Statues are now obsolete

THE EDITOR: With the advent of modern technology being famous and getting a statue put up for your brilliance is no longer popular.

From cradle to grave, there is a record of everything said or done in all countries. If you had teenage problems with the law for minor offences and you are 50 years later quite famous as explorer, writer, historian, social activist or MP, any number of people can attest to past misdeeds, thus making you ineligible for a statue.

Colombus's statue now represents a human being who exploited and decimated other humans for wealth and personal gain. He also paved the way for Roman Catholicism and other established religions to be introduced into the New World, ostensibly to save the souls of heathens deemed ignorant and unclean.

Several hundred years later the actions of Colombus are disgusting to the minds of the descendants of the ill-treated natives. He is abhorred. The statue must go.

The people of this century no longer need statues to serve as memory. Modern technology allows for services, good, bad or indifferent, to be indelibly recorded for posterity. That is the reality.

How we evaluate what needs to be applauded does not include the necessity for statues. They have become an unwelcome affectation from the past.

The world must move on. Consider statues as similar to moving from aircraft to space ships. Think on the additional instruments and styles in the world of music, photography and the changed forms and fashions of painting pictures.

LYNETTE JOSEPH

Diego Martin

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"Statues are now obsolete"

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