| What do you think of "bad" ancestors? | |
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| Topic Started: Apr 15 2018, 05:21 PM (138 Views) | |
| Siris | Apr 15 2018, 05:21 PM Post #1 |
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Ausar Reborn
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Something that has recently piqued my interest are the life and times of people from the past (e.g. the Middle Ages, early modern period, etc.). And you can point out all the things they did then that we consider wrong or even heinous today. We all have ancestors who lived during these times and there's a very real possibility that those particular ancestors did things that we would be disgusted by or whatnot. What I'm wondering is, what should you think about them? One might point out that you should take a "middle ground"; that is, neither completely condemn them nor speak highly of them without recognizing their faults, but rather that one should recognize their immoral actions and respect any admirable traits they had (if either of these apply to them). But when someone does something immoral today, we don't care about any admirable traits they have, we just go "fuck that person, he/she did X". Maybe I just live under a rock and that's just how I think of people (I liken it to a person's health; they may be healthy in just about every respect, but if their foot is nearly torn off and only hanging on by skin, you don't say that they're in a good, healthy position), but what do you think? |
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The mind is its own place, and in itself Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven. ~John Milton If you listen carefully at the door to the past, what you hear most - above all the distant sounds of daily life and death - is the beating of the most unstoppable heart. ~Ian Mortimer | |
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| Kazanshin | Apr 15 2018, 07:55 PM Post #2 |
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My ancestor, or technically the brother of my ancestor, was Oda Nobunaga, Japan's greatest warlord. He was praised by peasants and feared by daimyos, and the only warlords considered equal to him are Toyotomi Hideyoshi and Tokugawa Ieyasu, who were both followers. However, that doesn't mean he didn't do something unforgivable: The siege of Ishiyama Honganji was one of the Sengoku period's Biggest massacre. Nobunaga lit the mountain on fire to draw out the rebelious warrior monks of the Ikko Ikki in order to crush them once and for all. As people ran out of the mountain, Nobunaga ordered his men to kill everybody who would come out of the mountain, including women and children. None who were caught were spared. This was one of the reasons that caused the betrayal of Akecho Mitsuhide, who killed Nobunaga in the temple of Honnoji. |
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| Soopairik | Apr 15 2018, 09:34 PM Post #3 |
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We should take into account both their good and bad sides. |
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| Kazanshin | Apr 16 2018, 12:59 AM Post #4 |
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Very well then. He was as ruthless as a man can get, but he did do a lot, mainly for merchands. He also was one of the first daimyos to accept European missionaries into Japan, and more than anything, he was a brilliant startegist, once defeating an army of 40000 men with only 1000-2000 men. |
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| Siris | Apr 16 2018, 06:31 AM Post #5 |
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Ausar Reborn
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But the impression I have from people is that they don't care about any positive aspects about people who are known to commit wrongdoings (refer again to my otherwise healthy body with a nearly torn off foot analogy). Bill Cosby, for example. Comedian, sure, but he raped and drugged women, so people ultimately now look down upon him. Again, maybe I just live under a rock, but if we take, for example, an ancestor who helped numerous people get out of poverty but also owned slaves, would and should we not most importantly frown upon him? |
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The mind is its own place, and in itself Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven. ~John Milton If you listen carefully at the door to the past, what you hear most - above all the distant sounds of daily life and death - is the beating of the most unstoppable heart. ~Ian Mortimer | |
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| Soopairik | Apr 16 2018, 08:41 AM Post #6 |
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Because in most people’s eyes, the negative things he’s done heavily outshadow all the good things. They’re not unaware he’s a comedian, but they also take into account he’s a potential sex offender. |
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| Jinfengopteryx | Apr 16 2018, 11:28 AM Post #7 |
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How many healthy people are there then? Who doesn't regularly feel back pain, fatigue etc. and is still considered healthy? I don't even think most people would apply that sort of thinking to morality. Who would begin to view MLK as a bad person after having learned that he cheated in a math test during 8th grade? The obvious solution is to give it a frame of reference. Think of size. A 100 ft tree is large, sure. But what if that tree grew in a universe where the laws of physics somehow prohibited trees from getting smaller than that which is simultaneous filled with trees way larger than that. How many denizens of this universe (who are also all larger than that) would consider it big? Of course, it is harder to quantify morality (I could think of a coordinate system where one axis measures the amount of harm a person causes or prevents and the other measures their intentions, not sure which one should have the greater weight), but once you do have it, you can compare who is better than who. The main problem in distinguishing "good" from "evil" is where to set the mid-point of your scale (and the extremes). I think it really depends on the context and what is being compared. For this reason, I think the "good person/bad person" mindset is not all that useful when you are not trying to decide if a person is your friend or your enemy and how much you can trust them (which is why such a thinking evolved in the first place). When we take your "normal society" as your reference frame (with some sort of "average" being the middle), having committed an act of rape or murder at some point in your life almost certainly places you far on the "bad person" scale. The harm caused is great (you terminated/ruined someone's entire life), you usually need quite a lot of unsympathetic character traits to be even able to commit such acts against the strong inhibitions most people have and most importantly, only very few people commit such acts (donating to charity is far more common and hence more likely to the seen as "obvious"). |
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| Siris | Apr 16 2018, 01:37 PM Post #8 |
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Ausar Reborn
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Yes, valid point. So, out of curiosity, what would you think of the poor person-helping yet slave-owning hypothetical example I gave? I guess I’d liken what MLK did to some ailment far less severe than what I’ve given (maybe something like the ones you mentioned). But this is, after all, just an analogy I had in mind. I don’t want to get too caught up in it. The rest of your post is interesting. Thanks to all the answers so far, they’ve helped clear up some things for me. Edited by Siris, Apr 16 2018, 01:45 PM.
