BASED ON EXCERPTS FROM CHAPTERS TWO AND THREE OF

OUR HUMAN HERDS

    Morality is experienced as a three-stage process that begins with feeling, proceeds to thinking, and ends with acting. Morality is the guide by which we satisfy our survival urges to eat, socialize, mate, and relate in beneficial ways. When we have satisfied our urges in correct ways we conclude we have acted morally ... that is, we have done the "right" thing.
     Before we can act successfully we must first feel and think properly. For example, we begin with the intuitive feeling that it is right to provide for and protect our children. We then evaluate their situation to assess the dangers and opportunities, that is, we think about how to accomplish this goal. Finally we act to make providing and protecting them a reality. Morality is the guiding process behind turning subjective desire into objective reality, that is: turning our truths into facts.  
     But as we have discussed, our moral templates come in two distinct forms, which I have labeled Moral Mind 1 and Moral Mind 2. These two distinct moral patterns are easily discerned and have been discussed at length:

 Multiple dimensions of our physical and moral sensibilities

    Just as we experience the world physically through a variety of senses, so too does each of these senses have multiple dimensions. For example our sense of taste is not limited to detecting only sweetness or only bitterness, but can detect and react to both; and to saltiness too. Our vision is not limited to seeing black and white only, but can discern color in multiple wavelengths. This ability allows us to better navigate our environment. Our moral sense is also not limited to feeling in one way only. By having two patterns with which to discern right-action we can better navigate our social world. 
     Applying the appropriate moral template to the situation at hand helps us achieve our aims. We must feel "rightly" about the situation before we can think rightly about it, and finally act rightly. In this segment we discuss the origins of our two moral patterns.
     In other segments we have shown how it is determined which of our two moral patterns are brought to bear in any given situation. In times of ease and when clear of danger we tend to favor moral pattern #1 and in times of stress or eminent trouble we are likely to resort to pattern #2.

     Being able to see “right-action” and “proper-behavior” in either a Mind 1 or a Mind 2 fashion prepares us for the general conditions of life we experience. We are either safe or we are not, we have enough food and shelter or we do not. “Us” and “we” are the operative terms in these sentences. We are gregarious creatures with a limited lifespan. We survive as part of a group and our group will live-on after we are gone. So our personal survival can never be placed before the survival of the group when it is threatened. Then again, when things are safe and easy, the group is best prepared as it grows and protects each and every one of its members. The group sacrifices for the individual when it can, the individual sacrifices for the group when it must.     
     Nature seldom creates new forms or behaviors from nowhere. Almost everything is a modification of what came before. The elephant developed its trunk and its keen sense of smell from ancestors who sported much smaller proboscis, eyes developed from far simpler cells which reacted to light. In this same way we can speculate that our dual moral disposition came about from an earlier time when the two moral patterns had developed separately.  We can speculate that there may have been a time when there existed primarily Mind 1 human beings alongside Mind 2 human beings.

The Sexual Origins of Dual Morality

     Animals organize in two general patterns, horizontally like the starlings or sardines, where one takes it queues from its neighbor; or they organize vertically, like chimps following the lead and instructions of superiors. Morality, that is-doing rightly, is acting in a way recognized as best and proper under the circumstances we face. We can easily see how these organizational patterns fit in with the two moral outlines described above. Moral Mind 1 which conforms to the horizontal pattern of organization as with starlings or sardines where the actions of any one are about as persuasive as the actions of any other. Or Moral Mind 2 vertical organization where the actions of the leaders are emulated and the leaders instruction’s are followed more readily than the actions or instructions of subordinates.
   Both moral views are potentialities within each of us. But they are not blended within us, they are distinct. We feel things one way and then we can also feel them another way. Morality, that is doing rightly, has been divided in two ways from time immemorial. We speculate that the two methods of right action, Mind 1 and Mind 2, have not always been present in the single individual. It is likely that these two moral outlooks developed as distinct patterns with which to guide either the adult female or the adult male of the species. 
     When all girls grew up to raise and provide for babies and all boys grew up to compete for social leadership positions, correct behavior for each was clearly distinguishable from what was incorrect. Right and wrong actions existed only in one way for each of the sexes. Among primates, and we can presume it applies to early humans, the duties of the males applied to all males. The duties of the females applied to all females. When another group of strangers approached our herd’s territory, the males advanced to confront them. It did not matter which males were present, any and all males were expected to act in this way. This action was right for males. Females, when confronted by a group of strange males, retreated with their babies to a position of safety – this was right. The reaction of for each sex was determined by what was best for the group.  Both did the morally right thing for their condition. Under identical conditions, right action for the male was not the same as right action for the female. Moral correctness needed to be two different things for the group to succeed. One pattern of behavior was not exclusively better than the other … both were vital and necessary for the group to survive.  
     Sex determined the actions which were “right” for us. Other members of our group need only identify us by our sex to understand how we could be depended upon to feel, to think, and to act. We did what was right for our group by doing what was right for our sex, and we were probably stressed when others did not act reliably in accordance to theirs. In this pre-human era individuals could not exist in the way we understand them now. They were distinguished by their gender and not much more. Males acted differently than females, but they acted pretty much like all other males. Females were different from males, but virtually interchangeable with any other female. Like chickens, we were divided into roosters and hens, and like chickens, one rooster was very much like another, and a hen was a hen. If you had seen one, you have seen them all. Then everything changed.

