Why are we talking about masculinity in 2025?
Well, no one had to talk about masculinity when it was the
norm. You know what masculinity was.
Everyone was just, there were certain expectations of society
and that was no one talked about masculinity.
And then what happened is that, you know, there's this long
train of things that happen, obviously the industrial
revolution and feminism and all these things that slowly took
men away from certain kinds of roles and put them in this
protected space. You could almost call it a child
space, like where they don't have to deal with the defence of
things. They don't have to.
They're taken care of. You know, modern life,
masculinity is fairly optional unless you live in a place that
is in conflict or, or a bad neighborhood or something like
that. But in modern life, masculinity
is somewhat optional. So men are taken care of in much
the same way that women always have been.
So they can afford to, you know, run their mouths and know that
no one's going to hit them. And they can they can do all
this passive aggressive behavior.
And so this has just gone through, moved through culture
over, you know, decades and decades.
And what happened is that you saw this with the, the gender
theory things that I I saw in the 90s, but then became very
big just recently with all the trans things and so forth.
And all these people, all these feminists were working for a few
decades of redefining masculinity and talking about
masculinity and making it negative and saying that it
doesn't exist, saying that it's not real.
And these are all products of Marxism and queer theory and
gender studies and so forth. And no one, those people were
all under the radar until about like 2010.
And no one talked about masculinity because no one
needed to. And then all of a sudden, you
know, these people started to gain influence and we started to
see a lot, a lot more in mainstream culture.
And so then you had people saying ridiculous things about
men and masculinity and all of a sudden people started to wake
up. And really when the trans thing
became reached its peak, then you we're which we're past peak
right now, which is nice. But when it reached its peak,
you had a whole bunch of people saying, you know, men and women
didn't exist. All these things didn't exist.
And so it became very necessary. And that was why I wrote The Way
of Men earlier. It I saw that problem happening
is that men couldn't articulate what masculinity is.
And so you have all these gender studies PhDs who are then
articulating it for them, you know, with their own agenda and
pasting it onto it. And men needed to be able to
articulate masculinity in a coherent way.
And that was my project with The Way of Men.
So it sounds like you're talking about postmodernism.
Postmodernism being quite destructive.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And postmodernism obviously just
a reaction to to modernism and disappoint, the disappointment
in modernism, I think if that's the real, that's what
postmodernism really is, right? Like the collapse of meaning
that was really foreseen by Nietzsche in a certain way.
Who is Jack Donovan? A 50 year old man.
Yes, but you are a lot fitter. You're a lot fitter than every
other 50 year old men that I know.
I do try. I do try.
And I think it's important because I write around about
masculinity. I try to at least exemplify some
things. I mean, you can't, you can't be
the exemplar for all things masculine.
I, I got into, I, I started writing about masculinity
because I, it was interesting to me as a topic and I really
wanted to understand what it was.
Most men who talk about masculinity are marketing,
they're talking about their masculinity.
They're like putting themselves forward as the exemplar of
masculinity. And you see that, you know, all
over the Internet now. I mean, you really didn't have
that as much like when I wrote the way of men.
But now there's all these guys being like, here's what you need
to do to be man like me. And, you know, and that's what
most of this masculinity discourse is now.
Or you have like, you know, priests and pastors and things
like that. Being like, this is how you need
to be a man for God or all these, all these everyone wants
to everyone wants to capitalize on male insecurity is the real
price is what's really happening is they've no one wanted to talk
to men or care what happened to them until they realized that
there was money there and that now they can find different ways
to make men insecure. And advertisers used this a long
time ago being you want to sell a truck, Here's what you do to
sell it to men. But now there's all these men's
coaches and all the all, all these people selling men did
their way to be masculinity. But when I wrote the web and I
just had a project, I've been like, let's let's figure out
what this is. And it's not about me being it's
not like about be like me. But I, I to answer your
question, I guess I'm a 50 year old man who I went to, I went to
art school. I was probably a feminist when I
was, you know, a young kid, you know, like certainly I mean, I
was, I was probably a liberal and a feminist.
Like I went to art school. What do you think?
I also went to art school. Yeah.
Well, yeah, there you go. You know, so I mean, I, so I
came at this from a different angle than I think a lot of
people come at. But that's why I think I was
able to articulate it better than that.
So, you know, I, yeah, I lived in New York and San Francisco
and LA and really it was only in my 30s that I became really
interested in masculinity and what, what maybe I had missed in
believing everything that they told me about men and that men
were bad and masculinity was out outdated and out of fashion and
old and whatever. And so when I began revisiting
that for myself, that's when I started becoming interested in
this, this project of understanding masculinity
better. And so, you know, I started
talking about it as a good thing and someone was reading my work
and saying that I wasn't defining it very well.
I'm like saying to being a man is good, but you're not, you're
not really saying anything like you're not defining it.
And that's why I wrote the way of Men.
So that's, I guess me in a nutshell.
You know, I, the, the older I get, the more I think I, I'm
like, I should have just been an artist.
But you know, I was trying to draw for the past like 3 or 4
days I've been, I've been working on that.
So that's really my background. I care about, you know, beauty
and, and, and articulating these ideas in a different way, in a
visual sense. And, and I think that that's
that's always been part of who I am.
So obviously you said, you know, like you like my set, whatever,
and I have a different visual presentation than I think a lot
of people do when they talk about masculinity, but.
Well, yeah, Jack, what is masculinity?
What is masculinity? That that is the question.
And my answer to what is masculinity is that it's when
we're talking about it, we're talking about masculinity.
We're talking about the way we perceive each other, maybe
without even words, The way you can walk into a room and you can
kind of rate masculinity among a group of men without having them
even talk. You can by their body language.
