Don’t forget he was also an unapologetic advocate of spousal abuse,
There isn't a single person in history that can meet this standard of 'goodness'. Not you, nor I, nor anyone. So yeah, let's acknowledge people for all that they are, good and bad, but let's not reduce people to a two dimensional caricature of themselves based purely on what is now considered unacceptable.
"Of this I am quite sure, that if we open a quarrel between the past and the present, we shall find that we have lost the future" -- Winston Churchill
Well, to be fair, people where aghast at his position towards women when he took it as a position. Not just in modern times.
Watch some of his interviews -- he seems to think he is coming off as manly and possessive, but the female journalists interviewing him usually come off as insulted, scared, and overall disrespectful towards his misogynist attitudes. Barbara Walters saw right through his image, which is why that interview was one of the ones to go so lopsided.
He was judged plenty when he was 'modern', too. Since the judgement came about when he was young, I don't think it's too great a leap to discuss now around his death.
This isn't a case where his behavior was normalized by his time of existence : he was a misogynist during the hay-day of the first wave of Womens' Rights, he was well known to be one, and his antics and interviews were broadcast around the world.
He decided to go 'against the grain' during one of the most important civil rights movements in the United States so that he could keep his macho demeanor. His comments in no way encapsulated a standard male response, he was deliberately pushing the buttons of people to strengthen and embolden his image as a playboy misogynist.
RIP Sean, I loved you as an actor. You were amazing in a lot of ways, and not-so-amazing in some others, but that is to be human.
'To ignore either righteous or the condemning would be to ignore history and humanity itself.'
Also interesting to use a quote from a man responsible for starving millions of innocents in a debate about morality, but that's neither here nor there.
Not people? I'd hate to be referred to as 'an innocent'.
---
To address the main point, history is full of this. I mean, try quoting Mother Theresa and see what people will say then.
We _could_ try to cleanse history of all memorable quotes written or spoken by people who have don't have a clean track record in morality (whatever that actually is at a certain point in time) but I don't think we'd be left with all too much to learn from.
To go further into my own thought process, I'm much more in line with non-dual tantric attitudes to this than I am with what we commonly call morals these days.
>To address the main point, history is full of this.
I agree, but I do feel it is relevant to acknowledge the portions of someone's legacy that aren't clean. The quote in isolation is a fair and fine one, I suppose. I would show more restraint in bringing up the cursory comment on Churchill if the context of the thread was something else entirely.
For sure. I think this gets complicated, especially in the middle of heated discussions or on the internet, when this stuff is brought up ad-hominem. Or close enough. It's why I don't want to bring anger into this discussion and create another pro/anti divide, because we're all going to see it different ways.
I challenge anyone to come up with a person who was a squeaky clean legacy. I contend that it is impossible, because the goalposts for 'cleanliness' change as the times do.
If a world famous celebrity uses the megaphone of a televised interview to double down on and expand on views that it’s ok to slap women, that is a huge, dramatic event. That’s not just some small “we all make mistakes” transgression to be forgiven while we remember that person at his best. It is a huge, intentional literal broadcast of a very harmful belief, that we should not minimize or ignore or even set aside to remember other things about them, due to its level of severity and the sustained commitment to it over years that he displayed.
I think it’s very specious and very disingenuous to try to bring in any type of “let he who is sinless cast the first stone” or “let’s remember the good with the bad because he is only human” type of defense. That is just not acceptable in a case like this.
It took Connery to die for you to bring this topic up. I would expect you cared about this before the news, and not just in light of it.
Most people who display this type of direct misogyny don’t happen to also be world-famous movie stars using a national television broadcast to amplify the message.
So obviously because of the harm it propagates and the precedent it sets, Connery’s behavior should be railed against with much more effort than transgressions with far less widespread impact - but of course regular people committing the same transgression absolutely deserve for their behavior to be used to highlight moral reprehensibility (assuming they refuse to apologize or retract those views like Connery).
Science says plant feel & can hear esp. whilst being eaten by insect or are cut.
https://science.howstuffworks.com/life/botany/plants-feel-pa...
It's also proven that plants communicate with one another, and can share nutrients with one another, even warn nearby plants to get ready for attacks.
https://www.livescience.com/1909-plants-communicate-warn-dan...
