Well, most of society exhibits the morals of the majority. I would never rigidly classify the society as having a certain moral set if 51% did one thing and 49% did another. That generalization is just too broad. That is just as ridiculous as classifying America as democrat in 2008 because most people were democrats.
You cannot assume a consensus. I will agree that at that time the general society thought that slavery was Ok as long as they were not slaves themselves. The idea that people are inherently free has been around for a very long time and we are not even sure when it started. Only until recently has a majority of people believed it. That idea has made this world a better place and it is seen that many chose to go to our country because of its freedom and prosperity. The type of society we have is far more ideal than anarchy or tyranny. The Athenians and the Romans were some civilizations to experiment with a somewhat democratic form of government.
When the majority holds an idea you generalize the society as a whole to hold it. Saying that "society as whole" held an idea is simply a massive generalization. This is flat out ignoring the diversity of though that is exhibited in ever individual society because humans are rational beings. In societies we find some opinions that are more popular at some times and other mores that are more more popular at others. Of course how you see society depends on how you define it. You could talk about a world society or a national society or an ethnic society or a religious society, or a city society, or an economic society, or a family society. All these are made up of individuals who have their own opinions on how the world is. You can only measure general trends in the changes of opinion.
When we speak of society, we speak of it as a single entity. And, because of that, it inherits the characteristics of the majority. We can squabble all day over the differences of the individuals within that unit, but it doesn't matter. When compared to the whole, their characteristics are fairly irrelevant. Descriptions of society are, by necessity, mass generalizations.
As for your reference to the recent elections, of course we would not classify American society as democratic. The majority of America did not bother to show up to vote; we would classify American society as politically apathetic.
And the idea of inherent freedom is not old at all. While you are correct that we cannot trace it back to it's specific origins, we can trace it's rise through literature and other recorded history with culminates in eventual suffrage. If this idea had been wide spread and well articulated further back in history, then slavery would have ceased much earlier than the 1800's.
I want to look deeper than just the fact that opinions change. That is obvious. I want to ask why opinions change. Opinions change when people in general start changing their views obviously. However, this happens when see new experiences and evidence that a certain moral is wrong and that another is right. This change of opinion is obviously not based on the perspective that morals are just relative to the society you are in and the right opinion for now is the one held by the majority. The idea that morality is at least in part objective is a major reason ideas over time have changed. If moral relativism was true it would be wrong for individuals to think differently than the majority because the majority opinion determines what is right and what is wrong.
The reasons for the changing of opinions are as numerous as there are people.
People may change them when they find evidence of a more "moral" set of morals. It might also occur when a different set of morals are introduced into society by a more powerful group. This is often the case following war or revolution. Others might see personal gain or satisfaction from adopting a new set of morals. Other times, the changes follow a gradual evolution of ideas and therefore an evolution of the morality based on those ideas.
As for individuals having separate morals than the majority, we've already covered this. Each individual holds a personal moral code. When those individual codes are combined with the masses, then the morals of the majority become the morals of society by default.
So what is right and wrong is based on a democracy? So you think that the majority are always right? I think that the majority is ignorant and that that we should be critical and not blindly follow the majority like sheep. If the majority of people thought that happiness was not important I would never blindly follow them. Time has no effect on whether an action is right or not.
Your morals will effect the actions you make, the way you perceive things, and the way you feel. This will affect your standard of life. Because of this you can use reason to try to discover the best morals and the right ones. The fact that the majority does things a certain way is not a determination of which philosophy should be used. We should use reason and not blindly follow the beliefs of the majority. Who gave such authority to the majority anyway? Why is the morals of the majority so correct anyway?
Society is not now, nor has it ever been, a democracy. Society is mob rule with little to no structure or logic behind it. I agree that the majority is often ignorant and wrong (I don't see how you would assume that I thought differently from anything I've posted). But that does not stop them from making up the base for society's morals. I also agree that we shouldn't follow anything blindly. You seem to assume that I'm arguing one must conform to society in order to exist, and I'm not sure how you came to that conclusion. I'm not saying that the morals of the majority are correct, but that they form the base of that societies moral code.
We can judge whether an ancient society would have been better off without slavery. For example, a large percent of Romans were slaves and lived in poverty. This created a great social divide with the rich having great advantage over much of the poor. This may have been harmful for Roman society as a whole. I think I have just as much right to critically analyze the mores of my own society as I do to analyze the European Colonization, and witch burning, and ancient and modern slavery.
But, in your opening post, you were not critically analyzing the morals of ancient society. You were not evaluating their customs for effectiveness of production of social harmony. You were criticizing their society based your personal set of morals. You were imposing the ideas and norms of the 20th century on a society that operated in a much different era and with a much different set of ideas.
We should not ignore these advances but we should not ignore practices we consider harmful to these societies. Thinking critically about early societies may help us avert dangers in our own. I find it funny that you would say that there was nothing wrong with slavery 3,000 years ago, yet you would probably be horrified if most people in this society suddenly came to believe that slavery was all right and began to change the law to legalize it.
In order to examine history critically, you try to suspend you personal beliefs and look at the period abstractly. You examine events and look at the causes and the effects, and not whether it was right or wrong.
Of course I would be horrified if today's society deemed slavery a good idea; it goes against the ideas we hold to be true today.
Why do propose to accept the efforts of those advances, while ignoring the practices we see as immoral today, and yet imply that the entire moral code of Moses people should tossed out for the same actions?