And, and so to understand what that thing was, that thing that
we can, what are we sensing that we can't necessarily put our
finger on? I, I was like, well, what are
we, what cues are we reading? And what I came around to was
that we're reading the primal cues that we would have needed
through most of human history. You know, men have what have men
been doing for thousands and thousands and thousands of
years? And my answer is that in the
scope of human evolution, most of the time men have been
working in groups together and they hunting and fighting.
And that's most of our human evolutionary history.
The idea that we go to an office is, is very new.
For most of human history, men work together.
They, you know, had to take down big prey.
They had to protect their village from invading village
villages. That's pretty consistent.
And it's consistent across the whole world.
And so you have these hunting and fighting gangs and what
masculinity is like. The core primal element of
masculinity is what do these men need from each other?
Like what are they? How are they evaluating each
other as men? And so that's why how I came
around to the tactical virtues like what, what do, what do men
who are hunting and fighting together, What do they need from
each other? And I came up with strength,
courage, mastery and honor. You could rename them.
You could do all kinds of things, but they're they're good
general rules of thumb for talking about.
Well, what are we seeing in men? Like is he strong?
Is he capable? Is he physically capable?
You can walk in a room and see that with, with division and you
know, is he courageous or is he cowardly?
You can see that body language to a certain extent between
different men. And you know, these are all
cues. It's like, oh, well, that that
guy is a threat. That guy is not a threat.
Like we, we see all these things and our body sees them, you
know, in the way that, you know, if you have dogs, like they,
they know which they know what's going on with.
They don't understand what you're saying at all, but they
know what's going on. Like we have that too.
Like we, we sense things from each other that aren't
necessarily we don't have to articulate to see them.
And that's why now we have when you see AI, you get into the
uncanny valley because a you, you'll see something like that's
not a human thing. Like that's off, like that's the
we, we can sense something's wrong there.
And so you have strength, courage, mastery, like, you
know, capability, like what can, what can, what can someone do?
Men appreciate virtuosity, I think more than if you're really
good at something, men really, you know, it doesn't, you don't
have to be like, women have to worry about being pretty.
They have to worry about all these other things.
Men are like, wow, he's really good at this one thing and they
can appreciate that just for that and that that gives a man
value and and it gives a man value to men.
And where I think a lot of anthropologists and and
evolutionary biologists and so forth skip over because they're
always looking for how you're going to mate.
Like everything's a mating competition with Mitha, those
kind of people. But I think that men pre screen
each other for women in, in terms of like men compete for
status with each other and then the highest status men get the,
the the choice of women. You know, like that's and I
think that when people don't talk about that as much, it
like, they just think we're competing like a little contest
for girls. And I think that men compete
with each other and they have their own status hierarchy.
And you can see this in the modern world, like men in
business. So we're like, he's a very
successful businessman. Therefore he's high status.
Therefore, when we want him, you know, it's not like they're
we're like racing each other to see who gets the girl.
You know, like men have their whole like status hierarchy
without that. And then the obvious strength,
courage, mastery, and then honor is that you know what is a group
of men need from each other and that is loyalty and honor.
Honor is essentially loyalty and showing that you care about your
reputation within a group of men.
Now you can't care about every group of men, but honor is
basically like within this group of men, what is your reputation?
And if you, if you care about that and show that you care
about the group and what they think of you, then that that is
reciprocated. And if you say that you don't
care about what the group thinks, then you aren't
trustworthy. You know, like they can't trust
you as a man if you don't care what they think of you as a man.
So those are the, the four tactical virtues that I've
talked about in the Way of Men. And, you know, I wrote that book
maybe like, I guess like 12 years ago now, and I still agree
with it. I, I think that the, it, it, it,
it continues to be correct in the way that, you know, men
behave. They, they, we are kind of pack
animals that we, we and that, and that's one of the biggest
problems. And maybe goes back to your
question about why are we talking about magic eliminity in
2025 is that we have is it wouldn't I should have almost
forgot where I was going to go with that.
But Oh yes, why are why are men insecure?
A lot of men are insecure and they're insecure.
And, and that's why all these coaches and all these people can
sell them their different masculinity kind of products is
because men who are not validated by within a group of
men are more insecure. Like it.
We, we've spent our entire evolutionary history being like,
if these guys think I'm all right, then I'm OK.
Like that's our identity. That's where we get our identity
from. And and you can't get an
identity from an identity like that.
You can't get that from a woman because hey, also then if she
leaves you, then you're, you actually have nothing.
So that's bad. But there's a certain confidence
that comes with, OK, well, I have this group of guys who all
think I'm a good guy. They all respect me.
I've earned their respect in some way.
And men who have that have a different level of confidence
than men who don't have that. And so if men don't have that,
then they're looking for that kind of validation in some way.
And then so anyone who tries to sell them that validation that
they're very easy prey for that. Whereas if you have a bunch of
guys who think you're a cool guy, you maybe don't have to buy
this thing or buy this other thing or take this course or
whatever to show that you're a man because these other men
already think you're a man. You know, like these other men
always are. You already have validation with
that group. And, and so I think any, any way
that you can be kind of initiated and accepted into a
group of men or informally or formally that adds to your sense
of security as a, as a man in the world.
So I think that, you know, that's what men should really
seek out is if you don't have any kind of gang like that.
And it's really hard, it's really hard to find groups of
men in the real world. But that's, that's why I always
tell men, I, I mean, I do jiu jitsu.
That's one place where I was like, I OK, I, I have a
reputation like in that group, you know, like Jack was going to
do this, he's going to do this, he's going to do this, you know,
like he's, he's a hassle in this way.
But you know, this one person can get him in this thing every
time. You know, like I have this, you
know, like this is how he conducts himself, you know.
