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<p>Several weeks ago, I was seized by an inexplicable urge to buy a globe for my home office. Don’t know where it came from. I had been sitting at my desk, ruminating on an article, when I looked around, noticed my lack of a globe, and thought: <em>I need a globe.</em></p>
<p>On a lark, I posted a note on Substack confessing my inexplicable urge to buy a globe for my home office. I called it the male urge to own a globe. Half-joking, but also very serious. The note went Substack viral. Tons of guys chimed in: <em>Yes. Same. I’ve wanted one for years. My grandfather had one. Globes are cool as hell.</em></p>
<p>Seeing the universal male desire to own a globe ratcheted up my own. As the founder of the Art of Manliness, I <em>had</em> to live up to this masculine imperative. It was Girardian mimetic globe desire.</p>
<p>On that very same day that I scribbled my memo about men and globes on Substack Notes, I was watching <em>The Firm </em>(<a href="https://www.artofmanliness.com/living/reading/10-90s-dad-novels-to-check-out/">also a great 90s Dad Novel</a>) during my <a href="https://www.artofmanliness.com/health-fitness/fitness/zone-2-training/">Zone 2 cardio session</a>. There’s a scene where Tom Cruise, playing the young hotshot law grad Mitch McDeere, is setting up his office. Next to his desk, amidst shelves of leather-bound legal case books, sits a large, handsome<em> globe</em>.</p>
<p>That cemented it. This was a sign. I needed to get a globe. That day. Immediately. Resistance was futile.</p>
<p>So I went on eBay and bought a globe.</p>
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<div id="attachment_193493" style="width: 610px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-193493" class="wp-image-193493 size-full" src="https://content.artofmanliness.com/uploads/2026/05/image8.webp" alt="" width="600" height="248" srcset="https://content.artofmanliness.com/uploads/2026/05/image8.webp 600w, https://content.artofmanliness.com/uploads/2026/05/image8-320x132.webp 320w" sizes="(max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px"/></p>
<p id="caption-attachment-193493" class="wp-caption-text"><a href="https://substack.com/@brettmckay">Follow me on Substack Notes;</a> it’s the only kind of “social media” I personally interact with, because it’s fun instead of being soul-destroying and productive of the urge to repeatedly jam a fork in your eye.</p>
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<p>Specifically, I tracked down the exact globe I’d had as a kid in the 1980s. A sepia-toned one with topographically raised mountain ranges that you can run your fingers over. The USSR and other Soviet Bloc countries are on there. So is Zaire.</p>
<p>My globe now sits on a table in my office and looks majestic.</p>
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<div id="attachment_193501" style="width: 610px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-193501" class="wp-image-193501 size-full" src="https://content.artofmanliness.com/uploads/2026/05/IMG_1175.jpeg" alt="" width="600" height="450" srcset="https://content.artofmanliness.com/uploads/2026/05/IMG_1175.jpeg 600w, https://content.artofmanliness.com/uploads/2026/05/IMG_1175-320x240.jpeg 320w" sizes="(max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px"/></p>
<p id="caption-attachment-193501" class="wp-caption-text">My globe. It fits very well with <a href="https://www.dyingbreed.net/p/a-tour-of-our-home-office">the other handsome furnishings in my home office.</a></p>
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<p>What a rush.</p>
<p>This whole experience left me with the question: What makes a globe so damn appealing? Especially to men?</p>
<p>So I dug into the history of globes. Combining that history with my knowledge of the male psyche based on my own experience as a man and nearly 20 years researching, thinking, and writing about manliness, I’ve developed a few speculative theories about men and globes.</p>
<p>Here is my report.</p>
<h3 id="h.r5nom1orcf80">A Brief History of the Globe</h3>
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<p>Globes are ancient. The Greeks figured out the Earth was round by the 3rd century B.C., and an ancient Greek dude named Crates of Mallus is credited with making the first terrestrial globe around 150 B.C. When he moved to Rome, he showed the Romans his cool invention, and the Romans started making globes. Sadly, none of those ancient globes survived. There’s a famous 2nd-century Roman sculpture called “Farnese Atlas” that depicts the titan Atlas hoisting a celestial globe (a globe of the stars) on his shoulders. There’s your first masculine-globe combo in the West.</p>
