What will future generations condemn us for?

Summary

Highlights

• Historically condemned practices like slavery were once common. 🔙
• Prison systems today could be judged as immoral in the future. 🚔
• Defending questionable practices by tradition is not new. 📜
• Industrial farming may be our current moral blind spot. 🚜
• Strategic ignorance can blind societies to ethical issues. 🙈

Key Takeaways

• Reflect on history to anticipate future moral judgments. 🔍
• Current prison systems might face future condemnation. 🚔
• Factory farming could be viewed as morally wrong. 🚜
• Environmental neglect might receive future criticism. 🌍
• Look beyond tradition and necessity for moral clarity. 🧭

Overview

Chapters

• 00:00 - 01:00: Introduction: Moral Progress and Condemnation by Future Generations The chapter titled 'Introduction: Moral Progress and Condemnation by Future Generations' discusses the concept of actions or practices that were once common but are now seen as morally reprehensible. It prompts readers to reflect on what current practices might be condemned by future generations, drawing parallels to past practices such as child labor, domestic violence, and slavery that are now considered morally unacceptable.
• 01:00 - 03:00: Historical Context: Understanding Moral Progress This chapter explores the concept of moral progress by asking how past generations could condone actions now considered immoral. It questions if historical figures were inherently bad or if they operated under different moral understandings. The chapter suggests that dehumanization might have been a habit in the past to justify certain actions.
• 03:00 - 07:00: Identifying Current Moral Issues The chapter discusses the ongoing issue of dehumanization and using people without respecting their humanity. It emphasizes the need for better explanations and solutions to the persistent practice of dehumanization in modern society. The chapter suggests contemplating the future chances of overcoming these moral challenges.
• 07:00 - 13:00: Example 1: The Prison System The chapter "Example 1: The Prison System" discusses current societal practices that may be viewed as morally unacceptable by future generations. It prompts readers to reflect on the possibility of forecasting or predicting future moral judgments and the importance of anticipating these views to guide present actions. The excerpt hints at significant introspection regarding the prison system, though specifics are not detailed in the transcript provided.
• 13:00 - 18:00: Other Examples: Meat Production, Elderly Care, and the Environment The chapter explores avenues for making immediate differences by examining past changes in situations now considered morally wrong.
• 18:00 - 21:00: Conclusion: The Importance of Reflecting on Current Practices This chapter emphasizes the importance of reflecting on current behaviors and practices through a criteria or framework. It presents three particular ways to critically analyze and reflect on these behaviors. One example given is the practice of waterboarding, suggesting that even historically, there were those who questioned or understood the implications of such behaviors. The chapter encourages readers to consider historical context and arguments to inform current ethical evaluations.

