posted
Here's something I've been knocking around in my head. Before birth control was made widely available to the public, allowing wanton promiscuity within a culture was suicide. No society could support the number of unwed mothers that would result from that kind of practice, and so the societies that did well were the ones that bolstered strong family units, and discouraged sex without commitment.
If birth control were somehow unavailable today, I think that most people who are in favor of free premarital sex would find themselves switching very quickly into the abstinence camp.
But I'm wondering ... is it a good idea to base such decisions on something as fleeting and unreliable as technology? I mean, the fact that birth control is available does not mean that it works all the time, or that (as is more often the problem) people are actually bright enough to use it. So we really do have a big problem with unwed motherhood, illegitimacy, social disease, and other ills, because we base our moral code on the use of a technology that is not completely reliable, and that is not in universal use. Personally, I think that was a bad decision on our part. What do you think?
And what of other potential future developments? If advances in genetic engineering make it possible for us to remove all recessive genetic diseases, should incest then be made allowable, since the hazards of a shallow gene pool will have been removed? If in vitro gestation becomes dependable, should abortion be outlawed in favor of early birth and transferral to an artificial womb?
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posted
I think it is INEVITABLE that social mores will change with technology. As the consequences of behavior change, the attitudes towards those behaviors will also change.
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Geoff, good question, and one I've wondered about myself.
Here's another example: Before we had the technology to mass-produce food and ship it around the world, people had to grow it themselves or raise or hunt the animals. Every mouthful was something that you had known as a living thing. People gave thanks for their meals, fully aware that by death and hard work, their bodies were nourished. Now, people often have no idea where their foods come from, what all is in them, and the hands that prepared it. Very little thought and thankfulness is given toward food, other than token prayers that have become meaningless. And look at the results - unhealthy eating habits, eating disorders, and families who snag food on the go instead of eating together. We have changed.
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Sure. In the absence of an absolute source of moral authority handing down taboos, it seems logical to assume that most societal traditions have in fact evolved to reflect the perceived consequences of behavior.
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I would argue that right and wrong are NOT values that, in general, we instinctively know in our hearts. While certain behaviors do appear to be universal among societies, these are fewer in number than you'd think.
quote:But I'm wondering ... is it a good idea to base such decisions on something as fleeting and unreliable as technology? I mean, the fact that birth control is available does not mean that it works all the time, or that (as is more often the problem) people are actually bright enough to use it. So we really do have a big problem with unwed motherhood, illegitimacy, social disease, and other ills, because we base our moral code on the use of a technology that is not completely reliable, and that is not in universal use. Personally, I think that was a bad decision on our part. What do you think?
Geoff, you seem to be saying that the problem of unwed, unprepared young mothers is solely the fault of the technology being faulty or too easy to misuse. However, that assumes that all sexually active people have been trained in all forms of birth control, and have it easily available. Since there are so many who seek to limit the teaching and handouts of contraceptives in schools, I don't think we can assume that everyone out there is being given a fair chance to even use the technology, much less misuse it.
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It's also worth noting that the previous situation -- in which unwed mothers were rather hastily wed to their often immature and irresponsible lovers, or forced into sweatshops and nunneries -- was not necessarily preferable to the current one.
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I think that you're half right, Tom. I do think that social rules have evolved to fit the circumstances that their societies found themselves in. However, if the society isn't motivated by further circumstance to change their social rules, or if those social rules end up providing a secondary, unplanned benefit, those rules may continue even when the conditions initially dictating them have disappeared.
I think that the Jewish and Muslim prohibition on eating pork is a good example of this. At one time, there was a good chance that if one ate undercooked pork, one would contract trichinosis. I expect that the prohibition on eating pork in those societies sprang from that. In modern times, however, that threat has been greatly reduced or even eliminated, but the prohibition against pork remains. There are two reasons for this, I'd bet. First, there is plenty of other meat available. If some disease had wiped out cattle, goats, sheep, rabbits and chickens, leaving pigs as one of the only remaining domesticatable meat sources, I expect that that prohibition would have been lifted. The second reason is much more interesting though; it has to do with identity; "we're people who do X", "we're not like those people who do Y". If a group gains a visible part of its identity from one of its societal rules, especially if it suffers some degree of persecution for that rule, it is likely to hang onto it long after the coditions that dictated it have been obviated.
