141 Five Stages Of Male Psyche

Men go through different stages. At each stage, there are different drives, pitfalls, and keys to fulfillment. This episode covers the five stages from the perspectives of biology, the hero's journey, and relations to women. Also references Deida, Nietzsche's metamorphoses, and other lenses on men's psychology such as Red Pill.

Transcript

Today's episode is inspired by a few conversations I've had over the last couple of weeks.

Someone asked me about my coaching business.

Someone asked,

What kind of people do you coach?

What kind of people reach out to you for coaching?

Who are your clients like?

And I answered him by saying,

Well,

It kind of depends on where they are at in life.

I was just thinking out loud and I described,

Yeah,

Guys typically in their 20s,

They want this type of thing.

It's usually this type of person who reaches out to me when they're younger.

In their 30s,

It's like this type of person.

They typically want these types of things,

40s,

Et cetera.

And then I had to check my answer because it's not necessarily age-related.

There are people in their 40s,

Let's say like a newly divorced person who has very much the same desires as a guy who's 23.

So I corrected my answer to say,

Well,

It depends what phase they're in.

There's different phases men go through and based on what phase of life,

What phase in their journey they're at,

That's typically what they're looking for and what we end up talking about in the coaching sessions.

Different phases,

Men have different desires,

They have different self-concepts,

They have different ways they typically want to relate to women.

And yeah,

That's what I settled on.

And I was thinking about this for myself as I'm certainly entering a new phase,

Expecting my first child now in a couple of weeks.

In fact,

When this episode comes out,

I may have a baby because we're a couple of weeks ahead of schedule.

And I was thinking about this for myself and how I'm entering a new phase and a phase that obviously I haven't experienced because it's new.

So I was looking for advice as I typically do.

I was looking for things to read,

Things to enlighten me.

And I was basically just Googling for fatherly advice or not Googling,

I don't use Google,

Duck,

Duck going to be accurate.

I was searching for good books for fathers.

And I kept coming across similar kinds of top 10 books for new dads,

This and that,

The typical stuff that seems to populate search engine results.

And I noticed myself feeling uneasy at first and then kind of getting pissed off.

And it was somewhat late at night,

I was doing this because I wasn't sleeping well that night.

And I was like,

Why am I pissed off and I realized almost all of the things,

Pretty much everything I saw as far as good resources for new fathers.

It wasn't that the advice was bad.

I didn't end up even purchasing any of the books.

I was just reading the descriptions.

It was the way,

I'm sure there's actually good stuff in the books,

I'm sure.

But the way they're presenting the father archetype,

They all presented it as if like all dads are like bumbling fools.

And I was realizing it's like kind of marketed or they're speaking to a man who sees himself as a boy.

And I think that's what was making me first uneasy and then kind of pissed off.

And I was like,

Obviously,

Maybe I don't have the same taste as the mass market.

But is this really representative of like the mass of new fathers?

That they all kind of see themselves this way as idiots?

And I know I haven't actually been a father yet,

So maybe this is arrogant of me to say I'm sure I'll be challenged by many things.

But for me,

From all the perspective I have,

It seems to be very not conducive to being a good father is to see yourself as an idiot.

Anyways,

I decided I wasn't going to follow.

I mean,

There's nothing that resonated with me as far as how to help me step into my father archetype this phase of my life.

So I was looking in other sources and around this time simultaneously,

I have a friend who is recently married.

He's had some troubles in his relationship and he asked me for reading material suggestions.

And I know him pretty well.

I pointed him to the Red Pill community,

Which if you've caught me speak about them in any other podcast,

I say what I'm about to say now,

Which is it's full of really accurate,

Precise,

Grounded information that's very useful to men.

It's a bit reductionist,

But there's nothing wrong with that.

It keeps us grounded.

It's very cause and effect,

Actionable information.

A bit dogmatic,

But a lot of groups are.

Men are this way,

Women are this way,

Et cetera.

I don't even have an issue with that.

But every time I mentioned Red Pill,

I say that it was positive,

But I also bring up what in my opinion is the big negative,

Which is the tone in which they speak about women also I feel like is not conducive to healthy relationships in the long run.

I mean,

They go a little bit harder than say no more Mr.

Nice Guy of giving men like these hard truths,

Which I think is useful,

Especially if they've gone in the wrong direction mentally.

But there's something about the way they speak about women and taken in the wrong way,

In the wrong context over a long period of time,

I think can be negative.

And I'm speaking about this every time I recommend checking out Red Pill to anybody,

I say some version of this.

I said it to my friend,

Of course,

And he's been reading it and we've been discussing it.

And he was like,

Well,

Maybe a more accurate way to say this is that it's really useful for a certain phase of life.

I mean,

I don't think he said phase exactly,

But something like that.

If you're in a certain life situation,

It's like the best thing for you.

If you're not in that life situation,

Maybe it's not the best thing.

So again,

This idea of stages.

So I've been thinking about this,

Of course,

With all of these inputs on this idea of how the male psyche goes through different phases of life.

Also a lot of the fulfillment episode we did a couple weeks ago or a couple months ago now working off of Ted Kaczynski's idea of fulfillment,

Of being in tune with nature,

This whole idea that primitive man was so fulfilled in every stage of his life that he can go on to the next stage,

Including death,

Including aging without any fear or resistance,

Because he was so fulfilled in each phase.

Basically think about the stages of the male psyche,

The stages that we go through,

And how it's an ideal to be so in tune with your nature,

With your evolutionary nature,

That you get everything that you want out of every phase of your life with no resistance,

And you can basically be at peace,

Whatever phase you're at.

Because almost all psychological issues,

And not just for men,

Come from this idea that we're kind of divorced from our natures.

Our lifestyles,

Many of our ideologies,

Are not in tune with our nature.

It gives us feelings of shame or an advocacy or just uneasiness or things are just not right even when they seem like they should be.

Say when we follow the consumerism manifesto,

I spoke about this a bunch in the semantics episode.

I won't rehash that,

But my general belief has been if we can realign with our nature,

Which is changing,

Right?

There's no one static way to be a man,

But if you can realign with your physiological evolution,

Basically it's almost just like Peter Pan sewing back on his shadow.

You can sew your psyche back on to what stage your body is in.

That's how you achieve the most fulfillment and peace and fullness of expression as a man.

So in this episode,

We're going to go through what I'm calling the five phases of the male psyche.

We're going to look at it from three primary lenses,

The first being the evolutionary lens.

My basic premise,

And I'm drawing this from thinkers like Kaczynski,

Is that our bodies go through a physiological evolution.

There are five phases I'm going to identify of how our physical body matures,

And our psyche has evolved to transform alongside our bodies.

Modern society has divorced this,

And that's the cause of a lot of issues,

Especially with masculinity.

I mean,

Men especially are divorced from our nature.

Men certainly are.

Women are too.

So we're going to start with the evolutionary lens because it's the most grounded.

It is the least abstract and most sane,

Which is where I like to start.

If you caught the semantics episode,

You know why.

It's not the only lens we're going to look at it from.

The second is on the other end of the spectrum.

We're going to look at these five phases through what I'm going to call the slave to king myth.

It's kind of a take on Joseph Campbell's monomyth,

But one specifically identifying the development of the male psyche,

Archetypes that resonate with men more.

And we're going to use this idea to point out different types of fiction,

Different popular fiction stories that resonate with different phases.

And what this says about our subconscious longings or subconscious desire.

We're talking about movies like Scarface and why something about Scarface really resonates with 14-year-old boys,

But not so much with 50-year-old men,

Let's say,

And some other contemporary myths based on this slave to king structure.

You could guess what it means.

Start as a slave,

Develop into king.

And the third is in terms of function.

So the evolutionary keeps us on the reality.

The slave to king myth is the more meaning side of things.

The third lens is the function of masculinity.

And I think the best way to understand the function of masculinity is in looking how it relates to its opposite or how it complements what we call the feminine.

Masculinity,

Of course,

Is a relative concept,

Even though I often like to ground it in saying it's the traits that correspond with testosterone.

Masculinity as a concept,

As an abstraction,

Only makes sense to categorize given that there's something opposite to it,

Femininity.

If there was no femininity in existence,

If somehow that was possible,

We could still have all the masculine traits,

But there'd be no point in calling it masculinity.

It's a relative concept.

Just like if there was no right,

Left would be meaningless.

So we speak about the relation to the feminine in each of these five phases.

And just a lot of the issues that men have with women,

Whether it being an early dating or mother issues or later relationship issues,

Is often,

In my opinion,

A mixing of these stages.

You're behaving like you should have behaved as a toddler in your adult relationship or some other mix up like that.

And we're also going to touch on just,

I mean,

I wanted to make this the most comprehensive model possible.

So we're going to reference some other models that you probably have heard of,

Such as David Data's Three Stages of Men.

If you follow my friend Brian Bajin,

You probably heard about that through him.

He speaks about it a lot.

We're also going to speak about Nietzsche's Metamorphosis Phases,

And of course,

A little bit of everyone's favorite,

Carl Jung.

I'm also going to mention different ideas from Men's Work,

Primarily Red Pill,

Because I've been reading a lot of Red Pill.

I think it's very useful for certain stages.

And just point out where it fits in into this model.

The Ruando podcast is brought to you by Kudra.

Kudra is a caffeine-free adaptogen beverage that I'm drinking right now because it helps lower my cortisol.

I also think it tastes great.

And of course,

We're also brought to you by viewers like you.

If you're listening on Spotify or any app that you can rate it on,

It would mean a lot to me if you rate this show,

If you like it,

Of course.

And if you know anybody who would get a lot out of this episode,

Please share it with that person,

Perhaps a guy who's stuck in a phase and needs to move on to the next phase.

All right.

Right now,

You're listening to episode 140,

The Five Phases of the Male Psyche.

Phase one is what I'll call infancy.

Infancy is marked by dependence.

Our infant boy is completely dependent on his mother.

I mean,

From birth and even before birth,

Literally inside mother's body.

And then after birth,

Dependent on her breast for milk,

Her love for security,

All of that,

Right?

It's a totally rational and healthy program to be fully dependent and fully receptive on his mother and really just in general,

But specifically to his mother.

This is a good thing,

Right?

Like if we could just imagine an infant boy who somehow rejected nourishment,

That wouldn't be a good thing,

Right?

That infant would not last very long.

So not a useful program.

So it's good to recognize that in every phase of life,

There are certain programs we could call instincts that have a function,

Right?

Some of those functions might be outdated for our modern life.

Some of those functions are outdated for the phase of life,

Right?

