The current wave of people violently toppling statues during protests and riots is a problematic expression of an ignorant worldview.
The act is wrong because we ostensibly live in a society that has mechanisms for justice, social change, and means to prevent oppression. This precludes all riots from being justified. It doesn't matter how angry they are. Emotions don't justify criminality. Yes I too am tired of police abuse of power. Welcome to me 10 years ago, child. Grow up. Smashing things, setting fires, and stealing do not change the things you're claiming to be rioting against. Voting, lobbying, challenging laws in court, donating to causes, writing and speaking, these things actually change minds and laws.
So getting past the way in which these people are doing it, I will focus on the reasoning and act itself, and why they are wrong, even if done legally.
Obviously statues are just lumps of material, plaster on the lower end, metals, marbles, etc. on higher end. And obviously there's nothing inherently wrong about a city changing its layout over time, taking down some things and putting up others. Nor even would I argue that it's wrong to take down statues of bad people who either should never have been honored in such a way, or even mediocre people that nobody knows about anymore (although there'd I'd point out that's usually why statues are put up to begin with). No. I will make my favorite and most beloved argument. The argument that takes my opposition's own point of view and then proves itself to be wrong.
When I think about the mentality of people who look back into history and chastise or condemn people of the past for not being like people today, I imagine all of humanity walking up a very long staircase. A staircase so high that people live their entire lives walking up. Make it into a spiral just so one can imagine a huge fall down, without going all the way, or someone able to leap forward and bypass a number of steps. It's not a perfect metaphor, but bear with me.
I imagine most people in the mid-late 1700s might be, let's say 100,000 steps up. Then along came the American revolution and a unique historical event where philosophers guided the formation of a nation and people actually listened and got over themselves for five minutes to form a government. Society leaped forward 10,000 steps. Time passed, we're now in 2020. We're 150,000 steps up. I think we were at about 155,000 in 1996 but that's for another time. We're doing fine. Now most people will look around and see humanity gathered around step 150,000 and be content with life. Some people will continuously look up, and see where we can go. Those people will inspire or merely compel the rest to rise in steps, as those kinds of people have since the beginning.
A small percent of people will look back at where we were. Some will be objective and we call that history. Others will think about how to weaponize the past and we call that politics. The benefit to the ego of always looking back is that you're always the most right. And people in the past can never catch up. You can accomplish nothing in your life and still look down on the most influential and beloved people in history.
We erect statues to commemorate people. Sometimes "as people" and usually then the actual person isn't important so much as the message the statue is making. But usually we erect statues of people to commemorate specific accomplishments they made, or how their accomplishments improved humanity. We build statues for people who got us up some steps (or at least prevented us from falling). It's almost appropriate symbolically that Hollywood "stars" get plaques set right in the ground, because we venerate them for having done nothing but make the status quo a little more pleasant.
We don't have to erect statues. We could simply put up big signs that say "Love", "Learn", "Improve". And we do. We put it in text and on signs and in art, and use them in speeches, etc. But statues of people provide something unique, they provide real examples. Simply saying words like "love" or "improve" are abstract, not only can they mean many things, they don't represent any one thing specifically. However statues of people can represent very specific things. And that's the good they serve. Symbols matter. Inspiration is demonstrably important. And important or not, we like having a bit of a history and a culture, so they serve those goals as well.
These people toppling statues, if they are even looking back at all and not just idiotically breaking things with other people because they are bored from Corona lockdown and enjoy the high of mob violence, are looking back at people in our past as failures. They see even the exalted among the people in the past, and condemn them all. When they see a statue of Thomas Jefferson, they don't see a man who single-handedly moved our species forward many steps. They see a man who died on step 110,000, and nothing can change that. Any man who didn't make it to 150,000 is clearly backwards and a failure. No other facts matter. That's convenient for my metaphor. Because these people never look deeper. They see the step they are on, and the step the person below them is on, and that's all the brain power they expend "down". That's it. IQ 15. "Thomas Jefferson, down. Bad man. Break statue."
It doesn't matter if without Jefferson humanity would be hundreds or thousands of steps back. It doesn't matter if he was better than most people for his time and was limited by knowledge and science. Context went right out the window the moment these idiots decided to demonize everyone for the circumstances of the era in which they lived.
