Spatiotemporal distance of future victims weakens moral self-sanctions

Evidence

Because our descendants seem like remote abstractions to us, it is difficult to arouse empathic concern and moral self-sanctions, both of which would curb environmentally harmful practices. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 2629

Categorization

• XREF: This is the core mechanism the vault needs — moral self-sanctions require concrete, proximate victims. Plausibly connects to claims about how abstraction enables complicity in the Frankfurt School studies and ordinary people’s support for harmful policy.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 2629