Don’t think for one moment that the current battle lines between fundamentalist Christianity and science are determined by evidence. One has to be pretty immune to data to doubt evolution, which is why books and documentaries aimed at convincing the skeptics are a waste of effort. They are helpful for those prepared to listen, but fail to reach their target audience. (Location 43)
Perhaps it’s just me, but I am wary of any persons whose belief system is the only thing standing between them and repulsive behavior. (Location 50)
Contrary to the customary blood-soaked view of nature, animals are not devoid of tendencies that we morally approve of, which to me suggests that morality is not as much of a human innovation as we like to think. (Location 61)
The whole reason people fill their homes with furry carnivores, and not with, say, iguanas and turtles, is that mammals offer something no reptile ever will. They give affection, they want affection, and they respond to our emotions the way we do to theirs. (Location 86)
At the same station, free-ranging descendants of Lorenz’s flock of geese have been equipped with transmitters to measure their heart rate. Since every adult goose has a mate, that offers a window on empathy. If one bird confronts another in a fight, its partner’s heart starts racing. Even if the partner is in no way involved, its heart betrays concern about the quarrel. Birds, too, feel each other’s pain. (Location 100)
One of the surest signs of a caring attitude, according to Paul MacLean, the American neuroscientist who named the limbic system the seat of the emotions, is the “lost call” of young animals. Young monkeys do it all the time: left behind by mom, they call until she returns. They look miserable, sitting all alone on a tree limb, giving a long string of plaintive “coo” calls with pouted lips directed at no one in particular. MacLean noted the absence of the “lost call” in most reptiles, such as snakes, lizards, and turtles. (Location 104)
I welcome bonobos precisely because the contrast with chimpanzees enriches our view of human evolution. They show that our lineage is marked not just by male dominance and xenophobia but also by a love of harmony and sensitivity to others. Since evolution occurs through both the male and the female lineage, there is no reason to measure human progress purely by how many battles our men have won against other hominins.7 Attention to the female side of the story would not hurt, nor would attention to sex. For all we know, we did not conquer other groups, but bred them out of existence through love rather than war. Modern humans carry Neanderthal DNA, and I wouldn’t be surprised if we carry other hominin genes as well. (Location 189)
A single adult male chimpanzee has such muscle power (not to mention his daggerlike canine teeth and four “hands”) that even a team of five hefty men would never be able to hold him down. Chimps raised around people know this all too well. (Location 205)
Just like us, monkeys and apes strive for power, enjoy sex, want security and affection, kill over territory, and value trust and cooperation. Yes, we have computers and airplanes, but our psychological makeup remains that of a social primate. (Location 240)
we demonstrated that primates will happily perform a task for cucumber slices until they see others getting grapes, which taste so much better. The cucumber eaters become agitated, throw down their veggies, and go on strike. A perfectly fine food has become unpalatable as a result of seeing a companion get something better. We labeled it inequity aversion, a topic since investigated in other animals, including dogs. (Location 252)
Such findings have implications for human morality. According to most philosophers, we reason ourselves toward moral truths. Even if they don’t invoke God, they’re still proposing a top-down process in which we formulate the principles and then impose them on human conduct. But do moral deliberations really take place at such an elevated plane? Don’t they need to be anchored in who and what we are? Would it be realistic, for example, to urge people to be considerate of others if we didn’t already have a natural inclination to be so? Would it make sense to appeal to fairness and justice if we didn’t have powerful reactions to their absence? Imagine the cognitive burden if every decision we took had to be vetted against handed-down logic. I am a firm believer in David Hume’s position that reason is the slave of the passions. We started out with moral sentiments and intuitions, which is also where we find the greatest continuity with other primates. Rather than having developed morality from scratch through rational reflection, we received a huge push in the rear from our background as social animals. (Location 256)
The great pioneer of morality research, the Finnish anthropologist Edward Westermarck, explained that moral emotions are disconnected from one’s immediate situation. They deal with good and bad at a more abstract, disinterested level. This is what sets human morality apart: a move toward universal standards combined with an elaborate system of justification, monitoring, and punishment. (Location 267)
Science is not in the business of spelling out the meaning of life and even less in telling us how to live our lives. (Location 281)
high-ranking males regularly act as impartial arbiters to settle disputes in the community. I take these hints of community concern as a sign that the building blocks of morality are older than humanity, and that we don’t need God to explain how we got to where we are today. (Location 302)
For me, understanding the need for religion is a far superior goal to bashing it. (Location 308)
The confusion seems to stem from the illusion that all we need for a good society is more knowledge. Once we have figured out the central algorithm of morality, so the thinking goes, we can safely hand things over to science. Science will guarantee the best choices. This is a bit like thinking that a celebrated art critic must be a great painter or a food critic a great chef. After all, critics offer profound insights in regard to particular products. They possess the right knowledge, so why not let them handle the job? A critic’s specialty, however, is post hoc evaluation, not creation. And creation takes intuition, skill, and vision. Even if science helps us appreciate how morality works, this doesn’t mean it can guide it anymore than that someone who knows how eggs should taste can be expected to lay one. (Location 335)
Empathy is mostly a mammalian trait, so the deeper error was that great thinkers had lumped all sorts of altruism together. There are the bees dying for their hive and the millions of slime mold cells that build a single, sluglike organism that permits a few among them to reproduce. This kind of sacrifice was put on the same level as the man jumping into an icy river to rescue a stranger or the chimpanzee sharing food with a whining orphan. From an evolutionary perspective, both kinds of helping are comparable, but psychologically speaking they are radically different. (Location 471)
Mammals have what I call an “altruistic impulse” in that they respond to signs of distress in others and feel an urge to improve their situation. (Location 477)
To recognize the need of others, and react appropriately, is really not the same as a preprogrammed tendency to sacrifice oneself for the genetic good. With the increasing popularity of the gene’s-eye view, however, these distinctions were overlooked. This led to a cynical outlook on human and animal nature. The altruistic impulse was downplayed, ridiculed even, and morality was taken off the table entirely. We were only slightly better than social insects. Human kindness was seen as a charade and morality as a thin veneer over a cauldron of nasty tendencies. This outlook, which I have dubbed Veneer Theory, can be traced back to Thomas Henry Huxley, also known as “Darwin’s Bulldog.” (Location 478)
