Originally Posted by
Easy Street
Fast forward 200 years to a world in which burning fossil fuels has joined capital punishment and slavery in a list of things our predecessors once considered ‘usual’ but are now considered beyond the pale. Should posterity judge you (yes, you personally - let’s assume you have made some notable contribution to society) as being irredeemably tainted by the fact that you continued to use a car and take flights despite the harm this caused? I mean, it’s hardly as if you can claim ignorance of the effect such actions have: we justify our individual ‘wrong’ through custom, convenience and the comforting thought that everyone else is doing it because the alternatives are expensive, so you’d only be punishing yourself if you stopped. Would you be so deserving of future condemnation?
Now I’m not arguing that burning fossil fuels is directly comparable in terms of human suffering to my other two examples - maybe some would though! - but I am using the example to point out the real problem of casually ascribing ‘rights’ and ‘wrongs’ to past actions, even when taking developing philosophies of the time into account.
Rather than simply existing within a society in which he indirectly benefited from slavery, Colston was instrumental in pioneering Britain's role in the slave trade. In modern day terms it's perhaps less comparable to owning a car or taking flights and more comparable to spearheading the efforts of a private corporation to commit genocide.