 All right, this is Jack Donovan, author of The Way of Men, and you are listening to Start the World. My guest today is Richard Granin from SpartanLifeCoach.com. He's a master NLP practitioner, and I think we're gonna talk a little bit about narcissism today. But first, which I think he gives people tools to deal with people who have narcissistic disorders. So I'm thinking about linking to his website on my Tinder profile. But Richard, thanks for coming on the show, and why don't you tell the audience a little bit about what you do, what your background is, and what you're about. Okay, cool. First of all, thank you very much for having me on here, Jack, it's a real honor. My background is I'm actually, I got a degree in psychology and I worked briefly in the probation service in the UK and I didn't like it. I didn't like working in offices. So I went, I was very into martial arts. So I went out and I became a nightclub security abouncer, what you call an America abouncer for about 10 years. And eventually, as is inevitable, but I was working five or six nights a week, I picked up some nasty habits and eventually got into a bit of trouble and I was like, okay, I really should start using this degree. So I started teaching martial arts, but I was teaching from like a psychological point of view and it took off. So I was trying to prep people for real world violence emotionally and psychologically. I was teaching some hand-to-hand techniques, that type of thing, but it was predominantly the psychological side of it. Took off really well. Eventually got took up by the air marshals. So I was chatting to the air marshals instructor over in Las Vegas. This is back in 2008 on like a weekly basis, we were developing courses online together. And I did that for a while and what I was finding with consistency is a lot of the men that I was in contact with, high level martial arts guys, soldiers, even special forces guys, body guards, police, and they all had real issues with self-assertiveness. They all had real issues with not being able to say no, lots of problems in their relationships, lots of problems with their kids. Some of them with addictions. And so I was like, oh, I'll set up a branch of my website, which was called streetfightsecrets.com. I'll set it up and it'll be the life coaching branch to teach men how to take care of themselves in it. I'm gonna call it spartanlifecoach.com. Very quickly that escalated into through YouTube, people asking me a lot about narcissistic personality disorder. That was back in 2012 and the first few videos I did that went viral were all about emotionally abusive relationships and narcissistic personality disorder. So that's fast forward to today. That's how I ended up kind of, I got pushed into becoming a voice in the narcissistic personality disorder survival community. Okay. Well, we talk about this a little bit before the show. I don't even actually know what narcissistic personality disorder is. So can you explain a little bit what that means? Well, as you said before the show, you only know it from the mythological point of view, but that's the correct point of view. Freud and Jung both spoke in terms of Greek mythology and narcissists was a chap who fell in love with his own reflection in a pond and eventually got stuck there and just staring at his own reflection for all eternity. Freud pointed out that all children, all toddlers go through a phase that he didn't use the term healthy narcissism, but Freudians use the term afterwards after he died of healthy narcissism. So there was a stage where they would realize that they were separate from mommy, separate from daddy, and they could say no, and they could say this is mine and they could fight against the environment and they could demand things. What's supposed to happen then is you're supposed to individuate, you become a person, you realize other people also have needs and desires and things. For people with narcissistic personality disorder, they're so traumatized by their childhood environment that they end up stuck in that toddler phase of saying no and of trying to manipulate to get their own way and of everything being all about themselves. For it to be a personality disorder, this pattern of behavior needs to be malignant, it needs to be destructive to them and to other people, though there are some arguments about that in the literature. And it needs to be consistent across multiple contexts for it to be a full blown narcissistic personality disorder. So it's basically the culture that we live in today, everything that it breeds, the self-indulgence, the lack of resilience, the self-obsession, the obsession with image, it's full-breeding narcissistic personality disorder. Right, right, right, and actually, I also mentioned I have a friend who actually was following your work totally separate from mine and one of the questions he had asked is that you think that social media is amplifying, making people have this kind of disorder. He said cluster B traits. I don't even know what that is, but. Cluster B refers to the main manual that I use to describe the stuff, and this is not, as I say, it's not really something that I wanted to do, it's kind of something I railroaded into. I decided to stick with the American Psychiatric Association definitions. So all my definitions are American, the diagnostic and statistical manual that they publish every, I think it's every four or five years, they have cluster A, cluster B, and cluster C personality disorders. Everybody who's in the cluster B is a dick. They're dickheads. They're just not nice people to be around at all. The psychiatric language is like, oh, this is the dramatic cluster. These people are a social reaction seeking, sorry, anti-social reaction seeking provokers. These are manipulative, provocative bullies, and yeah, just assholes. People who are consistently assholes all the time, they vector in for these cluster B traits which Machiavellianism, it's exploitiveness, it's arrogance, it's rudeness, all of that kind of thing. Okay, and so how do you think social media plays into that? Well, I think at the end of the day, it's social media is not a charity. Social media, these are corporations, and they're playing the capitalism game, and they have to keep their shareholders happy, and the bottom line is what speaks. Now, if they want their cyber real estate to have maximum value, they need the most number of human eyes on their pages for the longest period of time possible. So they have to exploit frailties in human psychology the same way the designers of porn sites do, or the designers gambling sites do, and exploiting narcissism is an extremely good and effective way of keeping human beings, flipping this thing open and scrolling through, nervously dabbing through Instagram, through Facebook, through whatever it is. So it's deliberate, the people who design these sites know perfectly well what they're doing. One of the main executives of Facebook openly said, I'm here, I'm a hacker of human minds and I exploit human frailty to harvest human beings, time and attention. So there is this harvesting of time and attention that's going on at the moment. So yes, narcissism is the end result, unfortunately. Yeah, how would you say that you would avoid having that amplified in yourself? Say, you know, I mean, that's if you, because okay, if it's amplifying this problem that suggests that you're not a full blown dick until, and then this is amplifying that making worse. So how would you manage that? And you know, make yourself more, I guess, anti-fragile to that kind of. Anti-fragile, yeah, exactly. I think, well, the first thing to say is there is a world of difference between NPD, a full blown narcissistic personality disorder is extremely traumatized in childhood and they have a shell around them. So it makes it very hard, if not impossible to treat. They never go for treatment, usually. And if they do, they're completely resistant to it. Narcism is something we all have, you know, like the little bits of vanity, little bits of pride. And there is such thing as healthy narcissism. There is, you should be self-interested. You should want what's best for yourself. If you're not doing that, well, we have other terms for that, like fawning, codependent, people please it. Somebody just gives the best of themselves away. That's not a healthy state to be in either. So it's narcissism that's being provoked. It can lead to full blown NPD, in my humble opinion, when children are exposed to social media. It can't really induce NPD in people our age, I don't think, but it can make people rude it. It can make people more aggressive, more hostile. Definitely more irritable. I think people are more irritable with their social media usage and people's boundaries are weaker. Politeness, I think is, I sound like an old git now, I know I do, like people aren't polite anymore or they're not respectful anymore, but there is a diminishing effect because social media is boundary erasing. You know, right now I could tune in and I could know what the president of the United States is tweeting about. I could know what, I don't know, name a celebrity is tweeting about. So there's this sort of feeling of entitlement of access to everybody anytime, all the time, regardless of any sort of boundaries whatsoever. So it's