If we are indeed devoid of natural benevolence, how and why did we decide to become model citizens? And if doing so was to our advantage, as one would hope, why did nature refuse us a helping hand? Why must we perpetually sweat in the garden to keep our immoral impulses at bay? It is a bizarre theory, if that’s what we call it, according to which morality is only an evolutionary afterthought barely capable of concealing the sinners we truly are. (Location 529)
Kropotkin had traveled around Siberia and noticed how rarely animal encounters fit the gladiatorial style hyped by Huxley, who imagined a “continuous free fight.” Kropotkin had noticed frequent cooperation between members of the same species. Huddling together in the cold or collectively standing up to predators—such as wild horses against wolves—was critical for survival. Kropotkin emphasized these themes in his 1902 book Mutual Aid, which was explicitly directed against “infidels” such as Huxley, who misinterpreted Darwin. True, Kropotkin went overboard in the other direction, cherry-picking examples of animal solidarity to support his political views, yet he was right to protest Huxley’s depiction of nature, which was poorly informed by reality. (Location 535)
The argument typically ran as follows: (1) natural selection is a selfish, nasty process, (2) this automatically produces selfish and nasty individuals, and (3) only romantics with flowers in their hair would think otherwise. (Location 566)
The whole episode could have been avoided had Collins encountered a more thoughtful evolutionary literature, one taking its lead from Darwin’s The Descent of Man. Reading this book, one realizes that there is absolutely no need to throw the old man under the bus. Darwin had no trouble aligning morality with the evolutionary process, and recognizing the human capacity for good. Most interesting for me, he saw emotional continuity with other animals. For Huxley, animals were mindless automata, but Darwin wrote an entire book about their emotions, including their capacity for sympathy. One memorable example was how a particular dog would never walk by a basket where a sick friend lay, a cat, without giving her a few licks. Darwin saw this as a sure sign of affection. In his last note to Huxley, right before his death, Darwin couldn’t resist gently poking fun at his friend’s Cartesian bent, hinting that if animals are machines, then humans must be, too: “I wish to God there were more automata in the world like you.” (Location 577)
Darwin saw the potential for genuine altruism, at least at the psychological level. Like most biologists, he drew a sharp line between the process of natural selection, which indeed has nothing nice about it, and its many products, which cover a wide range of tendencies. He disagreed that a nasty process ipso facto needs to produce nasty results. (Location 586)
Every new development slammed another nail in the coffin of Veneer Theory until the common view had swiveled around 180 degrees. It is now widely assumed that we are designed in body and mind to live together and take care of each other, and that humans have a natural tendency to judge others in moral terms. Instead of being a thin veneer, morality comes from within. It’s part of our biology, a view supported by the many parallels found in other animals. In a few decades, we had gone from calls to teach our children to be nice, since our species lacks any and all natural inclinations in this direction, to the consensus that we are born to be good and that nice guys finish first. (Location 610)
Seeing the shocked reaction, and how widespread it has become, I’m left wondering whether my audiences have changed under the influence of new evidence, or whether it’s perhaps the other way around. Have we entered a new Zeitgeist, and is science simply catching up? (Location 623)
genes are just little chunks of DNA that know nothing and intend nothing. They have the effect they have without any goal in mind, hence are incapable of mistakes. It would be more appropriate to call rampant altruism a glorious accident, but few experts are in a celebratory mood. Their message is rather sour, as if a great theory about the selfish origins of altruism is regrettably spoiled by the facts. They complain that “almost everything in modern life is a mistake from the genes’ point of view,” but never conclude that this makes their theories largely irrelevant.24 (Location 636)
Rather than concluding that chimps, too, make mistakes, let’s move away from such normative language and its implication that we are born to obey our genes. Why not simply recognize the disconnect between the origin of a trait and its current use. (Location 676)
I have never heard anyone call fingers gliding over a piano “a mistake,” so why apply this sort of language to altruism? One might counter that altruism has a cost, whereas piano playing does not, and that this justifies the “mistake” terminology. But how sure are we that generalized empathy and lifelong commitments don’t pay off in the long run? I have never seen proof that such behavior harms us, and rather suspect the opposite. Friedrich Nietzsche, who famously gave us the “God is dead” phrase was interested in the sources of morality. He warned that the emergence of something (whether an organ, a legal institution, or a religious ritual) is never to be confused with its acquired purposes: “Anything in existence, having somehow come about, is continually interpreted anew, requisitioned anew, transformed and redirected to a new purpose.” (Location 679)
we should simply replace the word “mistake” with “potential.” Nothing keeps me from empathizing with a stranded whale and joining efforts to haul it back to the ocean, even if human empathy didn’t come into existence with whales in mind. I’m just applying my innate empathic capacity to its fullest potential. (Location 689)
Both human and animal altruism may be genuine, therefore, in that it lacks ulterior motives. This is true to the point that we have trouble suppressing it. James Rilling, an Emory colleague of mine, concluded from neuroimaging experiments that we have “emotional biases toward cooperation that can only be overcome with effortful cognitive control.” (Location 701)
Rilling further showed that when normal people aid others, brain areas associated with reward are activated. Doing good feels good. (Location 706)
This “warm glow” effect brings a touching image to mind that I have seen countless times while working with rhesus monkeys. The behavior in question was not exactly altruistic, but very close to the source of all mammalian nurturance. Every spring, our zoo troops produced dozens of newborns. The babies held magnetic appeal for juvenile females, who would try to get their little hands on them by patiently grooming their mothers. It would take a long time of hanging around the mother until the baby would be released to take a few wobbly steps toward the would-be sitter. She’d pick it up, carry it around, turn it upside down to inspect its genitals, lick its face, groom it from all sides, but eventually doze off with the baby firmly clutched in her arms. We took bets on how long it would take. Five minutes, ten minutes? The sleepiness that overcame the babysitters gave the impression that they were in a trance, or perhaps ecstatic, having waited so long for their lucky break. As they held their treasure, release of oxytocin in their bloodstream and brains, known as the hormone of love, weighed down their eyelids. Their sleep would never last long, though, and soon they’d return the baby to its mother. (Location 707)
Strangely enough, however, maternal care has been largely absent from the altruism debate. Some scientists don’t even want to count it as altruism, since it doesn’t fit their emphasis on sacrifice. They want to speak of altruism only if it harms the performer, at least in the short run. No one should be eager to be an altruist, let alone take pleasure in it. I call this the altruism-hurts hypothesis, which is deeply erroneous. After all, the definition of altruism is not that it needs to cause pain, only that it carries a cost. (Location 717)
Para publicarla, habría que darle más contexto.
