Changing Values “As a relatively privileged European man of the late Middle Ages, Dante certainly shares - despite his intellect and imagination - many views that we moderns might rightly consider unenlightened. These could include religious and ethnic intolerance, a reductive attitude toward women, and a heterosexist understanding of love and sexuality. In some respects - for instance, his advocacy of the empire (and opposition to more democratic, republican ideas) - he could be considered reactionary even for his own time and place.”While we might think of ourselves as enlightened, open-minded people today, what might our descendants say about us a century or two from now? What specific issues or attitudes do you think will change so much in the future that our current views may come to be seen as "medieval"?
15 comments:
I think that our descendants will find it entertaining that, in today's world, we analyze every comment down to a fine point and compare it to what we believe to be politically correct, for example, the shortening of mentally retarded, to retarded, some people waste time trying to protest the usage of the term in a non-medical manor, but in realization, a handicapable person suffering from mental retardation is not going to care about what you call them, it's the pompous fools with too much time on their hands that enjoy throwing coal into the fire, without petty manors like politically correct language slandering the media and controlling how we portray ourselves, not only does it allow us to show our real selves using whatever language we see fit, but we can also take more time dealing with real problems, such as conservation of the common agenda. I guess you could relate the Obama school speech to this, but, frankly I don't care, If I had kids I'd be a good enough parent to teach my kids not to be swayed so easily my a presidential telecast.
Any relations or contradictions?
I think years down the road, our descendants will view us as a very close-minded society. I believe that we like to thing of ourselves as liberal and tolerant- but look around you. The issues we face today are a sign of the times- healthcare, abortion and gay marriage just to name a few. There are the evolving standards of dencency. What is deemed "okay" now, was once not the case. Example- integration. We take things like that for granted. Since it doesnt directly affect US and our time period, we tend to let the idea of it slip by the wayside- myself included.
I think our children and our children's children will look at our society and judge us as hippocritical and close-minded. I hope it will teach generations to come a lesson.
daniwall i agree with you to an extent but you also have to look at our generation...what did we think of the generation before us and then before them...etc (i think you get the picture) in a way, didnt we see them as somewhat hypocritical and closed minded and then we just got worse at it, do you think that it will "teach them a lesson" or they just judge us and then get worse like we did? i also think that people have tried to become politically correct on alot of things and have forgotten to appreciate what they have and began taking things for granted
I agree with you, froggie frog. I think we focus a lot on being "politically correct", which is kind of sad if you think about it, that we have to be so sensitive to others beliefs so that they do not become misinterpreted or misunderstood. I do agree with you, that we do view generations before us as uber-conservative and hippocritical. Like I said, evolving standards. Things will only progress from here [or at least one can hope] :)
Exactly, the more we evolve into open mindedness, the more issues we scrutinize and essentially become close minded about! It's like a spiral slide, as we slide down we can look up and see our predecessors and laugh at their close mindedness without realizing that we are all on the same slide, honestly I think everybody enjoys analyzing everyone else, it makes us forget about our flaws, so I don't think we can ever be fully open minded, and it would really be an uneventful existence if judgment was removed from life, so maybe we need to be closed minded sometimes?
It's as if everyone is so focused on being open minded that we forget why it is imortant to be open minded in the first place. Of course, no matter how open minded you are, you will always have some sort of bias. The irony of the situation is that everyone is narrowminded in the long run, but as a society, we are not unifed in our narrowmindedness- we are all stubborn and find ourselves in solitude in our attempts to be open minded.
That really didn't make sense, but this is kind of what I meant: It's as if everyone in the world is standing in a circle facing outwards. Like R said, it's as if everyone is so focused on changing the world and those around them, that they forget to look in the middle of the circle and start to change themselves and their immediate surroundings. It's wrong if you stand in the circle and just look out or in- instead we need to balance our work for others and ourselves. We need to be able to look at those next to us eye to eye and understand each other and what you can do to help each other.
I disagree with R in many respects. First I don't see our generation over analyzing anthing. And I also don't believe that there ever was an issue with the naming of the mentally ill. And finally I don't think there was anything wrong with the president's speech. What would be wrong with being swayed by the notion to stay in school. It's not like he was telling the students of America to join a gang and do drugs.
I think in the future the people will think that we had a crazy view of God. If you think of it we now think that the egyptians and many other paganistic religions are rediculous.
I agree with you R, when you said that our generation over analyzes everything. I also agree with the statement about the president's speech. Why does today's society jump to conclusions and think the president is trying to pursuade children to accept and believe the democratic viewpoint? Maybe the President's main goal was to really get kids to stay in school. The future generations will probably learn from our mistakes of taking everything so seriously and become less analytic. The future will also be more accepting to different poeple as we are today compared to 100 years ago. The people of the future will have a totally different mindset than we possess today.
