The Art of Manliness - The Lost Virtue of Thumos (And Why Men Need It)

00:00:00.520 Summer's winding down, and at our house, that means life is about to get a whole lot busier.

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00:02:18.620 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the aom podcast which since 2008 has featured

00:02:24.800 conversations with the world's best authors thinkers and leaders that glean their edifying

00:02:29.300 life-improving insights without the fluff and filler the aom podcast is just one part of the

00:02:34.140 mission to help individuals practice timeless virtues through thought word and deed also be

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00:02:47.840 Strenuous Life program at strenuouslife.com. Now on to the show.

00:02:59.260 The ancient Greeks believed the human soul had three parts, reason, appetite, and something

00:03:04.180 called thumos or thumos. Thumos is difficult to translate into English. It encompasses anger,

00:03:10.280 noble spiritedness, pride, ambition, a sense of honor, and the drive to act. The Greeks thought

00:03:15.860 it was essential to living a life of manly virtue and my guest thinks we could use a lot more of it

00:03:20.280 his name is mike leblanc he's a decorated marine a harvard business school grad a tech founder and

00:03:25.920 author of what if anger is the answer today on the show mike and i discuss how the angry energy

00:03:31.020 of thumos can help you close the gap between who you are and who you should be we discuss why

00:03:35.140 physical training helps cultivate thumos how it can be an aid in overcoming appetites overthinking

00:03:39.880 passivity and cynicism and the role it can play in being an effective leader after show's over

00:03:44.900 check out our show notes at awim.is slash thumos. All right, Michael LeBlanc, welcome to the show.

00:04:02.700 Thanks so much for having me. So you've got a new book coming out called What If Anger

00:04:05.880 Is the Answer? And it's all about one of my favorite concepts from the ancient Greeks. It's

00:04:10.120 Thumos or Thumas. Before we get into it, let's talk a bit about your background because one,

00:04:15.200 it's interesting. And two, I think it will provide some context for your interest in

00:04:19.880 Thumas. Well, my background, my formative years were really in the Marine Corps. And so that

00:04:26.580 consisted mostly of 12 months in Afghanistan, and then six months around the Middle East when ISIS

00:04:33.520 had come and taken over Iraq and Syria. And I was a bit of a strange fit for the Marine Corps,

00:04:40.120 because I didn't come from a military family. I had never shot a gun before. I didn't know

00:04:45.080 anything about the ranks. I didn't know the difference between the officer and enlisted

00:04:48.300 and really had ended up just putting my phone number into Marines.com. A kind of scary way

00:04:54.120 to get into the whole thing. But through that process, I think that the reasons that I'd gone

00:04:59.180 into it were for wanting to put myself up against the hardest things that I could find.

00:05:04.180 It was about becoming a certain worth that I thought that I could deserve.

00:05:07.680 and throughout the course of my time in the Marines, I think I learned a lot about that.

00:05:11.840 And that really, to me, felt like a dissertation in Thumaz.

00:05:16.380 You also, your education background's interesting. Didn't you go to St. John's? You did the great

00:05:20.680 books. Yes. So right before that, I mean, that was kind of the way. I'd grown up in Ohio and I

00:05:27.400 only applied to one school, St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland. And there you learn to

00:05:33.020 translate ancient Greek, you read all of the great books. And so I was spending my days with Plato

00:05:38.540 and Aristotle and Thucydides. And you really start to take on that world. You know, no one's allowed

00:05:43.320 to have a TV at the school. So you really just start to live in, in what are ancient Greek

00:05:49.260 principles. And it was through that, that I really started to see, you know, young people my age,

00:05:54.780 they went to war, young men went to war, that was what they did. And I started realizing, well,

00:05:59.640 there was a war going on at the time, the war in Iraq. And I was thinking, why did I think that I

00:06:04.700 was exempt from this? What made me so special is not to have to go to this. That was really what

00:06:10.160 started popping those questions into my head. All right. So the great books led you to join

00:06:14.100 the Marines. Yeah, it doesn't do that for a lot. And it surprised my parents quite a bit.

00:06:19.300 Yeah. And what did you do after the Marines? So after the Marines, that was direct into,

00:06:24.740 well I had met my wife and I had deployed while we were together but she was very clear that

00:06:31.140 wanted me to get out if we were going to get married and so I knew that I was going to get

00:06:35.620 married and start a family today we're you know 11 years married with three kids seven eight and

00:06:41.200 nine years old but at that time getting out of the Marine Corps I really had trouble finding

00:06:46.580 finding any kind of job there was no one that would really hire me I was trying to make sixty

00:06:53.060 thousand dollars a year that was my entire goal in life was to get that and just couldn't seem to

00:06:58.200 find it and so through some lucky interactions ended up realizing that going back to school was

00:07:04.060 my best bet and i worked very hard at the gmat and then went to harvard business school all right

00:07:10.120 and then now you're you run a company today yes yeah so i've founded two robotics companies since

00:07:15.880 then and so my current company is called foundation future industries we make humanoid robots so like

00:07:21.880 robots and the shapes of humans that we sell into wars. We sell to the Department of Defense.

00:07:27.700 You make Terminators. 0.74

00:07:28.960 That's right. Yes, it's a Terminator company.

00:07:31.860 All right. So I can see your interest in Thumos or Thumos because you learned about it reading

00:07:36.900 the great books. And then that inspired you to join the Marine Corps. And Thumos, as we'll see,

00:07:42.980 is a warrior emotion, a warrior drive for the ancient Greeks. What's interesting about this

00:07:49.140 book, though, you don't go right into talking about Thumos. You start off with a letter to

00:07:53.780 your son, Michael, and it's all about what it means to be a man. First, why start the book

00:08:00.080 off with that? And then what did you tell your son in that letter? You know, it was interesting

00:08:04.240 for a long time. I had written this book a long time back and I would, I would wake up in the

00:08:10.060 morning at 5 a.m. And, you know, we had little kids, only my son at the time. And I would wake

00:08:16.360 up at 5 a.m. and I had until 8 a.m. until I had to get to work. So I had three hours to work on

00:08:21.640 the book. And it became a kind of meditation about what was it that I had learned about

00:08:27.040 Dumas? You know, when I joined the Marine Corps, I think that I had a rudimentary understanding

00:08:33.020 of what I was up to. I knew that everyone at the time had been telling me it was good to be

00:08:38.340 sensitive. It was good for me to be, you know, nice to the people around me. It was good for me

00:08:43.360 to find middle ground with people and to compromise. You know, I had heard a lot of that.

00:08:48.000 And then I was reading in the great books and thinking, no, that's actually not the path to

00:08:52.440 virtue. That's a path to a slow descent. And so I took this time to really, really try to think

00:08:57.660 through what was it that I did? Was that right? And what did I learn about it along the way?

00:09:02.460 And during that time, I really just would think about having my son, Michael, Mike Jr., just sit

00:09:08.520 across the table from me. And so I wrote the whole book in a way that I thought he would understand

00:09:13.100 it when he was, you know, 20 years old. And I hoped that, you know, I was in the Marine Corps

00:09:19.140 for 13 years. I was hoping to condense that experience in a way that you could read it

00:09:24.180 in about four hours and understand the same deep things that I did, or at least introduce the

00:09:30.700 frameworks for people to start thinking about them. Yeah, that was interesting. Your letter,

00:09:34.800 you talk about how in the 21st century in the United States and in the West, to be a man means,

00:09:40.540 like you said, be sensitive, be compromising, don't lose your temper. But as you read the

00:09:46.340 ancient Greeks, and we'll talk about this like that, like they, they believed in prudence and

00:09:51.160 not going overboard with your anger, but they actually believed anger was an essential part

00:09:56.380 of the soul, particularly a male soul. Like I was being able to experience anger was important.

