OoM 038： What Makes a Man "Manly" with Stephen Mansfield
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Summary
What does it mean to be a man? It s a question I ve asked all 38 podcast guests up to this point, and it s extremely difficult to answer. My guest today, Stephen Mansfield, breaks it down piece by piece as he talks about rites of passage, the need for excitement and adventure in men s lives, and how to build a band of brothers.
Transcript
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What does it mean to be a man? It's a question I've asked all 38 podcast guests up to this point
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and it's a question that is extremely difficult to answer. My guest today, Stephen Mansfield,
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breaks it down piece by piece as he talks about rites of passage, the need for excitement and
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adventure in men's lives, and how to build a band of brothers. You're a man of action. You live life
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to the fullest. Embrace your fears and boldly chart your own path. When life knocks you down,
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you get back up one more time, every time. You are not easily deterred or defeated,
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rugged, resilient, strong. This is your life. This is who you are. This is who you will become
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at the end of the day. And after all is said and done, you can call yourself a man.
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Men, welcome back to the Order of Man podcast. I am Ryan Michler. I am the host and the founder
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of Order of Man. And I'm glad to be back with you here again today, as always. As you know,
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we're talking about all things manly on the podcast, and I have an incredible guest lined up for you
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today. I do want to make sure that you have all the resources and the information for later
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reference as we get into the conversation. So first, you can find all the links, the resources,
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the best quotes, and the overview of the show at orderofman.com slash 038. And second, if you want
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to dig into this conversation a bit more beyond what we are having today and what we're talking
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about here, join us on our Facebook group. So you can go to facebook.com slash groups slash order of
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man, where we will be talking and debating about the conversation Steven and I have today.
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Also, I want to make you aware that I have set up a Patreon page. Some of you are familiar with that
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for you and the other men listening to this show. It's an opportunity for you to become more than
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just a listener of the show. In fact, this is the groundwork for the membership to the Order of Man
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that we're going to be creating in the near future coming into 2016. Now I've updated some of the
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Patreon levels and I've upped a few of the incentives. So make sure you head to patreon.com
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slash order of man. So it's P A T R E O N.com slash order of man. We are adding men to our wall
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of patrons. We're hosting a monthly Google hangout with the guys. We're giving away t-shirts. There's
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even an opportunity to be interviewed for a segment on this show. And again, just head to patreon.com
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slash order of man. Check it out over there. I'd love to see you become more than just a listener to
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the show. Now I do want to give you, before we get started, a quick apology for the audio in this
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episode. There's some moments during our discussion where I lose connection a bit and there's some
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background noise, but work through it guys. Just work through that noise because you are definitely
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going to want to hear every word of the show, especially if you want to become a better man
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and you would not be listening to this podcast if that wasn't the case. My guest today is New York
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Times bestselling author, Steven Mansfield. Now he's a regular contributor and commentator on Fox News
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and CNN, and he advises leaders worldwide. He first rose to global attention with his groundbreaking
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book, The Faith of George W. Bush, which was an enormous bestseller. And Time Magazine in fact
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credited that with helping to shape the 2004 U.S. presidential election. His book, The Faith of
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Barack Obama was another international bestseller. He's written biographies on Booker T. Washington,
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George Whitefield, Winston Churchill, and Abraham Lincoln, among others. In one of his latest books,
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Manfield's Book of Manly Men, Steven has inspired men's events around the world where he speaks widely
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about men, leadership, faith, the lessons of history, and the forces that shape our modern
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culture. Steve Mansfield, thanks for being on the show. Excited to have you here today.
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Man, so great to be with you. Thanks for having me.
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So how does a man that typically writes about faith and historical figures start writing about
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manliness and masculinity? Is there some overlap there? How did you change directions and come up
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with the idea for your latest book? Well, there is some overlap. First of all, most of the people I write
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about in history are men. That just happens to be that way. I've written about some women.
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But most of this came about from the fact that I speak a lot at university campuses. So late at
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night, if I can avoid the faculty meetings, I'll go out with the young guys and sit at the pizza
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joint, you know, and have a late night beer and pizza. And almost always the conversation would
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circle around to manhood. What is manhood? What are men doing today? How do you be a man?
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And a lot of the young guys would just suddenly get frustrated and say, look, just tell me what to do.
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I know we're all screwed up, but just just tell me what to do. And nobody's ever told me what it
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means to be a man. And I got to thinking, man, you know, a lot of the guys, the young guys in our
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generation, just just nobody's ever told them anything, man. They're just making it up as they
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go. They're getting out of GQ magazine. They're getting it out of Esquire, which, you know, all of
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somewhat helpful, probably. But these guys are just saying, man, I just need somebody to tell me what
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to do. And I just realized that that, man, somebody's got to speak, speak about this in practical terms,
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raw terms, hard hitting terms that these guys could grasp.
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Why you? What makes you the guy to do that? And I'm really curious about some of your experiences
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that make you come from the place that, hey, I've got some of these answers and I've got some of the
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solutions and I can help you identify what it means to be a man.
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Well, I never thought that I was the guy who would do this. I knew I had fought my own battles with
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this. I was raised by a military family. My father was a high ranking military officer.
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I had to fight through my own definitions of masculinity and manhood. And then I was a football
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jock, too. I was recruited to play football in Iowa and turned it down. But my point is that my
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concepts of masculinity were screwed up. So I had to battle through all that. When these guys started
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asking the important questions about manhood, fortunately, I'd fought through some of those
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things myself and could give them some practical answers. But like them, I was always looking for
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somebody to come along and be Superman. Somebody come along and tell me how to be a man and make me one
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in about 24 hours. It just never happened. So after a while, I finally just looked around and
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said, well, if this is going to get done, guys like me are going to have to do it.
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Yeah, no, I understand exactly what you're saying. A lot of people will say or ask me somewhere along
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the lines of what makes you the expert. And my response to that is I'm not the expert. I've just
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gone through experiences in life and I'm willing to put myself out there and write about what's worked
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for me and what hasn't worked for me. So it sounds like you're on a very similar path.
