Natural selection favors a suite of mental abilities and motivations for acquiring and using information about diverse tribal communities.
The two-way connection between psychology and institutions sits at the crux of human development: Institutions change and psychologies adapt.
Clans, states, and why You can't get here from there
The burning question of the book is this: How did we get from hunter-gathering bands to modern nation states; from clan-based villages to pre-modern cities; from informal emotionally-linked kin-based tribal institutions, to formal individualistic impersonal modern ones?
And the answer given here is: Its complicated.
Kin-based institutions have a finite half-life or carrying capacity before internal strife inexorably sets in and begins to tear them apart. If invoked at the proper time, impersonal institutions can be built on top of kin-based ones, effectively becoming a bridge from one to the other.
The bridge works because there is a strong path dependence paved by retaining the old psychology of social norms, beliefs, rituals, gods, and informal institutions atop the old. Cultural evolution and new uses of rituals help forge squabbling families into coherent communities and into formidable political units.
Rituals and beliefs about gods cut across clans and replace kinship names as the solidifying communal aspect. Controlling how rituals are taught and to whom and when, become community rather than just a clan responsibility.
Thus psychologically, kinship is subtly replaced with community pride and personal honor. A man and his family's safety, security and status is now based entirely on his community reputation.
When reputation and honor became valued life-affirming assets, they also became self-policing. Honor and reputation-based competition between competing groups, then became a sociological arms race.
A whole new social-psychology developed around honor and reputation. Dishonor and bad reputations could put family's safety in jeopardy. Social norms were self-policed and thus sustained by the consequences of not adhering to community norms.
Pair-bonding via monogamy helped too. As marriages expanded reputations, and produced in-laws, a new invention and a semi-formal way of expanding the clan and extending the family had come into being.
Importantly, this made it possible to take communal rituals out of the hands of families and put them in the hands of community leaders, thus making them a community rather than a clan responsibility. This produced Chiefdoms, and naturally those who led were seen as being of the highest reputation and honor. Chiefdoms constituted the first ring of modern social stratification.
The power informally delegated to them could be wielded for good or evil, or as usual, even amorally just to gain and retain power. The easiest way to do this was to take control of ritual processes especially control of ritualistic secrets, as well as control over who and when younger tribal members would be initiated.
Rituals of dancing, singing and drug use, blurred the distinction between self and group. The synergetic effect created personal dependence at the individual level just as it increased community interdependence. The stratification created by chiefdoms divided communities by roles and by reputations.
The Gods are Watching, so Behave
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