The Art of Manliness - The Shadows Over Men's Hearts and How to Fight Them

00:00:00.000 Brett McKay here, and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.

00:00:11.280 There are a lot of unspoken challenges and hidden battles that face men in modern society.

00:00:15.600 They often manifest themselves in a uniquely male malaise, where a man feels apathetic,

00:00:20.620 frustrated, cynical, and lost. John Tyson has thought a lot about the problems men face,

00:00:25.980 and has been on the ground trying to help them as a pastor in New York City.

00:00:28.580 In today's episode, I talk to John about the sources of this male angst that he explores

00:00:32.980 as the co-author of a new book, Fighting Shadows, overcoming seven lies that keep men from becoming

00:00:38.100 fully alive. John and I discuss how men often try to solve their malaise and why those approaches

00:00:42.820 don't work. We then explore some of the shadows men fight in their lives, including the shadows

00:00:47.280 of despair, loneliness, unhealthy ambition, futility, and lust. John offers some advice

00:00:53.320 to overcome these shadows, including sitting around a fire pit with your bros, taking time

00:00:57.540 to develop your telos, or aim as a man, and injecting a bit more playfulness in your life

00:01:01.580 to counteract grumpy dad syndrome. After the show's over, check out our show notes at

00:01:05.620 aom.is slash shadows.

00:01:18.340 All right, John Tyson, welcome back to the show.

00:01:21.480 G'day, mate. How's it going? Thank you for having me back on. Always a joy to chat.

00:01:25.180 Oh, well, always a pleasure. We had you on last time to talk about the five shifts of manhood.

00:01:30.000 It's part of a program you do. You got a new book out that you co-authored. It's called

00:01:34.540 Fighting Shadows, overcoming seven lies that keep men from becoming fully alive. You've

00:01:40.320 done a lot of work around mentoring and guiding young men into manhood. We've had you on the

00:01:45.860 podcast to talk about that, sort of the rites of passage that you've developed for your own

00:01:50.440 son, then have also helped other men do with their boys. This book is geared towards grown

00:01:56.960 men. Why did you shift your attention to helping grown men with their lives?

00:02:02.260 Well, to be honest with you, it was just like a giant need that kind of emerged. I had written

00:02:08.320 that book called The Intentional Father, developed the primal path curriculum, and then a bunch

00:02:13.180 of dads went through it and they said, hey, as I'm taking my son through this, I realize nobody's

00:02:19.000 ever taken me through this. And I feel like I've got all these holes in my development as

00:02:24.220 a man. There's all of these areas I've never really paid attention to. And there's all of

00:02:28.740 these things I'm struggling with. And I don't feel like I have either the perspective or the

00:02:33.320 community to be able to process these. And we just got this overwhelming response, which

00:02:38.000 is, do you have anything for men? And I was like, oh gosh, not really. And so that started

00:02:45.960 us on a journey several years ago. We started an organization called Forming Men because, you

00:02:51.220 know, men, obviously, they don't happen by accident. It requires an intentional process

00:02:55.560 of formation. And we worked with that. So we've worked with, you know, thousands of men

00:03:00.220 over the last few years through that. And we just kept seeing these dominant themes and

00:03:05.580 struggles coming along that we felt like we wanted to address, which is ultimately what

00:03:10.700 we did in the book. So yeah, it was a realization that many, many men just didn't have their own

00:03:17.220 process of development that they had been taken through and they were looking for something

00:03:21.320 to sort of address the gap. So we took our formation process that we'd done with young

00:03:25.500 men and try to sort of work it for older folks as well. So it's been really life-giving to

00:03:29.640 be honest with you. I've just come from, you know, I've been on a bit of a book tour. So I've

00:03:34.860 been all over America from, you know, California to the East Coast and just amazed at the hunger

00:03:40.920 for what it is you do with the art of manliness, which is like help men learn to be men

00:03:46.520 in a world that doesn't either give a spot for that or care about that. So yeah, it was

00:03:50.820 a gaping need and it felt like honestly a bit of a divine invitation to respond to.

00:03:56.280 So at the beginning of Fighting Shadows, you all write, a low-grade angst seems to have settled

00:04:01.760 over the hearts of men in our world today. How have you seen this angst manifest itself

00:04:06.900 in the men you interact with? Well, you know, it's based off a Thoreau quote. He said,

00:04:11.720 most men lead lives of quiet desperation. Unconscious despair is the phrase he uses.

00:04:17.960 And I think that's great language. A lot of men can't quite identify or name what it is they feel.

00:04:27.080 Is it anger? Is it loneliness? Is it frustration? Is it disillusionment, disappointment? And when you

00:04:33.140 can't name something, it exerts a disproportionate control over you because you don't know how to

00:04:38.100 fight it. And I don't think in our culture today, we have many mechanisms for men to process these

00:04:45.500 things. I mean, if a man showed up at work with a blue collar, just, you know, like hanging out with

00:04:51.020 the lads or in a white collar environment, showing up in an office setting, if someone was to say,

00:04:57.000 hey, how are you doing? And your response was, well, I'm really struggling in my marriage. I'm deeply

00:05:01.380 disillusioned with what my life has become after all of these years of commitment. My kids are driving

00:05:05.860 me crazy and I'm bored and yet sad that I don't spend enough time with them. I'm really comparing

00:05:11.080 myself to my peers and I'm slowly drowning in envy and sadness at what my life's become.

00:05:16.140 No one wants to hear that. You know what I mean? That's not going to be welcomed at the bar when

00:05:21.920 you're chatting with someone or, you know, when you're going out after work to catch up and it's

00:05:26.960 not going to be welcomed in an office. HR is going to say, hey, listen, you need to talk to a

00:05:31.180 counselor or someone. This is not appropriate for the workplace. If you're not a part of a sort of

00:05:35.540 faith community, and sometimes even in a faith community can be very, very lonely because you

00:05:40.540 feel like you've got to perform or live up to certain standards, or we've lost those organizations

00:05:46.020 in society that men used to belong to. You know, there was different organizations. I read some

00:05:51.560 research that in the 1700s and 1800s, 90% of men existed in informal social networks. They were a part

00:05:59.860 of the Masons or the, you know, honestly, there was hundreds of different options where you could

00:06:06.180 deal with your drama. Men don't have that today. They don't have these places where they can share

00:06:12.620 what's happening in their hearts. And so I think it manifests itself as frustration, cynicism,

00:06:19.640 unexpected volcanic anger at the people they love, followed by a real disappointment that they're mad at

00:06:25.720 the very people who actually care about them without any kind of outlets to do it. And I think what

00:06:32.120 slowly happens is that men's hearts get cynical and more and more bitter over time. And then they move

00:06:39.520 to numbing, medicating their pain, their frustration, and then they just slowly sort of fade out. And we see

00:06:47.300 that in America with middle-aged men a lot, high rates of depression, deaths of despair amongst men

00:06:55.720 at an almost epidemic level. 70% of suicides in America are men because they just kind of feel

00:07:01.080 like what's the point of another 30 years without hope, a relief mechanism, or some cause to give

00:07:06.460 myself to. So I think it's there. For some folks, it could just be pressure under responsibilities

00:07:13.200 and wondering, will I ever get relief? And for other men, it feels like despair with which they have

00:07:19.660 no place to turn. I remember hearing David Foster Wallace talk about suicide. Obviously,

00:07:25.680 he was a remarkable author who ultimately took his life. But I've been haunted by how he described

00:07:31.660 suicide, which was a death of despair. He said, no person who takes their own life, for the most part,

00:07:39.620 wants their life to end. They just want the pain to stop. And like a person who jumps out of a

00:07:46.900 building that is on fire, they don't want to jump. They just would rather jump than slowly burn to

00:07:53.600 death. And I think that is a good sort of indicator of how many men feel. There's like this burning

00:07:59.240 pressure and frustration edging them out of the light towards the darkness. And they feel like our

00:08:05.080 world is giving them very few mechanisms to be able to respond to it. So I see a lot of that just

00:08:11.300 talking with men. I'm in New York City. I see a lot just talking with men that I meet in public.

