2 ms·

The history of humanity is very literally one of violence, conquest and subjugation. Your comment falls into the fallacy of presentism: > uncritical adherence

The history of humanity is very literally one of violence, conquest and subjugation. Your comment falls into the fallacy of presentism: > uncritical adherence to present-day attitudes, especially the tendency to interpret past events in terms of modern values and concepts. History is not divided into victims and perpetrators in this respect, the only distinction you can make is that at any particular point in time any particular group may have been on the winning or losing end of it. > colonialism has devastated cultures across the globe, and we should acknowledge that To what end is it important to acknowledge this? The history of all people is drenched in the blood and atrocity of the past. Colonialism is not different from any other form of historic state or empire building.

camgunz 6y ago
Presentism (I’ve discovered after googling) is not a fallacy, it’s some niche criticism of eurocentrism that’s being reappropriated by the cultural right to try and whitewash some pretty atrocious stuff. Here’s an excerpt from Forbes [1]: > Let’s acknowledge that most modern Americans are not fans of slavery, the confederacy or racism. But is it right or useful to go back into history and cleanse the campus of references to those events and people who, in an earlier era with a different set of values, participated in them? So much is lost if we insist on this approach to history: –Leaders are not perfect. In fact, the very qualities that may lead to huge success may also result in grand failures. Ask Richard Nixon or Bill Clinton or, yes, Woodrow Wilson. We’re better off celebrating and learning from leaders warts and all. –History itself is full of failures and successes. Before the U.S., essentially every culture and country had slavery. Only in America was the prospect of eliminating it on the table at the founding, and eventually it was accomplished, Are we now to cleanse the public square of all failures? ——- Generally, I think slavery and mass murder/subjugation are pretty awful, no matter the era, no matter if someone else is also doing it. [1]: https://www.forbes.com/sites/daviddavenport/2015/12/01/presentism-the-dangerous-virus-spreading-across-college-campuses/#15b55242dcb5 https://www.forbes.com/sites/daviddavenport/2015/12/01/prese...
- AmericanChopper 6y ago
  > In literary and historical analysis, presentism is the anachronistic introduction of present-day ideas and perspectives into depictions or interpretations of the past. Some modern historians seek to avoid presentism in their work because they consider it a form of cultural bias, and believe it creates a distorted understanding of their subject matter. The practice of presentism is regarded by some as a common fallacy when writing about the past. > The Oxford English Dictionary gives the first citation for presentism in its historiographic sense from 1916, and the word may have been used in this meaning as early as the 1870s. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presentism_(literary_and_historical_analysis) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presentism_(literary_and_his... Your comment goes beyond a typical ad hominem, you’re dismissing an argument simply because it has previously been used at least once by people you disagree with.
  - camgunz 6y ago
    Yeah man, I read the same Wikipedia article, and now I know way more about "Whiggery" than I ever really wanted to. It's also got a couple people trying to add that Forbes article and "intellectual dark web" Sam Harris into it [1]. Presentism is a very specific kind of Eurocentrism founded on the teleological idea that, essentially, this is all God's plan and we're on the right side of it. Its meaning is changing a little in the modern era, now that we're looking back on our (human) history and recoiling. This naturally causes us some dissonance; the classic example is Jefferson's devotion to liberty... as a slaveholder who personally ordered his slaves flogged [2]. And classically, presentism would say that the US was on the correct course, and these other peoples (indigenous Americans, people we brought over to enslave, etc.) would inevitably lose out, because they're not on the right side of history [3]. But again in the modern era, we're seeing the meaning change from "we're on the right side of history and therefore can do no wrong" to "our values now are so different, if Andrew Jackson were alive today he'd be in prison". I think this is right; I don't want to erase Jefferson from history, but I do think I'd feel weird as an African-American to see slaveowners exalted everywhere (even money, save Lincoln and Grant everyone on there was a slaveowner). I mean, as a white guy I feel weird about it anyway. But while I think the wiki article is pretty thinly cited, it does reference an opinion piece from the president of the American Historical Association which I actually really like. Here are some good bits: > I'm not arguing that identity politics have no place in historical study; women's history, African American history, Latino history, gay and lesbian history, and the like have all made fundamentally important contributions to our understanding of history. It is hard to imagine American history in this country without some element of national identity in it. And present-day concerns have helped revivify topics, such as imperialism, that needed reconsideration. > Presentism, at its worst, encourages a kind of moral complacency and self-congratulation. Interpreting the past in terms of present concerns usually leads us to find ourselves morally superior; the Greeks had slavery, even David Hume was a racist, and European women endorsed imperial ventures. Our forbears constantly fail to measure up to our present-day standards. This is not to say that any of these findings are irrelevant or that we should endorse an entirely relativist point of view. It is to say that we must question the stance of temporal superiority that is implicit in the Western (and now probably worldwide) historical discipline. > Students readily absorb these attitudes of temporal superiority, but they also stand in some ways as our best bulwark against it. When I teach Hegel's lectures on the philosophy of history to students in UCLA's history of history class, they at first seize upon his Eurocentric, indeed racist, comments about Africa's place in world history, but they quite readily see that their condescension toward Hegel derives from Hegel's own worldview. Hegel was the great codifier of Western temporal superiority; for Hegel, all truth is revealed through the progression of history, which means that those in the present always have a better shot at grasping truth than do people in the past. Students understand quite quickly that those who follow them will have the same retrospective advantage over them that they enjoy vis à vis Hegel. So, specifically, I'm not dismissing your characterization of my comment as presentist (?) because it's got some new modern relevance. I'm dismissing it because I buy the moral relativism critique: I think these things (colonialism, here) were always bad, and I think your attempt to dismiss my characterization as presentism is applying moral relativism (or whataboutism, less charitably) to acts that are universally, eternally immoral. Which is why I wrote: > Generally, I think slavery and mass murder/subjugation are pretty awful, no matter the era, no matter if someone else is also doing it. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Presentism_(literary_and_historical_analysis)&action=history https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Presentism_(liter... [2]: This is a great example actually; read about American exceptionalism or the Jefferson's Empire of Liberty. That's textbook presentism right there. [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whig_history#cite_ref-28 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whig_history#cite_ref-28

