0:11 welcome back to 21 convention 2021 in
0:14 orlando florida it is my distinct
0:16 pleasure to introduce the following man
0:18 he's an author poet
0:20 poet mystic
0:21 mystic
0:24 and without a doubt a warrior he's
0:25 he's
0:27 incredibly famous and incredibly influential
0:28 influential
0:30 writings on men
0:33 masculinity are becoming quickly tomes
0:35 within the manosphere
0:37 and appropriately so
0:39 it is my pleasure to introduce the man
1:04 all right today i'm going to talk to you
1:12 the father the striker and the lord of
1:14 the earth
1:16 three eternal forms
1:18 that i believe we see repeated over and
1:20 over again
1:22 throughout philosophy and myth
1:25 and religion and history
1:27 and i believe that these three forms are
1:29 eternally relevant for men
1:31 because they relate directly
1:34 to three different kinds of challenges
1:36 that men have always faced
1:39 in our ongoing struggle
1:40 to create champion
1:41 champion
1:43 and perpetuate order
1:49 now
1:50 when you write and speak about
1:53 masculinity and the nature of men in a
1:58 there's a bit of a paradox because
1:59 because
2:02 it is in the nature of men to
2:03 to
2:05 break up into separate groups
2:06 and create their own
2:09 orders and they're competing groups and so
2:10 so
2:11 they create their own cultures and their
2:14 own religions and their own ideas
2:16 and so on the surface when you look at
2:18 all these different groups of men
2:20 you know their cultures their ideas are
2:23 very different
2:25 you know but that's who we are
2:28 you know we are a tribal animal
2:35 so in order to really understand the
2:36 nature of man what you have to do is
2:39 zoom out
2:42 go up to that thousand foot view
2:44 uh and then in the germanic tradition it
2:47 was called uh heidsgolf it was odin's
2:48 high seat
2:50 and from there you can see everything
2:52 and everything that ever was
2:55 and we kind of have that now with our uh
2:57 you know handheld uh you know high seats
2:59 that we can see the entire world on them
3:02 and everything that's ever happened
3:03 and so
3:04 you know we look at the world and you
3:05 look at everything that's ever happened
3:08 and you say what
3:09 what have we been doing
3:12 for the past few hundred years
3:14 for the past few hundred thousand years
3:15 what have we been doing what have we
3:16 been up to
3:19 what challenges do we have to face
3:24 you know what were our solutions
3:25 to all these problems that we had to face
3:31 and i believe that
3:32 when you look at all that
3:34 you see we've been facing a lot of the
3:36 same problems and doing the same things
3:43 and i believe that our problems are the
3:45 same and our solutions are the same and
3:51 our ideals
3:58 our gods our heroes
4:00 we create the same ideals in many ways
4:02 over and over again because
4:04 because
4:06 in many ways these gods and heroes and
4:08 ideals are
4:15 they're ideal versions of ourselves that
4:16 face the same kinds of challenges that
4:18 we face
4:21 but they just do everything better
4:28 i believe it's always been the job of men
4:29 men
4:31 whether you're talking about you know
4:33 australian aborigines
4:36 or people in africa or people in europe
4:38 people in asia
4:41 it's always been the job of men
4:43 to venture out
4:50 and create a perimeter
4:53 of safety and order
4:57 in which human life can flourish
4:58 to venture out
5:01 into confusion and try to make sense of it
5:02 it
5:04 to go out into the unknown and make it known
5:06 known
5:08 to wander into nature's wild
5:11 anarchy and impose
5:17 i believe it has always been a job of men
5:19 men
5:21 to create light in the middle of darkness
5:22 darkness
5:25 it's always been our job to build a fire
5:31 now i'm going to talk about chaos and
5:33 order a lot because i think that's the
5:34 big struggle
5:36 the struggle beyond struggles is a
5:40 struggle between chaos and order
5:42 but you know what we should define our
5:43 terms a little bit what is chaos and
5:48 well you know when people think of chaos
5:50 what they think of you know just
5:52 something it's crazy it's crazy what's
5:53 going on
5:55 and that's not too far from
5:57 the truth i think but i like to be a
5:58 little bit more precise in my definitions
6:00 definitions
6:02 so i think chaos is a state of non-differentiation
6:04 non-differentiation
6:05 a state in which
6:11 and a state of disorientation
6:12 like what is up and what is down and
6:15 where am i going what's happening
6:16 and i realized this morning while i was
6:18 writing this and after i made this slide
6:20 that i should add an element of time as well
6:21 well
6:23 because what happens in chaos is that
6:25 our ability to predict the future
6:28 our reliable patterns break down
6:30 so you know when you're in chaos what's
6:31 going on i don't know what's going to happen
6:33 happen
6:34 and that's
6:36 what is more terrifying
6:39 than being in a state of chaos
6:40 and disorder like
6:43 i don't know what is what
6:44 i don't know
6:48 where i'm going i don't know up and down
6:49 you know i i don't know what's going to happen
6:51 happen
6:52 and that's that i think that's the most
6:54 terrifying thing to men in the world we
7:01 and that gets close to the ancient greek
7:02 definition of chaos it's closer to the abyss
7:04 abyss
7:07 in a dramatic could be a primordial gap
7:09 a yawning gap
7:12 a space in which you know all matter is present
7:13 present
7:16 but undifferentiated everything is there
7:18 but it doesn't have a name
7:20 and almost all mythologies start out
7:22 this way almost all creation stories
7:24 start out in this place
7:26 they start out in darkness
7:29 and everything is there but
7:30 there's no direction nothing means anything
7:31 anything
7:33 and really that's that's kind of a state
7:35 of pre-life and post life
7:38 as well at least for our bodies
7:40 and that's what we're afraid of going
7:42 back to the place where
7:45 our matter is the same as dirt
7:47 and the struggle of life is really a