What will future generations condemn us for? Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 what will future generations condemn us for when we consider some of the examples of things that we used to do that were very common but we now consider to be morally repugnant right some of the things that we used to do like child labor beating one spouse or one's children slavery you know some of these examples of what people used to do we now recognize as being much more than just morally problematic but as being
• 00:30 - 01:00 downright in moral so one might naturally ask the question what were these people thinking back then how could those people have done those sort of things how could a good person do such a bad thing were those people just not very good people in the first place were they morally terrible folk one natural way to respond to such an aquestion is to think that back then folk were in the habit of dehumanizing other people for the purpose of perhaps
• 01:00 - 01:30 using them in whatever way they wanted or not respecting their humanity well that might have something to do with it that's not gonna be the best explanation insofar as right now there are plenty of examples we can point to where people are still in the practice of attempting to dehumanize other people for the purpose of using them in one way or another so it looks like we need some better explanation than that perhaps what we could do is just think about what are the chances that future
• 01:30 - 02:00 generations will condemn us for similar sort of atrocities for our current practices what are the sort of things that we're currently doing right now that future generations will think are just morally repulsive we might wonder is there a way to try to forecast or predict what the future generations will say about ourselves it might be really helpful if we can anticipate what the future generations will say of our current behaviors insofar as that will
• 02:00 - 02:30 allow us to make a difference right now and it might provide the opportunity we need to make a change well one thing that we can do is we can look at the past and we can consider in what way did a change occur back then with regard to situations that we now take to be morally wrong and what sort of things had to take place in order for there to be a change made back then that is we can consider some of those examples and
• 02:30 - 03:00 try to devise some kind of a criteria to think about with regard to our own behavior here are three particular ways in which we might do this the first thing that we might say is that well there were people back then who already knew of or were already familiar with the sort of arguments that were being made with regard to whatever that particular behavior was so take for example waterboarding most people today
• 03:00 - 03:30 will consider waterboarding or torture as being a morally terrible thing to do it's interesting though because waterboarding and this form of torture was actually invented by the Catholic Church so you might think how could something like the Catholic Church which is supposed to be a paradigm example of people that are doing morally good things how could these morally good people be doing something that we now considered to be such a terrible thing such a morally wrong thing like waterboarding
• 03:30 - 04:00 well if we recognize that there were arguments people were making against this behavior and that people were becoming familiar with these sort of arguments there was a particular point in time when what emerged from this discussion was a debate between different sides in the public forum where people were beginning to recognize the arguments being made against something like torture or waterboarding so that's one thing that we can establish that there were certain people
• 04:00 - 04:30 who already knew of or were already aware of the sort of arguments being made against the behavior a second point that we can make is that the defenders of that particular behavior tend not to offer morally based responses to these arguments but instead their responses to these type of arguments oftentimes focused on something like tradition or human nature or the necessity of the behavior right
• 04:30 - 05:00 so they might say things like well that's just the way we've always done things that's our tradition in this particular culture that's the way we've always done things and there's no way that we're gonna change our tradition or the defenders might say something like that's just human behavior you know men will be men that's the sort of response that often times was given with regard to people who would have abused their spouses or their children the sort of responses you might hear defenders of
• 05:00 - 05:30 people who were sexist in one way or another those things we now considered be morally problematic or morally terrible behaviors but the defenders back then would say that's just human nature that's just the way men are or they might offer some sort of Appeal to necessity you know even though we might like to change it there's no way we possibly can there's just there's nothing we can do that's just that a necessity that's involved that's just what we have to live with that's another type of response that was sometimes
• 05:30 - 06:00 offered and so instead of offering responses to these arguments that were based upon moral principles the defenders of these sort of behaviors would appeal to things like tradition human nature or just a necessity of the behavior and then the third thing that we can say is that the behavior was typically accompanied by some sort of strategic ignorance so maybe people sort of knew what was happening but they would not be willing to talk about it in the public forum take for example
• 06:00 - 06:30 situations where there was child labor taking place we now think that child labor is a morally terrible kind of behavior well there might have been a period of time where people thought maybe that was a pretty bad thing to do but as long as we can ignore it as long as nobody's talking about it then we're gonna let it slide for one reason or another similar things might be said about other sorts of morally problematic behavior maybe abusing one spouse yeah
• 06:30 - 07:00 we sort of recognize that that's not a very good thing to do that's morally wrong but as long as nobody's going to talk about it there's this kind of strategic ignorance of then you know that's fine you know whatever happens in Susie Jane's house that's fine as long as it's not happening in my house I don't really care that kind of ignorance oftentimes was accompanied by this sort of morally problematic behavior and so that's a third thing that we can say so these are three sort of signs that we can recognize when we look back on the
• 07:00 - 07:30 history of the different sort of cases that we were considering and recognize these three sort of signs as a way to help us indicate what sort of behaviors were currently engaging in that might be considered to be really terrible behaviors in the future what future generations will condemn us for so that raises the question what sort of behaviors are we currently engaged in what sort of things are we currently doing as a society that future
