(credit: Yinan Chen, via Wikimedia Commons)

This digression on the sociocultural model of human evolution and the examples of familiar morés that we can imagine being revised is intended to emphasize the fact that our morés and values are programmable. We can rewrite them by rational discussion and processes that are based on reasoning, evidence, and compromise.  For the betterment of the whole of human society. We can remake us. Difficult, yes, but infinitely preferable to the blind, inefficient, painful mode of social change that we have been using for centuries.

It is time for reason to take over. The hazards of continuing the old ways of prejudice, revolution, and war are too large. We have to find another way, one that rights gender, racial, and class injustices without resorting to the horror of war. The goal of this book is to show that we can find a way to base our values on our best models of physical reality, ones we can all see the sense of. Then, this transformation of the nations of the world into one nation can be accomplished. Reasoning and evidence – Science – will tame the ugly brute in our species.

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

Human behaviors and values almost all originate in the programming that the individual is given by his or her society. In addition, values become established in a society when they direct that society’s citizens toward patterns of behavior that enable the citizens to survive, reproduce, and spread in the real world.

Therefore, the deepest principles that must underlie and guide our values—in big choices for the tribe and small ones for individuals—must be designed in ways that enable us to respond well 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 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 thoroughly discuss the network of ideas at the base of the new moral system before we try to build the middle and upper levels. My proceeding with care will maximize the chances of my readers seeing that a universal moral code is possible for us to devise—and that this code of decency and sense, if we can implement it, offers the only path into the future on which our species might survive.

Notes

1.  http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20151012-feral-the-children-raised-by-wolves.

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,” 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.