“Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.”
— Oscar Wilde, De Profundis
Our dangerous obsession with idols and hero worship
One of the things I find most ironic about our selection of idols is that we’re so imperfect we wouldn’t even be able to recognize a perfect human being if there ever was one. Yet we crave and want guidance much like young children believing in the false mirage of the perfect parent. We search for people to love with crazy devotion. We create idols and icons out of other humans. From ancient religious figures to today’s pop culture idols like Taylor Swift, our tendency to elevate certain individuals to near-divine status is extraordinary. But this isn’t just harmless fan behavior. These modern-day icons wield real political influence, shaping opinions and moving masses with a single tweet or statement.
In these troubled times – with major conflicts claiming lives daily, accelerating climate change, and endemic corruption, critical thinking is more important than ever. Yet it seems to be disturbingly rare. I frequently hear and read people using talking points from all manner of influencers, figureheads, leaders and Governments (because many people believe authority definitively means accuracy) without really understanding the talking point, or being able to point to any credible evidence to back it up.
Heroes are just human, they all fall
Every hero will disappoint you in some way some day. Using my values of feminism, equal rights for all ethnicities, and protecting civilians especially children, as much as possible, here’s just a few telling examples of how flawed idols can be:
- Mahatma Gandhi
- While glorified in the West, Gandhi remains justifiably controversial in India for many reasons. Beyond the allegations of sexual abuse involving his nieces, he had views about women that are charitably called “traditional” (e.g. being against birth control). In 1921, he wrote that the four-fold caste system was a natural order of society. He also wrote racist thoughts when he was in South Africa, which apparently he later changed. When talking to the British filmmaker Attenborough about Gandhi, Nehru (India’s first prime minister and a friend of the late Gandhi) begged him not to turn Gandhi into a saint. “He was much too human” Nehru said
- Frederick Douglass
- Though a fierce champion for black rights and an eloquent thinker, Douglass held deeply prejudiced views against Native Americans. He envisioned White and Black Americans replacing native populations—a stark reminder that fighting against one form of oppression doesn’t guarantee awareness of others.
- Barack Obama
- Despite his charismatic demeanor, how much liberals love him, and historic role as the first Black President, Obama’s international legacy, to those who study reality, is complex. While he achieved significant domestic victories like the Affordable Care Act, his global drone assassination program resulted in thousands of civilian casualties, with more strikes in his first year than Bush carried out during his entire presidency.
- Sam Harris
- This is one that irks me very deeply because of its relation to a large source of today’s suffering. I used to be a big fan of Sam Harris until his take on Israel-Palestine. Whilst hundreds of Palestinian children were being bombed and 2.2 million Gazans deprived of food, water, electricity, he released a podcast to frame Israel’s attacks as a ‘moral’ war against Jihadism (no mention of even the possibility of other factors such as the Occupation of Palestine or the Nakba). He called Ceasefire marches “Pro Hamas” marches. We’ve all seen what type of violence is justified in dealing with Hamas – so by saying so, he gave license for the same kind of brutal violence in Gaza to be inflicted on all the protestors demanding a ceasefire and humanitarian aid. His podcasts have struck me as deranged, racist and dangerous. Several of my friends have wholesale adopted his framework without questioning it. I began to wonder if I was talking to my formerly compassionate friends or to Sam Harris-programmed robots.
A call to critical thinking – at least for the things that matter
Being critically engaged is exhausting, especially in our information-saturated world. It’s tempting to adopt someone else’s complete worldview rather than developing our own. This might be practical for minor matters, but it’s so dangerous for consequential issues.
Here’s my framework. Instead of becoming mouthpieces for political or cultural figures, religious leaders, or celebrity influencers:
- Commit to principles rather than people
- Use others’ content as material for developing your own thinking; to refine your own moral frameworks
- Seek out data and evidence to test how reality aligns with your principles
- Remember that even noble principles, applied without attention to evidence, or applied to a fake version of reality, can lead to harmful outcomes
Let us embrace the reality that some humans can be extraordinarily talented in a few or even many domains, but are still nonetheless human, thus not foolproof. We have to take responsibility for our own thinking. In a world of increasing complexity and consequence, this might be our most important task.
References
Of course THINK FOR YOURSELF when you go through any of these, my interpretation may not be yours.
For Gandhi:
NPR article: Gandhi Is Deeply Revered, But His Attitudes On Race And Sex Are Under Scrutiny
“When British filmmaker Richard Attenborough began researching what would become his 1982 Gandhi film, he asked Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first prime minister, how he should portray his late colleague. Nehru famously replied that Gandhi was “a great man, but he had his weaknesses, his moods and his failings.” He begged Attenborough not to turn Gandhi into a saint. He was “much too human,” Nehru said.”
