The Great Man Theory - A Guide to the Men Worth Studying

All right, team. Welcome back to the Man Talk Show. Connor Beaton here. Today we are going to be talking about the Great Man series. And Instead of talking about who the great men throughout human history are, I'm gonna be giving you a guide to the men that are worth studying and kind of form a case for why you should study them.

uh and how how to go about identifying this and really taking a a a deeper understanding of how the men that you have admired throughout your life have fundamentally formed your view. Because the truth is that your choices, your choice of heroes, might be one of the most important decisions that you will ever make. Now, why is this?

Well, it's because when you look back throughout human history, men's choices of heroes have fundamentally shaped the way that they have perceived reality and their actions, right? Because Napoleon spent his life trying to become Caesar. And Caesar idolized Alexander the Great. And Alexander the Great imagined himself to be the next Achilles.

So all of these men were being heavily influenced by the men that came before them. And one might argue that in today's climate and times, the reason why so many men are in disarray is that there is a kind of collapse. Of masculine architecture that one could look up to, masculine idols, masculine models. that men can point to and say, actually I want to move in that direction. That's a noble worthy aim for me to try and achieve.

And this is not random admiration that men throughout history history have had. This is a kind of limitation across the centuries. Sorry, not a limitation, a kind of imitation across the centuries. And it points to a little bit more of a controversial but powerful idea, in my opinion, known as the great man theory of history.

And it's an idea that was proposed by the 19th-century historian Thomas Carlyle, who argued that the history of the world. Is at its core the biography of great men. Now, that might immediately ruffle some feathers, and that might immediately cause you to squirm or dislike. uh what has just been said. But remember, we're talking about a historian's perspective. You don't have to buy it, but let's keep going. According to Carlisle, history isn't shaped by the anonymous masses.

It's shaped by rare individuals, heroes, we might say, whose vision, will, determination, and genius have moved and influenced civilizations forward. But this isn't just a history lesson. If Carlyle is right. then that means that the men that you study, the men that you admire, that you attempt to imitate, will quietly determine who you become.

And again, I just want to point out that for so many men, this feeling of lostness and confusion and lacking in direction, in my perspective, a huge part of it is that we have undermined and stripmined out. Really uh reverent, really admirable male role models and leaders that men on average could look up to. So today we're going to explore a few things. We're going to look at what the great man theory actually is.

We're gonna look at why it's fallen out of favor and how to use it intelligently in your life to shape yourself. without idol worship to support your character development, your direction, and to actually move you more towards your goals and your aims. First, I want to tell you a little bit about Thomas Carlisle. Thomas Carlisle was a Scottish essayist essayist, a philosopher, Scotman, after my own heart.

uh and a historian who delivered a series of lectures in eighteen forty that were later published uh as on heroes, hero worship, and the hi the heroic uh in history. At the heart of his work was one sort of simple but kind of explosive claim. And this is directly from him. His perspective was quote, universal history is at bottom.

The history of the great men who have worked here. Universal history is at bottom the history of the great men who worked here. Now, obviously, especially in today's world, that's a very, very, very controversial. statement. In other words, in his perspective, civilizations will rise, they will fall, they will change direction because of the decisive individuals, not committees. Not the averages, not the trends, not necessarily even the cultures, but because of the decisive individuals.

who will kind of steer the ship of society and culture. And Carlisle believed that these men were not interchangeable. They were not s you know, you could just like swap them out and get the exact same result. You couldn't simply change them out for somebody else and get the same outcome.

So they were in some ways unquantifiable. Now you have to think about it like this. And this is I I was thinking about this, you know, what does that actually mean? Well, how many Roman legions would equal one Julius Caesar? The decisiveness. the decision making, the influence that he held, how many minor poets?

Does it take to equal to one Shakespeare? Right? Or in today's terms, and again, you may hate this man, you may love this man, whether whether or not you like him or hate him. How many people would it take to equal the influence and the technological advancement and output of somebody like Elon Musk? You can't calculate it. So what makes a great man? This is something that Carlisle was very, very interested in.

