Keeping the Weight Off, Rewiring Your Brain with Psychedelics, and Finding Strong Male Role Models

It's hard enough to change, but why it is so hard to maintain that change too? How might psychedelics facilitate big changes in our lives? And how can young men find healthy role models in the modern world? In this week's pod, we cover my current struggles around keeping a healthy diet and lifestyle, how psychedelics might actually scramble your brain (in a good way), and why so many young men are struggling to find a place in the world today. Enjoy. CHAPTERS Chapters 00:00:00 Introduction: Men's Groups and the Weight Struggle 00:01:07 The Two Levels of Failure: Emotion vs. Narrative 00:02:33 Mark's Personal Weight Journey: Five Years and 60 Pounds 00:03:43 The Training Wheels Come Off: Old Habits Creeping Back 00:05:29 Food Addiction: The One Area That Won't Quit 00:07:13 Relapses Are Part of Recovery: Brandon Novak and the Process 00:13:20 Brilliance or Bullshit: Psychedelics and Brain Rewiring 00:15:32 Neuroplasticity and the Promise of Psychedelics 00:18:12 Psychedelics as Tools: Set, Setting, and Intention Matter 00:22:04 The Dark Side: When Psychedelics Make You Believe Everything 00:24:33 Audience Question: Growing Up Without a Father Figure 00:26:01 The Male Role: Be Useful and Add Value 00:28:08 Men Are Disposable: Make Yourself Indispensable 00:29:54 The Absent Father Crisis and Its Consequences 00:33:26 Finding Role Models Online: Navigating the Manosphere 00:34:55 The Andrew Tate Test: Turn Off the Sound and Watch Their Face 00:37:26 Wisdom of the Week: The Buddha on Self-Conquest 00:37:39 Closing Thoughts and How to Reach the Show ⇨ Sign up for my newsletter, Your Next Breakthrough. It will help make you a less awful person: ⁠⁠⁠⁨https://markmanson.net/breakthrough⁩⁠⁠⁠ ⇨ Get clarity on what actually matters. Try Purpose, Mark's AI mentor app that learns your patterns, challenges your blind spots, and helps you take action. Get started at ⁠⁠⁠⁨https://bit.ly/4w46FMH⁠⁠⁠ FOLLOW MARK Mark's IG: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/markmanson⁠ Solved IG: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/solvedpodcast/⁠ Twitter: ⁠https://x.com/markmanson⁠ LinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/markmanson/⁠ YouTube: ⁠https://www.youtube.com/@IAmMarkManson Theme Song: Icarus Lives by @Periphery , used with permission from Periphery.

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

• 0:00Mark Manson?

  So I was speaking to a men's group yesterday. Always love it when like men get together with other men to talk about their feelings. Deal with their emotional bullshit. It's not something you see every day, so when you see it, it's like, it's a very beautiful thing. It's the subtle art of not giving a fuck podcast with your host, Mark Manson.

• 0:25Mark Manson?

  But it was interesting, I was answering questions from guys in the group and there was one gentleman who got up, overweight guy, said he'd been struggling with his weight for years and was having episodes of binging and was just like absolutely distraught, overwhelmed with anxiety, regret, feelings of failure, or whatever. And it was a very like touching and emotional conversation that we had. And I guess I'll start with how I answered him, but then I'll talk about like why I bring this up. This is my fuck for the week. So my answer to him was that anytime we fail at something, you know, there's, there's kind of two levels of that failure.

• 1:10Mark Manson?

  There's the first one is just the simple like emotional gut reaction, right? So it's like you fuck something up, you're like, God, I feel bad about that, right? You feel the regret, you feel the embarrassment, you feel the frustration, the anger, the sadness, whatever, the negative feelings come up, right? I will die on the hill that those feelings are not the problem, right? Like we, we should have negative emotions when bad things happen in our lives or when we've made poor choices, like those negative emotions are there to try to get us to not make those choices again. So there's no problem there. The second level though, is, is the narrative that we build around those failures.

• 1:51Mark Manson?

  And talking to this gentleman, it was very clear that he had some deeply embedded narratives of shame, self-worth, failings, you know, this is never gonna work, I'm doomed, I'm cursed, I'm, I'm a loser, I'm just like, I can't be normal, I can't be like anybody else. And it's when those narratives come in, they amplify the negative feelings. They, they basically generate more negative feelings when it's not necessary. And I think it becomes self-defeating because it, it.