I would still argue that, at least for mammals, maternal care is the prototypical form of altruism, the template for all the rest. (Location 725)
Patricia Churchland, an American philosopher well versed in neuroscience, treats human morality as an outgrowth of caring tendencies. The neural circuitry that regulate the organism’s own bodily functions has been co-opted to include the needs of the young, treating them almost like extra limbs. Our children are part of us, so we protect and nurse them unthinkingly, the way we do our bodies. The same brain mechanism provides the basis for other caring relations. (Location 730)
Invariably, nature associates things that we need to do with pleasure. Since we need to eat, the smell of food makes us drool like Pavlov’s dogs, and food consumption is a favorite activity. We need to reproduce, so sex is both an obsession and a joy. And to make sure we raise our young, nature gave us attachments, none of which exceeds that between mother and offspring. (Location 740)
in The Meditations of the second-century Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius (“… acts that are consistent with nature, like helping others, are their own reward”).30 We are group animals, who rely on each other, need each other, and therefore take pleasure in helping and sharing. (Location 745)
self-neglect is counterproductive, a theme well known to charity workers. As with the oxygen masks on airplanes, the self needs to be fed before it can take care of anyone else. (Location 754)
Nothing comes more naturally to us than taking care of loved ones. (Location 762)
Churchland correctly saw continuity between caring for one’s own body, caring for one’s children, and caring for those close to us. Our brain has been designed to blur the line between self and other. (Location 763)
Given its intrinsic rewards, some like to label care for family and close associates “selfish,” at least at an emotional level. While not incorrect, this obviously undermines the whole distinction between selfishness and altruism. If my eating all the food on the table is just as selfish as my sharing it with a hungry stranger, language has become obsolete. How can a single concept cover such divergent motivations? More importantly, why is my satisfaction at seeing the stranger eat confused with my being selfish? Why can’t altruism be like any other natural human tendency in that it yields pleasure? Many people love to spoil their family and friends, and the greatest joy we can give them is to just let them do it. (Location 769)
Perhaps it is the common comparison of human altruism with that of ants and bees that has thrown us off. Insects lack empathy, whereas our brains are built to connect with others and experience their pain and pleasure. The end result is that altruism can be both genuine and satisfying at the same time. (Location 779)
They can be unfriendly to neighbors, but soon after a confrontation has begun, females have been seen rushing to the other side to copulate with males or mount other females. Since it is hard to have sex and wage war at the same time, the scene rapidly turns into socializing. It ends with adults from different groups grooming each other while their children play. (Location 919)
Already in the 1960s, Konrad Lorenz warned that a cat hissing at another cat is not the same as a cat stalking a mouse. The first expresses a mixture of fear and aggression, the second is motivated by hunger. We know now that the neural circuitry is different. This is why Lorenz defined aggression as within-species behavior, and why herbivores are not considered any less aggressive than carnivores—as anyone who has witnessed a stallion fight can attest. (Location 940)
The most significant point about bonobo sex is how utterly casual it is, and how well integrated with social life. (Location 993)
There is even an official theory about this by the French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss, who proposed that human civilization started with the incest taboo. Before that time, we did it with everyone regardless of whether we were blood relatives or not. The incest taboo pushed us into a new realm: from the natural into the cultural. How off the mark was Lévi-Strauss! Suppression of inbreeding, as biologists call it, is well developed in all sorts of animals, from fruit flies and rodents to primates. It is close to a biological mandate for sexually reproducing species. In bonobos, father-daughter sex is prevented by females’ leaving around puberty to join neighboring communities. And mother-son sex is wholly absent, despite the fact that sons stick around and often travel with their mothers. It is the only partner combination free of sex in bonobo society. And all of this sans taboos. (Location 1008)
The fuzzy line between conflict and cooperation is not always understood by women (for whom a friend and a rival are totally different things), but it is second nature to me since I grew up in a family of six boys and no girls. In fact, my interest in how chimpanzees reconcile after fights came about partly because I refused to view aggression as inherently evil, which was the prevailing opinion when I began my studies. Aggressive behavior was even labeled “asocial.” I failed to follow this. I saw scuffles and fights as a way of negotiating relationships, and would call them destructive only if inhibitions were lacking or if no one attempted a repair afterwards. Chimpanzee males get along most of the time and are indeed much better than females in reducing tensions through a long grooming session with their greatest rival. Holding grudges is not a male thing. (Location 1142)
20 It is only recently that we have learned how the brain of bonobos reflects this sensitivity. The first hint came from a special type of neuron, known as a spindle cell, thought to be involved in self-awareness, empathy, sense of humor, self-control, and other human fortes. Initially, these neurons were known only in humans, but following the usual pattern in science, they were subsequently also discovered in brains of apes, including bonobos.21 Then came a study that compared specific brain areas in chimpanzees and in bonobos. Areas involved in the perception of another’s distress, such as the amygdala and anterior insula, are enlarged in the bonobo. Its brain also contains well-developed pathways to control aggressive impulses. (Location 1153)
Human exceptionalism is still very much alive in the social sciences and the humanities. They remain so resistant to comparisons of humans with other animals that even the word “other” bothers them. The natural sciences, in contrast, having suffered less religious contamination, march inexorably toward ever greater human-animal continuity. Carl Linnaeus placed Homo sapiens firmly within the primate order, molecular biology revealed human and ape DNA to be nearly identical, and neuroscience has yet to find a single area in the human brain without an equivalent in the monkey’s. It is this continuity that is controversial. (Location 1450)
I find the neo-atheist insistence on purity curiously religious. (Location 1467)
I predict that fifty years from now Darwin’s portrait will hang in every psychology department. (Location 1483)
the big difference for scientists is that the thirst for knowledge itself, the lifeblood of our profession, fills a spiritual void taken up by religion in most other people. Like treasure hunters for whom the hunt is about as important as the treasure itself, we feel great purpose in trying to pierce the veil of ignorance. We feel united in this effort, being part of a worldwide network. (Location 1525)
The enemy of science is not religion. Religion comes in endless shapes and forms, and there are tons of faithful people with an open mind, who pick and choose only certain parts of their religion and have no issue with science whatsoever. The true enemy is the substitution of thought, reflection, and curiosity with dogma. (Location 1572)
Two large bundles of browse would be thrown into the compound. Any adult of any rank could claim and keep a bundle, because chimps respect ownership. (Location 1815)
Chimpanzee society always strikes me as revolving around tit for tat. These apes build a social economy of favors and disfavors ranging from food to sex and from grooming to support in fights. They seem to maintain balance sheets and develop expectations, perhaps even obligations, hence their negative reaction to broken trust. (Location 1832)
When sixteenth-century French philosopher Montaigne said his throat itched as soon as he heard someone cough, he gave us the essence of empathy several centuries before the term came into use. Empathy connects bodies with bodies. (Location 1862)