And so people recognize that when they come to the room,
whether it's good or bad, you know, like I have a reputation
within a group of men. And, you know, obviously in the,
in the larger world as an author, I have a reputation with
a group of men and I have a group that I, I run called the
Order of Fire. And so, but if you have none of
that, imagine a dude who had basically has no friends or just
has a few friends. Yeah, well, they're the, that's
a lot of guys. You know, like a lot of guys
don't have more than like, one or two people they can even
call. So I mean, that's the way the
modern world is because it keeps us all very separate, you know,
Like it's like, you know, Once Upon a time there are people who
still live where they grew up, you know, and that that's like,
OK, well, these are my friends from high school.
And I still see them at the mall, you know, or I still see
them wherever I go. But there are a lot of people
who, you know, they they move, you know, as I have like around
the world to different cities and so forth.
And yeah, they, they don't really have a connection with
anybody And, and you really have to go out of your way to build
it, you know, I mean, that was the goal, really.
Like what, What is always true about masculinity?
Because the, you know, the gender studies people and so
forth who were taking apart masculinity, they want to say,
oh, well, this is different here and this is different here.
And here, here are all the little differences between and
there are so many. I mean, you talk to different
groups of men and what type of car is OK for a man to drive or
whatever becomes so fluid, you know, like it's, it's so
different from group to group. But you know, they're they're
die guys who will die on that hill.
You know, like, no, a man should not drive this thing that you
know, and but that'll change from place to place that that
changes from social class to social class, group to group.
But what is always true and wherever you are in history and
wherever you are in the world now, they're always outliers in
like this weird Society of monks or whatever.
But if you take the mainstream of any culture that survived for
any length of time, would would, would any of those men say it's
better for a man to be weak? Like nowhere, nowhere is that
true. Like always and everywhere it is
better to be stronger as a man. Masculinity is directly
connected physically and and you know, whatever metaphorically to
strength. Is it better for a man to be a
coward? Like said no man anywhere, you
know, like that. No, men have never said
masculinity. One of the things that we we
value in men are, is cowardice. No one ever says that.
It doesn't matter if you're a Muslim.
It doesn't matter if you're Jewish.
It doesn't matter where you are. It's good for men to be
cowardly. No one says that ever.
You know, and, and The thing is these virtues, that's why that
was my criteria for them. Is this always true?
You know, and, and The thing is, is that women can have all those
qualities. A woman can be strong.
A woman can be courageous, warming.
They they can see. Yeah, no one cares.
Like, like they don't say that she's less of a woman if she
like no one says a woman is less of a woman because she's weak,
like physically weak. Like no one cares.
You know, a woman is less of a woman because she's coward.
No. Well, did she, she still makes
babies, right. You know, it's, it's, it's not,
it's, it's like a bonus thing that they can have.
You know, they, they can, they can be strong, they can be
courageous, they can be really good at things.
But as long as they're they're women, either way, you know that
that status. But if a a man is really weak
and really cowardly and you know, is always isn't really
good at anything and is always like, help me, help me, help me.
I'm not self-sufficient like men will think he's less of a man.
He he will be viewed as being less masculine.
And that's why I think these these virtues in this way of
looking at masculinity holds up because it holds up always and
everywhere for men. But it's also important to note
that the virtues that you're talking about are not the
caricatures that we see in Hollywood and in comics and that
sort of thing. It's not the caveman dragging a
woman or it's not. It's not a guy like Trump who
walks into a room and suddenly you assume that he's masculine
because that's also theatrics. You you're talking about
something a lot deeper. Yeah, I mean, there's, there is
theatrics is part of it. You know, like men, men can, men
can create that, you know, like, like George Washington was very,
very concerned about this is how I should be portrayed and this
is like how you should see me for history, you know?
But but yeah, I mean, there's there's big theatrical
confidence, which is kind of a marketing thing, I think is what
you're saying. And then there is, you know,
I'm, I'm just, I'm just secure. Yeah.
Like you don't have to
necessarily be loud about it. In fact, you know, like it's
like there's that big thing of like people who men who are
always talking about being alpha.
Are probably that's where I was going.
That yeah, yeah, yeah, I like that.
Yeah. The, the, the big yeah, I hate
that word. I hate alpha.
Like that's I, I think that that's a signal.
It's a marketing word. I know why men use it and I
don't. I I've friends and guys who I
respect who use that as a marketing word because it's the
way you reach young men is like, say you want to be more alpha.
What they're really saying is you want to be more masculine
because alpha signifies a status in a group and male hierarchies
are flexible. You know what I always like?
I could be the alpha in the room and then Trump walks in and I'm
not the alpha in the room. You know, like it or whoever
isn't has the most power becomes the in in that particular group.
Or like, say you're in a group that does chess and there's the
chess alpha and then you go to the jiu jitsu and well, there's
the jiu jitsu alpha and there's the boxing alpha and there's.
So male status hierarchies are very flexible and who is the
most important man in the room can change.
But what they're really trying to sell young men by saying
alpha is really this thing that I'm talking about.
Like, is he assertive? Is he, does he, does he look
confident? Is he, is he strong?
Is he it? It does do does he have a
presence when he walks in the room?
All these things that are associated with masculinity is
what they're associating with alpha.
And they make it like it's this type that you're either alpha or
beta. Like you can only be one of the
two, you know you. But I think that men are just
more complicated than that. We're not.
Yeah.
No, I was going to say, but you, you can kind of see if somebody
is a legacy alpha or legacy beta.
I mean you can. Yeah, well, well, the OK, like
the most submissive guy in the room is going to be beta, but
he's also going to have the less of all the qualities that I've
talked about. You know, like it's basically
he's just lower on the masculinity scale then the the
guy who's super alpha is going to be very sure of himself.
