The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast

00:00:00.000 I reached out to you for the podcast because I read an article you wrote in the New York Times recently

00:00:07.600 entitled The Democrats' $20 Million Man Problem,

00:00:11.280 the most positive article that has been published about me in the New York Times.

00:00:18.900 Yeah, I really do feel like a lot of the things that are ripping America apart will begin to ease

00:00:24.560 if we can deal with this loneliness, this alienization, this lack of belonging.

00:00:30.640 How we got here is quite the bloody miracle.

00:00:33.220 People were celebrating the demise of men or denying the demise of men

00:00:37.880 or beginning to characterize traditional masculinity as inherently toxic.

00:00:43.080 And what that told a lot of young men was not, well, you have a problem,

00:00:47.940 and instead was telling these young men, you are the problem.

00:00:54.560 Hello, everybody.

00:01:07.840 So, a small miracle occurred at the end of May this year.

00:01:13.320 The New York Times wrote a piece that featured me that was positive, or at least mostly positive.

00:01:20.680 And it was entitled The Democrats' $20 Million Man Problem.

00:01:25.600 It was written by a journalist, David French.

00:01:29.420 And David had written a couple of pieces about me, and some positive and some less so.

00:01:35.620 And I thought it would be very interesting to talk to him about The Democrats' $20 Million Man Problem.

00:01:42.800 Now, we ranged much more widely than merely that.

00:01:46.740 But that's the focus of the conversation, so join us for that.

00:01:52.820 I felt that the Democrats' investment of $20 million to solve their problem with men

00:02:01.180 was money spent so absurdly badly that it was a kind of staggering miracle.

00:02:07.160 And I thought we could have a conversation about all of that.

00:02:12.500 Because you're obviously concerned about the Democrats' man problem, but more deeply,

00:02:20.540 you have the sense, not to put words in your mouth, that something is amiss on the masculine front.

00:02:27.640 And you're also at odds and ends, let's say, about who men should turn to.

00:02:35.000 Right, right.

00:02:37.540 Well, you know, let me just start off with the way that I started off that piece.

00:02:41.600 And there's a very memorable moment for me, and it was not the only time that something like this has occurred,

00:02:47.680 because I've been writing and talking about the challenges that men,

00:02:52.500 and particularly young men, are facing for a long time.

00:02:56.000 I mean, I was sort of standing there jumping up and down, going,

00:02:59.280 young men are in trouble, young men are in crisis for a long time.

00:03:02.520 And around 20, oh gosh, 16, 17, 18, I began to encounter a lot of young men

00:03:09.660 who were saying that you had really impacted their lives for the better.

00:03:14.760 And I began with a vignette about a former Marine who was driving me somewhere

00:03:21.640 and started talking about how you had really changed his life.

00:03:26.940 I believe the phrase he used was saved his life.

00:03:29.180 And I was really curious about that.

00:03:31.580 And so I asked him how that happened.

00:03:33.860 And he was talking about when he got out of the service,

00:03:36.460 and this is something as a veteran that I have seen with a lot of soldiers, sailors, Marines.

00:03:41.900 When you leave the service, one of the things that you lose is your sense of daily purpose,

00:03:46.800 especially if you've deployed and you've been downrange.

00:03:49.580 You have incredible sense of purpose, even though it's very, very stressful.

00:03:53.540 It's very, very difficult.

00:03:54.520 It's very, very scary.

00:03:55.460 But you have this real purpose.

00:03:57.540 And you come home and you leave the military and you begin to lack purpose.

00:04:01.320 You lack direction.

00:04:02.200 And you know where that takes people.

00:04:04.040 It takes people into bad places.

00:04:06.480 And he talked about, this must have been right after your book, 12 Rules came out.

00:04:11.740 And he talked about reading that book and how just that very simple thing of the making of your bed

00:04:16.860 and the adjustment of how he viewed the world and the intentional acts of service or kindness to other people

00:04:24.400 really kind of was like a reboot for him.

00:04:28.380 And that always stuck with me.

00:04:30.420 And it stuck with me for two reasons, Jordan.

00:04:33.060 Reason number one was just the sheer power of somebody caring.

00:04:38.880 And this is something that is a huge problem.

00:04:42.200 So many young men, as you know, I'm not going to tell you anything about young men.

00:04:45.400 You don't already know.

00:04:46.800 But so many young men do not have fathers.

00:04:49.080 They do not have male role models.

00:04:51.080 And so the fact that a man cares and wants to see them succeed

00:04:55.840 and wants to see them succeed in the right way is incredibly important.

00:05:00.260 And then the other thing that really stood out was the way in which your communications with them

00:05:07.980 were not trite self-help, although you had some basic rules,

00:05:12.760 but you really dove deeply into the philosophical reasons

00:05:16.520 and even the religious or scriptural reasons why you articulated these points.

00:05:21.900 And so two things were happening at once.

00:05:23.860 You were saying, I care.

00:05:26.280 And you were giving a sophisticated enough approach that said that I'm not patronizing you.

00:05:32.120 I'm treating you like an adult.

00:05:33.720 And I think those two things at once was kind of, you know, for lack of a better term,

00:05:40.280 like the alchemy or the magic of the moment, because, you know, as I wrote,

00:05:47.160 a lot of people on the other side of the cultural spectrum were the last thing they were doing

00:05:51.940 was delivering a message that said, I care.

00:05:54.640 In many ways, it seemed as if people were celebrating the demise of men

00:05:58.840 or denying the demise of men or beginning to characterize traditional masculinity

00:06:04.140 as inherently toxic or inherently problematic.

00:06:08.120 And what that told a lot of young men was not, well, you have a problem,

00:06:13.200 which a lot of young men knew.

00:06:14.580 I do have a problem failing to succeed at school, failing to get some real purpose.

00:06:19.240 And instead was telling these young men, you are the problem,

00:06:23.380 which is a totally different thing, which is saying there's something wrong with you.

00:06:27.220 And that was, I think, an extremely destructive development in the culture.

00:06:34.300 Now, it was unevenly applied.

00:06:36.160 Like I, during the sort of the rise of the so-called manosphere,

00:06:39.340 I was living in rural and suburban Tennessee,

00:06:42.560 and you didn't see that really attack on young men as much.

00:06:45.800 But there are other places in other parts of the country

00:06:47.860 where that was very much a present reality in a lot of young men's lives.

00:06:51.320 And so you have a lot of young men who are struggling.

00:06:54.180 You have a lot who are fatherless.

00:06:55.400 You have a lot who lack male mentors.

00:06:57.400 And then you had this one side of this sort of cultural divide

00:07:00.380 saying there's something wrong with you.

00:07:02.360 There's something inherently wrong with what you want to do,

00:07:04.780 what you want to be, what your goals are,

00:07:06.420 your dreams are, your aspirations.

00:07:08.180 And somebody else says, no, I care about you.

00:07:11.860 I want you to succeed.

00:07:13.580 I want you to feel meaning.

00:07:15.100 I want you to feel purpose.

00:07:17.540 In that situation, like that message is like encountering an oasis in a desert.

00:07:21.500 So, let me ask you some questions about that.

00:07:27.220 I guess the first question I have is,

00:07:30.200 why, personally, why is this an issue for you?

00:07:34.660 Like, and I want to tangle that up with a different question, though,

00:07:37.700 because there's a political element to this, obviously.

00:07:41.640 And I'm not telling you anything you don't know.

00:07:44.360 You wrote that the Democrats had a $20 million man problem.

00:07:47.900 So, although it's not exactly a political problem,

00:07:53.940 it's actually a philosophical problem or it's a spiritual problem.

00:07:57.180 It's deeper than the political.

00:07:58.500 It's just manifesting itself in the political.

00:08:01.020 So, I want to address two things.

00:08:03.420 The first question I want to address is,

00:08:06.120 why is this an issue for you?

00:08:08.340 And then let's sort out some of the political issues

00:08:11.440 before we proceed in the conversation.

00:08:14.240 Well, it's an issue for me for multiple reasons.

00:08:16.400 One, I'm a father of a son.

00:08:18.640 I have a 24-year-old son.

00:08:21.460 And I have seen with my own eyes, you know,

00:08:24.560 in that peer group that he has,

00:08:26.600 how many young men in that peer group, you know,

00:08:30.940 spend a period of time kind of wandering in the wilderness,

00:08:33.680 if that makes sense.

00:08:34.480 I've seen, you can't be a father of a son in this era

00:08:37.780 and have not seen the struggles

00:08:40.140 that a lot, so many young men have had.

00:08:42.420 And so, one of the things is I want to be a good mentor to my son.

00:08:46.860 I want to love my son well.

00:08:50.820 And when you try to love your own son well,

00:08:53.320 you cannot help but enter this larger world

00:08:56.860 of what's happening with young men in general.

00:08:59.700 And so, that was right in front of my face,

00:09:03.720 watching his peer group come of age

00:09:07.180 and the struggles that many people in his peer group had.

00:09:09.900 And so, that was very direct and personal.

00:09:11.740 Then the next personal layer was I'm also a veteran.

00:09:14.940 And so, I served in the Army as a JAG officer,

00:09:18.760 an Army lawyer.

00:09:19.620 I deployed to Iraq during the surge in 07, 08.

00:09:22.980 And because I joined later in life,

00:09:25.840 I joined the Army later in life,

00:09:27.160 I was the second oldest officer on the base

00:09:30.200 behind our commander.

00:09:33.040 And, but I had, that gave me an actual opportunity

00:09:35.280 to serve in a mentoring capacity

00:09:37.320 for some of these much younger soldiers.

00:09:40.000 And I could see their struggles

00:09:41.300 and I could see their questions

00:09:42.860 about the world and the life after the military.

00:09:46.200 And then the third thing is,

00:09:47.420 I'm very concerned about American culture more broadly.

00:09:52.240 The way in which an increasing number of people

00:09:54.480 feel a sense of despair and anxiety and hopelessness,

00:09:57.380 that we've seen this rise of deaths of despair.

00:09:59.780 And then when you dig into it,

00:10:01.840 who is dying the deaths of despair?

00:10:03.980 Well, yes, there are women, married and single, who are.

00:10:07.340 But by and large, it's disproportionately single men,

00:10:11.320 either never married or divorced men.

00:10:13.720 And there's this real sense

00:10:15.260 of a lack of community and connection.

00:10:17.460 And then you layer on top of this,

00:10:18.880 and again, this is all stuff you're very familiar with.

