The Matt Walsh Show - Ep. 1541 - Every Young Man Who Feels Lost Should Listen To This

00:00:00.220 Joined today by Dr. Jacob Imam, who's a writer, speaker, founder of the College of St. Joseph

00:00:06.140 the Worker, and a guy who talks a lot about an issue that I focus on a lot as well over

00:00:11.480 the years, which is why I was interested in sitting down with him, and that's the issue

00:00:15.620 of masculinity in the culture, and specifically why so many young men seem to have lost drive

00:00:24.500 and ambition that used to define being a young man, and how do we get that back?

00:00:31.240 How do we reclaim it?

00:00:31.980 So, Dr. Jacob Imam, thanks for joining us.

00:00:35.020 It's a pleasure.

00:00:36.060 You know, when I was a young man, which I don't know if I qualify anymore, but when I was in

00:00:41.160 my early 20s, I could think about that time for me being really just being overflowing

00:00:46.700 with ambition, I can remember, and still much the same way, but especially at that time,

00:00:51.240 and just kind of working obsessively towards my goals, but then you look at, and it's

00:00:57.720 not the case, we don't want to generalize too much, but many young men today, and I don't

00:01:02.840 know if this is just me being an old fuddy-duddy, but I don't see that as much in many young men.

00:01:08.120 There doesn't seem to be that same drive, that same just like, I need to get out there and

00:01:11.800 do something.

00:01:12.980 Have you noticed that, and what do you attribute that to?

00:01:15.740 I think it's impossible not to notice that today.

00:01:19.260 I mean, everybody from the Karens and the bureaucratic white liberals that scream at young men for 0.81

00:01:25.760 being incompetent and worthless, everybody too, the Jordan Peterson's who are actually 0.63

00:01:29.920 giving them something positive and a constructive way forward, is noticing that and saying that. 0.87

00:01:36.080 And obviously there's multi-layered, you know, reasons for why this is, but no doubt a huge

00:01:42.700 part of it is that there is no activity of young people today.

00:01:47.260 You only have a character in your soul from the actions that you take.

00:01:53.440 You know, characters comes from that Greek word that means like an engraving and a mark.

00:01:57.280 You know, the way that your soul actually has a particular character about it, a particular

00:02:01.020 identity to it, is because you've actually engraved it with your actions.

00:02:07.360 And what have we handed young people today?

00:02:09.980 We've handed them phones, we've handed them computers, we've told them to sit in their

00:02:13.300 rooms functionally through our marketing and our advertisement, just stay there, don't

00:02:19.000 move, don't do anything.

00:02:21.020 And so I think that the, you know, the shape of their bodies is much like the shape of their

00:02:26.060 souls, very much blob-like, undefined, not all that interesting, right?

00:02:31.760 And so part of the resurrection of masculinity is certainly going to have to come through

00:02:38.380 doing real things, transforming the world so that it visibly looks different.

00:02:46.040 We just haven't even taught them that that's a good thing to do or how to achieve it.

00:02:52.140 How do we get to this point?

00:02:53.520 How do we end up with the blob-like souls?

00:02:55.900 The blob souls.

00:02:57.540 How did we get to having blob souls?

00:02:59.280 Yeah, how did that happen?

00:03:00.260 Yeah.

00:03:01.640 I think that there's a problem when you don't have a lodestar, you don't have a compass of

00:03:08.340 what you're actually trying to shoot for and achieve.

00:03:12.400 And I firmly believe that if holiness is not that lodestar, if that's not your north star,

00:03:18.600 then you're going to keep going through these mindless cycles where one generation after

00:03:23.900 the next looks up at their dad and say, what on earth were you doing?

00:03:26.720 And their children are going to be just as right and justifiably saying, you were wrong. 0.95

00:03:32.320 This was silly, just as much as they were of their fathers.

00:03:37.540 I see this also, you know, in so much in young men today that they are searching to even have 0.94

00:03:45.320 an identity, right?

00:03:47.260 I think this is something that screams out everything from them trying to dress in a certain

00:03:54.080 way or post in a certain way, even their taking on of a certain ideology, whether that be left or

00:03:59.980 right or certain brand within, is a way in which they're trying to be a person, have an identifiable

00:04:07.560 mark about them.

00:04:09.780 But you don't get an identity just by claiming one.

00:04:12.800 The only way you ever get an identity is by giving of yourself to something real, to

00:04:18.740 something greater than yourself.

00:04:20.820 It's only at that point that you ever start to have a character that's worth having.

00:04:28.160 Do you think a man, a young man needs to get married and have kids in order to, do you 1.00

00:04:32.780 think that's a necessary component?

00:04:34.240 I think.

00:04:35.260 Much of the time?

00:04:36.660 Yeah.

00:04:37.000 I think it helps tremendously.

00:04:39.500 You definitely have to have some vocation that is pulling you out of yourself.

00:04:43.400 I mean, when your kid screams at 2 a.m., it's not like, great, I'm so happy that I'm giving

00:04:48.760 myself right now, right?

00:04:50.100 I mean, that should be my mentality.

00:04:51.720 But you didn't choose the moment of giving yourself.

00:04:53.920 That's what I'm trying to say, right?

00:04:55.640 You don't plan out, you know, I'm done with work at 5 and there, I'm going to plan out the

00:05:00.100 next two hours of serving at the soup kitchen.

00:05:01.960 As great as that is, you know, it's when you're in a true relationship with somebody

00:05:08.920 that you don't get to determine when you are called to give of yourself or not.

00:05:14.300 And that's what marriage provides.

