TANNER GUZY - The BRUTAL Truth About Men's Style: Why Your Clothes Scream Weakness - The Will Spencer Podcast

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Foreign.

(00:20):
Hello and welcome to the WillSpencer Podcast.
This is a weekly interviewshow where I sit down and talk with
authors, thought leaders andinfluencers who help us understand
our changing world.
New episodes release every week.
My guest this week is Tanner Guzzi.
Tanner is a men's style coachand the author of the Appearance
of Power, a book helping highachieving men align their external
appearance with their internal identity.

(00:42):
As a single father of seven,Tanner has successfully run his own
seven figure business foreight years while building an impressive
list of physicalaccomplishments, including completing
a half ironman, earningmultiple Jiu Jitsu tournament medals,
and conquering Spartan races.
Over the past decade, Tannerhas worked thousands of men, me included,
helping them reinforce,helping, helping them develop a personal

(01:05):
style that reinforces theirvirtues and builds genuine confidence.
His approach moves beyondtraditional fashion advice and focuses
on three key pillars.
Aesthetics, articulation, and authenticity.
Tanner was also my first guestever on the podcast five years ago
almost to the day, and this isthe first time he's been on the show
since then.
Tanner, to kick off my monthlong celebration of five years of

(01:27):
the show.
Welcome to the Will Spencer podcast.
Dude, you make me sound realgood, Will.
I appreciate that intro.
You're welcome.
I just pulled a bunch of stufffrom masculinestyle.com and put it
into a bio for you.
Well, I appreciate it, dude.
It's always fun to get to chatand hang out with you.
I'm glad to be back and howrad that it's.

(01:47):
Man, five years, that's a goodchunk of time.
So I'm glad to be back andhanging out.
It's crazy, man.
Does it feel like five years?
It kind of does and it doesn't.
We live in a very differentworld today than I think we did just
five years ago.
It, I mean, my world iscertainly different than it was and
it is, it is.
It's one of those where it'slike, has it only been that long?
And I can't believe it's beenthat long, you know, kind of the,

(02:10):
the both ends of it.
Yeah, it was like 20, 20, 21and 22 were such, they were such
odd years, just in ahistorical sense with COVID and coming
out of that and then 23 and24, that's kind of like the lights
came on a little bit and nowhere we are in 25 and it kind of
feels like that whole Covidthing that happened.
Remember we shut down theworld for a couple years.

(02:30):
Remember that?
Like, don't just forget aboutall that.
And now we're on this yeah.
Now we're on Trump 47, and itfeels like this is completely new.
Horizons have.
Have opened up in the.
In the world and for men.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's.
It's been.
We live in interesting times,for sure.
Yeah.
So.
So five years on, I rememberwe did a.

(02:52):
You did a style coaching forme, and that was probably one of
the most transformative, ifnot the most trans of personal coaching
that I've ever done.
And I'm still wearing batchshirts, and I've kind of.
I've kind of made them nicerwith a.
With a T shirt now instead ofkeeping them all buttoned up.
But I still wear these shirts.
I still wear mott and bowjeans, and I still feel confidence
when I go shopping for clothes.

(03:12):
And you, to date, are stillthe only guy that I know who's talking
about this stuff, which is awesome.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, I guess it's nice forme because I don't have to compete
with anybody.
Right.
And it's a.
It's a fun niche to get to bein, for sure.
Especially because a lot ofguys still have a tendency to kind
of undervalue the importanceof their own appearance when it comes

(03:33):
to.
I think a lot of guys willbegrudgingly recognize it when it
comes to how it works indating or maybe from a career perspective,
but they.
They don't see the strongcorrelations as far as how it affects
their own sense of self andkind of like how they show up with
their own internalrelationship and.
And how they view themselvesfitting into the world that they

(03:54):
either have created for themor they choose to create for.
And it's fun to get to workwith guys and help them see it's
a really pretty potent tool ifyou know how to use it the right
way.
Well, why don't you take amoment, just kind of break down the
work that you do with men, thevalue of it, the things that you
lead them through.
Of course, I mentioned yourbook the Appearance of Power, which
is still very good.
Congratulations, by the way.

(04:15):
So maybe just break that down,because I think that there's a possibility
to discover a whole newgeneration of men that are beginning
to think about these things.
Yeah, absolutely.
So I think the best way toreally kind of like, break it down
to its brass tacks is what Ido is I help men create extegrity,
and that's kind of a term thatI've created and played with, but
it's the idea of who you areon the outside actually aligning

(04:38):
with and reflecting.
Honestly and accurately whoyou are on the inside.
And a lot of guys, especiallygood men, do a ton of the inner work,
and that's way more importantthan any of the stuff that I do.
When you do the.
The inner work, as far as yourspirituality or healthy relationships
or having, like, a goodemotional range, good emotional control,

(04:59):
all of those things areabsolute crucial.
And we're not just internal beings.
We're not just intellectualbeings, but we are social beings.
We have physical bodies, andwe have our own sense of sight and
smell and sound and all ofthese other things.
And when who we are externallycan align with and reinforce who

(05:19):
we are internally, it createssomething that's very powerful, and
it creates this really cool synergy.
And our identities become stronger.
We become more powerful.
And what's fun about it, it'sunique for everybody.
You and I are different men.
Internally.
We share a lot of values, butwe inhabit the world differently.
You know, our familysituations are different.
Our careers are different.

(05:39):
Our hopes and dreams andaspirations, our hangups and our
sins and everything are all alittle bit different.
And so how we presentexternally should also be a little
bit different.
And so what I get to do ishelp men cultivate that for themselves
so that it is very congruentand authentic, but it's also authentic
to better, higher versions ofwho they are, as opposed to just,

(06:04):
you know, kind of like the.
The postmodern, secularversion of authenticity, which is
just an excuse to, you know,indulge in your baser instincts.
It's not that kind of authenticity.
It's a more noble version of it.
Yeah, it was just.
Strangely enough, I was.
I was a guest on a podcastyesterday, and we were talking about
this very issue.
In fact, I was telling them about.
About the coaching that you do just.

(06:25):
Just by how it works out andbeing able to talk about things in
terms of a man's, like, youknow, the way that a man should dress
and present himself will bevery different.
For if he's got.
If his buddies are huntersversus if his buddies are chess players.
And it's not a better or worse thing.
It's just two different waysof being.
And so you as a man.
Yeah, so you as a man, have toknow how to dress in a way that suits

(06:47):
you, but also.
And your budget, and that alsosuits the communities that you're
a part of.
And I don't think I learnedthat from you, and I don't think
anyone really ever breaks that down.
For men, we always have to bekind of shoehorned into whatever
image we're seeing on themedia or, you know, on the red carpet.
Yeah.
Or sadly, what a lot of ustend to do is just play it safe and

(07:09):
dress to something that's soneutral that it never really identifies
us with or against anything in particular.
And there's.
There's certainly times andplaces where you need to lean further
in or further out ofparticular tribal identities or things
like that.
But neutrality should be donefrom a place of intention as opposed

(07:31):
to from a place of fear or alack of awareness or a lack of skill
set or anything else.
Yes.
Yeah.
It should be an expression ofwho you are as a man rather than
sort of desperately trying tofit in.
Right.
Yeah.
Or even desperately trying tojust not.
There's a difference betweenfitting in and just not getting noticed.

(07:56):
And I think a lot of guys havea tendency to go that route where
it's.
I will just dress in a waywhere I don't even show up.
I don't attract any positiveor any negative attention.
I just.
I just don't register at all.
And that is more often donefrom a place of fear or incompetence.
And this sounds like I'mgetting on these guys.
Like it's.
It's not anybody's fault.

(08:17):
Most of us didn't grow uplearning how to navigate any of this
stuff.
We weren't taught this by our dads.
This isn't stuff we weretaught in school.
But it is.
It's usually done from a placeof fear or incompetence or some other
level of lack that if you justlearn how to be able to visually
assert yourself a little bitmore, and it's done in a way that
it feels congruent, then youhave a little bit more courage to

(08:39):
do it, and everything justgets better for you when you do it
the right way.
Maybe this relates to aclassic meme of yours that I don't
see quite as often, at leastnot as much as I used to.
Real men don't care what theylook like.
So talk about that, becausethat was like.
That was like your thing forever.
It was.
And I still.
I still get to pop it up everyonce in a while.
So I've been doing this for 15years, and as you can imagine, a

(09:03):
lot of the resistance that Iget given what I do, you know, And
a lot of your listeners mayeven be experiencing this as they
listen to us talk is like, whydoes this matter?
Like, a real man shouldn'teven care what he looks like.
He shouldn't care about howhis clothing communicates to other
people or anything else.
Like, just be a good man andjust dress in XYZ basic clothing
and that's all that matters.
And that's historicallyinaccurate and not the.

(09:30):
When you zoom out from ourlittle like 20th century Western
culture bubble.
20th, you know, 21st.
And you look at any otherculture at any other point in history,
men have always used theirappearance and have always cared
deeply about appearance.
And even within subclassifications within their different
groups, you've got the warriorclass that dresses very differently

(09:51):
from the priest class, which dresses.
Dresses very differently frombureaucrats or whatever else.
And appearance, and anintelligent use of appearance has
always been part ofmasculinity in the way that men relate
to each other, the way that werelate to women, and the way that
we relate to children.
And so I love using that memewhenever pictures or photos or paintings

(10:11):
or whatever else pops up ofall of these different historical
examples of men very deeplycaring about their appearance.
It's just, it's a little bitof a dig of like, now you think that
they don't care, but we careand we've always cared about it.
Is there, is that the totalwhy men don't care?
They think who I am inside asa good person is enough.
Even if that's not true, like,or is there, I think there's sometimes

(10:32):
like a component of they wantto be invisible.
You know, when you start, whenyou start dressing in an intentional
way, you get noticed and it'sjust easier to kind of coast through
life and hide.
Yeah, there's pressure andexpectations and everything that
come from being noticed.
And life is a lot easier and alot smoother and a lot more comfortable.
It's a whole lot lessfulfilling and a whole lot less noble

(10:53):
when you fly under the radar.
But I certainly get the, thesiren song of that.
And I think another thing ofit too, in this kind of almost like
ironic meta sense, is that alot of us grew up in a culture where
the only appropriate,appropriately masculine relationship

(11:13):
with appearance isindifference to it.
But it has to be the rightlevel of indifference.
You can't be indifferentenough that you're wearing a dress
or garbage bags or something else.
You have to be indifferent tothe same like, T shirt, cargo shorts
and old sneakers version thateverybody else is.
And so we, most guys will wearthe same uniform, but we just live

(11:36):
in a culture that the uniformis one of apathy or indifference
as opposed to a uniform ofdignity or nobility or aspiration
or self respect or whatever.
Many other cultures would maketheir uniform Instead, I remember.
I remember the cargo shorts.
The special enemy, the nemesisof Tanner.

