A person is measured by their words and actions. Humans ability to pretend to be what they are not, while trying to get what we want is unmatched. One of the best way to truly capture how a person thinks, it is when our guard is down and we are not trying to fake our personality or perspective to meet the public approval. In order to do this, people's past get dug up by investigators or opposition, just to see how a person was in the past, to get dirt that contradicts who they are trying be.
It is a tactical method used in character assassination and the public enjoys a good scandal. I have seen how people's tweet for over 10 years have been dug up. This is why people are more careful when it comes what they say online, to prevent them from saying things that might hunt them in the future.
Should the public judge people based on what they said in the past? This question thinks highly of the public. Who do you the public is? Larger percentage of this so called public are uneducated and even those that are educated, lacks the ability to think logically in cases like this. The public are different kinds of people with different perspective and opinions about a specific subject.
Depending on what a person must have said in the past, you can be rest assured that, they will always be people that will feel targeted by it, regardless of the person's intentions. This is what people are after, to make people doubt a person's integrity. In today's era, it is not really hard to do. It is really difficult to make people understand that, whatever they have read concerning what a person must have said in the past, is not what it is.
But we are talking about people that are terrified by the choices they have made in the past, even if it was true, they really don't care. The fact that a person must have said something in the past, most people still believe that, such a person is still the same person regardless of the time it was said.
Can't people let bygones be bygones? The concept change is not really applicable to everyone. For instance, imagine a parent finding out that, the class teacher of their children once said something online that looks like, he or she supports child abuse. It doesn't really matter if the teacher said it when he or she was around 12 years old. That moment fear kicks in and parent will surely react without feeling the needed to digest and verify the information.
This is what happens with the public whenever someone reminds the public about what someone said in the past. When they said it, does not really matter at that point. People start thinking, oh he/she must be pretend to be a changed person. People's traumatic experience starts playing tricks on their minds. It is not because they are not capable of letting it go, people are just scared to get hurt. What if they let go and the person turns out to still be who they were in the past.
Humans are terrifying, you can't truly claim to know a person because who you think you know might be a mask worn by another person. This mask doesn't come off easily and it is not easy to tell. So when people find out about what a person said in the past, we react to protect ourselves from danger.
This write-up was inspired by weekly featured content titled Past thought in hive learners community.
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