Warrior Archetype

The Warrior Archetype is the set of testosterone-driven impulses that have a man develop his competence and courage. It's also associated with aggression which is why it's often attacked as "toxic masculinity". This episode discusses the function of this archetype, how it relates to mental health/confidence, the hormonal basis, and how to embody it in a constructive way.

My website is redone and the Masculine Archetype Challenge is available again. If you want a guide to connect to your warrior

Transcript

Culturally,

In the last couple decades,

In the first world at least,

Masculinity has been shamed under attack,

Has made a lot of younger men and boys ashamed of anything masculine.

You're actually doing a disservice to the world,

Doing a disservice to women if you're not embodying your warrior archetype.

This warrior archetype actually has an effect on your hormones and therefore your mood.

In order for women to feel safe and leaning on you physically or metaphorically,

You have to have that strength.

In order for you to have the impulse to do the hard things that make you useful to society,

You have to have this warrior archetype.

So the challenge to the modern man is finding those opportunities to danger,

Finding those scarce moments in a way that's constructive.

When you're in pray mode,

When you're in stress mode,

It's actually damaging to your body.

You actually become better at winning the more you practice winning.

You can't support the woman's weight,

You are useless.

Men have to do things to prove themselves as men and that means confronting death.

Courage essentially is the willingness to die.

The Ruando podcast is an exploration of the unconscious in the game of life.

Be sure to visit ruando.

Com to get a preview chapter of my upcoming book,

Infinite Play,

And free access to my content library.

Enjoy the show.

Good morning here from the Eastern Hemisphere.

Today we're going to be speaking about the warrior archetype.

A couple of months ago,

We spoke about the king archetype and I kind of want to go backwards in the sense of backwards in male developments.

The king archetype as we spoke about then,

As I define it,

Is where a man recognizes his need to serve others,

To be in charge of something,

To be protector of the realm metaphorically or maybe literally in some form.

It's the father archetype.

We start caring about other people.

We're using your abilities not for your own selfish gain but for other people's benefit.

It's a necessary stage of development.

I think men need that to feel complete.

But before that and actually in order to embody the king archetype securely and well,

You need to connect with what we call the warrior archetype which is the phase of cutting your teeth that usually spawns in adolescence of going out on adventures,

Doing things that maybe seem selfish or for either your own needs or your own interests.

But it's a necessary stage in order to be able to serve other people and to be a complete secure man.

You do need to experience this warrior archetype.

And I actually think there's been a few discussions in the masculine underground group about the lack of masculinity of course.

I mean this is a kind of ever-present cultural conversation especially in the personal development world or at least amongst people that care about their psychology.

And yeah,

I think the warrior archetype is one that's gotten really muted in our culture and a lot of guys are skipping this step.

Like they go from child mode into trying to be in charge of things and you can see there's holes in that.

You can see this in intersexual relationships.

We're going to speak about this today.

Before we jump in,

Couple,

I mean announcement type thing.

I actually have a question for everyone listening and a little public service announcement and then a preview.

So I've mentioned this a couple of times in the podcast.

I've had this thing where I don't like looking at – I don't like thinking about marketing.

I don't like thinking or looking at stats.

I kind of – I don't know.

I have a huge resistance to it but keeping notifications from Red Circle which is where I post my podcast.

I'm not plugging them.

I'm no affiliation other than I do use the service about how like I should be looking for sponsors because my numbers have reached a certain point.

So I actually looked at my stats recently and it shows cities,

Right?

So it's like where I have the most listens and always I've had a lot of listens in New York because I spend a lot of time.

I guess that's why I have a lot of listeners in New York and LA and Sydney a little bit.

I'm not totally sure about the Sydney.

I know one person who listens to me in Sydney.

But then I saw like one of the top cities,

Actually the top city in the last couple of weeks has been Eugene,

Oregon.

So I'm just curious.

For anyone who's listening to the podcast,

I'm curious who's in – I think I know one person who actually I think has been on the podcast who lives in Eugene.

But the number of listens doesn't make sense.

I don't know who in Eugene,

Oregon or Portland also is listening to me.

So I'm curious if you are listening to the podcast and you're in one of these – if you're in Oregon,

Hit me up.

I'm curious to know who you are or how I have so many listeners in these places.

So you can hit me up on Instagram or Facebook or I should be easily findable.

I would love to meet you and just know – I would like to know who's listening.

It's motivating to me.

The other thing is with this whole thing about my artist marketer lemma,

If you do follow me on Instagram,

I haven't posted in like forever.

I just started posting recently at the urge of my love and my friends who are – well,

I'll talk about that later.

But most of my posts lately have been about getting off your phone.

That's the only way I could bring myself to post.

Basically,

A little public service announcement.

If you're watching this on Facebook,

If you're watching the recording especially,

If you're on YouTube,

I know this is going to be terrible for my YouTube analytics,

But I highly,

Highly urge you.

If you're going to sit here and listen to me talk anyway,

How about you go into the show notes or the description,

Find the link to the podcast,

Put in some ear buds and listen to this episode while walking.

There's no reason why you should watch me on the screen.

There's no way you should be sitting on your ass right now.

I'm thrilled that you want to look at me on the screen,

But how about you go do some push-ups,

Stretch,

Do some pull-ups,

Do some yard work,

Whatever,

Right?

When I listen to podcasts,

That's what I do.

I stretch and then I do pull-ups every like five minutes.

I was actually thinking,

Given this is the Warrior archetype episode,

I was actually thinking about having someone edit in like a woodblock sounds like every five minutes you could get up and do some pull-ups.

But I figured that would probably be annoying.

So I'm just going to urge you to whoever watches the videos,

Try the audio version instead and do something with your body.

I feel very strongly about this even if it makes my internet presence whack.

Final thing,

So this episode,

It's a big topic.

I'm actually going to split half of what I was originally planning on saying here to next week because there's a lot to say about the Warrior archetype.

Today we're going to focus on the independent virtues like the self-directed virtues attached to the Warrior archetype.

There's a lot of other aspects of the Warrior archetype that has to do with relational situations,

Specifically male-to-male bonding.

If you caught the King archetype,

The King archetype essentially,

Especially when it comes to the social realm,

Is the King is the father of the unit,

Right?

The King is in charge of things.

When you're embodying the King archetype,

You are leading,

You are making decisions on behalf of your protecting,

Your guiding.

The Warrior archetype has a social aspect which is more of a peer-to-peer connection and for men or in masculine,

Testosterone-driven environments,

The Warrior archetype is how men bond with each other and respect each other.

It's a different take on it.

It's not the dominance hierarchy exactly.

It's more of a peer,

It's how men learn to respect each other and trust each other.

But that's a whole other thing.

We're going to save that till next week.

I'm speaking about tribal virtues,

Male-to-male dynamics,

Not in a dominant sense but in a more cooperative sense.

And I'm also going to speak about how to start men's groups there because that's been a topic that's come up periodically in the Masculine Underground Forum.

And I had a post about it last year but I figured I should make a podcast on it as well.

That said,

If you want to catch these live and participate and drop your comments in,

Join the Masculine Underground Group on Facebook.

Forum.

Masculineunderground.

