And the greatest defeat? Is it bankruptcy? More probably it is the indignity of life as an average wage-earning everyman that brings the greatest frustration and shame. Whatever it is in specifics, it is so astonishingly small!
Small victories and small defeats for humans too small to rule themselves. Systems are great. It's the spirits that animate systems which have the true glories and shames of the present and its attendant future.
At least Napoleon, Stalin, Hitler—at least they had the reality, the density—the substance!—to tear the world down around them in pursuit of their enormous glories in victory and enormous shames in defeat.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RqqYRon0sjE 