Jocko Podcast - Jocko Underground: What is The Mark of a Man?

Episode Date: December 24, 2024

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This is the Janko Underground podcast number 148. Bodeco Charles and me, Jocka, we have some Q&A from members of the underground. Yes. What do we got? Some guidance for life, which is very beneficial. All right. First question. Thank you for everything you do.

Giving hope to so many people, including myself. I have a simple question. What is the measure of a man? I'm sitting here 45 years old. I never joined the military. I never done any. anything for the country, for the community. Is there some measure of endurance or some feat that you would consider the mark of a man?

Spartans had their rituals. We don't have any rituals. What if you walked from San Diego to Canada? What if you did military type training? I'm looking for some kind of meaning, I guess. Is there some act that when done, you could look back and say, damn, that was manly of me. Climb a mountain? I don't know.

I'm rambling now. Thanks for all your help. It's kind of an interesting thought My first thought was There's a seed in Caddyshack You ever seen Caddyshack? Yeah

Where Chevy Chase was a tall guy And he's talking to the golf Like leader of the club And he says, you know What'd you shoot yesterday? He's like, I don't really know What do you mean you don't know? He's like, oh, I really don't keep score

And the guy goes Oh, how do you measure yourself against other golfers? And Chevy Chase goes, Oh, by height and it's well the thing that's funny about that quote is it's like it's arbitrary and it's something that Chevy Chase is tall this guy short I measure my height you know what I mean uh which is kind of applicable here like what are you into um and and look there's some stuff that that people might think of right whether it's like some kind of military activity whether it's some kind of exploration

whether it's some kind of physical or mental feat that you do, whether you win the freaking chess championships of the world, chess.com. Echo Charles, what's your call sign? All day. Echo Charles 24. So if you're just going up in the rankings and you become the number one player

in a game that's very, takes a lot of cerebral horsepower, okay, that's cool. Or if you're Alex Honnold and you climb L-CAP with no ropes free solo, you know, is that a big deal? Yeah, it's an awesome deal. There's some people that don't even understand what that is, by the way. There's some people that are out of that ecosystem. Yeah.

There's some people that would literally say that's stupid. Yeah. Right? Yeah, yeah, fully. There's some people that say, oh, you spend all your time doing chess. Why don't you go and study how to cure cancer, right? That's a, we understand. There's some people that look at a person climbing up a 3,000 foot granite face with no ropes and go, that's, what are you pursuing this for?

Yeah. Why would you risk death? It's all your life. So, so what's your perspective here? You know, I think if I was to try and boil this down to say, you know, what are you doing to be a good man, to be a good human, help other people. Because I think at the end of the day, even when we look at the military and you say that's a heroic thing to do, why is it heroic? Is it heroic if you're out doing bad things? No.

No, it's not heroic at all. It's supposed to be heroic because you're out helping. Saving you're saving your teammates you're helping kill the bad guys so that you can save the oppressed people like that's what makes it heroic And I don't know I'm I can see that I'm subconsciously avoiding the term manly Yeah, because it seems a little strange Yeah to me like manly right right it's like there's negative connotation behind it in my mind like oh You know like someone say oh you you're you're so you think you're so manly yeah just It seems like a weird term to me.

But I kind of understand what the intent of his word. He's like, hey, how can I look back at my life and say, I did honorable things as a person, things that are respectable, things that have meaning. And I would say if you were talking about honor and meaning and respect, I would go to what I was talking about, helping other people. You know, and so, like, what does an explorer do? Why is an explorer admirable? Because they take risk to open up new horizons. They find the new world. They go to the moon.

They go to Mars. That's exploring and opening new horizons for humanity. Yeah. That's true. And even someone like Alex Honnold, who's, he's doing something that is expanding the capability of humans, showing the potential of humans, inspiring other humans. So it's actually, if you're as long as you're not one of the people that's saying, well, you could die. So it's stupid. A lot of people look at it.

He really proved what humans are capable of. He inspired people. He helped people in the world. So I think if you, but I think if you're trying to break it down and you really want to look back at your life and say you did things that are good and honorable and respectful and meaningful,

I would say the apex of that mountain to climb is helping other people out. Whether it's elderly people that need help that are sitting alone in a freaking old folks home, What do they call those? Old folks. There's another name for it. A more like politically correct name.

Yeah. Senior. Senior living care. Yeah, something like they have a better, nicer name for it now. Or maybe it's some kids, right? Maybe it's some kids that are, you know, in a bad situation and they need guidance.

They need mentorship. They need help. They need someone to teach them how to throw baseball. Whatever the thing is. Maybe it, you know, so there's people out there. They're underprivileged people out there. There's people that are in need. If you can help those people, I think that's the honorable.

I think that's the most meaningful, honorable, respectable thing that you could do. And if you want to throw the word manly on that, go ahead. That's my perspective. It seems like, I don't know, this could be just my bias. But it seems like the more useful you aren't like I just how you said to others. You know, so like fixing stuff, saving people, helping out in a way that needs to be. done, you know? Like, that's the thing.

I think, um, I think he might have been thinking along the lines of like, what is there like a mark, like a big one. You know, like a right of passage almost kind of a thing that kind of is like, hey, that's manly of you. That's a like, you're a man now that you did this kind of a thing.

Yeah. Go out contribute to society and sustain yourself and build a family. Yeah. You know, take care of your family. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it feels like it all. Yeah, I think we're kind of all enamored.

hey, we all are in one way or another. It's like, you know, especially, you know, when you look on TV and the news and like all the stuff and you have these like seemingly larger than life heroes, you know, guys winning the Medal of Honor. It's kind of like, well, then you look at yourself, you're like, I don't win no Medal of Honor. I haven't done anything even close to that, you know?

And then I think that kind of precipitates into like these feelings, you know, of like, shoot, what did I do? And you kind of go down the list and you're like kind of confused, wait, I did this, but not this, you know. So it's kind of makes sense that you'd wonder that sometimes. Yeah. And when people earn the Medal of Honor they do it by helping people.

You know, they save other people's lives. They're able to push forward so that a battle can be won. They drag someone, you know, back. That is a little excerpt of what we are doing on the Jocko Underground podcast. So if you want to continue to listen, go to jacounderground.com and subscribe. And we're doing this to mitigate our reliance on external platforms. So we are not subject to their control. And we are doing this so that we can support.

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