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

00:00:00.000 Hey, it's Brett. It is Labor Day here in the United States. So we're going to take a break

00:00:02.980 and spend some time with the family and going to grill some burgers. So we're going to rerun

00:00:06.440 episode number 592, Being a Man in the Lousy Modern World with Robert Twigger. It's a really 0.95

00:00:11.040 fun episode. Hope you enjoy it. Check it out. We'll see you on Wednesday with a brand new episode.

00:00:22.360 Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. Emerson famously

00:00:27.000 said, society everywhere is a conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. My guest

00:00:32.240 today says things have gotten a lot worse since Emerson uttered those words over a century and a

00:00:35.700 half ago. His name is Robert Twigger. We last had him on the show to discuss his book, Micromastery.

00:00:40.040 That's episode number 528, if you want to check that out. Today, we discuss a book he wrote 20

00:00:44.600 years ago called Being a Man in the Lousy Modern World. We begin a conversation discussing how the

00:00:50.120 modern world infantilizes men so they're easier to control and whether Robert thinks things have

00:00:54.140 changed since he initially published the book. We then dig into the four factors Robert says need

00:00:58.160 to be in place for a man to feel like a man and why experiencing these qualities has become a lot

00:01:02.260 harder to do in the present age. We then discuss what Robert did to counter the currents of modern

00:01:05.980 malaise like hiking the Pyrenees Mountains and learning a martial art and whether doing those things

00:01:09.800 actually made him feel manlier. We enter a conversation with what men can do to start fighting back

00:01:14.140 against the conspiracy against their manhood. Out of the show is over. Check out our show notes at

00:01:17.980 aom.is slash twigger. All right, Robert Twigger, welcome back to the show. 0.99

00:01:35.140 Thanks for having me. Always, always glad to be talking to the art of manliness.

00:01:40.960 Well, we had you on the show last year to talk about your book, Micromastery, and that's episode

00:01:45.920 number 528 for those who want to check it out. It's all about learning new skills by thinking

00:01:50.000 small. It's a really great episode. It's a fan favorite. But we're going to talk about a book you

00:01:54.220 wrote almost 20 years ago. It's called Being a Man in the Lousy Modern World. So tell us,

00:02:01.860 what was the impetus behind this book? The real impetus was at that time, so I was writing that in,

00:02:08.680 I don't know, sort of 1999 or something like that, exactly 20 years ago. There was a whole spate

00:02:15.840 of adverts in which men were portrayed as sort of dorks and patsies, and the women were all smart 0.96

00:02:22.640 and sassy. They were often, it was often, there were commercials in people's homes, you know, and 0.89

00:02:27.320 it was the dorky husband who couldn't do anything, and the wife was in control. And I just thought, 0.99

00:02:32.260 this is just sending such a stupid wrong message. So it was kind of anger. And then it sort of all 0.99

00:02:39.760 kind of spiraled out from there. So I just started to look at what the role of men was

00:02:44.960 in the lousy modern world. And the way you wrote this, you sort of contrasted,

00:02:50.520 you had a son that was coming. You contrasted that trying to figure out what does it mean to

00:02:55.000 be a man in this world? And then contrasting all these adventures, you tried to go on to figure that

00:02:59.760 out. Yeah, I mean, the other strand in the book was using, because my previous couple of books had

00:03:09.940 been these adventures, but I had all these leftover stuff that I'd done. So I was writing for kind of

00:03:16.180 adventure travel pieces for magazines. And so I had all this material, and I thought, well, I've got to

00:03:23.940 use it. Each adventure itself probably wouldn't have justified a book. So I wove that in. And it

00:03:30.540 became, because the adventure seemed part of being a man. It seemed like a man who shunned any form

00:03:36.580 of adventure. I guess it was because adventure called forth the need for courage. And I knew that

00:03:41.340 courage was a key part of it. And you can, I mean, it was funny, the contrast between you getting ready

00:03:48.320 for the arrival of your son, it was sort of like a day in the life of just a regular suburban guy

00:03:53.480 living in the Western world, you know, barbecues. And you're kind of like, ah, the way you described