7:49 struggle of differentiation
7:51 like we're differentiated
7:54 as long as we're here
7:55 and you know it's very popular for a
7:57 whole bunch of people to take you know
7:59 mushrooms in iosqua and ayahuasca and
8:00 then they uh they
8:03 invariably they're like their experience
8:06 is the same it's like man
8:08 we're all made of stars
8:10 everything's connected everything's the same
8:12 same
8:14 and that's a red flag for me in a weird
8:16 way i mean it's true it's not wrong
8:18 everything is connected we are all made
8:20 of stars sure but
8:21 but
8:25 while we're alive we are differentiated
8:27 there's a real there's a bad logical
8:29 problem that follows from
8:31 you know everything is the same because
8:33 the next thing that follows is
8:36 then nothing matters
8:43 so everything starts in this state of
8:44 the abyss
8:46 in most creation stories
8:49 and then someone comes in
8:51 and differentiates
8:54 it says this is this and that is that in
8:55 the bible
8:58 in the beginning there was the word
9:00 and i believe that translates to logos
9:02 and and logos really means logic and reason
9:03 reason
9:06 so you're differentiating between things
9:08 and that's what gods do and that's what
9:10 men have to do
9:11 and that's that's what the sun does
9:13 that's why i always like the solar
9:15 thing you know there's all these things
9:16 floating around the universe and then
9:18 all of a sudden they become predictable
9:19 predictable
9:20 its gravitational pull makes them
9:22 predictable and pulls them into a
9:24 predictable orbit
9:26 and he orders you know the sun orders
9:28 the the universe
9:29 and to think about
9:31 how important words are and how
9:36 important definitions are
9:38 i i came up with this the other day uh
9:39 if you're gonna play rock paper scissors
9:41 everybody knows that game rock paper scissors
9:42 scissors
9:44 in order to play that game
9:47 we all have to agree on what a rock is
9:50 and what paper is and what scissors are
9:51 and not only that but they also have
9:53 certain properties
9:57 you know the rock can crush the scissors
10:00 the scissors can cut the paper
10:02 and you know the paper can cover the rock
10:03 rock
10:05 and those are all rules because all
10:07 definitions are fundamentally rules
10:09 that's what words are
10:11 you know but to say that uh that's a
10:13 glass of water means that it is not
10:16 a tripod
10:17 and uh that you know that's if we don't
10:19 have that everything falls apart because
10:20 if you're trying to play rock paper
10:22 scissors in a world where you can't
10:23 agree on what rocks are and what
10:25 scissors are
10:28 throw the table up there's no
10:30 doesn't matter it's total nihilism why
10:34 play the game nothing matters at all
10:36 and so i think you know people lose it
10:37 well it's just changing a word a little
10:39 bit but changing words means changing
10:40 meaning and that means changing everything
10:46 so i'm going to tell you a little story
10:49 that i i've told before
10:55 and i call the story the first men and
10:56 they're not the story it's they're not
10:59 the first men who ever lived
11:01 but they're the first man in our story
11:03 and most stories start out in this same way
11:06 and
11:08 what happens in the story the first man
11:10 is that
11:10 you know
11:12 they leave a place you know first you
11:15 have to imagine that you don't have
11:16 google maps
11:18 in fact you don't have maps
11:21 and so that's most of human history uh
11:22 uh
11:24 you're just in the wilderness and you
11:25 really don't know that you don't even
11:27 have a sense of the globe
11:29 or continents
11:32 or even much farther than you can see
11:35 that's that's very chaotic so
11:37 so
11:40 if you wander through
11:41 this space let's say that you left a
11:43 place and you can't go back and this
11:44 happens all the time for various reasons
11:47 maybe a tribe came in and burned all
11:48 your village down
11:51 uh you know maybe maybe you had a fight
11:52 with somebody and they don't want you
11:53 there anymore
11:55 but a group of men for whatever reason
11:57 leave a place and go to another place
11:59 they are entering a state of chaos
12:01 they don't have a home they have nowhere
12:04 to go to so they're disoriented
12:06 you know they're going you know into
12:08 into the unknown territory
12:11 and so i had a little animation created
12:12 for this
12:14 uh that i've been thinking about for a
12:16 long time to to visualize moving through
12:18 this you know open territory of the unknown
12:19 unknown
12:22 where you don't know where you're going and
12:23 and
12:27 you know when the sun goes down at night
12:28 you know
12:30 its light goes away and your ability to
12:31 see the difference between things the
12:33 differentiation goes away
12:35 so you build a fire
12:37 that's what men have been doing all over
12:38 the world over and over and over again
12:40 you build a fire what does the fire do
12:43 the fire allows you to see
12:45 everything around you within a specific
12:47 perimeter that it creates itself
12:52 and so you can see everything and so you
12:53 can put everything in that circle you
12:55 can put it in order
12:56 you say this is this and that is that
12:58 and that is my friend that is my other friend
13:03 and this kind of circle of order expands
13:05 until the light of the fire collapses
13:07 and the light of the fire becomes home
13:09 and if you wander beyond that circle of order
13:10 order
13:12 into the unknown chaotic world as long
13:14 as you can see that fire you know where
13:16 home is
13:17 and that becomes the essence of really
13:19 what what is sacred
13:22 what is most important to us
13:24 that's the light that you know wherever
13:25 we are we can still see it if we don't
13:27 have that we are in a perpetual state of
13:29 chaos and that's of course very terrifying
13:31 terrifying
13:35 so there are jobs that you have to do
13:36 you know this and these are the jobs
