The Daily Stoic - Ask Daily Stoic: Ryan and Brett McKay Talk Parenting, Living Through History, and Modern Manliness

Episode Date: June 20, 2020

In today’s episode, Ryan and Brett McKay, founder of The Art of Manliness (https://www.artofmanliness.com/), talk about being a parent in the age of COVID-19, the changing definition of manliness, and more.Sign up for The Stoic Parent, Daily Stoic’s newest course, today: http://dailystoic.com/parentingBrett McKay is founder and editor-in-chief of The Art of Manliness, the massive men’s lifestyle website with over 10 million monthly page views. For over six years, Brett has published articles about how to be a strong, conscious, thoughtful man in the modern age. Brett lives in Oklahoma with his wife and children.This episode is brought to you by LinkedIn Jobs. LinkedIn Jobs is the best platform for finding the right candidate to join your business. And right now, LinkedIn is helping companies like yours find the essential workers that they need in these trying times. Visit http://linkedin.com/stoic to post your healthcare or essential job for free, or to post another job for your business.This episode is also brought to you by Felix Gray, maker of amazing blue light-filtering glasses. Felix Gray glasses help prevent the symptoms of too much blue light exposure, which can include blurry vision, dry eyes, sleeplessness, and more. Get your glasses today at http://felixgrayglasses.com/stoic and try them for 30 days, risk-free.***If you enjoyed this week’s podcast, we’d love for you to leave a review on Apple Podcasts. It helps with our visibility, and the more people listen to the podcast, the more we can invest into it and make it even better.Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: DailyStoic.com/signupFollow @DailyStoic:Twitter: https://twitter.com/ryanholidayInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanholiday/Facebook: http://facebook.com/ryanholidayYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/dailystoicFollow Brett McKay and Art of Manliness: Twitter: https://twitter.com/artofmanlinessInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/artofmanliness/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/artofmanliness/YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/artofmanlinessSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stoic podcast early and add free on Amazon music. Download the app today. Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoic. Each weekday, we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoic, something that can help you live up to those four stoic virtues of courage, justice, wisdom, and temperance. And here, on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview stoic philosophers, we reflect, we prepare. We think deeply about the challenging issues of our time. And we work through this philosophy in a way that's more

possible here when we're not rushing to work or to get the kids to school. When we have the time to think to go for a walk to sit with our journals and to prepare for what the future will bring. Celebrity feuds are high stakes. You never know if you're just gonna end up on page Six or Du Moir or in court. I'm Matt Bellasai. And I'm Sydney Battle, and we're the host of Wondery's new podcast, Dis and Tell, where each episode we unpack a different iconic celebrity feud from the buildup, why it happened, and the repercussions.

What does our obsession with these feuds say about us? The first season is packed with some pretty messy pop culture drama, but none is drawn out in personal as Britney and Jamie Lynn Spears. When Britney's fans formed the free Britney movement dedicated to fraying her from the infamous conservatorship, Jamie Lynn's lack of public support, it angered some fans, a lot of them. It's a story of two young women who had their choices taken away from them by their controlling parents, but took their anger out on each other. And it's about a movement to save a superstar, which set its sights upon anyone who failed

to fight for Brittany. Follow Disenthal wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen ad-free on Amazon Music or The Wondery App. Hey there listeners, while we take a little break here, I want to tell you about another podcast that I think you'll like. It's called How I Built This, where host Guy Razz talks to founders behind some of the world's biggest and most innovative companies, to learn how they built them from the ground up.

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I built this, wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen early and add free on the Amazon or Wondering if you want to learn more about the new podcast. Hey it's Ryan and welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic podcast. Today, my guest is Brett McKay, one of my favorite people. Brett is actually the, one of the first people that I reached out to when I was writing the obstacles the way I'd been a big fan of his site,

Art of Manliness for many years. And so I was just asking him as I was doing my research as I often do when I'm kicking a book idea around. And so what people should I look at? Did he have any recommendations? And the first person he suggested was that I read about Laura Ingalls Wilder, which you might not have expected from the creator

of a site called The Art of Manliness. But I actually really don't feel like his site is about manliness. To me, it's about this sort of stoic idea of being wise, of being strong, those four virtues of courage, temperance, wisdom, and justice. And so Brett is just an awesome writer. I can't tell you the amount of times

that I've read stuff on his site. I've been Googling something I wanted to know about, a historical figure. I was looking for a quote. And his stuff is great. He's got great piece on John Boyd's Tobier to do. He's got great stuff on Eisenhower's decision matrix. He's got great stuff on the Odyssey.

