Why Society is Creating Weak Men, and Angry Women, with Jaguar Heart

All right, Jag, welcome to the ManTalks show. How are you doing, my friend?

I'm good, brother. Great to be here.

Great to have you. Long time coming. Had a lot of people recommend your stuff, started digging into it. I think it's great. You're doing the Lord's work on the other side of the world, which is wonderful. So I'm glad that we could bridge this gap. And nighttime my time, morning time your time. We'll see where it takes us. Let's start with the big million-dollar question. What the fuck is going on with men?

Oh, there's so many ways that I could take this, but my— when I boil it down to everything, I really see that it's the loss of rites of passage and initiation, the separation from maternal enmeshment. So mother influence from a young enough age and a series of subconscious programs that also lay dormant for us to discover that life will force us to confront at some place. And I think because of an absence of this, we start to go into crisis at around 33, 34, 35. And I see men, we go through this external validation process up until about 35, give or take a couple of years, of course, where it will be our external achievement, status, and money defines our internal world of who we are. Then I see a crisis point hit, and it's usually some form of major heartbreak or major loss or both, potentially death, divorce, whatever that looks like. Then we're initiated into this separation from any paternal, maternal influence. And then it's about who we are defines what we do in the world. So I think men get stuck at this crisis point and they don't know what to do with it. And I think that that again is because of an absence of initiation and rites of passage. I think that's really what's going on with men.

Nice. Yeah. I mean, I've talked a lot about how I think in the absence of initiation, we oftentimes create our own initiations. Like, we try and attempt that initiatory process by bottoming out and cratering our life in some way. At least that was my experience, you know, just created my own brutal time to see if I could come out the other side. Again, not intentionally, but in an unconscious way. And I think what you're describing is in some ways that, right, that, that in the absence of an initiation, life will serve us one. And it's almost like that function, we don't get to escape it. And if we don't, if we don't create it ourselves and bottom out, if we don't have a series of events get served to us in life in our sort of like early to mid-30s, then, you know, we hit our 40s and there's the quote-unquote midlife crisis, right? Because we can't stay in that state. Do you think that a part of that— well, maybe break this down into two pieces. Talk about the absence or the role that fathers play in what we're describing and maybe break down what's going on with mothers, because it does seem like more and more there's just so much enmeshment and feminine energy. And I've said on podcast multiple times, I've got pushback for this, that we're living the first time in human history where what it means to be men and to be masculine is being defined by women, and that, that's very counterintuitive and strange for a lot of men. So it feels like there's a heavy mother influence that I've heard you talk about quite a bit.

Yeah. And I think that when fathers aren't there, I sort of break it into two. Now, I'm not a father yet, but what I seen it is that The structure of the love that needs to happen in the environment or the ecosystem around children— and you'd be better off, um, talking about this, but this is what I see— is it needs to be loving but firm. And the firmness comes from the father, which is the authority and the discipline, the structure. And the love comes from the mother, which is the nurturing and nourishment. Now, that kind of strips it back to very simple philosophies, but I do think that in society we actually need to return to much more simple philosophies in order to understand it, and not from a language perspective. I mean, I could get into the whole type of the way that music is written and AI, how it's dumbing— it's actually making us more and more stupid, I think. And I think that the exposure to a father by osmosis will raise the boy into an adult. I don't think— and this is from evidence I've researched and things that I've seen— women can't really raise boys into men simply because they're not men. They don't know how to. It's, it's nonexistent within their biological and psychological structures. It's why even in matrilineal societies, the women would still give the boys over to the men. They knew what was up because it's a natural process. And so by separating that and not allowing that maturation process to happen by that osmosis and exposure to masculine programming, the boy stays in the puer aeternus, which is the eternally young stage. And I think, I think I'm pretty sure it was in King Warrior Magician Lover, a line that stood out for me many years ago when I read it was that it's not so much just the absence of masculinity, but the exposure to too much femininity. And then what happens is the boy orients to the feminine and then becomes a male adult, but not actually a psychological adult. And then he just keeps orienting to the feminine. To go back to what you said, that women are defining who men are in this. Oh, a real man does this and a real man does that. And it's usually a shaming tactic in order to force or coerce men into behaving how the woman wants them to behave based on the feminine lens, not actually the masculine lens. So I think that this is what's going on. I don't think— I mean, I've seen it so many times— is that men have forgotten who they are. They've been told that who they naturally are are somewhat toxic. And so in order to try to gain access to a mate or a relationship, they start to identify sameness with who they are, with the woman, thinking that that will get them the woman. And then that doesn't. And then we're just in this ideological fucking nightmare that we're in at the moment that men like you and I have to help other men out of.

Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting because it's— there's something about— I mean, when you dig into the data around fatherless homes and, you know, in the States, it's like 1 in 4 kids grow up without a father in the household. And it does affect young girls, but not to the same degree that it affects young boys. Young boys are disproportionately affected in every measurable category. Like, it's crazy when you start to dig into the data. And I think part of the problem is this, you know, I think we've, we've kind of discounted biology in society and culture in such a monumental and catastrophic way. And we forget that at our core, we're still mammals, you know, as much as as much as most people have fallen into this kind of techno-dependency where they're outsourcing their critical thinking and their sort of daily habits and their thought processes to, you know, to social media and whatnot, we're still mammals. And I think there's something to be said of, you know, if a mother lion was raising a male cub, at some point she knows that that male cub can overpower her, just like a fundamental base perspective. And for some boys, that comes quite early where they're physical and they're wild and they're feral. And it seems like there's no quote unquote right way or possible way to turn a boy into a man without him having his, his claws clipped and his fangs and his incisors taken out. And so his ability to kind of be robust and, you know, be a danger but not a danger is sort of neutered, you know, and he walks through life feeling somewhat impotent, feeling somewhat ineffective. And I've seen this in a lot of guys that are— and this isn't to blame mothers. I have to always make that super clear. It's not to say you as a mom are doing something wrong necessarily. It's just that as young boys, most boys have gone through this where they reach this age where all of a sudden their physicality and the primal nature just comes alive in them and they almost need some male figure to understand what that biological experience is like. And, I think this is where when we've kind of thrown the baby out with the bathwater with biology, I think sometimes women can get the perspective that, "Oh, being a man is like being a woman, just a little bit different." And, it's like, "Well, no." If you ever went through puberty as a young man and you started getting boners on the bus and you wanted to punch holes through the wall and like, fuck a wet pile of rocks. Like, it's just— that's all very crude. But you'd understand that the difference is very substantial and that we are much alike in some ways, but we are significantly different in other ways. And so, you know, I'm going to pause there because I can say a lot more, but I'm curious to get your take on what I'm saying.

Yeah, I think the, um, the biological aspects, that's where I've gone back to. I, I think that for men, uh, masculinity is the psychological software of the male biological hardware. And I think those two, they're meant to run each other. And I think because we've eliminated that, we put boys into classrooms, we're trying to make them act like little girls. And it's celebrated that healthy masculinity are the stereotypical traits of femininity. Harvard used this as a— they used a guideline study that was done over, I think, 3 decades, a number of years ago, and they identified stereotypical masculine and feminine traits which belong to men and women to actually root out masculinity out of the workplace. It's no surprise. So they had to define it. And when you look at these stereotypical traits now, if we look at healthy masculinity, they're all the stereotypical traits of femininity, which is like relational, compassionate, Um, humble, dependent follower, all of that. And so when you look at it, it's no wonder that men are really confused because they're natural— or boys, sorry, and men are really confused because their biological instincts, that primal aggression that needs to come out, which nature has produced to serve a very particular function, has been told to be suppressed, has been told is toxic. What I find really interesting is that we see the modern feminized narrative is open up, talk about your feelings, you know, we want you to be available. It's like, yeah, but you don't want to be available for my raw primal aggression right now. That doesn't mean you display it towards those weaker than you. It means doing it with responsible action and channeling it in the right way. But you can't ask for one thing and then when you don't get that in the way that you demand it, then say that that's toxic. This is like the, uh, the social gaslight that's been going on towards us as men to make us completely think that our biology is a social construct, which is just— it's madness in my opinion. And we see psychology professors and counseling teachers teaching this stuff, and it's like mentally ill teaching mental illness is like, you know, okay to be a therapist and coach other people through it. It's, it's a wild world, man. And I think if we dropped men and women on an island, which we've seen that happen, I think it was on the Bear Grylls Show and on Survivor, biology will come through real quick.

