Order of Man - MARK WALSH ｜ Why Modern Men Are Disconnected

00:00:00.180 Today's conversation is a homecoming, so to speak.

00:00:03.720 It's back to the body, back to character, and back what it means to be a man.

00:00:09.400 My guest today, Mark Walsh, challenges the modern habit of living entirely in our heads,

00:00:15.280 cut off from sensation and boundaries and even responsibility.

00:00:19.600 We talk about embodiment, not as fitness or aesthetics, but using physical training to

00:00:25.320 develop character, to develop emotional regulation and presence.

00:00:30.180 From stoicism and shadow work to doing hard things on purpose, this episode is about

00:00:35.880 reclaiming awareness, expanding your range and capacity, and building the discipline required

00:00:41.320 to choose better behavior.

00:00:43.600 We also confront the cult of modernity, hyper-individualism, the happiness culture, pleasure-seeking that

00:00:51.360 often or almost exclusively produces pain, the loss of religion, community, moral formation,

00:00:57.800 and Mark makes the case that happiness is secondary to meaning and commitment, and that

00:01:04.080 true freedom is forged through discipline, not the absence of limits.

00:01:08.000 You're a man of action.

00:01:10.280 You live life to the fullest, embrace your fears, and boldly chart your own path.

00:01:14.660 When life knocks you down, you get back up one more time, every time.

00:01:19.080 You are not easily deterred or defeated, rugged, resilient, strong.

00:01:24.180 This is your life.

00:01:25.260 This is who you are.

00:01:26.700 This is who you will become.

00:01:28.380 At the end of the day, and after all is said and done, you can call yourself a man.

00:01:33.360 Man, welcome to the Order of Man podcast.

00:01:37.020 I am Ryan Michler.

00:01:38.020 I'm your host.

00:01:38.720 We're going to jump right into this one here pretty quickly.

00:01:40.840 Very, very excited for the conversation that I had with Mark on just about everything that

00:01:46.120 we could think about.

00:01:47.280 I think we're going to have to do a round two because this one was that good, and I think

00:01:50.780 you're going to enjoy it as well.

00:01:52.560 Before I get into it, just want to mention my friends and show sponsors over at Montana Knife

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00:02:35.440 All right, guys, let me introduce you to Mark.

00:02:37.960 He's a psychologist.

00:02:39.060 He's an author, a teacher.

00:02:40.420 He's also a leading voice in the idea and practice of embodiment, and he challenges just

00:02:47.120 purely intellectual approaches to psychology and personal development, but he draws from

00:02:52.120 martial arts and yoga and leadership training and psychotherapy.

00:02:56.160 He focuses on awareness, breath, posture, physical practice as an idea to shape character, emotional

00:03:05.700 regulation, but his work emphasizes that real change isn't something you can just think your

00:03:11.980 way into.

00:03:13.000 It's something you have to live and train into.

00:03:15.240 He's also the author of How to Become Human, A Guide for Men, and host of The Pharaoh Philosophy,

00:03:21.080 where he explores meaning and boundaries and the cultural cost of modern disconnection.

00:03:26.820 Again, he blends stoicism and shadow work and discipline practice, and he makes the case

00:03:31.020 for strength and resiliency and responsibility and coming home to the body in what he would

00:03:38.500 call a disembodied world.

00:03:42.280 Mark, great to see you, man.

00:03:43.380 I really enjoyed the podcast that you and I did together for your show.

00:03:47.560 Gosh, what was that?

00:03:48.320 About a month or so ago, I think it was.

00:03:51.640 Pleasure to be here.

00:03:53.580 Yeah, looking forward to it.

00:03:55.020 You know, part of what I really enjoyed about the conversation we had is just the level of

00:03:59.920 thoughtfulness that goes into the work that you do, specifically this idea and concept

00:04:04.500 of embodiment, which is where I really want to lead off today because I think there's

00:04:09.600 a lot of men who are struggling with their identity, struggling with who they are, and

00:04:14.840 I believe that that leads, that incongruency leads to a lot of frustration at a minimum in

00:04:21.600 men that I work with today.

00:04:24.560 Yeah, we're all cut off from our bodies.

00:04:26.260 We all spend too much time on our phone.

00:04:28.240 I mean, in many ways, this goes back a lot further than just us as individuals.

00:04:31.560 This is our whole culture is very in the head.

00:04:34.900 You know, this is, I love Western culture, but this is one of the downsides of the West.

00:04:38.180 Like I was at school, we read a lot of books, but no one told me about relationships, mental

00:04:43.040 health.

00:04:44.060 I was still miserable.

00:04:45.340 And I thought, hang on a minute.

00:04:46.340 I've read every book in the library.

00:04:48.420 Everyone's telling me I'm smart.

00:04:49.680 Yeah, here I am, you know, alcoholic, drug addicted at 17.

00:04:53.140 Well, I've clearly missed something.

00:04:55.460 And for me, my beginning for this was me as martial arts.

00:04:58.360 You know, I went to university to study psychology, but I thought, you know, I don't think I'm

00:05:02.380 going to find the answers I'm looking for in the library.

00:05:04.620 So I thought, you know, I'll study martial arts.

00:05:06.600 I was doing some slightly illegal things at the time.

00:05:08.620 And I thought this might be useful, practical skills to have.

00:05:11.800 So, you know, it led me in.

00:05:13.280 I saw as I saw the martial arts about, wow, this is beautiful.

00:05:15.840 And I realized that it was character development, which the ancient Greeks would have understood

00:05:19.720 the gymnasia to be character development, not just body development.

00:05:23.560 And of course, the samurai understand that, you know, it's in several cultures.

00:05:26.020 Even the Victorian British would understand, you know, modern sports were essentially character

00:05:30.120 development.

00:05:31.080 So, yeah, that was for me.

00:05:32.140 And it opened up, I realized we're, we don't just have bodies like bodies have us.

00:05:38.080 Heidegger would say, yeah, we're bodily.

00:05:39.740 It's not that we have a body like we have a pen or a car.

00:05:42.360 It's not just an object.

00:05:43.320 It's part of our being.

00:05:44.780 And that's the area of embodiment, which I've really given my life to, is the, we call

00:05:49.360 it the subjective study of the body.

00:05:51.160 The body is part of who we are rather than just like this hunk of meat that we abuse

00:05:56.260 and drag around.

00:05:58.540 Well, and I think when we think of the body, we generally think of the, the factors and

00:06:03.760 the features that we see externally.

00:06:05.200 You know, we don't think about our mind being part of our body or our nervous system being

00:06:09.280 part of our body and how that gets regulated.

00:06:11.940 But I am interested in this idea though, because, you know, you see a lot of men who are physically

00:06:18.540 healthy.

00:06:18.960 They've got great physiques, they spend a lot of time in martial arts or the gym or

00:06:22.500 wherever it might be.

00:06:23.480 They're running marathons and they're good physical specimens. 0.96

00:06:27.400 And yet still they're miserable.

00:06:29.160 So there's a disconnect there as well.

00:06:32.080 Yeah.

00:06:32.480 I mean, basic physical health is fine.

00:06:34.200 It's a good starting place.

00:06:35.300 You know, I go to the gym, eat right, that kind of thing.

00:06:37.480 There's nothing wrong with that, but you're really missing the bigger picture there.

00:06:41.180 Like if we look at the martial arts, yes, they're about physical skills.

00:06:44.120 It's good to defend oneself and there's basic masculine kind of potency is a good thing. 0.91

00:06:48.280 But they're also a way to train oneself, to develop one's character.

00:06:52.260 It's almost an old fashioned word.

00:06:53.740 We, I think in modern world, we don't really talk about virtue very much, but this is a

00:06:57.800 key thing.

00:06:58.720 And this could be any practice, right?

00:07:00.280 Like I run a group for young guys and they do cold showers, right?

00:07:04.120 It's one of the practices they have to do was as part of the course.

00:07:06.520 And yes, there's a physiological benefit to that.

00:07:09.500 You know, people have been doing that for a long time, but there's also a skill we're

00:07:14.260 building.

00:07:14.680 So self-regulation.

00:07:16.260 So as you hit the cold water, it's like, you know, you have that emotional physiological

00:07:19.960 response because those two things are linked deeply into over the emotional and the physical.

00:07:25.300 And then you regulate yourself.

00:07:26.860 We could call that a centering practice.

00:07:28.380 Now, it depends who I'm teaching.

00:07:30.640 If I'm teaching business people or coaches or soldiers, you know, the package that comes

00:07:34.900 in is going to look very different, but there are a set of skills one can learn through the

00:07:39.980 body that are a little bit more than just the body as a brain taxi.

00:07:44.780 You know, the body is an object of beauty, the objectified body.

00:07:48.580 And in many ways, our culture, modernity, I say our culture, I mean, all of Western culture

00:07:52.960 since the 1600s, is really a culture of objectification.

00:07:57.380 So we see a sort of dead world, a disenchanted world.

00:08:02.380 The body becomes just an object.

00:08:04.120 Other people become an object.

00:08:05.480 So we act psychopathically, you know, treating people as means to ends rather than ends in

00:08:10.200 themselves, as Kant would say.

00:08:12.020 The natural world becomes an object.

00:08:14.560 And of course, you know, this is also the secular world.

00:08:17.140 The world where there's no God in that this, we could say, material modernity

00:08:21.920 has become a kind of hell.

