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I made a quick stop at the British Museum yesterday. There are stunning pieces of human history and culture in there. The Egyptian mommies are particularly impressive and the Asian galleries are my favorites.
Yet, while I was wandering in the different galleries, I couldn’t get a question out of my mind. Why do we still accept that in 2010? Museums are the only place where we allow thieves to publicly display what they looted.
That’s right. Most of the artifacts that are exhibited in the museum were stolen hundreds of years ago by representatives of the British Empire. People carved great sculptures out of the rock and shipped them back to England.
The endorsement
Of course, we may well have done the same thing a hundreds of years ago. I’m not saying that our ancestors should have been wiser or more open minded. They did what they did in the context of the era they lived in. I don’t want to pick on my British friends either.
What I’m questioning is our tacit and continued endorsement of their actions. It’s as if we were saying that the gravity of a crime decreases as the time goes by. If you stole something a hundreds years ago, you’re fine. It doesn’t count.
Obviously, the British Museum is not alone in that situation. There are plenty of other examples.
Should we return everything that was stolen in the gazillion wars that occurred in human history? I doubt we could figure it out. Saying that it’s the way it was, the way it is, and the way it ever shall be is no longer enough. Some established practices need to be questioned and the status quo needs to be shaken up.
The Lesson
There’s a lesson to learn from this. In many other areas of our lives, we tend to accept things because they’ve always been this way. We live and go with the flow. Whether at work or in our personal lives, we frequently accept the unacceptable because we are told that it’s the way life is.
I believe that we need to question longstanding practices more frequently. The world has evolved because someone somewhere refused to accept the way things were. Just like Fabian Kruse explained in one of his recent posts, “we are free to take our lives into our hands every single day.” We are also free to change the world every single day.
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Original photos by seriykotik1970 and Peter Rivera
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