So I was speaking to a men's group yesterday.
Always love it when like men get together with other men to talk
about their feelings, deal with their emotional bullshit.
It's not something you see every day.
So when you see it, it's it's, it's like, it's a very beautiful
thing. It's the Subtle Art of Not
Giving a Fuck podcast with your host, Mark Manson.
But it was interesting. I was answering questions from
guys in the group and there was one gentleman who got up,
overweight guy said he had been struggling with his weight for
years and was having episodes of binging and was just like
absolutely distraught, overwhelmed with anxiety,
regret, feelings of failure or whatever.
And it was a very like touching and emotional conversation that
we had. And I guess I'll start with how
I answered him, but then I'll talk about like why I bring this
up. This is my fuck for the week.
So my answer to him was that anytime we fail at something,
you know, there's there's kind of two levels of that failure.
There's the first one is just the simple like emotional gut
reaction, right? So it's like you fuck something
up. You're like, God, I feel bad
about that, right? You feel the regret, you feel
the embarrassment, you feel the frustration, the anger, the
sadness, whatever the negative feelings come up, right?
I will die on the hill that those feelings are not the
problem, right? Like we, we should have negative
emotions when bad things happen in our lives or when we've made
poor choices. Like those negative emotions are
there to try to get us to not make those choices again.
So there's no problem there. The second level though, is, is
the narrative that we build around those failures.
And talking to this gentleman, it was very clear that he had
some deeply embedded narratives of shame, self worth, failings.
You know, this is never going to work.
I'm doomed, I'm cursed, I'm, I'm a loser.
I'm just like, I can't be normal.
I can't be like anybody else. And it's when those narratives
come in, they amplify the negative feelings.
They they basically generate more negative feelings when it's
not necessary. And I think it becomes self
defeating because it, it raises the stakes and raises the
pressure for the next time you're in that situation and you
don't want to fail. So I had a discussion with him
about that. But like, it's funny because it,
like it hit close to home for me.
We did an episode a few months ago about my health journey.
You know, for listeners who haven't heard that I lost about
60 lbs over the course of four years.
At the beginning of this year, 2024, I turned 40.
And my goal was when I turned 40, I wanted to be best shape of
my life, strongest, best fitness of my life, strongest of my
life, best body composition of my life.
And I achieved all those goals. And I, I did that.
And after like nearly 5 fucking years of like obsessing over my
weight and what I'm eating and my exercise and everything, I
did something very daring, which was like, I took the training
wheels off and I was like, I told my, my health coach, I was
like, I'm in a place in my life. I'm very happy.
I feel good, like I, I've built a lot of great habits.
I don't want to track anymore. Like I want to live like a
normal fucking person. I don't want to have to think
about this every day. And at this point I feel like
I'm equipped to do that, right? Like I told him I was like, you
didn't give me fish. You taught me to fish right?
And like, let me go see if I actually know how to fish now.
And for the first few months it was fine.
And then, I don't know, something happened around like I
went to New York in June and then I went to Europe and then I
got sick. And then I came back and I was
jet lagged and was working a ton.
And I feel the old habits creeping back in.
I was, I went to dinner with my wife here in Santa Monica just a
few nights ago. And we're walking back.
We walked past an an ice cream place just down the street and,
and just completely unconsciously, I made a beeline
for the fucking ice cream shop and just got this massive cone
and started fucking inhaling it. And I, I got like midway through
the cone and I had this like, Oh my God, what am I doing moment?
And I guess for me, like talking to this guy yesterday, it really
struck me like I really felt for him because I feel like I'm kind
of in the same spot to A to a lesser extent.
Everybody reads, and especially you and I, we read all this
stuff about habits and discipline and rewiring our
reward system and building new lifestyle and altering
environment, all this stuff. And like, most of like the
conventional wisdom is that it takes, yeah, well, some people
say 21 days to change a habit, which is not true.
But most of research says couple months, a few months.
And there are plenty of habits in my life that I've broken
within a few months or I have created within within a few
months and I've never had to think about them again.
Yeah, when it comes to fucking food, I don't like, I don't
know, like I, I kind of feel there's like a there's a
frustration that I'm feeling of like I put five years into this
and it, and it feels like I can just feel my body and mind like
dragging me back to where I was five years ago.
