E143 - Modern Men Are Soft, Tired & Lost (Here's How To Become Strong Again)

37:14And that's our main strategy for dealing with or coping with the things that we think make us weak. It doesn't make us stronger. It makes us more fragile. And so we end up getting into relationships or starting a business or trying to achieve some goal. And the problem is that we become our own worst enemy because it's the unprocessed emotions and pain inside of us that starts to get in the way, right? Jung said, until you make the unconscious conscious, it'll direct your life and you'll call it fate. Meaning until you start to deal with the hidden shit inside of you, it's going to direct some of your actions and you'll just say, oh, that's just the way it is.

37:57That's just fate. But for a lot of guys, how they experience that is like, why do I keep doing this stupid shit? Why do I keep going back to porn? Why do I keep going back to weed? How come I can't stop vaping? How come I, you know, I say I'm going to get up at six and I fucking hit the alarm 12 times in a row. That's because you're sabotaging and your sabotage behavior isn't because you want to be out of control. Your sabotage behavior is because you want to be in a familiar position and that familiar position is suffering, pain, sadness, grief, self-hatred, self-loathing. That's the familiarity.

38:33And so we have to be able to deal with some of the stuff underneath the surface that's keeping us stuck, whether that's sexually, relationally, financially, in our health and fitness. That's really the realm that I operate in. It's like a, I don't know, like a psychological surgeon, you know, getting underneath the surface of what's happening inside of you that's causing you to sabotage the things that you're wanting to build in your life. And I think that's what's happening for a lot of guys is that they have been taught, I should just ignore what I'm feeling. I should just ignore my pain. And I did that.

39:13And it led me to all kinds of sabotaging and catastrophe, porn, weed, riding a motorcycle at 310 kilometers an hour down the highway in Alberta. I mean, just stupid stuff, you know, like really, really stupid stuff. and it caused me to blow up my life. I cratered my life. I hit rock bottom. And I think for a lot of guys, they end up bottoming out at some point in their life because they haven't dealt with the shit that's inside of them. And this is, I kid you not, this might be one of the closest guarantees to a psychological truth that I can give, which is that if we as men don't deal with the pain that's inside of us, it will crater our life in some way so that we deal with it, period.

40:08It might happen through a divorce. It might happen through a health issue, a financial issue. It will come calling, period. You can't escape it. And the truth throughout history, when you read all the great myths and all the great stories of all the great men. It is a story of reckoning with your own pain, with your own insecurities or your own inferiorities. Otherwise they direct your life. Otherwise they cause havoc in your life. But in our current culture and society, a lot of men are convinced like I should just cut myself off from that. And it leads to shit storms in their lives, you know?

40:50And so anyway, so I'll just, I'll, I'll put that there because I think that's helpful for a lot of the guys listening that, you know, maybe feel stuck in cycles or sabotage habits in whatever areas of their life. Yeah. So, so if you are somebody and you're, you're dealing with something and you feel like whether it's a struggle or something you need to get off your chest, which would be the best course of action? I guess we've kind of figured out that holding it in and just getting on with your life maybe isn't the best course of action, unless it's maybe something minor, I don't know, that's generally not a good idea.

41:28Then maybe you have some other options whereby you would speak to your friends. I mean, this is hopefully assuming that you do have friends and that they are, you know, reasonably intelligent. Sometimes I've found that even just unloading, even if I wasn't necessarily looking for an answer, I just needed to unload. And then, you know, your mates are there, they've listened to you, maybe they give you some good advice but at least they've listened and then you feel a little bit better because you've got out your system but hopefully you have good friends who can give you some good advice but then when would you take it a step further and actually look to work with maybe a professional like when is when do you cross that line i'd say i mean one i think a lot of guys know and the the threshold is usually i don't want to deal with this.

42:23That's usually the threshold for a lot of guys. There's actual fear. It's like, I don't want to deal with this pain. I'm afraid of opening up the hatch, the vault door to the grief that I know is there. And there's a lot of fear around it. And that's usually the indicator that you do need somebody to support you through that process who can help you traverse that territory. The way I like to think of it is like, did you ever play Doom growing up? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So like in Doom, the map doesn't reveal itself until you go into those new rooms, right? And so you start off in like one room, you can't see the rest of the map.

43:07And then as you go into these other rooms, the map starts to reveal itself. And sometimes with therapy and psychology, We actually need somebody else to sort of be a guide for us to explore some of that other territory so that we know that we can get back. And a lot of the times for men, they're afraid if I go into this intensity, whether it's the intensity of my grief or my pain or my anger or my rage towards whatever it is, I'm worried that I'm not going to make it back, that it's going to consume me. And so that's what really good, whatever psychological therapeutic process should be is that you have somebody who is secure enough and able to sort of deal with whatever it is that you have to deal with.

43:57Like all the men that I ever work with, guys that come into our community or come work with me one-on-one, the first thing I say to them is one simple statement. It's nothing you have to deal with is going to be too much for me to handle. And for a lot of men, they've never experienced that and they've never heard that because for a lot of guys, they feel like they're walking around with a ticking time bomb or a grenade inside of them that they don't know how to deal with. and they're convinced nobody else knows how to deal with. And so they're kind of trapped in this Chinese finger trap of if I ask anybody to deal with this, nobody's gonna be able to help me, but I'm stuck with it and I don't know how to deal with it.