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<p>The Middle Ages were a fallow period for European globe-making, but Islamic and Chinese scholars kept the craft alive. The earliest surviving terrestrial globe, the <em>Erdapfel</em> — German for “Earth Apple” — was built in 1492 by Martin Behaim in Nuremberg. (Conspicuously, it has no Americas. Columbus was just then setting sail on the ocean blue.) From that point forward, globe-making exploded in Europe with the Age of Exploration. Globes were useful things to have when you were charting the watery sphere we call home. Every major voyage produced new data, which meant globes needed to be regularly updated and new ones released.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter wp-image-193498" src="https://content.artofmanliness.com/uploads/2026/05/image10.webp" alt="" width="505" height="708" srcset="https://content.artofmanliness.com/uploads/2026/05/image10.webp 600w, https://content.artofmanliness.com/uploads/2026/05/image10-320x449.webp 320w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 505px) 100vw, 505px"/></p>
<p>Thanks to their association with exploration and conquest, globes became a symbol of power and wealth among the European hoity-toity. Even rich families who didn’t have anything to do with sea exploration wanted a globe in their homes.</p>
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<p>The Netherlands became the epicenter of the globe manufacturing industry, beginning in the late 16th century. Workshops in Amsterdam run by a few artisan families were churning out matched pairs of terrestrial and celestial globes for the libraries of European nobility.</p>
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<div id="attachment_193497" style="width: 593px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-193497" class="wp-image-193497 " src="https://content.artofmanliness.com/uploads/2026/05/image3-1.jpg" alt="" width="583" height="653" srcset="https://content.artofmanliness.com/uploads/2026/05/image3-1.jpg 600w, https://content.artofmanliness.com/uploads/2026/05/image3-1-320x358.jpg 320w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 583px) 100vw, 583px"/></p>
<p id="caption-attachment-193497" class="wp-caption-text">A gentleman’s pocket globe</p>
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<p>In the 18th century, the English took the baton in globe making and made them more scientific. Instead of being seen as ornamental pieces that you would keep in your home to signal your wealth and status, the globe was seen as a mathematical instrument. Gentlemen of letters and science would often keep a “pocket globe” in their coat pockets that they could whip out when pondering geography.</p>
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<p>Industrialization and mass production in the 19th and 20th centuries allowed the globe to become a staple in middle-class homes and schools in America. Spinning the globe and stopping it with your finger to see where you’d live in the future became a rite of passage for bored children.</p>
<p>In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, globes experienced a decline in the West thanks to Google Maps. Why have a physical globe when you can see a high-resolution globe on your screen for free? Also, globes are bulky and expensive to ship, so a lot of cash-strapped schools gave up on buying new globes to save money. Globes moved from being a democratic tool of learning and curiosity back to being sophistication-signaling ornaments in well-to-do homes.</p>
<h3>Why Famous Men Posed with Globes</h3>
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<p>If you look at portraits of powerful men from the past four centuries, you’ll notice that there’s often a globe in the picture. European royalty during the Age of Empires would hold globes to symbolize their global dominion. Democratic leaders like Teddy Roosevelt posed with globes to project their influence on international affairs. Shipping magnates and corporate CEOs would pose with globes to symbolize the worldwide reach of their enterprises.</p>
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<p>This globe portraiture descends directly from a type of portraiture in which ancient and medieval royalty would be depicted holding an orb with a cross on top of it. This orb was called a <em>globus cruciger</em>. Monarchs held these during coronation ceremonies. It signified dominion over the temporal world. When painters started swapping the <em>globus cruciger</em> for an actual terrestrial globe sometime in the 16th century, the symbolism stayed the same. <em>I rule the world! </em>Such a power move.</p>