• 07:30 - 08:00 generations will look back on us and say how could they have possibly done something so morally wrong such a morally terrible thing so let's consider some ways in which we might consider our current behaviors to be morally problematic take for example the prison system our current for-profit industrialized prison system it turns out that the United States has about four percent of the entire world's population and the United States has about twenty five percent of its prison
• 08:00 - 08:30 population and that just seems absurd that's just a ridiculously large amount of people that are in prison right now and there's numerous other problems with the prison system that we can point to for instance there's a history of systemic racism involved in the prison system and when we consider the post-civil war period the prison system was oftentimes used to keep the black population enslaved and this was actually allowed by the Constitution
• 08:30 - 09:00 because the Thirteenth Amendment granted freedom to everybody unless if they were a criminal in which case they could be put in prison and treated basically as a slave and used to make Goods and to to rebuild the south and this was just one way in which the the roots of our current prison system this is clearly problematic it looks to be morally problematic insofar as it's a for-profit system so there's actually a monetary incentive to to put
• 09:00 - 09:30 more and more people into the prison population and this really exploded in the 1990s under the Clinton administration when you had new government policies such as the three-strike rule in mandatory sentencing and all sorts of different ways in which money was being put into the prison system and into policing in general and all of this really provided a new kind of incentive which you might think was morally problematic there are
• 09:30 - 10:00 a number of different ways in which we might think that our current prison system is just morally bankrupt so you might wonder to what extent will future populations condemn us where our current practice was regard to the prison system you might wonder to what extent are there currently arguments that are being considered on both sides as arguments against the prison system and to what extent are defenders of the prison system responding to those arguments or
• 10:00 - 10:30 are the defenders of the prison system appealing to things like human nature or to the necessity of the prison system the necessity of the policing system that we have or are they responding by appealing to tradition this is just the way that we've always done things this is the way their that our society handles criminals these sort of ways in which defenders of the prison system might reflect the same kind of responses that we saw with regard to other morally
• 10:30 - 11:00 problematic behaviors we also might wonder to what extent is this behavior accompanied by a kind of strategic ignorant you know as long as we keep the prisoners over there nobody has to worry about them you know if I don't have to know about what's happening then I don't really care if it's morally problematic or not of course this is actually changing right now with the black lives matter movement that's taking place in the protests that are taking place and the sort of calls for reforms to the
• 11:00 - 11:30 policing system these are different indications different signs that are suggesting maybe future generations will look back on our current situation and think that we were doing something morally problematic with regard to a for-profit prison system there are other cases that we could consider for example industrial meat production with regard to factory farming that might be another situation where future generations will look back on us and think that what we are doing
• 11:30 - 12:00 was morally wrong another example would be the institutionalization and the isolation of the elderly population approximately 2 million Americans are institutionalized in one form or another who are also part of the elderly population so we might think that that itself is problematic and when we stop to consider some of the abuses that are involved in these institutions one might start to think that our future generations will look back on us and
• 12:00 - 12:30 wonder why in the world would we ever treat the elderly community in such a way and a fourth example is the environment in what ways are we currently treating the environment that the future generations to come after us will look back and think why in the world would that previous generation have acted in such a way with such a disregard for the future generations that have to live with the consequences of their behaviors you might think the environment is a really interesting
• 12:30 - 13:00 example because there are numerous different arguments that are being made and it's not clear at all that the the defenders of our current behaviors with regard to the way in which we treat the environment the way in which we pollute the environment it's not clear that they're doing much more than just appealing to things like human nature the necessity it's just necessary because we live in a capitalist society but that's just the result that we're gonna get so unless if we give up the
• 13:00 - 13:30 kind of capitalism that we're accustomed to then there's just nothing we can do about it these type of responses you might think our signs or ways of indicating that our current behaviors are morally problematic and there are likely many other sort of things that we could consider lots of different sort of situations we're what we're currently doing is morally problematic even though we don't currently recognize it as being morally problematic but it still makes sense to
• 13:30 - 14:00 ask whether or not future generations will look back at our current behaviors and condemn us for the things that we're doing and the reason why this is really important for us to consider in a course like this is because we're going to be talking about a lot of different applied ethical situations where you'd have to start thinking about whether or not what you're currently doing is morally all right whether it's morally permissible or would future generations condemn you for the things that you're currently doing and if that's the case the maybe
• 14:00 - 14:30 maybe what you need to do is do something different maybe we should all do that something different with regard to some of these behaviors on the other hand by thinking about how future generations might condemn us for our current behaviors it also puts us in a situation where we need to be able to offer reasons and arguments in support of the things that we believe in support of the behaviors that we are engaging in so if for example you think that it's morally permissible to kill animals for
• 14:30 - 15:00 the purpose of food then you might need to be able to provide arguments and reasons and support of that belief otherwise you might think that future generations are going to condemn us for such behaviors if it turns out that these really are morally problematic behaviors and we might say similar things about all kinds of different ethical situations that we're going to consider throughout throughout this course