The Path to Hell is Paved with Righteousness
“When hopes and dreams are loose in the streets, it is well for the timid to lock doors, shutter windows and lie low until the wrath has passed. For there is often a monstrous incongruity between the hopes, however noble and tender, and the action which follows them. It is as if ivied maidens and garlanded youths were to herald the four horsemen of the apocalypse.” Eric Hoffer, The True Believer
When Mao Zedong awoke in the early mornings, what—in his heart of hearts—did he think to himself? What did such a man, this notorious tyrant of history, really think of himself when he reflectively gazed into a mirror and into his own eyes?
More generally, what motivates such world historical figures to do what they do and how do they self-justify their actions?
This essay is a reflection on these questions.
At the ultimate level there are the common motivating factors shared by almost all humans: desire for status (to be known and respected), for purpose and meaning (religious or spiritual justifications for life and sense of group belonging), and the deep urge of reproduction and survival.
At a proximate level, though, people tend to justify their existence with recourse to a story wherein they are heroic. In other words, world historical figures—like most of us—probably did not think of themselves and their role in life as directly pursuing some combination of status, meaning, survival, and reproduction. Rather, such people—again, like us—view their life through the lens of a meta-narrative that, while implicitly satisfying all of those ultimate desires, nonetheless provides a coherent story wherein they are but humble servants of a noble and grand cause.
In Mao’s mind, ultimately manifested in propaganda, he was a hero, fighting to enact The Good™. In layman’s terms: he believed his own bullshit.
The story is as old as humanity. We can find it whenever we encounter world historical figures of consequence, whether Alexander the Great, Muhammad, the Crusading Popes, the European Kings, Mao, Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, Pol Pot, Ceaușescu, or George W Bush.
First of all, such world historical figures are extremely hard working. It is a truism of history that, from a societal mayhem perspective, it is never lazy people that you need to worry about. It is always the hard working, dedicated, conscientious and industrious people who deliver devastation—as well as progress. Though these qualities are often rightly seen as a virtuous, they are also core characteristics shared by the world’s greatest butchers, and are thus necessarily implicated. Such characteristics thus present humanity with convex payoffs: they reap the best and worst outcomes, whereas lazy people list harmlessly in the center neither creating nor destroying. Given the magnificent changes such qualities have delivered over the last two centuries, we can understand why they have become virtues. But we shouldn’t forget that in the wrong hands they are very much a vice.
Second, for various reasons, all world historical figures view the current world order / system as inadequately constituted and thus necessarily in need of drastic change. This leads into the ultimate explanation: not only does changing the world provide the world historical figure with meaning and purpose, it also offers him a profitable path to status and reproductive success. It does, however, present a grave threat to his chances of survival. If he succeeds in his quest, however, he can be assured of payoffs so spectacular that the cost-benefit ratio seems worth it. However, because the implicit cost-benefit heuristics humans use to guide their life decisions are psychological in nature, I believe it is fair to presume that world historical figures tend to share a common disposition as risk takers with an optimistic view of their chances for success. A risk averse pessimist would be unlikely to stake his life on high stakes, low probability revolution. For what it’s worth, this probably also explains why almost all world historical figures are men. The male variability hypothesis, which is very well substantiated at this point, shows that while males and females have roughly equal average psychological dispositions, men have much higher dispersion on almost all characteristics. Thus, at the tails of the distribution, we should find that men constitute a very, very high percentage of the population that is both extremely risk averse and extremely risk seeking. It is this latter category that is likely to be a world historical figure like Alexander the Great, Lenin, or Mao. I imagine this relationship holds less well today, given that world historical figures face little personal downside risk, such that GWB can topple Iraq with no fear for his own life.
This leads into the third and related feature, which is that the change world historical figures saw themselves as bringing was typically justified with recourse to The Narrative™ and thus The Good™. This is the proximate level, and thus the precise contours justifying the need for change, and the world historical figures role in bringing it about, were socially and culturally contingent. Alexander, for example, lived in a milieu that inculcated within him the belief that it was righteous and glorious to go forth, brutally conquer, and spread Hellenistic culture by the sword. Muhammad, according to the Hadith, clearly believed something similar about Islam. We can see a modern version of it in some of the justifications for the Iraq War, i.e. spreading liberal democracy.
Alexander thought it was intrinsically very good to conqueror and spread Hellenism. Muhammad thought it was good to conquer in the name of Islam. Crusaders thought it good to conquer in the name of Christianity. Genghis Kahn believed it was righteous and good for the Mongols to conquer and rule the entire world. Lenin, and later Stalin, thought it good to conquer Russia (and areas beyond) in the name of communism. Mao thought it good to conquer China with recourse to a similar Narrative™ and version of The Good™. George W Bush thought it good to conquer Iraq to spread liberal democratic values.