00:08:24.060 I think it's actually a cult is the best way to describe it.

00:08:26.760 And we're all in this kind of materialistic cult of objectification.

00:08:31.500 And my beginning way out of that was to discover like, wow, the body is more.

00:08:36.420 There's a homecoming to the body.

00:08:38.680 The Greeks have this word, nostos.

00:08:40.520 If you imagine the Odyssey, they go and they fight the Trojan War.

00:08:43.000 And then the nostos is the homecoming back.

00:08:46.000 And there's certainly a poetic definition of embodiment is coming home to the body.

00:08:50.800 And I think it's the same when we come home to spirit, when we come home to community,

00:08:55.580 when we come home to the planet.

00:08:57.380 And there's a relationality that grows.

00:09:00.220 So on the one hand, we can say, yeah, embodiment is a set of skills.

00:09:03.560 It'll make you a better leader, make you a better coach, make you a better parent.

00:09:06.480 That's all true.

00:09:07.620 That's all true.

00:09:08.320 Like no one respects a leader who's a head on a stick, right?

00:09:11.460 I can give examples of that from my travels.

00:09:13.700 But it's more than that.

00:09:15.440 There's a real depth here that's really began to open up with me with the embodiment piece.

00:09:20.800 You said something.

00:09:22.160 You said it's this idea of objectification really started to take root in the 1600s.

00:09:29.840 What was happening during that time?

00:09:32.580 Why did things change?

00:09:33.640 How did things change?

00:09:34.720 I imagine that men, for example, have always objectified women.

00:09:39.320 And I imagine that there's always been people who are looked at as fit.

00:09:44.800 And those people are probably going to get more than those who are not.

00:09:48.540 So I'm not sure what happened during that time.

00:09:51.600 Yeah.

00:09:51.980 I mean, the growth of modernity is a long historical story.

00:09:54.920 And there's different parts to it, different parts.

00:09:57.480 Secularization is kind of mixed in with it as well.

00:09:59.560 The idea that meaning is not inherent to the world.

00:10:02.300 The world is just an object.

00:10:03.740 So, you know, in business, they'll talk about human resources.

00:10:06.360 This is the modern, the modern worldview.

00:10:08.780 Or assets.

00:10:09.820 I hear that a lot.

00:10:10.500 Assets.

00:10:11.080 Yeah.

00:10:11.300 I've got an asset, someone will say, instead of, that's not relational, right?

00:10:14.600 Like, my father's not an asset.

00:10:16.740 I mean, she is an asset in the sense that she cooks great. 1.00

00:10:19.240 You know, she's awesome. 1.00

00:10:20.500 She's smart.

00:10:21.120 She speaks six languages great.

00:10:22.880 But she's not useful to me.

00:10:24.520 That's not the main reason she is.

00:10:26.200 Now, as men, we do need to be competent.

00:10:28.440 We do need to be useful.

00:10:29.540 But that isn't the basic, deepest level of humanity.

00:10:34.040 I mean, anyone who's a Christian, certainly, you know, the idea is it's the relational God, right?

00:10:38.960 It's, you know, it's Jesus as a human and God.

00:10:42.100 This is deeply relational.

00:10:43.820 And certainly, the body as an aspect of the divine is about an aspect of who we are.

00:10:49.980 This is a really deep concept.

00:10:52.920 So, yes, fitness is great.

00:10:55.220 Go to the gym, work out.

00:10:56.440 Now, on some level, occasionally, it's okay to treat yourself or other people as an object, right?

00:11:01.280 Sometimes we need to – I'm not a fan of you have to feel all the feels all the time.

00:11:06.100 You have to always be crying and expressing yourself.

00:11:08.040 I think some sort of more Californian or Canadian-style men's work can be a bit like that.

00:11:13.140 You know, we're constantly doing therapy out loud.

00:11:16.040 It's like, you know, sometimes you just got to get on with it.

00:11:18.460 I've spent a lot of time in Russia and Ukraine, and those cultures, they know how to be stoic.

00:11:22.900 They know how to just get on with it.

00:11:24.020 And that is a masculine capacity for sure.

00:11:27.180 But if we're denying our basic humanity, that will lead to burnout individually if we treat ourselves as an object the whole time.

00:11:33.940 This is what the sort of modern workplace is.

00:11:36.760 It's this machine, as sometimes it's been called, the machine paradigm.

00:11:40.720 Equally, if we treat other people like that, I mean, that's a user paradigm.

00:11:43.640 That's a psychopathic paradigm to treat other people as objects rather than relating to them, building connection, community.

00:11:49.800 I mean, another way of looking at this is in terms of connection, right?

00:11:53.900 C.S. Lewis wrote The Great Divorce.

00:11:56.280 There's four big disconnections.

00:11:58.140 So disconnection from the body, disconnection from other people, disconnection from, we could say, ecology or the planet, and disconnection from God or spirituality, if you prefer.

00:12:07.740 And those are, they define what the Greeks called eudynamia, like human flourishing.

00:12:14.120 They define what it is to be well as a person.

00:12:17.080 Or if we look at it through a sort of nervous system lens, we could say we're self-regulated, co-regulated, eco-regulated, and theo-regulated.

00:12:25.520 I made up those last two words.

00:12:27.960 So...

00:12:28.160 I like, they sound great.

00:12:29.240 It doesn't sound like you made them up on the spot.

00:12:30.940 I know, I've got a Greek colleague.

00:12:33.040 If you want to sound clever, just ask your Greek colleague what's a posh way I say. 1.00

00:12:35.960 Yeah, right.

00:12:36.320 So, yeah, but it's, I mean, this is the model.

00:12:39.900 I supervised the trauma charity in Ukraine.

00:12:42.400 I started it and supervised it in the war there.

00:12:44.740 And it was really intense.

00:12:46.180 And we basically had to develop a model of sanity that was sufficient.

00:12:53.240 It's not just, you know, if you're in a war zone, it's not just decent mindfulness tips.

00:12:57.240 You know, mindfulness is great, but it's a bit more than that.

00:12:59.580 You need to go a bit deeper than that.

00:13:00.940 I mean, equally in my own family, kind of, there's so much mental illness in my family. 0.95

00:13:06.080 Like, I have bad genetics for crazy.

00:13:09.040 And over my life, I've managed not to kill myself, to, you know, get sober.

00:13:13.760 I'm 19 years sober now.

00:13:15.880 Multiple members of my family have killed themselves or had schizophrenia.

00:13:19.560 And I'm not.

00:13:20.440 Like, I'm, you know, more or less functional most days, I think my girlfriend would agree.

00:13:24.640 So it's, you know, just because I've basically had to sort of enhance the model of what it is to be human

00:13:29.860 and how to stay sane.

00:13:31.500 And the really interesting thing is in my life, I think the world's caught up with me.

00:13:35.400 So I don't think I grew up, you know, I grew up in the 80s, 90s in the UK.

00:13:40.980 Lived all over the world since.

00:13:42.180 But what I've seen is a pattern of the sort of cult of modernity is breaking down.

00:13:47.160 And I don't know what it's like, Brian, there for you, but everyone's nuts now.

00:13:51.620 I mean, levels of mental ill health, drug addiction, alcoholism, suicide, these levels are through the roof.

00:13:56.040 All across the Western world and Asia, too.

00:13:59.100 Now, some places are better than others.

00:14:00.680 Like, I'm living in Croatia, which is relatively wholesome, a Catholic country, nice nature.

00:14:05.400 People have a healthy sense of nationhood here compared to Western Europe.

00:14:09.600 Lower levels of migration, which is significant.

00:14:12.240 There's a few factors.

00:14:14.140 But even here, you still see the rot, particularly in the big cities.

00:14:18.740 Are you in the countryside, right, or in the city?

00:14:20.320 Remind me.

00:14:21.400 I'm pretty rural.

00:14:22.420 I live in southern Utah.

00:14:23.500 Yeah, and it's fairly rural, and it's fairly conservative by nature.

00:14:28.900 So I think those two facts alone, and it's a very religious area and community as well.

00:14:34.860 So those factors alone tend to ward that off a little better than larger areas, metropolitan areas, blue cities and states, that sort of thing.

00:14:45.320 Yeah, I agree there.

00:14:46.360 They're basically resilience factors, right?

00:14:48.040 Like this question of my basic questions my whole career have been how to get in your body and how to stay sane.

00:14:54.060 And how to get in your body is a good anchor for staying sane, right?

00:14:56.680 Like, you know, my mind is not my best friend.

00:14:59.380 If I bounce around here, it's not good.

00:15:01.240 Well, let's talk about getting into your body and what that actually means.

00:15:04.320 Because, like, on a practical level, I could go to the gym or I could go to martial arts, but that's not really the depth of what you're talking about.

00:15:09.960 So how does one come home to their body, like you're talking about, to use your verbiage?

00:15:16.040 Yeah, very practically.

00:15:17.280 I mean, we've broken this down.

00:15:18.600 We do training courses over six months, and we've sort of turned it into a fine art over the last 20 years.

00:15:23.340 And there's a number of practices that help.

00:15:25.780 So it might be any body awareness practice is good.

00:15:28.520 So if you love jiu-jitsu, if you love kickboxing, if you love, I don't know, hippie conscious dance or yoga, great.