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Well, there's this great episode. I joke that all truth in the universe is represented in some
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version, some edition of the Andy Griffith show. And there's this great Andy Griffith show where
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people, I'm sure people know the show, but Barney, the sheriff is out of town. And, you know,
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the, and the two, I'm sorry, Andy, the sheriff is out of town and Barney and Goober are there.
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They're kind of the sheriffs. And somebody is robbing the bank. And so they squat down behind
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a car and go, oh my gosh, we've got to call the police. And finally, one of them looks at the
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other and says, we are the police. And that's what I'm saying to men everywhere. Hey, there is no
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Superman. There is no super conference. There is no super book. We are the police. We're all
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going to have to fix this together. Let's get to it. So do you think this conversation has been
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more prevalent over the past several years? Do you, and I, I feel like that, but maybe it's because
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I'm in the space just like you are. What are your thoughts about the trend towards returning to
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masculinity, if you will? Absolutely believe it's more prevalent. I can a percent. I think it's for a
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number of reasons. First of all, I think that some of the man programs, man tours, you know,
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everything, all the men's movement stuff that related to the baby boomers doesn't really hit
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the millennials and older very well. Those movements, those books, that way of talking,
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that way of thinking, kind of a therapeutic approach doesn't really hit younger guys as
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well. And the other thing is that we're very, very aware that we're living at a time when
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manhood's failing more than ever. I mean, the statistics for boys, the specifics, the statistics
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for most young males are terrible. Men are declining in our generation and by every measurable,
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you know, method of evaluation, every measure. And it's, it's, it's tragic. And also, young
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men, I think are just coming to the point where they're dissatisfied in their own skins. I mean,
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you know, you can, you can, you can live on kind of a cultural definition of manhood for so long.
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And after a while you go, you know, I haven't done anything out in the wild. I'm a cubicle rat.
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Um, I, I haven't had a woman, you know, drawn for me to me for anything from the head up in a long
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time. Uh, you know, et cetera, et cetera. Pretty sudden you start realizing that whatever definition
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is going out of manhood, it's not working. And so I think, I tend to think that all kinds of, uh,
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sort of external practices and signs and indicators are important. I think the emphasis on shaving
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among men is important. There's a huge shaving culture and, and surge and new ways of shaving and
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new ways of getting your, your razor mailed to you and all that kind of stuff. I think all that says
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something about men and manhood and the practices of manhood. I had a barber cry recently because
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his grandfather left him his razor and it was the only indication of manhood he'd ever gotten from
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anybody in his family line. So I think all that's important. And, you know, I think we're experimenting
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with some older physical looks and some older ways of dressing. And it's kind of a retro thing.
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And these things cycle culturally and all of it to me is indicative of young men, especially
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a hungering for some new definition of manhood. Well, and you talk about that. We're failing as
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men or masculinity on all different fronts. Why do you think that is? Why is it that we're
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struggling with this? Because I believe that as well. And that's part of the reason why I started
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this project order of man, but I'd like to hear why you think that we're failing and struggling as
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men in general. Well, first of all, there's this big, broad cultural kind of academic analysis
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that men were important when we needed their muscle, when we needed them to settle the nation
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cities and conquer the West and pacify the natives. As they say, I'm Native American, so I have to make
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jokes about that. I won't take your time with that now. But the bottom line is we tend to, you know,
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with that analysis is that men are now, though they were needed before, men now don't really fit a
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social media, digital society. I call this the guerrilla theory of men, that we needed men to
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build the nation, build the cities, you know, raise the steel, et cetera, tote that barge, lift that
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bale. Once we got into a digital age, men are like guerrillas in the corner of a cage, scratching
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themselves and eating a banana and confused by what's going on around them. And women are better
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suited to this new culture. Now, I celebrate the accomplishments of women, but I do think that
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this guerrilla theory of men that's taken, become very, very popular on the university campuses and
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a lot of leading books has really damaged men who are just as capable of functioning in our current
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society as ever. So you start with that kind of academic analysis that every young male is going
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to get maybe a little bit in high school and some in college. And then you see it portrayed in popular
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culture. I mean, every, every, almost every guy on TV is either, you know, shoving 20s in somebody's
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underwear at the pole or he's an idiot, you know, or he's a big bruiser, violent kind of guy. I mean,
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there's not any just normal image of manhood out there, uh, not much. And, uh, so all of that I
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think has become part of the problem. And then I think that men have found, uh, that there are things
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that are possible now in this generation that, that have the potential to destroy them, that they
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can, they can do to themselves. I mean, we all celebrate the great powers we have in our pockets
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with our cell phones and our iPads and, and our computers and what have you. Uh, but, but the
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fact is we can destroy ourselves, uh, a couple of hours a day with what, what we can take on on our
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iPhones. Um, you know, the, uh, the average, uh, nine year old now has his first exposure to poetry,
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uh, to pornography by the time he's 11. Uh, the average young teenager in America is looking at two
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hours of porn a day. Well, look, I'm not on some anti-porn rant. Everybody's got their views of that,
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but I, but I am very strongly against, uh, young men being destroyed sexually by images going into
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their heads without anybody there to tell them what all this stuff means and how it ought to be used
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and, and what, what the proper boundaries are for it. So for all of those reasons, uh, manhood is in
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crisis. We're dropping by every academic measure. We're dropping by socioeconomic measure. We're
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dropping by health and satisfaction measures. And that's why I think it's what we're having this
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conversation. Yeah. So where does that leave the modern man? Because we hear a lot about
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some of the primary roles and functions of man is to protect and to provide. And both of those
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things are quite frankly, not as necessary as they were a hundred years ago or a thousand or even
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10,000 years ago. So where does that leave the modern man? And how do we adapt to this new society
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where women are stepping into the workforce and we're just safer than we've ever been, believe it
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or not? Well, I take a slightly different view than some guys. I mean, I don't want to push religion
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here, but I start with the fact of what we're made for. I'm crazy about my wife. I'm crazy about
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my kids, but I don't want to be the great man that could be primarily for them. I don't think that
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works. And I think that's how manhood is often presented to, to men. Look, you got this obligation
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here and you got this obligation there. You got this duty and trust me, I'm with it. I understand
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the idea of duty and obligation, all of those things, but a man's made a certain way. And if a man
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doesn't understand how he's made and what he needs and who he is, then he's not going to be satisfied
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and just telling him to do things out of duty, his whole life for his wife and his kids, for most men
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that won't work. So, so a man needs to understand, for example, that, that he is more oriented towards
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doing than he is oriented towards feeling. This doesn't mean he's a troglodyte, doesn't mean he's
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incapable of feeling anything, but that's why in my book, for example, my, the first maxim that I talked to
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guys about is I have a lot of fun with the language. So we're just playing with this language,
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but man, men do manly things, do get on with the doing. It's the doing that it's all about.
