 What he represents is patriarchy. We're here to do work as men, as patriarchs. There's nothing more natural than being a father. Welcome back to 21 Convention 2019 in Orlando, Florida. Special patriarch edition. I'm honored to be announcing our next speaker. I brought him up in my speech. I've been friends with a man for years. He's been involved with 21Con longer than I. Since 2016, he's been a part of this. Spreading the message, setting the example for other men. You know, putting himself out there for others. Making himself totally available. Any questions asked, he'll answer for you. He gives you his time, his energy. And when he's speaking to you, it's like there's nothing else going on. He gives you his undivided attention. So Tanner Guzzi will be the next speaker. He writes at masculine-style.com. But he's more than just the style guy. Everybody pins that on him. He's about style. He looks good. He makes me feel self-conscious in everything I wear. That's what he does, though. He's very good at what he does. He's a professional in his craft. And he makes other men dress intentionally. He makes other men better. But he's also a man, a patriarch, and a leader. And when you see men like that, and you see men who are, they're broadening that scope. You like to pigeonhole them and put them into one area and say, that's the comfortable part. But here's the thing about Tanner. Everything in his life, everything he does, comes from an authentic position. It's not just being the style guy. It's being a leader. It's being a man who will help others and lead his family and lead himself to greater glory. So with that, he's going to be leading you to higher grounds and raising your standard in everything it is that you do. The patriarch, not the style guy, Tanner Guzzi. Hey, guys. I am excited to talk to you today, especially because I've been doing public speaking. I'm 34, and I've been doing public speaking for 30 years. I remember giving talks in church when I was four years old and having to get up and talk about things. I've had to speak as an authority about things for the last 15 years, whether that's teaching people about my beliefs or being involved with 21Con, Menfluential, other events that I've been involved with. And I'm really excited to talk to you today because I'm not talking to you as an authority today. If I were to be speaking to you guys about style, the importance of your appearance, how to better present yourselves and how to have a better presence, a stronger presence, better presentation, I'm an authority in that arena. But when it comes to being a father, when it comes to being a patriarch, my kids are young. I've got four. Let me tell you a little bit about some of the skin when it comes to this idea of being a father and being a patriarch. I've got four kids, happily married, been married for eight years. My wife stays home full-time. She gets to stay home full-time with the kids. We're very blessed and very lucky that men like you, who hire me as a coach, I make a good enough living off of doing that that I get to earn a full-time income on my own and my wife gets to stay home with her kids. I have three girls and a son, and they're aged. My oldest is about to turn seven. I have a son who's five, a little girl who's two and a half, and then we just had our fourth daughter back in January, so she's about three months old. We're probably having at least one, maybe two more, so we're old school like that. And I have very, very good kids right now. I do. I'm proud of them, and I get to brag about them, and obviously there's some bias in there, but I have very good kids right now. I have no idea if my kids are going to be good kids in 10 years. I have no idea if my kids are going to be good people in 20 years. And so I can't come to you as an authority figure and tell you that this is what you have to do in order to be a good patriarch and in order to raise good happy children, because I don't know. I haven't put in the time. I haven't put in the experience. I can tell you what I do, and that's what I'm planning on sharing with you, is how I have intentionally built my own family culture, how my wife and I are doing that together as a team, how we've seen success with our kids at a young age and how we plan on adapting and growing as our kids get older and as their personalities diverge and as their needs become different. But when it comes to speaking to you as an authority about this, is exactly what you have to do. I can't do that. So I want to set the expectations properly and let you guys know that today, I'm sharing my thoughts with you. I'm sharing my own experiences with you and what I like to do best is try and take what I do or what I see other people do from a purely tactical or an applicable standpoint and then try and pull the principles out of that so that we can learn together from what those principles are and then you can apply those principles in your own lives. Because I have no idea how you men can become better patriarchs. Your situations are different. You're married or you're not. You're divorced or you've got kids that were born out of wedlock. Some of you don't have kids. Some of you have grandkids. Your jobs are different. The way in which you live is different. The cultures that you belong to are very different. I cannot give you. Nobody in here can give you a prescription as far as this is how to be a successful patriarch. But what we can do is talk about the principles that have been established by men who are much greater than we are, the men who have built civilizations