analysis:nature:original_sin
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analysis:nature:original_sin [2014/04/26 21:30] ram [What About Morality?] |
analysis:nature:original_sin [2015/04/12 16:44] (current) ram [What About Morality?] |
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| [[analysis:evolution:evolutionary_psychology]] provides a tricky way of generating an answer by turning this question around. It is likely our innate moral senses and motivations evolved to help us to function in hunter-gatherer groups with egalitarian social structures. As long as our social natures have not changed since then, living in a small egalitarian group would be the most natural way to live; it would "feel right" to us. For the past 5000 to 10,000 years almost everyone has been living in much larger, less equal, groups, where our moral sense doesn't quite line up with the social rules. This [[wp>Mismatch_theory | evolutionary mismatch]] has created millenia of nagging frustration. | [[analysis:evolution:evolutionary_psychology]] provides a tricky way of generating an answer by turning this question around. It is likely our innate moral senses and motivations evolved to help us to function in hunter-gatherer groups with egalitarian social structures. As long as our social natures have not changed since then, living in a small egalitarian group would be the most natural way to live; it would "feel right" to us. For the past 5000 to 10,000 years almost everyone has been living in much larger, less equal, groups, where our moral sense doesn't quite line up with the social rules. This [[wp>Mismatch_theory | evolutionary mismatch]] has created millenia of nagging frustration. | ||
| - | The moral superiority of hunter-gatherer life isn't quite that clear-cut, though. First, although philosophers who study [[wp>Ethics]] don't agree on much, they do agree that "feeling right" is not a sound way to decide what //truly is// right (see [[analysis:philosophy:evolutionary_ethics]]). Second, it is likely that peoples who have been through the meat-grinder of civilization have endured some fine-tuning of their motivational structures. Although evolution does tend move slowly, if you are living in a [[wp>Despotism | despotic city-state]] you'd better develop some acceptance of social inequality, or you're going to die. This creates strong [[wp>Selection Pressure]], which can shift things pretty dramatically in 10 generations, or even less. | + | The moral superiority of hunter-gatherer life isn't quite that clear-cut, though. First, although philosophers who study [[wp>Ethics]] don't agree on much, they do agree that "feeling right" is not a sound way to decide what //truly is// right (see [[analysis:philosophy:evolutionary_ethics]]). Second, it is likely that peoples who have been through the meat-grinder of civilization have endured some fine-tuning of their motivational structures. Although evolution does tend to move slowly, if you are living in a [[wp>Despotism | despotic city-state]] you'd better develop some acceptance of social inequality, or you're going to die. This creates strong [[wp>Selection Pressure]], which can shift things pretty dramatically in 10 generations (300 years), or even less. |
| What about war? Are humans naturally violent, or peaceful? We don't really know how often tribes of early humans got into battles or whether they attacked other homnids (such as [[wp>Neanderthals]]). We would expect that nomadic hunter-gatherers would rather move on than risk death in battle, as long as there was somewhere to move on to. Once we adopted farming, moving on was no longer an attractive option, so inter-group conflict increased. Inter-group conflict is also common in recent hunter-gatherers. Even before the rise of the state most of us were were worried about raids from neighboring tribes, and had to be prepared to fight. See [[books:better_angels]] for a book-length study of human violence. | What about war? Are humans naturally violent, or peaceful? We don't really know how often tribes of early humans got into battles or whether they attacked other homnids (such as [[wp>Neanderthals]]). We would expect that nomadic hunter-gatherers would rather move on than risk death in battle, as long as there was somewhere to move on to. Once we adopted farming, moving on was no longer an attractive option, so inter-group conflict increased. Inter-group conflict is also common in recent hunter-gatherers. Even before the rise of the state most of us were were worried about raids from neighboring tribes, and had to be prepared to fight. See [[books:better_angels]] for a book-length study of human violence. | ||
analysis/nature/original_sin.1398562222.txt.gz · Last modified: 2014/04/26 21:30 by ram
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