________________
Society and Culture
103
regards 'culture' as an intrusion separate from ‘nature'. Study of kinship-systems of primates show elements of human kinship system as well as great complexity and variety. Finally, it is necessary to remember that patterns of culture are regulated by far more complex and immediate concerns than the proper distribution of genes. 2. Ethics
The capacity to learn ethical concepts develops during the long period of childhood when an individual is bound to be subservient to elders if only because one is genetically programmed to obey. It is during this period that the capacity to leam etbical concepts develop. Our capacity to learn the proper order of society is equivalent to learn the order of words in a sentence. Obedience is the dispositional cement that binds society and it probably has a hereditary background. Heredity gives us the capacity of learning what is right or wrong in our relations with others as well as powers to be happy or angry. What they do not give us is our particular conceptions of morals, rights and duties.
The child, early, learns that his first selfish attitude must be modified. The demands for self-sacrifice will seem, at first, to conflict with its needs for comfort etc. and may leave traumatic scars in some cases. Ultimately and in most cases, it realizes that altruism helps bim to fulfill his needs within society.
The existence of moral rules is quite common in human cultures and behavior and the capacity to respond to them is probably genetically inherited. So, the capacity to learn during the long period of childhood appears once again a central human feature. Culture is transmitted by virtue of this genetically determined pattern of growth and development of brain. The factors that ensure the development of an ethical sense are both external and internal. It certainly does not mature as do the ability for walking (or talking). The respect felt by the subordinate for the superior plays an essential part and it is this respect which develops to ultimately become conscience and the basis for moral behavior. This building of the personality is at the very center of the system of hypotheses and actions that constitutes the model in the brain, which we
