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.

“The women and girls sent to mother and baby homes weren't all quietly accepting their fate. Many were distressed, many families objected”

OP, families didn’t object - they were the ones who sent their DD’s away. There were families where the DD kept the baby; there were families where the baby was brought up as a “sister”. None of this would happen now. Often, especially if the girl was young, adoption was seen as the kindest and best option - you couldn’t just choose to have an abortion as would often happen today. For sure, there will be things that we do that future generations will question or not be able to understand - that’s the way of the world.

Society’s values and attitudes tend to change slowly, @taaay. It starts with a few people who are willing to stand up and say that X behaviour is unacceptable, but change doesn’t happen until you reach a tipping point within society, where more people agree that X is wrong than think it is acceptable. This takes time - it won’t happen over night.

And at any time in history there will be beliefs and attitudes that are considered perfectly acceptable that will later go on to be considered unacceptable. There are probably things you and I do, attitudes you and I have, which the majority of us consider completely acceptable, but will horrify our grandchildren when they look back at them. Do you want them to judge you by the standards of today, or of their own times?

Perhaps the people doing it didnt think it was wrong. Perhaps they thought their way of thinking was right?
Perhaps parents who smacked their children thought they were doing the best for their children.
My gran had a cane she kept above the mantle. My mum used her hands to smack us, I didn’t smack mine at all. My dd just says ‘no thank you’ when my dgd is misbehaving.
Times change for the better but my Nan thought she was bringing her children up properly and those that objected were wrong.

I knew someone whose mother sent her to a mother and baby home and her baby was adopted. It nearly broke her. Another friend’s mother forced her to have an abortion she didn’t want. On the whole young women did as they were told.

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.

I think that it is a fair excuse. When people say 'everyone' they obviously mean, the vast majority, it was normal, society accepted it, etc. It does excuse their behaviour. There are so many things that are wrong but accepted in society, then and now.

You are not relating that to what you do today.

When you look back and someone says why did you do that, you will say, everyone did it.

With regards to domestic violence, it wasn't that "everyone was doing it," because obviously they weren't.

Most people firmly believed it was wrong. However, they also tended to believe the state should not be interfering in marital issues.

The same was true for the ban on corporal punishment - plenty disagreed with it, more and more over time, but the idea of someone being a criminal because they smacked their child's bottom worried them.

Eventually there's a tipping point and enough people feel strongly, so society changes. But it's gradual, and the same person will have different views on the same issue at various points in their lives.

The reason things have changed is precisely because people did not think such things were okay !

Who do you want to have that conversation with and who’s stopping you? It feels like you have a particular situation or circumstance in mind and you’re looking for an acceptable explanation or a mea culpa?

In general I find people quite open to discussing past culture and societal change. It becomes much harder when talking in particular or personal terms because people do feel defensive and sometimes the only honest answer is that they acted in a way consistent with the times.

I read something saying the marital rape thing isn't 100% true and it did actually get prosecuted under different legislation. Although I suspect not often enough.

"I sometimes wonder whether too much emphasis is placed on "that's just how things were". Were people really incapable of thinking for themselves?"

That sounds a lot like the currently dominant social mores of our times, OP. It could be that you are incapable of thinking for yourself, and are just following the herd.

"The past is a foreign country. They do things differently there." Fifty years later, it still holds true. Or do you think all the societies around the world see the world the same and want the same things?

I don't think those things are mutually exclusive.

Yes, social change is usually gradual and yes, attitudes that seem normal today may well be criticised in the future. But that doesn't mean we can't make moral judgements at all.

The argument seems to be that because future generations may judge us, we shouldn't judge the past. But future generations probably will judge us. That's what every generation does. They'll look at things we tolerated and ask why more people didn't speak up.

Honestly, I'd rather they did ask those questions than simply shrug and say everyone was a product of their time. Otherwise nobody is ever responsible for anything because there is always a social context explaining why they thought as they did.

