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The Legend of Abe.
hermitwin
Veteran
Why do create heroes out of ordinary people?
0
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The world is a very beautiful place, but yet, somewhere, at any time at all, there is something going 'wrong'...
doesn't make the world any less beautiful as a whole.
I think this is an accurate assessment. Humans throughout history have deified leaders. "history" cannot be an unchanging thing, it is always changing and when new facts and perspectives arise they must be analyzed.
Then, after a time, I decided to go back and watch it. I stopped after the first 10 minutes or so. Not interested.
I would give this presentation much more credence IF the groups and individuals speaking out against Lincoln (his policies and presidency) were more... shall we say.... 'diverse' -- and not members or leaders of anti-civil rights groups, anti-government groups, Tea-baggers and other confederate flag- waving nitwits.
Their narrow-minded agenda negates their credentials as impartial critics of Lincoln. They are merely spinning things their way. Which is always what people do on any side of any issue.... spin it, and then try to convince the majority that their spin is the 'truth'.
And as for the few people of color jumping on the anti-Lincoln bandwagon in this video, it doesn't seem that they are complaining much about what he did or accomplished, (although some blamed Lincoln himself for 'starting the civil war'), but rather was he REALLY for equality, or merely a political opportunist?
Who cares at this point, is what I say- the end results are the end results. Slavery ended, and our constitution was made/understood to uphold that change.
The South (or at least some people in the South) just can't accept who 'won' and who 'lost'... this is another example of their mindset. JMO
I also never learned in the history books the specifics about the complexity of slavery, like it hurting free white laborers(which got Lincoln into the issue in the first place) and there being a separation in thought between slavery and racial equality(which today seems absurd but makes perfect sense looking back considering it took nearly 100 more years for it to come). It's quite interesting.
There was also the one section where they read the words Lincoln said in a political debate, which to our ears today sound quite racist, but even the one guy says look at it through the context of the culture and debate back then and chalked the words up to political survival.
any time we look at history, we need to look at it through the lens of the time and culture of the time, we cannot do so by looking through our own lens.
I will finish this up later today.
We build maverick rabbi carpenters into offspring of God, Prophets into unmentionable perfections, wayward princes into enlightened god teachers and bespectacled journalists into aliens from planet Krypton. What strange creatures we are.
I like my Buddhas to be human. Speaking as a wer-lobster I can aspire to be more human.
No, the UK reserves its most toe-curling sycophancy for the royal family. And what a bunch of ordinary people they are.
We do elevate ordinary people into something more than human. Jung would say we look for examples of archetypes of the savior and noble warrior and so forth, and pound square pegs into the round holes of our collective psyche as needed.
The Royal Family as a whole? Eh, not so much.
But Diana.... come on... it's not hard to see. She is the Cinderella, the Snow White, and every other Disney style "princess" who came up from the lower levels of society because she won the heart of a Prince.
Diana's family may have had royal titles bestowed on relatives past, but in real life, she was "just a school teacher"; shy and reserved, attractive, but not exactly 'stunning'.
But she lived the fairy tale story nearly every little girl in England, America and most of Europe grew up on.
I think she was very much resented by the Queen Mother... Diana was never quite 'good enough' and didn't have quite enough of the Blue Blood in her to make the QM really happy. But Q-Mother pursed her lips and muddled through!
Diana was miserable for most of her time as a Royal. The only joys she truly had were her two sons. She had broken away from the Royals and was just beginning to come into her own as an independent woman.... when it all ended.
Again, (classic) tragedy befalls the (classic) heroine.
There have been a total of approximately 545,000,000 Americans throughout our history. And 44 presidents. Therefore, to say any president is an ordinary man is folly.
So I would say the thread topic needs to be refined.
Even if you just want to use the term "hero"...again, what exactly is that definition? And is it a narrow definition that all people can even agree on?
Why are you assuming *I* swallowed the myth?
I said I found the reverence for Diana fascinating. Not that I found Diana fascinating.
You implied through your post you couldn't 'get' why people adored her, and then mourned her as if they knew her personally.
I was explaining to you what *I* thought some of the reasons would be. She representing something to them.... just like certain celebrities 'represent' something to people through the roles they choose, and the way they carry themselves through life.
Why would people around the world shed tears - yes, real tears - when the president is assassinated, or when thousands of 'strangers' were killed in the 9-11 attack? The day that the Dalai Lama dies, no matter by murder, accident, or old age... many people around the world will shed some tears. Yet they don't 'know' him personally.... it's what he represents to them that matters.
I don't know about you, but sometimes, when I see a news report about the loss of life and devastation I often cry - for a tragedy that touched no one I know.
Why do you seem so...... annoyed by it all?
Would you rather humans felt no connection to others?
The death of any person is sad of course, but what interests me is why people identify with certain public figures to the extent that they treat their death like the death of a loved one. The near hysteria that followed Diana's death went far beyond empathy. That in itself gives pause for thought.
The last politician to achieve mythic status was Guido Fawkes, the renowned anti parliamentarian and crypto terrorist. A man dedicated to profound change of the political criminal class. Mind you I believe he wanted to promote the 'Divine Right' of Kings and Dalai Lamas to misrule.
Maybe for some who want to think people like Washington or Jefferson or Lincoln or FDR were just "ordinary" men, it's just jealousy. They live their ordinary lives doing their ordinary jobs and accomplish little of lasting value beyond their own and their family's existence.