The Art of Manliness - April 03, 2014


Episode #10： Man Stories with Carlos Infante


Episode Stats


Length

18 minutes

Words per minute

129.32393

Word count

2,379

Sentence count

186

Harmful content

Hate speech

2

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Carlos Infante is a 30-year-old business manager living in Mexico City. He graduated college in 2006 and is currently looking for a job. In this episode, we talk about what it means to be a man and how he became one.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 This episode of the Art of Manage podcast is brought to you by Flint and Tinder exclusively
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00:00:45.920 podcast.
00:00:57.240 Brett McKay here and welcome to another episode of the Art of Manliness podcast. Well, we've
00:01:06.860 taken a brief break from the podcast for the past two weeks with the holidays and some other
00:01:11.500 things going on. Didn't have time for it, but we're back and we are returning with our series
00:01:16.220 called Man Stories, where every other week we interview a different gentleman and ask him
00:01:21.220 what it means to be a man. And this week, our guest is Carlos Infante. Carlos, welcome to
00:01:27.400 the show.
00:01:28.760 Thanks for having me, Brett. Well, I'm Carlos Infante. I was born in Mexico City. I'm 30.
00:01:35.720 And I'm a business manager, but I'm currently unemployed. So I have a lot of free time right
00:01:42.980 now.
00:01:44.100 Wow.
00:01:44.920 Yeah.
00:01:45.160 Well, I guess you're facing a problem that a lot of men are facing these days with being
00:01:50.280 unemployed, with the bad economy and everything. How's the job search going?
00:01:54.780 Well, there are lots of vacancies, but not many people call me. So I have very few interviews
00:02:02.020 and those that I had, they seem promising, but nothing happened after that.
00:02:07.960 Yeah. Yeah. Tough break. Well, I wish you good luck with that. Carlos, are you ready to get
00:02:12.200 started with the questions?
00:02:13.560 Yep.
00:02:13.900 Okay, Carlos. When do you feel like you became a man?
00:02:19.000 Well, it's pretty complicated because sometimes I don't feel like a man because I'm not treated
00:02:25.760 like one at home. Unlike a lot of Americans, you know, that leave home after college or get 0.62
00:02:32.840 a job or whatever. Mostly Mexicans stay at home with their families for a while because 1.00
00:02:39.220 pay is very bad so you really can't get an income that allows you to rent an apartment. So mostly
00:02:47.080 I stay at home with my family. And my parents sometimes treat me like a child. You know,
00:02:53.540 sometimes I get punished or they dread punishment. But I think I became a man or I felt like that
00:03:01.200 I became a man after a series of events that happened around 2002, 2003. Actually, I felt like a man after I graduated college because getting my degree was a very tough, bumpy road. I graduated high school in 98. I got my degree in 2006. That was like eight years of a very tough, tough, tough break.
00:03:27.020 So I got expelled from college because of my grades. I had a lot of no sense of direction of what I wanted to do. I didn't know who I was and what I really wanted to do. So I had a lot of these issues running around my head that I really wasn't focusing on important things. So because of grades, I got expelled, tried again, got expelled again because of grades.
00:03:53.140 My dad was really mad. My dad was really mad. And finally, he just found me to take jobs, which I really didn't like. And when I finally got back to studying in the summer of 2003, you know, I felt like I've gone through hell and survived it. And I felt a lot stronger, much more mature than when I started the journey.
00:04:19.500 And by the time I graduated, I remember my dad inviting me out for celebratory dinner. And I just cried at one point because I thought finally, after all I went through, I finally graduated from college. And whatever comes, it won't be as bad as the past few years have been.
00:04:45.920 So graduating college was that kind of that moment where you felt like you accomplished something and you really felt like you became a man then?
00:04:53.460 Yeah. And really, the whole experience, the whole journey is like that moment which my point of view of life really changed.
00:05:05.020 Suddenly, I felt like success is not something so easily achieved, which a lot of people want or seem to get. It just felt a lot more valuable, savoring success after going through a lot of obstacles.
00:05:21.020 Well, that's really interesting, Carlos. Thanks for sharing that with us. Carlos, so on to our next question. What does manliness mean to you?
00:05:26.940 To me, it really means responsibility for oneself, firstly, and then for others.
00:05:33.000 If you're not responsible for yourself, take care of yourself, how can you later on in life be responsible for a family if you don't value who you are, if you don't take care of yourself, if you don't assume the consequences of your actions?
00:05:50.400 To me, that's what being a man really is and perhaps also being committed to whatever it is you promise.
00:05:59.080 Very interesting. And Carlos, you're from Mexico. And one thing that people often talk about in Mexico and other Latin American countries is machismo.
00:06:08.860 What's your experience with machismo? Is it something that not a lot of people have or are you trying to battle against that?
00:06:15.160 I mean, what's your experience with machismo?
00:06:17.420 Well, it sort of, it has changed a bit since, you know, the old days when that was sort of like a value, especially during the 40s, 30s, 50s, you know, that's the sort of stereotype that sort of became widely known.
00:06:35.200 But it does exist, but mostly, I felt it exists mostly in the lower classes, not so much in the middle class and the higher classes.
00:06:46.200 It basically because of the sort of values that they've been taught, you know, middle class is much more educated, so they're more open to modern ideas.
00:06:58.420 And the lower classes, well, they don't have that level of education and culture.
00:07:06.000 So that's probably where it's mostly marked.
00:07:09.300 Hmm. Okay. Well, Carlos, what men in your life, it can be living, dead, or even fictional, what men have influenced your view of manliness?
00:07:19.000 Well, you know, my granddad has been a very big influence on me. My father, in the sense that he is a very responsible man. He's got a work ethic. I mean, he's been working since 1968.
00:07:35.820 So he's really addicted to work, in a sense. But, you know, he tries his best to provide us all with our basic needs.
