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With BLM I found myself thinking a lot about this question. Should we be understanding of slave owners and put them into hisorical context? Is it fair to hold
by 7952 6y ago
With BLM I found myself thinking a lot about this question. Should we be understanding of slave owners and put them into hisorical context? Is it fair to hold people in the past to the morals of today? Where should the balance be struck?
I think the answer is that both things are true. Killing, abusing and enslaving people was always wrong. But the cognitive basis for those acts can be more mundane than pure evil.
I think as a society we experience a larger version of the free will problem. Our future path is tightly bound to our history and culture. We do not have complete free will. Breaking away an asserting agency can be be both an opportunity and a risk. Nelson Mandela broke with history but so did Hitler and Stalin. We shouldn't assume that we are the former.
- dragonwriter 6y ago> Is it fair to hold people in the past to the morals of today? It's impossible, so it doesn't matter if it's fair: we’re not transporting reward or punishment back to people in the past. Our decisions about who from the past we hold up as role models, and how, isn't about fairness to people in the past, it's about fairness to people in the present.
- watwut 6y ago> Nelson Mandela broke with history but so did Hitler and Stalin. What do you mean by that? What does breaking with history means? All three were subjectively sure they are righteous and in the right.