00:10:21.680 You have the declining number of friendships

00:10:23.700 amongst young men in particular,

00:10:26.240 and men in particular.

00:10:27.200 And it's all adding up

00:10:29.080 to an immense amount of human suffering.

00:10:31.380 It's adding up to pain, loss, anguish at the very edges.

00:10:35.900 It's adding up to suicide and suicidal attempts.

00:10:40.960 And so we have a society and a culture

00:10:43.560 where millions upon millions of people

00:10:45.460 are feeling the sense of anguish.

00:10:47.680 And if you don't have a heart for that,

00:10:50.520 like if that doesn't touch your heart,

00:10:53.540 just leave aside the politics.

00:10:55.280 You know, I would say, hey guys,

00:10:57.440 if that isn't touching your heart,

00:10:58.920 take another look at this, right?

00:11:00.820 And then the other thing,

00:11:01.860 the political aspect, I truly believe,

00:11:04.980 and there's really, you know, a lot to back this up,

00:11:08.580 that a lot of our political dysfunction

00:11:10.360 is downstream from our personal and cultural lack,

00:11:15.100 a sense of a lack of belonging in our communities,

00:11:17.680 in our families, and amongst friends.

00:11:19.900 And so I really do feel like a lot of the things

00:11:23.200 that are ripping America apart will begin to ease

00:11:26.120 if we can deal with this loneliness,

00:11:28.960 this alienization, this lack of belonging.

00:11:32.220 And so even if you're just cold-blooded about it,

00:11:35.340 like even if you're like,

00:11:36.320 well, I just want American politics

00:11:37.860 to be less dysfunctional,

00:11:39.140 American be less divided,

00:11:41.140 just dealing with the issue that is besetting,

00:11:44.560 again, particularly young men is an imperative.

00:11:46.480 So it's an imperative morally,

00:11:49.660 it's an imperative culturally,

00:11:51.100 it's an imperative politically.

00:11:52.760 And if you have an ounce of love in your heart for people,

00:11:56.160 it's just an imperative spiritually.

00:11:58.600 I have been a Christian,

00:12:00.700 evangelical conservative my entire life.

00:12:03.400 I voted for Kamala Harris,

00:12:06.180 the first Democrat I voted for in national election

00:12:09.080 in my life.

00:12:11.640 So I have been a conservative,

00:12:13.840 I was a delegate to the 2012 Republican convention.

00:12:19.340 So yeah, I've been a Christian conservative

00:12:21.660 my entire life

00:12:23.100 and have volunteered for Republican campaigns.

00:12:26.820 In 1998, sorry,

00:12:29.520 joined the college Republicans

00:12:30.620 at my small Christian college

00:12:32.540 that I attended in Nashville

00:12:33.760 and very different experience from my law school,

00:12:37.260 which was very liberal.

00:12:38.100 My small Christian college was super conservative

00:12:39.980 and it was so conservative

00:12:41.060 that we realized as college Republicans

00:12:42.780 that we had nowhere,

00:12:44.920 we had no more votes to get

00:12:46.760 for George H.W. Bush over Dukakis.

00:12:49.700 But yeah, I've been a conservative

00:12:51.580 and my entire life and a Republican.

00:12:54.260 I'm not a Republican anymore,

00:12:55.300 but I've been a Republican most of my adult life.

00:12:58.060 You have written for the Atlantic

00:12:59.660 and for the New York Times.

00:13:01.420 Why do they allow you to write for them?

00:13:04.020 Well, you know,

00:13:06.580 they were actually looking for a pro-life person

00:13:10.060 when they were trying to hire a new columnist,

00:13:11.900 actually looking for somebody who was conservative

00:13:14.180 and somebody who had,

00:13:17.140 you know, I'm also a veteran.

00:13:18.980 I don't believe there were any columnists

00:13:20.600 who were veterans.

00:13:21.500 I'm also a lawyer.

00:13:22.620 I don't believe at the time of my hiring

00:13:24.680 that there were any other columnists

00:13:26.160 who were lawyers.

00:13:26.780 I'm a constitutional lawyer.

00:13:28.600 So, you know, I think that's the overall mix,

00:13:32.660 but, you know, you'd have to ask my boss as to why.

00:13:36.880 But I was very pleasantly surprised,

00:13:40.340 I'll be honest with you,

00:13:41.660 when I got the job offer.

00:13:43.080 It was definitely not something I was seeking out,

00:13:46.280 but it came to me

00:13:48.720 and I was very grateful and thankful

00:13:50.660 and I've had a really good experience there.

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00:16:34.240 Okay, okay.

00:16:38.840 So you pointed out

00:16:40.380 three reasons

00:16:41.900 that you're concerned.

00:16:44.020 Because you have a son

00:16:45.400 and then you talked about

00:16:46.660 what you saw

00:16:47.740 in his circle of friends.

00:16:50.640 Because you're a veteran

00:16:52.100 and you played

00:16:52.740 a mentorship role there.

00:16:54.320 And then because you're concerned

00:16:55.880 with broad cultural issues.

00:16:57.540 Let's start with the personal.

00:16:59.820 I want to tell you a story

00:17:01.280 about my son

00:17:02.280 when he was about 13.

00:17:05.780 So I reviewed his report card

00:17:09.120 and it wasn't stellar,

00:17:11.780 let's say,

00:17:12.320 although it was fine,

00:17:14.940 but it wasn't stellar.

00:17:16.240 And so I asked him about that

00:17:19.600 and he said,

00:17:21.480 well, Dad,

00:17:22.360 I'm doing pretty well.

00:17:24.780 I'm doing really well for a boy.

00:17:28.040 Huh.

00:17:29.240 Right.

00:17:29.580 And I thought,

00:17:30.560 I'd never heard him

00:17:32.480 say anything like that.

00:17:34.000 And it was certainly nothing

00:17:35.020 that he had picked up at home.

00:17:36.820 And it was quite striking to me

00:17:38.900 because for him,

00:17:40.860 that was just matter of fact.

00:17:43.300 And of course,

00:17:44.280 that's a deep rabbit hole

00:17:45.700 because when your son

00:17:47.620 comes to you and says,

00:17:48.860 I'm doing pretty good for a boy,

00:17:50.800 if you have any sense,

00:17:52.400 the first thing you think is,

00:17:53.980 where the hell

00:17:54.920 did that come from?

00:17:56.620 And so seriously,

00:17:57.580 because now that's

00:17:59.260 an implicit presupposition

00:18:00.940 that the boys

00:18:02.220 underperformed the girls.

00:18:04.180 That was certainly

00:18:05.020 not a presupposition

00:18:06.120 when I was his age.

00:18:07.760 And it wasn't anything

00:18:09.240 that was appropriate for him

00:18:11.020 because there's nothing wrong

00:18:12.320 with his mind

00:18:13.160 or his conscientiousness.

00:18:15.360 And so,

00:18:17.080 you know,

00:18:17.320 I've observed that

00:18:18.640 boys are there.

00:18:22.680 The school system

00:18:23.600 is not set up for them

00:18:24.780 in the least.

00:18:26.200 The vast majority of teachers

00:18:28.200 are not only female,

00:18:30.780 but infantilizing female

00:18:32.900 and radically left.

00:18:35.180 Boys' play preferences

00:18:36.320 are denigrated.

00:18:37.880 They're required to sit

00:18:39.720 for hours at a time,

00:18:41.380 which is not in keeping

00:18:42.680 with their nature,

00:18:43.600 especially if they're active,

00:18:44.980 in which case they get diagnosed

00:18:47.060 with ADHD

00:18:47.940 and get put on methylphenidate,

00:18:50.400 which suppresses play behavior

00:18:52.200 as one of its primary functions.

00:18:55.460 And then they're told

00:18:59.060 that competitive games are wrong

00:19:01.140 because we should all cooperate

00:19:03.100 by people who are too stupid

00:19:04.820 to notice that competitive games

00:19:06.600 are cooperative

00:19:07.360 because everybody's playing

00:19:08.760 by the same rules.

00:19:09.800 And then they're told

00:19:11.460 that boys' ambition

00:19:13.500 is pathological

00:19:14.580 and that the patriarchy

00:19:17.240 and marriage,

00:19:19.140 for that matter,

00:19:19.980 is an oppressive institution.

00:19:21.720 And if they manage

00:19:22.520 to escape from all that,

00:19:24.040 then they're told

00:19:24.740 that the activities of males

00:19:27.980 are destroying the planet.

00:19:30.060 And that's pretty much

00:19:31.020 a comprehensive,

00:19:32.200 that's comprehensive

00:19:34.040 evil queen pathology

00:19:35.620 as far as I'm concerned.

00:19:36.900 And it's not bloody well.

00:19:38.080 Then you add to that,

00:19:39.240 there's an additional twist too,

00:19:40.900 which we should delve into.

00:19:43.020 You know,

00:19:43.760 it's a universal cultural problem

00:19:47.800 to make adults

00:19:50.100 out of juvenile males.

00:19:51.940 That's why there are

00:19:53.020 initiation rights

00:19:55.240 in so many cultures.

00:19:56.360 And you have to create

00:19:58.060 a responsible man.

00:20:01.840 And the reason for that

00:20:02.820 is that it's a hell of a lot easier

00:20:04.240 to be irresponsible and immature

00:20:06.020 than it is to be responsible

00:20:07.640 and mature.

00:20:09.300 For men and women.

00:20:10.500 For men and women.

00:20:11.900 Right.

00:20:12.280 Well, the thing about women

00:20:13.660 is once they have an infant,

00:20:15.580 that kind of catalyzes

00:20:17.320 the maturity.

00:20:18.720 And maybe their nature

00:20:21.500 has a proclivity

00:20:22.600 to initiate women

00:20:23.720 a little more dramatically

00:20:24.780 than it initiates men.

00:20:26.900 So the fundamental problem

00:20:31.040 that cultures face

00:20:32.640 is how to make men

00:20:34.160 out of boys

00:20:34.700 and how to stop young women

00:20:36.020 from getting pregnant

00:20:36.960 out of wedlock.

00:20:38.100 That's the anthropological evidence.

00:20:40.880 And so,

00:20:42.240 well,

00:20:42.720 so the boys

00:20:43.640 face,

00:20:45.600 I think,

00:20:47.000 a virtual conspiracy

00:20:48.900 of demoralization.

00:20:50.100 demoralization.

