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.

What things do you think, do or not protest against now, OP, that people in the future might judge you for?

If there is another evolution in Homo Sapiens, and I doubt it deserves one, it will look back on the relationship with the environment like we currently look at the Holocaust or slavery.

Good question!

I'm fully aware that people are influenced by the society they live in. What I find naïve is the idea that people simply absorb whatever views are around them and bear no responsibility for questioning them.

If that were true, social change would never happen. Yet every generation has had people willing to challenge accepted wisdom, often while surrounded by others telling them they were wrong.

The truly naïve position, in my view, is believing that ordinary people have so little moral agency that they can shrug off almost anything with 'it was a different time'. People aren't robots programmed by the decade they happen to be born in.

Being influenced by your era is understandable. Pretending you had no capacity to think beyond it is another matter entirely

Because discussing the past and discussing the present aren't mutually exclusive.

Understanding why people accepted things in the past helps us understand why people accept things now. Human nature hasn't suddenly changed. If we're willing to say people were influenced by social norms then, it's worth asking whether we're influenced by them now too.

Also, I find it interesting that whenever someone questions past attitudes, some people immediately want to change the subject to the present. We seem quite comfortable judging people from centuries ago, but as soon as the discussion gets close enough to involve our parents' or grandparents' generation, suddenly we're told there's no point talking about it.

Looking at the past isn't about ignoring the present. It's about understanding how we got here in the first place.

@taaay But there are still men that beat the crap out of their wives and rape them. Lots of them. There are still people that beat their kids too. There are lots of "ordinary" people who pay to watch performing dolphins when they're abroad on holiday. So I guess these are people with the same mindset or lack of intelligence that there was back then. There are still also many countries/cultures where everything on your list is still normal, acceptable and legal.

Understanding why people accepted things in the past helps us understand why people accept things now. Human nature hasn't suddenly changed. If we're willing to say people were influenced by social norms then, it's worth asking whether we're influenced by them now too.

You are the one not understanding OP.

Of course you are influenced by social norms, even knowing that some of them are immoral.

You yourself could look back in 20 years and excuse your own behaviour by saying it was normal, everyone did it.

I’m not sure it’s an excuse but can be used as an explanation as to why certain things were commonplace. Doesn’t make it right or justify in any way but does give context…

This. This is such a weird thread. You’re talking about the existence of society, OP

Many people think it is immoral to eat meat. I’m aware of those views, I respect other people’s right to hold those views, but I don’t agree with then that I’m doing anything wrong or am an immoral person every time I have a steak or roast chicken. But who knows, maybe in 100 years people will be as appalled by a bacon sandwich as we now are by a permissive approach to domestic violence.

Look at porn. Almost every woman on MN will say, all men watch porn, it's normal.

But if you ask those same women whether they approve of their partner supporting sex trafficking they would be absolutely aghast and say, no of course not.

Yet here they are, doing exactly that.

I’m not sure what your argument is to be honest. Times were different and people often live according to the prevailing norms. When I grew up the church had significant influence over daily life. The idea of “spare the rod, spoil the child” was in some circles followed literally. There were child development “experts” who advocated physical punishment as being the best way to discipline children. As knowledge of child development improved people challenged those views but it’s been a generational fight to outlaw physical punishment and it’s still legal in England, despite campaigning.

The first woman’s refuge opened in my city in 1971, a woman could only seek refuge if she was married to her abuser and he hit her while sober - a drunken slap didn’t count. Again as times have moved on and our knowledge has improved attitudes have changed.

It’s also worth remembering that sharing knowledge and information was much more difficult. You had to either have resources to write books and leaflets, be able to buy or generate publicity - you couldn’t just look up a video on TikTok. It takes education, exposure to new ideas, challenges to social norms to move attitudes and behaviours, and that all looked different even 30 years ago.

It’s entirely possible to recognise harm done while also recognising that people were doing the best they knew how to do with the knowledge they had. There’s a million things I could lay at my parents feet. I also know they had children young, had absolutely no family support, were engaged in a faith setting that informed their decision making, had very few financial resources and huge amounts of pressure day to day. I’ve needed to come to terms with my own experiences, I have no need to blame them or for them to acknowledge that harm, or for them to apologise. They did the best they knew how in their particular circumstances.

I am having some trouble following your line of reasoning OP. It makes more sense to me if someone is justifying something that’s personal to you with ‘oh everyone was doing it’ and your argument is ‘well they weren’t, so that’s no excuse.’

I have memories of my grandparents who were born over 110 years ago in a working class Welsh mining village. They were good, gentle people. My grandad didn’t hit my gran and neither of them hit my mum. They knew of women in the village who had husbands who would drink and hit them and their children. They showed kindness and sympathy to those women and those men were viewed as behaving shamefully. But marriage was for life back then and having the misfortune to be married to someone like that was, I guess, ultimately viewed as something to be endured. Thats not the same as condoning it, but there weren’t really many other options for women in that position.

