The Wrong Side of History

[rowyn]

History is full of things that are abominations in modern Western society but which were not only tolerated but seen as outright positive things in prior eras (and which continue to be treated as such in some parts of the world. Eg:

* slavery
* treatment of women as property
* racism
* sexism
* serfdom
* indentured servitude
* colonialism in the name of "civilizing the savages"
* criminalization of miscegenation

Etc.

These are things that people pretty much don't argue in favor of in modern America. Granted, there are enormous debates over how much discrimination remains based on gender or race. But very few people will argue that discrimination on those grounds is good. In other areas (like sexual orientation or discrimination against those who are not cisgendered), the debate is more vehement. The trend line is towards acceptance but we're not there yet.

Sometimes I wonder what's next. In two or three hundred years, what will humanity be looking back on and saying "How could those 21st century Americans commonly accept something so awful, so abominable, as that"? Not something that we're really debating right now, but something that most people don't even think about. Something that's just the background of our lives, just the way things are and always have been.

Some of my candidates:

* Animal rights: maybe in 2310 "pet ownership" will seem as cruel and inhuman as "slave ownership" today.
* Employment: "employee" will be considered a step up from "indentured servant" -- "It's not as bad as slavery, of course, but still wrong".
* Children's rights: all current forms of disciplining children will be regarded as child abuse.

These aren't things that I actually think are horrible, mind you. I'm just trying to imagine what things I could be terribly wrong about, just as I consider many things people in 1710 took for granted as "part of the natural order" to be terribly wrong. And of course, there are fringe groups on these issues already: PETA, Communists, "unparenting" in its more radical forms.

What do you think that you might be wrong about?

Comments

[kelloggs2066.livejournal.com]

Okay, I misinterpreted the question.

When you bring up Slavery, I think of the people (my own ancestors) who were abolitionists long before the Civil War.

For the issues you list, I think that most people viewed them as necessary evils for the purpose of maintaining the society they lived in. Thus, something must be recognizable as regrettable before society has the luxury of regarding it as evil.

Abortion is the only real issue I can think of where we're close to that point technologically.

As for animal rights:
Before animal rights becomes an affordable luxury for our society, you're going to have to solve the problem of feeding people meat.

As for pets: Well, certain of our animals will not survive without human assistance. Sheep, cattle, chickens, won't survive in the wild. If you turn loose the dogs, cats and horses, they will turn feral, and be a danger to people.

Also, Consider evolution of dogs. Dogs have been human companions for over 100,000 years. That pre-dates Homo Sapiens Sapiens being Homo Sapiens Sapiens. We affected their evolution, and they have affected ours. We survive better with them, and they survive better with us. It's a symbiosis that would be cruel to break up. To turn dogs out into the world without us would (in my opinion) be cruel to their nature as well as ours.

(On the other hand, cats, seem to go feral and survive and thrive easily.)

But dogs... Apparently, even their brain structure and communication is altered in ways we hardly realize that makes them companion animals. They use techniques to communicate with humans that don't work with other dogs.

To turn human society away from things like running farms and keeping pets will be an extremely difficult undertaking. I don't know if society is going to have the luxury to do that in the next few hundred or thousand years.

[rowyn]

Well, maybe 300 years ago slavery was regarded as a necessary evil by a sizable number of people. But I've never gotten the impression that concepts like "a woman's place is in the home" were regarded as a necessary evil due only to the constraints of technology. Stuff like that was the Natural Order and the Way Things Ought to Be.

I'm not going to argue that animals ought to have all the rights of humans because yes, of course I think that's silly.

But then again, lots of people a thousand years ago thought that it was silly to argue women should have all the rights of men. c.c

In the future, I may be regarded as a Neanderthal

[kelloggs2066.livejournal.com]

On the other hand, I think one thing that needs to be tossed on the ash heap of history is the notion that men and women are identical and all differences are due to socialization.

What will get me banned from polite society is my belief that men and women *think* differently.