Today is the memorial for Saint Thomas Aquinas and that got me thinking.
Sometimes when I talk to people in their twenties about some great figure from the past—typically the 19th century, 1920s, 1950s—they will summarily dismiss him of her by saying that this person was racist. I think they "teach" them this stuff at university. I always try to point out that their observation is trite and pointless because everyone was racist back then.
I was thinking about that reading another blogger who is trying to understand how slavery was possible.
That seems the wrong question to me. I find hatred, torture and enslavement too easy to understand. We all have the instincts to do these horrible things. What needs explaining is how we ever managed to move beyond them. That's the really amazing thing. We aren't better people than they were "back then".
Ron Paul, for example, is getting much criticism for suggesting that the civil war was unnecessary and he is wrong about that but I wonder if anyone in our era would have the intestinal fortitude to fight such a war. Slavery still exists in some places after all. And if it existed here I suspect a lot of those who casually condemn Ron Paul would suddenly be using claims that would sound a lot like his to argue why such a war would be unnecessary.
It's amazing that we ever got to where we are.
Sometimes when I talk to people in their twenties about some great figure from the past—typically the 19th century, 1920s, 1950s—they will summarily dismiss him of her by saying that this person was racist. I think they "teach" them this stuff at university. I always try to point out that their observation is trite and pointless because everyone was racist back then.
I was thinking about that reading another blogger who is trying to understand how slavery was possible.
That seems the wrong question to me. I find hatred, torture and enslavement too easy to understand. We all have the instincts to do these horrible things. What needs explaining is how we ever managed to move beyond them. That's the really amazing thing. We aren't better people than they were "back then".
Ron Paul, for example, is getting much criticism for suggesting that the civil war was unnecessary and he is wrong about that but I wonder if anyone in our era would have the intestinal fortitude to fight such a war. Slavery still exists in some places after all. And if it existed here I suspect a lot of those who casually condemn Ron Paul would suddenly be using claims that would sound a lot like his to argue why such a war would be unnecessary.
It's amazing that we ever got to where we are.
Who teaches them this at university?
ReplyDeleteCouldn't say I know who teaches them this stuff. All I know is what I learn from talking to them.
ReplyDeleteIf I had to guess post-colonial theory types would be likely suspects.
I should add, they would not be the only suspects.
ReplyDelete