#261： Solitude, Friendship, & How NOT to Be an Excellent Sheep
Episode Stats
Summary
William Dresowitz is the author of several books and speeches, including A Jane Austen Education, Excellent Sheep, and Solitude and Leadership. In this episode, we discuss what most so-called leaders get wrong about leadership, and why learning to be alone with your thoughts helps forge better leaders.
Transcript
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Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.
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There's a growing feeling amongst Americans that we're suffering a crisis of leadership,
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not only in our government, but our families and our businesses. People today just seem to
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have less independence or agency and are less autonomous and more directed by others. What
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behind this lackluster leadership and what's the solution? Well, I guess they argue the problem
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has to do with the way we're bringing up what he calls excellent sheep. And the solution is equal
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doses of deep solitude and deep friendship. His name is William Dresowitz, and he's the author of
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several books and speeches, including a Jane Austen education, excellent sheep and solitude
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and leadership. And today on the show, William and I discuss what most so-called leaders get wrong
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about leadership and why learning to be alone with your thoughts helps forge better leaders.
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We discuss the history of friendship and why friends are so hard to make as an adult and what
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you can do to form deeper relationships. And then William and I also talk about how young
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people can stop being excellent sheep and jumping through hoop after hoop that's put in front of
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them in order to start living on their own terms. We cap our conversation with an exploration of why
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men should give Jane Austen a chance and the life lessons we can get from her novels. This is an
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eclectic but wisdom-filled podcast. You're definitely going to hear something you'll end up mentally
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chewing on for days to come. After the show's over, check out the show notes at
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aom.is slash sheep. William Dresowitz, welcome to the show.
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So I'm a big fan of your work. You've written about things or lectured about things that really
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interest me. Leadership, friendship, solitude. You have a book about Jane Austen. We wrote a post
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a while back ago about while every man should read Jane Austen and your book provided some useful
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guidance here. Let's start off talking about leadership. You gave a lecture at West Point
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and you've written in your book, Excellent Sheep, that while today's top universities and
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organizations say they're here to create leaders, they're actually not doing so. What are we getting
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wrong about leadership today at universities and in organizations across the country?
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Well, let me answer that in a couple of ways because I think we're getting two things wrong.
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First of all, our understanding of leadership is desperately wrong, but also more broadly,
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something that I think is implicit in your question, quite frankly, which is that we focus
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on the concept too much altogether. I think we need to ask ourselves, A, what does leadership
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really mean? And B, why is it so important to us all of a sudden? Are there maybe other things
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that we're missing? So in terms of universities especially, I think at this point, leadership,
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the way they use it just means being successful. I think it's become a euphemism for success. And when
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schools say that we produce leaders, what they're telling students and parents is we are going to make
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sure that you're successful. We're going to make sure that you make a lot of money and have high status.
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Broadly speaking, you're going to get to the top. You're going to be able to be a member of the
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elite. So that means that leadership is being used in a way that's essentially without content,
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right? It's simply about the position that you occupy. It has no reference, first of all,
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to anyone else, right? It's not about leading other people. It's not about the good of other people.
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And that becomes really clear when you look back on the way the word leadership was used at,
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you know, Ivy League institutions, Harvard Jail, Princeton, back in the day, back when they were
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in all kinds of bad ways, really segregated. You know, they were finishing schools for white male
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Protestant aristocrats, basically, the Wasp aristocracy. The difference, you know, for all that was so wrong
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with, say, Ivy's then, the difference is that when they talked about leadership, it actually meant
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something. It meant you guys were born into privilege. You were born into the leadership of
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the country. And that isn't about what you're going to get from it. It's not about wealth, status, power,
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fame. It's about what you need to give. It's about what you need to give to the society that you are being
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put in charge of. You need to make sure that you hand that society and its institutions on in better
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shape than you found it. And that means not thinking about yourself first, but rather thinking
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about other people first. It means duty. It means sacrifice. It means responsibility.
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All these things that, you know, they would try to inculcate on the football field back when football
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was about something other than television contracts. All that's been lost. So that's my first problem
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with it, is that we understand leadership in a really hollowed out, self-centered way.
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And my second problem is just mainly because of the way we understand it now. I think we put too
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much emphasis on it, especially in colleges. There are a lot of other things to get done in college
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that are more important than becoming a success, a leader so-called. And those other things, I think,
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are increasingly being sacrificed, starting with actually getting a rigorous education
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that teaches you to be a critical thinker. And I don't mean a critical thinker in the way people
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do now, like, you know, you learn to be a good lawyer. I mean someone who can really examine their
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own beliefs and the beliefs of the society around them and figure out whether they think they're good
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beliefs and whether they need to be changed. I don't think schools should think of themselves as being
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in the business of producing leaders. I think they should be in the business of producing,
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Yeah. Yes, that is the right word. Yes, that's the right word. Yeah, thinkers. You know,
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there's an alternative to being a leader or a follower, right? I mean, I think when we talk about
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leaders, there's this, you know, either you're a leader or a follower. No, actually, you can just be
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a thinker. You can be a citizen. You can be a dissenter. You can be someone who tries to stand
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outside of that whole dynamic of the people on the top and the people on the bottom.
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Okay, that's great. There's a lot to unpack there. Let's get back to that first point you
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made about how our concept of leadership has been hollowed out. Because as you're describing
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how leadership was portrayed, you know, a century ago, I was thinking of guys like Teddy Roosevelt,
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right? You know, from an aristocratic family. And he had this like sense of duty that he owed
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something to the country. So I mean, what changed? What changed in our culture where that idea of
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leadership became hollowed out? Right. Well, I think a lot changed and probably too much to even
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talk about it, including the discrediting of ideas like authority, the discrediting of ideas. I mean,
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I think this is maybe particularly relevant for your podcast. I think many of the values that we
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associate with adulthood, like sacrifice and responsibility and authority have been discredited.
