432: What Leads to Conflicts Between Groups of People? And What Leads to Cooperation?

Intergroup Conflict and Cooperation. The Robbers Cave Experiment. What Leads to Conflicts Between Groups of People? Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Jocko Willink?

  This is Jocko Podcast number 432 with Echo Charles and me, Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. Talk of raids had been in the air in both groups all day. The Eagles had made, had mentioned the possibility and indulged in bravado talk, but no plans were made. Simpson was pushing the idea in the Rattler group. And as the possibility of their winning faded during the day, it became generally accepted. Mills, the leader stipulated that it should not be a night raid because the Eagles had told them they were cowards to raid at night while the Eagles had come in broad daylight.

• 0:39Jocko Willink?

  Martin said he would raid if the Rattlers won, but not if they lost because that would be bad sportsmanship. This same Martin entered into the raid that same day without question after the Rattlers lost. He was one of few boys actually engaged in a physical clash with two Eagles and had to be forcibly restrained from fighting.

• 1:07Jocko Willink?

  That right there is a quote from an academic paper called intergroup conflict and cooperation, the robbers cave experiment. And that academic paper was authored by Musafir Sharif, OJ Harvey, B. Jack White, William R. Hood, and Carolyn W. Sharif. Sharif. And I mentioned this experiment, you might remember it. I do. A few months ago on an underground podcast, JacoUnderground.com. And got a lot of feedback about it, got a lot of questions about it also. And, and there's a lot of people that have been now referring to the Eagles and the Rattlers kind of as a thing, right?

• 1:51Jocko Willink?

  It's become part of the nomenclature that we use. People talk about the Eagles and the Rattlers and this group dynamic. So I wanted to go into a little bit more detail in it since I think it is very revealing. I'm going to read through. Not that entire experiment, that that paper that I just quoted, but there's another kind of synopsis paper that was written by Musafir Shafir or Sharif himself. It's called Experiments in Group Conflict. And this is from volume 195, number five, from the 1956 Scientific American, which is

• 2:34Jocko Willink?

  a magazine that's been around since 1845. So

• 2:40Jocko Willink?

  old paper, but definitely revealing, and I think he did a good job with the synopsis. Now, uh, Musafir Sharif was a Turkish-American social psychologist. He studied social norms, he studied social processes, and he studied, as we'll see, social conflict. And he arrived in America, like I said, he's from Turkey, so he arrived in America after he lived through the Balkan Wars and World War I. He arrived to America during the Depression. And then he went to Harvard and he left Harvard and went to Columbia where he got his PhD. He went back to Turkey in the late 1930s, where he pretty much supported the communists

• 3:22Jocko Willink?

  against the Nazis in the late 30s, and then came back to America permanently around 1945, where he was kind of followed by the FBI and interrogated by the FBI to be as a communist sympathizer. In 1947, he wrote a book called The Psychology of Ego Involvements. Gonna have to take a look into that one. And he wrote a bunch of other books as well, and he wrote many of those books with his wife Carolyn, who was also a psychologist. Interestingly enough, he was diagnosed as a manic depressive depressive, or having manic depression. He attempted suicide at some point, which is always, to me, is always strange.

• 4:07Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 4:09Jocko Willink?

  If you're, if you're in the field of psychology, and, I mean, I guess it's not that strange, because you get interested in it, because you feel a certain way. Okay, so yeah, I guess I shouldn't say I don't understand it, I understand it. But it is.

• 4:24Jocko Willink?

  Not very encouraging when someone that studies psychology

• 4:31Jocko Willink?

  attempts suicide, but this is an example of it. He did not succeed and he died. According to his daughter, he was in bad spirits when he died in 1988, had a heart attack. But along the way, and you know, one thing that when I start talking about this depression thing and this kind of political activity that he had, it makes me a little bit nervous about, hey, what is this guy? What kind of biases he bringing into his experiments? But he had a ton. I read all those names. That's why I read all the names of all the people that are involved in all these experiments that he did. So it wasn't like this one guy that was sort of giving his biased opinion. Cause let's face it, if you're a communist, and I'm not saying he was a communist.

• 5:14Jocko Willink?

  And look, when you're siding with the communists versus the Nazis, I mean, this is a lose lose scenario. Uh, but if you're, if you are a communist and you're working with group dynamics, you're probably going to have a bias that's going to come out. And paint a picture of like, well, it was much better when everyone was working together, right? You can see where that happens. But like I said, there's a bunch of different people that were involved in this experiment. It wasn't just him. And I think everyone will see, there's a reason why when we talked about on the underground, people have been asking me about it and referring to it on a very regular basis. Cause I think it's very pertinent

• 5:53Jocko Willink?

  to everything we see in the world today, or much of what we see in the world today. And I think you're going to agree. So let's get to it from Musafir Sharif and Scientific American.

• 6:05Jocko Willink?

  Here it is, this document called Experiments in Group Conflict. So

• 6:14Jocko Willink?

  starts off, what are the conditions which lead to harmony or friction between groups of people? Here, the question is approached by means of controlled situations in a boys' summer camp.

• 6:29Jocko Willink?

  Conflict between groups, whether between boys, gangs, social classes, races, or nations, has no simple cause, nor is mankind yet in sight of a cure. Isn't it crazy? As advanced as we are, we put men on the moon, we have phones in our pocket that are, have access to all the information in the world, and yet there's still tonight gonna be two people that fight each other from two different gangs, and there's gonna be two countries that fight each other and kill thousands of each other? Because we're part of two different tribes, two different gangs, like that's happening today.

• 7:03Jocko Willink?

  It is often rooted in deep, impersonal, social, economic, religious, and historical forces. Nevertheless, it is possible to identify certain general factors that have a crucial influence on the attitude of any group toward others. Social scientists have long sought out to bring these factors to light by studying what might be called "the natural history of groups and group relations." Intergroup conflict and harmony is not a subject that lends itself easily to laboratory experiment. Yeah, clearly, that's gonna be hard to do. But in recent years, there's been a, there's been a beginning of attempts to investigate the problem, problem under controlled yet lifelike conditions.

• 7:48Jocko Willink?

  And I shall report here the results of a program of experimental studies of groups, which I started in 1948. And he lists off all the people involved again. Marvin Sussman, Robert Huntington, OJ Harvey, B. Jack White, it's kind of a cool name, William R. Hood, and his wife Carolyn W. Sharif. The experiments were conducted in 1949, 1953, and 1954. This article gives a composite of the findings. "We wanted to conduct our study with groups of the informal type, where group organization and attitudes would evolve naturally and spontaneously without formal direction or external pressures." This is pretty cool, because you can take kind of pre-existing groups and bring them

• 8:32Jocko Willink?

  together, but they wanted the groups to form.

• 8:37Jocko Willink?

  As part of the experiment.

• 8:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:39Jocko Willink?

  So here's how, here's how they went about it. For this purpose, we conceived that an isolated summer camp would make a good experimental setting. And that decision led us to choose as subjects, boys about 11 or 12 years old, who would find camping natural and fascinating. Confirmed. Since our aim was to study the development of group relations among these boys under carefully controlled conditions with as little interference as possible from personal neurosis. Background influences or prior experiences, we selected normal boys of homogeneous backgrounds. Who did not know one another before they came to camp. So you're basically getting a bunch of the same type of dude.

• 9:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:27Jocko Willink?

  They were picked by a long thorough procedure. We interviewed each boy's family, teachers and school officials, studied his school and medical records. Obtained his scores on personality tests and observed him in classes and at play with his schoolmates. With all this information, we were able to assure ourselves that boys chosen were of like kind and background. All were healthy, socially well adjusted, somewhat above average in intelligence and from stable, white Protestant, middle-class homes. So that's what we've got. That's who, that's who we're kicking this thing off with, which is interesting. Because how often do you actually get to be a part of a group that's like that, that where everyone's kind of the same?

• 10:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:08Jocko Willink?

  And when everyone's not that much the same. What does that do? Well, I guess that's, I guess that's part of the experiment is.

• 10:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:16Jocko Willink?

  We want to just have like a.

• 10:18Speaker 01

  Control.

• 10:18Jocko Willink?

  A control, a control group.

• 10:20Speaker 01

  Control.

• 10:20Jocko Willink?

  Like it doesn't matter. Everyone kind of looks kind of the same. Everyone's kind of the same athletic, everyone's same smart. Okay.

• 10:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Sorry. Yeah. Not control group. I guess the, it's called a control where, yeah, like. Because certain experiments are, what do they call them, less valid, right? Where, when there's all these other variables that are not controlled for, is what I guess what they say.

• 10:42Jocko Willink?

  So they had to mitigate the variability here.

• 10:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, because like even when they're saying the, you know, the neuroses that they're trying to avoid. Like if one guy has some anomalous situation where he has, I don't know, freaking.

• 10:54Jocko Willink?

  He's scared of heights or he wets his bed.

• 10:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, or has turrets, he's the only guy, that's gonna affect, you know, the whole deal, kind of a thing. Yeah, yeah, makes sense.

• 11:02Jocko Willink?

  Check. So here we go. None of the boys was aware that he was part of an experiment on group relations. The investigators appeared as regular camp staff, camp directors, counselors, and so on. The boys met one another for the first time in buses that took them to the camp. And so far as they knew, it was a normal summer of camping. Ain't it weird? Like you throw your kid into an experiment?

