Part IV: The Cause of Human Behavioral and Moral Variation and its Consequences

We come to the fourth part of this paper. The last section dealt primarily with the emergence of morality as a function of our species’ evolutionary history; in particular, how environmental circumstances (the savanna environments of our ancestors) selected for increased emotionality, social bonding, social awareness, memory capacities (which include increased conceptions of the self across space and time), and language or associative reasoning (creativity). These developments led to the emergence of what we qualitatively recognize as human morality from the primordial, and in some sense primeval, ape morality we still find in chimpanzees. However, we left off with the idea that the pro-social tendencies, in some sense eusocial tendencies, of Man (homo sapiens) are contingent upon his development. I specifically stated that there’s no reason he must be social; he may revert back to a less adaptive form – given the typically complex environmental circumstances he finds himself within; a form characterized by brutishness, ego-centricity, emotional deficits or retardation (in the traditional sense), and rapaciousness (as was observed amongst the Waorani). Man, as we understand him, is accurately defined as homo duplex, specifically because, as a result of his capacity for hive-ish behavior (as Haidt would put it) or eusociality (as E.O. Wilson would put it), well-led groups are more effective than poorly-led groups or disparate individuals (Vugt, Hogan, and Kaiser, 2008). I.e., humans essentially know they can get more out of working together than they can working individually and will thus sacrifice for the group to do so. But this capacity is built upon one of Man’s specialties, his ability to learn (Tomasello, 2011; Richerson and Boyd, 1998).  This phenotypic ability is contingent upon different targets of selection, the gene, ontogenesis, the individual’s organic structure, behavior, symbols, and culture; the phenotypic variants of such targets affecting the physiology and environment of the organism, leading to further changes in the genotype and phenotype of the species.

 

To summarize the model, I will use to discuss development, I will begin with the genotype. The genotype “is the genetic makeup by which an individual or one of its traits can be characterized in genetic comparisons with other individuals or their phenotypic traits… this term may be used to denote the inherited or genetic contribution to a phenotype as inferred from breeding studies… It sometimes refers to the expressed gene or set of genes that influence a particular phenotypic trait (West-Eberhard, 2003, p. 31). However, the genome doesn’t need to change for there to be variation. “Biological evolution proceeds not only by making many words (molecules) from a single set of letters (the genetic code). By taking a limited vocabulary of words [the proteins], it can rearrange those into even more enormous numbers of distinctive sentences, and then continually and simultaneously reorganize paragraphs and pages and chapters and books (the phenotypes at different levels of organization) without increasing the volume of the basic vocabulary [the enzymatic products of the macromolecules produced by the exons of the genome] at all (p. 334).” Hence, due to the genome, we have the phenotype. Importantly, effects like this are not necessarily stochastic or random. Instead, under specific environmental pressures, exons coding for specific – not random – enzymes can randomly change to adapt to the specific environmental pressure, such as a physiological pressure or a traditional environmental pressure, e.g., heat. (Moxon et al., 1994 and Wright et al., 1999). 

 

As stated before, the phenotype is “all traits of an organism other than its genome… the phenotype is the individual outside the genome… the enzymatic products of genes are part of the phenotype, as are behaviors, metabolic pathways, morphologies, nervous tics, remembered phone numbers, and spots on the lung following a bout with the flue… the phenotype can be adaptive or pathological, permanent or temporary, typical or atypical of a species (West-Eberhard, 2003, p. 31).” Selection does not occur at the level of the genome. In essence, the genome is preserved by the phenotype, and thus, as the phenotype effects and is affected by the environment or objects in the environment, its ability to preserve the genome, the products of the genome specifically, is what’s selected. Hormones, a phenotype, also have the ability to affect gene expression, or the products of genes (phenotypes). “Hormones (e.g., juvenile hormone in arthropods, steroids in vertebrates) connect a diversity of environmental cues to a diversity of expressed genes. Hormones can participate simultaneously in many kinds of decisions because the level of production of a hormone can respond to environmental inputs through various pathways, as illustrated by the hormonal response to stretch receptors in blood-feeding insects; and because the same hormone can stimulate or inhibit responses in different parts of the body where appropriate receptors are found (West-Eberhard, 2003, p. 465).”  In other words, hormone activity elicited by an environmental cue can trigger behavioral and physiological changes that affect the phenotype of the organism, at a specific level, without ever effecting the genome, all with the goal of preserving the genome and passing its products, as targets of selection, into the future. Yet, it is not the genome that’s selected for; it’s the phenotype. 

 

In humans, at least one, if not the, specialty is our ability to learn (West-Eberhard, 2003, pp 337-352). Our ability to learn, while a specialty, also enables us to solve problems in a wide variety of complex environments. From deserts to tropical jungles, atoll islands to desolate tundra regions, dense coniferous forest to temperate grasslands, and so on, we are able to generate niches; niches that, in turn, affect us. We can create a wide variety of tools, modify those tools, combine different tools, abstract the essential elements or concepts out from a preexisting set of tools, recombine them, and generate a completely new tool. We can learn new ideas, apply those ideas to effect, learn from the consequences of those ideas, and iterate upon the lessons learned. Suffice to say, learning – though a specialty – generates massive amounts of variety in homo sapiens. As a result, our special flexibility generates flexible behavior, fit for the myriad environments humans might find themselves within. The effects of this behavior may generate different phenotypic responses, responses that need not, as already shown, generate any significant genomic variation. However genomic variation undoubtably and likely occurs, for example in groups who are prone to sickle-cell anemia and Tay-Sachs disease (M. J. O’Brien and K.N. Laland, 2012 and J. Diamond and J.I. Rotter, 2002).  Variants in human phenotype, if not also genotype, can be seen as the product of the Baldwin Effect. 

