A history of morality from the African savanna two million years ago to current polarization, including the extreme right and the woke movement. Hanno Sauer (1983), professor of ethics at the University of Utrecht, publishes La invención del bien y del mal (Paidós). A book that traces how we began to cooperate out of necessity in an environment populated by large predators that was becoming a steppe that no longer allowed our ancestors to take refuge in the treetops, and how since then history of morality can be narrated through the leaps in size of human societies, from small family groups to clans and tribes, cities and modern societies. Whether thanks to the punishment – which promoted self-control and social peace -, to the Catholic Church and its marriage policy or to the welfare that followed the Second World War.
Is morality born on the savannah?
basically There were climate changes and some of our ancestors stayed in a drier, more dangerous flat area. And he found protection in increased cooperation. This started evolution and our morality.
The us and them in which we continue today already appears at the beginning.
The critical phase for the human brain was a million years ago, and once you have certain types of brain structures they no longer change, evolution puts others on top that inhibit them, but our way of thinking it has many features selected for the environment in which it evolved: small groups with limited resources and intense competition between them. He has a heritage of thinking in terms of who is on my side and who is not, friend and foe, us and them. Thinking even today very easy to activate. And it’s a huge problem. Much of the moral progress of modern societies has been due to overriding that tribal thinking to some extent to allow larger structures to form. Humans are better off if they cooperate on a larger scale.
Today there seem to be great divisions between societies and countries.
There is polarization, but we should not overestimate it. It has always happened, it just changes in a different way. It was because of religion, nation, ethnicity… I don’t think we are more divided than before. Today they are moral divisions, progressive activists and conservatives, but the polarization comes from loud voices that do not represent the whole, there is room to overcome the divisions and confront the problems.
But Trump or Orbán is elected.
These phenomena do not tell us that right-wing populism is winning, but that it is losing. If they are there, it is because the liberal project has always won in recent decades. They know they can win votes if they exploit anxieties about social change by talking about toilets and trans people. But it’s a desperate move. And sometimes it results from strategically stupid decisions by progressive movements.
He sees the Catholic Church as the key to the leap to modernity.
We wonder why this jump only happens in some places, and today it seems clear that, when in the Middle Ages the Western Church prohibited certain types of marriage, such as between cousins, and inheritance, this changed the form of society in the opposite direction to the structures of kinship, of clans, and in favor of markets, cities, voluntary associations between individuals. It was very beneficial for prosperity. And once people have it, they want to keep it. And they think about how they can maintain political stability. And with both, you have the liberalizing effect.
But religions, he says, appear to support the inequalities of agrarian societies.
In a sense they are born of economic conditions, yes. In the Middle East, humans transitioned from hunter-gatherers to agriculture and livestock. For the first time in history there is a surplus, and when a small group appropriates the majority and one claims to be king, you have to tell a story to the rest of society that says this is fair, because in the people do not like to give most of the work to the other. The intellectual elites who co-evolve with economics and politics have the task of finding a narrative of why this inequality is okay. We still have secular narratives that justify capitalism, they don’t talk about God, but about productivity, efficiency. I’m not saying they’re wrong, but when those who have them are a small group, you can only maintain it with a small group of intellectuals finding justifications.
He says that markets do not produce more selfish societies, but that today there is an urgency for equality, a moral overheating.
It is a widespread idea that modern markets and capitalism make people more instrumental and cold towards others, but it does not seem so. In earlier societies there is strong altruism in small groups and hostility towards outsiders. In modern, less altruism in your group, but more cooperation with strangers, good in many ways. At the same time, people today believe that they should have the same opportunities, and this can lead to an overheating of moral discourse because societies change slowly. In the 1960s anti-black laws were removed in the US and there are still huge economic disparities. This leads to frustration and conspiracies are sought to dismantle.
He says that human history has led to the survival of the most peaceful. And Ukraine?
Self-domestication has played an important role in human history. Societies cooperated better if they solved the problem of the most aggressive individuals. Many times they were killed, they did not reproduce. Being more peaceful, cooperative and docile had a competitive advantage. But this attitude was restricted to the own group. At the same time, they developed the ability to be very good at waging war on outsiders, who were demonized. Compared to other great apes, we are very good at controlling our impulses, thinking long-term, being strategic and cautious… But this makes us very good at rationally and calmly organizing violence. It is depressingly unsurprising that people go back to thinking “we are Russians and this is our land, and they are Ukrainians”, somewhat invented distinctions, which are only in people’s heads, a fetish for which many die.