00:20:51.780 And that seems to me

00:20:53.860 to be,

00:20:55.240 well,

00:20:55.520 that's underneath

00:20:56.240 the political,

00:20:57.500 but the Democrats

00:20:58.700 have been

00:20:59.540 playing that hand

00:21:01.340 madly for,

00:21:03.120 I'd say,

00:21:03.820 four generations.

00:21:04.720 and now they're reaping

00:21:06.500 what they sowed.

00:21:09.160 Yeah,

00:21:09.400 I would,

00:21:10.180 there's,

00:21:10.680 boy,

00:21:10.920 there's a lot in there.

00:21:12.520 Let me,

00:21:13.200 let me go kind of

00:21:14.240 step by step

00:21:15.060 and let me begin

00:21:15.900 with one thing

00:21:16.440 that I think you articulated

00:21:17.540 right off the top

00:21:18.600 that,

00:21:19.800 that is,

00:21:20.920 I think,

00:21:21.740 a very important disconnect

00:21:24.400 that is happening.

00:21:25.600 So a lot of this articulation

00:21:27.200 you hear from the extreme left

00:21:28.680 and you laid out

00:21:29.560 the way

00:21:30.260 there are folks

00:21:31.620 on the extreme left

00:21:32.320 who has just

00:21:33.060 comprehensively

00:21:34.760 demolished masculinity.

00:21:37.240 Now,

00:21:37.460 I'd say most boys

00:21:38.220 have not been exposed

00:21:39.140 to that in school.

00:21:40.180 That might be a very,

00:21:41.440 that might,

00:21:41.880 you might see that

00:21:42.560 in some hyper-progressive

00:21:45.540 prep schools

00:21:46.180 or whatever,

00:21:46.800 but the,

00:21:47.620 some degree of that,

00:21:48.820 some element of that

00:21:50.060 is coming

00:21:50.860 and leaking through

00:21:51.940 and permeating through

00:21:53.600 a lot of American culture.

00:21:55.760 And one of the things

00:21:56.560 that I have seen

00:21:57.280 is that a lot of the people

00:21:58.400 when we talk about this,

00:21:59.580 when we raise this issue,

00:22:00.780 a lot of people

00:22:02.420 in the commentary class

00:22:05.840 and the academic class

00:22:07.180 immediately denigrate

00:22:09.280 a lot of the evidence

00:22:11.460 about the struggles

00:22:13.280 of young men and boys

00:22:14.220 because they don't see

00:22:15.820 in their milieu,

00:22:17.900 they don't see men struggling

00:22:19.460 because they're,

00:22:20.100 they're in the,

00:22:21.000 in places

00:22:21.680 where it might be,

00:22:23.060 say,

00:22:23.280 elite academia

00:22:24.240 or high-level corporate work

00:22:26.600 or in the military

00:22:27.860 or government

00:22:28.460 where men are still

00:22:29.500 at the tip of the spear

00:22:31.440 at the apex

00:22:32.240 of kind of American

00:22:33.960 commercial

00:22:35.140 and political

00:22:36.360 and economic achievement,

00:22:39.060 men are still

00:22:40.360 doing quite well.

00:22:41.920 It's the big,

00:22:43.280 giant,

00:22:44.400 giant number of people

00:22:45.880 who are not

00:22:47.260 in that sort of

00:22:47.980 tip of the spear

00:22:48.760 who are really struggling.

00:22:50.700 And because

00:22:51.420 so many of us

00:22:52.880 live in these bubbles,

00:22:55.280 we,

00:22:55.920 a lot of people

00:22:56.580 don't see it at all.

00:22:58.020 They don't see it at all.

00:22:58.940 And this is something

00:23:00.280 that I think

00:23:00.820 is endemic

00:23:01.940 in our commentariat

00:23:03.460 and that is

00:23:04.280 a lot of our commentariat

00:23:06.600 lives and eats

00:23:08.100 and breathes

00:23:09.020 a very rarefied

00:23:10.380 cultural air

00:23:11.240 and they don't have

00:23:12.700 any real world sense

00:23:15.940 of the way

00:23:17.240 that people

00:23:17.780 are living their lives

00:23:19.120 and the struggles

00:23:19.640 they're facing

00:23:20.180 outside of that milieu.

00:23:22.580 And so when you walk into

00:23:24.000 and you start talking

00:23:25.560 about how these young men

00:23:27.160 are struggling,

00:23:28.700 a lot of times

00:23:29.340 you get immediate,

00:23:30.000 I've been in these rooms

00:23:31.360 where people

00:23:31.880 immediately dismiss you.

00:23:33.320 Well,

00:23:33.800 disproportionate number

00:23:34.700 of men are CEOs,

00:23:35.880 a disproportionate number

00:23:36.780 of men are in Congress,

00:23:38.500 you know,

00:23:39.000 you name it.

00:23:40.140 And I'm like,

00:23:40.580 I'm not talking about

00:23:41.740 the tip of the spear here.

00:23:42.880 I'm talking about

00:23:44.000 millions upon millions

00:23:45.280 of people,

00:23:46.520 regular Americans

00:23:47.400 who are struggling

00:23:49.140 and in many ways

00:23:50.600 are not struggling

00:23:51.280 because of you,

00:23:52.740 but are you helping

00:23:53.800 or are you hurting?

00:23:55.580 And I can tell you

00:23:56.460 right now,

00:23:57.280 if you're telling men

00:23:58.320 that, for example,

00:23:59.280 traditional masculinity ideology

00:24:01.560 is inherently toxic,

00:24:03.200 you're hurting,

00:24:04.240 you're not helping.

00:24:05.680 And I tend to have

00:24:07.740 an explanation

00:24:08.400 of the struggles

00:24:09.060 of young men

00:24:09.620 that's rooted

00:24:10.140 in a lot more

00:24:11.680 than ideology

00:24:12.580 and politics.

00:24:13.300 It's rooted

00:24:13.940 in changing economies

00:24:15.900 and changing technologies.

00:24:17.940 A lot of things

00:24:18.760 changed in a way

00:24:19.760 that left men

00:24:21.140 in a position

00:24:21.800 where they would

00:24:23.100 often feel like

00:24:23.740 I'm not as necessary,

00:24:25.360 I'm not as needed

00:24:26.380 as I was.

00:24:27.640 A lot of the raw strength,

00:24:29.380 that raw physical strength,

00:24:30.680 for example,

00:24:31.180 that men have

00:24:32.020 became less

00:24:33.120 and less important

00:24:33.860 to be a vibrant,

00:24:35.200 a part of a vibrant economy.

00:24:37.720 Military is shrinking.

00:24:39.260 The U.S. military

00:24:39.860 is much smaller

00:24:40.840 right now

00:24:41.380 than it was

00:24:41.860 at the height

00:24:42.200 of the Cold War.

00:24:42.860 A lot of these things

00:24:43.820 created dynamics

00:24:45.100 where men felt

00:24:46.280 less needed.

00:24:48.640 And then

00:24:49.140 you have another part

00:24:50.480 of this cultural world

00:24:52.200 that then jumps on men

00:24:53.400 who are feeling

00:24:54.060 less needed,

00:24:54.900 who are not elitists,

00:24:55.820 who are not tip of the spear

00:24:56.800 or regular everyday folks

00:24:58.720 who are just trying

00:24:59.420 to do their best

00:25:00.420 and are coming in

00:25:01.440 and saying,

00:25:01.980 well, a lot of the things

00:25:02.780 that you feel

00:25:03.480 or a lot of the things,

00:25:04.880 the way that you are

00:25:05.780 is just bad and wrong.

00:25:07.700 And so

00:25:08.280 that created

00:25:09.580 this environment

00:25:10.260 in the sense

00:25:11.060 where I'm struggling

00:25:12.400 and an awful lot

00:25:13.820 of people

00:25:14.240 don't care.

00:25:16.440 And that,

00:25:17.720 I feel like,

00:25:18.560 is just a giant,

00:25:20.480 cultural disaster

00:25:22.700 that unfolded.

00:25:23.880 And now it's not

00:25:24.500 unfolding everywhere

00:25:25.260 the same,

00:25:25.800 that litany of things

00:25:27.120 that you said

00:25:28.600 about what people

00:25:29.500 on the far left

00:25:30.220 think and did.

00:25:31.080 Like my son

00:25:31.800 and his peers,

00:25:32.520 they never heard

00:25:33.160 any of that

00:25:33.800 in rural

00:25:34.420 Middle Tennessee.

00:25:35.840 That is not

00:25:36.380 their experience

00:25:36.940 in rural Middle Tennessee.

00:25:38.800 But,

00:25:39.260 but I will say

00:25:40.260 that all the

00:25:40.880 technological changes

00:25:41.960 and the changes

00:25:42.580 to career

00:25:43.200 and the changes

00:25:43.980 to all these

00:25:45.080 other big cultural changes

00:25:46.560 absolutely impact

00:25:48.140 us everywhere.

00:25:48.940 And so

00:25:49.900 young men

00:25:51.620 with,

00:25:53.220 you know,

00:25:53.440 are facing a world

00:25:54.800 even if they're

00:25:55.540 in a very sort of

00:25:56.320 man-friendly part

00:25:57.360 of the country,

00:25:57.940 which rural Tennessee is,

00:25:59.380 they're still walking

00:26:00.400 into an economy

00:26:01.320 and they're still

00:26:01.860 walking into a culture

00:26:03.060 that has been

00:26:04.680 through a lot,

00:26:06.200 generations

00:26:06.760 of upheaval.

00:26:08.740 And in that

00:26:09.780 circumstance,

00:26:10.660 you really have

00:26:11.940 to intentionally

00:26:12.980 lean in

00:26:14.180 to mentor

00:26:14.780 young men

00:26:15.460 into virtuous

00:26:16.140 masculinity.

00:26:16.720 It doesn't

00:26:17.960 happen by

00:26:18.540 osmosis,

00:26:19.400 it doesn't

00:26:19.900 happen by

00:26:20.400 inertia,

00:26:21.600 it happens

00:26:22.100 through intention.

00:26:23.760 And so,

00:26:24.700 that's where,

00:26:25.460 you know,

00:26:25.620 when I was writing

00:26:26.200 my piece

00:26:26.740 that you reached

00:26:27.580 out,

00:26:28.040 I was,

00:26:28.440 that's,

00:26:28.960 you know,

00:26:29.180 when you're

00:26:29.620 in your book

00:26:30.000 12 Rules

00:26:30.620 is a lot

00:26:31.160 about intention,

00:26:32.960 like living

00:26:33.500 an intentional

00:26:34.380 life and

00:26:35.220 thinking things

00:26:36.340 through and

00:26:36.700 having an

00:26:37.300 approach and

00:26:37.940 having a purpose.

