440: Why WE Don't Learn From History.

History usually is the best help being a record of how things usually go wrong. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

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• 0:00Jocko Willink?

  This is Jocko Podcast number 440 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening Echo.

• 0:05Speaker 01

  Good evening.

• 0:05Jocko Willink?

  So on podcast 438, we talked about Robert McNamara's book. It's called In Retrospect. And in it, there's some

• 0:17Jocko Willink?

  very important lessons, hard learned lessons from the Vietnam War. And then in talking to General Sean McFarland on podcast 439, it's clear

• 0:31Jocko Willink?

  that we have a tendency to sometimes make the same mistakes. We don't learn. And that's pretty evident when you look at some of the mistakes that we made in Vietnam that we also made in Iraq and Afghanistan. It made me think of a book that I've had for a while that I it well, it's going to be very clear. The, the book is by B H Liddell Hart and the book is very fittingly called Why Don't We Learn From History?

• 0:58Jocko Willink?

  So I remembered that book as I was thinking through these lessons that we have not learned. And I opened it up to refresh my memory and I found that like much of B H Liddell Hart's work, there are some really good lessons in there. Oddly enough, many of them don't have anything to do with or only tangibly relate to us not learning from history. So even though the book is called Why Don't We Learn From History? A lot of the lessons in it are only tangentially related to that, even though it does talk about why we don't learn from history. So there's some amazing lessons in this book about war, about history, about leadership and about life. And so I wanted to take a look at it. Look, B H Liddell Hart, we've covered him before

• 1:42Jocko Willink?

  on this podcast, number 285, 286, number 287, all about the strategy of the indirect approach, covered those with Dave Burke.

• 1:50Speaker 01

  Good deal, Dave.

• 1:51Jocko Willink?

  That's the one. And so to refresh your memory, B H Liddell Hart, Sir Basil Henry Liddell Hart, to be exact, born Halloween, 1895. He was the son of a Methodist minister. He went to Cambridge for college because he's a Brit.

• 2:10Jocko Willink?

  World War One volunteered for the British Army. He was an officer, an infantry officer in the Kings, the Kings own Yorkshire Light Infantry. And he was on the front in the winter of nineteen fifteen for World War One. He suffered some concussive injuries from shell blasts. And by the way, that's in a time when we didn't really understand concussions. So I bet you were really messed up. By the time they sent you home from concussive blasts, it's probably because you couldn't walk straight. So he gets sent home from those. Recovers, gets sent back to the front just in time for the Battle of the Somme.

• 2:46Jocko Willink?

  Nearly his whole battalion was wiped out. This is, you know, the battle where there were sixty thousand casualties in one day for the Brits. Let me say that again, sixty thousand casualties in one day.

• 3:00Jocko Willink?

  He was eventually wounded. He was hit three times. He was gassed. And eventually couldn't fight anymore. And then he went, returned from the front, went back to England and he was involved in training recruits, getting them ready to go. He wrote manuals on infantry and drill and training and stuff like that. And then after the war was over, he transferred to the Royal Army Educational Corps. And then retired partially from his medical issues, from his wounds. Retired from the Army in nineteen twenty seven. And he wrote a bunch of books, wrote a bunch of books, wrote a bunch of articles.

• 3:41Jocko Willink?

  He wrote about the problems with the frontal assault, which is why I talk a lot about B. H. Liddell Hart and the indirect approach. And there's, you know, there's some myths around the German generals reading his books after World War One and kind of taking his ideas and utilizing them. And that's how they come up with Blitzkrieg.

• 4:01Jocko Willink?

  How accurate that is, is there some truth to it? Perhaps we're not 100% sure how true it is. But World War II comes, there's definitely maneuver warfare happening, which didn't happen in World War I. And he ends up writing after World War II, he, he sits down, actually, this is a book we'll probably review at some point. He interviewed a bunch of German generals to see what they were thinking and what the war was like from their perspective. He ends up in 1954, he writes his most popular book, which is called Strategy. He gets knighted in 1966, dies in 1970. And just left behind a legacy, strategy and tactics that remain applicable to this day. Like I said, we've covered him on the podcast before and I've brought him up a bunch of other times as well.

• 4:48Jocko Willink?

  And we're going to learn, cover this book and learn some of his thoughts and, and ideas from this book. Again, this book is called Why We Don't Learn From History. And you're going to see that this relates to us as humans, individuals, groups. The fact that we as people and organizations fail to learn and adapt in our life, in our business. So this book he wrote in 1944, and let's get into it. B. H. Liddell Hart, Why Don't We Learn From History? And it kicks off here, "History is the best help being a record of how things usually go wrong. A long historical view not only helps us keep calm in a time of trouble,

• 5:33Jocko Willink?

  but reminds us that there is an end to the longest tunnel. Even if we can see no good hope ahead and historical interest as to what will happen is help in carrying on. For a thinking man, that can be the strongest check on a suicidal feeling." I would add that the only hope for humanity now is that my particular field of study, warfare, will become purely a subject of antiquarian interest, meaning there should be no more war. That's what he hopes for. For the advent of atomic weapons, for with the advent of atomic weapons, we have.

• 6:12Jocko Willink?

  Come either to the last page of war. At any rate, on the major international scale we have known in the past, or the last page of history. So if we don't learn from these lessons, this will be the last thing we learn because we're going to kill ourselves with nuclear weapons. There's the intro in here by a guy named Giles Lauren, somebody from Sacramento. I'm a couple of notes from that I thought were interesting from the introduction. Man seems to come into this world with an inalterable belief that he knows best and that he can make others think as he does by force. Hmm. We think we know everything and we think we can beat other people until they agree with us.

• 6:54Jocko Willink?

  He fast forward a little bit. Nations delight in having a militaristic leader represent them and thrive on enforcing their will on lesser powers with a righteous view to the glory and plunder that will follow victory. Peoples are never so united as in the early days of war, nor so determined to overcome once they see that a greater effort and more sacrifices will be demanded of them before success is won.

• 7:25Jocko Willink?

  All very noble and all fantasy. Has any war in the history of the world followed such a pattern? None on the ship of fools ever asks. We, of course, are not on the ship of fools. And we do ask. We are those who pursue a knowledge of what happened before our time for pleasure and to gain some understanding that may give us a better judgment in the present and help us better order our lives. So we're studying history to make sure we don't make the same mistakes we've done in the past. This is also from the introduction. Liddell Hart wrote this little book about military matters, but its arguments can be extended much more broadly, in fact, to all facets of human life

• 8:10Jocko Willink?

  that make use of an accurate, accurate knowledge of what went before. Any successful institutional, institution, bureaucracy, bank, business, medical, legal, protects itself from change to its own eventual destruction.

• 8:28Jocko Willink?

  Where for where unification has been able to establish unity of ideas. It has usually ended in uniformity, paralyzing the growth of new ideas. It keeps doing what may or may not have at one time worked until it no longer works. So it's a little warning. If you and I are and our team is all thinking the same way, fired up. We're all uniform in our thoughts. It's bad. We've closed our minds. So even though we think we want to be unified, we need to leave enough space for us to have our own thoughts and new ideas. Otherwise, we're going to keep doing things that don't work or keep doing things that worked at one time. But now they're not working anymore. We keep doing it.

• 9:12Speaker 01

  Right, like you, like you eliminate probability for like adjustments or updates or, you know. Evil is that like, that's essentially the echo chamber, right? I mean, I don't know if the echo chamber.

• 9:23Jocko Willink?

  Hundred percent.

• 9:24Speaker 01

  Expression was, you know.

• 9:26Jocko Willink?

  That's the echo chamber.

• 9:26Speaker 01

  Cracking back then.

• 9:28Jocko Willink?

  So back to the book, doing the wrong things for the wrong reasons brings us back to the ship of fools. Wide readership of this little book could do much for the betterment of mankind. So we don't want to be on the ship of fools. Want to do the right things for the right reasons, not the wrong things for the wrong reasons. And again, that was Giles Loren. Don't know who that is. I'll have to research it. Okay, so the first chapter here, it's called history and truth. Fools said Bismarck, say they learn by experience. I prefer to profit by other people's experience. Right? I don't have to learn. I don't have to make the mistakes myself. The study of history offers that opportunity in the widest possible measure.

• 10:11Jocko Willink?

  It is universal experience, infinitely longer, wider and more varied than any individual's experiences. So of course, how are you going to be able to learn in your lifetime from experience? What you could get from an infinite number of experiences of other people and from history? How often do people claim superior wisdom on the score of their age and experience? The Chinese especially regard age with veneration and hold that a man of 80 years or more must be wiser than others. But 80 is nothing for a student of history. There is no excuse for anyone who is not illiterate if he is less than 3,000 years old in the mind.

• 10:57Jocko Willink?

  So if you're studying and you're reading, you're getting older, you're getting more experience, getting wiser.

• 11:06Jocko Willink?

  The main developments that took the general staffs by surprise in World War I could have been deduced from a study of the successive preceding wars in the previous half century. Why were they not deduced? Partly because the general staff study was too narrow, narrow, partly because they were blinded by their own professional interests and sentiments. So he's saying, if you looked at the previous wars, you'd have seen, oh, World War I, we can see what's about to go down. Look at the Civil War, the American Civil War, you were getting close to that idea of trench warfare. It was getting there. So you could have probably looked at it and said, hmm, we need to make some adjustments, but we didn't.

• 11:46Jocko Willink?

  History is the record of man's steps and slips. It shows us that the steps have been slow and slight. The slips, quick and abounding. It provides us with the opportunity to profit by the stumbles and tumbles of our forerunners. Great. If we pay attention to it. The catalog of, and by the way, obviously I'm skipping through parts of this and hitting the highlights. The catalog of cataclysmic happenings of history-changing accidents is endless. But among all the factors which produce sudden changes in the course of history, the issues of war have been the least accidental. This is very, a very important point. So he's saying, look, throughout history, there's all these times where there's like a mistake

• 12:31Jocko Willink?

  or there's a, an accident that happens and it kind of changes the course of history. But with war, war is the least, has the least impact from accident and from chance. So what is it? And he says, in reality, the reason has had a greater influence. Sorry. In reality, reason has had a greater influence than fortune on the issue of the wars that have most influenced history. Creative thought has often counted for more than courage, for more even than gifted leadership. This is very interesting, right? We talk about leadership being the most important thing on the battlefield. Now, in my opinion. Part of leadership is creativity.

• 13:16Jocko Willink?

  But he's categorizing them as, well, three different things. You've got courage that he talks about. You've got creativity and you've got leadership. He's saying creativity is the most important thing. Which is very interesting. Now, again, for me, I think of a good leader is going to be a creative leader. He's not categorizing that way. Courage, he's, you know, like, well, yeah, we've got to be courageous, but that's not what's going to change the battlefield.

• 13:40Jocko Willink?

  Fast forward a little bit. It helps us to realize that there are two forms of practical experience, direct and indirect, and that of the two indirect practical experience may be more valuable because it's infinitely wider. So like the fact that you have a lot of experience,

• 13:57Jocko Willink?

  it's narrow, but indirect experience, when you learn from someone else, it's going to be a lot wider span. Even in the most active career, especially a soldier's career, the scope and possibilities of direct experience are extremely limited. In contrast to the military, the medical profession has incessant practice. Yet the great advances in medicine and surgery have been due to the scientific thinker, or do more to the scientific thinker and researcher than to the practitioner. Direct experience is inherently limited, is inherently too limited to form an adequate foundation either for theory or application. That's very interesting, right? So in war, how often does a soldier get to fight?

• 14:42Jocko Willink?

  The fact is, not very, not as often as a surgeon. You know, Dr. Luke, he's performing two, three surgeries a day, every day. So you would think, well, you can't really assess how much you learn from being a soldier because you don't get to conduct soldiering all the time. You don't, you're not on campaign, you're not in combat all the time. In fact, you spend a very small part of your career, in most cases, in combat.

• 15:13Jocko Willink?

  Whereas a surgeon, they're doing that job every day. So you have the whole spectrum, someone that does their job rarely, comparatively speaking, and someone that does their job every day. And he's saying in both cases, the people that are detached a little bit can have a better understanding and actually make progress. Now, I would have to check with, you know, Dr. Peter Attia and say, hey, what kind of advancements have come from the surgeons that are in there every single day? Because maybe this is, you know, this is an older assessment, this is 1944. But it does make sense that if you're in there, like on the grind, cutting people open and doing the surgery, that's work and you're trying to get that job done.

• 15:56Jocko Willink?

  Whereas someone on the outside that's a little bit detached is looking at that going, hey, you know what? The way you're doing that surgery could probably be, there's probably a better way to do that.

• 16:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, it's, I mean, feels like, and I think, I feel like it's obvious, but it's like one of those, the difference between learning in the classroom and then learning in the field, right? On the job experience versus like classroom learning or whatever.

• 16:20Speaker 01

  But they're like, so they're essentially saying the classroom learning, for lack of a better term, right? Is, is you can broadly understand more. But the on the job training, why we give it so much credit is because tactically, like when you're actually have to do the thing that you're studying. You can learn more ways to troubleshoot and you can kind of, you know, there's an, in and of itself, there's a different, whole different type of learning, which gives rise to a whole different type of knowledge.

• 16:49Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, imagine this, I was going to use jujitsu as an example. And I was like, well, you know, if you were, if you're a person that just rolls all the time and doesn't drill and doesn't learn new technique, you're going to get overcome, but take that to an even more extreme.

• 17:05Jocko Willink?

  If the only way you learned to fought, fight was just by actually fighting, like to the death.

• 17:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:13Jocko Willink?

  No one would be any good at fighting.

• 17:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:15Jocko Willink?

  Like the best person would just be the biggest, strongest person that was fast.

• 17:18Speaker 01

  They'd be tough, dude.

• 17:19Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 17:19Speaker 01

  You need to be.

• 17:20Jocko Willink?

  They'd be tough, but they wouldn't have developed any techniques.

• 17:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:24Jocko Willink?

  You, you develop those techniques by breaking them down and stopping and retraining. And then you take someone like John Donahue. Who is not like known as a competitive, a competitor in jujitsu. But he's a thinker and an analyst of jujitsu. And so you watch him and you go, oh, or you see his progression in jujitsu and the way he's taken and formulated systems and overcome challenges on the mat. By teaching people and breaking down techniques. So even though if John Donahue would have been just like competing and in camp, never mind just like fighting other humans, right? If he's fighting other humans, he wouldn't have been discovered probably one thousandth,

• 18:09Jocko Willink?

  one one thousandth of the things that he's discovered by watching videos and by analyzing and by watching his competitors compete.

• 18:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:17Jocko Willink?

  So I think this is actually a pretty accurate statement.

• 18:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, to me it does make sense. Yeah, especially put that way.

• 18:23Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, now listen, this doesn't mean you can be someone that never gets on the mats at all, right? You have to be able to, you have to feel it, you have to understand it, you have to have done it.

• 18:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:34Jocko Willink?

  Before you can say, okay, I have the context that we're working in.

• 18:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:40Jocko Willink?

  And now I can look at it from an outside perspective. And you probably do have to get in there. So I'm sure John Donahue to this day like goes, oh, let me try this move. Let me get on, let, hold on, put me in half guard.

• 18:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:51Jocko Willink?

  You know, he has to say that to this day, let me feel it.

• 18:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, fully in, you know, I mean, it feels obvious again that the best is gonna, to get good at something and good like the in, from a holistic approach. Where it's like good as in I'm good at doing it and I'm good at teaching it and I'm good at understanding it. Like the whole goodness of it is gonna be from both. Both learning in the classroom quote unquote and on in the field.

• 19:19Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 19:19Speaker 01

  That seems obvious.

• 19:20Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 19:21Speaker 01

  And so Don Hert, good example where he sure like he's not a competitor, but I feel like kind of he is kind of by proxy in a way where he uses his competitor. You know how he's like really in touch with his competitors? Styles and ways and strengths and we I feel like he kind of uses his competitors as his own like tools, you know, to be out there like if he has to troubleshoot in the field like in a competition or in sparring or something like that, he's watching and looking at his competitors, you know? So he's kind of doing it by proxy in a way.

• 19:51Jocko Willink?

  But even that, if he was competing, he wouldn't see from the outside. Like it helps me a lot when I'm watching someone like we were doing rounds the other day with Greg Train and Dr. Luke and we were just doing guard passing like no stopping and you know, if you if you win, you stay. If you lose, you're out.

• 20:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:12Jocko Willink?

  So, you know, every time I'm out, I'm watching and I'm seeing like, oh, I see what Greg Train's doing over there. Oh, I see how Dr. Luke's doing that. So when you're on the outside and then you start to figure out little remedies and you now you go in and try it. So you you have to do, I think the answer here is like, you gotta do both. You gotta participate, but you can't just participate. You've got to take a step back and say, hold on, how is this happening? Why is this happening? You've got to observe things from the outside if you want to learn and get proficient at them. And most important, if you want to advance the technique.

• 20:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:45Jocko Willink?

  Because look, if if you're just working on your arm bar, the best way to work on your arm bar, once you know the technique is to drill it, drill it, drill it, drill it. If you're doing a hand surgery on the third knuckle or whatever, you want to get good at that, keep doing that surgery. But if you want to find a way to a new technique, you got to observe that thing from the outside. You got to detach a little bit.

• 21:04Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. And even.

• 21:08Speaker 01

  I guess it feels like, again, it's like tactical and strategic. So like the strategic will be like the detached kind of perspective. And then tactical, you know, like you can't, if you have a lot of experience doing something like a plumber, we'll say, right, you get a plumber who's been working for 40 years as a plumber, freaking three calls a day, every day, seven days a week. Bro, that guy's gonna go into any plumbing situation and he's gonna know like, oh, I know, I see the leak. It's coming, it looks like it's coming from here, but this is like, you can tell, right? Cause it's happened like four times. Meanwhile, the guy who just studied plumbing, yeah, he knows all the things, but he can't troubleshoot in that way. You know, in the field, you know, so it's like, they're like, it's a broader understanding within a broad

• 21:51Speaker 01

  understanding kind of a thing. So they kind of go hand in hand in a way, you know?

• 21:55Jocko Willink?

  Gotta do both.

• 21:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, ideally.

• 21:57Jocko Willink?

  Gotta do both. Fast forward a little bit, soldiers universally concede the general truth of Napoleon's much quoted dictum that in war, quote, "The moral is to the physical as three to one," end quote. The actual arithmetic proportion may be worthless for morale is apt to decline if weapons are inadequate. And the strongest will is of little use if it is inside a dead body. But although the moral and physical factors are inseparable and indivisible, the saying gains its enduring value because it expresses the idea of the predominance of moral factors in all decisions.

• 22:40Jocko Willink?

  Fast forward, for any historian, it is a valuable experience to have lived in the world of affairs and seen bits of history in the making. This is what we're talking about. It's you have to, as a historian, you have to have fought. You can't talk about jujitsu unless you train jujitsu. And really, unless you've competed before, it's really hard for you to talk about competition.

• 23:05Jocko Willink?

  Not the least part of its value comes from seeing the importance of accidental factors. A touch of liver, a thick head, a sudden tiff, a domestic trouble, or the intervention of lunch hour.

• 23:20Jocko Willink?

  So what is he talking about there? Goes into this big example of meetings and like lunch hour and the how the meeting is unfolding and how no one wants to make a decision until like lunch is in 15 minutes and then all of a sudden people start getting real serious about like, all right, let's go ahead and and and get the, let's make this decision.

• 23:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:40Jocko Willink?

  And even talks about how someone that's a good leader will like not really present a final conclusion until it's almost lunch.

• 23:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:50Jocko Willink?

  And then he kind of rolls in and says, well, I'd like to present these options and everyone goes, oh, you know what? I'm hungry. Yep. We agree.

