Being a Man in the Lousy Modern World
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Summary
As Emerson famously said, "Society everywhere is a conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members." My guest today, Robert Twigger, says things have gotten a lot worse since Emerson uttered those words over a century and a half ago. In this episode, we discuss the four things Twigger says need to be in place for a man to feel like a man, and why experiencing these qualities has become a lot harder to do in the present age.
Transcript
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Hey, it's Brett. It is Labor Day here in the United States. So we're going to take a break
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and spend some time with the family and going to grill some burgers. So we're going to rerun
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episode number 592, Being a Man in the Lousy Modern World with Robert Twigger. It's a really
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fun episode. Hope you enjoy it. Check it out. We'll see you on Wednesday with a brand new episode.
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Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. Emerson famously
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said, society everywhere is a conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. My guest
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today says things have gotten a lot worse since Emerson uttered those words over a century and a
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half ago. His name is Robert Twigger. We last had him on the show to discuss his book, Micromastery.
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That's episode number 528, if you want to check that out. Today, we discuss a book he wrote 20
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years ago called Being a Man in the Lousy Modern World. We begin a conversation discussing how the
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modern world infantilizes men so they're easier to control and whether Robert thinks things have
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changed since he initially published the book. We then dig into the four factors Robert says need
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to be in place for a man to feel like a man and why experiencing these qualities has become a lot
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harder to do in the present age. We then discuss what Robert did to counter the currents of modern
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malaise like hiking the Pyrenees Mountains and learning a martial art and whether doing those things
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actually made him feel manlier. We enter a conversation with what men can do to start fighting back
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against the conspiracy against their manhood. Out of the show is over. Check out our show notes at
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aom.is slash twigger. All right, Robert Twigger, welcome back to the show.
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Thanks for having me. Always, always glad to be talking to the art of manliness.
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Well, we had you on the show last year to talk about your book, Micromastery, and that's episode
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number 528 for those who want to check it out. It's all about learning new skills by thinking
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small. It's a really great episode. It's a fan favorite. But we're going to talk about a book you
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wrote almost 20 years ago. It's called Being a Man in the Lousy Modern World. So tell us,
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what was the impetus behind this book? The real impetus was at that time, so I was writing that in,
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I don't know, sort of 1999 or something like that, exactly 20 years ago. There was a whole spate
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of adverts in which men were portrayed as sort of dorks and patsies, and the women were all smart
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and sassy. They were often, it was often, there were commercials in people's homes, you know, and
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it was the dorky husband who couldn't do anything, and the wife was in control. And I just thought,
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this is just sending such a stupid wrong message. So it was kind of anger. And then it sort of all
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kind of spiraled out from there. So I just started to look at what the role of men was
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in the lousy modern world. And the way you wrote this, you sort of contrasted,
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you had a son that was coming. You contrasted that trying to figure out what does it mean to
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be a man in this world? And then contrasting all these adventures, you tried to go on to figure that
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out. Yeah, I mean, the other strand in the book was using, because my previous couple of books had
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been these adventures, but I had all these leftover stuff that I'd done. So I was writing for kind of
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adventure travel pieces for magazines. And so I had all this material, and I thought, well, I've got to
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use it. Each adventure itself probably wouldn't have justified a book. So I wove that in. And it
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became, because the adventure seemed part of being a man. It seemed like a man who shunned any form
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of adventure. I guess it was because adventure called forth the need for courage. And I knew that
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courage was a key part of it. And you can, I mean, it was funny, the contrast between you getting ready
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for the arrival of your son, it was sort of like a day in the life of just a regular suburban guy
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living in the Western world, you know, barbecues. And you're kind of like, ah, the way you described
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is like, this is, this is not it. Yeah, I mean, and I, I might, I wanted to make it honest. And
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there's a sort of problem, because the kind of language you use to describe adventures is it doesn't
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suit describing relationships and about, you know, what you feel about your kids and all that sort of
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things. So it was a fine line to, to draw. I also didn't want to just, you know, burrow into total
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sentimentality. Because, you know, before your kids are born, I mean, what can you feel you need,
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they just arrived, you know, you don't know what they're going to be like. So it was, it was tricky.
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It was tricky ground. But as you say, yeah, it was, it's half that theme through the book,
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which I keep going back to, which is as the day progresses, that's the kind of driving force.
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It's, it's kind of like a micro adventure in itself, but it's, it's Mr. Suburbia. And my life
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is Mr. Suburbia. And I'm just not, not sort of happy with it. So what is it about the lousy
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modern world that you, you felt like that makes manliness feel obsolete? Like you feel like
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it's not suited for men. Yeah. I mean, there's so many strands here, but I mean, the, the,
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I mean, just coming from the top, it's, it's got to be that we have so many prosthetic
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devices, computers, cars, things that actually take out the physical aspect. And if there's,
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there are many differences between men and women, but I mean, the most obvious one is,
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there's a physical strength difference. So if you're not actually having to use your physical
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strength at all, you're different from, you know, most men that have come before you in history.
