Steel Sharpens Steel: On Male Bonding

There are certain aspects of the psyche that men can only access around other men. Building off last week's Warrior Archetype, we look at the hero traits as they pertain to male-to-male interaction:- Why honor, courage, and strength are universal "masculine" values, roots of chivalry in all-male hierarchies, what vulnerability actually is between men, creating your own rites of passage, and how to start an effective men's group (as opposed to a circle jerk).

Transcript

And in every culture, There was a rite of passage, It was something that involves a direct challenge to the boy for a couple of reasons. One, To show him what he was made of. And we're going to talk about the virtues in a second, Strength being the first one, Right? In modern consumerist society, Has all these people, All these men surging with testosterone but with no outlet, Right? There's nothing that he needs. There's no, There's very few things, There's very few functions that are readily available to the boy who's surging with testosterone and has all the impulses that go with that, Right? So if he doesn't go into video games, If he doesn't jerk off to porn all day, What does he do? He has all this aggression and that comes out in weird ways because he's never grounded himself in emotional security or recognizing his funk, Like the actual function of these impulses. When two guys can make fun of each other and they both can laugh, They're basically mutually submitting and saying, I'm willing to suffer for you, Right? Like obviously a joke at your expense isn't really suffering suffering, But there is like an ego check, Right? When a guy makes a joke about someone else, He's like reminding him, Hey, You're not high and mighty, Like I'm not putting you ahead of me, You better not put yourself ahead because if you don't take this joke well, It shows that you think you're better than us and that's not cool. The Ruondo podcast is an exploration of the unconscious and game of life. Be sure to visit ruondo. Com to get a preview chapter of my upcoming book, Infinite Play and free access to my content library. Enjoy the show. Hey, What's up folks? Good morning here from Thailand. Today we're going to speak about tribal virtues. I'm working off of last week's episode on the warrior archetype. I tried to save everything that has to do with male to male connection bonding interaction for this episode. Last week, If you didn't catch it, I spoke about the warrior archetype from an individual level, From an internal perspective. But there's a lot to say about man to man bonding. The book Iron John talks about this, Has spurred different branches of thought when it comes to masculine development that I agree with and disagree with. Today's episode was largely inspired by Jack Donovan's The Way of Men. I'm not going to speak about his book too directly because we're going to hopefully have him on the podcast soon in the next weeks or so. I'm going to save topics within his book for then. But it did inspire me to speak about the warrior archetype from a group level because many other episodes we've spoken about dominance hierarchies and whether I've directly said it or not, A lot of the times what people think of is men in a group competing against each other and that is something that happens typically. It's a natural instinct to compete against other men. But there's also an aspect of male bonding and I'm calling this episode, I don't know if I will necessarily but steel sharpening steel is a concept that I like because there's certain aspects of a man's development and character that can only come out in all male groups. As you I'm sure have noticed if you are a guy, When there's only guys around, Guys act differently. So we're going to speak about the virtues that can only be developed around other men. We'll speak about male to male interaction from a cooperative perspective, Which is not actually that different from the competitive but obviously putting a more constructive spin on things. We'll speak about rites of passage. And last year I wrote a post in the Masculine Underground group about how to start men's groups especially during COVID now with a lot of people starving for social connection. I've been recommending this even more to other guys about starting their own men's group or starting some sort of all male social something. So I'm going to share my thoughts on that and what I find to be effective because I have a lot of criticisms to things that are called men's groups. It might just be the hippie social situations I find myself in but they're like particularly on Masculine. That's a loud airplane. So I'm going to speak about that. And if you haven't catch this live, I know this is the last minute thing in the Masculine Underground group. Feel free to comment, Ask your questions. But if you are listening to the recording or watching the recording on YouTube, On Facebook or wherever recordings are, It's going to be my public service announcement for every episode forever. I highly suggest that you get off your screen, Download the podcast version of this. The content is exactly the same. It's not like I have visuals up. So you can listen to this episode while going for a walk, While doing some exercise, While doing something with your hands as opposed to sitting and looking at your phone or your computer. Other quick announcements. Later this week on Thursday, We have a great episode coming out with the BJJ Globetrotter Christian Graugart. Christian has a company or community of people who travel the world doing jiu-jitsu. And other than just liking travel and jiu-jitsu, I really appreciate his kind of Taoist philosophy bringing certain warrior nature to like a Zen-like perspective. So he's a real cool guy. That episode comes out on Thursday. Next week, I'm going to talk about the Lover archetype. I wasn't really planning on going through Moore and Gillette's King Warrior Magician Lover but I felt called to speak about the King archetype and the Father Nature a few months ago. And then last week was the Warrior. Might as well go into the Lover and Magician at some point. So I'm going to speak about that next week. And actually this episode is kind of a gap bridge between the individualist, Selfish and not necessarily a bad way