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