Com will put you in the group.

You get to vote on what the topics are and you get to comment live.

So I'll start with a little story.

I was thinking about talking about jiu-jitsu but I think that's a very obvious thing to talk about with the warrior archetype.

But actually one of the things that got me thinking about this or at least polling the group on what they want to speak about this is that I've been taking tango lessons lately which I know doesn't seem warrior-like.

But there's a lot of correlations between combat and grappling in tango.

But tango is a very sexually polarized dance if you don't know.

There are very clear roles in tango.

The men lead,

The women are the flare.

I mean,

Kind of David did ask masculine and feminine.

And physically,

You have to lean on each other.

There's a necessary interdependence for tango to work.

But the woman tends to lean a little bit more on the men.

And something like my tango instructor says is like,

Yeah,

You're kind of leaning into each other but as the man,

You need to be solid because there's going to be moments when she needs to lean on you.

And this is both from the kind of sterile open embrace where you learn and then the close embrace which you see in the movies where you're basically chest to chest and rubbing against each other or glued to each other,

Not rubbing.

So I'm in this beginner class.

I'm a beginner and it was interesting seeing how so many women have an issue with leaning on the man.

Women don't want to follow the guys.

And there's different ways to interpret the reasons for this.

I mean,

I could go off on that.

But it is very frustrating for everyone because if the woman doesn't lean on the guy,

It's really hard to tango.

Tango dance requires it.

So as a guy,

There are moments where it's like a little frustrating.

At the same time,

I was thinking about it,

Like if I was a woman who had typical dating experiences or typical experiences with men in the 21st century,

I don't blame them for not wanting to lean on guys.

Like when I think about most of the guys I know or I think about my female friends' stories about guys who are dating,

I get why women don't want to lean on men.

There's a tango,

It's showing it physically but there is a distrust of men to be able to hold their own.

So of course,

A woman,

Why would she get on her tippy toes,

On her heels and lean on a guy when she doesn't trust him to actually support her?

And I think this comes down to the atrophy of the warrior archetype in men culturally where a lot of guys don't have backbones,

A lot of guys aren't potent enough where other people can trust them.

And part of it,

I don't want to go too deep into the political side but culturally in the last couple of decades,

In the first world at least,

Masculinity has been shamed under attack and especially in the last decade,

This idea of toxic masculinity has made a lot of younger men and boys ashamed of anything masculine,

Ashamed of anything aggressive which we're going to speak about specifically with the warrior archetype.

So of course,

They don't embody that strength required for other people to trust them to lean on them.

So even though a placid warrior-less guy,

Like a guy who doesn't have a warrior archetype is a lot safer seeming because the warrior archetype is the archetype of strength and aggression,

Maybe it's more comfortable in a hyperfeminist culture for instance or setting or something.

But even women don't want to lean on a guy like that.

So this is one of the reasons why,

I mean aside from the self-esteem bonuses and the sense of confidence a guy gets and well-being,

Actually we're going to speak about physically like there are certain aspects to health that the warrior archetype affects in men.

We're going to speak about hormones and sex drive and stuff.

You're actually doing a disservice to the world,

Doing a disservice to women if you're not embodying your warrior archetype because humans are meant to be interdependent.

We're sexually polarized to depend on each other for different purposes,

Different skills.

Sexual dimorphism exists because humans do better when they specialize and then work together and this has kind of been killed in the last century through consumerism where it's instead of having this interdependence with each other where I mean to use the sexual setting masculine people rely on feminine people for feminine traits,

Feminine people rely on masculine people for masculine traits.

We're all kind of broken up into our separate pods as kind of the theme of Fight Club and relying on consumerism to feed our needs.

If you've read the Brave New World,

The same idea.

We're losing that interdependence and specifically with men not having the warrior archetype makes you kind of useless in the interdependent realm.

Like if you can't hold your own,

Anyway,

I think you get the point.

You whoever is listening.

So the warrior archetype is the archetype of independence.

It's where men cut their teeth.

It's the archetype of going out into the wild and seeking challenge.

It's the archetype that's required in order to embody your kingness because when I see guys who try to jump into leadership roles or I mean I'm at the age now where a lot of my friends are having children or a lot of people have children,

Early 30s and I can see this in people and guys who want to have kids or think about having kids and there's like a deep insecurity in them whether they have children or not because they haven't actually gone out and cut their teeth.

And I think I don't have children yet but I spent a lot of time speaking with a lot of men about their father-son relationships and there is like a little boy wants to look up to his father as having at least been a warrior even if he's old.

And if you haven't cut your teeth in that way,

There's no way to magically have that confidence that's going to allow you to feel sure of yourself when you're guiding someone whether it's a child or a team member or whatever.

The warrior archetype is where you develop that confidence through action that gives you the real emotional security that has you have like real confidence.

So it's necessary.

It's the archetype of independence and I mean when testosterone spikes up in a young man during puberty and he feels aggressive and he wants to go on adventures and maybe he gets hooked on porn and video games because that's the easiest expression of the primal rage that comes with testosterone,

This is what he's seeking.

We naturally seek this during puberty and if you don't have expression for that as with any primal instinct,

It perverts.

So it's also where you discover your potential.

So I just want to make a note here.

I just thought of a tangent that I don't want to forget.

So today we're going to speak about masculine virtues related to the warrior archetype,

Courage,

Violence.

I'm saving some of them for next week when we speak about tribal virtues but we're going to speak about the independent ones,

The self-driven ones.

And we speak about this in three sections,

The anthropological,

Biological roots of these things.

We're going to speak about the predator and prey archetypes when it comes to our hormones.

This is not just a conceptual idea.

This warrior archetype actually has an effect on your hormones and therefore your mood.

And very specifically,

This is an extreme example but guys who have sexual dysfunction,

Psychogenic sexual dysfunctions,

I always end up talking about predator and prey with guys who I'm coaching around these issues because if you're stuck in prey mode,

Meaning you're not in your warrior archetype,

It actually depresses your hormonal system.

So a lot of guys who can't connect to their aggression,

Their warrior predator archetype,

Their bodies actually shut down in a sexual situation.

There has to be a necessary.

.

.

You have to be able to access this part of yourself in order to penetrate anything metaphorically or physically.

And then finally,

I'm going to speak about the virtues I just mentioned,

Mastery and courage.

I spoke about consumerism a couple of minutes ago.

There's a quote by Camille Paglia that I actually meant to pull up but then I forgot to.

It's my bad.

But basically,

Camille Paglia is a woman obviously,

Controversial writer but she has a quote about how men are given a boost of testosterone because they need to.

.

.

Actually,

Wait.

I did pull this up.

Sorry.

I prepared this podcast two weeks ago and I forgot that I actually did write down these quotes.

Oh yeah,

Here it is.

Okay.

Camille Paglia said in her book,

Free Women,

Free Men,

Masculinity is aggressive,

Unstable,

Combustible.

It is also the most creative force in history.

Women have menstruation to tell them that they are women.

Men must risk or do something to be men.

Nature gives males the infusion of hormones for dominance in order to hurl themselves against the paralyzing mystery of women from whom they were otherwise shrink.