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posted
The question of whether social mores should change with technology is really based on where the foundations for social mores are laid. In the end there are certain absolutes which govern these things, as Geoff pointed out with sexual restrictions. There are simple consequences which cannot be gotten around. But are these sorts of natural laws really the only basis we have for settling cultural mores in a society? Obviously not. As I see it there are at least 3 sets of cultural/ moral categories: 1) Natural law 2) Societal stability 3) Traditional
In the first category are things which we simply must obey if we are to get along. That would include things like Geoff's example. The second category includes a wide range of behaviors which are moderated by their interaction with other behaviors in society. Certain factors just can't go together. For example, We will never find a society which on the whole allows for slavery for some citizens and sweeping civil rights for others. The two are simply incompatible. The third category consists of behaviors that are the way they are just because that's how they did it in the old country etc. This can include things like family and holiday traditions etc.
Now back to Geoff's question. Obviously technology will contribute to modifications of all of these areas. Should we get with the times and allow technology to change us in this way?
I think that as regards tradition, sure. Let science incorporate fiberoptic Christmas trees or video-conferencing family reunions.
In questions of societal stability then the answer I think is: Proceed with caution. Sure it is great that technology has freed huge numbers of us from subsistence farming to other pursuits, But that change has also brought with it a whole host of problems which subsistence farmers wouldn't have to face.
As regards changes in what was once natural law: Great care indeed should be taken in this area. Birth control itself is all well and good, but look at the associated baggage Geoff has mentioned and once again we as a society should take a long, hard look at the sweeping changes we allow technology to implement.
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quote:I would argue that right and wrong are NOT values that, in general, we instinctively know in our hearts. While certain behaviors do appear to be universal among societies, these are fewer in number than you'd think.
As proof of that, if a person knows their history well enough they can usually come up with a society in which whatever "wrong" you can think of was held to be "right".
Random murder? Check--the Thugee. Sex with children? Check--Ancient Greece. Eating animals? Check--Western Societies (lots and lots of them, I might add, although to someone raised Hindu, doing this would feel like an obvious and innately "wrong" act) Incest? Depends on how you define it. Societies often have familial structures that are quite different from our own, and will have certain unions that would be viewed as incestuous by them that would be fine by us. Biological parent/child sexual behavior taboos are pretty much universal; I can't think of a society that doesn't possess them, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if someone who had a better grasp of the broad sweap of human culture than I do could come up with one.
I'm going to have to dig out my old Dangerous Visions anthology and reread Sturgeon's "If All Men Were Brothers". Probably time to reread Venus plus X as well.
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But not in all societies, OSC-Fan. If you're arguing that its a universal, it has to be...well..universal, doesn't it?
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Feminism does not mean "I don't need a man." It means "I should not be treated less because I am a woman." Big, big difference. Don't let the radicals define the philosophy.
But still those who practice premarital sex and use birth control don't seem to care much about their own reputation in a society which, a while ago, would have put a stigma on them for their behavior (and you can witness it in other countries where women of good families don't want to bring shame on themselves and their family for their actions)
But, then as now, promiscuous men are often admired. When the woman is the one to deal with the results of sex, is it any wonder so many want options available to control it?
Added after I caught up on the posts since:
Quite often in those societies you mention, a woman's virtue was prized because it increased her value in marriage and made her a more valuable possession, not because it kept her soul all shiny.
I'm not trying to argue against self-control or virginity, but against the notion that everyone in the world was virtuous before the Pill came along. People really don't change that much, technology or no technology.
[ February 25, 2004, 02:02 PM: Message edited by: Chris Bridges ]
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quote:Geoff, you seem to be saying that the problem of unwed, unprepared young mothers is solely the fault of the technology being faulty or too easy to misuse. However, that assumes that all sexually active people have been trained in all forms of birth control, and have it easily available. Since there are so many who seek to limit the teaching and handouts of contraceptives in schools, I don't think we can assume that everyone out there is being given a fair chance to even use the technology, much less misuse it.
Ayelar, the problem is the fact that no matter how well-exposed people are to the technology, or how well-trained they are, this will always come down to people willingly choosing to use it. And there will always be at least a sizeable minority of people who don't think that the dangers apply to them, or who can't be bothered to worry about the future, or who just don't pay attention.