00:26:39.340 And that's

00:26:39.760 exactly how you

00:26:40.640 cultivate virtuous

00:26:42.120 masculinity is

00:26:43.540 you're living

00:26:44.360 a life of

00:26:44.880 intention.

00:26:45.460 it's not

00:26:46.360 happening by

00:26:46.900 osmosis,

00:26:47.400 it's not

00:26:47.740 happening by

00:26:48.300 inertia.

00:26:48.840 And in fact,

00:26:49.340 a lot of

00:26:49.660 the cultural

00:26:50.160 inertia was

00:26:50.900 destructive,

00:26:52.320 not constructive.

00:26:54.120 And so,

00:26:54.760 creating a,

00:26:56.180 it was,

00:26:56.580 I think it was

00:26:57.240 absolutely vitally

00:26:58.420 necessary to

00:26:59.220 create a kind

00:26:59.980 of counterculture

00:27:01.820 to that,

00:27:02.380 that was like,

00:27:03.020 hey,

00:27:03.660 young men,

00:27:04.420 we love you,

00:27:05.660 we care about

00:27:06.520 you,

00:27:06.820 we want you

00:27:07.480 to succeed.

00:27:08.920 And I think

00:27:09.740 that's one of

00:27:10.180 the reasons why,

00:27:10.980 and you often

00:27:12.240 see a lot of

00:27:12.900 emotions spring up

00:27:14.220 in men when

00:27:15.660 they do

00:27:16.500 encounter

00:27:17.040 somebody,

00:27:18.200 whether it's

00:27:18.720 somebody who

00:27:19.420 wrote a book

00:27:20.440 or delivered

00:27:22.040 a speech that

00:27:23.080 finally says to

00:27:24.300 them that very

00:27:25.220 simple message,

00:27:26.080 that that's what

00:27:26.540 they hear.

00:27:27.220 I care for you,

00:27:28.460 I want you to

00:27:29.120 succeed,

00:27:29.680 I'm here,

00:27:30.020 I'm going to

00:27:30.240 help you do it.

00:27:31.500 And the best

00:27:32.120 people who do

00:27:32.820 this do it,

00:27:33.340 I want you to

00:27:34.040 succeed in the

00:27:34.600 right way.

00:27:35.660 The worst

00:27:36.220 voices are,

00:27:37.200 just go get

00:27:38.060 what's yours,

00:27:38.700 young man.

00:27:39.600 That's the

00:27:40.160 toxic message

00:27:41.120 that gets,

00:27:42.000 that indulges the

00:27:43.140 worst elements

00:27:43.820 of our

00:27:44.080 nature.

00:27:44.880 The message

00:27:45.420 that says

00:27:46.080 that here,

00:27:47.440 train you up

00:27:48.180 in a way

00:27:48.640 that is much

00:27:49.340 more akin

00:27:49.980 to the

00:27:51.220 Kipling poem

00:27:52.100 if,

00:27:53.620 than sort

00:27:54.240 of any kind

00:27:54.840 of blind

00:27:56.020 ambition or

00:27:57.120 greed or

00:27:58.420 sexual conquest

00:27:59.360 or sexual

00:28:00.180 exploitation.

00:28:01.540 But if you're

00:28:01.960 building people

00:28:02.620 in virtuous

00:28:03.200 masculinity,

00:28:04.260 I think

00:28:04.700 that's the

00:28:07.440 oasis in

00:28:08.020 the desert,

00:28:08.960 whereas that

00:28:09.900 toxic,

00:28:12.040 go get

00:28:12.880 what's

00:28:13.200 yours,

00:28:13.900 sexual

00:28:14.980 prowess,

00:28:16.100 financial

00:28:17.220 accomplishment

00:28:17.840 is the

00:28:18.260 be-all,

00:28:18.780 end-all,

00:28:19.360 that's the

00:28:19.900 mirage,

00:28:20.520 that's the

00:28:20.920 illusion,

00:28:21.560 and that

00:28:21.880 just leads

00:28:22.340 them deeper

00:28:22.800 into the

00:28:23.080 desert.

00:28:23.420 Well, we

00:28:23.600 should talk

00:28:24.180 about that

00:28:24.740 a little

00:28:24.980 bit, I

00:28:25.900 think,

00:28:26.780 from a

00:28:27.240 psychological

00:28:27.720 perspective,

00:28:28.680 because there

00:28:30.560 are real

00:28:30.980 reasons why

00:28:33.020 that more

00:28:34.720 psychopathic

00:28:37.120 end of the

00:28:38.260 so-called

00:28:38.780 manosphere has

00:28:40.720 its attractiveness.

00:28:42.880 You know

00:28:43.300 what happens

00:28:43.760 every summer?

00:28:44.560 We all get

00:28:45.120 a little too

00:28:45.880 comfortable with

00:28:46.480 letting our

00:28:46.940 routines slide.

00:28:47.900 We sleep in,

00:28:48.600 we take vacation,

00:28:49.660 unplug from

00:28:50.160 everything, and

00:28:50.800 hey, that's

00:28:51.380 great, but

00:28:51.940 here's the

00:28:52.380 thing, sometimes

00:28:53.240 that break from

00:28:54.040 our routine

00:28:54.620 becomes a break

00:28:55.260 from the stuff

00:28:55.680 that actually

00:28:56.120 matters, like

00:28:56.720 our spiritual

00:28:57.180 discipline.

00:28:57.800 That's exactly

00:28:58.340 why I'm such

00:28:58.940 a fan of

00:28:59.520 Hallow.

00:29:00.180 It's the

00:29:00.500 number one

00:29:00.840 Christian

00:29:01.180 prayer app,

00:29:01.800 and honestly,

00:29:02.440 it's been a

00:29:02.800 game-changer for

00:29:03.520 keeping my

00:29:04.040 spiritual life on

00:29:04.820 track.

00:29:05.240 They've got

00:29:05.660 over 10,000

00:29:06.460 guided meditations,

00:29:07.720 prayers, and

00:29:08.420 spiritual exercises,

00:29:09.740 so whether you've

00:29:10.220 got five minutes

00:29:10.900 or an hour,

00:29:11.600 there's something

00:29:12.080 there for you.

00:29:12.860 What's really

00:29:13.240 cool is this

00:29:13.820 month they're

00:29:14.180 doing something

00:29:14.720 extra special.

00:29:15.820 Hallow is

00:29:16.120 walking everyone

00:29:16.840 through the

00:29:17.240 spiritual exercises

00:29:18.280 of St. Ignatius

00:29:19.360 with Father

00:29:19.920 Timothy Gallagher.

00:29:20.940 If you've never

00:29:21.480 experienced

00:29:22.140 imaginative prayer

00:29:23.200 before, this is

00:29:24.260 going to be

00:29:24.520 incredible.

00:29:25.200 Look, don't let

00:29:25.760 this July just

00:29:26.440 slip on by.

00:29:27.480 Take a few

00:29:27.860 minutes today and

00:29:28.500 get intentional

00:29:29.140 about your

00:29:29.740 spiritual life.

00:29:30.540 And right now

00:29:31.020 you can try

00:29:31.460 Hallow completely

00:29:32.160 free for three

00:29:32.940 months when you

00:29:33.480 go to

00:29:33.880 Hallow.com

00:29:34.800 slash Jordan.

00:29:35.680 That's H-A-L-L-O-W

00:29:37.500 dot com

00:29:38.040 slash Jordan for

00:29:38.800 three months free.

00:29:40.900 You know what

00:29:44.000 happens every

00:29:44.620 summer?

00:29:45.040 We all get a

00:29:45.840 little too

00:29:46.440 comfortable with

00:29:47.060 letting our

00:29:47.500 routines slide.

00:29:48.460 We sleep in,

00:29:49.160 we take vacation,

00:29:50.220 unplug from

00:29:50.720 everything, and

00:29:51.360 hey, that's

00:29:51.940 great, but

00:29:52.500 here's the

00:29:52.960 thing.

00:29:53.520 Sometimes that

00:29:54.180 break from our

00:29:54.840 routine becomes a

00:29:55.640 break from the

00:29:56.060 stuff that actually

00:29:56.700 matters, like our

00:29:57.440 spiritual discipline.

00:29:58.360 That's exactly why

00:29:59.140 I'm such a fan of

00:30:00.080 Hallow.

00:30:00.600 It's the number

00:30:01.200 one Christian

00:30:01.740 prayer app, and

00:30:02.460 honestly, it's

00:30:03.120 been a game

00:30:03.580 changer for keeping

00:30:04.320 my spiritual life

00:30:05.200 on track.

00:30:05.820 They've got over

00:30:06.420 10,000 guided

00:30:07.340 meditations, prayers,

00:30:08.760 and spiritual

00:30:09.320 exercises, so whether

00:30:10.600 you've got five

00:30:11.200 minutes or an

00:30:11.840 hour, there's

00:30:12.380 something there

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00:30:42.320 So, back in

00:30:44.020 2016, when my

00:30:48.080 objection to my

00:30:49.600 liberal government's

00:30:50.960 utter stupidity

00:30:52.320 launched me into

00:30:53.560 the public eye, I

00:30:54.760 told the Senate

00:30:58.160 and the public in

00:31:00.660 general that this

00:31:03.240 conspiracy, so to

00:31:06.240 speak, to weakened

00:31:07.900 men would produce

00:31:08.800 produce a very toxic

00:31:12.020 and fascist-like

00:31:13.280 backlash.

00:31:14.680 Now, one of the

00:31:16.280 things that man I

00:31:18.820 admire greatly, that

00:31:20.120 psychologist Carl Jung

00:31:21.900 pointed out, was that

00:31:23.100 you can be socialized

00:31:25.820 into a conformist

00:31:27.220 persona.

00:31:28.960 And the way out of

00:31:30.680 that is through the

00:31:32.800 dark side, so to

00:31:34.440 speak, to incorporate

00:31:35.480 elements of the

00:31:36.460 psyche, that

00:31:37.020 haven't been, that

00:31:39.940 have been set to

00:31:41.420 the side in the

00:31:43.040 domestication

00:31:43.980 effort, hyper

00:31:46.980 domesticated young

00:31:48.320 men are going to

00:31:49.140 find hyper

00:31:50.400 aggressive young

00:31:51.840 men attractive as

00:31:54.040 role models.

