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Maybe we should stop expecting perfection from public figures. I'm sure there's plenty of dirt I could dig up about you, if I rifled through your past, all your

Maybe we should stop expecting perfection from public figures. I'm sure there's plenty of dirt I could dig up about you, if I rifled through your past, all your actions and opinions. I'm really tired of the idea that a hero has to be a perfect saint by modern, vogue definitions. We have a news media that is so rabidly searching for reasons to destroy people, that Musk headbutting a car in frustration is somehow news. So what? Who hasn't banged their head in frustration? Then we have more serious cases, like attacks on Gandhi, where compromising situations with 18-19 year olds (which I'm not defending) get transmuted into accusations of pedophilia. Can we just stop!? Let good actions be remembered, and let truely bad ones be punished in a timely fashion. By speaking ill of the dead, we rob ourselves of heroes and examples that are genuinely worth following, just because the whole person isn't who we want to be. Edit: transmitted -> transmuted

xref 8y ago
it seems eminently fair to remember the whole person, not an idealized version of them.
- OtterCoder 8y ago
  Who said life is fair? Or should be? I prefer mercy.
  - kbenson 8y ago
    > I prefer mercy. I prefer accuracy, and not just for my own benefit. It's a small thing here, but whitewashing uncomfortable past truthful actions rarely leads to a good future outcome. One could argue that we should let the small stuff go and only hold to this for large infractions, but that just leads to fighting over what is small and what is large, as well as problems where in hindsight something that looked small really wasn't. Perhaps the way forward is to call out behavior we don't agree with, but also be more accepting of people (as opposed to their behavior) that have portions of their behavior we don't agree with.
- ekianjo 8y ago
  why not live by "actions speak louder than words" instead? Everyone says something they end up regretting. With the net whatever you said before ends up tainting your reputation forever. Time to move on to what people do instead.
  - dagenix 8y ago
    One thing he did was create a tremendously interesting OS. Another thing he did was to say a bunch of racist stuff. There is no evidence I'm aware of he regretted either. So yes, let's remember _all_ of it.
    - ekianjo 8y ago
      Notice I mentioned actions, not sayings?
      - dagenix 8y ago
        Saying something is an action. If not, I guess someone like Martin Luther King Jr. did just about nothing with his life. Screaming fire in a crowded theater is also an action. You can't just redefine words.
flukus 8y ago
I agree in general, but the problem with your Musk and Ghandi examples is that they were deified to begin with, we expect more from God's that we would a Car/Rocket company executive or a civil rights activist. A better example might be sports starts, they are very good at what they do but at some point we decided they had to behave like role models and they often fall short of that expectation. Terry Davis is more like a sports star praising god for his match performance, which isn't out of the ordinary.

xref 8y ago

it seems eminently fair to remember the whole person, not an idealized version of them.

OtterCoder 8y ago
Who said life is fair? Or should be? I prefer mercy.
- kbenson 8y ago
  > I prefer mercy. I prefer accuracy, and not just for my own benefit. It's a small thing here, but whitewashing uncomfortable past truthful actions rarely leads to a good future outcome. One could argue that we should let the small stuff go and only hold to this for large infractions, but that just leads to fighting over what is small and what is large, as well as problems where in hindsight something that looked small really wasn't. Perhaps the way forward is to call out behavior we don't agree with, but also be more accepting of people (as opposed to their behavior) that have portions of their behavior we don't agree with.
ekianjo 8y ago
why not live by "actions speak louder than words" instead? Everyone says something they end up regretting. With the net whatever you said before ends up tainting your reputation forever. Time to move on to what people do instead.
- dagenix 8y ago
  One thing he did was create a tremendously interesting OS. Another thing he did was to say a bunch of racist stuff. There is no evidence I'm aware of he regretted either. So yes, let's remember _all_ of it.
  - ekianjo 8y ago
    Notice I mentioned actions, not sayings?
    - dagenix 8y ago
      Saying something is an action. If not, I guess someone like Martin Luther King Jr. did just about nothing with his life. Screaming fire in a crowded theater is also an action. You can't just redefine words.

flukus 8y ago

I agree in general, but the problem with your Musk and Ghandi examples is that they were deified to begin with, we expect more from God's that we would a Car/Rocket company executive or a civil rights activist. A better example might be sports starts, they are very good at what they do but at some point we decided they had to behave like role models and they often fall short of that expectation. Terry Davis is more like a sports star praising god for his match performance, which isn't out of the ordinary.