A lot of people live in perpetual dissatisfaction with the state of the world.

They feel that virtues like integrity and courage are in short supply, that politics is an embarrassing circus, and that society is getting worse rather than better. And they feel powerless to do anything about it.

They say they’re too young or busy to accomplish anything important, or that they don’t have any gifts or talents to contribute, or that nothing they could do would make a difference anyway.

One man, a boy really, is uniquely suited to squash the ultimately empty excuses we all give for not taking action: Jacques Lusseyran, a little known hero of the French Resistance movement during World War II.

At the age of eight, Lusseyran lost his sight when he fell into the corner of a teacher’s desk at school, and one of the arms of his eyeglasses tore into his right eye. His left eye then suffered from “sympathetic inflammation,” and both were left completely blind.

In a time when the blind were often sidelined from mainstream society and sent to special schools, Jacques never wanted to be an exception or get treated with kid gloves; he went back to his old school, made many friends, rose to the top of the class, and joined with the other boys in their rough and tumble play.

Then in 1941, when he was just sixteen years old, Lusseyran created Volontaires de la Liberté — the Volunteers of Liberty — and recruited 600 of his peers into the French Resistance movement. With the Germans occupying the city of Paris where he lived, and censoring the news coming into France, he and his compatriots began publishing and distributing a bi-weekly underground news bulletin. The Volunteers of Liberty then joined with another, larger Resistance group, Défense de la France (Defense of France). Jacques served on the organization’s Executive Committee and editorial board, and used the little army of young men he had built up to distribute the DF’s own newspaper and grow its circulation to a quarter of a million.

Even when he was eventually arrested and held at the Buchenwald concentration camp, Lusseyran continued to resist the Germans and aid his fellow men — starting yet another covert news organization in order to build morale and encourage the hopes of his fellow prisoners.

Jacques Lusseyran perfectly embodied the maxim of Theodore Roosevelt to “Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.” At every turn, he could have made perfectly sensible excuses for sitting on his hands and doing nothing: “I’m blind! I’m only 16! I live in an occupied country!” Instead, he was always looking for some way to take action.

We have thus created this “Do What You Can” (DWYC) guide inspired by Lusseyran’s life. Below you’ll find 5 of the excuses people commonly give as to why they can’t make a difference, how the example Lusseyran set destroys that excuse, and the DWYC action principle you should replace it with.

Excuse #1: I have an idea but I’m not sure yet how to execute it.

When Charles de Gaulle, leader of the Free French, called upon his countrymen to continue to morally and physically resist the German occupation, Jacques knew “beyond a shadow of a doubt” that he wanted to fight for the “things in our heads and our hearts we called freedom.” Blind in both eyes, Lusseyran knew he couldn’t become a soldier or take up arms, and wasn’t sure exactly when and how he could contribute to the Resistance movement. But he felt sure he’d find a way to do something. As he told a friend: “I am going to make war. I don’t know how, but I shall make it.”

Only the first step seemed clear in his mind: he felt strongly that he needed to meet with his two best friends, and then to connect with ten others. Though he wasn’t even sure what he’d say to them, he felt confident that “when the time came, I should know well enough.” He had no plans, just a purpose, and that was sufficient to get going: “We knew nothing, and yet we already knew everything. We were embarking upon the serious things of life just as a well-hammered nail bites into wood and takes hold.”

Lusseyran first told his two best friends of his desire to resist the occupation. One was ecstatic; he had been thinking along the very same lines, and humbled Jacques by telling him: “We all expected this from you.” The other had a hundred questions about how exactly their movement was going to organize and operate. And Jacques found, just as he had hoped, that he was able to formulate answers and ideas on the spot.

Jacques then reached out to ten others, giving them just a few details of what he was thinking of doing. They all encouraged him to move on the idea, and he felt a bit of panic at the pressure: “What action was I capable of, blind as I was? Yet it was for me all of them were waiting.”

So he took another step, calling a preliminary meeting. He expected that just the twelve friends he had contacted would come. Instead, fifty-two of his classmates showed up.

They gathered around Jacques and fell silent. All eyes were on him. At that moment, Lusseyran remembered, “an unaccustomed radiance filled my head, and my heart stopped beating out of rhythm. All at once I began to understand everything I had been seeking and not finding over the past weeks.”

His words came to him as he spoke. He talked to his new comrades of what it meant to be joining the resistance movement, of the need for absolute secrecy and silence, and how they would start out slow for the next 6 months, building small cells of resistors one at a time.

By simply opening his mouth, the 16-year-old had set the wheels in motion. There was no turning back, even if he still didn’t know exactly how to proceed and what lay ahead. Being an underground movement, “there could be no question of getting expert advice, not from politicians, officers, newspaper men, or even from our parents.” The young men would have to figure it all out on their own.

The next step, and the step after that, and the step after that, emerged as they went along. The movement took shape as Lusseyran acted, and would never have gotten off the ground if he had tried to work out all the details before getting started.

Excuse #2: I don’t have any gifts/talents/abilities that would be useful.

A blind teenager might seem an unlikely leader of a resistance movement, and Lusseyran admitted that most of what he did with the Volunteers of Liberty required the help of his sighted right-hand men. But Lusseyran had developed a set of special abilities that turned out to be absolutely crucial to the operation.

When Jacques lost his sight as a boy, he found that his other senses became keenly sharpened, or as he put it, it wasn’t so much that his senses were heightened, as he simply started “making better use of them.” His sense of smell became animal-like, to the point where he could detect people’s confidence or stress simply by scent. And his sense of touch became so superhumanly sensitive, that as well shall see, it completely altered his view of the created universe.

Sound became a particularly important source of information for him, and he was astonished at how much he had missed before he had lost his sight:

“Even before my accident, I loved sound, but now it seems clear that I didn’t listen to it…

It was as though the sounds of earlier days were only half real, too far away from me, and heard through a fog…my accident had thrown my head against the humming heart of things, and the heart never stopped beating.”

Lusseyran proactively worked to hone his hearing, joying in the thousand little nuances he learned to discover in what had previously been mere noise:

“I multiplied sounds to my heart’s content. I rang bells. I touched walls with my fingers, explored the resonance of doors, furniture and the trunks of trees. I sang in empty rooms, I threw pebbles far off on the beach just to hear them whistle through the air and then fall. I even made my small companions repeat words to give me plenty of time to walk around them.”

Jacques could use the sound of creaking floorboards to gauge the dimensions of a room. He could tell where there was a recess in a wall or a crack in a window, and whether a door had been pushed by a human hand or the wind. If a draft moved a stationary object just a tiny fraction, he could hear “its friction in the air, as light a sound as the sound of a waving hand.”

Lusseyran further learned to read people’s “voices like a book.” He found that if he let the voices inside of him, allowing them to truly vibrate in his head and chest, they would unerringly reveal the character of the person before him. “There was a moral music,” he observed. “Our appetites, our humors, our secret vices, even our best-guarded thoughts were translated into our voices.” Lusseyran discovered that a person’s words and voice could say two different things, and it was always the voice that never deceived.

Put all together, while Lusseyran’s blindness was a handicap in one way, it also developed within him a kind of “seeing eye” — a penetrating intuition about people and his environment.

Unsurprisingly then, Jacque’s friends unanimously voted to put him in charge of recruiting for the Volunteers of Liberty. Each new member would have to be vetted before being admitted, and Lusseyran was made the final arbiter of the decision. His friends felt he was the only one for the position, because he had “the sense of human beings” and “would hear more acutely and pay better attention.”

It was a job that came with the highest of stakes. To let in a mole (and the country was lousy with them) would mean the end of the group, and the imprisonment and likely execution of its members.

Potential recruits were taken to an undisclosed location, and put into a room with Jacques alone. Here he would interview the would-be resistors. Being examined by a blind man invariably caught the recruits off guard. They couldn’t rely on clothes or appearance or facial expressions to win him over. They tried to say exactly the right things, without realizing that he wasn’t listening to their words, but to their voices.

Jacques’ judgments turned out to be nearly unerring. Of the 600 recruits he let into the Volunteers of Liberty, 599 turned out to be loyal to the cause. With one, Lusseyran felt a distinct premonition not to trust him, but was persuaded to change his mind by the man’s other qualifications and the encouragement of his friends.

He turned out to be the informer who eventually got Lusseyran and his comrades arrested by the Nazis.

Excuse #3: I’m Too Young

When Jacques started the Volunteers of Liberty, he was just sixteen years old, and the oldest member of the group was twenty.

Yet as Lusseyran observed, while the group’s youth “did not make all our operations simple,” it “made some of them possible.” In fact, the age of these resistance workers actually proved to be one of their greatest strengths for a couple of reasons.

First, the prejudice against young people not being capable of doing anything significant actually worked in the group’s favor. The boys’ neighbors saw them as just a bunch of kids and were less inclined to suspect they were up to anything. As Jacques explains:

“Young as we were, we could easily go all over, pretend to be playing games, or making foolish talk, wander around whistling with our hands in our pockets outside factories or German convoys, hang about kitchens and on sidewalks, climb over walls. Everything would be on our side…

The Volunteers of Liberty were going to build an information network, not an organization of professional agents but something better, an organization of agents dedicated and nearly invisible because they looked like harmless youngsters.”

Second, as we’ve previously discussed in-depth, adolescence (which stretches into your twenties) provides the kind of passion and courage that’s typically lacking in grown-ups and is often crucial to overcoming apathy and the fear of risk.

Being part of the resistance was incredibly dangerous and required putting one’s life at stake. Historians estimate that only 2% of the French population became active resistors, and of those willing to participate, Lusseyran observed that four-fifths were less than thirty years old:

“The men over thirty round about us were afraid: for their wives and their children — these were real reasons; but also for their possessions, their position, and that is what made us angry; above all for their lives, which they clung to much more than we did to ours. We were less frightened than they were.”

Lusseyran and his friends burned with an inexhaustible enthusiasm that not only surmounted apathy and fear, but allowed them to even relish their hazards and hardships. “Even in the difficulties of living,” Lusseyran remembered, “we found exhilaration that gave us strength.” For the young Volunteers of Liberty, “there was eternal spring”:

“none of my friends were hesitating any longer…All of us had plunged into courage. It was our element. We were swimming in it and had no eyes left but for the shore.”

Excuse #4: I’m too busy.

While acting as a leader of the French resistance movement, Jacques was also a full-time student, first in high school and then at university. He had two passions and goals during this time: to fight the Nazis and to be admitted to the École normale supérieure — an elite institution of higher education which had an extremely competitive selection process.

Lusseyran worked hard to manage both tasks well, even though it meant going absolutely full steam for two years:

“I had made it a point of honor to set up a balance between my two lives, the public and the secret. My days oscillated between studies and action at a frightening pace. In the morning between four o’clock and seven, I walked through books two or three steps at a time. From eight to noon I listened to the teachers, took frenzied notes and tried to absorb knowledge as fast as it was given out. In the afternoon, from two to four, I was still in class. Then at four o’clock the Resistance began.

There were trips across Paris by routes set up in advance for greater safety, meetings, surveys, judgments, discussions, orders to be given, worries, putting the doubting ones back on the road, supervision of founding groups, calls for coolness to those who thought the Resistance was like a detective story, deliberation over the articles for the bulletin, sifting of news, time lost in the kind of summons which could be made neither by letter because of censorship nor by telephone because of lines tapped. By this time it was already eleven o’clock at night, and I believe I only stopped because of the curfew.

Alone in my room at last, I immersed myself in my studies again, and kept on learning until my fingers grew stiff in the pages of Braille. Since my interest in life and my confidence in it were boundless, everything seemed to me as significant the tenth time I encountered it as it had the first. And that gave me an enthusiasm which enabled me to go through fatigue without feeling it.”

Lusseyran knew that many thought this kind of austere, all-out schedule was nuts, but as he asked rhetorically: “Have you ever known anyone to choose indulgence as a weapon in a fight?”

Excuse #5: “Nothing I could do will make a difference.”

The majority of French people were cowed into passivity not simply from fear, but from the feeling that even if they wanted to take action, there was nothing they could do that would make a difference. Armed resistance or an attempted coup would simply be crushed by the Nazis. And so most simply sat on their hands, “saying nothing and doing nothing while [the] country lay motionless. These folks were known as les attentistes, the waiting ones, and they drove Lusseyran nuts: 

“Society for me was divided into two parts, the Hard and the Soft. It was not cowards one found among the soft ones, and certainly not traitors, for traitors were almost always the hard ones who had gone wrong, but the formless race of the procrastinators, all the ones who approved of what we were doing and were careful not to be involved in it. These, of all times, were not times for meaning well.”

The Volunteers of Liberty and the Defense of France decided that even if they couldn’t attack the Nazis physically, they could still fight them morally. In publishing their underground newspapers, they sought to awaken the conscience of the French people, shake them from their apathy, and keep their hopes alive.

All the news coming into France was heavily censored, and so the papers — slipped under people’s doors and boldly handed out in public — covered what was really happening in the country and in the war. They published stories about who the Gestapo had arrested and killed, the existence of political prisons, and Axis defeats the Nazis tried to keep quiet. The papers printed some of the first photos of the horrors that were happening inside German concentration camps, and the Nazis’ attempt to exterminate the Jewish people.

It was hoped that even the simple fact that a Resistance existed would help strengthen the backbone of the French people — showing them there were still some who had not surrendered to the swastika and the spread of barbarism. France-Soir, the DF’s publication, saw itself not as a political newspaper, but as a Christian one, and thought it was just as important to encourage the survival of the faith’s “absolute demands for respect and love,” as it was to cover the truth about current events.

The paper’s overarching mission was “to keep France from abdicating, to see to it that she was present and intact when she was liberated.”

Such an aim is surely nebulous, and it would certainly be easy for critics to say that these newspapers didn’t ultimately make a difference. But the effects of the Volunteers of Liberty and the Defense of France extended beyond their primary work and that moment in time.

The Resistance gave men a purpose; instead of atrophying under occupation rule, their morale was sharpened, their character and skill were tested, and they were prepared for further tasks. When the Allies finally landed in France, the DF had thousands of men ready to fight alongside the troops and assist in the liberation of their country.

The France-Soir, which grew to a circulation of 450,000 by 1944, would become the most important paper in Paris after the war.

And for Jacques’ part, his experience in gathering, appraising, and distributing the news would certainly make a difference to another set of people: his fellow prisoners at the Buchenwald concentration camp, where he ended up after being arrested in 1943.

