SOLVED with Mark Manson - Keeping the Weight Off, Rewiring Your Brain with Psychedelics, and Finding Strong Male Role Models

Episode Date: October 16, 2024

It's hard enough to change, but why it is so hard to maintain that change too? How might psychedelics facilitate big changes in our lives? And how can young men find healthy role models in the modern world? In this week's pod, we cover my current struggles around keeping a healthy diet and lifestyle, how psychedelics might actually scramble your brain (in a good way), and why so many young men are struggling to find a place in the world today. Enjoy. Sign up for my newsletter, Your Next Breakthrough. It will help make you a less awful person: https://markmanson.net/breakthrough 00:15 The F*ck of the Week: Struggling with food and healthy eating 14:23 Brilliant of Bullsh*t: Psychedelics rewire your brain? 26:37 Q&A: How do I be man in today's world? Theme music: “Icarus Lives” by ⁠Periphery⁠, used with permission from Periphery. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey guys, before we get into it, if you listen to the show, you probably consume a lot of personal growth content. The books, the podcasts, YouTube videos, all of it. And you've probably noticed the gap between knowing what to do and then actually going out and doing it. You've got the insights, but what you don't have is something that connects them to your actual life. That's why I built purpose. It's a personal development AI that learns you, your patterns, your blind spots, all the stuff that you keep circling back to over and over again. Instead of handing you another framework, it gives you specific personalized direction.

So check it out. You can try it for free for seven days. Go to purpose. That is purpose. So I was speaking to a men's group yesterday. Always love it when like men get together with other men to talk about their feelings. Deal with their emotional bullshit. It's not something you see every day.

So when you see it, it's like, it's a very beautiful thing. It's the subtle art of not giving a fuck podcast. with your host, Mark Manson. But it was interesting. I was answering questions from guys in the group, and there was one gentleman who got up, overweight guy, said he'd been struggling with his weight for years

and was having episodes of binging and was just, like, absolutely distraught, overwhelmed with anxiety, regret, feelings of failure or whatever. And it was a very, like, touching and emotional conversation that we had. And I guess I'll start with how I answered him, but then I'll talk about why I bring this up. This is my fuck for the week. So my answer to him was that anytime we fail at something, you know, there's kind of two levels of that failure. The first one is just the simple like emotional gut reaction, right? So it's like you fuck something up. You're like, God, I feel bad about that.

You feel the regret, you feel the embarrassment, you feel the frustration, the anger, the sadness, whatever. The negative feelings come up, right? I will die on the hill that those feelings are not the problem, right? Like we should have negative emotions when bad things happen in our lives or when we've made poor choices. Like those negative emotions are there to try to get us to not make those choices again. So there's no problem there. The second level, though, is the narrative that we build around. those failures. And talking to this gentleman, it was very clear that he had some deeply embedded

narratives of shame, self-worth, failings, you know, this is never going to work. I'm doomed, I'm cursed, I'm a loser, I'm just like, I can't be normal, I can't be like anybody else. And it's when those narratives come in, they amplify the negative feelings. They basically generate more negative feelings when it's not necessary. And I think it becomes self-defeating because it raises the stakes and raises the pressure for the next time you're in that situation and you don't want to fail. So I had a discussion with him about that, but like it's funny because it like it hit close to home for me. We did an episode a few months ago about my health journey, you know, for listeners who haven't heard that, I lost about 60

pounds over the course of four years. At the beginning of this year, 2024, I turned 40. And my goal was when I turned 40, I wanted to be best shape of my life, strongest, best fitness of my life, strongest of my life, best body composition of my life. And I achieved all those goals. And I did that. And after like nearly five fucking years of like obsessing over my weight and what I'm eating and my exercise and everything, I did something very daring, which was like, I took the training wheels off.

