| This entire idea is backwards as hell. There aren't singular people behind progress. If Newton had never been born we would still have Calculus, and in fact we don't teach Newton's calculus in schools. Einstein was part of a team, and his team was only slightly ahead of another team. Statues and shit paint a picture of a lie: That great people drive the world. Human progress happens because other areas progress, the new ideas are inevitable, the person who does them has no real bearing on whether they happen or not. History is not driven by "great men" but by society working together. The entire "great man of history" thing is actually a giant pile of racist garbage, used to promote unjust systems and reinforce tribalisms, which is the very thing you're talking about it being good for. Also, Churchill (who I believe you brought up earlier) was a piece of dog shit who starved millions of people in India out of spite. Very few people have done as much actual evil as Churchill did, and his statues and images should be shit on. The fact that you aren't aware of those things is entirely down to "great man of history" nonsense being the place where you get your ideas. It's bad, it's backwards, and it's really not defensible. |
Where did I say that either the great men of history model, or national pride, were good things? My whole point that I explicitly laid out was that attacking symbols that people think are good is not good praxis. That doesn't mean that perpetuating myths is good, but if you want to win people over to your side, taking a shit on thinga they think are good is not the way to do it. It just makes you feel good in your righteous indignation, which is basically the image a lot of moderates have of progressivism in general.