4 ms·

Your point is that you feel queasy about how brutal life was back then and you wanted to throw some shade to feel better about your obviously better moral stand

• pjmlp 11y ago
  I come from a little place in the Iberian peninsula... As someone that loves to study history, read old mediaeval documents, I know pretty well what our ancestors did.
  • saool 11y ago
    As do I, and that's why I understand the whole "generational white guilt" spiel, cause I hear it often. Even an educated person such as yourself will be quick to jump the gun. I get it, condemning their actions gives you the higher moral ground, you feel like a mensch and somehow detach you from whatever shared responsibility you think you shoulder. IMHO, we can't judge old-day actions with current-day ethics. The same way we don't generally allow ex post facto law, we should be careful to deliver ex post facto moral judgement. If there's a place for moral relativism, it is probably when comparing different times in history. That is not to say I excuse everything that was done during the colonial times —there are plenty of recollections of senseless atrocities— but there's definitely a tendency to look at all this in a reductionistic and emotional way that I don't think is fair.