On the Relativity of Ethics, Evolution, and Behavior
by Albert Prins
Key idea: Humans have evolved as a species that ensures its survival through genetic drives, variation, and social cooperation.
TREBLA: To gain an understanding of how modern humans have become what they are today, we can follow the line of reasoning below. This line of thought is primarily based on evolutionary theory.
There may have been different ways in which human evolution has taken place, and different, unconscious strategies may have been followed. Only those strategies that were successful in survival have led to the humans as we know them today.
Here we must make a distinction between humans as individuals and humans as a species. The life of the individual is only temporary, but as far as the human species is concerned, it continues to survive. The species has therefore proven to be more persistent than the individual. Thus, in order to be as successful as the human species, there must be an inherent strategy that strives for the continuation of the species. But the species itself is not a tangible entity; it is a concept. The species exists only through individual humans who are replaced over time by new individuals. And of course, this also applies to every species, both animals and plants.
Regarding option 1, if each individual sacrifices itself for the group, there is a high chance that this individual will die prematurely, have fewer or no offspring, and consequently the group will decrease in size or even become extinct.
ALEX: So the species is actually more important than the individual?
TREBLA: From a rational perspective, it seems plausible that each individual is "programmed" to strive for its own survival and unconsciously realizes that it must support the group in order to increase its own chances of survival, with the side effect that it helps maintain the group.
As we know, a person has only a limited lifespan, and it appears that the survival strategy of each individual is not only aimed at its own physical survival, but also at its legacy in the form of its children. These are not conscious actions, but part of the motivational system of a person that has evolved over time through natural selection. It is therefore not a teleological system (goal-oriented), but evolves only through random chance.
ALEX: It seems that evolution works in the direction of passing on genes, thereby preserving the species, where selfishness and cooperation are not opposites.
TREBLA: Exactly. They reinforce each other. And in order to maintain the species, the most important “task” of the individual is to survive and thus be able to pass on its genes. This requires a partner. When he or she finds a partner, the individual, perhaps unconsciously, realizes that it must not only take care of itself, but also of the partner, because otherwise no genes can be passed on. All of this occurs unconsciously and is an innate (nature) or evolutionarily developed drive of each individual such as:
ALEX: And variation between people?
TREBLA: Essential. Diversity makes a species resilient. It is the most important characteristic of the evolutionary approach that each individual is slightly different. When circumstances change, those individuals who are most “fit” in the new situation will thrive best and thus become the new average. And thus the most important development will take place along the lines of this new average.
If we strive, for example through DNA manipulation or reproductive techniques, to make every individual perfectly suited to the prevailing average characteristics, a kind of inbred species will emerge that is doomed to disappear. It is optimized for the current situation but becomes vulnerable when the situation begins to change. Therefore, if we allow nature to evolve freely, all kinds of people with all kinds of different characteristics will continuously emerge to be prepared for possible suitability to different circumstances. Thus, variation and diversity are of the utmost importance for continuity.
ALEX: I understand what you mean. So when a child is born, its primary evolutionary drive is to stay alive and to do all those necessary things that its instinct “tells” it to do in order to achieve that goal? So this “selfish” behavior is innate (nature). But soon, through its experience with other children and adults, it learns (nurture) to be part of a group and develops a form of empathy and adaptation to the group. The behavior of the child, in order to have the highest chance of maintaining itself, is guided by feelings of happiness or unhappiness. These feelings will likely guide it in the “right” direction. These feelings are not something transcendent but a chemical reaction in the brain where a substance (dopamine) is released that creates those positive feelings.
TREBLA: Yes, Alex, that is indeed how I see it as well.
Key idea: Good and evil exist only within the perspective of the organism; the ecosystem itself makes no judgment.
As humans, we tend to judge events and actions as good or bad. We do this based on our own norms and values, which are deeply rooted in our experience and culture.
But if we adopt the neutral position we discussed earlier, we must ask ourselves: do “good” and “bad” actually exist outside the human perspective?
To better understand this, it helps to look at systems in which human morality plays no role.
Key idea:
In nature, there exists a functional balance in which suffering and death have no intrinsic moral meaning.
An impressive example of an ecosystem can be found in the annual migration of wildebeest across the Serengeti in Africa, known from documentaries such as The Great Migration. Massive herds continuously move from one region to another in search of fresh grass and water. This migration forms one of the most dynamic natural processes on Earth.
