My lefty alter ego wonders what subjects will be the subject of moral revolutions in the 21st century, the way we had revolutions about race and gender in the 20th century. He tips animal rights and the death penalty as likely candidates. Here are a few that come to mind for me (and yes, these are colored by my libertarian leanings):

  • Substance abuse: I can see this going in either direction. On the one hand, we’re in the midst of a puritanical crusade against social smoking. It’s not inconceivable that in 50 years, smoking cigarettes will be a stigmatized activity, like shooting heroin, that one only does alone in the privacy of one’s own home. On the other hand, it’s conceivable that the drug reform movement will achieve a breakthrough at some point, and in 100 years our drug war will look as quaint as Prohibition does today.
  • Obesity and diet: Like drugs, I can see this issue going either way. On the one hand, we hear often that obesity is a public health crisis, and 50 years from now overweight people may be subject to even stronger social pressures to lose weight. Perhaps the transfat ban will be the start of a trend, and the sale of unhealthy food will come to be tightly regulated. On the other hand, perhaps ideas like this video will become mainstream, and discrimination against overweight people will come to carry the same stigma as discrimination against racial minorities does today.
  • As has been discussed on this blog before, atheists are among the most hated groups of people in the country, and unlike most other groups, there’s little or no stigma associated with hating atheists. I don’t think this is the most productive way to deal with the problem, but it certainly would be nice to live in a society in which an atheist could say he’s an atheist without fear of discrimination the same way you can currently say you’re a Catholic or a Jew.
  • I think it’s a safe bet that hatred of gay people will become increasingly unacceptable, but it’s not clear exactly where social attitudes regarding marriage will end up. It may come to be seen as exactly like straight marriage, but it’s also possible that the evolution of the institution will diverge in some important way from that of normal straight marriage. But there are lots of other sexual topics that I can imagine changing polygamy is one possibility, although I don’t think there are enough aspiring polygamists out there for that to be the focus of a broad cultural movement.
  • Monogamy may come to be seen as a quaint 20th century superstition, or at least one among a variety of acceptable lifestyles. The “poly” community has at least some of the attributes of the gay rights movement of 50 years ago. The Internet has allowed them to find one another more easily than they could in the past, and a few are beginning to challenge the social stigma associated with “open” relationships.
  • The female topfreedom movement may also gain traction in the coming decades here in the United States, or attitudes toward nudity in general may shift. I’ve read that the United States is already rather reactionary on this subject, and a lot of other countries already have more relaxed attitudes toward topless women (and nudity in general) than we do in the United States. It’s not too difficult to imagine that topless or nude beaches could become the norm in a few decades’ time. After all, the bikini was considered scandalous 50 years ago, and now even relatively conservative women feel comfortable wearing them. There’s no particular reason to think that’s reached a stopping place. The rise of naked parties in Ivy League schools is a data point in this direction.
  • Immigration may come to be seen as a moral issue in a way that it’s not right now. I rather like Mike Linksvayer’s framing of the issue as the modern equivalent of apartheid. We would, for example, think it absolutely shocking if we passed laws prohibiting the residents of urban ghettos from from moving to the suburbs. Yet most Americans are perfectly comfortable with laws banning the residents of the big ghetto called Mexico from moving elsewhere in North America in search of increased opportunity. I have trouble seeing a relevant moral difference between the two.

What aspects of our moral intuitions do you think are likely to change in the next century?

Update: I meant to point out that Paul Graham’s “What You Can’t Say” is an excellent meditation on this subject.