The more dominant the male,

The more frequently he contributes to the genetic pool.

Nature rewards energy and aggression.

This ties to what we opened with.

In order for women to feel safe and leaning on you physically or metaphorically,

You have to have that strength.

In order for you to have the impulse to do the hard things that make you useful to society,

You have to have this warrior archetype.

It's a controversial statement but men are expendable.

Males are expendable.

It only takes one man to repopulate the earth.

So the ones who are valued,

Whether genetically or emotionally,

Are the ones who are willing to do the hard things that make them valuable to the group.

Just because you have a Y chromosome doesn't mean you're useful.

Genetically women are always useful because they have a womb and wombs are valuable and scarce.

So men,

If you're not contributing by doing the hard things that testosterone is for,

You're kind of useless.

It's not to be hard on men but especially in today's day and age,

It's harder and harder to find necessities for testosterone.

Actually,

This brings us to our first point.

So in pre-agricultural society,

Males had to exhibit strength in order to survive or in order to pass on their genes.

There were many hard things in pre-agricultural society.

Our nomadic ancestors had to chase down animals to eat.

They had to battle against the elements.

There were other tribes that were constantly trying to steal their resources and fight.

It was required for anyone with more testosterone,

Anyone who didn't get pregnant,

Anyone with slightly more muscle mass,

You had to exercise the warrior archetype literally.

You actually had to fight.

If you didn't do that,

You probably died or no one wanted to mate with you because a man male human being in one of these pre-agricultural tribes who ran away every time there was conflicts.

We know this today.

Our sexual instincts still run on this primitive or old programming.

The male instinct in testosterone essentially is to take on and defeat any sort of opposition.

So the hard parts of nature,

Prey that wants to not be eaten,

Predators who want to eat your children and enemies.

21st century man doesn't have these necessities at least in the first world.

None of us,

I actually want to get Jack Donovan on the podcast.

I just read his book and actually next week's episode is largely influenced by his ideas.

So Jack Donovan,

If you hear this,

I want to talk to you.

We're speaking about the perimeter.

Once upon a time,

These tribal groups,

The perimeter was right there.

The physical perimeter,

If you lived with 150 of your kinsmen,

The perimeter was like the edge of wherever your tents were and the males had to keep an eye on it and defend it from predators and enemies.

Now let's say if you live in the United States and you're not in the armed forces,

If you're not in the police force,

The perimeter is so far away from you physically that it's kind of hard to conceive of it.

Like if you live in a city in the United States and you live a cushy latte lifestyle,

You don't even know where the perimeter is.

This idea that there are people who have to defend the United States from attackers that allow you to sip your latte in peace and not have to carry your own weapon or ever think about your safety for the most part,

That is a huge luxury and it's very unnatural.

And while I'm not trying to glorify the violent past of human beings,

I'm glad that I can be sitting here and talking to you on a Facebook live or however you're consuming this and I don't have to carry my sword around.

There is something,

I mean men have evolved specifically for this.

So if we don't have this outlet,

This part of our nervous system,

It's the type of feeling that a woman with a biological clock gets.

It's like there's some part of her,

It might not even go along with her ego,

Some part of her wants to fulfill her instinctual destiny.

Let's say that women should or men should do anything but our emotions are still tied to this old programming,

This over 30,

000 years old.

Like this is like our attraction to other people is based on this,

Our emotional well-being is based to this.

So for 21st century first world man,

It's hard to find this opportunity for danger but we all seek it.

And I am saying this as a definitive statement.

I know people would argue with like,

How can you say this generalization,

There are feminine men who are naturally feminine.

Actually I had this great,

I've been having this like semi-debate with a female friend of mine about,

We're talking about drag queens a lot.

And I think if there's any evidence of people having archetypes that maybe don't exactly fit their body,

Like drag queens are my example.

I know a few drag queens,

You've ever meet a drag queen and spend time with a drag queen,

Like a real drag queen,

You can see it's a person in a male body who clearly has a woman archetype.

I mean,

Drag queens are women,

They're even more feminine than most women and they happen to have a penis.

So I have no issue with that,

In fact I want people to express the way they are.

So for someone who is a typical straight guy,

A guy who has an androgen system,

I mean,

You're only doing a disservice to yourself by trying to act like you don't have these potentially violent or aggressive impulses.

Like any young man or man who's drawn to video games or porn or sports,

Like this is your pre-egoic self that wants expression,

Right?

Guys are into sports typically or into strategy or into,

This is the androgen system,

This is your testosterone system that wants expression and it gets expression through conflict because when we look at pre-agricultural society,

If you look at the masculine testosterone driven traits and the feminine oxytocin driven traits,

They both have their functions,

Right?

We've spoken about this in many other episodes,

Like both of these modes have a need of expression in human beings,

For everyone,

Like this masculine side and feminine side is important but as a man who has more androgen receptors and oxytocin receptors,

You get more benefit from the male expression and specifically when it comes to function,

In our pre-agricultural ancestors at least as far as we can tell,

There was a time for both,

Right?

In times of scarcity where resources were slim,

Where two or more entities were competing over the same limited thing,

Whether it's,

Let's say,

Chasing down a prey animal,

The prey obviously wants to continue living and the predator or the human wants to eat it,

They both need their outcome to happen for survival and they both can't possibly happen,

Like the prey can't survive and the human can't eat at the same time,

Right?

So that's a moment,

That's a scarce moment where there's,

It's impossible for everyone to get their needs met,

Scarcity,

Where testosterone is king,

Right?

Same thing with enemies,

Like two tribes fighting over a plot of land,

They both can't have the land,

Right?

Or maybe there's not enough resources for all the humans to share it,

Right?

There just isn't,

So they have to fight.

That's what testosterone is for.

Or in modern day business,

And I think the business world is changing with the internet and skewing feminine as well,

Which I think is one of the reasons why boys are suffering in school and stuff like that but,

Yeah,

Testosterone is for scarce moments but there's a lot of times in human existence where there's not scarce moments,

Like where there's an abundance.

Your tribe finds a giant strawberry patch where there's like way more strawberries than the people need.

There's no reason to be in testosterone mode,

Right?

You might as well flip into nurturing oxytocin mode and if another tribe comes,

Like,

Hey,

There's plenty of strawberries for everyone and you share,

Right?

There's situations where each mode of behavior is useful.

So anyway,

In a situation,

And I think this is one of the cases with the modern world where we live in the most abundance ever in human history in the first world,

Like even if you're poor,

Most poor people in the United States still don't have to worry about starving to death,

Right?

Starving to death is quite rare in the first world compared to history.

Anyway,

So the challenge to the modern man is finding those opportunities to danger,

Finding those scarce moments in a way that's constructive.

And I would argue that when guys seem,

Like when people attack toxic masculinity and have all these examples of guys doing insecure things,

Yeah,

Most of those things are insecure because the guy can't find a healthy expression for his warrior archetype,

For his aggression.

So anyway,

Men need to find something related to danger.

They have to find environments or scenarios where there's some sort of scarcity where they actually need to use their inner hammer.

The inner hammer has to hit something.

If it doesn't have a function to build a house for the tribe or to bop a prey animal on the head and feed it to the children,

It's going to find something.

