Sadly, even that can backfire badly. For example, in the 1950s, the moral, advanced, compassionate view of homosexuality was that it was a mental illness but not anything immoral, and that, with sufficient help and will, it could be overcome in at least some cases. There was a group, the Mattachine Society, which advocated for gay rights in the modern sense, but they were a fringe organization. Similarly, in the same time period, autism was seen as being caused by emotionally distant “refrigerator mothers” as opposed to being seen as a genetic disease, which is the current view. That view, at least, exculpates the autistic person from being a monster, but it isn’t exactly nice to the mothers, is it? (People also didn’t really differentiate autism from schizophrenia until the late 1970s, but that isn’t really relevant to our current discussion. It’s just kinda weird.)
The future will look back at us with different eyes. By 2100, the population of Africa, Asia and China will be far larger than the population of Europe and North America; even the US will have been majority non-white for around fifty years by that point. This future population will look back at our heroes and see them very differently.
Queen Victoria? In her long reign, tens of millions of people died of starvation and disease, while her governments extracted taxes and prevented industrialisation in many parts of the Empire. The entire population of Tasmania vanished on her watch.
Ulysses S Grant? Presided over the destruction of Indian territories.
And so on.
Don’t expect to see statues to people like that in 2200 AD.
And I thought this was going to be about Roko’s Basilisk.
TLDR; eventually we’ll create a superhuman, god-like artificial intelligence, and this entity will decide to simulate us and torture those simulations as punishment for not trying hard enough to make it in the first place.
Or something.
The way the future views us, in the past, could be very unflattering, and the future might decide to do something about it.
From a quick wiki search:
In the 1950s the Mattachine Society and Daughters of Bilitis were formed in America, and The Homosexual Law Reform Society in the UK, and are among the earliest organizations calling for the decriminalization of homosexuality and civil rights for non-straight people. None of them asserted that it was a mental illness. Kinsey’s report the previous decade showed that 37% of men had at least one homosexual experience, and didn’t assert that 37% of the population was mentally ill. The Wolfenden report from the UK government concluded “homosexuality cannot legitimately be regarded as a disease, because in many cases it is the only symptom and is compatible with full mental health in other respects” and argued for decriminalizing homosexual conduct. Christine Jorgensen was the first person to undergo sexual reassignment surgery in 1952.
The idea that the ‘moral, advanced, and compassionate’ view of homosexuality was that it was a mental illness that people could overcome is whitewashing. There were numerous groups arguing against that proposition that non-straight sexuality and/or identity was not a mental illness, and arguing for full rights for LGBT people. Just declaring a plethora of organizations, including one who published an official government report, to be ‘fringe’ because you don’t agree with them about human rights doesn’t stop you from being bigoted, it just means people were bigoted with you.
A good rule of thumb: if you’re wondering if your view of a minority group is “moral, advanced, and compassionate”, ask members of that group to evaluate your view, and filter out replies from members of that group who aren’t in a position to give a differing view from yours (like gay people in the 1950s who needed to keep up a facade to maintain employment). The fact that almost none of the few gay people who spoke out supported what you’re asserting was the “moral, advanced, and compassionate” viewpoint speaks volumes.
You’re ignoring the very next part of my post. I can’t imagine why.
The next part of your post says basically “people thought autism was a bit different in the past than they do now, and were unkind to mothers in how they described it”. It doesn’t assert much of anything, I don’t think it’s untrue, and I fail to see any real relevance to the discussion in this thread. I didn’t bother to post that since I don’t usually note out every offhand comment with little relevance or controversy that I’m not responding to, as a habit of doing that would clog every thread with long posts about “I’m not responding to all of these bits”.
Meanwhile the idea that "It’s moral, advanced, and compassionate to treat a group of people as mentally ill for sexual preference as long as that group of people is a small enough minority and has few enough allies that you can dismiss their concerns as ‘fringe’ was worthy of comment.
With China as my witness, I deny this premise, too.
~Max
Yeah - “some bad things are happening now” is not much of an argument.
This suggests a useful test in evaluating how we should treat people for their past actions. What were they fighting for? Were they a product of their time, or were they actively advocating for what are now accepted as repugnant positions? The Boeing executive falls into the advocating category. Whereas considering Washington and Jefferson vis a vis slavery, one might arguably put them in the category of being a product of their time.
Regarding how one behaves today, with an eye toward the future, I feel it is overly glib and disingenuous to throw up your hands and say crap like, “Well, we don’t know! In 2200 we might be living under Sharia law!” If you are using that as an excuse for your bad behavior today, you are signalling that you are not arguing in good faith.