but self-driven, Go out into the world and seek adventure part of male nature which is the Warrior archetype and the Lover archetype which is connecting with the feminine whether internally or externally. This is kind of a bridge because before you can really be complete in the world of being a lover. Actually I won't say before but to be a complete fully expressed individuated man, You do need to access both your masculine and feminine side. The feminist side we're going to say for next week but there's more to say on this. So I'm going to start off with a quote from one of my favorite films that I reference all the time. I mean it's really when it comes to male mythologies. I mean Chuck Palahniuk who wrote Fight Club said this. I mean there's only a couple of things for men to look at. Women have tons of mythologies in contemporary fiction, Right? They have the traveling sisterhood, Yaya pants thing and there's like something that always comes out, Joy Luck Club, Whatever. There's only a few things for men. There's Fight Club and I'm actually blanking on the other thing that Chuck mentioned but there's really not a lot of male mythologies. Actually my book which will come out eventually I'm hoping can fill in that gap especially for our generation but from Fight Club, Tyler Durden says while he's in the bathtub, We're a generation of men raised by women and I'm wondering if another woman is really what we need. Fight Club hits on so many themes of the modern generation of men so acutely with like its analysis of consumerism and a lot of things. I'm not going to retell all of Fight Club but this line kind of represents what also the book Iron John which kind of spurred the men's rights movement in some ways speaks about which is recent generations of men. I'd say specifically from the advent of second wave feminism, Certainly young men who were boys during the rise of third wave feminism have created this kind of attachment to the feminine and you see a lot of guys who grew up who are basically afraid of their own masculinity. I think this is truer now more than ever. I mean it's barely an opinion of mine. It's like pretty close to fact and because of that, There's like new kinds of insecurities whereas like historically, Maybe men were too masculine in some ways or some guys were like destructively expressing their masculine edge and you can look at all the things that come from masculinity that are negative. We spoke about some of those in the warrior archetype. Obviously violence is a masculine expression. It's not always a good thing. In fact, Most of the time, Violence is probably not a good thing but nowadays, There's a lot of guys who are afraid of their edge and there are certain virtues that guys can only access around other men. As society has muted masculinity, A lot of boys are kind of attached to women. I spoke about this more in the mother complex episode but so many adult guys have this unhealthy attachment to either their literal mother or their concept of mother and you can see this when guys turn their girlfriends into a mother person. I hear this from my female friends all the time like my boyfriend treats me like his mother and part of that is on the woman. Part of it, I think, I won't get on to a whole rant on feminism but part of it is that in a situation where a girlfriend feels like the mother of her boyfriend, Of course there's some aspect of her acting like a mother. It's like kind of misplaced nurturing but at the same time, If that dynamic exists, If you're in that dynamic, You have to recognize where am I acting like a child, Where am I relying on the woman I'm sleeping with for emotional support or things that I should and can either give myself or get from other men or get out in the world where I don't have to have this interaction with the feminine whether it's in mother or a girlfriend form in a way that I'm using that to fill in the gaps of my self-esteem. The warrior archetype is the phase of development in the male psyche that should start during adolescence like when our balls drop and testosterone starts surging through our bodies, All of the impulses that teenage boys have to do hard things, To be competitive, To go to explore the world, A lot of these impulses are kind of channeled into video games because that's what's available to most guys or porn and video games basically but those impulses are pure. Those impulses are we've evolved for thousands of generations to have those impulses to send us on journeys to do risky things that maybe will end up killing us but if they don't, It will give us the true emotional security to then be a leader, Be a father, Be a lover, Be whatever. I talked about that last week so I'm not going to repeat that but this is a loss of natural virtue and even though there is an independent aspect of the warrior archetype especially when the boy actually becomes a man and picks up the sword or the axe or the hammer and goes out into the wild and does that, There is a transitional phase where the preteen or the young adolescent is taken from his family or actually I spoke about this, I'll just run through this. The traditional rites of passage, This is described in Iron John which is a famous book if you haven't heard from it. Actually someone was just mentioning in the comments, Robert Bly referred to invisible substances that invisible substances gets transmitted between men as we gather and get real between men and boys. This mystical lens that is in our bone marrow, I'm not familiar with that. In traditional, Essentially pre-agricultural societies from which we've all come, Most children, Prior to puberty, You can treat them as asexual, They're just kids. They spend their time in the land of women, They get all their nurturing from women if you're a boy prior to puberty, I mean he's not that different from a girl in terms of his relationship to men and women, Like he's just a kid. In the land of women traditionally back when biology necessitated our gender roles or rather the other way around, Boys were around women, They got their nurturing from there, They were dependent on their mothers. Prior to puberty or around the time of puberty, They got abducted essentially by men, Obviously the traditions in different cultures were a little different, But they were taken