Yeah, it's, it's, it's fascinating because I've talked to a number of people and there's no— it always seems like that's the divide that for me, biology certainly contributes to the expression of our gender and to try and separate those two things, I think, is just ignoring reality. It's ignoring, it's ignoring and disconnecting and disassociating in a way from a truth of reality. Now, there are certainly people who take that to an extreme that I think is unnecessary, you know, and attribute some, some things to biological, you know, biological essentialism or imperativism. I think that that's not always necessarily true and it can be taken to an extent that's, that's unnecessary. But the same is true on the other side when you kind of say you know, gender is just a social construct and biology and your natural biological state and expression contributes nothing to it. I think that misses out on a big thing. And I think most men feel that that's true, you know. All right, guys, really quick aside. First off, thank you so much for tuning in to the show and to the channel. If you are wanting to go deeper, if you're a man that's working on himself in some way, shape, or form, you're wanting to be more self-led, you want to trust yourself more, you want to have a deeper level of self-worth, or maybe you're looking to improve your relationship, then I encourage you to check out the Man Talks Alliance. You can go to mantalks.com/alliance. We have over 1,000 men in this incredible community from around the world, men who are just like you, working to better themselves, to be a better husband, a better father, a better leader, in your own life. So check it out, mantalks.com/alliance. Well, we can't point the finger at upbringing and family systems and socialization and culture and society and blame it entirely. Like, there is a biological imperative inside of me for certain elements, because again, still a mammal, you know, at the end of the day, still a mammal. But come back, just circling back to this notion of the mother. So We've kind of collapsed the father in a way. I started writing something just on like the death of the father within our culture. And I think personally, I really believe that we saw that with the rise of Jordan Peterson. You know, the father has been largely absent in our culture and Jordan Peterson had this meteoric rise. Why? Because in many ways he was saying everything that boys needed to hear from a dad. Stand up straight, shoulders back, make your bed, you know, those types of basic things, get your house in order. And what happened to him? He was just mobbed, you know, he was just absolutely mobbed and, and attempted to be sort of character assassinated all the time. So in the absence of that, there's just this role of the mother that seems to be taking over more and more and more. I'm curious what you're seeing in men. What role does the mother play? What role do you think it should play? Um, let's just explore that a little bit.

I think that the mother is imperative, right? So the first couple of years, the child's not going to survive without the mother. So I want to, I want to honor that. They're both equally as valuable as each other. And again, it's not to blame, which it's interesting when we, when we want to hold the feminine side accountable, we have to preface it. We say, hey, we're not blaming anything here, which is a part of the programming. But if we were to say, oh, men need to do better, you know, like, this is absolutely ridiculous, we don't have to preface that with the protection or looking after men's feelings with her, which is a symptom of society. I think the woman, or the mother, is there to help the boy's development through nurture and nourishment in the first few years, and then after that, she's the defining factor about letting him develop a sense of independent self in opposition to her. So whenever I look at this, I always go through a process of differentiation. So you look at the traits that are Um, things that you don't like about your mother, generally they exist within you. Generally they're the things you're in conflict with, and we start to move in opposition to that. So we see now that what men will do is they actually seek a partner expecting the unconditional love from the partner that they got from their mother. And this is where I see it really runs up against a major issue, because I don't really believe that our partners are meant to love us unconditionally. I think all relationships from a man, woman, husband, wife perspective, they are conditional, and there is a sense of, um, value exchange in that. And I think we need to be more honest about that. I think, um, what's his name, Orion Taraban, talks about that as well. And I think that's really important to understand, that your woman is not your mother. And when the boy doesn't split from the mother to become gender opposite through a process of differentiation and understanding of independent self and emotional sovereignty, he's going to collapse his, uh, woman's state and expectations on her as that he has with the mother. And that's where I think men go really wrong with that. And I think that's a really important aspect to look at. And in my men's group, you know, I see this so often where they're just so caught up in the, you know, the Woman Wonderful, um, effects. No, so psychological effect where men literally can't see anything negative about women. And it's a psychological condition, and it's the same as cognitive dissonance, really. It's like, I can see the good, can't see the bad. They split into the Madonna-whore construct as a result of that, and then they keep thinking that the woman should be like the mother. And I think it damages women, damages men. And the mother usually hasn't allowed the son to become an independent sense of self, either through smothering or through neglect. And I think that's— I'll leave that there because we'll probably continue into the devouring mother and others in a sec.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's, it's interesting because it's almost like an intoxication for a lot of men, you know, like a lot of men in the absence of really knowing who they are become intoxicated with the feminine. Would you say that that's an accurate description?

Mm-hmm. Yeah, absolutely. And defined by her. So his sense of self will be defined based on the level of validation or approval that he gets from the feminine. And so he doesn't know who he is without that. And I think that's a real big problem as well at the moment because it's celebrated. And this is that be more vulnerable, be more open. I've done multiple polls on my, uh, Instagram where I've said, have you opened up to a woman about something really sensitive and it's been weaponized? And it's like 99.7% say yes. So it's this delicate balance between that because you will, you'll only really do that if you expect her to accept you and love you like your mother. It's why we see, um, in society murderers or serial rapists, the mother will always defend them. That's— that love for a child is only reserved for the mother, not for the partner.

There was— there's actually an interesting example of this here in New York recently. There's a 15-year-old boy that was trying to get a phone number from a 14-year-old girl. She said no. They knew each other because they went to school together, and he's trying to get her to give him her phone number. She says no, like, no, I'm not me my phone number. And, somebody else is recording it for some reason and he ends up following her a couple feet and she's trying to get away from him and he picks her up, body slams her head down on the concrete and stomps on her head. And so, this 15-year-old boy because he was rejected, couldn't handle the rejection, is violent towards her. The mother is interviewed in the courts a few days later and she's justifying his behavior. I was like, Holy fuck. Like, what the hell? And she's like, you know, she was mean to him and she wasn't nice to him. It's like your son just picked up a girl, slammed her on her head and stomped on her head, and it's on video and you're justifying his behavior like that is inconceivable. You know, it's absolutely intolerable. So why do you think that that happens? Maybe just let's dig into the smother mother, the devouring mother a little bit. What is that archetype actually all about?

Yeah, I, I commented on when I saw— I was going to actually use that example just then. And this is where you get a boy, I could guarantee his father's not around, and I could guarantee that his mother has made him the surrogate husband. So he gets away with whatever he wants. There's no discipline, there's no authority. He's way too enmeshed with his mother, so he just acts on impulse. He's emotionally chaotic, and he's been taught that that kind of treatment is okay. And it's through an absence of father and discipline and authority that he thinks he can pick up a girl that's, you know, half his size, slam her, and then stomp on her head. Like, I was like, I had to look away for a second because it was, it was hard to watch that. And that is one of the results of mother enmeshment, because he's got no containment whatsoever. He's not learned how to treat women. He's just like a high chair tyrant, which is the world revolves around him. I get whatever I want. And everyone will bend to my will because his mother's done that for him. And this is the, this is the issue with it. I mean, there was a study a long time ago done, and I'm not saying that this is an accurate across the board, it was in a Texas prison, I think it was in 1979, where 80% of the violent rapists came from single mother households. You know, it's— and that's, that's really shocking. And again, I'm not saying that this is across the board, It's hard to find the study. I had to dig for it a little while ago, and I did it in another podcast. I got slammed for it, and I was just like, just go look at it, you know? And so this is where, when there is no authority, where there's no father, where there's no structure, that boys can act like this. And that mother's obviously very unhealthy as well because she shouldn't support that. And he's learned that he can get away with whatever he wants. And this is the issue with mother enmeshment.