Lusseyran’s comrades put him in charge of the news at the camp. He was already fluent in his captor’s language, as he had decided to study German two hours every day way back in 1938, simply because he could tell that “Europe was rocking towards the east, toward Berlin, Hamburg, Nuremburg, and Munich,” he wanted to prepare himself to be fully engaged with what was to come.

Jacques used this skill to listen to the bulletins of the German army and the “official” news which was broadcast over the camp’s loudspeakers. He would take down what was said from morning ‘til night and then carefully analyze the information, drawing inferences by omission. For example, when the news began to leave out any mention of Paris, he surmised that it would soon be taken by the Allies. He announced the city’s liberation on August 26 — the day after the last German garrison had in fact surrendered.

Lusseyran would find prisoners who lived in the zone of operations currently at the fore, and make sure he got all the names, places, and distances exactly right. He also gathered a team of interpreters to translate what he had to say into the various languages of the 30,000 or so other prisoners at the camp. Then he would go from block to block, calmly and confidently telling the inmates what was going on outside the walls of Buchenwald. The prisoners in turn would open up to Jacques about their worries and anguish. Yet Lusseyran found that he felt buoyed up, rather than weighed down, by these interactions:

“The remarkable thing was that listening to the fears of others had ended by freeing me almost completely from anxiety. I had become cheerful, and was cheerful almost all the time, without willing it, without even thinking about it. That helped me, naturally, but it also helped the others. They had made such a habit of watching the coming of the little blind Frenchman with his happy face, his reassuring words delivered in a loud voice, and with the news he gave out, that on days there was no news, they had him visit them just the same.”

In working to help other people hold onto life, Lusseyran found himself better able to hold onto his own. Of the 2,000 Frenchmen with which he was shipped to Buchenwald, only he and two others lived to see their liberation.

Get Started: You Simply Have to Meet the World Halfway

One of the overarching convictions that motivated Jacques Lusseyran to become a Resistance leader despite his age and his blindness, to fight for freedom, and to help others survive Buchenwald, was formed in his youth in the months after he lost his sight.

It was a time in which he was learning to use his other senses on another level. His fingers, which before his blindness “had been stiff, half dead at the ends of my hands, good only for picking up things” developed a new sensitivity. He wanted to touch everything — to measure objects’ dimensions, figuring out their height and weight, making a mental map of their irregularities, and gauging their density.

Forced to know the world tactilely, he made a most surprising discovery: the inanimate world was neither dead nor inert. Even stones, he attests, have a kind of vibration. What’s more, his fingers seemed to have a vibration of their own. And the more he harmonized these respective vibrations, the easier and quicker he could recognize an object. It felt as though when he reached out for things, they simultaneously reached out to him; “everything was an exchange of pressures.” When holding an apple, for example, he couldn’t tell “whether I was touching it or it was touching me.”

Jacques came to be able to sense these sort of electrical currents even when he wasn’t physically touching the object. He could “feel” objects even at a great distance; “trees and rocks came to me and printed their shape upon me like fingers leaving their impression in wax. The tendency of objects to project themselves beyond their physical limitations produced sensations as definitely as seeing or hearing.” Lusseyran became able to point to where a wall or a hedge or a telephone pole was along a road with an accuracy that absolutely astonished his friends.

The discovery of these vibrations radically altered the way Lusseyran viewed created matter, and transformed the way he approached life:

“Being blind I thought I should have to go out to meet things, but I found that they came to meet me instead. I have never had to go more than halfway, and the universe became the accomplice of all my wishes.”

If making a difference only involves moving halfway towards our vision of what our families, community, and country might be, what excuse could we possibly have for not taking action?

Do what you can, with what you have, where you are. Watch what happens, and…

Vive la résistance! 

____________________

Source:

And There Was Light by Jacques Lusseyran

If you are a red-blooded male who came of age sometime in the last 90 years, chances are you grew up with two action-loving, adventure-seeking, mystery-solving literary companions: Frank and Joe Hardy. The Hardy Boys books in which these young detectives star have never been out of print since first coming onto the scene in 1927, have been translated into 25 different languages, and continue to sell over a million copies annually.

The famous Hardy boys were created by the American publisher Edward Stratemeyer and subsequently brought to life by a series of ghostwriters under the pseudonym Franklin W. Dixon. (Pro tip: The best volumes in the series are 1-16 and 22-24, which were all written by Leslie McFarlane.) While there have been numerous spin-offs and iterations of the series, enthusiasts consider the first 59 volumes to be the true Hardy Boys “canon.”

A few years back, I bought half the canon for my children to one day enjoy, and I’ve sometimes looked at the old Hardy Boys volumes sitting on the shelf in my office and thought about what exactly has made these books so popular and enduring; why do they continue to line the shelves of libraries and bookstores, engage generation after generation, and remain indelibly printed on our cultural consciousness?

To answer this question, I recently re-read half a dozen of the early Hardy Boys books. What I discovered is that much of their appeal has to do with the way these teenage sleuths embody many of the ideals of masculinity. So much so, that they actually have a lot to teach grown men:

9 Things a Grown Man Can Learn From the Hardy Boys

1. Develop a Wide Variety of Skills

The Hardy boys are strong, athletic, brave, clever, and resourceful. By developing a wide variety of skills and becoming mentally, morally, and physically fit, they’re ready to come to the aid of friends and strangers, handle any exigency they find themselves in, and solve mysteries involving ever varied contexts and circumstances.

Frank and Joe know how to fix cars and bikes, camp, canoe, navigate the woods, scuba dive, talk in sign language, speak Spanish, track animals and humans, hold their breath for longer than a minute, and sneak around stealthily. Their father also taught them how to properly handle firearms and both boys are excellent marksmen (though they rarely use guns on the job).

Many of their skills allow them to be eminently mobile, and follow a mystery wherever it leads; they know how to deftly operate cars, motorboats, and motorcycles, and can pilot single-engine aircraft.

In addition to cultivating a wide breadth of manual competence, Frank and Joe Hardy develop their athleticism. They keep in shape through playing sports like baseball and track and work out in a barn behind their parents’ house that they converted to a gymnasium. Here they and their friends hang out, work the punching bag, engage in friendly boxing matches, and use the parallel bars to practice their gymnastic skills. The Hardy boys also often round up their friends for day hikes through the woods and countryside.

As the brothers never know when they might need to tackle a crook, hang off the ledge of a cliff, or swim a far distance, they keep their bodies nimble, tuned up, and ready for action.

2. Be Perennially Curious

The Hardy boys’ skills aren’t just of the physical variety, but extend to the mental realm as well. The detectives are often able to make logical deductions and find connections between various incidents and pieces of evidence. This ability comes in large part from the fact that they have a robust treasury of mental models to draw from, and they construct this rich cognitive scaffolding by being perennially curious about the world.

Frank and Joe are interested in a wide variety of subjects, and while working their cases, they often take the time to learn about the context and background that form the setting of their investigations. For example, when a case takes them up to Alaska in The Mystery at Devil’s Paw, they pay a visit to a local museum to learn about the state’s indigenous culture and take an interest in the archeological work being done in the state. In The Secret Panel, the boys are supposed to be searching through a peculiar house, but after finding a book on locks and keys in the library, one of the brothers settles into a chair to read it and finds himself lost in the text for hours. In The Flickering Torch Mystery, Frank and Joe decide to go work on an experimental farm, and while a case ends up impinging on their stay and proves to be a major distraction, they still have the inclination to learn about the agricultural tests being conducted there.

The Hardy boys investment in gaining a wider knowledge while working a case consistently ends up helping them make the connections necessary to solving it. But their curiosity often aids them in discovering new cases in the first place. When they see a spooky or abandoned house, the boys can’t help but go explore it, and their gumption and interest in the unknown invariably leads them into uncovering yet another mystery.

3. Strengthen Your Powers of Observation

One of the most important components of the Hardy boys’ arsenal of cognitive abilities is their keen power of observation. From a young age, their father taught them that most “people walk around in a trance” and that one’s situational awareness was a skill that had to be intentionally trained. That training took the form of the kinds of games and exercises we shared in this article.

In The Hardy Boys Detective Handbook, in which the brothers explain how real-life detectives do their work, Joe notes that “There’s a lot of difference between seeing and observing. The primary rule of observation is not to permit your eyes to pass over anything, but instead to make conscious mental images of the objects you wish to remember.”

The boys’ sharp eyes allow them to spot things that are unusual in their environment and find clues like footprints, tire tracks, fresh scratches on a rusty lock, and wilted plants that are no longer rooted in the earth and are instead being used to camouflage a secreted vehicle. Another tip they learned from their father is “always to note the exact time any unusual circumstance occurred.”

Frank and Joe not only practice observing as much detail in the environment as possible, they train themselves to take these mental snapshots as quickly as they can; they’re thus able to catch identifying details of a car that speeds past them, or notice an odd detail about a stranger they meet only briefly. For example, after speaking with a man for only a few minutes in The Secret Panel, the first thing the brothers say to each other is “Did you notice the odd signet ring Mr. Mead was wearing?” The Hardy boys’ attention to detail and close observation of others gives them “great ingenuity in judging character” and a heightened discernment in judging the bad guys from the good.

While Frank and Joe rely on their sight for much of their clue-finding, they also use their other senses at their full capacity. They are quick to notice unusual noises in their environment, and will put their ear to the ground or to a door to home in on and track faint sounds. Catching the scent of a certain flower wafting through a small hole in a prison where they’re being held is enough for them to figure out their location. And patting down a backpack allows them to detect an extra layer of material and discover the bag’s secret compartment.

4. Carry a Robust EDC

The Hardy boys were masters of everyday carry before that was even a term. They always have the tools and gear they need to escape danger, find clues, and solve their cases right on hand. Here’s what they carry:

• Pocketknife — for cutting through the ropes they so often get tied up with, and a host of other things
• Flashlight — for exploring dark tunnels, caves, attics, and basements
• Handkerchief — for bandages or wrapping up a piece of evidence
• Small magnifying glass — for examining clues more closely
• Pocket notebook — for writing down license plate numbers and sketching suspects and clues
• Pen/pencil — for writing in their notebook
• Strike anywhere matches — for starting fires and giving light in dark cellars when their flashlight is lost or broken

When engaged in outdoor adventures, the Hardy boys carry a first aid kit. And their father brings along “concentrated food tablets” wherever he goes in case he gets stuck in a place without access to needed sustenance.

5. Father by Example and Be a Mentor to Your Children

When I read the Hardy Boys as a kid, I mostly identified with Frank and Joe, and really didn’t notice the adult characters in the story. Re-reading them as a grown man, and a father, however, I was really struck by what a warm and supportive home Fenton and Laura — the boys’ parents — create for their sons, and particularly what an exemplary dad they have. Manly, athletic, intelligent, thoughtful, and full of unwavering integrity, Fenton reminds me of another upstanding literary father: Atticus Finch.

Mr. Hardy once served as a detective for the New York City police force, and did so well in that capacity that he struck out on his own and became a P.I. whose prowess is known from coast to coast. Yet though his services are greatly sought and his schedule is always busy, he’s described as “an intensely considerate man,” whose “first thought was always for his wife and boys.”

Fenton often has to leave town to work on a case, but when he’s home he’s “never too busy to talk to his sons.” He patiently teaches them the tricks of the trade, from the skill of observation to the practice of surveillance and fingerprinting. Their father’s willingness to openly share the ins and outs of his career is what gets Joe and Frank interested in becoming amateur detectives themselves, and creates their desire to one day become professionals in the field (to the chagrin of their mother, who wishes they’d pursue a safer line of work).

Fenton not only mentors his sons’ professional ambitions, he also sets an example of sterling character. He doesn’t just offer gentle counsel on always doing the right thing — he demonstrates such ethics in his own life. For example, in The House on the Cliff, a gang of smugglers kidnaps Fenton and then offers to let him go as long as he signs a document promising not to tell the authorities what he’s discovered about their criminal activity. If he doesn’t sign, they’ll leave him to starve. Fenton of course refuses to keep quiet, declaring, “I wouldn’t be doing my duty if I agreed to any scheme that would protect you.”

“How about your family,” the ringleader taunts. “Are you doing your duty to them by being so obstinate?”

To which Fenton replies: “They would rather know that I died doing my duty than have me come back to them as a protector of smugglers and criminals.”

6. Have Confidence in Your Children and Be a “Free-Range Parent”

Another admirable quality of Fenton’s parenting approach is how much freedom he gives to his teenage sons. He lets them shoot guns, get motorcycles, learn how to fly planes, and travel by themselves to places like Alaska, Mexico, and Scotland. And despite the fact that the boys repeatedly get knocked over the head and kidnapped, are attacked by bears, fall through trap doors, and are almost run over numerous times, he still allows them to act as amateur detectives and pursue cases against smugglers, forgers, spies, murderers, drug dealers, thieves, and other assorted baddies (a disproportionate amount of crime occurs in their hometown of Bayport; seemingly sleepy, idyllic towns on the Atlantic coast are actually hotbeds of criminal activity — just ask Jessica Fletcher).

Fenton not only allows his boys to pursue their own cases, he also lets them help on his cases. When a colleague wants to talk to him, he consistently asks that Frank and Joe be allowed to stay and listen, assuring the speaker that the young men can be trusted to hear whatever he or she wants to say.

The permissive and trusting attitude of the Hardy boys’ parents (their mother was more cautious, but also willing to let the boys adventure) is contrasted with that of their Aunt Gertrude. Though secretly proud of her nephews, she’s always chastising them for doing dangerous things, and issuing admonitions like: “Don’t go swimming. Don’t get run over. Don’t talk to strangers. Don’t be late.” Aunt Gertrude, the narrator observes, “could never quite cure herself of the habit of treating her nephews as if they were a pair of feeble-minded infants unfit to be allowed out without a guardian.”

Fenton gives his sons such a long leash because he has confidence in their maturity and aptitude, and this confidence helps grow those very qualities; instead of coddling them and treating them like fragile children, which would encourage them to sink to that level, he lets them make their own mistakes and rise to the standard of his high opinion and trust.

7. Every Man Needs a Gang

In contrast to Nancy Drew, who typically solves her cases alone (and is almost always featured alone on the covers of her books), the Hardy boys rarely single-handedly solve their mysteries. Instead, the brothers team up not only with each other, but with their father and their friends, operating in what has been the basic unit of male sociality since time immemorial: the all-male gang.

