Eight moral revolutions that this pandemic might trigger - from the end of work to the one-health approach
From Wired UK
We found this fascinating, clear-headed exercise in popular philosophy, about whether Covid will generate any moral revolutions in our lives, from the blog of John Danaher, author of Automation and Utopia.
What is a moral revolution? It’s a profound change in “the set of socially accepted rules and theories that people use to determine what is good/bad and right/wrong”. We once believed in slavery - now we don’t. A moral revolution is different from behaviour change - any authoritarian leader could compel that (eg, ban homosexuality), while the values could remain intact.
Danaher’s criteria for a moral revolution is below:
Moral revolutions start when there is some 'shock' to social order. This could be internal, or external, or a bit of both. The COVID-19 pandemic would seem to be a largely external shock (though it was certainly encouraged by practices that are inherent to modern industrial-agricultural society).
This shock prompts or forces new behaviours and new styles of thinking. We have to make sense of our new reality. To do this we go to the existing pool of moral ideas, theories and concepts (which is vast). Ideas emerge from this pool that help to justify, reinforce or control the new reality.
This leads to a refinement of our moral consciousness and, if the process continues in the right way, a moral revolution.
John then goes on to imagine some examples…
1: Hyper-utilitarianism
What will be the consequence of the fact that Coronavirus has made explicit our rationing of available health care? The stark decisions being forced on doctors and health-care workers? The choices we make between essential and inessential workers?
Danaher: Societies are clearly making choices that some lives are more important than others. We have always done this to some extent. Indeed, it may be unavoidable. But the pandemic might be forcing the utilitarian choices into the open in an unprecedented way. It might be like pointing out that the emperor has no clothes. We cannot unsee what we have now seen.
The end result might be that society re-emerges from the crisis embracing a hyper-utilitarian view in which it is acceptable to rank and prioritise lives according to some metric of relative worth. I am not sure what this will mean in practice but one possibility would be that we adopt an extreme version of the Chinese social credit system, wherein everyone is given a rating based on their worth to society or their contribution to the common good and are then selectively exposed to social benefits and burdens.
2: The End of Work
If the pandemic is revealing what we might regard as essential or inessential in our lives, what will it do to our sense of what work means?
Danaher: We tend to moralise work and think that it plays an important role in our well-being. The fact that many are now forced to accept that their work is non-essential and have to take an involuntary break from it, might encourage a rethink. Maybe we shouldn’t moralise our work so much?
Some groups that have long been advocating for a reduction in the working week, such as Autonomy UK, see the crisis as an opportunity for their movement. The changes to working habits and practices may force a change in moral consciousness around work.
I would be cautious about the possibility of a genuine moral revolution around work. The present circumstances are a less-than-ideal natural experiment for the possibility of a post-work economy.
Living in lockdown, not being allowed to visit friends and family, travel to the beach or countryside, or participate in rewarding leisure activities, means that people might not see the current predicament as better than work…. People might learn the wrong lesson from this ordeal. They may redouble their commitment to the work ethic not slacken it.
3: A Renegotiated Social Contract
A social contract is what we agree to regard as rights worth defending, and goods best distributed. Might Covid change it?
Daneher: Is there an opportunity for revolution here? This is one of the features of the present crisis that has been most remarked upon. Amartya Sen has penned an op-ed suggesting that there is an opportunity to build a more communitarian and equal society as we come out of the pandemic.
We have now seen what it is possible for governments to do when their backs are against the wall. Perhaps some of these changes can become more permanent? Sen is cautiously optimistic on this front, though admits that past crises didn’t always leave lasting changes.
Some people are less optimistic and revolutionary in their outlook. John Authers wrote an interesting piece for Bloomberg in which he argued that the current pandemic was testing our moral frameworks but that we were, ultimately, favouring this model: raise the floor for the most vulnerable. However, there is plenty of opposition to the more radical egalitarian and communitarian possibilities inherent in the present crisis.
Photo by Matthew T Rader on Unsplash
For example, one of the reasons why some politicians, noticeably in the US, have opposed more dramatic reforms to social welfare is that they fear that these changes will become permanent. It’s as if they are anticipating the revolution and trying to preempt it.
4. The New New Death of Privacy
We have been anticipating the end of privacy since the 90s, and the beginning of digital networks. Will Covid-19 really complete that threat?
Daneher: It has become clear that one of primary tools that governments have used — and plan to use — to resolve the COVID-19 pandemic is increased surveillance and control. Identifying those who are infectious, and those they might have come into contact with, and isolating them from everyone else is the only viable long-term solution to the pandemic in the absence of an effective cure or vaccine.
This requires testing individuals and recording their healthcare data. It also requires tracking and controlling people. This is likely true even if people voluntarily commit to isolation and quarantine. This could be done manually (i.e. by individual case workers) or it may, in some cases, be done through some kind of digital tracking and tracing.
In fact, many governments are encouraging digital solutions to the problem, partly because they are seen to be more efficient and scalable, and partly because we live in an age where this kind of technological solutionism is favoured. This is to say nothing, incidentally, about the kinds of surveillance and control that will be favoured by private corporations in their effort to ensure safe and productive working environments.
