Is there such thing as perfect morality?

[onesteptwostep]

So I think it's common census that we as a peoples have grown to be more moral with the passing of time. Take slavery for example, or something like universal suffrage. However, it's unsure whether or not we are actually going into a more morally progressive state than we were just a moment ago (or perhaps phrasing it as a 'decade' or a century' would be more apt). But, if we were to take the general notion that we as a peoples have grown more moral over the passage of time, if we had, for theoretical purposes, an infinite amount of time, would there be a state within human history where we would have perfect morality?

Do you think this is possible? What do you think?

Or perhaps morality isn't something that has a narrative, a history, and that morality simply doesn't get better- logically speaking, it would either just stay the same, stagnant as in go up and down, or just get worse.

What do you think happens, or is happening?

 

[Serac]

a lot of issues that pertain to morality in society as a whole are complex, scientific questions – which is a problem if one is to imagine us approaching perfect morality. That would necessitate everyone becoming highly scientifically literate, or alternatively, turning societies into technocracies.

take a simple concept like the gender pay gap, or, as I touched upon in another thread, minimum wage. In order to analyze the gender pay-gap, one needs to understand things like multivariate regression – something most people don't have the first clue about. So currently, since nobody really understands it, gender paygap us being used as a political tool.

 

[The Grey Man]

We have not grown to be more moral in the last 200 years, but our morals have changed. Tradition has been supplanted by tolerance, racism by humanitarianism, and nationalism by cosmopolitanism. In short, cruelty has been superseded by kindness in our estimation, and this to such a degree that it is, to most of us, a matter of common sense that kindness is better than cruelty. Common sense, however, seems insensible of the fact that by repudiating our own traditions and embracing cosmopolitanism, we are repudiating ourselves insofar as we adhere to structures that individuate us from other peoples, effectively committing cultural suicide by leaping into the melting pot of industrial society. We may, in the next 200 years, have to learn what it is to be a docile, softhearted sheep when there are wolves about, and how foolish were we to condescend to our morally "immature" ancestors.

 

[Cognisant]

I think we're becoming less moral but more pragmatic.

I mean morality itself is becoming less subjective, less of an art, and more objective, more of a science. If someone tries to pickpocket me the old way of thinking is that I should get angry and "punish" the person who has "wronged" me, perhaps this may rehabilitate their behaviour but really it's more about setting a precedent, "try to steal from me and I'll fuck you up".

A great example of this is the old world practice of mutilating criminals, cutting of a thief's hand to both punish them and impair their ability to repeat the crime. By modern sensibilities this is barbaric, rather than seeing crime as a transgression to be punished we treat it as a problem to be solved, we try to see things from the criminal's point of view. Perhaps the criminal was desperate (in which case crippling them would only make the problem worse), perhaps we were too complacent or made ourselves too tempting a target?

Although we take a softer approach to dealing with crime our methods are far more extreme, rather than punishing criminals for their crimes we would like to prevent those from crimes occurring altogether. This is train of thought is taking us into some frightening territory, by ignoring the agency of the criminal we are effectively taking away their free will.

Imagine a world like in the movie "Minority Report" where crimes can be predicted and prevented before they occur, and not just murder I mean all crimes, it's undeniably a utopia, a perfect society where no crimes ever occur because the people in that society no longer possess the agency to exercise their free will.

You don't need to be able to predict the future to do this, shops in the future could forgo checkouts altogether, you just walk in and pick up what you want and when you walk out with it the price is automatically deducted from your account thereby making theft from that store impossible. Imagine an entire society that operates by the same principle, where nobody can hurt each other because everyone interacts with each other either with avatars or through some kind of proxy, where hate-speech is perfectly censored, you can still think awful thoughts but society denies you the ability to express them.

 

[Niclmaki]

Morality has no “perfected” state. It is just whatever happens to be agreed on at that point in time.

“Moral relativism” is the fancy definition.

Less suffering caused seems to be the trend we’re on though. I imagine it to be a “good” direction. But I cannot be certain of it. It is just human/animal nature to avoid suffering. One counterpoint example I can quickly imagine is; what if my dog dies? But I can just take a pill* and bam, sadness and suffering is gone. Is this “good”? Perhaps, maybe this is where we will be in the future.

*for this example, we will say the pill has no ill side effects

 

[Minuend]

You say we have become more moral, but I wonder if you conflate more compassionate with more moral? Which isn't necessarily wrong, but not automatically right either

Perfect moral according to who? Aren't we just apes trying to make sense of the world? Are monkeys capable of having their version of a perfect moral? Are cats? Rats?

Are monkeys able to have a perfect moral according to their limited perspective, their biology, their limited choice?

Because that's what we have, what we are. We have tendencies, ways of function, limited ability to understand, driven by biology functions like motivation, feelings, needs. Even the need for something to be logical, consistent, moral is borne from what and how we are, from feelings.

Where do we even begin if we want to discover what is perfectly moral? What do we base it on?

Personally, I'm a believer of building a moral system, similar to how we've built cities or artworks. What we base that system on depends on a lot of variables like how humans are and what would be "good" for them (in most likelyhood), what we are able to do, how we are able to live, what we think (according to our limited perspective) will benefit humans etc. It's not pure utilitarianism either, it's trying to see and understand as much as you can, and trying to find something that works. And it's a learning process. We develop our moral system the way we become better at building or drawing. We learn, we observe, we change. Whether you call the end of that cycle (if it exists) perfect, I guess it's a matter of definition