# moral blind spots



## CTRandall

Picking up a theme started by Brian Turner, what modern practices that we accept as normal, even good, might future centuries look back on with horror? Brian's thread dealt heavily with AI, so maybe minimize that here.

One I was thinking of was prison. Not just the death penalty, as that is already controversial, but the whole notion of locking criminals, even violent criminals, away from the rest of society. Can we realistically imagine a society that views punishment with horror and focuses solely on rehabilitation? Maybe, in some more "enlightened" future, criminals are embedded in a cluster of people whose task it is to ensure that convicts learn to adjust their behaviour to the norms of society. This could have a dark side, too, as people grow accustomed to monitoring everyone around them for unacceptable behaviour.  And so everyone ends up being constantly rehabilitated. Kafka, here I come.

Any other ideas?


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## TheDustyZebra

I think the time is not terribly far off when our modern medicine will be looked upon with the same horror with which we now look at everything from a hundred years ago. The treatment of symptoms with ever-increasing piles of medications to counter the effects of other medications is just frightening.


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## Ihe

Probably not considered immoral in the future per se, but the institution of marriage won't hold up forever. One can already see the cracks in what once was the sole "correct" foundation for a family. It might look barbaric in hindsight to agree to a life-long exclusivity deal with a single partner.


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## Foxbat

I wonder how long it will be before somebody not only creates or modifies an embryo through genetic engineering but also tries to trademark it.


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## CTRandall

Hmm, I'm imagining combining a proliferation of family-types in combination with trademarks.  I can see the television ads now:

"Are you tired of your 2.5 kids? Then come on down to 'Family Tree'! We've got a wide range of children for you to choose from--intelligent, sporty, charismatic, whatever you want! You can even design your own! And if your current partner has got you down, we have a multitude of plans covering everything from single-parenting to multiple-partner, non-exclusive relationships! So what are you waiting for!"

(The customer assumes responsibility for all psychological and/or emotional damage. 1032% annual instrest rate on all financing.)


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## tinkerdan

Morality is a sticky issue or at least it can be. [Sometimes difficult to discuss without getting into religious and even sometimes political arguments.]

Morality is fluid and yet for some it's as rigid a ice.

Public nudity can be a moral issue: Some places have strict laws prohibiting it and often even more stringent toward certain segments of the population.
Some places had nudest camps and some allow nude beaches for recreational use.

Alcohol consumption can be a moral issue. Some places have strict measures perhaps all the way to prohibition. Some places allow children to drink alcohol and some require a specific age to be attained before they can drink.

This fluidity is what causes laws to be passed with some majority consensuses on how to handle these issues. And it is laws and upholding and enforcing the laws that created the need for prisons. For instance you can drink and run around nude at home but not in public.(Some places you might not want to do that because if you get caught it may not prove to be that loosely interpreted by the local enforcers.) If you do so in public you will be arrested. If you continue to do so in public you will be fined. If you are a repeat offender then you might eventually go to prison--you'll already have spent some time in jail. Prison and jail are the result of law and not necessarily involved in moral issues--sure things that happen in a prison might seem morally deficient, but that's why the prisoners are there because they have demonstrated an inability to rehabilitate. Oh did I mention prisons don't rehabilitate. But the fact and function of prison fall more under law than morality and in some cases it might prove to be protecting the criminal from retaliation from victims and their close family and friends.

The point is that although there may be some moral issues I feel are immutable, that doesn't mean everyone thinks that way and there might be some rigid moral issues they have that don't strike me as that important and it's this sort of disparity that leads to the necessity of law .  That gives us some tough choices--we can kill those who don't adhere to law--we can throw them into prison--we can try to rehabilitate them--we can fine them endlessly--or we could always strike the law from the books.

So which decision would be moral correct?

Or does anyone have other suggestions for viable decisions?


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## Judderman

We could argue that laws are immoral and constrain people's rights. I don't see that happening though as it would be bordering on impossible to avoid anarchy...and then new laws.


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## AnyaKimlin

I think our use of plastic and the mess of the oceans is an example where there is a change happening already.  People are seriously questioning do we need so much.


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## Ihe

To me, morality, just like politics, human rights, economy, religion, etc, kinda runs the cycle of thesis-antithesis-synthesis that Hegel talked about--if I recall anything from my philosophy classes. But even then, all those areas have some nigh-"universal" truths (or at least points almost everyone agrees with, like "incest/murder is bad", or "people should have a say in how they are governed", be those notions practiced or not, they are more or less well-known and accepted theoretically by the great majority). This gives me some hope that these cycles aren't infinite random loops. With each cycle that passes, we get just that bit closer to the ideal state (although reaching it is likely impossible, "close enough" is alright by me) because those perennial points of reference anchor the cycle in the right direction in a cumulative fashion.

With this said, I don't believe it'll be humanity's moral or intellectual merit if we end up at the right destination. Evolution dictates that most cultures know incest is bad not because of morality, but because it diminishes the survival chances of progeny and therefore, the species itself. In the same vein, world peace isn't desirable because it is morally good, but because it increases the chances of survival of a greater percentage of the gene pool. The selfish genes pull all the strings people!  Morality is just another world-wide genetic expression meant to positively modulate our general chances of survival, just like social dynamics, economic systems, government, etc.........Gosh I'm cynical today.

Am I making sense?


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## paranoid marvin

So many things could be frowned upon. Doing irreperable damage to our world because it's easier and cheaper to continue doing what we're doing or worse pretend it's not happening . Allowing some people to starve to death whilst others die because of having too much to eat. Having 1% of the world owning 50% of the wealth. Having weapons that have the power to end every life on earth.


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## Penny

When it comes to looking back on our society from a fictional future society. it becomes entirely about the journey that got your fictional future to where it is, the events that shape your society are the events that form your societies world view.

Here is a real world example - touchy subject bare with me please Americans I have a point with this 

In Australia, we used to have lots of guns, it was pretty free but we had lots of support for tighter restrictions on guns (you don't need assault rifles to hunt, you only need 1 bullet type mentality), you needed licences and such.
then we had the Port Arthur massacre (Australia) - Wikipedia and almost overnight what resistance there had been (US NRA was supporting our pro-gun lobby >.> go figure) melted away. and a gun buyback scheme was established as well as much tighter restrictions on ownership, mental health and background checks, as well as training, being mandatory for getting a gun.

So, we had a pre-established environment, we had a crux event (the massacre), which caused change, leading to our future society (tight gun regulation because guns kill people)

So, initial world, casual event, result

your future world will look back on our world through the eyes of experience, things that happened to cause your world inform their views.

So say America now, poor gun control, chaotically regulated, lazily organised. it has massacres every other week, what crucial event might happen in your fictional world to change America's view.  does it get worse or does it get better? how they view the past will be one of acceptance or disgust.

In an accepting future America, the school massacres continue, some regulations are added, but things remain mostly the same, parents start arming children, eventually arming all citizens becomes mandatory, they accept that guns have a vital place in society, they have no problem with the massacres, other than possibly not arming people sooner.

In a disgusted future America, eventually, a horrific massacre happens, hundreds die. armed teachers in the school fail to stop it. public opinion turns. guns are federally restricted and laws are put in place to ensure a minimum level of maturity and competence are required for access to weapons of different classes. gun buyback schemes are put in place and generally, people become happier as the slaughter stops. they look back with disgust at themselves and the politicians responsible.

(I understand that for American culture gun ownership is as much about a statement of personal freedom as it is about being able to shoot things or defend yourself)
(I use this merely to point out that history tells us that the course society takes often pivots on an individual event, this event shapes the society of the future, if America had such a defining event that fundamentally changed its societies views on gun control, then whatever that event was is what changed things. it could be anything.) 

So how a future society views us is more about the journey and less about how things are at either end.
The journey informs our future world and its views, but there are reasons for those views. 

To have a structurally sound scifi you do need to do a bit of backstory development on the history of your world


If your world needs to eat babies and be fine with that... well good luck coming up with a logical course of events for that one but yeah, your going to need, your intial conditions (now) the event (babies became delicious?) and that informs your result (now we all eat babies)

Morality doesn't come into it in the long run. morality is only an issue if the changes are short term, eg, within the current generation people remember clearly what it was like when we didn't eat babies. any future world will be fine with it if enough time removes them from the decision that eating babies was a thing we do now.


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## Cathbad

I think today's prisons are already looked upon with horror.


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## mosaix

Cathbad said:


> I think today's prisons are already looked upon with horror.



Visited Shrewsbury prison two weeks ago. It is now a museum of sorts. It closed as a prison in 2015. It is absolutely barbaric. 

Each cell is about 8” x 6”, held two prisoners, had windows above head height and only had running water and toilets installed in 2005.


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## janeoreilly

Childbirth.


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## Nick B

Removed. As I didn't spot the F word on the pic


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## Nick B

Treating animals incredibly badly, making their short lives a total misery, then killing them, often painfully, to eat. It's a complete moral blinds pot right now. Hopefully, we will be better in the future.


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## WaylanderToo

wow, talk about a quandary. On the one hand, something that we can view through a genre lens - on the other hand, this is deffo one of the 'world affairs' issues that was closed off some time ago.


there are certainly black and white areas for me here. I am vehemently anti-capital punishment (that pesky changes in morality aspect) so the life for a life punishment is off the cards:

Murder - life imprisonment
Rape (proved beyond doubt) - life
Child abuse (all kinds) - life
No time off for good behaviour - time *added* for poor behaviour.

is that barbaric? Possibly. Does that make me a 'neanderthal'? Again, quite possibly. 

The thing is that society _needs_ laws, *needs* boundaries. Without these it would be anarchy (and not in the cuddly sense that many anarchists seem to think is desirable), we would be no better than animals. 

I'll say here and now I'm far from an environmentalist as many view this - I am however appalled at the amount of waste we generate for no reason. To me, it makes no sense to throw away finite resources and I think that it is the sheer waste that happens that will appall future generations.

With regards to the starving masses, I'd have to put myself in a different camp. I truly feel for these poor souls. The issue however is that there is not a lot that can be done. 30 years of handouts have destroyed livelihoods (who'd become a farmer/fisherman etc when you can get free food?) and encouraged 'strongmen' to hold sway over large areas. 

There is a lot of good that can (and should) be done - however, we need to think beyond the 'quick fix' and the sticking plaster. We need to think for not the next generation, possibly not even the generation after that but the generation after that.


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## Nick B

WaylanderToo said:


> With regards to the starving masses, I'd have to put myself in a different camp. I truly feel for these poor souls. The issue however is that there is not a lot that can be done.
> .



This is a very common misconception, worldwide, we grow enough crops to feed approx 8 billion people, that we feed solely to livestock. That figure doesn't include crops we grow for human consumption. 
80% of Amazonian deforestation is for livestock, or to grow crops to feed livestock.
51% of total worldwide greenhouse gasses are from animal agriculture. 

These figures aren't propaganda, they are UN figures and readily available. 

I suspect in the future, if there are any people left, they will look back, shake their heads, and ask 'Why?'


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## WaylanderToo

Nick B said:


> This is a very common misconception, worldwide, we grow enough crops to feed approx 8 billion people, that we feed solely to livestock. That figure doesn't include crops we grow for human consumption.
> 80% of Amazonian deforestation is for livestock, or to grow crops to feed livestock.
> 51% of total worldwide greenhouse gasses are from animal agriculture.
> 
> These figures aren't propaganda, they are UN figures and readily available.
> 
> I suspect in the future, if there are any people left, they will look back, shake their heads, and ask 'Why?'




not denying yourfigures at all but... 30 years of handouts have destroyed livelihoods (who'd become a farmer/fisherman etc when you can get free food?) and encouraged 'strongmen' to hold sway over large areas.


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## Nick B

Yep, that happens on small and large scale. It induces dependancy, great for the big guys, terrible for the rest.


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## Ihe

And I'd add that most "handouts" almost never make it to their intended targets, partially or fully, as the more needs a country has, the more governmental corruption. I've never seen a case that has not been so, and I've been around .


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## Brian G Turner

IMO the following are going to be huge moral issues in the future:

Near future: Any form of prejudice and inequality will be rejected as unacceptable. This will go way beyond issues of race or gender, and include any form of negative connotations connected to body shape, form, expression, etc: we are all equal, merely different.

Continuous future: Having seen how much we've harmed the planet and its wildlife, not only will positive environmentalism become the norm, but the everyday consumerism of our time - which has fueled global devastation - will become routinely condemned, along with all people taking part in it. The future will also be naturally horrified by our treatment of animals.


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## Judderman

The animals and environment one is a funny one in that due to our breeding of cattle they (particularly cows) account for a large chunk of greenhouse gases. Plus deforestation occurs to have grazing land. I wouldn't really want to be vegetarian but even ignoring ethical concerns there is a good environmental case for making meat a restricted produce. Effectively requiring a cull on livestock (or stopping breeding). The media focuses on factories, fossil fuels and transport but maybe this will be a focus one day.
Rice, via rice paddies, also produces methane so that is not a good alternative.


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## Penny

If we were to try to predict future norms based off current and past events. I would say things will always be different based on geography and culture.
In russia it is basically illegal to be gay, it is illegal to tell children that you can be gay "because it might make them gay as well! ,tis like cooties i tell you!!!"

Many countries who take an anti american or european stance on things have begun enacting homophobic laws that they previously never had. they see the move towards equality and acceptance as a westernization. as Moral corruption. this allows them to paint the west as an immoral culture.

Saying the world is moving towards acceptance is a very narrow view. in many ways it is getting worse, especially as countries latch onto equality as being a western ideal.


There are moves to increase punishments for various sexual offences and to make sure offenders are punished for it, in the past many kinds of sexual abuse were largely ignored by society as a whole and the law.
For example in many places if a prostitute was raped. police would completely ignore it. this is still the case in many countries.

Marriage in many countries used to happen at crazy young ages compared to our views today. It was not until we started legally defining the age of adulthood that laws and protections were put in place to protect young people from making bad decisions or being used by predators.
In some countries children are still married to 40 year olds. usually in arranged marriage situations.


Most if not all moral issues are entirely cultural, geographical or religious in their origins.

Technically we are not moral beasts, society works within a framework of agreed norms. these change over time in response to short term issues.
Using various drugs, alcholol and other substances has, in many places at different times been illegal, usually as a political response to make it look like whoever is in power is seen to be doing something to protect people from lawlessness or define thier regime from the previous one.

If you want to know what will be the state of laws, culture and societal norms in the future. it really depends what happens. Australia has some really good examples of what I am talking about. we have a small population compared to most countries but a strong legal system and active government. so when things happen our government often reacts and creates laws about how we need to behave.
In melbourne a few years ago we had a spate of knife attacks, in the period of like a month there was something like 10+ stabbings. as a result it became illegal to carry pocket knives beyond certain lengths. and of certain types.

Our system moves very quickly to react to things perceived as a threat or wrong or injust.
Other countries seem to move very slowly, but australia is very very young compared to the others. but it has some good examples on the way things change politiclaly and legally based on reaction to stimulus.


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## Toby Frost

I think that we are so morally varied that the moral blind spots of the future will depend on who ends up in charge. I would say that there are four main moral/political groups in the West (or the developed world), which can overlap in different ways: Capitalist Right; Religious Right; Workers' Left and Diversity Issues Left. (I would also say there is a fifth group, Extremists, who seek power or purification in helping destroy society, but they don't quite apply here). Each group will have potential blind spots depending on the sort of person it idolises or exoticises: a banker, a pastor, a proleterian, an immigrant, say.

I think it is too hard to call which of these groups will have the most say in society in the future, and I suspect that the answer will vary by location. Also, I would not expect people's reactions to the world's problems to necessarily be rational: the response to the extinction of species, for instance, might be to deny that it has occurred or praise God for destroying them as much as it might be to try to conserve others.


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## Parson

Interesting Thread..... Here's one I would like to see pursued in a SF book which I could easily see happening. A world without pets. I think it is beyond the pale if as I've heard: if every American would give the money they use to feed their pets to fight world hunger there would be none!


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## Montero

Mine would be overpopulation - how we keep on increasing in numbers, using up resources ever faster, taking land away from wildlife.

In terms of SF that has been done - Sheri Tepper for one. Including aliens coming to earth to stop us trashing it further.

I'm afraid I completely disagree regarding pets - I think having pets, and indeed feeding wildlife in the sense of wild birds coming to suburban gardens - connects humans with species other than our own and helps to focus outward from human-centric behaviour. Like anything, it can be done to excess, but I think keeping pets in conditions where they are happy, is a good idea.


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## Judderman

There are lots of items and luxuries we could say we spend money on but don't need. In fact could be more than half of spending is far from necessary for many people. On the other hand there are jobs and incomes for people involved in the industries/companies making/advertising/selling these products.


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## Parson

Montero said:


> Like anything, it can be done to excess, but I think keeping pets in conditions where they are happy, is a good idea.



But not if it means humans must do without. I would like to see a 100% tax on pet food and have every dollar/pound etc. go toward world hunger.


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## Montero

Parson there is no direct correlation that food fed to pets would go to humans if the pet wasn't there. It is my understanding, that a lot of pet food is made from stuff that are by-products of the human food chain - as in already rejected for human consumption - gristle for example. World hunger is far more complex than that, starting with the delivery of food being part of the problem as has been mentioned earlier in the thread.
I also disagree that humans are so important that their needs should always take precedence over animals'.


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## SilentRoamer

Interesting thread.

I think the West suffers from a sort of cultural and moral relativism, where we think "deep down" everyone yearns for the Western ideal - liberty, equality, freedoms - sexual, religious and other forms of Western morality which have developed (arguably) out of a particular Judeo christian ideology.

I have a lot of friends from different places in the world and we often talk about their culture and a good Chinese friend of mine says one of the thoughts the Chinese have with the West is that we try to push our own moral values onto the East. They generally don't do the same to us. 

Moral narratives, are fluid and change over time, they arise from different ideologies. I think there are some basic moralities that almost all demographic groups have but I think these arise out of a Darwinian necessity for co-operation and are a by product of that. 

Will be interesting to see where the world goes as the West becomes more liberal I feel other places in the world will become less liberal as a direct counter measure to protect their own moral consistency.

Just my thoughts.


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## SilentRoamer

@Parson I think you have oversimplified the issue of world hunger. Lets just say that all funds that were used for pets are now ploughed into solving world hunger. So:

1. Who would organise possible the largest redistribution of wealth ever seen?
2. Would they neccesarily be benevolent (corruption in some of the poorer places in the world is rife and visible)
3. What about the millions now displaced from a job? The people who have trained for many years as vetinaries, the drugs companies manufacturing vetinary medicie, the animal food production, pet accessories, the list goes on.

It's like a magic panacea with no real thinking behind it - it would probably cause more problems than not, I also don't think the sums would come close to adding up. I truly believe the population is approaching a point where world hunger CANT be solved. We have a finite world, with finite energy systems and there's a reason for the UN agenda 21. 

I consider you a measured and reasoned person from your posts on here but I think your heart is ruling your head on this one.


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## Cathbad

Are not our animal companions as important as we are?

What would the world be like without them?  I'm pretty sure the world would be much better off without humans than any other beast.

We are all animals.


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## Montero

SilentRoamer said:


> Interesting thread.
> 
> I think the West suffers from a sort of cultural and moral relativism, where we think "deep down" everyone yearns for the Western ideal - liberty, equality, freedoms - sexual, religious and other forms of Western morality which have developed (arguably) out of a particular Judeo christian ideology.
> 
> I have a lot of friends from different places in the world and we often talk about their culture and a good Chinese friend of mine says one of the thoughts the Chinese have with the West is that we try to push our own moral values onto the East. They generally don't do the same to us.



I do wonder if this is arising from Christianity having an Evangelical tradition - starting with all the saints going out from Rome to convert the pagan. This was also a very strong theme in the Victorian period, with all the missionaries and converting the heathen. By then there seemed to be a lot of blurring of Christianity with Western tradition - not just convert the heathen to Christianity but get them to wear respectable clothes and behave like a Western template because that is what the Victorians considered a Christian to be.


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## Parson

SilentRoamer said:


> I think you have oversimplified the issue of world hunger


Of course I have over-simplified the argument. We are talking about story plot ideas, not trying to solve the problem. And my argument is not about what is being fed to the animals, (although a lot of that is in fact very edible for humans) my argument is about what is being spent to feed the animals. In reality, today there is no need for anyone to live with dangerous hunger. The food is available it's just not affordable with the present economic distribution. 

*On thread topic*: My story plot would begin in a near future world where humans have to prioritize what will have access to the available food, humans or human pets. I can't help but believe that such a story would garner a lot of attention and a lot of anger, (but that might be good for book sales) to suggest it is more important for people to support an orphan in Niger or Cambodia or wherever than to have a friendly puppy running around the house. The moral question which would lurk would be: Is it morally acceptable to choose for a pet to eat when it means to choose against some person living far away whom I will never meet to eat. 

*Aside:* In our world today that choice is not so stark. Here in the West we can easily choose both. But the vast majority of us, pet owners and others are only focused on what makes me feel good. I also suspect that the distribution would be easier than some would think. A lot of NGO's have the ability to feed many more people if they had the monetary means to do it. For example: If Bread for the World would have double the income I suspect that they would have at least double the impact. --- If I were to try to solve the problem of today's world hunger I would see "handouts" as the story idea suggests as short term, and things like micro loans, training and education as longer term answers. All of which takes capital, which is available with only a slight adjustment of our priorities.


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## Montero

Regarding how much money is spent, why target pets?
Why not target money spent on re-decorating to follow fashion? Buying a new car when your old one works just fine? Why target living creatures when you could easily make far larger savings elsewhere?
And why do story plots have to be over-simplified and unrealistic? Because that is the corollary of what you are saying.
If I were to be presented with a story which did an either/or on feeding pets or people, I would say that the plot was oversimplified and melodramatic - it had picked on an overly restricted either/or that was deliberately setting out to upset people. In writing sf, we should do better than that.

Regarding distribution there are many cases of corruption in receiving countries. There is only so much an NGO can do when a bunch of armed locals turn up and point guns at them and their food convoy.
There are also cases where handouts were the worst possible thing - I remember seeing a documentary on how the economy of an East African country was trashed by EU beef mountain beef. So EU over-produced, it wasn't actually a hand-out, but it was sold cheaply, it was more tender than locally produced meat. The economy of the country rested in part on inland farmers raising local beef cattle and walking them to coastal markets. They did that, got there and their former customers said, no thanks, we prefer the tastier stuff from Europe.


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## Judderman

Muslims may also try to convert people so that is not just restricted to western religion. It comes back to religions usually claiming that if you don't follow their belief you will suffer in the afterlife.. Muslims, Christians and Jews follow the same God, although it doesn't seem like that. But still usually view their own religion as the way to enlightenment/reward/holiness etc.


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## Brian G Turner

Okay, can we try and keep this thread specifically on topic to imagining moral considerations of the future - a simple thought experiment good for spec fic? I don't want this thread turning into a World Affairs thread by the backdoor.


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## Nick B

The moral blind spot of world hunger can be simplified down to this - we grow enough crops to feed 14 billion people. We feed so much of it to cattle, that a billion or more humans are starving. If we fed people instead of cattle, there would be no hunger, and all of the land (roughly 1 third of the world's landmass apparently) currently used for animal agriculture, could be turned over to forest, and still have more food than we can currently use. This would also eliminate 51% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions. 
Pretty much most of the climate problems solved, all hunger eliminated, no more farm animal welfare problems, our medical system would see a massive decrease in expenditure, no more deforestation, water shortages would be almost eliminated... Need I go on? 

Just one change. One. Some day, hopefully humans will look back in utter dismay that we didn't solve this sooner.


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## Montero

Nick - I'd love to go into detail disagreeing with your simplistic statement, but Brian has asked us not to go into World Affairs, so .........

I'd post a moral consideration of the future but am struggling to think of one that isn't related to stuff likely to tumble into World Affairs. Mucking up the sky with jet aircraft trails, nope, using resources for personal adornment, nope.

One thought - art. Sculpture, oil paintings, great buildings. Society currently puts value on great creations (and IMHO some rather less than great - unmade beds spring to mind). I've had a lot of pleasure from going round art galleries, visiting impressive buildings and am glad the art exists. However much of it was created for the elite that could afford it. So could there one day be a view of say Rubens, Constable, Landseer and the like as immoral, not uplifting, because they were paid for with money gathered by people at the top of the economic pyramid? And that art should only be enjoyed if it was ethically paid for? Ethically being say a small subscription from a very large number of ordinary people? (In the way that mosques are built in the UK - the local muslim community collecting money to build the mosque.)
Though all the starving artists then spring to mind - folks like van Gogh who painted pictures that sold for diddly squat in their life time and only became valuable later - they'd fall outside that particular criticism. You could add in paintings for which the artist didn't receive appropriate reward.


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## Montero

Further thought - it occurs to me that the OP said this:



CTRandall said:


> Picking up a theme started by Brian Turner, what modern practices that we accept as normal, even good, might future centuries look back on with horror? Brian's thread dealt heavily with AI, so maybe minimize that here
> 
> Any other ideas?



So far, we've all largely managed to discuss stuff which is already under criticism - distribution of resources, misuse of resources etc. But something that is currently considered normal becoming immoral is a big step of imagination. I am trying to think of something historical that wasn't criticised in its day, that has now changed as a first step in working out how to imagine a future immorality - but criticism is what causes the change. The human race rarely does a universal consensus on anything   Using computers as tools is something not criticised (I think) in terms of the effect on the computer, but is in terms of the effect on human interactions and in human health - but that's been done. Other than that.....

At this point I am wondering about a writing exercise where you pick three words out of a hat and try to imagine how they could become immoral in the future - either individually or as a collective. Sitting at my computer, looking around for inspiration, I give you
Aspidistra, ceiling, laundry rack.

Go for it.


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## Nick B

My post is simplified for the sake of space but the facts and figures are hard and easily verified by UN, WHO and other sources. That isn't world affairs, it is moral blind spot because what it takes to fix is simple, but uncomfortable. Basically, because people don't want to not eat bacon and beef.


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## Judderman

As was predicted in that intelligent movie Demolition Man it could be some societies become morally against real, sexual contact. That it is dirty. Whereas at the same time other societies could be breaking more and more sexual related taboos. Two sides getting more and more extreme.

Regarding AI it may be one day deemed immoral to give AI personality.


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## Montero

@Judderman - on sex yes, but that is kind of there already and has been for a long time.

On AI and no personality - yes and no on that being new. It could be an extension of it not having a soul. It could be extrapolated from currently not giving much consideration to the feelings of human workers....

I've been trying to think of something else that is a total change about and not just things which are currently regarded variably (eating meat, having sex). Not having much luck other than the paintings thing earlier and that might be considered an extension of communism. Did think of Hellspark by Janet Kagan, where there is quite a bit about culture clash on different standards of morality - in a light way as a group of scientists from different planets try to settle down to work together. In that, one culture has a taboo on bare feet and one of the other scientists loves going around in bare feet and painting her toenails green. When she is persuaded to wear boots, things settled down. So I was thinking about bare feet - but there are already all sorts of opinions and cultural bias on that already - so not a complete change.

That leads me to high heeled shoes - because of the damage they do. But some people already consider high heels immoral from a sexual temptation viewpoint. I have seen sf with future worlds where if you deliberately do something that can lead to future health problems (smoke, eat too much) then you don't have medical care. But that is already popping its head up currently.

It is really hard to think of something, that hasn't been disapproved of already, somewhere.

Ho hum, I'll go and work on the immorality of an aspidistra.That's my challenge for the day - how could an aspidistra be immoral.


----------



## Cathbad

I would think there'd be a lot less focus on morals in the future.


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## Parson

Cathbad said:


> I would think there'd be a lot less focus on morals in the future.



Hm, I wonder. I suspect that morality will change or perhaps change names, but I think judging people and things as to their intrinsic value is hard wired into humanity. --- (i.e. not so many generations ago having multiple spouses - usually wives - was widely thought as being perfectly moral. Today that view is seen as antiquarian at best.)


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## Cathbad

Parson said:


> Hm, I wonder. I suspect that morality will change or perhaps change names, but I think judging people and things as to their intrinsic value is hard wired into humanity. --- (i.e. not so many generations ago having multiple spouses - usually wives - was widely thought as being perfectly moral. Today that view is seen as antiquarian at best.)


I agree - people will always judge others.

