Reflecting on one of the mini-essays (by essayist/novelist Natasha Staggin) today’s obnoxious Times feature, “Future Cringe/One day we’ll look back on this moment and wonder: What were we thinking?,” my favorite quirky blogger, Ann Althouse writes,
I love the big question, what are we doing now that we are going to be embarrassed/ashamed of in the future? I noticed this question when I was a child and heard things said about people in the past, as if those people were benighted and ridiculous. We are those people to people somewhere out there in the future. How can I avoid being looked at by them the way people today are looking at the people of the past?
One answer is to be more charitable to the people of the past. Realize that some day you’ll be in their position, and don’t you want those future people to be charitable toward you? Embarrassment is over-worried about. Maybe those people in the future are looking back at us and laughing about how prudish and uptight we were to think of them feeling embarrassed about us. That is, one day we’ll look back and be embarrassed that we were embarrassed.
Typical Ann: raising what she calls a “big question,” and almost immediately suggesting it isn’t so big after all, writing, “Embarrassment is over-worried about,” which is also an interesting sentence coming from a writer who is so often a language pedant.
As an ethicist who believes that human understanding of what is right and wrong constantly evolves and usually improves, my initial reaction to Ann’s question is, “What do you mean we?” I’ve been around a while, and I can honestly say that I’m not “embarrassed” by anything I once believed in, or any major reaction to the data life gave me. Individual deeds, words and moments, sure. I have plenty of past moments I wince to think about.
Stagg was talking about the Wuhan virus freak-out, so don’t look my way. I didn’t freak out, and I did my best to try to keep others from doing so, failing miserably. However, the pandemic is the kind of event one’s response should only be embarrassed about if one knew, or should have known, that one’s response was dishonest, cowardly, or destructive, or if one had a genuine choice and foolishly took the wrong one. The pandemic was a unique challenge, and we were, as Marty Baron ( Liev Schreiber) says in “Spotlight” when a Boston Globe staffer is admitting that he could have blown the whistle on the Catholic Diocese predator priest scandal sooner, just “stumbling around in the dark.”
Yes, I think Dr. Fauci should be embarrassed. Andrew Cuomo should be embarrassed. The New York Times should be embarrassed, and the health “experts” who endorsed the mass George Floyd demonstrations as an exception to their warnings about large gatherings should hide their heads under bags. But for the most part, I think the pandemic is a poor example for Ann’s question.
The kind of embarrassment she’s talking about is hindsight bias, and hindsight bias is foolish and unethical. We shouldn’t be embarrassed that our society once practiced slavery, nor condemn those who did believing that it was right without the benefit of our many years of enlightenment. I’m not going to be embarrassed, but I sure hope those leading the charge in the current “diversity/equity/inclusion” fad are embarrassed soon, just as I hope that the pro-gender reassignment mania’s advocates eventually are awash in shame. As for feeling embarrassed on behalf of the society i live in, I can think of only one example for Ann: abortion.
And in that case, I am not inclined to be “charitable” to those advocating, practicing and trying to justify the practice while vilifying its opponents. They should be embarrassed. They should be embarrassed now.
Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Survey question is…
Ethics Alarms 
They have no excuse.
as a matter of fact, those who supported lockdowns did not seem to acknowledge the swine flu pandemic of 2009, nor the Hong Kong flu pandemic of 1968.
Everything that is happening now. The March toward totalitarianism that’s got caught up in it the Climate Change hysteria, mass shootings, the DEI push to remake society and the push by one party to destroy our economy in order to remake it while those who should be in a position to fight it are hopelessly ineffective.
We’re not just going to be embarrassed, we’re going to regret it terribly.
Good comment AMG.
“while those who should be in a position to fight it are hopelessly ineffective.”
Ineffective only because they aren’t trying hard enough, or at all. What is embarrassing about that is how the most feckless, dishonest, and corrupt legislators continue to be elected. Well, not embarrassing really. More like infuriating, frustrating, discouraging.
Embarrassment generally involves some kind of reflective mechanism that stimulates introspection that leads to embarrassment. That reflective mechanism is the piercing gaze of enough righteous people which has been a missing societal component lately.
Just watched “Spotlight.” Good movie.
I think the word for Catholics is ashamed, not embarrassed, and still so.
As a side note, I said here very early in the Panicdemic, the ridiculous over reaction to Covid would go down as the most massive fiscal and public health fiasco in the history of the United States.
Normally yes OB, but the globalists are just getting started…stay tuned.
Some people ought to be embarrassed about confusing the Times and the New York Times, but I suspect that they will somehow skate over it.
Do people still do that?
I believe the whole of society should be embarrassed with their acceptance of the nonontological, anti-anthropological, nonscientific delusions of the transgender movement. I cannot discern which is more embarrassing: 1. for a nominee seeking a justice appointment being unable to define a woman or 2. for a nominee seeking a justice appointment being to recall or speak spontaneously of either Article 2 or 5 of the Constitution.
The kind of embarrassment she’s talking about is hindsight bias, and hindsight bias is foolish and unethical.
Somebody should tell the iconclastic Left that.
In fact, if hindsight bias were eliminated, the entire edifice of leftism would collapse into ruin. It underpins almost every position they espouse.
What do you think “we “doing now that we are going to be embarrassed/ashamed of in the future?
As a society, giving in to an online mob that has virtually no real power for any purpose, yet it has been able to shape our society for the last decade or so. Sadly, it also has an unbroken record of making society worse in almost every aspect you can name.
Also, whatever happened to “Sticks and stones…?” It seems the old wisdom has been given concrete overshoes. More hindsight bias, I guess.
From a personal standpoint, not a thing I can think of.