Citizenship in a Republic was a speech given by Theodore Roosevelt in 1910. Roosevelt was no longer president at the time and addressed a crowd in Paris at the Sorbonne, part of one of the first universities in the world. Most are familiar with a passage in the speech known by its catchy line, the ‘Man in the Arena’. You’ll find the ‘man in the arena’ portion short and readily understandable. The passage is found in almost every inspirational quote compilation and if you’re just looking for a quick dose of inspirational dopamine, reading that short snippet will serve that purpose.
If you only desire a superficial understanding of concepts, the highlights from this blog post should scratch that itch. But if you are at all curious and want to explore the ideals of citizenship and community in depth, read the whole speech. It is excellent. I would be hard-pressed to find any document that communicates the ideals for citizenship and community as succinctly and eloquently as this speech.
There is more than enough accompanying content written about the ‘man in the arena’ portion. So, I think the remainder of this post will provide more marginal value if it explores some of the less-cited passages.
Words that make you feel
I want to start with the opening of the speech, just to highlight the poetry and reverence Roosevelt was able to convey in just two sentences.
Strange and impressive associations rise in the mind of a man from the New World who speaks before this august body in this ancient institution of learning. Before his eyes pass the shadows of mighty kings and war-like nobles, of great masters of law and theology; through the shining dust of the dead centuries he sees crowded figures that tell of the power and learning and splendor of times gone by; and he sees also the innumerable host of humble students to whom clerkship meant emancipation, to whom it was well-nigh the only outlet from the dark thralldom of the Middle Ages.
Nowadays, we miss out on experiencing poetry like this in our communications. Everything fits in 280 characters or a sound-bite. One could argue that brevity and simplicity provide a net benefit in terms of communication efficiency, but I for one still appreciate and yearn for messages that make use of such evocative language. It draws out your emotions and lets you feel something when you listen. I don’t know if the dimensions of brevity and emotional impact are mutually exclusive within communication, but I certainly think the range of possible emotions decreases as a function of message length. Shorter messages can really only convey the base emotions devoid of any nuance, breadth, or depth.
Stand on the shoulders of giants
The next passage I want to highlight comes at the end of a section where Roosevelt talks about the development of civilization.
The new life thus sought can in part be developed afresh from what is roundabout in the New World; but it can be developed in full only by freely drawing upon the treasure-houses of the Old World, upon the treasures stored in the ancient abodes of wisdom and learning, such as this where I speak to-day. It is a mistake for any nation to merely copy another; but it is an even greater mistake, it is a proof of weakness in any nation, not to be anxious to learn from one another and willing and able to adapt that learning to the new national conditions and make it fruitful and productive therein.
Nations and civilization are developed by drawing on the wisdom of those who came before. I think the same concepts apply to the learning and growth of individuals. It’s arrogance to discount the wisdom of those who came before. They have a lot of experience to leverage. It’s also arrogance to discount the people who come after you. They probably have a better understanding of the present and future direction the world is headed. Both groups provide insight that you lack.
Roosevelt also says that it’s a mistake to blindly follow the advice or models of others. Copying a model that works in one place is not guaranteed to yield the same results when it is applied in a new environment.
The idea that you can learn from everyone’s unique perspective and then combine their ideas in novel ways is super exciting to me. The amount of knowledge and diversity in the world is astounding and I get passionate when I think that I have the opportunity to uncover some small piece of it.
I started my personal learning journey with the approach of ‘listen + filter’. Listen. Assume that everyone around you has something to teach you that you don’t know. This drastically increases your pool of available knowledge that you can draw from. Filter. Then you get the exciting (but non-trivial) task of filtering that knowledge into something useful to meet your needs.
Over time I have evolved my approach from using the terms ‘listen + filter’ to using the terms extraction and synthesis. I moved to the latter set of terms, because they convey that active engagement is required. The word ‘listen’ requires an extra adjective (‘active’) preceding it to indicate that there is a particular style of listening that you need to engage in. ‘Filter’ is similarly associated with passivity (think water filters, content filters, etc). Active filtering is kind of a secondary interpretation of the word.
Extraction and synthesis may sound less personal when thought about in terms of communicating with somebody, but the words themselves have an inherent definition that conveys that active engagement is required.
While it’s possible to think of these terms from an antiseptic angle (e.g. doctors extract blood samples and maybe synthesize different medicines in a lab), I prefer to think in terms of value-creation. Extracting valuable materials from the earth involves exploring, digging, and refining that material until it is purified. You want to do the same. You want to explore ideas, discover new insights, and chip away until you’ve arrived at the kernel, or essence, of an idea. Similarly, synthesis can be thought of in terms of value-creation. Synthesis is bringing together components in novel and innovative ways. Similar to how a chef can combine a wide variety of individual ingredients together to make a delicious dish. There really aren’t that many new ideas under the sun, but there is a lot to gain on the margin by the combination of ideas.
