Originally posted by inimalist
no, I do get thatI'm more criticizing the "great man" interpretation
For me, someone like Mohammed or Alexander, sure, they were as individuals very important, but imagine either were born 100 or 200 years earlier/later, its entirely debateable as to whether we would know them at all.
Similarily, I tend to think that in most cases, history is governed by social and economic forces, meaning that most of these "great people", imho, would have been replaced by a marginally similar collegue. For me, if there were no Hitler, someone would have capitalized on the social forces of Europe at the time.
But that doesn't prevent the existence of "great men". Someone else could have been Hitler, certainly, but the way things turned out Hitler was Hitler and as a result he did have a disproportionate effect on history.
Or consider history as a top of the line sports car. Innumerable factors go into that design. Similarly history is built by the actions of large numbers of nameless people. Nonetheless when it comes right down to it the car is still being driven by one person and history is strongly guided by "great men". That anyone can be put in that drivers seat strikes me as having limited importance.
I guess the real problem with the "great men" idea is that people start to think that these figures were inherently important. That Hilter would have started a world war no matter what the world was like or Alexander would have conquered so much no matter who opposed him along the way.
Originally posted by inimalist
Though ya, the total ignorance of Eastern contributions to history, African contributions, or Islamic contributions outside of religion are pretty shameful for a modern education system...(though, that text books thread)
What annoyed me as a kid was that I got something like six years of US history (of which almost half was repeating old stuff) and only about three years of foreign history. It's not like they couldn't trim the curriculum in order to round it out just a bit.
and like, its not that I think history would have been even remotely the same if certain people were never to have lived, maybe more that history creates situations where people, should they posess just the right qualities, can exploit these situations for enormous social change... But that historical "priming" would be, imho, the most critical factor... blah, wont just ramble about relativity of situations...
EDIT: ha, that works to answer both Sym and mindship!
but ya, I can't deny that the individual was important, its just I thnk far too much importance is placed on the person. Like, how well does anyone understand ww1? compared to ww2? "We had to stop facism, ie, Hitler, Musilinni, the Japanese guy they never taught me about in school (yay canadian curriculum, we only learn about British/French history[technically, we are still Colonized])"
I'm not a Marxist, but I tend to think economic factors, at least, have as significant of an impact on geopolitics and history as the personality of the leaders. Among other things, ya?
Originally posted by inimalist
despite my best efforts, no man is an island
There WERE multiple political and military figures that held anti-Semitic ideals, the same as Hitlers. However, I am unsure if they had the same political prowess and drive as Hitler did.
In fact, if someone else did the power thing, like Hitler, it may not have even been the same. It could have been *multiple "littler" guys popping up.
It could have been a "good" guy that united some of Europe. Nothing big might have happened and Germany would have slowly stabilized, economically, or had a great depression.
*lol, I said little guys popping up. WEEEEE!
inimalist, I tend to agree with your analysis. For me, the figure best highlighting this is Ronald Reagan. In short, I could never shake the feeling that he was the Right Guy at the Right Time, for better and/or worse.
(btw, in mentioning him, I don't mean to imply he should be on a "Biggest Impact" list: he certainly isn't on mine.)
Originally posted by dadudemon
There WERE multiple political and military figures that held anti-Semitic ideals, the same as Hitlers. However, I am unsure if they had the same political prowess and drive as Hitler did.In fact, if someone else did the power thing, like Hitler, it may not have even been the same. It could have been *multiple "littler" guys popping up.
It could have been a "good" guy that united some of Europe. Nothing big might have happened and Germany would have slowly stabilized, economically, or had a great depression.
*lol, I said little guys popping up. WEEEEE!
ya, absolutly, the individual matters
The most interesting thing about Hitler and Germany is that the nation, compared to most places in Europe, was very pro-Jew. During the very first discussions among the origional Jews who emmigrated to Isreal to reestablish a homeland, Germany was discussed as a possible alternative. I forget her name, but a famous female Jewish refugee remarked that the worst thing Hitler had done (not sure if the death camps were running at this point) was to strip her of her German-ness.