We have this wonderful capacity to inhabit the bodies of others. Putting it in neuroscience language, we activate neural representations of motor actions in our own brain similar to the ones we perceive or expect in the other. That we do so unconsciously has been tested with facial expressions on a computer screen. Even if the expressions are flashed too briefly for conscious perception (the subjects believe they’re watching landscapes), our facial muscles still move along, and our mood is affected by the expressions seen. Frowns induce sadness, smiles happiness. (Location 1871)
Empathy was seen as a cognitive skill. Now we know that the process is both simpler and more automatic. It’s not that we lack control (breathing is automatic, too, but we are still in command), but science looked at empathy entirely the wrong way. Empathy stems from unconscious bodily connections involving faces, voices, and emotions. Humans don’t decide to be empathic; they just are. (Location 1878)
empatía regulación cita favorite emociones
Empathy finds its origin in bodily synchronization and the spreading of moods. Complex forms based on imagination and projection grow out of this, but only secondarily. (Location 1884)
Since mirror neurons don’t distinguish between our own behavior and that of others, they let one organism get under the skin of another. No wonder that their discovery has been hailed as being of equal importance to psychology as the discovery of DNA has been for biology. These neurons fuse people at a bodily level, (Location 1887)
Since birth (and even before) we know the voice as the vehicle of pleasure, pain, rage, and so on. The voice plugs directly into our central nervous system. It reaches inside of us as no artificial instrument ever will. We do not just infer the suffering of the soprano; we actually feel it and get goose bumps from it. (Location 1898)
viewers of a Jackson Pollock painting experience “a sense of bodily involvement with the movements that are implied by the physical traces—in brush marks or paint drippings—of the creative actions of the producer of the work.” (Location 1912)
human adolescents going out with a date instructed to mimic their every move, such as picking up a glass or leaning an elbow on the table, report liking him or her better than those going out with a nonimitating date. (Location 1925)
Neuroscience offers two basic messages about empathy. The first is that there is no sharp dividing line between human and animal emotions. The second is that empathy runs from body to body. You stick a needle in a woman’s arm, and the pain centers in her husband’s brain light up just from watching the procedure. His brain reacts as if the needle went into his own arm. Given what we know about mirror neurons, mimicry, and emotional contagion, this “body channel” of empathy is probably as old as the primate order, but I suspect it to be much older still. (Location 1945)
humans most prone to yawn contagion also have the most empathy. And children with empathy deficits, such as those with autism, lack yawn contagion altogether. (Location 1954)
Watching videos of yawning apes, our chimps yawn like crazy, but only if they personally know the ape in the video. Videos of strangers have no effect. This suggests that it is not just a matter of seeing a mouth open and close: identification with the videotaped individual is part of it. The same role of familiarity is, by the way, known of all empathy research, whether on humans or other animals. Empathic reactions are stronger the more we share with the other and the closer we feel to them. In a human field study (conducted undercover in restaurants, waiting rooms, and so on), yawn contagion was quicker and more common between relatives and close friends than between acquaintances and strangers.12 (Location 1955)
In an experiment at the University of Chicago, a rat was placed in an enclosure where it encountered a transparent container with another rat. This rat was locked up, wriggling in distress. Not only did the first rat learn how to open a little door to liberate the second, but its motivation to do so was astonishing. Faced with a choice between two containers, one with chocolate chips and another with a trapped companion, it often rescued its companion first. If the choice was between an empty container and one with chocolate, on the other hand, it invariably opened the second one first. The finding is about as contrary to the Skinnerian emphasis on conditioning as possible, and a testimony to the power of animal emotions. Interpreting the rats’ behavior as empathy-based altruism, the authors concluded that “the value of freeing a trapped cagemate is on par with that of accessing chocolate chips.” (Location 2023)
Empathy is multilayered like a Russian doll. At its core is the capacity to match another’s emotional state. Around this core, evolution has built ever more elaborate capacities, such as feeling concern for others and adopting their viewpoint. Few species show all layers, but the core capacity is as ancient as the mammals. (Location 2044)
Those who exclaim that “animals are not people” tend to forget that, while true, it is equally true that people are animals. (Location 2060)
An even more complex expression of empathy is targeted helping. Instead of reacting to the distress of others, the goal here is to understand their situation. We recognize the specific needs of others, as when we help a blind person cross the street. (Location 2067)
The only advantage of blushing that I can imagine is that it tells others that you are aware how your actions affect them. This fosters trust. We prefer people whose emotions we can read from their faces over those who never show the slightest hint of shame or guilt. That we evolved an honest signal to communicate unease about rule violations says something profound about our species. (Location 2188)
“Moral rules are directly grounded in the emotions. When we think about hitting, it makes us feel bad, and we cannot simply turn that feeling off.” (Location 2201)
The child is a natural moralist, who gets a huge helping hand from its biological makeup. We humans automatically pay attention to others, are attracted to them, and make their situation our own. Like all primates, we are emotionally affected by others. And not just like primates. The reason a big dog will stop gnawing on a smaller playmate as soon as the latter utters a sharp yelp is the same: hurting another is aversive. (Location 2213)
This may explain the strong reaction of Bully, a dog owned by Konrad Lorenz, to a rule violation. In this case, the victim was not a vulnerable other but the master himself. Bully accidentally bit the famous ethologist’s hand when the latter tried to break up a fight. Even though Lorenz did not reprimand him and immediately reassured him, Bully suffered a complete nervous breakdown. He was virtually paralyzed for days and uninterested in food. He would lie on the rug breathing shallowly, occasionally interrupted by a deep sigh coming from deep inside his tormented soul. He looked as if he had come down with a deadly disease. Bully remained subdued for weeks, prompting Lorenz to speculate about his having a “conscience.” Bully had never bitten any person before, and so he could not have relied on previous experience to decide that he had done something wrong. Perhaps he had violated a natural taboo on inflicting (Location 2216)
damage upon a superior, which could have the worst imaginable consequences, including expulsion from the pack.10 As a student, I followed (Location 2223)
Social rules are not simply obeyed in (Location 2235)
the presence of dominants and forgotten in their absence. If this were true, low-ranking males wouldn’t need to actively check on alpha or be overly submissive following their exploits. They internalize rules to some degree. (Location 2236)
In sum, two great reinforcers support the social code by which primates and children live. One comes from within and the other from without. The first is empathy and a desire for good relations leading to the avoidance of unnecessary distress. The second is the threat of physical consequences, such as penalties meted out by higher-ups. Over time, these two reinforcers create an internalized set of guidelines, which I will call one-on-one morality. This kind of morality permits partners of disparate abilities and strength to get along, such as males with females and adults with (Location 2259)
