I read this on the blog Joyous and Swift:
“Most people’s observations say more about the person doing the observing than what’s being observed.”
It might be easier to click if we replace “observations” with “criticism”:
“Most people’s criticisms say more about the person doing the criticizing than what’s being criticized.”
Or more specifically, “Michael Wolff’s criticisms of the Trump presidency say more about Michael Wolff than they do Donald Trump.”
But let’s go back to the original sentence in this story.
The cover of the New Yorker is a cartoon image of Colin Kaepernick and Michael Bennet kneeling with Martin Luther King Junior kneeling between the two of them. The artist wrote, “what would King be doing if he were around today? I’m sure that if King were around today, he’d be disappointed at the slow pace of progress: two steps forward, 20 steps back.”
This is something I’m going to be more careful with. There’s a big difference between learning from history and taking the lessons from MLK’s wisdom, (which is biblical wisdom) and applying it to today. That’s great. But to take a historical figure and superimpose your own opinion ON TO HIM, as if you’re sure he’d agree with you, that seems inappropriate.
And I’ve made this mistake before! I’ve said stuff like, “Thomas Jefferson would think this is a terrible bill.” That’s a lazy way of saying, “Thomas Jefferson wrote a lot about the importance of limited government. I agree with his eloquent assessment. This bill grows government. Therefore I’m against it”
Big difference.
IT’s more than lazy. It’s manipulative. It’s an emotional ploy. One way to make an argument is called “Appeal to Authority”. So instead of making an argument based on the merits, you bring in an authority, as if that is sufficient to give your argument enough weight to make it true.
There’s a time or place for this, but it’s not a complete argument in and of itself. “Well, Donald Trump says…My mom says…This professor says…” It can bolster an argument, but it isn’t truth just because someone of authority said it.”
Worse is when you take someone who is DEAD, and who can’t speak to the issue, and you take superimpose your opinion on them. “Kneeling during anthems is great!” (and to convince other people to join you in your opinion) “MLK would support kneeling during NFL protests, ya know!”
But…you don’t know that. And it’s manipulative because if I say, “You don’t know that” then I’m now against MLK and civil rights.
Be on the lookout for the, “This dead person would _____” argument.
This is especially dangerous because people don’t know history. This means propagandists can create mythical characters. He’s not he Reverand Martin Luther King Jr anymore. He’s whatever we want him to be Or, more likely, whatever I want him to be so he agrees with me.
If people don’t know history, we just go with it. Before long, every historical figure will be framed as a social justice activist. OR a Nazi. Whichever suits the speaker’s purpose.
Here’s one example of how not knowing history leads to people taking historical figures and turning them into whatever they want.
What’s the greatest love story fo all time? If this was The Family Feud, the number 1 answer would be Romeo and Juliet. That’s only because almost no one has ever read it.
We have an IDEA of what Romeo and Juliet is about. The IDEA is that two young people love each other. That’s it. That is most people’s knowledge of Romeo and Juliet. Our culture, and Hallmark, has turned Romeo and Juliet into the example of true love, and no one questions how absurd that is because very few people have read it.
It’s a tragedy about a dirtbag guy who really wants to have sex with this one girl but gets shot down, so he sneaks into a party and finds another girl, [who is 13, the same age as Shakespeare’s daughter when he wrote this, hence it being a WARNING to her].
He can’t marry her because she’s from the enemy family, but fueled by lust, within a few hours he kills he cousin and they marry in secret. He then splits out of town without her. To get him back, she fakes her own death. He comes back, thinks she’s dead, kills himself. She wakes up, sees he’s dead and then kills herself for real.
The entire play takes place over 3 days. They got married in like 8 hours after knowing each other.
This isn’t a love story. It’s a warning about the danger of infatuation and lust.
I share this, not to ruin upcoming valentines day celebrations, but as an example of how if we don’t know history, how easily people and past events can be manipulated into whatever someone wants them to be.
Let’s teach our kids as much history as possible, so they can’t be manipulated.