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Technology, Not Thought, Drives Most Moral Development
Preface
In a recent thread on the Enlightenment, I noted I thought moral change was driven not by thinking, but by technology. As you might imagine, this met with some pushback and I thought a full response was warranted.
Morality in society is driven by what is possible. I can use many examples, but I am going to focus on three:
Slavery
Child Labor
Women’s Equality
The best estimate we have is that half the people who have ever walked this earth lived before the dawn of history and agriculture. That will change this century. Still, for today, half of human beings lived as hunter-gatherers, moving about in tribes of 100-200 individuals or so. Humans being born, living, loving, laughing, crying, and dying in a world that changed little from generation to generation. Their technology was primitive, with fire, stone, and wood. Of course, these humans did some amazing things. Somehow, ancient people crossed the Pacific Ocean and colonized Hawaii and Easter Island. Humans wandered across every land bridge and colonized the world. We are amazing creatures. We also tend to think of “our tribe” as the only “true” humans.
There are so many examples of this in history (once it starts up) that we have to believe this was the norm in the past. Humans seem naturally tribal. My tribe is worth altruism, support, and care. The other tribe is not entitled to any of that, and they may be the enemy. The idea that all human beings are of the same value is, let’s face it, a pretty inhuman concept. Really, can a tribe that does not eat fish really be fully human? What about those guys over there who cannot even drink milk? You see how it goes. Humans pick up on superficial differences to make points. I joke about food taboos, but these are exactly the sorts of things groups seized upon to make their lines demarcating themselves from others.
With the advent of cities, driven by the revolution of agriculture, things changed. Now, somehow, humans had to figure out how to get along with strangers. Dunbar’s number of about 150 individuals we can know gets breached and we are in new territory. It was the technology of agriculture and that changed things. We had to get along as strangers, so the idea of a supertribe was mandatory to get along. People had to say, “I am not just part of this 100 or so people, but I am a member of Ur, the great city. The other people of Ur or my kin and they have value too, though not as much as my family. What is important is they are not those people in Babylon.”
Slavery
It is hard to talk about slavery at all in 2022, which is in and of itself a sign of our detachment from history and hardships. Slavery has been endemic to Mankind since the days of early agriculture. Once societies moved from the paleolithic, hunter-gatherer lifestyles and into farming, they discovered a need for someone to farm. While agriculture provides more food and more stability, there is some evidence it also ushered in longer working days and certainly required more energy for creating food. Even in the early days, there was enough surplus for a small number of people to have lives not devoted to the acquisition of food. We call this Civilization.
Now that more people could be fed, it made sense to produce as much food as possible. The only way to make more food was through the use of Mankind’s first renewable power source: muscle power of humans and animals. Animals are clearly in bondage to humans. It is a small leap to put other humans into bondage as well, especially if they are of “The other” and maybe not as human as you are in the first place. In short, it is an easy jump from planting to forcing others to plant for you. After all, those other people are not as of much value as your people are anyway.
Slavery, in some form or another, has therefore been with us for 10,000-plus years. It cropped up in all human societies with agriculture around the world. The West only moved against slavery in the past two centuries, less than 2% of the time since the agricultural revolution. By the time that happened, every philosophical idea used to counter slavery already existed. Yes, it was Christians who turned on slavery. It was also Christians who had spent the previous 1,500 years before that happily engaged in it. Yes, it was the West itself, with ideas of the rights of people, ideas that dated back to Rome and Greece. Yet, those same people engaged in the practice of slavery. While some might argue that chattel slavery is fundamentally different than some ancient practices, I disagree. Chaining someone to oars and making him row until he dropped dead or leaving him to burn in a ship is not honoring that man as a person. The reality is, all slavery is wrong as it robs people of their God-given rights to self-determination. Chattel slavery may be its worst form, but it is a lie to think that suddenly came about with European expansion. Slavery is a normal part of civilization throughout history. Therefore, we have to ask, just what changed in the Christian West to make people decide that slavery was antithetical to Natural Rights and Christ’s teachings. The answer is clearly technology.