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So there's, there's that side, there's the skill aspect, even small skills, like learning to light a
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fire, which my dad used to do, you know, lighting the fire in the house, even things like fixing the
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car. She did, I can't even fix my own car now. Cause I don't know, I don't know how to do the
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codes into the computerized bit. I mean, it's, it's kind of endless really the way we, we become so
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impotent and we just kind of like living like Kings in this, in this world of, of largely electronic
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backup. Well, and I think that one of the points you make that I thought was really incisive is that
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the modern world does a great job of keeping us like children, even as adults. Like I just said,
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you can't even fix your own car because there's like a computer that you have to be able to program
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and you have to be licensed to do that change. And, and you make this point that, uh, that children
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are easier to control than adults. And it's kind of, you can make the, you get some that say a cynical
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conclusion that, well, that's what corporations and governments want. They want us to be easily
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controlled. Well, yeah, I mean, it may not be, I don't think there's some kind of conscious
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Uber mind who's saying that let's, let's infantile, infantilize our entire population, but
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it, it just seems to work out better that way. So maybe there's some sort of evolutionary
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imperative at work inside corporations and big organizations that gradually the solution that
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infantilizes the, the workforce seems to work better. So you kind of by increments move towards that
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position and it's generally the case. Yeah. I mean, even the police, you know, when, when,
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for example, somebody stands up and defends themselves against the mugging, there's always
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the, the warning from the police, the police say, don't do this in future. Um, uh, it's a dangerous
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thing to try and defend yourself at the same time as the newspaper report is saying, Oh, what a great
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thing. The 78 year old guy fought off the mugger. So there's this constant message that you're,
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you're better off just, just being like a kid really. But the insidious thing is that because
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of all these advances, like, you know, things are cheap. We've got all this technology that,
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you know, basically gives us the world at our fingertips. It makes us feel like we're in control,
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but sometimes we're really not in control. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's a weird idea of control,
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isn't it? It's a bit like, I mean, we, we already had it today when the computer works, you're apparently
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in control. As soon as it doesn't work, you discover the exact limitations of your control.
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If you can't fix something, how much can you say you're in control? I mean, I think being able to
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fix stuff is, is, is a key part of being a man. And when we live in a world where we can't fix
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things very easily, maybe we're just going along on someone else's ride.
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Well, I guess Emerson's right. He said that society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of
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Well, yeah. I mean, that was 150 years ago, something like that.
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It's got to be. And so you wrote this 20 years ago and you were seeing this stuff then,
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like how, how have things changed? Have things gotten worse? Have it stayed the same as you've
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Yeah. It's, it's weird how things have changed. Um, in some ways it's got, it's got a lot worse
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things that I could humorously joke about. Then you can't really joke about now because you'll be,
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you'll be, um, targeted as somebody, you know, that's not something you can joke about.
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Things have become off limits. So that's kind of worse. The better side is there's been a huge,
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there's been a growth in things. The art of manliness came along. There's been a growth in
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people becoming more aware of mental health issues of young men, which is a tremendous problem.
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So those kind of knowing jokes, Oh, it's the men, you know, the other day I was at a party and some,
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some woman sort of made some mocking comment about men with respect to mental health. And I,
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I was able to sort of pull the, it's a serious subject kind of thing. I didn't have to back off
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and take it. So there's been a bit of a pushback there, but it's, but it's at a big cost. You know,
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we've seen, I mean, I, I talk about it in the book. I talk about how criminality is, is a kind
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of refuge. It's like the last refuge of masculinity for many men. I mean, if you haven't got much
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imagination and you can't get yourself off and do a dangerous or, or interesting adventure,
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you, you're probably drawn to criminal behavior. So, you know, that's, we've seen a massive or
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increasing rise in criminality and, you know, that, that kind of area and spill over into mental
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health issues. So, so in that sense, worse, it's, it's pretty similar though.
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So, uh, in the book you lay out, you, you lay out four factors that you think need to be in place
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for a man to be considered a man. So this is, again, this is what you said 20 years ago that
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might, this might've changed, but what, what are, what were those four factors that you, that you saw?
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The four factors were killing a beast, courage, courage is one ability to, you know,
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skills, you know, there were basic skills that, that, you know, seemed to be involved with being
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a man and passing a rite of passage. You know, that's, that's something that I circle in the book,
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which is that men seem to have the need to have undergone some kind of test of difficultness or
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dangerousness. And it's a before and after, and you see it characterized in, you know, even things
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like a, like a bar mitzvah or other rites of passage after which you are a man, it's a ritual.
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And I think that if anything, that's, I mean, just to sort of move on a bit from those four
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characteristics, that's one of the key issues of the, um, of the book is that this lack of ritual
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in our society means the transition from a, from a boy to a man is blurred or, or never even exists.
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So, and I think rituals are the way we, we make transitions and we've, we've lost sight of that.
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Yeah. Well, and we, we sort of still have rituals, but as you point out in the book,
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Yeah. Yeah. There's things like, you know, pass your driving test, you know,
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Yeah. Yeah. And they're lame as hell. I mean, you can't really look at yourself and think,
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I, um, I'm on the, I can stand shoulder to shoulder with, you know, people who were in the
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first world war or, you know, single-handedly paddled their way up the Amazon or something.