Sometimes these guidelines are suspended—for instance, when two rivals compete over status—but generally primates strive for peaceful coexistence. Individuals unable or unwilling to abide by the social code become marginalized. The ultimate driver of the whole process, in an evolutionary sense, is the desire for integration, since its opposite—isolation or ostracism—drastically diminishes an individual’s chances at survival. (Location 2263)
Field studies on baboons have shown that females with friendships outlive those without them, and raise more offspring. There are excellent evolutionary reasons, therefore, to value close relationships.14 (Location 2274)
Chimpanzees and bonobos respect each other’s possessions, so that even the top male may have to beg for his food. It is rare for dominant individuals to take another’s food by force, and code violators meet with fierce resistance. (Location 2278)
Animals living by a prescriptive code have made a transition from “is” to “ought.” And they have done so, I might add, blithely unaware of the ocean of academic ink spilt over this particular transition. (Location 2292)
other. Hume himself ignored the “guillotine” named after him by stressing how much human nature matters: he saw morality as a product of the emotions. Empathy (which he called sympathy) was at the top of his list. He considered it of immense moral value. (Location 2306)
Human morality develops out of sensitivity to others and out of the realization that in order to reap the benefits of group life we need to compromise and be considerate of others. (Location 2316)
Emotionally, we are radically different, which explains why we assign the two H’s of helping or (not) hurting special status. Rather than reaching us from the outside or through logic, these values are deeply embedded in our brainstem. (Location 2319)
A child of the Renaissance, Bosch lived in a time that came to value reason over piety. Humanity began to dream of a rationally justified morality, culminating centuries later in Kant’s elevation of “pure reason” to its foundation. The prevailing approach was that eternally valid moral truths were somewhere “out there,” held together by a compelling logic that is ours to uncover. Philosophers offered their expertise to do so. (Location 2401)
Normative ethics carries the stamp from a previous era. The whole idea of a moral “law” suggests an enforced or enforceable principle, which makes one wonder who the enforcer might be. In the past the answer was obvious, but how to apply this idea without invoking God? For a philosophical take on this issue, I recommend Philip Kitcher’s The Ethical Project, which expresses skepticism: Theorizing about the ethical project has been hampered by assuming there must be some authority in ethics, some point of view from which truth can be reliably discerned. Philosophers have cast themselves as enlightened replacements for the religious teachers who previously pretended to insight. But why? Ethics may simply be something we work out together. (Location 2411)
Although we live in an age that celebrates the cerebral and looks down upon emotions as mushy and messy, it is impossible to get around the basic needs, desires, and obsessions of our species. Made of flesh and blood, we are driven to pursue certain goals—food, sex, and security foremost among them. This makes the whole notion of “pure reason” seem like pure fiction. Did you hear about the study showing that court judges are more lenient after lunch than before lunch?21 For me, this is human reasoning in a nutshell. It is virtually impossible to disentangle rational decision making from mental predispositions, subconscious values, emotions, and the digestive system. (Location 2417)
Prestige and reputation are a critical part of why humans act morally even when they don’t directly gain from it. Others are more willing to follow the lead of an upstanding citizen than of someone who lies, cheats, and always puts his own interests first. Glimmers of reputation can be seen in the apes. For example, if a major fight gets out of control, bystanders may wake up the alpha male, poking him in the side. Known as the most effective arbitrator, he’s expected to step in. Apes also pay attention to how one individual treats another, as in one experiment in which they preferred to interact with a human who had been nice to others. This was not about how they themselves had been treated but about the reputation the human had gained by sharing food with other apes.24 In our own studies, we found that if we let the colony watch two chimpanzees who demonstrate different but equally simple tricks to get rewards, they prefer to follow the higher-status model. Like teenagers copying the hairstyle of Justin Bieber, they imitate prominent members of their community rather than bottom rankers.25 Anthropologists call this the prestige effect. (Location 2470)
Chris Boehm, an American anthropologist who has worked with both humans and apes, has insightfully written about the way hunter-gatherer communities enforce the rules. He believes it may lead to active genetic selection similar to that of a breeder who picks animals on appearance and temperament. Some animals are allowed to reproduce, others aren’t. Not that hunter-gatherers explicitly think about human genetics, but by ostracizing or killing persons who violate too many rules, or breach one that’s too important, they do remove genes from the gene pool. Boehm describes how criminal bullies or dangerous deviants may be eliminated by a member of the community, who has been delegated by the rest to shoot an arrow through their heart. Applied systematically over millions of years, such morally justified executions must have reduced the number of hotheads, psychopaths, cheats, and rapists, along with the genes responsible for their behavior. There are still plenty of such people left, one might object, but this doesn’t deny the possibility that there has been selection against them.28 It is a fascinating thought that humanity may have taken moral evolution in its own hands, with the result that ever more members of our species are prepared to submit to the rules. (Location 2512)
Hunter-gatherer cultures revolve around community and sharing, and stress humility and equality. They frown on anyone with a big mouth. Western society, in contrast, celebrates individual achievement and permits successful individuals to hold on to their gains. In such an environment, humility can be hazardous. (Location 2525)
Lamaleran whale hunters, in Indonesia, roam the open ocean in large canoes, from which a dozen men capture whales almost bare-handed. The hunters row toward the whale, the harpoonist jumps onto its back to thrust its weapon into it, after which the men stay nearby until the leviathan dies of blood loss. With entire families tied together around a life-threatening activity, their men being literally in the same boat, distribution of the food bonanza is very much on their mind. Not surprisingly, the Lamalera are more sensitive to fairness than most cultures tested by anthropologists, who have played the Ultimatum Game all over the world. This game measures preferences for equitable offers. The Lamalera are the champions of fairness, in contrast to societies with greater self-sufficiency, such as horticulturalists in which every family tends its own plot of land.30 (Location 2528)
If there is such a thing as the moral law, therefore, it is unlikely to be identical everywhere. It can’t be the same for the !Kung San, the Lamalera, or a modern Western nation. Our species does possess invariant characteristics, and all of human morality is preoccupied with the two H’s of helping and (not) hurting; hence some degree of universality is to be expected. Yet, the details of how fairly resources are divided or how much humility is desirable cannot be captured in a single law. Morality also changes over time within every society, so the hot issues of today may have meant little to previous generations. (Location 2534)
Rather than reflecting an immutable human nature, morals are closely tied to the way we organize ourselves. Nomadic cattle herders cannot be expected to have the same morality as large-game hunters, who cannot be expected to have the same morality as industrialized nations. We can formulate all the moral laws we want; they will never apply everywhere to the same degree. (Location 2558)
But my own problem with the utilitarian premise goes deeper, and is more serious, because I feel that it runs totally counter to basic biology. I cannot imagine any society, human or animal, without loyalties. All of nature is built around the distinction between in-group and out-group, kin and nonkin, friend and foe. Even plants recognize genetic kinship, growing a more competitive root system if potted together with a stranger rather than a sibling.37 There is absolutely no precedent in nature of individuals that indiscriminatingly strive for overall well-being. The utilitarian proposal ignores millions of years of family bonding and group loyalty. (Location 2602)