As I said before, what drove the existence of slavery was the demand for more muscle power. For most of Mankind’s existence, that has been the only real power we have had. Yes, water mills and windmills and sails have all been around, but the work they did was minor compared to the blood, sweat, and tears throughout the ages. That all changed with the industrial revolution. With the burning of wood and then fossil fuels to power machines, far more work could be done. Slavery was no longer needed to maintain as many people outside of farming. In 2022, modern nations don’t need slaves because we have machines that do it all for us. We don’t need servants either. Even the poor have time freed from mundane tasks such as washing clothes and extensive meal preparation because of our machines. Electricity from the wall is magic we take for granted. Slavery fell out of fashion.
I would be remiss if I left a discussion on slavery and technology without mentioning the technology that kept it alive, the Cotton Gin. Slavery was dying as uneconomical in the South. Everyone thought it would just fall off. Then technology changed and the morals on the ground changed, and slavery was just back on. The industrial revolution was not all one direction!
Child Labor
Child labor is one of those things that people of the 21st Century look at and feel their stomach turn. Children should have fun lives, get to enjoy their childhoods, and have some time to grow up. This is not something people felt until the middle of the 20th Century in the West. For most of the history of civilization, children could be and were economic assets. Children worked on the farm early. This has been the way from the old days. Yes, child number five might get more of the childhood as we understand it, but if you were first born, for most people, life was working that farm. With industrialization, children could be put to work in factories, and they were. This made a lot of sense for lower-income families, as it put more money into the kitty. Today, around the world, children work in factories and their families are darn happy they get the money.
Of course, for 21st-Century Americans, it is illegal, and we find it abhorrent. I mean, not so abhorrent we don’t buy cheap things made by children in horrible situations in other nations because that is what free markets are all about. We just don’t want it for our kids in America. But I digress. What has happened is technological progress. Even the poorest of Americans have enough to eat, a place to stay, and access to resources that most humans throughout history would have called paradise. (Homelessness is its own subject and not addressed here, but let’s be honest, in America no one is in danger of starving to death). Poverty in America is not poverty as it has been understood. There is simply no reason for families to have their five-year-olds work to support the family. Indeed, we believe in this so strongly, we will give you more aid for your children. Is that civilized or what? We are rich enough and technologically advanced enough that having young children work no longer makes sense. So we can condemn it (just keep those cheap products coming from China).
Women’s Equality
As we have seen, humans have not tended to see even other humans as moral equals. This has been demonstrated even more so between men and women. Until the 20th Century, women were second-class at best and property at worst. What happened in the 20th Century was not just a sudden surge of enlightenment. As we saw with slavery in the industrial revolution, we see a diminishment of the importance of muscle power. This lowered the relative value of a man. As the wealth of all has increased, civilization can actively take people from farming and put them into providing security. Women no longer need “their” man to protect them from other men because we can outsource that particular function.
With the rise of jobs without high requirements for muscle power, women’s ability to provide income for the family outside of running the home increased. Early on, this might have been working in mills, but this growing economic power helped to give women a seat at the table for their own political power. While (all) women in 1700 were not property in America, they sure did not have the political power of men.
Of course, women also benefited from the rise in medical science in the 20th Century. Before modern obstetrics, women did not live longer than men on average. Our big-brained heads being passed through our upright bodies have long been a design flaw in the form of Homo sapiens. Today, death in childbirth is far less likely. If not dying is not increasing one’s power and value, I don’t know what is. Other technological improvements include little things like pads and tampons to manage menstruation. Guys, this is no small thing in modern technology to liberate women. And as long as we are talking babies and periods, let us come to the biggest technological change since Mankind started planting food: birth control.
