Thursday, November 7, 2013

LE: The Power of Legacy, Legend, and Idealism

We've discussed at length in class about the 'legend' of Abraham Lincoln.  Many of the founding fathers also fall into this category, and are even called 'demi-gods' by some historians.  The legacy that a person leaves can often create the legend that future generations will come to know, and from legend, rises idealism.  When looking at the 'legend' of any person, the muddiness of their true human life is swept under the rug, and idealism fits the person who wishes to 'model after,' said person.

Perhaps, this is why many historians, scholars, and people often go through great lengths to debunk legends, not out of malice for that person, but out of fear, that the truths they stood for, the ideas that they championed, would become distorted or superimposed on others, solely due to the nostalgic and favorable weathering of time.

Why does this happen so often?  Historical figures never cease to be idealized, enshrined, and immortalized.  It seems to me, that the human mind has a remarkable capacity to believe that a given person was or is or will be great, in every way possible.  This capacity is coupled with a second remarkable capacity- the ability to become surprised every time we discover that every human life is inherently messy, and every decision, person, and idea, is always more complex than it seems.

2 comments:

  1. The deifying of historical figures is rampant, as you've made clear, and is quite mysterious phenomenon! If I were to venture a hypothesis regarding the potential cause of this, I might be inclined to say that it potentially stems from the ease with which people can distort the views of historical figures. Lincoln, for instance, is long dead. Everyone with whom Lincoln ever interacted is also long dead. Consequently, it is very easy for any Tom, Dick, or Harry to misrepresent Lincoln to fit his own ideology. If we operate under the assumption that Lincoln (or George Washington, or even someone as recent as Martin Luther King Jr. or Albert Einstein) was a sort of god, then no position he supported could possibly be wrong. So, it behooves people to have the historical figure on their side of the argument. Lincoln has been deified, it seems to me, so that when people claim ownership of his positions, they are considered to hold positions that are infallible. This, of course, is fallacious in two ways: often times, the views people espouse as Lincoln's were not actually his (i.e. modern Republicans claiming that, as a Republican, Lincoln had some sort of affiliation with the current ideologies of the party), and additionally, the fact that Lincoln held a particular view has no bearing on its truth. If my potential explanation is correct, it is imperative that we stop deifying historical figures. This entire course is quite eye-opening in that it has forced us to stop deifying Lincoln, which I think is, of course, positive.

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  2. I'm much gratified if this has indeed been an effect of the course.

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