Why we won’t be a morally just society even 1000 years from now — An opinion.
A short opinion that might make you rethink your moral stance.
Imagine you are an ideal wife, living your life in a completely normal way, suddenly one day, your husband dies. Now, you are supposed to be burnt alive for that. Sounds illogical more than anything right? , but this would be the best possible course of action had you been born in the 1700s in Bengal. This used to be perfectly reasonable and moral, and had anyone stood against it back then, they would have been seen as the one out of their mind. But would you call them heartless and immoral for that? Should they be seen as evil people? No. We are made up of our surroundings. We have agreed to a definition of morality, of what’s just and what’s not, not by default, but by what has been fed to us ever since we exist. There are no absolutes, just agreements. This is just how the world works. Agreements. Not just on rituals, but opinions as well. And there’s no way we can measure, at what point in history have we been the closest to “fair morality”, for the measurement will be in comparison to now, something which we aren’t sure is the best.
Let’s take different points in history and compare them. Ancient Greece had the infamous Brazen Bull punishment for criminals, now, there are discussions on whether hanging is humane or not. We don’t know what our moral stance is going to be like, 50 years from now, let alone a thousand. Same-sex marriage was seen as a sin 50 years ago, now it’s just a matter of who’s open-minded enough to accept it. Copernicus was given the death penalty for his discovery of the earth revolving around the sun, which would have given him the Nobel Prize if it was now. And this is going to be the case forever, we will be looking back at this era in the future and wondering how unjust we used to be. We will wonder how could societies accept the rules we have now. We are bound to improve on our moral standards as we move ahead, and yet we are unsure if we are actually improving. We do not even know if today’s practices are better as compared to a thousand years ago or not. It’s all relative.
Still, we are inclined to believe that some decisions are made by human consciousness which is instilled in us by default, the quality which makes us humans. Our consciousness has played a big role in shaping our societies and our moral standards. The best we can do is wish that we are as close to justice as it appears :)
