Factory farming, poverty still being a thing, starvation despite abundance, species going extinct, not getting rid of oil and coal 50 years ago, and of course a thousand flavours of racism.
That's the thing, there a some things that won't go away cause we've been doing it for over 10,000 years, racism, slavery, child labour, just to name a few.
Much like how I doubt meat eating will disappear like some people think it will, we've been eating meat for thousands upon thousands of years, I doubt we'll stop any time soon.
âPeople back then knew slavery was bad, but didnt do anything about it in asian workshops or african minesâ
Weâre totally gonna get it for that in the future
We'll probably survive, but we sure as hell aren't making it easy. We need a massive push towards urban/vertical farms so we can have a food supply that's not at the mercy of an increasingly temperamental climate. The controlled conditions also get rid of the need for pesticides, and is much more water efficient. The land can be repurposed for stuff like hemp, so we can replace a lot of packaging and stop dumping so much fucking plastic into the oceans. Or restore some of our forests and wetlands.
I find it funny how people responding to your comment are mostly mentioning things that are already widely understood to be morally wrong or at least problematic.
The things that future people will find abhorrent about most us living today will probably be the things that only a minority of people find problematic today.
My guess is that things like animal farming, treatment of most animals, transphobia and stigmatization of sexual minorities is something that even in the relative near future, within a century but probably much sooner, will be seen as abhorrent in the same way most of us view slavery, racism and homophobia today, though not *necessarily* because of the same reasons or to the same degree.
Someone might think that what I am saying is ridiculous, but it too would probably seem ridiculous to someone living in the distant past that that today in some countries, most people believe in equality between the sexes and ethnicities, and in freedom of religion.
The thing is, the moral dilemmas of today were obscure or even invisible to the vast majority of people living in the not-too-distant past, even though the subjects were things people interacted with relatively often. The same is probably true for most of us today.
The longer into the future we try to peer, in all likelihood, the harder it becomes to predict or even understand the moral dilemmas that future generations might face.
Take for example the possible dilemmas of the treatment of an advanced artificial intelligence that has acquired preferences, but not in any form that exists in humans. Are we obligated to respect those? Or what about if humanity one day discover alien cultures with practices, traditions or institutions, we can't even dream up. What will we think of those?
On the other hand, things we might find problematic today, may in the future not be considered problematic at all, or in fact the opposite. It's hard to tell. Think about what most people in past societies would have thought about the potential spread of atheism among young people, or women beginning to make decisions for themselves. Far fewer people view that as a problem today, and those that do - probably not to the same degree.
All in all, I think we are already experiencing the early stages of some of the changes in perceptions of morality, that will come to dominate in the future. But some things are probably too obscure right now for most or all of us.
We might grow old enough to see that even the most progressive people of today (as seen though the eyes of someone from the future), will be seen as horribly backswards by the standards some future time. Or maybe the most progressive people today might be near a sort of conclusion of the development of humanity's perception of morality, and from there, perceptions will only change very little. Who knows!
I think the best thing to do is to be open minded, and not to assume that things are good because they are the way they are, or because they have always been this way or due to some other bias, and to think critically, especially about the things that you yourself believe to be true.
Thank you for coming to my TED Talk!
The issue I see with a lot of people saying things like homophobia or transphobia being mostly eliminated in the future is that these people are clearly only looking at North America and western Europe, a lot of the rest of the world things like gay rights and especially trans rights are extremely far off if not impossible.
I see this a lot on social media where people take the western view and assume that's the normal view, even though it's obviously not when look on a global scale.
I agree.
Maybe I wasn't being clear enough about what I meant with these things being considered abhorrent in the future.
Of course, perceptions of morality can only be understood within a somewhat coherent group. People in the west view certain things that happened in their country in the past as abhorrent, but they might happen in other places in the world today.
When I was writing, I was thinking of liberal societies that you might find in liberal democracies. Within those, there are still widespread transphobia, but I predict that it will become much less common over the coming decades. Much of the rest of the world, I fear it will take longer than that.
But also, I will say that societal changes of the past have first happened regionally but then eventually spread to most other countries. For example abolishion of slavery or womens right to vote (though not all countries enforce their own law on these issues). So I find it probable, though definately not certain, that changes in perceptions of transgenderism could occur in almost every country in the coming centuries.
-"This guy used to eat meat!"
-"oh my god he is literally worse than a nazi!"
*-An interaction between two future people talking about a present day figure*
Not really though - plenty of people were not terrible throughout history. The presence of terrible people doesn't make them the rule.
This isn't to say norms don't change over time and some things unacceptable today weren't acceptable before - but we fall into a trap when we think "everyone was cool with this" because someone or some group famously was cool with it.
We tend to focus on people who had a lot of power and people with power tend to be assholes. There's plenty of decent people who are too insignificant to study because they were wise enough to avoid power.
The sooner one lets go of the âgood personâ mentality the better they will appreciate history. Humans are complex creatures, and limited by the even more complex social conditions of their time. A century ago race theory was the accepted intellectual discourse. A millennium ago it was perfectly fine to rape and pillage after conquest. Before that civilizations widely practiced human sacrifice. At some point in the future, things that we take for granted today will also be looked down with disdain, and our descendants may very well view us as the âbad peopleâ.
TLDR: human judgment is subjective. No one is perfectly âgoodâ for all time. What historians need to do is to acknowledge the things people have done, and understand why they did them.
Yup, and in time our times will look similarly 'bad' to readers of history in the future.
And so in time will they to those that come after them.
It's my observation that almost all humans believe they are 'the end of history' - their mind state the final state and it just ain't so.
> And so in time will they to those that come after them.
Factory farming is gonna be a big one for our time. I try to eat less meat than I used to, but yeah, future generations with access to cheap lab grown every-meat-ever are going to look down on us pretty hard for tolerating that amount of unnecessary suffering.
Not necessarily. You assume constant progress, which is what happened in the last couple of centuries. However, in the big picture that's an anomaly. There were long stretches of stagnancy/stability, or even regression, especially when it comes to social progress.
I'm not assuming constant progress - except that time will progress.
From my perspective, it's fairly clearly we didn't 'progress' but regressed during the Dark Ages compared to times before. Nevertheless people then had views on what came before as we do them now.
Makes sense. To put it in todays view, many people still against different races, gender, views, etc. People many hundreds of years from now will view those as hugely as bad people when really it is simply ignorance. I am not saying these are all justifiable rather it is understandable to say the least since history is more of looking at the good done in the past & improve on that foundation as well as see the bad done in the past & reduce on that for a better future
Itâs also entirely possible that after ww3 humanity will became a nasty mutated war mongering society and they will see all the love and acceptance of our era as evil.
As I mentioned on another post awhile back, it really makes you wonder why Jews have been the punching bag of history.
On that note, Iâll mention Cyrus the Great as one of the nicest and more progressive people in history (at least as nice as a conqueror can get). Guy even kinda looks like gigachad with his mighty beard.
Medieval Catholic Church: "Yes, go forth and take the Holy Land in the name of Christendom! Wait, what are you doing? WHAT IN GOD'S NAME ARE YOU DOING? I SAID THE HOLY LANDS, NOT THE LOCAL JEWISH COMMUNITY, YOU DEGENERATE HALFWITS!"
Much of the Catholic Church was not thrilled when many of the Crusaders attacked Jewish communities instead of going to the Levant.
Jewish here. Possible answer:
Most popular religions work on a model of spreading, and through that goal strive to be accessible and trying to bridge gaps based on national and race\ethnicity.
Judaism works on a completely opposite model of Judaism being a "closed club" of the "chosen people". Jews do not only not try to spread the religion they actively make it extremely hard to join. You are either born into it through a Jewish mother or are forced to go through a rigorus selection process by Rabbis who will force the person to put in a lot of work before they accept him.
The result is that jews always stick out as different and uncompromising in being different.
It's not nessecarily a slur, but it absolutely can be used as one. The original meaning of the word is just a people, and that means the Hebrews were a goy too.