Slowly over the course of multiple months.
I don't know, we like we've had a we've had a couple recovered
addicts on the show, Rich role, Brandon Novak and Novak in
particular. You know, he talked a lot about
like he said, a big part of it was just accepting that like he
is one of the few people in the population that this is always
going to be an issue, right? It's never going to go away.
It's never it's not a habit you're going to break.
It's not like it's not a a lifestyle practice that you need
to change. Like he is part of the 1% of the
population or whatever that this is just it is, it has to be
front of mind 24/7. And it, this has gotten got me
thinking about that. That is probably true with some
people around food and nutrition.
Like the longer I'm I get into this journey, the more I start
recognizing like the compulsion and the, the behavior and mental
patterns of an addict. And that fucking sucks because
I'm totally that guy who like every other area of my life, I
went and read a bunch of books and tried a bunch of stuff and
eventually figured it out. And it's like, this seems to be
the one area where it's like, yeah, dude, no, you're just
going to have to track for the rest of your fucking life.
And like, that's just it. That's like you sorry, dude.
You like you, you like lost the lottery.
This is this is the one thing that you like, you're just going
to have to like suffer through forever.
So anyway, I just wanted to express that.
I don't know if you have any thoughts around that your your
health habits seem to be very dialed in.
It's talking to the guy yesterday like brought this up
for. Me.
Well, if you remember something else that Brandon Novak said
too, he went to rehab 13 times. Yeah, I think I think Rich Roll
might have said something to this effect too.
But relapses are part of the the the recovery process totally.
They are. We talked about that in the
self-discipline episode 2 that we did where what
self-discipline is is it's a correction of the behavior,
right, right. That's part of the process.
So I think that's something I know that probably doesn't give
you a whole lot of doesn't console you, I'm sure I.
Feel so much. Better.
I know, I know, I know. But, you know, like Brandon
said, I I wouldn't have wanted anyone to rob me of my process.
And I think you're in that process.
And it sounds like this guy was is in the middle of a very
grueling process. Deep in it.
I've said this before too. I'm pretty fortunate and that I,
yeah, for me, as long as I, as long as I do that correction
process, I'm, I'm, I'm pretty good.
I, I do fall off the wagon every now and then, but I'm, I'm able
to get back on for whatever reason.
And to your point, some habits are just like that for some
people and some aren't. I don't know what to say about.
That it is. It's a weird thing.
And it's, it's crazy too, because you know, there been a
few times where my wife has gone on some sort of diet or
restriction or whatever. And for her, it's like she
literally just as like, I'm going to start this diet
tomorrow and I'm going to do it for 60 days and she does it for
60 days. And she like never fucks up and
is never tempted and never like slips a dessert when she
shouldn't. And, and at first, you know, the
first couple times she did that, I was like, Oh my God, her like
willpower is just like ironclad. But then it's funny because then
there are other areas of her life that like she doesn't have
that and I do. So it's, it's really just gotten
me thinking about, I don't know, like I think the, the, it's
interesting because I think specifically around weight,
health and food, there are a lot of moral judgments that people
attach, right? Like when you see somebody who's
overweight and eating a lot, like, I think most people's
default reaction is some sort of kind of moral judgment.
I follow a bunch of health influencers and I see this all
the time in their replies and, and sometimes from the
influencers themselves, they're like, yeah, it's calories in,
calories out, bro. Like if you can't figure that
out, you're a fucking loser and you have no discipline.
And I'm like, I'm sorry. I'm, I'm like, I've, I've been
struggling with this my entire life and I've been fixing it for
over five years. And I'm like, it's not that
simple, right? It's really not.
One of the things that my coach helped me realize is that
there's like, I don't think I really experienced compulsion in
almost any other area of my life.
Like when I think about other things that I've been kind of
addicted to, I've been fully aware of that addiction.
Like what's some examples of that?
So, for example, like, I've gone through periods where I'm really
addicted to video games, but I've been very aware.
You know, it's like I knew I was playing Eldon Ring 12 hours a
day and I was, even though I was a little bit disgusted with
myself as I did it, I was kind of like at peace with that
decision, right? When I was younger, I definitely
went through a period where I think I was addicted to dating
and meeting women. And I don't know, I guess
flirting and trying to pick up women, but I was aware of that.