00:05:15.520 And that's what kids provide better than anything in the world, I think, at that.

00:05:20.760 What do you think about that?

00:05:22.700 Yeah, well, I agree with your take on it.

00:05:26.080 And that's one of the problems with saying that, as you point out, that, well, you don't

00:05:33.420 need to, you know, in order to be in service to others, you don't need to get married and

00:05:37.840 start a family.

00:05:39.520 Well, there are vocations.

00:05:41.160 I mean, the priesthood is one.

00:05:42.580 So the way that I look at it is that every man is called to fatherhood.

00:05:49.280 I think every man is called to fatherhood.

00:05:50.720 And for the vast majority of men, that will take on the literal biological, you know,

00:05:57.100 sentence.

00:05:58.400 For some, there's the religious life.

00:06:01.280 But I don't think any man is called to just live entirely for himself.

00:06:05.260 Now, of course, the pushback that you hear is on the family piece and the marriage piece

00:06:11.980 specifically is, well, it's a rigged game these days, you know, getting married in particular.

00:06:17.620 It's a, it's rigged against men.

00:06:20.580 The family court system is stacked against you.

00:06:24.260 You go out and get married.

00:06:27.420 And let's, who knows, your wife ends up being a terrible person, cheats on you, takes the 1.00

00:06:33.400 kids, takes all your money, and your life is left in ruins.

00:06:38.060 And so why even do it?

00:06:41.100 Why take the risk? 1.00

00:06:42.860 You know, you're a sucker if you take the risk. 1.00

00:06:44.900 This is what I hear. 1.00

00:06:45.480 So how do you, how do you justify being a sucker and going off and having kids and getting 0.99

00:06:49.880 married? 1.00

00:06:51.140 You know, I just think that's the most ridiculous thing that anybody could possibly say. 0.97

00:06:55.580 I mean, it's not even a real thought. 0.92

00:06:57.160 It's like, okay, great.

00:06:58.120 You don't want to have a life of love at all.

00:07:00.560 Great.

00:07:01.040 That's wonderful.

00:07:02.020 This is why there's no sexual, like real sexual attraction today, I think as well.

00:07:06.020 Right?

00:07:06.460 Because all, like what you just said, it was like a whole list of calculations.

00:07:10.140 You know, I got to check the box.

00:07:11.600 I got to do my background check on this woman, like see what she's done, like what's her 1.00

00:07:16.460 resume.

00:07:17.060 I mean, mainly it's girls doing this to guys, right, too, is saying, you know, how much

00:07:21.640 is he making and stuff.

00:07:22.620 That's not talking about getting swept off your feet.

00:07:25.080 I mean, at that point, you're just talking about research, right?

00:07:28.460 But if you really want to have the opportunity to love someone, like truly give yourself an

00:07:40.080 act, and in that act, become somebody, finally, like become somebody yourself, then that has

00:07:47.800 to have serendipity.

00:07:49.360 It has to have risk.

00:07:51.540 You know, being swept off your feet is before a person that stands out.

00:07:56.380 I mean, I think about the line from the Song of Songs, when the woman's singing, that like

00:08:02.800 an apple tree amongst the trees of the forest is my lover, right?

00:08:07.540 I mean, there's a million different trees out there, but there's only one that stands out

00:08:12.340 to that person.

00:08:13.580 Not necessarily to everybody, but to that person.

00:08:16.980 I was like, great.

00:08:17.500 If you don't want to have anybody know you as standing out amongst the trees of the forest,

00:08:24.100 and go ahead and be lonely.

00:08:26.960 You'll also be a waste on the rest of society as well, by the way, because you've never practiced

00:08:32.340 how to be charitable and this perfect opportunity to, so that you'll never be able to take that

00:08:37.880 habit and to actually die for something great one day either.

00:08:41.940 And you're also, you're embracing a life of misery in order, because you're afraid that

00:08:47.280 you're, that you'll be miserable.

00:08:48.720 Well, you know, and isn't that the larger problem that's going on?

00:08:52.300 I just, at the root of all tyranny is fear, right?

00:08:57.380 And I think this is a big problem of why men do feel humiliated today.

00:09:02.780 I mean, we talk about men being purposeless.

00:09:04.320 I think they're also just being, you know, humiliated.

00:09:06.760 Talk about those Karens, talk about the Jordan Petersons, but it's not just those people that

00:09:11.480 are saying it.

00:09:12.000 Everybody knows it. 0.91

00:09:13.420 I mean, a guy does not need to be told by somebody else that he's a wimp. 0.98

00:09:17.780 He already knows that he's a wimp. 0.99

00:09:19.560 He's, he's lazy. 1.00

00:09:20.800 He's sloppy. 1.00

00:09:21.780 He's porn addicted. 1.00

00:09:23.440 You know, he's a joke. 0.99

00:09:25.080 You know, he knows that about himself though, as well.

00:09:27.920 And in part, because there's so much fear, like he has actually been dominated by the world

00:09:35.920 and all of its interests over and against him.

00:09:39.220 And he's not able to show any resilience against them.

00:09:42.980 I mean, I think about this, you know, in part because, uh, of what we're trying to, to do

00:09:50.120 to like, actually, how do we get a guy out of that situation?

00:09:54.060 Like, how do, how do we raise him up out of that state?

00:09:58.460 You know, and, and a large part of it is going to have to be, he needs to fight against everything

00:10:03.800 that's opposing him.

00:10:05.100 I mean, think about corporate interest today.

00:10:07.740 I mean, he won't, corporate interest wants the guy to be lazy.

