review of Trevor Blake's "Great Man Theory"

review of

Trevor Blake's "Great Man Theory"

by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE

2257. "review of Trevor Blake's "Great Man Theory""

- complete review

- credited to: tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE

- uploaded to my Critic website July 27, 2024

- http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/CriticGreat.html

review of

Trevor Blake's"Great Man Theory"

by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - July 26, 2024

The complete review is here:

http://idioideo.pleintekst.nl/CriticGreat.html

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6704861237

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/209697781-great-man-theory

Every once in awhile, I don't give a star rating for a bk. This doesn't mean that I think that the bk is worthless, it means that no rating wd be accurate, the bk is too outside the scale. I have a vague memory that the last time I tried to do that that I was prevented somehow by Goodreads, perhaps I cdn't write a review until I'd assigned stars. If that turns out to be the case, I'll give this a 4 star rating.

This bk was given to me by my old friend Trevor Blake, the author. Usually, if not always, when I stay friends w/ someone over a stretch of decades, it's b/c we continue to find each other interesting & continue to treat each other decently. That makes them very valuable.

The cover of this bk has a painting called "Halo with Three Parhelia, Winter Harbour Melville Island" by Charles Hamilton Smith. It shows 3 men & a dog in a snowy environment, the men looking at a somewhat complex arrangement of geometrically arranged rainbows. For me, it's representative of humans going out into a harsh environment in order to observe a rare natural phenomena - although I imagine the geometrical arrangement may be superimposed &/or exaggerated by the painter. Whatever the case, the image, coupled w/ the title of the bk, evokes for me how extraordinary humans can be when we pursue our interests, our visions, w/ exceptional dedication. On the back cover there's a statement: "History is the echo of individual men who have shouted." I reckon people who whisper are much less likely to be heard.

"Great leaders come forward when they're most needed, in order to become the foundation upon which history is built. Essentially, according to the Great Man Theory, people in positions of power deserve to lead because of characteristics granted to them at birth, which ultimately help them become heroes." - https://thedecisionlab.com/reference-guide/anthropology/great-man-theory

Given that I'm an anarchist & that I don't think anyone "deserve[s] to lead" I find the above axiomatically oversimplistic. What constitutes the conditions under wch "they're most needed". I shd probably read the Decision Lab's entire article in order to better appraise their position but my purpose here is to review Trevor's bk so I'll get back to it. I don't necessarily find all leaders egregious, I find the achievements of Martin Luther King, Jr, e.g., to've been very welcome & important.

Are all Great Men, if one even accepts the category, inclined to extol themselves as such? I don't know. I generally dislike megalomaniacs so it wd be hard for me to accept one as a truly great man. I don't recall King's being a megalomaniac, Rump the Idiot King has always struck me as one, I prefer King. Rump seems more like a Great Malignant Narcissist. Trevor is modest:

"I have a certain advantage in writing Great Man Theory. Not being a Great Man myself, I may observe the field in full at a distance." - p 1

Am I a 'Great Man'? I like myself but I'm not a leader, I like myself but very few other people do. It seems that whatever my qualities might be they're not the ones that make a 'Great Man'. Perhaps that gives me an advantage in writing this review of a similar nature to the advantage Trevor considers himself to've had in writing it.

"The Hero Lectures of Thomas Carlyle, published as Heroes and Hero Worship in 1841, are exemplary. I found his book difficult to read, but easy to read aloud. Perhaps you will as well. The Hero Lectures are a survey of Great Men from antiquity to the men of his time, from legend to hard science. The Great Men of the Hero Lectures are Odin (legend), Muhammad (prophet), Dante and Shakespeare (poets), Luther and Knox (priests), Johnson, Rousseau and Burns (authors), and Cromwell and Napoleon (Kings)." - p 5

I find that interesting. I'd like to read a similar bk about people past 1841. Culture has changed, wd any poet be a 'Great Man'? Maybe it wd be the most popular rapper. Wd Odin be a 'Great Man' or wd it be Marvel superheroes? I have no idea who Knox is/was, perhaps he was a reformer like Luther.

The somewhat simple style of the cover of "Great Man Theory" & the style of writing & the slightly large type w/ the substantial space between text lines makes the bk seem, to me, to be aimed at younger readers. I don't know if Trevor had that intent. Everything seems spelled out in a simple & straightforward way. I find this approach appealing in the sense that it seems that the author wants to make his philosophical observations in a way that most readers might find easy to understand. But he does take a surprising little detour:

"A dishonest summary of my book, for dishonest readers.

