The Art of Manliness - April 03, 2014


Episode #8： Man Stories with Robert Disque


Episode Stats


Length

21 minutes

Words per minute

202.22357

Word count

4,329

Sentence count

325

Harmful content

Misogyny

3

sentences flagged

Hate speech

2

sentences flagged


Summary

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

Robert Disk is a former Marine and active member of the Art of Manliness community. In this episode, Robert talks about his experience in the military and how it shaped him into a better man. He also talks about how he became a man and the lessons he learned along the way.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 This episode of the Art of Manly's podcast is brought to you by Flint and Tinder,
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00:00:51.640 Brett McKay here and welcome to another episode of the Art of Manliness podcast. And this week
00:00:57.380 we return to our series called Man Stories, where every other week we interview a different
00:01:01.740 gentleman and ask him what it means to be a man. And this week, our guest is Robert Disk.
00:01:07.120 Robert, welcome to the show.
00:01:09.380 Well, thank you, Brett. I appreciate that.
00:01:11.080 Well, I thank you for taking the time to speak to us today. And so before we get started,
00:01:14.680 Robert, can you tell us a little bit about yourself?
00:01:17.400 Yeah, sure. Like I said, my name's Robert Disk. My least favorite question is where I'm from
00:01:23.180 because I grew up as a Marine Corps brat. So I grew up everywhere. So usually I just say I'm
00:01:30.140 currently from, you know, like right now, I'm currently from Ogden, Utah. And I'm a divorced
00:01:35.740 single father of three.
00:01:37.440 All right. And the way I met Robert was he's very active in the Art of Manliness community
00:01:42.720 at community.artofmanliness.com. He's really active there and had some great insights. And
00:01:48.740 he's, you know, great guy there. And from my understanding, Robert, you are also not only
00:01:52.940 an Army brat, but you're also, you also served in the military yourself. Is that correct?
00:01:57.600 I did. I did. I actually served in two branches. I joined the Marine Corps way back in 1990,
00:02:03.460 right before the Gulf War. And then right after the Gulf War, our president was cutting back the
00:02:08.280 Marine Corps. So I was offered to get an honorable discharge or go into the reserve. So I went into
00:02:15.300 the reserves and then they disbanded my reserve unit a year or two after that. And so the only,
00:02:20.420 the only, um, the only military police unit available in the state at the time was a military
00:02:26.380 police unit in the Army National Guard. So I did a lateral transfer and then did the rest of my years
00:02:30.640 doing that.
00:02:31.500 Wow. Very interesting. Very interesting. Well, Robert, are you ready to get started with the
00:02:35.100 questions?
00:02:36.360 Sure thing.
00:02:37.160 All right, Robert. So when did you feel like you became a man?
00:02:40.340 That one always makes me laugh.
00:02:41.620 Because it makes me think about it because I distinctly remember the time, the date, the
00:02:46.540 place, and, uh, Marine Corps Recruit Depot, Marine Corps graduation from bootcamp. I remember,
00:02:53.420 uh, I remember feeling to the, you feel like you earn it. Really do. You go through, back
00:02:59.980 then it was 13 weeks of hell. So that's, that's what I realized. Just kind of felt it.
00:03:05.980 And so how old were you when that happened?
00:03:08.420 I was 23 years old.
00:03:09.980 Okay. So you're pretty young then.
00:03:12.060 Yeah.
00:03:12.740 And so do you think the experience you had in the military kind of prepared you for
00:03:17.040 other facets of your life?
00:03:18.780 You know, it basically set a foundation for just about everything in my life, uh, between
00:03:24.520 church and the Marine Corps and my dad, it kind of, it prepared me for just about everything.
00:03:30.020 It took everything I taught as a kid because I grew up as a Marine brat. So it was like going
00:03:34.120 home when I went to bootcamp and, um, struggles in life, emotional, physical, mental, uh, bootcamp
00:03:40.800 just kind of prepares you for it. What they do is they tear you down. I mean, they're really