00:10:11.500 He wants the guy to have no skills.

00:10:13.800 He wants to be, have the guy not know how to defend, guard, and protect other people.

00:10:20.080 Why?

00:10:20.940 Because then that guy needs to spend more money on stuff.

00:10:24.440 He can't do it himself.

00:10:26.740 He can't do his plumbing.

00:10:27.760 He has to pay somebody to do that.

00:10:29.360 You know, he can't grow his food.

00:10:30.800 He has to pay somebody else to do that.

00:10:32.740 You know, he can't educate his kids.

00:10:34.220 He has to have somebody else do that.

00:10:35.880 Right?

00:10:36.700 I mean, take whatever scenario you want.

00:10:39.400 If you're being set up in the system of corporate interest where people say, you know, it's more

00:10:45.120 profitable for you to be skill-less than not, it's not going to be a lot of motivation.

00:10:52.520 I mean, everything in that, in society is then going to be oriented to keep him where he is.

00:10:59.760 He needs to fight back.

00:11:01.000 He needs to stop being afraid.

00:11:02.100 Shouldn't he also, and I want to get your reaction to this, because you talk about the fear, and fear is natural.

00:11:10.720 There's always going to be fear, you know.

00:11:12.620 It's whether or not you let it dominate you.

00:11:14.560 And also, I think you have to be willing to take risks.

00:11:18.100 And I think that's, in my opinion, that's one of the major roles that a father can play in the life of his sons in particular, also his daughters, but in particular his sons, is to teach them how and show them how to take good risks.

00:11:36.280 Now, there are foolish risks that a person could take, but there's also good risks, and a man has to be willing to take risks.

00:11:41.980 So when I hear from young men, well, if I get married, here's the long list of awful things that might happen as a result.

00:11:49.700 How do I know that's not going to happen?

00:11:51.660 You know, if I go and get married to this woman and we have kids, how do I know that 15 years from now she's not going to go and run off with some guy she met at the gym and leave me in ruins?

00:12:00.020 And the answer, of course, is that, well, there's a whole lot you can do to guard yourself against that.

00:12:05.780 There's a whole lot.

00:12:06.520 It's not just a roll of the dice.

00:12:08.460 When people talk about the divorce rate is whatever, they claim 40%.

00:12:12.900 It does not mean that if you get married that your chance of getting divorced is 40%.

00:12:16.980 That's not how the statistics work.

00:12:18.880 There's a lot you can do to guard yourself against it.

00:12:20.720 But how do you know for a fact those terrible things aren't going to happen?

00:12:26.580 You don't.

00:12:28.180 You don't know that for a fact.

00:12:30.020 Anything good you do in your life, it's possible.

00:12:34.180 You can't look in a crystal ball and see exactly what's going to happen to you over the next 50 years of your life.

00:12:40.080 There's always a risk.

00:12:41.300 And when you give yourself to someone who you love and you give your life to them completely, there is a risk.

00:12:47.400 Of course there is.

00:12:48.640 But nothing good or worthwhile has ever been achieved by anyone ever in life without taking a risk.

00:12:54.900 And so that seems to be the breakdown with a lot of young men.

00:12:57.680 And it's like when you, yeah, yeah, okay.

00:13:00.100 Yes, it is a risk.

00:13:01.840 But if you're not willing to take any risk with your life at all, you will literally never do anything.

00:13:08.440 Yeah, that's certainly true.

00:13:10.260 I think one other question for them to ask, if they're like seriously in this predicament and they're not just lying to themselves and thinking about how to think about risk.

00:13:20.240 You have to ask yourself the question, if this fails, was it still a good thing for me to do, right?

00:13:29.060 Did I become a better person for just trying it out, right?

00:13:33.140 And, you know, of course you have to do your calculation, figure, you know, as much as is warranted about figuring out who this person is that you're marrying or, you know, building your financial model, making sure that the numbers make sense before you take the leap into a new startup or something like that.

00:13:51.600 But, you know, ultimately you have to say, would I regret the time?

00:13:58.380 You know, would I become a better person even if this flopped?

00:14:02.380 And I think that's like the ultimate litmus test.

00:14:05.800 Everything else is absolutely true.

00:14:07.180 You can't get through life without risk.

00:14:09.240 But that's how you have to decide whether or not it's a good one.

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00:14:59.200 One of the great things about having kids is that it's one of those things that once you do it in life, and you have a child, and you love your child, you can never really fully regret.

00:15:14.940 You can't regret.

00:15:16.420 There's a lot of things I did in my life prior to having kids that, a lot of mistakes that I made.

00:15:21.440 Like, I can't really live in regret about anything because I have my kids, you know.

00:15:29.080 And so even to your point, if you go off and you start a family and you have children, even if something goes horribly wrong, and there's other ways.

00:15:40.220 It's not just, oh, your wife might leave you.

00:15:42.060 Maybe someone gets sick.

00:15:42.880 Maybe a child dies, God forbid.

00:15:43.960 But it's one of those things that once you've experienced it, you can never really regret it.

00:15:50.460 Because you've been, you're experiencing something that's so objectively good that even if things go off the rails somehow in some unforeseen way, you can't have regret.

00:16:00.400 Yeah.

00:16:01.420 Yeah, no, we would call you a monster if you regretted that, actually.

00:16:04.800 Yeah.

00:16:06.660 Going back just specifically to work for a minute.

00:16:09.460 Yeah.

00:16:09.740 Because the pushback on that that I get all the time when I talk about this, and I'm sure you've heard the same thing, talk about the value of work.

00:16:17.400 You need to go out there and work.