Like I kind of knew, you know, in my head, I'm like, this is a
phase. Like I'm going out all the time.
I'm young. This is the time to do this.
There's probably an addiction to travel.
I was also fairly aware of that at the time.
I think food is the first thing that like I clearly have
compulsive behaviors and it took other people pointing that out
to me for me to even realize. Like the the level of awareness
was so just blocked that it required third parties pointing
out to me like, hey, you didn't have to eat that whole fucking
ice cream cone. Like you just had a big dinner
and, you know, like, it's been a weird experience.
Like it's something I haven't dealt with before.
And it's giving me a lot, a lot of empathy for, for people who
have been on this struggle bus for a long time.
Like I, I, I get it now. You meet people occasionally or
you talk to people, see people occasionally who like they've
literally been fighting their entire adult lives with their
weight or with their health. And, and I, yeah, I don't know,
I guess maybe when I was younger, more cavalier, my
assumption was just like, well, get your shit together, dude.
Like, do you think you need to go back to having kind of an
accountability set up with a, with a coach?
Are you going to try to grid it out yourself for a little while
longer and figure out how you can do it on your own?
What are you going? To do I think that's why the the
that's part of the emotional salience this week is is.
You're trying to figure that out.
No, it's like, I think, I think the ice cream was the moment
where I realized like, no, I need training wheels.
Like I, I cannot be allowed to operate heavy machinery like I
need, I need a babysitter. And in this part of my life, I
just need one. That's just who I am.
It's how my brain is wired. I need so I that the inevitable.
I don't know if I need, I'm not like starting today or whatever,
but between that experience and then, you know, talking to the
guy soon after you know it, I've kind of come to the conclusion
of it is inevitable. I don't know if I need tracking
and accountability 24/7, 365 for the rest of my life, but it it
definitely seems like I don't seem to be able to be left to my
own devices for more than, say, four months at a time.
OK, yeah, four to six months at a time.
So maybe it's a thing where it's like I do six months on, six
months off and I just live the rest of my life that way.
Or I just fucking get religious about it and make it a part of
every day, right? So I don't know, We'll see to
be. Continued.
We'll keep checking in on you, OK?
To be continued. All right, all right.
We'll be right back after a message from our sponsor.
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All right, we're back with brilliance or bullshit.
What are we harshly judging today, Drew?
Psychedelics or brilliant bullshit psychedelics?
OK, this is trendy. This is, this is spicy.
This is this is this is in the zeitgeist at the moment.
You've had some experience with psychedelics?
Probably. Too many, yeah.
Probably too many in the past. I've only ever had one.
We can talk about that, too. Yeah.
A really interesting study came out in Nature about the effects
of psilocybin on the brain. Yeah.
OK. And what they found basically is
that psilocybin, which is the the active ingredient in magic
mushrooms, right? So they they make these people
trip balls and then they put them in an fMRI machine, which I
can only imagine is terrifying. Sounds amazing, right?
Yeah, Yeah. That's how I wanted to spend all
my trips. Yeah.
But anyway, what they found is that there's this like massive
desynchronization all across the brain in when somebody's high on
mushrooms basically. And what's really interesting
about this is that they found there's these two areas of the
brain where in the past they found if these two areas are
talking a lot to each other, basically they're, they're
synchronized very, very heavily. That's actually correlated with
depressive symptoms. And what they found is that the
psilocybin will desynchronize that that relationship between
these two brain areas. And it, it's durable.
It lasts for a few weeks actually.
And they think this might be 1 mechanism by which psychedelics
can help people with like treatment resistant depression
and other mental disorders and other mental health disorders.
So we're, we're starting to find like some possible mechanisms,
you know, there's the, the symptom and depression where
people are kind of like stuck in a rut of there.
There's a lot of negative self talk along with, you know, all
the mood stuff that they do. They're, this could be like a
neural correlate to that of your brain.
Your brain is kind of stuck in this rut.
There's these two areas of the brain talking back and forth too
much. And if we can kind of reset that
that connection and and give space for new connections to
occur, that that might be 1 mechanism by which we could
treat depression and other and all the.
