WARNING: "like generations before us, we make excuses for the clear injustices of our age"

Julian Baggini: Out of sight, out of mind

We know slavery was an abhorrence, and that sexism and racism are wrong. Does that make our society more ethical? Not at all, argues Julian Baggini – like generations before us, we make excuses for the clear injustices of our age

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.....But if future generations were to look back at our period in history and judge that we
were grossly immoral, is there anything inaccurate in what they would say?

"At the start of the 21st century, Westerners enjoyed slightly cheaper goods only because they were indifferent to the welfare of those who produced them and supported a system which saw suppliers work for as little as they could get away with paying them. People pointed this out, and they could have eliminated the problem simply by paying just a little bit more for their basic goods - less per week than they spent on a couple of pints of beer on a Friday night.

"But they dismissed the critics as cranks and carried on as usual. They were convinced that, having abolished slavery and taken steps to eliminate racism and sexism, they had nothing else to feel guilty about. Their complacency is warning to us, and to all times, that humans are always blind to the gross injustices that form part of the fabric of their everyday lives."

MORE:
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/05/03-3


George Will (on This Week): Right. And -- and, by the way, wind farms kill a lot more birds daily than are probably going to be killed in this oil spill.

It's reassuring to read someone making a similar point in print that I've been arguing in conversation for ages.

It's way too easy to be smug about past discriminations while self-servingly justifying our present-day instances with "reasonable" arguments.

Most people aren't monsters, but many of us behave monstrously by rationalizing our behavior. As Baggini expresses it,

"While the sins of our forebears are all too evident, the wickedness of our own age is much harder to discern."

Amen.

Thanks for the thread, kpete.