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<p>By the mid-20th century, the globe had taken on a slightly different meaning. It conveyed global strategizing. During World War II, the Office of Strategic Services commissioned a pair of enormous 50-inch globes for FDR and Churchill (often called “Churchill Globes”) so the two men could see the war as a single, planet-spanning theater. There are photos of Churchill bent over his globe, calipers in hand, measuring distances between continents. The globe gave him an astronaut’s perspective of World War decades before the first astronaut.</p>
<h3 id="h.hnqwuyvkbrsv">So What’s the Appeal of Globes to Men?</h3>
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<p>Alright. So globes have been a symbol of power and a tool for exploration and strategizing. These two ideas, I think, can explain the male urge to own a globe. Here are my two <em>speculative</em> theories as to how:</p>
<p><strong>Theory One: Testosterone.</strong> Some studies have shown that men, on average, score higher on tests of spatial navigation, mental rotation, and route-learning, and have a higher desire to explore unknown territories than women. And these differences are often attributed to the higher testosterone levels in men. These conclusions are nuanced, and there’s probably more going on than just testosterone that results in these differences, but testosterone does seem to play a role. Even when women receive testosterone supplementation, <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=https://doi.org/10.1016/j.yhbeh.2015.10.012">they often see a rise in their spatial scores</a> and their desire to explore new places.</p>
<p>So maybe the fact that men have more testosterone than women explains the male pull to globes, which fire the imagination for charting a course and journeying somewhere new.</p>
<p><strong>Theory Two: The King Archetype.</strong> In his book, <em><a href="https://amzn.to/4elckb1">King, Warrior, Magician, Lover</a></em><em>, </em>the Jungian analyst Robert Moore argued that the mature masculine psyche organizes itself around four archetypes. Of them, <a href="https://www.artofmanliness.com/character/behavior/the-four-archetypes-of-the-mature-masculine-the-king/">the King is the one concerned with order, stewardship, and the blessing of one’s realm.</a> The King doesn’t conquer for the sake of conquest. That’s the Tyrant, the King’s shadow. The mature King surveys his domain so he can tend it. He keeps a wide view so he can act with prudence and justice.</p>
<p>While I’m skeptical of Jungian archetypes (I may need to write an article about this one day), I do think that, when used in moderation, they can be helpful prompts for reflection. Perhaps a globe in a man’s office is a subtle invocation of that Jungian King archetype. It’s a moral reminder to a man to think of the whole, to establish and maintain order, and to use power with justice and mercy.</p>
<p><strong>Theory Three: Globes Just Look Cool. </strong>Maybe it’s the T, or maybe it’s the King archetype existing in our Jungian collective consciousness that can explain the male urge to own a globe. Even if those theories don’t explain the urge, I think my final one can: globes just look cool. You get to see the Earth in its totality — as the Blue Marble in space that it is — right in your own home. You can find ones that are a bit more artistic. They’re in sepia tones. They make you feel like you’re Indiana Jones flying a plane with a red line tracing your path as you make your way to archeological adventures around the world. And that feels cool.</p>
<p>So my 1980s globe sits here in my office. I’m looking at it right now. Seems like it has always been there. Every so often, I go and trace my fingers across its bumpy face and look for old Cold War-era countries that no longer exist. I’ll even give it a spin and let my finger stop it on a random spot. Usually, it’s the Pacific Ocean. I hope that doesn’t mean I’m going to end up a castaway <a href="https://www.artofmanliness.com/character/manly-lessons/4-lessons-in-manliness-from-louis-zamperini/">like Louis Zamperini.</a></p>
<p>Why do I love this thing? Maybe it’s the testosterone. Maybe it’s the King archetype. Maybe I just want to feel like Indiana Jones for thirty seconds between emails. Whatever it is, I’m glad I acted on the male urge to own a globe.</p>
<p>Go wander over to eBay and search for “globe.” You’ll find one that will satisfy your own urge.</p>
<p><em>Impetus virilis globum possidendi.</em></p>
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<br /><a href="https://www.artofmanliness.com/character/knowledge-of-men/the-male-urge-to-own-a-globe/">Source link </a></p>
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The Male Urge to Own a Globe