(11:57):
Ghazi, which is funny becauseeven now I see guys that wear them
and wear them great.
And you can do it in a waythat works very well.
And it's funny because eventhat is.
That's not the same uniform ofapathy that we would have seen now.
It's like guys that are intheir shiny golf polos and their
Lululemon ABC pants and.

(12:19):
And they're like hybrid work sneakers.
That.
That's kind of like the new.
The.
The new uniform ofindifference, that that's what most
guys just wear without wantingto look like.
They think too hard, butthey're not too outdated on anything
either.
So the uniform changes, butit's still this idea of you have
to look like you don't care.

(12:39):
You have to study indifference.
I have to look precise.
I have to wear the uniform ofnot caring.
Exactly.
Exactly.
Interesting.
I've never thought of it thatway before, but, you know, as, sorry,
I'm just getting over being sick.
But as I look around theworld, you see it.
You can tell the differencebetween men who are trying and men
who are trying too hard andthe men who are not trying at all,

(13:01):
Right?
And a lot of guys justifiablyare afraid of what happens when they
try too hard, because there'sa big risk when you try too hard
and you make a fool ofyourself or you wear something that
looks like it's too much of acostume or you feel like a complete
fake and a liar when you putit on.
Like, these are alljustifiable fears is too strong of
a word, but, like, you'rejustifiably reticent when you think

(13:25):
about those potential pitfalls.
But it's not impossible tolearn to dress better and navigate
all of those things withoutfalling into those pitfalls.
It's very doable for anybody.
And on the other side, wehave, I love another one of your
terms, the gentle dork.
Now, so talk about what thatis, then I'll give a little story
about that.

(13:45):
Okay, great.
Yeah.
And I feel like I always haveto give this caveat because I rail
on these guys.
And part of it is because Iwas a gentle dork myself for a while
too.
And these are the guys whoreally don't have any other masculine
capital.
They're not, you know, they'renot strong.
They're not courageous.
They're not assertive.
They're not really masculinein any traditional sense.

(14:08):
And they have a tendency tothink that they can Overcompensate
for that by being very, like,intellectual and highbrow and being
very intelligent andarticulate, and then also dressing
like it's the 1950s, the1960s, and they don't realize that
what this does is rather thanit compensating for their lack of
general masculine developmentin other arenas, it actually just

(14:32):
highlights it even more.
And so they don't look likeCary Grant.
They look like this dorky,cosplaying version of Cary Grant.
And what made Steve McQueenCary Grant, you know, Clint Eastwood,
all of these great kind of,like, aspirational figures that a
lot of these guys try to dressup as from the 20th century.
It wasn't the clothing thatmade them.

(14:53):
It was the combination of theclothing and then just their overall
masculine presence.
And without one, then theother ends up looking like a costume.
Yeah, there was a.
There was a guy at a church.
We'll say which church?
But.
And he was.
As soon as I saw him, he wentfor several weeks that.
While I was there.

(15:14):
And he was the classic gentle dork.
Not a particularly masculine man.
Very socially awkward in his speech.
Incredible at picking outcombinations of colors for his suits
and his ties.
Like, obviously had a reallygood sense of color and fit and texture.
Like, he.
Like, from.
From the neck down, it's like,you know, he looks really good.

(15:34):
It's just that from the neckup, it was like, it wasn't making
up the gap in terms of hisability to relate to the world, so
that it actually made himunapproachable to see the way that
he was overdressing.
Yep.
Yep.
And a lot of guys will use itas a.
Like, as a bludgeon or as aclub when your style should be something

(15:55):
that is just a naturalextension of who you are, as opposed
to a compensation for whereyou lack.
Say more about that.
Yeah, well.
And this is one of the thingsthat I really focus on when I work
with my guys.
A lot of guys come in and theythink that working with me is all
about, like, here's the colorsthat work for you, or, here's how
we should do things based onwhat your build is, or here's what

(16:18):
the latest trends are, orhere's kind of how people in your
industry dress.
And all of those things arevery relevant.
And we do tackle all of it,but it's not the foundation.
The foundation is, who are you?
What are you bringing to the table?
What is your North Star as faras, like, what's the man you're building
yourself into?
And if we Know that then it'svery easy to develop a sense of style

(16:40):
that does factor in all ofthose variables, but it brings it
in a way that it just becomes okay.
One of the best ways that Ihear this is when I work with married
men, I will have their wivestell me, finally, Will looks like
the man that I was the onlyone who ever saw.
Like, he now looks like theman that I know, right?
Where these people who knowthese men on an intimate level get

(17:04):
to see the entirety of whothey are.
And then when you dress theright way, that now becomes something
that's presented to everybodyand reinforced back to you, as opposed
to it being kept compartmentalized.
And what you're presenting isthis just muted down version of yourself
or this caricatured, lyingversion of yourself that a lot of

(17:24):
guys overdo it with as well.
What's interesting, I don'tknow that when we had this conversation
a few years ago, if we talkedso much about the influence of wives
over the process, probablybecause I wasn't married at the time,
wasn't on my mind.
But I imagine that that can bevery helpful, but also potentially
introduce a lot of friction insome ways as well.

(17:44):
If, you know, she sees him oneway, he identifies another way.
Potentially you see him athird way.
I mean, how do you navigatethose tensions?
So I do my best as far as mythird way of seeing that as removing
that entirely.
My job is to teach them how tobe able to do it themselves.

(18:08):
And when it comes to helpingthem navigate that tension in there,
sadly, a lot of times itreally depends.
It kind of shines a flashlighton where the relationship is strong
and where it's weak.
Because I've seen and workedwith clients where when this becomes
a very visual representationof the fact that they're working

(18:30):
on themselves and they'rebettering themselves, and sometimes
they have a spouse that's notinterested in that, she'll try to
drag him back in.
Or maybe it's a way of himtrying to kind of like reclaim his
individuality and his identity.
And in the past, his wife wasthe one who chose his clothing for
him.
And so she resents that he'sno longer her mannequin and she can't
assert her vision of who shewants him to be onto him, but he's

(18:54):
actually asserting his visionof himself onto him, onto himself.
And so sadly, in.
In tense relationships, it canbe a way of.
Of not exacerbating it, butmaybe highlighting in a way that
they don't see it, but inreally, really healthy relationships.
The feedback that I get fromwives is always so fun and so good

(19:14):
to see because these are womenwho love their husbands.
They love that they're menthat are interested in being the
best they can be.
And when they see new avenuefor that to present itself, they
love it.
And then what's even better isthat they.
When they see how that affectsthem as fathers and how they show
up differently as fathers, howthey become more aspirational for

(19:37):
their kids, or their kids getto learn this new level of expression,
or it becomes another way forthese dads to be mentors and teachers
and be involved with their kids.
Most of the wives just eat itup and love it because it's just
another realm of excellencethat they get to see their husbands
show up in.
And that's the part that Ireally want to highlight for the
listeners, is that thisoutward style coaching is not just

(20:00):
outward coaching.
This is not just how to dress.
It's actually something much,much deeper.
Yeah, Yeah.
I can't call it this because Idon't have any sort of degree or
anything that would relate toit, but essentially what it is is
appearance psychology.
It's really being able tounderstand how you think, how you
interact with people,understanding how the world works,

(20:22):
but doing it through a visuallens, as opposed through talk therapy
or an emotional lens orsomething else.
It's the visual approach to it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Just to give an example, doyou still do the three style archetypes?
Rinkish, rugged, refined.
Okay.
So I remember when I took yourquiz, this would have been back in
2020, actually, and I thoughtgoing in that I was going to be like

(20:43):
some version of rugged, maybe.
And then in taking the quiz,it was like, actually, no, you're
more rakish with refined.
And that was not rugged at all.
And I was very surprised by that.
And then when you and I satdown to talk, you know, it was as
if you had analyzed mypsychology through this brief quiz,
and you pointed out somethingthat had stuck with me to this day,
which is that it's refinedclothing, but with really subtle

(21:06):
detail, so that if you payattention, you notice there's more
going on than just refined.
And that has really stuck withme since then.
And that's sort of become likea nor.
It's because it's true, notjust because I like it, because it's
true.
And so I really.
When I.
When I do go shopping forclothing, I do try to pick out things
that have those littledetails, like, no, it's not enough
that it just looks nice.
There has to be somethingabout it that makes it special.

(21:27):
Even if I'm the only guy who notices.
Right.
And that's.
Oh, I love that.
I love that.
It's about.
Even if you're the only onewho notices, because then it's not
you putting on a presentationfor somebody else.
It's you integrating byputting on something that's representative
of you and you feel differentand you interact.
Okay, I'll give you.
I'll give you an example of this.

(21:48):
I was just talking with aclient yesterday who was at a networking
event in Denver, and we hadworked very specifically.
He's a relatively new client.
So this was one of his firstevents after we had worked together.
And the stuff that we hadarrived at for him to wear was different
than what he had worn before.
And what he noticed was that aton more people approached him and

(22:10):
wanted to interact with himthan what he had had before.
And part of it was that, yes,he dressed in a way that subtly stood
out and made him kind ofeasily recognizable, but a big part
of it was that he was way morecomfortable and at ease at this event.
And so his posture and hisbody language and even just kind
of like, I don't believe in,like, the woo woo energy stuff, but

(22:30):
even just like his energy, itfelt different.
And so because he was morecalmly confident and sure of himself,
it made him more approachable.
And so it wasn't that peoplenecessarily related entirely to the
clothing, but they related tothe clothing plus how he related
to his clothing.
And that's what thecombination was.

(22:51):
Can we take a diversion offthe highway for a second?
Because I want to get your.
I want to get.
Okay, do you remember, I thinkit was like, three months ago, there
was a whole big controversy onX about this man who kind of had,
like, the dad bod.
And then he got, like, super lean.
Okay.
And all the guys were like,the dude on the right looks amazing.
And all the women were saying,no, the guy on the left, the pre.

(23:12):
The before looked amazing.
And we think the guy on theright is gay or whatever is what
they were saying.
And that was just this entire firestorm.
And like, my take on it waslike, okay, you can say that, but
I guarantee you the guy whoshows up being super lean and ripped
is going to move through hislife with so much more confidence
that will be so much moreattractive than just the surface

(23:33):
appearance might be for some women.
Absolutely.
And that was one of the thingsthat I noticed, is that there was
a lot of Evaluation notnecessarily of the appearance itself,
but what it represented.
Because a lot of women weresaying, well, I like the guy who
he was before because the guyon the right is going to be too focused
on his macros and he's notgoing to be able to be present as

(23:54):
a dad or it's not going to be.
And so we do thissubconsciously is we assign motivations
and morals and attributes andall of these other things onto not
only our appearance, but whatit takes in order to be able to get
to that appearance.
And a lot of times we do it ina negative way.
But you're absolutely right,because somebody who not only looks

(24:14):
that way, but has thesovereignty of knowing.
I took myself from point A topoint B, you show up differently
because of the confidence thatcomes from that.
And that's just a visualmanifestation of what all of that
is.
That's the funny thing aboutall of this appearance stuff is it
doesn't happen in a bubble.

