Oftentimes, when defending/advocating for a particular cause, some people will say, “It’s 2019!” (or “insert____year”) as their argument on behalf of it. But…that’s not a valid argument at all.
The argument of, “We ought to do this because it’s the year 2019” essentially means, “If the majority of people support Cause X at a particular time, then Cause X is correct.” It is appeal to majority. It has no more logical validity than if someone in Germany, in the 1930s, were to be asked, “Why do you support fascism?” and replied, “Because it’s the 1930s.” (Not that I’m comparing the causes which would usually elicit the “Because it’s 2019!” defense with fascism, but you get the point)
Saying “It’s 2019” is an argument that is not based off of the merits or demerits of a particular idea or platform at all. It says nothing about whether such a policy proposal is valid, good, bad, or moral - it simply says “Get on the bandwagon.” That is not a valid argument.
I’m pretty sure it’s shorthand for one of the following two arguments:
It’s the 1930s, and everybody back then was steeped in a culture where women were furniture and black people were hunted for sport. Therefore my grandpa/young me/my larp character wasn’t some kind of deviant for holding such attitudes and shouldn’t be looked at as worse than the average person from that era.
It’s 2019 and non-shitheads know better now. I’m not a shithead, so I don’t endorse that horrible thing you’re countenancing. (Serously - using emacs?)
I don’t think it is appeal to majority so much as begging the question or affirming the consequent.
If I say something like, “This is 2019, nobody should be opposed to same sex marriage” the argument assumes that being in favor of same sex marriage is the only correct choice and that anyone opposed should have obviously changed by now.
Every single time I’ve heard someone make an argument along these lines, it has generally been connected with an actual argument about the relative merits of particular ideas and causes. That is, very rarely do people simply say “It’s 2019” without also making clear WHY it is that they favor a particular idea or cause. The overall gist of the argument is generally along the lines of, “I believe that THIS is a good thing, and I would have hoped that most people would think this way by now.”
Also, it’s often explicitly NOT an appeal to the majority. That is, I’ve heard people use this turn of phrase when they are talking about distinctly minority or radical political views. I don’t think I would call Black Lives Matter a majority position within the United States, but I’ve heard BLM supporters make the argument that their concerns SHOULD, in this day and age, have become mainstream.
The term itself is a sort of shorthand for “I think that society’s views should change and evolve over time, and that we shouldn’t necessarily do things the way we’ve always done them” And, to be honest, what sane person DOESN’T believe this, at least about some issues?
Right, the person is simply declaring the correctness of their belief and bolstering it by saying it is 2019, so obviously their belief should be enacted.
I think it is universal that society’s views should change and evolve over time, but it does not follow that a person’s particular belief fits that category.
Not sure I ever suggested that it does. But people of all political stripes, for just about all time, have been arguing that their own views are the obviously correct ones.
So in sum, your point and the OP’s is basically that some people disagree with other people, and also believe that their own views are the obviously correct ones.
Well, using it as a moral argument does depend on the belief in ethical progress, which in turn depends on some variant of moral absolutism. But arguing for moral relativism should probably be its own thread.
At least as often, though, I see it as an argument instead against technophobia or general stagnation. It’s 2019, Mom, it’s time you learned how to text. Or it’s 2019 buddy, time to get over the ex and get on Tinder.
No, it doesn’t. Rather, it’s affirming, as jackdavinci pointed out, an assumption of moral progress. It’s saying, essentially, that the old-fashioned belief or custom that the speaker is critiquing has been discarded because we’re not as ignorant nowadays as back in the day when that old-fashioned view was generally accepted.
Note that such a speaker is generally not claiming that the belief or custom would have been correct in the old days when it was held by a majority, as your interpretation implies. “It’s 2019!” doesn’t mean “Whatever is the majority view at a particular time is correct”; it means “We’ve learned a lot since the old days, and one of the things we’ve learned is that this belief/custom is wrong.”
Now, I’m not claiming that anyone who uses such an argument is necessarily right. I’m just saying that the argument’s not as simple as “The majority view is automatically correct”.
I always thought it was invoked because any year past 2000 sounds futuristic and everything cool should have happened already. “It’s 2019… We should have flying cars!” Obviously any idea you came up with is super cool and should have happened already.