[Neurons] 2020 Neurons #34 FEELING GUILY OVER SOMEONE ELSE'S HISTORY

Sun Jul 12 16:04:06 EDT 2020

From: L. Michael Hall 

2020 Neurons #34

July 12, 2020

Thinking for a Living series #20

FEELING GUILTY OVER

SOMEONE ELSE'S HISTORY

With the destruction of statues of historical figures in the US, figures who
played a key role in the nation's history, there's been a lot of uncritical
and false thinking about history itself.  What it represents, what it means,
the historical contexts in which things happened.  The issue is about people
of previous ages who did things that we today consider "bad."  For example,
back in the 18th century when the United States began, the presence of
"slavery" was prevalent and most of the emerging leaders who created the new
nation had slaves.   Washington did; Jefferson did, most anyone of any
wealth did.  And given that slaves at that time had no rights, no standing,
it was often the epitome of compassion and protection to take a slave in.

Why?  It was the social environment of that day and had been the status quo
for centuries- for millennia.  It was only in the late 18th century (1750s
onward) that the most advanced nations began to question it and began to end
it with legislation.  In fact, unknown to most people today, the founders of
the US constitution put 1809 as the ending of slave trade.  Some had argued
to outlaw such trade long before that date.

So here's something very "bad" that happened hundreds of years ago that was
a world-wide phenomena.  Question: Who today should feel guilty about that?
A strange question.  Right?  Of course, if there was no demand for cheap
labor back then, there would not have been slave trade in the first place.
So who should feel guilty for the social demand that called for slaves?  Who
should feel guilty for the slave trade business?  And without tribal leaders
in Africa willing to provide slaves, there also would not have been a slave
trade industry.  So who should feel guilty for selling their own people into
slavery?

The answer to all of these questions is- no one.  At least no one living in
the 21st century did any of that!  Nor anyone in the 20th century.  And only
a few people actually participated in such despicable behavior at the first
of the 19th century.  With Lincoln's Emancipation Declaration of 1860 and
the American Civil War (1860-1865) the evil of human slavery ended- at least
in the US (it continued in other countries, but at least it ended here).

Guilt is an appropriate emotion for the person who does wrong against
another person or persons.  But you cannot be guilty and do not need to feel
guilty for something you did not do (if you did, that is another pathology).
How could you?  You weren't there.  You weren't born.  The idea of "white
guilt" for actions taken two, three, and more centuries ago is a cognitive
fallacy.  So also the idea of "black guilt" for actions taken by tribal
leaders those many centuries ago.

Slavery of human beings has a very long history being the legacy of ancient
wars.  When one group of people "conquered" another they would gruesomely
slay hundreds or thousands and then take hundreds or thousands of them back
to their country as slaves.  When the "new world" opened up in the Americas,
slavery was used as an economic process for cheap labor.  That activity
began many hundreds of years ago -when the whole world was at a much lower
level of consciousness.

The good news is that mankind as been growing up, maturing, and our ethics,
morality, and sense of consciousness has also matured.  Another cognitive
fallacy today is to judge those in previous age by today's values.  They
didn't know our values nor lived by them.  To apply a basic NLP premise-
they were doing the best they could with the mental models they had.  They
had positive intentions, even though it resulted it a lot of hurtful and
ugly consequences.

When we fail to consider the context, the economic and political environment
of a previous age and judge it with our thinking today, we engage in a
cognitive bias and distortion.  It prevents us from understanding that age,
the struggles at that time, the historical advances that they made, and
learn from that history.

Ah yes, learning from history- from mistakes so that we do not repeat
history.  That's why we need the statues and memorials, not to celebrate the
wrongs, but to learn from them.  Learning enables us to understand how we
got here and that enables us to plot the next steps toward creating a more
perfect union.

The mainline media and others who are over-simplifying things, looking at
things only from today's perspectives, creates a false narrative.  The
United States was not created to be a racist country- it was created to
become a color-blind country as Martin Luther King Jr. noted.  It was
created on a premise of equality that had never before been uttered in
politics- "that all men are created equal..."   King quoted that as a
promissory note in his I Have a Dream speech and said that he was there to
"cash in on that check."  He didn't reject the Constitution or the Founders
as racists; he quoted their enlightened vision as a guiding light for the
Civil Rights Movement.  He did not want to promote black lives matter or
white lives matter, he wanted a color-blind society where we would not judge
a man or woman by the color of their skin, but the quality of their
character.   Now that is the thinking of a self-actualizing person!

Want More?   I came across the following links from a good friend in the UK,
Kenneth Attwell;

 <https://unherd.com/thepost/coleman-hughes-the-moral-case-against-blm/>
https://unherd.com/thepost/coleman-hughes-the-moral-case-against-blm/

https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/07/09/blm-rebels-without-a-cause/

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D., Executive Director 

International Society of Neuro-Semantics 

P.O. Box 8

Clifton, CO. 81520 USA                             

               1 970-523-7877 

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