you basically have to write off the ninety nine point something percent of all humans who ever lived that did not grow up with your very specific set of values
that seems limiting
I keep seeing posts to the effect of “being a product of their time is no excuse” and I’m just like – that’s awfully easy to say from the other side of things. Awfully rich to assume that the values of 2017 progressives are the be-all end-all. Who knows what new prejudices our grandchildren will notice that we’re totally blind to? You can’t stand on the shore and yell at a fish for being immersed in the water.
I think it’s a really interesting exercise (but not a Rule for whether someone is Acceptable, because that’s not productive) to look at historical morality in context, not according to the prevailing attitudes of the times, but according to the range of attitudes. According to the moral principles genuinely under question and debate at the time! So, as a blatant example – I do judge people like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson for their ownership and terrible treatment of slaves, because abolition was an idea that existed in their time. Unpopular, but thinkable. And Jefferson at least was quite radical in other areas and fully capable of deviating from his predecessors and peers!Whereas I don’t judge Marcus Aurelius nearly as harshly, even though he too was a powerful leader of a slave-owning nation who tried to think seriously about moral principles and never considered freeing slaves, because the idea of slavery as a moral wrong had no traction or presence in the ancient world whatsoever.
Context is relevant, but that doesn’t make it simple.
I think TJ and GW are perfect examples because yes, they absolutely knew that slavery was wrong – Jefferson said it was a corrupting influence on the entire state of Virginia – and yet they constantly talked in circles around the idea of actually freeing their slaves or actually speaking out in favor of immediately-executed, total abolition because, like, that would be hard and unpopular among their social circles and dangerous to their political careers and who would bring them lemonade and raise their children for them? But also, I think, because abolishing slavery would mean acknowledging how truly evil it was, and thus acknowledging their own complicitness. They couldn’t give up the perks and they couldn’t accept the blame.
Which is to say, yes, context is important, but so is self-examination. If you can acknowledge that admirable individuals who performed heroic feats and/or wrote beautiful words could also willingly engage in and profit from oppression, you can come closer to examining your own role in oppressive systems. If you acknowledge human beings can not only do both good and evil things, but choose good or evil things, you can move away from “But I’m a good person!” or “But I meant well!” and look at what effect your actions have, as well as other people’s.
TL;DR: Admiring someone’s legacy while acknowledging their flaws is a step towards being able to improve your own behavior.
raise ur hand if you constantly doubt how much people actually like you even when they’ve said/reassured that they Do like you on more than one occasion and if you’re just tired of yourself for being this way
A lot of fans did not like that Hiro and Tadashi were portrayed as being mixed race. It’s like these studios are pretending to give us diversity but instead of going all in, they throw us this whitewashed, mixed race mess. No. Go all in. All or nothing. This isn’t real diversity. This is so big film execs can pat themselves on the back and all-white fandoms can feel good about how ‘diverse’ they are. Stop it.
Fun Fact: Mixed race kids actually exist. And more and more kids are born belonging to two or more races every day because of how many different races exist in America and the fact that interracial couples are becoming more widely accepted.
A lot of those mixed race kids will grow up being told that they’re not black/asian/hispanic enough because they’re half white or half something else. They’ll be teased and mocked for taking part in their own culture because they’re “only half”. They might even receive negative treatment from one or both sides of their extended family because of what race the other side of their family is.
More and more interracial couples are getting married in the US. More and more mixed race kids are being born. People need to learn to start understanding that being mixed race doesn’t make you “not enough”. Mixed race kids are both and they are neither. And they are becoming the norm.
You think being mixed race isn’t real diversity? I am half Italian, half Puerto Rican. I grew up with two incredibly different, vibrant cultures in my household. I listened to Pavarotti in my dad’s car and Salsa music in my mom’s. For dinner, we eat my abuelita’s arroz con gandules and my bisnonna’s homemade spaghetti. To me, being half and half is incredible. I got to experience an entire culture that I would’ve never learned about if I’d been only Italian or only Puerto Rican.
When a character is mixed race they are not more and they’re not less. They are who they are. People thinking that mixed race characters/families are less important than single race characters/families is incredibly ignorant as well as harmful to the many mixed race children in the world who will grow up thinking that they are worth less than their single race friends.
Railroad Tracks
The U.S. Standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches.
That’s an exceedingly odd number.
Why was that gauge used?
Because that’s the way they built them in England, and English expatriates designed the U.S. Railroads.
Why did the English build them like that?
Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways, and that’s the gauge they used.
Why did ‘they’ use that gauge then?
Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they had used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing.
Why did the wagons have that particular Odd wheel spacing?
Well, if they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break on some of the old, long distance roads in England, because that’s the spacing of the wheel ruts.
So, who built those old rutted roads?
Imperial Rome built the first long distance roads in Europe (including England) for their legions. Those roads have been used ever since.
And the ruts in the roads?
Roman war chariots formed the initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear
of destroying their wagon wheels.
Since the chariots were made for Imperial Rome, they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing.
Therefore, the United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches is derived from the original specifications for an Imperial Roman war chariot.
In other words, bureaucracies live forever.
So the next time you are handed a specification, procedure, or process, and wonder, ‘What horse’s ass came up with this?’,
you may be exactly right.
Imperial Roman army chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the rear ends of two war horses.
Now, the twist to the story:
When you see a Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad, you will notice that there are two big booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These are solid rocket boosters, or SRBs.
The SRBs are made by Thiokol at their factory in Utah.
The engineers who designed the SRBs would have preferred to make them a bit larger,
but the SRBs had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site.
The railroad line from the factory happens to run through a tunnel in the mountains
and the SRBs had to fit through that tunnel.
The tunnel is slightly wider than the railroad track, and the railroad track, as you now know,
is about as wide as two horses’ behinds.
So, a major Space Shuttle design feature
of what is arguably the world’s most advanced transportation system was determined over two thousand years ago by the width of a horse’s ass.
And you thought being a horse’s ass wasn’t important!
Now you know, Horses’ Asses control almost everything.
Explains a whole lot of stuff, doesn’t it?
This is the single most mind blowing fact I’ve read on tumblr, every day is a school day-thank you.
Nice history lesson!
My daughter and I were just discussing this very subject.
Loki is the Philosopher King 