to think "everyone did it back then" isn't an excuse?

[taaay]

This comes up quite a lot whenever people discuss things that were commonplace in the past.

People say husbands beating their wives was normal, children were routinely smacked or caned, racism was widespread, homophobia was accepted, and so on. Often the defence is that people were simply products of their time and didn't know any better.

But were they really?

Not that long ago, police often treated violence against wives as a private domestic matter and were reluctant to get involved. Marital rape wasn't even recognised in law. Racist attitudes were commonplace and children could be hit in ways that would be completely unacceptable today.

Yet even then there were people saying these things were wrong. Women campaigned against domestic violence, people fought against racism and discrimination, and some parents chose not to hit their children despite it being socially accepted.

I sometimes wonder whether too much emphasis is placed on "that's just how things were". Were people really incapable of thinking for themselves? Did they lack an internal moral compass? If your neighbour was regularly beating his wife, or a child was being routinely thrashed, did it genuinely not occur to people that this was cruel and wrong simply because society tolerated it?

I understand that social norms are powerful and that people are influenced by the world around them. But surely "everyone else was doing it" can explain behaviour without excusing it.

I don't think anyone is claiming it's as simple as saying "this is wrong" and then congratulating yourself.

You give an example that actually supports my point. You protested against the Iraq War because you thought it was wrong, even though you couldn't stop it and even though your taxes still contributed to it.

That's exactly the distinction I'm making. Being part of a system doesn't prevent you from making a moral judgement about it.

I'm also not claiming anyone lives a perfectly ethical life. My phone probably isn't 100% ethical. Yours probably isn't either. Most people's aren't.

What I don't understand is why that keeps getting used as an argument against discussing moral responsibility. If anything, it shows that people can recognise problems, make compromises and still think critically about the world around them.

The fact that nobody is morally perfect doesn't mean everyone is equally passive. Some people question things, some don't. Some try to change things, some don't. That's always been true.

I think it's difficult to disregard moral responsibility in this discussion along with the freedom and rights of the individual vs the freedom and rights of society. I think you posed an interesting question in your OP.

I personally feel my protesting of the Iraq war was hollow considering I financially contributed which I think makes me on some level complicit.

I don't think "everyone did it" is a common excuse though I'm not sure who you've interacted with to hear that so often but it doesn't really make sense to me unless the person saying it lacks critical thinking and even a passing knowledge of history.

Who is using these arguments though? People in your social circle? People of MN? People in general society? Older people? Younger people? People your own age?

I think you're being much harsher on yourself than on the people we're discussing.

You protested against the Iraq War because you believed it was wrong. The fact that you still paid taxes doesn't make your opposition hollow. It just means you were operating within a system you couldn't fully opt out of.

That's actually very similar to the point I've been making throughout the thread. People can be influenced by society, constrained by society and participate in society while still exercising moral judgement.

As for "everyone did it", maybe we have different interpretations of what that phrase means. I haven't just seen people literally say those exact words. I've seen plenty of variations on "it was normal then", "people didn't know any better", "that's just how things were", "they were a product of their time", and so on.

Those aren't unreasonable observations in themselves. What I've been pushing back against is when they're used as though they settle the discussion completely.

To me, explaining why people behaved a certain way and asking whether they could have thought differently are both valid questions. One doesn't cancel out the other.

I'm not sure why that matters.

Either the argument stands up or it doesn't. Whether I've heard it from people on Mumsnet, friends, family members, older people or younger people doesn't really change the substance of it.

The thread itself contains plenty of examples of people saying things like it was a different time, people didn't know any better, that's just how things were, or they were products of their era. Those are the arguments I'm discussing.

It feels a bit like we're moving away from the actual point and onto who is making it. I'm more interested in whether those explanations fully account for people's beliefs and behaviour than in drawing up a demographic profile of the people using them.

The reasons will differ depending on who is saying it. That’s why I’m asking.

Just like the reasons(which have been explained to you in detail on this thread) as to why some things happened in the past, differed depending on the person(s).

I feel I have to challenge the point that because I existed within in a system that gave me no choice but to contribute to the Iraq war I get a pass as we don't and didn't allow those involved in the horrors of WW2 that excuse even if all they did was type letters but that's only my personal opinion so don't take it to heart if you disagree.

I can only speak form my personal experience but I haven't encountered variants on the "everyone did it" excuse often if at all but the question of why people behaved a certain way and why some stand up and others don't is intriguing to debate and I respect you're views point however you likely outclass me on an intellectual level. I was simply doing my best to try and explore this with you but I'm admittedly not knowledgeable enough to give you the level of response you are looking for.

Nowadays we have more access to information from all over the world instantly than ever before. We are also taught that if not critical thinking then " just because.... it ain't necessarily so".

Don't forget the cotton workers went on strike during the American civil war over slavery in the US.

