25th August 2022
What do we do when our heroes, our family, our friends, our ancestors turn out to have made mistakes?
Deny, minimise, distance ourselves, tear down statues, defend statues?
Whatever community or cause we identify with, we will find people throughout its history who have got it wrong, we will be let down by people today getting it wrong.
But when we collectively distance ourselves from the wrongdoer, when we put them out, reject and eject them, when we state “they were never really one of us” we are destined to produce more of them. To repeat their mistakes, to stagnate.
Growth comes from learning from mistakes, and whilst a clever person learns from their own mistakes, a genius learns from the mistakes of others.
Let’s stop brushing mistakes under the carpet, let’s stop ignoring or glorifying our history. Let’s accept that humans are messy and let’s have a conversation about what we can learn from that