00:16:20.400 And life, life is work anyway.

00:16:23.420 You know, and if you want to live, you have to work.

00:16:25.080 And if you're not going to work, it means, only way to live and not work is to basically live off of someone who is working for you.

00:16:31.540 Either way, work sustains life.

00:16:32.960 What I hear is, hey, man, you know, you're telling young men to go out and be wage slaves and to be corporate pawns and to live, to just embrace this life of meaningless drudgery.

00:16:46.260 I want more than that out of life, you know.

00:16:49.860 What else are they going to do?

00:16:52.300 Okay, well, I mean, look, it is interesting.

00:16:54.920 If you go back and take a look at the ancient world and what they all thought the creation of the world was like, they all said the same thing.

00:17:03.500 I mean, think about the Atrahasis, which is like the Babylonian myth.

00:17:07.740 It's like bestseller in the ancient world.

00:17:09.660 Like if you were a young Christian kid growing up today, your parents probably read to you the beginning of the Bible.

00:17:15.200 In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

00:17:16.940 If you were a good Babylonian boy 3,000 years ago, 4,000 years ago, you were being read this myth, which opens up,

00:17:25.400 in the beginning, the gods and not the men bore the load and handled the drudgery.

00:17:31.940 They're complaining about work right from the beginning, right?

00:17:35.580 And you look around at pretty much any ancient myth, and they all say the exact same thing.

00:17:41.340 Like work is a bear.

00:17:43.520 It's a drudgery.

00:17:44.220 It literally kills our desire to be free.

00:17:49.700 It kills our ability to be free.

00:17:51.720 And then you go and look at the Bible, which is unique in the ancient volumes of creation myths,

00:18:03.760 when it says that it was before the fall God gave the gift of work to man,

00:18:09.800 and actually does so right next to the gift of marriage.

00:18:14.220 It's before the fall as well.

00:18:16.100 Subduing and having dominion over the world is said right next to be fruitful and multiply.

00:18:23.600 And you ask the question, okay, well, what's the reason for those two things being connected?

00:18:28.680 You start there before even moving to why work is a joy and not a drudgery.

00:18:34.860 Well, you think about marriage, and you start with something that is material, like your bodies, right?

00:18:41.940 And children emerge from it.

00:18:44.280 You know, just as you're saying, just something objectively good.

00:18:46.840 I mean, the spiritual emerges out of it a new soul, right?

00:18:50.340 It's something that cannot just be reduced to pure nature.

00:18:54.520 And then look over at the side of work.

00:18:58.720 Well, every work begins with a thought.

00:19:02.300 You know, if you want to build a house, you first imagine the house in your mind.

00:19:06.120 You first plan it out.

00:19:08.220 That's not reducible to pure matter either.

00:19:11.660 A thought is a spiritual reality, right?

00:19:14.400 It's a spiritual phenomenon.

00:19:16.100 And then you manifest it in the world.

00:19:21.440 This is the original glory that is revealed in work, next to marriage, no less, that it

00:19:28.440 actually is a way of bridging heaven and earth together.

00:19:34.340 And when God commands Adam in Genesis to till and to keep the garden, he's using words that

00:19:42.300 are more often used in the Old Testament, abad v'shamar, to speak about the Levitical duties

00:19:49.520 of the priests, that they are supposed to be ritually keeping the liturgy, praying around

00:19:57.000 the ark, keeping the law of God.

00:20:00.780 And so, okay, what does that mean?

00:20:02.860 What does that unveil to us?

00:20:04.100 Well, namely that what our work is supposed to be is, again, like marriage, a bridge,

00:20:12.180 between heaven and earth, a way of transforming the world so that it actually matters, insofar

00:20:18.800 as we're welcoming God into a relationship that he's already welcomed us into.

00:20:24.560 And this is why I say that if you don't have holiness or this transcendent understanding

00:20:28.900 of relation built and nestled in love itself, then it is going to be dissatisfying.

00:20:35.620 You are going to just feel like a wage slave.

00:20:38.080 You're just going to be a corporate pawn, or you're going to feel that way.

00:20:40.920 Of course, there are terrible jobs that do bear more drudgery, and that's, of course,

00:20:45.920 what happens after the fall.

00:20:48.040 But if you don't have that fundamental understanding of what work is actually for, you're just going

00:20:54.900 to make every good job a drudgery.

00:20:58.200 Everything's going to be a waste.

00:20:59.360 I think, you know, when you do find, when Adam and Eve eat the fruit of the tree, the knowledge

00:21:06.940 of good and evil, and God gives them these sets of curses, those aren't curses really at

00:21:11.780 all in the way that we think about them.

00:21:13.200 It's just pure punishments.

00:21:14.940 I think they're pedagogical.

00:21:16.120 I think they're instructing man into a new way of seeing the world.

00:21:22.520 I mean, man in the garden didn't have to eat.

00:21:24.320 I mean, God put them in the garden, gave them all the fruit to eat from.

00:21:28.360 Work was something that was inherently disassociated from the necessities of life, or getting the

00:21:35.360 necessities of life.

00:21:36.780 He didn't need to eat.

00:21:38.040 He didn't need to clothe himself.

00:21:40.020 I think the temperature was pretty good, you know?

00:21:41.940 What they were ultimately doing was seeing work, was taking on work as a way of building

00:21:52.100 that relationship between heaven and earth, and also building their own souls, actually

00:21:57.540 engraving their souls with a new type of character through their activity.

00:22:01.780 That's the original purpose of what work is for.

00:22:04.640 It's not for getting the necessities.