00:10:02.760 And you bring in this idea of the role anger played in the Greek world with one of Socrates

00:10:09.360 metaphors for the soul he has two of them the most popular one the most well-known one is the

00:10:14.520 one from i think it's the republic the chariot yeah but you referenced this one that's in the

00:10:20.020 gorgias so tell us about this metaphor of the soul and the role anger plays in it so you know it's

00:10:26.740 interesting to me that no matter who you look at that is talking about the soul they always break

00:10:31.240 it into parts like any serious look at the soul breaks it into parts and a kind of classic one

00:10:37.040 is you see it in all of the old cartoons.

00:10:40.300 It's an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other.

00:10:43.120 And I think we all know this experience

00:10:45.020 of having an angel on one shoulder and devil on the other.

00:10:47.700 It's, you know, when you're in Vegas

00:10:49.340 and your friends are like, let's go out to the next club.

00:10:53.060 And you have the angel that goes,

00:10:54.280 I think it's probably time to turn in.

00:10:55.500 Nothing is going to happen.

00:10:56.900 It's midnight, right?

00:10:58.440 And then you have this devilish part of you 0.95

00:11:00.180 that goes like, let's just throw all of our money on black

00:11:03.220 and let's see where the night takes us.

00:11:04.960 you know, everybody knows that kind of back and forth, whether it's about eating a piece of candy,

00:11:09.940 or, you know, taking revenge on somebody that they know, you know, everybody kind of knows

00:11:13.620 those two. And so Socrates had had some version of those. He had the little man of the mind. So

00:11:19.780 he said that your mind is like a little man. And it is rational. And it thinks about what it should

00:11:26.840 do and what it shouldn't do. And it makes, you know, generally good decisions. And then you have

00:11:31.420 your desires, which are like a hydra. So he considered this a many, many headed beast.

00:11:36.700 And that beast could just completely take us over. So just completely give us into desires.

00:11:43.000 And so as he's first talking about it, those are just the two parts. And he says, maybe that makes

00:11:47.980 up the whole of the soul. But there enters this third part. And it was a part that I didn't really

00:11:52.640 understand until I had left the infantry officer course in the Marine Corps. So the infantry officer

00:11:58.440 courses, it is a place where you don't sleep, you don't eat, right? It's it's just it's very hard

00:12:04.060 for 10 weeks. And so when I got done with that 10 weeks, I got my first night in a hotel room.

00:12:10.540 Right after that, I was beginning a new course in intelligence. And this was going to be a

00:12:14.580 gentleman's course. So I thought, all right, I earned it. You know, you're always you're always

00:12:18.980 giving yourself excuses for these things. And so I went and I bought every food you could imagine.

00:12:23.420 I bought Wendy's. I got, you know, the Philly cheesesteak at Subway. I got Cheetos. I got ice

00:12:28.600 cream. I got all of this junk food and my favorite of all junk foods, which is peanut butter. And I

00:12:35.340 sat in the hotel room and at first I'm, I'm eating and my desires, you know, have been locked up for

00:12:40.220 10 weeks and now I'm eating Subway, eating Wendy's and I'm going, you know, I deserve this. The Hydra

00:12:46.420 has been locked up in a cage. I'm going to let it out. And the, you know, rational part of me,

00:12:50.080 the little man of the mind is just like, this is great. Have at. And then I start digging into the

00:12:55.620 Cheetos and things. And little man of mine goes, you know what? Go crazy. What's it going to do?

00:13:00.840 It's a cheat day. It's one day. No big deal. We'll get right over this. But I just kept eating and

00:13:06.680 kept binging. And so by the time I got to the peanut butter, I started with just a spoon and

00:13:12.580 eating peanut butter directly out and thinking, oh, this is great. But pretty soon, I'm in one

00:13:19.880 of those big jiff jars. And I'm halfway through. And now the little man of the mind is getting

00:13:24.640 concerned and going, Oh, man, I can't be sitting here eating this, this huge tub of peanut butter.

00:13:31.460 You know, you're like, how many calories is this? And the hydra is just screaming back,

00:13:36.120 screw you, you've locked me up for 10 weeks. I don't care. And I'm just digging through this 0.99

00:13:40.880 thing. And the little man of the mind is thinking, can you even eat a full tub of peanut butter?

00:13:44.840 Like, am I gonna have to go to the hospital? What happens if you eat this much? This seems

00:13:47.920 like some kind of weird YouTube challenge. And the hydra just keeps blowing on through. And so

00:13:53.360 that battle keeps going back and forth, kind of between the angel and the devil, or as Socrates

00:13:57.900 would have it, the little man of the mind and the hydra. And finally, I get so angry with myself,

00:14:04.720 I'd finished all the peanut butter, and I was about to turn toward more junk food. And I was

00:14:09.000 so angry at what I was doing. And this whole argument that I made myself put on my running

00:14:15.660 shoes. I had some ice cream left. I had a gallon of ice cream. I just unloaded the whole gallon of

00:14:20.820 ice cream into the toilet, flushed it down, right? Because I couldn't trust myself near it.

00:14:25.960 And this is at midnight before this course. And I went out running and I ran 10 miles and I just

00:14:31.460 forced myself. I mean, I felt so sick, so exhausted, so tired. And so I ran 10 miles,

00:14:37.360 got back at somewhere around 2 a.m. And by 6 a.m. I was at my course. And now everybody at the

00:14:43.500 course thought, oh man, LeBlanc had some fun last night. You know, they, they pictured me like out

00:14:49.020 with spring break or, you know, who knows what they pictured, but they were, they were like,

00:14:54.200 this guy really came in and had a good time. And no, it was actually, I was shame eating peanut

00:14:58.520 butter in my hotel room alone. And that to me was where I really saw what Socrates was talking about

00:15:04.540 with this third part. The third part was the part that got angry with myself. It was the part that

00:15:09.640 was so fed up with not living up to what I thought that I was worth of not living up to my dignity

00:15:15.560 and that forced myself to become something better. And that was the clearest example that I had of

00:15:22.100 this third part of the soul. Yeah, it's thumos. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. What was the symbol or the, 1.00

00:15:29.540 you know, what does Socrates use to describe thumos? Oh, right. Sorry. Yeah. So and when he

00:15:35.280 describes it, he actually describes Thumas as a lion. And so, you know, that that had always been

00:15:40.260 a mystery to me before that experience. I'd always look and I think, okay, there's a little man in

00:15:44.660 the mind, there's something right about that. There's a way in which your mind, your conscience

00:15:48.400 is kind of like, it's like a CPA. It's like you just picture him with like glasses and just like

00:15:53.860 shaking his finger at you. And the Hydra was a good fit that you go, yeah, that's definitely 0.90

00:15:58.180 how the desires feel. They're just monstrous. And every time you try to cut off one head to grow

00:16:02.360 in their place. That makes good sense. But I couldn't make sense when I used to read it of why

00:16:08.080 Thumos, this anger, would be a lion, why it would be a noble creature, why it would be something

00:16:13.640 that you would aspire to, something that is a great strength like that. It seemed like it was

00:16:18.280 just another monster head. And so that experience of getting angry with myself, that was the

00:16:22.980 clearest that I started to see, oh, that's why it's the lion, because it's the part that demands

00:16:27.240 that you're going to be better than you are. Yeah, I'm sure everyone has experienced that

00:16:31.160 in their own lives. Maybe they want to change somehow. They want to break some habit.