00:03:57.840 is like, this is, this is not it. Yeah, I mean, and I, I might, I wanted to make it honest. And

00:04:06.180 there's a sort of problem, because the kind of language you use to describe adventures is it doesn't

00:04:12.260 suit describing relationships and about, you know, what you feel about your kids and all that sort of

00:04:18.080 things. So it was a fine line to, to draw. I also didn't want to just, you know, burrow into total

00:04:26.160 sentimentality. Because, you know, before your kids are born, I mean, what can you feel you need,

00:04:31.240 they just arrived, you know, you don't know what they're going to be like. So it was, it was tricky.

00:04:37.440 It was tricky ground. But as you say, yeah, it was, it's half that theme through the book,

00:04:42.420 which I keep going back to, which is as the day progresses, that's the kind of driving force.

00:04:46.540 It's, it's kind of like a micro adventure in itself, but it's, it's Mr. Suburbia. And my life

00:04:52.260 is Mr. Suburbia. And I'm just not, not sort of happy with it. So what is it about the lousy

00:04:57.820 modern world that you, you felt like that makes manliness feel obsolete? Like you feel like

00:05:02.240 it's not suited for men. Yeah. I mean, there's so many strands here, but I mean, the, the,

00:05:08.240 I mean, just coming from the top, it's, it's got to be that we have so many prosthetic

00:05:16.300 devices, computers, cars, things that actually take out the physical aspect. And if there's,

00:05:22.560 there are many differences between men and women, but I mean, the most obvious one is, 0.99

00:05:25.880 there's a physical strength difference. So if you're not actually having to use your physical

00:05:29.840 strength at all, you're different from, you know, most men that have come before you in history.

00:05:35.580 So there's, there's that side, there's the skill aspect, even small skills, like learning to light a

00:05:40.900 fire, which my dad used to do, you know, lighting the fire in the house, even things like fixing the

00:05:46.020 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

00:05:50.100 codes into the computerized bit. I mean, it's, it's kind of endless really the way we, we become so

00:05:56.380 impotent and we just kind of like living like Kings in this, in this world of, of largely electronic

00:06:02.080 backup. Well, and I think that one of the points you make that I thought was really incisive is that

00:06:06.840 the modern world does a great job of keeping us like children, even as adults. Like I just said,

00:06:12.400 you can't even fix your own car because there's like a computer that you have to be able to program

00:06:17.080 and you have to be licensed to do that change. And, and you make this point that, uh, that children

00:06:22.100 are easier to control than adults. And it's kind of, you can make the, you get some that say a cynical

00:06:28.220 conclusion that, well, that's what corporations and governments want. They want us to be easily

00:06:32.760 controlled. Well, yeah, I mean, it may not be, I don't think there's some kind of conscious

00:06:37.880 Uber mind who's saying that let's, let's infantile, infantilize our entire population, but

00:06:43.260 it, it just seems to work out better that way. So maybe there's some sort of evolutionary

00:06:47.700 imperative at work inside corporations and big organizations that gradually the solution that

00:06:54.600 infantilizes the, the workforce seems to work better. So you kind of by increments move towards that

00:07:01.040 position and it's generally the case. Yeah. I mean, even the police, you know, when, when,

00:07:07.240 for example, somebody stands up and defends themselves against the mugging, there's always

00:07:11.440 the, the warning from the police, the police say, don't do this in future. Um, uh, it's a dangerous

00:07:17.680 thing to try and defend yourself at the same time as the newspaper report is saying, Oh, what a great

00:07:22.720 thing. The 78 year old guy fought off the mugger. So there's this constant message that you're,

00:07:28.720 you're better off just, just being like a kid really. But the insidious thing is that because

00:07:33.500 of all these advances, like, you know, things are cheap. We've got all this technology that,

00:07:38.120 you know, basically gives us the world at our fingertips. It makes us feel like we're in control,

00:07:42.120 but sometimes we're really not in control. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's a weird idea of control,

00:07:46.980 isn't it? It's a bit like, I mean, we, we already had it today when the computer works, you're apparently

00:07:52.560 in control. As soon as it doesn't work, you discover the exact limitations of your control.

