Want to be a Great Man?

Many young men imagine that one day they will become great men. Some young women also imagine one day becoming great women, and there have been many great women to be sure. But men seem to possess a far greater tendency to think this way - to possess an imagination of greatness - and usually without much insight, to perceive themselves as great men in the making.

I am thinking here of the arts, but this scenario may apply to most any endeavor. A “great man” as described here is an individual whose activities have a significant impact on other men, a society or the culture at large. But the phenomenon is convoluted at best since clearly, there are many more imagined great men than actual great men. This brings us to two key questions. First, why is greatness so common in the male imagination? And second, why do so few men achieve this status?

Act I: Sensations of Greatness

Once having reached the pinnacle of success, or at some later point, great men are typically honored for their achievements and memorialized. I have just finished viewing ten years of Kennedy Center Honors, 2009 to 2018 (produced by CBS television, available on YouTube). The Kennedy Center Honors are annual awards given to those in the performing arts for their lifetime contributions to American culture. The honors are presented in a gala production from the Kennedy Center Opera House with the honorees present along with the President and First Lady of the United States.

Honorees’ origin stories are presented followed by tribute artists performing renditions of the honoree’s work live on stage. The honoree is generally not informed as to which contemporary artists or groups will be performing for them. This preserves a certain live quality to the event even when a viewer watches the program years later. Depending on the viewer’s relationship to the music or performances honored, the resulting experience is often emotionally engaging and deeply moving.

Between 2009 and 2018 male honorees included Mel Brooks, Dave Brubeck, Robert DeNiro, Bruce Springsteen, Merle Haggard, Paul McCartney, Neil Diamond, Sonny Rollins, Yo-Yo Ma, Buddy Guy, Dustin Hoffman, and the rock band Led Zeppelin. Others include Herbie Hancock, Billy Joel, Carlos Santana, Tom Hanks, Sting, George Lucas, Seiji Ozawa, the rock band the Eagles, James Taylor, LL COOL J, Norman Lear, Lionel Richie, Philip Glass, and Wayne Shorter. All great men of the arts, and many internationally renowned for their work.

But greatness is a social construction, and so we should not be surprised that viewers of the same generation as these artists may perceive their own lives through the lens of greatness. The music, films and performances bring us back to various moments in time that correspond to the viewer’s life. Greatness is also a shared perception. As we share in honoring these artists’ achievements, we become engaged and enthralled, and for a few moments, join with them in their success. Men in particular are prone to self-perceptions of greatness.

Act II: Creativity Realized

The problem demonstrated all too clearly by the artists’ origin stories is how rare such achievements are in real life, and how easily an artist’s creative potential may be derailed. The stories also reveal the influence of cultural and commercial factors largely unrelated to an artist's creativity and which often make the difference between international recognition and playing every Friday night at the local pub.

We can only guess how many artists, performers, actors and bands were active during the thirty to forty years the Kennedy Center honorees were performing and who never achieved the degree of success or admiration bestowed upon their more famous counterparts. Indeed the vast majority of artists and performers labor in relative obscurity, often building modest careers at the local or regional level or transitioning to other living wage professions.

The creative impulse may be present, but the circumstances perhaps were not right, the talent lacking, or opportunities insufficient to boost the artist's work into widespread recognition.

Act III: Male Imagination

From action films to heavy metal, “tough guy” actors to boxing champions, greatness is deeply embedded in the male psyche. Whether becoming something great or being a spectator of fictional greatness hardly seems to matter when compared with taking part in the action, the sensations, the thrills of greatness in any and all of its forms. In the presence of these performances, men easily merge with the characters and identify with the action, music or sports competitors as they vicariously take part in the creative performances.

Is it that men naturally yearn to be leaders? Winners? Gridiron fullbacks? Top Gun pilots? Or are their ordinary lives so mundane that an hour or so of pretending to be great - essentially playing with greatness - becomes a healing salve to their restless souls? Most men fear being ordinary, faceless individuals leading a dull existence. And notice that in the presence of fearless men performing with fearless abandon, most male spectators react by whooping, yelling and dancing along, as if the vicarious fearlessness releases a spectrum of bottled-up emotions waiting to emerge.

Although fear is a natural human emotion, men seem to be hurt more deeply by the sensation as it is contrary to hierarchical power, the concept of manhood with which they were raised. One cannot be the top dog or alpha male when cowering in the corner. But an hour or two of playing with greatness may be sufficient to keep the fear at bay.

Act IV: Creative Spirit vs Creative Success

There is absolutely no doubt that the creative spirit resides in many men and women and that it is expressed in innumerable ways. While certainly satisfying to participants and their communities, it is extremely rare that the spirit is translated into creative success, at least not in any commercial sense. Amateur participants enjoy their creative works - church choir participants for example - and the creative spirit is moved in ways that often counteract the mundane and fearful qualities of everyday life.

But seeking creative success in the commercial realm requires something more than talent and spirit. It requires dedication, determination and an internal sense that one’s creative work has something to offer the greater audience or culture to which it is directed.

Act V: Becoming a Creative Giant

2012 Kennedy Center Honoree Led Zeppelin, which some consider the greatest rock band in history, started performing in 1968 London as The Yardbirds and by the end of the year, the key members of the band had coalesced: Jimmy Page, John Bonham, Robert Plant and John Paul Jones. They changed the name to Led Zeppelin and signed with major recording studio Atlantic Records. This group had outstanding talent, a creative attraction to music from mixed genres, and the business acumen to carry it off. They were in a very real sense fearless.

Led Zeppelin continued performing until 1980, and then decided to disband following the tragic death of drummer John Bonham. In total, they produced eighteen record albums and sold more than 300 million records worldwide, becoming one of the best-selling music artists in history. This is just one example of becoming creative giants and great men of the rock music scene.

Act VI: Overcoming Fear

Men fear loneliness, abandonment, failure, growing old and dying, among other things. There is primal fear acquired as a child, and existential fear acquired later as an adult. The latter concerns being alone and dying, or in some cases, dying in an emotional sense. And if there is nothing extraordinary happening in adult times, then the various traumas of childhood tend to persist.

Some men avoid the extraordinary because primal fear keeps a lid on familiar masculine traits. Others brush off the primal childhood fears and embrace the extraordinary as a means of confronting primal fears and overcoming adult-based existential fears. Through their extraordinary creative works, these men conquer fear and replace it with a sense of greatness. On display before thousands of fans, artists like Led Zeppelin cry through the sad songs and stomp and spiral through the rock anthems.

The audience follows along with abandon, vicariously fearless and free in the presence of greatness.