A book called The Hidden Life of Trees is not an obvious bestseller but it’s easy to see the popular appeal of German forester Peter Wohlleben’s claims – they are so anthropomorphic. Certainly, a walk in the park feels different when you imagine the network of roots crackling with sappy chat beneath your feet. We don’t know the half of what’s going on underground and beneath the bark, he says: “We have been looking at nature for the last 100 years like [it is] a machine.”
"The man who thinks trees talk to each other"
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/sep/12/peter-wo...
Building off othe dendritic consciousness structures, my own suspicion isn't that trees have brains, but that trees are components of a larger brain-analogue --- forests or ecosystems.
Please don't mistake this as some apology for slavery, wife beating, antisemitism or whatever. It isn't; people did reprehensible things in the past. Just realize that it's extremely unlikely that our current norms are the objectively correct ones that will be forever unchanged.
Firstly, and beside the point, the term itself is wonderfully (though I suspect accidentally) ambiguous and self-defeating, as one can read it as “the culture of a cancelling” (as intended) or “this will cancel culure” (a possible side-effect).
Anyway... yes, cancel culture... I criticised it here once previously and amongst the various responses, most contrarian, was one that stuck with me: paraphrasing, it read “you’ve always told us to vote with our feet and now you’re complaining about cancel culture?”
Clearly this responder considered “cancel culture” to be the latest term for “boycot”, but I don’t think that’s accurate. I cannot (yet?) justify even to myself what utterly subtle distinction must exist between the two, but until I do and probably even thereafter I will accept that they do have a point.
That said, that doesn't mean it's always moral. For example, I don't feel comfortable saying at my place of work (software engineer) that women are biologically different than men and this probably has a large impact on why the field isn't 50/50 men/women.
I think this is a perfectly reasonable position, yet there's no way I could say this at work. I'd lose my job, just like James Damore.
So, I don't think that what is being done is wrong in the political sense, but I do think unfair cancellations are unethical. I think it's fine to "cancel" people/businesses/organizations that cause or allow unfair cancellations to take place. I already quietly decline to do business with and lobby against companies that adopt "woke" postures.
I'm part of a silent majority that votes with their wallet, I suppose.
I think the point that was trying to be made was that, this is something people should know about before they decided to unreservedly push this man as a saviour or as a hero, and that giving this knowledge to people allows them to decide how they feel about it, whether they are comfortable with it, and ultimately, be aware of it.
'Cancelling' public artists and figures is always about three things:
1) Reducing the effect, or putting into context, their platform. In other words: allowing people to be aware about the ideas creators hold -- there's almost always some kind of bleed-over -- and if that person tends to go on a soapbox, allowing people to be able to discern whether they want to listen based on this new fact that could be extremely relevant. For example, it would change your mind whether someone was talking about the nature of consent, based on whether they were known for being abusive and acting non-consensually with other people, no? That seems like a hugely important fact to know.
2) Allowing us to be aware and put into context the people that we, as a society, hold up -- people who for all intents and purposes can 'do no wrong'. And deciding whether or not we still want to consume those works, and hold them up on that pedestal, with that information.
3) If they are still alive, ensuring that they remain accountable for actions or beliefs that have harmed or will harm people. Ensuring people who are vulnerable and likely to interact with them, can be aware and avoid being harmed. This gives the public figure a choice: They can either push back against it and dig their heels in deeper, or they can take responsibility, grow as a person, and maybe even cast off or recant whatever made them act in such a way or believe such things. It allows them to introspect into what they've done, and gives them the opportunity to decide to become a better person. A wonderful example of this is Dan Harmon, who acted inappropriately towards staff under him, and did not realise it at the time because of his emotional state. He introspected to figure out why that happened, apologised in full, and has presumably taken steps and made himself more aware so he will not repeat those actions. In addition, staff around him can be more aware, and can more openly and safely broach the issue with him now if he does relapse, because of how he responded. What better can we ask for?!
It's not about destroying people, or encouraging people to see them as some monster, it's fundamentally about allowing people to choose how they want to interact with that person -- even in a parasocial way. It's about allowing choice, and allowing people to act with discretion, more than anything else.
Arguably, this encourages people to see them less as a two dimensional caricature. My reaction to this information was that this person was obviously very complex, and had both good ideas and bad ideas.