00:03:44.700 emotionally just tear you down and then slowly, but surely they build you up and they build
00:03:51.880 you back into a Marine. And then when you get your, get your dress blues on and you're
00:03:56.060 walking across that parade ground and you've got four uncles that are former Marines, retired
00:04:00.960 Marines and your father, that's a retired Marine. And you think of all the dead grandparents
00:04:05.480 that are, uh, were Marines and you just, everything clicks and connects and you just feel like a
00:04:11.680 man.
00:04:12.240 Yeah. I mean, right there, what you described is a perfect example of a rite of passage.
00:04:16.920 Yeah.
00:04:17.380 Yeah. You, you, you go in and you're kind of stripped away from society and you're actually
00:04:22.480 kind of initiated in by elder men. In this case, your uncles and your father and everyone
00:04:28.360 else who preceded you kind of into manhood. So yeah, that's really interesting.
00:04:32.740 Well, even, even in bootcamp, your, your senior drill instructor becomes almost like
00:04:37.480 your father, literally. I mean, emotionally you want his, you want his praise. You want
00:04:43.060 him to be proud of you and you feel like you've earned his respect when you graduate. So it
00:04:49.200 really is a rite of passage.
00:04:50.480 That's really great that you had that experience because one of the things we've talked about
00:04:54.220 on the site before is that a lot of men these days, particularly younger men don't have
00:04:59.060 that experience.
00:05:00.080 I know.
00:05:00.600 And it's really sad.
00:05:01.500 And you can actually see it too. I mean, you can see it in their lives, by the way they
00:05:06.180 systematically live their lives. You can see by their actions and by their choices, you
00:05:10.840 can see the lack of it.
00:05:12.000 So the Marines and the military is a big part of helping you shape your idea of masculinity
00:05:17.520 and kind of bring you into becoming a man. What does manliness mean to you, Robert?
00:05:21.780 Well, for me, it was, it's always been knowing and perfecting yourself by embracing
00:05:28.580 your manhood. You know, as a kid, you look forward to becoming a man and going through
00:05:33.420 all those little things like shaving and, you know, all the little things you look forward
00:05:36.940 to going to in my family, it's shaving and hunting and things of that nature. And you
00:05:42.100 start getting all these messages from outside of your family unit and from the world, you
00:05:47.480 know, and it starts confusing. Like, what are you? You know, even, even, even
00:05:51.760 your, your role defined as a boy starts getting confusing. And of course, you've also
00:05:56.540 have that little, uh, little thing called, uh, hormones going through puberty, confusing
00:06:01.140 the issues a lot more too. And so I was always taught to be the best person you can be, but
00:06:07.040 it was always, you know, knowing yourself and perfecting yourself. And once you realize
00:06:11.400 what manhood is from the examples around you, that's what you kind of strive to be. And
00:06:15.960 that's always, what I was always taught it was, is just being the best man you can be.
00:06:20.160 And going on that, you know, looking at the examples of manliness to follow, it kind of
00:06:24.240 leads on to our next question. You know, what men in your life, you know, either living,
00:06:28.100 dead, you know, even fictional have influenced your views of manliness?
00:06:32.740 Well, see, all of my, um, examples kind of coagulate together because my father was a Marine
00:06:40.120 and at 17 years old, he joined the Marine Corps and spent five years in Japan. I have
00:06:46.360 several brothers and we used to sit around as kids and my dad and my brothers, we would
00:06:52.020 watch James Bond movies. And, you know, you, you see James Bond and there's all kinds of
00:06:56.620 cool things about him. The boy just loves you got gadgets, you got girls, you got cars, you
00:07:00.440 know, all the cool stuff. And that's something that kind of influenced me a lot is not really
00:07:05.260 the movies and the characters of James Bond, which did, but doing those things as a bonding
00:07:09.360 experience with my dad and with my brothers. And then we also were, were forced to take
