Transgenerational Guilt: A Road to Nowhere
The strangest thing has happened to me lately. I got a speeding ticket for speeding a year ago. Receiving a speeding ticket is not so extraordinary, and receiving it a year after the violation may be a little bit late, but well, bureaucracy. The strange thing about it was that at that time, at that place, you were allowed to drive 50, and I was going 40. I called the office handling the speeding tickets and was sure we could solve this pretty quickly. I got an officer on the telephone, and I explained the situation. He looked it up in the system and started to laugh. I asked why he was laughing, and he replied that it was evident that I did something wrong because the speed limit was lowered to 30. I told him I knew, but that was only since this month, not a year ago! `Doesn´t matter; you should have known better. You will have to pay the fine.` were his last words before he hung up.
I looked at the phone and thought, things cannot get stranger than this. How wrong I was… Sometime later, to my surprise, I received a summons. I was charged for forbidden possession of weapons. The most dangerous weapon I have at home is my kitchen knife, so I was sure that there had to be a misunderstanding or a fault in the system. I went to the police station to put things straight. A friendly police officer looked up the file and told me there was no mistake. Actually, it was a very clear case of violation of the weapon possession law. I was flabbergasted, and I told the officer that I absolutely didn´t have any weapons! `Yes, you have, we have it on file, here, I will show you.` the officer told me, and meanwhile turned the monitor so I could read with him. And yes, there I saw a document where my grandfather had registered two guns for hunting. `But that is my grandfather!?`. `Uh, yes, so what?` answered the officer. Well, my grandfather did everything legally, and he registered the weapons, so what is the problem? The police officer looked at me, and I saw him thinking, how dumb people are nowadays… He sighed and started to explain. It doesn´t matter that all he did was legal; what matters that NOW it is illegal and because you are his grandson, you are responsible for this.
These two examples show how absurd it is and how ethically not maintainable to keep someone responsible for something that was not a violation of the law at a specific moment but changed later. Or that someone can be held accountable for something he did not do, but some of his ancestors. But this is exactly what is happening at this moment in our society. White people are held responsible for the slavery of black people generations ago. I will explain why this is not tenable.
First, we cannot condemn history by the ethical standards we have now. We can explain history, we can say that nowadays, we would do things differently, but things of the past are things of the past. There were times that slavery was legal, even noble; by having slaves, no laws were broken, and it was not a crime. That our views about slavery have changed, that is a different thing. It is not that because now it is illegal, we can be held responsible for something that was legal in the past. And unfortunately, slavery is still not a thing of the past; even today, 167 countries still have slavery, affecting about 46 million people.
Second, we can not be held accountable for something our ancestors did. There are many instances in history where big crimes were committed, and awful things happened. Imagine that we would keep the generations following this accountable. Should the Catholics still be held accountable for what they did to the Protestants? Should the Jews still be held accountable for the death of Jesus? Should Germany and Japan still be held accountable for the atrocities they did in the Second World War? You see, this list can go on and on. If we go down this path, it is a never-ending road, leading us to nowhere.
Third, with respect to slavery, this cannot be blamed on one group of people. Slavery has a long history. Evidence of slavery shows that the practice has existed in many, if not most, cultures. Slavery did exist in a lot of countries, and it still exists. The Romans kept slaves; they raped them; they had sex with underaged slaves. Should we still keep the Italians responsible for this? Not only black people but also white and Asian people kept slaves. Often people of a specific race were enslaving their own race. Muslims enslaved Christians. People can be enslaved on the basis of tribe, nationality, caste, wealth (usual lack of wealth), religion, political view, etcetera. There is not one group solely responsible for slavery.
If responsibility cannot work backward over generations, can it work forward into the future? It is tempting to think so, and if we must believe the climate alarmist, this is definitely the case. The problem is that responsibility cannot be translated into a duration. Another problem is that it is impossible to judge what is beneficial for future generations. When the first steam locomotives appeared, people thought that cows would die if they would see a train, and women´s uteruses would fly out. If people at that moment had to think about what might be useful in the future, they would have opposed steam locomotives till the end; they could not even imagine what it would bring us. The arguments are biased toward the continuance of the existing. Equity among generations implies similar conditions of life in each generation. Empathy with future generations is limited by the impossibility of imaging their condition, and therefore their preference. Ask people today about their preferred future, and they will describe the present, with negative aspects removed. (Treanor, 1997) History has taught us, that in general, strong opinions about how the future should look like can easily lead to historical catastrophes. Nazism and Communism are just two examples of this. While the particular act might be well-intentioned, well-considered, and well-performed from an ethical perspective in its time, down the road, it may produce disastrous results. Most endeavors to reach Utopia have resulted in hell…
Interesting links:
The Problem Of Identity Politics
The Problem If 2 Plus 2 Does Not Equal 4
Social Justice Warrior: The New Sorcerer’s Apprentice?
Fictional Alarmism, Time for Some Debunking. Part II: Social Issues
References
Treanor, P. (1997, December). Sustainability. Retrieved from http://web.inter.nl.net/users/Paul.Treanor/sustainability.html
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