But will their judgement continue to be moral-based?  Or possibly performance-based?


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## Montero

Ooh, yes please. I think there is already some judgement on performance based, and certainly in UK rural areas, judgement on neighbourliness - as in actually talking to your neighbours, not being regularly annoying and being prepared to lend a hand or look out for them (like spotting strangers wandering around). 
But being primarily judged on how well you do your job, rather than how good you look in a suit, or the speed with which you deliver an answer (right or wrong - often wrong because done too quickly) - bring it on.


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## CTRandall

Last week's issue of New Scientist reported on research that suggested 8-month-old babies not only recognize the difference between people who pay attention to crying babies (other babies, not themselves) and people who ignore cryimg babies. The toddlers seem surprised by the behaviour of those who ignore the babies, suggesting that the foundations of moral judgments are hardwired into human brains, at least in regard to some basic behaviours.

In other words, morality ain't goin' nowhere.


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## Montero

Mmm. Is their surprise a moral judgement or just surprise at something that doesn't happen very often?

Not saying that there are not basic behaviours wired in, just saying that the idea that ignoring a baby is immoral is not proven by the experiment. Thinking further, I am not convinced that ignoring a baby is immoral - I remember my mother saying she could tell by the tone of her babies' crying what they were on about and some she could safely ignore for a bit. That there was a difference between "hungry" "distress" "temper tantrum" "just exercising lungs because it is part of the development".

There is however proof of a sense of fairness - see






Any species where there is social interaction has to have some ground rules built in. Another one on fairness, from a slightly different perspective is cougars sharing food. Saw it on a documentary a couple of months back, have just found this link that gives information on the study.

Once Thought Loners, Cougars Revealed to Have Rich Society


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## Arden

I remember having an online argument with some guy who thought eugenics of the disabled was a good idea, and I said I'd be more comfortable in a society that helps and cares for the disabled, versus a society that kills them. I think morality is definitely a part of social interaction between species, and the more complex the social structure, the more it's reliant on trust and morality for it to succeed to some extent, like that three musketeers quote.


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## Graymalkin

I'm sure I read somewhere that some ancient Celtic tribes would weigh the men/warriors and if they were considered to be overweight would be fined proportionately (or actually have the corresponding weight in flesh excised) can't remember.

Perhaps we'll see a trend towards something similar in terms of 'excess' wealth (wealth = fat) and as populations expand, resources become rarer so the lower the threshold.

Something more conscious than simple tax penalties but not as post apoco-lala as the desperate scrabblings of Mad Max.
Perhaps this could lead to a Onka's big Moka scenario where people have to give stuff away rather than be fined/be seen as immoral so maintaining a functioning balance between collective wealth and personal rewards.
Financial traders trying to out give each other? 
I may not have thought this through too deeply?


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## Montero

Hhm. It is theoretically what was tried with communism, so not convinced. Unless it is inherited, wealth doesn't come with no effort, so if it is all to be taken away, why make the effort?


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## Cathbad

Montero said:


> Hhm. It is theoretically what was tried with communism, so not convinced. Unless it is inherited, wealth doesn't come with no effort, so if it is all to be taken away, why make the effort?


When was Communism ever tried?

Like... never.


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## Montero

Hence the word "theoretically".

In theory it was supposed to be equality, but every time it's been used, it wasn't.


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## Cathbad

Montero said:


> Hence the word "theoretically".
> 
> In theory it was supposed to be equality, but every time it's been used, it wasn't.


Actually, I don't believe anyone has actually tried - nor really wanted - Communism.  It continues to be a ruse to disguise totalitarian regimes.


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## Parson

I would agree @Cathbad ... but I would say rather than "Communism" --- complete socialism.


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## TimBaril

I think that the only way humanity surives is if it can overcome the selfish side of itself. Cooperation is the only long-term path to survival for large, complex organisms like ourselves. When we add the fantastic technological abilities we've gained, the need to cooperate becomes ever more vital. 

I should hope that, one day, a more cooperative world looks back on the selfishness of unchecked capitalism and realizes what folly it was and how much harm it causes. And that any serious act of selfishness is immoral.


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## MWagner

It's worth pointing out that the world has been getting better in virtually every measurable way for a couple centuries now, and dramatically better in the last few decades. If you had to swap places with the average person at any time in history, you'd be a fool to choose any time except today. Within living memory, half of the people on the planet lived under threat of famine. Today, that number is less than 5 per cent. What may be the greatest accomplishment of humanity - the virtual elimination of starvation - has gone largely unrecognized because it doesn't seem to be in human nature to recognize our progress, but instead to focus all of our energies on the gap between our current state and the next rung in the ladder of progress. The problem with that bias is if we don't even recognize that we're making progress, we may neglect to maintain the institutions, values, and tools that were responsible for that progress in the first place.

As for the original exercise, it's a cop-out to offer up behaviours and beliefs that a great many already regard as immoral today. It's more interesting to imagine moral beliefs that _we_ - the enlightened posters in this thread - feel are perfectly okay today and which our grandchildren or great-grandchildren may not. So I'll throw a couple out there:

Keeping animals as pets. 

Raising your own children.
I can see how existing trends, extended dramatically further, could bring us to a stage where those behaviours are regarded as immoral. But the biggest problem I have with making guesses about human norms 50+ years in the future is I think by that time we'll be seeing the effects of genetic manipulation and transhumanism, and once we have the capability to revise our very instincts, all bets will be off.


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## Parson

I think "keeping animals as  pets" has a very real possibility of coming to be if animals are seen being closer to human and/or if we move into an era of more scarcity. 

As far as "Raising your own children" probably comes into play if we move to more and more authoritarian form of government where personal beliefs are not respected when in opposition to the group norms. 

But I think you've hit on a couple of possibilities which are widely accepted now, but have a chance of being immoral in another time.


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## Anthoney

On the Crossing a show new show about refugees from the future, a comment went something like this,  "They say this meat actually comes from living animals".  They had things like beef and pork but it was all grown in tanks.


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## awesomesauce

Montero said:


> Regarding how much money is spent, why target pets?



I was reading an argument that having children is the worst thing that one can do for the world, in terms of consumption. But very few people are willing to question the basic right of people to have as many children as they please, or suggest that having more children than you need is causing harm to other people. (Even if it's true.) I think in the long term future, unchecked human reproduction, and the devastation caused by our proliferation and unchecked consumption, is going to be the unexamined barbarism of our time abhorrent to future generations. Not least because the reasons for encouraging reproduction, for making it a moral act, are intrinsically about political and economic power. My faction needs greater numbers, my product needs more consumers, my government needs more taxpayers. And so we prop up our system by perpetuating our population to insanely unbalanced and unsustainable levels.


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## awesomesauce

Montero said:


> I am trying to think of something historical that wasn't criticised in its day, that has now changed as a first step in working out how to imagine a future immorality - but criticism is what causes the change. The human race rarely does a universal consensus on anything



Slavery. It wasn't entirely without criticism (what ever is?) but owning or being owned by other humans was certainly normal, and even occasionally considered moral, for the vast majority of human history. When people talk about slavery, it's dominated by the specific instance of slavery in the Americas (primarily the US) but European colonists weren't even the first to industrialize mass slaving to provide a work force. It's only since the 20th century it's been globally agreed that slavery is an atrocity, and it wasn't completely abolished by all governments until Mauritania finally outlawed it in 1981. There are still fringe pockets of human society that consider slave owning moral and would like to see it reinstated. Societal change, even on something that seems as obviously horrific and immoral to us now as slavery, is incredibly slow.


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## Vladd67

An interesting view was covered by Arthur C Clarke in 3001, there was no interest in crime fiction as criminals were thought of as mentally ill and by association only the mentally ill would be interested in reading about crime. Who knows in the future Society may regard unplanned and unsanctioned pairings of people as immoral for social and genetic reasons and therefore regard the romance novel as immoral as well.


----------



## MWagner

Parson said:


> I think "keeping animals as  pets" has a very real possibility of coming to be if animals are seen being closer to human and/or if we move into an era of more scarcity.



You can already see an inkling of it today. In my neck of the woods, it's socially unacceptable to buy a dog or cat from a pet store, and buying from breeders is starting to be frowned on. The socially conscientious source of pets is shelters and rescue foundations. So for-profit breeding and selling of intelligent animals for personal gratification is already becoming morally tainted.



Parson said:


> As far as "Raising your own children" probably comes into play if we move to more and more authoritarian form of government where personal beliefs are not respected when in opposition to the group norms.



This one is less likely, or at least further in the future. It has some of the same roots as the pet one, namely a belief that it's immoral to impose a resources cost by breeding new people when you can adopt the less advantaged instead. There's also the fact, not yet acknowledged but becoming increasingly difficult to ignore, that parents pass onto their children both a socio-economic and a genetic legacy, and that these unequal legacies are a major source of inter-generational inequality. A more fair system may be to effectively spread out that genetic advantage so it doesn't concentrate into an unbridgeable class system.

Of course, such an effort to enforce egalitarianism would run contrary to some of our deepest innate impulses around reproduction and child-rearing. Attempts at raising children in communal creches have all foundered on the rocks of these innate impulses. So I agree that it could only happen in a far more authoritarian society than we have today.



Anthoney said:


> On the Crossing a show new show about refugees from the future, a comment went something like this,  "They say this meat actually comes from living animals".  They had things like beef and pork but it was all grown in tanks.



I think it's a pretty safe bet that my kids will live to see a time when eating meat grown on animals will be a rare indulgence of the extremely affluent, and regarded as repulsive by most people. My grandkids will regard pictures of me BBQing a pork shoulder on the rotisserie with the same kind of embarrassment with which we regard people in the 1930s doing blackface routines.


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## Montero

awesomesauce said:


> I was reading an argument that having children is the worst thing that one can do for the world, in terms of consumption. But very few people are willing to question the basic right of people to have as many children as they please, or suggest that having more children than you need is causing harm to other people. (Even if it's true.) I think in the long term future, unchecked human reproduction, and the devastation caused by our proliferation and unchecked consumption, is going to be the unexamined barbarism of our time abhorrent to future generations. Not least because the reasons for encouraging reproduction, for making it a moral act, are intrinsically about political and economic power. My faction needs greater numbers, my product needs more consumers, my government needs more taxpayers. And so we prop up our system by perpetuating our population to insanely unbalanced and unsustainable levels.



Good for you - and I am a Population Matters member btw (Overview - Population Matters) - so working to get the message over. Also had better say, that there is a policy on here to avoid getting into discussion on World Affairs as there have been some heated ones in the past couple of years. I don't _think _this is enough to cause trouble, but really wanted to cheer your response.

On the subject of governments  - I remember seeing a documentary how the concept of a census was invented because a government wanted to find out how big an army they could field for sure, rather than relying on guesswork. The answer was a lot less than they were expecting. I also recall reading "somewhere" - can't currently find a link -that Roman matrons with three or more kids could wear a stripe to show their honourable status.


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## Onyx

I think (hope) that future societies reject morality itself.

In the past, a moral code was a simple algorithm that kept people out of trouble by stabilizing useful social mores: Too much shell fish related illness? Kosher rules. Children of single mothers starving? Enforcement of adultery laws. Constant warfare from coups? Class system and the divine right of kings.

And that was not such a bad idea when most people spent their time working constantly. Now we have time for education and virtually unimpeded access to facts and figures. Human beings should be in a transition from using a preset algorithm to make their life choices to exercising their judgement of the actual consequences of their actions. And that has happened to an extent as the Christian West has puzzled its way through a lot of sexual politics and concluded that gay people marrying and having children does not actually represent a threat to the social fabric (and it has been interesting to watch that change happen in polls over a very short period of time).


However, the majority of people still see information as a tool to confirm their "convictions", and rarely see the conflicts in the things they are passionate about. Right now there is a moral blind spot to armed citizenry. Educated people present this "debate" as a clash between reason and something else, yet no one is having reasoned discussions about the history of armed citizens in English common law, the number of people killed in the last 200 years by their own oppressive governments or the growing authoritarianism in world politics. Never before have governments had the kind of potential coercive power over their citizens as they do now, yet it is widely believed that powerful militaries and police should be combined with disarmed populaces. It would almost seem like an emotional or "moral" revulsion to individual incidents of violence has completely eclipsed the fear of genocide and despotism.


That's just an example - but we need to start realizing that morality generally is myopic and that the death of a puppy in our home town is of greater moral offense than the death of an entire village in Sri Lanka. That speaks to how emotions and morals connect, and how a smarter future humanity would abhor the unconscious exercise of moral will rather than approaches that are more scientific or mathematical. I don't think it would be such a terrible thing for people to avoid committing crime because of the consequences rather than due to a moral code that is clearly applied so inequitably. 



(Hi to all, and pardon the heavy first post content.)


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## Judderman

With apparently rising cost of healthcare maybe eventually doing unhealthy acts will be seen as immoral and encouraged by governments to be treated as immoral. For example drinking more than a glass of alcohol, smoking even e-cigarettes, eating cake or drinking soda as it may increase your need for healthcare and thus demand on the system.
Of course it could go the other way and diet pills or surgery are so effective that many people don't care what they eat as long as it tastes good.


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## Cathbad

Some local governments are already regulating what you are able to get to eat.


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## Judderman

Although Zoos are popular with many there could be a rise against them regarding captivity.


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## Judderman

Cathbad said:


> Some local governments are already regulating what you are able to get to eat.


You mean with import duties?


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## Montero

@Onyx - hi there, good to see a new member on Chrons. Interesting points on morality, speaking as someone who likes to think for myself that is an interesting point on how the position on gay people has changed. The whole idea of debate and change though has been around an awful lot longer than people think - the Putney church debates which were part of the aftermath of the English Civil War being a classic example. You look at what they were calling for Putney Debates - Wikipedia and it is remarkably "modern" and some still not achieved.
Your point regarding some people not seeing the conflict between their own opinions - that is where learning the logic of debate and analysis is useful. As someone trained as a scientist I tend to bring that kind of logic into online debates and yes, not everyone is familiar with it. Maybe in the future it would be considered "immoral"  if the school system doesn't teach you how to think logically and independently.


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## Danny McG

Going back to the start of this thread



CTRandall said:


> what modern practices that we accept as normal, even good, might future centuries look back on with horror?


One that occurs to me is the slapping of kids.
I don't mean heavy spanking/belting "wait until your father gets in" type of corporal punishment (way over the top IMO)  - I mean a harassed  parent who reaches out and slaps a kid's wrist for grabbing at things in a shop or kicking granny in the shins.

There are already cases where someone has done this and been reported, usually by the person who, two minutes earlier, was muttering  "That child needs a good hiding"


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## Cathbad

Judderman said:


> You mean with import duties?


No.  At least one state (New York) has passed a law declaring what kind of oil can be used in restaurant fryers.  Other municipalities have limited the size of the cups of soda that can be sold.  All in the name of "health".


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## awesomesauce

Montero said:


> Also had better say, that there is a policy on here to avoid getting into discussion on World Affairs as there have been some heated ones in the past couple of years. I don't _think _this is enough to cause trouble, but really wanted to cheer your response.



I hope I didn't get _too_ political! It's probably not possible to speculate on the moral values of future humans, and how they might judge us, without considering current moral culture and values, and the outcomes of the morality we choose to formalize and enact. (And that which we don't.) But I didn't mean to get on a political soapbox and I deeply apologize if anyone felt I did.

I only mentioned government as an example of a powerful institution with a historic and continuing interest in population increase, and which, in most of its current implementations, presents a barrier to that moral future. I discounted both military and industrial examples because I think in the not-so-distant future, human bodies, either as cannon fodder or mechanical labour, are going to be more costly than the replacement technologies. Though that's based on the presumption our current moral trends continue, and humans continue to become more expensive while technology becomes cheaper.

Recently I read a book (which even pertains to this discussion!) called_ The Rise of Victimhood Culture_, by sociologists Bradley Campbell and Jason Manning. It focuses on the evolution of what they call "victimhood culture", which takes some elements from both dignity and honor cultures, but awards moral status differently and places emphasis on different moral values. Among other things, it highlighted for me how much of what we call "politics" (the kind people are unpleasant to each other on the internet over, not statecraft) is actually moral conflict. Culture wars are fought over moral dominance.



Onyx said:


> that has happened to an extent as the Christian West has puzzled its way through a lot of sexual politics and concluded that gay people marrying and having children does not actually represent a threat to the social fabric (and it has been interesting to watch that change happen in polls over a very short period of time).



A couple months back, I also reread Howard Becker's _Outsiders_, his book on deviance, and one of the things that struck me is how subcultures he chose as iconic examples of deviance in mid-century America  (male homosexuals and marijuana users) aren't considered especially deviant in western culture anymore. Mostly. Where I live, I think we still regard recreational drug use as somewhat deviant and harmful, but it's changed a lot in American culture since Becker's study on the subject. But then, in tandem, there exist current cultures where homosexuality and drug offenses are considered so morally reprehensible and socially damaging they merit execution. So I would say "We look back on the treatment of gay people as barbaric and inhumane" but that "we" is limited to members of a specific culture, examining their own culture. It's not universal.

I can't think of any moral principle every human culture agrees on, either positively or in condemnation, and I don't know how it would happen in the future unless we ended up with the 20th century sci-fi utopia where humanity unites under a single WorldGov which defines and legislates the collective morality. Who knows how far in the future you would have to go, and how much we would have to change, for that to happen. I don't know if we would even recognize those people as humans.



Montero said:


> On the subject of governments  - I remember seeing a documentary how the concept of a census was invented because a government wanted to find out how big an army they could field for sure, rather than relying on guesswork. The answer was a lot less than they were expecting. I also recall reading "somewhere" - can't currently find a link -that Roman matrons with three or more kids could wear a stripe to show their honourable status.



Nazi Germany did the same thing, rewarding women who bore a certain number of children; they loved to appropriate them some classical culture too. And I believe France still awards parents of large families with a medallion. There are probably more. And even in places where the dominant culture doesn't place high value on family size, there exist subcultures like the Quiverfulls who hold having as many children as possible as a moral duty.

Which makes me reflect on how my previous answer was based on an idea of what _I_ would consider advance in human culture and society and moral thinking, and the assumption that we (as a society) would progress in that vein. I suppose it could just as easily go another way, where values that we take for granted as "good" and morally progressive, even things like equality or democracy which, though imperfectly realized, we ("we" being defined as my social and cultural milieu) don't question as having value. But then, I recall there have been some studies indicating decreased support for democracy in the west, especially among younger people. And some people may consider that an advance; it's unlikely society goes collectively in a direction that has zero appeal to anyone.

Future humans could just as easily look back on the things we think we have right and be appalled by how wrong we were, according to their current values. Take the idea of democracy. In a culture that places high value on education and expertise, duty to society rather than the self, and patience, future humans might think _what were past humans thinking, look at the messes they made by letting the mob vote in any smooth talking johnny-come-lately, look at the nepotism and corruption where temporary rulers had no long term stake and used their position to benefit themselves and their friends, look how they were unable to accomplish anything because of constant changes in leadership and direction_.

Or maybe they'll look back on the things we think we're doing wrong, and think_ they had it right_. Take the prison example from the OP. In a future society where the justice system focuses on humane rehabilitation to the exclusion of retribution, maybe victims are denied the emotional satisfaction of seeing their tormentors punished. Maybe people in that society would come to see that as prioritizing humane treatment of the victimizer over catharsis for the victim, and as a moral failing.

And now I've thought myself in circles on the subject of moral future, and I need a good stiff vodka. Unfortunately lunchtime drinking is morally sktechy in my culture. (It may not stop me.) I'm so, so sorry for the length of this post. It got away from me.


----------



## awesomesauce

dannymcg said:


> Going back to the start of this thread
> 
> 
> One that occurs to me is the slapping of kids.
> I don't mean heavy spanking/belting "wait until your father gets in" type of corporal punishment (way over the top IMO)  - I mean a harassed  parent who reaches out and slaps a kid's wrist for grabbing at things in a shop or kicking granny in the shins.
> 
> There are already cases where someone has done this and been reported, usually by the person who, two minutes earlier, was muttering  "That child needs a good hiding"



It's illegal to hit children here, full stop, since 1979. (Here being Sweden.)


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## RJM Corbet

I'm in here late, but in a world where leaders use heavier-than-air chlorine gas to force people up out from the basement into the open where they can be more easily slaughtered etc, I find it ridiculous  that modern universities have sheltered spaces where students don't have to hear anything that upsets them, and where speakers that don't go along with popular opinion, including faith issues, are 'no platformed' and not allowed to speak, etc.

Mao tse Tung was responsible for the deaths of 70 million people. It's a dreadful world.

Perhaps we just don't realise how lucky and privileged we are even to be able to debate such issues? I often feel we we could be grateful for what we have, instead of seeking out every trifling cause  to cry 'injustice' so often?

Perhaps @awesomesauce 'victimhood culture' sums it up, lol?


----------



## Montero

@awesomesauce - I thought that you were still on the OK side (just my opinion but no moderator has been by, so..... ) but thought I'd mention it early enough that you'd know that there is a line, in case you got closer. (Hope that makes sense, not gibberish - had a long day.)


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## RJM Corbet

For all we know our privelidged and coddled western future may be a nuclear winter. Sorry ...


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## Cathbad

RJM Corbet said:


> I find it ridiculous that modern universities have sheltered spaces where students don't have to hear anything that upsets them


Just a thought, but shouldn't people also have the right not to listen to what they don't want to?


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## RJM Corbet

Cathbad said:


> Just a thought, but shouldn't people also have the right not to listen to what they don't want to?


Of course: you can not attend that talk, or leave the room? But that's not the same as not allowing someone you don't agree with to even speak? Let's not get into extreme examples of hate-speech etc, which opinions are forbidden expression by the law of the land ...


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## Onyx

Cathbad said:


> Just a thought, but shouldn't people also have the right not to listen to what they don't want to?


Sure, but that's entirely different than demanding that it not be spoken.


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## Brian G Turner

Cathbad said:


> Just a thought, but shouldn't people also have the right not to listen to what they don't want to?



Freedom to say what you want, freedom to listen to what you want. 

Anyway, it would be good if we could get back to being speculative about the future - there have been some really interesting and thought-provoking ideas - but I really want to avoid any discussion on current social politics, as it's too divisive to discuss here.


----------



## Cathbad

Brian G Turner said:


> Freedom to say what you want, freedom to listen to what you want.
> 
> Anyway, it would be good if we could get back to being speculative about the future - there have been some really interesting and thought-provoking comments - but I really want to avoid any discussion on current social politics, as it's too divisive to discuss here.


----------



## Cathbad

Personally, I believe there will be morality in the future - and the specifics will be similar to ours now.

Even after a few thousands of years, our current (common) morals aren't much different.  How we deal with violations has changed rather dramatically, but not the underlying morals.


----------



## Onyx

Cathbad said:


> Personally, I believe there will be morality in the future - and the specifics will be similar to ours now.
> 
> Even after a few thousands of years, our current (common) morals aren't much different.  How we deal with violations has changed rather dramatically, but not the underlying morals.


I don't think we are upholding many morals that aren't already deeply connected to property rights and the laws that protect them. Most of the "victimless crime" sort of moral codes - abstaining from sodomy, honoring your parents, showing courage, avoiding graven images - are really no longer considered at all outside of specific enclaves.


Can you think of any morals that are strictly adhered to by the general population that aren't also the subject of law? I wasn't able to.


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## Cathbad

Onyx said:


> I don't think we are upholding many morals that aren't already deeply connected to property rights and the laws that protect them. Most of the "victimless crime" sort of moral codes - abstaining from sodomy, honoring your parents, showing courage, avoiding graven images - are really no longer considered at all outside of specific enclaves.


Exactly.  The moral code(s) are still there, but we react to them quite differently.


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## Onyx

Cathbad said:


> Exactly.  The moral code(s) are still there, but we react to them quite differently.


It used to be a sin to cut your hair - especially for women. It is still in the religious literature, but we have long since stopped reacting to it to the point that no one really remembers it was ever a moral issue at all. Is a moral rule no one is even aware of "still there"?


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## RJM Corbet

Humanity has to try. Rights have to be fought for. If wheelchair users don't lobby for ramps at public venues, they won't get them? Although everyone knows there can never be such a thing as true equality and freedom for all, it's better to try to establish equality and freedom: for people, for animals, for fringe groupings -- than not to. Of course. But the future may not be any better?


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## awesomesauce

RJM Corbet said:


> I'm in here late, but in a world where leaders use heavier-than-air chlorine gas to force people up out from the basement into the open where they can be more easily slaughtered etc, I find it ridiculous  that modern universities have sheltered spaces where students don't have to hear anything that upsets them, and where speakers that don't go along with popular opinion, including faith issues, are 'no platformed' and not allowed to speak, etc.



The book by Campbell and Manning specifically focuses on the campus environment. Something I liked about it is that they're open about their personal bias in preference of dignity culture, but they still do their best to accurately describe, without judgment, what they see as a new moral culture emerging. Having read it, and the paper it was based on, I think it was excellent and would recommend it anyway, but in the context of future moral cultures, it seems especially relevant.


----------



## awesomesauce

Onyx said:


> I don't think we are upholding many morals that aren't already deeply connected to property rights and the laws that protect them. Most of the "victimless crime" sort of moral codes - abstaining from sodomy, honoring your parents, showing courage, avoiding graven images - are really no longer considered at all outside of specific enclaves.


Those moral codes weren't just social attitudes when they were written, remember, they were being set down as laws. Religion and belief weren't private things, they were the formal system of government for a specific group of people, with clear rules for who was in charge, inheritance and property, taxes, penalties and fines, in addition to the laws governing social behaviour.

Looking specifically at the Abrahamic faiths (which, taken together, is where the majority of humans draw their moral ideals) this is evident in the Torah (the first five books of the Old Testament) of Judaism and the Quran of Islam, but not so much for early Christianity. Early Jews and Muslims were setting down the rules for self-governance, while the early Christians weren't a "people" in the same way; they were subject to Roman rule and the laws of the states where they lived, and without the authority to administer legal decisions and punishment on their own behalf, which is reflected in their scripture. (There's this really good non-religious book, _Rome and Jerusalem: The Clash of Ancient Civilizations_ by Martin Goodman, that delves into the relationship between the Jewish and Roman cultures and states and the early Christians.)



Onyx said:


> Can you think of any morals that are strictly adhered to by the general population that aren't also the subject of law? I wasn't able to.



If we feel strongly enough about something that the general population strictly adheres to it, we tend to enshrine it in law so that we can legitimately enforce it and punish those who deviate. And it goes the other direction too. As something seems silly or irrelevant or unjust to the general population, we eventually drop it from our laws. (It may linger in the written code for long time, but enforcement stops.)

How social & moral attitudes influence law creation is a super interesting subject, like the history of the Temperance movement, prohibition, and its repeal, in 20th century America is fascinating.


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## awesomesauce

Thinking about this really drives home to me how correct Margaret Atwood was when she said "Science fiction is really about now." I'm having so much trouble imagining a future society more than a generation or two removed from my own, and I know I'm projecting issues on them which seem huge in our time but might be barely worth a historical footnote to them. I wonder if, in their wildest imaginings, Sophocles or Euripides or Virgil, or even Jules Verne or Robert Louis Stevenson, ever could have come up with us.


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## mosaix

awesomesauce said:


> Thinking about this really drives home to me how correct Margaret Atwood was when she said "Science fiction is really about now." I'm having so much trouble imagining a future society more than a generation or two removed from my own, and I know I'm projecting issues on them which seem huge in our time but might be barely worth a historical footnote to them. I wonder if, in their wildest imaginings, Sophocles or Euripides or Virgil, or even Jules Verne or Robert Louis Stevenson, ever could have come up with us.



You're not alone. In the past (going back over several decades), New Scientist ran a series of articles asking scientists to forecast technical innovations and their affect on society. Periodically they review these articles and their accuracy. Hardly a single thing that was predicted came to fruition and most of the important innovations - mobile phones, the internet etc. - were missed entirely.

Maybe the driving force isn't science at all. Maybe it's commerce.


