The argument that we cannot apply the standards of the present to people in the past does not seem to be resonating with those who believe that George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and hundred others should be painted over, tumbled to earth, or excised from history books. They seem to think that it is perfectly okay to apply their current standards, which anybody who is anybody knows and agrees with.
I therefore burrow one step deeper. Most of us, including the protestors, would have done exactly the same in their shoes. It is rare for anyone to stand apart from his culture and question its basic assumptions. It occurs mostly in the Anglosphere, and especially America. I suppose the young people adopting this new standard would not want to agree that it is an especially American thing to try and call one's countrymen to account, but it is. The Scandinavians like everyone to march together, quietly smiling. Mediterraneans will push back against their nation, but only on behalf of their clan or region. Farther east, the matter does not even come up.
So they too would have likely been slavers, or oppressors of women, or violent bigots, or at least done business with those who were. Because there wasn't any other way to make a living. Modern girls may fantacise that they would have imported their current personalities and attitudes and been just their same precious selves had they lived in Bruges as it was declining in power and people were scrambling to get power and influence and the future looked insecure, but no, they would have been obsessed with finding a husband, just like their friends. A husband who looked like he might be on his way up, or at least had something stable. The modern boy might think he too would stand nobly aloof from a degraded age as Columbus set out from Palos, refusing to participate in the expulsion of Jews, or going along with the Spanish version of the Inquisition, or watching slaves be sold in the market. But he would. Nearly all of us would, or would put up with it.
Lots of very fashionable clothes and equipment are made in foreign countries under very exploitative conditions now. When we hear of it or think of it, we wish it were not so. We wish there were some simple solution that would not make life for those poor people even worse. But we buy the clothes and equipment. I am betting those protestors buy lots more clothes than I do. They have a lot of turnover, and the high turnover items are the ones most affected. Athletic shoes. Yoga pants. Outerwear.
Therefore, they would have gladly done business with slavers, or been slavers themselves had they lived in those days. It's not pretty, but it's a very human thing to do.
8 comments:
Even the non-conformist sets his direction from the crowd.
When we did research at Little Rock Central High for the movie on the integration, I looked at the pictures of the protesters and folks who had circulated the nasty notes and realized that they were the same sorts of people (less than 2 decades later) who wouldn't be caught dead with a racist statement. The fashions had changed--for the better this time, but they could just as easily change for the worse.
The fashions have changed again--and in many cases for the worse.
An excellent example, and I should have remembered it. You wrote this up a few years ago. If you bring it forward on your site I will make sure to link to it.
I don't have any problem with calling attention to the moral lapses of our forefathers, especially when there's a good lesson there about the blindness of each era and the similar dangers in our own. What's weird is the notion that any flaw in a human being makes him a 100% ogre who not only can't possibly have done anything valuable in his own time, but who has to be treated as an unperson who did nothing whatever and in fact never existed at all. Do these people think there were flawless people around way back then that we can fill the alternative histories with? Do we have some flawless people sharing the world with us now? It's a radical thought, but couldn't we just keep our eyes open and tell the truth now and then?
I have decided that I am the sort of person who, in any era, would have taken up arms to defend what I thought were the best things about my civilization. I am doubtless capable of compromising with some not very good things in order to defend those best things, if it is necessary strategically or tactically.
So that tells me that a lot of this is accidental. If I'd been born in south Georgia in time for the war, I'd have doubtless fought for the Confederacy; but by the same token, if I'd been born in the mountains of north Georgia (or in Ohio), I'd have doubtless fought for the Union. If I'd done the one thing, I'd have had to turn a compromising eye on slavery and white supremacy; if the other, on the genocidal tactics employed by Sherman and Sheridan in Georgia, in the Shenandoah, and after the war those same tactics against the Lakota and the other Plains Indians, among others.
Perhaps a better kind of person doesn't fight; but that comes in for condemnation too. "How could they have stood aside while slaves were being kept / the Indians were being massacred / the Holocaust was going on / Mao was starving millions?" Here the accidental flaw is related to whatever harm to which you happened to be born close in time and place. But the essential flaw is a nonbelligerent heart: it turns out that both sorts of heart are essentially flawed. It's as if there were some kind of basic flaw at the root of humanity, some sort of 'original sin' or something like that.
It isn't that a single flaw makes a person completely evil in their eyes--only if he isn't one of them. Or if they can see some power advantage for themselves by expelling one of their group.
Ionesco's play, 'Rhinoceros', gives a good portrayal of the way in which people tend to align themselves with whatever craziness or evil is becoming dominant.
(Also a good movie featuring Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder)
Ionesco is a favorite of mine. I have written about him a few times. Thanks for the reminder
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