Again, readers, sorry I missed a day. I was occupied for almost all of yesterday with grandson's birthday trip/present. I am now back on my regular schedule. Skipped days most likely will not occur again for a long time. 

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              Secretary Sibelius, Joplin MO (2011) (credit: By HHSgov, via Wikimedia Commons)  

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 that there is more here. As we treat our elders with respect in their last years, consult their opinions on a wide 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 twenty years or so. Take care of mom and dad. The commandment turns out to be literally true.

Note also that there is a deep, 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 world beliefs that are held deep inside each individual’s mental world, beliefs about what kinds of behavior are consistent with the individual’s code of right and wrong, appropriate or inappropriate, sensible or silly. More on these matters as we go along.

Honouring parents enables the increase of the tribe’s total store of all kinds of knowledge. Avoiding committing adultery checks the spread of sexually transmitted diseases. It also increases the nurturing behaviors of males, as each man’s confidence that he is truly the biological father of the child he is asked to nurture increases. Not stealing and not bearing false witness have benefits for the efficiency of the whole community, in commerce especially.

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 long-term picture of the tribe’s survival. They just do, in their daily lives, what they were raised to believe is right.