And I was like, I told my health coach, I was like, I'm in a place. place in my life, I'm very happy. I feel good. Like, I, I've built a lot of great habits. I don't want to track anymore. Like, I want to live, like, a normal fucking person. I don't want to have to think about this every day. And at this point, I feel like I'm equipped to do that, right? Like, I told them, I was like, you didn't give me fish. You taught me to fish, right? And, like, let me go see if I actually know how to fish now. And for the first few months, it was fine. and then I don't know, something happened around like I went to New York in June and then I went to Europe and then I got sick and then I came back and I was jet lagged and was working a ton and I feel the old habits creeping back in. I went to dinner with my wife here in Santa Monica just a few nights ago and we were walking back and we walked past an ice cream place just down the street and just completely unconsciously I made a beeline.

for the fucking ice cream shop and just got this massive cone and started fucking inhaling it. And I got like midway through the cone and I had this like, oh my God, what am I doing moment? And I guess for me, like talking to this guy yesterday, it really struck me like I really felt for him because I feel like I'm kind of in the same spot to a lesser extent. Everybody reads, and especially you and I, we read all this stuff about habits and discipline and rewiring our reward system and building new lifestyle and altering the environment, all this stuff. And like most of like the conventional wisdom is that it takes, well, some people say 21 days to change a habit, which is not true. But most of the research says a couple months, a few months. And there are

plenty of habits in my life that I've broken within a few months or I have created within a few months and I've never had to think about them again. Yeah, when it comes to fuck of food, I don't like, I don't know. Like, I kind of feel, uh, there's like a, there's a frustration that I'm feeling of like, I put five years into this. And it, and it feels like I can just feel my body and mind like dragging me back to where I was five years ago slowly over the course of multiple months. I don't know.

We like, we've had a, we've had a couple recovered addicts on the show, Rich Roll, Brandon Novak. And Novak in particular, you know, he talked a lot about like, he said a big part of it was just accepting that like he is one of the few people in the population that this is always going to be an issue. It's never going to go away. It's never, it's not a habit you're going to break. It's not like, it's not a, a lifestyle practice that you need to change. Like, he is part of the 1% of the population or whatever that this is just, it has to be front of mind 24-7. And this has gotten, gotten me thinking about that that is probably true with some people around food and nutrition.

Like the longer I get into this journey, the more I start recognizing like the compulsion and the behavior and mental patterns of an addict. And that fucking sucks. Yeah. Because I'm totally that guy who like every other area of my life, I went and read a bunch of books and tried a bunch of stuff and eventually figured it out.

And it's like, this seems to be the one area where it's like, yeah, dude, no, you're just going to have to track for the rest of your fucking life. And like, that's just it. That's like you, sorry, dude, you like, you, you like lost the lottery. This is, this is the one thing that you're just going to have to suffer through forever. So anyway, I just wanted to express that. I don't know if you have any thoughts around that. Your health habits seem to be very dialed in. It's talking to the guy yesterday, like, brought this up for me. Well, if you remember something else that Brandon Novak said to, you know, he went to re-ab 13 times.

Yeah. I think, I think Rich Roll might have said something to this effect, too, but relapses are part of the recovery process. Totally. They are. Yeah. We talked about that in the self-discipline episode, too, that we did where what self-discipline is, is it's a correction of the behavior.

Right, right. That's part of the process. So I think that's something, I know, that probably doesn't give you a whole lot of, it doesn't console you, I'm sure. I feel so much better. I know, I know, I know. But, you know, like Brandon said, I wouldn't have wanted anyone. want to rob me of my process. Yeah. And I think you're in that process. And it sounds like this guy

is in the middle of a very grueling process. Deep in it. I've said this before too. I'm pretty fortunate in that. Yeah, for me, as long as I, as long as I do that correction process, I'm, I'm pretty good. I do fall off the wagon every now and then, but I'm able to get back on. Yeah. For whatever reason. And to your point, some habits are just like that for some people and some aren't. Yeah. I don't know what to say about that. It is, it's a weird thing. And, And it's crazy too because, you know, there have been a few times where my wife has gone on some sort of diet or restriction or whatever. And for her, it's like, she literally just is like, I'm going to start this diet tomorrow and I'm going to do it for 60 days. And she does it for 60 days.

And she just does it. Yeah. And she like never fucks up and is never tempted and never like slips a dessert when she shouldn't. And at first, you know, the first couple of times she did that, I was. was like, oh my God, her like willpower is just like ironclad. But then it's funny because then there are other areas of her life that like she doesn't have that. Yep.

And I do. So it's really just gotten me thinking about, I don't know, like I think the, the, it's interesting because it, I think specifically around weight, health and food, there are a lot of moral judgments that people attach, right? Like when you see somebody who's overweight and eating a lot, like I think most people's default reaction is some sort of kind of moral judgment. I follow a bunch of health influencers. And I see this all the time in their replies.