00:16:35.720 But until that point where they just get fed up with themselves, nothing really ever happens. 1.00

00:16:41.280 You just had to reach that point where it's like, I'm acting like a piece of crap. I am not a piece 0.99

00:16:45.100 of crap. I'm going to go do something about this. Yes. And that to me, that's what I had to do 0.99

00:16:52.220 when I was in college in the first place. You really do just have this part of you that everyone

00:16:57.100 is willing to let you just sink into mediocrity, like it's a warm bubble bath. Like there's this

00:17:03.260 invitation of the world to you don't want to be toxic. You don't want to be too aggressive. You

00:17:09.420 don't want to be too assertive. And you just shut up and just be polite to everybody, which, you

00:17:15.860 know, generally is good, right? I'm not not getting on manners at all. But it leaves you in this case

00:17:22.300 where you're thinking, am I who I'm trying to be?

00:17:25.460 Am I living the life that I'm trying to live?

00:17:28.300 And, you know, for so many people,

00:17:30.100 and I think it's almost like weeds in a garden,

00:17:32.800 they kind of grow back over time.

00:17:35.160 It always comes back a little.

00:17:36.440 You have to keep shaking yourself out of that

00:17:38.320 and going, is this what I meant to do?

00:17:40.340 Is this who I want to be?

00:17:41.880 Are my habits reflecting who I think that I am?

00:17:45.380 Well, let's dig into Fumas a little bit more

00:17:47.260 because it's a really complex concept

00:17:49.540 because there's an anger part of it.

00:17:51.600 And it's sort of a righteous anger.

00:17:53.880 It's an anger that's connected with honor

00:17:55.700 and your sense of self and status.

00:17:58.180 It's also anger in protecting those you love and care for.

00:18:02.560 So if someone's messing, you know,

00:18:04.380 crossing a boundary that they shouldn't, 0.97

00:18:06.080 like thumos would be like, hey, back off. 1.00

00:18:09.040 These are the people I love. 1.00

00:18:10.100 But there's more to it than that. 1.00

00:18:11.320 What are some other attributes of thumos

00:18:13.360 that the Greeks thought it entailed?

00:18:15.420 It's really interesting

00:18:16.320 because as you start to learn about this,

00:18:18.240 it pops up all throughout philosophy.

00:18:20.640 so from the ancient Greeks all forward

00:18:22.840 and it's just called by a lot of different names

00:18:25.220 so I mean this is like Machiavelli talks about the desire for glory

00:18:28.620 or you know you have like Rousseau talks about Amor Propra

00:18:31.980 you have all these different realizations of it

00:18:34.560 but the main idea is that we do have some worth

00:18:38.660 or some dignity that is worth protecting

00:18:41.120 and that the primary mode of anger

00:18:43.940 is to be angry at people that are not treating us

00:18:46.860 like we have that dignity

00:18:48.060 or to be angry at ourselves for not living up to the dignity that we have.

00:18:53.460 That's where the word indignation literally comes from.

00:18:56.800 Dignity is your self-worth.

00:18:58.640 And then indignation is when somebody offends that sense of worth.

00:19:02.100 So when we live up to it, we call it pride.

00:19:05.080 And when we fall short of it, we get very angry with ourselves and we feel a sense of shame.

00:19:10.420 But that's the big thing to me that Thumas really unlocks is shame is a tool.

00:19:15.560 You know, I used to look at shame and think it was something that if you're feeling ashamed, you know, think about it, talk to friends about it, and they'll tell you, oh, don't worry about that. Everybody does that. You know, there are ways that you can kind of bro it out to just make it feel okay. But no, shame is a signal. It's like a check engine light. And when you're feeling angry, when you're feeling, you know, indignant, when you're feeling angry at somebody else for not treating you with enough worth, that should all be telling you, I should be doing something about this.

00:19:45.560 Not necessarily the things that you're thinking about, which may be punching somebody in the face

00:19:49.360 or whatever, but you should be taking some form of action. That's the reason that you get angry

00:19:54.320 at these things. Yeah. Well, speaking of action, Thumos is also associated with action. It's not

00:19:58.940 just something you feel or think. It spurs you to action. It's very action-oriented. What's

00:20:05.840 interesting about Thumos, we've written an article about it a long time ago on the website. There's

00:20:10.700 also an element of evaluation or discernment or decision-making. There's a part, I think,

00:20:18.020 in the Odyssey where Odysseus says that he sort of reasons with his, or he ponders evils in his

00:20:25.100 thumos. So it's when he's about to take over the suitors and he's feeling this indignation because

00:20:31.460 they're just mooching off his household. And so he kind of thinks with this thumos, like, 0.97

00:20:35.860 what do I got to do to like take these guys out? Yeah, well, and that's what Socrates recognizes. 0.98

00:20:42.420 So this is kind of the general rule of three in politics is if you have two, they can work as an

00:20:49.320 alliance until they disagree. And then it's going to be one on one. But when you have three, you

00:20:54.820 know, and I know this from having three kids, every disagreement is going to sort itself into two

00:20:59.400 against one. And so the soul works that way, right? If you have this little man of the mind,

00:21:05.440 if you have the hydra of your desires

00:21:07.440 and this lion, the heart that is Thumos,

00:21:10.520 you have these three parts that need to play together.

00:21:13.620 And Socrates is saying,

00:21:14.700 you've got those three in one body

00:21:16.280 and they've got to come up with one action.

00:21:18.660 So they're constantly voting

00:21:20.940 on what your actions are going to be between these three.

00:21:24.340 And so the lion, he says,

00:21:26.400 can become a great ally of reason

00:21:29.200 because if you just put a little man against a hydra,

00:21:33.020 the little man loses every time.

