Order of Man - 091： Why Men Fight ｜ Jonathan Gottschall

00:00:00.000 Why do men fight and why do we like to watch? These are a couple of questions I've asked

00:00:03.860 myself before and one that we attempt to answer with my guest today, Jonathan Gottschall,

00:00:07.560 an English professor with some real-world experience in MMA. Today we talk about the

00:00:12.000 nature of fighting, how fighting has evolved, the role honor plays in combat, where the desire to

00:00:16.840 make men more civilized comes from, and of course, a ton more. You're a man of action.

00:00:21.980 You live life to the fullest. Embrace your fears and boldly chart your own path. When life knocks

00:00:26.960 you down, you get back up one more time, every time. You are not easily deterred or defeated,

00:00:33.160 rugged, resilient, strong. This is your life. This is who you are. This is who you will become

00:00:39.740 at the end of the day, and after all is said and done, you can call yourself a man.

00:00:45.580 Men, what is going on today? My name is Ryan Michler, and I am the host and the founder of

00:00:48.920 Order of Man. I want to welcome you to the Manly's podcast on the planet. That's right,

00:00:53.020 on the planet. Guys, in fact, I was looking at the iTunes rankings, and we have officially moved

00:00:57.960 up to the number 29 position in all of the business category, which is a huge feat, and I want to thank

00:01:03.060 you for that. I don't know all the details on how those numbers are calculated and how they come up

00:01:07.820 with those rankings, but I can tell you guys that reviews are huge. So if you would, please leave us a

00:01:13.820 rating and review. And also, if you're new to the show today, guys, we are having some great

00:01:17.540 conversations, some serious conversations on what it means to be a man. I'm talking with the world's

00:01:23.540 most successful men, authors, athletes, warriors, entrepreneurs, and we're going to extract all of

00:01:28.780 their lessons, their habits, their tools, their tactics, everything that they're doing and implementing

00:01:32.300 on a daily basis, and then we're delivering them right to you. So I've got a great one lined up for

00:01:37.420 today, as I always do, with an English professor of all things who decided, guys, to step up to the plate

00:01:43.120 and start MMA training, and even fight in the cage. So before I get too much into that conversation

00:01:48.080 and I introduce you to him and the conversation that we're having today, I do want to let you know

00:01:51.960 that you can get the show notes for this show at orderofman.com slash 091. And also, if you haven't

00:01:59.200 done this already, make sure you join our closed Facebook group. We've got 12,500 plus men in there

00:02:04.580 right now. And again, we're having some great conversations about what it means to be a man and how you can be

00:02:09.660 a better one, which is why each and every one of us are here. So you can do that at facebook.com

00:02:13.700 slash groups slash order of men. And third, guys, this is the big one. Make sure you check out our

00:02:18.360 elite mastermind. I don't know if you've checked it out yet, but I want you to go take a look at the

00:02:22.800 iron council. This is a group of men who are working each and every day on becoming better men. I'm going

00:02:28.220 to give you some more details during the break, but until then, just understand the iron council is all

00:02:33.340 about giving you the guidance and the tools and the direction that you need to achieve at high

00:02:38.520 levels. So you can learn more at orderofman.com slash iron council. Now, with all that said,

00:02:43.840 I do want to introduce you to my guest today. This is a fascinating discussion that I have with

00:02:47.680 Mr. Jonathan Gottschall. And like I mentioned before, he is an English professor. In fact,

00:02:51.520 he's a distinguished fellow at Washington and Jefferson college. But the reason I invited Jonathan

00:02:56.120 to come on the show is because of his latest book, which is called professor in the cage,

00:03:00.640 why men fight and why we like to watch. This is what makes this conversation so fascinating though.

00:03:05.020 He didn't just write about fighting. He started fighting. He noticed a gym across the street from

00:03:10.740 his office and decided to throw his hat in the ring and train. He trained for three years and he even

00:03:15.720 competed in a fight. So I'm not going to ruin the surprise on how that went. I'll let Jonathan do that

00:03:19.940 in the conversation that we have today. But the bottom line is that this is a guy who I hold in

00:03:24.460 high regard because he has actually done what most people would only talk or dream or think about

00:03:31.160 doing. And he's got some fascinating views on men and fighting from a credible perspective because

00:03:36.800 he's been willing to put it all on the line. So I hope you enjoy the conversation today.

00:03:42.440 Jonathan, thanks for joining me on the show today.

00:03:44.640 I am so happy to be here, Ryan. Thank you.

00:03:46.240 And this is part two, right? Because I talked to you a couple of weeks ago. Most of the guys

00:03:50.060 listening to this know that my computer crashed. They all have experienced similar things. And I just

00:03:54.700 appreciate your flexibility in coming back on the show.

00:03:57.020 Well, I appreciate your honesty. I'm surprised you're fessing up to this on the air.

00:04:00.320 Yeah. You know, the one thing that I have been pretty good at doing, I think I'm pretty good

00:04:04.980 at doing is saying that I don't have it all figured out and just putting it out there because

00:04:09.060 everybody knows there's no reason to hide it, right?

00:04:11.940 It's true.

00:04:12.620 Yeah.

00:04:13.160 But for some reason, most people do.

00:04:15.900 That's true. That is true. Well, let's talk about this. The initial conversation that we had

00:04:19.980 was about your book, which is The Professor in the Cage, Why Men Fight and Why We Like to Watch,

00:04:24.420 which I was fascinated by the concept because I'm enthralled with fighting. My boys are enthralled with

00:04:29.160 fighting. We do fight nights around here. Why is it that men are so interested in the notion and

00:04:35.980 concept of fighting?

