Thread:Ecoraptor3339/@comment-5496489-20160524151005/@comment-25309944-20160924173623

Yes, I'm very well aware of that article and I love it. If you want to go the anthropological route (because I've studied anthro), you'll actually find that human customs, rituals, moral systems, taboos, etc are not arbitrary, strange, or random. They are a product of the material situations and social relations that human societies find themselves in, and typically fall into place to ensure the survival of the group. They reinforce existing relations and behaviors which tend to be beneficial for the continuation of the group and of society, and deincentivize or make taboo behaviors which are harmful to the society.

All of this to say, morality which seems "arbitrary" to us really... isn't. There's a current of societal interest, of structural (perhaps unconscious) rationality which make similar strategies, social formations, roles, and rituals reappear across cultures and millennia. Self interest, shaped by the imperatives of survival, are pretty easy to understand across cultures.