Discussion Jumpstarter
Study leader reference - not a definitive answer
Question 2
The speaker argues that people who condemn slave-owning figures from the 1700s–1800s would likely have behaved the same if they had lived then; what does that claim reveal about the human heart, and how does it challenge the modern instinct to assume “I would have been the righteous exception”?
Another way to ask: What does it say about human nature that many of us would likely have owned slaves if we lived back then? How does that challenge the idea that we would have been the “good exception”?
Discussion Jumpstarter
Direct Answer
The claim reveals how easily people conform to the “ethical climate” of their own society and then feel superior to the past. It challenges the self-flattering belief that we would have stood apart, because the speaker argues the same critics usually “accept without question” their own age’s morality.
- He says chronological snobs assume “our attitudes…in our century is always right,” while earlier people are “wrong.”
- He argues most people in any era “live by what their society considers normal and good,” with only “a handful” questioning it.
- He states bluntly: if modern critics lived then, “they would have acted no differently…they would probably have owned slaves” if wealthy.
- His reason: these critics “accept without question whatever our age…says is…ethical today.”
- He warns the tables will turn: future generations will “look down on this generation” for its own accepted evils.