00:04:37.820 Yeah. That was what drew me to the project as well. I've been watching, you know, cage fighting

00:04:43.240 on TV for almost, you know, 15, 20 years before I started this project. And the whole time I was

00:04:49.620 watching it with this sort of sense of guilty fascination because I was drawn to it, but also

00:04:56.720 repelled. And I was thinking to myself, what kind of person am I? Who would want to watch this stuff?

00:05:01.820 What kind of monster would want to watch this spectacle of human suffering? And so there's

00:05:08.280 the big question, one of the big questions for me was why are we drawn to it? And so most of us are

00:05:12.960 pushed away a little bit. We're a little bit repelled by what we see in the cage. If it's a really bloody

00:05:16.500 fight, if a guy gets knocked out or injured, it seems kind of grotesque. But we're drawn to it too.

00:05:22.660 And I think we're drawn to it less by a certain bloodlust than by a desire to sort of celebrate

00:05:31.220 some of the best elements of human nature. So what a fight does is it sets up this artificial

00:05:36.560 situation, an incredibly dramatic artificial situation, sort of like the climax to a great

00:05:42.580 movie where you have this incredible showdown between two characters and they compete in a very

00:05:49.580 direct and real way. And that artificial situation forces the best elements of human nature to show

00:05:56.340 themselves. Talking about strength and courage and perseverance and skill and extremes of endurance

00:06:02.960 and grace, toughness. So I think that we are drawn to fighting less by a desire to celebrate or succumb

00:06:12.780 to what's worse than human nature and more by an urge to celebrate what's best in human nature.

00:06:21.120 Yeah. I really want to get into this conversation of what you're talking about, discipline, courage,

00:06:24.940 bravery, all the things that we celebrate and we admire. I think that's really important. And I think

00:06:28.940 that's one of the elements, especially, and I don't know if I want to be so bold as to say this,

00:06:32.960 but I think women maybe in general overlook this other element of it because they think it's more 0.91

00:06:37.580 violent than maybe it is. And they don't see and appreciate this other side of this. But before I get into

00:06:41.520 that, I want to know, is this something that just the notion of fighting, is this something that men,

00:06:46.860 modern men specifically, are more interested in living vicariously through other people? Or,

00:06:53.160 I mean, because you don't see guys just walking around, you know, getting in fights on the streets

00:06:56.240 anymore, right? No, you don't. And I think most of us would say that on the whole, that's a good thing.

00:07:02.320 I mean, we don't need to be nostalgic. It doesn't mean to, we're not repudiating masculinity. We're not

00:07:07.580 repudiating manliness by not being nostalgic for a vision of masculinity where guys, you know,

00:07:13.680 are swaggering down the streets, knocking shoulders into each other, trying to pick fights,

00:07:17.400 getting in duels, you know. I mean, we used to do this. We used to, you know, you'd insult me on the

00:07:21.920 street or I'd feel insulted and I'd insult you back and no one would apologize. And we'd go meet in the

00:07:26.780 morning and have a gunfight, you know. So this is not something to be nostalgic for. But there is,

00:07:32.760 I do think that there is a vicarious component to it. You know, we watch these guys in the cage

00:07:39.240 and what we are seeing there is an absolute epitome of a certain ideal of masculinity, right?

00:07:48.220 Of these guys who are just incredibly strength, strong. They're incredibly brave. They're incredibly

00:07:54.120 tough. They're incredibly skilled. They are so incredibly everything we want to be. They are our

00:07:58.700 heroes. And so I do think we go there to celebrate a certain vision of masculinity, but it's also part

00:08:05.120 of what makes cage fighting so controversial. You know, in this day and age, we don't feel as

00:08:10.120 comfortable as we used to or the whole culture doesn't feel as comfortable as we used to celebrating

00:08:15.660 this sort of raw masculinity that's on display in a cage fight. And by the way, I think this is part of

00:08:21.080 the reason why cage fighting, even though it is arguably safer than boxing because there's less

00:08:26.780 damage to the brain, um, has never, hasn't caught on to the same degree that boxing did in the old

00:08:32.380 days. In the old days, all the great writers, Plimpton and Mailer and Hemingway and many, many

00:08:38.960 others, uh, wrote about boxing. There's a whole literature about boxing. Great writers don't go

00:08:43.620 near it, uh, anymore. I have this whole field practically to myself. Um, and it's partly because

00:08:48.860 we're just, you know, the sort of elite culture, smart people, intellectuals just aren't as

00:08:53.620 comfortable with that idea of a sort of traditional masculinity as they used to be.

00:08:59.240 Why has that changed? I mean, I'm at, I imagine I almost look at this as, as someone might say

00:09:03.100 the term, you know, this is barbaric. This isn't necessary. Is there more to it than that?

00:09:07.660 You, you said that, that women have a different response to it and maybe they, they don't, 0.98

00:09:12.180 they think it's more violent than it actually is. But I think when women see it, they're seeing 0.71

00:09:16.600 it very clearly. This is incredibly violent and there is a real barbarism to it. You know,

00:09:23.280 I mean, when you get right down to it, combat sports like boxing and like cage fighting are

00:09:28.580 really very, very intense. What you have is basically a brain damage contest, right? Uh,

00:09:35.620 these guys put on these gloves, the gloves do not civilize the sport. The guy, the gloves

00:09:40.060 weaponize the hand because you can throw that thing around with wild abandon. If I'm fighting

00:09:45.340 you bare fisted, I have to be very careful because I will break my hands. Yeah. You got to protect

00:09:48.780 your, you got to protect that fist a little bit better. I get that. Exactly. So, so cage fighting

00:09:52.900 and boxing come down to, uh, this brain damage contest where it comes down to who has the

00:09:58.520 skill and the strength to inflict more blunt force trauma on the other guy's brain and

00:10:05.040 who happens to be blessed with the genetic gift of a good chin of the ability to absorb

00:10:11.600 neurological damage from, from your opponent. So a cage fight really is a, a, a brutal thing.

