An Encoding Primer

Many of our best people were really bad people.

But I read a lot, so I already knew this, and it’s actually not the worst of
Gandhi’s actions. Interestingly enough, many of our great leaders and icons
were massively flawed individuals. Martin Luther King Jr. was a documented
adulterer and plagiarist (he plagiarized some significant portion of his
major college work), and Abraham Lincoln himself was a clear racist:

Here’s him arguing for black rights in a debate with Douglas Charleston (who
I guess wasn’t as hippie liberal as this):

Then there’s the words of my favorite statesmen of all times–Thomas
Jefferson:

Well, he didn’t use the word men because that was an accepted proxy
for humankind at the time. He used it because it didn’t apply to what were
considered non-men of the time, e.g. blacks, women, and non-christians. In
other words, when he said “men”, he really meant Christian, white men.

The Lesson

So what’s the point?

The point is something I think most readers of this post already know: we
mustn’t look for purity in anything, lest we become disillusioned with the
concept we are trying to keep pure.

Newton was a freakin’ alchemist, for God’s sake. Embrace the positive
wherever you can find it. Everyone is flawed, and the earlier your time the
higher the chances that you hold/held barbaric beliefs. Don’t let the
negative in one’s belief system obscure the progress they gave us.

And above all, don’t hide the flaws of these greats people. MLK was a
phenomenal man, despite his flaws, as was Lincoln. The worst thing we can do
is teach children a version of these people that is not supported by fact.
The pushing of this sort of alternative reality on a child only makes for a
harsh landing once the truth is learned–much like Santa Claus, or God.

Instead we should teach children to expect flaws in people, and to focus on
the positive in them instead. The goal should be to teach management of
tolerances for various degrees of each within people–and within ideologies.

That’s where the difficult work is. ::