Aspects of the elusive concept of greatness

We know greatness when we see it but find it difficult to define for ourselves. Some people are born with a talent for greatness, others manage to develop it. 

Many presidents of nations and large corporations try to establish a legacy that will make them be remembered as "a great leader". Most of them fail miserably in that particular goal because they have not understood what greatness is and if you do not know what it is, you won't know how to attain to it either.

Observation of extremes on the grandest scale possible clarifies otherwise obtuse subjects. This principle of philosophical research does two things. First it makes the special characteristics jut out and secondly, it acts as a magnifying glass. 

So, let's first scan some people who are acknowledged as really great presidents in the political arena. We still promote the idea of democracy as established by politician and general Pericles (495 - 429 BCE) in Athens 2500 years ago and who was hailed as "the foremost citizen of Athens" for forty years. The brilliance of the democracy concept is that for the first time there is a mechanism by which bad rulers could be disposed peacefully while at the same time give the population the idea, some would say illusion, it is recognised and listened to. We are in awe of emperor Qin Shi Huang (259 - 204) who founded and united China as we know it today and who made it so strong by imposing an imperial language, a uniform writing system, a uniform educational system, and one coin for all of his empire, that it survived many a turmoil of unimaginable savageness. After 2600 years, China finally is on the verge to realise Qin's vision of China as the supreme, or at least eminent, world power. At school we learn about King Charlemagne (742 - 814). He could not read but still managed to put a stop to the incessant downfall of civilisation and all of the petty wars in North-Western Europe. He unified an area almost identical to the countries comprising the European Union when it was founded as a political entity in 1957. And then there is Winston Churchill (1874 - 1965) who in 2002 was voted the greatest man that ever lived in the United Kingdom. He railed against the Nazi's and Hitler in a time that even royalty was sympathising with them and the Prime Minister of Great Britain, Neville Chamberlain, followed an appeasement policy. But he was considered a war monger and was banaished from politics. Churchill claimed in 1945 that Europe needed to unify after 2000 years of incessant wars and conflict and warned not to let Stalin and communism usurp Eastern Europe. It was all in vain. People were weary after five years of devastating world war and considered him an unrealistic war monger. Churchill was dispised by his peers, found unrealistic and overly worried. He was only understood after the Iron Curtain (1945 - 1991) was let down over Europe, splitting it into two, and after the  European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), the first precurser of the European Union, had been founded (1951). The UK, or rather, England, still basked in the fading light of the times it was a super power where the sun never set, and a majority of the English still do. Only reluctantly it joined the European Union in 1973 but regretted it within a year when Thatcher and her crew discovered that the views they considered superior and ostensibly better, were not appreciated and found unrealistic in the rest of Europe. As of this writing, the people who still live in 1898 instead of 2019 see a chance to finally extricate themselves from the EU, disregarding the realities and correctness of the great vision of Churchill. That they weaken the UK considerably by doing so is no matter to them. Great politicians who understand the future so that their influence spans wide areas and many centuries, are rare and far between indeed. 

The first element: against the grain

The scourge of political correctness blinds us on the one hand and obliges us to consider all kinds of people great who aren't.
In the corporate sector we tend to think of tycoons but the jury is often still out on whether they are to be considered great or not. Today, there is only Elon Musk who has a chance to become remembered in posterity as great but that will be because of his visionary intentions to help the people of this planet, not because of his wealth or companies. Offhand I would not know one single president of any company today or in the past that I would consider a truly great man. Success, wealth, and charity in later life do not equal greatness, especially not in the USA where charity is used and abused as a tax shelter.
It is often in dire, seemingly hopeless circumstances that a great man or woman stands up and handles it to redemption.
At this writing there is an opportunity for greatness in the American society of the USA. About half of the population is still believing in the myth of a pioneer society as the optimum course, i.e. where every man has to fend for himself and it is deemed a good thing not to be interested in one's fellow man, regardless of his needs. That myth is untenable in view of the huge difference between modern society and the society in which the American Constitution was written, 1787, but somehow half of the Americans do not think modern society is different. Apart from that, the immense changes that are imminent upon all of us because of artificial intelligence, robots, the rise of China, the huge overpopulations in India, Africa and South-America, an ageing population, and climate change, are all factors that cannot be addressed from an individualist viewpoint with private, petty interests as the principal guiding factor. Yet, the latter is done in the USA, and the former is denied, all out of short-term political expediency and private interests that are infinitesimal small compared to the issues that need be addressed. But these days, filling the private bank accounts of politicians is deemed far more important than saving the nation from disaster, let alone the world. This total misunderstanding of reality creates an opportunity for people to elevate oneself to real greatness. We need to wait who will rise to challenge the self-sufficient, self-interested powers that be of today in the USA.