00:10:19.180 And it is right. I think that, uh, society is wary of it. I think that the proper attitude

00:10:27.740 towards boxing and cage fighting and other combat sports is not, uh, an effete, uh, rejection

00:10:34.700 of it. And it's not an uncritical embrace. The proper response is ambivalence. What you're

00:10:41.000 seeing there is very, very inspiring and also very, very horrifying.

00:10:44.980 How does, how has this evolved? Because it's gone from, and you talk about this in the book,

00:10:48.460 you talk about dueling and, and the monkey dance, which I want to get into and talk a little

00:10:52.560 bit more about that. But how has this evolved from you offended me or you offended my honor

00:10:57.440 or my family to now we're going to fight because I want to see if I have what it takes. And I want

00:11:02.920 to see if I am in the position or the strength or whatever it may be that I want to be. It's almost

00:11:07.860 like you're competing against yourself. Maybe I'm misunderstanding this a little bit.

00:11:10.700 No, no, I think that's exactly right. You know, one of the things that surprised me

00:11:14.520 most going into the gym, because you said you were, you, uh, set the tone by being

00:11:18.120 honest at the outset. I'll be honest too. I was never a brave guy. I was never a tough

00:11:22.040 guy. I was never a very courageous person. I was almost 40 years old and I'd never, uh,

00:11:26.700 been in a fight before. And then this mixed martial arts gym opens up the, across the street

00:11:31.400 from the English department where I teached. And I sat there day after day watching these

00:11:35.960 guys compete in the cage. And I would have, and I had this very powerful emotion that I

00:11:40.720 didn't expect. And the emotion was envy. I'd watch them in the cage fighting and I envied

00:11:45.220 them and I envied them because they seem so tough and they seem so young and they seem so brave

00:11:51.680 and watching them. I wasn't sure thinking back that I had ever done a brave thing. What drew

00:11:57.680 me to it was this was the desire to do a brave thing. I get in the gym and I didn't find the

00:12:03.460 type of guys I expected. I expected to find the guys that used to shove me into lockers,

00:12:08.620 you know, high school, the bullies. Yeah. But bullies don't need martial arts. If you are 0.80

00:12:13.580 tough and strong, or if you believe you are tough and strong, you don't go into martial arts. People

00:12:18.340 go into martial arts when they fear they are weak and they don't wish to be weak anymore. Yeah. And so

00:12:24.760 most of these guys are not the bullies. They are the guys more like the, the bullied types and

00:12:30.560 they aren't there at all to, out of a desire to swagger around in the world and oppress people.

00:12:37.000 They are there because they fear they are weak and they, and they want to be stronger and they want

00:12:43.060 to do battle, not with the other guy, but with this sort of weakness and timidity inside themselves

00:12:51.060 that they don't respect. And that was certainly the case with me. And I, and again, I'll be

00:12:56.300 completely honest. This is a swear to God moment for me. I never wanted to hurt anybody. You know,

00:13:01.000 I went in there, I trained for three years. I got really good at, I did not get really good. I got

00:13:05.360 much better. I got much better at violence, but there was never this kind of fantasy of, in my head

00:13:11.380 of going into the cage and like knocking somebody's head off. You know, some guys felt that way. I never

00:13:16.060 felt that way. To me, it was always about doing battle with myself. I just wanted to see if I could

00:13:20.320 go into a cage where everything is scary and you're completely alone and you're locked naked,

00:13:26.520 almost naked into this cage to do battle with the other guy until one of you can't do battle.

00:13:32.740 And I just wanted to know if I could face that situation and basically compete bravely,

00:13:37.960 if not skillfully. Do you think this idea or the lack of wanting to quote unquote hurt somebody

00:13:43.520 affected you negatively as you went into your training and fighting?

00:13:46.220 Oh, absolutely. Yeah. It was a major inhibition. There's two things you have to get over, uh,

00:13:51.840 when you're learning how to fight. And this is different than a martial arts gym where there's

00:13:54.840 not really like, like a karate gym, a Kung Fu gym or something like that. There's usually not very,

00:14:00.000 uh, intense sparring. Uh, but in a mixed martial arts gym, you are, the sparring really comes

00:14:06.900 80 to 90% of an actual fight. And it's very, very hardcore, heavy sparring. Um, and so there's two

00:14:14.180 things you have to get over, uh, in that situation. One is you have to get away from the instinctive

00:14:19.640 fear you feel. So my coach would always say that kickboxing in particular, that the striking element

00:14:24.800 of fighting in particular is a war against instinct because your instinct is screaming at you. There's

00:14:30.880 a, there's a big, scary, skilled guy in front of you. He's trying to hit you. Get the hell out of

00:14:35.060 there. Run for it. Turn your back, uh, cower. And you have to fight that instinct. The other thing

00:14:39.640 though, it's as much less intuitive is that there's a very strong inhibition against punching

00:14:46.300 someone really hard in the face after you've kind of been trained your whole life not to do this.

00:14:51.280 Right. Um, and so I had a very difficult time getting over this personally. And if I have one

00:14:57.040 regret about the whole experience I had in mixed martial arts for three years was that I never once

00:15:05.760 really let go. I never once really let go and hit another person with my whole heart behind it.

00:15:14.640 Occasionally I hit somebody really hard, but it was always by mistake. You know, like a punch just

00:15:18.180 gets away from you. He's moving in at the same time you're throwing the physics of that workout badly.

00:15:23.080 He goes down, but I never, I never really tried to hurt someone. And I'm kind of glad because I left

00:15:29.140 the project with a little bit of my innocence intact, but I'm also, I also think I'm missing something.