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Well, in our, in our somewhat feminized society, and I don't say that critically,
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um, and in our highly emotionally charged society, men are often approached emotionally.
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People try to motivate them emotionally, but men are oriented towards the doing. So guys,
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I want to talk to you about the doing. I want to talk to you about what the dues are,
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what the, what the deeds are of noble manhood. Well, that starts to get guys excited because
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thus far manhood has been presented to them almost entirely as emotions management. You know,
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it's like, let me figure out here how to, how to get my emotions all lined up. But that's not what
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men are good at. Uh, so whether you're talking about forgiving their dads or you're talking about
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loving their sons, or you're talking about, you know, whatever, whatever area of manhood you're
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talking about, uh, what you're primarily dealing with is, is the doing and not just trying to adjust
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yourself to feel that right there gives men a real strong sense of what they ought to be doing.
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And then, and then, yeah, men, men were always the protectors. They were always the, uh, you know,
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the ones who defended the society. And you're right. We don't need that as much today, but still,
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I believe in his life, a man has a field that he's responsible for. And what men are, what women,
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what men are good at, what men are made for is taking responsibility, uh, for their field. I don't
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mean their, their professional and career field by this. I mean, everything that's within the scope
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of what they're responsible for, uh, the house, the wife, uh, the kids, their job, their community
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service, whatever they're doing at the church, synagogue, temple, whatever, uh, whatever they,
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whatever else they've obligated themselves to. This is the field that is assigned to them. This
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is the field that they are meant to, uh, to tend and tend well. And when men are approached that way,
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Hey, you've got a certain invisible sort of field. It's not a, you know, an actual football field,
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but it's a, it's like that in your heart and your mind. This is what you're responsible for.
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Protect it, nurture it, cause everything that's within it to thrive. This is what a man does.
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Oh man, I've seen the connection start to happen in guys because finally they understand what they're
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meant to be about. And it's not just about trying to feel certain things or, or, or, or, or be their,
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their wives, you know, almost feminine kind of buddy. And I don't mean the feminine in any negative
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sense. It's just not what a man is made for. You can't believe the transformation that happens,
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especially in young men when they start thinking this way.
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Yeah. It's interesting. I'm going to go back to what you were talking about in,
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when you talked about doing an action, I see my two boys who, you know, we don't need to train
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them on this, but they want to go outside. They want to jump on the trampoline. All four of the
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boys, my couple of neighborhood kids and my two boys were outside and they put their football pads
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on and they were hitting each other and they were looking at bugs and they were starting fires.
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They're doing all this stuff that boys do. But somewhere along the way, we lose that sense of
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adventure and that sense of action. What are some of the things that you, when you say manly men do
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manly things, what are some of the specific things that you're talking about that manly men do?
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Well, it's every, every kind of a thing that, that a guy is obligated for. Men do protect.
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Men do improve themselves for themselves and for the good of others. Men are made to,
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to watch those around them and to help them achieve their best. Men are made. I move on down my list.
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For example, I talk about how men are made to bond with other men. I was just reading an article
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yesterday about how in England, the stats are heading very much like they are in the U.S.,
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where the average man doesn't have a buddy. To use the language I use, he doesn't have a band of
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brothers. Therefore, he doesn't have the team he needs around him to become the best he can be
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and to, and to achieve and to serve others well. Well, this is a matter of the doing. This is a matter of,
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of, uh, engaging other men into a band of brothers where he can, he can accomplish what he's made to
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accomplish. So, so the doing, um, is, is, uh, many different things, but it starts, for example,
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by taking care of yourself. It starts by understanding your own need for adventure and
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the wild men today are very likely to live overly domestic domesticated lives, for example, but
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you're doing, Ryan, you're taking your leisure. You recognize your own need for adventure. You
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recognize your own need. I think men need some controlled wildness in their lives, whether it's a,
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a pickup basketball game where they're likely to get smacked around or, or a ride up into the
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mountains or, or the scuba dive, whatever it is, men need that kind of adventure and wildness. And,
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and they can't expect their wives or society to give it to them. So they have to be doing that.
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They have to take responsibility for themselves and work that into their lives. Uh, so, so their
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whole list of doing many, doing things that the, the, what you're, what you're doing in the life of
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your daughter, what you're doing in the wife of your son, what you're doing in the life of your
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wife, what you're doing as a single man, uh, the way you're living out nobility, the way you're
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protecting women, the way you're improving yourself, the way you're becoming a person of character and
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strength, the way you're becoming a leader among men, all of those issues of doing. And then in my
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case, I don't apologize for the fact I come, uh, come from all this from a Christian perspective.
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So there's a issue of doing, of living to the glory of God and living a clean moral life and,
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and being the exemplary man of faith that I'm meant to be. But I realize not everybody's with me on
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that. That's not a problem. Still, there's the emphasis of doing, uh, for men that I think is
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critical. I listened to your interview that you just did with Jordan Harbinger over at the artist
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time or charm. And he was recently on our show. And I think you talked about the band of brothers as
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well. And I know how valuable that is for me, even if it's just a select group of guys, a couple of
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guys that I do Spartan races with or workout with, like you said, we play basketball every week and I
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can't tell you how good it is to get some of that aggression and some of that, whatever it may be out.