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## Montero

Commerce or convenience?
I think stuff that is briefly fashionable (THE must have Christmas toy for example) is definitely driven by commerce, or commerce exploiting one-up-manship behaviour.
Mobile phones and the internet are enormously convenient plus a source of pleasure. (Also massive annoyance, but even that some people sort of enjoy  )

In terms of future morality, I wonder what feed-in there might be from commerce, convenience and pleasure. I can think of one sort of commerce feed-in - who you buy from and how you buy. Ethical shopping, supporting the high street shops vs online ones..... the strength of feeling that some people have on those issues is on a par with the strength of feeling some people have on items on a moral code and I think it is migrating over for some people. As in it's immoral not to support your high street, or to buy from an unethical company.


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## MWagner

My sense is leisure and entertainment will be one of the primary driving forces of innovation in coming decades. A substantial proportion of people will spend almost all of their time engaged in digital entertainment, and the means and structures of this engagement will get very powerful and sophisticated. Not simply virtual reality technology itself, but the social structure fostered in these digital worlds. We're social animals. Status-seeking animals. Story-craving animals. Combine those with technology and I suspect we're on the verge of a sea change in social engagement. Identities and roles in fictional worlds, built around the emerging mythology of entertainment properties of Harry Potter, Star Wars, Marvel Universe, Game of Thrones, etc, will come to have more meaning than our meat-space identities and roles. And while we flutter and twitch in our VR tanks, bravely defending the rebellion from the emperor's stormtroopers, Amazon drones will drop protein bricks and VR-enhancing drug kits into our delivery chutes.


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## Danny McG

MWagner said:


> Amazon drones will drop protein bricks and VR-enhancing drug kits into our delivery chutes



Is that a thing? Is there a VR enhancing drug now? (Awed!)


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## Danny McG

I think people will be held in repugnance due to their ancestors present day jobs

"*What? Your grandmother worked in a tobacconist's shop? She sold people that foul cancer causing drug? Shame on You!"*

I feel it'll be like somebody nowadays whose ancestor was a concentration camp guard - you'd keep very quiet about it and hope nobody ever finds out


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## awesomesauce

dannymcg said:


> Is that a thing? Is there a VR enhancing drug now? (Awed!)



Given the current state of VR, pretty much any drug would enhance the experience.


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## awesomesauce

MWagner said:


> And while we flutter and twitch in our VR tanks, bravely defending the rebellion from the emperor's stormtroopers, Amazon drones will drop protein bricks and VR-enhancing drug kits into our delivery chutes.



This is the best argument I've seen against the "brains in vats" idea. Like, if you were programming a reality for a bunch of disembodied consciousnesses to exist in, this tragic version of The Sims is what you'd come up with? Really???


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## Onyx

awesomesauce said:


> Thinking about this really drives home to me how correct Margaret Atwood was when she said "Science fiction is really about now." I'm having so much trouble imagining a future society more than a generation or two removed from my own, and I know I'm projecting issues on them which seem huge in our time but might be barely worth a historical footnote to them. I wonder if, in their wildest imaginings, Sophocles or Euripides or Virgil, or even Jules Verne or Robert Louis Stevenson, ever could have come up with us.


I don't know if I agree with that at all. While SF is a product of now and reflects our hope and dread, much of the purpose of SF is to illustrate the dramatic results of purely speculative situations. Margaret Atwood may feel and write differently, but that doesn't mean Vernor Vinge is operating the same way.



awesomesauce said:


> Those moral codes weren't just social attitudes when they were written, remember, they were being set down as laws. Religion and belief weren't private things, they were the formal system of government for a specific group of people, with clear rules for who was in charge, inheritance and property, taxes, penalties and fines, in addition to the laws governing social behaviour.


That's the history, and given the way the universe was understood to operate in those times, the laws made sense. No one wants to have family members turned into pillars of salt.

But the evolution of law is always away from purely "moral" social codes and toward laws that protect the ability to do commerce. And while we are still in that process, much of the 20th century has been about removing "moral" barriers to free trade between citizens - like Jim Crow. Our laws are increasingly ethical rather than moral, and the morals that aren't codified in some sort of penalizing law are less and less observed. At some point, there won't be any laws protecting "decency" at all because they will have been shown to negatively impact individual livelihoods.


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## Amberlen

Onyx said:


> I don't know if I agree with that at all. While SF is a product of now and reflects our hope and dread, much of the purpose of SF is to illustrate the dramatic results of purely speculative situations. Margaret Atwood may feel and write differently, but that doesn't mean Vernor Vinge is operating the same way.
> 
> 
> That's the history, and given the way the universe was understood to operate in those times, the laws made sense. No one wants to have family members turned into pillars of salt.
> 
> But the evolution of law is always away from purely "moral" social codes and toward laws that protect the ability to do commerce. And while we are still in that process, much of the 20th century has been about removing "moral" barriers to free trade between citizens - like Jim Crow. Our laws are increasingly ethical rather than moral, and the morals that aren't codified in some sort of penalizing law are less and less observed. At some point, there won't be any laws protecting "decency" at all because they will have been shown to negatively impact individual livelihoods.




I hesitate to wade into this one, just from reading through,I would certainly be odd man out.... but I am curious as to whether you believe there actually is right and wrong.... based on themselves entirely, regardless of economics, morals,situation,ethics or anything else? Maybe I am reading you wrong, but it came across as a cynical outlook from the above post..is that my misinterpretation?


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## Onyx

Amberlen said:


> I hesitate to wade into this one, just from reading through,I would certainly be odd man out.... but I am curious as to whether you believe there actually is right and wrong.... based on themselves entirely, regardless of economics, morals,situation,ethics or anything else? Maybe I am reading you wrong, but it came across as a cynical outlook from the above post..is that my misinterpretation?


"Morals" aren't right or wrong, which is why "good" people reject bad morality. Morals are more a guide post for those who aren't able to sense right and wrong on their own and can instead check the rule book when they are unsure.

There is very little that could be said to be universally "wrong". Killing in self defense, stealing to feed your family, etc demonstrate the lack of universal yardstick. Right and wrong are individual, situational decisions that people have to make when presented with a dilemma. 


I certainly believe in my ability to tell right from wrong. I just don't think I could necessarily teach it, and think we have morals, ethics and laws to allow society to function even when everyone can't judge righteously.


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## Amberlen

Onyx said:


> "Morals" aren't right or wrong, which is why "good" people reject bad morality. Morals are more a guide post for those who aren't able to sense right and wrong on their own and can instead check the rule book when they are unsure.
> 
> There is very little that could be said to be universally "wrong". Killing in self defense, stealing to feed your family, etc demonstrate the lack of universal yardstick. Right and wrong are individual, situational decisions that people have to make when presented with a dilemma.
> 
> 
> I certainly believe in my ability to tell right from wrong. I just don't think I could necessarily teach it, and think we have morals, ethics and laws to allow society to function even when everyone can't judge righteously.



soo, i agree with the first statement, wholeheartedly. But very few things universally wrong? i think there are definitely things universally wrong(and right)...if , as human beings, we cant agree on even basic rights and wrongs..and teach and instill that into future generations, that is for sure a recipe for darkness.
no offense @Onyx


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## Onyx

Amberlen said:


> soo, i agree with the first statement, wholeheartedly. But very few things universally wrong? i think there are definitely things universally wrong(and right)...if , as human beings, we cant agree on even basic rights and wrongs..and teach and instill that into future generations, that is for sure a recipe for darkness.
> no offense @Onyx


I think I'd stick with "very few things are universally wrong", because we constantly point to the exceptions necessary for the greater good. In a strict moral framework it would always be rape to do a body cavity search, and it would always be murder to kill a murderer. Which is why most people don't have a lot of patience for total pacifism. 

I'm not saying that any of this is relativism. I'm saying that right and wrong are judgments requiring the ability to understand subtlety, while moral are mechanistic codes that don't tolerate the use of judgment. Someone can be good without ever having a moral code to state.


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## Amberlen

ack, body cavity search=rape is getting WAY more nitpicky than i would have. but you are saying within a moral framework. i am saying i think we can disregard "moral" frameworks, bc , you are correct, there is no standard. what i am saying is i believe there are intrinsic "rights" and intrinsic "wrongs"
ie. it is intrinsically wrong, no matter circumstances to rape someone. etcetera etcetera


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## Onyx

Amberlen said:


> ack, body cavity search=rape is getting WAY more nitpicky than i would have. but you are saying within a moral framework. i am saying i think we can disregard "moral" frameworks, bc , you are correct, there is no standard. what i am saying is i believe there are intrinsic "rights" and intrinsic "wrongs"
> ie. it is intrinsically wrong, no matter circumstances to rape someone. etcetera etcetera


Agreed. And I'm saying that every time you try to codify right and wrong by writing down a moral framework, you are going to run into these judgment issues that show the limitations of such a code. Which is kind of an interesting line between the rules of the Old Testament and the parables of the New Testament.

Right and wrong stand free of easily declared morals.


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## Amberlen

@Onyx i think we are generally on the same side..just not set on all the details


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## Joshua Jones

Onyx said:


> I think I'd stick with "very few things are universally wrong", because we constantly point to the exceptions necessary for the greater good. In a strict moral framework it would always be rape to do a body cavity search, and it would always be murder to kill a murderer. Which is why most people don't have a lot of patience for total pacifism.
> 
> I'm not saying that any of this is relativism. I'm saying that right and wrong are judgments requiring the ability to understand subtlety, while moral are mechanistic codes that don't tolerate the use of judgment. Someone can be good without ever having a moral code to state.


With all due respect, I think the weakness of your position is that you are looking at actions divorced from intentions and/or consequences and making moral judgments regarding those actions. This has always been the weakness of pragmatic ethical systems like deontology, as you rightly note. However, There are at least two other major branches of ethics which haven't fully been explored here (at least to my knowledge). 

Utilitarian Ethics is the position that the outcome of an action is the central concern of ethics, and the goal should be to cultivate as much "good" as possible for as many people as possible. Now, there are dozens of different forms of Utilitarian Ethics, but they all basically attempt this above point. The advantage of this position is that it avoids the problems you mention, as the outcome is the focus, not the action. So, using your cavity search example, there is a logical reason in Utilitarian Ethics that rape is different than a cavity search; the former causes immense suffering for no benefit to the sufferer, while the latter benefits the sufferer in that there are reduced quantities of deadly weapons present, and therefore, the person is safer, as well as reduced quantities of contraband that is often the cause of violence in settings where cavity searches are more common. This good outweighs the bad of the cavity search. However, there is a significant weakness. If a person is gang raped by enough people, eventually, he or she will loose consciousness and/or die, and the number of subsequent attacks becomes irrelevant. The damage has been done, and whether the victim is assaulted by 3 or 300 more is virtually irrelevant. However, the attackers are deriving some pleasure from the attack, and if you add enough attackers into the mix, it is hard to overcome the argument that their pleasure outweighs the victims' pain. To put it another way, if the pain of gang rape until death is a -100, and the pleasure each attacker derives from the attack is 0.5, then, once the 201st attacker is done, the situation becomes a net positive. And, if it is a net positive, according to Utilitarian Ethics, it is morally right. Now, I am reasonable sure that we all would argue that gang rape can never be morally right, but one would be hard pressed to establish why under Utilitarian Ethics. Hence, as a theory, I think it is lacking.

In contrast, Virtue Ethics is the position that things are right or wrong based on what sort of people we are or become based on what we do. In other words, why we do what we do is just as significant as what we do, and both add up to develop our moral character. So, going back to the cavity search, few people who perform them actually want to, and they only do it because they believe the prison system is safer and better without the contraband smuggled in orifices. Further, rape is the violent dehumanization of a person for the sake of selfish pleasure, whereas cavity searches are in the best interest of the prison society (or so it is believed, anyway). Therefore, one action is selfish, and the other is selfless. Should a guard take sadistic pleasure in performing these checks, that person is not exhibiting a virtue, but a vice, and therefore is morally wrong, even though the actions haven't changed. However, the weakness of this position is there are often contrasting virtues in a given situation. Assuming the virtues of honesty and protection of those in mortal danger, it could be difficult to work out the proper moral action/attitude when a murderer asks you where his victim, who just ran by and hid, went. Personally, I think this issue can be resolved if virtue is seen as singular gem with myriad facets, but that is a conversation for another time. 

So, all this to say, the subject of ethics is vastly more complicated than is commonly portrayed, and only one major branch of ethical theory is primarily concerned with an action itself. And, to address the OP, much of it will depend on what sort of ethical system is adopted and what field of study is the basis for this. If it is a scientific based utilitarianism, they may see the proliferation of religion as ghastly, as it (in their minds) only creates false hopes and interferes with our progress as a species. If it is a religious utilitarianism, they may see our lack of forced conversion as ghastly, as this may ensure the condemnation of millions (assuming, of course, that they believe that forced conversion is legitimate conversion).

(For anyone who may be interested in more information on these, this [Virtue Ethics (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)] and this [Consequentialism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)] provide good introductions on the subjects)


----------



## Joshua Jones

Just to bring my above, excessively long essay back into relevance for SFF and writing, there is an opportunity for some very compelling writing based on varying ethical theories, assuming they are presented fairly. One could take a scientific utilitarian and a scientific virtue ethicist and have this disagreement, and how they look at the world differently, fuel their conflict. Done correctly, it can make the protagonist and antagonist deeply relatable.


----------



## Onyx

Joshua Jones said:


> With all due respect, I think the weakness of your position is that you are looking at actions divorced from intentions and/or consequences and making moral judgments regarding those actions. This has always been the weakness of pragmatic ethical systems like deontology, as you rightly note. However, There are at least two other major branches of ethics which haven't fully been explored here (at least to my knowledge).
> 
> Utilitarian Ethics is the position that the outcome of an action is the central concern of ethics, and the goal should be to cultivate as much "good" as possible for as many people as possible. Now, there are dozens of different forms of Utilitarian Ethics, but they all basically attempt this above point. The advantage of this position is that it avoids the problems you mention, as the outcome is the focus, not the action. So, using your cavity search example, there is a logical reason in Utilitarian Ethics that rape is different than a cavity search; the former causes immense suffering for no benefit to the sufferer, while the latter benefits the sufferer in that there are reduced quantities of deadly weapons present, and therefore, the person is safer, as well as reduced quantities of contraband that is often the cause of violence in settings where cavity searches are more common. This good outweighs the bad of the cavity search. However, there is a significant weakness. If a person is gang raped by enough people, eventually, he or she will loose consciousness and/or die, and the number of subsequent attacks becomes irrelevant. The damage has been done, and whether the victim is assaulted by 3 or 300 more is virtually irrelevant. However, the attackers are deriving some pleasure from the attack, and if you add enough attackers into the mix, it is hard to overcome the argument that their pleasure outweighs the victims' pain. To put it another way, if the pain of gang rape until death is a -100, and the pleasure each attacker derives from the attack is 0.5, then, once the 201st attacker is done, the situation becomes a net positive. And, if it is a net positive, according to Utilitarian Ethics, it is morally right. Now, I am reasonable sure that we all would argue that gang rape can never be morally right, but one would be hard pressed to establish why under Utilitarian Ethics. Hence, as a theory, I think it is lacking.
> 
> In contrast, Virtue Ethics is the position that things are right or wrong based on what sort of people we are or become based on what we do. In other words, why we do what we do is just as significant as what we do, and both add up to develop our moral character. So, going back to the cavity search, few people who perform them actually want to, and they only do it because they believe the prison system is safer and better without the contraband smuggled in orifices. Further, rape is the violent dehumanization of a person for the sake of selfish pleasure, whereas cavity searches are in the best interest of the prison society (or so it is believed, anyway). Therefore, one action is selfish, and the other is selfless. Should a guard take sadistic pleasure in performing these checks, that person is not exhibiting a virtue, but a vice, and therefore is morally wrong, even though the actions haven't changed. However, the weakness of this position is there are often contrasting virtues in a given situation. Assuming the virtues of honesty and protection of those in mortal danger, it could be difficult to work out the proper moral action/attitude when a murderer asks you where his victim, who just ran by and hid, went. Personally, I think this issue can be resolved if virtue is seen as singular gem with myriad facets, but that is a conversation for another time.
> 
> So, all this to say, the subject of ethics is vastly more complicated than is commonly portrayed, and only one major branch of ethical theory is primarily concerned with an action itself. And, to address the OP, much of it will depend on what sort of ethical system is adopted and what field of study is the basis for this. If it is a scientific based utilitarianism, they may see the proliferation of religion as ghastly, as it (in their minds) only creates false hopes and interferes with our progress as a species. If it is a religious utilitarianism, they may see our lack of forced conversion as ghastly, as this may ensure the condemnation of millions (assuming, of course, that they believe that forced conversion is legitimate conversion).
> 
> (For anyone who may be interested in more information on these, this [Virtue Ethics (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)] and this [Consequentialism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)] provide good introductions on the subjects)


What I think your post is missing is that "morals" is a set of relatively concrete principles that can be taught in a relatively short time to people of all intellects.

So while Mao may have had excellent reasons for killing so many people for the "greater good", there is no applicability to a moral system that individuals can apply in their own lives.

You can describe the mental gymnastics of various people's thought processes with a variety headings, but it always comes down to a judgement call about what the person considers "good", how much power they have to effect others and what they imagine the ultimate good is. Depending on the person, that could be genocide or society with no laws at all.

So to bring it back to backsides, it is nearly impossible to say that there is a clean cut rule about invading another person's body. If you respect individuals, any invasion is morally repugnant, and if you take a more pragmatic approach you quickly end up in a place where the King's needs rule and the actions of those that serve him are 'morally' justified. 

Generally, good people gravitate toward a place where individuals are treated with maximum respect up to the point where the individuals themselves have made it impossible. And that involves real judgement, not a rule book.


----------



## Joshua Jones

Onyx said:


> What I think your post is missing is that "morals" is a set of relatively concrete principles that can be taught in a relatively short time to people of all intellects.
> 
> So while Mao may have had excellent reasons for killing so many people for the "greater good", there is no applicability to a moral system that individuals can apply in their own lives.
> 
> You can describe the mental gymnastics of various people's thought processes with a variety headings, but it always comes down to a judgement call about what the person considers "good", how much power they have to effect others and what they imagine the ultimate good is. Depending on the person, that could be genocide or society with no laws at all.
> 
> So to bring it back to backsides, it is nearly impossible to say that there is a clean cut rule about invading another person's body. If you respect individuals, any invasion is morally repugnant, and if you take a more pragmatic approach you quickly end up in a place where the King's needs rule and the actions of those that serve him are 'morally' justified.
> 
> Generally, good people gravitate toward a place where individuals are treated with maximum respect up to the point where the individuals themselves have made it impossible. And that involves real judgement, not a rule book.


I don't necessarily disagree with you, but it seems we may be discussing different questions. You seem to be speaking of descriptive ethics (meaning, what do people believe regarding ethics and how is this communicated), and I am more interested in normative ethics (what ought people believe regarding ethics and why). 

To put it another way, while I agree that "morals" may be taught in a simple form regarding behavior in a short period of time, and this is typically as far as the inquiry goes, I disagree that this is the summation of what ethics ought to be. But, to serve as an explanation for what defines an action, outcome, or attitude as wrong, it must be internally and externally consistent, as well as preferable over the other viable options. This is testable by the laws of logic, and I believe ought to be tested. In my mind, the reason why someone does something is vastly more descriptive of their moral character than the action itself, but that is just my opinion. There is a reason this question has been argued for millennia...


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## Onyx

Joshua Jones said:


> In my mind, the reason why someone does something is vastly more descriptive of their moral character than the action itself, but that is just my opinion.


What is the value in judging someone's moral character? Either the members of a society have morals that produce good outcomes, or they don't. Only St. Peter needs to evaluate moral character separate from actions.

The largest problem I see is that the worst excesses in history have come from the idea of good applied through the lens of a some sort faith, idea or political philosophy.


----------



## Montero

Onyx said:


> What is the value in judging someone's moral character? Either the members of a society have morals that produce good outcomes, or they don't. Only St. Peter needs to evaluate moral character separate from actions.
> 
> The largest problem I see is that the worst excesses in history have come from the idea of good applied through the lens of a some sort faith, idea or political philosophy.



Are you saying that it is what the morals are that matter not the individuals who are or are not applying them?


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## RJM Corbet

Onyx said:


> What is the value in judging someone's moral character? Either the members of a society have morals that produce good outcomes, or they don't. Only St. Peter needs to evaluate moral character separate from actions.
> 
> The largest problem I see is that the worst excesses in history have come from the idea of good applied through the lens of a some sort faith, idea or political philosophy.





Onyx said:


> What I think your post is missing is that "morals" is a set of relatively concrete principles that can be taught in a relatively short time to people of all intellects.
> 
> So while Mao may have had excellent reasons for killing so many people for the "greater good", there is no applicability to a moral system that individuals can apply in their own lives.
> 
> You can describe the mental gymnastics of various people's thought processes with a variety headings, but it always comes down to a judgement call about what the person considers "good", how much power they have to effect others and what they imagine the ultimate good is. Depending on the person, that could be genocide or society with no laws at all.
> 
> So to bring it back to backsides, it is nearly impossible to say that there is a clean cut rule about invading another person's body. If you respect individuals, any invasion is morally repugnant, and if you take a more pragmatic approach you quickly end up in a place where the King's needs rule and the actions of those that serve him are 'morally' justified.
> 
> Generally, good people gravitate toward a place where individuals are treated with maximum respect up to the point where the individuals themselves have made it impossible. And that involves real judgement, not a rule book.



But Mao tse Tung was responsible for the deaths of 70 million people. Pol Pot killed a quarter of the population in around 5 years (don't hold me to the exact figure). Stalin killed tens of millions. Weren't these the worst excesses in modern history? What about Gengis Khan? What about the Romans?


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## Onyx

Montero said:


> Are you saying that it is what the morals are that matter not the individuals who are or are not applying them?


"Moral" is a word that can be used to mean a number of different things. One is adherence to a code of behavior - and the rigidity of that adherence could be called "moral character". Another is whether someone is "good" or not - which might also be called their "moral character".

I'm not sure what exactly you're asking since you quoted two very different ideas. Moral codes aren't bad - they give people without broad judgement a tool that will often allow them to be good. But moral codes suffer because of their lack of flexibility and ability to be subverted by a larger ethos.

If you're asking about the first part, what "matters" depends on what you're interested in. If you're interested in how people treat the world, then the morals matter. If you're interested in who qualifies for salvation or a Rotary Club award, then you'd want to look into the heart of the individuals to see why they acted.



RJM Corbet said:


> But Mao tse Tung was responsible for the deaths of 70 million people. Pol Pot killed a quarter of the population in around 5 years (don't hold me to the exact figure). Stalin killed tens of millions. Weren't these the worst excesses in modern history? What about Gengis Khan? What about the Romans?



I thought you weren't talking to me anymore?

Anyway, all of those are examples of the excesses I was talking about, as they each did awful, excessive things due to their adherence to concepts like "Mongol superiority" or "ending class struggle". Incredibly, the brutality of the French Revolution was in the name of liberty.


----------



## RJM Corbet

Onyx said:


> "Moral" is a word that can be used to mean a number of different things. One is adherence to a code of behavior - and the rigidity of that adherence could be called "moral character". Another is whether someone is "good" or not - which might also be called their "moral character".
> 
> I'm not sure what exactly you're asking since you quoted two very different ideas. Moral codes aren't bad - they give people without broad judgement a tool that will often allow them to be good. But moral codes suffer because of their lack of flexibility and ability to be subverted by a larger ethos.
> 
> If you're asking about the first part, what "matters" depends on what you're interested in. If you're interested in how people treat the world, then the morals matter. If you're interested in who qualifies for salvation or a Rotary Club award, then you'd want to look into the heart of the individuals to see why they acted.
> 
> 
> 
> I thought you weren't talking to me anymore?
> 
> Anyway, all of those are examples of the excesses I was talking about, as they each did awful, excessive things due to their adherence to concepts like "Mongol superiority" or "ending class struggle". Incredibly, brutality of the French Revolution was in the name of liberty.


That was a different thread, lol.

Sadly most killers use some spurious moral justification as a smokescreen for simple power or land grab 'excesses'?

EDIT: Perhaps often a true cause, like the French revolution, is hijacked by pure killers?


----------



## Onyx

RJM Corbet said:


> That was a different thread, lol.
> 
> Sadly most killers use some spurious moral justification as a smokescreen for simple power or land grab 'excesses'.
> 
> EDIT: Often a true cause, like the French revolution, is hijacked by pure killers.


The enormous crowds that gathered at the guillotine to cheer were not "pure killers", unless you have particularly low opinion of the French.


----------



## RJM Corbet

Robespierre


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## Onyx

RJM Corbet said:


> Robespierre


What proof can you provide that Robespierre was motivated primarily by bloodlust? Was he thought to be a violent, war-like or otherwise brutal "pure killer" before the Revolution?

If not, then that argument doesn't really go anywhere.


----------



## RJM Corbet

This may be going off track, but someone may start out well and quickly become corrupted by power. But often I think such people are concealing their true nature, on their climb up the ladder to power, and then they rule by fear alone.

I have a particular issue about Mao tse Tung, because he was a master of doublespeak propaganda, manipulation of facts etc. They quickly impose a ban on free expression, etc. The true story of Mao tse Tung is truly monstrous. 

Gotta catch bus to work now, bro ...


----------



## Joshua Jones

Onyx said:


> What is the value in judging someone's moral character? Either the members of a society have morals that produce good outcomes, or they don't. Only St. Peter needs to evaluate moral character separate from actions.
> 
> The largest problem I see is that the worst excesses in history have come from the idea of good applied through the lens of a some sort faith, idea or political philosophy.


I don't think there is much value in assessing anyone else's moral character. However, there is considerable value in assessing our own, and seeking to do so apart from our own opinions. Should we be judged by a jury of ourselves, we will always be innocent, be we Ghandi or Hitler. Yet, I am certain we would all agree there is a fundamental moral difference between the two. The question is what is the basis of this distinction, and more importantly, by what measure do we determine which one we are more like. 

When you speak of moral codes not being flexible, though, you must be differentiating them from ethical theories. Both of the examples I gave above are ethical theories which seek to be nuanced and flexible, so you must be meaning a set of "do's" and "don'ts". And, yes, if by moral code you mean a set of actions, nuance is nearly impossible. The point I am trying to make is that only one popular ethical theory, Deontology, and its cousin Natural Law, are concerned primarily with actions. There are two major theories where actions are less fundamental than something else; more specifically, consequence in Utilitarian Ethics and intention in Virtue Ethics. Personally, I think the latter is more persuasive. No one acts in a vacuum; our actions are based on various reasons, rationalizations, and motivations. If these things are causal to moral or immoral action, then should they not be thought of as the starting place of morality? 

And, I would change your last statement to say that the worst excesses in history come from differing definitions of how society ought to be ordered and the grasping of political power. Stalin, Mao, and the Crusades represent the latter, while Hitler and global terrorism are more the former. Though religion is frequently the excuse given to the masses (I include Social Darwinism and Humanism in the religious category for the sake of this discussion, although metanarrative is the more appropriate term for the set), the actual motivator of the antagonists is nearly always der wille zur macht. 

And, again, we believe the throwing away of lives to achieve a political figure's fantasies of power is morally wrong. Why? That is the central question I am probing at. What makes that wrong? Is it simply a brute fact that it is wrong, or are the consequences what make it wrong, or is it that it begins with the assumption that der wille zur mucht is more valuable than the lives of others? How one answers that question is based on the ethical theory they either knowingly or unknowingly hold to. The bigger question is which is the right answer, and that has to be tested through logic, rather than opinion.


----------



## awesomesauce

It seems like there's not a clear, shared understanding of what people mean when they say _ethics_ or _morals_ in this conversation. I get the impression from some comments that some people see morality as a religious thing, where ethics are based in logic and reason. I don't really see any difference between ethics and morals in the way that the original post is using the term.

I looked this up, and it was helpful.
ethics | Origins, History, Theories, & Applications

I do enjoy moral philosophy.

Going back to the OP (sorry to change the subject) I've been reading this book, _The Intellectual History of Cannibalism_. (It's really good, if dense in places.) And I was thinking about how the ability to culture animal tissue for food might change our mores about human flesh as food in the future.

On the back of the news about cultured meat, a friend asked me if I would eat meat that hadn't come from an animal (I'm a vegetarian), and I was like "Sure." (Caveat being that the process for culturing it isn't really toxic or environmentally destructive or harmful in some way.) To me, in the here and now, it seems less gross to eat cultured human tissue grown in a lab than flesh from an actual animal, and I wonder if the ability to produce "animal" foods this way will change how more of us feel about them in the future.