a very boundary-dissolving piece of equipment. Yeah, yeah, and I find that that creates kind of a certain hysteria just because you're in touch with all these people and they're part of your lives and they're taking up a part of your mental space. We definitely, we started to rule out at my land when I have people out to the land that they're not allowed to talk about politicians who don't return your phone calls, right? And that's because it becomes this constant situation where people are constantly talking about what's on CNN or what's in the news and what's, you know, the president's tweeting or what, you know, celebrities are tweeting. These people are in their lives, you know, but it's one-sided exchange to a certain extent. So from, you know, your discipline and your background, we ended up discussing magic. And I was like, oh, I believe in magic. And you were like, oh, what rituals do you do? And I'm like, oh, I get people to write stuff down on a piece of paper. And you were like, yeah, we kill goats. I was like, whoa, okay, I have the middle-class bourgeoisie version of what you're doing. I do believe like the ritual, the focusing of intent, the being aware and conscious of what your consciousness is focusing on, definitely we'll have magical results. It's felt with a K, it will have magical results. Your intent will align. And I agree with you that this kind of thing, really from the psychologist point of view, and my tradition that I know more about is the Eastern tradition is Zen, this is insanity because you're holding in your conscious space stuff that has nothing to do with your here and now reality, nothing at all. And the hysteria you're talking about is this greater and greater investment. Like if I have, you know, so many hours in the day to be conscious and awaken aware and 99% of it is filled up with stuff that doesn't fucking involve me, really. And you can be like, no, no, no, as a voter you need, no, as a human being, you do you get back in your box because that's not gonna help you. You're pouring emotional energy, physical energy, adrenaline, cortisol into this situation. And here we are out in the mountains, out in the woods, out in the, like, look around, breathe the fucking air. So I think it's a great idea to say if they're not calling you back, then they're really not in your life. They're kind of phantasms on a screen, on a box that flickers in the corner of your room and don't invest too much of your emotional energy in that. It's not healthy. So yeah, the hysteria I think is one of the most dangerous byproducts of all. Yeah, yeah, it just, it makes people upset. A lot of, very upset all the time for things, again, the things that don't involve them. They'll just be angry. And I think that Facebook has destroyed more friendships than it's created, which is kind of funny because it seems to be designed to make friends, but it's actually destroyed so many normal relationships that people would have because someone gets bored and they see that Betty down the street said something that they didn't like about politics or whatever. And so then they hammer down on Betty and then they can't talk anymore. They can't, at the supermarket, they're now not friends. Why don't you speak to Betty because she's said something about so and so and you think, Jesus, no, and it's gotten older. The generations who have sucked into that are older and older. Facebook announced five years ago, openly that they were gonna target the boomers. They already got us. They already got the Gen Z, they, sorry. What are we? What are we? Gen X, Gen X. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So they already got, they'd got the kids first and then the kids left because Facebook wasn't cool anymore and then it was the 20s, then it was the 30s and then into the 40s and then they went, right, we want the 50s and 60s and 70 year olds. And I remember reading that going, good fucking luck with that. You know how they did it? They baited them with politics. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. That's how Facebook has slid more and more into politics. So I was like, these people are retired. They're sat around at home all day. My mom, perfect example. She's just arguing with people online through Facebook and getting upset about it. And I'm like, you're getting played. You're working for Facebook for free right now. Don't do that. Don't give your emotion to this shit. You're not being paid for it. Let them pay you if they want you to work like this. So there is, there's a deliberate baiting of confrontation that's been done on Facebook because the people behind it realized you're gonna sit on a page and read it for longer. If you're in the comments, somebody says something shitty to you. So you say something shitty back and the people are battling over nothing now. It actually addicts them. It gets them into a cycle of addiction to the adrenaline in the courses of confrontation. And Facebook seems to be about little more now than conflict. It seems to be a conflict provoking machine. Yeah, that and like selling things to your yard sale kind of stuff. Which is actually the only thing it's really useful for. Like I don't have any friends on Facebook. It's only people who live near me and so forth. Or just people I can't contact any other way and my mom and stuff like that. And then if I need to buy a goat, I'll do it on Facebook. Who's poor fucking goats? They're like, hey, no for me. Only for a week or two, my friends. Well, the actually the last one I bought one from the last lady I bought one from was just a farm nearby. And she told me some horror stories about like, you know, because people want to have them for barbecues and stuff and they don't know how to do it. And it's just, they tried to do it like in her driveway a couple times. Like bad scenes. So actually I'm probably giving that goat the best way out. The best way out that it's going to ever have. Because she told me about like, yeah, they just, you know, because people think that, I mean, this is totally random topic, but they think that if you like slice across the windpipe like in the movies, like that that's what kills something. And no, that just makes it a horrible, horrible. And they run down the road, you know, all kinds of things. That's not how it's done. And but she said, you know, she's had that happen or heard horror stories about that happening to her, her goats. And I'm like, yeah. It's amazing how much film trains people to think about violence in such a strange way. And it's this idea. Yeah, I just draw a line across the throat and their eyes close and they die. I'm like, do you know how the Malian body works? Do you know how fucking resistant it is to draw and be suffering through that shit? Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's definitely a technique that you need to learn if you're going to do things like that, you know? So I think, I think like the Facebook was what Instagram is now Facebook used to run on envy. It was about 20 somethings and 30 somethings trying to make each other jealous over their lifestyle. That's now shifted over to Instagram. Facebook predominantly seems to be about people arguing pointlessly over politics. Well, and I say the word arguing and that's discredit to the fine art of arguing and discussing and debating. Nobody fucking knows how to do it. I've seen some of the comments on your Instagram and I'm just sat there going, what the fuck? This is not how you present a position. Well, they learned it from Twitter. I love demonizing Twitter because it's like half a thought, you know? Here's half a thought and I'll tag you, you know? But I mean, I don't even use that, but yeah, people just don't know how to argue and they don't, they're just so used to this thing. Like I read a headline and then I'm, therefore I'm mad about the headline. Right. And they don't care about information and I learned that actually years ago. It's like, if I would be mentioning an article that was pretty mainstream and, you know, in a bad way or whatever, I'd be mentioning an article and I wouldn't get a bounce from it. You know, it'd be like New York magazine or something and I wouldn't get a bounce from it on my website because no one follows the links. They don't actually follow the links or do any research or just like, whatever that person wrote, I'll read half of it and then here's my whole opinion about this. And then the reporters just copy each other's work too. That's disgusting, isn't it? Yeah. Journalism nowadays is such trash. I don't even know what to call it. I don't even know, I think it discredits whatever journalism might have been. I mean, I guess, you know, like a certain point, as I get older, I'm like, was everything always this way? Do we really know that it was better before? Maybe, you know, like, it was just different people pulling the strings, but maybe they weren't any more, you know, honest or any more integrity, you know, 30 years ago or 50 years ago or whatever. But... I do think there's a case to be made that one of the things that we've lost in the last 20 years is gatekeepers as far as quality control goes. We've definitely lost the gatekeepers for quality control because our focus has drifted away from quality and making quality art and making quality productions to equality. So we got