loyalties are not just morally inconvenient, as utilitarians might call them, but very much part of the moral fabric. We expect them, and are appalled by their absence, such as parental neglect, refusal to pay child support, or treason. We despise the last so deeply that our answer is the firing squad. (Location 2617)
This brief excursion into the Ten Commandments, the golden rule, and the greatest happiness principle, shows my skepticism that moral dos and don’ts can be captured in simple unassailable rules. Attempts to do so follow the same top-down logic of religious morality that we are trying to leave behind. It is also not free of danger, since it risks leading us down the wrong path, putting principles before people. In an extreme reaction, the normative quest has been labeled “morally irresponsible.”40 Reading Kitcher, Churchland, and other philosophers, one can see an alternative movement underway that tries to ground morality in biology without denying that its specifics are decided by people.41 This is also my view. I don’t believe that watching chimpanzees or bonobos can tell us what is right or wrong, nor do I think that science can do so, but surely knowledge of the natural world helps us understand how and why we came to care about each other and seek moral outcomes. We do so because survival depends on good relations as well as a cooperative society. Moral laws are mere approximations, perhaps metaphors, of how we should behave. That the underlying values can be internalized to the point that we end up with an autonomous conscience, is something that, as Kant observed, should fill us with wonder, because how this happens is barely understood. (Location 2628)
One of my co-workers, Zanna Clay, patiently waits for spontaneous conflicts among the bonobos, collecting them on video so that we can analyze their aftermath. Inevitably, these incidents cause distress in one or both parties. How do bystanders react? They reassure anyone who has lost a fight by means of genito-genital rubbing, a brief mount, or a manual massage of the genitals. What chimps do with platonic touching calls for sexual engagement among bonobos. The principle, however, is exactly the same in both species: the apes down-regulate each other’s anxieties. This is such a basic emotional response that we notice it even among orphans in the nursery, who have barely had any social models to learn it from. And they, too, often do so in a sexual manner. (Location 2682)
In general, the reactions of apes to the death of companions suggest (Location 2761)
that they have trouble letting go (mothers may carry dead infants around for weeks, until the corpse is dried out and mummified), test the corpse, try to reanimate it, and are both upset and subdued. They seem to realize that the transition from alive to dead is irreversible. Some of the reactions resemble the way humans attend to their dead, such as the touching, washing, anointing, and grooming of bodies before we put them into the ground. (Location 2762)
Religion seems to promote well-being in body and mind. Let me hasten to add, though, that there is little agreement about how it does so. Even if many religions have rules governing diet, drugs, marriage, and hygiene, this doesn’t seem the reason. Research points, instead, to church attendance as a major factor, which suggests a social dimension. It is well known that social connectedness strengthens the immune system, and church attendance surely helps in this regard. If so, it may not be religiosity per se that protects against disease, but rather human contact. For all we know, the same benefits may apply to members of a book club or birding society. Churches, however, produce more shared commitment, which does add to a sense of belonging. Émile Durkheim, the French father of sociology, emphasized the collective rituals, sacred music, and singing in unison that make religious practice an irresistible bonding experience. Others have depicted God as an attachment figure, who offers safety and comfort in stressful situations. In addition, many religions add female statues marked by a gentle, nonjudgmental facial expression. These maternal sources of solace—from Mary in (Location 2805)
Goodall went on to wonder whether these displays could become ritualized into some animistic religion, and what would happen if chimps could share these feelings with each other. Would it lead to collective worship of the elements? (Location 2827)
This doesn’t mean that imagination and make-believe are out of the question for our primate relatives. There are reports of human-reared apes, such as Washoe, who carefully bathed her doll, and another ape, Viki, who pretended dragging an imaginary toy around by an imaginary string that she would unhook if it got “stuck.” I have already mentioned the bonobo female who fed juveniles from a bottle even though there was no need for it, perhaps imagining she was a Maman. In wild chimpanzees, there are observations of care for imaginary young. Richard Wrangham observed a six-year-old juvenile, Kakama, carry and cradle a small wooden log as if it were a newborn. Kakama did so for hours on end, one time even building a nest in a tree and gently placing the log into it. The fieldworker was reluctant to draw conclusions from what he had seen, but had to admit it was a young male playing with a doll. Kakama may have been anticipating a sibling, because his mother was pregnant at the time. I myself have seen juvenile chimps act the same, tenderly holding a piece of cloth or a broom. A wild gorilla was seen to pull up a mass of soft moss, which she carried and held like an infant under her breast, seemingly “nursing” it.11 (Location 2871)
Perhaps apes, too, can create a new reality that exists alongside the old one. In the old reality, a wooden log is just a log, whereas in the new (Location 2880)
one, it’s a baby. This capacity for dual reality is so highly developed in our own species that a sugar pill improves our health even if the nurse takes it out of a bottle with “placebo” clearly written on it. On (Location 2881)
trying to pinpoint the success of religion is like asking what good it is to have language. I am sure language has its benefits, but since all humans have one we simply lack comparison material. With religion, we’re in the same boat. The only thing we do know is that attempts to abolish or discourage religion have had disastrous consequences. (Location 3003)
Perhaps the question can be answered on a smaller scale, as in a study of the longevity of nineteenth-century communities in the United States. Communities based on a secular ideology, such as collectivism, disintegrated much faster than those based on religious principles. For every year that communities lasted, religious ones were four times as likely to survive than their secular counterparts.21 Sharing a religion dramatically raises trust. We know the huge bonding effect of coordinated practices, such as praying together and carrying out the same rituals. This relates to the primate principle that acting together improves relationships, ranging from monkeys’ preferring human experimenters who imitate them to varsity rowers’ gaining physical resistance (such as a higher pain threshold) from exercising as a team rather than on their own.22 Joint action may stimulate endorphin release, as has also been suggested for other bonding mechanisms, such as joint laughter. These positive effects of synchronization help explain the cohesiveness of religions and their effect on social stability. (Location 3014)
Durkheim dubbed the benefits derived from belonging to a religion its “secular utility.” He was convinced that something as pervasive and ubiquitous as religion must serve a purpose—not a higher purpose, but a social one. The biologist David Sloan Wilson, who analyzed the data on early Christians, agrees in that he sees religion as an adaptation that (Location 3022)
permits human groups to function harmoniously: “Religions exist primarily for people to achieve together what they cannot achieve alone.”23 Religious community building comes naturally to us. In fact, given how commonly religion is pitted against science, it is good to remember the tremendous advantage religion enjoys. Science is an artificial, contrived achievement, whereas religion comes as easily to us as walking or breathing. (Location 3024)
