Regardless, it's clear that Terry is both a tremendously talented and deeply troubled person. But, his personal troubles have nothing to do with the technical merits of what he created - it's impressive, to say the least. These accomplishments, however, don't in any way excuse his egregious behavior. He's a complicated figure.
A bit of a stretch, but your comment is on par with saying: Stephen Hawking was a tremendously smart person... his accomplishments, however, don't in anyway excuse his lack of physical productivity.
The point I am trying to illustrate is that the behavior most people, perhaps rightfully so, find egregious, is the best effort possible for people with schizophrenia. Having expectation for any kind of excuse, beyond the neurological condition, I believe is being a little short with compassion.
Im sure he did the best he could. Mental illness is a terrible thing. as a society, we do a terrible job in dealing with it. But, we can't just pretend like racist comments werent made. They were. They are part of his legacy.
TempleOs is part of his legacy too. It's his project - no one else's. It will always be tied to him. To pretend like he didn't behave the way that he did would be the same as pretending he didn't suffer from his illness. It's an impressive legacy. It's a tragic one. It's an appalling one. But, it's who he is. Whitewashing his mental problems, would just perpetuate the problems of how we handle such an illness.
I think that is the finest summation I've read in any thread about Terry, thank you
Terry's behavior is an unfortunate condition of his mental illness. It is not kind or even considerate to call someone appalling for their mental illness, it is rather, exactly the kind of behavior I would consider appalling from people who are in good headspace.
It is true that you had to wear nappies but also mind-numbingly stupid to consider it as your legacy or insist that "it is appalling and it is true".
Sure, he more obviously acted in ways that seemed an 'involuntary' result of his condition, but quite frankly much of the horrible shit I see people do or hear people say can be considered 'mental health issues' to various degrees. It's a murky area.
Terry's condition makes it both easier to judge him and excuse his behavior, depending on your perspective. I think getting away from those two extremes is probably the better way to go: be able to openly consider a person's behavior appalling and find understanding this shouldn't be considered an 'appalling person' as a result.
To be clear, I'm not at all arguing that we should have less sympathy or make less room for people like Terry, rather the opposite, and acknowledging that their behavior can be appalling can, in the right context, be a good thing for both them and others.
Perhaps this is not the right context for that argument, but that was what I was trying to say.
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
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.
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.
Every time TempleOS comes up, someone chimes in with a remark like this. Can't we just focus on the technical aspects?