44:42And so that's usually the sign, that's the threshold. If you're afraid of it, it's probably the place that you need to go. And again, this is sort of a basic psychological truth, which is that the confrontation with hardship is what helps you to mature psychologically and emotionally. So if you feel stunted in some way, or you feel like you've hit a ceiling, or you feel like I keep going through the same pattern, having the same argument with my girlfriend or my wife, or sabotaging in the exact same ways, and I don't really know why, and I can't seem to get out of it, that's a good indicator that you probably need an external guide or support to help push you through that ceiling.

45:25or that process that's playing out. Yeah, that definitely makes sense. One thing which I've been quite curious about is if you are having this guide that is going to guide you on a specific topic, does it matter the gender of your guide? Because if we, for example, take myself, I wanted to have therapy about relationships. I could have a male guide and a female guide. And if we assume they're both equally qualified, I would imagine that the advice and guidance that I get given would be slightly different. Yeah. Am I right or am I wrong? Well, people in the therapeutic, I call it the therapeutic industrial complex, but people in the therapeutic industry, they're really trained in a more feminized way of doing therapy.

46:20And so a lot of the times if you go and work with a therapist or clinician, sometimes they might have a little bit more of a, you know, how are you feeling about that? And, you know, when you talk about that, that kind of approach, and sometimes that's necessary. But depending on what you're dealing with, you can gain from working with a woman and you can gain from working with a man. And, you know, like I, can I speak to yours personally? Is that okay? yeah i think i like i think that you would probably benefit from working with a guy and specifically because when your mom passed part of what you needed was for dad to be able to hear your grief and your sadness and so for men that have gone through those types of experiences or for guys that just didn't have a dad around or needed dad's advice or there's a lot of anger and frustration, maybe dad was abusive or he was emotionally disconnected or whatever it is, it can be incredibly formative and healing to go work with a man who can help you to wrestle with some of those pieces and to help you sort of traverse that.

47:34There's certainly cases where you can go and work with a woman and you're going to get a lot out of it. But I think for the majority of men, going to work with a man is very, very beneficial because for a lot of guys, again, in our society, there's a lot of men and young men, especially who have lacked real male role models with real life experience and real wisdom. And so to go and sit with somebody, like I've had three mentors in my life and they were all in their seventies. And I can't tell you how formative that's been for me. I mean, it's been absolutely monumental. I feel very, very fortunate to have three men that were in their seventies that were very, very wise, very skilled, very capable, had lived lives.

48:19They weren't just academics that had read books their entire lives. They had really lived lives. And that changed me at my core. It changed me as a man. And I was able to see pathways of who I could become in my future as a father, as a business leader, et cetera. And so I think that I will always advocate for men to go and work with other guys if and when they have the chance. I would agree. This episode is brought to you by Whoop. The all new Whoop is here. The only wearable that turns your health and fitness data into personalized guidance. Now 7 % smaller with 14 days of battery life. I've been wearing Whoop since 2021 and I've been wearing it every single day.

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49:45So you can join now at joinwhoop.com forward slash first things thirst to get your first month for free. Let's get back to the episode. I guess another option, which I didn't mention previously, and that is obviously opening up and talking to your spouse or your partner and this is this has always been a bit of a a tricky one because i think we've all heard the term from women of them saying that men should open up more or like they may want their partner to open up more but there is um there's a way to do it and there's a kind of a threshold you don't want to go too far because then you almost run the risk of um you know almost being repulsed by it or feeling the ick and i mean even i i've experienced it before where i've i've gone too far and i've overshared and it's i think it's i don't know if it's necessarily put them off it may have done but they've used it against me in some way um and that wasn't that wasn't cool like you know when you when you when you open up and you're vulnerable and you're sharing something and then they'll find a way to, you know, use it against you later on.

50:55Yeah. Yeah. Um, but I, I mean, I have to quote you, I think you said this on Chris Williamson, you said it so well, and I want to say it again, because I think it's so good. My audience needs to hear it. You said the reality, the reality is women don't necessarily want you to be vulnerable emotionally. Women want to know that, you know, what's happening inside of you, that you can communicate what's happening inside of you and that you have resources around you to explore them. Yeah, that's it. Yeah. Yeah. I wrote in my book, Men's Work, I wrote a chapter called The Myth of Male Vulnerability.

51:31And I wrote that because I saw how much content there is out there, mostly from women telling men, the answer and the solution to all your problems is just be more vulnerable. And that's a very female approach to dealing with your issues is just open up and talk about it more and talk about how you're feeling. And for a lot of men that can be helpful in the right environments, in the right context, there is such a thing as sharing too much too soon. And there is such a thing as sharing, sharing with the wrong person, right? Like you might share with one of your mates or one of your buddies. And he's like, why the fuck are you talking to me about this shit, like stop being such a pussy and just get on with it.

52:13You know, and you're talking about something that's, you know, pretty intense, whether it's the, you know, the breakup or whatever it is. So, and then in a relationship with, with a woman, again, a lot of guys are inundated with this narrative, just open up to her, just tell her how you're feeling. And so they start to emotionally dump when they get into a relationship and they, they inadvertently turn the woman that they're with into a kind of emotional processing center. So, and for a woman that feels, you know, scary, overwhelming, they don't want to do that. It puts them in a position of feeling like your mother, because you're, you're not saying, here's how, here's what's going on for me.

52:55You know, I got canned from my job and I'm frustrated and I'm like pretty worried and, but I'm going to figure it out. And, you know, I'm going to talk to John about it and here's what I'm doing. You're saying, I need you to help me be okay. I need you to figure out what I'm feeling. And this is what happens a lot. You'll see this term online called emotional labor, right? That for a lot of women, they don't want to do the emotional labor for men. And you can have a conversation about whether or not that's good or bad or right or wrong or whatever. But what they're really saying is, I want you to open up.