13:37 that always that men have always had to
13:38 do and that's where i think these
13:40 archetypes come from
13:41 is that
13:43 you know you have the fire you have to
13:45 create order and make definitions and
13:47 draw lines and make words
13:49 and determine what is going to happen
13:50 what the rules are
13:51 and that's the job
13:54 of the archetype i call the father
13:56 and his job is to deal with the
13:58 decision-making and order and so forth
14:00 and then
14:02 the guy who has to go to the outside of
14:04 that circle
14:05 if you've read the way of men you'll
14:07 recognize his job
14:09 i mean that's the striker he has to go
14:11 to the outside of the circle to protect
14:13 everything that is outside the circle
14:15 i mean inside the circle for everything
14:17 that is outside the circle and what is
14:18 inside the circle is really everything
14:20 that he cares about
14:22 it's always friends
14:25 it's all his resources
14:28 and it is also ideas the ideas that he
14:31 cares about his sacred order
14:32 you know all that is what he's
14:34 protecting when he walks the edge of
14:36 that perimeter
14:37 and then finally if you're going to keep
14:42 if you want human life to flourish
14:43 you're like well this is a good enough
14:46 camp we're gonna we're gonna settle here
14:48 all the work that has to happen
14:50 to keep that going the uh you know like
14:52 well we're gonna build some things and
14:54 then we're gonna do uh you know all the
14:55 things that we need to do to make life
14:57 work life happen
14:59 you know maybe do some farming get see
15:00 if we can you know domesticate some of
15:02 these uh aurochs
15:03 you know uh
15:05 but yeah uh
15:05 you know
15:08 you you adapt the environment we change
15:09 it like humans when they walk into an
15:12 environment we change it and adapt it to
15:15 our needs
15:16 and that's really what i call the lord
15:18 of the earth
15:20 because he interacts with the earth and
15:21 and
15:23 you know shapes it in a way that uh you
15:32 there we go
15:34 so we talked about the sacred what is
15:36 holy what is sacred
15:39 your understanding of the world
15:40 and i want to talk a little bit about
15:42 the idea of hierarchy and hierarchy is a
15:46 really cool word um because it
15:47 we talk about hierarchy all the time and
15:49 you probably don't know what it actually
15:51 the roots of it mean
15:53 i mean hierarchy you know hierarchies of
15:55 value hierarchies of you know like
15:57 military hierarchies all those kind of
15:58 things but
16:01 the root the higher part of hierarchy
16:04 actually means holy
16:07 so it is what is sacred and what is holy
16:08 and so it really and then this you know
16:11 the arche from which we get anarchy and
16:13 and all the other argues um
16:13 um
16:15 that becomes you know that's that's our
16:19 rule so you rule by what is holy
16:25 and that's that's a really powerful
16:27 concept to think about what is what is
16:29 sacred what are our core values that we
16:31 rule everything else
16:33 by and i kind of like the idea we have a
16:35 perimeter already you know raises up
16:37 like what is the highest point and then
16:39 of course that's upward and towards the
16:41 sun and god and on all that kind of thing
16:42 thing
16:44 and the highest point of our values is
16:46 always going to be our most excellent thing
16:47 thing
16:49 like our the most excellent version of
16:51 our virtue the highest form of our virtue
16:52 virtue
16:54 and uh you know the ancient greeks called
16:55 called
16:56 and uh you
16:57 you
16:58 that's that's what you're reaching for
17:00 reaching for and then everything below
17:03 that and further out from that becomes
17:04 less excellent
17:06 not as good
17:09 and men men need this men men need the
17:11 idea that like this is what good is and
17:13 this is what not good is
17:15 and there are all kinds of variations in
17:18 between there's you know a b c d and e
17:20 and uh you know that is order that's how
17:22 we like to see our world order and men
17:24 don't care so much if they're at level c
17:26 or level b but they know they want to
17:27 know where a is
17:29 and a well a
17:32 a stands for avete and that's the that's
17:35 the highest form
17:36 and there's a book that i really
17:38 recommend if you want to talk about what
17:39 is sacred and what is profane it's
17:40 actually called the sacred and the
17:43 profane by mercy eliata
17:44 and he talks a lot about this and if
17:47 you're you know a christian because i'm
17:48 talking to obviously all kinds of
17:49 different men's from all kinds of
17:50 different groups and all kinds of
17:57 he talks about the idea of a church
17:59 well a church would be
18:01 the most sacred place it's actually a
18:03 building and everything that in that church
18:04 church
18:06 to like say a catholic would be every
18:08 everything that's in that church and in
18:09 china that hurts and symbolized by that
18:11 church is the most holy thing
18:13 and then you know you go towards the
18:17 lobby and uh the bathroom and the door
18:18 and as you get further and further away
18:22 from that church it becomes more profane
18:23 and that's a great way to think about
18:29 so
18:31 we talked about these three jobs
18:34 creating order perpetuating order and
18:35 and
18:38 championing order
18:40 and i think they re they relate to a
18:41 system that we've seen over and over
18:45 again in comparative mythology
18:46 and i call it a tripartite system and i
18:47 got that from somebody and i'll explain
18:49 that in a second i started
18:51 when i started writing the the fire in
18:52 the dark
18:53 when i started writing this book i was
18:55 performing a lot of germanic rituals and
18:57 i was dealing a lot with the gods odin
18:59 thor and frey
19:02 and i performed some rituals and uh was
19:04 thinking about that for a while and i
19:05 was like well what did they do what is
19:07 their purpose what is their function and
19:11 well yeah odin you know creates order he
