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the fact that "smart people" go along with bad social mores says more about the faults with who we denote as "smart people" than about the way we should judge p
by RodericDay 13y ago
the fact that "smart people" go along with bad social mores says more about the faults with who we denote as "smart people" than about the way we should judge people from the past.
you say "if they were smart today they wouldn't be racists", I say "they probably don't deserve as much credit as they get, if they were racist while a tiny minority of people was aware of the problem and trying to move past it".
there have always been people against slavery, against the oppression of women, against homophobia. don't dismiss their efforts and achievements in examining society just because you don't want to sully the image of technocratic heroes.
- bmelton 13y agoI'm speaking out of context from those people specifically as, for the most part, I don't have any particular adoration for them. Regardless, you simply cannot take things out of the context of history. In that day, it was common to find scientific evidence (or at least reports masquerading as scientific from otherwise esteemed scientists) suggesting that non-caucasian races were inferior, and weren't meant to be treated as equals. It wasn't too long ago that the common knowledge was that homosexuality led to increased and unavoidable risk of diseases. It's too easy to look back on history and decry those idiots for succumbing to common knowledge, but it is naive to do so.. and is analogous to mocking them for letting so many die of Polio, when it is so easily vaccinated against now.