00:07:57.180 If you can't fix something, how much can you say you're in control? I mean, I think being able to

00:08:02.720 fix stuff is, is, is a key part of being a man. And when we live in a world where we can't fix

00:08:07.360 things very easily, maybe we're just going along on someone else's ride.

00:08:12.120 Well, I guess Emerson's right. He said that society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of

00:08:17.700 every one of its members.

00:08:19.440 Well, yeah. I mean, that was 150 years ago, something like that.

00:08:23.060 Yeah.

00:08:23.600 It's got to be right, man.

00:08:24.900 It's got to be. And so you wrote this 20 years ago and you were seeing this stuff then,

00:08:28.280 like how, how have things changed? Have things gotten worse? Have it stayed the same as you've

00:08:32.000 seen things get better in some places?

00:08:34.240 Yeah. It's, it's weird how things have changed. Um, in some ways it's got, it's got a lot worse

00:08:39.820 things that I could humorously joke about. Then you can't really joke about now because you'll be,

00:08:45.920 you'll be, um, targeted as somebody, you know, that's not something you can joke about.

00:08:50.060 Things have become off limits. So that's kind of worse. The better side is there's been a huge,

00:08:56.380 there's been a growth in things. The art of manliness came along. There's been a growth in

00:09:00.520 people becoming more aware of mental health issues of young men, which is a tremendous problem.

00:09:06.720 So those kind of knowing jokes, Oh, it's the men, you know, the other day I was at a party and some,

00:09:12.880 some woman sort of made some mocking comment about men with respect to mental health. And I,

00:09:17.380 I was able to sort of pull the, it's a serious subject kind of thing. I didn't have to back off

00:09:22.900 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,

00:09:29.200 we've seen, I mean, I, I talk about it in the book. I talk about how criminality is, is a kind

00:09:35.220 of refuge. It's like the last refuge of masculinity for many men. I mean, if you haven't got much

00:09:40.200 imagination and you can't get yourself off and do a dangerous or, or interesting adventure,

00:09:45.420 you, you're probably drawn to criminal behavior. So, you know, that's, we've seen a massive or

00:09:51.140 increasing rise in criminality and, you know, that, that kind of area and spill over into mental

00:09:57.780 health issues. So, so in that sense, worse, it's, it's pretty similar though.

00:10:02.780 So, uh, in the book you lay out, you, you lay out four factors that you think need to be in place

00:10:09.160 for a man to be considered a man. So this is, again, this is what you said 20 years ago that

00:10:14.060 might, this might've changed, but what, what are, what were those four factors that you, that you saw?

00:10:18.780 The four factors were killing a beast, courage, courage is one ability to, you know,

00:10:25.140 skills, you know, there were basic skills that, that, you know, seemed to be involved with being

00:10:29.460 a man and passing a rite of passage. You know, that's, that's something that I circle in the book,

00:10:35.160 which is that men seem to have the need to have undergone some kind of test of difficultness or

00:10:43.000 dangerousness. And it's a before and after, and you see it characterized in, you know, even things

00:10:48.120 like a, like a bar mitzvah or other rites of passage after which you are a man, it's a ritual.

00:10:53.740 And I think that if anything, that's, I mean, just to sort of move on a bit from those four

00:10:59.080 characteristics, that's one of the key issues of the, um, of the book is that this lack of ritual

00:11:05.660 in our society means the transition from a, from a boy to a man is blurred or, or never even exists.

00:11:13.140 So, and I think rituals are the way we, we make transitions and we've, we've lost sight of that.

00:11:18.680 Yeah. Well, and we, we sort of still have rituals, but as you point out in the book,

00:11:22.740 they're, they're sort of watered down.

00:11:24.800 Yeah. Yeah. There's things like, you know, pass your driving test, you know,

00:11:29.040 graduate high school, graduate college.

00:11:31.400 Yeah. Yeah. And they're lame as hell. I mean, you can't really look at yourself and think,

00:11:36.740 I, um, I'm on the, I can stand shoulder to shoulder with, you know, people who were in the

00:11:41.380 first world war or, you know, single-handedly paddled their way up the Amazon or something.