 

The Baldwin Effect “is a process by which organic selection leads to evolutionary (genetic) change. Baldwin’s Organic Selection… is differential survival (selection) in which phenotypic accommodations to extreme conditions during individual ontogeny allow enhanced survival of appropriately responding individuals (West-Eberhard, 2003, p. 24).” One such example, ten million years ago, could be the differential effect on apes who became more emotionally bonded, more emotional, and more social compared to those who did not, i.e., those apes who went extinct. Selection, as already shown, favored the apes who became more eusocial in the savanna environment. As h. Habilis and h. Erectus continued to radiate from their savanna origins, equipped with the benefits conferred to them by h. Australopithecus, variation in hominin behavior could have been effected by what Mary Jane West-Eberhard calls the ratcheting effect of conditional expression – “the fact that conditional expression matches a phenotype to an environment, making it possible for a phenotype to be exposed to positive selection when it is likely advantageous, and shielded from negative selection by nonexpression in conditions where it is inappropriate. This ratcheting effect could accumulate net directional change under episodic selection in temporally and spatially heterogenous environments, even though the population may experience conditions that temporarily reverse the trend (West-Eberhard, 2003, p. 162).” Hence why we can see such disparate behavioral variation in technologically and environmentally similar peoples, e.g., the Semai and Waroani, and thus the many differences in humans from various cultures. While humans universally have the same form, variation in that form is environmentally contingent, meaning that it is also socially contingent. The many kinds of peoples are in fact distinct phenotypically, if not also genetically, meaning they also have different values. In other words, humans do not need to be a social animal, but they, as previously stated, gain many benefits from doing so. However, how exactly they do so is subject to the same environmental mechanisms that produced human eusociality.

 

For example, one of the main problems that needed to be overcome for humans to develop complex societies was the free-rider problem. Free-riders do not play the tit-for-tat game like everyone else. Turchin described them as knaves. Knaves are essentially parasites. They take from what the group collectively generates without sacrificing for the group to ensure the group’s continued success. In essence, by not sacrificing for the group, by acting selfishly, the free-riders gain more than those who do sacrifice for the group. When moralists, those who conditionally contribute to the group, not out of any sense that they necessarily should contribute to the group, discover the knaves are engaging in this kind of behavior, if they are not allowed to punish the knaves, they stop sacrificing to the group because they know it’s the rational thing to do (they actually can’t emotionally benefit from doing so). However, as Fehr and Gachter in their 2002 (Fehr and Gachter, 2002) study found, if they are allowed to punish the knaves, they not only punish the knaves but they enjoy punishing knaves. The reward centers in their brain, for example the nucleus accumbens area, ventral tegmental area, the basal ganglia, and hippocampus, track the punishing behavior, they anticipate punishing the knaves, they get excited by it, and they get a sense of euphoria for doing so (De Quervain et al., 2004). However, not all individuals hold their fellows to account. For example, “graduate students in economics… tend to behave more selfishly than students from other disciplines (Marwell and Ames, 1981).”

 

The effects of this game, which serve as the basis to test how exactly the problem of the tragedy of the commons is overcome, also differs between cultures, exemplifying the flexible nature of human behavior and the ratcheting effect of conditional expression provided to us by West-Eberhard. According to Turchin (2006, pp. 120-121), “Cross-cultural variation is not huge, although detectable… in Israel and Japan the modal offer was lower, 40 percent of the pot… In Israel, there was also a substantial number of low offers (10 to 30 percent of the pot), which were very rare in the other three countries. The probability that a low offer would be rejected was the highest in the United States and Slovenia, intermediate in Japan, and the lowest in Israel (Roth et al., 1991).” Researches also conducted similar studies in much more small-scale societies of traditional farmers, herders, and hunter-gatherers. “The amount of cross-cultural variation found in these small-scale societies was much greater than in the modernized ones (although in no society did people behave as would be predicted by the self-interest axiom). The Machiguenga of Peru made the lowest offers… [their] economy is entirely focused on the household; almost no productive activity would require cooperation outside the members of the family.” The less members of the society were integrated, the less they offered. In contrast, “The Ache of Paraguay practice widespread meat sharing and cooperation on community projects… The average proposal made by the Ache was 51 percent of the stake, almost precisely the 50:50 split predicted by fairness considerations… The Lamelara whale hunters of Indonesia go to sea in large canoes manned by a dozen or more individuals. Close cooperation is crucial for a successful hunt. In the ultimatum game the Lamelara are super-fair – the average proposal was 58 percent of the stake (findings from Henrich et al., 2004).” 

 

Two attributes that could account for this effect are IQ and Agreeableness. Based off evidence from prisoner’s dilemma (PD) experiments from 1959-2003, “For every 100-point increase in the school’s average SAT score,” students cooperated 5-8% more often (Jones, 2008). Agreeableness, the other variable that could be modifying this effect, also affected whether participants were more likely to participate in PD experiments. A standard deviation (SD) increase in agreeableness increases cooperation by 15% (Kagel and McGee, 2014). Of note, group IQ, the first effect considered, apparently is primarily mediated by individual IQ (Bates and Gupta, 2017). In high IQ groups (groups constituted by individuals with high IQs), “cooperation increases… while declining with lower intelligence (Proto, Rustichini and Sofiano 2014).” And in another study by Garett Jones, the author found that “The well-identified psychological relationship between IQ and patience implies higher savings rates and higher folk theorem-driven institutional quality in high average IQ countries. Experiments indicate… intelligence predicts greater pro-social behavior in public goods and prisoner dilemma games, supporting the hypothesis that high national IQ [nations composed of people with relatively high IQs] causes higher institutional quality… higher savings intensity by a variety of measures… and [higher levels of productivity] (Jones, 2011).” In summation, higher intelligence groups will be more likely to cooperate to acquire more resources, more willing to sacrifice (saving resources) and not defect (free-ride), be better at producing resources, and likely to trust others more (Sturgis and Allum, 2010), in turn generating more complex societies (Gottfredson, 1997). In short, this phenotype, likely including the ability to interpret the intentions of others (Theory of Mind) (Engle et al., 2014) and potentially the ability to consider individuals in varying scenarios, each one used to weigh the value of a possible decision or choice (Theatre of Mind), leads to more eusocial societies, more complex societies, societies capable of creating empires. 

