfish hypocrites so skilled at putting on a show of virtue that we fool even ourselves.
 
But human nature was also shaped as groups competed with other groups. As Darwin said long ago, the most cohesive and cooperative groups generally beat the groups of selfish individualists. Darwin’s ideas about group selection fell out of favor in the 1960s, but recent discoveries are putting his ideas back into play, and the implications are profound. We’re not always selfish hypocrites. We also have the ability, under special circumstances, to shut down our petty selves and become like cells in a larger body, or like bees in a hive, working for the good of the group. These experiences are often among the most cherished of our lives, although our hivishness can blind us to other moral concerns. Our bee-like nature facilitates altruism, heroism, war, and genocide.
 
Once you see our righteous minds as primate minds with a hivish overlay, you get a whole new perspective on morality, politics, and religion. I’ll show that our “higher nature” allows us to be profoundly altruistic, but that altruism is mostly aimed at members of our own groups. I’ll show that religion is (probably) an evolutionary adaptation for binding groups together and helping them to create communities with a shared morality. It is not a virus or a parasite, as some scientists (the “New Atheists”) have argued in recent years. And I’ll use this perspective to explain why some people are conservative, others are liberal (or progressive), and still others become libertarians. People bind themselves into political teams that share moral narratives. Once they accept a particular narrative, they become blind to alternative moral worlds.
 
(A note on terminology: In the United States, the word liberal refers to progressive or left- wing politics, and I will use the word in this sense. But in Europe and elsewhere, the word liberal is truer to its original meaning—valuing liberty above all else, including in economic activities. When Europeans use the word liberal, they often mean something more like the American term libertarian, which cannot be placed easily on the left- right spectrum. Readers from outside the United States may want to swap in the words progressive or left- wing whenever I say liberal.) In the coming chapters I’ll draw on the latest research in neuroscience, genetics, social psychology, and evolutionary modeling, but the take- home message of the book is ancient. It is the realization that we are all self- righteous hypocrites:
 
Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? . . . You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye. (Matthew 7:3–5)
 
Enlightenment (or wisdom, if you prefer) requires us all to take the logs out of our own eyes and then escape from our ceaseless, petty, and divisive moralism. As the eighth- century Chinese Zen master Sen-ts’an wrote:
 
The Perfect Way is only difficult
for those who pick and choose;
Do not like, do not dislike;
all will then be clear.
Make a hairbreadth difference,
and Heaven and Earth are set apart;
If you want the truth to stand clear before you,
never be for or against.
The struggle between “for” and “against”
is the mind’s worst disease.
 
I’m not saying we should live our lives like Sen-ts’an. In fact, I believe that a world without moralism, gossip, and judgment would quickly decay into chaos. But if we want to understand ourselves, our divisions, our limits, and our potentials, we need to step back, drop the moralism, apply some moral psychology, and analyze the game we’re all playing. .
 
Let us now examine the psychology of this struggle between “for” and “against.” It is a struggle that plays out in each of our righteous minds, and among all of our righteous groups.

Detalhes do produto

• Editora ‏ : ‎ Pantheon Books; Illustrated edição (13 março 2012)
• Idioma ‏ : ‎ Inglês
• Capa dura ‏ : ‎ 419 páginas
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0307377903
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0307377906
• Dimensões ‏ : ‎ 16.13 x 3.89 x 24.21 cm