Tempo

Haidt Chapter 9: Divinity with or without God

• Flatland
• Speculative hypothesis: 183: In addition to relationship and status, we perceive/experience "divinity" as a kind of "moral purity". A theory of relationship and culture.
• Research on disgust. Why do we experience disgust? 186
• Psychological anthropologist Richard Shweder, U Chicago: Haidt worked with him on research in morality in India: "Shweder's research on morality in Bhubaneswar and elsewhere shows that when people think about morality, their moral concepts cluster into three groups, which he calls the ethic of autonomy, the ethic of community, and the ethic of divinity." 188 -- evidence on diff. distribution over class. Note observations on research in India. Link bt. purity/divine.
• Cites approvingly: Eliade, The Sacred and Profane -- perceiving sacredness universal among humans.

Elevation and Agape

• Looking for a name for the emotions that we experience when we observe morally outstanding deeds. "Elevation" (ex. Greg Mortensen talk)
• Jefferson onto it. Experience of aesthetic value triggers physical changes in the body and recognizable feeling of elevated sentiments.
• 196: wants to see if elevation is a kind of happiness. research with student Sara Algoe, results seem to separate out different responses: moral elevation vs. response to non-moral excellence like basketball player.
• initial research documents elevation as response. Unclear how moral/non-moral triggers work.
• Vagus Nerve theory -- operation of vagus nerve, relationship to oxytocin. Since oxcytocin causes bonding rather than action, this theory might explain the lack of evidence in an earlier study that elevation leads to action.
• Lactating moms study 198
• Letter from religious person distinquishing two kinds of tears in church. compassion/celebration
• Latter like agape : objectless love

Awe and Transcendence

• cites Darwin / Emerson, idea of elevation from exp of nature.
• Drugs - -entheogens. reports old experiment with mushrooms and religion.
• Awe: "As we traced the word "awe" back in history, we discovered that it has always had a link to fear and submission in the presence of something muchgreater than the self." 202
• Emotion of awe: "Keltner and I concluded that the emotion of awe happens when two conditions are met: a person perceives something vast (usually physically vast, but sometimes conceptually vast, such as a grand theory, or socially vast, such as great fame or power); and the vast thing cannot be accommodated by the person's existing mental structures." 203
• Story of Arjuna Pandava from Gita. Gets a cosmic eye. Extreme case, but Haidt implies this is a model for how we describe spiritual transformation.
• Maslow's work on peak experiences. Side note on clash about the nature of science in psychology. Maslow is considered a founder of humanistic psych.
• Mark Leary, Curse of the Self: Self as obstacle to -- mental chatter -- self as obstacle to vertical development . Read p. 207.