And sometimes from the influencers themselves, they're like, you know, it's calories in, calories out, bro. Like, you can't figure that out. You're a fucking loser. And you have no discipline. And I'm like, I'm sorry. I'm like, I've been struggling with this my entire life and I've been fixing it for over five years.

And I'm like, it's not that simple. Right. It's really not. One of the things that my coach helped me realize is that there's like, I don't think I really experienced compulsion in almost any other area of my life. Like when I think about other things that I've been kind of addicted to, I've been fully aware of that addiction. Like what's some examples of that?

So, for example, like, I've gone through periods where I'm really addicted to video games. But I've been very aware, you know, it's like I knew I was playing Eldon Ring 12 hours a day. And I was, even though I was a little bit disgusted with myself as I, you know, I was. did it. I was kind of like at peace with that decision, right? When I was younger, I definitely went through a period where I think I was addicted to dating and meeting women and I don't know, I guess flirting and trying to pick up women. But I was aware of that. Like I kind of knew, you know, in my head, I'm like, this is a phase. Like, I'm going out all the time. I'm young. This is the time to do this.

There's probably an addiction to travel. I was also fairly aware of that at the time. Food is the first thing that, like, I clearly have compulsive behaviors. And it took other people pointing that out to me for me to even realize. Like, the level of awareness was so just blocked that it required third parties pointing out to me, like, hey, you didn't have to eat that whole fucking ice cream coat. Like, you just had a big dinner. and, you know, like, it's been a weird experience.

Like, it's something I haven't dealt with before. And it's given me a lot of empathy for people who have been on this struggle bus for a long time. Yeah. Like, I get it now. You meet people occasionally or you talk to people, see people occasionally who, like, they've literally been fighting their entire adult lives with their weight or with their health. And, yeah, I don't know. I guess maybe when I was younger, more cavalier, my assumption was just, just like, well, get your shit together, dude.

Like, do you think you need to go back to having kind of an accountability, um, set up with a, with a coach? Are you going to try to grid it out yourself for a little while longer and figure out how you can do it on your own? What are you going to do? So I think that's why that that's part of the emotional salience this week is, is, uh, you're trying to figure that out? No, it's like, I think, I think the ice cream was the moment where I realized like, no,

I need training wheels. Like, I, I cannot. be allowed to operate heavy machinery. Like I need, I need a babysitter. Okay. And in this part of my life, I just need one. That's just who I am. It's how my brain's wired.

I need. So I, that the inevitable, I don't know if I need, I'm not like starting today or whatever, but between that experience and then, you know, talking to the guy soon after, you know, it, I've kind of come to the conclusion of it is inevitable. I don't know if I need tracking and accountability. 24-7-365 for the rest of my life. But it definitely seems like I don't seem to be able to be left to my own devices

for more than, say, four months at a time. Okay. Four to six months at a time. So maybe it's a thing where it's like, I do six months on, six months off, and I just live the rest of my life that way. Or I just fucking get religious about it and make it a part of,

every day. Right. So I don't know. We'll see. To be continued. We'll keep checking in on you. Okay. To be continued.

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What are we harshly judging today, Drew? Psychedelics. Oh, brilliant. Bullshit. Psychedelics. Ooh, okay. This is trendy. This is spicy.

This is in the zeitgeist at the moment. It is. You've had some experience with psychedics. Like too many. Probably too many in the past. I've only ever had one. We can talk about that too. Yet a really interesting study came out in nature about the effects of psilocybin on the brain.

Yeah. Okay. And what they found basically is that psilocybin, which is the active ingredient in magic mushrooms, right? So they make these people trip balls and they put them in an fMRI machine, which I can only imagine is terrifying. Sounds amazing. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

That's how I wanted to spend all my trips. Yeah. But anyway, what they found is that there's this like massive desynchronization all across the brain. Okay. In when somebody's high on mushrooms, basically. And what's really interesting about this is that they found, there's these two areas of the brain where in the past they found if these two areas are talking a lot to each other, basically, they're synchronized very, very heavily. That's actually correlated with depressive symptoms. Okay.

