A Better Ape

Book excerpt: "A Better Ape explores the evolution of the moral mind from our ancestors with chimpanzees, through the origins of our genus and our species, to the development of behaviorally modern humans who underwent revolutions in agriculture, urbanization, and industrial technology. The book begins, in Part I, by explaining the biological evolution of sympathy and loyalty in great apes and trust and respect in the earliest humans. These moral emotions are the first element of the moral mind. Part II explains the gene-culture co-evolution of norms, emotions, and reasoning in Homo sapiens. Moral norms of harm, kinship, reciprocity, autonomy, and fairness are the second element of the moral mind. A social capacity for interactive moral reasoning is the third element. Part III of the book explains the cultural co-evolution of social institutions and morality. Family, religious, military, political, and economic institutions expanded small bands into large tribes and created more intense social hierarchies through new moral norms of authority and purity. Finally, Part IV explains the rational and cultural evolution of moral progress and moral regress as human societies experienced gains and losses in inclusivity and equality. Moral progress against racism, homophobia, speciesism, sexism, classism, and global injustice depends on integration of privileged and oppressed people in physical space, social roles, and democratic decision making. The central idea in the book is that all these major evolutionary transitions, from ancestral apes to modern societies, and now human survival of climate change, depend on co-evolution between morality, knowledge, and complex social structure"--