Episode 5 - Idols, Martyrs, and Pedestals

In this episode, I dive into a crucial yet often overlooked aspect of Dag Hammarskjöld’s legacy: the danger of idolizing and martyrizing him to the point of erasing his humanity.

Dag was a remarkable leader, diplomat, and thinker, but he was also a human being with complexities, insecurities, and worries. Too often, people want to place him on a pedestal or label him as a martyr for world peace. But when we reduce him to an untouchable ideal, we risk losing sight of what made him truly inspiring—his human qualities, his struggles, and his quiet, steadfast courage.

Join me as I push back against the narrative that seeks to turn Dag into a graven image. Let’s talk about why it’s essential to remember the real Dag—the man who worked tirelessly, navigated impossible challenges, and remained deeply human through it all. We’ll explore why keeping him real not only honors his legacy but also makes his story more relatable and inspiring for those who seek to live with integrity and purpose.

Tune in for an honest, thoughtful exploration of why Dag was—and always will be—so much more than just an idol or a martyr.

📖 Read Decoding the Unicorn: https://a.co/d/0D9xM3b. 

Transcript

Transcription by Otter.ai.  Please forgive any typos!

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

Dag Hammarskjöld, idolization, martyrdom, pedestals, human experience, intellectual, supremacy culture, editorial criticism, historical perspective, reduction, icon, legacy, emotional connection, research community.

Welcome to the Decoding the Unicorn podcast. Here's your host, Sara Causey,

 Hello, Hello and thanks for tuning in. Welcome to episode five of decoding the unicorn the podcast. In today's episode, I want to talk about idols, martyrs and pedestals. Whenever we're discussing a figure who died under tragic circumstances, or perhaps they were working for a noble goal, like world peace, there's definitely a risk of putting them up on a pedestal, idolizing them, forgetting that they were human, turning them into some kind of martyr for peace, etc. And unfortunately, when we do that, or if we even come close to doing that, it gives critics and cynics an opportunity to pounce, which they love to do. So let's explore today, Dag Hammarskjöld's legacy, and how we can avoid things like idolization, forgetting that he was a human with a heart and a brain and a soul. We don't want to put anybody up on a pedestal, and we also don't want to reduce him down to a martyr. Stay tuned.

What if the unicorn wasn't a myth? What if he walked among us and wore a bow tie, a diplomat, a seeker, a man of frost and fire, misunderstood by the world until now, decoding the unicorn isn't just a biography, it's a revelation. Discover the real Dag Hammarskjöld in Sara Causey's groundbreaking book, Decoding the Unicorn, available on amazon.com

