Miscellaneous - InspirationJon Krakauer's "Where Men Win Glory" -- specifically, his incredible ending
Below are portions of passages from the conclusion of Where Men Win Glory, Jon Krakauer's epic narrative account of the life of Pat Tillman, the NFL star who walked away from a multi-million-dollar contract to join the Army following the tragedy that was 9/11. As most of the world now knows, Tillman was killed while in Afghanistan. Krakauer does an unbelievable job exposing the lies and manipulations employed by our government in their attempts at spinning Tillman's death in their favor when all the while they knew that he had been killed by friendly fire.
The book itself takes a little while to get into, especially as Krakauer delves into Middle Eastern history that leads up to the current conflicts over there, but his portrait of Tillman is a stunning one. I highly recommend this book. It will destroy your faith in our government, but it is nonetheless a fantastic read.
The rest of this post comes from the postscript of the book. They are portions that moved me, thus I felt like sharing. Enjoy.
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In his 1992 best seller, The End of History and the Last Man, Francis Fukuyama predicted that the inexorable spread of capitalist democracy “would mean the end of wars and bloody revolutions. Agreeing on ends, men would have no large causes for which to fight. They would satisfy their needs through economic activity, but they would no longer have to risk their lives in battle.” Fukuyama acknowledged that this rosy future would come with a slight downside, however: the emasculation of humankind. World peace would spawn “the creature who reportedly emerges at the end of history, the last man.”
“The last man” was a derisive term coined by Friedrich Nietzsche in his overstuffed masterwork, Thus Spoke Zarathustra. In Nietzche’s estimation, according to Fukuyama, modern liberal democracies produced men
“composed entirely of desire and reason, clever at finding new ways to satisfy a host of petty wants through the calculation of long-term self-interest….It is not an accident that people in democratic societies are preoccupied with material gain and live in an economic world devoted to the satisfaction of the myriad small needs of the body….The last man at the end of history knows better than to risk his life for a cause, because he recognizes that history was full of pointless battles in which men fought over whether they should be Christian or Muslim, Protestant or Catholic, German or French. The loyalties that drove men to desperate acts of courage and sacrifice were proven by subsequent history to be silly prejudices. Men with modern educations were content to sit at home, congratulating themselves on their broadmindedness and lack of fanaticism.”
Mocking these contemptible “last men,” Nietzche’s Zarathustra famously declares, “Thus you stick out your chests—but alas, they are hollow!” Which prompted Fukuyama to label such milquetoasts “men without chests.”
Given the current state of turmoil in South Asia, Africa, and the Caucasus, the onset of international peace prophesied by Fukuyama does not seem imminent. But his forecast about the ascendancy of the American wimp remains disturbingly accurate, according to the historian Lee Harris. In a polemic titled The Suicide of Reason, Harris argues,
“The problem is not that Fukuyama is dead wrong; the problem is that he is half right. Unfortunately for us, the wrong half.
In the West, we are perilously getting down to our last man. Liberal democracy, among us, is achieving the goal that Fukuyama predicted for it: It is eliminating the alpha males from our midst, and at a dizzyingly accelerating rate. But in Muslim societies, the alpha male is still alive and well. While we in America are drugging our alpha boys with Ritalin, the Muslims are doing everything in their power to encourage their alpha boys to be tough, aggressive, and ruthless….We are proud if our sons get into a good college; they are proud if their sons die as martyrs.
To rid your society of high-testosterone alpha males may bring peace and quiet; but if you have an enemy that is building up an army of alpha boys to hate you fanatically and who have vowed to destroy you, you will be committing suicide….
The end of testosterone in the West alone will not culminate in the end of history, but it may well culminate in the end of the West.”
Harris’s dire conjecture certainly grabs one’s attention, but it seems at least as far off the mark as Fukuyama’s. Anone who has spent time with American troops in Afghanistan or Iraq is bound to take issue with Harris’s contention that the current generation of young men raised in the West suffers from a deficit of testosterone.
In truth, our society produces all manner of males….
In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzche introduced the concept of the Ubermensch: an exemplary, transcendent figure who is the polar opposite of “the last man” or “men without chests.” The Ubermensch is virtuous, loyal, ambitious and outspoken, intensely engaged in the hurly-burly of the real world. Above all he is passionate—a connoisseur of both “the highest joys” and “the deepest sorrows.” He believes in the moral imperative to defend (with his life, if necessary) ideals such as truth, beauty, honor, and justice. He is self-assured. He is a risk taker. He regards suffering as salutary, and scorns the path of least resistance.
Nietzche, it is not difficult to imagine, would have recognized in Pat Tillman more than a few of the attributes he ascribed to his Ubermensch. Prominent among such qualities were Tillman’s robust masculinity and its corollary, his willingness to stand up and fight. Because Tillman’s story conforms in some regards to the classic narrative of tragic hero, and the protagonist of such a tale always possesses a tragic flaw, it might be tempting to regard Tillman’s resounding alpha maleness as his Achilles’ heel, the trait that ultimately led to his death.
A compelling argument can be made, however, that the sad end he met in Afghanistan was more accurately a function of his stubborn idealism—his insistence on trying to do the right thing. In which case it wasn’t a tragic flaw that brought Tillman down, but a tragic virtue.
Reader Comments (4)
Gosh, I don't know if I could read the book. So many of our faiths in this wold, not just religious, patriotism, even decency in human beings—just look at Lawrence Taylor, Tiger Woods, Ben Rothelisberger, Al Sharpton, most reality shows—you get my point. Not that I have a ton of faith in government, but reading a book where they detail how they exploited Tillman's death, would be the tipping point. I applaud you for reading the book and not becoming distraught at the world we live in.
Gosh, I don't know if I could read the book. So many of our faiths in this wold, not just religious, patriotism, even decency in human beings—just look at Lawrence Taylor, Tiger Woods, Ben Rothelisberger, Al Sharpton, most reality shows—you get my point. Not that I have a ton of faith in government, but reading a book where they detail how they exploited Tillman's death, would be the tipping point. I applaud you for reading the book and not becoming distraught at the world we live in.
Oh, I definitely have my moments of distress. It's a worthwhile read, though, to see Tillman's thoughts on everything. He was a truly impressive dude. His journal entries that Krakauer shares are jaw-dropping -- you just don't expect the type of thought patterns he had from long-haired NFL players who join the Army.
So yeah, it definitely sucks that the government is as shady as it is. Who knows what they don't tell us, or worse, what lies they tell us. But I was made better by learning about Tillman, and how he handled some of the things he saw before he died.
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