People were not exposed to as many people from other races, countries etc as a rule. Both in personal contact but in the media and culturally.

Personal experience against What People Were Told showed that in ww1 the coal miner conscripted into the infantry, that the owners son, his officer was brave, willing to risk for "duty" and bled and died like his mates. Equally, The Hon Tim-But-Dim saw his tenant farmers were as scared as he was putting shelling, had dreams and hopes like he did.
Both saw the limp.wristef pansy conscientious objector, driving and ambulance as he refused to beat arms would do his utmost to save lives of men beyond hope with care and compassion.

A daily newspaper, not even cinema newsreels until later limited information and without the Editorial Opinion and Human Interest stories did not give the information abundance which we have.

I agree that people today have access to far more information than previous generations. Nobody is disputing that.

What I don't agree with is the suggestion that people in the past were so information-poor that they couldn't question accepted beliefs.

Your own examples show the opposite. The cotton workers didn't need social media to oppose slavery. Soldiers didn't need the internet to realise that class stereotypes weren't always true. People have always been capable of observing the world around them and drawing conclusions from it.

Also, information alone doesn't explain moral change. We have more information than ever today, yet people still disagree passionately about all sorts of issues. Access to information doesn't automatically produce the same beliefs.
I think people sometimes overestimate how ignorant previous generations were. They may not have had Google, but they weren't incapable of thought, observation or moral judgement.

The fact that some people challenged slavery, campaigned for women's rights, opposed child labour or questioned social hierarchies long before modern communications existed suggests that information wasn't the only factor at work. People were still capable of looking at the world around them and deciding something wasn't right.

I think it's easy to look back and ask why previous generations didn't challenge things like slavery. Meanwhile, there are nearly 4x more slaves in the world today than were trafficked over the entire 300-400 years of the transatlantic slave trade, and the countries that are the worst offenders are often amongst the ones people think we should pay reparations to.

The existence of modern slavery doesn't tell us we shouldn't discuss historical slavery. If anything, it reinforces the point that societies can continue tolerating serious injustices even when many people know they exist.

Also, most people would agree that modern slavery is wrong. The question isn't whether we recognise it as a problem. The question is why, despite that recognition, it still persists. That's actually very similar to the discussion we're having about the past.

As for reparations, that's a separate debate altogether. Whether particular countries are entitled to reparations has no bearing on whether slavery itself was wrong or whether people in the past could have questioned it.

It feels a bit like saying, "Why discuss historical racism when racism still exists today?" The answer is that we can do both. Looking at present-day injustices doesn't make historical ones irrelevant, and vice versa.

Attitudes and laws may have changed over time but human nature has not. There is just as much, if not more, crime and antisocial behaviour today as there ever was in the past in spite of "everybody" supposedly knowing it is "wrong" There's no definitive answer to your question. people are complicated, there are no easy answers to explain human behaviour.

I’ve just been reading up on this and apparently Karl Marx said “people make their own history but not under circumstances of their own choosing “
It seems the reasons why people react differently are
Openness to experience
Need for cognition : some people enjoy thinking deeply
Tolerance for ambiguity: critical thinkers cope well with uncertainty they don’t panic when something is uncertain or wrong
Personality differences
Exposure to diverse viewpoints
Life experiences that disrupt assumptions
Time perspective
Confidence and physiological safety critical thinking requires courage
Education

Apparantly if you have these things you would probably speak up and question what’s going on around you but if you don’t have these traits you don't.
Which is what loads of people on this thread have pointed out to the op.
My simple view is everyone is different and deals with things differently there is no right answer to your question as to why people react differently to injustice and wrongs

These are luxury beliefs, OP.

For the vast majority of humanity for th vast majority of history, we simply didn't have space to wonder if we should protest against this or that until we hit extremes.

We were too busy trying to get enough for our families to eat, to live through droughts, famines, plagues, too busy dying in childbirth, or having high infant mortality, or dying of an infection antibiotics would hav sorted out in a jiffy. Too busy working 6 days a week and having socially enforced religious observance on the 7th. Or just working to the point of exhaustion 7 days a week.

Or just not having the education and vocabulary to start asking questions.

People were too busy trying not to die, to keep warm, to keep fed, to wonder if we shouldn't poach game or smack our children or campaign for racial tolerance.

I think that's far too sweeping.

Most people throughout history were busy surviving, but they weren't incapable of moral thought. Poor people, working people and people with very little formal education have been behind many of the biggest social movements in history.
The cotton workers who supported abolition weren't wealthy intellectuals with lots of free time. Trade unionists, suffragettes, civil rights activists and labour reformers weren't all sitting around with the luxury of endless leisure either.

Calling these questions "luxury beliefs" risks implying that ordinary people only cared about food and shelter and never thought about fairness, justice or how other people were treated. History suggests otherwise.