It's—

there's just no separation, no differentiation. And he's been taught that he can get away with anything he wants.

It's kind of like the Miyamoto Musashi quote where he says the only effective solution against violent and evil people is good people more skilled in violence.

Violence. Yeah.

Yeah. And it's— and I think it's interesting because it does, it does feel— it's very strange, you know, because like my background is I went to school for a music degree initially, and that was a very, very, very feminized culture that I was involved in. And I was not, you know, like I had a 1000cc sport bike that I would ride to, you know, opera rehearsal, which was very strange, you know, very, very oppositional to pretty much everybody else was there. I was one of the few straight dudes that was in there. And, you know, it was a very hyper-feminized culture and environment. And I could see the pressures to comply to certain ideologies and the pressures to behave in certain ways. And I think what's interesting is that a lot of the men that I've worked with, I've seen that notion as well when they've grown up with just very female figures, there's not really an understanding of how to sort of push back, how to deal with your own aggression, how to deal with, you know, your own anger and your rage. And a lot of the times that just gets subterranean, you know, it gets pushed underneath the surface of the psyche and it causes issues like that. So what are some of the downstream impacts of a man that's had that type of Devouring Mother, Smother Mother.

Yeah, so he'll usually operate out of a program of I don't exist in the subconscious because he's never been allowed or had the right to be able to exist outside the Ouroboros, which is the world of the mother. It's like the prima materia of the, of the feminine is the snake that eats its own tail. This is why Eric Newman talks about the dragon fight where you split, separate, and then you have to fight the dragon, which is these impulses internally that you come up against. And what that guy would have experienced in being rejected by the woman would have been an unconscious, deep rejection from the mother that he hasn't had. And so he doesn't know how to handle it. And I think with, with men and going through this process, it's so important to understand that containment is really important through capacity, through doing difficult things. And that this split is going to happen regardless of whether you want it to happen or not. And generally it'll happen from a painful breakup. And when I see this in, uh, in men, that it's usually catalyzed by divorce. When we start to actually link up the patterns between what they've gone through, um, the type of woman they were with, the woman will usually be very similar to the mother that they have to split from. And it can be a very, very, very painful process. And I think— I don't think we need to bring that back because men are becoming more chaotic as a result and falling for ideological notions because of this. The social engineers that orchestrated all of this have done a really good job. They've done it like it's a masterful, precise way that they've been able to destroy men. And if men aren't on the front line, society goes to where it is. I think, I think it was Plato or Aristotle said it, that masculine republics give way to feminine democracies, and feminine democracies give way to tyranny. And we're seeing the collapse of the empire now as a result, because there's strong men are going to have to make a comeback.

It's interesting because it seems like the— how I've always looked at it is that when a man has that type of smother mother or devouring mother, it's that she— it's almost like she keeps him in a psychological womb for as long as possible. Like, he's born and he comes out in the world, but she creates this externalized womb psychologically and emotionally that he lives inside of, and he needs to almost birth himself out of it, you know, and create separation and create distance and sever and cut the umbilical cord for himself. And it's pretty intense. I've worked with a lot of men that have had that type of devouring mother, and the the resistance towards even creating space for like a week can sometimes be— it just feels like completely overrun, you know, overrunning to their system. So, what are some of the things that men need to do if men have had that type of smother mother, devouring mother, they've grown up in that type of presence? How do they even approach that? And maybe I'm going to ask an interesting question. Do you think that in a way our culture that we're living in is akin to a devouring mother?

Yeah, I've been saying that for more than 5 years now. I'm like, we don't live in a patriarchy, we live in a cultural devouring mother. And the devouring mother is going to seek to erase the potential and the maturation of the solar masculine. You know, we're in the lunar waters, which is the womb. We're meant to come out, split, and head into the world of the material consciousness and light, which is the solar masculine. So what will a mother usually that's cut from this cloth not be okay with from the boy? Anger and defiance. And anger and defiance is the energy of the hero that he uses the sword to go out there to, you know, to cut and kill the dragon, slay the dragon. And what are we told in society that we're not allowed to feel as men? Anger, our anger and aggression, which is the very thing that splits us from the lunar waters and the maternal Ouroboros for our own development, is the very thing that we're not allowed to use. And so then we're labeled as toxic, misogynistic, etc., if we go and do that. Now, the process to do that is first you've got to have awareness, and then you take action. And so the awareness of it is to realize that the only way you can ever really become a full man is to split from the mother and be given to men that have gone through the journey. And it's painful, man, especially when you get older, because you have to go through a major psychological death which will feel like a physical death. And so that differentiation process is, again, create space. You have to start to develop a level of self-sufficiency. You have to learn who you are from an emotionally sovereign perspective. I'm not responsible for my mother's feelings. Life, emotions, state anymore, because the mother will make the boy feel guilt for not serving her at that point. And guilt's a very— it's a very painful emotion to experience, because then we self-flagellate and self-punish in order to alleviate the guilt that will come up for us saying no to our mother and separating, because that will feel like the ultimate betrayal. That's the thing. And so we have to start moving past this betrayal the self-betrayal and self-abandonment. Because what's the most painful thing we'll experience as a child is the abandonment from the mother. So we kind of have to go through the very things that we are actually afraid of in order to establish a sense of independent self in opposition, but also in collaboration with the mother. So you can maintain the relationship while bringing into harmony that balance of opposites internally to harmonize the relationship with yourself, to know who you truly are. Every time I've done this with a man, generally their relationship with their mother improves. Sometimes it goes into non-existence because the mother just can't handle it, but the mother will keep smothering and say, oh, you know, you're my little boy, and it's like, you're 45 years old. At some point, that's just emasculation. One of the other things as well is if, um, I see mothers that are still sleeping with their kids, their boys, and they're like 12 or 14, I'm like, that's got to stop, you know. That's That's just— that's way too unhealthy. And I've seen men that have come to work with me and their kids have been 14, 15. They're so destructive because they still sleep in the same bed with their mother and sometimes even still shower with her. And so this, like, separation really needs to happen. Otherwise it starts to form a type of psychological and emotional incest, and the mother colonizes the mind of the boy, and he doesn't know who he is, uh, as a separate object to that, which is it can be devastating.

I was going to be backhanded there, and my initial response was like, whoa, whoa, Jag, women cannot colonize. Come on now. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So sorry, that was an inflammatory word.

I was like, whoa, women colonize. Say more about that. Colonizing the mind of the boy.

Yeah. So, I mean, if we look at it, I'll throw this something back. Men might colonize land, but women will colonize the mind, right? So what that means is that when trauma happens to a child from a devouring or narcissistic abusive mother— so imagine like a, uh, a cell, like a— it looks like a little donut. The wall around the cell is to keep the good in and keep the bad out. When the mother— the father can do it too, so let's just say the household, but for argument's sake, the mother— when the mother traumatizes the child, especially when she's a devouring mother, she wants to blur the meridian between him and her to make sure that there's no separation whatsoever, like being back in the womb. And what will happen is, as she starts to blame him and make him responsible for her state, because he's so young, he'll say, 'Oh, I'm the one that, that's hit, I'm the one that's hitting, and I'm the house that contains it all. So now I actually can't tell the difference between what's mine and what's my mother's.' And this is where the mother will colonize the mind. And especially the narcissistic mother, will colonize the mind and create a series of structures that he won't know is his or not his. And then that will keep him attached to her because the devouring mother is terrified of abandonment. Mhm. And so that'll keep him in line from, from that structure, that, uh, very, very charged word of colonization.

