The moral of the story
Every day, modern science progresses forward, making us a more technically advanced society. But when was the last time you heard about a major ethical breakthrough? We’re a 21st century people living with ethics that almost exclusively derive from the Middle Ages, biblical time, and the ancient Greeks.
Since the Industrial Revolution, individual occupations have gotten increasingly specialized. We now have farmers who only know how to grow soybeans, doctors who only know how to treat foot problems, and teachers whose only subject is ancient Chinese art. This increased specialization allows us to develop very advanced domain knowledge which would be unavailable to us if everyone was a generalist.
However, essentially no one has focused on and undertaken that same degree of specialization in ethics. There’s no financial incentive to study ethics. We, as a society, have decided that ethical development isn’t worth the investment, so we haven’t shown any real progress in morality since the Middle Ages, and our outlook on life shows a decidedly feudal flavor. For that same reason, there’s no one to turn to who can serve as ethical mentors, guides, or leaders for individuals who want to cultivate an ethical life.
The biggest questions of the day-abortion, stem cell research, cloning, human rights-are all ethical questions, and modern society, lacking a modern ethical framework, has no effective way of addressing them.
Some people look at our ethics in a very functional way. Our deep valuing of children, fairness, and compassion can be thought of as an evolutionary advantage: they helped ensure that our species survived.
One might well ask whether continuing our ethical development would be a further evolutionary advantage. Would we face man-made threats like acts of terror, environmental disaster, genocide, and nuclear destruction if our ethical development hadn’t been arrested prematurely?
Morality might seem pretty old-fashioned in these modern times, but at the same time, even the most cursory glance at our society shows the problems associated with the disregard of the ethical component of life.
I’m not advocating a proscriptive ethics mandated by an elite. We went through that in the feudal period, and it’s not appropriate for a modern, educated society. On the other hand, the problems associated with subjective and/or situational ethics are obvious. What’s needed is a concerted effort to explore our values and their implications, under the guidance of wise, open-minded, ethically literate leadership.