July 23, 2024 • 54 mins
In this engaging episode, we dive deep into the core question of whether society provides sufficient opportunities for boys and men to express their masculine traits positively. We explore the consequences of stifling these natural tendencies and discuss various outlets like sports, scouting, and martial arts that can channel masculine energy constructively.
The conversation also touches upon the concept of "toxic masculinity," debating its implications and suggesting that the term might be a misnomer. Instead, we propose that the issue lies in how masculine traits are directed—whether for selfish gain or sacrificial service. We emphasize the importance of teaching young men to wield their inherent strengths, like physical presence and aggression, responsibly and selflessly for the betterment of society.
Through personal anecdotes and examples from popular culture, this episode underscores the significance of understanding and nurturing these traits, ensuring that boys grow into men who can confidently and positively contribute to their families and communities.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:58):
Ready? Yeah. Let's hop back into it. We, uh, we finished our break.
Jim, you posed a really great question. And that is if we're not providing opportunities
for boys and men to express masculine traits at their core, is that going to
manifest itself in negative ways?
And I think, I think that you've already got an answer formulated for that,
(01:20):
what you got for me. So I've got two answers.
One is a smart owl cancer, which is we need more fight clubs,
right that's the smart aleck answer you're not wrong not wrong but go on but
the real answer is providing opportunities for young men to go out and feel
those spaces and what it's like.
My youngest he's got a black belt in mixed martial arts that was his outlet
(01:45):
my oldest it was boy scouts being with men being out in the wild learning to
do those things both of them are Eagle Scouts, right?
That's where they cultivated those relationships, developed some of those skills,
learned how to express themselves in a positive way in a masculine environment, right?
(02:10):
It was very rare that you had a mom come along, but they were always welcome.
We've changed that dynamic now in that scouting community, which I don't love.
I don't hate. I see why they do it financial reasons there,
but it takes away that same, that space for young men to grow and learn how
(02:33):
to do that and where to express it. Right.
So you go, I'm going to use you as an example, Josh.
Okay. You go out and you hunt.
You do that on a regular basis yeah i think one you do it to provide for your
family and fulfill those pieces but two you go out because it's an opportunity for you to express.
(02:53):
Those masculine pieces in a positive way
right the people that don't have
those outlets they have to find a space for it you
have to let it get out somewhere right i
don't i've gone hunting with you a couple times it's fun
it's not my love right but i liked it yeah
right so what do i do i like to go play
(03:15):
video games and make 12 year olds cry right while
you go do that to me that's fun but it
it allows me to release some of
that extra overflowing i
don't know i don't want to call it masculinity but we'll we'll call it energy
yeah right that's an easy space for me to do that you like to go fishing something
(03:38):
well with kids yeah right well i'll hunt too but it's i don't know that i can
call it hunting till i've actually like shot something other than a target so,
sort of i guess because like is it fishing if you don't catch a fish or is it
just hanging out next to the pond wasn't did elmer fudd ever get the rabbit
or the duck i mean the show eventually maybe he did we don't know but yeah like
(04:00):
we you know it i think that there has to be that outlet Like you said,
for just that masculine nature that exists, right?
These boys have it. That was one of our reasons for homeschooling.
And it's probably the greatest source of frustration for my wife.
(04:21):
Because our boys will get into the dumbest fights and sometimes you just got
to let it play out right it's sometimes you've got to let them work through
that aggression right and and.
Understand it because if we constantly squash it
the second it happens they never learn how to
(04:42):
manage it and if they don't know how to
manage those feelings that well up right and
we you know we have to unpack it sometimes so my
son alex is probably the greatest example of of struggling to manage those passions
that come up he's he's got a good sense of justice but a very warped way of
(05:03):
applying it right so it applies different for him versus other people and so
when someone wrongs him him,
he correctly identifies that the action was unjust or unfair,
and he seeks to correct it.
And it is all, it is a singular focus until he feels like it's been corrected.
(05:23):
And so trying to, you know, remove him from the moment.
We don't want, you can never have that conversation with someone that passionate
when they're in the heat, right?
When their peak fire is burning, like, Like it's not the best time,
but we'll sit down, you know, a few minutes, hour, sometimes a day later,
never more than a day and get too far away from it and connection to those moments.
(05:47):
But sitting down and saying like, well, what, what triggered this? What was the cause?
Why were you so angry? Why were you seeking retribution, vengeance, whatever it was.
And we realized like, he's got this, this fire, this passion,
this understanding of justice, and he wants to correct these wrongs. And in school...
(06:08):
That behavior is not welcomed right the job
of correcting those wrongs is to the authority of
the teacher and that's not wrong right that's
a it's a necessary thing for the structure of having 25 30 kids there but what
it was creating for our boys was a scenario where they were not allowed to learn
who they are and understand they're like that those feelings you feel are good
(06:32):
There's nothing wrong in feeling angry about an injustice.
The wrong comes from how you respond to it.
If you seek out retribution on that by like, I think of one of their ones, like somebody,
I think it was one where they turned off a game and they were playing a game
(06:53):
and one of them was about to win and the other one turned off the Xbox and then
denied that his victory.
Well, because the game didn't finish so it
was it was a draw sounds like a butt kicking right
so so then it was you'll watch
them and this is where it gets wrong is that'll happen you
(07:13):
know around lunchtime and one of them will
pursue the other one the remainder of the day trying to find an opportunity
to ruin their game or their moment the way theirs was ruined and so it becomes
lost in that right I guess if we want to use the concept of toxic,
that's where it becomes toxic for them.
(07:34):
It's all consuming.
The vengeance is what matters more than understanding you were wronged.
It's okay to feel anger about that, but how you apply the energy from that anger.
Can be the good or the bad from it, right? There's no wrong in the feeling.
There's no wrong in the understanding of that.
(07:56):
And I think sometimes lost in that, especially in schools where you have to,
elementary school and even to some degree middle school, you have a lot of kids,
they're all gathered together.
You don't always have time to do that. And it's not really the responsibility
of a teacher to try to unpack those emotions, right? They don't have time for it anyways.
But what ends up happening is like, this is settled, this is final, let it go,
(08:19):
move on, right and they don't they don't get the opportunity to just express
it and and so if we don't have those opportunities we don't give them those
those avenues those venues for it and then they're going to express it in the
wrong ways it's gonna it's gonna be unchecked you're gonna get that disgusting.
Toxic misogynistic whatever that you see on social media
all the time the people posting that probably don't
(08:42):
believe half the stuff they say but they say it because it's you know some
type of anger that was unchecked that was
never corrected that was never unpacked to say like you feel
wronged you're entitled to that part here's how
you express it in a productive manner to grow with it
right not to you know to let it consume you yeah here's a question is because
(09:04):
i'm hearing you talk about that level of aggression that your boys express in
how they play and then how they try to solve problems as well when it comes
to conflict i see the same thing in my boys I see the same thing myself.
Is there a level of aggression that we inherently maintain as men that could
(09:24):
be called a masculine trait?
And there's aggressive women as well. I'm not saying there's no overlap,
but I feel like that if you were to throw them both on a bell curve,
that the aggression side of men would be higher than women.
And is the problem that we've you've not provided adequate outlets for that
(09:45):
aggression to be used in a positive way.
And I also want to make sure that we're differentiating.
There's a difference between aggression and anger
well i i think we
we have the spaces or the ability to
do it most men and i'm
(10:06):
going to say men and boys will find that pathway
to express that aggression it's physical
right because yes right my boys do it
they still do it they're 19 19 and 22 and i
have to pull them off of each other a lot harder they're a
lot bigger or they hit an inanimate object
right i think i can think of a few kids who've like punched a wall or exactly
(10:28):
the ground or something but it needs to come out right they need to and it's
always that bald fist that's gonna
be that release yeah whereas a more feminine response would be a slap.
The hand is open or crying i'm
gonna passive aggressive responses too i think that's
(10:50):
a lot more typical like that gets brutal yeah yeah yeah it's just as damaging
it's a it's a great i mean it's as big of a hammer as anything else it's an
emotional yeah battering you know so i think that maybe it's as we're talking
about that and thinking about it might be not necessarily that
aggression is distinctly a masculine thing.
(11:10):
It's that the physical expression of aggression is a masculine thing where women
have a more passive expression of aggression.
I don't know that it's limited to physical. I think that for sure a woman could
be physically aggressive when it was necessary.
And she's not, I think, disposed in her body to that.
But when you asked that question, what I was thinking about was going back to,
(11:32):
okay, there's the male body, there's the female body, and these bodies are distinct
for the sake of children, right? And so we need to understand them through the children here.
And I was thinking about, okay, when does one need to be aggressive, right?
We're not talking about when you're
going to go conquer your neighbor's barbecue or something like that.
We mean- We already did that. When there's a threat, when there's a threat that
needs to be eliminated, right?
(11:53):
So when there's that oral warning right out in the woods, right?
The men in the village are going to get their spears and they're going to go
out and find the threat or at least discern the threat, right?
But what are the women going to do? They're going to corral the children into a safe place,
right so i think that for the
man there's this there's this going out to go find it
and i think for the woman the reason why she's not this aggressive
(12:15):
attacker if we want to
call it that i think we could use the word defender too but there's there
is something offensive about going out to seek the threat whereas it wouldn't
be proper for the woman to do that be like all right like she might need to
in an emergency she might she might hide her children somewhere and then go
do it but she's not disposed well to that right so she encounters the threat
(12:35):
she's not going to to be as disposed as well to eliminate the threat, whatever it is.
And if she's also, this is another
really interesting thing about men and women and just reproduction.
Of the two, the man is the more sacrificial one or sort of disposable one, I should say.
Right. So like in terms of just propagating society, you can lose 40 million
(12:59):
men in a great world war and still keep kicking.
Right. Oh, wow. Yeah. So I think there's a reason why men have always gone out and done that.