This is being one of them.

And for an adult man to be super dependent on women,

Not a useful thing,

Right?

Not going to lead to his fulfillment,

Certainly not the fulfillment of anyone he's with.

But for a baby,

It's totally useful.

And I like looking at this in this way because a lot of times it's very easy to shame oneself for a certain impulse or instinct,

A desire or a tendency.

But when we know where it comes from,

It can take a lot of the pressure off,

A lot of the self pressure off.

And we can realize that all of these behaviors that we have,

Specifically things that are involuntary or instinctual,

They're basically tools.

Sometimes the tools are misused and that's what causes problems in our life,

Right?

Like you wouldn't use a jackhammer to open a can of tomatoes.

It doesn't mean the jackhammer is a bad tool.

You just need to find out where it works.

Dependency,

Very useful thing when you're an infant.

Receptivity,

Very useful thing when you're an infant.

And also at some points when you're not an infant.

The big thing from the infant boy's perspective,

His relationship to the feminine is completely represented by his mother,

Right?

For a really small infant,

The mother is the only woman that matters,

Right?

All of his initial feelings about femininity,

Like she is the representation of everything.

She is the first imprint for all of his relationships with women.

There's a common idea in contric tools of thought where treating women like goddesses,

Seeing them as goddesses,

You could take that,

Resonates with some,

Doesn't resonate with others.

But before an infant boy,

When you were an infant,

Your mother was,

I mean,

For everything you can possibly perceive,

She was a goddess,

Right?

She gave you everything,

Right?

She was a source of everything.

She was the world because you didn't know anything else about the world.

Again,

Also useful to understand because we could even argue that things like oneitis or when a guy gets sucked into a personal fable or obsessive in a way that's maybe not healthy in his later relationships,

That program came from something.

That program came from this infancy stage.

Now,

The issue with these programs,

Of course,

Is when they persist,

Right?

So like what we call nice guy syndrome is for the most part an adult man using strategies,

Programs from his infancy and boyhood now with adult women,

Right?

There's like a translation of how he treated his mom to how he's treating his lovers,

Right?

And that's already in our common language,

Right?

Many women complain of like,

Oh,

Yeah,

I've become my boyfriend's mother or like I'm always mothering guys I date,

Right?

Something I've heard a lot from female friends.

And,

You know,

A lot of guys identify this in themselves,

Right?

Like I turned my girlfriend into my mother.

My friend Patrick,

Who was just on the podcast probably last episode,

Said something,

I mean,

He had that experience.

A lot of people have that experience when they identify what we're calling nice guy syndrome.

So Jung called when a man is reacting to his mother's image essentially in his mind,

The mother complex,

Right?

The man's mother might not be around,

Might be dead,

Might be in a different part of the world,

But the imprint of how he related to that woman who was the most important woman in his infancy has stuck around.

And you know,

Maybe her voice is in his head and maybe how he treats women when he feels love ends up reverting to this way he related to his mother.

And this is an important thing as we go through the stages and specifically in how a man relates to what we're calling the feminine,

Which is the say archetypal representation of women,

Is that when it comes to our unconscious,

One,

Our unconscious is like the symbol making part of our unconscious,

The meaning making part of our unconscious is one,

It's a solipsic,

Right?

It sees everything is about it,

Right?

And you can,

You know,

This is often identified in little kids,

Like if mom is mad,

It means something about me and I must have done something wrong.

This is idea that you're the center of the world.

And this persists,

Right,

In our unconscious where basically anything is meaning something,

Right?

The second thing is that these archetypes,

Like what we're calling the feminine with quotes around it,

To our unconscious,

Parts of it are impersonal,

Right?

Like we're going to talk about the Oedipus complex in a later phase.

It's not that men literally want to sleep with their mother,

It's that this is a representation of changing of how we relate to the feminine in our minds.

If you like the general semantics lens,

You could even say it's kind of a confusion of abstraction,

Right?

Like the man's unconscious sees this first woman that he loves relates to this woman,

His mother,

In a certain way.

So later on when he falls in love again,

When he feels that feeling of love with a woman,

With a person with female energy,

He reverts that old way.

What caused this?

Well,

We could say it's kind of a lack of completion or some arrested development,

Something that's preventing full transition into the next phase,

Something that's having us still hold on to these earlier strategies,

Which were meant for our tadpole phase,

But now we're a frog and we're still acting like a tadpole.

So some things that can cause this arrested development,

Of course,

Are things like overmothering,

Right?

If your mother wasn't willing to let you grow up or requiring you to meet her needs,

Requiring you to be a small pet for her needs,

For instance,

I mean,

This is often identified as the roots of mother complexes and nice guy syndrome and things like that,

Right?

Even at young ages,

If you think of a three-year-old who hides behind his mom's skirt,

That's usually kind of cute,

Right?

You have to be kind of a jerk to find judgment of that.

But for a nine-year-old,

A nine-year-old boy to hide behind his mom's skirt,

Yeah,

There's just something that makes everyone uncomfortable.

It's like this recognition that he's relating to her in the not—yeah,

We'll just call it the wrong way—a way that is not useful for his physical level of maturity.

And mothers are not the only thing that cause nice guy syndrome.

Maybe you wouldn't call it a mother complex if it wasn't attached to a mother.

But as Robert Glover and different people in the red pill community identify,

There's kind of a societal coddling,

A societal mothering of men rooted in collectivism and feminism and kind of just a general thing in a consumerist society that treats everybody as kids.

Aside from this evolution of the male psyche,

One of my criticisms of modern culture is that it has all people grow up a little bit too slow,

And this hurts women as much as men.

And it really hurts women even more because it forces women to have children when their biological clock is ticking in a very small window,

Which is not natural.

Another subject entirely.

But this societal coddling reinforces infancy behaviors in people,

Even though you might not think of it as infancy,

But this feeling of helplessness,

Of yeah,

Of that there's something wrong and you can't do anything about it.

We typically call this anxiety,

Right?

Like this feeling of there's some survival issue,

But I can't really do anything about it and it just feels weird,

Right?

One of the more common working definitions of anxiety is this feeling of fear that's not tied to anything,

Right?

This is in Timothy Leary's eight circuit model of consciousness,

This is bad circuit one imprinting,

Right?

Triggering of our survival circuit.

This is all infancy stuff.

So it's blocked by over-mothering,

This arrested development could be caused by societal coddling which reinforces infancy strategies.

Because to be coddled in this way,

To be protected in this way,

Is basically to not be your own person.

It's in Nietzsche's phases of metamorphosis,

Which is kind of his model for,

We call it the spiritual evolution of a person,

Of people.

This infancy stage corresponds with what he calls being a sheep,

The sheep is totally dependent,

Doesn't think for itself,

You know,

We have all these associations with sheep.

Sheep is simply followers.

And another lens in which to look at infancy in what I'll call the slave to king myth is this infancy phase is kind of like being a slave,

Right?

And I know for a literal infant,

The negative connotation of slavery is fine,

But for anyone outside of that phase,

Outside of infancy,

To be treated like an infant,

To not be able to not be treated like an infant is essentially being a slave,

Right?

Like you can't do things for yourself,

You have no autonomy.

Thankfully,

Very few people get fully stuck in infancy,

Despite the over-mothering of the world,

And mainly the societal coddling,

I think,

Is the main issue.

Thankfully,

This transition into the next phase starts before our minds are developed enough to really take in,

You know,

These cultural memes.

Essentially,

Like it's happening through our bodies before our minds are developed enough to be warped.

And we note this in as young as toddlerhood,

You know,

We call it the terrible twos,

Where kids are basically really annoying to their parents because they are developing their sense of the word no,

They're developing their own personal boundaries,

Their own individual desires.

And very often,

I mean,

One of the reasons why it's called a terrible twos is that it kind of feels like a rebellion.

It's like in the two-year-old's world,

It's kind of,

We could liken it to like an archetypal slave's rebellion of like,

I am not going to be a dependent blob anymore,

Right?

I have things that I want to do.

I'm shaking my fist at the world.

You know,

I'm going to be something,

Right?

I want something,

Right?

From the two-year-old's worldview or,

You know,

When the two-year-old was rebelling against his parents for the first time,

That's kind of what's happening on the inside.

Which brings us into the next phase,

Which we're calling boyhood.

Now,

Initially,

When I was sketching out these phases in the male psyche,

I actually had put infancy and boyhood in the same category of just like,

I think I was just calling it childhood or boyhood.

But one of the reasons why I'm separating the two is due to Nietzsche's model.

Nietzsche's first two phases in his metamorphosis model has a separation between the sheep and the camel.

People start as sheep where they're kind of mumbling followers,

And then they become a camel where they're a more self-aware,

Hardworking follower.

And I thought that this separation was actually a useful one because there is a difference between an infant boy's consciousness of like pure helplessness and the boyhood consciousness of having a personal identity,

Knowing who he is,

You know,

Having his own desires,

But still being under the reign of his parents,

Right,

In the realm of his father and mother.

His infancy is marked by total dependence,

Boyhood's kind of marked by willful servitude,

Right?

The kid goes to school even though maybe he doesn't really want to.

He eats his vegetables even though he doesn't want to.

He's doing these things,

Doesn't really want to,

But he's putting in the effort,

Right?

Like he doesn't,

He has fully rebelled.

You know,

He hasn't really broken free yet.

In this phase of life and psychological development,

We see a shift,

The beginning of a shift of how he relates to the feminine.

Now,

You know,

Of course,

Little boys,

They even at fairly young ages become attracted to girls,

Still has a very strong connection to his mother,

But it's starting to shift.

It's a transition period between dependence on mommy,

Which has this relationship to the feminine,

To actual like engaging of intimacy.

There's like that innocent romance that occurs,

You know,

Between infancy and puberty where there's attraction and it's kind of like you're trying out how you relate to women that are not your mom.

This is where young children,

Boys and girls,

Are exposed to a lot of Disney type mythologies.

And,

You know,

Regardless of your opinion,

You know,

I'm not anti-Disney at all,

But you also see it does kind of reinforce an element of,

I should say something that probably happens to everybody earlier in life,

Which is this idea of the personal fable,

Right?

This idea of like kind of head over heels infatuation that kind of seems crazy when you're older,

Right?

If you think of your very first crush,

Whether it's someone you actually dated,

You know,

You're like boyfriend and girlfriend when you're little or maybe a little bit older,

Or even someone who just had a crush on,

Right?

Like I think of some of the crushes I had when I was a pre-pubescent,

They were kind of insane,

Right?