And what they found is that the psilocybin will desynchronize that. that relationship between these two brain areas. Okay. And it's durable. It lasts for a few weeks, actually. And they think this might be one mechanism by which psychedelics can help people with, like, treatment resistant depression and other mental disorders. Sure. And other mental health disorders.

So we're starting to find like some possible mechanisms. You know, there's the symptom and depression where people are kind of like stuck in a rut of there's a lot of negative self-talk. Yeah. Along with, you know, all the mood stuff that they do. This could be like a neural correlate to that. Okay. Of your brain, your brain is kind of stuck in this rut. There's these two areas of your brain talking back and forth too much.

And if we can kind of reset that connection. Yeah. And give space for new connections to occur. That that might be one mechanism by which we could treat depression and other mental health disorders. So one thing that I've heard anecdotally is just that the promise. of psychedelics, what they've generally, like, in lay people's terms, what they found with psychedelics is that it temporarily boosts neuroplasticity. So for listeners who aren't familiar, when you're young, your brain is what's called very neuroplastic. That means that your brain is still

very malleable, and you can learn and change and shift identities and change your views of the world very easily. And then as you get older, that neuroplasticity slows down. And it becomes harder to change and remove deeply embedded beliefs or identities. And so my understanding has been that, you know, psychedelics can just kind of like, almost like a steroid injection, like just a jolt of neuroplasticity. So it like shakes all those old beliefs and perspectives loose and makes it easier to kind of reformulate nuance. Is this related to that?

Like how is this map up with that? Definitely. Definitely. Yeah. So what they think is going on is when you do kind of scramble this synchronicity across the brain, it forces the brain to make basically new connections. Interesting. And so, yeah, there is more what they call synaptogenesis, basically two cells linking up to each other after you do psychedelics. There's kind of this reset.

And then there's a rewiring. Yeah. So they think that's what's going on. Yeah. So that mapped pretty well to my subjective experience of psychedelics. My subjective experience of psychedelics is that most of like the basic beliefs and assumptions that I have just get scrambled and disconnected. And I start making very disparate connections between very odd things than a sober person would never make connections between. And I can see how, I mean, I would personally say 80% of the time those new disparate connections that I mean.

made those new meanings that I created when I was on psychedelics were completely frivolous and just incredibly amusing. You know, I would just kind of giggle like a, right, like an idiot. But I'd say 20% of them were particularly profound and very insightful and help me like see things or realize things about myself or about my life. So I could see, I could see how that explanation could work. And I can also see how like if you were put in a clinical setting and you had a license a clinician there with you who was like directing you with questions and helping guide you

into thinking or about the right strands of meaning and connections that you've made or the beliefs that you've had. I could see how that could be extremely therapeutic. Right. What is your overall take on this? I think like anything else, psychedelics are a tool. Yeah. And, you know, just like you can't use a hammer to screw a screw.

You can't use psychedelics for certain things. I just don't think they work for certain things. This study actually, they mentioned this in the study. And one of the interesting findings they find is that the degree to which the synchronicity is exploded, basically, in the brain is related to how strong of a mystical experience people have. They're making these weird connections. They're having these feelings of one with, oneness with the universe. That's very common, you know, when people are tripping on psychedelics. And yeah, so the degree of synchronicity is related to that.

And I think that that, it's like this window that pops open for people and can pop open for people. What you said, though, about having the set and setting there with a clinician and intention, probably 80% of the connections you said you made were kind of bullshit. Silly. A big part of that was probably set and setting. You were just, you were all fucking off and you had no intention. I'm just popping some acid and here we go, right? Like that sort of thing. Totally.

And I've had one experience with psychedelics, only one. It was with DMT, so it was 90 seconds long. Nice. The mountains in southern Mexico. Did you speak to aliens? I spoke to somebody, something spoke to me. I'll say that. I'll say that.

