美国儿科协会明确指出，打屁股对孩子的伤害既有短期的，也有长期的。从短期来看，这是一种耻辱。从长远来看，它会导致心理健康问题。

Its recommendations are based on evidence. It’s easy to spin yarns and weave anecdotes about how spanking builds character (“My parents spanked me and I turned out alright!”). But actual research implies (1) physical punishment is damaging to children’s mental health, even when it doesn’t harm the body, and (2) other forms of discipline improve behavior more effectively anyway (timeouts, consequences like putting away toys, etc.). So in light of information now available, it’s fair to say spanking children is immoral. (Despite that, it’s still common:recent data showthat “24 percent of one-year-old children and 33 percent of 3-year-olds are spanked in a given month.”)

When I write spanking is immoral, I mean that about the present: those who spank in this day and age are doing wrong. But here’s a tricky question. How should our moral judgments of the present impact our judgments of what people did in the past?

Spanking is a case in point. Spanking used to be much more common, and it was even regarded as obligatory. The thought was that, if one didn’t spank, the child would fall into delinquency or have an ill-formed character. Hence the saying: “Spare the rod, spoil the child.” So if I morally condemn present spanking, should I extend my moral condemnation to past spanking too?

我可以想象出三种对过去的道德判断的大致立场。

1. Extreme Presentism: I should condemn past instances of any action that I would condemn in the present.
2. Temporal Relativism: I should not use present moral standards to condemn past actions at all, since the past was a different time with different moral standards in different places.
3. Moderate Presentism当前位置有时以我现在的道德标准来评价过去的行为是公平的，但我应该谨慎行事，认识到有缓和的因素，只有在有目的的时候才谴责。

I think it’s intuitive that Extreme Presentism and Temporal Relativism are misguided.

时间相对主义允许任何被普遍接受的行为。But consider this passage from Steven Pinker’sBetter Angels of Our Nature, a book which chronicles declines in violence over the course of human history (see Pinker’s book for the sources of his quotations).

一项调查发现，在18世纪下半叶，百分之百的美国儿童被棍棒、鞭子或其他武器殴打。儿童也可能受到法律制度的惩罚。直到19世纪，英国法律还允许对“7至14岁的儿童有强烈的恶意行为证据”的人判处死刑，许多青少年继续因纵火和入室盗窃等轻微罪行被处以绞刑，直到1908年，执行死刑的最低年龄提高到16岁。即使在20世纪初，德国的孩子们“如果不听话，就会经常被放在烧红的铁炉上，被绑在床柱上好几天，被扔进冷水或雪里让他们‘变硬’，(而且)每天被迫跪在一根木头上靠墙几个小时，让父母吃饭和读书。”

We would be remiss if we didn’t condemn the customs described in that passage. But that raises the question of what principle we should apply in condemning common customs from the past. Extreme Presentism furnishes an easy answer: we should apply present moral standards, whatever those happen to be.

Yet I don’t think we should accept Extreme Presentism either. First, it rules out the possibility that the past might have something to teach us morally. Second, Extreme Presentism foists on us the unnecessary burden of judginga lot过去的行动，很少有关于我们为什么应该这样做的指导。过去充满了数以十亿计的个人行为以及成千上万的习俗和规范。Having to condemnallthe ones that don’t fit present morality would be practically impossible.

That leaves Moderate Presentism, which is plausible yet (so far) vague. But the current vagueness needn’t bother us, as long as we sharpen the position.

我们可以用几种方法来加强温和现世主义。例如，人们可以列出一些可以为过去的行为开脱的因素(例如，错误但诚实的描述性信念使某些行为看起来有益，尽管它们并不是有益的，人们没有理由应该知道得更好)。But I want to focus on the final clause in the position, which is about thepurposeof condemning the past. Why might we even bother?

在很多方面，过去的习俗是对我们现在应该做什么的默认。这有实际和象征的层面。

实际上，为什么在美国我们应该靠右行驶呢?Even if there were no laws about this, there would be a simple answer:because that’s what we’ve done in the past. It’s hard to see how sophisticated human cooperation would be possible if there weren’t such practical defaults. In any complex cooperative activity, there are too many elements for all of them to be up for re-negotiation every time, so something has to provide defaults, and past customs and conventions are as good for that purpose as anything.

Symbolically, however, past customs also become ways of indicating one’s group identity. An American follows American customs. A Bulgarian follows Bulgarian customs. Etc. And it’s up to collective memory to say what those customs are (this is why people often falsify the past, mythologize it, or tell yarns). And a culture’s symbolic, identity-defining customs can be (from moral and/or practical standpoints) good, neutral, or bad. Presumably, coming together to share certain culinary delights is, all things considered, goodas well assymbolic. Wearing certain colors on certain days is neutral, since it’s basically arbitrary and wouldn’t be good or bad either way apart from the symbolism.

但是，习俗也可能是不好的，但却被文化符号普遍拥有的势头所保持。打屁股说明了这一点。这是不道德的，没有实际目的(甚至是愚蠢的工具，鉴于我们所知道的)。但如果有人说:“我父母打了我屁股，我长大了还好!是在说，属于这个俱乐部是他们身份的一部分，他们希望自己的孩子能分享这种身份。

So for customs that have this symbolic aspect we should be especially vigilant in morally questioning the past—often using present moral standards to do so. Onepurpose从道德上谴责过去是为了让我们摆脱象征性的违约，当它们与我们从非象征性的立场认为是错误的东西相冲突时。这就是为什么体罚儿童值得谴责的原因——过去也是如此。

In sum, I think we should be circumspect with regard to moral condemnation of the past, since Extreme Presentism is short sighted. But when past ill behaviors threaten to spill into the present as a part of misguided in-group symbolism, we should condemn them. Some symbols need to be shattered.