Like there was like a pure romance because obviously my sexuality hadn't developed yet,

But there was an attraction to women,

But there was an instance to it,

Right?

There was like a romance to it that maybe has been reinforced by things like Disney,

But I think there's also probably this archetypal part of worship,

Right?

Before you see women as someone you engage with sexually,

There's a transition phase from seeing,

You know,

From the love you have for mother to before you actually take on real lovers.

Now,

If the infant was a slave,

The boy is kind of like a house servant,

Like a willing servant,

Right?

Like a,

And from an evolutionary perspective,

A seven-year-old boy,

For instance,

Even if he disagrees with his parents,

Has very little to gain in total by total rebellion,

Right?

Like he still needs his parents.

In fact,

Not only does he need his parents for him to continue to be under the protection and provision of his parents,

He needs to contribute something,

Right?

He might have chores or he might have to just do stuff,

Go to school.

There's things he has to do.

And for the most part,

Even though he might not want to do it,

He is choosing to do it because it's good for him.

It's the boyhood phase where pleasing authority becomes useful,

Right?

In infancy,

There's not enough consciousness to choose to police authority,

Like it's what you want to do the most anyway is to suckle from your mom's breast and be cute and whatever.

The boy does have choice.

He is obviously more conscious than the infant.

And he sees that he gets a lot out of pleasing the people in power because he doesn't have power yet.

This is where a young person learns the abstractions that can be so damaging at times and the source of many psychological problems,

Which is the idea of absolute right and wrong.

A young boy has no concept of right and wrong until he's told that,

Right?

Right and wrong are what his mom and dad say or what the church says or what the teacher says.

He just takes it.

There's no idea that what the teacher said is right and wrong might not actually be right and wrong.

There's no concept of subjectivity.

It's like,

Oh,

An authority figure said,

This is the category of things that are good and this is the category of things that are bad,

And that's how it is.

Line in the sand.

It is basically what we could call a confusion of the orders of abstraction or rather a semantic disturbance taking the subjective for absolute.

Now in boyhood,

Especially in early boyhood,

Because of course,

As the boy comes closer and closer to puberty,

He takes on more adult traits,

But in the peak of boyhood,

Let's say in young boyhood,

Approval equals survival.

Again,

It is the most useful strategy to survive and to have a healthy wellbeing to get approval from people in power.

Now again,

People pleasing behavior,

When we talk about people pleasing behavior,

It's almost always framed as this very negative thing.

But certainly,

To care about what your parents think when you're seven,

Not the worst thing.

It's whether or not it persists when it no longer is useful.

Nietzsche called this phase the camel because the camel works hard,

Doesn't question,

Reminds me of an animal farm,

George Orwell's horse.

The horses were really hard workers who they just wanted to work hard and they didn't question anything,

And they didn't think that maybe what they're working on is not the best thing.

They just want to work hard because it gives approval,

It makes them feel good,

It makes them feel a part of the collective.

The boyhood phase is also where the boy is now conscious enough to,

One,

Care about masculinity on some level and absorb the modeling of male role models.

So of course,

The primary male role model is his father.

In hunter-gatherer cultures,

It might not just be your father.

I mean,

Of course,

There are different types of social configurations of tribes that were more monogamous versus not.

But regardless,

There was more of a collectiveness,

More of an extended family bonding in that era,

The era for which our nervous systems evolved for.

So the young man's role models back then,

Male role models,

Were not just his father,

But also the father of the tribe.

The chief is kind of the father of all the fathers in a sense.

If the father is the head of the immediate family,

The chief is kind of the father to the greater family of all the families together,

Essentially.

Since in modern life,

We don't have that unless you were lucky to really live around a lot of extended family or all of your neighbors were really,

Really close.

Most of us didn't have that kind of tribal upbringing.

The male role models that young boys are drawn to are other shows of essentially hyper-masculinity.

Superheroes,

Athletes,

Anyone demonstrating essentially power,

Right?

That is what superheroes and athletes represent to a boy.

And in superhero mythology and sports,

Again,

This idea of line in the sand,

Good versus evil,

Us versus them is very defined and not very nuanced.

If you look at any superhero movie,

For the most part,

I think superhero movies are getting a little bit more adult,

But even now the typical Marvel movie is like there's the evil guys and there's the good guys and it's very clear.

They don't typically go into the motivations of the evil guy or how he's maybe not evil in his eyes.

It's just like,

No,

He's a bad guy.

We're the good guys.

The bad guy must be stopped.

There's not a lot of nuance.

Sports also kind of reflects this same kind of thing.

There's our team and there's their team.

We're good and they're bad.

We're going to celebrate when we beat them and when they lose,

Essentially.

I think about as a kid,

I really was into baseball and I grew up hating Chipper Jones.

Chipper Jones,

A star player of the Atlanta Braves in the 90s.

Why did I hate him?

He was a good baseball player.

I love baseball.

I should have liked him.

I also played third base sometimes.

I hated him because he was of the other.

He was of the team that – and in terms of warrior archetypes,

He was like the champion of the other army who was the most threatening to my army,

To my baseball team.

So of course,

I just hated him.

I hated him as a default.

Much is often made in these so-called crises in masculinity of the lack of strong fathers.

Some people just identify fatherless homes or not enough caring,

But it's also strength.

A young boy who has no role model demonstrating strong masculinity is probably not going to develop strength himself.

If he sees that the biggest immediate authority on masculinity is a guy who's really weak or a guy who folds easily,

Is insecure,

He's almost certainly going to take those traits.

It's very unlikely that he'll just magically become super confident when his father wasn't or that he'll magically become very comfortable in relating to women when the men in his life are not or maybe that they fold easily.

Because traditionally,

Through the boyhood phase,

Up until the end of the boyhood phase,

The boy basically lived in the land of women.

He lived in wherever the settlement was.

Maybe he was treated a little bit differently than girls,

But for the most part,

He was just a kid around his mother a lot,

Wasn't out with the men where they were often doing dangerous things.

So that was his world.

And without some sort of active transition,

He stays there.

And we can argue,

I think many people have argued,

And not just me,

That a lot of the lacks of strength in male character that many guys have,

Whether they have nice guy syndrome or any sort of,

You could call it,

Beta or the red pill community would call it blue pill behavior or blue pill ideology,

Is because of this lack of effective modeling of someone showing you this is how it goes.

Now most indigenous cultures did have something like this,

Right?

And it was a very active moment.

It was a ritual,

It was a rite of passage.

The rite of passage usually was around the time of puberty,

When he enters sexual maturity,

Which is an undeniable time.

Regardless of what society or culture says about gender or ways people should be or how it's all a construct,

Puberty is a very clear thing.

There's a program in each of our bodies,

In every child's body,

At a certain age,

Some switch flips essentially.

And there's a flood of new hormones and the body actually changes.

You're almost a different animal from pre-puberty to post-puberty.

This should come,

Or we've evolved to have this come with a very big change in consciousness.

Obviously that happens naturally.

You become more interested in intimacy with whatever type of person you're attracted to.

You have different feelings,

You have different self-concepts.

There's also the opportunity for greatest confusion in the teenage years.

The indigenous or the primitive person's rite of passage tried to solve a lot of what we might call teenage problems beforehand.

The rite of passage for men did a few things.

One,

It was a clear marked difference from him being taken from the land of women,

The land of his mother,

To the realm of men.

In many cultures,

The boy was literally taken or sometimes abducted in a forceful way from the land of women when the time was right.

He spent some time with men.

The rite of passage usually came with learning some hard truths about nature.

He is no longer to be protected in any fashion.

He needs to go out and experience things for himself,

Whether it's battling the elements,

The cold,

Hunting something,

Dealing with pain,

Dealing with suffering.

He has to learn that nature is metal.

This is one of the big things that are lost to people,

And specifically men.

And I think,

Take the Red Pill perspective,

Is that people have been raised,

Men have been raised,

To not really understand the truths of nature,

To not really understand that things are not fair,

For instance,

That power in the natural realm is kind of the only law.

Outside of human societies,

What makes something right or wrong is power.

It's not to say,

I'm not making a comment on how things should be,

Or that rule of might is correct by any means.

But these are truths about reality that many people are conditioned to not believe or not be aware of.

And in many ways,

In many areas of life,

It doesn't matter.

It is true that in modern life,

People,

Men,

Don't have to hunt their own food.

Most of us don't have to engage in combat for our security or the security of our family.

A lot of these things are true,

And a lot of those impulses and skills maybe aren't not necessary.

One of the places that the truths of human nature and the truths of nature and how power is law and how our genes are selfish still holds true,

No matter how society develops,

Is in our sexual behavior.

This is one of the reasons why the Red Pill community focuses almost entirely,

Even though it's a place for men to develop their masculinity,

I don't know if that's how Red Pillars would describe it,

But almost everything is focused on women,

The truths about women.

A lot of the adages that I think kind of promote resentment,

Even though they're true,

Are pointing out things like hypergamy and how women are always trying to marry up and they'll leave you if you show too much weakness.

All of these things,

All of these things that are true,

Come from this hard truth perspective,

Partly because we'll speak a little bit more about Red Pill in a few minutes,

But they're essentially trying to correct from a lot of false belief that many men have,

Believing that women want equality and women want meekness and all that stuff.

It's a passage,

Maybe they wouldn't speak about intersexual dynamics in this way,

But overall they would let the boy becoming a man know that nature is hard,

Nature is not fair,

There are asymmetries,

That is just how it is.

This is not meant to beat him down,

Although it is perhaps partly meant to calm his hubris,

He's got this surge of testosterone,

He needs to know that there are limits,

He needs to know that he can't beat a bear or that he can't be an arrogant dickhead because there are real consequences to every action,

But it is also to teach him that with recognizing the truth about nature,

He has power that maybe he didn't know he had.

It gives him an opportunity to test himself,

Deal with the cold or deal with some sort of grave discomfort,

So he knows that within a certain range,

Within his limits,

He does have a lot of agency.

And this is why these types of group challenges I think are inherently appealing to men.

Eight months ago I think it was,

I spoke about how some guy friends and I did this 4x4x48 challenge inspired by David Goggins where every four hours we would run,

We ended up walking a lot of it,

But it was still very challenging,

Do four kilometers every four hours for 48 hours.

It was challenging.

My knee was swollen,

It was difficult.

Also,

Every four hours means you're not really sleeping,

So there was this physical discomfort.

But there was something about doing – and actually a lot of people that we spoke to,

Namely women,

Didn't understand why we would do this.

How is that fun to do this thing that you get no reward for to just put yourself through discomfort?