I see this constantly and not just with statues, or even famous people. Just this fucking idiotic childish mentality that sees oneself as superior for having been born on a higher step, even when the only reason we're on step 150,000, is because humanity walked from ground floor to here over time.
The difficulties of life before recent decades is irrelevant. The actual education level is irrelevant. The limits of science are irrelevant. The basic human evolutionary traits are irrelevant. The irony of condemning people beneath you when literally the only reason they are beneath you is because they raised you above them, is irrelevant.
HURR JEFFERSON HAD SLAVES. BAD MAN. TOPPLE AND BURN!!!!
But he tried his whole adult life to abolish slavery...
TOPPLE AND BURN!!!!
But he was raised being told by scientists that Africans were inferior, he didn't know better, but he knew human rights and appealed for them..
TOPPLE AND BURN!!!!
He may have failed in that regard but he also set the pathway for global liberation with the Declaration of Independence. First steps had to be made, and he made them. When we look at the statue, we remember liberty, we tell our children about people who stood up for unalienable human rights. You only focus on the bad. We don't say ignore the past, quite the opposite, evaluate it ENTIRELY, and an objective review of Jefferson should be to note he helped even black people eventually. He set a precedent that couldn't be ignored. The world was better off because of him.
But he didn't do everything!...TOPPLE AND BURN
And that's how it goes. The same idiot mentality that blames people in the past for not solving problems of our future, for not having the sensibilities that we had, even though the only reason we have them is because people in the past got us here, is the mentality that will NEVER find someone worthy enough to not condemn, let alone learn from or take inspiration from. And before you go excusing my choice, they've already toppled statues of abolitionists who have absolutely no history of wronging anyone, merely because they are historical, because they are white. You don't have an argument after that. If the only criteria needed to topple a statue is the person's race or having lived in the past.
Condemn everyone, everywhere, always, forever. No good. These people see all of humanity in two groups. "Currently bad" and "Will be bad in the future". No statue erected, and no person venerated will ever be tall enough to stand above the next higher step.
Which goes back to why we even have statues or honor people. It's not about the person specifically. OK sometimes it's just the person, if they were personally loved. But the vast majority of the time, and 100% of the time it's an issue for debate, it's about a person's accomplishments.
We didn't build a statue of Jefferson because he had slaves, we built a statue of Jefferson because he helped found the fucking country and wrote "All Men Are Created Equal" which should be reason enough for ALL TIME. The modern Social Justice Warrior/Cancel Culture mentality is more about pretending every human has to be 100% perfect always or they must be torn down, career ruined. A "Karen" has a bad take on someone writing "Black Lives Matter" in chalk, an encounter that lasted a few minutes and affected nothing, she must be ruined socially and financially. Her husband must be ruined socially and financially. And the more extreme add physically to that list. BEAT HER. KILL HER. SHE ISN'T PERFECT. That's LITERALLY the SJW-Cancel Culture worldview. The same one tearing down statues.
So take that to its logical conclusion. Take their idiot psycho child argument and show them what they are fighting for. Nothing. No future. No hope. Because if as soon as it becomes the past, it becomes taboo, then everything is destined to be labelled evil and taboo. Everything. Always. Because there is no top of the stairs. There was a bottom. There is progress. But there's no top. And since you've condemned anything below, and have no respect for progress, yet mandate it in perpetuity, you are left with nothing. Society by your standards is perpetually shit, and will always be shit. There is never a good enough.
You eat your own tail. You constantly change words and ideals and norms because you are vapor evaporating. You are smoke. You have no substance. Poof, and everything you promoted you're now condemning. Your only defining characteristics are condemnation, destruction, and ignorance. You demand we all take a step up, and then condemn everything that ever was, even one step below. Rinse and repeat. An absolute vacuum of anything remotely positive.
The physical act of tearing down statues of people who were being honored for making the world a better place, but weren't as modern as today, fits perfectly metaphorically with the entire worldview that everything must always be torn down, and anything built must be condemned as soon as it improves anything in the slightest. Such that only destruction and hatred are ever valued with any consistency.