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So it's a sort of, you're going to just feel lame if you, if you accept cult, the culture.
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Right. They're, they're, they're male rights of passages for this lousy modern world.
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But yeah, I mean, you, you said this idea, like a rite of passage, it really can help a boy
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transition that man that has that help. It has those factors that there's an element of risk
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to it of danger where you have to display courage. You have to display fortitude and lacking that.
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It's just, it, it doesn't, it's not, it's not transformative if there's no risk involved.
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Yeah. I think that that's the, it just sharpens things up and the ability to assess risk is probably
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a big part of it. I mean, I had, I know this guy, a good friend, and he told me he's going off to
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Pamplona to party. And I said, well, you've got to run the bulls. If you're going to go to Pamplona,
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he said, no, no, that's just stupid. That's stupid. You know, that's kind of like the lousy
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modern world speaking, you know, you, you're like Mr. Sensible. And of course running the bulls has
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risks. And, and if you're drunk, the risks are higher, but you know, you can assess those risks
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and decide whether you're going to do it or not. Otherwise don't go to Pamplona because otherwise
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you're borrowing the, the, the sort of the kudos of Ernest Hemingway and all the people who went
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there and you're just going there for a big kind of piss up. And that seemed to be kind of like,
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you know, another problem, you know, but the problem itself is not the danger. It's the
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unwillingness to assess it. Cause again, that's a kind of self-reliance. So I'm not saying do
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dangerous things for the sake of it, to be stupid. I mean, there are plenty of people who do that.
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I'm getting some of them get killed. What I'm saying is develop the skill to assess risk.
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Don't sort of just offload that skill to, you know, looking on the internet and someone tells you,
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Well, let's talk about, let's delve deeper into this courage. Cause you, you, you kind of,
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you got philosophical about this, like trying to figure out what is courage, because there's
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some people who look courageous and like Aristotle, the philosopher grappled with this idea. It's like,
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how can you tell someone's really courageous, right? They could just be like, they're crazy
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and they don't feel fear and they just would just do crazy stuff. So there's, I mean,
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are they really courageous? So how, what's your assessment of that?
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Well, I think, yeah, Aristotle does mention no courage by its absence rather than by its
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presence. That's one thing. You talking to people who served in the army and in dangerous
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situations, it's courage isn't, it's not that rare. You know, there are, you know, most people
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given them, given the right kind of backup will be courageous. So it's, it's, it's not something we
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should feel that it's like a really rare quality. It's, it's, it's, it's pretty available to
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everybody, but I think everybody needs to, to be able to test, test themselves in a number of
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situations because you're right that mere bravado can look like courage unless someone has felt the
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consequences. You know, I mean, I, in the book, I talk about this climbing where I was, when I was
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younger, did climbing. I never had any concept of risk to fell off and broke, cracked some vertebra in
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my, cracked a couple of vertebra. And then I realized there were consequences and I stopped being a
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crazy. And in fact, I didn't really do much climbing after that. So I kind of realized that
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maybe I wasn't that courageous when it came to, to heights. So it's finding those, I think that
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courage is, is an exploration of finding those, those points where you push yourself. And, and again,
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it's a sort of self-knowledge thing that without putting yourself in those difficult situations,
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you won't get that self-knowledge. So maybe even more than courage, what we're looking at here is,
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is knowing yourself and knowing what your limitations are. Because I think, as I said,
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most people do have, have courage and they are sort of a natural human characteristic.
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And I think one of the problems of the lousy modern world, as you put it, is that we don't
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have that many opportunities to display courage. Like you have to like often proactively go seek it,
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you know, in times past that it would come to you. You had to display courage for whatever reason,
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because the world was a dangerous place, but now it's so safe. You had to go look for it instead
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So, yeah, you do really. I mean, it, there are plenty of opportunities for
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showing that you're stoical in the modern world for showing that you can put up with awful shit
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over a long period, but courage sort of find out the full kind of topography of courage. I think you
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do need to be in, in situations which demand quick thinking as well as kind of like just endlessly
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putting up with something. And for that, yeah, you, you, you probably have to see, well,
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you do have to seek it out. I think, I think you have to get either into the wilderness or you have
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to, you know, deny yourself the normal creature comforts and find, find a bit of a challenge.
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Well, let's talk about this idea of being skilled as a component of manliness. I thought it was fun.
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This was fun reading this because, you know, I'd read your book, Micro Mastery, we talked about it,
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and this was 20 years later. So it was interesting to see your thinking of, of skills being an
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important part of being a man, you know, even 20 years ago. So what, what is it about being handy
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that you think makes a man admirable? Well, I think it's, it's the hands. Yeah. It's, it's,
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it's using our hands. You know, I think that, uh, we know that there's something associated with it.
