"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.  Raiding other communities for slaves to sell - or to increase your community's population (especially of young women, for sex and children and young men for laborers and some times sex) - have been pretty much universal.  So silly reactions the fact that George Washington has slaves is just the result of ignorance and arrogance.

Cannibalism is another fact of human behavior that is pretty much universal in history.  It does tend to be tied to religion in most cases - the Aztecs eating of their sacrifices, the eating of various body parts of defeated warriors.

The use of children for sex is wide spread historically and culturally. Socrates ruminated on the question if it was right for a child to object if the father wanted to "gift" his son to a more powerful individual for sex and rearing and exposure to the rich and powerful, increasing the son's potential to have an increased social status.

I have no issue with saying these behaviors are wrong today, but I strongly disagree with judging too harshly peoples of the past for  behaviors we find disgusting today.  Don't be arrogant, be understanding of different times and different peoples.