This View of Life
Magazine

Properly understood, morality is not a burden; it is an effective means for increasing the benefits of cooperation, especially emotional well-being resulting from sustained cooperation with family, friends, and community.

“…ethics has to do with how to arrive at as harmonious social interactions as it is humanly possible.”

Life arose as a cooperative effort among diverse molecule types in catalytically closed and self-sustaining chemical reaction networks. There is grandeur in this view of (the origin of) life.

The outer limits of moral possibility are established by the emotional tendencies that prepare us to be morality-making beings.

As a marketer, I obviously value any opportunity better to understand ourselves and our true, evolved social nature. It is potentially a huge source of competitive advantage and differentiation.

Are we witnessing a new synthesis for evolutionary theory?

The invention of fake facts was to compel us to behave for the benefit of our group, even when it might be against our private interests.

Morality is always and everywhere a cooperative phenomenon.

Tinbergen’s four questions apply to any variation-and-selection process, including but not restricted to genetic evolution. Accordingly, they can be insightful for the study of moral universals and particulars as products of human genetic and cultural evolution.

What behavioural economists neglected to answer is the ultimate question: why do people possess these psychological dispositions? Answering ultimate questions leads one to evolution, as the human brain has been honed by the forces of natural selection.