Quality of the average citizen
The last passage that I’ll address in this post comes in the middle of a section where Roosevelt is highlighting the importance of the individual citizen.
The success of republics like yours and like ours means the glory, and our failure the despair, of mankind; and for you and for us the question of the quality of the individual citizen is supreme. Under other forms of government, under the rule of one man or very few men, the quality of the leaders is all-important. If, under such governments, the quality of the rulers is high enough, then the nations for generations lead a brilliant career, and add substantially to the sum of world achievement, no matter how low the quality of the average citizen; because the average citizen is an almost negligible quantity in working out the final results of that type of national greatness. But with you and us the case is different. With you here, and with us in my own home, in the long run, success or failure will be conditioned upon the way in which the average man, the average woman, does his or her duty, first in the ordinary, every-day affairs of life, and next in those great occasional cries which call for heroic virtues. The average citizen must be a good citizen if our republics are to succeed. The stream will not permanently rise higher than the main source; and the main source of national power and national greatness is found in the average citizenship of the nation. Therefore it behooves us to do our best to see that the standard of the average citizen is kept high; and the average cannot be kept high unless the standard of the leaders is very much higher.
Roosevelt states that the quality of the every-man is incredibly important in our republic. Statements at ‘republic’ scale are difficult to relate to. So let’s scale it down to ‘team’ scale to make it more understandable.
In a small group of peers, the weakest link limits the progress achievable by the group as a collective. Teams of small groups of peers are “weak-link” systems. Weak-link systems are those that provide more marginal benefit in upgrading the weakest parts. It provides more value to the team to improve the lowest performer from 60 to 70 than it does to improve the highest performer from 85 to 95. This is as opposed to “strong-link” systems, which are those that provide more marginal benefit in upgrading the strongest parts. The NBA is an example of a strong-link system. It provides more value to find a better superstar than signing a better 6th man. Malcom Gladwell has an excellent podcast episode full of examples on the difference between these two systems, so listen to that if you want more context. Revisionist History – My little hundred million
While a team of peers is a weak-link system, most teams aren’t composed purely of peers. They require appointing someone to serve as the leader. Adding a leader into the system changes the dynamic completely because now we have asymmetry. Before, it did not matter which person on the team was the weak-link, everyone is kind of equal in the amount that they can impact the whole. Now that we have a leader, who the weak-link is matters a great deal. A team with a weak leader is much much worse off than a team with a weak member. The asymmetry comes from the different roles (leader, member) having a drastically different magnitude of impact depending on which one is the weak-link. Since categorizing things aids understanding, I’m going to refer to this as being an asymmetric weak-link system.
In this asymmetric weak-link system, a weak team member can be compensated for. The other members of the team can assist, teach, and train the weak member. Their weakness doesn’t really drag the team down so much as the other members’ strengths help to pull them up. However, a weak leader is much more difficult to compensate for. Their weakness inevitably ends up dragging the other members of the team down. Over time, the average quality of every member of the team drops until it matches the quality of the leader (e.g. the steady-state response of the system is to lower the member quality).
I think a distinction should be made here between weak leaders and leaders with weaknesses. Leaders with weaknesses are humble and can learn and grow throughout their lifetime. Their weaknesses are usually accounted for because they will allow their team to fill the gaps and shine in those areas. Weak leaders on the other hand, are those who lack humility and the ability to listen. Without those two attributes, they are hopeless and will inevitably drag the quality of their team to match them.
Tying all these ideas back to Roosevelt’s speech, the quality of the average citizen is paramount in our republic and our communities. As the team-member in this scenario, we have a great deal of responsibility to use our strengths to aid the weaknesses of our fellow teammates. We must maintain high standards for ourselves. In addition, we must hold even higher standards for our leaders. Otherwise, we are subjecting our community to an inevitable decline. The quality of the average citizen will eventually be lowered to match the quality of the leader.
Wrap Up
I barely scratched the surface of this speech with this post. I only elaborated on a tiny fragment of the whole. There’s still so many great ideas that deserve elevation that I think a second post is definitely in order. But in the meantime, I’d encourage taking 20 minutes out of your day to read the speech in its entirety. Your unique perspective and background mean that the insights you uncover by reading will undoubtedly be different than mine, so investigate for yourself.