He's got, I was just reading the Man in the Sea a couple weeks ago and I was reading his piece on the Lessons from the Man in the Sea. He's written a bunch of awesome books, one called The Art of Manliness, one called The Warrior, Monk Philosophy of Cuss, Demato. He's got one called The Spartan Way, what modern men can learn from ancient warriors.

He's just a great guy. He and his wife, Kate McKay, actually run the site together and Brett's an advisor to Daily Dad, which is the other daily email and podcast that I do. So he's just been an awesome guy. I had dinner with him a few years ago when I gave a talk in Oklahoma City.

He's a really smart guy. We're both Churchill nerds. So we talk a little bit about that. I've done his podcast many times. He's been a great supporter of my books. Actually, his sort of model of running a cool website that has sort of products. I bought one of his carry the fire lighters a few years ago

that I carry around with me when I'm on my farm. So the art of manliness was very influential in the forming and the formation of the thinking behind Daily Stoic. And you know, just with everything that's going on in the world, Brett was someone I wanted to talk to because he's sort of sweeping sense of history, his sort of commitment to those stoic virtues we talked about it. I just thought he'd be a good person. And then being that, you know, here at Father's Day, obviously I wanted to talk about some parenting stuff with him. As part of his advising with daily dad, Brett has been an awesome advisor on this challenge we've been putting together that we're calling the Stoic Parent. It's 10 commandments for being a better parent based on Stoic wisdom, classical

wisdom, writing from people like Brett. You know, most of the Stoics had kids, most of them thought about what it meant to raise a new generation in these sort of core principles. And so you can check that out. It's dailystoic.com slash Stoic parent. And it's awesome. And actually as part of the material, there's an extra 30 minute interview that you get with Brett and I

where we kick around some of these commandments. So Brett's been an awesome advisor. I'm really proud of this parenting challenge we've been doing. If you're a member of Daily Stoke Life, you get this challenge free, along with all the other ones, or you can just check out this one

if you wanna dip your toe in the challenge. What I wanted to do was put together 10 sort of core principles that I try to live by, that the stoic laid out for us, that make us a better mother or father, that help us do this really important job, which is raise good kids. To me, that's my most important job.

It matters to me more than whether I sell books or how my business does. Ultimately, I judge myself on am I a good father? And my wife judges herself on issue, good mother. And I know that's what you think about. So that's why we put together the Daily Stoic parent. You can check that out at dailystoic.com slash Stoic parent. And thanks again to Brett for doing this interview.

These are uncertain, scary, weird times. Some people are missing the point. Some people are getting distracted. Some people are missing the point. Some people are getting distracted. Some people are because it's partisan and because, you know, they've been radicalized or whatever it is are losing the view on what's important, which is treating everyone fairly. Mark really talks about the essential need

for equality under the law, you know, the essential need for leaders who respect the rights of their people. That's all people of all skin colors, of all persuasions and of all lifestyles. And you know, that need for justice and fairness. And that's what we're facing. That's what we're wrestling with right now. But if you don't have a strong sense of history, if you don't have a sort of grounding

in these ideas we're talking about, can be really easy to be overwhelmed, to be distracted, to be angry and worried and afraid. And so that's why we talk to people like Brett, that's why we do these challenges, that's why we turn to the wisdom. And so check it out and I will talk to you soon. So I'm curious how you feel about how everything's happening in the world.

I mean, Oklahoma's a little bit sort of out of the way of things, but does it feel like it sort of does for me that kind of it's a perfect storm of all these things happening at the same time? Yes. Yes. And I've, I feel like I've lost bearings. That's kind of like been my, the recurring thought that's going on. It's like, I never thought in my lifetime. Because, you know, you and I, we read these history books about these greater World War II, World War I, go even further back. And you're like, oh, well, that would never happen, anything like that happened now.

And now we're facing this moment where you're having multiple things happening at the same time that are systemic. I mean, they're just huge. They're going to have lasting impacts for generations probably. And it's finally dawning on me that that's happening. And it's a weird feeling. Because again, I never thought that would happen. I think that's right.

