Now let’s return to our main argument, in spite of digressions that beckon.

It is clear that individual human behaviors and the internal running of the more complex but vital principles and values programs (which are mental meta-behaviors) almost all originate in the programming that the individual is given by his or her society. Furthermore, values become established in a society when they direct its citizens toward patterns of behaviour that enable the citizens to survive, reproduce, and territorialize with ever-growing success.

By now some readers are probably inferring a profound insight about the higher-order mental constructs that we call values. Clearly, the deepest principles that must underlie and guide our value systems—in big choices for the tribe and small ones for the individual—must be designed in such a way as to enable us to respond effectively to the largest general principles of the physical universe itself. That universe is the one in which survival happens or does not happen. 

                                 

Value systems must have designs underlying them that complement and respond to the designs inherent in matter, space, and time.

What are these principles? For impatient readers, I can only say that I am coming to them—by small steps and gradual degrees. But we have to discuss the network of ideas at the base of the new moral system thoroughly before we try to build the middle and upper levels. Proceeding with precision and care will maximize the chances of seeing that a universal moral code is possible for us to devise—in theory—and that such a code, if we can implement it, will offer the only path into the future that allows our the survival of our species—in practice.

Notes

1. “Feral Children,” Learn Stuff website, December 5, 2012. http://www.learnstuff.com/feral-children/.

2. “Enculturation,” Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Accessed April 20, 2015. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enculturation.

3. “Sociocultural evolution,” Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Accessed April 20, 2015. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociocultural_evolution#Contemporary_discourse_about_sociocultural_evolution.

4. Pearson Higher Education, “Anthropology and the Study of Culture,” My Anthro Lab, Chapter 1, p. 17. http://www.pearsonhighered.com/assets/hip/us/hip_us_pearsonhighered/samplechapter/0205949509.pdf.

5. Alice Dreger, “When Taking Multiple Husbands Makes Sense,” The Atlantic, February 1, 2013. http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/02/when-taking-multiple-husbands-makes-sense/272726/.

6. “Piaget’s theory of cognitive development,” Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Accessed April 20, 2015. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piaget’s_theory_of_cognitive_development.

7. Plato, Crito, Perseus Digital Library. Accessed April 20, 2015. http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0170%3Atext%3DCrito%3Apage%3D50

8. Mark J. Perry, “U.S. Male-Female SAT Math Scores: What Accounts for the Gap?” Encyclopedia Britannica blog, July 1, 2009. http://www.britannica.com/blogs/2009/07/more-on-the-male-female-sat-math-test-gap/

9. Jenny Hope, “Women Doctors Will Soon Outnumber Men after Numbers in Medical School Go up Tenfold,” Daily Mail online, November 30, 2011. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2067887/Women-doctors-soon-outnumber-men-numbers-medical-school-fold.html.