Sources. So one thing that I've heard
anecdotally is just that the, the promise of psychedelics,
what they've generally like in lay people's terms, what they
found with psychedelics is that it, it temporarily boost
neuroplasticity. So for listeners who aren't
familiar, when you're young, your, your brain is what's
called very neuroplastic. That means that your brain is
still very malleable and you can learn and change and shift
identities and change your views of the world very easily.
And then as you get older, that neuroplasticity slows down and
it becomes harder to change and remove deeply embedded beliefs
or identities. And so my understanding has been
that, you know, the psychedelics can just kind of like almost
like a steroid injection, like just a jolt of neuroplasticity.
So that like shakes all those old beliefs and, and
perspectives loose and makes it easier to kind of reformulate
new ones. Is this related to that?
Like how is this map up? Map up with that, definitely,
yeah. So what what they think is going
on is when you do kind of scramble the synchronicity
across the brain, it forces the brain to make basically new
connections. Interesting.
And so yeah, there is more what they call synaptogenesis,
basically 22 cells linking up to each other.
After you do psychedelics, there's kind of this reset and
then there's a a a rewiring so that they think that's what's
going on. Yeah.
So. That maps pretty well to my
subjective experience of psychedelics.
My subjective experience of psychedelics is that most of
like the the basic beliefs and assumptions that I have just get
scrambled and disconnected and I start making very disparate
connections between very odd things than a sober person would
never make connections between. And I can see how, I mean, I
would, I would personally say 80% of the time those, those new
disparate connections that I made, those new meanings that I
created when I was, when I was on psychedelics were completely
frivolous and just incredibly amusing.
You know, I would just kind of giggle like a like an idiot, but
I'd say 20% of them were particularly profound and very
insightful and help me like see things or realize things about
myself or about my life. So I could see, I could see how
that explanation could work. And I can also see how like if
you were put in a clinical setting and you had a licensed
clinician there with you who was like directing you with
questions and helping guide you into thinking about the right
strands of meaning and connections that you've made or
the beliefs that you've had, I could see how that could be
extremely therapeutic, right? What is?
What is your overall take on this?
I think like anything else, psychedelics are a tool and you
know, just like you can't use a a hammer to screw a screw, you
can't use psychedelics for certain things.
I just don't think they they work for certain things.
This study, actually, they mentioned this in the study and
one of the interesting findings they find is that the the degree
to which the synchronicity is is exploded basically in the brain
is related to how how strong of a mystical experience people
have. They're making these weird
connections. They're they're having these
these feelings of one with oneness with the universe.
That's very common, you know, when people are tripping on
psychedelics. And yeah, so the degree of
synchronicity is related to that and.
I, I think that that it's, it's like this window that pops open
for people and can't pop open for people.
What you said though, about having the set and setting there
with a clinician an intention, probably 80% of the connections
you said you made were kind of bullshit.
A big part of that was probably set and setting.
You were just, you were off, fucking off and you had no
intention of just popping some acid.
And here we go right like that, that sort of thing.
And I I've had one experience with psychedelics.
Only one. It was with DMT so it was 90
seconds long. It was in the mountains in
southern Mexico. Did you?
Speak to aliens. I spoke to somebody, something
spoke to me. I'll say that.
Something spoke to me.
And this is turning. Into the Joe Rogan.
Podcast, right? Yeah, yeah, I, I, I what I got
from the experience more than anything was basically what I
just said is these things are not to be fucked around with.
I don't, I don't think, I don't think you get a whole lot of,
there's going to be a lot of people who disagree with this,
but I don't think you get a whole lot of value of tripping
on acid at a fish concert or whatever, right.
That's just not. I mean, you get entertainment
value you don't get. It's entertaining.
You don't get like mental health value.
Yes, yes. But what they're finding now is
that these tools can be used in very, if you're very
intentional, very specific ways these tools can be used with
great effects. And that that's very, very
encouraging. The one caution I see though
too, a lot of these effect sizes that we're seeing coming out of
these early studies on psychedelics and treating like
major depression, treatment resistant depression,
alcoholism, all of that. Those effect sizes are very
similar to what we saw in like the 80s with the new
antidepressant drugs and they were being used, you know, on
people with treatment resistant depression like.
