Since the earliest towns and cities formed there have been periods where “heroic societies” celebrated powerful men by showering them with women and luxury goods, burying them like kings and immortalizing them with legends and songs. Beowulf is kind of the archetypal example.
I strongly believe that in modern times whenever we’ve veered toward fascism it’s because that social memory leaked out.
It might be acceptable … might be … if there were any actual ‘Great men’ or even ‘Geniuses’ in our current generation. There are none.
We instead reward mediocrity and place emphasis on wealth and prestige rather than in anything that resembles intelligence.
There absolutely are great people and geniuses in every generation. There always will be, since both terms are relative comparisons to contemporaries.
Great people and geniuses tend not to be the sort of people who are drawn to exploiting others for profit or political power, so you can mostly safely assume anyone who is a billionaire or a career politician is neither great nor genius.
