Summary Of Naive Realism By Jonathan Haidt

The confidence in oneself used to be disregarded. In the East, Confucius preached humility as “the foundation of all virtues”. In Christianity, Pride is considered to be one of the deadly sins. For the majority of human societal history, we squeeze ourselves into the mold of what is expected and humbled ourselves to preserve the stability and harmony of the group. With the age of enlightenment came Individualism and with it, the rise of Pride. For centuries, humility is what kept civilizations on a relative state of stability. One would argue that stability doesn’t mean progress. It is the belief that an individual can strive for something greater than themselves, to pursue greatness and to dream is what push humanity forward.
In Jonathan Haidt’s passage The Danger of Naive Realism, the author speaks of how people of western society have a high regard of themselves, with the believe of being above the mediocrity. Professor Haidt believes that this belief brings the notion of over-self-entitlement. Introducing the such phenomena as “naive realism”, Haidt discussed the problems caused from such high self-esteem, believing that it is

While one can understand others, it doesn’t mean there is no conflicts of interest. Moreover, it should be recognized that understanding and agreeing are different things. I can understand my roommate’s distastes for doing the dishes while still wanting him to do it because I myself dislike washing dishes. He can acknowledges the fact that I already washed them the previous turn and we can still argue about it. Just because we have understandings, we still have conflicts of interest. Coca-cola and Pepsi are locked in rivalry not because of the lack of understanding between two corporations but because of the conflict of interest for the soft drink