19:13 murders giants starts the world
19:15 uh you know creates the order
19:17 king of the gods all that kind of thing
19:20 and uh you know you have thor who's
19:22 clearly the protector of order he's the
19:24 striker form
19:27 and then you have frey who's a fertility god
19:28 god
19:30 you know kind of governs all kinds of
19:34 crops and fertility and and fruitfulness
19:36 and so you know as i did more research i
19:37 was going to write the book and this the
19:39 the book fire in the dark was originally
19:42 going to be titled odin thor frey but
19:43 but
19:45 as i looked into it more and more and
19:46 more like there was just so much more
19:49 there because you see this tripartite
19:52 system over and over and over again and
19:54 someone who picked that up a long time
19:55 ago in the indo-european system was
19:57 george dumasil
19:59 and uh
20:01 he he wrote he called it the sovereign
20:04 the military and the productive
20:06 and he's a pretty famous i think he was
20:07 a philologist you know a lot of cool
20:09 guys are philologists
20:11 uh but uh
20:12 that's that's basically what he came up
20:14 with in comparative religion uh and uh
20:15 you know we talked about the same ideas
20:17 that i'm talking about with odin thor
20:18 and frey
20:20 uh plato talked about it in the republic
20:22 uh he called them you know his uh you
20:23 know philosopher kings were the
20:25 guardians and then the warriors who
20:28 worked under them were the auxiliaries
20:29 and you know everybody else was
20:31 merchants and farmers and all the people
20:33 that they ruled over and but also fed
20:35 them you know and gave them everything
20:37 that they needed
20:40 and many of you have probably read uh
20:41 you know robert moore's king magician
20:43 warrior lover
20:45 it's a very popular book in you know
20:47 men's circles uh from the you know the
20:49 80s 90s and
20:50 and
20:51 you know
20:52 there's some problems with that book
20:53 because a little bit has a little bit of
20:55 a feminine influence but
20:56 but
20:57 he talks about the same
20:59 basic three forms his king and his magician
21:00 magician
21:02 match up with some things that dumasil
21:04 said about the differential
21:11 and uh obviously warrior same
21:12 same lover
21:14 lover
21:15 matches up pretty well with the uh
21:18 appetites and productive function
21:20 and then my friend robert mick
21:22 brian mickler uh
21:23 uh
21:25 he uh you know you may know him from the
21:27 order of man
21:29 a very popular podcast and and he has a
21:32 group and he wrote in his book uh about
21:34 sovereignty that
21:38 you know he used protect provide preside
21:39 and again those are the same exact functions
21:40 functions
21:42 you know it is just you know like in a
21:44 different order you know
21:46 uh preside would be the the
21:48 father role
21:50 you know protect you know would
21:52 obviously be the warrior role and
21:53 provide would obviously be the
21:55 productive function
21:57 and i'll talk about this with each of
21:59 them but each of these
22:00 you know there's there's a nice greek
22:02 word for at least two of those uh the
22:04 the uh
22:06 you know product the uh
22:08 ordering function
22:09 is obviously governed by logos and
22:13 animated by logos and then the the uh
22:14 the champion of order and i like to say champion
22:16 champion because
22:17 because
22:18 when we just talk about protecting it's
22:20 all defensive
22:22 and that's really not all that warriors
22:24 ever were and that's got a little bit of
22:26 a cop out in terms of like just what
22:28 warriors just didn't just defend
22:30 sometimes the purpose of warriors to go
22:32 is and expand your community
22:34 and maybe in order to survive you need
22:36 to go and take this stuff from that
22:38 other community
22:39 and that's what warriors have done for
22:41 most of history so i think you know we
22:43 can whitewash that and pretend that they
22:44 they only respond to threats but that's
22:47 not that's not how it's usually worked
22:49 uh you know heroes actually go out in
22:51 and fight battles so before they come to
22:54 the perimeter in many cases so uh
22:55 uh
22:57 so the champion of order he would he
22:58 would be animated by thumbos and we'll
23:01 talk about that more later and then the
23:03 god who perpetuates order
23:05 would be animated by appetite because we
23:12 so we'll begin with the father
23:14 the creator of order
23:16 now we see we see this again and again
23:19 you might know him as god
23:22 you might recognize him as god uh but i
23:24 mean there is a father in the sky in
23:26 almost every system and
23:28 and
23:31 i think the reason why
23:33 it's specifically a sky father
23:34 is that
23:37 you know when you're a boy
23:38 you look upward
23:39 to your father
23:41 you literally look up to your father
23:42 it's not just a figure of speech you
23:43 look up to your father because he's
23:44 taller than you and
23:46 and
23:48 he represents
23:51 in some sense you know for for a girl he
23:52 represents a model of what a man is but
23:56 for a young man he represents a model of
23:58 what he will become
24:00 or what he could become
24:02 but of course the truth of that is is
24:03 that you never actually become your father
24:04 father
24:08 that's impossible he's he's himself
24:10 so there's something beyond a father
24:12 something higher than a father
24:14 the father of fathers he's he's the
24:16 ideal father
24:18 one father to rule them all odin is
24:20 called the all father and
24:22 and
24:24 i think that i think that's why you know
24:25 it's so
24:26 normal i mean so much of stuff i like to
24:28 talk about is so simple and repetitive
24:29 because we've been doing it over and
24:32 over and over and over again and it's
24:33 just everyone has that experience that
24:36 your father is higher than you
24:38 and why would he not be in the sky where
24:40 light and the sun is and the sun
24:42 provides order
24:46 you know there's no real system in which
24:48 darkness is