• 11:29Jocko Willink?

  You know what I mean? And it's not in this, I read another paper about this, the longer paper. And they paid like twenty-five dollars to the parents.

• 11:38Speaker 01

  For this particular one?

• 11:39Jocko Willink?

  So that they could use the kids and it meant that they weren't gonna be able to talk to their parents.

• 11:44Speaker 01

  Did the parents know what the experiment was all about?

• 11:47Jocko Willink?

  I think that, yes, they were told like this is an experiment, but you can't tell your kids.

• 11:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, but I wonder how in depth they went with explanation.

• 11:55Jocko Willink?

  Just the idea, just the word experiment.

• 11:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, we're gonna experiment on your kid.

• 12:00Jocko Willink?

  That's gonna, that's gonna cause some issues.

• 12:02Speaker 01

  Well, you know, I was part of, I don't know if you even call it experiment, but it's, they call it a longitudinal study.

• 12:08Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah.

• 12:08Speaker 01

  Where they go and they ask like some, well, the cool thing is, especially nowadays with the, you know, regulations.

• 12:13Jocko Willink?

  Derek Moore plays more dates, he's all about them longitudinal studies, right? That's what we're doing.

• 12:17Speaker 01

  That's where we get the info, you know?

• 12:18Jocko Willink?

  That's where the info comes from.

• 12:20Speaker 01

  But they, they ask questions that are like sensitive. But, you know, what you might expect, you have the option to like decline to answer.

• 12:30Jocko Willink?

  Is this longitudinal study that you're a part of, is that because you have a twin brother? Or is it just random?

• 12:37Speaker 01

  I forget if it's because I have a twin brother. In fact, I, from what I understand now, from what I remember, it's not because I had a twin brother, but.

• 12:44Jocko Willink?

  That's a bonus?

• 12:45Speaker 01

  I don't, I don't think it affected the reason why I was part of it, but I know that it, it is part of it. I remember before they'd ask questions about it, but not, it wasn't based on that. No, it didn't feel like it anyway. It was more about like.

• 12:58Jocko Willink?

  Do they do that with twins though? Have you ever seen the twins that get separated at birth? And they get put in different families? Are you, you kind of hone in on those things a little bit?

• 13:06Speaker 01

  Little bit. Um, and it, to me, that part, not to go too deep into just big twins in general, but I guess it is relevant because, okay, so twins. This is the way I understand it as being a twin and I hear what everyone says. Cause if you're not a twin, there's a lot of stuff you just can't relate to or whatever, but.

• 13:23Jocko Willink?

  Dude, that's gotta be a weird thing.

• 13:26Speaker 01

  You would think, but if that's all you know, not being a twin, twin seems kind of weird, you know, like as far as the feeling goes, you know, of course it's not weird when I see it, but the, you know, people are like, oh, you guys have, um. Telepathic, like can you read each other's mind? And it's like, eh, sometimes, yeah, like pretty much our whole life, it felt like we could read each other's minds. Like, oh, I know what he's thinking right now, kind of a thing, I know. But when you really think about it as like a grown up, then not thinking in terms of like magic or, you know, freaking telepathy or whatever. You're like, it makes sense that he can read my mind under certain circumstances.

• 14:01Jocko Willink?

  I can read JP's mind.

• 14:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly right.

• 14:03Jocko Willink?

  I love JP and JP looks at me and I, I know what he's thinking. He knows what I'm thinking.

• 14:06Speaker 01

  Right. So, so take that idea, cause that's absolutely a hundred percent correct. Where take that idea and I'll apply it to not just, cause you're, you're talking about in very specific situations, right? Where you're like, eh. Now take that idea and just expand it to your whole life. So every experience essentially, like pretty much 99%, probably more than 99% of my experiences, he was there. So I'm just talking about growing up, not after adulthood or whatever. So growing up, we're gonna know.

• 14:31Jocko Willink?

  What age?

• 14:32Speaker 01

  Uh, probably like 23, maybe, maybe 22.

• 14:35Jocko Willink?

  99% of your experiences until the age of 23, you co-participated in with your twin brother.

• 14:42Speaker 01

  Yep, maybe 22. That's when, I would say when I started getting into working out way more heavy, like after football, that's kind of when, but still we lived together. For all, well into our twenties, but our past started to deviate at that point.

• 14:55Jocko Willink?

  What you were going heavy, he was not lifting this heavy, he was going lighter.

• 14:58Speaker 01

  He was going like, yeah, he was going cardio. Nah, he was into professional stuff, you know, his, his career kind of started at that point.

• 15:08Speaker 01

  And the last, the, what do you call the formative years, right? When you grow, while you're growing up, we're together pretty much. So, think about it.

• 15:16Jocko Willink?

  Did you guys share a bedroom?

• 15:17Speaker 01

  Uh, we shared a bedroom through high school.

• 15:20Jocko Willink?

  Damn, okay.

• 15:21Speaker 01

  Not in, and then we dormed together in college. So, yeah. So, yeah, we shared bedrooms until we, you know, moved to the mainland or whatever. Or no, until we got an apartment, whatever. But, so you consider that, right? How you can read JP's mind and vice versa, under, in certain circumstance. We can do that in pretty much all circumstances because when this XYZ stimulus, whatever you want to call it, you know, when this happens, we're both thinking the same thing because our thoughts are based on past experience, which is just very similar. We shared a lot, you know? So, yes, it feels like you can read each other's mind because you know already, but it's not like, ooh, I can read his mind. It's not that. It's just like, I'm thinking this. I look over, I know a hundred percent, he's thinking that exact same thing. And then it goes from like big, obvious stuff to just teeny tiny stuff.

• 16:04Speaker 01

  And here's the, here's when it got weird, but it makes sense now, is when I see something super small, like just something as small as like this lens right here being that close to the table, like stuff within the stuff that you're recognizing. And then it reminds me of something, which reminded me of something, and then it'll cause me to say something. And then I'll say it and it'll be like, oh, I was just about to say that because based on something that is fairly insignificant, but I just happened to see it at the same time. And it led us down a thought process that arrived at the exact same spot. That part is really rare, but it would happen all the time. So, it's like, man, they are fucking sharing the same brain and like all that kind of stuff. But it's like, it's explainable. But it, but it makes it, yes, that's real.

• 16:48Jocko Willink?

  And so the longitudinal study that you're a part of, how often do you have to check in with these people?

• 16:55Speaker 01

  Uh, it's like a long time. So, at first it was like every few years, if I'm not mistaken. And then now it's like every 10 years or something.

• 17:03Jocko Willink?

  Do you think your parents got paid to put you in the study or anything?

• 17:06Speaker 01

  We get paid for it.

• 17:07Jocko Willink?

  Oh, you get paid?

• 17:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:09Jocko Willink?

  How much?

• 17:10Speaker 01

  Two hundred bucks for an hour. Hour interview. Actually, it's two hours, sorry. Yeah, so.

• 17:15Jocko Willink?

  Back in the day, that had to come in a little bit handy, right?

• 17:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, that was freaking legit.

• 17:20Jocko Willink?

  Do they share any results with you?

• 17:22Speaker 01

  They don't. They don't share any results with us. They don't share any like personal stuff. So like there's certain stuff that it's only for their records to like keep track of us. But as far as the results for what the results are for, like I think our name, like certain things they don't, they don't include, you know? So like your privacy essentially is like kept private.

• 17:45Jocko Willink?

  Check. When did it start? What age?

• 17:47Speaker 01

  I don't remember. I think like when we were little kids.

• 17:50Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 17:52Speaker 01

  But yeah, they just essentially, they want to find out in a given population, who's ending up where?

• 17:57Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 17:58Speaker 01

  And what are they thinking? You know, kind of a thing.

• 18:00Jocko Willink?

  I hope they can figure out what you're doing.

• 18:05Speaker 01

  Nobody knows.

• 18:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, cuz the questions are like that kind of stuff like, you know, how often do you have this feeling? How often this and like, why this? And then you have like memory tests and stuff. Remember these numbers. It's, it's, it's kind of fun cuz it's kind of little challenges, you know, but, um, but yeah, so that's what I, that's what I concluded.

• 18:24Jocko Willink?

  So you were part of an experiment? Kind of. And you're, how old were you when you started?

• 18:29Speaker 01

  I don't know. Kid.

• 18:30Jocko Willink?

  So a kid?

• 18:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:31Jocko Willink?

  So your parents enrolled you in an experiment?

• 18:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:34Jocko Willink?

  So that's what we're saying here. That's what, it's something had to go down where if the parents, the parents knew, like we're putting your child into an experiment. How many people right now in 2024 would put their 10 year old or 11 year old child into a quote, summer camp for a quote, experiment?

• 18:54Speaker 01

  For 25 bucks? Well, what?

• 18:56Jocko Willink?

  But even for like 150 bucks or 200 bucks or 300 bucks? Damn, I'd throw all my kids in there.

• 19:02Speaker 01

  See what happens. Yeah, that, but this is like an actual experiment experiment. My thing is just a study. Like there, it's not invasive. They're not trying to, they're not throwing in some stimulus to see how I react. They're not doing that kind of stuff, you know, that was an experiment kind of ends up being.

• 19:18Jocko Willink?