00:07:13.740 karate at a very young age. And it was different back then than it was today. Back then there
00:07:21.220 was no English spoken in our dojo. And sometimes a dojo was a garage in somebody's house. There's
00:07:27.020 a lot of things, the rife of passages that you go through in that too, because as the lower
00:07:31.120 ranking belts, it's your job after class to bend over in line with wet rag and wipe down
00:07:36.540 the dojo floor. That's my biggest memories. But every Saturday we had to spend two hours
00:07:40.920 listening to lecture on philosophy, history of karate and things of that nature. So got
00:07:47.620 a lot of martial philosophy growing up as a kid. So, and again, my father brought that
00:07:52.320 influence of Gitchin Funakoshi into my life that way too. And so Gitchin Funakoshi is a big,
00:07:59.000 big influence philosophically. And then my uncles. So I guess everything kind of centers around
00:08:04.920 family with me because my uncle Bob, when I was younger, he owned an auto body shop. And
00:08:10.520 during, during school year, school days, I worked at his auto body shop and he built custom
00:08:15.540 hot rods and show cars and muscle cars. And so I grew up with this, this love of muscle
00:08:21.900 cars. And he too was also, you know, a former Marine. And during the summers, my mom and dad
00:08:28.680 always felt we needed something to keep us out of trouble and to build our character as
00:08:35.160 boys. And so my brothers and I were sent to my uncle's ranch in Arizona. And it's a real
00:08:40.080 ranch, not the Billy Crystal kind. You know, everybody gets these romantic ideas. It's like,
00:08:46.160 you know, three o'clock in the morning, mixing up 300 bottles, giant baby bottles of calf formula
00:08:52.540 and hand feeding them is not romantic or fun. No, no. But my uncle Hank was a cattle rancher. And
00:08:59.420 you know, he was a very typical masculine cowboy handlebar mustache, same boots for 30 years,
00:09:07.500 same hat for 30 years. Every morning got up, worked the ranch, taught us how to, how to work cattle,
00:09:13.980 how to care for them, how to rope, how to ride and hard, hard work. And he was always full of cowboy
00:09:20.640 wisdom. Like what kind of cowboy wisdom did he have? Well, just the basic things. Like, you know,
00:09:26.700 I mean, I know it's always kind of funny when you say don't squat on your spurs, but it teaches you
00:09:29.840 a lesson, especially the first time you do it. It hurts. But a lot of life things, like trusting
00:09:36.100 people. He used to pass on little cowboy wisdoms here and there about trusting people. You would
00:09:41.820 learn these things, you ingrain them in your lives. And to this day, I automatically trust people
00:09:46.780 to a certain point just because of him. You know, even in the days of cynicism and everything,
00:09:51.540 I still do. Seeing the good in people was something he always did. He always saw the good in people
00:09:57.300 first and then judged them by their actions later as they were lowered down the scale. And so that's,
00:10:02.940 that's something we were always taught to do is that people are just like cows. You treat them right,
00:10:07.640 you keep them healthy. They'll always be easy to handle and manage. And it's true. It's a little
00:10:12.500 simplistic, but it's true. If you treat them right, keep them fed and keep them healthy. They're
00:10:16.680 really easy to deal with. You can lead them just about anywhere. So family, the men in your family
00:10:21.860 have been the biggest influence in your life. Yeah. That's great. That's another, I think,
00:10:26.660 another thing that a lot of men lack these days. Family is not that big in their life. Even if,
00:10:30.880 even if they have a father at home, a lot of times the dad's away, busy at work or devoted to other
00:10:37.460 things, but not necessarily in their children. And a lot of people these days don't have the luxury
00:10:42.080 of living nearby extended family and kind of getting that extra, extra support. You know,
00:10:46.700 and I never really realized that before. I don't, I never realized how great I really had it as a boy
00:10:51.040 growing up. Seven brothers, dad, uncles, grandparents, you know, they were always there.