"Those who will review my book without reading it, or having read it will review words I never wrote, will find I have here done their work for them. If you are an honest reader you will find opportunities to criticize my book, and I will thank you for it. And if you are an honest reader and you see the following sentiments in a review of this book, feel free to accuse such critics of plagiarism of this envoi, this dishonest summary.

"I, the author of Great Man Theory, am a Great Man, the Greatest of all Great Men." - p 11

Ha ha! Trevor values honesty, as do it. As for the last sentence quoted above, I have to wonder if Trevor just wanted to say it for the fun of it - even though he doesn't believe it.

There's a fair amt of anti-communism. I'm not pro-communism, I'm not pro-capitalism - but I find both to have their good points from time-to-time. A neighbor once sd something to me to the effect that innovations came about b/c of capitalism's reward motivator. Probably some innovations do - but I feel like I've been an innovator my whole life & that what motivates me is the sheer pleasure of it - so maybe my governmental system is HEDONISM.

"No new inventions can happen after communism, nor exploration.

"The Communist Manifesto was published in 1848. If the accurate records of capitalism had been frozen at that time, we would have no refrigeration, no heavier than air controlled flight, no computers, no internet, we would have nothing that capitalism had not already provided accurate records for by 1848." - p 18

Dziga Vertov's "Man with a Movie Camera" (1929) is one of the most innovative & inventive films I've ever seen, it was also made by a communist as a paean to the communist revolution. Alas, it was rejected by communist leaders & a more mediocre style of filmmaking was pushed for. The USSR was ahead of the US@ in the 'space race', certainly communists were innovators in that area. There, the competition was between social systems. The point being that I think there are exceptions to Trevor's blanket statement quoted above. It's hard for me to say wch social system caused the most misery, it seems to me that communism & capitalism might've been neck-in-neck on that one.

I found the section on Hercules particulary interesting:

"The dying centaur told Deianira that if the affections of Hercules ever strayed, that his own blood, now seeping from his arrow wound, would turn Hercules back toward Deianara. Hercules did stray and did know another Princess.

"Deianara applied the centaur's blood to Hercules' cloak, made from the skin of the Lion of Nema, gathered during his first great labor. Hercules put on the cloak. His flesh began to boil and Hercules collapsed in great pain. He had been touched by the blood of the centaur, which had mixed with the poison of the Hydra, which had been added to the tip of the arrow which had been shot by Hercules. The very actions of a Great Man can bring him down. Hercules had himself burned alive to escape the pain." - p 29

The big question is: in a gladiator match, who'd win, Christ?, or Hercules? They're both legends w/ Gods for fathers. Personally, I'd be gambling on the HEDONIST who'd be off somewhere other than the colliseum.

"The promise of equality for all after death is appealing to those men who are patient. In this life the race is not always won by the swift, not the battle always won by the strong; neither are essentials granted to the wise, not wealth granted to the clever, nor praise granted to the skillful.

"All is vanity, a bunch of hot air, or it seems that way. But after death, all who believe are promised they can stand as equals before the Lord. This idea was something new under the sun." - p 41

Whether the "idea was something new under the sun" I can't say. I don't really believe Trevor has a firm basis for that claim. Regardless, the promise was for those who believed, meaning they had to give up skepticism, give up free-thinking, AND their heavenly reward was to be in front of a master, their Lord. The promise was for a fictional reward in a fictional afterlife - still submitted to a hierarchy.

Personally, I prefer an equality in the present tense, NOT a rigged card game. Communism promises a non-rigged card game but doesn't deliver. Christianity promises a rigged card game & delivers something worse. HEDONISM promises nothing but delivers more good times than either communism or christinanity.

Trevor seems to believe that one tyrant replaces another, I tend to agree. Violent revolutions make things worse for some people that I might think deserve it, makes things better for some people who might need the relief, & then puts new people in power who essentially restore the imbalances under a new structure. Getting rid of the Czar only to replace him w/ Stalin wasn't a victory for free thinking.

"No sooner was the Kingdom of France free of its King than it was ruled by Maximilian Robespierre, First Citizen, member of the Committee for Public Safety (you're not against public safety, are you, Citizen?). No sooner was the Republic of France free of its First Citizen than it was ruled by Emperor Napoleon.

"No sooner was Russia free of its Czar Nicholas than it was ruled by Lenin. No sooner was China free of its Emperor than it was ruled by Mao. No sooner was Cuba free of its capitalists than it was ruled by Castro." - p 44

& France even hearkened back to "Public Safety" when it enforced its most recent tyranny enacted in the name of protecting citizens from a hypothetical pandemic. Nonetheless, each revolution showed that even the most entrenched powers cd be evicted, a heartening lesson.