Right. And there's a reason why men have always protected their women and why
they've actually, in order to eliminate other tribes or whatever, right?
You target the women, you capture the women, you take the women, right?
(13:19):
I think there's, I think that's why men go out to encounter threats and to eliminate them.
And I think if there's a particular masculine expression of aggression,
it is that sort of response.
I think it's that sort of response that he and his body is suited to,
right? To go out and confront.
You know what I keep thinking about? Pride of lions.
(13:42):
I've been thinking about it since the beginning. Yeah, good.
Right? But when you're looking at that pride of lions, you have that one male
lion, however many female lions in that pride, right?
Those female lions are a formidable force all on their own, right?
Obviously nothing to mess with.
Right. But if there's an aggression, it's usually that male lion going out to meet it alone.
(14:10):
Going back to your piece and your piece, that moral hearing thing.
Yeah. Right? So they go out and will meet that on their own.
So it happens in nature all the time.
And I mean, I'm just thinking of A Pride of Lions, and I'm sure it happens in
other spots, but it's constantly that he goes out alone.
(14:31):
He may or may not come back. And if he doesn't, well, somebody is going to show up to replace him.
But those that those female lions will go ahead and corral the young protect
that mama bears all of it right nature does that all on its own yeah well i
i'm mood i'm mooted a herd of cows once.
There's more to that story it's when
(14:54):
i was working out west in new mexico and we were at this high point
and there was a hole but the place i was at still a working functional
ranch it's a it's a calving ranch so the cows have calves
those calves are then sold to other ranches once they
are old enough to continue the line right
and so i'm up on this high spot and the cows
are all mooing and i just like yelled out the word
(15:16):
moo in a word that was distinctly not cow
and i thought it was amusing and funny and what
happened was all of
the calves gathered together and the cows
made a ring around them facing out and the one bull with horns in the group
(15:39):
closed the distance between that ring of cows and me by about 50 percent and
then you could like he hadn't figured out quite where i I was yet,
but he was like scanning through the trees and I just like backed away slowly.
I was like, I have created a storm that I do not want to be a part of the tonnage of animal.
(16:01):
Now that is aware of my presence and is assuming that I'm a threat is like, this is bad.
This is real bad, but it's that exact same.
That exact same mentality of fall back and protect versus move forward and discern
and perhaps take care of the threat.
Well, and I'm just curious what your thoughts are on this because it's a thought
(16:25):
that's running through my head is that there are the more obvious bulls that
immediately walk out, right?
And then there's the more best word I can think of as a casual bull.
I don't know if that's a thing where it's, they're watching and waiting and
watching and waiting, deciding how much of a threat it really is discerning
(16:49):
that threat before they even break cover.
Yeah. I'm just curious, you know, like. So, so I think it's,
it reminds me of was going through training at a company I worked at and,
you know, they had a, all this role play stuff that they did.
And so we get to put in these different groups and they gave us the examples
and I had to watch this group that went right before me.
(17:10):
And there was some kind of the whole setup was there was this disagreement about
some behavior and this person was acting the role of the manager and it was management training.
And so at one point during this role play and the people who were like doing
the training were the, the kind of the, the antagonists in the, in the training.
And at one point the guy stood up during the discussion and he didn't really
(17:33):
raise his voice, but he stood up and he very just matter of fact was like, well, you're wrong.
This isn't what happened. And when they were assessing him afterwards,
they said, when you stood up, it was really aggressive.
Defensive and so that was kind of
the markdown because in this in this altercation this discussion
right as it was getting heated he stood up and
(17:53):
they were like you stood up now you're towering over these two women
who were bringing this concern to you in this role play exercise right so then
it was our turn and so mine is a little different someone allegedly got hurt
fell off a ladder or something and the person was yelling at us because they
thought we were negligent so they're coming at us and telling us all these things
about it and hey you know this This place is unsafe to work at,
(18:15):
blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And I was like, okay, why do you think it's unsafe? And they said,
so-and-so fell off the ladder and instinctually I stood up and I was like,
where is she? Does she need help?
And in that moment, I'm like, oh man, I stood up. They're going to get on me about this.
So we finished the thing and she said, you know, when you stood up and I was like, here it comes.
(18:38):
She's like that was it really helped because
you stood up when someone was hurt and you
like it wasn't aggressive towards me it was like you're ready to go help right
it showed a level of concern for the situation and it makes me think now that's
that's that scenario right is is how you confront it right how you use that
(19:00):
it's the appropriate use right so i think when at that talk.
Father Matthew had said, he defined meekness as the appropriate application
of power, the appropriate use, the necessary amount of force or power to achieve
what was necessary, right?
So he was saying how meek, when people think of that, they think of little mice,
(19:21):
right? But the reality is that it was the appropriate use of power.
And so in that instance, the first guy, he
stood up and his full you know six two
frame presence was a
very intimidating use of that power because he stood up
to tower over these women that he was having a discussion
with or an argument with and it was between the two of them about something
(19:44):
that happened and so when he stood up it was this form of aggression like now
i'm above you in this moment and mine was standing to go to check on somebody
it was simple both of us stood up but in in in those two different situations.
From their perspective right the the women who
are doing the training one was an appropriate use of that
(20:04):
power because it was it was directed towards a threat of like this person's
hurt let's go take care of them versus the other one felt like that it was directed
towards a threat of we're not getting anywhere with this argument so i think
it's that right like when you talk about the two bowls what's the appropriate
use of that power in that moment is it to stand up,
get between the sound and and your your
(20:27):
herd and make your presence known right grunting whatever it is but use that
that bigger frame to scare off the threat away right or is it laying in wait
because you're like i don't know where this threat is but i think it's a legitimate threat.
And if I stand here now, I'm not in the right spot. What if it's over there?
(20:49):
What if it's, you know, I got to assess more. So I don't, I think from a bull
perspective, I don't know if they're getting that, that technical in their thought
process, but I think for, for us, I think it's important to recognize the appropriate use.
When is it, when is it the right time to stand up, be intimidating?
When's it the right time to sit back and listen and
(21:10):
understand before you jump up and you use that that aggression you know to to
solve the problem or rectify the situation yeah i do i do think that coming
coming full circle now to sort of defining.
Masculinity and toxic masculinity and authentic masculinity it's not necessarily
(21:35):
the traits it's It's what you're doing with them.
That's what really is going to define it. If men are naturally more physically
aggressive, what are you doing with that physical aggression?
Is your thought process to...
Do harm to others from a place of hate or is
it to go and serve others either as
(21:57):
a protector or provider in a sacrificial act
of love like that that to me is is kind
of where where it's at and and not coming
quite full circle but half circle to the question that
jim presented and that was is there are
we not providing enough opportunities for men
to hone hone their own
(22:19):
natural traits to such a way that they can be wielded
confidently and with
and with precision for the betterment of the family
and society and i guess the next question i've got
is is is the lack of opportunity to
express those not letting our young
men be confident with those abilities and is
(22:40):
the lack of confidence in those abilities what is
leading to that manifestation of emasculation that's
what it is right it is dang it it's not it's it's
not applying it right it's not it's that's the the
one who sits back and watches and never acts right you're not
you have these this ability but you let right
(23:00):
like the the example that that we started with of the the people being crucified
next to jesus right they were emasculated their their masculinity was taken
away their life was taken away their ability to act was taken away if we allow
that right that's that flip side if you You, if you sit there in fear of like.
If I speak up or I do this or I show any type of toxic masculine traits.
(23:22):
Then people are going to not like me or whatever.
You allow that fear, whatever it is that motivates you to do nothing.
If you allow that, then you're being emasculated as a, as a young man.
Yeah hang on so i think we i just
want to make sure femininity is always part of this discussion too because i
don't i don't want to say that masculinity is like the
(23:42):
proper application of power or that it's the
ability like emasculation is is the inability to act when one ought to act because
women have power and they have authority in different ways right and they they
act in different ways and there's there's times when women don't act when they
should act right and And that's not them being emasculated. That's something else.
(24:04):
And so I think back to Josh's question or his remark that there's some sort
of traits here that we're looking for.
And it's traits that we identify as under this sort of air quotes heading of masculine.
And we want to talk about how we best embody those traits as men.
(24:24):
Right? I think that's really important.
And i think i'm gonna bring up now that a point that we talked about at men's
group but it'd be good for the listeners.
I have issues with the very terminology of toxic masculinity,
just because I don't think it names the traits, right?
I think it, when people hear it, they think about a man.
(24:50):
They think about masculine, they think about a man. And when you call something
toxic, that means you have too much of it, right?
Like a lead toxicity, right? There's too much lead. head.
And so, I think we want to be just really careful, and we have been in this conversation, right?
But I think everybody should be really careful about using the word toxic masculinity,
(25:11):
especially because of what it suggests to boys that what you are,
you could be too much of that, right?
So, what God made you, you need to actually restrain that because it's not perfectly good.
There's some there's some there's some badness in it or there
could be and so i think if
we can name correctly what the traits are that we're
(25:33):
trying to exercise well we will
find a better word than toxic masculinity to express what the imperfection is
right so if we if we back all the way up to sort of virtue theory which i think
was what you guys identified on your mission trip was kind of behind that conversation
right that virtue is always found in some sort of middle between an excess and a defect.
(25:54):
And this goes all the way back to Aristotle where courage is a good example.
Courage appropriately measures daring so that one could be too daring or not daring enough.
If he's too daring, we don't call him toxicly courageous.
We don't say that he has toxic courage. We say that he is.
(26:16):
Rash right oh interesting he's rash and if he's
if he's if he lacks daring we don't
say that he's like i don't i can't
even think of a negative word for courageous like i'm courageous no
we call him a coward right we have a different name for that too and if you
want to talk about like if you want to use the word toxicity right you could
(26:37):
talk about toxic daring or something like that where you are too daring and
you can be too daring right but you can't be too courageous Courageous. That's not possible.