00:08:16.920 You know, I lead a faith community. I see that with people in my congregation. And getting out on the

00:08:21.820 road like I have been, I see that many men coming up after saying, thank you for naming the thing

00:08:26.560 in my heart. I haven't know how to describe it. And we use the metaphor of shadows to describe that.

00:08:31.920 Yeah. Why'd you use the metaphor of shadows to describe that angst?

00:08:34.860 Well, I think many people initially do talk about Jung, you know, and Jung's idea of the shadow is,

00:08:43.060 it's actually, it's kind of a mind boggling concept. And I think it was one of his keenest

00:08:48.640 insights about human nature. We didn't channel it primarily off that. We channeled it out of the

00:08:55.380 scriptures. But it's a really, it's a really interesting metaphor. It's taken from the idea of

00:09:00.000 an eclipse. We recently had an eclipse. And an eclipse is where from your vantage point,

00:09:07.500 it feels like the sun disappears. So from your vantage point, it's like, oh my gosh, the sun is

00:09:13.940 gone. But we know, due to science, that something has just blocked the sun. The sun is doing fine.

00:09:22.060 Now, if you can imagine, you know, a thousand years ago, in a pre-scientific understanding of what

00:09:27.400 was happening with an eclipse, you would have thought the world was ending. Like you literally

00:09:31.720 would have thought, oh my gosh, this is the apocalypse or something. And the idea of shadows

00:09:37.100 is basically taken from a passage of scripture where Christ comes to Peter and says to him,

00:09:44.580 Satan has asked to sift you like wheat, but I've prayed for you that your faith may not fail.

00:09:50.100 And that word fail is the word eclepo, where we get the word eclipse. And I think it's an interesting

00:09:57.920 metaphor, even if you're not a person of faith. Jesus says that Satan's strategy was to put something

00:10:04.720 between you and the light so you can't see the light and all you're left with is struggling in

00:10:11.040 darkness. And Jesus says, I've prayed for you that your faith may not fail. And I think that's what

00:10:17.160 happens to a lot of men. Their vision of life gets blocked out by a particular struggle.

00:10:23.240 And it seems like there's nothing in their life, but that struggle. And so we call that living in

00:10:30.040 the shadows because it feels like the light, the vision, the clarity, your sense of wellbeing is

00:10:35.760 blocked out by a particular issue. So your vision becomes your struggle and you can't see beyond it.

00:10:42.060 So in the book, you know, we talk about seven of these core shadows we see in the hearts of men.

00:10:46.200 There's many more. It could have been a 20 chapter book, but we try to pick out some of the core

00:10:51.880 themes. And if you talk, how many men do you know that their life is dominated by struggling in secrecy

00:10:59.380 and shame with a particular issue that feels like it's taken over their reality? And so we try and

00:11:05.060 talk about what those are and then how to fight those shadows, which is what the book is about.

00:11:10.640 How do you reposition your perspective, your heart, your life, where you can see the light again and

00:11:15.800 realize life is more than just struggling with a particular issue?

00:11:19.740 Oh, so you've seen this angst that a lot of men have. I'm sure people who are listening to this

00:11:24.220 right now, they might think, I've definitely felt that. How do men typically try to resolve this angst?

00:11:33.220 I mean, I think there's a few responses people have. One of them is to try and work harder,

00:11:41.460 you know, sort of that. That's just the sort of like the busier, you know, push the treadmill faster.

00:11:47.760 And I think when you're younger, that may work. You can distract yourself with hard work and

00:11:52.260 accomplishments and, you know, excitement, getting on a dating app and going out with a bunch of people

00:11:57.160 and you can sort of, yeah, manage it or medicate it. I think a lot of folks, I mean, these days are

00:12:05.840 trying to figure out how do I honestly address it? That's why there's so much talk about therapy,

00:12:12.940 mental health, being honest about our interior lives. At different moments of history, there's been

00:12:19.140 these, you know, what they call men's movements. There's several in the 1800s, 1900s. Robert Bly is

00:12:26.400 probably our most recent men's movement guy. There was another big faith movement called Promise

00:12:31.900 Keepers. There's the mankind movement. There's all these movements. I actually think we're in the

00:12:36.340 early stages of another one of those, which is men getting together, being honest, opening their hearts

00:12:44.720 and trying to figure out how do I get something out of life that is more than this, you know? And so,

00:12:52.320 yeah, the hedonism doesn't seem to work. I mean, the social research, they talk about hedonic

00:12:58.020 hot spots in our brain and why after the dopamine hits, you actually feel worse than when you were

00:13:05.780 before. So, yeah, I think hedonism, escapism, workaholism, when they all end, you're left with

00:13:15.120 yourself and you're left with the same problem. So, people, I think, are looking for more than

00:13:20.040 momentary relief and looking for larger solutions. One of the shadows you talk about is this idea of

00:13:25.680 despair you've mentioned. What do you think are the sources of despair in a man's life?

00:13:30.460 I think it's multifaceted. I think part of it is men feel like they don't know how to fit as men in

00:13:37.160 the modern world, you know? So, somewhere between total apathy and becoming Andrew Tate,

00:13:44.120 men feel like they don't know how to be a man in the world anymore. You know, they've got these

00:13:50.380 instincts which are, you know, backed by social psychology about the differences between men and

00:13:57.960 women and they feel like the gifts they carry as a man are often perceived as a threat because men 0.89

00:14:04.040 have used those gifts badly. And so, I think there's an inner desire to use what they've been

00:14:10.340 given for the sake of others but they're not sure how to show up. So, I think there's like a lack of

00:14:14.480 confidence. I think there's a, I think many, many men feel shame. You know, the classic guilt means

00:14:21.000 I've done something wrong. Shame says there's something wrong with me. And so, a lot of men

00:14:25.520 refuse to step up or take responsibility because they're, they feel like they don't have what it

00:14:30.800 takes or there's something wrong with them. And I think a lot of men have sort of like lost their

00:14:35.120 purpose. They feel overshadowed in the modern world. You know, I understand why, but there's

00:14:40.760 many communities in the world today, not primarily in Western culture, that honor men as they age.