This topic weighed heavy on my mind at times whenever I was writing decoding the unicorn. It's also come back into focus as I've been writing my next non fiction project, which I've titled Simply Dag. I decided to do this project first person point of view from Dags perspective, to make it more intimate all the way around, more intimate for me as the author, more intimate for dag's spirit to connect with readers, and then more intimate for the readers themselves, so that it's not as disconnected as a third person narrative. It's not about dag said or dag did. It's about I did, I said. And that just makes a more cohesive relationship between the author, the subject, and the reader. It's really fascinating to examine. Whenever I was writing decoding the unicorn, there was an editorial that I came across that was just blistering. Some historian had taken Dag's inventory in a major way, or what he thought, I'm sure, was taking Dag's inventory, he was blathering on about how Dag has been put up on a pedestal by liberals who say that he's right up there with Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr, and he did no wrong, and he had no flaws. And really, according to this historian, Dag was cold and calculating and shrewd and overly intellectual. No one really liked him. He couldn't bond with people. He was manipulative. He took the secretary generalship and turned it into way more than it was ever meant to be, and he wanted to just control everything. It was almost like this man was saying that Dag was some sort of hoarder of power, a manipulator, a shrewd customer who wanted all kinds of power for himself. He's just like a power mad dictator sitting at the top of the UN and I'm reading this editorial like I don't know where this guy is coming from. And as I continued to read it, it became very clear where he was coming from. Dag back in the 1950s you really have to go back in your mind and think about how revolutionary This is. Back in the 1950s Dag gave a speech denouncing supremacy culture. He talked about how for years, Europe was really considered to be the center of culture, the center of the world, and this was just no longer true. He went on to say that there was no race of people, no nation of people that should ever say we're above everyone else. We're superior. The other person is inferior. He was very much of the idea that the scriptures are true. We are created equal in the image of God, and nobody can say I'm better than you're worse than my group is superior. Your group is inferior. He was talking about this publicly and openly in the 1950s and apparently, based on what I was reading and the way I interpreted this historian's words were that he was really mad at dag for Sara. That he felt like white Europe was the center of the universe, and how dare Dag Hammarskjöld. He must have just had some kind of white liberal guilt. He was just trying to assuage himself by saying that white Europe wasn't the center of the universe, and I'm sitting there like, Oh my God, dude, I like, how can somebody even go there in modern times? It just blows my mind. It really does. So it's like, in my interpretation, in my opinion, you have dag being way ahead of his time in the 1950s denouncing supremacy culture and saying, No, we really are equal. People are equal, made in the image of God, period. And then you have this other guy writing in the 2000s saying, Oh no, white Europe really was the center of everything, and dag was just some kind of cerebral, smug, terrible human for saying otherwise. And it's like, oh my god. Just it becomes unfathomable to me. And I wanted to really take this guy to task in decoding the unicorn. Here's a little behind the scenes information for you. If you've not ever written and published a book, I'll give you a little bit of inside baseball here. Editors and attorneys have a lot more say in what gets published than John and j and q public will ever realize, and that's true, even if you're self publishing. Now, for me, as a self publisher, I maintained a lot more control than someone going through a publishing house, and that was by design. It wasn't because, oh, I didn't think I could sell the book or nobody's going to be interested. One of the main reasons why I fought against that was because I had a couple of interested parties sniffing around, and they made it very clear to me that Dag hammerscholt is not going to sell books. No one cares about DAG. Dag is old news. Maybe he was famous back in the 50s, but that was a long time ago, Sara and nobody cares now. They made it very clear to me that I would need to make the book mostly about the Orange Man. So it would be like talk 80 to 90% about the orange man, good, bad or indifferent, and then weave in some anecdotes about dag here and there. And I'm like, no, no, no. Now I would rather just go fling myself off a bridge than do that. That is of no interest to me whatsoever. I don't care if the book is some big, massive best seller, I care about Dag and I care about getting Dag's life and legacy out there. It's like the poem The Dash. We can sit here and talk about how dag was born in July of 1905 and he was murdered. Yes, murdered. I did say that murdered in september of 1961 but let's also think about all the things that happened in between those two dates. So I wanted to really, like rip it on this guy. I thought he this. This This man has written this editorial. Well, he has a right to free speech, and