China has a particularly long history of right-thinking. I believe it stretches across not one but two millennia - the book burnings and burying of dissident scholars comes to mind.
I don’t think the current state of affairs in the western world is some sort of natural outcome of human nature - personally I think it’s an anomaly.
~Max
It’s easy.
Try to make the world a place you want to live in.
If it turns out to be that world, then you will be remembered well.
If it doesn’t, then take comfort in the knowledge that those who think of you poorly are those that you would think of poorly.
Unfortunately, that’s what many people in the past have done. They tried to make the world a place they wanted to live in by making it not-so-nice for people who are different from them.
Exactly, and those are the ones that we should judge poorly.
I’m sure they would feel poorly of us, and I don’t really care.
I think the cetaceans will be rightly proud of themselves for waiting for humans to kill themselves off.
I feel free to judge any historical person regarding es beliefs or actions based on the knowledge that nothing has changed regarding human suffering. A villager cut down by a sword of Chinghiz Khan or a slave being put in chains by Thomas Jefferson would feel the pain being visited on es body and mind just like any person today would. Thus, it was exactly as wrong back then as it is now. So, no, long dead people—and even really old people still living today—get no free pass.
Also my first thought when I read the thread title! Seriously.
What you’re asking is how someone can know in advance which group they can attack or discriminate against without the risk of future consequences. Perhaps the answer, the just answer, is that you’re not going to know, so discriminate at your own risk.
That’s certainly the crudest least charitable interpretation of what I said. And not the one I was going for.
As the future evolves however it will, there will be people insisting that e.g. LGBTQ rights are the most important and MUST be fixed RIGHT NOW, even if the maximum rate of social change means some other group has to wait. IOW, they believe you can’t fix both, because that means you’re under-doing their pet group. Whichever one that may be. And that group’s agitation may well carry the day for the whole society. Ref the current thread on the historical discrimination against the Irish in the USA, that group’s problem with prejudice has been solved whereas e.g. Black America’s problem has not. History is contingent and it might have come out the other way. If your priorities today don’t match theirs tomorrow, you won’t be well-judged.
It gets vastly more complicated once you consider real examples. I deliberately chose “3 different flavors of the same actual problem: group-based us-them discrimination.” I did that to draw a bright obvious cartoonish picture that I hoped would be free from misunderstanding.
Now consider a set of futures where the question is widespread veganism vs widespread group-nondiscrimination vs widespread low-carbon lifestyle vs widespread economic egalitarianism. Being a fully anti-discriminatory individual 40 years before everybody else is great unless you’re also an unreconstructed non-vegan 20 years after every else is vegan. Or vice versa. Just saying “Don’t discriminate against anybody” won’t hack these kinds of tradeoff.
That is the real problem with @Velocity’s formula. We cannot predict which ruler some future somebody will measure us by. Sure we can guess. As several folks including me have suggested, treating everyone everywhere with more compassion, more collective humanity, etc., seems like an enduring arc of history we could/should get behind.
But Progress isn’t guaranteed. Rest assured that if a Muslim Caliphate or Scientology is the universal religion of humanity in 2300, the lefty-er parts of 2020 America (of which I am one) will not be looked back on as a Good Thing. We will be the Sodom and Gomorrah of their legends; unspeakably immoral in our abandonment of the True Principals.
Switching gears ...
@Acsenray makes a nice point just above about direct one-on-one physical harm. A point I agree with. But has he considered the harm his purchase of cheaper sneakers causes the semi-slaves in Chinese dormitory factories? Or the horrendously bad future his choice to burn fossil fuels willy-nilly is visiting on the people of 2300?
Those harms to those people are just as real as the chains or the swords of yesteryear. And we’re doing them right now.
The examples in the news this month are mostly about discrimination. A practice that certainly could use continuous reduction until it’s eliminated. But there’s so much more to the OP’s “future judgement” than that single issue.
You’re still refusing to read my post, so I have no ability to reply to yours.
That’s fair, but let’s say we’re in 1990, and I’m trying to “future proof” my Usenet posts. I consult my crystal ball and it tells me that LGBTQ folks will continue to be openly marginalized in 2020, with supporters mocked and discredited, while women’s rights are going to be a hot issue in 2020, right as I hit my peak earning power. In order to be future proof, I’m going to be anti-LGBTQ and feminist.
To put another way, how does one future proof their behavior if not by picking and choosing whom to support and not support based on which effort will be most successful? It’s a best a rather calculating way to decide how to act.