00:15:34.680 Uh, the, the, the project was incomplete because I never had that experience of really,

00:15:39.420 of really letting go, uh, with the intention with, with sort of bad intentions.

00:15:44.740 What's your thought on how this might translate over into a competitive business environment,

00:15:49.400 for example? I mean, are, are men holding back because of what you're talking about when instead

00:15:54.000 they should go for the kill in certain situations? I suppose so. I suppose so. There's

00:15:59.100 rules though. There's rules in any fight. So there's rules in a cage fight, right? I can't just haul

00:16:03.740 off and kick the guys in the nuts. Right. And I can't poke him in the eyes and I can't bite him 1.00

00:16:07.700 on the face. You know, there's things you can't do. And there are rules and codes and rituals in

00:16:12.760 the business world, the professional world as well, uh, that you violate at your peril,

00:16:17.540 you know? So yeah, I think guys should compete hard, but I think they should also compete like

00:16:22.420 cage fighters do, to be honest. They should compete according to an honor code. And the honor code is

00:16:27.320 basically, you just, you know, you'd be a decent human being and this is not something you would

00:16:30.620 expect from cage fighters. You'd expect them to be kind of bad guys. But if you've watched any of

00:16:36.060 this sport at all, it's shocking how impressive the sportsmanship is, how much good feeling there

00:16:42.500 is between the fighters, how fair they are to each other, how decent, how much warmth and affection

00:16:48.040 is generated, uh, by the competition. So yeah, I think men should be, be aggressive, but they should

00:16:53.420 compete in, uh, honorably as well. Yeah. I'm always fascinated by the idea behind competition

00:16:58.460 versus cooperation. And I look at cage fighting. I even look at, you know, professional football,

00:17:03.720 for example, is another version or variation of this is everybody says it's about competition

00:17:08.200 when in all reality it's, yes, it is competition. You are competing against another team,

00:17:13.140 but there's a lot of cooperation that go because you're, you're adhering to those rules. You have a

00:17:17.620 referee that you've agreed upon and you've agreed to follow these rules. And there's penalties if you

00:17:21.640 don't follow those rules. Absolutely. There's penalties, uh, in terms of being like penalized by the

00:17:27.100 losing points and, you know, maybe being disqualified from the fight, but there's also an honor code.

00:17:32.740 And if you violate the honor code, there's a, there's, there's social penalties. So you will

00:17:37.200 be considered to be a dishonorable person and people will consider that to be frankly unmasculine.

00:17:43.420 Um, and you'll lose status, uh, by doing this instead of gaining it. I'm trying to think of a good

00:17:49.040 way to put this, but when you're in the fight, you don't dislike the other guy. The other guy is not

00:17:54.460 like, he's not your enemy. In fact, he's kind of your friend because you want to go through this

00:18:00.540 intense experience. You want to have this test. You want to do something dangerous. And the only

00:18:05.880 way you can do this particular test is if this other man is willing to go through it too. And so

00:18:12.120 you have this sense of, uh, camaraderie and this sense of gratitude to him, uh, at the end of the fight

00:18:18.720 because yeah, you know, it's, he's, he's like the mountain for the mountain climber without him.

00:18:23.340 Uh, you can't, you can't have this experience that's important to you.

00:18:26.980 Yeah. This makes sense. You know, I had Scott Keneally. I don't know if that name rings a bell,

00:18:30.880 but he's the director and writer of rise of the suffer fest. Yeah. Yeah. I like that guy. Oh yeah.

00:18:36.300 Really cool guy. He was on the podcast several weeks ago, maybe a month or so ago.

00:18:40.700 And I think what he's talking about in some of the projects that he's been involved in is

00:18:44.960 overlapping with some of the work that you're doing, because I think there's a sense of

00:18:48.980 restlessness and mediocrity and just complacency in men today. Am I understanding that this is the

00:18:55.580 same thing you guys are trying to achieve here? I think it's very similar. The suffer fests are

00:19:00.420 about, about suffering and about the value of suffering and about doing things that are really

00:19:04.800 hard. And so I think that the two projects have that in common. On the other hand, what I think is

00:19:11.160 different about the cage fighting scenario and what makes it more extreme is, you know,

00:19:17.240 if you do one of those Spartan races, uh, they'd be very, they're very hard. Right. And that really

00:19:21.900 may maybe push you to your limits and maybe you injure yourself and maybe you get dirty and maybe,

00:19:26.740 uh, I don't know, it's, they're hard. Uh, but they're not terrifying. You know, there's no,

00:19:31.620 there's no, there's no primal fear. And what makes, you know, people ask me why I did the,

00:19:37.380 the cage fighting book instead of like, well, why don't you go climb a mountain or do a Spartan

00:19:41.440 races or whatever, any, or run ultra marathons. And the answer was very simple is that they didn't

00:19:46.320 scare me. I wanted to do something that was scary. And cage fighting was, you know, again,

00:19:51.500 this situation of primal fear where you're locked into a cage with a, basically a trained killer.

00:19:56.960 And this man is encouraged, absolutely encouraged by the rules to do everything in his power to murder

00:20:02.860 you with his bare hands until the ref says stop. But until then, as much murderous violence as he 0.70

00:20:09.120 can humanly muster. And that was scary. And so, so part of the book at a personal level was finding

00:20:15.560 things that were finding something that was very, very scary for me to do in order to find out if

00:20:20.240 I was brave or not, or if maybe, who knows, maybe I'm, maybe I'm a coward.