so do I, and I was going to exercise it in this book. Let me tell you, my publishing attorney is like, Okay, wait a minute. You have to understand that it's one thing to lambast the man's opinions, though, that's all fair game, but if you're wanting to do a direct quote from this newspaper, you're going to have to get permission. And anytime you're seeking permission, to quote, If you're going to rip somebody apart, you're playing a really dangerous game, because they're probably not going to give you permission if they know you're going to say something negative. That's the world in which we live. It is what it is. So the attorney's opinion was, yeah, you can do it if you want to. You can take the chance, but if you get caught, it's probably not going to end so well for you. And I'm like, Oh, I'm a private individual, okay, I don't have deep pockets. I can't afford to get into it with a newspaper or some historian that's going to fly off the handle, so I had to cut that section, much to my own chagrin. I wasn't happy about having to do that, but I can certainly talk about it here and now in more abstract terms. When we put somebody up on a pedestal, when we turn somebody into an icon or an idol, a graven image, we're not doing ourselves, the person, and certainly not the critics and cynics, any favors. That's the thing do. I think that there are some people who have indeed put dag up on a pedestal, and they're saying he's right up there with other people that they've put on a pedestal. Yeah, of course there are those people. There are also people who, in my opinion, have reduced dag down to being that cold, calculating intellectual that this historian was talking about. They see dag as being cerebral and bookish and oh well, he was part of the Swedish Academy and he was multi. Lingual, and he was doing very difficult translation work. Oh, and then on top of that, he was the UN Secretary General. He was very smart. Yeah, Dag was incredibly smart. Well read, articulate, polished, poised, all of that, that's just not the whole story. And I think for me, as an author and a biographer, as well as a fellow human, a fellow traveler, a fellow introvert, an HSP that has also been the victim of reduction at times, it just gripes me. It's like, yes, Dag was smart. Would I characterize him as being cold, shrewd and manipulative? No, I would not. That's not the Dag that I know, but the Dag that I see is warm and caring and funny in his own way, maybe not like stand up, comic funny, but funny and clever in his own ways. And to reduce him down to he was just a brain. He was really intellectual, very smart. Could learn a lot from him, but oh, he was dull and awful to be around. That's just simply not true. It's not true, and we need to be careful of crafting these icons and putting them up on pedestals and making them sound like they weren't human. I swear, some of these people, it's not even so much that they idolize Dag, it's that they they are so covetous they want to put him into this box, which I too, have been put into boxes before. I wrote a blog post about that, about a supposed mentor, a supposed teacher of mine that was basically like stuffing me into a box that I stayed in for a pretty good amount of time through the entirety of my 30s. To be honest with you, turning 40 was a revelation for me. This this decade in my life has been fabulous in comparison, not that it's been easy. It's just been a lot better to be authentic. But you have these people that want to stuff dag into a box. I'm categorizing you. I'm telling you the way that your legacy should and should not be portrayed, and I'm crafting an image of you based on how I see you may not necessarily be objective reality, and it may not be how other people would approach Dag's legacy, but it's like we're going to gatekeep and we're going to stuff Dag into this box, and woe unto any creature who comes along and says no, but wait a minute, he was human like I think it would blow their mind if they actually spent time with Dag and he, like, had a runny nose and blew his nose into a handkerchief, if he belched, if his shoelace came untied, if he tripped while he was walking down the street, if he got a paper cut and said, ouch. That really hurt. I think they would lose their mind. It's like, well, this is not the cold, detached, robotic Dag Hammarskjöld that I was expecting. It's really ridiculous. And as I said, when we treat people in that kind of you're a Faberge egg, right? I'm gonna hang on to you with kid gloves and treat you as a Faberge egg. It really gives people like that historian the leverage that they need to say, Well, you've turned this person into an icon. And then the next thing is, let me tell you all the things that were horrible about this person, and it's like the pendulum swings from one extreme to the other, which is very dangerous. I think. Now we've talked a bit about idols and icons and putting people up on unrealistic pedestals. I guess what I would add to the unrealistic pedestal is it's kind of like that saying about don't meet your heroes. Now, I will be honest. Knock on wood. I have always had good experiences meeting people. I was lucky enough that I got to meet Roger Moore and his wife, Kristina on Fifth Avenue in New York City. What a backdrop, right? You're meeting James Bond on Fifth Avenue. Very nice. The two of them were as pleasant as peach pie to me. But here's the thing. I was at an event. They