Toward a Spiral of Sound
Changing people’s opinions is hard. There’s a better way.
Don’t let anyone tell you that marches and signs and protests don’t matter, that they don’t change anything, because science shows quite clearly that they do.
You want to change the world, but too often it seems hopeless.
If you agree with the above sentence, I can say with a high degree of certainty that you hail from the left end of our political spectrum. Not just because the political power in America this election cycle rests largely with the conservative party, but because for liberals, the desire to change things is almost definitional.
From social science we know that liberals and conservatives (note that here and elsewhere ‘liberals’ includes everyone on the left, from near-centrists to radicals, just as ‘conservatives’ includes everyone on the right) have distinctly quantifiable differences in moral values. Liberals focus primarily on caring and fairness, while conservatives consider loyalty, authority, and purity to be paramount. NYU professor Jonathan Haidt, who studies the psychology of morality, frames the distinction thus: “Liberals speak for the weak and oppressed; they want change and justice, even at the risk…