And it was hard to put into words to someone from that worldview because if you don't have the – I don't know if you could call it – if you don't have the androgen receptors to benefit from putting yourself and seeing what you're made of,

It's probably a totally crazy thing.

But if you do,

If you are inherently masculine,

If you have those androgen receptors,

You do understand that,

Oh yeah,

Putting yourself through a challenge,

Especially with friends,

With people whose opinions you care about,

Does something like some deep archetypal reward of like,

This is what we're supposed to be doing.

This is what we were supposed to do in our teenage years to show ourselves and show our allies what we're made of.

This leaving from the realm of women to the realm of men is shown in the monomyth as the call to adventure.

I could look at in Lord of the Rings,

Frodo leaves the Shire.

He leaves the Shire guided or called to adventure by a real man,

A real man that has seen the world,

Gandalf,

And he gets to leave the Shire where he was basically completely safe,

Right?

Like he never got to test his mettle and never got to see anything about himself staying here.

This call to adventure was like his rite of passage,

To leave,

To enter a new world where he's now no longer a boy but a man.

In many human nomadic cultures,

Exogamy was the norm.

Egamy meaning marrying,

You know,

Exo meaning outside,

Marrying outside of your tribe.

In different cultures,

There's different forms of it.

I think in more recent centuries,

It was more common for the woman to leave.

But I do believe,

I mean,

This is perhaps all speculation,

But it kind of makes sense to me that for our earliest ancestors,

Pre-agricultural ancestors,

It's probably the men that left because men have a natural impulse to go out and find their own way,

To make their own fortune,

To be on their own for long stretches of time.

It kind of makes sense to me that,

You know,

This impulse to explore the world,

Which we can see in video game addiction,

Primarily an issue with men,

This is this impulse,

This strategy for going out on your own,

Entering the great unknown,

Seeing what happens,

And perhaps finding mates outside of your tribe.

And just the attempt at exogamy,

Or we could just say just the whole thing of leaving your tribe,

It does seem to do something positive for most men.

I mean,

It's something that I recommend to almost all young guys who are still in the city or town they were born in to just go somewhere new,

To challenge themselves.

And you know,

And to relate this to something I spoke about in the How to be Attractive to Women episodes,

We spoke a lot about dominance hierarchies there.

One of the best ways to ascend a dominance hierarchy and jump rungs in a given ladder,

A status ladder,

Is actually to leave the ladder completely,

Do some things that are not available to the people who stayed in that ladder,

Stayed on that ladder,

And then come back,

You could come back and jump rungs,

Right?

And we can see this in,

You know,

Like when someone,

You see this in corporate America,

Someone leaves a company,

Has some experiences with another company,

Comes back at a much,

Much higher position,

Whereas peers who stayed can only go up incrementally.

I recognized this when I was in the cult.

There's a very clear,

Like a social hierarchy there,

You know,

And you can only advance step by step.

But if you left and did something cool out in the world and came back,

You almost always got a higher status.

And you can see this in many things.

This is actually almost exemplified in the Prodigal Son myth,

Right?

And that was the Prodigal Son thing.

I mean,

It confuses a lot of people,

Right?

Even in the story,

It confuses the brother who stays,

Right?

So the story is one of the sons of this,

I guess,

A Semitic family.

He leaves,

Goes out and sees the world,

Comes back.

And then when it comes back,

The father praises him and gives him this lavish banquet and whatnot.

He's the son that came back.

And the son who stayed complained.

It's like,

Well,

How come?

I mean,

I actually stayed.

I actually was loyal.

How come I'm not getting a celebration?

And at least this is what I was told.

I think I must have been told in Sunday school,

Maybe.

But what the father says is,

Well,

He actually came back.

He went out and he actually came back.

And that's why we're celebrating him.

Didn't totally make sense to me,

Like the lesson there.

But I think there's kind of like this rooted thing in exogamy of like you're actually benefiting your bloodline by going out and seeing the world and exploring things.

I mean,

It's kind of a natural boyhood impulse to explore,

Whether the real world or in video games.

Now,

The transition in lieu of a rite of passage,

Because most of us didn't have a clear rite of passage,

Even if you had a bar mitzvah or something like that,

Nowadays,

No one actually takes it seriously that you've become a man.

It's more of a cultural thing.

It's not really exemplifying a transition into adulthood.

No one's treating a post-bar mitzvah kid,

A 14-year-old,

As a real man.

So because of that,

And this is my theory of where teenage angst comes from,

Because of that,

Just like the transition from infancy to boyhood,

There is a rebellion,

Right?

Teenage rebellion comes from this.

And bring this back to the Nietzsche model of metamorphosis,

He says that going from camel,

The hardworking,

Willful servant essentially,

To the next stage,

He must kill the dragon.

And in Nietzsche's model,

The dragon represents authority.

It could be a society,

It can be parents,

It could be any controlling figure.

And the image of the dragon is used because the dragon has scales,

And every scale is a law or a rule.

And the way that the person transitions from camel to the next stage,

Which is lion,

Basically has to peel off all those scales,

Has to kill that whole body of authority that's oppressing him and keeping him hardworking as a camel,

Who doesn't get to really do anything for himself.

Now,

Whether someone is willing and able to make that active rebellion in their mind of rejecting the laws and authorities and rules that he was born into,

Regardless of whether he makes that mental shift,

His body is going to shift,

Right?

So I'm calling this next phase,

Phase three,

Adolescence.

Of course,

You remember what puberty is like.

Your body changes rapidly,

Your personality changes.

I mean,

Again,

You're basically becoming almost a different type of person,

A different species almost,

You're a different creature than you were pre-puberty.

And of course,

This is seen as one of the more confusing times in terms of identity and belonging and who you are and what you like.

It's also a very beautiful time,

A great opportunity.

Again,

I would argue that many of the issues that are typical for teenagers are due to the fact that,

Well,

Two things.

One,

There's no rite of passage that gives them a clear function or a new way to use their basically newfound vehicle.

The second is that in our cultures now,

A modern society,

We treat teenagers,

We treat adolescents still as children,

Which just like treating a three-year-old as if he was an infant gives him this feeling of rebellion where he just wants to be a hard-ass and rebel essentially.

The same thing happens,

I would say,

Of course,

To an adolescent.

An adolescent,

Everything in a teenage boy's body is saying,

I need to do some of my own things.

I need some responsibility.

I need some real power.

I want to conquest.

I want to fight.

I want to go to war.

I want to do these things.

I want to adventure.

And if not,

I have to rebel.

Adolescence is the mark of the beginning of peak virility.

An adolescent can actually impregnate a woman and be a father.

He has entered sexual maturity.

In this,

We see his relation to the feminine really change or it should shift from relating to the feminine as mother to relating to the feminine as a peer or a lover.

Obviously a boy-to-mother relationship is very different than a man-to-woman intimate relationship.

I think this is a shift again from being a servant or dependent to a peer or in a sense a rival if you look at genetic strategy.

We'll talk about that in a second.

This shift from mother to lover is represented by the Oedipus myth.

Let's talk about this specifically,

Like this Oedipus thing more directly in the Mother Complex episode.

I think this title is Slaying Medusa.

If you want to check that out,

You can.

But more briefly,

Oedipus myth,

Young man grows up,

Accidentally kills his father,

Marries his mother.

Freud said that all young men secretly want to sleep with their moms and kill their dads.

At least that's how it's often spoken about.

As we mentioned,

Archetypal symbols are impersonal.

My interpretation of the Oedipus myth is that it's a recharacterization of the young man's identity.

The whole killing the father represents you're no longer going to follow his direction and his expression of masculinity.

You're no longer a squire.

You're no longer a servant.

The killing the father thing is kind of,

If you look at it biologically,

It's like you are taking his place as the representative of your genetic lineage.

If you just think of our selfish genes,

Father,

His genes are in his son.

Assuming the same genes are in both father and son and they want to maximize the reproductive success,

It makes sense that they would favor the son.

There's almost maybe a program to kill your father in a sense,

Metaphorically.

I'm sure in some species,

I mean,

In some species this happens,

Right?

The sons will rise up against the alpha father and take his place once they're strong enough.

He's also represented in fiction in the Star Wars universe by,

This might be an obscure reference,

But not if you're a Star Wars nerd,

The Sith who are like the evil Jedi,

They have this practice called the rule of two.

Whereas the Jedi,

They're kind of a collectivist group,

The Sith Lords,

There's only ever two Sith Lords.

There's a master and apprentice.

Once the apprentice becomes strong enough to defeat the master,

He kills his own master and then takes on our apprentice.

I've searched online for the logic behind this.

How could the Sith ever grow as a group if they do this thing?

Why would anybody become a Sith Lord knowing that his own apprentice is going to kill him at some point?

I've seen different answers for different Star Wars nerds,

But it kind of is representative nature,

This thing that we're describing.

You take your father's place.

The lineage is a straight line.

You take your father's place and you are the representative of your genetic line for the time being until you're then replaced by your son.

You kill your father,

Take his place.

Taking his place means now metaphorically marrying your mother.

I don't think it means literally guys want to bang their moms.

It's that the mother throughout infancy and transitioning in boyhood,

Certainly in infancy,

Is the representative of the feminine.

It's impersonal.

She's just like an impersonal face for all women in a sense.

Marrying your mother is now taking a step into,

Well,

If you're engaging with a woman in that way,

She can't possibly see you as a child.

I think this whole thing has been sublimated in what's in our popular culture known as the MILF fantasy.

We spoke about the creation of that term in American Pie and how it normalized the idea of young men finding older women attractive or women of his mother's age attractive.

What I do think it is,

Again,

Not that guys literally want to do this,

Is that if you could engage sexually,

If you're engaging sexually with a woman your mother's age,

Then it's kind of proof to that whole generation.

If you look at it symbolically,

Where one woman represents all women,

It's proof that you're no longer a kid.

A woman of that age,

Women are not going to see you as a child if you've just slept with them.

Because the sexual fantasy,

And I'm going to speak about all sexual fantasies soon,

Or all fantasies rather,

I think very often they are indicative of some feeling of lack or some change that the unconscious wants to go through.

This move from being the child of a mother to a lover is this move of dependent,

Of basically being inferior or lower status in the chain to being equal or higher status.

This adolescence,

And if you think about the way that most teenage boys begin to view women or see women in cultures that maybe they haven't been influenced in another way,

There is kind of an objectification that is almost natural.

Now,

You can argue that everything is cultural,

Like what is the natural way?

We don't actually have a sample of that.