  All right. Back to the document here. To keep the situation as lifelike as possible, we conducted all our experiments within the framework of regular camp activities and games. We set up projects which were so interesting and attractive that the boys plunged into them enthusiastically without suspecting they might be test situations. Unobtrusively, we made records of their behavior, even using hidden cameras and microphones when feasible. We began by observing how the boys became a coherent group. The first of our camps was conducted in the hills of northern Connecticut in the summer of nineteen forty nine. When the boys arrived, they were all housed at first in one large bunkhouse.

• 19:58Jocko Willink?

  As was to be expected, they quickly formed particular friendships and chose buddies. We had deliberately put all the boys together in this expectation because we wanted to see what would happen later. After the boys were separated into different groups. It's so interesting to think about this from a military perspective because that's exactly what happens when you join the military. You get put into a big freaking room with, I don't know how many, like seventy people. In Navy boot camp, when I went through, I think, I think it was probably around seventy to a hundred people. And they're all in there and it's just people from all over the whole country. And they're weird. Some of them are freaking weird, right?

• 20:39Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Did you, or is that the game, like when you say you put them in or they put you guys in a room? What was that like a waiting room?

• 20:46Jocko Willink?

  No, no, no, I mean like you move into a room. There's, you know, it's the typical boot camp seat with all the bunk beds lined up.

• 20:51Speaker 01

  Oh, that's where you guys live.

• 20:52Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's where you're living, yep. That's a way, that's the way it kicks off and you're about to figure out who's who.

• 20:57Speaker 01

  So how many beds are in a like room?

• 20:59Jocko Willink?

  I'm, I'm guessing it was like a hundred or maybe, let's say eighty, let's say eighty people. I would say eighty is probably a pretty good, it might be a hundred, but I'm trying to think of how big that room was and you look on the left, you look on the right. Yeah, if there would have been twenty bunk beds on each side.

• 21:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:16Jocko Willink?

  That's forty per side, that's eighty people. So it's probably around eighty people. Yeah.

• 21:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's, that's interesting.

• 21:20Jocko Willink?

  And you, you know, you like right out of the gate, you're gonna see some people that aren't ready for this, this whole, this whole scene.

• 21:25Speaker 01

  Nope.

• 21:26Jocko Willink?

  You know, uh, there was a kid that was really freaking out, like, like crying and all this stuff. And another dude was sleepwalking all weird.

• 21:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:35Jocko Willink?

  So you get to see some, some weird, it's also, it's also weird that people aren't even weirder than that. That you take eighty people and most of them just get in there like, alright, this is what we're doing, I guess. Now they then went through some kind of screening to get in there. So you don't have.

• 21:49Jocko Willink?

  People that might have some kind of serious issues.

• 21:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:53Jocko Willink?

  But everyone goes in there and they're all like, alright, gonna make my bed, gonna fold my socks and all this crap.

• 21:59Speaker 01

  What do they do if the guy um does sleepwalk, for example?

• 22:02Jocko Willink?

  In the Navy, I'm sure, and you can't, you can't be in there anymore. Like, they kick you out, yeah.

• 22:07Speaker 01

  Huh.

• 22:08Jocko Willink?

  I mean, you can't have a bro walk, just walking off of a ship or whatever.

• 22:10Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 22:11Jocko Willink?

  In the middle of the night, or walking around even.

• 22:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, and yeah, that's the.

• 22:15Jocko Willink?

  Do you sleepwalk?

• 22:16Speaker 01

  No, my kids do though.

• 22:17Jocko Willink?

  Oh.

• 22:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:19Jocko Willink?

  I, is it, so, did you look into it? Like, what, does it deal with it?

• 22:23Speaker 01

  No, not really. It's not an issue, like, it's not like every single day, but just every once in a while, it's like, you just know, because you can see the look in their eye, you know?

• 22:31Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah.

• 22:32Speaker 01

  So he's just, and, but what they're doing is stuff they already know. So it's not like they're, woo, walking into the pool or something, you know?

• 22:39Jocko Willink?

  Pull-ups and stuff.

• 22:41Speaker 01

  It's just, it's going like, yeah, it's like, this is a weird part of sleepwalking that I've witnessed, anyway. They, they'll come and it's almost like they have had something that they were doing in their own head, and they just continued to do it. So it'll be real random, you know? Like, like, my son will come and sit, like, so my wife has a little office, right? And it's kind of off to the side or whatever. So I'll hear him coming up and like, kind of like whining or talking or something, you know, just saying like nonsense or whatever. And then I'll just hear him kind of stop, and then I'll go and I'll look, and he's just like sitting there, like, trying to do something. Like that. But you already know, so you just walk him, walk him down, you go, oh, no, let's go downstairs. He'll be like, come downstairs, go to sleep, and they won't remember.

• 23:26Speaker 01

  So it's like that kind of stuff.

• 23:27Jocko Willink?

  Well, you can't sleepwalk and be in the military, is from what I know.

• 23:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, it seems like too, sleep, some sleepwalkers, they do other stuff. Like, there's people who do, like, weird stuff when they sleep well. So, yeah, I would think, especially like how you mentioned, if you're on a ship, that's a lot of liability.

• 23:43Jocko Willink?

  It's scary. Um, back to the doc, our object was to reduce the factor of personal attraction in the formation of the groups. In a few days, we divided the boys into two groups and put them in different cabins. Before doing so, we asked each boy informally who his best friends were, and then took pains to place the best friends in different groups as far as possible.

• 24:06Jocko Willink?

  As everyone knows, a group of strangers brought together in some common activity soon acquires an informal and spontaneous kind of organization. It comes to look upon some members as leaders, divides up duties, adopts unwritten norms of behavior and develops an esprit de corps. Our boys followed this pattern as they shared a series of experiences. In each group, the boys pooled their efforts, organized duties and divided up tasks in work and play. Different individuals assumed different responsibilities. One boy excelled in cooking, another led in athletics, although not all, not outstanding in anyone's skill, um, others, sorry, others, though not outstanding in anyone's skill

• 24:51Jocko Willink?

  could be counted on to pitch in and do their level best in anything that the group attempted. One or two seemed to disrupt activities to start teasing at the wrong moment or offering useless suggestions. Hmm. I, I saw, I got to see this stuff. I think I see all this stuff because I had four kids, you know? So I got to see like the group dynamics at the birthday parties. I talk about this, the time many years ago when us, we had a birthday party while camping at the beach and this particular beach, there's a river. And so we're camping at the beach, there's a river and I started doing all these events and challenges and marching and all these, yeah, contests with all the kids and I split

• 25:35Jocko Willink?

  them into two squads and they were competing. It's basically like, well, this experiment. Yeah. But what I remember the most about it is within 15 minutes, you could see like, oh, this person doesn't care and this person's looking to get out of work and this person wants to win everything. Like the personalities are so clear. Yeah. And just, just like a SEAL platoon. In a SEAL platoon, there's a guy trying to get out of work. There's a guy wants to win everything. There's a guy that cares if he wins, guys, it's just so clear. Yeah. A few boys consistently had good suggestions and showed ability to coordinate efforts of others in carrying them through. Within a few days, one person had proved himself more resourceful and skilled than the rest. Thus, rather quickly, a leader and lieutenants emerged. Some boys sifted toward the bottom of the heap while others jockeyed for higher positions.

• 26:20Jocko Willink?

  This is 11, 10, or sorry, it was 11 and 12 year old boys and they're doing what human beings do. They're doing what human beings do. And the weird thing about this is, and this is, this is a bad thing about the military. The bad thing about the military is.

• 26:35Jocko Willink?

  You if you you might not be the a good leader, a good natural leader. But you went to college and you went to officer candidate school or you went to the academy and you become an officer and now you're in charge.

• 26:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:47Jocko Willink?

  And you don't have really any good leadership skills and now you're running things. Now, if you're humble enough to be like, ah, you know what? I'm not the best leader and I'm gonna lean on this guy over here and this person can help me out. You'll be fine.

• 26:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:00Jocko Willink?

  But if you're like, I'm the leader.

• 27:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:02Jocko Willink?

  Yep. Not gonna be good.

• 27:07Jocko Willink?

  We watched these developments closely and rated the boys relative positions in the group, not only on the basis of our own observations, but also by informal sounding of the boys' opinions as to who got things started, who got things done, who could be counted on to support the group activities. As the group became an organization, the boys coined nicknames. The big blonde hardy leader of one group was dubbed Babyface by his admiring followers. A boy with a rather long head became Lemonhead. Each group developed its own jargon, special jokes, secrets and special ways of performing tasks. One group, after killing a snake near a place where it had gone to swim,

• 27:52Jocko Willink?

  named the place Moccasin Creek and thereafter preferred this swimming hole to any other, though there were there were better ones nearby. Isn't it just weird how just predictable these dynamics are?

• 28:04Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 28:05Jocko Willink?

  And yet we don't pay attention to them so often and we don't pay attention to them in ourselves. Back to the doc, wayward members who failed to do things right or who did not contribute their bit to the common effort found themselves receiving the silent treatment, ridicule or even threats. Each group selected symbols and a name and they put these on their caps and T-shirts. So that's kind of interesting.

• 28:35Jocko Willink?

  The nineteen fifty-four camp was conducted in Oklahoma near a famous hideaway of Jesse James called Robber's Cave. The two groups of boys at this camp named themselves The Rattlers and The Eagles. And it does say, I

• 28:49Jocko Willink?

  these guys would just come up with these names on their own, like they weren't told, hey, come up with a name. They would just they just wanted to have, they wanted to be a gang.