 

Morality is then the evolutionary product of emotion; a phenotype selected through Man’s development in various complex environments (Morality being necessary in some environments more than others); its origins found in contemporary primates. It was forged in a harsh environment requiring group cohesion or what is recognized as asabiya (Turchin, 2006 via Ibn Khaldun), yet not all proceeding environments that Man radiated into were alike, leading to the development of various forms of nesting behavior, different – yet similar --  divisions of labor, numerous forms of social complexity, the need to recall various individuals, events, and facts contingent upon the complexity of the environment a given people find themselves in (facts are not as relevant to some peoples as they are to others); differences in the capacity to intuit and theorize about the intentions of others, all followed by the development of complex behaviors (different types of dance and music), symbols, and languages; the latter of the developments best exemplified by intelligence or IQ; i.e., systematic thinking, which itself varies globally and regionally, and is likely environmentally dependent. While none of these phenotypic differences require significant genetic variation to occur, they can have profound effects on intergroup cooperation and socialization (and also have allelic effects). How can someone who cannot assess the intentions of another ever hope to cooperate with them at a grand scale; how can such phenotypically distinct people hope to develop a complex society if they are not capable of engaging in mutualistic cooperation, sharing, and betting (sacrificing); how could they develop successful institutions of power capable of supporting their people, helping them to acquire resources, reproduce, distribute those resources, and maintain the equilibrium of the people and society; how could such a phenotypically distinct collection of people compete with a more cohesive people? 

 

Of note, development does not act upon a blank slate, it does not, every generation, create random genetic variation and thus brand-new phenotypes – this process would lose out in the competition for resources to a process capable of generating phenotypes that efficiently capitalize on the resources already available while retaining the ability to create phenotypic variation. Selection, as stated previously, occurs at the level of the phenotype and what is carried over from one generation to the next is the genome, particularly through the germ line. Yet, out of the protein structures manifested by the genome, which can be altered through development (e.g., in the mother’s womb), development can only act, selection for different phenotypic variants can only act, on the phenotype already present (this includes transposons and chromatin marking); you cannot teach a fish to talk like a human, no matter how hard you try. Thus, even though we are genetically similar as humans, we are clearly not phenotypically similar and these phenotypic dissimilarities are largely the product and the interaction between organism, development, and environment, with the genome essentially enslaved to the phenotype; it can only “hope” the phenotype and structural changes work in its favor – so much for the selfish gene (West-Eberhard, 2003, p. 93). Thus, while the human niche is learning, and it has afforded Man the ability to adapt to various complex environments, the ability to move between those environments is not so fluid; selection from one environment to the next must still take place. 

For instance, say there was a population with an average IQ of 75, with a SD of 15 points, such that the lower quartile minimum was 60 and the upper quartile maximum was 90. Let’s also assume there’s another population whose average IQ was 110, with a SD of 10 points, such that the lower quartile minimum was 100 and the upper quartile maximum was 120. Given the purported heritability of IQ is around r=.5, (.8 in some studies), how easy would it then be for a large mass of individuals with an IQ of 75 to move into an environment that requires complex problem solving, and how likely is it that they will cooperate with, let’s say, the native inhabitants who have an average IQ of 110? Let’s also say they were not as agreeable as the native inhabitants, there were substantial personality differences between the two people, would they be able to create a complex, flourishing, and functioning society? Let’s also say their moral systems, the behaviors, norms, what was considered permissible and impermissible differed substantially, such that there was very little overlap. How well would these two people cooperate? Now let’s also say there was another group of people with an IQ of 105, SD = 8 points, lower quartile minimum = 97, upper quartile maximum = 113, they were cooperative, willing to share with each other, sacrifice for each other, save up, and could create functioning, complex, dissociable, interdependent institutions (division of labor). In the game of group selection, who would win? The high IQ society affected by the low IQ society or the society with a relatively lower IQ capable of cooperating? The evidence we have covered suggests it is the latter.

 

While this only serves as an example, the point is this: just because we are genetically alike does not mean we are phenotypically alike. Slight phenotypic differences, differences that are selected for in different environments may not be useful in other environments; the values, behaviors, ideas a group acquires in one environment may not be useful in another environment (Tishkoff et al., 2007). Yet, because the target of selection is previous phenotypic variation, phenotypes carried over from one environment into a new environment have to go through a bottleneck; the old that doesn’t work has to be discarded for the old that does work, and perhaps something new can be acquired along the way if the organism is plastic enough (Badyaev, 2009). Although this may not sound all that interesting, in terms of human relations, this likely produces extremely dramatic and tragic outcomes. Morality, the topic of this paper, the product of evolution, is just one of those phenotypic variations. 

 

I think we can now actually begin to theorize about what is happening in the United States. Why are Americans at each other’s’ throats? What is happening in America? Why is there such a profound moral divide? To begin to answer this question, where I began at the beginning of this paper, I will turn to the end of Richard Joyce’s book, The Evolution of Morality. 

 

Part V: The Consequences of Rationalism for Human Moral Systems and their People

 

A reading of Joyce’s The Evolution of Morality may give the reader (as it has me) the impression that Joyce is anti-intuitionist (although he does suggest intuitions are rationale in a manner not used in this paper); it does not seem as if he is in favor of Intuitionism. Hence why he argues for linguistic dominion over Moral Systems rather than recognizing linguistic justifications follow from intuitions, and even rational moral judgments (e.g., moral judgments about Julie and Mark’s night) are only seemingly devoid of emotional affect; do the moral judges really make a rational judgment or does it only appear as such – are they not ultimately going with their gut, even after they think it over; is their decision genuinely rationally justified? I don’t think there’s any evidence to demonstrate it is.

 

For a start, why must morality (a moral system) comport to the truth? Remember, moral systems are essentially games (with or without explicit norms), whose telos cannot be conquest, competition, or winning (as it was for the Romans). Instead the goal of the game of morals is to continue playing the game of morals for as long as possible. Winning may be part of the game of morality, but its goal is not winning; the moral game continues regardless of whether a win or loss is incurred. On page 219 of Joyce’s text, he states, “I contend that on no epistemological theory worth its salt should the justificatory status of a belief remain unaffected by the discovery of an empirically supported theory that provides a complete explanation of why we have that belief while nowhere presupposing its truth.” First, does any theory provide a complete explanation? What precisely counts as a complete explanation? One we find reasonable? But then why must we agree that reason alone, or at all, must justify our beliefs, or that it genuinely does? Also, why is truth necessarily relevant for one to act on a moral belief? I am not saying it’s totally irrelevant, but what I am saying is that one has no need to justify their morals through reason or truth. 