But I think there is something natural about this temporary phase of kind of seeing women almost as a rival or someone,

You're kind of competing.

Because if we look at from an evolutionary biology perspective or sexual anthropology,

There is competition between the sexes in the sense of women have limited wombs,

Men have unlimited sperm,

But limited provisions.

So it kind of makes sense,

Especially in youth when virility is extremely high,

But ability to provide is low,

That there's some sort of,

You know,

Not everyone's going to get their needs met,

Right,

In the same way.

At least if a woman and a man of the same age,

Of the same young age are together,

You know,

Everything in his instincts wants him to spread his seed as much as possible because,

You know,

He's the most fecund of his life,

But he can't really – he's not very able to stick around and provide for them anyway.

So it's almost like the best strategy for his genes to do as much spreading as possible.

Whereas for a woman,

Whether she's 20 or 30 or any age in sexual maturity,

She only has one womb.

So like there is,

You know,

And we see this in common dating culture,

Especially with young people dating,

It's usually the woman that wants to lock things up and the man who wants to explore more.

It's like the common trope and there are biological reasons for this.

And I actually think,

You know,

And one of the reasons why I really want to make this episode especially for some of the younger listeners,

Let's say guys in their 20s,

Is that – and I've noticed that I felt this pressure when I was younger to sometimes,

You know,

There's a lot of shame of say playing the field or nowadays – and perhaps it is a reaction to unhealthy or unuseful behaviors of the past.

Obviously there are men who've done asshole things to women.

There's women who've done – you know,

The equivalent to men.

A lot of our cultural paradigms are our reactions to something that somebody did at some point.

But when I see a lot of guys feeling ashamed of their natural instinctual desires to,

Let's say,

Date around and not settle down,

You know,

One,

I don't want anyone to feel ashamed,

Right?

That's not useful.

But two,

I actually think not really taking advantage of this phase of your life,

We could call it the adolescent phase or it's the warrior phase that corresponds with the warrior archetype where you're not trying to really rule,

You're not trying to own things,

You just want to go out and conquest.

I think it's actually critical if in a later point you do want to settle down,

Be a husband,

Be a father,

Be a committed partner.

It's almost critical to have had some expression.

And I see this in guys I know who say are around my age or whatever and they're thinking about settling down.

I've heard from a lot of guys of like,

Yeah,

You know,

I do kind of want to settle down,

But I never had that like,

So my wild oats phase,

Right?

And it kind of eats at guys.

And maybe part of it is,

You know,

This feeling of inadequacy created by propaganda like the pickup artist culture saying every guy needs to do these kinds of things.

But it's also,

I think,

Instinctual because in this adolescent phase,

This warrior phase where a guy,

You know,

A young man has just had his rite of passage,

His body has just changed,

He has his new surge of testosterone,

This warrior phase is where he gets to discover his limits,

Right?

The whole part of this young man phase is all about accumulating potential energy,

Essentially,

Right?

It's a very anabolic phase,

Right?

He's building up his body.

He's building up his bank account.

He's figuring out what he wants to do with his life.

This is more the modern thing,

Right?

In antiquity,

He was learning what kind of warrior he was going to be and how to be with men and how to make a mark on the world.

This is the phase of life where he's going to determine his peak level of status,

His peak level of attractiveness,

His wealth.

In this phase of life,

Men typically become very interested in material goals.

How much weight can you push?

How much money are you making?

These tangible things,

Maybe some people try to shame it as like,

Oh,

Those are such base desires,

They're material only.

It's like,

Yeah,

But this is important,

Right?

This is the phase in his life where a man has evolved to see where his maxes are,

Right?

This has actually been,

It's kind of silly and this is very male ego stuff,

But I've gone through this thing this year,

Partly driven by becoming a dad,

But I think also just the reality,

Recognize the reality of when it comes to certain physical things,

For instance,

It's only dawned on me this year that my maxes,

My best performances with,

Say strength things are behind me,

Right?

When I was 23 and I hit what is now my max deadlift,

I thought for sure I was going to put on another 100 pounds,

Right?

When I was 23,

I pulled,

I think 395 and I was like,

Oh,

I'll definitely pass 400.

I'll probably hit the 450 or something,

Right?

And again,

All of this stuff doesn't matter,

Right?

It doesn't matter how much you can lift.

In fact,

I'm realizing that those types of goals were kind of damaging to my body and perhaps self-esteem in some way,

But kind of just recognizing it like,

Oh shit,

I'm not even that old.

I'm only 33 and some of my best,

I mean,

Probably all of my best physical performances are behind me,

That's kind of a bummer,

Right?

I mean,

I think that's part of entering the next phase,

But it's also a recognition,

A thing that maybe has bummed me out a little bit and perhaps bums out a lot of people just in any stage of getting older is of recognizing of like,

Oh,

The window has closed.

Certain ships have sailed,

Certain windows have closed.

And I say all of this,

I guess for younger men who are still in this phase of like not stressing about things that you can deal with as an older man,

Really focus on the things that you're probably naturally interested anyway,

Which is accumulation of potential energy in the sense of the ability to do work.

Your status,

Your wealth,

Your purpose,

Your creative capital,

All of these things that can allow you to build things when it's time in your life to build things,

There's a phase in your life where it's best to max these things out.

From the slave to king myth thing,

At one point you will be king of something,

But the respect a king gets,

If you look at like most mythologies,

The respect the king gets comes from when he was a warrior,

Like before he was king,

Right?

By the time he's king,

He's a little bit older,

He's not the best warrior by then,

But he'll always regale the times,

People will always talk about the times when he was in his warrior phase,

When he was out conquering,

When he was rebelling.

It makes me think of like in Game of Thrones,

The story begins after Robert's rebellion,

But everyone's always talking about how strong Robert was when he rebelled against the king.

That's what made his mark and determined that his ability to become king.

Now a lot of what goes on in adolescence for a man,

And talking psychological adolescence,

Which usually ties to physical adolescence,

Is this drive for power,

This drive for,

Again,

Potential,

Right?

Potential of doing stuff.

And I've spoken to many men about what goes on in their heads.

I strongly believe that the fantasies that we come up with,

I mentioned the Milf fantasy,

That the fantasies that we come up with that naturally occur are almost always,

And maybe always,

They reveal some sort of lack.

It's like the fantasy that comes to our mind is what our unconscious inner theater creates for us in a kind of an entertaining story fashion,

Because that's the language of the unconscious,

That reveals something that we need to go get.

When my friend Patrick was on two episodes ago,

He was talking about how he fantasized of being with prostitutes.

The main reason for that was that he felt that sex was always transactional,

Even in his relationships.

It's my interpretation now.

So it's something about prostitutes that it was almost a cleaner transaction when it came to sex.

So that's where his mind went.

The Milf fantasy,

Older men don't typically have Milf fantasies as younger men who want to prove to that generation of women that they're men.

I think that's where the Milf fantasy comes from.

You can actually look at almost any sexual fantasy that isn't environmentally conditioned.

It's one thing if you're flooded with images of a certain thing,

And that's why you fantasize about it.

But if you have kind of a random longing for a thing,

Or like a random thing that you find really interesting,

And it hasn't been conditioned or imprinted from something,

I would propose that it is a signal from your unconscious that this is something that you want more of.

Outside of sexuality,

There's two fantasies that I've heard from men a lot.

One is that of being an MMA fighter.

I think this is a bigger part of just fighting.

There's a lot of times in my life where I felt really powerless and perhaps low status.

I was constantly thinking of getting into fights.

Sometimes there are noble fights,

Like I'm in Bodega and the cashier's getting stuck up at gunpoint,

And I do some crazy karate kick or something.

Many men have fantasies like that.

I've heard many guys fantasize about that.

I've heard a lot of guys who don't even watch MMA say,

Oh yeah,

I'm driving,

Or I'm at work,

Or something.

I'll fantasize about being an MMA fighter and getting my hand raised,

And I don't even watch MMA.

I think the MMA thing is just because MMA is popular in our culture now.

What this type of fantasy reveals is this need for power,

This desire to win in zero-sum competition.

A physical fight or altercation is the most simple representation of power over others,

Meaning you're no longer the loser.

The second fantasy that I've heard a lot of,

Which is something I also resonate with,

And I've heard this so many times from many men lately,

Is that a lot of guys fantasize about talking to Joe Rogan in their head.

This one always makes me laugh a little bit,

Because one,

I do it too.

In fact,

A little secret,

Many of—and this has happened less and less recently,

But a lot of my solo podcast ideas and the stories I tell come from me riffing on this fantasy.

I don't smoke pot that much anymore,

But when I used to,

Especially when I lived alone,

I would get high,

I would have my notebook.

I would end up just talking to Joe Rogan in my head,

And then I'd be like,

Oh shit,

Those were good and useful.

I should write that down,

And those become a solo podcast.

To me,

The MMA fighter fantasy,

The winning-of-fight fantasy is a need for power or dominance.

This talking-to-Joe-Rogan-in-your-head thing,

Which is a very common male fantasy,

Is a need for expression.

It's kind of like the sword and the pen,

If you will,

Power and expression.

This all comes from this overall thing of being able to make a mark on the world,

To matter.

If you win a fight,

You've asserted your physical will on a reality.

If you're talking to a guy who,

I think anyone who has this Joe Rogan fantasy has some respect for Joe Rogan,

Or he's a person whose attention one would care about,

This fantasy of talking to Joe Rogan in your head is basically,

Oh,

A guy who I respect respects me back.

Right?

I think that's just like,

You know,

Because the guys who I know who fantasize about this,

Or who've told me at least,

They often,

They have a lot of good ideas,

And they don't have people to listen to it.

I'll speak for myself,

Because actually,

This kind of fantasy I've had since I was like,

Some of my earliest memories,

Like seven years old.

I wasn't with Joe Rogan.

He wasn't popular at the time.

But I grew up very shy.

I would have a lot of ideas.

I would think about things and want to say things,

But I was inhibited.

So sometimes I would go a whole school day without saying anything.

The things I wanted to talk about and think about weren't what most of my peers wanted to.

So at night,

I'd be in bed,

I would hear my parents listening to The Tonight Show or watching The Tonight Show in the next room,

And I would have these,

Like,

For the entire duration that my parents were watching Jay Leno,

In my head,

I'd be on the couch talking to Jay Leno,

Or he'd be interviewing me.

And I would be saying all the things that I wanted to say all day,

And all my theories about things,

And all the stories that I think are cool.

And I've continued that basically my whole life,

Which is maybe how I ended up becoming a podcaster and doing this,

Because now I finally get to do this for real.