00:10:56.000 And I never realized that, you know, out of my little, my little box of influence that the world
00:11:01.100 outside of mine, there are people that don't have that. Well, Robert, you mentioned your dad a little
00:11:05.660 bit, how he's kind of influenced your idea of manliness. Are there any other more specific examples of
00:11:10.540 your, you know, the ways your father has influenced your conception of masculinity or manliness?
00:11:15.480 You know, there are so many, we don't even have time. You know, as a boy, I saw my dad working as
00:11:20.800 a Marine. We'd go visit him on base. We'd bring lunch to him during lunch hour. I watched how he
00:11:26.320 was with other Marines and noticed he was different than some of the other Marines, you know, but I saw
00:11:31.720 him work his butt off. I saw him take two or three jobs to support all the kids that he had to
00:11:37.780 support. So he was a Marine and he worked as a security guard at a medical facility, research
00:11:42.880 facility in California. And I remember seeing him come home late at night and thinking, well, I haven't
00:11:49.060 seen my dad in a week. And then dad would take the weekend and spend a few hours with us and tell us,
00:11:53.720 well, I haven't seen, you know, guys in a while. I'm sorry. So let's go do this. And we'd go, you know,
00:11:57.900 go fishing for the day or something like that, or just do something silly. He always worked hard.
00:12:02.300 And when we did things around the house, around the property, because my dad had a thing, he grew
00:12:08.160 up in the city and my mom grew up in the country. And so he wanted to live in the country all the
00:12:12.520 time. So that's where we lived. Every time we moved someplace, we always lived out in the boonies
00:12:16.200 and we had cows and pigs and chickens and everything. And my dad's trying to reclaim something that he
00:12:22.440 felt he missed out on. And he worked our butts off. We always had to work hard. And, you know,
00:12:29.900 you get, you know, I went to the Marine Corps and learned a lot about my dad because I'd go
00:12:35.260 through bootcamp where I'd be, you know, in my permanent duty station, like at Camp Pendleton.
00:12:39.480 And you see everybody around you. I get these little, little reminders of my dad. Like
00:12:43.120 that's a characteristic my dad always taught us. That's part of what my dad is right there.
00:12:48.540 You know, and I guess the best way to say his influence was, is that he taught us 90% of
00:12:55.360 everything by example. You know, he was a, he was a very strong man, still is. He was always a family
00:13:00.780 man. You know, he had eight kids of his own. And then I had an uncle that was debilitated by disease
00:13:05.980 and he took his three cousins, my three, three of my cousins, his three sons and adopted them. And
00:13:12.880 they grew up like brothers with me. And then my aunt ended up having almost the same exact thing
00:13:18.700 that happened to her. She was debilitated and he took her three daughters and adopted them and raised
00:13:26.120 them as his daughters. And so I grew up in a huge household.
00:13:30.240 Yeah, that's what it sounds like.
00:13:31.740 And our church, well, yeah, our church had a program to help the Navajos several years ago,
00:13:38.780 back in the seventies. And I remember several foster kids coming to the house as a kid, and we were
00:13:44.100 always ordered to treat them like family. And that's something we always did. And so, you know,
00:13:48.760 we were taught by example that family is important. It's everything. And spirituality, you know, my,
00:13:54.780 my father was raised as a strict Lutheran in Pennsylvania. He found religion in another
00:14:01.280 religion and was disowned because he joined the, joined the religion and it didn't stop him. And
00:14:07.940 he didn't force any religion on, on us as kids either. He always taught us that spirituality,
00:14:13.300 was coming to terms with whatever supreme being or higher power you believed in or found
00:14:20.360 and coming to terms with it. And that allowed me by, by seeing his example. And, you know,
00:14:26.400 I was taught religion and I was taught about God, but I wasn't forced to accept it. It was always out
00:14:31.300 there like, well, this is what I believe. And this is what's right. And was never told you'll believe