24:50 symbolizes good
24:52 and uh you know the light symbolizes
24:54 evil that that almost never happens
24:56 and we've been doing the same thing
24:57 creating the same ideas over and over again
24:58 again
25:00 so he's motivated by logos which is of
25:05 and each of these
25:08 figures has a kind of excellence to them
25:09 like what is their excellence what is
25:12 and of course he's going to be involved
25:14 in problem solving
25:20 and the other thing about the father and
25:22 the symbolism of the father and the
25:24 striker are often very similar because
25:26 the father and the striker
25:29 the striker usually becomes a father
25:30 where he doesn't have to become a father
25:32 basically like you can't become a father
25:33 without usually being an ascended striker
25:35 striker
25:36 uh you know all
25:38 most of the whether you're george
25:40 washington or zeus you had to kill a
25:42 monster of chaos before you could take
25:49 and throughout this book i like to frame
25:51 it in in two different senses what what
25:53 is the role of the father and he has two
25:55 different roles
25:57 a father in darkness
25:59 which would be the stuff that you aren't
26:00 supposed to see
26:02 like you're not see if you're being you
26:04 know if you're the kid
26:06 or the you know the the people being
26:08 ruled you're not supposed to see the
26:10 father in darkness because
26:12 because
26:14 you know if you're a good leader in any way
26:15 way
26:17 man that's hard
26:18 that's hard work
26:20 and you have to sit and think of like oh
26:21 what are the consequences to all the
26:23 things that i could do and there's so
26:24 many possible outcomes and this could
26:25 hurt this person and this could hurt
26:27 that person
26:29 and i'm setting a precedent here and
26:32 maybe that's a bad precedent
26:34 now that's a lot to think about
26:42 so you know we i think that there's a
26:44 job of the father that doesn't get seen
26:46 a lot and you're not supposed to see it
26:47 because you know if dad freaks out then
26:49 everybody freaks out
26:51 but uh you know any any leader or father
26:53 who's you know worth his sultan actually
26:55 cares about his kids or his people
26:57 is going to be a little stressed out
26:58 sometimes and confused about what he
27:03 so i think it's it's symbolized really well
27:04 well by
27:05 by
27:08 ron his soul solar barge
27:10 uh he's an egyptian god of the sun and
27:11 he symbolizes you know in the ancient
27:13 world obviously the sun goes down and
27:15 where did it go it disappeared for the
27:16 whole night
27:19 well ra in the stories goes and fights
27:22 chaos monsters all night long and
27:23 and
27:24 in the morning
27:26 you know he defeats them and therefore
27:29 the sun rises again
27:32 and it's just a really beautiful image and
27:33 and
27:35 it's also really symbolized really well
27:36 the the father and darkness is
27:39 symbolized really well by odin
27:40 uh because
27:42 you know there's a story about odin that
27:44 he was on the tree of life igresville
27:46 for you know a whole
27:48 you know nine nights
27:50 it was windy no one gave him any you
27:52 know horn or loaf and
27:53 and he
27:54 he
27:56 did this not for
27:58 you know it wasn't a sacrifice it sounds
27:59 christ-like but it's not quite the same thing
28:00 thing
28:02 he did this for knowledge
28:05 for in this case the symbolism and magic
28:08 of writing in the runes
28:10 and so he sacrificed himself at night
28:12 and went through this ordeal to
28:21 and then the father in light as i said
28:22 you know
28:26 he makes an overseas laws
28:27 because he's already made his decision
28:29 that's this is the part that you see
28:31 this is the confident father who tells
28:32 you okay this is what we're going to do
28:34 and this is why this is the course of
28:39 and
28:41 i love the idea this is a great image
28:43 and i think i just heard that somebody
28:44 else used it but
28:46 but
28:48 we love this image because it shows what
28:51 the father does he draws lines
28:52 and that's present in the language as well
28:53 well
28:54 in the
28:56 rex is which is the roman
28:59 version of king
29:00 but it's also in the royal styles of
29:02 like the british royal family uh
29:04 versions of rex i mean it's a queen
29:06 right now so it's like regina or
29:08 something like that but it's in part of
29:10 their titles
29:13 it corresponds to the rajan in the uh vedic
29:14 vedic
29:17 uh kind of an ancient indian culture
29:18 and uh it goes back to a
29:20 proto-indo-european root which i talk
29:22 about that a lot and it's it's really a
29:24 theoretical language that a lot of
29:26 languages come from
29:28 and that's
29:29 or you know however they don't even know
29:31 how to pronounce it it's all theoretical
29:32 but uh
29:34 all these things mean to write or
29:36 straighten oneself
29:37 they come from write
29:38 write
29:40 draws lines that's what that's what
29:41 kings do they draw lines they make
29:44 boundaries they make rules
29:46 and what's cool that we also have
29:48 another rule
29:50 another word for that which is ruler
29:52 that's what a ruler does a ruler is a
29:56 king and also someone who draws lines
29:57 all these things just come together in
30:03 second archetype that i want to talk
30:05 about is the striker
30:07 as i said he's a champion of order
30:09 and his job is to contend with physical chaos
30:10 chaos
30:11 you know the father deals with
30:14 conceptual chaos and ideas
30:15 and his job is to to contend with
30:17 physical chaos
30:20 and he's motivated by thumbos and thumos
30:22 is an ancient greek thing that means
30:24 spiritedness is usually how it's translated
30:25 translated but
30:26 but
30:27 you know it's also very close to indignation
30:29 indignation
30:31 and my best example of thumos i think
30:33 for anyone you know living in modern times
30:35 times
30:36 matter what you think of what happened
30:38 on 9 11 or whatever
30:40 uh all the guys who joined the military
