Make it Warty, Tangled & Complex

I routinely have conversations with folks about finding the balance between focusing on the legacy of someone’s good deeds and the legacy of their bad ones. On this 4th of July some of you may be reflecting on our founders and their complex lives and legacies.  Lately, I've been thinking a lot about the need to replace the heroes and villains of our cultural stories, with portrayals of those same people in their complexity. Allowing them to be messy humans whose good behaviors and bad behaviors are left tangled and in tension.

When we hold historical figures up so that we only glorify their achievements and edit out their mistakes, warts, crimes, bad behavior, or general ugliness, people who have been wronged are wronged all over again. Even without a legacy of harm, painting the picture of anyone as superhuman or exceptional can leave listeners wondering how a normal person could ever measure up to this glorified (unrealistic…untrue…) character.

On the flip side if people are painted as only their negatives, we risk not only throwing any potential good out with the acknowledged bad, but we rob ourselves of the chance to learn from and get curious about their flaws and contradictions because now these ‘evil-hateful’ people can be simply dismissed because ‘we’re good people – we would never do that’. That can prolong harms and inequities and perpetuate systems we want to leave behind.

But if we let our historical (and modern!) figures be complex, tangled and messy and try to understand how someone we either admired or hated could do both wonderful and deplorable things, we gain the opportunity to reflect on how modern life is full of those same tangles and messes, contradictions and complexities. And at the risk of sounding totally Pollyanna – we might even gain the opportunity to move past culture wars and polarization and achieve the visions of freedom, inclusion and thriving for all.

For the readers out there, there is a book with a terrific chapter about getting comfortable with complexity. Take a look at Unlocking Leadership Mindtraps particularly the chapter entitled “Trapped by Simple Stories”. It’s not about interpretation per se, but relevant nonetheless.