(24:35):
It does not happen unrelatedto the social cues or our own psychological
aspects or how much work wehad to or didn't have to put into
it or anything else like that.
Man, I just gotta say, it isso refreshing to talk to you because
you used a word, used the word sovereignty.
And I remember back in themanosphere days like that was one

(24:55):
of the words that I thoughthad some real truth to it.
Now I do want to get into themanosphere and what's happened, you
know, since then, but like, it's.
It's good to be going throughthe wreckage of what's sitting at
the bottom of the ocean andkind of harvesting.
Like this was actually areally useful idea of men acting
with a sense of sovereigntyover their own lives, being able

(25:16):
to make independent decisionsfrom the collective thinking around
them.
Absolutely.
And it's a word I still standby and totally believe in.
I don't think I was one thatparticularly leaned heavily on it,
but I do think that it's, it's.
You have to.
You have to start from aposition of sovereignty and then

(25:36):
choose how much you're willingto cede that for the people who matter
and for the consequences thatyou want.
We all seed sovereignty whenit comes to, you know, we live in
a society.
But like, you know, that's true.
Or when you're married and afather, you seed certain levels of
sovereignty for the bettermentof your family.
If you believe in God, youcede certain levels of sovereignty

(25:57):
in order to be able to submitto his will in a way that, that is
appropriate and what's cool iswhen you take it from the perspective
of sovereignty, then I feellike very rarely is it actually a.
What's the word I want?
Ceding.
Cessation.
I don't know what the word is.
But you're not actuallyseeding it.

(26:17):
Concession.
Yeah.
Okay, thank you.
But you're investing itbecause family life pays out massively,
even when you go throughterrible circumstances.
I mean, I ceded a lot ofsovereignty to my marriage, and my
marriage blew up, but I've gotwonderful kids that it was worth
seeding that sovereignty to,and I cede a lot of it to them.

(26:38):
But it's not.
Not a victim.
I'm not trapped.
I'm still sovereign.
You know, this is great.
I want to dig into thisbecause I talk to a lot of men who
are single and who want to bemarried, and I take them at their
word.
But one of the things thatI've noticed in myself and that I
spent a long time consciouslypreparing for, as in, I met my wife

(27:00):
in the woman who would becomemy wife.
We met in August of 2024.
It had become clear byDecember, January, that this had
marriage potential.
We were engaged by.
I think it was April.
And married and married in June.
Married in July.
Sorry.
So engaged in May.
Yeah, engaged in April,married in July.
Cool.

(27:22):
And I was a single guy, andI'd been single for a long time.
But I started preparing myselfmentally about six months before
the wedding, before we wereeven engaged, to know that, okay,
what is my day going to looklike if my wife is here walking around,
if my kids are here walking around?
I cannot be the same guy thatI am just in private and just, you

(27:43):
know, not that I'm walkingaround in sin all day, but I'll give
you a good example.
Like when I would, you know,eat by myself and make myself dinner,
I would sit and I would watchvideos of chess breakdowns.
Like channels that, like,analyze chess games.
That's what I'd watch while Iwould eat.
You know what I mean?
It's absolutely.
It's not mindless, amoral.
It's completely amoral.
Exactly.
It's fun.
It's entertaining.

(28:04):
Exactly.
Now I'm probably not going tobe able to sit and watch chess videos
anymore.
I'm not going to have time andso thinking about those things.
So let's talk about theprocess of men who don't want to
be single, they want to bemarried, getting ready to give up
that sovereignty.
Because I don't know thatenough men think about that.

(31:03):
It's interesting that you'reasking me this because I am finding
myself from the completeopposite direction.
Yes.
Where, you know, I was marriedfor 13 years, and we have a lot of
kids, and I feel like I hadbeen able to carve out a really,
really good balance of, like,I work for myself.

(31:23):
And so I had a lot of autonomyand a lot of sovereignty in that
regard.
And I was able to kind ofcontrol my schedule and work out
when I wanted to and work whenI wanted to.
And I had great friends.
Like, I feel like I had areally good balance in a lot of that.
And now I find myself in aposition where I. I don't know what

(31:43):
it's like to be single.
I'm two years in, and I'mstill learning what it's like to
have what, like, my own.
My own.
It's so weird because itsounds so funny saying it, but, like,
everything that I did wasn't.

(32:05):
I was not.
I did not have a life that wasbuilt around, like, happy wife, happy
life, or, like, this immediate.
But everything was builtaround family and legacy and building
and all of that.
And even the way that I wasable to turn my hobbies and my friendships
and my connections into thingsthat either made money, or I felt

(32:26):
like they made me a betterfather, or they were things that
I could connect with my kidson or things like that.
And I still have a lot of needfor that and a lot of drive for that.
And at the same time, I have alot of time that I can.
If I want to, I can sit inhere and I can play video games for
eight hours straight and justnumb myself and distract myself,

(32:50):
you know, and so I don't knowif I'm the right guy to ask that
question, because I've alwaysbeen so.
I'm so much more capable offinding the balance of what?
Balancing, converting,investing, leveraging, maybe all

(33:12):
of those words, mysovereignty, into a family dynamic
that I'm, in a lot of ways,incredibly lost when I don't have
that.
That direction to channel itinto 100% of the time.
Well, that's.
That's just as valuable,because I'm sure there are plenty
of men that have that same feeling.
Like, I know plenty of men whoare looking for the opportunity to

(33:35):
have the yoke placed aroundtheir neck.
And then there are some menthat reach a stage in their life
through no fault of their own,where suddenly that yoke has taken
off.
Yeah.
You know, and they're like, Idon't know who I am without this
weight.
That's Sort of that I use toanchor myself.
Right?
Yeah.
And I found that for me, oneof the interesting things in the
last two years has been I'vejust been in this kind of like, limbo

(33:59):
of, you know, and a lot ofguys, certainly a lot of manuscript
guys would tell me I'm anidiot because I've lived out in what
a lot of ways are like Reddithorror stories.
It's the stuff that a lot of,a lot of you guys read.
And sometimes you go, there'sno way this could be real.
And sadly, my experience is alot of it is real.
I want to get married again.
Like, I want to be partneredwith somebody forever.
Like, I have no interest inhedonistically playing the field

(34:22):
and racking up notch counts.
Like, I just, I want to.
I want to be married and builda deep, connective, mutually beneficial
relationship in life with somebody.
And one of the things that'sbeen a challenge is realizing how
subconsciously I've been justin this kind of like limbo or purgatory

(34:42):
or waiting period of like, youknow, when I find somebody that I
can click with and we canbuild that in, then I can get back
on track to where I want to be.
And so one of the things thatI'm actively trying to do right now,
I actually just did a substack on this is I still love.
I still love all the.
The X jargon and everythingelse is I'm romance maxing.

(35:02):
And not from like a datingperspective or anything else like
that, but I'm trying to makemy life with what it is as enjoyable
and romantic and kind of likeaspirational as it can be.
So, like, a great example is Ido the same thing as you, except
I just mindlessly scrollTikTok when I eat dinner.

(35:24):
And now it's like, no, I'mgonna put on, like, good music and
I'm gonna sit down at mydinner table and I will have taken
some time to like, actuallycook dinner as opposed to just like
nuking a quesadilla in themicrowave or whatever else as a way
to just, like, live my life aswhat it is right now, as opposed
to waiting for mycircumstances to change and then

(35:47):
feeling like I can get back toliving the life that I, that I had
and that I loved so much.
Sort of not really taking astep off the path of who you used
to be and just continuing onin that vein of living.
I don't know what we say it'snot a dignified life, but it's like
leading a Put together life,leading a life of respect of your
time and respect of yourself,and not letting the sudden shift

(36:11):
in circumstances sort of jaryou into being some lesser version.
Yeah.
And I think part of it too isthat for me, even when things were
really good, I always had ahard time being present.
I think that's a trap that alot of us that are very self development
minded fall into is.
It's always like, what's thenext goal, what's the next milestone,
what's the next PR or whatever else.

(36:31):
And I certainly got on that treadmill.
And that was part of how Icontributed to the detriment of my
marriage was that things werejust never good enough.
What I did wasn't good enough,what she did wasn't good enough,
what my kids did wasn't good enough.
And it wasn't because theyweren't good things, but I was just
like, okay, that PR is now thenew baseline and we have to get to

(36:53):
something else.
And so it was this kind oflike, it's almost like gluttony for
growth, you know, And I don'tthink that we need to stop being
growth minded.
And for me, being present thatterm never really did a lot.
But if I can make my life feelmore cinematic, more romantic, more

(37:18):
just kind of like immersive asopposed to it always having to be
progressive or distractive,then that's where I'm finding I'm
reclaiming a lot of myindividual sovereignty right now.
You're building a life andlife rhythms that feel the way that

(37:38):
you want it to feel that isn'talways focused on the next hill.
It's like, well, I've actually.
You've arrived at a prettydecent hill where you're at right
now.
Right, right.
And always being focused onthe next hill.
Yeah.
There's a way that we shoulddo that as men.
We should be looking towardsthe next horizon, but not at the
expense of missing what'sright and in front of us.
And you can do that as aunexpectedly single man at this stage

(38:00):
of life.
Right, yeah.
Learning to getting better at it.
Right, right.
Yeah.
And yeah, because I, you know,of course I met you when you were
married and you've shared somestories about things that have gone
on.
And so, you know, over thepast couple years, we were talking
about like seeing you rebuildfrom that, like knowing, knowing
the life that you had built,the man you were, you know, and what

(38:22):
you had, and then to see itjust all kind of blow up in its own
way.
And then to see you kind ofrebuild in this new guy.
Like, it makes sense whyyou're like, okay, well who am I
now?
I get to choose.
This is who I am.
And I like being this guy inthe hope that this is the road that
will take you where you're going.
It seems like it is.
And even if it doesn't, oreven if it takes a lot longer, because

(38:42):
I think that's another one ofthe things that's happened, and I've
done this my whole life isI've always just waited.
I've always wanted to be atthe next stage in my life.
And I think that's part of thereason why my particular life blow
up was so hard, because I.
We had a great relationshipfor a decade, you know, and I would

(39:03):
say that the years 2019 to2022 were almost as idyllic as it
gets as far as a lot ofdifferent circumstances are concerned.
And so for me, that was likethe only time in my life that I wasn't
waiting for something else to happen.
I had finally gotten to apoint where, yeah, it was like, you
know, how do I work on this PRfor at the gym?

(39:24):
Or how do I set this next goalfor this accomplishment?
Or how do I scale the business?
But it wasn't that things wereso far from where I wanted them to
be that I was always justlike, well, maybe when I do this,
then I'll be happy.
And then now to have so muchof that stripped away.
I've wasted a lot of the lasttwo years going back into this mindset

(39:45):
of if I can change mycircumstances and if I'm patient
enough, then I can be happy again.
And it's more learning that Imay be in this for a while.
I may not, I may not find agood relationship for another, you
know, two years, 10 years, 20 years.
Who knows how long it's goingto be?
And I don't want to waste theentirety of that time waiting to
be happy and waiting for mycircumstances to change.

