What can you say about this Chinese proverb: " The great man is a public misfortune."?

Question

Thanks for all your answers. Have a great day!

Answer 1

Another old proverb is: "May your life be filled with excitement." Both are full of skepticism because the Chinese have a different view of the ego. A "great man" must have a great ego, so therefore he is a misfortune to a public who lives within their small egos.
A life filled with "excitement" is one that is full of controversy.
Keeping a small ego is also why women were forced to bind their feet to be as small as possible.
Muslims who force their women to completely cover all but their eyes are the same as the Chinese--women are not to have large egos in PUBLIC, and covering up prevents that. A woman with an ego may try to "attract" the men. These women are often bold and with normal egos within their households.

Answer 2

A great man is the vessel of a great amount of accumulated power (accumulated over many generations). In the great man, this power has become so great that it *must* discharge itself - often rocking or even capsising the boats in which the common people sit. Compare the following:

"When your heart overfloweth broad and full like the river, a blessing and a danger to the lowlanders: there is the origin of your virtue."
[Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra, Of the Bestowing Virtue.]

Here Zarathustra is encouraging the great man toward his greatness - toward the bestowing virtue: that virtue which gives itself whether the receiver likes it or no.

"[I]f one had made the rise of great and rare men dependent upon the approval of the many [...] - well, there would never have been a single significant man!"
[Nietzsche, The Will to Power, section 885.]

Answer 3

it would desire to recommend that the guy have been given called being large first and the lady had to take 2nd place. it would additionally recommend that at the same time as the lady didnt get the credit her help helped the guy to attain greatness. This asserting extremely doesnt prepare anymore in a worldwide the place ladies and men people have equivalent possibilities at achieving greatness. possibly a greater up as much as now asserting may well be "no person achieves greatness devoid of help from others"

Answer 4

Hi Third P.

"The great man is a public misfortune."

Great men (and women) tend to bring about great changes. There are often many who do not like that, including governments. Societies are changed by great men; and change frightens many people, especially close-minded people who would prefer that things stay the way they are.

This is especially so if the great man goes against general public thinking, as did the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., who was, indeed, a great man. He was a powerful man; yet he was a man of peace. Society seems to be afraid of peaceful people who still wield power; they do not know how to fight them.

Society, as a whole, does not like people who "rock the boat," who may ultimately change the way we are used to living.

"Regular" people often do not want to see that the world NEEDS changes. They can often be afraid of how these changes may affect their very own lives, even if these changes are ultimately for the better.

Governments & big corporations do not like to see changes made. The "almighty" dollar may be affected; and we know that money often comes before the betterment of humanity, of life on this planet. The governments also do not like people who make changes, either. They may not have the control over the people that they normally do have. Change is not good in the eyes of government & corporate life, both of which are entwined.

For example, Rachel Carson (1907 - 1964) was a great woman who was a public misfortune — in the eyes of corporations/governments whose main concern was money and not the safety of the world and the creatures that live in it.

She was not by nature a crusader, but when aerial spraying of DDT killed the birds in a friend's bird sanctuary, she began to investigate the effects of pesticides on the chain of life. "The environment" and "ecology" have since become household words for Americans, due to Rachel Carson.

It all began with her book, Silent Spring in 1962. Driven by the knowledge that the book was desperately needed, she pored over and combined the work of many individual researchers. She wrote of the heedless pesticide poisoning of our rivers and soils, warning that we might soon face a spring when no bird songs could be heard.

Rachel Carson had to weather a storm of controversy and abuse, and she did not live to see the eventual banning of DDT. But the environmentalist movement carries on the work she began, preserving our natural heritage for the future.

Rosa Parks is known as "the mother of the civil rights movement." She walked into history on December 1, 1955 when she refused to give up her seat for a white man on a Montgomery, Alabama bus. Parks was arrested for her defiance, and she agreed to challenge the segregation order in court.

After this tactic failed, Parks and others organized the Montgomery bus boycott: "For a little more than a year, we stayed off those busses. We did not return to using public transportation until the Supreme Court said there shouldn't be racial segregation."

Parks and others lost their jobs, and she was harassed and threatened. The boycott held, and an important corner was turned in the movement. Parks and her family eventually moved to Detroit, where she worked for many years for Congressman John Conyers. She founded the Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute for Self-Development to offer guidance to young African-Americans in preparation for leadership and careers.

We all know about the riots and the abuse that went on during the early years of strong civil-rights reforms, in the 1950's & 1960's. Great people ARE a public misfortune only because the status quo is challenged. Great people want to make great changes, and usually do. This may be something they set out to do, or it may be something that just set them on a course that they followed through.

There will always be great men and great women who change the course of life as we know it. Thank God for them all. They may be the salvation of humanity and the very earth, itself.

Peace.

Answer 5

It refers to the large ego. We all have a defensive conditioned identity and belief structure that has grown out of early experiences. Many so-called 'great' men are only conditioned to think they are great and impervious to error which makes them a disaster for the public-at-large. The world is experiencing one such extreme and deluded example of ego now.

Answer 6

It is the equivalent for 'do not judge a book by its cover' and perhaps it is said in the spirit of the stoics. It is also the start for a dialog in that it begs a question for its meaning and may or may not lead the others to question, depending on their peculiar presumption for it., e.g. a 'great' man for what.

Answer 7

It's true. People expect a "great man" to fix all the world's problems. That leads to disappoint at best, oppression at worst.

Answer 8

God is the greatest, and yet God is unseen, so the truly great people accomplish great things without bringing attention to themselves.