Right. Courage is the middle. I think I, and I don't think we're far off and
I love what you're, you're putting there because I, it's toxic masculinity is
(26:57):
really an abuse of power.
Right. And how that power is applied.
What kind of power? Because women have power too. Right. Well,
but it's being applied or where it came from originally,
you know, it's original application where the gentleman, gentlemen that were
in that position of power and abusing it. Right.
But I agree. Abusive power is gender neutral.
(27:20):
Maybe our real problem is not that we haven't found the right word for it.
It's that we have lost some of our creativity to find the right word.
I mean, the English language is ridiculously complex, right?
Because it blends so many different languages together. American English, right? Right.
(27:43):
And what we did because talks the phrase toxic masculinity started here is we
dumbed it down to very basic forms and threw it out there because that's kind
of what we do culturally instead of being more,
I mean, just look at the way things are written and, and the,
the beauty of language and how pull up anything on the internet. It's just, right.
(28:09):
I was going to say kids, Kids are really creative with the words they come up
with. You need a new dictionary every year.
Well, right, but the words, they're making up words, right?
But they actually, they make sense. When a kid explains to you where the word's
coming from. Yeah, listen.
I don't know. There's a few that don't make sense. No, but I think somehow.
(28:30):
I feel like we could have come up with something better than toxic,
masculine. Yeah, it makes me actually wonder how deliberate it is.
Right. And here's what's interesting about that is that I think when I'm writing
down some of the traits that's like, all right, what do these look like in excess?
But then when I think about, and the example we just gave was great where it was like.
You know, an excess of courage is rashness, but a lack of courage is cowardice.
(28:56):
And I feel like that maybe the lack of a trait, maybe it's easier to find a
word for than what excess of something is.
And so when there's an excess of a trait, we just lump it all together because
we, we lack the verbiage to be able to do. I think you gave a great example.
Like we know well what lack of
(29:17):
courage is it's coward the fact i
think that you've really given me now just in this one moment to be like hey
if you've got too much courage you're rash the fact that you've given me a talking
point to have with my 11 year old now who maybe has too much courage that he
expresses on a regular like there's no stopping that dude now i have the ability
(29:38):
to talk with him about that so So,
you know, somebody who lacks in strength is weak. What is the excess?
Yeah, yeah. This is actually, this is so funny because this goes all the way
back to Aristotle as everything does to Jim's lament.
But can we use Plato? I mean, you know, come on. No.
(29:58):
So when Aristotle is trying to name all the virtues, he finds that,
of course, virtue is always in the middle between some excess and some defect.
And he says this very clearly.
Some vices have no name because there is no clear expression of them.
And the example he gives is the vices associated with temperance.
So temperance is, it moderates our desire for pleasure.
(30:21):
You can love pleasure too much or too little. We have a name for loving it too
much. We call that intemperance.
What's the name for somebody who doesn't love pleasure enough?
He's like I don't really know yeah he says we'll just call it insensibility and move on right but.
Yeah, there is a difficulty with naming things. And sometimes any old word can
(30:45):
work, like insensibility. It's fine.
I recoil from toxic masculinity because I'm always thinking about students.
And when they hear what I say when I speak, I need to think about what they're going to think.
And so if they hear toxic masculinity, they're going to think I can be too much of a man.
(31:05):
Right. And that's false, right? Right.
So I think it could just be as simple as just stating that very clearly,
like we're that that's not what we're saying, but that we can use the word for the sake of brevity.
Right. I think that a lot of what I see in culture,
if we if we want to get to name the specifics of it, what I see in,
(31:26):
for example, the red pill movement is very much a group of people who've said
men traditionally have been providers and protectors for women.
Women don't seem to care about that anymore.
So I'm only going to protect and provide for me and women in procreation be damned.
And so I think that protecting and providing in for oneself in excess is just
(31:54):
selfishness being, being egocentric.
Like, and I think that there's a lot of these things that manifest themselves
in selfishness and egocentricity instead of service and sacrifice.
And so I think that's kind of the lens to look through it.
In fact, so here's what I'm going to do is, so strength, leadership,
(32:16):
being a provider, being a protector,
maybe in the scenarios that we've talked about, it's not necessarily in excess
or lacking thereof, which I do think that there's a level of that as well, but perhaps it's.
Is it being expressed selflessly and sacrificially or is it being expressed
(32:38):
in a selfish way and ego in an egocentric way?
Like, are you using these things for others or are you using these things explicitly for yourself?
So I think going back to the attempt to kind of define masculinity, Right.
And we, we, I think we, we define that one unique characteristic for,
(33:01):
for femininity, for women, right.
Of, of being able to nurture, like grow life and provide for it, right.
Nurture with their body. And we, we touched on the.
Typically, right, on average, men are going to have a more imposing presence,
deeper voice, more intimidating.
I think Matt talked about this, a men's group was the, you know,
(33:22):
like the booming like dad voice, right? You could say things and you're going
to get people's attention.
You think of a lion, their roar, their presence, the big mane, right?
I think I even read something about like when a lion loses, when a male lion
loses to another male lion, their mane like fall out. And it'll grow back.
But like the stress of that, right? Like they're literally, right?
(33:43):
Like, I don't know if that's true. I remember reading it was on the internet,
so it's probably false. You can find out, Jim.
Jim, you're on GTS duty. Yeah, check that out. But I think what it is,
is if we want to hone in on those, that one piece that we know, right?
The, the masculine form, right? The male body is, is we're, we're supposed to
be a little bit bigger, a little bit more of a presence, a little bit more intimidating
(34:06):
in some ways so that, that we can defend.
So we can protect, but also going back to what you said about,
we could lose a lot of men in society.
And as long as their women are there, right? Then society will continue. It'll continue, right?
It's why we have hunting quotas where you can kill as many deer as you want.
Male deer, right? Did you? I've got an answer.
(34:26):
So a lion's mane often shortens considerably and can even fall out altogether
when an animal is wounded.
It has two photographs, but these two photographs show that the same lion Trojan
within six, within a six month period before and after receiving an injury in
a fight with another lion.
(34:47):
Is that big? I wonder if that's because of a redirection of energy
towards healing or something which would suggest that the main is
actually this expression of like a super abundance of energy so
it's funny that's my thought yeah it's funny that you mentioned that right yeah
if if if if a male deer if a buck injures one of its legs the next season when
(35:08):
its antlers grow the antler on the opposite side of the head from the leg injury will be deformed.
Hmm. Interesting. And, and it is that same, it's all, I never thought about this before.
It's almost like this visible marker of dude, you got your butt kicked.
So I'm wondering why I don't have any hair then. Did I get my butt kicked too
(35:30):
many times as a kid? Is that what happened? I think, yeah, maybe. I don't know.
I'm going to Google that as well. What I have heard is
that men that have higher levels of testosterone end
up having more male pattern baldness than
men that don't so it's just part of having a capital y
in our y chromosome is that maybe that's the
(35:50):
toxic masculinity there maybe right maybe it's
just too much too much testosterone so so what i was what i was getting getting
to though is just thinking about that sacrificial part right like if there's
a threat right the bull put itself between the sound and all of the the cows
and the calves so So for us, like that appropriate,
(36:13):
like masculinity is we have that ability.
Are we using it for ourselves? Right.
So do I use my intimidating presence at a bar?
Do I put my arm on the wall and like lean in to talk to some woman and don't
give her a path to leave if the conversation is not something she wants to be a part of?
(36:33):
That's me using my intimidating presence for harm.
Right. Yeah. I'm not giving her an avenue to leave if the conversation's not
something she wants to be a part of,
and I'm using my presence in that way versus am I using that when maybe I see,
I don't know, an altercation.
(36:54):
I see someone pushes some woman down, and I'm trying to think of an example
off the top of my head, but do I come up and be like, what's going on here?
I think of kids fighting, right?
Middle school age kids, and you see something going on and there might be a,
I think I've seen it. It was at a.
I did a summer camp. I did a long time. And one of the chaperones,
(37:17):
one of the moms there was trying to break up this like shoving match and she's
like yelling at them and they're just not listening.
And I'm like, I just come over and I boomed out like, what are you guys doing?
And all of a sudden they all stopped and looked.
And it was just that booming voice, that moment that someone bigger than you. Yeah.
Even if they're not, even if you're not bigger than them, like a deep voice
(37:39):
calling them out, it's going to get their attention for a second.
So are you using it for that or are you using it for your own personal gain?
I think that's that red pill thing is saying, I have this presence,
I have this gift from God of being deeper voice, bigger.
Am I using that for my own personal gain or am I using it for others?
(38:00):
Am I using it sacrificially? Right.
I'm not dying. I'm not literally going out and dying every day,
but I might, you know, use it for, for something that is a little sacrificial.
It's something I don't want to do, but it's something I'm doing for the good of somebody else. Yeah.
I hate that. I know that the whole red pill thing was in reference to the matrix
(38:21):
and like, you know, reality. Yeah. Yeah.
But I'm so frustrated that they used red pill because the color red is typically
the color that represents sacrifice because it's the color of blood.
And I'm, I'm trying to figure out a way to rebrand it so that there's a branding for that.
(38:42):
Masculinity that is, is focused on that, but someday we'll get there.
The example I wanted to give though, to your point was I was standing out here
in the front yard of my house and at least two of the boys were out there,
but I think it was actually several of them.
And for those of you who've never been to my house before, we are the first
(39:03):
house in the neighborhood, which means that every single person that lives here
has to drive by our house to go
home, regardless of which which way you're going when you're getting in.
And I was standing at the driveway close to the road and somebody pulled into
the neighborhood and came around that corner way too fast.
(39:24):
Younger guy driving a truck just came around really fast.
