During an enforced period of recuperation I have been thinking about various “big issues” in life. One is the relation between goodness, by which I mean consistent behaviour according to a moral code that places a high weight on the welfare of others, and greatness, by which I mean consistent highly skilled performance at some activity.
The “myth of monolithic personality” described by Gian-Carlo Rota (every great person is also good, and great at everything) was probably created by rulers seeking to show their subjects how godlike they were. I doubt that many people believe this nowadays. In fact the opposite idea, that goodness is inversely correlated with greatness, is surely more common. It seems plausible: after all, we only have so much energy, and acquiring great skill requires a lot of time spent practicing, not to mention introspection.
In the musical Chess, by Tim Rice and half of ABBA, the Russian (world chess champion) and his ex-wife trade recriminations which express this (perceived) selfishness of the great:
“Anyone can be a husband, lover / sooner them than me, when they discover / domestic bliss is shelter for their failing / Nothing could be worse than self-denial / having to rehearse the endless trial / of a partner’s rather sad demands prevailing”
“As you watch yourself caring / about a minor sporting triumph sharing / your win with esoterics, paranoids, hysterics / who don’t pay attention to / what goes on around them, they leave the ones they loved the way they found them / a normal person must dismiss you with disgust / and weep for those who trusted you”.
My question is: what theoretical reasons are there for this alleged inverse correlation? There are numerous examples of high achievers who appear to have happy personal lives, and of course many who don’t. Are there hidden variables here – for example, the type of endeavour in which greatness is being sought (how competitive is it, intrinsically?), the performance level versus the maximum potential performance (are the really top people less stressed and therefore nicer than the ones just a little below, who don’t have as much talent and compensate by selfish overwork?), etc. In other words, could we have a decent theory that answers: when, and why, is a genius likely to be a jerk?
I am just watching the state funeral of Edmund Hillary, and here was a man who was both great and good. Perhaps it has something to do with the physical nature of his deeds, or perhaps humility is less likely to be lost in the face of huge forces of nature.
For starters, I think it’s interesting that Hillary should be cited as an example of “a man who was both great and good”. Hillary certainly made the most of his greatness as a mountaineer, by doing many good things in his life, but, as I understand it, he obtained his greatness very much at his brother’s expense, with whom he was running a bee keeping business.
The recent example of the scandalous end to Eliot Spitzer’s Governorship of New York seems to reinforce my impression that many “great” people are merely great at self promotion and tend to give the truly great a bad name.
On the other hand, the truly great often owe much of their greatness to their spousal relationship where their spouse is not only loving and smart but chooses to dedicate their life to a supporting role. Since this appears to be counter-cultural these days, the shortage of such people may partly account for an apparent inverse relationship between goodness and greatness.