from the world of women into the world of men and put through some hardship, That was the rite of passage. In every culture there was a rite of passage, It was something that involved a direct challenge to the boy for a couple of reasons. One, To show him what he was made of and we're going to talk about the virtues in a second, Strength being the first one. He needs to know that he has the ability to take on shit, Whether it's nature, Whether it's killing an animal, Whether it's challenge with other men, I mean there's different Native American, I mean the Native American vision quest, Obviously there's many different versions of that, Putting him out into nature without food, Without water, Maybe attached to a tree or piercing through his body, Something that puts him through pain where he has to dig deep and recognize that he has some abilities that maybe he didn't realize he had when he was a boy. The second piece of that is kind of like if you caught the episode on social constructions of reality, There's a negative aspect to it but traditionally a young human who's surging with testosterone and he has muscles for the first time, He has aggression for the first time, If he's not aligned with the collective, He can do some bad stuff and this is kind of like, I mean I hate the term toxic masculinity but this is where this comes from, Right? Modern consumerist society has all these people, All these men surging with testosterone but with no outlet, Right? There's nothing that he needs, There's very few things, There's very few functions that are readily available to the boy who's surging with testosterone and has all the impulses that go with that, Right? So if he doesn't go into video games, If he doesn't jerk off to porn all day, What does he do? He has all this aggression and that comes out in weird ways because he's never grounded himself in emotional security or recognizing his funk, Like the actual function of these impulses. So anyway, The young man now recognizing his strength has to go through a hardship, Usually something that is humiliating or humbling, I mean humbling and humiliating literally mean the same thing even though they have different connotations because then the boy recognizes, Okay, I have this immense strength but I'm still powerless, I mean powerless in a sense without my collective, Like there's a reason why I need to commit myself to the tribe so the boy comes back from the rite of passage as a man and he recognizes, Okay, I'm really powerful but my best use of this power, The most fulfilling expression of this power is to do things that benefit my society which back then was usually a tribe of 50 to 150 people. A lot of things kind of break down in our modern tribes that are hundreds of millions of people because yeah, We can't handle that many relationships, Dunbar's number. I just want to peel back for a second, I got excited and I jumped ahead. I do want to speak about, First I want to speak about the, Continue on this with the origins of why these are specific to men. I do want to speak about masculine virtues, This is somewhat referencing Jack Donovan's book, I really like the way he laid it out and then third, I'm going to end with my take on how men's groups should be formed because I'm very frustrated with a lot of things that are called men's groups. I want to speak a little bit about my own experience with this because if you've listened to this podcast, You know that I grew up with a lot of insecurity around my masculinity mainly because I was really shy and I just thought that made me less of a man or less useful as a person and I did a lot of hyper masculine things growing up and naturally I think I was drawn to that. It wasn't like I was always, It's not like I got into boxing, Wrestling just to prove myself, Although there was an aspect to that. I had this impulse maybe driven by my insecurity or because in regular social situations I just felt like I couldn't keep up with people who are louder or more confident or had more bravado, But I've always been into like fighting for some reason, Like that's always been like an interest of mine whether it's like military battle tactics or combat sports or whatever. But a lot of things were driven by my insecurity and a lot of times I would throw myself into these hyper masculine environments whether like rugby teams or like the Marines, I went to Officer Canada school and I always felt even worse. I felt like I didn't know how to interact with guys who were really potent or really strong. And part of my journey has been connecting with my feminine side I think and I'll save that till next week on the lover archetype, But a lot of me developing real grounded confidence came from also recognizing that I had certain unexpressed aspects to my oxytocin driven side. But to be honest I didn't really feel, I still felt like this insecurity and like to admit for a while after I became really competent and confident in connecting with women, For a while I mean in my mid-twenties or so I spent almost all of my time around women. Why? Because I just felt that okay I can really empathize, Girls really like me, Obviously sexual validation is a huge boost to the ego and all that stuff. And I would always feel a little uncomfortable around really masculine guys because it exposed to me something, Exposed to me that there were areas that I wasn't adequate, Right? With women I felt super adequate, With men I was like I don't feel so great. But even that started to nag me because it's like maybe two or I guess three years ago now I started traveling Asia, I spent a bunch of time in Bali and I just want to speak about this a little bit. So Ubud, Bali is an interesting place, It's where the book and movie Eat, Pray, Love takes part or at least the love part of Eat, Pray, Love takes place. So a lot of people since that book has come out have moved to Bali to find themselves especially women, Older divorced women, Younger college age women, Everything in between go there to like find themselves and do yoga and eat vegan food. So I showed up there for the first time in 2018, Early 2018 and I was shocked, I mean there's like a five to one woman to man ratio, It's like something crazy like that. And in a lot of the guys they were gay because I mean it's like a very feminine