And I was on the edge of the grass and I turned and
looked at him and I just dad glared through that windshield
and made eye contact with him and and
and the window as he was driving past and
was going down the street the window started going down on the passenger
side i was like god help me if he says something
(39:47):
stupid it is on
like he can't leave this neighborhood without like i will create a checkpoint
at my driveway if that's what it takes that window came down and before he was
even to the neighbor's house he yelled out sorry out the window nice so like
that to your point that presence,
(40:10):
of providing a protective barrier whether it's with a look or words or anything
like his men it carries weight i don't know that my wife would have been capable of.
Shooting that same glare through the
window that would have required a reaction
because i think the wife stare typically is
(40:32):
i'm disappointed in you the wife
stare only works on you yeah it doesn't work
on anybody else right like and to your point about
about men's voices as well so we'll be up here in
our uh in our kitchen dinner will
be ready and we'll have
two boys downstairs in the basement maybe or somebody outside
(40:54):
or two boys upstairs or wherever they are and my wife's
voice is just dinner dinner even
when i mean she's a foot shorter than i am she's got significantly less lung
capacity and lower frequencies like what men's voices have actually have the
ability to travel through objects whereas higher frequency sounds do not Great
(41:16):
example is if you've ever seen somebody bumping their music loud,
coming by in a car, you hear the bass in the low end first.
And she'll be like, Josh, tell them it's dinner time. And I'll just bark out, boys, dinner.
And it travels through the house in such a way that you say,
okay, coming, be right up.
Like they can hear in a better way because of that. And you've,
(41:38):
you've just got to think that there was some, some part of that that was evolutionarily
helpful for being able to raise the alarm and sound the alarm.
Well, and I think that's where it goes, right? That evolutionary piece,
not only can it travel through something, but it travels farther.
Yeah. Right. So that base tone will carry significantly farther than those higher
(42:01):
tones, which goes to the alert.
It goes to the hunting. It goes to the protecting. It goes to all those pieces
in that tribal scenario.
Yeah. It's interesting. There was, I always thought that, uh.
Elk in particular were a mismatch of
body size and and
the sound that they make because a big bull elk is
(42:23):
on the low end 600 pounds and
some of them are up in the 800 pound range and they make
that super whiny just
i was like
this makes no sense and then i remember my first
my first elk cunt that i went
on in colorado in 2018 i had
(42:45):
a big herd bull bugle at
me from sub 50 yards away and what microphones don't pick up is when they do
that there is a lower register tone that is there that will rattle your rib
cage that you don't ever see in videos or film or youtube videos that are out there.
(43:06):
Like there's something that is missing there that is that low end resonance
that just cuts through stands of aspen trees and carries over mountain.
What's interesting about that is that higher frequencies, if unobstructed,
will carry longer than low frequencies, but low frequencies have the ability to go through both.
(43:27):
So you have this large male animal that has somehow been able to harness both
the lower frequency register and the higher end register to be able to penetrate sound through objects.
But also carry over long distance.
So you could hear up close, a bull elk's going to rattle your ribs,
but in an open valley, you'll be able to hear one bugle from 400,
(43:50):
500, 600 yards away sometimes. That's how wireless works.
I want to go back to the trying to talk about how we can take the masculine
and direct it towards the good of the community and not towards the good of the self.
I think that's, that seems to be pretty critical.
I was thinking, it seems like one of the ways we do that is by taking boys and
(44:16):
this natural sense of like, I want to go out and get the threat and we put them in sport, right?
Right. So like one of the great things about team sport and especially,
right, is that the boys have to work together as a team, like if they can't
achieve this on their own and that the ones that try to be like the all-star,
right, they end up bringing the team down.
(44:36):
And so there's i think it that sort
of practice is actually jim you made the joke right we
need more fight club but i think we like i think that sport is
good for boys because it it puts
their masculine energy in an environment where they can achieve a good but only
together right when they when they're aggressive but they're aggressive together
for a common purpose and i think that's when we're when we're working with community
(45:01):
we have to we have to be working for some common good for the whole city or
the whole community or whatever.
So we got to identify the good and then teach the boys how they can exercise
this energy in such a way that they're advancing the good of the community and
not just the good of themselves.
And there's ways to show them that advancing your own good contrary to the good
(45:21):
of your community is not going to end well and things like that.
But this goes to the sort of red pill objection.
And the red pill objection is that what do
i get in return right that's what the red
pillars have been have been pushing is i think i
think i think most men right if if the call
came out like it did in like world war
(45:42):
ii you know there's there's a there's a there's a global threat we need you
to come down today to answer this threat i don't know about today's generation
i don't i'm a little more optimistic than some but i think that a lot of men
would still they would they would show up before their draft papers are in their mailbox, right? Yeah.
And I still think that a lot of those red pill guys would have that sort of
(46:04):
proclivity, right? That they want to be able to just answer that call.
But we have to be able to show boys that the sort of sacrifice we're talking
about is not, it's not something that you're not going to get anything out of
and that no one's going to thank you for, right?
If we can talk about what is it that a man gets out of it when he goes out to go confront the threat.
(46:29):
Then maybe we can start encouraging boys to do this. But if you're just telling
a boy, I want you to chop your arm off for the community.
Like, why would, why would he do that? I mean, it's like, this is,
this is no fun. This hurts. This makes my life worse in my, in my life.
What, what's the, what's the, what's the trade? What's the business offer?
What's the value proposition? What's the return on investment for my sacrifice?
(46:50):
Right. But, but then it's not a sacrifice.
No, I, I, do you know what I'm saying? Like if, if, if I'm doing a quid pro
quo, I'm going to give you something and you're, back.
I'm not sacrificing anything.
So I think there's a difference between saying, what am I getting in return?
But also if the return isn't to me, what is the value to the community?
(47:13):
So there's gotta be value in the sacrifice, but how does this make things better?
Yeah. It's the expectation of something coming back. I disagree, Jim.
So So I think that we have to be able to show if an action is going to be morally good,
it doesn't mean that it's good for other people. It means it's good for me, right?
(47:36):
If it's, if it's something that I'm going to do, that's good. It's good for me to do.
Now the opposing view of that comes around from Immanuel Kant,
which is a lot later, right?
So the idea that we want to be, we want to just be good.
We want to do these good things. We want to do them for no other reason than
this raw sense of duty, because it's good for somebody else.
(47:57):
I don't think that that's persuasive. And I don't think that it's true.
And I'll give you an example just to kind of concretize this here.
You might think that a man laying down his life for his country is not good
for him, right? Because it ends his life.
But if the virtues are actually good, right?
Then the man who lays down his life for his country is performing an act of
(48:20):
courage, which is perfective of him.
It makes him better. It is a good for him to perform the act of courage and
it is good for his community.
So we have to be able to bring these two together such that we're not asking
men to set aside all of their interests and all of their goods so that the community
(48:41):
can flourish, because the red pills got you at that point.
But I think you can show them that your good is in agreement with the good of
the community, such that you will not find your happiness, your fulfillment,
and your good apart from building up your community.
And I could show that in a number of different ways, but I don't want to,
(49:03):
that would be, my soapbox is sliding under my feet right now.
Well, I think the piece that comes in, and I agree, right? They're building themselves up.
They're in that final moment, they're trying to find some level of perfection, right?
(49:23):
But they're not receiving something, right? They're not expecting somebody to
give them something in return.
It doesn't need to come from somebody else. It's not transactional,
right? It is, I'm doing this for myself.
It's actually a, that sacrifice isn't, it's selfless and selfish at the same time. Okay.
(49:43):
I'm doing it for me to perfect myself, to find that, to make myself comfortable
with whatever I'm giving it up for. Right. Yeah.
But I think if we try to teach our sons that if we're not clear on that,
that piece, they will always expect something in return for that good act.
(50:07):
And it goes back to how do you behave when nobody's looking?
Right. And that's the real key. What is your moral fiber when nobody is around?
Nobody expects anything from you. You can still be masculine.
And you can still be all of these things in those moments and find your moral
high ground, except the moral high ground is just within you. It's all internalized.
(50:30):
If they're looking outward, like they look at their phones and they look at
the internet and they look at somebody else to give them justification for that
act, then that's all they'll do it for.
And before you know what they're doing 30 second tiktoks right
it's how do i behave for myself
(50:51):
and how does that then better my
community well i think i totally agree right so this isn't this isn't about
purely like it's not real courage if you're only doing it so that you can get
a medal right right real courage is for the sake of the community right whether
you get a medal or not nonetheless Nonetheless,
(51:13):
if we refused to give medals to the men who died or to honor them,
right, you would have very few men who would do it at all because that is showing
them that there is no thanks to be had for this, right?
That the community does not appreciate what's being done. I've got a great example of that.
And that is in the movie, we were soldiers and there's the lost platoon,
(51:38):
which pursues somebody into the woods to try and capture them.
And they ended up walking into an ambush and the leader of that platoon stands
up to lead the men out and takes a couple or three rounds. and he ends up bleeding out.
And the thing that he says before he dies is, I'm glad I could die for my country.
(52:00):
And in one of the scenes previous to that during the training,
the sergeant is watching his leadership and now he's pushing people along and go, go, go, go, go.
And he says, that guy wants to win medals.
And I think that if you go into the battle wanting to win medals,
(52:21):
you're more likely to get yourself killed or get other people killed.
Because if you're, if you're, you know, think about it from the ROI,
there's primary, secondary, tertiary.
If your primary reason for going into battle is to win medals,
there's an easy way to do that.
You just got to do something stupid and die doing it that looks really good.
(52:44):
Lieutenant Dan.
Lieutenant Dan's another great example of a guy who had a long storied history
of relatives dying in every American war in all of history.
It's a big weight to carry with you going into battle but
if your primary if your primary reason for
(53:06):
going in is to get all
your men home and your secondary reason is to
complete the mission i think those two things could be interchangeable depending
on the situation and then your tertiary reason is is maybe like hey if i get
a medal or i get a promotion or something that's great but if your primary thing
is winning medals it's going to go badly we've all seen the movie hacksaw rich Mm-hmm . Yeah.