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You know, we sort of don't want to become adults. That's a bad thing to become. But, you know,
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more specifically with the colleges, you know, who goes to college and what they do there and how
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they're chosen. So basically, we've shifted from this, you know, very narrow, very exclusionary
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aristocracy, where people who were born into it were, you know, pretty much automatically got to go
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to an Ivy League college and were inculcated with this ethic of sacrifice. Doesn't mean they all lived up
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to it, but they were inculcated with this ethic. And then about 50 years ago, I mean, there's a very
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specific historical change that needed to happen. The schools opened themselves up, they started to,
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you know, admit women, affirmative action, remove the quotas on Jews, and, and shifted the whole
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emphasis of their admissions process to what we call meritocracy, right? SAT scores, grades, AP test
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scores. There's, you know, a lot of that needed to happen was good that it happened, but it turned the
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whole business into a much more individualistic, self-seeking, what can I get for myself kind of
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endeavor. And it happened, I think, not coincidentally, at the same time that society in general was moving
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from a kind of, you know, New Deal, Great Society sort of ethos of, of social solidarity and social good
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to a sort of more Reagan-esque, neoliberal, every man for himself. And, and, and despite the fact that
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the colleges tend to be hotbeds of liberalism and to see themselves as liberal institutions,
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that part of it, you know, admitting students in a meritocratic way and training them to be
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careerist professionals, which is basically what they do, but they call it leadership, right? That is
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not a very liberal thing at all. Right, right. And I guess also you talk about in your, your book
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that, you know, a consumerist mindset has also creeped in, right? And in our universities and
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that's kind of taken over in leadership, like what's in it for me? Well, uh, absolutely. I mean,
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it's, it's a consumerist mindset from the student's point of view, but also from the university's point
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of view. Uh, they treat their students as consumers who, to whom they have to provide certain
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things, you know, all kinds of things, including this notion that we're going to make you leaders
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and what that's code for, uh, instead of an educational institution, which is about demanding
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things and treating their students as students. A student is someone from whom things are expected,
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not someone who is entitled to certain things. So that's, that's the consumerist mindset in academia
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now. Yeah. So, I mean, these, uh, these students who are graduating from these elite schools,
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I mean, they are becoming CEOs and leaders in government. I mean, if these folks really aren't
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leaders, what are they? Yeah, right. Well, they're bureaucrats, uh, for one thing. Uh, I mean,
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look, you, you, I think, I think the question you asked contains a very important answer, which is
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that the leadership class we have, which I think has been very conspicuously failing, uh, at least
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since the Iraq war, if not earlier is transparently a product of the schools that train our so-called
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leaders and what they train them to be are self self-dealing, self-serving, self-enclosed,
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uh, and quite frankly, very, very timid, very unimaginative. Uh, and we've seen, you know,
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across the board, whether it's the banks or government or the military, uh, the media,
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uh, I mean, this huge sort of, uh, herd of people who call them leads themselves leaders,
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but in fact are all the things that I just said. They're, they're, they're leaders only
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by virtue of the fact that they occupy certain positions. They don't display traits of leadership
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for the most part. Yeah. They're like managers or technocrats.
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Um, they're managers and technocrats, but, uh, I think, and that's bad enough, but I think of a
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certain type, um, of a type that's, that's, listen, the best example for me, he's actually
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British, but it's not really that different there. I mentioned him in the book, uh, Tony Hayward,
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who everybody remembered 10 years ago, he was the CEO of BP during the Gulf oil spill.
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So his company was perpetrating the greatest environmental disaster in history.
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And he, he, he, he held this news conference where he said, you know,
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I'm suffering too. I want my life back. Like I want my life back. That's, that was what he was
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focused on because for him being CEO of BP was having a great lifestyle and any sense of responsibility
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was just absent from that equation. Right. So, you know, at least if they were good managers,
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it wouldn't be so bad, but they're managers who were thinking about themselves first, you know,
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and we could, I mean, we could go down the whole list. So much of what came out when after wall
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street collapsed was the way banks were defrauding their own clients, the way they were, the way they
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had, you know, um, basically bought the political system to create regulations that benefited them,
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but harm society at large, the way they were, if not defrauding, then at least endangering all the
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people who lost mortgages, all the people who should never have had mortgages in the first place.
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Right. I mean, this is the point. There's no sense of stewardship anymore. There's no sense of
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larger responsibility. There's no sense of corporate citizenship.
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Right. And you talk, I like how you talk about how Heart of Darkness, uh, provides some insight
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into our current leadership crisis. You know, we often think of Heart of Darkness is this, uh,
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book about colonialism and race and things like, which it is, but you are, you, you argue that it's
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actually a great insight into bureaucracies and how they can just make us dumb and terrible.
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Yeah. Right. I mean, we tend to, you know, we think about Kurtz, that sort of mysterious,
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charismatic kind of monster who's sitting there at the middle of the spider web and,
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you know, in Apocalypse Now, which is adopted from Heart of Darkness, that's the Marlon Brando
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character. But most of what the, the protagonist narrator Marlo encounters along the way, we forget
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about that because it's less exciting and it's actually designed to be less exciting. It's the
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bureaucracy of this company. It's actually, he spells it with a capital C. It was like the, the,
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the Belgian, you know, company that ran the Congo for the Belgian government. Right. And it's,
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and we see the, um, this other kind of evil, he calls them flabby devils in the novel. It's not the
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red-eyed devil of Kurtz who has this kind of charisma and life force. It's this kind of flabby
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devil of bureaucracy that actually is much more powerful than Kurtz that destroys Kurtz. And that,
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and it's all about keeping the system going for your own benefit without having any convictions
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behind it at all. In fact, it's not even an awareness that there could be convictions,
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right? So there's nothing, there's no ideal, there's no principle that you would make a choice,
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uh, to uphold. Right. So there's, it's just your own career advancement. That's how, I mean,
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this is so often the type that bureaucracies produce. And I mean, I've met people like this.