00:20:25.040 Men quick pause to tell you about our elite mastermind, the iron council. I'm sure you're

00:20:29.000 thinking about how 2017 is going to be different than 2016. And as much as I hate to burst your

00:20:34.400 bubble on this guys, it's probably going to be the exact same as it has always been, unless you

00:20:39.700 actually do something different than what you've always done. So if you're looking to keep your

00:20:44.660 marriage alive or maximize your earning potential or lose the spare tire or connect with your kids

00:20:49.920 on a deeper level, maybe you want to ask for a raise, maybe you want a promotion, or maybe you just

00:20:53.540 want to feel better about yourself or any other goal that you might have on your mind. The iron

00:20:57.460 council is the place for you guys. We've built the framework that will allow you to accomplish big

00:21:02.600 things in the coming year, tools, the resources, the discussions, and the big one guys, the

00:21:07.280 accountability from the other 175 men inside of the council. So if you're interested in learning more

00:21:11.900 about that and ensuring that this year is actually different, then join us at order of man.com

00:21:16.960 slash iron council. It's time to take your life to the next level. Again, check it out at

00:21:21.260 order of man.com slash iron council. And I hope to see you inside. Now, let me get back to my

00:21:25.240 interview with Jonathan. How has this element of bravery and courage changed since you participated

00:21:32.400 in the fighting for the three years that you did? And how does that now transition over into

00:21:37.220 writing books and the things that you're doing in your every ordinary day life?

00:21:41.520 Well, this is a great question. Boy, I'm glad you asked that question. I wasn't expecting spillover.

00:21:47.800 I was expecting, again, I go in the cage, I'd fight for a year, and then I would quit. But it was

00:21:53.320 always like, I always expected to be a self-contained sort of thing. Maybe I would come out of it with

00:21:58.300 some fighting skills. I was looking forward to that. But I didn't expect it to have major

00:22:03.260 implications for my whole personality. And I think it did. I was under a certain misimpression.

00:22:10.920 And the misimpression was that you're kind of either born brave or you are not. You just have it or you

00:22:17.380 don't. And I think that's wrong. I think that I came out of it feeling that bravery, courage,

00:22:22.960 these are actually skills that you can work on, that you can train, just like you would train any

00:22:29.240 physical skill. So you go into the gym night after night, you face these sort of scary situations,

00:22:34.440 and you get better and better at habituating yourself to fear. And it has had a certain spillover

00:22:41.080 into my life. I do think I'm a braver person. Again, this is on a very small scale level of

00:22:47.720 bravery. I know you have a lot of soldiers, for instance, in your audience. I'm not suggesting that

00:22:51.880 my bravery is anything on that level. But I'm braver than I was. And it has affected my work.

00:22:57.960 It has affected how I approach my life. And in fact, I've started, I have a very basic

00:23:03.780 decision-making structure now. Like if I have a hard decision to make, I often just ask myself,

00:23:09.640 what is the scarier option? And that is what I choose. The scarier and the harder option,

00:23:16.720 in my experience, always seems to be the right choice. It always seems to be the thing that you

00:23:21.740 should do. And so I more and more often force myself to do that. Yeah. I mean, this is something

00:23:27.220 that we talk about all the time with the guys is trying to do scary things, trying to do difficult

00:23:31.600 things, and how that actually builds that muscle and develops that inside of yourself. How many

00:23:35.080 fights? How many professional fights did you have? I can't remember what we talked about. One.

00:23:38.200 Just one. Yeah. And tell me how that went. Badly. It went even worse than I expected it would go.

00:23:46.240 Oh, man. I expected it would go badly. Yeah. Yeah. You know, this is part of where my inhibition

00:23:51.520 was trouble. Like I went into the fight not really understanding it. Not really understanding.

00:23:58.140 My coach said something very gruff to me right before the fight. Like he gets me by the shoulder just

00:24:03.720 about a week before the fight. He grabs both my shoulders, looks me directly in the eye and says

00:24:07.540 very solemnly, when you go in that cage, you got to be ready to tear off that guy's head and shit 1.00

00:24:12.900 down his throat. Yep. And I was like, oh, that's gross. I don't want to do that. But, you know, 1.00

00:24:18.340 he was saying in his sort of gruff way that you are about to be in an extremely violent confrontation.

00:24:25.960 And you need to be prepared for that. You need to be prepared to inflict grievous harm

00:24:32.400 on this man. And I kind of blew that off. It didn't really sink in. It wasn't until afterwards

00:24:37.620 that it sunk in. You know, this is, you know, this is a very, very violent thing and I have

00:24:43.640 to be prepared to do violence. And I wasn't. So I got in the cage more in a sort of wrestler's

00:24:49.500 mindset rather than a fighter's mindset. Sure. And without giving the whole book away,

00:24:54.800 I lost very quickly and very catastrophic catastrophically. So I trained about 15

00:25:00.200 months for a for a 47 second fight. Let's go back to part of what you talk about in the book a

00:25:06.220 little bit, which is the concept and the idea of a monkey dance. I want to tell I want you to tell us

00:25:10.360 what that is and then how things confrontations more than likely are going to end up rather than

00:25:17.180 maybe the way we believe, which is catastrophic most of the time. The book is about a lot of

00:25:20.860 things, you know, related to fighting, but sort of the intellectual spine of the book is this concept

00:25:25.980 called the monkey dance. And that's a term that I adapted from a violence expert named Rory Miller.

00:25:33.280 And I use the term in a different way than he does. But if you've ever seen like a nature video,

00:25:38.520 a couple of elephant seals clashing in the surf or a couple of mountain goats on a hillside cracking

00:25:43.360 their skulls together, biologists call that ritual combat. And ritual combat is a way that

00:25:48.780 this incredibly diverse array of animal species, almost always the males have developed to figure

00:25:55.980 out who is bigger, tougher, stronger, fitter, faster without the danger of fighting it out for real,

00:26:02.220 fighting it out to the bitter death. Right.