----------



## Montero

Onyx said:


> "Moral" is a word that can be used to mean a number of different things. One is adherence to a code of behavior - and the rigidity of that adherence could be called "moral character". Another is whether someone is "good" or not - which might also be called their "moral character".
> 
> I'm not sure what exactly you're asking since you quoted two very different ideas. Moral codes aren't bad - they give people without broad judgement a tool that will often allow them to be good. But moral codes suffer because of their lack of flexibility and ability to be subverted by a larger ethos.
> 
> If you're asking about the first part, what "matters" depends on what you're interested in. If you're interested in how people treat the world, then the morals matter. If you're interested in who qualifies for salvation or a Rotary Club award, then you'd want to look into the heart of the individuals to see why they acted.
> 
> .



I was trying to understand what you were saying and am still a bit baffled. You appeared to be saying that how well a person behaves is irrelevant, it is just the moral code that is important.
We may be using the term moral character in different ways. 

Approaching this from the personal end - so, people have a range of people they interact with, whether it is a neighbour, a shopkeeper, a friend, a total stranger. With people you interact with repeatedly, you build up a picture (accurate or not) of what to expect from the other person. Going with the shopkeeper - are their goods what they say on the tin? Or when you open the tin is it not what you expected? Is the change they give you accurate? 
So is the shopkeeper someone who provides an honest service or not?
The moral codes I've encountered say be honest in your dealings with other people. So if they do provide an honest service I would say they were adhering to at least that part of the moral code, and to the extent of my experience of them they are a moral person.
It of course does not guarantee that in other ways they may behave in ways I wouldn't like. 
I don't tend to think of "good" people - very wary of "good".
My other scales of judgement of people would tend to rest on competence, kindness, fun, reliability and consideration.
I've certainly socialised with people who'd I'd label "good value at a party" - witty, amusing, well informed - but not necessarily reliable and they might have inconsiderately double parked and blocked in someone else's car on the way into the party.
This could feed back into a discussion on morality, if you said a moral person caused, or strived to cause, no hurt to another person. Not actually saying that, but just floating it for discussion. (And yes, you would then have to define hurt..... )
In fact, extending from that, how much of a moral code is about physical or financial harm and how much is about feelings?
Feelings certainly extend into the legal system - been watching The Force Manchester - and the police taking witness statements were asking an old lady about how upset she'd been by a thief, as that will input into sentencing.


----------



## Montero

Joshua Jones said:


> I don't think there is much value in assessing anyone else's moral character..



Which seems to me at first sight to be the opposite of what I am saying - in that I am assessing a person for a pattern of how they behave so that I know what to expect from them. I'm probably missing a point.

Incidentally, I am finding your definitions and explanations very interesting - and it is a lot of information new to me. May I ask what your background is - as in have you studied philosophy? Or psychology? (Or summat...)


----------



## awesomesauce

Joshua Jones said:


> I don't think there is much value in assessing anyone else's moral character.





Montero said:


> Which seems to me at first sight to be the opposite of what I am saying - in that I am assessing a person for a pattern of how they behave so that I know what to expect from them. I'm probably missing a point.



I understood Joshua Jones' statement to be more about passing moral judgment on others according to your own measure, where your statement seems to be about having a practical understanding of someone's personality, how they're likely to behave, and what it's safe to expect from them. I think you can do the second without the first.

Example: My mom is always late for everything. I can know this about her and adjust my expectations for her behavior and plan how I'll handle her lateness in a given situation without judging it as a failing in her moral character when she's late.


----------



## Montero

OK thanks @awesomesauce  - yes, what you are saying makes sense in the way you are saying it, but I am not entirely convinced by the separation you are making between personality/character and moral character. To me the phrase "moral character" refers to a subset of the character - it is the part of a person's character that deals with the moral stuff like honesty. The rest of the character could include likes Mozart, the colour blue, prefers cats to dogs.....

A few further thoughts on morality

The basis of a lot of legal and moral code, seems to me to be ways of ensuring a co-operative society works when it is so big that the direct consequences of dumping/cheating/doing down a person will not necessarily land on the dumper. By that I am thinking of the kind of small society, where reputation is important and if someone is known as not giving a fair deal, or breaking their promises, they quickly become isolated as people will not want to engage in any kind of deal with them, whether it is a big "deal" or just a "hey if you'll take this to the post for me I'll do the same for you next week" kind of deal.

Not exactly morality but moral judgments. It fascinates me how some people associate types of behaviour together. So if say someone is dressed scruffily, has tattoos and piercings some people would assume the person more likely to be violent than a person in the suit. I think I would include "likely to be violent" inside the moral code as part of morality is dealing with mitigating threats (stealing, killing). However, in my experience in living in a big city, I've found that the person in the suit is more likely to be the one in a tearing hurry who might bump into you or not help you.

So I am theorising that an important part of a moral code is supporting a co-operative society (as in human society - teamwork) - so how immoral is not helping someone?


----------



## Joshua Jones

awesomesauce said:


> I understood Joshua Jones' statement to be more about passing moral judgment on others according to your own measure, where your statement seems to be about having a practical understanding of someone's personality, how they're likely to behave, and what it's safe to expect from them. I think you can do the second without the first.
> 
> Example: My mom is always late for everything. I can know this about her and adjust my expectations for her behavior and plan how I'll handle her lateness in a given situation without judging it as a failing in her moral character when she's late.


You are exactly right. @Onyx seemed to be concerned about those who use ethics as a way of looking down upon or otherwise othering people, and I was seeking to respond to that concern.



awesomesauce said:


> It seems like there's not a clear, shared understanding of what people mean when they say _ethics_ or _morals_ in this conversation. I get the impression from some comments that some people see morality as a religious thing, where ethics are based in logic and reason. I don't really see any difference between ethics and morals in the way that the original post is using the term.
> 
> I looked this up, and it was helpful.
> ethics | Origins, History, Theories, & Applications
> 
> I do enjoy moral philosophy.


I agree that we do not seem to have an established definition here. The classical definitions are that ethics is the study of the principles which answer what a moral thing is and why it is thus. Morals, or more precisely, moral duties, refers to ethics as applied in a given situation. For the sake of the OP, this distinction is pretty much irrelevant. For the sake of the conversation with @Onyx, however, there is some relevance, because only one major and one minor ethical theory produces moral duties (a collection of which are used to create moral codes as we have used the term above) which are focused on action, and there are two whole branches of ethical theory which don't. Hence why I am seeking to establish the distinction between morals (though, again, moral duties is the more accurate term here) and ethics.



Montero said:


> Which seems to me at first sight to be the opposite of what I am saying - in that I am assessing a person for a pattern of how they behave so that I know what to expect from them. I'm probably missing a point.
> 
> Incidentally, I am finding your definitions and explanations very interesting - and it is a lot of information new to me. May I ask what your background is - as in have you studied philosophy? Or psychology? (Or summat...)


Yeah, I didn't do a particularly good job of hiding that, did I? I studied ethics, philosophy of God, and theology pretty extensively in university, and I intend, one day, to obtain a doctorate in Philosophical Theology with an emphasis on Ethics. Much to the frustration of my wife, I tend to bring back issues of _The Philosophical Quarterly_ as reading materials to doctor's appointments and the like. So, yeah... I have studied it a bit. I also find psychology fascinating, though I have only researched that in the context of a handful of classes, my work, and for characters in my works. Then again, I am also interested in history, physics, genetics, biology... And I roll it all into my SF writing!


----------



## Joshua Jones

Montero said:


> OK thanks @awesomesauce  - yes, what you are saying makes sense in the way you are saying it, but I am not entirely convinced by the separation you are making between personality/character and moral character. To me the phrase "moral character" refers to a subset of the character - it is the part of a person's character that deals with the moral stuff like honesty. The rest of the character could include likes Mozart, the colour blue, prefers cats to dogs.....


Ah, and here we have another example of separation by a common language. I can't speak for anyone else, but in my own usage, I don't mean "character" in the sense of personality traits or, if we were fictionalized, what our characterization would be. When I speak of character in this context, I am referring more to one's moral patterns and nature rather than their personality. Sorry for the confusion there.



Montero said:


> A few further thoughts on morality
> 
> The basis of a lot of legal and moral code, seems to me to be ways of ensuring a co-operative society works when it is so big that the direct consequences of dumping/cheating/doing down a person will not necessarily land on the dumper. By that I am thinking of the kind of small society, where reputation is important and if someone is known as not giving a fair deal, or breaking their promises, they quickly become isolated as people will not want to engage in any kind of deal with them, whether it is a big "deal" or just a "hey if you'll take this to the post for me I'll do the same for you next week" kind of deal.
> 
> Not exactly morality but moral judgments. It fascinates me how some people associate types of behaviour together. So if say someone is dressed scruffily, has tattoos and piercings some people would assume the person more likely to be violent than a person in the suit. I think I would include "likely to be violent" inside the moral code as part of morality is dealing with mitigating threats (stealing, killing). However, in my experience in living in a big city, I've found that the person in the suit is more likely to be the one in a tearing hurry who might bump into you or not help you.
> 
> So I am theorising that an important part of a moral code is supporting a co-operative society (as in human society - teamwork) - so how immoral is not helping someone?


How very Utilitarian of you to think that way!  Ribbing aside, I am sure you are right that a co-operation is surely a moral duty in any system except perhaps some forms of ethical Darwinism. But, it is for completely different reasons in different systems, and which system is being used will inform how significant not helping someone will be.


----------



## Onyx

Joshua Jones said:


> Should we be judged by a jury of ourselves, we will always be innocent, be we Ghandi or Hitler. Yet, I am certain we would all agree there is a fundamental moral difference between the two.


If you put 100 equally "powerful" people in a sealed community together, they will arrive at the Golden Rule automatically. From a universal perspective, Ghandi hoves to that rule more universally than Hitler. But you also have to understand that Hitler was "doing right" by the German people in a very similar way to what Ghandi did for India - up to a certain point. Which is why both came to and maintained power.



Joshua Jones said:


> The point I am trying to make is that only one popular ethical theory, Deontology, and its cousin Natural Law, are concerned primarily with actions. There are two major theories where actions are less fundamental than something else; more specifically, consequence in Utilitarian Ethics and intention in Virtue Ethics.


These are theories that explain - after the fact - why people may have behaved as they did. They aren't explanations of how a group would arrive at a particular set of values, just what they look like in a philosophical way. Like an economic theory, it doesn't actually describe why individual people do things. No one carries Virtue Ethics around in their head to decide if they should help a stray puppy or not.



Joshua Jones said:


> And, I would change your last statement to say that the worst excesses in history come from differing definitions of how society ought to be ordered and the grasping of political power. Stalin, Mao, and the Crusades represent the latter, while Hitler and global terrorism are more the former. Though religion is frequently the excuse given to the masses (I include Social Darwinism and Humanism in the religious category for the sake of this discussion, although metanarrative is the more appropriate term for the set), the actual motivator of the antagonists is nearly always der wille zur macht.


I don't understand the line you're drawing between the Crusades and Hitler. In all cases a huge number of people made what they believed to be decisions for a "greater good" based on an ethos promulgated and interpreted by their leaders. They did that because they believed that ethos (Mao's Red Book, recovery of the Holy Land, the restoration of the German people to prominence) were overriding responsibilities that made smaller "wrongs" acceptable (or actually "right") for a "greater good". Just as the US has the death penalty - where we judge murder to be acceptable if it is in the service of an artificial ethos we'll call "justice". Every time a felon is executed, the people that say "I'm glad!" have abandoned the basic Golden Rule in favor of a more abstract idea of good that includes violating individuals for a supposed pro-societal concept. But from a universal vantage, they (we) are doing wrong.



Montero said:


> I was trying to understand what you were saying and am still a bit baffled. You appeared to be saying that how well a person behaves is irrelevant, it is just the moral code that is important.


No, I'm saying that _why _a person behaves in a "good" way is irrelevant to the fact that they _are _behaving in a good way. You can have a black soul, but if an imposed moral code causes you to function pretty much like a naturally benevolent person, there is little functional difference between the two.

The flip side to that is that there is little difference between a murderer that enjoys the act and a Christian that murders gays because he feels an obligation to his faith to do so. Their victims can't measure that difference.



Joshua Jones said:


> You are exactly right. @Onyx seemed to be concerned about those who use ethics as a way of looking down upon or otherwise othering people, and I was seeking to respond to that concern.


I'm more saying that human beings are able to subvert their natural community level ethics (the Golden Rule) by inserting an overriding value system that warps how their morals are applied. At no point in Nazi Germany was an ordinary murder not considered a heinous crime, even while the citizens as a whole were engaged in murdering millions. The ethics of murder didn't change - the definition of murder changed to suit the ethos. It is the worst problem human beings face - that subscription to a belief system (political, economic, genealogical or religious) can warp good moral action into acceptance of evil.

It is like the futility of being a mathematician who decides one day that the number 3 is anathema, but must still make calculations. The result is inevitably irrational.

However, that doesn't mean that all ethos that downgrade individual lives are bankrupt - the Golden Rule can't be a suicide pact.


----------



## RJM Corbet

The Little Red Book was imposed upon the Chinese population by force. They were obliged to carry it at all times, on pain of torture, imprisonment and death.

@Onyx
"... there is little difference between a murderer that enjoys the act and a Christian that murders gays because he feels an obligation to his faith to do so. Their victims can't measure that difference ..."

Provide a single instance? Or are you getting confused with ISIS, or whatever?


----------



## Onyx

RJM Corbet said:


> The Little Red Book was imposed upon the Chinese population by force. They were obliged to carry it at all times, on pain of torture, imprisonment and death.


By the force of the rest of the Chinese population that had subscribed to it. Mao had no more power than anyone else - he was a wealthy farmer's son that became the leader of a grass roots political movement. The way you talk about things it sounds like aliens showed up and imposed order on everyone. The reality is that Hitler and Mao came to power as the result of somewhat democratic processes.


----------



## RJM Corbet

Onyx said:


> By the force of the rest of the Chinese population that had subscribed to it. Mao had no more power than anyone else - he was a wealthy farmer's son that became the leader of a grass roots political movement. The way you talk about things it sounds like aliens showed up and imposed order on everyone. The reality is that Hitler and Mao came to power as the result of somewhat democratic processes.


Dream on. Mau was carried on a litter for the duration of the great march. Their feet and knees were torn and bloody as they carried him up and down mountains. He didn't walk a single step. They HATED the Little Red Book. He was killing them in millions. They didn't love him.


----------



## RJM Corbet

They both used democratic process to get to the top and rule by fear and murder millions


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## Onyx

RJM Corbet said:


> Dream on. Mau was carried on a litter for the duration of the great march. Their feet and knees were torn and bloody as they carried him up and down mountains. He didn't walk a single step. They HATED the Little Red Book. He was killing them in millions. They didn't love him.


I don't think this conversation is working, as you often seem to ignore cause and effect. Mao became the leader of a movement because a large number of people decided to make him one. Those people could have changed their minds, but did not.

So you'll pardon me for not replying to you any more. I don't see how anyone benefits from this level of discourse, and the "Dream on" stuff is childish and rude.


----------



## Brian G Turner

Anyway... much as though I do find history interesting, I think the opening of this thread had a more interesting premise - that of considering what future generations might consider the moral blind spots of our generations.

It's already been mentioned that the following may become stronger movements in future:

1. Environmentalism
2. Keeping of pets
3. Veganism (or a movement toward that)

I'd like to get this thread back on topic to that, and see if anyone can think of any curve balls we can imagine - maybe not probable, but at least a tiny bit probable.


----------



## Montero

@Onyx - thank you for the explanation on the results vs the motivation. I understand the point your are making and mostly agree with it. 
@Joshua Jones and @Onyx - well that is a whole raft of new to me words and concepts that floated past. I'm going to have to google what JJ thinks I am......

@Brian G Turner - hear you boss 

I've maybe got one (possibly a variation on what I said earlier) - it does arise in part from the discussion further up this page, hope it doesn't take us back into more contentious discussion. Here we go:

There is a lot of theory, and political and philosophical theory that has roots in science at some point. For example, survival of the fittest was grabbed in the 1980s and used as the excuse for a lot of very greedy and back-stabbing behaviour by some people. However as far as I can see (and I am not expert on this), some of this was based on a misunderstanding of what is meant by fittest. (In simplistic terms a co-operative society, being very co-operative would surely make you the fittest.) Animal behaviour is an ongoing field of study, and as I mentioned earlier in the thread newer experiments and in the wild observations have shown animals exhibiting an understanding of fairness in terms of fair pay (the monkeys) and sharing (the cougars that share their food, and are more likely to do so with a cougar that previously shared with them). So theories/philosophy such as survival of the fittest, take on a life of their own, separate from the fields of evolution and animal behaviour where they started, and are not updated by new data from animal behaviour studies. There is an interesting book by Richard Conniff called The Ape in the Corner Office, which is looking at how many human behaviours have clear parallels in animal species and are in no way exclusive to humans.

So I would hope that one day, it will be immoral to think there is a clear "them and us" between humans and other species on earth. With books like The Ape in the Corner Office, I am seeing a start that makes this a possibility.


----------



## RJM Corbet

That's fine: perhaps in the far future if will be incomprehensible how past generations like our own made so many decisions from insufficient/faulty input data?

Perhaps one may visualise a future where, to those who have mastered the mental ability, all events will be available to view on 'akash tapes' (astral) that record everything and that can be accessed by higher knowledge, observed directly through the eyes/minds/emotions of the actual witnesses of those past events.

Of course much of this reality will be extremely traumatic to the 'viewer' and without the necessary training and control, may cause serious mental and emotional damage ...

The 'rulers' will necessarily be those who have achieved a greater or lesser degree of mental and emotional mastery required?


----------



## Joshua Jones

Brian G Turner said:


> Anyway... much as though I do find history interesting, I think the opening of this thread had a more interesting premise - that of considering what future generations might consider the moral blind spots of our generations.
> 
> It's already been mentioned that the following may become stronger movements in future:
> 
> 1. Environmentalism
> 2. Keeping of pets
> 3. Veganism (or a movement toward that)
> 
> I'd like to get this thread back on topic to that, and see if anyone can think of any curve balls we can imagine - maybe not probable, but at least a tiny bit probable.


You know, we could wind up going the other way as well. If we become a spacefaring, FTL race, we may not see much need to preserve a particular environment. I could see this happen for a couple plausible reasons.

1. If we rapidly expand, the human population may simply have vastly more space available than population to fill it. Mars, for example, has roughly the same dry surface area as Earth, so the dry surface, if made habitable, could support a population roughly equal to Earth. Find 8 more Mars type planets, and if the population is evenly distributed, we move each planet's population back centuries. Imagine if we found hundreds... We could realistically have planets with populations in the tens of thousands.

2. We may come to believe that a planet is expendable, or may stop living on planets altogether. If the latter, I could see us dumping trash into the grav-well, where there is clearly plenty of space and it is no longer of concern to us.


----------



## Onyx

Imagine a future time where contraception is absolute and there are no longer diseases of any type, including STDs.

In such a world, denying sexual contact between friends and peers could be a violation of basic human needs and hospitality. When there are no longer medical reasons to avoid sexual contact, will people still see it as something any more sacred than shaking hands or lending a jacket?



Along similar lines, what do we do with the with the pedophiles? My wife and I were talking about this last night: At some point it is going to understood that, like hetero or homosexuality, what people desire is often beyond their control. A society that completely denies pedophiles every outlet increases the likelihood of children being abducted, raped and murdered to cover the crime. Society may decide to offer technological alternatives to actual child pornography or contact so pedophiles have an acceptable outlet. At least one SF author discussed adults who reverse their apparent age to act as legal prostitutes for such people.


Both of those ideas are essentially so far outside what is currently considered reasonable that it is like discussing cannibalism. But both reflect alternative ways of dealing with real problems and a change in the way we evaluate good behavior based on our current technological level.


----------



## Graymalkin

Private transport. Our minds are too fragile and easily distr ...


----------



## Brian G Turner

Montero said:


> So theories/philosophy such as survival of the fittest, take on a life of their own, separate from the fields of evolution and animal behaviour where they started



That's a seriously interesting point, actually. The field of epigenetics suggests that environmental effects could be inherited, so if an organization of government wanted to control physical attributes of their populations, they could aim to do this directly outside of normal genetic hereditary processes.



Joshua Jones said:


> If we become a spacefaring, FTL race, we may not see much need to preserve a particular environment.



That's an even more interesting topic - imagine humans specifically adapted for zero-gravity for long flights? Does this mean humans adapted for different environments would be either desirable or acceptable? If so, doesn't that mean homo sapiens as a species could diverge into many species? If so, how would they regard us? Originals to be respected, or degenerates?


----------



## Onyx

Joshua Jones said:


> You know, we could wind up going the other way as well. If we become a spacefaring, FTL race, we may not see much need to preserve a particular environment. I could see this happen for a couple plausible reasons.
> 
> 1. If we rapidly expand, the human population may simply have vastly more space available than population to fill it. Mars, for example, has roughly the same dry surface area as Earth, so the dry surface, if made habitable, could support a population roughly equal to Earth. Find 8 more Mars type planets, and if the population is evenly distributed, we move each planet's population back centuries. Imagine if we found hundreds... We could realistically have planets which populations in the tens of thousands.
> 
> 2. We may come to believe that a planet is expendable, or may stop living on planets altogether. If the latter, I could see us dumping trash into the grav-well, where there is clearly plenty of space and it is no longer of concern to us.


Iain Banks took a similar POV but in the opposite direction - with the availability of synthetic living places like space stations and ships, disturbing natural planets - even lifeless ones - becomes immoral.


----------



## Joshua Jones

Onyx said:


> Iain Banks took a similar POV but in the opposite direction - with the availability of synthetic living places like space stations and ships, disturbing natural planets - even lifeless ones - becomes immoral.


That is an interesting premise. Which book did he explore this in?


----------



## Onyx

Brian G Turner said:


> That's an even more interesting topic - imagine humans specifically adapted for zero-gravity for long flights? Does this mean humans adapted for different environments would be either desirable or acceptable? If so, doesn't that mean homo sapiens as a species could diverge into many species? If so, how would they regard us? Originals to be respected, or degenerates?


It could go the way we currently regard the races on this planet, or a very different direction if they are more civilized.

However, if people start to diverge significantly will almost certainly include mental architecture - at some people people will think so differently that they may no longer be able to communicate or empathize on a deep level.


----------



## Onyx

Joshua Jones said:


> That is an interesting premise. Which book did he explore this in?


It's a basic tenant of the Culture.

A Few Notes on the Culture, by Iain M Banks


----------



## Joshua Jones

Brian G Turner said:


> That's a seriously interesting point, actually. The field of epigenetics suggests that environmental effects could be inherited, so if an organization of government wanted to control physical attributes of their populations, they could aim to do this directly outside of normal genetic hereditary processes.
> 
> 
> 
> That's an even more interesting topic - imagine humans specifically adapted for zero-gravity for long flights? Does this mean humans adapted for different environments would be either desirable or acceptable? If so, doesn't that mean homo sapiens as a species could diverge into many species? If so, how would they regard us? Originals to be respected, or degenerates?


Thank you; I find the idea interesting as well. I could see humanity adapting for zero g, low g, and high g environments, so there could well be at least significant morphological differences which may prevent reproduction. Perhaps I am far too pessimistic, but I could see people playing around with mating them for the sake of creating freaks for amusement, laborers, or scores of other unseemly purposes. There are scores of different ways this could go, but eventually, it will lead to conflict.


----------



## Joshua Jones

Onyx said:


> It could go the way we currently regard the races on this planet, or a very different direction if they are more civilized.
> 
> However, if people start to diverge significantly will almost certainly include mental architecture - at some people people will think so differently that they may no longer be able to communicate or empathize on a deep level.


Honestly, that may happen even faster than the speciation of humanity, due to linguistic drift and lack of shared experience. But, I think you are right that once neural architecture begins changing, the possibility of humanity reconnecting dwindles significantly.


----------



## SilentRoamer

Joshua Jones said:


> Yeah, I didn't do a particularly good job of hiding that, did I? I studied ethics, philosophy of God, and theology pretty extensively in university, and I intend, one day, to obtain a doctorate in Philosophical Theology with an emphasis on Ethics. Much to the frustration of my wife, I tend to bring back issues of _The Philosophical Quarterly_ as reading materials to doctor's appointments and the like. So, yeah... I have studied it a bit. I also find psychology fascinating, though I have only researched that in the context of a handful of classes, my work, and for characters in my works. Then again, I am also interested in history, physics, genetics, biology... And I roll it all into my SF writing!



That's an interesting background indeed and ties in well to my post.

I hope the thread stays on track and it's interesting and if it gets locked I am going to be peeved.

So to keep things on topic here are some moral issues which I have seen in SFF reading which you can extrapolate to a future vision of humanity as we've not defined scale or scope.

*R. Scott Bakkers The Second Apocalypse* series has some interesting moral frameworks - morality is sort of objective in a real sense and has direct imposition on Reality through external moral agents. @Joshua Jones based on your background I think you would enjoy Bakker - he also writes some philosophy stuff, which I don't read to be honest but you may/may not enjoy. I would definitely recommend the Second Apocalypse as an epic fantasy series.

In *Peter F Hamiltons Commonwealth Saga* there are some interesting moral issues. There are some technologically advanced, super rich humans who have lived for hundreds of years, generally possessing in awesome OP biotech and having mega advantage over "first lifers" Subsequently it's seen as kind of taboo to engage in sexual activity, I got the inference that it was because the first lifers were seen as intellectually and physically inferior and the more advanced views them as children - despite their age. So you could even have an advanced human seemingly in their twenties who is much older than a middle aged woman and would consider her a child.

There are also some scenes where humans split their consciousness between "multiples" which is between multiple bodies and then have a big orgy. That was an actual scene, although Hamilton does like the odd page or two of SF soft porn, not quite as much as Bujold though.

In *Bujolds Vorkosigan Saga *there are genetically engineered humans, basically living breathing sex toys to order. There is an actual werewolf type girl and a girl with an impossibly created proportion of waist and breasts, there's a place called Jacksons Whole where nothing is illegal. Some weird moral stuff with Miles and his clone Mark as well.

The last point I have I think we might actually see as a moral development in the next few decades. Sexual activity or relationships with robots or an external interface that is the same thing to the brain - as soon as there is a walking/talking (even if it didn't pass the Turing test) sex robot then all bets are off. Forget VR when you can order your favorite porn star online, or it will go the other way and it will be fully immersive VR with exosuits like in *Ernest Cline's* *Ready Player 1* (only really in the book)

I think we also see an interesting moral code in* Frank Herbert's Dune* surrounding water, I mean damn you can't even cry because it's a waste of water and seen as an obscenity, the bodies are also completely dehydrated. Imagine a future world where water was so scarce, Earth or not.


----------



## Onyx

SilentRoamer said:


> The last point I have I think we might actually see as a moral development in the next few decades. Sexual activity or relationships with robots or an external interface that is the same thing to the brain - as soon as there is a walking/talking (even if it didn't pass the Turing test) sex robot then all bets are off. Forget VR when you can order your favorite porn star online, or it will go the other way and it will be fully immersive VR with exosuits like in *Ernest Cline's* *Ready Player 1* (only really in the book)


I read a book recently called the Unincorporated Man that has a whole section on why VR becomes taboo after a generation is lost to it.

Lots of moralistic "action" throughout the book.


