3 ms·
>When people are focused on the past, they aren’t focused on the future. It becomes a never-ending argument over history, trying to divvy up blame and virtue an
by nobody9999 3y ago
>When people are focused on the past, they aren’t focused on the future. It becomes a never-ending argument over history, trying to divvy up blame and virtue and money among people who weren’t even present at the time the evilness happened and who themselves have a mixed heritage.
As is widely discussed and intuitively obvious, "the past is prologue."
What happened in the past is relevant to the present because the past quite literally creates the present.
As Eugen Weber[0] put it[1]:
...we are going back to the old country. We're going back to where many of
our ancestors came from, to see where their stories came from, and their
memories, and their habits and the way they are, which has made us the way we
are.
This is what history is about. Where we come from, what lies behind the way
we live and act and think. How our institutions, our religions, our laws
were made.
Should we ignore all that came before, knowing that it informs and structures our societies, ideas and proclivities? I say, "no."
Because we don't exist in a temporal vacuum (thank you, Second Law of Thermodynamics). Rather, our pasts and the impact of the events of those pasts inform and shape the present. Ignore it at your own peril.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugen_Weber https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugen_Weber
[1] https://youtu.be/XCyO8meahME?t=410 https://youtu.be/XCyO8meahME?t=410
- chmod600 3y agoThat’s a long-winded way of saying that things have causes. Yes, they do. But the people and laws that caused evilness in the past are largely gone. What we are talking about here are the effects. But the effects are not cleanly separated by skin color, and the burden of addressing them should not be assigned by skin color, either. Affirmative Action is just a bad solution from all angles, created by anthropomorphizing groups of people as though they were individuals.
- nobody9999 3y ago>Affirmative Action is just a bad solution from all angles, created by anthropomorphizing groups of people as though they were individuals. Who said anything about Affirmative Action? You dismissed the importance of history. That's what I objected to. And you just dismissed it again. And you're still wrong.
- sokoloff 3y agoWe’re literally commenting on a Supreme Court ruling which tossed out Affirmative Action. It’s not unusual for people to talk about the main topic in the comments.
- nobody9999 3y ago>We’re literally commenting on a Supreme Court ruling which tossed out Affirmative Action. It’s not unusual for people to talk about the main topic in the comments. Perhaps you and others are/were. But I didn't. In fact, I never voiced an opinion about Affirmative Action at all. Rather, I pointed out that ignoring history is a bad idea. Feel free to disagree with that assertion, but I didn't discuss AA, nor was my reply related to the recent SCOTUS decision. Are you suggesting that I keep my big mouth shut if, in your estimation, I'm not sufficiently "on topic?" Not saying that's what you're implying, but it's definitely something that could be inferred -- and I did. If I misunderstood, please do correct me.