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The mind is its own place, and in itself Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven. ~John Milton If you listen carefully at the door to the past, what you hear most - above all the distant sounds of daily life and death - is the beating of the most unstoppable heart. ~Ian Mortimer | |
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| Soopairik | Apr 16 2018, 02:55 PM Post #9 |
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IMO a slave-owning person is not very worthy of praise. No matter how nice they were to others, the fact they owned slaves shows irony. Times were different in the 1700s were slavery was legal in the US, but even then, I still don't view a lot of the slave owners in a favorable light, including several of the presidents. |
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| Siris | May 24 2018, 07:13 AM Post #10 |
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Ausar Reborn
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I guess the real question I wanted to ask was whether or not it's valid to judge people of the past by our modern standards, without historical context. After I read some webpages and online conversations on that subject, I increasingly began to think that this doesn't really work. Does anyone else want to weigh in on that? |
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The mind is its own place, and in itself Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven. ~John Milton If you listen carefully at the door to the past, what you hear most - above all the distant sounds of daily life and death - is the beating of the most unstoppable heart. ~Ian Mortimer | |
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| Soopairik | May 24 2018, 08:46 AM Post #11 |
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I think it’s okay to judge historical people by modern standards. The Aztecs performed heart sacrifice. Do you think that’d be acceptable today? Everyone has their own values and it’s okay to judge people by your own values. |
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| Jinfengopteryx | May 24 2018, 10:36 AM Post #12 |
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I think it historical context should be taken into account, but shield them from any judgement whatsoever. |
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| Siris | May 24 2018, 12:43 PM Post #13 |
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Ausar Reborn
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Edit: there we go. I accidentally deleted my original post, and have tried to replicate it and its points as best as possible.I'm a bit confused. Why the "but"? If you take historical context into account, you may also shield historical people from judgement. Your statement sounds as if these two things are in opposition. I think I should have been more clear. I mean, you can judge people of the past all you'd like. However, what I think those who speak out against presentism try to convey is that it may not get you very far in properly understanding past people. None of this is to say that it's acceptable today to slice open someone's body with a stone knife that could be many times sharper than even high-quality steel scalpels and proceeding to remove their heart. That's rightfully seen as a very brutal thing to do. However, to look at this thing that the Aztecs did and conclude that they were a bunch of evil pricks who sacrificed human hearts just for the sake of being such may give you a distorted view of the Aztecs. It's not as if the Aztecs thought or said "Lol, let's rip out that guy's heart just to be bloodthirsty, barbaric douchebags". Their sacrifices were meant to be repayments for the sacrifices their gods made in creating the world (well, in their mythology, that is). Needless to say that the Aztecs' reasons for sacrifice are really all for naught (there is no reptilian monster spirit that wants human blood and hearts for sacrifice/consolation) and that their means of sacrifice is just plain brutal. And if we could travel back to a point in time to when the Aztecs thrived in Mesoamerica, we wouldn't (and shouldn't) think of their heart sacrifices as any less ghastly or acceptable then as it would be if practiced in the present day. But as I said before, to scrutinize the Aztecs without any historical/cultural context and ending up with an interpretation of them as malevolent barbarians or whatnot might result in a skewed and inaccurate understanding of them. Note how I'm saying "might" or "may". That's because this whole topic is still confusing to me and I'm still looking to the Internet, trying to find a solid position to take on it. Also, just because this one person (or people) may not be best understood as "bad" for their actions doesn't mean I can say the same for another person (or people). I've seen another interpretation of the "judge people by the standards of their time" on Reddit and it goes as follows: "Saying that we should "judge people by the standards of their time" doesn't mean that we should judge them by their adherence to the norms of their time, it means that we should should cut people in the past a bit of slack due to their not having all the advantages we do. If you have a better view of what is just and moral, you have got it by standing on the shoulders of giants. You don't believe in slavery or monarchy or sexism or racism? That's nice, but you didn't get there by yourself. All the heavy lifting was done by generations past. That gives you no moral superiority." Edited by Siris, May 24 2018, 01:42 PM.
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The mind is its own place, and in itself Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven. ~John Milton If you listen carefully at the door to the past, what you hear most - above all the distant sounds of daily life and death - is the beating of the most unstoppable heart. ~Ian Mortimer | |
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| Soopairik | May 24 2018, 01:38 PM Post #14 |
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Well, in modern times, the Aztecs would be considered evil pricks regardless of the context, even if it was for a “good cause.” |
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| Jinfengopteryx | May 25 2018, 04:16 AM Post #15 |
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I forgot a "not" before the "shield". |
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| Siris | May 28 2018, 11:45 AM Post #16 |
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Ausar Reborn
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Ahh, okay. And that really says just that, as much as I emphasize that I don't think we should approve of heart sacrifice. I'll try to make my current and revised view of this clear again: there's nothing wrong in judgement directed towards people of the past and their moral failings (although, that Reddit quote I edited in my previous post before I learned you made another one has also got me thinking). It just might not necessarily get you very far in properly understanding them. Edited by Siris, May 28 2018, 11:52 AM.
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The mind is its own place, and in itself Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven. ~John Milton If you listen carefully at the door to the past, what you hear most - above all the distant sounds of daily life and death - is the beating of the most unstoppable heart. ~Ian Mortimer | |
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| Soopairik | Jul 7 2018, 09:04 PM Post #17 |
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Why won’t it get me very far in properly understanding them? What’s holding me back? |
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| Kyng | Yesterday, 12:42 PM Post #18 |
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Not a lot I can add to the Reddit quote, really. It makes little sense to judge people by a moral standard that would have been alien to them, and any moral failings they committed need to be judged within the context of their time. I mean, it's entirely possible that we today are committing all sorts of unspeakable crimes on a daily basis, when we don't have any idea that we're doing anything wrong. |
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