were expecting to socialize. I didn't ambush them at an airport. I didn't ambush them in the middle of having dinner or in the middle of trying to have a spa treatment. We were at an event. I just have not. The times that I've been in Hollywood, the times that I've been in New York, I have not ever had a negative experience, but I have also been very careful about the way that I approached people too. I tried not to be your sort of stereotypical gauche American tourist that's like, hey, sign an autograph for me, buddy. Just because I'm standing here, I really haven't, really, have not tried to behave that way. But the thing is, people are humans, and they may have a bad day that includes your favorite actor, your favorite rock star, your favorite politician, whatever, they may not always be completely gracious. I remember reading this story about. Later in life, Marlon Brando was standing in line at a pharmacy to get, like, diabetes medicine or something, and this woman came up to him in line at the pharmacy and was like, I remember when you were famous a long time ago, which that approach, who's gonna really be thrilled, dear, that I remember when you were famous a long time ago, and I want your autograph. And he just told her, No. He was like, lady, I'm in line at a pharmacy trying to get medication. I don't like your approach. Please leave me alone. She got really mad and went to the media and kind of made a stink about it. And it's like, well, you sort of played yourself on that. But here's the thing, when we put somebody up on a pedestal like that, eventually they're going to topple off of it. You're going to find out that they had a bad day. Maybe they snapped at somebody, maybe they were rude to somebody. Maybe they caught the stomach flu, and at some point they threw up. And they weren't this polished Saint amongst mere mortals that you thought, who was never ill, who never had a cross word for anybody. There is a danger, for sure, in turning somebody into an icon, an idol, or putting them way up on a pedestal, that's just unrealistic. And I think it also it cheapens what it is to be here on this planet, incarnated into a human body, having a human experience. It is these human experiences that help to thread all of us together as part of the tapestry, the tapestry of the world. And I think, to act as if someone who most certainly was human was not human, there was some sort of God amongst mere mortals, is really ridiculous. And it also takes away from the beauty of humanity, the awesome things about their nature, because even some of these flaws can be beautiful at times. It's like the idea that when a vase gets broken, you repair it with gold, then it's not a flaw, it's an extra area of beauty. Now, as for martyrdom, this is another sticky wicket, because there are people who learn the tragic and bizarre, highly bizarre circumstances of Dad's death, and for them, that really becomes the story. Whenever I was writing, decoding the unicorn. I saw this happen several times, because people would say, Oh, you're writing a book. That's awesome. What is it about dag hammer, Shoal, crickets, tumbleweeds, nothing, who, what? And sometimes I would get the question, Well, how did you find out about him? I've no I've never heard about this man before. How did you get interested in this? How did you find out about this person? So I'd have to go into my little elevator pitch, and I feel like Mads bruger owes me some money on this deal, because there have been more than a few people who have rented his documentary, his documentary, cold case, hammerschool, because of me writing decoding the unicorn, simply because people would ask me, Well, how did you get interested in him? And I'd say, Well, you know, I initially heard about the insane details of his murder, and from there, I wanted to know more about his life. And what I found was just a beautiful, wonderful, amazing man was, and still is, to me, so amazing, so beautiful. And people start Googling, and then from Google, they would find Cold Case Hammarskjöld. And the next thing I know, my phone's ringing, and they're like, have you seen this documentary? I'm sure you probably have. What did you think about? And it's like, Boy, I've got opinions. Here's the thing, I and look, I, I'm I'm spilling a little bit of tea here. There are people in the hammer sold research community that I have reached out to at various times to try to connect with, yet again, crickets, tumbleweeds and radio silence. It's just so intriguing to me, because it's, it's like people in the JFK research community have the tendency to be super open and they want their research to get out. But then it seems like there are people, not everyone, to be clear, I'm not naming any names, and I'm not pointing any fingers, I'm not giving any shade to anybody. I'm just saying, in general, there are some people, in my opinion, in the in the hammer show community that are not so friendly to me. I can't, I can't speak to anybody else's experience. All I can say is, in my experience, in my interpretation, in my opinion, I've run across some individuals in that community that haven't been real welcoming and Dag's, however you want to think about this, his energy, his spirit, his vibe, really made it quite clear to me that there are people who will never accept me, and they will never forgive me for making him human, not that he wasn't human. I. But for showing him as a human being with