30:42 right after that
30:44 that's what thumos is
30:47 they're the guys who are like no
30:48 no
30:50 this is this is not happening we will go
30:51 fight for this
30:53 i think uh in christian circles very
30:54 there's a popular phrase a lot of
30:56 warriors like that it's like it's
31:00 something like i'm here send me and
31:00 and
31:02 you know that's that's what the striker does
31:05 does
31:06 and his excellence of course would be
31:08 the tactical virtues strength courage
31:10 and mastery and honor i mean that's what
31:11 the book the way of men is really all about
31:19 and what's cool about the striker
31:21 is that you know you have the sky and
31:23 the sun and that's the calm sky the you
31:26 know the father in light who is
31:29 you know oversees order when all is good
31:30 and right
31:32 and what
31:36 you know what what the striker does
31:38 is he's the storm
31:41 he's the sky in the he's a storm in the
31:43 sky that comes out he's the vengeance of heaven
31:47 we see this over and over again and it's
31:49 symbolized usually
31:51 by a vajra
31:53 and this is a vajra this one is from indonesia
31:55 indonesia
31:56 so it's been filtered through some kind
31:59 of buddhism but what's cool about it is
32:01 is
32:03 the tines are open
32:05 these little points are open uh buddha
32:07 apparently closed the tines and
32:09 i guess put the safety
32:11 on the fire on the lightning weapon
32:12 because this is what this is this is a
32:15 lightning weapon and you can find it
32:17 repeated over and over again throughout
32:20 you know all these mythologies
32:22 you know indra the the vedic
32:23 god who became kind of a different
32:26 figure in the hindu stuff later but uh
32:29 indra originally is kind of awesome
32:32 he has he has a posse of mahroot and he
32:34 calls them ma boles
32:36 and uh he uh
32:38 he wheels this lightning weapon he kills
32:40 a serpent
32:44 and you know he kills it with this
32:46 lightning weapon and
32:47 and
32:51 if you look at the old pictures of zeus
32:53 surprise you got a lightning weapon that
32:55 looks almost exactly like this in
32:59 but
33:01 you know it's in it it translates later
33:04 you know it becomes a hammer in the hand
33:05 of thor
33:07 and i would say that
33:09 thunder weapons also come in spears and
33:11 guns and other things because that's
33:13 what it's it's a great it's a beautiful
33:15 metaphor and you can see how like our ancient
33:16 ancient
33:18 ancestors would have you know you're out
33:19 in the wilderness and all of a sudden
33:22 lightning comes down from
33:25 heaven lightning comes down from heaven
33:26 and whatever you're trying to do whether
33:28 you're hunting or fighting
33:30 i want to do it like that
33:34 that that is the ultimate ideal of boom
33:35 you know like that that's what you
33:38 that's what you want to do
33:40 so it it's such an illustrative form but
33:41 it's repeated over and over again and
33:49 now to talk about the striker in darkness
33:56 the striker in darkness i would say is
33:58 you know the striker that has to go out
33:59 and face monsters because heroes are
34:01 really defined by their monsters that's
34:05 you know we have all these examples of
34:07 famous heroes like i said you know zeus
34:09 had to to fight typhon
34:12 uh and that's how he got his kingdom
34:13 and his son apollo python
34:15 python
34:18 and theseus you have the minotaur
34:20 you know perseus medusa
34:22 heracles you know killed a whole bunch
34:23 of things
34:26 including kind of yeah and uh
34:27 you know thor
34:32 you know sigurd is known for a dragon
34:34 slaying it's it's a common theme over
34:36 and over again that the heroes have to
34:38 fight monsters and the monsters
34:40 represent chaos
34:42 because the monsters what they they threaten
34:42 threaten
34:45 all the predictability
34:46 they threaten all the order they
34:49 threaten to tear everything apart
34:51 so they're these dark forces that
34:54 represent chaos and
34:55 and
34:57 the challenge of the striker i think is
34:58 to to
34:59 you have to become a monster to fight
35:02 monsters you have to become terrible
35:04 you know the stories i think from the
35:06 from the the rigveda uh
35:09 you know you'll see the uh
35:11 you know all these striker type figures
35:13 they'll become their faces are beautiful
35:14 and handsome and then they become
35:16 hideous and terrible because you have to
35:18 become hideous and terrible to go fight monsters
35:23 so the challenge is to become a monster
35:25 for a short period of time
35:27 and not just become a monster
35:29 and i think we see that challenge you
35:30 know a lot of the you know veterans and
35:33 so forth that i that i talk to uh you
35:35 know the challenge is to like come back
35:37 from that and you know one of the police
35:39 guys who comes here who i'm pretty good
35:40 friends with we talk we've talked about
35:42 this before like you're dealing with
35:45 people on their worst day all the time like
35:46 like
35:47 how do you not become really nihilistic
35:50 and like and just you know horrible yourself
35:56 so there's this repeated phrase because
35:57 because
35:59 you know heroes kill monsters and
36:02 usually they're serpents
36:03 and uh you know the people who have gone
36:05 through all the academics who've gone
36:06 through all the myths and so forth
36:07 there's this repeated phrase over and
36:10 over again that is even linguistically
36:12 uh connected
36:15 and it's he went oguim
36:18 it means he killed the serpent
36:20 and they've been saying he killed the
36:22 serpent about the hero again and again
36:24 and again and again
36:25 all throughout history
36:29 he killed the chaos monster
36:30 and this really interesting symbol
36:32 symbolism if you think about it
36:37 the snake eagles actually kill snakes
36:38 you know heroes are generally
36:40 represented by eagles the eagles also
36:42 represent the king and serenity and all
36:47 these things and eagles kill snakes
36:48 and you can see this you know it's on