00:21:35.440 you know, if you just go walk, walk around a mall, you'll see, you know, just how quickly people have

00:21:40.240 let the little man be overrun. People have always given to their into their desires. That's why

00:21:46.040 obesity is such a big problem in the US, because it's very easy to just keep eating. I know that

00:21:51.280 that one still gets me. But when you have this third part, you all of a sudden could have the

00:21:56.800 lion and the little man, and the little man has a fighting chance against the Hydra. And so to

00:22:01.800 Socrates, what it looks like to live a good life and to have a well-ordered soul is to get the

00:22:07.980 lion coupled with reason instead of having the lion coupled with the hydra. Because there are

00:22:13.920 way too many times that we get, you know, I've worked too hard. I get to eat this. No, I'm eating

00:22:20.360 my food. Leave me alone. Or no, I'm taking time off. I'm watching TV. I'm, you know, whatever it

00:22:25.460 is, whatever sin we're indulging in, we're happy to use the lion to defend it. But that's where

00:22:30.240 Socrates says, when you can couple it with the little man and actually have it in line with

00:22:34.720 reason, that's when you can get the strongest life. Yeah. I mean, another example of coupling

00:22:39.900 Thumos, the lion with the little man, you know, this idea of people crossing your boundaries,

00:22:46.820 maybe through, maybe like actual physical violence, maybe they're threatening you physically,

00:22:50.640 or, you know, it's an employee who's maybe stealing from the company. You know, the 21st

00:22:57.500 century guy would be like, well, just use little man reasoning. We can talk about this. We're

00:23:01.360 reasonable people and we can talk this through. So he's be like, well, that's probably not going

00:23:05.860 to get you very far because this guy who's, you know, overstepping this boundary, he's just going

00:23:11.320 to take advantage of you. You need to bring in that lion-like thumas along with the, the, the

00:23:16.840 little man to, you know, you got to have a little, little passion there and be like, Hey, you know,

00:23:21.100 this is wrong. I'm angry. I'm upset about it. And we're not going to, this is not going to happen

00:23:25.880 anymore you know it was so interesting when i was when i was in fifth grade you know i i had a mouth

00:23:31.240 on me and i'd be i would mess with everybody and one day before school there was this kid sitting

00:23:37.180 on his bike and he had he had every bike accessory known to man you know he had like not just like a

00:23:41.900 water bottle holder but he had like little gloves that he wore with the cut off fingers he had like

00:23:46.600 oakley glasses he just had all this stuff and so i'm sitting there making fun of this kid in front

00:23:50.980 of everybody. And, you know, this guy, instead of just taking it, like I'd been used to people

00:23:56.360 doing it, he just without warning, just winds up and just punches me in the face and knocks me to

00:24:02.600 the ground. And, you know, so I'm just laying there on the ground and thinking, okay, well,

00:24:07.380 there's a boundary. That's what it feels like to cross a boundary. And one of my friends goes and

00:24:13.240 punches him back in the face. And the two of them get suspended. And the principal, you know,

00:24:18.640 pulls me aside, right? We're all sitting there. I'm bleeding from my mouth and the other kid's

00:24:23.080 bleeding and they're both getting suspended. And the principal comes and tells me, you know,

00:24:27.400 you did the right thing. You didn't do anything. He punched you and you didn't get back up.

00:24:32.220 That was the right thing. We shouldn't be fighting. And I thought, okay, good. So I go back to my

00:24:36.240 class and every other kid, especially, you know, all of the girls in school are all like, what

00:24:42.420 happened to Chris, my friend who punched him? And I realized there was this disparity between what

00:24:49.640 the teachers and the principal talked about as me being the bigger man and kind of being above

00:24:55.100 the violence and the just, you know, basic human instinct to stand behind my friend who, you know,

00:25:03.320 had stood up for his friend and who had put himself in danger to do it and knock the other

00:25:07.560 guy down. So I was, I was just ashamed. Everybody would come up and go, why weren't you suspended?

00:25:12.420 Right. Why? Why? I don't get it. So why did the other two guys go? But you're you're just allowed here, you know, and I have ice on me on my mouth and everything. But that was an early lesson for me that there is just kind of this split between how how we think of these things. Boundaries. We get taught when somebody is overstepping boundaries to pull people aside for mediation and that it's something to talk about.

00:25:35.420 And I'm not saying that it needs to be a punch in the face every time, but that should be kind of the basic response is saying, no, you step on a boundary. You talk about my wife. You talk about my kids. You do something to my family. It isn't a let's have PTA meeting about it. It's you better stay the hell back.

00:25:56.040 Yeah.

00:25:56.420 But what's interesting, 1.00

00:25:57.360 you have to have that Thumos with the little man.

00:26:00.440 Like you can't just have only Thumos 0.87

00:26:02.580 because the ancients,

00:26:04.260 that can lead you down some bad paths.

00:26:06.820 Were there negatives that they saw

00:26:09.300 of like leaning too much on that lion-like Thumos?

00:26:12.800 Yeah, I think, you know,

00:26:14.220 anybody that's watched Jerry Springer

00:26:15.900 has seen the negative sides of it, right?

00:26:18.620 What you end up with is the biggest problem

00:26:21.580 is that we have so many people that are saying,

00:26:24.200 you know, you've treated me lower than I'm worth and they get very indignant, but they don't live

00:26:30.300 up to their own standards. So when you're out there and you don't act, when you don't take

00:26:35.620 care of your business, you don't take care of your money, you don't work and do something

00:26:39.060 productive, you don't take care of your kids, you don't defend boundaries properly, then you're

00:26:44.680 just kicking the ocean. You're throwing tantrums all the time. And I think a lot of the anger that

00:26:50.400 we've seen that gets highly publicized, especially over the past 10, 15 years, is really just

00:26:56.360 tantrums that older people recognize. These young people, they haven't done things to deserve the

00:27:02.420 level of, you know, this high standard that they seem to be defending. And that's why I think a lot

00:27:07.760 of people get back to this principle of you need to take care of, you know, get your own house in

00:27:11.780 order before you go and criticize the world. Because we do have an America that is filled

00:27:16.640 with people that are just getting angry about things

00:27:19.560 and not fixing their own life, right?

00:27:23.480 Why come yelling about our economy

00:27:26.220 or come yelling about the system or the man

00:27:28.880 or all these things

00:27:29.720 when you don't have your own house in order?

00:27:32.420 And so I think the Greeks were very sensitive to that,

00:27:35.280 of recognizing anger is not always good,

00:27:37.480 it's not always bad,

00:27:38.620 but like any of the virtues,

00:27:40.400 it is the middle between this kind of being too cowardly

00:27:45.140 and shy and being too angry and violent overly so yeah you need the little man to kind of figure

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00:32:12.740 One of the other interesting things about thumos is that the Greeks associated it with the physical body.

00:32:18.520 Specifically, they said you kind of resided in your chest.

00:32:21.400 It was in your breath, like the thumos sounds like your breath, thumos. 0.59

00:32:24.700 in your blood kind of made you hot-blooded in your experience is thumas something that has to be

00:32:30.620 awakened physically that you know it was such an interesting thing to me because i had this sense

00:32:37.160 i'd always you know i'd played baseball i'd always played sports and stuff through being a kid and

00:32:42.400 through high school but when i got to college i had this sense that i was going to leave that all

00:32:47.380 behind and i thought i don't need to do any of that i can i can be so smart the idea was to have

00:32:52.680 this big brain and learn so much that I could just, you know, I would do everything with my

00:32:57.680 mind. And I was shocked when one of my professors, Mr. Page, was the one that was really pushing me

00:33:04.180 to recognize that shame was a tool. He was my ancient Greek professor and started to open up

00:33:08.960 what virtue really looked like for me. He told me one time I said, oh, well, I'm going to keep

00:33:13.800 working out, but it's only to push myself mentally. I just want to make sure that I'm mentally tough.

00:33:18.320 and he was very clear that he said, no, you should be doing it to get strong and in shape

00:33:24.480 and to look good. He's like, those are all very important things too. And I was shocked when he

00:33:29.880 had told me that. But as I've gotten older, I've recognized it's all part of the same thing.

