Analysis Of Joshua Greene's Moral Tribes

In Joshua Greene’s novel Moral Tribes: Emotion, Reason, and the Gap Between Us and Them, the author deploys utilitarian theory in an attempt to maximize efficient communication between individuals and groups. Greene explores the fundamental causes of disagreement and proposes tools to overcome them and to progress. In Part I, Moral Problems, Greene relates Hardin’s “Tragedy of the Commons” to compare individualistic and collectivistic interests. In the “Tragedy of the Commons”, a single group of herders shares a hypothetical common pasture. Hardin posits that, were everyone to act for his or her individual self-interests, the pasture would be eroded and nothing would be left (19). Collective interests should triumph over individual interests whenever possible (24).

Morality evolved to solve this problem of cooperation. The essence of morality is altruism, however there is a tendency for people to prefer group affiliations rather than individual interests or the interests of other groups (23). Morality helps avoid the Tragedy of the Commons, but not the Tragedy of Commonsense Morality (26). The Tragedy of Commonsense Morality is the separation between Us vs. Them outlined in the Parable of the New Pastures (15). In order to thrive with Commonsense Morality, humans developed a metamorality that allows conflicting moralities to live together

Cooperation between groups is often thwarted by tribalism and personal bias. One solution for this is utilitarianism. Utilitarianism holds that a combination of happiness and maximization of good consequences would allow tribes make good decisions (153). While the Tragedy of the Commons is mainly concerned with selfishness, the Tragedy of Commonsense Morality is a tragedy of moral inflexibility (172). Groups must be perceptive and impartial in order to overcome their differences and