insecurities and a heart and a soul and passions and opinions because they want their martyr. And when we watch a documentary like cold case hammershould, which you know, it's darkly comedic. And the first time that I watched that documentary, I really did not know anything about dad's life. I had only heard about the weird circumstances of his murder, so the fact that it's kind of darkly comedic, it didn't bother me necessarily. I was weirded out by, you know, getting about halfway through the documentary or so and Mads says I never got close to figuring out who actually killed Dag, but that's okay, because I didn't really care about him anyway. Now, whether that's meant to be funny or tongue in cheek, I don't know, but it's like, well, as someone who cares a lot about Dag. Cares deeply about Dag. You know, I don't. I don't find that amusing. I don't find that funny. It might have seemed sarcastic and cool to me when I was watching the documentary and I had no emotional connection, no emotional investment, in Dag. But now that I do, it's like, I just don't want the stories around him to be focused on these cookie cutter narratives. And let's think about what I've said here: the icon, the liberal icon, up on a pedestal with MLK Jr, and Mahatma Gandhi, the icy intellectual who was brilliantly smart with a genius IQ, but had no social skills and nobody really ever wanted to be around him. But then also the martyr to peace, the man who was killed amidst the backdrop of the Congo crisis, he took a flight that he probably should not have to try to meet with Tshombe. It didn't go well, and he was murdered, probably by mercenaries, etc. It's like you have to put Dag in one of these three boxes. It reminds me of the old school shell game, you know where it's like, so when he takes a P and three nutshells, and it's like, this is all the choice you get, liberal icon, icy cerebral dude, martyr to peace, that's it. That's all Dag is allowed to be. And I just completely and totally reject that notion, and I feel like one of the reasons why the JFK research community has become such a vibrant community. For one thing, they allow for diversity. For another thing, there really are voices within that research community that try to amplify Kennedy's life. Yes, there are researchers that are fixated on Kennedy murder, and they may have one particular area upon which they fixate. It can be the grassy knoll, it can be the parade route. It could be the autopsy. It could be some subsection of the autopsy. There are those people out there, but then there are also people who are really working to be sure that his life and legacy are upheld and they're welcomed into the research community. And I really want to put a call to action out to just say that we cannot limit dag to this shell game liberal icon, cold, intellectual martyr to peace, and that's it. Those are your only three options. No, I reject that completely and definitely. I feel like my work has reflected that. How has my work reflected that? Why has my work reflected that? Because it's been a co creation. It hasn't been about, oh, I just want to write books. And dag seemed like an interesting person. No, no, no, no, no. I was firmly ensconced in a different career when all of this happened. For me, it's about giving space. It's about giving dag the opportunity, the place and the space to speak some truth, so that he can come back and say, here are some of the pieces of the puzzle that have been missing. Please don't reduce me. Please don't make my entire life about my death. That was the worst night of my life, but it was only one night of my life. And I'm not saying that the perpetrators shouldn't be identified and brought to justice. I'm not saying that at all. I'm saying that dad's life and his legacy have to be about more than the night that he was killed. It his life and legacy has to be more about who he really was. He deserves better than to just say, okay, liberal icon, and that's it. If somebody's on a different side of the political spectrum, there's nothing for them here. That's not true. Or he was super smart, genius level smart, but that's really all there was to him. He was a one trick pony. No, he wasn't. He was a freaking unicorn, and he knew that too, not a one trick pony that could only be smart on command. So much more to him than that. If any of this resonates, I hope that you will consider checking out my book, decoding the unicorn. But most importantly of all, please, I beg of you, avoid anything that feels reductive. And I'm not saying not to consider anybody else's work, not to watch certain documentaries or not to read certain books. Far from it. In fact, I would say go and look at the body of other research. Do that. First, go watch the other documentaries. Go read the other books. Look at what other authors have had to say. Then come to decoding the unicorn. And I swear to you, you will feel the difference. You'll know the difference because you'll feel the difference. It will light you up in ways that other works just don't quite do. Am I biased? As an author of course I am. I'm also biased because I care so deeply for Dag. That doesn't mean I don't have a point. Just some food for thought, some points to ponder here. We have to be so careful that we don't reduce people down to stereotypes and run the risk of forgetting how amazing and incredible their lives truly were.

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