religious representations are highly natural to human beings, while science is quite clearly unnatural. That is, the former goes with the grain of our evolved intuitions, while the latter requires that we suspend, or even contradict most of our common ways of thinking.24 (Location 3033)
When four- to five-year-old children are left alone in a room, they tend to negotiate with each other by means of moral terminology such as “That’s not fair!” or “Why don’t you give her some of your toys?”26 No one knows what children would do if left alone for a much longer time, but they would definitely form a dominance hierarchy. Young animals, whether goslings or puppies, quickly battle it out to establish a pecking order, and children do the same. I remember the pale faces of psychology students steeped in academic egalitarianism, upset at seeing young children beat up on each other on the first day of preschool. We are a hierarchical primate, and, however much we try to camouflage it, it comes out early in life. (Location 3043)
But I also consider this particular collision between science and religion a mere sideshow. Religion is much more than belief. The question is not so much whether religion is true or false, but how it shapes our lives, and what might possibly take its place if we were to get rid of it the way an Aztec priest rips the beating heart out of a virgin. What could fill the gaping hole and take over the removed organ’s functions? (Location 3066)
On a recent visit to Vancouver, the Canadian psychologist Ara Norenzayan gave me the title of his new book, which I promptly wrote down as “Big Dogs.” I may be slightly dyslexic, or perhaps it was a Freudian slip, my mind being more with animals than people. Ara had said “Big Gods.” He studies the role of religion in everyday life. One experiment investigated how “priming” people with religious thoughts affected generosity. Priming is the planting of an unconscious bias, hereby letting subjects correct the grammar of a few sentences that included words like “God,” “prophet,” and “divine.” They encountered these words without any further information and had no idea what the experiment was about. After this, each subject found ten one-dollar coins on a table with the instruction to take as many as they liked, knowing that what they left behind would go to the next person. The (Location 3104)
outcome was spectacular. Unprimed subjects left on average only 4.22. About two-thirds of the primed group left more than half the coins behind. Curiously, religiosity didn’t seem to matter much. Asked about their religion, about half the subjects answered “none,” yet many of those performed like the rest. (Location 3110)
It is only when our ancestors began to aggregate in ever larger societies, first with thousands of people, then with millions, that these face-to-face mechanisms fell apart. That is why Ara believes that with bigger groups came a need for bigger gods, who watch like hawks over everything we do. This nicely fits my own thinking that morality predates religion, certainly the dominant religions of today. We humans were plenty moral when we still roamed the savanna in small bands. Only when the scale of society began to grow and rules of reciprocity and reputation began to falter did a moralizing God become necessary. (Location 3120)
For those who despair at the implication that without religion the world might lack prosociality, there are a few rays of sunlight. First of all, the original experiment was incomplete. It primed for religious concepts only, not for any alternatives. This deficit was corrected in a second experiment in which subjects encountered good-citizen terminology, such as “civic,” “jury,” and “court” before being tested. Lo and behold, they became as altruistic as those primed with religious terms, leaving on average $4.44 on the table. This outcome offers hope for secular societies. If appeals to community values, the social contract, and law enforcement are as effective as religion at inducing generosity, the positive effects of religion may be replicable after all. Second, a recent study compared the reasons why believers and nonbelievers assist others. It found nonbelievers to be more sensitive to the situation of others, basing their altruism on feelings of compassion. Believers, in contrast, seemed driven by a sense of obligation and how they ought to behave according to their religion. The behavioral outcome was the same, but the underlying motivations seemed different.32 Clearly, there are many reasons for kindness, and religion is just one of them. The secular model (Location 3129)
Animals crawling out of the mud recall our lowly beginnings. Everything started simple. This holds not only for our bodies—with hands derived from frontal fins and lungs from a swim bladder—but equally for our mind and behavior. The belief that morality somehow escapes this humble origin has been drilled into us by religion and embraced by philosophy. It is sharply at odds, however, with what modern science tells us about the primacy of intuitions and emotions. It is also at odds with what we know about other animals. Some say that animals are what they are, whereas our own species follows ideals, but this is easily proven wrong. Not because we don’t have ideals, but because other species have them, too. (Location 3199)
Most pertinent for morality, which is also normative, social mammals strive for harmonious relationships. They are at pains to avoid conflict whenever they can. The gladiatorial view of nature is plainly wrong. In one field experiment, two fully grown male baboons refused to touch a peanut thrown between them, even though they both saw it land at their feet. Hans Kummer, the Swiss primatologist who worked all his life with wild hamadryas baboons, (Location 3209)
describes how two harem leaders, finding themselves in a fruit tree too small to feed both of their families, broke off their inevitable confrontation by literally running away from each other. They were followed by their respective females and offspring, leaving the fruit unpicked. Given the huge, slashing canine teeth of a baboon, few resources are worth a fight.5 Chimp males face the same dilemma. From my office window, I often see several of them hang around a female with swollen genitals. Rather than competing, these males are trying to keep the peace. Frequently glancing at the female, they spend their day grooming each other. Only when everyone is sufficiently relaxed will one of them try to mate. (Location 3212)
If fighting does break out, primates react the way the spider does to a torn web: they go into repair mode. Reconciliation is driven by the importance of social relationships. Studies on a great variety of species show that the closer two individuals are, and the more they do together, the more likely they are to make up after aggression.6 Their behavior reflects awareness of the value of friendships and family bonds. This often requires them to overcome fear or suppress aggression. (Location 3218)
This brings me back to my bottom-up view of morality. The moral law is not imposed from above or derived from well-reasoned principles; rather, it arises from ingrained values that have been there since the beginning of time. The most fundamental one derives from the survival value of group life. The desire to belong, to get along, to love and be loved, prompts us to do everything in our power to stay on good terms with those on whom we depend. Other social primates share this value and rely on the same filter between emotion and action to reach a mutually agreeable modus vivendi. We see this filter at work when chimpanzee males suppress a brawl over a female, or when baboon males act as if they failed to notice a peanut. It all comes down to inhibitions. (Location 3222)
We are mammals, a group of animals marked by sensitivity to each other’s emotions. Even though I tend to favor primate examples, much of what I describe applies equally to other mammals. Take the work by the American zoologist Marc Bekoff, who analyzed videos of playing dogs, wolves, and coyotes. He concluded that canid play is subject to rules, builds trust, requires consideration of the other, and teaches the young how to behave. The highly stereotypical “play bow” (an animal crouches deep on her forelimbs while lifting her rear in the air) helps to set play apart from sex or conflict, with which it risks getting confused. Play ceases abruptly, though, as soon as one partner misbehaves or accidentally hurts the other. The transgressor “apologizes” by performing a new play bow, which may prompt the other to “forgive” the offense and continue to play. Role reversals make play even more exciting, such as when a dominant pack member rolls onto his back for a puppy, thus exposing his belly in an act of submission. This way, he lets the little one “win,” something he’d never permit in real life. Bekoff, too, sees a relation with morality: During social play, while individuals are having fun in a relatively safe environment, they learn ground rules that are acceptable to others—how hard they can bite, how roughly they can interact—and how to resolve conflicts. There is a premium on playing fairly and trusting others to do so as well. There are codes of social conduct that regulate what is permissible and what is not permissible, and the existence of these codes might have something to say about the evolution of morality.7 (Location 3243)