more invested in equality and when you're focused on quality, it generates inequality because you're fucking good at it and I suck. And somebody who isn't me and isn't you, it's sort of in between is going, Richard, I'm afraid your work sucks. Nowadays, you'd be like, you can't say that. It's art, it's subjective. Whereas before, people just go, now that's a shitty piece of work, mate, and we're not publishing it. Right, right. And there's two sides of that. It does come out in the wash in some way. I think, actually, the tricky thing is that the old gatekeepers still have some kind of credibility, but they don't use it. Right. I mean, like the New York Times, I wouldn't really make that any more credible at this point than anything else, but it has this name as if it's a gatekeeper and as if they do work, as if they do fact checking and all that kind of stuff. They do do a little bit of it. I've gotten some calls from some of the bigger places where they'll actually, did you actually say this? Do you actually mean it? But in most cases, they're just writing yellow journalism and doing scandal tabloid stuff that's gonna get clicks just like everyone else, but they have the air of being gatekeepers. And I think that that's the only thing that I'm looking forward to that going away, because if we're not gonna have gatekeepers, let's just not have them at all. Yeah, sure. I mean, and then you do have some kind of, like the market does certain things to come out of the wash. Obviously, you have then kind of trash culture and like all different kinds of pornography, whether it being political pornography or ideally all kinds of different things, but you get all that. But at the same time, like, okay, I wouldn't be an author. I never would have made it through the gatekeeper at all. And but I've had like 100,000 guys change their lives in different ways because they've read my work. You know, and so- Nobody would have published it. No. No. Well, because think of the political repercussions. I mean, I was published by someone else first. And so I was actually in Barnes & Noble and stuff in my first book, but beyond that, I mean, there was no money in it. I make a lot more money just because I published myself. Sure. And also, but yeah, I mean, to imagine me sending manuscripts to New York City to have them decide if what I was saying was okay, that never would have happened. I mean, I don't think that that would have happened. It would have been some small press somewhere and it wouldn't have gotten out. But in Europe, actually, I have a lot of their actual publishing companies that put out my work and they just translate it and do everything. So there's a little bit of both. But I mean, I think a lot of what I've created has been because I can just say something that no one else is saying and then it goes through. And that's, I'm a big fan of Nietzsche. And if you look through his work, just working my way through a biography on him right now. And once he started writing philosophy, all the philosophy people were like, you suck. You suck. We don't wanna hear about you. Talk about philology. Don't talk about philosophy. You're not allowed to talk about that. Like you're not qualified. And so you couldn't get a job teaching it. And so it just ended up going away on its own and writing all this cool stuff that we refer to now, you know? And I wonder what would have happened if we ran the clock back to, I don't know, say 95. The thing is I'm very, very snobby about writing and I have very little tolerance for poor writing. And I actually think you're a very good writer. I see there would be a problem. You probably would be a long takeoff period. Like you'd probably have to wait seven or eight years for it to happen. And it might be some niche European publishing house. So somebody would have, I think, I would love, I'd like to think somebody would have taken you, but you're right. Having the gatekeepers not there means there's an immediacy to the loop. I mean, Joe Rogan said it best. The great thing with social media is you can have access to people you otherwise wouldn't have had access to. The awful thing with social media is you have total access to people you otherwise wouldn't have access to. There's pros and cons with it for sure. Absolutely, absolutely. So let's get back a little bit to some of the stuff that you do. It was interesting to me at the beginning that you said you were dealing with a lot of martial artists and so forth. And they had a problem being assertive, which it just sounds like it shouldn't make any sense at all. How did that happen? It's so common, mate. It's so common that it's actually like, it's got to the point now where I expect it. So if somebody's like a high-ranking martial arts instructor, or there's lads I know around here in Liverpool who've served in Bosnia, Iraq, Afghanistan, there's almost a correlation between a lack of assertiveness and these kinds of accomplishments. I have different hypotheses for why that happens, but it's super common. There'll be guys following you who are ex-military. I'm very confident who'll be saying, yep, that's me, that's all martial arts guys, BJJ guys, MMA fighters who should be very, very capable. These men who we think of as capable men, alpha males, what? When it comes to interpersonal boundaries, their intimate relationships, a lot of their ideas around how they should treat women. They are worse than useless because if they're self-destructive, they're one step beyond useless. They actually hurt themselves. Well, I mean, yeah, I'm interested in this. And like you said, I think that is a lot of my audience. And I don't, I haven't noticed that, but I mean, what are some of the problems that they run into? You know, what are some of the behaviors that you see? What are some of the problems that you run into with those guys? Cause that's, I mean, I think that, yeah, it might be of interest to a lot of them. Yeah, well, and, you know, full disclosure for people who've run into this video, we actually met at a Red Pill seminar. So we're moving into Red Pill sort of territory here. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, and I'm new to it. I'm still completely new to that, to that whole scene. And I, it's funny, it never crossed my desk back in those days. Nobody ever brought it up with me. MGTOW was brought up with me a couple of times, but nothing else. The problems that were coming up very, very frequently, quite frankly, a primary issue, and one of the things that drew me to the Red Pill, because it resonated with what I was experiencing is an inability to say no. Perhaps we could say guys are into martial arts and they're in the military. They've got the good soldier mindset. You know, the word samurai literally means to serve. A good soldier is a servant. They've got the archetype running of a dutiful man, an honorable man, obeys orders, you know, protects heart and home, and doesn't, the conflict is outside the house, not inside the house. So with his wife, with his girlfriend, with his kids, he doesn't have any software running to deal with that. I think that's very, very common. Very, very common, very, very dangerous. And I think one of the things that you're doing that I really like is you're offering men a philosophical grounding to actually develop the boundaries inside themselves and outside themselves. And I really think the only solution is in philosophy. It's not in psychology. You can't really talk your way out of this. You have to actually absorb a whole ethic. So that's why I like your, I suppose your writing is considered philosophical to a degree, right? I've decided that I, yeah, I call myself a philosopher now. That's where I'm going with. That's what I'm going with. That's my career choice. That's how I read. That's how I read. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. But I mean, yeah, I think because, yeah, you have to construct a whole identity and I'm kind of writing a new book in this realm right now in the sense that your myth and all these things, we're telling a story about reality. Yes. And so you're telling a story about reality and you, that's what we latch on to, whether it's a religion or an ideology or whatever, we're telling the story about reality and that, and by hearing that story over and over again and it gives us a way to relate to the rest of the world. Yes. Like this is the story of reality. And therefore, and that sets up whether it's, you know, a system of morals and ethics and all that. And I think a lot of guys like that and they, because they're not philosophers. I mean, that's what I do is I want to think about all these things, but a lot of guys, they want some kind of template. Yeah. You know, and that's good enough because they're doing other stuff. You know, they don't want to sit down and figure out all this stuff. Let's rewrite the, you know, the vowel shouts, you know, let's rewrite that from the beginning. You know, they want a system and, you know, obviously I have a lot of people who are interested in Germanic magnetism and so forth that follow me. And I think what they're looking for is they look at these stories about, you know, Odin or Thor or whatever. And they're like, that's, I like what that's saying about life. And that's, I'm going to organize my consciousness around that. And