Human individuality

     Sometime in the distant past, we separated ourselves from all other animals through an ability to create and use things no other animal could create or use. More than this, we acquired an ability to create and use things which were different from the things being created and used by other members of our own group. We made tools and developed unique cultures, and by doing so created unique individuals.
    At the dawn of history some of us became herders, others hunters, and others farmers. This development of individual skills was undoubtedly a difficult challenge because it required a whole new way to understand right and wrong. For the first time in the history of any advanced species labor was not just divided into two kinds, the male kind or the female kind. Suddenly, one’s labor might be any one of a number of different things. Within the sexes one male could be doing something different than other males, and still had to be looked upon as doing right. A female could be doing things differently than all other females were doing, and she needed to be seen as also still doing properly also. How do we know what was right when everyone was doing their own thing? Morality expanded in complexity as the notion of individuality and community became more sophisticated. Before we would do different things, the idea that it was acceptable that “different things could be done” needed to be moral too. 
     Looking more closely at traditional gender roles we discover females acting as mothers organize their group, -themselves and their children- horizontally. That is – where possible- each of her children is loved and cared for equally. She distributes resources equally between them as all must survive. As the leader of her own tiny group the mother finds it morally right to look to the needs of the smallest and weakest first, and focuses her attentions there before others. She will often go hungry to feed her brood. She is the focal point of her group, but she is not the superior who the others have to serve; she may direct their services, but it is for the good of all. She lives for them; they need not sacrifice for her. 
    Males, on the other hand, tended to organize their activities vertically, with leaders and subordinates. Male dominated social organizations, like the military, business corporations, bass fishing clubs, and criminal gangs; all still form around leaders, lieutenants, and low or unranked trainees. Male oriented social structures are usually organized vertically where the group looks upward. Those near the top direct the rest, those near the top are more important, and the superiors are to be emulated. The male group looks up for examples and back for written procedures, customs, and rules, to chart their course of action. This ability to organize both horizontally (the family way where we are all equal) and vertically (the social way where some are more important than others) has always been part of primate social organization. But humanity came into existence as each of these moral patterns came to be merged into each individual. Females could also feel, think, and act in male ways, males came to also be able to feel, think, and act in what had formerly been only female ways.

The Animal Becomes Human

The explosion of individuality
The creation of different kinds of people     

    What brought the males into the family and brought the females out of it was the one thing that distinguishes us most dramatically from other creatures. With an expanded brain, complex tool use and trading developed and combined with the alterations of our social organization which led to humanity as we experience it.
     Tool use alone did not change us, but we had to change to use tools most effectively. As long as everyone used the same tools in the same ways we were all remained nearly identical people with each doing about the same things as everyone else. When all males made spears and all females roasted woodchucks for their babies, maleness and females could retain their own distinct moral code which guided their own patterns of behavior. Tool use by itself would not change that. Other animals use tools. Otters and seagulls crack oysters on stones, chimps roll noisy cans. Tool use changed us when some of us began using some tools while others did things differently. 
     There were once only two kinds of humans, the male type and the female type. Both used the same tools in the same ways. Everything changed when some people began using one type of tool and someone else used others.  And when we figured out how to exploit and promote these differences.

Near monogamy created the possibility of true sub-groups
Individuality multiplied
The capacity for dual moral perspectives expanded within each us

    For centuries beyond number every male competed with every other male, vying to mate with every female. Everyone was born knowing the game: every female was potentially available to any male who achieved socially superior positions. Males earned mating opportunities by competing with other males for social status in narrow ways. For every male this competition is what had to matter most. From a biological point of view there was only one career every male wanted to participate in – herd leadership. The guys at the top got the gals. But this had to change or production and trade could never have been possible. 
     There had been only one measure of status which mattered, hierarchical position. This outlook had to be modified in the minds of the females before all modern society could become possible.  If mating was only assured though one activity, it made sense to focus as much as possible on that one thing. But if mating became possible as a result of other factors, then focusing of these other factors could also make biological sense. The cultural forces changed the males they changed the females too. Both males and females acquired the ability to recognize social contribution and a sort-of hierarchy through creation and trade. As we gained the ability to bestow social status on a wider range of activities, the rewards for achieving such status began to be spread throughout a wider segment of the group. 
   With the development of production and trade, males within the same group began doing dissimilar things. Females acquired the ability to recognize the advantages of any number of skills. Status began to be acquired not just through group leadership, but by excelling in some or any technical specialty. The superior spear maker who traded spear-points for game was recognized by the other males through an enhanced bestowal of status, and by females as a viable and desirable mate. So too was the group’s best cave artist or sandal maker. As goods accumulated around the males with superior skills, females gathered around them too. As sub-groups of spear makers, tanners, and medicine men evolved, mating with the mates at the top of these sub-groups satisfied the female requirement to mate with superior types.

