The Effect of Moralistic-Based
Team Building on Evolution
by Bill Carr
All humans on earth have 99.9% the same DNA; this enables us to process similarly the flux of waves, processes and constants we find ourselves thrust into, kicking and screaming, at the time of birth. It’s the other one-tenth of one percent that not only makes things interesting but enables us, as part of the civilizations we evolve into, to pursue a goal.
Theories such as panpsychism and monism postulate that we are all one person, subdivided. It’s true that if my nerve endings were longer, I could feel another person’s pain and elation directly instead of indirectly. It’s almost like an analogy involving hardware and software.
Evolution itself is amoral; it has a direction but no goal. The term “amoral” may sound severe, but a vestigial example of the amorality of evolution is the war going on within our own bodies. Harmful bacteria and viruses are intent on destroying us; our immune systems are intent on destroying these invaders. There are no truces or prisoner exchanges.
Evolution uses natural selection and survival of the fittest to form its direction. But the concept of fitness appears differently as civilizations evolve; what starts with individuals who are the strongest and healthiest transforms into those into those best suited to adapt to a changing environment.
Following a direction, species evolve into groups and then societies and civilizations, with the competition starting with few or no rules inherent in the process. Civilizations seek to mold evolution to enhance their own survival advantages. Historically, civilizations tend to be either isolated from other civilizations or interactive with them. Interactivity can range from peacefulness or violence, with all sorts of gradations and combinations in between. Isolated civilizations benefit from the absence of externally generated violence, but also lack the influx of developments that could enhance their own survival.
The complexity of this whole system grows exponentially as civilizations manage already-complex individuals into institutions. Some institutions, such as the military, reflect evolution’s basic survival instincts. Others, such as writers, artists, and scientists, administrators, and jurists, have the dilemma of being pressured to support their society’s own survival instincts. But religious, ethical, and socio-evolutionist organizations are the prime proponents of team building leading to a goal beneficial to all.
These groups — rather cleverly, I believe — take the competitive nature of evolution, apply rules of morality, build the team and move the direction of evolution towards a goal. In Western civilization, that goal has been variously expressed throughout the ages as establishment of the kingdom of heaven on earth or visions of various utopias.
The progression toward that is evident in the pillars of Western beliefs: the monotheism of Abraham, the practical and ethical wisdom of Moses, the teachings of Jesus Christ and their dissemination, the Magna Carta, Thomas More’s vision of Utopia, Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Social Contract, the United States’ Declaration of Independence and the United Nations’ Declaration of Human Rights. All are expressions of team expansion, team building, and team solidification.
Team building, as an aspect of group socialization, is an inherent element of evolution. The earliest societies and, indeed, animal groups, used team efforts for survival. The difference is the religious/ethical/socio-evolutionary promotion of team building as directed towards a goal in which all members of the expanded team have a role to play in the pursuit of something beneficial to all. The exhortation to support widows and orphans and, more recently, the disabled, is not limited to charity alone.
The key turning point in Western Civilization, when religious and ethical groups began to promote moral obligations and charity over the “survival of the fittest” mentality, was the Christianization of the Roman Empire in the 4th Century CE.
Two contemporary religions in Western civilization, Christianity and Judaism, present some interesting contrasts with regard to team building. Today both require an arduous transition period for conversion, usually one year or more of study and life-changing practices. Both have faced huge problems in molding evolution towards a goal.
Historically, Christianity has been more aggressive in seeking converts, or team building, using tactics that violate its own ethical standards. Judaism, on the other hand, is subject to constant suspicion because of its dogged resistance to beliefs and practices that violate its own science-based principles. In a very general sense, Judaism has been dominated by a search for truth, using its derivative, science, while Christianity has been dominated by a search for beauty and contentment, with its derivative, art.