00:26:04.280 And humans are animals too. We're complicated animals. We're cultured animals, but we're animals.

00:26:09.720 And the monkey dance is my name for human versions of those ritual combats. So it's everything from

00:26:17.660 pistols at dawn to the sports, to the roughhousing of boys. And the thing about these monkey dances

00:26:27.200 that we need to grasp is that they often seem very silly. You know, watch a couple of guys get into a 0.73

00:26:34.160 fight at a bar, argue at a bar or whatever. It seems very silly, kind of pathetic, but they serve a 0.99

00:26:40.320 purpose. They help channel our conflicts down relatively safer pathways. So for instance, the 0.98

00:26:48.500 most common form of the monkey dance is that you're at a bar, you chuck shoulders with some guy, he spills

00:26:54.060 his beer. He says, you asshole. You say, you're an asshole. It escalates, it escalates. And before you 1.00

00:27:00.740 know it, one of you is down on the floor. So that's the monkey dance, that back and forth sequence of

00:27:07.360 moves. There's a sort of choreography to it. And sometimes it ends up in a disaster, but usually

00:27:14.540 it'll end faster than that. One guy will back down. He'll call you an asshole. You say, hey man,

00:27:19.300 I didn't mean to do that. Let me buy you a beer and it's over. So the main thing about it is that

00:27:24.560 these are ways not of encouraging human violence, but are ways of setting up codes and rituals and

00:27:30.560 rules around violence that actually make a human conflict a little bit less dangerous.

00:27:36.580 Right. And I mean, this is, this is all about survival as well. If you, if you look at a guy

00:27:40.320 and he's six foot four, 250 pounds, like he can rip your head off. Then of course, you're probably

00:27:45.280 going to try to try to back down from that situation. You find a faith. Yeah. And he'll probably allow you

00:27:50.900 a face saving way out because the truth is as big as he is, he doesn't want to fight either.

00:27:56.120 Right. He doesn't want to get injured. He doesn't want to expose himself to that threat either.

00:27:58.920 Yeah. Yeah. He wants all the, he, yeah, exactly. He, he, he can get what he wants,

00:28:03.760 which is you backing away without having to throw a punch. He'd rather do it that way.

00:28:08.000 I want to go back to what you had just said about in the previous comment that you had made about,

00:28:12.760 about your fight, your one fight that you had and that you weren't adequately prepared and ready.

00:28:17.560 Is there really another way for you or any other fighter to learn what it really means to step

00:28:23.960 into a cage other than just to do it? No, no. I almost the second the fight ended or,

00:28:29.820 you know, or just right afterwards, I was like, Oh, you know, I was like, I almost wanted to beg the

00:28:33.240 guy, can we do this again? Uh, because now I get it. Now I understand what this is. Um, and I

00:28:39.240 couldn't have understood that, uh, through just sparring in the gym, for instance, there's a real,

00:28:44.360 you know, the best thing about this project for me was doing participatory research. So I'm an

00:28:51.960 academic, you know, I'm a scholar. My whole life I'd spent in libraries reading other people's books

00:28:56.240 and trying to integrate that knowledge and writing my own books out of those books. Um, whereas this

00:29:01.680 was a much more firsthand participatory project where I learned by actually doing it. And it is

00:29:07.340 tremendously educational to get punched in the face. You know, it's tremendous. I mean, I'm, I'm, 0.92

00:29:13.100 I'm serious. Like this guy punches you in the face and you feel that you feel your brain slosh,

00:29:19.800 you know? And, and you say, Oh, and that's where I got this, you know, I'm like, Oh, this is,

00:29:24.520 he's not punching me in the face. He's punching me in the brain. My face is just getting in the way,

00:29:28.900 right? You know, men are trying to shut down each other's brains and you kind of know that on an 0.63

00:29:34.420 intellectual level, watching fights or watching football, for instance, you know, it's not good for

00:29:38.400 the brain, but it's a different thing to feel it. And the same thing went with my fight. You know,

00:29:42.760 it was, it was, I had to be in that situation to be in an actual fight to realize it and realize

00:29:49.700 what it was. And I had to lose that fight. Um, I think I, I would have done better if I would have

00:29:55.140 done it again. But at the same time, I was 40 years old at the time. And I, I didn't, I didn't,

00:30:00.020 I didn't really want to fight again. You know, I didn't want to, I didn't really want to take that

00:30:03.280 risk. I kind of proves what I wanted to prove to myself that I'd at least be willing to get into the

00:30:08.440 cage and take the risk. And that was enough for me. Right. Which is more than a lot of people,

00:30:12.100 most people are just sitting in the sidelines and admire what other people do. And which it sounds

00:30:16.160 like is what you were doing from that office window, but, but to be able to step up into the

00:30:19.840 cage and go into the gym. And I know how intimidating that can be. So good on you for doing that.

00:30:24.460 Yeah. Thanks.

00:30:25.180 What do you consider to be the future of cage fighting and maybe even the future of

00:30:31.000 confrontation and violence, uh, knowing what you know, and the research that you put into this book?

