Re: Irony and Understanding

Yet not all historical records are so fragmented and incomplete, and knowledge of the past few centuries has generally been well preserved. Further, for everything we admittedly do not know about how people lived in ancient Greece due to all the records lost during that era, a remarkable amount of information does remain preserved. Please note the important fact that since film has existed for just over 100 years now, that PSA and documentary from decades past about homosexuality are clear and concise about how attitudes towards certain groups and certain types of sexuality change from one part of a century to the next. Assuming the values of the past 30 years were more or less exactly the same as they were in the Middle Ages makes much less sense than the supposition that they were likely very different, especially when we look at tomes written in that era, like the Bible. You will note the Bible is heavily politically influenced, and it has effectively nothing to say about what we today call pedophilia, yet much to say about how homosexuality was viewed then.

Many people like to believe that the values their present culture holds most dear were universal throughout human history, as this makes them more secure with those values, and more comforting for them to pretend that these particular views, unlike all others, will never be subject to change.

I think historical evidence is useful but I would not rely on it to bolster any arguments for any particular view. What has happened at various times throughout history might be cited as "the norm" when we would probably know that there were different pressures within that particular society to cause any differences seen in other societies. We seem to have glimpses into different eras and the article I quoted was I think representative and sufficiently far back as to do so. You can honestly say modern history is entirely verifiable? Who exactly did kill JFK?