How about… both?
Comment on Pavlov's conditioning
smooth_tea@lemmy.world 7 months agoJfc, to what end? All this retroactive cancelling of dead people is just diddling yourself for feel-good reasons. Get over it and be different instead of waving some flag that says you are different.
jose1324@lemmy.world 7 months ago
pomodoro_longbreak@sh.itjust.works 7 months ago
I get what you’re saying, but I personally don’t find it tiring. It’s just a part of contextualizing history. I think of it as a reminder of the progress we’ve made (I hope) - that we can put an asterisk beside someone’s name in the history books.
Kind of like how it’s impossible to talk about the history of hypothermia research without acknowledging its grossly unethical source.
Twelve20two@slrpnk.net 7 months ago
Oh you mean actually learning from history to prevent repeating atrocities
Yearly1845@reddthat.com 7 months ago
How are you supposed to be different if no one ever tells you what was wrong the first time?
sebinspace@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Mate learning from history’s jackasses is how we move forward as a society. Cancelling? The fuck are we cancelling? You said it yourself, fucko is dead, cancelled by life, you don’t get much more “cancelled” than that.
smooth_tea@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Move forward as a society, that’s a good one. Please do tell how you’re going to change your ways now that you know someone famous did something heinous. Fuck all is going to happen, and all of this unearthing of our evil past to better ourselves is just a form of self delusion and shock value, typical for the outrage culture of these days.
The only reaction to this new found wisdom is “and then what”? And if you took two seconds to analyze the situation instead of getting on your high horse to start a new crusade you’d probably come to the same conclusion.
What is being implied here is that because he did something bad, all of a sudden that has to be mentioned every time he’s brought up. It’s completely pointless and just a testimony to how insecure we are as a society. It’s like having to cover up female ankles in case we get “urges”. It’s completely ridiculous.
This is the not how we move forward as a society, in fact it is a form of regression and infantility. An inability to hold two opposing ideas in our heads and instead throwing out the baby with the bath water because everyone constantly needs to reassure the person next to them how virtuous they are.
A progressive society does not need to retroactively change history, it can accept the imperfections of the past in the knowledge that we’ve already changed.
SmoothIsFast@citizensgaming.com 7 months ago
How is pointing out the heinous shit changing history? If anything, it’s accepting the imperfections of the past and acknowledging we have changed by calling out the callousness of its prior implementation and calling out what to avoid… you are literally contradicting yourself.
CileTheSane@lemmy.ca 7 months ago
Out of curiosity, what do you believe has had a larger negative impact on your life:
sebinspace@lemmy.world 7 months ago
We move forward as a society by recognizing that jackasses in history participated in jackassery, and by learning that some of those jackasses were framed as “good” or “leaders” or “briliant” or whatever were, in reality, pretty fucked up individuals, so that we may understand our history isn’t as flawless and unbloody as we maybe learned as children.
For instance, I was taught throughout my childhood that Henry Ford was a revolutionary leader and the inventor of the automobile. Found it a bit odd that, later on, they moved the goalpost, so that instead of having invented the automobile, he invented the assembly line! He didn’t even do that.
In fact, Henry Ford was an antisemitic jackass that took the money he made by exploiting people at the right time with the right technology, and poured it into the stupid concept of a town in South America, exploiting/displacing natives to produce rubber. Something atleast The Deuce had the sense to dismantle, but only after decades of trying and failing.
Acknowledging the darkness in our history instead of pretending it’s not there is how we admit that we’ve done some fucked up shit as a species, and how we know we still have a long way to go, how we know there is yet work to be done, how we move forward as a species.
Have a good day :)
smooth_tea@lemmy.world 7 months ago
What you’re describing is exactly the delusion I was talking about. And it’s very typical these days. People don’t want nuance, they want perfect heroes or complete villains, complete polarization, anything in-between is too complex and we’re too insecure to be associated with someone who’s done something bad. I don’t need a messiah, in fact I think that is exactly the problem that is the foundation of your line of thinking.
I have no problem admiring the good Pavlov or Ford did, and I don’t really care that they did something bad, it’s irrelevant to the discussion, really. And I can say that because I believe that recognizing their achievements says absolutely nothing about me agreeing with what they did wrong. I think that people who have to point out the worst are ultimately scared that if they don’t do that, it would say something about themselves.
jandar_fett@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Agreed and well said. It reminds me of when someone lauds Thomas Jefferson as being brilliant and having great political ideas for America, but then someone clutches their pearls because he was a slave owner. Yes, being a slave owner is abhorrent, BUT it doesn’t negate the positive contributions. That isn’t how reality works. You can condemn the bad and accept the good when it comes to the effects of people and organizations and concepts.
jandar_fett@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Quit inhaling your own farts.