But I think a lot of people have this need for this expression.

And it's actually funny,

Just a random anecdote.

I started the very first episode of Joe Rogan that I watched,

Listened to,

Was Jay Leno as a guest.

And I clicked on it just because I had this childhood affinity for Jay Leno.

And then it was kind of like a passing of the torch,

Where my fantasy switched from talking to Jay Leno at The Tonight Show to then talking to Joe Rogan.

But I'll say,

Once I started making these solo episodes,

Which I,

This is my favorite form of expression that I've ever had,

And I've done a lot of things,

The fantasy goes away,

Or fantasy reduces,

I should say.

And I think that is a sign,

When it comes to all fantasies,

Sexual fantasies,

Power fantasies,

Expression fantasies,

When the fantasy itself becomes a little bit less compelling,

It's usually a good sign,

Meaning that that need is actually being fulfilled in the real world.

Because the conscious doesn't have to create the projection in your mind.

Because very often what we seek for entertainment are these lacks.

This is a key lesson in my archetype challenge,

Is to recognize what types of entertainment you're drawn to.

So in the adolescent phase,

I mentioned in the intro,

For some reason,

It seems like 14-year-old boys universally love Scarface,

Tony Montana's rise to power.

It's all about,

I mean,

He's got that line in the beginning,

First you get the money,

Then you get the power,

Then you get the women.

It's all about this whole thing,

This whole adolescent drive to accumulate,

This anabolic phase of bulking up metaphorically or physically.

But to a 50-year-old,

Scarface,

Or even to myself in my 30s,

Hey,

Scarface isn't that cool,

Right?

I think it's cool because I have fond memories of watching it when I was 14.

But now it's like,

Oh yeah,

It's just a lot of adolescent images.

So our fantasies reveal where we feel like we're low on a certain attribute.

And even this model of seeing yourself as having these different attributes and seeing other people,

Also kind of an adolescent worldview.

And I think this might actually be reinforced by video games and video game culture.

I have friends who have played a lot of RPGs.

And the way they talk about people,

I have this one friend,

He's played a lot of,

He used to be really addicted to RPGs,

And the way that he talks about people,

It's almost like he's comparing stats all the time.

It's like comparing how much XP you have in different areas of your life or how this person's more creative,

But this person's more like,

He's very much on stats and even how he talks about himself.

And I think this is from playing a lot of video games.

And I even remember in my early days in the pickup artist community,

I mean the pickup artist world was created by nerds.

Very left-brain guys who didn't get to date a lot.

Even the pickup culture,

This is idea of getting your stats up.

I remember the dating coach I worked for for a period,

He would say,

Oh yeah,

Your humor,

They talk about it like they're talking about my scorecard.

Like oh,

Your humor's really good and your touch is really good,

But your dominance levels are really low.

The way he would say it is like,

You have almost no dominance.

You need to work.

That's the stat that you need to get up.

And yeah,

I mean,

I used to think of it as like kind of a childish way to look at character development,

But actually it makes sense if you look at adolescence as a time to get your stats up as high as you can before the next phase where you're now using the stats that you've built up.

It does make sense.

Now,

I mentioned how teenage rebellion is essentially this archetypal fight of shifting Nietzschean terms from the camel to the lion.

What defines the lion,

I mean,

I might not have said that earlier,

But Nietzsche's phase that corresponds with this is the lion phase.

The lion rejects everything.

What defines a lion is that he's specifically fighting against what oppressed him when he was a camel,

When he was in more of a slave realm.

So Nietzsche pointed out the lion in that the lion is not really free because the lion is engaged in rebellion.

He's defining who he is as the opposite of where he came from or the opposite of what the perceived dragon or authority wants.

Very often when it comes to correcting an imbalance,

You need to go to extreme.

I spoke about this with Patrick last episode on how some of his fantasies were to overcorrect for some false beliefs he had.

I think that's useful.

Certainly if you feel oppressed,

It makes sense to have that feeling of rebellion.

A lot of the red pill community's advice comes from this lens of rebelling against feminism and the nice guy influences what they call blue pill ideology.

Again,

As I said right in the beginning of this episode,

It's a very useful doctrine for guys who grew up too soft,

Who just don't understand female nature or human nature.

But my big issue with red pill is that it's only from this adolescent phase of rebellion.

At no point does – I haven't read anything in red pill stuff,

Which I generally – I don't disagree with a lot of it.

It just comes from this idea that you always have to be at war,

At war with yourself,

At war with women and their impulses and their manipulations.

There's this presumption that you can never stop and you're always battling,

Which in my opinion is useful in the adolescent phase of the male psyche,

But it's not so useful in later phases.

But to be clear,

One of the reasons why I recommended red pill to so many people and why I bother talking about them in this podcast even though I don't subscribe to that worldview in itself is that especially for anyone in this adolescent phase,

Which could be actual adolescents,

Young men.

I mentioned earlier for an older man who's recently divorced and back onto the dating scene or even someone is starting a new career or entering a totally new field where they're now in this accumulation phase,

Maybe going back to study.

This is also a form of psychological adolescence.

This drive for power is so critical and one of the values I think of red pill ideology is that it allows men to not feel ashamed for the accumulation of power.

So much of it is because of female dynamics.

They always are talking about hypergamy from the evolutionary lens that women have limited eggs.

They want to use those eggs.

Connect eggs with the best genetic opportunity that the most alpha male is possible.

So it is all about power.

I mean,

A lot of it is about power.

Sexual dynamics occur at a level of our nervous system that is far more primal than our cultural ideas or our social norms even,

Which is why you often visit the whole trope of the bad feminist who believes in all of these things of men and women should be the same and this and that and women in power and all this independent stuff,

But in the bedroom,

They still respond to submission.

I've had a lot of friends and lovers in New York who had women who are feminists who had this kind of internal conflict,

This cognitive dissonance,

This pain because their ideology did not match up with their bodies.

Anyways,

Red pill world and a lot of the tactical stuff that they teach is based on the idea that because women want to maximize their reproductive success,

Which for women does not come from spreading a seed to a million places but getting the best one quality,

They have to test for power.

And most of the useful dating and relationship advice from that world comes from teaching men how to demonstrate and actually have the power to pass the tests of women so that they actually want to be with you.

I spoke about this a lot with Patrick in that last episode in that just like we were speaking about in how nature is metal and in nature,

Power is the only ethic,

When it comes to human sexual nature,

This is not the only thing that's true but is one of the big driving forces.

Women are testing for power because it's actually not a kind thing to her reproductive instincts to show weakness because she's not going to feel safe.

Even if a guy who's very pro-feminist and wants to—actually an example,

I was coaching a guy some time ago where he really cared about his girlfriend.

His girlfriend was a very passionate woman,

Let's say,

And he could not seem to make her happy.

She would ask her,

Like,

What is it that you want?

Can you just tell me,

And she would list off of all these demands,

And he would do all the things,

But there were always more demands.

It seemed like no matter how much he tried to check all the boxes on her checklist,

He could not really fulfill her.

And it reflected to him that actually trying to fulfill the checklist was failing in her eyes.

It might not have been conscious,

But every time he was basically in a subservient role,

She was not feeling safe because she did not want to be with a man that had to be told what to do because her millions of years of reproductive instincts are saying that only—maybe not millions,

Hundreds of thousands—were saying,

Don't procreate with a man who's not sure of himself.

So every time that he was doing what she wanted,

He was actually doing what she didn't really want.

Power is the thing.

And as Patrick mentioned on the episode,

He realized power is neither good or bad.

It is just a thing.

And you can only do good or bad with power.

So it's a critical thing,

And I think it's really great that the Red Pill community and other sources are taking the shame away from power.

It is a huge semantic disturbance to believe that power is bad.

But as I mentioned,

Adolescence is not the final phase,

And I think as any phase,

As infancy or boyhood,

To get stuck in adolescence,

To just stay here,

Is not useful.

My examples are Red Pill guys,

And I've mentioned pickup guys that I knew 10-plus years ago.

Kind of just staying in pickup mode,

They're never happy.

Their relationships tend to suck.

Guys who are my age or a little older,

They don't really want to be going to clubs.

I don't know what people do in COVID nowadays.

They don't really want to be living that lifestyle anymore.

That's not that interesting anymore.

But that's just what they know how to do,

And they're kind of stuck in this mode that was very fulfilling when they were 24,

Not so fulfilling when they were 36,

Or whatever age.

Not that there's a specific age you have to transition from one to the other,

But it's natural to notice a shift.

Even my friend Miska,

Who was on the podcast a few months ago,

And he's a little younger than me,

I think he's 26,

He was noticing as he's grown as a man,

He's just noticing this kind of natural desire for children.

And I think that that's our evolutionary longing.

Women have some version of that,

Just like women have a biological clock.

And I would define that as,

What defines this next phase of the king,

Is that you are no longer living just for yourself.

In fact,

I think the core of the king or fatherhood impulse is to oversee something beyond you.

Now,

What allows this transition from the warrior phase or adolescent phase to the king phase or fatherhood phase is what I call total victory.

And to use the slave-to-king myth images,

Right?

So it starts off as a slave in infancy,

Becomes maybe a house slave or a servant,

A willful servant,

Maybe a squire in boyhood.

He rebels,

He rebels against the authority,

Becomes a rebel warrior,

Goes out off on his own.

And then an anabolic accumulation phase,

Anabolic meaning your growth,

Anabolic steroids,

You're building your muscles.

Accumulation of potential energy of power.

But this rebellion,

If it lasts forever,

Your army's going to get wary,

Right?

No one wants to be in rebellion forever.

At some point,

You want to win the war and preside over the country that you just won.

And I think this is the natural impulse.

It happens at a certain age when perhaps what total victory specifically means psychologically is total victory over your insecurities,

Both material and immaterial,

Right?

Like I think a big mark of moving from adolescence into a more mature stage,

What we could call the kingness is you've kind of figured out what you want to do for money.

You kind of figured out what your purpose is,

Right?

Those questions are answered.

You're not living totally groundlessly,

Right?

Certain things have settled down.

The world might not be your oyster anymore,

And that is the trade-off.

It might not be that you can do anything or that you even want to do anything and everything,

But you now have stuff.

You've now come down a little bit to earth.

You've collapsed the wave function of all the possibilities of your future.

And some things have become,

I mean,

Things have become more secure.

And also the immaterial things,

Right,

Like your character,

Confidence,

Relationships with women.

I mean,

This is my big criticism of Red Pill,

Is that hardly anyone is ever talking about like really embodying it.

