Al Owski’s Reviews > The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion > Status Update

“In such proto-tribal societies, individuals who found it harder to play along, to restrain their antisocial impulses, and to conform to the most important collective norms would not have been anyone's top choice when it came time to choose partners for hunting, foraging, or mating. In particular, people who were violent would have been shunned, punished, or in extreme cases killed.”

“gene-culture coevolution…the ability to digest lactose is lost during childhood. The gene that makes lactase (the enzyme that breaks down lactose) shuts off after a few years of service, because mammals don't drink milk after they are weaned. But those first cattle keepers…had a vast new supply of fresh milk… Any individual whose mutated genes delayed the shutdown of lactase production had advantage.”

“Homo heidelbergensis is…our best candidate for Rubicon crosser. These people had cumulative culture, teamwork, and a division of labor, … shared intentionality, including at least some rudimentary moral matrix that helped them work together and then share the fruits of their labor. By crossing over, they transformed not just the course of human evolution but the very nature of the evolutionary process.”

“In contrast, when early humans began to share intentions, their ability to hunt, gather, raise children, and raid their neighbors increased exponentially. Everyone on the team now had a mental representation of the task, knew that his or her partners shared the same representation, knew when a partner had acted in a way that impeded success or that hogged the spoils, and reacted negatively to such violations.”

“According to Tomasello, human cognition veered away from that of other primates when our ancestors developed shared intentionality. At some point in the last million years, a small group of our ancestors developed the ability to share mental representations of tasks that two or more of them were pursuing together. ”

“Darwin summarized the evolutionary origin of morality in this way: "Ultimately our moral sense or conscience becomes a highly complex sentiment originating in the social instincts, largely guided by the approbation of our fellow-men, ruled by reason, self-interest, and in later times by deep religious feelings, and confirmed by instruction and habit." ”

“Selfish and contentious people will not cohere, and without coherence nothing can be effected. A tribe rich in the above qualities would spread and be victorious over other tribes.” (Charles Darwin)

“I've painted a portrait of human nature that is somewhat cynical… Glaucon was right and that we care more about looking good than about truly being good… We lie, cheat, and cut ethical corners quite often when we think we can get away with it… manage our reputations and justify ourselves to others. We believe our own post hoc reasoning so thoroughly that we end up self-righteously convinced of our own virtue.”

“We modified the Fairness foundation to make it focus more strongly on proportionality. The Fairness foundation begins with the psychology of reciprocal altruism, but its duties expanded once humans created gossiping and punitive moral communities. Most people have a deep intuitive concern for the law of karma—they want to see cheaters punished and good citizens rewarded in proportion to their deeds.”

“We added the Liberty/oppression foundation, which makes people notice and resent any sign of attempted domination. It triggers an urge to band together to resist or overthrow bullies and tyrants. This foundation supports the egalitarianism and antiauthoritarianism of the left, as well as the don't-tread-on-me and give-me-liberty antigovernment anger of libertarians and some conservatives.”