The midst of a coup might not seem like the best time to publish a book on creating dialogue. But Kurt Gray's "Outraged! Why We Fight About Morality and Politics" doesn't exactly fit that generic description. Gray is a social psychologist who’s played a leading role in redefining our understanding of moral cognition, or how we come to see things as right or wrong. Most of "Outraged!" is about that new understanding and how it fits into the larger framework of our ever-growing understanding of ourselves as a species. But the final third builds on that to point toward what we can do with this better understanding, and specifically how we can find ways to bridge our enormous social and political divides.
To talk about doing that in today’s toxic environment is morally questionable, and might serve to normalize a highly abnormal state, one aimed at ending America’s liberal democracy by subverting or uprooting the institutions of government and civil society. That’s not what “Outraged!” is about. It’s trying to lay the groundwork for a bottom-up peace and reconciliation process, something like what South Africa went through — if, that is, we can get through the current crisis, so that such a process becomes possible. And it does so by telling stories, and sharing them, to model what that might look like.