(40:08):
Whether I'm waiting passivelyor actively, it's still waiting.
You want to know something funny?
Please.
You and I have like completelychanged positions due to our change
in circumstances.
Because I am, I am notgenerally like a hyper goal oriented
guy.
I focus very much on presence.
Presence is something that Ihave in spades.
But now here I am married andeveryone listening gets to, gets

(40:31):
to hear the story.
Like my wife is pregnant andwe went for our ultrasound yesterday
and so got the photos and, andthe baby's nine weeks old and got
to see the heartbeat on the ultrasound.
And I got real emotionallooking at that.
Oh, dude, I love it.
So stoked for you.
Me too.
And presence is great.
And presence is absolutelysomething that I can and should and

(40:51):
do bring to my wife and to mydaughter and to my family in the
evenings when I'm there.
And, you know, presence isn'tgoing to help feed and clothe a growing
number of kids.
Right.
And don't sacrifice presenceto do those things, like just throw
it out the window.
That has meaning.
But I need to bring out moreparts of myself.

(41:12):
So I'm learning to be moregoal oriented and goal driven.
And meanwhile, here's you onthe other side being like, I was
super goal oriented.
Now I'm going more towardspresence, which is.
That's kind of wonderful, actually.
Well, I think that's thebeauty of these different circumstances,
you know, And I have alwaystalked about how, for me, marriage
and fatherhood were rocket fuel.

(41:33):
I was not necessarily super ambitious.
I wasn't necessarily super present.
I was just really good atdistracting myself, if I'm being
honest, you know, up until Igrew up.
And for me, marriage andfamily did that.
And it really turned on a lotof that ambition that I don't think
it would have otherwise.
And I'm grateful for theunique circumstances that that brought
in there.

(41:54):
And I'm also really gratefulfor the unique circumstances that
I'm in right now because Ithink about how, you know, if.
If my world wouldn't haveblown up, what would I be doing right
now?
And it still would have beenon that progress treadmill of like,
what's the next big thing?
What's the next big step?

(42:16):
And I still don't think Iwouldn't have been.
I wouldn't have been able tobe as fulfilled and as joyful as
I wanted to be.
I wouldn't have been able tobe as present with my kids and as
good of a dad as I want to be.
I wouldn't have been able tobe as good of a husband as I want
to be.
And in a lot of ways it feelslike, you know, obviously agency

(42:39):
comes into play and God hasmore and there's.
There's a whole lot more to it.
But I think one of theblessings from this is God is giving
me an opportunity to embracepresence and romance, Max.
As opposed to just be a continued.
I haven't thought of this termbefore I just said it, but I. I'm
going to use this.
Growth glutton.
Yeah, man, you're so good atcoming up with these things.

(43:02):
I remember the first time thatI ever heard your.
Your name, I think it was.
Would have been in 2020.
I think it was LARPing.
Personal development.
That was.
That was like your first memethat really hit, I think.
Was that it?
Probably that.
That one's mine.
Yeah.
These ideas, like, you readall the personal development books,
but you, like, implementanything they say.

(43:22):
Yeah, yeah.
So my Audible account shows avery different man than who I am.
Right, Exactly.
So now another one is growth glutton.
You got to be writing thesedown, man.
These are all stories.
No, and I.
And I think that there's a wayin which we have to learn to be responsive
in this way.
Like, mindfully responsive toour circumstances.
Like, you could.
You could rage against yourcircumstances, and you could say,

(43:44):
you know what I'm going to do?
I'm going to kick it intosixth gear because I don't want to
wait.
And then you could.
Without the constraints, youcould run yourself, you know, right
off the cliff or into theground or burn yourself out.
But it's like, no, I'm goingto mindfully slow down and make my
life into something that Ifeel comfortable in right now.
Rather than, you know, youhave a big semi truck that's pulling
a load, then you decouple itfrom the load.

(44:05):
What happens?
Like, does this truck fishtail out?
Like, you don't want that to happen.
Yeah.
And I think that that'sanother one of the blessings for
me of this weird kind of like,bipolar nature of what my life is,
because I do have seven youngkids when they're here.
You know, My oldest is 13 andmy youngest is 16 months.
And so when I have the kidshere, work is incredibly difficult

(44:29):
to get done.
You know, you don't say it's.
Yeah, right.
It's interactions with clients.
And if I'm lucky, I can sneakout a daily email and, like, that's
the extent of it.
And then when they're nothere, I can go days because I work
from home.
I can go days without comingup for air of just, like, working

(44:50):
and grinding and trying tofigure things out and trying to get
more business or other things.
And I think in a way, it issuch a blessing to not have the ability
to go all in on either one of those.
There's been some guardrailson the road as a result of that.
Yeah, absolutely.
In a similar way, for me, Ihave to get much more efficient with

(45:14):
my time.
And also now that I'm in thecircumstances, wife and kids, the
things that I want for Them isvery different than the things that
I want for myself as a single man.
It's like, yeah, I'm good withwhat I've got.
It works.
Maybe I want marginalincreases here and there.
Maybe splurge on a big nicething, like a big, nice car or something.

(45:35):
But single guys are usuallylike that.
But I can look at my wife andsay, there are all these things,
things that I want to giveher, and that inspires me to want
to work harder, to be able to provide.
And so that's a mindfulresponse to my life circumstances.
Instead of being like, oh, mygosh, it's overwhelming, or instead
of being status conscious,like, well, how can I respond to
this?
It sounds like you're doingthe same, trying.

(45:56):
Yeah.
Yeah.
So I guess I want to talk alittle bit about the manosphere in
relation to all this, becauseI think the reason.
Well, there are many reasons,but the big reason why the manosphere
failed is that it didn't havea healthy vision of kids and family.

(46:16):
You know, it couldn't think ofitself beyond the, you know, beyond
the casual sex, build muscles,big money mindset.
And think about men givingthemselves, giving their lives to
women, to a woman, for lifeand children.
Like, there wasn't room for that.
And so I think as men reacheda certain age, like, cool.

(46:38):
I've mastered a lot of theselessons, or I certainly understand
them.
And now I want to do thenatural thing that men do, which
is get married and settle down.
And all the manosphere had tosay was like, all women are like
that.
It's risk.
It's all risk and no reward.
Yeah, yeah.
And I think, you know, I thinkabout some of my experience and some

(46:58):
of the guys, you know, I thinkabout guys like Ed Latimore or Alexander
Cortez or guys like, you know,who really have kind of, like, leaned
into and embraced new roles ofmarriage and fatherhood.
Like, I love seeing Alexanderleaning into, like, buying land and
all these other things, or howmuch Ed loves being a dad and stuff

(47:19):
like that.
I think that, you know, andmaybe this is a good thing.
I haven't actually thoughtabout a lot of this, so I'm just
going to think out loud.
And I probably will disagreewith a lot of this in a week, but.
We'Ll just think out loud.
We'll just talk out loud.
I think a lot of themanosphere was very much the opposite

(47:40):
side of the coin of feminism.
And I'm not the first one tosay that, but it was a very reactionary,
you know, kind of like meetingplace and mindset and ethos and everything
else.
And when you get enough peoplethat are able to get out of a state
where they have to be reactiveand can get into a state where they're.

(48:03):
Are proactive and they've.
They've got theseaccomplishments and they've successfully
built these things, then youdon't need the old scaffolding anymore,
you know, and so maybe.
Maybe what a lot of it was,and I think we can even see that
from like, a macroperspective, was a lot of it was

(48:24):
scaffolding for the right guys.
I think a lot of it was.
There were certainly, like,purity spirals and a lot of drama
and everything else like that.
We had a lot of guys that.
And I'm sure that there areguys who would say this about me
as a result of what happened with.
With my marriage, but you hada lot of guys that there was a duplicity
or duplicitousness about howthey presented themselves versus

(48:47):
who they really showed up to be.
And I think that that is oneof the hard things about it is.
And you can see this in my owncontent, and I've written about this
a lot because I know that I ama public figure and I'm tied to this
space.
How do I present in a way thatis equal parts aspirational and humble?

(49:15):
And a lot of guys missed thehumility aspect of it.
And it was.
And I don't even think it wasalways necessarily malice.
I think a lot of times guyswould post stuff as a way to kind
of like.
Like, just reinforce that thisis who I'm trying to become or this
is what I want to be.
It's not like, you know, I'mjust putting on this face to show.
But then the problem is, iswhen you have all aspiration and
no humility, then eventuallywhen the flaws that we all have bear

(49:43):
fruit and you see the resultsof that come into the spotlight,
then you get knocked off ofthe pedestal that you never should
have been on in the first place.
And I think a healthy dose ofhumility is what keeps us from putting
ourselves or from having otherpeople put us up on pedestals.
And most of the manospherelacked any humility.

(50:07):
Yeah.
And then.
And then sort of the fouryears of Biden came along.
And, you know, when Trump waspresident, that was sort of gave
air cover for a lot of men asit is now, to begin thinking and
speaking about these things.
And then from 2020-24, duringthe Biden presidency, when things
turned considerably darker, alot of men's sins came to the forefront.

(50:29):
Andrew Tate decided that hewas going to eat the whole buffet
and kind of did, you know.
And so I think there's acomponent of it where there was never
anything solid built therekind of.
To begin with.
The duplicity was a part of itas well.
And again, there was this lackof humility.
There was a siloed thinking.
The interpersonal drama was,of course, a big thing.

(50:52):
And I think you're right thatit was ultimately, it was feminism
for men.
And I think there was a way inwhich it was productive for a lot
of guys.
But, yeah, it's a vehicle thatwas meant to be left behind.
It drove you a certain distance.
Now you have to get out andyou either build your own car or
walk on foot or however youthink about the metaphor.
But, like, it was never meant.
You never met men, were nevermeant to set up camp and live there.

(51:13):
No.
And it.
Yeah, no.
And I think that what's hardis that for a lot of people, you.
You couldn't.
I mean, you make a.
You make a good income and youhave status and clout and all these
other things.
And it's addictive to be onthat side of things.
And especially because you cancome up with very real and very moral

(51:36):
justifications of, we'rehelping men and they're in these
hard places and we're helpingthem navigate this, and it's self
development and all of that.
And it's just so trickybecause you have to be very.
Again, I think humble is theright word.
I think you have to be veryhumble to be able to parse out when
are you actually doing this tohelp, or are you using help as a

(51:56):
justification to just serveyour own ends and your own needs?
And I think the guys that havebeen able to still move themselves
into different spaces, like,okay, Jack Donovan, he and I, you
know, on, like, theologicallevels, are about as antithetical
and as opposite.