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And what's interesting is my wife even notices it. She says, you need to go work out. You need
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to go play basketball. You need to go hang out with the guys because she can recognize that in
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me when I don't have enough of that. Well, there's no question, by the way, for those of us who are
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married, a lot of what is about becoming a good, a noble, a great man, uh, is exactly what women are
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crying out for from men. Men want men of strength and character, men who are fully engaged and are fully
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connected with all of who they are on the inside. They also don't want them to be, to be, uh, you know,
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sort of playing out their need for adventure and rowdiness with them, with the women.
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Right. No, we, we, we find ourselves with other men. We find ourselves in the wild and then we come
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to our wives, you know, clean showered in our own mind, you know, in our, in our right minds,
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uh, and knowing how to treat a woman. Right. And so, yeah, I couldn't agree more that that's,
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that's a lot of the problem is we, men are told that in order to relate to women, they kind of need to
00:19:28.880
become, you know, women with beards in a sense, you know, kind of feminized in order to relate.
00:19:33.620
But, but what we love about each other is the other. It's the fact that we're other from each
00:19:38.260
other. I'm crazy about my wife. She is so foreign to me. It's not even funny. Right. I mean, I,
00:19:44.720
I'm not saying, I'm not trying to be sarcastic here. I love my wife. She's a very well-known
00:19:49.280
producer and produces a lot of rock and roll and tours and what have you. Um, and she's very strong
00:19:54.540
personality and, and very, you know, kind of Celtic, you know, buddhicia kind of, uh, rowdy
00:19:59.140
woman. Uh, but I don't understand how she moves like that when she walks down the street. I don't
00:20:04.200
care. I don't know. I don't understand how she thinks sometimes, but I'm crazed about it. So I'm
00:20:09.300
not trying to be like her. I want to be fully who I am for her. And that's what, that's what she
00:20:14.760
loves. That's what sparks the romance. That's what makes her feel safe and cared for and provided
00:20:19.820
for and protected and all of those things. I want to stay on this, this trend of band of brothers
00:20:25.280
and groups of guys. I'm really fascinated by your story of your, I, I, I think you refer to it as a
00:20:31.220
rite of passage when you were, when you were overseas. And I'd like to hear a little bit about
00:20:35.480
that because I think that's something as I raise my children that I'm interested in doing for them
00:20:41.220
and helping them understand that now you belong to this tribe or this culture of men and you've made
00:20:47.560
it in a sense. Tell me a little bit about that. Sure. Ryan, because we don't have a strong emphasis
00:20:51.960
on manhood. We're not a hundred percent sure what it is in some cases. We don't know how to sort of
00:20:56.860
commemorate it, um, and, and, and have the moments where we are, we are celebrating it and, and welcoming,
00:21:03.120
uh, young men to different phases of manhood. Very briefly, um, I was doing relief work in the
00:21:08.860
Middle East and usually we went through Damascus. This is long before the Syrian troubles now
00:21:13.440
and went on into, uh, for a kind of, well, actually it was, it was amongst the Kurds and,
00:21:17.700
and, and Rocky Kurdistan, but I got stuck in Damascus. Um, it was there for a couple of weeks
00:21:23.160
and a friend of mine decided to have a party on a roof for me. It was great except that nobody could
00:21:27.340
spend and nobody could speak English really. And so we ate and we kind of nodded at each other and
00:21:31.820
welcomed each other. And, you know, it was exotic to be there and all that. Finally, an older man
00:21:35.840
turned to me and said, uh, do you have a son? And I said, I do. What is his name? He asked.
00:21:42.120
And I said, his name is Jonathan. He said, he looked at me like he was just announcing the
00:21:46.340
second coming. He said, well, then you have a new name. And I didn't understand what was going on.
00:21:51.600
Finally, the one guy who spoke the most English said, you know, in Arab culture, when a man has
00:21:56.300
a son, it's such an honor to him that they actually give him an honorific name, a special honorary name.
00:22:01.020
And it's Abu, which is the Arab word father and a shortened version of the son's name. So in my case,
00:22:06.920
my son being Jonathan, they announced that my name was Abu John. Well, so they, when that was
00:22:12.960
announced, they started celebrating like Jonathan had been born 20 minutes before. I mean, the dancing
00:22:18.700
began, they, somebody clapped their hands in that Arab way and other food came out and, and so on.
00:22:24.360
And a lot of, some of the guys that there were bodyguards, it was the dancing started. Some of the
00:22:27.340
guys were holding my hand and their other hand was a Kalashnikov, you know, or, you know, when a dude,
00:22:32.420
when the dude dancing with you has a machine gun, he leads, trust me. And it was awesome. This went
00:22:38.240
on for three, four hours into the wee hours of the morning. They sent me back to my hotel with hugs
00:22:43.360
and, and, you know, all kinds of blessings. When I got back, I was pretty, pretty changed and I
00:22:49.660
couldn't figure out why I sat up the rest of the night trying to figure out what's going on. I'll
00:22:52.520
tell you what it was. Even though I was raised in a military culture, my father, like I said,
00:22:57.020
army officer, even though I played football every year, even though I, you know, obviously ended
00:23:02.080
puberty. I obviously went to high school, went to college, you know, got advanced degrees, had a
00:23:06.860
wife, had children. And not at any of those transitions had any group of men ever welcomed
00:23:12.600
me to any phase of manhood. We had no rituals. We had no, you know, in my culture growing up,
00:23:19.700
just normal American Protestant. We didn't have bar mitzvahs like our Jewish friends do in 13,
00:23:23.920
when the young man becomes a son of the covenant, as they call it. I had never had any moment when any
00:23:29.420
group of men said, welcome to manhood. And it was done by a bunch of Arabs, Syrian parliamentarians
00:23:36.100
on the roof of a hotel in Damascus. And it changed me. When I came back to the States,
00:23:42.340
I looked around and I realized, you know, we're not doing this at any level. So I have really,
00:23:46.260
I mean, it really fed a lot of what I'm teaching and writing now, but it also made me turn to fathers
00:23:50.900
like you, Ryan and say, absolutely. You have got to have rituals that mark these transitions into
00:23:59.660
manhood. And when a young man, you know, turns into puberty, a lot of fathers that I'm working
00:24:05.960
with now talking to, they'll have certain rituals. They'll have the kid conquer something, maybe go
00:24:10.680
out in the woods and hike up a mountain. He couldn't get up a few years before, you know, or whatever,
00:24:14.840
they'll have something, you know, and then of course, a transition out of high school, we don't just make
00:24:19.200
about a high school graduation ceremony. We have a welcome into young adulthood kind of thing. And
00:24:23.860
then, you know, on and on and on. I mean, it's, there's no set pattern. I don't have a book of
00:24:28.200
rituals, but I'm urging men to welcome, to create a culture in which they can welcome the young men
00:24:34.320
into manhood. And I got to tell you, it is absolutely changing the lives of those young men.
