In Part I, by looking at Tom Petty’s video for the song “You Got Lucky” (go back and take a look if you didn’t read it already), I took the roundabout way of demonstrating that we certainly don’t understand what was going on in the minds and lives of the people of the past – even a past as recent as 1982. Today I’d like to take it a little further through some examples.
As I write this, we know that there are a lot of people on the planet who would decry the use of coal from beginning to end as destructive to the planet. It’s undeniable that it is responsible for a great deal of pollution and physical damage to the environment, but at one time it was a major catalyst in the industrialization of the world. It had been around for millennia, but its rise to prominence in the early 1800s was an absolute necessity to the people of the time. The industrial revolution brought us out of the agrarian society of the past to what we have today and little thought was given to its effect on the environment.
Fast-way-forward to the mid-20th century. Computers brought the next major industrial revolution and every one of us would admit that they’re invaluable to our lives today. This includes the people who curse coal; who use computers not only in their daily lives, but also to get the word out as to coal’s destructiveness. Consider this then: the chemicals, materials, and methods used to produce those computers, and their effect on the environment in landfill pollution alone when we’re done with them is staggering (and I haven’t even mentioned electric car batteries).
As in all other eras, we are living in a time where none but the most environmentally extreme turn a blind eye to or are ignorant of the future effects of what we believe we absolutely need. At the same time, we look back on our predecessors and curse them. So what should we expect of future generations? What will they have to say about us? In reality, why should we care what people we’ll never know think (we should, but maybe not for the same reasons people think right now)?
This is the danger of not putting proper emphasis on the contextualization of history. We look back and condemn the actions of some – we demonize them without stopping to think they were working within a context that we cannot experience, but must at least attempt to understand.
Let’s turn to the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki for a well-documented example that might help.
As the years pass between the bombings of those cities and today, the number of people who see the actions of the United States as those of a murderous regime who preyed upon the innocent civilians of Japan increases. But when we include the historical context? It was well-known at that time that the Japanese had been literally butchering civilians throughout East Asia for decades leading to the US involvement in the war. It was also well-known at that time that the Japanese people would willingly die to the last man defending their emperor and their islands. Because of this, there’s no reason to doubt a study by the War Department estimating the possibility of millions of casualties and hundreds of thousands of American dead (and millions of Japanese) if the US was forced to invade Japan. Casualties and deaths at Hiroshima and Nagasaki probably numbered less than half a million (and this includes the lingering effects of the radiation). Critics may look back and excoriate the US, but in the end, the bombings brought a brutal and relentless regime to its knees and saved hundreds of thousands if not millions of lives, both military and civilian. Should we have “played the better man” and taken it on the chin so as not to be labelled “monsters” over half a century later by people with a limited understanding of the times in which the bombings occurred? To answer that, we should imagine going back to the families of people who at that time had been at war for over four years – who had lost friends and family members and who had continually sacrificed for the cause – and tell them that we’d like to give up the lives of even more of their loved ones to appease the sensitivities of a future generation who knew nothing of the brutality of that war.
Thinking through that scenario, will you give up your cell phone now? Or are you willing to be branded an enemy of humanity by a generation fifty years from now simply because you absolutely had to have it? Can you envision a time in the future where places associated with Steve Jobs and Bill Gates will come under attack because they started the companies that polluted the world immeasurably? If we continue to ignore the context of the times, we can’t help but relegating some of today’s icons (not to mention ourselves) to the wrong side of history.
Here’s where I’d finally like to get around to my point: Many people in history did things which today we know without a doubt to be wrong (and I make no apologies for their actions). But if we place their actions in historical context, can we really condemn them in their entirety? Being “a product of their times” cannot be an excuse that puts an end to further inquiry and criticism, but are we also willing to discredit an entire body of work based on actions that were widely accepted at the time? I say no. I say we should not erase the entirety of a person’s contributions to history, but rather, we should seek to understand and acknowledge both their contributions and their faults. In this way we might better reflect on ourselves and our own times so we may be inspired by the best without repeating the worst. I think humanity would be the poorer for ignoring those lessons and better off for facing the truth.