I have a new column today on OnlySky. It poses a thought experiment: If you were flung hundreds of years into the past, how would your modern morality clash with the sentiments that were commonly held then?
The past wasn’t a nice place, and most of the moral ideas we take for granted today only won out after long struggle. In ages of monarchy, of empire, of colonialism, of patriarchy, of religious supremacism, our modern beliefs in democracy, equality, human rights and tolerance would be shocking, outrageous notions that would put you in league with the most radical thinkers of those days.
Now slide the lesson forward: What beliefs do we hold that the future will abhor? And what does that tell us about what we should be thinking and doing right now, knowing that our era will one day stand in the judgment of history?
Read the excerpt below, then click through to see the full piece. This column requires membership to read, but you can sign up for free. (Paid members of OnlySky get some extra perks, like a subscriber-only newsletter and the ability to post comments.)
So, what would you do as a modern person trapped in the past?
Hopefully, you’d be a shining light to those dark ages. You’d join the visionaries and reformers who stood against popular prejudice. You might become a crusader for free thought, sheltering religious dissenters from the wrath of the Inquisition, writing books that defended people’s right to make up their own minds. You might take up arms in the revolution and fight for democracy.
You might oppose imperialism and speak up for indigenous rights against colonizers who wanted to exterminate them. You might make your dwelling a station on the Underground Railroad, a secret shelter for people escaping from slavery into freedom. You might hide Jewish families from pogroms. You might march in the nascent movements for women’s suffrage or civil rights.
You’d do these things, not just because you’d have the benefit of knowing you were on the right side of history, but because you’d know it was the right thing to do. Your conscience would demand no less.
How far back in the past? As I just learned today, sportzballz player Pete Rose, who just died, had a habit in the 1970s of having girls ages 12 – 14 brought to him so he could rape them.
The 1970s. I remember the 1970s. I don’t recall this ever being news, along with the rock stars who got custody of very-young teens and then raped them. All of this was kept quiet, no big deal, it’s just women and girls, nothing important about crimes against them.
Considering how much of the news I read these days is about powerful people trying to bring back bad ideas from the past which range from “unpopular” to “extremely unpopular” today, and force them on everyone else, it’s definitely not the case that everyone would be a “shining beacon”. They’d be every bit as much convinced of their rightness if they were trying to fight for future stagnation, and not, you know, just trying to keep their head down and survive like most people would do in that situation.
(I didn’t read the article because it’s subscriber only.)