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I think anyone who's worked in any kind of bureaucratic environment has met people like
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this. They're the people who tend to rise in corporations because they never stick their
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neck out. They know how to please their superiors. They never make a move that's going to endanger
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their career. Yeah, this is this. And we call these people leaders because they get to the top.
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Yeah. Sounds sort of like a Nietzschean last man. Yeah. I blink.
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It is. Yes, it is a Nietzschean last man. Yeah. Yeah.
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Well, so, okay. So instead of focusing, you just said that we shouldn't just focus on leadership.
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We, in fact, we probably focus too much on it. Instead, we should focus on, uh, developing
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thinkers or becoming thinkers because thinkers often end up being good leaders. Um, I love how you argue
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that solitude is vital for developing this thinking ability. Um, so what do you mean by
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solitude? Does it mean becoming a hermit, you know, in a cabin every now and then, or is it something
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else? You know, it's funny. I mean, I, I, this was the, my talk at West Point, uh, in 2009, uh,
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and the talk was called solitude and leadership. The truth is I did not set out to write a talk about
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leadership or to be some kind of expert on leadership. Although this talk is now taught
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in a lot of business schools and it's taught in the military. Um, I had written about solitude
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and I was asked by some people at West Point to talk to the plebes the first years about solitude.
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And I wanted to try to make a connection to them in a way that they would care about it. Cause I don't
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really think that that's a very urgent, uh, concern for them. I realized that leadership,
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and by the way, at West Point, it really does mean what it used to mean. It really is all about
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sacrifice and duty. So leadership is a really important word there. So I wrote a talk called
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solitude and leadership. And I, it forced me to think about the connection between these two things.
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So if, if we agree, as I've already said, that being a leader, isn't about rising to the top per se.
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It's about really being able to oppose the system that you're part of when necessary, right? To take a
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courageous stand, to find a new direction, to risk your career by doing something that may be
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risky. Um, how are you going to do that? How are you going to become someone who can think for
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themselves is really what we're talking about. Think for themselves and act for themselves.
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Uh, and my answer, I don't think it's the entire answer, but my answer is solitude. Uh, it doesn't have
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to mean full-time solitude. It doesn't have to mean being a hermit. Um, but I think it does mean
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having some degree of solitude in your life. And that can mean a lot of different things, but
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fundamentally it means the ability to be alone with your thoughts. Um, you know, you can be solitary
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in a room with other people. If you're sitting, if it's a library and you're sitting reading a book
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or a cafe and you're sitting reading a book, uh, and you can also be alone in a room and not be
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solitary at all. Like, because you're connected to your devices and you're toggling between five
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different social media. I mean, I think that's the great threat to solitude now. So yeah, that's
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my, that's my understanding of the connection between, uh, leadership and thinking and thinking
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and solitude. Right. So I imagine our, our, the social media culture where you live out your life
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and live out your thoughts and publicly that that's the antithesis of solitude. Like you probably
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want to do less of that. Yeah. Listen, I mean, I, I don't want to come across as this Luddite who
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thinks that everything that happens at a computer is bad. I don't. And I certainly use social media
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myself, although I try to do it as sparingly as possible, but I'm not the first person to suggest
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that there are some real losses that come with our total immersion in social media. And I think
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actually what I'm saying about this is similar to what some psychologists, I think Sherry Turkle,
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who's this MIT, I think she's a psychologist. She's been, she's a social scientist. She's been
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writing about this a lot. Like what does social media do to our, to our sense of self and what
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it seems to do, the more you're on it, the more it, um, you kind of export your sense of self to
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the people in your social network. So who you are is all about how you reflect, how social media
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reflect is, reflect yourself back to you. And, and you kind of, you know, you're kind of waiting to be
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filled by other people's opinions of yourself or, you know, which are, which are also not even
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really in response to yourself. They're in response to the image you create of yourself
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on social media. I think we all understand, we all do it. We all understand what it's like to craft a
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persona on social media. So you put this persona out there for the approval of the group. Um,
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where does that leave you? Right. Right. Who's the real you?
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Yeah. This reminds me a lot of, uh, the lonely crowd, that book that was written in the 50s,
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like other, the other directed people, like other directed. Absolutely. Right. Yeah. We,
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ourselves are correct are created by other people. We look, we kind of put out feelers to others to
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figure out what we are. Um, yes. And it's important to remember that it's not like there's this real
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self that's being concealed by these persona. The real self is something that needs to be built,
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that needs to be developed. We're not just born with one. And this is also why it's an especial
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concern for adolescents, you know, who are living their life, you know, that, that time of life is
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the time that you're really supposed to build the foundation of a self. Uh, and if you're,
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and if it's all about like what your friends think of you, that's going to be a real problem
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because that self is, it's not, it's not that it's going to be concealed. It's just not going to be
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there in the first place. Yeah. All right. So spend less time on social media. Um, and you also
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talk about in that lecture at West Point, like reading books is another, you know, act of solitude
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to take part in. Yeah. Again, I mean, I know that makes me sound like, like an old fart probably.
