One of the worst things to happen to me is meeting my heroes and idols. Even seeing a picture of them is enough to ruin them in my eyes.

I think this is the case because I generally don’t like humans - we are ugly, selfish, brutish, conceited and so much more. In fact, it’s best if I never learn more about the people behind the words I admire. That way, I can imagine them as better versions of themselves and not suffer the disappointment of having my illusions shattered.1

But if illusions must be shattered, shatter them I shall2:

  • nietzsche was an amateur and couldn’t prove anything he wrote; he also went insane - presumably from thinking too hard
  • schopenhauer pushed his land lady down the steps for making too much noise; unfortunately, he had to then support her for the rest of her life 3
  • cioran talks endlessly of life being suffering, yet he managed to live past 80 - the essence of a man with no conviction.
  • feynman spent hours in strip clubs harassing women. He also sucked at playing the bongos and was probably really annoying to be around
  • k-punk was so anti-establishment that he had a PhD and taught at the University of London.
  • thoreau had his mom make him sandwiches and do his laundry while he wrote Walden Pond and espoused the merits of self-reliance and living off the land
  • pythagoras’s flatulence smelled so bad that he thought beans contained the souls of the dead. He also faked his own death to find out what people said at his funeral4
  • kant insisted animals don’t have consciousness because he liked the way they taste. Unsurprisingly, he is one of the first documented cases of autism5

Notes

  1. There are a few people I have that my respect for them has grown after learning about their life6, but for the majority, learning about their failings just makes me bitter.

  2. Several of these people are not my heroes, but I thought I should take them down too

  3. I wish I could push people down the stairs who make too much noise or throw garbage in my garden

  4. He had his mother record everything they said while he was in the underworld

  5. Most people consider his writings proof of autism

  6. Philip Agre was an AI researcher who disappeared. Likely because he couldn’t stomache what society had become