(53:30):
Right. And I think that's an excellent example of the selfless act with no expectation
of something coming back.
Mm-hmm . As a matter of fact, his expectation was he was gonna die. Mm-hmm . Right?
That's that selfless act over, and not only did he do it once,
he did it- Dozens of times. Dozens of times. Right, right. Right? Right?
(54:23):
Music.
Ready? Yeah. Let's hop back into it. We, uh, we finished our break.
Jim, you posed a really great question. And that is if we're not providing opportunities
for boys and men to express masculine traits at their core, is that going to
manifest itself in negative ways?
And I think, I think that you've already got an answer formulated for that,
(01:20):
what you got for me. So I've got two answers.
One is a smart owl cancer, which is we need more fight clubs,
right that's the smart aleck answer you're not wrong not wrong but go on but
the real answer is providing opportunities for young men to go out and feel
those spaces and what it's like.
My youngest he's got a black belt in mixed martial arts that was his outlet
(01:45):
my oldest it was boy scouts being with men being out in the wild learning to
do those things both of them are Eagle Scouts, right?
That's where they cultivated those relationships, developed some of those skills,
learned how to express themselves in a positive way in a masculine environment, right?
(02:10):
It was very rare that you had a mom come along, but they were always welcome.
We've changed that dynamic now in that scouting community, which I don't love.
I don't hate. I see why they do it financial reasons there,
but it takes away that same, that space for young men to grow and learn how
(02:33):
to do that and where to express it. Right.
So you go, I'm going to use you as an example, Josh.
Okay. You go out and you hunt.
You do that on a regular basis yeah i think one you do it to provide for your
family and fulfill those pieces but two you go out because it's an opportunity for you to express.
(02:53):
Those masculine pieces in a positive way
right the people that don't have
those outlets they have to find a space for it you
have to let it get out somewhere right i
don't i've gone hunting with you a couple times it's fun
it's not my love right but i liked it yeah
right so what do i do i like to go play
(03:15):
video games and make 12 year olds cry right while
you go do that to me that's fun but it
it allows me to release some of
that extra overflowing i
don't know i don't want to call it masculinity but we'll we'll call it energy
yeah right that's an easy space for me to do that you like to go fishing something
(03:38):
well with kids yeah right well i'll hunt too but it's i don't know that i can
call it hunting till i've actually like shot something other than a target so,
sort of i guess because like is it fishing if you don't catch a fish or is it
just hanging out next to the pond wasn't did elmer fudd ever get the rabbit
or the duck i mean the show eventually maybe he did we don't know but yeah like
(04:00):
we you know it i think that there has to be that outlet Like you said,
for just that masculine nature that exists, right?
These boys have it. That was one of our reasons for homeschooling.
And it's probably the greatest source of frustration for my wife.
(04:21):
Because our boys will get into the dumbest fights and sometimes you just got
to let it play out right it's sometimes you've got to let them work through
that aggression right and and.
Understand it because if we constantly squash it
the second it happens they never learn how to
(04:42):
manage it and if they don't know how to
manage those feelings that well up right and
we you know we have to unpack it sometimes so my
son alex is probably the greatest example of of struggling to manage those passions
that come up he's he's got a good sense of justice but a very warped way of
(05:03):
applying it right so it applies different for him versus other people and so
when someone wrongs him him,
he correctly identifies that the action was unjust or unfair,
and he seeks to correct it.
And it is all, it is a singular focus until he feels like it's been corrected.
(05:23):
And so trying to, you know, remove him from the moment.
We don't want, you can never have that conversation with someone that passionate
when they're in the heat, right?
When their peak fire is burning, like, Like it's not the best time,
but we'll sit down, you know, a few minutes, hour, sometimes a day later,
never more than a day and get too far away from it and connection to those moments.
(05:47):
But sitting down and saying like, well, what, what triggered this? What was the cause?
Why were you so angry? Why were you seeking retribution, vengeance, whatever it was.
And we realized like, he's got this, this fire, this passion,
this understanding of justice, and he wants to correct these wrongs. And in school...
(06:08):
That behavior is not welcomed right the job
of correcting those wrongs is to the authority of
the teacher and that's not wrong right that's
a it's a necessary thing for the structure of having 25 30 kids there but what
it was creating for our boys was a scenario where they were not allowed to learn
who they are and understand they're like that those feelings you feel are good
(06:32):
There's nothing wrong in feeling angry about an injustice.
The wrong comes from how you respond to it.
If you seek out retribution on that by like, I think of one of their ones, like somebody,
I think it was one where they turned off a game and they were playing a game
(06:53):
and one of them was about to win and the other one turned off the Xbox and then
denied that his victory.
Well, because the game didn't finish so it
was it was a draw sounds like a butt kicking right
so so then it was you'll watch
them and this is where it gets wrong is that'll happen you
(07:13):
know around lunchtime and one of them will
pursue the other one the remainder of the day trying to find an opportunity
to ruin their game or their moment the way theirs was ruined and so it becomes
lost in that right I guess if we want to use the concept of toxic,
that's where it becomes toxic for them.
(07:34):
It's all consuming.
The vengeance is what matters more than understanding you were wronged.
It's okay to feel anger about that, but how you apply the energy from that anger.
Can be the good or the bad from it, right? There's no wrong in the feeling.
There's no wrong in the understanding of that.
(07:56):
And I think sometimes lost in that, especially in schools where you have to,
elementary school and even to some degree middle school, you have a lot of kids,
they're all gathered together.
You don't always have time to do that. And it's not really the responsibility
of a teacher to try to unpack those emotions, right? They don't have time for it anyways.
But what ends up happening is like, this is settled, this is final, let it go,
(08:19):
move on, right and they don't they don't get the opportunity to just express
it and and so if we don't have those opportunities we don't give them those
those avenues those venues for it and then they're going to express it in the
wrong ways it's gonna it's gonna be unchecked you're gonna get that disgusting.
Toxic misogynistic whatever that you see on social media
all the time the people posting that probably don't
(08:42):
believe half the stuff they say but they say it because it's you know some
type of anger that was unchecked that was
never corrected that was never unpacked to say like you feel
wronged you're entitled to that part here's how
you express it in a productive manner to grow with it
right not to you know to let it consume you yeah here's a question is because
(09:04):
i'm hearing you talk about that level of aggression that your boys express in
how they play and then how they try to solve problems as well when it comes
to conflict i see the same thing in my boys I see the same thing myself.
Is there a level of aggression that we inherently maintain as men that could
(09:24):
be called a masculine trait?
And there's aggressive women as well. I'm not saying there's no overlap,
but I feel like that if you were to throw them both on a bell curve,
that the aggression side of men would be higher than women.
And is the problem that we've you've not provided adequate outlets for that
(09:45):
aggression to be used in a positive way.
And I also want to make sure that we're differentiating.
There's a difference between aggression and anger
well i i think we
we have the spaces or the ability to
do it most men and i'm
(10:06):
going to say men and boys will find that pathway
to express that aggression it's physical
right because yes right my boys do it
they still do it they're 19 19 and 22 and i
have to pull them off of each other a lot harder they're a
lot bigger or they hit an inanimate object
right i think i can think of a few kids who've like punched a wall or exactly
(10:28):
the ground or something but it needs to come out right they need to and it's
always that bald fist that's gonna
be that release yeah whereas a more feminine response would be a slap.
The hand is open or crying i'm
gonna passive aggressive responses too i think that's
(10:50):
a lot more typical like that gets brutal yeah yeah yeah it's just as damaging
it's a it's a great i mean it's as big of a hammer as anything else it's an
emotional yeah battering you know so i think that maybe it's as we're talking
about that and thinking about it might be not necessarily that
aggression is distinctly a masculine thing.
(11:10):
It's that the physical expression of aggression is a masculine thing where women
have a more passive expression of aggression.
I don't know that it's limited to physical. I think that for sure a woman could
be physically aggressive when it was necessary.
And she's not, I think, disposed in her body to that.
But when you asked that question, what I was thinking about was going back to,
(11:32):
okay, there's the male body, there's the female body, and these bodies are distinct
for the sake of children, right? And so we need to understand them through the children here.
And I was thinking about, okay, when does one need to be aggressive, right?
We're not talking about when you're
going to go conquer your neighbor's barbecue or something like that.
We mean- We already did that. When there's a threat, when there's a threat that
needs to be eliminated, right?
(11:53):
So when there's that oral warning right out in the woods, right?
The men in the village are going to get their spears and they're going to go
out and find the threat or at least discern the threat, right?
But what are the women going to do? They're going to corral the children into a safe place,
right so i think that for the
man there's this there's this going out to go find it
and i think for the woman the reason why she's not this aggressive
(12:15):
attacker if we want to
call it that i think we could use the word defender too but there's there
is something offensive about going out to seek the threat whereas it wouldn't
be proper for the woman to do that be like all right like she might need to
in an emergency she might she might hide her children somewhere and then go
do it but she's not disposed well to that right so she encounters the threat
(12:35):
she's not going to to be as disposed as well to eliminate the threat, whatever it is.
And if she's also, this is another
really interesting thing about men and women and just reproduction.
Of the two, the man is the more sacrificial one or sort of disposable one, I should say.
Right. So like in terms of just propagating society, you can lose 40 million
(12:59):
men in a great world war and still keep kicking.
Right. Oh, wow. Yeah. So I think there's a reason why men have always gone out and done that.
Right. And there's a reason why men have always protected their women and why
they've actually, in order to eliminate other tribes or whatever, right?
You target the women, you capture the women, you take the women, right?
(13:19):
I think there's, I think that's why men go out to encounter threats and to eliminate them.
And I think if there's a particular masculine expression of aggression,
it is that sort of response.
I think it's that sort of response that he and his body is suited to,
right? To go out and confront.
You know what I keep thinking about? Pride of lions.