• 23:55Speaker 01

  Right. So he kind of uses that as a, as an additional element of strategy that can be like taught. Yeah, like stuff that you can only learn in the field, like because, okay, so you know how like we'll get into a, we'll say, um, debates, mean you or whatever, not a, whatever debates.

• 24:11Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 24:12Speaker 01

  And this expression, which my brother J. Charles kind of turned me on to is like in a vacuum. They say in a vacuum, which just means like, yeah, in theory, like, yeah, and that's, it's all correct in a vacuum. But you're not accounting for everyday things that come up that are not part of the curriculum as far as what you're talking about or whatever. And that's exactly what that is where it's like, yeah, you got to take into account and a lot of these war books that you read actually talk about those things where it's like, hey, this is all true. Ideally, you want to do this and react this way and all this stuff, but you have to take into account morale, like all these unwritten things that can come up under certain circumstances, but not necessarily.

• 24:52Jocko Willink?

  And that's exactly what we talked about, a thick head, like, oh, this sounds cool, but my commander was an idiot.

• 24:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 24:58Jocko Willink?

  Or my sergeant that I told to go execute this was dumb or, you know, I told the two platoons to go make this happen, but they're in a, he says a sudden tiff, they get in an argument about something that now doesn't work.

• 25:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:09Jocko Willink?

  Or I told Echo to go handle this. Well, he's having domestic trouble. Now he's taking it out on his troops and they don't get the job done.

• 25:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:16Jocko Willink?

  And he talks about how these little personal things just. Throw these theories out the window. And he's gonna go even harder with this. Uh, he says, experience has also given me some light into the processes of manufacturing history, artificial history. The product is less transparent than a silk stocking. Nothing can deceive like a document. Here lies the value of the war of 1914 to 1918 as a training ground for historians. Governments opened their archives, statesmen's and generals their mouths in time to check the records by personal examination of other witnesses.

• 25:58Jocko Willink?

  After 20 years' experience of such work, pure documentary history seems to me akin to mythology. And he starts talking about that. Many, many are the gaps to be found in official archives, token of documents destroyed later to conceal what might impair a commander's reputation. More difficult to detect are forgeries with which some of them have been replaced. On the whole, British commanders do not see, seem to have been capable of more ingenuity than mere destruction or antedating of orders. The French were often more subtle. A general could safeguard the lives of his men as well as his own reputation by writing

• 26:41Jocko Willink?

  orders based on a situation that did not exist for an attack that nobody carried out while everybody shared in the credit since the record went on file.

• 26:52Jocko Willink?

  There's an old story about the SEALs in Vietnam being told to do some ambush somewhere on some river deep in an enemy territory. And they assessed that it was not a good mission. They pushed back up the chain of command. Hey, like, that's a dangerous area. We don't think there's gonna be any activity. It's gonna be hard to get in and out. And they're like, no, do it. And so the SEALs were like, okay, Roger that. And they patrolled outside the wire, you know, 100 yards and sat in the jungle for six hours and then patrolled back out that 100 yards and said, yep, we didn't see anything. Same thing you see in, in Band of Brothers where Dick Winters is getting ordered to go do another reconnaissance across the river. Does it? Loses a guy, has a few other casualties, comes back, didn't find anything out.

• 27:36Jocko Willink?

  By the way, the war is about over, like the documents are all but signed. His commander's like, do it again tonight. And he says, sir, I don't recommend that. We took casualties. Do it again tonight. Cause Roger that sir, and they go into the cellar of a house and they get drunk.

• 27:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:53Jocko Willink?

  Famous American historian Henry Adams. Wrote this, I have written too much history to believe in it. So if anyone wants to differ from me, I am prepared to agree with him.

• 28:07Jocko Willink?

  Chuck.

• 28:11Jocko Willink?

  Alright, now we're gonna start to rip into some of these authoritative schools, he calls them. It seems hardly possible that the authoritative schools of military thought could have misunderstood as completely as they did the evolution that was so consistently revealed throughout the wars of the 19th and 20th centuries. So how did they get this so wrong? A review of the record of error suggests that the only possible explanation is that their study of war was subjective, not objective. But even if we can reduce the errors of the past in the writing and teaching of military history by soldiers, the fundamental difficulty remains.

• 28:52Jocko Willink?

  Faith matters so much to a soldier in the stress of war that military training inculcates a habit of unquestioning obedience, which in turn fosters an unquestioning acceptance of the prevailing doctrine. While fighting is most, while fighting is a most practical test of theory, it is a small part of soldiering. And there is far more in soldiering that tends to make men the slaves of a theory. So yeah, you're in the military and you're gonna get trained. This is what we do and you've gotta believe in what you're doing.

• 29:32Jocko Willink?

  Moreover, the soldier must have faith in his power to defeat the enemy. Hence to question, even on material grounds, the possibility of a successful attack is a risk to faith. So if you look at me and you're like, hey, Jocko, I don't know if we can actually succeed in charging up that hill with the machine gun nest at the top.

• 29:56Jocko Willink?

  That's you doubting that you can do it. So you don't even want to say that.

• 30:01Jocko Willink?

  Doubt is unnerving, save to philosophic minds. And armies are not composed of philosophers, either at the top or the bottom. So since I've told you and I've trained you like, dude, we need to have faith. We need to believe in ourselves. And you're looking at this hill going, man, I see like a machine gun nests, couple of machine gun nests with interlocking fields of fire. And not much cover for us going up there. I don't know if this is possible. That's like a sin for you to question this, right? If we're not careful.

• 30:35Jocko Willink?

  In no activity is optimism so necessary for success. For it deals largely with the unknown, even unto death. The margin that separates optimism from blind folly is narrow. So we have to be careful that like, I think we can do this. We can do this. We can do this. We can do this. Well, really?

• 30:57Speaker 01

  Yeah. Essentially your dichotomy of leadership, right? Foolhardy and brave.

• 31:02Jocko Willink?

  On the one side is optimism. I think we can make this happen. Staring up at a, maybe a machine gun nest that we've got some cover on the way up. There's some, there's some trenches that we can get through. There's a, some terrain features we can use. We can put some fires on it beforehand. Okay, I think we can do this. And then you go too far, it becomes folly, which is like, hey, we're going.

• 31:25Speaker 01

  Bad move.

• 31:26Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Thus, there is no cause for surprise that soldiers have, have so often overstepped it and become victims of their faith. So that's what happens. We, we believe, we have so, so much optimism that we can make this happen. And we end up getting killed because of it.

• 31:44Jocko Willink?

  The soldier could hardly face the test defined in the motto of the famous Lung Ming Academy. A motto that headed each page of the books used there. Quote, "The student must first learn to approach the subject in a spirit of doubt." End quote. That's really good. It's a good idea.

• 32:07Jocko Willink?

  Echo, charge up that hill. Your first thought should be doubt. I don't know if I can do that actually. Yeah.

• 32:14Jocko Willink?

  The point had been still more clearly expressed in the 11th century teacher teachings of Chang Tsai. Quote, "If you can doubt at points where other people feel no impulse to doubt, then you are making progress." End quote. Now, I'm going to tell you my realistic assessment of this is, is what you need on your team is people with both attitudes. You need someone that kind of thinks you can make anything happen. You need someone that thinks we're all going to die. And you got to actually listen to both of them. Yeah. With an open mind and figure out, okay, I think I see where this goes. Okay. Yeah, Echo's got a good point. The enemy is in a way superior position with terrain.

• 33:00Jocko Willink?

  But Fred's got a good point, too. We can put suppressive fire and they're not going to be able to do it. So you got to really open your mind and hear both the doubters and the glass is overflowing half full. Yeah.

• 33:17Jocko Willink?

  Another reason, and this is all under the subject heading of, um, what's this chapter called? History and the truth. So this is, this is why we don't get to the truth in history. One of them in the next section here is called the fear of truth. We learn from history that in every age and every climate, the majority of people have resented what seems in retrospect to have been purely matter of fact comment on their institutions. So when you say something bad about our institutions, someone says something bad about jujitsu, like you have a resentment immediately. Yes. Somebody says something bad about Hawaii, we're automatically mad. Yeah. Right? It's very true.

• 34:00Jocko Willink?

  We learned too that nothing has aided the persistence of falsehoods and the evils resulting from it more than the unwillingness of good people to admit the truth when it was disturbing to their comfortable assurance.

• 34:17Jocko Willink?

  So when someone says, bro, what are you, why are you doing it like that? And you say, because we've always done it this way. That is when we have the truth not being followed, not being discovered even.

• 34:33Jocko Willink?

  Always the tendency continues to be shocked by natural comment and to hold certain things too sacred to think about. Oh, I gotta be careful of that, right? Man, and like, do you remember when in jujitsu when foot locks were like bad?

• 34:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:50Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, so even you remember that?

• 34:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:52Jocko Willink?

  And when did you start that training?

• 34:54Speaker 01

  Two thousand five.

• 34:55Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah.

• 34:55Speaker 01

  Official.

• 34:56Jocko Willink?

  I mean, imagine when I was sitting back there in nineteen ninety six with Dean Lister breaking people's feet. And people were like, this foot locks do not work is, is, I would hear jujitsu people say that.

• 35:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:06Jocko Willink?

  Foot locks do not work.

• 35:08Speaker 01

  In the spirit of complete accuracy, it wasn't all foot locks. The regular straight foot lock was okay. Because this is what, this is why I.

• 35:17Jocko Willink?

  So, so rewind another five years or ten years, even the straight foot lock.

• 35:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's not the jam.

• 35:23Jocko Willink?

  Was, this does not work. Hey, because it just hurts, but the person can still like punch you in the face. So therefore it's, it's not a good move. We shouldn't be doing them. Why would you give up position? Why would you sit back?

• 35:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:37Jocko Willink?

  You're on top, don't go for a foot lock. They don't work.

• 35:40Speaker 01

  You know why? And this is just me, no one even told me this, but this is what I just assumed. So I could literally have been wrong this whole time, even though I still feel this like more on an emotional level where, okay, so I, I always thought that the straight foot lock was fine because literally the, the way I learned it was from Hoist and Hicks and Gracie back in the day in the tapes, you know? But that was it. There's no heel hooks or, you know, this kind of stuff. But, um, I always thought it was because they're frowned upon or they don't count or they don't, you know, they don't, they don't have like the legitimacy is because you don't have to earn the position to achieve it. So if you want an arm bar, you gotta, you can't just be in a neutral or like disengaged position, you know, kind of a thing.

• 36:23Jocko Willink?

  You gotta be in the game.

• 36:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, you gotta pass his guard to get them out, to get the arm bar, or you gotta get the guys back for the choke, you know? Where footlock, you kind of don't. You can, he can be holding you in your guard and you can just sort of get the footlock without passing guard, without gaining superior position, kind of a thing. That's what I always, I thought that that's why it was frowned upon.

• 36:42Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Well, there was a time where it was just totally frowned upon. The whole, the whole, the whole jam.

• 36:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, they'd like throw shoes at you.

• 36:49Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah, it was crazy. And so it was, it was sacred. It was too sacred to even talk about like, hey, do you think that they might be effective? Like, no, just be quiet.

• 37:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:01Jocko Willink?

  That's not jujitsu, by the way.

• 37:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:04Jocko Willink?

  And you're right, though. If you watch, I forget which UFC, UFC one or two, when Hoist fought against Ken Shamrock. Ken Shamrock goes for, uh, I mean, he's going for his foot, whether he's going for a heel hook or footlock. And Hoist with masterful technique, like immediately defends it. The kind of defense where he clearly fully understood the footlock and heel hook procedures. And that was in nineteen ninety-three or nineteen ninety-four.

• 37:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:36Jocko Willink?

  So Ken Shamrock, and by the way, Ken Shamrock and that school, the Lions Den School, they were very versed in footlocks and heel hooks because they came from Japan. And there was that whole lineage of catch wrestling and heel hooks and footlocks over in Japan. So Ken Shamrock was legit. And, but you, when you go back and watch that, like when I watched it at the time, I was pure jujitsu guy. And so I thought, oh, well, the footlock doesn't work. Because look, that guy tried it and then Hoist, it didn't work at all.

• 38:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:10Jocko Willink?

  But what you realize when you go back five years later, you go, oh, no, Hoist knows how to defend that.

• 38:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:15Jocko Willink?

  Like a hundred percent.

• 38:16Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 38:17Jocko Willink?

  New and had the awareness. That's what impresses me.

• 38:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:21Jocko Willink?

  Cause he had the awareness that that, he went for that footlock and boom, he was on it. He was defending it immi- immediately.

• 38:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:27Jocko Willink?

  And it worked out bad for, like, Ken Shamrock did exactly what we all thought. It reinforced the position. You say, oh, you see what happens when you go for a footlock?

• 38:35Speaker 01

  Right.

• 38:36Jocko Willink?

  The guy comes on top now.

• 38:37Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 38:39Jocko Willink?

  Sacred.

• 38:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, and you read about Ken Chalmers being legit because if I'm not mistaken, same exact event, that was UFC one. Right. He got Pat Smith in the heel hook. And yeah, jammed him up pretty good. So yeah, you're right. But yeah, you're right. Like you can't react with that kind of timing if foot locks. Aren't part of training.

• 39:01Jocko Willink?

  No, no, he knew.

• 39:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, it goes along with what you always say. You say, hey, if they don't, if you don't like them, if you don't like that part of the game, then learn to defend against them. Boom, there you go.

• 39:16Jocko Willink?

  I can conceive of no finer ideal of a man's life than to face life with clear eyes instead of stumbling through it like a blind man, an imbecile, or a drunkard, which in a thinking sense is the common preference. How rarely does one meet anyone whose first reaction to anything is to ask, is it true? Yet unless that man, unless that is a man's natural reaction, it shows that truth is not uppermost in his mind, and unless it is, true progress is unlikely. This, this idea of just constantly thinking like, what, what am I, and what I am hearing, is it true? Is it true? Is it accurate? Where's it come from?

• 40:02Jocko Willink?

  In 1935, a distinguished German general contributed to the leading military organ of his country, an article entitled, Why Can't We Camouflage? It was not, as might be supposed, an appeal to revive and develop the art of deceiving the eye with the object of concealing troop movements and positions. The camouflage which the author wished to see adopted in the German army was the concealment of the less pleasing facts of history. He deplored the way that after World War One, the diplomatic documents were published in full even to the Kaiser's marginal comments.

• 40:44Jocko Willink?

  So like, oh, you're looking back at history. Don't say the bad stuff. Say the good stuff.

• 40:50Jocko Willink?

  This camouflaged history not only conceals false and faults and deficiencies that it could otherwise be that could otherwise be remedied, but it engenders false confidence and false confidence underlies most of the failures that military history records. It is the dry rot of armies. But its effects go wider and are felt earlier for the false confidence of military leaders has been a spur to war. So when you do something and you cover it up and you're like, oh, no, actually, that didn't really happen. We actually did great.

• 41:27Jocko Willink?

  And then you then, by the way, that that enables people into the thinking of like, well, we're really good. We're better than we are. And what do we do then? We go to fight when we shouldn't.

• 41:39Jocko Willink?

  This section is called the evasion of truth.

• 41:45Jocko Willink?

  The history of 1914 to 1918 is full of examples. Passchendaele perhaps provides the most striking. It is clear from what Hague said beforehand that his motive was a desire to and a belief that he could win the war in a single, win the war single handed in 1917 by a British offensive in Flanders before the Americans arrived. You've got Hague in charge of the Brits and he says, well, look, we can win one big push in 1917 before the Americans even show up. By the time he was ready to launch it, all the conditions had changed. And the chief French commanders expressed grave doubts. So the French are going, hey, dude, it's not going to work.

• 42:31Jocko Willink?

  Yet in his eagerness to persuade a reluctant British cabinet to allow him to fulfill his dream, he disclosed none of the unfavorable facts which were known to him and exaggerated those that seemed favorable.

• 42:48Jocko Willink?

  Just lying. Oh, don't worry. No, we'll be able to do this. Oh, we have plenty of ammunition. Oh, their lines are weak over here. Like, it's just lies.

• 42:58Jocko Willink?

  When his offensive was launched on the last day of July, it failed completely on the part that was most vital.

• 43:05Jocko Willink?

  Yet, he reported to London that the results were, quote, "most satisfactory." The weather broke that day, that very day, and the offensive became bogged. This is freaking just terrible, right? This is, this is when you get, the commanders are telling the, the happy story about what's going on. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, the Vietnamese are, the Viet, the South Vietnamese army is improving. They're getting better. Oh, the, the Iraqi soldiers are getting better. The Afghans are, the Afghan, uh, forces are really coming together and they're, they're, they're really supportive. It's like, no. No, it's not true. Oh, yeah, we launched this offensive. It went great. No, it didn't go great.

• 43:47Jocko Willink?

  When the prime minister, becoming anxious at the mounting toll of casualties, went over to Flanders. Hague argued that the poor physique of the prisoners then being taken was proof that his offensive was reducing the German army to exhaustion. So, the prime minister goes over to Flanders and says like, dude, it doesn't seem like this is going well. And Hague says, no, you gotta go see the German prisoners. Look at what rough shape they are. You're gonna be able to see that this is working. When the prime minister asked to see one of the prisoners' cages, one of Hague's staff telephoned in advance to give instructions that, quote, "all able-bodied prisoners were to be removed from the core cages before his arrival."

• 44:32Jocko Willink?

  The chain of deception continued and the offensive went on until 400,000 men had been sacrificed.

• 44:40Jocko Willink?

  So, eh...

• 44:43Jocko Willink?

  That's like freaking capital punishment for this guy in my mind.

• 44:48Jocko Willink?

  Making it look like the Germans are all weak and injured and whatnot. This is lies. In later years, Hague was wont to argue an excuse that his offensive had been undertaken at the behest of the French and that the possibility of the French army breaking up compelled me to go on attacking. But in his letters at the time, since revealed, he declared that its morale was excellent.

• 45:16Jocko Willink?

  And the following spring, he blamed the government when his own army thus brought to the verge of fiscal and moral exhaustion, failed to withstand the German offensive.

• 45:25Jocko Willink?

  Hague was an honorable man according to his lights, but his lights were dim. The consequences which have been made Passchendaele, have made Passchendaele, a name of ill omen, may be traced to the combined effect of his tendency to deceive himself. His tendency therefore to encourage his subordinates to deceive him and their quote loyal tendency to tell a superior what was likely to coincide with his desires. Boy, that's scary. So I am running around with my attitude and I, I by my presence, when I go Echo, how's it going down there? You look up at me and go, it's going great, sir. Yeah.

• 46:09Jocko Willink?

  Cause you're loyal to me. Yeah. And cause you're loyal to me, you're supporting what I'm doing. You want it, you want it to be going well, so you just tell me it's going well. Yeah.

• 46:19Jocko Willink?

  Passchendaele is an object lesson of in this kind of well-meaning, if not disinterested untruthfulness. As a young officer, I had cherished a deep respect for the higher command, but I was sadly disillusioned about the many of them when I came to see them more closely from the angle of a military correspondent. It was saddening to discover how many apparently honorable men would stoop to almost anything to help their own advancement.

• 46:51Jocko Willink?

  Fast forward, a different habit with worse effect was the way ambitious officers, when they came in sight of promotion to the generals list, would decide that they would bottle up their thoughts and ideas as a safety precaution, until they reached the top and they could put those ideas into practice. So I got some things, I want to keep my mouth shut until I get to the top, then I'm going to tell everyone something. Unfortunately, the usual result after years of such self repression for the sake of their ambition was that when the bottle was eventually uncorked, the contents had evaporated. I found that moral courage was quite as rare in the top levels of the services as among politicians. It was also a surprise to me to find that those who had shown

• 47:36Jocko Willink?

  the highest degree of physical courage tended to be those who were the most lacking in moral courage. And the clue to this seemed to be largely in the growing obsession with personal career ambition, particularly in the cases where an unhappy home life resulted in inordinate concern with their career prospects. The other main cause in diminishing moral courage, however, was a lack of private means that led commanding officers to wilt before their superiors because of concern with the problem of providing for their children's education. So you had, on the one hand, someone that just like has a crappy home life, and so they're just trying to get promoted. Or the other end of the spectrum is, I'm trying to take care of my family, so I better get promoted, so I get more money. I don't want to lose my job.

