Welcome to Maid Spin, the personal website of iklone. I write about about otaku culture as well as history, philosophy and mythology.
My interests range from anime & programming to mediaevalism & navigation. Hopefully something on this site will interest you.
I'm a devotee of the late '90s / early '00s era of anime, as well as a steadfast lover of maids. My favourite anime is Mahoromatic. I also love the works of Tomino and old Gainax.
To contact me see my contact page.
Through (probable) pure coincidence, I have lived almost my entire life in towns and cities that lie under the shadow of great men. Towns who's greatest sons eclipse anything else from that town in fame and prestige. My childhood hometown, Stratford, is synonymous with the Bard of the English: Shakespeare; and my university city of Nottingham is known worldwide for its place in the tales of Robin Hood. I've yet to find a permanent home for myself in my adult life, but the two cities I frequent the most for work are the two maritime cities of Plymouth and Portsmouth, under the twin immortal gazes of Sir Francis Drake and Admiral Nelson respectively. I suppose many towns and cities (at least across the old world) have such strong associations with particular residents of theirs, sometimes even held within the name of that city itself such as Barcelona (Hannibal Barca) or any of the myriad Alexandrias. But usually this "hero-worship" can only occur with cities of smaller size: mega-cities such as London or Paris have such immense sway that a single figure can rarely suffice in personifying them. Such "hero-cities" have a strange relationship with their hero, often building tourist/pilgrimage economies that profit from the association. Catholic saint towns, for example, such as Assisi or Lourdes have been all but consumed by their feeding of the voracious pilgrim, and my own town of Stratford can sometimes border on delirium in its Shakespearomania. But also the very nature of the town and her citizens are affected: their character constantly being compared and contrasted with that of their hero's, inadvertently tailoring the social fabric of the city in line with (or sometimes in opposition to) said figure. From the account of a friend who has visited, for example: in Passau, Austria, the hometown of Adolf Hitler, the entire populace is so violently consumed by the need to disavow him that it ends up feeling inauthentic.
Such is the power of a "great man" to alter the world even long after his death. But in return a great man, unlike normal men who are forgotten and who's records lie unchanged, has his reputation forever in the court of current moral opinion. Sir Winston Churchill is a man who's character seems vastly different in the eyes of modern political enemies, and who's peculiarities can be understood to lie anywhere between Satan and the Saints. But his Sixth Great-Grandfather, John Churchill the Duke of Marlborough lived an arguably equally illustrious life in his day (Winston would certainly argue this), but now the great events he orchestrated are not relevant to the masses (such as the Glorious Revolution of which he was the architect, or the War of the Spanish Succession of which he was the dominate power) and the places he is connected with are too distant or remote to hold much sway (his greatest victory at Blenheim, Bavaria and his great family seat at the eponymous Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire), so he is a great man in sleeping instead. This gives him neither the ability to project change today, nor has his own image changed posthumously; until the day of course where the world's attention returns to a window similar to 18th century Europe and his image is resurrected from the history books to be juggled by the opinionated mob. Such things have happened before, after all: Dr Carter's resurrection of Tutankhamun for one, or the downfall of Edward Colston in Bristol 2020 for another.
In fact the very concept of a "great man" is one that ebbs and floods with the sentiments of the political clime. In time of political strife the concept is often degraded, with hero iconoclasm common. The most obvious example would be the Protestant Reformation, but it was seen also during the French Revolution and the Communist Revolutions of the 20th century. However in times of peace and political hibernation the natural state of mankind seems to be to laud and aggrandise our heroes rather than despise them. After all we all like to humanise higher concepts such as history: to do so makes them understandable and emotionally resonant in the same way as a "personal God" is natural to us. The "Great Man Theory" of history stands as a thesis to which "Social History" grew as an antithesis. Where Great Man Theory ostensibly attributes the course of history to a select group of Great Men who steered it, Social History says such men only act as insignificant figureheads for waves of change already emanating through the general populace, or at least large classes of the population. Talking of theses & antitheses, Hegel outlined his synthesis of the two schools of thought in his writings. Rather than puppeteers of humanity, he gives great men the role of ones who harness a preordained destiny of the world in their specific time, a proposition I find convincing:
"Such individuals [great men] had no consciousness of the idea they were unfolding, while prosecuting those aims of theirs; on the contrary, they were practical, political men. But at the same time they were thinking men, who had an insight into the requirements of the time: what was ripe for development. This was the very truth for their age, for their world; the species next in order, so to speak, and which was already formed in the womb of time. It was theirs to know this nascent principle; the necessary, directly sequent step in progress, which their world was to take; to make this their aim, and to expend their energy in promoting it. World-historical men, the heroes of an epoch, must therefore be recognized as its clear-sighted ones; their deeds, their words are the best of that time."This proposition turns "great men" from mere pagan men of action into providential prophets of God, uncovering and harnessing revelations given to them by circumstance, wisdom and faith. It also allows a separation of those great men who harness such revelations in a good and selfless faith from those who buy it by Faustian bargain. For those men who build the world for the sake of the world have lasting change (see the actions of St Peter, of Constantine, or of Charlemagne), but those who do so in bad faith or a misunderstanding of the truth will have their work undone within a generation (of Napoleon, of Hitler, or even of Alexander himself). Through this lens we can separate the moniker of "great" from "good" or "right". Hitler was "great" in this sense, a man who grasped the reins of history but eventually could not master the true "idea" of his age, leading to his demise at the hands of those who did so a little bit more. But as our current social climate grows more hostile to great men both good and bad, I hope we can somehow avoid another irreversible iconoclastic catastrophe in the decades to come.
