
Everyone reading this sentence likely (hopefully!) agrees that women deserve the same rights as men. But just a couple of centuries ago, that idea would’ve been dismissed as absurd.
The same is true for the belief that black people should have the same rights as white people. Commonly accepted now; unthinkable a couple of centuries ago.
There’s a concept from philosophy that describes this evolution — it’s called humanity’s expanding moral circle. The circle is the imaginary boundary we draw around those we consider worthy of moral consideration. Over the centuries, it’s expanded to include many people who were previously left out of it. As they were brought into the circle, those people won rights. Slavery was abolished. Women got the vote. Same-sex marriage was legalized.