JER: “ The Line in the Sand” by Thao Lam
JER: “ The Line in the Sand ” by Thao Lam is a very thought-provoking book that manages to pack lots of meaning into every page with only pictures. It brought to mind, for me, Jonathan Haidt’s “ The Righteous Mind ”: "People don't adopt their ideologies at random, or by soaking up whatever ideas are around them. People whose genes gave them brains that get a special pleasure from novelty, variety, and diversity, while simultaneously being less sensitive to signs of threat, are predisposed (but not predestined) to become liberals. They tend to develop certain 'characteristic adaptations' and 'life narratives' that make them resonate - unconsciously and intuitively - with the grand narratives told by political movements on the left (such as the liberal progress narrative). People whose genes give them brains with the opposite settings are predisposed, for the same reasons, to resonate with the grand narratives of the right (such as the Reagan narrative). Once p...