And then movies like Fight Club hit on this where we don't have wars to fight.

There's this lack of necessity of masculinity,

The more and more abundant the world gets.

And this is one of the reasons why men have this increasing rise in male self-esteem issues and whatever.

And if you look at,

Because we're running on over 10,

000 year old programming here,

Our nervous systems haven't changed to match the fact that we have cell phones and Whole Foods and all that stuff.

And I made a note here.

I made these notes two weeks ago,

So I forgot what I wrote here.

New market forces lower the bar from masculine virtues.

You actually can get away with not being much of a man in today's day and age.

You don't actually have to be strong.

There's a lot of guys who are spineless,

Who can get away with and survive.

And even with our cultural climate,

They might even be seen as,

They might even be liked.

Whereas other societies would really,

If you think of ancient Sparta,

A weak man would be ostracized and kicked out.

Nowadays in a super liberal environment or a very feminist environment,

A weak man might be celebrated,

But still no one's going to want to fuck him.

Because our sexual attraction still runs on this Paleolithic nervous system.

I just made a note about looking at the MGTOW people.

If you listen to this podcast,

I have a strong disdain and contempt for MGTOW.

But the root of their frustration is exactly what we're saying.

Masculinity is not necessary.

The rules of society are shifting in ways that,

For thousands of years,

The rules of society did really strongly favor masculine individuals,

But now it's shifting.

I have this disdain for the MGTOW people because to me,

They're just complaining about the system as opposed to taking care of their shit.

The warrior archetype doesn't complain about the systems like,

Okay,

Here's the system,

Maybe the cards are stacked against me,

I'm still going to fight and try to win.

Shifting gears here,

I'm going to talk about predator and prey,

I also want to mention this quote.

So a lot of this frustration that I think a lot of guys feel in their disconnection from the warrior archetype is shown in mythologies and fictions that stimulate us.

So I bring up Fight Club all the time.

Fight Club obviously talks about consumerism and there's all these quotes from Fight Club about how men of this era don't have wars to fight and whatnot.

We're the middle children of history.

I just want to bring up this quote from Breaking Bad.

Breaking Bad and Fight Club are the two mythologies that I bring up in coaching a lot because they hit on this thing.

This is a quote from,

I forget what episode,

But it's where Walter White,

Spoiler,

He sells drugs,

He's a meek warrior-less professor who has cancer and sells drugs to feed his family and then he becomes a badass.

He breaks bad,

That's why it's called Breaking Bad.

And there's a scene where his wife is worried about him getting shot because a colleague just got shot and she wants him to turn himself into the police.

And he says,

You clearly don't know who you're talking to,

So let me clue you in.

I am not in danger,

Skyler.

I am the danger.

A guy opens his door and gets shot and you think that of me?

No.

I am the one who knocks.

So this is where we're going to the practical application.

We're not going to talk about hormones because this quote very much encapsulates the embodiment of the warrior archetype.

He is not the thing that runs away from tension.

He's not the prey.

He's basically declaring that I'm the killer here and it's a dark iconic moment in the Breaking Bad series because his character has changed.

I want to talk about predators and prey because I feel it's very important to,

And I love archetypal psychology of course,

But it's very important to ground this in the body.

Our emotions are tied to our hormones to really know what we're talking about so we don't just blow it off into airy fairy land,

Which I think is one of the main issues with a lot of the cultural discussion around masculinity is everyone is coming up with,

A lot of people are coming up with these ungrounded ideas that have nothing to do with material reality and material reality we can see in our bodies.

So I'm actually going to reference a different type of source.

If you do follow me on the interwebs,

I got really into kettlebells last year,

A little plug to old Paul Salzullin's book,

The Quick and the Dead,

And he references from a fitness perspective why it is healthier to have the hormones of a predator.

He says,

Reading from his book,

Prey is stressed,

Predators are not.

Stress and adrenaline exacerbate the free radical damage initiated by lactic acid.

This is basically saying that when you're in prey mode,

When you're in stress mode,

It's actually damaging to your body.

And one way to understand this is like if you're a rabbit and you're in a scarcity moment where let's say a fox is chasing you and the fox wants to eat you,

You want to not be eaten,

You might as well spend every bit of energy you have to get away because there's no reason to save anything for your well-being if you're about to be eaten.

Great,

You're blissed out and you're happy but you just got eaten,

Well that's the end of it.

So prey animals have a huge adrenaline response.

Adrenaline is damaging to the body,

Frequent adrenaline is not good for the body.

It can cause oxidative stress as I just read,

It's not good but if you're about to be eaten,

You might as well spend everything,

You might as well waste away all of your energetic resources to save yourself.

Whereas for the predator,

That's not true.

If the fox is chasing the rabbit and it misses,

The rabbit gets away,

It's not beneficial to the fox to have wasted all its energy or to have spent energy in a way that is now damaging to the body because the fox has to go chase another rabbit.

The rabbit just needs to get away and there's actually as Pavel references in the book,

When a prey animal gets away,

Some prey animals and certain fish like the way that their cellular energy systems work in their cells is that if they sprint,

They physically can't move for hours.

It's like they've spent all of their energy and they have to hide under a rock and not move for a while.

That's how prey animals have evolved.

Whereas predator animals have a different kind of system that replenishes faster because if you're a lion or a shark or a fox or something and you miss,

You have to go chase something again.

Predators have to have a better sense of well-being because there's no benefit to the predator to spend its well-being on catching one meal.

He was saying that as a human being,

He's talking from a workout perspective,

You have a lot more benefit as far as your longevity,

Your emotional health,

Your hormonal health if you train to be like a predator,

Which is why all of his workout programs are based on not maxing out necessarily.

The difference between predator and prey hormonally can be seen in noradrenaline versus adrenaline.

Adrenaline is the hormone of fear,

Noradrenaline is the hormone of aggression.

He writes,

High concentration of adrenaline almost doubles the mitochondrial damage by free radicals.

Yeah,

So he just said if the body is efficient,

If you're about to become lunge,

Why worry about accelerated aging?

So he lists certain ratios of adrenaline to noradrenaline.

Rabbits have a 50 to 1 ratio,

So they have a lot more adrenaline than noradrenaline.

Rabbits have almost no aggression.

Chickens are 10 to 1,

They're kind of predators sometimes.

I mean,

I have chickens,

They're kind of vicious.

Humans are 5 to 1 typically and lions are 1 to 1.

So basically,

Yeah,

More noradrenaline,

Healthier you are.

And as a man specifically,

The predator archetype noradrenaline aggression also tied to testosterone.

I speak about the winner effect a lot.

When you enter a competition,

When you enter a scenario where there's a possibility of winning or losing whether it's sports or a game or a video game or hunting after something or fighting someone and you win,

Your body gets a huge boost in testosterone and you develop more receptors for testosterone.

So you're actually becoming more manly by doing hard things and your noradrenaline and I would presume that your noradrenaline receptors increase.

So you actually become better at winning the more you practice winning,

Which is why habits are so important.

And I was thinking because I watch Planet Earth a lot or actually when I lived in New York,

The thing I would always do with my roommates is get high and watch Planet Earth.