00:33:35.140 It's not enough to just be in principle, you know, pushing yourself through hard things. I mean,

00:33:40.060 you could, you know, lock yourself in a kennel, right? For two days, that would be hard,

00:33:44.880 but it wouldn't get you stronger. Maybe it would make you mentally stronger, but it's not doing

00:33:49.540 anything for your muscles. No, actually getting out there and pushing yourself to run, to march,

00:33:56.120 to lift heavy things, to fight. Plato was a wrestler, Socrates is a soldier. All of these

00:34:01.260 guys, they were very much doing this with their bodies. And I think it's one of those things that

00:34:06.180 once you actually get into lifting and once you get into fitness, it's just right on the face of 0.71

00:34:12.340 you can see why that awakens the thumos into you, why on the day that you get a workout,

00:34:17.400 you're more ready to go into work. And to me, if I'm being indecisive or just kind of mushy in my 0.57

00:34:23.920 thinking, the first thing that I do is force myself to go do a very hard workout because I

00:34:29.160 know it's going to clean up the mind just like that. Yeah. People forget that about the ancient

00:34:32.720 Greek philosophers. You said Plato was a wrestler. Where they went to discuss philosophy was the

00:34:38.120 gymnasium. And they not only discussed philosophy, but they were working out while they were there.

00:34:43.200 Yeah. And it's exactly right that it would happen. I mean, once I was in the Marines,

00:34:47.040 I saw this all over the place, that you really would have these incredible leaders that I think,

00:34:53.880 how did these guys do it without philosophy, right? I'm sitting there thinking about how

00:34:58.360 the Greeks have gotten me into this. And I'm thinking about Aristotle and Socrates. And that's

00:35:03.740 kind of how I view the world. But I have these other guys around me that have no interest in

00:35:08.960 any of those things, but they are so decisive and they are living up to the virtues better than I

00:35:14.600 am. And I realize a huge part of that is they are pushing themselves in the gym. They are pushing

00:35:19.660 themselves to lift more, to run faster, to do more pull-ups. And it's just a huge part of pushing

00:35:26.160 each other, pushing yourself, and yeah, how that matches with manly virtue.

00:35:31.800 Yeah, so they were training the lion.

00:35:34.000 Yeah, yeah, exactly.

00:35:35.340 Exactly right.

00:35:36.260 And yeah, I'm a big proponent of, you know, all people, girls, but particularly young men.

00:35:41.560 I want them like active doing some sort of sport or an activity where they get physical.

00:35:46.400 One of the things I just hate is you see these young men who just don't have any sort of vitality.

00:35:51.800 They don't have any thumos and they kind of go through life anesthetized.

00:35:55.540 And there's really no there there.

00:35:57.440 And I'm like, bro, you need to get doing something.

00:35:59.420 like start playing ultimate frisbee at least, or, you know, let's go lift weights. So I think

00:36:03.600 that could be a starting point to developing this thumash that can help you develop these other

00:36:08.920 more noble virtues after that. You know, it's, it's interesting too, with the body. I always

00:36:13.780 have this kind of framework for myself that, you know, as, as a man, you should be horny in the

00:36:18.720 morning, hungry through the day and tired at night. And I think that, you know, when you give

00:36:25.540 into the world of TV, when you give into a world of just pleasures and binge eating and whatever,

00:36:33.920 you start to realize that all of your good drives are muted. The volume is way down on all of those

00:36:39.620 things. I hear about so many young men that say they have insomnia. My good friend, Tom Schumann,

00:36:46.220 Marine, he always says like, insomnia is for people that haven't heard of leg day.

00:36:50.100 and i i think that there is this sense that you know we we miss a meal and we start to think

00:36:57.180 oh my gosh i i need to get it my blood sugar's low my blood sugar's low you know that that is

00:37:03.400 not how your body's designed and to me that's like taking a porsche 40 miles an hour and going like

00:37:09.560 that was too much for the tires it's like no it was designed for a lot more than that and there

00:37:14.340 there may be some unpleasantness with that there may be some withholding from desires and not you

00:37:21.180 know not eating for long periods of time you might have to be hungry you might have to go through

00:37:25.120 being tired you might have to lift very heavy things and think you know my muscles are just

00:37:30.000 screaming at me to stop but all of those things it's it's amazing how rewarding they become

00:37:35.060 how quickly if you do that for seven days if you actually do you know a good workout split or even

00:37:40.780 even just take yourself you know just go on an actual run and push yourself you know seven days

00:37:46.580 in a row and if you stay off of tv if you stay away from junk food seven days you'll be amazed

00:37:52.700 with how much your body rewards you with clear thinking with more drive with you know just more

00:37:58.940 excitement in your life so i i always think people are a week away from that but instead you're just

00:38:04.300 lulled into this muted sense of self-worth all right so thumas is this part of our soul where

00:38:10.620 we feel anger towards ourself if we're not living up to a standard that we think we're capable of

00:38:16.320 reaching it's connected with our sense of honor and status and sort of self-regard and it can

00:38:22.820 motivate you to you know put those that hydra of desires in its place you also talk about this idea

00:38:29.520 of thumos being overwhelmed by the little man of reason how do you see that play out well that that

00:38:37.420 was the interesting thing is i always had this idea that well the mind is is just untouchable

00:38:42.400 the mind is always right and you're always going to go back to these rational things and that's

00:38:46.660 what you're supposed to land on you're supposed to let reason win out but actually you see a lot

00:38:51.560 of people that are too smart for their own good and and i started to see there's this real danger

00:38:57.320 of letting the little man be too much in control,

00:39:01.180 there are too many distinctions.

00:39:03.000 You can't get anything done in the world

00:39:04.740 when you're just stuck in research mode.

00:39:07.540 And to me, the Marines had a great principle to live by,

00:39:11.340 which is the 70% solution.

00:39:13.680 And, you know, the little man of the mind

00:39:15.820 wants the 100% solution.

00:39:17.900 I see this now running tech companies.

00:39:20.140 I have a lot of smart people working for me.

00:39:21.760 They want the 100% solution.

00:39:23.800 And they go, well, shouldn't we think about this

00:39:25.580 before we move on to the next step?

00:39:27.020 And, you know, why make that mistake?

00:39:29.240 No, because mistakes are good.

00:39:31.220 Iteration is good.

00:39:32.580 And if you have something that is 70% of the way there,

00:39:35.400 that's good enough to move forward.

00:39:37.440 That's how you actually get things done in the world.

00:39:39.640 And so you have the little man of the mind

00:39:41.780 kind of pitted against execution.

00:39:44.700 You know, how many people have I seen that are out of shape?

00:39:47.840 They're overeating, they don't work out.

00:39:49.980 But when I talk to them about working out,

00:39:52.360 they start going, well, you know,

00:39:53.620 I know there's just a lot to get into.

00:39:55.700 I've been studying, you know, form. You need to get your form right or else you're going to get

00:39:59.340 injured. And, you know, I've really been reading a lot about diet, you know, understanding keto.

