h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Interesting. There's a debate among historians -- about which I hope someone who knows more about it than I can provide information -- about the respective merits of the 'Great Men' view of history -- the sort that focuses on characters like Caesar, Napoleon, etc. and views them as the primary causes of history's having taken one path rather than another -- and the view that such people are essentially the tip of the iceberg, and that their achievements are merely the product of historical forces. (At least one 'Great Man' himself held the latter view; Bismark referred to himself as the 'helpless child of time', I think, and said that it was possible only to steer within the current of historical events, listening for God's footsteps and trying to catch 'the hem of His garment'.)

The moral attitudes, especially, of the ideal world, were for a long time in what was then 'Christendom' set by the Church -- later Churches -- although it didn't follow that clergy would follow their own doctrines. Their claim to moral authority was part of the reason _why_ they were part of the ruling class.

It is the case that the West is widely thought of as being strongly individualistic, in contradistinction to the Far East which is seen as being more group-oriented; regarding how social attitudes can operate in these conditions, try A571565.

I heard on a rap album some speaker asking the question:

What would George Washington or Martin Luther King have been without thousands of people standing gehind them with the will to make their dreams a reality.

Was the defeat of Hitler a feather in the cap of Stalin, Churchill and Eisenhower or the acheivement of the men and women who gave thier lives and limbs for the cause. Was it the ideas of those three men or the determination of millions of others? or was it even Hitlers own folly in not defeating his enemies one by one?

one love

The Great Men view of History, I guess this has been being discussed for a while since it seems a large part of 'War and Peace' is setting out to rubbish that idea isn't it?

So I'm told, although I've yet to get around to reading the book.