Gandhi for the Post-Truth Age
I am reminded of restorative justice advocate Bryan Stevenson&#x27;s quote from his memoir describing his life&#x27;s work of defending death row inmates: &quot;Each of us is more than the worst thing we&#x27;ve ever done.&quot; Certainly this might apply to someone who is credited with world-changing outcomes like Mohandas Gandhi?<p>To me, the fact that these kinds of questions about Gandhi&#x27;s legacy is even a conversation being held in public discourse -- this says little about Gandhi, and a lot about our collective inability to handle the cognitive dissonance of good people making mistakes or having dark sides. More relevant to this conversation than an appraisal of Gandhi is James Gunn getting kicked off of his movie, or any of the other random people who get fired or lives ruined for some random crap they posted on Twitter. When can we start collectively adopting some understanding of restorative principles and put the days of outrage culture behind us?<p>Sure, Gandhi had real flaws -- MLK as well with his womanizing, Churchill with his drinking and many other men and women with great accomplishments in their lifetime. Nassir Ghaemi wrote an interesting book on how he believes there is even a link between great leaders and certain kinds of mental illness. It is sobering and reasonable to have a conversation about the consequences and harms perpetuated by the flaws and mistakes of our past icons, made throughout a lifetime. But to borrow from the article:<p>&gt; ...even Gandhi’s harshest detractors do not deny that he steadfastly defended, and eventually sacrificed his life for, many values under assault today—fellow-feeling for the weak, and solidarity and sympathy between people of different nations, religions, and races.<p>The guy was a man of tremendous courage and tenacity, who paved a path for other great men of courage and tenacity to win significant moral victories for our collective conscience. (Though this path may have become obsolete as &quot;having a conscience&quot; goes out of fashion among modern overlords.) Having read Zinn&#x27;s A People&#x27;s History of the United States, I can confidently say there&#x27;s plenty of worthwhile things to be conflicted or outraged about when it comes to historical revisionism. But Gandhi? Not high on my list. Attacking the guy because he lacked the full modern conception of intersectionality is like knocking over an Amelia Earhart statue because she didn&#x27;t fly across the Atlantic in an F-22. How are you going to try to diminish someone&#x27;s historic accomplishments by comparing them to a modern contextualization of the task?<p>But despite my position on the absurdity of the premise, I think this article does draw some interesting parallels between Gandhi&#x27;s thought and life&#x27;s work and some of the challenges we face in political economy today. I&#x27;m grateful to the author for mentioning that Tim Rogan book on the moral economists, as I have only recently become of Karl Polanyi and his ideas and have not heard of Tawney or Thompson.