The Art of Manliness - #592： Being a Man in the Lousy Modern World

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast emerson famously

00:00:12.000 said society everywhere is a conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members my guest

00:00:17.220 today says things have gotten a lot worse since emerson uttered those words over a century and a

00:00:20.680 half ago name is robert twigger we last had him on the show to discuss his book micro mastery

00:00:24.900 that's episode number 528 if you want to check that out today we discuss a book he wrote 20 years

00:00:29.800 ago called being a man in the lousy modern world we begin a conversation discussing how the modern

00:00:35.320 world infantilizes men so they're easier to control and whether robert thinks things have changed since

00:00:39.640 he initially published the book we then dig into the four factors robert says need to be in place

00:00:43.740 for a man to feel like a man and why experiencing these qualities has become a lot harder to do in

00:00:47.860 the present age we then discuss what robert did to counter the currents of modern malaise like hiking

00:00:51.840 the pyrenees mountains and learning a martial art and whether doing those things actually made him

00:00:55.600 feel manlier we enter a conversation with what men can do to start fighting back against the

00:00:59.780 conspiracy against their manhood out of the shows over check out our show notes at aom.is

00:01:03.780 slash twigger 1.00

00:01:04.580 all right robert twigger welcome back to the show thanks for having me always always glad to

00:01:22.220 to be to be talking to the art of manliness well we had you on the show uh last year to talk about

00:01:28.700 your book micro mastery and that's episode number 528 for those who want to check it out it's all about

00:01:33.280 learning new skills by thinking small it's a really great episode as a fan favorite but we're gonna talk

00:01:38.620 about a book you wrote 20 almost 20 years ago it's called being a man in the lousy modern world so tell

00:01:46.640 us what was the impetus behind this book the real impetus was at that time so i was writing that i don't

00:01:54.080 know sort of 1999 or something like that exactly 20 years ago there was a whole spate of adverts in

00:02:01.620 which men were portrayed as sort of dorks and patsies and the women were all smart and sassy they were

00:02:08.400 often it was often there were commercials in in people's homes you know and it was the dorky husband

00:02:13.320 who couldn't do anything and and the wife was in control and i just thought this is just sending

00:02:17.980 such a stupid wrong message so it's kind of anger and then it sort of all kind of spiraled out from

00:02:26.800 there so i just started to look at what the role of men was in in the lousy modern world and the way

00:02:33.240 you wrote this you sort of contrasted your you had a son that was coming yeah you contrasted that

00:02:38.740 trying to figure out what does it mean to be a man in this world and then contrasting all these

00:02:42.840 adventures you tried to go on to figure that out yeah i mean the other strand in the book was

00:02:49.060 using because my previous uh couple of books had been these adventures but i had all these leftover

00:02:57.340 stuff that i'd done because i was writing for kind of adventure travel pieces for magazines and uh

00:03:04.700 so i had all this this this material and uh i thought well i've got to i've got to use it none

00:03:09.940 each adventure itself probably wouldn't have justified a book so i wove that in and it became

00:03:15.960 because the adventure seemed part of being a man you know it seemed like a man who shunned any form

00:03:21.560 of adventure always i guess it's because adventure called forth the need for courage and i knew that

00:03:26.300 that courage was was a key key part of it and you can i mean it was funny the contrast between like

00:03:32.700 you getting ready for the the arrival of your son it was sort of like a day in the life of just a

00:03:37.380 regular suburban guy living in the western world you know barbecues and you're kind of like uh the

00:03:42.220 way you described is like this is this is not it yeah i mean and i i might i wanted to make it honest

00:03:50.220 and there's a sort of problem because the kind of language you use to describe adventures is it doesn't

00:03:57.240 suit describing relationships and about you know what you feel about your kids and all that sort of

00:04:03.060 things so it was a fine line to to draw i also didn't want to just you know burrow into total

00:04:11.140 sentimentality because you know before your kids are born i mean what can you feel you they just

00:04:16.560 arrived you know you don't know what they're going to be like so it was it was tricky it was tricky

00:04:22.780 ground but as you say yeah it was it's half that theme through the book which i keep going back to

00:04:28.680 which is as the day progresses that's the kind of driving force it's kind of like a micro adventure

00:04:33.480 in itself but uh it's it's mr suburbia and my life is mr suburbia and i'm just not not sort of happy

00:04:39.520 with it so what is it about the lousy modern world that you you felt like that makes manliness feel

00:04:45.760 obsolete like you feel like it's not suited for men yeah i mean there's so many strands here but i mean

00:04:51.820 the the i mean just coming from the top it's it's got to be that we have so many prosthetic devices

00:05:01.900 computers cars things that actually take out the physical aspect and if there's there are many

00:05:08.120 differences between men and women but i mean the most obvious one is there's a physical strength

00:05:11.840 difference so if you're not actually having to use your physical strength at all you're different

00:05:17.080 from you know most men that have come before you in history so there's there's that side there's the