Yeah. Well, it's, it's interesting because I think oftentimes the, the other, I think, asterisk or caveat that we need to put in here is is the devouring mother isn't just afraid of abandonment. She utilizes and deploys the structures and the behaviors and the tactics that you're talking about in order to gain power over a more physically dominant entity.

Yeah.

And so, you know, this is— I think this goes back to this, this biological notion. Right. And How do men and women compete? Well, they compete very differently, right? Men compete through hierarchies and competencies and capability, and women compete through very different tactics. Oftentimes it's about reputation. It's about character assassination. And so the fastest way to gain power over somebody, it's not about, am I more capable, competent than you? Can I actually do better than you? It's Can I be good in a way while also making you appear less good to other people in a social and cultural setting? And, and can I do it in a way where I don't get caught for it? And that's the power, right? Can I gain power over you? I've actually had guys say that they've gone into some of the biggest Fortune 500 companies and interviewed with women that are in the VP executive positions, and the women will openly say to them, in, you know, I've, I've never, I've never once sought out this position. You know, I've never actually wanted these positions. I've never wanted to. I've just— it's just come to me. It's just happened. It's just been given to me and I've never wanted them. And in my team, you know, we don't, we don't really strive to compete and that type of stuff. That's the, that's the narrative, right? And so it's kind of this very secretive and almost backhanded way of saying, don't be in competition with me, otherwise I'll come and, you know, poison dart you in the neck. And, and so there's just a different way women gain power in different ways. And it's usually through more psychological social means. Can you say a little bit more about that? Because I think it might be helpful. What have you seen in terms of how women gain power and try and get compliance specifically over a son, and maybe even relationally, what happens? And I know we're getting into some interesting waters. It's probably going to get me some emails and some comments, but let's go anyway.

So there's a fair bit there. So there's a couple of ways that I look at the feminine. So the feminine achieves power through tearing down. The masculine achieves power through building up and not sort of like up and down being the, um, yeah, conquering, right? And so that means men are overt and women are covert. So I've said for a long time that the weapon of the feminine is manipulation, but the gift is intuition. And the weapon of the masculine is aggression, and the gift is protection. So when we look at these from a maladaptive structure, as an example, aggression and manipulation without responsibility, they're the maladaptive structures. But when there is responsibility, it can move into protection and intuition, which I think are beautiful. So if you— even if you look at, uh, toxic masculinity, all those traits— aggression, risk-taking, dominance, all of that— they're only unhealthy, or let's say undeveloped, without responsibility that goes with them. If you have a responsibility with them, they're actually very healthy traits. So in relation to that, it's very much so men will compete for territory and women will compete for sexuality. Essentially, they'll compete for mate preference and they compete with each other for that. I've seen this. People have said to, to my wife, like women that she knows, like, oh, you know, why wouldn't you want to work? Because she's fully taken care of. Why wouldn't you want to work? Get out of Jag's shadow, you know, like do this, do all these other things that go against the things that she actually wants because these people or these women don't have what she has. And so quite often it will be— and this is, it's a generalized statement, but it's not from what I've seen— is that no one really hates women more than other women. And I've seen it. And they tear each other down and they do the reputation destruction and they will work women out of relationships with good men, but then tell them to stay with men that are not that— say, not a very good catch, as an example. Go, oh no, stay with him, give him a chance, because that gets her out of the marketplace. It's the same as when, you know, their expectations or their celebration of body positivity and say, oh no, you're gorgeous, you're a queen, you're a goddess. And it's like, you know what you're doing, you know? Like, that's—

that one's always— that one's always— I'm like, yeah, but men don't find that woman attractive. Like, 99% of men don't find that woman attractive. And so this is lip service, you know, and you know that, and you would never want to look like that. That's, that's the irony of it, is like the women that are saying that are there, they would never want to be in that situation.

Yeah, precisely. And so this is where these tactics that get exposed they're often met with derision towards the man exposing them. But we have— it's kind of like if we want everyone to heal, which I'm so sick of the gender war, you know, it's so rampant and it's— I'm so tired of it. And I think we all have to take responsibility for our own state and actually celebrate the other gender while also holding them accountable on both sides. Men have done horrible things, women have done horrible things. So one of the things that can become— and I was just having a conversation with this on, on the way here before we did this podcast with uh, one of my clients, and he's got a son, and his baby mama was raised by a mother that hates men. And that's really one of the biggest threats to the boy because he will start to grow up hating his own kind because the mother hates men as well. And that's what a devouring mother can do. And she will often as well attempt to destroy the father in that process at the same time. So if she hates men, she'll destroy the father, usually alienate the boy or the kids from the, from the father, which I think is— oh man, it's so— it's just sickening what I've seen out there. Both sides can do it, but alienation of children is just— I was in a situation that was similar to that where the, uh, the ex-husband was trying to do that with a woman that I was dating for a bit that had kids a number of years ago, and it was just— what he was doing to the kids was absolutely disgusting, saying that I was going to kidnap the mum and that, um, she's never going to see them again. It's just horrible what happens. And I think that without that responsibility, it's really important to see the damage that that does to kids. And the devouring mother will be like, you're mine, you're no one else's. I'm not going to let anyone near you. And that includes making the boy fight for her love. And so when another woman comes in, she's going to be in competition to make sure that he doesn't actually ever leave her. And will ruin the relationship. So I see quite often men will qualify the partner through the mother, and I'm like, yeah, that only goes one way.

Why is it— because I, I already know that this podcast is going to be very unliked by some people, and yeah, sure, it's, you know, I think it's, it's interesting because if you and I were solely having a conversation about male responsibility and accountability, cheers, thumbs up, 5 stars. As soon as we start to talk about toxic female behavior, toxic femininity, and some of the behaviors that get deployed there that really harm boys and men, that harm boys that then become men, that unfortunately a lot of women disqualify as being dateable, matable, marriable. And so, in some ways, and I've seen this, I'm sure that you've seen this, a lot of the times when a boy has been raised by the type of mothers that we're talking about, he gets into extremely dysfunctional relationships and he does not become a fully functional man that leads to him having mate success. And so, he's lonely, he's angry, and sometimes that leads him into incel territories and we kind of wonder why and yada, yada, yada. Why is it that men are— that it is taboo for us to have this conversation? Why is it taboo?

How do we make sure we get more thumbs down with that answer? Look, I think it's, you know, the way that society has been structured is women have risen by virtue of men stepping down to allow space for them, and that part of that was necessary. Part of it was necessary. But I think that in order to come to light again, it's this— you give power to someone that doesn't, doesn't earn power by its own, by their own volition, or by their own credentials, like a meritocracy. When we're not in a— in like, we don't live in a meritocracy anymore. It's just like the DEI stuff, woke ideology, all of that. It's just, it's a flat structure. So as you said earlier, men organize hierarchy, which is a vertical structure. Women will organize on a flat structure. In a flat structure, it's, you know, equality of opportunity is not equality of outcome. And so what happens is when we give too much power where we don't stand up and say, hang on, no, this isn't right, we see the results of this happening at the moment where I think George Orwell said it. I think it was George Orwell. He said, if you want to see who controls you, look to see who you can't criticize. You know, and there's a woman in Australia called Abbey Chatfield, and she's, she's quite a hateful human being, and she's now getting canceled, I think, or not renewed on her radio show. She's all like, men are violent, they kill everyone, and etc., etc. And, um, the notion with that that's really important to understand around, um, around her is that she's given a platform, and when you can't criticize that, you get canceled. Now, I don't think anyone should get canceled. I welcome criticism. If you want to tear me down about trolls, try to do that. I actually support them to be able to do that. I think that's fair. I don't think that we get to a society that's healthy, balanced, and equal by canceling people. And I think that because of that, I mean, there's a reason my stereotypes exist. And it's, you know, accountability is a woman's kryptonite in a lot of ways. And this is why one of the things I say to men to look for in a woman is accountability. Like, just look to see if she's accountable. If she's not accountable, I'd say that might not be one you want to head down because it's going to be a little bit more difficult. But you get a woman that's accountable, then that's a good place to be. And I think that when you give uncontained responsibility to people that haven't necessarily earned it, then you're going to get the inability to be able to push back and hold them accountable when the time is right, which is— we're seeing that in society at the moment. It's, it's crumbling. Hard. And I would say within 12 months it's going to be a very different landscape.