36:50 the mexican flag
36:52 uh it's a great theme in ancient rome i
36:55 think this is a byzantine mosaic and
36:57 and
36:58 think about that the eagles are in the sky
37:00 sky
37:03 they are high above us
37:09 to stop this chaos monster who
37:10 who
37:15 you know which you know is obviously
37:18 symbolizes some uh you know cunning and
37:20 and maybe duplicity
37:22 and uh you know comes from the shadows
37:24 it's hard to see
37:26 is poisonous
37:28 so it's a really beautiful symbol that
37:35 so the striker in light
37:36 as i said
37:39 you know if you're doing it right
37:41 you know the ideal is for the striker to
37:43 come back
37:45 and you know be honored and reintegrated
37:48 in society and celebrated
37:50 and you know in some way become you know
37:51 they they always say it is better to be
37:53 a warrior in a garden than a gardener in
37:54 a war
37:56 but a lot of those guys need to come
37:58 back and become warriors in a garden and
37:59 that's how they
38:01 fix themselves
38:02 you know they focus on life and
38:10 and that leads us to the lord of the earth
38:11 earth
38:14 he perpetuates order
38:15 this guy gets skipped a lot because men
38:19 are very focused on you know
38:20 higher ideals
38:22 and i want to be a warrior and i have
38:24 high ideals and all that kind of stuff
38:26 but man
38:28 so much of the stuff we have to do in life
38:29 life
38:30 is just to keep it
38:33 going you know i i have to you know call
38:36 my accountant and do my books and and
38:37 cry you know
38:40 farmers have to go out and keep farming
38:42 uh they have to go do all this this this
38:44 grunt work to get it done you know you
38:45 aren't going gonna have shelter unless
38:47 you build a building
38:49 uh you know all these things everybody
38:50 has to go to work every day just so they
38:52 can feed their family that's what has to
38:54 happen that's most of life is actually
38:57 lord of the earth stuff
38:59 you know he contends with material chaos
39:01 which i mean the world is chaotic world
39:03 i mean you take as i said you go out on
39:06 the perimeter of nature
39:08 but you bend the branches
39:11 you know you you do things to make the the
39:11 the
39:13 environment suit you
39:16 so the life can flourish
39:17 and that's you know whether he's you know
39:18 know
39:30 and he's motivated by appetite
39:32 and an appetite and that took that
39:35 specifically from plato
39:36 but he's motivated by appetite meaning
39:38 that like we are animals we're human
39:40 animals we have human needs that need to
39:55 and you know there's a difference between
39:56 between perpetuation
39:58 perpetuation
40:00 which is just surviving
40:02 and prosperity
40:04 and prosperity is the is the sweet spot
40:07 that's where life happens
40:08 it doesn't matter if you just have
40:11 enough food to survive great
40:12 that's kind of you know we could eat gruel
40:14 gruel
40:15 but yeah i'd much rather have a nice dinner
40:17 dinner
40:18 and that's where the joy of life comes
40:20 in in the fruitfulness of enjoying things
40:22 things
40:24 is he is he you know working to make
40:27 sure that we have more than we need
40:30 but of course you know the lord
40:32 you know he's represented of course in
40:34 uh by by fray
40:36 you invite him and die in isis
40:38 uh in the uh celtic stuff you know
40:41 there's cannons
40:44 uh faced us in the greek
40:45 uh which is you know they make and
40:48 vulcan in the roman i believe it it's uh
40:52 you know the smith god who makes things
40:55 and you know represent all kinds of
41:01 but you know this this god of the
41:02 festival is gonna you know there are
41:04 problems with that if you just serve
41:07 appetite the darkness part of that is is vice
41:12 you get addicted to that that feedback
41:14 you know all that prosperity
41:16 can be a little bit addicting
41:20 and it can take you to a dark place and
41:21 and
41:23 you know it leads you to abandon your
41:25 reason and your tactical thinking and i
41:27 there's a story uh that i like to call
41:29 phrase error it's not presented as an
41:30 error but i feel like it's an error and
41:33 i think it's familiar to everyone here
41:34 not in the sense of the story but in
41:35 what happens
41:38 which he actually uh he has a magical
41:40 sword that fights for itself which is
41:41 pretty awesome he doesn't have to work
41:43 just like go fight sword and
41:45 and
41:47 but he falls in love with this giant he
41:48 sees her and he's like i gotta have her
41:50 and she's everything to me and whatever
41:52 so he ends up trading away his magical sword
41:53 sword
41:55 for this this pretty girl that he
41:57 doesn't even know
41:59 and uh i think a lot of us can relate to
42:01 the idea of a dude who gives away
42:02 everything that he is important and
42:05 makes a lot of sense for to chase some girl
42:05 girl
42:08 and so it's i think that's
42:10 the lord of darkness you know obviously
42:11 you know
42:15 he's you know not making a lot of sense
42:16 and the lord in light i think his
42:20 excellence is pursuing whatever he does
42:22 you know it's in the service of order in
42:23 the service of goodness
42:25 it's not just about vice and like oh
42:27 we're gonna get drunk and do whatever
42:28 but you know providing healthy and
42:30 delicious food and drink creating
42:33 beautiful and functional structures
42:35 you know creating strong healthy
42:37 righteous you know art and music
42:39 that contributes to and promotes order
42:42 and beauty and excellence
42:44 and a lot a huge
42:46 part of the work
42:48 of the lord of the earth is building
42:51 relationships and actually uh tanner's
42:52 whole presentation and the patriarchy
42:54 thing was really about lord of the earth stuff
42:55 stuff
42:58 like how do i he was called leading with
43:00 love and it was all about like how do i
43:02 build relationships that are healthy
43:04 all around me and and that's the big challenge
43:05 challenge
43:07 of the lord of the earth that's what
