Learn the difference between guilt and responsibility.
The West is the first civilization to achieve economic prosperity. Meaning we can sit around and be self-reflective in our free time, instead of worrying about starvation and survival. It's just a part of societal progress, moving up from basic needs to worrying about more luxurious topics like social justice.
Because thats a source of political capital for many politicians.
To forget your history is to doom yourself to repeat it.
Here is something to believe in!
Thats exactly why it is so hypocritical. You arent allowed to be proud of the good things your ancestors did, yet you are suposed to feel guild for the bad things they did. Let bygones be bygones.
This quote gets missused to justify so much bad propaganda. There is a huge difference between remembering and living in guilt. Its okay to have like a slavery or holocaust memorial day. Its not okay to expect people to feel bad for it every day of their lifes.
It's not. The idea that it is is a false narrative spun by people who want excuses to be shitty.
Translation: I wasn't involved in any of these things so why should I care that they happened to people I don't give a fuck about?
Human progress isn't measured by industry. It's measured by the value you place on a life.
Just, be kind.
Actually it hasn't changed form at all. It's merely more represented in non-western countries, since the west has advanced socially and morally. But I guess the mind needs things to be "just as bad as they always were" in some strange equilibrium, so people pretend that wage slavery is just as bad as slavery, or that lynchings are a real threat, or that police violence is a real threat. Those are significant concerns, in other cultures. The things underlying this proposed guilt culture still haven't been eradicated outside the west.
No one in a healthy mind is. Yet there are people who want you to to still feel bad for what the vikings did. Some mentaly sick people actualy live in guilt or even go as far as suicide to stop living in the guilt of the holocaust. You would be suprised about what kind of people you meet when working in a mental hospital.
Last edited by plato13; 2019-05-20 at 05:54 AM.
I don't personally feel any guilt for either of the examples you gave, but I sure as hell am not going to forget them, and I will definitely make sure my children understand what happened and why so that they can use that information to make critical decisions in the future.
Here is something to believe in!
I mean I've literally had conversations with people on this board who think Germans needs to be suppressed because of what Nazi Germany did. If that's not trying to impose a life of guilt based on one's tribe, guilt would have lost its meaning. Generally political activists (just using this as a referent since we should all know what this means) believe in some sense of responsibility for mending the ills of the past (institutionalized racism), and that this responsibility is heavier due to the person's race (a white person has more responsibility for making life better for black people), and that the race of the person in fact determines how responsible they are, given racial privilege means power and therefore responsibility. There's also plenty of emotionality involved in this school of thought - the shaming and condescending tone of which should be very obvious. Again, if this isn't some sense of racial guilt, the general definitions of guilt should be re-written.