The second element: greatness is rare

Frankly, everybody on this planet has a chance at greatness. Many nameless nurses are greater than most politicians who get a kick out of finding their names in the news.
Real greatness that is recognized on a grand scale by one and all is a rare thing indeed. There is a real dearth of great people because people who have potential are often stamped into the ground for reasons of political or corporate expediency. Nicolas Tesla is now being recognized as one of the greatest but in his time he was victim of a misinformation campaign because his inventions would save the Earth but wreck financial interests, especially those of Thomas Edison and banker John Pierpont Morgan.
We want to live in a time together with great men and therefore want to crown people as great, e.g. with the Nobel Prizes, so we can say "I have known that man/woman. I lived in his time." My criteria for greatness appear to be different from those of the Nobel Prize committee so I find it difficult to talk about that.

The third element: lighting the fire by himself

The third element of greatness is that the halo of greatness can only be lit by the person himself and can only be seen from a distance. It seems the lapse of time is needed that history imposes between us and them for us to see clearly. (See illustration of Buddha in Greco-Indian style.) Greatness tends to be bestowed on a person by wide consensus long only after the fact. So, for the person himself it seems an illusory objective yet it is highly sought-after in the here and now and therefore many of us want to know how to be great. 

If greatness stems from an inner lantern that guides and illuminates great thoughts, greatness also needs circumstances to foster it and let it come to fruition. The truly great man knows he has to find such circumstances and, if he can't find them, create them himself, as has been observed by the playwright George Bernhard Shaw in 1893 when he was 36, as well as by the American oil tycoon, J. Paul Getty in 1968 when he was 75. 

The frailty and vanity of legacy seekers

Many presidents of states and big companies seek a legacy that will assure posterity of their greatness. Unfortunately for most of them, they tend to think about this star-high goal in terms of the context of the culture they live in. It is the way their culture happened to be functioning at that time that brought them to a position of sufficient power and renown to be able to do great things. But to subsequently try and seek greatness within that context is a fatal error. The truly great rise above the exigencies of the day and impose ideas and values that serve Man well and will last for decades if not centuries to come. That is an extremely difficult thing to do. This is why I only see Elon Musk as a candidate for greatness. He is fought tooth and nail by the fossilised vested interests of fossil fuel, i.e. oil and motor car companies like General Motors. America's governments refuse to put an infrastructure in place to facilitate electric vehicles and so he had to find a solution for that, too. He works on ultrafast trains in a tube and commercial space exploration and exploitation on the cheap when his governments have not paid heed to infrastructure for decades and are only interested in space for military purposes and for population control.

Funnily, some think mistakenly greatness has to do with buildings because buildings are reminiscent of a particular time. The line of thought must be something like, "If I am not going to be considered great, then a least they will remember me by my building." The building should carry their name like the Guggenheim Museum. Even better, when the building carries out a specific unique function that is of value to the culture or the land like The Site of François Mitterand of the National Library of France (see picture) Le site François Mitterrand de la BnF). The enormity of the building is intended to 'prove' that this was a great president. But the building is ugly, badly conceived, too costly, and not very popular to say the least. It is a perfect illustration of the man, though, be it the opposite of what Mitterand intended it to be. His imposing self-righteiousness communist Soviet style shows in the building by examplifying not only his faulty allegiencies, it also shows why he was hated and the way in which he tried to suppress 160 religions, including those of two American presidents of his time, that did not happen to be his own.
Mitterand was president of France from 1981 till 1995 and felt upstaged by his predecessor, the banker and innovative negotiator Georges Pompidou, French president from 1969 - 1974, who was not only a better man by himself and better liked by the French people, but also had left an exremely innovative architectural marvel called Centre Pompidou that even today attracts 3.75 million visitors a year. Mitterand was more of a little man and wanted to impose colossal and expensive monuments, ostensibly to symbolise the elevation of society by his socialist party but in reality to be remembered himself. He had the biggest possible librarybuilt against staggering costs, perhaps inspired by American presidents who tend to be remembered by a library in honour of their name as well. In spite of all of his building, he is not considered a great man, perhaps exactly because of that building for the architecture is, perhaps unsurprisingly for an old-school socialist who nationalised the banks, of an old-school soviet style ugliness and 19th century energy inefficiency, that has not been seen for a long time before or after in France. See picture. 

The bedrock of greatness lies in the spirit

Eventually, even the ones who won't listen to anyone, come to the awareness that true greatness does not reside in the physical but in the spiritual. 
True greatness stems from creating and implementing ideas and findings with wide impact and great benefit to many many people, or the exposition of a breakthrough, 
 i.e. the thing that drives most scientists. Winston Churchill sr., chosen as the greatest Englishman that ever lived, is credited with unifying his people and installing hope in all them by painting them a worthwhile future to strive for in the most dire of times when all seemed lost and hopeless. And then, once that goal of peace and human dignity had been achieved, he turned to keep that achievement by calling for a military union that grew into the NATO and proposing a federal Europe, which today has become the European Union. And no wars have ensued since and prosperity abounded in Europe. Now, that is true greatness.

This essay has been inspired by my aggravation from reading an piece of nonsense by Robert Faulkner, professor of political science at Boston College.

Amsterdam, 27 June, 2019