(52:17):
Opposite as it gets.
Yeah.
And I've been right, and I'vebeen friends with Jack for years,
and he's one who.
I still just really love andappreciate his sincerity.
And I think that he does agood job with his guys and he's built
a.
A good club with the Order ofFire, where those guys feel like

(52:38):
they have a space, you know,And I.
And again, I have.
I have my theologicaldifferences with what the end goal
is or things like that, but Idon't see Jack as somebody who's
this grifter or somebody whois trying to leverage.

(52:59):
I. I I just.
I just see a lot of sincerityfrom him, and I don't necessarily
see it from other people.
And there are certainly otherpeople, you know, and I don't.
I don't want to get into namegames, but I can see good examples
and poor examples from.
From all sides as far as,like, those of us that used to make
up kind of the core of whatthe manosphere was.
Yeah, I. I agree with you.

(53:20):
I agree with you.
I. I think Jack is.
He is sincere, and he.
He has tried to offer something.
He and I haven't spoken inover three years at this point.
So, you know, so I don'treally know.
I don't know where he's at.
He also blocked me on X, like, whatever.
But I will say that the.
The man that I knew back then,he was genuinely trying, and it was

(53:42):
from a sincere heart.
And there are others out therefor sure, who.
Maybe some of them stillaround, maybe some of them are not,
who were not doing it from asincere heart.
And that creates a verydifferent feeling.
And the sincerity is.
What I always found appealing,is that there was a realization,
maybe not consciouslyexpressed, but that certainly had

(54:03):
been around since the 90s,that for whatever reason, men don't
know what it means to be a man anymore.
This is a generational problem.
It crosses all boundaries ofage, race, class.
They just don't know.
And some men, out of a spirit of.
Maybe they learn forthemselves, maybe they had a good
father who taught them, theywanted to offer something to other

(54:25):
men.
And it was flavored with,well, yeah, I got to make a living
doing it, and I think that's okay.
But was flavored with, no, Ido this because I genuinely care,
as opposed to seeing it as amarket to exploit.
Because you could see it both ways.
You can look at it and say,like, that guy over there is hurting.
If I poke at his wound and hecries out, I can sell him the medicine,

(54:45):
too.
And you can do it that way.
And there were plenty of guyswho did.
There were tons who did that.
Absolutely.
But I think the men who reallywanted to offer something where it's
like, don't stick around, growup and leave home.
Don't live here.
Like, if you want to stay herein the club or whatever, cool.
But, like, the goal is thatyou become your own man, which is

(55:08):
that you say, go ahead.
That.
Well, sorry I interrupted you,but that's like, that's the ultimate
in masculine mentorship.
Yeah.
Is.
It's that I don't need you tobe my protege in Order for me to
feel.
In order for me to maintain myidentity as a mentor, I legitimately
want you to leave and be ableto be on your own.

(55:29):
Yeah, exactly.
Exactly.
This is the tricky part,because when you start getting into
monthly recurring revenuemodels, there's a disincentive.
There's nothing wrong withthat, but you have to, within yourself
as an individual man, releasethat and trust that God will bring

(55:49):
more men to you and not to tryand squeeze out every dollar you
can from the guys who come to you.
You.
Yeah, And I think that that'sone of the ways that I was.
I haven't thought about this,but that's kind of a blessing for
me, actually, because I knewthat what I do with style coaching,
one was not a big enough,like, hair on fire problem that there

(56:11):
was real pain to exploit.
So the temptation wasn't even there.
It was more of this kind of,like, you're good.
How do we take you up to aneven higher level as opposed to,
like, your life is miserable.
How do we dig you out of it?
It.
And then also that because itwas so little of a, like, hair on
fire problem, there really wasno monthly recurring revenue model

(56:33):
that worked.
And so very early in, I leanedon this idea of my job is to get
you to not need me anymore,you know, and that would.
That.
That's been my marketing for10 years, and I never really thought
about this, but, you know,because these different mindsets
and ethos don't exist in abubble or in a vacuum.

(56:57):
I think that that's part ofwhy I never really got trapped into
a lot of these same pitfallsthat a lot of other guys did, because
I never.
There was never a conflictbetween my goals for my clients and
what I could find worked formy business.
I didn't have to navigate thatlike a lot of guys did.
Yeah.
And then that's a.

(57:17):
And that's a blessing if you.
If you proceed with that.
With that mindset, as opposedto, like, sort of.
And I think Andrew Tate playedinto a lot of this.
I've described him as the apexpredator of the manosphere.
He's the guy who did all thethings that other guys only talked
about.
You want to talk about, youknow, being fit.
Well, dude fights.
Professional MMA fights.

(57:38):
You have professional.
Not maybe not with ufc, butMMA for sure.
You want to talk about making money.
The dude's a multi hundred millionaire.
Yeah.
With Cam girl Empire, but themoney don't know where it come from.
Right.
And then you want to talkabout, you know, you want to talk
about success with women.
The dude's basically a digital pimp.
So he's the guy and he drivesa Bugatti and wears an iced out watch
and stuff.
So he's the guy that dideverything that a lot of guys were

(58:01):
only speculating about.
He wasn't a virtuous man, buthe still did them.
And when you come from an antimoral Nietzschean philosophy, which
is kind of what the manospherewas, there's no grounds to say that
what he's doing is wrong.
So he just comes and he justeats everybody's lunch.
Joined the war room, becomesthe most searched name on the Internet.
I think it was summer 2022,more than Donald Trump.

(58:22):
And so suddenly this giantcore of the market goes to the bigger
fish in town, and then what's left?
You have a lot of guysscrambling to hold on to something
where the sand has been eatenout from beneath them.
I never thought about it fromthat perspective, but you're spot
on because he did.
He walked the walk in not justone way, but in all these different

(58:42):
ways.
And when you come at it fromthat amoral as opposed to pro moral
perspective on things.
And I think, you know, andagain, this is where Jack talks about.
And I appreciate thedistinction between being good at
being a man versus being agood man.
Yeah.
And I think that we're, we'recalled to be both.

(59:03):
Right.
Just.
And, and.
But the problem is, is whenyou have good people that are not
good at being men, then it'sreally easy to lose your lunch to
people who are good at beingmen but aren't necessarily good people.
That's right.
Oh, absolutely.
Yeah.
And the problem was always inthe choice that you had to be good

(59:24):
at being a man or be a good man.
Right.
And what does it mean to be both?
And the answer for meultimately came from Christianity.
This surprised me.
Like I went into the manosphere.
I found the men's Movement in 2013.
I found the Manosphere in 2018.
You and I met in 2020.
I spoke at the 21 Convention.
2021.
By 2022, I was too Christian,I think, and I was thrown out.

(59:47):
But that led me deeper intothe Christian faith.
And I realized that that's thepicture that actually harmonizes
being good at being a man insome of the highest and greatest
ways, particularly around selfsacrifice and also being a good man.
And it's like, oh, well, finally.
And everything that I waslooking for in the place that literally

(01:00:07):
the last place I would everthink to, look.
There'S a home for all of this.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I think to some extent, Ithink the manosphere failed to respond
to that challenge.
Is that, okay, cool, you gothundreds of thousands of men around
the world, they're talkingabout what it means to be a man,
and then you have the rival ofGod, the Father and the Son, Jesus
Christ, back into the dialogue.

(01:00:28):
They never went anywhere butback into the dialogue.
And how do you respond to that picture?
And do you reject it?
Or do you say, wow, maybe thisactually has something to teach me?
And I think a lot of menrejected it.
Yeah.
Especially because I think oneof the things that happens is that.
And this is one of theparadoxes or the contraries of Christianity

(01:00:50):
that I think a lot of peoplestruggle with, and I love those contraries,
is that for a lot of guys thathave been victimized their entire
lives, or at least felt likethey've been victimized their entire
lives, and then they finallyfind a space that not only gives
them permission, but alsogives them a roadmap to reclaim some

(01:01:11):
measure of sovereignty.
And then they're told that,yeah, but you actually have to willingly
cede some of that back inorder to be moral.
Like, it's not that the bestperson is the one who accumulates
the most autonomy, but there'sactually a give and take relationship
with autonomy.
And in order to reach themeasure of your creation and the

(01:01:34):
highest level of fulfillment,you have to willingly give some of
that back.
And that's the stuff thatwe've already talked about.
I think a lot of guys, they were.
They just were so happy tofinally have it that they clung to
it desperately, and it was toohard to let go of it in the healthy
ways that were necessary toget them to the next level.

(01:01:54):
That makes sense.
Yeah.
For the first time in yourlife, you have a little bit of independence,
a little bit of sovereignty,you've learned to reclaim some autonomy.
And the idea that now you as aman are going to join a church and
you as a man have to be insubmission to a man who you might
not 100% agree with, let'sjust say it's a healthy church and
it's not run by women, so youstill have to give up some of your

(01:02:16):
autonomy.
And maybe your pastor, maybethe elders don't agree with all of
your political takes orwhatever, you still have to give
that up if you want to be partof this.
And that ask was too much formen, That's a really good way of
looking at It.
Yeah.
Or you think about all of theanti marriage, anti family rhetoric,
and it's all a risk of losingautonomy is really what it is.

(01:02:36):
Yeah, I mean, you think about,you know, she takes half your stuff,
or you don't get to see yourkids, or you lose all your time,
or you don't get to go outwith your friends even if you are
married.
You know, you don't.
You don't get this level ofautonomy that you had before.
It's ultimately all predicatedon the assumption that the happiest
man or the best man or themost fulfilled man is the one who

(01:02:57):
has consolidated the most autonomy.
And any risk to that is notworth taking.
And, you know, I think it'salmost like what Aesop's fable of,
like, the miser that has thegold buried in the ground.
And there's a guy that comesalong and he ends up saying, well,
you know, if you're not goingto do anything with it, why not just

(01:03:18):
put a stone in there and paintit gold?
And I think a lot of men havedone that with our sovereignty and
our autonomy is.
It's like, if you're not goingto spend it on something, what's
the point of having it?
And I do.
I think that we, a lot of ushave become misers of our power.
Yeah.
Keep going with this.
This is.
I love this way of thinkingabout it.

(01:03:39):
I'm trying to think about howthat even.
And this is all just me again,thinking out loud.
Yeah, yeah.
And trying to.
Trying to think about this.
But really, like, if I circleback to conversations that I've been
a part of and the way thatI've seen things happen, from marriage,
from religion, from havingchildren, and this is not.

(01:04:00):
This is.
I think this is the sad ironyis that this is not unique to men
or to the manosphere.
But this is the ultimate goal of.
This is what feminism has donefor women or anything else is it's
taught us that anything thattells us that we will be better by

(01:04:22):
sacrificing power isoppressive and is a lie.
Anything that tells us.
So this is the message of the manosphere.
Anything that tells us thatwe'll be better by sacrificing power.
The thing that's telling usthat is lying is a lie.
Churches are lying to us,society is lying to us.
Women are lying to.

