We are judgmental beings, we humans.
This can be good in many ways. We use our capacity for judgment to decide if certain foods will kill us. If we are in danger and need to run. If that guy who just bought a drink for us really put something in it. It gets a little slipperier when we use our judgement as a group to gang up on someone who behaves in a way we disapprove of.
We like to believe that there are certain inalienable truths. That some things are “just wrong.”
Is that really the case?
Murder. Surely we can all agree on murder. Can we?
Define murder. Is it any time you kill someone? What if it is self-defense? What if it is justified in some other way–in the course of a crime, when you catch a partner in flagrante delicto, when someone assaults your child. Maybe there are some justifications for killing another human being. Do you think they are universal?
What about if someone insults your honor in some way? How ’bout if they have a consensual relationship with your adult daughter that you disapprove of? Is it different if it’s your son than your daughter? No? Why not?
Most people probably agree that killing someone while defending yourself is justified, but where does the boundary of self defense begin and end? If they’re in my bedroom? My garage? Knocking on my door? Standing in my front yard? Walking down the street wearing a black hoody?
Justification, justice, judgment. They are largely subjective. Entirely, maybe.
The entire world would probably agree that killing someone for no good reason is wrong, but there would be a whole world of disagreement about what constitutes a good reason.
Other crimes are even harder to define. This is very apparent right now with the attention being focused on sexual misbehavior, assault and rape. Some people think it’s all equally bad. Some think there are degrees. In some cultures, women are married as soon as they hit puberty. Obviously in most of the Western world, that is considered child abuse. In many cultures, rape is the fault of the woman no matter what the man does. Even here, rape is a crime in which most often the victim is shamed instead of the criminal.
At one point many cultures, including broad segments of the US, thought that owning people was perfectly fine. People were spoils of war taken by the victors, fit to be bought and sold as laborers and domestic help. Some were seen as less than human. Slavery persists in some areas, thought it is nearly universally reviled in this period of history.
You might think that there’s a very strict Right and Wrong, but morals and ethics vary from culture to culture. Not only that, but the culture itself changes views over time. Radically. So how can we continue to believe that our views of people from earlier times can remain static any more than our belief systems and cultures do?
If you look at classic films, art and literature it’s very clear. History is full of examples of people who behaved in ways we would no longer find acceptable today. Sometimes it’s just an expression that is no longer appropriate like “that’s very white of you.”
Thomas Jefferson was a slave owner, who had a longstanding sexual relationship with his slave Sally Hemings. In all likelihood, he is the father of her children. Can a sexual relationship with someone you own ever be considered consensual? Is it always rape? Are there degrees? And how should that change how we view Jefferson now? Should it?
He’s on Mt Rushmore with the Great Emancipator. Should he be removed?
Can (and should) you separate a historical context in which many people believed that black people were not even really human from the context of Black Lives Matter. Didn’t one lead to the other? The culture in our country is at a crossroads, a tipping point in the dominant culture.
This is only intensified by the flood of information and misinformation raining down on us from TV and the Internet. It’s being used to direct us against each other. To fragment us into sides, each believing in a version of Right and Wrong that can never find common ground.
Can and should we judge men and women of the past by the standards of the present when we can’t even protect ourselves against the troll and bot armies trying to shape the direction our country takes?
Looking at it with a view of context seems crucial. Educating ourselves on an ongoing basis to acknowledge that the world changes and that people who had important roles in the world’s history behaved in ways that we would consider despicable today.
The only thing clear to me is that this is a world full of gray, rather than black and white. Maybe I am just a woman who wants to get along. Maybe I can’t commit to even a concrete ideal. Maybe I am too willing to see both sides to pick one. Maybe perhaps is easier than yes or no. .
Still. I don’t trust an idea or ethical code that doesn’t allow for some wiggle room.