[ SECRET POST #2807 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2807 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 033 secrets from Secret Submission Post #401.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ], [ 1 - random photo of a pizza place ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

What if it's a writer who wrote a long time ago, and thus would have had much different values than you?

Not the OP

[(Anonymous)]

I think that only goes so far...it's like the 'they were a product of their time' argument - there were people who also lived during that period who didn't act like the majority

Re: Also Not the OP

[(Anonymous)]

I think it depends what the values of the times were. If I were reading the memoirs of a Southern Slave Owner just before the Civil War and they were talking about whipping their slaves and raping their slave-women, then even though that was common in their time, it still would not get a pass. I think once you get back more than fifty years then you got to start taking things on a case-by-case basis.

[sarillia]

Personally, I don't like excusing people of the past. Understanding the context, sure. But part of that context is that there were people who thought differently even then and I don't think they should be ignored when they've fought so hard to make life more like it is now.

I don't go around saying that anyone who likes things that express bigoted opinions are terrible people though. I'm not sure why having a problem with something and liking it are treated as completely incompatible.

[(Anonymous)]

IA with this. Although I think you do have to bear in mind what differing opinions really were around in a given time period, but yeah. Somebody said that you judge people from the past by the best lights of their time and I think that's a good formula.

There's also a difference, for me, between thought and action in this regard - I think I'm a lot more inclined to forgive someone for thinking or saying something bigoted in the past than for actually doing something cruel or inhumane or immoral, because it's a lot easier for the former to be excused on grounds of ignorance or unfamiliarity or whatever.

[sarillia]

Hmm, I'm not actually sure what I think of thoughts versus actions. I come from a religious background where conscious thoughts are considered actions. So like in my homophobic upbringing, I was responsible for keeping my mind clean of homosexual thoughts, and it was a pretty significant action for me when I embraced those thoughts instead of ignoring them. But at the same time, it's not like I had control over all those thoughts, just what I did with them when they popped into my head.

I tend to be sympathetic to people who struggle with giving up old beliefs though. These things are pretty ingrained and it can be hard to train yourself to think differently, especially if you don't see a lot of the effects of the sort of thinking that you're trying to change because you're fairly isolated from the people who are affected the way a lot of people in history have been. I guess it's harder to claim that you don't see those effects when you're acting on those thoughts, so I'd have to agree with you overall.

Sorry, I'm rambling.

[(Anonymous)]

DA and not the OP -- the 'product of their time' thing only goes so far for me, too. Very often, people underestimate the range of possible opinions / actions in any given time. John C. Calhoun and Jefferson Davis were "products of their time," but William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass, and John Brown. H. P. Lovecraft was one year older than Nella Larsen and Zora Neale Hurston. Present day US news media has Melissa Harris-Perry, Rachel Maddow, Glenn Beck, and Bill O'Reilly, all existing together as products of their time, and the range of possibility for contemporary writers / artists is much broader than that of TV hosts. The past is no different. There were racists and anti-racists, reactionaries and radicals and conservatives of all stripes, feminists and anti-feminists, all in the context of their times.

I'm all for judging people in the context of their times, but I do think it's important to put some thought into what that context actually is. Sometimes that happens and sometimes it doesn't.

/wall of text

[(Anonymous)]

aw shit, I accidentally deleted part of my text wall.

William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglass, and John Brown were products of the *same* time.