 

For example, take the evolution of lactose digestion in adults into consideration (Holden and Mace, 2009). Before lactose could be digested, it was a matter of fact that one could get sick from lactose. Not all members of a people would necessarily get sick from lactose, but enough may have that it wouldn’t be prudent for everyone to consume lactose. Yet, cultural patterns persisted, such as the rearing of cattle livestock, whose milk may have served as a source of sustenance in times of scarcity, selecting for lactose tolerance and selecting against lactose intolerance. If these desperate people acted on the truth that lactose makes people sick, and they decided not to consume lactose, they may have died. By going against the evidence, in some sense, these people willed a phenotype into existence. As a result, whole cultures arose around the worship of the cow; e.g., Nordic mythology places the cow as a central player in the creation of the world. This irrational view, that the Cow played a hand in the creation of the world, could have saved the lives of these people – the effect of lactose intolerance was irrelevant. The morals and myths surrounding the worship of the Cow did not need to be centered around the idea of truth, nor justified by such an idea, they simply had to ensure the players of the social game could continue playing the social game. The Semai, and their belief of a malevolent, inspirited world, also – though irrational and ostensibly false – plays a significant role in their survival; the truth of the malevolent spirits is irrelevant.

The sacrificial nature of some religions may also be related to this effect. “Must I sacrifice to the gods, to God, why ought I sacrifice to the gods, to God? Why must I abide by these childish and babyish taboos and rituals? What good does it bring me? What justification do you have that I ought to sacrifice for the group, to the gods, to God, based upon an empirical fact – where is this God, these gods? Where is the rationale in abiding by these inane and subordinating taboos? Must I wear all black, dye my hair red, grow my facial hair, and not bathe but once a week? Who says? On what authority? And why ought I abide by that authority?”. 

These seemingly childish questions genuinely present us with a fantastic insight into the problem I am trying to address. Essentially, the good of the group, the need for the group to survive through its ability to cooperate, need not be dependent on truth, rationale, or reason. In a paper by Scott Atran and Joseph Henrich, The Evolution of Religion: How Cognitive By-Product, Adaptive Learning Heuristics, Ritual Displays, and Group Competition Generate Deep Commitments to Prosocial Religion (Atran and Henrich, 2010), the authors demonstrate that, “Differential group survival [yields] an increase in the mean number of costly rituals per group over time… [suggesting] that such rituals and devotions likely generate greater commitment and solidarity within groups.” In other words, “religion, as an interwoven complex of rituals, beliefs, and norms, plausibly arises from a combination of (1) the mnemonic power of counterintuitive representations [their lack of truthiness], (2) our evolved willingness to put faith on culturally acquired beliefs rooted in the commitment-inducing power of devotions and rituals [the more we sacrifice to something, the lower the probability we’ll abandon it], and (3) the selective effect on particular cultural complexes created by competition among societies and institutions.” The more you sacrifice, the more willingly you sacrifice, the lower the probability you will take advantage of the group, the more you demonstrate to the group that they can trust you. “[These belief] complexes tend to include potent supernatural agents that monitor and incentivize actions that expand the sphere of cooperation, galvanize solidarity in response to external threats, deepen faith, and sustain harmony.” Again, we can see that the moral systems’ goal is only partially winning (if at all, i.e., it’s more about resisting external threat). As previously stated, cooperation, group cohesion or asabiya (Turchin, 2006), deepening faith (or emotional ties to the beliefs and thus the group), and the maintenance of harmony to prevent the disintegration of the group through degradation or degeneration (to prevent intragroup strife) are the main goals. The legitimacy of this paper’s claims are borne out in another paper previously cited (Sosis and Bressler, 2003). In other words, by demanding the religious or moral belief be justified (let alone completely justified) misses the point – the point is that the morals bind the group, create group cohesion, and protect the group from abuse and external threat. The moral systems, once again, ensure the social game can go on. And yet, Joyce and people like him demand the moral belief be completely justified, or that a belief should be affected by an empirically supported theory – it neither has to be or ought to be. 

 

What I am going to propose now is that, what Joyce, Greene, and even Jonathan Haidt in his emphasis on utilitarian virtue ethics miss is this (Haidt seems to have a kind of faith that virtue ethics will just work): morality, moral systems, and thus religions, channel the intuitions into effective group behavior. By effective group behavior, I mean that the intuitions, specifically the moral intuitions, are channeled into a preexisting, demonstrably stable morality phenotype (if we take the moral system to be an extended phenotype of a given people who are predisposed to be attracted to a certain set of behaviors, ideas, or moral aesthetics). Recall that it is not useful for an organism to generate a new phenotype each generation. Thus, because the moral intuitions are a phenotype contingent upon the development of a group of individuals, if they are deprived of a moral system to channel those moral intuitions into [an aspect of their development], a new moral system, in other words a new religion, will emerge [a saltatory phenotypic development]; they may also channel their desire for moral behavior into the closest manifestation of normative judgments: the state. This phenotypic development will necessarily take on a pragmatic form, a form capable of effectively making use of their moral intuitions while discarding previous wisdom traditions that have acquired staying power. Essentially, their new moral system may get them what they want, but it will lack all the wisdom a moral system entails, specifically because some pieces of wisdom are not supported by empirical evidence, reason, or the truth. 

Joyce’s emphasis on the banality of atheistic skepticism ignores this point. Moral systems are not an individual phenomenon (as expressed in my critique of the case of Julie and Mark); they are a group phenomenon, they’re contingent on the group. Joyce claims, “in an earlier era [again, speaking from a position of alleged superiority, as if – coming from a later age -- he’s necessarily wiser] it was feared that religious atheism would lead to a breakdown of civil order – that without the belief in a divine being keeping an eye on human affairs a person would have no reason to eschew depraved acts if confident of getting away with them.” Barring the fact that people do behave more ethically and prosocially when they feel as if they’re being watched (Haley and Fessler, 2005; Shariff and Norenzayan, 2007), the atheist would only act morally if he is bound to a group; why ought he act morally without connection to a group? And what binds him to his group?