53:33I want to know that you know what's happening inside of you, but I don't want to be the one responsible for dealing with your emotions and processing your emotions and helping you understand why you feel that way. And that's what happens in a lot of relationships because a man's, you know, it's just like anything else. He has no practice talking about how he feels. And then he gets in a relationship with the woman that he really likes, feels safe with, trusts her. All of a sudden he starts to open up a whole bunch, but because he's not practiced in understanding what's happening inside of him, he ends up sort of enlisting her in helping him to understand why he feels that way.

54:13And so she kind of becomes a therapist to him. She's helping him sort out, well, this is why you feel that way. And have you tried saying this? And have you tried talking about it this way? And she's giving him frames and whatnot. And so that depolarizes the relationship because, again, she feels more like I'm your mom helping a boy figure out what is going on inside of him or I'm a therapist helping you to deal with your emotional problems. So, you know, women still value strength. And part of strength within a man is being able to have emotional fortitude. And I call it emotional sovereignty.

54:51It's what I wrote about is having emotional sovereignty. and that's not suppression that's a deep awareness and understanding of here's what i'm feeling inside of me here's how i'm relating to this conflict you know like when an argument happens being able to understand what you're angry about and why you're getting defensive and why you're getting reactive or why you're shutting down or pulling away and being able to communicate that is incredibly important because then you have sovereignty over your own emotions and she's not having to deal with it. But you're able to say basic things like, hey, I didn't like that.

55:29I didn't like when you said that. That didn't feel good for me when you did X, Y, and Z. And you can start to set boundaries from that place. And for a woman, that creates a huge amount of safety. And as men, I think we often under index and underestimate how much women are desiring safety, wanting safety, and we often miss out on what we do that provides safety or collapses it. and that's just a big one right like if you're getting a woman to sort of process your emotions um and offloading them all onto her then that's going to collapse the polarity and it's going to cause her to feel like oh maybe i'm not emotionally safe here so anyway i'll pause there because i said a bunch of stuff yeah no that's good it it made a lot more sense because i i mean i i would have usually been of the approach of, I'm just not going to open up, just may I give them a little bit, but I'd be like, let's not push any further.

56:33But I think, as you said, it's a lot clearer to me now that if I can articulate what I'm feeling well enough so that they understand and they're aware that I know what's going on. And then I can just say, look, this is what I'm going to do to kind of fix it like it's i'm not looking to you to try and solve my problems these are the issues it's a little bit of a rough patch but i've got the solution for it so kind of yeah well and you can ask for things you can say here's what i could really use from you here's here's the support that i could use you know i'd love for you to um just check in on me you know the next couple days and see how I'm doing.

57:16That's okay. Nothing wrong with that. Right. Or you can say, that would be a green flag in a relationship if they actually are there saying, Hey, is there anything I can do to help? Yeah. I mean, obviously a red flag would probably be them mocking you or doing something like that, which is obviously, I mean, for me, if I was to experience something like that, then I'd be like, well, this person probably is not for me. yeah yeah i mean there's there's a couple there's a couple flags right like if she can't first off if she doesn't like men and she doesn't see value in men which is very common in a lot of women especially in western culture today where there's a devaluation of men and masculinity don't go down that path right there's there's something that i've called the patriarchy virus which is just like men are the fundamental problem in existence today and we just need to fix men and then everything will be better.

58:11And we need to collapse the patriarchy and then everything will be better. And if you're with a woman that doesn't see value in men or thinks that men collectively are the problem with society, period, you are always going to be the problem in the relationship with that woman because she thinks that men are the problem and women are not and that there's no shared accountability. That it's just men that are the issue. So that's a red flag first off. And then secondly, as you're saying, if you share and a woman's making fun of you or, you know, she is, she's emotionally stunted, which also happens.

58:48It's not like women are emotionally, these all women are emotionally superior beings that are completely capable. Like some of them have their own shit and they're not good emotionally either. And so she starts mocking you or making fun of you, or she can't, you know, be with you and hear that you're having a hard time, that's probably a red flag as well. And I would, I'd be very cautious because some women do weaponize emotions. And so you do have to kind of test the waters to ensure like, is this a good dynamic for me to be able to talk about some of the stuff that's going on in my life? And, and lastly, I'd say just give direction.

59:26You know, a lot of the times men are often afraid to give direction, but relational leadership is really part of it is just giving direction. Here's what's happening for me. Here's the challenges that I'm facing. Here's how I feel about it. I'm aware that I feel what I feel about it. And here's what I could really use from you. I would really love for you to just like be a little extra kind to me. Like just if you're okay with just like doing a little, a nice thing here and there, you know, tomorrow and the day after that would really help me out or just check in with me. That would really help me out.

59:58But otherwise i've got it you know my buddies are helping me i've got support here's what i'm going to do or it's okay to say i don't really know what i'm going to do yet but i'll let you know when i do and that way she's not like okay how do i fix this for him and how do i make him feel better and that type of stuff yeah i did uh i think it's like a year ago or two years ago the the love language test because it's someone kind of like recommended that i should do it So I did it because I was quite curious. And then mine was quite comfortably acts of service. So if a woman is doing something to help me out in some way, that means a lot to me.

1:00:43but it was quite interesting because when i would reciprocate that and do the same thing for them it's not felt the same because their love language is completely different so i'm doing something as an act of love which i feel as though would be a loving thing to do but for them they it doesn't really get registered because they have a completely different love language so it's a bit topic but when you know i if i'm going to open up with someone and they're there to kind of help me out with whatever it is that i'm dealing with at that point in time like that means a lot to me and i'm like okay this the skills are keeper nice do you find that you tend to attract women that are like a little bit more anxious or needy Or shut down?