that's going to inspire me. And, you know, when I need, when I go to the gym or when I want to try and make myself better, that's what I'm going to think about. And that's the way I'm going to motivate myself and organize my consciousness. And so when they, one thing I've learned is what they're seeking in ritual sometimes is to hear that story in a powerful way because that's their identity. Yeah. And they want to have another, a more powerful interaction with that story and that idea because then they can take that back into their own lives and use it, you know, to when they run into trouble, they run into trouble like, you know, I mean, the way Christians would say like, what would Jesus do? You know, they're like, well, how do I use this story to solve a problem? Yes. Yeah. And this is, I think a lot of psychology is going back to its roots, especially in the area of like trauma and PTSD, because psychology is just a branch of philosophy historically. It has the fantasy of being a science and it needs to let that shit go because we're not scientists, we can't. It's just, you can't, you can't have human consciousness, look at human consciousness, like, how the fuck is that? That's regressed, it just, you can't do that. I mean, we should try and be scientific, rational, but let's make it a philosophy again is what I think. What you've just described there is so key for people to move forward in their lives when they have any kind of mental health issue or trauma because I don't think we as humans ever get to live outside of story. We never get to, so we only get better and better stories. So when life is good and you're feeling cheerful and optimistic and like you can breeze and you have a bit of freedom, you're living a better story than you were living six months ago, that's all you can do. So the, and these are the things that stick, this actually sticks because it appeals to the unconscious. That's what I love about the magical systems. It's all an appeal to the unconscious. It's all an appeal to the parts of you that are pre-civilization, that are primal, because therapy takes place between two civilized masks. I know you were reading young recently. Yeah, yeah. And you were disappointed and I was really happy that you were disappointed. I was delighted because I could see that you went in with an open mind and you wanted it, but ultimately it's, you kind of get there and you go, why is everybody making a fuss over this stuff? Right, right. And there is a kind of a surface level ego, masturbational quality with Freud and Jung's work where we're in this realm of consent and it's basically therapy is just a consensual conversation between two peers. And to that point, it's very anemic, it's very lightweight. You need a lot of will to get that to work with what you're doing. You're actually hijacking the, not hijacking, you're accessing the unconscious directly in a way that will allow deep shifts. And then all, if we shift properly here, if we go from falling codependence, all I want to do is please my wife to an unconscious level too. I want to express who I am to the fullest as a human being. I'm a red-blooded individual. I'm here, I'm alive. I want to live my life, please. Can I have that? All the behaviors that go above that, they're all shift. For me to try and do that as a psychologist, I have to pluck out this behavior and slowly try and move it and this behavior. And most of the time it pings back because the unconscious hasn't shifted. So what you're doing there at the philosophical level and with the use of magic and ritual I think is very, very powerful. I find it very interesting observing your posts on Instagram and that because I think this is really the way ultimately people are going to have to go is this will be the solution, I think. Yeah, well, there's a, we're at a weird point in history and this is what I was writing yesterday so maybe it's just in my head, but we're in a weird point in history where we can see all the mythologies of all time which has never happened really. We can see, we can trace how this God changed into that God and all these things that really are, ancestors didn't have that. They were existing in their own time. A world is actually an age of man and they're existing in their own age of man and they don't see really outside of that. And but we can see all things. And so it becomes very confusing and so it becomes, I think difficult to become rooted in one particular set of ideas. Because there's so much flux. But I think that with psychology and with philosophy and so forth, we can look at what the common threads are between all these things and maybe find a new common thread or a new story. Pick a story that makes sense and has always made sense. I think when it comes to masculinity and man and some of the problems that they're dealing with it's almost like masculinity is gonna become a religion of itself in its own weird way. Because the idea is, if men want to be the best version of themselves they have to embrace these kind of higher ideals of what a man is. And those all come from history and there's rich, rich history of that but all of that is so demonized at now. And so masculinity is almost underground. Well, it is underground. It is underground now. And I think it's such a poisonous shit storm that men, not men, but masculinity. I think it's right to say it's masculinity that faces the shit storm. And I see two responses generally. The yin response, which is either meaghtow or just fawn, just do what you're told and BD, as they say, the beta male. And that's the yin response, which is to literally hide in the ground because if there's a storm, a seed can go in the ground and it can outlast the winter. And eventually it will thaw because this will pass. Eventually it's gonna pass. And then you see the yang response, which is there's a shit storm and then this guy's out there going, ah, come on, let's fucking go, let's fight. And they're the minority. And it's a much riskier tactic. But if you choose to go underground and you choose the yin response, which is, okay, I don't wanna fight. I don't wanna be exposed. The, in order for the metaphor to continue, I don't wanna stretch it past breaking point. That seed, when it comes out from the ground, that might not be you. That might not be the guys who are listening. So the guys who are listening who've chosen, no, I want the underground easier way. Your life may be fucked. It may be your kids or your grandsons who eventually get to be masculine again. So you'll really know it seems like the safer option. It's actually for your own life. It's the more dangerous option. But the reason I think that it needs to become kind of a religion like in the way that you're suggesting is because it is under such attack ideologically, we have to have some sort of ideological counterbalance. And what else can you do but have sort of a philosophical spiritual religious stance on it? Otherwise, how the hell is it gonna survive? Yeah, yeah, I mean, because, and that's why I think there's a third way in the center because, you know, I don't know that there's a, let's take this all the way to the Capitol building. We're gonna fight for it and change it. I don't think that that's a viable thing because the world is run by money as we were talking about with Facebook and everything earlier. The good money is not there. The good money is in flattering women's egos because they buy most of the things and just tell them what they want to hear and responding that and also, you know, like our leaders, well, their leaders, I don't like to say our, I'm not part of them, but the leaders of the nations, they are, a problem with democracy is that everything's short term. Yeah, you know, it's like when you had kings, it's like, well, I have my reign, which might be 30 or 40 or 50 years and what is my legacy gonna be for this reign? But when you have democracy, you have people who are in for four years or two years or eight years or whatever and they're responding to polls. And so how they're making decisions in the same way that corporations make decisions, which is like quarterly, you know, like on the, you know, like what kind of return are we getting on this idea right now? And rather than doing a long-term planning thing with like, you know, what is America gonna be in 10 years? They're like, how am I gonna get elected in 2020? You know, like how, what do I need to do? What do I need to say? What do I need to make happen so that we can get from A to B? That's why they're all so fucking spineless now. All of them. Europe, America, Canada, it's spinelessness because the system entrains spinelessness and it entrains a forming response. You know, where's the person saying, I don't really care what the public thinks about this. What the fuck does the public know? The public generally, like, you speak to somebody with an average IQ. You're speaking to somebody who's not that fucking bright. But who cares? Well, the fucking public, get it done. If you think that's gonna work, do it. But this, it makes like an anxious reactive. What have they said? How are we doing in the polls? What do they think about that? Oh, they don't like it. Oh, okay, we won't do it then. They're like, well, that's shit. That's not a way to run anything. It's not a way to run a business. It's not