The recent protests have brought me perspectives that I really haven’t thought much about before. I’ve read something about Christopher Columbus in “The Half Has Never Been Told”, but the book is written in a less entertaining way than what I prefer that I only have a very vague memory of what it says. Learning that his status is being pulled down and thrown into a lake brings back the memory of the atrocities he committed. And those other famous figures of the colonial era, for example Queen Victoria. When the movie bearing her name came out, I thought about all those colonial era savagery she was involved in, but I didn’t dwell on the thought much. I’ve always harbored a kind of cynical view that people sometimes adore their tormentors and put the torturous figure on a pedestal. That’s just a distorted yet common human psychology that we have to live with. However this cynical view was swept away by the recent protests. People do remember and people can’t adore their torturers forever. Sometimes people do wake up.
This new wave of looking at things from a new perspective prompts me to look at things differently. I have often thought there is only one way of doing things, or at least one correct way of looking at things, but I’m wrong in thinking that way and many times I’m deadly wrong. The reason for my stubbornness is nothing new. Laziness, of course. I am a sloth and I tend to be lazy. Looking at things in different ways requires a sort of eagerness that I don’t possess. Sometimes I can feign an eagerness, but not for long. Ignorance is another reason. Stubbornness and loyalty to a narrow view is even considered a virtue against the insecurity of not knowing better and not knowing more.
Haoyan Do 