Malazan Empire: Cause - Viewing Profile - Malazan Empire

Now that I am older and have actually lived through some history I am re-examining a notion that I have long held. I have believed that while certain names in history may stand out, these characters of history are not the cause for momentous events but merely the wheel spinning as a result of a greater momentum in history. I am specifically thinking of Trump right now but history is full of many examples...

Was Alexander the Great so great? He wasnt a fool but he didnt single handedly defeat the persian empire and hellenize the world because he was wiser and stronger than mortal humans. His army was better trained, better armed and better led than the persian empires. It was a result of at least two generations of Macedonia and we could probably argue it goes back even much further.

MLK famously fought for and won civil rights but if he had been shot or never even been born, the civil rights movement would still have happened and still have been won. Maybe a year later, maybe even a year sooner. He is a famous figure but he was merely a conductor of a greater movement. He also of course had several contemporaries such as Malcom X and many more who all played their part. The millions of Americans who followed him, supported him and propelled him do not get Wikipedia pages but the movement was clearly more than one man.

Nelson Mandela was South Africas first black president after apartheid fell but he was just the ANCs lead candidate but not the only won.

If Winston Churchill had been assassinated during WW2 the war would have gone on and I find it hard to believe that Winston Churchill single handedly won the war for the allies. He was important in the way that any leader of the UK would have been important in his place. Similiarly if Hitler was killed, another Nazi would have taken over. However if Hitler was killed during WW1, the treaty that ended that war would still have planted the seeds for german discontent. Was the seed of WW2 already planted and Hitler just the most successful gardner or is he pivotal. Without him specifically would WW2 been a lesser event, without his obsession with Jews would the holocaust have been absent from events? Alternativly the rise of fashism seems to require an other to vilify so perhaps it was inevitable.

With Trump it seems different. The discontent with politics was there. There was room for an outsider to rise. There was room for the standard politics of the day to be upended by populism. The road to where we are has been paved for decades by repulbicans like Mitch McConnel and the federalist society judges. The overturning of Roe vs Wade was a milestone in their design. We are now in the present. Perhaps Trumo could be any populist celebrity. Elon Musk could perhaps be any rich republican donor of which there are many (surviving Koch Brother for an example). The strings pulled would be different, the agendas might be different but I could see a path that took us down only a slightly different reality. However Tarrifs seem to be a momentul change, huge in scope and altering the fabric of the world. It seems uniquelt Trump. He is its singular champion. He is bringing the Republican part along with him and not the other way round.

After the fall of the USSR it seems Russia was fertile soil for a dictatorship and oligarchy to rise. Perhaps it only looks that way with the target already struck and so anything else seems far fetched. Still if not Putin some other dictator seems likely. However Putins attack on Ukraine seems to be his desire. The purported aims of security, protecting russian language speakers etc all seem to ring hollow. It doesnt even seem Putin needed the war to distract the Russian people. He wanted to cement HIS legacy.

I am coming round to the idea that the influence individuals can have on the world is so much more than perhaps I first admitted. I feel like the greater momentum is still the most imprtant factor but maybe some people are able to direct it while others surf it.

The first definition I got from google was: an activity involving physical exertion and skill in which an individual or team competes against another or others for entertainment.

Okay so this is just a fun little conversation I am interested in having. Honestly I started questioning it this week for a couple reasons; 1) the Olympics continues to test out or showcase new sports such as breakdancing, surfing and Skate dancing 2) chess popularity seems to be taking off recently thanks to the Queens Gambit TV show and growing youtube presence of chess grandmasters 3) e-sports is growing in popularity and has massive cash prizes but to many still strikes as absurd.

Now in particular I have seen the controversy around Australia's female Breakdancers performance, I don't know the sport well at all but her performance did seem to be shall we say lacking but she wont her spot so her performance couldnt have been completely unexpected. Was Australia just not ready to find and support an official breakdance team? Is the definition of the sport too loose, or currently to amatuerish? I also for reasons I cant quite explain feel like breakdancing is not a sport but cant really articulate why. Its a competition, dancing is physical and rhythmic gymnastics/synchronized swimming have been at the Olympics for decades (seem to be fundamentally similiar). Or more specifically its not that I don't think its a sport I'm just not sure its an 'Olympic' sport. I feel the same about skating.

I have watched some x-games footage over the years; skating, BMX, stunt jumping etc all of these things look awesome, are entertaining, require skill, physicality and are competitions but again I dont feel they are olympic. Same for E-sports. An adult who is the best in the world at the child game of starcraft isn't different from the the adult who is the best in the world at the child's game of basketball. Basketball is physical whereas starcraft units behave as they behave by hardcoding and the game gets constant balancing patches to try make it even but clearly their can be unfair advantages or the game wouldn't keep changing. Still its a mental competition same as chess and arguably its a physical skill to make 300 moves a minutes (I cant do this). Also imbalance is inherent to sport or else 7 feet tall giants wouldn't dominate basketball and we wouldn't have weight classes or gender divided sports. We control it as best we can but luck is a factor in sport. I dont look down at e-sports I just dont think it belongs in the olympics and I would call them athletes I would call them elite gamers. The best players at chess aren't athletes they are grandmasters.

I also don't seem to believe soccer, basketball are Olympic sports either (though they have a long history). I think part of it is that I feel they are not Olympic because they have other much larger and more serious competitions; Premier league, NBA etc. I also think the team nature of these sports seems to be part of the reason I feel they don't belong but what about synchronized swimming, rowing then which have been olympic sports for a long time. Seemingly again, with no inner consistency I believe chess could be an Olympic sport but then why not have Go too.

I seem to have a gut feeling about what sports do and do not belong but cant really justify why. I also wont be surprised if my gut feelings dont match everyone else in the worlds feelings either


Edit- can a mod god move this to discussion.