The hard cases. And so I, I just, I'm concerned
that as they, as the, the tools get applied to more and more
people and edge cases and where they're maybe not going to be as
effective, we're not going to see these huge effects.
And it's it, it could be very similar to the like the
antidepressant story. I I feel we see that not only
with drugs, we see that with therapy modalities as well.
It's like some new therapy modalities develops its use on
super hard cases. You get a great effect size and
then you apply it to the general population and that effect size
goes away. So.
Back to the synchronicity thing really quick in the plasticity.
One thing that I've noticed, and this is this is always, you
know, people ask me all the time, what is your opinion on
psychedelics? It's kind of a hot topic at the
moment. I, I would say overall I'm very
bullish and optimistic, but I, I do think there are caveats and,
and one of those caveats would be I've noticed that there are
the people that I've known who take lots of psychedelics over a
long period of time. They, it's almost like they
desynchronize so much and they open themselves up to so much
meaning that they start believing anything and
everything. And I've, I've watched this
happen, you know, back when I used to party a lot and do a lot
of drugs. I watch this happen to a number
of friends and now that I'm out here in California and I've got,
I know a bunch of people who are like into psychedelic therapy
and doing ayahuasca journeys and have shamans and are micro
dosing and all this shit. Like I've noticed that the ones
who go very deep down that road, they kind of just start
believing everything. And I think that's a under
broadcast danger of this is that when you knock loose all those
connections of meaning that we make and open up your neural
system to like wiring anything together, you will see if
somebody who is basically just has not heard anything that
doesn't make sense to them. And that to me that's just as
dysfunctional as I mean, if you look at.
So this is also gets this is a whole nother podcast, but you
know, there's there's an interesting discussion around
what is the difference between a mystical experience and like a
psychotic break? And is there a difference?
And because it's like when you look at say like a schizophrenic
person who is having an episode, they see meaning in a bunch of
different places and it's usually mystical meaning in a
bunch of different places that have no mystical meaning.
And if you look at somebody who's done a fuck load of
psychedelics, they find a lot of mystical meaning in places that
they don't have mystical meaning.
I will, I will leave this with a fun memory.
I remember the biggest trip I ever had.
One of the one of my favorite things about it was the day
after just walking around the house and finding the most
absurd things and just like laughing to myself being like,
how did this make any sense? Like I remember the next day I
opened the microwave and there was a bowl of cereal in it and I
was like, how does this make sense?
Like what? What was the thought process?
Some warm. Coco puffs, yeah.
Seriously, I'm like, how? What?
What on earth was going on? So just the I guess that's just
the word of. Caution.
Yeah, for sure. They're again, they're tools,
yes. Absolutely.
Tools. Tools can cut both ways.
So all right, we'll be right back after another message.
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All right, we're back. What are we answering today,
Drew? Audience.
What is the audience give me a fuck about?
Masculinity, Mark. Modern masculinity.
It's been a while since you've talked about this.
We give a fuck about masculine. Yes, we do.
Give OK, I guess I should ask that first.
Yeah, no, we we got a a question from somebody on YouTube.
Mark, I'm a college student but I don't know how to grow up as a
man. I'd like to hear some men's
advice. I seriously lack so much
nurturing for men. I don't want to talk to my
brother. My dad died a few years ago and
even while he was alive he was never really around to guide me
into manhood. I didn't hang out with him much
or my friends when I was growing up and now I seek a lot of male
connection. I don't know how I should think
as a man. How should I feel as a man?
So can you help me? I need some male advice.
Well, it it's ironic that we open the show mentioning men's
groups. It it's interesting actually.
My experience in men's groups about being a part of them and
also speaking at them is that they are generally mostly
populated with men who grew up without a a male role model, and
that the group is kind of acting as the communal male role model.
For everybody. Communal father?
Yeah. Yeah.
So I mean, this is the sort of question I want to preface this
with like any time I see, first of all, there are a lot of
influencers and Youtubers and creators out there who will like
start their answer with a man needs to be this or, you know,
every man needs this. And to me, that's a red flag.
Like there is men. There's as much variation
between men as there is between anybody in the human race.
So what feels very true and important for, for one young
man's going to feel very different for another.
But I, I do think in general, in human nature, I think it's, it's
important to look for both role models and fellow travelers on
the path of life who are similar to ourselves and, and, and have
the same lived experience as ourselves.