00:14:35.340 this or you'll be punished or any kind of thing like that. And that, that allowed me to make my own
00:14:39.980 decision as I discovered different things as I grew up. And so I saw my dad live, live as an
00:14:44.900 example. He lived his religion, still does. He still treats families so important. You know,
00:14:50.380 he's got 63 grandkids now. He sees all of them. He knows all of them. And that's always been
00:14:57.300 important. So as an adult, it's important to me. And I'm one of those unusual cases where I have
00:15:03.140 full-time custody of my daughters after my divorce, you know, and I still treat my wife
00:15:07.820 with respect because of what I learned from my father. You know, we don't talk bad about mom
00:15:12.200 in the house because mom is part of family. It's my daughter's mother. That's something that's just
00:15:17.820 kind of ingrained in my life. You know, and then there's silly things like my dad had a policy that
00:15:21.860 you break it, you fix it or replace it. And so I can fix almost everything now as an adult because
00:15:27.240 of that, because I was forced to fix things or replace things. And as a kid, didn't have the money
00:15:32.180 to replace them. So I had to fix them. And there's so many examples I could give you. We could go on
00:15:37.700 for hours on this because he just taught by example. And that's exactly how I try to teach
00:15:44.340 my kids. And I hope I'm doing okay with that, but I'm not sure yet.
00:15:47.160 Well, your dad sounds like quite a man. Robert, you mentioned that you have that kind of unusual
00:15:51.540 circumstance where you have full custody of your children after your divorce. And they're all
00:15:57.820 daughters. Is that correct?
00:15:59.240 Yes.
00:15:59.680 So what's that like? I'm sure that's kind of an interesting thing. You grew up in a household of
00:16:04.300 boys, and now you're a single dad with three girls. How's that been for you?
00:16:09.940 I had to call my mom sometimes, and my mom would say, well, call your sister Cindy. She knows how
00:16:14.840 to braid hair. I called my sister who was in Phoenix, and I'd say, Cindy, girls are crying. You know,
00:16:20.080 this is when they were much younger. They want me to braid their hair, and I'm a guy. I don't know
00:16:24.400 how to braid hair. My sister would sit there and take me through painstaking details over the phone 1.00
00:16:28.980 how to braid hair. And my mom would call me. If I'd call my mom, I'd be frustrated. Parental
00:16:35.700 frustration, typical, I hope, for everybody. And my mom would say, you know what? The problem
00:16:40.080 you're having is you're a man. And we're like, what? She goes, I'll let you talk to your dad,
00:16:44.720 and he'll tell you what to do about this situation. My dad would get on the phone, and my mom would be
00:16:49.480 telling him what to say. And my dad would say, Robert, they're girls. Just accept it. So it's always 0.98
00:16:55.060 been different. And it's been kind of a struggle, too, because I have a teenager now, which scares
00:16:59.780 the tar out of me. But she's 13. She plays volleyball, plays in the jazz band at school.
00:17:05.140 And so between music lessons, you know, after-school sports and activities, church and church activities
00:17:10.860 and everything, I feel like a soccer mom sometimes. I'm just running back and forth. And it's hard to
00:17:15.940 do the whole work thing and the life thing and still keep your kids going. And then my middle
00:17:22.540 daughter is 12 years old. And so she's in the same middle school as her older sister.
00:17:26.780 I have to be dad. Sometimes I have to be mom sometimes, because mom doesn't spend as much
00:17:31.500 time with them. So I have to admit, you know, the only times I've ever had to purposefully
00:17:37.060 swallow my masculinity was allowing my daughters to paint my nails and do my hair and put clown 0.97
00:17:43.780 makeup on me, you know. But it was hard for me. It took weeks for me to say, okay, fine.
00:17:49.860 Your mother's not here. Paint my nails. I don't care. You know, and it was actually really
00:17:54.960 difficult for me to do something that I was always raised. That's a girl thing. You don't 1.00
