Comment by rTX5CMRXIfFG | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rTX5CMRXIfFG | Hacker News Reader

> For some readers today, this agglomeration of personal failings — after such knowledge, what forgiveness? — carries over to a blanket rejection of Eliot’s creative work. This would be a mistake. Art and morality belong to separate spheres. Flawed, often seriously flawed people create immortal works.

I used to think this way too, but there are popular people in my life whom I revile despite the valuable deeds they are known for, because that person happens to specifically offend my own personal traumas. So who am I to say that it is wrong for people to reject other people’s work just because they are flawed? What do I know if their flaws affect people in a deeply personal level? Do I know what it is like to be a victim of such circumstances?

One should also take with a critical mind such narratives that elevate an imperfect talented person into a hero. It’s not necessary for one to cause hurt upon others in order to produce something good.

It's possible to be nuanced when evaluating someone's deeds.

> Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either—but right through every human heart—and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained. And even in the best of all hearts, there remains … an unuprooted small corner of evil.

- Solzhenitsyn

It just seems to me to be the pinnacle of narcissism that so many people apply judgement according to modern value systems to historical figures.

There isn't a single one of us who couldn't be judged harshly in the context of a future values system decades from now, but the most judgmental among us assume that we are the first generation to be enlightened enough to harshly judge all who came before. It's a narcissistic, juvenile attitude, once laughed at as a teenage right-of-passage practiced by naive, Che Guevara worshipping cloaked in fashionable self-righteousness. Now it's morphed into a quasi-religion, complete with performative acts of piety designed to boost in-group status amongst the adherents.

Perhaps this sort of immaturity produces the sort of crisis that is it’s own cure

Er, the idea of moral objectivism isn’t reserved to teenagers and has long been a serious school of thought on its own. For someone who calls others judgmental and narcissistic, you’re pretty judgmental yourself especially to views of morality that don’t align with your own.

I think you’re running off the assumption that there’s no objective basis for morality and the sense for it simply changes over time, but don’t you think that the changes over time reflect progress in ethical wisdom in the same way that science progresses in terms of knowledge over time? For example, is believing in the equal rights of women, African-American, and LGBT people narcissistic (we used to think of them as less, many still do) or is it just the right thing to do and the old value system was objectively wrong to oppress them? The stupid things you did as a child—were they stupid only because you’re older now, or were they categorically stupid? Was burning witches actually OK? How about the way that justice was administered in terms of the Old Testament or the Quran, was that also OK? I struggle to see where you can insert the narcissistic aspect here.

Maybe an unpopular opinion but I think it’s a mistake to elevate anybody to hero. We can praise a work or a deed but we really have no visibility into someone’s character usually.

And anyway the narrative of the great man is bunk meant to sell something or convince you of something or elect somebody.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com