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This is M60A2 erasure and I won't stand for it.
Aw, that's adorable, the same way miniature trains are adorable.
None of that happened though.Personal Opinion Only: when the Mongols destroyed the House of Wisdom, it was part of a general destruction of the city and just gets lumped in with that, conversely the Christians burning the Library under Cyril (after they skinned the librarian alive with sea shells, set her on fire and literally tore her apart for the crime of being a powerful female opposed to Cyril) it was with the express intent of destroying knowledge.
While, I don't believe in Great Man Theory, I sometimes think people take it too far in the other direction.
For me Great Men (and Women and so forth) make clear and solidify what the great sweep of history has to offer.
While, I don't believe in Great Man Theory, I sometimes think people take it too far in the other direction.
No you don't understand! Everybody in history gets a nice liberal participation trophy. Random Man A and Random Woman B in the ditch who nobody knew in life and nobody knows in death are just as important as Alexander and other famous folks.
It's pure elitism and fascism to point out most people lives thoroughly insignificant lives while a few really smart or really lucky people changed the course of human civilization forever.
I have no evidence for this but believe it wholeheartedly. Or maybe it's the shift from wargaming to adventuring rpgs, like d&d?The rise of Great Man Theory is deeply tied to the death of the RTS and the rise of MOBAs where instead of controlling multiple units, we control one hero and everyone else is just second fiddle. In this essay I will
Hard to be a more impressive institution when the House of Wisdom... wasn't one to begin with.I only looked into it briefly, but the House of Wisdom that was in Baghdad seems like a more impressive institution than the Library of Alexandria.
Don't know why I never see anybody going on about the destruction of that library.
For me Great Men (and Women and so forth) make clear and solidify what the great sweep of history has to offer.
Mostly just because it's a theory that flatters the people in power and those who consider themselves temporarily inconvenienced Napoleons.
To be a pedant, Lenin didn't really say that, but it was the official line of the USSR pretty much the instant he actually died, so your example still works, it's just that he himself wasn't that self-aggrandizing .Also as far as it goes, it's never going to end because powerful people have basically every reason to intentionally delude people into thinking they're the focal point of all things. Rulers throughout history have basically intentionally told myths and lies, and for a long time historians just swallowed them whole. "Of course Lenin was the guiding heart and soul of the Bolsheviks, the indispensable man without whom none of it, none of the Bolsehevik's rise to power would have happened. After all, Lenin told us this. Repeatedly. And wouldn't Lenin know?" to use an example at random.
If he'd said it a thousand years ago we wouldn't have been able to fact check him at all, honestly.
"Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past." - Karl Marx
No one, even the people most opposed to the theory think individuals are entirely irrelevant. That'd be silly.
1) I get the feeling that in this discussion "Great Man theory" is being used to name two different things. One of these things is the idea that sometimes the ideas, choices, and actions of an individual have a profound effect on history. The other is the idea that the mass of humanity receives most progress and culture as gifts from a handful of geniuses, and without that handful of special people we'd all still be living in huts and hunting dinner with obsidian-tipped spears and also we'd eat raw meat and communicate by grunts cause fire and language were invented by Ug and Thogg on January 4, 3,264,072 BCE and July 12, 52,166 BCE, respectively. I think the "geniuses invented everything and did everything important" version of Great Man theory is the one people usually have a problem with, and the one people are usually thinking of when they say "Great Man theory" with a sneer. It's obviously the version that's easier to argue against, if nothing else because it makes a much more specific claim about how society works. It's also the version that's obvious catnip to defenders of hierarchy.