Why You Shouldn’t Put Anyone on a Pedestal—Least of All Yourself
In the previous chapter we exposed the “great men” theory as a fallacy. Yet there have been some “great men,” you might object—a few have shaped the fate of whole continents! One example would be Deng Xiaoping. In 1978 he introduced China to a free-market economy, liberating several hundred million people from poverty—the most successful development project of all time. Without Deng Xiaoping, China would not be a world power today.
Wouldn’t it? The analysis of British author Matt Ridley offers a different picture. The introduction of a market economy was never Deng Xiaoping’s intention. It was a development from below. In the remote village of Xiaogang, eighteen desperate farmers decided to share state land among themselves. Each one would be allowed to farm for himself. Only by this criminal act, they believed, could they make the land productive enough to feed their families. In fact, in the first year alone they produced more than in the previous five years combined. The generous harvest attracted the attention of the local party functionary, who suggested expanding the experiment to other farms. Eventually the proposal landed in the hands of Deng Xiaoping, who decided to let the experiment run its course. A less pragmatic party boss than Deng “might have delayed the reform, but surely one day it would have come,” wrote Ridley.
Fine, you may be thinking, but there are exceptions. Without Gutenberg, no books. Without Edison, no lightbulbs. Without the Wright brothers, no plane trips.
But not even that’s true, because those three were also products of their age. If Gutenberg hadn’t figured it out, someone else would have developed printing technology—or sooner or later the technology would have found its way from China (where it had long been known) to Europe. The same goes for the lightbulb: after the discovery of electricity, it was only a matter of time before the first artificial light was switched on. It wasn’t even Edison who got there first. Twenty-three other tinkerers are known to have made wires glow before he did. Ridley explains: “For all his brilliance, Edison was wholly dispensable and unnecessary. Consider the fact that Elisha Gray and Alexander Graham Bell filed for a patent on the telephone on the very same day. If one of them had been trampled by a horse en route to the patent office, history would have been much the same.” Similarly, the Wright brothers were just one team of many worldwide to combine gliders with an engine. If the Wrights had never existed, that wouldn’t mean you’d have to take the ferry to Mallorca. Somebody else would have developed motorized air travel. Ditto for virtually all inventions and discoveries. “Technology will find its inventors,” argues Ridley, “not vice versa.”
Even highly scientific breakthroughs are independent of specific people. As soon as measuring instruments achieve the necessary precision, eventually the discoveries will happen of their own accord. That’s the curse of science: individual researchers are fundamentally irrelevant. Everything there is to discover will, at some point, be discovered by someone.
The same goes for entrepreneurs and captains of industry. When the home computer was launched onto the market in the eighties, somebody urgently needed to design an operating system for it. That person happened to be Bill Gates. Somebody else might not have met with quite the same success, but we would have similar software solutions today. Our smartphones might not look as elegant without Steve Jobs, but they would function in more or less the same way.
My circle of friends includes a number of CEOs. Some lead major corporations with hundreds of thousands of employees. They take their jobs seriously, some working themselves into the ground and earning plenty of money in recompense. Yet they’re fundamentally interchangeable. A few short years after their retirement, nobody even remembers their names. Huge firms like General Electric, Siemens or Volkswagen must have had outstanding CEOs. But who knows their names today? It’s not just that they’re interchangeable; even their companies’ strong results have less to do with their decisions than with market trends as a whole. Warren Buffett puts it like this: “[A] good managerial record (measured by economic returns) is far more a function of what business boat you get into than it is of how effectively you row.” Ridley is a little blunter: “Most CEOs are along for the ride, paid well to surf on the waves their employees create. [… ] The illusion that they are feudal kings is maintained by the media as much as anything. But it is an illusion.”
Mandela, Jobs, Gorbachev, Gandhi, Luther, the famous inventors and the great CEOs—all were children of their age, not its parents. Each guided important processes using their own tactics, of course, but if it hadn’t been them it would have been somebody else. So we should be hesitant about putting “great men” or “great women” on a pedestal—and modest about our own achievements.
No matter how extraordinary your accomplishments might be, the truth is that they would have happened without you. Your personal impact on the world is minute. It doesn’t matter how brilliant you are—as a businessperson, an academic, a CEO, a general or a president; in the great scheme of things you’re insignificant, unnecessary and interchangeable. The only place where you can really make a difference is in your own life. Focus on your own surroundings. You’ll soon see that getting to grips with that is ambitious enough. Why take it upon yourself to change the world? Spare yourself the disappointment.
Okay, so maybe chance occasionally sweeps you into a position of great responsibility and you rise to the challenge masterfully. You’re the best entrepreneur, the wisest politician, the most capable CEO and the most brilliant scholar you can be. But don’t make the mistake of thinking that the whole of humanity has been waiting for you.
I don’t doubt for a moment that my books will vanish like stones dropped into the ocean of world history. After my death, my sons will probably still talk about me for a while. Hopefully so will my wife, and maybe even my grandchildren. But then that’s it. Rolf Dobelli will be forgotten—and that’s exactly as it should be. Not believing too much in your own self-importance is one of the most valuable strategies for a good life.