1:01:37I've attracted all types. Okay. You're like, there's no, I got them all. They've all made their way through. No, I've definitely become a much better judge of character now at my age and my 30s. Just from the experiences I've had. And you know, like one relationship could be so different from another. um things which you do in one relationship um is not enough in another relationship it's really interesting and even recently i had probably one of the most confusing relationships and i think i understand why because it was so like it was only it was short but sweet and very intense it was six months very passionate like the passion intimacy side of things was like probably as good as it could have got but in terms of compatibility of being partners it was just never going to work out just two almost completely different people and i had a very difficult time trying to figure that one out and one thing which had we were kind of very different levels of emotional maturity not that i'm saying that i am the most emotionally mature person but i have a lot of control over my emotions.

1:02:56And I would say I'm fairly consistent. It's not like one day I'm super up and then the other day I'm super down. It's like, we're pretty steady. Her on the other hand, it was like a frigging rollercoaster of ups and downs. And that was something which I had to deal and tolerate with. So when things were good, she was super happy. Of course I was super happy, but when she was down, like that was really bringing me down. And I think she was quite impulsive whereby she if she was feeling something she would act upon it immediately and um that on numerous occasions didn't end very well so um yeah i don't know how we got here but i feel like it's a session of unloading so i just keep opening the door for you like i just keep opening the door for you this is like little little breadcrumbs here and there i mean but You're asking me which type of girls I attract.

1:03:52So yeah, a mix. I mean, what an allure, right? I mean, we say that opposites attract. And so sometimes we go in the far direction, right? If you're the calm, stable, sort of unmovable archetype, then we can attract or be attracted to that sort of oppositional force. And a little bit of that or a medium amount of that is great but then a ton of that can create a lot of instability but it can also this is this is kind of the messed up thing is that it it also has that effect of of usually having a really high level of sexual polarity right like the the people that are energetically or emotionally uh so different than us are usually the ones that there's like a huge charge with sexually but then it's very hard to make it work relationally and so there there has to be that balance of like okay there's some common ground between us enough to create the stability and then there's some differentiation that creates this polarity and it's it's hard sometimes to find that balance yeah for sure but i think i would say generally i'm more on the masculine side so i tend to be more compatible and more attracted to more of a feminine woman if that makes sense totally i mean i'm i'm not against them obviously being career driven and you know doing what they need to do but i think a little bit too much of that um i don't know if i'd say is off-putting but yeah i think there seems to be this rise of more and more masculine women with masculine traits and i'm not necessarily into that personally yeah yeah there's a there's like the i don't know if you saw like the biggest flex for a man is is having the hyper masculine woman falling asleep on the couch with him you know like curled up and and whatnot and i i get it i think that women a lot of women have been sort of incentivized to be to adopt these more masculine traits to to try and compete um i think i said this on chris's show that like women have become very adept at competing within male spaces but we as men haven't really adapted quite as quickly to being able to compete with women like we're very good at competing with other men we know the rules of the game when it's about hierarchy and it's about competition from a place of capability.

1:06:32That's how men compete, right? It's like, can I be better than you? Can I lift more? Can I be faster? Can I be smarter? Can I create a structure that's more efficient than yours? Can I be more efficient? That's how we compete. And it's generally from that place. And if it's not from that place, then it's just about pure force and domination. And so the rules of the game are pretty clear for us as men, but women do not compete in the same way as men. They actually take an antithetical or oppositional approach. They don't compete through hierarchies. They actually try and collapse any type of hierarchy.

1:07:06They try and collapse any type of

1:07:12capability differentiation. And so you'll see in a lot of corporate environments, women will pretend a lot of the times that they don't really care about who's more capable or not. and you'll even see this in job interviews right that it's not about hiring the most capable and competent person it's not it's not about meritocracy it's not about how good you are and i think that throws men for a loop because for a lot of us we've been taught if you just get really proficient and really fucking good at what you do then you'll get ahead and you should win but the marketplace has changed and so men are having to learn the the sort of social and emotional game that women will oftentimes play.

1:07:55And it becomes more about sometimes politics and it becomes about, you know, who's, who's getting ahead based on the network or their friendships or the relatability, the ability to sometimes fly under the radar and, you know, still be very good at your job. So there's a whole bunch of different markers that women will often deploy that I think for a lot of guys it can feel very frustrating in the workplace because it's like that's not how i have been taught to sort of compete and to get ahead and so they feel under equipped and then they get into a workplace and they don't get the promotion they don't get advanced um sometimes simply because you know of you know what it used to be like dei hiring and and uh some of the structures that were other times it's like you're not getting advanced because you don't know how to do the sort of social politics that have been baked into the system and i think that's really frustrating for a lot of guys so i don't know if you've seen that or like seen that with some of the men that that come into your ecosystem yeah well i it's one thing which i have noticed and i think this is just generally on social media i don't think social media is doing the whole dating seen any favors at all.

1:09:14And I think especially with women, I've noticed, this is not necessarily all women, but I've noticed that there's been increasingly more women who just seem to want everything. Like if you ask a woman what they want, it's like they want the holiday, they want the family, but then they also want to be going to parties and they want to be on the yacht and they also want to be an entrepreneur and they also want to be a model at the same time. and I feel like this is becoming increasingly difficult for men to try and satisfy these women who seemingly want it all and I think this has probably happened because of social media and a lot of women posting a lifestyle which whether it's a true lifestyle or not you know a lot of women seem to have this appearance of having everything yeah I mean modern culture certainly has pushed that.