• 28:58Jocko Willink?

  Other conclusions on every phase of the study were based on a variety of observations rather than on any single method. For example, we advised a game to test the boys' evaluations of one another. Before an important baseball game, we set up a target board for the boys to throw out on the pretense of making practice for the game more interesting. There were no marks on the front of the board for the boys to judge objectively how close the ball came to a bullseye, but unknown to them, the board was wired to flashing lights behind so that an observer could see exactly where the ball hit. We found that the boys consistently

• 29:38Jocko Willink?

  overestimated the performances by the most highly regarded members of their group and underestimated the scores of those of low social standing. So there's a whole bunch of biases that start to come out in this whole study, and that's one of them. You're watching the person that you like, and you give them a little extra credit. You're watching the person that you don't like, and you take credit away from them, regardless of how good they did. And that was a, that's another thing that we covered on the underground. Reactive devaluation, psychological phenomenon that if I don't like you, I don't like you, present your ideas and I devalue everything that you say. And in this case, I don't really like you, you throw baseball, eh, wasn't that good of a shot.

• 30:26Jocko Willink?

  The attitudes of group members were even more dramatically illustrated during a cookout in the woods. And this is, the two groups are still split up into two groups because you're gonna see eventually these groups come together. The staff supplied the boys with unprepared food and let them cook it themselves. One boy promptly started to build a fire, asking for help in getting wood. Another attacked the raw hamburger to make patties. Others prepared a place to put buns, relishes, and the like, two mixed off drinks from flavoring and sugar. One boy stood around without helping, was told, or one boy who stood around without helping was told by the others to get to it. It's before they could take it after it. Shortly, the fire was blazing and the cook had hamburgers sizzling.

• 31:10Jocko Willink?

  By the way, it's 11-year-old kids, pretty cool. Two boys distributed them as rapidly as they became edible. Soon it was time for the watermelon. A low ranking member of the group took a knife and started toward the melon. Some of the boys protested. The most highly regarded boy in the group took over the knife, saying, "You guys who yell the lattice loudest, get yours last."

• 31:35Jocko Willink?

  Group dynamics.

• 31:39Jocko Willink?

  When the two groups in camp had developed group organization and spirit, we proceeded to the experimental studies of intergroupalization. So that's a key component. So they they take the groups and they keep them separate. They don't even know that there's other groups in camp. And there's eleven boys in each group. So you have these two groups, eleven boys, they keep them separate for a number of days so they can kind of form relationships and form an identity, a group identity and all that. The groups had no previous encounter. Indeed, in the 1954 camp at Robbers Cave, the two groups came in separate buses and were kept apart while each group acquired a group feeling. Our working hypothesis was that when the two groups have conflicting aims,

• 32:21Jocko Willink?

  i.e. when one can achieve its ends only at the expense of the other, their members will become hostile to each other, even though the groups are composed of normal, well-adjusted individuals. There is a corollary to this assumption, which we will consider later. To produce friction between the groups of boys, we arranged a tournament of games: baseball, touch football, tug-of-war, treasure hunt, and so on. The tournament started in a spirit of good sportsmanship. But as it progressed, good feeling soon evaporated. The members of each group began to call their rivals "stinkers, sneaks, and cheaters."

• 33:02Jocko Willink?

  They refused to have anything more to do with the individuals in the opposing group. Isn't that crazy? These are all, by the way, these are a bunch of like, what, white, ten-year-old Protestant kids, all the same. They're all the same kids. And yet, they're calling each other "snakes, cheaters, stinkers."

• 33:22Jocko Willink?

  The boys in the 1949 camp turned against buddies whom they had chosen as best friends when they first arrived at camp. A large person of the boys in each group gave negative ratings to all the boys in the other. The rival groups made threatening posters and planned raids, collecting secret hordes of green apples for ammunition. Bro, this is at a summer camp.

• 33:49Jocko Willink?

  In the robbers cave camp, the Eagles, after a defeat in a tournament game, burned a banner left behind by the Rattlers. The next morning, the Rattlers seized the Eagles' flag when they arrived on the athletic field. From that time on, name-calling, scuffles, and raids were the rule of the day. Bro, this is like full freaking Lord of the Flies activity about to go down.

• 34:16Jocko Willink?

  Within each group, of course, solidarity increased. And you know, this is, this is why I say this is so pertinent for all of us today, because you're sitting there, I'm sitting here, and we're constantly getting recruited into different groups. You know what I mean? And we instinctively want to be a part of a group. So when the recruiting comes around, we're kind of on board for it. Kind of like naturally just on board for it. Because what are you going to do? Be part of the other team? When this team's kind of reaching out to me? Making me feel good about things? They want me to be a part of their crew?

• 34:53Jocko Willink?

  There were changes. One group deposed its leader because he could not take it in the context, in the contest with the adversary. Another group overnight made something of a hero, of a big boy who had previously been regarded as a bully. Man, when the bully's on your side, he's your favorite.

• 35:13Jocko Willink?

  But morale and cooperativeness within the group became stronger. It is noteworthy that this heightening of cooperativeness and general democratic behavior did not carry over to the group's relations with other groups. So you become tighter and stronger and work together better as a team. And as you get better as a team, you become more antagonistic to the other teams around you. Does this sound familiar at all?

• 35:41Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 35:45Jocko Willink?

  So they end up with these issues and I, you know, started off with that quote where the guys were like, "You have to be physically restrained from beating the other team up." Like, that's some pent-up aggression I'm trying to get unleashed. We now turn to the other side of the problem. How can two groups in conflict be brought into harmony?

• 36:05Jocko Willink?

  We first undertook to test the theory that pleasant social contacts between members of conflicting groups will reduce friction between them. In the 1954 camp, we brought the hostile Rattlers and Eagles together for social events, going to the movies, eating in the same dining room, and so on. But far from reducing conflict, these situations only served as opportunities for the rival groups to berate and attack each other.

• 36:35Jocko Willink?

  In the dining hall line, they shoved each other aside, and the group that lost the contest for the head of the line shouted "ladies first" at the winner.

• 36:45Jocko Willink?

  They threw paper, food, and vile names at each other at the tables. An Eagle bumped by a Rattler was admonished by his fellow Eagles to brush the dirt off his clothes.

• 36:58Jocko Willink?

  We then returned. So, just when you take two people. Now, I will say, and...

• 37:07Jocko Willink?

  If we aren't around each other, if you're if you're isolated from another group, you the hostilities are just gonna grow. Conflict gets created in a vacuum and it grows in a vacuum. And sometimes when you bring groups together, there's a level of humanization that takes place where it's like, oh, you know, you gotta work this guy. But the key thing that I just said is you gotta work with them like you don't like this person. They don't like you, but you have to get, you have to do something together. And you know, you you figure out a way to make it work. And that's a lot different than, hey, we're just gonna put you in a social environment. That's why when people talk about, you know, at Echelon Front, when I talk about building relationships, you know, and when I used to, a few years ago, I'd be like, well, how do you build relationships? And people, yeah, take someone to coffee, take them to lunch. They bring up these things that, I'm not saying they're bad,

• 37:51Jocko Willink?

  but they're not as beneficial as actually doing work together.

• 37:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:57Jocko Willink?

  Doing work together is how you build relationships, doing something positive, making progress, figuring out a plan. And then, of course, it comes down to the components of relationship trust, listen, respect, influence and care. And you gotta give those things away. But those things, giving, listening to what you have to say compared to, I bought you a cup of coffee.

• 38:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:17Jocko Willink?

  Giving you trust compared to, I bought you a burger at lunch, you know, it's just, it's not the same thing. It's a nice gesture, but it it doesn't truly build relationships. So now you take that to a group dynamic.

• 38:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:29Jocko Willink?

  And you just put the two groups together that have animosity, that's just an opportunity for fights.

• 38:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. There is, I mean, now that you're kind of running down this, there's a lot of like movies and shows and stuff that kind of base the show or the episode of the movie on kind of, kind of on that right there, which is, I mean, not so much this experiment, but the idea that like two people, they can hate each other or two groups, they can hate each other. But you put them together, working together, and then they wind up kind of liking each other. Cause you know, they humanize each other, they realize, hey, we're more alike, though we are different, all this stuff. Like American History X was the example, I told you last time, where, you know, the, you know, neo Nazi guy with the black guy, they had to do laundry, whatever, they end up being friends.

• 39:09Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, because they had a mutual goal.

• 39:10Speaker 01

  Exactly right. They, yeah, they gotta do that laundry. There is a movie called Band of the Hand. You ever, have you heard of that? It's like a 1980s.

• 39:19Jocko Willink?

  I have heard of that, but I don't remember anything about it.

• 39:21Speaker 01

  That seems like a movie that you would actually watch. Cause it, cause it has real like Lord of the Flies, like undertones. Yeah, vibes, exactly right. It's essentially, they get these criminal teenagers. That are like criminals, gang members, like blah, blah, blah, this stuff, drug dealer, you know, all of a sudden they throw them all. They just randomly grab them and instead of like giving them a trial, they just throw them in the freaking swamp. Eat like they herd them up, throw them in the swamp. And they're just, they don't know what's going on at all. They're just in their normal clothes that they got picked up with and they're in the swamp.

