Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Levistus's_Leviathan" data-source="post: 8317696" data-attributes="member: 7023887">Ugh. Look. I honestly couldn't care less about "clearing Gygax's name" or whatever else this recent nonsense is about, but I want to address this super fallacious support of whatever you think the situation is."Do not speak ill of the dead" in the proverb's entirety roughly translates into "Of the dead nothing but good is to be said", and it originates from <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chilon_of_Sparta" target="_blank">some guy from Sparta</a> in the 6th Century BCE.This phrase is flat-out wrong in most cases that people try to use it in. We should absolutely speak ill of the dead, as long as what we're saying is correct and with a constructive and beneficial purpose. If someone says "Oh, [insertdeadperson] is [insertinsult]" (basically smack-talking someone behind their back, but they're dead), that's a correct place to say "Hey, don't speak ill of the dead, they can't defend themselves", because that remark isn't constructive and is just bashing on an easy target. However, if someone says "[Insertdeadperson] did bad things, here's some examples" and continues to explain why you shouldn't idolize them or otherwise praise them as people, an incorrect response to that would be "Hey! You're not allowed to speak ill of the dead! Pretend that whatever bad things they did didn't happen, because they can't defend themselves!"I'm going to speak ill of Hitler, Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Osama Bin Laden, and I'll continue to speak ill of my abusive grandparents when they die, and anyone else that is dead that deserves it, because criticizing the harmful things people did and said is how we progress as society, whether or not they're still alive. If we just put of a curtain down once someone dies and say "Ignore history, they're dead, no one gets to comment on what they did unless you have something good to say", that's harmful. Over 90% of the people that have ever lived are now dead, so saying "well, they're dead, so you don't get to say anything bad about them" is actively harmful and trying to prevent people from learning from the mistakes of people in the past.As you know, there's another famous saying: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."(And, no, I'm going to stop you right here and right now. I am not comparing Gary Gygax to Hitler, Bin Laden, Andrew Jackson, Thomas Jefferson, or other awful dead people. I am merely rebutting the assertion that "Dead people are immune to being criticized", and any arguments that depend on being founded on this assertion. As I said above, I don't know enough about what is currently going on to have a real opinion on the matter (yet), I just say a logical fallacy and needed to call it out.)</blockquote>

Verification