Moral Origins Quotes

“All over the world, mobile hunter-gatherers use social control guided by moral rules to see to it that when a successful hunter kills a large mammal, his ego is held in check.”
― Christopher Boehm, Moral Origins: The Evolution of Virtue, Altruism, and Shame

“all human groups frown on, make pronouncements against, and punish the following: murder, undue use of authority, cheating that harms group cooperation, major lying, theft, and socially disruptive sexual behavior. These basic rules of conduct appear to be human universals.”
― Christopher Boehm, Moral Origins: The Evolution of Virtue, Altruism, and Shame

“an efficient evolutionary conscience is one that lets us express ourselves socially in ways that help us to both keep ourselves out of trouble and get ahead in life.”
― Christopher Boehm, Moral Origins: The Evolution of Virtue, Altruism, and Shame

“What well-internalized moral values and rules do is to slow us down sufficiently that we are able, to a considerable extent, to pick and choose which behaviors we care to exhibit before our peers. As a result, most of our self-interested acts don’t become so predatory or antisocial that we’re likely to be discovered and severely punished—with our fitness ultimately being damaged.”
― Christopher Boehm, Moral Origins: The Evolution of Virtue, Altruism, and Shame

“The first fossil with a definite and undisputed claim to human ancestorhood is Homo erectus,42 for some time a contemporary of these later upright apes. Erectus appeared before 1.8 MYA”
― Christopher Boehm, Moral Origins: The Evolution of Virtue, Altruism, and Shame