• 39:52Jocko Willink?

  Wait, are they criminals or no?

• 39:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, they're criminals. They get, they got arrested for whatever.

• 39:56Jocko Willink?

  So they're arrested, but, but why are they in normal clothes?

• 40:00Speaker 01

  Because it's not like they take their clothes and put them in a uniform or something like that.

• 40:04Jocko Willink?

  Okay, they got arrested. All right, you're going in the swamp.

• 40:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, like one guy has a suit because he's this high end drug dealer and he's wearing that same. Anyway, throw them all in the swamp and then this, then randomly, they have no idea what's going, randomly this survivalist dude, he's kind of like, kind of the leader, you know, the chaperone, whatever. He comes in and he's just giving them little bits of information, but he's more just leading by doing and they're all like, what are we doing it? You know, anyway, it just starts like that and then they wind up going through this whole thing and they're all like bros at the end, kind of a thing, you know? Rallyed around the same goal, kind of a same exact thing. It's like, that's actually a pretty cool movie. But um, you kind of see all these or whatever, but then, you know, in the movie or whatever, especially American history acts, I think that.

• 40:44Speaker 01

  I kind of felt that. I was like, yeah, I could see why like they don't like each other kind of, or the one guy didn't like, but it seemed like the black guy knew, knew the deal. Like, hey, we gotta work, because he had been working there for a while. So he was kind of like, hey. We gotta work here together, so we might as well not fight. Kind of, you could tell that was his attitude. And then slowly the way they wrote it, it was like, oh, I could see how that would work right there. You know, first it just starts with one little thing, one like taking down of the guard and then one little smirk after the guy's joke. And then after then, finally one word, then they're joking, you know, it's like that sequence seems understandable after a while. Because of what you're saying, like that one goal is kind of that primary thing. And after a while, you kind of find a way to make it work.

• 41:28Speaker 01

  And then you realize the way that it works is for you to freaking let go of all this dumb other stuff, you know?

• 41:33Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 41:35Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 41:37Jocko Willink?

  It continues on here. We then return to the corollary of our assumption about the creation of conflict. Just as competition generates friction, working in a common endeavor should promote harmony. It seemed to us, considering group relations in the everyday world, that where harmony between groups is established, the most decisive factor is the existence of superordinate goals, which have a compelling appeal for both, for both, but which neither could achieve without the other. To test this hypothesis experimentally, we created a series of urgent and natural situations which challenged our boys. One was a breakdown in the water supply.

• 42:21Jocko Willink?

  Water came into our camp in pipes from a tank about a mile away. We arranged to interrupt it and then called the boys together to inform them of the crisis. Both groups promptly volunteered to search for the water line, search the water line for trouble. They worked together harmoniously and before the end of the afternoon, they had located and corrected the difficulty. A similar opportunity offered itself when the boys requested a movie. We told them that the camp could not afford to rent one. The two groups then got together, figured out how much each group would have to contribute, chose the film by a vote and enjoyed the showing together. One day, the two groups went on an outing at a lake some distance away. A large truck was to go to town for food.

• 43:07Jocko Willink?

  But when everyone was hungry and ready to eat, it developed that the truck would not start. The boys got a rope, the same rope they'd used in their acrimonious tug of war, and all pulled together to start the truck. These joint efforts did not immediately dispel hostility. At first, the groups returned to the old bickering and name-calling as soon as the job in hand was finished. But gradually, the series of cooperative acts reduced friction and conflict. The members of the two groups began to feel more friendly toward each other. For example, a rattler whom the eagles disliked for his sharp tongue and skill in defeating them became a good egg. The boys stopped shoving in the meal line.

• 43:52Jocko Willink?

  They no longer called each other names and sat together at a table. New friendships developed between individuals and groups. This is, you know, it's talking about boot camp. One of the things that they do at boot camp is you end up with, well, you first of all, you get these mutual things that you have to do together and then you kind of get a cop common for lack of a better word, a common enemy, which is the drill instructors. You know, like, oh, here he comes. Like, we gotta do this. We gotta do that. So you end up with this kind of common enemy who ends up being the common friend. But in the beginning, it's like, oh, it's us against them. Us against the staff. And that forms unity, that forms bonds. And then you absolutely are going to have things that you got to do. If you don't work together, you're not going to be able to make them happen. And so they're doing

• 44:32Jocko Willink?

  this perfectly to develop bonds between the people that are going through, for instance, boot camp.

• 44:40Jocko Willink?

  In the end, the groups were actively seeking opportunities to mingle, to entertain and treat each other. They decided to hold a joint campfire. They took turns presenting skits and songs. Members of both groups requested that they go home together on the same bus rather than on separate buses, which they had come. On the way, the bus stopped for refreshments. One group still had $5, which they had won as a prize in a contest. They decided to spend this sum on refreshments. On their own initiative, they invited their former rivals to be their guests for malted milks. So, very powerful. Our interviews with the boys confirmed this change. From choosing their best friends almost exclusively in their own group, many of them shifted to

• 45:25Jocko Willink?

  listing boys in the other group as best friends. They were glad to have a second chance to rate boys in the other group, some of them remarking that they had changed their minds since the first rating after the tournament. Indeed, they had new ratings were largely favorable.

• 45:43Jocko Willink?

  Efforts to reduce friction and prejudice between groups in our society have usually followed rather different methods. Much attention has been given to bringing members of hostile groups together socially, to communicating accurate and favorable information about one group to the other, and bringing the leaders of the groups together to enlist their influence. So that's kind of a common thing, right? We just need to get the other one and talk to them. Well, let's, let's talk to them and figure it out. And that might not be the best idea.

• 46:15Jocko Willink?

  As everyone knows, such measures sometimes reduce intergroup tensions and sometimes do not. Social contacts, as our experiments demonstrated, may only serve as occasions for intensifying conflicts. Favorable information about a disliked group may be ignored or reinterpreted to fit stereotype notions about the group. Leaders cannot act without regard for the prevailing temper in their own groups. Man, people are freaking crazy right now, dude. Like, that's so classic. That's, that's freaking America right now. Hey, anything that that person says, I hate them.

• 46:56Jocko Willink?

  And I hate what they're saying. What our limited, and this is kind of how it closes out. What our limited experiments have shown is that the possibilities for achieving harmony are greatly enhanced when groups are brought together to work toward common ends. This is why at war, this is why when you get attacked at Pearl Harbor, the whole country unifies.

• 47:17Jocko Willink?

  Cause you gotta remember before Pearl Harbor, the country was not unified behind going to war at all. Some people thought we should go to war, some people thought we should not go to war. There was people that were American Nazis. That were like, why would we go to war with Germany? Where, I'm German. Like, this isn't happening. Oh, and by the way, the Nazis don't like, uh, black people and Jews. I don't like black people and Jews. I'm not gonna, why would we fight them? That was happening. And then all of a sudden you get attacked and it was like, well, no, we're all on board.

• 47:47Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, way different.

• 47:54Jocko Willink?

  What our limited experiments have shown is that the possibilities for achieving harmony are greatly enhanced when groups are brought together to work toward common ends. Then favorable information about a disliked group is seen in a new light and leaders are in position to take bolder steps towards cooperation. In short, hostility gives way when groups pull together to achieve overriding goals that are real and compelling to all concerned.

• 48:25Jocko Willink?

  So

• 48:27Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 48:28Jocko Willink?

  You, when you, when you don't have a unified goal and let's face it, like for instance, in America right now. Many, many, many people are in a pretty good spot financially. They have a house. They have an iPhone. They have food on the table. They have the, like, they have a pretty good situation.

• 48:47Jocko Willink?

  So what do they do? They start looking around saying, well, who can I attack? And what group can I be a part of? And then, oh, I'm part of this group. We're going to attack another group. And that's what ends up happening because we don't have this big unified overarching. World War Two or September 11th.

• 49:03Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, what you're saying. You know, they, they, I had this theory a while ago where it's like, yeah, we have all these little problems everywhere. That turn into big problems, whatever, is because the whole reason behind that is because all our problems are solved. And that's what these real and compelling problems are no longer in existence. So. So you know how you say like, oh yeah, I, what you just said, where, you know, they're looking around whose group can I be with? The thing is, the funny thing is, and it is interesting at the very least, is that's what we're all doing anyway. Regardless of the circumstance, we're all doing that. So when all these real and compelling problems start to become less and less, we're still doing that. We're still doing the whole, who's the enemy?

• 49:46Speaker 01

  Who can I join? Who are we fighting? What are we doing? You know, like we're, everyone's still doing that, just on different levels now. The big problems, the real and, you know, compelling problem, they're gone. Now you have less real, less compelling, but we still got that operating system or.

• 50:00Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 50:01Speaker 01

  Whether you call it operating system or not, we're still doing that.

• 50:03Jocko Willink?

  So you create problems.

• 50:04Speaker 01

  Exactly right. Oh, well, I'll put it this way. We start to look harder and harder for them and find them because they're, they're going to be there. They were in. I know it's, it feels like that we're creating the problems, but more than anything, we're looking for like, we're looking for more.

• 50:20Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I was gonna say it's real easy. Look, you, you're, let's say you've got a good job. You're making enough money. Your rent's paid. You got your vehicle. You've got food on the table, right? That's you. Cool. But you still have that little, uh, that little instinct. For war, for fighting, for, for, and also the instinct to be a part of a gang. So, but you're living your life and you're not really sure what that is, but if I'm over here. And I'm like, hey, I got a cause for you.