Hey it's me The Puzzler again, Its good to be back blogging about stuff.
Well what can i say about how or descendants might have viewed our way of living now and maybe a century or two later? To be perfectly frank, I think that the more our descendants know about us the better. The way things were back in the day when most of todays problems are now fixed might have thought we were carzy. You could easily ask our descendants about it just call your relatives or visit the retirment home. They'll tell how back in the day things were a lot tougher and that were skimming by, but do think were making our lives easier by correcting their mistakes?
Sorry I must have started rambling. HaHaHa! Well from what Is protrayed in the portrait I could say that people in that day in age would respond to it beacause of belief in evil. But today and further on in the future we'll view it in curiosity and excitment. Well see you next time!
Hello, thank you patrick, I respect your opinion, and I agree, the naming of the mentally ill wasn't a big problem, but I wanted to post a comment about being politically correct from a racial stand point, but I decided that, ironically, due to the potential offensive nature of race not being politically correct I should not start the blog off with a post about racism, but I do thank you for your criticism, I just wanted you to know where I stand, I am not a racist, as to the presidents speech, never since Ronald Regan has a president given a nationwide in-school speech on television, that and I have read unconfirmed reports that there were worksheets given to students in participating schools, with very pro Obama biased questions, the speech itself has nothing bad in it but the biggest problem I have with the speech is, with the recession and the overseas problems how does the president find time to broadcast a speech? Why is he giving a speech? Why do the American tax payers have to pay for Obama to tell kids to do good in school, televising isn't free. Thanks but no thanks I don't need the president telling me what we are told everyday, I know I can do my best, and be what I want to be.
Check out the speech yourself, http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Remarks-by-the-President-in-a-National-Address-to-Americas-Schoolchildren/
R,
I disagree with you saying his speech was a waste of tax payer's money. Things like overseas issues and the recession cannot be fixed in mere seconds. What was so wrong about him taking fifteen minutes to encourage the youth of America? You know the people who will be running this world white you're in a retirement home. How is that a waste of anything?
I didn't say the speech was "wrong" fishie fish, I was just wondering what the overall purpose of the speech was, but I understand where you are coming from, maybe I am being too cynical and perhaps the speech had all the good intentions, I see where I may have sounded really negative in response to the speech, I apologize it wasn't my intention to downsize the speech, it is a very positive, well composed speech don't get me wrong, I was just trying to gather insight on it, I can see it from different points of view, thanks for your opinion, because lately everyone I spoke to was ready to jump on the anti-Obama bandwagon, so getting a more positive response is really appreciated, because personally I have not the faintest reason to dislike Obama, yet, so I don't want to count him out before he has a chance, after all he is and will be president for four more years.
Yo--where did the prompt go? You know me, I don't mind a little random digression--but weren't we talking about medieval attitudes. You know guys--maybe you should replace "sensitivity" with politically correct. The point is not to use language that is offensive to others--to put yourself in the shoes of someone else and consider where that person is coming from--it might be a very different place than you are. And actually, R, there are degrees of mental retardation, and many Downs Syndrome patients are aware of their handicap--and are offended by the use of the word "retarded". Especially since we use it in such negative way otherwise. What is the "common agenda"? Aren't those words a tad presumptuous? I'd love to remove you from O'Fallon for a day and put you somewhere else--somewhere where the "common agenda" is much different.
i believe that in the future we are going to look at ourselves as more tolerant when considering race. within the next ten years our schools are going to be so diverse that we are not going to even notice race, or discriminate. i think that we pride ourselves for being tolerant, but there is still much more work to be done.
I think all R is saying is that we use lanquage to tone down things because people can't handle the truth. George Carlin made a good point on this subject when he said that Shell Shock used to be the term to describe people after war. These words give a negative connotation and make people who come back paranoid and crazy seem reasonable because they are in shock. That's too harsh now so we've drawn in out to Postraumatic Stress Disorder. That is so long and so emotionless that we lose the true meaning which is these people don't have a disorder. They are in shock at what they have seen and need medical attention to adapt into normal society again.
As for the original post, I think that there is nothing we do now that would seem barabaric or medieval. We don't have doctors doing electroshock therapy anymore, which even now seems crazy. We have lost all segregation, for the most part. Although some people will always be racist. We do have wars and maybe in the future that will be a thing of the past. Hopefully in the future it will seem ridiculous to solve problems by the body count each country can tally up. I don't know though, I think for the most part society is not as bad as some people like to think it is. I think wars will go on forever so besides that there isn't anything I can think of.
Post a Comment