The egalitarianism of hunter-gatherers suggests a long evolutionary history to our preoccupation with resource division. Hunters aren’t even allowed to carve up their own kill, in order to prevent them from favoring family and friends. (Location 3262)
The way humans play the Ultimatum Game is quite complex, because we not only show first-order fairness, which is protest at getting less, but anticipate this reaction in others and try to forestall it. We do so by actively promoting equity, thus reaching second-order fairness, which is a preference for fair outcomes in general. The critical role of conflict avoidance was already hinted at by Thomas Hobbes: “Every man is presumed to seek what is good for himselfe naturally, and what is just, onely for Peaces sake, and accidentally.”9 I agree with the political philosopher, except that I would never use the word “accidentally.” A human tendency that is so pronounced and universal must be there for a reason. (Location 3267)
How ancient this tendency is became clear when Sarah Brosnan and I discovered it in capuchin monkeys. This became an immensely popular experiment in which one monkey received cucumber slices while another received grapes for the same task. The monkeys had no trouble performing if both of them received identical rewards of whatever quality, but rejected unequal outcomes with such vehemence that there could be little doubt about their feelings. I often show their reactions to audiences, who almost fall out of their chairs laughing—which I interpret as a sign of surprised recognition.10 Until then, they hadn’t realized how closely their emotions resembled those of monkeys. The (Location 3272)
monkey receiving cucumber contentedly munches on her first slice, yet throws a tantrum after she notices that her companion is getting grapes. From then on, she ditches her measly cucumber slices and starts shaking the testing chamber with such agitation that it threatens to break apart. The underlying motivation is not so different from human street protest against unemployment or low wages. Occupy Wall Street is all about how some people roll in grapes while the rest of us live in cucumber land. (Location 3277)
Refusing perfectly fine food because someone else is better off resembles human performance in the Ultimatum Game. Economists call this response “irrational,” given that something is always better than nothing. No monkey, they say, should refuse food she’d otherwise eat, and no human should reject any offers, however small. Money is money. If these reactions are irrational, however, it is an irrationality that transcends species. To see it so vividly on display in a monkey helps us understand that our own sense of fairness, rather than being a product of our vaunted rationality, is rooted in basic emotions. (Location 3281)
Fairness and justice are therefore best looked at as ancient capacities. They derive from the need to preserve harmony in the face of resource competition. We share both stages of fairness with the apes, and the first stage with monkeys and dogs. At the University of Vienna, Friederike Range found that dogs refuse to lift their paw for a “shake” with a human if they get nothing for it while a companion dog is rewarded.14 We shouldn’t be surprised to find this reaction in dogs, which derive from a long line of cooperative animals. Caring about what others get may seem petty, but in the long run it keeps one from getting duped. To call this response “irrational” misses the mark. If you and I often hunt together and you always take the best chunks of meat, I will need a different hunting buddy. It is probably no accident that all three animal species that dislike inequity—chimps, capuchins, and canids—are fond of meat and hunt in groups. Sensitivity to reward distribution helps ensure payoffs in line with effort, which is critical for sustained cooperation. (Location 3302)
This brings me to next level of morality, the one where we leave the other primates behind. We care intensely about the group level and (Location 3310)
develop notions of right and wrong for everyone around, not just ourselves and our close relations. Not that this level is altogether absent in the apes—I have discussed it as “community concern”—but it requires greater powers of abstraction as well as the anticipation of what may happen if we let others get away with behavior that doesn’t even directly affect us. We have the capacity to imagine its impact on the greater good. The underlying values are, again, not that complicated, because surely the functioning of a community is in the interest of all of its members, but it is harder to find parallels with other animals. We build reputations of honesty and trustworthiness, and disapprove of cheaters and noncooperators to the point of ostracizing them. Our goal is to keep everyone in line, putting collective interests before selfish ones. Morality serves to spread the benefits of group life around, and to keep a lid on exploitation by a powerful elite. (Location 3311)
The more we expand morality’s reach, the more we need to rely on our intellect, because even though I believe that morality is firmly rooted in the emotions, biology has barely prepared us for rights and obligations on the scale of the modern world. We evolved as group animals, not global citizens. Nevertheless, we are well underway to reflect on these issues, such as universal human rights, and there is no reason to take (Location 3325)
the naturalized ethics advocated in this book as a prison from which we can’t escape. It offers an account of how we got to where we are, but we humans have a long history of building new structures on top of old foundations. (Location 3328)
Perhaps religion is like a ship that has carried us across the ocean, having allowed us to develop huge societies with a well-functioning morality. Now that we are spotting land, some of us are ready to disembark. But who says the land is as firm as it looks? (Location 3339)
the main ingredients of a moral society don’t require religion, since they come from within. Despite its emphasis on reason, humanism considers our species a creature as much of passion as of intellect. This is where the bonobo has no trouble connecting. We have the emotions of a social animal, and not just any animal, but a mammal. Previous attempts at biological explanations of human behavior have suffered from too much emphasis on genes, and too many comparisons with social insects. Don’t get me wrong, ants and bees are wonderful cooperators, and the study of them has greatly advanced our understanding of altruism. It is a triumph of evolutionary theory that its logic applies across such a vast array of species. Yet, insects possess none of the neural circuitry that mammals evolved for empathy and caring. Even if insect behavior resembles ours on the surface, it doesn’t rely on the same processes. It’s like comparing the chess play of computers and grandmasters: they may come up with the same moves, but get there in totally different ways. (Location 3353)
Mammals are affected by the distress of others, leading to levels of altruism far in excess of what gene-centric theories predict. (Location 3368)
With this observation, the bonobo concludes his advice to the atheist, whom he sees as a protester rather than an advocate. The big challenge is to move forward, beyond religion, and especially beyond top-down morality. Our best-known “moral laws” offer nice post hoc summaries of what we consider moral, but are limited in scope and full of holes. Morality has much more humble beginnings, which are recognizable in the behavior of other animals. Everything science has learned in the last few decades argues against the pessimistic view that morality is a thin veneer over a nasty human nature. On the contrary, our evolutionary background lends a massive helping hand without which (Location 3391)
we would never have gotten this far. (Location 3395)