Loving visitors means understanding the reasons behind their ignorance, not judging the ignorance itself.
Evidence
No, indeed; you are not to love people in any sickly sense. You are to love people in the sense that you never cease trying to understand them and to realize that whatever faults they have, whatever levity, whatever ignorance, they are not peculiar. People were not born with the special purpose of making an interpreter uncomfortable. “There, but for the grace of God, go I,” said the prelate as he saw the criminal marched to his doom. … The visitors who come for his services have seldom any expert, or even moderate, knowledge of the things they come to see or to experience. They come frequently with mere idle curiosity, or to kill time, or from boredom. It is for us to understand, and affectionately to weigh, not the ignorance, for that is apparent, but the reasons for the ignorance. — Freeman Tilden, Interpreting Our Heritage, 535
Categorization
- DEFINE: Precisely defines what Tilden means by ‘love of people’ — an active interpretive duty rather than sentiment toward individuals.
- XREF: Ch17 already insisted interpreters cultivate humility toward non-expert visitors — this deepens that into a positive method of understanding ignorance’s causes. — connects to: Commitment to memory is unnecessary when the interpreter loves the subject and the people. — Freeman Tilden, Interpreting Our Heritage, 532; A visitor’s understanding is ample once interpretation meets the visitor at their own expertise. — Freeman Tilden, Interpreting Our Heritage, 541; “Silly” visitor questions often mask polite appreciation, not ignorance — Freeman Tilden, Interpreting Our Heritage, 330 (+2 more)
Broader Connections
- Effective interpretation must engage visitors’ present anxieties, not just park facts
#corroborates(0.82) — Freeman Tilden, Interpreting Our Heritage, 58 - Indifference is a chosen self-blindness, not an innocent lack of awareness
#qualifies(0.75)