The Origins of Virtue

6. « Our minds have been built by selfish genes, but they have been built to be social, trustworthy and cooperative. That is the paradox this book has tried to explain. Human beings have social instincts. They come into the world equipped with predispositions to learn how to cooperate, to discriminate the trustworthy from the treacherous, to commit themselves to be trustworthy, to earn good reputations, to exchange goods and information, and to divide labour. In this we are on our own. No other species has been so far down this evolutionary path before us, for no species has built a truly integrated society except among the inbred relatives of a large family such as an ant colony. We owe our success as a species to our social instincts ; they have enabled us to reap undreamt benefits from the division of labour for our masters – the genes. They are responsible for the rapid expansion of our brains in the past two million years and thence for our inventiveness. Our societies and our minds evolved together, each reinforcing trends in the other. » (p. 249)

2. « Exactly the same applies to cancer cells, outlaw embryo tissues, segregation distorters and B chromosomes. Mutations that make genes suppress the selfishness of other genes are just as likely to thrive as selfish mutants. And there are far more places such mutations can occur : for every selfish mutation at one place, there are tens of thousand of other genes which will thrive if they accidentally stumble on mechanisms that cause the suppression of the selfish mutant. » (p. 33)

5. « Trade is the beneficent side of human groupishness. I have argued that human beings, along with chimpanzees, are unusual in their addiction to group territoriality and inter-group conflict. We segregate into territorial groups and the shared fate that we enjoy with other members of the group drives us into a mixture of xenophobia and cultural conformity, an instinctive subservience to the larger whole that partly explains our collaborative nature.
But this segregation into groups also allows trade between specialized groups. Chimpanzee troops are closed : there is no interchange between them except through violence and emigration. Human groups are not and never have been so closed ; they are permeable. People from different bands meet to exchange goods, information and food, as well as to fight. » (p. 200)

4. « […] even if you dismiss charitable giving as ultimately selfish – saying that people give to charity in order to enhance their reputations – you still do not solve the problem because you then have to explain why it does enhance their reputations. Why do other people applaud charitable activity ? We are immersed so deeply in a sea of moral assumptions that it takes an effort to imagine a world without them. A world without obligations to reciprocate, deal fairly, and trust other people would be simply inconceivable.
Psychologists, therefore, are converging with Robert Frank's economic argument that emotions are mental devices for guaranteeing commitment. But perhaps the most remarkable convergence comes from the study of broken brains. There is a small part of the prefrontal lobe of the human brain, which, when damaged, turns you into a rational fool. People who have lost that part of their brain are superficially normal. They suffer no paralysis, no speech defect, no loss in their senses, no diminution in their memory or general intelligence. They do just as well in psychological tests as they did before their accident. Yet their lives fall apart for reasons that seem more psychiatric than neurological […]. They fail to hold down jobs, lose their inhibitions, and become paralytically indecisive. » (p. 143)

3. « After all I did for him, how could he do that to me ? If you do this for me, I promise I'll make it up later. What did I do to deserve that ? You owe it to me. Obligation ; dept ; favour ; bargain ; contract ; exchange ; deal... Our language and our lives are permeated with ideas of reciprocity. In no sphere is this more true than in our attitude to food. » (p. 84)

1. « But our cultures are not random collections of arbitrary habits. They are canalized expressions of our instincts. That is why the same themes crop up in all cultures – themes such as family, ritual, bargain, love, hierarchy, friendship, jealousy, group loyalty and superstition. That is why, for all their superficial differences of language and custom, foreign cultures are still immediately comprehensible at the deeper level of motives, emotions and social habits. » (p. 6)