00:14:48.060 They honor their wisdom. They honor their contribution. They honor the lessons they've

00:14:53.760 learned. And we live in a world where, you know, we prioritize youth over age. We have reduced our

00:15:00.060 perspective on what really matters. And so, like, you know, a typical middle-aged dude feels like he

00:15:06.200 doesn't have much in front of him or much behind him. And they just sort of don't know how to be

00:15:11.040 anymore. So, there's a phrase, a biblical phrase, which is the phrase that Jesus uses. It's the phrase

00:15:17.060 lost. Men feel lost, which means there's a place they're supposed to be, but they don't know how to get 0.56

00:15:25.660 there. And if you've ever been lost and been late, you know how stressful it is. You know how

00:15:30.680 disappointing it is. If you've got people in the car with you, you feel like a jerk. I'm old enough 1.00

00:15:36.180 to remember navigating the roads with a Rand McNally map. No GPS, no help. And if you got lost, you relied

00:15:42.900 on asking other people. It was very disempowering. It wasn't humbling. The difference between being

00:15:48.820 humble and being humiliated, humble requires agency. It's a voluntary stepping down. Humiliation says

00:15:54.740 somebody is putting me down against my own consent. You feel humiliated because you cannot

00:15:59.860 navigate where you want to go. I feel like a lot of men feel like that. I don't know what a man is.

00:16:04.600 I don't know what it means to be a man in the modern world. I don't know the path to get to being a

00:16:10.520 functional man. And again, talking back to those mechanisms that don't work, I'm going to medicate

00:16:15.860 or I'm going to, you know, map my frustrations onto social causes to try and recover a sense of

00:16:22.900 meaning. There was a fascinating article that the Atlantic did on researching, because I think many,

00:16:30.700 many religious traditions are in decline amongst Generation Z. And they asked the question,

00:16:37.180 where does all that energy go? And the answer was politics. And so I think we're trying to deal with

00:16:44.580 our despair by mapping it on trying to get meaning out of, you know, social causes, which often makes

00:16:51.580 us more polarized, more angry, and only feeds our despair if our particular part of your side doesn't

00:16:57.920 get in power. We feel like it's the end. So yeah, there's a lot happening in the hearts of men.

00:17:04.280 Now that I've sort of facilitate these, I wouldn't call them workshops, we call them events,

00:17:08.960 but we do four-day immersions, really getting into men's hearts. And the things that men sort of confess

00:17:15.100 or open up to or are vulnerable about, I don't look at any man the same anymore. I think, what is

00:17:21.740 that man carrying around in his heart? That heaviness, that lack of purpose, that uncertainty,

00:17:28.760 that shame. And again, I say this, it produces tremendous compassion because behind the smiles

00:17:36.440 and behind the success is often this sense that I haven't done enough, I'm not enough,

00:17:42.420 and I don't know how to become enough. And so yeah, that is, I think, a very, very real thing

00:17:47.060 many people are facing. Another thing you talk about, another source of despair, and you kind

00:17:51.080 of alluded to it, but you really flesh it out in the book, is this idea that a lot of men,

00:17:55.280 they don't have a telos. This is a Greek word, it means an aim in life. Maybe they had a telos in

00:18:00.620 their 20s and 30s. Their telos was go to college, get a job, get married, establish myself. And then

00:18:08.560 once they get to midlife, they're like, well, now what? Or maybe what happens is the source of

00:18:13.960 despair is they had these aims young in life, they get to midlife, and they haven't realized

00:18:20.780 their aim, like those sort of very concrete, we'll call them aims of achievement. And they have

00:18:27.660 despair. And Kierkegaard talks about this, he said, one of the sources of despair is that you have this

00:18:33.120 idea of the self you want to become, right? I want to be successful, I want to have a great family

00:18:38.420 life. And when you don't achieve that, there's that gap, and you just feel terrible. You're like,

00:18:43.400 what am I doing? Like, I've wasted my life. But he also said that, you know, if you want to

00:18:48.000 overcome that despair, you have to, I mean, Kierkegaard, he was a religious philosopher.

00:18:53.720 So he'd say you have to become, instead of thinking about the self that you want to become,

00:18:56.940 you have to think about the self that God wants you to become. But I mean, you can apply this to

00:19:01.120 to, you know, anybody. It's like, you have to find a telos that's bigger than yourself.

00:19:05.920 Yeah, Viktor, yeah, Viktor Frankl. I mean, I think his stuff on logotherapy,

00:19:11.220 I mean, that stuff has deeply impacted me. And I feel like that should have a resurgence. I'm

00:19:16.980 really heartbroken about the amount of people I meet who have like, I've never read Man's Search

00:19:21.280 for Meaning. And because that's the way he survived Auschwitz in the death camps. You know,

00:19:27.180 he basically said, you have to have a vision beyond your current circumstances that pulls hope

00:19:35.120 into your current circumstances. And if you don't have that, it's over. If all you are is your current

00:19:41.460 struggle, and there's nothing beyond this, how do you not give in despair? And so in his mind,

00:19:47.740 he had started writing the book that I think would ultimately become Man's Search for Meaning.

00:19:52.140 And he saw himself beyond the death camps, being able to use what he went through to prove his

00:19:59.700 vision of logotherapy. And one of the things he asked, and he, you know, quotes Nietzsche,

00:20:04.880 which is, you know, you can endure any what if you have a strong enough why. And it's getting in

00:20:10.440 touch, you know, logotherapy is meaning therapy. He believed like the point of life is a quest for

00:20:16.080 meaning. But his approach was totally different. Getting back to sort of Kierkegaard's idea.

00:20:21.260 He says, when you're young, you ask, what do I want from life? But the older you get,

00:20:27.640 the more you realize meaning comes from responding well to what life asks of you.

00:20:34.100 And he connects meaning and responsibility. Men are at their best when they're accepting

00:20:40.200 responsibility and they find meaning within it. And I think that's a huge part of it. You've got to

00:20:46.860 have a vision beyond your current season about the kind of man you want to be in order to find

00:20:52.940 meaning in your current season. So yeah, I think we've got to get beyond the pain and pleasure of

00:20:58.380 our moment. Ask those bigger questions. Spend time doing the real work about what we think life is

00:21:04.320 asking of us. And they're beginning to sort of plot beyond that.

00:21:07.780 And I think the challenge there for men, particularly if you're in midlife, is making time for that,

00:21:12.420 that introspection and that questioning. Because you just get so busy just trying to

00:21:16.640 balance all the things you got going in your life, but you have to be intentional

00:21:19.760 about this. Like I'm going to carve out, maybe it's a weekend where I just go

00:21:23.320 by myself and I'm going to sort through this stuff.

00:21:26.600 Yeah. And you know, so I have two responses to that. I 100% agree. One of them is like one of my

00:21:31.680 mentors said to me, he said, John, if you don't rest, he said this, rest is in your future.

00:21:36.300 You will either live a life of Sabbath and renewal, or you will burn out and be forced to

00:21:43.420 take a rest. But I promise you, you cannot live like you're living. Rest is in your future. And I

00:21:48.540 would say the same thing. You either take time for this, or this will be forced on you by crisis.

00:21:55.240 And the truth is, because we do so little of it, simply turning one game off and saying,

00:22:00.980 you know what, I'm just going to get the scores on ESPN or get the highlights. I'm going to take three

00:22:04.980 hours and just draw out sort of the seven categories of my life. Like, you know, how am I doing as a

00:22:09.860 dad? How am I doing at work? How's my health? How's my finances? How's my marriage? Or, you know,

00:22:15.180 how's my sense of self? What's my contribution? And then just spending time on those. You can get

00:22:22.000 so much done in a few hours because we rarely take that much time. And I always remember,

00:22:27.720 I'm Stephen Covey talking about the most important hour of the week is every Sunday night,

00:22:32.100 having the discipline of just living an intentional life by pulling out those roles,

00:22:36.420 goals, and responsibilities and aligning it. So I would say, yeah, I'm amazed at how many people

00:22:43.200 think they don't have time, but with a very small investment could radically improve their sense of

00:22:49.500 self and the vision that they think they have. And so again, yeah, I would urge men to just,

00:22:54.180 if you can't do an hour, do 30 minutes, do what you can, not what you can't, and then slowly build

00:22:59.780 capacity over time. But meaning is coming for you either through crisis or through cultivation.