00:24:39.060
Yeah, I can see that. My son actually turned, my oldest son turns eight in the spring of next year.
00:24:44.260
And we've already got some plans for that, which is hiking up in the wilderness. And we're
00:24:49.140
going to spend some time and he's going to have his own pack. I'll have my own pack. And then he'll
00:24:52.640
earn probably a knife. I'm still trying to convince my wife that he should earn a 22 rifle. That's an
00:24:58.760
uphill battle. But I think, you know, over the next six months, I think I can win that one. But
00:25:02.400
I'm really excited about that. And I know that he is already looking forward to the challenge
00:25:07.640
and the overcoming of that obstacle. And then of course, the reward or that comes along with that as
00:25:13.420
well. Well, I can't, I just can't commend that enough. And I urge it for every man. What I was
00:25:19.060
able to do was I sail a bit. I spent part of my year in Annapolis, Maryland. And when my son was
00:25:24.680
approaching 13, I said, if you fulfill these certain things, the grades are right, you know,
00:25:29.320
the things I'm asking you to read, you'll read and we'll do some things together. We'll go, we'll go
00:25:33.480
sailing. So when he turned 13, we took his two favorite older men with me and we got a 41 foot
00:25:39.480
hunter sailboat and sailed around the Abacos. And he, he was made the captain of the dinghy,
00:25:45.380
the dinghy for those who don't sail is the little boat that's attached to a bigger sailboat where you
00:25:49.920
can go back and forth to the store at the shore and all that stuff. Well, he was the total captain of
00:25:53.640
the dinghy. Nobody started it. Nobody got in it. Nobody did anything with it without, without his
00:25:57.640
permission. And he would run around. And I got to tell you, and then at night we talk about what we
00:26:01.880
saw in Jonathan's life and what we dreamed for him and what we had admired about him. I got to tell you,
00:26:06.940
it just absolutely changed his world. And he's had some, some grit and some gut and some,
00:26:12.240
and some joy and some passion since that moment that I've never seen him happen to have before.
00:26:16.720
It was all because we welcomed him to that vital stage of manhood.
00:26:20.480
Very cool. Very cool. So I got a little bit of this growing up. I grew up without a permanent
00:26:24.920
father figure, but I look about, I look at some of these rites of passages for me. I spent some time
00:26:29.500
in the military. In fact, I think I was in Iraq in 2005, which I think was about the same time
00:26:34.480
you were in Iraq, if I understand correctly. So we got some of it there. I got some of it from
00:26:39.400
sports as well. Go ahead. No, no. I was just, I just want to make clear that I've never served
00:26:43.580
in uniform, but yes, I was actually there embedded with the troops for about a month in 2005. So we
00:26:48.740
were maybe there at the same time. So I'm really curious what growing up in a military family and
00:26:54.040
then also being with the troops that you were for the amount of time that you were, what are some of
00:26:58.340
the things that you see from the military and this band of brothers and rites of passages that we may be
00:27:03.680
able to take out of the military and transform into civilian life? That's a great question because
00:27:09.280
I think every man is made in some way for some aspect of military culture. I liked the fact that
00:27:16.280
the instant assumption was that anybody could help you improve at any moment. In other words,
00:27:21.440
no matter where you are, anybody in uniform, whether they're higher ranking or not, can turn to you
00:27:25.840
and help you improve. It's like when guys get together and play football. The moment you step on the
00:27:31.360
field, the moment you're on a football team, anybody can say to you, hey, get off the line
00:27:35.400
faster. Hey, go out wider. Hey, go longer. Hey, make that cut tighter. Nobody's offended. Nobody's
00:27:41.040
upset. You know, the assumption is we're here. We're here to win. Anything I can say to you that
00:27:45.280
makes you better, I'm going to say. I call it a free fire zone. And in the military, there's a
00:27:49.100
constant free fire zone. I know that older officers can stop any, you know, junior officer or any non-comers.
00:27:54.760
That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about everybody can help you be better, learn the tricks.
00:27:58.260
How do you get a better shine on the boots? How do you move faster with this thing? How do you
00:28:01.140
clean that gun faster? Anything can be improved. I like the sense that everything's done in terms
00:28:06.380
of unit. Call it Band of Brothers if you want. Everything's unit. You know, we know from the
00:28:11.080
writings of the great historians and military analysts that when it really comes down to it,
00:28:15.400
soldiers in the field at war don't really fight for the big, big causes that the politicians espouse.
00:28:21.100
They fight for each other. They're really fighting for each other. They don't want to let each other
00:28:25.200
down. That's what that's what a soldier's life really boils down to. So I believe in that. I
00:28:30.500
understand that being part of something, being part of the unit, being part of something bigger
00:28:34.580
than yourself, something that's making you improve, something that's speaking into your life. And then
00:28:38.620
all the other things of the rituals that we're talking about, of the systems of improvement,
00:28:43.900
of the accountability, of the expectation that you will constantly improve yourself for the unit.