But, the German people, the economy, the whole geopolitics of the depression and the end of ww1 sort of created this place where a strong man could rise and take such control. I think some more general tendencies of power struggles make it more predictable that someone willing to mobilize a "Brown shirt" goon squad to kill political opponents and rough people up in the streets is going to fill a power vaccum like that, but by no means do I believe it had to be Hitler or it would be if we re-rolled history starting at 1900.
Originally posted by Mindship
inimalist, I tend to agree with your analysis. For me, the figure best highlighting this is Ronald Reagan. In short, I could never shake the feeling that he was the Right Guy at the Right Time, for better and/or worse.(btw, in mentioning him, I don't mean to imply he should be on a "Biggest Impact" list: he certainly isn't on mine.)
totally. I'd say even the election of Obama follows that somewhat, maybe more in the way he became a worldwide celebrity more than the election itself...
Let's see...
- Zoroaster for founding a dualistic religion that would heavily influence Judaism.
- Cyrus the Great for founding the Achaemenid dynasty and being a general badass.
- Alexander the Great for spreading Hellenism around and being a general badass.
- Antiochus Epiphanes for being suck a prick that the Jews would write literature inspired by his actions, leading to the book of Daniel and modern day Dispensationalism.
- Julius Caesar and Octavian for butf*cking The Republic.
- Flavius Belisarius for being an utter badass and conquering a bunch of the fallen Western Roman Empire for Justinian I with minimal aid.
- Charles Martel The Hammer for butf*cking the Moors and halting the spread of Islam in Europe.
- Charlemagne for redefining Europe and ushering in a cultural legacy that would define the Middle Ages.
- Pope Gregory VII for his role in the Investiture Controversy, cementing the power of the Church against secular rulers for years to come.
- Chengis Han, for starting an Empire that would transfer ideas back and forth from Europe all the way to Asia, oh and for being an utter badass.
- Louis XI, for reestablishing the power of the French Monarchy.
- Henry VIII for establishing the power of secular Kings against the Church (and for of course being a total dick.)
- Peter the Great of Russia for his incredible ego and turning Russian into a Great Power.
- Napoleon for his wars which would shift European power balances and for being a badass.
- Marx for well being Marx and developing ideas that would shake the world.
- Bakunin for being the father of annoying, overly optimistic, Anarchist teenagers that dress in black and commit vandalism to prove their independence.
- Hitler and Stalin for being the two most talked about pricks of the twentieth century and for somehow becoming Atheist poster boys.
There are plenty more but screw it, there are too many of them.
EDIT - I almost for Hegel, the man that inspired Marx and a bunch of other Philosophical advances either for or against him.
Originally posted by Bicnarok
[b]Albert Einstein is top of my list, without his equations, thought experiments and advancements we woulnd´t be as technically advanced as we are now.If fictitious characters like Jesus and Mohamed are allowed then Darth Vader must be in there as well. [/B]
I disagree as there were several greats around his time. In fact, there were greats before his time. I'm quite certain someone would have popped up with something very similar to relativity. In fact, I don't even think that was wholly original to Eisenstein, he just had the brain to mish-mash some ideas together and expand upon those...which is really where his genius comes in.
However, I am glad he WTF PWNED! those newbs with his light bending eclipse prediction. So bad ass. I LOVE it when the naysayers (especially when they are the masses AND are very educated scientists) are pwned so thoroughly.
Edit - Gravitational lenses, berches.
Originally posted by dadudemon
I disagree as there were several greats around his time. In fact, there were greats before his time. I'm quite certain someone would have popped up with something very similar to relativity. In fact, I don't even think that was wholly original to Eisenstein, he just had the brain to mish-mash some ideas together and expand upon those...which is really where his genius comes in.
In fact the invariance of light speed was discovered and proven by Maxwell (which is where Einstein got the idea) and E0 =mc^2 was discovered before he did (although Einstein didn't know that). The concept a maximum wattage was conceived of before Einstein (but Planck had the number wrong).
Einstein's real contribution to science was seeing what these things implied, before him they were curiosities that someone would get around to exploring later.