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> This is unfortunate because students do not understand that "normal" changes over time. This is probably most pronounced wrt race relations (e.g. what passed

> This is unfortunate because students do not understand that "normal" changes over time. This is probably most pronounced wrt race relations (e.g. what passed as normal race relations in 1860 throughout the entire US would be considered outrageously racist now... There were people back then who thought it was an outrage too. Maybe you should be more uncomfortable with the past.

claydavisss 8y ago
It is likely that a few centuries from now our degradation of the environment will be subject to a different moral filter...yet how many of us feel uncomfortable buying a new smartphone? The problem of moralizing is that our present "high horses" are wobbly.
- bunderbunder 8y ago
  I don't know that we need to interpret the GP's post as moralizing. You can also interpret it as a simple statement of fact: History is usually written by those who were in power at the time, and that means that it doesn't typically include the opinions of those who weren't. The common meme that the vast majority of people in the antebellum south thought slavery was OK is a great example of this. It doesn't even pass the smell test unless you either don't have a good sense of just how many people were enslaved at that time and place, or you don't think slaves count as people. That isn't to say that the morals of the people dictating how society worked weren't different at the time, just that getting the phrasing right does matter.
  - LyndsySimon 8y ago
    > The common meme that the vast majority of people in the antebellum south thought slavery was OK is a great example of this. Even that is a somewhat controversial statement - as the author mentioned, historians (or anyone who is interested in and studies history) are apt to bring in nuance. From my understanding from reading the correspondence and journals of people in that era, people in the antebellum South weren't "OK" with the institution of slavery to the same degree. Some thought it was wrong but the most practical option, some thought it was abhorrent, some had their opinions colored by their own fortunes being tied closely to it. Some where abject racists even by the standards of the time. It was a controversial and nuanced issue at the time... like every other political issue in the public arena.
- jerf 8y ago
  "It is likely that a few centuries from now our degradation of the environment will be subject to a different moral filter...yet how many of us feel uncomfortable buying a new smartphone?" You negate your own point when the second clause clearly implies that you're still applying the fashionable standards of today. To demonstrate how the future may be different, you need to apply different standards. The future may well consider today's environmental degradation as simply a necessary step to the glorious future they live in, and be amused at the parochialness of the people of the time who were worried about it. They could use the metaphor of an egg; shortly before the chick hatches, the egg environment is getting pretty nasty, full of waste products that have nowhere to go. The chick can project that death is certainly around the corner if they don't stop growing soon. But it can't stop growing; it must hatch. (Before you go "But jerf...!" and start trying to tear that metaphor apart, bear in mind I'm writing from the perspective of an already-glorious future here, not claiming it is absolutely something true of the present.) Another heterodox idea I've considered is that the future may well mock us for our concern over the environment when the real threat was technological tyranny the whole time, except the tyranny probably wouldn't let alone learn that much about the present time.... But the general idea holds; there are plenty of future threats that may turn out in the end to be far more dangerous than the environment and for it to have been a near waste of time in the end to put so much effort into the environment instead of dealing with $THREAT. To get here, I'm also projecting into the future the subconscious idea that most of us carry that there is something inevitable about the way the future went and that somehow people should have known. A modern example of this is that it's really easy to look at history and say Y2K was overblown and everybody should have known it. But at the time, it was a rational fear, and the reason why it didn't happen is that people worked really, really hard. So in the future, if some other disaster overtakes humanity, I fully expect the future to project back on to us a belief that we should in the here-and-now already know about this threat and have been dealing with what seems to them to be patently obviously a bigger deal than the environment. In the real here-and-now, where the future is not known, taking good care of the environment is a rational move. But in the future they may really be cursing us for not throwing billions of dollars at friendly AI. Or whoknows what.
  - pjc50 8y ago
    > A modern example of this is that it's really easy to look at history and say Y2K was overblown and everybody should have known it. But at the time, it was a rational fear, and the reason why it didn't happen is that people worked really, really hard. This mythos is playing out now in the Brexit debate, where because nothing too bad happened in y2k everyone who makes projections about the likely bad impact of "no deal", including the government's own preparedness staff, are dismissed as "scaremongering". History becomes propaganda unless you watch it very carefully.
- danharaj 8y ago
  If you read moralizing into my statement that says something about you. Yes, there is conflict today just as there was conflict in the past. I'm just telling you, you can't understand history without understanding that conflict as anything but normal. But I'm sure you have your reasons for approaching history- and today's issues, for that matter- the way you do.
- Nasrudith 8y ago
  Well anyone remotely informed in the future would judge based on how obvious it was. While we may consider civil war amputations barbaric we don't blame them for it given their lack of alternatives. In addition to the bleed out risk preantibiotics it would become gangrenous and kill the patient even if done in a clean room by time travelers who lacked antibiotics. However we tend to have "what a bunch of idiots" reactions to lack of hygiene like ignoring advice to get water upstream from the latrines. I doubt we would be judged over nonrenewable usage for advanced at the time tech if it takes say fifteen PHDs to understand how to fabricate a biodegradable future smartphone from say genetically modified algae based nanotech wafers that are subjected to a one hundred and fifteen step process.
Broken_Hippo 8y ago
Just because folks were outraged doesn't make it any less normal. For example: It is normal for low-paying jobs in the US to require drug tests, even though there are folks that think this is outrages and could even be harmful. All it really takes is enough folks doing the act or for such things to remain a legal part of being able to do some jobs.
- danharaj 8y ago
  What kind of definition of normal is that? History is conflict and struggle. You don't understand that conflict by calling it "normal".
  - Broken_Hippo 8y ago
    Something being normal is simply widely practised or widely encoded into law. It doesn't make it right or without struggle nor does it take away from the conflict. It was part of the reason there was conflict and struggle. Knowing what was normal - widespread, encoded in law, and other such things - is part of understanding what the struggle was all about. Normal doesn't equal correctness, just what was average and widespread at the time.