Or I mean,

Maybe it doesn't have to be spoken about because,

Again,

They're probably addressing someone with an acute problem where they do have issues with women.

But it seems like,

From my perspective,

It kind of perpetuates guys.

This ideology kind of keeps guys in this rebel warrior phase where I see guys who are,

Quote-unquote,

Red-pilled kind of still treating their wife like someone they need to continuously conquer.

In fact,

I've even seen this advice in Red Pill forums,

Whereas the actual guys who I think are most secure and happy in their relationships,

They've achieved this total victory where they don't even see a battle anymore.

It's like they've won so completely,

And to put it into the relationship dominance terms,

Their wife respects them so much,

Their self-esteem is so high,

They're so grounded their masculinity that the idea of doing some technique or making sure they're controlling the frame,

They don't have to check in on it anymore.

They've achieved unconscious competence in that realm,

At least.

I've also used the term total victory in a given relationship,

A committed relationship,

In dealing with your partner's insecurities too.

I've had this discussion with a few different guys who maybe are dating a woman who has past traumas or she's adopted an ideology that's not very useful for the relationship,

Some depolarized ideology,

Which just doesn't seem to work in an intimate relationship.

A lot of guys,

And this is even discussed in Red Pill circles,

Of controlling the frame,

Setting the reality,

In my opinion,

As I mentioned in the high polarity relationship principles episode,

There's a certain foundation of interdependence that is what makes a relationship between a masculine person and a feminine person work and makes it very fulfilling.

If you're with someone with an ideology that doesn't fit that or is just very traumatized that they can't be down with the interdependence that intimacy comes with,

It can feel like a battle or a war,

Rather.

But the idea isn't to get good at battling so that you can squash the opposition.

And just to be clear,

The opposition isn't your partner.

It's maybe the ideology or the worldview or the traumas that aren't useful.

But the goal should be to achieve total victory where now you've won the land,

You've defeated the wrong ideology,

And you've now achieved interdependence and harmony in your society.

No one wants to be at war forever.

So this fourth phase,

We had first infancy,

Boyhood,

And adolescence.

This fourth phase is where the war has been won.

You might still have rebellions,

Rebellions in the sense of your old insecurities might pop up sometimes and you have to battle them or you might have a relationship issue or something that threatens your polarized intimacy.

That's going to happen.

But you're the king.

That status has been established.

What do we mean by king exactly?

The king oversees the realm.

In the simplest human societies,

He had the chief who acted as the father of the entire tribe or the early nation states or even modern day countries.

There's this perception that the leader of a country,

The president,

The prime minister is the father.

We don't think of it so much like this anymore,

But certainly in monarchies,

There's more of that sense.

He is the protector of the realm.

He is the representative of the realm to everyone else.

He's what protects and provides.

He ensures safety.

He also ensures what to believe.

In red pill terms,

He provides the frame.

He provides the world in which people perceive things.

And that is from an anti-power,

You know,

I would call it woke or perspective that kind of shames this idea or maybe calls it toxic.

This is actually a huge gift.

There's a reason why men have evolved to find this idea appealing of being a king.

It's all the way down to some of our simplest myths of Simba can't just wait to be king,

Down into the lion king that you watch probably when you're four or five years old.

That impulse is almost the fourth phase.

It's the thing that we're kind of aiming for.

It's why you learn the ways of men as a boy.

It's why you accumulate power as a warrior.

If the warrior phase is all about anabolics,

About building up,

The king phase,

You might still expand your borders in the sense of growing your business or developing your character,

Learning new things,

Things like that,

Improving your relationship.

But here as a king,

You now are presiding over others and it's kind of like this transition point of not just anabolic of building,

But now it's like a shift towards catabolism,

Like of spending.

You have to care for your children.

You have to preside over your employees or your company.

And I think this father nature king archetype impulse comes over anything where you kind of want to take care of something or preside over something.

Even a man's impulse to water his lawn,

Which I never thought I would enjoy.

But this year,

I've cared more about my home than in other years.

And there is something kind of like archetypally,

And it maybe sounds super cliche,

And I'm thinking of my father watering the lawn all the time and for some reason caring about it.

I don't know.

I just care about it now.

It's about having a responsibility beyond yourself.

It gets boring to always be out just for your own enjoyment forever.

And I think when guys start to feel like sex is starting to feel meaningless,

The same type of sex that maybe was very enjoyable in their 20s.

Or I think I know a lot of guys who made a decent amount of money in their life and they're like,

Well,

Shit,

What is it for?

I've already traveled a bunch.

I've already had these experiences or even people who maybe haven't accumulated a lot.

There is this,

I think,

Natural movement towards wanting to look over something,

Basically to have a realm.

And while this could happen at different stages,

At different ages,

I think it does come along with this physiological shift of essentially passing your peak.

And it's not that you're not still virile.

It's not that you're still not powerful,

Not that you're still going to grow in some way.

But it's this essentially trade-off,

Whereas in peak adolescence,

You were at your highest virility but very low provisioning ability.

At the phase of life,

At the phase of the psyche of the king archetype,

You actually have accumulated some stuff already.

You have provisioning ability and you're no longer at your peak virility.

So it makes sense to make this trade-off,

Whereas there's this kind of competition between young men and young women of settling down versus not.

At a certain phase,

When you've had certain experiences as a man,

When you've accumulated potential energy,

It makes sense to start spending it and it makes sense to make the trade-off of settling down from a genetic perspective instead of spreading your seed as far and wide as possible.

You focus on the kids you actually want to raise,

Which I know sounds like very cold,

But of course,

For more selfish genes,

It is.

This is not to say that that's what anyone should do,

But it is to I guess de-shame or normalize the typical male instincts of wanting to sow your wild oats when you're young and then eventually settle down and focus on quality over quantity at some point.

Because your deadlifting max might be in your past,

But your wisdom hasn't peaked yet.

Your wisdom is going to keep going up,

And that's what's important for the king in the slave to king myth is his wisdom.

Now it is important that he had a warrior phase where he did prove himself and prove his character on the battlefield,

But he's not going to be the strongest guy anymore.

He's more there to be a model to other men now and model to other people.

He is now modeling the ideal man for his given tribe,

Which for people nowadays is typically their immediate family.

If a man decides to become a father and have a nuclear family,

He is now the model for everyone younger.

He is the model for his sons on how their boyhood imprints of masculinity will come from him.

He's a model.

This is actually something in my search for good parenting advice.

I did stumble on some stuff by Rollo Tomasi that I liked.

Unexpected that I would really enjoy red pill parenting stuff.

But he has this thing about raising daughters about how a man's role in raising his daughter is to model the type of person you want your daughter to be with,

To model your ideal future son-in-law.

That makes a lot of sense.

And this is something I've been thinking about independently because in my work with men I've thought a lot about raising a boy and what's ideal for a boy and how I would raise a boy and raise a son.

And I hadn't thought much about raising a girl.

And of course I'm expecting a daughter now.

So I have been thinking about it more recently.

And I think about these little moments of how I treat Nalaia,

How I treat our daughter's mother,

Is imprinting to her how she'll expect to be treated by men and how she'll react.

And so from things of what she'll put up with and what she'll appreciate,

But also her sense of humor with men and how secure she is with different things.

All of those things are being modeled.

And probably the type of men,

Maybe not the type of men she'll be drawn to during her so-called party years.

Maybe that'll be a rebellion.

Female stages of the psyche are a different topic,

Obviously.

But probably the person that she sees as being normal and seeing and determining as good values comes from the man who is her father figure,

Right?

So a man in the king archetype,

Maybe a man who is the king of his family,

An actual father,

Is modeling this.

The king role in a company or a team or a country is also doing the same thing.

Actually in 2016 when Trump got elected,

I was living in New York,

Most of my friends were very liberal.

A lot of people were very upset.

A lot of my friends were feminists as well.

My female friends at least.

And a lot of people were infuriated and heartbroken and upset.

And I thought it was kind of silly how people were so crazy about it because at this point I had already felt that elections were like a silly ritual that our country engaged in.

I feel ever more vindicated every election cycle by that worldview.

But one thing that I'm only appreciating now,

One complaint that I heard from women who were really upset that Trump got elected,

Because I would ask like,

Come on,

Okay,

He's said some messed up things,

His border policy is a little messed up,

But it doesn't mean he's going to be a bad president,

Right?

Maybe he has great financial policy,

Fiscal policy,

All that stuff,

Right?

A couple of them said,

Yeah,

But all of that stuff he says on Twitter matters because he's becoming the moral standard for the next generation.

Which I didn't totally buy.

I didn't think that was a reason to try to remove him from office.

But there is a point to that,

Right?

Especially to those in the boyhood phase,

Whether literal boys or adult men are still in the boyhood phase,

There is the chief male,

Which in the United States is the president of the United States,

In every country,

He is one of the core role models.

And he does imprint the country,

Imprint the young men of the next generation of what's okay.

He is the model.

He is one of the key models for the next generation.

And actually,

You know,

I mean,

Other really good red pill parenting advice that I got from Tomasi's third book on positive masculinity,

I'm actually hoping to have him on the podcast so I can ask him specifically about parenting from a positive masculine perspective.

Another thing is that,

And this is another thing I've also thought about before,

In that raising children,

The qualities that make one a good father are also the same qualities that make one attractive to women.

Being grounded,

Being secure,

You know,

Because kids throw shit tests also.

In the same way that women test for your strength,

Kids do the same thing,

Right?

And being a good parent to them,

Making them feel safe,

Which is really what they need,

Doesn't always come from making them happy,

Right?

If a kid knows he can get away with everything,

He might be pleased in the short term,

But he's not going to feel secure because his protector isn't secure,

Right?

You actually,

You know,

Leadership requires work,

And it is a responsibility.

It's not just about showing how awesome you are.

And you know,

Because this is actually another separation from nature in that nowadays,

One of the reasons why we see power as this negative thing is that there's all these people who abuse power,

Right?

All these tyrant kings,

All these Harvey Weinsteins,

All these people,

All this shit,

Right?

But to our hunter-gatherer ancestors,

Yes,

The strongest or wisest or most alpha male would become chief,

But that didn't mean he could do whatever he wanted.

Even if he was the strongest warrior,

And that's how he established his status,

If he was a total asshole,

Because they were such small groups where everyone knew each other,

Like these groups,

Less than 150 people,

Where people were bonded by direct social connection and not mythology,

You know,

When everyone had a direct relationship,

And if the group was small enough and connected enough that if they really found him to be an asshole,

All the so-called beta men could team up against him and kick him out,

Right?