00:22:06.580 Now, after the fall, it becomes that so that we would continue to work, so that we would

00:22:12.080 continue to engrave our souls, so as to continue to grow, actually take steps in the pursuit

00:22:20.620 of virtue.

00:22:22.500 So even if you have a bad job, that's what you have to be focusing on.

00:22:26.960 But I would say, pick a better job.

00:22:29.740 There's some bad ones out there.

00:22:31.760 There's some good ones, too.

00:22:32.600 I'm just thinking, I think one of the, maybe some of the confusion here is the distinction

00:22:40.560 between a job and work, because the way that people talk about it these days is, they talk

00:22:52.240 about it like, well, jobs are an invention of the industrial age, and it's kind of the

00:22:58.480 office space, just like going to the office and moving numbers around for no reason.

00:23:05.560 And if only we didn't have that, if only we didn't have this capitalistic system, then

00:23:10.680 we wouldn't have to deal, it's almost like we would live in a world with no work.

00:23:14.700 But it's like, well, no, actually, there was arguably, not even arguably, there was a lot

00:23:19.400 more work to be done prior to the industrial age.

00:23:22.580 So we actually, when people complain these days about, well, I got to go to the nine to five

00:23:26.660 job, you see these TikTok videos of people that are often, you know, Gen Z, young people

00:23:31.600 in tears because they've just discovered the drudgery of work.

00:23:37.280 And they're talking about, oh, I got to go to work for eight hours.

00:23:39.800 I get home at five.

00:23:40.820 And it's like, that, do you understand that you're, you stand in very rare company in the

00:23:49.220 whole history of humanity that you actually have multiple hours a day by your own telling

00:23:55.720 where you have no work to do at all?

00:23:58.420 Like that, that's very rare for people even on earth today, but certainly historically,

00:24:03.460 you go back prior to the industrial age, that like didn't exist unless you were a pharaoh

00:24:06.940 or, you know, the, you know, the emperor of Rome.

00:24:10.440 Well, kind of, I mean, I, I'm not going to defend them at all.

00:24:13.840 I'm going to, I'm going to hammer on them, but I think a better critique of them needs

00:24:18.600 to give them some due, right?

00:24:20.740 And you actually do find in the middle ages, I mean, we know the number of, number of days

00:24:25.440 per year that like Benedictine monks worked, right?

00:24:29.500 And, and it's actually about half the year sitting around, sometimes ranging from about

00:24:35.640 158 to 172 days a year that they would actually be working.

00:24:40.020 So there, there are occasions in history where we find an unbelievable reduction of work because

00:24:46.900 systems are working so much better.

00:24:49.140 Well, I guess I would, this is the distinction of, so what do we, what are we calling work?

00:24:53.060 Yeah, great.

00:24:54.460 So what I mean is if you're in the middle ages, it would seem to me impossible that in most

00:25:01.840 cases that you could go through even two days without doing some kind of work, at least

00:25:06.640 how we would define it today, because you got to eat.

00:25:09.120 You have to churn the butter.

00:25:11.020 You got like anything like that.

00:25:12.400 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:25:12.820 And so today we're in a situation where when you get home from work.

00:25:17.120 You just open the refrigerator, you're saying.

00:25:18.500 Right.

00:25:18.740 Everything is just there.

00:25:20.220 You can actually just do no work and sit around where I think prior, I think, you know,

00:25:25.240 hundreds of years.

00:25:25.660 Hence the blob-like character of, yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:25:28.180 Yeah.

00:25:28.640 No, I think the distinction you made between work and a job is, is gold, right?

00:25:33.000 I mean, when we think about a job, we think about something that hopefully you don't mind

00:25:37.240 too much doing, you know, that it pays well.

00:25:40.280 And that's really the first thing that you say about it is that, you know, if you have

00:25:43.400 a good job, you define it as, I get good pay and I don't mind it too much, right?

00:25:47.420 Maybe you even say, I find it interesting.

00:25:50.160 But a work, that's, when you use that word, it feels like it has more of a heavy sense

00:25:55.300 of a vocational aspect to it.

00:25:58.160 My, my godfather was a guy named Walter Hooper, who served as C.S. Lewis's secretary at the

00:26:05.180 end of his life.

00:26:07.060 And when C.S. Lewis died, he was wondering, you know, what do I do now?

00:26:11.660 And a dear friend of Lewis's kind of looked him squarely in the eye and said, I, I think

00:26:18.680 there's a work for you to do here.

00:26:22.080 And that had always stuck with Walter to the, to the last, last of his days, that there was

00:26:28.920 a work set apart for me to accomplish.

00:26:33.080 And he did it, you know, and that, that I think is when we start to look beyond the

00:26:41.160 necessities, right, of after the fall, having to work so that you eat and seeing beyond it

00:26:48.700 to, this is fundamentally about the transformation of the world so that I can welcome more people

00:26:55.140 into this relationship with God and myself as well.

00:27:00.580 And yeah, and I think when, when you're looking at a complaint against, against kind of the

00:27:07.780 lethargy that is prolific today, it, it's, I think the complaint arises because they don't

00:27:13.880 know what their work is and what they're supposed to do.

00:27:16.720 And they're going to hate their job until they've squared themselves with that more fundamental

00:27:21.680 question, I think.

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00:27:51.360 Yeah, I guess if you don't have any sense of why you're doing it or what the job is for,

00:27:57.600 then that is, it's like a, almost a torture.

00:28:00.480 I think that, like, there's two opposite ends of the spectrum.