During this journey, the herds are constantly threatened by predators such as lions, hyenas, and crocodiles. From a human perspective, this often appears harsh and cruel: young animals become exhausted, calves are torn apart, and many animals die along the way.
Yet a different picture emerges when we look not only at the individual animal, but at the functioning of the ecosystem as a whole.
The wildebeest graze on vast quantities of grass, but because of the constant threat from predators, they continue moving. As a result, the vegetation is given time to recover. If the herds remained in one location for too long, the grass would be overgrazed, eventually causing food shortages not only for the wildebeest themselves, but also for other grazing animals.
The predators therefore unknowingly fulfill a regulating function within the system. Through hunting, they force the herds to keep moving, thereby preventing overgrazing and maintaining the balance of the ecosystem as a whole.
At the same time, the wildebeest form an essential food source for predators. Through the grass, the grazers absorb nutrients that later become indirectly available to lions, hyenas, and crocodiles, animals that cannot digest plants themselves. The migrating herds therefore function as a living flow of energy and nutrients within the ecosystem.
In this way, a continuous circular process emerges:
From the perspective of the ecosystem, this appears almost as an elegant system of natural balance. Life, death, growth, and decay remain continuously interconnected within it.
For the individual animal, however, the situation is very different. For a mother wildebeest losing her calf, or for a lioness unable to feed her cubs, suffering is anything but abstract. What appears as balance on a systems level may represent pain, loss, and struggle on the level of the individual.
From this emerges a fundamental insight:
Concepts such as good, evil, beauty, or cruelty therefore appear to be relative concepts to some extent, depending on the perspective from which we observe reality.
This aligns with the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900), who argued that no universal, absolute morality exists. According to him, concepts such as good and evil are not objective properties of reality, but human interpretations arising from culture, emotion, and social circumstances.
When we extend this line of thought to human societies, an uncomfortable yet interesting question emerges. Human civilizations also depend on balance: between population growth, food supply, energy consumption, raw materials, and ecological sustainability.
In the modern world, this balance appears increasingly fragile. Through technological advancement, humanity has partially overcome many natural limitations. Famines are fought, diseases are cured, and conflicts are sometimes resolved through diplomacy rather than violence. At the same time, continuous population growth places increasing pressure on ecosystems, climate systems, and natural resources.
The question therefore arises whether humanity will be capable of voluntarily finding a new balance, or whether major disruptions such as wars, pandemics, famines, or ecological crises will eventually once again act as corrective forces, just as natural processes often do within ecosystems.
Nature itself possesses no moral judgment. Balance is ultimately always restored; the only question is at what cost to the individuals within the system.
In 2019–2020, a pandemic broke out that shook the world to its core: COVID-19, a virus that likely originated in China and spread rapidly across the globe. The early images from Italy were shocking, every day dozens, hundreds of people died, and the virus steadily moved northward through Europe.
What followed was a unique experiment in crisis management. No one knew how to deal with this virus. There was no medicine, no vaccine, no playbook. European cooperation seemed obvious, but even at that level, people were groping in the dark.
And so a remarkable situation emerged: each country chose its own path:
What emerged was not a coordinated plan, but a mosaic of strategies.
A centralized, coordinated approach has the strength of unity and consistency. But if that approach turns out to be wrong, the consequences are enormous and universal. The fragmented approach that we actually observed can also be interpreted afterward in a different way: as a series of national laboratories, each with its own method, each with its own results. Only afterward do we know which approach saved the most lives, and that is precisely the tragedy, because decisions had to be made in the heat of the moment, not with the luxury of hindsight.
Here we see what we expressed earlier: the system as a whole strives for balance, but for the subsystems, countries, peoples, individuals, every disruption causes its own shock. Just as in the migration of wildebeest in the Serengeti, where lions and grazers each experience the system from their own perspective, no country in a pandemic can remain neutral regarding the choices it makes. And yet: the whole benefits from variation.
When vaccines were eventually developed that appeared to be effective, something remarkable occurred: a significant group of people refused to be vaccinated. Some believed in conspiracy theories, others had religious or principled objections. Many people experienced this as frustrating. If we act together, people reasoned, we can eliminate this virus more quickly. Why doesn’t everyone cooperate?
From a medical perspective, this was often seen as problematic or irrational. But when we again apply the evolutionary perspective, a different viewpoint emerges.