(13:42):
I've been thinking about it since the beginning. Yeah, good.
Right? But when you're looking at that pride of lions, you have that one male
lion, however many female lions in that pride, right?
Those female lions are a formidable force all on their own, right?
Obviously nothing to mess with.
Right. But if there's an aggression, it's usually that male lion going out to meet it alone.
(14:10):
Going back to your piece and your piece, that moral hearing thing.
Yeah. Right? So they go out and will meet that on their own.
So it happens in nature all the time.
And I mean, I'm just thinking of A Pride of Lions, and I'm sure it happens in
other spots, but it's constantly that he goes out alone.
(14:31):
He may or may not come back. And if he doesn't, well, somebody is going to show up to replace him.
But those that those female lions will go ahead and corral the young protect
that mama bears all of it right nature does that all on its own yeah well i
i'm mood i'm mooted a herd of cows once.
There's more to that story it's when
(14:54):
i was working out west in new mexico and we were at this high point
and there was a hole but the place i was at still a working functional
ranch it's a it's a calving ranch so the cows have calves
those calves are then sold to other ranches once they
are old enough to continue the line right
and so i'm up on this high spot and the cows
are all mooing and i just like yelled out the word
(15:16):
moo in a word that was distinctly not cow
and i thought it was amusing and funny and what
happened was all of
the calves gathered together and the cows
made a ring around them facing out and the one bull with horns in the group
(15:39):
closed the distance between that ring of cows and me by about 50 percent and
then you could like he hadn't figured out quite where i I was yet,
but he was like scanning through the trees and I just like backed away slowly.
I was like, I have created a storm that I do not want to be a part of the tonnage of animal.
(16:01):
Now that is aware of my presence and is assuming that I'm a threat is like, this is bad.
This is real bad, but it's that exact same.
That exact same mentality of fall back and protect versus move forward and discern
and perhaps take care of the threat.
Well, and I'm just curious what your thoughts are on this because it's a thought
(16:25):
that's running through my head is that there are the more obvious bulls that
immediately walk out, right?
And then there's the more best word I can think of as a casual bull.
I don't know if that's a thing where it's, they're watching and waiting and
watching and waiting, deciding how much of a threat it really is discerning
(16:49):
that threat before they even break cover.
Yeah. I'm just curious, you know, like. So, so I think it's,
it reminds me of was going through training at a company I worked at and,
you know, they had a, all this role play stuff that they did.
And so we get to put in these different groups and they gave us the examples
and I had to watch this group that went right before me.
(17:10):
And there was some kind of the whole setup was there was this disagreement about
some behavior and this person was acting the role of the manager and it was management training.
And so at one point during this role play and the people who were like doing
the training were the, the kind of the, the antagonists in the, in the training.
And at one point the guy stood up during the discussion and he didn't really
(17:33):
raise his voice, but he stood up and he very just matter of fact was like, well, you're wrong.
This isn't what happened. And when they were assessing him afterwards,
they said, when you stood up, it was really aggressive.
Defensive and so that was kind of
the markdown because in this in this altercation this discussion
right as it was getting heated he stood up and
(17:53):
they were like you stood up now you're towering over these two women
who were bringing this concern to you in this role play exercise right so then
it was our turn and so mine is a little different someone allegedly got hurt
fell off a ladder or something and the person was yelling at us because they
thought we were negligent so they're coming at us and telling us all these things
about it and hey you know this This place is unsafe to work at,
(18:15):
blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And I was like, okay, why do you think it's unsafe? And they said,
so-and-so fell off the ladder and instinctually I stood up and I was like,
where is she? Does she need help?
And in that moment, I'm like, oh man, I stood up. They're going to get on me about this.
So we finished the thing and she said, you know, when you stood up and I was like, here it comes.
(18:38):
She's like that was it really helped because
you stood up when someone was hurt and you
like it wasn't aggressive towards me it was like you're ready to go help right
it showed a level of concern for the situation and it makes me think now that's
that's that scenario right is is how you confront it right how you use that
(19:00):
it's the appropriate use right so i think when at that talk.
Father Matthew had said, he defined meekness as the appropriate application
of power, the appropriate use, the necessary amount of force or power to achieve
what was necessary, right?
So he was saying how meek, when people think of that, they think of little mice,
(19:21):
right? But the reality is that it was the appropriate use of power.
And so in that instance, the first guy, he
stood up and his full you know six two
frame presence was a
very intimidating use of that power because he stood up
to tower over these women that he was having a discussion
with or an argument with and it was between the two of them about something
(19:44):
that happened and so when he stood up it was this form of aggression like now
i'm above you in this moment and mine was standing to go to check on somebody
it was simple both of us stood up but in in in those two different situations.
From their perspective right the the women who
are doing the training one was an appropriate use of that
(20:04):
power because it was it was directed towards a threat of like this person's
hurt let's go take care of them versus the other one felt like that it was directed
towards a threat of we're not getting anywhere with this argument so i think
it's that right like when you talk about the two bowls what's the appropriate
use of that power in that moment is it to stand up,
get between the sound and and your your
(20:27):
herd and make your presence known right grunting whatever it is but use that
that bigger frame to scare off the threat away right or is it laying in wait
because you're like i don't know where this threat is but i think it's a legitimate threat.
And if I stand here now, I'm not in the right spot. What if it's over there?
(20:49):
What if it's, you know, I got to assess more. So I don't, I think from a bull
perspective, I don't know if they're getting that, that technical in their thought
process, but I think for, for us, I think it's important to recognize the appropriate use.
When is it, when is it the right time to stand up, be intimidating?
When's it the right time to sit back and listen and
(21:10):
understand before you jump up and you use that that aggression you know to to
solve the problem or rectify the situation yeah i do i do think that coming
coming full circle now to sort of defining.
Masculinity and toxic masculinity and authentic masculinity it's not necessarily
(21:35):
the traits it's It's what you're doing with them.
That's what really is going to define it. If men are naturally more physically
aggressive, what are you doing with that physical aggression?
Is your thought process to...
Do harm to others from a place of hate or is
it to go and serve others either as
(21:57):
a protector or provider in a sacrificial act
of love like that that to me is is kind
of where where it's at and and not coming
quite full circle but half circle to the question that
jim presented and that was is there are
we not providing enough opportunities for men
to hone hone their own
(22:19):
natural traits to such a way that they can be wielded
confidently and with
and with precision for the betterment of the family
and society and i guess the next question i've got
is is is the lack of opportunity to
express those not letting our young
men be confident with those abilities and is
(22:40):
the lack of confidence in those abilities what is
leading to that manifestation of emasculation that's
what it is right it is dang it it's not it's it's
not applying it right it's not it's that's the the
one who sits back and watches and never acts right you're not
you have these this ability but you let right
(23:00):
like the the example that that we started with of the the people being crucified
next to jesus right they were emasculated their their masculinity was taken
away their life was taken away their ability to act was taken away if we allow
that right that's that flip side if you You, if you sit there in fear of like.
If I speak up or I do this or I show any type of toxic masculine traits.
(23:22):
Then people are going to not like me or whatever.
You allow that fear, whatever it is that motivates you to do nothing.
If you allow that, then you're being emasculated as a, as a young man.
Yeah hang on so i think we i just
want to make sure femininity is always part of this discussion too because i
don't i don't want to say that masculinity is like the
(23:42):
proper application of power or that it's the
ability like emasculation is is the inability to act when one ought to act because
women have power and they have authority in different ways right and they they
act in different ways and there's there's times when women don't act when they
should act right and And that's not them being emasculated. That's something else.
(24:04):
And so I think back to Josh's question or his remark that there's some sort
of traits here that we're looking for.
And it's traits that we identify as under this sort of air quotes heading of masculine.
And we want to talk about how we best embody those traits as men.
(24:24):
Right? I think that's really important.
And i think i'm gonna bring up now that a point that we talked about at men's
group but it'd be good for the listeners.
I have issues with the very terminology of toxic masculinity,
just because I don't think it names the traits, right?
I think it, when people hear it, they think about a man.
(24:50):
They think about masculine, they think about a man. And when you call something
toxic, that means you have too much of it, right?
Like a lead toxicity, right? There's too much lead. head.
And so, I think we want to be just really careful, and we have been in this conversation, right?
But I think everybody should be really careful about using the word toxic masculinity,
(25:11):
especially because of what it suggests to boys that what you are,
you could be too much of that, right?
So, what God made you, you need to actually restrain that because it's not perfectly good.
There's some there's some there's some badness in it or there
could be and so i think if
we can name correctly what the traits are that we're
(25:33):
trying to exercise well we will
find a better word than toxic masculinity to express what the imperfection is
right so if we if we back all the way up to sort of virtue theory which i think
was what you guys identified on your mission trip was kind of behind that conversation
right that virtue is always found in some sort of middle between an excess and a defect.
(25:54):
And this goes all the way back to Aristotle where courage is a good example.
Courage appropriately measures daring so that one could be too daring or not daring enough.
If he's too daring, we don't call him toxicly courageous.
We don't say that he has toxic courage. We say that he is.
(26:16):
Rash right oh interesting he's rash and if he's
if he's if he lacks daring we don't
say that he's like i don't i can't
even think of a negative word for courageous like i'm courageous no
we call him a coward right we have a different name for that too and if you
want to talk about like if you want to use the word toxicity right you could
(26:37):
talk about toxic daring or something like that where you are too daring and
you can be too daring right but you can't be too courageous Courageous. That's not possible.
Right. Courage is the middle. I think I, and I don't think we're far off and
I love what you're, you're putting there because I, it's toxic masculinity is
(26:57):
really an abuse of power.
Right. And how that power is applied.
What kind of power? Because women have power too. Right. Well,
but it's being applied or where it came from originally,
you know, it's original application where the gentleman, gentlemen that were
in that position of power and abusing it. Right.