I mean, that's really what it comes down to a lot.
And that's unfortunately that's really, that's really kind of a
problem that we're seeing I think now is that you have men
who are very confident and if you say anything with
confidence, people will gravitate towards you.
It doesn't matter if it's true. It doesn't matter if it makes
sense. But if you say, hey, buddy, the
sky is red, it's red, it's been red, it's always been red.
They're lying to you, all right? You know, like if you say that
with confidence, people are like, fuck me, the sky is red.
You know, like it's, that's the thing.
That's the problem. It's like you can say anything
with confidence and you have a lot of big influences, you know,
like, and if you say it with confidence, a lot of people will
just follow it and believe it and it that's what it it's
about. So I people have learned how to
mimic confidence. I think to sell things in many a
good case, because I guess he's on my mind because his
documentary just came out and I had the the pleasure of meeting
him in person was Liver King. Liver King came across as very,
very confident, like in his message, like everything that he
said was true. And you know, tons and tons of
people believed him. I've met him in person.
I believed him like he was a, he was a charismatic guy.
He's really, there's a lot to like, a lot to like about him,
apparently. I mean, he, he lies a little
bit, but I've, I've known some other guys who came off very
well who also lied a little bit. So it, you know, sometimes they
do that, but but the, the confidence is what comes across.
And he man, if you'd start saying like, OK, Pablos, this is
what we're doing, then then young men are like, sign me up.
You know, let's go. It doesn't matter if what you're
saying is right or not. It just if, if you deliver it
with confidence, people respond to it.
There's a handful of virtues that people talk about.
Yeah, in the way that there's not, not a lot new under the
sun, you know, like you can, you can read Aristotle and Plato and
they're talking about the same things that we're talking about
today. And they're, I'm specifically
interested in the concept of virtue right now, and that's
kind of where my work is going. And and yeah, when you talk
about virtue, you're talking about, you're having the same
discussion that that you they've been having since, you know,
ancient Greece. So like, yeah, they a lot, a lot
of there are only so many like human positives and negatives.
I guess. Like it is the way that you
could look at it like what is good and what is bad, you know,
like there are people talking about temperance as a virtue,
like self-control. And that's that's this thing
that's just this recurring theme that people talk about over and
over again because it's human. Like they're only thing, they're
things that are specific to people.
And I think that that's that's one of the things that we really
got away from in, you know, like the whole, I guess boomer
experiment is that, you know, like this idea that there was
that idea that humans are blank slate.
You could, if the government changes, you can change human
nature. I think I wrote.
About that, sorry. Yeah, that's that is actually
Steven Pinker was my gateway. The the his his book, The Blank
Slate was a big life changing book for me.
That was, you know, like in the early 2000s, I think that that
came out and yeah, that was a major frame shift for me.
And that's where I first started to get in interested in
evolutionary psychology and things like that was because,
you know, there was that that period where they basically the
boomer generation, I think, redesigned society based on the
idea that we don't have a human nature.
And right now we're in this place where we're watching all
of that fall apart because, OK, you had X amount of years to
because because human nature is real, because we just like any
other animal, there are there are things you can expect my
dogs to do because they're dogs, you know, like, not because they
were trained to do this or whatever, but because they're
dogs. And the same thing is true of
people in the way we just talked about it.
Like we've been talking about the same discussion about
virtues for thousands and thousands of years.
Why? Because people have a nature and
they have recurring problems that are the same problems all
around the world. And if you don't address those
things, what Kipling called it the gods of the copy book
headings. He has that great poem.
And it doesn't matter exactly what he says the the gods, the
complications are, but there are certain human realities that if
you ignore them, you will be punished for it.
And and that's that's what we're seeing now is happening.
Like all the things that, you know, they said, oh, women and
men are totally interchangeable. We could just put them on the
workplace. Oh, well, surprised.
You have a really low birth rate all around the world.
You know, like, like, oh, well, that's a consequence of that
thing. You know, like here's that
experiment and here are the consequences of that.
You know, if you don't prioritize, you know, if you
don't prioritize families in society, people won't have them.
You know, like that's something that needs to happen.
And so like all, all these human realities don't go away.
And that's where I think we get into human nature and the just
the the experience of being human.
But Jack, OK, so you mentioned declining birth rates, for
example, so does does masculinity matter when it comes
to family? I mean it it seems to it seems
to be an independent variable it it can exist regardless.
It can, I mean a good example would be what Shackleton or
something like a man. Men can be on a ship and
masculinity has its own realm, you know, like they they can be
on a sailing ship on an adventure for years and years
and years, never see a woman. And masculinity exists in its
own space, right? It's totally independent of
women. But one of the reasons why I
think it's important for, you know, children to have a father
and a mother is because, you know, they obviously model the
two sexes. And if your dad is a loser,
that's your model for masculinity.
And so like it, you know, like it's it's also obviously
important in the home and what people are finding a lot of men,
there are a lot of men in my group who have families I don't.
But, you know, they really have to lead that family and they
have to be the leader in that, in that family.
And if they're not doing that, the whole thing kind of falls
apart. And and so and so, yeah, it's
obviously it's, you know, it's, they always say it's how your
your daughters are going to envision how men are supposed to
be and how your sons are going to try and be, you know, like
their, your sons are going to try and grow up to be like you
and your daughters are going to their expectations of men are
set by you. So yeah, I mean, obviously,
yeah, I think it happens. It matters a lot in the home.
But it's interesting because, you know, as, as somebody who is
married and has a child, I see the need for the gang, the tribe
to be ever more important. And I I can't tell you why
though, Jack, but it just seems to be that that is what I find
brings a sense of fulfillment. Yeah, well, yeah, I mean, like I
said, you can't, you can't depend on on like a woman and a
child for your masculine identity.