environment, It's like vegan, Hippie, Yoga everywhere and I was like wow this is amazing because not only are there a ton of women and very few men, Very little competition, Right, I mean all the women are doing yoga all the time, They're super healthy and they're super thirsty, Right. It's the only place in the world I've been to where I'll walk into a cafe not dressed like anything in particular and then all the women stare at you. And like there's nothing special about me, Like a lot of guys have this experience when they walk into like, Because there's so many women and so few men and over there in an environment like that the bar for masculinity is so low, Right. Like if you can just make eye contact and keep your back straight and like keep your wrist straight like you're already more masculine than a lot of guys there and I don't say that, Well whatever I say that the way I say it. So at first I was like I can't believe this is like such a great kept secret like I don't want to tell anyone because like all these bros are going to come here and like you know it's going to ruin the ratio. And I was wondering like how is it that there's so many women here, So many attractive women here, So many like eager women here and like it's not flooded with guys, Right. Because like anywhere else I've been like New York or anywhere else like if there's a place with a lot of attractive women a lot of men show up, Right, Naturally. Then I realized after a few months that it's because the environment was so feminine that if you're a masculine person you just feel uncomfortable. Like there's something that doesn't feel right because I was there for a couple months and it was amazing and then I started to feel like I feel like I'm losing a part of myself like a part of me is atrophying like I end up growing my hair long which I don't I mean mine but like I started like acting a little bit more feminine than I felt was good and I just like I had to be around some guys. So I became like obsessive about weightlifting during this time like there's something it's just like I felt like I was being sucked up into a void of yin and it was like draining what was authentic in me. So I think that's why it's funny like in this hyper feminine environment it's kind of protected itself from masculinity because like anyone who's masculine doesn't feel good being there. I referenced that in my cult episode too. Even if you're a guy who seeks the feminine because you feel more secure there's something that's lost or something that's missing. I know a lot of guys who are like great with women maybe they like did a lot of pickup stuff or whatever and like they can really take advantage of attachment theory by acting avoidant and getting anxious women to like them and like becomes a very easy thing but they still shy away from men and they always have that insecurity and it usually shows up in like their purpose and their ability to follow through on things and commitment and that's and then anyway this is important. I just want to tell one more story because I this is true even down to the extinctual level because I think you know we speak about masculinity a lot of people are like oh well your ideas or constructs blah blah blah culture. I will say one more thing so one of my really close friends female friend childhood friend she has a nephew or she had I mean this nephew is probably I don't know but at this time this is maybe a few years ago I was like a two year old boy her cousin was raising a single mom and this boy grew up in a very matriarchal environment. It's growing up in a matriarchal environment. It's like he was only like the father was out of the picture so he's only really spent time around women and it's a two year old boy or maybe even maybe even it was one and a half because he wasn't speaking yet. I remember my friend invited me to a party and like I get together it was like her cousins all women right. I was the only guy show up like halfway through and her little the little boy who's maybe one and a half which is like dancing around being cute getting all this like oohs and aahs and cuteness and all this validation even though he can't even speak is getting all this validation from these these these women right. Eventually he knew that like he's just loved and he was comfortable and he was just being cute in the way that children know how to be cute and I walk in and I wasn't I wasn't you know I wasn't saying anything and he's just dancing around and he's laughing and he's playing and everyone's like you know going on whatever and then he turns around he sees me immediately goes like this right. There's a little kid he doesn't know anything I mean all he could tell on some level that was I was different than everyone else like I was a male human right and immediately he straightened up and he sat down and he just sat and he was nervous and it means make him nervous right. But it shows you like even like down to like a child level like a pre toddler even there's something where he knew that he was not going to get the same type of good giggly googly nonstop validation for me right at one look at one glance he could sense it right not because I'm a mean person I mean I love kids but like you don't get this automatic validation for men and this is important part because I mean I don't know the kid right I don't know how he grows up but someone who only grows up around women who's used to getting that nonstop validation and this is like you know one of the roots of the mother complex will not feel secure around men because he knows that men are going to challenge him. Men aren't going to give him validation just because he's the opposite sex. There's something like and I think this ties into participation trophy culture where you know if you grew up getting validation from not accomplishing stuff or not winning it leaves this void in your heart right even if it feels good to get a fake trophy it's like it leaves this void like you're not sure if when the shit really hits the fan can you really handle stuff because I don't I didn't really earn that trophy I didn't really earn the validation you know I mean I got the validation from women whether it's my mother or whomever just for being me which is nice you know it's nice to like know that you're worth