“The Righteous Mind” by Jonathan Haidt

This is a book about the foundations of moral psychology. Although its basis is psychological principles, it moves beyond the individual human mind. It relies heavily on concepts brought in from evolutionary biology, philosophy, and sociology. Morals are something that evolved over time to help the human species survive. They are foremost intuitive, with the reasoning behind them often happening post hoc. Haidt separates morals into six oppositional matrices: care/harm; fairness/cheating; loyalty/betrayal; authority/subversion; sanctity/degradation; and liberty/domination. Humans, to some degree or another, judge other humans by how their actions conform to these principles.

Humans are intrinsically social animals. Even though evolutionarily we have been bred to be selfish (on the genetic level at least), through group selection humans have also evolved to cooperate well in groups. Those humans that were able to form successful groups beyond kinship bonds were able to out compete other groups and, therefore, their genes multiplied. Haidt posits that in that way we are ninety percent ape and ten percent bee. Unlike our ape relatives, humans are alone among primates in being able to convey shared intentionality. This created a common understanding amongst the group and an ability to punish deviants who strayed from group norms.

Genetic and cultural evolution also reacted with each other over generations to breed a more social human. “Our brains, bodies, and behavior show many of the same signs of domestication that are found in our domestic animals: smaller teeth, smaller body, reduced aggression, and greater playfulness, carried on even into adulthood.” It is useless to look for the positive aspects of religion on an individual level just as it would be useless to look at the actions of an individual bee without relation to its hive. Religion acted as a way to create social ties far beyond kinship networks. It engendered trust between strangers, created group cohesion, and was effective in punishing free riders. This book looks at human morality descriptively, not normatively. It does not hope for the dawning of a new moral man, but looks at how humans have actually evolved over the centuries and how their evolving moral compass has helped them achieve reproductive success.