claydavisss 8y ago

It is likely that a few centuries from now our degradation of the environment will be subject to a different moral filter...yet how many of us feel uncomfortable buying a new smartphone? The problem of moralizing is that our present "high horses" are wobbly.

bunderbunder 8y ago
I don't know that we need to interpret the GP's post as moralizing. You can also interpret it as a simple statement of fact: History is usually written by those who were in power at the time, and that means that it doesn't typically include the opinions of those who weren't. The common meme that the vast majority of people in the antebellum south thought slavery was OK is a great example of this. It doesn't even pass the smell test unless you either don't have a good sense of just how many people were enslaved at that time and place, or you don't think slaves count as people. That isn't to say that the morals of the people dictating how society worked weren't different at the time, just that getting the phrasing right does matter.
- LyndsySimon 8y ago
  > The common meme that the vast majority of people in the antebellum south thought slavery was OK is a great example of this. Even that is a somewhat controversial statement - as the author mentioned, historians (or anyone who is interested in and studies history) are apt to bring in nuance. From my understanding from reading the correspondence and journals of people in that era, people in the antebellum South weren't "OK" with the institution of slavery to the same degree. Some thought it was wrong but the most practical option, some thought it was abhorrent, some had their opinions colored by their own fortunes being tied closely to it. Some where abject racists even by the standards of the time. It was a controversial and nuanced issue at the time... like every other political issue in the public arena.
jerf 8y ago
"It is likely that a few centuries from now our degradation of the environment will be subject to a different moral filter...yet how many of us feel uncomfortable buying a new smartphone?" You negate your own point when the second clause clearly implies that you're still applying the fashionable standards of today. To demonstrate how the future may be different, you need to apply different standards. The future may well consider today's environmental degradation as simply a necessary step to the glorious future they live in, and be amused at the parochialness of the people of the time who were worried about it. They could use the metaphor of an egg; shortly before the chick hatches, the egg environment is getting pretty nasty, full of waste products that have nowhere to go. The chick can project that death is certainly around the corner if they don't stop growing soon. But it can't stop growing; it must hatch. (Before you go "But jerf...!" and start trying to tear that metaphor apart, bear in mind I'm writing from the perspective of an already-glorious future here, not claiming it is absolutely something true of the present.) Another heterodox idea I've considered is that the future may well mock us for our concern over the environment when the real threat was technological tyranny the whole time, except the tyranny probably wouldn't let alone learn that much about the present time.... But the general idea holds; there are plenty of future threats that may turn out in the end to be far more dangerous than the environment and for it to have been a near waste of time in the end to put so much effort into the environment instead of dealing with $THREAT. To get here, I'm also projecting into the future the subconscious idea that most of us carry that there is something inevitable about the way the future went and that somehow people should have known. A modern example of this is that it's really easy to look at history and say Y2K was overblown and everybody should have known it. But at the time, it was a rational fear, and the reason why it didn't happen is that people worked really, really hard. So in the future, if some other disaster overtakes humanity, I fully expect the future to project back on to us a belief that we should in the here-and-now already know about this threat and have been dealing with what seems to them to be patently obviously a bigger deal than the environment. In the real here-and-now, where the future is not known, taking good care of the environment is a rational move. But in the future they may really be cursing us for not throwing billions of dollars at friendly AI. Or whoknows what.
- pjc50 8y ago
  > A modern example of this is that it's really easy to look at history and say Y2K was overblown and everybody should have known it. But at the time, it was a rational fear, and the reason why it didn't happen is that people worked really, really hard. This mythos is playing out now in the Brexit debate, where because nothing too bad happened in y2k everyone who makes projections about the likely bad impact of "no deal", including the government's own preparedness staff, are dismissed as "scaremongering". History becomes propaganda unless you watch it very carefully.
danharaj 8y ago
If you read moralizing into my statement that says something about you. Yes, there is conflict today just as there was conflict in the past. I'm just telling you, you can't understand history without understanding that conflict as anything but normal. But I'm sure you have your reasons for approaching history- and today's issues, for that matter- the way you do.
Nasrudith 8y ago
Well anyone remotely informed in the future would judge based on how obvious it was. While we may consider civil war amputations barbaric we don't blame them for it given their lack of alternatives. In addition to the bleed out risk preantibiotics it would become gangrenous and kill the patient even if done in a clean room by time travelers who lacked antibiotics. However we tend to have "what a bunch of idiots" reactions to lack of hygiene like ignoring advice to get water upstream from the latrines. I doubt we would be judged over nonrenewable usage for advanced at the time tech if it takes say fifteen PHDs to understand how to fabricate a biodegradable future smartphone from say genetically modified algae based nanotech wafers that are subjected to a one hundred and fifteen step process.

Broken_Hippo 8y ago

Just because folks were outraged doesn't make it any less normal. For example: It is normal for low-paying jobs in the US to require drug tests, even though there are folks that think this is outrages and could even be harmful. All it really takes is enough folks doing the act or for such things to remain a legal part of being able to do some jobs.

danharaj 8y ago
What kind of definition of normal is that? History is conflict and struggle. You don't understand that conflict by calling it "normal".
- Broken_Hippo 8y ago
  Something being normal is simply widely practised or widely encoded into law. It doesn't make it right or without struggle nor does it take away from the conflict. It was part of the reason there was conflict and struggle. Knowing what was normal - widespread, encoded in law, and other such things - is part of understanding what the struggle was all about. Normal doesn't equal correctness, just what was average and widespread at the time.