We're All in This Together

"Newborn babies don't have a lot going for them, their brains are still forming and the genes won't have much to work with until the kid gets to four or five years,  At that point the kid begins to love his parents.  He doesn't think well I better be nice to them or they won't feed me supper.  Well maybe that's on his mind a little, but the main thing is he just loves them, and if he can make them happy than he will do that without doing some math on what his effort will bring in return." - Uncle Ken

Okay, this clarifies it, and I can agree with that.  I thought Uncle Ken was saying that kids are just born being good, but it seems that he was saying they are born with the capacity to learn morality, and it takes some amount of time for them to develop it.  

Now to expand on my assertion that people do the right thing because they want something in return.  It's not exactly a quid pro quo thing, it's more like humans are social animals and morality is the glue that bonds their societies together.  It's a way of resolving disputes so that they don't escalate to the point of rending the group asunder.  If a guy were to live his whole life with the society in which he was born, he might not be aware that he had to do anything special to remain in it but, if he were to travel to a far off land and encounter a different society, he would have to make some adjustments if he wanted to be accepted or even tolerated.  

Non-human social animals do this too, but their social norms are largely based on dominance and submission.  A newcomer to the group needs to find a position in the pecking order that both he and the existing members can live with, otherwise the group will reject or even attack him.  Humans probably started out this way, but eventually advanced to more sophisticated operating systems.  At least some of us have.  It was a quantum leap from the rule of men to the rule of law, a leap that many people have yet to make.  As Uncle Ken has previously pointed out, our rule of law is still administered by humans, so we haven't completely abandoned the pecking order, but we're trying.  At least some of us are. 

In the modern world, our social contacts are no longer limited to the people who live next door to us.  Indeed, a person can be a member of multiple societies, none of which necessarily include his next door neighbors.  The problem is that your next door neighbors are still there, and they might not be very nice.