something just for being you we'll talk about that in the lover archetype and we spoke about the anima next week but there has to be some like there's certain virtues that you can only trust in yourself if you actually earn them this is why competition is so critical and putting yourself into hard things are so critical so men actually act differently around men because we of course we interact differently like we are we are the same as opposed to the certain things in women that you can appreciate just because they're women there's something that's not natural to you so so one thing in how men interact and how men bond is like we give each other checks naturally women show offer friendship or offer connection by immediately validating each other right like you see two women and they want to be friends what do they say like oh I love your shirt like where'd you get it blah blah blah that's like the sub communication of I think you're great I want to be friends I'm not a threat to you I'm not going to try to steal your man I'm not going to try to undermine you or kick you out or ostracize you from the social hierarchy like that's when a woman says oh I love your blah blah blah I love your hair that's her way of saying it right that's why it's so critical when women meet each other if they actually want to be friends they say that if they don't if they don't say something like that they have to close up they have to guard themselves this guy gonna steal my boyfriend blah blah blah men are a little different right men show these signs of respect by validating each other's strengths so on the surface level it might be like some sort of like interest right you show interest in a person I mean this is true for any sort of gender but there's something that is to really show respect to each other you give some sort of challenge or check and is often in the form of humor but I want to before we get into the virtues and stuff so one thing with millennial guys that Dr. Robert Glover mentioned when he was on the show a few months ago or I guess it was over a year ago is that a lot of people rag on millennial men and you know this the millennials and younger right like and women even say this right like younger guys have lost certain bits of their edge right this is the we are the least masculine generation ever at least before you know as far as this era or I mean certainly probably throughout history but Dr. Glover did mention that we are the most empathic right millennial guys and younger seem to be the most emotionally aware they seem to dress better than previous generations like they're in touch with their feminine side they're in touch with oxytocin they maybe we've grown up with more oxytocin receptors because of cat photos on Instagram and more likely feminism and how culture shifted to reward more feminine virtues which is why young guys are more emotionally aware I hear this a lot from my female friends who like in their 30s or early 40s who dated both generations they're like millennial guys and younger will say can I kiss you and it's so gross I've heard this like I have a friend who's 40 who's dated younger and older and she's like she can't believe that someone would ask can I kiss you where is if you've grown up in the me too movement that's actually not a bad move right like for a 20 year old guy with a 20 year old woman that might be almost expected I mean I don't know I'm in between these ages but there has been a shift and I think you know with consumerist and finalization of people this whole idea of like being a expecting validation or softness or like being super emotionally aware is not enough I mean the empathy part is not bad but this this over infantilization certainly is not healthy so one way that people and the reason why this is missing and you can look at fatherless homes or shaming of masculine all-male environments like you know everyone wants to make fun of fraternities and like these kinds of groups but they are critical for developing male self-esteem so actually so I want to when we talk about male bonding one of like the the highest levels like the opposite of hey I love your sweater between women is making fun of each other right you can see this in throughout various ways like guys when they're close they make fun of each other you can see this in Gran Torino the Clint Eastwood movie like Clint Eastwood takes the young Hmong kid under his wing he's trying to show him how to be a man and he shows him how him and his buddies like make fun of each other and it's funny if you haven't seen the movie it's a great movie but so he's trying to teach the young kid of how to make fun of other guys because that's how men bond so the kid comes in and says something like really derogatory to Clint Eastwood's friend and then they were just like well you can't say that which I mean it's humorous but it shows that because what it is when two guys make fun of each other it's kind of like puppies play fighting if you ever seen two puppies playing what they're really doing is pretending to kill each other like they they might be wagging their tails and jumping on each other but what are they doing they're trying to put their neck their their mouth on each other's neck like they are practicing play as a practice for competitive life skills right any kind of play I can look at sports all of these things I develop both the mental skills and the physical skills to conquer an opponent but so when when when two guys make fun of each other it's it's a sign of male bonding because essentially what you're doing is one you're demonstrating courage that like I'm willing to like dig into you right like I'm not afraid of you I'm showing that I'm willing and then when the person accepts it when the person laughs and then sends it back it's almost like it's like bending the knee it's like it's showing mutual submission which is critical when we talk about two people if you look at like where all of our testosterone driven virtues come from or their functions and in violence or strength or whatever when two guys can make fun of each other and they both can laugh they're basically mutually submitting and saying I'm willing to suffer for you right like obviously a joke at your expense isn't really suffering suffering but there is like an ego check