• 2:24Mark Manson?

  Raises the stakes and raises the pressure for the next time you're in that situation and you don't want to fail. So I had a discussion with him about that, but like, it's funny because it like it hit close to home for me. We did an episode a few months ago about my health journey. You know, for listeners who haven't heard that I lost about 60 pounds over the course of four years. At the beginning of this year, 2024, I turned 40 and my goal was when I turned 40, I wanted to be that shape of my life, strongest, best fitness of my life, strongest of my life, best body composition of my life. And I achieved all those goals and I I did that. And after like nearly five fucking years of like obsessing over my weight and what I'm eating and my

• 3:09Mark Manson?

  exercise and everything, I did something very daring, which was like, I took the training wheels off. And I was like, I told my, my health coach, I was like, I'm in a place in my life. I'm very happy. I feel good. Like I I've built a lot of great habits. I don't want to track anymore. Like, I want to live like a normal fucking person. I don't want to have to think about this every day. And at this point, I feel like I'm equipped to do that. Right? Like, I told him, I was like, you didn't give me fish, you taught me to fish, right? And like, let me go see if I actually know how to fish now. And for the first few months, it was fine. And then, I don't know, something happened around like, I went to New York in June, and then I went to Europe, and then I got sick,

• 3:54Mark Manson?

  and then I came back, and I was jet lagged, and was working a ton. And I feel the old habits creeping back in. I was, I went to dinner with my wife here in Santa Monica just a few nights ago, and we were walking back, and we walked past an ice cream place just down the street. And and just completely unconsciously, I made a beeline for the fucking ice cream shop and just got this massive cone and started fucking inhaling it. And I I got like midway through the cone, and I had this like, oh, my God, what am I doing moment? And I guess for me, like, talking to this guy yesterday, it really struck me like, I really felt for him because I feel like I'm kind of in the same spot to a lesser extent.

• 4:39Mark Manson?

  Everybody reads and especially you and I, we read all this stuff about habits and discipline and rewiring our reward system and building new lifestyle and altering the environment, all this stuff. And like most of like the conventional wisdom is that it takes, well, some people say 21 days to change a habit, which is not true, but most of the research says a couple of months, a few months. And there are plenty of habits in my life that I've broken within a few months or I have created within a few months and I've never had to think about them again. Yeah, when it comes to fucking food, I don't like, I don't know, like I kind of feel, uh, there's like a, there's a frustration that I'm feeling of like, I put five years into this and it, and it feels like I can

• 5:22Mark Manson?

  just feel my body and mind like dragging me back to where I was five years ago, slowly over the course of multiple months. I don't know, we like, we've had a, we've had a couple recovered addicts on the show, Rich Roll, Brendan Novak, and Novak in particular, you know, he talked a lot about like, he said, a big part of it was just accepting that like he is one of the few people in the population that this is always going to be an issue. Right. It's never going to go away. It's never, it's not a habit you're going to break. It's not like, it's not a, a lifestyle practice that you need to change. Like he is part of the 1% of the population or whatever, that this is just, it has to be front of mind 24/7.

• 6:02Mark Manson?

  And this has gotten, gotten me thinking about that that is probably true with some people around food and nutrition. Like the longer I get into this journey, the more I start recognizing like the compulsion and the, the behavior and mental patterns of an addict. And that fucking sucks. Yeah. Because I'm totally that guy who like, every other area of my life, I went and read a bunch of books and tried a bunch of stuff and eventually figured it out. And it's like, this seems to be the one area where it's like, Yeah, dude, no, you're just gonna have to track for the rest of your fucking life. And like, that's just it. That's like, you, sorry dude, you like,

• 6:48Mark Manson?

  you like, lost the lottery. This is, this is the one thing that you like, you're just gonna have to like, suffer through forever. So anyway, I just wanted to express that. I don't know if you have any thoughts around that. Your, your health habits seem to be very dialed in. It's talking to the guy yesterday, like, brought this up for me.

• 7:07Speaker 01

  Well, if you remember something else that Brandon Novak said too, he went to rehab 13 times.

• 7:12Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 7:13Speaker 01

  I think, I think Rich Roll might have said something to this effect too, but relapses are part of the, the recovery process.

• 7:18Mark Manson?

  Totally.

• 7:19Speaker 01

  They are.