So if you're a young man, that means finding other young men
and finding some older men that you can look up to and admire
and get advice from, etcetera. My general piece of advice to
young men is is to simply channel their angst and their
energy towards something of value that ultimately, like if
you look from an evolutionary perspective, the man's role,
other than making babies, the, the, the man's role in in human
society is to produce more value than he consumes.
Whether that's going and killing a water Buffalo to feed the
tribe or to devising a new piece of technology or protecting
people from invaders. You know, whatever it is that
you're doing, you, you should feel that you're adding value in
some way. And you know, Arnold
Schwarzenegger wrote a book last year that it's very simple and I
love the premise and it's just be useful, be useful.
Like his his answer to kind of every life problem is just get
up and go be useful. And most things will kind of
take care of themselves. And I think in general for for
men, that's more often than not going to lead to the solution is
like you feel lost, just like go be useful and go do something
useful. Like, go help somebody, go build
something. That's the starting point in my
opinion. Yeah, there there's kind of this
common lament among men that, you know, oh, society sees us as
we're dispensable. You know, we're we are and we
are. No, we and we are.
But the point you're making is it's like, make yourself less
dispensable, right? Make yourself indispensable,
right. Go add value.
Yes. So if, if we want to get into
like, if we want to go hardcore on the evolutionary psych, like
let's do that for a second, which is historically men are
completely dispensable, dependable, dependable,
dispensable. Dispensable.
Disposable. Disposable, that's the word.
Men are completely disposable. I mean, it's, and it's just,
it's simple biology is that, you know, one woman can only have a
child every nine months, whereas one man can have like a fucking
hundred kids every nine months. So men are very disposable and
we are evolutionarily adapted to that reality that we are, we're
stronger, we're more physical, we tend to have more physical
energy and we tend to to seek out danger.
We're more risk taking, we tend to seek out danger and, and are
more willing to put ourselves in harm's way.
And so I, I think it's, it's don't lament the fact that men
are disposable. Like embrace that fact.
And, and as you said, find ways to be indispensable.
Like, what is the value you can create that people are like, oh
what, no, don't send him to war. Like we fucking need that guy,
you know, right. So it's like, ask yourself that.
And yeah, basically just try to try to create far more value
than you're consuming. Right.
Yeah. And you mentioned the not having
good role models. I looked up some research on
absent fathers. Yeah.
And consistently what the, the most rigorous research around
this finds is that there's consistent effects of, of absent
fathers on high school graduation rates, a child socio
emotional adjustment and their adult mental health.
And if you look at those three things, so education, socio
emotional development and mental health, those are three areas
that modern men are really, really struggling with right
now. Educational attainment is has
been on the client decline for men while it's going up for
women. Socio emotional adjustment, a
lot of men in their 20s and 30s are either feeling or are
labeled as being a little bit stunted in the emotional
department. And then mental health, men's
mental health is just men commit suicide at nearly four times the
rate that women do, right. So these, these just so happen
to be 3 areas that we're seeing that men are, they have a plight
right now. Well, and we're seeing where
record it's a record number of households are growing up with
single mothers, right, you know, or record number of children are
growing up with single mothers. So it's this is like this is
just one of those highly under discussed topics.
And, and I think the, the messaging around this is, is
just been bad. Like I think, I think
conservatives have actually fucked this up because this is
an issue that they are 100% right on and they're just really
bad at communicating that. I think it's most people when
they hear like family values or the importance of family, it's
always attached to like some religious connotation.
You know, whenever, at least here in the US, whenever you
hear, you know, some conservative politician rail on
about family values, pretty high, high likelihood you're
going to hear the words God or Jesus very soon afterwards.
And I think that just turns lefties minds off completely.
They're like, oh, he just said the G word I, I don't have to
listen to him anymore. Whereas if they just presented
the data, like the data on two parent households versus one
parent household is, is absolutely staggering.
And it's the, the level, the, the amount of children growing
up today in one parent households is like epidemic
proportions. And as you just pointed out,
like the outcomes are so much worse, both like cognitively,
but also emotionally and just in in general educational
attainment, well-being, etcetera, etcetera.
So like, I get frustrated around this of like, you guys are
right, like you're just fucking up the messaging, right?