And I don't know about you, but I love history so much that I feel like maybe I glamorized it a little bit in my head. So, you know, I'm the Civil War is fascinating to me. And the World War II is fascinating to me. And the American Revolution is fascinating to me. And Ancient Greece and Rome is fascinating to me. And one of the things this gave me some perspective on is like, oh wait, history might not actually be that fun to live through, that it's actually quite terrifying

at the time. Yeah, no. So I did an interview with a guy who wrote a book about how soldiers die in war or battle. Yeah. And he basically just, often I mean, we talk about war. We talk about it in this very grand, in almost abstract way, talk about the battles. We know people die, but we don't war, we talk about it in this very grand and almost abstract way.

Talk about the battles. We know people die, but we don't really think about what's that like. And he tries to get to that. It's like, sometimes it's just, it's not glamorous, it's not glorious, it's not romantic. Sometimes just a shell hits you out of random. And that's it. Yeah, you're gone. And I mean, I'm not trying to equate what's going on right now to that.

But I mean, that's sort of the day to day can often be very mundane, but sometimes the mundane things of life can just grind you down. Yeah, maybe it's like there's some ego you look back at history and think you'd be like the hero or that it'd be glamorous or awesome and it's like actually, like for instance, I don't know if you read this book, The Polar Soldier,

or something like that. Anyways, I'd always known that my great-grandfather had found World War I. And so I assumed he fought in the trenches in France or something. And it turns out my dad did some research where we found this book that was published recently. It turns out, actually, he was sent to basically the North Pole as far up in Russia as you could possibly get, in what turned out to be a totally pointless sort of distraction where basically everyone died for no reason.

There was no glory, nobody remembers it. And it was like my grandfather was basically cannon fodder in, you know, froze his nuts off for no real reason for some sort of bureaucratic decision. And thankfully he came back or I wouldn't be here, but the point is history is not as fun as you think it would be. No, I agree. Yeah. I know you love this book, but I, so when the pandemic started, I went to my shelf and I got the road by Cormac McCarthy off the shelf. And my wife was like, you cannot read that book this right now. And I was like, you cannot read that book right now. And I was like, you're totally right, I won't. But it kept, it was just occupying a part of my brain. And I was like, you know what,

it took me, it wasn't until about three weeks ago that I finally worked up the courage to do it. And I know it's one of your favorite books, but at the end of it, literally, I had to, I finished the book and I just went in my son the book and I just went in my son's room and I just sat down and wept. It was, it was the middle of the night, he was asleep, but it was just overwhelming. I'm curious, have you thought about, you know, have

you thought about that book recently? I mean, I read it once a year. Oh, really? Yeah, it's sort of like a emotional, it's like almost like a Greek tragedy. Like you go, you read it. Yes, sort of a catharsis a Greek tragedy. Like you go, you read it. Yes. Sort of a catharsis. And I do the same thing. You read it.

And I mean, I read it before I was a dad and it read it with me. But then when you read it as a dad, you just start sobbing. And then you just all you want to do is you want to hold your kids. When you're a dad, you're going through this crazy time that we're going on right now with the pandemic. And then the protests that are going on against police brutality for the death of George Floyd and all this other stuff. It can be easy to feel very, I don't know, like you lose hope.

Like the message of the road, which is in sentence, extreme, extreme setting, is you can ever lose hope. Like you always have to teach, and you have to pass it on to your kid. You have to, you have to teach them to carry the fire. I mean, that's I think the most powerful message. Even when things are the most hopeless, that's like when hope becomes even more meaningful and significant. So to you is hope what the fire is? Yeah, I mean, it's a whole bunch of things. It's hope and it's all good things. It's like it's it's goodness is what it is. That's what I think it is. And it's decency. Decency. Yeah, but the hope that it will still carry on even when you think it's not, it's going to get snuffed out. It was interesting to me because it's only the second time I read it,

but I have been rereading a lot of books. It was interesting to see what I marked the first time I read it. And then what I did it mark, you know what I mean? Like the things that just went over my head because I wasn't a father because I hadn't gone through things, you know, even just sort of, you know, historical illusions or biblical verses or things, you know, I just didn't get. But one of the interesting things that I think is sort of an interesting concept, he's just trying to get to the coast,

even though he admits to himself multiple times that there's nothing at the coast and there's no reason for going there. He just has to go somewhere. He just has to keep going to me was very beautiful and profound. That is. I'm curious. I'll be interesting to see if you read the road with like a clean book. No, the same is probably 10 or 12-year-old. Yeah, but I wondered what happened if you didn't see your markings and you read it through again, because sometimes when I read books that I've already marked over before, it sort of taints what I read, because I'm like, so I wonder what would happen, what would stick out to you, even more? I've done that a few times, there's books that I like a lot, and I've marked up a lot.

