Chapter 12.         (continued) 

Understanding the process by which a new moré enters into the cultural code of a society is vital to our understanding the survival of morés themselves. None of the phases in a society’s adopting a new moré necessarily entails any of the others. A behavior recently acquired by a few people  on a trial basis may make those few healthier or happier, but this does not automatically mean they will reproduce more prolifically or nurture their kids more effectively or teach their values and morés to them more efficiently. Other factors can intervene.

Many examples can be cited as evidence to support this model. Some tribes in Indonesia once taught every member of the community to go into the forest to defecate. The individual had to dig a hole in the earth, defecate in it, then cover the excrement with earth before returning to the tribe’s living spaces. Why? Children were taught to hide their excrement so no shaman could find it and use it to cast an evil spell on the child or his/her family.⁴

In the view of Western societies, the advantages of the practice lie in the way it reduces the risk to the community of diseases such as cholera. (We know by our Science that excrement carries microbes, sometimes deadly ones.) Similar practices are taught to people in Western societies (and described in cultural codes as early as those found in the Old Testament of the Bible).

Or consider another of our morés. For centuries, many Europeans drank a lot of tea, hot chocolate, and/or coffee. These customs rapidly became accepted as “traditional”, even though the dates of their introductions into Europe can be specified to within less than a decade. Neither tea nor coffee was a traditional beverage in old European cultures. Scientific reasons for why consuming them was beneficial to human health were not known until germ theory was found, but the benefits were felt by their enthusiastic consumers, nevertheless.

In much of Europe, local water contained dangerous bacteria. But the water for properly made coffee or tea is always well boiled before the tea is brewed. Boiling kills most pathogens. Tea and coffee drinkers gained a modest, but real, survival advantage over those who did not like boiled beverages. 

While the benefits were mixed because they were partially offset by the negative effects of caffeine use, the important thing to see is that these people did not need to know anything about bacteria in order to arrive over generations, by trial and error, at a custom that enabled them over the long term to survive in greater numbers. Tea drinkers died much less often during epidemics. Of course, in China, tea drinking had been looked on as a healthful practice for both the individual and society/community for centuries by the time Western cultures arrived at a similar custom.

 

                 

                               (credit: Docteur Cosmos, via Wikimedia Commons)

 

        

                                       Japanese-American grandfather and grandson 

                                     (Dorothea Lange, via Wikimedia Commons) 

Another example of a value and its attached moré that guides our cultures can be found in a different area of life in the law of Moses. The Ten Commandments instruct followers of the Hebrew, Christian, and Muslim faiths to “Honor thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long in the land that the Lord thy God hath given thee”. (Exodus 20:12) The faithful are instructed to care for, respect, and consult their parents. Therefore, by a small logical extension, all citizens of the community are more likely to be cared for in their old age. 

“Honoring” elders means consulting with them on all kinds of matters. But why did this custom have a good survival index?

Before writing was invented, an old person was a walking encyclopedia to be consulted for information on treatments for diseases and injuries, planting, harvesting, and preserving food, making and fixing shelters and tools, hunting, gathering, and much more. Knowledge was passed down the generations by oral means. By honoring elders, the people of a tribe preserved, and thus had access to, much larger stores of knowledge than if they had simply abandoned their elderly as soon as they appeared to be a net drain on the tribe’s resources. An elder’s knowledge often solved small problems or sometimes major crises for the entire tribe. In short, it was often a good bet, to consult the elderly. Over many generations, societies that respected and valued their elders gradually outlasted, outfed, outbred, and outfought their competitors.

Imagine an elder in a primitive tribe. She might have said: “We have to boil the water. This sickness came once before in my seventh summer. Only people who drank soup and herb tea did not get sick. All who drank the water got sick and died”. Honoring elders is a tribe-saving policy. It is, every so often, the difference between life and death for the whole tribe.  

