fare between them. The likelihood that members of other tribes will
cooperate is not that great, given that we cannot read their cues and
they cannot read ours. Which is all the more reason for not even try-
ing to cooperate with them.
The connection between morality and social interaction is also
obvious in children. Note that the examples of moral violations that
four-year-olds in Turiel's and other psychologists' studies found
repugnant are often behaviors that disrupt cooperation. Children are
angered by disruptive behavior—for instance, when an opponent in a
board game throws all the pieces up in the air in the middle of play.
[188] What children need to acquire is a better sense of who should be
treated as a likely cooperator and who should not. Such information is
not that easy to pick up because it is entirely context-dependent. You
cannot adjust your behavior unless you have lived through enough dif-
ferent situations. We blame children for refusing to share their toys
with a visiting cousin. But children also observe that we do not offer
all our possessions to perfect strangers. So children must learn to rec-
ognize and classify different situations of social interaction in their
particular social milieu.
We should not be too surprised that moral principles in all cul-
tures seem highly commendable in their formulation ("peace is most
precious," "a guest is sacred") and less so in their application ("let us
raid the next village," "let us rob this rich traveler"). This is not a
symptom of unredeemed hypocrisy but simply a consequence of the
constraints imposed by commitment and cooperation. In such situa-
tions one has to consider the trade-off between offering cooperation
(at the risk of being swindled) and denying it (at the risk of missing
out on mutual advantage). So peace is genuinely valued in general but
this has to be weighed against the perceived threat of inaction against
dangerous neighbors. In the same way guests are honored but less so
if there is no conceivable expectation of further interaction with
them. Westerners can afford to find tribal warfare and systematic
nepotism unpalatable because they are to some extent protected from
these evils by judicial systems and other state institutions. Between
warring tribes and Western suburbs the moral understandings are
similar, but the perceived safety of offering cooperation to unknown
partners is not. So, against the wisdom of many moralists, the milk of
human kindness is not in short supply; but it is apportioned in a prin-
cipled manner.
RELIGION EXPLAINED