1:10:12I think that there's, this is probably going to get me into trouble in some ways, but I think that there's some parts of feminism as well that has sort of sold women falsehoods. There's certain parts of female culture in today's world that says you're lovable at any size. So it's like, well, you should be, it's okay for you to be 300 pounds. You should still be lovable by any man. It's like, well, no, a lot of guys are not going to find that attractive and they're just not going to want to date you. So that's just not true. But there's a push that a lot of women, a lot of women inhabit this narrative and this story that I should be lovable no matter what.

1:10:57I should be lovable no matter how I behave. I should be lovable no matter what I want. I should be lovable no matter what my expectations are. And I should be lovable no matter what it is that I want or how I look. And that's just not objective reality, right? That's just not true. And we know that it's not true. But generally speaking, what's happened is that certain parts of feminism have pushed women really deep into over-indexing and over-prioritizing subjective experience. So however you feel. And it doesn't have to correlate with objective reality or objective truth. And so we as men are oftentimes the sort of holders of here's what's objectively true, here's objective reality, here's what we can see and measure, and here's what we know.

1:11:50And a lot of the times, certain parts of modern feminism have pushed women into this camp of don't worry about what objective reality is. Don't worry about what will actually get you a man. Don't worry about what men want. Just focus solely on how you feel and what it is that you think you deserve. And whatever you think you deserve is true because that's how you feel. And that puts a lot of women into a kind of fantasy-based illusion. And this is why so many of them get really disenfranchised. Now, I get sent these reels all the time. I watched one yesterday of this woman being like, I mean, she's so anti-man.

1:12:31I can't stand men. Men have nothing to offer me. You know, I'd rather die alone with cats. You know, I can't even stand the idea of going on a date with a man. If you told me that he had a bad day, I just automatically assume like, well, what did you do to cause that? It's your fault. I mean, it's, this is, but it's those types of narratives that push women into this belief system that is anti-family, anti-natal, and really, really hyper-individualistic. And this has shown up, I don't know if you saw this, after the election, after the 2024 election, they did polling. And they polled Kamala Harris voters and they polled Trump voters, both men and women.

1:13:17And they were polling them based on their values. They wanted to see what do these people value. And for male Trump voters, their number one value was having a family. It was having kids and starting a family. And for Kamala Harris female voters, that was third last out of 20. So the values of men and women have fundamentally changed. And I think part of the problem is that, you know, political campaigns and advertising and yada, yada, yada have pushed men and women so far apart. And the problem with it, and I know I'm kind of getting off into like a, you tell me if this is interesting or not for your audience.

1:13:58This is what I wanted to cover this actually. I think what's problematic is that when you look at the modern narrative, a lot of it is men are getting more radicalized. Men are moving to the right. When you look at the data, that's not true at all. I mean, men are marginally moving more conservative and more to the right, but women are exponentially becoming more left-leaning. And so women are exponentially becoming more radicalized than men. The data shows us. We can see it unequivocally, but that's not what the narrative says. And so I think men and women are sort of being driven apart on party lines.

1:14:39They're being driven apart on political lines. And this, we kind of always go through shifts in culture and society where people are divided for political reasons, right? Initially it was race. Um, and, and, you know, what you believed about race would determine who you voted for. Then it was religion. Um, and what you believed about religion would determine who you voted for. And now it's, uh, now it's gender, right? What you believe about gender or how you feel about, about women versus men is going to determine who you vote for, you know, and you probably see these videos online, guys, guys listening to this probably seen this where, you know, there's a woman filming herself having a date with a guy for the first time, asking him, did you vote for Trump?

1:15:25Who did you vote for? And, you know, if he doesn't give the right answer, she's done, she's out. And so we've, we've collapsed being able to disagree between men and women and hold that disagreement. And I think that's unfortunate and tragic in a lot of ways. But it's interesting because men and women, when they are radicalized, look very different. Men that are radicalized are violent. They are dangerous. They're going to destroy things. They're going to murder. They're going to harm physically. And women that become radicalized don't resort to physical violence. they use social violence and social force.

1:16:08So they will band together to cancel you. They'll delete you off the internet. They will dox you. They will assassinate your reputation and your character. And they'll ensure that they sort of sequester you away from the society and from the culture. And so radicalization between men and women just looks different. And one has become socially normalized, which is women's radicalization. And the other one is being, you know, positioned as the most dangerous thing in the world. And yet we seem to be creating and encouraging a culture that is creating more radicalized men and women, but disproportionately more radicalized women.

1:16:53And again, we can just see that in the data. So I'll hand that bag of goods over to you and see what direction you want to take that in what i find quite confusing is with some of these women who are making the content where they're hating on men they still seem to be posting the type of things which is what would attract men in the first place they're still you know taking huge pride in their appearance and putting the makeup on making themselves look good but then when it comes down to it they don't want a partner and they don't want a family and don't want kids but then they're still presenting themselves in such a way to attract male attention but at the same time they don't want it that's what confuses me it's like what what do you want here well some but some of them do that's the that's the thing is like the the old saying you know listen to what a woman says, but really pay attention to what she does holds true, right?

1:17:56It's like, look at, what's that chick's name from the podcast, Call Her Daddy? I can't remember what her name is, Alex something. I can't remember what her name is, but she's a perfect example, right? She built a career, she built a podcast telling women to be as salacious, as sexual as humanly possible, you know, men are whatever, you know, however she talked about them, don't settle down, never get married, never have kids. It's not worth your time. It's a huge hassle. I mean, she, she built her whole sort of persona and identity off of these, these very modern, um, sort of extreme feminist notions and stories.

