Modern Men Are Weak Because They’ve Lost This Skill

What if I told you that you as a modern man have become more weak, more fragile, less effective, less competent because modern society and modern culture has encouraged you to forget this one skill that every single man throughout human history has known is incredibly valuable and important? And what if I told you that modern culture and society in many ways has been shaped to disincentivize you from developing this skill. The truth as I can see it is that modern men have become so complacent, so lost because they've been missing this valuable skill. And this skill without it makes us more fragile, makes us more receptive to control and to manipulation, less receptive to standing up for ourselves. It causes you to want to ignore your own values, your own ethics, your own morals, or to be able to stand up to those who are causing a disruption to the values and the ethics and the morals of a culture and of a society. This simple skill that I'm talking about is your ability to mobilize, your ability to kinetically mobilize yourself and the people, and specifically the men around you, towards something meaningful, something purposeful, and something that's going to create change. The truth that we know about the human species and about the human race in many ways is that it is in some parts a story about men mobilizing towards creating change. Men mobilizing towards creating new tools, new structures, new architectures, new forms of cities, mobilizing towards new forms of political outcomes. Men mobilizing to gather together to think about how life as a human being could be. Mobilizing together to battle out ideas. But this ability to mobilize as a man has become lost. Most men can't mobilize themselves to get the fuck off of their couch for long enough to go and clean up the kitchen or go to the gym. Or do a workout or go to work or mobilize themselves to building a family or a product or a service or mobilize the men around them enough to gather so that men aren't so lost and alone and isolated. And the truth is that modern culture loves and modern society loves a more hyper-feminized man that is incapable and unwilling to mobilize because he is afraid. And he is afraid of standing up for anything, against anything, to mobilize towards creating anything or building anything. And modern culture and society has been structured, the system has been structured in such a way as to enable you as a man, to incentivize you as a man, to completely neglect and negate the inherent desire to mobilize. Why? Because men that do not mobilize are not a threat. Men that have the ability to mobilize and think for themselves, men that have the ability to mobilize and go out and do real things in the world are dangerous. They are harder to control. They are harder to manipulate. They are harder to coerce. There is a bigger concern that those men that are able to mobilize are going to be co-opted for some nefarious reason, right? They can be co-opted for some, some political outcome or ideology. And this is a very real concern. And so what do modern societies do? They give you all of the tools, all the resources, all the incentivization to diminish your capacity to mobilize. But this is exactly what the world needs, because you and I both know that throughout human history, men that have mobilized are the ones that create change. Men that actually kinetically move, move their bodies to go and build something, exert their energy towards creating a product, a new way of doing anything— sewage systems, electricity, you know, power lines— those are the men Those are the people that shape and sculpt reality and society and culture. But this is what the world really needs. It needs you as a man to be able to kinetically mobilize towards something meaningful, a workout program, cleaning your kitchen or your bedroom, building a family, creating a new tool that makes things easier or simpler or more effective. Creating a mission or a vision of what could be possible, giving back to a community, giving back to a society, giving back to a culture. The world needs men who can mobilize against the tyranny of modernity that wants to put you in a comatose state of never having to mobilize. This is why The Matrix in some ways was so, so popular, because when you think about it, those people were in little pods where their life force and their energy was literally being drained from them. And the, the single thing that they were incapable of doing was kinetically mobilizing. Why was that? It's because their whole life source was taken out by the system. So instead of them moving and mobilizing and creating things, the system needed to drain them of their energy in order to survive. So when you as a man begin to mobilize and you begin to mobilize people around your mission, around your, you know, whatever product, service, etc., that you're building, your idea, your party, your whatever, that becomes a danger to the system. That becomes a danger to the status quo, to the norm. And the truth is that we have to fight against the incessant IV drip of complacency. That is fed to us through social media on a daily basis. It is easier to stay in place, to shelter in place on your living room couch, in your bed, doomscrolling through social media, playing video games again and again and again, watching the same Netflix show over and over and over again than it is to go out and do something with your life. And the truth is that men are more dangerous because they're willing to stand up and mobilize. But that's not what our culture, that's not what our society or the system wants. It wants nothing more for you than for you to have obedience, than for you to be mindless. It wants nothing more than a man who is unwilling or sees himself as incapable, incapable of mobilizing towards something that he actually gives a shit about. Modern culture and society wants you in a trance of submission, of compliance, where those who have power reign supreme because they are the ones