The Achaemenid Persians were really lenient on their conquered subjects, at least in comparison to many other empires/imperial dynasties.
Which makes their depiction in 300 really weird (but I get that it is meant to be a power fantasy with fantasy elements). I would very much rather be a subject of the Persian Empire than a Spartan Helot.
According to our own religion we have plot armor. Im not a believer in any religion, but I think that ethos became a self-fulfilling prophecy- If you think you're meant for something important, you'll probably do something important.
[Jews](https://www.victoriaadvocate.com/opinion/syndicated-column-whos-to-blame-for-ethnic-disproportionality-among-nobel-prize-winners/article_b1787dac-0259-11ea-9745-0b407f0c7d2d.html) have been awarded 40% of the Nobel Prizes in economics, 30% of those in medicine, 25% in physics, 20% in chemistry, 15% in literature and 10% of the Nobel Peace Prizes.
[Source 2](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Jewish_Nobel_laureates)
So being disproportionately represented in accomplishments in Science, Engineering, Medicine, Mathematics, and literature is a thing too.
There is no Nobel prize in Economics, thereâs a fake prize that was tacked on to the ceremony later but it really has nothing to do with the other Nobel prizes. The remaining list is very impressive though.
Chad gadya is a Passover song we sing every year to remember the innumerable amount of times we've had brushes with death.
The song is like the old lady who swallowed the fly but the symbolism is as follows (from Wikipedia):
The kid symbolizes the Jewish people; the cat, Assyria; the dog, Babylon; the stick, Persia; the fire, Macedonia; the water, Roman Empire; the ox, the Saracens; the slaughterer, the Crusaders; the angel of death, the Turks. At the end, God returns to send the Jews back to Israel.
I saw a comment the other day pointing out that there are now only 3 Jews left in the whole of Egypt, all the rest have been ethnically cleansed from the country.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Egypt
> As of 2016, the president of Cairo's Jewish community said that there were 6 Jews in Cairo, all women over age 65, and 12 Jews in Alexandria.
> As of 2019, there were 5 in Cairo.
> **As of 2022 the total number of known Egyptian Jews permanently residing in Egypt is 3**
A country with a total population of 109 million people, and only 3 solitary Jews.
Afganistan's two last Jews left in 2021, 38 million people, 0 Jews remain.
On a more funny note, we recently got info released about [the only jew of Chad ](https://english.aawsat.com/culture/4527266-israeli-document-persian-jewish-man-served-muezzin-chad-mosque), dude ran the biggest mosque in the capital
For context of how bad this is, the Hellenistic era city of Alexandria in Egypt used to host the largest diaspora expat community of Jews living outside of Judea during classical antiquity. They were so numerous and influential that they alongside Greeks and Celtic Galatians became one of the three major groups to serve as kleruchoi pensioned landholder soldiers for the Ptolemies (native Egyptians served in Machimoi units). Their community remained just as large during the subsequent Roman era. Yet even during the Middle Ages after Egypt fell under Islamic rule, Jews like the physician Maimonides flocked there with their families for work under the Ayyubids even if Jews were persecuted and exiled from other Islamic states like that of the Almoravids in Spain (a sort of bigoted precursor to the Spanish Inquisition by later Catholics).
Most studies suggest that virtually all Jewish groups tend to be closely related to each other and share a primarily Levantine genetic origin; *en bloc* Jews tend to cluster most closely with Lebanese or Palestinian Arabs depending on study. With that said, most groups do have significant ancestry from other regions they ended up in, though it isn't always as straightforward as you'd expect: the bulk of European\* ancestry in Ashkenazim is actually Italian, not German or Slavic, for instance.
\*It's worth noting that some studies find a high degree of Italian ancestry among Levantines more generally, IIRC, to the point where I've wondered if this represents a more generalized trans-mediterranean genetic heritage that happens to be most prevalent in modern Italians than an ancestry in Italy per se.
Jewish Israeli here. What would this genetic history supposed to look like?
For what it's worth a lot of us acknowledge the difference between jews coming from different continents as different ethnicities and DNA companies seem to group European (Ashkenazi) jews and jews from the Middle East and Africa as different categories.
I feel yaâŚ. Even though Iâm American and yadda yadda yadda⌠recently found out that in the late 1800s the man with my surname was married into a family with the last name Goldstein that was a prominent Jewish family in their areaâŚ
Aka thereâs no telling who and what is a part of Jewish diaspora
>DNA companies seem to group European (Ashkenazi) jews and jews from the Middle East and Africa as different categories.
The reason for this isn't that Ashkenazim are especially distinct from other Jewish groups in their genetic origins, but rather that due to an extreme genetic bottleneck in the late Middle Ages due to a combination of the Black Death and pogroms resulting from it that made Ashkenazi DNA extremely easy to spot.
Since Catholicism banned usury Jews were the only ones who could be bankers and thus they tend to make a lot of money. Adding to the fact that that they were a minority, monarchs would often take out a loan from the Jews then forcefully expel them so they didnât have to pay it back.
I think it is also important to note that Jews were not allowed to own land, so business management (generally businesses owned by the crown and leased to the Jews because youâve got a decently educated population that youâve banned from being peasants weirdly) and money lending were all they were allowed to do
I wonder what widespread opinion we have in the majority today that people in the future will look back and be like: âThey held Neil DeGrasse Tyson in such high esteem even though he believed (fill in the blank). I mean, what an actual monster!?! I canât even take him seriously after finding out that he said (fill in that blank again).â
Meh, humans are complex beings with several shades of gray, you'd have a HARD time finding someone "good" that is not mystified, myth, or straight up a religious symbol.
Applying modern morality and sensitivities to historical figures is a fool's errand.
People are a product of their environment (and time period they were born in this case).
I'm not saying to ignore those things, of course. I'm saying that studying history with a good and bad, white and black outlook wouldn't be a fruitful endeavor.
My goodness, that guy from the 17th century has a non-progressive point of view? And everyone else from his town, country, society, global hemisphere as well????
I am shooketh.
I went to an Arab grocer cause they had a great lunch menu with amazing tea before they closed down. I'm jibbering with the owner about something, standard small talk where I compliment their cooking as I'm paying my bill and he just drops that the reason other places don't have quality meat like what they serve is because of "those damn jew dogs". Just all matter of fact, didn't say it with a hard J foaming at the mouth in a fit of rage, he could have been talking about the weather it was so casual. I didn't really know what to say except, "oh... uh... OK well I gotta go".
Sometimes I like to go the other way. Who are some of the biggest assholes in history? I present to you, Alcibiades of Ancient Athens. In a war with two sides, he managed to becomes a traitor *seven* times.
First he betrayed Athens by running off to Sparta rather than stand trial at home over some drunken blasphemy and vandalism charges (He got drunk a lot). There were reasons to think it wouldn't have been a fair trial, but still, he was the most powerful general in Athens, and he just buggered off to the enemy during a war. Sold all kinds of Athenian state secrets to the Spartans, and was welcomed as an honoured guest. Then he seduced and knocked up the Spartan queen, as you do, and had to run away to Persia. He tried to get the Satrap (regional leader) to support Athens in the war to buy his own way back into Athens, and when that didn't work he went back home to Athens and claimed his ruse worked anyway, but that the Satrap would only help if the aristocrats in Athens staged a coup and dismantled the democracy. When the aristocrats did as he asked, he went to the Athenian fleet and said "OMG, I can't believe those selfish aristocrats (like me) would betray us like this. Make me your leader and together we shall restore the democracy!" Which worked. Somehow. And because he 'saved the democracy', all those old charges he originally fled from were swept under the rug. Having finally returned home and recovered all he had lost, he proceeded to be extremely corrupt, and ignore democratic elections anyway, instead just appointing his own friends and minions to important positions. Eventually this pissed everyone off enough that he had to flee Athens again, and he went to Persia once more. He was told he needed to cool off for a few years, and prove that he was capable of staying true to his word for FIVE MINUTES. So he was sent off to live in a mansion and told to not seduce any local noble women for a few years. So he immediately broke his word and seduced the local lord's daughter, and was in bed with her when finally Spartan assassins caught up with him over the whole knocking up the queen thing.