----------



## Joshua Jones

SilentRoamer said:


> That's an interesting background indeed and ties in well to my post.
> 
> I hope the thread stays on track and it's interesting and if it gets locked I am going to be peeved.
> 
> So to keep things on topic here are some moral issues which I have seen in SFF reading which you can extrapolate to a future vision of humanity as we've not defined scale or scope.
> 
> *R. Scott Bakkers The Second Apocalypse* series has some interesting moral frameworks - morality is sort of objective in a real sense and has direct imposition on Reality through external moral agents. @Joshua Jones based on your background I think you would enjoy Bakker - he also writes some philosophy stuff, which I don't read to be honest but you may/may not enjoy. I would definitely recommend the Second Apocalypse as an epic fantasy series.
> 
> In *Peter F Hamiltons Commonwealth Saga* there are some interesting moral issues. There are some technologically advanced, super rich humans who have lived for hundreds of years, generally possessing in awesome OP biotech and having mega advantage over "first lifers" Subsequently it's seen as kind of taboo to engage in sexual activity, I got the inference that it was because the first lifers were seen as intellectually and physically inferior and the more advanced views them as children - despite their age. So you could even have an advanced human seemingly in their twenties who is much older than a middle aged woman and would consider her a child.
> 
> There are also some scenes where humans split their consciousness between "multiples" which is between multiple bodies and then have a big orgy. That was an actual scene, although Hamilton does like the odd page or two of SF soft porn, not quite as much as Bujold though.
> 
> In *Bujolds Vorkosigan Saga *there are genetically engineered humans, basically living breathing sex toys to order. There is an actual werewolf type girl and a girl with an impossibly created proportion of waist and breasts, there's a place called Jacksons Whole where nothing is illegal. Some weird moral stuff with Miles and his clone Mark as well.
> 
> The last point I have I think we might actually see as a moral development in the next few decades. Sexual activity or relationships with robots or an external interface that is the same thing to the brain - as soon as there is a walking/talking (even if it didn't pass the Turing test) sex robot then all bets are off. Forget VR when you can order your favorite porn star online, or it will go the other way and it will be fully immersive VR with exosuits like in *Ernest Cline's* *Ready Player 1* (only really in the book)
> 
> I think we also see an interesting moral code in* Frank Herbert's Dune* surrounding water, I mean damn you can't even cry because it's a waste of water and seen as an obscenity, the bodies are also completely dehydrated. Imagine a future world where water was so scarce, Earth or not.


Thanks for the recommendations. I have heard of Bakker, but yet to pick up anything. Maybe I will shortly...


----------



## awesomesauce

Onyx said:


> Imagine a future time where contraception is absolute and there are no longer diseases of any type, including STDs.
> 
> In such a world, denying sexual contact between friends and peers could be a violation of basic human needs and hospitality. When there are no longer medical reasons to avoid sexual contact, will people still see it as something any more sacred than shaking hands or lending a jacket?
> 
> Along similar lines, what do we do with the with the pedophiles?
> 
> [...]
> 
> Both of those ideas are essentially so far outside what is currently considered reasonable that it is like discussing cannibalism. But both reflect alternative ways of dealing with real problems and a change in the way we evaluate good behavior based on our current technological level.



There was an interesting episode of either _Social Science Bites_, or maybe _Philosophy Bites_, where the discussion was about isolation, and what we owe, and are entitled to, from other human beings. Part of the discussion was about prostitution and people who are disabled, and the argument made in favor of social programs that help disabled people access paid sex, and the idea that we're social animals and being deprived of social (and sexual) interaction is cruel, and we have a right to these things.

I don't know what kind of morality we'll see around that in the future. I think when you embrace the idea that one person is entitled to contact from another, you tend to see abuse and exploitation as well. I think we could probably make a convincing argument a social expectation already exists that women, especially, are supposed to provide contact to those who desire it and that they are inhospitable ("bitches", usually) if they refuse; I saw on the BBC news ticker that the recent mass shooting in Texas was triggered because a female student had rejected a male student.

In the modern, we talk a lot about consent. I think there are some gymnastics involved in reconciling the idea of enthusiastic consent with normative social pressures and expectations that go with a right to social and sexual contact. In ideal future-land, humans would figure out that balance, but that's a steep cliff to climb, and there are a lot of places to fall off it. Maybe norms about sexual access in the future will be less about a noble idea of human rights. I can also imagine a future society where the pressure exists to provide sexual access because the possibility of a violent response endangers the group, and the idea that people would withhold sex and, doing so, potentially endanger those around them, is immoral because without the threat of STDs or pregnancy, there are no self-protection arguments against it.

As far as pedophiles go, I don't personally see anything unconscionable in allowing them access to animations or child shaped sexbots; I think the issues of morality (or ethics) only come into play when there's harm to another living and or sentient being. To that end, the idea of physically modifying adults to satisfy a specific sexual desire squicks me out a lot more. This is another area where I can't really even guess which direction the morality might evolve. 

It could equally be considered cruel to leave humans to exist with deviant desires that mean they can't meet their needs in a way that's socially acceptable. Psychology and neuroscience are in, if not their infancy, their toddlerhood. (I think future humans will look back on 20th and 21st century psychiatry much the way we look back on leeches and humours.) Maybe the solution would be therapeutic, with the goal of correcting deviance. But 21st century me also can't imagine any decent human being who wouldn't jump at the chance to rid themselves of sexual attraction to children.

And I was afraid cannibalism might be too much ick factor, thanks for seeing that and raising!


----------



## Parson

We've talked a lot about the right to fulfillment of a person's desires, but it wouldn't surprise me that the future would look a lot more dystopian. If we posit times of increasing scarcity I suspect that what many western democracies consider to be rights we'll become rare privileges. And perhaps we don't have to go that far. In any kind of short term space habitation everything will have a cost, likely including the air you breathe and the whole idea of a society situated to serve your needs because you think it's owed you could well be laughed at scornfully.


----------



## awesomesauce

Joshua Jones said:


> You know, we could wind up going the other way as well. If we become a spacefaring, FTL race, we may not see much need to preserve a particular environment. I could see this happen for a couple plausible reasons.



I can easily see that for environments where there are no other life forms dependent on the environment for survival. Strip mining asteroids, say.

I guess I hope for a utopian sort of future humanity where, if planets really are that plentiful, we're careful and respectful of the ones that have life, even non-animal or "non-sentient" life. Because you never really know, do you? But there are still plenty of humans who think animals on our own planet are basically just automatons made of meat. If it turns out life is plentiful, especially "less advanced" life, maybe it becomes a disposable resource, and we do the exoplanetary equivalent of the North American buffalo hunts, decimating entire species just because we like their skins.  We could be the species that drives around the galaxy chucking its empties and fast food wrappers out the window, because why not, who cares with all this space?

Haha. Now I think the worst possible future for humanity might be if we never meet anyone bigger and badder than ourselves, and we continue to think of ourselves as the little lords of all creation.


----------



## Onyx

awesomesauce said:


> I think when you embrace the idea that one person is entitled to contact from another, you tend to see abuse and exploitation as well.


I wasn't really speaking about "entitlement", but empathy.



awesomesauce said:


> Maybe norms about sexual access in the future will be less about a noble idea of human rights. I can also imagine a future society where the pressure exists to provide sexual access because the possibility of a violent response endangers the group, and the idea that people would withhold sex and, doing so, potentially endanger those around them, is immoral because without the threat of STDs or pregnancy, there are no self-protection arguments against it.


What I was getting at is that people may arrive at a point were their self conception doesn't include feeling that their sexuality is sacrosanct and isn't so easily violable any more, nor are they reticent to be exposed to other's sexuality. With that kind of shift in attitude about ourselves, the disgust and embarrassment associated with sexuality may evaporate and be replaced with an increased respect and empathy for that aspect of other people, which might then cause people to see sexuality as a more casual sharing like dining.

And to make myself abundantly clear, this isn't the result of anyone subverting their natural feelings to serve other people, but people losing the negative feelings they have about sexuality.



awesomesauce said:


> To that end, the idea of physically modifying adults to satisfy a specific sexual desire squicks me out a lot more.


The context in the book was that the character liked being a little girl, was a sexual person, and was happy to be paid for sex. It was not something imposed on her to serve other's needs, but something she did to herself and was appreciative of an audience. This was in the sequel to Counting Heads entitled Mind Over Ship.

I really was not trying to describe anything dystopian, but rather what happens when the last Puritan impulse is gone.


----------



## Onyx

I missed this earlier:


RJM Corbet said:


> "... there is little difference between a murderer that enjoys the act and a Christian that murders gays because he feels an obligation to his faith to do so. Their victims can't measure that difference ..."
> 
> Provide a single instance? Or are you getting confused with ISIS, or whatever?




Scroll down to Ronald Gay in September 2000:
Significant acts of violence against LGBT people - Wikipedia


----------



## awesomesauce

Onyx said:


> I wasn't really speaking about "entitlement", but empathy.



Entitlement isn't a dirty word.  

Once we identify something as necessary to physical or psychological health, and we come to consider that thing a human right, we tend to believe humans are entitled to that thing just by being a human. We may fail to provide it, but that failure is what we consider the moral failing, not the entitlement. If we believe humans are entitled to shelter and food, or more abstractly, education or social contact, then we judge those who fail or refuse to provide those things as being in the moral wrong.

Our understanding about why humans act and react the way we do continues to evolve. 

Deep down I'm a moral nihilist, which is sort of a hard way to be, because being human is mostly about being trapped in other people's moral frameworks. My working definition of "right" and "good" for operating in society, and exercising what limited choice I have in the direction of that society, are the things that I see as having greatest benefit to myself. I should add, benefit to myself doesn't necessarily mean immediate or purely personal gratification; for instance, I have a preference for greater social and economic equality because there's a convincing body of social science that suggests those things lead to greater stability and security in a society, and given the alternatives presented, I think I prefer to spend my flickering existence in that kind of a society, but I don't think equality in itself is inherently or intrinsically good or right or moral. Which is way off topic. It's also why I back away from some of the more abstract discussions on the nature of morality.


----------



## Onyx

awesomesauce said:


> Once we identify something as necessary to physical or psychological health, and we come to consider that thing a human right, we tend to believe humans are entitled to that thing just by being a human.


This is somewhat prickly ground, which is why I'm trying to make clear that my conception of this idea is adamantly not to service people's "needs",  but would be a moral shift that results from a positive change in people's anxiety about sex. And that change would happen largely after medical, reproductive and sexual violence had been ended by technology.

I understand the points you're making, but I just want to draw a line between what you're talking about - which could be seen as a subjugation of individual rights for societal stability - and my notion of a freedom to see sexuality separate from coercion or shame and the moral impact that change would cause.


----------



## RJM Corbet

B





Onyx said:


> I missed this earlier:
> 
> 
> 
> Scroll down to Ronald Gay in September 2000:
> Significant acts of violence against LGBT people - Wikipedia


Ok. That may be one psychotic incident out of what, thousands? A nutter mass shooting. Small cause to accuse


----------



## Stephen Palmer

Part of the problem with having intensive, difficult and enjoyable discussions such as this is that all moral codes - ones discussed here or other ones - are based on partial understandings of the human condition. There is as yet no generally accepted 'scientific description' if I could use that phrase - i.e. a universal one. So for instance we could use the Christian notion, which is 2000 years old and created by boys. Or we could use libertarianism - much younger and also created by boys. Or we could use Hinduism - very ancient indeed. But as John Gray has shown in his various writings, if you remain a cynic on the matter of human nature and/or the human condition, you open yourself to the counter-argument of the inadvisability of relying on incomplete wisdom.
We need to remain patient. Great progress has been made in the last 40 year on these matters. Give it time.


----------



## Onyx

RJM Corbet said:


> B
> Ok. That may be one psychotic incident out of what, thousands? A nutter mass shooting. Small cause to accuse


I didn't accuse anyone of anything. That's in your mind.

I would suggest you stop reading the topics of a speculative writing forum through the eye of an aggrieved defender of the Faith. No one here is attacking your belief system.


----------



## Montero

Brian G Turner said:


> That's an even more interesting topic - imagine humans specifically adapted for zero-gravity for long flights? Does this mean humans adapted for different environments would be either desirable or acceptable? If so, doesn't that mean homo sapiens as a species could diverge into many species? If so, how would they regard us? Originals to be respected, or degenerates?



Lois McMaster Bujold covers this in various ways. Jackson's Whole is the extreme end, with exploitation. There are also the Quaddies - who have four arms - two where the legs were. They were created for work in null g and have formed their own society. The Cetagandans are busy running a massive social and genetic experiment on themselves - which is in its way subtle - so no grotesques, but they are working for optimum human beings in several ways. Some of the non-Cetagandan characters comment on this and wonder what Cetagandans will be at the end of it.

In terms of sex - later bits in the the thread - LMB also covers social aspects of this at times, commenting that a lot of the restrictions were designed to either control birth rate, or ensure parentage in a world before contraception and DNA testing. If you can't control the ovaries, you have to control the whole woman.

I would also say that in terms of the impact on the individual, training people to be part of the society they are born into - as in socially acceptable behaviour - involves stick as well as carrot. You make someone feel rotten about doing something and they either stop doing it, or do it secretly. This causes all sorts of inhibitions and knock-ons later.

John Barnes has an interesting series which starts with A Million Open Doors. In the backstory, earth went through a period of colonising planets, including marginal ones that needed terraforming, and there was a massive diaspora of various groups, with some groups getting a planet of their own to form a totally new society, others having to share. It was a mix of ethnic groups - such as Fijians, Tamil - and cultural groups. A number of groups were created from scratch - as in artificially created societies, some derived from a time in the human past or from a philosophy. There was then a massive selection process. Not all groups got to have a planet, and then the loosers had to reintegrate with mainstream society - the idea being that a homogenous earth would be a peaceful earth. The story kicks off on a planet based on a recreated ideal of a troubadour society, with duels, beautiful maidens and the like.


----------



## Joshua Jones

awesomesauce said:


> I can easily see that for environments where there are no other life forms dependent on the environment for survival. Strip mining asteroids, say.
> 
> I guess I hope for a utopian sort of future humanity where, if planets really are that plentiful, we're careful and respectful of the ones that have life, even non-animal or "non-sentient" life. Because you never really know, do you? But there are still plenty of humans who think animals on our own planet are basically just automatons made of meat. If it turns out life is plentiful, especially "less advanced" life, maybe it becomes a disposable resource, and we do the exoplanetary equivalent of the North American buffalo hunts, decimating entire species just because we like their skins.  We could be the species that drives around the galaxy chucking its empties and fast food wrappers out the window, because why not, who cares with all this space?
> 
> Haha. Now I think the worst possible future for humanity might be if we never meet anyone bigger and badder than ourselves, and we continue to think of ourselves as the little lords of all creation.


For me, I don't like predicting based on what I hope humanity will do, but what history has shown we will likely do and what trends exist in the present. And, we tend not to be the most noble of creatures, and when we try to be, we often have massive blind spots. If we are the only intelligent species in the universe, but earth is not the only place with life, we will have to decide how to address native ecosystems. I will use a local context as an example; where I live, the only predator of deer is humanity. It has been that way for hundreds of years at minimum. So, if the killing of an animal were banned in any context, the deer would overpopulate and destroy the ecosystem. So, those who think the killing of an animal is immoral and the preservation of an ecosystem is moral are stuck at an impasse, as one cannot preserve the ecosystem without killing animals on an annual basis. 

Now, apply that to a planetary context. There may be times where the culling of a species is essential for the maintaining of the planet's environment, but is that immoral in and of itself? What if the species is fleetingly self aware? As in, not aware enough to realize the effects of overbreeding, but aware enough to realize someone is hunting it, forcibly sterilizing it, or what have you? We would be seen as oppressors, to be certain. But, again, non-violence vs. ecological preservation, and only one can win. This is because the world is an intrinsically harsh place, and we are part of the food chain whether we like it or not. Our absence can have dreadful consequences, just like the absence of any other apex predator or omnivore. 

And, that is when we are at least attempting to act in a noble manner. Far more often, we act on selfish interests...


----------



## Joshua Jones

I'll chime in on the sexuality issue... 

I see a world where sexuality is expected as a right, or where people are expected to be empathetic to the needs of others in this regard and freely engage in prolific sex, as DEEPLY dystopian. On the former, sex simply is not a biological or psychological need unless it is assumed by the individual that they are entitled to it and the lack of easy access to this desire is intrinsically problematic. In contrast, having a non-hedonistic society has the advantage of requiring individuals to mature as people before they have a realistic opportunity to woo a sexual partner. This places societal pressure on the one desiring of sex to mature in ways which their sought after sexual partner will find attractive, thus leading to a healthier society as a whole. Sexual violence happens when someone is considered a means to an end, and that end is owed to another. In other words, when a person is seen primarily as a sexual end rather than a complex individual who deserves to be treated as such, and it is assumed that sex is both a need and a need which should be fulfilled with whomever one chooses, sexual violence is at the doorstep. The problem is not lack of empathy from the perspective of the one denying sex, but lack of empathy from the one expecting it. 

On  the latter, if sexuality is more freely engaged in, this only makes sexual rejection that much more painful. There will always be situations where Person A wishes to have sex with Person B, but the feeling is not reciprocated. If society is more promiscuous, those who are rejected will feel far worse, as they can look around and see that Person B has had sex with Persons C through Q and therefore, Person A must be inferior to them. Of course, that happens in a less promiscuous society as well, but it can be accounted to taste much easier if the person has only had sex with Persons C and D, rather than half the population of Alphabet Land. 

This, btw. is where I think we fail as a society in identifying people primarily by their sexuality. A human being is a complex entity, and sexuality is one trait of this complex individual. If we identify people primarily by this trait, we will always see sexual rejection as personal rejection. If, however, we can shift so that we see sexual relations as one plausible form of relation among a set of normative relationships, and the rejection of this sort not being a rejection of the entire individual, I think we will become a far healthier and less violent society, at least regarding sexual violence. 

Of course, I am not optimistic we will go that way, so I won't predict that we will, but it would be great if we did!


----------



## Montero

Following on in part from JJ's post on sexuality, I'd like to flag up the raising of unrealistic expectations as something that could be considered immoral. Not just in terms of sexuality, but in terms of lifestyle. Here in the west, we live in a society where there are vast swathes of fiction, TV series and films on relationships - and for dramatic purposes they are often a bit overstated and angst ridden.
The OH and I watch some Hollywood style sex scenes while making the commentary of "if we tried that, we'd be in A&E" - sometimes just the whole tumbling into bed thing where they passionately grapple and locked together manage to cross the room and land on the bed without missing it, and also without banging their heads on the bed head, smacking noses, biting their lip, or their partner's or finding you just squashed a sleeping cat. As a writer of fiction, I do understand the need to construct a story and the limitations (I tend to write on the less dramatic side) - but maybe in general it needs to be more highlighted to people that it's just entertainment.
Then there is advertising - persuading people to buy things they don't necessarily need, with all the pretty pictures of the glorious house you could have if only you would buy their kitchen/sofa/carpet/paint etc, etc. Yes, people do like stuff, and some people like/desire lots of gorgeous stuff while others don't care - but showing people lots of stuff they can't ever afford and doing a hey, wow if you just take out a loan.....

I can't remember now if I mentioned Emotional Intelligence earlier in the thread, but that is something that is badly neglected at present - it is taught in a few schools (California the last I heard) - but it is learning to understand your emotions and other people's and to apply a degree of control. A lot comes down to impulse control - various experiments were done, with follow on and it was found with a group of school kids that their later success in life was predicted better by the EQ (the emotional intelligence version of IQ) than by their IQ. So a morality to hope for - that the future will see us as barbaric for taking so long to educate people in this.


----------



## RJM Corbet

Onyx said:


> ... The flip side to that is that there is little difference between a murderer that enjoys the act and a Christian that murders gays because he feels an obligation to his faith to do so. Their victims can't measure that difference
> ...



Well then I apologise for assuming that the above choice of words -- especially in an ethics debate -- seems clearly to slant towards creating the impression that many murders of gays are committed by Christians.



Onyx said:


> ... I would suggest you stop reading the topics of a speculative writing forum through the eye of an aggrieved defender of the Faith. No one here is attacking your belief system.


I am open to most spiritual ideas, I am most certainly not a religious fundamentalist 'defender of the Faith.' But these aren't faith forums anyway. I assure readers of this thread that I am adamantly decided not to endanger this engaging thread by responding to further personal attacks/jibes -- whatever.


----------



## Brian G Turner

If you two don't stop it, I'm going to get my spanking paddle out. After I've ordered it from Amazon. 

In the meantime, this thread was allowed to run so long as we discussed future attitudes to contemporary attitudes, specifically with regards to speculation of existing moral blind spots. However, it keeps spilling over into subjects outside of that remit.

In which case, we either allow it to continue in its original direction, or I close it and we move on.


----------



## Joshua Jones

Brian G Turner said:


> If you two don't stop it, I'm going to get my spanking paddle out. After I've ordered it from Amazon.
> 
> In the meantime, this thread was allowed to run so long as we discussed future attitudes to contemporary attitudes, specifically with regards to speculation of existing moral blind spots. However, it keeps spilling over into subjects outside of that remit.
> 
> In which case, we either allow it to continue in its original direction, or I close it and we move on.


And, if I have contributed to this, I apologize profusely. My goal in my comments was to help with some of the ethical frameworks which future societies may employ, and give alternate sets of considerations which I sometimes find absent in more optimistic works. If this contributed to this thread getting offtrack, I sincerely apologize, as this was not my intention. 

So, I have often wondered, should Western civilization become a lost society, will future archaeologists believe we worship clocks (seeing as we have massive towers dedicated to them) and consider phones talismans? I mean, without electricity and a functional internet, it would be hard to discern their use...


----------



## Onyx

Joshua Jones said:


> In contrast, having a non-hedonistic society has the advantage of requiring individuals to mature as people before they have a realistic opportunity to woo a sexual partner. This places societal pressure on the one desiring of sex to mature in ways which their sought after sexual partner will find attractive, thus leading to a healthier society as a whole.


The problem with this is that it is most likely to happen by enforcing traditional gender roles, where one sex acts as the pursuer and the other the gatekeeper. Maybe that isn't what you intend, but it is the most likely way for that scenario to continue from the present day.

I don't think this sort of sexual dimorphism is something human beings, interested in lasting equality, can engage in permanently. And I think it is part of why some gender issues seem so intractable, because sexuality is seen as a type of transactional supply/demand problem among heterosexuals. Some sort of change to that dynamic is necessary. A return to even more Puritan courting rules isn't it.


----------



## Joshua Jones

Onyx said:


> The problem with this is that it is most likely to happen by enforcing traditional gender roles, where one sex acts as the pursuer and the other the gatekeeper. Maybe that isn't what you intend, but it is the most likely way for that scenario to continue from the present day.
> 
> I don't think this sort of sexual dimorphism is something human beings, interested in lasting equality, can engage in permanently. And I think it is part of why some gender issues seem so intractable, because sexuality is seen as a type of transactional supply/demand problem among heterosexuals. Some sort of change to that dynamic is necessary. A return to even more Puritan courting rules isn't it.


Setting aside the question of preferability (we have been warned twice about going off course, and I am not particularly eager to discover if we will get a third warning), I will limit my comments to the fact that there myriad ways this idea could be implemented apart from a "puritanical" approach. There is nothing intrinsically gender normative, or even heterosexual, to the idea that one ought to mature as an individual in order to persuade a prospective sexual partner, who is likely doing the same. Nor does the statement that this is likely better for society, or that people should be defined as more than their sexual interests. 

But, I anticipate Western civilization to become more hedonistic, not less. If automation and guaranteed living income replace an employment model, society is nearly certain to shift this way. Now, I am not going to mate a judgement call about if this is good or bad, but I will say that when this happened in Rome, it marked the beginning of its colapse. 

That actually does lead to a prediction... People will depend on drones for combat more and more until they cannot imagine humans fighting each other, until another force exploits the weaknesses of drones that humans don't share, and conquers those who use them.


----------



## Onyx

Joshua Jones said:


> There is nothing intrinsically gender normative, or even heterosexual, to the idea that one ought to mature as an individual in order to persuade a prospective sexual partner, who is likely doing the same. Nor does the statement that this is likely better for society, or that people should be defined as more than their sexual interests.


The problem is that there are only two people involved in a standard sexual arrangement, so the roles of applicant and judge can only fall to those people. Add the problem of maturity vs sexual maturation and you have what we've got right now - boys chasing girls. The only way to really change that is to alter the timing or degree of sexual maturity with medical interference, or impose moral roadblocks that are drastic enough to stymie adolescent drives through fairly severe social penalties so adolescents are "forced" to wait until the community judges them ready. What are the other ways?

And my value judgement that one thing is "better" than another is just from a egalitarian vs. dystopian POV. I think more people being able to make choices at a personal rather societal level is a move toward liberty, while increasing the barriers to free interaction has to be imposed on individuals.



Joshua Jones said:


> But, I anticipate Western civilization to become more hedonistic, not less.


"Hedonistic" is a value judgement, similar to "promiscuous". To use it, you first have to believe that there is something intrinsically damaging about pleasure seeking. This is a Puritanical view, and not necessarily the "natural order" as many primates live that way with "Rome collapsing".

I think Rome had more of a lead ingestion problem than anything else. But the Christian world has historically associated the collapse with the kind of pleasure seeking pagans engaged in at the behest of Satan. I don't know if any modern sociologists necessarily agree with that.


----------



## Joshua Jones

Onyx said:


> The problem is that there are only two people involved in a standard sexual arrangement, so the roles of applicant and judge can only fall to those people. Add the problem of maturity vs sexual maturation and you have what we've got right now - boys chasing girls. The only way to really change that is to alter the timing or degree of sexual maturity with medical interference, or impose moral roadblocks that are drastic enough to stymie adolescent drives through fairly severe social penalties so adolescents are "forced" to wait until the community judges them ready. What are the other ways?
> 
> And my value judgement that one thing is "better" than another is just from a egalitarian vs. dystopian POV. I think more people being able to make choices at a personal rather societal level is a move toward liberty, while increasing the barriers to free interaction has to be imposed on individuals.
> 
> 
> "Hedonistic" is a value judgement, similar to "promiscuous". To use it, you first have to believe that there is something intrinsically damaging about pleasure seeking. This is a Puritanical view, and not necessarily the "natural order" as many primates live that way with "Rome collapsing".
> 
> I think Rome had more of a lead ingestion problem than anything else. But the Christian world has historically associated the collapse with the kind of pleasure seeking pagans engaged in at the behest of Satan. I don't know if any modern sociologists necessarily agree with that.


Physical maturation is not in view here, but relational, emotional, and possibly economic maturation. Hedonism is a technical term for a social value of pleasure, and promiscuity is only a negative term if one assumes there is an intrinsic fault in having sex with a range of individuals. It is simply a historic fact that the disciple of the legions laxed over time, and the "barbarians" likely could not have overrun Rome if they were as disciplined as before.


----------



## Onyx

Joshua Jones said:


> Physical maturation is not in view here, but relational, emotional, and possibly economic maturation. Hedonism is a technical term for a social value of pleasure, and promiscuity is only a negative term if one assumes there is an intrinsic fault in having sex with a range of individuals. It is simply a historic fact that the disciple of the legions laxed over time, and the "barbarians" likely could not have overrun Rome if they were as disciplined as before.


But you're associating a lack of discipline in the military with sex?

I don't see how you can separate physical and mental maturation from questions of sexuality. They don't happen in a convenient order for what you're describing.


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## Montero

I'm going to chime in here with Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan series. Beta Colony and how she created that:

1. There are all sorts of permutations and combinations going on - including hermaphrodites.
2. There is rigorous sex education, not just about the physical aspects but also the emotional and psychological ones.
3. There is state enforced contraception - in order to get the contraception removed you have to get a parenting licence - and both parents are judged.
4. It is an advanced science world with artificial wombs and DNA manipulation - so it is possible for a same sex couple to have kids with both their DNA.
5. The society is based on openness - you wear ear-rings to indicate your status, from not interested in sex, to interested in xxx, to in a stable monogamous relationship - and lying with a false status earring is a big social no-no.

So it would be entirely possible, in  future society, to have systems in place that assess the maturity of individuals. The Beta colony one isn't a perfect system in the book, people still pull crap, but when it is working well, a couple (or larger grouping) can ease into a relationship, or solve problems in a relationship with a very highly trained therapist.

To me, one of the joys of the whole Vorkosigan series is how Bujold creates some very different socials systems and puts them in a sandbox to play together - nicely or not.


----------



## awesomesauce

Joshua Jones said:


> For me, I don't like predicting based on what I hope humanity will do, but what history has shown we will likely do and what trends exist in the present.



I think there's a place for both in speculative fiction. It's a way to talk about what we could be, if we choose. The future can be an awful warning of a grim and dystopian future, but it doesn't have to be. There's value in imagining we can become better than we are, also. I guess I feel like this optimism has eroded from sf somewhere. Corny and naive as it might seem now, in the old sci-fi shows and pulp stories, there's often an enthusiasm for the future that seems like it's missing in a lot of the current stuff.