I'll just buy another copy so I can read it fresh. I did that recently, and I may have sent you this book, you know, Stephon's Wig, the novelist. He wrote a biography of Montagne at the end of his life. He's basically the most famous novelist in Europe. He's basically exiled. His books are burned by the Nazis because he's Jewish, ends up in

London, then New York, and then finally it's sort of in Brazil. And he picks up Montagne, again, who he read it like 20 and hadn't got, and Montagne just like bulls him over. And Zwag doesn't realize that he only has like a year left to live, and he writes this short, amazing biography of Montagne, who himself who himself you know was writing during the sort of the horrors of the the Reformation and and basically had to retreat to his sort of castle and he turned in what he turns inwards and explores himself so it's kind of like it's the biography of an exile by an exile and so I read that for the first time in

2016 when I first had my son, you know, Donald Trump's just been elected. There's a lot of sort of reflection going on. And then I reread it, but I read a fresh copy. And then I went just recently and then I went back through both of my notes. And it was really interesting. You find the things that you missed, but then I was also heartened by how many times I marked the same things.

Yeah. No, I mean, anything that goes to, there's definitely an essential element of yourself that carries with you throughout your life, but also as you, hopefully as you mature and you get older, you change. So things are going to hit you different than when you read something in a previous part of your life. Yeah, I mean, and I think that's the stoic idea, right? No man steps in the same river twice, even though the book is exactly the same.

You're different. What's happening in the world is different. And so it creates a different experience for sure. How are you talking to your kid? I know you were telling me you you'd had sort of a family meeting recently where you talked about stoicism to your to your kids. How old are they? And I'm curious just like how that, how did you explain it to them?

Yeah, so once a week, we do what's called family home evening. And it's on Monday night, and it's really short. We do, here's the basic format. My, either my wife or I give it like a short lesson. It's like literally like five minutes long. And it can be about anything. It could be sort of like life lessons that you would see on, I don't know, Daniel Tiger's neighborhood. Yeah. Ords like very practical. Like we'll talk to him about like what money is, what it means to pay the bills, things like that. And then after that, we go over our schedule for the weeks. So we are all in the same. So like who's got practice, who's got a birthday party. That hasn't really been going on. Honestly, the meetings haven't been really going on

during the pandemic. There's nothing to meet about, because you're just in each other's business all the time. Right, and then so after we do that, then we discuss issues in the families, anything that's going on that we need to like get straight and make our family run better, the household run better. This is where you kind of,

we try not to make it like airing of grievances, but it's like, okay, you know, you're leaving your stuff out on the floor. Let's not do that, please don't do that. Yeah. And then after that, we read our family rules, which we got from John Wooden. Maybe you've read John Wooden, right?

I have, I don't know about these family rules, or I'm gonna look it up. Yeah, so it's like something his dad had as a kid. And it was basically, you're best work harder every day, never lie, never steal, never cheat. Yeah, be honest, don't lie, don't cheat, don't make excuses, or anything like that. So we recite that together.

So anyways, one family meeting, we dedicated to a principle of stoicism. So basically, we kept it super simple. We talked about, hey, there's these guys, Ancient Greek and Ancient Rome had this idea of philosophy, guided their life. And we just talked about the big tenant, like the big tenant we focused on was that

even though things happen around you, they don't have to influence, like you have control over how you respond to that. And that's basically all we did. And then we just sort of came, came examples, try to like ask them questions like, so, you know, if someone does this, what would be your response?

And they would like, oh, here's the response, a stoic response. So that was it. It was really simple. I mean, I showed him a picture of Marcus Arraileus because he's like the most famous stoic philosopher. We've done this without a stuff. I've done like lessons on like Churchill, you know, who here's what in Churchill? And like, you know, he represented perseverance. And then like, how can we be more have more perseverance in our life? And that's that's how we do it. So you keep it like super simple, like, really dumb down and don't try to like have like a whole philosophy class about it the last 30 minutes, like literally

two minutes, three minutes tops. It's funny that you say that that's dumb down because it's such a profound idea that's so hard for adults to, like, I know that that's true, but I still mess it up all the time. People think they have to make these things like really, really complicated in order for it to be meaningful or deep, and you don't.

