uncut thoughts about hero worship
Bryan Stevenson of the Equal Justice Initiative wrote:
“Each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done”
It’s an important message in its own right, and I encourage everyone to explore it further, starting with Stevenson’s book Just Mercy (public library). However, the converse of the statement is also true: no individual is “greater” than the best they’ve accomplished. “Bad” thoughts, words, or actions don’t make you an inherently terrible person or mean that you are underserving of the respect and dignity that is every human being’s prerogative. Doing great things does not absolve you of treating others with respect. People who do great things for their families, communities, or even for humanity, should still be held acceptable for the mistakes they make. We should be held accountable for the good and the bad.
Holding someone accountable doesn’t necessarily mean “punishment” in the traditional sense. We ought to acknowledge the harm done and attempt to address its causes while looking for a solution. The harmful thoughts, words, or actions are ascribed to an individual, while environmental factors and a degree of randomness can be included in our causal assessment of the harm.
Many scholars and writers critique that which has caused harm and dismiss it entirely. While I admire and support this norm, to not respect or acknowledge good that has occurred because it originated or coincided with something that caused harm isn’t a good practice. Few things exist in absolutes. It is possible for someone to do good and bad things—for us to understand and honor that individuals, technologies, and phenomena bring with them positive and negative consequences. What matters is that we acknowledge our potential to do both. Our heroes can do evil, and we shouldn’t excuse the evil that’s been done by those whose actions we admire, but to include it as part of the narrative. To do anything less is to erase important parts of history.
While storytelling necessitates some factual reductionism, voluntarily sweeping these facts under the rug is harmful for a few reasons. Portraying some people as unconditionally good creates role models with impossibly high standards to live up to, perpetuating impostor syndrome and the model minority myth, while diminishing the narratives of those who were harmed by the acclaimed figure. Erasure of narratives and history also reinforces the “good”/”bad” binary—many people we villify now were ancient heroes, and vice versa. It’s not so easy to spot the bad guys when they do some good too. It often takes the filters of history, narrative, and hindsight bias to clearly see who was in the wrong—and even this is up to dispute.