00:30:35.100 You know, we're living again, this is, this is something that it's very hard for people to believe

00:30:39.400 even to get their heads around, but we're living in, uh, the safest moment in the history of the

00:30:44.600 world. You know, there's never been a safer, more civilized time to be alive. Uh, if you are in a

00:30:50.220 first world type of nation, your odds of dying by violence are much, much lower than they've been

00:30:56.340 at any time in the past. And, uh, hopefully there will not be a descent into barbarism that reverses

00:31:02.780 this trend toward peacefulness and, uh, safety in terms of cage fighting. It'll be, it'll be

00:31:08.700 interesting to see how this evolves in the future at any moment, like the next, yes, tomorrow, you

00:31:13.920 know, the next, whenever the next fight is somebody can die. Um, somebody is going to die in a UFC fight

00:31:21.100 eventually. And it will be interesting how the culture freaks out around that. Uh, there's other

00:31:27.000 dangerous sports. Uh, there's, you know, you can be a parachuter, you can be a wingsuit flyer,

00:31:32.160 you can be a bull rider. Um, you can be a motocross racer, all kinds of extreme sports

00:31:37.580 where people, people occasionally die, but there won't be calls to ban those sports after

00:31:42.160 someone dies. Uh, in cage fighting, it'd be interesting to see what happens. Here's what

00:31:47.780 I would like to see happen in cage fighting. Cage fighting, as I said before, the gloves are

00:31:52.240 not to make the sport safer. People have the wrong idea about the gloves. They say, well,

00:31:55.620 they're pillows on your hands. It must make it safer for the brain. They don't. They make the

00:31:59.440 hand such a good club that you can just punch, punch, and punch, and punch and do so much

00:32:03.780 damage. What I would like to, so, so the current level of neurological trauma you see in combat

00:32:09.080 sports is not intrinsic to the sport. Violence is intrinsic to it. A certain rawness and savagery

00:32:15.360 is intrinsic to it. But the neurological trauma trauma at the levels we see right now is an artifact

00:32:20.900 of the gloves. What I would like to see isn't take the gloves off. This would be, it's a hard

00:32:26.400 cell, but it becomes easier if people, the more people appreciate the neurological catastrophe

00:32:32.900 of fighting with gloves. So you take the gloves off and you'd have a sport that was still raw,

00:32:39.040 still savage, still, still tough, but without this kind of really unacceptable level of neurological risk.

00:32:46.680 Would that be similar to, let's say, for example, making the distance from home plate to center field

00:32:53.180 longer and you don't see as many home runs and that takes away some of maybe the excitement and

00:32:57.180 glamour of that from a spectator standpoint? That's a beautiful way of putting it. Yes,

00:33:00.960 that's exactly the problem. It's exactly the problem because people like to see home runs,

00:33:04.300 right? Right. And people also like to see knockouts and there'd be fewer of them. 1.00

00:33:07.840 So if you take the gloves off, especially in MMA, what you'd find is guys would throw their hands a lot

00:33:12.320 more carefully and they would, uh, they, they, and they wrestle a lot more because wrestling is very,

00:33:17.040 very safe for the hands would be a lot more jujitsu. So there'd be a lot more hugging on the mats and the

00:33:21.720 fans, especially casual fans like to see slug fests on the feet. Uh, so this is why this is, uh, not a

00:33:28.640 very plausible change that I'm suggesting until the lawsuits start pouring in. Sure. At some point

00:33:36.480 it might become more cost effective for fighting sports to make these sports safer. Even, even if

00:33:43.220 the fans revolt because you know, they're, they're getting sued and people are done at that point.

00:33:48.120 They can't afford it. Yeah.

00:33:48.980 So in the research that you've done, I'm really curious to know if you see any,

00:33:54.360 this is probably not worded correctly, but any downside in the progressive civility that we are

00:34:00.800 experiencing in modern culture? I think civility is great. No, I don't. I, I, I think civility,

00:34:07.620 civility is great. If you changed the word to like PC or something, then I might agree with you,

00:34:12.480 but civility is a good thing, right? And to be a man doesn't mean to always be

00:34:17.360 blunt and savage in your discourse. It doesn't mean to be swaggering in the way you act.

00:34:23.760 I think civility suggests a gentlemanliness, um, that you should be a, should be a gentleman.

00:34:29.920 Um, I do think that there's a certain attempt, a sort of cultural attempt to neuter, uh, maleness, 0.99

00:34:37.560 and there's a certain degree of discomfort and it doesn't come from nowhere. You got to remember

00:34:43.460 that this doesn't come from nowhere. It comes from a realization that in many ways, I think we have

00:34:50.040 to face this in many ways, the great problem of history is masculinity run amok. It is men behaving

00:34:58.700 badly. Isn't that true? Yeah, I can see that. Definitely. And so there is a, it doesn't, it makes

00:35:04.360 sense to try to civilize masculine savagery, but we don't want to take it so far that we lose

00:35:11.920 all the positive elements of masculinity, things like strength and bravery and courage and toughness

00:35:17.540 and all these traditional virtues that we really should be trying to cultivate. So all societies

00:35:23.880 have dealt with this. All societies have dealt with this. How do we get the best aspects of men

00:35:29.400 and encourage those while suppressing and trying to chain up the worst and most aggressive elements

00:35:39.060 of men? Our, our society is struggling with this just like all other human societies have struggled.

00:35:45.140 Do you, and, and, and in your experience, I mean, is the type of fighting that we're talking about now

00:35:50.340 adding to that solution or detracting from the solution?

00:35:53.780 I think that fighting, um, certainly does not encourage men to behave aggressively in the real

00:36:01.960 world. I don't think that at all. I, the guys I met, I never met a guy at my gym. I met hundreds

00:36:07.560 of them who ever got in a fight outside of the cage, who went out to the bars and was looking for a

00:36:12.840 fight. And I don't think that you, for instance, after watching a cage fight on TV, say, Hey man,

00:36:18.180 I'm going to go out to the bar and beat somebody up. Right. Who thinks that way? Um, that's a very

00:36:22.640 simplistic social science sort of argument that consuming a lot of aggression will turn you

00:36:28.080 aggressive yourself. But people just aren't that stupid. We know that there are, that, that inside 1.00

00:36:34.040 that fighting cage, the rules of society, all the laws, all the codes are temporarily suspended.

