Wherein we ask people who say "You have to look at [x] in the context of the times!" something that might make them think about their bullshit.
Let's say I have a time machine, and I go back in time to the year 1000 AD. I take with me a Challenger battle tank and some modern firearms with lots of fuel and ammo. Upon arrival in Ye Olde England I declare myself King Of The World and proclaim Alfred The Great to be a big fanny who nobody should follow because he smells like beards and dog-shit and his mum was probably a Wessex candle-maker. When his armies come to challenge my assertion, I use my modern armaments to flatten the fucking lot of them, then go about the place pillaging and raping and murdering to my heart's content. I then live in my newly-accquired Kingdom Of Fuggerland as king of everything, using my tank to enforce my absolute will on my citizens and to pull off the occasional Crusade into continental Europe and beyond.
Who knows, maybe I take it all the way to Japan, have a poke around over there for a bit. Read the first edition of The Tale Of The Genji or something. Stop off in Mongolia and lead the hordes across central Asia or something on my way back.
Would this be evil, in the context of the times?
I'm not trying to straw-man objectivism; I simply wish to understand how the fuck you can contextualise another human being's suffering. That's not a straw man, because when you say things like "You've got to look at what happened to the Tsar Nicholas' family/ the Viking thralls/ the refugees in Hara Castle in the context of the times!" that's exactly what you're trying to do.
And before anyone says "Hey look it's moral absolutism like they have in religions!"... yes. It's LIKE what they have in religions, except it's based on the empirical observation that people do not like to suffer rather than some book someone wrote a long time ago that was inspired by a volcano erupting and a desire to control the way people behaved.
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