And I mean, all people think like, well, you gotta really hammer in your kids so they really understand it's like, no, literally your kid has an attention span of maybe 10 minutes, so just get what you can. And then what you do is after you do that meeting, like throughout the week, we focused on that. It's like, all right, what would be like a stoic response to that.

And then you know, your kids are going to roll their eyes at you. Oh, dad. But you know, you just, it requires repetition for that stuff to finally sink in. I was thinking about this recently because I've been writing some sort of social justice stuff and, you know, people have sent some very angry emails about it, you know, and or other people have just said, hey, we get it, okay? And my response is like, first off, just because you get it doesn't mean that everyone gets it.

And second, the idea that you get it is what's preventing you from truly getting it, right? I think the really wise people don't tell themselves, they've mastered anything, they kind of remain a perpetual student of it. And so I'd be curious, how have you been thinking about either in your own life or talking to your kids, how are you explaining some of these sort of lessons

or rules in the context or the light of, these sort of terrible videos that have come out, the people that are marching in the streets, even some of those sort of mom violence, like, how are you discussing the values you're having as a family in meeting about this, because your kids are seeing this stuff on the news. They might see newspaper article, where it talks about protest or riots, and they're like, you know, what's going on there. And so yeah, we had a meeting dedicated, it's kind of like, get some context to them,

what's going on. So we had to explain to them, like a really brief history that they could understand about race relations in the United States. So you can't get too deep in that with like a six-year-old and a nine-year-old. But we talked to people, like, you know, black people a long time ago in America were slaves. They were the property of other people. How do you think that would feel?

And they're like, oh, be really bad. And we talked about, you know, they've had a fight for rights to get the right to vote, to be well, first to be free, then the right to vote. And then we fought a civil war to help, to be, well, first to be free, then the right to vote. And then we fought a civil war to help, you know, get free, free the slayer. Sure. So we kind of get in that sort of sort of history and kind of understand that, you know, even still the day, black people are treated poorly in a lot of instances.

And this is what happened in this case. There was a man we talked about George Floyd, he got killed by a police officer, should have happened. And then that was it. And so we just talked about the sort of the takeaway from that was like, you know, it doesn't matter what people look like. We treat the people with kindness and dignity and respect. And they're like, okay, I mean, and that was it.

I mean, it literally was probably 10 minutes. We tell that after certain point, the kids like sort of, I started glazing over. But that's what we did. And you know, we're continuing to have that conversation because our son Gus, he sees something in the news. He's like, hey, what's going on here? And so we have to like, you have that conversation again. And I mean, I'm hoping it rubs off on them.

They pick something up. You said kindness, dignity, and respect. I'm curious, like, do you've been writing about manliness? You've been writing about, which when you kind of started, was not politically correct, and then it came politically correct, and then politically incorrect again. I don't know. I think what's been interesting to me about where we are politically, and I don't think we have to talk from a partisan standpoint,

but it's been striking to me how those ideas of kindness, dignity, and respect seem to have now almost been conflated with a lack of manliness, like that it's almost sort of cool or weak to, okay, political correctness, I understand, is there's some falseness to it and I don't like it. But there seems to be, we've almost done this weird thing. We're now we're saying like saying an offensive thing being disrespectful You know like refusing to treat other people with dignity or kindness has now almost been conflated with manliness or toughness or Or confidence in some way and I don't understand that. I don't get it either. I mean, I think it's just a matter

I mean, I think it's just a matter. I mean, I think it's just the nature, particularly of online culture, right? Like you can't, I mean, we can talk if you want to talk about the history of like, you know, manliness and stoicism and whatnot. In Roman culture, before, there's like, you can talk about Rome like before the empire, like the Republic of Rome, then in Shared Rome. So for people listening, that's like Cato and Cicero, and then Cesar overthrows it, and then actually you get Augustus, who's advised by two Stoic advisors, Areas and Athenodorus, and then it goes basically on through to Marcus Aurelius. So it's sort

of like, there's the pre, there's the Republic Stoics, and then the Empire Stoics, which would be more like Marcus and Seneca and Epictetus. Right. And even before the Republic Stoics, like they were sort of like, those guys were like, they were in charge when the Republic isn't inclined. So before there's this great book, I'd recommend everyone who loves Stoicism to check out, it's called Roman Honor, but a classicist name, Carl and Barton. And it's literally one of the best books I've ever read.

