For one thing, before the 20th century, there were plenty of genocides. We tend to forget about them, partly because they weren't as well documented and partly because, until recently, people didn't care. We used euphemisms like 'sackings' and 'sieges' instead of calling them 'genocides.'
Interpretation
This quote highlights how historical atrocities like genocides were downplayed and misnamed, leading to a lack of awareness and accountability.
Steven Pinker's quote reflects on the tendency of society to overlook or sanitize the discussion of historical genocides, suggesting that the lack of documentation and public concern has contributed to a collective amnesia about these tragic events. He points out that euphemisms have often been used to mask the reality of genocide, making it easier for people to forget or ignore the severity of such occurrences in human history.
In practice
This quote can be used in a discussion about the importance of accurately documenting historical events.
The foundation of individual rights is the assumption that people have wants and needs and are authorities on what those wants and needs are. If people's stated desires were just some kind of erasable inscription or reprogrammable brainwashing, any atrocity could be justified.
The linguistic clumsiness of tourists and students might be the price we pay for the linguistic genius we displayed as babies, just as the decrepitude of age in the price we pay for the vigor of youth.
If we are not to abandon values such as peace and equality, or our commitments to science and truth, then we must pry these values away from claims about our psychological makeup that are vulnerable to being proven false.
We adults protect ourselves with laws, police, workplace regulations and social norms and there is no conceivable reason why children should be left more vulnerable, other that laziness or callousness in considering what life is like from their point of view.
The idea that children are passive repositories to be shaped by their parents has been massively overstated. A child's peer group is a far greater determinant of its development and achievements than parental aspiration.
Reason is non-negotiable. Try to argue against it, or to exclude it from some realm of knowledge, and you've already lost the argument, because you're using reason to make your case. ... We don't "believe" in reason.
It's a touchy subject, but as a Southerner, you can't ignore our history any more than a Renaissance painter can ignore the Virgin Mary. And it's impossible to drive down a road or eat a vegetable or pass a church without being reminded of slavery.
Never to forget the Holocaust was not only against Jews. It was mostly against Jews but it was also against homosexuals, gypsies and, let's not forget, people with disability.
If history starts as a guest list, it has a tendency to end like the memory of a drunken party: misheard, blurred, fragmentary.
The evil of slavery and colonialism was that these oppressions kept their victims out of history, disconnected them from the evolutionary struggle.
History, to be above evasion or dispute, must stand on documents, not on opinions.
Let Indian history be set side by side with Europe history with what there is of the latter century by century and let us see whether India need blush at the comparison.
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