“Ever since the brothers had been old enough to engage in sleuthing,” the narrator observes in The Secret Caves, “there had been a great camaraderie among the Hardy ‘men folk.'” This camaraderie extends to the Hardy boys’ high school pals: Chet Morton, Allen “Biff” Hooper, Jerry Gilroy, Phil Cohen, and Tony Prito. Many a case finds Frank or Joe picking up the telephone “to put in one call after another to ‘the gang.’” The young men assemble as a posse, and tear out on their motorcycles to search for clues or investigate some suspicious happenings.

The Hardy boys’ crime-solving team operates like all-male gangs — through a dynamic of both cooperation and intra/inter-group competition. Sometimes the boys and their father are both working on the same case, with each party wanting to be the first to solve it. And the brothers’ friends, especially Chet, seek the glory and pride that comes from being the first to find a clue. But competing with each other to solve the mystery keeps their team sharp, and thus better prepared to take on the criminal gangs they’re up against.

By collaborating and pushing each other to be better, the boys are able to pool their skills and resources, and become a safer and more effective crime-solving force. Alone, each young man is vulnerable and can only search a small area, but together they can cover more ground and watch each other’s backs. Indeed, the Hardy boys’ gang sometimes saves Frank’s and Joe’s lives outright. The brothers can’t always solve the cases they tackle on their own, and the gang is not only their secret to success and physical survival, but simply makes their operations more enjoyable — the boys do plenty of teasing and joking around and have a lot of fun on their way to nabbing the crook.

Frank and Joe are grateful for the valuable help and support provided by their father and their friends, and share in the rewards that come from solving their cases. For example, in The House on the Cliff, the boys use part of the reward they earn for breaking up a smuggling ring to throw a gentleman’s dinner for their buddies in their backyard barn.

8. Be Persistent

At the heart of the Hardy boys’ M.O. is their dogged persistence and determination; once they get on a case, no amount of obstacles or dangers can deter them from solving it. When they notice something suspicious or strange going on, their curiosity spurs them to say: “I’m going to find out why.” And once a “Hardy said that, one could be certain he would let nothing stop him from carrying out his purpose.”

Fenton had taught his sons that “A good detective never sighs with discouragement nor becomes impatient.” Frank and Joe thus do the painstaking work of detectives without complaint, and are unable to rest until every rock has been overturned and they get to the bottom of things. It doesn’t matter if they are cold or scared, whether it is dark, or they’re dead tired, they keep on the trail. When their friends’ spirits or courage flag, the boys rally the troops with calls to “Brace up!” and lead the team on by example.

9. Approach Life Like a Detective

The word “detect” has its origins in the Latin for “uncover, expose, discover, reveal,” and later to “expose the real or hidden nature of something or someone.” To detect is thus to look for the truth of things, and a detective is one who has made truth seeking his central purpose and identity.

Detectives don’t accept the pat stories they hear, but try to get to the bottom of things; they’re always looking to go deeper and find the reality beneath of the surface. Their environment is alive with possibilities — everything they see, smell, touch, taste, and hear may be a potential clue to the larger meaning of things.

A detective must at times be selfless, risking his life to aid others. In fact, the Hardy boys not only help others by trying to solve a case, they often stumble upon the case in the first place while trying to help friends and even strangers. In service we encounter more of the problems of life, but also gain access to its deeper interests and complexities.

A detective strives to track down and expose those who disrupt the scales of justice; he struggles for good against the forces of evil, and seeks to right wrongs. Yet though he works to restore order, he often does so outside established channels of authority and operates as something of a rogue. The Hardy boys, for example, though they are clean, morally square, upright lads, frequently come into conflict with Bayport’s police force, who, at least in the early books, are described as sometimes bumbling, arrogant, and not fully on the level. Frank and Joe show great poise and a complete lack of intimidation when they confront officers for their ineptitude, and are not afraid to stand their ground.

While the later books gave the boys a greater respect for the law, McFarlane had a purpose in painting the young sleuths as sometime iconoclasts; as the author explained in his autobiography, Ghost of the Hardy Boys:

“I had my own thoughts about teaching youngsters that obedience to authority is somehow sacred…Would civilization crumble if kids got the notion that the people who ran the world were sometimes stupid, occasionally wrong and even corrupt at times?”

In looking at the qualities of detectives generally, and the Hardy boys, specifically, I’ve come to conclude that what drew me and millions of others to the Hardy boys growing up, was a desire to take their approach to sleuthing and apply it to all of life. To always be up for action and adventure; to be both a doer and thinker; to strive to expose evil and corruption; and to center one’s life on the pursuit of truth — ever examining witnesses, sifting through evidence, looking for clues, making connections, and reaching conclusions as to the deeper meaning of it all. To maintain the Hardy boys’ spirit as a grown man is to ultimately not give up on the idea that for the perennially curious, there are always mysteries out there waiting to be discovered and explored.

Let what the literary scholar Michael G. Cornelius said of the Hardy boys, ever be said of us:

“These sleuths always long for mystery and adventure; when one ends, they consciously cannot wait for another to begin. In many ways, boy sleuths are sleuths first and boys second; they live to detect, and the act of detection, in turn, is what has given them life.”

_______________________________

Sources:

The Hardy Boys Canon. If you’re looking for the originals, be sure to buy those published before 1959, the year in which the publisher began editing the early installments to excise potentially offensive racial stereotypes, but also to make the already accessible books even easier reads — length was lopped off, descriptive language streamlined, and old slang and vocabulary words judged too meaty were removed. Overall, the project dumbed the books down and the result was almost universally panned; McFarlane felt the books had been “gutted,” while one modern critic opined: “The quality of the revised stories is generally so far below that of the originals that it can only be considered as an act of literary vandalism.” Look for originals on eBay.

Boy Detectives: Essays on the Hardy Boys

Word count: ~10,000
Time to read: ~45 minutes 

In ancient Rome, four virtues were considered the chief pillars of excellent manhood and worthy leadership — none of which have a single word in English that entirely encapsulates their full meaning: pietas (duty, religiosity, loyalty), dignitas (dignity, status, influence, prestige), virtus (valor, manliness, excellence, courage, character), and gravitas (weight, seriousness, dignity, importance).

Of these four celebrated virtues, the last is the one that has found its way into our modern language in its ancient, unaltered form — we still speak of such and such a man as having real gravitas.

This is likely no coincidence, as the trait in many ways encompasses the other three, and is acutely needed in times of instability, uncertainty, and superficiality. For the Romans, gravitas denoted a man’s metaphorical “heaviness” — a strength of purpose, sense of authority, depth of character, and commitment to the task at hand that together formed a structure sturdy enough to bear the weight of his significant responsibilities. A man with gravitas held a position of importance, and used his influence to further the public good. His seriousness, his substance, acted as a counterbalance to all that was fickle, cheap, crass, disposable, flighty — those currents that have only grown stronger in Western society as time has gone on.

Though we may still use the word gravitas, and crave its greater presence in private citizens and public figures alike, beyond lists of its attendant qualities, it’s still a virtue that’s hard to describe. Like other weighty concepts, you know it when you see it, and it’s easiest to grasp in the illustration of someone else’s example.

Who then, is a good exemplar of gravitas to study? For me personally, there’s always one man who first comes to mind: Walter Cronkite.

As a radio reporter, newspaper journalist, television broadcaster, and special correspondent, Cronkite covered the world’s events for over six decades. But it was his nearly twenty-year stint as the anchor of the CBS Evening News for which he is best remembered. Each night for nearly two decades, his fatherly visage and authoritative, reassuring voice beamed into millions of households across America, comforting families’ grief during the assassination of JFK, steadying their nerves as astronauts first landed on the moon, and answering their questions about Vietnam.

Cronkite was called “The Most Trusted Man in America” after a survey found that he was, well, the public figure people trusted most. His presence was so constant, his demeanor so even-keeled, his warmth so genuine and paternal, he was also that rare figure whose name people take to prefacing with “Uncle.” Rarer still, Uncle Walt was respected by folks on both sides of the political aisle, and by those of all ages — from WWII GIs to Vietnam protesters. Many all across the country could identity with the sentiment voiced by Jack Paar, television host and one-time rival to Cronkite, who confessed: “I’m not a religious man. But I do believe in Walter Cronkite.”

What was the secret to Uncle Walt’s distinct gravitas? Why was his dignified presence such a centering force? How did he manage to command respect from such a wide spectrum of people?

Today we’ll answer these questions and take a look at Cronkite’s life as a case study in the kind of gravitas every man should emulate, and look for in their leaders.

Gravitas = An Unadulterated Core of Integrity, Surrounded by Layers of Tempered Rock

“At a time when everybody was lying — fathers, mothers, teachers, presidents, governors, senators — you [Cronkite] seemed to be telling them the truth night after night. They didn’t like the truth, but they believed you at a time when they needed someone to believe.” –Fred Friendly, President of CBS News (1964-66)

At the heart of the nature of gravitas lies a paradox. The trait denotes weight and heaviness, which conjures up the image of a rock. And there indeed must be something immovable about a man who possesses this trait — a pillar of integrity formed at the core of his character. But gravitas cannot be built entirely on dense, impervious stone. The relationship between seriousness and gravitas does not lie on a J-curve, but rather eventually reaches a point of diminishing returns.

A man who is too stiff, in fact becomes more brittle; his rigidity makes him prone to fracture; his one-dimensionality diminishes his weight — increasing his shallowness rather than his substance. A man who descends into unadulterated graveness, who takes himself too seriously, to the dissolution of any self-awareness, eventually becomes ridiculous.

This is the central lesson that emerges from studying Walter Cronkite’s gravitas.

At the center of his character was a strong sense of honesty and integrity — an undeviating moral compass — as well as an air of dignity and gentility. He was well-mannered, even courtly in his behavior. And this was as true of his on-screen personality as his off-screen one; those who knew him observed that he was the same man in all situations.

Cronkite’s friend Mickey Hart, drummer for the Grateful Dead (as we’ll see, his surprising relationship with Hart points to the fact there was more to Cronkite than the serious newsman), said of Uncle Walt: “I found Walter to be a real classy, straight-up gent…My father was a common crook. Walter became the father I never had…Walter walked the walk as well as talking the talk.”

Texas Monthly bestowed on him “a kind of innate, Calvinist honesty that can’t be manufactured or affected, and certainly not perverted.”

When one of his close friends was regularly asked what Cronkite was really like, he’d always answer: “He’s just the way you hope he is.”

And when the comic Dick Cavett was tasked with roasting him at an event, he admitted to the difficulty of the task, owing to the paucity of material to work with. “I’m taking the easy way out,” he told the audience. “I’m going to use all the jokes I used at the Mother Teresa roast.”

In truth, Cronkite wasn’t a saint. Nor was he a monolith of sober solemnity. And this was in fact the key to his distinct gravitas. Around the principled, ethical core of his character, were still other layers of substance — but layers tempered with qualities of lightness, humility, and flexibility — qualities that paradoxically enough, as we will see, added, rather than detracted, from his weight and clout.

Let’s now take a look at the pairs of counterbalancing traits that must each be in place for gravitas to develop.

Take Your Job/Role Seriously…

“Cronkite can be terribly intense, and he’s very serious about his broadcasts. He’s not one for kidding around.” –Walter Schirra

“There are better writers than me, better reporters, better speakers, better-looking people and better interviewers. I don’t understand my appeal. It gets down to an unknown quality, maybe communication of integrity. I have a sense of mission. That sounds pompous, but I like the news. Facts are sacred. I feel people should know about the world, should know the truth as much as possible. I care about the world, about people, about the future. Maybe that comes across.” –Walter Cronkite, after being asked to explain his appeal

At the very crux of gravitas is a weight and depth of mind, character, and purpose. A man with gravitas shoulders serious responsibilities, and he takes these responsibilities seriously.

Walter Cronkite brought this “heaviness” to his role as a newsman. With integrity, a strong work ethic, and a desire to get things right, he carried himself as a real professional. He understood and embraced the significance of his role in the culture, and not only intentionally sought the cultivation of greater authority, but strove to direct that influence in a positive direction.

The ways in which he did this took a variety of forms:

Have a purpose/mission. As a high school student and the sports editor of the campus newspaper, Cronkite gleaned journalism lessons in economy, efficiency, and most of all accuracy from a teacher and former reporter who left an indelible impression on the budding newsman. “I had a sense,” Cronkite said of this mentor, “whenever I was in his presence that he was ordering me to don my armor and buckle on my sword to ride forth in a never-ending crusade for the truth.”

For the rest of his life, Cronkite saw the business of the “fourth estate” through similarly idealistic eyes — as less of a business at all than a kind of civic service essential to the maintenance of a well-functioning democracy. He saw journalists as having the weighty responsibility to act as a hedge against totalitarianism by presenting citizens with objective, factual, well-investigated information.

To accomplish this purpose, Cronkite believed, the media had to uphold high standards of dignity, accuracy, and intelligence. And he considered the greatest achievement of his long and storied career to be his contribution towards doing just that.

Cronkite worked as a reporter in print, radio, and television, and the latter two news sources were just coming of age as he was. As fledging mediums, it was not initially clear how they were going to be used and what kinds of forms and norms the news would take through these channels. Each was initially met with a good deal of not unwarranted skepticism, as the first news broadcasts on both television and radio tended to be short and shallow — a mere parroting of the headlines created by the “real” journalists working at the newspapers.

Having spent over a decade cutting his journalistic teeth as a wire reporter for the United Press, Cronkite took it as his mission to infuse print journalism’s long-established standards into these new mediums, helping to steer first radio, and then television, in a more substantial direction.

In his pioneering role as television broadcaster, he sought to counter the perception of anchormen as pretty boy ventriloquists who simply repeated the news that had been gathered by paper journalists and handed to them to read. Unlike his rivals at NBC, Cronkite insisted on maintaining more control over his broadcasts; working as both anchorman and the managing editor of the CBS Evening News, he not only voiced the content of the program, but stayed involved in its gathering and editing, allowing him to push for longer and meatier coverage of important stories.

Cronkite worked as a war correspondent on the ground in Europe during WWII, and if there was anything the experience had taught him, it was that the news could be used for good or ill — as an outlet for authoritarian propaganda, or an enhancer of civic education. Cronkite dedicated his life to trying to position journalism — even the televised variety — towards the latter purpose.

Choose principles over popularity. Douglas Brinkley, Cronkite’s biographer, argues that “competitiveness” was the anchorman’s “defining quality.” He wanted to be the first to break stories, and was driven to make the CBS Evening News the number one evening news program in the country.

