Moral Progress

I am currently wondering about the growing lethality of hatred. I had a strange dream last night about being trapped in some situation and the only way I could think to get out of it was through violence. It was a very impotent dream as well, in that in not wanting to act violently I continued to be stuck in the situation I didn't want to be in. Which is fine seeing I wasn't actually aware of what the situation was, I just knew I didn't want to be in it.

For me this is nice, it comforts me that, in my dreams at least, I won't go nuts and kill a bunch of people. Well in the case of this dream. Dreams are funny things. Even that we call them dreams is funny, considering some of the other connotations of the word dream. Anyway... lethality as I was wondering.

Thinking about moral progress, that move over that past several thousand years--I don't really know time wise how long it took so i just throw out a large amount of time--the move from when someone not in my family wasn't human, to when everyone from my city state was human but someone not from my city state wasn't (as we might consider the case between Sparta and Athens); to the time when someone not from my country is not fully human, to maybe blacks or Jews or midgets weren't fully human, to our (i think) current condition where more or less we pretty much agree that every person is human. Maybe the nuances of that statement are somewhat problematic...what is a person? but whatever it is I will take it to be human...at least I can say for sure that every human is a person and more or less you will agree.

What does that mean? That somehow we have evolved morally to recognize that those people around us in some way deserve to live as we do. That in the same way we don't much want to be murdered, tortured, raped, abused, outcast or neglected we can see they don't either.

This is big progress! But now what has gone along with this moral progress? At every step, war, and increasingly more lethal war...but perhaps even as war has become more lethal it has become less violent.

Demographically more people are involved in war than ever before. This is necessary there are just more people around nowadays. Perhaps if we looked at the total percent of the global population involved in war, we could get a better idea of the comparison. Although even then it is difficult to say, the very definitions of, motivation for, and practice of war has fundamentally changed. I don't know I have never experience war. But it seems setting lookouts for the Mongol Hoard only to be overrun by fire arrows, raped and butchered as they sweep past is more violent than silently huddling in houses as bomb fall about like rain drops.

The aggressor in the first act is enacting far greater violence against another human than the latter aggressor. Even though the latter aggressor may be more effective and more lethal, maybe cause greater trauma in her actions that the case of the Mongol aggressor. She doesn't act in violence, she is calculated, strategic, planned, and approved through a complex chain of authority in her act.

I think the Mongols considered their opponents to be human, they must have because of their acts of colonialism. You wouldn't ask non-humans to join your human kingdom. And I know soldiers today try to dehumanize targets but always struggle with the knowledge that they are enacting aggression again other morally human entities like themselves. So we can make the comparison.

How is the latter act less violent? I think in increasing efficiency in warfare the need for individual aggression has far diminished. Lately I have been reading a fair amount of novels from the Forgotten Realms. In these stories often individuals with less efficient weapons are forced to dig deeper into themselves to find the will, the strength and the ability to continue enacting violent acts against those who threaten their existence.

As was has become less violent though it has increased in the weight of moral responsibility it thrusts on those involved. That is knowing that war is more lethal we are (or should be) more hesitant to engage in it. Our moral positioning in the world should stay our fingers and force us to look for other ways to resolve our conflicts. And don't we? internationally we work to help countries resolve conflict, to force countries to desist hostilities and to help other nations grow up survive and eventually thrive.

War may be more lethal, but we now strive to avoid it. It is when hatred enters the scene that we now need to progress our morality. With violent acts so efficient and lethal as they have become can we justify this hatred. Can we find no otherway to sublimate its effects? We must try. As we work into Humanity 2.0 we must continue ou progress, and expand our ever growing morality.