Throughout history, humans have sought effective birth control because sex is a lot of fun and it leads to babies. In the 1960s, “The Pill” was upon us and it heralded the sexual revolution. Women could control conception for the first time. (Though the Romans may have had a plant they could use. We can’t be sure as they used it to extinction.) Women could both enjoy sex and delay pregnancy. Thanks to medical science, abortion could be performed safely as well (a big change from millennia of unsafe abortion and outright infanticide). This allowed women to live the lives of men if they choose. Society adapted, and in the 1970s, the world changed for us. Traditional norms were being overturned. None of this would have happened without the technology to support it. Today, we are engaged in a great experiment of the past 60 years to see if men and women can work side by side, which is not how human beings have ever operated before.
Conclusion
Technology has altered human thought and human behavior. The first half of Humanity, when it was static, culture seems to have been static. It was with the advent of agriculture that things started to change, and people were even able to try out new ideas and concepts. With increased technology came more opportunities for experimentation and change. This has only accelerated. We attempt to find a moral framework to cope with the power and knowledge that we have today.
Future technology will cause different changes. An example is abortion. Part of the success of the pro-life movement has been the advent of pictures of babies in utero that are clearly babies. When we develop artificial wombs that any embryo or fetus can be transferred too, what of abortion then? I think the pressures against abortion will be much higher then. I wonder what other ethics and morals will change with what the future brings.
Picture under open license paid for by writer from JumpStory.com
Published in Religion & Philosophy
Yes, I get that, but I’m making a clarifying point about morality being God-given and unchanging. Would it be immoral to withhold a cure for Alzheimer’s if we had one? It would seem so. If you were suffering from Alzheimer’s and someone had a cure, would you want it? Of course. It isn’t moral to let someone suffer unnecessarily. Same with going hungry. And that’s where technology can come into play.
And, btw, while I suppose it’s a good thing that our 10-year-0lds aren’t required to work in the fields, I do think we’re damaging their character by asking so little of them. I’m working on asking more of my 20-something kids even with their extenuating circumstances (health conditions), not because I need them to do more, but because it is good for them to serve others.
Broadly speaking, yes. More options allow for more choices.
The thing is, by modern standards, ancient people all suffered from big T Trauma. We all play life on easy mode in America.
Yes, and it’s leading us to despair and destroying our civilization. It turns out prosperity has some pretty dire tradeoffs.
I’ll offer one simple counterpoint:
This is absolutely a huge moral leap for the world. It came before the aforementioned technological innovations that theoretically enabled it.
I agree that there is nothing wrong with kids having chores or a part-time or summer job. I think most adults who did some work when they were kids are glad for the experience and the lessons they learned. But there’s a healthy balance there. If their parents made them drop out of school to work full time, that will have long-term consequences.
Maybe. Probably depends on the relative qualities of the school and the job.
I know that my reading is hideously biased, but it is hard not to wonder how much of high school is wasted time and opportunity.
I was reading, I think it was Michael Anton, who said recently that Progressives tend to think that history has a moral arc, but it doesn’t. Civilization arose about 7,000 years ago and the three items that you point out took almost 7,000 years to become what we think of as common though.
Let’s look at slavery, even today it is not gone and is actually relatively prevalent in Africa. Estimates today are that ~40-45M people are enslaved in the world today. That is ~0.6% of the world population. In 1860, the height of slavery in the US, about 4M people were slaves. This was 32% of the southern population, but the entire US population was 31M so about 13%. According to various sources there were approximately 25M worldwide with a world population of ~1.2B or about 2.1%. This despite the outlawing of slavery over the entire world.
As a fan of post-apocalyptic literature and an avid RPG player who thinks a fair amount about what post-civilization looks like for games that I run, I recognize that civilization is a thin veneer over barbarism. Take away our civilization and slavery will become commonplace, it might be called something else, but people will be completely controlled by those with power. Women will have only those rights that they can fight for directly and can expect to be forced into positions of subservience by stronger and meaner men. Children will only have value when they can add to the productivity pool, otherwise they are a drag. The idea that they should go to school instead of working in the fields will disappear with alacrity.
