Great People Who Weren't Great People — Transcript

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1. 0:00Greatness is a virtue that many of us aspire to  achieve. Whether that be through the skills we
2. 0:06develop, or the impact we have on others, we all  have something in our lives that we wish to be
3. 0:11great at. But there's a level of greatness that  some of us achieve that goes far beyond what we
4. 0:17expect from most people. Where they make such a  significant contribution to the world that we as
5. 0:23a society have decided that these are the figures  who are great enough to be taught in school, great
6. 0:28enough to be quoted, and great enough to be revered  in our collective conscience. But in the process of
7. 0:34venerating those who did great things, we often  fail to learn the full picture of who they are
8. 0:40as people. Only learning the good, but not the bad  or ugly side of them, allowing us to succumb to
9. 0:47the "Halo Effect", the error we make when a person's  achievement allows us to be blind to everything
10. 0:53else about them. Now, to clarify, my intention  is not to discredit their actual achievements,
11. 1:00nor am I interested in cancelling anyone. I'm  also not going to mention things people did
12. 1:05that were unsurprising for their time, because  applying today's expectations on the people of
13. 1:10yesterday makes absolutely no sense. Most people  in human history were probably racist, or sexist,
14. 1:18or homophobic, or whatever else you can think of,  so I'm not really interested in virtue signaling
15. 1:25about how someone 100 years ago said something  problematic. However, if what they did contradicts
16. 1:31what made them great to begin with, that's fair  game. And so, I present to you,
17. 1:42We'll start with pissing off  an entire nation of fake accents by talking about
18. 1:46Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill, or just  Churchill, better known as that guy who defeated
19. 1:53Hitler. To this day, the British consistently  regard him as one of the greatest Britons to have
20. 2:00ever lived, and if all you know about Churchill  are his achievements as the UK's leader against
21. 2:05the Nazis, you'd probably feel the same way.  But here's the hard truth: if it wasn't for
22. 2:11World War II, Churchill would have been remembered  for much worse, and that's being generous since he
23. 2:17likely wouldn't be remembered at all. Despite  being one of history's most staunch opponents
24. 2:22of the Nazi regime and its hateful ideology, he had  surprisingly similar views that a racial hierarchy
25. 2:29existed, believing that white Protestants were at  the top, followed by white Catholics, then Indians,
26. 2:35and then Africans. Apparently the other races  didn't matter enough. Again, I'm not interested in
27. 2:42bringing up all his comments if those ideas were  mainstream, but even during that time, his views on
28. 2:48racial supremacy to justify British imperialism  were considered to be fringe and extreme. As late
29. 2:54as 1955, 10 years after defeating the Nazis, he reportedly suggested the phrase,
30. 3:03as a good slogan to use against immigration. But  perhaps the worst stain on Churchill's legacy is
31. 3:10his action, or rather, lack of action, during the  Bengal Famine of 1943. While British officials
32. 3:18begged for food supplies to be directed for  India, Churchill and his cabinet ordered 170,000
33. 3:24tons of wheat from Australia to be transported to  Europe in order to build a stockpile for European civilians.
34. 3:33He ordered food to pass by millions of starving people, who were
35. 3:37his British subjects at the time, in order to  be used for storage in Europe. But this isn't
36. 3:43terribly surprising given that he once said:
37. 3:51As well as blaming the famine's severity on  his view that Indians "breed like rabbits". By the
38. 3:58time he finally approved for food to be sent,  up to 3 million people were already dead. Lastly,
39. 4:05the man hated Gandhi with a passion, since he  represented a largely peaceful movement advocating
40. 4:11for Indian independence. Consistent with earlier  points about his belief that certain races were
41. 4:17inferior to others and his general disdain for  India, Churchill was completely against any form
42. 4:23of self-determination for Britain's colonies, and  actively wish for Gandhi and his movement to die
43. 4:29in failure. Now that I've pissed off the English  and made goodwill with the Indians, it's time to burn
44. 4:35the bridge with my fellow Indians and talk about  Gandhi. This man has been rightfully celebrated by
45. 4:42India for helping to bring about the country's  independence from the United Kingdom. And he's
46. 4:47admired internationally for his use of nonviolent  activism. But despite his lifelong battle against
47. 4:53the oppression of Indians by the British empire, he  didn't seem to mind knowing that the same empire
48. 4:59was also oppressing Africans, referring to them  as
49. 5:08How someone can have those  beliefs about a group of people, but also insist
50. 5:13that those beliefs don't apply to his own group is  baffling to say the least. It would be a bit like
51. 5:19him saying,
52. 5:29Yeah I totally agree with you then.