00:05:22.560 skill aspect even small skills like learning to light a fire which my dad used to do you know

00:05:27.820 lighting the fire in the house even things like fixing the car she did i can't even fix my own car

00:05:33.180 now because i don't know i don't know how to do the codes into the computerized bit i mean it's it's

00:05:38.360 kind of endless really the the way we we become so impotent and we're just kind of like living like

00:05:43.420 kings in this in this world of of largely electronic backup well and i think one of the points you make

00:05:50.360 that i thought was really incisive is that the modern world does a great job of keeping us like

00:05:55.500 children even as adults like i just said you can't even fix your own car because there's like a computer

00:05:59.980 that you have to be able to program and you have to be licensed to do that change and and you make

00:06:05.360 this point that uh that children are easier to control than adults and it's kind of you can make the

00:06:11.680 you get some that say a cynical conclusion that well that's what corporations and governments want

00:06:16.780 they want us to be easily controlled well yeah i mean it may not be i don't think there's some kind

00:06:22.200 of conscious uber mind who's saying that let's let's infantile and infantilize our entire population but

00:06:28.220 it it just seems to work out better that way so maybe there's some sort of evolutionary

00:06:32.660 imperative at work inside corporations and big organizations that gradually the solution that

00:06:39.600 infantilizes the the workforce seems to work better so you kind of by increments move towards

00:06:45.820 that position and it's generally the case yeah i mean even the police you know when when for example

00:06:52.600 somebody stands up and defends themselves against the mugging there's always the the warning from

00:06:57.600 the police the police say don't do this in future um it's a dangerous thing to try and defend

00:07:03.940 yourself at the same time as the newspaper report is saying oh what a great thing the 78 year

00:07:08.780 old guy fought off the mugger so there's this constant message that you're you're better off

00:07:14.340 just just being like a kid really but the insidious thing is that because of all these advances like

00:07:19.600 you know things are cheap we've got all this technology that you know basically gives us the

00:07:24.100 world at our fingertips it makes us feel like we're in control but sometimes we're really not in

00:07:29.100 control yeah i mean it's it's a weird idea of control isn't it it's a bit like i mean we already had

00:07:34.260 it today when the computer works you you're apparently in control as soon as it doesn't work

00:07:39.740 you discover the exact limitations of your control if you can't fix something how much can you say

00:07:44.660 you're in control i mean i think being able to fix stuff is is a key part of being a man and when we

00:07:51.080 live in a world where we can't fix things very easily maybe we're just going along on someone else's

00:07:55.960 ride well i guess yeah emerson's right he said that society everywhere is in conspiracy against

00:08:01.780 the manhood of every one of its members well yeah i mean that was what 150 years ago something like

00:08:07.360 that yeah it's got to be right man it's got to be and so you wrote this 20 years ago and you were

00:08:12.280 seeing this stuff then like how how have things changed have things gotten worse have it stayed the

00:08:16.220 same as have you seen things get better in some places yeah it's weird how things have changed um

00:08:21.500 in some ways it's got it's got a lot worse things that i could humorously joke about then

00:08:28.080 you can't really joke about now because you'll be you'll be um targeted as somebody you know that's

00:08:33.760 not something you can joke about things have become off limits so that's kind of worse the better side

00:08:39.960 is there's been a huge there's been a growth in things the art of manliness came along there's been

00:08:44.340 a growth in people becoming more aware of mental health issues of young men which is a tremendous

00:08:51.240 problem so those kind of knowing jokes oh it's the men you know the other day i was at a party and

00:08:57.560 some someone woman sort of made some mocking comment about men with respect to mental health 1.00

00:09:02.160 i was able to sort of pull the it's a serious subject kind of thing i didn't have to back off and

00:09:08.060 take it so there's been a bit of a pushback there but it's but it's a big cost you know we've seen

00:09:14.800 i mean i i talk about it in the book i talk about how criminality is is a kind of refuge it's like

00:09:21.600 the last refuge of masculinity for many men and if you haven't got much imagination you can't get

00:09:26.400 yourself off and do a dangerous or or interesting adventure you you're probably drawn to criminal

00:09:31.880 behavior so you know that's we've seen a massive or increasing rise in criminality and you know that

00:09:40.080 that kind of area and spill over into mental health issues so so in that sense was it's it's

00:09:46.080 pretty similar though so uh in the book you lay out you you lay out four factors that you think need

00:09:52.980 to be in place for a man to be considered a man so this is again this is what you said 20 years ago

00:09:58.840 that might this might have changed but what what are what were those four factors that you that you saw

00:10:03.280 the four factors were killing a beast courage courage is one ability to you know set skills

00:10:10.780 you know there were basic skills that that you know seem to be involved with being a man and

00:10:15.540 passing a rite of passage you know that's that's something that i circle in the book which is that

00:10:20.820 men seem to have the need to have undergone some kind of test of difficultness or dangerousness