mobilizing. They are the ones kinetically moving the energy of society, gathering people together to go and do real things in the world. While you are lost on a keyboard warrior mission, freaking out about whoever or whatever it is. That keeps you lost. That keeps you ineffective. That keeps you small and unable to affect the real kinetic world, the real world where things are actually happening. Getting pissed off on somebody on Instagram or YouTube or TikTok does nothing to actually kinetically move the needle of reality. And this, again, this isn't some conspiracy theory. This is history. This is how it has always been. Men who are free, men who think for themselves, men who are able to mobilize people towards something meaningful have always been feared and societies and structures and systems and cultures have almost always been built around trying to figure out how to disincentivize men from mobilizing. And we have just become way more effective at that in modern culture, because today you as a man have a plethora of options. You can doomscroll through social media for hours. You can play video games for hours. Nobody says anything. You can piss away all your money on OnlyFans girls, nobody says anything. And you can waste your life away pushing all of your energy into the digital space without actually building or doing anything in the real world. And this is what— I'm not going to say this is what the system wants, but this is what keeps you stuck because the truth is that for you as a man, going out and mobilizing and building something, creating something, going into the world, going to ask a woman in real life for her phone number is deeply confronting. And so if you're listening to this video, if you're listening to this podcast and you're thinking to yourself, he's a little right, I don't like going out into the real world and doing real things, whatever that might be. Whether it's building something, whether it's contributing to a cause, whether it's volunteering your time, whether it's, you know, offering to support your neighbor and building their fence. I don't go out into the real world and do real shit that actually makes a difference, right? So many men have got caught in this trap of complacency and nullifying their kinetic mobilization as an individual or having it be conscripted towards something because they think it's the quote-unquote right thing to do. So most modern men have become so confused and so complacent and so utterly disconnected from the kinetic force and power inside of them, inside of their own bodies, that not only do they fear any type of conflict or any type of combat, but they fear the the minor act of turning off their phone at night, of putting down the social media, of unplugging the video game machine, of turning off Netflix and going out into the wilderness and doing something real, going out into the wilderness with nothing but food and water and a weapon for protection to just be there, to mobilize themselves into nature. I remember seeing this— a video online that went viral. Maybe you saw this. You probably did, of a woman and a man in a bus stop, and they were clearly traveling, right? They were clearly traveling together and they both had on these big backpacks. And another man comes into the bus station and starts to assault the woman, starts to rob, try and rob the woman. And the man literally steps out of the way and is clearly terrified and cannot even mobilize himself to protect that woman from the harm. This is the state of modern men. They— we have become so disincentivized from mobilization that we do not know how to protect ourselves or others, our family members or friends. We do not know how to mobilize, or we are too afraid to mobilize ourselves off of our couch and into the real world. Now, maybe this isn't you, Maybe you're listening to this and you're like, "You know, this isn't me. I do mobilize myself. I go camping. I'm building something in the world. I go to the gym. I gather men together to talk about meaningful things, to try and build something, to try and contribute back to the world, to try and stand up for something." Maybe you're watching this and you're thinking, "That's not me." But I know, I know that you see it all around you. I know that you see it in your brother, in your friend, in your buddy that can't seem to get his ass off the couch to go and work out and has every single intelligent excuse in the world for being out of shape, for being broke, for hating himself, for not contributing to society, for not having the job that he wants, for whatever it is. And he spends so much of his time tweeting hatred online, harassing people in Discord rooms, trolling people on YouTube, And he's never been confronted with any kind of real responsibility in his life. And he has been unfortunately incentivized to become a smaller, weaker, less competent, more insignificant version of himself in society, a kind of pawn. Now, remember, men who cannot stand up for themselves cannot stand up to things that are dangerous, that are wrong, that are morally bankrupt. So if you are a man that cannot mobilize yourself in your own life, then for sure you cannot mobilize yourself to stand up to the atrocities of the world that we live in. And I think that this is the real moral issue of our culture and our society today. We have lost the capacity to mobilize and stand up against real problem, real evil. As the saying goes, it is dangerous good men who keep the dangerous evil men in check. But the truth as I can see it is that the dangerous good men have been largely castrated because they have lost the ability and the skill. They've been sold an idea and a belief system that says you don't need to mobilize. You don't need to kinetically go out in the world and do anything real. Stay on your couch. Stay at home. Shelter in place for your whole life. Doom scroll it away. Jerk it away. Pay all your money to OnlyFans chicks and don't worry about it. Another way of saying this is that a broken system thrives on broken men. A broken