• 48:24Jocko Willink?

  Now I used the word loyalty in air quotes earlier. This section is called blinding loyalties. We learn from history that those who are disloyal to their own superiors are most prone to preach loyalty to their subordinates. Loyalty is a noble quality so long as it is not blind and does not exclude the higher loyalty to the truth and decency. But the word is much abused. For loyalty analyzed is too often a polite word for what would be more accurately described as a conspiracy for mutually mutual inefficiency.

• 49:03Jocko Willink?

  In this sense, it is essentially selfish, like a servile loyalty demeaning both to master and servant. And you see this all the time, right? Where you you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours. Is that considered loyalty? Hmm. Questionable. It's a conspiracy for mutual inefficiency.

• 49:25Jocko Willink?

  These minor loyalties also invade the field of history and damage its fruits.

• 49:32Jocko Willink?

  Deep is the gulf between works of history as written and the truth of history, and perhaps never more so than in books dealing with military history. If one reason is that these are usually written by soldiers untrained as historians, and another that there is frequently some personal link, whether of acquaintance or tradition between the author and the subject, a deeper reason lies in habit of mind. For the soldier, quote, "My country, right or wrong," quote, "must be a watchword."

• 50:02Jocko Willink?

  And this essential loyalty, whether it be to the country, to the regiment, or to the comrades, is so ingrained in him that when he passes from action to reflection, it is difficult for him to acquire instead the historian's single-minded loyalty to the truth. So you're writing about your buddies and you're like, oh, he was great. Oh, my boss was great. And my team was great. It's like, you got to be careful of that.

• 50:28Jocko Willink?

  Faith matters so much in time of crisis, one must have gone deep into history before reaching the conviction that truth matters more.

• 50:38Jocko Willink?

  Next section. It's called Government and Freedom. And again, this book is called Why Don't We Learn From History? So we just went through a bunch of military reasons, right? We're all covering for each other. No one wants to talk about it. We got these misplaced loyalties. We got all those things going on. The documentation, like there's all these things happening.

• 51:00Jocko Willink?

  And now we get into government and freedom.

• 51:02Speaker 01

  These, I mean, I would imagine you'd think this is

• 51:07Speaker 01

  normal or obvious, for lack of a better term, that this is, yeah, sure, it was a military, but I was thinking about all kinds of other situations where it's like, hey, that idea applies to every, kind of a lot of situations.

• 51:18Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah.

• 51:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, that all, I mean, okay, so back to that, that law, what do you call inefficiency commitment to like.

• 51:25Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, mutually, mutually supporting inefficiencies or whatever.

• 51:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's essentially like little side agendas, right, that you guys are collaborating on that goes against or may go against like the greater good of the, of the, you know, the team, bro, that's freaking, that's everywhere, you know, guys, little collusion, you know, those, I don't know, steal from the mailroom, or I don't know, whatever the, the deal is, work, yeah, or even as kids, right? We'll go, we'll sneak out at night together or something, you know, something like that.

• 51:52Jocko Willink?

  We plot.

• 51:53Speaker 01

  Where we'll go, yeah, we'll go sneak and, I don't know, grab some cookies out of the cookie jar together, you know? You get me one tonight, I'll get you one tomorrow, kind of a thing.

• 52:02Jocko Willink?

  That's it.

• 52:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 52:04Jocko Willink?

  And then all those things end up hiding the truth.

• 52:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:09Jocko Willink?

  That's what they end up doing.

• 52:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:15Jocko Willink?

  So this section is called government and freedom, blindfolded authority. All of us do foolish things, but the wiser realize what they do. The most dangerous error is failure to recognize our own tendency to error. That failure is a common affliction of authority. So we're gonna make mistakes. We fail to make, that's like Extreme Ownership, the book, I wrote the book with Leif Babin.

• 52:41Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 52:42Jocko Willink?

  Going back to the other thing, like, oh, we want to paint ourselves in the best light.

• 52:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:47Jocko Willink?

  It's like, actually, we want to tell the truth about what's happening. That's why the opening chapter of that is, hey, we had a blue on blue, killed a friendly Iraqi soldier, had one of my SEALs get wounded, had a few other friendly Iraqi soldiers get wounded, like, all that is a rough thing to put out.

• 53:09Jocko Willink?

  But guess what? I made mistakes. Those mistakes need to be accounted for. To sit there and think, oh, well, no, I did everything perfect. It's like, hmm. No, did not. So that's the same, you know, that's, that's one of the themes in the books. Isn't, hey, here's what we did awesome. It's actually, here's what we messed up. Same thing with dichotomy of leadership, same thing with leadership strategy and tactics. It's like, oh, here's some mistakes that I made. Here's some things that I could have done better. Here's some lessons learned. Now I'll tell you, there's times where it's like, oh, do I rat out? Somebody else, some other unit? No, we're not ratting out other units.

• 53:54Jocko Willink?

  You know, like, oh, well, they could have done this better. It's like, hmm, no, we don't need to say that. They're not here to discuss it. But as far as what we did wrong? Yeah, cleared hot. Yeah. The other thing is, when you, when you debrief, whether it's a SEAL platoon or whether you debrief getting back from an operation, bro, there's no, there's no, there's no sugar coating. Like if something happened on a mission and you know, the, there's confusion, there's, there's, like this happened a lot in Ramadi where people are confused on where the friendlies are and friendlies are shooting at friendlies, right?

• 54:39Jocko Willink?

  Blue on blue potential situations. You know, interestingly, there's, so there's the opening blue on blue in Extreme Ownership. Well, Leif and I were, we kind of outlined what chapters we were going to write about. Or what subjects we were going to write about. And we were both kind of pulling stories from Ramadi individually. And it turns out Leif wrote a chapter where he's talking about Chris Kyle.

• 55:05Jocko Willink?

  Is looking at a, at an individual, an unknown individual that has a scoped weapon inside of a building where there's not supposed to be any friendlies. And Chris, as a sniper is like, hey, I see someone with a scoped weapon. Well, there was snipers in Ramadi, enemy snipers in Ramadi. So Chris is, hey, I see someone with a scoped weapon in that building. They're in this window. Leif, do we have friendlies in there? And so Leif is calling back to the army saying, hey, do you have any friendlies in this particular building? The army says, no, we don't. And they're, they're saying, kill that guy. Because guess what? Guess who's killing army soldiers? Enemy snipers. So they're telling Leif to tell Chris, kill that guy. Like, take him out. And Chris didn't feel comfortable with it.

• 55:48Jocko Willink?

  And Leif continued to say, hey, hold on, let's review this. And finally, what Leif ends up doing is saying, hey, we don't feel comfortable taking a shot. Can you assault that building? And when, when they said that, it became like, I think the guys left the building that Chris was looking at. So basically, it became very clear that we, those were friendlies, friendlies that Chris was looking at. So there's a blue on blue. He writes about, like, Leif writes about the, meanwhile, I was, I wrote a chapter where

• 56:21Jocko Willink?

  an army Bradley, which is like a small tank with a 25 millimeter chain gun on it, that can reap all kinds of havoc, is calling back to the combat outpost, saying, hey, we, there's, we see people with scoped weapons on top of such and such a building, building 43, in this block. And so they ask me, hey, Janko, do you, and this is, this is in the, in the tactical, in the, in the combat outpost. So I've got guys out in a, in a building. And they say, hey, Janko, do you have any build, any guys in building 43? And I'm like, no, I don't, because I'm sitting there looking at my map. I can know where my guys

• 57:04Jocko Willink?

  are. They're in building, you know, 58. And so the guy's like, okay, well, we have people with scope weapons. Now I'm we're very blue on blue paranoid. Yeah. So I said, hold on a second. What building you saying? He goes to building forty three right here. And I'm looking at the battle map. I'm like, okay. And so finally I said, hey, ask the Bradley to count the number of buildings from where he is, because we knew where he was. Count the number of buildings up. And he's like, stand by. And it sounded like a ridiculous request, right? Are you serious? You want us to count the number of buildings? And so, all right, stand by. And he comes back. He's like, actually, correction, it's not building forty three, it's building fifty eight. Or whatever the numbers were.

• 57:47Jocko Willink?

  So what I'm saying is both of us were talking about these, these blue on blues. And there was another blue on blue that was the opening chapter. So there's a lot of this stuff happening. My point in telling you all this is when we'd come back from those operations, or even that particular situation, like, we're gonna debrief that. There's no holds barred. It's not like we don't, you, you can't let that stuff slide. So even though historically, you know, in extreme ownership, I'm not like, and by the way, this particular soldier was saying, can we engage those, you know, people on the rooftop of building forty three? Like, no, that guy made a mistake. There's no reason to call people out. They were doing the best they could. In that debrief, like, it's like, hey, what were you thinking? Why did you do this?

• 58:32Jocko Willink?

  How can we better mark our position? What, what could we do to, to make sure this doesn't happen? So even though in history, these things might get softened, man, on the battlefield in the debrief, you cannot allow them to get softened. You have to be hard on each other and most important to the key point of this whole book, truthful with each other to say, hey, this is bad. You know, I, I know Leif and I think it was Leif and Dave. Leif got, you know, had a, had a enemy tank, sorry, not an enemy tank, an Iraqi tank,

• 59:11Jocko Willink?

  like firing at them. Like there's, it's scary and we have to be very careful and make sure that we tell each other the truth to prevent these things from happening. So like I said, I guess my point in saying on the battlefield, that truth is going to be a lot more direct and it's a lot more critical because lives are at stake. And then in these historical books, well, maybe these people are looking out for their friends and not wanting to make someone look bad and wanting to keep their boss from, you know, having any collateral damage, that type of stuff.

• 59:45Speaker 01

  Yeah. And that makes sense. I think, I think anyway, because yeah, when you're in the heat of battle, like the, the objective seems a lot more clear and available in your head. So yeah, just because someone said, hey, you made a bad move. You're not like distracted by the fact that you said that about me, you know, because the mission is so clear, so in front of your face, you know, as opposed to later on, everything's settled down, you're settled in as a person.

• 1:00:09Jocko Willink?

  And by the way, this doesn't give you the right to be an asshole because if it's like, hey, what the hell was your Bradley driver thinking? What the hell was wrong? No, it's like, what did we do wrong? Hey, your Bradley driver thought we were in the wrong building? He should have been able to identify that we were friendlies and not even thought for a second, we should have had some better marking. So what can we do better?

• 1:00:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:00:30Jocko Willink?

  Again, the idea of extreme ownership is real. And even in combat, even though you're saying like, oh, it's, it's really intense and all that, people still have the same mechanisms that they have in regular life. So if I go, Echo, what were you doing pointing your weapon over there? Your idea isn't going to be, oh, well, I made a mistake. No, you're going to get defensive and you're going to say, well, I was, how are we supposed to know where you were? You weren't even marking your position correctly. So I don't go at you like that. I say, hey, Echo, and notice that you were, you had your Bradley 25 millimeter chain gun trained on my guys. Clearly I did a bad job of letting you know where they are and we're not doing a good job of marking our positions. What can we do to make sure that this doesn't happen again? And now your mind is opened up.

• 1:01:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:09Jocko Willink?

  So the principle. They apply whether you're in combat, whether you're in business, it doesn't matter.

• 1:01:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:15Jocko Willink?

  Taking ownership is how you actually move forward to find a solution. Pointing fingers and blaming other people, it doesn't, nothing gets solved.

• 1:01:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:23Jocko Willink?

  Nothing gets solved within the, the own team, like in our platoon, nothing gets solved. But nothing gets solved external from the platoon if the platoon is pointing their fingers at everybody else.

• 1:01:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:34Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So caution must be used.

• 1:01:36Speaker 01

  Yeah. That's so crazy how the details of, we'll say, communication and those whole dynamics. Where like, you know, your example of like, oh, what the, what were you doing pointing your machine gun? See, even that tone right there, kind of like ventured off into like a personal tone. Where it was, it was like, you, you got, kind of got off of all business, which like, that's what being direct, in my opinion, or as far as I understand it. When you're direct, you're just direct. You're not sugar coating it with like, you know, you, you know. Overall, a great job, but this one little teen tiny tweak, you know, like, that's like sugar coating it, right? But if you're direct, you're like, you don't say good job, there's no need to necessarily say good job right now. Cause we're trying to solve this problem and that's the, kind of the direct mission at that point.

• 1:02:17Speaker 01

  So you'll say, hey, like this was the wrong move, um, why did you do it that way? Or why did you do it that way? Um, because we know it was the wrong move, kind of a thing. But if you start going personal, cause that's all business, right? Direct is all business, but if you go personal, like, what are you, a moron? That's personal, like, Brad, why do you have to call me names, you know, kind of a thing. Even, but then it goes all the way down to even the tone that you're using, you know, kind of a thing. And I think most of us too, we're kind of calibrated to a degree, I guess. That we can tell if someone's using a certain tone because they're mad at me. Versus if they're just mad and excited about the situation, you know? Even though I'm sure there's some overlap there.

• 1:02:53Jocko Willink?

  But it, the principles apply.

• 1:02:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:56Jocko Willink?

  Like, that's why your, your tone and your words are, are important. But if you, and that's why taking ownership is such a huge piece. Because when you take ownership, you're, you're automatically aiming that tone at yourself.

• 1:03:10Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yep. And therein lies like even how you would explain to me where, cause I would let it slip. Like in my own head where I'm like, you know, the idea of really taking ownership and then acting like you're taking ownership, you know, that this is. There's a big difference.

• 1:03:26Jocko Willink?

  There's a big difference.

• 1:03:27Speaker 01

  As subtle as it may be sometimes, that's a huge difference. So if I'm acting like I'm taking ownership, that means now I gotta act with my tone and be not as genuine or not genuine, really. But if you truly take ownership, you truly think like it'll just naturally come out as genuine.

• 1:03:42Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and that's the, that's the point. When I'm talking to the platoon commander, the company commander in charge of that Bradley,

• 1:03:52Jocko Willink?

  my true belief is we need to do a better job of marking our position.

• 1:03:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:03:58Jocko Willink?

  So that we don't get mistaken from Mujahideen fighters and get blasted with a 25 millimeter chain gun.

• 1:04:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:04:05Jocko Willink?

  That's, that's the actual truth that I believe. Now, there, when I present that to them, they're also gonna say, we need to do a better job, understanding the picture of the battlefield and understanding what your guys look like. And letting our team know that we have SEALs out there, they're probably gonna be on a rooftop and they're, they're definitely have scoped weapons, like these are things, even that right there, if the friendly forces know, oh, hey, there's, there's SEALs operating in the area, they're on rooftops, they're in the vicinity of this area, that's gonna immediately give everyone a second, a second thought before they engage, right? Oh, you see somebody with scoped weapons on the rooftop, oh, we know SEALs are out here, okay, let's, let's, let's check in and confirm what we're looking at.

• 1:04:49Jocko Willink?

  So, spreading that word and when you take ownership, the other side takes ownership as well and you come up with a better solution.

• 1:04:57Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, it's, it's almost like you, you shift it immediately over to the collaboration.

• 1:05:03Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:04Speaker 01

  Approach versus the competition approach, you know?

• 1:05:06Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, or the accusatory approach.

• 1:05:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, which is, yes.

• 1:05:09Jocko Willink?

  We're doing our, everything right, you guys need to fix yourselves.

• 1:05:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, like, we're good, yeah, you're wrong. So it's like a more of a competitive, like, yeah.

• 1:05:16Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, don't do that. All right, pushing forward, this section's about government and freedom. And I already, I already mentioned the, um, the opening here. All of us do foolish things, but the wiser realize what they do. The most dangerous error is failure to recognize our own tendency to err. That failure is a common affliction of authority. So when you're in charge, you think you're right more often.

• 1:05:44Jocko Willink?

  From many examples, maybe cited one from World War One. When reports percolate to Paris about the neglected state of the Verdun defenses. Joffre was asked for assurance that they would be improved. In reply, he indignantly denied that there were any cause, that there was any cause for anxiety and demanded the names of those who had dared to suggest it. And he said, and I quote, "I cannot be party to soldiers under my command, bringing before the government by channels other than the hierarchical channel complaints or protests about the execution of my orders.

• 1:06:27Jocko Willink?

  It is calculated to disturb profoundly the spirit of discipline in the army," end quote. So, let me give you a recap. They set up defenses around Verdun. And some guys on the front lines were like, hey, our defenses are weak here and here. We need to get them reinforced. And they, they sent that up to the, that got to the government, not to the army, but to the government. And so Joffre, who's in charge, hears it. Someone goes, hey dude, I heard that the defenses weren't that good in, in Verdun. Instead of saying, oh, I, I had not heard that. Let me go investigate. Let me go improve my defenses. Instead, he said, hey, who said that?

• 1:07:10Jocko Willink?

  I can't have someone ratting me out inside the army.

• 1:07:16Jocko Willink?

  And it says, "That reply might well be framed and hung up in all the bureaus of officialdom the world over to serve as the mummy at the feast." I had to look up what that meant, the mummy at the feast. What does it? It means that, I guess back in the day, there was, people ate mummies almost, you know how you hear about someone eating like a rhino, a rhinoceros horn? For various medical.

• 1:07:43Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:07:43Jocko Willink?

  Like, uh.

• 1:07:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:07:44Jocko Willink?

  It's almost like a little magic power.

• 1:07:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:07:46Jocko Willink?

  Well, apparently that used to be the deal with mummies. Like you could. And this was, by the way, I looked at it was the British were doing this.

• 1:07:53Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:07:54Jocko Willink?

  Like some weird. Yeah.

• 1:07:56Speaker 01

  Like a human mummy.

• 1:07:57Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, like a human mummy. Like you get, they would grind it up.

• 1:08:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:01Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's very strange. But.

• 1:08:04Speaker 01

  Okay, cool.

• 1:08:05Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. The mummy, the mummy at the feast. For within two months of this doctrine of infallibility, collapsed like a punctured balloon with tragic effects for his army. So, yeah, didn't work out well from Verdun. And this attitude is absolutely terrible. I give this feedback to leaders all the time. If you're getting negative feedback about what's happening, you should say thank you and they should go fix it. You shouldn't say, who said that? I'm gonna freaking get him fired.

• 1:08:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:30Jocko Willink?

  The presence of infallibility is instinctive to a hierarchy.

• 1:08:36Jocko Willink?

  We all think we know what we're doing. We learn this from history that the critics of authority have always been rebuked in self righteous tones. If no worse fate has befallen them, yet have repeatedly been justified to history. To get to, to be again, the government, that means against the government, may be a more philosophic attitude than it appears. For the tendency of all governments is to infringe the standards of decency and truth. This is inherent in their nature and hardly avoidable in their practice. So anyone that's criticizing the authorities gonna, gonna get, has a tendency to get smashed. And people in authority have a tendency to smash them. Which is the wrong move, by the way.

• 1:09:19Jocko Willink?

  Hence, the duty of the good citizen who is free from the responsibility of government is to be a watchdog upon it, lest the government impair the fundamental objects which it exists to serve. Is a necessary evil, thus requiring constant watchfulness and check.

• 1:09:35Jocko Willink?

  So that's one of the things that can keep us from knowing the truth is that if you question what's happening, you will get smashed by the authorities and authorities, people in authority situations have a tendency to say, shut up when they get some truth heading their way.

• 1:09:53Speaker 01

  So like, you know, McDojo life, right, Rob? McDojo life? Isn't in concept, isn't that what he's kind of exposing a lot of it? Where like, you know, all these demonstration, these magical mystical martial arts demonstrations, right? And then you need a collaborator there, you know, like if it, bro, I'm gonna freaking-

• 1:10:13Jocko Willink?