Something spoke to me. And this is turning into the Joe Rogan podcast. Yeah, right? Yeah. Yeah. I, I, I, I, I, I, I, what I got from the experience more than anything was basically what I just said is these things are not to be fucked around with. I don't think, I don't think you get a whole lot of, there's

going to be a lot of people who disagree with this, but I don't think you get a whole lot of value tripping on acid at a fish concert or whatever, right? That's just not. I mean, you get entertainment value. You don't get. It's entertaining. You don't get like mental health value. Yes. Yes. But what they're finding now is that these tools can be used in very, if you're very intentional, very specific ways, these tools can be used with great effects. And that's very, very encouraging. The one caution I see, though, too, a lot of these effects sizes that we're seeing coming out of these early studies on psychedelics and treating like major depression, treatment resistance depression, alcoholism, all of that, those effect sizes are very similar to what we saw in like

the 80s with the new antidepressant drugs. And they were being used, you know, on people with treatment resistant depression. Like the hard cases. Right. And so I just, I'm concerned that as they, as the, the tools get applied to more and more people and edge cases and where they're maybe not going to be as effective, we're not going to see these huge effects. Yeah. And it could be very similar to like the antidepressant story.

I feel we see that not only with drugs, we see that with therapy modalities as well. It's like some new therapy modalities developed. It's used on super hard cases. You get a great effect size, and then you apply it to the general population, and that effect size goes away. 100%. Back to the synchronicity thing really quick in the plasticity. One thing that I've noticed, and this is always, you know, people ask me all the time,

what is your opinion on psychedelics? It's kind of a hot topic at the moment. I would say overall, I'm very bullish and optimistic, but I do think there are caveats. And one of those caveats would be, I've noticed that there are the people that I've known who take lots of psychedelics over a long period of time, they, it's almost like they desynchronize so much and they open themselves up to so much meaning that they start believing anything and everything. And I've watched this happen, you know, back when I used to party a lot and do a lot of drugs,

I watched this happen to a number of friends. And now that I'm out here in California, and I've got, I know a bunch of people who are like into psychedelic therapy and doing ayahuasca journeys and have shamans and are microdosing and all this shit. Like I've noticed that the ones who go very deep down that road, they kind of just start believing everything. And I think that's a under broadcast danger of this is that when you knock loose all those connections of meaning that we make and open up your neural system to like, wiring anything together, you will see somebody who is basically just has not heard anything that doesn't make sense to them. And that, to me, that's just as dysfunctional as, I mean, if you look at, so this also gets, this is a whole other podcast, but, you know, there's, there's an interesting discussion around

what is the difference between a mystical experience and like a psychotic break? And is there a difference? And because it's like when you look at say like a schizophrenic person who is having an episode, they see meaning in a bunch of different places. And it's usually mystical meaning in a bunch of different places that have no mystical meaning. And if you look at somebody who's done a fuck load of psychedelics, they find a lot of mystical meaning in places that they don't have mystical meanings. I will leave this with a fun memory. I remember the biggest trip I ever had, one of the one of my favorite things about it was the, the, day after just walking around the house and finding the most absurd things and just like laughing

to myself being like how did this make any sense like I remember the next day I opened the microwave and there was a bowl of cereal in it and I was like how does this make sense like what what was the thought process some warm cocoa puffs yeah seriously what what on earth was going on so just the I guess that's just the word of caution yeah for sure they're again Yeah, and their tools. Yes, absolutely. Tools can cut both ways. All right.

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All right, we're back. What are we answering today, Drew? Audience, what does the audience give me to fuck about? Masculinity, Mark, modern masculinity. It's been a while since you've talked about this. Did we give a fuck about this? Yes, we do. Okay.

I guess I should have that first, yeah. No, we got a question from somebody on YouTube. Mark, I'm a college student. But I don't know how to grow up as a man. I'd like to hear some men's advice. I seriously lack so much nurturing for men. I don't want to talk to my brother. My dad died a few years ago.

go, and even while he was alive, he was never really around to guide me into manhood. I didn't hang out with him much. Or were my friends when I was growing up, and now I seek a lot of male connection. I don't know how I should think as a man. How should I feel as a man? So can you help me? I need some male advice. Well, it's ironic that we opened the show mentioning men's groups.

It's interesting, actually, my experience in men's groups about being a part of them and also speaking at them, is that they are generally, mostly populated with men who grew up without a male role model. Right. And that the group is kind of acting as the communal male role model for everybody. Communal father, yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, this is the sort of question.