Eventually, a new paradigm will develop with lower standards of living and likely no protection for children, women, and slavery being commonplace. Over time, assuming that we develop a society that first values those ideals, and two has the leisure time to allow them to exist, we might return to something like our current society.
I did a quick check googling around, and it seems to be common in European countries to allow apprenticeships as young as 14 years old. It sounds like they’re still educated in basic math skills as most modern crafts require it. Other skills probably include reading schematics, etc.
The United States doesn’t really encourage that kind of thing before graduating high school. It is common for high schools to offer “shop” classes, but if you want to get into a trade, you go to a community college, or apply to a union apprentice program as a young legal adult.
Great post with much food for thought.
Although primitive people were tribal, it should be noted that many tribal peoples installed taboos against their offspring marrying tribal members, including cousins, and even distant cousins.
Genetic understanding of what happens when cousins marry was not yet possible. (We only have to look at the royal families of Europe, Great Britain and Russia to see the results of that lack of understanding. Hemophilia, for one thing.)
But one benefit to this taboo was that it meant the young people of one tribe married into the families of another tribe. This meant there was some genetic diversity. (Whether this was realized or not.)
It also precluded war being possible between the two tribes which had shared adult children and grandchildren. Most tribal leaders were not of the mind to wipe out a neighboring tribe where their own grandkids were living, and vice versa.
Early American settlers whose wagon trains pushed through Indian territories were aghast when a chieftain of a Plains Indian tribe proposed that the more prominent families in the wagon train agree to trade children with that chieftain and his top braves. But that chieftain’s “indifference to his children” was a cultural norm that had allowed for benefits to accrue to his people. Including the benefit of flattering a nearby war chief whose proclivities to war would be blunted by the child exchange.
I’ve been reading Nial Ferguson’s Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power. He talks about Britain’s role in African slavery, first in establishing it in its colonies, and then deciding to end it.
During the Victorian Era, an evangelical religious missionary movement developed. They led a grass roots movement against slavery that led to Parliament abolishing it, and Ferguson argues that technology wasn’t the driver, since their captains of industry opposed it. Nor did other European powers buy in until Britain, by then the premier sea power forced them to.
From there, Britain used the Royal Navy to end the trans-Atlantic trade. The United States was the only western country to fight a civil war over it.
But even as this was an English speaking Christian based movement, it took roughly 1700 years from the time Christianity was born to actually have an effect.
With all the arguments that it was technology that ended slavery, it was only one religious philosophy, springing from an island nation at that, which caused it to start to be ended.
This is probably the most confusing and intriguing post I’ve ever read on Ricochet. I don’t know where to begin to understand it.
There are three broad reasons that come to mind.
First, this article presupposes human beings are changing or even capable of fundamental change; this involves in point of view an progressive existence for humans, regardless of whether humans are evolving, steady state, or even devolving. Modern human beings have existed as fully intellectually and socially sophisticated humans as we are today, so they say, for between 60 thousand and 160 thousand years, and the article approaches the changes of morality purely from a secular and modern point of view and uses current “common knowledge” as it were as a starting point.
Second, it doesn’t differentiate between cultural morality which differs from place to place and time to time, and absolute morality; for example, is it wrong to kill a baby?: yes, no, or it depends on time, place, circumstances and inclination, and whether this is either enforced or merely encouraged.
Thirdly, while it relies on environment and outside influences causing changes in morality, it selects only one cause – technology – and doesn’t consider any other potential outside sources such as climate (as ice-ages, solar super minimums, perhaps volcanic eruptions, etc.) or such as intelligent, deliberate, spiritual influences that exist, whether good or bad, that may change and guide societies and cultures (including the guiding Spirit of the Christian church — or fallen angels).