00:15:34.780 Like anything where you're, like, getting in your body, developing a relationship with your body rather than just pushing and abusing your body.

00:15:40.640 Now, that might depend on the yoga school because some yoga is purely performative, physical.

00:15:45.560 Some martial arts are purely performative.

00:15:47.680 They're just, you know, interested in winning or whatever.

00:15:49.360 It's not just – they've lost maybe that more Asian awareness-based sense of things.

00:15:54.700 I do have a question actually on that before – I know I want you to go further.

00:15:59.700 But on that, have you found that it's useful to be in – I don't even know quite how to word this – more dynamic physical aspects?

00:16:09.540 You know, for example, I would consider jiu-jitsu a more dynamic practice than I would lifting weights.

00:16:15.240 And I like to lift weights.

00:16:16.440 But the bar is the bar.

00:16:17.960 It doesn't lie.

00:16:18.660 It doesn't push back on me.

00:16:20.120 It's very objective.

00:16:21.620 Whereas if I'm training with another person who is also into jiu-jitsu, I've got to think about it.

00:16:28.920 I've got to respond differently.

00:16:30.480 I've got to read subtle cues that may not be readily visible.

00:16:35.000 Is there an advantage to one over the other?

00:16:37.500 Yeah, so different arts build different muscles.

00:16:41.420 So the way to look at it is that not any of them – you know, most of them have some strength, whether it's, I don't know, acro yoga, concept intro dials, jiu-jitsu, they all have strengths.

00:16:48.900 But what are they building?

00:16:49.960 So, for example, solitary arts are going to build awareness much better than social arts, but they're not going to build social relational awareness, right?

00:16:58.400 Got it.

00:16:58.680 Things that are difficult build the skill of dealing with regulating intensity.

00:17:05.020 So it could be breath holds, cold showers, martial arts, more intense yoga.

00:17:08.560 So that's a valuable skill set for men, for everyone to deal with intensity.

00:17:13.260 But there's also a calibration issue.

00:17:16.500 So not enough intensity with the weights or whatever, you don't get to build that skill.

00:17:21.600 Too much intensity, you're just going to be overwhelmed.

00:17:24.040 You're going to be just surviving, maybe even traumatized.

00:17:26.940 So that is also an issue here of sort of dosage or, you know, it's the same as if you take someone to the gym.

00:17:32.900 You don't want the weight to be too heavy or too light.

00:17:35.540 So, you know, what we do is we send people out of their comfort zone.

00:17:39.280 So if someone comes to me and says, hey, I do, you know, tough martial arts, rough kickboxing, Thai boxing, I'm like, brilliant.

00:17:44.900 We're going to take you salsa dancing, right?

00:17:47.600 And actually, you're going to learn the follower role, right?

00:17:50.520 And so that would be like, whoa, or improv comedy.

00:17:53.340 There's, you know, one way of thinking about embodiment is a collection of all these great fields.

00:17:57.000 I love them all.

00:17:58.140 So my girlfriend does improv comedy, for example. 0.89

00:18:00.100 She's quite a serious person.

00:18:01.240 She's done a lot of work in conflict zones and NGO sector.

00:18:03.680 And she's like, I need to lighten up.

00:18:05.840 So it's also getting in your body, but it's also what are you embodying?

00:18:10.220 Yeah, so she can do serious and organized all day, but being a bit lighter. 0.98

00:18:13.520 Now, I'm from an Irish family.

00:18:14.780 We tell jokes just all day long.

00:18:16.400 So for us, being light is easy.

00:18:18.440 You know, for me, it might be, you know, I don't know, more sensitive listening practice or being a voice to a lot of structured martial arts and yoga because I'm chaotic.

00:18:26.180 You know, I'm, you know, recovering alcoholic, alcoholic dad, Irish family, just total chaos. 1.00

00:18:31.220 All these layers of chaos.

00:18:32.100 And what was great for me as I hit my teen years was getting that structure and discipline.

00:18:39.040 And then after a while, I almost got like two structure and discipline.

00:18:41.780 So I kind of started doing hippie dancing and, you know, going crazy.

00:18:45.100 It's something called Five Rhythms and all the hippies, you know, in Brighton, which is kind of like Boulder or San Francisco.

00:18:49.560 And I used to love it.

00:18:50.740 And it was more the expressive side rather than the contained side.

00:18:54.160 So we have all these different embodied skill sets.

00:18:56.600 You know, I map them.

00:18:57.540 I have models of embodied intelligence in my books.

00:18:59.880 And we kind of map the skill sets.

00:19:01.840 And if I'm working with a coach, we'll look at, okay, where are you strong?

00:19:05.080 What needs developing?

00:19:06.160 We've got different models for that.

00:19:07.440 I mean, I think that's a great point because you, I would say that I, I do hard things and I would say that a lot of the guys who are in our orbit would say, I do hard things.

00:19:21.460 I train, I do jujitsu, I do cold baths.

00:19:23.880 And it's like, okay, objectively, those are hard, I would say.

00:19:27.980 Yes.

00:19:28.420 But subjectively, they're not that hard anymore.

00:19:31.620 You've been doing jujitsu for 15 years.

00:19:34.180 That's not hard for you.

00:19:35.580 Salsa dancing, like you said, or improv might actually be a hard thing.

00:19:40.140 Jujitsu is not hard for you or for some people.

00:19:43.100 Yeah, this is where we challenge people.

00:19:44.300 And the problem is we generally deepen our own neurosis, right?

00:19:47.780 So an aggressive guy is going to do an aggressive martial art.

00:19:50.080 A sensitive, creative guy is going to do that.

00:19:52.380 And it takes courage.

00:19:54.260 You know, I remember I did Aikido for years.

00:19:56.000 I was pretty good and had my black belt and I was pretty swish, you know.

00:19:59.140 And then I went to jujitsu and I was just getting choked out.

00:20:02.440 But I'd never done anything competitive.

00:20:03.940 So I was like, I need to do this.

00:20:05.100 This is another side of my being, this competitive side.

00:20:07.960 And then I went to Tango and there was like, you know, fabulous Argentinian women with great shoes and perfume. 1.00

00:20:13.800 And I was like, okay, this is really scary.

00:20:16.160 You know, this is much scarier than dealing with some black belt, you know, 1.00

00:20:18.920 dealing with an attractive woman.

00:20:20.320 And it's like, oh, my God, I have to kind of keep boundaries and, you know, be brave.

00:20:24.080 Social courage.

00:20:25.140 So it's a different skill set.

00:20:26.880 So, I mean, we can't do everything.

00:20:28.200 But you can do, you know, I believe in doing something for a while.

00:20:31.580 And if you're new to embodiment, I just say fall in love with anything.

00:20:34.520 That's a good starting place.

00:20:36.400 But then after a while, like someone, you know, mature practitioner like yourself has been doing some stuff for a while.

00:20:40.860 You might go, okay, is this still challenging me?

00:20:44.200 And you may need to change how you do it or you may need to add a supplementary practice, you know,

00:20:49.460 send the jujitsu guide to Tango or whatever.

00:20:51.560 So, and this is, you know, this has been my life for years is really looking at these different practices

00:20:56.440 and how they build who we are as people rather than, you know, the practical skills are great too.

00:21:01.640 It's good to be able to defend your family.

00:21:03.000 You know, a man should be well danced as well as well read.

00:21:05.420 This is great.

00:21:05.880 But there's something else at work here, which is the character formation.

00:21:10.640 Oh, I also think it's in my experience and, you know, some of the things that I've done

00:21:15.300 that are outside of my comfort zone just make me a more interesting person.

00:21:19.320 So I feel better about myself.

00:21:22.340 I'm more competent.

00:21:23.900 I'm excited to try new things.

00:21:25.660 I'm willing to translate hobbies, new hobbies into taking risks in my career, for example,

00:21:32.760 or being able to strike up a conversation more easily because I'm just a more interesting person

00:21:38.640 than somebody who doesn't do different things.

00:21:42.880 Yeah.

00:21:43.380 I mean, it's building range.

00:21:44.560 So it's behavioral flexibility, really.

00:21:46.540 So the basic equation we run is awareness, range, and choice.

00:21:49.900 So you need awareness of your current embodiment, which most people don't have.

00:21:53.120 You know, they don't.

00:21:53.680 I've worked with managers who have no idea they're super aggressive or super passive.

00:21:57.520 You know, that's an embodied thing.

00:21:59.040 Most communication is embodied.

00:22:00.380 And then we need to build range so we can have some choice, some freedom.

00:22:05.320 I mean, you know, freedom is a key value of mine.

00:22:08.040 And if all I've got is a hammer, not only does everything look like a nail,

00:22:12.220 but I keep hitting everything like a nail.

00:22:14.340 So this idea of actually being sort of ontologically free, free in our being,

00:22:18.680 having some choice around how we are, how we live.

00:22:22.180 And, of course, we still have personalities, cultures.

00:22:24.320 These things are all real.

00:22:25.160 But I don't want to become a character joy, you know, like a New Yorker cartoon of myself

00:22:29.480 that's just kind of limited in that way.

00:22:32.180 So, yeah, for me, that freedom is important.

00:22:34.300 And I think particularly in the context we're in, I mean, the cult of modernity is really

00:22:39.780 not leaning us in the direction of embodiment and sanity.

