How will people in the year 2320 judge us?

It’s futile to speculate, but surely makes the point – is morality really so plastic that we must be forever fearful of what others may or may not think of us? Are we to conduct ourselves in accordance with “anything-but-the standards-of-today” in the certain knowledge that out successors will damn us in the future no matter how conventionally virtuous we may appear today?

I don’t think I am either homophobic or racist, and I am certainly not a smoker; however, when I attended Reading Rock Festival in 1978 the joint themes were “Glad to be Gay” and “Rock against Racism”, and as this article points out, both homophobia and racism were rife back in the 70’s. And a lot of people smoked like chimneys. Nowadays, less so, and things have changed

However, nowadays we abhor paedophilia, cannibalism and incest, whilst revelling in Twitter feeds and inane Facebook posts; will the former have become mainstream, and the latter morally and socially abhorrent 40 years from now? To be honest, even if I knew with certainty that they would, there is no way I am going to indulge in them just to be “on the right side of history”.

Slavery and colonialism are WRONG, and always have been; so let’s sue the Italian government for the Roman invasion of 43 AD and the brutality wrought on Boudicca and her daughters. Let’s sue Germany for the Anglo-Saxons invasions, the Danes for the Vikings, and the French for 1066 and all that.

Or rather, let’s not. Let’s just get on with our lives as best we can, living by the moral compass we have inherited from our families, our current societies and our consciences. And let’s stop judging – either our contemporaries, or our ancestors. They, like us, were just trying to make the best of the circumstances which life cast upon them – some were good people, some bad, most a bit of both. Just like us. And I, for one, am in no position whatsoever to assert that my principles and moral values are superior to – or more enduring than – theirs.