Just like just just put some studies in front of people and,
and it'll be undeniable. So, so yeah, I, I do think it's,
it's, and there are a lot of, there are a lot of young men out
there who do feel lost, who don't have role models like
this. This the guy who asked this
question. I mean, there's a huge amount of
guys like this in my audience. And I think it's a lot of them
are turning online to people like myself or Jordan Peterson
or Chris Williamson or Joe Rogan, you know, to like, kind
of try to find those male role models and, and, and more
importantly, like a sense of community, like a sense of like
a group of guys who like, think the same way and deal with the
same struggles and have the similar aspirations.
So people can trash the quote UN quote, you know, manosphere or
alt right or whatever. And to me, it's just like an
inevitability of the demographic issues that society's going
through so. Would you have any
recommendations around that though?
We talked the other day about creators and kind of people
having these parasocial relationships.
You and I had discussed that and do you think that's a good
thing? Can it be a good thing?
Can it be a bad thing? You know, if you if somebody's
glomming onto like, you know, there's varying levels of
toxicity out there around this. Do you have any guiding
principles around that? I think overall it's, it's a
good thing. I mean it, it's, we're feeling a
demand, yes, right. So, and I, I think having
something online, having some sort of parasocial relationship
with a male role model is much better than just having no male
role model period. That said, there are, there's
like, as you pointed out, there's a different differing
degrees of healthiness and unhealthiness.
And, and the problem is, is that young men, especially if they're
like emotionally stunted or haven't gotten out in the real
world a whole lot, they're going to be very bad judges of like,
what is a healthy role model and what's an unhealthy role model?
Like they're probably going to mistake things that sound cool
and sexy and like a dude standing next to a Lamborghini
is like, oh, that's a cool role model.
You know, hopefully as they get older, they're, they'll grow out
of that. I think most do, but I, I would,
the advice that I would give is I would look at the, the ethical
and emotional character of what the man is saying.
It's funny, actually. I had a friend a long time ago
who told me this and it's very, very true.
He said, he said the next time you start like looking up to
somebody online, put on a video of them and turn the sound off
and just, and just gauge like their facial expressions.
And it's it's amazing actually. Like you, there's a lot of
people that as soon as you turn the sound off, they look so
incredibly angry, like it's just.
You can just see. There it's just like anger is
just fueling everything, whereas like other people there's like a
joy or a levity and then other people there's kind of like this
sadness that is seeping through so.
That's fascinating. That's a cool little hack.
But like, I, you know, I look at, I look at, I think an
obvious example of somebody like Andrew Tate, like I get why
young men see him and are like kind of seduced by it because
especially if you're like a young 16 year old, no male role
model, you know, no real friends, haven't really done
anything in life. Doesn't, you know, feel very,
you know, have a has a lot of anger and resentment and
frustration that you don't know how to express.
You see a guy like that who is just clearly full of rage and
very antisocial, like just very like clearly takes pleasure in
upsetting other people, being obnoxious, you know, saying like
just arguably being unethical. I can see why that's seductive
to that young guy. But I think if you're that young
guy, you need to be able to look past that and ask yourself like,
OK, like, what is, is this actually sustainable?
Or am I just, you know, kind of getting excited because I'm like
living vicariously through this guy in a YouTube video or.
Whatever, I would not want to be a young man.
I remember how hard I was, you know, when I was like this, this
guy's in college that it was an intense period to go through an
intense emotional experience that you have at that age and
just trying to figure shit out. And I, I don't know, I, I feel
for you, man. I don't.
I wouldn't want to be in those those situations these days.
I feel it's it's only gotten more complicated.
Yeah, it really. Is.
For sure, that's too bad. So what's the wisdom of the
week? Wisdom of the week comes from
the Buddha this week. I'm a fan.
And it's about masculinity. A man may conquer a million men
in battle, but one who conquers himself is indeed the greatest
of conquerors. Very fitting.
He's the goat. That's the Buddha.
All right, thank you, guys. That is our show this week.
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Stay frosty. The Subtle Art of Not Giving a
Fuck podcast is produced by Drew Bernie.
It's edited by Andrew Nishimura. Jessica Choi is our videographer
and sound engineer. Thank you for listening and we
will see you next week.