• 50:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:50Jocko Willink?

  Let me present you with a cause and a team that you can be a part of today. And then you have something to fight for.

• 50:56Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 50:57Jocko Willink?

  You have something to go online.

• 51:00Speaker 01

  Wherever.

• 51:00Jocko Willink?

  And freaking retweet some dumb shit. You know what I mean?

• 51:07Jocko Willink?

  Bro, you think about the efforts. How much time? I mean, you know what I'm saying? Like you can, you can. And, and what's weird too is when you, if you look at Twitter X or Instagram or whatever. You, people are mad about stuff. It's, it's, it's a, it's a person like they're mad at a bot.

• 51:26Speaker 01

  Yeah. Or whatever.

• 51:27Jocko Willink?

  Or they're mad at whatever, right?

• 51:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:29Jocko Willink?

  They're mad at an image.

• 51:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:30Jocko Willink?

  They're mad at a statement, but they're like literally mad because you can say, because it's made them emotional to the point where they've fired off this thing.

• 51:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:38Jocko Willink?

  And you're like, hey dude, like, what are you doing?

• 51:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:41Jocko Willink?

  What? That's what you're gonna get mad about? That's where you put your, that's where you invest your emotional anger and your emotional efforts is to being mad at this person that posted a picture of something.

• 51:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:52Jocko Willink?

  That you were told by your group leader.

• 51:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:57Jocko Willink?

  Was bad and you're on board for that.

• 52:00Speaker 01

  The, the answer to that question is yes. So, and this, this like you're, this document with, that talks about this experiment, like, man, that it illustrates why this is the case. That, you know how like, there's all these examples, all these are different examples, big, small, whatever. They're all just different examples of the same exact thing. So like, you know, you know, cults, right? You know, cult, right? Where you typically, pretty much every time reliably will say, you can't just grab someone and put them in your cult. The normal person would be like, bro, I'm not doing that dumb cult. It's like obviously dumb. And if you look into any kind of cult, who do they target? They could target the person who's kind of drifting. They don't know. They're not part of a team. They don't know their common enemy. They don't know anything. You, a normal person has their family. That's their team.

• 52:43Speaker 01

  They got their friends. That's part of their team. They got their values. They got their freaking, and their real, their consistent, they're stable, they're secure with a lot of stuff in everyday life. Cult people don't look for people like that. They look for the people without that. So they can provide all that stuff and that's exactly what they do when they bring them in. Totally what they do. It's us against them. Um, this is the real way. The other way. Look, you've been tricked. They did this to you, those enemy, you know, it's like that kind of stuff. So it's all the same stuff, all of this stuff. But if we don't have it, if we don't have like that common enemy, the, you know, um, you know, we're not part of a tribe. We don't feel like we're part of a tribe, whatever. Um, that's when we're so susceptible to just gravitating towards kind of the first tribe we can be a part of.

• 53:24Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 53:25Speaker 01

  And freaking assigning enemy status to the first enemy we can, we can identify. That's essentially it, but it's always been like that.

• 53:34Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, there's also, there's also a real easy sort of bridge, which is, you know, there's a book called Extreme Ownership.

• 53:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 53:42Jocko Willink?

  Which is the problems that are in my life are because of me and I'm, I'm the one that has to fix them. But part of that attractiveness is being able to say, hey, the problems in your life aren't because of you. They're because of this, these people over here.

• 53:55Speaker 01

  It's all part of that process.

• 53:57Jocko Willink?

  And then you're, you wanted to hear that. You know, you want, you were looking for a reason why this happened to you. You're looking around like, dude, my life isn't that good. And I come in and say, it's not your fault.

• 54:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:09Jocko Willink?

  It's this fault over here. It's these people's fault. That's why, that's why you're being held down. We need to fight against them. You're all bored. Cause look, if you can take a 10 year old or 11 year old and they're, that's their natural human instincts is to just get on board with this team and fight the enemy. By the way, these are kids that you've never met before that are this pretty much the same as you. So now you take it in America where there's differences between us, right? All kinds of differences and you say, oh, this is my team. This is your team. Let's fight.

• 54:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:40Jocko Willink?

  So, so pay attention, man. Pay attention to what's making you angry. Pay attention to what's, what, who's, who's leading you? Right? Cause there is someone leading you. Like where are they leading you? Why are they leading you? What do they want? What benefits do they get out of it? Are they benevolent? Hmm. Are they maybe have some other motives behind what they're doing? It's very possible. Hmm. So just watch out. Gonna watch out for this kind of thing. There's one more um thing that I wanted to talk about from this experiment. And it was a a pretty cool graph. Or chart, which I'd never seen this type of chart before.

• 55:24Jocko Willink?

  And it clued me into a way of judging people, which is very interesting. So basically, they they plot out each one of the kids, each one of the boys with a little circle. And then depending how many decisions they made, they went higher and higher up this graph. So it goes from zero to whatever, ten. And depending on how many decisions you made, you're higher up the graph. So because think about it, when you're in a little group of ten people, there's someone that's gonna make more decisions and some people that make less decisions. So you immediately have leaders and followers. And I never, it's so obvious to think of that. It's so obvious to think, well, yeah, how how would you? How do you know who's a leader? Oh, well, the leaders are making decisions.

• 56:07Jocko Willink?

  And so they actually would plot out, they'd pay attention, they'd plot out where these people ended up. And in some groups, guess what? You end up with, oh, this person's making three or four decisions. This other person's making four or five decisions. This person's making three or four decisions. So you end up with a a consensus group. And then the other thing that they identify in this particular uh type of graph is that they have a a one-way friendship, a one-way friendship and reciprocated friendship. So a reciprocated friendship is is indicated with a solid line in this graph. And a one-way friendship is is a dash line. Meaning like, oh, it's pretty obvious. You've been around people where it's like, oh, this person, they're not listening to me.

• 56:52Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. I, if we're gonna go out somewhere, we're going to where they wanna eat. We're watching the movie they wanna watch. Like, that's a one-way relationship. Yeah. So what they've, in some of these charts, they've got these people. And and and what you see is, some of the charts, everyone is making decisions. And there's lots of two-way relationships.

• 57:14Jocko Willink?

  The other end of the spectrum is you have charts where one or two people are making all the decisions. Everyone else is very low on the decision, number of decisions that they make. And it's a one-way relationship. Most of the time, it's a one dictator, for lack of a better word, that's telling everyone else, that's making decisions and imposing the decisions on people. And here's why I'm going into this with a smile on my face. Is because the groups that perform tasks better are the groups that have more people making decisions and more two-way relationships.

• 57:53Jocko Willink?

  Which is a just absolute confirmation of what we teach at Echelon Front, which is decentralized command. I'm not gonna make every decision. I don't want to make every decision. The people on the frontlines can figure out better ways to do things. And I should be listening as a leader and I should be forming good relationships.

• 58:15Jocko Willink?

  And if you do those things, so it's an interesting experiment that you can do yourself with your family, with your people you work with, with your friends. How many decisions are you making? And I have said this before where I've got a leader that's like maybe a bit of a micromanager. And I'll tell them like, listen, don't make any decisions. Like when you go to work today, don't make any decisions. Let other people make decisions. And it can be really hard for some people to do that because they're freaking psycho micromanagers. So, but I think now paying attention to who on the team is making decisions. Cause that's how you can identify, oh, we got Jessica over here. She hasn't made a decision in three days.

• 58:59Jocko Willink?

  So, so she's very low on this decision-making matrix. So she's not really participating in the team. And that doesn't just hurt Jessica, hurts the whole team. Cause we want every one of the team to be decision-makers and leaders. And we want to be able to listen to what they have to say. And we want two-way communication. So this, this graph ends up being very informative to me and showed me something visually that I had known for a long time. And I, as much as it's so obvious to think of leadership as the number of decisions that you're making.

• 59:35Jocko Willink?

  It's interesting to see it graphically. And, and that being said as well, the other part of this that would have to become like a 3D graph, I guess at some point is like, what is the weight of decisions that are getting made?

• 59:46Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 59:47Jocko Willink?

  Because I think ideally what you have is a leader at the that a leader that is making very few decisions, but they're very important decisions. And they're taking input. Those decisions are based on the, you know, hundreds of other decisions that are getting made that lead to a point where it's like, okay, now we've got to either go left or we're going to go right. And people look around and now it's that one most experienced leader and also the leader that's been listening the most. Cause now he has the best perspective from everybody else that he's gathered up. And now he can decide, oh, we're either going left or we're going right. But he's listened and knows it can make the best decision. So, and a very interesting way to think about things.

• 1:00:34Jocko Willink?

  And that's where we go. I think, um, some good lessons here, beware of your biases. Right? We all have biases and we have instincts, right? We have some group mentality instincts that are just inherent being a human. So watch out for those. I would say I always had a rebellious streak in me. And I think that rebellious streak was enhanced and exacerbated by the music that I grew up listening to. And so I always felt like, no, nothing is part of your shit. No, I always had that little thing in me.

• 1:01:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:14Jocko Willink?