right when a guy makes a joke about someone else he's like reminding him hey you're not high and mighty like I'm not putting you ahead of me you better not put yourself ahead because if you don't take this joke well it shows that you think you're better than us and that's not cool right there's like a it's like a it's a whereas like maybe the feminine bonding is like about boosting each other up masculine bonding is about making sure we stay at the same level or not not going high and mighty which maybe seems like a negative thing I think a lot of people see this as toxic masculinity but this is critical right like if you don't have those checks you don't know you don't know where your ceiling is you don't you don't have an opportunity to prove yourself and you have all this like bolstered up fake self esteem that you see a lot since the participation trophy culture became a thing but it's also it goes down to a critical piece of like actual development of character and the reason why you know all certain virtues are considered masculine is that when you when you laugh at when someone makes fun of you and you make fun of them and you both can laugh at it you're saying I'm willing to suffer for you which is when we go back to those rites of passage of like it's not enough to just show a boy that he's strong as to show him that he needs to use his strength for the benefit of other people when you're willing to laugh at each other you're basically saying I'm willing to do hard things on your behalf to write and it's showing that you're not just using your potency for yourself and this is where like all of male man-to-man respect comes from is can I trust you to hold down the fort for us right I mean I do love Jack Donovan's concept or at least what he talks about in his book Way of Men about all of male virtues are there to protect the perimeter. If we think of our pre-agricultural ancestors you know women obviously get pregnant not saying that they have to or whatever I mean obviously a lot has changed in modern society but back then you know our functions in a tribe a lot of it came down to our biology women back then there's no contraceptives so they're probably pregnant half the time or with small children breastfeeding a lot of time so what do the men do like the men we've evolved to be sexually dimorphic because men don't get pregnant they might as well have more muscle and protect the perimeter right when the women and children are vulnerable someone has to protect the perimeter of you know from invaders from predators from the from the weather blah blah blah so all the things that men inherently instinctively respect in each other come down to can I trust you to protect the perimeter protect the perimeter and you know being able to laugh at each other is one of these things. I kind of just like a random tangent I'm reading this book that I'm eventually gonna do a podcast episode on called Liber Null it's a western occult book I'm actually trying to get the author Peter Carroll on the podcast he's the first proponent of what is known as chaos magic very different topic but in the book he speaks about certain principles that tie in a lot to like the Jungian psychology stuff that we often speak about we're speaking about like different emotions and their functions and how pretty much every emotion has an opposite like fear and desire love and hate laughter is the only emotion that is its own opposite like laughter is like is a is the highest experience of emotion because it's like there's nothing anyway I'll leave it at that like laughter is is its own opposites the highest emotion of like actually seeing the entire field and accepting and approving of it and getting off on it to use other language. Alright so the three virtues I want to speak about is our when it comes to male male respect our strength their competency courage and honor. Let's speak about courage first I have this out of order on my page but courage is the willingness to enter tension period right I spoke about that a lot in the warrior archetype like one way to activate that in yourself is to initiate tension right it's not enough to just show up to the battlefield and wait for the enemy to come to you it's like can you can you enter that and this shows up a lot in life like whether it's saying the hard thing confronting the person you have a hard time with or telling the woman that you're into that you're into her like all of these initiations or like I use the sexual example right like a lot of guys if they're passive in sexuality or hesitant it actually depresses their neuroendocrine system like they actually they might they're what would become testosterone might actually turn into cortisol and they become more and more stressed and then they have an issue getting it up later because they've actually through the behavior of not initiating they've allowed their nervous system to depress and go into prey mode. I spoke about that extensively last week but as courage matters between men because the first thing is willingness right like if there's a zombie apocalypse if there's if barbarians come over the hill if it starts snowing and we have to build something to keep our children from freezing to death or go hunting like can I count on you to throw the spear or swing the hammer when the time comes which is why when guys shy away from tension and this can be seen in like the simple experience of guys making fun of each other if you shy away from it if you get butt hurt because someone teased you about something you did it shows like okay I can't respect you or I can't you know I can't trust you to hold things down because even from a little bit of discomfort you fall away that's where courage that's why courage matters so much and why especially between men you inherently lose respect for someone who shies away from hard things or things that are uncomfortable right and we have so much respect for people because like if you look at the movie I mentioned this last week but if you look at the movies that typically make guys cry I don't know if Rudy is a popular movie anymore I mean I know it came out like over 20 years ago but you know Rudy or like any of these are there 300 like movies where guys try and fail it's not even about the winning right 300 obviously they all