My wife loves it as well. It's just like, it's one of those books. So first off, it's available on Amazon, but it's like super expensive. It's like, I think it's like 70 bucks right now. Okay. That's one of those academic books. But anyways, what she does,

she tries to explore the psychology of the emotions of Romans, republic, end of republic, and empire. And she kind of makes this case. And she does this by looking at all the text and trying to suss out what they're talking about. You can get a compose a psychological drawing of a typical Roman republic in the Republic Empire. In the early days of the Republic and the peak of the Republic, Rome was a very face to face culture.

And as a consequence, it was an honor culture. And because it was an honor culture, like your shame was like the tool that people used to keep everyone in check. And healthy shame can actually be really useful. To build a tiny shame is like when you go and you just start destroying the person, right? Either there's like no redemption whatsoever.

That didn't happen in Rome, because there's sort of this checks and balances on each other that you go so far. She makes the case as the republic started to fall and eventually ended to empire that face-to-face, close knit community just evaporated and people became citizens of the world. And so everyone in the empire like you didn't know like you couldn't have that. You didn't know if like some guy you were talking to had the same ideals as you,

because he's from some different place that's not in not Rome, the city. And so she sees this sort of decline. Like people became almost shameless, right? You did certain, insulted things. And I kind of, you can just say things about people and you know, dignity and kindness, because like it doesn't matter.

Like you don't see that person, they're just sort of like a mass in the empire. I mean, you can,'t matter. You don't see that person, they're just a mass in the empire. I think you can make the case that's it's kind of like the internet, but you have to just random strangers interacting with each other. You don't know if you share the same values, the same ideas, the same beliefs.

So you can just hurdle whatever you want at somebody, because it doesn't matter. And then you can people get all the stuff at you and it's like, well, who cares? I don't know you. So we basically created a, almost like a shamelessness that goes on the internet. So you can just do whatever.

And I don't know, it's not, I don't like it. It's like, reproductive. Do you know about the most morium? Do you know what that is? It sounds familiar. It's probably in the book, but it basically translates to sort of like the old ways or like the way of the elders. And that was, like, Kato was obsessed with preserving

the most morium and that he sort of associates rungs the climb with that. And I don't know, there's another great book. I'd recommend to people called The Storm Before The Storm, which is sort of about this happening. Julius Caesar just doesn't come out of nowhere. It's a slow steady decline of the old ways that allows this to happen.

But it's this interesting tension, right? Because like on the one hand, and we're seeing this play out with the Civil Unrestory. Now on the one hand, yeah, there seems to be, you can't let your obsession with the old ways make you this sort of conservative reactionary who resist change because there's a lot of problems with the old ways.

At the same time, it's hard not to look at what people say on Twitter the way the talking heads yell at each other on CNN, you know, that the things people are willing to write and say and on the YouTube comments section and not feel like some part of the social contract has collapsed and that it explains a lot of where we are right now. Yeah, I mean, I think that's, since the protests started and like now, we're like, how many days are we out of it? Since, like, two weeks? Two weeks?

Two and a half weeks, yeah. I mean, you're seeing the, the, something, it's something shifting. It's like not, it's not just about police brutality. Yeah. And I think that, I think you're, I think you're, I think you're on something. There's like a conflict of old ways and like new ways. There's people who want to keep the old ways. And there's some people who's like, they want to like,

you know, let's just wash the slate clean and we're gonna start something new. Yeah. And that's gonna cause an immense amount of conflict and friction obviously. And I mean, I don't know, I mean, I think it's gonna see how this all plays out. I'm for like graduated improvements.

It seems to work out better. Sure. We feel like at the history, like, roast Pierre, that wasn to work out better. I mean, if you look at the history, like, Rose Pierre, that wasn't a cool thing. No. Or even what happened in China or Russia. So yeah, I mean, I'm all for keeping stability and like building off and even making improvements

or even taking out some of the old ways, but I think it's got to be graduated. Or else you're gonna have really bad outcomes. It is interesting though, like I think about, so people are sort of like, hey, this is too much too fast or this is unfair that they go, like, look, there's looting and violence in the street. This is wrong.

And they're sort of focused on that ill. And it's like, hey, you wanna talk about lawlessness and violence? Like, let me show you a video of a gang of hillbilly vigilantes murdering a man in the street with a Confederate flag on, you know, sticker on the back of their truck, right? Like, let me show you a police officer casually kneeling on a man's neck for nine minutes, right?