That's that's that's where I think a lot of guys get into
trouble. And then when they get divorced
or something, their whole world falls apart because like that
their whole identity is that that group.
That's why you have to have something outside that group as
well. And it's also really good for,
again, young men and young women.
Is that OK? You're the one model of
masculinity. Well, if you have a whole
collective of, of men who you respect, now you have they have
a handful of models. Like this is the way that men
are supposed to behave. You know, if you have guys
coming over to your house to help you move or whatever, you
know, and they see this interaction all the time, That's
it. It broadens their perspective
about what masculinity is supposed to be.
It's not just you, but they have all these role models.
And that's why I think it's really important, you know, for.
Yeah, it's like if you have a son or something, OK, you're,
you're the one guy. But if he's seeing all these
other men who are also have your values, then then he's seeing a
lot of good modeling to, to, to, you know, shape his character as
he grows up. And that's why I, like I said,
I, I, I do jiu jitsu, so I always talk about that because
I'm that nerd. But I mean, it's, that's one of
the benefits of being in a place like that is that we have these
guys and they bring their, their teenage sons in and dad's doing
jiu jitsu and his son's doing jiu jitsu.
And his son is also around all these other men who are
respectful and behaving themselves and like behaving in
a very positive way. And he's getting all these other
influences that are that are all positive.
And so I think that that's very that's very important in in, in
the way that you know, but. I, I, I, I love what you said
earlier about human nature because it, you don't even have
to read about it. It just seems to naturally
occur. Like for example, my wife will
say to me, go on your boys weekends and I do, you know,
I'll go on hunting weekends or whatever.
And it's just natural. And here's the thing, it's the
guys who who hold other guys accountable.
Well, yeah, it's almost like human nature's real, right?
Imagine that. Imagine that.
Yeah. That men behave the same way all
around the world. You know, it's wild.
You know? It's so.
Yeah. I mean, you get it, It.
We're naturally hierarchical creatures, I think more so than
women. But women have their own
hierarchies. But you know, men, you'll get a
group of men together and one of them is going to be the leader.
And that's just how that's going to work within that group of
men. And then everybody has their
role and finds their role within that group.
Whereas your role might be different in in another group
because you might have something different to offer.
But in that group, you're this guy, you know, like.
And so it's yeah. And, and they'll determine
what's acceptable for that group is the way it works.
Like you said, is, is, is holding each other accountable
for masculinity. Every group is going to have its
own, like I said, its own little details of what that means.
You know, like the littlest thing could be like, well, our
group of guys don't like this. You know, our group of guys
don't like, I mean, that's running a men's group.
It's like we have our own little thing like like, oh, I could
never let that guy in the group because that would, what he's
doing would not fly, you know, like it would not fly with our
group. It would fly with somebody else.
But like our, our guys would be like, we hate this guy.
Why, why is he here? You know, men need to purpose
and they need responsibilities or they generally self destruct.
They, they, they say what I saw a quote about that the other
day, like if, if you don't give a man a war to fight, he'll,
he'll make war on himself. And, and that's, that's not
wrong that, that's for my, the different degrees and different
men, but men generally need a purpose and, and something, a
direction, you know, something, a goal, something to do.
And as long as they're working towards a goal, men are doing
fine. But if you don't, if you, if you
give them nothing to do, which is why kind of welfare states
are scary in a, in a certain way, like if you give men no
reason to get up in the morning, they will self destruct like
they need, they need something to move towards that they're
that they're doing because it's, I mean, again, what have they
been doing for thousands of years?
They need to get up in the morning, go hunt food.
If, if they everything just is delivered to them.
What, what do you do? Well, why be alive?
Why be here? And so they become very
nihilistic. And but in on the topic of
meaning too. I think that that's something I
get into a lot in in my book Fire in the Dark is, is that men
naturally want to live in an ordered world and so they create
meaning when there is none and that's that.
That'll rub a lot of religious people the wrong way because
they meaning comes from an external source.
But as opposed to yourself? Yeah, my, my view is that if in
the ABS, like Voltaire said in the if God wasn't there, we'd
have to create him. The same thing is true of
meaning if there's no meaning present because there really
isn't any meaning in the world. And this is gets into a thorny
thing where people get into nihilism and so forth.
But I always say, like, I just made a video about this the
other day. That's kind of my big my thing
that I'm doing right now is YouTube.
And like a rock does not need a name to exist.
We don't need it just exists. It doesn't.
It just it doesn't need a name. All these things don't need a
name to exist. All that meaning all the, all
the a word is a story about a thing, you know, every, every
word tells a story. And and that's it's creating
value and it's creating well, it's this and not that, it's
exclusivity. And so we create all that stuff
to make sense of our world. And so if we met and we, none of
us spoke the same language, we would come up with grunts and
cliques that came to, to and we would remake the world.
That's what that's what men do. They need to live in an ordered
world and they will recreate it in its absence.
And so that's people find that very, people get not very
nihilistic about that, because if, if there is no absolute
meaning from an external source, people think they should become
nihilistic. But I think that I, I think that
it gives us the opportunity that men will create meaning in its
absence. And so if there isn't meaning
there, create it. I mean, and that that that
becomes very freeing. And it's like, well, it's you
and your group of guys can recreate would would eventually
recreate the whole world and, and it would be slightly
different, but a lot of it would be the same.
You know, but that's the point though.
I mean, I, I in a way you kind of making a parallel with that
story Lord of the Flies where yes, where where you, you
naturally create purpose. Yes, yeah, yeah.
