It’s easy to take for granted so many good things in our lives that prior generations didn’t have. I’m not talking about technological advancements (although we certainly take those for granted as well). But I’m referring to social norms and benefits we enjoy today that our ancestors had to fight for.
Take, for instance, women’s suffrage. The vast majority of Americans today don’t think twice about women being able to vote. It’s a given—uncontroversial—obvious. And yet, the right of women to vote was hard fought for, and, historically speaking, is still a pretty young concept.
Take a look at this anti-suffrage propaganda postcard from around 1900. I saw this recently and it moved me. I don’t want to say it surprised or shocked me, because those aren’t the right words. But it made me angry and disgusted that this sort of attitude and general disdain towards women was once a popular notion.
In my younger, more naïve years, I felt like once social and cultural battles were won, they were more or less done. No one really thinks that women shouldn’t vote anymore (ok, you can never speak in absolutes, but you know what I mean). That’s just a relic of the past, I thought. I felt the same way about American slavery—that it is just done, and no one feels we should have slavery anymore, and everyone knows the South was wrong. I assumed I could talk to anyone in the country and know that they would agree. Boy, was I in for a shock when I heard that many people still disdain Lincoln (Lincoln!!) and still call the Civil War the War of Northern Aggression.
But what I’ve come to realize is that those people didn’t really change. The type of person who thought women shouldn’t vote and who was willing to wage war over the ability to own another person—those types of people still exist. The specific beliefs may have changed, but the people did not.
That’s where I was naïve—to think that we won those battles and that therefore the people who were capable of holding such beliefs simply stopped being capable of those beliefs. Or at least that their kids and grandkids stopped being capable of it.
My views have changed so much that it actually sounds silly to say that I ever thought that way. Those were some rose colored glasses I used to wear.
The type of person who thinks awful things and has awful points of view—they will always exist in one form or another. For instance, the racism of slavery never died, but simply morphed and shifted and stayed with us ever since, in various insidious ways. I look now at the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers and Q-Anon and I just see a modern version of slave holders, segregationists, and anti-suffragists.
For one of the more extreme examples, look at the Holocaust. I used to think that could never happen again. How could it? Everyone knows that was wrong and horrendous and every other terrible word you can think of. However, now I feel like I know exactly how the Holocaust happened. I can see it in the eyes of people in my own community. Given the right circumstances, they would have participated.
The KKK isn’t gone—they’re now the Proud Boys. The anti-suffragists aren’t gone—they’re now the men’s rights activists. The slaveholders aren’t gone—they’re now the politicians enacting voter suppression laws. The science deniers who said that the earth didn’t revolve around the sun aren’t gone—they’re now the science deniers who say climate change isn’t real and vaccines have microchips.
I’ve thought a lot about the notion of whether people are “inherently” good or bad. This is a philosophical question that is popular to consider—I’ve heard people ask and answer that question my whole life. Usually the answer is some sort of Pollyanna platitude that of course people are inherently good, it’s just that sometimes people do bad things.
I disagree. For one thing—what is good and bad even, other than what we say it means in the here and now? Plus, all people exhibit both qualities, to varying degrees. So don’t get me wrong with what I’m about to say—I don’t think that any segment of people are inherently bad, and even the people I’m about to talk about can have wonderful qualities, be capable of beautiful charity, and have a deep well of love for those around them.
However, I have come to feel like there is a certain personality type—whether it be the product of nature or nurture, or both, I do not know—that causes some people to be suspicious of “other” people, afraid of societal and cultural change, susceptible to cult thinking or group think, territorial, nativistic, closed minded, etc. As I discussed in a previous newsletter, liberals may win the culture wars and make positive change on particular points (i.e. women’s empowerment, LGBTQ rights, the labor movement), but that doesn’t really change the people who lost those fights. Eventually, the new culture becomes the norm, but those suspicious types will simply shift their fear and loathing to a new perceived boogeyman.
Maybe I’m just as bad for playing the game of “us” versus “them.” And I don’t say any of this to be pessimistic or negative. Rather, it actually feels comforting to me to have what feels like a more solid grasp on human nature. I’ve said this before in my writing, but it makes me feel like the strife we are witnessing now is normal and entirely usual. We can prevail over the hatred and fear, as we have before. But it is also important to know that there will be more to come. I am no longer surprised that people have awful opinions—I now see that as inevitable. We will win many battles, but the war of humanity will never end.
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I have been feeling this way for a number of years now, but didn’t fully understand those feelings. I definitely couldn’t articulate them. This blog rings so true. You have found the words to explain to me my own feelings.
Thank you!