1:18:37And she just announced that she's pregnant, right? She's married now she's pregnant. And a whole bunch of her audience is like, wait, what the fuck? Like you've been talking for 10 years about like this sort of anti-established meant anti-men, not liking men, don't get married, you know, whatever, like hoe it out for as long as possible, just have fun. And, and here she is, you know, married to some guy and, and she has a kid on the way. And so I think that the modern narrative, it's, it's, I don't want to say this. i think a lot of modern narratives are they're there to push people into certain decisions into certain ideological camps so that people in power can get a vote and those narratives serve certain parties and and i think that unfortunately what's happened in the western and culture is that the gender war has become the front line of the battle for political power.

1:19:46I mean, it's the greatest way to manipulate men and women in culture and society is just to segregate them and to pit them against one another and to have one issue voter bases, right? Where it's just like, I mean, you say the word abortion and automatically people are in two camps. And so that's how you divide people. That's how you separate them. Um, I think it's unfortunate for the average person because men and women are largely unhappy because of this gender war. And so I think that people need to push against it. Um, and I think, I think that needs to happen from a lot of women's side. I think a lot of women need to start to push against some of the narratives.

1:20:26And I think it's starting to happen. You know, they're starting to push against some of these very, um, anti-natal anti-family narratives that have become so prominent that anti-men like misandry, which is just the hate for men is so commonplace that it's laughable, you know, but misogyny is there's a war against misogyny and, and misogyny becomes the validation or the excuse for women to hate men. So they can point to men who maybe are disingenuous to women or use women or are abusive to women or violent against women. And then that becomes the sort of white label to say, it's okay for me to hate men.

1:21:15And that's becoming something that's cheered within the culture. You have a lot of women that's like, The real flex is that the real men are the men that love women who hate men. The real men are the ones that marry women who hate men. It's like, what the hell? Imagine just inversing that and saying to women, the real women are the women who marry men who hate women. We would just never in a million fucking years advocate for that type of idiocy. but the pendulum's just swung, right? The pendulum swung. And so it'll start to correct over the next couple of years. I think you'll see, you know, by 2030, 2034, somewhere in there that it'll start to correct because if it doesn't, you're just going to see a tremendous amount of women that are single and unhappy.

1:22:08And we see that now, right? It's like by 2030, 45 % of women under the age of 40 are estimated to be single and childless. I mean, that is a lot. And a lot of them are going to be single and childless against their choice. It's not what they want. But the problem is that these narratives that they're inhabiting and the stories that they're believing about men become such a bias that when they start to date men, they're dating men from this perspective of, you're an emotional dud. You don't know anything. I'm superior to you. you're the problem in this relationship and it excludes female accountability from the dating problems that we're seeing in modern culture and puts the onus all on men as being the fundamental problem and issue so I think you'll start to see that collapse because it doesn't work No, even for me I've noticed it was very concerning just the amount of posts that were pitting men and women against each other and even from men just men and women but more so men just promoting the idea of cheating and just seeing the amount of shares and comments and likes i was like oh my god we are the society is absolutely fucked like it's not going in the right direction but then today for the first time in a long time i saw a very it was a very positive pro relationship pro men pro woman working together to help each other out.

1:23:41And I was like, yes, like finally, but this is, there should be more of this content. Yeah. More positive, constructive posts, reels, things like that, which is, you know, encouraging men and women to work together. Cause ultimately the end of the day, that's, that's what we need. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I'm married. I love my wife. She's amazing. You know, I think that one of the things that every man should still aspire to is being able to raise a family, is being able to produce the future generations of the human species. I mean, the propagation of our species has always been, you know, a kind of triumphant endeavor for men because it's hard.

1:24:30You know, it's not easy to raise kids. It's not easy to have a family. It's not easy to make the money to do that. And I think I'll just say one more thing about that other piece, which is, you know, the whole anti-natal movement, anti-having kids, anti-family movement that's happening. It's really funny because I see some of these women that are like cheering the end of their lineage, like actually cheering and celebrating the declining birth rates. And, you know, we're doing it, popping champagne. We're doing it, ladies, keep going. And I think it's sad to me. It really is sad. I have a daughter as well.

1:25:11She's only 21 months right now. But it's sad to me to see women so ideologically captured by this notion that is so nullistic in nature, that's so bleak in nature, that they're celebrating the end of their own bloodline. And the reason why we've had kids is, of course, to propagate our species. But part of the other reason is to also continue to propagate your personal ideals, your personal belief structures. And so when you're celebrating the end of your lineage, you're simultaneously also celebrating this slow decline and disintegration of your belief structures, which will not survive because your side of the aisle just isn't having kids.

1:25:58so if you have a belief structure that says having kids is bad having a family is bad and you don't do that and everybody in your circle is doing that it's a form of darwinism that is going to move your ideology towards extinction but that seems to be sort of baked into some of those ideologies so i know that's a little bit more politically uh esoteric so hopefully that's okay to get into but yeah how is how are people generally receiving your content because i always find this quite interesting like even with for example chris williamson good friends with him being friends with him since university and the guy is he's just literally wanting to help people he's just trying to help people navigate through this modern world that's what it's called modern wisdom and he's not particularly uh overly opinionated or one-sided he's quite open yet still i guess this just comes with having a platform and more people watching his stuff he'll get heat for certain things even for having particular people on the podcast as a guest you get criticized just for choosing to speak to that person doesn't mean you necessarily agree with but because you've decided to have that person on the show yeah you're gonna get criticized for that how like with what you i imagine you probably get more heat on twitter because or not twitter x because that's just generally the environment it's very you know very opinionated get very heated the battleground how is it how is it received uh i mean good yeah i mean i've always caught heat you know the name of my company is man talks and so i've always caught a little bit of heat and i think it's interesting because a lot of times women want me they they like what i'm doing because i am supporting men in being better men that's sort of at the core of what i do is just helping men to be their best versions of their best selves through the use of psychological tools and frameworks and understanding.

