Here's an interesting piece from a fellow blogger, neighbor and aquaintence of mine here in Ferndale, Tom Gagne:
"This is the danger of projecting today's moral perspectives on people from times past. What they did then wasn't considered objectionable by their contemporaries. Prior to Western Culture (specifically Christians) thinking slavery was abominable and the 150 years it took to abolish the slave trade, all nations and all people traditionally (and without a second thought) made slaves of other nations and people."
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4 comments:
A useful point, rarely made and even more rarely appreciated. The Howard Zinn portrayal of slavery and conquest holds these behaviors as unique to one "race" of people. It's paternalistic, in that it views all other races as morally superior but technolocally weaker. Worse, it's just dishonest, and it creates contemporary resentment; it teleports into today inter-"racial" hostilities of the past. It portrays people -- inaccurately -- as remarkably different, and so based on "race". The truth reveals people of different "races" as effectively the same, and struggling together to advance inter-personal behaviors.
However, I disagree with his views on many of his side issues: "prostitution, homosexuality, underage sex (between young people, I presume), drug use, fossil fuels, abortion". First of all, I don't consider any of these activities to be immoral, nor do they harm anybody. I cannot imagine how a person like me 200 years from now could view any of these activities as immmoral. Abortion at least has a hypothetical wrong imposed on a non-consenting person, but practically I cannot imagine it as evenly slightly comperable to killing, conquering, or enslaving a fully automomous, conscious person.
"However, I disagree with his views on many of his side issues..."
It's not necessary to agree, which is why I (tried to) asked the question not knowing which direction the future may go.
500 years after Columbus we regard genocide and slavery as crimes against humanity but in the late 15th century who would have guessed that?
The Greeks were big into Pederasty but currently it's not a legal intimate attachment. A mere hundred years-or-so ago it wasn't unusual to marry girls as young as 13--but it's now regarded as statutory rape.
Who would have thought there'd come a time when spanking a child risks public scorn?
The luxury of living in the present gives us a degree of arrogance to pass judgement on peoples and times past with little regard for how we may be judged by future generations. I'm simply encouraging people to resist the temptation because it distorts history and the lessons we're supposed to find therein.
Thomas: I believe I understand your point. I will think more about it.
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