"The Fourteenth Dalai Lama identified Gedhun Choekyi Nyima as the next Panchen Lama in 1995. Three days later the government of China kidnapped the Panchen Lama. He has not been seen in public since that day. The means for the Dalai Lama to be chosen in his next incarnation is now severed. The disappearance of the child Panchen Lama betrays a belief in Great Man Theory that few visible men could master." - p 49

It's thanks to Trevor that I've become interested in the life & writings of Dora Marsden, someone who was, for a while, prominent in the WSPU until she rebelled against it.

"Lies plague what must be one Great Woman, Emmeline Pankhurst. She and her daughters founded the Women[s] Social and Political Union (WSPU), who hold the lion's share of credit for votes for women in England.

"In England at that time, most men could not vote. Only men above a certain age, only men who had a degree of higher education, only men who owned property, only the upper crust of men could vote. This was the equal vote that the WSPU fought for. They fought for votes for women above a certain age, women who had a degree of higher education, women who owned property, a vote only for the upper crust of women and no other. Women like Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughters, as it happens." - pp 54-55

"The WSPU did seek the conscription and death of men. Two men died from a WSPU bomb. Other men were burned by fire or acid attacks. Business and home were burned to the ground, often with men and women inside when the WSPU set the fire.

"The WSPU was careful to emphasize no one was hurt by their arson, as if the lack of death were caused by caution and not incompetence. The WSPU made great show when they had a death of their own in Emily Davidson. She stepped before a speeding horse at a race and was trampled. Her military-style funeral was conducted by women who went on to become the first policewomen in England as well as members of Sir Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists." - p 56

Not exactly a pretty picture, eh? But the author isn't saying that all 'Great (Wo)Men' are beneficent, only that they have great power to influence.

"Great Man Theory includes tyrants. It also includes heroes, and men who were neither tyrants nor heroes but who were heard beyond the voice of most men." - p 77

"Sequoyah was a Cherokee man. He joined the Indian Regiment and fought with the United States against the Creek, a tribe which fought against the expansion of the United States. Sequoyah saw the advantages of literacy held by the United Stataes soldiers. They could record and deliver information at a distance and across time, be it letters to and from their family or military orders or provision records. He then made a choice that is without precedent in all of mankind's history.

"He did not learn the written language of his fellow soldiers. He did not learn their written language openly in a schoolhouse or furtively in secret. He did not learn any written language at all. Instead, he invented a written language." - p 61

I was already familiar w/ Sequoyah from reading & reviewing Mary Ulmer Chiltoskey's "Cherokee Words With Pictures" ( https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2184454981 ). From my review:

"1st, I find it phenomenal that one man, Sequoyah, wd've been visionary enuf to undertake the project of creating a written version of his people's language; 2nd, it interests me that this language was created phonetically, that each letter represents ONE SOUND & that with a knowledge of the alphabet & how to pronounce each letter one can read the words as groupings of those sounds &, therefore, recognize the word (if one knows it already). That seems like a very basic & sensible way to proceed."

Trevor is a good researcher & often exposes me to things I was previously unaware of. This next tidbit seems very indicative of how power functions. King James might've been a 'Great Man' but I'd avoid him like the plague.

"The work of Erasmus was used by Martin Luther when he translated the Bible into German, and William Tyndale when he translated the Bible into English. For his troubles, Tyndale was strangled to death and his body burned at the stake, by the orders of the King of England. King James then loaned his name to the King James Bible, largely based on the translation of William Tyndale." - p 63

Here's a relevant quote from a Wikipedia entry:

"In 1525, William Tyndale, an English contemporary of Martin Luther, undertook a translation of the New Testament. Tyndale's translation was the first printed Bible in English. Over the next ten years, Tyndale revised his New Testament in the light of rapidly advancing biblical scholarship, and embarked on a translation of the Old Testament. Despite some controversial translation choices, and in spite of Tyndale's execution on charges of heresy for having made the translated Bible, the merits of Tyndale's work and prose style made his translation the ultimate basis for all subsequent renditions into Early Modern English.

"With these translations lightly edited and adapted by Myles Coverdale, in 1539, Tyndale's New Testament and his incomplete work on the Old Testament became the basis for the Great Bible. This was the first "authorised version" issued by the Church of England during the reign of King Henry VIII. When Mary I succeeded to the throne in 1553, she returned the Church of England to the communion of the Catholic faith and many English religious reformers fled the country, some establishing an English-speaking community in the Protestant city of Geneva. Under the leadership of John Calvin, Geneva became the chief international centre of Reformed Protestantism and Latin biblical scholarship." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_James_Version

In this Wikipedia entry I find no mention of the particulars of Tyndale's execution & how that related to what happened to his translation. In other words, Blake's assertion isn't substantiated. Is this 'history' by omission? I tend to believe Blake over Wikipedia in this instance.

