The best analogy I can offer you for it being a compelling argument is that of slavery. In the early nineteenth century, abolitionists were deemed lunatics, dreamers, disrupters of norms, etc. but they had the advantage of being right (historically and morally) and are now regarded as prescient and wise. That’s what you want to be–to take the positions that, however poorly your contemporaries judge them (and you) to be, are right, and stick to those positions. The spectacle of degraded legacies only adds to that process.
My prediction is that a century from now the villains whose names we’ll see being removed from buildings and organizations will be those individuals who persisted in driving internal combustion engine cars, mowing lawns, going on cruises, relying on jet travel, or otherwise exerting a large carbon footprint after the time when it became known that the greenhouse effect/climate change has largely anthropogenic origins.
I agree. And i don’t think that’s why anyone changes the name of an institution or removes a statue from a public square. I think we do those things because today, we don’t want to be associated with those people, or those words, or honor those people with statues. I think we want to avoid hurting other people today. And send messages today about our ideals today.
Today, we think it’s abhorrent that someone is enslaved due to an accident of birth. (Enslavement of those who have committed felonies is still accepted.) Today, we think it’s fine to exclude someone from the US or other political boundaries due to any accident of birth. Today we think homosexuality and eating meat are fine.
Any of those might change in 50 or 100 years, and the words we use and the people we honor and associate ourselves with may change, too. We may or may not be able to predict what will change.
I do think, when looking at historical figures, that it’s relevant what the cultural norms were in their time. If Galileo happened to own a slave, and wasn’t known to be an especially nasty or enthusiast supporter of slavery, i don’t think an astronomical society would necessarily feel obliged to distance itself from him. Audubon, as others have noted, is actually problematic in a lot of ways, but even so, his case isn’t a slam dunk. Jefferson Davis, whose claim to fame is supporting slavery at a time when it was obviously controversial, is a slam dunk.
“We” will not be doing that. You talk about it as though the question of whether homosexuality is a mental illness is an arbitrary cultural whim, and that it is perfectly possible for a good and moral society to revert to bigotry. It is not. There is no cultural relativism in such matters. If that happens, it will be because the nation has been taken over by theocrats, and there has been a temporary setback in the general long-term trend of human civilization toward more enlightened morality. No moral person today would seek to anticipate such a shift and align themselves with it simply to protect their reputation in the eyes of future bigots who might temporarily hold power.
You may be right. But I think the most obvious trend through the history of civilization has been toward greater compassion. Tolerance, concern for the well being of others, a trend away from justifying harm and suffering through assigning more rights and entitlements to “us” than are deserved by “them”. What might this imply if we approach a post-scarcity civilization?
I think it’s likely that our treatment of non-human animals today will be seen as barbaric, just our treatment of human slaves in the past is now seen as barbaric. Not that anyone who is not a vegan will be seen as evil, but the way we are so often casual about the suffering of animals as though it holds no significance.
But it is.
If that’s your view, all I can say is - watch out for your legacy.
Well it boils down to your definition of good and moral society. If you believe the US is/was a good and moral society, how do you explain the current political climate? It would seem to me that we stand a good chance of regressing on some social norms.
You said it yourself with you choice of verb. “Social norms” is not morality.
It’s one thing to share the ignorance of everyone else in (say) Victorian society about homosexuality. It’s quite another to be willfully ignorant in the modern world. You do not regress without choosing to embrace bigotry.
And, just as with people’s attitudes to slaves and slavery in times when it was widely practised, there is rarely a uniform callous amorality. In the context of (say) Victorian society were ignorance about the nature of homosexuality was almost universal, we would still surely differentiate between those who saw it as something not to be discussed in polite company, and those who actively sought to persecute, imprison and murder gay people. Compassion as opposed to callousness (or worse, an active desire to inflict unnecessary suffering) may be differentiated among individuals in any cultural context.
If you feel that the best way to protect your legacy is to show less compassion than others, then (a) you are an objectively amoral person; (b) you are, in the long run, on the wrong side of history.
I bet they already hired a PR firm to come up with a new name. Which they will very likely roll out later this year or early next year . They know a new name will tick off some people.
I do find it weird / funny that ducks unlimited is mostly hunters. They want to save birds to kill them! Same with trout unlimited
You say this as though it’s a complex and counterintuitive process designed solely in order to “tick off some people”. No doubt they will come up with some obscure and counterintuitive name like the National Bird Society, after which nobody will have the faintest idea what they are all about, and membership will decline precipitiously.
Right, and then there are all the ancients, like the Greeks, Romans etc. Not to mention in 100 years, we will be the villains, as we enslaved Chimps and dolphins and ate real meat. Most everyone was a bad guy 100 years ago.
They didn’t “just own slaves”. They committed treason, war against the Union, and were responsible for the deaths of about 600000 Americans.
And by then, most people had realized owning slaves was wrong. Back in 1776, they were just coming around to that.
What’s your point here, is this supposed to be a “gotcha” example? Because of the way the ancient Greeks and Romans are now vilified as evil, the Parthenon and Coliseum have been demolished in sheer disgust, and the works of Greek and Roman scholars have been expunged from our libraries?
sure some people will quit over the new name but not a lot. It is possible they won’t change the name but I would put that at about 10% chance.
Sierra club had a similar issue with founder John Muir but they did not need to change names.
Ridiculous. The number of people who owned slaves was a small fraction of the overall population. They’re vastly overrepresented in the people who get things named after them, because enslavers were disproportionately wealthy and powerful.
Since this thread isn’t about homosexuality, I didn’t feel the need to do a deep dive into what the right or wrong attitude should be. Nor am I really arguing what is good and moral, but what is considered good and moral often changes. It is entirely possible that in the not-to-distant future, our descendants will look back at the decadent wickedness of the early 20th century that led to the downfall of civilization and a new dark age (rather than a failure to do something about climate change).
None of your perspective makes any sense unless you believe that morality is an entirely arbitrary cultural phenomenon, that there is no such thing as right and wrong in any objective sense; and that you deny the overall trend toward a more enlightened and objectively better morality through human history.
You also seem to working from the premise that our aim is to preserve our legacy at all costs, and that there is a flaw in this plan because some future evil theocracy might denigrate our legacy of compassion and tolerance.
To the contrary, our objective should be to do what is right and moral to the best of our knowledge and ability. We cannot control what the future will think of us, history suggests that it’s likely that they will view us from a more enlightened moral perspective. But the opinion of some hypothetical future society that regresses to bigotry is certainly not a consideration.
In the antebellum South, altho true, not that many owned slaves, most benefited from the cotton money and supported slavery.
But even without slavery, most people a century ago were racists, sexists and homophobes. Wilson was a Racist for example. Even the Great Emancipator would be considered a racist today. We can’t just the people of the past by todays standards. Do note that by the standards of that day- The South was treasonous and wrong. By taking down statues of CSA leaders, we need not judge them by today’s standards, but merely the the standards or the time.
Again: chattel slavery required at minimum captivity, torture, and forced labor. Being homophobic is real bad, but unless you were actively torturing (or credibly threatening to torture) homosexuals in order to get them to work for you, you weren’t as bad as the very best enslaver. Saying “everyone was bad then” minimizes the atrocity of chattel slavery.
We sure as shit can; and the people of the future sure as shit can judge us by their standards, and indeed they must and will. It’s nonsense to say otherwise.
Chattel slavery ended in 1865. 157 years ago.
I was talking about 100 years ago.
Do the math.