History

A reader over at TNC writes:

It really is too easy. I hate to make the inevitable Hitler reference, but I remember taking on most of my classmates in a Nazism seminar - they seemed to think they all would have been the ones hiding Jews in their attics. I'd sure like to hope so, too, but of the 30 of us in that class, most would have been just keeping our heads down at best, and a few would have been actively informing to the Gestapo, or worse. It's just facts - and it's one more reason to be grateful I don't live in a time and place where I really have to find out what I'm made of. It's pure hubris to be sure I'd like the answer.

It's very easy to look back on history and decide that of course you or I would be on the side of "right." But the fact is, who knows who among us would be the ones dumping eggs and sugar on the protesters at Woolworths. Most of us would have had slaves without even thinking about it; most of us would be annoyed at the Colonists potentially fucking our daily lives up with talk of revolution. And in none of these examples would we be seen as "extreme" in the slightest. In fact, we probably wouldn't even be noticed.

We all feel that history is merely something that leads up to ourselves right now; that events that have happened in the past only did so to set the table for today. But surely 100 years from now there will be things that historians look back on as we do with slavery/Civil rights et al, things happening right now that we barely even notice and yet will be looked back upon in puzzlement. Darfur? Ignoring Global Warming? Oil? Judd Apatow?  Whatever - it will be something, and there will be a photo of you or me, and we will be on the wrong side of history. So long as we choose to be, anyways.