s invite certain dangers. There are various formal and informalways a civilization teaches people such things.What people value profoundly affects the way they define their world and makelaws. Every person values something. People value their health, their families,their possessions and their careers. The things that people value most are theirlives and the lives of their friends and their families. Survival is a cardinalvalue in an extensive hierarchy of values. If people value their careers morethan their lives, they are thought to have misplaced their priorities. If one'shedonistic pursuit of sexual pleasures carries with it the high possibility ofdisease and death, again society might think such a person had misplaced his orher priorities. To comment on this possibility is to express a sense of moralitythat comes from prudent thinking. Drugs, alcohol, gambling, are activities thathave repeatedly caused people to temporarily misplace their priorities. Rulesystems help keep people in their "right mind" instead of going "out of theirminds" through excess. People who are repeatedly "out of their minds" have lesschance of surviving and surviving well than people who remain true to theiroriginal personality. Some behaviors corrupt the efficiency and socialcompatibility of people more than other behaviors. Some part of the evolution ofethical systems monitors the growth of potentially harmful behaviors and looksfor methods to suppress them.Rules help to reign in human passion as progress demands finer and finerdelineations of labor, resources, and authority. The visceral compulsions ofhumans to survive rather than perish commands intelligent people to try to holdtheir society together and to keep people and their passions from tearing itapart. Survival places an imperative to be sensible enough to stay above thethreshold of extinction as a species. This evolutionary process inspires finerand finer details of order, and is first evident in ...