 

Joyce claims that “we generally have strong reasons to act in “prosocial” ways independent of such considerations.” But again, this misses the point: moral systems are not dependent on reason, they are not the product of reason, they are socially contingent and develop in a social context, and make demands dependent on authority, which is an explicitly unreasonable request; i.e., authoritative fallacy; is it wrong because the authority tells you it is so? Is the authority right because he’s an expert, perhaps? Are you, for instance, acting out of faith when you trust the expert? Can you trust the evidence that certifies their expertise, can you even verify it for yourself, or are you putting faith in the expert’s certificate of expertise? How about the institution the expert emerged from? Can you be reasonably certain that institution is worth trusting? Have you ever tried to get a room of 100 people to express all their reasons for doing a particular act, do they agree, even on principle? How about 1,000, 1,000,000 or 100,000,000, et cetera? At the group level, where moral systems emerge, morality is not based on reason. How could it be? An individual acting morally according to his own personal standards of what a moral person ought to be is a genuine abomination that no society would tolerate. As you might see, the rational moralist rests many of his rational considerations in individuals and groups whom he simply trusts or, more accurately, puts his faith in. Many of his personal, individual, and rational considerations are done at the group-level, by institutions, experts whom he doesn’t know, accredited in ways that he simply defers to without complete verification of, all of which he simply has faith in – necessarily sacrificing his autonomy to them.  The young deprived of a moral system, left with only the idea that they can derive these moral considerations on their own without a moral system (religion) guiding them, or more accurately a wisdom tradition, realize the autonomous moralist is an abomination, illusion, and absurdity. To offload the burden required of moral decision-making onto the developing youth will turn those young -- who grow up without a moral system to channel their moral intuitions into – into the next, closest thing: the state. These animonious youth turn to the state to alleviate the dysphoria produced by the fact they have no medium to work-out their moral intuitions and sentiments. Without an outlet, they’re like a sealed pot of water being heated; eventually, the pressure must be released.  Haidt even provides an example for such a phenomenon in his discussion on the emergence of fascism in Italy. 

 

To paint a clearer picture of the interaction between the individual, environment, culture (including its systems), and the group, I will turn to a paper written by Tim Ingold titled, Between Evolution and History: Biology, Culture, and the Myth of Human Origins (Ingold, 2002 in Wheeler et al., 2002). Tim is arguing for a specific kind of relational model. It is my opinion that this quote exemplifies what he’s trying to express: [Persons] are not constituted, as the genealogical model implies, in advance of their entry into the lifeworld, but rather undergo a continual formation throughout their lives, within the context of their involvements in specific social and environmental relationships.” In other words, the identity of the individual is a product of the relationship between the individual, their phenotype, their environment, the culture produced by the group to whom they are a part, that group itself, the phenotypes of all the members of that group, and the other objects within that environment. This concept is in line with what Mary Jane West-Eberhard presented in her exquisite work, Developmental Plasticity and Evolution (West-Eberhard, 2003).

 

Tim then provides us with the example of how societies develop around their environment, specifically trees. “With the passage of time, trees develop in strength and stature, as do humans. But their respective lives do not merely proceed in parallel; rather, they are intimately intertwined, as they are with those other inhabitants of the forest… Through their involvement in the human sphere of nurture, trees grow people, just as people grow one another (and trees). An ancient tree that has presided over the passage of many human generations might be regarded as an ancestor of all those who has grown up under its shelter. These human generations have followed the trees into the world, and have drawn support from it. (Ingold, 2002, p. 50).”  In other words, Man doesn’t just grow up around inanimate forces, objects that do his bidding. He is deeply intertwined with his environment, with his culture, technology, and the people around him. Man is as much descended from the trees as he is the progenitor of the trees.

 

Tim continues, “The conventional term, procreation, captures the sense of begetting implied when we say that one thing is descended from another. It suggests a one-off event: the makings of something absolutely new out of elements derived from immediate antecedents (Ingold, 2002, p. 50).” This is not what we want to express when we are exploring the relationship between individuals, their environment, their culture, their moral system, and how that eventually changes their development, their life, and their experiences. “By progeneration, on the other hand, I refer to the continual unfolding of an entire field of relationships within which different beings may emerge with their particular forms, capacities, and dispositions. The procreated entity is already complete before its life begins: the design is in place, merely awaiting its fulfilment.” This concept is eerily similar to the notion of determination West-Eberhard provides for us: “Phenotype determination, as in “sex determination” or “caste determination,” is the choice made at a decision point. Thus, phenotype determination is influenced by conditions as well as by the nature of the regulatory elements, products of both genotypic and environmental influence during their development (West-Eberhard, 2003, p. 68).”  Whether an organism switches on or off (expresses a phenotype or not, including ontogenetic processes), “implies some change in state… under certain conditions. If a process were constantly on or off regardless of conditions, there would be no operative switch. So condition sensitivity is an implicit quality of all switches [italics added]. They mark developmental decision points that depend on conditions.” Once again, in the words of Tim Ingold, “the design is in place, merely awaiting its fulfilment.” In the marble, there is the masterpiece, waiting for the skilled artisan to reveal it, yet its form is up to the artisan, it is not dependent on the marble.  

