Morality is in the Eyes of Others

Research on both humans and primates shows we are good when we are seen. Why? Morality is prioritizing the tribe before your own selfish interests.

In the Stone Age if you were selfish you reduced the survival of the whole tribe. And you were exiled. Only tribe members who showed they are generous survived. The few hunter-gather societies remaining show a strict egalitarian ethos with collective punishment for any member showing selfishness.

Being seen to be good was advantageous to survival. But when everybody is good, then being bad is very advantageous if you are not caught. So humans were good when they were seen, bad when nobody saw them.

This does not work in a world of strangers. Civilization happened because we learned to internalize the watchers. We learned to signal goodness even when nobody is physical watching. The book Big Gods posits that religion spread because it provided virtual all-knowing all-present watchers to keep us good all the time.

With the fall of religion, we might have plunged the world into chaos. Because people retained the internal watchers to varying degrees. Most of us still feel watched enough to do good. But some came to the conclusion nobody is watching. And so they became selfish, profiting from the goodness of the majority.