Investing in Your Society
In the comment thread to my recent piece on statues, with regard to racism and Black Live Matter protests, Anthrotheist made this comment worthy of discussion:
I can't help but feel like a lot of this conversation rests greatly on the degree to which people associate statues and monuments with a national identity, and subsequently to what degree they invest their own sense of self in that national identity. Reasonably speaking, societies should not revere individual people; any given person is complex, messy, and often apparently contradictory. People revering other people makes sense for the same reason that society revering any person does not (the person doing the revering is just as complex, messy, etc.). Often times, events are far simpler than any person, and having monuments commemorating the sites of monumental events makes perfect sense to me for society.
So my thoughts:
1. Minimize the degree to which you invest your sense of self in any particular society. The less you feel that your society is a part of you, the less you will care about that society having iconic heroes (or tearing them down as villains a generation later).
2. Minimize the degree to which society reveres individuals, even the significant ones. For example, many of America's founders were also slave owners and they conspicuously avoided addressing slavery in the creation of their new nation. Commemorate where the Declaration of Independence was drafted and signed, likewise for the constitution, etc. Those were great events pertaining to America and its identity.
3. Let people revere what they want within their own private spaces. If someone wants to fill their home with confederate symbols and images of its leaders, that is their prerogative; it it makes you uncomfortable, leave, and don't hesitate to criticize the person's choice of heroes as you do. The fact that a person can remove themselves from the presence of those images is what makes this acceptable where putting it on a pedestal literally in the center of town is not.
Stay in touch! Like A Tippling Philosopher on Facebook:
A Tippling Philosopher
You can also buy me a cuppa. Or buy some of my awesome ATP merchandise! Please... It justifies me continuing to do this!