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I've been thinking a lot about the history of moral development recently, particularly the acceleration it has seen. Some byproduct of the industrial revolution (increased communication and travel?) has led to a race in moral improvement to match that of technology. We're extending what we define as human faster and faster. Which is great, but...
The more I really think about issues of moral development, the less I can identify with the past. 200 years ago was 1807. Nations openly, proudly went to war to build empires and capture resources. You could buy and sell other people. Democracy was in its rudest of beginnings, limited to the rich and the white. You could travel to any number of frontiers and spend a weekend killing natives for fun. Everyone alive was an absolute savage, a barbarian.
But how will I look in 200 years? The scary thing about exponential curves is that the farther you go, the more change there is. From the vantage point of 2207, I might end up looking a lot closer to the people of 1807 than to their own enlightened selves. How am I currently a bigot, and don't even realize it? What am I casually saying/writing/doing today that will cause them to shudder in horror?
The moral Singularity has already happened, and will continue to happen as we ride the curve upwards. We're the orphans of history, with an ever-decreasing pool of suitable role-models from the past, and an ever-increasing threat of hostile rejection from the future. From here on out, we're on our own.
The more I really think about issues of moral development, the less I can identify with the past. 200 years ago was 1807. Nations openly, proudly went to war to build empires and capture resources. You could buy and sell other people. Democracy was in its rudest of beginnings, limited to the rich and the white. You could travel to any number of frontiers and spend a weekend killing natives for fun. Everyone alive was an absolute savage, a barbarian.
But how will I look in 200 years? The scary thing about exponential curves is that the farther you go, the more change there is. From the vantage point of 2207, I might end up looking a lot closer to the people of 1807 than to their own enlightened selves. How am I currently a bigot, and don't even realize it? What am I casually saying/writing/doing today that will cause them to shudder in horror?
The moral Singularity has already happened, and will continue to happen as we ride the curve upwards. We're the orphans of history, with an ever-decreasing pool of suitable role-models from the past, and an ever-increasing threat of hostile rejection from the future. From here on out, we're on our own.
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Yes, we have broadened the definitions of Human, the basis of most "moral" development. But there is still massive genocide, USA is a defacto Empire, and there is a good chance I own and have eaten the products of essentially slave labor over the last year.
It may well be that in 100 years, being an omnivore like I am will have been considered utterly barbaric.
It sincerely hope that the present-day foreign policies of the USA (along with much of the rest of the world's governments and corporations) will be considered barbaric. However, many people do not see the past atrocities of the US as barbaric. How many Americans actively acknowledge that our nation was founded on the active and deliberate genocide of Native Americans?
And around the world, people keep doing the same crap over and over again. Israel is building ghettos for the Palestinians, Iraqi death squads are torturing people to death for belonging to a different religious sect, etc.
And it's not like we, as a "1st World Nation" are doing a lot better once you get outside our borders. Take S. Africa. For a long time, the US official policy was that the anti-apartheid leaders were criminals and communists, etc. Don't recall if "terrorist" was in vogue then, but that label would be stuck on them these days.
Argh. The whole "moral progress" bit is just a bit much for me. Basically, there is less excuse for the evil these days--it is awfully hard to argue that only ones local village is really "human"--but the evil still happens. Not sure if that is progress.
-B.