I mean, that's what men will do. They, like, someone told me
about that about dogs, too. And like, if you don't give a
dog a job, it'll give itself a job, you know, like, it gives
it. They give themselves jobs
without us. Like my, my dog's job is to
obviously, I, I think he thinks he's supposed to like, be
available at any time, you know, like he has to.
If I, if I get up and go to my office, my dog will get out of
bed and go to the next room. So he's nearby, you know, just
to make sure. I mean, no one told him to do
that. That's just what he's decided
that he needs to do. It's a job.
But the same way men need to have a job and they need to, you
know, like they'll they'll they'll give themselves one or
like I said, they'll self destruct.
I. Just want to go back to the
tribes gangs aspect because when you say that people kind of
raised the eyebrows like gangs, OK?
Yeah, well, and also women, we men relate to women differently.
And women will never understand this because they, because
they're women and we relate to them differently.
But women will short circuit the group 100% women's present.
Yeah. And it's not because they're bad
or doing anything wrong or whatever.
It's just their presence will make men speak differently.
It'll, it'll, they, they, they'll, they'll change the
whole way that they relate to each other because women are
present. And it's not necessarily that
they like, it's not that they're all going to talk about girls
when the women are gone, you know, like they, in fact, they
usually don't, you know, like they're not talking about that.
Like, what's that mean? Like the guy like sleeping at
night and the woman's on the other side, I wonder if he's
thinking about me or whatever. And, and he's like, you know,
what happened with the Roman Empire?
You know, it's like it's men. Men are thinking about when men
get together, they're talking about totally different things.
They're, they're usually not just venting about women.
I like it. That's, that's very rare.
And it's only if it's like necessary for some reason.
But they're, they're talking about things that men like to
talk about. That's that's their own
interests and so forth. But I mean, adding to that,
there was a study done and I, I cannot for the life of me
remember when I read this, there was a study done, Jack, that
they wanted to see what would happen if you added women to the
front lines of a military operation.
OK. And effectively the conclusion
was it would lower morale. Yeah, well, I mean, because all
they're bonding, right. Like we just said that they they
relate to each other differently.
They need to bond to be in that play in that platoon or whatever
together. And if they can't bond properly
that that makes them less effective.
And there is no like specific way to make them bond.
But they're, they're going to so much of culture is jokes.
So culture starts with jokes. I say, like almost everything
begins as like all of a sudden, if you guys have an inside joke,
then that's, that's kind of the seed of culture.
We have a whole bunch of jokes that no one else thinks they're
funny, but we do because we were there and we, I mean, that's
that's where culture comes from so many.
And so men have to create that. And a lot of times they won't
create that with women present, you know, like they won't create
this like internal discussion that becomes its own culture
over time. And, and the other thing is, I
mean, obviously I've, it's nice that what's happening in America
right now is that we're actually, people are speaking
about this now, whereas you weren't allowed to talk about
this for like decades. But I mean, I've heard it from
friends. I, I had so many people who were
sought me out after the wave of men because they read it in
Afghanistan or Iraq or something like that.
And so all these veterans who come back and like, they just
talk about being in units with women and like what a disaster
it was. And like they realize, you know,
like her value, her street value is that maybe not be got that
great, but her value when she's in a in a, in a, there are only
three women and like 30 guys, their, their value goes up and
then become they used to, what do they call them something
Queens? But, you know, like, all of a
sudden these girls will get guys carrying all their stuff for
them and all this, you know, like, 'cause they're the only
women there, you know, like, so they, yeah, short circuits a lot
of things to have women present just because of natural, because
of men and women are different. Jack why is masculinity
becoming, well, not masculinity? Why are men becoming so
feminized? What's going on?
Is that a result of women, or is that a result of other men?
Well, it's, it's a result of other men in, in terms of like
everything that happened, we were in charge.
So everything that happened happened on our watch, like,
like feminism happened on our watch, you know, like it, it's
so it's like, yeah, yeah. I mean, to a certain extent,
everything is men's fault, you know, like, so anything that bad
happened really. I mean, all the changes that
have happened in society have been because some men at at the
top were like, yeah, that'll be fine.
We'll we'll just go with that. That'll work for right now.
And and then we live through the problems that that creates, you
know, whether it was, you know, like, say the boomer kind of
experiment, whether the things that happened with the Internet
or, you know, like all these changes happen in society, then
we, we have to deal with them. And obviously the reason why if
men are becoming feminized is because a they're being
programmed in a particular way by propaganda to be.
I mean, like I said, I was, I was always, you know, grew up, I
guess in the late 80s, early 90s.
And there was already a lot of propaganda, like masculinities,
outdated men are bad. You shouldn't act like a man.
That's like not not the right way to behave.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Toxic wasn't even they didn't
even call it toxic then. It wasn't with that.
That's like a innovation from a twenty 10s.
But in the 70s they called it testosterone poisoning.
Like it was the same thing. They just recycle the same thing
over and over again, but they just give it new names.
But yeah, I mean, it was there's yeah, there are all these men,
they're getting all these messages that masculinity is
bad. I think that actually probably
contributed a lot to the trans thing is that you have, you
know, if you're a young man and you've been told your entire
life that being is man is a bad thing, maybe you want to be a
woman. You know, like that's, I think
that that's a valid that's probably been an influence on on
a lot of the people who are confused.
Well, I bet you've been telling me that being I am a man, but
you've been telling me that being a man is bad.
So, you know, like that get that's got to get in their head.
You know, like if they've been hearing that since they were
like a baby, that's that's got to get in their head.
And so that's I think that's a factor.
But the other thing is obviously is there's the propaganda
element of it. And then there's also the
element of it that is, you know, like just lack of challenge.
Like we said, masculinity is optional.
