What makes us moral jeffrey kluger time magazine

Hauser believes thatall of us carry what he calls a sense of moral grammar--the ethical equivalent ofthe basic grasp of speech that most linguists believe is with us from birth. Butjust as syntax is nothing until words are built upon it, so too is a sense of rightand wrong useless until someone teaches you how to apply it.

It's the people around us who do that teaching--often quite well. Onceagain, however, humans aren't the ones who dreamed up such a mentoringsystem. At the Arnhem Zoo in the Netherlands, de Waal was struck by howvigorously apes enforced group norms one evening when the zookeepers werecalling their chimpanzees in for dinner.

The keepers' rule at Arnhem was that nochimps would eat until the entire community was present, but two adolescentsgrew willful, staying outside the building.

The hours it took to coax them insidecaused the mood in the hungry colony to turn surly. That night the keepers putthe delinquents to bed in a separate area--a sort of protective custody to shieldthem from reprisals. But the next day the adolescents were on their own, and thetroop made its feelings plain, administering a sound beating. The chastenedchimps were the first to come in that evening.

Animals have what de Waal calls"oughts"--rules that the group must follow--and the community enforces them. Human communities impose their own oughts, but they can varyradically from culture to culture. Take the phenomenon of Good Samaritan lawsthat require passers by to assist someone in peril. Our species has a veryconflicted sense of when we ought to help someone else and when we ought not,and the general rule is, Help those close to home and ignore those far away.

That's in part because the plight of a person you can see will always feel morereal than the problems of someone whose suffering is merely described to you. But part of it is also rooted in you from a time when the welfare of your tribewas essential for your survival but the welfare of an opposing tribe was not--andmight even be a threat.

In the 21st century, we retain a powerful remnant of that primaldichotomy, which is what impels us to step in and help a mugging victim--or, inthe astonishing case of Wesley Autrey, New York City's so-called SubwaySamaritan, jump onto the tracks in front of an oncoming train to rescue a sickstranger--but allows us to decline to send a small contribution to help the peopleof Darfur.

Throughout most of the world, you're still not required to aid a stranger,but in France and elsewhere, laws now make it a crime for passers by not toprovide at least the up-close-and-personal aid we're good at giving.

In most ofthe U. SaysHauser: "In France they've done away with that difference. The group does it too. One of the most powerful tools for enforcing group morals is the practice ofshunning. If membership in a tribe is the way you ensure yourself food, familyand protection from predators, being blackballed can be a terrifying thing.

Religious believers as diverse as Roman Catholics, Mennonites and Jehovah'sWitnesses have practiced their own forms of shunning--though the banishmentsmay go by names like excommunication or disfellowshipping. Clubs, socialgroups and fraternities expel undesirable members, and the U.

Sometimes shunning emerges spontaneously when a society of millionsrecoils at a single member's acts. Simpson's acquittal may haveoutraged people, but it did make the morality tale surrounding him much richer,as the culture as a whole turned its back on him, denying him work, expelling. In November hiserstwhile publisher, who was fired in the wake of her and Simpson's disastrousattempt to publish a book about the killings, sued her ex-employer, alleging thatshe had been "shunned" and "humiliated.

Sometimes we can't help it, as when we're suffering fromclinical insanity and behavior slips the grip of reason. Criminal courts are stingyabout finding such exculpatory madness, requiring a disability so severe, thedefendant didn't even know the crime was wrong.

That's a very high bar thatprevents all but a few from proving the necessary moral numbness. Things are different in the case of the cool and deliberate serial killer,who knows the criminality of his deeds yet continues to commit them. Forneuroscientists, the iciness of the acts calls to mind the case of Phineas Gage, theVermont railway worker who in was injured when an explosion caused atamping iron to be driven through his prefrontal cortex.

Edition -- December 3, Vol. What makes us moral jeffrey kluger essay Archives what makes us moral jeffrey kluger essay and past articles from the Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia Daily News, and Philly. What Makes us Moral? What Makes Us Moral By Jeffrey Kluger If the whole human species were a single individual, that person would long ago have been declared mad. Yet we make What makes us Moral?

Dazu hab ich mir eine. The Line Between Good and Evil In this essay , I will explore the nature of evil, and the psychology of the human mind. This month's Faunalytics Index takes you around the world with figures about zoos, meat consumption, endangered species, chimpanzees, and much more.

Faunalytics delivers the latest and most important information directly to your inbox. Choose what topics you want to see and how often you get our emails, and you can unsubscribe anytime. What Makes Us Moral How does morality develop in humans and how does that process impact our relationship with animals?

Time Magazine explored the topic. Attachments: Available to registered users only. Please Login or Sign Up for full access. Save to Library.