and then how we can apply those principles together. So one of the things that I want to talk about and what's been on my mind a lot lately is this idea of identity. Because really when it comes to my own children and the things that we're experiencing with them, one of the things that we're finding is so crucial is that they have a true identity in who and what they are. Identity is really, it's bigger than everything. And the things that we believe about ourselves, the self-talk that we have, the things that we tell ourselves who and what we are, because we're humans and because we like consistency, those are the things that we don't want to change. You hear people talk about things all the time that we identify with our weaknesses or we identify with things like the hobbies that we're into or the friends that we have or the music that we listen to, a lot of these superficial things. And I can tell you from my own experience that I went through a crisis when I was 20 years old because my identity was rooted in BMX bikes and punk rock music. And you know what, I sucked at both of those a lot. I really was not very good at any of that. And so my identity was rooted in something that there was no possible success for me to have. And it was something that was so hard for me to be able to grapple with the idea that I don't have to abandon those things. I still enjoy those things. I love taking my kids to the skate park now and riding bikes together. But it doesn't have to be my identity even though for 10 years I had told myself that that was what my identity was rooted in. Identity is what makes who we are and if we can have our identities rooted in the right things then that's what helps us be successful as people. Now the problem is the world used to be aligned with the identities that the men in this room that we would want. It used to be that you really could just kind of outsource the idea of you send your kids to school and you send them to church or to their friends' houses and they come back and those institutions and those people are instilling good ideas into them. The world used to work that way. And some people would argue that now it works that way even better but the men in here we don't like that identity. We don't like the results of that world and that culture and the way that it's creating our children. I know I certainly don't. We cannot send our children to Rome and expect them to come home hating Caesar. And that's what happens if we continue to outsource the creation of our children's identity by sending them into these other environments and not doing anything to offset that. Hunter talked about that. That doesn't mean you have to home school. We've made that decision but it does mean that when your kids home, when they do come home from school you have to talk to them about what they've done, what they've learned, what they think about that. We have to teach them as parents because we have to be the primary source of what their identities are. Everything else needs to be secondary. Otherwise Rome gets to choose who our kids are and Rome isn't interested in our kids' best interests. Rome is only interested in creating the best citizens for Rome. I don't want my kids to be fodder for Rome. I don't want my kids to be part of Babylon. I want my kids to reach their full potential and that's my responsibility as a patriarch to create the culture that gives them that sense of identity, reinforces that and teaches them to reach their full potential rather than just outsourcing that to somebody else. We don't get that luxury anymore. Now identity is not something that's created by things like law. It's not created by logic. It's not created by mandate. Identity is created by culture and culture is the driver of everything. Politics, law, everything else is downstream of culture and culture are the things that groups of people agree upon are things like morals and beliefs and systems and rituals and language and appearance and all these other variables that create this idea of a collective identity and then the individuals need to determine how they fit individually within that collective identity. And so one of the things that we're doing as a guzzie family is the guzzies is very intentionally building a culture around our family because if we can successfully build a culture if we can instill in our kids what it means to be a guzzie then that means that their identity won't be something that's threatened when they have friends who have beliefs that we disagree with or they have jobs that may offer more profit but come at the expense of their morals or my son has a girl that's really hot and is really into him but she's not good for him or my daughters can't find the kind of caliber of men that they would like to marry and so they just become spinsters. We can create the kind of culture within our family and then watch it expand out because here's one of the other things that's really interesting about this culture problem is that it's frustrating because you see people complain about culture all the time whether it's social justice warriors and everybody else complaining about the patriarchy you know us as the villains or it's people that are over in the monastery and they're talking about the cathedral and feminism and everything else but the problem is everybody's trying to fix culture on a macro level and you know why we do that? because we're terrified and we're wimps it's a way for us to tell ourselves that we're doing something good we're doing change you're not you're not we're not changing