00:31:55.580 And the reason for

00:31:56.720 that is they need

00:31:57.480 that aggression.

00:31:58.100 attraction, and the

00:32:00.460 fact that that's

00:32:01.240 attractive is just an

00:32:02.520 indication of how

00:32:03.520 much demoralization has

00:32:05.500 taken place.

00:32:07.520 Well, I also think

00:32:08.200 that's an eternal

00:32:09.420 battle.

00:32:11.520 I've put it this way,

00:32:12.580 somebody has asked me,

00:32:13.780 who are the best men and

00:32:15.080 the worst men that you've

00:32:16.040 encountered?

00:32:17.140 And the answer is the

00:32:18.140 same, football coaches.

00:32:19.920 Some of the best men I've

00:32:21.060 ever encountered are

00:32:21.900 football coaches who have

00:32:23.240 been able to socialize

00:32:25.460 young men and take this

00:32:28.360 energy, this drive, this

00:32:30.660 aggression, and create it

00:32:32.200 into, and turn it into a

00:32:33.520 brotherhood, turn it into

00:32:35.220 a community, turn it into a

00:32:36.620 fellowship that is pouring

00:32:37.660 into fighting for each

00:32:40.000 other the right way.

00:32:41.620 And so I've seen a

00:32:42.780 football coach be

00:32:43.600 incredibly instrumental in

00:32:45.980 a young man's life by

00:32:47.460 taking all of that that's in

00:32:49.080 them, all that stew that's

00:32:50.580 in them, and molding it and

00:32:52.260 channeling them and turning

00:32:53.360 them into tremendous

00:32:54.820 citizens and turning them

00:32:56.320 into good teammates and

00:32:58.600 good friends and this, and

00:33:00.700 you will meet so many

00:33:01.920 former football players who

00:33:02.960 will say the person who

00:33:03.740 changed my life as much or

00:33:04.980 more than my father,

00:33:05.940 depending on the

00:33:06.380 relationship with their

00:33:07.020 father, was their football

00:33:08.140 coach.

00:33:09.060 And then you will find men

00:33:10.220 who will say that one of

00:33:11.400 the most malignant influences

00:33:12.960 in my entire life was my

00:33:14.140 football coach because he

00:33:15.760 taught me to hurt people.

00:33:17.300 He taught me to inflict pain.

00:33:19.160 He told me that rage and

00:33:20.420 aggression were my friend.

00:33:21.660 I should cultivate them

00:33:22.780 and burn, you know, and

00:33:24.080 I've actually seen, I've

00:33:26.160 seen different kinds of

00:33:27.220 coaches, and so I would

00:33:28.660 say that, you know, one of

00:33:31.360 the interesting realities of

00:33:32.920 life is that you've, and

00:33:35.120 this goes all way back.

00:33:36.540 If you go back to June 6th,

00:33:38.100 1944, on Normandy Beach, you

00:33:41.300 had two different kinds of

00:33:42.740 young man, young male

00:33:44.160 acculturation confronting each

00:33:45.900 other on that pivotal day in

00:33:48.540 world history where you had

00:33:50.140 won a generation of youth

00:33:51.700 acculturated into cruelty,

00:33:53.820 into viciousness.

00:33:55.440 And yes, they were very

00:33:56.500 lethal and they were very

00:33:58.220 well-trained and they were

00:33:59.080 very proficient in the

00:34:00.180 profession of arms, which

00:34:01.720 caused a lot of people to

00:34:02.820 admire them, but they were

00:34:04.580 cruel and they were vicious

00:34:05.900 while they were lethal.

00:34:07.340 And then on the other side,

00:34:09.060 you had the forces of

00:34:09.880 American and British

00:34:10.860 democracy and Canadian

00:34:12.420 democracy as well.

00:34:13.380 One of the beaches was

00:34:14.200 Canadian, right?

00:34:14.980 So you had these coming

00:34:17.280 across the channel.

00:34:18.540 They weren't perfect people

00:34:19.900 and they weren't perfect

00:34:20.920 cultures, but these young

00:34:22.760 men were acculturated to use

00:34:24.300 their sense of their courage

00:34:26.000 and their aggression to

00:34:27.440 defeat cruelty, to protect

00:34:29.640 the weak, to protect the

00:34:31.320 vulnerable.

00:34:32.400 And it is striking to me, it

00:34:34.120 is striking to me how that

00:34:35.980 virtuous masculinity, that

00:34:37.960 virtuous courage and

00:34:39.240 aggression so

00:34:40.520 comprehensively triumphed in

00:34:42.320 World War II.

00:34:42.820 There's, I'm reading this

00:34:43.980 book right now about the

00:34:44.740 fall of Berlin.

00:34:46.500 And this is a great lesson

00:34:48.040 in why you shun cruelty and

00:34:52.280 you exhibit compassion.

00:34:53.640 At the very end of the war,

00:34:55.320 when Nazi Germany was

00:34:56.480 collapsing, people were

00:34:57.700 falling all over themselves to

00:34:59.580 come to the American side and

00:35:01.800 to escape the Soviet side.

00:35:03.800 And so this was something where

00:35:05.640 not only by our valor did we

00:35:08.200 win the war, our compassion

00:35:10.140 also helped us win the war.

00:35:11.680 And that's when I'm looking at

00:35:13.600 this little angel and devil

00:35:14.920 under the young man's

00:35:15.880 shoulder.

00:35:16.320 It's, I've often think of the

00:35:17.240 bad coach and the good coach

00:35:19.080 or at the most extreme, and I

00:35:20.580 don't know, gosh, I'm a

00:35:21.860 middle-aged man, so I guess I

00:35:23.120 always have to talk about World

00:35:24.180 War II at some point.

00:35:25.400 And, you know, at the

00:35:26.640 extremes, you have the

00:35:28.380 pure evil of fascism and

00:35:31.100 communism and the virtuous

00:35:32.520 valor of a democracy

00:35:34.260 awakened.

00:35:34.980 And these are the angels and

00:35:38.320 devils that are always on the

00:35:40.700 shoulder of young men here.

00:35:43.520 And look, I know that there are

00:35:45.240 parallels with women, but we're

00:35:46.660 talking about men.

00:35:47.660 These are the angels and

00:35:48.560 devils that are on young men's

00:35:49.640 shoulders.

00:35:50.220 And you're exactly right.

00:35:51.920 A lot of young men will be

00:35:53.240 drawn to that devilish side

00:35:55.040 because not only does it feel

00:35:56.720 rewarding and strong, it's

00:35:58.640 easier.

00:35:59.540 It's easier in so many ways

00:36:01.740 because you don't engage in

00:36:03.540 self-discipline, you don't

00:36:04.760 check yourself, you don't

00:36:06.080 engage in kindness because

00:36:07.340 kindness carries a cost.

00:36:09.540 And so, it's the easier path

00:36:11.800 to indulge that unmitigated,

00:36:14.920 unbridled aggression and

00:36:16.160 ambition.

00:36:16.500 It is the harder path to

00:36:18.980 temper that aggression and

00:36:21.540 ambition with courage and

00:36:23.380 compassion.

00:36:24.460 And so, I think that's the

00:36:26.780 eternal struggle and it

00:36:27.960 manifests itself in different

00:36:29.780 eras in different ways.

00:36:32.540 So, I've been spending some

00:36:35.920 time considering the archetypal

00:36:39.820 image of the shepherd in the

00:36:41.340 biblical writings.

00:36:42.580 Yeah.

00:36:43.680 And of course, so Moses was a

00:36:45.860 shepherd and David was a

00:36:47.380 shepherd and Christ is a

00:36:49.580 shepherd, metaphorically.

00:36:52.720 So, the question is, why the

00:36:55.440 image of the shepherd?

00:36:57.060 And you put your finger on it in

00:36:58.860 the discussion that you just

00:37:00.980 brought forward.

00:37:03.220 So, in pastoral times,

00:37:08.060 especially in the Middle East,

00:37:09.420 being a shepherd was actually a

00:37:10.860 pretty, it was a demanding and

00:37:12.560 dangerous job.

00:37:13.580 Like, like all jobs were

00:37:15.480 demanding and dangerous in those

00:37:16.900 times.

00:37:16.920 Nothing easy about it.

00:37:17.920 Yeah, absolutely.

00:37:18.560 Well, so the shepherd had to fight

00:37:22.700 off wolves and lions and he had to

00:37:26.600 take care of himself in the

00:37:27.900 wilderness.

00:37:28.620 So, just right there, that's hard.

00:37:31.380 But then the crucial issue is that

00:37:33.940 that monstrous capacity to fight off

00:37:37.340 the predators and even to some

00:37:39.600 degree to fend for yourself was

00:37:42.940 turned into service to the most

00:37:45.900 vulnerable.

00:37:46.900 That's why the lamb, the

00:37:48.440 protection of the lamb is, is

00:37:50.500 such a numinous image in the

00:37:55.440 West, in the Western cultural

00:37:58.100 tradition, especially at the

00:37:59.820 biblical level, because all that

00:38:02.360 aggression, I mean, you touched on

00:38:06.100 this, say, with regard to valor in

00:38:08.080 World War II, all that capacity for

00:38:10.840 aggression and teamwork aggression,

00:38:13.060 for that matter, is supposed to be

00:38:15.280 subordinated to service to the most

00:38:17.480 vulnerable.

00:38:18.620 And so the shepherd is this amalgam of

00:38:20.940 monstrous power and service to the

00:38:25.340 most vulnerable, self-sacrificial

00:38:27.260 service to the most vulnerable.

00:38:28.820 Of course, that's a hallmark of

00:38:30.100 Christianity itself and something

00:38:32.980 that distinguishes it from all other

00:38:35.800 theories of sovereignty, right?

00:38:39.600 Because Christianity is very paradoxical

00:38:42.260 and peculiar in that regard that it

00:38:43.960 defines sovereignty not as the

00:38:47.740 aristocratic will to power, dominance

00:38:52.760 and force, let's say, of pagan Rome or

00:38:56.280 even aristocratic Greece, for that

00:38:59.140 matter, but transmutes that into the

00:39:03.960 capacity for stalwart and forthright

00:39:08.240 behavior in service to the most

00:39:10.580 vulnerable.

