Progress in society is evident everywhere: artificial intelligence, drones, electric cars, the ability to fly to far flung countries around the world. While this technological progress is obvious, it's also common to hear people decry the loss of moral values in politics, increases in inequality and sense that many find their values and identity to be under siege. In popular culture it is difficult to escape the impression that, in the eyes of many, things appear to be getting worse.

So it seems that technological progress and moral and ethical progress dont necessarily go together. if this the case, is our age indeed more morally or ethically advanced than previous ones or are we in moral and ethical decay? Can we even compare ourselves in this way to previous ages who had completely different ideas about how the world worked?

The mandate of heaven

The Chinese tradition of Daoism has a fundamentally different view of moral and ethical values:

Not to value and employ men of superior ability
is the way to keep the people from rivalry among themselves;
not to prize articles which are difficult to procure
is the way to keep them from becoming thieves;
not to show them what is likely to excite their desires
is the way to keep their minds from disorder.
Therefore the sage, in the exercise of his government, empties their minds, > fills their bellies, weakens their wills, and strengthens their bones.
He constantly (tries to) keep them without knowledge and without desire,
and where there are those who have knowledge, to keep them from presuming to act (on it).
When there is this abstinence from action,
good order is universal. Dao De Jing

The Daoist view is that striving for improvement and progress is actually what causes disharmony, unhappiness and misery. Does this make any sense? What if you are living in a society where you are oppressed?

The noble savage

L'homme est né libre, et partout il est dans les fers. Du contrat social, Jean Jacques Rousseau

Rousseau believed that humans in their natural state were happy and peaceful but that society and the demands of living and striving against one another made us miserable. He spoke of our natural sentiment of "Amour soi" which is our natural "self love" or desire to meet our needs for sustenance, shelter and love. He contrasted this with our "amour propre" or "self-esteem" which is how we compare ourselves with others.

In Rousseau's view we aren't so much trying to progress but rather we are trying to regain the natural state in which all humans are happy.

Could this be the answer to the Daoist riddle? if I am oppressed is it because we have already strayed from our natural state through some striving or desiring? So maybe we are always trying to regain that state? Is it regress we are after rather than progress?

Tel se croit le maître des autres, qui ne laisse pas d'être plus esclave qu'eux. Du Contrat Social, Jean Jacques Rousseau

The Decline of Violence

Stephen Pinker has argued that, despite Rousseau's vision of the noble savage, human's in their natural state are really much more violent than we imagine.

Certainement qui est en droit de vous rendre absurde est en droit de vous rendre injuste.
Lettres Voltaire

Noble savages, being uneducated, uncivilised and not having learnt the value of human institutions have no recourse except to violence for dealing with conflicts. Can we be sure that the noble savages could live in harmony without these advantages?

Stephen Pinker on the decline of violence.

The illusion of progress

John Gray argues against Stephen Pinker that this illusion is merely illusory. While violent death may have reduced, many other kinds of violence persist (rape, starvation, modern slavery) and have replaced overt violense as a means of coercion and domination.

John Gray on the illusion of progress.

John Gray argues that, although we may have improved some overt forms of oppression (the abolition of slavery, abolition of the death penalty, women's suffrage, gay marriage) these can only be considered temporary since other forms of oppression, of these same groups, have continued unabated, showing that the underlying moral and ethical situation is not improved.

Moral evolution

If, as seems likely, John Gray is right is saying that human beings remain much the same as they were thousands of years ago, can we say that there has been any moral progress? Can institutional or social constraints contain these human frailties more than temporarily? If they cannot do we have the right to claim any moral progress? Do they really constrain us at all or is the world of today no more nor less moral than previous ages but simply has different rules which the same, partly moral, partly immoral, humans follow, more or less?