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Somehow, I don't think we're approaching the moral singularity.
Generations before us were moral failures by our standards, and in some cases, by their own. Slavery, labor rights including child labor, vigilante justice and rural lawlessness, political abuses that would never fly today, wars of conquest, and much more. The list is long and nasty, but all of those things were justified in their time.
Today we have the moral high ground over the entirety of human history. That makes it difficult to see where we are failing - beyond a few obvious examples - and some of the things that might become immoral may come about counter-intuitively.
Three easy ones
1. Factory farming. Even those of us who don't care that it's immoral, know that it's immoral. Our excuse is that it's a very efficient way to keep ourselves alive, but the suffering of these animals can no longer be denied, along with the great environmental costs.
2. The lack of universal healthcare (this is mainly an American thing). Surprisingly, a true universal healthcare is either not a majority belief in America, or a small majority belief today, depending on methods and variance between surveys. There is no question for me that our society today will be seen as monstrously morally deficient for not viewing healthcare as a basic human right.
3. Brutal criminal justice system. Future, more enlightened and intelligent people will think our prison industry was absolutely horrific. Between the violence, the length of sentences, the loss of rights, the lack of rehabilitation, the strict confinement, the sadistic corporate approach to supplying food and healthcare, the abandonment of ex-prisoners in society- the whole goddamn thing. It will be a towering monument to our inhumanity.
One that's counter-intuitive
4. Abortion. And I mean the killing of developing human life, not that my view that it's currently immoral to deny women abortion rights will prevail in the end. When the prevention and planning of pregnancy is a trivially easy matter, rather than an unfair test of adolescent and young adult personal responsibility, we'll be pitied for our recourse to the destruction of growing human life. It won't be seen as a Holocaust, but as a brutal, disgusting solution to a difficult problem.
One we'll get a pass on
Climate change and environmentalism. This one is also a bit counter-intuitive, because in our time, it is monstrous of us to ignore our environmental impact. However, I think we'll be judged on this like we judge misuses of technology generally - as experiments in ignorance or immediate necessity that were slowly corrected. Future people will understand why we drove so much, and they will feel bad for us belching our nasty fumes into the environment. We're going to be an exclamation point in an ice core sample, but not monsters.
The great unknown
The internet has already given rise to a few new moral considerations, and it will spawn many, many more. While we can't tell what those might be, there are considerations like privacy, access, bullying/trolling, pornography, and others that will shake up our values in unpredictable ways.
Go for it, this is fun
Generations before us were moral failures by our standards, and in some cases, by their own. Slavery, labor rights including child labor, vigilante justice and rural lawlessness, political abuses that would never fly today, wars of conquest, and much more. The list is long and nasty, but all of those things were justified in their time.
Today we have the moral high ground over the entirety of human history. That makes it difficult to see where we are failing - beyond a few obvious examples - and some of the things that might become immoral may come about counter-intuitively.
Three easy ones
1. Factory farming. Even those of us who don't care that it's immoral, know that it's immoral. Our excuse is that it's a very efficient way to keep ourselves alive, but the suffering of these animals can no longer be denied, along with the great environmental costs.
2. The lack of universal healthcare (this is mainly an American thing). Surprisingly, a true universal healthcare is either not a majority belief in America, or a small majority belief today, depending on methods and variance between surveys. There is no question for me that our society today will be seen as monstrously morally deficient for not viewing healthcare as a basic human right.
3. Brutal criminal justice system. Future, more enlightened and intelligent people will think our prison industry was absolutely horrific. Between the violence, the length of sentences, the loss of rights, the lack of rehabilitation, the strict confinement, the sadistic corporate approach to supplying food and healthcare, the abandonment of ex-prisoners in society- the whole goddamn thing. It will be a towering monument to our inhumanity.
One that's counter-intuitive
4. Abortion. And I mean the killing of developing human life, not that my view that it's currently immoral to deny women abortion rights will prevail in the end. When the prevention and planning of pregnancy is a trivially easy matter, rather than an unfair test of adolescent and young adult personal responsibility, we'll be pitied for our recourse to the destruction of growing human life. It won't be seen as a Holocaust, but as a brutal, disgusting solution to a difficult problem.
One we'll get a pass on
Climate change and environmentalism. This one is also a bit counter-intuitive, because in our time, it is monstrous of us to ignore our environmental impact. However, I think we'll be judged on this like we judge misuses of technology generally - as experiments in ignorance or immediate necessity that were slowly corrected. Future people will understand why we drove so much, and they will feel bad for us belching our nasty fumes into the environment. We're going to be an exclamation point in an ice core sample, but not monsters.
The great unknown
The internet has already given rise to a few new moral considerations, and it will spawn many, many more. While we can't tell what those might be, there are considerations like privacy, access, bullying/trolling, pornography, and others that will shake up our values in unpredictable ways.
Go for it, this is fun
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