I’m so opposed to the current (corrupt) education establishment that I believe it’s better if kids are uneducated than the indoctrination and maleducation they’re getting in public schools and 98% of universities/colleges. Huge fan of graduating kids at 8th grade and getting them into skills-based programs or working for a few years before going to college.
The ban on cousin marriage goes a long way back. It was common to discourage marriage within 4 degrees of consanguinity, which roughly means that if you shared a grandparent, you couldn’t marry.
The Catholic Church in the 9th century increased it to 7 degrees of consanguinity, though they ended up giving a lot of waivers.
This had the long term affect of discouraging tribalism and encouraging nation states.
Note that first degree cousin marriage is still common in parts of the world, and where it is, you tend to have stronger tribes, and weaker nation states.
While agree about the corruption, that would fall under, “Be careful what you wish for.”
I’d rather take a risk with the corruption than take a risk with almost universal illiteracy. That too would have its moral hazards.
The Bible was written after agriculture, and thus after aforementioned technological innovations.
And in the Old Testament, God most certainly ordered the Jews to treat “the other” differently. Just like everyone did.
I disagree with that assessment because of two reasons. One reason is that religious (Christianity) philosophy condoned and allowed slavery even if it didn’t encourage it. It isn’t until much later that Christianity became anti-slavery. The second reason is related…in that it is the increase in personal wealth that came from the adoption of capitalism that would allow for activists to even lobby against slavery in the first place. The great wealth of the UK allowed them to consider the idea that slavery was evil and should be abolished.
I do not presuppose that human beings are changing at all. In fact, it assumes just the opposite, that humans have been the same since they evolved. I am presuming that human beings access to technology is changing and that creates the ground for new moral understanding.
One might argue that 100 generations of living in cities has done something to us, but that is another article.
It presumes that what people understand as absolute morality has changed with access to more technology. For the Aztec, human sacrifice was an critical thing to do to make the sun come up.
I would welcome and example of external forces changing morality. I cannot think of any. As far as the rest, the whole point is that intelligent influences come after the advent of technological progress that makes them possible. Supernatural influences are unprovable. I would say, based on my own Holy Book, that the Human understanding of the Devine has changed, and that includes morality.
Good point on the political power from wealth
This comment is intended only as a different perspective. So let me just state my view then, it’ll probably be clearer what my problem is.
Morality does not change. Morality is right and wrong, and is a fundamental aspect of God’s character (which can’t be proven scientifically). As such morality as it applies to people has been consistent since the beginning, and it is only people’s or culture’s obedience to it or awareness of it that has varied. And morality is in the end a matter of applying one’s inner conscience or consciousness of right and wrong to one’s thinking and actions, whether individually or to a group.
Technology does not change morality. Technology in itself is an external force, that I believe you are saying acts on, or stimulates or allows, the inner thoughts and consciences of men and society. You seem to be saying that one person can invent a printing press or The Pill, and this specifically brings about, either directly or indirectly, a change in morality and in people’s thinking. The Pill is clearly an external cause.
Right and wrong is a matter conscience, not technology. People and cultures will do anything in the world they want to the extent they are capable of it. And as to provable or unprovable supernatural forces, I didn’t think this article was anything like a scientific paper, intending to prove anything. As for the Aztecs, can one really assert that one person one day, or one culture one century, really first had access to stone knives and human chests and then thought the sun would only rise due to human sacrifice? Either way, I don’t think that this morality arose from access to stone knives.
All that said, for examples, I find it hard to accept that slavery began with the advent of agriculture. If one accepts that there were any generations of humans before the development of agriculture, and that’s certainly the common understanding, I find it hard to believe that captured and enslaved enemies and slave-concubines didn’t exist in hunter gatherer societies long before this.
Also I find it hard to believe that the moral argument against slavery began due to the influence of industrial revolution.
Technology changes what people think is or is not moral.
What is right and wrong is a matter of perspective for cultures.
The argument did not catch on until then.
