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Ideas versus People
Nov. 30th, 2019 08:10 pmHopefully most of us believe that all people have fundamental rights and dignity just by virtue of being people. Generally we should try to be respectful to others, because, they are people!
Ideas, on the other hand, aren't worthy of respect in and of themselves just by virtue of being ideas. Many of us have ideas/thoughts/worldviews/mental arguments that we like and respect a whole lot! Some are more popular than others. But you shouldn't have to hold back on criticizing a bad idea simply because you'll hurt its feelings. It doesn't have feelings, it's an idea.
Now, sometimes, these two concepts tie in closely to each other. For instance (an analogy I've made before), most of my atheist friends don't go around insulting religion all the time just because they can, even when their criticisms of religion are genuine and they have legal protection for making them. Why? Sometimes it would be out of context or a non sequitur, and sometimes it's very easy for criticism of those ideas to spill into "well anyone who would believe this is an idiot," and they want to take care not to go around calling people idiots all the time, because of the social contract and stuff.
So this also applies to looking back into the past. Most people don't want to say "everyone who lived 200 years ago was a total moron and irredeemably sexist"--we don't know those people. But it still might be true that "many of the ideas and beliefs that circulated 200 years ago were pretty bleeping sexist, I'm glad we don't share all of those today." To me, that seems a lot more likely than "those people were just all bad people, every one of them" and "sexism is bad today, but it was a-okay 200 years ago, those people were holding what at the time were good beliefs."
People in other times and places will probably, for better or for worse, think many of the opinions my peers and I hold today are bizarre too! That's their prerogative.
Ideas, on the other hand, aren't worthy of respect in and of themselves just by virtue of being ideas. Many of us have ideas/thoughts/worldviews/mental arguments that we like and respect a whole lot! Some are more popular than others. But you shouldn't have to hold back on criticizing a bad idea simply because you'll hurt its feelings. It doesn't have feelings, it's an idea.
Now, sometimes, these two concepts tie in closely to each other. For instance (an analogy I've made before), most of my atheist friends don't go around insulting religion all the time just because they can, even when their criticisms of religion are genuine and they have legal protection for making them. Why? Sometimes it would be out of context or a non sequitur, and sometimes it's very easy for criticism of those ideas to spill into "well anyone who would believe this is an idiot," and they want to take care not to go around calling people idiots all the time, because of the social contract and stuff.
So this also applies to looking back into the past. Most people don't want to say "everyone who lived 200 years ago was a total moron and irredeemably sexist"--we don't know those people. But it still might be true that "many of the ideas and beliefs that circulated 200 years ago were pretty bleeping sexist, I'm glad we don't share all of those today." To me, that seems a lot more likely than "those people were just all bad people, every one of them" and "sexism is bad today, but it was a-okay 200 years ago, those people were holding what at the time were good beliefs."
People in other times and places will probably, for better or for worse, think many of the opinions my peers and I hold today are bizarre too! That's their prerogative.