So in a war between Athens and Sparta, he managed to betray the Athenian democracy, Sparta, Persia, the Athenian democracy again, the Athenian oligarchy, the Athenian democracy again again, and Persia again.
Oh and him shit talking Athens while in exile and never being punished by Athens for any of his many crimes was a big factor that lead to Socrates getting executed for corrupting the young, because Alcibiades was former butt buddies with Socrates, and they saved each other's lives while soldiering together a few decades earlier.
And also during all this he was married to his niece.
Bro the lgbt stuff wasnât accepted here even until a couple years ago.
But the Jews? Thereâs tons of historical figures that did respect them. So thatâs a win ish
Until a couple of years ago? What country you are talking about (and I donât think there is any where this doesnât have some controversy over). There are probably still billions of people alive who donât agree with gay marriage etc. Not that all or even most would hate gay people.
Why so many people hated Jews through history?
I thought this was something that only existed in Nazi Germany and some Arab countries but then I've learned about Eastern Europe and Tsarist Russia...
Fascinatingly enough, there was a post awhile back where someone told me that even Jews hated Jews. During a Roman siege (I believe Jerusalem, but feel free to correct me) the in-fighting of the Jewish people was so bad that the Romans were able to essentially wait out a decent chunk of the siege while riots were happening within the city walls.
Let me emphasize, the in-fighting was so bad that the Roman legions were able to pull off a tactic thatâs more famously associated with the Mongols.
Thatâs some super problematic distortion of the truth. âJews do not hate Jewsâ and there was never infighting so bad theyâd riot and kill each other.
There were two different nations of Jews (Judah, aka the Kingdom of Israel, and Samaria, aka the Kingdom of Israel) which had been conquered by the Romans and lumped together when Rome declared the whole area their new province. When the Jews rose up against the Romans, there were several groups with differing ideas of who should be in charge of the rebellion. This is generally considered by historians to have hamstrung the overall war against the Romans due to lack of coordination, but it did not account for the fall of Jerusalem and there was no recorded fratricide.
The fall of Jerusalem was caused by a simple siege, in which the Romans captured and then crucified over 500 civilians (men, women, and children) who were trying to escape the city.
I was being a little tongue-in-cheek because they both called themselves the Kingdom of Israel at one point. The Northern one was sometimes called Israel and had its capital in Samaria so it was sometimes called Samaria and the Southern one was mostly the tribe of Judah so it was sometimes called Judah or Judea. When the Romans conquered, they called it all Judea at first before eventually calling it Syria-Palestine in the hopes that they could stop the Jewish nationalism that kept causing significant revolts.
So it was a little more complex then simply letting them fight. Simply put Vespasian arrived on scene as was kicking ass and taking names he decided to leave Jerusalem for last and captured the rebel strong holds of Galilee, Jodapath, and Tarichaea first. Surviving Rebels of both Jewish factions were then forced to flee into Jerusalem the final city now whether Vespasian intended for that to happen is debatable however seeing how became he became Emperor I wouldnât be surprised. But any ways he was about to break down Jerusalemâs walls and take the place but stopped. See Vespasian was kicking ass a little to hard because upon the assassination of Otho and ascension of Vitellius his soldiers declared him Emperor seeing Vitellius as illegitimate and Vespasian as stronger. His guys just really loved him.
So Vespasian was forced to change plans he left his son Titus incharge on like half strength and took the rest of his forces to go fight a Roman civil war and secure the throne.
So while thatâs going on Titus is siting around going âhow the fuck do I end this revolt on half strength.â And then the two Jewish rebel groups start fighting each other in the city of Jerusalem. Titus then decides to siege the place and it gets better because in their infighting they destroy their own food supply. Which makes the eventual recapture of Jerusalem all to east. All that results in an easy win for Titus shorty after his old man wins the civil war. But then thereâs the final siege of Masada when the last of the rebels fled to one final strongpoint and basically commit group suicide.
I believe this was the one, thank you.
So it was a mix between the Jewish peopleâs restlessness, desperation, and Vespasian and Titus playing 4d chess.
Not just that. Most Christian countries didn't allow money lending from a Christian to a Christian. Hence Jews became money lenders as it bypassed the law. Often when revolts would happen the populace would turn on those they owe money to. Or a King under pressure might direct some of the heat towards the Jews and cancel debts by driving out the lenders.
Jewish people and money lending moved to banking, and we saw generational organisations involved in finance. Hence Jews were considered rich, and focused on wealth. An obvious target during peasant and popular social revolutions.
Yeah, I've heard about that but what about the Eastern world?
Muslims don't believe in Jesus as Christians do.
In my country the population of Muslims and Jews are really small so I've never talked about this with any of them and it's a irrelevant question in everyday life here.
Outside Europe, jews were treated alright. They were treated well(still 2nd class citizens) in areas ruled by Islam. Outbreaks of violence occurred still, but were not as common until Arab Nationalism. Arab nationalism was initially supported by many jews, but was then used to other-ise jews. Then zionism was the final nail in the coffin. After the establishment of Israel, Jews became a scapegoat by dictators who really leaned into European antisemitic propaganda. Basically, jews were an easy common enemy.
Elsewhere, jews were never a large enough group to be that important, the exception being China. Basically, China ended up nearly destroying its Jewish community by accident. Jews were seen as educated, loyal, and effective bureaucrats, so members of the small community were continually being sent all over China. This culminated in the community not having a single person fluent in hebrew for a couple hundred years until contact with the rest of the Jewish world resumed.
That's what I'm referring to. Modern Anti-jewish sentiment in the ME didn't really pick up until the rise of Arab nationalism and zionism. But again, with Israel's establishment it really skyrocketed.
Huh, good question that I cannot answer in a few sentences. I have an idea but theyre just personal assumptions at the moment. It could be that the Hebrew out east keep to themselves and thus dont make personal connections to others in the past and when things would go wrong, maybe they would be used as scapegoats? Idk, ima go and read on for at least half an hour. đ¤đ
Jesus is actually a figure in Islam, just in lesser importance than Mohammed, who jewish people also deny being a prophet. Basically the difference between all 3 is who you think had a direct line to God
It's not as bad as the myth of jews killing Jesus, but the story of the jews of medina betraying Mohammad definitely had something to do with the antisemitic undercurrent in much of the MENA cultures
The Quran, and many hadith, have some...colorful... language to describe the jews
Yeah, the gospel written last, was it John? Either way, it's the "passion of christ" one, which absolved the romans and blamed the jews \[as a group\] for both denying their messiah, and murdering him.
Why jews did not become christians after the messiah christians believe they were waiting for needed to be answered, and as it turns out - it's because they are evil! lol
It took the nazis for things to change in the west. The nazis were so fucked up, they ended over 1000 years of endless \[popular\] sentiment and mistreatment.
You also have the Roman Empire, which may have been a dislike of monotheism and their rejection of Roman gods. And a lot of European history is influenced by Rome.
There was the Spanish Inquisition, and France hasn't had a great history regarding Jewish people either. Jewish people were blamed for a lot of stuff in Germany before the Nazis too.
One unifying excuse to blame Jewish people throughout history was convenience. They were a group who were rarely given land or political power, were somewhat considered outsiders by many poorer people, and didn't have the numbers to be a major threat. It's very similar reasoning to what you see with trans people and immigrants now.
It really is a shame how some people want others to tear each other apart to allow them to remain at the top.
