In addition to the capacity for language, we also share with some other animals the aptitude for complex cognitive faculties of self-observation and analysis of the environment. All living creatures are conscious of their environment. But some have developed beyond merely experiencing the environment to being aware of it, consciously observing it. The evolution of consciousness has generated in some animals an awareness of themselves as "self" and of the rest of life that they see as "not-self". They are also capable of not just observing this distinction between "me" and "not-me" but of setting up many different categories of "not-me".
Thus, they recognize, "my troop" and "not my troop"; "good food place" and "bad sleeping place". And they also can make the further distinctions like "my troop but might beat me up so better be careful" and "good place to sleep but belongs to that one who might beat me up." The individuals and the group develop a mental map of the world as it pertains to them. And through communication skills continue to develop the map to more complex levels and pass it on to the young.
Humans have taken the rudimentary sense of self found in other animals and have elaborated that into a perception of a multi-dimensional personality. The "I" that we perceive comprises various complex interwoven mental and emotional states. We observe and identify with numerous interconnected physical and psychological "selves." The "me" when I am working is quite different from the "me" when I'm playing with my dogs or kids.
And we have taken the basic recognition of "me" and "mine", "you" and "yours", "them" and "theirs" and generated an unending stream of categories for the objects, creatures, environments, events, conditions, circumstances that we encounter in our shared life. But because we have also been talking incessantly with ourselves, with others and with the universe in general, we've also amplified these ideas enormously. We've conceptualized and abstracted them.
For much of our human history we've still preserved the strong sense of family, clan, homeland, territory, that are direct hold-overs from our pre-human heritage. But also present in some of our non-human relatives is the capacity to modify the clan-territory predisposition in favor of making alliances outside of the clan. We've taken that tendency also to a greater extent forming towns and cities, conducting commerce and trade.
We expanded our conceptions of "my people" to include those of different clans, different regions, even different linguistic groups. And we benefitted enormously. It allowed us to extend our facility to survive and thrive in all the vastly different parts of the earth. We redefined in our minds what "my people" means and then continued to reconfigure that concept into innumerable permutations and variations, depending on the circumstances and advantages new alliances might offer.
Thus we can work with people we don't identify with and identify with people we've barely met. The categories of who we experience as "self" and the people with whom we connect as "my people" are fluid, malleable, fungible. I may lose my feeling of connection to my family, school, city and replace them with a different set of people with whom I feel more immediately connected.
Throughout this process the ideas of morality, the unspoken standards for how we treat others, have continued to evolve as well. But each person, society, culture, religion still tends to distinguish between "my people" and "not my people." And that distinction carries with it the inherent justification, rationalization to not give the same moral treatment to those who are "not my people."
In other words, although these capacities and tendencies also contribute to a universal natural morality, by themselves they fall short of generating a universal moral sense. They can still be used to set us against one another.
Well, is there anything else lying around that might prove useful in getting us out of here?
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