43:09 that's what he does i call that that's
43:10 the lord's work
43:13 uh is because that's so much what we
43:15 need we're social animals we need to to
43:16 build these strong relationships all
43:24 so
43:27 we have this system
43:29 the father the striker and the lord of
43:30 the earth
43:32 you know archetypes symbols gods
43:37 and
43:39 you know when i wrote this book
43:43 we were living in a very different world
43:44 and i was thinking hey we can use this
43:46 symbol to talk about how men can balance
43:48 parts of their lives
43:49 like i said the warriors a lot of times
43:52 need a little bit more lord of the earth
43:54 and they need to balance things out
43:57 uh the you know
43:58 the you know
44:00 everybody ever needs a little more lord
44:01 of this usually and uh but the lord of
44:02 the earth usually needs a little bit
44:03 more of the father
44:05 you know if you're partying too much you
44:07 need a little bit more order and uh you
44:08 know you need to bring things in and
44:10 make some rules
44:12 so i thought it'd be a good system to
44:13 talk about the important parts of men's
44:15 psyche that are all the same the things
44:16 that we all have in common because
44:17 that's that's what's been really
44:18 important to me
44:20 you know a lot of you are part of you
44:21 know a group or a part of a particular
44:23 religion and that's what you do and
44:24 that's good and that's how men are
44:26 supposed to work
44:29 uh my job is to look at to try and sit
44:31 in the high seat for a little bit and
44:33 see how everybody works
44:35 like what's always the same
44:44 and
44:45 we're living in a world right now where
44:47 they're trying to destroy the idea of excellence
44:50 excellence
44:52 the idea that there is something better
44:59 ideal forms are anathema to
45:04 and so
45:10 i want to look and see
45:12 man we have so many groups of men from
45:15 all around the world
45:17 what can we agree on
45:19 yeah we all have different religions
45:20 their doctrines and all those different
45:22 points and whatever but what would
45:24 everyone at this conference
45:26 agree on what do we have in common
45:33 you know what is a truth that is self-evident
45:34 self-evident
45:36 it seems almost as if it's you know holy
45:38 and comes free it's it's
45:40 comes from somewhere higher
45:42 because it seems obvious to us but it's
45:50 i think we can all agree
45:52 that it is better to be strong and athletic
45:53 athletic
45:55 than it is to be weak
45:57 seems like common sense
46:00 definitely in question
46:02 can we all agree that it is better to be
46:08 can we all agree that it is better to be
46:13 robust and healthy than it is to be sick
46:14 it doesn't matter what religion you're in
46:15 in
46:19 i think we can all agree that men and
46:21 women are different
46:27 it's better to be beautiful and it is to
46:29 be ugly
46:31 it's better to be intelligent than it is
46:37 it's better to be competent
46:40 than it is to be incompetent
46:42 it's better to be industrious than it is
46:43 to be lazy
46:46 it's better to be independent than it is
46:47 to be dependent
46:51 and it is better to be a free man
47:01 that's a pretty good order that's i
47:07 but you know they're tearing down statues
47:09 statues
47:12 tearing down ideals
47:13 saying this is the new beauty that we
47:15 made up yesterday this is the new
47:17 you know this is the new version of
47:20 health that happens to be obesity saying
47:23 saying
47:24 we should all be chemically altered in
47:26 the same way
47:28 gender doesn't matter men and women are
47:37 everything that means anything to us
47:39 our sense of order our sense of differentiation
47:40 differentiation
47:45 you know
47:51 i get emails from people all the time
47:53 asking me
47:55 you know how can i find my purpose in life
47:57 life
48:05 especially in the past two years if you
48:08 don't see a mythic struggle
48:10 you're not paying attention i don't even
48:24 order is under attack by forces of chaos
48:26 forces of the void
48:28 and they sound nice and they're like oh
48:30 we should just be nice and everything
48:39 we have a choice
48:41 to try and protect those
48:52 try and make order
48:54 out of chaos to try and
49:05 to create order
49:07 to champion order
49:11 and all these mythic struggles and
49:14 mythic heroes
49:16 they're just idealized versions of what
49:22 and they represent men who lived in
49:29 these are our fights
49:39 so
49:40 you know if you need a motivational
49:42 speech at this point
49:43 because everybody loves a motivational speech
49:50 i've been doing this for a long time
49:52 it's my job to research what
49:54 men look at what motivates them and what
49:55 they see
49:59 and i tell you that the speech
50:01 it's always the same
50:02 it's the same speech it's been written a
50:05 thousand times over and over again
50:07 every motivational speech is
50:10 fundamentally the same
50:12 you just change the details so it goes
50:36 and fight
50:38 to protect everyone and everything that
50:48 do not let this world
51:00 if not you
51:02 then who
51:04 and if not now
51:12 i see in your eyes the same fear that
51:18 and there may come a day
51:22 when the courage of men fails
51:25 but it is my sincerest hope
51:35 stay sober
51:53 i guess i could take questions i think i
51:55 have 10 minutes i wasn't sure how it was
52:02 yeah
52:04 hit it
52:07 great speech jack
52:08 thank you so
52:11 your four tactical virtues strength
52:13 honor courage mastery
52:15 what would you say is the best action
52:18 plan to cultivate all four of those
52:20 in your life
52:21 let's say today
52:23 today all right uh go surround yourself
52:25 with men who uh represent those values
52:27 to you and
52:28 and
52:29 put yourself in situations that
52:32 challenge each of those virtues
52:34 i mean that's that's that's the strategy
52:36 really so you know i say you know go do
52:38 some martial arts
52:40 that's the best way really
52:49 all right
52:51 good to go [Applause]