00:10:28.720 and it's a before and after and you see it characterized in you know even things like a

00:10:33.500 like a bar mitzvah or other rites of passage after which you are a man it's a ritual and i think that

00:10:40.000 if anything that's i mean just to sort of move on a bit from those four characteristics that's one of

00:10:45.140 the key issues of the um of the book is that this lack of ritual in our society means the transition

00:10:52.700 from a from a boy to a man is blurred or never even exists so and i think rituals are the way we

00:11:00.880 we make transitions and we've we've lost sight of that well and we we sort of still have rituals but

00:11:06.700 as you point out in the book they're sort of watered down yeah yeah there's things like you know

00:11:11.240 pass your driving test you know graduate high school graduate college yeah yeah yeah and they're lame

00:11:19.400 as hell i mean you can't really look at yourself and think i um i'm on the i i can stand shoulder 0.57

00:11:24.520 to shoulder with you know people who were in the first world war or you know single-handedly paddled

00:11:30.560 their way up the amazon or something so it's a sort of you're going to just feel lame if you if you

00:11:35.540 accept cult the culture right there there there are male rites of passages for this lousy modern world 0.53

00:11:40.700 yeah exactly but yeah i mean you you said this idea like a rite of passage it really can help a boy

00:11:48.020 transition that man it has that help it has those factors there's an element of risk to it of danger

00:11:53.340 where you have to display courage you have to display fortitude and lacking that it's just it

00:11:59.500 it doesn't it's not it's not transformative if there's no risk involved yeah i i think that that's

00:12:05.620 the it just sharpens things up and and the ability to assess risk is probably a big part of it i mean

00:12:15.100 i had i know this guy a good friend and he told me he's going off to pamplona to party and i said

00:12:19.980 well you've got to run the bulls if you're going to go to pamplona he said no no that's just stupid

00:12:23.820 that's stupid you know that's kind of like the lousy modern world speaking you know you're like mr 0.52

00:12:27.720 sensible and of course running the bulls has risks and and if you're drunk the risks are higher but you

00:12:34.420 know you can assess those risks and decide whether you're going to do it or not otherwise don't go to

00:12:39.620 pamplona because otherwise you're borrowing the the the sort of the kudos of ernest hemingway and

00:12:45.360 all the people who went there and you're just going there for a big kind of piss up and that seemed to

00:12:49.900 be kind of like you know another problem you know but the problem itself is not the danger it's the

00:12:55.240 unwillingness to assess it because again that's a kind of self-reliance so i'm not saying do dangerous

00:13:01.120 things for the sake of it to be stupid i mean there are plenty of people who do that i'm getting some

00:13:04.900 of them get killed what i'm saying is develop the skill to assess risk don't sort of just offload

00:13:10.660 that skill to you know looking on the internet and someone tells you it's dangerous or something

00:13:15.220 well let's talk about let's delve deeper into this courage because you you kind of you got

00:13:19.480 philosophical about this like trying to figure out what is courage because there's some people who

00:13:24.560 look courageous like aristotle the philosopher grappled with this idea is like how can you tell

00:13:28.520 someone's really courageous right they could just be like they're crazy and they don't feel fear and they

00:13:34.220 just would just do crazy stuff so i mean are they really courageous so how what's your assessment

00:13:38.460 of that well i think yeah aristotle does mention no courage by its absence rather than by its presence

00:13:44.840 that's one thing you talking to people who served in the army and in dangerous situations it's courage

00:13:52.780 isn't it's not that rare you know there are you know most people given them given the right kind of

00:13:58.460 backup will be courageous so it's it's it's not something we should feel that it's like a really rare

00:14:03.200 quality it's it's it's a it's pretty available to everybody but i think everybody needs to to be

00:14:10.100 able to test test themselves in a number of situations because you're right that mere bravado

00:14:15.840 can look like courage unless someone has felt the consequences you know i mean i in the book i talk

00:14:21.120 about this climbing where i was when i was younger did climbing i never had any concept of risk i fell off

00:14:27.780 and broke a cracked some vertebra in my cracked a couple of vertebra and then i realized there were

00:14:33.740 consequences and i stopped being as crazy and in fact i didn't really do much climbing after that so i

00:14:38.780 kind of realized that maybe i wasn't that courageous when it came to to heights so it's finding those i

00:14:45.420 think that courage is is an exploration of finding those those points where you push yourself and

00:14:51.360 and again it's a sort of self-knowledge thing that without putting yourself in those difficult

00:14:56.760 situations you won't get that self-knowledge so maybe even more than courage what we're looking at

00:15:01.280 here is is knowing yourself and knowing what your limitations are because i think as i said most people

00:15:07.280 do have have courage and they are sort of a natural human characteristic and i think one of the

00:15:14.880 problems of the the lousy modern world as you put it is that we don't have that many opportunities

00:15:19.220 to display courage like you have to like often proactively go seek it you know in times past