53. 5:31Gandhi also had some... disturbing ideas about sex. He would  conduct so-called tests on his celibacy, in order
54. 5:40to determine his self-control. To him, lust was an  enemy that needed to be destroyed, and he somehow
55. 5:46concluded that the best way to defeat it was to  sleep with naked teenagers, who were more than
56. 5:52half a century younger than him. Despite all the  shortfalls of Gandhi, he helped to inspire younger
57. 5:58generations throughout his lifetime, convincing  leaders around the world to use nonviolent means
58. 6:03to advocate for their causes, with one of them  being our next great person,
59. 6:11Revered for his powerful and inspiring speeches  protesting the injustices black people faced in
60. 6:17America, MLK is rightfully at the top of many lists  when it comes to history's greatest people. But if
61. 6:24there's one thing confirming that he's still  just a human, it was women. Throughout his life
62. 6:29as a civil rights leader, women in the movement  have been consistently put on the sidelines.
63. 6:35Figures such as Ella Baker and Dorothy Height  describe their personal experiences of often
64. 6:41being made subordinate to male leaders like  MLK, despite the fact that they were the same
65. 6:46skin color, fighting for the same cause. I guess  when he gave his famous "I Have a Dream" speech
66. 6:53and declared that all men are created equal, he  really only meant that all men are created equal.
67. 6:59And he wasn't much better with women in his  personal relationships either, having been
68. 7:04a serial cheater to his wife up until his  assassination. In fact, as a deeply religious
69. 7:10figure, MLK himself recognized the sinfulness  of his infidelity, and reportedly felt unworthy
70. 7:17of the many accolades people place upon him, not  wanting to be treated as a saint. But someone who
71. 7:23DID want to be a saint and ended up becoming  one is none other than Saint Teresa of Calcutta.
72. 7:30With a name synonymous with selflessness, Mother  Teresa continues to be admired around the world
73. 7:36as a humanitarian icon, even receiving the Nobel  Peace Prize in 1979. The best way to comprehend
74. 7:43her impact on the world is by understanding  that her primary objective wasn't really to
75. 7:49reduce suffering, heal the sick, or even help the  poor. Rather, it was to bring as many people to
76. 7:55the Catholic Church as possible. Often times, this  objective happened to overlap with plenty of
77. 8:01good things she did, like building schools and  orphanages, feeding people, and taking in those
78. 8:08with illnesses. But there were also plenty of  moments when her objective didn't do much good,
79. 8:13and may have even done more harm to those she  was supposedly helping. Many of the facilities
80. 8:19Mother Teresa ran were observed as having  extremely unhygienic conditions, and a lack
81. 8:25of actual medical staff, food, and painkillers. A  former volunteer revealed that dying patients
82. 8:31were simply given aspirin rather than proper  medication, and recalled how needles continue to
83. 8:37be reused without being sterilized, which would be  horrible today, but was even more horrible during
84. 8:44the height of the AIDS epidemic. It gets even worse  after you learn that Mother Teresa's organization
85. 8:50would receive tens of millions of dollars every  year, most of which is now believed to be held
86. 8:56by the Vatican. Teresa's actions were based on her  fundamentalist Catholic beliefs, like her view that
87. 9:02poor people suffering in this world was actually a  good thing, once saying,
88. 9:17It is from this framework  of glorifying human pain where we can begin to
89. 9:22understand why none of the hundreds of millions  of dollars Mother Teresa received over the years
90. 9:27went to bringing in doctors to actually helped  the sick, or why water heaters for washing and
91. 9:32cleaning were refused, or why proper medication  wasn't purchased. Additionally, a reporter who
92. 9:38visited these facilities observed how volunteers  would laugh about a boy who urinated while being
93. 9:44tied to a bed, and saw an older woman tied to  a tree. In another orphanage, volunteers would
94. 9:50tie up disabled children without batting an  eyelid. There was clearly a general roughness
95. 9:55toward people in Mother Teresa's care, so despite  being declared a saint by Pope Francis in 2015, to
96. 10:02many of her critics, she was certainly anything but.
