To evolve essentially means to continually change.
There is no "last stage". Cultures will always develop and change with environment and circumstance, as they always have. Moral rights and wrongs blur between, and across, different cultural paradigms. A well known anthropologist called Peggy Reeves found that roughly 35% of all cultures have practiced cannibalism at some point, either as a ritualistic funeral rite, or for sustenance. It would have been considered shameful, feminine even, for a male Maori warrior not to eat his dead opponent's flesh. The Romans held bloodsports in amphitheaters all over Italia and that wasn't widely considered immoral by the populace. The Vatican sanctioned the Holy Crusades across Europe and the populace believed that taking back the Holy Land at the expense of however many settlers and innocents was not only a Christian right, but a duty to God. In Moses' day, slavery was a widely accepted practice, as it was in early North America. More than a few societies throughout history practiced public executions and tortured people accused of crimes in front of jeering crowds. In Jesus' day and well beyond, women used to be effectively sold to men for a dowry price, and considered henceforth male property. Many societies allowed extreme violence against the mentally ill and against homosexuals -- we used to chemically castrate them, if you remember. In heavily Christian countries like Ireland, pregnancy from wedlock often resulted in young mothers facing total social exclusion -- many young innocent women were thrown into horrible children's homes or chucked out on to the streets, because of a deep shame culture. Children (mostly orphans) in Victorian societies used to be sent to workhouses, and the disabled and their families, for many many years, were not given any legal rights to get help, financially or otherwise. That was "the norm", and to deviate from those accepted norms, was by definition, "deviant".
Are you asking me if I think morals have become better? Well, yes, I think the evidence quite clearly shows that they have. No longer do we have people across all continents eating one another in the daylight, as an accepted practice. No longer do we pit poor slaves and outcasts against champions and wild animals for our entertainment. No longer do we even condone torture, much less do it in public spaces. No longer is a child who confronts his parents and says "I feel like a girl", expected to be chucked into a mental institution, beaten into a pulp, chemically castrated or worse. Gay people now have the freedom to choose the lifestyle they wish, in consensual and adult relationships. Young girls who get pregnant tend to be supported more. Contraception and sexual education has enabled a generation to make better choices. Marriage is no longer an essential expectation for a person's life -- people can choose from an array of options from singledom through unmarried partnerships to marriage, if they so wish. Children now have fundamental human rights and are protected in many countries by legislation against abuse and neglect.
Is it perfect? No, it certainly isn't, but it's a helluva lot better than it was a thousand years ago, a hundred years ago, even fifty years ago.
There is no "last stage". Cultures will always develop and change with environment and circumstance, as they always have. Moral rights and wrongs blur between, and across, different cultural paradigms. A well known anthropologist called Peggy Reeves found that roughly 35% of all cultures have practiced cannibalism at some point, either as a ritualistic funeral rite, or for sustenance. It would have been considered shameful, feminine even, for a male Maori warrior not to eat his dead opponent's flesh. The Romans held bloodsports in amphitheaters all over Italia and that wasn't widely considered immoral by the populace. The Vatican sanctioned the Holy Crusades across Europe and the populace believed that taking back the Holy Land at the expense of however many settlers and innocents was not only a Christian right, but a duty to God. In Moses' day, slavery was a widely accepted practice, as it was in early North America. More than a few societies throughout history practiced public executions and tortured people accused of crimes in front of jeering crowds. In Jesus' day and well beyond, women used to be effectively sold to men for a dowry price, and considered henceforth male property. Many societies allowed extreme violence against the mentally ill and against homosexuals -- we used to chemically castrate them, if you remember. In heavily Christian countries like Ireland, pregnancy from wedlock often resulted in young mothers facing total social exclusion -- many young innocent women were thrown into horrible children's homes or chucked out on to the streets, because of a deep shame culture. Children (mostly orphans) in Victorian societies used to be sent to workhouses, and the disabled and their families, for many many years, were not given any legal rights to get help, financially or otherwise. That was "the norm", and to deviate from those accepted norms, was by definition, "deviant".
Are you asking me if I think morals have become better? Well, yes, I think the evidence quite clearly shows that they have. No longer do we have people across all continents eating one another in the daylight, as an accepted practice. No longer do we pit poor slaves and outcasts against champions and wild animals for our entertainment. No longer do we even condone torture, much less do it in public spaces. No longer is a child who confronts his parents and says "I feel like a girl", expected to be chucked into a mental institution, beaten into a pulp, chemically castrated or worse. Gay people now have the freedom to choose the lifestyle they wish, in consensual and adult relationships. Young girls who get pregnant tend to be supported more. Contraception and sexual education has enabled a generation to make better choices. Marriage is no longer an essential expectation for a person's life -- people can choose from an array of options from singledom through unmarried partnerships to marriage, if they so wish. Children now have fundamental human rights and are protected in many countries by legislation against abuse and neglect.
Is it perfect? No, it certainly isn't, but it's a helluva lot better than it was a thousand years ago, a hundred years ago, even fifty years ago.