00:15:24.840 that it would come to you you had to display courage for whatever reason because the world

00:15:29.040 was a dangerous place but now it's so safe you have to go look for it instead of it finding you

00:15:33.360 yeah you do really i mean it there are plenty of opportunities for showing that you're stoical in

00:15:39.580 the modern world for showing that you can put up with awful shit over a long period but courage

00:15:45.180 sort of find out the full kind of topography of courage i think you do need to be in in

00:15:51.160 situations which demand quick thinking as well as kind of like just endlessly putting up with

00:15:55.560 something and for that yeah you you probably have to see well you do have to seek it out i think i

00:16:00.360 think you have to get either into the wilderness or you have to you know deny yourself the normal

00:16:05.680 creature comforts and find find a bit of a challenge well let's talk about this idea of being skilled as a

00:16:11.600 component of manliness i thought it was fun this is fun reading this because you know i'd read your

00:16:16.400 book micromastery we talked about it and this was 20 years later so it's interesting to see your

00:16:21.380 thinking of of skills being an important part of being a man even 20 years ago so what what is it

00:16:28.300 about being handy that you think makes a man admirable well i think it's it's the hands yeah it's it's

00:16:34.720 it's using our hands you know i think that uh we know that there's something associated with it i

00:16:39.760 always remember my grandfather who's very i mean he he'd kind of he he originally he ended up as an

00:16:45.340 engineer but he'd started as you know doing manual work building walls and and using all kinds of hand

00:16:52.440 tools he had these really he's not a big guy but his hands are big and strong and that we feel it in

00:16:58.080 the old handshake you know why do we have such a such a store by having a bone crushing handshake it's

00:17:03.720 because it kind of means something it means that you can you can handle weapons you can you can make

00:17:09.200 things you have the skill to be useful i think it's it's all about a utility factor nobody wants

00:17:15.800 to feel useless and i think that this connection in the lousy modern world between people not finding

00:17:21.540 meaning and people being very very lazy and not getting off their butt it's connected to feeling

00:17:26.900 useless so if you have skills hand skills you are useful and therefore you will work and you will find

00:17:33.200 meaning so they're all kind of deeply connected and we know that there's you know parts of the brain

00:17:40.220 connected with you know getting hand skill are really sort of if you can use this term ancient parts of

00:17:45.980 parts of our cognition you know this is not it's not a recent development so i think it's tapping into

00:17:53.320 something that's that is ancient and valuable and yeah i mean even even neanderthal man even proto-humans

00:18:02.940 were were adept at hand skill so it seems like a an essential essential thing to to master and it's

00:18:12.060 one of those ways of becoming more competent is one of those ways you can rebel against this conspiracy

00:18:17.100 against your manhood yeah i think it i think it really is i think it's it's it's it's a way of

00:18:24.440 it's it's very satisfying as well you know the idea of you know you can go into the wilderness and start

00:18:28.540 a fire without using a lighter and petrol you know if you can use a make a bow drill and start a fire

00:18:35.000 like that i mean there's huge growth in survival which we've seen i mean the being a man thing it

00:18:40.240 already had started in the 90s but in the last 20 years we've seen a massive growth in

00:18:44.320 bushcraft and survival and youtube has been a huge a huge help there in spreading all kinds of skills

00:18:51.620 it's now really quite easy to get quite arcane skills which you had to go on special courses

00:18:56.320 to learn in the past you can access them through youtube we're gonna take a quick break for your

00:19:02.440 word from our sponsors and now back to the show all right so let's talk about this idea of the ability

00:19:08.020 to kill man or beast so what's going on there i mean i think i mean i think the point you made is that

00:19:12.960 it's something that people i think tacitly accept as being you know a part of being a man it's like

00:19:19.040 if you were able if you have the capability to do violence but they're dodgy about it they don't like

00:19:24.280 to talk about it yeah i mean it's it's dodgy ground because you you know you're entering the area of the

00:19:29.660 criminal in in the modern culture but if you go back to traditional societies most of the rites of

00:19:35.020 passages were either you killed a lion or or some some dangerous beast or you killed a member of

00:19:42.180 another tribe but not in the sort of psychopathological warfare of the 20th century

00:19:47.340 it was probably some kind of raiding warfare and even tribes like the nagas do you know these head 1.00

00:19:52.820 hunters in in burmese indian border i spent some time with you if you ran away you weren't considered

00:20:00.440 a coward but if you got killed in a raid you were given a dishonorable burial which is quite interesting

00:20:04.960 so it limited warfare but it allowed people the chance to to to get involved sometimes of course

00:20:11.560 people were killed in that in those environments but that the numbers were far far less than the vast

00:20:17.640 numbers that have been killed in the in the 20th century so we can't really boast that our system is

00:20:23.400 more humane or more manageable so i think that that gets rid of that objection but the hard part is to

00:20:33.060 you know to say that that is an aspect the potentiality of of of killing somebody perhaps