But I agree. Abusive power is gender neutral.
(27:20):
Maybe our real problem is not that we haven't found the right word for it.
It's that we have lost some of our creativity to find the right word.
I mean, the English language is ridiculously complex, right?
Because it blends so many different languages together. American English, right? Right.
(27:43):
And what we did because talks the phrase toxic masculinity started here is we
dumbed it down to very basic forms and threw it out there because that's kind
of what we do culturally instead of being more,
I mean, just look at the way things are written and, and the,
the beauty of language and how pull up anything on the internet. It's just, right.
(28:09):
I was going to say kids, Kids are really creative with the words they come up
with. You need a new dictionary every year.
Well, right, but the words, they're making up words, right?
But they actually, they make sense. When a kid explains to you where the word's
coming from. Yeah, listen.
I don't know. There's a few that don't make sense. No, but I think somehow.
(28:30):
I feel like we could have come up with something better than toxic,
masculine. Yeah, it makes me actually wonder how deliberate it is.
Right. And here's what's interesting about that is that I think when I'm writing
down some of the traits that's like, all right, what do these look like in excess?
But then when I think about, and the example we just gave was great where it was like.
You know, an excess of courage is rashness, but a lack of courage is cowardice.
(28:56):
And I feel like that maybe the lack of a trait, maybe it's easier to find a
word for than what excess of something is.
And so when there's an excess of a trait, we just lump it all together because
we, we lack the verbiage to be able to do. I think you gave a great example.
Like we know well what lack of
(29:17):
courage is it's coward the fact i
think that you've really given me now just in this one moment to be like hey
if you've got too much courage you're rash the fact that you've given me a talking
point to have with my 11 year old now who maybe has too much courage that he
expresses on a regular like there's no stopping that dude now i have the ability
(29:38):
to talk with him about that so So,
you know, somebody who lacks in strength is weak. What is the excess?
Yeah, yeah. This is actually, this is so funny because this goes all the way
back to Aristotle as everything does to Jim's lament.
But can we use Plato? I mean, you know, come on. No.
(29:58):
So when Aristotle is trying to name all the virtues, he finds that,
of course, virtue is always in the middle between some excess and some defect.
And he says this very clearly.
Some vices have no name because there is no clear expression of them.
And the example he gives is the vices associated with temperance.
So temperance is, it moderates our desire for pleasure.
(30:21):
You can love pleasure too much or too little. We have a name for loving it too
much. We call that intemperance.
What's the name for somebody who doesn't love pleasure enough?
He's like I don't really know yeah he says we'll just call it insensibility and move on right but.
Yeah, there is a difficulty with naming things. And sometimes any old word can
(30:45):
work, like insensibility. It's fine.
I recoil from toxic masculinity because I'm always thinking about students.
And when they hear what I say when I speak, I need to think about what they're going to think.
And so if they hear toxic masculinity, they're going to think I can be too much of a man.
(31:05):
Right. And that's false, right? Right.
So I think it could just be as simple as just stating that very clearly,
like we're that that's not what we're saying, but that we can use the word for the sake of brevity.
Right. I think that a lot of what I see in culture,
if we if we want to get to name the specifics of it, what I see in,
(31:26):
for example, the red pill movement is very much a group of people who've said
men traditionally have been providers and protectors for women.
Women don't seem to care about that anymore.
So I'm only going to protect and provide for me and women in procreation be damned.
And so I think that protecting and providing in for oneself in excess is just
(31:54):
selfishness being, being egocentric.
Like, and I think that there's a lot of these things that manifest themselves
in selfishness and egocentricity instead of service and sacrifice.
And so I think that's kind of the lens to look through it.
In fact, so here's what I'm going to do is, so strength, leadership,
(32:16):
being a provider, being a protector,
maybe in the scenarios that we've talked about, it's not necessarily in excess
or lacking thereof, which I do think that there's a level of that as well, but perhaps it's.
Is it being expressed selflessly and sacrificially or is it being expressed
(32:38):
in a selfish way and ego in an egocentric way?
Like, are you using these things for others or are you using these things explicitly for yourself?
So I think going back to the attempt to kind of define masculinity, Right.
And we, we, I think we, we define that one unique characteristic for,
(33:01):
for femininity, for women, right.
Of, of being able to nurture, like grow life and provide for it, right.
Nurture with their body. And we, we touched on the.
Typically, right, on average, men are going to have a more imposing presence,
deeper voice, more intimidating.
I think Matt talked about this, a men's group was the, you know,
(33:22):
like the booming like dad voice, right? You could say things and you're going
to get people's attention.
You think of a lion, their roar, their presence, the big mane, right?
I think I even read something about like when a lion loses, when a male lion
loses to another male lion, their mane like fall out. And it'll grow back.
But like the stress of that, right? Like they're literally, right?
(33:43):
Like, I don't know if that's true. I remember reading it was on the internet,
so it's probably false. You can find out, Jim.
Jim, you're on GTS duty. Yeah, check that out. But I think what it is,
is if we want to hone in on those, that one piece that we know, right?
The, the masculine form, right? The male body is, is we're, we're supposed to
be a little bit bigger, a little bit more of a presence, a little bit more intimidating
(34:06):
in some ways so that, that we can defend.
So we can protect, but also going back to what you said about,
we could lose a lot of men in society.
And as long as their women are there, right? Then society will continue. It'll continue, right?
It's why we have hunting quotas where you can kill as many deer as you want.
Male deer, right? Did you? I've got an answer.
(34:26):
So a lion's mane often shortens considerably and can even fall out altogether
when an animal is wounded.
It has two photographs, but these two photographs show that the same lion Trojan
within six, within a six month period before and after receiving an injury in
a fight with another lion.
(34:47):
Is that big? I wonder if that's because of a redirection of energy
towards healing or something which would suggest that the main is
actually this expression of like a super abundance of energy so
it's funny that's my thought yeah it's funny that you mentioned that right yeah
if if if if a male deer if a buck injures one of its legs the next season when
(35:08):
its antlers grow the antler on the opposite side of the head from the leg injury will be deformed.
Hmm. Interesting. And, and it is that same, it's all, I never thought about this before.
It's almost like this visible marker of dude, you got your butt kicked.
So I'm wondering why I don't have any hair then. Did I get my butt kicked too
(35:30):
many times as a kid? Is that what happened? I think, yeah, maybe. I don't know.
I'm going to Google that as well. What I have heard is
that men that have higher levels of testosterone end
up having more male pattern baldness than
men that don't so it's just part of having a capital y
in our y chromosome is that maybe that's the
(35:50):
toxic masculinity there maybe right maybe it's
just too much too much testosterone so so what i was what i was getting getting
to though is just thinking about that sacrificial part right like if there's
a threat right the bull put itself between the sound and all of the the cows
and the calves so So for us, like that appropriate,
(36:13):
like masculinity is we have that ability.
Are we using it for ourselves? Right.
So do I use my intimidating presence at a bar?
Do I put my arm on the wall and like lean in to talk to some woman and don't
give her a path to leave if the conversation is not something she wants to be a part of?
(36:33):
That's me using my intimidating presence for harm.
Right. Yeah. I'm not giving her an avenue to leave if the conversation's not
something she wants to be a part of,
and I'm using my presence in that way versus am I using that when maybe I see,
I don't know, an altercation.
(36:54):
I see someone pushes some woman down, and I'm trying to think of an example
off the top of my head, but do I come up and be like, what's going on here?
I think of kids fighting, right?
Middle school age kids, and you see something going on and there might be a,
I think I've seen it. It was at a.
I did a summer camp. I did a long time. And one of the chaperones,
(37:17):
one of the moms there was trying to break up this like shoving match and she's
like yelling at them and they're just not listening.
And I'm like, I just come over and I boomed out like, what are you guys doing?
And all of a sudden they all stopped and looked.
And it was just that booming voice, that moment that someone bigger than you. Yeah.
Even if they're not, even if you're not bigger than them, like a deep voice
(37:39):
calling them out, it's going to get their attention for a second.
So are you using it for that or are you using it for your own personal gain?
I think that's that red pill thing is saying, I have this presence,
I have this gift from God of being deeper voice, bigger.
Am I using that for my own personal gain or am I using it for others?
(38:00):
Am I using it sacrificially? Right.
I'm not dying. I'm not literally going out and dying every day,
but I might, you know, use it for, for something that is a little sacrificial.
It's something I don't want to do, but it's something I'm doing for the good of somebody else. Yeah.
I hate that. I know that the whole red pill thing was in reference to the matrix
(38:21):
and like, you know, reality. Yeah. Yeah.
But I'm so frustrated that they used red pill because the color red is typically
the color that represents sacrifice because it's the color of blood.
And I'm, I'm trying to figure out a way to rebrand it so that there's a branding for that.
(38:42):
Masculinity that is, is focused on that, but someday we'll get there.
The example I wanted to give though, to your point was I was standing out here
in the front yard of my house and at least two of the boys were out there,
but I think it was actually several of them.
And for those of you who've never been to my house before, we are the first
(39:03):
house in the neighborhood, which means that every single person that lives here
has to drive by our house to go
home, regardless of which which way you're going when you're getting in.
And I was standing at the driveway close to the road and somebody pulled into
the neighborhood and came around that corner way too fast.
(39:24):
Younger guy driving a truck just came around really fast.
And I was on the edge of the grass and I turned and
looked at him and I just dad glared through that windshield
and made eye contact with him and and
and the window as he was driving past and
was going down the street the window started going down on the passenger
side i was like god help me if he says something
(39:47):
stupid it is on
like he can't leave this neighborhood without like i will create a checkpoint
at my driveway if that's what it takes that window came down and before he was
even to the neighbor's house he yelled out sorry out the window nice so like
that to your point that presence,
(40:10):
of providing a protective barrier whether it's with a look or words or anything
like his men it carries weight i don't know that my wife would have been capable of.