I want to preface this with like any time I see, first of all, there are a lot of influencers and YouTubers and creators out there who will like start their answer with a man needs to be this. You know, every man needs this. And to me, that's a red flag. Like, there is men, there is as much variation between men as there is between anybody in the human race. So what feels very true and important for one young man is going to feel very different for another. But I do think in general, in human nature, I think it's important to look for both role models and fellow travelers on the path of life who are.

similar to ourselves and have the same lived experience as ourselves. So if you're a young man, that means finding other young men and finding some older men that you can look up to and admire and get advice from, et cetera. My general piece of advice to young men is to simply channel their angst and their energy towards something of value. that ultimately, like if you look from an evolutionary perspective, the man's role, other than making babies, the man's role in human society is to produce more value than he consumes, whether that's going and killing a water buffalo to feed the tribe or devising a new piece

of technology or protecting people from invaders. You know, whatever it is that you're doing, you should feel that you're adding value in some way. And, you know, Arnold Schwarzenegger wrote a book last year that is very simple, and I love the premise. It's just be useful. Be useful. Like his answer to kind of every life problem is just get up and go be useful. And most things will kind of take care of themselves. And I think in general for men, that's more often than not going to lead to the solution.

is like, you feel lost, just like, go be useful. Go do something useful. Like, go help somebody. Go build something. That's the starting point, in my opinion. Yeah. There's kind of this common lament among men that, you know, oh, society sees us as we're dispensable. You know, we're disposable.

We are. And we are. No, we are. But the point you're making is like make yourself less dispensable, right? Make yourself indispensable. Right. Go add value. Yes. So if we want to get into, like, if we want to go hardcore on the evolutionary psych, like, let's do that for a second, which is, uh, historically men are completely dispensable. Right. Dispendable dispensable. Dispensible. Dispensable. Um, disposable. Disposable. That's the word. Men are completely disposable. I mean, it's, and it's just, it's simple biology is that, you know, one woman can only have a child every nine months, whereas one man can,

have like a fucking hundred kids right every nine months so men are very disposable and we are evolutionarily adapted to that reality that we are uh we're stronger we're more physical we tend to have more physical energy um and we tend to to seek out danger we're more risk taking we tend to seek out danger and and her uh are more willing to put ourselves in harm's way and so I I think it's don't lament the fact that men are disposable like

embrace that fact and and as you said find ways to be indispensable like what is the value you can create that people are like oh no don't send him to war like we fucking need that guy you know right

so it's like ask yourself that and yeah basically just try to try to create far more value than you're consuming. Right. Yeah.

And you mentioned the not having good role models. I looked up some research on absent fathers. Yeah. And consistently what the most rigorous research around this finds is that there's consistent effects of absent fathers on high school graduation rates, a child socio-emotional adjustment, and their adult mental health. Yeah. And if you look at those three things, so education, socio-emotional development and mental

health, those are three areas that modern men are really, really struggling with right now. Educational attainment has been on the decline for men while it's going up for women. Yes. Socio-emotional adjustment, a lot of men in their 20s and 30s are either feeling or are labeled as being a little bit stunted in the emotional department. And then mental health, men's mental health is just men commit suicide at nearly four times the rate that women do. Right. So these just so happen to be three areas that we're seeing that they have a plight right now. Well, and we're seen where record, it's a record number of households are growing up with single mothers.

Right, right. Or a record number of children are growing up with single mothers. So it's this is like this is just one of those highly under discussed topics. And I think the messaging around this is just been bad. Like I think I think conservatives have actually fucked this up because this is an issue that they are 100% right on and They're just really bad at communicating that I think it's Most people when they hear like family values or the importance of family It's always attached to like some religious connotation you know whenever at least here in the US

Whenever you hear you know some conservative politician rail on about family values Pretty high high likelihood you're gonna hear the words God or Jesus very soon afterwards. And I think that just turns lefties minds off completely. They're like, oh, he just said the G word. I don't have to listen to him anymore. Whereas if they just presented the data, like the data on two parent households versus one parent household is is absolutely staggering. And it's the level, the amount of children growing up today in one parent households is like epidemic proportions. And as you just pointed out, like the outcomes are so much. much worse, both like cognitively, but also emotionally and just in general educational attainment,