00:23:05.460 And I would urge you to take whatever time you can, even five minutes a day, and begin to work

00:23:09.620 on that now. We're going to take a quick break for a word from our sponsors.

00:23:18.160 And now back to the show. So another shadow you talked about is the shadow of loneliness. And we've

00:23:23.420 had lots of podcast guests on before talking about how lonely men are. Men hardly have any friends,

00:23:29.720 especially if you get into midlife. If you're married, it's typically your wife who might be

00:23:35.660 scheduling your social calendar out. And there's a hunger. I think in my experience, a lot of men

00:23:41.680 are looking for friends. And there's all these health consequences and mental health consequences

00:23:47.380 of not having a strong social support system. One of the things you encourage men to do in the book

00:23:53.040 is to recreate or revive the lost art of the hang.

00:23:58.980 Yes.

00:23:59.580 So tell us about this. How can reviving the lost art of the hangout be an antidote to male loneliness?

00:24:04.060 Well, I know lots has been said on it, but I do just think this is an epidemic that we've got

00:24:12.260 to lean into. We're more connected than ever, while at the same time being more lonely. So John

00:24:17.800 Eldridge has an illustration that we really lean into. He talks about the three layers of the heart.

00:24:23.880 He talks about the shallows, which is just cultural banter. You know, how about them Yankees? 1.00

00:24:29.260 It's, you know, who's going to be elected president. It's stuff about our culture.

00:24:34.240 Then the Midlands, which is what he talks about, which is, you know, sort of the stresses of our

00:24:39.520 lives. Hey, my daughter's not doing too well. She's really wrestling with anxiety. Hey, things are

00:24:44.300 tight. My wife wants to go on a vacation and I want to do some repairs on the roof. And there's a

00:24:49.000 tension. You're talking about the strains of your life. But he said there's a third layer called the

00:24:53.100 depths. And the depths is like, here's my primal fears, man. This is the stuff that's driving my life,

00:24:58.760 but I'm afraid to admit it. Or here's a dream I've had in my heart and I really want to go after it.

00:25:04.460 But I'm controlled by fear. I just like courage to make the risk. And I'm only saying that to clarify,

00:25:10.620 the art of the hang is not just cultural banter, like let's get together and shoot the breeze about

00:25:15.460 sports. That's where men are most comfortable. And you may start there, but it's a commitment to

00:25:20.660 really ask the question, what's in the depths of your heart that you've buried out of fear,

00:25:26.220 fear, busyness, depression, obligation. And how do we dig that up and help you get back to

00:25:33.240 really pursuing the thing that's in your heart? And so we're a big believer that anything that

00:25:37.500 matters in your life is scheduled. And by the way, you've got to schedule it in such a way that it

00:25:41.180 doesn't strain your system so that your wife's mad that you're meeting with men. You've got to give

00:25:46.560 her time, give your girlfriend time so she can do the same thing with people she needs. But it's like 0.99

00:25:51.420 creating conscious spaces for men to open up their hearts and be present and vulnerable with one

00:25:57.120 another. And we talk about the power of a fire pit. We love a good fire pit. For a couple hundred

00:26:03.760 bucks, a few benches in a fire pit, there's just something there that I think men seem to respond

00:26:09.260 to that feels different than sitting in a coffee shop where there's people around you listening to

00:26:14.160 you. I'm a big, big believer that men need same gender spaces for processing information. If men are 0.99

00:26:24.420 in places where women are present, they often tend to either perform or to manage their image or to be 1.00

00:26:30.400 anxious or to hold back. So I think having spaces where men can be open and honest and vulnerable.

00:26:37.060 And so we've got a, I think this was one of my recent emails, it's called building a brotherhood

00:26:41.740 and it gives you a 10 step process to how to build a brotherhood. Be intentional, get a vision for it,

00:26:48.320 curate the space yourself, you know, just resolve. Hey man, I need to do something about this.

00:26:54.160 Buy a fire pit for a couple hundred bucks on Amazon, put it in the backyard and just say,

00:26:58.160 hey fellas, do you want to come over? Now, I don't know what, you know, it's either come over and we

00:27:02.380 can hang out, smoke cigars, whatever it is people do, cook barbecue, whatever. But let's get together

00:27:07.800 and have places where we consciously do this. It will not happen by accident and it may require

00:27:12.460 you taking some initiative. And then I'd say like, you know, move towards this. You may start in the

00:27:19.640 shallows, but you got to have a vision at the end of it that you will, you will let people in on the

00:27:24.720 deepest dishes of your heart and there's going to be a brotherhood that's going to work towards it.

00:27:28.760 So you've got to take these small light connections and then move them towards like a deeper sense of

00:27:33.200 connection. And man, I'm telling you, there is a movement of men gathering around fire pits and

00:27:37.760 backyards that we hear from. And the stories are amazing. Anytime someone says to you,

00:27:42.260 I've never told anyone this, you're dealing with shame. And the amount of men dealing with

00:27:46.220 their shame by processing things they've been through, they're feeling, they're going through,

00:27:50.480 it's radically empowering. So I say, yeah, you need this. It's non-optional. So get a vision for

00:27:55.740 it and then reach out. And I think you'd be amazed if you do it well, how often men long for that and

00:28:01.000 respond to that. And then you bless everybody with you because of it. Your family should be stronger.

00:28:06.740 You should be more present to serve and sacrifice because you're drinking from a well that's sort

00:28:11.780 of filling your heart. So again, these are not just hobbies. A good hobby is good, but I'm talking

00:28:17.340 about more than just community. I'm talking about intentionally getting to the depths of a man's

00:28:20.880 heart. Yeah. And I think another piece of advice I would add to that is be patient. Once you get this

00:28:25.740 thing going, there's a lot of men who they've never experienced that sort of thing. They don't know how

00:28:31.460 to socialize. And it's just not even on their radar. So you might make a lot of invitations and

00:28:36.640 a lot of people will say no, or you'll, one guy will say yes, might come for two nights and then not

00:28:42.680 come. So be patient. Don't get frustrated and give up on it because it starts off really slow. Or it might

00:28:48.640 not even, you might just have one guy show up, maybe no guy show up, but just, if you just keep doing

00:28:53.560 it, it'll eventually pay off. Yeah. There's a, there was some psychological research done on how

00:29:00.820 to, how to be vulnerable with people. They basically talk about the five layers of vulnerability.