  You're gonna dim mock me?

• 1:10:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:15Jocko Willink?

  You need someone that's gonna fall down, yeah.

• 1:10:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly right. And it's like, what's the guy gonna do? Be like, um, you know, I know it's only my first week here, but, bro, I didn't, I didn't feel the chi, you know? Like when you're doing it to me, like, I don't feel it, like, bro, that's kind of intimidating, you know? Probably tell you, shut up. He'll probably hit you for real kind, you know? Punish you for it. I'm sure that's what goes on. See what I'm saying? How else are you gonna organize people to just fake it like that? With those kind of numbers?

• 1:10:40Jocko Willink?

  There's some weird McDojo life stuff out there in the world.

• 1:10:42Speaker 01

  But when you think about this idea, it starts to make sense.

• 1:10:45Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:10:47Speaker 01

  I remember we took Aikido back in the day and, bro, I was scared of everybody, like all the instructors, bro, scared, I'll do anything you say. You want me to fall down? Fuck, I'll fall down. All good.

• 1:10:57Jocko Willink?

  How old were you when you did that?

• 1:10:59Speaker 01

  Uh, I don't know, six, seven years old, maybe? I don't know.

• 1:11:03Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:03Speaker 01

  Not for a long time, we just went, that's how.

• 1:11:06Jocko Willink?

  The UFC really cleaned up a lot of that stuff.

• 1:11:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a big-

• 1:11:09Jocko Willink?

  But it's weird that it still exists in a big way.

• 1:11:12Speaker 01

  It is weird. It feels weird for us, I think.

• 1:11:15Jocko Willink?

  Because back in the day, I would be like, Echo, if I poke you in this nerve center, it's gonna paralyze your arm. And you'd be like, you'd be like, well, let me see. And I'd be like, I can't, you know what? I can't do it.

• 1:11:30Jocko Willink?

  I can't do it. But you have, you know, it would.

• 1:11:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:11:34Jocko Willink?

  It would do it.

• 1:11:35Speaker 01

  If you get a master at this art.

• 1:11:36Jocko Willink?

  I had a guy like, tell me that this karate chop to my neck would, would knock me out.

• 1:11:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:11:42Jocko Willink?

  And I said, do it.

• 1:11:47Jocko Willink?

  Is no kidding. It's like a karate chop, but they had some bigger name for it like breaky old Plex or something. They had some name for it. And I said, do it. I was like, hey, go ahead. Let's do it. And he's and he like, oh, I can't do it right now. It'd be and I said, no, like, do it.

• 1:12:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:12:03Jocko Willink?

  And it didn't work. You know, a karate chop to the neck doesn't work.

• 1:12:07Speaker 01

  Yeah. Um, yeah. And you're, you're right about like, why do we still, cause there's, it's not like, you know, we see videos of this. That's really how we see it, right? These videos of these weird things. And then, but then freaking, it takes the same amount of effort to find these videos. You can find the videos of the people saying, hey, we don't believe this work. And some of them aren't even other martial artists. They're just people like these guys who be like, oh, I don't think that works. And so they go in and they're like, yeah, do it to me. It's like the no touch knockout stuff. And like, do it to me. Like, I don't, they're not martial art. Like, I think they're like college kids.

• 1:12:42Jocko Willink?

  Like, like, he looks like he's this freaking linebacker. And there's a woman that's gonna stop him from getting to her.

• 1:12:52Speaker 01

  The running one, where he's running?

• 1:12:53Jocko Willink?

  He like runs at her and just

• 1:12:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, bulldozes her.

• 1:12:56Jocko Willink?

  Cleans her out.

• 1:12:57Speaker 01

  It's bad. It's bad.

• 1:12:58Jocko Willink?

  Did you ever hear that story about Higgs where a guy told Higgs that because of his chi, because of the other guy's chi, Higgs couldn't take him down? And Higgs is like, what do you mean? He goes, when I settle my chi, you will not be able to, you know, take me down.

• 1:13:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:13Jocko Willink?

  And Higgs is like, do you want to try it? And the guy's like, yeah. And so the guy takes a minute and settles his chi out. And then you know what Higgs did?

• 1:13:22Speaker 01

  Take him down.

• 1:13:22Jocko Willink?

  Freaking double leg, like double leg, picked him up, slammed him. The chi didn't work.

• 1:13:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:27Jocko Willink?

  But I, this is, so this is tangential to what we're talking about, you know, for sure.

• 1:13:32Speaker 01

  But it actually, I think it's this idea in action, just in, in this other way.

• 1:13:37Jocko Willink?

  What you have to take it to is when someone says, hey, Matt, you know, someone that's in the group says, hey, master, I didn't really feel like any. Disturbance and he's like, that's because you're not training hard enough. You know what I mean? Like you shut up. I'm gonna write you up. You know, you're not gonna get advanced until you can feel like that kind of thing. Right. So that's where it applies. Yes, directly.

• 1:13:59Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I'm and I'm purporting that hypothesizing will say that that's what goes on internally. Otherwise, why would you do that? Or some some version of that, or even it could just be the culture.

• 1:14:12Jocko Willink?

  Internally, why the person gets knocked out like allegedly by the death touch?

• 1:14:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:16Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I think this is weird psychology, brainwashing, like group dynamics, I think.

• 1:14:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:23Jocko Willink?

  And that's a really weird thing.

• 1:14:24Speaker 01

  It is.

• 1:14:25Jocko Willink?

  It's a very strange thing.

• 1:14:26Speaker 01

  It what's actually the real, to be honest, I kind of understand. I'm not saying it makes it cool or right. But I I get how that happens. I get that. What I don't get is the master who ends up believing his own height. And then goes and fights like an MMA guy. Like you ever seen those where it's like, yeah, the master? He's like, yeah, no, my thing is like, I'm gonna fight an MMA guy. And then he just gets beat down. Everyone knew it. Everyone knew that was gonna happen. He gets beat down. That part I don't understand. I mean, I mean, I guess there's that level.

• 1:14:57Jocko Willink?

  One like MMA fighter versus Aikido guy.

• 1:15:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:15:00Jocko Willink?

  And the dude just, I mean, the Aikido guy is just getting punched in the head.

• 1:15:07Speaker 01

  Oh, wait, is that the guy with the does he have a ponytail? Okay, so here's the thing that makes that one a little bit more clear and understandable is because if there's, I don't know if there's two versions or what, but there's one where the Aikido guy was saying, hey, I'm gonna go test my Aikido against an MMA guy. I'm gonna go test it. So it's it was almost like a genuine test, you know, I he's like, I have this specific belief that my Aikido can basically get me through any combat scenario. And that's what I believe right now. So I'm gonna go put it to the test. Fails the test, obviously. And then later he says, well, my Aikido system doesn't work as good as I thought or whatever. Like he he assesses it honestly at the end, you know? I can see that.

• 1:15:44Jocko Willink?

  I haven't seen that one.

• 1:15:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, but that's.

• 1:15:47Jocko Willink?

  I've just seen one of those some guy getting his ass.

• 1:15:51Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, he gets beat down and like kind of kind of, yeah.

• 1:15:53Jocko Willink?

  And it's not even a beat down. It's just like, you know, probably 10 seconds of fighting. And then he pauses and then another five seconds of fighting and it's over.

• 1:16:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, he's taking heavies though. And he and he gives up. He's like, well, no, no, I can't take this this beating or whatever, which. Yeah, I mean, to me, kinda good on him. He was like.

• 1:16:10Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, he tried.

• 1:16:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, he went in, took his beating, you know, and was like, oh, fuck, no. But, you know, like, there's one, there's one, I think it might have been in China or somewhere, where the guy, he was like a mystic monk, Kung Fu master versus like a regular MMA fighter from China or whatever, and the guy just beat him down.

• 1:16:28Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:16:29Speaker 01

  Like, bro, everyone could, like, anyone, I think, anyone could tell that guy was gonna get beat down.

• 1:16:36Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:36Speaker 01

  That part I didn't understand. That guy should have known better.

• 1:16:39Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, well, you got enough times where you touch someone on the arm and they fall down, maybe you do start to believe it, I guess. Pretty disturbing.

• 1:16:47Speaker 01

  I guess, right?

• 1:16:50Jocko Willink?

  Ah, another, another, another, um, problem with getting the truth and learning from history. Restraints of democracy. We learn from history that democracy has commonly put a premium on conventionality. By its nature, it prefers those who keep step with the slowest march of thought and frowns on those who may disturb the conspiracy for mutual efficiency. Thereby, this system of government tends to result in the triumph of mediocrity and entails the exclusion of first-rate ability if this is combined with honesty. So, it's saying in democracy, we're kinda like, hey, just keep doing what you're doing type thing. But the alternative to it, despotism, almost inevitably mean, means the triumph

• 1:17:35Jocko Willink?

  of stupidity. And of the two evils, the former is less.

• 1:17:41Jocko Willink?

  And he says, "What is of value in England and America," again, this is written in 1944, "and worth defending is its tradition of freedom, the guarantees of its vitality. Our civilization, like the Greek, has for all its blundering way, taught the value of freedom, of criticism of authority, and of harmonizing with this order. Anyone who urges a different system for efficiency's sake is betraying the vital tradition."

• 1:18:11Jocko Willink?

  Freedom, the most important fact. Then it runs through some of the power politics. It talks about the men behind the scenes. So it talks about the influence of like, you know, the cabinet members and the people that are friends with Churchill and with President Wilson and President Roosevelt. It talks about some of these behind the scenes people and just how they're influencing the whole scene and you don't know a lot about them. It also talks about this, the pattern of dictatorship. We learn from history that self-made despotic rulers follow a standard pattern in gaining power. They exploit consciously or unconsciously a state of popular dissatisfaction with the existing regime or of hostility between

• 1:18:55Jocko Willink?

  different sections of people. Hmm. If we can get people to fight with each other inside of our own organization, we'll have a group that's dissatisfied and that's going to help me out.

• 1:19:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:19:07Jocko Willink?

  The old divide and conquer. They attack the existing regime violently and combine their appeal to discontent with unlimited promises, which if successful, they fulfill only to a limited extent.

• 1:19:24Jocko Willink?

  They claim that they want absolute power for only a short time, but find subsequently that the time to relinquish it never comes. They excite popular sympathy by presenting the picture of a conspiracy against them and use this as a lever to gain a firmer hold at some crucial stage.

• 1:19:44Jocko Willink?

  On gaining power, they soon begin to rid themselves of their chief helpers, discovering that those who brought about the new order have suddenly become traitors to it. They suppress criticism on one pretext or another and punish anyone who mentions facts which, however true, are unfavorable to their policy. They enlist religion on their side if possible or if its leaders are not compliant, foster a new kind of religion subservient to their ends. They spend public money lavishly on material works of a striking kind in compensation for the freedom of spirit and thought which they have robbed the public. They manipulate the currency to make the economic position of the state appear better than it is in

• 1:20:25Jocko Willink?

  reality. They ultimately make war on some other state as a means of diverting attention from the internal conditions and allowing discontent to outwardly explode.

• 1:20:37Jocko Willink?

  They use the rallying cry of patriotism as a means of riveting the chains of their personal authority more firmly on the people. They expand the superstructure of the state while undermining its foundations by breeding sycophants and at the expense of their self-respecting collaborators by appealing to the popular taste for the grandiose and sensational instead of true values and by fostering a romantic instead of a realistic view, thus ensuring the ultimate collapse under their successors, if not themselves, of what they have created. This political confidence trick is itself a familiar string of tricks, has all been

• 1:21:21Jocko Willink?

  repeated down the ages, yet it rarely fails to take in a fresh generation. Oh, what are we witnessing right now in the world? The psychology of dictatorship. We learn from history that time does little to alter the psychology of dictatorship. The effect of power on the mind of the man who possesses it, especially when he has gained it by successful aggression, tends to be remarkably similar in every age and in every country. He talks about Napoleon. He talks about Napoleon going to Russia, June of 1812. Napoleon's got 450,000 men heading into Russia. One of his quotes is, "In less than two months' time, Russia will be suing for peace."

• 1:22:03Jocko Willink?

  After five weeks of campaigning, despite this deep advance, he'd inflicted little damage on the enemy. That's because the Russians kept retreating. He believed there would be a battle because he wanted one. He believed that he should win it because it was essential that he should. September 14th, Napoleon reached Moscow and find that the Russians had evacuated the city and there was great fires and they pretty much burned much of the city and destruction of Moscow by the Russians sobered Napoleon. October 25th, he gives orders to go back. By the time they get back, they're down to 50,000 people.

• 1:22:44Jocko Willink?

  And then this is what's crazy. Almost exactly 129 years after Napoleon launched his invasion of Russia, Hitler began his attack on Russia on June 22nd, 1941. Despite the revolutionary changes which had taken place in the interval, he was to provide a tragic demonstration of the truth that mankind, and least of all, its great men, do not learn from history. And he has great men in quotes. He's not calling Hitler a great man. A basic flaw in dictatorship. It would be untruthful not to recognize that authoritarian regimes such as Napoleon's have produced some good fruits. They are found to be in both the material and spiritual fields. Many social norm reforms and practical improvements have been carried out within a few years,

• 1:23:29Jocko Willink?

  which in a democracy would have been debated for generations. Okay, so when you have a totalitarian system, you can make some things happen a little quicker. He gives them credit for that. It is also to the credit of the totalitarian system that they have simulated service to the community, or that they have stimulated service to the community and the sense of comradeship up to a point. So you get some nationalism going.

• 1:23:51Jocko Willink?

  It is man's power of thought which has generated the current of human progress throughout the ages. Thus, the thinking man must be against authoritarianism in any form, because it shows its fear of thoughts which do not suit momentary authority. Any sincere writer must be against it because it believes in censorship. Any true historian must be against it because he can see that it leads to the repetition of old follies, as well as to the deliberate adulteration of history. Anyone who tries to solve problems scientifically must be against it, since it refuses to recognize that criticism is the lifeblood of science. In sum, any seeker of the truth must be against it because it subordinates truth to state expediency.

• 1:24:36Jocko Willink?

  This spells stagnation.

• 1:24:41Jocko Willink?

  Can't support the authoritarianism, man. Disturbing trends, one factor is an excessive growth. And he's talking about Britain and America and other democratic places. One fact, and this is 1944, by the way, one factor is an excessive growth of security mindedness. The more bureaucratic than realistic, so it is more often carried to ludicrous extremes. It is certainly more difficult for parliament or congress to acquire the knowledge on which to base useful comment on defense matters. This is when we start really tracking what people are doing to an excessive point. And he's talking about that in 1944.

• 1:25:17Jocko Willink?

  This is a really important lesson here on leadership and life and all aspects. The fallacy of compulsion. We learn from history that the compulsory principle always breaks down in practice. It is practicable to prevent men doing something. Moreover, that principle of restraint or regulation is essentially justifiable insofar as it is application is needed to check interference with others' freedom. So it's one thing to stop you from doing something. Like it's, it, it makes sense. It's justifiable because what you're doing might infringe on someone else's freedom.

• 1:25:57Jocko Willink?

  So for me to, to restrain you from doing something, there's gonna be some of that. But it is not in reality possible to make men do something without risking more than is gained from the compelled effort. The method may appear practicable because it often works when applied to those who are merely hesitant. When applied to those who are definitely unwilling, it fails. However, because it generates friction and fosters subtle forms of evasion that spoil the effect which is sought. The test of whether a principle works is to be found in the product. So you can't make things, people do things. And look, if you're a little bit hesitant, I might be able to get away with it.

• 1:26:42Jocko Willink?

  But if you ain't down, it's going to be problematic. Yeah. And it's, and it's problematic because subtle forms of evasion, right? This is what we saw break down with communism. When, uh, like the solidarity, the solidarity movement in Poland. They just would make little mistakes in the factory that would make the, the thing that they were building not work. Hmm. And that just wrecks everything. Yeah. But that's how they were protesting. Yeah. And this happens, you know, this happens with your freaking kids. Yes. Right? Yeah. You have to do this. Uh, it's going to take forever. It's going to be a problem. They're going to break the dish, whatever that you're asking them to clean. Like this is just so, it happens, obviously happens with people that work for you. Mm hmm. When you force something down their throat, they're not going to like it. Yeah.

• 1:27:25Jocko Willink?

  And they're going to do little things that are going to make it fail. Yeah. It doesn't work in the long run. It's not a, it's not a strategic move. Compulsion, it's not a strategic move. It'll have, it'll might work for a little while, but it's not a strategic move. Yeah. It's a short-term move. Listen to this. In efficiency springs from enthusiasm because this alone can develop a dynamic impulse. Enthusiasm is incompatible with compulsion because it essentially is spontaneous. So that's what makes the difference. Hmm. For a group, for a team is when you have this, this dynamic spontaneous impulse to do the right thing. This is decentralized command. This is good culture. Hmm.

• 1:28:09Jocko Willink?

  When we don't have that, when I'm forcing you to do something, all of that disappears. And you have what I, I, I talked to a group the other day and I talked about collective. I called it something collective slacking.

• 1:28:27Jocko Willink?

  Like imagine you got your football team and everyone on the football team turns the dial down 4%. Yeah. What can you get a touchdown like you might get one, but It's not a good approach. It's not a good approach and and it's really imperceivable that Echo gave 4% less effort. Like I can't really see that when I'm watching and I can't really see that Fred didn't he gave 5% less and and Mike he gave 7% less and you know you you can't really see it with each individual person. Yeah. But when each individual person backs off the gas just a little bit. Yeah. They lose that that dynamic impulse. That's when you have failure. Then you lose. Yeah.

• 1:29:10Jocko Willink?

  Compulsion is thus bound to deaden enthusiasm because it dries up the source. The more an individual or nation has been accustomed to freedom, the more deadening will be the effect of change to compulsion.

• 1:29:25Jocko Willink?

  And he talks about conscription here. Conscription does not fit the conditions of modern warfare. It is specialized tech. It's specialized technical equipment, mobile operations and fluid situations. Success increasingly depends on the individual initiative, which in turn springs from a sense of personal responsibility. This is ownership. When I give you ownership, do you do better or worse? When you give me ownership, I do better. When you give your kids ownership, do they do better or worse? They do better. Yes. That's what this is talking about. These fluid situations. Success depends on individual initiative. And when you compel compel people to do things, when you force it down their throat, that disappears. That's why communism doesn't work, actually. Yeah.

• 1:30:10Jocko Willink?

  That's why dictatorial leaders end up failing because they're like, you will deliver the numbers I'm telling and that doesn't help because that person's in the field like I'm not delivering those numbers. I'm not working extra hard for Echo the way he treats me. Yeah. But if Echo's like, hey, we can win this together and your everything you bring is gonna gonna bring us closer to the overall number. This is the strategy we're going for. And here's how it's going to benefit you. I'm like, y'all, I'm gonna go out there and work extra hard. Yeah.

• 1:30:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, that idea which you just, which I'm obviously familiar with, but I'm kinda going down a rabbit hole mentally about is those silent protests.

• 1:30:45Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:30:46Speaker 01

  Or the secret protests or what, you know, the little, small, little thing. I mean, that's the old school. Like, you know, you're a waiter or a, I don't know, a fast food hamburger maker or whatever. And the customer is treating you like shit and you're like, fine, you gotta do it. You gotta go make it. That's your job or whatever, but you're getting to it and what does he do?

• 1:31:03Jocko Willink?

  You ain't getting no ketchup.

• 1:31:04Speaker 01

  He spits on the burger or something like that.

• 1:31:06Jocko Willink?

  Straight hostile.