“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.” (O. Wilde)


----------



## Joshua Jones

awesomesauce said:


> I think there's a place for both in speculative fiction. It's a way to talk about what we could be, if we choose. The future can be an awful warning of a grim and dystopian future, but it doesn't have to be. There's value in imagining we can become better than we are, also. I guess I feel like this optimism has eroded from sf somewhere. Corny and naive as it might seem now, in the old sci-fi shows and pulp stories, there's often an enthusiasm for the future that seems like it's missing in a lot of the current stuff.
> 
> “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.” (O. Wilde)


Fair point. To be fair, I don't think the future is fully dystopian or utopian; I think no matter how we order society, there will be advantages and disadvantages, those who have and those who have not. So, I come at this from the perspective of "If (insert societal value here) were to change, what would be the effects? Who would benefit and how? Who would loose out and in what ways? What would the society try to do to fix that?" If all of these are not present, I don't think I have fully analyzed the situation. 

But, that is just my approach, and I see the value of dystopias and utopias.


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## MWagner

Onyx said:


> "Hedonistic" is a value judgement, similar to "promiscuous". To use it, you first have to believe that there is something intrinsically damaging about pleasure seeking. This is a Puritanical view, and not necessarily the "natural order" as many primates live that way with "Rome collapsing".



I read "hedonistic' to mean to pursue personal pleasure to the exclusion of all other aims. There's a classic ethical philosophy scenario that asks if you were able to enter a box that stimulates intense and unrelenting pleasure, with the proviso that you could never leave the box, would you do it? Most people answer no, even it they can't articulate exactly why. 

My mind has been turning to that scenario recently, as we're not far off from it becoming reality. I think I'll live to see a time when most people do not leave their homes, and instead lie twitching in tanks, hooked up to VR, blood coursing with nutrients and pleasure-enhancing drugs. The pleasure box made real. And I don't think the people who eschew the pleasure box will do so out of puritanism.


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## MWagner

I have my doubts that we'll be looking at universal morality for much longer. Society is already fragmenting, and fragmenting rapidly, into mutually incomprehensible political and social tribes. Give it another 30 or 40 years and the various tribes will demonstrate their own distinct values and virtues. Each may enforce its social norms fiercely within the group, but be powerless to influence or sanction those outside it. 

And I wonder how easily people will be able to move between the tribes. As social identity shifts from meat space to virtual space, who's to say people won't have several social identities, and switch between those tribes - even hostile tribes - as the need warrants. Humans have very strong instincts to police social norms, but it's unclear how those could be enforced in a world where 90+ per cent of your socialization takes place in the environment where you can hide or swap identities at will.  Perhaps espousing and defending various values and causes will become no more than an elaborate social media game.


----------



## Parson

Onyx said:


> A return to even more Puritan courting rules isn't it.



But it would at least be an interesting scenario in an S.F. book. It seems to me that most S.F. writers tend to explore the boundaries of libertinism; I for one would find a society that was functioning in an accepting but constrained manner very interesting indeed. It seems when S.F. writers go for constrained societies they assume a "Handmaid's Tale" kind of repressive society which is then flouted by the rich and powerful. Couldn't we at least imagine something different and more wholesome for a future society?



MWagner said:


> I have my doubts that we'll be looking at universal morality for much longer. Society is already fragmenting, and fragmenting rapidly, into mutually incomprehensible political and social tribes. Give it another 30 or 40 years and the various tribes will demonstrate their own distinct values and virtues. Each may enforce its social norms fiercely within the group, but be powerless to influence or sanction those outside it.



I don't believe we've ever had anything like a "universal morality." Humans have been tribal essentially all of our existence. And every tribe has some of their own morals and exceptions to them. I would further posit that anything that even looks like "universal ethics" is based in either shared tribal mores (Tribes don't last if they allow much killing of members) or something that has it's roots in the time when human trading became possible which is a very short time in human existence.  ---- One of the things I've always loved about S.F. is it's ability to look at societies in a kind of uncluttered way, which is very different than the world we live in. And I don't see a lot of originality in that sense lately.


----------



## Onyx

MWagner said:


> My mind has been turning to that scenario recently, as we're not far off from it becoming reality. I think I'll live to see a time when most people do not leave their homes, and instead lie twitching in tanks, hooked up to VR, blood coursing with nutrients and pleasure-enhancing drugs. The pleasure box made real. And I don't think the people who eschew the pleasure box will do so out of puritanism.


You should read "The Unincorporated Man" for an interesting take on this.



MWagner said:


> I have my doubts that we'll be looking at universal morality for much longer. Society is already fragmenting, and fragmenting rapidly, into mutually incomprehensible political and social tribes. Give it another 30 or 40 years and the various tribes will demonstrate their own distinct values and virtues. Each may enforce its social norms fiercely within the group, but be powerless to influence or sanction those outside it.


I think we've already lived through more extreme periods of divergent sociology. We joke about groupthink and truth police, but the mental adjustment people who lived through the Cultural Revolution went through to denounce each other and adamantly believe things they knew were not true is pretty astoundingly outside the Western mindset. I think the assumptions about people demonstrated in Three Body Problem really bring home how different the Chinese view of people is from our own. Much more so than arguments about "living wage" or the mild xenophobia of the alt-right.



Parson said:


> But it would at least be an interesting scenario in an S.F. book. It seems to me that most S.F. writers tend to explore the boundaries of libertinism; I for one would find a society that was functioning in an accepting but constrained manner very interesting indeed. It seems when S.F. writers go for constrained societies they assume a "Handmaid's Tale" kind of repressive society which is then flouted by the rich and powerful. Couldn't we at least imagine something different and more wholesome for a future society?


I know I've read more than a few SF books about formalized societies with constrained expression, the most obvious being Dune. The New Victorians of The Diamond Age would be another. And for all the sex and drugs of the Culture, notions like ecology, fairness and duty are much more part of those people's principles than they are ours. You really aren't a true libertine if you care about stuff.


----------



## Parson

Onyx said:


> I know I've read more than a few SF books about formalized societies with constrained expression, the most obvious being Dune.



Dune ..... Yes, that would be an example (one I should have thought about) especially in the first book or two, after that the series got too weird to be taken seriously.


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## Onyx

Parson said:


> Dune ..... Yes, that would be an example (one I should have thought about) especially in the first book or two, after that the series got too weird to be taken seriously.


You prefer those more conventional stories of life 10,000 years in the future?


----------



## RJM Corbet

If the future didn't have room for birds mating and nesting as they have done since long before man came into being -- and for seasons and thunderstorms and clean fast-flowing streams --  the fragrance of mountain herbs and the  rich smell of new plowed earth -- I wouldn't care to go there ...


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## Parson

Onyx said:


> You prefer those more conventional stories of life 10,000 years in the future?



 Yeah, sounds dumb doesn't it? I was really referring to things like the "God Emperor of Dune," where he saw all of the future and was walking carefully to walk in just the right footprints for the future. --- The later books were not as engaging for me, so that probably plays into my impression.


----------



## Mirannan

Nick B said:


> The moral blind spot of world hunger can be simplified down to this - we grow enough crops to feed 14 billion people. We feed so much of it to cattle, that a billion or more humans are starving. If we fed people instead of cattle, there would be no hunger, and all of the land (roughly 1 third of the world's landmass apparently) currently used for animal agriculture, could be turned over to forest, and still have more food than we can currently use. This would also eliminate 51% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions.
> Pretty much most of the climate problems solved, all hunger eliminated, no more farm animal welfare problems, our medical system would see a massive decrease in expenditure, no more deforestation, water shortages would be almost eliminated... Need I go on?
> 
> Just one change. One. Some day, hopefully humans will look back in utter dismay that we didn't solve this sooner.



I think it's worth mentioning that some (sure, by no means all) land used for raising meat animals is pretty much useless for growing crops - at any sort of reasonable cost, anyway. American semi-desert rangeland (as in Texas, perhaps) and British hills come to mind here. If cattle and/or sheep were not raised there, they wouldn't be producing food at all.


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## Mirannan

Cathbad said:


> Just a thought, but shouldn't people also have the right not to listen to what they don't want to?



Indeed. Which is why, if you are in the habit of acting like an adult, in circumstances like that you get up and walk out. Freedom of speech does not include the freedom to be listened to.


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## Onyx

Mirannan said:


> I think it's worth mentioning that some (sure, by no means all) land used for raising meat animals is pretty much useless for growing crops - at any sort of reasonable cost, anyway. American semi-desert rangeland (as in Texas, perhaps) and British hills come to mind here. If cattle and/or sheep were not raised there, they wouldn't be producing food at all.


Raised, yes. But most of those animals are grain finished, and that grain is edible by people. If you were to eat beef that was raised entirely in Nevada without grain finishing, you'd stop eating beef. The good "grass fed beef" is from cows grazing pasture that could easily support a food crop.


But really, the main problem right now is the methane.


----------



## SilentRoamer

Well i recently finished reading Brian Aldiss: Non -Stop which poses a myriad of moral questions with some great complexity:

Is it right to board a generational ship - knowing you deny at least a portion of your ancestors life on a planet (as evolution surely intended it)?


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## Onyx

SilentRoamer said:


> Well i recently finished reading Brian Aldiss: Non -Stop which poses a myriad of moral questions with some great complexity:
> 
> Is it right to board a generational ship - knowing you deny at least a portion of your ancestors life on a planet (as evolution surely intended it)?


Evolution doesn't have intent. 

Is it right to subject people to the dangers of planetary life when a habitat that doesn't have drought, earthquakes or hurricanes could easily be constructed?


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## Joshua Jones

SilentRoamer said:


> Well i recently finished reading Brian Aldiss: Non -Stop which poses a myriad of moral questions with some great complexity:
> 
> Is it right to board a generational ship - knowing you deny at least a portion of your ancestors life on a planet (as evolution surely intended it)?


That is an interesting question, but I think of it from a slightly different angle. Is it morally right to board a generation ship, knowing that scores of your ancestors will have no say in their living conditions, reproductive autonomy (too much population growth can be a serious problem on a generation ship, so I suspect there will be tight reproductive controls in place), political or economic freedom, and so forth. On Earth, at least, one could always move to another country if they don't like the one they live in (not intending that to be a minimization of the difficulties surrounding immigration, but it is a possibility), whereas, on a generation ship, one is stuck. So, does one have the right to decide on behalf of, say, 50 generations where they will live?


----------



## SilentRoamer

Onyx said:


> Evolution doesn't have intent.
> 
> Is it right to subject people to the dangers of planetary life when a habitat that doesn't have drought, earthquakes or hurricanes could easily be constructed?



I know evolution doesn't have intent - what I was getting at is that human physical and mental conditions are most suited to life on a planet - genetics even vary between peoples depending on location within said planet. Denying a human that is denying them the environment that evolutionary factors have developed them to be their most useful in. Hope I parsed it a bit better that time. 

Your inversion is really interesting - future humans may see it as barbaric and morally reprehensible to condemn future generations to life or to go even further continued evolutionary development in a gravity well. A far future where humans are genetically altered at an extreme level and then placed in the conditions for for them.



Joshua Jones said:


> That is an interesting question, but I think of it from a slightly different angle. Is it morally right to board a generation ship, knowing that scores of your ancestors will have no say in their living conditions, reproductive autonomy (too much population growth can be a serious problem on a generation ship, so I suspect there will be tight reproductive controls in place), political or economic freedom, and so forth. On Earth, at least, one could always move to another country if they don't like the one they live in (not intending that to be a minimization of the difficulties surrounding immigration, but it is a possibility), whereas, on a generation ship, one is stuck. So, does one have the right to decide on behalf of, say, 50 generations where they will live?



That's what I was getting at, it's different to a planet in that you have a completely closed system, much less flexibility and movement and opportunity for change.

In the Aldiss novel it leads to a development of an almost inverted moral code regarding the outward expression of internal conflict. They have moral paradigms like "Look before you leap" and "The devil you don't know may replace the devil you do".


----------



## Onyx

SilentRoamer said:


> I know evolution doesn't have intent - what I was getting at is that human physical and mental conditions are most suited to life on a planet - genetics even vary between peoples depending on location within said planet. Denying a human that is denying them the environment that evolutionary factors have developed them to be their most useful in. Hope I parsed it a bit better that time.
> 
> Your inversion is really interesting - future humans may see it as barbaric and morally reprehensible to condemn future generations to life or to go even further continued evolutionary development in a gravity well. A far future where humans are genetically altered at an extreme level and then placed in the conditions for for them.


Your premise is that there is something natural and pleasant about human ingenuity allowing people to live entirely on reindeer meat and milk on the Mongolian steppe, but using that same ingenuity to live in a tube with perfect weather and plenty to eat is somehow unnatural and cruel. People haven't been doing the natural thing since we started using tools and language to manipulate the environment, and a space borne terrarium is little different than a species that evolved in central Africa living in igloos.

And while I get the lack of choice, that's really a rich Westerner perspective. The citizens of Cambodia can't move out when they get bored with growing rice for a living.

Most human beings throughout history would consider themselves greatly fortunate to have a comfortable home "country" that exceeds their physical needs while having a genuine purpose to the existence of their community.


The bigger problem is going to be getting people who grew up in an engineered paradise to want to get off the bus when it arrives at some lethal exoplanet.


----------



## Mirannan

Onyx said:


> Raised, yes. But most of those animals are grain finished, and that grain is edible by people. If you were to eat beef that was raised entirely in Nevada without grain finishing, you'd stop eating beef. The good "grass fed beef" is from cows grazing pasture that could easily support a food crop.
> 
> 
> But really, the main problem right now is the methane.



OK, you're probably right about cattle - but AFAIK it doesn't apply to sheep; the upland areas used for rearing sheep really are pretty useless for anything else, and again AFAIK sheep are not normally finished in the same way as cattle are.

Incidentally, there is a similar argument about pigs; there is a good reason for the word "pigswill". And pigs, back in the day, were often left to forage for acorns and such in the forest. Pigs can and will eat things we won't.

Various forms of wildlife might also be used, in a controlled way, as food and that would probably help the environment in the same way as introducing predators does. In some places where predators are absent, deer are becoming a damaging nuisance. Rabbits in Australia already have.

And one can't help thinking that those endless thousands of wildebeest one sees on nature documentaries are a wasted resource.

Of course, we have lots of evidence of the fact that such exploitation has to be controlled. Stocks of various popular fish, and the horrible example of the American bison - and even more horrible examples of various species we have driven to extinction by eating them.

BTW, another source of food - particularly protein - that is greatly underexploited is insects. Some of which are actually quite tasty; I understand that crickets and locusts taste rather like prawns. And insects convert feed into bodymass much better than cattle do.


----------



## SilentRoamer

Onyx said:


> Your premise is that there is something natural and pleasant about human ingenuity allowing people to live entirely on reindeer meat and milk on the Mongolian steppe, but using that same ingenuity to live in a tube with perfect weather and plenty to eat is somehow unnatural and cruel. People haven't been doing the natural thing since we started using tools and la
> 
> And while I get the lack of choice, that's really a rich Westerner perspective. The citizens of Cambodia can't move out when they get bored with growing rice for a living.
> 
> Most human beings throughout history would consider themselves greatly fortunate to have a comfortable home "country" that exceeds their physical needs while having a genuine purpose to the existence of their community.
> 
> 
> The bigger problem is going to be getting people who grew up in an engineered paradise to want to get off the bus when it arrives at some lethal exoplanet.



Maybe it is a Westerner perspective, I was born in Britain so it's likely I do have that particular world view, although lets not get into socio-politics as we don't want to bring the ire of the mods. 

I think we're getting tripped up on our particular imaginings of a inter generational ship/environ. I am not thinking of something that is essentially a terrarium in space but more a functional ship, there are plenty of SFF novels I have read where I would be happy to live in a non planetary environment - plenty of described ships or environs where I could live out my life and never get bored. 

I think my posts have been affected by my recent reading of Aldiss' Non Stop. **Spoilers For Non Stop Ahead** In this the ship is largely defunct and the humans have extremely restricted lives, they're moving between decks with insane hydroponics growing all over, things have gone down the pan. **End Spoiler**

I suppose one of the problems is that you can't guarantee future generations well-being, you can't guarantee their survival and while those on earth have similar uncertainty for their future theirs is the default position whilst those on the journeys is manufactured of their own volition. We all make choices for our future and the future of our children if we have them and this would be a pretty big moral decision. 

It could be that we get to the point where this isn't a particularly big moral decision, it could be like decide to emigrate to Australia or buy a shack in the middle of nowhere. Whichever way at some point there will be a moral dilemma before it becomes a normal and accepted everyday occurrence.


----------



## Onyx

SilentRoamer said:


> I am not thinking of something that is essentially a terrarium in space but more a functional ship,


I guess I've never understood the depiction of a generation ship full of metal corridors. If you don't have the technology to store human genes and birth the people you need when you arrive, how are you doing that with the rest of the earth life you'll need when you get there? So I've never understood having a ship full of people that wasn't like a park full of life. And if you can just breed what you need from stored ova when you arrive, you can do the same with the people using a much smaller multigeneration crew.

This is one of those SF problems that doesn't work on paper.


----------



## Montero

Onyx said:


> Raised, yes. But most of those animals are grain finished, and that grain is edible by people
> 
> .


Yes and no. Technically people could eat the grain, but in the main it is of lower quality than that normally used for flour. Animal feed also includes waste products like the pulp from sugar beet after the sugar has been extracted.

Agree regarding inefficiency of cattle carcases - but if what you are doing is keeping cows for milk, then that changes the efficiency. The thing that has happened in the modern world is having separate breeds for dairy and meat and people coming to expect the chunkier carcase of the meat breed. Same with sheep - as in there are wool breeds and meat breeds and modern consumers expect a chunky chop. There is also the expectation that everything is eaten when young and tender. If you brought end of life dairy cattle and wool sheep more into the food chain then that would help a bit. There has been work on promoting mutton from end of life sheep. I like mutton - it has a lot more flavour than lamb and if it is properly aged and slow cooked, no problem with texture. It used to be that sheep produced wool and you ate them at end of life. Britain used to be a massive producer of wool and we were known for eating mutton. Cattle used to be multi-purpose too - not just meat and milk but also as bullocks for ploughing and pulling heavy wagons. At end of working life - eaten.

In terms of methane - have any tests been done on how much methane people produce - and whether it increases on a vegetarian diet?


----------



## Onyx

Montero said:


> Yes and no. Technically people could eat the grain, but in the main it is of lower quality than that normally used for flour. Animal feed also includes waste products like the pulp from sugar beet after the sugar has been extracted.
> 
> Agree regarding inefficiency of cattle carcases - but if what you are doing is keeping cows for milk, then that changes the efficiency. The thing that has happened in the modern world is having separate breeds for dairy and meat and people coming to expect the chunkier carcase of the meat breed. Same with sheep - as in there are wool breeds and meat breeds and modern consumers expect a chunky chop. There is also the expectation that everything is eaten when young and tender. If you brought end of life dairy cattle and wool sheep more into the food chain then that would help a bit. There has been work on promoting mutton from end of life sheep. I like mutton - it has a lot more flavour than lamb and if it is properly aged and slow cooked, no problem with texture. It used to be that sheep produced wool and you ate them at end of life. Britain used to be a massive producer of wool and we were known for eating mutton. Cattle used to be multi-purpose too - not just meat and milk but also as bullocks for ploughing and pulling heavy wagons. At end of working life - eaten.
> 
> In terms of methane - haven't any tests been done on how much methane people produce - and whether it increases on a vegetarian diet?


Methane is due to specific stomach flora. Kangaroo flora is being considered for use in cows and sheep because it doesn't produce much methane. This is a species issue, not a vegetarian issue.


----------



## Parson

Onyx said:


> Methane is due to specific stomach flora. Kangaroo flora is being considered for use in cows and sheep because it doesn't produce much methane. This is a species issue, not a vegetarian issue.



I live in the hearty of livestock country and have never heard this. But this article says that it was a false hope.
Kangaroo flatulence

and this

Mooooove Over, Cows! Kangaroo Farts Warm the Earth, Too


----------



## Stephen Palmer

The main problem is feeding food to livestock, but there are many other, smaller, problems too.
The sheep/land argument above is correct imo.
Regardless of issues of plant crop quality, with an increasing population, feeding food to livestock instead of to people is madness.
Vegetarianism or semi-vegetarianism is the way forward!


----------



## Montero

Population reduction is the best way forward on saving the planet (see Population Matters for example). Yes, individuals reducing their consumption helps, but dropping the number of individuals is also crucial.

Other than that - I have found a link on human farts - https://www.quora.com/Do-human-farts-contribute-to-global-warming
Which does show that a higher fibre diet increases the farts, but says they are still insignificant. 

And a different article on cows
https://gizmodo.com/we-ve-grossly-underestimated-how-much-cow-farts-are-con-1818993089
Says 30 to 50 gallons of methane a day - which sounds rather high.

Other than that, a few comments:

1. Before we kept cattle, there were large ruminants over much of the planet - bison, buffalo, deer, elk, reindeer - which will have the same impact as grass fed cattle

2. It isn't possible to ignore crop quality - if people won't or can't eat it, then it is pointless, plus as said, waste products from human food also go to animals - it is already established those are bits we can't eat.

3. Both being an omnivore or a vegetarian includes drinking milk and eating eggs - for that you have to breed animals and birds and you have a surplus of males, which you either mature and then eat, or kill at birth. At present in Western farming practice most dairy cattle bulls and cockerels are killed just after birth. Commercial laying chickens are "autosexing" which means the cockerel and hen chicks are visually different, so people have the lovely job of separating the sexes and killing the cockerels. There are also a lot of bereft cows who give birth then immediately lose their calf. If the calves were grown to the point they are weaned and the mother is moving on, that would be more ethical. However, as mentioned earlier, dairy cattle are not "beefy" so they are less popular for eating, though there are people who are raising dairy calves for meat - or putting a beef bull on a dairy cow, so the calf has meat value. Though breeding pure dairy calves is still necessary for continuing the breed, with of course, the production of surplus dairy bull calves.

The detail is important in all of this - especially in terms of ethics.


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## Stephen Palmer

Montero said:


> 1. Before we kept cattle, there were large ruminants over much of the planet - bison, buffalo, deer, elk, reindeer - which will have the same impact as grass fed cattle
> 
> - They lived in naturally-limited populations fitting with their environments, unlike cows, which are mass populations on artificial, human-limited populations. Hence, devastating habitat destruction.
> 
> 2. It isn't possible to ignore crop quality - if people won't or can't eat it, then it is pointless, plus as said, waste products from human food also go to animals - it is already established those are bits we can't eat.
> 
> - Protein is protein. And we need less than people realise.
> 
> 3. Both being an omnivore or a vegetarian includes drinking milk and eating eggs - for that you have to breed animals and birds and you have a surplus of males, which you either mature and then eat, or kill at birth. At present in Western farming practice most dairy cattle bulls and cockerels are killed just after birth. Commercial laying chickens are "autosexing" which means the cockerel and hen chicks are visually different, so people have the lovely job of separating the sexes and killing the cockerels. There are also a lot of bereft cows who give birth then immediately lose their calf. If the calves were grown to the point they are weaned and the mother is moving on, that would be more ethical. However, as mentioned earlier, dairy cattle are not "beefy" so they are less popular for eating, though there are people who are raising dairy calves for meat - or putting a beef bull on a dairy cow, so the calf has meat value. Though breeding pure dairy calves is still necessary for continuing the breed, with of course, the production of surplus dairy bull calves.
> 
> The detail is important in all of this - especially in terms of ethics.



Agreed, but this works on the local scale. On the national/global scale, it leads to disaster.
I, a vegetarian of 30+ years, would certainly consider eating meat from a small-scale, locally responsible, ethical/humane slaughtering farm. But there are very few of those.

^^ oops, a couple of my replies in the quote!


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## Montero

Big kudos to you regarding your statement on considering eating meat.

I think that a lot of the things done on a national or global scale are a big part of the problem, whatever it is being done. There was the whole thing about bio fuels - great initially when people were running diesels on waste chip oil. Then it took off and there was the human race cutting down chunks of rain forest to grow crops for biofuels which were then transported across the globe using petroleum products. Go figure.
Sadly, this could also happen with vegetarianism - a lot of pulses, grain, fruit and veg are already imported - and growing them in parts of the UK as we've already agreed is not always possible. So doing the whole equation - including the greenhouse gases produced importing veg vs the greenhouse gases produced from local livestock - vegetarianism might not help with global warming as much as it appears at first sight.
Returning to mainly eating seasonal food _would_ help - no more out of season soft fruit for example.
Not importing across the globe by aircraft - fruit and veg is now largely flown in, it used to come in bulk on ships which I think - haven't checked but it _seems_ logical - would have lower fuel costs per ton of food.
You could also bring the calorie value of the transported food into the discussion - which would tend to favour meat and cheese......  (Cheese is a great way of storing milk - particularly on the continent, there used to be and still is in some countries the way of life of taking your dairy herd up into the high pastures for the summer, making cheese all summer and you come back with a pile of cheese for the winter.)
In terms of transport, there is now the whole "thing" of stuff being made at a great distance because the labour is cheaper. The bottom line is ruling the roost - that may well be what future generations consider to be totally immoral - how so much was subordinated to the bottom line. Including such daftnesses as importing plastic kids toys from China.

Further thought - biodiversity in the UK - avoiding ripping out hedgerows and having massive fields with a monoculture, whether it is "weed free" grass, grain, oil seed rape or cabbages...


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## Stephen Palmer

The fundamental change behind all we are talking about is the one that "Greens" have been banging on about since the '70s. The scale of society is so huge all sense of locality has been lost. But we don't need to "return to mud huts," as Thatcher infamously said, we need to reduce the scale of society then interlink everything. At the moment, globalism is destroying everything in its path.
My main motives 30 years ago for going vegetarian - once I'd got into it by accident, sharing a house with other veggies - were the animal cruelty and the economic vandalism.


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## Onyx

Montero said:


> So doing the whole equation - including the greenhouse gases produced importing veg vs the greenhouse gases produced from local livestock - vegetarianism might not help with global warming as much as it appears at first sight.


Why would imported veggies produce more greenhouse gases than imported meat grown on the same foreign soil? Not getting the connection.


There are places on earth where it is nearly impossible to grow vegetables, but cows can eat the local scrub. But most of those places also have nearly no people. If we're talking about places people do live in large numbers, the land tends to be fairly arable for the production of human veggies.


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## Mirannan

Onyx said:


> Why would imported veggies produce more greenhouse gases than imported meat grown on the same foreign soil? Not getting the connection.
> 
> 
> There are places on earth where it is nearly impossible to grow vegetables, but cows can eat the local scrub. But most of those places also have nearly no people. If we're talking about places people do live in large numbers, the land tends to be fairly arable for the production of human veggies.



As I said earlier, there are even more areas where nothing edible by humans will grow but sheep can graze just fine. The same probably applies to goats, but I'm less certain.

I have in mind a compromise. Most of those who eat meat eat far too much of it for their health if nothing else; and our favourite meat animal, cattle, is probably the hardest to get tasty meat out of economically and without wasting land and resources.

There is also the issue that humans are not naturally exclusively herbivorous. Our gut isn't long or complicated  enough for that, for a start, and some nutrients are difficult to impossible to get enough of in an exclusively vegetable diet. Vitamin B12 is only the most obvious.

Most people don't react too well to hectoring and claims that they are evil, as directed by vegans towards omnivores. A campaign to encourage smaller amounts of meat in a sitting and eating beef very rarely if at all might work better, if pitched properly - maybe emphasising such a diet's health benefits.

Of course, this might not work because fanatics are rarely interested in compromise. BTW, why aren't the anti-meat campaigners doing anything about halal?


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## Onyx

Mirannan said:


> As I said earlier, there are even more areas where nothing edible by humans will grow but sheep can graze just fine. The same probably applies to goats, but I'm less certain.
> 
> I have in mind a compromise. Most of those who eat meat eat far too much of it for their health if nothing else; and our favourite meat animal, cattle, is probably the hardest to get tasty meat out of economically and without wasting land and resources.
> 
> There is also the issue that humans are not naturally exclusively herbivorous. Our gut isn't long or complicated  enough for that, for a start, and some nutrients are difficult to impossible to get enough of in an exclusively vegetable diet. Vitamin B12 is only the most obvious.
> 
> Most people don't react too well to hectoring and claims that they are evil, as directed by vegans towards omnivores. A campaign to encourage smaller amounts of meat in a sitting and eating beef very rarely if at all might work better, if pitched properly - maybe emphasising such a diet's health benefits.
> 
> Of course, this might not work because fanatics are rarely interested in compromise. BTW, why aren't the anti-meat campaigners doing anything about halal?


