Do you care about being on the right side of history?

[QuertyGirl]

I'm an archaeologist so I do have some perspective on the long view of history.

Just wondering if normal people ever think about this?

There have been lots of times where plenty of people have signed up to ideas that we now see as manifestly wrong if not downright abhorrent.

Everything from Nazism, phernology, eugenics, racism to hitting your kids and drink driving, has had otherwise intelligent people campaigning to for them.

Does anyone here look at the modern world and ideas and take a guess how history will treat these ideas?

For a start, I think that homeopathy, plastic grass, how we treat ND people and cars for short trips will all be consigned to the historical scrap heap.

I think most people have their beliefs and have no way of knowing how the world will change

Dear lord, those weird swollen lips.....

By the time the 'right side of history' (even if there is such a thing) for the early to mid 21c is decided I'll be history as well - so no. History largely isn't a fixed static entity where there are 'goodies' and 'baddies' - early to mid 20c being the great exception, of course - and even with that you've got Holocaust denial, and currently Russia thinks it's on the right side and Ukraine thinks it is. 'History' is being re-interpreted all the time.

'The right side of history' is just shorthand for 'I'm right and you're wrong, so there' about whatever is currently occupying the forefront of people's minds.

Because I'm a historian so I spend loads of time trying to reconstruct people's opinions from the past, so it's inevitable to imagine how my generation will be perceived via what we leave behind. I often wonder how the people I research would feel about the way I represent them. You get to feel you know someone when you read their diaries and letters but you can't really know them at all and how they'd feel about things.

However, a lot of these responses assume history is always moving progressively. It's definitely not! I fear in a few hundred years we may be in a new age of authoritarian empires and people will be wondering what on earth we were doing farting around with recycling and equality and such. I hope not, but I can see it happening...

Whereas I think most of us collectively lost our minds during the height of the pandemic. I attempted to have conversations with people about how crazy and downright cruel some of the measures were and was told to my face that I was wishing people dead. According to my own sister my much needed holiday last year was akin to mass murder 😮

Same, I really don't care.
No one will be interested in my views or lifestyle

The only legacy I worry about leaving is having my kids turn into well adjusted adults, and ideally a planet that isn't a total disaster, but in that order. It would be nice to make an impact through my work, I hope I do that in a small every day way, but I don't worry about history remembering me. I will be long gone. I hope that the world is a little bit better for having had me in it, but if I don't manage that then at least not making it worse is enough for me.

Whereas I think most of us collectively lost our minds during the height of the pandemic. I attempted to have conversations with people about how crazy and downright cruel some of the measures were and was told to my face that I was wishing people dead. According to my own sister my much needed holiday last year was akin to mass murder 😮

That makes two of us. I was lucky that I had a like minded friend I could lean on. She unfortunately seems to have gone down the 'the elites want us <insert conspiracy theory of choice>...' path, which is ATM just mildly annoying.

But if you cure all diseases and end hunger there will theoretically be even more people on the planet and we’ll be extra screwed.

Personally I think when it comes to children less is more. Apart from the cases of accidental pregnancy or twins I think two children should be the maximum for everyone. Not in a China style policy but more just being the socially accepted thing to do. There’s just way, way too many humans.

Blimey this is a fairly minor issue compared to, you know, the environment, global inequality leading to political destabilisation, the loss of the NHS, exit from Europe, inequality in the Uk..

But I think it illustrates a point OP, which is that people only see what’s in front of their noses, and it’s understandable, as we all have to get through the day and shore up our families.

I think most people now realise the treatment of the environment is something we’ll regret, but mostly that’s getting governments and corporations to behave themselves.

I don’t think we’ll look back in horror at things like chemo - clearly that’s just a technology stage.

We might look back in horror at the control of drugs companies.. but equally that’s an economic stage - they are pretty awful, and the system needs sorting, but it has led to a lot of breakthroughs.

