Tuesday night Paris Saint-Germain drew at Chelsea in the UEFA Champions League. They advance to the final eight in the competition. Playing at Stamford Bridge against a Jose Mourinho club that can defend against goals as well as any in the world PSG also went down to 10 men and still managed to secure the decisive second away goal that sent them through. In Magic Johnson's eloquent malapropism it was a "binding moment" for PSG.
In the sum of our lives' deeds and misdeeds binding moments are rare and count heavily. In modernity our lives are quiet iterations of single digit advances and setbacks. We get our paychecks at regular intervals and count down the days to retirement when we can get our paychecks without working. Instead of a blinding supernova there are a thousand points of light, opportunities every day to "make life better," and there are a thousand cuts to death instead of one premature, catastrophic wound. Ours are lives of gentle ups and downs over rolling hills rather than the vertigo of peaks and the compression of depths. We wish for ourselves and for others "enough."
Few of us know binding moments as Laurent Blanc and Paris Saint-Germain do. Great men are produced by the times. "PSG finally deliver on a big stage," was one headline Wednesday. Blanc had the perfect strategy and his players played out of their minds a man down. For Jose Mourinho the headline was,"Chelsea's underwhelming game plan backfires."
In this view few of us attain greatness because few have the opportunity. When the times require greatness, so this positivist outlook continues, we will have great men: you, and you, and you, and me. America was in a bind in 1861 and out of nowhere produced Abraham Lincoln; in 1932, FDR; in 1941, FDR again, along with countless others.
There is the fallacy of reversibility in that. If Chelsea had won Tuesday night, Mourinho would be credited the same strategy for which today he is criticized, the same strategy that worked last year against PSG, that has worked countless times before. However: "This time, locking it down' wasn't just enough; they weren't secure enough." This time: "Jose Mourinho again governed by fear rather than adventure." It is not an explanation, it is a tautology.
Times-make-the-man history is selective. The times did not produce greatness in James Buchanan and Andrew Johnson, the two bookends the United States produced to Abraham Lincoln. Great Britain chose Neville Chamberlain and Winston Churchill at the same time. The corollary to times-make-the-man positivism is that men do not effect greatness.
You do need the opportunity, most of us don't get the opportunity but Buchanan and Johnson and Chamberlain and George W. Bush and on and on did get the opportunity and whiffed. There is fallacy also in the breezy view of latent greatness. Man can effect greatness and he can fail to effect greatness.
"First, were we truly men of courage?"
In the sum of our lives' deeds and misdeeds binding moments are rare and count heavily. In modernity our lives are quiet iterations of single digit advances and setbacks. We get our paychecks at regular intervals and count down the days to retirement when we can get our paychecks without working. Instead of a blinding supernova there are a thousand points of light, opportunities every day to "make life better," and there are a thousand cuts to death instead of one premature, catastrophic wound. Ours are lives of gentle ups and downs over rolling hills rather than the vertigo of peaks and the compression of depths. We wish for ourselves and for others "enough."
Few of us know binding moments as Laurent Blanc and Paris Saint-Germain do. Great men are produced by the times. "PSG finally deliver on a big stage," was one headline Wednesday. Blanc had the perfect strategy and his players played out of their minds a man down. For Jose Mourinho the headline was,"Chelsea's underwhelming game plan backfires."
In this view few of us attain greatness because few have the opportunity. When the times require greatness, so this positivist outlook continues, we will have great men: you, and you, and you, and me. America was in a bind in 1861 and out of nowhere produced Abraham Lincoln; in 1932, FDR; in 1941, FDR again, along with countless others.
Times-make-the-man history is selective. The times did not produce greatness in James Buchanan and Andrew Johnson, the two bookends the United States produced to Abraham Lincoln. Great Britain chose Neville Chamberlain and Winston Churchill at the same time. The corollary to times-make-the-man positivism is that men do not effect greatness.
You do need the opportunity, most of us don't get the opportunity but Buchanan and Johnson and Chamberlain and George W. Bush and on and on did get the opportunity and whiffed. There is fallacy also in the breezy view of latent greatness. Man can effect greatness and he can fail to effect greatness.
-President-elect John Fitzgerald Kennedy, speech to Massachusetts General Court, January 9, 1961.
Opportunity is circumstances plus power. You don't have to be presented with the opportunity of existential threat. Dwight D. Eisenhower was presented the most placid eight years in 20th century America. He golfed a lot, yes, but he also created the interstate highway system, foresaw and warned against the threat of the burgeoning "military-industrial complex" to civil society. Barack Obama inherited no existential crisis, he inherited the Great Recession and ended it; seized the opportunity to enact a national health care system; inherited the NSA spy scandal, the realization of Eisenhower's warning, and did nothing. Greatness is opportunity plus power plus ability.
There is then a necessary alignment of factors, circumstances, power, ability, both temporal and personal for greatness. It is rare, it is also discrete, Greatness is discrete. For those who are presented the circumstances, who are given the power and who have the ability there are discrete instances for the alignment to occur. In the three instances above Barack Obama went two for three. Laurent Blanc achieved greatness Tuesday night; a year ago he failed. Jose Mourinho was not great Tuesday, was great a year ago and so many other times.
The sum of a man's life are the discrete instances of the things he has done and of those he has failed to do and the circumstances of both. The great ones count more.
There is then a necessary alignment of factors, circumstances, power, ability, both temporal and personal for greatness. It is rare, it is also discrete, Greatness is discrete. For those who are presented the circumstances, who are given the power and who have the ability there are discrete instances for the alignment to occur. In the three instances above Barack Obama went two for three. Laurent Blanc achieved greatness Tuesday night; a year ago he failed. Jose Mourinho was not great Tuesday, was great a year ago and so many other times.
The sum of a man's life are the discrete instances of the things he has done and of those he has failed to do and the circumstances of both. The great ones count more.
