I did my religious studies exams in 1970s Ireland. We were asked us to consider euthanasia and abortion and how relevant attitudes and laws might change during our lifetimes. Looking back, I’d say we’ve seen a full inversion in both.
My point in this blog isn’t right or wrong but how quickly the random walk of acceptability in modern Western society can take someone from proper to pariah.
I believe it is dangerous for society if its views on morality swing fully and quickly between extremes, especially since technology ensures that people can access decades-old material and records and views easily. What you do today may be judged today by today’s morality, but will also be judged by the very different morality of 2050. You could well become a pariah for activities or views that are perfectly acceptable and normal today. Today’s photos, videos, selfies, tweets, chat records and blogs will all still be easily searchable and they might damn you. The worst thing is you can’t reliably predict which values will invert, so nobody is safe.
Let’s looks at some examples, starting with the two examples we did for Religious Studies – abortion and euthanasia. Remember, the point is not whether something is right or wrong, it is that the perception of it being right or wrong has changed. i.e what is the ‘correct’ fashionable view to hold?
Abortion was legal in 1970s Great Britain, but was far from socially accepted. A woman who had an abortion back then may well have felt a social outcast. Today, it is ‘a woman’s right to choose’ and anyone wanting to restrain that right would be the social outcast.
Euthanasia was universally accepted as wrong in the 1970s. Today the UK’s NHS already implements it via ‘The Liverpool Care Pathway’, almost 1984’s Doublespeak in its level of inversion. Recently some regions have rolled euthanasia out still further, asking patients over 75 years old whether they want to be resuscitated. Euthanasia is not only accepted but encouraged.
Meanwhile, assisted suicide has also become accepted. Very clearly wrong in the 1970s, perfectly fine and understandable today.
Homosexuality in the 1970s forced people to hide deep in a closet. Today, it’s a job requirement for reality TV, chat show hosting and singing in the Eurovision Song Contest.
Gay marriage would have been utterly unimaginable in 1970s Ireland but it would be very brave indeed to admit being in the No camp in today’s referendum campaign there.
Casual sex had its inversion decades earlier of course, but a single person still a virgin at 20 feels ashamed today, whereas anyone having sex outside of marriage before the 1960s would be the one made to feel ashamed.
A committed Christian in the 1970s was the gold standard of morality. Today, being a Christian labels someone as a bigoted dinosaur who should be denied a career. By contrast, being Muslim generates many competing moral inversions that currently results in a net social approval.
The West in the 1970s was the accepted definition of civilization. Now, the West is responsible for all the World’s troubles. Even history is not immune, and the morality of old wars is often up for renewed debate.
Even humor isn’t immune. Some TV comedies of the 1970s are seen as totally unacceptable today. Comedians have to be very careful about topics in their jokes, with today’s restrictions very different from and often even opposite to 1970s restrictions.
These areas have all seen total inversions of social acceptability. Many others, such as drugs, smoking, drinking, gambling, hunting and vegetarianism, see more frequent swings, though not usually full inversion. Still more practices are simultaneously acceptable for some social groups but not for others, such as oppression of women, mutilation, violence, sexualization of children, and even pedophilia.
In every case, attitude change has been gradual. In most, there have been some successful pressure groups that have successfully managed to change the direction of shame, one case at a time. Orwell’s 1984 has proven superbly insightful, realizing how social interaction, the need to feel accepted and the desire for status, and even language can be manipulated to achieve a goal. So successful has that been that shame and doublespeak have become the weapons of choice in left-wing politics, though the right haven’t quite worked out how to use them yet.
With these forces of inversion proven to be highly effective, we must question where they might be used in the future. What do you do or say today that will make future generations despise you? What things are wrong that will become right? What things that are right will become wrong? And what will be the arguments?
In case, you haven’t read the preceding text, I am not condoning any of the following, merely listing them as campaigns we may well see in the next few decades that might completely invert morality and social acceptance by the 2050s.
Drugs in sport – not taking them once adverse health effects have been conquered could be seen as lack of commitment. It is your duty to achieve the best performance you can.
Genetic modification and selection for babies – If you don’t approve, you are forcing people to live a life less than they could, to be less than they should. If you don’t give your kids the best possible genetic start in life, you are an irresponsible parent.
Owning a larger house or car than you need – You are not successful and high status, you are a greedy, utterly selfish, environment destroyer denying poorer people a decent life and home.
Resisting theft – the thief obviously was deprived, almost certainly by an oppressive society. It is you who are stealing from them by preventing social disadvantage from being addressed. Your property should be confiscated and given to them.
Pedophilia – Based on the failed 1970s PIE campaign which may find the field is soon ready for a rematch, if you don’t support reducing the age of consent to 9 or even less, you may soon be portrayed as a bigot trying to prevent young people from experiencing love.
Eating meat – you are utterly without compassion for other lives that are just as valuable as yours. What makes you think nature gives you the right to torture another creature?
Making jokes – all humor comes from taking pleasure at someone else’s misfortune. Laughing is violence. Take that smile off your face. You are a contemptible Neanderthal!
Managing a company – employment is exploitation. All decent people work with others as equals. What makes you think you have the right to exploit other people? Shame on you!
Having a full-time job – don’t you know some people don’t have any work? Why can’t you share your job with someone else? Why should you get paid loads when some people hardly get anything? Why are you so special? You disgust me!
Polygamy – who made you God? If these people want to be together, who the hell are you to say they shouldn’t be? Geez! Go take your Dodo for a walk!
Getting old – you seem to think you are entitled to respect just because you haven’t died yet. Don’t you realize millions of babies are having to be aborted just because people like you so selfishly cling on to another few years of your worthless life? The sooner we get this new limit enforced at 50 the sooner we can get rid of nasty people like you.
Patriotism – all people are equal. You want to favor your country over others, protect your borders, defend your people, uphold your way of life? That is no more than thinly veiled excuse for oppression and racism. Your views have no place in a civilized society.
Well, by now I think you get the point. A free run of values with no anchor other than current fashion can take us anywhere, and in time such a free-wandering society may eventually encounter a cliff.
In modern atheistic Western society, right and wrong is decided, it is no longer absolute. Moral relativism is a highly effective lubricant for moral change. The debate will start from whatever is the existing state and then steered by anyone in an influential position highlighting or putting a new spin on any arbitrary cherry-picked case or situation to further any agenda they wish. Future culture is governed by the mathematics of chaos and though there are attractors, there are also regions of very high instability. As chaos dictates that a butterfly wing-beat can lead to a hurricane, so feeble attention seeking by any celebrity could set a chain of events in motion that inverts yet another pillar of acceptability.
A related question – for which I don’t have any useful insight – is how long moral stability can exist before another inversion becomes possible. If and when the pendulum does start to swing back, will it go as far, as fast, or further and faster?
Timeguide - The future before it comes over the horizon 