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Um, and I don't want to fetishize books in particular. I also don't think they have to
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be on paper. I mean, they can be on a screen. Um, I, but listen, first of all, reading in general
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is an inward experience. If you're actually reading, you're not, you know, you're, you're in more,
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you're in intimate contact with one other person, the person who wrote whatever it is you're reading
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and you're not, your attention isn't being scattered to a bunch, to a million different
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things. Um, unless you're kind of reading the way people read online, where you are just jumping
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around, you know, minute by minute. So reading in general, and that could mean, you know, it could
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mean an essay. It could mean a story. The thing about books, the thing about longer sort of reading
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encounters is just how immersive and extensive they are. So it's not just a few minutes, but it's
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a real long, really communion with, with one other person who's put themselves very intensely
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in this act of writing. I mean, I think anyone who gets any pleasure out of reading understands that
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it's a, it's a unique experience. It's a unique, it's a unique kind of, uh, inner communion that,
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uh, you somehow make contact with yourself by making contact with someone else. And it happens
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in a way that, that it's, it's almost, uh, it's almost, um, uh, impossible to do any other way.
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And that's why I say, you know, reading books, um, can be not for everybody, but can be. And if you
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have a taste for it, you know, you should really try, it's hard, but try to make room in your life
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because it's so deeply rewarding. Right. And I guess you also need to fight the urges, you know,
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when you're done with reading that book to get online and like immediately share your opinion
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on it. Right. Your hot take, you know? Yeah. I mean, to be honest, that doesn't,
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if you've actually finished a book, that part wouldn't even bother me that much. I mean,
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I think it's, I think it's becoming rarer and rare for people to actually finish books and,
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and specifically, you know, really challenging books that, that, that demand a lot of you
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mentally, not just, you know, like a business book. Um, if you want to go and share your take,
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especially if it's a thoughtful one and it requires like some serious writing, then that's fine.
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All right. Um, so you also argue in that lecture you gave at West Point, um, about the importance
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of close friendships, uh, in developing leader thinkers. Uh, what is it about a close friendship
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that can help people become better thinkers, better leaders? Right. So this is really just the
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same, the same thought as the thought about reading, right? They're different, that there are
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different ways I think to have this kind of productive solitude. So again, let me say that
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I'm defining solitude, not as being physically alone, but as being alone with your thoughts. So
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first of all, you're, you know, you're socially alone. You're not in social media contact,
00:23:10.640
but you were actually with your thoughts, right? You are sort of in your head in a good way,
00:23:15.060
uh, that allows you to kind of figure out who you are, what's important to you,
00:23:20.300
what you think you want to be doing tomorrow or for the rest of your life. I think reading does
00:23:26.160
that. I think silent contemplation, contemplation is a fancy word, but just like thinking your
00:23:30.600
thoughts, maybe while you're doing some kind of work, um, uh, you know, you're building a table,
00:23:37.080
but you're thinking your thoughts, um, and friendship. I think those kinds of, the, the kind
00:23:42.800
of, uh, intimate friendships that enable you to have long undirected conversations, um,
00:23:53.040
that I think social media and the pace of our life in general are making harder and harder,
00:23:57.620
but what they do, I mean, first of all, they're just great to have anyway. I mean,
00:24:02.140
I think one of the things that makes people happy is having deep connections with other people.
00:24:06.680
So I don't think they need to be justified in any other term, but one of the things they do
00:24:10.340
is to help you, you know, kind of discover and articulate what's going on inside you by
00:24:18.380
expressing it to someone else. I mean, I think one of the things that are, that a true friend
00:24:23.240
does is to help you feel comfortable enough to kind of be yourself in precisely the way
00:24:29.780
that social life, whether it's social media or social life as it existed before social media
00:24:34.800
makes it often so hard to do because you feel like you need to wear that mask. You need to
00:24:38.880
project that persona and with a real friendship or a real, I would, you know, partnership, romantic
00:24:43.700
partnership, um, you can drop the mask. Right. I know, I know that's true in my own experience. Um,
00:24:52.080
I, I, I definitely, uh, kind of hold back when I'm interacting in social media, but when I'm in
00:24:57.340
that one-on-one with someone I trust, it allows me to play with ideas and not be afraid of
00:25:03.180
repercussions. Right. Someone's seen what I tweeted and like saying, Oh my gosh, look what he,
00:25:08.240
he thinks like, well, no, I'm just, I'm experimenting with this idea. Let me figure it out.
00:25:13.260
Right. Right. That's a great point. And I think, you know, one of the sad things about social media
00:25:18.980
is that it's evolved in this direction of such, you know, sort of immediate judgment and censure and
00:25:23.720
hostility that, you know, I can understand that people are sort of more and more, I mean,
00:25:29.380
nevermind even sharing like a personal thing, just like putting anything out there. You kind of feel
00:25:34.240
like you need to have your armor up. So, yeah. So, but, but listen, I mean, those kinds of intimate
00:25:40.700
friendships that I think rely, you know, require long stretches of uninterrupted time, just like real
00:25:46.340
reading does just like real solitude does harder and harder. Yeah. Well, I mean, let's dig into this
00:25:52.680
idea of friendship because you also have an ebook, a short little ebook called the death of
00:25:56.700
friendship. And you argue that us moderns really don't know what friendship means anymore. At least
00:26:03.240
we don't, we don't understand, you know, what friendship means the way our ancestors might have
00:26:07.560
understood it. So how has the notion of friendship changed from, you know, say the days of ancient
00:26:13.840
Greece until now? Right. Well, this is, I mean, this is a little more complicated. I don't,
00:26:18.680
I don't want to, it wasn't my intention in that essay to, to idealize sort of ancient friendship
00:26:25.880
per se. I actually think that in many ways, the modern age, if we mean the last couple of hundred
00:26:30.180
years have been a golden age of friendship, but briefly back in the day, this is very counterintuitive.
