The Evolved Nest, Virtue, and Vice

The evolved nest provides an evolved baseline for optimizing species-normal development. Any shift away from the evolved nest should be considered a risk factor. Humans are dynamic complex systems that self-organize according to experience, and whose initial conditions shape subsequent development and function, barring later intervention. The evolved nest provides the type of stimulation and support at the right times and in the right ways for healthy development. Developmental psychological studies are beginning to examine nest components, demonstrating their effects on social and moral capacities. Neurobiological studies demonstrate the effects of evolved nest components on human functioning and disposition. We can also observe the vast difference in personality and culture between societies that provide the evolved nest and those that do not. Traditional Indigenous communities provide the nest and demonstrate the natural development of virtue. When the nest is not provided it represents a broken continuum of support and we should not be surprised that various psychopathologies result that promote individual vice and vicious societies. Industrialized capitalist societies have fostered people unable to fit into the biocommunity as fellow members and then have rationalized the disordered result with anthropocentric fatalistic theories like selfish-gene theory. The evolved nest is critical for restoring human nature to its earth-centric origins as found among our ancestors for millions of years.