Pedestals Not Required - Human Nature Past and Present, Heroes and Flaws.

If you can, please spare a few minutes to watch
"Ballad of Billy John" :

The song is probably fictional in its detail, but exploring any comment thread just about anywhere on the net will reveal content not far from that described.

Ironically enough, I watched the video straight after having read an essay by Dan Falk at Salon. The essay contains, as a kind of side issue, some theories that we humans are now more moral, sympathetic, empathetic, ethical than we were in the past. Hmmm.

You would’ve hated your heroes: Why history’s great people seem so morally deficient. Winston Churchill was racist. Albert Einstein was a chauvinist. And that's not even the half of it!

The title tells enough about the essay's content for the moment. We've all, at one time or another, come across similar discoveries about our "heroes", even about our friends and families - and ourselves: i.e. we and they are simply humans with human flaws. With regard to those who lived in a different era from us, they were humans living in a world with different cultural mores and norms, it's not logical to compare their mindsets and values with ours...it just isn't!

Snips from the essay:

It is tempting to dismiss such examples of jerkdom by noting that “times were different” back then. But why were they different? Why are they better today? One bold hypothesis is that we have become, objectively, increasingly moral over the course of time. Several prominent thinkers, including Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker and Princeton philosopher Peter Singer, have argued in favor of this idea. Singer in particular spoke of an “expanding moral circle”: While we once only cared for those in our immediate tribe, we now interact with (or at least, are aware of) people from around the world, from many different backgrounds. We have come to care about those who are outside our group, to feel their pain, to object to their suffering. (This is, arguably, the territory that Shakespeare was exploring with Shylock’s “Hath not a Jew eyes” speech in “The Merchant of Venice.”)

In Pinker’s 2012 book, “The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence had Declined,” the focus is on the decline of violence over the course of history. But running in parallel to this decline in violence, he argues, has been a rise in moral virtue: Pinker suggests there may be a “moral Flynn effect,” akin to the rise in global IQ scores over the last century described by James Flynn. The two effects, incidentally, could be linked: As we get smarter, Pinker argues, we’re better able to imagine ourselves in the positions of others, and thus more likely to sympathize with them, and recognize their right to well-being.

Oh my! We feel their pain and object to their suffering do we? That's questionable! I suspect Iraqi civilians and Afghan peasants will feel differently, as will the loved ones of those in countries caught in US drones' "collateral damage". I agree with commenter "happyhaze" ~

I don't see the point of rooting around in the past to find SOB's that were not all of a piece, considering that we got a peace prize winner living in the here and now who believes it is fine to kill by remote control anyone deemed enemy, along with whoever is in range of the drone blast. Might makes right is one hell of a foundation for ethical conduct.

As for Churchill, he was a racist, a reactionary conservative, true enough, and the British people booted him out after World War II ended - they had the good sense to realise that it was time for a different approach. "Horses for courses". A brilliant wartime leader and orator is a brilliant idea for the people, but only in times of war. He remains a hero to me and thousands of others for what he achieved. A comment among the many following the essay:
"Even a-holes can be heroes when we need them."

As to the question of whether we humans are more moral, ethical, empathetic now than humans were in the past, I think not. In a small way, think again of those cruel comments appearing online day by day -with no cause other than mean, negative intent...and worst of all, they are contagious

We look at the past, and present, through our own lens, that's all we possess, and that lens must inevitably colour our view. Our education, experiences, lifestyles have formed us, and our lens; the people of the past, their education, experiences and lifestyles formed them and provided the lens through which to view their their present, and past. We are on different turns of the spiral of time/space, the view varies with each turn. I suppose "deep thinkers" and authors such as Messrs Singer and Pinker are wearing glasses with rose-coloured lenses, with sincere intent to make us feel better among the ongoing chaotic idiocy and calamity of this world.