3 Things Every Man MUST Become | Scott Galloway

If you're not kind and you have money, you're going to just ruin people's lives. If you're just like, mean, okay, I have all the money. I have resources. I'm funny and I'm intelligent, but I'm mean. That is a disaster for any person coming into a relationship with them, whether it be a business partner or a team member. If they're running a business or the president. The president or a finance.

I say that I don't know the political leanings of you or your audience, but I find that some of the role models for masculinity that we should naturally look up to the wealthiest man in the world. He's won capitalism and the president. And I don't think they're very strong role models for young men. I think they've conflated masculinity with coarseness and cruelty. You know, being sued concurrently by two women for sole custody or child because you haven't seen that child. That couldn't be any less masculine. Cutting off aid HIV positive mothers. I just can't think of anything less masculine than that. It's. These guys have recognized tremendous prosperity. That's really impressive. But the whole point of prosperity is you can move to protection. That's the whole shooting match, right? What's the point of prosperity if you can't get off your heels and on your toes and protect others after you've protected yourself? And I think some of the most powerful men in the United States have just missed that whole part of their journey towards manhood. I think it's really disappointing. Even if you look back at the Gilded Age, some of these men who were just rapacious kind of once they got there, they did feel a real obligation, a civic obligation. And that's where I think some of the individuals in big tech and in our government right now, I feel as if they've kind of skipped that whole protection part of the masculinity. Stool, if you will.

Procreation, protection and providing. Of those are the three stools.

Provider, provider. And then move to protection operating system around Os. Protecting. Not just physical. You know, guys like your size, breakup fights at bars, they don't start them, right?

But emotional protection, psychological protection, all these things, right?

When you hear someone talking shit about someone behind their back, your default operating system should be to weigh in and at a minimum, not participate and ideally protect them. You may not agree with the transgender community. You may be like me and think it's ridiculous that firms have to have legally mandated third bathrooms. I don't think that makes any sense. I think it's ridiculous that we allowed a transgender woman who's 6 foot 5 to show up to an NC2A swim meet. I think that's just irrational. It starts from a good place, but I think that's irrational. But at the same time, I just don't see any reason why people want to demonize this community and start kicking them out of the military when they've served honorably. When we start passing laws in states that say there can't be any transgender athletes in high school, and then someone actually says, are there any transgender athletes in high school in South Dakota? And they can't find one that's just demonizing a community. This is less than 1% of the American population. So, yeah. Have Democrats or people on the left gone way too far? Yeah. But then to weigh in with just being mean and demonizing a community. So women should be able to cross the street because they see men on that side of the street, not avoid them. That's really. That's heartbreaking that women say they don't feel safe around men. Right. I think we have to teach our young boys from a very early age protection is really a key component. And then the last one is more controversial is procreation. And that is, I think, men wanting romantic and sexual relationships has been pathologized and demonized. And I think it's a feature, not a bug. Because if men want to have relationships and quite frankly, sex. I didn't see my partner at the pool at the Raleigh Hotel in South beach and think, I would like someday to have a relationship with her, to get lower rates on auto insurance. I saw her and thought, quite frankly, I would really like to have sex with that woman. And that desire, that fire can be destructive.

Yes.

But most of the time, it's fire that's captured in an engine and creates progress. Progress towards being fit, being a better dresser, having a rep, being a provider, having perseverance, and developing what I think is the key skill in life across multiple dimensions, and that is the ability to endure rejection. You know, all this shit you built here, this didn't just happen. The only thing I know that was involved in this was a lot of no's. And the ability still today, the ability to get hit in the face, beamed in the face, get up, dust up, and get back to the plate. And I think a lot of the skills men develop pursuing relationships are not only informative and educational, but really key to developing skills across the rest of their lives. And if you ever see someone who you think, oh, they're talented, but they seem to have made more money than I would have guessed, or they're with someone higher character and more attractive than them. I can almost guarantee you they have one skill set, and that is the ability to get out a spoon and eat shit. And every great yes in your life, every great yes in your life will involve one thing, and that is a ridiculous number of no's that come before it. And there's a scary stat that just came out that 40% of men 18 to 24 have never asked a woman out in person.

Wow, really?

So if you're a dude that's willing to go up to a woman, figure out a way to express romantic interest while making her feel safe, you're almost already in the top half of men. But men aren't approaching women. And this is anecdotal evidence. I don't have data on this, but when I go out to places on a regular basis, when I speak to single women, they'll say, I'm here, I'm single, I'm ready to mingle. Look at me, I look amazing.

They're signaling it.

Yes and no. Men approach me. And regardless of what the Atlantic, the New York times will say, 80% of women still say they want the man to make the approach. Yes. They don't want to be approaching men. It just doesn't feel natural for four out of five women. And I worry that men are being tempted, have been getting mixed messages. No guy wants to be that guy, right? Makes an approach in artful, doesn't go.

Well, often gets laughed at or gets.

Rejected, or it ends up, we both work at Google and now I'm that guy. And there's actual professional ramifications. I mean, the moment a woman says at work, fairly or unfairly, oh, yeah, that guy, he hit on me at a bar. He's a creep. That is not. So I think that men wanting to pursue romantic and sexual relationships is a feature, not a bug. And we demonized and pathologized it. And I think we're now getting to a point where people realize that men being initiators, and I don't want to say aggressive, because that has negative overtones, but when I coach young men, one of the things I tell them is they need to put themselves in the agency of strangers. And then we have a practice called no get to know express platonic friendship. Hey, do you want to grab a beer and watch the game? And then also maybe romantic interests, would you be interested in grabbing coffee first? You got to open, establish some sort of rapport, where are you from, et cetera. And then the key is no, because what you're going to do is you're going to call me the next day and I'm going to say, how are you? And they're going to say, oh, you know, I'm bum, bum, fine. And that's the key is developing those calluses.

I'm alive.

Yeah, I'm fine.

I'm alive.

And by the way, she's fine too. She's fine too. And if you don't know the difference between expressing platonic and romantic interest and harassing someone, you got much bigger problems. But where do men even have the venues to do that right now? So, provider, I think you gotta be economically viable in a capitalist society. I think your own self esteem, the way society judges you is unfairly. It's unfairly based on the economic viability for men. It's unfairly based on the aesthetic qualities of women. And I'm not saying this is the way the world should be, but it is the way the world is. And then two immediate move to protection. I think that's the most rewarding thing about having some prosperity. That's when I feel most at rest and most of purpose. When I feel like my kids are safe, my partner feels noticed. I feel I can get involved in great charities. I'm doing a lot of virtue signaling right now, but it's true. But that gives me a sense of purpose and makes me feel strong. And then finally, I think we've got to celebrate young men's desire to be in relationships. I think it's a feature, not a bug. Men are struggling. Four times as likely to kill themselves, three times as likely to be addicted or homeless, 12 times as likely to be incarcerated. You go into a morgue, there's five people that die by suicide and four men. If it was any other group, I think we'd weigh in with programs and empathy. I think more and more of them are going to be alone in a room with a screen.