3 ms·

In a hundred years, there will be campaigns to rename any buildings named after non-vegetarians. There won't be a lot of names left if you take only the purest

In a hundred years, there will be campaigns to rename any buildings named after non-vegetarians. There won't be a lot of names left if you take only the purest of the pure as names. Naming a building means celebrating the good things that a person did, not condoning the bad. People are complicated and it's a disservice to college students to suggest otherwise.

tesselatum 10y ago
Societies' values change and evolve, there's nothing wrong with that.
- Teever 10y ago
  I question the value of throwing out all mention of the past simply because the people in the past don't meet today's societal standards.
  - pasquinelli 10y ago
    the past is mentioned in ways other than the names of buildings.
panic 10y ago
There's a lot of room between the "purest of the pure" and a pro-slavery segregationist.
rayiner 10y ago
Calhoun college was so named in 1931, and the only reason seems to be that he was a Yale alumnus who was Vice President. I'm not seeing the big offsetting factors. It's not like they're trying to rename something named after Thomas Jefferson, who also owned slaves.
- hkmurakami 10y ago
  Some Princeton students wanted to rename the Woodrow Wilson school.
  - maverick_iceman 10y ago
    That would be a good thing. Woodrow Wilson, though widely regarded as a progressive icon, was a racist who purged the federal government of blacks. Yale should be ashamed of this man, not celebrate him.
    - scruple 10y ago
      Does the progressivism of decades past need to be measured against the standards of today? I'm not being facetious, I'm asking genuinely because I've never really had the thought before but it seems like that's exactly you're suggesting here. It would seem to me that the progressive progress that we enjoy and push forward today stands on the shoulders of those progressives who came before us, even when their actions would be abhorrent to most people today.
      - apu 10y ago
        Wilson was racist even by the standards of his time.
        scruple 10y ago
        I really don't know much about the man other than the big acts that were passed as part of his legacy. Thanks for getting me curious enough to read more about him.
      - dnautics 10y ago
        well, to put things into context, three years after wilson, we had a president who called for anti-lynching laws, made several public and private addresses exhorting Americans to protect the civil rights of African-Americans, and gave a commencement address at Howard University. He also very famously and forcefully put down internal party efforts to prevent a black man from running in New York state.
erispoe 10y ago
Context matters. It matters to be on the morally wrong side when society is at a decision point. By and large, we don't judge romans because they practiced slavery. We judge people who have chosen to defend slavery when it was not a moral consensus anymore and on the verge of abolition. Plenty of slave owners have their names on university buildings, but they never went to war to defend it.
- azakai 10y ago
  There is a strong argument to be made that we are at a decision point on vegetarianism. Of course we'll only know for sure in retrospect, but * Vegans and vegetarians are growing groups, especially among the young. * Food technology is improving and making it easier and easier to not eat meat. There are a few startups in this area, such as Impossible Foods, that may revolutionize how we eat. * The world is becoming increasingly aware of the risk of climate change, and that consuming animal products is a significant factor. * We have plenty of solid scientific evidence showing people can live healthy lives without eating meat, removing the "we need it to survive" argument. (There is also some evidence that eating less meat is good for you, but there is a lot to debate there.) * Legislation is moving more and more towards protecting animal rights, even if we have a lot left to do. So yes, I think the top comment is right. People eating meat today will be judged poorly in a few generations' time.
  - ryanwaggoner 10y ago
    Sorry, but no. Only about 3% of Americans are self-proclaimed vegetarians (less than 1% are vegans), and there's good evidence that the majority of those eat meat, fish, or poultry on a regular basis [1]. Of course, future generations may be 100% vegan and look back on us with horror at the way that we treated animals, our planet, our bodies, etc. But that's distinct from looking back on individuals who didn't choose a particular niche lifestyle and having it tarnish their memory. Your points seem more about why you think that individual non-vegetarians should be judged harshly by history, but I see little reason to think that a lifestyle that less than 1% of the population strictly adheres to is going to become a source of individualized historical shame. 1. https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/animals-and-us/201109/why-are-there-so-few-vegetarians https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/animals-and-us/201109/w...
literallycancer 10y ago
Once enough time passes, trivial things don't matter anymore. Cheops, Gilgamesh or Hammurabi probably weren't paragons of virtue by current standards, but we still know about them and their legacy.

tesselatum 10y ago

Societies' values change and evolve, there's nothing wrong with that.