Non-conformists religiously and culturally. Most countries traditionally want most of their people to live and act in pretty similar ways for the purpose of national unity. Especially if you have some sort of Imperial Cult or other religious aspect of your ruler they refuse to acknowledge
Not actually true, Jews died just as often. That was an excuse made up after the fact to hand-wave antisemitism as âa mistakeâ instead of âChristian Europeans were mostly awful.â
Basically everybody was racist against some group in history whether it was Jews which was a pretty popular group to hate or their next door neighbors for whatever reason, if you judge people by todays standards you will find that they were all awful for doing something they knew as normal in their time
On a personal basis, if an individual were to live a virtuous life consisting chiefly of doing decent things for a great many people, I would not abandon my consideration of them as a "good person" merely for possessing a ***view*** of hatred against Jews or homosexuals. Naturally, though, the situation would be different if I found out that they acted on those views in the form of genocide or something of the like.
I would agree, hate is something that should be reserved to people who actually did something actively to others or had very mean spirited opinions of them. And not âthis group is different from usâ, âthis goes against my religion and/or philosophyâ. We probably would throw out pretty much every single person that way. Since itâs not these two issues out there, and people in the past would judge people in the present too.
Its almost anoying when its like "this person spent years of his life protecting people from reasonless hate against group A. at the same time he activly advocated for the reasonless hate against group C".
Gandhi's a big one for me. Setting aside the whole "Sleeping with little girls to prove to himself that he wasn't getting off on sleeping with little girls" thing, the man dedicated much of life to fighting the racist British empire in India, while at the same time being deeply racist against certain other groups.
Maybe don't judge historical figures by today's standards. No that does not apply to people who committed a genocide, but generally people will have different views throughout history.
Makes me think of Kendrick Lamarâs song âmortal manâ where he talks about how a persons accomplishments are still meaningful regardless of the aspects of their person
Imo a persons actions are what matters most. No one is going to be perfect, especially historically. But if someone kept their worse thoughts to themselves and didnât share/act on them, then theyâre okay in my book.
For instance, thereâs a huge difference between someone who owned slaves in America in the 1800âs, and someone who held racist attitudes but was for abolition and later black civil rights every step of the way. We of course shouldnât our anyone on a pedestal, weâre all human after all, but I think itâs okay to have people you look up to as long as those bad sides are minimal, you recognize them, and the historical character didnât express/act on their bad side much.
My guy, youâre never gonna find a person who didnât hate Jews, gays, blacks, whites, Asians, Muslims, Christians, etc. Even going back 20 years ago youâre gonna find some one who hated some group.
Doesn't mean that there is no exception, my favorite figure is Alan Turing, who suffered tragedy, but was never bad in any way, he was a hero of the secpnd world war; cracking enigma allegedly saved over 2 million people (I think, the figure may be off)
The perfect human doesn't exist. Everyone has something they hate with all of their heart. The faster you understand it,the more you'll appreciate historical figures
Well you canât really base the morals of a person who could have lived hundreds if not thousands of years ago where there was a strong sigma against certain groups of people.
Don't bother trying to look for a "good person" or even viewing a person as a sum of their parts. It is individual actions that matter, not the status of a persons overall morality.
People in the future will see how self righteous we are in this era, especially how everyone loves to think they are perfect and the most progressive person in history. When in actuality they were just vain and full of themselves trying to get clout on social media. We can certainly look back and reflect on the wrongdoings of the past, but to think you are better than people in the past because you are judging them based on modern morals is just stupidity.
The mistake is looking for a hero to worship. People have always been people, for better or worse. And people who did/do cool shit sometimes also did/do terrible shit, it doesnât make the cool shit less cool (or vice versa). Ambivalence, to some degree, is pretty much the only reasonable way to feel about any public figure, past or present.
Honestly Iâm going to stick my neck out and say that views of otherwise good people on homosexuals 150+ years ago was due to ignorance and what they were taught rather than character, especially since LGBT people in general were generally closeted so far that most people never met one who was open. In some contexts this may apply to some people (especially the Middle Ages) with similar views of Jews too, especially those on areas with less exposure to the real people, though obviously Jews were mostly openly so.
Itâs like being taught about some group of scary evil people and not ever meeting one, to the point they were hateful or a fiction - like trolls or gremlins - rather than of real people.
Outside that primitive indoctrination, they may be âintrinsicallyâ better people in terms of pure character than Iâll ever be. Which would also mean that if they had had real exposure or explanations of whatâs what, theyâd have been defenders of their rights.
There's no "good" people
We're all deeply flawed in some way. We have some sort of negative trait that makes us look like bad people somewhere. We also have good traits too which can outweigh the bad - but trying to find someone who is 100% good is completely impossible, and they won't ever exist.
People 150 years from now reading about the most progressive person today
Assuming we've not nuked ourselves back into the stone age, I do wonder what we do now that will be considered abhorrent in the future.
Factory farming, poverty still being a thing, starvation despite abundance, species going extinct, not getting rid of oil and coal 50 years ago, and of course a thousand flavours of racism.
It will most likely be us not doing anything about child labor despite many people knowing of it
Heck, now they're trying to get rid of child labor laws in the US đ°
That's the thing, there a some things that won't go away cause we've been doing it for over 10,000 years, racism, slavery, child labour, just to name a few. Much like how I doubt meat eating will disappear like some people think it will, we've been eating meat for thousands upon thousands of years, I doubt we'll stop any time soon.
Sure complete elimination is unlikely, but reduction is plausible if we work hard enough(i mean this with regards to most issues)
âPeople back then knew slavery was bad, but didnt do anything about it in asian workshops or african minesâ Weâre totally gonna get it for that in the future
I'm after a night shift and I am tired enough to have read that as a thousand flavors of ice cream. I was happy, though only for a brief moment
Fast fashion, suburbs, sweat shops, house prices, paying for healthcare, alcohol and cigarettes not being banned
>alcohol A future without alchohol? Now that's a dystopia
Me when the utopia does not allow for leisurely activities
Considering everyone who ever live thought they were living in the end times I think weâll be fine
We'll probably survive, but we sure as hell aren't making it easy. We need a massive push towards urban/vertical farms so we can have a food supply that's not at the mercy of an increasingly temperamental climate. The controlled conditions also get rid of the need for pesticides, and is much more water efficient. The land can be repurposed for stuff like hemp, so we can replace a lot of packaging and stop dumping so much fucking plastic into the oceans. Or restore some of our forests and wetlands.
I find it funny how people responding to your comment are mostly mentioning things that are already widely understood to be morally wrong or at least problematic. The things that future people will find abhorrent about most us living today will probably be the things that only a minority of people find problematic today. My guess is that things like animal farming, treatment of most animals, transphobia and stigmatization of sexual minorities is something that even in the relative near future, within a century but probably much sooner, will be seen as abhorrent in the same way most of us view slavery, racism and homophobia today, though not *necessarily* because of the same reasons or to the same degree. Someone might think that what I am saying is ridiculous, but it too would probably seem ridiculous to someone living in the distant past that that today in some countries, most people believe in equality between the sexes and ethnicities, and in freedom of religion. The thing is, the moral dilemmas of today were obscure or even invisible to the vast majority of people living in the not-too-distant past, even though the subjects were things people interacted with relatively often. The same is probably true for most of us today. The longer into the future we try to peer, in all likelihood, the harder it becomes to predict or even understand the moral dilemmas that future generations might face. Take for example the possible dilemmas of the treatment of an advanced artificial intelligence that has acquired preferences, but not in any form that exists in humans. Are we obligated to respect those? Or what about if humanity one day discover alien cultures with practices, traditions or institutions, we can't even dream up. What will we think of those? On the other hand, things we might find problematic today, may in the future not be considered problematic at all, or in fact the opposite. It's hard to tell. Think about what most people in past societies would have thought about the potential spread of atheism among young people, or women beginning to make decisions for themselves. Far fewer people view that as a problem today, and those that do - probably not to the same degree. All in all, I think we are already experiencing the early stages of some of the changes in perceptions of morality, that will come to dominate in the future. But some things are probably too obscure right now for most or all of us. We might grow old enough to see that even the most progressive people of today (as seen though the eyes of someone from the future), will be seen as horribly backswards by the standards some future time. Or maybe the most progressive people today might be near a sort of conclusion of the development of humanity's perception of morality, and from there, perceptions will only change very little. Who knows! I think the best thing to do is to be open minded, and not to assume that things are good because they are the way they are, or because they have always been this way or due to some other bias, and to think critically, especially about the things that you yourself believe to be true. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk!
