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You'll notice when watching western TV from across the last ~70 years that each show would only have been found agreeable by its own particular audience.
Audiences a decade or so either side of it would have recoiled in horror at the moral code it takes for granted.
Audiences a decade or so either side of it would have recoiled in horror at the moral code it takes for granted.
The "Friends is problematic" article doing the rounds is just one instance of this. Impossible to find a single TV show - fiction or nonfiction, comedic or serious - produced since at least WW2 which doesn't contain things which would have disturbed earlier and later audiences.
The one thing you can be guaranteed of when watching western TV is that the moral code your show is taking for granted would be deemed false by everyone but the generation watching it.
Unless our generation has special epistemic powers everyone else lacks, we should conclude
Unless our generation has special epistemic powers everyone else lacks, we should conclude
The moral code being taken for granted by the media we consume today is as false as those a few decades before us would take it to be, and those a few decades after us will take it to be.
And no, we can't get around this by claiming that the flux in moral codes represents "progress" in our moral knowledge, just as flux in scientific beliefs represents progress towards greater truth there: https://twitter.com/Evollaqi/status/897883014956503043
When we see old TV with a different moral code than ours, rather than asking "how could they have such a problematic moral code?", we should ask "is there something wrong with the way we form our moral beliefs?". /Fin
