A promising new trend for humankind: trying not to be an asshole
A lot has changed when it comes to what is considered acceptable human behavior lately. Is it a coincidence that feminism, environmentalism, sexual tolerance, corporate responsibility and awareness towards racial issues are all on the rise right now? Hardly, and here’s why.
“You just can’t say anything anymore!” Complaints against political correctness are nothing new, but it feels like they’ve been increasingly audible lately. Whether the complainers are referring to what they can no longer say about women, ethnic minorities, LGBTQs or animal rights, the feeling remains the same: from every direction, the prohibitive pressure is mounting.
Blink and the laws have changed
Obviously, they’re right. The rate at which what is deemed politically or socially acceptable is changing can make your head spin these days. Just in course of the last five years, same-sex marriage was legalized in a dozen countries, including some where homosexuality was taboo only decades ago (Irish gays were illegal as recently as 1993, and by 2015 they could get married!), while India historically decriminalized it last September.
The MeToo movement spread like wildfire from late 2017 and changed in just a few months the way notions such as sexual harassment, rape and women’s rights in general are envisaged once and for all. Vegetarianism (and its offshoot flexitarianism) has quickly evolved from a marginal, derided hippy practice to a socially acceptable, morally laudable and environmentally sound behavioral trend in many Western countries, providing unprecedented exposure to the question of animal welfare in the process.
Going back to human beings: in the USA, the Black Lives Matter movement shined a stark new light on systemic racism, while the Women’s Marches did the same thing for women’s rights — in both cases, attempting to push back the limits of what American society (and the rest of Western societies along with it) should accept in terms of inequality. Meanwhile, an unprecedented international wave of child sex abuse scandals deeply shook the Catholic Church, shattering a long-established taboo, empowering victims and creating a new type of cracks in a seemingly unshakable institution.
Also within the last decade, corporate social responsibility has taken on a whole new meaning, with notions such as equal pay and social and environmental accountability becoming universally accepted objectives companies need to embrace (for example by signing the UN Global Compact or committing to 100% renewable power), in lieu of the utopian pipedreams of anti-capitalists. And finally, environmental awareness, the mother issue — because there will be no one left to protect if humanity continues to destroy its vital resources at the current rate — has become in the last 3 years a top issue among the media noise and even in international diplomacy. A giant step from the confidential, activist-only subject it was confined to since the 1970s.
Women, homosexuals, ethnic minorities, children, employees, animals, the planet: whatever the oppressee, their needs and struggles have somehow all recently started being taken into account like never before. In every case, the conclusion is pretty much always the same: the status quo is not ok, so things need to change.
Looking a little further back, the past 250 years in Western history have been a long downward spiral for the age-old oppressor: the privileged white male (and his supporters, who more often than not have included a fair share of women/poor people/ethnic minorities). Just consider the long list of what’s he’s been deprived of over time — you could almost start feeling sorry for him.
· 1780s: “But we’ve been oppressing the masses for centuries and it’s worked out just fine. We don’t see how taking away our livelihood will solve anything.”
· 1850s: “What do you mean, Negroes aren’t animals? And Indians have a soul? Now how on Earth am I supposed to manage without slaves…?”
· 1900s: “What, women have opinions of their own, and they should be allowed vote? There goes the very idea of government…”
· 1990s: “Ok so now animals aren’t objects either? I mean come on, what’s next, plants?? Wait, no, don’t take my steak!”
· 2000s: “Right, sure, so not only are homos not freaks, you want them to get married, too? But marriage has always been my thing. You know, for normal people.”
· 2010s: “Now you’re telling me that natural resources aren’t ours for the taking? So what is? Will you leave us anything at all???”
A simple old little idea
Could there be a common denominator to all these evolutions — apart from the consistent dispossession of the Man? Actually there is, and a quite simple one too: the common-sense notion that others shouldn’t be treated like objects. When you start seeing it that way, it appears clearly that feminism, anti-racism, sexual tolerance, vegetarianism, environmentalism, etc. are all different sides of one multi-faceted shiny new coin: the will to act in ways that treat our fellow living things with consideration.
Wait, shiny and new, really?
Far from it, actually. Quite a few people, prominent examples including Confucius (“Don’t do unto others what you don’t want done unto you”), Jesus (“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”) and Muhammad (“A true believer wishes for his brother what he wishes for himself”) have been conveying that same idea, which was likely first popularized by Zarathustra in Ancient Iran several centuries BC: “Whatever is disagreeable to yourself, do not do unto others.”
Sound pretty basic and familiar, right? Well it is, so much so that this idea of treating others like yourself has been known as the “Golden Rule” across Abrahamic religions for a couple of millennia.
Ironically, though all of the above-mentioned thinkers and prophets came to be at the root of the establishment of successful religions, one quick look at the history of humanity is enough to see that their teachings weren’t exactly heeded, not least by the followers of those very religions. But somehow, times have managed to change for the better, to the point where today, not only are mass killings, slavery and oppression hardly considered justified by anyone in their right mind, but the idea of stopping to think about what others might need, think or want and adjusting one’s behavior accordingly has managed to become commonplace, if not dominant yet.
Look at the evolution through time of what it means to be a bigot. In 16th century Europe, considering as inferiors people who didn’t share the same religion as you was perfectly normal — you were sometimes even encouraged to kill them. And it wasn’t so long ago that considering non-whites to be no good was the standard way of seeing things in the West. In fact, slavery was only declared illegal on an international scale with the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. Evolutions have been spectacular and their pace has been accelerating. Some day, sooner than we think, lacking consideration for a sentient animal or the well-being of Nature will be considered as backward, reprehensible bigotry.
That being said, the voice of the habitual oppressor hasn’t disappeared, far from it (it even managed to hoist itself up to the head of several Western nations these days, in a worryingly insistent historical anomaly), and there will always be resistance and outcries along the way (along the lines of “We can beat dogs to death if we want to, it’s a tradition!”, “I’m so tired of these whiny entitled minorities; who’s looking after my rights anyway?” or “Yeah right, stop drilling for oil because of the little penguins and get our energy from what, steam engines?”). But the ratchet effect is real: there will be no reversal to the way things were before slavery was abolished, before women’s rights started being acknowledged or before environmental conservation was deemed essential.
Why is all this changing now? Hard to tell, but maybe humanity, rather than following some modern fad trying to silence those who just want to be able to speak their mind (“Damn you, political correctness police!”), maybe instead, humanity in the 21st century has finally gained sufficient knowledge and wisdom to start abiding by the most virtuous of its own long-established principles, the Golden Rule of “Just trying not to be an asshole”.