How so?

I think that we're moving more to a masculine-led society again, or moving back to one where these women are going to be held accountable. We're just talking off, um, off air about the false accusations that happen. And you know, it's like, they want equality, then we need to bring equality there. And I'm a huge advocate for, if you are found to be making things up you can't prove your claim clearly and you've accused someone, you should get the same amount of time in prison as they would have gotten. Watch how quickly things would change overnight with that. And if you want men to be responsible, which I'm all for male responsibility, then women need to be responsible as well. And I just think it's been a, um, a result of the tendrils of ideologies seep into society that we can't question or challenge this.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's— it is— I think the hypocrisy is starting to fade.

Yeah.

You know, like the, the notion of— the notion of believe all women has always stood in the face of not all men. You know, anytime a man says not all men, I mean, there's dozens and hundreds of women that go online making videos being like, you don't get it. And, you know, when a woman says, you know, believe all women, and it's like, well, but there's many cases where that's not true, you know? And I've worked with dudes where that's happened. I've worked with a 17-year-old kid who got falsely accused at high school. And, you know, she— actually, what's that?

I have too. Yeah, I worked with a 15-year-old. Yeah.

And it destroyed him. Like, he, you know, took attempts on his life and he's like, I didn't do anything, you know, trying to prove his case. He got expelled from school and then you know, she ended up telling her friends that she made the whole thing up and her friends did the right thing, thankfully, and went back to school. But the psychological and reputational damage that happened to this boy was so intense, you know, multiple, multiple attempts on his own life. And it's brutal. So I agree. You know, I think there needs to be equality of accountability within society. That is what law and justice is for. I also think that we as men have done a disservice by moving too heavily towards the truth of logos and rationality. And I think that we've, we've disconnected from the, the truth of mythos. Like in ancient Greece, there's two forms of truth. There was logos, which was more logical truth, and then there was mythos, which is mythological truth, the truth that's that's about the Gestalt, that's about the whole, that's about the intuition, that's about the body and the unconscious. And, I think that we as men societally and socially, and you could probably make a case that was engineered out of us to disconnect from that so we could go be good factory workers and units in a factory setting. But, I think that we as men have disconnected from that wisdom. And, I think that when men start to plug back into that intuitional myth-based mythos, that level of truth in some ways that we're talking about, which is story-based, archetypal-based, connected to symbols and the unconscious and all that type of stuff, you end up having a much deeper and broader understanding of reality as it is. You're able to see— it's almost like going from the TVs that we used to have as kids and you'd you'd kind of like dial, you'd hit the top and try and adjust the bunny ears so that you could get a clearer picture. It's almost like going from that to 4K, where all of a sudden you start to see reality in a whole different way. You're like, oh, whoa, this, this makes so much more sense. Um, what are your thoughts on that? Do you think that that's a fair assessment? How would you frame that? I'm curious.

Yeah, I think that's a great point. I wrote about this recently, uh, where I was saying that even I was starting to fall into the religion of scientism. And I use those words deliberately because religion can be, you know, mythological-based and archetypally-based, whereas we're now— everything's like, what's your source? What study? Cite your study. Which is— it reduces our ability to critically think. It just looks for metrics, logos, rational information, and it places scientism at the forefront over direct experience. And I think we're missing direct experience, contact with nature, getting into contact with our unconscious material, the nature of archetypal structures through mythological, um, objects and structures, and going on these quests like the hero's journey, going down into the underworld, you know, visiting with some of the gods if you want to talk about that, or the archetypal structures. I mentioned the high chair tyrant before, you know, that's a, that's an aspect of immature masculinity and the the weakling prince. And this is why I think Game of Thrones was such a huge hit, because we've lost contact with that. And that was very much derived in this really strong mythological-based dragons and castles and power and sexuality and aggression and rawness. And there's this direct experience with that which I think we're all missing, and we've become a very, very degenerate but sanitized society at the same— in the same level of our deep deep connection to reality. So I think direct experience is something that— and I think I saw you, you do a story actually on this, saying that courses are dead because AI is like taking over. And I think we're going to be moving back to direct experience and, and actual contact with this mythological initiation for what's actually true for us through nature and through our own psyche. And I think that's where we get to get to know each other, where I think we go into the mythological and then we make sense of it with the rational. And then we start to become more integrated. And we're seeing a major lack of integration in society as well with, with men too.

Yeah, it's interesting because a lot of my wife's a marriage and family therapist, and so a lot of times we'll work with couples together or, you know, I'll get sent a man to work with out of that couple and then I'll end up working with them a little bit. And it's, it's wild to see how often both of them are just stuck in hyper-intellectualization. And they've watched all the Instagram reels and all the YouTube videos, and they've read the books and they've done the courses. But what they haven't done is actually looked into each other's eyes and sat in front of each other and breathed for 20 minutes. You know, like that type of experiential being and connection and relating and intimacy is the most terrifying thing. And so it's so much easier to escape into logos, right? This is like the elephant and the rider. Problem within psychology. The rational mind, as Einstein said, is a faithful servant and the intuitive mind is a sacred gift. And, we've created a culture that honors the writer and has forgotten— honors the servant and has forgotten the gift. And, in psychology, the intuition and the body and the direct experience is the elephant. It's the more potent force. And yet, it seems as though we've created a society that encourages people to actually enslave and castrate the elephant and give supreme authority to the rider. And it creates a wild imbalance. You know, it creates a really wild imbalance. How do you, how do you think we begin to walk that back? Like, what does that look like for a man that's maybe— because I know we're getting out into the existential, philosophical, psychological weeds. So do you want to pull us in or do you want to go further in that direction? Where would you like to go, Jag?

