Quote:
Originally Posted by raveneye
I agree about the importance of understanding history, but I would extend that to prehistory as well, and for me that understanding just emphasizes how much we are all in the same boat.
All we humans descended from the same common ancestor not long ago at all relative to the history of any species. If you held hands with your mother, and she with her mother, and so on, to form a long line of people, that line would reach back to the common ancestor of everybody very quickly and would stretch a distance equivalent from around Philadelphia to NYC.
Considering the amount of real time involved, several hundred thousands of years, it is inescapable that there are unspeakable, horrific crimes committed by the ancestors of each and every one of us. Probably every single one of us would not exist at all if not for the fact that many of our ancestors were raped. We each have murderers and rapists, and probably genocide in our family tree.
If we're all going to pay for the crimes of our ancestors, then who is going to receive the payment?
My preference is to restrict our ethics to those events that occurred within living memory.
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Your view of the big picture puts things in perspective. The same kind of thing can be said about countries and land ownership. Almost all the land was taken from someone who in turn took it from someone, and on and on.