"A single river flows from Rome, to the Roman Catholic Church, to the Protestant Church, to Western European culture and history. All those discoveries, all that architecture, all those wars, all those deaths, all that culture, a roaring surge from a mountain of words." - p 64

Interesting point, eh? Having recently watched a movie about a Czech 'heretic' (read religious social reformer) named Jan Hus who was burned alive at the stake b/c of his publicly advocating against one of the Catholic Church's main ways of enriching itself, the selling of indulgences - in other words 'bribing God' to allow one's criminality - as well as stealing from the poor for any reason that the Catholic Church cd use to do so, I have a strong sympathy for the victims of the Church's astounding greed. All of this religious history, as alluded to above, is profound to think of given that, indeed, it was generated w/ WORDS, w/ DOGMA, a powerful tool still in effect today despite how consistently it's been exposed as anti-humanist in all-too-many-cases.

"If art is born of suffering, all men would be artists. Art comes from the choice to turn weakness into strength, ugliness into beauty, lies into truth." - p 67

Whew! I like the author's trying to simply express his philosophy, I don't always agree w/ it - but there's no-one's philosophy that I'll always agree w/ - instead I find the philosophy to be a stimulating springboard for the expression of my own thoughts, THANK YOU TREVOR for that.

"If art is born of suffering": IF. I've always had a dislike for the claim that art comes from suffering - &, yet, I think that most, if not all, great artists (IMO) do suffer. I dislike the claim b/c I don't want people to suffer & don't necessarily think that great art is worth suffering for. I don't think of myself as an 'artist' but I do think of myself as a creative person. I also think of myself as someone who suffers entirely too much on a daily basis - but that doesn't mean that I suffer nearly as much as many other people do. In fact, I wish these people didn't suffer so much & I hope to suffer less than I do - will my creative activity then suffer a dimunition of its 'power' instead? I hope not.

As for "If art is born of suffering, all men would be artists"? I don't agree w/ that. Some people have the imagination & the ability to convert the power of their suffering into something creative, others do not. This whole philosophical idea, wch is not what Trevor's expressing, that everyone's an artist is something I deeply disagree w/. Not everyone's a pilot, not everyone's a surgeon, why shd everyone be an artist? The assertion that everyone's an artist mediocritizes creativity by homogenizing it.

"Art comes from the choice to turn weakness into strength, ugliness into beauty, lies into truth.": I don't think that's really intrinsic to creative activity but I do think it's largely intrinsic to most creative activity I'm interested in. I prefer to use my personal term: "Psychopathfinding" - by wch I mean taking powerful urges & channeling them into constructive, or, at least, positive, output.

"Andrew Carnegie used his wealth to build libraries. Carnegie would fund the construction of a building and fill it with books in any city willing to accept his gift and maintain it from that time forward. Three thousand Carnegie libraries were built." - p 69

It's hard for me to not give Carnegie great credit for this, I'm thankful. Nonetheless, there's the nagging criticism: Behind every 'philanthropist' there's a theft greater than what's given back. Maybe I'm underappreciating Carnegie's management efficiency, maybe if the roots of his wealth were to've stayed more in the individual hands of the workers they wdn't've pooled together so brilliantly. That's a "What if?" scenario that will remain purely hypothetical. Are there any instances of united workers creating such a magnificent library system?

"In 1983 Stanislav Petrov of the Soviet Union had every reason to believe that nuclear missiles were incoming and had every responsibility to initiate a nuclear retaliation. But he did not. I've read many essays on the reasons he did not, and not one on the possibility that it was not a "reason" based choice. It was no if / then / else set of thoughts, it was "I prefer not to do this." That the world was saved by a whim, that individual men are that powerful, is a forbidden thought. In not pressing the button that would have bathed the world in a nuclear fire, Stanislav Petrov is a Great Man." - p 72

Petrov is certainly a Great Man to my mind but I don't think he really fits into Blake's definition of a 'Great Man' as presented elsewhere in this bk b/c he's too obscure. Perhaps I misunderstand. To repeat a quote:

"Great Man Theory includes tyrants. It also includes heroes, and men who were neither tyrants nor heroes but who were heard beyond the voice of most men." - p 77

"Petrov underwent intense questioning by his superiors about his judgment. Initially, he was praised for his decision. General Yury Votintsev, then commander of the Soviet Air Defense's Missile Defense Units, who was the first to hear Petrov's report of the incident (and the first to reveal it to the public in the 1990s), states that Petrov's "correct actions" were "duly noted". Petrov himself states he was initially praised by Votintsev and promised a reward, but recalls that he was also reprimanded for improper filing of paperwork because he had not described the incident in the war diary.

