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 irony is that you're calling me naïve while arguing that people had so little moral agency that they largely just absorbed the attitudes around them.

I don't think I'm different from everyone else. In fact, my whole point is that people are capable of making moral choices. Some conform, some challenge, most do a bit of both. That's true now and it was true then.

As for wife beating, I think you're actually proving my argument. You say most people didn't think inveterate wife beaters were good people. Fine. That means they recognised there was something wrong with the behaviour. They weren't morally blind. They made a judgement about it. The disagreement was over how much violence was acceptable, when intervention was justified and whose responsibility it was. That's not the same as saying people couldn't know any better.

Yes, future generations may judge me for things I participate in today. They may well ask why I didn't do more. I don't see that as some devastating gotcha. They'll probably be right about some things.

What I won't do is claim that because I was influenced by my society, I bear no responsibility for my choices. That's the part of this argument I find unconvincing. Influence isn't the same as helplessness.

To be honest, what seems naïve to me is the idea that because an attitude was widespread, people couldn't reasonably be expected to question it. History is full of people who did exactly that. They weren't superhuman. They were ordinary people making different choices from their neighbours.

You have also grown up in a society where there is much more emphasis on self reflection and self examination - and I’m not sure that’s entirely a good thing. Disciplines like human development and psychotherapy are relatively young, our understanding of how people work, how society works is changing constantly. It’s unrealistic to expect someone to explain or justify choices made 40 years ago against a modern societal framework.

People don’t have valid reasons for every single thing they do, the decisions they make and the lives they live. Sometimes we do make decisions that act against own ethical positions or values. Sometimes the answer really is “because that’s what it was like then”.

What I won't do is claim that because I was influenced by my society, I bear no responsibility for my choices.

Are you saying you bear responsibility right now but are choosing to do nothing about it?

No, I'm admitting that living in a society means participating in systems you don't entirely control. That's not the same thing as saying something is right because everyone else does it.

There's a difference between recognising that you're part of a flawed system and actively defending that system.

In fact, if anything, being aware of those compromises strengthens my point. I can acknowledge that some things I do may be criticised in the future without pretending that criticism would be invalid simply because lots of other people were doing the same thing.

The whole discussion started because people were using "everyone did it back then" as a reason not to criticise certain attitudes or behaviours. I'm saying that widespread acceptance explains something, but doesn't automatically make it morally acceptable.

If future generations ask why we tolerated certain things, I wouldn't answer "because everyone else was doing it." I'd hope for a better defence than that.

Please tell how you would answer?

I think if I was asked in future why I was so scared to punish my children and let them lead with most aspects of their development, I'd say its the result of the upbringing I had and the resulting attitude of the day.

It was how were were told to parent. Everyone did it. 🤷

So what is your reason for not bucking against the “system” you live in whereby you make choices that may not be wholly ethical? Because saying we live in a system we don’t have full control over is saying “that’s the way things are”. I doubt anyone could stand up to every decision they make being judged against an ethical framework without reverting to “that’s the way it was”, because we do in some cases go along with prevailing values without too much thought because we’d be paralysed otherwise.

If future generations ask why we tolerated certain things, I wouldn't answer "because everyone else was doing it." I'd hope for a better defence than that.

What is your defence OP, if not everyone did it?

You seem to be avoiding questions that hold a mirror up to you.

@taaay I think you'd be better off worrying about issues such as child marriages and other medieval practices in countries like Mali, Bangladesh and South Sudan for example. This is happening now under cultural and accepted norms and doesn't look like it's going to change any time soon.

That's a false choice.

There's a huge difference between accepting some responsibility and doing absolutely nothing. Most people fall somewhere in the middle. They make some changes, some compromises and some trade-offs, while still living in the real world.

Also, this seems to be drifting away from the original point. The discussion wasn't whether people are morally perfect. It was whether "everyone was doing it" is a sufficient defence.

I don't think it is.

If I acknowledge that there are ethical issues with things I consume today, that doesn't somehow prove that people in the past couldn't have questioned accepted attitudes. If anything, it shows that people are capable of recognising problems while still being part of the society that creates them.

The fact that I don't solve every problem in the world doesn't mean I have to abandon the idea of personal responsibility altogether. That's an all-or-nothing standard that nobody, in any era, could ever meet.

I have answered your questions.

Ok well as a child abuse victim, it wasnt uncommon to get smacked on the arse. Thats not the same as being thrown down the stairs or thrown against a solid door.

I will admit i have in frustration smacked my eldest on the bum but never done it to my youngest Because times and emotions change.