So there was a natural check and balance,

And everyone had a direct connection with the chief.

Whereas nowadays,

Post-agriculture,

Where people stop being bonded by direct social connection and became bonded by mythology,

You don't actually know your king directly.

The king doesn't actually know you.

You have all these coalitions formed.

You don't actually know most of the people in your town or your city,

Nation,

State,

Whatever.

There's now an opportunity for – I mean,

There's a lack of check and balance.

And I think,

You know,

Viewed from that lens that in a healthy survival group and a healthy social unit,

There should be that check and balance.

Power is not a bad thing.

Power is a gift because in the right circumstances,

A sane person would be encouraged or have the incentive to use the power wisely.

I mean,

Most parents mean the best for their kids.

And for a long time,

Long before I really had any other opinion about parenting and what makes a good parent,

Really just from the perspective of talking to a lot of people about their lives where they felt fucked up by something in their childhood,

It seems like the only thing that really makes a good parent or the thing that I know for sure is good for parents is to be secure individuals,

Right?

And this is true for leaders or anyone who's responsible for others.

If you are insecure,

You're causing your nation or your family to be insecure as well,

Both emotionally but also with your semantic perceptions.

This king phase,

This phase four kind of separates from the Nietzsche model.

The final phase in Nietzsche's model is what he calls the baby.

So in Nietzsche's model,

Metamorphosis,

There's a sheep who follows,

There's a camel who works hard,

There's a lion who rebels,

Defeats the dragon.

And then the baby is the one who's no longer acting reactively,

Right?

Where the lion is defining his identity and purpose in rebelling against what oppressed him as a camel,

The baby is now completely pure.

And it's interesting that he uses the term baby.

It's kind of like,

I mean,

It's the fool archetype where there's like pure,

You know,

Starting from scratch with no imprints,

No negative imprints,

No imprints controlling,

No reactions to imprints.

You can really act freely.

This doesn't really correspond with the king archetype.

We could call a baby maybe a later phase of warriorness.

And,

You know,

Nietzsche wasn't necessarily going for stages of male development.

But I do want to comment on this thing in that Nietzsche probably stopped here.

He never got into a phase where you want to take responsibility over something greater than yourself.

Because from what we know of Nietzsche,

It seems like he never really got to this phase anyway,

Right?

He probably never even really reached the baby phase.

It seemed like his personal life,

Despite having very influential and useful and thought-provoking work,

Didn't always live up to his adages.

He didn't seem to be the most powerful man that,

You know,

One would think from his writing.

And it seems just like Freud,

All of his theories went back to sex because from what we know of Freud,

He seems to have been quite sexually frustrated.

So of course,

That's where his mind went.

You know,

Nietzsche's stuff about power and nobility and being able to act freely and not be oppressed probably came from the feelings that those were his core problems in his adulthoods.

Darrell Cooper,

Who's probably my favorite podcaster,

Modern Made podcast,

Has an episode comparing Nietzsche and Dostoevsky,

Which is kind of interesting.

I didn't actually listen to the whole thing.

But basically about how Nietzsche kind of was a loser.

And as much as I like his writing,

You know,

He didn't always practice what he preached.

But also,

So with this,

You know,

There's actually five phases that I have identified.

You know,

From my own personal experience,

I think I'm just entering phase four.

I mean,

Literally,

But also in my mind.

In fact,

I'm trying to catch up my mind to what's happening in my life.

I'm a father whether or not my mind goes there or not.

So I'm trying to really make sure that I enter this father archetype and don't hang on to adolescent worldviews or life strategies,

Let's say.

But I don't think that King is the last phase.

And I actually think even I call it the slave to King myth because you don't typically see hero's journey stories that go beyond Kingness.

But there is a phase after Kingness if we look at our biology.

You know,

The infancy and boyhood is pre-sexual maturity.

Adolescence is peak sexual maturity into Kingness,

Which is later sexual maturity.

But then,

You know,

Men go through something,

Go through andropause,

Some version of andropause,

Much later than women go through menopause.

But there's a point where genetically we are no longer passing on our genes,

Right?

We've perhaps had sons.

We've had our children.

Our children may be having children.

And we're no longer the best bet for our genes to pass on into the next generation.

Doesn't mean that we're useless though.

And this is the fifth phase,

Which is least appreciated in modern Western culture,

But very much appreciated in some older cultures,

Eastern cultures,

Indigenous American cultures,

Which is that of the elder,

You know,

African cultures.

Basically anything that's not like industrialized European still seems to worship their elders because this is a recognition that they hold the wisdom,

Right?

They are past their virile years,

The elder men.

They are no longer fighting in battles.

They're no longer leading the country.

They're no longer passing on their genes.

But they have a wealth of information.

They're now in the phase of total catabolism,

Total spending of resources,

Total breakdown.

Whereas adolescence was about building up,

The king father phase is about transitioning into spending your resources for your progeny.

As an elder,

It's all about spending,

Right?

This is like a creation of your will,

But also your will of wisdom,

Right?

Bringing it on to really making it not about you anymore.

You are no longer a player in a game.

You are there simply to guide others.

And I do think,

Even though I hope this actual phase is a long ways away from me,

I mean it's the final phase,

The next one is death,

Is also a critical phase.

I don't have any firsthand experience from this,

But there is something that I think all people,

But men also get out of guiding younger men at any age,

Right?

Even if you're a young man,

It feels good to coach even younger guys in sports or life or whatever.

When you're an elder,

That's all you're.

.

.

I mean,

You can see this.

This is an opportunity for great fulfillment.

And in a hunter-gatherer past,

These were critical people in the society,

Right?

They were worshiped.

They were consulted by the chief,

Right?

They might not make the key decisions,

But they have all the experience and know things.

And from the Kaczynski perspective of achieving fulfillment where you don't fear old age or you don't fear death,

I think there's something beautiful about really being happy to have entered this phase,

Really being happy to make your life no longer about you.

I mean,

This is where you don't see this in the hero's journey directly because the hero never reaches this phase.

Most hero's journey stories stop at the end of adolescence or into the kingship phase.

But you do see that the elders,

I mean,

These are the mentors.

This is Gandalf.

It's not his adventure,

But he's there to help.

This is Obi-Wan.

Obi-Wan literally sacrifices his life for Luke Skywalker because Obi-Wan did his warrior phase,

Did his hero's journey in the earlier episodes of Star Wars.

By the time Luke Skywalker is around,

He's just there to guide Luke.

It's not about him.

He doesn't even care about his own life anymore.

It's about helping the next generation,

Helping the success of your project need to pass on your genes even more.

And in our paleolithic ancestry,

In those times,

This idea of old,

Senile,

Dependent people,

I don't think,

I mean,

It wasn't common.

For one,

People probably stayed a little bit sharper later because they were just active.

And two,

They probably also died.

Like,

There probably wasn't,

You know,

For someone to live where they can't really support themselves at all and they're offering no wisdom to the tribe probably didn't last very long.

In fact,

I think,

I can't remember if this was in sapiens or in the selfish gene,

But there's something about,

I think it was in sapiens,

Where certain cultures,

Still like tribal cultures in Africa,

They actually have a practice of killing the old people once they got to the point where they're no longer a net positive,

Once they become a liability.

So I mean,

That's not a very nice way to end speaking about this fifth phase,

But it's just based on the idea that is also a very useful phase that was seen and had a very critical function to our ancestors and it's largely been lost in our culture.

I mean,

As Kaczynski pointed out,

We kind of overvalue,

We overvalue early youth,

Right?

People are,

Women,

Men,

We're always trying to act like we're 20 again.

And cool,

There's a lot of things you could do when you're 20,

Especially when you have the wisdom of 30,

40,

50.

It's like,

Man,

If I had my 20 year old body with my 30 year old mind and my 40 year old mind,

What could I do?

But like,

That's just not how nature works.

Unless you take steroids,

Which I'm not against that idea.

It's on the possibilities of my future.

But yeah,

Because the whole point of this,

The reason why I want to go through these phases is that there are different strategies we've evolved to have for different phases of our evolution.

I do think a man is most fulfilled when he passes from phase to phase in a natural way,

Which means he fully completes one phase and goes into the next,

Right?

He doesn't carry his mother relating strategies into his adult life.

He doesn't carry his teenage rebellion into his father years,

Right?

That doesn't make sense.

It's not useful.

And since we don't have our rites of passage,

Since we don't have these mechanisms kind of forced by our environments,

It behooves us to take an active role of recognizing what phase we're in,

What phase we want to be in,

What phase have we been kind of moving towards but maybe resisting,

And recognizing that there are things that are very useful in some phases and not for others.

And taking away the shame,

Right?

My message to young men is like,

Man,

See the world.

Don't tie yourself down.

Check out everything.

That will ultimately make you a more secure father in the future.

You don't have to settle down when you're 24.

Don't let yourself be shamed into it.

And then when the time comes,

The time comes,

You know?

So just as a recap,

First phase infancy,

It's all about receiving.

Second phase boyhood,

It's all about obeying and learning and modeling.

Third phase is about rebelling if necessary,

Fighting your battles,

Accumulating,

You know,

Building up and finding your own way in the world.

The fourth phase,

Kingness or fatherness,

Is about ruling,

Presiding over others,

Over something beyond yourself.

And the fifth phase,

The elderly,

Is about spending everything you got for the next generation and guiding.

Hope you enjoyed this episode.

This is the five phases of masculinity.

I've mentioned a few other episodes you might want to go back to if you're interested.

One is how to be attractive to women.

Speak about dominance hierarchies in that one.

There's high polarity relationship principles.

I mentioned my recent conversation with Patrick from Germany.

And I probably mentioned some other.

Oh,

And then master morality.

If you're into the Nietzsche stuff,

Check out my episode on lambs and eagles,

Which is probably our most listened to episode in the last year.

If you liked the Rondo podcast,

It means a lot to me if you rated it,

If you like it.

And share this episode if you want to share it with someone.

That's all I got.

I probably had more calls to action,

But I don't remember.

All right.

Goodbye.

Let's have fun.

No optimus,

Say optional,

Nag,

Uncomfortable You want a piece of me,

Take the whole thing golden Not stolen,

I give it away Truth ain't black and white,

Even actin' right,

Right There's still a little gray,

I'm comin' from Poland Straight to your head,

Both

Reviews

I got tired and couldn't listen to the last 20 minutes, but I'll be back. Very interesting to hear this even as a 69-year-old woman dating a 69 year-old man. Thank you for your work, you remind me of my son