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I mean, I was, my grandfather who was very, I mean, he, he'd kind of, he, he originally,
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he ended up as an engineer, but he'd started as, you know, doing manual work, building walls and,
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and using all kinds of hand tools. He had these really, he's not a big guy, but his hands are big
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and strong. And that we feel it in the old handshake. You know, why do we have such a,
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such a store by having a bone crushing handshake? It's because it kind of means something. It means
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that you can, you can handle weapons. You can, you can make things. You have the skill to be useful.
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I think it's, it's all about a utility factor. Nobody wants to feel useless. And I think that
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there's connection in the lousy modern world between people not finding meaning and people
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being very, very lazy and not getting off their butt is connected to feeling useless. So if you
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have skills, hand skills, you are useful and therefore you will work and you will find meaning.
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So they're all kind of deeply connected. And we know that there's, you know, parts of the brain
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connected with, you know, getting hand skill are really sort of, if you can use this term,
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ancient parts of parts of our cognition, you know, this is not a, it's not a recent development.
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So I think it's tapping into something that's, that is ancient and valuable. And yeah, I mean,
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even, even Neanderthal man, even proto humans were, were, were adept at hand skills. So it seems
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like a, a, an essential, essential thing to, to master.
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And it's one of those ways of becoming more competent is one of those ways you can rebel
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Yeah. I think it, I think it really is. I think it's, it's, it's, it's a way of, it's,
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it's very satisfying as well. You know, the idea of, you know, you can go into the wilderness and
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start a fire without using a lighter and petrol, you know, if you can use a, make a bow drill and start
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a fire like that. I mean, there's huge growth in survival, which we've seen. I mean, the being
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a man thing, it already had started in the nineties, but in the last 20 years, we've seen a massive
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growth in bushcraft and survival. And YouTube has been a huge, a huge help there in spreading all
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kinds of skills. It's now really quite easy to get quite arcane skills, which you had to go on
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special courses to learn in the past. You can access them through YouTube.
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We're going to take a quick break for a word from our sponsors.
00:19:21.620
All right. So let's talk about this idea of the ability to kill man or beast. So what's
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going on there? I mean, I think, I mean, I think the point you made is that it's something that
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people, I think tacitly accept as being, you know, a part of being a man. It's like, if you were able,
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if you have the capability to do violence, but they're dodgy about it, they don't like to talk
00:19:40.120
Yeah. I mean, it's, it's dodgy ground because you, you know, you're entering the area of the criminal
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in the modern culture. But if you go back to traditional societies, most of the
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rites of passages were either you killed a lion or, or some, some dangerous beast, or
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you killed a member of another tribe, but not in the sort of psychopathological warfare of
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the 20th century. It was probably some kind of raiding warfare. And even tribes like the
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Nagas do, you know, these headhunters in, in Burmese Indian border. I spent some time with
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you. If you ran away, you weren't considered a coward, but if you got killed in a raid, you
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were given a dishonorable burial, which is quite interesting. So it limited warfare, but
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it allowed people the chance to, to, to get involved. Sometimes, of course, people were
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killed in that, in those environments, but that the numbers were far, far less than the
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vast numbers that have been killed in the, in the 20th century. So we can't really boast
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that our system is more humane or more manageable. So I think that, that gets rid of
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that objection. But the hard part is to, you know, to say that that is an aspect, the
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potentiality of, of, of, of killing somebody. Perhaps the only way around it is to talk about
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defense, you know, that you are prepared in a situation to put yourself in a difficult
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situation and be competent to, to, to protect somebody, even if it meant dispatching somebody.
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It does, it is, it is, it is borderline psycho though. So that's, that is, that is always
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going to be the problem. And I think the way around it is to think of this as a skill, which
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is kind of bridging between the sort of the past and the present that if you are, if you
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believe that you couldn't in a certain situation, if your family was threatened and you had to
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defend them, if you believed you would just walk away and let them be killed and you wouldn't
