Question
Is social responsibility on the way to becoming fashionable in the general Western population?
Answer
Difficult question.
I think it always has been fashionable, but you see more socially responsible behavior as you present people with clearer feedback on the social/moral consequences of their actions. Out of sight, out of mind seems to be the rule.
And right now, a lot of the social costs associated with the last century, and incurred as pay-later social debt, are coming due for payment. Starting in the 60s, the most obvious and visible social costs were cleaned up (environmental pollution, smog, litter). Now it is becoming harder to ignore other costs, like obesity (the main social cost of "Food, Inc."), oil-based lifestyles (rising gas prices), global warming (weather volatility... even though this one is still debated, whether global warming is true or not is irrelevant... people are attributing the recent volatility to it).
What doubles the pressure is that the US is now trying to lecture the developing world on "clean growth" and the developing world is replying "you had the luxury of dirty growth, now you want us to grow clean?" which makes it necessary for the US to gradually tighten its regulatory regime, which makes social responsibility more necessary.
You can see that it is a "consequences visibility" effect when you consider critical social responsibility issues that HAVEN'T yet become fashionable. An example is factory farming, which involves enormous cruelty to animals. Even ostensibly free-range meat doesn't come from the sort of idyllic 18th century family farms you see on food packaging. But the food industry has so far managed to comprehensively hide their operations from too much scrutiny, and only a few lonely animal rights activists are trying to raise visibility.
Which means the pace of reform in animal agriculture is tied to more selfish issues like "local" and "organic" which are more about benefits to humans. But a nice side-benefit of "local and organic" is that it will bring the issue closer to surface visibility.
Other examples are the relative status of breast cancer (highly visible) versus other cancers, the relative prominence of Tibet ("celebrity" issue) vs. Darfur (less so) vs. Burma (nobody has a clue), etc.
So overall, it's a mix of increased visibility and necessity. Since it isn't driven by a fundamental moral development in the human race (i.e. we haven't suddenly become saintlier), this means the increase is probably nowhere near enough, or anywhere near the right distribution of emphasis among social responsibility "causes."
I think it always has been fashionable, but you see more socially responsible behavior as you present people with clearer feedback on the social/moral consequences of their actions. Out of sight, out of mind seems to be the rule.
And right now, a lot of the social costs associated with the last century, and incurred as pay-later social debt, are coming due for payment. Starting in the 60s, the most obvious and visible social costs were cleaned up (environmental pollution, smog, litter). Now it is becoming harder to ignore other costs, like obesity (the main social cost of "Food, Inc."), oil-based lifestyles (rising gas prices), global warming (weather volatility... even though this one is still debated, whether global warming is true or not is irrelevant... people are attributing the recent volatility to it).
What doubles the pressure is that the US is now trying to lecture the developing world on "clean growth" and the developing world is replying "you had the luxury of dirty growth, now you want us to grow clean?" which makes it necessary for the US to gradually tighten its regulatory regime, which makes social responsibility more necessary.
You can see that it is a "consequences visibility" effect when you consider critical social responsibility issues that HAVEN'T yet become fashionable. An example is factory farming, which involves enormous cruelty to animals. Even ostensibly free-range meat doesn't come from the sort of idyllic 18th century family farms you see on food packaging. But the food industry has so far managed to comprehensively hide their operations from too much scrutiny, and only a few lonely animal rights activists are trying to raise visibility.
Which means the pace of reform in animal agriculture is tied to more selfish issues like "local" and "organic" which are more about benefits to humans. But a nice side-benefit of "local and organic" is that it will bring the issue closer to surface visibility.
Other examples are the relative status of breast cancer (highly visible) versus other cancers, the relative prominence of Tibet ("celebrity" issue) vs. Darfur (less so) vs. Burma (nobody has a clue), etc.
So overall, it's a mix of increased visibility and necessity. Since it isn't driven by a fundamental moral development in the human race (i.e. we haven't suddenly become saintlier), this means the increase is probably nowhere near enough, or anywhere near the right distribution of emphasis among social responsibility "causes."