00:26:36.220
It surprised me when I discovered it. Friendship was rare because societies were more highly structured
00:26:42.780
and you owed allegiance and blah, blah, blah. The, the notion of, of one true friend who is more
00:26:48.760
important to you than the allegiances that you were supposed to have was actually a big deal. And,
00:26:54.080
you know, there are Greek myths about it and, you know, like Achilles and Patroclus or David and
00:26:58.980
Pythias. And, um, you know, you had, you had people in your world who we might today call friends, but
00:27:06.280
friendship was, was understood to be this really special thing. And that really, that persisted
00:27:11.720
pretty much up until modernity. I mean, if you know Hamlet, there's Hamlet and Horatio. Horatio is
00:27:17.720
kind of this classical friend in the sense of the, you know, the classical world, as opposed to
00:27:23.160
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern who are like Hamlet's drinking buddies, but totally stab them in the back
00:27:27.340
because they're just maneuvering for their own benefit within the world with the Danish court. So that's
00:27:32.420
like, that's the pre-modern friendship, right? The rare friendship that gets celebrated if you
00:27:37.060
can manage to have it at all. The thing that happens in modernity is that all those traditional
00:27:41.200
structures, you know, feudal hierarchies and even family structures start to break down and all of
00:27:47.020
a sudden friendship becomes, it, it changes in two ways. You, you have lots and lots and lots of
00:27:52.100
friends because that's the world you live in. We're just this world of atomized adults, right? Who are
00:27:56.780
sort of broken apart from their family. You haven't gotten married yet and you travel in this world of
00:28:01.380
friends. But by the same token, those friendships are rarely as intense as the kind of singular
00:28:09.540
classical friendships. I think there've been times in modernity where friendship has actually been
00:28:15.600
really highly developed and we can look at all kinds of examples in, among writers or artists or,
00:28:22.120
or, you know, or they're in fiction. Uh, I can't, I think I grew up in a world like that. You know,
00:28:29.480
friendship, I had some really intense friendships when I was young and I, and I'm sure that young
00:28:33.780
people still do. What I'm saying is that not in modernity as a whole, but in the age of social
00:28:40.000
media, that might be getting harder and harder for all the reasons we've already said, because
00:28:45.920
you don't have time because you're afraid to be intimate. Um, because I think, uh, people are so
00:28:53.760
focused on just kind of building their career. I mean, people talk about this as among college
00:29:01.680
students, college students have been interviewed about this. They, they don't have time for
00:29:05.020
friendships. They don't have time for, you know, passionate romantic involvements. Everything
00:29:09.700
is conducted in a spirit of real sort of, uh, pragmatism. Right. So that's, that's what I'm
00:29:16.600
concerned about. Yeah. It reminds me of, uh, that line in fight club, uh, when, uh, the
00:29:23.280
protagonist is with Tyler Durden and he says, you know, you're my single serving friend,
00:29:27.360
uh, on the airplane. Right. I feel like that's how, what Facebook does. Like social media sort
00:29:32.680
of encourages like sort of this utilitarian view of people. It's like, it allows you to easily find
00:29:37.000
people who are just like you have the same interests as you. Um, but that's about as far as it goes.
00:29:42.640
Yeah. I mean, I know that we can use social media to help maintain friendships that are
00:29:48.980
formed in a more genuine way, but I mean, friendships that exist only on social media. I
00:29:53.260
mean, what, what do they consist of? Really not very much. And I think, you know, the fact
00:29:59.520
that, uh, Facebook uses the word friends is, is telling. Uh, I think we want to believe that
00:30:07.840
we have friends, that these people are our friends, but they're not really our friends.
00:30:12.640
Uh, I mean, LinkedIn is more upfront about it. They're contacts. Uh, but of course LinkedIn
00:30:18.020
is, is, uh, openly a business site. It's about networking, but Facebook provide, you know,
00:30:24.240
it offers us networking in the guise of friendship. And I think it ultimately can erode our idea
00:30:29.980
Yeah. I mean, I think it's interesting, like my closest friends that I've had in my life,
00:30:34.980
they've, I don't, I don't, if it were for the, like, they're, they're my friends. Cause
00:30:39.400
like I, they were like, they were the ones that were nearest by it. Like I was constrained
00:30:42.840
geographically. And I think if like, if I was honest, like if it was trying to meet this
00:30:46.940
person online, I probably would never have interacted with them online because they're
00:30:51.400
just completely different from me. But for some reason, because they were there physically,
00:30:55.840
they're the only ones there. I was able to develop this awesome, intense relationship
00:31:00.580
with them where I was able to open up to them. I think that's kind of, it's kind of weird.
00:31:05.200
Yeah. I think that's a great point. Uh, these sort of affinity group sortings that happen in
00:31:10.580
social media and really actually don't necessarily reflect who were, who we could be close to. But
00:31:14.960
I would also say something else about what you're saying that these friendships that you built
00:31:18.520
were, uh, first of all, physical proximity. So it's not just words on a screen or maybe images
00:31:25.040
on a screen, but that, I mean, actual physical presence is very powerful. This by the way,
00:31:29.020
is one of the things that's wrong with online education, physical presence. But I imagine
00:31:34.600
that these people you're talking about are people you had experiences with, you did things with
00:31:39.540
them. And I mean, experience is, I mean, it's the ultimate that that's what really what bonds people
00:31:45.620
together is when they have experiences. It's not about exchanging words necessarily, or information
00:31:51.720
or, you know, preferences. These are the songs that I like. It's about having common experiences.
00:31:57.240
And, you know, to the extent that our, uh, social life is mediated, uh, by the screen,
00:32:05.180
we're not having those common experiences because they can only really happen in person.