- On gender views:
- “Gandhi’s Gender and Sex Politics” by Rita M. Gross in “Journal of Religious Ethics” (2016)
- “Women in Indian Freedom Struggle: Path Makers to Liberty” by Dr. Shraddha Ashtekar discusses Gandhi’s patriarchal views
- Direct quotes from Gandhi’s own writings in “Harijan” where he expressed some traditional views about women’s roles
- https://www.npr.org/2019/10/02/766083651/gandhi-is-deeply-revered-but-his-attitudes-on-race-and-sex-are-under-scrutiny
- On caste system:
- “Annihilation of Caste” by B.R. Ambedkar (1936) – contains direct critiques of Gandhi’s position on caste
- “Gandhi on Caste and Hindu-Muslim Unity” in Economic and Political Weekly by Arundhati Roy (2014)
For Frederick Douglass:
- “The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass” (his autobiography) contains his views on Native Americans
- “Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom” by David W. Blight (2018) – Pulitzer Prize-winning biography that discusses his complex views on Native Americans
- Specific speeches where Douglass spoke about westward expansion and Native Americans, such as his “Our Composite Nationality” speech (1869)
For Obama:
- On drone program:
- “The Drone Papers” by The Intercept (2015)
- “Living Under Drones” – Stanford/NYU report (2012)
- Bureau of Investigative Journalism data on civilian casualties from drone strikes between 2009-2017
- “Obama’s Covert Drone War in Numbers: Ten Times More Strikes than Bush” – The Bureau of Investigative Journalism (2017) Just one excerpt: Obama embraced the US drone programme, overseeing more strikes in his first year than Bush carried out during his entire presidency. A total of 563 strikes, largely by drones, targeted Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen during Obama’s two terms, compared to 57 strikes under Bush. Between 384 and 807 civilians were killed in those countries, according to reports logged by the Bureau.
- Obama also began an air campaign targeting Yemen. His first strike was a catastrophe: commanders thought they were targeting al Qaeda but instead hit a tribe with cluster munitions, killing 55 people. Twenty-one were children – 10 of them under five. Twelve were women, five of them pregnant.
For Sam Harris:
- Here’s just a few of the direct quotes from his podcast episodes about Gaza (2023):
- “In short, there are people and cultures who revel in war crimes—and who do not hide these crimes or their celebration of them but, rather, proudly broadcast their savagery for all the world to see.” — He’s talking only about Hamas (“I’m describing concrete behaviors—behaviors that occur on only one side of this conflict.”). I wonder if he’s seen the numerous videos of IDF soldiers celebrating on Instagram and TikTok and the on-the-record interviews of Government officials and influential political leaders declaring their joy and intention about expanding the Israeli state at the expense of others in the region. (Quote source: https://www.samharris.org/blog/the-sin-of-moral-equivalence)
- Examples of the mountains of counter-evidence available:
- CNN report https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkXJwErm8DM ;They’ve removed Israeli Finance Minister Smotrich’s Greater Israel vision remarks from YouTube it seems but a summary can be found here: https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/smotrich-calls-israels-borders-extend-damascus
- “We’ve got feminist organizations like CodePink going all in for Hamas” —> Sam Harris can’t seem to distinguish between caring about Palestinian children and supporting Hamas. To his mind, you’re against or for both. You can’t possibly believe, as I do, that Hamas is terrible, and that no Palestinian toddler should have to pay the price for that, let alone the 18,000+ killed, orphaned, starved and maimed in a year and counting.
- People of color will find these claims interesting: “year after year in the United States, no group has been targeted with more hate, and hate crime, than Jews.” (no source is cited for this, and we may not all agree that the ADL counting anyone waving a Palestinian flag counts as much as being a black person who is shot for ‘looking shifty’). He also says in the same piece: “Apart from being a public figure, and having to deal with disordered people of every description, I have never been concerned about anti-Semitism for even 5 minutes in my life. I now feel that I have been quite naïve…I’ve been utterly ignorant of what has been going on beneath the surface.” Quote source: https://www.samharris.org/blog/the-bright-line-between-good-and-evil
- His podcast https://www.samharris.org/blog/5-myths-about-israel-and-the-war-in-gaza is ironically riddled with statements that have been proven to be false or for which no evidence is available. For example, Sam parrots that Palestinians throw gays off rooftops headfirst. I couldn’t find any evidence for this claim on the Internet. Even if it were true, how does it justify killing children?
