we aren't done with ethical progress
Tag: ethics
There’s an argument that goes something along these lines: “The group demanding equal rights has gone too far. Sure, there were problems and inequalities in the past, but those have been resolved, and now that group is using inappropriate methods to make inappropriate demands.”
I really don’t mean to make too much of a strawman out of this argument, there are a lot of specific contexts and details which can make it a very valid and good argument. That said, I think it’s unfortunate how commonly people use this argument without realizing that the people in the past that they condemn used this argument too.
For example, Martin Luther King is widely brought up as a bastion of virtue who was fighting a good cause. If, however, you actually look at how people viewed him in his time, it’s the exact way people look at racial protesters nowadays. There are tons of political cartoons showing Martin Luther King as a riot-provoker who was bothering the peace, and it would be trivial to swap MLK out for BLM.
Ethics and progress is never solved. This doesn’t mean that progressivism is always correct, but it does mean we should be just as critical of ourselves now as we are of the past.
https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/eugenics-is-a-great-idea
See also the inevitability of the past