So there's this weird tension, I feel like, where like some of the sort of the people who say they're, you know say they're preserving the old ways are actually weirdly threatening the good parts of the old ways by not allowing, I mean, that was the knock against Cato. The Cato was sort of preventing much-needed reforms from happening, and therefore you get Julius Caesar. So it's like this interesting tension, like what FDR manages to do so brilliantly is take sort of revolutionary radical energy

and find a way to funnel it towards productive institutions and change and still not blow everything up at the same time. Yeah, and going back to that idea, we're talking about, you're looking back at history and because you see things, you're looking back and things already happened, you think, oh, of course it was gonna happen this way.

But now that we're in the middle of it, I'm like, I have no clue how this is all gonna shake out. And I wonder if like people then like also felt the same way. They're just like, what is happening? They've lost their bearings. They don't know what's going on. I wonder if it's more extreme now because of social media.

Because I was talking to my in-laws the other day about the riots in 68. And they said, we didn't have the internet. So it's like, you'd see the thing on TV about the riots. And then that was it. And he's going with your life. Right, it was two minutes of your day, not entirely of your day. Right.

So it mean it didn't feel like they knew it was bad, but it didn't like, didn't consume them. Right. Because they're just their intent. They're they had no way to know. So I'm wondering like how did people feel when like that big stuff happened? Or the same way that we do. That's a really good point.

I'm curious. Did you read that? Do you know Tom Nichols who wrote like the death of expertise, he did that piece about, I think it was for the Atlantic, it was like Trump is America's least manly president. Did you see this piece? I have not seen that piece. Oh, you would love it.

Anyway, I think again, I think we don't have to talk about the political policies and the people are gonna be mad that I mentioned the word Trump, we're gonna be mad anyway. And so I don't really care what they think. And I'm curious, you're taking on this. He's like, there seems to be mad that I mentioned the word Trump are going to be mad anyway. And so I don't really care what they think. And I'm curious, you're taking on this. He's like, there seems to be on the right this sense that Trump is the sort of the manly president

who can negotiate and is tough and not politically correct. And you know that he's almost this sort of paradigm of manliness, but he's like, if you actually look at it historically or you look at what people typically associate with manliness, he's like a cartoon character of unmailiness, right? He doesn't take responsibility for his actions. He cheats on his wife. He has never engaged in any physical activity whatsoever. He doesn't take care of his body. He's incredibly sensitive and paranoid. He bullies people, so on and so forth. I'm just

curious like how have we gotten, like, the Stoics would not have looked at Donald Trump and said, like, that's a tough guy. Vladimir Putin doesn't look at Trump and go, like, that dude, I'm intimidated by, he probably, you know, licks his lips and thinks, like, I've been breaking guys like this since my first day on the job in the KGB, how is our sense of what actual sort of toughness and like strength, how we lost track of what that is that people could be essentially saying, you know, black is white and white is black? Well, I think something to point out that this idea of a man not being sensitive or thin skinned or not prone to lash out emotions is like unmanned.

I mean, if you look at him, he most of human history that's actually been the case where manliness was that. It meant to be thin-skinned. It meant to be true. You know, if you go, yeah, you go, we'll go back all the way to like the Bronze Age Greeks, right, like the heroes there.

We're talking like Agamimnon, Achilles, Odysseus, Ajax. I mean, these guys had incredibly thin skins because they were very concerned about the reputation. And then they would do, you know, considerable, you know, harm if you disrespected them. You look at Odysseus, you know, like men don't cry or show emotions. Like Odysseus, like, if you read the Odyssey,

when we meet Odysseus, like he's you read the Odyssey, when we meet Odysseus, like he's crying, he's weeping because he misses his wife because he's on this island with a sex nymph, basically, and he wants to go home. Same with Ajax, he gets like, desponded and depressed. And then you can like look at another cultures too, sort of this thin skin and highly tune to your reputation and what people think about it and lashing out when they, when you feel like you're disrespected. And like you go to Viking culture, same sort of thing, the head sort of this,

someone disrespected you, you challenge them to a duel or a battle. I mean, you can see that even in America, this in recent history, like going back to 18th, 19th century, this sort of culture of honor that allowed duels to go on, right? Like someone would say something about you. Well then you challenge. I mean, I mean, wasn't Abraham Lincoln? Didn't he get challenged to a duel? He fought like wrestling matches. I don't think he ever fought with weapons. Yeah, but some of those are, you know, they fought like

