Growing up in an authoritarian state like South Africa in the apartheid era meant that my understanding of political conflict was between those who have rights and those who have few or none. The moral choices and imperative for change were clear.
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On moving to the UK almost 30 years ago, I realised that, in free democracies, the moral lines were blurred. Both sides of the political aisle seemed to me to have positions of merit. Elections were hard-fought but they lacked any substantial vitriol.
But, over the last 20 years, this changed. The way that each side talked about the other grew in acrimony. The same was happening in the USA, Canada and Australia. In Europe as well, the contrasts between the political left and right became more clearly drawn. The basis of the attacks took on a moral tone of good vs evil. Both sides claimed to hold the moral high ground and therefore an exclusive right to gain and hold power.
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Everyone seems to encounter at least one unexpected upheaval in their lives, and mine came after thirteen years of marriage. In the aftermath of this experience, I became aware that people can hold entrenched views of right and wrong which cannot be swayed by logic or reasoning.
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This confounded me. I thought that on the whole if any random collection of people studied a problem for long enough, with the right information, they would all reach the same conclusion.
I realised I couldn't have been more wrong. I needed an an explanation. I went on a ten-year journey and read hundreds of books on psychology, politics, economics and genetics searching for some thread of logic or organising principle to make sense of what seemed to me to be a chaotic and incoherent world.
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The breakthrough was Jonathan Haidt's 'The Righteous Mind ' (Hachette, 2012). The 1000s of pages of notes I had made over the years coalesced around his theory of moral values, more especially that liberals and conservatives rate the importance of the same values very differently.
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With a skeleton of coherence, all the clues I had assembled from behavioural genetics, motivational psychology, cognitive behaviour, social psychology, politics, economics to social wellbeing began to fall into place. More importantly, the ideas I was developing appeared to have high explanatory value for what appeared on nightly news platforms.
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I knew beyond doubt in early 2016 that both Brexit would happen and that Trump would win the presidency. My analysis showed that they were inevitable. I also knew the unhappiness and unrest that they would generate. I knew I had to write this book, which has consumed many months and was one of the toughest things I have ever done.
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I hope this book will bring comfort to all my friends on the left and the right as they understand the reasons why they think differently and that both moral tribes are needed if we are going to solve the big problems facing humankind.