Yet I still have to deal with my youngest being upset that her bf has been beaten because its a cultural norm.

There's a massive difference to being smacked on the hand or bum to being punched and kicked at.

No you haven't. you haven't answered ths:

If future generations ask why we tolerated certain things, I wouldn't answer "because everyone else was doing it." I'd hope for a better defence than that.

What is your defence OP, if not everyone did it?

You are accusing people in the past of doing exactly what you are doing right now.

I don’t think anyone is saying that though, they’re saying that choices are many and multifaceted, that if you asked people about the multitude of choices they make daily some answers will come down to “that’s the way it was/is” because we can’t articulate the reasons for every decision we make, the rules we choose to challenge or the times we go with the flow.

Regarding corporal punishment, I think the consensus was that it was necessary and beneficial. It was part of a more authoritarian society. With often much bigger class sizes, it was possible to achieve a level of good behaviour which today is absent from many schools, especially secondary. So it really wasn’t an ‘everyone’ else is doing it’ situation

Regarding racism, the recent popular decolonisation discussions have seemed to ignore the widespread anti slavery movements which led to its abolition. But they were orchestrated by the various religious denominations, especially the Quakers.

On the other hand the level of racist language that I remember from the second half of the 20 th century was extraordinary by today’s standards. I guess people were not accustomed to a diverse society. Same for homophobia.

I don't really understand why it has to be one or the other.

People can care about child marriage in other countries and still discuss attitudes and behaviours closer to home, whether in the past or present.
Also, if your point is that child marriage continues because it's culturally accepted in some places, then you're actually reinforcing the discussion. There will be people in those societies who oppose it, just as there were people in ours who opposed things that were once considered normal.

Telling people to focus on a worse problem somewhere else doesn't answer the question being discussed. It's a bit like responding to a conversation about domestic violence in Britain by saying, "What about war zones?" Both can be serious issues.

If we accept that harmful practices can persist today because people accept them as normal, that rather supports the idea that social norms should be questioned rather than treated as an excuse.

I don't know. Are you a vegan? In the future it may be considered shocking that we as society eat meat and fish. Vegetarians today say that is morally wrong. Vegans go further and consider that eating any animal product is morally wrong. The majority of people think it is fine

I agree that most people don't consciously analyse every decision they make. We all go with the flow sometimes.

But I think that slightly sidesteps the issue. The discussion isn't really about why someone bought a particular brand of washing powder or followed a random social convention. It's about attitudes and behaviours that had significant consequences for other people.

When people say "that's just the way it was", they're often talking about things like racism, domestic violence, homophobia or the treatment of unmarried mothers. Those aren't just everyday habits that nobody thought about. They affected real people's lives.

I'm not claiming everyone sat down and carefully weighed up the morality of every issue. But neither do I think it's true that people simply drifted through life without any sense of right and wrong. Most people had views about fairness, cruelty, responsibility and decency. They weren't moral blank slates.

The fact that many people went with the flow doesn't mean they were incapable of questioning it. After all, some people living in exactly the same society did question it. That's why attitudes changed in the first place.

Social norms are questioned though, they always have been. But not everyone questions every social norm, nor do they often have reasons why they do or don’t question one but not the other.

*I'm really not sure what the purpose of this thread is....even if everyone agrees with the OP (currently only 55% in agreement) what would the end point be?

5 minute argument or the full half hour?

(Monty Python)

Of course people question it. Most of the reasons that you 'go with the flow' OP is that you don't have any choice.

Most of us don't have the power to stop wars, or change a foreign regime, or live without all the damaging things in our society.

Yes we can protest and talk about it, and campaign against it, and change does come. But if you are not personally doing that then how are you any different?

So what response would you deem acceptable if you asked someone why they smacked their child or watched tv programmes where racism and homophobia writ large? What would be acceptable to you?

Future generations may well look back at meat consumption and be horrified. They may decide we were wrong. That's entirely possible.

But if they do, I wouldn't expect them to stop discussing it just because most people thought it was fine at the time. In fact, one reason they might judge us is because there were already people arguing against it. The ethical arguments aren't hidden. They're being made right now.

That's actually similar to many of the examples being discussed. People often talk as though nobody questioned racism, homophobia or domestic violence at the time, when in reality some people did.

The existence of disagreement matters. If there are people challenging a practice, then it's hard to argue that everyone simply couldn't know any better.
So if future generations judge us for eating meat, they'll probably make exactly the same argument I'm making now: that widespread acceptance explains a behaviour, but doesn't automatically settle whether it was right.