00:28:49.480
All of that stuff is to me essential parts of manhood. Yeah, it's interesting that you talk about
00:28:56.120
men serving themselves rather than these big causes that the politicians advocate. And I actually had
00:29:01.380
an interview a couple of weeks ago and somebody asked me about my time in Iraq, how it felt to be
00:29:07.180
serving and protecting my country in the heat of the moment. And looking back, it wasn't about
00:29:13.460
serving my country. It wasn't about protecting. It wasn't those things, although those are noble and
00:29:18.120
they sound really good. It was about making sure that our friends and the guys that we're with and
00:29:23.900
spending time with are protected and safe when we look after them. So I second exactly what you just
00:29:28.480
said. Well, and I think some people would say that sounds unpatriotic, but quite frankly, it's for
00:29:33.280
the politicians and the military theorists to figure out the big fat causes, bell eyes, they say in
00:29:38.220
Latin, the big cause of the war, the big justification. What I want you to think about when you're in the
00:29:43.440
field, I want you to think about how to stay alive, how to protect those around you and how to
00:29:47.320
execute well. So I'm fine for every soldier to be thinking about what his unit is supposed to do,
00:29:51.440
how he can do the right thing for his band of brothers. That's fine with me. That's not really
00:29:56.060
their job to be sitting there formulating poems to the cause of the war. Let somebody else do that.
00:30:01.700
And I think that's how manhood is. I mean, the guys I walk with, I walk with some real good guys,
00:30:07.060
a couple of guys in my band of brothers are ex-NFL, tough, manly, funny. Two of my five are
00:30:14.460
African-American, hilarious and great guys. And I got to tell you what, they spare me nothing,
00:30:20.280
man. If they see something that's got to change, that really is what starts to happen in the
00:30:24.640
trenches, as you know better than I do, in the military. How do you give somebody permission
00:30:29.120
to do that? Because I know we tend to tread lightly, especially in this culture of political
00:30:34.120
correctness, that we don't want to offend anybody or step in anybody's toes. How do you form a
00:30:38.620
relationship so close that you feel comfortable giving feedback and then also being open to
00:30:44.940
receiving from your guys? Well, it really is something you've got to be very intentional about.
00:30:50.800
First of all, most men have a hard time even making friends. And so I talked to guys a little
00:30:55.300
bit about how to make friends, how to just move from being kind of the isolated male,
00:30:58.700
typical in the Western world, to having friends. But once you've got any kind of friends at all,
00:31:03.240
there are a couple of simple steps to simply moving from just kind of casual friendships
00:31:07.660
to friendships where you've got that free fire zone. And for me, a lot of times,
00:31:11.980
once I'm already hanging with a guy, once I'm talking to him, I'll get his advice about something
00:31:15.720
in my life. Man, I'm watching you and you are one disciplined dude, man. You work out all the time.
00:31:20.620
You can tell I got a little weight to lose. I want to get buff like you. Can you help me with this?
00:31:24.360
Can you talk to me about what works? How do you eat? What do you do? And I'll let him talk to me.
00:31:28.220
Well, now already I'm putting him in a mentor role with me, which is exactly what I want.
00:31:32.040
And then maybe we'll go with that for a while. Maybe then he'll ask me advice and we'll start to,
00:31:35.900
in other words, we move the friendship just a little bit beyond, hey, let's just go watch the
00:31:39.200
game to, hey, let's as men help each other be better men. And then finally, when I feel like
00:31:43.960
it's a good fit, I'll turn to him and say, listen, there are some things I really want to perfect in
00:31:47.960
my life. I want to be a good man. I want to be a really fine man. I sense that you do too.
00:31:52.420
I want to tell you, and this of course doesn't happen on the first day. It happens down the road,
00:31:55.740
but I'll finally say to them, I want you to say to me anything you need to say to make me a better man.
00:32:01.280
You know who I want to be. We've talked enough about it. You know what kind of man I want to be.
00:32:05.040
Um, I think you've got a good, good grasp on that. And I think that's what you want to be.
00:32:08.960
So from here on out, as long as you and I are friends, I want you to make an agreement with me.
00:32:13.540
I'll use the word covenant in some cases, but I want you to make an agreement with me
00:32:16.820
that you will say to me anything that needs to be said to make me a better man, total free fire
00:32:22.320
zone between us. And I'll do the same with you. And when I can get to that point, that's usually when
00:32:27.060
I've got a lifetime band of brothers, even if we end up moving away from each other or whatever,
00:32:30.520
we still will check in by phone years and years later to check with each other and get together
00:32:34.620
when we can, because that's the relationship. Most men don't have. They don't have anybody around
00:32:39.760
them who can't, who basically it's got to be somebody who loves you, who's not afraid of you
00:32:44.200
and who wants to see you become better and we'll say, or do whatever they have to do to make that
00:32:47.900
happen. That's when you've got something special. Makes me want to step it up a little bit with some
00:32:52.420
of my buddies. So I'm going to take some of that, that information ideas to heart. I want to jump
00:32:56.380
around here for a minute because we have been bouncing around. You, you covered two of the
00:33:00.320
maxims that you talk in, in your book, which is manly men do manly things and then manly men tend
00:33:05.160
their fields. Let's talk about the other two, because I know there's four. Let's talk about the
00:33:09.060
other two briefly if we can. Sure. The next one we've already been touching on, but it's great to
00:33:12.720
revisit for just a moment. And that is manly men build manly men. I, I, I'm a big believer.
00:33:18.780
Everybody, anybody who knows what I do, I write books, I speak, I do conferences, I do television.