anything and so it's a way to congratulate ourselves that we're having an effect on the world or to justify when we don't because then what we're saying is well I'm doing my best I'm just one small drop in the ocean I'm just doing everything that doesn't matter you can't change the macro culture without building and changing a micro culture that's the foundation of every civilization and every culture and that's the nuclear family we waste so much time and so much energy congratulating ourselves because we're fighting the good fight we're part of a movement when we're not having any real effect if we're not actually having an effect within our own dynamic within our own family that's one of the things I love about why Anthony and Hunter put on this event is to come and talk to men who are interested in being better on that macro level I can't tell you men how much I respect you for being willing to put some real skin in the game being really interested in actually doing this with your own family dynamic instead of being a big shot online because you're intelligent and you can say things that maybe people retweet a few times awesome cool look at you change the world and so we get to focus on what that micro culture is and then once we build that out then other people become attracted to that the reason that you're all here is because there are other men who have built a micro culture and it started to expand and it started to grow but something like this is even taking that online culture that micro culture to a different level but here's the thing that I think is really crucial that I need to keep reminding myself is that what we have in common and this room is a little bit different it's a little bit more niche it's a little bit more focused but for those of us who are in the corner of the internet that is focused on masculinity and male self development I was talking about this with Jack Donovan the other day is that two thirds of us probably wouldn't get along if we were actually trying to build a tribe we have disparate ideas about what our identities are we have disparate ideas about what it means to have a relationship with God or nature or anything else we have different ideas of how a family dynamic should be we have different ideas about music or language or appearance or all these other things and yes those things can be small some of those are very big but this the manosphere the red pill whatever other term is kind of the term de jure it's not a culture it's a movement it's a men's movement and the only thing that we really have in common all of us is that we're interested in men becoming the best versions of themselves and we can't even agree on what the best version of ourselves is so that doesn't mean that you guys can rely on me or on any of these other men or even on each other to tell you what your culture should be or to build that culture for you and we can't build that way it's the problem with I mean this is one of the simple children's stories that we tell our kids is the problem with the little red hen right everybody wants this awesome culture that celebrates men men here we want the patriarchy back but nobody's willing to put in the actual hard to do work everybody wants to eat the bread but nobody's going to go dig in the soil nobody's going to go plant the seed nobody's going to go water the seeds nobody's going to go harvest it nobody's going to thresh it nobody's going to grind and mill it nobody's going to knead it in the dough and nobody's going to cook it we all just want it or we may show up at the very end and say look I pulled it out of the oven I did this awesome tweet look how I got to make the bread right we have to be willing to do the work all the way through and that's what I love about that's what I love about being in this room with men like you is you are the ones who have real consequences on the line or desire to have real consequences on the line and you're willing to build your own culture and then watch whether that actually has a positive effect on the macro culture or you just have to hunker down and fight off the hordes of barbarians and heathens are going to come after you and your family and that gets to be our job too so like I said when we first started I don't have a prescription for what it means to build a good family culture I just want to tell you guys what we've done with my family I want to walk you guys through some of what our daily routines are through some of the things that we do throughout the week some of the things that we talk about some of the things that we've set as our goals and then extrapolate again what the principles are from that so let me walk you a little bit through what a day in the Guzzi household looks like my wife and I are lucky enough that we get to wake up to the kids coming into our room now for four years if not longer it wasn't like that because before I was able to do masculine style full time I worked in nine to five and I was running a side hustle so that meant that I was getting up at five o'clock every morning a couple hours before my kids so that I could get some work done thankfully I don't have to do that anymore so our kids come trotting in with their hair all messy and their breath all stinky and everything it's seven thirty in the morning and everybody kind of piles onto our bed and we spend the first ten fifteen minutes in the morning just kind of talking and hanging out and getting to enjoy each other's company there's physical contact and there's just a there's a way to touch base and make sure that everybody slept