a way to run a fucking cafeteria. You can't run anything like that. No wonder it's in such a mess. Yeah, yeah, and unfortunately, like I don't see that changing for a long time. That's why I think that the masculinity to a certain extent is gonna be underground, but not in a migtail way, which if those guys wanna do that, that's fine. It doesn't really, I don't need to talk shit about them. But at the same time, the guys who wanna make their own lives better, I think is gonna be the middle path. Because, okay, well, you're not maybe gonna change the world. Yeah. But how can you create that space in your own world? In your own life and your own existence and fight for that and make, actually do a lot of what you're saying, which is say no and create boundaries. Like, this is what I will not tolerate. Yeah. This is what kind of relationship I'm not gonna have in my life. These are the kind of friends that I want. These are the kind of friends I don't want. You know, like who do I want my life for? Who's gonna influence me and controlling that? And you're making all those decisions. And I keep going back to this solar ideal and this kind of idea of a father. And, you know, like being a father is very different from being a mother in the sense of it's all about creating structure. Yes. It's about creating order and creating structure in your life. And that's what all these guys need to be doing in their own personal lives, as you said, rather than they know how to create structure in everything else. Yes. Oh, God. Yeah. But they need to, yeah, yeah, go ahead. I was just gonna say, it seems to become a social taboo. We tend to think about this as being a modern thing, but I don't think it's, that I think it's been around for a while. The idea that you're not, we live in anti-structural times. We live in a time where any kind of structure is like, oh, well, you shouldn't, that's like, that's why I dance. I still, I'm dancing. I do a Latin style of dance called bachata. And it was like this last bastion where you have a leader, a follower, and boundaries and rules. And even that now, even that now is changing. You have women who want to lead men. And I'm just like, would you stop? Would you just stop? It sucks. You suck. I had a woman, I saw her leading men the other night in a club. I said, oh, you want to be a lead, do you? She said, yes, I've trained myself to lead. I said, lead me, go ahead and lead me. And I wasn't being a dick. I just let her do it. And I was like, objectively, you stink. This totally sucks. It's an anti, we live in anti-structural time. So I think like the fight to maintain masculinity is also a fight for women who also believe in boundaries and structure and politeness and form. We can't live in a formless fucking world. That's soup. Yeah, it's all chaos versus cosmos is the whole thing. I almost think that everything is a battle between chaos and cosmos. And cosmos is kind of losing right now. I mean, you know. We're on the ropes. We're definitely on the ropes. Yeah, definitely on the ropes. And that is, and I think it has a lot to do with, you know, just the changes in society and so forth and who's influencing things and so forth. And we really want to, I think men want that structure and want that order. And really women want it too. I mean, you know, a lot of women would prefer to be led, but if no one's gonna lead, they're gonna lead themselves. Yeah, well, there is that problem as well. There is that problem as well. So there's two things I was gonna say is one is I've got female friends who tell me guiltily that they want that structure, but they feel like they're not allowed to say because they'll be attacked by men and by women. And the second thing is if men are derelict in their duty and we withdraw the yang energy, we're inviting women to take the space that where we used to be. Of course they're gonna do that because that's an unconscious instinct. That's a drive for safety. It's like, wow, there's no man here to offer me protection. Well, I guess I'll pick up the spear and shield myself then. And then you have a bunch of women who are completely animus possessed, rude, hostile, aggressive, obnoxious, no manners, no boundaries, totally overconfident, incapable of doing the things they think that they can do with in an environment where nobody dares to say to them, excuse me, you're not very good at that. Could you please stop? Yeah, yeah, I mean, it's, but they've been fed that for so many years. I mean, like I said, that's where the money is in Hollywood. I mean, you look at all these movies they're coming out constantly and it's like amazing, super powerful women who don't do, like, can beat up 20 men at a time and all the stuff. And you just see that constantly. Like, this idea that there's always gonna be this woman that's more competent than everyone else. And she's the one who really runs things, whether it's as the mom or on some like NCIS kind of program, and the female cop is the one that is really committed. And these other guys, they're just kind of fooling around. They're like the thug muscle, but she's the one that really knows. And really the world has not run like that for most of history and it isn't running like that right now. It doesn't run like that now. I mean, even things have changed a lot, but the arrogance of that, I'm not saying the arrogance of women. I'm saying the arrogance of that ideological stance is fucking mind-numbing. It's mind-numbing. Oh yeah. You know, you just have to say, well, this is one of the things that I saw you writing about. Who do you think is guarding the walls that allow you to even have this fucking conversation right now? The indulgence, this ego wank that you're engaging in right now quietly over your iPhone in your living room, in the cool, in the dry. Who's guarding the walls you privileged First World fucks? You know, you're complaining. Sorry, are you allowed, you can swear on your podcast, right? Oh yeah. I don't know how to not swear. I could feel a rant building up there. I just need to do some psychology work on myself to contact. You need to NLP yourself there. Yeah, yeah, that's right. No, no, no, I'm totally there with you, man. There is just, you know, the joke of like, you know, the girl who will write a check that her boyfriend has to cash, kind of like, because women are used to, and I have to preface all this because we're not talking about women as like an evil thing. Because I always say, you know, men who believe that women are angels and men who believe that women are devils are both wrong. Yeah. You know, it's, you know, it's basically the way that modern society has influenced a large percentage of women. Yes. I think is what we're really talking about. And, you know, there's other women who are not like this at all. Yeah, I understand. But, you know, there are, women are just generally used to being able to say whatever they want without that kind of fear. Men are getting this way, too, because there aren't consequences. I mean, you're not going to get punched in the face. Yeah. And, you know, like, you have to do that primal math as a man, I think a little bit more than women ever have to. Oh, God, for God's sake. I mean, anywhere in the world, I've traveled all over. I've never been to a country where if a man raised a hand to a woman, he wouldn't be dogpiled by everybody in the environment. Anywhere you go in the world, it's like that. So, yes, there is a degree of entitlement that that breeds that just gets knocked out of men because we're like, well, I could end up in a fight where I get stamped on and then I die over a conflict over a cafe latte. So it does make you, yeah. What did you call it? Primal math. Yes, I think we do a lot more primal math. Yeah, yeah, we do. The primal math of violence. Yeah, we have to figure out, okay, well, that guy is 250 pounds and 6'4". So I probably am not going to raise my voice to a certain level. Yeah. You know, I'm not going to actually act as it, send out all the signals as if I'm initiating a conflict because I might get one. Yeah, exactly. And I'm not prepared to deal with that. And that's not, I have to, you know, that I'm doing the math, what the arc of this conflict is going to end up at. And I realized that that would be a bad choice. Yeah. And whereas, you know, women are so used to being able to just be like, well, fuck you. And to say to anyone bigger. And it's just because they're just smaller generally. And that's the way they have to interact with the world. I mean, yeah, my, my mom always said that my sister, one sister was fearless because she was so used to being around bigger men. And so she would just like be bossy and talk to them in a certain way. But men can't talk to each other in the same way without doing that math, you know, and thinking about it. Absolutely not. This is, this is the, the frustration that I have. I'm sure all men have when you get into a conversation about equality and I've always held the position that I don't think in an interaction with a woman I could get three steps in equality without her becoming furious. Because if I treat her the way I treat a guy who's equal to me, I'm screwing with the whole dynamic. I mean, you know, that's, that's, that's how to stay single. You know, that's probably why I'm single because I demand quite a lot of