Carlisle built his theory around two core assumptions. The first is that great leaders are born, they're not made. Now, this is something that is kind of flies in the face of today's perspective, right? He emphasized nature over nurture. He didn't believe that exceptional men were s sort of honed and fostered and developed. He actually believed that these men possessed innate traits, vision, courage, decisiveness.

that allowed them to act when other people would hesitate. Now I'm gonna pause there because I do think that in my perspective from what I've seen, I do think that there is uh credence in this. I do think that there's credit to it. I also would not discredit, though, the the importance of nurturing, fostering. Um, just in looking at some of the great leaders of the world and seeing the lives that they've lived. Yes, there seems to be some type of spark that exists inside of them.

But there is also a nurturing process that has taken place for the majority of these men. So that's the first one in Carla's belief. I'm curious to hear your thoughts on whether or not you think that's true. But second, he believed that great men arise when history demands them. They don't emerge in a vacuum. They don't emerge for no good reason. Circumstances actually matter, but when societies face real crises, real ordeals, that's when the hero becomes the decisive factor.

And he's the weight that sort of tips the scale and causes that individual to stand out more. And the beauty about Carlisle's version of the hero is that he's not some perfect persona, right? In fact, The world is filled with contradictions. And the hero is filled with both contradictions internally that he must come to grips with.

And externally from a moral and social standpoint, right? Think of somebody like Aragorn who goes through countless contradictions and situations that he must contend with. And that really means that all heroes are flawed. They're not some god that we should pedestal, but they are something that actually humanizes us and brings us into a kind of deeper relationship with the truth of who we are as men.

And paradoxically, that's exactly why heroes matter. Their imperfections make them um they make them something to look up to. They make them something that we can learn from. So Carlisle's other point was that imitation is what really moves history and imitation And uh uh kind of modeling is is part of the masculine psyche, as maybe the terminology would use today, but it's an important aspect.

Of male development, both individually, uh, socially, and culturally. Right? Alexander the Great reshaped warfare. for centuries. Neop uh Napoleon revolutionized artillery and made uh military strategy in ways that that still to this day have defined modern war. These men didn't just

act. They they weren't just random. They created and set standards and patterns that would permeate through culture, society, and would really influence men. For years, decades, and sometimes even centuries to come. And those patterns were copied. Those patterns get refined. Those patterns get repeated. And Carlisle believed that imitation was really the engine of history, right? This is where you can kind of think of

uh in programming, you have a code, you have a base foundational code that can get imitated but then improved. It can get repeated, uh, but then a sort of adapted into a new manner that that gets uh it that gets improved on. So it's not blind copying, but it's comp it's it's conscious uh emulation and a drive to improve on the greatness of successors, of the the people that are sorry, predecessors, the people that have come before you.

So this isn't just about kings and conquerors. This is an important part of what Carlisle said before we get into how do you actually start to implement this in your life. Importantly, Carlisle didn't believe that heroes were really limited to soldiers, and he didn't really believe that they were limited to rulers. He identified six types of heroes, and this is the part that's really important. If you read mythology, if you read really great stories or watch uh, you know, old movies that have

great character development. You'll see one of these great archetypes really uh shine forward in a lot of great literature and a lot of great poetry and stories and movies. So he identified six Types of heroes. Is the divine hero. The second is the prophet, so the person that sort of predicts what is going to unfold. The next hero is actually the poet. So you could think of somebody like Shakespeare as being a poetic hero.

uh the priest, the kind of uh hero of the sacred, right? The the one that is actually um not necessarily a conduit to God, like the divine hero, this sort of elevated hero, but actually a vessel or a vehicle. for uh for sacredness amongst the people Then there's the man of letters. So this is kind of like the the wizard archetype, the person that is able to articulate things that are happening within culture, within society, global macro trends.

That maybe other people wouldn't see. And then finally, there is the hero archetype of the king. So, in other words, there is a heroic ideal for every domain of life. And this is where it kind of gets. personal because Carlisle believed that uh who you study really shapes who you become. And not just who you study, but who you idolize, who you have reverence for, who you admire.