00:28:06.520 And in my mind, a life where there's just nothing to do at all is torturous.

00:28:12.680 On the other hand, a life where there's a lot to do, but you don't know what it's for.

00:28:17.920 You know, it's like the cool hand, you ever see Cool Hand Luke, the movie?

00:28:22.920 I missed that.

00:28:24.080 It's a good one.

00:28:25.520 But in that movie, in order to punish Luke, Paul Newman's character, the warden has him

00:28:31.880 dig a hole and then fill it back in and then just dig it again.

00:28:37.800 Sisyphus, yeah.

00:28:38.480 Right.

00:28:38.780 And there's no reason for it, just to do it.

00:28:41.440 And I guess for a lot of people, that's what their jobs kind of feel like because they don't

00:28:44.300 have any sense of, and in particular, if you don't have a family, you don't have a wife

00:28:48.520 and kids, they don't have this spiritual sense, you don't have a faith, it does feel a bit

00:28:53.600 like, what is any of this even for?

00:28:56.960 You know what?

00:28:57.520 I think there's the other side of it, too, is that their bosses or the guys that founded

00:29:02.020 the company might not have an answer to that question as well.

00:29:05.260 And therefore, of course, the type of jobs that those guys are then building, designing,

00:29:10.140 creating are going to occasion that sense of, you know, hopelessness in them.

00:29:17.320 And so, again, like, you got to give credit, but of course, that's not the only job out

00:29:21.340 there.

00:29:22.080 There's just an enormous amount of good work to be done where you can be your own keeper.

00:29:27.220 I mean, this is a part, of course, at this point, I'm biased, but this is originally why

00:29:32.580 I chose to help serve the skilled trades is specifically because you can be your own owner.

00:29:41.580 Like, you can actually fulfill the American dream of being in charge of your life and

00:29:48.360 having ownership over the means of production, if they want to keep using that same language

00:29:53.860 that you're alluding to.

00:29:55.820 At that point, you can be responsible, right?

00:30:00.300 I mean, in a real sense where you can't if you're just clocking in and clocking out.

00:30:04.980 I mean, when Jefferson, Madison, they were like thinking about how on earth the republic

00:30:09.420 was going to exist and perpetuate, they were thinking about the Yohan farmer, right?

00:30:16.500 I mean, it's like the small farmer who could defend the republic and he could take good charge

00:30:23.220 of the republic precisely because he could take charge of himself, that he was independent

00:30:29.940 of larger systems and structures.

00:30:33.260 He was able to feed himself and provide himself by his own work.

00:30:38.780 And it gave him a stability in a place to be a rock and a pillar for their communities.

00:30:46.900 Now, that is really quite a remarkable thing because if that is truly the American dream,

00:30:54.680 then we've gotten so far from that.

00:30:58.240 And of course, we don't have to be farmers today.

00:31:01.320 I mean, I think the equivalent of the Yohan farmer today is the small business owner, right? 0.68

00:31:06.240 But the idea is the same, is that he who has independent means can truly have an independent

00:31:13.380 mind as well.

00:31:15.880 He's somebody that can think for himself, that can penetrate and cut through rhetoric and dissembling

00:31:22.120 from all of the propaganda that is disseminated today, that he's able, because he is secure

00:31:29.560 in his own ability for material provisions, to also be able to be a provision to himself

00:31:38.660 and to others in terms of the spiritual ones as well and to the thoughts that are actually

00:31:44.600 making man free.

00:31:45.540 And how does a young man get to that, get there from, he's in a job that he hates and

00:31:52.040 he wants to get to where you're talking about?

00:31:56.040 Without cheating and applying to the College of St. Joseph, the worker, right?

00:31:59.760 Yeah.

00:32:00.140 How does he do it?

00:32:01.300 What's the, I mean, how did, because what I hear is, well, look, look, it sounds great.

00:32:06.360 I like the idea.

00:32:07.620 There's no opportunities where I live, though.

00:32:10.380 These are the only jobs available.

00:32:11.460 All the good jobs are taken.

00:32:13.480 The jobs that I'm in, there's no opportunity for growth.

00:32:18.860 Where do I go from here?

00:32:20.200 Yeah.

00:32:20.740 Okay.

00:32:21.260 I will answer that question.

00:32:22.960 I promise.

00:32:23.680 But I think a part of it is that you have to be open to jobs that maybe your parents

00:32:28.520 didn't encourage you to look at.

00:32:30.780 You know, I mean, when you talk about the skilled trades, for instance, the opportunities

00:32:36.500 there are immense, but of course we have a great disdain for it.

00:32:42.300 And the world has always had a great disdain for, for, yeah, actually manual labor.

00:32:47.960 I think about here, like the ancient Greeks, like the city-states of Sparta and Thieves 1.00

00:32:54.240 that literally had laws on the books forbidding their citizens from engaging in manual labor.

00:32:59.740 However, Athens didn't have one of these laws, but Aristotle wrote in his politics,

00:33:04.840 his treatise on politics, that the life of a tradesman was ignoble and inimical to the

00:33:09.660 life of virtue.

00:33:11.080 You know, Caesar, or Cicero, excuse me, pretty much said the same thing and at different

00:33:15.500 occasions in Roman history, similar laws forbidding citizens from engaging in manual labor hit

00:33:21.080 the books as well.

00:33:22.940 And I look at this and say, okay, the Greeks hated work. 0.67

00:33:27.040 The Romans hated work, and into the Greco-Roman world, the word became flesh and spent most

00:33:34.480 of the years of his life at the carpenter's bench, that Christ's life was political dynamite

00:33:41.840 because it completely overturned who you thought the lowly carpenter to be.