00:20:39.100 the only way around it is to talk about defense you know that you are prepared in a situation to put

00:20:44.960 yourself in a difficult situation and be competent to to to protect somebody even if it meant dispatching

00:20:51.640 somebody it does it is it is borderline psycho though so that's that is that is always going

00:20:58.880 to be the problem and i think the way around it is to think of this is a skill which is a kind of

00:21:06.640 bridging between the sort of the past and the present that if you are if you believe that you

00:21:13.180 couldn't in a certain situation your family was threatened and you had to defend them if you believed

00:21:18.080 you would just walk away and let them be killed and you wouldn't do something about it

00:21:21.500 then there's something missing you know i think that you need to have that potential

00:21:24.980 and that skill to be able to do that and probably it's more of a willpower thing and it's nothing to

00:21:30.820 be particularly proud of because you know thousands of people in this world are going around killing

00:21:35.480 people with you know without any thought you know a friend of mine told me that he was in somalia

00:21:40.800 as war reporter and when he decided that the game was getting a bit dangerous was when a kid you know

00:21:47.280 we're talking about a 10 year old kid pointed to kalashnikov and just pulled the trigger because

00:21:50.780 it was unloaded so or the bullet jammed or whatever and he was lucky but that the ability to just you

00:21:58.240 know blow somebody away is not some huge great skill in that sense but if you are a rational calm

00:22:04.960 normal and you're not an unhinged human being then then it's quite a leap so maybe what we're edging

00:22:11.780 towards here is if if you are someone who is repelled by the idea of killing and you're normal

00:22:17.720 in that sense you should make that effort to comprehend it and i suppose that's what i'm saying

00:22:23.420 but if you're the sort of person who just can't wait to go and stab somebody then then you're obviously

00:22:28.880 a psychopath and we're not talking about you so i think that the the perspective of the book was really

00:22:34.340 aimed at that thoughtful perhaps rather suburban character who thinks this is an untenable and

00:22:42.120 outrageous position and maybe it's all about getting that mental flexibility and moving yourself

00:22:47.620 into that position well and i mean something this is sort of an issue that's that philosophers have

00:22:52.680 grappled with it's like can can you really be considered kind or good if you don't have the

00:23:00.100 ability to do like violence or bad or whatever right it's like is it any virtue that you don't

00:23:05.840 even have the ability like you don't have to overcome it yeah see what i'm saying so it's like

00:23:09.260 can you really be proud of your virtue if you had no opportunity to test it or like control it somehow

00:23:15.300 yeah i think that the you know that's that's a kind of another way into it and i think that's a

00:23:20.240 a good way of looking at it that you may be over focused on those virtues and you might

00:23:24.900 not understand that well perhaps they need to be defended in some way and that they may go hand in

00:23:31.240 hand with with a lied virtue i mean thinking i'm thinking things like courage and generosity i've

00:23:36.360 often noticed that people who are very generous often courageous and actually if you read in sort

00:23:41.600 of you know traditional type psychology they're considered to go hand in hand so if you want to build

00:23:47.520 your courage build your generosity so there are some some sort of links maybe at a deeper level between

00:23:53.160 more passive virtues and and the more kind of outgoing aggressive virtues or or borderline

00:24:02.800 vices depending how you look at them well you make this distinction too between men being either

00:24:07.780 passive or active and i think that goes to what you were just saying there like men are i think

00:24:13.760 there's we have this idea that men should be active instead of passive and i mean what does that

00:24:18.660 look like for you in the yeah and what is that one of the things i i regret not doing in that book was

00:24:24.960 not using the yin yang distinction which of course was fairly well known but it wasn't really mainstream

00:24:30.880 and now i think it is more mainstream and it's one of the better one of the things that has definitely

00:24:35.620 happened over the last 20 years is a lot of the concepts that were a bit borderline then are totally

00:24:41.220 mainstream brain plasticity totally mainstream use it or lose it you know the idea that if you don't

00:24:47.980 practice these skills you'll lose them all of these things are now mainstream and one of them was yin and

00:24:52.180 yang and i think that that's the passive active thing the sort of yin characteristics i mean you know

00:24:57.700 in the sort of eastern philosophies you know things things always have a yin and yang element and it

00:25:02.740 depends on where on the spectrum you are and i think this they don't necessarily map perfectly onto male and

00:25:09.060 female but definitely men are more on the yang end of the spectrum and women in general are more on the 0.96

00:25:16.760 yin end of the spectrum and there's a bunch of characteristics that are yin and yang and passivity

00:25:21.600 is more of a yin characteristic which doesn't mean it's better or worse it's just a characteristic

00:25:26.620 and um so i i definitely think that men are more on the yang end and therefore need to do more active

00:25:36.940 stuff but another point you make in your book is that the lousy modern world or soft suburban existence

00:25:42.340 can often take men who are have that active stance towards the world and then turn them into like

00:25:48.540 they become like they're just really guppy fish they start out male young and then when they get