And studying great men actually develops the courage, the vision, the clarity about your own nature. Learning from the men that have come before you, their mistakes. uh what they've gone through, the the elements of them and their nature and their character that maybe you feel like you're lacking in, you become at least Slightly a little more heroic because you understand what's necessary for moving through the chaos and the hardship of existence. You understand what it takes.

to to actually influence Community, culture, society, politics. uh money, et cetera, in a certain way that moves the needle. So this idea in in honesty is older than Carlisle. He just kind of put it into words, right? And he wasn't alone. Nearly two thousand years earlier, uh, Plutarch Wrote Parallel Lives, where he examined the figures of Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, and so forth.

Not necessarily to worship them, but to kind of extract the virtues and the values that they embodied, the characteristics that they embodied, and to avoid their vices. the beautiful aspect of studying heroes in the way that we're talking about is not to hold them in this kind of pristine fashion where they collapse into this singular dimension of being only good.

The point of studying and you know heroes of the past is to actually see the multidimensional nature of their being, these individuals that have shaped culture, shaped humanity. push things in one direction or another. And to understand the characteristics and the attributes that they possess, that they that they built, but to also understand some of their shortcomings.

This is where he kind of argued that studying great men wasn't just philosophical. It was actually a practical psychological uh application. It's something that you should do. uh something that is very practical for one's development. And he wrote that the rulers uh that in any individual, any man that is a leader in any way, shape, or form should constantly read history, should study victories and defeats, and model themselves after leaders worthy of admiration.

Um, but you know, as somebody like Machiavelli would have said, and he added in a very important insight and caveat, you can never walk another man's path exactly. So aim high, aim higher. So follow someone truly great. Um, even if you fall short, you'll land higher than where you started. Now, why were we never taught this? Why were we never uh sort of

educated on going down these paths, well chances are you didn't learn history this way in school. Modern education really favors different uh lenses, which is history from below. So think social movements, systems, collective forces. This perspective. Has really been shaped and popularized by thinkers like Henry Spencer, who argued that society creates the great man, not the other way around.

And later this approach evolved into things like social history, where heroes are often framed as the oppressors. They're often framed as the manipulators or The kind of lucky beneficiary of circumstances, right? Like they just happen to be in the right time, the right place, and the stars aligned, and everybody, you know, contributed to them and their success, and we shouldn't revere them.

And so in these narratives, great men are not examples to aspire to, but figures that need to be dismantled. And this is part of what we are living through right now. We are living through the kind of the end result. of great figures being dismantled. And in my view, this leaves us with a very serious problem. It gives you as a man no one to become. It doesn't model possibilities. of an aim that you can move towards. And I've said this before that one of the greatest

um downfalls to men in modern society is that men are chronically told who not to be, what not to do, how not to be as a man, but they're never given an aspirational vision of who they could become. There's no models. There's no standards, there's no embodied excellence that they can move towards. Anybody that starts to take on the mantle. of this type of quote unquote hero. Again, I'm not talking about hero in the like Marvel movies sense.

I'm talking about the the hero in the sense of the person who is willing to uh be perceived sometimes as the bad guy to create social change and move things forward. uh the the person that is is able to use certain strengths and attributes that so few possess to move the needle forward in culture, in society, etc. Now There's one necessary caveat that I want to share before I get into implementation. And this really does matter, right?

The great man theory does not mean blind worship. And this is the other end of the spectrum that we have seen in the vacancy of really heroic men that we can revere and we can look up to. What we see in the sort of shadow of that vacancy in our modern culture today is blind worship of certain leaders. And Carlisle sometimes spoke of heroes.

in almost religious like terms, you know, and and that's where things can really go wrong. We should not emulate every single aspect of great men. Many actually had deep flaws and some uh, you know, used their gifts somewhat destructively and manipulatively. So there's a really key distinction that you have to take with you when you're studying great men, right? And the key distinction is we don't need to imitate their ends or their outcomes. We extract the wisdom of their capacity.

Okay, a great man may be a great or orator, right? Maybe be great at speaking, but he uses that for evil. And that doesn't mean that you should in turn be evil. It means that we should master the art of speaking. and use it for something well, something good, something just. So we study great men to understand what human potential actually looks like, what mastery, what discipline and excellence actually looks like. It is not a study.

In trying to find perfection. And this is where I think a lot of the modern discourse has gone wrong, especially within the realm of masculinity and men, because there's no such thing as a perfect man. He doesn't exist. And yet this is what men are usually compared against, right? Is that you have to kind of be this perfect, pristine uh embodiment of a perfect man in order to get.

Social uh credibility in order to get praise and validation online and that kind of stuff. So, why does this matter to you? Well, I think that Carlisle really said it best. He said, we cannot look. however imperfectly upon a great man without gaining something by him. So the question isn't whether or not heroes exist. The question is which ones are you studying by default and what are you learning?

from their lives because whether you choose them consciously or not, you are becoming someone by having studied them. So you have to choose wisely. So how do you implement this? What do you do with all this information? I think the big piece is my encouragement for you is to go out and study some of the greats. I remember in university reading Marcus Aurelius. And here was a man who, you know, had a very interesting life, very interesting course.

And his way of being, his thought, his thought process, his self-reflection, his ability to, you know, his his sort of dedication to the expansion of awareness. of trying to really understand the complexity and the nuance of the human experience in his writing. was something that fundamentally shifted who I was as a man. And I remember reading Meditations by Marcus Aurelius and thinking to myself, wow.

I really hope that when people are interacting with me later on in life, when I'm in my 70s and my 80s, that I have the level of depth. And I have the level of nuance and sophistication in thought. And I have the level of self-reflection to be able to know and have a deep grasp of what is happening inside of me, why I think that way, why I made that decision, the you know, the trade-offs that I'm making in life.

And I hope that that comes across to people that the life that I've lived has moved me in that direction. And it actually gave me an aim to point towards. And I've had many different versions of that. There's a man in my life right now, he's 75 years old. His name's Dewey Freeman. I've had him on my show. I've co-facilitated weeks weekends with him. He's supported my development as a practitioner. And he's somebody that I remember watching him work the first time.

And he kind of took on a heroic figure in my life because I immediately thought to myself, same thing. Wow, I hope that when I'm 50, 60, 70 years old, I have the level of skill as a practitioner that this man does. So we have to be able to develop Some relationship with heroes.

uh in our life, real life men or men of history that we can study and that we can learn from. And again, it's not about them being perfect. I think this is the biggest thing. Whoever you look up to in your life, whatever men you have in your life. uh whether they're online, whether they are in real life, whether they're men from history, it's not about them being perfect. It's actually good that you're able to study them with nuance, you're able to study them with a kind of discernment.

to really have reverence and admiration. For the aim that they can create for you as a man, that there's something about them, their stability, their genius, their influence, their level of success, whatever it is, that it creates a trajectory for you as a man. but that you do not blind yourself to their imperfections.

This is why, you know, constantly I'm trying to talk about my own imperfections because I never want people to put me on a kind of pedestal and imagine that I don't have flaws, that I don't have imperfections, because that's just not true. It's just not how that works, right?

Still human, I still make mistakes. And so look for the heroes in your life. Look for the man. And the hero in the way that I'm defining it. In case it's not clear by now, it is the man that gives you a type of directional trajectory of who you could become in the future. The characteristics, the strengths that he has built. and the flaws that you maybe want to learn from.

So share your thoughts and comments on this below. Man it forward. I'd love to hear specifically about the men who you have really learned from throughout history that you're learning from in your life right now, the men that you have reverence towards. I'd love to hear that. I think that would be amazing. Share that with the other men on the channels as well. Uh, because sometimes, you know, again, in the vacuum of uh having a hero within our culture.

Um we I think a lot of men are really looking for that. So don't forget to share it. Don't forget to like and subscribe. And as always, until next week, Connor Bean signing up.