Respect Your Ancestors

There is a habit that a lot of people have, at least in western culture, to think that you are smarter and more enlightened than your ancestors. Moderns judge them for not knowing things that we now know (as if we don't know things that will be discovered in the future), or for their beliefs and practices. This should stop, imo.

For example, a lot of Europeans look back on the middle ages and scoff about how stupid their ancestors were because they didn't bathe regularly. We think, they thought the devil was in the water or something, how stupid, everybody must have stank because they were ignorant.

Yeah, no. In the same time period, people regularly drank weak beer as their everyday beverage - children too - because the water was not safe to drink. They may not have understood germ theory, but they knew that it was so, so they drank alcoholic beverages instead because those were safe as far as "wouldn't make you shit yourself to death." Water that is contaminated with sewage isn't safe to bathe in, either - so they didn't bathe very often.

Perhaps they mythologized the reason why this was so - perhaps they really did think the devil was in the water - but every culture mythologizes things they can't otherwise explain, because humans are meaning-making creatures and stories are how you teach your children how to live. They didn't have a microscope to see the bacteria, but they knew the water wasn't safe - so it got chalked up to spirits, or miasma, or whatever they imagined it was.

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Have you ever read an old history (or what today we'd call anthropology except it was really bad anthropology) book - like, from the 19th century or so, and thought, my Gods, the arrogance of this writer!! Seriously, if you haven't, go to the library and find some old British-empire-era book written by some crusty old white guy with a mustache to next Tuesday and see how long it takes you to want to chuck the book across the room. I've read a few of these that were full of so much judgement and hubris, dehumanizing other cultures and treating them patronizingly like they were stupid children simply because they didn't do things The British Way, or whatever. And not just other cultures - their own ancestors as well. I've read books from this era that were supposed to be about the Druids of antiquity or ancient Celtic cultures in general and it's full of the same condescending "oh those savage Pagans" attitude that was applied to literally any other culture that was not theirs of the moment.

It is equally arrogant to look back today and think, ha ha, our ancestors were dirty, savage, superstitious, simple people who lived in poop and thought it was fine. They were just as complex as you and I, they just had different circumstances to live in and different tools and a different societal lens. A hundred years from now, if humans survive that long, they'll be looking back at our wasteful, exploitative, globalized capitalist resource extraction and thinking, my GODS what was WRONG with our ancestors, polluting the whole planet and living in toxins and thinking it was fine??! ...the exact same way we judge our ancestors for not figuring out sewage treatment was a good idea.

So, in sum, respect your ancestors. I mean, we still have lead water pipes and rivers you can't swim in and oil spilling into the ocean and clouds of pollution hovering over our cities. We live in shit too.