Also, the fact that change starts with a minority of people speaking out actually supports my point. If some people were capable of recognising that an accepted behaviour was wrong, then it wasn't impossible for people living at the time to think differently. It may have been difficult, but not impossible.

So yes, future generations may judge me. They may identify blind spots I can't see. That doesn't mean they're wrong to ask the question. It just means I was influenced by my time, just as people in the past were influenced by theirs. The fact that I might be judged one day doesn't mean nobody should ever discuss whether I got something wrong.

Look here at the number of people saying don't interfere because my neighbour smokes cannabis/ this person hasn't suncreamed their child/someone shouted at their (own) child in the supermarket in a horrible way.

And it's not practical or desirable to constantly interfere. Even if some or all of those things bother you. And I'm very glad we have made things like domestic violence easier to condemn.

Saying I might be influenced by the values of my own time doesn't prove that nobody can ever think independently. If anything, it suggests we should all be willing to examine accepted beliefs, both past and present.

I don't think anyone is claiming that all societies see the world the same way. The fact that different societies have different values actually weakens the argument that people had no choice but to think as they did. If people in one place, or even within the same society, could hold different views, then there was clearly room for independent thought.

The phrase about the past being a foreign country is true. But foreign countries aren't beyond criticism, and neither is the past. We can understand why people thought differently without pretending that every belief or behaviour was beyond question.

To me, the more interesting question is why some people challenged accepted norms while others didn't. Simply saying everyone was a product of their time doesn't really explain that.

But those moral judgements are informed by our social circle and wider society. In my parents case they would have been severely judged for not disciplining their children, the man was the head of the house and to be obeyed by everyone. In his circle the moral thing to do was rule his household and discipline his children. So while objectively I agree physical punishment is harmful, I can also see he was making what was in his mind a moral choice. Bearing in mind social structures were less permeable than they are now and variety of opinion harder to access.

I think there is a tendency today to think HERE is where the line will be drawn, everything we do now is the correct and best way and everything that had gone before is substandard.
FWIW, although I obvs don't agree with hitting children, I think the current 'child-led' way that children are being raised, with the mum sitting in the dark because her baby can't be left alone and not daring to go for a shower because the baby 'refuses' to be put down will fall into the 'what the hell were we thinking of?' category in years to come when studies into maternal mental health are analysed.
The responses I will probably get to that comment illustrate how people just go along with what is considered best practice at the time .

Surely that’s never changed though, there are always people more willing to engage in discussion and debate, people who are more prepared to challenge accepted norms. People are people, some are very engaged in social and political issues and others aren’t. Some don’t have the time, education or headspace, some are dealing with their own stuff to take on another viewpoint. It’s not deep or sinister that folk just get on living as best they can with the knowledge they have.

@taaay "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"

But ordinary people did have a moral compass, otherwise so many of them wouldn't have fought for societal change over the centuries. Lots of them having been killed, imprisoned or deported for their efforts. Women didn't have the vote, the slave trade was legal, children were sent down the mines, families were left to rot in poverty at the mill owner's whim and people would queue to see dancing elephants at the circus. All of that has been swept away by "ordinary" people. Yet there are still ardent racists, wife beaters and animal exploiters. So how do you explain their existence in an age of relatively progressive thought?

To me, the more interesting question is why some people challenged accepted norms while others didn't. Simply saying everyone was a product of their time doesn't really explain that.

Do you formulate a personal opinion based entirely on the facts available and ignore the prevailing popular view on EVERY social norm nowadays, OP? If there are ones that you decide are objectively bad or wrong, do you actively make your views known and campaign against whatever it is?
Probably not. Like the rest of us, we have other things that are more important to us, or we are spending our time and energy trying to scrape a living and bring up our kids, just like the majority of the people in the past that you are so judgmental about.

As PP have said, plenty of those in the past disagreed with social norms but if they didn’t affect you directly then you probably didn’t give it much thought let alone actively campaign against it, just like us today.

So yes, future generations may judge me. They may identify blind spots I can't see.