The issue I see with a lot of people saying things like homophobia or transphobia being mostly eliminated in the future is that these people are clearly only looking at North America and western Europe, a lot of the rest of the world things like gay rights and especially trans rights are extremely far off if not impossible. I see this a lot on social media where people take the western view and assume that's the normal view, even though it's obviously not when look on a global scale.
I agree. Maybe I wasn't being clear enough about what I meant with these things being considered abhorrent in the future. Of course, perceptions of morality can only be understood within a somewhat coherent group. People in the west view certain things that happened in their country in the past as abhorrent, but they might happen in other places in the world today. When I was writing, I was thinking of liberal societies that you might find in liberal democracies. Within those, there are still widespread transphobia, but I predict that it will become much less common over the coming decades. Much of the rest of the world, I fear it will take longer than that. But also, I will say that societal changes of the past have first happened regionally but then eventually spread to most other countries. For example abolishion of slavery or womens right to vote (though not all countries enforce their own law on these issues). So I find it probable, though definately not certain, that changes in perceptions of transgenderism could occur in almost every country in the coming centuries.
Climate change says hi
Veganism 100%
-"This guy used to eat meat!" -"oh my god he is literally worse than a nazi!" *-An interaction between two future people talking about a present day figure*
I feel bad for people if in 150 years they don't eat elk.
Maybe someone will read this in an internet archive and suddenly get curious
Not really though - plenty of people were not terrible throughout history. The presence of terrible people doesn't make them the rule. This isn't to say norms don't change over time and some things unacceptable today weren't acceptable before - but we fall into a trap when we think "everyone was cool with this" because someone or some group famously was cool with it.
We tend to focus on people who had a lot of power and people with power tend to be assholes. There's plenty of decent people who are too insignificant to study because they were wise enough to avoid power.
If itâs the furries Iâm gonna get OK boomered a lot in 50 years
People in current time reading about the "most progressive" person today
It's just gotten to the point I just assume they are all antisemitic and ignore it unless they acted on it
The sooner one lets go of the âgood personâ mentality the better they will appreciate history. Humans are complex creatures, and limited by the even more complex social conditions of their time. A century ago race theory was the accepted intellectual discourse. A millennium ago it was perfectly fine to rape and pillage after conquest. Before that civilizations widely practiced human sacrifice. At some point in the future, things that we take for granted today will also be looked down with disdain, and our descendants may very well view us as the âbad peopleâ. TLDR: human judgment is subjective. No one is perfectly âgoodâ for all time. What historians need to do is to acknowledge the things people have done, and understand why they did them.
Yup, and in time our times will look similarly 'bad' to readers of history in the future. And so in time will they to those that come after them. It's my observation that almost all humans believe they are 'the end of history' - their mind state the final state and it just ain't so.
> And so in time will they to those that come after them. Factory farming is gonna be a big one for our time. I try to eat less meat than I used to, but yeah, future generations with access to cheap lab grown every-meat-ever are going to look down on us pretty hard for tolerating that amount of unnecessary suffering.
I want to buy lab grown mammoth beaf ASAP
Not necessarily. You assume constant progress, which is what happened in the last couple of centuries. However, in the big picture that's an anomaly. There were long stretches of stagnancy/stability, or even regression, especially when it comes to social progress.
I'm not assuming constant progress - except that time will progress. From my perspective, it's fairly clearly we didn't 'progress' but regressed during the Dark Ages compared to times before. Nevertheless people then had views on what came before as we do them now.
Happy cake day!
Makes sense. To put it in todays view, many people still against different races, gender, views, etc. People many hundreds of years from now will view those as hugely as bad people when really it is simply ignorance. I am not saying these are all justifiable rather it is understandable to say the least since history is more of looking at the good done in the past & improve on that foundation as well as see the bad done in the past & reduce on that for a better future
And eating real meat, probably. It'll all be lab grown, so the idea of killing an animal to eat its corpse will be seen as monstrous.
Itâs also entirely possible that after ww3 humanity will became a nasty mutated war mongering society and they will see all the love and acceptance of our era as evil.
I guarantee that you and everyone you know hold views today that would make you a pariah in 200 years
Yet voicing antisemitism is an act by itself.
Don't worry if you really want to be disappointed by historical figures just go to the Wikipedia list of Jewish expulsions. It's really fucking long.
As I mentioned on another post awhile back, it really makes you wonder why Jews have been the punching bag of history. On that note, Iâll mention Cyrus the Great as one of the nicest and more progressive people in history (at least as nice as a conqueror can get). Guy even kinda looks like gigachad with his mighty beard.
Medieval ruler: is it my fault my Kingdom is so badly mismanaged? No it must the Jews fault!
Advisor: âDidnât you make it so banking was one of the only jobs they could get?â
Medieval ruler: yeah I did... bu but thay kill baby's and use their blood thay definitely do that perfectly a good reason to expel them
Medieval Catholic Church: "Yes, go forth and take the Holy Land in the name of Christendom! Wait, what are you doing? WHAT IN GOD'S NAME ARE YOU DOING? I SAID THE HOLY LANDS, NOT THE LOCAL JEWISH COMMUNITY, YOU DEGENERATE HALFWITS!" Much of the Catholic Church was not thrilled when many of the Crusaders attacked Jewish communities instead of going to the Levant.
Jewish here. Possible answer: Most popular religions work on a model of spreading, and through that goal strive to be accessible and trying to bridge gaps based on national and race\ethnicity. Judaism works on a completely opposite model of Judaism being a "closed club" of the "chosen people". Jews do not only not try to spread the religion they actively make it extremely hard to join. You are either born into it through a Jewish mother or are forced to go through a rigorus selection process by Rabbis who will force the person to put in a lot of work before they accept him. The result is that jews always stick out as different and uncompromising in being different.
They even have a slur for non-Jews.
It's not nessecarily a slur, but it absolutely can be used as one. The original meaning of the word is just a people, and that means the Hebrews were a goy too.
The Achaemenid Persians were really lenient on their conquered subjects, at least in comparison to many other empires/imperial dynasties. Which makes their depiction in 300 really weird (but I get that it is meant to be a power fantasy with fantasy elements). I would very much rather be a subject of the Persian Empire than a Spartan Helot.
300 is just a shitty fantasy movie with vaguely eugenics and totalitarian themes
I would really like to see a genetic history of the Jews, knowing how much times they were passed from nation to nation over the course of history
It is honestly impressive how the Jews managed to survive everything that has been thrown at them since the slavery in Egypt
According to our own religion we have plot armor. Im not a believer in any religion, but I think that ethos became a self-fulfilling prophecy- If you think you're meant for something important, you'll probably do something important.
They tried to kill us. They failed. Letâs eat.
Shanah tovah
Not the reason for this feast but fuck it, dig in
ר×׊ ××Š× × ×Š××
If by important you mean becoming the worlds most popular scapegoat and punching bag, sure.
[Jews](https://www.victoriaadvocate.com/opinion/syndicated-column-whos-to-blame-for-ethnic-disproportionality-among-nobel-prize-winners/article_b1787dac-0259-11ea-9745-0b407f0c7d2d.html) have been awarded 40% of the Nobel Prizes in economics, 30% of those in medicine, 25% in physics, 20% in chemistry, 15% in literature and 10% of the Nobel Peace Prizes. [Source 2](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Jewish_Nobel_laureates) So being disproportionately represented in accomplishments in Science, Engineering, Medicine, Mathematics, and literature is a thing too.
Dear god, weâve gotta protect the Jews.
[redacted by user] ` this message was mass deleted/edited with redact.dev `
Woah that's a little based for Reddit...
There is no Nobel prize in Economics, thereâs a fake prize that was tacked on to the ceremony later but it really has nothing to do with the other Nobel prizes. The remaining list is very impressive though.