die right they die but they die for a cause and Rudy the kid wants to be a linebacker for Notre Dame he never really makes the team but he gets that one sack at the end like it makes everyone I mean makes guys ball why because you can see like he you know he suffered and he suffered he suffered but he was still brave enough to keep doing the thing and that you know and we inherently have respect for people like that the next piece is not just enough to have the willingness it's like can you actually do it right like it's great if someone's willing to pick up an axe and run into battle but if he's too weak to even lift it well that's also useless so inherently we all I mean this goes across the board men women whatever we respect competency I mean specifically in men right it's one of the more attractive traits and this is why Omar Pani spoke about this and he was on the podcast at one of his appearances like before dating skills were discussed before like leadership became like this complex thing like in the early 1900s leadership training was synonymous with public speaking training like or even back in like ancient Greece or in many other societies oratory was one of the things that was respected as like one of the primary masculine skills why because it showed competency right if you were eloquent enough to string words together and make arguments people could trust you to lead a group in battle or to organize the field right because being able to protect and provide doesn't just come down to whether or not you're strong enough to swing a weapon it's actually when it comes to humans a greater skill is can you organize a bunch of people to swing their weapons together like that's actually a more useful skill and that's why on sports teams the best athlete is always the captain which is something I've always wondered about because like when it comes to like any sports team just being good at the sport doesn't mean you're the best leader right like some people are terrible at giving instruction in fact very often the nationally gifted athlete is terrible at guiding other people because like he naturally is good like how can he teach the other kid but we still need the leader to be really good at the sport because how can we trust him like he can say all these perfect things but like if he can't do it himself I mean sometimes just being able to sink the sink the shot yourself is enough an inspiration to everyone else and then finally the third virtue is honor right this idea of honor I was tempted to go say honor courage commitment as is the Marine Corps motto I mean we're keeping it a courage strength or competency and honor honor is such a critical virtue for men because when it comes to potency right going back to the rite of passage idea of like all of these young men now have testosterone surging through them they have the potency to create or destroy honor is where guys can trust okay when my back is turned are you actually gonna be with the tribe right when my back is turned can I trust you to not sleep with my wife or you know not abducts or like steal my steal my crops or steal my sheep like this idea of honor so critical on our many levels like can I honor essentially is like a person is honorable if we can trust them to do what they say they're gonna do whether it's like actually do the hard things like you know I mean a lot of times when we speak of honor culture sociologically very often we're talking about like will a guy back defend his name and I won't go too deep into this but uh you know it's it was featured in Malcolm Gladwell's book Blink where they're speaking about how in the American South there's this deep honor culture right like in the American South traditionally if a man insulted your wife and you shot him you would not be convicted right because in the American South which was according to most theories the reason why there's honor culture in the American South probably because of the Wild West because without the without without the law to uphold justice for you you need to uphold your own justice but a lot of the roots are from the people who settled the Americans eventual Americans who settled the American South came from Northern Europe in the highlands where everyone was where most people sustenance came from raising cattle or raising animals and animals are really easy to steal like wheat you know it's very hard to steal someone's entire wheat crops but it's very easy to steal someone's horses or steal someone's sheep or steal someone's land and if someone did that and you didn't go after them and kill them then everyone would know oh we can steal the rest of his land like you needed to have a reputation of violence for anyone to respect you for people to not steal from you and for your family to live on which is why honor culture or honor became such a honor in the in the defending your name sense became you know naturally evolved into becoming a dominant strategy sociologically but there's also honor in just keeping your word back to like pre agriculture again tribal leadership before civilization was able to evolve in a way that they were able to have standing armies and kings were able to have a people do violence on their behalf to keep everyone in line before tyranny was possible back in like these small groups of like 50 to 100 people tyranny wasn't really possible like in those situations and I think this is why you know right-wing politics kind of glorifies this because they kind of go back to small unit leadership they go most right-wing everything believes in like independent governance as opposed to centralized government governance the reason is because in these small tribes naturally the government was afraid of the people right it wasn't like a thing that you had to uphold at the Second Amendment like that was like you know if you're there's only 25 guys in a small tribe the biggest and baddest might rise to leadership but if he's an asshole to everyone if people can't trust him if like he always goes back on his word if he never follows through if he's selfish if he if he does anything that isn't doesn't give him a sense of honor everyone else is just gonna gang up on him and take take you know and kill him right like in a small group naturally the the leader is afraid of the people in the