Similarly, when you attempt to proscribe social mores, there will be people who ignore them.
But I think our vast experiment of the past few decades has demonstrated that people on the whole listen much more closely to social mores than they do to safety instructions. It's strange, I know, but unwed parenthood goes up dramatically when it stops being an issue of shaping your entire lifestyle, and starts being an issue of unwrapping a condom or taking a pill every day. People are more reliably willing to do the former than the latter.
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quote: It's strange, I know, but unwed parenthood goes up dramatically when it stops being an issue of shaping your entire lifestyle, and starts being an issue of unwrapping a condom or taking a pill every day. People are more reliably willing to do the former than the latter.
The first sentence might be true, but I don’t think the last sentence is. Before there was reliable birth control there were an awful lot of babies born six months after their parents wedding. Which does reduce unwed parenthood, but doesn’t support the idea that the possibility of pregnancy kept anyone chaste before marriage.
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posted
While I think that it is probably true that social mores can't help but change with technology, I think your assumptions about "pre-birth control" days are just not correct.
Basically, there's evidence that women throughout history (and even pre-history) have known ways to avoid or eliminate a pregnancy.
In addition, if we go back far enough in time, to some imagined period where women didn't know anything about herbs that would stop a pregnancy, I'm willing to bet that fertility was significantly lower than it is today. So starving ignorant people in our past could probably while away the hours humping like bunnies and still not have to worry too much about children.
If you go back even further in time, women were probably fertile only part of the year so childbirth was timed to the best season for survival. Once again, you could have worry-free pleasure the rest of the time. But then, probably nobody knew how babies happened anyway.
Basically, ARND, I think the period of ignorance about sex that preceded the ready availability of birth control was an aberration
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I would submit to you that technology has been responsible for the very creation and shaping of our civilization as it exists today and has existed for centuries. Go back as far as the Bronze Age, the Stone Age, the Iron Age. We define stages of our civilization by the technology available at the time. Without technology in some form, these lauded mores of yours would not have have developed -- we would have been too busy killing our next meal to worry about whether or not it's okay to kill the guy next door. Hey, he could be food too!
Our morals most definitely change with our technology -- but I don't think that's always a bad thing.
[ February 25, 2004, 03:19 PM: Message edited by: Kasie H ]
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quote:Instead today selfishness is so rampant that people wanting to satisfy their selfish whims and desires foget the importance of family environment for their children.
Isn't this a complaint made about EVERY generation? I mean, they don't call such things a "Jeremiad" without reason.
The O.T. prophets talked incessantly about the Godless masses and how the bad things that happened to Israel were a direct result of people forgetting about God, etc., etc., etc.
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I've been told that there are Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics that say pretty much the same thing.
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"Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is writing a book." -- Marcus Tullius Cicero (106 BC - 43 BC)
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quote: I don't think we can assume that everyone out there is being given a fair chance to even use the technology, much less misuse it.
I'm sorry. Adults have a responsiblity to find out about birth control on their own. Unless you're talking about teenagers? That, of course, would be strange, considering it is illegal to have sex before age of consent.
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Suppose there were an animal whose meat tasted absolutely delicious, but contained a poison that killed those who ate it about a quarter of the time. It was thus considered wrong to feed someone this kind of meat.
But eventually an antidote for the poison was developed. Wouldn't you say that after the antidote arose, it would be perfectly ok to feed someone the meat as long as you neutralize the poison?
To answer the broader question, the principles of morality do not change with technology, but the specific norms certainly do. Thus, if technology can reliably remove the morally bad consequences from an action, it can definitely change whether that action is wrong. What technology cannot change is what moral right and wrong consist in.
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It may be morally acceptable to feed someone a food with neutralized poison, as we've managed to do in the real world with almonds, breeding out the cyanide before adding them to our diet. Almonds are safe now to eat because ALL domesticate almonds are naturally cyanide-free.
But I think it's morally questionable to advertise that a food is safe when each time a person eats it, they must personally apply the antidote. I feel like our culture has embraced promiscuity because of a technology that doesn't actually remove the moral problems. It lessens the dangers when used properly, but the emotional consequences of reckless sex, the chance of screwing up and getting pregnant, etc, are still quite severe.
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posted
I'm not at all sure that there's evidence that our society has "embraced" promiscuity more than any other arbitrarily-chosen society in history.
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