The cult of the great man, common in the US given our love of glorifying the individual, has lately reached depressing extremes. Elon Musk, fancying himself a modern Midas, wreaked massive chaos on the federal government last year with his band of Doge hacks. Donald Trump, meanwhile, has instituted an unofficial cult of personality in DC, and recently posted – then deleted – an image of himself as a Christ-like figure. Less malevolently, we tend to think of great scientists, authors and philosophers as working in splendid isolation, assuming that their accomplishments are a function of their solitude and individual gifts.
When some people witness the crowning moment of the Scripps National Spelling Bee – the champion, standing alone, hoisting the trophy as the confetti falls – they may understandably assume that competitive spelling works the same way. But, as with so much in life, success in competitive spelling is a function of community – an important lesson for us all to remember in an age of atomization, AI alienation and Trumpist individualism.