 

For Tim, this makes each individual’s path a path of negotiation. “[The] growth of the person may be understood as a movement along a way of life, conceived not as the enactment of role-specifications received from predecessors, but literally as the negotiation of a path through the world… And it is at the points [where contributions are given and received] where the life-lines of different persons cross or commingle that these exchanges occur (Ingold, 2002, p. 51).” The artisan negotiates with the marble, the developmental phenotypes interact with the genome more than they are the product of the genome, yet they are also the product of the environment, with whom they interact, which is the product of their progenitor, who has been affected by and effected the environment the developing organism finds itself within, the environment thus affecting the different developmental phenotypes produced by the genome, which again affect the genome. The deeply integrated and entwined interactions of these processes cannot be merely seen as a one-to-one relation between genotype and organism, traceable from lineage to lineage. Instead, the products of these processes have to be understood as one of deeply interconnected relationships. The artisan is as responsible for the work as the marble is responsible for abiding by his hand, as the artisan is responsible for choosing the right piece of marble, as the Earth is willing to provide for the artisan’s wishes, et cetera. “The life of organisms, instantiated in their activity, is not a derivative output of already evolved capacities but the active process of their formation. In what they do, in their modes of life, organisms set up the conditions not only for their own future development but also for that of others to which they relate. In this regard, they figure not just as passive objects of evolutionary change but as creative agents, producers as well as products of their own evolution (Ingold, 2002, p. 57).” For Tim Ingold, and for the argument I am making here, organisms are not alive, they do not contain life, they are within a process of life. 

 

In regards to moral systems, moral systems are like an artifact of Man. They are an extended phenotype, a tool that permits cooperation, the resolution of disputes and the preservation of harmony between members of a given tribe. For Ingold, artifacts, like organisms, have life-histories. “Earlier, I [Tim] referred to the way in which, for certain forest-dwelling people, the life-histories of persons are intertwined with those of trees. But what goes for trees could equally well go for artefacts such as buildings. They, too are formed through a process of development within an environment that critically includes their human builders-cum-inhabitants. And through their presence in the environment they, in turn, condition the development of those who dwell in them.” Moral systems, like the forests of Man, are as much a product of Man as Man is a product of them, as much as the moral system is a product of its environment as the environment is a product of the moral system, as Man is the product of his environment. The moral system is part of the living process, it cannot simply be abandoned if one assumes it’s unreasonable or that its claims are unjustified and false. The puerile ego that produces such a thought, and who does not reproach himself, must be seen as the worst kind of knave; the worst free-rider imaginable, one who seeks to upend the moral system that preserves everyone and potentially every societal artifact around him simply because he doesn’t like it. He may certainly have a role to play in the perpetuation of the moral game (the moral system), but he doesn’t have the right to assert his own morals, in the truest sense of right that may still exist. 

 

On an island, with a group of people who have agreed upon a set of moral precepts (explicitly or implicitly, it makes no difference), he cannot simply decide to act in any way he sees fit and call it moral and reasonable; he literally has no right to assert his own, personal morals. He may seek to convince his fellow island-inhabitants that his act is morally justified, but he must still get them to agree with him. He has no right to force his morality upon them. There is no morality, only autocratic tyranny. A king who holds dominion over his people, yet whose reign is contingent upon their success, is less of a villain than the moral rationalist who seeks to shape the moral system in his personal image. 

 

I think it is now finally appropriate to talk about what is wrong with America today, what is happening to its people, and why they’re in the state they are in. 

 

Part VI: The Battle of the Gods in America

 

So far, we have established five points, which I will briefly summarize here. (1) Morality is not the product of rational processes but is the product of emotional and intuitive processes. (2) Morality’s primordial roots are located in chimpanzees and are best described by the behaviors of moral actors, not the rationalizations of those moral actors, with the goal of the moral actors under any system of morality being continued cooperation between members of the moral community. (3) The development of an individual or group of individuals significantly affects their understanding of emotions and their ability to solve complex social problems. Thus, improper developmental socialization greatly impedes moral behavior, or the understanding of morality. (4) Morality is the product of evolution and can thus be described by evolutionary mechanisms, including developmental mechanisms, meaning that moral systems are the product – and producer – of the diverse peoples and environments around the Earth and, as follows, are diverse themselves. Lastly, (5) undermining moral systems to establish secular, rational moral systems only moves developing youth away from moral systems that gained wisdom from their time in various environments to the state, creating a maladapted population. For instance, the individuals who move towards these secular, state religious-institutions suffer from anomie as a result of the loss or degradation of their moral system and community. The worst of them seek to shape the secular moral system in their own, personal image by force, especially if they perceive the moral system to be a product of individual actors rather than a product of an intertwined relationship between individuals, environment, society, et cetera; the former become enslaved and reliant on the system in their search for meaning and reprieve from the anomie they suffer. 

 

Hence, we can begin to actually answer the question, “Why are Americans at each other’s throats?”. The response to the overturning of Roe v. Wade is only a symptom of an overarching problem. To put it very succinctly, there are at least two kinds of America; America is a nation composed of nations. While Haidt defined the divide between Americans as a split along moral sentiments, and thus a split between two moral tribes, I think it is much more significant than that. This split (Ghosh, 2019), even according to Haidt, likely emerged out of the development of the political parties within the United States. Developmental effects then led to behavioral and experiential differences, leading to differing conceptions of what it is to live in America, followed by differing conceptions of how to solve the problems in America (Alford, Funk, and Hibbing, 2005; Hatemi et al., 2011; and Block and Block, 2006). These differences, as long as the developmental conditions continue to feedback into the people who produced them, will generate conservatives that are more conservative and progressives that are more progressive. What follows is essentially an ideological divide between peoples within the United States. However, this is only part of the problem. 

 

America is also a nation of a diverse number of people, very few (if any) of whom share the same cultures, ideas, rituals, practices, or systems of belief (Jensen et al., 2021). As shown above, behavioral differences lead to differences in environmental conditions, leading to differing environmental effects on the individuals in those environments, leading to differing developmental effects, behaviors, experiences, and concepts about what it is like to live in America, ultimately leading to differing conceptions about how to solve the issues in America, some of which will be irreconcilable. These ontogenetic and experiential conditions target particular phenotypes already in existence in the populations at present, and in the various environments the people find themselves within, as well. Like the growing political divide in the United States, the effects of the phenotypic, ontogenetic, and learned differences will likely feedback into the populations they were derived from, exacerbating the differences between peoples in the United States. In turn, what follows is essentially greater division based on phenotypic variations in the various peoples who have immigrated to America, bringing with them the values, practices, rituals, behaviors, and taboos from their nation of origin.