• 1:31:07Speaker 01

  Old school. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I'm assuming that doesn't happen as, as often as maybe it might be purported. In movies, they do that, which is fun, you know? What was it? I think it was like Goodfellas. It was Goodfellas. Pretty sure it was Goodfellas. Where the cops, you know, they're in on the take and they're like, hey, guys, how are you doing? All nice to the cops. Like, he goes in the back, gets some sandwich, he spits on all of them. But yeah, that's kind of, that's kind of the kind of stuff you get, right? Stuff you'll never really know about. You know, you'll feel the effects and it'll suck, but you won't, you can't like, you know, you can't follow the, you know, the effects down to, hey, it was that. It was because of this. It was just, but it's all going on, you know, behind your back.

• 1:31:42Jocko Willink?

  Echo didn't, you know, he didn't do that thing quite right. And now the whole project's backed up. Now we gotta get this other, he didn't say everything falls apart.

• 1:31:49Speaker 01

  Or you don't even know Echo didn't do that quite right. Echo did it. It's just for some reason, like things just aren't, don't seem to be working out as good as I hoped, you know? Kind of a thing. And it's like that, like for, you know, for good, just because of how you're running.

• 1:32:02Jocko Willink?

  Collective slacking occurs and then we're losing.

• 1:32:04Speaker 01

  Little silent protest, collective slacking.

• 1:32:09Jocko Willink?

  Continuing on, moreover, every unwilling man is a germ carrier. Spreading infection to an extent altogether disproportionate to the value of service if he is forced to contribute. That is such an important little note. If I'm like, no, Echo, you're gonna do it my way. Now go get with the team and do what I told you. You drag that negativity down there and you're gonna disproportionate the, the value that you bring. Cause I was like, no, you need to get down there and move those rocks. And you get down there, this is bullshit. We shouldn't have to move these rocks. Even though you're gonna move seven rocks. The negativity that you brought to the whole team, they move 12 rocks less.

• 1:32:48Jocko Willink?

  Because you're down there complaining and bringing everyone down and saying this is stupid and why do we even have to move these things? So I forced you to do it and it actually hurts the whole team. And we end up with a disproportionate. disproportionate negative compared to the value that you bring in your contribution, which is limited by the way, because you don't even want to be there in the first place.

• 1:33:16Jocko Willink?

  And he talks about for my own part, I've come to my present conviction of the supreme importance of freedom through the pursuit of efficiency. I believe that freedom is the foundation of efficiency, both national and militarily. And I'll go and tell you this is the same with your family. It's the same as your business. If you're over there freaking beating people and compelling them and forcing them to do things, I know it's your kid. I know you know that your son should be doing this thing in order to have the best life and your, your daughter needs to get on this path in order to be a better human being. I know you know that. I'm gonna tell you, you force them to do it and it's not going to be worth it. It's not going to be worth it.

• 1:33:56Jocko Willink?

  Progress by compulsion. At the same time, history warns us that even in the negative regulatory sense, if, if much more in the positive compulsory sense, the effort to achieve progress by decree is apt to lead to reaction. The more hurried the effort, the greater the risk to its endurance. The sure way of achieving progress is by generating and diffusing the thought of improvement.

• 1:34:24Jocko Willink?

  So when you force progress, it, it, it actually can lead to a negative reaction. We're gonna make this change now because I said so. That's not gonna, it's gonna actually make people go against you. Reforms that last are those that come naturally and with less friction. When men's mind have become ripe for them, a life spent in sowing a few grains of fruitful thought is a life spent more effectively than in hasty action that produces a crop of weeds.

• 1:34:57Jocko Willink?

  That leads us to see the difference, truly a vital difference between influence and power. So if you're leading by power, you're in a bad way. If you're leading by influence, you're in a good way. And if you're leading by power, ultimately it's less efficient. This is what's so hard for people to understand. It's less efficient to go in there and bark orders and impose your plan on everybody. That's less efficient than going in, listening and being collaborative, being open-minded with your team. It's less efficient. Even though I know it's hard to understand that, it's true. That's the indirect approach.

• 1:35:30Jocko Willink?

  This last section is called War and Peace. The Desire for Power. History shows that a main hindrance to real progress is the ever-popular myth of the "great man", once again in quotes. While greatness may perhaps be used in a comparative sense, if even then referring to, referring more to the particular qualities of the, than to the embodied sum, the quote "great man is a clay idol whose pedestal has been built up by the natural human desire to look up to someone, but whose form has been carved by men who have not yet outgrown the desire to be regarded or to picture themselves as great men."

• 1:36:12Jocko Willink?

  Many of those who gain power under present systems have much that is good in them, but few, but are, few are without some good in them. But to keep their power, it is easier and seems safer to appeal to the lowest common denominator of the people, to instinct rather than to reason, to interest rather than to right, to expediency rather than to principle. So you can be a good person, but you get into power, and it's like, the easiest thing to do is just, "Let's go lowest common denominator with the people. Let's talk, let's get people emotional rather than reasonable. Let's protect our own interests rather than protect what is right." This is the problem with politics at large.

• 1:36:57Jocko Willink?

  The shortsightedness of expediency. We learn from history that expediency has rarely proved expedient. Such a good, this is the indirect approach. Expediency, trying to get things done fast, is usually less efficient and less effective. Also known as trying to force it. Yeah, trying to force it. It's not good. Yet today, perhaps more than ever, the statesmen of all countries talk the language of expediency almost as if they are afraid to label themselves unpractical by referring to principles. So when you start talking about, as if you're a politician, and you start talking about the broader picture and how we can move to a better place, as opposed to just saying, "Here's the, here's the solution to this problem." Like, we have the most complex problems, and people try and throw a bumper sticker solution on it.

• 1:37:44Jocko Willink?

  And if you try and be more nuanced about it, then you get attacked as being inefficient and stupid.

• 1:37:56Jocko Willink?

  He says here, "The strength of British policy has been its adaptability to circumstances as they arise. It's weakness that the circumstances, which are usually difficulties, could have been forestalled through forethought." So, we're good at dealing with problems, but we don't see the problems coming.

• 1:38:14Jocko Willink?

  "The importance of keeping promises." Civilization is built on the practice of keeping promises. It might, it may not sound a high attainment, but if trust in its observance be shaken, the whole structure cracks and sinks. "Any constructive effort and all human relations, personal, political, and commercial, depend on being able to depend on promises." And then he goes on to talk about the importance of care about making promises. "It is immoral to make promises that one cannot in practice fulfill in the sense that the recipient expects." So, be careful about making promises. And then he's got this cool section in here called "The Germs of War." And the germs of war, you're gonna see, this is not just about war.

• 1:38:58Jocko Willink?

  "The cause of most troubles can be traced to excess. The failure to check them to deficiency, their prevention lies in moderation. So be balanced. Don't get crazy. If you get crazy, we're gonna have problems." Here's the, here's some of the germs. Sweeping judgments, malicious gossip, inaccurate statements which spread a misleading impression. These are the symptoms of the moral and mental recklessness that gives rise to war. And by the way, it also gives rise to the little political drama that you got going on in your company.

• 1:39:31Speaker 01

  Oh, especially sweeping judgments.

• 1:39:34Jocko Willink?

  Oh, those are bad.

• 1:39:34Speaker 01

  Would you say that that's the most prominent of those?

• 1:39:38Jocko Willink?

  I, I, I'm not gonna force rank these things.

• 1:39:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:39:41Jocko Willink?

  Because they're all kind of, they're all gonna be bad. And they're all, they all work, they all, they all work amongst each other too.

• 1:39:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, it feels like the sweeping judgments thing is like it's almost like that's what we're trying to do. It's almost like, like it may have come from like a maybe lazy mindedness approach of things, you know?

• 1:40:02Jocko Willink?

  You know what? The, the, one of the problems I have with that, or one of the additive statements I would make is it's saying sweeping judgments. And that's you get this idea of this being this really big, broad thing. But I think you have just as much difficulties arise from little, little tiny judgments, little tiny inaccurate judgments. Like you come in to tell me something, Echo doesn't know what he's talking about. Like, or he is, he's doing this because he's got his own agenda. Like there's these little tiny judgments that we make. That are usually made by our ego, by our emotions. And so we make these little tiny judgments. They're not sweeping. I'm just saying like, oh, Echo's got a stupid plan.

• 1:40:41Jocko Willink?

  And so I don't put full effort into it. You see what I'm saying?

• 1:40:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:40:44Jocko Willink?

  But yes, judgment in general, sweeping or small, causes problems.

• 1:40:50Speaker 01

  Yeah. Like, you know how the, you know, the president running or the guy running for president, whoever, you know? He says one thing you disagree with, you just sweep judge the whole deal. This guy's not for me, you know? One thing.

• 1:41:03Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Well, it's amazing that you can take any topic. And then you can formulate your entire belief system around one topic. And when you tell me that your beliefs on one singular topic, then yes, I make a sweeping judgment about everything that you believe. And by the way, in this day and age, there's a decent chance that you're just on board with that because you're like, this is, I'm on this side. I'm on the red team. I'm on the blue team. I'm on the yellow team. I'm on the black team. It's like, oh, so then I know everything that you believe. When the reality is, I would hope people have much more nuanced understandings and beliefs about, well, you know, I grew up in the city. So I think this, well, I grew up in the country and I think that, but I see where you're coming from over here. And this kind of makes sense to me.

• 1:41:48Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It can get so bad. I've heard people actually say this in real life, not just on the internet. Where they'll refer to someone that they don't know as a X Y Z supporter, some candidate supporter, therefore that's a bad person. Just because they support this, they don't know why they support them. They don't know under what, you know, they don't know who else they support. They don't know, they just, oh, that's a X Y Z supporter freaking, oh, that's how you know, you know, kind of a thing.

• 1:42:18Jocko Willink?

  Sweeping judgments. Sweeping judgments are bad. Back to the book, studying their effect, one is led to see that the germs of war lie within ourselves. Not in economics, politics, or religion as such. How can we hope to rid the world of war until we have cured ourselves of the originating causes? So, so, to your point, like, the problems that we have, the reason I'm mad at you isn't because you support this candidate or that candidate, it's actually an issue that I have. How the germs work, these germs are most virulent among those who direct the affairs of nations.

• 1:43:01Jocko Willink?

  The atmosphere of power and the activity in the pursuit of power inflame them. So, hey, you, everyone's got some of these things, but the higher you go in rank, man, the more, the more they get, the more they come out. The way they can be worked clearly traced in an examining the origins and course of World War I. While economic factors formed a predisposing cause, the deeper and more decisive factors lay in human nature. It's possessiveness, competitiveness, vanity, and pugnacity, all of which were fomented by the dishonesty which breeds inaccuracy.

• 1:43:43Jocko Willink?

  That's why we got World War I, millions of people dead because of our own human nature, our own competitiveness, our own vanity. Fast forward a little bit, the war we were drawn stumbling into was, on our side, a striking example of this drawbacks of entering into vague commitments without thinking out the implications and military problems. How the germs persist, similar influences wrecked every good chance of bringing the war to an end on satisfactory terms before all the countries were exhausted.

• 1:44:22Jocko Willink?

  When one gets a close view, a close view of influential people, their bad relations with each other, their conflicting ambitions, all the slander and the hatred, one must bear in mind that it is certainly much worse on the other side. Among the French, English and Russians, or one might well be nervous, the race for power and personal positions seems to destroy all men's characters.

• 1:44:53Jocko Willink?

  Any history of war which treats only of its strategic and political course is merely a picture of the surface. The deeper personal currents, sorry, the personal currents run deeper and may have a deeper influence on the outcome. We learn from history that war breeds war. That is natural.

• 1:45:17Jocko Willink?

  The illusion of victory. It's what sucks about that, what sucks about this is like all these little petty things that I talk about a lot with ego and with arrogance and with agendas and alignment, like all these things that we'll, we'll talk to a business be like, oh yeah, we're gonna miss revenue this quarter because we've got some egos involved. And you think, wow, that's terrible. Or like, oh, we actually had to fire this guy because, you know, his ego got out of control. He got fired because of it. And it seems real bad, right? Or like, hey, you're not getting promoted because you're over here looking out for yourself and that's gonna, that's why you didn't get promoted because everyone saw through where they saw your real self. And that's why you gotta focus on the team more. Like we give this very pertinent, very powerful advice.

• 1:46:04Jocko Willink?

  And sure, those lessons are rooted in war, but when you start talking about world wars and millions and millions of people dying because an ego here, a power trip there, a vanity over here, like that's just sickening. It's sickening.

• 1:46:29Jocko Willink?

  The illusion of victory. We learn from history that complete victory has never been completed by the result that the victors always anticipate. A good and lasting peace. So you want a good and lasting peace, you're never gonna get it. For victory has always sown the seeds of a fresh war because victory breeds among the vanquished a desire for vindication and vengeance and because victory raises fresh rivals.

• 1:46:55Jocko Willink?

  A too complete victor inevitably victory inevitably complicates the problem of making a just and wise peace settlement. The only thing I'd say about that is I think we did pretty good with Germany and Japan. Unconditional surrender. And look at Germany and Japan now. They're our allies. They're, you know, good societies moving forward.

• 1:47:16Jocko Willink?

  It is an elementary, it is an elementary principle of strategy that you find your opponent, if you find your opponent in a strong position costly to force, you should leave him a line of retreat as the quickest way of loosening his resistance. It should equally be a principle of policy, especially in war, to provide your opponent with a ladder by which he can climb down. Always give somebody a way out. That's so important in a meeting. Yeah. You know, where you've got some plan and your plan doesn't really make sense. And I, instead of confronting you in front of everyone and making you look bad, I'm gonna say, hey, actually, you know, there's some things that I didn't bring to light. It's

• 1:47:57Jocko Willink?

  my fault. Can I talk to you after about this? Cause I think I might've done a bad job. And I think we might need to reassess this. You know, like, give you a little way out. Yeah. No big deal. Yeah. It's a good one. The importance of moderation. We learn from history. That after any long war, the survivors are apt to reach common agreement that there has been no real victory, but only common losers. War is only profitable if victory is quickly gained. Only an aggressor can hope to gain a quick victory. If he is frustrated, the war is bound to be long and mutually ruinous, unless it is brought to an end by mutual agreement.

• 1:48:39Jocko Willink?

  Since an aggressor goes to war for gain, he is apt to be the more ready of the two sides to seek peace by agreement. The aggressed side is usually more inclined to seek vengeance through the pursuit of victory, even though all experience has shown that victory is a mirage in the desert created by a long war.

• 1:49:02Jocko Willink?

  The will to fight always tends to become stronger among the people who have been attacked, so that it is easier to make them hold out in any negotiation for terms that are satisfying. The history of ancient Greece showed that in a democracy, emotion dominates reason to a greater extent than in any other political system, thus giving freer rein to the passions which sweep a state into war and prevent it getting out at any point short of the exhaustion and destruction of one or the other of the opposing sides.

• 1:49:38Jocko Willink?

  So that's interesting. The democracy, we get, we get hyper emotional. And this goes on and says, "Democracy is a system which puts a brake on preparation for war, aggressive or defensive, but it is not one that conduces to the limitation of warfare or the prospects of a good peace." No political system easily, more easily becomes out of control when passions are aroused. These defects have been multiplied in modern democracies since their great extension of size and their vast electorate produce a much larger volume of, volume of emotional pressure. Now let's just throw social media to the mix on that and 24-hour news cycles.

• 1:50:22Speaker 01

  Yep, well, why is that? I mean, obviously, aside from that, it's, can be almost simplified. I don't know, I could be wrong, so I'm just thinking out loud here for your benefit, for your entertainment.

• 1:50:37Speaker 01

  But it comes down to choice, right? When you have free democracy, that means hey, you're free to make any decision. You have a lot of choices essentially. But when you don't have a choice, you know how like, I don't know, if we go somewhere to eat, you only got two choices. You'd be like, alright, I choose that one. But what if you have infinite choices? Or you know, whatever, 100 choices? And then you got 100 people. Bruh, there's gonna be so many choices and you'd be like, no, no, no. That means if you get it, then I don't get it, even though I could get it under the system. I could get it, I should get it, right? It's free, I'm free, I'm free to, why am I, you know, bending to your choice? I want my choice. The more choices there are, the more that's gonna go on. And the more, the more fired up we get. See what I'm saying? But if we know just off the freaking starting block, hey, there's only one choice, actually, let's go with one choice. There's only one choice.

• 1:51:22Speaker 01

  No matter if you like it or not, but it's like, oh, we already accepted, accepted that early on, so we're not gonna get all fired up about going to that one choice, you know? So, as far as like, how to run your life? Or how to live your life or whatever? You don't have as much choice if you're not under a democracy.

• 1:51:38Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Although you do get that kinda unified emotion inside of a tyrannical nation where you, it, it certainly appears from the outside, like you hear those stories about when Hitler was giving a speech, no one would wanna stop clapping? Because then they become the first person that stopped clapping. It's like, oh, so you're not a true supporter? And so they'd sit there and clap for so long, and standing ovations would last forever, because no one wanted to freaking stop clapping and sit down.

• 1:52:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:52:07Jocko Willink?

  So you get, sometimes you see some of that. Uh, you know, where people are just going freaking crazy emotional.

• 1:52:15Jocko Willink?

  And he, he talks about Wellington here. He says, "It was because he really understood war that he became so good at securing peace. He was the least militaristic of soldiers and free from the lust of glory. It was because he saw the value of peace that he became so unbeatable in war.

• 1:52:37Jocko Willink?

  For he kept the end in view instead of falling in love with the means. Unlike Napoleon, he was not infected by the romance of war, which generates illusions of self, and self-deceptions. That was how Napoleon had failed and Wellington prevailed."

• 1:52:58Jocko Willink?

  There's a section in here about the illusion of treaties and this is one of the clear lessons that history teaches is that no agreement between governments has had any stability beyond their recognition that it is in their own interest to continue to adhere to it. So like I'll stick with the rules. I'll stick with the treaty as long as it's good for me. And if it's not good for me, eventually I'm gonna fight.

• 1:53:27Jocko Willink?

  The Romans coined the maxim, "If you wish for peace, prepare for war." But Calvin Coolidge caustically remarked after World War I, "No nation ever had an army large enough to guarantee it against attack in time of peace, or ensure it victory in time of war." So it doesn't matter how much you pray, you can't be ready enough to ensure victory. In studying how wars have broken out, I was led to suggest after World War I that a truer maxim would be, "If you wish for peace, understand war."

• 1:54:03Jocko Willink?

  Have to agree with that one.

• 1:54:06Jocko Willink?

  "There is no panacea for peace that can be written out in a formula like a doctor's prescription, but one can set down a series of practical points, elementary principles drawn from the sum of human experience in all times. Study war and learn from its history. Keep strong if possible. In any case, keep cool. Have unlimited patience. Never corner an opponent and always insist him to save, always assist him to save his face. Put yourself in his shoes so as to see things through his eyes.

• 1:54:47Jocko Willink?

  Avoid self-righteousness like the devil. Nothing is so self-blinding.

• 1:54:54Jocko Willink?

  Cure yourself of two commonly fatal delusions, the idea of victory and the idea that war cannot be limited." So that's just a whole slew of good advice for life, right? Keep cool in any case. Have unlimited patience. Don't corner people. See the other person's perspectives and don't be self-righteous. Because it can be blinding. Blinding. Most blinding.

• 1:55:23Jocko Willink?

  This is the dilemma of the intellectual. Neither intellectuals nor their critics appear to recognize the inherent dilemma of the thinking man and its inevitability. The dilemma should be faced for it is a natural part of the growth of any human mind. An intellectual ought to realize the extent to which the world is shaped by human emotions, emotions uncontrolled by reason. His thinking must have been shallow and his observation narrow if he fails to realize that. So you want to be all smart, want to be all intellectual, you want to talk about reason? Cool, but you better realize that what's driving humans is their emotions.

• 1:56:07Jocko Willink?

