The full sentiment is along the lines of "for the past 500 or so years, the Western World, at least, has been slowly building a world based on the ideals of freedom, liberty and justice. It’s been a rocky road, but we currently live in a world where slavery for the first time is nearly extinct, where more women have more options than ever, where life expectancies are off the charts…and the future only looks brighter and brighter.
And you are standing against that progress.
Future generations— maybe not all future generations until the end of time–but definitely future generations within the current intellectual tradition, which does seem pretty well established, will view you with scorn."
Pseudo naivete is not your strong suit. I say that X is on the wrong side of history because X has been wiped off the surface of the earth. But you won’t be troubled to deal with reality, so drop it, as it’s irrelevant anyway.
I, mostly, agree with the paragraph, but I don’t accept the “poetic expression” excuse
I’m not that big to stand in the way of progress. You’re not that big to help progress
You drank too much of the poetic stuff.
You cannot have imagined four months ago that European countries would be erecting fences or that Schengen could disappear in a snap of the fingers.
What has been wiped off the surface of the earth? Pray tell.
Slavery?
Opression?
Inequality?
Lack of access to clean water?
Domestic violence?
Wow, just wow.
Do your not-quite-on-topic examples mean that the fact that they were wiped it was becuase they were on the “wrong” side of history? Is non-wiped stuff on the right side?
You dodged, possibly for lack or arguments, the real crux.
Nazi Germany may be ended, but oppression, racism, and genocide (you know, the real issues) are alive and kicking.
I can’t quite figure out what Carthage did to be on the wrong side of history, unless being destroyed without excuse shows it. Was destroying Carthage the moral thing to do?
You lump into tRSoH two completely different things.
Things you find morally/ethically wrong that no longer happen, e.g. slavery in the US.
Things which have no clear moral right/wrong but htat happened.
They are still ex post facto considerations. It’s like knowing the winning nubers of the lottery the day after the draw.
How can one divine tRSoH ex ante facto? How does one separate preferred outcomes and tRSoH?
Useless, self-serving, own-flag-waving concept for lazy people who can win witrh arguments.
Whose conscience? Mine that says abortion is killing innocent babies?
In the end, it only proves my point that tRSoH means: whatever the hell I think is right.
Understandable? Definitely. However, accepting its use means accepting the other’s position as axiomatically true; no really good in a debate.
I do actually disagree about how people use “the wrong side of history,” but, honestly, this is a distraction. It’s just a semantic argument. You may disagree with it, Aji, but you understand what is meant. So argue that, not the words.
The real problem is that Christianity has been on both sides of history. It doesn’t really have anything to do with the question. The question is whether our ideas of human rights are inherently linked with Christianity. And I agree that they are.
This is not to say that Christianity was always on the side of angels. But that our ideas of human rights came about because of Christian ideas. It provided what was historically the overarching moral framework of Western Culture for years. Yes, we would also borrow from Ancient Greece, but that more informed our scientific culture.
Freedom of religion as we understand it is a Christian idea. It doesn’t take the Eastern form of different ideas all having value. It takes the Western idea of tolerance: leave me alone, and I’ll leave you alone. And it came about due to fears of Christian sects, which themselves came about due to the Protestant Revolution (which is also why the U.S. exists, BTW.)
You just can’t expect something with as large an influence as Christianity not to have informed our morality, and thus our ideas of human rights.
Not sure I would say that in such absolute terms. History shows that other cultures and people of faith that were not Christian in the past also arrived to the idea of tolerance to other faiths.
Except that it is not. Christianity may have a lot to say about charity and compassion but it has almost nothing to say about human rights, and in the few cases that it does, ie women and homosexuality, the position is decidedly anti human rights.