 

Combined with the fact that the State has become the church of the secular, state-religion, proselytizes for and is sanctioned by the state, and culturally and demographically fewer people are remaining religious (Jones, 2021), anomie will become a more significant issue; depression and mental illness will become more significant issues (Geiger and Davis, 2019). On top of this, as was previously stated, because the individual will be seen as the source of morality, not the group, individual rights based on identity will take center stage. The individual (the knave who seeks to use morality to enrich himself) will demand the group abide by their conception of what is and is not appropriate behavior; disagreement will be seen as denying the rights (really the moral worth) of the individual; we can all generate our own morality right, so why don’t you? 

 

One response to the anomie produced by the sanctioned and proselyted State religion of the rationalist, logic-based, evidence-centered, authority and institution approved (yet inherently intuition and faith-based) morality will be an increase in the development of various group identities (Trueman, 2021). As Turchin noted, the development of group identities emerges when people are put under pressure. When groups are placed in high-pressure situations, like the Germanic Tribes facing the Romans, eventually uniting as the Alamanni or Franks, they form groups, develop an identity in contradistinction to whom they consider to be a threat to them (e.g., the Romans), and work together as a cohesive group to overcome the threat. These typically emerge on the frontiers of a society. The secular, state-religion of the United States will likely be seen as the source of the threat. In turn, its institutions, elites (or priests), and rituals – at least – will stand as forms to develop distinct identities from, specifically in contradistinction to. New religions (moral systems) will emerge, some based on previously existing ones (Judaism, Islam, Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism), some not (Paganism) as a response to this issue. With them will potentially emerge new gods, or conceptions of God, as well. 

 

Hence, we reach this paper’s conclusion and the proposed hypothesis. 

1. America is divided along political, moral, and phenotypic lines as, in some sense, it always has been. 
2. However, the state, spreading its secular, rationalist morality is likely the root of this issue because it causes division, the degradation of communities, anomie, and accentuates individual rights based on identity without obligation to the group (a variant of free-riding and social parasitism), seemingly deriving its morality from reason and empirical fact, not intuition (this is a lie; it is mostly deriving its morality from its intuitions – authority-based morality – and feelings). 
3. The secular state religion will likely exacerbate divisions in America by creating dysphoria and threatening the stability of the numerous groups in the United States (consciously or unconsciously).
4. New moral systems will naturally emerge as a result of the pressures imposed on peoples by the secular state-religion, which will increase conflict between peoples whose values will be increasingly irreconcilable.

Conclusion: more moral conflicts, and moral systems, will emerge within the United States (e.g., conflicts between individuals who support Roe v. Wade and those who do not.) America is not headed for Civil War, as was the case in 1861, but rather extreme balkanization based in different conceptions of what is considered appropriate or inappropriate moral behavior. America is headed towards a war of gods. 

A pluralistic nation is essentially temporally untenable when you consider developmental plasticity as a mechanism for phenotypic variation in homo sapiens that have already undergone and carry the effects of previous environmental selection with them. While E Pluribus Unum is a great idea, it does not work under conditions that cause extreme phenotypic variation or in which there’s an influx of extreme phenotypic variation, specifically when the increase in phenotypic variants prohibits the integration of those variants into the new environment; there will simply be too many hands and means by which individuals are competing for resources. Part of the decline will also come from the desire of individuals to find refuge in the state, or to acquire power through the state. This will cause an increase in the production of elites who seek employment in the state church as a means of acquiring power for themselves, decreasing the value of real-wages, leading to intra-elite conflict and higher levels of civil strife (Turchin, 2013). In turn, what America is looking at, why there is so much conflict in America, is rooted in the vast and varied differences between peoples, many of which, as time progresses, will be increasingly irreconcilable due to developmental and environmental feedback. With the rise of postmodern holistic nihilism, this effect will likely only be exacerbated; even if they speak a variant of English, they may mean completely different things. Technology, e.g., the ability to quickly find people like yourself, isolate yourself from others not like you and them, and group up with those people online, will also exacerbate this issue (Karmin, 2019). There seems to be a perfect storm of identity conflict brewing within the United States. America is headed towards the state the Waorani found themselves within. Will God save it, too? 

 

Part VII: Discussion

 

One of the responses to this will be that we can change the culture, we can resolve this issue if we simply put forward a positive vision, if we properly educate the youth, if we simply vote for the correct candidates. I think these are preposterous claims. I think that there is something fundamentally insoluble about the state of the United States that will necessarily propel it into conflict. A proper reading of Tim Ingold’s paper (2002) should give the reader the feeling that they’re personally responsible for the past, present, and future of humanity – and themselves. However, for Americans to personally solve their problems, they must have the capacity to solve their problems. In other words, selection can only act on already present phenotypes or the potential to manifest those phenotypes. How would Americans, for instance, resolve the illiteracy problem? Who would teach whom? Would they be receptive to the best teachers? Have you ever been in a public high-school classroom, during the school year, in downtown Baltimore? The majority of Americans apparently read below or at proficiency level 3 (Goodman et al., 2013). Such texts are: 

 

“often dense or lengthy, including continuous, non-continuous, mixed, or multiple pages. Understanding text and rhetorical structures become more central to successfully completing tasks, especially in navigation of complex digital texts. Tasks require the respondent to identify, interpret, or evaluate one or more pieces of information, and often require varying levels of inferencing. Many tasks require the respondent construct meaning across larger chunks of text or perform multi-step operations in order to identify and formulate responses. Often tasks also demand that the respondent disregard irrelevant or inappropriate text content to answer accurately. Competing information is often present, but it is not more prominent than the correct information (p. B-3).”

Specifically, as of 2012, 52% have a literacy score below level 3. The majority of these individuals were at Level 2, but 18% are at a level 1 reading level or below. The numeracy scale is not much better. As of 2012, 64% of Americans perform at Level 2 or below. Such problems: 

 

“require the respondent to identify and act upon mathematical information and ideas embedded in a range of common contexts where the mathematical content is fairly explicit or visual with relatively few distractors. Tasks tend to require the application of two or more steps or processes involving calculation with whole numbers and common decimals, percents and fractions; simple measurement and spatial representation; estimation; interpretation of relatively simple data and statistics in texts, tables, and graphs (p. B-7).” 