When I enter a church to attend a Catholic wedding, I’m blown away by the beauty I see: the bride, clad in white, kneeling before the altar; the priests in their wine-colored vestments; the vaulted, arched ceilings; and the stained-glass windows, each of which tells a Biblical story. Yet I love the Judaic tradition of acceptance of diverse theories of existence and its principles of ethical relationships between individuals.
Science has the task of not only creating new processes beneficial towards civilization’s direction of survival but also providing answers, through testing and observation, to the question: “What is really going on here?”
Judaism, though still suffused with mysticism and superstition, has essentially survived because of its steadfast inclination toward scientific principles; for example, the concept of monotheism correlates to the relatively recently promulgated scientific principle that the laws of nature are constant throughout the universe.
Because religions are often led by educated and insightful persons, they, like sciences, are tasked with demands to answer the query “What is really going on here?” However, unlike science, religions do not use the strict protocols of observation and testing. Hence religions, at some point, come into conflict with science.
Teams themselves within the same society may come into conflict with each other, presenting individuals who are concurrently members of two or more teams with a huge dilemma. For example, members of the military pledged to defend a society may object to practices, such as killing, that contradict their religious beliefs. This is essentially a conflict between evolutionary direction and religious/ethical/socio-evolutionary based goals.
The recent history of the United States, for example, in dealing with this problem, has shown mixed results, from firing of conscientious objectors from their government jobs after World War I, to allowing conscientious objectors to serve in non-combatant roles during World War II, to including in the military training in the post-World War II period that a soldier does not have follow any order that he/she deems to be immoral, and back again to the threat of charging a member of the military with sedition if he/she proclaims the very principle already included in the military’s training.
Another example of a dilemma faced by individuals, facing the complexity of the variable nature of evolution and the influence of religious/ethical/socio-evolutionist groups, resides, ironically, in events in which nations from all parts of the world send teams to global athletic competitions. Whether we are really one person, subdivided and trying to reunite or are simply going through an evolutionary process that sends out, via cables and airways, neuron-like connectors to all parts of the world, the result is a greater knowledge of what is happening elsewhere.
Individual athletes face a specific dilemma: despite language differences, they invariably find they have more in common with their competitors than the differences that leaders of their societies have been claiming. Since these competitions are, in essence, a sublimation of the evolutionary tendency to war, this is yet another manifestation that in the world today, wars of aggression have zero necessity and justification and are essentially a relic of our evolutionary past.
While western democracies have clearly benefited from the team building and moralistic influence of religious/ethical/socio-evolutionary groups, they have also benefited from two world wars in the first half of the 20th century. One can argue that Germany, a defeated country in these wars, was a Christian nation and itself a western democracy. However, as exemplified by the uneven progression of evolution, Germany was also highly influenced by its archaic pagan worship of blood and soil.
Perhaps even benefitting from these wars, western civilization, led by the United States, became the first to unlock nature’s enormous power: atomic energy. It’s important to note that in both sides’ quest for military superiority, Germany came tantalizingly close to being the first to utilize this power for military advantage, and the United States’ leadership in this area may be very temporary. Now the challenge is to use all the power being developed for clean energy for the peaceful benefit of all.
There is ample evidence that this is the ideal time to meet that challenge. The primary motivations for aggressive military actions have disappeared or are quickly disappearing. There is currently enough food in the world to meet the nutritional needs of everyone on this planet; it’s just a matter of distribution. There is enough clothing, new and used, to keep everyone protected from natural climate changes. With architectural advances, there is the potential for modern group- or mini-dwellings for everyone. There are sufficient online and in-person altruistic medical specialists to provide a basic level of health care for all. With the advent of improved distance learning, there are enough opportunities for everyone to receive a basic level of education.
The bottom line is that for the first time in our history, we can actually achieve the moralistic team building goals of religious/ethical/socio-evolutionary groups. We just need the collective will to do it. Perhaps the fittest in today’s civilizations are those best able to manage our human, robotic and environmental resources for the benefit of all.
Copyright © 2026 by Bill Carr