00:22:43.320 So we are, to use Buddhist phrase, swimming against the stream somewhere.

00:22:47.500 When you say cult of modernity, what aspects of the cult or modern times are creating some

00:22:57.360 of these rot, this rot, that's a term you used earlier, and creating these problems that

00:23:01.680 we do see, drug abuse, violence, mental illness, et cetera, et cetera?

00:23:07.540 Yeah, I mean, we're essentially in a near hell-like condition psychospiritually.

00:23:11.740 So modernity has been very successful physically, like we're using wonderful technology right

00:23:17.680 now, you know, I'm not hungry, I'm guessing you've been well fed, we're materially very

00:23:21.440 well off, but we're psychospiritually maybe the most insane culture in human history.

00:23:28.140 Over 50% of young liberal American women are now on medication.

00:23:32.960 And some of that is a diagnostic issue, overdiagnostics, but it's also like, you know, if you've got

00:23:36.800 suicide rates and sort of hard measures like that, people aren't just pretending.

00:23:39.800 So we live in a culture which has denied those four connections, it denies the body, it says

00:23:46.660 you are a mind, like you can be, in this culture, people say you could be a man in a woman's

00:23:50.440 body.

00:23:50.760 Well, that's a very Cartesian body-mind split, you're a little ghost in a machine, it doesn't

00:23:55.020 make any sense philosophically.

00:23:56.680 It's completely illogical.

00:23:57.920 Actually, philosophers should have said much more against this trans work.

00:24:01.680 So it denies the body, it denies the humanity of the body while celebrating the objective body.

00:24:07.880 All right, so it's missing the personhood of the body.

00:24:12.080 It also denies the humanity or the body of others as well, because if your body is whatever

00:24:17.420 you think it is or separate, then that means other people's are as well.

00:24:21.240 And so you can use them. 0.97

00:24:23.480 Well, one term I've heard often is, you know, people just using each other as masturbatory

00:24:30.020 tools, you know, instead of actually treating that person like a human being who has feelings

00:24:34.780 and thoughts and goals and dreams and desires.

00:24:38.940 Absolutely.

00:24:39.600 So this is the resubjectification and empathy, just on a mechanical level, empathy works through

00:24:45.240 the body.

00:24:45.960 So people who are traumatized may have a numbing of the body and not always, but sometimes that

00:24:51.500 can lead to a lack of empathy, which is why abuse can circle around.

00:24:54.580 But certainly the second connection there is just ahead of me actually was the body is

00:24:59.840 equally after that is other people, empathy, but also community.

00:25:03.920 And you'll see this particularly in Europe, there's a real demonization of tribe or extended

00:25:09.080 family, nationhood, we could say.

00:25:12.800 You know, we can talk about the three hells, mental state, moral state and denation state,

00:25:17.000 you know, the nation state being destroyed by this sense of that we're, we don't have family

00:25:22.060 or tribe. And that doesn't have to be unhealthy. You know, the Croatian church I went to this

00:25:26.600 morning has a Croatian flag and they're all very Croatian, but they're friendly to outsiders

00:25:30.320 as well. That's the balance, right?

00:25:32.160 They're not ashamed of who they are, but they're, you know, we have my girlfriend's Italian,

00:25:35.820 I'm English and we were welcome there.

00:25:38.280 Yeah. It's not a, it's not a false dichotomy that if you're Croatian or if that you're in

00:25:42.380 the U S then, you know, we don't like anybody else. We could be proud and also hold space

00:25:47.680 for other religions and cultures and ideas, as long as they don't conflict with ours.

00:25:54.420 Yeah. And I think we're being proud of culture is a really important thing. And I had a guest

00:25:59.980 on my podcast called Benedict Beckhold. He wrote a book about weakophobia, which is the

00:26:04.140 opposite of xenophobia. Um, a term from Roger Scruton, late British philosopher, conservative

00:26:09.520 philosopher. And this is the idea of really self-hatred. And you tend to see this, uh, self-hatred

00:26:15.220 in periods of decadence where you also get the gender confusion and you get various boundary

00:26:20.680 issues essentially. And you also get it, there's various aspects going on simultaneously. So

00:26:25.420 there's also the feminization of culture, which is where sort of boundaries are made

00:26:29.040 bad in boundary setting is one of those masculine features. Uh, and this comes from various things.

00:26:34.360 It's a, it's a sort of distorted version of Christianity, which is the Christianity always 1.00

00:26:41.180 balance the love of tribe with the love of the outsider, the acceptance of difference,

00:26:45.800 you know, uh, personally, I think I draw the line at tax collectors, but, uh, certainly,

00:26:50.220 you know, the Christian, the Christian message is, you know, to be accepting and not to throw

00:26:54.140 the first stone. Uh, but that was in the context of a sort of hyper-national sort of Jewish context

00:27:00.140 in that day. So it was bringing balance to the sort of natural in-group bias that we have.

00:27:06.460 Now what's happened is actually an out-group bias, uh, combined with a sort of hyper-feminization,

00:27:11.880 which is essentially toxic to all boundaries. And this is culturally, this is postmodernism,

00:27:17.600 uh, in terms of historical cycles, it's always decadence in terms of masculine feminine, 0.98

00:27:22.600 it's the movement towards the feminine. And this is, I know this is quite convoluted and quite

00:27:27.040 philosophical, but it's very helpful if people understand the post-World War II consensus,

00:27:32.260 which is now breaking down. So essentially we defined evil as Nazi, as opposed to Soviet.

00:27:38.860 So we defined it as the hyper-masculine, as opposed to the hyper-feminine, um, the over-boundaried,

00:27:43.720 as opposed to the over-communal. Um, people can look up Jonathan Peugeot on this,

00:27:48.320 he's an excellent Canadian Orthodox thinker. Uh, but essentially we sort of, we defined the

00:27:53.300 masculine as bad. And then we had a slip of lowering the bar of everything's, you know,

00:27:57.980 the British government are crazy for this now. Everything's far right. Going to the gym is far right.

00:28:01.540 Families are far right. Religious people are far right. It's like, look, not everyone. 1.00

00:28:05.020 Talking about how you look is far right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Putting on a jacket, whatever.

00:28:08.580 It's like everyone's Hitler, right? Like this is the sort of slip. Uh, we could see this as a sort 0.70

00:28:13.580 of hyper-Christianity, like a distortion of Christianity. We can see it as the post-World War II.

00:28:19.520 No, no, just to complete that.

00:28:20.880 Do you think that part of it is, um, that, uh, there's this, we live in relatively easy times.

00:28:29.200 I know we're talking about the mold decay of society, but relatively, you know, you talked

00:28:33.840 about earlier, the fact that we all have food and a roof overhead and this technology, and even the

00:28:38.320 worst of us tend to have it better than a large percentage of the humans that are walking this

00:28:43.740 earth. Do you think that part of the demonization of men is due to the fact that we have it so easy?

00:28:49.320 So there's no, there's no enemy. There's no, there's nothing for men to do, so to speak.

00:28:56.480 Man, I know you're enjoying this one. I'm going to step away from the conversation briefly and get

00:29:00.680 into an announcement. I'm very excited. We have the men's forge experience. It's open guys. This

00:29:05.920 is an immersive in-person experience. It's going to strip away all the distractions for several days,

00:29:11.300 force clarity, force discipline, give you introduction to brotherhood. And this is not a

00:29:15.620 conference where you just sit back and you take notes. It's, it's a proving ground, so to speak,

00:29:20.200 where you actually do real work with other men. And over the course of those several days in the

00:29:25.540 forge, you'll be challenged physically and mentally and emotionally alongside these guys who

00:29:30.340 genuinely refuse to drift through life, but you're going to leave with sharper self-awareness,

00:29:36.740 stronger convictions about who you are and how you're supposed to show up,

00:29:40.520 and a very clear understanding of what it means to lead yourself and your people. Well,

00:29:45.040 this event is April 3rd, excuse me, 23rd, April 23rd through the 26th. And we're also bringing in

00:29:50.940 Dwayne Noel as a guest speaker. He's an experienced leader. I know a lot of you guys know who he is.

00:29:55.760 He's been on the podcast several times and he focuses on resilience and responsibility and has this

00:30:01.040 incredibly beautiful ability to cut straight through all the noise and nonsense. He doesn't deal in

00:30:07.520 theory or in platitudes. He speaks from lived experience and hard fought, hard won wisdom. So if

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00:30:19.680 conversation today, the men's forge is your opportunity to recalibrate yourself, to reconnect

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00:30:36.240 this conversation. For now, we'll get back to it with Mark.

00:30:41.740 Yeah, that's part of it. I mean, there's a few reasons. So the sort of historical cycle,

00:30:45.180 everybody knows the meme of, you know, good times create soft men, you know, this kind of

00:30:49.480 cyclical. So there's something in there. I don't want to overstate it. I think the other thing to

00:30:53.960 understand is that the state has grown throughout time, you know, like the colonies there, you know,

00:31:00.340 revolted against the crown. Was it a 3% tax? And it's like, now I lose half my income in tax.

