Albedo > the point I was making seems to have been lost, so let me rephrase.
Saying not only that the people who do not share your moral point of view are objectively wrong, but that they know they are wrong, that they are consciously insincere in their beliefs, that the only way they'd be sincere in those beliefs is to suffer from a pathological lack of empathy…
I'm probably not making myself clear either. I'm not saying the Grandpa Racists of history knew they were wrong and were insincere or hypocritical. I'm saying they
should have known. Looking at another's suffering and feeling it along side them
should be innate. That most of them were able to suppress the empathetic instinct and be utter shits to each other anyway is a great tragedy, but that's a litany we have all heard now so I won't harp on it further.
…is exactly the kind of things that would be said by someone who is unable to emphatise with people who think differently, someone who cannot conceive different values as being the product of rational thinking, but necessarily as that of insincerity or insanity.
I won't presume to understand what you are really thinking and feeling, but your expressed words give the impression of a huge level of double standard and moral myopia.
This conversation is jumping around a fair bit. I think it's a bit unfair I have to defend myself against charges of lacking empathy, now (and I've accused exactly noone of insincerity or insanity), so I'm going to go back to the beginning. Here are some statements that until this thread I didn't think were that controversial. Here is where I'm coming from.
1. History sucks.
Really. Show me a period -- post the advent of societies bigger than small bands of hunter-gatherers, and prior to contemporary technological civilisation where hyperabundance has
more or less vastly improved the standards of everyone's lives -- where life for the majority, those not part of the elite, or the priestly class, or the gentry, was anything other than nasty, brutish and shite. Find one, and I'll show you a period where the hagiographers were telling porky pies.
2. The past has no moral lessons to deliver, other than to illustrate abject horror.
Yeah, there's been joy, great art, great architecture (sometimes not even involving the deaths of thousands of slaves!), and inspiring stories of endeavour. But all of that kind of loses its lustre when you consider that for most of history, we've regarded
that time we crossed over into the next valley, slaughtered an entire village and piled their heads in the town square as a fun bedtime story, not an indelible stain.
3. Down with society/I am an edgy thirteen year old.
I've got no respect for society, largely because of the above. Individuals, yes. Cultures, yes. But fuck any societies -- as in the combined forces of economies, states, religions, and other power structures, and the interrelationships amongst them, that end up controlling those peoples and cultures -- that can't feed their own people without destroying others. Whoops, that's most of them. Societies are gigantic, impersonal meat grinders. They don't have feelings, so I'm not worried about causing hurt by saying this.
4. The gears in the grinder had eyes, and ears, and empathy.
Societies are gigantic, impersonal meat grinders, but they're made of people. Some of those people, like Grandpa Racist, may have not participated directly in the grinding, though they sure benefited from it. They might not even have realised what was going on. But the moment Grandpa Racist felt that twinge of empathy for his neighbour getting run out of town, and didn't connect the fucking dots and change his mind, or join a movement, or take up arms, like the people who throughout history
have actually done so and changed the world for the better, he became part of the problem.
5. We're better.
Having rejected the entire history of human endeavour as a bit crap, let me just say I don't think we're perfect (and I agree that one day people will view Albedo as an uncouth barbarian),
but we're doing pretty good. A world where
fewer mothers watch their infant children die each passing year is an okay world, that's getting better! We're actually in a pretty good position, with our high energy diets, long lives, education, and global communications, to pass judgement on all those who came before us as being a bit crap. Try it. It's fun, and you can't hurt the feelings of the dead.
So yeah, back to my original point. 'They were products of their time' is a pretty poor excuse. Those times (doesn't matter which) were by and large unworthy of respect (see 1, 2, 3). Those people could have tried harder (see 4). We basically set the standard for decent human behaviour, at this point (see 5), and needn't accept poor excuses from dead people.
's all I'm saying.