00:07:50.060 Probably, philosophically, I've been influenced by George Orwell. I've read 1984, Animal Farm, a lot of his essays, and even in his journal, his work journal.
00:08:03.440 And philosophically, he's been a big influence on me. He's like my favorite writer.
00:08:08.200 Recently, John Steinbeck has influenced me in my view of work. After I read The Grapes of Wrath, I felt that when he described the importance of the farmers and how they love their land, and their work, and how machines don't really have that contact, or the people that run the tractors,
00:08:32.340 I sort of felt, that's sort of what I think about job, or any job, any work. That it's something you do. I mean, it doesn't matter if it's a thankless job. As long as you do it, and you're proud of it, you should be proud of it. That's all that really matters. And, you know, John Steinbeck really has me. Well, mostly my granddad.
00:08:56.340 Yeah. In what ways has your granddad influenced you?
00:09:00.300 Well, his life has been a bit of an inspiration to me, because he's done these, what I think are amazing things. I don't think he's ever thought of them as being amazing.
00:09:13.860 He lived in a different time than I did, so that's fascinating. You know, different times, different cultural values, even basically a much more simpler time, I think, because they didn't depend too much on technology.
00:09:31.540 So they did things different. They took things day by day, you know, slowly. He reads a lot. And I think I've gotten that love for reading from him and from my dad.
00:09:43.100 But music, I mean, I remember when I was 14, 15, he still had his old record player. And we found some old records from Chester's old records and my mom's old records. And we would listen to music.
00:09:59.860 And jazz was one of his favorite. His favorite record was probably Take Time Out by the Debrebrook Quartet. And so that type of music has entered my consciousness.
00:10:15.060 Because before that, I don't think I would have heard jazz until my grandfather. Old movies, back in the old, back around that time, they used to show old movies on TV, TV. And so I was introduced to a world of classic Hollywood films.
00:10:33.140 Yeah, I don't know if you ever watched any of the old Mexican films as well from that time, you know, the 30s and 40s. There's a lot of good ones from that time period as well.
00:10:40.600 Yeah, I actually have watched a lot of those. They're very, they're very good movies. I think the quality comes from the fact that there was a lot of censorship back in those days. So filmmakers had to find ingenious ways to tell a story without being crude or doing things that nowadays seem like unnecessary. I mean, sex scenes seem to me like if they don't add anything to the plot thing, why have them?
00:11:09.920 Yeah. Well, Carlos, you talked about this a little bit already. But how did your father influence your conception of manliness?
00:11:16.920 Well, my father, I don't think he really has as much influence as my granddad. Because technically, he's been sort of like an obstinate dad. You know, he works a lot, but we hardly had growing up a lot of father and son moment.
00:11:36.520 I was in the, I lived in the States for a while. And I was a Boy Scout. But my dad wasn't really involved in that. My mom was, but not my dad. Not as much as my mom was. But he, he did teach me my values. He learned my values from my dad.
00:11:55.640 My appreciation for literature. He reads a lot. And of course, he pushes us to read. As well as he's a very well-informed man. So we really can talk about a variety of subjects.
00:12:10.460 Very good. And Carlos, one thing we talk about on the website sometimes is about how men our age, 20s, 30s, didn't learn some of these skills that our grandfathers knew or our dads know. Is there one thing your dad can do or your grandfather could do that you can't?
00:12:29.880 Well, my dad can multitask. It's amazing. It's amazing. I used to hear my dad, my aunt used to tell stories about when he was a kid. He could actually watch TV, read a book, listen to the radio and do his homework, something like that. I mean, it's amazing. He's a very smart man, a hardworking man.
00:12:55.280 And I think the thing that impresses me the most is the fact that he can solve people's problems. I mean, at least professional problem. He's had a few jobs in the past few years where basically the companies aren't that good. And he just comes in and changes everything or as much as he can. Cost effectiveness, he does it. It's amazing. He's very smart. He's a very smart man.
00:13:21.220 Very cool. And Carlos, last question. What's the hardest thing you've ever done as a man, either emotionally, physically, intellectually in your life?
00:13:32.180 Well, this basically takes us back to the first answer, just surviving those eight years of getting to college. I mean, 2002, 2002 was probably the most difficult year I ever had because my dad was really supporting me or guiding me.
00:13:51.820 I was totally lost. I had my mom to support me, but most of the time it was just me trying to come out of this hole I was in and really know who I was and what I wanted to do.
00:14:07.140 That was probably the most difficult thing I've ever gone through.
00:14:12.080 And are there any lessons that you've taken away from that experience?
00:14:15.660 Definitely. One of the things I've actually learned is not to have regrets.
00:14:20.640 If my life took me there, if my choices took me there to that particular situation, then instead of looking back and saying,
00:14:31.900 I wish I'd done things differently, I just go ahead and say, well, I'll do things differently from now on,
00:14:38.720 but not really look back at what could have been, but what is, and probably I have no regrets anymore.
00:14:50.460 I used to have regrets even before that about certain changes that I made.
00:14:57.620 I said, oh, I wish I'd done things differently, but I learned through that experience that there are no what-ifs.
00:15:04.020 Either you learn from the past and not obsessed with that, but take those lessons and move forward is much better than just holding on to something that is counterproductive.
00:15:19.020 Well, Carlos, thank you for your time. It's been very interesting talking to you, and it's been a pleasure.
00:15:24.440 The pleasure has been mine.
00:15:25.340 That wraps up another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.
00:15:32.740 For more manly tips and advice, check back at the Art of Manliness website at artofmanliness.com.
00:15:37.740 And until next week, stay manly.
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