Morality is temporal

This morning, I listened to a man on radio who argued against same-sex marriage. I don't recall his name and I can't be arsed to find out, but he has apparently made a bit of a career defending the institution of marriage, i.e. he has written a book.

I don't recall the name of the book and I can't be arsed to find out, but I have it on good authority that it has pages and stuff.

The man was a guest on a liberal talk show, and so most people who called in asked unfriendly questions. Someone pointed out that marriage is a social contract. The definition of many social contracts has changed over time and people have changed their minds with it. So why didn't the guest be a little flexible and change his mind?

The guest answered that people have changed their minds when some worthy social issue was in question. If this was, say, giving women the vote, he would have changed his mind, but he would definitely not change his mind about men poking at each other's bums. No siree.

As I was listening to the guest on radio, it suddenly occurred to me that no matter what he says now, the guest would NOT have changed his mind about the things that he says are worth changing ones mind about. No matter what he says, a hundred years ago, he would have been up on a platform arguing that he fails to see why women will ever need to vote. Two hundred years ago, he would have been arguing that those dirty negroes have no damned business working for pay outside of a cotton field. Someone who loudly prescribes discrimination against a group of people today based on what end of a human they prefer to stick their willy into is not likely to have displayed liberal views yesterday.

But why dwell on a random conservative guest on talk radio? What happens when we raise the mirror to ourselves?

A lot of us possess this sort of a self-image bias. We believe that we are better than we really are. A lot of us believe that we are more moral, more liberal, more intellectual, and more talented than we are.

Morality is temporal. Most of us are completely comfortable defending the morality of long established notions. Even gay rights has been around for some time. But how many of us would have stood up for something when it was just a renegade idea? Today we support a woman's right to vote because somebody else fought for and won that cause. We express our approval of the result, not necessarily the cause. When we defend the equality of sexes, or the equality of races, or separation of religion and state, we defend a result. It is easy--and superfluous--to defend a victory. How many of us would, were we to be magically displaced in time, fight to actually win that victory? And how many of us, like this guest, would actually have fought against the cause that seems so natural now?

Don't see what I am saying? Well, consider these ideas which are not popular today and see how many of them you can get behind. How many urban Indian men would be comfortable with the idea of the complete sexual liberation of Indian women? Or at the very least press for a sexual standard for women equal to that applied to themselves? How many Indian men that you personally know would, in your estimate, take as completely normal the prospect of a marriage to someone with five previous relationships? How many Muslims in Islamic countries would stand up and defend the right to apostasy? How many Hindus still consider caste to be an important factor in marriage and sometimes in employment? And how many other Indians simply humour this first group and go along with the plan, instead of informing them, in straightforward language, that they are fucking idiots?

How many American politicians can publicly discuss their atheism without at the same time risking their careers? How many people would endorse the legality of completely polygamous relationships where many husbands live with many wives and raise unmarked children in a communal way, out of personal choice?

These ideas are not popular in their respective cultural domains because their time has not come. At some future time, when somebody has won the cause, we will vigorously defend these ideas. Some of us will appear on future talk shows and hold up these ideas as worthy causes, while simultaneously arguing against a an even futurer(?) idea. Almost certainly. But the question is, would we fight for them now?