Restore heroes to the modern world: the apotheosis of historical figures, cleared of all their misdeeds with this new “scapegoating” system!

Background:

In ages past, it was difficult to know much about a historical “hero” besides a one-sentence summary, such as “was the Emperor of Rome” or “invented the steam engine.”

Now, it’s easy to find extensive information on most historical individuals, which frequently uncovers 1) crimes against humanity (“killed a bunch of villagers while invading Iberia”) and 2) normal-at-the-time things that are considered unacceptable today (e.g. “cooked a roasted poodle for every Sunday dinner”).

(This is a slight variant of the the “milkshake duck” thought experiment (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milkshake_Duck).)

Proposal:

There are a large number of historical figures who accomplished something noteworthy but also actively participated in what modern people would consider to be major crimes against humanity.

It’s rare to find a totally non-controversial historical figure. But, thanks to this new system, we can generate as many as we want!

We can simply “sanitize” historical figures by splitting them into two: one persona will have the person’s “good” elements (as defined by current society), while the other “scapegoat” persona will have any disapproved-of elements.

Fig. 1: The fictional historical character above performed a mix of “admirable” actions and “disapproved of” actions.

Now, we’ll take this complete history and “launder” it to produce the squeaky-clean person in Figure 2. This is essentially the version of the person that you’d find described in a 1950s grade-school textbook.

Fig. 2: The list of deeds from Figure 1 is pruned to only include “non-controversial” ones that society approves of. This particular historical figure is now properly “sanitized” and ready to have an elementary school named after him.

The negative-or-mixed-bag deeds—once again, as defined by society at this exact moment in time—will be assigned to a new “scapegoat” persona (Figure 3).

Fig. 3: Here, a new “scapegoat” persona is created: this “Obok Shabayib” (an anagram of the name in Figure 1) is assigned the blame for any action of disputed or negative quality.

Job-Creation Bonus:

This new system will provide a useful and never-ending source of work for historians. Since the attitudes of society change over time, things that are totally normal in the 2020-era West (e.g. eating meat, buying clothes made by child laborers, driving a car, taking recreational plane flights, owning a pet) might eventually be universally despised as barbaric. Thus, more historical figures will need to be revised.

PROS: Allows “heroes” in history to exist without the asterisk “[*] for that persons’s specific society and time period.”

CONS: It is unlikely that there will be unanimous agreement as to which actions are “approved” versus “despised.” Constant revisions of the historical record may make history excessively confusing.