Asklemmy

43336 readers

790 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
!lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

137

Why do we glorify horrible people from the distant past? (sh.itjust.works)

submitted 4 weeks ago by Konis@sh.itjust.works to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

113 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Julius Ceasar, Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan and many more...

These people had beliefs and worldviews that were so horribly, by today's standards, that calling them fascist would be huge understatement. And they followed through by committing a lot of evil.

Aren't we basically glorifying the Hitlers of centuries past?

I know, historians always say that one should not judge historical figures by contemporary moral standards. But there's a difference between objectively studying history and actually glorifying these figures.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] wewbull@feddit.uk 48 points 4 weeks ago (15 children)

Do we glorify them, or do we just learn about them because they had a huge impact on the world?

I don't think I've ever heard of anyone holding Genghis Khan up as a role model.

[–] lolcatnip@reddthat.com 6 points 4 weeks ago (4 children)

We literally call Alexander "the Great", and Caesar's name was adopted as a title more than once by powerful rulers (e.g. Kaiser and Czar). Sounds like glorification to me.

[–] wewbull@feddit.uk 5 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

...because that's his name. It was how people referred to him. It's not like people are going "He's Grrrreat!" like Tony the Tiger.

Is this just a case of "great" having changed meaning subtly? Now it's a superlative more than anything else, but in this usage I feel it meaning is much more about scale of what they did. Not a judgment on the morality of what they did.

[–] xor@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 3 weeks ago

It wasn't for him, but for those who were named after him it was used to symbolise that they - like Caesar - were one of "the greats"

load more comments (2 replies)

load more comments (12 replies)