 

As noted in Part 4 of this paper, smarter people create more effective institutions. Then let us consider the reading and literacy scores of Americans in light of the testing scores post-COVID (Nerozzi, 2022). Scores for all students fell, while scores for the most at-risk students fell the most. Students with more access to educational resources such as a quiet space, technology conducive to learning, and someone to help them scored higher than those who did not. Higher-performing students also understood when they were struggling more than lower-performing students and sought help to resolve their difficulties. In effect, what we are seeing are the developmental feedbacks we would expect to see if niche construction played a role in the development of children, including their personal development (i.e., how they contribute to their development). However, this isn’t just on the shoulders of the parents and children, but the institutions that effectively represented them (Ham, 2022). If we return to the ideas of Tim Ingold, we can see that we are essentially in a degeneration spiral caused by the interwoven nature of organism, environment, niche, other organisms, et cetera. In education, literacy, and numeracy alone, the adverse effects will likely compound and increase exponentially, leading to further institutional degeneration. There’s no way to improve the culture, the institutions, or the children unless the people are capable of improving themselves, and they are not and will not be able to if the effects continue to compound as I predict they will. 

 

I would like to explore one more point philosophically, i.e., Man must be connected to nature to truly understand what it is to be moral. Haidt acknowledges that people who grow up in different social milieus have different expressions of the moral intuitions (Haidt, 2012, p. 24-25). This would follow from the conception of morality as a developmental phenotype. However, what I think may be relevant is, as previously stated, Man’s connection to the vicissitudes of life. 

 

How can Man understand the nuance of when harm is appropriate or inappropriate if he has never suffered himself, if he has never learned from suffering? We learn through conditional habituation and sensitization, and pain or suffering is one such sensation we can become conditioned to. By learning what is appropriate pain – suffering worth enduring – and what’s not worth enduring, we can come to a better understanding of what kind of harm is permissible and what’s not. By seeing nature first hand, we get an appreciation for it – being in nature likely has many health benefits (Tilmann et al., 2018; Franco, Shanahan, and Fuller, 2017); we get a sense of what is and isn’t harmonious; what is and isn’t sanctifying. An exposure to nature could reshape our understanding of why we see the world as a great chain of being, how we understand the great chain of being, and the utility of both negative and positive forces (Keltner and Haidt, 2003; Brandt and Reyna, 2011). In nature, through nature, we also get a sense for what is just authority. Nature has rules, to put it simply. While you can “negotiate” with nature, in the sense that Ingold has described it, you cannot bargain with nature as we do our fellow men. By being in nature, we learn to accept the things we cannot change and to work through such problems without manipulating them as if they were in a virtual space. By doing this, by exploring and negotiating with spaces we cannot bargain with, in spaces where we must discipline and negotiate with ourselves, we develop our problem-solving capacities (Thomas and Harding, 2011; Haga, 2021; and Thomas and Lleras, 2009), we subordinate ourselves to Nature and in doing so become an authority onto ourselves. By becoming our own authority, we learn how to govern ourselves, potentially others, and even become aware of what just and, more importantly, unjust governorship looks like in another. 

 

From this, I think it is fair to claim that it’s likely that, without exposure to nature, our morals improperly develop. A society that is not exposed to nature, does not experience its vicissitudes, has no sense of what harm is, or what genuinely deserves care, what is beautiful and why it ought to be preserved, and why and when we should respect authority and only subvert it if it’s corrupted beyond repair. A society that does not understand what it is to be part of nature cries out at the slightest and most banal of harms, as if he were coddled his entire life, degrades what is beautiful because he has no understanding of the genuine utility of the aesthetically sublime, and at least is prone to being corrupted, lacking self-discipline, driven to bargain and knavishly manipulate his way out of every problem. A society deprived of nature is sure to develop a morally reprehensible and abhorrent population.  

 

At the beginning of this paper, I wanted to understand my fellow Americans. I wanted to know why such vitriol existed in the hearts of my countrymen. Over these past few months, by exploring the philosophy, neuroscience, and psychology of morality; by learning about the origin of morality in our ape ancestors; by unraveling the beauty of the developmental process and its relationship to evolution and selection, I have come to a much deeper understanding of myself, my countrymen, the society I live in, the world around me, and all the people within it. I now have a deeper reverence for the world around me, for life, for every organism, and at least my part in the living process of existence. I do not think my country is headed in a good direction, and I do not believe there’s a lot that can be done to solve the problems it’s facing; in fact, I think doing too much will only exacerbate the issues she’s facing. However, I also understand I have a responsibility to my past, to who I am today, and most importantly who and what I could be. I think what most people need to reason about, to think about, and most importantly – if I have not made this point clear enough – really feel through (in the literal sense) is what it is to be good and what is good. 

 

For a start, I would say good, genuine good, comes from sacrifice. By learning to sacrifice for himself, the worst parts of himself, he may come to know the good in himself and learn how to evoke that good in himself and others. How can one wield power, over himself or others, if he doesn’t know how to sacrifice the worst parts of himself for his own good? How moral is it to force or coerce another to sacrifice that which you will not sacrifice yourself? Yet, to truly know what is an appropriate sacrifice and what isn’t, you must come to know what is good (I think physically). Otherwise, you may make sacrifices that buy you an immediate reprieve (which you may call good) only because you have not considered the fate of yourself or your society in the future. I cannot see this as anything other than love, a deeper love than I think most of my fellow Americans are capable of manifesting, living in, and through because it requires they know of themselves as they are, where they were, and where they could end up, including where they don’t and do want to end up. I do not think there’s evidence to demonstrate the majority of Americans are capable of this kind of thinking. As a result, many of them may engage in the kind of blind sacrifices that buy them nothing more than a little bit of time in a dying society without doing the kind of work necessary to revitalize and preserve that society. And yet, I doubt it would be such a horrible start.

 

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