Ways of Thinking that I Don’t Understand

I’m sure my brain does some thinking at times that doesn’t make sense to others. Or, at the very least, my way of thinking differs strongly with someone else. For example, I am always early to everything all the time. I get stressed when I feel like I am going to be late. It’s something I’ve inherited from my father, as nature and nurture continued their never-ending battle. There are other people, of course, who are chronically late, who don’t give a single shit about being early, and never stress about showing up on time. Our ways of thinking differ greatly, but at least I understand their mindset. Punctuality simply isn’t an important aspect of their life.

On the other hand, there are ways of thinking that I really don’t understand at all, and I’d like to discuss a couple of them. First is the notion that, “I had to suffer through something, so other people should suffer the same thing too.” It’s somewhat similar to the “misery loves company” idea, but there is a key difference. With misery loves company, I imagine someone suffering through something, and, if someone else is suffering a similar struggle, the shared struggle creates a sense that someone else has to do this too, and maybe you can get through it together. But what I’m talking about is someone who has already suffered through a hardship, got through it, and when presented with an idea that will prevent others from enduring similar hardships, they are against it. It is not a concurrent misery. It is misery that occurred, then a possible solution to that misery, then a resistance to the solution based on a person’s already having experienced the misery.

The most obvious example of this way of thinking is in regards to student loan debt and the cost of college in general in the United States. There are some, including me, who advocate for alleviating the colossal student loan debt that is plaguing this nation. This would involve some sort of debt cancellation. There are some, including me, who also advocate for the reduction of tuition costs so that we won’t just return to the debt crisis again. When these types of suggestions are made, there are always people who have already suffered through their large amount of student debt, paid it off, who resist the change simply because they already went through the suffering that we’re trying to alleviate. “I already paid my incredibly inflated student loan debt, why shouldn’t everybody else?”

It is this line of thinking that I have great difficulty understanding. “I went through X, and you’re trying to make it so no one has to go through X in the future, but I already went through X, so I want everyone else to go through X.” What the fuck? I understand, to a small extent, the frustration they must feel. As time progresses, things change, and sometimes things change in a way to make things easier for people. And there may be some frustration that, when you were younger, it was more difficult.

Take elevators, for another example. A person may have grown up in a world without elevators, and they may have lived in a building with flights of stairs that annoyed them and tired them out. After years of climbing stairs, climbing stairs, climbing stairs, someone comes along and invents an elevator. And the person might be frustrated that they spent all those years climbing stairs and they missed out on the luxury of elevators for most of their life. I can understand their frustration, but I wouldn’t understand their notion to ban elevators because they had to climb stairs every day of their life.

It’s just a way of thinking that I don’t understand. I have had to struggle with a tremendous amount of student loan debt, and I’ve hated it. It has been horrible. But if we can end that system, and make it easier for people to access higher education without such an extreme burden, I hope that we do. I want the people that come after me to live in a better world. Why wouldn’t people want that, in general? Now, some people may disagree with the specific example of student loan cancellation or cheaper/free public colleges for some other reason. Whatever. But to specifically cite your own suffering through it as justification for why it should not improve, that makes no fucking sense.

When I was even younger, Google and Wikipedia were very new and not nearly as widely used or effective. But now they are, and kids who grow up with them have better access to a wide range of knowledge. And that’s good! I want future generations to get better. I cannot understand people’s reluctance to the world getting better after them. Perhaps they are just bitter, miserable people.

The second way of thinking that I don’t understand is a bit less broad. It’s no secret that many important historical figures held shitty views, practiced shitty behavior, etc. There’s a wide range of beliefs and behavior here, so condensing it all down to “shitty” is obviously insufficient, but I don’t want to go into every historical figure here. At the very least, there is ongoing debate about how we should remember certain figures with the context of those beliefs and behaviors, and whether or not we should be celebrating them.

Of course there are degrees of shittiness and that is commonly brought up in these discussions. What I’ve often heard, however, is a way of thinking that I cannot understand. I might say something like, “We should not celebrate Person X because they held belief Y and practiced Z behavior.” And someone in the discussion responds, “Person X’s beliefs and behaviors were commonly held in the historical time. It was part of the generally accepted morality back then, so attacking them is unfair. We obviously know more morally than they did back then You should stop criticizing Person X from the morality of modern times, or else you’ll be criticized for something you’re doing by people 100 years from now.”

It doesn’t always go exactly like that, but very similar. I can kinda understand some of the first parts of their little diatribe. Morally contextualizing history is debatable, which is why we’re having the discussion in the first place. However, what I don’t understand is this notion that I shouldn’t criticize historical figures, who are dead, because it would be unfair and mean to them. And in the future, when I’m dead, someone might be unfair and mean to me. Who cares? They’re dead. And, in the future, I’ll be dead.

The second part of this line of thinking that I don’t understand is more interesting. There is a vague idea that moral standards generally progress throughout history. I can kinda get behind that idea, to some extent. So the idea is that, a person in the past may have been shitty by our standards, and we are probably shitty by the standards of people in the future. I can kinda get behind that idea too, to some extent. A common example is eating meat or using plastic. A person from 200 years in the future may look back at us and criticize us for eating meat [or factory farms, at least] and using so much plastic. I can agree with that too.

But it’s the next step in their way of thinking that I don’t understand. Instead of taking their realization [that future people will look back at the present and criticize our beliefs and practices as antiquated and bad] and using the realization to adjust their beliefs and practices, they instead decide to stop criticizing people from the past, lest they be criticized also. Why?

I simply don’t understand that connection of thoughts. “Hey, we criticize people from the past based on our understanding of the world and morality, but they thought it was normal at the time. We probably do things that similarly seem normal right now, but will seem horrible by future people. Therefore, I will stop criticizing people from the past because I’m scared of being criticized after I’m dead.” What the fuck? That’s an important realization, and why wouldn’t you at least try to think about what we’re doing that’s shitty and change it? At least try. I don’t understand this way of thinking, and I’ve never really asked someone to explain it further because I believe it would have to entail a much deeper conservation about what the point of human life is.

If anyone can try to explain these ways of thinking a bit better than I have, I’d be happy to hear it.