equality from women and they can't handle it. They can't, they don't stick around for it. They're like, well, this isn't what I want. This isn't what I thought I would be given. And I'm like, well, you said equality and I'm philosophically, I agree with you. So let's try equality. Yeah, I stay, I stay single. Equality made me single. Yep. And yeah, and this is, this is, this is the thing that like when I'm talking to, I actually had a young, young man in today that was talking to is you've got to set your stall out. When, when I was doing nightclub security an older guy trained me early on an Irish guy and he said, look at the beginning of the night you set your stall. How do you want the store to run? How do you want people to speak to you? Start as you mean to go on. This is your personal space. This is the level. This is everyone in the club. This is, and what do we have to sacrifice in order to maintain that standard? And I was just like, that's my boundary, man. I would rather be single than, than be playing the silly game of having to listen to somebody say to me, oh, we're equal, aren't we? We do everything the same, don't we? And me sitting there going, yeah, if by equal you mean I pay for 80% of everything? Cause I've been in those relationships and I hated them. I hated myself for letting that happen. I didn't hate paying. That wasn't my problem. I hated paying and then being told, this is what equal looks like, you idiot. And I was like, hmm, okay. Yeah, could be because it's not. And I think, again, they have a very, you know, a lot of people have a very skewed perspective of what, it's equality when I want it to be. And it's not really quality, like you said, is all of it. It's all of it. I mean, you can't, and equality is one of these things. I like getting into conversations about equality because really what we want is fairness. We want justice. You can't, equal is a concept from mathematics. And it applies to things that are completely identical. If it's not identical, it's not equal. So we're never really equal, but we're not drive towards fairness and justice. I personally am not interested in the relationship that's equal because it would be, it would lack any kind of sexual polarity. There'd be no sexual tension. It would be boring and I don't want that. But I do want one that is fair, that is just where we're not fulfilling some weird ideology where we tell each other lies and I have to, in some 1984 George Orwell style, I'm forced to lie. There's a British psychiatrist, I'm afraid at the moment I can't remember his name, but he was saying that this culture that we have right now is, especially when it pertains to controlling people's words and political correctness, he called it communism writ small. And he said that the methodology is to force people to lie and say things that aren't true, because it humiliates them. And if I'm humiliated, I won't fight for myself. I'll just give up, I'll just feel ashamed. And I was like, damn, that's smart. That does seem to be what's happening right now. No, absolutely. Yeah, I mean, so many lies that people tell and I've been able to shield myself from that, because I've worked for myself and you do too. And so we're able to be outside of that. But I think most people to get through, you know, the corporate afternoon, how many lies do you have to say? Like, I'm good because you know that you can't say certain things. I mean, and the rules keep changing and they change really, really fast and no one can keep up with them. So they, they, they aren't saying anything. Yes. And the weird people, you know, people who are making the rules are just bizarre because it's again, it's who screams the loudest on Twitter and who, you know, like who shouts and has the biggest tantrum. And that's the most immature personality is in charge. Well, that's narcissism and the social justice warrior movement. These people who are screaming on Twitter and demanding to see the manager, you're talking about people who are probably personality disorders because the way that they operate, you look at the coordinates for these cluster B personality disorders, you look at the coordinates that define the more awful characters in these communities and you're like, damn, that's the same thing. This is, if I tell you that equality is me advantage and you disadvantage, that is absolute narcissism. That's, you know, that's right there in the textbook. No, absolutely. It's, it's, it's, it's really tricky. I think, you know, even, even me, like I don't know like what, what's going to be okay to say at this point, you know? And so you have to be honest to a certain degree and just decide what hill you want to die on. That's what I always say. Like, it's like, you can't fight the whole world and try to be right about everything and then, you know, piss everyone off because then tactically, that's foolish. You're having a, you're having a fight with 20 people. Pretty cool, but yeah. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's great, but you're not going to last long. Yeah. You know, it's like, so you have to, you know, like my thing personally, I always say, you know, my, my hill to die on is like, I've said things about men and women being different that I, I'm not going to take that. Yeah, like that's, that's, that's what I'm about. I've talked about masculinity. That's kind of my area, but I'm not going to go into all these other areas, which are also important, but like, you know, I can't do all, I can do it all. I'm with you. I'm with you. Yeah. And that's a good, that's a, it's a good thing to do. It shows a good philosophical outlook and it shows humility. You go, okay, I know what I'm doing here. And people go, do you want to do that here? And you're like, I don't know what the fuck. You can't, you know at 80%. Whereas this thing, you know 100%. Yeah. And you're better, you're better sticking with that. You're definitely better sticking with that because you can, you can be tempted to do things that you're not quite, like you say, and you're not prepared to die on that hill. And if you would be shit to go out on something that you didn't even really care about properly in the first place, and that's what gets you deep platformed. Exactly, exactly. I don't, yeah, I don't want to go over like what, running my mouth about some kind of something that I barely even know about. No, no thank you. Like me talking about like, you know, 20th century politics. I mean, that's just blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Who cares, you know? And there is, there's plenty of people talking about politics already, right? I mean, it's, at this point, it probably is one of the more redundant activities that human beings in the Western world and probably in the whole world, actually it's the same in Asia. I mean, it's all one culture now. But like arguing about politics, talking about politics. I mean, it's there's so much talk and so little action. And the more we're talking and thinking and the further away we get from action, the further away we are from reality because reality is only ever action. There's no such thing as you can't talk reality or think reality, you have to do. You have to be there and do it, otherwise, shut up. And I think, to the compassionate side of this would be to say, I think the burden of knowledge now is greater than it's ever been in recorded human history. You said, we know about all the myths of all the cultures and I just think, God, yeah, what a weight. We know way too much. What a lovely situation to be in, to be ignorant and naive and to believe in like a cosmology of gods and everybody around you believes in the same thing and that's it, that's the world. You just, okay, this is how I'm gonna live and this is how I'm gonna die. We don't get that. That's sort of the pleasure of that simple life. Our lives are very, very complicated, extremely stressful now in terms of information. Yeah, but I mean, this is our fate. I'm more fought to you like, this is what we got because I know there are a lot of people, I think, especially in this kind of heat and space that I'm in in some ways. And I've started to call them like Viking Amish. They really wanna be like 12th century farmers. This is what they really wanna be and they think that if they're in some way, they can go back to this mental space where everything's simple, then everything's gonna be okay. And so they're, but it's like, it's very that migtail kind of mentality in terms of like, it's kind of putting your head in the sand and running away from the thing. Yes. We live in a world where we do have all this information and do all of these choices and all these things. And that is our time. Yes. And so that we have to inhabit that space and figure out how to make the best of it. It's pretty cool in many ways. It is, and that's, you know, you mentioned that Amal Fati, Nietzsche's position, you know, love your fate and there is a very strong argument to be made to say, okay, well what's fucking cool about this? Our conversation right now, I mean, we wouldn't have met and if we did meet, we wouldn't have been able to have this conversation so easily. That's really cool. So I can take information that you've got about archetypes and magic and ritual and I can take that to a, I probably used elements that's there in