The transition to near-monogamy

    Modern social life and cultures running into the millions could hardly be possible unless there was a reasonable prospect of most males mating. It took the development of near-monogamy to allow production and trade to pass from a possibility to a reality. Individually skilled producers, and not just the herd’s martial leaders, also had to get the girls. And the females who mated with males other than martial-leaders had to have their children protected and provided for.
   Females began to trade their invaluable attentions for the assets of males who possessed more than just status; they also held material wealth; the wealth which ensured the survival of the female and her offspring.  But production and trade could not occur if males abandoned everything they were doing to court females. By shifting to a more monogamous pattern, along with unending estrus, a sexually available female could potentially be available to every male all the time. 
    With an expanded mental capacity to create and trade, and the monogamy which allowed it to be biologically feasible, survival could now be assured for hundreds, thousands, or millions. The population of any producing and trading group was potentially limitless. The formerly all-mighty dominant male at the top of the pecking order simply could not command the attention of the growing number of females. Nor was it in his interest to hoard them; nor in the interest of the multiplying number of females to be so exclusive in their selection. 
     Production and trade may have been a human potential for generations, but until a move by the females occurred which created the near-monogamy we now enjoy, males would not venture too far down that road. Males give up wealth for women; it makes little biological sense to give up women for wealth. Once the females were on board, mates who rewarded productive males with their attentions, society as we know it was inevitable.  Once the women were more exclusively the partners of productive males, they could focus their time on assisting his efforts. Productive life became linked to family life. She could share his concerns and he began sharing hers. 
      With the merging of family morality with social morality right and wrong, what we understand as proper behavior, began to drift. Masculinity and femininity grew less distinct. Humans have created societies amenable to monogamy not by eliminating the differences in the males, but by multiplying them. We may not all be near-equals in our ability to fight but we can each hold a job and each attain a home and each put food on a table, so in this way productivity has created a sort of widespread equality of competence.

Speculation and hypothesis

    The move toward monogamy is probably as recent as advanced tool production, otherwise men and women might look more alike. Sexual distinctions tend to become less visible in monogamous creatures. With animals like swans and beavers which are monogamous males and females are almost indistinct. Humans are probably still moving in that direction – toward a more secure mating for life and even greater physical and temperamental androgyny. Assuming this monogamous pattern continues, we can guess how humans might look in twenty thousand years. Males without facial hair, women with reduced breast size, men and women appearing indistinguishable from a distance.
     The move to monogamy may have marked the point where humans diverged from Neanderthal and other proto-human like relatives. It is possible that we survived and other near-human species became extinct because our near-monogamy was conducive to social situations with favored survival. Competing with Homo sapiens families which benefited by having a second adult to help with the children and a second set of hands to help with their production, Neanderthals could not keep pace. Lacking dedicated husbands and wives, Neanderthal tribes had to remain much smaller, and these competing large apes never enjoyed the reproductive advantages which our over-producing extended families guaranteed. Perpetual estrus accompanied perpetual production.
      Our men are still clearly distinguishable from our women and children. Yet we are a near monogamous species. Maybe not enough time has passed for our physiology to catch up with our psychology. We have moved from being one type of creature toward being the other type. We have moved from a past where our ancestors were probably much like the chimps or gorillas, and where no permanent mating bonds occurred, into a being where near-permanent bonding has created the two parent family with males taking an active part in child care, with females contributing to tool production. Acting differently requires feeling differently. To be a successfully monogamous creature morality had to adjust.
     Having to be both family leader and social leader, what emerged are human beings which retain the ability to feel in both moral patterns. Our habits, conflicts, political debates, and moral philosophies now reflect this divided nature within us. Whenever we are faced with having to make a social decision, our minds debate the spectrum of possibilities and weigh back-and-forth the best course of action to take. Sometimes we follow the blueprint encouraged in one of our moral minds, and at other times we move in the other direction. We are internally conflicted. But our internalization of both moral modes of feeling and acting has opened up a huge vista of actions which can be right, or can also be seen as wrong. Having become creatures of Dual Morality, we can explain what we see around us today. 
    It would be wrong to say one of our moral patterns is the female type and the other the male type, though it is likely they had their origins in the sexes. We are each one of us, of both moral types now. Today, we are creatures with a Dual Moral nature.