It’s often said that you should never meet your heroes. Better advice for the twenty-first century would be to never look at the ‘Controversy’ section of their Wikipedia page. Whatever field inspires you, and whoever you look up to, you’re bound to find people who aren’t quite the paragons of virtue you hope them to be. Steve Jobs berated employees who disappointed him without empathy. Gandhi denied his dying wife penicillin. Mother Teresa would not give sick people medicine, causing unnecessary deaths. The rapper Dr Dre beat up a journalist and tried to throw her down a flight of stairs. Earlier this year, Dr Tim Hunt’s scientific career came crashing down after he allegedly made a bad joke about female scientists. Whoever you admire, enquire deeply enough, and you will find something unsavoury.

So what’s to be done? In short, live with it. Humanity as a whole faces a huge number of ongoing and developing crises: climate change, overpopulation, war, disease and corruption to name just a few among them. This list may seem hackneyed, but if you spoke to almost any human being in recent history they’d probably give you a similar one. The continued problems that we face as a species are greater than any individual, and each requires humans to work as a group towards finding solutions.

Yet despite this, we still live in a society focused on personality and the individual. Modern western culture is often bemoaned for its worship of celebrities, for producing insipid role-models, and creating a trend towards identity-focused politics, ignoring wider concerns. However, this is nothing new: the position of the celebrity, relative to the general population, has changed, but in practice there is little difference between, say, the saints who were worshipped in medieval England, and somebody like Beyoncé. In both cases an idealised version of them is put before us, and people aspire not to their reality, but to what they represent: a better version of ourselves. Hence why we can ignore that many medieval saints probably held views which were racist, misogynistic or homophobic, and, equally, we can ignore that in attempting to control her branding, Beyoncé’s publicity team attempt to suppress photos of her they don’t want the public to see.

Gaining a true understanding of humanity as a wider concept is one of the most difficult things for an individual to do – many would argue it is impossible. For most of us, inspiring individuals remain the easiest figures to follow and emulate.

W. B. Yeats wrote “The intellect of man is forced to choose / perfection of the life, or of the work”. No individual is capable of absolute perfection, and we should embrace those who in any way move humanity forward, or in some measure improve the short lives that we lead. So Steve Jobs should be celebrated for the leaps and bounds in technology made, in part, through his leadership, and not maligned because of his personal failings. That is not to say they should be forgotten, and we should be resolute in acknowledging when an individual’s flaws make them unsuitable as a model for a certain lifestyle or teaching. Martin Luther King, Jr. is a titanic and crucial figure in the fight for African-American civil rights, but might perhaps not be the best model for maintaining a monogamous relationship. In a world hugely troubled by conflict and strife, we should be thankful for those people who do, whether symbolically or in actuality, move things forward.

For some, the work and life of an individual are inseparable. For these people, they will find that no leader ever lives up to the standards they demand. Of course, we should demand more from those who purport or strive to be leaders, but if we wait for perfection, we will wait forever. Equally dangerous is the view that an individual’s worst work discounts their best. Germaine Greer has been rightly criticised for her regressive views on trans women, but to disregard everything else she has done or said as a result is ludicrous. Let her be a giant on whose shoulders you stand, and acknowledge that you can reach higher as a result. To do otherwise would be like ceasing to enjoy a band because their new album is no good, or not liking the Lord of the Rings anymore because The Hobbit films disappointed. Plenty of people do it, but it is to their own detriment.

Idolisation is problematic, and making yourself blind to the flaws of somebody you admire benefits no one. To do the opposite though, to wilfully ignore the lessons you can learn from and achievements made by other, flawed humans is a tragic mistake. We should embrace progress wherever we find it, and not shut the door to those from whom we demand a standard that nobody can attain.