Orphans of History

[gfish]

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.

Comments

[stolen-tea.livejournal.com]

When I've thought along those lines, my guesses are that the next "expansions" will be regarding how we treat of non-human sentients. Inter-human relationships seem to be doing what they've done for a while; there's a wide mix of views out there, but the average is moving slowly. And I doubt that the average is moving exponentially. We (in Seattle/in our social communities) are on the bleeding edge, and so while we do see exponential change, I'm not sure it indicates anything except that we live on the tip of a whip. I don't think the differences between now and 1807 are much more pronounced than, say, between 1807 and 1607.

Regarding the notion others have brought up that we've not made much progress in the last 200 years, I think we've definitely improved. There are areas in which certain types of violence rarely if ever happen any more, and they seem to be growing. And there's enough consensus about the right way to behave that when people violate the consensus, they lie about it or try to hide it. That suggests that the moral norms are universally recognized, even if they're not universally shared.

As for how we're viewed by our descendants, that's one reason why I try to look at historical figures with compassion and understanding. I don't think human beings have changed very much in the last few thousand years, so I put most of the blame and credit for moral standards onto society and history. I think that moral standards that we now think are clear, are only so because the chain of reasoning leading up to them has made them so; we stand on the shoulders of giants, and all that. I'd hope that a hypothetical future society with a more enlightened morality would have a better understanding of human weakness and strength, and would be able to judge us based on something other than unattainable perfection. (Which, by the way, is explicitly not an excuse not to do what we can.)