> The people that were responsible for these problems are not around anymore, but nor are the direct victims of those problems.
>
> It would be foolish of me to argue that past crimes against humanity do not still impact our lives today. But such is life. All of our lives are impacted by the lives of others, for better or worse and usually both. This is a fact of life. The modern mindset of Western culture seems to hold that anything bad that happens to oneself as the result of another's actions (no matter what the intent, or how far removed along the cause-and-effect chain) is automatically unjust. But this is foolish. The proverbial butterfly in China that causes the proverbial tornado in America is not responsible for damages.
>But I think we are crippled in our ability to do that if we're always looking back to the past of generations ago and saying, "Well what about THOSE wrongs?"
>
> THOSE wrongs are not THESE. THOSE wrongs will remain wrongs until the end of time. They will remain no more or less atoned for than they are now, no matter how many centuries of attempts at belated reparations are made.
>
> The best can we do is to learn from the past while leaving it in the past. Then strive to do right by the present on its OWN terms.

Your post made a lot of sense to me (probably more than my own). Although I think that we are still dealing with problems caused by past actions in a somewhat more direct manner than the butterfly to tornado analogy - the original action was done with intention here - I do agree that at some point we just have to start solving them as problems that are currently existing, and therefore our responsibility to solve regardless of their history, just because they exist.
I'm still unsure of where that point should be though. Measuring it by the living "original" victims does seem to make the most sense, but a part of me still asks 'what about their kids?'. And then it just becomes a giant slippery slope...

Mazer31