societies making rapid ethical progress will (necessarily) become ashamed of their recent past
Societies making rapid ethical change will (necessarily) become ashamed of their recent past.
All ethical change feels like progress, because you think your current ethics are Good (that is what your current ethics are), and therefore all previous ethics are Bad in proportion to their deviation from the present.
Different kinds of shame. “My ancestors were weak… well, at least they somehow managed to survive and give birth to my glorious generation of warriors” feels different from “My ancestors were monsters”.
Another thing, making true or false statements about one’s ancestors is also a part of moral setup. Suppose the previous generation was “warriors who occasionally questioned whether fighting was the best thing they could do” and the current generation is “warriors who never question fighting and never question their ancestors”. There is a change, but the current generation would feel very good about the previous generation.
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More generally, feeling bad about one’s past is not a symmetric difference. For example, from individual perspective, a good person would feel bad about having done bad things in the past, but a bad person would not necessarily feel bad about having done good things in the past. The change from “you care about what you did” and “you don’t give a fuck about what you did” feels qualitatively differently in different directions.
Societies making rapid ethical change will (necessarily) become ashamed of their recent past.
All ethical change feels like progress, because you think your current ethics are Good (that is what your current ethics are), and therefore all previous ethics are Bad in proportion to their deviation from the present.
Different kinds of shame. “My ancestors were weak… well, at least they somehow managed to survive and give birth to my glorious generation of warriors” feels different from “My ancestors were monsters”.
Another thing, making true or false statements about one’s ancestors is also a part of moral setup. Suppose the previous generation was “warriors who occasionally questioned whether fighting was the best thing they could do” and the current generation is “warriors who never question fighting and never question their ancestors”. There is a change, but the current generation would feel very good about the previous generation.
*
More generally, feeling bad about one’s past is not a symmetric difference. For example, from individual perspective, a good person would feel bad about having done bad things in the past, but a bad person would not necessarily feel bad about having done good things in the past. The change from “you care about what you did” and “you don’t give a fuck about what you did” feels qualitatively differently in different directions.