It's not blind spots you can't see OP. You see them. You can name all the things that you participate in today knowing full well that they are morally wrong but accepted by society.

Unless you don't? You don't buy stuff that will end up in landfill. You don't wear clothes without sourcing how they were made? You check on the wellfare of animals used in food and other products? You don't consume food shipped in from other countries? You don't use AI or fossil fuels or order anything from Amazon? You know the conditions of the workers who mined the minerals for your phone. Even if you drive an electric car or only use electrically powered public transport, we still don't know what we are going to do with all the batteries. More landfill probably.

Unless you live off grid, I am sure that you partake in much of this because it's normal and everyone does it.

Yes, ordinary people fought for change, often at great personal cost. But that rather suggests that ordinary people were capable of recognising injustice even when it was widely accepted. That's exactly why I don't buy the idea that everyone was simply a passive product of their time.

As for racists, wife beaters and animal abusers still existing today, their existence doesn't prove that social norms don't matter. It shows that people make choices. Some people challenge harmful attitudes, some embrace them and many go along with whatever is socially acceptable around them.

The fact that a minority of people still behave badly today doesn't mean we stop making moral judgements about them. We don't say racism is acceptable because some people are still racist.

To me, the existence of people who fought for change and people who resisted it, both in the past and now, suggests that individuals have more agency than "they were just a product of their time" allows for. That's what makes the discussion interesting. If everyone simply followed the prevailing culture, there would have been no reformers then and no bigots now.

completely agree that most of us participate in systems that have ethical problems. The difference is that I'm not claiming that this means we're incapable of making moral judgements about them.

In fact, you've listed a whole load of things that people are already debating and criticising. There are people who try to buy less, reduce waste, avoid certain companies, eat less meat, fly less or shop more ethically. Most don't do it perfectly, but the fact they're thinking about it shows that social norms don't completely determine behaviour.

Also, there's a difference between participating in a system and actively defending it. I can acknowledge that my lifestyle may contribute to problems without pretending those problems don't exist.

And if my grandchildren look back and say, "Why didn't more people do something about this?" that's a fair question. I wouldn't expect them to stop asking it simply because everyone was doing it at the time.

The fact that I may be compromised by the society I live in doesn't mean previous generations were beyond criticism. If anything, it suggests that every generation should be willing to examine itself, including its own blind spots.

I too think you are quite naive OP.

Naive to think you are so different from everyone else. And naive to think that these issues are so very black and white.

Wife beating for example, you seem to think that this was something people were either for or against. Whereas in reality you would really see was that most people thought inveterate wife beaters were bad/lacking in self-disapline, not living up to their obligations in marriage, cads, and possibly ought to be dealt with by the priest or woman's brothers etc. Even the police sometimes intervened in such cases.

There was however more acceptance of violence in general, and that includes a certain amount of violence erupting in a marriage, and recognition that some marriages were not good or were even toxic. And a tendency to see that kind of thing as a private matter. Something that outsiders weren't really in a position to judge.

This is similar to many of these kinds of topics, it's not that people thought that things were great or fine or good. But their sense of where they ft into human life was differernt from ours.

We have things like this too. I daresay you think that environmental responsibility is a good and moral thing. How many compromises do you make in your life about it? Do you have a car, heat with oil, wear sneakers made with petroleum products? Were those sneakers made by some underpaid poor sod working in a shitty factory somewhere? Maybe one day people will think that's just as bad as wearing things made by slaves.

That’s a circular argument though. There have always been people who pushed against the accepted norms, but those accepted norms held, and still hold, significant sway on a societal basis. Otherwise no one would eat meat, buy crap from Temu, use single use plastics etc.

This thread is becoming embroiled in an awful lot of hypothetical scenarios. You can dwell on this stuff until you're blue in the face but nobody nowadays can possibly know what "everybody" felt like in the past. Or what actually precipitated change. We don't seem to have learned anything from the past anyway, too many egos, top many conflicting opinions, too many unwilling to compromise or co-operate.

So you are just admitting that you are doing it because everyone else does.