How the Mighty Have Fallen | Healthy Aging Series: S12 E16
January 16, 1991, 4 PM EST
I was sitting in my living room, watching on TV the beginning of the Gulf War. As a young teenager in the late 60s, I remember watching news clips of the Vietnam War, the death count for the day during Walter Cronkite’s Evening newscasts. But the Gulf War was different. It was live, and it was mostly about Saddam Hussein.
He was killed December 13, 2003, by US military forces.
He was unquestionably a powerful figure, and while the geopolitical situation in the Middle East is complex, it is difficult to survive as a tyrant.
There have been other world leaders who have met the same end.
Edi Amin was overthrown in 1979, when the revolutionary forces of Uganda forced him to flee to Saudi Arabia where he died in 2003. He was accused of numerous crimes, including mass killings, torture, political, repression, and ethnic persecution that led to the deaths of between 100,000 to 500,000 Ugandan people.
How the mighty have fallen.
Manuel Noriega. I remember the use of loud rock music as psychological warfare that forced Noriega, who had hunkered down in the Vatican Embassy, to surrender to US forces in 1991.
He died while incarcerated in Panama at age 83, in 2017.
How the mighty have fallen.
Religious leaders have fallen as well.
Jimmy Swaggart from a relationship with a prostitute.
Jim Baker for financial and sexual scandals.
Ted Haggard for sexual misconduct and drug allegations.
Mark Driscoll, who was accused of bullying, abusive leadership, and financial abuse.
Bill, Hybels for sexual misconduct.
Eddie Long for sexual coercion.
Robert Tilton for issues with donations.
Paul Crouch for financial misconduct.
I could go on and on, but won’t.
How the mighty have fallen.
The mighty fall in the business world as well.
Bernie Madoff, Elizabeth Holmes, Sam Brinkman, Travis Kalamick, Kenneth lay.
And then there is the sports and entertainment world.
Kevin Spacey, Lance Armstrong, Tiger Woods, O.J. Simpson, Harvey, Weinstein, Bill Cosby, R. Kelly, Sean Combs, Louis C.K., and Roseanne Barr, again just to name a few.
How the mighty have fallen.
Bernarr MacFadden
There is a man that I’ve been intrigued with who was nearly a household name 100 years ago, much like Arnold Schwarzenegger is today.
I’ve written about him, but wanted to bring him up again in light of the powerful people in our country and in our world.
Bernard McFadden lived from 1868 in 1955, died at 87.
At the peak of his career, his net worth was estimated to be over $30 million, and in today’s terms would be roughly equivalent to $500 million.
Who Was Bernarr MacFadden?
Bernarr McFadden was the self-proclaimed Father of the Fitness Culture. The difficulty in sharing his life as a fitness revolutionary is that he was a complete failure, and honestly his life ended as a complete mess.
I doubt if any of you have ever heard of BM (he liked to be called BM). Think about Arnold Schwarzenegger 100 years ago. There are some stark differences, but clearly some similarities as well, not to mention he ran for, but lost, a campaign for Governor of Florida and at one point in his life was a multimillionaire.
Here is how one biography described him:
One of a long line of health reformers, not above exaggerating, his importance, BM affected the social fabric of 20th century America. He was a muscular muckraker who not only championed sexuality and sex education, but he also promoted the display of beautiful bodies. He condemned the wearing of restrictive garments (women’s corsets) and fostered the physical culture. In his crusade for health, he was derided by traditional physicians as an ignorant and dangerous quack but was gratefully remembered by many whom he had helped by his prescription of exercise, diet, and natural healing. To some observers, he was simply an amusing eccentric who would do anything to win publicity; yet such feats as parachute jumping in his 80s serve not merely to feed his ego, but to prove that the body, if properly cared for, retained its youthful fitness. McFadden set trends in journalism as a publisher of mass magazines and newspapers that exploited romance, sex, and crime. To businessmen, he embodied the old-fashioned virtues and stubborn self-assurance of free enterprise promoters. An incarnation of rags to riches theme, a little strong man from Missouri, who became a millionaire New Yorker naïvely dreamed of restoring the rugged qualities of early American pioneers, and never tired of preaching that his country men had to be physically strong if the United States were to survive a violent world. (Weakness if a Crime)
BM the Influencer
He was an influencer in today’s language. He played a role in establishing Charles Atlas as a famous bodybuilder. McFadden was a publisher and writer.
“Publishing enabled McFadden to carry his health message across the land and beyond,” writes Robert Ernst in his book “Weakness is a Crime.” The title of that book was a motto that McFadden used throughout his life.
As a sidenote, BM would have been a mega-influencer in our world of social media and YouTube!
So, if he was so famous 100 years ago, why haven’t most people heard of him today? I asked several people throughout the past couple weeks if they’d heard of Bernarr McFadden. Out of about 20 people only one reported that they had heard of him but knew almost nothing about him. I can’t imagine asking people 100 years from now if they have ever heard of Arnold and I dare say, most would know who he was. BTW: BM also made movies!!
All those books and magazines. Seriously, he wrote 50 books. He has an eight-volume encyclopedia of health and fitness. I was able to purchase the complete set, but they haven’t been printed for 100 years.
As I read his biography, I concluded that he failed because his personal life was a complete disaster. His life was such a disaster that in the end he died alone, estranged from his children, and penniless.
How the mighty have fallen.
I marinaded over MacFadden and all of the other “Fallen” people that were mentioned earlier in this episode and came up with three characteristics that they shared. Here is what I came up with:
Tons of Money
It would seem like the “Fallen” loved money and had so much money that they could purchase anything that they wanted. I often wonder why the mega-rich need so much money. I wanted to write a book years ago that followed people who won the Lottery, the mega-millions Lottery. That kind of money changes people. It changed most of them for the worse.
In his book, Breakfast with Seneca, David Fideler writes, “When people become wealthy, it increases their sense of self-importance and amplifies their negative character traits.” He goes on to say that one of the greatest dangers of extreme wealth is that it encourages some people, “to become addicted to luxury, excess, and living beyond their means.”
People with extreme wealth lose their connection with everyone. They lose their empathy, the “good kind of empathy,” you know, like being able to put themselves in other people’s shoes.
Great wealth is dehumanizing.
No Moral Compass
You need a moral compass. Period. It helps prevent hurting people. It prevents cheating people out of their retirement money. It prevents misusing charitable donations. It prevents sexually abusing children and abusing those caught in the web of sex trafficking. It prevents using people. It prevents enslaving people. It prevents exploiting people. A moral compass helps us treat others the way we want to be treated.
The “Fallen” either had no moral compass or suppressed it in the glitter of things, sex, and fame.
Intoxicants
The “Fallen” became intoxicated. My guess is that they literally became intoxicated with lots of substances, and figuratively intoxicated with their own self-importance, their fame.
The spotlight is 100 Proof. People say and do things under its influence that they would never otherwise do. It causes people to fall into a Trance of Narcissism.
The “Fallen” never think that what happened to others will happen to them. Never. They are blind to the pain that they bring to others and the dangers they face. It is only after their fall that they seem repentant. It is only after the fall that they see their monstrous behaviors. They spend the rest of their lives hungover with guilt and regret, maybe.
I could tell you about the extremely wealthy that do not fall. Many of them are disasters. Many of them are unhappy. Many of them are complete phoneys.
Look around and survey the adult playgrounds and the adult islands, and the adult red-carpet runways. Don’t envy those people.