camgunz 6y ago

Presentism (I’ve discovered after googling) is not a fallacy, it’s some niche criticism of eurocentrism that’s being reappropriated by the cultural right to try and whitewash some pretty atrocious stuff. Here’s an excerpt from Forbes [1]: > Let’s acknowledge that most modern Americans are not fans of slavery, the confederacy or racism. But is it right or useful to go back into history and cleanse the campus of references to those events and people who, in an earlier era with a different set of values, participated in them? So much is lost if we insist on this approach to history: –Leaders are not perfect. In fact, the very qualities that may lead to huge success may also result in grand failures. Ask Richard Nixon or Bill Clinton or, yes, Woodrow Wilson. We’re better off celebrating and learning from leaders warts and all. –History itself is full of failures and successes. Before the U.S., essentially every culture and country had slavery. Only in America was the prospect of eliminating it on the table at the founding, and eventually it was accomplished, Are we now to cleanse the public square of all failures? ——- Generally, I think slavery and mass murder/subjugation are pretty awful, no matter the era, no matter if someone else is also doing it. [1]: https://www.forbes.com/sites/daviddavenport/2015/12/01/presentism-the-dangerous-virus-spreading-across-college-campuses/#15b55242dcb5 https://www.forbes.com/sites/daviddavenport/2015/12/01/prese...

