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I wouldn't say they're bad per se, rather that they're a stabilizing agent. If there were only strong men, there would be no society at all, as there wouldn't be enough of the type who mindlessly upholds status quo. Too many however, and no necessary advancement and adaptation can occur.
They're the stabilizing rods of the great nuclear reaction we call society. Too few and it explodes, too many and you choke out the necessary chain reactions.
Why can't strong men uphold the status quo? See pic related. Notwithstanding spelling errors or stereotypes, surely it paints a picture of a tough, patriotic, disciplined, brave man (a strong man). In contrast we have a lazy, timid, pacifist (a weak man). Now these are just archetypes, yet there are surely people who more or less match them. I'm willing to bet the Romans who made Rome great were more like the former, Caesar, Marius and so on, leading from the front, risking all for glory and victory. The Romans who made Rome weak were probably more like the latter - the Empire somehow stopped being able to field huge armies, they had to pay for foreigners to fight for them.
There could well be a status quo that revolves around strength, a status quo that rewards bravery and great deeds. Strong men would fit fine in that.
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Well strong men 'do' uphold the status quo. At least for a given time. Will Durant had a useful heuristic of historical thinking, when he said that, "A nation is born Stoic and dies Epicurean." Good conditions have an inherent quality sewn into the environment that allows idiots and weak men to proliferate, at times it seems, with no end in sight. Until eventually the load becomes too heavy, the pendulum swings back and a historical reversion to the mean takes place. And that's usually how it's been, throughout history.
Civilizations tend not to make course corrections. When they're caught in a negative feedback loop/death spiral, history hasn't suggested that they find themselves a way out of it. They die, and they die hard. Going against the weight of that is no task for mere mortals. Which is the 'why' I'd suggest to you, as to why they can't uphold the status quo indefinitely. One thing Jared Diamond suggested in his historical/geographic determinist view of history that I think is highly relevant, was the question he raised about whether or not societies can change their values. If you want a relevant example where that question becomes important, just look at declining fertility rates all across the world.
I just came across this thread today on Reddit. Which is a great exemplar of this problem. The article isn't as relevant as the comment section, if you can notice how many people are politically blocked (evidenced by Reddit's overwhelming leftist userbase) from noticing the elephant in the corner. If you keep scrolling, a few people noticed it, about midway to the bottom of the thread, and some of them got jumped on for their 'right'-leaning suggestions of an explanation; and why the typical economic explanations are bunk. The reflexive tendency to jump on and attack and dismiss the 'real' source of the problem, are why civilizations broadly speaking, don't recover. And it's why strong men can't uphold them or reverse direction. Because the people overwhelmingly are not allowed to think about the problem, in a way that will allow a correction. And the longer the problem goes on, the worse it gets. And the worse it gets, the more extreme the solutions become. And the more extreme the solutions become, the more unacceptable they are to the population. And then you die.
Good post, agree. I hope people will realize we've been doing things wrong when it becomes more obvious, as economies fail and wars are lost. Like they said about the Soviet Union, 'it was forever, until it was no more'. If not, death is also an automatic stabilizer, the future will belong to those who do things correctly.
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