But, at the same time, he steadfastly opposed allowing a drive for ratings, and the hunger for profit, to become an excuse for the compromise of principle.

When it came to breaking stories, his motto was “Get it first, but first get it right.”

Cronkite had made the decision to resolutely adhere to this code way back at the very beginning of his career, as is well illustrated by an anecdote Brinkley shares from young Walt’s days as a 19-year-old radio reporter:

“One day the wife of his boss, Jim Simmons, called the station to report that three firemen had been killed in a blaze in her neighborhood. Simmons rushed to Cronkite’s desk, saying, ‘Get on the air with a flash! The new city hall is on fire, and three firemen just jumped to their deaths!’ Cronkite, full of protestations and litanies, insisted on checking the facts himself with the fire department by telephone. ‘You don’t have to check on it,’ Simmons snapped at Cronkite. ‘My wife called and told me.’ ‘I do too have to check on it,’ Cronkite said, remembering the fundamentals of journalism instilled in him at San Jacinto High, The Houston Press, and INS. ‘Are you calling my wife a liar?’ a ticked-off Simmons asked the young Lone Star hotshot. ‘No,’ Cronkite said, evoking the Standard Model of Professional Journalism. ‘I’m not calling your wife a liar, but I don’t know the details.’ Simmons was now livid. ‘I’ve told you the details. The new city hall building’s on fire, and three firemen have jumped.’ With Cronkite resolutely refusing to go on air, Simmons, in a temperamental snit, headed to the microphone himself. Playing the fool, he went on the KCMO airwaves ad-libbing a breaking news bulletin about the supposedly burned firemen. Cronkite’s sleuthing subsequently proved that the fire had been minor. There were no deaths. Nevertheless, the next day, Cronkite was summarily fired by the ego-bruised Simmons.”

Rather than being crestfallen, the budding reporter was proud of being canned for sticking to his ethical guns, and carried these same principles forth throughout the entirety of his career. Cronkite ever after chose caution over acclaim, even if it meant another network beat him to a story.

And even if that story was one of the biggest of the century.

On the afternoon of November 22, 1963, reports began coming into the CBS newsroom that President John F. Kennedy had been shot by an assassin in Dallas. Although Cronkite desperately wanted to get into the studio and begin broadcasting the news, the camera wouldn’t be ready to begin rolling for at least twenty minutes. So, while the camera was made operational, CBS decided to break into the soap opera then airing — As the World Turns — with “bumper slides” announcing a news bulletin, over which Cronkite would read an audio-only announcement.

Around 2:00 PM EST more bulletins arrived in the newsroom, containing further details on President Kennedy’s condition.

By this time, the camera was ready, and Cronkite had taken his seat at the newsroom’s anchor desk. He threw out the feed to a reporter from a local affiliate station in Dallas, who gave an unofficial report that JFK was dead; he later repeated this pronouncement, saying it had come from a good source.

Cronkite, however, did not affirm the report himself.

The anchorman then received reports that priests had administered the last rites to the president. These were followed by several more bulletins carrying the news that Kennedy had died, including one from CBS’ own correspondent, Dan Rather. CBS Radio News considered his report official enough to declare the president’s passing.

But Cronkite did not.

More such “death flashes” came in over the wire, including dispatches that cited the word of one of the priests who had been at JFK’s bedside and government sources in D.C. Such reports were considered sufficient by ABC news to officially announce the death of the president.

Yet Cronkite continued to hold off.

It was not until 2:38 PM EST, when he received a flash from the Associated Press — a source he considered sufficiently authoritative — that the CBS anchorman made the official announcement that JFK had died.

Cronkite’s abundance of caution in making the pronouncement was born of his conviction that facts must be checked at least thrice over — and in the case of such a monumental story, even more times than that. The public was seized with anxiety, and conspiracy theories were running wild; Cronkite did not want to add to the tumult by spreading potential misinformation; his job was to cut through the chaos, not inflame it.

Cronkite’s commitment to discretion continued in the days that came after. He vetoed the idea of airing a re-creation of the shooting a CBS reporter had staged by buying a rifle similar to Oswald’s and positioning himself in the same Book Depository window in which the assassin had fired his deadly shots, and Cronkite further nixed the running of footage taken in the blood-soaked operating room where surgeons had tried to save Kennedy’s life. He considered both proposed pieces as overly sensational, macabre, insensitive to the grieving family of the slain president, and insufficiently newsworthy.

After Cronkite retired as an anchorman in 1981, he spent the next two decades watching in dismay as such lurid gimmicks became the common stock and trade of television news programs, and the standards he had worked so hard to erect over the course of his career steadily eroded.

In the twilight of his life, he regularly inveighed against the rising world of “newstainment” — marked by the single-minded chasing of ratings and its attendant trafficking in gossip over real facts, feel-good stories over hard news, editorializing over objective coverage, dumbed down snippets over meaty features, angry shouting over dignified delivery. “What I rail against,” Cronkite declared, “is the Action news, Eyewitness news” — the kind of “format that diminishes the importance of the story itself in favor of presentation.” He likewise lamented the effect such a format had on the public discourse — the way in which politicians had increasingly begun to speak in soundbites that would play well on such superficial “news” programs; “Naturally,” the veteran anchorman observed, “nothing of any significance is going to be said in 9.8 seconds.”

The problem, Cronkite believed, was that modern news organizations were beholden to their stakeholders, who were motivated only by profit, rather than by any sense of greater public responsibility — by any sense of higher purpose.

Do your homework. A man with gravitas doesn’t talk out of his arse, but knows of which he speaks. Further, his grasp of knowledge is so solid, that he is able to clearly distill, interpret, and explain vital information to others.

When would-be television journalists asked Cronkite for advice on how to find success in the field, the advice he gave was to “Read, read, read.” He thought every newsman had to be eminently well-informed and know something about just about everything, from politics and science to music and sports. He himself was a voracious reader, who was particularly well-versed in American political history.

The field Cronkite really boned up on, however, was military aviation and aerospace technology. He decided to make the space race his beat, and become journalism’s authority on the world of jets, missiles, and rockets. To this end, he pumped government contacts for information, accepted the tutelage of meteorologists and aeronautical engineers, staked out Cape Canaveral, and even read sci-fi novels in order to catch not just the nuts and bolts of aerospace, but a vision of its future potential and cultural meaning. Particularly before the launch of the Apollo 11, Cronkite immersed himself in the details of its spectacularly unprecedented mission to the moon. “Never before had I seen Dad with such thick binders,” his son recalled. “We all knew he was studying like never before.”

Though he never graduated college (dropping out after his sophomore year), and in fact failed physics while a student at the University of Texas, this autodidactic education gave Cronkite such a deep understanding of the mechanics of space-bound rockets that he was able to impart his hard-earned knowledge to the American public — who struggled to grasp the intricacies of this almost miraculous feat of human engineering — in a thoroughly accessible way. It was an ability even the passengers on those spacecraft appreciated. As astronaut John Glenn recalled:

“Space travel was so new that most people didn’t know how to relate to it. They understood an Indy driver because they knew how to turn a steering wheel right or left. Walter’s gift was helping the public understand the science of space. He was a teacher. His CBS broadcasts were the main factor in the public understanding my mission.”

As Brinkley puts it, “Cronkite was able to break down aerospace concepts for the average American without dumbing them down.” And he was able to offer his explanations on the fly, ad-libbing his commentary as rockets launched in real time. As Cronkite told the Chicago Daily News in 1965, this knack came down, once again, to intensively doing his homework:

 “I don’t attempt to commit anything to memory, but somehow it gets there. I learn by doing; I don’t learn by reading. I’ve been to the basic sources and tried to talk to people involved in the project. I’ve been to McDonnell Aircraft in St. Louis, where the capsule was made; to Houston, where the astronauts live; to the Martin Company near Baltimore, where the booster was built; to the Goddard Space Center. And I’ve been at Cape Kennedy for this week — talking, taking notes, reading. Then I sit down and write page after page of notes for my background material, organizing it chronologically — pre-launch, launch, orbit, etc. And then what happens is that after I’ve done all that, it’s all there in my mind.”

Look & act the part. A concern with appearance may seem antithetical to the virtue of gravitas. After all, isn’t it a function of depth over superficiality?

But gravitas is a trait that does not exist outside of its perception by others, and externals are the tool by which internal values are communicated. Clothes and demeanor can either enhance or detract from the “weight” one wishes to convey; think of the way a doctor’s coat or a police officer’s uniform plays a significant role in creating an impression of authority. Likewise, when a man is dressed like a schlub or an adolescent, people simply do not take him as seriously.

This was a conclusion Cronkite reached early in his career. To deliver the sober news, he needed to look like a sober man — a real professional — and he thus kept his mustache well-trimmed, his suits neatly tailored, and his shirts well starched — their French cuffs embroidered with his initials and held together by cufflinks made to look like the CBS “eye.”

Cronkite intentionally crafted his mannerisms to convey gravitas as well. Whether it was the lowering and raising of his distinguished eyebrows, or the removal and replacement of his glasses, he knew how to use such tics to produce a desired effect.

This was especially true of the way Cronkite spoke. While the average American talks at a rate of 165 words per minute (and fast talkers clock in at 200 words a minute), Uncle Walt trained himself to speak at a purposeful 124 words a minute during his broadcasts. This composed cadence added weight to his words, and made them easier for viewers to digest. He also made masterful use of the deliberate pause; rather than feeling the need to fill every moment of dead air with the sound of his own voice and the din of mindless commentary, he understood that silence is sometimes the most potent seasoning for speech. While covering an inauguration or the launch of a rocket, Cronkite knew that the best way to highlight the significance of the moment, was often to let it speak for itself.

From his clothes to his inflections, Cronkite knew how to cultivate the sense of presence so crucial to gravitas. As his friend Mickey Hart put it, “He was a voice shaman. He had a powerful aura. The voice, glasses, pipe — they were perfect totems.”

…But Not Yourself

“Walter was really the class clown. He made us all laugh. He was serious in believing we couldn’t take ourselves too seriously.” –Andy Rooney

In and of themselves, all the ways mentioned above that Walter Cronkite took seriously his job/role/influence would not add up to gravitas. For as mentioned earlier, unadulterated seriousness paradoxically has the effect of making a man seem not uber-weighty, but extremely ridiculous. A man should be committed to grappling with the weightier matters of life, but if this wrestle is not accompanied by an ability to also see and appreciate life’s transience, absurdity, humor, and fun, it becomes hard, to, well, take him seriously. Such one-dimensionality reads as an overweening sense of self-importance, a paucity of perspective, that repulses rather than attracts — that diminishes rather than enhances influence; it’s hard to trust a man who can’t seem to see and appreciate a wide swath of the human experience, who can’t see his own foibles, and who doesn’t carry the sense that all things, no matter how seemingly important in the present, will one day pass away. Without a measure of lightness, the weighty man sinks like a stone.

Quick, think of a modern television newscaster on FOX or MSNBC who you can imagine laughing at themselves. Right, you can’t do it. Modern news networks are anchored almost exclusively by those who take themselves too seriously, and are thus a gravitas-free zone.

Cronkite, on the other hand, ran no risk of being entombed by his own heaviness. Despite the sobriety he brought to his broadcasts, he was far from an uptight prig; away from the cameras, he exuded an effervescence that kept him happily floating through eight decades of life, and a humility that leavened his weightiness.

By cultivating the following two traits, he followed the wise maxim of President Dwight D. Eisenhower: “Always take your job seriously, never yourself.”

Humility. Unlike many of his fellow newscasters, Cronkite never let his ego get too puffed up. Described well by Brinkley as “rigorously unpretentious,” he thought that journalism was an important business, but he didn’t mistake the importance of his work for his own personal importance.

Cronkite’s colleagues at CBS called him “the eight-hundred-pound gorilla” because his stature allowed him to get pretty much anything he wanted, and he was arguably one of the most powerful men in journalism, and the culture at large. But despite his outsized influence, and cabinets of awards, he never let it all go to his head; disposed to self-deprecation, he was fond of insisting he was “only a newsman” — just a conduit tasked with conveying current events. As Brinkley puts it, “He was that rare TV reporter who never tried to put himself over the story.” When Cronkite retired, Kurt Vonnegut wrote a tribute to the anchorman appropriately entitled, “A Reluctant Big Shot,” in which the author observed that “A subliminal message in every one of his broadcasts was that he had no power and wanted none.”

Cronkite’s humility was partly rooted in his recognition of his own limitations. While many other journalists seemed to be carried along to success by natural talent and intellect, as a college dropout, Cronkite thought of himself as a kind of tradesman — someone who had to work at his craft to stay on top. He took a practical, nuts and bolts approach to his career and life and thought more about how to do the job at hand, than about himself, declaring, “I never spent any time examining my navel. And I’m bored with people who do.”

Proud of the way he had started at the bottom of the journalism ladder and climbed his way all the way up, he always maintained a kind of blue collar mentality about his work. As Tom Brokaw wrote of his friend in Time magazine:

“I always had the feeling that if late in life somebody had tapped him on the shoulder and said, ‘Walter, we’re a little short-handed this week. Think you could help us on the police beat for a few mornings?’ He would have responded, ‘Boy oh boy — when and where do you want me?’”

This down-to-earth attitude kept Cronkite open to feedback; he appreciated when CBS executives gave him honest critiques and he insisted on reading all of the mail he received from viewers himself; when such a letter illuminated an error made or hit upon a sound piece of criticism, Cronkite would write back and own up to the oversight. He readily extended the same courtesy to the politicians he covered on his program, as this example from his biography illustrates:

“When the CBS Evening News accidentally misrepresented a comment that Governor George W. Romney of Michigan made regarding the Black Power movement, Cronkite quickly ate crow. ‘Your complaint was justified and our handling of the story was not,’ Cronkite wrote to Romney’s press spokesman. ‘It is neither justification nor rationale but only by way of explanation that the news service copy which carried the Governor’s statement buried the full text of the pertinent remark and our writer and editor missed it. I hope we made amends by seeking an interview with Governor Romney, which was used yesterday with the full text of his observation.’”

A sense of humor and fun. Cronkite’s off-camera personality may come as a surprise to those who only imagine him as the buttoned-down CBS anchorman. Away from the studio, he was in fact a playful man, who loved kids, conversation (to the point of labeling himself a “hangoutologist”), going out on the town, dirty jokes, and having fun. He and his wife, Brinkley, writes, “lived for humor,” and Walt had a near-constant “infectious laugh” that “wasn’t coarse or hearty or even especially loud,” but “just had an amazing ain’t life somethin’ ring to it.”

