Unfit for the Future

In the book Unfit for the Future Persson and Savulescu portray the problems and challenges humanity will have to cope with in the near future. Problems technological progress and demographic growth have evoked can’t be solved through common moral psychology, which was assimilated to small, nontechnological societies many many years ago. There is a need of moral enhancement for humanity to be able to cope with present problems. It is Persson and Savulsecus opinion that humanity is ‘ill-equipped’ (p. 12) through the so called ‘common-sense morality’. Moral attitudes of various societies all over the world can be brought to one common denominator, which the authors call ‘common-sense morality’. This ‘common-sense morality’ is not capable of giving us the moral psychology to cope with the problems modern societies have to face. Further in the book, Persson and Savulescu illustrate the components of this ‘common-sense morality’. For example, it is said that we care more about what happens to the people who are close to us, than the ones further away. Also it is rather difficult for us to sympathize and emphasize with a larger group of people. Furthermore our causal contribution towards an action is proportional to the responsibility we carry for this action. Another point illustrating the ‘common-sense morality’ is that altruism, which exists as long as the members of a community are able to observe each other constantly. All these components forming this ‘common-sense morality’ can’t be transferred to modern societies as they consist of millions of citizens in which anti-social individuals are bound to strive against the stream. In my opinion the theory of a ‘common-sense morality’ is very strong and needs to be looked at more precisely.