Who should benefit from your actions?

Trans-evolutionary morality

The problem of human morality can be analyzed from an evolutionary perspective. We have instincts pretty similar to our closest primate relatives, the chimpanzees and gorillas. They live in tribal units, on the order of magnitude of a hundred individuals in a community. They all know each other well and they're all family because they primarily breed with each other. At that level of community they are able to genuinely care about each other. They don't have to be exorted to not steal or to share food or to protect each other from predators, it's instinctive.

We're the same way, with just a modest increase in the size of our tribal instinct. Our Neolithic ancestors lived in communities just two or three times larger than a chimp or gorilla tribe. With our superior communication ability and the rudimentary division of labor -- hunters, gatherers, healers, flint-knappers -- we were able to care for and about a couple of hundred fellow humans.

With the advent of agriculture, permanent settlements, and ultimately civilization, in less than ten thousand years, we rapidly outgrew our ability to evolve new social instincts. Considering that challenge, we haven't done half badly. Humans seem able to function with natural harmony in cities as large as twenty or thirty thousand. That's about the limit of where you see doors being left unlocked, children being cared for by whichever adult happens to be nearby, neighbors coming together without anyone asking to help someone who's sick or unlucky.

But any community larger than that exceeds our natural instincts for caring. We just don't feel like those people thousands of miles away who speak unintelligible languages and have traditions we don't understand are our kin. In fact we often regard them as competitors for scarce resources, just as the chimps would regard the tribe from the next valley if they wandered over and started eating somebody else's bananas. Go find your own damn bananas! We take care of our own.

The function of religion is to supplement our natural instincts and overcome the natural limitation on the size of a human community. All people are brothers and sisters. If there's a child in Tanzania with no food or one in Bucharest with no parents, it's one of ours. If there's an earthquake in Chile or a flood in Bangla Desh, those are our kin lying broken in the mud with no roofs, wagons, or seed. We are all the same tribe: that's the message of Jesus, of Buddha, of all the great prophets. We can overcome the limitations of biology and feel compassion for people we can't even see. We deserve this magnificent life of cities and cars and television and fast food because our abilities of reason and philosophy take over where our instincts leave off. We can live just as nobly in a man-made world as our ancestors did in the world of nature.

I have one edit to the Golden Rule but I think it is becoming increasingly important as we come into closer contact with the more distant members of our One Tribe. What we must do is to treat others as they wish to be treated, not as we do. That is just really damn important. The people in Baghdad don't want the First Amendment. The people in Bulgaria don't want a republican form of government. The people in New Guinea don't want capitalism. It is hubris to assume that they do. Christianity says that pride is a deadly sin. I think they've got it a little off. It is hubris that is the sin, the arrogant pride that we've got it right and therefore we know what's right for everybody else.

The kinds of questions that are popping up here are way beyond the simple morality of religion. They're getting into the realm of situational ethics. If there are ten of you and there's only enough food for five, which five get to live? No religion can answer that question and no religion should have to. Just as religion was created to answer questions that our instincts couldn't answer, so must we now develop ethical structures that enable us to answer questions that are out of the domain of religion. Pick the five that are the healthiest and the most likely to benefit from the food. Or the five that are the strongest and will be able to gather more food. Or the five that are the smartest and will figure out a way to prevent another famine. The point is not to automatically think of yourself first.

That's just an extension of the tribal ethic. A chimp would give his life to save a member of his tribe from a lion. A Neolithic hunter with two broken legs would sit down in the snow and wave the rest of the tribe onward so his weakness did not slow them down and keep them from getting to shelter. Amish farmers get together and build a new barn for the neighbor whose old one burned down. Poor people in small towns don't need a government welfare office, their neighbors help them out.

And we can use our intelligence and education to figure out how one planet can accommodate so many different ways of life without us constantly offending each other or exploiting each other's weaknesses.

We can. It's that ability that elevates us above the chimps and gorillas, above our Neolithic ancestors, and even above the early disciples of Moses, Buddha, Jesus, and Mohammed. We're better than all of them. Because if we're not, then we'd better take off these fancy clothes, shut down these computers, and walk back into the jungle with our spears and our dogs.

My Maltese dog just heard that one and came running over with a frantic look in her eyes. You're not really going to expect me to learn to hunt anything bigger than a tennis ball, are you poppa? No of course not. I love my dog and I would never shirk my obligation to her.

Damn, look at me. I'm capable of loving someone of a totally different species. Then I guess it must not be too hard to feel kinship with another human, regardless of his skin color or religion.