00:40:04.660 I hear this kind of stuff all the time of people that are just letting their minds just jump into

00:40:09.600 this R&D mode and they never escape from it. And you think all you had to do was just get some

00:40:15.740 shoes on and go for a run. Don't even wear shoes. Just go on the grass, go barefoot and just go for

00:40:20.600 run, go sprint a couple of times. And that will be better than whatever reading or research you

00:40:25.940 did. Yeah. So yeah, the little man wants to overthink things. The lion says, no, let's,

00:40:31.660 we've done enough thinking time to take action. Yes. And that's the thing is like, you're trying

00:40:36.380 to get yourself to action. I see today so many young men that have so much to offer and they

00:40:42.820 have so much potential, but they are locked between their desires, just taking over their

00:40:48.820 lives. You see it with gaming. You see it with porn. You see it with, you know, not going out

00:40:55.140 in the world to, they don't go date. They don't go and get jobs. They aren't ambitious in their

00:41:00.880 careers. And then you also see it with their minds of just rationalizing away every reason

00:41:06.280 that they would do that. Oh, well, it's rigged against me. Ah, well, the economy's bad. Ah,

00:41:11.300 well, they have all these reasons why it isn't working out for them. And that's what happens

00:41:17.080 when you don't develop your thumos,

00:41:20.040 when you don't take this other part of you that says,

00:41:22.500 I do not care about how strong the desires are.

00:41:26.020 I don't care about how good the reasons are

00:41:28.400 against anything.

00:41:29.560 I'm going to just do it.

00:41:31.720 We used to have that.

00:41:33.000 I used to paint houses with my dad

00:41:34.360 and there would be these really tough sets.

00:41:37.200 They'd be three stories up.

00:41:38.320 They'd be on the roof.

00:41:39.060 You'd have to do like the side of a window

00:41:41.660 that was jutting out or something.

00:41:43.260 And we'd be looking at the thing from the ground

00:41:45.220 and we'd be thinking how the hell are we ever going to get a ladder up there to do it you know

00:41:50.540 when you're discussing it over and over again and going I think maybe if we had a ladder on the top

00:41:55.480 and we had it hooked from the top you have all these ideas the solution was always just to take

00:42:01.080 the highest ladder you've got throw it up there and climb up there and then solve every problem

00:42:05.660 as you go you know and I used to do that of getting on the roof and then you'd go oh actually

00:42:09.920 I didn't realize if you were here if we could hang on to this and you'd end up with these weird sets

00:42:14.260 but you'd get the whole thing painted.

00:42:16.220 And I think that's what we've lost so much of

00:42:18.960 is just saying that's Thumos that drives you

00:42:21.540 to just say, throw the ladder up, 0.85

00:42:23.340 just get up there and do this thing

00:42:24.920 because you can sit and nitpick things

00:42:27.400 with your mind all day.

00:42:28.620 You can absolutely sit

00:42:30.440 and let your desires run things all day,

00:42:32.080 but it's not the outcome that you're looking for.

00:42:35.020 Let's talk about Thumos in relation to other people.

00:42:38.500 We've been kind of touching on a little bit

00:42:40.100 how our Thumos is used to defend boundaries.

00:42:43.480 and establish boundaries.

00:42:45.460 You have this section in this book

00:42:46.780 about the role Thumas plays

00:42:48.660 in establishing power and authority.

00:42:51.260 First off, is there a difference

00:42:52.480 between power and authority?

00:42:53.740 Yeah, I think there really is.

00:42:55.800 You know, power, power you think of

00:42:58.320 as whatever you're able to do out in the world.

00:43:01.820 You know, the person who punched me

00:43:03.160 when I was messing with his bike,

00:43:05.080 that kid had the power in that situation.

00:43:07.900 Authority is when you have the right to do it

00:43:10.160 and you don't get suspended after it, right?

00:43:12.580 Right. And you can have power without authority, but then you can have authority without any power.

00:43:20.240 Yes. The Marine Corps is a really great place to look at this because there are battalions that you would go into.

00:43:26.560 I would have all the rank in the world. And I might be, especially when I was a lieutenant, you outrank all of these guys that have been in for, you know, 20 years.

00:43:35.340 You outrank them. You outrank a master sergeant, a first sergeant.

00:43:38.380 but it's very clear that you don't have any power

00:43:42.200 when you try to go and start ordering them to do anything

00:43:45.380 and they're like, I appreciate the thought, sir,

00:43:47.900 but no, we're going to do it this way.

00:43:49.920 You know, that's where you always see those,

00:43:52.380 I don't know, I think that a lot of young lieutenants

00:43:54.900 conflate power and authority

00:43:56.240 and they think because I'm wearing the rank,

00:43:58.820 I can go and tell people what to do.

00:44:01.080 And yeah, people, they'll probably do the one thing

00:44:03.900 that you're asking them to do,

00:44:05.080 but you know, then they had a good way

00:44:06.840 teaching lieutenants that, which was, you know, all of the enlisted would just do exactly what

00:44:11.100 you said. And it turns into a sort of Amelia Bedelia battalion. You have this way in which

00:44:16.940 you start to realize, oh, they were doing a whole lot that I didn't know and that I didn't know

00:44:21.420 about. And you get taught pretty quick that there's a big difference between the two.

00:44:25.840 Yeah. My experience, if you ever have to resort to authority to get someone to do something,

00:44:30.220 you've already lost. Yeah. Well, and that's, you know, that's a big thing. I've always told

00:44:35.600 guys people in my companies is I say, you think that I act the way that I act because of the role

00:44:41.860 that I have in the company. But actually, I have the role in the company that I have because of

00:44:45.960 the way that I act. And that's something that a lot of employees don't realize is I was always,

00:44:52.260 no matter where I was in the pecking order, I was always stack ranking my peers. I was always

00:44:57.360 thinking, who would I want on a team? I used to have, I had a long list that I kept all throughout

00:45:01.800 the Marine Corps called the people I want to hire someday. And I hired a lot of them once I got out.

00:45:07.820 But I was just always thinking from, all right, this is what the organization needs to do.

00:45:12.920 And in that way, I never felt that I had a boss. It was interesting to me because,

00:45:17.720 you know, people love authority. There's some security in having somebody else who's in charge.

00:45:23.020 But I just always looked at myself as, all right, I'm a captain in this battalion. Here's what

00:45:28.600 captains should be doing. Here's what the battalion should be doing. And here's how I fit in with it

00:45:32.180 with that. And my commanders were another stakeholder, just like my sergeants were a

00:45:37.720 stakeholder. They were all people that I had to I had to deal with and keep happy in the way that

00:45:42.220 they wanted to be kept happy to get them moving in the right direction. That was always the way

00:45:46.740 that I navigated it. And I think that really helps you as you're going to become, you know,

00:45:51.400 a founder, an entrepreneur, a boss in any way, a boss, a manager, a leader.

00:45:56.100 So how does Thumos help you develop that power?

00:45:59.560 Well, to me, to be a good leader,

00:46:01.920 you need to be the one that is willing to say

00:46:03.940 that the emperor is wearing no clothes.

00:46:05.680 There are all kinds of things that go on in organizations

00:46:07.820 that everyone has to live with that they go,

00:46:09.960 that just doesn't make any sense.

00:46:11.660 At my first company, Cobalt,

00:46:13.820 so we made security robots

00:46:15.260 and they were supposed to replace security guards

00:46:17.840 by catching all kinds of open doors

00:46:20.400 or bags that were left around,

00:46:22.020 just things that a security guard would catch.

00:46:23.780 So it's a robot that would drive around and look for those things.

00:46:27.420 And we all kind of knew that it didn't work.

00:46:30.660 We had probably, I don't know, maybe 200 people in the company at the time.

00:46:34.900 You know, so we're all working every day.