well we talk about what they dreamt and I always tease my third that you know it's always about mom what you dream about mom you know as soon as she can't even finish the sentence I'll just interject it because it's always about mom and there's these little rituals with that now the next thing that we'll do because we're a religious family is we'll do scripture study for ten or fifteen minutes you don't have to do something like that but I do recommend that you do something where you're instilling some sort of values or some sort of principles in with your kids you can teach them you can read Esaubs Fables you can teach them some other sort of principle but we spend the first ten to fifteen minutes after we've kind of gotten up and everybody's going by doing scripture study and by talking about what these principles are teaching them the idea of what it means to be a good person what good and evil actually look like what it means to sacrifice for the people that you love or to be willing to stand up for things as opposed to just being pragmatic so we teach them these things then we'll do family prayer it's a ritual and again you don't need to be religious you do need to engage in ritual with your family every culture on a macro level that has been a successful culture the people who are part of it they have rituals they have things that they engage in physically we kneel we fold our arms we bow our heads we expect our children to be quiet and silent unless they're the ones who are actually saying the prayers you engage in some sort of a ritual because when your kids see that ritual matters then they can also start to understand the value of it they can start to see the symbolism of it they can start to find their own peace in it I love what George was talking about as far as bedtime routines a bedtime routine is nothing more than a ritual and ritual provides us with security it provides us with an understanding it doesn't mean mindless rituals my kids are engaged in that at some point if you just allow it to be mindless then it doesn't do you as nearly as much good as it could but you start off with it and then you allow it to deepen even further after that either I go to the gym or my wife goes to the gym because we have to sharpen our axis I go three days a week she goes three days a week so we just kind of take turns and in order for us to function at our highest level we have to take care of ourselves physically we have to take care of ourselves emotionally we have to take care of ourselves mentally, spiritually in every other regard separately from the kids now one of the things that we're actively talking about is instead of going to the gym setting up a gym at home in our basement because we want our kids to be able to see I mean they know that mom and dad go to the gym they have some sort of an idea of what we do there but we want them to see even more so what that looks like we want to be able to have them engage in that and have physical fitness and taking care of your body and having that be an important thing we want them to see that in real time and so that's one of the things that we're considering doing as a family is we try and build an even stronger family culture ourselves but we sharpen our axis every morning and we take turns so that each one of us can do it now after we get back and everybody's kind of ready and everything's gone through then I'll work I work from home and so my kids know that when the door is shut they don't get to come in and barge in and come bug me well our kids have boundaries and there are consequences for not obeying what those boundaries are doesn't mean that I'm angry when it happens although there are times that I am angry and I wish that I weren't I wish that I could be better as Dr. Sean was saying as far as disassociating the anger from the consequences and being able to just teach them dispassionately but my kids understand that it's not well I'm going to count to three and then you have to go okay well now I'm going to count to three now you follow through and our kids know my kids are very obedient and they're very good at not only just following the rules but starting to understand why the rules are one of the things that we've been doing a lot lately especially with my two older kids is if we tell them to do something and they say why the way kids whine because that's just kind of our natural tendency is we will say that's not the right answer you say okay dad how come because we're happy to have our kids ask us and try to understand neither my wife or I expect any sort of blind obedience from them we also don't expect them to think that we have to justify our answers or our dictates to them because we don't they're not our little gods and we don't have to justify anything to them so we expect them to obey and if they want to understand why then they can ask how come and we also expect them to do it cheerfully so I go to work and then my two oldest kids they'll do homeschool they'll start off that's the first thing that they'll do during the morning one of the reasons we do that is because we want our kids to understand that you do the hard things first you do the important things first it's hard for them my son hates it especially because the homeschool curriculum that they're following right now is it's all based on a computer program that's teaching them the simple stuff like reading, writing, math and a little bit of science you know and as they get older then we'll start doing things differently but for now this curriculum is working or my husband my son hates