If Cronkite’s never-ending laughter doesn’t fit the public image of him, members of his circle of friends don’t either. Uncle Walt palled around with Jann Wenner, the founder and editor of Rolling Stone magazine, the artist Andy Warhol, and was especially good friends with Mickey Hart, the one-time drummer for the Grateful Dead. Cronkite and Hart not only hung out, but played the drums together, regularly rocking out in the anchorman’s living room. Guests to the Cronkite home would invariably find themselves invited to participate in these drumming jamborees.

Another, if more expected of Cronkite’s friends, Andy Rooney, penned a piece which celebrated his fellow newsman’s zest for life:

“The greatest Old Master in the art of living that I know is Walter Cronkite. Walter works and plays at full speed all day long. He watches whales, plays tennis, flies to Vienna for New Year’s. He dances until 2 a.m., sails in solitude, accepts awards gracefully. He attends board of directors meetings, tells jokes and plays endlessly with his computers. He comes back from a trip on the Queen Mary in time for the Super Bowl. If life were fattening, Walter Cronkite would weigh 500 pounds.”

To have real gravitas, you’ve got to be able to appreciate and have experience with the full spectrum of life; you can’t live with one foot already in the grave. There’s a reason a guy like Hitler, who had serious purpose and principles (no matter how nefarious) aplenty, still didn’t exude gravitas, and rather came off as that most peculiar of species — the killjoy clown.

Be Steady and Reassuring…

“A man lands on the moon. A president dies. Anything. If you can have one man in the world tell it to you, who do you turn on?

Cronkite.”

–Fred Friendly

“When our nation has been in trouble or made mistakes and there was a danger that our public might react adversely or even panic on occasion, the calm and reassuring demeanor and voice and the inner character of Walter Cronkite has been reassuring to us all.” –President Jimmy Carter, on the presentation of Cronkite with the Medal of Freedom

Whether a man has gravitas or not is most clearly revealed in a crisis. If he has it, he rises to the occasion; while others fall apart, his steadiness only increases — he’s the rock in the storm.

Think of a funeral. In such a situation, the man possessing gravitas is able to keep his composure; with compassionate poise, he delivers bad news; with great stamina, he unflaggingly takes care of what needs to be done; with a minister-like mien, he comforts the mourning; with the sagacity of a wise elder, he helps the grieving make sense of what happened. His is the gravitational force that holds people together. His is the healing hand on every shoulder. His is the presence that imparts reassurance and strength, a belief that life will go on. He is a human hearth that people naturally want to gather round.

Cronkite’s greatest exhibition of this steadying aspect of gravitas was unarguably in his reporting on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

On November 22, 1963, Cronkite was tasked with setting up a kind of televised grieving center, around which Americans could congregate to learn and process the news surrounding their slain president. At the helm of his anchor’s desk, Cronkite was part sea captain traversing the unexpected waves of the event, and part pastor, metaphorically reaching through the screen to place a reassuring hand on the nation’s collective shoulder.

His was the nearly single-handed responsibility of sorting through — in real time — the bulletins coming in, parsing which could be trusted, putting the various pieces of the story into a cohesive narrative, and determining when to deliver the final announcement of Kennedy’s death.

When that official news flash finally arrived, Cronkite struggled to maintain his composure as he made the pronouncement; his eyes moist, his throat tight, he removed his glasses, looked first at the audience at home, then at the clock on the wall to record and place the historic moment in time. Replacing his glasses, his voice still filled with emotion, he then proceeded to explain further details as then known.

Even though he “knew it was coming,” Cronkite later recalled of the bulletin, “still it was hard to say. It was touch and go there for a few seconds before I could continue.”

Continue he did, however, broadcasting for four hours before taking a break to commiserate with his family. He later returned to host the CBS Evening News as normal, and would continue to fill the anchor’s seat in the days that followed, offering the country marathon sessions of uninterrupted coverage and a constant, centering presence. His stamina, only surpassed later when he stayed on the air for twenty-seven of the thirty most crucial hours of the Apollo 11 mission to the moon, earned him the nickname “Old Iron Pants” among his colleagues. Cronkite shrugged off any praise for his endurance, however; as a professional, he said, you have a “job to do and you do the job.”

Cronkite always did his very best work — always exhibited his steadiest gravitas — when the pressure was on.

…As Well as Empathetic and Emotional

“When the news is bad, Walter hurts. When the news embarrasses America, Walter is embarrassed. When the news is humorous, Walter smiles with understanding.” –Fred Friendly

Though Cronkite’s gravitas was displayed through his ability to regain his composure while grappling with tragic news, it was also manifested in the fact that he struggled to keep it in the first place.

Gravitas isn’t unmitigated stoicism. A man made of impenetrable rock doesn’t convey depth, and is unable to offer comfort. It isn’t reassuring for someone entirely unfeeling to tell you everything is going to be okay; his words carry little weight because it’s clear he doesn’t understand the significance of the event or the loss. It’s similar to the way Aristotle says that a reckless man, who is heedless to risk, cannot really be courageous. It is consoling, on the other hand, to receive reassurance from someone who sympathizes with your pain, who’s feeling that pain too, but is still moving forward. He commiserates, but is able to carry the weight a little better than you at the moment, and thus points the way forward.

That was Cronkite to a T. As a friend described him, “He had an antenna sensitive to friends’ pain.” It was an antenna that extended to the pain of the country as a whole as well. While Cronkite was typically an exemplar of even-keel when the cameras were rolling, off the air, he allowed himself to feel things quite deeply.

After the broadcast in which he reported the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., he left this anchor chair and wept. He reacted similarly to the killing of Robert F. Kennedy. Hearing the news at home, he bolted out the door to get to the CBS studio as quickly as possible:

“I ran for a cab, buttoning my shirt on the way. The driver had his radio on. We were both just listening, speechless, I guess. Listening to the turmoil in that hotel kitchen, we cried. That cabdriver and I cried. We cried. And we weren’t ashamed.”

Cronkite perhaps sobbed most heavily after astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee — men he considered absolute heroes — died in the pre-launch test for the Apollo 1 mission.

The weight of gravitas, then, is composed of a balance of steadiness and emotion, control and compassion.

In our time, the free disgorging of emotion is seen as an unadulterated good — a tenet of psychological health. Self-expression is king. In fact, some feel that the emphasis on men keeping a “stiff upper lip” has stunted our well-being. Yet what is little understood about the traditional emphasis on masculine control, is that it was never about not feeling things, nor stifling their expression. Rather, a healthy stoicism simply means possessing the ability to choose when and where to air one’s emotions. Modern society doesn’t value this idea, because it’s based on another forgotten concept: honor. One temporarily puts aside one’s personal needs, in order to act as a strength and support to friends and family. Gravitas, then, is a generous, willing sacrifice, an act of service on behalf of others.

Be Opinionated…

A man with gravitas has deep convictions. Cronkite certainly did. Though he was registered as an independent, he leaned liberal and was an ardent supporter of the various equal rights movements of his day, as well as protecting the environment.

…Yet Maintain the Ability to Be Objective, Fair-Minded, and Flexible

“Walter is so objective, careful, and fair in his presentation of news that he has been characterized — if not immortalized — with the oft-heard line: ‘If Walter says it, it must be so.’” –William S. Paley

“We didn’t pick Walter because he was beautiful — he wasn’t. We didn’t pick Walter because a focus group, wired up to a machine, palpitated at the sight of him. They didn’t have things like that in those prehistoric days, so we were on our own. We picked Walter for the only sound reason to pick an anchor: He was a real pro, a superb reporter — a newsman who always gave his audience an honest account, no matter what his personal beliefs. It was the right assignment.” –Richard S. Salant, president of CBS News (1961–64; 1966–79)

Despite Cronkite’s decided opinions, he didn’t think a news broadcast was any place for them to be shared. Hewing to the motto, “If the World Goes to Hell in a Handbasket It’s the Reporter’s Job to Be There and Tell What Color the Handbasket Is,” he saw his role as anchorman as that of communicator, rather than editorializer, and unlike some of his fellow newsmen, he didn’t use the CBS Evening News platform to campaign for pet causes. His only agenda was to educate the public. “On television,” he explained, “I tried to absolutely hew to the middle of the road and not show any prejudice or bias in any way.” For this he earned the nickname “Mr. Center.”

Cronkite was so adept at playing things down the middle, that the public was often confused as to what his personal political leanings actually were.

After chairing his first Democratic and Republican National Conventions in 1952, Cronkite was initially concerned to receive letters alternately accusing him of being biased towards Eisenhower or biased towards Stevenson. “Then I came to a marvelous revelation,” he wrote a friend. “They were about equally divided between those who thought I favored the Democrats and those who believed I favored the Republicans! Since then, this has been my rule of thumb: If the charges stay in reasonable balance, I consider that I am succeeding in maintaining objectivity.”

If the public couldn’t sometimes discern where Cronkite’s partisanship fell, political candidates were often confounded as well. President Kennedy felt the anchorman had aired unfair coverage of him during the 1960 election, and thought Cronkite was a Republican. On the other hand, President Nixon, who had declared that “The press is the enemy” in a taped conversation in the Oval Office, regularly called out Cronkite by name in similar recordings.

Even when Republican presidents were aware of Cronkite’s liberal leanings, they still often respected his gravitas. Eisenhower chose Cronkite to do a series of extended interviews with him, which amounted to 13 hours of footage, to create the 3-hour special, “Eisenhower on the Presidency.” He likewise picked Cronkite to host “D-Day Plus 20 Years” in which the anchorman and the former general returned to Normandy to record Ike’s recollection of the historic event. Twenty years later, Reagan, who respected Cronkite as a “pro,” gave the newsman an exclusive interview in conjunction with the speeches he made in Normandy commemorating D-Day’s 40^th anniversary. Both Eisenhower and Reagan knew that Cronkite — who had long campaigned for June 6th being honored as the central anniversary of WWII, and who had of course covered the war firsthand as a correspondent — was the only anchor who carried the weight necessary to properly mark the occasion.

It’s no wonder, as Brinkley reports, that “According to an informal poll, politicians of all stripes considered him the fairest of the national newsmen. Everyone of consequence, it seemed, thought Cronkite gave people an honest shake in interviews.”

Cronkite was not only known for his dependable fairness, but for his sympathy even for public figures he personally opposed.

Despite the antagonism Nixon had shown him, when the president resigned, Cronkite saw no reason to kick the man when he was down, and not only gave him a respectful send off on his broadcast, but also occasionally publicly praised the ex-president in the decades until his death — behavior liberal critics found befuddling and distasteful.

Similarly, though Cronkite celebrated the election of Bill Clinton, he felt great sympathy for HW and Barbara Bush, with whom he was on friendly terms, and who, Brinkley writes, he considered “among the finest, most patriotic people he knew.” When, a month later, Cronkite emceed the Kennedy Center Honors at which the lame duck president was in attendance, Walt “suddenly launched into an unscripted moment”:

“At the show’s close, he pointed at President Bush and offered a high note of thanks. ‘There’s one more honor to be paid tonight,’ he said, turning himself to look squarely at the president’s face, ‘to an individual who has served his country in war and peace for more than a half a century who has joined us again tonight to pay tribute to America’s performing arts. We offer him our respect, our gratitude, and we thank him for service to his country with honor.’ President Bush got a long standing ovation, with a grateful Cronkite the last to stop clapping.”

Pure Cronkite class.

Cronkite’s ability to see the good in folks on both sides of the political aisle, extended to his private circle of associates as well. His friends included plenty of liberals, of course, but decided members of the GOP establishment like Roger Ailes, John Lehman, and George Shultz as well, and he regularly went sailing with conservative writer William F. Buckley.

It wasn’t a struggle for Cronkite to bridge the divide; as Brinkley writes, “Rigid ideology and political correctness bored him.”

Cronkite’s objective, middle-of-the-road stance ultimately went a long way towards creating his outsize influence and centering presence, and garnering the widespread credibility he enjoyed with people of all ages and political parties. To many, he seemed refreshingly fair-minded, even-keeled, and able to deliver facts without the interference of personal feelings and biases.

Of course, non-journalists are not held to the same standard of objectivity, and even Cronkite, once he retired from the anchor’s chair, became much more outspoken about his political opinions. But for the private citizen who wishes to be a leader, this lesson in gravitas should still be heeded.

Shrill, rigid partisanship and gravitas are antithetical. No one wishes to confide in a stubborn ideologue, or turns to them for comfort, or willingly engages them in dialogue, because everyone already know exactly what they will say on every single issue. Wielding their opinions like a sword, they rebuff and divide people, rather than gathering and connecting.

To be sure, the passionate political or social crusader has a set of virtues of his own, and can bring together a certain set of people. But only gravitas is effective at unifying a wide spectrum of folks who might otherwise reside on different sides of an subject.

A man with gravitas, though he has strong convictions, is able see both sides of something, can understand another person’s perspective, is open to compromise, and can have reasonable, thoughtful debate with those with whom he disagrees. He doesn’t bludgeon people with his opinions, or even wear them on his sleeve, behavior which is supposedly a mark of passion, but really amounts to a lack of emotional control. Given this reputation for flexibility and fairness, such a man is widely respected, liked, and trusted by a variety of people, and his influence and importance greatly increase.

Be Rooted and Stable…

“Cronkite is not a genius at anything except being straight, honest and normal.” –Andy Rooney

“For an entire era, Cronkite was — and this is what psychologists say is the greatest tribute to a parent — there.” –David Shribman, The Washington Star

In many ways, Walter Cronkite was, in the parlance of the time, a real square.

Raised in Missouri and Texas, he evinced a kind of heartland-bred, genuinely decent, down-to-earth demeanor, and exuded a Midwestern, aw-shucks folksiness which was reinforced by his propensity to punctuate his speech with “gosh” and “golly.”

His living room drumming and night life loving aside, he earned a “lifelong reputation,” Brinkley notes, “for being a ‘company man’ at heart.” He was a rooted, stable guy, who felt loyalty to the organizations in which he worked, stayed married to his wife for 65 years, had three kids, paid attention to the details, showed up to work in his suit every day, and possessed a knack for management and business-like efficiency. The New York Daily News accurately described him as “Solid as a mountain,” and “As reliable as the sunrise.” His life and career were distinguished not by a string of controversies or scandals, but by the lack of them.