I think think squandering resources, ultra processed foods, not treating health holistically, wealth inequality will all be looked back on as mistakes - but history is full of mistakes because people don’t change.

I also dread the summer. My friend in Australia posted a while ago it was going to be a hot one and 38 degrees. I would expect that in the height of summer there. It was 38 degrees here last year (west mids) that is not normal and the government do absolutely nothing about climate change. Except vanity projects like the new boilers where they are massively overpriced and no one can fit them

I think birth control pills will be seen as shocking.

alter hormones, mood, sex drive, may even cause strokes

we hand them out like candy, people take them without a second thought

I suspect that lots of the movements and ideas that our current moment in history chooses to judge poorly were full of people certain that they were going to be ‘on the right side of history’.

I think it’s a concept employed by various groups to try to scare people out of asking questions.

I think it’s a laying claim to the future, rather than a crucible of history test.

I also think there is a lot to come out in terms of long lasting COVID effects and the impact of the rate of circulation. I think the minimal action being taken about bird flu is also going to bit us.

And I think that some of the current parenting trends qand lack of boundaries will be viewed with amazement in yearqs to come

I can reassure you on that score! It's nigh on impossible to permanently erase history. Plenty of people have actively tried to do it- from the Ancients to the British Empire.

However, those Victorian interpretations of the BE which generally saw it as a good thing, are being rapidly demolished.

British Royalty being directly involved in the slave trade was until recently, very much hushed up. Now you can watch a documentary on it, on IPlayer.

Take the idea of the "Dark Ages" - as in pre-Norman conquest. That idea played right into the hands of the Norman French elite. Now, we know that it was anything but dark.

This thread has reminded me of this 'documentary' set in the future about how we will look back at meat eating now with horror. I'm not a vegan but it was an interesting way of getting the point across.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnage(20177_film)

Agreed!

Everyone should read stuff they fundamentally disagree with

I agree with a lot of this, but the car thing is becoming more and more exposed as a choice.

In urban areas, able bodied parents can do pick ups and drops and go to work without a car- with the right infrastructure in place. I do all of that by bike.

Wasn't this paid for by a Vegan food company?

No, I don't assess my behaviours and opinions against the morality map of a theoretical future.

except exactly the same rhetorical tactic can be used by the opposite position to much the same effect.

This idea of right and wrong and ‘sides’ is just unhelpful. Maybe it’s actually much more complex.

And, frankly, future humans are likely to have a whole range of different information that they’re using to judge choices and actions. There’s no way to predict what they’re going to think because we are making choices right now without knowledge of what else happens or what happens next. There is a bigger picture that isn’t available to the people making the choices ‘history’ will judge them on.

I’m also not sure this idea that we should be judging history (and the idea of right and wrong sides is a judgment) rather than trying to understand what was actually going on and what was driving choices.

Agreed. There are too many of us on this planet and not enough "stuff" so we're fighting over it. I think the one child or family idea would be better than thinking that we should just let people starve to death or die of disease (which I know is not what you're saying), especially as it's mostly happening in the developing world.

I also think anyone with over 100 million (at most) in personal wealth should be made to invest anything above that in charities or research or something other than yachts, multiple houses and Twitter. It's disgusting that people are dying through lack of food and running water and the majority of the wealth is held by a very small minority. But I digress and typing this isn't going to change anything.

But this is applying contemporary moral judgments and projections about what will be morally valued in the future to judge other people in the present.

That what the concept of ‘the right side of history’ is all about.

I think China are reversing on the one child policy as there are other problems associated with a declining and aging population (like Japan).

@hryllilegur

"I’m also not sure this idea that we should be judging history (and the idea of right and wrong sides is a judgment) rather than trying to understand what was actually going on and what was driving choices."

Once upon a time, I would've agreed with you.

Now I don't. Some things are fundamentally bad. There is no right side, of slavery, genocide, exploitation, intentional famine or corruption.

If we do not judge history, we both reduce it to a meaningless list of dates and risk repeating the bad stuff.