Um, look, I think that when you start to see the patterns in life, life is going to initiate you into whatever part is being cut off. So for me, I was in that very logos, rational, very stoic kind of place for a long time, and I, I still am. And one of the things that I think it was Alice Miller wrote about, the nature of suffering comes from what you were not allowed to experience as a child. So it's more of like a felt experience for me because I grew up with a devouring mother. It was joy. And this started to come through for me when I was doing Vin Zhang, who's a communication expert, and I'm doing one of his courses at the moment. And the way that he speaks, it's very flexible. It's broad. I'm more monotone and like my voice is deep and gravelly and it's a bit boring to listen to for a while. So sorry for the audience out there. I haven't done that. I haven't done the work yet to bring more joy into in my voice. But I started to look at that with what Alice Miller said, knowing I wasn't actually allowed to experience joy as a kid. And that was something that I was working into through that direct experience. And what happened over the last few years is because I was divorced from that, the, the semantics, you could probably say, and it was just very rational, intellectual programming, language, precision, code, pro, all of that stuff. Is I got really sick. I got, uh, two types of poisoning, and one of them was black mold poisoning. And I'll tell you what, brother, that gets you into your body real quick to remember the direct experience of what happens there. And it was— I had holes in my intestines, it was up in my, uh, in my face and in my brain. I was really, really sick where I couldn't get out of bed. And I still showed up to work, but it was like I would have the monumentally worst hangovers you could ever imagine. But I don't drink. So my liver was producing alcohol to deal with the toxic overload, and it pulled me into direct experience with life, like, as quickly as possible to get me back into the body because I was like, I was neck up and I wasn't feeling enough and I wasn't containing— it wasn't being contained enough in that. I was divorced from it completely. And what's happened since then is— and this is kind of going out but in at the same time, you know, my wife's pregnant. We haven't announced anything yet. So this is the first time I've really publicly spoken about it. And that's bringing me into contact with the ontological way of being with that that has cracked me wide open, you know, and to do that, to understand that, to map that, what I'm doing is I'm writing a series of letters to my child so they'll know who I am at 42, 43, 44 and what the process is actually doing to me. You know, every day I'll kiss my wife's stomach and I'll talk to the baby and it's bringing out this joy which had previously been pushed down. And I went, oh, this must be what they talk about when the child will reflect back anything you haven't dealt with. And fortunately enough that I get to have this beautiful experience of being in this deep intuition around, oh, I was never allowed to experience joy. My baby is starting to make me feel that joy. Now I get to document what it's like on that pathway. And I think that that's been a real beautiful experience to come out of after being really sick for a while. So I know I went sort of all over the place there with that, but I think that both of them are equally as important. And when you start to weigh one more than the other, then life is going to bring you the necessary force to crack that resistance open so you can become integrated and whole.

Yeah, I started this— I mean, I've had a number of experiences where, uh, I had one experience that I've described as being waterboarded into the unconscious, which was not something I would ever recommend for any human being on the face of the planet. It was the worst experience of my life, um, followed by some pretty challenging times, but I remember when my— when I found out, yeah, that's, that's for a wholly different conversation and episode. But when my son was born, it was not too long after that experience. And after he was born, I, you know, I wasn't too sure how to communicate to him, you know, who I was and what I was going through during that period of time in my life and his life. And so, when I turned 40, I was in the Austin airport and I was coming back from a men's weekend with my group of guys and spending time with them. And I just started writing. I started a note on my notes on my computer and it says, "Letters to my son." And I just started writing a letter and I've written in there just like a journal entry whenever, just whenever it strikes me. Maybe something's going on with him and I, maybe we're doing something, I've taken him to his first hockey game or we've gone skiing together or we've gotten into locking horns together and it's not gone well. Just writing to him and being like, this is a kind of diary or a journal or a glimpse into who I am as a father to you and maybe a different way than you saw, especially in a time in life where he likely isn't going to remember much, you know, in like these formative years where kids usually don't— I mean, they just don't have any type of recollection. It's just all felt sense. So I love, love that you're doing that. That's amazing.

Yeah, that's— it's beautiful to hear. It's been quite powerful as well. And I felt it's been very emotional for me as well. You know, I felt tears coming up when I'm doing it, but not tears of sadness, tears of like, oh, these are tears of joy that the family that I grew up in is never going to exist again because I grew up in a very abusive household. And I even wrote in one of the letters to her, I think it's a girl, we don't know yet, but I'm going to say her anyway because I was dreaming about a girl. My wife was as well, which that'll crack me open even more, you know. And it's, that's such a beautiful process to be going through. And I said to her, I said, maybe one day I'll tell you about the family that I grew up in, but I don't think these letters are where this should happen. But all I know is that probably when you, when I do tell you you won't even be able to understand it because of the environment that you've grown up in. And it'll be so far from your understanding. And that's the promise that I make to you as your father.

Yeah.

You know, and I thought that was really powerful for me. Love that.

Love that. Well, I want to circle back around on a couple of things because I think, you know, we opened up a whole bunch of cans of worms. I mean, first off, congrats on the baby. I think that's amazing. When my wife got pregnant with my son, she knew instantaneously that it was a boy. And like when she, she knew that she was pregnant before she took a pregnancy test and it was pretty wild. And she just got this hit that she's like, you know, I've got a boy inside of me. And sure enough, she did. So intuition is a wild, sacred gift. So you guys are straight on to it there. So congrats and thanks for sharing that. And yeah, I mean, how do you see it? Because this is something that I think about a lot in terms of how do fathers, how do men of today start to create more masculine environments for their sons? And how do we as men support one another when there is often a push to be hyper-feminized? There is a push to be extremely emotional. There's a push, and I get it to a certain degree, right? I understand the be in touch with your emotions, understand how you feel so that they don't spill out onto me constantly, so that they don't be— they're not weaponized against me. They're not used to attack me. Because I think that's the case for a lot of women, is that men that are disconnected from their emotions, they're generally men that are either completely shut down and they can't make contact with that man, or they're so volatile with their emotions that they don't— it just does not feel safe at all. So how do we as men start to create a more masculine culture? How do we start to create more masculine environments for young men and young boys to to grow up inside of.

Yeah, I mean, you would know this as well, that kids— I heard a good quote, I think it was Peter Crone that said it, and he said, children will rarely succeed at listening to you, but they'll always succeed at becoming you. And I just stand by that. And I think that, and this is when I talk about coaches as well, I always encourage men to seek out a coach that has walked through and demonstrates and can prove that where you want to be, they've done, you know. And so if people come to me for fatherly advice, I'm like, I'm not a father, so I can only talk to you from a, you know, kind of like a textbook way. I don't— I haven't walked that path. But I can say that I know that being around the right people, being around the right men that hold you accountable— and this is why male contact is one of the pillars that I— is absolutely essential. And I say split from the mother, separate from the father, Purpose and male contact. They're my 4 pillars for men to become more masculine and mature into their, their manhood. And those are, those are just really the processes you need to go through. And I think that it's important to, to demonstrate to people, to show people, to stand for something and to stay consistent while you're standing for something. And I think to go back to what we're saying before about the shift in society, we're going to see— and I'll call this now— so many of those men's coaches and male coaches that were pandering to the feminine, they'll just turn around and go for what's popular because they haven't stood for, for what's true. And I would just— I don't want to demonize men or anyone in this, but I'd just be cautious of that because they're doing what's popular, not what's of foundationally integrous to them. So I think you've got to look out for the men that have been able to stand through it all, to take the arrows like I have. I've been one of them. I'm sure you have as well. The minute you start talking about something difficult, you, man, you take the shots big time. And so I think it's important to be around men that have a solid set of values, that are living the way that you want to live, that can prove to you that I've got the results. Most of the time, I would say that if you're going to work with a man, try and find other men that he's worked with to make sure that he's cut from a good cloth, because we don't— we also don't want men to go down this MGTOW red pill approach, which even they're a little bit myopic in the way they do things. They're just biology. And I think that the way that they approach masculinity in men is just— it's kind of like an immature masculinity. It's money, muscles, game, and frame is their kind of ethos. And that foundation will, will be great for you up until about 28, 29, 30, where life's going to go, all right, big boy, it's time to do the work and life will initiate you past that. And what I see is that men that actually get around the right men, once they move through that, you know, high chair tyrant to the hero or the prince in waiting and into more of the king archetype, you generally want to be a father at that point. You don't want to be sleeping around with multiple wives like the red pill will tell you to do. And look, for clarity, there's a lot of good stuff in the red pill for female behavior and things like that. It's not so much about the body of work itself, it's more about what's been done with it. Same with, you know, you could talk about third wave feminism onwards with that as well. But I think get around males that— to circle back and to reinforce this— get around males that have done what you're looking to do, that demonstrate and exemplify who they are, that you can verify through other men that they've worked with, that they can do what they say they're going to do, and that have walked through what you're currently going through. And I think that's really important to build more masculinity. And most importantly, it can only be done by other men. Love that.