00:46:36.820 Everybody has big salaries and all these things.

00:46:39.100 But we all thought, no, the robot doesn't quite work.

00:46:41.980 We had a customer that tested us and we realized just how bad it was.

00:46:46.100 We were catching under 5% of what we were supposed to catch

00:46:49.880 out of the little booby traps and these things.

00:46:51.980 so that's you know that's not just an f right that's not just a failing grade that's like you

00:46:57.920 almost didn't even show up for the test so when i saw those results i was so angry and i was mostly

00:47:04.480 angry with myself because i thought what i'm running this company and i tried to get into it

00:47:11.260 every now and then and go well shouldn't this be better and shouldn't this be better and everybody

00:47:15.560 would tell me no it can't be that way well this has to be this way because of this and this and

00:47:19.320 And so the whole company, we're all going to work every day, knowing that we're working on a product

00:47:24.740 that doesn't work. And I got so pissed about it. And so I was I was home with my dad in Ohio at

00:47:30.500 the time. And he was like, you know, use that, get into that, go get a plan and execute it through

00:47:36.520 the company. He was like, just be done with everybody's excuses, be done with all the reasons

00:47:41.000 against what you're doing. And so I did, we went and, you know, I got my close team together.

00:47:45.420 and we put together this plan of showing people,

00:47:48.440 it wasn't actually that we were just below 5%.

00:47:51.180 There were actually something like, you know,

00:47:53.380 nine steps from a robot, you know,

00:47:55.840 catching something all the way to us reporting it properly.

00:47:58.900 And we realized, okay, it's actually,

00:48:00.680 everybody's getting a C.

00:48:02.000 That's why nobody feels like they're really failing.

00:48:04.100 It's just, it's a very leaky funnel

00:48:06.500 when every single step of the way

00:48:08.860 is doing about C, C minus work.

00:48:11.740 So they all feel like they're doing well enough,

00:48:14.300 but in the aggregate you're failing and this this happens across organizations all the time

00:48:18.380 so to me as a leader that's your role is to start start getting angry about that and go we're we're

00:48:25.060 not going to deal with it we can't have c minus work anywhere we need to have everyone in a and

00:48:30.660 we we definitely ruffled some feathers but you know i set a timeline of 90 days that we were

00:48:36.980 going to be at 80 effectiveness and within 90 days we were at 80 effectiveness and we kept doing it

00:48:43.800 week over week until we were 95% effective.

00:48:47.680 And then it became this big marketing tool for us

00:48:49.540 that we did all these tests

00:48:50.700 and that we would show to customers.

00:48:52.840 But that to me, that's what Thumas does in business.

00:48:56.380 That's what it does in leadership

00:48:57.320 is it takes the status quo that's not working

00:49:00.340 and it forces it into being something that's excellent.

00:49:04.840 And it might require you to pull rank

00:49:06.620 or like go over rank, you know, and skip it, ignore it.

00:49:09.720 Because maybe there's a guy listening to this show,

00:49:11.840 they're in a company

00:49:12.360 and they're working on a project

00:49:14.160 and it's just not going anywhere.

00:49:16.000 And because of all the politics,

00:49:17.820 no one is actually trying to make a solution happen. 0.87

00:49:21.540 Well, the Thumos in this guy could be like, 0.67

00:49:24.160 you know what, I'm going to come up with a plan. 0.99

00:49:25.720 I'm just going to execute without asking permission

00:49:27.640 and then show the results

00:49:29.260 because then you can't argue with the results.

00:49:31.420 Yes.

00:49:32.000 And that, you know, I tell this to my employees all the time

00:49:34.720 that being right has an authority all its own.

00:49:37.900 You know, Jeff Bezos for Amazon,

00:49:39.440 one of his principles was leaders are right a lot.

00:49:42.360 And it's funny, we kind of leave that behind

00:49:44.380 of realizing that, but that is the case.

00:49:47.280 When you're a leader, when you're getting promoted,

00:49:48.920 it should be because you're right a lot.

00:49:51.680 And to me, when I'm going into a disagreement in my company,

00:49:55.060 it doesn't matter if somebody's working for me.

00:49:57.320 I don't think about it in terms of that.

00:49:59.360 I always think, let's get to the best thing.

00:50:01.680 But I'm arguing for something that I think is right.

00:50:04.320 So I'm happy to be talked out of something.

00:50:06.300 But it was always amazing to me,

00:50:08.480 even as a second lieutenant,

00:50:10.440 you know, you're, you're really, you know, pretty low on everybody's mind because everybody knows

00:50:15.660 that you're school trained, but you don't have experience yet. But at that time I was still able

00:50:21.120 to make these, these arguments that were able to move a lot of people my way because I worked it

00:50:27.320 and was right. And there's, there's a way that right arguments went out. Yeah. And then if you

00:50:32.320 are in a position of authority, you can use your thumas to establish the power. So that authority

00:50:38.020 is effective. Absolutely. That's the big responsibility of a leadership position is,

00:50:43.700 you know, I spend a lot of my time just going, man, this isn't right. What we're doing here

00:50:48.560 isn't right. And how do we actually get it right? I'm still trying to do that work of the cynical

00:50:53.800 employee. I'm still trying to think, just what do these things look like? Do we have good enough

00:50:57.960 reasons for what we're doing? Is this, you know, are we doing what investors are expecting us to

00:51:02.360 do? Are we doing what customers are hoping us to do? You know, are we doing what employees think

00:51:06.800 we should do. There's a lot of mulling time that you just need to put in that and you need to act

00:51:11.760 on it when you go, something's just not right here. Well, you mentioned cynicism. You have this

00:51:16.080 chapter about cynicism and this can affect people personally in their personal lives or it can affect

00:51:22.660 an organization where they just feel like everything we do is not doing anything. And you

00:51:27.980 argue that the little man is probably responsible for that cynicism. How so? This is where smart

00:51:34.020 people really get themselves into danger. I saw a ton of this at Harvard. I see this still in my

00:51:39.480 peers from Harvard when I talked to them, that a lot of what you do is seeing through the picture

00:51:46.160 of everything. So, you know, you have this, this way in which when you're young, you have this

00:51:52.000 idealism, right? Especially going to a place like the Marine Corps, you're like, this is the place

00:51:56.040 where virtue actually lives. We're going to get to put this on the battlefield. And, you know,

00:52:00.620 by the time you're working at the Pentagon, you're going, Oh, my gosh, you know, these,

00:52:05.380 this guy's trying to get promoted. That's why we're doing this mission. And this person is

00:52:08.820 just doing this because he wants to fight over budget. And it's very easy once you start to see

00:52:13.520 these things in the world, to just get cynical. And to just think, you know, there's no real

00:52:19.240 reason for this. Nobody's trying to do well. Everybody's just jumping in to get theirs. And

00:52:23.800 they're just trying to get money. People are greedy, people are empty. And the whole organization

00:52:27.740 is empty. And I don't think that's a bad place to get or at least a, you know, a rest stop along

00:52:34.720 the way. I think that, you know, there's a lot that's right about that. And you can sit and look

00:52:40.140 at an organization and a lot of it is about budgets and promotions and, you know, all kinds

00:52:45.820 of things that shouldn't be driving it. This is where like, you know, Michael Jordan, famously,

00:52:49.620 when he began in the NBA, he kept playing his hardest, even though, you know, his team was

00:52:55.040 thinking that they should lose so that they'd get a better draft pick that's the kind of cynicism

00:52:59.060 that somebody like michael jordan overcomes by saying i i go out there to win right and there's

00:53:05.720 an idealism to it there's a naivete to it but really that cynicism of thinking yeah we should

00:53:11.020 just get the draft pick let's just not put it all out there on the field that's actually something

00:53:14.920 to overcome that's something to get through and i think that that's something that's very much

00:53:19.880 taught in the great books but it's something that so many smart people today they don't think

00:53:25.000 about what is that next chapter. They know, yes, I can become cynical. I can see through why people

00:53:30.240 are doing these things, but there's still more room to act. But when you let your mind fester,

00:53:35.540 the mind will figure out everything that, you know, makes the world an empty conspiracy.

