Chapter  9                 The Mechanism of Cultural Evolution              Part A

               

            In order to build a universal moral code, we must now do two things: first, explain how moral codes get established and amended; second, extract from our best modern models of the physical universe the principles that we should use to guide us in building a moral code so that it is consistent with, not disconnected from, all of our other knowledge in modern times. We need to make our ideas of Good connect to our most coherent and effective ideas of Real.

               

            All of us are raised and conditioned to be fiercely loyal to the way of life that we grew up with so we can expect that analyzing the roots of morality will be difficult. Powerful and subtle internal programming will steer us toward affirming the morals and morés that we grew up with. But difficult does not mean impossible. Most importantly, we have the evidence of history and of life as it is lived by real people in real societies today to check our theories against. 

               

            And what do we notice about moral code systems if we closely analyze various human ways of life, i.e. the cultures of a variety of human societies, present and past? Human beings baffle each other, and sometimes, individuals even baffle themselves. Why do we do the things that we do?  

                     

               

           

                 

            The reasoning process which answers this question contains several steps. To begin with, we can analyze the everyday actions of the people around us. Why does this man get up when his alarm clock rings? Why does he even have an alarm clock? Why does this woman shampoo her hair and then dry it with a hot-air blowing electrical device? In similar ways, dozens of mundane questions may be posed about the everyday life of our society or any society. These “ways”, of course, seem obvious to the people who live in the society in which the ways are practiced. To the people in a given society, their ways seem simply to involve people being people. But to people in other cultures, the ways are often not merely unobvious; they’re unknown.

               

            Another interesting ordinary example of a custom that is commonplace in some societies but not others is the custom which trains men to shave their beards. In some cultures, men who are clean shaven are seen as being neat, presentable, and attractive. In other cultures, a man without a beard is seen as being weak or alien. In some cultures, men are forcibly shaved as a form of punishment. The fascinating questions come when we begin to ask “Why?” Why shaving? Is there some survival advantage in some environments for men who were trained by their fathers to shave their beards? For example, do men who shave daily appear younger/more attractive to women? Do they reproduce more successfully and prolifically and thus pass their ways on to more progeny?

               

       

            Research on such shaving questions is sparse and inconclusive. However, what is important to see in our present context is that our beginning to ask questions about cultural morés and customs in terms of their possible advantages in the survival game entails our beginning to think scientifically about morés in general. Under this view, none of our “ways” are trivial or meaningless. They all matter. Under this view, the mundane rapidly becomes the fascinating.