it he hates it he throws fits about it and we're working with him to get over it but the big thing that we're trying to do is to help them understand that you do the hard things first same thing with if there's a food that they don't like that they have to at least try that and you're better off if you try eating that first then you can enjoy the rest of your meal that's a very intentional thing that happens on our part my third child my second daughter she does the same thing when it comes to throwing fits about having naps she hates it she's two and a half she doesn't want to have to take a nap especially when her older siblings are done playing she just wants to be or when they're out playing when they're done with preschool she just wants to go out and play with them and it's funny because this has been a fight for a little while and my wife just texted me today and she said my daughter's name is Birdie she said Birdie came in at 10.30 which is like two hours earlier than what her normal nap time is and she said mom I'm tired I want to take a nap will you sing to me and my two and a half year old is really almost about that articulate because she's ridiculously smart and I'm in trouble but she said that and so even as a little kid just by reinforcing what those principles are she's starting to understand more value in it and especially because we go out of our way to try and help our children understand things and we'll go throughout the day but I come down and we eat lunch together we don't always get to do dinner together because we have different responsibilities but we always make it a point to try and eat lunch together I'll kind of clock out for a little while and I'll come down and we'll do that we'll talk about what their days how it's been and what's been going on and so we get some engaged family time then it's back to work and back to them playing outside and honestly one of the things that we're doing with our two oldest right now especially now that it's spring is again almost seven and five and we're lucky enough that we live in a community that's very it's a safe area but we send our kids off and just we taught our oldest to look at a watch and we hope to not see them for four or five hours you guys who have kids know how hard that is at first right and it kind of references what Sean was talking about in his workshop about this idea of dads have to we have to kind of push our kids out of the nest we have to challenge them we have to let them do things that may put us outside of our comfort zone and that's one of the things that I'm learning more and more as a dad is that being a good father means that I'm getting out of my comfort zone just as much as I expect my own children to get out of their comfort zones and in a lot of ways them in fact in every way when it comes to that particular action my sending them to go out and play in the neighborhood and to not be able to keep an eye on them is infinitely harder on me than it is on them they love the freedom they love it and it's good for them because they need to be able to have that kind of freedom even though sometimes it's hard for us as protective people that want to let that go and to want to let that happen so they come in we do dinner we kind of go through everything else let me tell you a little bit about what our bedtime routine is because the bedtime routine is important we do what's called the guzzy breakdown and what we'll do is whoever's leading will say who are we? and then everybody in the family says guzzies what do we do? hard things is the first thing we talk about okay dad what was your hard thing today? I have to rack my brain and think well it was sparring or it was you know it was leg day or I you know I had to try and recover a sales call that wasn't going very well or whatever else it was and then okay Hazel what was your hard thing and we go through everybody in the family it's not just the kids at first it was just the kids and then I realized that as I was trying to answer those questions in my own head there were days that I couldn't think of a hard thing that I had done or one of these other things that I had done and I realized that I needed to be as accountable to that as they were and so that's when I changed it and said you know my wife and I needed to start answering this too so everybody goes through and they talk about their hard thing and one of the things when they're little that they do is they talk about hard things that happened to them and then we keep reinforcing that no no that doesn't count I don't want to hear about the hard thing that happened to you if the hard thing happened what did you do to conquer it did you have a good attitude about it were you brave instead of scared what did you do to conquer that hard thing because we don't want our kids to think that they're they're objects that are acted upon they're not victims they're agents of action unto themselves and so we want them to understand that hard things when we ask you what hard things you did today I don't care what happened to you I care about what you did with what was difficult for you so then everybody goes through that and then we do it again who are we guzzies what do we do good things this is where we get to reinforce some of the moral codes that we teach as a family what are the things that you've done today that are good that are moral that are upright that are taking care of what it means to be a good person and we go through all of that who are we guzzies what do we do kind things okay so what are some of the kind things that