moral blind spots

[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]

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.

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.

 

[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.

 

[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]

morality ain't goin' nowhere.

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

 

[Extollager]

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]

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 ..

 

[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]

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.

 

[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.

 

[MWagner]

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]

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]

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.

 

[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]

....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).