00:32:10.800
Yeah. So Bill, do you have any advice? I mean, for guys who are listening, like, man, I really want
00:32:16.060
some friends, but I'm busy, you know, everyone else is busy. Uh, I mean, like having friends in
00:32:22.540
adulthood, I found is like one of the hardest things to do. I mean, you're, you're kind of further
00:32:26.060
along than I am, uh, in life. Any advice on making good friends while an adult?
00:32:33.000
Well, I'll tell you, uh, this is, this is kind of the opposite of advice. The truth is that it does
00:32:38.180
get harder and harder as you get older for a lot of reasons. I mean, busyness is only part of it.
00:32:43.280
Uh, I mean, uh, you know, I mean, this is, I've been aware, I'm 52 and I've started, I noticed this
00:32:50.320
start, you know, probably for the last 20 years and the people are, I mean, everybody, my age says this.
00:32:54.420
Um, it, it, it gets harder and, and, um, I think you're, you know, your sort of personality is less
00:33:01.800
kind of malleable and I mean, so much of those friendships that when you're young are actually
00:33:05.840
because you're being formed together and now you're already formed. But I would say that with
00:33:10.660
friendship, it's the same as with solitude to the extent that it's possible. It's about making hard
00:33:17.760
choices and, and asking yourself what your priorities are and then really doing the hard
00:33:24.220
work. And I know from my own experience, it's really hard to change your habits, to change
00:33:27.680
your patterns, to say to yourself, I wish I had more time for X and now I'm really going to try
00:33:33.200
to make time. And that's going to involve spending less time with Y and that Y could mean things that
00:33:41.100
are hard to give up, including maybe some career advancement possibilities. But I think probably
00:33:47.980
the way things are today, a lot of that junk time is being taken up by media, by social media.
00:33:55.700
And if you can break that addiction or at least manage that addiction better,
00:34:02.860
again, I found in my own life, it frees up not only time, it kind of frees up psychic energy.
00:34:08.240
I personally find that stuff so draining. And when I'm able to shut it out, um, I just have,
00:34:15.900
I have more of myself for everything, whether that's solitude or friendship. Now, of course,
00:34:22.340
with friendship, you got to find someone else who feels the same way or who's willing to
00:34:25.680
you know, prioritize that kind of thing. And that, and that can be difficult, but that's probably
00:34:31.780
the kind of person you want to be friends with anyway. Right. Um, so we've got a lot of young
00:34:36.720
listeners, right? Men who are in college or just out of college. And I, I love excellent sheep. And
00:34:41.360
if you're in college, read this book. If you have kids in college, get the book. It's fantastic.
00:34:46.180
Um, you argue that today's generation consists of excellent hoop jumpers, right? Like they're super
00:34:51.960
accomplished. Um, but they're accomplished only when there's a set program in place for them to
00:34:57.980
follow. Um, I've known, I've noticed that in my own life, right? Like I was always as a college
00:35:03.220
student, like, Hey, what's the next ring I got to jump through? What's the next thing I got to do?
00:35:06.600
Okay. Graduated college, uh, LSAT time now LSAT. Okay. I need to get a law review. You know,
00:35:12.820
I just had these hoops. I was always trying to jump through. Um, and it's exhausting. And I don't think
00:35:19.120
there's a certain point where you're like, boy, why, why am I doing this again? And for our
00:35:24.040
listeners who are in college, how, why do you think they, what's your case for them getting off
00:35:28.320
the hoop jumping track and how should they do that? Right. So let me say, first of all, again,
00:35:34.100
to try as much as possible to not sound like an old fart. Um, this is not just kids today.
00:35:40.720
The system that we're talking, we were talking about it before. It's this meritocratic SAT school,
00:35:45.660
you know, GPA achievement system that really started in the sixties. And the only thing that's,
00:35:52.580
so I went through too, in the seventies, eighties, um, the only difference is that it keeps
00:35:58.200
accelerating all the time. It's like, it's an arms race, right? It used to be that, you know,
00:36:02.940
when I was in high school, the kids who got into Ivy league schools took like three AP courses in high
00:36:07.640
school. And now it might be a dozen, right? And it's just, so the competition ratchets up the numbers
00:36:13.140
and the numbers ratchet up the pressure. And before you know it, you have no time for anything
00:36:17.920
but hoop jumping, including friendship, romantic involvements, sleep, play, downtime, nothing.
00:36:25.260
Right. So here's what I would say, because there are rewards for hoop jumping. You get to be,
00:36:32.460
you get to be a leader, right? A quote unquote leader. You get to make it to the top. You get to
00:36:36.780
be one of the jerks who are ruining the country. Um, I think that there are much more valuable things
00:36:42.460
that you can do with your life. But the only argument I would make to people is ask yourself
00:36:48.660
whether this is working for you, ask yourself whether you're happy, whether it's when, whether
00:36:54.340
you're feeling nurtured and whether you want to spend the rest and the rest of your life doing this.
00:37:01.360
I mean, I, I can understand if you have a legitimate goal, you know, I want to become a lawyer because I
00:37:06.580
believe in environmental protection. And I want to be that, you know, a lawyer who, you know,
00:37:10.540
who defends the environment. And in order to do that, I need to have good grades and I need to
00:37:14.360
have good, that's all fine. You know, if you're doing, if you're working hard for the sake of a
00:37:19.340
goal, that's meaningful to you, that's fine. But if like so many people, including me, when I was in
00:37:25.200
college, you're just doing it because that's what you're supposed to do. You're trying to get to the
00:37:31.420
top, but it doesn't even matter to you what it's the top of. It just has to be the top because
00:37:35.920
that's the only way you can have any kind of self-esteem. Then you're probably miserable.
