Question: What are some other “categories” of people or animals that seem to have seen the circle shift away from them?
Some of my ideas:
Various groups who are popular targets for discrimination in their respective regions. They may have lived in (relative) peace for a long time before things became very bad very quickly (the Tutsis, the Rohingya, the Uighurs)
Jewish people may be the most prominent example throughout history. The story of my people can be seen as a story of shifting circles, with wildly varying levels of violence culminating in the Holocaust (and, some say, rising again today, though I’m not sure how 2019 compares to, say, 1979).
Immigrants. There have been eras when it was much easier to move between countries and find opportunity (though there was less opportunity to go around). Nearly every Ellis Island applicant became a U.S. citizen; that’s much harder today.
Elderly people in the West are treated with less regard than they might been a century ago, I think (although I’m not certain—maybe elderly people in the West have always been treated poorly?)
Government social safety nets for elderly people (such as Social Security in the US) reduce the need for young adults to provide direct care to their elderly parents. This seems likely related.
To me this seems more of an expansion in moral circles though. Most of us in the developed world now seem to think that we’re responsible for everyone’s elderly parents rather than just our own.
Eh, but nowadays we’re “responsible” in a way that carries dark undertones.
Many US elderly aren’t embedded in multigenerational communities, but instead warehoused in nursing homes (where they aren’t in regular contact with their families & don’t have a clear role to play in society).
Hard to say whether this is an improvement over how things were 100 years ago. I do know that I’m personally afraid of ending up in a nursing home & plan to make arrangements to reduce the probability of such.
My impression is the West hasn’t traditionally revered elders as highly as some other societies, but in the distant past the West revered elders more than we do now.
It’s hard to generalize across times and cultures, butephebophiles and hebephiles seem to be treated much more harshly these days. Often they are placed in the category of pedophiles (who also might have been more tolerated in the past, I’m not sure).
I think historical immigrants to the US had to deal with more frequent racism at the social level. Historical immigration policy might have been guided by economic need rather than moral values.
Question: What are some other “categories” of people or animals that seem to have seen the circle shift away from them?
Some of my ideas:
Various groups who are popular targets for discrimination in their respective regions. They may have lived in (relative) peace for a long time before things became very bad very quickly (the Tutsis, the Rohingya, the Uighurs)
Jewish people may be the most prominent example throughout history. The story of my people can be seen as a story of shifting circles, with wildly varying levels of violence culminating in the Holocaust (and, some say, rising again today, though I’m not sure how 2019 compares to, say, 1979).
Immigrants. There have been eras when it was much easier to move between countries and find opportunity (though there was less opportunity to go around). Nearly every Ellis Island applicant became a U.S. citizen; that’s much harder today.
Elderly people in the West are treated with less regard than they might been a century ago, I think (although I’m not certain—maybe elderly people in the West have always been treated poorly?)
Seems like a real shift. (Perhaps driven by the creation of a nursing home industry?)
Government social safety nets for elderly people (such as Social Security in the US) reduce the need for young adults to provide direct care to their elderly parents. This seems likely related.
To me this seems more of an expansion in moral circles though. Most of us in the developed world now seem to think that we’re responsible for everyone’s elderly parents rather than just our own.
Eh, but nowadays we’re “responsible” in a way that carries dark undertones.
Many US elderly aren’t embedded in multigenerational communities, but instead warehoused in nursing homes (where they aren’t in regular contact with their families & don’t have a clear role to play in society).
Hard to say whether this is an improvement over how things were 100 years ago. I do know that I’m personally afraid of ending up in a nursing home & plan to make arrangements to reduce the probability of such.
My impression is the West hasn’t traditionally revered elders as highly as some other societies, but in the distant past the West revered elders more than we do now.
It’s hard to generalize across times and cultures, but ephebophiles and hebephiles seem to be treated much more harshly these days. Often they are placed in the category of pedophiles (who also might have been more tolerated in the past, I’m not sure).
I think historical immigrants to the US had to deal with more frequent racism at the social level. Historical immigration policy might have been guided by economic need rather than moral values.