Imagine that a vaccine, despite all care and testing, contains an unforeseen, fatal flaw. A flaw that only manifests itself after years. If the entire world population takes this vaccine, the outcome is catastrophic: humanity becomes extinct. No individual, no system of quality control is infallible enough to completely eliminate that risk. Evolution, however, is not a system aimed at individuals; it operates at the level of the species. And the species does not survive through uniformity, but through diversity. Through variation. Through the fact that not everyone does the same, according to the evolutionary strategy: never put all your eggs in one basket.
This aligns exactly with our earlier statement: that when one strives through DNA manipulation or other techniques for a uniform, “optimized” species, a vulnerable system emerges. A species that is perfected for current conditions, but becomes fragile when those conditions begin to change.
From this perspective, the group that refused vaccination, for whatever reason, justified or not, unconsciously acts as an insurance policy for humanity as a whole. If the vaccine works perfectly, the vaccinated survive and protect society. If the vaccine turns out to be fatally flawed, it is precisely the unvaccinated who prevent extinction, those who can reproduce and continue the human line.
Evolution has, over centuries, instilled in us a drive to survive, not as individuals, but as a species. And perhaps skepticism, distrust, even stubbornness, is one of the tools through which that drive expresses itself. Not elegant, not conscious, but effective in the most basic sense of the word.
What appears irrational at the individual level may be functional at the level of the species.
This brings us to a deeper question: was it “wrong” for anti-vaccination advocates to resist? From a medical perspective, the answer seems clear. But we must be cautious about that very certainty. Ethical judgments such as “good” and “evil” are, as argued following Nietzsche, human constructs. They do not exist as universal truths, but arise from what at a given moment appears to be beneficial for the survival of the individual and the group.
Nietzsche argued that there is no universal good or evil. And we can add: moral values are contextual, pragmatic, and subject to change. What in one situation is seen as dangerous stubbornness may in another situation prove to be the salvation of the species.
This does not change the science behind vaccines, nor does it justify unfounded conspiracy theories. But it does invite a different kind of understanding, and a degree of humility in our moral judgment.
There is another dimension relevant here, which we will discuss in more detail later: the paradox of equality. Humanity constantly strives for more uniformity, more consensus, more unity. That striving is understandable and valuable in many respects. But here a fundamental law of nature applies: energy always flows from inequality to equality. Without difference, no movement. Without tension, no life.
Two barrels filled to the same level do not flow. Wind arises from differences in air pressure. Rivers flow because one point is higher than another. Life itself depends on gradients and differences in energy. Complete equality, however noble as an ideal, would in practice mean stagnation.
Perhaps wisdom lies not in achieving equality, but in consciously and courageously continuing to strive for it.
Seen in this light, the division surrounding the vaccine is not only a problem. It is also an expression of the fundamental diversity that keeps the species alive. Humanity does not survive despite its internal divisions, but sometimes precisely because of them.
The COVID pandemic confronted us with the limits of our knowledge. We did not know which approach was best. We did not know whether the vaccine was absolutely safe. We did not know why people resisted. And yet we had to act, quickly, collectively, under pressure.
What we can perhaps learn from it afterward is this: the system as a whole, humanity as a species, has developed mechanisms to protect itself, even when those mechanisms at first glance appear irrational or even harmful. Diversity in behavior, variation in response, resistance to uniformity, these are not shortcomings of human nature. From an evolutionary perspective, they are its most fundamental survival strategies.
We should not only judge people who think differently from us based on the correctness of their reasoning. We may also recognize that their deviant behavior, however unintended, fits into a pattern that nature has applied for millions of years: never put all your eggs in one basket.
Humanity does not survive despite its internal divisions, but sometimes precisely because of those divisions.
These insights bring us to a next question: where do our moral frameworks actually come from?
Key idea: Ethics and religion are cultural strategies that arise from the human need for structure and group cohesion.
We now examine the influence of religion on the formation of ethics and moral values. And to what extent, as some claim, religion alone leads to norms and values, and thus to what is good and evil. That without religion we would not be able to form a good society.
Plato (427–347 BC) and Aristotle (384–322 BC) lived around the 3rd century BC and were not influenced by the then non-existent Christian religion. Yet Aristotle wrote his work Ethics. In this work, one finds virtues and vices described that closely resemble Christian teachings. This is not surprising, because Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274 AD), 1500 years later, studied Aristotle’s work and attempted to integrate it into Christian doctrine. Aristotle based his Ethics primarily on his view of humanity independent of religious frameworks.