And it's funny because there are all these,

If you watch Planet Earth,

Any nature show,

They're taking footage from nature but they script it in a way that there's a storyline which makes it very engaging.

And there's a lot of storylines where there's a lion chasing a gazelle and the lion tries and then misses and then tries and misses and the gazelles are getting away.

I remember watching with my roommates one time,

It was a long time ago,

And this lion kept trying and failing and trying and failing and trying and failing.

And I identified with this lion.

It made me feel like about how I felt in life at the time.

I kept trying and failing and trying and failing.

And then finally the lion goes after it and it gets to the gazelle and I was like,

Yeah.

And then one of my roommates was like,

No,

Because he identified with the gazelle and I identified with the lion.

It was just a random anecdote,

But there's a lot of people who,

I meet a lot of guys who are,

I think are cultured in a way that they identify with prey.

Even when watching Planet Earth,

Just watching animals in Africa on a screen,

They've so taken on this prey archetype that they identify with it on the screen.

And I'm going to go out and say,

I don't think it's healthy for any typical guy.

Obviously there are feminine men out there who maybe that's their thing,

But if you're a guy who dates women,

If you're a guy who wants to take a masculine role in a relationship or society,

It's very important that you connect to your noradrenaline predator side because otherwise you're kind of useless to the group.

You can't get pregnant,

You can't make babies,

You can't nourish a child.

Maybe you have the empathetic awareness that other women have,

But if you're a typical guy,

These are the things that actually make you happy.

Winning makes you feel good,

Winning makes you more confident,

Winning makes you more emotionally secure,

Which allows you to be a better lover,

A better father,

A better teammate,

All those things.

So when it comes to the practical application,

Well,

How do you connect to your predator archetype?

There's one key thing that separates predators from prey when it comes to action,

And that is predators are the ones who initiate tension.

Prey is the one that tries to avoid tension.

That's just how it goes in life.

Anytime there's a situation where one animal is eating another,

The predator is the one always who initiates it.

Prey doesn't accidentally walk in,

Well,

I mean,

I guess maybe there's certain situations where prey gets tricked,

But the predator is always the one that initiates.

This kind of thing,

I'll just give an example,

A really concrete example when it comes to sexuality.

A lot of guys reach out to me about the psychogenic sexual issues,

Like guys who through anxiety or some sort of mental association or shame,

They have some issue when they get in bed with someone they want to have sex with,

Like they can't get it up or they come too soon,

Whatever.

I mean,

I always bring up this idea of predator and prey with these guys,

Because assuming that they don't have like a physical issue,

Which you can figure that out.

If you get morning wood,

Then your parts are fine.

It must be mental,

Emotional anxiety.

Almost all the time when a guy has an issue like this,

He's taken on this idea that he's afraid of what might happen at whatever point that he has an issue,

Whether it's when the clothes come off or whatever.

Every guy with this issue has a certain point in a sexual interaction where his body shuts down because of his fear,

His shame,

His avoidance of humiliation.

And then if I run through,

If I go play by play with a guy on his recent experiences,

You can see there's a point where he switches into prey mode.

I've met a lot of guys who have this issue who like going on dates,

They feel confident and everything,

Maybe even in foreplay,

They feel confident.

But at a certain point,

Maybe it's whatever point they had an issue,

Maybe a guy had an issue one time in an early sexual experience.

And then every time he gets to that point of sexual interaction,

He switches to prey mode and everything depresses and then he can't get it up.

His testosterone probably dropped.

We're not testing his levels,

But that's we can assume.

You can see in his behavior.

So every time when I tell these guys this,

I mean,

There's the vulnerable side,

Which I've talked about on the podcast many times,

Like speaking about how you feel is a very brave move.

I mean,

Maybe we won't talk,

We won't associate talking about your feelings with warrior archetype,

But there's a bravery that comes with putting yourself out there,

Which we're going to talk about in a second about danger.

But another thing is like actually initiating the tension.

If you are the one initiating,

Some part of your unconscious recognizes,

Oh,

I'm the predator.

Actually,

I mean,

With being vulnerable,

You're the one entering tension,

Right?

If a person comes up to you and says,

Hey,

Tell me your secrets and you say,

Okay,

I'll tell you something.

Of course that could be vulnerable,

But it's a very passive vulnerability,

Which I would argue keeps you in prey mode,

Right?

As opposed to like,

Hey,

There's something I got to tell you,

Whether it's,

You know,

Whatever the vulnerable statement is,

Or if you have an issue with sexuality,

Entering sexuality is an experience of tension for you.

But just the fact of initiating flips something because a lot of guys with,

Let's say,

Who have ED issues,

Who have psychogenic issues with this stuff,

We'll say for this a million times,

I've experienced it myself,

It's like with someone you don't care about,

And this maybe sounds bad,

But the woman you don't really care about,

Everything works fine.

With a woman that you really like and whose validation matters to you,

That's where everything depresses.

Why?

Because the guy now hesitates about entering.

There's some stake,

He's afraid of the outcome,

So he becomes passive.

I mean,

You become passive,

Your adrenaline increases,

You have all these thoughts about,

Oh my god,

I hope this works,

Like it's like this afraid,

This fear of uncertainty,

This fear of the unknown outcome,

And you go passive,

And maybe,

Maybe because you've led the interaction until then,

She comes to you,

But your body is depressed because you're now in prey mode.

You're like,

I hope this isn't too bad,

Right?

Which obviously if you're thinking this way in a sexual experience,

There's no way you possibly can have a good experience,

Right?

As opposed to,

I'm going to put myself out there,

Maybe it'll work,

Maybe it doesn't work,

Maybe I catch the rabbit,

Maybe I don't,

Maybe we have an amazing intimate experience,

Maybe we don't,

But I'm going to push it forward,

Right?

That's part of the masculine,

It's part of being a predator.

And I know when I use the word predator in sexuality,

It's like,

Oh my god,

Taboo,

But I mean,

I hope you understand what I'm saying,

Like the predator is the one who initiates tension,

The predator is the one who leads,

Which goes back to tango.

One reason why I love tango is like,

It becomes very clear,

Like when actually two people,

The man and the woman,

Really sink into their roles,

Everybody feels so much better,

Right?

Even the women who are initially afraid to lean on men,

Who are afraid to like be led,

When they actually allow it,

They feel so good.

The man,

Even a guy who thinks like,

Oh,

I don't want to lead people around,

You know,

But he actually starts to embody it,

Like,

Oh,

I can actually support this woman's weight and I can guide her in a way that feels good to both of us.

They always feel better,

Right?

These are just,

These are beyond cultural constructs or ideology,

This just makes people feel better.

I mean,

You know,

Assuming you're a masculine guy and a feminine woman,

Obviously not everyone is but I think most people are,

Which has nothing to do with sexual orientation either.

Anyway,

What was I saying?

Oh,

The last thing on the hormones is,

We spoke about adrenaline,

Fear hormone,

Cortisol,

Sex hormone,

Cortisol and testosterone,

The male sex hormone share the same precursor hormone.

It's called DHEA,

It's a precursor,

I don't know if that's the right term,

But it's a molecule that can either become cortisol or testosterone.