AmericanChopper 6y ago
> In literary and historical analysis, presentism is the anachronistic introduction of present-day ideas and perspectives into depictions or interpretations of the past. Some modern historians seek to avoid presentism in their work because they consider it a form of cultural bias, and believe it creates a distorted understanding of their subject matter. The practice of presentism is regarded by some as a common fallacy when writing about the past. > The Oxford English Dictionary gives the first citation for presentism in its historiographic sense from 1916, and the word may have been used in this meaning as early as the 1870s. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presentism_(literary_and_historical_analysis) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presentism_(literary_and_his... Your comment goes beyond a typical ad hominem, you’re dismissing an argument simply because it has previously been used at least once by people you disagree with.
- camgunz 6y ago
  Yeah man, I read the same Wikipedia article, and now I know way more about "Whiggery" than I ever really wanted to. It's also got a couple people trying to add that Forbes article and "intellectual dark web" Sam Harris into it [1]. Presentism is a very specific kind of Eurocentrism founded on the teleological idea that, essentially, this is all God's plan and we're on the right side of it. Its meaning is changing a little in the modern era, now that we're looking back on our (human) history and recoiling. This naturally causes us some dissonance; the classic example is Jefferson's devotion to liberty... as a slaveholder who personally ordered his slaves flogged [2]. And classically, presentism would say that the US was on the correct course, and these other peoples (indigenous Americans, people we brought over to enslave, etc.) would inevitably lose out, because they're not on the right side of history [3]. But again in the modern era, we're seeing the meaning change from "we're on the right side of history and therefore can do no wrong" to "our values now are so different, if Andrew Jackson were alive today he'd be in prison". I think this is right; I don't want to erase Jefferson from history, but I do think I'd feel weird as an African-American to see slaveowners exalted everywhere (even money, save Lincoln and Grant everyone on there was a slaveowner). I mean, as a white guy I feel weird about it anyway. But while I think the wiki article is pretty thinly cited, it does reference an opinion piece from the president of the American Historical Association which I actually really like. Here are some good bits: > I'm not arguing that identity politics have no place in historical study; women's history, African American history, Latino history, gay and lesbian history, and the like have all made fundamentally important contributions to our understanding of history. It is hard to imagine American history in this country without some element of national identity in it. And present-day concerns have helped revivify topics, such as imperialism, that needed reconsideration. > Presentism, at its worst, encourages a kind of moral complacency and self-congratulation. Interpreting the past in terms of present concerns usually leads us to find ourselves morally superior; the Greeks had slavery, even David Hume was a racist, and European women endorsed imperial ventures. Our forbears constantly fail to measure up to our present-day standards. This is not to say that any of these findings are irrelevant or that we should endorse an entirely relativist point of view. It is to say that we must question the stance of temporal superiority that is implicit in the Western (and now probably worldwide) historical discipline. > Students readily absorb these attitudes of temporal superiority, but they also stand in some ways as our best bulwark against it. When I teach Hegel's lectures on the philosophy of history to students in UCLA's history of history class, they at first seize upon his Eurocentric, indeed racist, comments about Africa's place in world history, but they quite readily see that their condescension toward Hegel derives from Hegel's own worldview. Hegel was the great codifier of Western temporal superiority; for Hegel, all truth is revealed through the progression of history, which means that those in the present always have a better shot at grasping truth than do people in the past. Students understand quite quickly that those who follow them will have the same retrospective advantage over them that they enjoy vis à vis Hegel. So, specifically, I'm not dismissing your characterization of my comment as presentist (?) because it's got some new modern relevance. I'm dismissing it because I buy the moral relativism critique: I think these things (colonialism, here) were always bad, and I think your attempt to dismiss my characterization as presentism is applying moral relativism (or whataboutism, less charitably) to acts that are universally, eternally immoral. Which is why I wrote: > Generally, I think slavery and mass murder/subjugation are pretty awful, no matter the era, no matter if someone else is also doing it. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Presentism_(literary_and_historical_analysis)&action=history https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Presentism_(liter... [2]: This is a great example actually; read about American exceptionalism or the Jefferson's Empire of Liberty. That's textbook presentism right there. [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whig_history#cite_ref-28 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whig_history#cite_ref-28