1:28:09And so they like that. But it's when I say or talk about something that goes against the sort of modern, hyper, hyper leftist narrative that that's when there's just like an onslaught. And it's funny and ironic because it's the hyper inclusive people that are the most fragile to opposing views and opinions. And so I don't worry about that. I think largely what I talk about, it really helps men. And that's all I give a shit about. So at the end of the day, you know, it's like the, I think it's from the Simpsons, like, or no, it's from Rick and Morty. It's from Rick and Morty. I think it's Rick and he's like, your boos mean nothing to me because I've seen what you cheer for.

1:29:03And so that's kind of the approach that I take is like when people, when people are really upset with me and they're leaving comments and whatnot, I'll read through it. And I take valid feedback from, from people. If there's valid feedback, I'll, I'll take that for sure. But a lot of the times it's just nonsense And it's just ideologically captured people that are parroting and regurgitating some perspective that I know is objectively harmful. So all I really focus in on and worry about is, is what I'm doing helping men to live better lives? And that's my compass. That's my North Star. And if that means that some people dislike me or dislike what I'm doing or what I'm saying, that's okay.

1:29:49no you you're definitely approaching it the right way and i think one thing that i found a little bit concerning is maybe it's not so much of an issue now but i think particularly back in the day when there was i don't know if it was 20 22 23 when there was the rise of the the red pill influences and the self-help male coaches that was a little bit too extreme and they you know they were saying some valid things but quite a lot of damaging things that were actually you know putting men against women um and i'm even in the early days of my podcast i had a few of them on the show and that was just purely because i'd done something once upon a time with andrew tate and then that opened up uh me speaking to his inner circle and then they came on the show and then very early on i was like holy shit like what is happening here like i'm i'm hosting like the worst of the worst people on this it was getting views but then i was like hang on am i am i actually making the world a better place or am i making it worse and then you know very quickly i was like right this is not the direction i want to head in i think a few people were a little bit concerned that i was going down that direction but immediately you know i wanted to host more females on the show and more people just had a more reasonable educated approach because i think even something that i find fascinating is how would you define like an alpha male that you if you could ask so many different people and get so many different answers and i think there's far too many people particularly young impressionable guys who are just looking up to these these men these influencers who are showing off the the jewelry the chains the cars the being on a yacht with loads of women and they think like okay that's the answer that's what i need to do but i mean i've been there and i tell you firsthand it's not the answer yeah so i almost feel like it's my duty to steer guys away because you see on my social media like i'm i'm not posting anything flashy the only flashy thing that i do i like to travel nice like to go to nice places and travel there comfortably but i'm not like showing off all the time i'm not materialistic in showing off like watches or cars or anything like that because i just don't think that's the right kind of message to be sending to people so um what would you what would you define as a an alpha male in today's world yeah well first off i just want to say kudos to you for not trying to commodify to not trying to make money off of the the pain of young men and i think that that is happening a lot right now i think that a lot of guys are unfortunately leveraging the fact that a lot of men are lost they're alone they're confused They don't have role models to look up to.

1:32:52And they're monetizing that pain. They're monetizing that loneliness. And the solutions that they're giving them aren't really robust. It doesn't actually help those young men become more resilient, more capable. Sometimes it does. You know, sometimes the messaging. I think one of the things about that, really like the red pill swing for a long time, and one of the things that made Andrew Tate super popular is that he would say something that was objectively true, but it was always like packaged inside of this really inflammatory thing. And that's what made him so popular. It's just a very simple thing to do where you say something that's objectively true about young men, and then you package it inside of this really inflammatory statement, and then everybody talks about it.

1:33:39And the problem is that a lot of young men begin to believe the really inflammatory statement. And so, you know, I think what it means to be an alpha male has always been historically culturally dependent on what the society needed from men and that what it meant to be alpha male has always shifted based on what culture and society was really struggling with. And you can see that if you, if you study history, right, if you look back at the Greeks and the Romans, you look at the Romantic period, what it meant to be alpha has changed. But what it meant to be alpha has always included some type of physical capacity, the ability to lead, the ability to pursue capability and competency.

1:34:30That has always been a part of being an alpha male, that you are extremely competent. But the other piece that has always been a part of being an alpha male. And you can see this in the research. I had, he's since passed, but I had this guy on named Franz DeWall on my podcast, and he's one of the leading primatologists who studied chimpanzees and bonobos and orangutans and gorillas. And he came up with, which got miss cited a lot, but he was one of the first people to talk about alphas in the chimpanzee culture. And what he found was that the most alpha males, the most successful alpha males within chimpanzee cultures have always been the ones who could use force and dominance when necessary to create coherence, but who always used social and emotional strategies to create coherence first.

1:35:26And so I think what our culture and our society is really asking for from men, and I really believe what I'm about to say is going to be true, especially in the next five years, is that the men who are able to be extremely psychologically resilient and simultaneously be able to create coherence amongst people in a time of complete chaos are going to rise to the top because it's going to be so rare for a man to be psychologically resilience, and also somebody that can create coherence amongst people, create relationship, togetherness, networks, and the ability for people to actually work together is going to be the sort of future of what it looks like to be an alpha male.

