It's important for individuals to play an active role in their communities

These statements (#MaC) form part of the Morality as Cooperation Quiz

What is morality? Where does it come from, and how does it work? And how and why do moral values vary, between individuals, and across cultures?

The theory of ‘morality as cooperation’ (MAC) argues that morality is best understood as a collection of biological and cultural solutions to the problems of cooperation recurrent in human social life. MAC draws on evolutionary game theory to argue that, because there are many types of cooperation, there will be many types of morality.

These include: family values, group loyalty, reciprocity, heroism, deference, fairness and property rights. Previous research suggests that these seven types of morality are evolutionarily-ancient, psychologically-distinct, and cross-culturally universal.

Take the Quiz to work out what your particular mix looks like.

Being active in your community is not only a nice thing to do, but it could conceivably be expected, to some extent, as the consequence of living in a system that supports and sustains your very life.

• We should remember, of course, that not everyone will necessarily be able to help due to their personal circumstances. People with disabilities and the like should not be expected to be active in the same kinds of ways as others who are able to be. But, in general, I think I do believe that being active in your community is a fairly necessary thing, not only for the community itself to continue functioning at all, but also for the sake of reciprocating within and towards a supportive system that literally sustains you.

• If there are communities which are not functioning to support their people fairly, then the circumstances might not dictate activeness in them. However, I would argue that, at some point, new communities would be formed or at least attempted to be formed against the original oppressive ones. And in those cases, activeness in the community would be important again to maintain the supportive and often even life-saving system.