  Having once learned to think and to use reason as a guide, however, he cannot possibly float with the current of popular emotion and fluctuate with its violent changes unless he himself ceases to think or deliberately or is deliberately falls to his own thought. George Orwell expressed in a profound truth that quote, "The energy that actually shapes the world springs from emotions." End quote. And I would put a little additive on that, your emotions, especially the negative ones, come from your ego.

• 1:56:43Jocko Willink?

  Fast forward a little bit, "History bears witness to the vital part that the prophets have played in human progress," quotes prophets, "which is evidence of the ultimate practical value of expressing unreservedly the truth as one sees it." And this is something that we talked about when we did the first series of podcasts on him. He's got this idea between that there's people that are prophets and these are people that bring out the truth when the truth is not accepted.

• 1:57:13Jocko Willink?

  Yet it also becomes clear that the acceptance and spreading of their vision has always depended on another class of men, leaders. So you have the prophet and then you have the leaders who had to be philosophical strategists, striking a compromise between truths, between truth and men's receptivity to it. So the prophets just out there saying like, this is the truth. Yeah. The leaders say, hey, listen, we need to make some adjustments here. Here's another way of looking at things. Yeah, kind of the liaison, if you will. Yeah, like a liaison. Their effect has often depended as much on their own limitations in perceiving the truth as on their practical wisdom in proclaiming it. The prophets must be stoned. That is their lot in life and a test of their self fulfillment. So if you're putting out the word

• 1:57:58Jocko Willink?

  and people don't want to hear that word, you're getting stoned.

• 1:58:01Jocko Willink?

  A leader who is stoned, however, may merely prove that he has failed in his function through a deficiency of wisdom or through confusing his function with that as a prophet. In that last book, that's what he says too, right? The prophets must be, I never forgot that. It's interesting. Yep. You can look out at the world and you can see the people that put out opposing truth that's opposing the, the common narrative. And they're getting crushed. They're getting stoned. They're getting attacked, that's for damn sure.

• 1:58:36Jocko Willink?

  Opposition to the truth is inevitable, especially if it takes on the form of a new idea, but the decree, the degree of resistance can be diminished by giving thought not only to the aim, but the method of approach. Now we're talking about the indirect approach. Avoid a frontal attack on long established position. Instead, seek to turn it by a flank movement so that the more penetrable side is exposed to the thrust of truth. But in any such indirect approach, take care not to diverge from the truth, for nothing is more fatal to its real advancement than to lapse into untruth.

• 1:59:13Jocko Willink?

  And there's actually a great example in here. So when the, when the tanks came out, there's people that didn't like the tanks. It's gonna get bogged down. There's all these needs fuel. Like, what are you crazy? How are we gonna refuel these things? And the people, the leaders that actually brought the tanks into fruition to be utilized on a larger scale militarily. It says here, a notable example was the way that the opposition to mechanization, that's the beginning of use of tanks, was diminished by showing that the mobile armored vehicle, the fast-moving tank, was fundamentally the heir of the armored horseman. And thus the natural means of reviving the decisive role which cavalry had played in past ages.

• 1:59:58Jocko Willink?

  So like, remember all those guys riding around on horses? They're like, hey, this is like the new horse. This tank is the new, and people are like, oh, okay, that's kind of cool, right? It's a way to flank them and not just freaking, tanks are better than horses. Tanks are better than infantry. Tanks are the new way. No, it's like, tanks are the new, the new horse. So what you've been doing been good. We appreciate it. You're kind of like the natural progression. Thank you. Fire up those tanks.

• 2:00:30Speaker 01

  What, uh, what kind of fuel does do tanks have?

• 2:00:32Jocko Willink?

  Diesel.

• 2:00:33Speaker 01

  Diesel, yeah. Straight up diesel.

• 2:00:35Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 2:00:35Speaker 01

  Gas tank, like a diesel truck tank, just fuel it up at the station.

• 2:00:39Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 2:00:40Speaker 01

  Get it rolling.

• 2:00:41Jocko Willink?

  Fuel it up at the station.

• 2:00:44Jocko Willink?

  And I think it has a little bit broader. Like, there, there's probably some, you can probably use the little bit less processed fuel. But I don't know, I'm not a tanker. We should have asked the general.

• 2:00:58Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 2:01:00Jocko Willink?

  The limitations of conformity, even among great scholars, there is no more unhistorical fallacy that in order to command, you must learn to obey. Now, this is something we wrote about. We wrote about this. Leif and I wrote about this. If you want to lead, you got to learn to follow first. He's saying that's no, not true.

• 2:01:18Jocko Willink?

  A more temperamentally insubordinate lot than the outstanding soldiers and sailors of the past could scarcely be found in England as the one as one only has to think of Wolf, Wellington, Nelson, and Dun Donald. So he's saying like, look, all these guys were rebels. So he's saying, look, if you, it's an extreme. It's not a perfect counter to what we wrote.

• 2:01:41Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 2:01:42Jocko Willink?

  What he's saying is more in line with the psychology of military incompetence, which is if you obey orders and you're just an obedient person, you're probably not going to be a real winner out there on the battlefield.

• 2:01:54Speaker 01

  Got it. Yeah. Is that kind of like, um, you know, some people at work, they're, they're kind of innovative. They're kind of like, they like to like, think of new directions and stuff. And then some people, they just say, hey, tell me where and when to, to get there. Tell me what I'm doing and they'll just go, you know? And that's like two very specific types of person.

• 2:02:18Speaker 01

  Is that kind of what he's talking about in a way? I mean, or that dynamic?

• 2:02:21Jocko Willink?

  And what he's saying is that in order to be a leader, you can't be one of those person that's just totally obedient all the time.

• 2:02:27Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. It's, yeah. It's like, you gotta be that kind of person.

• 2:02:31Jocko Willink?

  Right. Like Dean Lister. Now, he, if all he did was like, do exactly what his jujitsu professors told him, would he have become the Dean Lister that we know today? The answer is no. He had to have some rebellious part of him that was sort of like, I'm gonna, does this work? I'm gonna try something else. I'm gonna try something outside the box. In order to be a, uh, in order to win in chaotic environments, you've got to be more open minded. You can't just be obedient.

• 2:03:00Jocko Willink?

  And he says, "A model boy rarely goes far, and even when he does, he is apt to falter when severely tested. A boy who confirms immaculately to school rules is not likely to grow into a man who will conquer by breaking the stereotype professional rules of his time as conquest has most often been achieved."

• 2:03:19Jocko Willink?

  Can't be, it can't just be if. My, my opinion of like the, the best is you got someone that knows when to conform, knows when to follow the rules, but then also is constantly thinking like, what can I do different? How can I, how can I break outside the box? What if I get attacked from this direction? I'm gonna do something that no one expected me to do.

• 2:03:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:03:37Jocko Willink?

  Like it was wild, listen to the, uh, the general talk about bombing ISIS's money supplies? Like a billion dollars?

• 2:03:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:03:46Jocko Willink?

  And actually pulling the assets off of searching for high value targets.

• 2:03:52Jocko Willink?

  So Jenna McFarland's like, oh, I'm actually not going to let you do that right now. I'm not going to give you the support that you need because we're gonna, we're gonna blow up their money, money supply. Some of those money supplies, a billion dollars and how that truly crippled the enemy, crippled ISIS. That's kind of outside the box, somewhat rebellious thinking.

• 2:04:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:04:10Jocko Willink?

  And also at the beginning of the fight against ISIS, he talked about the ROEs were too constrictive. And he's like, no, I can't follow these ROEs. I can't do this. We need some flexibility. He didn't just break the rules, but he said, oh, I need to change these and they changed them.

• 2:04:25Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:04:29Jocko Willink?

  The problem of force, the more I've reflected on the experience of history, the more I've come to see the instability of solutions achieved by force and to suspect even those instances where force has led to the appearance of resolving difficulties. This is so important to remember as a parent, as a parent, but as a leader, as a person, as a, if you force your solution on people, it's not going to be a lasting solution. It's not gonna happen.

• 2:04:54Jocko Willink?

  It, it just creates instability. It creates a surface level of compliance, but it's not deeply rooted and it's gonna crack.

• 2:05:06Jocko Willink?

  There is at least one solution that has yet to be tried, that the masters of force should be those who have mastered all desire to employ it. This is similar to what Jordan Peterson was talking about on this podcast a few years ago. When he said like, you should be dangerous, but you should have the discipline to control it.

• 2:05:26Jocko Willink?

  If armed forces were controlled by men who have become convinced of the wrongness of using force, there would be the nearest approach to a safe assurance against its abuse.

• 2:05:38Jocko Willink?

  The problem of limiting war. Can war be limited? Logic says no. War is the sphere of violence and it would be illogical to hesitate in using any extreme of violence that can help you win the war.

• 2:05:51Jocko Willink?

  History applies. Such logic makes nonsense. You go to war to win the peace, not just for the sake of fighting. Extremes of violence may frustrate your purpose so that victory becomes a boomerang. Moreover, it is a matter of historical fact that war has always been limited in many ways. He talks about a little bit about Caesar, Hitler. And he says, "The Romans, at their worst, were mild compared with our own ancestors and the ancestors of all Western European nations during the Dark Ages that followed the collapse of the Roman Empire. It was the habit of the Saxons and the Franks to slay everyone in their path, men, women,

• 2:06:35Jocko Willink?

  and children, and to indulge in the most reckless destruction of towns and crops." And then he goes on to say, "Yet the savagery of such warfare was not so great as it had been in the Dark Ages. Moreover, this excess of violence produced a widespread revulsion, which in turn led to a great advance, greater than ever before. To proceed to extremes in war might be logical, but it was not reasonable. Another important influence was the growth of more formal and courteous manners in social life. This code of manners spread into the field of international relations. These two factors, reason and manners, saved civilization when it was on the verge of collapse.

• 2:07:16Jocko Willink?

  Men came to feel that behavior mattered more than belief and customs more than creed in making earthly life tolerable and human relations workable." So when we started to actually behave, Yeah. It helped all of society. Like gentlemen. Yes, like gentlemen. And it literally talks about the, uh, the code, the like the chiv- the code of chivalry and this kind of thing.

• 2:07:44Jocko Willink?

  Fast forward a little bit, "To take the opinion of generals, admirals, or air marshals on the deeper problems of war as distinct from its executive technique is like consulting your local pharmacist about the treatment of a deep-seated disease. However skilled in compounding drugs, it is not their concern to study the causes and consequences of the disease, nor the psychology of the sufferers." He's basically saying like, "You can't just listen to generals if you want to talk about war."

• 2:08:13Jocko Willink?

  "The problem of irregular warfare. The prospects for disarmament or formal restrictions on war have become increasingly complicated by the development of irregular warfare in different forms throughout the world: guerrilla fighting, subversion, and resistance." He really saw this coming. This is in 1944, he wrote this. This is before Vietnam. This is before Afghanistan and Iraq and those big insurgencies in Algeria. Like, this is... He's got, he's very, got a lot of foresight here. "The habit of violence takes much deeper root in irregular warfare than does in regular warfare. In the latter, it is counteracted by the habit of obedience to constituted authority, whereas in the former, the former makes it a virtue of defying authority and

• 2:08:56Jocko Willink?

  violating rules. It becomes very difficult to rebuild a country and a stable state on such an undetermined, undermined foundation." So when you're dealing with an insurgency that are rebelling and acting violently and they're being rewarded for that, it's difficult to re-establish them in some kind of a more normal society.

• 2:09:20Jocko Willink?

  "The problem of world order."

• 2:09:24Jocko Willink?

  "Regrettable as it might seem to the idealist, the experience of history provides little warrant for the belief that real progress and the freedom that makes progress possible lies in unification." I was kind of surprised to hear this. So, hey, you don't get real freedom from everyone being together, unified. "For where unification has been able to establish unity of ideas..." It is usually ended in uniformity, paralyzing the growth of new ideas. And where the unification has merely brought about an artificial or imposed unity. It its irksomeness has led through the discord and disruption. So we think we're doing what to get everyone in line.

• 2:10:07Jocko Willink?

  And it seems to work for a little while, but that's not ultimately what's going to make things work well.

• 2:10:11Speaker 01

  So, you know, actually funny, because EK, you know who Bill Maher is, right?

• 2:10:15Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 2:10:15Speaker 01

  So he said something where I was like, I don't think I agree, which now after hearing that, I think I do agree. And it was more, it was kind of a joke, but you know, with a lot of his jokes, there's a lot of seriousness in it. Where he was like, hey, um, we should essentially, we shouldn't like be fighting each other. We should learn to get along with the people that we hate. Essentially, he said in a funny, jokey way, but basically I'm like, bro, why you gotta hate everybody? Like, why can't you, why can't we just get along, you know, kind of a thing? That's what I'm thinking in my head, real simple. Um, and he's basically saying like, it's okay that you dislike someone, but we gotta learn to live together, even if we dislike each other. And I was like, huh, that makes sense. Now that you say that, it's kind of like, oh yeah, that's true, huh? We don't all have to freaking be unified and think the same thing and feel the same way about every different thing, you know, bro.

• 2:11:00Speaker 01

  If everyone freaking, yeah, be be mad at that guy or whatever, but still like the, the idea of kind of accepting that this is what we're doing. You know, like you, you can, um, you can say, what's the, there's like a classic thing that everyone always says that like, um.

• 2:11:15Jocko Willink?

  Agree to disagree.

• 2:11:17Speaker 01

  Agree to disagree is a good one, yeah, but the it's way more eloquent. It's, um, I don't agree with what you're saying, but I'll fight till the death. For your right to say it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like, it's kind of like that idea, right? Where it's like, yeah, I don't, I don't like it, I don't agree or whatever, but hey, man, you can be here just like me and freaking, it's all good. We keep pushing, you know?

• 2:11:37Jocko Willink?

  Well, I'm happy that you have that thought, because a lot of people don't. Bro, you go on, uh, social media? People are, people, they sound insane. Like if you were to take the words that they write in a comment.

• 2:11:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:11:52Jocko Willink?

  About some politician or some other politician and you were to have a person say that, you'd be like, oh, this, this per- this person's unhinged. They're not thinking clearly.

• 2:12:01Speaker 01

  You know what I think, I mean, not to go off on too much of a social media tangent. I think there's kind of two, well, probably more than two, but two things are going on that kind of give rise to this, that. Which I, I agree. That's how it feels to me too. But first off, I think there's, it's only a small group of people who are on there acting up, being weird, like being non-normal. A, that's A. And it's even actually a smaller group than we think because there's a big group of people of the small group of people. That are like, under normal circumstances, they wouldn't do all that stuff if all, if they were under, in a scenario where all the information was presented to them in a calm,

• 2:12:39Speaker 01

  non-combative, non-emotionally driven, um, or inducing way, they'd be like, hmm, that makes sense. That makes a little less sense to me. That, I don't know. You know, they would probably act pretty normal. But social media has a way on purpose, by the way, to get everybody freaking fired up and not everybody's ready for that, you know? So they encounter it and they can't, quote unquote, can't help but get fired up and then act up. See what I'm saying? And I think that that's like a, a good, good amount of people. That's what I think.

• 2:13:05Jocko Willink?

  Okay. I would, me enough to excuse my language I'm about to use here.

• 2:13:09Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 2:13:10Jocko Willink?

  Um, when's the last time that you heard another person tell to their face, fuck you?

• 2:13:21Speaker 01

  I see what you're saying to.

• 2:13:23Jocko Willink?

  No, I'm asking, like for real, when's the last time you saw another person?

• 2:13:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, well.

• 2:13:27Jocko Willink?

  Look at that person and say, fuck you.

• 2:13:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, I tell my brother that all the time, but.

• 2:13:32Jocko Willink?

  No, not, hey, no, no, not, not like, fuck you, man. Not like that. I'm talking fuck you.

• 2:13:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't know.

• 2:13:38Jocko Willink?

  It's been a while, right?

• 2:13:39Speaker 01

  Been a while. Yeah, yeah, sir.

• 2:13:41Jocko Willink?

  Do you ever go on Twitter or what is now known as X?

• 2:13:45Speaker 01

  I don't go on X, no. I mean, I would, but it's not as entertaining.

• 2:13:49Jocko Willink?

  Like, it's a good source for news, but when you see the news story.

• 2:13:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:13:54Jocko Willink?

  You're gonna see, you know, you go, okay, well, what, what, how are people reacting to this?

• 2:13:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:13:59Jocko Willink?

  And you'll see.

• 2:14:02Jocko Willink?

  If you wanted to see the number of people that tell other people on this medium, you know, blah, blah, blah, fuck you. And you're like, bro, what is, are you okay?

• 2:14:14Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:14:14Jocko Willink?

  So it's weird that that's what it, that that's the way that medium. Like I said, if you took those words that people write in a tweet and you actually had a human being say those to another human being.

• 2:14:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:14:32Jocko Willink?

  Like, most people wouldn't do that.

• 2:14:34Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:14:35Jocko Willink?

  Because you would sound completely unhinged. You wouldn't sound like you were like, I would almost take that statement if you said something, you know, no way should we ever do this as a country. This is bullshit. Fuck you. I'd be like, like, I'm not listening to what you're, you know what I mean? I'm not, I'm not like, okay, well, let's say, hey, thanks for your opinion. No, I'm like, okay, this dude's a little unhinged.

• 2:14:54Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:14:54Jocko Willink?

  But that's kind of what, and again, even if you're just going on to Twitter because you want to check the news stories or check the trending news stories, because it's a good way to, to figure out what's happening. Oh, you, you record a podcast for three hours and you get done, you're like, oh, I wonder if there's anything happening in the world.

• 2:15:10Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 2:15:10Jocko Willink?

  A major event, you know, an earthquake, a, a civilian plane crashes, a military attack happened, a terrorist attack, like, okay, we'll check the trending news.

• 2:15:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:15:20Jocko Willink?

  And so you open up a story and it says, there's a, whatever, there's a, there's a earthquake, a level seven, what is it, seven point two earthquake. Oh, wow. And then someone will chime in, you know, with, of course, we can't get them help because our president sucks. Fuck you. And you're like, what are you talking about?

• 2:15:44Jocko Willink?

  What is wrong? And, and there's also like, you know, the, the, the dramatics of it, you know, the dramatics of the whole thing.

• 2:15:51Speaker 01

  Yeah. So which is weird. Well, I, I agree with you, um, about that, that, and that's kind of part of what I'm saying. And I'm sure, yeah, let's say that me and you're disagreeing, which I don't think we're disagreeing. Um, but let's say we were, I'm sure it's somewhere in the middle. But, but this is what I'm saying.

• 2:16:09Speaker 01

  I'm saying that yeah, people act up like that, but the majority of them is my hypothesis. The majority of them fall into one of these groups. The majority of them, there's a minority of people, yeah, they're just unhinged now. And maybe social media just brought it out or whatever. And they're just weird. They're unhinged, you know, like they'll, they probably see their neighbor like doing mowing their lawn too early in the morning and they roll over there and yell at them. And they're that kind of person. And there's people like that, oh yeah, for sure. Brother disgruntled neighbor, that's how, you know, that's a disgruntled person. And sure, they're on social media for sure. But I think most of us are there either not ready for the algorithm and the freaking emotionally enticing stuff and we're not ready for that. And, and consider over the idea of overtime as well.

• 2:16:54Speaker 01

  Cause it's not like, you know, just all of a sudden I'm a normal person and then boom, I'm psycho. It's like, but first off, it's like, wait, I can't wait. Is this real? What is it? Well, you know, and then it's like day by day by day over the years. Then now they're just normally psycho in that way because the algorithm made them that way. And this is a very anomalous circumstance because just like I said in real life, no, they wouldn't do that because they don't get enticed like that in real life. That's why. So yeah, anyone who's enticed enough emotionally, they will say fuck you. They totally will in real life. But social media, sure, it's not real life, but it provides that same enticement under those circumstances.

