morality: the great fly wheel

A fly wheel is "a heavy wheel attached to machinery to equalize the movement (opposing any sudden acceleration by its inertia and any retardation by its momentum), and to accumulate or give out energy for a variable or intermitting resistance." Morality serves the same purpose in society. Morality is the accumulated wisdom of the ages - some things are "good" and some things are "bad." It averages out all the decisions of millions of people.

It takes a long time for morality to change. Clever politicians can appeal to morality to make people do apparently stupid things. But over the long term, enough counter examples will cause the heavy fly wheel to change direction. Without this fly wheel, people would take forever to make any decisions,a nd would change direction every day, and thus have even greater problems. Because the bottom line is that our brains are very limited, and we use numerous tricks and short-cuts to get better results with what we have.

So the inertia, though frustrating and occasionally disastrous, is good. Which means that, barring amazing events, any radical changes like a move to land rent, will take generations. But the good news is that it will happen, for the reasons given elsewhere. I just have to be more patient while the great fly wheel changes direction.