So if you are spending your time on anxious thoughts,

If you're taking this passive role in worrying and being in fear mode,

You're actually spending your raw material that would become testosterone.

So being anxious actually makes you less manly because you're wasting what would become testosterone on fear.

So it's important.

A lot of people who just will say,

Oh,

Meditate,

All that stuff is great,

Being Zen is great,

Inhibiting the fear cortisol response is great,

But a more active way to do it is to initiate tension whether it's like going on stage and giving the public speech you're afraid of,

Asking out the woman that you're nervous about rejecting you,

Whatever the thing is.

Confronting the tension tricks you into actually feeling that way,

It will put you into predator mode.

Something that I think people learn a lot with combat sports which is why I recommend jujitsu to everyone.

Last bit on this,

Aleister Crowley has the famous line,

Do as thou wilt.

The reason why the warrior archetype is associated with toxicity or is often shamed is that yes,

When a man is potent,

When a person is in their warrior archetype who has access to their aggression,

Who has access to confidence and power and the willingness to initiate tension,

Yes,

They could do things that are not good for people.

There are people who are actually sexual predators who harm other people.

There are bullies.

All of this is also warrior archetype.

I would argue that it's warrior archetype that is insecure because it doesn't have a need met.

I think that bullies typically,

Most children who bully are doing it because they're being bullied in a sense by their parent or maybe they have an abusive parent so they take it out.

They balance out their emotional books by taking it out on someone else.

Arguably this is why anyone who is ever an asshole to anyone else is just trying to externalize the pain they got from someone else.

The greatest thing you can do from a compassion standpoint is take someone's shit and not pass it on to other people.

It's much harder,

Much easier said than done.

But in order to have any sort of potency to make this useful,

Because the reason my culture has shamed masculinity recently is because they take all these examples of insecure expressions of the warrior archetype of aggression that's not constructive.

This whole episode we were speaking about constructive aggression,

Fighting bad guys,

Killing prey animals to feed your children,

Fighting against the forces of nature.

But if you don't have a necessity for that,

And you actually can see this in mythologies like Star Wars or even in Lord of the Rings with Boromir,

You have these warriors who are completely selfish and they often have a character arc where they recognize that their gunslinging ways can be used for the benefit of other people.

They can actually exercise empathy.

You can see that's their big transformation.

But prior to that,

These types of anti-heroes have this warrior aggression,

But they don't have a positive outlet for it,

So they end up doing it in a self-serving way,

Which often can harm other people.

They become a thief or a marauder.

But you have to have that selfishness first,

Otherwise you have no potency.

So culture is muting masculinity in people because they're like,

Well,

The safest thing to avoid toxic expressions of this is to basically cut off everyone's balls.

If everyone is impotent and doesn't have a metaphoric weapon,

They can't hurt anybody,

But they can't be useful either.

And also,

When we go back to sexuality,

That's why a lot of women are increasingly disappointed in the bedroom.

But connecting with this in yourself is a selfish stage.

We naturally have these impulses when we go through puberty where we want to seek adventure and we want to meet our sexual needs.

And you know,

Zann Parian talks about this,

Like a couple centuries ago,

What a young man would do is he would join a boat,

He would join a ship and go around the world and see the world because that's the warrior archetype,

Trying to put yourself in situations that are challenging and see what you're made of.

Because that's the only way to develop the confidence later to serve other people.

So there is like a necessary selfish element of doing what you will,

Doing what's interesting to you in real life.

And given that 21st century life doesn't have these necessities of tension,

Like there aren't barbarians attacking our cities,

Thankfully,

None of us have to go out and hunt.

A lot of guys are drawn to video games because video games give that experience of building.

I mean,

What do we do in video games?

We build,

We fight,

We explore.

That's what the warrior in us wants to do.

And that's why as teenagers,

We have those strong impulses to build,

Fight,

Explore.

World of Warcraft is essentially being a warrior,

Going around and build,

Fighting and exploring.

I don't know,

All these other video games,

Minecraft,

SimCity,

All of these games that people can get addicted to,

Boys especially can get addicted to,

Are essentially an opportunity to express to the warrior archetype.

The hard part is finding a way to do that in real life.

So yeah,

Damaging masculinity is insecure,

Useless.

Yeah,

Okay.

So last bit here,

The last section,

I speak about the independent virtues of the warrior archetype.

The first thing ties to what we just said about initiating tension,

Which is courage.

So I have a very soft spot for men dealing with anxiety or men who are trapped by fear or not living up to their potential or living a low fidelity reality,

Like I've been there.

That kind of stuff actually makes me emotional more than anything else and I have a lot of respect for any guy who's confronting his demons.

The one thing I don't respect and the one thing that will prevent me from working with a guy who's asking for coaching is if he doesn't,

At the very least,

Idealize courage.

It's okay if he's fearful.

It's okay if every time he tries to do the hard thing,

He gets shy and we can work on that.

But if he makes excuses for like,

Oh,

I didn't need to do the hard thing or like,

Oh,

There's no reason to be courageous and face my fear.

I mean,

There's no helping a person like that.

And I actually kind of have a disdain for that because even some of the most fearful guys I met can at least think like,

Well,

At least I want to be willing to go into battle.

Because essentially,

A lack of courage is a selfish and a selfish in a bad way,

A selfish desire for self-preservation.

Whereas we spoke about when we opened up the Camille Paglia quote,

Like men are expendable to a sense.

Men have to do things to prove themselves as men.

And that means confronting death.

Courage essentially is the willingness to die.

Even if you're talking about courage was something that in modern day life has nothing to do.

Giving a bad presentation and failing at your public speech isn't going to kill you.

Nothing really bad is going to happen.

But we have this fear because at one point in our human existence,

Anything that has emotional tension had the possibility of preventing your survival.

And actually I had this chat with my love about,

We were talking about our,

I'm in a new relationship where we've been talking about our past relationships.

And she was speaking about like her number one issue with guys she's dated before is that their unwillingness to initiate.

Essentially what we talked about,

About the predator archetype,

Like they have this passive role towards life,

They're unwilling to bring up the hard conversations,

They're unwilling to take care of business,

Logistical stuff.

And she's had this pattern because we were in this new relationship,

We've been speaking about our patterns and how we can make this relationship really awesome.

And she was speaking about how she,

Because she's been disappointed by men so often,

Men who don't have the warrior archetype,

Which is my language,

Not hers.

She's gone out of her way to make things easier on guys she's dated.

Like she's coddled them,

Coddled their ego.

She's hidden her disappointment when she's disappointed.

I think a lot of women do this.

A lot of my female friends say this like,

Oh yeah,

Like I kind of knew he was going to let me down.

So I just acted like it didn't matter.

I pretended not to care.

I gave him a compliment anyway.

And I'm like,

No,

No,

Don't do that.

I was telling this to my girlfriend and then also all my female friends,

Like that's the worst thing you could do for yourself and the worst thing you could do for men because now you're giving him a false sense of reality.

And it's one of the worst things you could do for young boys.

The participation of trophy culture has given young men,

Especially a false sense of winning and losing.

So when they go out to the real world and they're not coddled anymore,

They feel like they don't have any self-esteem because they were robbed of the experience of winning and losing where they get to cut their teeth.