00:33:48.260 I mean, he literally, as St. Paul said, it came in the form of a slave, right?

00:33:52.240 And he's not talking, you know, in any sort of analogical sense.

00:33:57.340 I mean, he actually is, allegorical sense, excuse me, he actually is coming in the form

00:34:01.980 of a slave.

00:34:03.760 But if Christ truly, and I, you know, this is just true, it's authoritatively true that

00:34:09.940 Christ reveals true humanity to us, then he has revealed something about the dignity of

00:34:16.220 that type of work to us as well.

00:34:18.280 And when you look then at his followers, those who came after him, they didn't take that for

00:34:25.160 granted.

00:34:26.000 And here I'm thinking about the early monasteries, which were the early seats of education as

00:34:32.940 well.

00:34:33.720 There was a pace of life and a dance of the daily routine that moved around the chapel

00:34:40.820 where the monks prayed, the library where they studied and carried on the most sophisticated

00:34:47.160 and hard-earned parts of wisdom that we have still today, and then to the fields where they

00:34:55.620 work.

00:34:56.820 And that movement between the chapel, the library, and the fields was the model of their life.

00:35:04.040 But it was also, I have to say, their business model too.

00:35:07.400 It was a way in which it was sustainable.

00:35:10.280 And so you fast forward a few years when that monastic model becomes ingrained and instantiated 0.99

00:35:16.080 in the very first universities.

00:35:18.420 That was still part of the education, right?

00:35:22.340 Where you find guys like Hugh of St. Victor and St. Bonaventure talking about the trifold

00:35:30.060 distinction of the arts, which are the liberal arts, you should say something like philosophy,

00:35:36.060 theology, you know, the more speculative and theoretical forms of knowledge.

00:35:42.300 So the practical arts, which are like politics and economics, actually, how do we govern and

00:35:46.880 form the social order?

00:35:48.280 Down to the mechanical or the manual arts, which is like farming, which is like carpentry,

00:35:55.240 which is like masonry, and they fit together not just because different people are good

00:35:59.960 at different things, but because you can't have the one without the other.

00:36:04.700 What you believe is fundamentally going to change how you build.

00:36:08.460 And having the ability to build is going to enable you to have the freedom to think and

00:36:16.480 to think freely and to think without a tyrant influencing what's actually in your mind.

00:36:22.820 So I think that there is a tremendous dignity to many of the forms of work that the ancient

00:36:32.100 world, and I would say our modern world, has looked down upon, and that we have to put away

00:36:38.360 the ancient pagan disdain for a lot of these jobs and instead embrace something that I think 0.96

00:36:44.460 is far more dynamic and far more sophisticated as a view of what they are.

00:36:50.100 I think that the trades are a clear option for this.

00:36:54.000 There's over 500,000 open jobs in the skilled trades, and we're not talking about guys in

00:36:59.820 an assembly line doing stuff.

00:37:01.180 We're talking about those who actually need to exercise their creative capacity to troubleshoot

00:37:06.400 and figure out problems today that actually engages your mind wholly so that you can also

00:37:12.520 then instantiate it with your body wholly.

00:37:15.180 I think that that is a real possibility for pretty much anybody in any city in the United

00:37:22.260 States today.

00:37:23.300 That is a good opportunity.

00:37:25.040 And I would say, you know, to take it a step further, one of the reasons why I'm so dedicated

00:37:30.000 to seeing tradesmen, highly educated tradesmen, truly trained in the liberal arts is because

00:37:36.700 a liberal arts education is almost least wasted on a tradesman because he is the owner of his

00:37:46.440 own means of production, because he is of independent means and therefore has an ability to be of

00:37:52.820 independent mind in a way that not everyone in society is today.

00:37:56.940 So if you're complaining about your job right now, and you don't know what the next step

00:38:01.560 is, then maybe you need to think in a wider horizon and see where true dignity lies.

00:38:07.560 And so, and also if it's true that you don't see any opportunities where you live, there's

00:38:11.460 always the option of moving as well, which is, you know.

00:38:14.580 I just think there's opportunities everywhere.

00:38:16.720 Yeah.

00:38:16.900 Yeah.

00:38:17.800 And I'm not just speaking for the trades.

00:38:19.640 I mean, make it up.

00:38:20.300 And that's why I'm always preaching, if you're, especially if you're a young man with no kids

00:38:25.640 and no wife, you are in really this amazing position where you can go anywhere and do anything.

00:38:35.540 And so there's really, like, you can move to Alaska if you needed to, if you wanted to.

00:38:40.140 I mean, it's that there's really no reason.

00:38:42.360 Yeah, why not?

00:38:42.840 Um, and, uh, so I don't know that you got these young men that feel somehow tied down

00:38:50.020 or, or like they can't move around when, why not?

00:38:54.840 You know, um, so tell me about the College of St. Joseph's the Worker.

00:38:59.200 Tell me about that.

00:39:00.220 Yeah.

00:39:00.620 So this is an idea that first, now it's reality.

00:39:03.900 It was, it was a hope to find a way of being able to continue to train students in the

00:39:11.940 classical liberal arts, but doing it in such a way as that they could simultaneously be

00:39:17.800 financially stable all the way through college and not graduate up to their eyeballs in debt.

00:39:22.580 And then also to have a means by which to instantiate these ideas into the world and

00:39:27.540 not just leave them up in the ivory tower.

00:39:30.540 And so those were kind of two, two goals.