Teever 10y ago
I question the value of throwing out all mention of the past simply because the people in the past don't meet today's societal standards.
- pasquinelli 10y ago
  the past is mentioned in ways other than the names of buildings.

panic 10y ago

There's a lot of room between the "purest of the pure" and a pro-slavery segregationist.

rayiner 10y ago

Calhoun college was so named in 1931, and the only reason seems to be that he was a Yale alumnus who was Vice President. I'm not seeing the big offsetting factors. It's not like they're trying to rename something named after Thomas Jefferson, who also owned slaves.

hkmurakami 10y ago
Some Princeton students wanted to rename the Woodrow Wilson school.
- maverick_iceman 10y ago
  That would be a good thing. Woodrow Wilson, though widely regarded as a progressive icon, was a racist who purged the federal government of blacks. Yale should be ashamed of this man, not celebrate him.
  - scruple 10y ago
    Does the progressivism of decades past need to be measured against the standards of today? I'm not being facetious, I'm asking genuinely because I've never really had the thought before but it seems like that's exactly you're suggesting here. It would seem to me that the progressive progress that we enjoy and push forward today stands on the shoulders of those progressives who came before us, even when their actions would be abhorrent to most people today.
    - apu 10y ago
      Wilson was racist even by the standards of his time.
      - scruple 10y ago
        I really don't know much about the man other than the big acts that were passed as part of his legacy. Thanks for getting me curious enough to read more about him.
    - dnautics 10y ago
      well, to put things into context, three years after wilson, we had a president who called for anti-lynching laws, made several public and private addresses exhorting Americans to protect the civil rights of African-Americans, and gave a commencement address at Howard University. He also very famously and forcefully put down internal party efforts to prevent a black man from running in New York state.

erispoe 10y ago

Context matters. It matters to be on the morally wrong side when society is at a decision point. By and large, we don't judge romans because they practiced slavery. We judge people who have chosen to defend slavery when it was not a moral consensus anymore and on the verge of abolition. Plenty of slave owners have their names on university buildings, but they never went to war to defend it.

azakai 10y ago
There is a strong argument to be made that we are at a decision point on vegetarianism. Of course we'll only know for sure in retrospect, but * Vegans and vegetarians are growing groups, especially among the young. * Food technology is improving and making it easier and easier to not eat meat. There are a few startups in this area, such as Impossible Foods, that may revolutionize how we eat. * The world is becoming increasingly aware of the risk of climate change, and that consuming animal products is a significant factor. * We have plenty of solid scientific evidence showing people can live healthy lives without eating meat, removing the "we need it to survive" argument. (There is also some evidence that eating less meat is good for you, but there is a lot to debate there.) * Legislation is moving more and more towards protecting animal rights, even if we have a lot left to do. So yes, I think the top comment is right. People eating meat today will be judged poorly in a few generations' time.
- ryanwaggoner 10y ago
  Sorry, but no. Only about 3% of Americans are self-proclaimed vegetarians (less than 1% are vegans), and there's good evidence that the majority of those eat meat, fish, or poultry on a regular basis [1]. Of course, future generations may be 100% vegan and look back on us with horror at the way that we treated animals, our planet, our bodies, etc. But that's distinct from looking back on individuals who didn't choose a particular niche lifestyle and having it tarnish their memory. Your points seem more about why you think that individual non-vegetarians should be judged harshly by history, but I see little reason to think that a lifestyle that less than 1% of the population strictly adheres to is going to become a source of individualized historical shame. 1. https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/animals-and-us/201109/why-are-there-so-few-vegetarians https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/animals-and-us/201109/w...

literallycancer 10y ago

Once enough time passes, trivial things don't matter anymore. Cheops, Gilgamesh or Hammurabi probably weren't paragons of virtue by current standards, but we still know about them and their legacy.