I agree OP.

It’s a bit like saying “I was just following orders”.

There are certain things about which humans should always be able to think for themselves and realise are plain wrong. No matter what the prevailing wind is in terms of societal approbation or “following orders”.

That doesn’t include absolutely all behaviours that we might change our minds about, but things like assaulting and raping people are pretty clear cut.

In 60 years people will probably look back at the treatment of transgender people today with the same horror we look back at the treatment of gay people 60 years ago

OK so what are you currently doing to improve the world, that goes against the tide and your upbringing? Because isn't that the only important thing.

So easy to point the finger back. So hard to change the world against your conditioning and social convention.

@taaay You make it sound as if every husband beat and raped his wife in the 1970's (or whenever). Of course they bloody didn't! And I'm saying that as feminist. The men that rape and beat their wives now are the same kind of scum that did it back then. You're suggesting that all these societal issues have gone away just because they're illegal. Spoiler alert - they haven't. And with the advent of 24/7 wall to wall porn brought to men on a pocket sized device, they've arguably got worse.

Of course we’re influenced by social norms now, there are people who make a living actively influencing others - be that academics sharing current research on whatever social phenomenon or someone sharing skin care on social media. There are a whole raft of things people are being conditioned to think of as normal, that should be far from normal.

There’s reality is most people are too busy living life to question every single social norm, so they maybe challenge something that matters to them personally but otherwise they live their lives. They may look back and regret certain decisions or change their views at another point in time but you could end up utterly paralysed trying to live what others might consider an ethical life in every single sphere.

Looking around at what is going on in the world today from the perspective of my 76 years of age, I really don't think that the human race has ever learned anything from the mistakes of the past...

I am of an age when the things you mentioned did happen and very sadly still do
but sitting down having a discussion about acknowledging they happened doesn’t change the fact that that these things did happen.
The phraseology “everyone did it back then” I don’t think is an excuse just a statement . Because rationally we don’t all believe everyone did it back then.

It’s only through education and the will to change things is how we evolve and hopefully make things better. So I don’t understand what you’d want to achieve
by hoping people ( let’s face it of a certain age) will sit down and discuss it.

If you weigh it up each generation will judge a previous generations actions over certain issues but hopefully by learning from the past we make things better.

The way we put male rapists in women's prisons, the way we put a female patient on a men's psychiatric ward and they immediately raped her, the way a 6'5" convicted child sex offender was housed for 11 weeks in a women and children's refuge - all because institutions decided gender identity mattered and sex didn't...

Yeah, we don't need 20 years to be appalled at that treatment.

I think the lack of waste reduction, the poor rates of recycling and the dependence on fossil fuels after all this time is what the future will judge us for. And they'll be right.

That's kind of the point though.

Most of us would have no problem saying a man who beats his wife today is in the wrong, even though there are still places and communities where that behaviour is tolerated. We don't usually say, well it's normal where he comes from, so who are we to judge?

I also don't think it's about intelligence. Plenty of intelligent people go along with whatever is considered normal around them. That's true now and it was true then.

The bit I struggle with is the suggestion that because something was common, people couldn't possibly have questioned it. They clearly could, because some people did. There were people speaking out against racism, domestic violence and homophobia long before public opinion shifted.

To me, saying something was normal explains it. It doesn't automatically excuse it. Otherwise we'd never be able to criticise any harmful practice, either in the past or the present.

It is what it is, unless you have access to some kind of time machine I'm not sure you can change things.

There are quite a few things right now, including baby circumcisions for non-medical reason which I'm sure maybe be extremely frowned upon or made illegal in future. But are acceptable now by a vast majority. Even though there are thousands who appose it right now.

Everyone is influenced by their surroundings.

And I'm very jealous that corporal punishment was made illegal in schools in 1998 in the UK. I went to school in France and got smacked a few times into the 2000's by the headteacher.

People believed in the teachings of the church , so lots of them believed homosexuals were evil.
People back then though smacking your child did them good.Spare the rod spoil the child.
Most average people were trying to survive, the church told them what to think.
The wife well if she married she lost her job, so she was in quite a bad situation.

I don't think anyone is saying that discussing the past changes the fact that it happened. The point of discussing it is to understand it.

You say change comes through education, but education often involves talking honestly about past attitudes and behaviours. We don't learn from the past by avoiding uncomfortable conversations about it.

Also, I think "everyone did it back then" is often used as more than a neutral statement. It's frequently used to shut down criticism, as if something being common at the time means it shouldn't be questioned now.

And I don't really see why older people should be excluded from the discussion. Many of them lived through those changes and have valuable perspectives on why attitudes were the way they were and how they shifted.

Ultimately, I agree that every generation judges some aspects of previous generations. That's inevitable. But if we can acknowledge that, then discussing whether people were simply products of their time or whether they had a responsibility to think for themselves seems like a perfectly reasonable conversation to have.