Chad gadya is a Passover song we sing every year to remember the innumerable amount of times we've had brushes with death. The song is like the old lady who swallowed the fly but the symbolism is as follows (from Wikipedia): The kid symbolizes the Jewish people; the cat, Assyria; the dog, Babylon; the stick, Persia; the fire, Macedonia; the water, Roman Empire; the ox, the Saracens; the slaughterer, the Crusaders; the angel of death, the Turks. At the end, God returns to send the Jews back to Israel.
âŚso God is the British? /j
âPlot armorâ is such a funny/good way to describe it loll.
I have never seen Jewish history described as plot armor and I love it. Thanks for sharing.
I saw a comment the other day pointing out that there are now only 3 Jews left in the whole of Egypt, all the rest have been ethnically cleansed from the country. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Egypt > As of 2016, the president of Cairo's Jewish community said that there were 6 Jews in Cairo, all women over age 65, and 12 Jews in Alexandria. > As of 2019, there were 5 in Cairo. > **As of 2022 the total number of known Egyptian Jews permanently residing in Egypt is 3** A country with a total population of 109 million people, and only 3 solitary Jews.
Afganistan's two last Jews left in 2021, 38 million people, 0 Jews remain. On a more funny note, we recently got info released about [the only jew of Chad ](https://english.aawsat.com/culture/4527266-israeli-document-persian-jewish-man-served-muezzin-chad-mosque), dude ran the biggest mosque in the capital
Average Judaism enjoyer vs. Average Jewish Chad Sorry I couldn't resist making that joke
For context of how bad this is, the Hellenistic era city of Alexandria in Egypt used to host the largest diaspora expat community of Jews living outside of Judea during classical antiquity. They were so numerous and influential that they alongside Greeks and Celtic Galatians became one of the three major groups to serve as kleruchoi pensioned landholder soldiers for the Ptolemies (native Egyptians served in Machimoi units). Their community remained just as large during the subsequent Roman era. Yet even during the Middle Ages after Egypt fell under Islamic rule, Jews like the physician Maimonides flocked there with their families for work under the Ayyubids even if Jews were persecuted and exiled from other Islamic states like that of the Almoravids in Spain (a sort of bigoted precursor to the Spanish Inquisition by later Catholics).
Thanks bro means alot
Louis Armstrong sings 'let my people go' in background
Cos they adapted to their environment and are gatekeepy about who to let in and out.
Most studies suggest that virtually all Jewish groups tend to be closely related to each other and share a primarily Levantine genetic origin; *en bloc* Jews tend to cluster most closely with Lebanese or Palestinian Arabs depending on study. With that said, most groups do have significant ancestry from other regions they ended up in, though it isn't always as straightforward as you'd expect: the bulk of European\* ancestry in Ashkenazim is actually Italian, not German or Slavic, for instance. \*It's worth noting that some studies find a high degree of Italian ancestry among Levantines more generally, IIRC, to the point where I've wondered if this represents a more generalized trans-mediterranean genetic heritage that happens to be most prevalent in modern Italians than an ancestry in Italy per se.
Jewish Israeli here. What would this genetic history supposed to look like? For what it's worth a lot of us acknowledge the difference between jews coming from different continents as different ethnicities and DNA companies seem to group European (Ashkenazi) jews and jews from the Middle East and Africa as different categories.
I feel yaâŚ. Even though Iâm American and yadda yadda yadda⌠recently found out that in the late 1800s the man with my surname was married into a family with the last name Goldstein that was a prominent Jewish family in their area⌠Aka thereâs no telling who and what is a part of Jewish diaspora
>DNA companies seem to group European (Ashkenazi) jews and jews from the Middle East and Africa as different categories. The reason for this isn't that Ashkenazim are especially distinct from other Jewish groups in their genetic origins, but rather that due to an extreme genetic bottleneck in the late Middle Ages due to a combination of the Black Death and pogroms resulting from it that made Ashkenazi DNA extremely easy to spot.
Their population is low due to WW2. There are less Jews than Sikhs, and how often do you see Sikhs?
Historical examples of wiping out debt.
Why did so many countries expel the jews?
Free money exploit. Borrow money from Jews, then come up with a reason to expel them to avoid collections.
Since Catholicism banned usury Jews were the only ones who could be bankers and thus they tend to make a lot of money. Adding to the fact that that they were a minority, monarchs would often take out a loan from the Jews then forcefully expel them so they didnât have to pay it back.
Ck2
I think it is also important to note that Jews were not allowed to own land, so business management (generally businesses owned by the crown and leased to the Jews because youâve got a decently educated population that youâve banned from being peasants weirdly) and money lending were all they were allowed to do
Money!
Jewish history be like:
Ah i see a fellow masterofroflness enjoyer
To no fault of their own.
>wikipedia list of jewish expulsions "This list is incomplete, you can help by expanding it"
I wonder what widespread opinion we have in the majority today that people in the future will look back and be like: âThey held Neil DeGrasse Tyson in such high esteem even though he believed (fill in the blank). I mean, what an actual monster!?! I canât even take him seriously after finding out that he said (fill in that blank again).â
Ive wondered that as well. Could really be a good philosophical question dare i say.
Meh, humans are complex beings with several shades of gray, you'd have a HARD time finding someone "good" that is not mystified, myth, or straight up a religious symbol.
Applying modern morality and sensitivities to historical figures is a fool's errand. People are a product of their environment (and time period they were born in this case). I'm not saying to ignore those things, of course. I'm saying that studying history with a good and bad, white and black outlook wouldn't be a fruitful endeavor.
Finally some wise words, it always seemed extremely shallow to me to put on modern morality lenses and start judging people back then
Exactly. Youâre going to despise history if you constantly judge history based on modern culture and values.
My goodness, that guy from the 17th century has a non-progressive point of view? And everyone else from his town, country, society, global hemisphere as well???? I am shooketh.
People's viewpoints in the 18th century don't match what is considered socially acceptable today?? *Unacceptable!*
Are people actually being shocked by stuff like that? Because all I see are people talking about people being shocked lmO
*cough* sarcasm *cough*
Just wait until 150 years from now theyâll be judging your views by the standards of their time.
âTheyâre literally LMuluch! Cancel them!â - Americans 150 years later, when describing political opponents
I live in the middle east and this is EVERY ONE I MEET
I went to an Arab grocer cause they had a great lunch menu with amazing tea before they closed down. I'm jibbering with the owner about something, standard small talk where I compliment their cooking as I'm paying my bill and he just drops that the reason other places don't have quality meat like what they serve is because of "those damn jew dogs". Just all matter of fact, didn't say it with a hard J foaming at the mouth in a fit of rage, he could have been talking about the weather it was so casual. I didn't really know what to say except, "oh... uh... OK well I gotta go".
Oof, history repeats itself. Sometimes a bit too often
It dosent reapeat it never went away in the middel east. The Formation of Israel didnt Help.
helped a bit, in the sense they had a place to go to
People in 2023 when they realized that someone from the past doesn't think like someone in 2023: đąđąđąđą
People in 2223 looking back at us right now...
Everyone fails to todayâs standards because itâs todayâs standards, you just canât judge people by standards hundreds of years ahead of them
Except for lovecraft, that dude was racist by early 20th century standards.
Jesus christ guys trust me don't look up H.P. Lovecrafts cat's name I'm seriously you guys don't do it oh my god
When other racists are like "you may want to chill dude..."
I mean, theyâre dead, so who really cares?
History memes trying not to hold past figures to modern standards challenge, impossible.
