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How does this relate to Tolstoy? I don’t know much about him other than reputation as an author and moral reformer.

• emodendroket 3y ago
  War and Peace contains a lot of essays about his thoughts on how history moves along with Napoleon's invasion of Russia as a case study. Tolstoy argues that the conventional understanding that great men move history forward is wrong; rather, such men are carried along by events they have no control over and are simply obliged to ratify faits accomplis to appear to be leading anything. (he also argues Kutuzov was a great commander for intuitively understanding this and not trying to resist the current of history, unlike Napoleon)
  • neilk 3y ago
    That comports with my observations. But there are still differences to explain. For example, we even have natural experiments across the Chinese internet and American/European internet. The outcomes aren’t entirely fixed in advance, and individual actions, personalities and values do matter, when something new is being created.
    • emodendroket 3y ago
      Well, we could explain this by simply saying that different conditions shaped the two different things, regardless of what their leaders might have wanted. It's an interesting question how much you can ever attribute to one person.