00:31:06.240 50% of my income has got to put government in tax, you know. So it's, the state has just

00:31:11.140 grown, the state is in direct competition with men for protection and provision. So I think that's

00:31:16.260 another part of it. And it's certainly, you know, for example, if I'm, there's the Ukrainian

00:31:21.280 psychologist who I work with, right? They love their men. They, they, they say our men are brave

00:31:27.460 and strong and they protect us and we love them. And I, you know, that compares to the average

00:31:32.300 British or, you know, New York American liberal who would just think it's totally normal and 0.99

00:31:36.980 just shit on men. I saw a post today. It was so awful about men just on Instagram, came 0.99

00:31:43.580 up as a psychologist. My field sadly is completely feminized as a field. And what she was saying

00:31:51.200 about men, you could not say about any other group. In fact, it would be illegal in the UK

00:31:55.720 to say it about any other group. Certainly, you know, white men in particular, but men

00:31:59.620 more generally. And I thought, God, isn't it sad that there's this divide, this, because

00:32:04.960 most women are great. Most women like their dads and their brothers. I get on work with 0.94

00:32:08.540 my niece and my mom. This is normal, right? This is normal. I'm not oppressing my sister.

00:32:13.520 I was giving her some advice yesterday. She's having a difficult work thing. It's just normal,

00:32:17.360 right? To love, to have that love between men and women. And whether it's as an uncle or as a

00:32:22.100 boyfriend, all his son, all these forms. And the driving a line between men and women, 0.74

00:32:27.840 I think we should start saying it's demonic. I mean, it's utterly satanic to divide a line

00:32:33.480 between the basic team of humanity. And who benefits from that? Well, the tax man benefits

00:32:40.500 because women being in the workforce is a huge thing, like doubling the tax, right? 1.00

00:32:46.040 The same with mass migration. Like who benefits? Well, wages go down. So the man who runs the

00:32:53.200 factory and wants cheap labor benefits, house prices go up because there's more people. So

00:32:56.820 the landlord benefits. You know, I don't blame the migrant who wants a better life. My grandparents

00:33:03.780 were Irish migrants who fought in World War II in order to come to the UK, which was a much richer

00:33:08.340 country then. Not anymore, but it was. And I don't blame the migrant who wants a better life,

00:33:13.140 but I do blame the politician who does it for profit, or because they just want a population

00:33:19.280 that's confused and doesn't have that family coherence, or the liberal psychologist who just

00:33:25.240 doesn't have any boundaries. I mean, this is why all the arguments we see, you know, Trump's wall was

00:33:30.560 symbolic, as well as real, because the idea of masculine boundaries has become demonized in the

00:33:37.080 current culture. And a world without boundaries looks like heaven, but is hell. Do what you want

00:33:43.680 is a curse. You may you get exactly what you want is demonic. It's a curse. And I've had neuroscientists

00:33:52.320 on the podcast say the same thing. And Anna Lemke on who wrote Dopamine Nation. And she said,

00:33:56.600 if you seek pleasure, you will end up in pain, you'll end up in hell. And this is the unboundaried

00:34:03.180 modern world, which is essentially the in terms of that yin yang masculine feminine balance. It lacks

00:34:10.220 boundaries around sexuality around behavior around technology around substances, and the sort of

00:34:17.280 consumer culture of just do what you want. Money is the only God, money and fame are the gods of the

00:34:22.920 West, really, particularly in the States, I find. And if you follow those gods, those idols, you will

00:34:28.400 end up in hell psychologically says, I've come through this, not really through a religious lens,

00:34:32.760 but I've come through this just from a well being lens, just going, how do you stay sane?

00:34:37.460 How do you be well?

00:34:38.440 They're not even at odds with each other.

00:34:40.720 Completely not. I mean, human flourishing requires spirituality. Atheist cultures have never survived 1.00

00:34:46.600 more than 100 years. And you know, a lot of my friends say,

00:34:49.940 I think I saw a video that you had posted about how much I can't remember if you use the term

00:34:56.460 religion or spirituality. But I think you did say religion and how it is. The title was something

00:35:01.800 like, it's more important than we than than we thought or than we than we thought we knew or

00:35:07.280 something along those lines.

00:35:09.540 Yeah, I mean, a lot of my friends say, hey, I'm spiritual, but not religious, man. But it's like,

00:35:13.220 no, no, you need to be both. You need the experience of connectivity with profundity with

00:35:18.360 meaning with a divine that that we need that like we need bread.

00:35:21.980 Well, you need a code too, right? Like that's the thing that always confuses me, right?

00:35:27.980 It's interesting when people will structure, you need a tradition that that's not just a church.

00:35:32.940 That's all of those things, right?

00:35:34.880 Yeah, it is always interesting because you'll, you'll, you'll hear guys talk about sports,

00:35:39.720 for example, like I really like football. And it's like, okay, well, if you were on a football team,

00:35:43.560 you'd be expected to show up to practice to be able to commune with, to be able to develop and

00:35:49.280 build skills, to be able to learn about your teammates, to be able to operate within a

00:35:52.900 structure, to go through the playbook and be on the same page come game day. I mean, you would

00:35:57.300 and every man understands that principle. But when it comes to religion, it starts to slip a little

00:36:04.160 bit. And we forget that there, the structure is crucial for any functioning team, whether it's a

00:36:10.280 spiritual community or a football team.

00:36:13.380 Massive. I mean, I, you know, it's Sunday to stay and I, this morning I was like, I don't really fancy

00:36:17.520 going to mass. And I was like, it doesn't matter what I feel like. That's not the important thing

00:36:20.920 here. There's a commitment. And even if it's not my favorite mass, cause it's in Croatian and,

00:36:25.200 you know, I kind of don't understand most of it. You know, I prefer the one in Lubiana in English,

00:36:29.140 but it's, you know, I know the priests there, but it doesn't matter. Cause this isn't consumer

00:36:32.920 culture. This isn't, there's a deep commitment here. Uh, and there's structure and there's

00:36:37.880 accountability and there's traditions. It's not just, I'm the boss of me. The hyper individualism of

00:36:43.280 modernity is hyper isolated. I mean, I, sometimes I say we ended up dead, deracinated, so cut off

00:36:49.600 my roots, but it just leads to us being exhausted, just exhausted, anxious, and sparing this

00:36:54.640 deracination. And part of that is the secularization. And we've been running on the fumes of Christianity

00:37:01.640 for a few hundred years, really since the reformation. And everyone's a Christian in some

00:37:07.320 sense in the West, like if you believe in human rights, women's rights, these kinds of things.

00:37:10.900 Um, Tom Holland breaks this down, British historian, you could look at his book on this,

00:37:16.580 but that starts to run out. And, you know, Nietzsche identified this. He said, you know,

00:37:21.940 if God is dead, what the hell do we do? Where do we get our relationships from? Where do we get,

00:37:26.640 how do we decide what to do? What's the big center of your marriage? What's the center of your community?

00:37:30.960 Which is literally a church in every British village. That's the center of every community

00:37:34.560 traditionally. And yeah, you know, I look at the state. Now it's the courthouse.

00:37:38.040 Yeah. Well, now it's the government, some government building. Yeah. That's true too.

00:37:44.740 I think 19th century was the government buildings. They were the tallest buildings. Now it's the

00:37:48.560 mall or the bank. You know, look at the center of London, the tallest buildings are banks. I was in

00:37:53.380 a mall the other day because there's something I just couldn't get locally. I had to go to this

00:37:56.260 mall and it was like being in a temple, this weird idolatry kind of consumer temple. I just fell

00:38:02.960 awful after I'd left there because I'm just not used to it anymore. I live in the, you know,

00:38:06.660 I live on the Croatian coast by the sea, but even my lifestyle, you know, it's kind of 0.70

00:38:10.900 ridiculous. I'm living the digital douchebag lifestyle of, you know, working online abroad

00:38:15.040 and I'm really, you know, I'm actually, unfortunately, because of Brexit, my partner's

00:38:19.680 Italian. We can't go live in the UK just yet. We have to get married first. And it's, um, 0.99

00:38:24.260 it's tricky because these aren't my people, even though they're perfectly nice people

00:38:28.720 and it's perfectly beautiful and it's cheap here, but cheaper, but it's, um, I'm not with my 0.99

00:38:34.520 tribe and I want to be around my elderly mother and shoot the shit with my best friend. And 0.99

00:38:39.100 I think the sort of the dream of, uh, the world is run by, the world is run by nowheres rather 0.96

00:38:46.780 than subwares. You know, people are either nowheres or somewheres and the nowheres of the BBC and

00:38:51.360 channel four and the Westminster politicians who they don't have that sense of community that

00:38:56.920 you'd find in Salt Lake city that you'll find in a village in, in the Cotswolds in England.

00:39:01.900 They don't have that. Um, because of that, they're kind of crazy, but they also don't

00:39:06.440 understand the roots of place. You know, they don't understand the English people have lived 1.00

00:39:12.180 there for a thousand years. Right. They don't get that. So that is crazy making in terms of,

00:39:19.740 uh, we are always situated. We're not just lone individual consumers. That's going to send

00:39:25.360 everyone nuts. We are situated in place and community in our own bodies and in faith. Those,

00:39:30.160 uh, we could say body, biome, belief, and belonging for bees.

00:39:37.240 It's interesting too, because, you know, uh, America is known for and founded on this idea,

00:39:42.840 this concept of rugged individualism. And I think that there's a lot of merit to that,

00:39:48.680 you know, to tug, tug, tug up your, your life by, by your bootstraps and, and, you know,

00:39:53.680 find a way or make a way. Nobody's coming to rescue you. You got to be gritty, tough, resilient,

00:39:57.980 hardened, hardened, and all of that is wonderful, but taken to the extreme, it creates this isolation.