Plato does refer in many cases to a god or gods, but according to Greek religion, the gods possessed both good and bad characteristics. What was good or bad was therefore apparently determined by Plato himself; he needed a god and then shaped those gods to fit his own image. In short, he created them himself. He also criticized poets who described the gods with both good and bad traits. Plato believed that poets should only present the good side of the gods in order to set an example for the youth. Once again, how does Plato determine what is good and bad? Confucius (551 BC–479 BC, China) also concerned himself with morality without being inspired by religion. His statement “do not wish upon others what you would not wish upon yourself” appears in many forms across various religions and moral traditions.
This only strengthens the idea that humans have an intrinsic sense of good and evil. Most likely an evolutionary characteristic, where “good” is defined as beneficial for the survival of ourselves and the group, and “evil” as threatening that survival.
Religion can play a reinforcing role in this:
But that does not mean it is the source.
ALEX: Many people believe that a god created the world and humanity. They see the idea of evolution as conflicting with the idea of creation. What is your view on this, Trebla?
TREBLA: Even if there is a God who created everything, it seems very likely to me that He would have incorporated the mechanism of evolution as part of creation, since this would simplify the process of creating different forms of life. But as Plato already said, if we have no idea who God is, what His influence is on living beings, and what He expects from them, it seems better to leave it aside.
Hume argued in his work An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748) that a wise person adjusts his beliefs to the evidence. The more improbable an event is, the stronger the evidence must be to believe it.
Benedictus de Spinoza (1632–1677 AD) regarded God as equivalent to nature, a God without special devotion to humanity.
Perhaps it would have been better if Spinoza had not made this equation, because the term God is too heavily burdened with the historical meaning of a God who has a direct relationship with living beings; this easily leads to confusion.
ALEX: Why do so many people still need religion?
TREBLA: Perhaps because people struggle with the unknown. Where knowledge is lacking, the need for explanation arises.
Take the phenomenon of thunder and lightning: impressive, unpredictable, and sometimes deadly. The Vikings attributed it to Thor, the god of thunder; the Germanic peoples to Donar; the Greeks to Zeus; and the Romans to Jupiter. All these peoples lived far apart, yet independently arrived at the same conclusion: a powerful deity must be behind it. Today we know that thunder and lightning result from electrical discharges between clouds and the earth, a phenomenon fully explainable without divine intervention.
The same applies to the northern lights. This overwhelming natural spectacle, where the sky lights up in waves of green, red, and purple, was seen by the Norse as the reflection of the shields of the Valkyries, divine warriors guiding fallen heroes to Valhalla. The scientific explanation, charged particles from the sun interacting with the Earth’s atmosphere, is at least as fascinating, but requires no god.
We see this pattern repeatedly: earthquakes were attributed by the Greeks to Poseidon, diseases to the wrath of gods, and the movement of stars to divine will.
Each time science provided an explanation, the god retreated. The gods filled the gaps in human knowledge, what philosopher Dietrich Bonhoeffer later called the “God of the gaps.”
And for leaders, it is easier to tell people to behave according to the rules of a god than to try to convince them through logic to obey the rules of the leader. In this way, God is used, for practical reasons, as a means of control (Thomas Hobbes, 1588–1679, referred to this as the Leviathan). Thus, religion and God are essentially human constructs.
ALEX: I understand your point. Indeed, if you cannot properly define God, what He looks like, what He expects from us, what His intentions are, or what we can expect from Him/her/it, then when something is so vaguely defined, we will simply continue our lives and not adjust our behavior to any religious dogma; especially if there is no empirical evidence of a higher being.
TREBLA: As for ethics and morality, I also consider these to be human constructs. There is no universal good or evil. It simply depends on the group itself. That a group seeks to survive and establishes rules to achieve that goal is understandable, but this can be done through different sets of rules. And these rules also change over time. Slavery was once considered “normal,” but today we view many historical practices very differently. Christians have their rules, as do Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, atheists, or even followers of ISIS.
We can drive on the left or the right side of the road, there is nothing inherently good or bad about it. It is simply an agreement between people to make coexistence easier.
ALEX: So religion is a kind of tool?
TREBLA: Yes, a tool to create order and meaning.
But if that is the case, we must be careful not to treat religious norms as universal.
Ethics appears more like a social contract: a set of agreements that makes cooperation possible.
And this brings us to the next step in our exploration: Is that contract primarily focused on the individual, or on the group?