00:37:41.520
And there are all kinds of statistics and books by adolescent psychologists that talk about just
00:37:47.560
how miserable high achieving students are these days. So that's my, that's my argument to people.
00:37:55.400
It's not any kind of grand philosophical argument about, you know, what human life should be about.
00:38:00.040
Although we could talk about that too. It's just, are you happy? And if you're not,
00:38:06.920
you need to find the strength. You need to find the courage to defy all of the forces and voices
00:38:13.480
and incentives that are, that have turned you into a hoop jumper. It may involve defying your parents.
00:38:20.040
It may involve defying your peers and saying, you know what, I'm going to major in anthropology because
00:38:24.920
I love it and I'm fascinated by it. And you guys can major in economics and go to wall street after
00:38:31.400
you graduate, you know, good luck to you, but this is not working for me. I'm not going to do it.
00:38:37.000
Yeah. And talking about this, you know, going in with an ideal, uh, once you get in the system,
00:38:41.360
it's hard to hold onto those ideals. I know I experienced that. I was like, I'm going to be
00:38:45.420
an environmental lawyer when I, as my goal was in law school. Now I do this full time, but I remember how
00:38:50.380
easy it was to be like, wow, you know, I want to work at that nice law firm downtown that pays six
00:38:56.980
and I want to be on law. I want to do these things. Um, I mean, how do you hold true to that
00:39:02.320
ideal you have without, while you're still in the system and not let the system corrupt your ideals?
00:39:07.500
Well, listen, I mean, first of all, it's hard. It's definitely hard. And we, it doesn't do any
00:39:11.900
good to pretend that it's not hard, but you know, this is the thing, right? Is, and again,
00:39:17.600
there've been studies of this, the people who work on wall street are unbelievably miserable.
00:39:21.980
I mean, as measured by, you know, alcoholism, suicide, depression, whatever life expectancy,
00:39:27.540
uh, lawyers also miserable. Um, so the rewards look really great, but if you actually just
00:39:35.420
investigate whether the people are happy, they're not happy. So again, what I would say is if you,
00:39:40.920
if you do have ideals, if you do have things that you believe in work that you believe in,
00:39:44.220
and you're managing to do it to some extent, um, ask yourself how that's going. Right. And, and,
00:39:50.800
and I think what you'll find is that it's incredibly rewarding, right? The intrinsic rewards
00:39:55.720
of pursuing some of, of, uh, studying something that's interesting to you, doing work that's
00:40:03.500
meaningful to you, um, are, are, I think what's going to help you the most resist the lure of all
00:40:11.340
those false rewards, the shiny trinkets, because you know, it's just, I mean, there's, this is what
00:40:19.140
the people who've studied happiness will say that there are two things that really make people happy.
00:40:24.300
One we mentioned before, which is feeling connected to other people. And the other one is purposeful
00:40:29.220
work. And for my own life, cause I've also had the opportunity to pursue rewards that I,
00:40:37.040
that I decided not to pursue. Um, and, and I was able to do that because I was just so into the
00:40:43.980
other thing that it just seemed like that, that's what got me across the hump. It's like, why would
00:40:49.720
I stop doing this thing that, that feels so great? Right. Yeah, that makes perfect sense. And I love
00:40:55.440
your answer. Cause I think it, it segues nicely to my next question. Cause there's a gal from the 18th
00:41:00.420
century in England who wrote a lot about, you know, figuring out what really makes you happy
00:41:05.860
in life. Uh, and her name's Jane Austen. Uh, you wrote a, you wrote a book called the Jane Austen
00:41:11.740
education. Um, you're, you're a man, obviously we've been talking, but you've written a, you've
00:41:18.040
written how you learned a lot from Jane Austen, who we often think of as a sort of chick lit. Right.
00:41:22.500
Right. But why do you think a man should give Jane Austen a chance? What can she teach us about
00:41:28.360
living a good life? Yeah, that's a great question. I think she can teach us a lot and I want to talk
00:41:35.460
about that, but I think the first thing, at least for me, right. The, the big, cause I was just as
00:41:39.680
resistant to her as any other guy. I thought she was chick lit. I thought, you know, it's going to
00:41:43.340
be really boring. And I, I read one of her novels in a grad class that I took for, cause of everything
00:41:49.980
else that was on the syllabus. And so the first thing I think to learn is that you can learn something
00:41:57.100
from a female writer who writes about female characters. Like this was a huge breakthrough for me
00:42:03.600
that, I mean, I'd always been drawn naturally to novels that had male protagonists, um, who I could
00:42:10.900
identify with and just making that breakthrough of being able to identify with the female protagonist,
00:42:16.820
despite the fact that she's female, because listen, I mean, what Jane Austen is writing about,
00:42:22.420
uh, in, in these books that are all about young women finding husbands, she's writing about
00:42:30.200
things that we all go through. She's writing about, um, growing up. She's writing about what love
00:42:38.300
really means. She's writing about, um, how being a good person is more important than being a fun
00:42:44.360
person, which is kind of a hard lesson to accept. So, so that's what I mean. So first of all, just,
00:42:52.720
just to be open to that possibility, um, I think is, you know, I think is really important,
00:42:58.180
but, but I mean, there are other things. I mean, I don't want to, um, I don't want to turn masculinity
00:43:03.400
into a stereotype, but certainly let's just say for myself, I was one of these young men who was
00:43:08.660
very certain of himself. I did a lot of mansplaining. Um, uh, I was very arrogant. Um,
00:43:17.440
and so the first novel of hers that I read, it's not the first one she wrote was, was Emma,
00:43:22.660
which is about a character. Even Emma is a young woman, but actually she's a lot like that. And,
00:43:27.880
and there are critics who've said that Emma in many ways is like, is like a man, um, in terms of
00:43:33.020
her, she's, she's independently wealthy. She has freedom of action. She's very, uh, respected in
00:43:38.660
her community. She does what she wants. Uh, and she's exactly like that kind of person who thinks
00:43:44.100
she knows everything better, thinks she knows what's better for the people around her than they do.