00:21:35.520
do something about it, then there's something missing. You know, I think that you need to
00:21:39.280
have that potential and that skill to be able to do that. And probably it's more of a willpower
00:21:44.640
thing and it's nothing to be particularly proud of because, you know, thousands of people in
00:21:49.520
this world are going around killing people with, you know, without any thought, you know,
00:21:52.940
a friend of mine told me that he, he was in Somalia as war reporter. And when he decided
00:21:59.080
that the game was getting a bit dangerous was when a kid, you know, we're talking about a
00:22:02.720
10 year old kid pointed to the Kalashnikov and just pulled the trigger because it was
00:22:06.240
unloaded. So, or the bullet jammed or whatever. Anyway, he was lucky, but that the ability to
00:22:12.580
just, you know, blow somebody away is not some huge, great skill in that sense. But if you
00:22:17.760
are a rational, calm, normal, and you're not an unhinged human being, then, then it's quite
00:22:24.560
a leap. So maybe what we're edging towards here is if, if you are someone who is repelled by
00:22:30.520
the idea of killing and you're normal in that sense, you should make that effort to comprehend
00:22:35.960
it. And I suppose that's what I'm saying, but if you're the sort of person who, who just
00:22:40.280
can't wait to go and stab somebody, then, then you're obviously a psychopath and we're not
00:22:45.260
talking about you. So I think that the, the perspective of the book was really aimed at
00:22:50.440
that thoughtful, perhaps rather suburban character who thinks this is an untenable and outrageous
00:22:57.620
position. And maybe it's all about getting that mental flexibility and moving yourself
00:23:04.560
Well, and I mean, something, this is sort of an issue that's, that philosophers have grappled
00:23:08.080
with. It's like, can, can you really be considered kind or good if you don't have the ability to
00:23:15.980
do like violence or bad or whatever? Right. Cause like, is it any virtue that you don't even
00:23:21.120
have the ability, like you don't have to overcome it. You know what I'm saying? So it's like, can
00:23:24.760
you really be proud of your virtue if you had no opportunity to test it or like control
00:23:31.140
Yeah. I think that, that, you know, that's, that's a kind of another way into it. And I
00:23:34.700
think that's a good way of looking at it, that you may be over-focused on those virtues
00:23:39.060
and you might not understand that, well, perhaps they need to be defended in some way and that
00:23:45.220
they may go hand in hand with, with a lied virtue. I mean, thinking, I'm thinking of things
00:23:49.700
like courage and generosity. I've often noticed that people who are very generous are often
00:23:53.700
courageous. And actually, if you read in sort of, you know, traditional type psychology,
00:23:59.540
they're considered to go hand in hand. So if you want to build your courage, build your
00:24:03.380
generosity. So there are some, some sort of links, maybe at a deeper level between more
00:24:09.460
passive virtues and, and the more kind of outgoing, aggressive virtues or, or borderline
00:24:19.240
Well, you make this distinction too, between men being either passive or active. And I
00:24:24.640
think that goes to what you were just saying there. Like men are, I think there's, we have
00:24:29.460
this idea that men should be active instead of passive. And what does that look like for
00:24:34.400
you in the, you know, one of the things I regret not doing in that book was not using
00:24:41.420
the yin yang distinction, which of course was fairly well known, but it wasn't really mainstream.
00:24:45.900
And now I think it is more mainstream and it's one of the better, one of the things that has
00:24:50.380
definitely happened over the last 20 years is a lot of the concepts that were a bit borderline
00:24:54.900
then are totally mainstream. Brain plasticity, totally mainstream, use it or lose it. You know,
00:25:02.060
the idea that if you don't practice these skills, you'll lose them. All of these things
00:25:05.160
are now mainstream. And one of them was yin and yang. And I think that that's the passive active
00:25:09.560
thing, the sort of yin characteristics. I mean, you know, in the sort of Eastern philosophies,
00:25:14.440
you know, things, things always have a yin and yang element and it depends on where on
00:25:19.120
the spectrum you are. And I think this, they don't necessarily map perfectly onto male and
00:25:24.080
female, but definitely men are more on the yang end of the spectrum and women in general
00:25:30.440
are more on the yin end of the spectrum. And there's a bunch of characteristics that are
00:25:34.860
yin and yang and passivity is more of a yin characteristic, which doesn't mean it's better
00:25:39.940
or worse. It's just a characteristic. And, um, so I, I definitely think that men are more
00:25:48.060
on the yang end and therefore need to do more active stuff.
00:25:53.340
But another point you make in your book is that the lousy modern world or soft suburban
00:25:56.860
existence can often take men who were, have that active stance towards the world and then
00:26:02.440
turn them into like, they become like, they're just really guppy fish. They start out male,
00:26:06.140
young. And then when they get older, they turn into females.
00:26:09.360
Yeah. I think that, I mean, that was, that was my great theory that I thought would be
00:26:12.700
taken up, but people just kind of like completely ignored it. But yeah, I thought that the, the
00:26:17.740
sort of traditional polarity societies seem to need to organize themselves into polarity.
00:26:22.660
And maybe that reflects the yin yang thing. And in most cultures it's male, female, but we
00:26:28.780
now have evolved a young, old polarity. So you're kind of young until you're about 38 and you
00:26:35.820
start making all these references to getting older. And then you suddenly adopt all these
00:26:40.100
kind of, kind of timid, older characteristics that are quite yin. And so they, they're sort
00:26:45.680
of more like old style feminine characteristics, but you can't call, call them that now. So
00:26:50.040
it's now just what older people do. So, so that was, and I, but I think there are all sorts
00:26:56.080
of interesting possibilities. Like I do think if you, if you, if you trap an active person
00:27:04.040
in a, in a controlled environment and they become focused on, so on, I mean, we see a
00:27:10.560
growth in not Asperger's syndrome per se, but sort of characteristics, Asperger type characteristics,
00:27:18.060
you know, listing involvement, deep involvement in sort of, this sort of hobbies. And, and
00:27:24.840
I wonder if that's a reaction to, to being kind of trapped in a, in a non-active environment.
00:27:32.040
You tend not to see that in tribal groups, which still go out hunting and roaming around
00:27:39.620
and generally being kind of hunter gatherer types. You don't see that same sort of nerdy
00:27:45.660
kind of behavior, which may be a kind of reaction to being sort of penned in.