system thrives on men unwilling to mobilize, unwilling to mobilize towards helping the society and the system build itself into something more effective, into something better than it currently is. And the truth is, I can see it, is that throughout human history, when systems start to collapse and decay, it is often because the men within those societies and those systems have become complacent in their ability to mobilize towards something meaningful, towards something good, towards something better than it already is, towards something that is protecting those who are more vulnerable and weaker and genuinely incapable of mobilizing for themselves. And that has been the backbone of a thriving society. So here's the truth that most men don't want to hear, that most of us don't want to hear. And this is not about politics. This is not about women and blaming them. It's not even really about culture. It's about your capacity. It's about your willingness to mobilize yourself in a kinetic way, to get off the couch, to go out into the world. Because the truth is that somewhere along the way, many men, many of you stopped training your capacity to mobilize, to go and do shit, to act, to confront, to lead, to endure discomfort, to stand in the tension without collapsing, to stand up for something that's meaningful and worthwhile. And when a man loses his ability to mobilize himself, he cannot mobilize others. You cannot mobilize your marriage, your relationship, your children. You cannot mobilize your business. You cannot mobilize the employees that work with you. You cannot mobilize the people in society. And what happens is that you become reactive instead of decisive. You become outraged instead of effective. You become distracted instead of disciplined. And that is not power. And it is not where power resides. That is disorganized energy. That is distracted energy. And that is what modern culture and modern society optimizes for in the biggest way possible. Having your energy as a man completely fractured, distracted, disconnected, and disabled from kinetically mobilizing out into the world. Real strength is kinetic and it's controlled. It's not aggression, it's not rage, it's not loud, it's not going out and shouting some chant. It's the ability to move when movement is required. It's the ability to take action when action is required. It's the ability to speak when silence would be cowardice. And it's the ability to protect when protection is needed. And it's the willingness to question something when you know that something is wrong, to disconnect from the noise externally long enough to hear your own mind and then mobilize yourself into action when a response comes. The modern world does not train you to do this. It trains you for comfort, for consumption. It trains you for performance back into the system, and it trains you specifically for dopamine addiction. But it does not train you for a spine. It does not train you to mobilize out into the world in a meaningful, effective way. And here's the part that really matters. You do not become dangerous. You do not become a dangerous man by hating the world. You become dangerous by disciplining yourself and mobilizing out into a world that is pushing you into compliance, that is pushing you into comfort, that is pushing you into mediocrity. So turn your phone off, train your body, learn a combat sport, go into the wilderness, build something difficult, have hard conversations, gather men together, gather men together, get men together, mobilize men together. When I started ManTalks, I started it as an event series. And I remember people specifically telling me, this will never work. And the truth is that the reason I am where I am today was because I gathered men together. And very, very quickly, we started seeing hundreds of guys 2, 3, 400 men coming out every single month, putting on massive events with 1,800 people, now building an online community with 1,100, 1,200 men from around the world that meet up in person, do real things together, support each other. So mobilization begins with a self-orientation. It begins with you mobilizing yourself because the man who cannot command himself that cannot move himself, that cannot mobilize himself towards something that he knows he needs, will always be commanded and mobilized by someone else. It's not that you don't get mobilized by somebody else or some other force, it's that you get incentivized to shelter in place. So here's the question. When in your life have you become too passive? Are you too passive right now? Have you outsourced your strength and where have you outsourced it? And where are you trading competency for comfort? Where are you trading competency for comfort? Don't comment about it. You don't need to debate about it. You need to do something about it. You need to mobilize yourself towards the things that you need to do. This is why Jordan Peterson became so popular by telling men, "Go clean your room." So in the essence of Jordan Peterson, whether you love him or hate him, Mobilize yourself, go clean your room, go do something in your life that might seem small or insignificant, but that moves you kinetically and energetically towards doing something real in the world, because healthy systems are built by healthy men, and healthy men are built by disciplined actions. They are built by being able to mobilize ourselves towards the things that we know we need to do. And so my challenge for you today, my brother, is to look at the things in your life that you know you need to mobilize yourself towards and go kick some ass. Go get some shit done. Peel yourself off the couch, resist the complacency, say fuck you to the mediocrity, and go do something valuable today, tomorrow, and the next day, even if it seems small and insignificant. Just mobilize yourself to make progress. All right, thank you so much for tuning in. Don't forget to man it forward. Share this message with a man that you know needs to hear it. Man it forward. Do not leave men down. See you next time.