00:33:23.580
I believe in all of it, but I think that ultimately what builds a man, uh, what makes a man into what
00:33:30.160
he's meant to be, uh, other than what he can bring to it himself is basically other men helping him
00:33:36.600
and building him into manhood. And I want to say, especially this has to do with the boys. What I
00:33:40.620
urge men to do is to build a culture of noble manhood around them that they can then initiate
00:33:44.900
the boys into. I'm going to talk about this for just a quick second. My, I'm a big believer in the
00:33:50.100
idea that boys are suffering today horribly because men are not there to articulate who they
00:33:55.580
are and to explain manhood. I, there's a great article in a recent Esquire, our Esquire magazine
00:34:01.340
from last year. Um, and it's all about how boys it's called the war on boys. And it's a psychologist
00:34:07.320
says that because we, uh, don't, don't have men articulating what it means to be a boy and what
00:34:13.700
adolescence means and what can happen in a boy's life that we're drugging boys to death. Um, and
00:34:19.300
we're over prescribing. Now I want to say automatically I'm not anti-medicine man. If you
00:34:24.580
need whatever you need for depression or whatever Ritalin, whatever you and your doctor agreed
00:34:28.560
to fine. But, but this psychologist makes the point that a lot of what's going on with
00:34:32.840
boys is they're just being normal boys, but it looks so odd in a school setting or some
00:34:38.180
other setting that we started to drug what we don't know what to deal with. And I'm convinced
00:34:42.400
that men need to be able to articulate what's going on with the boy. Quick, quick story. When
00:34:45.940
my son was about 12, um, uh, suddenly he and a police officer appeared in my office. The officer
00:34:52.460
happened to have been a friend of mine. Thank God. Uh, great big African-American, uh, SWAT team
00:34:57.320
leader, uh, in Nashville. And, uh, my friend, my African-American friend winked at me and said,
00:35:02.300
sir, is this son? Is this your son? Well, of course he knew it was, but I said, yes. Um, he said,
00:35:07.340
do you let him lay in the road at night? I said, well, no, sir. What's happened? He explained to me that my
00:35:11.860
son had decided to test his manhood by laying at night and at one of the busiest streets in Nashville
00:35:17.880
to see how close he'd let the cars get to him, uh, before he jumped up and ran to the side. Now,
00:35:23.060
of course he was an idiot. Uh, but, uh, but the fact is by, so we, my, my, my SWAT team member,
00:35:28.920
my SWAT director friend, and I went through this little ritual. He quote unquote, arrested Jonathan,
00:35:33.320
put him in the back of the car. I negotiated with him, got my son back. You know, we had a great laugh
00:35:38.000
about that later. Well, I want you to know his mother, his grandmother, his teachers,
00:35:42.820
they institutionalized. They wanted to hit him with tranquilizer darts. They wanted him to run
00:35:47.240
around with, you know, uh, special vests or whatever. I mean, they just thought he'd lost
00:35:51.000
his mind. Well, almost understand. I threatened him. I took away everything he loved. I disciplined
00:35:56.060
him. I, you know, restricted him for the next 50 years. I mean, I did whatever I had to do.
00:36:00.560
And then when it was all over and I had everybody taken care of, I went to my office and laughed
00:36:04.280
my head off because, because I know what that is. You know what that is. That's a boy hitting
00:36:11.060
adolescence and testing himself. Now it told me as a father, he needs some more wildness in his life.
00:36:16.760
I need to be more in there. We started, you know, doing more pickup games and breaking noses and going
00:36:21.440
out into the wild. And my son wanted to take another step up into being a man. But what I didn't think
00:36:26.640
was that I needed to drug him for the next eight years of his life, uh, because he had just done what I
00:36:31.080
knew to be normal adolescence. So because I was able to be there and articulate his path, both to
00:36:36.260
him and others, then he wasn't treated like a mental case and is going to be a very fine young
00:36:41.680
man. Now he's going to be 30 this spring and he's, he's wonderful. My point is that that's what's,
00:36:45.980
that's, that's what's causing the war on boys is since we don't have a band of brothers, that third
00:36:49.940
principle of mine, manly men build manly men. Since we don't have a band of brothers around us,
00:36:54.900
we can't bring up the boys in it. We can't articulate what the journey to manhood is.
00:36:58.580
So the society just drugs it to death because they don't know what else to do. And this,
00:37:02.520
this psychologist in this SQ article, again, the war on boys makes a, makes a fantastic case that
00:37:07.380
all of us need to know about. Yeah. I mean, I see that with my, again, my oldest son, we're playing
00:37:12.800
basketball and I'm coaching his team. And at the end of the game, unfortunately at this point that
00:37:17.120
he's in second grade that they're not keeping score, but at seven and eight years old, these boys,
00:37:22.900
the first thing they want to know is, did we win the game? And that's their competitive nature and
00:37:27.560
that's their drive. And that's how they measure themselves as them being successful. And so
00:37:31.460
I'm actually going to the athletic director and saying, Hey, these boys are old enough that they
00:37:35.420
ought to start keeping score. It's not going to hurt anybody's feelings. It's going to help them
00:37:38.800
improve and know where they stand. So I, I see the value of that. Are you talking about Dr. Leonard
00:37:43.880
Sachs by chance when, when you, when you talk about that article? You know, I forgive me. I do not
00:37:48.540
remember the author's name. It was the March, I believe it's the March, 2014 edition of Esquire,
00:37:53.620
the war on boys, but forgive me. I don't remember the author's name. I'll have to look that up because
00:37:58.300
it sounds like a lot. I I'm reading a book called boys adrift right now by Dr. Leonard Sachs, which
00:38:03.020
talks a lot about what it is that you're saying. And my wife has read it as well. So we'll link that
00:38:07.300
up and then I'll look through that magazine as well and make a link in the show notes. Good, good,
00:38:10.960
good. Yeah. I think it's, I think it's critically important and I think you're exactly right. See
00:38:14.360
what's happened and what you're doing by going to the athletic director where your boys play is,
00:38:18.680
is just right. You're a father, you're involved, you understand what boys need. Uh, you know,
00:38:22.640
you're not wanting to, to, to overwhelm them, but, but you're aware as a father who's out in the real
00:38:28.040
world that, that they're going to be having to keep score, so to speak in their lives, that there
00:38:32.160
comes a point where that has to be done in a controlled situation. And so this idea that we
00:38:36.400
just sort of play and Yahoo, and then it's all over. And then we all go home that see, you're
00:38:40.640
articulating the journey of a young man because eventually they're butts or didn't we, did we get
00:38:44.820
the job done or didn't we, are we, are we, did we make, did we fulfill the job we were sent to do or
00:38:49.000
didn't we? And a father understands they need to know that somebody else might not. So I applaud
00:38:53.200
you for getting in there and, you know, contending for what you know is right for your boys.