  And I think it was beneficial, which is weird too, because I'm sure someone's like, well, what the hell did you join the military for? It was like, actually for me, joining the military was an act of rebellion against, against everything. Cause everybody else was going to college or getting a job and carrying on with normal lives. There was nothing normal. Where I grew up in the sticks of, oh, I'm going to leave and go be a freaking commando in the Navy. That was not a normal thing to do. But I think that it's good to have that little instinct. I still, I still, I still have that little instinct of, well, we'll do this, we'll do this our way. We'll do this my way, like my way, meaning like DIY. There's a whole, a whole like, kind of.

• 1:01:58Jocko Willink?

  Freaking punk rock ethos of doing it myself. Like, we're gonna do it our way. Cause back in the day, like, who's gonna, who's gonna pay for the recordings to you? We are. Who's gonna design the record cover? We are. Who's gonna put the, who's gonna make posters for us? We are. Who, we're doing everything. We're doing it ourselves. We don't want your money. We're gonna do it ourselves. And I always kinda had that in me. And it's still, you know, it still seeps out. Jocko Publishing, right? Why is that? Uh, Jocko Fuel, like, where's, where's, where's that coming from? Wouldn't it be easier just to take money from some big company that, you know? Oh, yeah, that'd be easier. But we can do it ourselves. And then we can do it the way we wanna do it.

• 1:02:43Jocko Willink?

  So I always had that in me. And I think it's very beneficial. And I think that it's something to help anybody that's exposed to the world at the current time. What are you being exposed to? What group is trying to, trying to adopt you?

• 1:03:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:03:02Jocko Willink?

  Trying to bring you in. Cause this group's trying to adopt you every single day.

• 1:03:05Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:03:07Jocko Willink?

  And if you're not paying attention, your instinct is, let's be part of that group. Let's have a common enemy. Oh, let's blame the other group, by the way. So these are things we gotta watch out for. Don't allow yourself, open up your mind and, and beware of your own biases. Competition can create animosity also. And so you have to beware of that. And you can use competition. Hey, look, in the business world, competition gets used all the time inside of, inside of a business. So if I've got two sales teams, oh, put them against each other and so you can do more and it's fun. I have two salespeople, I'll put them against each other, two production lines, that's you can make more widgets. Like, those are things that you can do. You gotta be careful, though, cause you can take that a little bit too far and all of a sudden you've got animosity.

• 1:03:54Jocko Willink?

  So be careful of that. Be careful of scarcity, cause that's what they did. But you've noticed in that experiment, how are we gonna create conflict? Scarcity. The minute we say, not everyone can have dinner, not everyone can watch the movie, not every. The minute you put scarcity in, it becomes my team against your team. So be careful that because it creates animosity. It creates animosity. Look, that's another natural instinct we have. I will think of how much is driven by. I look at Echo and he's got a freaking Cadillac Escalade. And I get mad about it. Right? And there's those are two reactions. Some people go, oh yeah, Echo's got a Cadillac Escalade. Hell yeah. I can't wait till I can get one one day. I'm going to work hard. So and some people go, oh, he's got an Escalade.

• 1:04:39Jocko Willink?

  He, he screwed people over for that money. And I'm mad at you about it. Yeah. Oh, and you're hurting the environment because you got a big V eight. Does that have a V eight engine in it? Uh, yeah. So yo, you got a big gas guzzling engine. You're ruining the environment. You're ruining you. By the way, you're ruining my environment. Yeah. In my world. Yeah. And I hate you even more. Or I could say, oh, man, that's awesome. Oh, and he's got a good catalytic converter on there. You know what I'm saying? There's just like how you frame things up. You've got to be careful of. And to unify a team, of course, you gotta, you gotta work towards a common goal. And where this can be challenging inside of an organization is. You gotta set up. You've got to be aware that there's, there can be different subordinate goals inside of an organization.

• 1:05:25Jocko Willink?

  Meaning you're trying to sell. The widget. That your team produces and Fred over here is trying to sell the widget that his team, we both work in the same company. But you're like looking for his client data to see if you can offer him the, you know, the other widget, but like that, that can happen. So I need to make sure that even though you and Fred have. Subordinate goals that you're both trying to achieve. I need to remind you of the superordinate goal, right? The superordinate goal, the unified strategic goal so that you're both, hey, listen, even if, look, we might sell Echo's widget, we might sell Fred's. Bottom line is we brought that customer into our. Into our customer base and that's going to help us in the long run and we all win. Oh, okay.

• 1:06:10Jocko Willink?

  So I might have to remind people of that. Remember that good reciprocal relationships and decentralized commander, what win?

• 1:06:22Jocko Willink?

  Reciprocal relationships. And again, this is talking about freaking 10 year old kids doing.

• 1:06:29Jocko Willink?

  Cooking dinner. And even with 10 year old kids. Good reciprocal relationships and you still have a leader. The leader still shines. The leader still steps up, but he listens.

• 1:06:42Jocko Willink?

  And gives them trust and allows people influence. So that's good.

• 1:06:47Jocko Willink?

  What that means is we have to build good relationships and take care of each other so that we don't devolve into the Eagles and the Rattlers, which is very easy to do. They're very instinctive. We have to watch out for it.

• 1:07:04Speaker 01

  It's a, it's a good reminder for sure. But and this can sound kind of more negative than I mean it to be, but I do feel like to a certain degree, we don't have a choice. Maybe individually we do for sure, but we have less of a choice than it might feel like sometimes because you know, you know, you know, you ever heard the conspiracy theory? Or maybe it's not even conspiracy. I don't know. Just this idea that like, oh, some, somebody, you know, the powers that be want to keep you distracted.

• 1:07:38Speaker 01

  Um, from the big picture, whatever that may be, then X, Y, Z is the big picture. Right? Everyone has their, their theory or whatever. In a way, that kind of seems true in a lot of ways and reasonable as far as like why that would happen or whatever. Cause like, think about it. If, if you can control like some people's minds, and I'm not saying like the kind, you know, with

• 1:08:01Jocko Willink?

  If you can just get them focused on this thing over here instead of that thing over there.

• 1:08:04Speaker 01

  Yeah. And then

• 1:08:05Jocko Willink?

  You can win.

• 1:08:06Speaker 01

  With that, you can let them and you know, these instincts, like all these instincts are, we know that. So let's influence them in this way that gives rise to this instinct taking hold. It's not going to take hold.

• 1:08:16Jocko Willink?

  Right. You're, you're calling this a conspiracy theory. This is just what's happening every day. This is normal life.

• 1:08:21Speaker 01

  But it

• 1:08:22Jocko Willink?

  This is what's going on. This is what we have to watch out for.

• 1:08:24Speaker 01

  Exactly right. But, but through

• 1:08:26Jocko Willink?

  But didn't you just say you don't know if you have a choice? I'm going to say, I'm going to say you're wrong.

• 1:08:29Speaker 01

  No, individually you have a choice.

• 1:08:31Jocko Willink?

  Individually have a choice. Yes. But also collectively, like, how can you break people out of this mold? And what makes it so hard is that when people are part of that gang, bruh, it's hard to talk to them.

• 1:08:42Speaker 01

  And that's exactly what I mean. So you need something for real, for real to take them out of the mold. And so you, you talk about bombing Pearl Harbor, nine 11, like these things, but they do snap people kind of back into, but here's the thing, I don't know if it's more so than it snaps people out of like some thing. There, I think even like, okay, bombing Pearl Harbor, everybody kind of unifies. That's not snapping anyone in or out of anything. All that is is just adjusting the common goal. So and the common enemy as well. So like before that, it was like, we don't really have any real, like a real one, you know, you can say, or um, you know, whatever the problem is, if they don't feel it for real for themselves for real, it's kind of like, cool. That's what they say on the news.

• 1:09:26Speaker 01

  Cool. That's what my neighbor said. That's all it is. Nothing more. But you get a for real attack. Oh, clear, clear and compelling or whatever. Well, however, however they put it. So all it is, it's all the same stuff, except for different levels of it. So if the different level can be big enough that it really affects the individual, then they'll change naturally, for sure. And the group changes. But as an individual, sure, you keep your eyes open. I see what you're doing. Be more educated, be more into like the real things and how real things work for sure as an individual, but collectively it's way harder.

• 1:09:58Jocko Willink?

  Oh, it's definitely hard because you you're going against the human being instinct that they've had since they were born, which is I'm gonna be a part of this group. Once I'm a part of this group, I don't like you anymore.

• 1:10:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:07Jocko Willink?

  Pay attention. Pay attention to what you're doing. Pay attention to what group you're buying into. Pay attention to the emotions that you're having. Pay attention to the time that you're spending on an infinite scroll. Pay attention. Pay attention to overcome the instincts that you naturally have to get mad at someone that's from a different group. Pay attention to that. Pay attention to where that comes from. Pay attention to the emotional investment that you put into a group. Why are you putting it into a group? Isn't there something more productive you could be doing besides getting emotional and passionate about something that you've been convinced is important, when in reality, it's not important and it's not gonna matter and it's not gonna change anything. And what you could do is improve your world,

• 1:10:52Jocko Willink?

  your family, your job, your community, your health, you could, you could have an impact on all those things. Instead, you're mad about some other thing. That you have almost no impact on whatsoever.

• 1:11:05Speaker 01

  A lot of times, no.

• 1:11:06Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, if not no impact. So just be careful. Don't evolve. Don't devolve.

• 1:11:13Jocko Willink?

  Pay attention. So that's what we're doing.

• 1:11:16Jocko Willink?

