Once, pretty much everywhere, beating your wife and children was regarded as a father's duty, homosexuality was a hanging offense, and waterboarding was approved. Through the middle of the 19th century, the US and other nations in the Americas condoned plantation slavery。

　　Looking back at such horrors, it is easy to ask: What were people thinking? Yet, the chances are that our own descendants will ask the same question, with the same incomprehension, about some of our practices today. Still, a look at the past suggests three signs that a particular practice is destined for future condemnation。

　　First, people have already heard the arguments against the practice. Second, defenders of the custom tend not to offer moral counterarguments but instead invoke tradition, human nature or necessity. And third, supporters engage in what one might call strategic ignorance, avoiding truths that might force them to face the evils in which they're complicit. With these signs in mind, here are four contenders for future moral condemnation。

　　Prison system in US. Roughly one percent of adults in US are incarcerated. We have four percent of the world's population but 25 percent of its prisoners. No other nation has as large a proportion of its population in prison. What's more, the majority of our prisoners are non-violent offenders, many of them detained on drug charges。

　　Industrial meat production. Of the more than 90 million cattle in our country, at least 10 million at any time are packed into feedlots, saved from the inevitable diseases of overcrowding only by regular doses of antibiotics, surrounded by piles of their own feces, their nostrils filled with the smell of their own urine. In the European Union, many of the most inhumane conditions we allow are already illegal or will be illegal soon。

　　The institutionalized and isolated elderly. Nearly two million of America's elderly are warehoused in nursing homes, out of sight and, to some extent, out of mind. Some 10,000 for-profit facilities have arisen across the country in recent decades to hold them. Other elderly Americans may live independently, but often they are isolated and cut off from their families. Is this what Western modernity amounts to -- societies that feel no filial obligations to their inconvenient elders?

　　The environment. Of course, most transgenerational obligations run the other way -- from parents to children -- and of these the most obvious candidate for opprobrium is our wasteful attitude toward the planet's natural resources and ecology. Desertification, which is primarily the result of destructive land-management practices, threatens a third of the Earth's surface; tens of thousands of Chinese villages have been overrun by sand drifts in the past few decades。

　　Let's not stop there, though. We will all have our own suspicions about which practices will someday prompt people to ask, in dismay: What were they thinking? Even when we don'thave a good answer, we'll be better off for anticipating the question。

　　美国《华盛顿邮报》9月26日文章：后世子孙会谴责我们什么？

　　以前，几乎在任何地方，打老婆打孩子都是天经地义之事，同性恋也是滔天大罪，而水刑也不会招致异议。直到19世纪中期，美国以及美洲其他国家还认可奴隶制。

　　回顾这些恐怖行径，我们不禁会问：当时他们都是怎么想的？然而，对于我们当前的一些行为，我们的后代也许会提出同样的质疑，而且同样感到费解。在检测历史之后我们发现，如果某种行为具备三个特点，我们在未来必定会招致谴责。

　　第一个特点，该行为已经引发争论。第二个特点，这种行为的捍卫者往往不会提出道德上的抗辩，而是把传统、人的天性，或者迫不得已作为理由。第三个特点是，这种行为的支持者采取所谓“策略性忽视”的态度，回避“可能使他们正视恶行的真相。”知道了这些特点，我们再来看看未来可能引发谴责的四件事。

　　美国的监狱系统。大约有1%的美国成年人身处牢狱。美国人口占到世界的￥%，却占到全球囚犯总人数的25%。没有哪个国家有如此高比例的人口被关在监狱里。此外，这些囚犯大多是非暴力罪犯，其中许多人是因为与毒品相关的指控而锒铛入狱的。

　　工业化肉类生产。美国有9000多万头牛，至少1000万头终年被关在饲养场里。它们只能定期靠抗生素来避免患上过度拥挤引发的疾病。它们身边是成堆的牛粪，闻到的是自己的尿骚味。而在欧盟，许多最不人道的做法已经被视为非法行为，或者即将成为非法行为。

　　老人孤守养老院。美国有将近2000万老人生活在养老院里，远离了公众的视线，在一定程度上也远离了我们的思绪。近几十年来，美国各地建起了近万所营利性的养老机构。美国的其他老年人虽然独立生活，但往往受到冷落，很少与家人接触。整个社会都觉得没必要孝敬老人，难道这就是西方的现代社会吗？

　　环境问题最严重。最该受到谴责的就是我们对地球自然资源和生态的浪费。全球有三分之一的陆地面临沙漠化的威胁。几十年间，流沙掩埋了中国的许多村落。

　　不过还不止这些。我们都会暗自揣测，哪些行为会令后世子孙沮丧地问：他们都是怎么想的？尽管我们没有最佳答案，但只要把这个问题铭记在心，我们的境况就会有所改善。