There is also a general pattern wherein as society evolved and expanded in size and scope, world historical figures devised increasing layers of narrative to justify their need to change the world. For example, world historical figures in early eras and/or places wherein civilizational values of settled peoples did not evolve, represented by Alexander the Great and Genghis Khan respectively, often justified conquering as a good thing in and of itself. They had little need for bells and whistles when the populace was still totally on board with openly galvanizing under a leader to get the plunder that was often essential for living well. Conversely, leaders of Qin / Han China and the Roman Empire often justified conquering with the barely more layered explanation that they were righteously spreading ‘higher’ values of empire and civilization—something we saw replicated in a very similar manner under European imperialism (whether it be under the guise of spreading Christianity, the ‘white man’s burden’, or similarly believing in spreading civilization).
As we approach the modern era, world historical figures increasingly found that trade-offs once readily accepted—little things like human lives, other people’s well-being, etc—were increasingly seen by people as valuable in and of themselves. As human morality evolved and expanded its coverage area from clan, to nation, to an abstract notion of humanity, would-be world historical figures found it increasingly necessary to add new layers onto The Narrative™ and thus construct new, and often more abstract and sweeping notions of The Good™. At the same time, the industrial revolution had turned the world from a largely zero sum to positive sum game. This meant that individual self-interest, that is payoffs in terms of material goods necessary for survival and reproduction, were less and less maximized via accruing resources via conquering. Ideas, as they tend to do, evolved in lock step with the material world. Thus, as a consequence of both real material advances and moral evolution (e.g. killing people just for conquest might not always be okay…) world historical figures increasingly lived in a time wherein explicitly conquering for conquering's sake just couldn't cut it. The masses and the upper middle part of the population that organized and also benefitted from conquest weren’t as easily sold when a would-be world historical figure came around promising the glory and booty of conquest in exchange for their potential sacrifice. In order to succeed, would-be world historical figures would have to re-imagine what The Narrative™ and The Good™ might be.
The obvious precursor to build off were religious wars of conquest. Rulers thinly wrapped and sold self-interested wars of conquest and plunder in the name of X-Y-Z god for millennia. Humans found this pretty convincing for a long time. In fact, it was a pretty solid sales pitch: the god that you believe in and deeply hope to please also just so happens to want you to go on a conquest mission that will get you some war booty and me, the ruler, world historical figure benefits! Thus the Traditional Religious Narrative™ just so happened to legitimize and serve all the base instincts of the masses, the upper mid-level organizers, and the world historical figures: it provided transcendent meaning and purpose to life (doing gods bidding for your king/noble and with other like-minded dudes, how dope!), offered the victors great status, and increased reproductive potential.
Meanwhile, your life hanging around at home—i.e. being the same old parish priest, regional official, or peasant—wasn’t that great and wasn’t likely to be getting significantly better any time soon, so why not take a gloriously justified risk? After all you might get lucky and hit the jack pot! If you’re an official, getting appointed to a higher status. If you’re a peasant, by moving up and maybe affording your own manor and acquiring some status and reproductive enhancing resources. And if you’re a world historical figure by achieving the top spot in the new order you’re helping to usher in. The secular variant along these lines in China seems uniquely precocious (probably due to its unique heritage of early state building due to proximity to steppe and uniquely scalable geographic features—a topic for a different essay). Religious inspired movements also had the extra benefit of convincing people that their downside was in fact substantially mitigated: if you die in service of this great and noble cause you’ll get great things in heaven!
Thus did religion offer a very thinly veiled, yet highly adaptive, justification for doing the conquer-y thing humans like to do. What was so interesting about it, though, and what signaled ominous signs for the future, was that this added layer of justification actually made conquest so much more viable. It allowed humans to scale up their cooperation levels in joint pursuit of a commonly shared Narrative™ of The Good™. Would-be world historical figures thus became increasingly equipped, thanks to the lessons drawn from religion, of how to play the game at higher and higher levels. He who wields The Narrative™ of The Good™ shakes the world, and in so doing accrues for himself the sense of purpose, status, and reproductive success that world historical figures are largely motivated by. Something, something, something… the dangers of man turning himself into god??