You have to seek out challenges. So the way you have all these
guys doing like absurd things, you know, whether it's ice bath
things like men's groups for a while that was the big trend.
They all get together and take ice baths like 'cause they don't
have anything hard in their lives.
Me and my friends who have done at different times, like blue
collar jobs that are actually hard.
Like it's like my, my buddy, he, he had the best story.
He was like, these guys are getting ice baths.
Have you tried being on a ladder for three hours trying to fix
something in in the freezing rain and your pants are frozen
to your leg? Have you tried that?
Like, you know, there are a lot of jobs see in the world that
you can still do that are really hard and those people will just
want to come home and relax. They don't need to take an ice
bath, but they they do other things.
But there are so many men who don't have anything that's
challenging in their lives. And so they need to seek that
out. And that's, you know, like if
you grew up having, I would say, like men who grew up with
brothers have a little bit of an edge because they, they've had
to compete with another guy their whole life.
And so they've had to work out all those little status
hierarchies and all that stuff. They've been doing that their
whole lives. Whereas like I, I grew up with
sisters. So, you know, I'll never have
that advantage. But that's that's why, you know,
you know, whether people go into like combat sports and things
like that, they've never had that experience and they need to
have it. They need to go through that
experience of figuring out that hierarchy and doing the push,
pull and all that kind of stuff with it with different men
because that's part of how we become what we are.
But it's easier not to do any of those things, you know, And
society, it's like society is telling you being a man is bad.
And it's also easier to not be a man.
So well, that's that's your answer to like why men are
becoming so effeminate is it's like society is saying it's bad
to be masculine and being masculine is hard, you know,
like, say, and men will judge you in a way that women won't.
And so men, so many men get addicted to female affirmation,
which is, yeah, I'll say which is cheap.
Like in the sense that like, you know, if you look at a woman
post something and it's all, a lot of it's fake too.
But if you, a woman post something, you get 300 other
women being like, that's amazing, amazing, amazing,
everything you do amazing. And whereas dudes, you have to
struggle to get a positive comment from a guy at all.
That was really shit. Come on.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Like you could do anything.
I mean, I would say like, 'cause you know, my job is to sometimes
do manly stuff. I was like, if I, if I would do
literally anything in the realm of masculinity and post it on
Instagram, my comments will light out about how I did it
wrong. Like it doesn't matter, you
know, like it'll be dudes will not be like the amount of man
squat a great job. Your squat wasn't low enough.
Oh, 100% exactly. Like that's a perfect example.
Same thing. Any of the masculine spheres,
like dudes who are shooting. Yeah, like, like, dude, dudes
have all kinds of opinions about that.
Yeah, dudes, all of us too far out.
Yeah, yeah. Oh yeah.
Oh, all of it, all of it. Men won't could tweak you to the
and that's kind of a little bit of an Internet disease it but
it's it's something that we do in real life, you know, but kind
of in a joking way. But in the Internet it's just
obnoxious. It becomes like guys have an
opinion about every little thing that you do, you know, whereas
like I said, women, women, it's much easier, I think for men to
be like, hey, I'm going to surround myself with women who
say that everything I do is amazing.
You know, like it's, it's a different world and being around
men is hard. Although it can come off as
being somewhat superficial, the discussion that we're having,
but it's not because I'll let me give you an example.
I was not too long ago, I was in Amsterdam, and I said to my
wife, you know, I saw a lot of males, but I didn't see a lot of
men. And I said that, you know, after
having read your your book because I suddenly became more
aware of the absolute feminization of men as they're
walking around looking at their cell phones with headphones on,
disconnected from reality and would probably jump and run away
if there was a fire, you know, not and not actually apply the
virtues of masculinity. Yeah.
And I think, I think it's even more than that too.
I think because it's what we are regardless.
And so I think that for us to reach our potential as men,
that's they're areas that we need to deal with and, and
areas, you know, like, because you know, if you're not going to
be masculine, like dudes always ask me on Instagram, they ask me
like, how do I become more masculine?
I'm like, how do we become more of a man or whatever?
I'm like, well, you're not a woman, so the only thing that
you can do is become more of a man.
Or you can just be a really crappy woman.
You're never going to be good at being a woman, so you need to
get better at being a man. I think it's like a good enough
message for a lot of people because it's going to make you
better at being you because that that is what you are.
And so you don't have to become this caricature of masculinity
where you just try and do all the manly things, being a lot of
it's not an outfit like that. That's where I think a lot of
gays go wrong is that they, they, they, they think
masculinity is an outfit that you can wear like, Oh, I'm
putting on my lumberjack costume, you know, like, but men
value can you actually do the thing, you know, like that's
more important than the costume or the outfit, the actual
ability to take action and do the thing, whatever it is.
And men are very tuned to authenticity in that way, you
know, like, in the sense of like, you know, all these, like
I said, Internet comments or whatever.
It's like if you, I could never, I had a guy in a photo shoot one
time. It was a photographer and he
wanted me to, he had these prop weapons and he wanted me to hold
up these weapons and he thought that would be cool.
And I was like, dude, I have so many special forces followers.
I can't hold a weapon. I, I, I can't sit there and get
photographed of a weapon I don't know how to use.
Like they would slay me. Like, like, you know, like,
because men are like, you know, like I would never be
photographed with a weapon that I've never fired or never a
weapon that I never don't know how to use because that, like,
who are you trying to be like that?
Unless you're acting like, unless you're literally in a, in
a play or a movie or something like that and you're acting now
that's fine. But the we men respect your
actual ability to do things. It's not like just play act and,
and, and look cute, you know, like you, you actually have to
be able to do things. And, and I think that that's
really important to men as well. And so, and, and as you're
saying, dude's walking down the street.