sense of like the leader it has to uphold certain values which is why I mean and back then like you know the leader would be expected to mediate conflict right between two guys there there's a dispute over food over something they would go to the leader who would mediate if they didn't trust that he keeps his word they didn't trust that he was honorable one or both parties wouldn't want to go to him so like for any for anyone to be king in this or chief in a small tribe he had to have the respect of everyone both with his courage his willingness to do hard things his strength or competency his ability to do hard things but also was he honorable enough that we can trust his judgment right because they can't trust his judgment in a small group there's no army right everyone is the army so they would just be like no I'm not gonna do that there's no police force everyone is the police force was like well if I don't trust you if I don't trust your code I'm just not gonna follow you and then society breaks down which is why these ideas of tribulary were so critical pre agriculturally and even though even though in modern society we have a standing police force none of us are directly in contact with our leader like no Americans very few American citizens actually communicate with the president or president-elect like there's this anonymity which allows for tyranny and allows for oppression because we're not our brains aren't meant to organize in these groups this big our emotions still fall on us like I spoke about this last week a lot of things that a lot of masculine or testosterone driven virtues that we've evolved to have honestly are somewhat obsolete in the first world 21st century life right unless you're in the armed forces unless you're in the police force unless you're in a gang where you're actually fighting over territory whether that's the right thing to do or not like you unless you're in a situation like that you don't really need to demonstrate strength courage and honor on a regular basis but our emotions still run on these you can call them outdated or you know obsolete circuits if you will but our emotions still run on that right this is why these kinds of things still get us emotional when we watch movies these are why this is what causes respect between people whether or not they're necessary traits anyway I want to say one thing I forgot to make this note not saying this is the right thing but if you I don't actually don't know if it's true anymore with modern culture but when I was a kid you know 20 years ago between guys between boys the accusation of being gay was like the worst thing right like a lot of boys I mean don't even or when they first learn or even before they know what the word means right they throw this word around and I'm not saying that's a good thing certainly want to accept people of all orientations and whatnot but the reason why this is chosen as an insult instinctively for many boys is that it has nothing to do with homosexuality and in my opinion it's just like there's this concept this instinctive concept of these virtues these masculine virtues of strength courage and honor and like something about like throwing someone into a category of non-man which I think is what little like boys who are trying to just insult each other do you know not really thinking about it obviously lacking compassion in many ways but they're just throwing this out because like that kind of accusation is what it's like it's like the the worst challenge on an instinctive level and I you know Jack Donovan speaks about this in his book Jack Donovan is actually a homosexual guy he doesn't use the word gay because he feels that as far as I understand from his writing gay culture kind of over rid homosexual culture like not everything not every homosexual is part of gay culture I'm gonna let him speak about it when he's on the podcast but I didn't really think about that I never thought about it before being a straight guy but I thought like oh yeah like there are certain memes that everyone assumes is part of part of homosexual culture I don't mean to comment on this necessarily but like the whole idea behind like the limp ristedness like when someone speaks in a certain voice that we consider to be a gay voice or shows limp ristedness they are self-identifying in a way like they're they may I've asked gay friends like what is the thing what is the deal with like gay flamboyancy like why is this like kind of a thing that so many guys who sleep with guys have like this mode of behavior seems like such a specific way of being and gay guys I know gay friends have said like oh it is a way of like identifying each other and like most guys turn up the flamboyancy when they're in a game bar or like a gay gym or something but then I read Jack Donovan's interpretation which I understood if like specifically like let's say limp ristedness like why what is the deal with like making your wrist like this that kind of shows that you're you behave a certain way of certain sexual proclivities and my understanding of what Jack Donovan was saying is like well think about it like if you're showing a limp wrist you're kind of demonstrating that you're not good at swinging a sword right so you're kind of letting everyone know like that that's not the role I'm gonna play in our tribe right whether you know whatever your opinions are on it like you know I'm not I certainly I want people to be however they are but as far as like the roles the the necessary roles I don't mean like culturally imposed roles but like the the actual functions that testosterone driven behavior leads to for the tribe virtue I usually has to do with swinging tools and like doing hard things with other opposing forces if you are demonstrating that you're not good at holding tools you're letting everyone know like hey I might look like a guy but this is not the function I'm choosing to play in society I have a different function like that's my understanding of it now I'm curious to speak about with Jack himself so anyway I want to end with with my take on men's groups there's anything else oh I want to say one more thing on ethos so as you maybe know like there's the three categories of we spoke about oratory a second ago the three categories of making arguments of convincing