00:39:12.580 And that means the highest serves the

00:39:15.840 lowest and that actually becomes a

00:39:17.560 defining characteristic of what's

00:39:19.560 highest, which is really quite a

00:39:21.580 miracle of conceptual rearrangement.

00:39:24.740 And so this is part of this kind of

00:39:28.280 notion is part of what's been driving

00:39:30.500 my discussions with men.

00:39:32.040 I mean, most of what I've done on the

00:39:36.140 public stage has been, much of what I've

00:39:39.500 done on the public stage, has been in

00:39:40.980 response to my observation of the

00:39:43.620 desperate situation of, well, young

00:39:45.780 people, because you can't demoralize

00:39:47.600 young men without devastating young

00:39:49.420 women.

00:39:50.140 You know, I don't know if you know this,

00:39:51.640 but you know in the West now that

00:39:53.240 more than 50 percent of women at the

00:39:56.300 age of 30 have no children.

00:39:58.620 It's more than 50 percent, right?

00:40:01.000 Half of them will never have a child.

00:40:03.860 And so on the one hand, we have the

00:40:05.740 absolute radical pathological

00:40:08.020 demoralization of young men.

00:40:10.760 And then we have the insistence that

00:40:12.720 although all that masculinity is toxic

00:40:15.400 and patriarchal, that's precisely what

00:40:19.640 young women should pursue.

00:40:22.280 And so they pursue that in some ways

00:40:24.720 displacing young men, but more

00:40:26.980 detrimentally for themselves, squandering

00:40:30.400 their youth on service to the evil

00:40:33.620 corporate world, bizarrely enough, given

00:40:36.120 that it's a leftist trope, and the

00:40:38.280 demolition of their, not only of their

00:40:40.840 fertility, but the probability of their

00:40:43.340 participation in the long-term

00:40:48.960 partnership of marriage.

00:40:51.240 So, I mean, you can hardly imagine a

00:40:53.380 more toxic brew than that.

00:40:56.040 And how we got here is quite the

00:40:58.040 bloody miracle.

00:40:58.720 Um, I'd like you to comment on that.

00:41:02.240 I'd also like you to tell me, if you

00:41:04.100 would, what kind of response you got to

00:41:07.520 your New York Times article.

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00:42:09.100 Okay, well, yeah, let me start with

00:42:11.040 that and then I'll get to the second,

00:42:13.280 the bigger one.

00:42:16.000 Remarkably positive for readers.

00:42:18.920 There is a, you know, one thing that I

00:42:21.480 think is a lot of people miss, especially

00:42:23.860 people are all in all the time on into

00:42:26.360 political fights online, is that there's,

00:42:29.400 there is still a big American center,

00:42:32.500 center left, center right.

00:42:34.800 There is a big American center.

00:42:35.940 About 80%.

00:42:36.960 That has a lot of common concerns.

00:42:40.200 And so, whereas somebody on Twitter might

00:42:42.080 be going, talking about toxic masculinity,

00:42:45.020 you know, there's no problem with young

00:42:46.500 men, the future is female and all of that

00:42:48.740 stuff, there's millions of democratic moms

00:42:53.500 who have sons who love their sons so much

00:42:56.700 and are worried about their sons.

00:42:58.600 And so, when I go back to first principles,

00:43:01.540 rather than immediately diving into gender

00:43:04.200 gaps and political races and all this,

00:43:05.940 instead of talking about struggles,

00:43:08.000 you actually meet people where they are.

00:43:10.400 And where they, where millions of moms are

00:43:13.100 and dads, moms and dads are right now is,

00:43:16.000 I, I'm having trouble.

00:43:17.980 My son is having trouble or my son's

00:43:19.720 friends are having trouble.

00:43:20.980 My nephew is having trouble, whatever.

00:43:23.100 That's where millions of people are.

00:43:25.000 And they are hungry for somebody to

00:43:28.180 approach that problem with empathy and

00:43:30.760 approach that problem saying, I see all of

00:43:33.500 this.

00:43:33.900 I see you.

00:43:34.740 I see what is happening.

00:43:36.560 And so, I think that that's why the

00:43:38.800 response to that article was overwhelmingly

00:43:41.440 positive, certainly into my inbox.

00:43:43.740 Now, online, it was much more mixed.

00:43:45.520 But that, that's a artifact of lots of

00:43:48.840 things that are actually irrelevant to

00:43:50.880 the article.

00:43:51.880 But it was remarkably positive.

00:43:54.080 And Jordan, I'll tell you another story

00:43:56.300 that I think would be encouraging to you.

00:43:59.420 I was in a meeting, one of these meetings,

00:44:02.200 you know, what you have, I call them

00:44:04.460 save the world meetings where you get a

00:44:05.940 bunch of people into a room and everyone's

00:44:07.600 talking about what's wrong with the

00:44:08.860 culture and what's wrong with everything

00:44:10.160 and what can we do to fix it.

00:44:11.700 And this room was much more left-leaning,

00:44:14.460 much more left-leaning.

00:44:15.640 There was a few conservatives in there.

00:44:17.260 I was in there, a couple other people.

00:44:19.380 But one thing that was so striking,

00:44:21.300 woman after woman at the meeting stood up

00:44:24.020 and said, we need to be reaching young

00:44:26.320 men and we need to be telling young men

00:44:28.380 we love them.

00:44:29.300 I'm a mom of boys and I love my boys and

00:44:31.620 I do not want this culture telling my

00:44:33.400 boys there's something wrong with them.

00:44:35.080 And this was happening in left-leaning

00:44:36.900 spaces.

00:44:37.540 Not far left, not like radical left, but

00:44:40.140 in left-leaning spaces.

00:44:42.060 And so, I think, and I have seen it with

00:44:45.760 my own eyes, that there is a desperate

00:44:49.240 hunger in America, broad America, for

00:44:54.300 constructive mentoring of young men.

00:44:57.740 Another thing, you know, you may have

00:45:00.560 followed this, but Admiral William

00:45:02.660 McRaven, who was the admiral who headed

00:45:05.160 special, you know, American special

00:45:06.400 forces, directed Operation Neptune Spear,

00:45:09.320 which killed bin Laden.

00:45:10.860 Just a remarkable American man, American

00:45:13.500 story, American role model.

00:45:15.440 You know, he gave a commencement speech at

00:45:17.080 UT Austin several years ago and it was,

00:45:19.860 it's known as the Make Up Your Bed

00:45:21.380 speech, you know, a theme that you've

00:45:23.780 articulated as well.

00:45:26.000 Millions and millions and millions of

00:45:28.660 views for that thing.

00:45:29.660 It has been just spread and metastasized

00:45:32.120 all over America and not just in

00:45:34.660 conservative spaces.

00:45:35.960 And so, that's what I think is

00:45:37.860 encouraging.

00:45:38.620 Lots of people in that big American

00:45:40.360 middle are saying, waking up and, and

00:45:42.840 saying something here is wrong.

00:45:45.680 And that's why the response to the

00:45:47.480 Times article was, was more positive, I

00:45:51.760 think, than people might expect.

00:45:52.920 The other thing, going to the, the

00:45:55.200 bigger, deeper question, you know, I, I

00:45:59.440 get so tired of like the concept of the

00:46:01.840 gender wars and I, and the concept of

00:46:05.260 the way our political parties exploit

00:46:06.980 gender gaps.

00:46:08.120 So, you know, the way our political

00:46:09.380 parties come in and say, the

00:46:10.440 Republicans might say, well, we win

00:46:11.980 more with men than with women.

00:46:13.440 So, I'm going to really dive in with

00:46:15.300 men or the Democrats say, we men win

00:46:17.480 more with women than men.

00:46:18.600 And they really dive in with women,

00:46:20.540 which means we have these giant

00:46:22.380 engines of cultural and political

00:46:24.080 influence who are exacerbating gender

00:46:27.640 and sex disagreements as part of their

00:46:30.520 political project, right?

00:46:32.860 And so, it's making, it's creating the

00:46:34.820 sense that, and rather than we're all

00:46:36.600 in this together and that you cannot

00:46:38.060 have, you know, women in America,

00:46:41.500 writ large, cannot be in a healthy

00:46:43.460 place unless men in America are in a

00:46:45.360 healthy place and vice versa.

00:46:47.700 Men in, you know, so the idea that we're

00:46:49.720 all in this together, that this is not a

00:46:51.780 zero-sum game, I think that's a message

00:46:54.840 that has to be repeated and repeated and

00:46:57.280 repeated, that the success of men does

00:46:59.040 not mean the failure of women, the

00:47:00.400 success of women does not mean the

00:47:02.580 failure of men.

00:47:03.540 And, you know, I don't know that I,

00:47:07.340 here's the way I would put, I don't

00:47:09.340 have the same perspective of you about

00:47:11.340 corporate evil and all of that, but I

00:47:14.300 will say this, I do think that one

00:47:16.300 thing that really distresses me is that

00:47:18.220 we see people having fewer kids than

00:47:21.140 they say they want to have, and we see

00:47:23.700 people getting married later than they

00:47:25.800 say they want to get married, or not

00:47:27.780 getting married at all when they say

00:47:29.360 they want to get married.

00:47:30.820 And I think we have this gap between

00:47:32.780 people's desires, the deepest desires

00:47:35.020 and longings of their heart, and their

00:47:37.000 actual lives, what's actually happening

00:47:39.740 in their lives, that is really putting a

00:47:42.980 pall of anxiety and failure and

00:47:46.020 hopelessness over American life.

00:47:47.620 So what is it that we can do to close

00:47:50.360 this gap between your heart's longing

00:47:52.560 and the reality of your life?

00:47:54.420 And by the way, longing for children

00:47:56.020 and longing for a marriage is, that's

00:47:58.180 not, I don't think everybody, you know,

00:48:00.720 as a Christian who believes in the

00:48:03.540 Bible, it's very plain from Scripture

00:48:06.020 that not everybody has to be married.

00:48:08.620 But if you're somebody, marriage is a

00:48:10.860 marvelous, a wonderful institution.

00:48:12.900 It's wonderful for me.

00:48:15.400 It's a, so saying I want to get

00:48:17.640 married, that's a good thing.

