The Right Side Of History

I’ve always been fascinated by the changing of the publics opinions on certain issues. Issues like the women's vote, gay marriage, racism. They were horrific and actively fought against a hundred years ago and are completely accepted today. In the modern western world now you’d be crazy to be against the women’s vote but that view would have been perfectly acceptable before.

I think the public opinion always trends towards more acceptance, not less. As a society it seems like we want to be more accepting of people and want to include more people. People read and see more of the world and they start thinking about issues differently. While there is a lot of evil in the world and I don’t think humans are fundamentally good I think that as a population we trend to being ‘nicer.’ And being nicer just means that we are more accepting of people with different ‘views’ than ourselves.

What I think about a lot is being on the right side of history. Anytime you read a good history story there’s always someone who was on the wrong side and who was on the right side. Some of that is influenced by who wrote the history, sure, but everyone agrees that things like the Nazi’s were bad.

But I think this especially applies to individuals. How would you feel if you discovered your grandfather was a part of the KKK? On the other hand, how would you feel if your grandmother marched with MLK? Both were valid places to be at the time but only one is socially acceptable now.

Whenever I’m thinking about issues like racism, equal pay and equal rights I think about how it would look in a hundred years. Does my view make me look like a massive idiot in a hundred years, considering how acceptance tends to go up? That’s a clear indicator that I’m probably wrong in the long run. It helps to put things in perspective when you can’t do it any other way.