Becoming a Renaissance Man (A New Way to See Self-Improvement)

he who is only an athlete is too crude too vulgar too much of a Savage he who is a scholar only is too soft too effeminate the ideal citizen is the scholar athlete the man of thought and the man of action Plato you should be striving to be a renaissance man I think everyone should and first what is a renaissance man what does that mean why should we strive towards it the renaissance man is exactly as the name suggests it's following in the footsteps of the men the great men who lived in the Renaissance like

Da Vinci and Copernicus who did not improve themselves in one aspect only but they they really focused heavily on every faculty of their human existence and really boosted it individually and that will coalesce into making themselves great individuals who were proficient in the Arts Engineering artistic expression in all sorts of ways sculpting The Sciences physical development through Athletics and everything else and that's the really the concept of the Renaissance Man and of course if we zoom out a bit and go a step before that before we even consider becoming a following in the footsteps of

the Renaissance men we need to understand why are we developing in the first place well what's the point of personal development well it gives us it gives us Direction and meaning because why drift around aimlessly and without some sort of higher purpose where we can collect our values organize them and then go forward aiming up in in a good direction to develop ourselves it gives us purpose it makes us happy it gives us a reason to live and a reason to to suffer in the first place we can choose to suffer aimlessly or we can

choose to suffer for a cause that is worth it a work a cause that is worth the suffering of existence and that then leads us on to becoming a renaissance man and what we have nowadays especially with the college system and University is a push towards hyper specialization and what I mean by that is because there's so many people on earth in this such high competition in essentially every field every trade there's intense competition you have to be really good at what you do and you often find success by being really specialized on a very

distinct Niche that's kind of it's completely strange to everyone else but in your small field of that Niche you're the authority and that's sort of how they push you to find success in University of course they emphasize other skills but that's mainly the formula for Success nowadays is to get really focused and that's not inherently bad but it's I think it's really not good either for building a well-rounded character and that's where the idea of the the renaissance man comes in it's almost fully rejecting specialization not fully of course because it's still good to have

some sort of Mastery on a topic or two your topic your skill your trade that's good but the point is it's become a renaissance man we have to attend to every sort of faculty of self-development and what I mean by that is one faculty faculty is Art We should strive for artistic Excellence to express ourselves in some way in an autistic medium We should strive to improve our our mind whether that's through reading through debating it's that field of study and personal development uh physical development is another one a good social life is another one

being good at being a a father it could be another one it's all these groups of sub skills and trades I suppose that we should give attention to each one because a lot of us don't we we focus heavily on on one side whether it's lifting and or reading and we don't really spread out our attention to all of them and there's there's a phrase that there was a saying a story from I have no idea where it's from but that was a nun someone's uncle or something who was a mechanic and he was really

good at his job he was a great mechanic but his mechanic friends weren't cooks and this Uncle was he was a chef as well in his spare time he he loved the culinary world and he he would focus heavily on developing his skills in that and he would use he used to say of all the chefs I am the best engineer in that room and when I'm in the the shop I'm the best chef of all those mechanics and that was profound to me because it's like just because you went out of your Niche and

focused on developing yourself in other ways you were suddenly you suddenly got this unique Viewpoint these unique skills that all kind of just work together and intertwined into one person yourself and that really Amplified every aspect of work in every Niche you do having that broad perspective with all the the inputs coming in and yeah the messages that specialization is not bad inherently but it's important that we we don't lose sight of uh the higher end by strictly sticking to one subject We should strive to at least develop ourselves somewhat in in every in a

whole range of different fields and and faculties like I say and this will be this is sort of the introductory video the next one I want to do is actually a sort of framework for how to become a renaissance man is it going to be very vague because it's not going to be you know do this this and this to become or renaissance man like we say but it's picking up four sort of fields we can look into and make sure we're doing something there something that leaves no corner in the dark let's say and

they are actually artistic expression Social Development and being a good communicator and it's included in that physical development which is one of the more obvious ones and then the final one is developing the mind reading and such again it's another more obvious one and in that video I'll give you a sort of guidance and a a rough structure that you can build upon that you can with some examples of what you could do to achieve this and really you see it more and more nowadays people all these sort of content creators and small entrepreneurs in

this in this field will focus on a broad set of skills constant learning like the constant desire to learn and to become that archetype we look up to the da Vinci he was such an impressive man he was you could do everything and that's what we look up to we we find Value in people who are not masters of one thing necessarily but flexible in all things and they're just well-rounded and that's what we should strive to do that is the Renaissance Man and I'll see you in the next video for a guide of how

we can actually do that in our own life thank you