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It's not possible to behave in ways that won't eventually be seen as barbaric by somebody in the future, unless you simply don't do anything worth recording. It

It's not possible to behave in ways that won't eventually be seen as barbaric by somebody in the future, unless you simply don't do anything worth recording. It's ridiculous to act as if somebody did something wrong for making a suggestion that didn't pan out.

xadhominemx 5y ago
> It's not possible to behave in ways that won't eventually be seen as barbaric by somebody in the future Not true, but even if it was, who cares. You’re dead and everyone who ever knew you is dead. In this particular case, I don’t understand why anyone would care about renaming the building. It is strange to name a building after a guy who had a bunch of incorrect theories that are very popular with racists. Just rename it, who cares.
- helloworld11 5y ago
  Of course it's not possible. For most of human history, many things considered barbaric today simply didn't warrant batting an eye lid. People literally had no notion that they would one day be at all controversial. You therefor have a very odd notion of how it should have been possible for them. That however is secondary to the obviously mis-guided thing you so dismissively claim: that it's "strange" to name a building after a highly praised scientist at a time when modern notions of social justice hadn't yet entered. Much stranger would be the case of people in the past somehow just knowing how we'd react to certain things today. Why rename it? If we judged all the many enormously influential and sometimes celebrated figures of civilization's history by modern moral standards, there would be virtually none left to applaud who were born before the 1960s. Those old names shouldn't be removed from historical reference by modern nagging..
  - newtypeofdog 5y ago
    > If we judged all the many enormously influential and sometimes celebrated figures of civilization's history by modern moral standards, there would be virtually none left to applaud who were born before the 1960s. Good! We have a major issue with hero worship in our society. We should not be naming anything after anyone. It serves no purpose other than to create cults of personality.
    - chatoyance 5y ago
      [dead]
    - pvaldes 5y ago
      > We should not be naming anything after anyone. It serves no purpose other than to create cults of personality. To inspire the new generations to work hard to move our societies further is a basic goal in any schools and has proven to be a really profitable move for everybody. On the other way, falsely accusing main scientists of "the sin of the jour" is harming deliberately the trust of the new generations in knowledge and any school doing that should close ASAP. Linnaeus was as racist as me or you. His real sins were much, much worse. 1) placing people among monkeys in the order Primates. Religious people are trying to disprove that without any success for more than 250 years. Yes we all are "monkeys" and chimps are our closest alive relative in the planet. Linnaeus was right. Deal with it. 2) Exploring the logical possibility that if a genus can include more than one species, our genus could do the same also. And he was right also in this. The genus Homo includes more than one species. Period. This is not debatable or unclear and is not racism. Is the naked uncomfortable truth that will make your life much more complicated if your goal is to promote a Creationist agenda. Of course he was wrong with the species proposed, but before to blaming him we should remember that genetic analysis were not available in 1768. And he still somehow managed to find the right answer in thousands of cases without knowing anything about the DNA. And this is really impressive if we think about it. People being racist or more and more stupid with time and some obscure agents promoting "cancel knowledge" is not Linnaeus fault in any way.
- traverseda 5y ago
  I'm quite sure that eating meat will be considered barbaric in the future, just it's so hard to avoid with the way society is set up. When society makes it easy to do the right thing people generally will, but there's so much terrible stuff going on and so little time that you really need to prioritize . I'm sure you do a bunch of barbaric things, probably eating meat will be considered among the worst when humanity has more practical alternatives.
- pvaldes 5y ago
  Is not even a building, an arboretum is a collection of trees. A park.
raxxorrax 5y ago
But he wasn't even barbaric. He did separate humans into races per stereotype. This is wrong as we know today, but people that make him the forebearer are plainly wrong (and unnecessarily gives those theories even more credit for connecting his name to them). For the time he lived in this is negligible, he was completely dedicated to science which could indeed serve as an example for more ideological ambitions.

xadhominemx 5y ago

> It's not possible to behave in ways that won't eventually be seen as barbaric by somebody in the future Not true, but even if it was, who cares. You’re dead and everyone who ever knew you is dead. In this particular case, I don’t understand why anyone would care about renaming the building. It is strange to name a building after a guy who had a bunch of incorrect theories that are very popular with racists. Just rename it, who cares.

helloworld11 5y ago
Of course it's not possible. For most of human history, many things considered barbaric today simply didn't warrant batting an eye lid. People literally had no notion that they would one day be at all controversial. You therefor have a very odd notion of how it should have been possible for them. That however is secondary to the obviously mis-guided thing you so dismissively claim: that it's "strange" to name a building after a highly praised scientist at a time when modern notions of social justice hadn't yet entered. Much stranger would be the case of people in the past somehow just knowing how we'd react to certain things today. Why rename it? If we judged all the many enormously influential and sometimes celebrated figures of civilization's history by modern moral standards, there would be virtually none left to applaud who were born before the 1960s. Those old names shouldn't be removed from historical reference by modern nagging..
- newtypeofdog 5y ago
  > If we judged all the many enormously influential and sometimes celebrated figures of civilization's history by modern moral standards, there would be virtually none left to applaud who were born before the 1960s. Good! We have a major issue with hero worship in our society. We should not be naming anything after anyone. It serves no purpose other than to create cults of personality.
  - chatoyance 5y ago
    [dead]
  - pvaldes 5y ago
    > We should not be naming anything after anyone. It serves no purpose other than to create cults of personality. To inspire the new generations to work hard to move our societies further is a basic goal in any schools and has proven to be a really profitable move for everybody. On the other way, falsely accusing main scientists of "the sin of the jour" is harming deliberately the trust of the new generations in knowledge and any school doing that should close ASAP. Linnaeus was as racist as me or you. His real sins were much, much worse. 1) placing people among monkeys in the order Primates. Religious people are trying to disprove that without any success for more than 250 years. Yes we all are "monkeys" and chimps are our closest alive relative in the planet. Linnaeus was right. Deal with it. 2) Exploring the logical possibility that if a genus can include more than one species, our genus could do the same also. And he was right also in this. The genus Homo includes more than one species. Period. This is not debatable or unclear and is not racism. Is the naked uncomfortable truth that will make your life much more complicated if your goal is to promote a Creationist agenda. Of course he was wrong with the species proposed, but before to blaming him we should remember that genetic analysis were not available in 1768. And he still somehow managed to find the right answer in thousands of cases without knowing anything about the DNA. And this is really impressive if we think about it. People being racist or more and more stupid with time and some obscure agents promoting "cancel knowledge" is not Linnaeus fault in any way.
traverseda 5y ago
I'm quite sure that eating meat will be considered barbaric in the future, just it's so hard to avoid with the way society is set up. When society makes it easy to do the right thing people generally will, but there's so much terrible stuff going on and so little time that you really need to prioritize . I'm sure you do a bunch of barbaric things, probably eating meat will be considered among the worst when humanity has more practical alternatives.
pvaldes 5y ago
Is not even a building, an arboretum is a collection of trees. A park.

raxxorrax 5y ago

But he wasn't even barbaric. He did separate humans into races per stereotype. This is wrong as we know today, but people that make him the forebearer are plainly wrong (and unnecessarily gives those theories even more credit for connecting his name to them). For the time he lived in this is negligible, he was completely dedicated to science which could indeed serve as an example for more ideological ambitions.