{"id":33132,"date":"2017-08-22T01:00:26","date_gmt":"2017-08-22T05:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=33132"},"modified":"2017-08-11T08:12:26","modified_gmt":"2017-08-11T12:12:26","slug":"qotd-writing-about-the-past","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2017\/08\/22\/qotd-writing-about-the-past\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: Writing about the past"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you\u2019re writing in the past \u2014 or even if you are just living in the present \u2014 you should have an idea of how the past was different, and the factors that shaped that.<\/p>\n

If you assume the past was just like the present only less \u201cenlightened\u201d you\u2019re presupposing history comes with an arrow, and that today is of course more \u201cadvanced\u201d than the past. While this is true of science \u2014 of course \u2014 it\u2019s not always true of what was inside people\u2019s heads. In many ways because even the poorest of us struggle less than in the Middle Ages, it\u2019s become easier to develop mental habits of laziness and other \u201crich person\u201d vices. What you think is enlightenment might be considered sheer nonsense by your descendants. For instance the enlightened thing at one time (even Heinlein has a whiff of it) was genetic culling. Now we\u2019re finding that what we know about genes isn\u2019t that straightforward. Throw in epigenetics and someone with a gene to be a \u201cmoron\u201d can turn out to be a genius. More, even overtly bad disease genes are linked to genes we need and can\u2019t survive without. BUT the enlightened opinion in the early twentieth century was to improve humanity and save human suffering by culling out the sick and the lame and the \u201cinferior races.\u201d (No, Hitler didn\u2019t invent that.)<\/p>\n

Some of our concepts (and I\u2019m not going to name any because it\u2019s a fight I don\u2019t need, but I\u2019m sure you can think of some) will prove just as monstrous to our descendants.<\/p>\n

If you don\u2019t have a sense of that, you don\u2019t have a sense of the past, which unfortunately means you don\u2019t have a sense of the present.<\/p>\n

If you think that there is an objective way to end poverty or stop drug use, or whatever, and it\u2019s ONLY your way, and even your opponents think your way is right and are being villainous and \u201cevil\u201d by opposing it you not only shouldn\u2019t be writing historical fiction, you definitely shouldn\u2019t be voting. You should find the nearest kindergarten and use it as a safe space.<\/p>\n

Because out here in the real adult world, the past and the present and complicated places, with different modes of arranging life that worked with the circumstances at that time, even if they now set our teeth (or our hair) on edge.<\/p>\n

If you can\u2019t accept your ancestors were different from you, thought differently and responded to different necessities, you have no business preaching multiculturalism.<\/p>\n

Because what makes a culture different is not the hairstyles, the dresses or what they ate, but how one must live to survive. And yes, some cultures are factually worse than others at providing their people with the necessities (or the luxuries) of life. Arguably most past cultures were (barring our finding some atlantian high-developed scientific culture we\u2019ve heard nothing about.)<\/p>\n

That doesn\u2019t give you the right to to stomp your feet and rewrite the past to justify your boorish self-regard in the present.<\/p>\n

Your ancestors were both more and less enlightened than you in ways you can\u2019t even understand, and your superimposing your beliefs on them is the act of a mental midget standing on the shoulders of giants and peeing down.<\/p>\n

Sarah A. Hoyt, “What Has Gone Before Us”, According to Hoyt<\/em><\/a>, 2015-08-03.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you\u2019re writing in the past \u2014 or even if you are just living in the present \u2014 you should have an idea of how the past was different, and the factors that shaped that. If you assume the past was just like the present only less \u201cenlightened\u201d you\u2019re presupposing history comes with an arrow, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,7,41,16],"tags":[262,827,1138,134],"class_list":["post-33132","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-history","category-quotations","category-science","tag-culture","tag-genetics","tag-thepastisaforeigncountry","tag-writing"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-8Co","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33132","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33132"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33132\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33133,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33132\/revisions\/33133"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}