the unconscious and I take it to this, this client I've had here today. He walks away with it. The big smile on his face and his life is better that otherwise would not have happened. So there is, there is that, that extremely positive side to it as well. Yeah, yeah, I mean, so many tools and so many things available. I mean, I've been playing with music. Like I made my own intro music for, yeah, I'm into it. It's so fun. As I haven't done anything like that for like most of my adult life, right? And I'm just, I spent months. It's amazing. It's like for, you know, a couple hundred bucks that you buy this program, it's like every sound that you could ever possibly imagine, you could just scroll through them for hours and a half, like hours and hours and hours, because that's what you do. You like put something on a, you like make a little set, like a little series of notes and then you sit and scroll through it and let it play in a loop and listen to the, like which one do I like the best? Yes. And you do that forever and you have access to all of it. You know, like, you know, in the simple world, yes, you just, you just have that drum. You just have that drum. I have all the drums. You know. So there is a, I like the Viking armish idea. I was thinking, if you set that up as a thing where people could just withdraw from society, you would, you'd probably like hit the big time with that one. But a lot of what, or not a lot, but some of the things I was hearing at the Red Pill Convention that we met at, I was, my brain was going, hang on a second guys, you can't put the toothpaste back in the tube. No. It's a romantic idea. It's very appealing, it's seductive, but I know, I don't know what happens in a group setting, but I know with individuals who try to move back in time, fucks them up, fucks them up. You can't, you can't do that. No, no, you can't live in another time. You can't do that. And you can, you can do what we're talking about, which is create your own boundaries and create your own space. And you can do that with a group of people. I probably won't do that again with a big group of people in that kind of way. And I don't want to run away from society. In fact, just living out in the country where I live right now, I've had enough and I'm like, where can we go? Like, I want to be where stuff's happening. I want to go where things are going on. I'm not ready to retire yet. You know, I want to live life here. But, you know, you can see it happen with groups, but there are a lot of guys who, you know, inspired by my work and inspired by the work of others and so forth who have created kind of intentional groups of men and so forth where, you know, they kind of accountability networks and that are in person and so forth. They just like, you know, if anything I do is going to be like on the radar and so it's going to have its own dynamic, which is maybe not the best for it. Right. You know, because it's public. Everything is public and then it becomes a, you know, that becomes a problem. But if you have a bunch of guys who just have, hey, we're good friends and we have our families and da, da, da, da, we should get together once a month and do a thing. That's good. And there are a lot of guys who are actually doing that. And I hear about it, but obviously the groups are public so nobody knows. So we're not going to see Jack Donovan's solar groups popping up all over America? No, I think I may do after I put the book out and really have a philosophy that, you know, as a platform, I do think that I'll probably try and start some kind of like online community again and then, you know, people, with the idea that people should get together. That would be cool. Yeah, but I'm not going to try and like, I don't really want to be a leader. I don't want to lead, I don't want to lead a, I like to be, you know, like, I'll be a philosopher. Here's some ideas here. Here's some ideas, but I don't want to control people. Yeah. And that's, I just have never, that's never been my dream. And I realized that when I was in a situation where I had to do that more often, I was like, oh, this is not what I'm about. It's a bit sucky, isn't it? Yeah, I just want to be a weirdo and come up with weird ideas and being artists and stuff like that. I don't want to like tell you how to live your life and what you are allowed to do and not allowed to do, you know? It's a big responsibility, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. And there's some guys who are cut out for it. I know guys who are much better in that. And that's a social skill. I think that a lot of, you deal with a lot of these guys who were, you know, who have been high up in the military or whatever and they've had to manage large groups of men. They actually are pretty qualified to handle that situation because they've had to do it for so long. But that's a different skill set, definitely. Yeah, yeah. Oh, God, yeah. It's a totally different thing. Well, it would be good to see that. It would be good to see that happening. When's your book coming out? Oh, well, I'm only on like page five. So I need to write it. That's the way this stuff works though. I'm thinking like I'd like to be done with it by summer. So, and then, so, you know, this year and then we'll see what happens because everyone has their own niche. And that's what I really like about these men's, these different kind of men's speakers. Because when I first wrote The Way of Men in 2012, we didn't have, you know, there weren't a lot of guys talking about this stuff. Okay. You know, just a few blogs and whatever. Like you said, you weren't really that aware of well, all this kind of stuff back then and so forth. And now there's a lot of guys who are interested because the problem's big. Yeah, you know, the problem's big. And they realize, you know, like, I mean, when I started writing about masculinity, I was just, I was really talking to gay men. Hey, maybe you guys could get your shit together a little bit. And then, then I realized that actually it's for God, everyone's a mess, you know, like there's men all around the world are a mess. And, and I think that it's a big problem and a lot of more people are seeing it's a big problem. So you have these guys who are coming into the scene and talking about who actually do have some expertise. Yeah. And do have some background. And all of a sudden you're getting like MMA fighters and like, you know, the guys from Special Forces and all this stuff. And they're bringing what they have to the table well. And that's kind of, that's really good. And that's really exciting. And you're getting guys from all different perspectives, you know, when I have this conversation with all kinds of different people, obviously like a private guest that I'll have on right before your podcast or both, you know, one's a Christian and one's a Mormon. And so they're going to have their own niche of who they talk to. But I would say like different voices for different years. Yes. And I think there's something from a different way. Like you and I probably have more of a, you know, would have, you know, more similar audience because, okay, we're both more or less single dudes. And so that's a different, because I mean, and I always think that, I think that that's a valid perspective too, because you know, like the world is what it is, women are what they are. There's all those lies that people have to tell and not everyone to tell them. And if your main goal was to start a family, then there're going to be a lot of single guys. Yeah. And that's going to be, that's a new reality that's happening. And there aren't, you know, there aren't one to one marriageable women. If they all decide to get married tomorrow, no, that's not going to work. So that's good. That's going to be right for some guys. It's not going to be right for somebody. So, you know, guys like you and I can talk to guys who are maybe never going to have that experience or never be in that situation. And then guys who, you know, the Mormon guys can talk to the guys who have, you know, like five kids. Right. Yeah, because that's a different, they have different problems. That's true. You know, so I think it's cool. It's a cool thing. We have a lot of different guys talking about a lot of different things from a lot of different spectrum because not all men are the same and we're not going to all live the same way. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, the idea that the end goal, the implicit injunction that the end goal should be to have kids. I was always being a bit like, oh, I'm not too sure about that. I mean, because as you say, if that was a goal in and of itself for me, I probably would put up with more and make that sacrifice because I'm like, well, I want to find the other kids, but for me, I'm just like, hey, I'm quite happy being single. Tell me why I should put up with this fucking gibberish again. Right, right. Exactly. If that's not the end goal, then you don't have to set things up for that situation to happen. Right. So you can say different things and so we're free to maybe talk about different things because I always think a lot of the things that I've written, well, if I had a woman standing beside me like telling me maybe who was like, well, where are you saying that for? You know, like that kind of thing. Do you ever get that suspicion when you're reading a book or seeing a film that's made by a guy and you know he's married? Do you ever get the suspicion that some of it is written just to keep her office back? Oh, totally. Totally. You know that that happens. You know, like, and so you're not, they're not free to talk about. I mean, that's why I always say like, that's why I was able to write The Way Of Men is because I wasn't really attached to any group. I didn't have any responsibility to anyone so I could just say what I was thinking. But as soon as you have someone in your life like that who's going to be like, well, why are you saying that? Well, why are you saying that? And they're going to be like who you have to, you know, like you said, write the thing. Here's the passage I'm going to write because if I don't write this, I'm going to hear you have to deal with a whole bunch of bullshit. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, like it. The hero at the end of this story is what, and I'm reading it and I'm going, hey, the hero up until this point really seems like a 60s James Bond guy who would just be with a lot of different women over the course of this. And I'm like, let me just look up and see if the author's married. Oh, funny. He is. Yeah, okay. Yeah, yeah. Because he's got to hand her the manuscript. She's going to be sat there reading it. Did you like it, honey? Let me get to the end. Yes, you're not in trouble. That's okay. You can publish this one. That's definitely a thing, man. That's definitely, that's definitely something that's real. And you could see that in literature and, you know, all these people online and stuff and so forth. And yeah, you see it. I mean, you know, like, dude's even like, I think there are a lot of guys down. You have some cool guys like, cool guys who don't do this at all and refuse to do it and more power to them. But I think there are a lot of guys out there who just like even like, they're not going to write something online because, you know, they have two girls that they're talking to in the DMs and they don't really want to piss them off because they're trying to get late. Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Isn't that funny? It's funny how so much of life is just about that one thing. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, cause that's always in the background. I mean, like, cause if they're talking to three or four people, like, well, she's not going to like it. If I say that, she's going to like it. And I'm just trying to get late here, but I don't need to like, I don't need to kill my options. You know, I don't need to crush my options by running my mouth. So, you know, like, I think men self-censor a lot of times just for that. You know, like, not even let a wife slither with her shoulder or whatever, but like, they still have to interact with women and deal in this big dating market. Right. And, you know, they, I think they self-censor because, you know, like, close down my options over here, close down my options over here, if I run my mouth, you know, so, you know, you know, forward. I mean, again, that's why it hasn't always been this way. That element to it, I suspect, yeah. I suspect, yes. There was a good line. I was watching the Tudors. I just caught the end of it a couple of weeks ago. And this guy who was a peasant, but a musician was talking to a member of the nobility and he was saying, oh, look, the king has problems with the queen. And this member of the nobility turns to him and says, if you could read, you'd be able to read Greek mythology and you would know even the gods have trouble with their wives. Oh, dude, right? I mean, you know, like, you know, the Zeus's wife, I mean, she's just a bitch. And, like, that's her only function is to be a bitch. You know, like, even the guy is like, oh, I have all these problems with my, you know, hair is coming off my shirt. You know, like, yeah, it's amazing that obviously this has been going on for forever. And he's in all the stories. I mean, all the great tragedy everybody talks about, you know, like in the Germanic side of stuff, you know, Valkyries and the big myth that I'm totally blanking on right now. But, you know, it's always about some big drama over a woman. And then she's duplicitous and tells lies and so forth. And then the dude ends up dying, you know, like, because of it, you know. There's the Spartans, isn't there? Helen of Troy is actually, she's from Sparta. She's Helen of Sparta. And that whole war is a kickoff because apparently she had a great ass. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, this story has been told over and over and over again. Like, oh, the guy lost his head and then, you know. Now we've all got to go to war. OK, boys, get your shields on the boat. It's a bit of a long journey. Sorry about this. You're probably not going to come back. You know what I'm saying? But, you know, this woman disrespected me. Well, yeah, I think I think it's I think it's always been there. One of my favorite Greek stories was the story of Kaliste. I can't remember who did. Maybe it was Aphrodite felt slighted by the other goddesses and she wanted to cause chaos. So she had an apple made a golden apple with Kaliste written on it, which means for the most beautiful one. And then she the dinner of the of all the gods and goddesses to sat there and she throws the golden apple like a grenade. And because it says for the most beautiful one, all the goddesses go for it at the same time and it just creates absolute fucking chaos. This golden apple is a grenade of narcissism, Kaliste. The grenade of narcissism. Yeah, you know, weirdly, it reminded me of I used to, you know, I worked in a recruiting office for nurses, actually. Like that was one of my dumb jobs that I've had in my life. Doing data entry in UCLA. And I remember the main office, you know, like they were going to hire another secretary and they're like, they couldn't hire the cute one because Annette's the cute one. And that's the cute one. And then there's going to be a problem. So we can hire one that's cuter than her because that'll take it through a whole roll off. You know, you'll upset the ecosystem. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, the grenade of narcissism, I love it. All right, so I think we should probably wrap up here. But is there anything that, you know, you want to send people to your website, to your coaching or whatever? I've got a new mental health system coming out that's called Fortress. It's a mental health, self-protection system. It's completely free for anybody who wants it. If they follow me on Instagram, I'll give the details there. It's I'm Richard Granon on Instagram. And that will be coming out next week. If you have anxiety, depression, anger management issues or addiction, this is a 10-step process that will help you clear all of that. And it is completely for free. OK, and that helps people, you know, work through things themselves. It's yeah, really, it's it's it's mental health work with a very strongly philosophical edge to it in that you're going to be doing it on your own. You're going to be working it through for your own. You do as part of the process, you do have to develop a kind of value based philosophy. I'm avoiding saying moral philosophy, but a value based philosophy in order to move forward. And the idea is to take you from a place where perhaps some boundaries that people have have been have taken some blows and some necks and so they're broken a little bit. We'll strengthen the boundaries, emotionally re-regulate the person, have them develop some kind of a value system based philosophy so they can move forward and navigate life with clarity and move them back to a state of agency and sovereignty. Well, it sounds like a place that everyone would want to be, agency and sovereignty. I'm down. All right, man, thanks for coming on the show, man. Thank you very much, sir. It's a pleasure. Thank you for watching or listening to Start the World. You know, my personal mission is to help men become the best versions of themselves and to face some of the challenges that we all face in the 21st century. You know, it's getting weird out there. So I'm having conversations with other men who are helping men face and overcome these challenges. And that's why I'm so excited about the new season of Start the World. You know, I have a lot of people scheduled. I'm going to talk to psychologists, therapists, martial artists, coaches, trainers, artists, spiritual leaders and maybe just some fun weirdos. We're going to try to put out an episode every week for a while, maybe 30 to 50 episodes this year. You know, I'm going to get some lavalier makes, maybe do some in-person interviews and maybe even some workout content. I think a lot of people would actually like that. You know, if you want to support this podcast or just my work generally, I am writing a book this year that I'm also pretty excited about. Hopefully it'll come out in the fall. I'm using Subscribestar. Subscribestar is an anti-censorship platform. You can sign up using a link in the show notes or on YouTube or just by typing in Subscribestar.com slash Jack Donovan and it should take you there. So thanks again for watching. We're listening to Start the World. This is Jack Donovan. Stay sober.