You Wouldn't Have Owned Slaves But You Probably Wouldn't Have Done Anything About It, Either
It's hard to imagine a whole set of history without your own perspective embedded. The idea that people died pretty regularly before the age of thirty-five seems bizarre like Tolkien fiction about midgets with hairy feet finding a ring that behaves like a smartphone in its addictive and all-powerful qualities. The concept that people routinely shat outdoors, bathed long past their stank-date, and buried more children than raised just feels off in a time of such ridiculous technological and egalitarian modes of operation.
No wonder there is a rift between those who see the death of Queen Liz as the passing of an age and those who gracelessly celebrate the death of colonization. The very reality that a young woman (you know, like Meghan Markle but white and not at all an actor) would willingly accept the mantle of monarchy and then reign almost apolitically for nearly a century makes no sense in today's myopic territory of historical self-righteousness.
"If I had been crowned the Queen way back then I would never behave like Liz did. I would have dismantled the entire British Empire, returned all the artifacts stolen from distant lands housed in the British Museum, enforced a system of reparations for millions colonized prioritizing those countries with black and brown people, and pushed a feminist agenda."
No. No, you wouldn't.
The probability is overwhelming that if we had belonged to the generations we deplore, we too would have behaved deplorably. The probability is overwhelming that we belong to a generation that will be found by its successors to have behaved deplorably. — Wendell Berry
We all love to play the "If I had known then what I know now" game. Hell, I've been doing ever since my third marriage caught fire and burned down like a fireworks warehouse next to a dynamite factory struck by lightning. The Albert Brooks film Defending Your Life is predicated on the very notion that if he'd known that Casio was going to become a huge investment opportunity he'd have died fabulously wealthy (which is kind of pointless to die with a lot of money unspent) as well as a host of other bad decisions made in the absence of knowing the future. We all play it. Every mistake along the path gets that time travel backwards looking lens.
"If I had been aware that the car I bought was a broke-ass lemon, I would've bought a different one."
"If only I had known that smoking was bad for me, I wouldn't have smoked."
"Looking back, I think I might have taken seriously the warnings of peak oil and inevitable climate change in the 1970's and invested heavily in solar power and electric cars then..."
It's a fun game that can spiral into self incrimination and loathing plummeting one into a pit of doubt and regret (so maybe not so fun) but it's only functional in that it helps us truly see our past mistakes in order to prevent the same mistakes from coming back to haunt us today. You can't possibly have known then what you know now any more than you can predict how you'd behave in the early days of the American Experiment.
If you were living in 1840 America, it's highly unlikely you'd own slaves but extremely likely you'd know someone who did. A whopping twenty-percent of Americans (including six percent of that being freed black men) owned slaves. Less than one percent owned more than 100 with the average being about 17% owning less than ten. Most of the population was poor, uneducated, rural, and having lots of kids because kids equalled labor if you couldn't afford to buy someone. Most of the country was against slavery as a concept as anti-slavery and abolitionist movements had existed in this country since 1688 but few knew what to do about it. "If the chain of slavery can be broken, ... we may cherish the hope ... that proper means will be devised for the disposal of the blacks, and that this foul and unnatural crime of holding men in bondage will finally be rooted out from our land."
There was no internet in 1840 so gathering a mob to protest slavery was not feasible nor was the mob going to be pelted with tear gas and rubber bullets but shot with musket pellets that would infect a leg so it was cut off to save the body. Good luck signaling your virtue with a wooden crutch and no means of employment.
No, you might have been abolitionist but, trust me, you ain't John Brown. One of you might be but that guy is as likely to be the insurrectionist Viking as anyone else because, while John Brown was right he was also nuttier than a shithouse rat. No Twitter in 1840 and you were unlikely able to read, so there goes that avenue. No, you might have been anti-slavery but pretty much would have done jackshit about it.
On the flip side, in 2070, when the planet has been decimated by climate change and we are nocturnal creatures who sleep during the day to avoid the routine 135˚ heat and are willing to kill our neighbors for food because the climate has eradicated the Earth's ability to sustainably grow food, the list of morally reprehensible for that future generation will include:
Anyone in 2022 who had the audacity to own a Ford F-150 that got 5 miles to the gallon.
Anti-gun lobbyist and activists because, in the future, China owns everything and guns are needed to protect your food and supplies from your pastor who wants to put a hatchet in your brain for that homemade cheese.
Anti-abortionists who thought that more people was the road to the future as well as any family with more than one kid.
Neo-Marxists who idolized Communism because in 2070, the world is entirely Communist and it pretty much sucks.
The few remaining statues will be toppled (at least the ones above the water line) and any politician who flew in planes or drove around in motorcades will be universally despised.
History cannot be revised by the morality of the present. We try, though because if we only knew then what we know now, right?