00:40:03.080 And what I think we see now is what, what I've heard of called the happiness culture. And you

00:40:08.400 already alluded to this where everybody's just pursuing individual happiness. And so I can do

00:40:14.060 anything I want to get happy as if that's the end result. And I can hurt people in the process.

00:40:20.680 I can distort reality. I can take advantage of and manipulate truth and morality as long as I'm

00:40:28.020 happy. I just want to be happy. That's one of the central features of the cult of modernity,

00:40:33.320 as well as saying the only stuff exists and then immediately contradicts itself by saying the purpose

00:40:38.220 of life is your individual happiness. Now, happiness is to me far secondary to meaning and to God.

00:40:45.080 For me, if you pursue happiness, you won't get it. That's the irony. Whereas if you're a service,

00:40:49.800 if you're in relationship, you know, my thinking on a podcast is how can I be of service to people

00:40:54.620 listening? I'm teaching some young guys today, how can I be of service to them? Who am I in

00:40:58.140 relationship with this? This will make you happy as a byproduct. But certainly the pursuit of

00:41:03.440 happiness, which is kind of written in. I mean, listen, I love the States, right? If it wasn't for my

00:41:08.600 America, some American teachers, if it wasn't for them, I wouldn't have had that American pursue your dreams,

00:41:14.460 you know, you go, you do what you want to do. You want to put babies on spikes, you put babies on spikes.

00:41:19.280 You know, there's a crazy Eddie Izzard, like crazy, like a mergulious. I love it. I love it. And that ruggedness 0.68

00:41:25.260 that I love it. And you guys also have this worship freedom a bit too much. And I say this as someone from an

00:41:30.760 Irish family who likes freedom too, right? The view of freedom we have, we need to mature. It's like the view of

00:41:37.180 strength we have needs to mature as men. Yes, we should be physically strong, but also mentally, emotionally,

00:41:41.660 spiritually strong. And the view of freedom can't just be like a teenager's view of freedom. Like,

00:41:47.700 I want to do what I want to do when I want to do it, dad, don't tell me what to do. You know,

00:41:51.280 like I've tried that. And what it led to was addiction, mental illness and despair. Like it

00:41:56.280 doesn't end well. And I mean, in a way, this is the good, this is good news, right? If people say

00:42:01.200 it's not depressing, I'm hopeful. We're hitting what they call it. Alcoholics Anonymous rock bottom.

00:42:06.120 Like our culture is hitting rock bottom. This is great news. Like modernity is obviously not

00:42:11.620 working. I was in Austin last year, great town, some good friends there. But the homeless drug

00:42:17.700 addicts I saw in these zombie poses under the bridges, I was like, these are, someone has

00:42:23.420 described them as the saints of modernity, meaning they are the ultimate result of worshipping

00:42:29.600 materialism, of worshipping hedonism. Like that's where you get to if you worship it. And I've,

00:42:34.700 you know, I've been that Gollum. I was watching Lord of the Rings the other night and my girlfriend

00:42:38.140 was like, you're a little bit like Gollum sometimes. I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. I get

00:42:41.600 it. Like we're, we've all got a little bit of precious in us, you know, like we want what

00:42:45.740 we want and we want it. And, uh, you know, I've got the others, hopefully Samaragon and a

00:42:50.820 few other bits to me too, but that's where we end up. And the good news is it's not working.

00:42:56.300 It's obvious it's not working. Modernity is broken. Now the problem is we've got this idea

00:43:01.300 of progress, right? Like you keep going West in America. We keep inventing more and more

00:43:06.140 tech. We, you know, keep having more and more genders until we identify as a lesbian seagull, 1.00

00:43:11.140 you know, it's like, it gets crazier and crazier. Uh, but that is not progress. This idea of progress 0.89

00:43:17.120 as being more and more liberal, more and more technological, more and more isolated. I think

00:43:21.420 we're realizing now that something's up. So like the young guys I'm working with around,

00:43:27.300 you know, this work around, they're surprisingly based, like things have changed. Things have

00:43:34.260 changed. Like the boomers are dying out. Thanks for ruining the planet. Goodbye guys. Um, but 1.00

00:43:38.920 and like now people are talking about remigration in the UK seriously, which hadn't occurred, you

00:43:45.160 know, a couple of years ago, uh, people are really realizing the body matters. People are coming

00:43:49.580 back to faith in droves. You know, I have a colleague who's Orthodox, like this is just normal 0.99

00:43:54.780 now. And, um, so I'm like deeply hopeful that we've turned a corner because we can see that it

00:44:01.580 like material and modernity is just not working. I mean, my, my fear though, is that when you talk

00:44:07.280 about the state being as large as it is and other institutions that do not have our best interest

00:44:11.320 at heart, the prescription for the problem is more of the problem. And that's, that's the issue is that,

00:44:18.020 you know, the government will come in and create this problem and ask us, the taxpayers to fund

00:44:24.160 the solution. So we do, uh, inevitably we do fund it. And then the government says, well,

00:44:29.940 it's not working. We, because we need more, right. We need more, we need to do more of what's not

00:44:36.460 working for it to be better. It's like, no, you created the problem. You diagnosed the problem,

00:44:41.520 you prescribe the problem and it's all on you now. Listen, I'm a small state guy as well. And

00:44:48.220 I'm still a tax resident in the UK. Frankly, whenever I fly home, I'm embarrassed not to

00:44:54.180 have been arrested yet. Like the reason so many people have been arrested for free speech for

00:44:58.740 their YouTube, for their tweets. It's almost getting, it's almost getting to the point where

00:45:02.440 I'm embarrassed not to have been. I'm like, am I not saying anything interesting? Um, and no,

00:45:07.960 but at the same, so anarcho-tierity as a trust breaks down in this society, as people get less and

00:45:14.160 less cohesive because they have no religious center. They have no extended family, no sense

00:45:19.060 of tribe, no sense of ethnos, uh, no tradition holding them together. And this is little things

00:45:24.220 like just, I don't know, people making noise on the train in the UK, right? It's just not a British 0.98

00:45:28.080 thing to do, which is now totally common, uh, right up to the really big things. And some of the

00:45:32.720 appalling things like the, uh, the predominantly Pakistani gangs, like right from the tiny to the atrocious, 1.00

00:45:39.160 the society breaks down and then the state has to become more tyrannical. So we have

00:45:43.860 cameras everywhere. That's why we have all these strict laws. They're trying to hold it together,

00:45:48.000 but it just doesn't work. And, you know, my fear is that there's going to be a bloodbath. Like,

00:45:52.760 you know, I'm in the Balkans right now. Yugoslavia was a multi-ethnic state until it wasn't. And

00:45:57.640 they, when it collapsed, it collapsed badly in the nineties. I remember that there's still the

00:46:02.560 scars from that here. And I, I don't want that to happen in the UK. Um, we see this all across

00:46:07.480 Western Europe. There's this tension. We have to have, you know, I'm never advocate for violence in

00:46:13.260 case. Uh, Mr. Starmer's listening. I certainly don't. I've, I've been around too many war zones

00:46:18.540 to think that violence is a good idea. You know, sometimes I think there is a case for the just

00:46:23.360 war. There is a case for ethical self-defense. Uh, there is a case when there's violation at such

00:46:28.180 a huge level. So that could be looked at as a case, but I certainly don't want to incite violence

00:46:35.440 because I've seen how horrific it can be. But I fear that things are getting to a point where that

00:46:40.380 breakdown will happen and things may get worse before they get better. Where I have hope is

00:46:45.280 that I see people kind of actually finally starting to address some of these concerns,

00:46:50.280 um, and starting to realize like what actually keeps us sane, what actually makes us well.

00:46:56.900 Well, you know, I, I think the best solution, and this isn't, this is no easy solution. I'm not

00:47:01.040 just saying it's so it's, it's, it's easy. It is very simple, but the state needs to back up

00:47:06.620 and start advocating for the nuclear family, start advocating for churches, uh, that teach

00:47:13.280 morality and then start advocating for social institutions that teach moral principles. For

00:47:18.480 example, the Boy Scouts was such a great organization for so long. And then, you know,

00:47:25.260 and, and I, I was a, I was not a boy, uh, I think I was a Boy Scout for one year, but I went all the way

00:47:30.100 through Cub Scouts and it was so good for me in the absence of not having a permanent father figure in

00:47:35.080 my life. And then, you know, the state gets ahold of it. The, the progressives quote unquote

00:47:39.880 progressives get ahold of it. And all of a sudden it's an institution that just is completely

00:47:44.560 backwards and dangerous now relative to what it was.

00:47:48.740 Also, they can't hold boundaries. So of course, you know, Scouts in the UK lets girls in.