00:29:05.700 And I've found these over the years to be very, very helpful. The first layer is what they call

00:29:10.000 cliche, which is where you're just making stereotypes. This is like someone saying to me,

00:29:13.720 Hey, did you grow up riding kangaroos to school? And I was like, no, I did not. Aren't you from

00:29:18.980 Australia? You know, they have cliches and then you have facts, which is where you find out the

00:29:24.160 reality of what people have actually been through. Then you get to this dangerous point, which is

00:29:29.340 opinions and opinions are great. But if you have a different opinion than someone, emotions will be

00:29:35.860 sparked. And because a lot of men don't know how to handle strong emotions of difference, we often

00:29:41.520 resort back. So we go back up the hierarchy, which is, well, that's because, and then you weaponize the

00:29:47.380 facts about someone's life and then you reduce them to a cliche. Well, what would you know? You're

00:29:51.740 an immigrant here. You're from Australia. You wrote a kangaroos. You know, we sort of reverse those 1.00

00:29:55.120 dynamics. And the real tension moment is when you have different emotions, you know, and it's learning

00:30:00.800 to say, Hey, tell me why you voted for that person instead of you're an idiot. How could you have voted 1.00

00:30:05.800 for that person? And again, that is slow, patient work of trust. But if you get through that and you can

00:30:12.840 get through those emotional tensions underneath, you'll find out you can be really vulnerable with

00:30:18.400 people. And that's where the deep stuff is. So yeah, it takes time and patience and you got to, you

00:30:23.600 can't, when it gets hard, you've got to lean in with kindness and patience and not revert back to

00:30:29.440 weaponizing the details of someone's story against them.

00:30:32.440 Another shadow you talked about that resonated with me was the shadow of ambition. And I think a lot of men

00:30:37.700 are conflicted about ambition because we get conflicting messages about it. On the one hand, we're told as a

00:30:42.460 man, you need to have this drive and you need to have ambition so you can achieve and succeed.

00:30:48.540 But we're also told, well, no, ambition's bad. You got to be humble, play it small. You don't want to

00:30:54.100 be a showboat or a narcissist. What can men do to resolve this conflict they might have about ambition?

00:31:01.940 Well, my conviction is, my come from, is that ambition is a good thing. It's not even a neutral

00:31:09.380 thing. I think ambition is a good thing. We need men with ambition in their hearts. The opposite is

00:31:17.120 apathy, laziness. And I don't think we need more lazy, apathetic men. I think there's something 0.98

00:31:24.520 beautiful with ambition, but there's a very, very real challenge in it. And that challenge is

00:31:29.540 unhealthy ambition damages people because it uses people as a commodity for personal success.

00:31:38.400 And James K. Smith, who I know you've had on your podcast, he talks about the two determining

00:31:44.660 factors of ambition. One is domination, which is like a competition gets into our ambition where

00:31:51.240 we're just competing against others. Instead of doing our best or having an internal motivation of

00:31:58.100 ambition to be the best we can be, we only want to be the best compared to somebody else. This is our

00:32:03.900 reference group. Am I doing better than my college buddies who I'm tracking on social media? So it's

00:32:10.460 a comparative ambition. And then, so it's domination is the first part. And the second one, he talks about

00:32:15.780 attention or recognition, which means people have to know you're beating other people or it doesn't feel

00:32:22.200 meaningful. And domination and recognition, I think, do a tremendous amount of damage in the world

00:32:29.720 because your ambition that fuels you to success makes you treat people in such a way that often robs you

00:32:36.320 of success. Whether it's you use women as a commodity, whether we see it with workplace bullying, you know,

00:32:43.700 which is narcissistic jerks just using other people or just sort of a ruthless, a ruthless lack of trust in 0.99

00:32:50.940 the workplace. I think that can be very, very hurtful. So the overreaction a lot of guys have is to just say, 0.99

00:32:58.060 well, man, I'm not going to, I'm just going to sit back. I'm going to relax. But you can't do that

00:33:03.900 either because that's actually rooted in fear and cowardice. James Hollis, he says, every day a man

00:33:09.380 wakes up, there's two forces, two shadows that stand over his bed. One is fear and one is lethargy.

00:33:14.960 And, you know, we've got to fight those things. We've got to say, I'm going to confront my fear and

00:33:19.140 I'm not going to be lazy. So that's, again, it's such a challenging message to sort of deal with.

00:33:25.900 So I talk about in the book, three keys to healthy ambition. The first one is having a vision beyond

00:33:33.920 the horizons of your own concerns. Most men are just using accomplishment for selfish gain. So

00:33:41.660 that's it. I will sacrifice people for myself. The best leaders sacrifice themselves for people.

00:33:50.380 And this is not just sort of like the Christ archetype of the cross. This is leaders literally

00:33:57.740 using their power out of love and humility for others. Whether that's a good dad who is taking

00:34:05.180 his kids to the game when he is exhausted, when he'd rather stay home. Whether it's a man who refuses

00:34:10.860 to look at porn to alleviate his frustrations and spends time investing in his wife and winning her

00:34:16.420 heart and affection. It's sacrificing the self for the sake of others. So you've got to get a

00:34:20.700 horizon of concern beyond your own life. Number two, you've got to get this crystallization of

00:34:25.800 discontent, which I think is a beautiful phrase. That is when something happens in your heart where

00:34:33.520 you say, I must change. So an example, like you may see a photo of yourself at a Christmas party and

00:34:40.360 you just go, holy crap, I got fat. Like what happened to me? Is that me? And you're like, 0.96

00:34:48.080 man, I cannot end 2025 like this. And then you really get focused on, but that photo acts as

00:34:55.360 something that pushes you on. It can be your wife threatening to leave you. Hey, listen,

00:35:00.540 I'm unhappy with our marriage. And you go, oh my gosh, I've got to work on my marriage. It's that

00:35:05.120 moment where everything begins to change. And a lot of men don't sit in it long enough for that to

00:35:09.500 happen. They numb their frustration. I say, I think I say in the book, you'd be amazed what a

00:35:14.380 good picture and a good movie will do to stop your real frustration crystallizing. So it really

00:35:20.280 brings about change. And then at the end, I talk about taking radical action in alignment with that

00:35:26.740 renewed vision and that new sense of resolve. And I think if you, if you look at it, every movement

00:35:33.880 in history and every change in a man's life comes when they get a vision of healthy ambition.

00:35:39.980 They really get a clear vision. They really get a clarity of heart and they really commit to

00:35:45.040 taking radical action. So to be honest with you in New York, most of the men who've read that book

00:35:51.080 said that that chapter on ambition was the most helpful chapter for them because there are so many

00:35:55.680 mixed messages about it today. Yeah. Um, this idea of ambition and apathy, I think a lot of men

00:36:01.380 struggle with this. They want to do something good. They want to have that drive, but they don't know

00:36:06.620 how to do it. So they just fall into apathy. And I, from getting letters or emails from

00:36:11.660 not only men, but also women, you know, women who are married to guys, one of the complaints that

00:36:18.300 these women have, or like something they, they've noticed in the lives of their husbands is that 1.00

00:36:22.840 women find an ambitious man attractive and they find an apathetic man completely unattractive. 0.98

00:36:29.760 Like a lot of source of marital discontent is often, you know, the wife's looks at her husband's 0.74

00:36:35.260 like, you don't, what's going on? Like you don't do anything. What happened to the man that I married?

00:36:39.320 We had this drive and had this vision. What are you doing now? And you have this great quote by

00:36:43.620 John Steinbeck from travels with Charlie. So, you know, John Steinbeck, he's an old guy at this point

00:36:48.040 when he goes on this road trip with his dog, Charlie. I mean, he says like, why did he do it? Why did he go

00:36:52.540 on this road trip when he didn't have to? And he said, my wife married a man.