1:36:18Because I think for a lot of guys, it's going to lack depth, it's going to feel shallow, and they're just going to try and prioritize making a shit ton of money and have this sort of old way of influence. And I'm not saying that there's not value in that. I like making money. I do well for myself. And I will continue to do that. So there's certainly value in that. But I think the more that you are capable and able to hear through the nonsense and the noise of modern culture and be resilient enough to withstand some of the arrows on social media and the dislike and whatnot, and bring people together towards a higher good as a collective, that is going to be what it means to be an alpha male moving forward in the future.

1:37:06Because that's what we've always seen throughout human history. And we kind of got away from that for a period of time. We resorted to the high chair tyrant, this sort of I'm going to rule through domination and authoritarianism and disconnect from any type of emotional understanding. And again, there's times and places for that. But I think that's what you're going to see moving forward in the future is that combination. And that's, again, I'll give one more example, which is I think that, I don't want to say this. I think we as men need to return to being in pursuit of creating things that are beautiful.

1:37:47and I worry that we've ostracized that to the domain of women. And when you look back at human history, I just did a piece on this, it's not out yet, but when you look back at human history, men have always been in the pursuit of creating beautiful things because it's always been a kind of vertical access that has brought us closer towards divinity, closer towards the ascended, closer towards something bigger than us, whether that's the sublime or nature or whatever it is. And when we disconnect from making beautiful things or being competent for the sake of beauty, I think that we lose something in the mix.

1:38:29And examples of this are rich in human history, but I'll just give you one, which is the Spartans. People think that Spartans have been some of the best warriors on the planet. it. And so you would think that they weren't interested in these types of endeavors of making things beautiful. But when you look at their training and you study the history of the Spartans, they would do hand-to-hand combat in the morning. They would learn how to fight with swords. They would learn how to work together to use their shields to create this structure that was almost impenetrable. And then in the afternoons when it got hot, they would study dance.

1:39:03They would study art. They would study poetry. They would create music and poetry. And so these great warriors were very connected to the pursuit of beauty, and it actually informed how they did battle. It actually informed why they created that shield structure that was so impenetrable and such a force that allowed them to do what they did. So I think that we as men need to return to that, because I think in some ways we have this conception of being an alpha male and men are pursuing beauty through watches and chains and cars and these types of things, but they're not actually making anything beautiful in their life.

1:39:43They're not producing any type of art. They're not producing any type of, I mean, we used to build cathedrals that were insanely ornate and would take hundreds of years to build. And that was a masculine endeavor. That was something that alpha men would do. I mean, you think about people like Michelangelo. These guys were insanely talented, you know, and they would pursue these types of things to push the boundaries for human species and for the human species and give other men something to look up to. And so I think the men in our lifetime that are going to be alphas are going to be the men that can lead, that can create coherence, and that can build beautiful things using the technology, using the architecture that we're building, and give other men something to look up to, because we've lost that.

1:40:38Men have lost that ability to look up at the creations or the lives of other men and say, wow, I really want, I'm inspired by that. And I want to be more and do more because of that man. And I think we have so few of those examples and we need more of them. Yeah, that was beautifully said. I think even you've made me rethink about some of the types of content that I'll be putting out there. Cause I mean, this is, this is one of my channels, my podcast channel the whole point of it is just to help people out and even to help myself out i have my coaching channel which that's actually recently started but the whole purpose of that is just to get men and women but tends to be mostly men watching into the best physical shape that they can get into the better understanding of nutrition and even the mindset of actually being consistent with sticking to what it is that you're doing in the long run and then there's my main channel, which was the OG channel, which started 10 years ago, I've kind of got to the point where I don't know which direction to take that in anymore because the podcast and the fitness stuff is now separated from it.

1:41:50So it kind of had been more of the travel, the vlog, the lifestyle, show people the world. There is a world out there. Go explore it, live your best life because it's short and it really can be amazing because life is what you make it. But I think there needs to be some, some more of my life experiences and, you know, problems that I have faced in the past and maybe an opportunity for me to be more vulnerable, um, to let people know that, you know, people, not everything is perfect. Like I'm also struggling with things, even at my age um on a daily basis but i'm going to share it with you and you know we we can kind of tackle it together so yeah it's been a powerful conversation and i would like to follow up and have another one maybe off camera and we can unpack exactly what is going on in here because i feel as though you're you're somebody who could who actually understands it and can really help i think that's been my biggest barrier has been just thinking oh they i they don't they don't really know they don't understand i don't understand how you know they could possibly help but i feel like you you know your shit well i really appreciate what you're doing man i think i know some young men who have come across your work and i think that what you're doing is really holding a good line for a lot of young men and i i hope you do put that stuff out you I think a lot of men really look up to you.

1:43:26A lot of young men really look up to you. And I think to have those type of role models that are able to build the business, able to be in shape, able to pursue the life that you want, but also to be able to be a model of something integrated and aligned, I think would be great. I think if you did that kind of stuff, a lot of men would really respect it. So I hope that you do. I'm cheering for you man I really enjoyed this convo and just getting a chance to get to know you and I mean I've checked out your content before and yeah I think I think what you're doing is really supporting a lot of young men in a healthy way so I really appreciate you thank you I appreciate you where can people find you man talks everywhere m-a-n-t-a-l-k-s on Instagram, on YouTube, Spotify.

1:44:19I don't really do X. I don't really go on to X. It's pretty sparse on there, mostly because it's like a battleground. There's just so many bots. But yeah, everywhere else, it's Mantox. And then my book is called Men's Work. Amazing. Thank you, Connor. I appreciate your time. Thank you.

1:44:46Thank you.

1:45:16Thank you.

1:45:46Thank you.