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1. Don Romano (alt) (thor@noagendasocial.com)'s status on Tuesday, 23-Apr-2019 04:22:23 EDT Don Romano (alt)

   @Gargron Who wasn't like that back then, though? Hell, even Winston Churchill had similar opinions, and that was centuries later. Nobody really saw a problem with racism until WWII was over, and the atrocities of the Nazis were revealed. The American public, who didn't witness this first hand, took even longer to change their mind about it.

   1. Don Romano (alt) (thor@noagendasocial.com)'s status on Tuesday, 23-Apr-2019 04:28:47 EDT Don Romano (alt)

      in reply to

      @Gargron I'm not convinced that we would've dropped the overt racism if it weren't for certain historical events. After all, if your culture genuinely believes that non-whites are non-human, it's easy to morally justify treating them like animals and not feel the least bit of guilt about it. If your culture's standards of animal welfare are low, giving a horse or a slave a good whip is also entirely fine. There are no absolute moral laws except for the ones we happen to collectively agree on.

      1. Don Romano (alt) (thor@noagendasocial.com)'s status on Tuesday, 23-Apr-2019 04:33:48 EDT Don Romano (alt)

         in reply to

         @Gargron Further, social progress has no clear definition. We just decide that some particular state of affairs is superior to our current state of affairs, and define that as progress. It has momentum and thus direction, but who decides what's backward and forward? It's easy to define progress in STEM fields, not so easy in social science.