Moving this video to erlanter's personal queue. It failed to receive enough votes to get sifted up to the front page within 2 days.

I know it's long, but it's sooo good. T_T

*beg

Sending this video to Beggar's Canyon to plea for a little attention - beg requested by original submitter erlanter.

The thumbnail image for this video has been updated - thumbnail added by geo321.

*quality *doublepromote

Boosting this quality contribution up in the Hot Listing - declared quality by dystopianfuturetoday.

Double-Promoting this video back to the front page; last published Tuesday, February 7th, 2012 6:15pm PST - doublepromote requested by dystopianfuturetoday.

*promote

Promoting this video back to the front page; last published Wednesday, February 8th, 2012 6:03am PST - promote requested by radx.

JONATHAN HAIDT: So karma, karma's a Sanskrit word, for, literally for work, or fruit. That is, if you do some work, you should get the fruit of it. If I help you, I will eventually get the fruit of it. Even if you don't help me, something will happen. It's just a law of the universe. So, Hindus traditionally believed it's, that the universe will balance itself, right itself. It's like gravity. If I am lazy, good-for-nothing lying scoundrel, the universe will right that and I will suffer. But then along comes liberal do-gooders and the federal government to bail them out.

So I think the conservative view, for social conservatives this is, is that basically liberals are trying to revoke the law of karma. Almost as though, imagine somebody trying to revoke the law of gravity, and everything's going to float away into chaos.

This is well worth your time to watch whichever camp you are from

Right QM. However, objective karma requires that there be a level playing field from the start. This is clearly not the case with social equity, political equality and racial equality. Liberalism is therefore an attempt to identify and correct imbalances be they natural or social.

What it seems to come down to is a pragmatic versus idealistic world view with each side claiming the higher ground.

The problem is also that we as humans believe in a moral code that doesn't conform to natural law. With our moral code, only good people should get sick or hurt. People who work hard, regardless of who their parents are, etc., should have an equal chance of success. Etc.

But natural law and the social structures we institute don't enforce moral law, and often fly in the face of it. People don't need welfare just because they're lazy. They often need it because the system did screw them even though they did what they were supposed to.

I was on unemployment for three months back in 2004. Why? I was a public school teacher, and my wife got sick. We couldn't pay the medical bills and went into massive debt. So I busted by butt getting into IT for a few years while refusing to let my quality of work as a teacher suffer. After a few years of getting certifications and side work on top of teaching, in 2004 I got my first full time IT job at Microsoft Premier Product Support for Exchange. After being there for 2.5 months, MS axed every contractor support professional in that call center as they outsourced many of these support jobs overseas. I don't see how that's karma to me. I had no savings because I was in debt paying for medical bills for my wife, who certainly didn't deserve the medical problems she had.

This kind of thing happens frequently. To ignore that the system we've fashioned, or natural law for that matter, flies in the face of our moral code, is a selective view of reality. No one could possibly deserve being born with a genetic disorder - they hadn't done anything yet to deserve it!

That's the problem I have with honestly both harcore liberals and conservatives - neither side is right 100% of the time, so being ideologically rigid is insane. People do game for example welfare; others truly need more assistance than welfare currently provides, too. The answer isn't to infinitely expand welfare benefits nor to abolish it completely. We should improve on it. Same for other similar programs. The sooner people would accept that, the sooner we can actually accomplish something instead of having insane conversations that lead nowhere.

>> ^quantumushroom:

JONATHAN HAIDT: So karma, karma's a Sanskrit word, for, literally for work, or fruit. That is, if you do some work, you should get the fruit of it. If I help you, I will eventually get the fruit of it. Even if you don't help me, something will happen. It's just a law of the universe. So, Hindus traditionally believed it's, that the universe will balance itself, right itself. It's like gravity. If I am lazy, good-for-nothing lying scoundrel, the universe will right that and I will suffer. But then along comes liberal do-gooders and the federal government to bail them out.
So I think the conservative view, for social conservatives this is, is that basically liberals are trying to revoke the law of karma. Almost as though, imagine somebody trying to revoke the law of gravity, and everything's going to float away into chaos.

Was this a QFT? Is Haidt right, and the Rosetta stone for me understanding conservatives is that you believe in, of all things, karma?
>> ^quantumushroom:

JONATHAN HAIDT: So karma, karma's a Sanskrit word, for, literally for work, or fruit. That is, if you do some work, you should get the fruit of it. If I help you, I will eventually get the fruit of it. Even if you don't help me, something will happen. It's just a law of the universe. So, Hindus traditionally believed it's, that the universe will balance itself, right itself. It's like gravity. If I am lazy, good-for-nothing lying scoundrel, the universe will right that and I will suffer. But then along comes liberal do-gooders and the federal government to bail them out.
So I think the conservative view, for social conservatives this is, is that basically liberals are trying to revoke the law of karma. Almost as though, imagine somebody trying to revoke the law of gravity, and everything's going to float away into chaos.

Didn't find this too impressive. Kind of lends itself to an infinite loop of claiming that an individual isn't fairly considering the opposition. I'm all for a more civil discourse, but I think his reluctance to come up with any real solutions (besides advising us not to be jerks) shows he's just spinning his wheels.

Maybe I just can't see his point of view because I think people who write books are Satan.

He didn't say "politics is about religion" as stated in the description, but "politics are like religion, it's about sacredness". He's comparing political discourse with the "unscientificness" of how people debate religion.

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