I'm not a vegetarian, and animals like chickens and aquaculture fish can be raised in the same land that is growing people food.

Cattle out grazing in the wastelands is fine, but you already objected to transporting food long distances, and the majority of people don't live in wastelands.


The problem isn't that we eat the wrong foods, but that we eat them in the wrong proportions. Mammal meat should be a special meal - not something eaten daily. But Westerners now eat pork for breakfast, hamburgers for lunch and lamb chops for dinner while thinking nothing of it. To support that intake you have to convert a lot of rainforest to pasture and grow a lot of grain to get the awful taste of creosote out of cows raised in Montana. Cheese and milk are nice, but are more non-essential foods that most populations have a hard time digesting.


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## Montero

Onyx said:


> Why would imported veggies produce more greenhouse gases than imported meat grown on the same foreign soil? Not getting the connection.


The transport. The further something is transported before you eat it, assuming fossil fuels are used to power the transport, then the more greenhouse gases are associated with that food. Even if you bring it in by sailing ship and bicycle, there will be energy consumed in the building of the transport and it maintenance.


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## Onyx

Montero said:


> The transport. The further something is* transported *before you eat it, assuming fossil fuels are used to power the transport, then the more greenhouse gases are associated with that food. Even if you bring it in by sailing ship and bicycle, there will be energy consumed in the building of the transport and it maintenance.


Okay, I'll say this again:

If you want to use wasteland to grow cattle, you have to *transport* the cattle to where the people are. People mainly congregate where high quality vegetation grows. So how are cows - that spew methane AND require fossil fuel transport to market better than vegetables that require either one or none of those two things?


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## Cathbad

I think this thread got lost.


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## SilentRoamer

Cathbad said:


> I think this thread got lost.



Not too lost to find it's way back.

In *David Zindells Neverness *it is considered morally wrong (I think it is also illegal) to alter your own or to take someone else DNA. It even has an associated slur - Slel-necking for DNA thiefs and slelling for those that alter their own DNA. In Neverness physical attributes can be changed by body sculptors, who work on your existing bones but actual changes to DNA are not allowed - maybe in the future some genetic issues or some new ethical stance will emerge where we find DNA alteration ethically or morally wrong. In Neverness I think it relates to a disaster at some point and is something prohibited as damaging for future generations. 

Along these same lines future humans who evolve seperately may become naturally incompatible. For example if some humans develop in a gravity well and some develop in Zero-G then these humans may end up being reproductively incompatbile - it may be considered morally / ethically wrong to try as it may cause similar defects than what we see in incest. 

So genetic fidelity and ownership may begin to have moral implications - in a world where clones became commonplace would you own your own DNA?

Just some chud for the cows to chew on.


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## Montero

@Onyx - over a number of posts, mine and others, the discussion has ranged across a number of topics relating to ethical farming, to upland areas being better for grazing sheep than for vegs and also discussion on vegetarianism. So drawing this together, the point I was making, perhaps not clearly enough, was that for everyone in the UK to go veggie, a lot of veg would have to be imported. I was then noting, that if you compare the fossil fuel consumption of imported veg vs locally raised animals there was less of an advantage than might initially appear for the vegetarian option. I would add to that, especially for hill raised grass fed sheep.

In terms of ethics, I think getting the detail right is crucial - with all the impacts considered. In areas of the UK where farming has gone to large scale arable vast lengths of hedges were torn up, removing habitat for birds.

@SilentRoamer - not owning your own DNA - that sounds creepy. It jogged my memory - there has already been problems in that direction with companies collecting samples. I think it was Iceland - have found an article about problems with this in Iceland. The world's most precious genes?


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## Onyx

Montero said:


> @Onyx - over a number of posts, mine and others, the discussion has ranged across a number of topics relating to ethical farming, to upland areas being better for grazing sheep than for vegs and on vegetarianism. So drawing this together, the point I was making, perhaps not clearly enough, was that for everyone in the UK to go veggie, a lot of veg would have to be imported. I was then noting, that if you compare the fossil fuel consumption of imported veg vs locally raised animals there was less of an advantage than might initially appear for the vegetarian option. I would add to that, especially for hill raised grass fed sheep.


This may or may not be true of the UK - it rather depends how much land there is that can support sheep but not barley, and what the expense of transporting grain into the UK would be - considering it is an island. What I was getting at was that most wastelands are not right next door to population centers, so the meat would have to travel. But the UK certainly could have just the right mix of transportation problems and geographic features for it to not be self sufficient for veg in the way Europe would be. It is a somewhat special case.


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## Montero

I'm a little puzzled by your phrase "wastelands" btw - what exactly are you calling wastelands?


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## Onyx

Montero said:


> I'm a little puzzled by your phrase "wastelands" btw - what exactly are you calling wastelands?


The cattle grazing states like Wyoming and Montana.


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## Brian G Turner

I'll only bring the discussion back on topic this one last time - this thread is about things the future might condemn us for, rather than a discussion of existing ethical debates.


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## Mirannan

Brian G Turner said:


> I'll only bring the discussion back on topic this one last time - this thread is about things the future might condemn us for, rather than a discussion of existing ethical debates.



Noted. I would like to throw one in here, and it might be quite important. Humans are not exactly noted for good treatment of others thought to be "other"; the treatment of various anthropoid apes, whales, dolphins, and elephants (all of which might be sapient) shows that - even more so the treatment of human races thought to be inferior.

Before very long, we will have a completely new class of beings to maltreat, these much more different - not even biological. And they will, eventually, be sapient.

The future may well curse us for our treatment of robots.


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## Onyx

Mirannan said:


> Noted. I would like to throw one in here, and it might be quite important. Humans are not exactly noted for good treatment of others thought to be "other"; the treatment of various anthropoid apes, whales, dolphins, and elephants (all of which might be sapient) shows that - even more so the treatment of human races thought to be inferior.
> 
> Before very long, we will have a completely new class of beings to maltreat, these much more different - not even biological. And they will, eventually, be sapient.
> 
> The future may well curse us for our treatment of robots.


Humans have graduated from human sacrifice and cannibalism to the protection of endangered species, reversing the extinction trend of several species. So the trend is pretty positive, even if the overall results suck.


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## Justin Swanton

One thing which really stands out about the last 100 years - the mass slaughter of people. At virtually no time before 1914 have human beings been killed in such numbers: World War I, World War II, the Ukrainian peasants, the Kulaks, the Holocaust, the Khmer Rouge, the Cultural Revolution, the Rwandan massacres, the Afghan War, and so on and so on. Even in the first Iraq war (which nobody thinks was especially bloodthirsty) the US bombing killed about 100 000 Iraqi soldiers which in terms of Antiquity is a huge death toll (Rome's worst defeat ever was at Cannae with 70 000 Roman infantry massacred).

And we have no assurance this kind of bloodletting is over. The First World nations (and a few Third World ones) still maintain and upgrade weaponry that could kill tens of millions of people in a few minutes. Think we're never going to use them?

I suspect the future will see us as a peculiar lot who were able to combine the championship of the precious rights of the individual with the maintenance of a method of warfare that would blow away those individuals by the million.


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## Onyx

War is one thing, but the number of citizens killed by their own governments really set records in the 20th century.


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## Justin Swanton

Onyx said:


> War is one thing, but the number of citizens killed by their own governments really set records in the 20th century.



Governments killing their own people is covered by the Ukrainian peasants, Kulaks, Holocaust, Khmer Rouge, and Cultural Revolution. I forgot to mention the Gulag (sorry). 

If you count as 'citizens' those who had not exited their mothers' wombs in a natural fashion but were forcibly removed by the Chinese government then the numbers reach a whole new level: 336 million. But let's not go there...


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## Robert Zwilling

I would think the way we routinely treat non human life forms as life without rights is something most people wouldn't care about. Ignoring the importance in our lives of non human life forms for maintaining a healthy environment is probably something future generations might wonder about. The importance will naturally become evident when the cost exceeds more than we wish to pay. I also have a feeling that the personal weapons industry will become digitalized and will result in weapons that will be able to keep ahead of laws banning them the same way drugs have done. Future generations might wonder why it took us so long to supply everyone with rubber bullets. Its not what is used to do things, it is how the things are done. If the palm oil trip is a classic example of the road to hell paved with good intentions, future generations might wonder why it took us so long to take a different road.


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## Onyx

Robert Zwilling said:


> Future generations might wonder why it took us so long to supply everyone with rubber bullets.


I'm sure governments much prefer to have old fashioned, really loud, messy and ballistically trackable weapons rather than open the door to what would replace them - lethal or not. Guns are bad, airguns full of shell fish toxin or lasers would be a lot worse.


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## Justin Swanton

What is interesting about animal rights is the total lack of regard animals have for them. Y'know, lion and zebra, snake and mouse, wolverine and anything, etc. Animals take other animals apart if it suits them, heck, they're even equipped for it.


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## Justin Swanton

Point taken though that if we give ourselves a carte blanche on wiping out nature we will be the losers.


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## Montero

Taking animals apart - yes, but as has effectively already been implied - we can do it on a massive scale due to our tool using plus we don't suffer the consequences in the same way. Yes, lions can kill a buffalo - but buffalo can and do injure or kill lions. If lions overhunted the way people do, then their food supply would be gone. They are (probably) not equipped to see the consequences of that, but they would die of starvation anyway.

So my ethical take on this (keeping the thread on track!) is that we no longer suffer the consequences of our actions in the way we used to. Being able to dodge the consequences of our actions could in the future be regarded as immoral.


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## Robert Zwilling

Paying attention to consequences of actions, that could be required in future societies. Sometimes it's hard to figure out what interacts with what. That might make life like a chess game. I have played chess where you start out by not taking any pieces even though they can be taken. When you reach a point where no move can be made without taking a piece, you then trip the mousetrap and wipe out everything that is vulnerable. The pieces left over are a random selection of pieces in random positions. The game is a lot easier to play after that.


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## Russiano

CTRandall said:


> Maybe, in some more "enlightened" future, criminals are embedded in a cluster of people whose task it is to ensure that convicts learn to adjust their behaviour to the norms of society. This could have a dark side, too, as people grow accustomed to monitoring everyone around them for unacceptable behaviour. And so everyone ends up being constantly rehabilitated.


I've got severe A Clockwork Orange movie flashbacks when read this one. It rose a specific question whether we should change someone's personality against their will in order to make them behave properly, as the rest of the society. The methods in this post and in the movie differ yet the message remains.
There is also a tricky question such as What will we see as a norm in the future? It's impossible to calculate without according to the past. For example, the Middle Age often considered free speech as a sinful act. The beginning of the Modern Era divides living beings on humans and slaves, and there is no racism because it simply doesn't exist at that timeline. To all those societies in the past, many of our aspects of life that we see as good would be a disgust to them.
I'd except something that we think of as morally unacceptable today to become a new norm in the distant future, because the evolution shows that our conscience becomes more and more flexible. It's neither positive nor negative, it's just the way we adapt and survive.


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## Onyx

CTRandall said:


> One I was thinking of was prison. Not just the death penalty, as that is already controversial, but the whole notion of locking criminals, even violent criminals, away from the rest of society.


Perhaps that will seem unlikely because it might someday be nearly impossible to commit a crime. A society where no one has any physical vulnerabilities and everyone has as much property as they desire becomes a hard one to be a criminal in. How do you steal something that is free? How do you murder someone who can't be killed?


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## Judderman

It is hard to see a future where everyone has all the property they desire. Certainly not with the population size on earth. Unless in a virtual world counts. Perhaps in the future having large physical properties will be seen as immoral by many.


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## Joshua Jones

Judderman said:


> It is hard to see a future where everyone has all the property they desire. Certainly not with the population size on earth. Unless in a virtual world counts. Perhaps in the future having large physical properties will be seen as immoral by many.


Perhaps. Alternatively, if we can colonize other planets at a moderate pace, we could find ourselves with vastly more space available than we can fill in the near future. In such a setting, people may find it astonishing that people used to crowd themselves into tight pollution holes called cities...


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## Onyx

Judderman said:


> It is hard to see a future where everyone has all the property they desire. Certainly not with the population size on earth. Unless in a virtual world counts. Perhaps in the future having large physical properties will be seen as immoral by many.


That's both a philosophical and economic adjustment. If there are more than enough solar powered personal jets for anyone to travel when they want to, and they are free for anyone to use, will people still value owning a jet? Or will it be like owning a hat, where everyone can get a hat and most people don't care?


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## MWagner

Earlier in the thread, we discussed the future of sexual norms. This recent article in the Atlantic has caused quite a stir:

Why Are Young People Having So Little Sex?

One of the observations of the article (and the research that informs it) is that norms around sex are changing rapidly. Young people today are often deeply uncomfortable with face-to-face flirtation and proposals. When the author tells some young women she's interviewing that she met her husband when they worked in the same building and he struck up a conversation with her in the elevator, they regard such behaviour as 'stalkerish.' 

So I'd suggest that in the future, we may come to regard unregulated face-to-face flirtation and mating as dangerous and immoral.


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## Ihe

That's a good one. The over-dependence on technology does push us away from the face-to-face moments. As with everything else, social media was a great idea until we took it too far. And watch out, because the younger generations coming up depend even more on tech.

I, for one, welcome this change of pace for the long-term. Not because I'm against good old-fashioned romance, but because I believe the planet won't last another century if we maintain our numbers, let alone increase them. Less sex is good for the human race.

I think that Mother Nature, in its infinite pragmatism, abides by a simple general formula: as success, knowledge, and resources increase in any given place, birthrates diminish to offset what could be a dangerous baby boom, thus conserving resources and ensuring a brighter future for the offspring--I know, I know, this is very vague, but I feel there's some sense to it. I won't get into suicide rates amongst the richer countries, because the samples could never be big enough to be evidence in a global Gaia-like theory, but there's some reflection of it at the quantum level that is the individual, in extreme cases. Maybe the brain is wired to worry, and the moment life gives us some success and free time, nature just sits back with some popcorn and watches us do ourselves in. Who knows. There's must be some sort of conspiracy here, everything just makes too much sense! (I would now like to request from the Masters of this forum emoticons wearing tinfoil hats, so that I can punctuate all of my ramblings from here on out).


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## Robert Zwilling

Ihe said:


> I think that Mother Nature, in its infinite pragmatism, abides by a simple general formula: as success, knowledge, and resources increase in any given place, birthrates diminish to offset what could be a dangerous baby boom, thus conserving resources and ensuring a brighter future for the offspring



I would think it was backwards. Population explosions happen with everything when there is plenty of resources. People have an added feature over most of the rest of the population of life on this planet, we can contemplate our situation from past results, present conditions, and future expectations. If there was rational thinking involved, people voluntarily would slow the birthrate because they felt there wasn't resources to continue, not because they felt they had everything they needed. One third of the food produced in the world is thrown away every year, that would be enough to solve the food shortage without producing more. A rational solution that would make the situation even worse.

Modern day, technologically developed societies have had declining birth rates ever since records were started on the subject. Societies playing catch up don't have declining birth rates. Since the number of new births is starting to decrease on a global scale, as evidenced by the slowing of the global population increase, it could be reasoned that the number of people in well technologically developed is coming up to a 50/50 ratio with the not so technologically developed societies. The interaction of the two parts has to be taken into any accounting of what might happen next. It would seem logical that until everyone is on the same playing field, we can't know if having too much is an incentive to reproduce less, or just a temporary brake that won't hold once things level off. Declining birthrates in technologically advanced societies could be the ultimate cause and effect of replacing workers with substitutes. The population number is so large that even without any additional increases, there are still too many situations that are out of control that should be addressed to insure a successful life for everything involved. With all the ups and downs the human race has had, the population has always steadily increased in the long run. Even if things go wrong, we will start up again, and if we totally fail, there are so many waiting in line to take our place. From our point of view that wouldn't be good, from Mother Nature's point of view, we're just another face in the crowd.

Gaia theory takes the entire planet into account. It also doesn't use abundance as a sign for stopping productions. It uses lack of resources as a wall to act as a brake, which is usually applied long after the boulder has seemingly successfully rolled down hill. Look at Gaia like it's a circular pattern, with the functional stuff swirling about in the center of the circle. The inner circle is what Mother Nature protects, the rest is a disposable/replaceable/not really needed phone skin. The small stuff is what makes all life possible on the planet. That would be anything part of the biogeochemical cycles. Which is only the small stuff. Without the small stuff there would be no big stuff. Without the big stuff there will still be the small stuff. In other words people are not part of the Gaia program, we are completely optional, like flower petals but not even that, more like an optional species that arose out of a game of chance. We imitate Gaia but we are not required for it's continued operation.

The phones are built around pushing the buttons which push our mental buttons that keep us on line for one reason only. The longer we stay on line the higher the advertising rates can be charged. Because we have monetized everything that becomes the most important reason. There are all kinds of ramifications pouring out of the phones  running the entire range from good to indifferent to bad. The more money handled the more monetized our thinking becomes. The smaller the device the easier it is to take it with us. You can even wear it on your arm like a data pump. Both actions fulfilling the rules of a system that promises unattainable rewards for desired behavior.

I recently drew a picture that showed a phone stuck on on a persons neck, it replaced the head. On the phone screen was a picture of ice and there was a bunch of people with their heads stuck in the frozen ice (stuck in the sand but ostriches never do that in real life) and their feet waving around in the air. The picture can be interpreted at least 2 ways. One thought is, phones aren't so good, you can get your head stuck in the phone. The other is that no matter where people physically are (where your feet have taken us) we can all easily meet up any time we want in one single place, inside the phone. This illustrates mixed signals, one man's disaster is another man's opportunity. Which has to do with the idea that warning signs for one group is to the go ahead for another group. The more uncertain the signage as it applies to the time, I think the more likely we would see a 50/50 split. Which means even knowing the outlook is bad, not everyone is going to interpret the news as a signal to stop.


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## Ihe

Here I was, all dewy-eyed, drunkenly philosophizing about life and the world, and @Robert Zwilling had to come at me with facts. Party pooper.

I wasn't talking about the existing Gaia theory btw, just using it interchangeably with Nature and the world at large, my bad. My ramblings were much more vague and scattered than you give me credit for.

I understand that as long as there is noticeable growth in economy/tech/quality of life, birthrates go up, but--and this is without even peeping at an ounce of research--numbers don't keep climbing forever. Maybe what we're seeing in places like Europe, Japan, and now a bit in America is a plateau of sorts. Humanity has never been in the technological position that we are now--predicting our growth from here on out using evidence from our past might not work. We live among potential singularities waiting to happen. 

The main idea I was massaging was that once First World societies stabilize in comfort and there's no more grandly noticeable advancement/growth as a nation, its citizens can lose some motivation at the most instinctual levels (increase in suicides and declining birthrates were the lose examples). I'm still trying to think in a really big picture, looking at the world as a self-regulating cell. We are its ribosomes (or something like that, gotta brush up on my fourth grade science), and all these complex societal/technological/economy dynamics that we experience, that shape our lives, are its versions of "chemical processes", with a change in dimension. A very romantic notion, if you ask me, correct or not .

The more practical (and boring) answer out there is something like: as men's acquisitive power increases, education improves (both in quality and in number of opportunities). Since capitalism is the great shark that cannot stop moving or risk dying, we must keep feeding the machine, which means with more educated women, eventually their acquisitive power increases as they study and enter the workforce, which delays relationships and decreases births. Technology and social media ironically isolating us socially don't help our newer generations either, and so forth, etc. But who wants to talk about that when you got sentient planets to discuss?


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## Robert Zwilling

Maybe the ribosomes the Brave New World or of some third rate flower petal but surely not the ribosomes of the natural world. I don't see how women becoming educated means there has to be less children around.


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## Ihe

The way I understand it, more/better education=more work opportunities and economic freedom=more focus on career/job=less full-time mums=delaying childrearing, or deciding against it/or deciding for a reduced number of offspring in order to keep working. Unlike on my previous ramblings, there is more literature on this subject I believe. Can't direct you anywhere as I'm only pulling from memory (this is a sneaky post while at the job ).


----------



## Robert Zwilling

This is from limited experience but was pretty common for the area. Going back 50 years it was not unusual for women with professional careers to take time out, raise a couple of children, after 10 or 12 years go back to a job with professional standing, could be a different job, maybe even got more education, and continued working for quite some time. 

I don't know if the 10 year gap cuts down on the rate of population increase. I do know taking too much time out today can make it difficult to get back to the same pay level even if it is the same job, which would be a deterrent to taking the extended break.


----------



## Stephen Palmer

MWagner said:


> Earlier in the thread, we discussed the future of sexual norms. This recent article in the Atlantic has caused quite a stir:
> 
> Why Are Young People Having So Little Sex?



The main issue i.m.o. is the influence of the internet and social media in particular.
You could also google hikikomori to see what awful things are happening in Japan. Hikikomori has been known there for a while, but now it's being merged with internet addiction.
For a frightening insight, check out _The Cyber Effect_ by Dr Mary Aiken.


----------



## Robert Zwilling

I think that is a pretty well balanced article, it not entirely focused on one country, or one group and looks at many things that are happening. It presents an idea that not one thing effecting a whole lot of people but a whole lot of things effecting a whole lot of people. The results are the same. The article didn't seem to implicate the economy, which has become a way of life in place of being a way of supplementing life. The digital aspects seemed to offset the gains and losses and only served to illustrate the problem but not explain why it is happening. In the column of articles on the right hand side from the same magazine, is an article that says the economy killed the millennials ability to better their lives materialistically, that the millennials did not kill the economy, or better phrased, killed various aspects of the economy. Why not extend that idea that the economy is killing all kinds of things, such as the birthrate of developed countries and the birthrate of other animals in those countries. That was one weak point in the article, it looked only at developed countries. The birth rates in underdeveloped countries are higher than in developed countries. The mortality rates have been decreasing in both developed and underdeveloped countries. It is being said that the spread of technology is responsible for the reduced mortality rates, and has little to do with the income inequality that seemingly comes with the spread of technology. Perhaps the more the land is exposed to the economy and not the technology, the lower the birthrate becomes for everything associated with that land.


----------



## Parson

Stephen Palmer said:


> The main issue i.m.o. is the influence of the internet and social media in particular.
> You could also google hikikomori to see what awful things are happening in Japan. Hikikomori has been known there for a while, but now it's being merged with internet addiction.
> For a frightening insight, check out _The Cyber Effect_ by Dr Mary Aiken.



Very interesting. A few weeks ago I used the Hikikomori as a sermon illustration. They might just be the leading edge of a sad societal trend.


----------



## Robert Zwilling

If it's because of the way the economy operates, that's completely within our control to change. If it's unintended consequences of mass applied technology that becomes whatever comes of it.


----------



## MWagner

Stephen Palmer said:


> The main issue i.m.o. is the influence of the internet and social media in particular.
> You could also google hikikomori to see what awful things are happening in Japan. Hikikomori has been known there for a while, but now it's being merged with internet addiction.





Parson said:


> Very interesting. A few weeks ago I used the Hikikomori as a sermon illustration. They might just be the leading edge of a sad societal trend.



I think Japan is the canary in the coal mine for a lot of social changes we can expect to see in developed countries. We may even end up worse off in some respects, as children in Japan are still given much more freedom and unsupervised play than children in Anglo countries have. A recent study in Vox showed that American college students today spend an hour less a day socialising face-to-face with one another than students 20 years ago did. And that time hasn't been filled with studying - it's all increase in screen time. A couple more decades of the trends we're seeing, and I expect social anxiety and retreat from meat space to become the norm.

In the near-future SF novel I've been toying around with, most people rarely leave their homes. VR, drone deliveries of food and other goods, and 3D printing, combined with high levels of social anxiety, have made the outside world a unnecessary and unpleasant ordeal for most.


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## Robert Zwilling

We might consider not thinking of "others" as being the canaries in the coal mines and just put the whole human race inside one big cage. 70 years ago we were being indoctrinated to living in a natural Lord Of The Flies/Brave New World scenario, now we are being outfitted for sliding into a mechanized slot in The Matrix World providing unlimited data access for someone else.


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## Stephen Palmer

M Wagner - I'm about to launch into my new novel, set in 2039 China.
It's been inspired by various books I've read recently about the malign effects of the internet et al on the young.
But _The Cyber Effect_ was the best book. Scary and prescient.
I fear for the future. There's simply no way to stop these malignant international corporations.


----------



## Alan Aspie

CTRandall said:


> morality ain't goin' nowhere.



But some parts of immorality/moral relativism might go. I hope so.


----------



## Extollager

Brian G Turner said:


> Anyway... much as though I do find history interesting, I think the opening of this thread had a more interesting premise - that of considering what future generations might consider the moral blind spots of our generations.
> 
> It's already been mentioned that the following may become stronger movements in future:
> 
> 1. Environmentalism
> 2. Keeping of pets
> 3. Veganism (or a movement toward that)
> 
> I'd like to get this thread back on topic to that, and see if anyone can think of any curve balls we can imagine - maybe not probable, but at least a tiny bit probable.



SEXUAL ETHICS

Near future:

Adult brother-sister incest is likely to become acceptable and to be "affirmed," thanks to a convergence of permissive norms about sexual practices combined with the easy availability of contraception and abortion. At present we're probably to the point that the main argument against incest between adult brother and sister is that a child with handicaps might be born.  That's a pretty flimsy basis for a prohibition, in a soceity with ready access to contraception and abortion.

Incest between younger siblings will take longer to become acceptable, but it might be hard to argue that, if elementary school-age children can choose their gender, they should not be permitted to engage in various forms of sex play between siblings.  The breakthrough would come with the availability of oral contraceptives kids could take without obvious detrimental physical consequences.

Child-parent incest will be nibbled at by progressive folk, at least as if the child is legally an adult, but I suspect it won't get a lot of traction with the public.  It might become sort of acceptable.

Not-too-distant future:

Some western European country/ies will legalize necrophilia in the sense that a person who is going to die may leave his or her body to a designated person(s) for sexual use.  The legal issue has already, if I'm not mistaken, been raised in Germany.  Given the high value placed on self-disposal, including, e.g., state-supported suicide, it is hard to see why the prohibition of necrophilia would be likely to last, aside from the "yuck" factor; but various things that are now "affirmed" were considered "yucky" a few decades ago.

Bestiality may continue to be illegal.

HIGHWAY DEATHS

At some point in the future, people might look back with horror on the public acceptance of highway deaths and injuries.  Something like 30,000 people die annually in the US due to car crashes, etc.  Nobody is bothered by this statistic; in effect, it is something that can be written off as overhead. 


NATIONAL DEBT

At present our economy in the US (and I suppose in some, at least, European countries) provides a grotesque affluence based largely upon the acceptability of deferring payment of debts to the never-never land of the future; i.e., if the debts are ever paid, they will be taken care of by the descendants of the present spenders.  It is possible that someday our way of life will be regarded with fury and disgust by people who suffer the consequences, or for some other reason simply perceive the injustice involved in obligating future generations with unimaginable debt about which they had no say whatsoever.  It is remarkable to think that (if I'm not mistaken), as recently as President Kennedy we had a president who seriously believed that the budget must balance.  And he was a "liberal"!

The above touch on controversial issues, and as someone grateful to the moderators for shutting down the Current Events threads, I assure everybody that I don't want to see a descent into irritating "debates."  I'm trying to give Brian's request a serious response, like others who have contributed here.  Brian, I will be happy to rewrite anything here that seems inappropriate.