00:43:48.280
And she makes a fool of herself. And, and she learns to, she learns her own limitations. And
00:43:56.900
she also learns not to have contempt for the people that she's looked down upon because they're
00:44:01.420
beneath her socially. So that, I mean, that was my first lesson from her. And I, and, and, and I
00:44:06.960
suddenly started to actually pay attention to the people around me and actually listen to what they
00:44:12.080
were saying. And that's also probably when I started to become a good friend because I was able to
00:44:17.020
actually take in what people were saying and have empathy for what they were going through instead
00:44:21.780
of just thinking about myself all the time. Yeah. So we can start with that. Yeah. No, I love that.
00:44:29.080
Um, if there's a novel that you recommend that guys start off with is it, which one would it be?
00:44:34.980
Would it be Emma? Well, well, I mean, Emma is a great novel. Um, in some ways it can be more
00:44:40.200
challenging. You know, one of the criticisms of Austin in her own day, as well as ours for the people
00:44:45.440
who don't like her is that nothing happens in her books because they're just about people sitting
00:44:49.560
around, like, you know, having tea parties. Um, it's not true because a lot happens socially, but
00:44:56.640
it can be a challenge. And in Emma, she almost sort of, it's almost like a dare. It's almost like
00:45:02.100
she's saying, I'm really going to write a book where you think nothing happens. Um, so that, so
00:45:08.100
Emma can be especially challenging. Listen, Pride and Prejudice
00:45:11.120
is this incredibly delightful book. It's a reason, there's a reason why it's her most famous
00:45:16.080
book, why it's the one that keeps getting filmed more than any of the others. It's perfectly
00:45:21.720
constructed. The language is incredibly witty. It's, it's a, it's a terrific love. I mean,
00:45:26.440
it sort of gives you that romance story that you want, but it gives it to you in an intelligent
00:45:30.540
way. That's all that also challenges you. So you can't do better than start with Pride and
00:45:36.320
And what insights do you think a guy should be on the lookout for while he's reading Pride and
00:45:42.480
Well, I mean, Pride and Prejudice is really about, um, uh, the difference between what you think,
00:45:49.720
you know, and what is actually true. I mean, what it's really about is, so that heroine,
00:45:56.280
uh, she's not exactly like Emma, Elizabeth Bennett. She's a lot more likable than Emma,
00:46:01.220
but she's, she's very smart. She's very sharp. And as a result, she kind of overvalues her own
00:46:07.440
perceptions. You know, um, she really thinks she can read people perfectly and she makes
00:46:14.620
a lot of mistakes that cause her a lot of pain ultimately. And, and that to me is what the book
00:46:21.880
is really about. And it's really, I mean, yes, there's this, you know, marriage at the end,
00:46:25.800
but I, I mean, I think even more than love and marriage, Austin's books in general and
00:46:30.340
Pride and Prejudice in particular are about growing up and, and not just when you're 20.
00:46:35.980
I mean, they're about things that apply throughout youth and, and, and even in, in well into adulthood.
00:46:42.020
And I think one of the fundamental lessons that you need to learn in order to really grow up
00:46:47.580
is how fallible you are, how fallible your perceptions and your feelings are. I'll tell you,
00:46:54.580
there's something that I think Pride and Prejudice teaches that actually women I've talked to have
00:46:59.980
a lot of trouble when I articulate this, but I think it applies to men too, because there's this
00:47:04.740
feeling, I think feminism has had a lot to do with promoting this, this idea that our feelings are
00:47:10.020
always valid. Their, their feelings are automatically valid. It can never be challenged. They have this
00:47:15.940
kind of metaphysical status. And Austin says, you know, that's bullshit. Um, our feelings are always
00:47:22.480
feelings about things, about situations. And if we misjudge the situation, if we get it wrong,
00:47:30.020
that our feelings are wrong and we need to acknowledge that. And I think that that's, um,
00:47:35.100
that's been a hugely valuable lesson for me in the context of relationships because it enables me to,
00:47:40.820
it's enabled me to let go of, uh, anger of resentment of hurt feelings, you know? Um, so yeah, I, I think,
00:47:53.780
I like, I love that. Well, Bill, this has been a great conversation. Where can people go to learn
00:47:59.480
I have a website, BillDerezowicz.com and I have, you know, information about my books and links to
00:48:06.500
some of my articles and that's, that would be a good place to start.
00:48:09.940
Fantastic. Well, Bill Derezowicz, thank you so much for your time. It's been a pleasure.
00:48:14.700
My guest today was William Derezowicz. He's the author of the book, Excellent Sheep,
00:48:17.860
Jane Austen Education and Solitude and Leadership. All those available on amazon.com. You can find out
00:48:22.980
more information about his work at BillDerezowicz.com. And also check out our show notes at
00:48:27.540
aom.is slash sheep for links to resources where you can delve deeper into this topic.
00:48:44.440
Well, that wraps up another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. For more manly tips and advice,
00:48:48.740
make sure to check out the Art of Manliness website at artofmanliness.com. Our show is edited
00:48:52.440
by Creative Audio Lab here in Tulsa, Oklahoma. If you have any audio editing needs or audio production
00:48:56.200
needs, check them out at creativeaudiolab.com. As always, we appreciate your reviews on iTunes
00:49:00.820
or Stitcher. It helps that a lot. Thank you so much for your community support. And until next time,