00:11:47.020 So it's a sort of, you're going to just feel lame if you, if you accept cult, the culture.

00:11:52.580 Right. They're, they're, they're male rights of passages for this lousy modern world. 0.96

00:11:56.420 Yeah, exactly.

00:11:58.920 But yeah, I mean, you, you said this idea, like a rite of passage, it really can help a boy

00:12:03.040 transition that man that has that help. It has those factors that there's an element of risk

00:12:06.900 to it of danger where you have to display courage. You have to display fortitude and lacking that.

00:12:13.540 It's just, it, it doesn't, it's not, it's not transformative if there's no risk involved.

00:12:18.580 Yeah. I think that that's the, it just sharpens things up and the ability to assess risk is probably

00:12:27.700 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

00:12:33.380 Pamplona to party. And I said, well, you've got to run the bulls. If you're going to go to Pamplona,

00:12:36.880 he said, no, no, that's just stupid. That's stupid. You know, that's kind of like the lousy 1.00

00:12:40.900 modern world speaking, you know, you, you're like Mr. Sensible. And of course running the bulls has

00:12:45.420 risks. And, and if you're drunk, the risks are higher, but you know, you can assess those risks

00:12:51.320 and decide whether you're going to do it or not. Otherwise don't go to Pamplona because otherwise

00:12:55.640 you're borrowing the, the, the sort of the kudos of Ernest Hemingway and all the people who went

00:13:01.360 there and you're just going there for a big kind of piss up. And that seemed to be kind of like,

00:13:06.000 you know, another problem, you know, but the problem itself is not the danger. It's the

00:13:10.280 unwillingness to assess it. Cause again, that's a kind of self-reliance. So I'm not saying do

00:13:15.760 dangerous things for the sake of it, to be stupid. I mean, there are plenty of people who do that. 0.99

00:13:19.640 I'm getting some of them get killed. What I'm saying is develop the skill to assess risk.

00:13:23.680 Don't sort of just offload that skill to, you know, looking on the internet and someone tells you,

00:13:29.220 oh, it's dangerous or something.

00:13:30.220 Well, let's talk about, let's delve deeper into this courage. Cause you, you, you kind of,

00:13:34.280 you got philosophical about this, like trying to figure out what is courage, because there's

00:13:38.860 some people who look courageous and like Aristotle, the philosopher grappled with this idea. It's like,

00:13:42.980 how can you tell someone's really courageous, right? They could just be like, they're crazy 0.98

00:13:47.080 and they don't feel fear and they just would just do crazy stuff. So there's, I mean,

00:13:51.020 are they really courageous? So how, what's your assessment of that?

00:13:53.940 Well, I think, yeah, Aristotle does mention no courage by its absence rather than by its

00:13:59.460 presence. That's one thing. You talking to people who served in the army and in dangerous

00:14:06.020 situations, it's courage isn't, it's not that rare. You know, there are, you know, most people

00:14:11.460 given them, given the right kind of backup will be courageous. So it's, it's, it's not something we

00:14:16.560 should feel that it's like a really rare quality. It's, it's, it's, it's pretty available to

00:14:21.680 everybody, but I think everybody needs to, to be able to test, test themselves in a number of

00:14:28.140 situations because you're right that mere bravado can look like courage unless someone has felt the

00:14:33.860 consequences. You know, I mean, I, in the book, I talk about this climbing where I was, when I was

00:14:39.140 younger, did climbing. I never had any concept of risk to fell off and broke, cracked some vertebra in

00:14:45.360 my, cracked a couple of vertebra. And then I realized there were consequences and I stopped being a

00:14:51.240 crazy. And in fact, I didn't really do much climbing after that. So I kind of realized that

00:14:55.040 maybe I wasn't that courageous when it came to, to heights. So it's finding those, I think that

00:15:00.760 courage is, is an exploration of finding those, those points where you push yourself. And, and again,

00:15:07.500 it's a sort of self-knowledge thing that without putting yourself in those difficult situations,

00:15:12.400 you won't get that self-knowledge. So maybe even more than courage, what we're looking at here is,

00:15:16.860 is knowing yourself and knowing what your limitations are. Because I think, as I said,

00:15:21.960 most people do have, have courage and they are sort of a natural human characteristic.