(01:04:43):
And it's the same thing again.
It's the same thing that womenare being.
And, dude, this is the thingthat is so fascinating about being
back in the dating world.
Oh, man.
Right.
I mean, for me, it's sofascinating to be in here because
I, you know, the last time Iwas in the dating world was I was
in my early 20s.
And you learn how terrifiedpeople are when they're in their

(01:05:05):
30s or their 40s to cede anypower to anybody.
Or how quickly we label, like,healthy interdependence as codependence,
or like a desire for coregulation as, like, you know, and
there's all these, like,therapy terms that are thrown about
and bandied about for everything.

(01:05:25):
And we've pathologized ahealthy, mutual relationship into
a threat to everybody'sautonomy and everybody's power.
That's.
That makes a lot of sensebecause from two different angles.
One angle is you have thepeople who were in situations where

(01:05:47):
the autonomy that they hadgiven up, that interdependence was
abused, where it was takenadvantage of.
You have those situations, butyou also have a general cultural
thrust right now that's aboutexpressive individualism in a hyper
expressive, individualistickind of way.
Nothing, no tradition, no set of.

(01:06:08):
Not even set of laws, not evenphysical, biological reality can
be said to have a claim over me.
If I tell you that I'm a womanin a man's body, even my own genetics
have no control.
So I think those two factorstend to collide where it's like,
okay, is this not feminism andis this not feminism for men?

(01:06:31):
The two factors collide, andthey say, you know, anything that
constrains your autonomy is a lie.
And those who constrain yourautonomy who have authority over
you, they're abusive.
And so the only response hasto be to throw both off.
Yes, absolutely.
And ultimately, what it sadlyhas done is it has convinced us that

(01:06:55):
we are all little gods.
I am a God unto myself, andanybody that demands that I be subjected
to anything bigger than myselfis oppressive.
And anybody who doesn'trespect my truth and worship at my
altars the way that theyshould is also somebody that needs

(01:07:17):
to be cut out of my life.
You know, it's funny.
I was just at the NationalConservatism Conference, natcon,
about a month ago.
And so National Conservatismis a.
A political movement with avery heavy Christian element to it.
Judeo Christian, especially.
The founder, Yoram Hazoni, isan Israeli Jew.

(01:07:38):
And there are lots ofChristians of all denominations speaking
there.
And so their entire, I guess,perspective is to push back on the
individualistic approach ofthe Enlightenment.
Everything since theEnlightenment has been hyper individualistic.
And so now you have nationalconservatism that's pushing back
on that from a biblicalstandpoint, is that we aren't just

(01:08:02):
individuals who aresovereignly dropped onto the world.
Man is free, Ed.
Everywhere is born in chains.
I think that's Rousseau.
Instead, we are born intofamilies, tribes, nations that have
claims over our behavior andour beliefs.
And, and so I listened toeverything they said, I read the

(01:08:24):
books, and it's like, okay, Ican actually get down with this.
And to find that there areelements on the right that can't
stand it, it's like, okay, thefriction there is between the people
who want to continue to say,you know what?
No, I am an individual sovereign.
You have no claim over mebesides that of the law.
Because we live in a nation oflaws, but no tradition, family, nation,

(01:08:46):
these things have no claimover me.
It goes really, really far.
Yeah, it goes really, really far.
And I think that for me, thisis why I love the imagery of the
Straight and Narrow Path.
Because one of the things thatwe see such a good example of is
that we have, whether it'sindividual sin or societal downfall

(01:09:06):
or these big major issues thatwe get so scared of that we, we push
ourselves so far away from itthat we end up falling into, you
know, it's the horseshoetheory or it's Aristotle's like virtues
and vices and things like that.
It's the same thing.
But I think that we've donethat where we are right to fear so
many of the downfalls ofcollectivism or communism or oppressive

(01:09:29):
or oppression or all of theseother things.
But when you bastardize it tothe point where you become, you can
become evil in the otherdirection or you can become fallen
in and, yeah, downfallen inthe other direction.
And I think this is where alot of us have gone and we've made,
we've made autonomy into afalse God and we worship really readily

(01:09:53):
at.
That altar, just like othershave made sort of collectivism into
a false God.
A lack of autonomy.
Like, yeah, you can have superoppressive regimes, you know, that,
that are materially oppressive.
Meaning like they've got gunsand jackboots and they keep everyone,
like everyone in line, youknow, like the dystopian science

(01:10:14):
fiction, you know, but you cango just as far in the other direction
of saying, no, my individualliberty means that I can just kind
of do whatever I want, and Iwill be equally oppressive to you
in preventing you fromconstraining my behavior at all.
Everything must be permittedfor everyone is equally oppressive

(01:10:35):
ultimately.
Well, and I think what makesit even trickier and harder is that
the solution is not.
You can use this as kind of like.
Like libertarianism versuscommunism is kind of like the political
extremes of that.
Right.
And the problem is not.
Or the solution is notnecessarily this, like, milquetoast,
moderate, middle of the roadtype of thing, but it's being able

(01:10:56):
to recognize when elements ofone attitude are predominant and
appropriate and when elementsof another attitude are what's most
appropriate.
And it's.
It's being ironicallysovereign enough to be able to hold
the tension between these.
These contraries, to be ableto say, I'm going to lean this way
on this and I'm going to leanthat way on that, as opposed to,

(01:11:18):
I have to always be in thiscamp where I have to always be on
that camp and let that do thethinking and the decision making
for me.
That's.
I'm so glad you went back tothe word sovereign, because one of
the things that I've observed and.
And that a battle that I'vebeen fighting is I think a lot of
men are afraid to stand upagainst their bros when their bros
are getting into bad ideas.

(01:11:38):
And there's a lot of thatonline right now.
It's growing like wildfire, sadly.
And so I encourage them.
You have to take a standagainst your bros.
I know it's the most unnaturalthing to do.
It may seem disloyal, but ifyou believe and you are loyal to
a higher moral law, then youhave to say something to your friends.
And it's unloving to say otherwise.

(01:12:00):
That's the position I've taken.
And I found that appeal thatdoesn't always land.
But I think the idea ofsaying, can you be sovereign even
over the influence of yourfriends, I think that is a powerful
way of framing it.
Both are true.
Not something one is.
It's just a different way ofskinning the cat.
Yeah.
And I think that that kind ofstuff, we can even tie this back

(01:12:22):
into what I do.
As far as from a style perspective.
It's not always like, what youdo matters, but how you do it matters.
Right.
And so I think about this,like, I spent years trying to figure
out how to be present, and itdidn't work.
And then as soon as I.
As soon as the idea of, like,romance maxing and making my life

(01:12:42):
feel more romantic and morecinematic, it's the same thing, but
it's just phrased in a waythat actually clicks with me.
And so it's the same thingwith sovereignty, where it's like
yeah, you're.
You have this moral obligationwhich you do to, if you really love
your friends, you're going tostop them, do everything you can
to stop them from going downbad paths.
Absolutely.
And that may click for somepeople, but for some people, if you

(01:13:06):
phrase it from a sovereigntyperspective, it may click a little
bit differently as well.
So, yes, what we do matters,but how we do it matters just as
much.
Yeah.
And it's the same for me with goals.
Like if the number, if thegoal for me is just racking up another
zero, that doesn't necessarilyhave appeal for me.
But if I can say like, hey,doing this will help me gift my family

(01:13:26):
with X, Y and Z and have alittle bit more sovereignty over
my time to be able to be morepresent for my young kids than my
dad was able to be, that's thesort of thing like, Yeah, I can 1000%
get behind that, but if it'sjust about like, I want to run up
the big number just for thesake of having it.
Yeah.
I suppose that for some menare motivated by that and that's
completely fine, but thatdoesn't click with me.

(01:13:46):
Yes.
Yeah.
And I think this is thebeauty, and maybe this is another
reason why growth as a man,especially now, is so interesting,
is that we get the chance tolearn this stuff kind of on the fly.
It's like there's like apioneering spirit.
In a way.
There is.
And I think that we, more ofus need to kind of take that, that
approach to it.
And again, that comes down tothis level of sovereignty because

(01:14:11):
it's a lot easier to be anacolyte than it is to be a pioneer
and.
Right.
And so when you have yourgurus that are the pioneers and you
buy into the programs and youjust follow what they say on their
sub stacks and stuff likethat, then you don't have to carry
the burden of responsibilityfor the outcome of it.

(01:14:33):
And if, if it fails, you getall the upside if it works.
But you don't have to care,you don't have to take any of the
risk if it doesn't workbecause acolytes get to blame the
leader on it.
Right.
Whereas if you think about itmore from the, from the lens of being
a pioneer, there's more selfexperimentation, there's more sovereignty,
there's more selfresponsibility, there's more of that

(01:14:54):
masculine mantle andweightiness that comes in with it.
But that really is theattitude that we need because we're
in like, the old world is dead.
We're in like the world, the20th century bureaucratic Western
world is, is dead.
We're seeing it sartorially,we're seeing it culturally, we're
seeing it spiritually.

(01:15:14):
And it doesn't mean God isdead, it doesn't mean civilization
is dead, it doesn't mean anyof that.
But it means that the waysthat all of those things existed
don't exist anymore.
But we're not in the new phase yet.
We're in the transition, whichis the hardest position to be in.
And you have to have pioneersin those transition phases.

(01:15:37):
This is fantastic because Ithink one of the things that so many
men are feeling,understandably so, is that, and this
also explains a lot of theenthusiasm for SpaceX and Elon Musk
is that we've covered theworld, we've covered the planet.
There is no go west, young man.
There is no Western expansion.
We expanded all the way to thewest of California and now people

(01:15:58):
are bouncing off, heading backto the east, you know, the bottoms
of the ocean, like who wantsto go there?
The deserts, everything hasbeen mapped.
And so men who have apioneering spirit.
What are we pioneering towards?
And so you look at Elon Musk,who wants to go to Mars, Cool, fine,
talk about that separately.
But I think not every man'sgoing to be Elon Musk and not every
man's going to go to Mars.

(01:16:19):
So how can we have thispioneering spirit, the sense of adventure
in our own lives in a waythat's fulfilling to us as men that
doesn't necessarily involvesomething with like going out and
conquering some physical plotof dirt.
That's such a good question.
And I think one of the otherthings that makes it even trickier
to navigate is that we canhave that pioneer spirit subverted

(01:16:42):
by consuming pioneering asopposed to participating in it.
So we do it in video games, wedo it in shows, we do it in.
Again, that LARPing personaldevelopment is, you know, if I listen
to all the Audible books andI'm pioneering but I'm not actually
doing things, or if I'm justlike a Musk fanboy, I think a lot
of guys that get reallyinvolved in like, you know, they're.

(01:17:03):
And again, there's nothingwrong with any of these things, with
being really into tech andlike being excited about the latest
stuff and.
But it needs to be somethingthat we are participating in rather
than just consuming.
And how you do that in yourown life is going to be very different

(01:17:26):
and very challenging.
But I think that that's this,this is a really Good call to action
for me of like.
And I think that.
That this even fits into,like, what the romance maxing is.
Is, like, what are the thingsthat are worth pioneering and experimenting
that I either need to startdoing or I'm already doing.
But I can come at it with newvigor and vitality if I think about

(01:17:49):
it from that perspective, asopposed to I'm tired.
Yeah, yeah.
Like, the pioneer spirit is.
There's a way in which apioneer spirit.
My pastor talks about thingsin terms of pioneer faith that we
see all throughout the NewTestament and the Gospels.

