Past Sins?

People evolve over time.  Depending on how old you are, you have likely held various beliefs and opinions in the past that now seem wrong.

Rightly or wrongly when I was growing up in the Bronx we used to use words related to nationality that are now considered inappropriate.  They may have been pejorative, but they were generally used as descriptive.

Similarly many of us were raised to believe certain behaviors, now accepted were sins and illegal.  It wasn't something you formed an opinion on, it was simply what it was.  You may have wondered why but it wasn't something that was an issue until later.

Was it wrong?  From today's perspective it is but people were arrested for things back then that we wouldn't even blink at today.

I was reading an article today which talked about how the rail industry, itself an environmentally friendly form of transport, defended coal which it makes a lot of money transporting back in the 90s and to some extent later.

Was this wrong of them?  This article implies or states it was, but the railroads defended an item which was, and still is, a major customer to them.  Yes we knew a lot about carbon pollution back then, but it wasn't the consensus it is today.

Should people be condemned for positions they took at a time when that position was either the consensus position or at least a position you could honestly hold?

They might be demonstrably wrong using what we know today, but as they say 20-20 hindsight is easy.

I see a lot of people criticized for things they could have known or should have known but which at the time they didn't know.

The past isn't always relevant, it just isn't.