/lit/ - Literature

Moral superiority is a luxury. When someone is born in an environment where they have literally never even met someone who had to go without without the shelter and safeguards of modern civilization, they have a hard time believing there is any meaningful difference between the context of their daily moral choices and the moral choices of someone who was born into a world without modern luxuries, where mercy isn't cheap and mistakes are fatal. Confident in their untested moral fortitude, they come to believe that it is their responsibility to pass judgement on these less fortunate generations. They see no reason why Odysseus shouldn't feel bad about owning slaves. They have no doubt that there's something deeply wrong with Penelope not moving to Seattle to "find herself" once people start questioning her husband's delay. Anytime they encounter something inconsistent with whatever the law of the land happens to be this week under the protective dome of modern life, they react to it as they would now, flagging it for criticism and distancing themselves from it as much as possible. They do this partially to assure themselves that their sense of moral superiority is at least somewhat founded, partially because they are cowards seeking easy ways to prove themselves to the obsessive cult of moral purity, passing loud and visible judgement on writers too dead to defend themselves, circumstances too alien to offend anyone, and practices too antiquated to be regarded with nuance.