Einstein's racism is all relative (SCMP)

[struggle4progress]

My Take
Alex Lo
PUBLISHED : Friday, 15 June, 2018, 6:21am
UPDATED : Friday, 15 June, 2018, 8:27am

... The misogyny we have known for a long time, especially Einstein’s treatment of women in his life. Now we can add racism.

So far, so what? Einstein was a deeply flawed human being. Should that surprise anyone who knows something of human nature. Only saints are saints. W B Yeats famously wrote: “The intellect of man is forced to choose/Perfection of the life, or of the work …”

In an influential book on relativity theory, Max Born, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist, called general relativity “a perfect work of art”. If we follow Yeats’ equation, then the discoverer of relativity must be less than perfect; and so he was ...

There is a big difference between words and deeds. Published words are closer to deeds, if they incite actions in others. But private thoughts, which those diary entries clearly were, are subjects of self-conversation ...

http://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/2150895/albert-einsteins-racism-all-relative

[longship]

1. Here's an interesting Einstein story.

Last edited Fri Jun 15, 2018, 05:14 AM - Edit history (1)

He was offered the Israeli presidency in 1952. The Israelis pondered, "What will we do if he says, 'Yes?'"

(Corrected)

[Sophia4]

2. Humankind actually learns and changes over time.

Einstein was a man of his era.

There were many people with far less understanding of physics and science who were, although living at the same time that Einstein lived, far ahead of him in terms of placing value on all human life and realizing that we are all equal.

I grew up in an America that was very different than the America of today. Because of our religion, my family was not racist. But we knew that most Americans of the time of my childhood were racist.

Fortunately, we all can learn and change. But we can't impose the value system of today on people of the past. Life doesn't work like that.

We should remember to stay humble because, after all, not only are we changing, but the world around us is changing. We, ourselves, are not perfect. By no means.

Certain religions stood against slavery, but not always, not from the very beginning. People learned to condemn slavery. They learned. We are, fortunately, always learning.

That's what can give us hope. We don't have to be perfect right now as long as we are striving to be more perfect with each day. We are working toward being better people. We aren't perfect. We are working toward perfection. It all takes time. We do progress.

[Kentonio]

3. We need to learn to separate genius in particular skills from the whole.

A person being a genius physicist, mathmatician, surgeon, or musician says nothing about their personality or social values. It just means that particular person was born with a natural affinity for that talent. The best musician in the world could also be a virulent racist and fascist. The best military strategist in the world could be a progressive liberal pacifist.

To me it seems stupid to try and discredit the genius or indeed to inflate them beyond the genius. If a Nazi created a cure for cancer, that cure isn't any less important or valuable or wonderful. Equally, being the person who created the cure for cancer does not mean that anyone should be asking for your opinions about politics or social values.

We have an innate tendency to look for leaders to raise. It's purely evolutionary, and comes from a background where the number of skills humans needed were fairly limited. When you had a person who could demonstrate high capability in those survival increasing skills, it was important to listen to that person and perhaps follow their direction. We still feel those evolutionary pulls today when we see someone who is clearly streets above us in some field. We have to recognize why that happens and resist it. Accept and respect the ability, but don't turn it into something bigger than it is.

So Einstein was a racist? OK, does that make his physics any less important? Do we base our ethics or morality on his books? No? Then I think it probably doesn't matter.

[Igel]

4. We only do that here, in part, because of the person.

If you're a writer, a musician, an actor, a director, a poet; if you are good at intelligence and espionage, a great librarian, a doctor, a researcher in science, or even a good cook and you're a racist or sexist the typical response is to say, "Evil! Evil! Not only is he fired and his memory disgraced, but we must now revoke any honor, remove any plaque or statue, deny any advancement, extirpate his presence in music or art or film or the culinary arts, and let his name be unmentioned forever." It's to the point that some want to see their families destroyed and suffer, for the person involved to be fired from work and unemployed.

I think that's foolishness writ immense, but that's the way it's done these days. I think you're right. If what was done is worth being read or heard or seen or learned, then what was done is worth being read or heard or seen or learned even if we find out that the person behind it violates our morality. Pasternak wasn't a Communist, but wrote good Russian lit under the Communist regime; banning his works was an act of the inquisition and protecting the flock from seeing a evil man as a role model, which is the act of oppressors wanting to control and manipulate, not of those given to freedom and self-determination. Of course, in the USSR since the government provided all jobs and housing, the call for firing the person for political unreliability automatically meant he was a "parasite"--it was in the USSR that being unemployed was actually a prosecutable crime--which could lead to state-required homelessness.

"This man did X, Y, and Z, all good, and we have his statue for this reason. But he did something now considered bad, so we must pull down his statue and chisel his name from off the stelae that recount that portion of our history." It's like the Egyptian god-kings' response to Akhentaten's apostasy.

Or like fundies' response when they learn that some novelist was gay. The moral taint is assumed to spread thoughout everything the person did, and assumed to continue to spread by contact with the work.

[Kentonio]

5. Yeah, it came up a lot during the J. Marion Sims statue incident

It's a way of thinking that makes me uncomfortable.