There appears to be a trend towards removing honours from anyone with a “murky” past. I am gladdened by the call for greater honesty and transparency. The trouble is, if we start down that path of placing everyone in the “good” or “bad” camp, every single one of us, living and dead, would fall in the “bad” camp. There would be no statues left. Even saints have their down sides.
How much is there to deplore in all our ethical choices? Our disrespect towards people and our planet? If I were (hypothetically) to win an award for something, I sincerely hope that people would point out that I have been extraordinarily lazy in my choices, indirectly supporting child labour, unethical work conditions and animal / environmental cruelty. And that’s all before I even leave the supermarket.
I hope people would denounce those choices, because that would mean that we can see a better way. I hope they would go further and call me out on every bias and inhumanity of which I am capable. I also hope that none of this would change the fact that, in this hypothetical scenario, I also, apparently, did something that made a positive difference.
Anything that I produce will be a very mixed bag, filled with good intentions, unconscious bias, selflessness and selfishness. The same applies to us all. I do not think we will learn much by pretending otherwise, or by imagining that something that is purely good can and does exist. How much more can we learn if we read books we love, looking clearly and critically at all the complex mix of darkness and light they contain? Loving them all the same.
Let us not strip the honours from our heroes. Let us learn from their prejudices and errors, and also from their love and courage. Let us sing with gladness for the light and truth that has, despite the mud, fought its way through to our sight. Because, if even our heroes are fallen, then, conversely, even our fallen can rise.