00:48:18.940 Saying I want to have kids, that's a

00:48:20.300 good thing. And how can we narrow that

00:48:22.900 gap between the heart's longing and the

00:48:24.520 reality? Honestly, Jordan, I think

00:48:27.480 that's one of the central cultural and

00:48:29.240 political projects of our time, and it's

00:48:31.300 why neither party has been able to win a

00:48:34.100 commanding majority for anything more

00:48:35.900 than a two- to four-year period in the

00:48:37.740 last generation. Is it a lot, so many

00:48:40.740 millions of Americans feel like their

00:48:43.280 dreams are out of their reach, and they're

00:48:46.840 looking everywhere for a solution to this, and

00:48:49.640 in the political sphere, they're definitely

00:48:51.140 not getting it.

00:48:52.720 So, one of the things I thought when I

00:48:55.280 reached out to you is that since we were

00:48:58.360 concerned about the same issues, that it

00:49:02.180 might be worthwhile sorting out whatever

00:49:07.340 differences we might have, you know, and I

00:49:10.900 don't know how much you know about my work

00:49:13.320 enough to have written about it sometimes, but

00:49:17.260 I'm curious if you have any questions or

00:49:20.120 concerns about what you see that I've been

00:49:24.260 doing, and because I'd like to address

00:49:27.240 them, because we don't need the split.

00:49:31.300 Right. Well, you know, I would put it like

00:49:34.960 this. There are lots of elements of your

00:49:37.640 work that I have really appreciated, and I've

00:49:39.680 really appreciated the impact of your work

00:49:42.260 that I've seen on people I know and people

00:49:44.820 I love, and I have very much appreciated

00:49:46.860 that. I think we probably had some pretty

00:49:49.220 sharp political differences when it comes

00:49:51.480 to how do we manifest, who do we support, and

00:49:55.680 how do we manifest our shared concerns into

00:49:59.000 the political world and into politics, and

00:50:02.200 then I think there are some things that we

00:50:03.580 disagree on that really have nothing at all

00:50:05.380 to do with what we're talking about. I know, I

00:50:07.580 think, I wrote in The Atlantic that I was

00:50:09.100 critical of your stance on the Ukraine war, that

00:50:13.040 you're kind of seeing the Russian invasion as at

00:50:17.080 least understandable. I don't think you would

00:50:18.980 say justifiable, but understandable to a certain

00:50:22.640 extent, and then some of your stances on vaccines, and I

00:50:28.120 know you've talked about some people need to go to prison

00:50:30.840 around their stance around vaccines, and so it's

00:50:34.280 interesting, there's an interesting approach you can

00:50:38.120 take when you have areas of commonality and areas of

00:50:40.300 difference. You can dig into the difference and say,

00:50:43.180 these differences are why we are opponents, or you can

00:50:46.680 dig into the commonalities, and you can say, these

00:50:48.660 commonalities are why we are friends, but who have

00:50:50.980 differences, and I would really like to see in

00:50:53.180 American politics more of the latter approach on a

00:50:55.720 consistent basis, that rather than saying, hey, we have

00:50:59.360 this overlap, but the differences mean we're

00:51:02.340 fundamentally opposed. Say, the overlap means that we

00:51:05.840 have a lot of fundamental agreements, but like almost

00:51:07.960 every human being on the planet, we do have

00:51:09.760 differences, and I'm happy to dive into the Ukraine war, or

00:51:12.680 to vaccines, or any other issue where you think we might

00:51:16.240 have differences. I think that might be helpful for

00:51:19.320 people to hear some of that, but that was, you know, when I

00:51:23.720 have written critically, it's been mainly focused around some

00:51:26.660 of these political choices, and they're, and to be honest,

00:51:30.560 they're political choices that are not unique to you at

00:51:33.000 all. These are a lot of the beefs that I have with the change

00:51:36.020 in the Republican Party more broadly. I never thought I would

00:51:40.360 see a day, for example, when the Democrats were more hawkish

00:51:44.900 against Russia than Republicans were, for example. I never

00:51:49.200 saw, I never saw, and this is on me, but I never saw a strong

00:51:53.820 movement anti-vaccine or vaccine-skeptical movement

00:51:56.940 coming out of the Republican Party. That was always a far

00:51:59.680 left, crunchy, Democratic, Marin County, progressive thing.

00:52:04.120 And so there are many ways that the Republican Party has

00:52:06.540 departed from my previous views, and I feel like you're more

00:52:10.640 in line with the mainstream Republican Party now than I am.

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00:53:10.960 Yeah, it's hard to say. I mean, I don't know. I haven't called for

00:53:17.780 anybody to be imprisoned with regard to their stance on vaccines. I'm

00:53:21.500 not very thrilled about the fact that there was force applied when

00:53:26.600 people were making medical choices. I think that was a big mistake. And I

00:53:30.380 think there's the backlash that we see against vaccines is certainly part

00:53:33.880 and parcel of that. With regards to the pesky Russians, well, you know, my

00:53:38.920 sense is we missed a massive opportunity in the 1990s to strike a real

00:53:44.500 accord with the Russians. And there was all sorts of reasons for that, not least

00:53:48.540 one of the reasons being that it was very convenient for the military

00:53:53.660 industrial complex, so to speak, to have a perpetual enemy. And Russia seems to fit

00:53:59.480 that bill quite well. And so it's not like I'm thrilled about the fact that the

00:54:04.920 Russians have been chomping at the bit on the Ukrainian side of the, on the Ukrainian

00:54:12.240 side of the world for the last multiple years. I don't regard Russia as a permanent

00:54:17.420 enemy. China's a different story in all likelihood. I don't think we really need to

00:54:23.780 go either of those places. I mean, they've been beat to death in many ways. And I am more

00:54:30.620 interested in the issue that we're discussing. Tell me a little bit more about what you saw

00:54:36.440 with your son's friends that concerned you.

00:54:40.940 Yeah. And boy, I, some of my son's friends might be watching this podcast, so I don't want

00:54:46.660 to cast a broad brush and have them think, Dave, what did, what does Mr. French think about

00:54:51.500 what, you know, no, my, my, I'm very proud of my son. I know it's, yeah. I have, I have great, he has

00:54:57.620 wonderful young men in his life, but I'm talking writ large. I'm talking about his broader peer group,

00:55:04.320 okay? And one thing, there's a couple of things that I saw, definitely, definitely alienization from

00:55:10.480 the academic world. No question. That thing that, that your, that your son said about, like, I did well

00:55:16.880 for a girl. Absolutely saw that with this sort of sense that, this sense of, this isn't communicating

00:55:24.640 to me, this isn't reaching me. Definitely saw the effects of sort of inhibiting and play. That's

00:55:31.780 another big one. You know, when I was in first grade in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, I was born in

00:55:36.400 Alabama, raised in Louisiana, Alabama, Louisiana, Tennessee to Kentucky. So all across the South.

00:55:41.500 When I was in first grade in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, we had three recesses a day.

00:55:45.140 Three recesses a day. And they were crazy and they were wild. And all growing up, you know,

00:55:50.940 we played tackle football at recess in my elementary school in Stamping Ground, Kentucky.

00:55:57.540 So there, it was just a different experience growing up. And so much more constrained play,

00:56:03.700 a sense that school wasn't really for them. A loss of the free range childhood. I know you've

00:56:10.420 talked to Jonathan Haidt in the past, but this sort of loss of the broader play-based

00:56:15.020 childhood where kids roam the neighborhood. That's what I did when I was growing up.

00:56:18.940 The number of forts I cut through thick underbrush. I mean, I, by the time I was like in middle school,

00:56:26.000 I was a master builder of rural fortifications. Like, I mean, you know, you would just go and

00:56:31.440 leave and play and come back and your parents would, my parents were great. They would make

00:56:36.320 me be home for dinner and then, what'd you do? And then I would tell them about my adventures

00:56:40.020 and boom, I'd be out again until, you know, my curfew. And so all of those things have resulted

00:56:46.220 in this sense of, the loss of all of that, this sense of growing frustration, the sense

00:56:51.440 of growing recklessness. And then you made this medication point that's very, I think,

00:56:54.880 very important. I don't want to paint with too broad a brush. There are a lot of people

00:56:58.620 for whom medication has been important, but I feel like it's been over-prescribed at a large

00:57:03.800 scale. And so then you take- There's methylphenidate. Methylphenidate is inexcusable.

00:57:08.820 Everything about it is a lie. You know, the original hypothesis, just to be clear about this,

00:57:15.060 is that there were a small subset of children who were neurologically abnormal. And if you put them

00:57:22.800 on a stimulant, which is what methylphenidate is, most common ADHD medication, it's an amphetamine,

00:57:28.740 that paradoxically calmed them down. And the fact that they calmed down was an indication of their

00:57:35.480 neurological abnormality. Okay. Every single bit of that is a preposterous lie. What methylphenidate

00:57:43.960 does is increase the probability that you will continue to attend to whatever you happen to be

00:57:50.520 attending to. It locks you on and it suppresses play behavior. And there's no evidence whatsoever

00:57:56.200 that it has a paradoxical effect on a small subset of children with attention deficit disorder.

00:58:02.260 What it does quite clearly is stop boys from playing roughly, especially the ones that are

00:58:08.760 more extroverted and, well, more extroverted, more sociable, more assertive, more talkative,

00:58:15.280 all of that, more boisterous. And so I don't think there's any evidence at all in the clinical

00:58:22.420 literature of the medium to long-term utility of attention deficit disorder medication. I don't

00:58:28.740 think there ever has been. Like I've followed that literature since 1982. In fact, the first

00:58:34.740 scrape I had in graduate school was with a professor at McGill who was at the forefront of ADHD research

00:58:43.080 and who was a methylphenidate advocate. And I criticized her papers on the grounds of

00:58:48.900 no long-term follow-up. And so, and it's some preposterous percentage of boys now are put on

00:58:58.180 methylphenidate medication. And so- When I was a kid is when it really began starting because I can

00:59:04.600 remember when some of my peers would start to go on Ritalin. And, you know, the, and that was even

00:59:13.800 back in the day when I was, I'm Gen X. I mean, we were the ultimate free range generation. I was a

00:59:18.240 latchkey kid for a little while. And so you take all of these things, less play, less ability to,

00:59:25.980 you know, the academic environment, less hospitable, less resource, recess. And then there's a lot of

00:59:31.340 downstream consequences of that. And then you say, here's a pill. No, that, that was not the path.