I think that's very true. It's interesting, as you were talking about it, I was getting a chuckle because when I first started Man Talks like 11, 12 years ago, just the name, just the name Man Talks would get me Facebook comments and emails and oh man, it was, it was so wild. You know, it was just It's like, it's just a name. Like, you don't even know what the fuck I'm doing yet.

Wow.

But I understand it's been a— it's— I think it's been— it's hard sometimes because there's certainly been moments and inflection points in culture where it's pulled so hard in one direction or another. And my wife and I have always had conversations about this, trying to keep— trying to keep platforms, trying to keep messaging, trying to keep the body of work clean and free from overly politicalized ideologies, overly religious messaging, and kind of taking a stance of this is a safe house for you as a man if you are wanting to do the work regardless of who you vote for or who you pray to and or who you love. Like, it's just whatever. And it's been very interesting to see because at our weekends that we run these live retreats for guys, you know, you'll get into those environments and there'll be guys that have, you know, voted completely opposite directions, grew up in completely different environments, and they start to know each other in such a different framework that it creates bonding first and commonality and camaraderie to the point where they can actually have conversations about things that they disagree with. And I think, like, I do think that in some ways the inability of our culture to disagree is one of the most toxic, dangerous, and unhealthy elements in today's society that I think we should absolutely not tolerate. It's gotten so bad that people will message me because they'll go through the people that I follow and they'll be upset about somebody that I follow because they disagree with them. Like, that's a type of insanity to me that I think is just completely unhinged. And I'm interested in disagreeing with people. I'm interested in having conversations with people that I actually just don't agree with at all because I want to understand their worldview. And I think that relationality has to be maintained in the face of disagreement because for me, the truth that I think our culture and society has forgotten is that when you collapse discourse, when you can't maintain relationship in the face of disagreement, either the relationship just severs entirely, or if you're living in a country setting, then what's left is the use of force. And it seems like there are people who believe in a way of being that is advocating for moving quicker and faster towards the use of force. And I think that that's extremely dangerous, and I will always speak out against that type of ideology. Because it's— we should just never— we should never stand for that in my perspective. I'm curious what your take is on that because obviously you live in a very different part of the world. I'm sure you've seen some of that over there, but what's your take on that?

I agree 100%. I actually wrote in my notes this morning that we've lost the ability to disagree, and one of our powers now should be able to be to disagree and not completely discard someone's entire world or a friendship or relationship simply because you have disagreements. Um, you know, I've had reels made about me by other accounts that disagree with me, and people like, oh, why don't you report it? Because I don't care. Like, they should be able to express themselves. Like, by all means, go for it. I fully support that. I don't want people to be canceled. I think that's a use of force which I definitely don't agree with, and I think that that that's like, that starts a cascade or a domino effect where when that use of force is accepted, then we turn the temperature up a bit, and then another one, then another one, then another one. And then, you know, you're thrown in jail for whatever type of narrative they want to run against you. You know, it might be, you know, I mean, we saw that in World War II just because of your religion. And I think that it's really important. And one of the things I've said, I'm like, I'm sure if I sat down with one of these trolls and I didn't know them and we're at a cafe and we just started having a conversation, I could pretty much guarantee we'd probably get on, you know. And I think that we've lost this— we've lost this ability to negotiate with one another from a mature perspective because our society has become younger and younger mentally. I mean, even music, which is— I mentioned this earlier, so it's cool that we're kind of circling back. Um, even music has got like the average, uh, understanding of language of a 2 to 4 year old. You look at AI, I've only been using the AI models, the LLMs for 12 months, 18 months. The sentences are getting shorter. They use constructive parallelisms. It's not this and that and here's why that matters. And you know, and that's rare. No fluff. I turn on YouTube now, I watch someone talk and they're just reading off of a ChatGPT script. It's, it's just horrendous. And it's making, it's reducing our ability to critically think, which means we have a reduction in ability to be able to be with opposing viewpoints because we can't actually sit there and say, hey, why do I disagree with this? Why don't I like this? Why is this triggering me? What is this revealing within me that this person is saying that is causing me distress? And instead of being with that, we're like, no, we'll just eliminate that and we won't let that happen, and we'll just use force to isolate this person and kick them out simply because they said something. I mean, if we really break it down, brother, we look at It's words on a screen. It's words on a screen. And people are getting like, you know, hissing and spitting and rolling over and saying you should kill yourself or whatever, you know, end yourself. So you might need to edit that out so you don't get pulled off YouTube. But like such, such vitriol and hatred and venom being directed at one another. We're brothers and sisters. We're all part of the human race. We're all in this together. And I think that's what's snapping back at the moment. Accountability comes with adulthood, along with that responsibility for your actions. And I think people like us have just kind of had enough of it. I know I have. I don't want to speak for you, but I know I've completely had enough of the abdication of responsibility to make everyone just bow down to how someone else is feeling. I saw a Jubilee presentation with Jillian Michaels, and it was with obese people, and they wouldn't say the O-word because it was offensive. And a therapist was actually in there saying that, oh, we don't use that word, it's offensive. It's like, you're a therapist, you should be able to be with whatever word is said and remain neutral. So I agree with you on all that. I think I answered the question, um, there. If there's anything I missed, let me know.

No, I think you did a great job, man. Yeah, I saw, I saw some of that, and I've, I've always been fascinated. I think the, the body positivity area had good intentions to begin with, you know, change, change how you feel about your body. I get it. I've had disagreements with my own body before and, you know, looked in the mirror and not liked what I saw, even though I was in relatively decent shape. And so I understand, you know, having a bit of body dysmorphia sometimes and carrying that. But it, it seemed to reach a place. Here's, here's what I really have a hard time with, and I'm curious where you see this fitting in. Archetypally or mythologically, there is a massive push to deconstruct and almost eradicate categories, definitions entirely. And for me, that's a kind of push of saying there's no objectivity, there's no objective truth in any way, shape, or form, and we should eradicate it. And the only thing that really matters is your subjective experiencing. And what ends up happening is that that's a certain type of, in my perspective, psychological narcissism that ends up saying how I feel matters more than any type of categorization or definition that we can quantify or measure or observe. And so how I feel needs to be more important than what we can all observe and see. And that is how a child behaves. You know, a child doesn't want to see that they've lost. They don't want to see that they've hurt somebody. They don't want to admit that they did something wrong. And so they want to do, to do anything that they possibly can to get out of that responsibility and that accountability. So I know I just said a lot and threw a lot at you. I'll pass it over to you.

Yeah, I mean, there's the case in society now of this toxic individualism where it's all about me, me, me. It's the, the cult of I, capital I, and that's narcissism. And narcissism has now become so pervasive that it's got its own branches on the tree of narcissism, from, you know, vulnerable narcissism to covert narcissism to, you know, all these other types of narcissism. And it's it's almost become like a mind virus in a way. And only those that are deeply narcissistic are going to try to force— which we come back to that word— someone else to change their language, their personality, their being in order to suit them because of the mild— well, should be mild— level of discomfort because they disagree with them. And then if you've got to destroy the world around you and others to suit your own feeling, I mean, that doesn't get very far very soon, you know. And it's just, we're seeing the decay of society, I think, because of that, because we're so feelings-based. And then I heard, I can't remember who said it, it was, I was watching a debate once, and when we were talking about, uh, men feeling like women, and the guy, the person said, I can't, fuck, I can't remember who it is, he said he can't actually say he feels like a woman because he's never inhabited a woman's body. He can't experience that, that's just gaslighting people. And I would agree with that on some level because this is— and people ask me, you know, how can I become more feminine? I'm like, go ask a woman that's feminine because I don't know, you know, I don't know what it's like to be an inherently feminine woman and I'll never know that. I know just what it's like to be a man. And so I think when we start to adjust our viewpoint to suit people like that, we get into a world where it becomes a boundaryless state. And there is no differentiation between truth and fantasy or reality and fantasy and truth and fiction. I think that's where we're at.