00:38:57.280
I'll let you know how it turns out. It could be an uphill battle, but we'll see. So talk to me
00:39:01.080
about the fourth maxim. We're winding down on time a little bit here, so let's address that. And I've
00:39:04.660
got a couple other questions for you as well. Sure. Absolutely. I believe that manly men live to the
00:39:09.440
glory of God. And that's not just because I want to preach and make it all religiously. It's because
00:39:13.280
I believe as men that the manhood that we're meant to fulfill is not contrary to our faith and our
00:39:18.700
connection to God, but a fulfillment of it. And I really don't think that a man can fulfill everything
00:39:22.940
he's made to fulfill and be, unless he's got God's help and God's work in his life. I love my wife.
00:39:28.480
As I've said many times, I'm not just making a case. I really am crazy about my wife, but like I say,
00:39:32.540
she's, she's foreign to me. She's other, well, I need God's help to be patient with her, to understand
00:39:37.040
her, to be gentle with her, to, to recognize what she needs. I don't have the insight I need
00:39:41.560
with my kids. I need some, some have something different from God. And I want to, I want to
00:39:47.860
live for his glory because I've been made that way, but I also need his help to live that way.
00:39:51.540
One quick, quick story. I know we're tight for time. My, my daughter is off doing acting in New
00:39:57.140
York now, and she's 25, 26. But when she was in high school, I used to have to go pick her up at
00:40:01.380
school every afternoon. And I had to walk into a big atrium to do it. Well, one day when we were
00:40:06.180
driving home, my daughter turned to me and said, dad, you know, whenever you walk in the room and I'm
00:40:11.460
talking to a boy and he's got his back to where you're walking in, he says, she said, as soon as
00:40:16.240
he walks, you walk in the room, it changes the boys I'm talking to. They can't even see you,
00:40:20.940
but they, they gentle up. They take a little step backwards. One of them, one of them even messed
00:40:25.520
up and called her ma'am. They were the same age. He called her ma'am by accident. I said, well,
00:40:30.220
honey, what do you think that is? She said, well, you know, I think you're just in charge. I think
00:40:35.560
you're just, I think you just have authority for my life. And I think they just feel it, even though
00:40:40.460
you're 50, 50 feet away and they can't even see you. And that to me was one of the best statements.
00:40:45.020
It's not a big ego thing, but one of the best statements of, look, I, I cared for this girl
00:40:50.060
before she was born, prayed for her every day, spanked her, disciplined her, funded her, taught
00:40:54.980
her. I mean, come on, of course I have authority with her life for her life. Of course, Mufasa's in
00:41:00.680
the room, you know, I mean, I walk around feeling some big, you know, metal armor on me or something,
00:41:06.260
but, but that's the spiritual side of what we're talking about. Yes. Manhood is, uh, it's character
00:41:12.040
and it's practicality and it's hammering things out. In fact, foxholes, but it's also, I'll call
00:41:16.980
it grace, a gift, a spirit. It's a, it's, it's, it's a part of a way a man unfolds that God intends
00:41:22.460
and with God's help. And I was so pleased that day that my daughter recognized that there was
00:41:26.800
something beyond just my physical presence and intellect that was involved in this business
00:41:30.840
of fathering. And I think that's true in all of manhood. Well, I'm excited to ask you this
00:41:35.000
next question because I've read your book. I enjoyed your book. It's one of my, my favorite
00:41:38.900
books on the subject of masculinity. And so my question for you is what does it mean to be a
00:41:43.680
man? I believe that man, that to be a man is to, is to own your field before God. Now there are many
00:41:52.680
different definitions and I certainly don't think that I've got the only one, but the main thing that
00:41:56.840
brings manhood together for me is that a man understands he's been assigned a field in his life,
00:42:03.520
a field, not just being his profession again, but all that that is he's responsible for and all that
00:42:08.120
he's been given. And he owns it and he owns it in strength and character and he owns it to the glory
00:42:14.260
of God and with God's help. And that includes taking care of himself, knowing his own need for
00:42:18.960
the wild, his own health needs, his own psychological need, his need for a band of brothers, all the way
00:42:24.160
through to what a daughter uniquely needs, a son uniquely needs, a wife uniquely needs, a date uniquely
00:42:28.820
needs, et cetera. A man owns his field with the help of God and to the glory of God. And when I
00:42:34.440
think of manhood that way, it starts to change things for me. Stephen, how do we connect with
00:42:39.260
you? If we want to learn more about what you're doing, we want to connect with you. We want to
00:42:41.840
get your book. How do we do that? How do we go about finding you? Well, the book is pretty much
00:42:45.880
everywhere men's books are sold, especially on Amazon, but I'd love to hear from guys at
00:42:49.400
Steven Mansfield dot TV, Steven Mansfield dot TV. And my Twitter is just at Mansfield
00:42:55.840
rights. One word Mansfield, right. So Steven Mansfield dot TV and Mansfield rights.
00:43:02.120
Steven, I appreciate you. I appreciate your book and your time. Thanks for joining us on
00:43:06.000
the show and imparting some of your wisdom and insights. I appreciate it, Ryan. I'm
00:43:09.040
proud of you. Thanks for letting me be with you, buddy. Bye-bye.
00:43:11.860
There you have it, man. Mr. Steven Mansfield talking about rites of passage, the need for
00:43:15.500
excitement and adventure into men's lives, how to build a band of brothers and his
00:43:19.240
four manly maxims. Again, if you want to check out a couple of resources to follow
00:43:22.900
up on the show first head to order of men.com slash zero three eight to gain access to the
00:43:28.040
links, the highlights, and all of the information we talked about today. And next you're going
00:43:31.720
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00:43:36.480
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00:43:41.340
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00:44:05.780
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00:44:24.000
Guys, I look forward to talking to you next week. But until then, take action and become
00:44:27.740
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00:44:32.680
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