• 2:17:30Jocko Willink?

  Like what makes me concerned for them is if you're, are they emotionally feeling? Like when you type the words fuck you, does it feel the same way? Like, you know what I mean? Like that's kind of, so that means that a person, like there's very few things that happen to me on a daily basis that get my emotions to a point where I even would think like,

• 2:18:01Jocko Willink?

  The hell with this or like, I don't know what like fuck you is kind of like the top hierarchy of anger expression at another human being. There's a whole bunch of levels down to like, you know, just

• 2:18:13Speaker 01

  Whatever.

• 2:18:14Jocko Willink?

  You know, yeah, roll your eyes. Okay. So I barely even would roll my eyes at someone or like go like that, like it's not happening. So that means these people that are in that zone just it's, it's

• 2:18:29Jocko Willink?

  it's, it's kind of crazy, right?

• 2:18:31Speaker 01

  It is, but I do still think and I don't know, bro. Who do I hang out with? I can't hold you most of the time.

• 2:18:37Jocko Willink?

  And quite frankly, most of the time I go, that's a weird bot, you know?

• 2:18:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:18:40Jocko Willink?

  I kind of attribute a lot of this stuff to just being uh bots or, or shit posters that are just, they get some kind of satisfaction about getting a response like, oh, right. Fuck you. No, fuck you. And that we have like

• 2:18:51Speaker 01

  That's what I think too. But actually here, more than that, I would say the majority of human beings on earth kind of a thing. They're not on social media getting nuts all the time. I, I'd say we see the ones that do get nuts all the time. That's who we see. So we're like, what's up with people of the world? Cause you don't see all those other people ever in your life, ever real life or otherwise, you don't see them because they're gone. They don't register on your little rate on your measurable or your measurement tool, whatever. So now who do you see? Okay. When those people who are the minority people

• 2:19:19Jocko Willink?

  Mr. F you.

• 2:19:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, you got Mr. F you. And then within that group of Mr. F you is like, under what circumstances did they get to be that way? Some people, that's how, and they're crazy and they're the people that you refer to as like, people are crazy nowadays, right? That's them. Okay. That's, they're small. The rest are like, they're, they act crazy on social media only because freaking social media makes them act crazy. They're not, they, they don't know how to deal with the algorithm like you or like, like, like a lot of people. Seriously, a lot of people do not know how to deal with it.

• 2:19:48Jocko Willink?

  And a lot of people do.

• 2:19:49Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 2:19:50Jocko Willink?

  You're actually making a point to me, which I agree with, and which I've made to a bunch. I've been interviewed a bunch of times where people have said like, dude, you think America's so divisive? And I always say like, it's super divisive on Twitter.

• 2:20:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, online.

• 2:20:03Jocko Willink?

  Because, but I work with companies all over the country and I travel all over the place and everyone is trying to do better in their life, trying to get stronger, trying to improve their next quarter profitability and hire a new team and develop a new product. That's what most people are doing.

• 2:20:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:20:17Jocko Willink?

  They're not sitting on social media if you get crazy. So, so your point is correct.

• 2:20:21Speaker 01

  And even on top of that, where it's like, hey, if you really want to drill down or whatever. It's divisive only in certain places on social media. It's divisive in divisive places in social media. Like how you talked about like, you know, to Ben Shapiro and Candace Owens or whatever. It's like, yeah, their view of it. Cause they're, they exist in the, in the hotspots. You know, there's probably going my wife's social media. There's no divisiveness there. There's just some kids running around and there's this and that. Going my freaking brothers, going like pretty much everyone that you know, aside from a small handful of people. Go on their social media, see how many arguments are breaking out. Freaking none. And if they are, it's about like, I don't know, something else. Like it's not dividing the country. I'll tell you that.

• 2:21:04Jocko Willink?

  Yep. Well, to your point, this idea of unity that we all have to think the same way. It shouldn't be something that we strive for. We should actually just be striving for being more understanding and being more open minded.

• 2:21:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:21:17Jocko Willink?

  So that's a good point. That Bill Merrmaid?

• 2:21:19Speaker 01

  Bill Maher.

• 2:21:20Jocko Willink?

  Bill Maher?

• 2:21:20Speaker 01

  Yeah. But yeah, yeah, yeah. So that, I mean, again, I totally deviated when it to social media. Like, hey, let's.

• 2:21:26Jocko Willink?

  No, I think I dragged us over there.

• 2:21:29Speaker 01

  But hey, that's, that's enlightening to me too. Like, hey, you don't agree, you don't have to even accept really, but you gotta learn to live together.

• 2:21:36Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And it always is good. And he already talked about this in the book. He's like, what's your perspective? Cause if you hate Trump or you hate Biden, I should be like, oh, I wonder why you hate them. Not like, well, then I hate you.

• 2:21:48Speaker 01

  Right?

• 2:21:48Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:21:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:21:52Jocko Willink?

  This gets into the problem of world faith and how that interrupts. And he, he says this very interesting and, and very interesting is not the right word. I'll just read it. I will state very simply how I came to find evidence of God that was convincing to reason. It was that an imitated, an underworldly current of goodness has been maintained.

• 2:22:19Jocko Willink?

  So, an underworldy current of goodness has been maintained and proved insurpressible in a world where evil flourishes and selfishness has obvious advantages. By human standards, there is no sense in self-sacrifice and helping others at one's own expense, yet that unselfish motive has been manifested in innumerable cases. Can it be explained, save by the presence of a higher source of inspiration? This is something very similar that I say about war, and I say in war, you see like the best part of humanity and you see the worst part of humanity.

• 2:23:01Jocko Willink?

  And that's what he's saying here, like, why would people do things that benefit others when there's no benefit to yourself? Like, it doesn't make any sense. The only way to do that, the only way that people would make those decisions is a presence of some kind of higher power. He says, "Our civilization in the West has been rescued by the revival of a code that was based on moral values. The cult of chivalry did quite as much as the efforts of the church to bring Europe out of the Dark Ages." And this is going back to some, a topic that we already kind of touched on. Manners are apt to be regarded as surface polish. That is a superficial view.

• 2:23:46Jocko Willink?

  So again, just how you're behaving and having manners. They arise from an inward control. A fresh realization of their importance is needed in the world today, and the revival might prove the salvation of civilization. It's a bold statement. But dang, being polite, being well-mannered, that shows that you have self-control. And we need self-control, because what is that doing? That's controlling your emotions. So when someone cuts you in the line at the grocery market, and your response is, "Fuck you," instead of, "Excuse me, sorry, yeah, go ahead."

• 2:24:24Jocko Willink?

  That you you take that it's just like I was talking about these principles of leadership and how hey oh you know this guy got fired because he had a bad ego whereas in war it's like oh that guy got twenty million people killed because he had a big ego so now you take good manners and good behavior and you start to amplify that on a global level you can see where this is important

• 2:24:43Speaker 01

  Yeah I oftentimes think of manners is like also the quelling of impulse where like

• 2:24:50Jocko Willink?

  Hundred percent

• 2:24:52Speaker 01

  You know like you the more freaking rowdy you are you know the more like you can't control your impulses right and you know manners you know what do you think of anything manners think this proper gentleman you know who like hmm under you know something might uh might maybe frustrate him but he'll behave you know accordingly with and not give into the impulse to lose his temper or treat someone you know a a certain way or even like you know even like this idea of toxic masculinity or whatever so um you know like let's say uh someone who's insensitive and has bad manners towards women right big strong guy or whatever like how's he gonna make them feel like

• 2:25:30Speaker 01

  and sometimes that's that's an impulsive thing you know but regardless of like how you might feel somewhere in your mind or whatever you can control it so it's like yeah that the controlling of impulse as well

• 2:25:40Jocko Willink?

  Yeah and then you multiply that times like a government

• 2:25:44Speaker 01

  Yeah

• 2:25:45Jocko Willink?

  A society

• 2:25:46Speaker 01

  Yeah that's true

• 2:25:48Jocko Willink?

  And it says for only manners in the deeper sense of mutual restraint for mutual security can control the risk that outbursts of temper over political and social issues may lead to the mutual destruction in the atomic age Yeah bad manners

• 2:26:07Jocko Willink?

  Confucianism was humanly wiser than Christianity in that it recognized and applied better than Christianity the truth of experiences that was epitomized in Aristotle's ab observation that quote men acquire a peculiar quality by constantly acting in a particular way or sorry a particular men acquire a particular quality by constantly acting in a particular way and that reminded me of what RFK his whole story of

• 2:26:42Jocko Willink?

  Spiritual enlightenment. You know, he says, I said, well, how did you quit drugs? He said, oh, I have a spiritual enlightenment, enlightenment. I was like, well, what was that all about? And then he kind of told that story. And one of the key components of that story that he told was he realized, he told that, that whole story about how they were looking for proof of God and they couldn't find proof of God. But what they did find was that the people that believed in God had better lives than the people that didn't. And so what he started doing was acting as if God existed and acted as if he believed in God. And guess what? His life got better. And so that's what this is, this, this comment from Aristotle. If you act in a particular way, you will, you will gain that particular quality.

• 2:27:26Jocko Willink?

  So how our actions are going to impact who we are and what we are. And that goes back to the whole thing about like, oh, can you be brave? If you're scared, can you be brave? Well, did you do the thing? Then you were brave.

• 2:27:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:27:38Jocko Willink?

  So we need to act and behave better. That's what this whole section about manners, like it doesn't matter if I'm mad at you, I have to act as if I'm not. And some people say, well, you've got to be your true self. No, I actually don't. And if you don't be your true self, if you don't act out in these ways, and you actually act like a civilized, good human being, over time, you'll become a good civilized human being.

• 2:27:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:28:01Jocko Willink?

  The point here is that if you acquire, you will acquire a particular quality by consistently acting in a particular way, which seems to me to make some level of sense. And that's why manners and treating each other correctly is going to be beneficial in the long run. And this gets into the conclusions here. This is the last little section of the book. Science and technology have produced a greater transformation of the physical conditions and apparatus of life in the past hundred years than had taken place in the previous 2000 years. And that's probably even true right now. It's probably even more true. Yet when men turn these tremendous new powers to a war purpose, they employ them as recklessly

• 2:28:43Jocko Willink?

  as their ancestors employed the primitive means of the past, they pursue the same traditional ends without regards to the difference of their effect. Meaning I used to throw a rock at you and then I throw a grenade at you. And right now we can throw nuclear missiles at each other and everyone dies.

• 2:29:01Jocko Willink?

  Truth is a spiral staircase. What looks true on one level may not be true on the next higher level. A complete vision must extend vertically as well as horizontally, but not, oh, sorry, not only seeing the parts in relation to one another, but embracing the different planes. And this is where we kind of get to the, uh, the final conclusion and the crux, and this is, again, this is, has a little bit to do with, with why we, why don't we learn from history? But it has a lot to do with just life. He says, "What can the individual learn from history as a guide to living? Not what to do, but what to strive for and what to avoid in striving.

• 2:29:46Jocko Willink?

  The importance and intrinsic value of behaving decently. The importance of seeing clearly, not least of seeing himself clearly. To face life with clear eyes, desirous to see the truth, and to come through it with clean hands, behaving with consideration for others, while achieving such conditions as enable a man to get the best out of life, is enough for ambition and a high ambition." So think about that statement. You want to go through life with clear eyes. You want to look for the truth. You want to come through it with clean hands.

• 2:30:29Jocko Willink?

  You want to behave with consider, consideration for others, but at the same time, you want to achieve conditions that enable a man to get the best of life. So you want to get good things in life, but you want to do it while you're considering, with consideration for others.

• 2:30:45Jocko Willink?

  "Only as a man progresses toward it does he realize what effort it entails and how large is the distance to go." So what he's talking about is not easy. To go through life and get the best out of life that you're able to achieve. And do that while you're still taking care of other people and considering other people. Back to the book, it is strange how people assume that no training is needed in the pursuit of truth. It is stranger still that this assumption is often manifest in the very man who talks of the difficulty of determining what is true. We should recognize that for this pursuit, anyone requires at least as much care and training as a boxer for a fight or a runner for a marathon.

• 2:31:28Jocko Willink?

  He has to learn how to detach his thinking from every desire and interest. From every sympathy and antipathy and antipathy. Like ridding oneself of superfluous tissue, the tissue of untruth, which all human beings tend to accumulate for their own comfort and protection.

• 2:31:51Jocko Willink?

  This is what the ego builds up, want to take care of that.

• 2:31:55Jocko Willink?

  And he must keep fit to become fitter. In other words, he must be true to the light he has seen. So you gotta be able to detach. It's surprising to me that he doesn't use the word ego in here, right? Because desire and interest, that's ego driven. Every sympathy and antipathy, antipathy, that's ego driven.

• 2:32:16Jocko Willink?

  Ridding oneself of the superfluous tissue, the lies that you tell yourself, those are, that's your ego telling you lies. Your ego is lying to you a lot.

• 2:32:25Jocko Willink?

  In other words, he must be true to the light he has seen. He may realize that the world is a jungle. But if he has seen that it could be better for anyone, if the simple principles of decency and kindliness were generally applied, then he must in honesty, try to practice these consistently and live personally as if they were general. In other words, he must follow the light he has seen.

• 2:32:58Jocko Willink?

  Since he will be following it through a jungle, however, he should bear in mind the supremely practical guidance provided nearly 2,000 years ago. Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves. Be ye therefore wise as serpents and harmless as doves.

• 2:33:24Jocko Willink?

  So, there you go. That's a, that's a wrap on the book. A lot of good advice in the book. And like I said, it's only so much of it is about why we don't learn from history. It just goes off in all kinds of tangents.

• 2:33:39Jocko Willink?

  But such good advice, and obviously not just for combat, but to go through life with clear eyes, seeking the truth, to be considerate of others. Boy, is it weird that I have to review this on a podcast? We have to sit here and talk about being considerate of others while working to achieve the best that you can out of life? This is great. This is incredible. This is incredible advice. It's gonna make your life so much better if you do those things. Achieve what you can, be considerate of each other, of others. Seek the truth. That's what we're doing.

• 2:34:13Jocko Willink?

  These are good things for all of us to keep in front of our minds and things that can help us all be better human beings and not start wars and not kill each other or

• 2:34:31Jocko Willink?

  attack each other.

• 2:34:35Jocko Willink?

  Or be filled with hatred for other people. By the way, people you'd never even met before.

• 2:34:43Jocko Willink?

  It's getting wild out there. All right. So we're trying to be a little better. Echo Charles, speaking of becoming better. You mentioned one thing early on in this whole jam, that there's one thing that we can do as human beings that's gonna help us in all aspect of our lives. Everything that we do. What can we do to help it out? What is that thing? What is that one thing?

• 2:35:03Speaker 01

  Exercise.

• 2:35:03Jocko Willink?

  There you go.

• 2:35:04Speaker 01

  It's true. It's absolutely true. It's funny, I was talking about this idea with Thomas Delaro about food, right? Where it's like you have natural food, which, you know, in a nutshell is like the best, right? Natural food. And on the side of the spectrum is highly, highly, highly, highly, highly processed food for taste. So basically, how that became a thing is people are like, okay, you know, I take this apple, whatever. How can I sell more apples? Make it taste a little bit better, right? So let's make a, I don't know, I can't, this is just hypothetically. Let's make a candy apple. Oh, wow. Yeah, that's cool. People love the candy apple.

• 2:35:45Jocko Willink?

  Oh, you like the one with the caramel on it?

• 2:35:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, the caramel or the candy, red candy thing on the outside, right?

• 2:35:51Jocko Willink?

  Hey, let's face it, those things are good.

• 2:35:52Speaker 01

  Hey, now tastes better than a normal apple, right? So it's like, cool. Now that becomes the thing. Then some other person was like, hmm, I see what they did there. Let me make something that tastes even better than a candy apple. So they make, I don't know, a freaking piece of candy that's apple flavored, we'll say, right? But by that time, it's like, bro, well, the whole reason you ate the apple, the hell, all the health part of it is gone. So they're like, all right, but that now that's a problem. So now let's inject some fiber into this piece of candy now. Now it's healthy candy. See what I'm saying? You got the fiber, so you got the candy. Now you got the fiber in there. You got, let's inject some vitamins in there.

• 2:36:31Jocko Willink?

  Heading back towards an apple.

• 2:36:32Speaker 01

  Exactly right. It's like, bro, why don't you just eat the apple? You know, at the end of the day. So it basically goes through this weird spectrum where it's like, we take out all the natural parts and then, because we want to feed like this specific purpose, but then it's like, dang, you, you know, you lose a bunch of it. So let's reinject this other stuff to make it back, serving the benefit of the original thing, you know? But it's now this, this, this weird Frankenstein thing. You see what I'm saying? So I was talking, not talking, I was thinking while I was working out, by the way, I was like, bro, that's kind of what we do with workouts.

• 2:37:03Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, because we used to like tilt, you know, tilt the field.

• 2:37:07Speaker 01

  Work all day, hunt for food, like the whole deal. But now it's like.

• 2:37:11Jocko Willink?

  Did you just realize that?

• 2:37:14Speaker 01

  No, that part I didn't just realize. I realized that part and then now we're, you know, instead of, because so we normally, basically it's like, hey, we got what we need from exercise just by living, doing our normal living stuff. Now we don't.

• 2:37:29Jocko Willink?

  Now we drive to the gym to get on the treadmill.

• 2:37:32Speaker 01

  Exactly right. It's like, or the, yeah, yeah, exactly right. You get on a treadmill that doesn't go anywhere, by the way. Before it was like, shit, I'm trying to get to the next village or whatever, whatever the deal is.

• 2:37:42Jocko Willink?

  Tiger.

• 2:37:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, the whole deal, you know, or play or do whatever, whatever, right? Now we're like, bro, I'm gonna jump on a treadmill just to get those, you know, it's like this, it's weird, bro. And even with like strength, right? Before we're working, lifting up heavy stuff, freaking carrying stuff across the field, like heavy stuff, bags of this or whatever, right? Now it's like, bro, we don't do that. We got equipment doing all that stuff, but I still gotta be strong. So now I'm gonna go like form a made formulated fabricated heavy things called weights, by the way. It's not that they, it's this functional thing with weight. No, they're called weights for the sake of weights. And I'm gonna lift them up again and again and again and then just to get my strength back. It's a weird kind of process.

• 2:38:25Jocko Willink?

  You know how you can get solar power for your house?

• 2:38:28Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:38:29Jocko Willink?

  And they come with a big battery for your house?

• 2:38:32Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 2:38:33Jocko Willink?

  Wouldn't it be cool if you could recharge your battery by lifting? Like pulling things and lifting things and biking and stuff like that? The only thing is I kind of looked into this a little bit at some point and you don't generate very much power on like a bike.

• 2:38:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:38:52Jocko Willink?

  You know, you, you could light a light for a little while, but, but then again, if you had your whole family. I remember we had in the SEAL teams for a while. We had these battery rechargeers. So you could be in the field and for your radio. And we had these battery chargers that you could like crank this thing. And the amount of freaking cranking that you had to do to recharge one of these batteries. Yeah, like a little crank, like a little cranky, turn this thing and it would create, generate power.

• 2:39:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:39:25Jocko Willink?

  The amount of power that it took to, to like recharge one of these batteries was impractical.

• 2:39:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's not realistic.

• 2:39:33Jocko Willink?

  We didn't do it. We didn't do it. I, I don't think I ever actually recharged a battery one time ever in the field because when I tried it. It was like, you know, four hours of cranking this thing. I think they were more aimed at special forces like Green Berets, because Green Berets, they're gonna be, generally speaking, they would, they, they might go on a mission where they're going out into the, into the jungle with some host nation for months.

• 2:39:59Speaker 01

  Alright.

• 2:39:59Jocko Willink?