It is worth noting that the Fifth Commandment in its original wording read, “Honor thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long …” and so on. “Thy” days, not “their” days. At first glance, this seems odd. If I honor my parents, they will likely enjoy a more peaceful and comfortable old age, but that will not guarantee anything about my own final years. By then, my parents, even if they are grateful folk, will most probably be long since dead. At that point, they can’t do much to reciprocate and so to benefit me.

On closer examination though, we see there is more here. As we treat our elders with respect in their last years, consult with them a range of matters, include them in social functions, and so on, we model for our children behaviors that are imprinted on them for a lifetime and they, in turn, will practice these same behaviors in 20 years or so. They will take care of mom and dad. Dad. Me. The commandment turns out to be literally true.

Note also that there is a complex relationship between our morés or patterns of behavior and our values programming. The common behavior patterns in a culture, patterns that we call morés, are just ways of acting out in the physical realm beliefs that are held deep inside each individual’s mental realm, beliefs about what kinds of behavior are consistent with the programmed person’s moral code, i.e. her/his code of what acts are right or wrong, appropriate or inappropriate, sensible or silly. We learn concepts and values so that we can turn them, in practical situations, into words/actions. We are programmed to strive to be  “kind”. Honoring elders, we learn, is kind. More on these matters as we go along.

Honoring parents enables an increase in the tribe’s total store of knowledge. Not committing adultery checks the spread of sexually transmitted diseases. It also increases the nurturing behaviors of males, as it increases each man’s confidence that he is the biological father of every child he is being asked to nurture. Not stealing and not bearing false witness improve the efficiency of the whole community, especially in commerce.

By this point in our argument, explaining the benefits of more customs and commandments should be unnecessary. A major fact is becoming clear: a moral belief and the behaviors attached to it become well established in a tribe if the behaviors help tribe members who practice them to survive. It is also clear that individuals usually don’t see the long-term picture of the tribe’s survival. They just do what they were raised to believe is right. It’s the society, the tribe, with its whole culture, that benefits from effective values and their attached morés over the long haul: while some values may not make individuals happy, the aim of the values is not the happiness of the individual; it is the improving of the long-term survival odds of the tribe.

 

 

                 A retrograde custom in modern times: child labor, Nepal, 2010

                               (credit: Krish Dulal via Wikimedia Commons)

Children may not enjoy some of the behaviors their elders dictate; they may not enjoy them later when they are adults either. Work is hard. Building shelters is work. Making clothes is work. Gathering food and preserving it for the winter is work. Raising children is work. But for survival, the happiness of each individual is not what matters. Patterns of living that maximize the resources of the tribe over many generations are what matter, and these ways of living do not always make sense to the people being programmed to do them. But tribes that do not teach hard work as one of their values die out. (Note that it is only in comparatively recent times that we have learned we gain more in the long run by educating our children than we do by setting them to work as soon as we can. Child labor is a counter-productive practice, but it still occurs in some parts of the world.) 

To illustrate further, another example of a custom that seems counterintuitive to many Western minds, but that works in some contexts, can be offered here. Polyandry allows and encourages one woman to have two or more husbands, legally and with the blessings of the community. It seems counterintuitive to us in the West. Wouldn't "male pride" be irreparably hurt by it?  But the practice is not only viable in some cultures, it promotes better survival rates and growing populations.

In some areas of the Himalayas, when a man knows that finding work may require him to be away for an extended period, he and his wife can pick a good second husband for her. Then he will know that she, his children, his property, and children and property of the other man, will all be protected. If she becomes pregnant while he is away, it will be by a man he has approved of.⁵  As long as all three are faithful to the marriage, the risks of any of them getting an STD remain small. More surviving children for the town are the result. 

All that has been said so far in this chapter has been supporting this hypothesis: a concept, belief, or value, and the behaviors that it fosters get well established in a tribe if the value/belief – with its attached behaviors – improves the odds of its adherents’ survival and, more importantly, their culture's survival.