What are your thoughts on great man history? I kind of like it in a narrative sense. It's easier to tell a story when you have a protagonist.
It's overblown, but sometimes pretty true.
Like, if it wasn't for Genghis Khan, nobody today would know what the fuck a Mongol was.
It's empowering, the idea that one man can change history, it's also true.
>>85349
>Contradicts self completely
Also it's not overblown, history proffesors literally shit and piss all over the GMOH
Fucking cultural Marxist scum imo
>>85394
>shit and piss on GMOH
May i add except when they are talking about Marx and Stalin
>>85394
cool your meme jets, memester
If Caesar didn't exist, Rome still would've become an Empire. The forces at work there were larger than any one man.
>>85339
Great men often reflect existing trends and conditions, but that doesn't mean that they weren't great, or that their personal agency was unimportant in pushing events along. Mao and Liu Xiaoqi were in the same generation in the same movement, reflecting the same demographic changes in post-imperial China, but they would have been radically different in charge.
Humans evolved around telling stories.
Our ancestors, your ancestors sat around a fire every night and told stories to each other. Storytelling is encoded in our DNA.
So of course we're gonna try to make things into a cohesive story. Either after the fact or as a self-fulfilling prophecy.
>>85394
There is an extreme randomness factor to it. How many "great men" have we possibly lost to random disease, the chaos of battle, natural disasters? Or perhaps never getting the opportunity to ever recognise and later showcase whatever greatness they possessed because of the class they were born in?
I disagree with completely eliminating the concept (i.e. all people and history is shaped by external factors in the vein of gun germs and steel) and equating all peoples' talents. But these circumstances surely do play a part.
What came first? The great man or the great event?
>>85432
But can the same be said of Marius or Sulla or, to some extent, the Gracchi brothers? It seems to me that the fall of the Roman republic was kind of a great man thing. Sure, the Gracchi might have just been able to tell what way the wind was blowing, but they still pushed things off.
>>85394
history these days is a mix of the GMOH and trends and forces. it is actually pretty balanced, you probably just had shit profs.
>>85532
I graduated in 2000 from UT Austin with a degree in history and they literally shat all over GMOH theory, I was so pissed and it still makes me angry to this day
>>85394
there's catalysts and there's the materials for the reaction itself
great men can make great catalysts but they aint shit without external circumstances for the man to take advantage of
>>86176
External circumstances caused by other men unless we are talking random acts of nature
>>85339
A lot of the "great Men" were self-interested jerks who were just in it for themselves. They would cause conflicts and wars for fun.
>>86204
That's why the Great Man Theory holds, because the whims and faults of these Great Men can subvert or alter the direction of the events that brought them about.
It's bullshit. Only used to teach drooling idiots like OP who can't follow anything unless there is a "narrative."
>>86260
>dunning-kruger
>>85339
The truth is it's all economics, trust me
>>86300
No fuck you
