Attempting to debunk "man / product of his time" argument

[sasha_feather]

Saving my tweets on this as I think it through.

The "Man of his time" argument assumes that everyone in that time period felt the same way. Erases nuance and difference.

It also erases experiences of dissents and marginalized people. Those people existed even if history has forgotten them. (For example: I learned from Rachel Maddow tonight that Vince Lombardi was pro-gay and had a gay brother. He was a famous football coach that lived from 1913-1970).

Me and my friends don't hold the prevailing views of mainstream society. I don't think of us as "products of our time."

This argument also assumes that society progresses forward thru time, that people in the past were worse. Which is not true. (History does not go forward in a upward line. It's more like a sine wave maybe.)

We are all influenced by our time and society, but we can all think critically and listen to our consciences re right and wrong.

Saying that someone was "a product of their time" is usually just apologism for their bad behaviors.

If something is wrong today, it was wrong 100 years ago. (Ethical behaviors, possibly, have some standards across societies and times, even if morals are relative. Have to think on this more.)

Just because people in power endorsed it, doesn't make it OK for everyone else in society to do so.

Comments

[owlectomy]

I agree with a lot of what you have to say and a lot of what naraht has to say also! I sometimes feel like the fragility of knowing how contingent my own moral beliefs are, how much they're formed by the society I live in and my family, peers, and friends, is the most helpful place to stand -- and that comes with knowing how contingent everyone else's moral beliefs are, too -- but I think nobody's excused from trying to be better than their society is. I definitely think of myself as a product of my time! And part of that is also being a product of listening to what my friends had to say about ableist language, and gendered language, and thinking, and changing.

But the real question is, why do we have to praise or condemn people who are already dead? I can't go back in time to scold H.P. Lovecraft or give Heinlein a course in Social Justice 101 (yet!). If we're really talking about how we look at their works -- then the only eyes I have to look at a book or a movie are my own eyes. So whether you can excuse someone's beliefs or not, I think it's always legitimate to say "There isn't room for any meeting of the minds here, I can't get anything out of this." Or even "I was really caught up by the storytelling, but I also winced at the misogyny and the racism."

Not sure if you read this Ta-Nehisi Coates piece on Thomas Jefferson, but it really gave me a lot to think about on the subject! Thomas Jefferson was more than a man of his times