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Honest question: Should we not judge a man according to what was acceptable during his time and not ours? Herge was a very open-minded man for his time, but m

Honest question: Should we not judge a man according to what was acceptable during his time and not ours? Herge was a very open-minded man for his time, but maybe not so much according to today's standards. But this probably applies to every man ever lived including our own parents

javier_e06 2y ago
I think the term is "presentism". The tendency to judge past and future, with the ethics and morals of today.
brookst 2y ago
IMO we should judge people based on their efforts to improve, and based on their openness to learning that their views are imperfect. I can’t speak to Herge or his era; if he was in the 98th percentile of tolerance and growth, I’d think super highly of him. If he was 60th percentile, less so, but as you say, we are all products of our time. What I really dislike is the recurring talking point that we can’t judge people for merely being typical of their time. There have been lots of historical times where the typical views were horrific, and where minorities who argued against those views were persecuted. I don’t truck with the “we can’t blame the persecutors, it’s what everyone was doing” line of thought.
- hadlock 2y ago
  > we should judge people based on their efforts to improve, and The world did not change very quickly in regards to social norms or acceptance even in 1950, and colonialism was still very much in vouge back then. The US didn't give up the Philippines and UK didn't give up India until WW2 was wrapping up. Most economic studies I've seen draw a thick line at 1950 as "post war economy" etc etc. Values of "efforts to improve" may not have existed at all in the mainstream media back then. Tintin was/is the French equivalent of the Marvel Cinematic Universe today.
- foxglacier 2y ago
  > dislike [...] that we can’t judge people for merely being typical of their time. That's all very noble but you have to apply it to yourself too. If you just go along with the popular morals of your time, you're no better than them. To a future society, our time may well look immoral. Morals aren't universal. They depend on the environment people live in. As an example of something widely accepted today - we make children spend most of their childhood at school. Many of them don't much like doing that and it sounds like a fairly abusive practice if it didn't have any purpose. But kids have to go to school so they'll be successful as adults. It's a bad thing we do to people due to the circumstances of our society. Maybe in some kind of future utopia or a non-industrialised world there would be no need for school and the compulsory schooling of today would look like child abuse. Are you sure you've progressive enough to even identify the bad beliefs of today's progressives, let alone stand up against them?

javier_e06 2y ago

I think the term is "presentism". The tendency to judge past and future, with the ethics and morals of today.

brookst 2y ago

IMO we should judge people based on their efforts to improve, and based on their openness to learning that their views are imperfect. I can’t speak to Herge or his era; if he was in the 98th percentile of tolerance and growth, I’d think super highly of him. If he was 60th percentile, less so, but as you say, we are all products of our time. What I really dislike is the recurring talking point that we can’t judge people for merely being typical of their time. There have been lots of historical times where the typical views were horrific, and where minorities who argued against those views were persecuted. I don’t truck with the “we can’t blame the persecutors, it’s what everyone was doing” line of thought.

hadlock 2y ago
> we should judge people based on their efforts to improve, and The world did not change very quickly in regards to social norms or acceptance even in 1950, and colonialism was still very much in vouge back then. The US didn't give up the Philippines and UK didn't give up India until WW2 was wrapping up. Most economic studies I've seen draw a thick line at 1950 as "post war economy" etc etc. Values of "efforts to improve" may not have existed at all in the mainstream media back then. Tintin was/is the French equivalent of the Marvel Cinematic Universe today.
foxglacier 2y ago
> dislike [...] that we can’t judge people for merely being typical of their time. That's all very noble but you have to apply it to yourself too. If you just go along with the popular morals of your time, you're no better than them. To a future society, our time may well look immoral. Morals aren't universal. They depend on the environment people live in. As an example of something widely accepted today - we make children spend most of their childhood at school. Many of them don't much like doing that and it sounds like a fairly abusive practice if it didn't have any purpose. But kids have to go to school so they'll be successful as adults. It's a bad thing we do to people due to the circumstances of our society. Maybe in some kind of future utopia or a non-industrialised world there would be no need for school and the compulsory schooling of today would look like child abuse. Are you sure you've progressive enough to even identify the bad beliefs of today's progressives, let alone stand up against them?