97. 10:07What's the opposite of an old woman who's deeply
98. 10:10religious, quiet, and conservative? A young man who's  anti-religious, violent, and communist. Yet both are
99. 10:18in the same category of those who are venerated  by millions around the world while not actually
100. 10:24being great people. I am of course, talking about  Mr. Ernesto "Che" Guevara, the ubiquitous symbol for
101. 10:31counterculture and rebellion. He tortured and  executed hundreds of people, and established
102. 10:37Cuba's first Military Units to Aid Production, or...  "concentration camps" for short. Tens of thousands of
103. 10:45intellectuals, gay people, priests, conscientious  objectors, and really anyone who was considered
104. 10:52"antisocial" such as hippies were targeted, which  is especially ironic considering that the very
105. 10:58people who celebrate him today would be the exact  types of people thrown into these forced labor camps,
106. 11:04or just straight up executed. Despite having the  supposed morally superior ideology, Che referred
107. 11:11to gay people as sexual perverts, Mexicans as a  band of illiterate Indians, and black people as:
108. 11:27Quite the progressive icon. What's probably the most ironic
109. 11:30thing about Che the anti-capitalist, that would  have him rolling in his grave, would be the fact
110. 11:36that his iconic photograph has been making  filthy capitalists filthy rich from the very
111. 11:42moment he died, selling millions of posters, hats,  flags, hoodies, backpacks, mousepads, shirts, you
112. 11:51name it. Being commercialized and exploited more  than possibly any other figure in human history.
113. 11:57Today, his rockstar image to most people makes him  less Lenin, and more... Lennon, which speaking of the devil...
114. 12:07[Music]
115. 12:26Considered one of the greatest musicians  of all time, there is no doubt that John Lennon
116. 12:31along with the rest of the Beatles, not you Ringo,  forever changed the world of music. So it's quite
117. 12:38understandable why millions of Boomers and  frankly, even younger generations adore John
118. 12:43Lennon for having created so many songs that  continue to be popular to this day. Throughout
119. 12:49his life, he was also famous for his commitment  to love and peace and became a symbol for it too.
120. 12:56But it's a shame he didn't practice what he  preached, given that he publicly confessed to
121. 13:00having beaten women, cheated on his wife, treated  their child like absolute garbage, and then left
122. 13:07his family to be with Yoko Ono so they could  make whatever the hell this:
123. 13:41Perhaps this is why he found it easy to  imagine there was no heaven, he probably didn't
124. 13:46expect to enter it anyways. But he's far from the  only great person to have treated his significant
125. 13:52other like crap. Take JFK for instance, a  president beloved by Americans from both
126. 13:59the left and right, something that is impossible  for any of our politicians today. And sure, part
127. 14:05of it is the simple fact that JFK was young,  attractive, and assassinated, comparing that
128. 14:12to the two candidates we currently have where  both of them are not young, not attractive, and
129. 14:18not assassinated. But an even bigger reason is that  we now live in a world where every issue, person,
130. 14:25and news story is polarized to such an extent that  people will have completely different facts on a
131. 14:31subject based on where they get their sources from.  Take for instance, the story about Robert Kennedy
132. 14:37Jr's Super Bowl ad for his presidential campaign  that was very similar to an ad from his uncle, JFK,
133. 14:44back when he was running for president. With Ground  News, today's sponsor, I can see how there's a blindspot
134. 14:50on the right for this story, with only 16 out  of 119 sources coming from that side, possibly due
135. 14:58to RFK's better approval among Republicans.  I'm also able to read through summaries that
136. 15:03Ground News creates which highlight differences in  what the right and left say about every news story,
137. 15:09like how the left is emphasizing the "pain" Kennedy  caused with the ad while the right is focusing on
138. 15:15the "sincerest apologies" that he gave to his family.  So I'm proud to partner again with Ground News, an
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142. 15:39source on both sides of the political spectrum, so  it's incredible that Ground News can do all that
143. 15:45work for us so we can stay informed AND understand  what each side is saying about any issue. If you're
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146. 16:04subscription, the very one I'm using right now!  Back to JFK, the president we all know and love
147. 16:12who was killed by... insert your favorite theory  here. But he's also the president who was too
148. 16:18busy cheating on his pregnant wife while partying  in Europe, to bother coming back home as she gave
149. 16:24birth to their child, who ended up being stillborn.  Guess who wasn't much better: Dr. Seuss, the man we
150. 16:32all know and love for creating classic children's  books like the Cat in the Hat, Green Eggs and Ham,
151. 16:39ooh okay... not that one. Wait, not that one either  what the [ __ ]. How the Grinch Stole Christmas, The
152. 16:46Lorax, and so many other stories. But even he, the  man whose books touched the childhoods of every
153. 16:54generation going all the way back to the Boomers,  reportedly had an affair, drove his wife of 40
154. 17:01years to suicide, and then married the new woman  just 8 months later.
