By this point in our argument, explaining the benefits of more of these moral commands 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 to survive in both the short and long hauls. It is also clear that individuals usually do not see the large, long-term picture of the tribe’s survival. They just do what they were raised to believe is right.

                              

   

                             Modern children working in brick factory in Nepal (credit: Wikipedia) 

  

Children may not enjoy some of the behaviors their elders dictate, nor may they enjoy them later when they are adults. Work is hard. Building shelters is work. Making clothes is work. Gathering food and preserving it for the winter is work. Raising kids is work. Work is tedious. But for survival, individual happiness 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 don’t teach hard work and loyalty to family and tribe die out.

To illustrate further, I can offer here another example of a custom that seems counter-intuitive to Western minds - but that works. Polyandry allows and encourages one woman to have two or more husbands, legally and with the blessings of the community. This practice seems counter-intuitive to us in the West. But the practice is not only viable in some cultures, it even promotes better survival rates. 

In some areas of the Himalayas, when a man knows that finding work may require him to be away for an extended period, he can pick a good second husband for his wife. Then he will know that she, his children, his property, as the children and property of the other man as well, will 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 healthy, surviving children is the result.