Despite his liberal leanings, he didn’t like hippies (“I didn’t like their attitude. I didn’t like their dress code. I didn’t much like any of it.”), political correctness, or in-your-face protests. He was widely read, but knew barely anything about current pop culture.

Uncle Walt was old school. Establishment. Seemingly unchanging.

And that’s not a bad thing.

Cronkite’s constancy is what imparted to him the omnipresent, pillar-like qualities of gravitas. He was a human institution — a patriarchal figure who seems like he’s always been there, and will always be there. You know a man has real gravitas when it’s hard to imagine your world without him around.

Yet stable dependability, by itself, does not beget this kind of “institutional” status. You surely know plenty of “squares” who are reliable as rain, but don’t convey any gravitas. Constancy’s gravitas-enhancing properties are only activated when it represents one side of a double-edged blade, with the other side being significantly edgier.

…Yet Willing to Take Risks, Accept Hardships, and Put Skin in the Game

“Because everybody knew that Walter didn’t get his suntan in the studio lights. He got it from being out on the scene, story after story. And that’s why you liked to work for Walter. He knew that the news didn’t come in over the wire-service machine. That some reporter had to go out there, somebody had to climb up to the top of the city hall steeple to see how tall it was, somebody had to do that. Walter knew how hard it was to get news because he had been there.” –Bob Schieffer, on why Cronkite was so trusted

You may never have thought of Walter Cronkite as a guy with “a compulsion toward risky endeavors”; a man for whom “daring was the vital element of being.” But that’s just how Brinkley describes him.

So what is it about Uncle Walt you don’t know?

Before he settled into a domesticated anchorman routine, he spent seven years as a war correspondent and international reporter stationed in war-torn and austere locales.

When World War II broke out, Cronkite fervently wished to become a pilot, but discovered that his color blindness not only barred him from taking flight, but granted him a medical deferment from any kind of military service.

Young Walter could have stayed in his job working stateside for the United Press, but he decided to cover the war in the field, and left home in 1942 to become a correspondent on the frontlines of Europe. As a roaming reporter, he had to travel light, carrying only a duffle bag and his portable typewriter. Accommodations varied, from modest hotels, to flea-bitten dives, to outdoor campgrounds.

When the commander of the Eighth Air Force invited eight journalists to accompany the crews of B-17s and B-24s on bombing missions over Germany, Cronkite, despite the significant danger, jumped at the chance and successfully pressed to be chosen. He and the other members of the team — which became known as “The Writing 69th” — were given a week of training in first aid, parachuting, enemy identification, and even how to shoot the plane’s weapons (despite rules barring non-combatants from carrying a weapon into combat).

During the actual bombing run, Cronkite was tasked with manning the starboard gun of a Flying Fortress, and in fact end up firing at a German fighter during the course of the mission. Unfortunately, in terms of getting firsthand material for his reports, but perhaps fortunately for his longevity, Cronkite’s first bombing mission was also his last — when the B-24 carrying a fellow correspondent was shot down on the initial run, killing all on board, all future flights for the Writing 69th were canceled.

Cronkite went on to cover D-Day, Operation Market Garden (landing in a glider with the 101^st Airborne), and the Battle of the Bulge. While most reporters, including the famous Edward R. Murrow, made trips back to the States during the course of the war, Cronkite worked for more than two years straight, rejecting, as Brinkley writes, a return to the “normalcy of hamburger cookouts, Clark Gable matinées, and the Andrews Sisters” to remain in the thick of the action, where history continued to unfold with life and death intensity.

At the end of the war, Cronkite was assigned to cover the Nuremberg trials in Germany, and then was made the UP’s main reporter in Moscow in 1946. There Cronkite’s wife, who he had been separated from her husband for several years, finally joined him. Together they lived for two years on a tight salary in a dilapidated apartment, until, tired from the deprivations of living abroad and Walt’s working seven years without a real vacation, they returned to the States to start a family and begin a more settled existence.

Though, truth be told, Cronkite never entirely gave up his thirst for adventure, nor his tolerance for hardship.

As a 52-year-old broadcasting celebrity, with a big salary and cushy lifestyle, he made a return to being a war correspondent in 1968 by traveling to Vietnam to investigate the conflict on the ground. Cronkite trekked to a U.S. Marine Corps base in the countryside and set about his research without demanding any special treatment. “Reporters working for AP, The New York Times, UP, and Reuters,” Brinkley writes, “were surprised to see the renowned Cronkite walking through the bombed-out streets of Hué, gunfire erupting in the vicinity, with the poise of a combat veteran. Like the younger correspondents, he slept on the bare floor of a Vietnamese doctor’s house that had been turned into a pressroom. He ate C rations and used the overflowing latrine. No one thought he acted like a bigwig or was bigfooting.”

After his retirement from the CBS Evening News, a 60-something Cronkite sought out special assignments that took him all around the world, from the wilds of Alaska to the Amazon river, where, after leaving his motorized dugout canoe for a quick dip, he got nibbled on by piranhas.

From youth to older age, then, Cronkite literally put his skin in the game for his work. Without these times of risk and hardship, his periods of stability and reliability would have lacked significance and been categorized as merely safe and pedestrian — a retreat to routine and comfort involuntarily made due to fear or inertia. But, because his stable periods were “earned,” so to speak, they became “activated” enhancements to his gravitas. They demonstrated an intentionally chosen reliability — a capacity to get down and do more staid but important work — based on real desire, rather than cowardice.

Conversely, if a man shows only a capacity for endless travel and adventure, but cannot ever dig in and show constancy in a commitment, then his propensity for risk fails to add to his gravitas. We may think that extreme athletes or adventurers are “cool,” but we rarely find them “weighty.” Often, they’re in fact of the flighty (pun perhaps intended) type.

It’s similar to the concept that “you have to be a man, before you can be a gentleman.” Stability and constancy enhance one’s gravitas if you’ve proven you also have a harder edge. And once you do hone that flintier side, you still must progress on to show you can be fully there for something, or someone.

Be Skeptical…

“He had this great curiosity. If there was a car wreck and Walter saw it, it would be like the first car wreck he’d ever seen in his life. He’d want to know all about it.” –Bob Schieffer

The weight of gravitas rests on a foundation of truth, a truth which can only be discovered through serious-minded sifting and objective judging of evidence.

That was Cronkite’s M.O. He was not a man who suffered fools lightly. Curious, savvy, and skeptical, a fellow reporter described him as having a particularly “sensitive shit-detector” and Brinkley observes that “No one knew how to separate the chaff from the grain quite like Cronkite. Seeing through shell games came naturally to him.”

Central to this sifting task, was sussing out the facts of what was really going on in the world, something for which Cronkite had an absolute passion. “Find the Facts” was one of his favorite phrases, and he couldn’t rest when he was hot on their trail. He had an insatiable desire to get to the bottom of things and find out the truth, and was, as Brinkley writes, possessed by a “tyrannical demand for answers.”

The search would not stop with the verification of one or two sources. His early journalism mentors had taught Cronkite to triple check everything, and to wait to make pronouncements until confirmation had been received through the most reliable channels — mainly the Associated Press and United Press wire services. “He took nothing for granted,” remembered Don Hewitt in his memoir, Tell Me a Story. “He picked up the phone and checked with people he knew would give him a straight answer and, at the same time, throw in a couple of facts that made his reporting better than anyone else’s.”

Cronkite’s most famous fact-finding mission came in 1968, when he made his aforementioned trip to Vietnam in the aftermath of the Tet Offensive. In the early years of the war, he had maintained a neutral to supportive view of the conflict, and largely based his reports on official reports coming out of the Pentagon. But the things he was hearing from reporters on the ground in Vietnam increasingly belied the more optimistic statements being issued by President Johnson and the military’s top brass. Cronkite wanted to see for himself what was really going on.

When he arrived in Vietnam, he deliberately avoided spending his time around the official press conferences, as he had done on a previous visit. Instead, he traveled into the South Vietnam countryside — positioning himself in the thick of the action and making his way to remote military outposts. “Like a prosecuting attorney gathering facts,” Brinkley writes, “he interviewed everyone, from orphans to traumatized U.S. soldiers. He went on a marine patrol to survey the perimeter roads around Hué. According to him, he was only operating on a Journalism 101 principle learned in high school: the more information, the better the story.”

From his wide-ranging, in-the-field research, a different picture of the war than the one being presented back home soon emerged. After returning to the States, Cronkite presented the public with what he had learned in the aptly titled special report: “Report from Vietnam: Who, What, When, Where, Why?” and famously concluded that rather than winning the war, the country was “mired in a stalemate.”

It was one of the few times Cronkite departed from his commitment to complete objectivity (and he intentionally offered his commentary during the special report, rather than on the CBS Evening News, where objectivity was sacrosanct). “I did it because I thought it was the journalistically responsible thing to do at that moment,” he later explained.

…But Also Sincere

“There’s something in Walter’s style, his character, his very face and delivery that promotes sincerity.” –Chet Huntley, NBC news anchor

“[Cronkite] remains as entranced by the unfolding of each day’s news as a child with a new kaleidoscope.” –Kurt Vonnegut

Even though Cronkite was a stickler for facts, his inherent skepticism never devolved into entrenched cynicism.

Cronkite felt a genuine passion for some of the issues he covered, which could create a weakness in maintaining his objectivity, but largely worked to strengthen his gravitas overall.

In the same way that steadiness must be punctuated by emotion to demonstrate real depth, skepticism must be matched with sincerity to achieve the same effect. A strain of pure enthusiasm maintains gravitas’ qualities of reverence and solemnity — qualities that require a bit of unadulterated awe.

It was in fact partly Cronkite’s unabashed support for the troops that kept him from changing his mind about Vietnam for so long. Though he had encountered danger as a correspondent during WWII, the risk paled beside that shouldered by the soldiers in the trenches and the flight crews in the sky, and the experience left him with a sense of both guilt and humility, as well as an indelible reverence for members of the military.

While this conviction biased him during WWII towards making reports that sometimes bordered on patriotic propaganda, and may have colored his early reporting on Vietnam, at the same time it lent him the depth of feeling needed to properly commemorate the aforementioned anniversaries of D-Day, and connect with the many veterans who attended the events. Of walking silently with Eisenhower past the 9,000 graves laid out at the American cemetery near Saint-Laurent-sur-Mer, Cronkite said, “It may have been the most solemn moment of my career.”

When twenty years later Cronkite found himself back in Normandy with Reagan, “Everybody [veterans] wanted to keep shaking Walter’s hand,” a colleague remembered. “They were moved to tears by the mere sight of the old anchorman returning to Pointe du Hoc.”

Cronkite’s patriotism extended beyond the troops, to his country as a whole; he was an unashamed flag waver. Cronkite got to give full expression to his love for America during the nation’s celebration of its bicentennial in 1976. Brinkley notes that “When Cronkite heard ‘Amazing Grace’ — his favorite song — played on bagpipes that special Fourth of July from the Mall, he wept openly.” Uncle Walt infused his broadcasts of the nation’s 200^th birthday with a full-throated enthusiasm, sincerely believing the celebration could serve as “the Great National Healing” and “was exactly what America needed after Vietnam and Watergate. Cronkite used the bicentennial to tell Americans it was alright to be proud of their country again.”

Cronkite’s most genuine ardor and gee whiz excitement, however, was reserved for the nation’s space program. He was, in Brinkley’s words, “a huge cheerleader for NASA” — an evangelist for what he called the “conquest of space.” The idea of hurtling up to the stars, landing on the moon, and eventually journeying onward to visit our solar system’s planets, fired Cronkite’s imagination, inspiring him to make rhapsodic pronouncements like, “Of all humankind’s achievements in the twentieth century and all our gargantuan peccadilloes as well, for that matter — the one event that will dominate the history books a half a millennium from now will be our escape from our earthly environment and landing on the moon.”

Cronkite still believed in heroes, and the astronauts willing to make that escape were his — he lionized them as courageous, modern-day explorers.

The anchorman’s admiration and awe for the space program memorably infused his broadcasts of mission launches. The launch of a rocket could alternately leave him speechless, or find him shouting with boyish glee: “Go, baby, go!”

When the Apollo 11 spacecraft left earth, Cronkite spent several seconds in silent reverie, before exuberantly exclaiming: “Oh boy, oh boy, it looks good…Building shaking. We’re getting the buffeting we’ve become used to. What a moment! Man on the way to the Moon! Beautiful.” And when “the Eagle” finally landed, Cronkite celebrated the moment with tear-soaked eyes, and an awe-struck “Oh, boy!”

Cronkite’s authentic elation and admiring reverence perfectly matched the drama and gravity of the event, while his serious knowledge of the spacecraft’s mechanical workings and physical dynamics steadied nerves with the words of authoritative expertise. Together these qualities allowed Uncle Walt to triumph over his much drier anchor rivals and become the go-to guide for the millions watching the Apollo 11 mission around the world — many of whom barely took their eyes off Old Iron Pants’ face during his hosting of nearly 30 hours of live coverage.

Yes, Cronkite’s sold-out zeal for cosmic exploration kept him from being entirely objective about the value of the space program, and his childlike delight in it might on paper seem to detract from the seriousness of the mission. But, once again, a tempering force, in this case, sincerity and heart, actually enhanced rather than detracted from Cronkite’s gravitas — adding weight and depth to what might have otherwise been a merely stony and superficial summary of such historic events.

Conclusion

Gravitas, if it’s thought of at all, is often imagined as something monolithic. But while its core of integrity must be unadulterated, the virtue is in fact made up of multi-faceted aspects — pairs of traits that provide a necessary counterbalance to each other. You can’t just take everything extremely serious, and hope to develop gravitas. Rather, you must temper solemnity with humor and humility; stoic steadiness with emotion and empathy; skepticism with sincerity; stability with risk; conviction with flexibility.

The equation of gravitas comes down to something like weight X depth. You can’t only add to the weight while ignoring the depth, nor vice versa. The first scenario would create a life akin to a flat, heavy stone. The second would be like unto a flimsy hole. Either way, a one-dimensional character is brittle, fragile, and prone to fracture.

Trust and respect comes to the man with perspective and self-awareness, warmth and toughness, dependability and courage — a man who can shoulder important responsibilities with purposeful seriousness…and also laugh at himself and the absurdity of life.

In possession of such gravitas, a man cannot only authoritatively sign off to things with Uncle Walt’s classic catchphrase: “And that’s the way it is”…

…but people will really believe him when he says it.