155. 17:08Steve Jobs, or as I called him in my previous video, Steve Apple, is considered to be one of the greatest figures in the world of
156. 17:16technology, putting aside the fact that he was more  of the marketer, rather than the creator for these
157. 17:23Apple products we know and love. Regardless, in many  aspects of his life, he was just to straight up bad
158. 17:30father, partner, friend, boss, and well... person. From  the beginning of his career, Steve Jobs tricked his
159. 17:39fellow Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak into working  day and night on a project for Atari, by imposing
160. 17:45an unnecessarily stressful deadline. They agreed  to split the payout 50/50, but when Atari paid
161. 17:52Jobs $5,000, he claimed they only received $700,  and so gave his friend $350, who later cried
162. 18:00when he found out about it. He also refused to  provide his most loyal employees with stock
163. 18:05options, which prompted the better Steve to try to  do the right thing by giving the money out of his
164. 18:11own personal share. Outside of being a terrible  boss at Apple, Steve Jobs refused to pay a single
165. 18:19dollar in child support for his daughter, and forced  his partner to clean houses and live on welfare
166. 18:25in order to raise their child. This is all while  he was a multi-millionaire, and it wasn't until
167. 18:31he was legally forced to provide payment when he  finally gave in. On top of all that, he continued
168. 18:38to publicly deny that the child was his, even after  paternity tests proved that:
169. 18:52And one more thing that might seem insignificant  to some people but what I think says a lot about
170. 18:58his character: he would regularly park in handicap  spots, and drove without a license plate because
171. 19:04he just didn't like how it made the car look.  Yeah, just pure narcissism at its finest. So at
172. 19:12this point, it seems clear that being smart doesn't  prevent people from making stupid decisions. Even
173. 19:18Albert Einstein, whose name is now synonymous with  genius, had serious flaws as a person. The physics
174. 19:26prodigy was able to figure out four-dimensional  spacetime, relativity of simultaneity, kinematic and
175. 19:34gravitational time dilation, length contraction,  and most famously, mass energy equivalence, but
176. 19:41somehow couldn't figure out how to treat his wife  and children like human beings. For one, there's no
177. 19:47record of Einstein having ever bothered to meet  his first child, and scholars believe that he and
178. 19:54his wife gave her up to an orphanage. After having  two more children with the same wife and deciding
179. 20:00to keep them this time, he suddenly decided  to start cheating on her with his own cousin.
180. 20:06And you might assume that it was surely a third  cousin twice removed or something, but nope. They
181. 20:11were first cousins. Their moms were sisters.  As if that wasn't bad enough, after his wife
182. 20:18found out about the affair, she felt it was still  better that Einstein stay with her for their two
183. 20:24children, but he forced her to accept the following  conditions:
184. 20:58To add insult to injury, he would describe his wife as an unfriendly,  humorless creature writing,
185. 21:08She ended up having a  nervous breakdown after he decided to still leave
186. 21:13her and their two children, and marry his first  cousin. Now one might have hoped that at the very
187. 21:18least, he found his true love in his cousin, and  remain faithful to her happily ever after. But
188. 21:26NAH, if anything, he had even MORE affairs with  women during his second marriage than his first.
189. 21:33So it seems that if you're smart enough, whitewashed  enough, respected enough, talented enough, or die
190. 21:40early enough, you can get away from the scrutiny  of society and maintain a fairly positive legacy.
191. 21:47Look, I'm not saying that we need to invalidate  people's meaningful achievements just because
192. 21:53they also did awful things. And I'm certainly  not telling you to buy an Android or... listen
193. 21:59to The Beach Boys or... be racist? Being a great  person and being a great person are two very
194. 22:08different things, but what's unfortunate about this  world is that too often, we only seem to admire one
195. 22:15of them, when we should be celebrating both. Yes, we  ought to be thankful for all the wonderful things
196. 22:22these people did for us, but we should be just  as grateful for the great people in our lives,
197. 22:29that make life... truly, great.
198. 22:34In the span of one video, I somehow managed to piss off
199. 22:37British people, Indians, Americans, right-wingers,  left-wingers, Boomers, Boomers, everyone, and worst
200. 22:46of all... Apple fanboys. So in anticipation of  the hate I'll be receiving, help me balance
201. 22:52it out by giving this video a like, and I  would really appreciate you subscribing as well!
202. 22:57Please consider supporting me on Patreon,  to help me make more videos for you to watch!
203. 23:02Thank you to each and every one of my Patrons  for allowing me to keep a roof over my head.