A quick google, and I mean quick, doesn’t show much among the great philosophers arguing against slavery. None actually. Nada.
The Gospels don’t address it either. Various forms of feudalism, including serfdom were the norm. And slavery.
So a society’s desires for a pre-existing moral view are allowed to enter a culture’s moral system due to the technological convenience or capacity to do so? I can believe that.
That is your right, of course.
The morals of Hunter Gatherer societies are not ours for sure.
Not much immediately available in Christian theology on wikipedia. That’s why I said “hard to believe”, not “don’t believe”. Again, according to wiki there have been places an times apart from industrialization in which leaders abolished slavery, sometimes reinstalled when the potentate died.
However, I still find it hard to believe that slavery was permitted without criticism always and everywhere on balance prior to industrialization. I didn’t mention, but will now, the Mosaic prescriptions regarding slavery, limits to servitude, release, and including voluntary, slavery, if a slave should love his master, have a good life, and want to remain past his release day (iirc).
James Oglethorpe, founder of Georgia, was against slavery before the beginning of the industrial revolution. And he ruled Georgia in the 1730s, and personally purchased and freed slaves. He also worked successfully with others in the House of Commons to ban slavery in 1735. The industrial revolution began in 1760 or so, but really didn’t get going until 1830s. So Oglethorpe and his friend, and surely many people before him certainly saw slavery as immoral.
Abolition may have gotten great help from technology, but it predated it.
Just for the record, turn the other cheek was introduced in the Hebrew Bible in Lamentations (3:30), a book ascribed to the prophet Jeremiah, composed in 586 B.C. As for conquest of the Promised Land, it was done according to God’s directives in Joshua 6 (at Jericho), 8 (at Ai), 10 (against Gibeon attackers), etc. In Joshua 11:20 we read: “For it was from the Lord to harden their hearts (Canaanite nations) against Israel in battle, that they (Israel) might destroy them completely, and that they might have no favor, that they might destroy them as the Lord had commanded Moses.”
I think part of the point is that technology made slavery a thing that could be given up.
Slavery didn’t exist for the purpose of being cruel – it existed to get work done at a low/competitive cost. Technology renders slavery redundant. We, and by ‘we’ I mean countries all over the world, weren’t going to give slavery up without an alternative. Machines provided that alternative, but not everywhere all at once.
I’m not sure I understand what you mean by “moral development”, and I’m not even certain I understand what qualifies as “technology”.
I take “moral development” to be the sort of behaviors that the broad mass of humanity thinks is acceptable or not acceptable, and development specifically meaning the changes to that assessment. So, for example, you argue that slavery was broadly considered acceptable up until the point that steam rendered muscle power less important. Since a simple economic calculation makes slavery much less desirable, a moral calculation that we should ban slavery follows.
I think that’s incorrect as a matter of history. After a couple minutes googling dates and such I find that the McCormick Reaper was invented in 1831 and the steam tractor was in 1860, but the Ohio state constitution abolished slavery in 1802. What technology did the Ohio farmers use to farm before the invention of the tractor? If they plowed their fields with yoked oxen and reaped them with the hand scythe, why didn’t those technologies free slaves in the centuries they had already existed?
If you wanted to argue that wealth drives moral development you might have an easier road. Indeed, your child labor section is all about society being wealthier, and never bothers to mention what kind of technology got kids out of the factories. But that’s a different thesis.
I would suggest that the argument could be settled due to the influence of the industrial revolution.
This is wrong. Moral development has granted women the illusion that they no longer need their man to protect them. There’s no amount of wealth that makes women safe, no technology that’s sufficient to guard against man doing what he thinks is right in his own eyes. It’s only the civilizing influence of Christianity and other moral philosophies that women are as safe as they are. Though I’ll admit the gun helps.
What exactly was socially permitted the Roman Patrician to sexually do to his slaves? If he hadn’t the technology to do without slaves, it must still be granted that he had the wealth to provide security for them, right?