Compass points

Somewhere in The Selfish Gene, Dawkins explains that those animals that act to maximize the well-being of close kin can pick out their cousins, aunts, and so on. Dodging the question of how they recognize relatives, Dawkins says they "just know." The authors of Baboon Metaphysics offer a similar observation. I feel that my ethics and lots of other behaviors are part of my "just knowing." I never saw my dad do it, I can't remember anything he said to me before I was sixteen, he drives me crazy, but in countless situations I act just as he would, as he must have.

Did you ever choose a certain course of behavior because it was championed in a tv show you watched or in a neatly reasoned argument endorsed by Rawls? Or did those things just come along, adhering to your awareness because they squared with your predisposition? And where did that come from?

Orphans grow up without the terrible insufferable models we with parents are cursed with. Lucky, lucky orphans! Free to fuck up without feeling even dumber about it because your fuckuppery was handed you with your diapers, your bunkbed, your first car.