And I embody the warrior archetype.

And I told my girlfriend,

Like,

Don't you ever do that.

You might have to say something.

You might have to tell some truth to me that really hurts my ego.

I might disappoint you sometime.

And then you have to like tell me like,

Yeah,

This is something.

It's going to hurt.

It's going to hurt.

My male ego wants to be perfect and be the hero in her life all the time,

Of course.

But I told her,

Don't ever do that to me.

That's like the worst thing you can do to me in the long run.

Let me go out on my shield,

Which is the iconic line from 300 where Queen,

I'm losing your name,

Not Golga.

Leonides' wife in the movie says,

Come back on your shield or come back with your shield or on it,

Meaning either you die in battle or you survive in battle.

And I think this is important.

There's a reason why this line gets quoted a lot.

I mean,

All the lines that I've quoted today,

I am the one who knocks,

Go out on your shield.

These lines are meaningful to masculine individuals.

Like women,

When they hear like Deontay Wilder,

When he got TK Yode by Tyson Fury,

He told the media like,

They should have let me get knocked out.

Let me go out on my shield,

Even though he's getting his ass kicked.

There's something respectable about that.

You see a guy who's willing to actually get knocked out.

There's something inspiring about that.

I'm actually going to talk about that next week when we talk about male to male tribal virtues.

But these lines are so inspiring or like emotionally stimulating to men because some part of instinct recognizes that's what being a man is.

That's what being a useful male human is to a tribe is like being willing to confront death,

Being willing to confront failure,

Even if it means losing your life,

Even if it means losing your status or losing people's ego perceptions or perceptions of your ego,

Rather.

That's the only way that you develop real self-esteem and are meaningful.

So I told my girlfriend,

Like,

Let me go out on my shield.

Like,

If I do something,

If I disappoint you so much as a man that you need to hurt my feelings and it ruins our relationship,

Like do that because if you don't,

It's going to ruin our relationship anyway.

And we're only just going to be separated from reality.

And I think everyone deep down,

Even if they're afraid,

Would rather live in real reality than a false sugary existence.

Maybe that's not true.

Some people are.

Some people are bundles of sticks.

I don't mean that's not a sexual reference at all.

Yeah.

Tension causes fear because there's real stakes.

Oh,

And the other thing is like glory.

If you look at,

You know,

I'll speak for myself,

But I think this is true for guys,

Like most guys,

Like the idea of glory,

Even dying on the field of battle is emotional.

Like if I look at the movies that get me emotional,

Like I think of Rudy,

A lot of people get emotional about the movie where like that kid wants to be a Notre Dame linebacker and he's too small and he keeps failing and keeps failing and keeps failing.

At the end of the movie,

They throw him in and he gets a sack.

Like that's so,

It's so emotional because you could see like he tried and he failed and he tried and he failed and he tried and he failed and he finally got this,

This Pyrrhic victory or his little victory and not Pyrrhic victory.

More like the movie glory with Matthew Broderick and Morgan Freeman about the first colored regiment in the civil war.

You know,

They got shit on by everyone,

All this racism and they ended up losing their final battle.

They ended up getting massacred by the team,

But they died on that hill.

And like just thinking about that,

300 is another example.

Like there's something that is emotionally stimulating to anyone with an androgen system,

Anyone who is,

Whose mood and behavior is affected by testosterone,

A masculine individual.

This is so stimulating because deep down,

No matter what your ideologies are,

Deep down you know that this is what being useful as a human being is.

I would compare it to,

Again I don't have children,

But in the times that I've spent time with children and I'm just like focused on the child and playing with the kid,

There's some like deep primal sense of like,

This is what life is,

Right?

Forget about,

You know,

Who cares about all this other stuff,

This internet stuff,

These social things.

Like to raise a child,

Like this is what life is.

This is why we exist.

I mean,

Not everyone feels that way,

But that's how I feel at least.

And something with that with glory too,

Like this is what being a man is for.

This is why we have testosterone.

This is why we have testicles.

This is why we have a slightly higher muscle mass than women.

This is to throw ourselves into tension.

And the thing is,

If you don't do that,

Even though the necessity and culture is largely gone,

Some part of your instinct is like,

Ah,

We're not really doing it.

And the guys who don't do these things always have self-esteem issues.

Yeah,

I spoke about the Marines a while ago.

I didn't serve.

I'm glad I didn't go.

I think my life path is correct.

But I do think about my choice.

I mean,

So in college,

I kind of driven by like my insecurities and masculinity,

But also like a desire to know real life.

I went through Officer Canada school from the Marine Corps,

Chose not to serve for various reasons,

Actually,

If you caught the podcast with Lieutenant Colonel Dan Grossman back in May,

I think it was,

I kind of tell that story.

But actually,

Only after preparing the notes for this podcast here,

I did recognize like,

Oh,

This is the reason why I really wanted to go into battle,

Right?

Like I'm not particularly patriotic.

I didn't really fit in the military.

I'm not that type of person.

But the reason why I wanted to know combat is to know real life.

In the first world,

And especially I felt this in college,

Like there's something so fake about modern university,

Like where you're preparing for this like very artificial version of adulthood,

Which is so different than what we've evolved for.

I mean,

Just feels fake.

I mean,

This is what is highlighted in Fight Club,

Like a guy who works this boring ass office job that has no real impact on society,

Just to collect IKEA furniture or whatever.

There's something that just doesn't feel good about it,

As opposed to like real life.

Not to say I'm not justifying war or violence,

But like that is real life.

Like if someone is invading your territory and is going to kill your family,

That is real life to go up against it.

And like,

Again,

I'm not trying to glorify more violent times in human history,

But in those times,

Even though there's a lot of stress,

There's a lot of anxiety,

There's a lot of uncertainty,

People died all the time from infections,

Men back then didn't have the self-esteem issues that men today do.

Or men who did either manned up and like found a way to embody that or they got killed off pretty quickly.

Now we have this coddled society,

Our latte culture where a guy can be so disconnected from primal male virtue and still survive and still have a cushy,

Overly comfortable lifestyle which only increases his self-esteem issues,

Which is why I think there's so many pill addictions and all sorts of male anxieties that didn't exist in previous millennia.

Because if you don't,

If like,

To be in this coddled adult child's baby university situation,

It's like being a vegan tiger,

Right?

Like it's not natural,

So there's something that just doesn't feel right,

Even if it's comfortable.

I don't know if tigers would be comfortable or vegan,

But.

Alright,

So the last virtue I want to speak about is the idea of mastery.

Courage is the willingness to enter tension.

Mastery or competence is the ability to actually handle tension.

Like it's great to be willing to take on the invader,

But if you are completely impotent,

Like physically,

If you can't actually do that,

If you keep chasing the buffalo and you're just too slow and you can't throw the spear or whatever,

Well that's not,

I mean,

You also need some ability,

Which is why,

I mean,

Doing hard things and accomplishing them gives us such a big benefit to people,

But anyone with an androgen system,

Especially the testosterone system that gets this boost.

Because as we mentioned in the beginning with the tango example,

Sexual polarity exists for interdependence.