Yet as human society scaled up, as diversity proliferated, and as industrial modernization continued apace, morality itself evolved in lock step with the changing material circumstances. The justifying role that religion played for the would-be world historical figure grew harder to maintain. The discrepancy between other worldly redemption religion offered and the need for change (read: conquest) in the here and now were too blatant, the justification too loose. Where, after all, did God demand conquest much less justify the use of force? (Though here would seem to exist an unfortunate distinction between Christianity and Islam. Much easier to read such a view out of the Q’ran and Hadiths.) Religion, it was increasingly claimed to be about—and thus understood to be about— a far off benevolent dude in the sky (or, even better, some eternal magical spirit energy) who vaguely wants good things for people. Far-off religious justifications for something good in the afterlife, though, just aren't the best way to get people riled up and hot and bothered for sacrifice (Islamic Jihad, however, can still seem to solve this problem uniquely well amongst Traditional Religions™). People need imminently realizable pay offs. As self-interested gain via resources was increasingly lost as a motivating force due to positive sum modernization effects, the justifying veil had to become at once more sophisticated and more immediate. The eschaton had to be immanentized in a new way!
It’s worthwhile to mention that ‘Immanentizing the Eschaton’ is so adaptive that it is one of the most common tropes that world historical figures rely upon in building a following. An example of convergent socio-cultural evolution. In contrast to its etymological origins, world historical figures often deployed the same basic principle, but rather than the final event being the end of the world it was rather a day of radical discontinuity wherein a new and improved world would unfurl. The word ‘millenarian’, in a similar contrast, originally meant "one who believes in the coming of the (Christian) millennium.” While the term originally sprung up in the 16th century in cahoots and in justification of mounting European imperialism, it would soon come to describe any movement predicated on the belief that a radical re-ordering of society is just around the corner. (The CCP, for instance, bore testament to millenarianism in its early catchphrase: building the ‘New China’.)
The big advance that would-be world historical figures ushered in was to secularize millenarianism. This opened the door for world historical figures to propagate beliefs in a new arena over and above the crowded space of traditional religions. The secularization of millenarian faith broadened the scope of competition for the hearts and minds of the human populace. Any person, whether Christian, Muslim, or atheist, could, in addition to their traditional faiths, also buy into the ostensibly secular faiths! The potential field of recruits for the would-be world historical figure expanded massively. In time, however, it would come to pass that the secular faiths would also explicitly take the place of, and sometimes even outlaw, the older faiths. Secular millenarianism is the groundwork structure upon which new Narratives™ of The Good™ would arise and propagate.
At the same time, the new Narratives™ of The Good™ had to adapt to serve their necessary role as veiling devices, simultaneously covering up and fulfilling the ultimate human motivators of purpose, belonging, status, and reproduction. In this way we can understand the most impactful secular millenarian faith, Marxism, and the historical figures it inspired…Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Cecescu, and so on. By latching onto an all-encompassing meta-narrative they were able to veil—to the world around them and to themselves as well—the deeply human motive forces pushing them to become world historical figures.
Marxism also demonstrates quite well another maxim that all effective Narratives™ of The Good™ need: a devil. It has been stated before that not all effective movements need to believe in a god, but all do need to believe in a devil. This is true. Nietzsche pointed to the roots of this psychology in his book ‘Beyond Good and Evil.’ He argued that people, particularly those lower on the societal status ladder, have a tendency to create moral narratives by first defining what they hate and calling it Evil™ and then only afterward—and in contradistinction to The Evil™—labeling everything else good (ergo his stated desire to move beyond good evil). The secular millenarianism of Marxism is particularly exemplary on this point, as its progenitors and practitioners were very clear about what they hated but not at all clear about what they were striving for (i.e. what communism would look like). Thus, the would-be world historical figure of contemporary times immanentizes the eschaton and implores his dispossessed followers to fight *against* the existing system and existing order. He hypes up their grievances to the Nth degree. He connects their every little grievance to The Evil™. The world historical figure and his followers, duly radicalized believing they are fighting Evil™, are thereby hyped up on moral righteousness. So long as the omnipresent, oppressive, monstrous Evil™ exists they can do no wrong, spare no expense in eradicating it.
That the would-be world historical figure himself—the purported leader—doesn’t have a clue about what comes next is of no consequence to him. He’ll be in power! He can figure it out as he goes. Lenin, for example, often cited Napoleon’s maxim, which captured this type of revolutionary philosophy perfectly: “On s’engage et puis on voit"— i.e. one jumps into the fray, then figures out what to do next. And so did Lenin, Stalin, Mao and other world historical figures grope toward the future, leaving a trail of carnage in the millions. And, in a distinct but very similar manner, so did Hitler rise to power.