Shooting that same glare through the
window that would have required a reaction
because i think the wife stare typically is
(40:32):
i'm disappointed in you the wife
stare only works on you yeah it doesn't work
on anybody else right like and to your point about
about men's voices as well so we'll be up here in
our uh in our kitchen dinner will
be ready and we'll have
two boys downstairs in the basement maybe or somebody outside
(40:54):
or two boys upstairs or wherever they are and my wife's
voice is just dinner dinner even
when i mean she's a foot shorter than i am she's got significantly less lung
capacity and lower frequencies like what men's voices have actually have the
ability to travel through objects whereas higher frequency sounds do not Great
(41:16):
example is if you've ever seen somebody bumping their music loud,
coming by in a car, you hear the bass in the low end first.
And she'll be like, Josh, tell them it's dinner time. And I'll just bark out, boys, dinner.
And it travels through the house in such a way that you say,
okay, coming, be right up.
Like they can hear in a better way because of that. And you've,
(41:38):
you've just got to think that there was some, some part of that that was evolutionarily
helpful for being able to raise the alarm and sound the alarm.
Well, and I think that's where it goes, right? That evolutionary piece,
not only can it travel through something, but it travels farther.
Yeah. Right. So that base tone will carry significantly farther than those higher
(42:01):
tones, which goes to the alert.
It goes to the hunting. It goes to the protecting. It goes to all those pieces
in that tribal scenario.
Yeah. It's interesting. There was, I always thought that, uh.
Elk in particular were a mismatch of
body size and and
the sound that they make because a big bull elk is
(42:23):
on the low end 600 pounds and
some of them are up in the 800 pound range and they make
that super whiny just
i was like
this makes no sense and then i remember my first
my first elk cunt that i went
on in colorado in 2018 i had
(42:45):
a big herd bull bugle at
me from sub 50 yards away and what microphones don't pick up is when they do
that there is a lower register tone that is there that will rattle your rib
cage that you don't ever see in videos or film or youtube videos that are out there.
(43:06):
Like there's something that is missing there that is that low end resonance
that just cuts through stands of aspen trees and carries over mountain.
What's interesting about that is that higher frequencies, if unobstructed,
will carry longer than low frequencies, but low frequencies have the ability to go through both.
(43:27):
So you have this large male animal that has somehow been able to harness both
the lower frequency register and the higher end register to be able to penetrate sound through objects.
But also carry over long distance.
So you could hear up close, a bull elk's going to rattle your ribs,
but in an open valley, you'll be able to hear one bugle from 400,
(43:50):
500, 600 yards away sometimes. That's how wireless works.
I want to go back to the trying to talk about how we can take the masculine
and direct it towards the good of the community and not towards the good of the self.
I think that's, that seems to be pretty critical.
I was thinking, it seems like one of the ways we do that is by taking boys and
(44:16):
this natural sense of like, I want to go out and get the threat and we put them in sport, right?
Right. So like one of the great things about team sport and especially,
right, is that the boys have to work together as a team, like if they can't
achieve this on their own and that the ones that try to be like the all-star,
right, they end up bringing the team down.
(44:36):
And so there's i think it that sort
of practice is actually jim you made the joke right we
need more fight club but i think we like i think that sport is
good for boys because it it puts
their masculine energy in an environment where they can achieve a good but only
together right when they when they're aggressive but they're aggressive together
for a common purpose and i think that's when we're when we're working with community
(45:01):
we have to we have to be working for some common good for the whole city or
the whole community or whatever.
So we got to identify the good and then teach the boys how they can exercise
this energy in such a way that they're advancing the good of the community and
not just the good of themselves.
And there's ways to show them that advancing your own good contrary to the good
(45:21):
of your community is not going to end well and things like that.
But this goes to the sort of red pill objection.
And the red pill objection is that what do
i get in return right that's what the red
pillars have been have been pushing is i think i
think i think most men right if if the call
came out like it did in like world war
(45:42):
ii you know there's there's a there's a there's a global threat we need you
to come down today to answer this threat i don't know about today's generation
i don't i'm a little more optimistic than some but i think that a lot of men
would still they would they would show up before their draft papers are in their mailbox, right? Yeah.
And I still think that a lot of those red pill guys would have that sort of
(46:04):
proclivity, right? That they want to be able to just answer that call.
But we have to be able to show boys that the sort of sacrifice we're talking
about is not, it's not something that you're not going to get anything out of
and that no one's going to thank you for, right?
If we can talk about what is it that a man gets out of it when he goes out to go confront the threat.
(46:29):
Then maybe we can start encouraging boys to do this. But if you're just telling
a boy, I want you to chop your arm off for the community.
Like, why would, why would he do that? I mean, it's like, this is,
this is no fun. This hurts. This makes my life worse in my, in my life.
What, what's the, what's the, what's the trade? What's the business offer?
What's the value proposition? What's the return on investment for my sacrifice?
(46:50):
Right. But, but then it's not a sacrifice.
No, I, I, do you know what I'm saying? Like if, if, if I'm doing a quid pro
quo, I'm going to give you something and you're, back.
I'm not sacrificing anything.
So I think there's a difference between saying, what am I getting in return?
But also if the return isn't to me, what is the value to the community?
(47:13):
So there's gotta be value in the sacrifice, but how does this make things better?
Yeah. It's the expectation of something coming back. I disagree, Jim.
So So I think that we have to be able to show if an action is going to be morally good,
it doesn't mean that it's good for other people. It means it's good for me, right?
(47:36):
If it's, if it's something that I'm going to do, that's good. It's good for me to do.
Now the opposing view of that comes around from Immanuel Kant,
which is a lot later, right?
So the idea that we want to be, we want to just be good.
We want to do these good things. We want to do them for no other reason than
this raw sense of duty, because it's good for somebody else.
(47:57):
I don't think that that's persuasive. And I don't think that it's true.
And I'll give you an example just to kind of concretize this here.
You might think that a man laying down his life for his country is not good
for him, right? Because it ends his life.
But if the virtues are actually good, right?
Then the man who lays down his life for his country is performing an act of
(48:20):
courage, which is perfective of him.
It makes him better. It is a good for him to perform the act of courage and
it is good for his community.
So we have to be able to bring these two together such that we're not asking
men to set aside all of their interests and all of their goods so that the community
(48:41):
can flourish, because the red pills got you at that point.
But I think you can show them that your good is in agreement with the good of
the community, such that you will not find your happiness, your fulfillment,
and your good apart from building up your community.
And I could show that in a number of different ways, but I don't want to,
(49:03):
that would be, my soapbox is sliding under my feet right now.
Well, I think the piece that comes in, and I agree, right? They're building themselves up.
They're in that final moment, they're trying to find some level of perfection, right?
(49:23):
But they're not receiving something, right? They're not expecting somebody to
give them something in return.
It doesn't need to come from somebody else. It's not transactional,
right? It is, I'm doing this for myself.
It's actually a, that sacrifice isn't, it's selfless and selfish at the same time. Okay.
(49:43):
I'm doing it for me to perfect myself, to find that, to make myself comfortable
with whatever I'm giving it up for. Right. Yeah.
But I think if we try to teach our sons that if we're not clear on that,
that piece, they will always expect something in return for that good act.
(50:07):
And it goes back to how do you behave when nobody's looking?
Right. And that's the real key. What is your moral fiber when nobody is around?
Nobody expects anything from you. You can still be masculine.
And you can still be all of these things in those moments and find your moral
high ground, except the moral high ground is just within you. It's all internalized.
(50:30):
If they're looking outward, like they look at their phones and they look at
the internet and they look at somebody else to give them justification for that
act, then that's all they'll do it for.
And before you know what they're doing 30 second tiktoks right
it's how do i behave for myself
(50:51):
and how does that then better my
community well i think i totally agree right so this isn't this isn't about
purely like it's not real courage if you're only doing it so that you can get
a medal right right real courage is for the sake of the community right whether
you get a medal or not nonetheless Nonetheless,
(51:13):
if we refused to give medals to the men who died or to honor them,
right, you would have very few men who would do it at all because that is showing
them that there is no thanks to be had for this, right?
That the community does not appreciate what's being done. I've got a great example of that.
And that is in the movie, we were soldiers and there's the lost platoon,
(51:38):
which pursues somebody into the woods to try and capture them.
And they ended up walking into an ambush and the leader of that platoon stands
up to lead the men out and takes a couple or three rounds. and he ends up bleeding out.
And the thing that he says before he dies is, I'm glad I could die for my country.
(52:00):
And in one of the scenes previous to that during the training,
the sergeant is watching his leadership and now he's pushing people along and go, go, go, go, go.
And he says, that guy wants to win medals.
And I think that if you go into the battle wanting to win medals,
(52:21):
you're more likely to get yourself killed or get other people killed.
Because if you're, if you're, you know, think about it from the ROI,
there's primary, secondary, tertiary.
If your primary reason for going into battle is to win medals,
there's an easy way to do that.
You just got to do something stupid and die doing it that looks really good.
(52:44):
Lieutenant Dan.
Lieutenant Dan's another great example of a guy who had a long storied history
of relatives dying in every American war in all of history.
It's a big weight to carry with you going into battle but
if your primary if your primary reason for
(53:06):
going in is to get all
your men home and your secondary reason is to
complete the mission i think those two things could be interchangeable depending
on the situation and then your tertiary reason is is maybe like hey if i get
a medal or i get a promotion or something that's great but if your primary thing
is winning medals it's going to go badly we've all seen the movie hacksaw rich Mm-hmm . Yeah.
(53:30):
Right. And I think that's an excellent example of the selfless act with no expectation
of something coming back.
Mm-hmm . As a matter of fact, his expectation was he was gonna die. Mm-hmm . Right?
That's that selfless act over, and not only did he do it once,
he did it- Dozens of times. Dozens of times. Right, right. Right? Right?
(54:23):
Music.
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