Stop Futzing With History
At long last, I'm finally getting around to a post I meant to make weeks ago. I'm not going to go as link crazy as I have in the past, but feel free to google around.
What I want to talk about is our society's constant and irksome obsession with reclaiming historical figures for marginalized groups. Perhaps you've seen some of these claims yourself.
Shakespeare was a feminist!
Beethoven had epilepsy!
Newton had Asperger's!
Alexander the Great had ADD, epilepsy, and he was gay!
These lists go on and on (and on and on...). I understand the importance of letting people with perceived disabilities know that they can go on to live full and meaningful lives, but I think we go too far sometimes. It's almost as though we want to believe that every famous person, every great thinker or strong leader, had something wrong with them.
Actually, that much is probably true. Not that they all had something wrong with them, but that we, as a mixed-up, muddled, American society, desperately want them too. We seem to have this odd dichotomy of yearning for success while loathing those who have it. This is especially true of those whose talents show a lot of intelligence. We're a terribly anti-intellectual bunch here in America. Popular discourse in the media tends to be about one step removed from making fun of the "smarty-smart-pants" in elementary school.
[As an aside, I blame the strain of religious thought in this country that says that those who have more are deserving of more. Because we all think that we're deserving, but we can't all be one of the "haves" and so we, I dunno, figure the other guy must have suffered or something and the wealth/fame/success/whatever is all karma balancing out. That, or we just want to knock him down a peg, he thinks he's so great, the dirty rotten....]
A small number of these claims actually have some merit, but most are based on vague descriptions of historical people that happen to match up with vague descriptions of existing disorders. It's kind of like saying you can tell I'm a Sagittarius because I'm restless but optimistic. So are millions of people who aren't Sagittarians. If we start looking at the descriptions as commonly presented, I probably have ADD and Asperger's. No doubt I'm gay too. And a feminist. I probably don't qualify for epilepsy, though. But I'm working on it...
What I want to talk about is our society's constant and irksome obsession with reclaiming historical figures for marginalized groups. Perhaps you've seen some of these claims yourself.
Shakespeare was a feminist!
Beethoven had epilepsy!
Newton had Asperger's!
Alexander the Great had ADD, epilepsy, and he was gay!
These lists go on and on (and on and on...). I understand the importance of letting people with perceived disabilities know that they can go on to live full and meaningful lives, but I think we go too far sometimes. It's almost as though we want to believe that every famous person, every great thinker or strong leader, had something wrong with them.
Actually, that much is probably true. Not that they all had something wrong with them, but that we, as a mixed-up, muddled, American society, desperately want them too. We seem to have this odd dichotomy of yearning for success while loathing those who have it. This is especially true of those whose talents show a lot of intelligence. We're a terribly anti-intellectual bunch here in America. Popular discourse in the media tends to be about one step removed from making fun of the "smarty-smart-pants" in elementary school.
[As an aside, I blame the strain of religious thought in this country that says that those who have more are deserving of more. Because we all think that we're deserving, but we can't all be one of the "haves" and so we, I dunno, figure the other guy must have suffered or something and the wealth/fame/success/whatever is all karma balancing out. That, or we just want to knock him down a peg, he thinks he's so great, the dirty rotten....]
A small number of these claims actually have some merit, but most are based on vague descriptions of historical people that happen to match up with vague descriptions of existing disorders. It's kind of like saying you can tell I'm a Sagittarius because I'm restless but optimistic. So are millions of people who aren't Sagittarians. If we start looking at the descriptions as commonly presented, I probably have ADD and Asperger's. No doubt I'm gay too. And a feminist. I probably don't qualify for epilepsy, though. But I'm working on it...