(01:18:09):
You see the stories of peoplewho had pioneer faith.
Like the hemorrhaging woman,you know, she says, if I just touch
the hem of his cloak, I'll be healed.
My pastor says that's pioneerfaith, where it's like, she doesn't
know entirely what's going on.
She's willing to take a riskif I just touch him.
That's how powerful thatwhat's going on is.
And then she confesses thewhole story.
That's pioneer faith.

(01:18:30):
And so there's a way in whichbeing pioneering draws us towards
something that's beyond wherewe're currently at while also maintaining
a healthy tie to what was.
Like, we're not pioneeringjust for ourselves.
We're not going to be a recluse.
There's something we're tryingto do on behalf of others.
Yeah.
And I think.
I mean, really what you'rejust describing actually is active

(01:18:52):
faith, because you can't havefaith if you are unwilling to put
yourself in risky situations.
Right.
Because if everything is knownand you've got a pretty good understanding
of what the likelihood, youknow, like, my turning on a light
is not an act of faith.

(01:19:12):
Right.
It's not.
When Edison was trying tofigure out how to make light bulbs
work, that was an act of faith.
Faith.
Because at the time it was unknown.
Right.
And.
And so, yeah, I do.
I think that what we'remissing that's so interesting, do
we consume other people'sfaith or do we, like, pro.

(01:19:35):
Like, do we commodify it in our.
Like in our.
In what we watch or what weplay or the music that we listen
to versus actually living it actively.
And so it's almost this, like,bait and switch into thinking that
we're being faithful, but it'snot actually yielding any results.

(01:19:55):
And so we have to go get ourfaith fix by doing it again in something
that is a simulation asopposed to actually being real.
Man, that's really interesting.
That's really interesting.
And I think that's the appealof the conspiracy stuff that's so
popular right now.
Like Ian Carroll, whatever.
I'm going to have pine.

(01:20:16):
I'm going to be the pioneer onbehalf of all of you and I'm going
to investigate all of thesethings and I'm going to tell you
what's going on so you don'thave to go find out because you can't
do it yourself.
So I'm going to be pioneeringfor you.
Yeah.
Which is not to say that weneed to like eschew the idea of scouts,
you know, And I think aboutpioneering obviously with my heritage,
with my people were the actuallike American pioneers that got pushed

(01:20:38):
out west and everything else.
You know, I have a very closerelationship with that word.
And that doesn't mean thatthere weren't scouts, there weren't
people that didn't go out ahead.
But you still, there werestill plenty of people that took
a lot of risk moving out westin handcarts and ox drawn wagons
and things like that.
And it is a little too easy inour very live in our brain screen

(01:21:04):
based, intellectualized,philosophized, non physical world
to turn our scouts into whatare prophets or gurus and not actually
have to follow suit.
I think of it in terms of yes,Scouts is a real thing.
I think of it as in an erathat starved for fathers into that

(01:21:31):
vacuum step a whole bunch ofolder brothers, like Lord of the
Flies, you know what I mean?
Like all the fathers cultureor whatever else.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
And so an older brother,brother comes in, older brother has
sort of like a bullying mentality.
I'll fight for you, but I'mgoing to bully you a little bit as
well because kind of therelationship between older brothers
and that's a very different,that's a very different feeling than

(01:21:52):
the one who wants to guide oris exploring because he likes to
explore.
It's I'm going to do this foryou, but I want something from you
in exchange as opposed to thisis my calling to go explore this
and I'm happiest when I'mdoing that.
There's a very differentfeeling there.
Yeah.
And I think sadly so many ofthese men resonate with that older

(01:22:13):
brother approach because,well, my, my attitude on this is
that the, the physicalcasualties of the two great wars
were absolute atrocities.
But the worst thing that cameout of it were the spiritual and
emotional casualties that justwiped out an entire generation of

(01:22:34):
healthy men.
Men.
Yeah.
Oh yeah, right.
And those men did the bestthey Could.
That is by no means throwingshade or casting aspersions on these
men who were brokenpsychologically in some of the worst
ways imaginable.
And it manifested in there notbeing a lot of good paternal energy

(01:22:54):
or approaches.
For now, multiple generations,and we're left with this older brother
attacked or just the completeabandonment of masculinity in general.
This is literally what I wastalking about on the podcast I was
a guest on yesterday, the sameone we talked about your style coaching.
It's like, look.
Look back up.
Look at the world from theposition of, like, 1950.

(01:23:16):
You're looking at World War I,which they called at the time the
war to end our wars.
Right, right.
We don't know much about WorldWar I today, but that's.
I mean, it was horrible on ascale like gas and trenches.
Insane, Insane.
Crazy, right?
And then on the heels of that,you have the Great Depression, people
living in shanty towns in NewYork City, you have the Dust bowl,
people starving to death.

(01:23:36):
And then you have World WarII, the atomic bomb, and all the
horrors of World War II.
So, yeah, from the perspectiveof, like, 1950, it's like you have
a generation of men who were.
Yeah, well, yeah, a generationof men who are becoming fathers,
who, in their living memory,they remember World War II because
they fought in it.
They remember the GreatDepression because they.
Lived through it, grew up in it.

(01:23:57):
Yeah, they grew up, and theirfathers probably fought in World
War I.
Right.
So, like.
So, yeah, they're not going tohave a whole lot of fatherly presence
available because they'restruggling with their own.
Their own demons, the thingsthat they're haunted with, with the
things that they saw.
And so, yeah, they're notgoing to be able to be available
for a baby boomer generation.
You know, that.
That is more comfortable andmore coddled than any generation

(01:24:19):
in human history.
And so the baby boomers growup hating their John Wayne dads.
Like, your John Wayne dad wasdoing the best that he could.
Absolutely.
Well, and especially because Iwonder how much of it was that they
almost felt like, look, I'mdoing okay because of this material
abundance that I've created.
And so it was a way to kind offocus on that and to not have to

(01:24:40):
continue to do.
To dig deeper and reflect onmore of the pain and everything else.
Because I wonder how much ofit was almost a shadow of, like,
if we can pull out of all ofthese awful decades from a material
perspective, then that isindicative of the fact that we also
pulled out of them from aSpiritual or an emotional or a societal

(01:25:01):
or a psychological perspectiveas well.
Which almost makes me wonderif that's why people get so hyper
focused on, you know, well,the world is better than it's ever
been because of xyz,technological or economic marker.
And we so quickly just focuson, well, TVs are cheaper than they've
ever been.
And so the world is betterthan it was 80 years ago.
And it's like, well, no, thereare more ways to measure the health

(01:25:23):
of a society than justtechnologies and economies.
But those are a lot scarier tohave to confront because Green line
doesn't always go up.
That's right.
That's right.
I'm thinking about.
It would be really easy tounderstand how men of the greatest
generation would be like,okay, so it's 1955.
I've got a comfortable officejob, you know, we've got the suburban

(01:25:46):
house, you know, and.
And everything's happy,world's at peace.
You know, maybe the Korean waris kind of happening, but like, things
are good.
We made it.
You did it.
You arrived like you did it.
But no focus on spiritualhealth at all.
Because it was during the1950s that the seeds of the cultural

(01:26:07):
decay of the 1970s and 60s and70s was planted.
That was all planted in the 50s.
And that all took root quiteheavily, which is why we don't look
at it much today.
But.
But like, yeah, there was alack of focus on spiritual health
because there was an overtfocus on material health.
And so now you have an oldergeneration that still thinks that

(01:26:27):
way.
It's like, look, I got.
We got all this stuff.
It's like, well, you can seethat inside there's a rotting going
on.
So maybe that has been passeddown as well.
I think so.
Yeah.
Where it is, it's just as longas I have more stuff, then society's
doing okay.
Because it's a lot scarier tolook at the alternative.
The alternative that have asociety where I would have less stuff.
Yeah.
Or even that a society mayhave a lot of stuff, but it's not

(01:26:50):
a good, healthy society.
That's right.
Yeah.
People get into that to talkabout, like, illegal immigration.
Like, okay, if you round upand kicked out all the illegal immigrants
and you started paying, youknow, regular American wages, what
would that do to the price of everything?
The bitcoin guys talk a lotabout that.
Yeah.
And it's like, yeah, I mean, that's.
That's real.
And there are real prices to that.
And it doesn't mean that it'snot worth doing.

(01:27:14):
You know, absolutely.
If you could go back to.
This is a conversation I havewith my friends all the time where
it's like, if you had to goback to the technological levels
or even, like, medicinallevels or things like that of a particular
point in history, but you alsogo back.
Got to go back to the levelof, like, social cohesion or social
trust, where would you go?

(01:27:34):
Would you do the 90s?
Like, where's the trade off asfar as, like, how much physical,
economic, technologicalprogress you're willing to seed?
And, you know, obviously theassumption is that those two are.
You know, there's an inverserelationship, and that's obviously
not the case.
But it's an interestingthought experiment, and I think what

(01:27:55):
underlies it is that a lot ofpeople are willing to tackle it because
we see kind of an inversecorrelation between how abundant
in resources we are, but howstarved for spiritual and emotional
and social, like, societalhealth we are.
At the same time, I like how.
You said social cohesion,because I think that that explains

(01:28:18):
why people look at the 80s.
They're like, look, this was atime of material prosperity.
It was like the explosion ofChinese junk in the American economy,
whatever.
And there was very sociallycohesive, even though it wasn't that
at all.
And you can easily run downthat path.
You're like, well, you know,who had high material prosperity
and high social cohesion?
Nazi Germany.
You know, the Roman Empire.

(01:28:39):
And that explains.
Those were, excuse me, hugethemes of the manosphere.
Not necessarily Nazi Germany,but like the Roman Empire return.
Remember that?
Return with the V?
Yep, absolutely.
And that's what they werehoping for is sort of material prosperity
and social cohesion.
Yeah.
And I don't think that they are.
I don't think either of thosein and of themselves are problems.

(01:29:04):
Not at all.
But I think that what happensis, you know, and I use this one
a lot too, where X is a falseGod, not like X the site.
But, you know, that's anotherone of the memes of mine.
But we.
I think the problem that mostof us fall into is that.
That it's not that we have.
We have, like, our hierarchyof the things that we value the most.

(01:29:28):
And the problem is not thatthings don't belong in the hierarchy,
because material prosperitydeserves a place in the hierarchy
and social cohesion deserves aplace in the hierarchy.
But when we place them in thewrong position and we place them
too high up is when thingsbecome false gods.
And that's when they becomeproblems, it's when we're too willing

(01:29:49):
to sacrifice other things thatshould be maintained or actually
deserve a higher position inthat hierarchy, that that's where
we run into issues.
And so this is what we've seenis, you know, you saw.
You've seen with both themanosphere and feminism, we saw connection
and humility placed lower than autonomy.