00:36:56.120 I saw no reason why she should inherit a baby. I am very fortunate having a wife who likes being a

00:37:01.420 woman, which means that she likes men, not elderly babies. And I think, yeah, a lot of women, 1.00

00:37:07.940 they want to see their husbands and the men in their life be a man, like have that, 0.98

00:37:13.440 have a drive for something bigger than themselves. I think part of that, so if, you know, if I could

00:37:20.120 address women for a minute, I would say, yeah, I'm sure that that's disillusioning. I've certainly had 1.00

00:37:25.660 seasons of like real passivity and apathy where I think my wife was like very graciously saying, 0.99

00:37:31.860 yo, homeboy, it's time to level up, you know. But I would say you're not going to nag or guilt or

00:37:38.800 shame your husband into being the man you married. It's just like, that is not the way a man's heart

00:37:45.040 is motivated. Men respond to encouragement. Men often respond to affirmation, you know. So if all

00:37:50.680 you do is point out what he's not doing, you'll get more of it. And it may honestly feel like

00:37:55.200 trivial. You may in your mind be thinking, what is this like a three-year-old kid that needs

00:37:59.840 affirmation? The answer may be you're actually dealing with him wrestling with his inner child

00:38:04.700 that wasn't, that was deeply wounded, that's like being exposed under pressure. So I think you've got

00:38:09.700 to be patient. You know, men respond to vision and encourage them or they do criticism. But I would

00:38:15.280 say this to men, Steinmeck's got another quote, which I love. He says this, a boy becomes a man

00:38:20.960 when a man is needed. I've seen boys be 40 years old because there was no need for a man. 0.56

00:38:28.360 And I think one of the things that you can appeal to a man's heart is to simply say,

00:38:32.680 we need you. You know, young men, we need your zeal. We need your strength. We need that heroic

00:38:40.740 energy. We need that drive and ambition that often accompanies youth to shake us out of our

00:38:47.360 midlife apathy. Like we need you in the room being you. And we need to say to middle-aged men,

00:38:53.280 hey, we need you as fathers and mentors. Like we need your wisdom. You've bled and suffered through

00:39:00.360 all of this duty and obligation. Do something with it. Like turn around and add wisdom to the zeal of

00:39:07.720 the young people. And elderly men, your best days are not behind you. You are the sages that can get 0.97

00:39:14.240 us into history to understand how we faced these problems before. And you can temper either our

00:39:20.480 midlife despair or the zeal we have without knowledge. And I think just saying to men,

00:39:25.960 literally, we need you. This is one of the themes I preach. You know, when I'm in a room full of men,

00:39:31.300 I'm like, I want to say this to you. Listen to me now. You are needed. Your wife needs you to show up

00:39:36.700 with a full heart. Your kids need you to show up. Your co-workers need you to show up. Your

00:39:41.660 community. And I'll often have men come up to me weeping saying, you have no idea how long it has

00:39:48.940 been since I felt needed. And here's the truth. We need better leaders in the world. We're in a

00:39:54.880 crisis of leadership. We need better fathers in the world. Our kids are suffering because men are 1.00

00:40:00.280 struggling. We need better husbands. We need better teachers, better mechanics. We need better 0.98

00:40:05.380 baristas. We need better politicians. We need better business people. So when a lot of men feel

00:40:10.560 like there's no place for them, I'm like, this has never been a better or easier time for you to rise

00:40:15.380 and becoming the man that you are called to be, that you want to be because you will shine in a

00:40:21.680 time of such darkness and such apathy. So yeah, I want to do what I can to help let men know we need

00:40:27.480 them at their best in our world today. I love that. So I love that idea. If you're a man listening to

00:40:32.060 this, maybe in your 30s, maybe in your 40s, maybe in your 20s, you're kind of having that quarter life

00:40:36.720 crisis when you're trying to figure out how can I get my drive, that healthy ambition again. I like

00:40:41.480 that idea of paying attention to the things that frustrate you, that cause discontent and crystallize

00:40:47.260 it, lean into it, and then go in and try to solve it. You also, one chapter that resonated with me

00:40:53.740 was the shadow of futility. And there's a particular section in there where you talk about the importance

00:40:58.920 of play in a man's life, a grown man's life. And this reminded me of one of your newsletters.

00:41:04.780 I love your newsletter. People are listening. They need to subscribe to it. It's really,

00:41:08.660 really well done. But one of the newsletters you sent out was about the dangers of having a heavy,

00:41:14.360 weary, cynical heart. And basically it's just like, it's being a grump. And I think being a grump,

00:41:20.800 I mean, being a grump is something that I've struggled with. I've noticed like starting in like

00:41:23.780 my thirties and now I'm just kind of grumpy and I don't like it. And I know a lot of men I've talked

00:41:29.580 to my age have experienced, expressed similar concern that, man, I'm just a big giant grump.

00:41:34.980 And it's just, you're irritable and you just, your, your temper's short. And I think oftentimes

00:41:40.760 when you're getting your forties, men think, well, the reason why that's a problem is your

00:41:44.640 testosterone's low. So they go get testosterone replacement therapy. But like, you know, for me,

00:41:49.780 my testosterone's fine. It's, it's good. So it's not that it's not a biological problem.

00:41:54.180 It's something else going on. What do you think is the source of this sort of male irritability and

00:41:58.800 grumpiness? Well, let's just be honest. I think that's most people, the snappy dad

00:42:04.860 screaming at these kids that they're late for school. And then, you know, injecting a high level

00:42:11.480 of stress before the kids go off to school. And I have to say, I've got a lot of thoughts on this

00:42:16.540 because this is my personality, man. I am a serious, sober-minded, intense man.

00:42:22.380 Yeah. I hate it.

00:42:22.940 And I'm great. Yeah. I'm grateful I married a woman. My wife just pokes at me and I'm always

00:42:28.240 so thankful for it. One of the things we need is we need to recover being childlike, but not childish.

00:42:36.060 And childlike is just that sense of wonder. Wonder is, it's, wonder sounds like a lot, like my life

00:42:42.580 motto. Okay. So I've got two, my cup overflows is one because that's my stance on gratitude.

00:42:48.100 And the other one is fighting cynicism, pursuing wonder. And people are like, pursuing wonder,

00:42:54.460 man, that feels kind of soft. Like, what is that? I'm like, yeah, but wonder is from the German

00:42:59.440 word Wunder, where we get the word wound. And it means your membrane of normalcy is pierced open.

00:43:08.600 You're stabbed awake by the beautiful and the transcendent and the glorious and the great

00:43:14.240 in your normal sense of life. And we have to learn to cultivate wonder, which is basically about

00:43:20.160 having margin. So you've got to slow down a little bit and you've got to stop projecting adult

00:43:26.560 frustrations into your kid's life. That's terribly damaging. And so, yeah, part of it is you've got to

00:43:32.180 create space to get in touch with the things that not just relax you. Men are good at relaxing,

00:43:36.380 but they're rarely good at renewing. And so you've got to ask yourself, like, you know,

00:43:42.220 maybe part of it is like, what are the drains and gains of my life? But then how do I consciously

00:43:47.200 create a space where I'm renewing my heart? I'm doing the things that feed me, you know? And then

00:43:53.080 I prioritize those in my life. So there's a sense of joy that I am drawing from. St. Thomas Aquinas said,

00:44:00.060 a man deprived of spiritual joy will go over to carnal pleasures. And that principle remains,

00:44:06.120 a man without meaning and joy will just try and medicate with pleasure. So you've got to ask

00:44:11.780 yourself, what really brings me joy? What gives me that sense of wonder and renewal? I can tell you

00:44:17.100 for me, it's listening to jazz music and riding motorbikes. Like if I do that, I mean, that fuels

00:44:22.100 me and fills me. And then you've got to learn to sort of from that well, feed those who are around you.