00:36:41.480 And it's a sort of magic space where for just for a little while, there's an, there's an enchantment

00:36:46.540 and there's this rule that, you know, all the, all the rules are in abeyance. And we know that,

00:36:50.560 that when you go to the bar or you go out on the street, that you're not allowed to act that way.

00:36:54.820 So no, I don't think that this encourages people to behave aggressively in real life.

00:36:59.280 I think that the lesson people get from this is, boy, wouldn't it be great to be brave and strong

00:37:04.540 and, uh, and, and, and to be enduring in the face of suffering and misery. I don't think they say,

00:37:10.680 boy, I'd like to go out and pound somebody's face on. 0.83

00:37:13.580 Right. Right. Well, Jonathan, this has been so insightful. In fact, uh, just as good, 1.00

00:37:18.020 if not better than our first conversation that we had, I really appreciate it. I'm relieved.

00:37:21.700 I really appreciate you coming back. Uh, as I enjoyed it, I enjoyed it the first time and I

00:37:25.820 enjoyed it this time. I enjoy talking to you. Good, good. Well, I appreciate it. Well, so as

00:37:29.260 we wind things down today, I do want to ask you the question I asked you the first time,

00:37:32.200 and that is what does it mean to be a man? Okay. Yeah, this is a great question too. And it's one

00:37:37.760 of these questions that I love and hate, and I love it because it's, it's deep and penetrating

00:37:41.800 and I hate it because it's so damn hard. Uh, it's one of these incredibly, it seems simple,

00:37:47.360 right? But it's very, very hard to, to nail it down. However, I spent a lot of time trying to nail

00:37:51.760 this down when I was working on the book and trying to sort of boil masculinity and manhood down to

00:37:57.360 its absolute essence. And gender studies departments, uh, on, on university campuses,

00:38:04.060 sociology departments, uh, really the whole, the whole university has been trying to muddle

00:38:08.760 this question and make, to make manhood and masculinity seem, uh, incredibly complex and

00:38:14.960 incredibly shifty. Like, like, like it was some sort of invention that was invented like in the 19th

00:38:20.360 or 18th century. And it's incredibly culturally fluid. Like if you go to Africa, it'll be different

00:38:26.480 than it was in South America, than it was in Antarctica or wherever you find humans, you know? Um, but

00:38:31.540 that's not what you find. You find, uh, that, that masculinity and manhood are defined pretty much the

00:38:36.340 same all around the world, uh, almost without exception. There's a very few outlier societies

00:38:42.340 where there's some sort of controversy about whether or not manhood and masculinity are defined

00:38:47.120 the same way. So what is manhood? What is it to be a man? What is it to be masculine? It's very simple.

00:38:53.980 Masculinity is strength. Masculinity is strength and toughness, toughness and strength of body,

00:38:59.400 toughness and strength of mind. It's about that simple. It's been, it's, it's defined that way all

00:39:04.160 around the world. There's other ways for men to be men can be, uh, sweet and men can be caring and men

00:39:11.920 can be very good at taking care of their parents, uh, and their children. And that's not unmasculine,

00:39:18.160 but that is not part of the definition of masculinity, uh, around the world. What's masculine

00:39:24.080 is strength. Well, Jonathan, I appreciate you being on the show again. I appreciate the work that you've

00:39:28.800 done. I enjoyed the book. I know the guys that have read this have probably enjoyed the book and those

00:39:32.380 who want to read it will enjoy it if they do. So thanks again for being on the show today.

00:39:36.460 Tell us how we connect with you. If we want to learn more about you or your works and pick up a

00:39:40.060 copy of the book. Oh, the books, uh, you know, on Amazon, places like that. Uh, you can go to my

00:39:45.540 website, Jonathan got shawl.com. It's probably the, or you just Google me and you'll find all my

00:39:49.100 information pretty quick, but I want to thank you for having me on. And, uh, I really am kind of

00:39:54.160 inspired and, uh, fascinated by this whole movement that you're associated with this sort of asking this

00:40:00.640 very basic question. Like, how do you be a good man? And that was part of what I was looking into

00:40:05.360 too. So I really applaud you and, and your work. Well, thank you. I feel the same way. And I'm,

00:40:09.440 and I'm glad that, uh, I got to know you and, and that you're, you're on the same path, you know,

00:40:13.680 you're learning some of this as well. And you're answering that question as well. And that's

00:40:16.780 definitely a service to me and the rest of the guys that are listening. And so Jonathan, thanks again.

00:40:20.940 Thank you. Hope our paths cross again.

00:40:23.640 There it is, man. Mr. Jonathan Gotchel talking with us about what a fight represents the future of

00:40:28.800 fighting and why society in a way is trying to neuter masculinity. Again, just want to remind

00:40:33.280 you about the iron council this week, guys, we're specifically talking about exploring new paths.

00:40:37.260 There are a ton of men out there who have an idea or a vision for the future, or maybe it's just that

00:40:43.200 you know that you're meant for something more. So what we're doing for the entire month of December

00:40:47.800 is breaking down the concept of finding your path and purpose. You're going to have the structure,

00:40:53.820 the tools, the resources, the accountability, everything else you need to accomplish big things this

00:40:58.000 year. You can check that out at order of man.com slash iron council guys. I look forward to talking

00:41:02.940 to you on Friday for our Friday field notes, but until then take action and become the man you were

00:41:07.380 meant to be. Thank you for listening to the order of man podcast. You're ready to take charge of your

00:41:12.260 life and be more of the man you were meant to be. We invite you to join the order at order of man.com.

Order of Man - December 13, 2016

091： Why Men Fight ｜ Jonathan Gottschall

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript