We aren’t really sure, we’ve only seen glimpses of what people are capable of through the great men of the past. Men who accomplished seemingly impossible feats. During the course of history there has been a consistent emergence of great men. That was the case up until very recently, nowadays it’s difficult to find great men. It seems as though the world has been rid of them.
The men who come into the limelight for obtaining qualities of great men eventually all sell their souls for one thing or another. We could take Jordan Peterson as an example. I used to look up to Jordan Peterson, I read his book, “12 Rules for Life”, in February of 2020 and it was unbelievably helpful to me. I started to focus more on what mattered, I started to act in a manner in which I would gain more self-respect, and I was able to understand others much more than I could before reading the book.
Jordan disappeared after his wife was diagnosed with cancer. To combat his depression caused by his wife being diagnosed with cancer he upped his dosage of benzodiazepines. Benzos are CNS depressants and they are highly addictive. Anyway, something changed in Jordan after that, not only did he seem psychologically messed up, it was if he was a completely different person. A year or two later he completely separated from his messages of self-betterment, responsibility, and virtue. Instead of speaking about how young men need to improve themselves, he began kissing the feet of countries who sent their young men off to die in pointless wars. He had fallen.
Jeremy Bentham said, “The rarest of all human qualities is consistency.”
Yes, that is true, but no self-respecting man would ever put his self-interest above his self-proclaimed values. Yet, thats exactly what Jordan did, he sold his soul and now he’s a slave to the Daily Wire as well. Jordan was capable of improving the lives of untold number of people, then he let it all crumble.
What did the true great men of the past do?
“Thomas Jefferson was running, by himself, with both parents dead, a 2,500-acre farm with 250 employees at the age of 13. George Washington didn’t go to school until he was eleven, and the first subject he studied was trigonometry. He then became a crackerjack surveyor by the time he was 13 and by the time he was 17 he was the surveyor of Culpepper County, Virginia. Admiral Dewey, who was the first American admiral, sailed a warship from Peru to Boston in 1815. It was a captured British warship. He was the only one available. He was 12 years old. He was the captain. He had two guns on and when the British captain appeared above deck he told him, “Sir”, he said, “You will be dead if you do that again, and thrown over the side.” He was twelve. Thomas Edison had a newspaper business making big bucks when he was twelve years old. He was reporting Civil War news to passengers on long distance trains between the lower peninsula of Michigan and the upper peninsula. He had access to the telegraph. He had access to the war news first. He sold it for a dime to a quarter. Sometimes he would sell a thousand copies at a stop. You know, making in one hour what an adult working man would make in several months.”
-John Taylor Gatto
Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Admiral Dewey, Thomas Edison, and many other great men were capable of unbelievable things. The vast amount of accomplishments throughout their lives could only ever be imagined by most. Perhaps whats more important is their character. These men were the embodiment of the Be Do Have Principle which states that if we move our focus from what we have or don’t have, to who we want to be - and align our goals and actions with that state of being, in time, we will achieve our haves. By placing a stronger emphasis on who we want to be, we are then able to accomplish tasks which would have previously seemed impossible for us.
Just a thought: Consistency may be so rare because by nature we change. Sometimes change is positive, sometimes not. But we can't change that we change.
Just a thought: Consistency may be so rare because by nature we change. Sometimes change is positive, sometimes not. But we can't change that we change.