we've done this is the one that I struggle with especially because a lot of times the thing I can think of a million things that I've done throughout that day maybe it's as simple as you know brushing my youngest teeth or filling up their water or something else like that and I don't think of that as a particularly kind thing I just think of it as doing my job but I don't want my kids to think of that as me doing my job I want them to realize that that's a kind thing that I'm doing for them and so we go through and we talk about what those kind things are and then because I'm kind of you know uptight and we're like this and my wife very kindly made the recommendation of we need to add one more and it's fun things because otherwise I would just focus on like the work and all that other stuff and she's totally right because you can't have a culture and you can't have a successful family without having fun things that come with it it can't just be all punishment and no praise like has already been spoken to a bunch of different times it can't be all work and no play if we're going to have a successful family culture there needs to be just as much fun as there is growth and development and so the last thing we talk about is what are the fun things this is another one that both my wife and I really kind of struggle with is sometimes throughout the day we don't really get to have that much fun because she's home schooling I'm working there's other things that are going on and so what's nice is as we go throughout this routine it makes us think as we go throughout the day it's like okay I'm going to have to tell the kids that once again I didn't do anything fun which means I'm really not being a good guzzy so I better do something fun even if it's just wrestling with my son for a few minutes or it's playing pretend with my daughter for a little while or it's that I got to take a break and I got to watch a YouTube video instead of doing another call or something else like that so that they see again that we're sharpening our own axes that we're taking taking care of ourselves and that we're doing family prayer and we have the kids stay there on prayers and then we kind of do stories and that kind of stuff and if you guys if you have little kids you don't read to your kids and you don't do the voices and you don't get into it like you're broadcasting you're missing out because that is so fun and your kids will absolutely love it and they will eat it up because they get to see you as dad get to be bigger than life you get to create these environments and these stories and these tales and these other things that as they read them my two oldest they know how to read but they can't read with the same they still ask me to do it all the time when it comes to bedtime because I can do it in a way that brings it to life that's a skill that's something that I encourage you to practice because I've gotten better at it I'm still not great at it but I've gotten better at it and I absolutely love it it's fantastic for them then by that time it's about 7.38 o'clock and the kids are done it's bedtime they go to bed at the same time every single night one because that's what keeps them sane but way more importantly that's what gives me and my wife some time to not just be parents right because just like Hunter was talking about we talked about obviously you know you take care of what your own needs are we do the gym I do work my wife does some of her stuff we do that obviously there's the parenting component which is what I've hit on quite a bit but there also needs to be the relationship component the lover archetype that comes in there so my wife and I we have these three four hours after the kids go to bed that are sacred for us they really are sometimes honestly it's just watching something like justified on Netflix or whatever we really sometimes it's just nights like that sometimes we'll both just be sitting next to each other we'll be reading books I mean the nights vary but what's important is that we get time together to just be alone the two of us so that it's not just that she's the mother of my children or I'm the father of her children but we get to maintain that relationship between the two of us as well we had a night you know now I'll start talking about things that are a little bit more than just what our daily routine is but we had a night we go out on a date twice a month and we had a night the other night that we just wanted to go to the gym together on our date that was it because we both enjoy going and we never get to go together anymore because the way the situation is with the kids and so we had her sister who comes over like every third Friday so that we can go out and we went to the gym and then we had a cheat night we just binged ourselves stupid on a bunch of junk food it was fantastic you know and so the idea of even keeping your marriage something that you're constantly working on you're constantly engaging and you're constantly enjoying when I get back this week I get back and we get to spend all day Wednesday without the kids because my parents are going to be watching them my wife and I love the alone time that we get together because it's a way for us to remind ourselves and to remember that we are still going to love being around each other even when the kids are grown up and gone we still get to engage with each other as husband and wife as lovers as everything else as opposed to it's just mother and father and feeling that dynamic so obviously there's the there's the daily component of it we've got other