[MD] Is morality Hard Wired?

[Krimel]

dmb says:
I'm not so sure that small scale communities enjoy any immunity to violence.

If that were true there would be no such thing as domestic violence, crimes 
of passion, incest and the like. You always hurt the one you love and all 
that. I can see how the larger scale communities that come with civilization

would precipitate a need for formal codes and laws but I'm a bit skeptical 
about the effects of scale on morality per se. Its much broader than that, 
no? It seems to me that there is an alienating and disturbing effect of 
large scale, complex societies. There is something stressful about having to

manage one's own life in a context that is complicated to the point that 
nobody understands much beyond their own role as baker, warroir, midwife, 
Queen or whatever. Seems to me that there is a psychological advantage to 
living in small groups simply because social reality is within the 
individual's range of comprehension.

[Krimel]
Humans evolved by living in small groups of about 150. That is how we lived
for about a million years. Laws are not needed because there are all kinds
of social controls that function in groups of that size. You may get
domestic violence but the community knows about it. You may have thieves but
everyone knows who they are.

Civilizations did not cause larger communities, larger communities caused
civilizations. Larger communities resulted from technological innovations in
agriculture. With larger group sizes the inherited systems of control broke
down and other more formal types of control had to be put in place to
maintain order.

The rest of the stuff you mention specialization, social roles, codes of
morality and law, etc. are the product of this change that occurred about
12,000 years ago. This is too short a period to have had evolutionary
significance.

But take your leap into theology for a second. We speak of the evil with
reference to specific individuals and events. If evil were not somehow
genetically selected against wouldn't you expect to see more of it? In fact
much of the stress you mention comes from having to adapt to an environment
that we are not particularly well adapted to.