Also, the examples don't really fit together. Not campaigning for racial tolerance while working 14 hours a day is one thing. Smacking your child, shunning an unmarried mother or turning a blind eye to discrimination are different. Those aren't all issues that required someone to start a national movement. Sometimes they involved everyday attitudes and choices.

People can be struggling and still have a moral compass. The two aren't mutually exclusive. In fact, some of the strongest challenges to injustice have come from people who had the least time, money and power.

In fact, some of the strongest challenges to injustice have come from people who had the least time, money and power.

When it reaches the tipping point. Up until then, most people are too busy living to have the energy to change the world.

They may not notice what we'd now object to, in the way fish don't notice water (for an easy example, watch almost any TV from the 60s and 70s that have aged badly)

Or they may notice and quietly object, like all the people who'd give help and support on the quiet to an unmarried mother. Or they might loudly protest but have bugger all power to do anything.

The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there
The Go-Between

But if your struggling for you or your own or families survival ,not very articulate or well educated you are capable of having moral thoughts but you’re probably in no position to put your head above the parapet and rail against it
So OttersonaPlane makes a really valid point.
Also if you are living in an environment where people did smack their children , live with domestic violence when you do have the time and energy to ponder it usually when you reach a certain age you may well look back and make the statement of that’s how things were

I think that partly supports my point rather than undermines it.

You say some people noticed and quietly objected, some helped unmarried mothers, some protested despite having little power. Exactly. That means there were people who recognised these things as wrong before society reached the tipping point.

What I'm questioning is the idea that everyone else was simply unable to see it.
Most people are busy living their lives now as well, yet we still expect them to exercise some moral judgement. Being busy doesn't switch off a person's conscience.

The fish-in-water analogy only goes so far. Fish don't know they're in water. Human beings are capable of reflection. That's why some people challenge accepted norms while others don't.

I also think the phrase "the past is a foreign country" gets used a bit too often as though it ends the discussion. The past was different, yes. But it wasn't inhabited by a different species. The people living then were just as capable of compassion, courage, selfishness, conformity and independent thought as people are today.

The real question isn't whether the past was different. It's why some people living in that past questioned accepted attitudes while others accepted them.

I also think the phrase "the past is a foreign country" gets used a bit too often as though it ends the discussion. The past was different, yes. But it wasn't inhabited by a different species.

The past is another country means that in order to understand the people who lived there, you need to learn about their beliefs, customs, influences etc. We can't simply project our own on to them and expect to gain any meaningful insight into their lives. It's not usually used to end a discussion IMO, but as an admission that you don't have the knowledge needed to go further with it.

I think your your final question has been answered time and again in the thread Taaay because your dealing with real human beings each unique in their own way with different emotions thoughts and feelings
Not robots or AI

So are you unable to see your contributions to modern slavery, or do you make a conscious choice to continue supporting modern slavery? Because essentially this is what you are asking of past generations. So which is it?

Neither, and that's exactly why I don't think this is the gotcha you think it is.

I can recognise that I live in a world where exploitation exists, that I probably benefit from systems that have ethical problems, and that I make compromises. Most people do.

What I don't do is say, "Well, everyone uses phones, buys clothes and consumes goods, so that settles the moral question."

The whole point is that recognising your involvement in a flawed system doesn't stop you making moral judgements about it.

Also, I'm not asking past generations to have been perfect. I'm asking why some people living in the same society questioned accepted attitudes while others didn't. That's a very different question.

If future generations look back and ask why more wasn't done about modern slavery, environmental damage or exploitation, that's a fair question. I wouldn't dismiss it by saying, "Everyone was doing it."

That's the bit I keep coming back to. Widespread participation explains a behaviour. It doesn't automatically justify it.

You’ve been given the answer to that question multiple times though. For some reason , you’re still asking it!!

The question has been answered you say if someone ask in the future about modern slavery you wouldn’t dismiss and say “Everyone was doing it “the next person ask the same question could very well answer “Everyone was doing “it also means that on reflection they thought it was OK.
It doesn’t meant that you have a more moral high ground than them they have just stated what happened

Of course, it was only the wealthy and educated who had the wear withal to think about and act on moral choices.
Society was less joined up in the past . Even newspapers only came in during the 2nd half of the 18 th century I believe and were expensive.
Please consider that a local squire could well order no beating in the local school and we would be none the wiser.
Secondly, ingeniously designed experiments to discover less educated people’s opinions from the past show that ordinary people had much more developed thought processes and knowledge than we suppose. Generally we’re patronising about the past and historically people at every level of society were more educated and thoughtful than we suppose.
In conclusion, national laws regulated ‘necessity’ eg need to maintain public order , while privately we mostly have no idea how people thought and acted, though probably it was much more complex than we imagine.
IMO this is a complete answer to your question , OP.
🙂