[quote]Sloth wrote:
Again, it would be just be like choosing favorite colors. [/quote]
If your favorite color was red, and you regularly picked and ate things that were red, you would soon find out what the consequences of that particular choice are.
And when the other members of the tribe found you, lying motionless in the grass with a mouthful of half-chewed poisonous red berries, they will learn from your error in judgement. The berries of that tree will be avoided by everyone who saw you lying there, and their children, who are told the story of your demise by their parents
Generations later, children will be told by their parents not to eat that berry. The parents will have never seen your poisoned corpse (since you decomposed into the forest floor long ago), and perhaps they don’t even remember the details of the story of your demise. There is a taboo against eating the red berry. It is wrong, and one will be punished if he disobeys.
One night, lightning strikes one of the trees near where the tribe is sleeping. Panic ensues. The forest burns. Only a few of the tribe survives: a few men, some women, a couple of children. They make their way to a rocky, less forested, snake-infested land east of the forest. They remember, vaguely, the story of the red berries, even though there are none of those trees to be found.
As the generations pass, the new tribe manages to scratch out an existence among the rocks, keeping captured wild goats and harvesting the hard yellow seeds of the prevalent grasses. The snakes are a problem, being quick and sneaky with venomous bites, but the people have learned to kill them by stomping on their heads.
At night around the campfire, the old folks tell the wide-eyed youngsters the story of why they no longer live in the forest, where life was so good. It’s your story! The story of your death! But it has gotten much more interesting.
“It was First Father, who ate the Red Berries of Wisdom, which the Great Spirit had forbidden him to eat. His wife, First Mother had been deceived into gathering these berries for him by the crafty serpent, and indeed the berries gave his tribe wisdom, but the Great Spirit was angry. He sent a flaming arrow amongst the People, driving them from the forest. And that is why the serpent is hated by the women of our tribe: for the trick played on First Mother. And that is why Great Spirit, when he remembers First Father’s disobedience, sends his flaming arrows and beats his war drum. But then his anger subsides and he sends cool water from the sky.”
And that is how your favorite color just might lead to something like morality. Maybe even religion.