  And so then it makes sense, like, hey, we're not gonna need to resupply our batteries, we're gonna crank this thing and, and it's gonna recharge, but the amount of work you have to do to generate power that we take for granted, we flip on the light, like, if there was, if you had to go and freaking pedal a bike, so you would be so much more restrictive about how much energy you used.

• 2:40:21Speaker 01

  Oh, big.

• 2:40:21Jocko Willink?

  But wouldn't it be kinda nice if we did that? Because you think about what, what are we doing? We're using, we're eating food to give us the energy to lift the weights and ride the bike and pull the rower.

• 2:40:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:40:33Jocko Willink?

  And all that is just energy that goes into nowhere.

• 2:40:36Speaker 01

  I know.

• 2:40:36Jocko Willink?

  Whereas if we could set up some kind of a system where we can at least put a little juice back into the battery, right?

• 2:40:43Speaker 01

  I, I actually heard of a gym, I don't know if it was a fantasy thing or what, but, or video, whatever, but it was a gym. It was a commercial gym, that the treadmills were hooked up to, yeah, some system where like, you would, you would add or subtract whatever from the electricity bill of the gym. And it would affect their membership price. I don't know, it like had something like that. But yeah, it's minimal.

• 2:41:03Jocko Willink?

  It's minimal.

• 2:41:04Speaker 01

  But, but, so, okay, so I found this out early on where, on average, to run one mile is one hundred calories.

• 2:41:11Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 2:41:12Speaker 01

  I thought it was gonna be way more. You're like, you ever ran a mile? Like, my, your body running a mile, it's like, bro, that's freaking, I don't know, thousand calories is what it feels like, you know? It's like, bro, a hundred calories, you know how easy it is to eat or drink a hundred calories?

• 2:41:26Jocko Willink?

  Oh, it's a joke.

• 2:41:27Speaker 01

  Easy money. So, there's,

• 2:41:30Jocko Willink?

  hmm, yeah, I was gonna say, you can get, there's some foods, I bet you can get a hundred calories in a bite.

• 2:41:36Speaker 01

  Yeah. Oh.

• 2:41:37Jocko Willink?

  Right?

• 2:41:37Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:41:38Jocko Willink?

  Cause it's, oh yeah, what is it, nine grams of fat, nine grams, nine calories in a gram of fat, right?

• 2:41:42Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:41:43Jocko Willink?

  So that means if you put ten grams, that's not hard to put ten grams, that's, or eleven grams, you get ninety-nine calories in a bite.

• 2:41:50Speaker 01

  Easy.

• 2:41:51Jocko Willink?

  That's some cra- Crazy activity right there.

• 2:41:53Speaker 01

  Put it into perspective. Okay, so, okay, yeah, there's these muffins, you know, gluten free. All this stuff they get from Trader Joe's or wherever they're they're from, right? These chocolate muffins. Four hundred eighty calories in one muffin. And it's not like it's this this crazy big deluxe. But it's easy to eat.

• 2:42:09Jocko Willink?

  If you, if I put just unlimited supply of these Trader Joe, what kind muffin is it? Trader Joe?

• 2:42:17Speaker 01

  What? I I don't even know.

• 2:42:18Jocko Willink?

  Gluten free muffin muffin.

• 2:42:19Speaker 01

  Gluten free for sure. I don't know if they're a Trader Joe.

• 2:42:20Jocko Willink?

  Let's say that you are gonna watch a movie and I was gonna give you a a free pass. On caloric intake, your health is a waiver. Like it's, this doesn't get a figure. How many of those could you eat?

• 2:42:33Speaker 01

  Well, each little container has four of them in there, so I could probably comfortably and just be like and not be uncomfortable. Probably two containers, maybe eight, eight of them, maybe. You six, six, eight.

• 2:42:45Jocko Willink?

  That's crazy.

• 2:42:46Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. That, bro, yeah.

• 2:42:48Jocko Willink?

  That's two thousand calories per box. So you just had four thousand calories, which is like the caloric intake for you probably per day, what you eat.

• 2:42:55Speaker 01

  More than, that's more than I would burn per day, even with a normal exercise routine, for sure. Yeah, it's, it is to your point, but you don't burn as many calories as you think you do. You're not producing.

• 2:43:07Jocko Willink?

  It is weird, though, how many calories you burn just by your normal metabolism.

• 2:43:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:43:12Jocko Willink?

  Like, because you think, this is what doesn't make sense, you know, when you think about it, is it's a hundred calories to to run a mile. But then, just in the day, every day, without doing anything, I burn twenty five hundred calories.

• 2:43:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:43:23Jocko Willink?

  You know, just by walking around and just being a human.

• 2:43:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, and sleeping too, by the way.

• 2:43:27Jocko Willink?

  And sleeping, you're burning calories.

• 2:43:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. So, so, can say, when you do the math, it does make sense, because you have your what's called basal metabolic rate. It's just how much you're burning, not really freaking doing anything. And if you want to put it into simpler terms, let's just say you're resting, like, how much you burn? Just rest, at rest, or whatever, sleeping, sitting there, whatever. You do that for so long in a twenty four hour period.

• 2:43:52Jocko Willink?

  You do it for twenty four hours.

• 2:43:54Speaker 01

  Compared to every other activity, when you think about it. So it's like, yeah, it's just on on in background running.

• 2:44:00Jocko Willink?

  But let's face it, when you run that mental game of like, you just trained jujitsu for an hour. What does that feel like?

• 2:44:08Speaker 01

  So, okay, so.

• 2:44:10Jocko Willink?

  I mean, hard rounds.

• 2:44:11Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, hour. That's a lot. And that to me, and that's why I always say I was just talking to JP yesterday. And jujitsu, as far as losing weight, is the cheat code for that.

• 2:44:19Jocko Willink?

  Cause it's fun.

• 2:44:20Speaker 01

  Because, okay, so the three zones, right, is like what you do just at rest, right? That's however many calories that it, that's most, not because it's the hardest or most exertion. It's because it lasts, it's the longest thing you do during the day.

• 2:44:30Jocko Willink?

  It lasts about 24 hours a day.

• 2:44:32Speaker 01

  Yes, exactly right, which is the most. That's why you burn the most. Then you have, uh, what's called, I think it's something along the lines of non-exercise activity, right? Well, that's like walking here, walking there, depends on your job, like that kind of stuff, right? If you're, you know, and then there's your exercise. And so the thing you do the least, as far as time goes, is exercise. Like, no one's gonna, rolling for an hour is very, like, taxing. You just don't know it as much compared to like running on the trip, cause it's so fun. Exactly right. You're with your friends and all this stuff. But, or like running on a treadmill or running outside or whatever, that's like mundane, like to have that much exertion compared, you know? If you're running is like a lot. It's not comfortable and it's very unrealistic. So, most people don't do it.

• 2:45:17Speaker 01

  So, what they say is, the savvy person, so the amount of calories you burn just at rest is gonna depend on your body composition. So, the more muscle you have, that's, that's the big burner of the body, right? Your muscles. So, a savvy person, right, wants to get in the shape that they want to get in, whatever that is, they're gonna build some muscle. So, now even when they're cruising, which that's what, let's face it, that's what we're doing factually. No matter how lazy or not lazy you are, that's what you're doing most of the time, cruising. While you're cruising, you're burning way more calories, cause you got all that muscle, see what I'm saying? And then when you exercise, you don't run and do some, some calorie burning exercise, cause that's minimal. You do some muscle building exercise, you see what I'm saying?

• 2:45:57Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:45:58Speaker 01

  So, now it'll, it's like an investment, see what I'm saying? And then that, that's not to mention the non-exercise activity, you're still burning way more. See what I'm saying?

• 2:46:05Jocko Willink?

  Check.

• 2:46:06Speaker 01

  There you go.

• 2:46:07Jocko Willink?

  That's what we're doing. We're exercising.

• 2:46:08Speaker 01

  We're exercising 100%.

• 2:46:10Jocko Willink?

  When we exercise, guess what we're gonna need?

• 2:46:12Speaker 01

  Fuel.

• 2:46:13Jocko Willink?

  What kind of fuel do you recommend?

• 2:46:14Speaker 01

  Jocko Fuel. All day, the cleanest, most effective, every single way. Yeah, the good news too, in which, you know, I commend you. You know, I've known you for a long time. It's one of the many things I'm gonna commend you about is, is, is hitting all essential angles of the fuel.

• 2:46:30Jocko Willink?

  We got it. We got the, we got the protein, which you're gonna need, Molk Protein. So good, so tasty, so good for you, so replenishing. You're gonna build those muscles, they're gonna make you a better human being, help you in all aspects of your life. We got the energy drink if you need it.

• 2:46:46Speaker 01

  That's true.

• 2:46:47Jocko Willink?

  And we got the, now we got the hydration, the hydration system.

• 2:46:50Speaker 01

  Two options, by the way.

• 2:46:52Jocko Willink?

  Two options? What do you mean two options?

• 2:46:53Speaker 01

  Mix the powder.

• 2:46:53Jocko Willink?

  Oh, you can mix the powder or you can get the ready to drink one.

• 2:46:55Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 2:46:56Jocko Willink?

  What's your assessment on the ready to drink one?

• 2:46:58Speaker 01

  Ready to drink one is surprisingly good. I know it's gonna be good, cuz I know that's the jam. You know, you went into it early on with the false dichotomy, but I still accept it. Where you're like, oh yeah, what am I gonna do? Make it taste like crap? No, bro, you can make it taste okay, but I know that you focus on making it taste good. Which actually function- functionally is actually best.

• 2:47:17Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:47:18Speaker 01

  It's like, it's kinda like the whole entertainment thing with education. It's like, cool.

• 2:47:22Jocko Willink?

  I said from the word go, if you make protein that tastes like crap, no one drinks the protein. If you make a hydration that tastes like crap, no one's gonna drink it. So the stuff has to taste good. And we've, look, our, especially our energy drink, the first version of the energy drink did not taste good. That's all on me. I did a bad job.

• 2:47:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, cuz you only drink water.

• 2:47:40Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and so as we tuned that up, man, all the energy drink tastes good, but now we kind of got those dialed in. The protein's definitely dialed in.

• 2:47:49Speaker 01

  Yes, sir.

• 2:47:50Jocko Willink?

  We got the freaking, what, highest ranking for taste. So, that's awesome. And the hydrate is awesome too. So we got a lot of options for you. We got you covered.

• 2:48:00Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:48:00Jocko Willink?

  As Eclature. Plus, we got Joint Warfare, Super Krill. You know, people were asking about, so we came out with some fish oil. And some people were, hey, should I take krill oil or fish oil? Look, krill oil is a superior product. Fish oil, some people want to take for it's it's almost like a personal preference that they like fish oil, or they are allergic to crustaceans. I know that sounds weird, but some people are like specifically allergic to crustaceans. So if you're one of those people, or you prefer the official as opposed to krill, that's why we made it. But we've got that, you know, Cold War, Time War, freaking

• 2:48:41Jocko Willink?

  good to go. So if you want any of this stuff, go to jockofuel.com. Also, we have the milk protein, ready to drink shakes at Wawa. We got everything at Vitamin Shoppe. We got GNC, Military Commissaries, Afis, Hanford Dash Stores in Maryland, Wakeford, ShopRite, HEB, Meyer, Wegmans, Harris Teeter, Lifetime Fitness, Shields. Just everywhere you go, we got you covered. And if you got a small gym, or you go to a small gym, or a big gym, look, have you been to Lifetime Fitness before? Yeah. That's a big gym. Yes, sir. If you go to a gym, but even if it's a small gym, and you want them to have Jocko Fuel there, tell the gym owner to email [email protected]. That's what we're doing. Jocko

• 2:49:25Jocko Willink?

  Fuel, you need fuel to be stronger, better, faster, smarter. We got you covered. Also, if you need American made clothing, which you do, because otherwise you're supporting a communist government, a sweatshop, an ecological terror group. Did I just say ecological terror group? What do I mean by that? I mean, an entire nation that doesn't care what it does to our environment. We care about that in America. That's why we have the EPA. That's why we have rules. That's why we have regulations. That's why we can't put our waste, our chemical waste into the river, into the ocean. We can't let our fuel leak into the air. We take care of the environment in America.

• 2:50:09Jocko Willink?

  We also take care of our workers in America. So if you want to support that stuff, go to originusa.com and get the goods. Jiu Jitsu gi's, Jiu Jitsu rash guards, some sick rash guards, by the way.

• 2:50:21Speaker 01

  Yes, sir.

• 2:50:21Jocko Willink?

  I just, I just ordered and just received the blackout raptor camo.

• 2:50:26Speaker 01

  Oh damn.

• 2:50:27Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:50:28Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 2:50:28Jocko Willink?

  You haven't seen that one yet, have you?

• 2:50:30Speaker 01

  I have not.

• 2:50:31Jocko Willink?

  So there's that one. Uh, we got everything that you need. Joggers, Jiu Jitsu gi's, jeans.

• 2:50:36Speaker 01

  Good jeans.

• 2:50:37Jocko Willink?

  The best jeans. Isn't it weird that you could be like, yo, I'm American. I'm wearing this such and such American iconic brand of jeans and your iconic brand of jeans are made in China by a totalitarian government that has slave labor making your pants that you're putting on, that you're proudly wearing. Unfortunately, you don't know that those things are made anti-freedom. They're the antithesis of freedom. They're about slavery. So don't support that. Support America. OriginUSA.com. That's what we're doing. Hey, also, we have a, a law enforcement

• 2:51:18Jocko Willink?

  training session. So we do, we do a Jiu Jitsu event up in Maine. It's awesome. Bunch of Jiu Jitsu black belts gonna be there. And I'm talking world champions, former world champions, like the best guys. A lot of awesome Jiu Jitsu instructors and we do, we've been doing a, a, what is it, a week, six days or something for civilians? But this year, we're actually doing also doing a law enforcement. So if you're in law enforcement and you want to train that Jiu Jitsu, August 27th through the 31st in Maine will be up there where you got a bunch of law enforcement, black belts, highly skilled, that are gonna help introduce or train Jiu Jitsu with you from law enforcement, first responders, military. So check it out, 27th through the

• 2:52:03Jocko Willink?

  31st in Maine. That's what we're doing. OriginUSA.com to find that event as well.

• 2:52:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think is the camp sold out.

• 2:52:12Jocko Willink?

  The first camp is sold out. The Leo, the law enforcement military first responders not sold out yet.

• 2:52:17Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 2:52:17Jocko Willink?

  But it will.

• 2:52:18Speaker 01

  Legit. Also Jaco has a store called Jaco Store. This is where you can get your shirts mainly. Do a lot of shirts and a lot of cool shirts. We've got hats and hoodies on there as well. If you want to represent discipline equals freedom. That's the deal. I'm telling you, sir, you get it. It's cool. Some good stuff on there. We just came out with a new discipline equals freedom.

• 2:52:37Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Was it mod four?

• 2:52:39Speaker 01

  For mod four. Yes, that was the word I was looking for.

• 2:52:41Jocko Willink?

  Can we still get mod one?

• 2:52:42Speaker 01

  Mod one, yes. And mod two, hundred percent.

• 2:52:46Jocko Willink?

  And which one is mod three?

• 2:52:47Speaker 01

  Mod three is called standard issue.

• 2:52:49Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 2:52:50Speaker 01

  You did the mod.

• 2:52:51Jocko Willink?

  You're wearing mod two.

• 2:52:52Speaker 01

  Uh, this is mod two, yes, on the hoodie or whatever. Um, with the standard issue underneath, by the way.

• 2:52:59Jocko Willink?

  You're just, you just got all kinds of discipline.

• 2:53:01Speaker 01

  Freaking representing hardcore. Anyway, that, so yes, and yes, there is a new version, version four is up, up, running. People are already representing. So that's, uh, you can get that there. Also Shirt Locker. It's a subscription scenario. You get a new shirt every month, different design, a little bit more creative, if you will. People seem to like it. Um, uh, same thing though. Go to JacoStore.com, you click on the little thing that says Shirt Locker. You can check it out. See some designs on there. See if you, if you like the vibe, but yeah, that's where you get it. JacoStore.com.

• 2:53:31Jocko Willink?

  Check it out. Also, you're gonna need steak in your life. Check out PrimalBeef.com and ColoradoCraftBeef.com. Two outstanding American companies. Leo, go get some steak.

• 2:53:47Jocko Willink?

  It's the best. Tastes so good. I must say, it's so good. So that's what we're doing. ColoradoCraftBeef.com, check it out. PrimalBeef.com. Obviously Colorado Craft Beef is from Colorado. And the Primal Beef is from the Shenandoah Valley. Just delicious steak. All from the same source, this one source in Colorado, one, one source in Virginia. Check it out. If you want to get good steak, which you do. Get some there. PrimalBeef.com, ColoradoCraftBeef.com, we got you. Also subscribe to the podcast. Also subscribe to JacoUnderground.com. We just recorded a couple of those. They'll be out. Also, we have a YouTube channel. Also, we have Psychological Warfare. Also, Flipside Canvas, Dakota Meyer, making cool stuff to hang on your wall. I've written a bunch of books about leadership.

• 2:54:34Jocko Willink?

  Strategy and tactics, extreme ownership, dichotomy, leadership. Written a bunch of those books. I've also written a bunch of warrior kid books. I think I've written five, maybe six of those, plus Mikey and the Dragons. I've written a bunch of kids books. Check those out. Get your kids on the warrior path. Let me tell you, it's going to be beneficial for them. I wish I would have had these books when I was a child.

• 2:54:58Jocko Willink?

  Check them out. Also, we have a leadership consultancy. We solve problems through leadership. Go to eslamfront.com for details. We have the muster in Dallas, 16 through 18 October. We have the council, which there's, there might be a couple of seats left when this comes out. If you want to come to that, it's up in the, up in the remote mountains of Washington state, a very small group. We sold out one of them. I think there's a couple of seats left. The seats that are left are June 26th to the 29th. If you want to come, go register. The women's assembly coming up is September 11th through the 13th in San Antonio, Texas. We also have online leadership training. I was just on there on Monday.

• 2:55:40Jocko Willink?

  Answering questions, getting after it. Extremeownership.com. If you want to learn how to lead, we can run you through those courses. It's going to make everything in your life better. It's going to give you a better understanding of every interaction that you have with other human beings. It is going to help you. We've had just success story after success story after success story through extremeownership.com. Check that out if you want to get on board. 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. You heard General McFarlane talking about this organization, AmericasMightyWarriors.org. It is a great organization to help out veterans, their families, Gold Star families. Check it out. Also, heroesandhorses.org.

• 2:56:24Jocko Willink?

  Micah Fink up there in the mountains of Montana, helping our veterans find their themselves and find their way again. Jimmy May has also got his organization behind BeyondTheBrotherhood.org. Check that one out. If you want to connect with us, we're there. We're on the interwebs. Jaco.com also on social, @JacoWillink, also Echoes at Echo Charles. Just be careful, because you might run into some people in there that are not acting like decent human beings. So just watch out. And then there'll be an algorithm that's going to try and drag you in to go and act like not a normal human being, a decent human being. So be careful of that. Thanks to all our men and women in the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines for all that you

• 2:57:05Jocko Willink?

  do every day to protect freedom and liberty around the world. We will honor your sacrifice. Same goes for our police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, Border Patrol, Secret Service, as well as all other first responders. Thank you for protecting us on the home front. And everyone else out there, listen to that incredible life advice from B.H. Liddell Hart. "Face life with clear eyes, and with those clear eyes, seek the truth." And in order to do that, you have to detach.

• 2:57:42Jocko Willink?

  Detach from your own desires and interests. Detach from your sympathies and your hostilities.

• 2:57:50Jocko Willink?

  Don't lie to yourself. Don't let your ego be the source of your compulsions. Don't let your ego drive what you're doing. Learn from history and move forward out of the jungle of darkness and toward the light of the truth. And that's all we've got for tonight. Until next time, this is Echo and Jaco.