00:27:50.560
Well, I mean, that's another thing we've done in our lousy modern world. We've taken
00:27:53.260
being active, sometimes the extreme, like the extreme forms of being active. And we said,
00:27:57.480
well, that's a pathology. Like they've got ADHD. We're going to give you some medicine for
00:28:01.600
that. Cause again, it's all about control. Like we want to control people.
00:28:05.560
Yeah. I think that that's certainly true. I mean, if you look at the school, school is a,
00:28:09.660
it's only tangentially about education. I mean, it's really about socializing people to
00:28:15.120
function in, in this world that is very, that does demand a high, a high level of submission
00:28:20.940
to, in certain areas. I mean, one of the shocking things I found going around a prison
00:28:26.500
in Scotland, where I gave a talk a couple of years ago and it reminded me of school. I mean,
00:28:33.880
in, not in a bad way, even in kind of a good way, because the guards were really trying to help the
00:28:38.000
prisoners in a good way. And, and I was teaching, I was talking to some of the good prisoners who hadn't
00:28:42.400
sort of, you know, messed up. So they were allowed to listen to my talk. And the whole thing was like
00:28:46.380
a hardcore, grim version of school. So it shocked me. And I realized, in other words,
00:28:52.780
those prisoners had just been trained for this environment. This is what they knew by going to
00:28:56.860
school. So, I mean, this is, I'm not saying that's the only function of school, because obviously
00:29:02.480
people do learn things, but they, they could learn them a lot more efficiently in another way.
00:29:07.420
We know that, but that's not the big issue. The issue is that society needs to control all these
00:29:14.220
people. It can't have them just running around. And just observing that doesn't mean to say that
00:29:18.480
I'm proposing that we disband all these things, but it's just about developing that awareness.
00:29:23.580
And having that awareness doesn't mean that you are automatically opposed to those institutions.
00:29:29.120
I mean, I think that's one of the things I was trying to do in the book is to build
00:29:31.540
a sense of, you know, have, be able to hold those slightly contradictory positions in your brain
00:29:39.600
at the same time. Don't, don't assume that you have to be either one thing or the other.
00:29:45.500
And again, like the people that are often trying to control are boys. It's like, I mean, usually,
00:29:49.480
yeah, I mean, usually the schools are what the research says, the way school set up, it's suited for
00:29:54.240
girls, boys, you know, some do okay, but then some boys don't do well at all in it because there's just so
00:30:00.680
much, there's no flexibility. They like to be active and they don't get that at school.
00:30:05.240
Yeah. I mean, there are just a hundred ways that you could improve it. And we probably go off in a
00:30:10.940
complete tangent, but you're, you're right. You know, we human beings were not meant to sit
00:30:15.180
motionless or not hardly moving in one seat all day long. You know, it's just, it's just not what
00:30:22.060
humans are supposed to do. And to expect people to do that, it's just, it's just kind of, it's kind
00:30:27.120
of lunacy. So you talk about within this, this lousy modern world, like we don't have
00:30:31.840
these opportunities to show male attributes, the courage, the ability to be skilled. Like you have
00:30:37.960
to go out and find it. Like, what are some of the stuff that you did to go display this stuff? And
00:30:42.940
like, were you, did you, were you trying to create a rite of passage for yourself with all these,
00:30:47.740
I think what I was trying to do was emulate people who'd come before me. I wanted to, to,
00:30:55.480
you know, I knew that people had fought in wars. I knew that people had gone on expeditions and I'd
00:31:02.000
read books about them. And I thought, we've got to live up to that. We can't just, just assume that
00:31:06.720
things were great in the past and we've just got to, you know, all be wimpy nowadays. So there was,
00:31:11.780
it was a conscious trying to sort of, to emulate people in the past and, but starting on a really
00:31:18.860
small way, cause I was quite a timid guy. I'm not like sort of Superman who just jumped off. So I
00:31:24.480
started, I mean, I think the first thing is this doing a long distance walk in, in the Pyrenees.
00:31:29.740
So walking alone about 700 kilometers along this couple of trails that, that connect the Atlantic
00:31:37.960
with the Mediterranean. And that was a big deal for me because it was, you know, self-reliance,
00:31:43.500
you know, some slightly scary situations when I got lost, but you know, it wasn't beyond the ability
00:31:49.640
of almost anybody to do. And then that gave me the impetus to go to Japan and study this martial
00:31:56.220
art. And I'd always known that I wanted to do a martial art. I just not found a situation where I
00:32:01.960
could do one and actually progress and get better. Cause I wasn't that good at it. And then when I got to
00:32:07.300
Japan, I realized you could do it absolutely full on and full time, five hours a day, five days a
00:32:12.520
week. And that's when I began to properly progress and achieve that sort of bucket list tick, which,
00:32:20.020
you know, get a black belt was, had always been a kind of, you know, there's a kind of an overlap
00:32:24.360
with the bucket list, I suppose here, but I'm a big believer wishlist. I think it's better to
00:32:28.180
call them wishlists. Making a wishlist of, uh, achievements is, is, is no bad thing.