and you had to like show up like even to someone. Sure. The thing was, so I think that's where that come from. People, men traditionally have been, that's been part of what it meant to be a man. Now there's been periods throughout history where we've tried to temper that, right? Where you could use that touching as that energy and you control it a bit and only use it when it's useful or productive. And that's what I think cultures of manhood try to do. It's sort of temper and guide masculine energy. That sort of that vitalism, testosterone, or if you want to call it to something that's productive

and not destructive. Sure, but you can and that actually is an interesting point that maybe this is a sort of a throwback to like, like truly, truly ancient masculinity. But I mean, you can look at like, you know, gangs, and that sort of thing happens with, like the idea of your reputation. Yeah.

Like, I mean, as someone says you're weak, we're gonna do something about it. It's a very masculine. It's, I mean, it's been, I think it's sort of like the default, like what we're, we're we have and we've developed philosophies or cultures that temper that. I think I think Nichols point though is this sort of American idea of sort of greatest generation masculinity like faithful to your spouse, hard working, humble, please sports is above pettness, you know, secure in themselves, in good shape.

He's saying it's sort of weirdly very at odds with this sort of like overweight, you know, bronzer wearing, to pay wearing, make fun of war heroes, you know, I take no responsibility at allness. And again, I don't, I'm actually less concerned with Trump and more concerned with who are these people that are actually like, yeah, like screw my grandpa's generation, a definition of masculinity. I want the guy making fun of Miss America on Twitter or whatever. Like, where is that coming from, you think? I have no clue. I don't know anybody like that personally. Right. So it's hard for me. I don't even I don't I wouldn't

I don't know how to even answer that question. I haven't like delved into that site. You've been around it enough to even come up with a coherent answer for that. But it does seem to be a product of the internet, right? It's it's like a we you don't actually it's an interesting point. I don't know anyone like that in real life either, and I don't think many people do. It seems to exist exclusively on the comment section of Instagram or something. You know what I mean? It's like,

that's the problem with the internet. It's like the most extreme voices are the loudest. And just the regular people, they're just chilling. They just want to look at pictures of whatever, you know, nice picture of the outdoors. And so, but then like, because everyone, like the, the people with the most extreme viewpoint,

because the only one's talking, you get, you get, you have this assumption, you start thinking, is this, is this how everyone thinks? Right. And I don't think, I always remind myself, wait a minute, okay, look at my social, sort of people live, and I, it's very wide. And I'm like, I've never met anybody in person like that.

So I don't, yeah, I think it's the internet, man. I don't know, it's weird. But that is the anomaly of Trump. And I can tell you that we don't have to keep going into it. But the anomaly of Trump is like, no one would let that person be their kid's tennis instructor or their landlord or what, like if you saw that behavior in any other context, you'd be like, that person is unhinged. I need to, I can't be vulnerable to that in any way. Life's too short.

And then somehow we've ended up, you know, with that person in the nuclear codes, it's just confusing to me. But to party system. Yes, that's what it is. Yes. No, right. You, you care in from one extreme to the other and it's a team sport and all that. So let's, let's come back to wrap up this idea of, of carrying the fire. You know, we're all that it feels like that flame is flickering a little bit, whether we're talking about masculinity, whether we're talking about kindness and respect and dignity,

whether we're just, you know, looking at a pandemic and civil unrest. When you think about how to carry the fire or how you pass that on, I'm just curious what comes to your mind. I mean, I'm trying to do it right now with my kids. You know, they sort of vary the very explicit way having these meetings where you pass on, you say, like here's what we believe in here are our values.

And then you just do it, and it's like you lead by example, you do what you say. I mean, that's what the kids pay attention to what you do. That's what they begin to do more. I know, in best of the thing, it's hard because you're constantly remind, you have to remind yourself that like my kids are watching me. And so you have to be on your, on your best game because that's going to rub off on them in some way.

Well, that's the other John Wooden thing. He had this poem on his wall, and it was called like a little fellow. Yeah, we still have that much more story. Yeah, little fellow follows me. Oh, you sell that, that's amazing. Yeah, careful man, I must always be a little fellow follows me. That's beautiful. All right, we'll stop right there. We invite you to check out our newest course, the Stoic Parent. To give you tools and support that you need to become the parent you want to be, it's ten actionable practical meditations and prescriptive commandments for parenting. Rules you can live by and teach by for as long as you are lucky to have this job. So check out dailystoic.com slash parenting.

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