well-being, et cetera, et cetera. So like, I get frustrated around this of like, you guys are right. Like you're just fucking up the messaging. Like just like just put some studies in front of people and it'll be undeniable. So, um, so yeah, I do think it's, it's, and there are a lot of, there are a lot of young men out there who do feel lost, who don't have role models. Like this, the guy who asked this question, I mean, there's a huge amount of guys like this in my audience. And I think it's a lot of them are turning online to people like myself or Jordan Peterson or Chris Williamson or Joe Rogan, you know, to like kind of try to find those male role models and more importantly, like a sense of community, like a sense of like a group of guys who like think

the same way and deal with the same struggles and have the similar aspirations. So people can trash the quote unquote, you know, manosphere or alt-right or whatever. To me, it's just like an inevitability of the demographic issues that society is going through. So would you have any recommendations around that, though? We talked the other day about creators and kind of people having these parasocial relationships. You and I discussed that. And do you think that's a good thing? It can't be a good thing?

Can it be a bad thing? You know, if you, if somebody's glomming onto like, you know, there's varying levels of toxicity out there around this. Yeah. Do you have any guiding principles around that? I think overall it's it's a good thing. I mean, it's we're filling a demand. Yes. Right.

So and I think having something online, having some sort of parissocial relationship with a male role model is much better than just having no male role model. That said, there are, there's like, as you pointed out, there's a different, differing degrees of healthiness and unhealthiness. And the problem is, is that young men, especially if they're like emotionally stunted or haven't gotten out in the real world a whole lot, they're going to be very bad judges of like what is a healthy role model and what's an unhealthy role model. Like they're probably going to mistake things that sound cool and sexy and like a dude standing next to a Lamborghini is like, oh, that's a cool role model.

you know, hopefully as they get older, they'll grow out of that. I think most do. But I would, the advice that I would give is I would look at the, the ethical and emotional character of what the man is saying. It's funny, actually, I had a friend a long time ago who told me this, and it's very, very true. He said, he said, the next time you start, like, looking up to somebody online, put on a video of them and turn the sound off.

And just gauge, like, their facial expressions. And it's, it's amazing actually. Like, you, there's a lot of people that as soon as you turn the sound off, they look so incredibly angry. Like, it's just, you can just see. It's just like anger is just fueling everything. Whereas, like, other people, there's like a joy or a levity. And then other people, there's kind of like this sadness that is seeping through. So that's fascinating.

That's a cool little hack. But, like, I, you know, I look at, I look at, I think. An obvious example is somebody like Andrew Tate. Like I get why young men see him and are like kind of seduced by it. Because especially if you're like a young 16 year old, no male role model, you know, no real friends, haven't really done anything in life. Doesn't, you know, feel very, you know, has a lot of anger and resentment and frustration that you don't know how to express. you see a guy like that who is just clearly full of rage and very antisocial, like just very, like clearly takes pleasure in upsetting other people, um, being obnoxious, uh, you know, saying like, just arguably being unethical. I can see why that's seductive to that young guy. But I think if you're that young guy, you need to be able to look past that and ask yourself, Like, okay, like, what is, is this actually sustainable or am I just, you know, kind of getting excited?

Because I'm like living vicariously through this guy in a YouTube video or whatever. I would not want to be a young man. I remember how hard it was, you know, when I was like this guy's in college. Yeah. It was an intense period to go through an intense emotional experience that you have at that age. Yeah. Just trying to figure shit out. And I don't know.

I feel for you, man. I don't. I wouldn't want to be in those situations these days. I feel it's only gotten more complicated. Yeah, it really has. It really has. For sure. That's too bad.

So what's the wisdom of the week? Wisdom of the week comes from the Buddha this week. Ooh, I'm a fan. And it's about masculinity. A man may conquer a million men in battle, but one who conquers himself is indeed the greatest of conquerors. Very fitting. He's the goat.

That's the Buddha. All right. Thank you, guys. that is our show this week. Be sure to like and subscribe. Follow the show on any platform. Leave a review. It helps us.

Helps juice the algorithm. If you have a question, you can leave it as a comment on YouTube or you can send it to podcast at markmanson.net. And let us know what you think. Let us know what you'd like to see. Anything you'd like us to talk about.

We'll see you next week. Stay frosty. The subtle art of Not Getting a Fuck podcast is produced by Drew Burning. It's edited by Andrew Nishimer. Jessica Choi is our videographer and sound engineer. Thank you for listening, and we will see you next week.