(01:30:11):
Right.
Or we've seen this with a lotof just Western culture in the 20th
century as we saw, you know,economic and technological growth
at the expense of socialcohesion or spiritual growth.
And again, none of thesethings are wrong or problems in and

(01:30:31):
of themselves, but it's whenwe just.
We prioritize the wrong thingsin the wrong places and we sacrifice
the wrong things for the other things.
I think that's a really goodway of looking at it, because I think.
Think we can understand thismoment as what are the idols that
people are worshiping?
Unchecked economic growth wasthe idol of the second half of the

(01:30:54):
20th century.
There are many.
There's a book called Idolsfor Destruction that I read last
year that was excellent.
That's like, wow, we are acrazy, idolatrous nation.
Totally.
But unchecked economic growth,and now it's almost like there's
another idol.
It's almost like socialcohesion is probably a good way of
phrasing it.
I want a society that hangstogether that I feel like I can be

(01:31:14):
a part of, that's become anidol in and of itself, where it's
like, okay, I'm even willingto sacrifice my civil liberties,
or I'm willing to sacrificepeople's lives to create that sense
of social cohesion, but thatalso will not deliver satisfaction.
Right.
And I think the other thingthat makes it really scary is that
we get these idols that arepitted against each other and that

(01:31:37):
what.
And that can create this kindof fever pitch of, you have to choose
one or the other, because wedo have this one idol of social cohesion.
But then on the other side, wehave this, like, hyper individualism.
And those can contradict eachother in very real ways.
And so if you're not willingto, you know, I'm totally pro social

(01:31:57):
cohesion, or I'm totally prohyper individualism, or I'm totally
moderate and trying, like,it's just.
It requires so much ability tohold tension to be able to say no.
There are elements of socialcohesion that are worth sacrificing
for, and there are elements ofindividualism that are worth sacrificing
for, and we need to find A wayto hold on to the best of both of

(01:32:19):
these things, as opposed tojust like, you know, it's Solomon
splitting the baby in half.
That's not the solution.
It's being able to.
To find what's worth holdingon to in both of those and putting
them in the right places inthe hierarchy.
And that's what I alwaysthought was the best about the conversation,
about masculinity at its.
At its best moments, men wouldreach points.
This where you recognize.
No, it's not about either orlike, somehow we have to find a way

(01:32:43):
to chart a path through themiddle and maybe the middle towards
one side or towards the other,but there still is a middle ground.
And we know when we've crossedthe line and become more extreme
because we're willing tosacrifice too much.
And that was what alwaysappealed to me about the conversation,
because it highlighted what achallenge being a man is and has
always been.
And are we up for thatchallenge versus no.

(01:33:05):
I'm going to take the path ofmy flesh and I'm going to go what's
most satisfying in terms of aperspective that gives voice to my
anger, gives vent to mybitterness, as opposed to.
No, like, being a man is ahigher calling than that.
It is.
And again, you know, becauseyou and I are who we are and who
your audience is, we can talkabout this.
In a way, I love the beauty ofChrist in that, because Christ is

(01:33:27):
the alpha and the Omega.
He's not M or whatever themiddle letter in the Alphabet is,
but he's not just Alpha orjust omega.
And he's perfect justice andhe's perfect mercy.
And it's the ability to embodyall of it, as opposed to just go
one extreme to the exclusionof the other, or vice versa, or just

(01:33:47):
play it safe in the middle ofthe road.
And I feel like those are kindof these three alternatives that
we're presented with is youhave to be this extreme, that extreme,
or extremely milquetoast.
And the real trick ofmasculinity is being able to embody
as much of the full spectrumas you can see.
And that's why I love so muchof what the manosphere was, because

(01:34:09):
it embraced so many goodthings that were left out of the
conversation of whatmasculinity was and should be.
That's why I had no problemgoing into a lot of the spaces that
a lot of the manosphereresents, where I would go into a
lot of this more kind of liketherapy or some of these other kind
of like, softer, more Selfdevelopment spaces.
And there are, certainly thereare problems in both sides, but there

(01:34:30):
are strengths in both sides.
And so I love that, that ideaof those contraries and, and to truly
emulate Christ is to be as.
Even if we can't embody alphaand Omega, to recognize that he can
perfectly embody alpha andOmega, and to not think that we always
have to choose one or theother or choose nothing at all.
That's right.
And, and the constant reminderlike, you ain't the guy.

(01:34:54):
Oh no, that's the humility part.
Right.
It's like, hey, however coolthat you think you are, you ain't
Jesus.
Right.
You know, you're probably notgoing to start something as big as
Abraham.
Right.
You're probably not going tolead as many people as Moses.
You're probably not going tobe as wise as Solomon or King like
David.
Like, see yourself reflectedin the stories of these, of these
great men.
And like, and have somehumility and have some gratitude

(01:35:15):
to be part of the storyinstead of thinking that you, you
are the, the Ubermensch, youknow, you are the end of history,
man.
Like from Nietzsche.
Right.
And yeah, and I love evenagain, that beauty of like, there's,
there's sovereign humilitybecause you do want to be the Ubermensch
in your own story.
You want to be the maincharacter in your own story, but

(01:35:37):
you want to have, have thehumility to recognize that it's your
story, you're not the maincharacter in anybody else's story.
Yes, yes, that's right.
And you should be the maincharacter in your story.
Right.
Maybe Jesus should be the maincharacter in your story, in a manner
of speaking.
Right.
But in terms of your life, youare the main character of your story.

(01:35:58):
Not that there aren't reallyimportant other supporting characters,
not that you don't have costars in your story, but to understand
that there is a degree ofsovereignty that we're called to
exercise over our lives, overour circumstances, on behalf of our
families, in the perspectiveof humility.
And that's okay.
And you can do that withoutgoing crazy in one direction or the
other.

(01:36:19):
Exactly.
And then still have thehumility to grant people sovereignty
in their own lives.
Amen.
Amen.
So I want to bring this backaround again to how this ties into
men's style.
No, but honestly, I do thinkit matters because it's great to
talk about, about these bigphilosophical concepts and we should
and men should.

(01:36:39):
And there is still a pointwhere it's like, hey, we have to
land this in our lives.
And the first way that thisland, there are many ways that it
lands in our lives, but interms of other people's interactions
with us, the first way that weland for them is always our physical
appearance.
They don't see us asdisembodied spirits, as good people.
They see who we are on the outside.

(01:37:01):
And in a sense, the way thatwe dress, the way that we present
ourselves is a way ofexpressing sovereignty or not.
Absolutely.
It could choose the course ofour lives in some circumstances.
Absolutely.
And that's, you know, I dothink this is a great way to tie
everything back in because,you know, we talked before about
the uniform of apathy or theuniform of indifference.
And it is an anti sovereign uniform.

(01:37:23):
It is one that is basicallysaying that I have so little sovereignty
in my own life, so littleresponsibility for my own life, that
I would rather blend in andnot even register than be willing
to take the risks and theresponsibilities and the rewards
that come from actually just manifest.

(01:37:45):
And that's, that's one of thebest things.
And you get this now becauseyou've worked with me on a different
level, that when you put onclothes every day, most guys, when
they put on clothes every day,it's as automatic as brushing your
teeth.
You don't think about it, youjust know that you have to do it.
It.
When you get dressed everyday, you are putting on your sovereignty
every day.
And it's either something thatreinforces that or it's something
that undermines that.

(01:38:06):
And it's something that I cangrow and develop in as well.
Like, I don't dress the sameway that I did a few years ago.
I make changes because it is away for me to assert, like I'm on
camera, you know, so the waythat I dress matters.
Like, how am I going topresent myself when I'm talking to
you know, reallyprofessionally politically accomplished,
you know, people that havemade impacts in the world versus

(01:38:28):
how am I talking to someonewho works on a smaller scale?
Well, how do I put myselftogether in a way that is able to
meet both of those as I chartmy own course, you know, through
YouTube, in a sense.
Absolutely, absolutely.
Excellent, man.
Well, I'm, I'm, I continue tobe grateful.
Oh, before I forget, I haveto, I have to say thank you because

(01:38:49):
as a result of the stylecoaching that we did, I got to get
dressed for my wedding.
Yeah, dude, isn't that so fun?
And that was amazing because Igot to say, the kind of suit that
I wanted, the colors that Iwanted, the Cut and all of that.
And I got to look exactly theway that I wanted to look on my wedding,
such that people complimentedme all throughout the day, which

(01:39:11):
was an amazing feeling.
So there's nothing wrong.
Tell me it didn't just helpyou feel more confident, more present,
more like celebratory.
There's no self consciousnessabout was this the right thing or
like you just got to be fullyimmersed in the experience as a result
of that.
Right?
That's right.
Oh, yeah.
I got to pick a color suit.
I went with a mid blue suitwith a rust colored tie.

(01:39:32):
And what really did it waslike I looked at it, I was like,
okay.
And it went to suit supply.
Also the tie came from, Ithink tie bar online, I think is
where.
No, no.
I went to a men's store herethat had.
I wanted to see it in person,but I felt that the suit itself wasn't
enough.
So I went and I got a vest andI got a vest that was just slightly,
like slightly darker than thesuit itself.

(01:39:54):
And the whole thing just likecame together so well.
And so it's like I got to feelcomfortable all day knowing that
I looked good and that like Ilooked good standing next to my bride,
who looked incredible.
Yes, dude, I love it.
Good.
I'm so glad that that workedout that way.
That's fantastic.
Very much so.
So thank you for all thatyou've given me over the years to
make that possible.
You're welcome.

(01:40:14):
All right, well, if men wantto create similar transformations
for themselves, where can theygo to find out more about what you
do?
Okay, so the best places tointeract with me are on X and Instagram
and it's annerguzzi, which isT, A N N E, R, G U, Z, Y.
You can learn more about mycoaching and my approach to stuff
if you go tomasculine-style.com and then if you

(01:40:39):
want really like a good 50,000foot view on kind of what the.
The ethos and then go checkout the Appearance of Power.
It's on Amazon, it's on Audible.
You can get it really kind ofanywhere at this point.
So.
Yeah.
Are you going to do a secondedition to the book?
I don't think I need to.
Which is actually kind of fun.
I'm coming up on.
I'm eight years in.
I may do an updated versionthat inserts another couple of chapters.

(01:41:01):
I know I've got another bookin me, but it's not necessarily style
related.
But we'll see what that endsup being in the future.
Yeah.
All right.
I look forward to it.
Yeah.
All right, brother.
Well, it's great to reconnectwith you again after five years.
Thanks for starting the journey.
And I think in thisconversation, everyone will understand.
And what a blessing it's beento talk with you and.
And why you were the perfectguest to start off my podcast.

(01:41:22):
So thank you.
Thanks, Will.
Such a pleasure, man.

(01:41:43):
Sa.

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