Presentism
B.W. Wojciechowski
About two years ago I wrote an essay under the title:
Never, NEVER, Judge your Ancestors by the Standards of Today
Here it is with minor changes. Just in case you missed it two years ago.
Recent historical concepts disturb well-educated people. Society is being shaken by thoughtless oafs produced by a lamentable educational system and informed by an ideologically inspired, single-minded news and other media. Destruction of statuary and re-naming of streets and buildings is the signature act of a violent revolutionary change, a time when the past is vilified and distorted to enflame the useful idiots of radical change. History shows that such events eventually peter out and some measure of rationality returns to society, even dread castles have become national treasures (e.g. the Tower of London). If we have progressed since the days of bloody revolutions of the past, we should avoid such troubled times and remember the settings of our ancestors’ lives and seek to save the best while showing some intelligent understanding of what may have been wrong.
Our ancestors ancient and recent, including our parents, lived in a different world. They fitted into the milieu of their time and worked to succeed in competition with their contemporaries, while dealing with the possibilities, needs and realities of their day. To the extent they succeeded they deserve our gratitude and credit for giving us the opportunities we have; they built the societies and capabilities we know. Their shortcomings from our present point of view may attest to bad luck, or shortcomings in dealing with the challenges they faced. They cannot be blamed for holding views of their time, they lived in a different milieu. Judge them on their realities, not on what they might have been in our “woke” world of today. Shakespeare had it right.
“The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones.”
What of our historical figures’ erstwhile deeds which now are judged to be abhorrent? Certainly, there were misdeeds that we can universally condemn in today’s world: violent rape, genocide and various deeds which can be assigned to mental or moral ailments of the leaders. However, certain acts we now see as evil were actually acceptable as “policy.” Think about horrific public executions to discourage crime. We might well blame those who set such policies, but what about those who carried them out, and watched them? They were common folk, just like we are.
Most of what we tend to blame our ancestors for was not evil in their time. Instead, these now-denounced acts should serve as a warning, to us: warnings of new evils and stupidities that lurk within the societies we now populate. Our descendants are sure to find fault with our ideologies; even with our precious principles. Do the “progressives,” caught up in the righteousness of today, realize that they may be remembered as evil because they adhere to today’s “laudable” norms, norms which are likely to be criticized by future generations? Or perhaps they think today’s ideologies, today’s principles, today’s norms, are the standard for all ages.
Not so. Things change in our evolving societies as knowledge, technology, understanding and capabilities change. We must all become aware that what we espouse now may be fatally flawed in a future setting. Change will take place and the transition can be painful. What is a sure given is that change is inevitable. We must take a longer-term view of our future and try to steer our inevitable transitions to an end which will make the world not just “better,” as we currently see it, but more accepting of, more open, even friendly to all future changes made necessary by the progress of science. Most of all, we should set standards for rational policy-setting, and avoid wishful thinking and irrational passions, the basis of several current ideologies.
What should we do to make the changes required by our inevitable technological and scientific progress less painful? To examine this question, we must go back to basics and face realities. You figure out what these are. All I will say is that ideological positions which conflict with reality are a burden that societies will be forced to bear and to use their limited resources to maintain. They must not last. How many resources will be needed to maintain adherence to silly or unnatural policies is a question no one is evaluating in an unbiased, objective, way. Group think is a bad substitution for quantitative evaluation, and clearly points to a failing of our ideologically-driven political systems. Today’s political posturing does not allow reason to prevail, even in the halls of academia.