00:15:29.180 And I think one of the problems of the lousy modern world, as you put it, is that we don't

00:15:33.440 have that many opportunities to display courage. Like you have to like often proactively go seek it,

00:15:38.880 you know, in times past that it would come to you. You had to display courage for whatever reason,

00:15:43.220 because the world was a dangerous place, but now it's so safe. You had to go look for it instead

00:15:47.560 of it finding you.

00:15:48.320 So, yeah, you do really. I mean, it, there are plenty of opportunities for

00:15:52.340 showing that you're stoical in the modern world for showing that you can put up with awful shit 0.96

00:15:57.480 over a long period, but courage sort of find out the full kind of topography of courage. I think you 0.97

00:16:03.880 do need to be in, in situations which demand quick thinking as well as kind of like just endlessly

00:16:09.900 putting up with something. And for that, yeah, you, you, you probably have to see, well,

00:16:14.300 you do have to seek it out. I think, I think you have to get either into the wilderness or you have

00:16:18.080 to, you know, deny yourself the normal creature comforts and find, find a bit of a challenge.

00:16:24.620 Well, let's talk about this idea of being skilled as a component of manliness. I thought it was fun.

00:16:29.400 This was fun reading this because, you know, I'd read your book, Micro Mastery, we talked about it,

00:16:33.200 and this was 20 years later. So it was interesting to see your thinking of, of skills being an

00:16:39.120 important part of being a man, you know, even 20 years ago. So what, what is it about being handy

00:16:44.660 that you think makes a man admirable? Well, I think it's, it's the hands. Yeah. It's, it's,

00:16:49.800 it's using our hands. You know, I think that, uh, we know that there's something associated with it.

00:16:54.720 I mean, I was, my grandfather who was very, I mean, he, he'd kind of, he, he originally,

00:16:59.560 he ended up as an engineer, but he'd started as, you know, doing manual work, building walls and,

00:17:05.280 and using all kinds of hand tools. He had these really, he's not a big guy, but his hands are big

00:17:10.660 and strong. And that we feel it in the old handshake. You know, why do we have such a,

00:17:15.700 such a store by having a bone crushing handshake? It's because it kind of means something. It means

00:17:20.860 that you can, you can handle weapons. You can, you can make things. You have the skill to be useful.

00:17:26.560 I think it's, it's all about a utility factor. Nobody wants to feel useless. And I think that

00:17:32.100 there's connection in the lousy modern world between people not finding meaning and people 0.99

00:17:38.540 being very, very lazy and not getting off their butt is connected to feeling useless. So if you 0.98

00:17:43.020 have skills, hand skills, you are useful and therefore you will work and you will find meaning.

00:17:49.400 So they're all kind of deeply connected. And we know that there's, you know, parts of the brain

00:17:55.240 connected with, you know, getting hand skill are really sort of, if you can use this term,

00:18:00.000 ancient parts of parts of our cognition, you know, this is not a, it's not a recent development.

00:18:06.140 So I think it's tapping into something that's, that is ancient and valuable. And yeah, I mean,

00:18:14.840 even, even Neanderthal man, even proto humans were, were, were adept at hand skills. So it seems

00:18:21.880 like a, a, an essential, essential thing to, to master.

00:18:26.860 And it's one of those ways of becoming more competent is one of those ways you can rebel

00:18:30.760 against this conspiracy against your manhood.

00:18:34.720 Yeah. I think it, I think it really is. I think it's, it's, it's, it's a way of, it's,

00:18:39.880 it's very satisfying as well. You know, the idea of, you know, you can go into the wilderness and

00:18:43.300 start a fire without using a lighter and petrol, you know, if you can use a, make a bow drill and start

00:18:49.720 a fire like that. I mean, there's huge growth in survival, which we've seen. I mean, the being

00:18:54.420 a man thing, it already had started in the nineties, but in the last 20 years, we've seen a massive

00:18:58.660 growth in bushcraft and survival. And YouTube has been a huge, a huge help there in spreading all

00:19:06.000 kinds of skills. It's now really quite easy to get quite arcane skills, which you had to go on

00:19:10.680 special courses to learn in the past. You can access them through YouTube.

