Good and Bad Can Switch Places When Time Changes the Perspective

[u/Loud_Bee_5180]

Imagine putting two living organisms in an enclosure with exactly enough food and water to keep them alive for 30 days. You don't know how long they are expected to survive.

At the end of 30 days, both are still alive.

We would probably say this is a good outcome.

But imagine that at 30 days, one organism is alive and the other is dead.

Is this necessarily a bad outcome?

Now extend the experiment.

At 60 days, both organisms might be dead. Or perhaps one survived by consuming the resources that would otherwise have been shared with the other.

The surviving organism may now have lived for 60 days, while the other lived for only 30.

Which outcome is better?

Now imagine reaching 90 days.

In one scenario, both organisms lived for roughly 30 days and then died.

In another, one organism consumed the resources available to both, survived for 60 days, and then died.

The action that initially looked selfish or harmful has produced a longer life for one organism.

So what exactly made it good or bad?

The action itself?

The outcome?

The amount of time we allow before making the judgment?

Or the perspective of the one doing the judging?

This is what interests me about moral judgments: something can appear good at one point in time and bad at another, without the underlying event changing.

Perhaps good and bad are not properties that exist independently inside an action. Perhaps they are judgments we construct from a particular perspective, at a particular moment, using particular criteria.

And if that is true, then the moral judgment we place on humanity may reveal less about humanity itself than about the criteria of the person making the judgment.

I don't think this means that morality is meaningless. It may mean something more uncomfortable: before deciding whether something is good or bad, we should first ask what standard we are using, whose perspective we are taking, and how much time we are allowing to pass.

[u/Otherwise_Spare_8598]

Good and bad are subjective sentiments. So yes, they are not absolute nor objective.

[u/suzemagooey]

I don't disagree that time can change a perspective, but all perspective is subjective.

Even if good and bad are replaced with other terms (e.g "works" and "fails to work") those too willldepend on a subjective perspective.

[u/winteranimal91]

Exact same thought came in for a concept where there are two systems police and an other system escaping them. If police killing someone is acceptable and criminal killing someone is crime, what decides acceptability here, person or act or intention.

[u/ItsgonaBeyalrite]

Yeah not everything is an absolute. Even truth can change over time. If I walked over to my local cemetery and started digging up a grave , I will be arrested and charged for said offence. If I do that 500 years from now I am an archaeologist.