Interestingly enough, I always percieve people (like you) who so vehemently argue against spreading information like this, and allowing people to choose how they view public figures and interact with content that they have produced, as arguing this from fear. From the fear that acts that you have done will catch up with you. This might not be true, but it does make me wonder.
I agree to an extent, but I think it is too easy to take a nasty turn in this age of information overload. It's very easy to cherry pick salacious details and run with them, knowing that people will take it at face value.
I'm absolutely not accusing anyone here of doing that, and in part I'm not responding to the parent in as much as I'm also venting my exasperation about how we talk about people on the internet these days.
Even if Connery did publicly retract or apologise, for example, how many people would try to seek that out if all they saw was the original video in isolation? Once a criminal, always a criminal? Or can we imagine that people may change even without making a public song and dance about it?
These are the questions I ask myself.
See: Dan Harmon's apology which so easily disproves this :) In the case of Connery, it would have been easy for him to push his PR people to publicly denounce the video, do a few interviews, and donate some token sum of a couple of thousand to the relevant charities. I remember (But unfortunately can't cite) some other people who have then gone on to be advocates for these causes as a form of penance. As a celebrity, pretty much anything like this is newsworthy, if not, he doesn't have good PR people and should fire them and hire new ones, because they aren't effective enough for his purposes :P
> Or can we imagine that people may change even without making a public song and dance about it?
I mean, he stated it publicly in the first place, so obviously he thought at the time that that public statement on that was worth his salt. Assuming he had reformed and then gone on to improve his perspectives, it seems unlikely that from then on he would be unaware of the harm that that video, still in perpetuity, could cause and want to undo that to some extent.
Reforming isn't possible on a personal level, because we (and I'm sorry for this so heavily memed statement) live in a community. On a fundamental level our public statements take on a life of their own, and because we made them, we should have responsibility for them. From then on, that statement can do untold harm or benefit. Such is the way of living in a community, where your actions will affect other people. Part of reforming yourself is attempting to undo the damage that you have caused in the past. And so part of that reformation would inherently have to be, retracting or attempting to undo the damage caused by those public statements.
A different way to put this would be: Is it possible to reform yourself and not try to undo the damage of your past actions in some way? Are you truly reformed if you wave your hand and do not take responsibility for them?
It's interesting that you went to that place when the TL;DR of my post is:
Can you really become a better person if you haven't attempted to undo harm you caused? If you have changed, part of that change is acknowledging that you harmed people, and how those actions were harmful. You can't acknowledge that you have harmed people, and then handwave that harm by ignoring it, and still say you are a changed person.
It's inherent to self-improvement that you would want to undo the harm that you have caused, if you understand it.
And if you don't, then can you be said to have improved?
I don't know who you're arguing with, but it's not with me or what I wrote.
But let's address it: let's say that someone raped another person. The rapist serves a prison sentence for his crime and he comes out of prison as a rehabilitated man. Are you saying he has to go to his victim to specifically make amends to them? And if he doesn't, he's still a rapist? That, in my opinion, is one of the most toxic parts of the 12 step process in the US, where you make your victims responsible for your penance by requiring them to accept your apology, which by its very nature involves bringing up that trauma _again_.
And what even does it mean to 'undo harm'? What's done is done, for better or worse.
Aha, so this:
> Such is the way of living in a community, where your actions will affect other people. Part of reforming yourself is attempting to undo the damage that you have caused in the past. And so part of that reformation would inherently have to be, retracting or attempting to undo the damage caused by those public statements.
> A different way to put this would be: Is it possible to reform yourself and not try to undo the damage of your past actions in some way? Are you truly reformed if you wave your hand and do not take responsibility for them?
is not at all similar to this:
> Can you really become a better person if you haven't attempted to undo harm you caused? If you have changed, part of that change is acknowledging that you harmed people, and how those actions were harmful. You can't acknowledge that you have harmed people, and then handwave that harm by ignoring it, and still say you are a changed person.
> It's inherent to self-improvement that you would want to undo the harm that you have caused, if you understand it.
> And if you don't, then can you be said to have improved?
Because to me they are relatively close retellings of the other.
I don't feel that you're responding to me in good faith. More to that, I still feel like you're responding to your imagined version of my response, and not the actual one. It feels to me like you're creating an argument when I was merely disagreeing and presenting my reason why. I don't really understand how the tone of this chat became so aggressive through you.