_______________________

Source

Cronkite by Douglas Brinkley

The post Lessons From Walter Cronkite in the Lost Art of Gravitas appeared first on The Art of Manliness.

While books like 1984 and Brave New World are getting a lot of buzz right now because of the political climate of the country, I think there’s a classic dystopian title which is even more deserving of our reading (and re-reading): Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451.

If you’ve not read the book, you likely at least know its general plot: In the future, firemen no longer put out fires, rather, they start fires to piles of books. Books have been outlawed, and anyone caught with them is a criminal whose stash is to be burned up, sometimes with the daring reader along with it.

One particular firefighter, Guy Montag, encounters a couple of people who help change his mind about books, and particularly, the ideas held within them.

While 1984 and Brave New World offer scary glimpses of a future that some argue is already here, Fahrenheit 451 is filled with hope, and offers ideas for how people can resist — not the government necessarily, but the shallowness and thoughtlessness of the age.

Let’s look at a few specific lessons we can garner from Bradbury’s classic.

If You Want Better Media, Vote With Your Clicks and Dollars

“You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.”

In the dystopian future Fahrenheit 451 depicts, books slowly lost their value over time. As society began to move at a faster pace (quite literally — cars travel so fast that billboards must stretch 200 feet long to be readable), the written word started to seem too slow and boring, especially in comparison to the new forms of media that became available. People preferred to stay home and watch the “parlor walls” — giant television screens — or go see a sporting event instead of reading. Publishers abridged books into shorter and shorter works to meet the needs of steadily atrophying attention spans, but demand for even these “Cliffs Notes” shriveled.

Eventually, the government simply banned books altogether, under the pretense that not having to deal with reading and difficult-to-digest ideas would make the public happier.

Looking at the current media landscape, it’s a course of events that doesn’t seem entirely far-fetched.

Articles and books have been made ever shorter (or substituted altogether for videos) in order to appeal to those who cry “TL;DR!” to anything over 500 words. News and debates are often conducted in soundbites and conveyed in 140-character tweets.

Many people shake their heads at these trends, and act as if they’ve been brought about by shadowy forces and greedy media corporations. “Those people” over “there” are to blame.

It’s true that media companies do want to make money. But they’re only able to do so by fulfilling what the consumer demands. If the consumer wants short, dumbed-down content, that’s what is produced. Websites wouldn’t create clickbait headlines if they weren’t effective in soliciting clicks.

The reality is that it isn’t corporations who are responsible for our media, but the public. You, me, and everyone else. How you direct your attention, what subscriptions you’re willing to pay for, and what you click/share/re-tweet greatly determines the content that is put out by websites and media corporations.

If you vote for quality with your clicks, that’s what you’ll get. If you vote for bite-sized nuggets of fluff, an endless supply will be produced.

Until at some point, as in Bradbury’s novel, all information becomes so trivial and seemingly useless, that it could be banned outright and only elicit a shrug of the shoulders.

Facts Are Useless Without Context

“Cram them full of non-combustible data, chock them so damned full of ‘facts’ they feel stuffed, but absolutely ‘brilliant’ with information. Then they’ll feel they’re thinking, they’ll get a sense of motion without moving. And they’ll be happy, because facts of that sort don’t change. Don’t give them any slippery stuff like philosophy or sociology to tie things up with. That way lies melancholy.”

Our modern society has an obsession with acquiring information, most of it in the form of social media and internet articles. We think that reading about the news (in reality, often just the headlines of the news) and keeping up with what’s happening with our Facebook friends, makes us smart, informed citizens.

And to some degree it does. Surely, having some knowledge of mere facts is better than none. The problem, especially today, is that by simply watching the news or reading articles on the internet, you can hear very different facts about the exact same subject. It’s really hard to know who to trust, how to suss out what the truth is about a certain matter (if that’s even possible at all), and how to develop a truly informed opinion about something. Rather than putting in the hard work of doing those things, we simply hit the “Share” button or re-tweet something after reading a headline that we think conveys some new information.

In today’s world, being informed doesn’t actually matter much, or set you apart. Simply knowing isn’t enough, even though it can sure feel like it. As Bradbury writes above, when you’re chock-full of information, you feel satisfied and enormously “brilliant.” But are you really?

Our world isn’t made better or moved forward by knowing facts. It’s the “slippery stuff like philosophy or sociology” that enables progress of thought and action. It’s thinking deeply, connecting ideas, knowing the context of those ideas, and solving problems by delving into your toolkit of mental models that matters.

As Montag’s sage mentor, Faber, says:

“It’s not books you need, it’s some of the things that once were in books. … There is nothing magical in them at all. The magic is only in what books say, how they stitched the patches of the universe together into one garment for us.”

You don’t need more information. You need new ways of stitching the world together.

To give a quick example, let’s briefly look at Paleo dieting. Many folks in the last decade have taken up what they consider to be the diet of cavemen. Eggs every morning, plenty of meat/seafood, nuts, leafy greens, etc. This is based on the information that those foods are what our prehistoric ancestors — who were presumably healthier than their modern, overweight descendants — had available to them. 

But it’s not that simple. As Kamal Patel asked in his podcast with Brett, “Would paleo man have really eaten 3 eggs every morning?” It’s far more likely that ancient humans had a varied diet based on what they could hunt and forage at that time and season rather than eating the same things every day. They likely had intermittent periods of fasting and gorging, and consumed many foods that are either now extinct or look very different than they did 10,000 years ago (though of course some are also remarkably similar).

On top of all that, can we really be sure that a caveman diet is what’s best for everyone in the 21st century? It’s more likely that folks have different needs and that various diet regimens can work for them.

See how adding a little bit of context from history, archaeology, and modern nutrition creates a very different picture than the simple facts of “knowing” what constituted a caveman’s diet?

So what does one do to be able to look at ideas through different lenses, and not just amass facts but connect them together?

Read widely, both fiction and non-fiction. Consider both sides of an issue — or take it a step further and dismiss both and come up with your own opinion or theory (one based on evidence, of course). Delve into various disciplines like biology, philosophy, psychology, sociology, physics — spend more effort on trying to understand how the world works and less on understanding pop culture. An ancient Greek classic could end up giving you more insight into the modern world than a catchy internet headline (or even an evening newscast) ever could.

Don’t Let Fictional Characters Become Your “Family”

As a man in my late 20s, in social situations it feels as if I’m expected to be in touch with every corner of popular culture. Inside jokes are based on an SNL skit, references are made to Breaking Bad’s Walter White (even here on AoM), and of course, Queen Bey’s upcoming twins are even a topic of conversation.

Frankly, it’s a lot to keep up with. You truly can end up feeling out of the know if you’re not aware of what’s going on in the world of sports and entertainment. I’ve only fleetingly even heard of Chance the Rapper, so I felt rather out of touch when everyone was talking about his Grammy win a while back.

To be a Netflix or Hulu “binger” has become common (and yes, my wife and I are plenty guilty at times — we plowed through The Crown and loved it).

And when we’re not in front of a TV, our attention is bogarted by some other screen — be it a phone or laptop or tablet. Americans are in fact consumed by screens for more than 10 hours a day. This can be a little misleading — if you’re working for 8 or 9 hours in an office, that’s the bulk of it right there. And yet, if you’re honest, you know that even outside the office a lot of your life is spent staring at backlit rectangles.  

While this is partly just the new reality of the world we live in, it’s also a sad testament to the inevitable loss of “analog” experiences — the way digital gigabytes have become substitutes for flesh and blood relationships.

Guy Montag sees this happening in his own household and tries to quell it, asking his wife “‘Will you turn the parlor [television] off?” To which she indignantly replies: “That’s my family.”

His wife can’t bear the thought of turning off the tube because the characters provide her companionship.

This idea — of the entertainment being her family — is repeated throughout the novel, and really stuck with me. It’s a little absurd, but when you think about it, our lives just aren’t that different. The people in our screens — be they internet celebrities or TV show characters — in many ways have become our extended kin. We spend a lot of time with them, we quote them, we aspire to be like them. We plan our weeks and evenings around when certain shows are on (or when they’ll be available online). We analyze the events in a fictional storyline and come up with “fan theories” about how those universes operate. All the while, we may be ignoring the many nuances, plot developments, and character arcs of our own loved ones and the communities right outside our door.

Make an effort to give a little less credence to your fictional family, and more time and effort to your IRL family. (That’s internet slang for “in real life.”)  

Substance Matters; Conversation Matters  

“‘Sometimes I sneak around and listen in subways. Or I listen at soda fountains, and do you know what?’
‘What?’

‘People don’t talk about anything!’

‘Oh, they must!’

‘No, not anything. They name a lot of cars or clothes or swimming pools mostly and say how swell! But they all say the same things and nobody says anything different from anyone else.’”

If I’m being honest, many phone calls with family (especially the guys) are a little shallow. There’s a lot of sports and weather chit chat. Sometimes there’s a question about a house project. And of course I always give an update about how our son is doing and if he’s added any words to his growing vocabulary.

But, generally, there isn’t a ton of substance about how work is going, the general mood of the household (which fluctuates greatly with a toddler), our thoughts on current events, etc. And when those questions do pop up, I’m often guilty of a quick answer: “Things are going well!”

And I notice the same pattern when amongst friends too. We rarely dig deeper than the shallow topsoil of weather, sports, quick updates about work, etc. Sometimes it goes beyond that into deeper bedrock, but it admittedly takes some event for that to be the case — being laid off, a breakup, an illness, etc.

While small talk and even seemingly shallow subjects are often what grease the wheels into deeper topics of conversation, you can’t stay flat forever with the people you love and have repeated interactions with. Things lose momentum that way. Relationships become stale. The idea of any disagreement or conflict, or even simply not getting affirmation, leads us to not bring up our fears, dreams, even the interesting things we’ve maybe learned that day.

Guy Montag feels this throughout the book. Within his group of “friends,” there is nothing of depth ever talked about. It revolves around complaining about kids, the latest gossip about town, political trivialities, and of course, the “family” in the TV parlor. When he tries to bring up bigger ideas about the society they live in, or even when he tries to read some poetry aloud, he’s scolded and called crazy. Which in turn, makes him indeed feel crazy.

In order for life to have texture and meaning, we need to be able to talk about important things with other folks beyond just the latest smartphone apps or the new car you bought. As Susan Neiman rightly argues, asking big questions — those of a moral and value-based nature — are a sign of growing up.

My challenge to you is not simply to have those conversations and thoughts within yourself (that’s Step 1, as noted above), but to share those thoughts and questions with your friends and family. Ask your wife or girlfriend what her dreams are (and ask repeatedly — they’ll probably evolve and likely even change entirely over the course of time). Share with your friends some thoughts you had about a book you recently read. Heck, read some moving poetry aloud! You might be literally laughed at, but you might not, and if you’re among friends, there’s really no risk.

Substance matters. Take a risk and bring up something important next time you’re conversing with a friend or a loved one.

In a world of clickbait headlines and “hot takes” about current events and trends, being someone who can think for themselves, and takes seriously the value of community and family, makes you stand out amongst the crowd, and allows you not to be tossed about by whichever cultural current has the most steam that day. Be like Guy Montag. Rather than setting little fires of pop culture and political debate, and letting your attention span smolder into ashes, pause from time to time to extinguish the ever-burning glow of your smartphone and restore the values of deep knowledge, face-to-face relationships, and real conversation.

The post Lessons From Fahrenheit 451 for the Modern Day appeared first on The Art of Manliness.

Victor Frankenstein does not get much attention in popular culture. It is Frankenstein’s creation – a nameless monster (often mistakenly called Frankenstein) – in all his green, bumbling glory that attracts the attention and the horrified screams of people worldwide.

To the contrary of how film directors and producers have portrayed Frankenstein’s monster, Mary Shelley wrote the character as an intelligent and physically astute being. He wasn’t a stiff, monosyllabic beast with a flat head and a bolt in his neck. And while Victor Frankenstein himself is often mostly ignored in media portrayals, he retains the image of mad scientist. That’s about as far as we ever get in analyzing Frankenstein.

This is unfortunate, as some of the mistakes Frankenstein made along the way, mistakes which ultimately led to him losing everything he cared about – his brother, his best friend, and ultimately his wife – are incredibly instructive to any man who wishes to improve himself. After reading Shelley’s masterpiece, both previously and for this month’s AoM Book Club selection, my gut feeling was actually of sympathy towards the monster rather than Frankenstein.

While highlighting a character’s positive traits can be inspirational, it can also sometimes be quite educational to examine the ways in which he stumbles. So today we’ll take a look at Victor Frankenstein as a profile in un-manliness and explore what his flaws can teach us about what it means to be human, the importance of owning up to our responsibilities, and the danger in blaming anything other than ourselves for our mistakes.

Lesson #1: Unchecked Passion Can Be Dangerous

The creation of the monster was a long process. It didn’t happen overnight. It was months and months of studying and experimental tinkering before the creation rose to life. Frankenstein notes while narrating his story, “I seemed to have lost all soul or sensation but for this one pursuit.” His studies and his obsession “swallowed up every habit of [his] nature.”

While Frankenstein was away at college, he became utterly obsessed with finding out what the spawn of life really was. In spite of the insistence of his family and professors to give up this all-consuming pursuit he continued on. He did nothing with his time but study this science of human animation and tinker in his lab. He lost sight of any other thing in life that brought him joy…so he really did become the mad scientist that we all know from pop culture.

What’s telling is that when Frankenstein took breaks to go home, his passion would be tempered, he would realize what truly brought him joy in life, and he would be happy once again. But then he’d return to college, and continue in his madness. It was almost an addiction.

While passion today is touted as a necessary and driving force in our career path, if unchecked it can lead to losing the things we truly care about in life. The late Steve Jobs is often looked up to (heck, even worshiped) for his brilliant business acumen and product innovation. But his passion and obsession for his company led to him being an angry and temperamental boss, and a mostly absent husband and father. What is more important in life? I can’t offer a one-size-fits-all answer, but Frankenstein himself gives us a great bit of wisdom while reflecting on this passion of his:

“A human being in perfection ought always to preserve a calm and peaceful mind, and never to allow passion or a transitory desire disturb his tranquility. I do not think that the pursuit of knowledge is an exception to this rule. If the study to which you apply yourself has a tendency to weaken your affections, and to destroy your taste for those simple pleasures in which no alloy can possibly mix, then that study is certainly unlawful, that is to say, not befitting the human mind. If this rule were always observed; if not man allowed any pursuit whatsoever to interfere with the tranquility of his domestic affections, Greece had not been enslaved; Caesar would have spared his country; America would have been discovered more gradually; and the empires of Mexico and Peru had not been destroyed.”