Well, you can tell if they can't do certain things, you know,
like you can tell that they've never been in certain kinds of
situations. And you know, there's a sliding
scale. I mean, it's not like I've, I, I
mean, I hang out with, I've, I've guys in my groups who are
like, I have a guy in my group who's a Marine Raider.
And I'm sure it's probably killed a lot of people like
overseas. And you know, like he's had that
whole experience and seen some things, you know, like that I
will never see in my life. And we we can't all you have to
do the best you can, you know, like it from where you are, you
know, but but you can't, you can't have every experience or
be be all the man things because then you're just kind of
becoming a character of like, I'm going to be the the manliest
man in man town. And you, you can't really be all
that. And you have so it has to be
proportionate to where you are in life.
But I think it's important to go and explore those things at
least, you know, like you don't have to become an MMA fighter,
but you should probably know what it's like to get punched.
Yeah, like you should probably you should probably have that
experience and and like go do that for a little bit and then
maybe you'll like it, maybe you won't.
Because a lot of anything in life, right, you you can try
them something and maybe it's for you and maybe it's not.
But a lot of times you don't know if it's for you because it
may seem like it's not for you. And then and then all of a
sudden you become very interested in it.
Like, you know, like I avoided jiu jitsu for years and now it's
like I really like wrestling and and I but I don't really like
ghee like like you get these very specific, like I like this
and I don't like that, but you had to try it to find out.
And and so that's true of all the man things.
Like I've done the shooting thing.
I always say that I'm kind of like I'm done.
I'm over my shooting arc, Like I I've done that.
I've tried it out. It's not really my my thing.
I, I, I would do it again in, in the right situation, but like,
it's not like something that really calls to me, you know,
but I've, I've been there and I've tried that and I know what
it is. And I think that's important for
men to do anything in the masculine sphere.
Like that is like, men should go out and seek that out and try it
out. And it helps you understand who
you are as a man and to to you know.
It's kind of going back to the primal and and disregarding the
social constructs, isn't it? Yeah, yeah.
I mean, to a certain extent, well, there are these primal
qualities of masculinity. I think it's important to
explore those because they are we are still the same animals
like being a man is being this certain kind of animal.
And you I think it's important to see that exercise, you know,
like this exercise, that strength and you know, it makes
you something else. Like I always you said, you want
to talk to me about workout stuff later, But for instance, I
would say like I didn't really start working out really hard
until my mid 30s, mid mid to late 30s.
And I wouldn't have told you at 20 that I think of myself as
being strong. And now it's literally part of
my identity like that, that's being the strong guy is actually
part of my identity and who I am.
And I wouldn't have known that I, I wouldn't have known I had
the potential for that or whatever it had I not tried it
out. And so that's part of my core
identity. I don't like certain lifts to go
below a certain thing. I'm actually doing that right
now. I'm like, well, let's do some
50s benchmarks. I haven't deadlift in a few
years. Well, well, I don't like that
number. That's much too low.
I'm like, let's get that up to where it was.
And you know, like, and, and, and so that's part of my
identity now and that's part of who I am.
And that's, I think it's made me just, I said more of myself, you
know, like a better version of myself by exploring those areas.
And like I said, not everything is for every person but you, you
will get you, you will realize your potential, I guess, as a
man that you did maybe didn't think you had.
And I think that's why I think it's important to explore those
things. Speaking of which, did you see a
few days ago a South African one, the world's strongest man?
Oh, no, no, I didn't see that. I thought you were going to go
through somewhere else with that.
But South Africa's been in our news a little bit lately.
Yes, but and. We won't talk about that because
it's highly embarrassing, Yeah. Yeah.
But. But no, yeah, I, I did not see
that. But yeah, that's, yeah.
I mean, again, that's a, I've done some strong man training
before and I know what that is, you know, like it's not
something I want to do all the time, but it's, it's good to
know what that feels like. Yeah.
So that's that's it's a cool thing.
But that's also what I find about masculinity.
That's so, I don't know, appealing also is the fact that
I'm not interested in what women do in the gym.
I'm interested in what men do in the gym and I'm interested in in
in in how they excel. And that's, that's the
foundation of virtue really is, is excellence.
I mean, that's, there's an interesting thing.
I mean, that's kind of where my interest is now.
So it captures my mind. But veer, the root word of
virtue is, is veer, which it means man.
So it's basically virtue meant manly in this ancient Rome.
And so it was Marshall, manliness, all the tactical
virtues, all the stuff that I'm talking about.
That's what that's what virtue meant originally.
And then it met with the Greek arete.
And when, you know, the Greeks influenced the Romans a lot with
the gods and the other things, but also with philosophy.
And so when you have Plato and everybody talking about Plato
and Aristotle and so forth, talking about ayate, which is
basically excellences. And so like those two things
merged right about Cicero, right about Cicero, those things
crossed over and became the virtue, became all these
excellences and the manly things together.
And maybe I'll write a book about that some point, but
that's kind of where I'm at with it.
Is that that's the foundation of virtue Is is this chase of
excellence and manliness at the same time?
How can I follow you? Oh, right now, like I said, my
website is www.jack-donovan.com. But right now I think the
easiest way to find me is I'm trying to produce videos every
week on YouTube. So I have a Jack Donovan at
YouTube, I have a channel there and I, I let that sleep for, for
a decade and now I'm kind of trying to go and talk at least
once a week on YouTube. And that's none of my new
projects. So that's, that's the best place
to find where I'm most active right now.
So I mean, I'm, I'm on Instagram at starttheworld and you know, I
have this group called Order of Fire at orderfire.com.
And that's my whole philosophy based on my book Fire in the
Dark. And obviously all my books are
in Amazon, et cetera. So.
Jack Donovan, thank you for joining me in the trenches.