Back when the Internet was becoming a major part of society, there was a common concern that it would usher in an era of ephemera: that the continuous flow of information and entertainment would provide us endless distractions and take away our ability to focus on things for extended periods of time; that our capability to remember things would decay as we google away for forgotten facts–memory becomes a second class need.
However, in an odd twist, the age of ephemera has also led to an age where the past is never really forgotten. In analog days, things said or written years in the past would often stay there: written words lost in the piles and files of ever increasing physical documents. Things said would remain within a smaller circle of people and be difficult to really break through to the whole of society. To be clear, it wasn’t so much that past dissolved or ceased to be, but that the effort required to bring things from the past to present in a meaningful way was extremely high. As result, in Analog days, the past generally stayed the past.
That’s changed. The effort to find a few words in massive of pile of documents has been reduced to a few keystrokes; and the spreading of tales of one’s past can instantly be shared with the entire world with the tap of button. So we have to reckon with questions we’ve never really had to reckon with before as society: what from the past can be forgiven? And what must be a permanent scar? And, and much more difficult question: do we have different standards for different people?
For this post I’m more interested in that last question: Regardless of what society deems forgivable or not, should there be different standards for people given things like their backgrounds or their contributions to society?
I think we’ve implicitly answered “Yes” in general to Different Standards, however we haven’t defined the different thresholds. A figure like Harvey Weinstein was shunned for his abuses of power while Michael Jackson is still generally accepted. Arguably Jackson did much worse than Weisnten, but Jackson has given society way more gifts, and his talents way more clear, than Weinstein. Or take a figure like Bill Clinton, John. F Kennedy, even Martin Luther King Jr. all figures that are generally lauded for their political / social contributions, yet in private have done things that would of us would consider unacceptable had our close friends or family committed them.
I won’t do a deep dive in this post of all the recent folks who’s pasts have been exposed and how society has dealt with them (A good idea for a follow up though, note to self self). Yet I will say that I’m not sure of the answer whether society should give folks that contribute so much, more slack for the past (or even present) sins. It’s a new world for sure though, that should be considered.
Intergalactic Dance 