> Going back four hundred years, it would have never occurred to anyone that humans shouldn’t be slaves…

Philosophers considered that even before Christ.

https://www.cnbc.com/2011/06/03/the-ancient-and-noble-greek-...

"A fragment of Solon’s poetry describes a situation in which many of the poor “have arrived in foreign lands/sold into slavery, bound in shameful fetters.”"

"In 594 BC, Solon was appointed archon of Athens. His solution to his city’s strife was to cancel both public and private debts and end debt slavery."

> or that the environment will be irrecoverably destroyed if everyone pillages it for their own business needs

https://theconversation.com/the-waters-become-corrupt-the-ai...

Pliny the Elder: "We taint the rivers and the elements of nature, and the air itself, which is the main support of life, we turn into a medium for the destruction of life."

(The same is true for introspection. It's certainly not a modern invention. Andreessen asserts it's an 1800s/1900s invention, but Shakespeare's fucking famous for "to be or not to be, that is the question"!)