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Only Remembered for the Bad

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Randomly Gone Insane

Romantic Raider

PostPosted: Mon Sep 06, 2010 9:32 am


User ImageLooking in the scope...User Image

Here's a fun little topic.

Are some people truly only remembered by the bad things they did?

Here are some examples.

Hitler - Germany, to put it bluntly, was a shithole. Economy was bad, people were at rock bottom with no money and no pride. They really had nothing. Then Hitler stepped in. He brought them up from nothing up to something. Something, big, powerful, and rich.
But, he killed millions of innocent civilians because he didn't like them.

What is he most remembered for?
The killing of innocent men, women, and children.

Stephine Meyer (Yeah, I'm saying it.)
She's a writer, and has done other work besides Twilight. Take for example, The Host. Actually a pretty decent book. Yes, boring in the beginning, but most books don't start off extremely interesting with explosions and unicorns and rainbows. They start off a bit slowly and then blossom later on. But anyway, The Host is a fairly decent novel, written by Stephenie Meyer.

However, people only know and remember Twilight in two forms.
Rabid fangirls take it as a lifestyle and religion; Bashers waste their days hating a book.

It's not just them too.
There's plenty of others.

See where I'm going with this?
People are only remembered for the bad.

Do you agree or disagree?
Provide some examples to your argument if you can.

(opinion is given in the next post)

User Image...of a dead man's gun.User Image
PostPosted: Mon Sep 06, 2010 9:35 am


User ImageLooking in the scope...User Image

I agree.
If you do something bad, history has a way of making you only remembered for that bad.
Shove aside the good, because people don't want to know or think about someone who's good and bad at the same time.
Society has worked itself down to where you're one or the other.
Gray area does not and shall not exist for the general public.

User Image...of a dead man's gun.User Image

Randomly Gone Insane

Romantic Raider


Leucothoe

Wheezing Fatcat

PostPosted: Mon Sep 06, 2010 9:41 am


I suppose I do agree. Society seems to be especially interested in ills or wrongdoings because (I guess) they seem more interesting. The news always has disasters and really sad stories. I'm not saying they don't have uplifting and inspiring stories, but more often then not, they report the bad things because that's what people want to hear and that's what they remember. Therefore, it makes sense that many figures would be remembered for the bad things they did because they are more memorable. I think Hitler is kind of an extreme example but I see what you're getting at. There's always two sides to a story and people often forget that. After all, history is usually the account of whoever survived, meaning the victors.

EDIT: It also reminds me of a magnet my mom has: Well behaved women rarely make history. ... It's the sad truth.
PostPosted: Mon Sep 06, 2010 3:29 pm


I agree, for the most part. I'm reminded of a song. "It's interesting when people die. Give us dirty laundry."

I think the reverse is also true, though; people who did really great things are held up on pedestals, and any shady act they may have committed is ignored. The Founding Fathers of America, for example. Yeah, they're awesome. They started their own country, after all. But they also had slaves. They treated people of another color as less worthy than they. It's widely known, I believe, but people don't focus on that because it detracts from the saintly image people have of The Founding Fathers.

I'm sure there's a term for this sort of thing: Forming an opinion of someone, either good or bad, and then ignoring or rationalizing any bit of info that contradicts that opinion. As you said, there's no grey area. Everything either conforms to the already-established belief, reinforcing it; or it somehow goes against the belief and is tossed aside.

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kuro-uchi

PostPosted: Sun Oct 24, 2010 1:06 am


50/50 Great people through-out history have done great things and bad thing but they are remembered for both

Julius Caesar, destroyed many cultures and societies destroying all evidence of their existance but is remembered for starting the great 'Rome Empire'

but at the same time Hitler

So it depends on who is telling the story, all records of Julius Caesar are written by his loyal servants, lots of books about the Holocaust written by Americans, Jews, Holocaust survivors and dead Holocaust victims, but if you went and read a book by a Nazi it would make Hitler sound like a hero
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