Meeting Re-cap: Saturday, January 31st, 2026

By: Jordan Barrett

This was our fourth meeting and marked the halfway mark in The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt. I think this was pretty signicant in that getting to a 4th meeting makes our odds of getting to a 400th or 4000th meeting much better.

We had some pastries brought in today. We also had a couple new visitors. Good feedback!

Here are the questions we discussed:

1.⁠ ⁠Are Jamaicans WEIRD in their outlook? How about this book club?

2.⁠ ⁠⁠Based on Haidt’s experience, do you think that cultural immersion could be a net positive for most people?

3.⁠ ⁠I⁠s it possible to get moral consensus in a multicultural/pluralistic society?

4.⁠ ⁠⁠Was Jeremy Bentham’s philosophy of a utility-maximizing legal code infeasible or unrealistic? Why or why not?

5.⁠ ⁠⁠Does Kant or Bentham having undiagnosed Asperger’s detract from the validity of their moral theories?

6.⁠ ⁠⁠By identifying the primordial moral receptors, did Haidt make a case for universal virtues? Universal vices?

The discussion was pretty heated, especially on questions 3 and 4.

I’ll have to do some more work on writing clearer questions but one improvement that was introduced was utilizing a whiteboard. Kamari rigged up a custom stand for us to use. We also introduced the use of red flags to indicate when we want a discussion topic to come to a close.