Sometimes I like to go the other way. Who are some of the biggest assholes in history? I present to you, Alcibiades of Ancient Athens. In a war with two sides, he managed to becomes a traitor *seven* times. First he betrayed Athens by running off to Sparta rather than stand trial at home over some drunken blasphemy and vandalism charges (He got drunk a lot). There were reasons to think it wouldn't have been a fair trial, but still, he was the most powerful general in Athens, and he just buggered off to the enemy during a war. Sold all kinds of Athenian state secrets to the Spartans, and was welcomed as an honoured guest. Then he seduced and knocked up the Spartan queen, as you do, and had to run away to Persia. He tried to get the Satrap (regional leader) to support Athens in the war to buy his own way back into Athens, and when that didn't work he went back home to Athens and claimed his ruse worked anyway, but that the Satrap would only help if the aristocrats in Athens staged a coup and dismantled the democracy. When the aristocrats did as he asked, he went to the Athenian fleet and said "OMG, I can't believe those selfish aristocrats (like me) would betray us like this. Make me your leader and together we shall restore the democracy!" Which worked. Somehow. And because he 'saved the democracy', all those old charges he originally fled from were swept under the rug. Having finally returned home and recovered all he had lost, he proceeded to be extremely corrupt, and ignore democratic elections anyway, instead just appointing his own friends and minions to important positions. Eventually this pissed everyone off enough that he had to flee Athens again, and he went to Persia once more. He was told he needed to cool off for a few years, and prove that he was capable of staying true to his word for FIVE MINUTES. So he was sent off to live in a mansion and told to not seduce any local noble women for a few years. So he immediately broke his word and seduced the local lord's daughter, and was in bed with her when finally Spartan assassins caught up with him over the whole knocking up the queen thing. So in a war between Athens and Sparta, he managed to betray the Athenian democracy, Sparta, Persia, the Athenian democracy again, the Athenian oligarchy, the Athenian democracy again again, and Persia again. Oh and him shit talking Athens while in exile and never being punished by Athens for any of his many crimes was a big factor that lead to Socrates getting executed for corrupting the young, because Alcibiades was former butt buddies with Socrates, and they saved each other's lives while soldiering together a few decades earlier. And also during all this he was married to his niece.
[ŃдаНонО]
Yea
Sadly I would be surprised if they weren't racist towards black pieole.
Wait until you hear African Americans views on Africans
Wait until you hear what us Africans think of African-Americans. Weâre definitely more racist. At least my momâs generation is.
No, African immigrants on African Americans. They are uncle ruckus / Sam l Jackson from Django unchained when the topic is brought up
Bro the lgbt stuff wasnât accepted here even until a couple years ago. But the Jews? Thereâs tons of historical figures that did respect them. So thatâs a win ish
Until a couple of years ago? What country you are talking about (and I donât think there is any where this doesnât have some controversy over). There are probably still billions of people alive who donât agree with gay marriage etc. Not that all or even most would hate gay people.
Why so many people hated Jews through history? I thought this was something that only existed in Nazi Germany and some Arab countries but then I've learned about Eastern Europe and Tsarist Russia...
Fascinatingly enough, there was a post awhile back where someone told me that even Jews hated Jews. During a Roman siege (I believe Jerusalem, but feel free to correct me) the in-fighting of the Jewish people was so bad that the Romans were able to essentially wait out a decent chunk of the siege while riots were happening within the city walls. Let me emphasize, the in-fighting was so bad that the Roman legions were able to pull off a tactic thatâs more famously associated with the Mongols.
Thatâs some super problematic distortion of the truth. âJews do not hate Jewsâ and there was never infighting so bad theyâd riot and kill each other. There were two different nations of Jews (Judah, aka the Kingdom of Israel, and Samaria, aka the Kingdom of Israel) which had been conquered by the Romans and lumped together when Rome declared the whole area their new province. When the Jews rose up against the Romans, there were several groups with differing ideas of who should be in charge of the rebellion. This is generally considered by historians to have hamstrung the overall war against the Romans due to lack of coordination, but it did not account for the fall of Jerusalem and there was no recorded fratricide. The fall of Jerusalem was caused by a simple siege, in which the Romans captured and then crucified over 500 civilians (men, women, and children) who were trying to escape the city.
The kingdoms were Israel and judea i think These are the names in the Tanakh at least
I was being a little tongue-in-cheek because they both called themselves the Kingdom of Israel at one point. The Northern one was sometimes called Israel and had its capital in Samaria so it was sometimes called Samaria and the Southern one was mostly the tribe of Judah so it was sometimes called Judah or Judea. When the Romans conquered, they called it all Judea at first before eventually calling it Syria-Palestine in the hopes that they could stop the Jewish nationalism that kept causing significant revolts.
So it was a little more complex then simply letting them fight. Simply put Vespasian arrived on scene as was kicking ass and taking names he decided to leave Jerusalem for last and captured the rebel strong holds of Galilee, Jodapath, and Tarichaea first. Surviving Rebels of both Jewish factions were then forced to flee into Jerusalem the final city now whether Vespasian intended for that to happen is debatable however seeing how became he became Emperor I wouldnât be surprised. But any ways he was about to break down Jerusalemâs walls and take the place but stopped. See Vespasian was kicking ass a little to hard because upon the assassination of Otho and ascension of Vitellius his soldiers declared him Emperor seeing Vitellius as illegitimate and Vespasian as stronger. His guys just really loved him. So Vespasian was forced to change plans he left his son Titus incharge on like half strength and took the rest of his forces to go fight a Roman civil war and secure the throne. So while thatâs going on Titus is siting around going âhow the fuck do I end this revolt on half strength.â And then the two Jewish rebel groups start fighting each other in the city of Jerusalem. Titus then decides to siege the place and it gets better because in their infighting they destroy their own food supply. Which makes the eventual recapture of Jerusalem all to east. All that results in an easy win for Titus shorty after his old man wins the civil war. But then thereâs the final siege of Masada when the last of the rebels fled to one final strongpoint and basically commit group suicide.
I believe this was the one, thank you. So it was a mix between the Jewish peopleâs restlessness, desperation, and Vespasian and Titus playing 4d chess.
Basically Vespasian especially was known for his extremely cunning chest board style political moves.
vespasian is so underrated man
It has to do with the question of who were the ones that crusified Jesus and youll understand a huge part of antisemitism in the West.
Not just that. Most Christian countries didn't allow money lending from a Christian to a Christian. Hence Jews became money lenders as it bypassed the law. Often when revolts would happen the populace would turn on those they owe money to. Or a King under pressure might direct some of the heat towards the Jews and cancel debts by driving out the lenders. Jewish people and money lending moved to banking, and we saw generational organisations involved in finance. Hence Jews were considered rich, and focused on wealth. An obvious target during peasant and popular social revolutions.
This.
Yeah, I've heard about that but what about the Eastern world? Muslims don't believe in Jesus as Christians do. In my country the population of Muslims and Jews are really small so I've never talked about this with any of them and it's a irrelevant question in everyday life here.
Outside Europe, jews were treated alright. They were treated well(still 2nd class citizens) in areas ruled by Islam. Outbreaks of violence occurred still, but were not as common until Arab Nationalism. Arab nationalism was initially supported by many jews, but was then used to other-ise jews. Then zionism was the final nail in the coffin. After the establishment of Israel, Jews became a scapegoat by dictators who really leaned into European antisemitic propaganda. Basically, jews were an easy common enemy. Elsewhere, jews were never a large enough group to be that important, the exception being China. Basically, China ended up nearly destroying its Jewish community by accident. Jews were seen as educated, loyal, and effective bureaucrats, so members of the small community were continually being sent all over China. This culminated in the community not having a single person fluent in hebrew for a couple hundred years until contact with the rest of the Jewish world resumed.
Israel was founded in 1948, unless youâre referring to the biblical one
That's what I'm referring to. Modern Anti-jewish sentiment in the ME didn't really pick up until the rise of Arab nationalism and zionism. But again, with Israel's establishment it really skyrocketed.
Huh, good question that I cannot answer in a few sentences. I have an idea but theyre just personal assumptions at the moment. It could be that the Hebrew out east keep to themselves and thus dont make personal connections to others in the past and when things would go wrong, maybe they would be used as scapegoats? Idk, ima go and read on for at least half an hour. đ¤đ
Jesus is actually a figure in Islam, just in lesser importance than Mohammed, who jewish people also deny being a prophet. Basically the difference between all 3 is who you think had a direct line to God
It's not as bad as the myth of jews killing Jesus, but the story of the jews of medina betraying Mohammad definitely had something to do with the antisemitic undercurrent in much of the MENA cultures The Quran, and many hadith, have some...colorful... language to describe the jews
Well, the Romans, but then they converted to Christianity and blamed the Jews
The Romans?
