With all that has been going in in the world during the past week, I thought it was the right time to write this blog. In fact, it is perfect timing considering Deshaun Watson and DeAndre Hopkins have recently stated a proposal that would get rid of or at least rename and award that is called the Calhoun Honors college which is named after former US Senator John Calhoun. I want to start by saying that slavery is in my opinion the worst possible fate for a human. I feel strongly when I say I would rather be killed than have to be a slave for a person for the rest of my life. Luckily, we as a society have progressed to a point where slavery no longer exists in the US, even though there are still many racial injustices. It is nearly bizarre to think about the concept of slavery being a well accepted norm to society less than 200 years ago. I think it shows how much we have progressed as a human race. For those of you who don't know John Calhoun was a US Senator and eventual Vice President from the state of South Carolina. He was Vice President from 1825 to 1832 which means he served during a time when slavery was beginning to be abolished by some states but slavery was still legal in the United States. Basically where I'm going with this is not necessarily the idea of cancel culture because when I think of cancel culture I think of present day celebrities such as Kanye West or people like that. This is something different more like "historical cancelling". Firstly, I want to say that I am not trying to defend John Calhoun specifically, but rather all people who do not live under today's moral standards. I think it is important for all people to understand that moral standards do change. This is hard for people to accept since most people think they live in the golden age of human society and that there version of how they see the world is always right. This is how people have always thought including people who thought the Earth was Flat, including people who thought that slavery was acceptable, including people who thought computers the size of whole rooms would be the greatest invention for hundreds of years, including the people who thought it would be impossible to go to the moon. Pretty much people always think they're right and that's my biggest problem with today's society especially the scientific community. Nearly all science related people think that they know the answers while if you look back 500 years, the scientists of those days also thought they knew all the answers so realistically, in 500 years when scientists look back to our generation, they will most likely laugh at what we thought was true. So what's the point of all this? My main message is that it is important to judge people by the standards of the times they lived in rather than the standards of the current day. Some examples include not saying people from the 1200s were idiots because they thought the Earth was flat. This doesn't make them idiots, this was simply the norm back in the 1200s. This also applies to modern technological inventions like I mentioned before. You can't say the person who invented the computer was stupid because he thought a computer needed to be the size of a NYC apartment, this was simply the belief at the time. This may also apply to the future such as the concept of eating meat. It is likely that most of society will one day no longer eat any kind of meat. This doesn't mean those people can look back at the people from 2000 and say that they are all evil because they ate meat which is totally unacceptable in the year 2100. So finally let me get to John Calhoun. First I want to say if Clemson wants to change the name of their award to something else, its not like I am going to protest or even be against the decision for that matter. But everyone needs to understand something very important, nearly all people from the year 1825 in the US fall into one of the following categories: they owned slaves, they supported slavery, they did nothing to stop slavery. While these three categories are very different, they are all adding to the idea of slavery because they are doing nothing to stop slavery. I am not saying all people from 1825 fall into one of these categories but most do. My main point is that I truly believe it is wrong to erase people from our present day society because they believed in policies that are terrible based on present day standard. I'm 99% confident we can find something bad about all people pre 1800 that has to do with racial issues, this doesn't mean we should cancel these people. Some of these people include George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and yes John Calhoun. I will end with a connection to present day. Imagine a society in 200 years that bans the concept of owning any pets. The rationale behind this is that no animal(even humans) should have any control over another animal. In that future society no one will own pets. If they look back at today and see that YOU owned a dog, does that make you a bad person. No. It doesn't. If they see Obama owned a dog, does that make him a bad person. If they see George Bush owned a dog does that make him a bad person. I understand this is different than slavery but it is the idea. Judge people from the past on the standards in which they lived in. Because I'm sure you don't want to be judged in the future based on standards you are totally unaware of.
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