Page 28 - Cultures and Organizations

The Rules of the Social Game 13

sixty-four years before, and he has come to see his confiscation of the bike
as a theft for which he wants to make amends.
Our mental programs are adapted to life in a moral circle. We take
pride in the achievements of our children; we are happy when our favorite
sports team wins; many of us sing patriotic or religious songs with feeling

and pledge allegiance to our national flag. We are ashamed of the failures
of members of our group, and we feel guilty about our crimes. There are

differences among groups in the fine-tuning of these emotions: in some
societies a woman can get killed by male family members based on rumors
that she slept with the wrong man, and in others a man can be punished
by law for having paid sex. Nevertheless, moral, group-related emotions
are universal. We have these emotions even about frivolous things such as
sports, song festivals, and TV quiz shows. The moral circle affects not only
our symbols, heroes, and rituals but also our values.
There may be dissent in societies regarding who within the group is
good and who is bad. Politics serves to sort out the difference. In societ-
ies that are politically pluralistic, right-wing parties typically protect the
strong members, left-wing parties protect the weak members, green parties
protect the environment, and populist parties brand parts of the population
as bad guys. Leaders such as former U.S. president George W. Bush try to
promote internal group cohesion by creating enemies: they make the moral
circle smaller, in the same way that populists and dictators often do. The
perception of a threat makes people close ranks behind their current leader.
Leaders such as U.S. president Barack Obama strive to enlarge the moral
circle by creating friends, in the same way that diplomats and negotiators

do. In doing so, however, they risk achieving fission in their own moral
circle. President Anwar el-Sadat, of Egypt (1918–81), and Prime Minister
Yitzhak Rabin, of Israel (1922–95), were both assassinated by one of their
own people after reconciling with the traditional enemy.

The moral circle, in many guises and on scales from a single marriage
to humanity as a whole, is the key determinant of our social lives, and it
both creates and carries our culture.

Boundaries of the Moral Circle:
Religion and Philosophy

Philosophy, spirituality, and religion are ways of sorting out the difference
between good and bad. For 2,500 years, philosophers in the East and West
have taught the Golden Rule: “Do to others as you would wish them to do