The Kaiser and a "Mediocre Man" Theory of History

One factor here is how systems become more or less prone to creating great or mediocre men. Inbreeding, isolation, over romanticism of emotions, all these are factors that can make a dangerous inconsistent person more likely to appear in the halls of power

Of course mediocre and bad leaders make their mark on history. But Carlyle's Great Men theory is more about paradigm shifts that Great Men can will into existence, not just random noise they bring along. The problem with GM theory is that there is only a handful of examples to support it. Napoleon is one such example, and it was undoubtedly the inspiration why the theory was proposed in the first place. People were trying to come to terms with the fact that one leader can have such a dramatic impact on the entire world.

When you look at white noise from up close, you see dramatic changes, periods of calm, and what seems like patterns.

Only when you step back, you realise all that drama you read is mostly inconsequential. What will be the impact of Napoleon 1000 years from now? Of Columbus? If instead of Hitler Germany had Rohm? It’s all monkeys and typewriters all the way down. What matters are the structural forces, the natural resources, the geography, and so on. Chances are it’ll be all forgotten in a billion years.

Now, on a more serious note, did anyone else, at some point, started wondering whether the article was really about Wilhelm II?

You could fit in most senior directors, consultants and sales VPs into that bucket comfortably.

Good read, interesting choice as there are a lot of such examples

This entire article tries to make a point that it's not just "great men" or "structural forces" alone being responsible for the course of history, but then completely misses the point again by labeling someone in power as mediocre and arguing that that mediocrity caused much of the events of the 20th century.

This once again causes oversimplifies history to a few people and some nebulous "structural forces", and provides an attractive but wrong model of how history developed. In software terms we would call this a "leaky abstraction", and this particular abstraction leaks so much it's barely useful at all.

The world is much too complex to be understood by examining less than at least a few hundred million people. That this is beyond the capability of humans is not the world's problem.

Probably greatness is most powerful if there are enough powerful mediocrities to work against.

Reflect on this in the context of the US right now. Makuthink.

> If it was the social and political forces of the French Revolution that made Napoleon successful, the logical conclusion is that it would have made no difference to the course of history should he have, say, suffered a fatal stroke in 1801, a premise few would accept. It is clearly untrue when applied to specific cases. Not only who ends up in power, but the specific decisions they make are deeply consequential. Who would really contend that the 20th century would remain unchanged had Hitler been killed in WWI?

Isn't the idea more that the large-scale political forces are what allow those supposedly "great men" to become "great" in the first place? Yes, once Napoleon was in power, a lot of the details of history were dependent on his individual decisions - but the forces that led to the French Revolution were what gave him that power in the first place. An if he had actually died of a stroke, or if Hitler had been killed in WWI, then the specifics of history would have been different, but probably not the large-scale trajectory: Post-revolutionary France would still have been there and the deep divisions, senses of injustice and reactionary and capitalist influence in post-WWI Germany that gave rise to the Nazi movement would also still have been there. And chances are, other "great men" would have emerged and captured those forces.

As such, I see the relationship more like the one between lightning strikes and wildfires: Yes, a particular wildfire might have been caused by that particular lightning strike (or careless hiker or whatever), but the reason why that particular local event could spiral into a blaze that burns down acres and acres were the larger environmental conditions, i.e. hot weather, wind and dryness. And if firefighters could take a time machine and prevent that particular cause, then it's likely another random event would trigger a slightly different but still extremely similar wildfire - so not much would have been won.

some interesting ideas but something feels off with the language used.

This point of view implies that the revered "great men" should be stripped of their wealth and power as much as possible. They're not necessary for history, so no need to disproportionally allocate resources to them.