00:25:52.500 older they turn into females yeah i think that i mean that was that was my great theory that i thought

00:25:57.400 would be taken up but people just kind of like completely ignored it but yeah i thought that the

00:26:02.140 the sort of traditional polarity societies seem to need to organize themselves into polarity and

00:26:07.700 maybe that reflects the yin yang thing and in most cultures it's male female but we now have evolved a

00:26:15.600 young old polarity so you're kind of young until you're about 38 you start making all these references

00:26:21.980 to getting older and then you suddenly adopt all these kind of kind of timid older characteristics that

00:26:27.940 they're quite yin and so they they're sort of more like old style feminine characteristics but you

00:26:33.640 can't call call them that now so it's now just what older people do so so that was and i but i think

00:26:40.380 there are all sorts of interesting possibilities like i do think if you could if you if you trap

00:26:47.020 an active person in a in a controlled environment and they become focused on so on i mean we see a growth

00:26:56.060 in not asperger's syndrome per se but sort of characteristics asperger type characteristics

00:27:03.040 you know listing involvement deep involvement in sort of this sort of hobbies and and i wonder if

00:27:10.300 that's a reaction to to being kind of trapped in a in a non-active environment you tend not to see that

00:27:18.040 in tribal groups which still go out hunting and roaming around and generally being

00:27:25.580 kind of hunter-gatherer types you don't see that same sort of nerdy kind of behavior which may be

00:27:32.820 a kind of reaction to being sort of penned in well i mean that's another thing we've done in our

00:27:36.860 lousy modern world we've taken being active sometimes the extreme like the extreme forms of

00:27:41.660 being active and we said well that's a pathology like they've got adhd we're gonna give you some

00:27:46.080 medicine for that because again it's all about control like we want to control people yeah i think

00:27:51.080 that's certainly true i mean if you look at the school school is a it's only tangentially about

00:27:56.340 education i mean it's really about socializing people to function in in this world that is very

00:28:02.720 that does demand a high level of submission to in certain areas i mean one of the shocking things

00:28:09.900 i found going around a prison in scotland where i gave a talk a couple of years ago and i

00:28:16.220 reminded me of school i mean in not in a bad way even in kind of a good way because the guards were

00:28:21.800 really trying to help the prisoners in a good way and and i was teaching i was talking to some

00:28:26.240 of the good prisoners who hadn't sort of you know messed up so they were allowed to listen to my talk

00:28:30.000 and the whole thing was like a hardcore grim version of school so it shocked me and i realized

00:28:35.700 in other words those prisoners had just been trained for this environment this is what they knew

00:28:41.260 by going to school so i mean this is i'm not saying that's the only function of school because

00:28:47.260 obviously people do learn things but they they could learn them a lot more efficiently in another

00:28:51.980 way we know that but that's not the big issue the issue is that society needs to control all these

00:28:59.200 people it can't have them just running around and just observing that doesn't mean to say that

00:29:03.460 i'm proposing that we disband all these things but it's just about developing that awareness

00:29:07.960 and having that awareness doesn't mean that you are automatically opposed to those institutions

00:29:13.780 i mean i think that's one of the things i was trying to do in the book is to build

00:29:16.500 a sense of you know have be able to hold those slightly contradictory positions in your brain at the same

00:29:25.000 time don't don't assume that you have to be either one thing or the other and again you're like

00:29:31.000 the people that are often trying to control are boys it's like i mean usually yeah i mean usually the

00:29:35.520 schools are what the research says the way school's set up it's suited for girls boys you know some do

00:29:41.680 okay but then some boys don't do well at all in it because there's just so much there's no flexibility

00:29:47.300 they like to be active and they don't get that at school yeah i mean there are just a hundred ways

00:29:52.000 that you could improve it and that we probably go off in a complete tangent but you're you're right

00:29:57.480 you know we human beings were not meant to sit motionless or not hardly moving in one seat all day long

00:30:05.160 you know it's just it's just not what humans are supposed to do and to expect people to do that

00:30:09.780 it's just it's just kind of it's kind of lunacy so you talk about within this this lousy modern world

00:30:16.020 like we don't have these opportunities to show male attributes the courage the ability to be skilled

00:30:22.540 like you have to go out and find it like what are some of the stuff that you did to go display this

00:30:27.620 stuff and like were you did you were you trying to create a rite of passage for yourself with all

00:30:31.560 these activities you did i think what i was trying to do was emulate people who'd come before me i

00:30:38.920 i wanted to to you know i knew that people had fought in wars i knew that people had gone on

00:30:45.340 expeditions and i'd read books about them and i thought we've got to live up to that we can't just

00:30:50.680 just assume that things were great in the past and we've just got to you know all be wimpy nowadays so

00:30:56.460 there was it was a conscious trying to sort of to emulate people in the past and but starting on a

00:31:03.700 really small way because i was quite a timid guy i'm not like sort of superman who just jumped off so