00:53:40.700 So what role does Thumas play in overcoming cynicism?

00:53:44.080 You know, Thumas is that part, again, that believes in nobility. It believes in worth,

00:53:49.780 right? I mean, it's very funny to me because when you think about worth or recognition,

00:53:53.980 recognition is probably a good word for it. Hegel's word for it, or the best translation

00:53:58.340 for Hegel's word for it. Recognition is, you know, we talk about it when somebody gets like a watch

00:54:04.020 at the end of their pension, right? It's like, you know, in recognition of service for 30 years,

00:54:10.160 you know, we have kind of that word. But the basic recognition is to do with how worthy are you? And

00:54:17.020 do people recognize that? Do people see how hard you're working? I think there are so many fights

00:54:23.280 in marriage, in companies that are directly about recognition. And we talk about them in all kinds

00:54:30.160 of other forms. We like to make it more economic. You're getting more than I am, right, is a big way

00:54:35.920 that we like to fight. But it's actually much more about worth. People want the credit. People

00:54:41.040 want recognition for what they've done. And so people see that as very unfair when somebody's

00:54:46.100 getting a lot and getting a lot of glory for something and they go, they didn't do the work,

00:54:50.400 I did the work. So it's something that we see in everything, but it gets minimized because there's

00:54:56.060 almost something childish about honor and nobility. But I think that's where Thumas can step up in

00:55:02.600 this cynicism and says, you know, no, even if this is some of the workings, even if there is,

00:55:09.140 you know, a budget that's going on and people are actually just fighting over the money,

00:55:13.380 there's still something that we're all here to do, you know, and we're always kind of putting

00:55:16.680 out of play. And so, you know, you see someone like Winston Churchill, you know, very thematic

00:55:21.460 man, who he took this as he loved to wear costumes, he loved to dress up as a soldier, he loved to

00:55:27.640 dress in his medals and his awards, he loved his iconic hat with a cigar out of his mouth, you know,

00:55:33.160 in a three piece suit. You know, there's a there's part of a game of dress up that goes on with it.

00:55:38.520 And it's a very thematic thing to do to say, I'm going to engage with my life beyond all reasons

00:55:45.160 not to beyond yes this of course the system's rigged of course everything's rigged and of

00:55:50.320 course people are out for themselves and you know and they make it look like very charitable thing

00:55:54.340 of course if you're grown up you know that's that's the way the world works but that doesn't

00:55:58.260 mean that you don't engage with life and so thumas is sort of that one that looks at how the little

00:56:03.280 man gets very cynical and says get up off the mat you've got to get back in this and and you've still

00:56:09.500 got to play your part in life regardless of what else is going on yeah live with nobility yes

00:56:15.380 Let's go back to your son.

00:56:16.760 I've got a teenage son.

00:56:18.100 I lead teenage boys in my church congregation.

00:56:20.920 One of my biggest concerns, as I said earlier,

00:56:22.520 is I feel like a lot of them are lacking that thumatic drive. 0.98

00:56:25.600 What are you doing to teach your son to harness his thumas

00:56:28.860 or foster it for noble aims?

00:56:31.780 You know, it was interesting.

00:56:32.640 I was just in Montana last week,

00:56:35.660 and we were out with a PB Abate.

00:56:38.840 It's like a nonprofit for veterans

00:56:40.840 that brings a lot of veterans back to this actual place.

00:56:43.900 You know, they have acres of land.

00:56:45.060 in the woods in montana and while we were out there the power was out and since it's on septic

00:56:51.440 and everything the toilets are out the showers are out there's no running water but it was amazing

00:56:55.860 we we all had our kids out there and you know the kids just seemed to not notice that we didn't have

00:57:02.580 power or any of these things for the week you know at night we would have a fire they were all

00:57:07.620 completely enamored with the fire putting sticks in it throwing pine cones in it they would be uh

00:57:13.660 you know, we had axes and they'd be chopping wood. They'd love to pick up the axes and play with

00:57:19.160 them. They'd love to go build forts. And I was thinking about it as I was looking at all of them

00:57:23.300 that boys have a good way of finding thumos when you just get out of their way. The problem is

00:57:30.480 when we start to think, here's what we should be teaching them. Here's what we should be doing

00:57:34.740 with them. Let me get them this, this screen in this math game. And everybody tells me how

00:57:39.960 important STEM and STEAM are and I need to get them a robotics toy if I want them to not be

00:57:45.580 working at Home Depot someday. The real answer, the real cure is put them in nature. Put them in

00:57:51.880 the woods. Put them somewhere where they have to deal with the actual world and they have to engage

00:57:57.400 with the actual world. They may get cut up. They may get hurt. There may be some suffering that's

00:58:03.080 part of it, but they'll get over it and they'll become strong. That's how they will become men

00:58:07.740 is when they engage with the world that way.

00:58:10.740 I love it.

00:58:11.020 Well, Mike, this has been a great conversation.

00:58:12.420 Where can people go to learn more

00:58:13.260 about the book and your work?

00:58:15.380 Officialmikeleblanc.com is my website.

00:58:18.340 So I have all kinds of things about the book on there,

00:58:20.780 but also at Amazon, Target, Barnes & Noble,

00:58:24.780 anywhere that you look for books,

00:58:26.680 What If Anger Is The Answer will be there.

00:58:28.640 All right, Mike LeBlanc, next time.

00:58:29.820 It's been a pleasure.

00:58:30.660 Thanks so much, Brett.

00:58:32.660 My guest today was Mike LeBlanc.

00:58:33.920 He's the author of the book,

00:58:35.200 What If Anger Is The Answer?

00:58:36.260 It's available for pre-order right now at all major book retailers like Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

00:58:41.220 You can learn more information about his work at his website, officialmikeleblanc.com.

00:58:45.480 Also, check out our show notes at aom.is slash thumas, where you can find links to resources when we delve deeper into this topic.

00:58:58.260 Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM Podcast.

00:59:01.040 If you haven't done so already, I'd appreciate it if you take one minute to give us a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

00:59:05.280 It helps out a lot.

00:59:06.200 And if you've done that already, thank you.

00:59:07.880 Please consider sharing the show with a friend or family member who you think was something

00:59:11.040 out of it.

00:59:11.740 As always, thank you for the continued support.

00:59:13.720 Until next time, it's Brett McKay.

00:59:15.120 Remind you how listening to the podcast would put what you've heard into action.

00:59:35.280 You

The Art of Manliness - August 25, 2026

The Lost Virtue of Thumos (And Why Men Need It)

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