More Thinking about Greatness

In writing yesterday’s blog I struggled somewhat with certain personalities and ended up scrapping them from my article because they did not live up to my standard of greatness.  People are flawed, this we know, but I do have difficulty applauding one segment of a person’s life when another part of their activism goes against the grain.  I will therefore make a personal admission that I WAS WRONG about something!  Yes, I have been arguing with my brother about the whole removal of statues thing – he is pro-removal and I was against it (because of the art, feeling there was a way around destroying the art by writing both sides of the story on a side panel).  However, I now realize that if I am going to split hairs about the Famous Five then I must concede on the other issue.

Now you may be wondering what I have against some of the women of the Famous Five (I will keep them nameless).  Yes, they fought for women’s right to vote and other equal rights for women.  However, looking into them more thoroughly I discovered some of them worked on less noble causes, most especially the pushing through of legislation that saw the systematic sterilization of thousands of people who were deemed “unfit, degenerate, morons, etc.”  Coincidentally my brother had been telling me some things about eugenics the other day (completely unrelated to my article and research) which shocked me.  I had not realized that eugenics were still on the books in 1972 here in Alberta! 

Furthermore unwed mothers were put into homes and then their babies were taken away from them without them even seeing the baby, knowing the gender or knowing if the baby was alive or dead.  This may have been done with the mothers’ parents’ consent but the young mothers apparently had no rights since they were under age.  I did know that such things happened but I did not realize that it was on such a large scale across the country and that there were so many parents who essential abused their daughters to such an extent.  It is rather unnerving to realize what self-righteousness can do to an otherwise decent person.

While I find all of the above appalling I wonder how many in today’s mad world think we should revert back to these “ideals”?  I shudder to think there are any but I fear I am being a Pollyanna in that hope.

“I believe that we must maintain pride in the knowledge that the actions we take, based on our own decisions and choices as individuals, link directly to the magnificent challenge of transforming human history.”   Daisaku Ikeda