A tweet by Hugh Laurie got me thinking. Here it is.
Imagine you’re famous now, a philanthropist, so famous you’re still remembered in a hundred years time. What do you do now that isn’t illegal and not yet deemed morally wrong by the majority, but where opposing views exist? Opposing views which could become mainstream in the future.
Do you eat meat? Use plastic? Drive and take international flights? All issues where opinion is in flux.
As Hugh mentions, the biggest example, I believe, will be eating meat. Numerous arguments already exist to stop eating meat. Factory farming, animal cruelty and environmental degredation among them. As the population grows and land availability to raise animals shrinks, meat is likely to become more of a luxury only the rich can afford. Even now viable meat alternatives exist which are likely to only get more ‘realistic’ and cheap as time passes. How will meat eaters be judged in a hundred years? Will the good you do be outshone by the barbaric practice you follow of devouring the flesh of living creatures and perpetuating the cycle of suffering and death?
What about plastic use? Imagine an alien landing on the planet and watching a human being choose to use a single-use plastic spoon over a reusable metal one. For the plastic spoon to exist at all, oil has to be found, drilled, refined, moulded, and shipped to its destination only to be used once and thrown away. A huge environmental impact for the sake of convenience looks like insanity.
Will drivers be vilified? Future citizens looking back and seeing you choose a petrol car over an electric one, knowing what we know about the current climate crisis, may deem you implicated in the environmental destruction they are living through. Will we be judged as thoughtless idiots who knew the consequences of our actions but did them anyway?
Edward Colston, the Slave trader and philanthropist that barely anyone had ever heard of until last week, when his statue was torn down and thrown into the Bristol harbour, had his statue erected to him for his philanthropy in 1895, one hundred and seventy four years after his death. Interestingly it was erected sixty two years after Britain passed the slavery abolition act of 1833. Slavery had been opposed long before this but a tipping point arrived and it was abolished. What does it say about peoples opinion of slavery, and those that were involved in it, that his statue was erected anyway despite his history in the trade? It says fewer people judged it to be a reason to negate his other deeds and that opinions change over time.
If you had a statue raised to honour you and your philanthropy, will there be a call for it to be removed in a hundred years because you were complicit in the wholesale massacre of animals? Profligate in your plastic use? Drove an SUV?
We are all a product of our time and we all make decisions for different, complex reasons. Today is the history of the future, and maybe knowing we are part of an ever evolving conversation about morality and right and wrong will help us to make better decisions for that future.
As for controversial statues, removing them doesn’t erase history, if anything this particular event has sparked a huge conversation about Britain’s slave trading history which, arguably, is far more important to people today than an old statue covered in pigeon poop.