00:44:27.940 So here's how this changed my practical example. My kids were raised in Manhattan, went to school

00:44:34.160 on 57th Street in Midtown. And it's right near a playground called the Hexler Playground in Central

00:44:39.720 Park. And I used to, I was a classic, we're going to be late. We're living in the Upper West Side,

00:44:45.180 trying to get the train down. We're going to be late. And every day I was just screaming at my kids

00:44:49.740 and stressing them out. And, you know, it was just all this anxiety. And I thought, what if I changed my

00:44:55.140 family schedule? Where instead of injecting stress into the day, I started my day by getting my kids up

00:45:02.640 earlier and then playing in Central Park with them every morning before they went to school.

00:45:07.440 So that's what I did. I just changed my family schedule, put the kids to bed a little bit

00:45:11.400 early. It was a war at first. It took time. But then my kids wanted to get up because we would play

00:45:17.000 for half an hour every morning before school in Central Park. And their day started with me chasing

00:45:23.060 them around, having fun with them, laughing with them. And then I would walk them to school

00:45:29.780 full of joy to start their day. And that transformed their and my lives. And so I started to try and ask

00:45:36.900 small questions like, how do I adjust my schedule to have more margin personally? How do I redeem some

00:45:42.000 of my dead time and use it for time that's not just relaxing but renewing? And then how do I monitor

00:45:48.160 my emotional field where when people come into my presence, what they get is the good part of my heart,

00:45:53.880 not the stress part of my heart? And again, that was a long journey for me. That probably took me a

00:45:58.420 year of what I would call repentance. Other people would call transformation or penance probably.

00:46:04.740 But then it really has produced that deep sense of joy in my life. So now again, I have to prioritize

00:46:09.760 that not as a luxury, but as a necessity. Stuart Brown says this, when a man stops playing,

00:46:15.260 he starts dying. And so play is a necessity. There's all this research on what happens to our

00:46:21.880 brain. Massive levels of creativity are released. What it does for our mental health is kind of

00:46:27.820 remarkable. So yeah, again, like many of these things, if you can prioritize it or it'll come to

00:46:34.200 your life in a crisis, you can cultivate it or there's going to be a crisis. And just take small

00:46:39.700 little tiny steps. And by doing that, I think they make larger changes over the course of time.

00:46:47.540 One thing I've been thinking a lot about is just not taking things so seriously.

00:46:51.080 I think as men, we're like, oh, everything matters. Like if we get to school in time,

00:46:54.100 it's super important. Or the house needs to be fixed at this time because I want it on this

00:46:59.080 schedule because it needs to be. And if it doesn't, then like, or if I don't get this raise and

00:47:02.460 like, oh, everything's ruined. And just like one thing I always think about, I've been thinking a lot

00:47:07.560 about is Zorba the Greek. Have you seen that movie? Yeah. Yeah. It's that famous scene. So

00:47:12.760 like, you know, they're creating this mine shaft or something and, you know, just complete disaster.

00:47:18.080 And the character Zorba, it's like, well, we're just going to dance. You know, he just laughs

00:47:22.680 about it. It's so funny. And I really love that approach. And I think in Nietzsche, I know, you

00:47:27.140 know, he had a lot to say about joy. I think oftentimes people think about Nietzsche as just like,

00:47:30.500 well, God's dead and everything. But his goal in life was to like live, have a joyous experience.

00:47:34.960 You have to encounter life with a certain amount of lightness. Don't take things so

00:47:39.840 seriously. And you even see this in like religious works. Dante, we had Bishop Barron on the podcast

00:47:46.280 talking about Dante's Inferno. And he makes the point that Satan in Dante's Inferno, he's like

00:47:52.220 this heavy, cold figures at the very bottom of the earth. And he says, as you get higher into heaven,

00:47:58.400 things get lighter and lighter and angels are light. I think Chesterton talks about that.

00:48:02.340 We need to be like angels. Angels are light. And I've been trying to have more of that in my life.

00:48:07.820 I totally agree. It's, you know, the Bible talks about the fruit of the spirit. So people ask all

00:48:14.680 the time, like, what does it really mean for a Christian in particular, my tradition,

00:48:20.220 to live a spiritual life? And it's nothing like popular society portrays it. Here's what the answer

00:48:26.620 is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control.

00:48:37.140 And really, isn't that what all of our therapy, isn't that what all of our mindfulness is trying

00:48:42.640 to get towards? And then when you look at who Jesus critiqued, he saved all of his anger for

00:48:47.640 the Pharisees who were self-righteous, uptight, aggressive. So again, Dallas Willow has a statement.

00:48:56.700 He said, spirituality wrongly understood and practiced is a major source of misery for humankind.

00:49:03.140 And the thing that the saints of my world, which means the people who I think are most consistent

00:49:09.660 living their faith, one thing will shock you is they're the most joyful and relaxed. That's a wild

00:49:15.960 word, relaxed. But yeah, may we get more joy and play in our lives.

00:49:21.660 And I'm sure everyone's encountered people like that. And they're just, they feel so good to be

00:49:25.980 around. And it rubs off on you. And I want to be like that kind of person for my family.

00:49:31.780 Another shadow you talked about is the shadow of lust. I'm going to end on this one. In one of

00:49:35.240 your newsletters, you noted something that I've observed too. I mean, it seems like a decade ago,

00:49:40.820 15 years ago, there was a lot of talk about quitting porn and the like. Now you don't

00:49:45.840 see that conversation very much. What do you think is going on? Like, do you think people

00:49:50.840 just resign themselves to the idea that porn is just part of our lives and culture?

00:49:56.320 Yeah, it's been so normalized and so celebrated. I mean, look, rather than just even the personal

00:50:04.200 experience, the social research on pornography is that it is not healthy for our society,

00:50:11.520 radically distorts our sexual tastes and preferences. The New York Times had an article recently,

00:50:15.760 that just said, like, the dangerous trend around teenage sexuality.

00:50:20.320 Yeah, I saw that one. It was really disturbing. A statistic that stood out to me was two-thirds

00:50:24.800 of female college students have been choked by their partner during sex. 0.99

00:50:29.660 Yeah. You know, Rene Girard, who talked about mimetic desire, if I can summarize mimetic desire,

00:50:35.880 it's this, we love what the people we love, love. Which means we think our desires are neutral,

00:50:41.680 but they're radically shaped by the people we respect. And the same thing happens in our

00:50:45.980 sexuality. You watch pornography and you think it's natural and normal and healthy. And then you

00:50:51.760 begin to imitate that in real life. But because pornography is not real life, you realize that

00:50:57.280 all you do is damage your actual partner by pretending to do what it is. Violence has gotten so mapped into it

00:51:04.880 as well. And so, you know, it's very, very confusing to live in a me-too world of violent pornography.

00:51:11.840 You know what I mean? Yeah.

00:51:12.880 These are such contrasting messages. So, I feel like in despair, men have given up fighting it and

00:51:20.040 it's been so normalized. People have lost their sort of heartache for it. But I can tell you this,

00:51:26.760 and it is not because of religious morality. So, this is not a, oh, you're a religious,

00:51:35.320 you know, you're a member of the clergy and therefore you've got this morality you want

00:51:38.540 to beat people down with. The problem with porn, in essence, if I could summarize this,

00:51:42.620 is that sex is designed not just as a pleasure mechanism, but as a connection mechanism.

