Recently my family watched the excellent Escape from film Pretoria, set in apartheid South Africa. It made me think, if I had been a white South African in the 1970s would I have supported or opposed apartheid?
I similarly wonder, if I had been a German living in the Weimar Republic in the early 1930s, would I have supported the rise of Hitler to power? Or, if I were George Whitefield or Jonathan Edwards, would I have owned slaves? In my head, I like to think I would have done what was morally right. However, the weakness of my fallen flesh makes me all too aware that I probably would have been just as culturally blind as many who lived at the time.
Cancelling former heroes
We live in a era in which history is being re-evaluated, with heroes ‘cancelled’ because they were not on the ‘right side of history’. It is entirely right that we truthfully evaluate the past, and do not deny or excuse the inexcusable. We must not maintain a simplistic ‘heroes and villains’ approach, but learn the lessons of history in the hope that we do not repeat them.
How the Titanic encapsulates the human dilemma
Last month a gold pocket watch worn by John Jacob Astor, the richest passenger on the Titanic, was sold …