Different stages of moral development (Harris)
April 7th, 2008 | Published in Morality, Quotes, Culture | 6 Comments
[This is a controversial claim, but his logic seems sound. What do you think? I’m inclined to agree.]
It is time for us to admit that not all cultures are at the same stage of moral development. This is a radically impolitic thing to say, of course, but it seems as objectively true as saying that not all societies have equal material resources. We might even conceive of our moral differences in just these terms: not all societies have the same degree of moral wealth. Many things contribute to such an endowment. Political and economic stability, literacy, a modicum of social equality—where such things are lacking, people tend to find many compelling reasons to treat one another rather badly.
Our recent history offers much evidence of our own developments on these fronts, and a corresponding change in our morality. A visit to New York in the summer of 1863 would have found the streets ruled by roving gangs of thugs; blacks, where not owned outright by white slaveholders, were regularly lynched and burned. Is there any doubt that many New Yorkers of the nineteenth century were barbarians by our present standards?
To say of another culture that it lags a hundred and fifty years behind our own in social development is a terrible criticism indeed, given how far we’ve come in that time. Now imagine the benighted Americans of 1863 coming to possess chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons. This is more or less the situation we confront in much of the development world.
—Sam Harris, The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason (W. W. Norton, 2004), pp. 143-4.
April 7th, 2008 at 11:00 pm (#)
It makes me wonder where we’ll be in another hundred years. While barbarism is not as visible in our culture as it once was, I’d argue that greed, lust and deception are more rampant if only because they’re more accessible in this information age. Has our morality really evolved simply because we don’t lynch our black brothers anymore? Or has the human condition simply taken on a more subtle form of debauchery?
April 8th, 2008 at 8:14 am (#)
“simply because we don’t lynch our black brothers anymore?”
While it may be no big deal to you that black people aren’t being lynched anymore…to them (and the rest of us) it is an extraordinarily big deal. It is certainly a sign of moral progress when we don’t go about killing people for the color of their skin. And that’s not the only example.
In 16th century Paris, a popular form of entertainment was known as “cat burning.” They would tie up a cat and lower it into a fire, while the audience would laugh and cheer as the animal burned to death.
I think that it’s a good sign that we see these sadistic things as horrible now. It means we are becoming more moral as a whole, although the speed of progress may seem terribly slow to us.
Your complaint about the Information Age indicates that “subtle debauchery” is the new Bad Thing, and that “greed, lust and deception are more rampant”. While I do not deny that some of these things seem more prevalent, I believe it is a byproduct of the Information Age. We used to see every newsworthy Bad Thing of a local population ranging from 1,000 to 200,000. Now, we see every newsworthy Bad Thing in a population of 6 billion. It should come as no surprise that these things should seem more “rampant.”
However, I’m confident that progress will continue to happen, and the bar of morality will continue to be raised. Our great-great-grandchildren will find some of our common misdeeds reprehensible, just as we see our great-great-grandparents, and wonder how they could have justified slavery.
April 8th, 2008 at 8:19 am (#)
I had written a reply but I just read Edman’s and he said it better than me. Great points.
April 8th, 2008 at 9:58 am (#)
Edman, I wasn’t saying that the fact that we don’t lynch black people anymore is no big deal. I’m married to a black woman and my children are half-black, so it is a big deal to me. What I was saying was that just because outward manifestations of hatred are not as common as they once were, hatred (and lust and greed) still exist in the human heart. Are we more moral just because racial violence in this part of the world has decreased? Or do we find other outlets for our hatred?
The availability of evil will lead the human heart to search it out. The information age will lead to increased pornography addiction, among other things. Do I think we’re more moral than 200 years ago? It depends on how you label morality.
April 8th, 2008 at 10:04 am (#)
I’d rather people be looking at porn that lynching black people, or being openly homosexual than putting them in prison or killing them. Etc. Right now we may have an increase in personal sin (and to me that’s a big maybe, since that’s alway been there too) but social justice seems to have increased.
April 8th, 2008 at 10:11 am (#)
Social justice (in America) has increased, yes. The general condition of the human heart is unchanged in my view, however. I understand morality to encompass more than just outward actions.