00:32:33.500
And you also went bullfighting or you, there was a cow training. Yeah. Famous cow. Yeah. That
00:32:40.080
would, that came about through a men's magazine, a Maxim, I think. And England had a bullfighter
00:32:46.300
called Frank Evans, sadly now dead. And he offered to train me and I had to go up to Manchester,
00:32:54.860
his town. And he had a, we went into the local school playground where he, uh, he had a shopping
00:33:01.440
trolley with a, a bale of straw in it. And that was the bull. And I had to practice kind
00:33:06.000
of stabbing it and, you know, lifting the, the cloak. And yeah. And then we went out
00:33:11.560
to Spain to practice with a cow. Cause you can't, if you practice with a bull, you have
00:33:16.400
to actually dispatch the bull. And I wasn't really going to do that. So you, you have to
00:33:21.720
practice with a cow cause then the cow's allowed to live.
00:33:24.220
And the reason why you have to dispatch the bull is that the bull will learn. Basically
00:33:27.380
they don't want the bull to learn how to kill humans.
00:33:29.400
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, they learned so fast in the 15 minutes that they're in there because
00:33:34.360
they've been living on the range for two to four years. So they're, they've had a wonderful
00:33:37.660
life. They haven't been inside a horrid shed for six months and then, you know, stunned
00:33:43.180
by one of those guns, like they used in no country for old men. None of that. They've had
00:33:47.820
a wonderful life and it's come to an end in 15 minutes. And quite frankly, if, if that was
00:33:52.620
the way I was going to go, I wouldn't mind, but yeah, they learn so much. They become
00:33:56.320
very dangerous and they will, they will easily kill the next matador. So they're dispatched.
00:34:02.000
But cows are considered to be less difficult, but of course cows learn too. So they can be,
00:34:08.940
they can be, they can be, there is a wild card and Frank himself had suffered some, a terrible
00:34:14.060
injury where a coward pronged him right up the ass, punctured his bladder, but it left
00:34:19.340
no damage. So he, you know, it was an internal injury that had no external kind of damage.
00:34:25.260
So it was rather a touch and go nasty thing to happen.
00:34:30.440
It's a deeply unpleasant. I'm just trying not to laugh because it's a horrible thing
00:34:34.820
to happen to anyone. But anyway, yeah. So yeah, we went into, it was a tiny cow, but
00:34:39.440
still, yeah, pretty scary when it's coming, coming full on at you and all you've got is
00:34:43.820
a, is a, is a cape and a sword to protect you. But yeah, it was, that was a cool thing
00:34:51.840
Wait, and after you did all this stuff, like, did you feel changed? Like, did you feel like,
00:34:55.260
I feel like a man or was it sort of like, uh, that was a letdown?
00:34:59.340
I think I was thinking of a fact about this the other day. I was thinking, God, yeah, you've
00:35:02.620
done some stuff. You're all right. I think it experience has an odd effect on you that
00:35:08.600
isn't explicit. So it doesn't, it doesn't come up as sentences in your head. It's just
00:35:13.340
does change the way you approach life a bit. It makes you, uh, those kinds of experiences
00:35:18.780
will tend to make you more confident in unusual situations. You'll just think, oh, this isn't
00:35:24.840
so bad. So that's good. So it gives you a, it gives you a range in which to judge things
00:35:29.720
and some skills, which you might need, but it's, it's not that you're not going to feel
00:35:35.640
any different. I think that's the kind of thing when you're a kid, you always think,
00:35:38.060
I'm going to feel different. You're just the same, you know, you're still you, but
00:35:41.740
you, you're less anxious and you're, you're more, yeah, you're less anxious really. And
00:35:49.580
you're more, you're more willing to have a go at something. So it's a sort of, it increases
00:35:53.920
your, your range and your, the possibilities that you have, but you'll, you won't, you won't
00:35:59.780
feel like Clint Eastwood inside, whatever he feels like inside.
00:36:03.300
Have you talked to your son about this stuff as he's gotten older?
00:36:07.580
Uh, not really. I mean, that's the other thing. I'm, I don't think I'm a great dad.
00:36:13.180
So, you know, it's like an okay one. I've, I've, I've, uh, yeah, I kind of brought it up,
00:36:18.240
but mostly what I pontificate on is, is treated as a, you know, marginal, marginal interest in
00:36:25.340
our household. So, um, so that's always the problem, but I've, I've, the books are there
00:36:30.780
for them to read. My daughter read it. I think she, she gets it better. That's the
00:36:33.660
other paradox. Of course. Yeah. You spend all this effort thinking you're talking to
00:36:37.620
your son and you may well be talking to your daughter. So things work in mysterious ways.
