Some agree with me that our countries should say sorry for our past misdemeanours, some disagree and say it would be pointless and we should just move on.Whatever your view on that particular debate, is there anything we in the West are doing today that will bring this debate back to the fore in a couple of hundred years time?
The most obvious is our present adventure in the Middle East, i think we will be apologising to Iraq for what we have done there at some point in the future. I fail to see how History can make anything good from that particular episode.
The 2207 Catholic Church could be issuing a grovelling sorry note to the millions of Catholics it has compelled to death by AIDS by refusing to sanction the use of condoms.
Hopefully we have finally decided to do something about Climate Change and maybe between now and then we will have developed a fairer way of sharing the wealth around the World in place of the system we have now.
Mostly, i hope we will be apologising for inflicting boy bands on the World. For that we should be truly sorry.
12 comments:
I guess what makes life interesting is that we don't know. Probably some legal drugs people are using now will be found to cause cancer or some other awful thing, the evidence will be suppressed for a while, and we'll hear sorries for that. Maybe we'll hear some apologies for the low-cut jeans that emphasize muffin-tops. Or perhaps there will be no apologizers or recipients left because we're allowing Iran to get nukes.
Yeah, the M.E. thing is too recent to call. I supported it in the first place because of my sense that if we just stayed away and wrung our hands, we'd have a lot to answer for once a nuclear dictatorship arose, Nazi Germany-like, from the current (i.e. pre-2003) rubble. Of course, now that we know a lot of the evidence that suggested it was going to happen sooner rather than later was false or deliberately misrepresented, it seems we should have just left em alone after all. But will we need to apologize? History is so full of wrong turns I just can't see it. Japan not apologizing for enslaving Chinese woman in the 1930s doesn't bother me nearly so much as their not acknowledging that they even did it.
I wish I was funnier like you guys. Waa. :)
I can think of two right away.
1) The lack of western help in battling disease and poverty in Africa.
2) The lack of Western help in stopping the atrocities in Darfur.
Now we have to worry about the Imperial Nuclear Dictatorship of America crushing the whole world into its ugly image. Iran is supposed to be attacked within the next few days with Easter being favoured for the nukes to start falling.
There's an irony there I think!
Bye, bye to a few thousands, hundreds of thousands, or millions as well when the whole Middle East erupts, Stephen.
WW3 has arrived!
Pretty much, yeah.
Easter? I had better get my easter eggs in early then.
That's it's likely to be at Easter makes a complete mockery of Christianity and what it is supposed to stand for. Cheers!
This is a great point, Lucy, and it reminds me of what really bothers me about this whole 'apologising for ancient history' stuff... It's that people like Tony Blair try to portray themselves as humble and willing to apologise... but he's only 'sorry' about stuff that he realises everyone knows wasn't his fault, or indeed, had anything at all to do with him. The shit that most certainly is his fault, he's not budging on. He still maintains, in the face of all the proof to the contrary, that he was right to invade Iraq. This is one of the main reasons why I don't give a toss about whether or not he's 'sorry' about slavery.
Aye, Cheez. That's where I'm at with legislators and all this apology crap (Google "Confederate Heritage Month" for a brainful). Politically, I can't understand the recalcitrance, but fuck if there aren't many more vitally important resolutions to be concerned about.
Good point Cheezy, always easy to say sorry for someone else's balls-up, not quite so quick to acknowledge his own.
"Iran is supposed to be attacked within the next few days with Easter being favoured for the nukes to start falling."
Supposed to be? Who made that proclamation?
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