The true measure of your morality is what you sacrificed for other people.
By that standard, most leaders are failures. I suspect most founders of states, war heroes and freedom fighters had far less noble motives than is commonly claimed. Allow me to add to your piece two (admittedly extreme and well-known) examples:
Napoleon never put the interests of the French above his own. All his toils were merely the self-inflicted result of his relentless ambition. That became most obvious after his disastrous Russian campaign, when he rejected multiple peace offers, claiming that this would be too dishonourable. His lust for warfare was so great that eventually his opponents realised that a lasting peace with France would be impossible as long as Napoleon was in power and consequently declared war on him personally, rather than his country. They were right, as later events would prove. Even after Paris had fallen, Napoleon still considered military operations. A year later, he invaded the Low Countries to fight for his throne instead of seeking exile in the United States.
Hitler, of course, was much worse. A draft-dodger in his youth, he had never even payed taxes when he took office, and never would. This is not unremarkable because as a Nazi, he espoused and claimed to embody the most extreme form of patriotism yet invented. His public image painted him as a selfless man who had sacrificed all of his personal life for the benefit of the German people. In contrast, he did not even make a serious effort to overcome his natural shiftlessness while in office. After Stalingrad, he knew the war was lost, but continued it for years until the Russians were about to capture him in his bunker. He only committed suicide because he was afraid of what they might do to him. In his last days, he even declared that the German people had proven themselves weaker than the races of the east, to whom the future now belonged. Since they had failed (him, presumably), he ordered the entire country to be destroyed, since it deserved no future.
Sure, if we look in the history books, we're going to find people who are largely in it for their own glory, and you've ably pointed at some of the failure cases of the bare fact of "immortal glory in stories and memories exists" distorting people's incentives. And this was a particularly Greek and Roman thing, this obsessions with immortality in memory and story!
But isn't this selection? Don't most generals just actually do their jobs? And don't we have just as many "good general" stories in Roman history? Cincinnatus, Cunctator, Scipio Africanus, and much more.
And even if we look at the "great men," the glory-greedy empire builders like Napoleon or Alexander or Genghis Khan, didn't they have loyal generals and subordinates who faithfully did their job, often at a really high standard, and this was a large part of their success?
Genghis' Tsubodai, Alexander's Craterus and Seleucus, and I don't know enough about Napoleonic history there, but I'm sure he had somebody.
I feel like most generals in most countries just largely did their jobs, sometimes well, sometimes badly, but doing it badly SPECIFICALLY for personal glory at the cost of state and countryment is probably relatively rare.
The true measure of your morality is what you sacrificed for other people.
By that standard, most leaders are failures. I suspect most founders of states, war heroes and freedom fighters had far less noble motives than is commonly claimed. Allow me to add to your piece two (admittedly extreme and well-known) examples:
Napoleon never put the interests of the French above his own. All his toils were merely the self-inflicted result of his relentless ambition. That became most obvious after his disastrous Russian campaign, when he rejected multiple peace offers, claiming that this would be too dishonourable. His lust for warfare was so great that eventually his opponents realised that a lasting peace with France would be impossible as long as Napoleon was in power and consequently declared war on him personally, rather than his country. They were right, as later events would prove. Even after Paris had fallen, Napoleon still considered military operations. A year later, he invaded the Low Countries to fight for his throne instead of seeking exile in the United States.
Hitler, of course, was much worse. A draft-dodger in his youth, he had never even payed taxes when he took office, and never would. This is not unremarkable because as a Nazi, he espoused and claimed to embody the most extreme form of patriotism yet invented. His public image painted him as a selfless man who had sacrificed all of his personal life for the benefit of the German people. In contrast, he did not even make a serious effort to overcome his natural shiftlessness while in office. After Stalingrad, he knew the war was lost, but continued it for years until the Russians were about to capture him in his bunker. He only committed suicide because he was afraid of what they might do to him. In his last days, he even declared that the German people had proven themselves weaker than the races of the east, to whom the future now belonged. Since they had failed (him, presumably), he ordered the entire country to be destroyed, since it deserved no future.
Great comment, couldn't agree more.
Sure, if we look in the history books, we're going to find people who are largely in it for their own glory, and you've ably pointed at some of the failure cases of the bare fact of "immortal glory in stories and memories exists" distorting people's incentives. And this was a particularly Greek and Roman thing, this obsessions with immortality in memory and story!
But isn't this selection? Don't most generals just actually do their jobs? And don't we have just as many "good general" stories in Roman history? Cincinnatus, Cunctator, Scipio Africanus, and much more.
And even if we look at the "great men," the glory-greedy empire builders like Napoleon or Alexander or Genghis Khan, didn't they have loyal generals and subordinates who faithfully did their job, often at a really high standard, and this was a large part of their success?
Genghis' Tsubodai, Alexander's Craterus and Seleucus, and I don't know enough about Napoleonic history there, but I'm sure he had somebody.
I feel like most generals in most countries just largely did their jobs, sometimes well, sometimes badly, but doing it badly SPECIFICALLY for personal glory at the cost of state and countryment is probably relatively rare.