00:39:33.000 I was, um, in between my master's and my, uh, doctorate when I, um, first started to

00:39:38.940 write the model and I was doing it in part because I thought I was going to go off and

00:39:43.240 be a professor and then be terribly guilt ridden, bringing all these students into the classroom

00:39:48.720 and knowing that they were going to, you know, get $60,000 in debt and go off and make a,

00:39:54.160 have a $40,000 a year job.

00:39:57.220 And the math just didn't seem justifiable to me.

00:40:00.040 Um, and so we started to pick at a new model, a new idea where, um, students can come and

00:40:06.980 be formed in the Catholic intellectual tradition to earn their BA degrees, regular four year

00:40:12.480 degree, um, while also being trained in the skilled trades to earn their journeyman card

00:40:17.980 to, to actually be able to work as a skilled tradesman on any job site in the U S. And because

00:40:24.200 you get paid to train in the skilled trades, you graduate, uh, net even instead of again,

00:40:31.140 drowning in debt.

00:40:32.300 So that's what, that's what we're doing.

00:40:34.300 This is the inaugural class that we're, that we're educating this year.

00:40:38.480 How big is the class?

00:40:39.180 We started small, trying to be nimble.

00:40:41.700 30 students is where we, where we began.

00:40:44.640 Um, and how long does it take?

00:40:45.820 Is it, how long is it?

00:40:47.220 Is it a four year institution?

00:40:48.360 It is a four year degree.

00:40:49.560 Yep.

00:40:49.940 You're out and done, commenced in all, just like every other, every other university.

00:40:54.880 I mean, if you do your work, obviously.

00:40:56.780 Is it, it's in Ohio?

00:40:58.760 It is.

00:40:59.200 Yeah.

00:40:59.480 We, we're in Steubenville, Ohio.

00:41:01.120 We straddle the river.

00:41:02.260 We have some operations going in Weirton, West Virginia, just across the Ohio river.

00:41:07.060 Um, it's a marvelous, uh, in historic area that we're in, but totally defeated as, as

00:41:13.400 well.

00:41:13.900 I would say this is, you know, when people talk about the Rust Belt, man, we are in this

00:41:17.960 smack dab middle of it.

00:41:19.320 Our city is something like 18,000 people.

00:41:23.100 It was 38,000, not too long ago.

00:41:27.000 Um, I'd say about 80% of the downtown is all boarded up and empty.

00:41:31.580 It's, it's, it's actually a pretty rich opportunity to be part of a revitalization effort

00:41:36.820 in the middle of the downtown, uh, simultaneous with this, uh, launching of the college.

00:41:42.240 If, uh, any young man was listening to this conversation, what, what's the main thing you'd

00:41:45.500 want him to take away from it?

00:41:47.080 Yeah.

00:41:47.620 You know what?

00:41:48.020 I, I, I think that, um, if you're a young guy that's struggling to find good work, I think

00:41:54.220 you need to spend some time seriously, quietly by yourself, realize asking the question,

00:42:00.320 what do I actually want to work for?

00:42:03.140 And if you are struggling to figure that out, then go find the wisest person that, you know,

00:42:09.340 don't Google this, please.

00:42:11.260 Goodness sake, do not Google this.

00:42:13.600 Ask the wisest person that, you know, like, what should I be working for?

00:42:17.340 And let that be just the first person you ask.

00:42:20.120 But I think we need to get back to actually understanding what our, what our principal

00:42:23.280 ends are, like what, what we actually have as a goal and a purpose for our life.

00:42:28.680 Otherwise, you're just going to keep taking steps.

00:42:30.960 It's like getting in a car and driving without knowing the directions of where you're supposed

00:42:34.940 to go.

00:42:35.360 You're going to go in the wrong direction.

00:42:37.080 You'll, you'll, you'll hit the, your foot will be on that pedal and you will be going

00:42:40.000 somewhere.

00:42:40.560 You'll be working for something, but you might not hit that end.

00:42:43.280 You got to know where you're going first.

00:42:45.600 Dr. Jacob, mom, thanks.

00:42:46.960 It was a great conversation.

00:42:47.760 Thanks for joining us.

00:42:48.540 Thanks so much for having me, Matt.

00:42:53.280 The executive producer of the Matt Wall Show is Sean Hampton.

00:42:57.260 Our associate producer is McKenna Michaelis.

00:42:59.540 The show is directed by Mark Jones and Trey Miller.

00:43:02.320 Our production manager is Austin Michaelis.

00:43:04.840 The show is edited by Jeff Tomlin.

00:43:06.980 Our lead audio engineer is Mike Coromina.

00:43:09.440 Our audio engineer is Ryan Reese.

00:43:11.800 Our hair and makeup artists are Cherokee Heart and Andrea Bauer.

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00:43:45.660 The Matt Wall Show is a Daily Wire production.

00:43:47.400 Copyright Daily Wire 2024.

00:43:48.880 Hi, this is Andrew Klavan.

00:43:51.340 If you like American flags and automatic weapons 0.99

00:43:53.960 and shaking your fist at homosexuals 0.99

00:43:56.120 while fighter jets fly over in formation, 1.00

00:43:58.360 come to the Andrew Klavan Show.

00:43:59.900 We don't have any of that. 1.00

00:44:01.020 But we will be making fun of idiots and praising God 1.00

00:44:03.260 and laughing our way through the fall of the Republic. 1.00

00:44:05.400 It's like an insane asylum for happy people.

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00:44:10.640 To be continued...

The Matt Walsh Show - February 21, 2025

Ep. 1541 - Every Young Man Who Feels Lost Should Listen To This

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