00:36:42.080
What did she get about the book? Like what did, what did she say? Like what connected
00:36:46.540
Yeah. What she got, and I think I can see it. She's tolerant of all kinds of different,
00:36:53.220
she can see, uh, what masculine behavior is important and what isn't, and what is just
00:37:00.100
like a, like what men do. She's used to, to, she's not one of these women who demands men
00:37:06.240
to all kind of act as if they're, you know, downtrodden and passive. She's, she's more able
00:37:13.120
to respond to what they're actually saying or doing rather than what she might imagine
00:37:19.660
they are. Cause there are quite a lot of, especially if you go to college now, there
00:37:22.800
are kind of a lot of, you know, behavioral norms that men are supposed to adhere to,
00:37:31.900
There's like classes now when you get, you start your freshman year where you have to
00:37:35.620
talk about like what you're, how we're supposed to do and not do.
00:37:38.100
Yeah. I know. It's kind of, it's so weird. It's making this whole area of tacit communication
00:37:43.220
where you just, you, you know, you should know already. It's kind of trying to make it
00:37:47.940
all explicit and it's, it's a really bizarre kind of a move, but yeah, I mean, I'm not
00:37:58.000
Well, okay. You're not, so you're not there, but like, what do you, what do you think men
00:38:00.300
who are listening to this podcast can start doing to experience what you call enhanced
00:38:07.680
Apart from buying, is it even, is it still in print?
00:38:09.980
Yeah. I don't know. Yeah. It's definitely, that's the thing of the imprint thing doesn't,
00:38:14.060
you know, there's, there's quite a few secondhand copies out there, especially you get to
00:38:16.780
the Amazon UK site. So I think you can still get it. It may still be in print. I don't
00:38:21.840
know. Cause it was on a reading list at British Columbia and the Simon Fraser university. It
00:38:26.640
was on their masculinity course as a, as a kind of academic text for a while. So I think
00:38:32.360
it still has a life out there. You probably will be able to get a copy, but yeah. Yeah.
00:38:35.520
Okay. That aside, what could you do? I think there's far more resources out there. And I think,
00:38:45.280
when I've got into this practical wisdom, there's this sort of website on University
00:38:50.340
of Chicago, it's kind of movement, practical wisdom, which is sort of moving away from rules
00:38:56.380
and incentives and trying to ground behavior in, in experience. And I think that that's a
00:39:04.440
way of sidestepping compartmentalizing and labeling, you know, which I think is, you know,
00:39:10.160
it's part of the, has been part of the problem, but yeah, in general, I would say you've got
00:39:15.620
to honor your yang. I mean, I say this to my friends who got a yang up. I mean, the other
00:39:20.480
day I was going to join this gun club and of course, you know, shooting guns in the UK
00:39:25.020
is, it's pretty difficult, but it's just a, it's a yang experience to go out, shoot off
00:39:30.920
a few rounds. You know, it's, it's, you know, ultimately you may, maybe you go hunting,
00:39:36.040
maybe you don't go hunting, but it definitely clocks you up a bit more yang and you come
00:39:40.020
out feeling a little bit more, a bit more alive and a bit more energized. So I would
00:39:46.020
generally say yang up, find yang type activities, chopping wood. It's been shown that even if
00:39:52.080
you're 80 years old, you go out and chop wood, your testosterone levels rise to that
00:39:56.180
of a 30 year old. I mean, jogging won't do that for you. You know, find out those activities
00:40:01.140
that do, do give you that kind of use aggression. I mean, aggression has a, has a function,
00:40:06.920
which is to, to use tools or weapons in a, in a fast and efficient way. So you don't lose
00:40:14.480
it. I mean, you, you've, and don't necessarily get into all those kinds of endurance sports,
00:40:20.400
like riding your bike for 5,000 miles. You know, there's, there's, you've got to have,
00:40:26.200
you've got to have a variety, I think, of activities.
00:40:28.680
Well, Robert, where can people go to learn more about your work?
00:40:32.580
Well, I've got, I've got a website, robertswigger.com with about a thousand articles on it of all
00:40:39.120
kinds of stuff. I mean, as, as you know, from the last chat, I'm a, I mean, my, my, my kind
00:40:45.120
of the area I'm mainly into is polymathy, which is, you know, being skilled at many different
00:40:49.820
things. I think that, that my being a man thing was just a sort of subset of the, the whole
00:40:55.800
polymathic impulse, which I think is as men and women, I think we all need to, to spread
00:41:02.140
our wings and not be trapped into specialization.
00:41:05.460
Well, Robert Twigger, thanks for your time. It's been a pleasure.
00:41:09.900
My guest today was Robert Twigger. He's the author of several books. The book we discussed
00:41:13.120
today was called Being a Man in the Lousy Modern World. It's available on amazon.com, but you got
00:41:18.260
to go to the UK version of Amazon. It's not available in the States. Also check out his website,
00:41:22.320
roberttwigger.com and check out our show notes at aom.is slash twigger, where you can find links
00:41:26.780
to resources, ring delve deeper into this topic. Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM
00:41:38.240
podcast. Check out our website at artofmanlios.com where you can find our podcast archives, as well
00:41:42.320
as thousands of articles we've written over the years about pretty much anything you can think
00:41:45.480
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