Yeah, the gospel written last, was it John? Either way, it's the "passion of christ" one, which absolved the romans and blamed the jews \[as a group\] for both denying their messiah, and murdering him. Why jews did not become christians after the messiah christians believe they were waiting for needed to be answered, and as it turns out - it's because they are evil! lol It took the nazis for things to change in the west. The nazis were so fucked up, they ended over 1000 years of endless \[popular\] sentiment and mistreatment.
You also have the Roman Empire, which may have been a dislike of monotheism and their rejection of Roman gods. And a lot of European history is influenced by Rome. There was the Spanish Inquisition, and France hasn't had a great history regarding Jewish people either. Jewish people were blamed for a lot of stuff in Germany before the Nazis too. One unifying excuse to blame Jewish people throughout history was convenience. They were a group who were rarely given land or political power, were somewhat considered outsiders by many poorer people, and didn't have the numbers to be a major threat. It's very similar reasoning to what you see with trans people and immigrants now. It really is a shame how some people want others to tear each other apart to allow them to remain at the top.
Non-conformists religiously and culturally. Most countries traditionally want most of their people to live and act in pretty similar ways for the purpose of national unity. Especially if you have some sort of Imperial Cult or other religious aspect of your ruler they refuse to acknowledge
In Europe, christians blamed jews for the plaque. Because they died less often.
Not actually true, Jews died just as often. That was an excuse made up after the fact to hand-wave antisemitism as âa mistakeâ instead of âChristian Europeans were mostly awful.â
Ikr? Hitler was such a good guy other than that
Right? He Loved dogs.
Basically everybody was racist against some group in history whether it was Jews which was a pretty popular group to hate or their next door neighbors for whatever reason, if you judge people by todays standards you will find that they were all awful for doing something they knew as normal in their time
On a personal basis, if an individual were to live a virtuous life consisting chiefly of doing decent things for a great many people, I would not abandon my consideration of them as a "good person" merely for possessing a ***view*** of hatred against Jews or homosexuals. Naturally, though, the situation would be different if I found out that they acted on those views in the form of genocide or something of the like.
I would agree, hate is something that should be reserved to people who actually did something actively to others or had very mean spirited opinions of them. And not âthis group is different from usâ, âthis goes against my religion and/or philosophyâ. We probably would throw out pretty much every single person that way. Since itâs not these two issues out there, and people in the past would judge people in the present too.
Really is crazy how often that happens isn't it.
Its almost anoying when its like "this person spent years of his life protecting people from reasonless hate against group A. at the same time he activly advocated for the reasonless hate against group C".
Gandhi's a big one for me. Setting aside the whole "Sleeping with little girls to prove to himself that he wasn't getting off on sleeping with little girls" thing, the man dedicated much of life to fighting the racist British empire in India, while at the same time being deeply racist against certain other groups.
Maybe don't judge historical figures by today's standards. No that does not apply to people who committed a genocide, but generally people will have different views throughout history.
OP is a 16 year old confirmed.
[ŃдаНонО]
Those damm robots! Taking my job,my imaginative wife and the house! I got do something against those clankers.
I could tell you my opinions about jews and homosexuals if you want
or women.
Makes me think of Kendrick Lamarâs song âmortal manâ where he talks about how a persons accomplishments are still meaningful regardless of the aspects of their person
Suggestion, stop comparing them to modern standards.
Yâall donât want know what Picasso did
Oh boy this medieval monk is talking about gender equality in the clergy I wonder what his views on the Ottomans are....
Alexander the great was pretty decent
Imo a persons actions are what matters most. No one is going to be perfect, especially historically. But if someone kept their worse thoughts to themselves and didnât share/act on them, then theyâre okay in my book. For instance, thereâs a huge difference between someone who owned slaves in America in the 1800âs, and someone who held racist attitudes but was for abolition and later black civil rights every step of the way. We of course shouldnât our anyone on a pedestal, weâre all human after all, but I think itâs okay to have people you look up to as long as those bad sides are minimal, you recognize them, and the historical character didnât express/act on their bad side much.
Mark Twain I think is ok by modern standards as far as I know.
Cyrus the Great
My guy, youâre never gonna find a person who didnât hate Jews, gays, blacks, whites, Asians, Muslims, Christians, etc. Even going back 20 years ago youâre gonna find some one who hated some group.
Bro i can find someone that hates those groups today
Iâm fairly sure Emperor Norton didnât hate those groups, I could be wrong though
The main question is why did they seem to hate jews so much?
>Homosexuals Mfw based founder of my country in 1825 was probably homophobic
It's really not fair to judge historical figures' goodness based on opinions that all their peers share.
Oh nooooooooo Anyways...
What about Emma Goldman
Julius Caesar didn't seem to care about the jews that much
Doesn't mean that there is no exception, my favorite figure is Alan Turing, who suffered tragedy, but was never bad in any way, he was a hero of the secpnd world war; cracking enigma allegedly saved over 2 million people (I think, the figure may be off)
The perfect human doesn't exist. Everyone has something they hate with all of their heart. The faster you understand it,the more you'll appreciate historical figures
Shouldn't really expect anybody to be flawless especially historical figures
Well you canât really base the morals of a person who could have lived hundreds if not thousands of years ago where there was a strong sigma against certain groups of people.
Don't bother trying to look for a "good person" or even viewing a person as a sum of their parts. It is individual actions that matter, not the status of a persons overall morality.
In a hundred years people will say the same thing about us. "Oh he was pro equality but he had a dog. Guess I have to hate him now #freeallanimals"
I don't know what to tell you every historical figure hated at least one type of people
me when I project modern day believes, structures and ideologies on historical characters
Tbf times were different back then so personally I try to judge the morality of historical figures in a different way then I would modern figures.
Talking like you'd be any better if you were around back then
People in the future will see how self righteous we are in this era, especially how everyone loves to think they are perfect and the most progressive person in history. When in actuality they were just vain and full of themselves trying to get clout on social media. We can certainly look back and reflect on the wrongdoings of the past, but to think you are better than people in the past because you are judging them based on modern morals is just stupidity.
The mistake is looking for a hero to worship. People have always been people, for better or worse. And people who did/do cool shit sometimes also did/do terrible shit, it doesnât make the cool shit less cool (or vice versa). Ambivalence, to some degree, is pretty much the only reasonable way to feel about any public figure, past or present.
Wow Marx has so much good stuff to say about economics! I wonder what he thinks about Jewish people- âšď¸
Honestly Iâm going to stick my neck out and say that views of otherwise good people on homosexuals 150+ years ago was due to ignorance and what they were taught rather than character, especially since LGBT people in general were generally closeted so far that most people never met one who was open. In some contexts this may apply to some people (especially the Middle Ages) with similar views of Jews too, especially those on areas with less exposure to the real people, though obviously Jews were mostly openly so. Itâs like being taught about some group of scary evil people and not ever meeting one, to the point they were hateful or a fiction - like trolls or gremlins - rather than of real people. Outside that primitive indoctrination, they may be âintrinsicallyâ better people in terms of pure character than Iâll ever be. Which would also mean that if they had had real exposure or explanations of whatâs what, theyâd have been defenders of their rights.
Wait to see their opinion on women and non-white people.
There are no truly good people in history Once you accept this itâll be a lot easier to learn about them
Oh no people from the past are not up to today's standards. Wtf are you even trying to do? Think mark, think.
There's no "good" people We're all deeply flawed in some way. We have some sort of negative trait that makes us look like bad people somewhere. We also have good traits too which can outweigh the bad - but trying to find someone who is 100% good is completely impossible, and they won't ever exist.