I suspect that if we were living and had easy access to information about any number of people from the past that had a large influence on history, we would find the opinion of the time much less one sides than it becomes after they are gone and their legacy (whether good or bad) has been largely decided by the culture.
There's a whole literature category devoted to taking the caricatures of historical people and expanding them into much more complex and realistic depictions of the people in question. Frankly I think it's amazing that so many people can't imagine a complex person with competing goals and motivations when considering public personas, when this is true of literally everyone alive.
I totally agree with you. There is an occlusion of the collective will in all of these arguments.
Its like, a surefire way to win any argument is to invoke the collective against an individual, since the collective whole is greater than the individual unit.
But, there's also the fact that the collective holds itself back willingly and utterly, whereas individual desire seems to be unlimited in our species. I guess the mores of one over the other, drive the cycle forward, endlessly.
Personally, I'm very glad that people such as Elon Musk exist, and on a more basic level, I hope to see Musk succeed in all of his endeavours. The collective sure isn't doing much of any interest, in the meantime...
There's a whole literature category devoted to taking the caricatures of historical people and expanding them into much more complex and realistic depictions of the people in question. Frankly I think it's amazing that so many people can't imagine a complex person with competing goals and motivations when considering public personas, when this is true of literally everyone alive.