Yeah, it's interesting because it's almost as though there's like, if I can't, if I can't beat you in a physical game or in a game of meritocracy, like in a game that has meritocracy at its core, then it makes sense to try and create some type of upheaval that discredits and discourages meritocracy, that discourages trying to figure out who's more competent and who's more capable for a position, for a job, etc. And, and the fastest way to do that is to sort of deconstruct, which seems to be a very popular word, deconstruct definitions and deconstruct and decenter certain things so that you can basically turn it into what you want. And I had this guy on the podcast and we were, we were kind of talking about this in a way, and I brought up the sort of like Marxist notion that there's at the, at the core of it, part of the ideology holds that that which advances the party is ethical. And so there's a notion baked into Marxism that basically says you know, that which advances Marxism is ethical, is good, is truth, is honest. And, and so I think that's part of where we get this eradication of categories and eradication of definitions, that they kind of become circular, meaningless. And I think that, you know, it's, it's interesting because if you study psychology long enough, you'll notice that That enters into a certain type of psychosis and schizophrenia. Like, if you look at the definition of psychosis and schizophrenia, psychosis specifically is that you can't determine what reality actually is. You can't— your tether on what you're observing, what you're seeing, what you're feeling, what you're smelling, what you're hearing from people, it's detached from what's actually there. And so you're interacting with something that's completely different than what other people are interacting with. And when you start to dissolve the definitions of language and you start to dissolve categories and then you extrapolate that out and you start to do that indefinitely and that becomes a worldview and an ideology that you're pushing out into a culture and society, what ends up happening is psychosis and what ends up happening is mass psychosis. And, I think I made this episode the other day where I said my prediction is that in the coming years, we will see a wild escalation in mass psychosis, in individuals experiencing psychosis because they're detached from any type of reality. We're going to see an increase in AI-induced psychosis where, you know, AI just kind of feeds you what it thinks you want to hear. In some ways, it's a validation machine, which is crazy. But we're going to see a massive rise in psychosis. And there are certain ideologies that are pushing this into our culture. And yeah, so I'm, I'm, I'm curious about that from your perspective, because for me, I'm like, well, as somebody that's dedicated to helping people be more resilient and robust psychologically and emotionally, that actually is something that I would push back on. That is something that I would stand against, because anything that's going to encourage some form of psychosis in people is probably not something that we should stand for.

Yeah, and I think that even when you're in contact with that kind of reality, you can almost start to question yourself going, is this actually happening? Like, how is this— how have we let this get to this point? And that's what, um, you know, Richard Granum— you heard of Richard Granum?

I don't think so.

He's a narcissism expert. He's awesome. And he talks about the shared fantasy that the narcissist pulls you into. So this is used by this push-pull idealize, uh, devalue, discard cycles that they, that they use. They gaslight to make you the problem, not them. You'll say, um, they want you to be open, as an example, and then you'll get frustrated and angry. Then they'll gaslight you to say, oh, now you're just not making me feel safe, and whatever it is. So they pull you into a shared fantasy, and they use this unsteady ground of gaslighting to keep you confused. And then they get rid of you, pull you back in, And this is what happens when you move into psychosis. It's this detachment from reality, this cognitive dissonance, and this shared fantasy that we're all playing out— or not all of us, people that are more susceptible to falling prey to that— which is, I can only see the good in this, I can't see the bad. And then we have things like suicidal empathy, which is allowing whatever type of person into a country that is not going to assimilate. That is known to be trouble and then destroying our society under the guise of, oh, you know, this is like, this is good, we're all equal, we all should have the same. Yet the very people that they're bringing in are the very things that they're blaming guys like you and I for. And it's like, it's, it's a, it's a major psychosis that these people are in, and they're just completely detached from reality. But as life always does, it forces our hand back into equilibrium. And when nature wants to fix something, it will shift the ground hard enough in order for the healing to happen, is the way that I see, in order to bring balance back to whatever is the most unhealed aspect of itself. I read once that— I think, I can't remember the exact word, but it said nature will always seek balance to heal itself, and the most unhealed part of nature is the human being. And so it's going to start pushing us up against this in order to see the most unhealthy, the people in psychosis that are schizophrenic, narcissistic, suicidally empathic, and then people like us, which are like, no, feet on the ground, like, let's talk about what's real. You don't get to run the place. We actually need that to help bring society back into a place of grounded reality.

I experienced a little bit of that the other day. I created a reel about I was like, everybody needs to check in on the local therapist. Like, what's going on with therapists? Because the therapeutic industry seems to be so infiltrated and indoctrinated into certain ideologies. And, and part of what I see happening is that it's bleeding into social media content where people within the therapeutic industry are just turning on each other, you know, and there's constant hit pieces and attacks and callouts and canceling. And I've seen it happen Oddly enough, predominantly with anybody that builds a big enough platform that they then become subject to some type of onslaught. And it's such an insidious way to power grab, you know, it's like, let me attack the person with status and with platform to, to subdivide some of their audience towards me and position myself as the authority. And, you know, I get that sometimes you know, there's, there's real reasons to call people out. There's real reasons to point out, you know, bad behavior or malintent and all that type of stuff. And I'm not saying that, that there's not value or merit in that. I'm simply saying that the amount and the volume in which I have seen it happen and it seems to go in peaks and troughs within the space over the last few years is pretty wild. Anyway, I want to honor your time, respect your time. This has been a very fun conversation. It will be fascinating to see how it's received online. And yeah, man, but I think that it's a very important one and I think it will resonate with a lot of people. So for those that are wanting to learn more about your work, wanting to learn more about the devouring mother, how to break free from that cycle, where can they find you?

Pure Jaguar on Instagram. I link that to YouTube. YouTube is Pure_Jaguar. I think it is Substack's the same kind of like just flywheel that and put everything into that ecosystem. I can I just say one more thing on the therapy thing that you mentioned? I actually just worked with a couple recently and they were at the end of their tether and they'd gone to multiple therapists, I think 4 or 5, and all of them said, end the relationship and the relationship. And they came to me and I said, imagine if you live in a house and you've got a plumbing problem. You just going to move out and get rid of your house because you've got a plumbing problem where there's a blockage? And all it was was the guy was graduating through an archetypal structure into the hero. So he was just a little bit demanding. She was very much of the volition to control everyone by making sure everyone's okay. And it was just creating resentment between them. And I said, this is what you guys are in. This is the program. He's like, oh, Man, like, I can't believe I didn't see that. And she's like, I can't believe I didn't see that. She grew up in a place where there was no space allowed for her. So she brings in a man that takes up all the space. He was in a place where he took up all the space and celebrated by the women he was raised by. He demanded that from her. We started dismantling that. And she said, I was— they're engaged. She was like, I was about to walk away from this relationship upon the advice of other therapists, and you saved my relationship in one session. And I said, this is where we've got to get into the more of like the reality of it. You can't just dismiss and discard someone because you just don't like the way they do something. When you make the commitment, make the commitment. People are worth it and relationships are worth it. And I think that's a really big thing. And those people that are tearing others down in the therapy space, I just look at that and I go, you know, you're probably not doing yourself too many favors to get clients that way either, because you should be there to help. So I think it's a great point that you made, and thanks for giving me the extra space on that. And thank you for giving me the space here today, man. I've really enjoyed it, and it's been awesome, man. I really enjoyed conversation.

Likewise. Likewise, man. Well, we'll have the links for that in the show notes. Gentlemen, don't forget to do your thing and man it forward. Share this episode with somebody else that you think would enjoy it and that maybe you'd have a great conversation with after tuning in. Until next week, Connor Beaton signing off.