weekly rituals we go to church on Sundays Monday night is kind of a is a family night so we do even for those family nights we do things where one Monday a month we do a hard thing together another one will do a good thing another one will do a kind thing another one we do a fun thing we just kind of rotate through those as we go so that we can focus on those more on this kind of macro level and again it's good for the kids because half the time they don't want to do the hard things or the kind things really they just want to do the fun things because the fun thing is going to the trampoline park or it's going sledding or it's going to the skate park or something else love is that they start to recognize that when we do the hard things together as a family or when we do the kind things together as a family when we go out and we find a neighbor and we go weed their garden or something else that those are often the fun things that when we do our guzzy breakdown at the end of the night they'll talk about the hard thing that we did together as a family that day was also their fun thing for that day their attitudes start to change they start to adapt this idea of what it means to have fun and to enjoy family time and to embrace doing all that together so we have our weekly things that we do I talked about the fact that my wife and I have our monthly things where we do date nights and we try and do we try and do another religion you know and I have I don't want to go too deep into kind of the nuances of what our religious beliefs are but I remember the church Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints most of you guys know us as Mormons we go to the temple every week we do I oversee all the young men in our congregation who are between the ages of like 16 and 18 so I do that every Tuesday my wife oversees all the youth for sports and so she does that every Thursday night we do stuff like we try to go to the temple individually every week but then we try to go together as a couple every month so that's another one of our monthly rituals that again we do together as a couple but then even on a bigger scale we try and go and visit with my extended you know with my family or her family we're really grateful that where we are in Salt Lake that my family is an hour away her family is 20 minutes away we're very intentionally there I mean you guys we can live anywhere we want to in the world we really can not only is my work location independent but our kids are homeschooled we can live anywhere in the world we wanted to and we very intentionally have decided to buy a home within half an hour of both of our families because family for us is that important it's just it's that important for us and it's the idea of that culture those shared beliefs that support system having our kids grow up around cousins and aunts and uncles and grandparents who support the culture that we're trying to build and then also offer their own versions and twists on it that's way more important for us than travel we're buying a home that's half the price because Utah market is stupid expensive right now or any other variable it's that culture that drives all of our decisions for where we are and why we've decided to be there so getting to be with our family and doing things that way there are other things that go into it like what Christmas is or what Thanksgiving is but then there's even other little micro things that go into it what's the language that you use I remember a few years ago I was getting ready to do my daughter and I my oldest were getting ready to do something she was three I remember what it was and we were getting ready to do it she's yeah dad let's do it and it sounded really familiar to me I couldn't figure out it's like where is that is that a quote from a movie like why why does she say it like this and I heard her say it a bunch of times and then I was out with some friends the other day and or you know the other day a few days after and I heard myself say that exact that exact thing and I realized that she picked it up from me you know my little three year old she'll say what the heck and it just sounds exactly like my wife when she says it you know the intonation and everything is perfect and it's all like that we are not we don't do that intentionally and we should be better about intentionally using the language that we do well you know I should say we are because we teach it we teach our kids to use big words you know or to be articulate or things like that we certainly teach them to avoid using other words even things like and of course I'm going to talk about this but even little things like how you dress as a father there's not a culture that doesn't have appearance as part of what it is you guys who have read my book or have seen it know that every example that I pull from that talks about the relationship between masculinity and aesthetics is related to a particular culture what kind of culture are you creating by dressing the way that you do you can talk about the fact that we do hard things that we care about what our reputation is and we have a place that we want to make in the world and we're ambitious or whatever else but through our language through our hobbies through our appearance through everything else if all we're really doing is showing that the thing that matters most is comfort then there's dissonance and the culture we're trying to create is not the same thing as the culture we actually are creating so it's all those little things it's the language that we use it's the clothing that we wear it's