Generational Dynamics World View

[John J. Xenakis]

** 24-Oct-2019 World View: Great Man Theory

Higgenbotham Wrote:> Among other attributes, to be a wildly successful entrepreneur it
> helps a lot to be super smart and super, super optimistic. Bill
> Gates and Jeff Bezos are both super smart and super, super
> optimistic. But being overly optimistic never helps when
> attempting realistic analysis applied to complex societal
> problems.

> https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/01/jeff-bez...space.html

I've been thinking a lot lately about the "Great Man Theory of
History," which says that great historical events occur because they
are brought about by great leaders, and further that these leaders are
born with these leadership skills (as opposed to learning them through
life experience). The theory was advanced by 19th century historian
Thomas Carlyle, and has been adopted since then by many historians,
who write histories as a series of stories told through great leaders.

So, for example, this theory might claim that Adolf Hitler was born as
a great leader who caused World War II and the Holocaust, and Winston
Churchill was born as a great leader who save the world from Hitler.

It's hard to overstate how thoroughly Generational Dynamics rejects
this theory. WW II and something like the Holocaust would have
occurred with or without Hitler, and the world would have been saved
from Hitler with or without Churchill.

However, there is a part of the Great Man Theory which is true -- that
politicians who are born with great visionary and leadership skills
self-select themselves to become the leaders to implement things that
are going to happen anyway.

So applying this, Hitler was a great visionary and born with great
leadership skills foresaw that public opinion was turning towards
genocide of Jews (a trend that Hannah Arendt documented in her 1950
book The Origins of Totalitarianism), and decided to implement
the genocide through the Holocaust. It's easier to make the argument
that Churchill was in the right place at the right time, and someone
else would have defeated Hitler without Churchill.

Many of Barack Obama's supporters believed that he was a Great Man who
would "heal the world" and remake society through his policies from
gun control to curing global warming. But in the end all his policies
failed. He couldn't even get the "simplest" of his policies
implemented -- closing Guantánamo prison. So what went wrong? Obama
was clearly born with exceptional leadership skills and great vision,
but he was stopped because his policies were opposed by huge masses of
people and generations.

Now look at Mao Zedong's Great Leap Forward. He was also born with
exceptional leadership skills and great vision, and he used those
skills to implement the Great Leap Forward which was the stupidest
agricultural and economic policy of any nation in the history of the
world, and resulted in the deaths of tens of millions of Chinese
through torture, executions and starvation. So what went "right" for
Mao's policies that let them be implemented? Mao was clearly born
with exceptional leadership skills and great vision, but he could not
be stopped because he was dictator, in control of the army, and able
to torture, jail and kill anyone who opposed him, a privilege that was
never afforded to Obama.

Donald Trump is often called a "dictator," but he's the same as Obama
in that all his policies are constantly being challenged, whether by
the courts or Congress or agencies.

So Mao Zedong, Barack Obama and Donald Trump are similar in that they
all had exceptional leadership skills and great vision, but the
difference is that Obama and Trump could be stopped, while Mao could
not be stopped.

And now, of course, China has a new dictator, Xi Jinping, who also has
exceptional leadership skills and great vision, and who is a dictator
who cannot be stopped, and he's going to bring disaster not only to
China but to the entire world. The interesting observation about
dictators is that they're as stupid as you and me, but they have no
one to challenge their stupidity, with disastrous results.

In an interview in 2014, Obama admitted failure: "I just wanted to add
one thing to that business about the Great Man Theory Of History. The
President of the United States cannot remake our society, and that’s
probably a good thing. Not probably. It’s definitely a good thing."

And of course the reason that it's a good thing is that even Great
Men make stupid mistakes.

So now let's circle back around to your point about Jeff Bezos and
Bill Gates, and their being "overly optimistic."

The "Great Man Theory" could apply equally well to government
leadership and business leadership, and Great Men in this category
self-select themselves to build successful businesses. So Jeff Bezos
and Bill Gates both have exceptional leadership skills and great
vision, and they built Amazon and Microsoft with those skills.

In many ways, a business leader is like a government dictator, because
a business leader often has dictatorial powers within his own company.
Using those skills, he can push the company to disaster (as is
happening with WeWork, and may be happening with Tesla), or he can
push his business to major success.

So business leaders and government leaders who are "overly optimistic"
might be very successful, but they might be stopped by the people,
one way or another.