00:47:52.720 So boys don't have that space to get boys together. Uh, which is, which is a problem instead of

00:47:57.380 getting, you know, if they don't have a dad, they can get a male role model there. Maybe it was

00:48:00.780 positive. Yeah. Yeah. I'm with you on this one. And what you have to understand is this is a death

00:48:06.380 cult. So I say modernity is a cult. It's a death cult. And I mean that on several levels, the death

00:48:11.940 of the soul. If you look at Starber, he's, he says he doesn't dream. He's a kind of gray managerial

00:48:19.300 institutionalized Demi man. Right. Like that's the, that's the sort of interesting watching the

00:48:25.500 office, but without the comedy, like that's the death of the soul. Right. The second death is just

00:48:31.600 the mass killing of children. It's a Holocaust 10 times over every single year globally. If we look

00:48:38.040 at the, the, the right to life, uh, and now the killing of old people, which, you know, is very

00:48:43.600 common in Canada and, um, sadly has just been voted for in the UK. Slovenia happily just voted against it

00:48:49.880 here and Croatia wouldn't even consider a vote. Uh, but euthanasia because the Christian idea of the

00:48:55.500 right to life, the sacredness of life is now, uh, those fumes are running out. Uh, and the third

00:49:01.660 way it's a death cult is just people aren't breeding. So birth rates across the West are down, which is

00:49:07.780 another thing pushing, pushing mass migration. And those birth rates are so low because, you know,

00:49:13.220 we're like pandas in a zoo that are so over socialized. We won't fuck like, like we've 0.99

00:49:19.040 gotten, you need God to get one. It's just, yeah. Like, like, and there's no meaning to like, 0.99

00:49:24.900 why would you have kids? It's not practical. It's not like, Oh, I'm going to have kids. Cause

00:49:29.080 that's going to be fun. It's like you were talking about earlier. It's not going to make

00:49:32.000 me happy as in fun, happy. It will provide meaning. It will add depth to your life. Meaning

00:49:36.100 and fulfillment for sure. A sacrifice to it. Like, why would you sacrifice? Why would you perpetuate

00:49:41.080 life if you're not in touch with your own life or the bigger meaning of life? Like,

00:49:46.140 so of course, no one's breeding. Now there's multiple reasons why the birth rate's going

00:49:50.340 down. You know, the, the frogs are gay, testosterone levels, blah, blah, blah. But it's the sort of, 0.99

00:49:55.660 the, the, I have to laugh cause this is stuff so horrific. This is a very, it would be a lot

00:50:00.940 more funny if it wasn't so horrible. Right. But I, for me, it's like, we can't lose our sense

00:50:05.420 of humor. Like you've got to keep a sense of humor on this stuff. And you'll notice like comedians

00:50:09.900 are some of the best truth speakers around this stuff. So you've got to keep your humor.

00:50:13.120 But, um, why would we, why would we reproduce if we don't have a sense of meaning and faith

00:50:18.760 and, you know, a community to help a village to raise that child, all the things you mentioned.

00:50:23.080 So like, this is like an existential threat, not just on the level of, you know, the UK,

00:50:28.620 even most of Western Europe, uh, uh, essentially this is, this word could get me arrested, but

00:50:34.380 invaded. Like I would define invasion as a non-consensual movement of people into a place,

00:50:40.440 right. It's pretty common sense view of what an invasion is. They'll call it like a demographic.

00:50:45.840 Yeah. It's pretty reasonable. Right. So again, not calling for violence, not calling to be mean

00:50:50.160 to Ahmed, who's at your corner shop is probably a perfectly nice guy. You know, don't be mean

00:50:54.200 to random people. And in the face of the sort of mass national violation, the sense of a lack

00:51:01.060 of meaning, like this is existential threat. Why would people not respond to this? And this is

00:51:07.280 where you see the government's having to clamp down to try, but it's, that's just putting,

00:51:11.400 this is like Tito did this in Yugoslavia. It's just putting a, a tying a tight lid on something 0.60

00:51:16.120 that's going to explode. And I really hope we can find this sort of peaceful, loving way out of this

00:51:20.920 because it's, um, it's rough, but, but as I said, it's rough, but it's also like the darkest before

00:51:25.720 the dawn, you know, uh, what's his face? Gandalf's just about to come over the ridge with the

00:51:31.020 Rohirrim. Uh, you know, we're pretty, we're pretty deep in Helm's deep, deep surrounded by

00:51:35.560 orcs at the moment, but it's, um, you know, Hobbiton still hasn't totally died out in Europe.

00:51:39.820 And also on an individual level, it's like, guys get offline, touch grass. Don't spend all your time

00:51:47.600 listening to me and Ryan's podcasts, like all the time on the internet, like be with some actual

00:51:52.540 people, like in your men's group, like in the group of young guys that I run, you know, join a

00:51:57.000 local church where you can meet people, learn to dance, do jujitsu. The real world's okay. You know,

00:52:02.980 the real world, there's still plenty of nice human beings out there. And, uh, and this is how we stay

00:52:07.760 happy, healthy, and sane. I think. Yeah, I would, I would agree with that. And just trying new things,

00:52:13.760 just making you a more interesting, well-rounded person. It brings some creativity and fun to your

00:52:18.460 life. You know, I was going to go back to something that you had talked about earlier. I had made a note.

00:52:22.540 Um, I think there's a, you had said something about stoicism and I think there's this misrepresentation

00:52:29.180 of what stoicism is, where we're led to believe that it's a suppression of emotions when actual

00:52:35.840 stoics talk about understanding your emotions for productive outcomes. And I think that's part,

00:52:40.920 correct me if I'm wrong, but that would be to me, part of the embodiment process. I'm assuming where

00:52:46.280 you start to know why you feel and what it does to you on a physiological level. So you can start to

00:52:51.620 address it rather than just tamp it down and hope it doesn't impact you in a negative way.

00:52:57.200 Yeah. I mean, stoicism, not broicism, right? Like the sort of misunderstanding of stoicism on the

00:53:02.820 internet is there. I'm not expecting that. Uh, what I would say though, is this, I'm all for

00:53:08.300 emotional repression. We need to be more Victorian. This, this idea that you shouldn't repress an emotion

00:53:14.100 is a Freudian idea that America took on as a culture. Cause you guys are pretty expressive,

00:53:19.220 you know, just in terms of cultural variance. I like that, but it's there. Um, and this idea that

00:53:24.720 the worst thing you can do is repress a feeling. It's a sort of Californian ideology that worships

00:53:31.180 at the cult of feeling. So if you say modernity is a cult, the cult leader is oneself. I couldn't

00:53:38.280 figure this out for a long time. I said, modernity has all these features of a cult. They punish you

00:53:41.720 if you leave, they have, you know, dogma, they have all these priests and weird words, you know,

00:53:45.520 the woke stuff. But I thought, who's the cult leader? I thought, who's the cult leader? I was

00:53:49.540 like, Oh, the cult leader is oneself. Like the arrogance we have as individuals. I don't need

00:53:53.720 church. I don't need a community. No one tells me what to do. Um, you know, that piece of the

00:53:58.880 kind of narcissism at the center of modern culture says that my feelings are the most important thing

00:54:04.620 in the world. And it's like, no, they're not. It's yes. We need to, you know, the body is a great

00:54:09.320 way to tune in. Feelings give you a message, right? Like if I'm passionate right now, it's telling

00:54:14.060 me this is important to me. If I'm scared, it's telling me I'm worried I'm going to get arrested

00:54:18.320 at Heathrow. If I'm angry, it's because my boundaries, a little bit, I'm a little bit anxious.

00:54:23.300 If I'm angry, it's because like, okay, my boundaries have been crossed, right? So that's

00:54:27.940 good to know. It's good to know my boundaries have been crossed. That's why I feel angry.

00:54:30.580 And I feel that in my body. But I mean, I think this sort of Freudian idea of you have to never

00:54:35.100 repress an emotion is, it's all part of the sort of narcissistic cult of my feelings of God

00:54:41.060 and, you know, it's overdone. It's overdone. I think that's a, yeah, I think that's a fair

00:54:45.020 point. You see this idea. I just did a podcast a couple of days ago on the, um, my case against

00:54:50.900 vulnerability because of what it often represents is just performative emotion. Everybody's out there

00:54:57.880 just like crying on camera. They actually set up their phone with the right lighting, the right

00:55:04.240 angle, the right shot, started crying, then stopped the recording, watched it, probably

00:55:11.380 reshot it one or two times because it wasn't exactly how they wanted it to look. And then

00:55:16.480 they say, well, I'm just being vulnerable. I'm courageous. No, you're just performing.

00:55:20.280 No, no, no, no, no. It's performative. It's toxic femininity. You know, it's, it's controlling 1.00

00:55:25.080 people through, through that victim position, uh, is again, toxic Christianity. 0.97

00:55:30.240 I've seen men do it too. So I don't think it's exclusive to not real men, Ryan, not real

00:55:34.740 men. They're probably Canadian. Fair enough. Fair enough. I think the problem comes when

00:55:40.680 we over index our emotions, right? Where we, we place too much of an emphasis. I think your

00:55:45.940 point is well taken. Hey, you know, I feel sad today. Okay. So why? Well, I, I had a loss

00:55:54.020 of a family member. I had a relationship breakdown. I had a, a business goes sideways. Okay. That's

00:55:59.780 good information to know. How are you going to make sure that doesn't happen again and,

00:56:02.980 and, and do and be better next time. But it's when it's like, I'm sad. And that gives me an

00:56:08.300 excuse to self-destruct and to treat other people around me like garbage. That's where it becomes 0.99

00:56:14.440 a process. It's not that big a deal. Yeah. The telephone's ringing, pick it up, get the message,

00:56:19.940 put it down. Yeah. Maybe I'll spend 10 minutes meditating, just sitting with like, Oh, okay. I'm

00:56:24.340 really grieving my dad right now. You know, like, Oh, you know what? I'm really pissed off. I'm really

00:56:28.640 anxious about whatever right now in the world. And sitting with that for 10 minutes can be good.