even the things like the symbols that we can adopt it's the things like the models that we have it's the things that we tell ourselves it's the kind of vacations that we go on it's what our work routines are like it's all of these little variables and all these little things that they happen on accident it still creates a culture I'm sure every single one of you can think about the little things the traditions the habits everything else that happened for you as you were kids growing up I can certainly think of those that happened for me and half the time when I asked my parents why they did things that way I don't know that was just how we did it and there's nothing well I shouldn't say there used to be nothing wrong with that because again the macro culture was strong enough that it would reinforce what they were trying to do as parents but again we don't get that luxury we don't we don't get to be lazy we don't get to just say I don't know it just happened that way we have to be intentional about everything that we're doing about creating that culture and if we are then that will give our kids a sense of identity and that will allow them to be strong enough in what that identity is because the thing the task that we have at hand for us is I think one of the most difficult in the world because what we have to do is create moral revels and I know that sounds oxymoronic but that's really what we're creating is morally good people who are revels against the world that we live in we have to teach them to be in the world and to not be the weirdo kids that can't actually identify with anybody else because then again you don't get to expand your microculture into something bigger we need to teach them to be in the world but not of the world that's an incredibly difficult thing to do especially because the world is so enticing the world through music through media through culture through friends through everything else is so enticing and if we're not incredibly intentional and incredibly deliberate about what the culture is and the identity is that we're helping our children to create then the world will pull them in and they will become part of Rome they will become part of Babylon and that's the problem is that we'll lose them we can't just trust on inertia we can't just trust on another culture we can't even just trust I mean, you guys when I hear you talk about sometimes it really breaks my heart to come to this convention and I've been doing it for the last four years and to hear you men talk about the situation that you're in because the West for a lot of us when it comes to the family you live in ruins and where I am the culture that I live in that I belong to the part of the world that I live in the neighborhoods that I'm in my family, my church my community and everything else I'm in a little oasis you guys will hear people talk about like Tradcon Warping and everything else and it's all just role play I get to live that for real I really do my wife is not an outlier for being a stay at home mom she's not the majority of her peers stay home full time most of her peers most of our peers they want anywhere from three to six kids we want the division of labor I live in a little oasis but I see those borders slowly shrinking and I see wrought starting to come up because the world is so good at making men lazy and complacent and making women ungrateful and masculine and if we don't protect ourselves from that then our kids are in serious trouble we have to do everything we can on a micro level to create the kind of environment that gives our kids the identity necessary for being moral rebels in a world that does not have their best interest in mind at all that's what our responsibility is is patriarchs that's what our responsibility is when it comes to the welfare and the well-being of our children because and really the best way that I've ever heard it put is from a man named David O. McKay and the way that he said it is no success in life can compensate for failure in the home now you can think about that on two ways the things that I do in my life that my ambition, my drive, my successes if I think about it to a large extent really a lot of times it's just me trying to make up for all my crappy like the things that sucked about my childhood my parents were fantastic but they weren't perfect and I have to deal with some of the the scars, the wounds, the whatever victim language you want to use and I wish there was something better but I get to deal with all that and a lot of the reasons the way that I am and my work ethic and my ambition comes from the fact that I'm trying to compensate for what their failure in the home was and I can't and nobody ever will get to because we won't ever have perfect parents I'm not a perfect dad, I never will be but that doesn't mean that we get off easy it just means that we have to do everything we can to not fail in the home because I want my kids to be able to be successful because of the things that I do well as a father not just in spite of the things that I do well as a father so again, no success in life can compensate for failure in the home and that goes back to why we are the way we are and that certainly speaks to what our responsibility as men as fathers and as patriarchs is that's what I try to live by I hope that that's something that I've been able to help you guys live by and think more about so I appreciate your time thanks for having me join you guys he represents his patriarchy we're here to do work as men as patriarchs there's nothing more natural than being a father