What a clever, if inevitable, historical occurrence! Righteous outrage at The Evil™, midwifed by the would-be historical figure and undergirded by secular millenarianism, came to serve as the new veiling force of violence and conquest. While increasingly recognized as immoral, both were nonetheless justifiable again! The same pattern holds even for allegedly benign liberal democracy. Tyranny, we are told, is the enemy of freedom. Thus liberal democrats are justified in ending tyranny by force! And thus did the GWBush administration ...uhh...justifiably bring…uhh...Freedom to Iraq, by force! (The operation was literally, yet ironically, called Iraqi Freedom.)
It is worthwhile to return again to the question posed at the beginning: what did Mao think of himself when he awoke in the mornings? A lot of people implicitly seem to assume that Mao thought evil thoughts because his actions were so evil. But that is almost certainly wrong. In fact, he more than likely felt precisely the opposite. He probably awoke in the mornings following the anti-rightist campaign, the Great Leap Forward, and the Cultural Revolution truly believing himself to be a heroic champion of The Narrative™ and the Good™. He himself more than likely truly believed, as his Marxist-Leninist philosophy surely did, that in opposing the Evil™ one can hardly do wrong. And, even if he did, it was of a far, far lesser impact than the Evil™ would otherwise be doing. Hurray for Chairman Mao, Chairman Mao thinks to himself. As Alexander Solzhenitsyn beautifully put it in The Gulag Archipelago: “If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?"
We know now that it is evolutionarily adaptive to believe your own bullshit. In order to really motivate and convince others, you yourself have to be a true believer. Risk averse, rational skeptics are just extremely unlikely to ever lead a massive, world shaking movement. To do so requires the utmost faith in your convictions and utter dogmatism. Even if some would-be world historical figures start off unsure of their convictions—as I imagine most do—routine exposure and repetition, and/or exposure to a radicalizing event, eventually transitions them into the true, dogmatic believer. If you hold a branding iron against your body long enough it will permanently deform you. If you wear a mask long enough it impresses upon you; ceasing to be a disguise it instead becomes your identity. The social construct becomes reified. Myth becomes reality.
Half-hearted believers don’t lead revolutions.
So, to sum up: the world historical figure, almost always male and riven with a risk seeking psychology, is intensely motivated by his need for purpose, status, and reproduction. He looks upon the world and sees that it needs to change. Over time and alongside progressive, evolutionary changes in human material circumstances, Narratives™ of The Good™ that justify world historical figures need for change have evolved in lockstep. The justifications remain socially and culturally contingent.
Most importantly, the modern would-be world historical figure promises change, now! A drastic revolution in the here and now, justified with a righteous indignation against The Evil™ that constitutes the present system. Those who lead and those who buy into such radical visions are of enduring archetypes. The would-be historical figure, is described above. The followers, meanwhile, see in the movement a meaningful explanation (The Narrative™ of The Good™) and thus derive a justified sense purpose, a communal sense of belonging with fellow believers, and (mostly below conscious awareness) recognize that they stand to benefit from the status and resource accrual that manifests as their movement grows and, in particular, should their vision come to fruition.
Ultimately, The Narrative™ of The Good™ is necessary on two important counts. First, to simultaneously veil and service the deeper undergirding drivers of human behavior that are always bubbling under the surface. And second, to provide justification for the extravagant and often brutal means necessary to achieve the requisite societal re-ordering that appeasing those base human desires inevitably requires. Thus, in contemporary movements and for the would-be world historical figure of modern times, righteous opposition to Evil™ comes to serve as the needed veil of the deeply human impulses that spurred on our conquering forefathers—those impulses that modern sensibilities increasingly recognize cannot themselves justify the exorbitant means inevitably needed to realize the radical societal re-ordering they desire. The emperor has purchased new clothes.
World-historical figures are humans with complex motivations. They grapple with fear and uncertainty. Fear that if they didn’t take the reins someone worse will, fear that they won’t matter to history. They also confront uncertainty about whether they know how to achieve the ends they desire, uncertainty about whether the means and tactics are truly justified. But, as a general rule: the more certain the would-be world historical figure is about the ends he desires, the more willing he will be to justify any means. Ironically, the more righteous they believe themselves to be in pursuing The Good™, the more capable they become of justifying and enacting evil. It is all together too common for world historical figures, being dogmatic true believers in salvation in the here and now, to lead humanity down dark and deadly paths to hell. As Nietzsche warned us: "Anyone who fights monsters should see to it that he does not also become a monster. When you look long into an abyss, the abyss looks also into you." When you believe you are righteously fighting Evil™, stop and think for a moment. And remember this: the path to hell is paved with righteousness.
Let us develop a maxim: doubt your convictions in proportion to your sense of righteousness about them.