Our peers here on HN can decide that, one way or another.
My sentiments to you exactly. You hyperfocused on the term "reformation" when it was very clear from the context and the previous 5 - 6 paragraphs I had written on the subject, that it was intended as a substitute for "self improvement", "self betterment", "taking accountability for one's actions". You decided to somehow interpret it as an authoritarian argument, and deliberately twisted my argument into something that you could then argue against. It was utterly fascinating and simultaneously irritating to witness how deft you were at doing it, hence the sarcasm.
The argument was literally just about how everything you do in public happens to affect the people it reaches. And people should be accountable for the effects of their actions in that public (or private) space.
If someone did that, they deserve to have those words brought up and used to identify their poor character, regardless of whether they “served their time.”
Just as in Connery’s behavior - he doubled down on saying (extremely publicly) that he was ok with women being slapped and gave some extremely contrived misogynistic reasoning about what they could do to deserve it. Connery didn’t just say that and then later apologize or clear the record. He said it once, then years later said it again in response to a direct interview question about that exact topic, and doubled down on not changing his mind, and then never in the rest of his life did he explicitly apologize or retract it.
That is such a forceful application of misogyny that it goes beyond an unfortunate character flaw we should overlook and instead is borderline a defining characteristic of his legacy.
> poor character, regardless of whether they “served their time.”
This is where I tune out, because that is a whole damn can of worms you've opened up.
I respect that you think Sean Connery's a cunt and shouldn't be celebrated because he's said some things that go against what you stand for, but beyond that we're done here.
Agree to disagree?
The thing is, people already know that. Bringing those things up is really just being a downer.. peeing in the punchbowl.
Honest mistakes, sure. Character flaws, ok. Blatant endorsement of spousal abuse on a major news program with no retraction or apology ever? Get real.
Rarely, if ever, is it so clear cut. And if anything, it's quite a juvenile (and pervasively Western) value system.
I find it particularly exhausting and the world is as it is because there isn't enough compassion going around to even consider how we might approach our problems with kinder, less vengeful, hearts.
And the opposite edge of the same sword are stories of Keanu being such an amazing human being etc. All the while no one knows or seems to even care who they truly are. We demonize and idolize for a sense of moral righteousness and to strengthen our world view. It's far from compassion, has little to do with them, and it's juvenile.
Bad behavior is not an argument against good behavior. Bad character is not an argument against good character. They're not mutually exclusive, and it's a false dichotomy.
Let the police arrest the criminals. But speech should be free. We've all said dumb sh_t. We've all believed dumb sh_t. We've all done dumb sh_t.
To paraphrase George Carlin, we're all born guilty.
First, I think Connery was pretty clearly saying that slapping a woman isn't always abuse, not saying that it is abuse and abuse is okay. Besides being literally false if narrowly interpreted, this violates the HN guideline, "Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize."
Second, because it's an attempt to side-load a hot-button topic into a non-political thread, and HN frowns on that. (Note that the hot-button topic is "Were Connery's comments acceptable", which was contentious at the time he made them and still is today; it is not, as OP's phrasing might suggest, "Is spousal abuse acceptable" which almost no one agrees with)
Third, discussion of this Connery interview has been ubiquitous online today (it has been mentioned in every article, Reddit thread, FB post, etc about Sean Connery I have seen today) and I suspect lot of people come to HN to get away with that.
Fourth, there is indeed a long, long tradition of people who dislike a celebrity using the occasion of their death to launch one last attack on them, and other people who liked the celebrity indignantly complaining that that's a bad thing to do.
There seems to be some unwritten rule that you're only allowed to say good things about people when they die. And I think that rule needs to end. Let's be honest and recognize that people are complex even when they die.
Spousal abuse is wrong and people who think it's OK should be called out for that.
It seems to always happen in forums, as here, where some people complain that it's somehow 'too soon' to mention something negative, but it doesn't happen in obituaries, which commonly don't just stick to superficial 'good' aspects of someone's life or career.
In the case of Connery, for example, all of the following, and more, refer to his statements on slapping/abuse:
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/oct/31/sir-sean-conner...
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/sean-connery-dead-james-b...
https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/featu...
https://www.latimes.com/obituaries/story/2020-10-31/sean-con...
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/davidmack/sean-connery-...