Victory to the United
Great groups—not great men—win.
In 2023, Jimmy Kolb broke the bench press world record by 23 kg. He raised the record to its current standing of 635 kg.
That is some out-of-this world strength. To put into perspective just how much weight that is, it's equivalent to 635 jugs of milk. Honestly, it would have been cooler if he bench-pressed milk instead of steel, but such a feat introduces a lot of complexity and risk (I wouldn't want to be the one wiping up 600 liters of sour milk), so I shall forgive him for his lack of artistry.
But we're not here to talk about sour milk. We're here to talk about performance. Kolb could accomplish his feat through a mixture of elite, determined training and genetics.
The American record-breaker optimized every facet of his life to do the impossible. Sleep. Nutrition. A finely tuned exercise regimen. All unnecessary activities cut out. All sources of drag or weakness removed. All obstacles abolished—at least as much as he could manage.
Kolb sacrificed everything on the altar of excellence to break this record, and his diligence was rewarded.
But consider this: 10 fit men, working in tandem, could easily outdo him.
Walking into any gym in the US, I could easily round up enough guys to lift that weight. Three amateur body-builders could also outdo Kolb.
With two professional power lifters, I could nearly double the weight. No strong man, regardless of how disciplined or gifted, will ever beat that record.
Discipline and genetics alone will never achieve lasting greatness.
Yes, we marvel at Kolb's record-setting strength, but outside of a niche group of powerlifters, he will pass through history unknown, forgotten in the coming decades as better lifters surpass him. Most of you reading this right now probably didn't even know who he was until today.
He's forgettable because of scale. Two professional lifters can easily outperform him, and his accomplishment has little impact outside of the power lifting scene.
Real power comes when personal perfection meets numbers and coordination.
The pyramids are a marvel—made by masses of emaciated slaves and ingenious engineers at the Pharoah's behest.
The Spartans applied this principle to their own civilization. They didn’t rule over Greece for five centuries because of their skill as individual warriors.
A lone Spartan was stronger, tougher, and better trained than any other Greek hoplite, but their military supremacy didn’t come from individual ability alone.
The Spartans won because they joined fanatical training with centuries of eugenics, a unity of will, and solid co-ordination on and off the battlefield. They ate, slept, trained, bathed, maneuvered, and fought as a single organism.
The Spartan warrior was superior, but the Spartan phalanx was god-like.
Ten-thousand hoplites, led and drilled by a Spartan commander, routed a Persian host quadruple their size. They would have won Cyrus his empire had he not foolishly charged ahead and caught an unlucky javelin to the cheek.
Had the hoplites fought as Achilles and Diomedes did, they would have been easily routed by the numerically superior force.
Since they remained united in purpose, maintaining order even as the enemy fled before them, the hoplites won the battle. With no claim to the throne and betrayed by their surviving Persian allies, though, the Greeks were forced to march thousands of kilometers through hostile lands to return home.
Great men win.
Individualism is seductive. The promise of prestige. The thrill of the spotlight. The swagger of standing above all other men and luxuriating in that knowledge. The drive for personal excellence without dealing with lazy, stupid, weak subordinates who’d rather bicker and talk shit than get shit done. Eschewing this all to bask in your own perfection, like an athlete as he studies his chiseled form before a mirror, will whisper sweet promises into your ear in moments of weakness and frustration with the common man.
Do not heed the invitations. Greatness in isolation is impotent—as impotent as Kolb's record. A marvel that will never change the course of history.
The ten-thousand Greeks fighting as individuals would have been slaughtered by the Persians. Their strength rested in their combination of skill, discipline, and unity.
The World Cup offers a clearer and more modern example of how raw, individual talent does not guarantee victory.
In 1950, the tiny country of Uruguay upset the star-studded Brazilian team to steal the trophy.
Uruguay had quality players, but everyone expected the wildly talented Brazilian team to blow Uruguay out of the water. Before the match, the Brazilian government had minted gold medals with the player’s names. Newspapers declared Brazil the de facto winner. The match was just a formality.
It was not to be.
The superior discipline and resolve of Uruguay overcame the overconfident Brazilians, delivering one of the greatest upsets in football history.
Talent is not a matter of arithmetic, with each individual player on one side neatly adding to a sum of ability for the team, with the largest sum securing victory.
Talent is part of the equation but so is teamwork. Teamwork multiplies power, while the thirst for individual acclaim or petty resentments divides it.
War is among the best arenas to see this fact in action. Its complexity, chaos, and uncertainty reflects the realities of real-life struggles.
Sparta dominated the Mediterranean and, with the help of other Greek city-states, drove the Persians from their borders, but the Greeks never penetrated further than coastal regions. The Lacadamonians never overthrew the Persians. They never claimed Italy. They never pacified and colonized the Baltic states.
The Greeks were too divided along city-state lines to set aside their differences, unify their forces, and conquer other lands. It would take a barbarian king, Philip the II, to undo the ethnic rivalries and divisions and forge a Hellenic empire.
Through force, diplomacy, and a careful admixing of arms and peoples, Philip succeeded where countless others had failed.
Alexander’s explosion out of the Mediterranean is thanks to Philip’s political and military genius. Philip gathered together centuries of Hellenic breeding, culture, innovation, and skill into a single force that stormed across Asia.
Alexander would eventually fail. Fate took him in his youth after a voracious series of campaigns that expanded his father’s empire to India’s Hyphasis River. Had Alexander survived and rid his officers of the petty ethnocentrism that had doomed Greece for centuries, a Hellenic empire would have followed in his wake.
It could have rivaled Rome and electrified generations of young men for millenia. That was not to be. In part, because Alexander's own lack of foresight and reversion to the Homeric ideal of individual strength over a carefully forged, united identity.
The empire of Philip and Alexander was snuffed out with their passing. The ancient rivalries, ethnic divisions, and private ambitions that had paralyzed Greece prior re-emerged. Greece was doomed to be another English World Cup team—incredible talent squandered by poor coordination and egoism.
Rome solved this problem. She lacked the artistic nuance and vibrance of Greece, but she made up for it through sheer power and unity of will. She was a World Cup team that won every tournament for centuries straight.
History is unequivocal. The future belongs to trained, talented, fanatical, unified men.
A great man must be at the helm, but if Alexander did not have the most elite infantry units in the world and capable senior officers seasoned after generations of war, his aspirations would have been crushed.
Great men, united in purpose, have the world in the palm of their hand.
Our mission is not self-perfection for individual glory or acclaim.
Our purpose is to forge a people who will seize the earth and the endless stars, to win—generation after generation after generation—until our flame is snuffed out by Time.
Until all that survives us is our name and our example, burning for our descendants until even our memory is extinguished.