2 ms·
the phrase “wrong side of history” imagines some future perspective where a thing called “history” will say “thus and such person/act/idea was wrong in a moral
by athriren 6y ago
the phrase “wrong side of history” imagines some future perspective where a thing called “history” will say “thus and such person/act/idea was wrong in a moral sense”. it is comforting to imagine the future judgement of those presently engaged in behavior we think is wrong, especially when we perceive that behavior to negatively impact us (as opposed to just being something we find distasteful that feels like it has low personal impact).
so people say something like “mark zuckerberg is on the wrong side of history” and mean “even if mark zuckerberg can get away with his behavior for a long time, at some point in geologic time the people alive will know zuckerberg’s name and hold him in contempt”. this is a false, presumptuous comfort so i find the charge impotent.
history is being actively constructed in front of you. even “settled” topics we feel we can accurately assess who was on the right and wrong sides of whatever are being constantly societally negotiated. just as we can imagine an egalitarian future free of resource constraints where people who hoarded wealth are judged harshly, so too can we imagine a future where tech titans are revered as demigods. you can apply this same logic to the posture the future will adopt toward aspects of the present and the past. will the 1960s US civil rights movement be viewed positively and those who opposed it be viewed negatively for all time? i hope so, and i hope the reader does too, but there are no guarantees.
zuckerberg isn’t taking solace that in some imagined future his detractors will be regarded as nothing more than jealous petty luddites, he is burying your future now. his goal is to entirely foreclose the opportunity for the future to view him badly. he doesn’t need to be your friend, he only needs to ingratiate himself to the arbiters of the historical record—or better yet, make facebook’s product line become the historical record.