Let me give a few examples from the field of sports.
Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo may be great footballers and
make big money, but they won’t be considered equal to Maradona or Pele till
they win a World Cup for their country.
Michael Jordan had to win many NBA titles before he became
the Chosen One. Kobe Bryant even after winning 3 NBA titles with Shaq, had to
win a few more without Shaq to prove others that he is great in his own right.
More recently LeBron James had to win a few NBA titles to launch his way to
greatness.
Federer may have the most gifted and talented player, but
still he has to win 17 grand slams in all surfaces to be in considered among
the all-time greats. So is Nadal.
But we are different. Objectivity and Rational thinking has
no place when it comes to our holy cows. Even if someone attempts it, it is
brushed off. This is damaging the cause in many ways. One is real merit may go
unrewarded. People who do the work get overshadowed and may get demotivated. Secondly
is that these people become bigger than the cause. People watch cricket just
for Tendulkar, watch a movie just to see the Rajini or SRK irrespective of the
quality of the movie and people voting for leaders (several) irrespective of
the performance. Some people would even prefer a Sachin scoring a century over
a win.
Why is it so? I think it is inbuilt in our psyche. All our
mythologies are about eulogising a warrior or king or a God. We likely have
carried over the eulogising part, but over time, we may have lost the ability
to objectively evaluate their achievements. So overboard we have gone that we
have lost the ability to take objective criticism in the right spirit. Any objective
criticism of an icon or ideology will invariably result in a strong or
sometimes violent reaction and so people who can speak up against mass opinion are
just going to shut-up and we as a society are not going to evolve or progress.
Note: I have deliberately used the term
objective criticism as there is also a tendency for some to criticise the
person rather than the problem. This is of course no excuse to being intolerant
of objective criticism.