----------



## RJM Corbet

Extollager said:


> SEXUAL ETHICS
> 
> Near future:
> 
> Adult brother-sister incest is likely to become acceptable and to be "affirmed," thanks to a convergence of permissive norms about sexual practices combined with the easy availability of contraception and abortion. At present we're probably to the point that the main argument against incest between adult brother and sister is that a child with handicaps might be born.  That's a pretty flimsy basis for a prohibition, in a soceity with ready access to contraception and abortion.
> 
> Incest between younger siblings will take longer to become acceptable, but it might be hard to argue that, if elementary school-age children can choose their gender, they should not be permitted to engage in various forms of sex play between siblings.  The breakthrough would come with the availability of oral contraceptives kids could take without obvious detrimental physical consequences.
> 
> Child-parent incest will be nibbled at by progressive folk, at least as if the child is legally an adult, but I suspect it won't get a lot of traction with the public.  It might become sort of acceptable.
> 
> Not-too-distant future:
> 
> Some western European country/ies will legalize necrophilia in the sense that a person who is going to die may leave his or her body to a designated person(s) for sexual use.  The legal issue has already, if I'm not mistaken, been raised in Germany.  Given the high value placed on self-disposal, including, e.g., state-supported suicide, it is hard to see why the prohibition of necrophilia would be likely to last, aside from the "yuck" factor; but various things that are now "affirmed" were considered "yucky" a few decades ago.
> 
> Bestiality may continue to be illegal.
> 
> HIGHWAY DEATHS
> 
> At some point in the future, people might look back with horror on the public acceptance of highway deaths and injuries.  Something like 30,000 people die annually in the US due to car crashes, etc.  Nobody is bothered by this statistic; in effect, it is something that can be written off as overhead.
> 
> 
> NATIONAL DEBT
> 
> At present our economy in the US (and I suppose in some, at least, European countries) provides a grotesque affluence based largely upon the acceptability of deferring payment of debts to the never-never land of the future; i.e., if the debts are ever paid, they will be taken care of by the descendants of the present spenders.  It is possible that someday our way of life will be regarded with fury and disgust by people who suffer the consequences, or for some other reason simply perceive the injustice involved in obligating future generations with unimaginable debt about which they had no say whatsoever.  It is remarkable to think that (if I'm not mistaken), as recently as President Kennedy we had a president who seriously believed that the budget must balance.  And he was a "liberal"!
> 
> The above touch on controversial issues, and as someone grateful to the moderators for shutting down the Current Events threads, I assure everybody that I don't want to see a descent into irritating "debates."  I'm trying to give Brian's request a serious response, like others who have contributed here.  Brian, I will be happy to rewrite anything here that seems inappropriate.



It all rings true. Difficult moral honesty. Once the thin edge of the wedge is down, where does it end? What works for clay, must work for diamonds also; since all things are equal, where's the difference?

Excellent post, imo  ..


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## Parson

Not a mod, but ..... There is a prohibition on this site about talking about abortion (among a few other things) because they have often led to flame wars. I've corresponded with Brian (site owner) about this hoping to get it allowed, but it was not an option then, and I suspect now. So I suggest that any further discussion be done via PM's or somewhere else.

(It wouldn't be hard to guess where I stand on this issue.)


----------



## Toby Frost

But isn't this the problem with predicting the future in science fiction? So often, SF becomes an extrapolation as far as it will go. "If a man can marry a man, why can't he marry a giant squid, or a corpse? If a clinic can euthanise a terminally-ill patient, why isn't there a secret police that kills people if they get the flu?" The answer is surely because morality kicks in. Somewhere along the road, people draw a line. The wedge ends where people say it ends. It may not be where you want it to be, but not every scenario has to go to the extremes of _1984 _or _Mad Max_. Most people aren't monsters incapable of moral judgment, even the filthy degenerates who voted differently to you.

Look at it from the other side. "If you can buy a pistol, why can't you buy a nuclear warhead? If we call ourselves a Christian country, why don't we just kill all the agnostics?" The answer is basically because these are grotesque overreactions that almost any sane person would regard as wrong. The only way that something that bizarre could happen would be over a very long period of moral decay (among _everyone_, not just the left or right, because the other side would fight it and it would be political suicide) or after a total crisis that effectively destroyed society (_1984_ and _Mad Max _are both set after nuclear wars).

One of the reasons that cyberpunk shocked me when I first encountered it was that there was no clean break with the past, no point 50 years in the future when people decided to wear silver togas and live in cities made only of glass. The same principles governed the future, although the technology and circumstances were different. Society had developed (usually for the worse) but it still functioned and hadn't gone entirely to hell. People were still people, and even if the rules of decent conduct were broken more often, they still existed. Of course, this does rely on something of a value judgment, in that you have to credit most people as being capable of basic decency.


----------



## Extollager

Again, I don't wish to court trouble by mentioning a controversial issue, but I do, sincerely, think that future people may see some moral blindness in what's happening now -- in this case, the very rapid move to affirmation of transgender affirmation (including surgery, hormone treatments, etc.) when it involves children, even quite young ones.  

How the Fight Over Transgender Kids Got a Leading Sex Researcher Fired

When controversial matters are not explored with deliberation, taking the time it takes to arrive at a political consensus, one side or other may seem to win victory, but the issue has a way of coming back to trouble society.  The handling of race-based slavery in the United States's history is what I'm thinking of.  basically, as I understand it, the issue was kicked down the road in the early decades of the country.  But eventually it was dealt with as a front-burner issue, to say the least.  Thus I could imagine a scenario in which people of our time are criticized for moral obtuseness, in their haste to be affirmative and "allies," etc.  

Here's another "moral blindness"-type item with regard to EDUCATION

At present, there is very little questioning of the typical American school day.  (Those relatively few who don't buy it might choose homeschooling and "disappear.")  If I remember reading a book called *Education and the Cult of Efficiency* correctly, the typical school day of 50-minute periods with youngsters shuffled from subject to subject was not based on the best information available even in 1900 about how adolescent learn -- and does not reflect the best knowledge of that topic now.  But it remains in place largely because it is affordable and entrenched.  It is possible that a generation from now, people will be amazed that millions of healthy young people were confined to desks and tables and classrooms for something like 175 days a year for 12+ years, which in itself is bizarre -- and for what?  Would _anyone_ prior to the beginning of his or her school career, if he or she could choose, willingly make the deal, to give up all those days in return for what he or she will have learned when they are over?  Is it not, rather, obvious that there's something like a swindle here?


----------



## Extollager

Toby Frost said:


> But isn't this the problem with predicting the future in science fiction? So often, SF becomes an extrapolation as far as it will go. "If a man can marry a man, why can't he marry a giant squid, or a corpse? If a clinic can euthanise a terminally-ill patient, why isn't there a secret police that kills people if they get the flu?" The answer is surely because morality kicks in. Somewhere along the road, people draw a line.



A challenge for the future-fiction writer is to imagine a society in which that point was reached, accounting for why it was_ there_, not somewhere else, that the line was drawn; _and_ to show how in our own time the line had been crossed -- probably culpably crossed (we should have known better).


----------



## Ned Marcus

Our treatment of animals, especially factory farming and slaughter. Of course, they will have the benefit of lab grown meat.


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## Robert Zwilling

Seems like morality is more likely based on what people are willing to put up with than anything else. Preferential customs administered by rules based on preferential customs.  Can a highly technological society successfully function when run as if it was based on magic and discrimination. What would happen if morality was science based and had to be fact checked.

As long as the education system is based on the ability of individual systems to fund themselves it will remain a pile of something or other. Certainly it is good looking something or other and certainly it can score high test results. Not everyone can save data into their minds the same way. Some people use audible cues, other use visible cues, others use tactile cues and it goes downhill from there. Thinking that everyone can learn the same way is another pile of something or other. Pay to play education give some people a good education while excluding far more people from getting an excellent education. The errors we make in our adjustments are corrected with education and by leaving out multitudes of people from all walks and locations of life from the source of ideas to correct that future will always yield skewed results. Mother Nature isn't going to help us on the path we have chosen but she will hold the man hole cover open so we can fall right into what it is that lies beneath that man hole cover.

So many people are now in occupations that they are totally unfit for except that some wizard with emerald green jowls has pronounced them able to do so by virtue of having a piece of paper that says, congratulations, you passed a bunch of meaningless tests, but don't worry, it's all about preservation and ignoring the obstacles that get put in your way, you can do it.

There are genetic combinations saved within animal bodies, successful adaptions  covering millions and millions of years, that will answer questions when they are asked the right way. All that information is being chucked out the window of discontent. Just cause we can, doesn't mean we should. 2 billion people are munching on some sort of insect as part of their diet, perhaps that is the far more intelligent way to get nourishment, although I would suspect those that don't would consider it a poor substitute for the real thing.

Some successful science fiction author who I don't remember whose methods are now probably somewhat obscured once said that the trick to science fiction is to know what a traffic jam will look like thousands of years in the future.

As far as it takes many years traveling down a road before the once thought can't be done capabilities become commonplace, well whose to say we haven't been on that very same road for the past thousand years. The good ideas we had 40,000 years ago are probably the same good ideas we got now, just spoken in a different language.


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## MWagner

Extollager said:


> A challenge for the future-fiction writer is to imagine a society in which that point was reached, accounting for why it was_ there_, not somewhere else, that the line was drawn; _and_ to show how in our own time the line had been crossed -- probably culpably crossed (we should have known better).



As Toby remarked, you're assuming a linear progression from Morality to Immorality (or Amorality), with signposts along the way. But humans are moral animals. While the trend over the last century or so has been towards liberality and individual freedom, we've also seen the moral beliefs of the past replaced with new ones. So I don't find the prospect you're painting - of a future where all values besides individual gratification have been abandoned - very plausible. Some traditional values will be discarded, but new values will be taken up. Old pieties and taboos will give way to new ones. And of course, reaction and a return to conservative values is always possible. Social change is never a straight line, or easy to predict.


----------



## MWagner

Ned Marcus said:


> Our treatment of animals, especially factory farming and slaughter. Of course, they will have the benefit of lab grown meat.



This seems the most obvious change. If our history of the last 200 years is one of widening circles of empathy, it's almost certain that the circle will continue to widen to include other intelligent animals. And in fact, already has begun to include animals, considering how many people get even more upset hearing about the mistreatment of dogs and cats than they do about mistreatment of people. I expect in 50 years or so, eating the flesh of animals (as opposed to the kind grown in labs) will be an exotic indulgence confined to the most decadent of the very rich.


----------



## Alan Aspie

Cathbad said:


> When was Communism ever tried?
> 
> Like... never.




Like... Everywhere it has been tried.

Soviet Union, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Albania, China, Venetzuela, Cuba, Vietnam, Cambodia, Nigeria.... 

Every time, everywhere results have been about the same and for the same reasons. Those reasons are: communism, communism and communism. 

Communism we have seen has been the true communism. And the results it has had tell us everything important we need to know about communism. 

Saying that it has not been tried is like saying religion has never been tried. 

Utopias don't exist in real world. You can't build utopia because it is utopia. You can't build what is not possible and what is possible has been tried many times and we have seen the results.

Everybody can make their own conclusions about those results - and about the morality that seeks that kind of results. And communist moral orders are really seeking & building that kind of results. Results are not a surprise, byproduct or error in that trajectory.

I'm not gonna say more about this here.


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## Toby Frost

For a man to be marrying a giant squid, or buying a nuclear warhead at the local shops, I would require an exceptionally good explanation beyond "the liberals/conservatives did it, because that's what they secretly want to do". Beyond the obvious question of "Do they now?" there would have to be some very strong world-building to explain how on earth this ridiculous situation arose and continues.

There is a type of SF where society changes in grotesque ways - "Harrison Bergeron" springs to mind - but it's satire rather than a serious attempt to predict the future. Of course the boundary between prediction and satire is blurry.

Actually, as someone whose faith in humanity has basically gone through the floor since 2016, I am not sure I was right to say that a total breakdown in society would be required for people to choose an insane, ridiculous option. That said, I can think of only one political figure in my lifetime who has expressed any sort of sexual interest in his immediate relatives, and he's hardly got universal support. And I'll stop there.


----------



## Extollager

FOOD WASTAGE

I hesitated to cite this one.  _Is _this really a moral blind spot now?  I suppose a fair number of people are already vaguely aware that a great deal of food is thrown away in certain parts of the world such as the US -- e.g. past-the-date produce, uneaten food from large restaurant portions, etc.  But perhaps this is something that, for most people, is still a blind spot.  It isn't hard to imagine a hungry future in which people would look back at our time and condemn it.

EARTHQUAKE VULNERABILITY

This is another one I thought about, didn't write, then decided to go ahead and mention.  Again, many people are aware of the apparently likelihood of a catastrophic earthquake(s) along the West Coast of the US, etc.  If this occurs, then people will denounce the foolishness (moral blindness, even) of having built and lived there.  Conversely, if, a century from now, no serious earthquakes have occurred since Big One(s) became a topic, the foolishness of "hysterical" people who predicted terrible things might be denounced.  The common element is that people foolishly like to point out the foolishness of previous generations.


----------



## Extollager

Alan Aspie said:


> ....Every time, everywhere results have been about the same and for the same reasons. Those reasons are: communism, communism and communism.
> 
> ....I'm not gonna say more about this here.



Nor do you need to, since anyone can get hold of the Harvard University Press book called *The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression* and read it for himself or herself.

Nonfiction Book Review: The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression by Stephane Courtois, Author, Karel Bartosek, Joint Author, Andrzej Paczkowski, Joint Author  Harvard University Press $49 (858p) ISBN 978-0-674-07608-2


----------



## Extollager

LOSS OF THE NIGHT SKY

Here too, people here and there perceive something that's at least a borderline moral issue, the encroachment of light pollution such that most people and animals have a seriously compromised view of the stars and planets.  My guess is that many people are still inclined to think the photos from space of the earth all lit up are lovely.  Others look and think how horrible, to be living at the bottom of a wide, deep well of artificial light.  People in the future may look at our time with pity and horror (if they have found good solutions to light pollution).


----------



## Mirannan

Extollager said:


> FOOD WASTAGE
> 
> I hesitated to cite this one.  _Is _this really a moral blind spot now?  I suppose a fair number of people are already vaguely aware that a great deal of food is thrown away in certain parts of the world such as the US -- e.g. past-the-date produce, uneaten food from large restaurant portions, etc.  But perhaps this is something that, for most people, is still a blind spot.  It isn't hard to imagine a hungry future in which people would look back at our time and condemn it.
> 
> EARTHQUAKE VULNERABILITY
> 
> This is another one I thought about, didn't write, then decided to go ahead and mention.  Again, many people are aware of the apparently likelihood of a catastrophic earthquake(s) along the West Coast of the US, etc.  If this occurs, then people will denounce the foolishness (moral blindness, even) of having built and lived there.  Conversely, if, a century from now, no serious earthquakes have occurred since Big One(s) became a topic, the foolishness of "hysterical" people who predicted terrible things might be denounced.  The common element is that people foolishly like to point out the foolishness of previous generations.



Earthquake vulnerability is an interesting one. Of course, obviously prone areas tend to have that fact taken account of in their building codes, and most people living there are aware of the problem. However, there are some areas where this is not the case. The area around New Madrid in the centre of the continent is a good example of this.

I can think of another moral blind spot. There is at least one source of disaster ranging all the way from losing a city to an extinction-level event, for which it can be said that at least getting advance warning would be cheap - at least on the scale usually addressed by governments. I speak of near-Earth asteroids. Currently, the best estimate is that we don't even know about the existence of better than 90% of these. And we aren't even looking for them!


----------



## Brian G Turner

Parson said:


> There is a prohibition on this site about talking about abortion (among a few other things) because they have often led to flame wars. I've corresponded with Brian (site owner) about this hoping to get it allowed, but it was not an option then, and I suspect now. So I suggest that any further discussion be done via PM's or somewhere else.



Indeed, that topic has never been allowed here, so I've had to remove a post above and edit another to remove the topic.


----------



## Extollager

No complaints, Brian.


----------



## Extollager

Mirannan said:


> Earthquake vulnerability is an interesting one. Of course, obviously prone areas tend to have that fact taken account of in their building codes, and most people living there are aware of the problem.



I should have been more precise.  For places I used to live in -- Coos bay and Seaside, Oregon -- the most alarming thing about earthquake danger is not tremors that would shake buildings into rubble so much as damage to bridges and roads, and flooding from tsunamis. 

There's been a whole lot of building in those places since I lived there, meaning that, whatever happened to the buildings, a lot of people would be affected by impassable roads, bridges dropping, and waves rushing in. If such things happen, likely moral culpability will be attributed to city planning commissions, developers, etc.  I remember Coos Bay especially with a lot of affection, but I don't think I'd want to live there now, which is convenient, since I couldn't afford to.


----------



## Extollager

FALLING SPERM COUNTS

If the trend continues, it could be that, in future, today's focus on innumerable other things, _perceived_ as crises, will be regarded as having been morally obtuse.

----a widely cited study published in 2017 by researchers from the Hebrew University and Mount Sinai’s medical school found that among nearly 43,000 men from North America, Europe, New Zealand, and Australia, sperm counts per milliliter of semen had declined more than 50 percent from 1973 to 2011.-----

Study: Men's Sperm Counts Continue to Decline - The Atlantic


----------



## Extollager

STEEL AND GLASS ARCHITECTURE

They keep building them, don't they? -- those enormous buildings with faces of steel and glass and that are horrendously expensive to heat in winter or cool in summer.

UGLY BUILDINGS IN GENERAL

They keep building these, too.  Look at any campus, for example.

May 2018 - Kunstler

OPEN PLAN OFFICES

https://www.washingtonpost.com/busi...s-are-bad-you-thought/?utm_term=.d87a73414fdb

HORRID PUBLIC ART

The 10 Most Hated Public Sculptures - artnet News

The thing that looks like a bunch of intestines has to be seen to be believed.

Brian's charge wasn't to find contemporary things we dislike, but to suggest things of the present that future folk might find immoral.  In the case of art, our descendants may be wondering what moral defects had us in thrall, that we had people in charge of art and architecture who designed such hideous, profligate eyesores, year after year, that people had to live with.  Can't anyone see that such things are not conducive to human flourishing?

Not that I am recommending that people resort of violence in protest against modern architecture, though Roger Scruton has contended that some of the rage coming out of the Arab world relates to the defiling of the skyline by brutal Western architecture:

How Western Urban Planning Fueled War in the Middle East


----------



## RJM Corbet

Extollager said:


> LOSS OF THE NIGHT SKY
> 
> Here too, people here and there perceive something that's at least a borderline moral issue, the encroachment of light pollution such that most people and animals have a seriously compromised view of the stars and planets.  My guess is that many people are still inclined to think the photos from space of the earth all lit up are lovely.  Others look and think how horrible, to be living at the bottom of a wide, deep well of artificial light.  People in the future may look at our time with pity and horror (if they have found good solutions to light pollution).
> 
> View attachment 48728


That's a good one. Keep going, lol ...

EDIT: Oh sorry, the several posts since that one have just landed on my page. There must have been an Internet glitch. I'll keep reading



Extollager said:


> ...some of the rage coming out of the Arab world relates to the defiling of the skyline by brutal Western architecture:
> 
> How Western Urban Planning Fueled War in the Middle East


Oh, wow!


----------



## RJM Corbet

Religion in the home will be 'child abuse' and children will be removed to state care homes?


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## CTRandall

The use of AI to perform tediously mundane tasks, such as focusing the camera on your phone and managing the exposure levels. Our future robot overlords might consider this a particularly sadistic form of slavery.


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## Extollager

UNDIGNIFIED

I could see a not-far-in-the-future scenario in which people will be amazed by the way people in our time would go on television shows & so on and talk about their private lives.  Compared to most historical periods & most cultures, we are amazingly shameless about such things: talking about suffering from debilitating illnesses, sexual activities, our anxieties, etc. so publicly (or in various classrooms & so on).  We would be thought of as lacking in self-respect and a sense of the dignity proper for a human being.  Our buying of faded jeans sold expensively with tears may astonish them.


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## Mirannan

Onyx said:


> Okay, I'll say this again:
> 
> If you want to use wasteland to grow cattle, you have to *transport* the cattle to where the people are. People mainly congregate where high quality vegetation grows. So how are cows - that spew methane AND require fossil fuel transport to market better than vegetables that require either one or none of those two things?



Well, it's not necessarily inevitable that transporting livestock requires fossil fuel. Electric trucks (or even driving the livestock on its own feet!) and electrically powered trains solve that problem. As long as the electricity is created using carbon-neutral methods, of course.


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## MWagner

Extollager said:


> UNDIGNIFIED
> I could see a not-far-in-the-future scenario in which people will be amazed by the way people in our time would go on television shows & so on and talk about their private lives.  Compared to most historical periods & most cultures, we are amazingly shameless about such things: talking about suffering from debilitating illnesses, sexual activities, our anxieties, etc. so publicly (or in various classrooms & so on).  We would be thought of as lacking in self-respect and a sense of the dignity proper for a human being.  Our buying of faded jeans sold expensively with tears may astonish them.



That sort of narcissistic behaviour seems an inevitable consequence of modernity. Our sense of self is no longer rooted in the generational continuity of community and family, so many seek validation in the wider world of celebrity - even if 'celebrity' in the era of social media means your 282 friends on Facebook. 

However, I'm not sure how a return to dignity culture could be be brought about. Technology continues to make performative acts easier and more superficially satisfying. And unless we return to much more authoritarian social systems, there will always be people who defy norms for the cachet of being a rebel. The norms and the form of rebellion will keep changing, but if many people in 2050 believe X is proper and upright, others will conspicuously defy X, regardless of what X is. 

As with any trend fostered by technology + individual freedom, any counter to them will have to be explained by the reining in of one or both.

Ultimately, I suspect we're in the twilight of mass, collective values and norms altogether. People will continue to have values and norms. But as mass media and mass identities die away, I expect we'll see a proliferation of sub-cultures, manifesting mainly in the digital world, that co-exist with one another. In many cases the co-existence of these sub-cultures will be fractious (we're seeing this already). But as more sub-cultures grow, and even the memory of mass culture fades, people will become oblivious to what many of their fellows believe and value.


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## Parson

MWagner said:


> . But as more sub-cultures grow, and even the memory of mass culture fades, people will become oblivious to what many of their fellows believe and value.



I'm with you up to the above point. If we use the present situation as our guide I can't see people becoming oblivious to what many of their fellows believe and value. Rather I think the more likely direction is that people will find stereotypes reinforced to an incredible degree by listening to those people with whom they agree and are therefore led. The more we find our socializing to be defined by electronic social networking, the easier it will be to be appalled and frightened by what we "know" about other groups.

You can see that easily today. It is easy to think that gay, Muslim, black, Roma et. al. are really dangerous to you and your way of life until you know some of these people personally, than the stereotype becomes much harder to swallow.   --- I've experienced more than one of stereotypes being utterly smashed by people I've come to know personally.


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## CTRandall

MWagner said:


> But as mass media and mass identities die away, I expect we'll see a proliferation of sub-cultures, manifesting mainly in the digital world, that co-exist with one another.



I've been wondering about the possibility of this, too. I agree with Parson that people may have less and less direct contact with anyone with different opinions and values, and there is a danger of descending into harmful stereotypes. (With any luck, the future will be full of places like the Chrons where people with different opinions can communicate peacably with each other!)

One wacky idea of mine is that, if society continues to fracture into subcultures, governments may lose their role as cultural icons and sources of identity. In other words, concepts like nationalism and national identity may lose much of their potency and governments might be reduced to the role of social service providers: basic education, sanitation, health care, etc.

In such a world, large scale war could become very rare or even impossible. Violence might occur between members of different subcultures but, being subcultures, they would lack the population and resources to wage the kind of total war seen in Syria or Yemen now. 

This is very wishful thinking on my part but, hey, it's almost Christmas, so give me a break.


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## Extollager

FASCINATION WITH CELEBRITIES, DEFERENCE TO YOUTH

It seems that it was in the 1960s and 1970s that this really took off -- the attention given to celebrities who might be regarded as icons of youth.  This was probably partly done simply because it was "good for ratings."  But what I'm thinking of is the sort of thing in which a popular musician might be interviewed and asked to expound his (usually) or her political ideas, etc.  There was a lot of this for John Lennon, for example.








Yet there is really no reason anyone should think that Lennon was well-informed about current events, let alone that he commanded a knowledge of history helping him to have perspective on them.  It didn't necessarily make much more sense than it would have, to have Henry Kissinger on TV and ask him about his taste for popular music.  Of course, no one did the latter.  Henry was not young.  Lennon was, if not as young as he'd been a few years before, still hardly a man who'd obviously acquired a lot of the wisdom sometimes acquired by people as they've grown older.

Some of this relates to the sense that young people are more attractive than older people and, so, are more pleasing objects for the television camera.  

Such things go along with, say, the readiness of university presidents to give in to demands of (a minority of) university students today, that speakers representing opinions they don't like should be kept off campus, etc.

There is a moral component here, surely.  It might be that it will be more obvious to people inthe future than it appears to be now.


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## Extollager

Alan Aspie said:


> Like... Everywhere it has been tried.
> 
> Soviet Union, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Albania, China, Venetzuela, Cuba, Vietnam, Cambodia, Nigeria....
> 
> Every time, everywhere results have been about the same and for the same reasons. Those reasons are: communism, communism and communism.
> 
> Communism we have seen has been the true communism. And the results it has had tell us everything important we need to know about communism.
> 
> Saying that it has not been tried is like saying religion has never been tried.
> 
> Utopias don't exist in real world. You can't build utopia because it is utopia. You can't build what is not possible and what is possible has been tried many times and we have seen the results.
> 
> Everybody can make their own conclusions about those results - and about the morality that seeks that kind of results. And communist moral orders are really seeking & building that kind of results. Results are not a surprise, byproduct or error in that trajectory.
> 
> I'm not gonna say more about this here.



In agreeing with this post, I cited the Harvard University Press book *The Black Book of Communism*.  To Alan's list of countries may be added Jonestown, Guyana.  Jones preached communism and had people use sheets of the Bible as toilet paper, for all his "Reverend" schtick.  See Flynn's *Cult City* on the remarkable approval Jim Jones and the Peoples Temple received -- even after publication of investigative journalism -- from left-leaning politicians and celebrities ranging from Harvey Milk to Jane Fonda and Mayor Moscone.  But 900 died; then Harvey Milk quipped, "What's purple, lies on the ground, and has 1,800 legs?"  (Flynn, p. 204, citing Randy Shilts)


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## Robert Zwilling

Making the North Pole The Top Of The World complimented by globes that have the South Pole bolted to the base.


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## Alan Aspie

Extollager said:


> In agreeing with this post...



If you want to seek moral blind spots, there are several good clues:

- When identities get more attention than bare self, you are in the real of moral blind spots & dishonesty.
- When psychological defensies get started, you are in getting close to moral blind spots and selfbetrayal.
- When argumentation techniques become more important than truth, you are among lies.
- Straw men point to the direction of moral blind spots.
- Projection...

And every time you hear words "social construction" you know that a bunch of dishonest and selfish people are trying to fool everybody else.

And every time someone tries to point that a category is a construction, she is building moral blind spots and hoping you are intellectually and morally too lazy and stupid to notice it.


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## CTRandall

Future generations will wonder why we care so much for our dogs that we microchip them, yet have so little affection for our kids that we let them run wild and unmonitored. TAKE YOUR KIDS TO THE VET!


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## Cathbad

CTRandall said:


> Future generations will wonder why we care so much for our dogs that we microchip them, yet have so little affection for our kids that we let them run wild and unmonitored. TAKE YOUR KIDS TO THE VET!


AND LEAVE THEM!!


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## awesomesauce

Extollager said:


> FOOD WASTAGE
> 
> I hesitated to cite this one.  _Is _this really a moral blind spot now?



I think we can legitimately ask that question about most ideas we can come up with in this topic, because if we're aware of the topic, it's not something we're blind to now.

That said, looking at another post in this thread...



Extollager said:


> Child-parent incest will be nibbled at by progressive folk



I don't think incest taboos are going to be considered a moral blind spot in the future as a result of changing gender norms or improved birth control. We have stronger incest taboos now than for much of humanity's past _in addition_ to having much more effective birth control. Conclusion: there are reasons besides possible genetic defects for humans not getting it on within family groups.

If anything, I think it's more likely to go the other direction and the future will look at some of the relationships we consider normal now and find them barbaric, much like we're coming to see child marriage. (Which specific relationships? I don't know... it's a blind spot. ; )



Extollager said:


> HIGHWAY DEATHS
> 
> At some point in the future, people might look back with horror on the public acceptance of highway deaths and injuries. Something like 30,000 people die annually in the US due to car crashes, etc. Nobody is bothered by this statistic; in effect, it is something that can be written off as overhead.



That's a good call! Especially after we give in and accept self-driving cars. And I really think this is a _when_, not _if_, that will be driven (heheh) by commercial financial interests despite popular moral panic. I imagine future humans will look back and be like "Why would they ever oppose this?"


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