00:17:58.920 do it. And so I had to swallow my masculinity and say, okay, let's be girls. And the teenage
00:18:03.960 struggles between parents that always will happen, it was difficult because girls are different. 1.00
00:18:10.560 And, you know, I can't just look at them and say, man up, but you're crying. You know,
00:18:15.200 rub some dirt on it. And I find myself doing that. And then I get this look and it's always
00:18:19.620 the same look. I think they learned it from their mother, this rolling of the eyes look
00:18:23.280 and then staring at dad. And I have to stop and step back and realize that, okay, I have
00:18:27.680 to treat this situation differently because I'm not relating as a girl. I can't, I can't
00:18:32.420 get them to relate as a boy. And so that won't ever work. So it was actually very different.
00:18:36.440 And it's been very difficult. Um, and, and keeping, keeping their mother and their lives
00:18:41.640 is, is a struggle. Sometimes everybody automatically assumes usually that, that, uh, the man's at
00:18:46.560 fault in a divorce or if a man's single, it's his fault. He did something wrong. I've had
00:18:51.580 people be surprised when they find out, well, yeah, I've got my daughters all week. Sorry,
00:18:55.080 I can't do that. I've got to do this or I've got to do that. And people always congratulate
00:18:58.420 me on, oh, you're such an involved father. It's like, I don't get that. This isn't what
00:19:01.920 fathers do. Yeah. That's just natural for me. So it's been quite the struggle being a single
00:19:08.240 dad. Well, maybe this, uh, kind of relates on to our next question. Maybe this is the answer
00:19:12.440 to the question I have to ask. What's the hardest thing you've ever done as a man, either emotionally
00:19:16.380 or physically or spiritually? You know, I read, I thought about that question. That was actually
00:19:22.440 one of the hardest questions to actually think about an answer because I didn't have an answer
00:19:26.640 right off the top of my head. Immediately I was thinking, oh, divorce, because it was really
00:19:30.340 hard emotionally. But I thought back about it and you're familiar with this because you
00:19:34.580 did it. But for two years I gave voluntary full-time service for our church. It was really
00:19:40.700 hard because we don't, we didn't watch TV, read the newspaper, listen to the radio, participate
00:19:45.380 in all the things that, you know, normal 19 year old kids do. We, uh, separated ourselves
00:19:50.800 from the world, went out in the world, we knocked on doors, we taught people about our church,
00:19:54.120 we helped people by, by, um, doing service projects and giving service. And that was a
00:20:00.080 spiritual, emotional, and mental struggle for me that I grew more in those two years than
00:20:06.560 I think I have in the past 30 some odd years. I mean, it was, it was really difficult for
00:20:10.960 me, but I would never give that experience up because of what I learned and what I became
00:20:15.620 because of it. I agree. Yeah. It made boot camp easier. I'm sure. Honestly, it did. Uh, what,
00:20:21.740 what Robert's talking about here, we both served missions for our church. Uh, those of you
00:20:25.740 were familiar with the LDS faith, uh, you probably seen, uh, the guys in white shirts
00:20:29.420 and ties, uh, knocking on your door and you might run away from them and hide. And, uh,
00:20:34.580 that's okay. We understand, but yeah, it really is a life changing experience. And for me,
00:20:40.020 that was kind of my rite of passage into manhood, I guess. And I guess for you, it was Marine Corps
00:20:45.320 afterwards, but I know for a lot of men, the mission is a rite of passage. Interesting. Well,
00:20:50.460 Robert, thank you for your time. I appreciate you, uh, being available for us and answering
00:20:54.300 some of these questions. No problem. I enjoyed it. That wraps up another edition of the art
00:21:00.020 of manliness podcast. For more manly tips and advice, make sure to check back at the art of
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00:21:10.000 art of manliness, classic skills and manners for the modern man. You can find it at amazon.com
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00:21:18.960 art of manliness.com slash the book. And until next week, stay manly.