I'm sorry the 'best' reply you received here was "bullshit, but I'm not going to talk to you." You are quite correct. It's all in the Fable of the Bees.
You have got to let me borrow your Tardis sometime. No, he's not right, he's full of shit. Sure, we didn't firmly reject slavery until the transition from an agrarian to an industrial economy, but we rejected the cruelties of serfdom and slavery once we were able to do without them, and we have, painfully slowly, been simultaneously rejecting the cruelties of industry and figuring out how to do without them for 200 years, with some backsliding over the past few decades because 'Murica. How moral society can be is constrained by what it needs to do to keep functioning, Maslow's hierarchy at the collective level, but solving the practical problems that necessitate cruelty allows us to be less cruel, and when we are able to be less cruel we do. We as a collective learn to be better just as we as individuals do. Join the 19th century, put down the classical economists and pick up Hegel or Marx, depending on what you want to take as prior.
You literally prove my point with this sentence. once we were able to do without them We could have done without serfdom and slavery from day one, or at least had a relatively equal distribution of wealth so that the serfs wouldn't have starved while the lords lived in castles. Except we didn't, and we didn't do so until we reached the point in time that firearms turned peasants into warriors at the pull of a trigger, and removed the need for highly trained warriors to defend land. Only as technological advancements allow us to do so without losing much efficiency. The cruelties of industries are still alive and well all across the world, and they are only dying as robots replace humans in those jobs, becoming cheaper than even those in the third world. This is different how from what I stated? Are you stating that, through all of human history we have been behaving in an immoral way? Are you stating that even today we are acting immorally based on the environment we live in? No, not at all. Each generation sets their definition of good and evil based on what they think the world should look like, and we are no different. The next will set that definition again, and we may disagree with it. Except we are able, right now, to be less cruel. We are able to abandon our culture of constant growth and adopt one of constant content. We are able to drop capitalism and expansion and live sustainable lives with heavy control on the way we act in the day to day basis to ensure utmost efficiency and sustainability. Instead we buy products we don't need, we consume excessively, and we fight every day for more growth. Why? Here's a question, if you think the ultimate goal of morality is to be less cruel, should you eat no meat if you have the choice? Should you donate all your money to charities and live a life in a small apartment, with cheap food, and a productive job? Because by the standards you set, that is exactly as you should do. It is moral, by your standards, are you immoral? Which do you chose, to be moral, or to fit in, to sate your desires? Doesn't that make you evil? Think of those people in the third world, starving because you chose to buy a new t-shirt. Think of the people working day in and day out in factories just to make the computer you type on today. Think of the cows, pigs, and chickens who live short and terrible lives based on your consumption of meat. You have the choice, you have the choice today to give these things up and save those lives, to help those people. So, it's moral, why not do it? but we rejected the cruelties of serfdom and slavery once we were able to do without them
we have, painfully slowly, been simultaneously rejecting the cruelties of industry and figuring out how to do without them for 200 years
How moral society can be is constrained by what it needs to do to keep functioning
but solving the practical problems that necessitate cruelty allows us to be less cruel, and when we are able to be less cruel we do.
I do see where you are coming from. As society is able to consistently and effectively meet a tier on hierarchy of needs or morality evolves to provide greater value for the tiers above it. Where we get a lot of conflicted morality when one group of people has move into the top 3 tiers on the need pyramid and another group is still trying to figure out the psychological and safety needs. When the more advanced group tries to apply their morality to a group that's still trying to meet basic needs it does them no good because while their esteem and emotional needs are met, they might end up dieing from starvation (whoops).