"He received no reward. According to Petrov, this was because the incident and other bugs found in the missile detection system embarrassed his superiors and the scientists who were responsible for it, so that if he had been officially rewarded, they would have had to be punished. He was reassigned to a less sensitive post, took early retirement (although he emphasized that he was not "forced out" of the army), and suffered a nervous breakdown." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov

"Anyone who says that software cannot match a man's intelligence is only spending time with very clever men. Software has matched men's intelligence at the lower end of men's intelligence for some time, and the degrees of men's intelligence that software can match is growing." - p 73

I think the problem in comparing artificial intelligence w/ human intelligence lies in how intelligence is defined - much as the idea of IQ has been criticized for being biased in limited cultural directions. I created the following movie as an attenpt to illustrate what I'm talking about:

683. "List4n,"

- credited to: tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE (&/or t4NTATIV4LY,a cONV4NI4NC4)

- made April 10, 2022

- 2k 60p, Stereo

- 1:24

- on my onesownthoughts YouTube channel here: https://youtu.be/NVaxAJJXJI8

- on the Internet Archive here: https://archive.org/details/list-4n

This movie is intended to show something that a human brain can do spontaneously that an AI wd have to be programmed to do - viz: interpret alternate symbols as representing what they're intended to. This is only one example of the incredible flexibility of human intelligence.

"The hesitation to entrust a single man with great responsibility is sometimes overcome with the reminder that a single man is in possession of a single neck. This most sensitive spot of all royalty shows a strength of the system that can never be found in bureaucracy nor democracy, in which everything is everyone's fault." - p 78

One of my favorite bks is Suetonius's "The Twelve Caesars". In the section on Nero there's a part about Nero falling out of favor & facing death by popular demand:

"a runner brought him a letter from Phaon. Nero tore it from the man's hands and read that, having been declared a public enemy by the Senate, he would be punished 'in ancient style' when arrested. He asked what 'ancient style' meant, and learned that the executioners stripped their victim naked, thrust his head into a wooden fork, and then flogged him to death with rods. In terror he snatched up the two daggers which he had brought along and tried their points"

[..]

"Then, with the help of his secretary, Epaphroditus, he stabbed himself in the throat" - p 243, 1989 Penguin edition of Suetonius's "The Twelve Caesars"

Is this likely to happen w/ a leader of today? Perhaps the closest example of recent note was the hanging of Nicolae Ceau?escu of Romania in December, 1989. What if George W. Bush's endorsement of torture had been recognized as the heinous crime I, at least, consider it to be? Cd he've been subject to Nero's fate? Bush was very careful to keep the public at great distance from himself.

"Marcus Aurelius carried out one of the last successful Roman pograms against the emerging cult of Jesus Christ. The Christians were persistent and patient and won out. In the Holy Roman Empire, when Christians held power, they carried out terminally successful pograms against the pagans. All of the pagan cults were driven from Rome in the late Roman Empire, and that included the Stoics. The chain of Stoic teaching from teacher to pupil was broken." - p 80

I've read the Stoic Marcus Aurelius & was pleasantly surprised at how reasonable he was in contrast to other Roman leaders. As for pagans?: If pagans are people who call for a respect of & reverant relation to nature I'm all for it. Christinanity's victory over Stoics & Pagans is a great loss for human sensitivity.

"Many men were great in a world that did not allow them to be Great Men. I will name just one: General Smedley Butler. It would have been a better world if the peace he negotiated with the Bonus Army had been honored by the United States Government, and if his exposure of the Business Plot had led to the men involved being held accountable, and most of all if his book War is a Racket had been influential instead of merely important. But the world was not up to his standards, and he is a man who was great instead of a Great Man." - p 87

Agreed. Wholeheartedly.

The author seems to've been raised w/ Christian morals, as was I. Unfortunately, my sense of history tells me that Christinanity rarely or never lived up to those morals. Hence, as part of my rejection of Christinanity I switched from religion-based morals to common-sense based ethics. Martin Luther King, Jr: YES, Smedley Butler: YES, Dora Marsden: YES, Marcus Aurelius: YES. Nero: NO, Ceau?escu: NO, Mussolini: NO, Bush: No, Emmeline Pankhurst: NO. They may've all been 'Great (Wo)Men' but that doesn't mean we have to like them all or even accept their role in history.

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