It is absolutely fine not to care about Diego Armando Maradona’s (ARG) death. It is also absolutely fine to criticize a person for their mistakes and harm in life.
No one “has to” admire a genius since being a genius does not make you a hero, and blindly following a messiah leads to fanaticism, which is very dangerous.
At the same time, just displaying hate against a man that was a genius and has transcended in history might just be ignoring that life is full of hues and is not black or white.
Diego made many mistakes in life but something that made him the idol he is is that he was always authentic. Some people claim that authenticity is not very relevant and that one ought to do what is important to your self-interest, even if that means displaying an image that you would not want, just in order to take advantage of the system.
To each their own. But a façade of pretending to be perfect is just lying, and lying is also wrong (with its hues). Let’s embrace humans as the humans they are.
It is a fair point to make that geniality should not be admired because in the end geniality relies on factors that are not controlled by thyself, such as genetics.
At the same time, there are people around the world that have exceptional talent and go through life doing other things because society has defined what success is for them: “you gotta do” what brings you money, fame and social approval. Geniuses do not care.
Geniuses relish on their talent and they thrive when they are creating, regardless of what society could tell them. If we did not have people that decide to sacrifice everything else to pursue their genius then the world would stagnate.
And it would not only stagnate because geniuses usually create important advances in history but also because there are some sensations that we can access when geniuses create them.
An example is feeling the goosebumps from looking at the “barrilete cósmico” goal by Maradona against England at the Estadio Azteca, in 1986. Some individuals unfortunately cannot or do not want to understand how those small moments of genius in sport can captivate millions. That does not make them smarter. In any case it is a reduced ability to appreciate beauty and aesthetics.
Maradona, regardless of the rest of his life, decided to pursue a path that allowed millions to be inspired, to know that even if odds are against you, you can still remain as human as possible and be successful and loved.
Love is what we would see Maradona would have with the ball and the world needs more love, not more false pretension in a society of “homo attentis“, where trying to get others’ attention might seem as the most important. Diego’s genius should be celebrated. While someone devotes energy to jealousy and hate, geniuses keep on working.
