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Showing posts from April, 2023

"Temporal Arrogance"

 People do and have done all kinds of things -  and people from other cultures and times think that much of what they do is horrible and beyond human understanding.  But is it patently unfair - more, it's completely unreasonable - to judge people of other times by the standards of today.  It displays an arrogance and ignorance of history that is  - or should be generally condemned. Examples are multiple. Slavery is considered a horror beyond understanding by all "right thinking" people today.  And I agree - after all, I am a person of my time.  But to condemn all in the past who practiced or were accepting of slavery is to condemn pretty much the entire human race.  Slavery has been a feature of pretty much every culture in history that was wealthy enough to develop class systems.  Selling conquered peoples was a standard way to make war pay for itself.  Selling children was a standard way to help a poor family survive.  Raidin...