00:56:33.500 But then I get on with my day, you know, and I think that's partly what a man does. Can I tell you

00:56:39.260 a quick fun story I thought of earlier? Quick fun story. Absolutely. Yeah. So I'm in Krakow,

00:56:44.840 right? This is week three of the main invasion of the big invasion of Ukraine. And we're going there 0.52

00:56:50.740 to set up a trauma charity, but we set, we started Krakow in Poland, across the border. And

00:56:55.840 we're collecting medical supplies. So I'm talking to doctors, they're quite illegally giving me all

00:57:01.040 these drugs. I'm using all my old professional talents to sort of illegally source medications.

00:57:05.900 And at that point, it sounds, it sounds like you're a, you're younger years to me.

00:57:10.820 Younger years were a lot of fun, but I don't recommend them to anyone. But I had some skills,

00:57:14.640 had some skills. Anyways, we're sourcing all these meds. And we're going to take them to the

00:57:17.940 hospital in Lviv because the hospital's cut off because Kiev is surrounded and they need some meds.

00:57:21.820 And we're like, okay, we'll deliver them while we're, while we're going there. My Pietro, my

00:57:25.400 Polish friend from martial arts. And, uh, I'm spending all day getting these meds and we're

00:57:30.860 buying them all this money. We fundraised and doctors are giving this to us. And it's really

00:57:34.360 late. I've been doing this all day. I'm going to one late night pharmacy and taxi drops me off and

00:57:38.520 I get out of the taxi and I realized that I've left the bag with all these like life saving drugs for

00:57:44.120 the children's hospital in the taxi. And I have to go the next day. And I just thought, shit,

00:57:48.740 what am I going to do? This is a moment of panic, quickly resent us. I stand in the middle of the 0.99

00:57:52.120 road, flag a car down. It's the right guy. It's a young guy in a souped up sports car, right? He's

00:57:58.540 there with his hot Polish girlfriend. I literally just opened the car door, jump in the back seat.

00:58:02.560 I say, follow that cab. This kid has obviously grown up. He doesn't speak English, right? He doesn't

00:58:07.940 understand what I'm saying. He just sees me pointing. And this kid has grown up with Grand Theft Auto.

00:58:12.740 He doesn't say a word. His girlfriend's screaming because a strange man just jumped into their car at like

00:58:17.700 11 o'clock at night. He just puts his foot down, chases the cab, runs it off the road, right?

00:58:24.860 I jump out. So I listen, man, I'm really sorry, but I left the meds here. We need this to save

00:58:28.400 kids' life. We need these meds. And the taxi driver's like, what the fuck? What the fuck in

00:58:31.560 Polish? You know, korwa, korwa, korwa. And we get the bags. I'm really sorry. Here's 10 bucks for 1.00

00:58:35.940 your trouble. I say to the guy, look, can I give you some money just to say thank you? And he doesn't

00:58:39.880 really speak English. He's just, I just say, zhankoje, zhankoje bardzo, you know, thank you very much in Polish.

00:58:44.500 And he just puffs up and his girlfriend like clings to him. Like he's the hero because they

00:58:48.900 figured out what's just happened, right? Like she clings to him. And he was just like zero head,

00:58:54.120 like proper East European masculine man. And he was just like, no problem. And I never saw that guy

00:58:59.960 again. And I was like, that is healthy masculinity right there. So I thought of that story.

00:59:05.060 That is, that's a good story. We need, we definitely need more of that. And you know,

00:59:10.240 what's interesting is you see how people respond. You were gracious. His girlfriend thinks more

00:59:14.400 highly of him than she did, you know, 10 minutes prior. That's just a good thing individually.

00:59:19.460 And I think for humanity as well. And in his body, he was like, I trust this guy. I don't know what

00:59:24.980 the situation is. He had that embodied instinct and he had that courage to just go, okay, like he

00:59:30.240 trusted his gut, but I wasn't a criminal. That was, you know, I was a good guy. I was doing good

00:59:34.380 thing. If you didn't understand the words, he kind of just got it on a gut level when I trust this guy,

00:59:39.020 let's do it. And he had that like action mode. He wasn't like, you know what, should I do this?

00:59:42.940 How do I feel about this? He just floored it. You know, like, I just so lucky I got the right

00:59:47.780 guy at the right place, but it's serendipity. That's amazing. Well, Mark, I appreciate our

00:59:54.660 conversation, man. This is, uh, we'll have to do another one because there's so much to talk about.

00:59:59.080 And, you know, I like to get into the philosophical and I also, like you said, like to touch grass and get

01:00:03.980 out into the real world. And I think I could probably stand to be a little bit more thoughtful at times.

01:00:08.320 And I think there's a lot of guys who could stand to be a little bit more physical at times. And I

01:00:11.880 think it's, um, I think it's about finding what you need, right? Just like we talked about earlier.

01:00:17.740 It's not that it's, it's not the thing that's the world would say it's hard that you should be

01:00:23.200 doing. It's the thing that you think is hard that you should be doing.

01:00:26.840 That you need to, I mean, if you're like your dad just died, you're seriously ill, just do what you

01:00:31.980 enjoy, you know, cruise, right? But if you've got a little bit of energy and you want to grow,

01:00:36.240 this is where we need to run that. And I think there's like a barbell. I kind of like both ends

01:00:41.120 the barbell. One is like the highly intellectual talking about, I don't know how the 30 years war

01:00:46.080 led to the state of modern man in Europe. You know, that's great. It's great. And the other side

01:00:50.180 though has to be, there's a lot of talk in men's circles. It's like, okay, what are our practices?

01:00:55.300 Like what do we do every day? Um, Oh, this is what my American teachers taught me.

01:01:01.060 This book, how to become human, a guide for young men, uh, has got like a load of ways to

01:01:06.900 break that down. Um, it may actually be illegal in the UK, this book. So it's just by a guy called

01:01:12.140 Mark, uh, this book. Um, but yeah, there's a load of ways in there. People can look up and if people

01:01:18.340 want to get it, uh, for free, like if they have no money, it's only like 10 bucks, but if they have no

01:01:22.760 money, uh, they can use code skint, S K I N T on the website. I mean, I'd rather they bought it and

01:01:30.020 paid money for it, but if, if they're genuinely broke and they need some help, you know, then

01:01:34.160 they can get it for free just on, on my website rather than Amazon. So that's how to become human,

01:01:39.020 uh, a guide for young men by Mark. So that's, that's got more kind of concrete stuff in.

01:01:46.400 I'm writing that down real quick. Yeah, absolutely. I'm glad you said that. So I want to pick up a copy

01:01:50.360 as well and, um, check that out, but yeah, we'll make sure we direct guys to that. Where else can

01:01:54.600 we send them to learn more about you, Mark, and what you're up to and, uh, get them connected.

01:01:59.120 Yeah. I mean, if people want to train as an embodiment coach, just put in embodiment

01:02:02.040 coaching, embodimentunlimited.com is the website for that. That's my kind of main work. And then I've

01:02:06.600 got a YouTube channel for young guys. So people look up Mark Walsh channel. There's an old one,

01:02:10.660 a new one. People can find a bunch of kind of free videos and the feral philosophy podcast. So that's

01:02:16.680 the podcast. Uh, you're on Ryan, people like podcasts. They might like that. So it's feral

01:02:20.680 philosophy podcast, Mark Walsh on YouTube, uh, embodiment coaching. If they're interested in

01:02:25.620 that professionally. Excellent. Mark, I'll sync it all up for the guys. Thank you for joining me

01:02:30.040 today. Powerful stuff. And I'm looking forward to having a continued conversations with you.

01:02:34.580 Right. And this has been fun. It's been fun. Real pleasure.

01:02:38.060 Gentlemen, there you go. Mr. Mark Walsh. I hope you enjoyed that one. I was on his podcast several

01:02:42.340 weeks ago or maybe a month ago or so. Very, very glad to have him on my podcast. Um, obviously

01:02:48.500 a deep thinker, somebody who understands the ramifications of the society that we live in,

01:02:53.480 but he's not just speaking in theories and up in our heads and just being intellectual about it,

01:02:59.000 really teaching us how to put this into real practice in our real lives to create real results.

01:03:05.740 So make sure you follow him, make sure you leave a rating review for the podcast, and also make sure

01:03:10.640 that you, uh, take a screenshot right now, post it up on Instagram and Twitter or Facebook,

01:03:15.720 let people know what you're listening to and, uh, where they, where you heard this, uh, this

01:03:20.900 conversation. Also make sure to check out his book, how to become a better human, a guide for young men.

01:03:26.120 And the last thing is the men's forge.com. I hope to see you there. All right, guys,

01:03:30.380 we'll be back tomorrow for our ask me anything until then go out there, take action and become the man

01:03:36.480 you are meant to be. Thank you for listening to the order of man podcast. You're ready to take

01:03:41.920 charge of your life and be more of the man you were meant to be. We invite you to join the order

01:03:46.560 order of man.com.

Order of Man - January 20, 2026

MARK WALSH ｜ Why Modern Men Are Disconnected

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