Lesson #2: Giving Up the Ship Won’t Solve Your Problems

One of my constant annoyances while reading the book was that Frankenstein incessantly blamed the ethereal forces of the universes for his problems. At one point, he comes close to giving up his pursuit of animating a lifeless object, only to be pulled back into his obsessions once again. Frankenstein notes, “It was a strong effort of the spirit of good; but it was ineffectual. Destiny was too potent, and her immutable laws had decreed my utter and terrible destruction.” Later he blames “chance – or rather the evil influence, the Angel of Destruction, which asserted omnipotent sway over me…”

Frankenstein felt he was at the mercy of the fates and had no trust in his own willpower to overcome his dangerous passions. He had what’s called an external locus of control – a belief that you’re not responsible for your behavior, that life happens to you, rather than you making it happen.

A resilient man, on the other hand, seeks to have an internal locus of control – the confidence that one is captain of his destiny and can pilot his ship wherever he wants it to go. He takes responsibility when things go awry and actively seeks to get back on course.

Everyone falls somewhere on a spectrum between the two perspectives, even changing depending on the situation. When we don’t believe we can solve a problem, we tend to assume the victim mentality and look externally to assign blame.

The reality, however, is that we have way more control over our lives and actions than we tend to think; when practiced, our focus and our willpower are incredibly potent tools for shaping our lives. Sure, circumstances will always have something to say, but if your life hasn’t gone the direction you thought it would, take action and don’t let it stay that way. One of our mantras here at AoM is that if you want to feel like a man, you have to act like one. And a man doesn’t blame his life on destiny or fate, he takes responsibility and assumes command of his actions. Which leads to our next lesson…

Lesson #3: When You Don’t Accept Responsibility, Your Mistakes Can Take On a Life of Their Own (Literally)

After the monster rose to life, Frankenstein was horrified at his creation, and ditched. Plain and simple. He got out of dodge, ran home, and hoped that his perceived disaster would somehow remedy itself.

This is understandable. We’ve all run at one time or another from some problem we’ve created. And hopefully we’ve come to learn that running only escalates those problems, and they can truly take on a life of their own. Think of the snowballing lie where you’re spending more time and thought on the lie than the reality of the situation. And those instances usually come back to bite us in the rear even worse than had we owned up right away.

What’s most frustrating about Victor Frankenstein is that he had multiple chances to take responsibility and own his mistakes and fix them, and each time he shrank like a coward and came up with excuses.

At one point early in the novel, the monster kills Frankenstein’s young brother and frames a woman in the village named Justine. She is caught and sentenced to die. Only Frankenstein knew the truth of the matter. He says, “A thousand times rather would I have confessed myself guilty of the crime ascribed to Justine; but I was absent when it was committed, and such a declaration would have been considered as the ravings of a madman, and would not have exculpated her who suffered through me.”

His excuse is that the people in the village would not have believed his tale. How lame is that? And Justine is killed without Frankenstein uttering a word of truth.

When we create something awesome, we practically fall over ourselves to claim credit. But when we create a problem, our natural tendency is to slowly walk backwards while casually whistling the tune of abnegation and denial. But being a man means taking responsibility for all of our creations, both the good and the monstrously bad.

Humans are not perfect. Not by any means. But it’s within our power to correct the problems we create. And when we don’t exercise that power, our problems fester and only get worse. Think about the dentist. If you go every six months for regular cleanings, brush your teeth twice a day, and floss regularly, you’ll likely be just fine. But when you put off those appointments, when you slack on flossing, when you forget to brush every once a while, you end up being poked and prodded for two hours so they can give you a deep clean and fix the problem you created. Not fun. (If it seems like this is from personal experience, it is.) And that’s just with oral hygiene, let alone something far more serious.

Frankenstein at one point says, in regards to a potential solution to his monster problem, “I clung to every pretense of delay, and shrank from taking the first step.” Can’t we all relate? There are a whole host of reasons why ripping the band-aid off is a better solution than the slow peel. Most importantly, it’s the simple fact that a man takes responsibility for his life, and therefore the problems he’ll inevitably sometimes create.

I’ll leave this lesson with one final bit of advice from the reflective Frankenstein, “Nothing is more painful to the human mind than the dead calmness of inaction.”

Lesson #4: Loneliness Leads Us Down Unhealthy Paths

One of the catalysts of Frankenstein’s unchecked and dangerous passion was simply that he was by himself at college. His friends and family weren’t around to give him balance and to temper his flame. It wasn’t until he could hear the voices of those closest to him that he realized how selfish and frankly, crazy, he was being.

“Study had before secluded me from the intercourse of my fellow creatures, and rendered me unsocial, but Clerval called forth the better feelings of my heart; he again taught me to love the aspect of nature, and the cheerful faces of children… A selfish pursuit had cramped and narrowed me.” 

Author Mary Shelley notes that the theme of loneliness and its effect on humans was important to her in this novel. In Frankenstein’s case, it can be argued that it’s mostly his loneliness that led to the creation of the monster.

Loneliness also plays out in the monster’s life. He turns to killing because he’s so lonely – nobody accepts him, he has no companion, and even his creator has rejected him. At one point he tells Frankenstein that if he simply had a female mate, he’d stop killing and run away to never be seen again. Frankenstein, who should understand the perils of loneliness, rejects this idea, however. So not only did loneliness lead to the creation of the monster, the monster becomes murderous and kills everyone close to Frankenstein because of his own loneliness. One can’t help but think of the mass shootings of the last two decades, and how most are perpetrated by males whose profiles include words like “isolated” and “lonely.” Would things have been different, even in just a couple instances, if loneliness wasn’t as pervasive in their lives?

Humans are not meant to live solitary lives. Science has shown again and again the importance of friends – in everything from stress levels, to happiness levels, to life expectancy. What’s more telling, however, is simple life experience. As an introvert, I often just want to sit at home and hang out with myself and my wife, and I quite love working from home, alone in my office. When I spend time with friends though, there’s just something that happens inside that gives me a more satisfied feeling with life. There is simply greater joy in my day-to-day when friends and family are a regular part of it.

While it can be and is a difficult and messy endeavor, be sure you have friends and family you can turn to, and perhaps more importantly, who can keep you accountable when you get off track. Victor Frankenstein isolated himself, and paid dearly for it.

Lesson #5: Appearances Can Be Deceiving 

This is the most heartbreaking lesson of all from the novel. The monster (for ease of identification, I’ve been calling it “the monster” the whole time – but it’s not really a fair assessment) is intelligent, reasonable, even caring. It strongly desires to interact with other humans and simply be loved. But, every single person he encounters shrieks and runs the instant they see him. He’s never even given a chance.

Frankenstein himself says, “Begone! Relieve me from the sight of your detested form.” The creature’s own creator refuses to see past appearances. Even later on, when having a discussion with the creature, Frankenstein observes, “I compassionated him and sometimes felt a wish to console him; but when I looked upon him, when I saw the filthy mass that moved and talked, my heart sickened and my feelings were altered to those of horror and hatred.” Frankenstein begins to have compassion, and to see past the ugly exterior, but in the end, his reliance on his senses takes over, and his heart doesn’t have a chance to respond.

The creature himself notes that “the human senses are insurmountable barriers to our union.” What a sad commentary on how powerful appearances are. Sure, they are important in business and in first impressions, but to let appearances be the final say in any judgment is simply not giving someone their proper worth as a person.

The creature has feelings of joy, hope, despair – isn’t this what makes us human? Our commonalities on the inside as people far outweigh our differences and our appearances. Don’t allow what’s on the outside to have the final say.

Let Frankenstein’s tale serve as a variety of lessons in how not to act as a man.

The post Lessons in Unmanliness from Victor Frankenstein appeared first on The Art of Manliness.

Editor’s note: This is a guest article from Will Whitson. 

“[He was] as honest as you can expect a man to be in a world where it’s going out of style.” —The Big Sleep

Even if you’ve never picked up one of Raymond Chandler’s novels about quintessential noir private detective Philip Marlowe (or seen him immortalized in film by Humphrey Bogart), you can conjure up the image of the hardboiled gumshoe pretty easily. While Chandler wasn’t the first author to really develop the classic pulp detective fiction of the 30s, 40s, and 50s, he created the archetype of the rugged private eye — a man as quick with a witty one-liner or a metaphor as he was with a gun.

While some hardboiled mystery writers of the era focused on cut-and-dry stories you could cruise through in one sitting, Chandler created something different in Philip Marlowe. Through his inner monologues and interactions with his clients on the case, Marlowe exhibited a type of manliness and modern day chivalry that even back then was going out of style. Today, we’re going to take a closer look at Marlowe, and how his approach to the tough side of life can apply to you and me, even if we’re stuck behind a desk and not out chasing down the clues (and the dangerous dames that come with them).

Stick to Your N.U.T.s

“Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished, nor afraid. He is the hero; he is everything.” —The Simple Art of Murder

Do you have N.U.T.s? Those non-negotiable, un-alterable terms that set the basis for your life and decisions? Much like a moral code, our N.U.T.s remind us of where we stand and what we stand for when we’re faced with temptation or cutting corners. They keep us resolute in a world of half-measures and fickle values. 

While Marlowe never specifically laid out his N.U.T.s during one of his cases, he definitely had a strict set of guidelines that he adhered to. Before he was a private detective, Marlowe was a cop and an investigator for the Los Angeles District Attorney. He left his role as a public servant because he realized the office wasn’t serving the public at all. While not all the cops and attorneys he worked with were corrupt, Marlowe lamented that they never really got anything done, or would settle for closing part of a case rather than put in the extra effort to track down more clues and solve it entirely. When he couldn’t be helpful in an organization that was built specifically to be helpful to the public, he said so long and took off on his own.

How many times have you compromised on your values for the quick fix at work? Have you seen your boss, coworkers, or friends cut corners or make decisions you absolutely knew went against what they believed for the sake of making a profit or saving face or even just for convenience?

Every day, our N.U.T.s are challenged, and we can either let it slide, and slip a little further down the slope of moral compromise, or we can stand up and point out when something is wrong. Sure, it won’t necessarily make you the most popular guy in the break room (even Marlowe took licks for standing up for what was right), but the other option will slowly eat away at who you are.

Which sounds better to you?

Don’t Get Caught Up In the Glitz and Glamour and Forsake the Work in Front of You

“And lastly there is the gorgeous show piece who will outlast three kingpin racketeers and then marry a couple of millionaires at a million a head and end up with a pale rose villa at Cap Antibes, an Alfa-Romeo town car complete with pilot and co-pilot, and a stable of shopworn aristocrats, all of whom she will treat with the affectionate absent-mindedness of an elderly duke saying goodnight to his butler.” —The Long Goodbye

Philip Marlowe lived in Los Angeles in the midst of Hollywood’s Golden Age. It was a time of movie stars living in sprawling, ornate mansions and driving fancy cars; the entire city was entranced by the glamour of Tinseltown. (And not much has changed today.) But Marlowe didn’t seem to pay it much mind. He knew and acknowledged that he lived among the stars of the silver screen, but he never let it get in the way of his work. To Marlowe, the case was the important thing, and even the wealthiest and most glamorous of Hollywood’s high society were ordinary people just like him.

Nowadays, we don’t have to go to Hollywood to get caught up in the glamorous life. All we have to do is putz around on our phones any time we get bored or want to put off doing something important. Sure, you can take a look at the duck confit your friend is snapping photos of instead of eating, or look at the exotic locales and beautiful girls some macho guy is surrounding himself with, but where does that get you? Three minutes older with nothing to show for it.

A little escape into Hollywood or seeing what your adventurous friends are doing on Instagram isn’t such a terrible thing, but it distracts us from doing real, meaningful work. If you turn off the app and keep grinding away, you may even get to a point someday where people are checking out your social media posts.

Do Your Homework

“I drove down to the Hollywood public library and did a little superficial research in a stuffy volume called Famous First Editions. Half an hour of it made me need my lunch.” —The Big Sleep

Philip Marlowe wasn’t afraid to get tough when he needed do, and he could give any punk or gangster on the street a run for their money in a fight. But, Marlowe also appreciated that sometimes brain over brawn was the way to get information he needed. The above quote is from a scene where Marlowe suspects a rare book shop may be a front for something shady. Rather than barge in and demand answers, he does his research and questions the sales clerk about first editions he knows don’t exist. The clerk is oblivious, and without revealing that he’s on to them, the clever detective gets all the information he needs.

Marlowe also kept his mind sharp by constantly playing chess. He’d use this manly game of strategy and skill to relax and think through problems. Like Sherlock Holmes and his violin, Philip Marlowe pursued an edifying hobby in his downtime, rather than wasting it.

There are numerous examples of great men and leaders who embodied the merits of lifelong learning and expanding your mind. You never know where that knowledge you acquire through autodidactic education could pay off down the road.

Work With What You’ve Got

“I needed a drink, I needed a lot of life insurance, I needed a vacation, I needed a home in the country. What I had was a coat, a hat and a gun. I put them on and went out of the room.” —Farewell, My Lovely

Similar to “shoulding” all over ourselves,” we often “if” ourselves out of getting a job done or even starting an important task in the first place. You know how it goes: “If only I had two more hours to spare, I could get a workout in.” Or, “If I had more money, I could spend more time investing in side hustles instead of having to work this awful job.” We constantly find the magic “if” that stops us from pursuing something important. Marlowe didn’t have the luxury to “if” himself.

In most of the cases he took, there was usually someone in danger and he had to work fast to make sure the right people were safe and the guilty parties got what was coming to them. Were Marlowe to stop and say “If I had backup, I could brace this guy,” or “If I were stronger, I’d stop that guy from harassing women,” then he wouldn’t be worth the paper his stories are printed on.

Instead of stopping to think about what he didn’t have, Marlowe worked with what he did have right in front of him. Sometimes, all he had on the bad guy was the element of surprise. Other times, he didn’t even have that. But in every scenario, Marlowe rolled with the punches and was able to work through even the hairiest of situations.

Of course, it didn’t hurt that he could strategize and improvise thanks to all that chess playing and lifelong learning.

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Will Whitson is a news producer and long-time AoM reader. He lives with is wife and daughter outside Washington D.C.

The post Lessons in Manliness From Hardboiled Detective Philip Marlowe appeared first on The Art of Manliness.