00:31:09.320 i started i mean i think the first thing is this doing a long distance walk in in the pyrenees so

00:31:14.920 walking alone about 700 kilometers along this couple of trails that connect the atlantic with the

00:31:23.280 mediterranean and that was a big deal for me because it was you know self-reliance you know

00:31:28.660 some slightly scary situations when i got lost but you know it wasn't beyond the ability of almost

00:31:35.060 anybody to do and then that gave me the the impetus to go to japan and study this martial art and i'd

00:31:41.540 always known that i wanted to do a martial art i just not found a situation where i could do one

00:31:48.220 and actually progress and get better because i wasn't that good at it and then when i got to japan i

00:31:52.680 realized you could do it absolutely full-on and full-time five hours a day five days a week

00:31:57.740 and that's when i began to properly progress and achieve that sort of bucket list tick which you

00:32:05.000 know get a black belt was had always been a kind of you know there's kind of an overlap with the

00:32:09.620 bucket list i suppose here but i'm a big believer wish list i think it's better than wish lists

00:32:13.900 making a wish list of uh achievements is is it's no bad thing and you also went bullfighting or you

00:32:20.640 oh yeah yeah there was a training yeah the cow famous cow yeah that would that came about through

00:32:26.160 a men's magazine maxim i think and england had a bullfighter called frank evans sadly now dead

00:32:33.520 and he offered to train me and i had to go up to manchester his town and he had a we went into

00:32:41.620 a local school playground where he uh he had a shopping trolley with a a bale of straw in it and

00:32:49.280 that was the bull and i had to practice kind of stabbing it and you know lifting the the cloak

00:32:54.520 and yeah and then we went out to spain to practice with a cow because you can't if you practice with

00:33:00.820 a bull you have to actually dispatch the bull and i wasn't really going to do that so you you have to

00:33:06.700 practice with a cow because then the cow is allowed to live and the reason why you have to dispatch the

00:33:10.260 bull is that the bull will learn basically they don't want the bull to learn how to kill humans

00:33:14.380 yeah yeah i mean they learn so fast in the 15 minutes that they're in because they've been living

00:33:19.940 on the range for two to four years so they're they've had a wonderful life they haven't been

00:33:23.900 inside a horrid shed for six months and then you know stunned by one of those guns like they used in

00:33:30.100 no country for old men none of that they've had a wonderful life and it's come to an end in 15

00:33:35.240 minutes and quite frankly if if that was the way i was going to go i wouldn't mind but yeah they learn

00:33:40.500 so much they become very dangerous and they will they will easily kill the next matador so they're 1.00

00:33:45.720 dispatched but cows are considered to be less difficult but of course cows learn too so they can

00:33:53.560 be they can be they can be there is a wild card and frank himself had suffered some a terrible injury

00:33:59.400 where a coward pronged him right up the ass punctured his bladder but it had left no damage 0.91

00:34:05.060 so he you know it was an internal injury but had no external kind of damage so it was rather

00:34:11.140 touch and go nasty thing to happen and that sounds unpleasant it's a deeply unpleasant i'm just trying

00:34:18.140 not to laugh because it's a horrible thing to happen to anyone but anyway yeah so yeah we went

00:34:22.380 into it was a tiny cow but uh still yeah pretty scary when it's coming coming full on at you and all

00:34:28.360 you've got is a is a is a cape and a sword to protect you but uh yeah it was that was a cool

00:34:33.980 thing and uh kind of glad i did it wait and after you did all this stuff like did you feel change like

00:34:39.580 did you feel like i feel like a man or was it sort of like uh that was a letdown i think i was thinking

00:34:45.440 reflecting about this the other day i was thinking god yeah you've done some stuff you're all right

00:34:49.080 i think it experience has an odd effect on you that isn't explicit so it doesn't it doesn't come

00:34:56.480 up as sentences in your head it's just does change the way you approach life a bit it makes you those

00:35:03.160 kind of experiences will tend to make you more confident in unusual situations you'll just think

00:35:09.240 oh this isn't so bad so that's good so it gives you a it gives you a range in which to judge things

00:35:14.680 and some skills which you might need but it's it's not that you're not going to feel any different

00:35:21.120 i think that's the kind of thing when you're a kid you always think i'm going to feel different

00:35:24.040 you're just the same you know you're still you but you you're less anxious and you're you're more

00:35:32.500 yeah you're less anxious really and you're more willing to have a go at something so it's a sort

00:35:38.080 of it increases your your range you know the possibilities that you have but you'll you won't

00:35:43.480 you won't feel like clint eastwood inside whatever he feels like inside have you talked

00:35:49.860 to your son about this stuff as he's gotten older uh not really i mean that's the other thing i'm i

00:35:55.580 don't think i'm a great dad so you're almost like an okay one i've i've uh yeah i kind of brought it

00:36:03.020 up but mostly what i pontificate on is is treated as uh you know marginal marginal interest in our