  All right. Speaking of pay attention, we gotta pay attention to our health. I just mentioned that, which means we need some good fuel.

• 1:11:21Speaker 01

  It's true.

• 1:11:22Jocko Willink?

  I recommend, strongly recommend.

• 1:11:26Jocko Willink?

  Jaco Fuel. Hey JacoFuel.com. We got a bunch of really awesome stuff for you fueled to put in your body. We got everything from greens, which by the way, we're number one greens.

• 1:11:38Jocko Willink?

  Number one protein at Vitamin Shoppe, which is kinda cool. Those are astute buyers. You know, these are people that are in the game. So, check out the greens, check out the protein. We got ready to drink protein. We got everything that you need. We got everything that you need. Joint Warfare, Super Krill. We got everything that you need. We just, we just launched fish oil, because there was a high demand signal for fish oil. So, that's another highly beneficial thing. And magnesium. Again, there's big demand signal right now for magnesium. And if you want the clean magnesium, check it out. JacoFuel.com. We got you. We're available there. We're also available at Wawa, Vitamin Shoppe, GNC, Military, Commissaries, Afees,

• 1:12:23Jocko Willink?

  Hanaford, Dash Stores in Maryland, Wakefern, ShopRite, HEB down in Tejas,

• 1:12:30Jocko Willink?

  Meyer up in the Midwest, Harris Teeter, Lifetime Fitness, Shields, small gyms everywhere, Wegmans by the way, in PA and surrounding areas.

• 1:12:42Jocko Willink?

  That's where you can get it. Check it out. Jaco Fuel. If you want, if you have a gym, like I have a gym. If you have a jiu-jitsu gym, I have a jiu-jitsu gym. If you have a CrossFit gym, I have a CrossFit gym. My CrossFit gym is on standby right now.

• 1:12:55Speaker 01

  It's under construction.

• 1:12:57Jocko Willink?

  But, uh, check it out. If you want to sell stuff there, or if you want your gym owner to sell the stuff there, have them email [email protected]. Get the good stuff. So, there you go. Also, if you need clothing for your gang,

• 1:13:13Jocko Willink?

  go to originusa.com and get the clothing of Freedoms gang. Cause that's what we got there. Cause we don't have stuff that's made in a sweatshop by 12-year-old.

• 1:13:30Jocko Willink?

  Slaves, which is what's happening in a lot of the world. So we don't do that. All of our stuff is 100% made in America and the the material that it's made with is 100% from America. So that's what we're doing. OriginUSA.com. If you need jeans, if you need boots, if you need a jujitsu gear, if you need rash guard, if you need workout gear, if you need hunt gear. Basically, if you need, well, basically what you need, we got OriginUSA.com. Check it out. That's what we're doing.

• 1:13:55Speaker 01

  Also Jaco's store, call Jaco's store. Well, on your, on our path to excellence, discipline, freedom, the whole thing, if you want to represent on that path, discipline equals freedom, you go to Jaco's store.com is where you can get the stuff. Not on Amazon, sorry to say. Hey, look, I'm, I, I buy stuff off Amazon, I'm down for the call, I get it. But none of the discipline equals freedom, stuff is on Amazon.

• 1:14:18Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:18Speaker 01

  And if you buy it from Amazon, you're buying it from somebody probably overseas, maybe in China or something like this, who is like, ooh, Navy SEAL, they sell stuff. And then they'd like print it. A lot of times it's not even, some stuff is not even spelt correctly, by the way. Brad, I'm not joking. That's what you're buying. It's not from the real source at all, not even close.

• 1:14:38Jocko Willink?

  Not good.

• 1:14:39Speaker 01

  No, so that's, that's on you, but it, I find it, well, I find it incumbent upon myself to, to let people know, because not, I can't expect everybody to know that. Yeah. You get it from Jaco's store.com. It's the only place. Um, discipline equals freedom, good, all these, all these things that, you know, when you want to represent, you can represent.

• 1:14:58Jocko Willink?

  Check.

• 1:14:58Speaker 01

  Not to mention the Shirt Locker, which is a new design every month. People seem to like this one. The new one is interesting.

• 1:15:05Jocko Willink?

  I, I saw it.

• 1:15:07Speaker 01

  What?

• 1:15:08Jocko Willink?

  The new shirt, in the, in the wild, by the way.

• 1:15:10Speaker 01

  The new, new one.

• 1:15:12Jocko Willink?

  I saw the one that's, that looked like it's a donut one.

• 1:15:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, the sugar coated, yeah. So the next one. April didn't come out yet, comes out on the first.

• 1:15:22Jocko Willink?

  What's the, what's, give me a hint.

• 1:15:24Speaker 01

  Put it this way, it goes, it's in the same vein and on the same vibe as this whole being on a team.

• 1:15:32Jocko Willink?

  Oh.

• 1:15:33Speaker 01

  You know, that whole thing.

• 1:15:34Jocko Willink?

  Look into it.

• 1:15:35Speaker 01

  Nonetheless, it's called the Shirt Locker, new design every month, a subscription scenario, it's on Jaco's store, so that's where you can get that.

• 1:15:41Jocko Willink?

  Check. Also, if you need steak, which you most likely do, go to PrimalBeef.com or go to ColoradoCraftBeef.com and get yourself some steak.

• 1:15:53Jocko Willink?

  This is the good stuff, man. This is the good stuff. It's you can you will you will enjoy every freaking bite. And this is coming from significant experience because believe me, I'm getting my steak on. So check it out. Colorado craft beef.com primalbeef.com awesome companies, awesome people making awesome steaks. Also subscribe to the podcast. Also jock underground.com. This is the kind of thing that we covered today that we cover on the underground jock underground.com and it's they're adjacent. There's a lot of lessons to be learned. So if you want to support that, go to jock underground.com.

• 1:16:33Speaker 01

  I feel like the the underground is one of these things that's like a sure, we can talk about whatever we want, kind of a thing, but it's kind of thing you tune into like every well, it's every week, but it's like you tune into for like good guidance on life. Like if you have like questions like, okay, you go through like, look, most of us, we know how to get from A to B to get it. But if we're going A to be in a more efficient, more useful, helpful, you know, if you're pursuing success, this kind of thing, if you want to go A, B, C, D, all the way to Z, you know, this is a good guide. It's like like that kind of life advice, I would say.

• 1:17:05Jocko Willink?

  I would agree. Yeah. Also, we got a YouTube channel, subscribe to them. Also, psychological warfare, also flipside canvas.com Dakota Meyer, making cool stuff that hang on your wall. I've written a bunch of books about leadership. I've written a book about, well, about laundry mats.

• 1:17:22Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:17:23Jocko Willink?

  Called Final Spin. I've written a bunch of kids books. I've written a book called Mikey and the Dragons overcoming fear for kids and adults. And I've written the way of the warrior kid series. So check those out. Also, echelonfront.com. We solve problems through leadership. We understand group dynamics. We understand group conflict. This is what we do.

• 1:17:53Jocko Willink?

  And when you have a problem inside your organization, the problem is from leadership. So we will help you with that. Go to esalenfront.com for details. We also have a bunch of live events that you can come to as well. We also have an online training platform. Called the Extreme Ownership Academy. Go to extremeownership.com. If you need to improve your interaction with groups, if you need to improve your relationships with your team, if you need to learn about decentralized command and how to make your team, your family, work better and be better, go to extremeownership.com. Take some of the courses we've got on there. And if you want to help service members, active and retired, you want to help their families, Gold Star families, check out Mark Lee's mom, Mama Lee. She's got a charity organization. If you want to donate or you want to get involved,

• 1:18:38Jocko Willink?

  go to AmericasMightyWarriors.org.

• 1:18:42Jocko Willink?

  On top of that, we got Micah Fink up in Montana. He's got HeroesAndHorses.org. Taking vets up into the mountains so they can find their souls again. And then Jimmy May, he's got an organization called BeyondTheBrotherhood.org. Helping special operations guys, namely SEALs, get through the transition into the civilian sector. And if you want to connect with us,

• 1:19:09Jocko Willink?

  for me, I'm at Jaco.com. I'm also on social media, infinite scrolls, algorithms. I'm at Jocko Willink, Echo's at Echo Charles. Just be careful because these are basically platforms for you to be inducted into a group of filled with hatred.

• 1:19:30Jocko Willink?

  So just watch out. Don't let it happen. And when we have to fight for real, we are thankful that our military personnel are out there all over the world to fight and defend us and our way of lives, not online, but on the battlefield. So thanks to all of you and also thanks to our police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, border patrol, secret service, as well as all other first responders. Thanks to you all as well for defending and protecting us here at home. And everyone else out there, please pay attention. Pay attention.

• 1:20:07Jocko Willink?

  Pay attention because there's these, these mind pirates wandering around and they're trying to steal your brain.

• 1:20:17Jocko Willink?

  Know your biases, understand what you're doing, understand the instincts that you have can be taken advantage of if you're not careful.

• 1:20:26Jocko Willink?

  Look at the conflict that you're getting engaged in, what is it for?

• 1:20:33Jocko Willink?

  What is it for?

• 1:20:36Jocko Willink?

  Don't be an eagle or a rattler.

• 1:20:41Jocko Willink?

  Be a good human.

• 1:20:44Jocko Willink?

  And until next time, this is Echo and Jaco. Out.