Too often, our concern for specific individuals today means neglecting crises that will harm countless people in the future.
It is clear that rituals and sacrifices can bring people together, and it may well be that a group that does such things has an advantage over one that does not. But it is not clear why a religion has to be involved. Why are gods, souls, an afterlife, miracles, divine creation of the universe, and so on brought in?
One way to make a baby cry is to expose it to cries of other babies. There's sort of contagiousness to the crying. It's not just crying. We also know that if a baby sees another human in silent pain, it will distress the baby. It seems part of our very nature is to suffer at the suffering of others.
A sympathetic parent might see the spark of consciousness in a baby's large eyes and eagerly accept the popular claim that babies are wonderful learners, but it is hard to avoid the impression that they begin as ignorant as bread loaves.
Morality is often seen as an innovation, like agriculture and writing. From this perspective, babies are pint-sized psychopaths, self-interested beings who need to be taught moral notions such as the wrongness of harming another person.
We benefit, intellectually and personally, from the interplay between different selves, from the balance between long-term contemplation and short-term impulse. We should be wary about tipping the scales too far. The community of selves shouldn't be a democracy, but it shouldn't be a dictatorship, either.
A growing body of evidence suggests that humans do have a rudimentary moral sense from the very start of life.
If our wondrous kindness is evidence for God, is our capacity for great evil proof of the Devil?
Imagination is Reality Lite - a useful substitute when the real pleasure is inaccessible, too risky, or too much work.
We can imagine our bodies being destroyed, our brains ceasing to function, our bones turning to dust, but it is harder - some would say impossible - to imagine the end of our very existence.
In politics and in society, we can use our reason to rise above our parochial natures. Too bad that our elected officials don't choose to do so more often.
If evil is empathy erosion, and empathy erosion is a form of illness, then evil turns out to be nothing more than a particularly awful psychological disorder.
Strong moral arguments exist for why we should often try to ignore stereotypes or override them. But we shouldn't assume they represent some irrational quirk of the unconscious mind. In fact, they're largely the consequence of the mind's attempt to make a rational decision.
Even in the most peaceful communities, an appetite for violence shows up in dreams, fantasies, sports, play, literature, movies and television. And, so long as we don't transform into angels, violence and the threat of violence - as in punishment and deterrence - is needed to rein in our worst instincts.
Imagination tends to be truly useful if accompanied by the power of mental control - if the worlds in one's head can be purposefully manipulated and distinguished from the real one outside it.
Having kids has proven to be this amazing - for me, this amazing source of ideas of anecdotes, of examples, I can test my own kids without human subject permission, so they pilot - I pilot my ideas on them. And so it is a tremendous advantage to have kids if you're going to be a developmental psychologist.
It's really difficult working with kids and with babies because they are not cooperative subjects: they are not socialized into the idea that they should cheerfully and cooperatively give you information. They're not like undergraduates, who you can bribe with beer money or course credit.
We'd be really screwed if we had to start our life over again as children with our brains right now, because I think we lose the plasticity and flexibility.
You'd expect, as good Darwinian creatures, we would evolve to be fascinated with how the world really is, and we would use language to convey real-world information, we'd be obsessed with knowing the way things are, and we would entirely reject stories that aren't true. They're useless. But that's not the way we work.
I think what a lot of fiction is, is the imagining of the worst so as to prepare ourselves.
