>It turns out it’s all true. The cars are impressive and their flaws get covered up. Musk is a lying ignorant grifter and he has inspired innovation in the electric car industry. Understanding that these seemingly contradictory things can be true simultaneously is important, because societies who cannot hold these two ideas at the same time may end up following scam artists and false prophets off the cliff and into the abyss.

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Societal Donatism, Bastian Rieck https://bastian.rieck.me/blog/posts/2021/donatism/

Donatists were a group of Christians in the fourth century. Their core tenet was that priests need to be ‘faultless’ in order for their prayers and for their sacraments to be valid.

Societal Donatism & Its Implications

I believe that some recent trends can be seen as a form of Societal Donatism. By this, I refer to the unspoken requirement that any creator in our society needs to be (almost) faultless or (almost) morally impeccable in order for their work to be allowed to persist in the public sphere. If, retroactively, it transpires that a person committed a crime or behaved in an untoward manner, their work is immediately called into question. Are we still allowed to enjoy their music, their films, their lecture materials? Should their awards—if any—be revoked?