{"id":1093,"date":"2013-12-09T23:50:07","date_gmt":"2013-12-10T04:50:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.eightminefortress.com\/surewhynot\/?p=1093"},"modified":"2023-05-29T10:47:48","modified_gmt":"2023-05-29T15:47:48","slug":"only-human","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.eightminefortress.com\/surewhynot\/index.php\/2013\/12\/09\/only-human","title":{"rendered":"Only Human"},"content":{"rendered":"

You surely know by now that Nelson Mandela died last week. I was bummed to hear it. Of course, you can’t help but be incredibly impressed that he made it to 95, something uncommon even among regular people, let alone such a world-changing activist and politician. Compare that to Martin Luther King who only made it to 39 before his assassination.<\/p>\n

There’s a lot of talk about him and his life, obviously. The amazing things he did. And behind all that, of course, are the people making a point to remember any not-so-great things he did (or often just making the good things out to be bad somehow). Just like with anyone else who does great things, their bad things get remembered, too, to remind that they were only human.<\/p>\n

To which I say… No shit.<\/p>\n

Nobody’s perfect. We all know that, yet we often act so surprised when reminded, and those reminding us act so smug like they’ve stumbled upon great wisdom the rest of us ought to envy.<\/p>\n

Definitely not just Mandela. Barack Obama<\/a> was put on a high pedestal in 2008, by people who must feel rather differently about him now. Martin Luther King was great but had his share of flaws, such as cheating on his wife all the time. Abraham Lincoln had his problems. Susan B Anthony had her problems. Robert Kennedy had his problems. The list goes on. Name a great person in history who was integral in changing society for the better, and they did some bad shit among the great.<\/p>\n

This should be taken as encouraging, though. For one, it’s no reason not<\/a> to continue to see them as great. Also, it’s a reminder that even acknowledging our own faults, we all can be great. We’re all only human.<\/p>\n

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You surely know by now that Nelson Mandela died last week. I was bummed to hear it. Of course, you can’t help but be incredibly impressed that he made it to 95, something uncommon even among regular people, let alone such a world-changing activist and politician. Compare that to Martin Luther King who only made … Continue reading “Only Human”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1093","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-think-about-it"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eightminefortress.com\/surewhynot\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1093","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eightminefortress.com\/surewhynot\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eightminefortress.com\/surewhynot\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eightminefortress.com\/surewhynot\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eightminefortress.com\/surewhynot\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1093"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.eightminefortress.com\/surewhynot\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1093\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2288,"href":"https:\/\/www.eightminefortress.com\/surewhynot\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1093\/revisions\/2288"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eightminefortress.com\/surewhynot\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1093"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eightminefortress.com\/surewhynot\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1093"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eightminefortress.com\/surewhynot\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1093"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}