Modern society weakens morality through distance, technical responsibility, and segregation

Evidence

Among societal achievements in the sphere of the management of morality one needs to name: social production of distance, which either annuls or weakens the pressure of moral responsibility; substitution of technical for moral responsibility, which effectively conceals the moral significance of the action; and the technology of segregation and separation, which promotes indifference to the plight of the Other which otherwise would be subject to moral evaluation and morally motivated response. One needs also to consider that all these morality-eroding mechanisms are further strengthened by the principle of sovereignty of state powers usurping supreme ethical authority on behalf of the societies they rule. — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 567

Categorization

• DEFINE: Enumerates three distinct morality-eroding mechanisms plus sovereignty — a core taxonomy for the theory toolkit.
• XREF: Feeds the Islamophobia module: distance, technical responsibility, and segregation as mechanisms of Othering. — connects to: Orthodox sociology assumes social regulation produces morality and restrains savagery — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 47; Moral resistance is personal while immorality requires social production — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 476; Moral violations get theorized as production failures within a factory metaphor of society — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 490 (+9 more)

Related

• Under modern order moral behavior often means resisting societal authority (similarity 0.86)
• Morality dies when social distance replaces proximity, enabling mass murder (similarity 0.84)
• Modern societal organization can weaken moral drives and make immorality more plausible (similarity 0.83)
• Moral responsibility to others shrinks and vanishes with increasing distance (similarity 0.82)
• Morality precedes society and society merely manipulates an already-existing moral structure (similarity 0.82)
• Proximity grounds moral responsibility while abstract categories remain morally neutral. (similarity 0.80)
• Sociology mirrored modern society by banishing ethical problematics from its discourse (similarity 0.80)
• Moral capacity arises socially but not from societal institutions (similarity 0.80)
• Orthodox sociology assumes social regulation produces morality and restrains savagery (similarity 0.80)
• Modern technology extends action beyond the moral vanishing point, enabling harm (similarity 0.80)
• Moral violations get theorized as production failures within a factory metaphor of society (similarity 0.79)
• Moral inhibitions do not act at a distance and depend on proximity (similarity 0.79)
• Moral responsibility can compel insubordination to socially upheld principles (similarity 0.78)
• Technological rule substitutes causality for choice and effaces the Other (similarity 0.78)
• Sociology reduces morality to derivative products of non-moral social institutions (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Modern societal organization can weaken moral drives and make immorality more plausible #corroborates (0.95) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 566
• Human morality is contingent rather than invariant across circumstances. #expands (0.70) — Nicolas Baumard, A mutualistic approach to morality, 390