00:59:37.140 And, and again, again, I don't want to overstate this, but I will say that we went too far in that

00:59:42.880 direction. And there's been, we've paid, and a lot of well-meaning doctors, a lot of well-meaning parents

00:59:48.580 doing the best they could with the circumstances that they had, you know, fell into this. And,

00:59:55.340 and it's just been so tragic. And so one of the reasons why I'm such a booster

01:00:01.280 for example, of Jonathan Haidt's work is that he really wants to get us back to that play-based

01:00:05.840 childhood. And look, everything's trade-offs. You know, it's, it's an interesting irony that

01:00:11.560 the latchkey kid generation became the helicopter parents. The Gen X generation, we were the latchkey

01:00:17.620 kids, and it's my generation that helic, that hovers over their kids. And, you know, even more than

01:00:22.700 helicopter, the snowplow parent that like clears the way. And I think one of the reasons is some of the

01:00:27.980 excesses of the latchkey world were really negative. I mean, there's a lot of bad stuff

01:00:33.680 that happened in that total free-range environment. But then there was this overcorrection that went all

01:00:39.100 the way to tightly managed play. And, you know, not to refer too much to Jonathan, but there's,

01:00:47.660 in his book, The Coddling of the American Mind with my dear friend, Greg Lukianoff, was really

01:00:52.520 important. And one of the ways that I, that really helped open my eyes and helped me put a finger on

01:00:57.840 what was happening was offering this contrast. Like, in my generation, how young were you the

01:01:03.560 first time you left a house without supervision? And for me, the answer is I was really young,

01:01:09.080 maybe seven, eight. I'm not out of the question that it was even six years old. But you ask parents

01:01:15.900 now, and they might raise their hand and say, well, when my kid was 14, you know, we tried to raise

01:01:21.320 like free-range kids. And it was difficult even in rural Tennessee, because we would, we would get

01:01:26.860 to the point where we would tell parents as they were coming over, they were letting their kid come

01:01:31.040 over to play. We would say, look, we have a philosophy where we let our kids run around the

01:01:35.440 neighborhood and play. Is that okay with you? Because we wanted to pre-clear that. Because some parents

01:01:40.960 would say, I would really rather not if that's okay. That is not something that would come up in

01:01:45.520 1984. What kind of neighborhood? What kind of neighborhood was that? It was a rural Tennessee

01:01:51.140 neighborhood. We lived, literally across the street from us was just open pasture. And behind us was

01:01:59.060 another street with a cul-de-sac. And then we moved from there to a, the very opposite of that, one of

01:02:04.880 these very densely planned communities, right side out of Nashville, outside of Nashville. Both of them

01:02:10.400 remarkably safe. But both of them very different. One was very outdoors. One was very much like,

01:02:18.300 if you were going to run through the woods, you're going to encounter a bunch of deer. You were going

01:02:21.540 to encounter turkeys. You were going to encounter, you know, there were coyotes in the hills.

01:02:26.280 And the other one was, well, you're going to encounter a coffee shop and a pizzeria. But in both

01:02:32.420 of them, some parents, some parents, and this is Tennessee, red Tennessee, some parents were totally

01:02:38.580 cool with the free range. But a lot were absolutely not. In both situations. In both situations. In both

01:02:44.620 situations. I wonder, tell me what you think about this. I mean, when these massive cultural changes

01:02:51.420 take place, it's never a straightforward thing to specify why. I mean, in the neighborhood that I grew

01:02:58.220 up in, and so I was a child in the 70s. So I was born in 62. So, you know, I was, had my young

01:03:09.000 childhood in the 60s and my middle childhood in the 70s. At that point, I grew up in a little town,

01:03:17.680 let's say from the time I was nine till I graduated from high school, town of about 3,000 people,

01:03:24.440 Fairview, Alberta. At that time, the neighborhoods were, there were a lot of women who were still at

01:03:34.060 home in the neighborhoods. You know, and so the neighborhoods were established in known territory

01:03:43.280 because there was a, they were regulated by a network of interconnected women. And so when you had

01:03:53.320 your kids outside to play, outside wasn't hostile territory defined by the presence of no one but

01:04:01.360 strangers, it was territory defined by the watchful eye of a loose network of women. And that all

01:04:08.840 disappeared in, really, in the 1980s. And it isn't obvious how that can be put back. Like, the question

01:04:15.780 is, why did people start to become fearful of the neighborhood, given that there was no radical

01:04:23.880 increase in the probability that your child was going to be abducted by, you know, some psychopath?

01:04:31.620 That's a really good question. You know, we human beings are generally not, we're often not very good

01:04:38.620 at proper threat calibration. And so, you know, you, in the 1980s, you began to have the stories like

01:04:45.140 the missing kids on the milk cartons. Yeah. You got that just when women entered the workforce

01:04:50.660 en masse. You know, those two things coincided. You also got the sexual predation and satanic ritual

01:04:58.640 abuse conspiracies in daycare. You know, and to me, that was all a manifestation of unconscious

01:05:04.940 concern about having your children, like, radically unsupervised, not just unsupervised.

01:05:11.820 Or just abused and exploited. Yeah, I remember the satanic panic very well.

01:05:16.260 It was terrible.

01:05:17.660 It was weird and, yeah, it was very dark. And so, you have this situation. And I think,

01:05:25.580 so, when I'm coming of age in the late 70s, early 80s, you had this situation where, and I used the

01:05:31.300 phrase latchkey kid before, and there was this kind of gap between the home situation that you

01:05:41.580 described where the dad was at work and moms were all over the neighborhood, the two parents working,

01:05:47.940 and then the two parents working the way things are now, where there's loads of afterschool

01:05:52.460 activities. If your kids are in sports, it's like all consuming. And there's just much more,

01:05:57.200 especially for middle-class and upper-middle-class families. There's just activity after activity

01:06:01.080 after activity. So, there isn't this latchkey phenomenon as much. And so, I think one of the

01:06:07.980 things that happened in that latchkey gap, those latchkey years, for some kids, it was awesome. For

01:06:14.440 me, it was fantastic. I loved roaming the neighborhood, but I was also a kind of nerdy,

01:06:19.700 responsible, straight-as-an-arrow kid. So, when I was a latchkey kid, one of the things I started

01:06:25.160 was neighborhood chess tournaments. So, if that doesn't tell you I was a raging nerd

01:06:29.340 in middle school, I don't know what does. But I started like chess tournaments, and people would

01:06:35.500 come to my house and play chess, or I would just walk outside with the basketball and start bouncing

01:06:40.040 the basketball, and people would come from all over the neighborhood to play basketball.

01:06:43.780 And that, for me, was great. But I also know that there were kids who were violently bullied,

01:06:48.400 just terribly bullied in their neighborhoods. There were girls who were assaulted in their neighborhoods.

01:06:52.660 kids. And so, not everybody's experience of that latchkey generation, we kind of lionized

01:06:58.120 it on Twitter, but not everybody's experience in that time period was good. And so, a lot of

01:07:02.760 those kids who had that bad experience then come of age, and they vow, my kids will not experience

01:07:11.000 this. And I would also, you know, this is a podcast, so we can do some sort of like speculation-free

01:07:18.300 association. But I do also wonder if the part of the delay in having children, if part of the

01:07:27.480 anxiety of the moment is that you have a lot of people who are not wanting to have kids, and the

01:07:34.280 fewer number of children, is they don't want to have kids until they're ready to be able to make sure

01:07:39.520 everything is okay. Yeah. You know, I think, David, what we should do is we should close this section

01:07:48.020 off. We should talk about exactly that on the Daily Wire side. Okay. Yeah, because I've been

01:07:54.740 speaking with my wife a lot. She's particularly concerned about the plight of young women,

01:08:01.680 and the fact that if men, if young men lack mentors, I would say the crisis is actually even

01:08:13.640 more acute among young women on the mentorship front. I think- Especially when you add in the

01:08:18.400 pornography element to this, where young men lack mentors and are being acculturated into

01:08:23.300 relationships through early exposure to pornography, and we wonder why there are major relationship

01:08:29.700 problems in this country? Yeah. Well, that's another thing that we can talk about on the Daily

01:08:34.300 Wire side. So I want to talk to you, if you would, about some ideas about timeline for life. How old are

01:08:41.780 you? 56. 56. So we're roughly the same age. I'm 63. And so I guess you were a kid more in the 80s,

01:08:52.420 and I was a kid a little bit more in the 70s, but it's not that much different.

01:08:57.440 Um, so let's do that. Let's close this off. Um, the more discussion that can be had about

01:09:06.800 the utility in encouraging young people in general. Now we got to figure out exactly what that means.

01:09:16.260 That's what we'll talk about on the Daily Wire side. What does the proper time course of a life

01:09:20.900 look like? So for everybody, yeah, because this delay that you described, that's what triggered

01:09:28.280 that for me. So for everybody watching and listening, join us on the Daily Wire and we'll continue this

01:09:36.600 discussion focusing on what a optimized timeline for life might look like from a developmental

01:09:45.040 perspective. And so in the meantime, I'd like to thank you for speaking with me today and to help and for

01:09:53.260 your, um, work on the cultural front, bringing the plight of young men to broader attention, especially

01:10:02.560 among people on the left, because that's of crucial importance. And I'm very pleased to hear that your

01:10:09.040 your work has had some broad impact. Maybe that'll continue to be the case. Uh, the next $20 million

01:10:16.400 the Democrats spend might be, might be better spent in consequence. So, um, any closing words?

01:10:25.100 No, I've really enjoyed the conversation. I, this is an absolute passion of mine. It's been that way for

01:10:30.540 a long time is this idea that we have so many millions of men who are young men who are really

01:10:36.140 struggling and how can we reach them? How can we inspire them with a virtuous vision for what it

01:10:42.300 means to be a man? Because I'm convinced it's only the virtuous vision that's ultimately going to be

01:10:46.740 fulfilling. And, uh, you know, look, uh, it's a, it's a, it's a real pleasure to talk to somebody who's

01:10:52.340 been thinking about this, eating, drinking, breathing this for a very long time. And I have appreciated

01:10:58.640 the good, the good fruit that I have seen in young men in my life, uh, and that I've seen that have

01:11:06.840 had as a result of some of your writings and some of your teaching. And I, I, I do appreciate that.

01:11:12.920 And I think people should appreciate that. Well, thank you very much, sir. And to all you

01:11:17.800 watching and listening, your time and attention is much appreciated.

01:11:21.400 Um, join us on the Daily Wire side to continue the conversation.

01:11:28.640 Thank you very much, sir.

560. When Does Masculinity Become Toxic？｜ David French

Summary

Transcript

The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast

560. When Does Masculinity Become Toxic？ ｜ David French

Summary

Transcript

560. When Does Masculinity Become Toxic？｜ David French