Summary of Joshua Greene's Moral Tribes

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Book Preview:

#1 The Parable of the New Pastures is a sequel to the Tragedy of the Commons. It illustrates the problem of cooperation. When individual and collective interest are neither perfectly aligned nor perfectly opposed, as in Hardin’s parable, any one of the herders is better off adding more animals to her herd, but this leads to collective ruin, which is not in anyone’s best interest.

#2 The reason why individuals can accomplish things together is because sometimes they can spread their genetic material in new and more effective ways. This principle has guided the evolution of life on earth since the start.

#3 The tension between individual and collective interest exists in many situations that we don’t consider cooperative. For example, when you buy something from a store, you trust the storekeeper to give you what you paid for, but they also expect you to hand over a real ten-dollar bill and not counterfeit money.

#4 The essence of morality is unselfishness, or a willingness to pay a personal cost to benefit others. Morality evolved as a solution to the problem of cooperation, as a way of averting the Tragedy of the Commons.

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