(Untitled)

[strangedave]

Did you know that the evil racist Nazis were beaten by the heroic efforts of white people?
I suppose there must be people for whom learning history doesn't lead to galloping cynicism, but I'm not sure how.

Comments

[cathiis]

I think the best way to avoid the cynicism is to read/learn history through eyes coloured with all the prejudices of the time. Imposing 'current beliefs' upon the past can only lead to unrealistically judgmental, and therefore unnecessarily revisionist versions of the past. How will our actions in Iraq and Afghanistan be judged with the values of the future, not to mention our flirtation with a return to a watered down "white Australia policy" during the Howard years?

Meh, I think Winston Churchill said it best when he said, "History is bunk."

[strangedave]

I understand that we can't judge the mainstream thinking of the time by our standards. We can't just judge the people who promoted things like the White Australia Policy by our own standards.

But still -- the important point here is not just that it was racist, but that it was a deliberately deceptive bit of propoganda. We might understand that their political background was different from our own, but they still engaged in deliberately deceptive conduct, which is still going to make us cynical about the history of the time, knowing that people were deliberately manipulating how it was presented.

[_fustian]

I understand that we can't judge the mainstream thinking of the time by our standards.

How else can we hope to see how far we've come (and indeed how far we've yet to go)?

[cathiis]

As a measure of progress: valid.
As a measure of people historically: I say invalid

I would like to think that 60 years on, people will be having this same argument about _us_. Hopefully by that point society will have moved much further toward actually living by the ideals that 'we', the people of today profess to have, and yet we disprove that time and time and time again. By today's standards (and even by the standards of 60 years ago!), the human race is still woefully barbaric to each other.

[alias_sqbr]

Argh. Indeed.

[dalmeny]

That's ugly.

[arcadiagt5]

By asking the question would I rather be alive now or then?

If the answer is now (which for me it usually is) then, despite all the flaws and faults of imperfect people, things have been getting better over the long run.

[kadeton]

What's wrong with cynicism? As long as you're not pessimistic about the future, I think cynicism is a good thing.