What this could mean, in practice, is that we will witness the new death of privacy. Faced with a choice between the inconveniences of lockdown and the intrusiveness of surveillance and tracking, many people will choose the latter.
That’s if they even get a choice. Some governments will choose (and some already have chosen) to impose surveillance technologies on their populations in an effort to get their economies back to some level of functionality; some companies will require employees to do so before they can return to work.
It’s hard to see how privacy can be sustained in light of all this unless we get an effective treatment and vaccine and even then we can expect some recording and tracking of healthcare data (e.g. through immunity passports).
5. The uncertain fate of Universalism and Cosmopolitanism
Is our world narrowing or expanding under Covid? Are we retreating from a dangerous world of contagion and mobility into our own small corners - or finally and conclusively connected to the ecological fate of the planet?
Daneher: A common theme in books written about moral change is the sense that creeping universalism is the hallmark of moral progress. Humanity started out in small bands and tribes. We owed moral duties to members of our tribes but not to outsiders. They were not ‘one of us’. This made a certain amount of ruthless sense in a world of precarious living conditions and scarce resources.
Photo by Pawel Nolbert on Unsplash
As society grew more technologically complex, and as the social surplus made possible by technology grew, the pressure eased and the moral circle started to expand. More and more people were seen to be ‘one of us’. It hasn’t all been plane sailing, of course, but the recent high watermark in this trend came, perhaps, in the post-WWII era with the rise of global institutions and the recognition of universal human rights.
What’s going to happen in the post COVID-19 world? It seems like we are poised on the precipice and could go in either direction. On the one hand, we will need greater global coordination and cooperation to both resolve this pandemic and prevent the next one. So we could be on the cusp of even greater global cooperation and solidarity.
On the other hand, infectious diseases, almost by necessity, tend to breed suspicion of others. Others are a threat since they could be carrying the disease. Borders are being shut down to prevent the spread. We are asked to distance ourselves from one another. The sense that the disease originated in a specific country (China) also fosters suspicion and antipathy toward foreigners.
I am not sure which way we are going to go. I have certainly felt my own world shrinking quite a bit over the past few weeks. It’s hard to maintain a globalist and cosmopolitan outlook when you limit your movements and contacts so much.
When I go for a walk I find myself wary of others: are they getting too close? Why aren’t they abiding by social distancing rules? But when I go online and read opinions from around the world I do also sense some greater solidarity emerging, particularly in academic and research communities. The only problem is that they have always tended to be more cosmopolitan and globalist in their outlook.
6. Return of a Disgust-Based Morality
We’ve suppressed disgust as part of our moral compass in recent years - we choose to shape our behavioural limits according to the harm or the unfairness an action might cause. But what if the virus revives our old reactions?
Danaher: It seems plausible to me to suggest that the COVID-19 pandemic will provide an opportunity for a disgust-based morality to get a foothold in modern liberal societies once more. To some extent this could be positive. Better policing of norms around personal hygiene (hand-washing) and social hygiene (mask-wearing) could genuinely reduce the spread of infectious disease, thereby limiting loss of life.
At the same time, there could be pernicious effects as some people and practices that are, in fact, innocuous are perceived to be ‘unclean’ or ‘disgusting’ and so must be ‘purged’ from our communities. This could help to support the retrenchment from universalism and cosmopolitanism that I outlined above.
7. Animal Ethics and the One Health Approach
Photo by Kris Mikael Krister on Unsplash
Coronavirus, at the very least, dramatises our direct relationship with the non-human, animal world - we’re now starkly aware of what can happen when our environments violently irrupt into each other.
Daneher: it is not just Wuhan wet markets that are to blame for the risk of viral pandemics. The entire system of animal agriculture has played its part.
We breed animals in closed environments where infectious diseases can spread with ease; we pump them full of anti-microbial drugs that encourages the growth of anti-microbial resistant strains; we destroy the natural homelands of wild animals, forcing them to migrate into closer proximity with us. (This is something discussed in more detail in my podcast with Jeff Sebo).
Epidemiologists have long noted that this is a recipe for disaster. A ticking time bomb that was set to explode at any time.
The best solution is to adopt a ‘one health’ approach to the world whereby we see our fates as inextricably intertwined with the fate of our animal populations.
As the COVID-19 pandemic makes the wisdom of the one health approach more obvious it also provides an opportunity for an enhanced animal ethics. Maybe we will now realise that we have moral duties to animals and take these duties seriously.
8: An ethic of existential risk
Will the size and death toll of the pandemic compel us to start thinking about the apocalypses that we ignore, that are pressing on us from a number of angles?
Danaher: The fact that we had a close call this time around could change our attitude to all those other existential risks that people have been harping on about for some time: bioweapons, nuclear war, global warming, supervolcanoes, artificial superintelligence and so on.
Maybe now we will take them much more seriously? In other words, maybe we will emerge from this pandemic with a social moral consciousness that is more attuned to existential risk and more willing to take decisive preventive action.
More here. As Danaher says, given enough time, he could think of eight more possible moral revolutions. But it’s at this level we’ll see the profounder changes from Covid. Assuming, as the professor concludes, that we see the kind of leaders of these changes - the individual narrators who personify these moral shifts - come through.