00:51:49.240 And so, it doesn't surprise me when people use sex to deal with their loneliness. That's what it's

00:51:54.400 designed to do, help you deal with your loneliness. But the problem with porn is that it dehumanizes

00:52:00.480 and commodifies women, which means we extract the sexual component of them and we dismiss their 1.00

00:52:09.120 personality, their needs, their emotions, their dreams, their goals. And as a result, in real life,

00:52:16.260 when we want a connection with a woman, but we use her for lust, our connection mechanism is broken

00:52:22.500 because we've been trained to dehumanize and separate the pleasure aspect from their real life

00:52:28.120 aspect. So, it creates tremendous issues in relationships. And so, yeah, I want to advocate

00:52:35.580 for a recovery of kind of a sexual dignity and nobility that's been lost in hedonism.

00:52:42.080 Louise Perry wrote a fascinating book, and she is an atheist feminist, you know, like,

00:52:48.180 so she's not a theological conservative or she's like, you know, fully LGBTQ affirming. She is,

00:52:54.640 you know, is not, doesn't have like a purity mentality or anything like that. And she wrote

00:52:59.460 a book called The Case Against the Sexual Revolution. And here's what she said. If you take a huge continuum

00:53:05.200 of sexual desire, like how much and what kind of sex do people want to have, you will find there's a

00:53:13.040 continuum where there's like five to 10% on the bottom that tend towards asexual, low sexual desire.

00:53:20.180 And then on the right-hand side, you will have a tiny percentage that are hyper-sexualized people

00:53:25.300 who want all kinds of sex all the time. The typical person, including the majority of women, 0.99

00:53:31.540 are somewhere in the middle, which means they have a normal sex drive where they want to have sex

00:53:36.940 for the most part with a committed partner that they feel safe around. And what porn does is it 0.92

00:53:43.200 takes the desires of this tiny fraction of hyper-sexualized men and violently forces it on 0.96

00:53:50.800 women to have a kind of sex they don't want to have. And it damages women by making them live up to 1.00

00:53:57.240 hyper-sexualized men's desires. And it damages men by cultivating the desires to be hyper-sexualized

00:54:03.160 instead of building what is actually a satisfying sex life, research shares, which is a committed

00:54:08.000 monogamous relationship with a person that you'd love. So yeah, I think even now the regular social

00:54:14.840 research is telling us that dehumanizing people, chopping them into little components, extracting

00:54:20.420 the lust, commodifying it, and using it for ourselves is not a good way to form your desires to be a loving

00:54:26.540 man of commitment and to approach women with nobility and dignity, which is what a lot of women want.

00:54:31.380 Yeah. And Ross Douthat, how do you pronounce his last name?

00:54:35.000 Douthat, yes.

00:54:35.640 Douthat, yeah. Ross Douthat in his book, The Decadent Society. He points out that

00:54:39.180 sort of the pornification of our culture, it's actually, it's made sex like less sexy. And it's

00:54:45.880 become sort of this hygienic, we kind of treat it like sort of this therapeutic hygienic thing. It's

00:54:49.660 like, well, you know, I have this, just like you have a desire for food and drink, we have desire for

00:54:54.520 sex and you just got to scratch that itch. And he's like, well, no, sex is more than that. It's about, 0.72

00:54:59.900 there's like, there's a connect, like you said, there's a connection part. When you sever that

00:55:02.660 connection part, you actually make sex, like he says, yeah, not sexy. I think he has a point.

00:55:08.500 Yeah, that's definitely true. I mean, I am known for addressing hard and complex issues. I just

00:55:14.180 actually just gave a sermon called, why does God care what I do with my sexuality? What is the point

00:55:19.260 of the human body? And then how do I honor God with my sexuality? And here's my simple point.

00:55:24.100 The point of the body is to make love visible. You know, like an athlete, an athlete uses their,

00:55:31.680 they train their body. So at the right moment, they can perform at their peak power. And like

00:55:37.380 a ballerina who uses a body to reveal beauty through dance. That's what our bodies are designed to do is 1.00

00:55:43.160 to reveal love and commitment to a physical act. They're not built as an extraction mechanism of

00:55:51.660 pleasure alone. And I think that when we treat people with dignity as whole persons,

00:55:58.720 and when we train, discipline ourselves, everybody's putting boundaries around sexual

00:56:04.260 behavior somewhere. Everybody in the world knows that sex is potent, formative, and has profound

00:56:09.320 consequences. There's no such thing as casual sex. And that's why we put boundaries around children,

00:56:15.240 because we know that how damaging inappropriate sexual relationships can be to children. Sexual abuse

00:56:21.100 is a plague in our nation, damaging so many. We're all trying to figure out where the boundaries go.

00:56:28.140 And many people are realizing that disciplining our desires to honor people holistically is leading to

00:56:35.420 deeper and more fulfilling relationships than just giving into our desires and doing whatever we want.

00:56:39.780 So I don't have a shame-based approach. I don't have a stop it approach. I have a directing your

00:56:45.940 desires towards learning to love well. It makes a man feel better about himself because he has a sense

00:56:53.540 of control even over himself. And it makes him learn to respect women and treat them as whole people

00:56:58.580 with dignity and not just as a sexual object to be utilized for personal pleasure.

00:57:03.080 Yeah. Augustine would say you got to order your desires.

00:57:04.980 Yeah. Ordering the loves. Ordering the loves. 0.99

00:57:08.360 And that idea that sex makes visible the invisible, that's the theology of the body. That's Pope John

00:57:14.780 Paul II, right? He did a whole- That is correct.

00:57:17.660 Yeah. Yes.

00:57:18.320 Yeah. So if you want to dig deeper into that, we can check that out. Well, John, this has been a

00:57:22.000 fantastic conversation. Where can people go to learn more about the book and your work?

00:57:25.280 Uh, yeah. You can go to johntyson.org. That's just, uh, that's my personal website. Or you can go to

00:57:32.020 fightingshadows.co. That's where the book is. And if you want to see our stuff at Dad's, it's

00:57:37.360 primalpath.co. And then formingmen.com is where all our stuff is located.

00:57:42.140 Fantastic. Well, John Tyson, thanks for your time. It's been a pleasure.

00:57:44.980 Mate, really appreciate the chat. Thank you.

00:57:48.140 My guest here is John Tyson. He's the author of the book Fighting Shadows. It's available on amazon.com.

00:57:52.540 You can find more information about the book at the website, fightingshadows.co.

00:57:56.660 Also check out our show notes at awim.is slash shadows, where you can find links to resources

00:58:00.620 when we delve deeper into this topic.

00:58:09.100 Well, that wraps up another edition of the AWIM podcast. The Art of Manly's website has been

00:58:13.200 around for over 16 years now, and the podcast for almost 10. And they both have always had one aim,

00:58:18.440 to help men take action to improve every area of their lives, to become better friends,

00:58:23.100 citizens, husbands, and fathers. Better men. If you've gotten something out of the AWIM podcast,

00:58:28.780 please consider giving back by leaving a review or sharing an episode with a friend.

00:58:32.520 As always, thank you for the continued support. And until next time, it's Brett McKay,

00:58:36.420 reminding you to not listen to the AWIM podcast, but put what you've heard into action.

00:58:39.940 AWIM podcast is brought to you by the AWIM podcast.

The Art of Manliness - May 22, 2024

The Shadows Over Men's Hearts and How to Fight Them

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