The Moral Animal

Having just finished another book, “The Moral Animal”, by Robert Wright, I’m prompted to get back to blogging after my winter lull. My reading of this book coincidentally comes in the year of the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin, whose life the book thoroughly dissects from the perspective of evolutionary psychology. It treats the reader to some great insight into who Darwin was as a person and how he may have come to be that person. The introspective reader will find much food for thought as the origin of our most basic behaviors are speculatively (though reasonably) discussed.

For those who understand the theory of biological evolution and acknowledge the substantial evidence supporting it (and lack of any other credible theories), it is no leap at all to believe that our human behaviors are at least partly attributable to it. The difficulty is in understanding (and especially in proving) exactly how those behaviors evolved and what role genes (versus environment) played in the process. Wright makes, however, a very credible case for at least a high-level understanding of evolved human behavior. Like Darwin’s theory, it will not be warmly embraced by a general public who is waiting to have their cherished fantasies established as objective reality. For those who understand that such reality does not conform to human desire, but rather waits to be discovered by those who can see past it, the material Wright discusses awaits them as a real treat.

Evolution of a species is driven by which genetic materials make it through the filter represented by the environmental challenges to its survival. Because evolution operates only very slowly (particularly for species such as ours with long gestation), these environmental challenges though are the ones that existed before our civilization arose about ten thousand years ago. The behaviors that promote that survival are going to be the most prevalent behaviors today. Studies of our primate cousins, however, suggest that the origin of those behaviors was in fact much more ancient because they show commonalities with basic human behaviors.

Among the behaviors discussed in this book are those surrounding the pursuit of sex, which is of course primal to the proliferation of genes. Individual status within a group is a prime determiner of the number of opportunities for sex that a given male gets. The range of behaviors that relate to this status are the source of many interesting discussions in this book. One in particular that is very interesting is the tendency to be dishonest to promote ones status, but even more interesting is the tendency to believe ones own lies so that one can be a better liar! Delusional thinking is built into our nature. Anyone who has watched the countless American Idol auditions in which outrageously bad singers walk way heartbroken and in denial would have to agree. Examples abound of course… and of course none apply to ourselves, right? (-: The ‘badge of morality’ that one adopts when proclaiming to be a member of an popular established religion can also be looked upon as one of these behaviors that can be at least partly motivated by the competition for social status.

The origins of human morality are a primary topic of this book. What it proposes is that human morality arises despite our selfish natures due to ‘reciprocal altruism’… a behavior in which we remember those who help us and we in turn help them while punishing those that do not reciprocate. This is one of the behaviors observed in our primate cousins. Support for the model comes from research done with computer models of moral systems in which ‘tit for tat’ (a form of reciprocal altruism) is demonstrated to endure in evolutionary competition.

The implications of this line of thought to the idea of ‘free will’, the nature of the subconscious mind, the degree to which we can perfect human society, etc. are just a few of the ways in which this book can send your thoughts down new and fascinating paths. While it promotes a way of looking at life that is in one way discouraging (suggesting that we are more programmed in our behaviors than we would like), it at the same time gives us the understanding that might (if anything can) enable some level of transcendence of that kind of existence by facilitating honest, critical introspection.