00:19:16.200 We're going to take a quick break for a word from our sponsors.

00:19:19.720 And now back to the show.

00:19:21.620 All right. So let's talk about this idea of the ability to kill man or beast. So what's

00:19:25.540 going on there? I mean, I think, I mean, I think the point you made is that it's something that

00:19:29.240 people, I think tacitly accept as being, you know, a part of being a man. It's like, if you were able,

00:19:34.700 if you have the capability to do violence, but they're dodgy about it, they don't like to talk

00:19:39.700 about it.

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

00:19:45.000 in the modern culture. But if you go back to traditional societies, most of the

00:19:49.700 rites of passages were either you killed a lion or, or some, some dangerous beast, or

00:19:56.300 you killed a member of another tribe, but not in the sort of psychopathological warfare of

00:20:01.380 the 20th century. It was probably some kind of raiding warfare. And even tribes like the

00:20:05.800 Nagas do, you know, these headhunters in, in Burmese Indian border. I spent some time with

00:20:12.340 you. If you ran away, you weren't considered a coward, but if you got killed in a raid, you 0.85

00:20:17.300 were given a dishonorable burial, which is quite interesting. So it limited warfare, but

00:20:21.820 it allowed people the chance to, to, to get involved. Sometimes, of course, people were

00:20:27.020 killed in that, in those environments, but that the numbers were far, far less than the

00:20:32.280 vast numbers that have been killed in the, in the 20th century. So we can't really boast

00:20:37.400 that our system is more humane or more manageable. So I think that, that gets rid of

00:20:43.260 that objection. But the hard part is to, you know, to say that that is an aspect, the

00:20:50.920 potentiality of, of, of, of killing somebody. Perhaps the only way around it is to talk about

00:20:55.860 defense, you know, that you are prepared in a situation to put yourself in a difficult

00:21:02.240 situation and be competent to, to, to protect somebody, even if it meant dispatching somebody.

00:21:07.080 It does, it is, it is, it is borderline psycho though. So that's, that is, that is always

00:21:13.740 going to be the problem. And I think the way around it is to think of this as a skill, which

00:21:19.580 is kind of bridging between the sort of the past and the present that if you are, if you

00:21:27.520 believe that you couldn't in a certain situation, if your family was threatened and you had to

00:21:31.900 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 1.00

00:22:45.260 talking about you. So I think that the, the perspective of the book was really aimed at 0.99

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

00:23:02.640 into that position.

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

00:23:29.680 it somehow?

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

00:24:17.820 vices, depending on how you look at them.

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 0.97

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. 0.97

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 0.63

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,

00:30:46.780 these activities you did?

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 1.00

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. 1.00

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 0.99

00:34:14.060 injury where a coward pronged him right up the ass, punctured his bladder, but it left 0.99

00:34:19.340 no damage. So he, you know, it was an internal injury that had no external kind of damage. 1.00

00:34:25.260 So it was rather a touch and go nasty thing to happen.

00:34:29.220 And that sounds unpleasant.

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

00:34:49.300 and, uh, kind of glad I did it.

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

00:36:45.000 with her?

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 1.00

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,

00:37:28.340 which obviously not everyone does.

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

00:37:54.980 envious of them.

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

00:38:04.400 male being? Like what, what are the takeaways? 0.77

00:38:06.560 Apart from buying the book.

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 0.89

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. 0.71

00:41:05.460 Well, Robert Twigger, thanks for your time. It's been a pleasure.

00:41:07.600 Thank you, Brett. It's been great.

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

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00:42:13.220 to listen to the AOM podcast, but put what you've heard into action.

The Art of Manliness - September 06, 2021

Being a Man in the Lousy Modern World

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