00:36:10.480 household so um so that's always a problem but i've the books are there for them to read my

00:36:16.560 daughter read it i think she she gets it better that's the other paradox of course yeah you spend

00:36:20.440 all this effort thinking you're talking to your son and you may well be talking to your daughter

00:36:24.300 so things work in mysterious ways what did she get about the book like what what did she say like

00:36:29.360 what connected with her yeah what she got and i think i can see it she's tolerant of all kinds of

00:36:37.760 different she can see uh what masculine behavior is important and what isn't and what is just like a

00:36:45.500 like what men do she's used to to she's not one of these women who demands men to all kind of act as

00:36:52.580 if they're you know downtrodden and passive she's she's more able to respond to what they're actually 1.00

00:37:00.700 saying or doing rather than what you might imagine they are because there are quite a lot of especially

00:37:06.640 if you go to college now there are kind of a lot of you know behavioral norms that men are supposed

00:37:12.540 to adhere to which obviously what everyone does yeah there's like classes now when you get you start

00:37:19.380 your freshman year where you have to talk about like what you're how we're supposed to do and not do

00:37:22.840 yeah i know it's kind of it's so weird it's making this whole area of tacit communication where you

00:37:28.520 just you you know you should know already it's kind of trying to make it all explicit and it's a

00:37:34.620 really bizarre kind of uh move but yeah i mean i'm not envious of them

00:37:40.920 well okay you're not so you're not there but like what do you what do you think men who are

00:37:45.440 listening to this podcast can start doing to experience what you call enhanced male being

00:37:50.060 like what what are the takeaways apart from buying the book apart from is it even is it still in print

00:37:54.680 yeah you don't know yeah it's definitely that's the thing of the imprint thing doesn't you know

00:37:59.200 there's quite a few uh secondhand copies out there especially you get to the amazon uk site so i think

00:38:03.240 you can still get it it may still be in print i don't know because it was on a reading list at

00:38:09.120 british columbia and simon fraser university it was on their masculinity course as a kind of academic

00:38:14.920 text for a while so i think it still has a life out there you probably will be able to get a copy

00:38:19.680 but yeah yeah okay that aside what could you do i think there's far more resources out there and

00:38:27.940 i think when i've got into this practical wisdom there's this sort of website on university of

00:38:35.500 chicago it's kind of movement practical wisdom which is sort of moving away from rules and incentives and

00:38:42.880 trying to ground behavior in in experience and i think that that's a way of sidestepping

00:38:50.500 compartmentalizing and labeling you know which i think is you know it's part of the has been part of

00:38:57.080 the problem but yeah in general i would say you've got to honor your yang i mean i say this to my

00:39:03.760 friends i've got a yang up i mean the other day i was going to join this gun club and of course you

00:39:08.440 know shooting guns in in the uk is it's pretty difficult but it's just a it's a yang experience

00:39:13.920 to go out shoot off a few rounds you know it's it's you know ultimately you may maybe you go hunting

00:39:21.020 maybe you don't go hunting but it definitely clocks you up a bit more yang and you come out feeling a

00:39:25.540 little bit more a bit more alive and a bit more energized so i would generally say yang up find

00:39:33.700 yang type activities chopping wood it's been shown that even if you're 80 years old you go out and chop

00:39:38.940 wood your testosterone levels rise to that of a 30 year old i mean jogging won't do that for you

00:39:44.260 you know find out those activities that do do give you that kind of use aggression i mean aggression

00:39:50.840 as a function which is to to use tools or weapons in a in a fast and efficient way so you don't lose

00:39:59.460 it i mean you you've and don't necessarily get into all those kind of endurance sports like riding

00:40:07.080 your bike for 5 000 miles you know there's there's you gotta have you have a variety i think of

00:40:13.180 activities well robert where can people go to learn more about your work well i've got i've got a

00:40:18.920 website robertswigger.com with about a thousand articles on it of all kinds of stuff i mean as

00:40:26.440 you know from the last chat i'm i mean my my my kind of the area i'm mainly into is polymathy which

00:40:32.540 is you know being skilled at many different things i think that that my being a man thing was just a

00:40:38.360 sort of subset of the the whole polymathic impulse which i think is as men and women i think we all need

00:40:45.680 to to spread our wings and not be trapped into specialization well robert twigger thanks for

00:40:51.300 your time it's been a pleasure thank you brett been great my guest today was robert twigger he's

00:40:56.440 the author of several books the book we discussed today was called being a man in the lousy modern

00:41:00.680 world it's available on amazon.com but you got to go to the uk version of amazon it's not available

00:41:05.360 in the states also check out his website robert twigger.com and check out our show notes at

00:41:09.580 aom.is slash twigger where you can find links to resources ring delve deeper into this topic

00:41:13.960 well that wraps up another edition of the aom podcast check out our website at

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The Art of Manliness - March 11, 2020

#592： Being a Man in the Lousy Modern World

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