Interdependence is being replaced culturally by consumerist independence,

But that's why people feel bad,

Right?

We live in New York City where I used to live.

Everyone lives in these individual boxes on top of each other.

People barely interact.

When people meet on Tinder,

There's like this fakeness that exists,

At least in the beginning or sometimes last entire relationships.

Interdependence requires the man to be able to hold his own weight.

And we're not going to talk about this more with male-male relationships,

But the sexual relationship,

Like if you can't support the woman's weight,

You are useless,

Which is why this mastery matters,

Right?

It's great to want to be a good tango dancer,

But you actually have to practice and become good.

It's great to want to build houses,

But you need to know how to swing a hammer.

So in addition to being willing to face failure,

Is also being able to put the time in to be good at something,

Right?

That's the,

I mean,

Again,

Mentioning Tyson Fury,

He spoke about this on Joe Rogan,

About how he was in this deep depression after winning the heavyweight championship,

Gained a hundred pounds or something.

And his way of getting back wasn't taking antidepressants,

Wasn't even like,

You know,

Talking about his feelings,

Which maybe would have been good for him,

But it was setting a goal and doing it and like re-mastering his skill,

Which happened to be boxing.

And I think the draw to video games,

The reason why video games are so addicting is that they are built in this artificial world to level up,

Right?

I mean,

Video games specifically are wired to stimulate this part of the androgen system of like,

You get to learn skills and you get to develop your character as an RPG,

Or you get to gain more abilities the more time you put in,

Which is how life works.

You can also just do it with life.

If you're listening to the audio version of this,

I hope you're doing your pushups.

It's fine for now.

Okay.

All right.

So anyway,

I think I hit on all the things for that.

Next week,

We're going to speak more about the social aspects of the warrior archetype.

This idea of danger and this willingness.

We're going to speak a lot about how men inherently respect each other,

Which ties to some of the independent virtues we just spoke about.

Social roles,

Ego risk.

Because there is something like,

If you are a masculine individual at all and you see someone who like chooses to shy away from tension or who chooses to take the easy way out or we're going to speak about a concept like honor and integrity and why these are masculine virtues.

Chivalry,

Why this really matters between men,

Not even between men and women,

But like between men,

Why chivalry matters and why honor is such a meaningful virtue.

It comes down to trust and all these primal instincts.

Let's be able to Bushido code next week.

I was going to say that until then because we just hit an hour.

But I'll just leave us with the last takeaways.

The ways to embody the warrior archetype is to initiate.

So being the one who's willing to initiate tension because that actually will benefit you hormonally,

Increasing your neuro adrenaline into South-Star as opposed to your cortisol and adrenaline.

Making active decisions.

You have to be willing to collapse the wave function.

I didn't speak about this directly today,

But that's basically it.

And courage essentially is the willingness to die and working towards a skill.

Developing competence at something is how you develop that male self-esteem because again all of the expressions of what people are calling toxic masculinity in my opinion come from men who have this like hormonal or instinctual need to express their testosterone driven instincts,

But they haven't maybe because of their development.

Because as teenagers,

The phase of life where this is supposed to develop is during puberty when your testosterone spikes.

That's why boys want to do hard things or risky behavior.

And we can judge this as like,

Oh,

Male ego wants to show up.

But there's a reason why.

There's a reason why I'm going to go a little less my last little rant.

There's a reason why,

I mean,

I don't know if this is true anymore with Google maps,

But at least when I was a kid and I'm not that old,

There's like the joke about like men don't want to stop and ask for directions and like,

Oh,

Men are so insecure.

And yeah,

Maybe there's some level to it,

Right?

Like if a guy is like,

If a guy and his wife are lost and he really doesn't want to ask for directions,

There's some level of insecurity with that.

But the reason why guys have that impulse is that they deep down recognize they need to figure it out on their own,

Right?

If they don't figure it out on their own,

They're kind of useless.

And obviously a woman's not going to leave a guy she's in love with just because he got lost driving one time.

She might lose attraction to him if he gets lost and gets like anxious about it.

She might lose attraction to him if he always gets lost over and over again,

Even though he says he's going to find the way.

Like this level of confidence,

This lack of competence is a necessary trait for men.

So yeah,

Being courageous and being willing to do hard things,

Initiate tension and actually become competent at a certain skill.

Different specific things that I would recommend,

I think everyone,

If you are disembodied or disconnected from your masculine archetype,

I know a lot of places in the world with COVID,

All the gyms are shut down,

But lifting weights raises your testosterone.

It's kind of hard to feel like a bitch when you're physically strong.

And combat sports,

There's nothing that every other sport tries to simulate combat sports,

Every individual sport trying to simulate single combat,

Every team sport trying to simulate a pitched battle.

You might as well go to a source.

You really want to connect it as part of yourself.

Committing to doing jujitsu for a year will solve certain holes in insecurity just through like that repeated simulated combat.

It's also good.

It's also very fun.

So I'm actually going to end.

I'm going to end with one quote that relates to competence because I love this quote.

It's another quote that gets me emotional or has gotten me emotional.

Should I just get logged out?

Can I read this quote without logging back in?

No,

You son of a bitch,

Asana,

Logging me out.

Okay,

Bear with me.

Bear with me internet.

It's going to take me two seconds to find this quote again.

From the book As a Man Thinketh by James Allen.

And it's basically about putting yourself in a situation where you're doing the hard things and well,

You'll always read it.

And you too,

Youthful reader,

Will realize the vision,

Not the idle wish of your heart.

Be it base or beautiful or a mixture of both,

For you will always gravitate towards that which you secretly most love.

Into your hands will be placed the exact results of your own thoughts.

You will receive that which you earn,

No more,

No less.

Whatever your present environment may be,

You will fall,

Remain or rise with your thoughts,

Your vision,

Your ideal.

You will become as small as your control and desire,

As great as your dominant aspiration.

In the beautiful words of Stanton,

Curtin Davis,

You may be keeping accounts and presently you shall walk out of the door that for so long has seemed to you the barrier of your ideals and she'll find herself before an audience,

The pen still behind your ear,

The ink stains on your fingers,

And then and there she'll pour out the torrent of your inspiration.

You may be driving sheep and you will wander into the city,

Bucolic and open mouths,

And she'll wander under intrepid guidance of the spirit into the studio of the master.

And after a time he'll say,

I have nothing more to teach you.

And now you have become the master who did so recently dream of great things while driving sheep.

You shall lay down the saw and the plane to take upon yourself the regeneration of the world.

" And to me,

That quote encapsulates the process of embodying your warrior archetype.

I mean,

There's no violence mentioned in that quote,

But it's,

Yeah,

Recognizing your instinct,

Driven by selfish desire to see the world or accomplish things,

Or even ego validation is a fine way to start your journey.

You seek out a master,

We're talking about apprenticeship next week.

You learn some skills,

You become competent,

And then you yourself become the master one day.

And this is a necessary element of male self-esteem.

Anyway,

Yeah,

Next week we're talking about tribal virtues.

We'll see you then.

If you have any questions,

Join the Mask on the Ground and I can address that in the next episode.

Yeah.

All right.

Later.

I'll see you next week.