• 7:19Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 7:20Speaker 01

  We talked about that in the self-discipline episode too, that we did, um, where what self-discipline is, is it's a correction of the behavior.

• 7:27Mark Manson?

  Right, right.

• 7:27Speaker 01

  That's part of the process. So I think that's something, I know, that probably doesn't give you a whole lot of, it doesn't console you, I'm sure.

• 7:33Mark Manson?

  So much better.

• 7:34Speaker 01

  I know, I know, I know. But, you know, uh, like Brandon said, I, I wouldn't have wanted anyone to rob me of my process.

• 7:41Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 7:41Speaker 01

  And I think you're in that process and it sounds like this guy was, is

• 7:45Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 7:45Speaker 01

  in the middle of a very grueling process.

• 7:47Mark Manson?

  Deep in it.

• 7:48Speaker 01

  I, I've said this before too, I'm pretty fortunate in that I, yeah, for me, as long as I, as long as I do that correction process, I, I'm, I'm pretty good. I, I do fall off the wagon every now and then, but I'm, I'm able to get back on.

• 8:00Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 8:00Speaker 01

  For whatever reason. And to your point, some habits are just like that for some people and some aren't.

• 8:06Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 8:06Speaker 01

  I don't know what to say about that.

• 8:07Mark Manson?

  It is, it's a weird thing and, uh, it's, it's crazy too, cause you know, there've been a few times where my wife has gone on some sort of diet or restriction or whatever. And for her, it's like, she literally just is like, I'm gonna start this diet tomorrow and I'm gonna do it for 60 days. And she does it for 60 days.

• 8:28Speaker 01

  Does it, yeah.

• 8:28Mark Manson?

  And she like, never fucks up and is never tempted and never like, slips a dessert when she shouldn't and, uh,

• 8:37Mark Manson?

  And at first, you know, the first couple of times she did that, I was like, oh my God, her like willpower is just like ironclad. But then it's funny because then there are other areas of her life that like she doesn't have that. Yep. And I do. So it's, it's really just gotten me thinking about, um, I don't know, like, I think the, the, it's interesting because I think specifically around weight, health and food, there are a lot of moral judgments that people attach, right? Like when you see somebody who's overweight and eating a lot, like I think most people's uh, default reaction is some sort of kind of moral judgment. I follow a bunch of health influencers, uh, and I see this all the time in their replies

• 9:19Mark Manson?

  and, and sometimes from the influencers themselves are like, you know, it's calories in, calories out, bro. Like you can't figure that out. You're a fucking loser and you have no discipline. And I'm like, I'm sorry, I'm, I'm like, I, I've been struggling with this my entire life and I've been fixing it for over five years. And I'm like, it's not that simple. It's really not. One of the things that my coach helped me realize is that there's like, I don't think I really experienced compulsion in almost any other area of my life. Like when I think about other things that I've been kind of addicted to, I've been fully aware of that addiction. Like what's some examples of that? So for example, like I've gone through periods where I'm really addicted to video games, but I've been very aware, you know, it's like, I knew I was playing Elden Ring

• 10:04Mark Manson?

  12 hours a day and I was, even though I was a little bit disgusted with myself as I did it, uh, I was kind of like at peace with that decision, right? Uh, when I was younger, I definitely went through a period where I think I was addicted to dating and meeting women and I don't know, I guess flirting and trying to pick up women. But I was aware of that. Like I kind of knew, you know, in my head, I'm like, this is a phase, like.

• 10:34Mark Manson?

  I'm going out all the time. I'm young. This is the time to do this. There's probably an addiction to travel. I was also fairly aware of that at the time. I think food is the first thing that like, I clearly have compulsive behaviors and it took other people pointing that out to me for me to even realize like the the level of awareness was so just blocked that it required third parties pointing out to me like, hey, you didn't have to eat that whole fucking ice cream cone. Like you just had a big dinner and you know, like, it's been a weird experience. Like it's something I haven't dealt with before and it's given me a lot, a lot of empathy for, for people who have been on this struggle bus for a long time.

• 11:19Mark Manson?

  Like I, I get it now. You meet people occasionally or you talk to people, see people occasionally who like, they've literally been fighting their entire adult lives with their weight or with their health and

• 11:32Mark Manson?

  and I, yeah, I don't know. I guess maybe when I was younger, more cavalier, my assumption was just like, well, get your shit together, dude.

• 11:38Speaker 01

  Like, do you think you need to go back to having kind of an accountability set up with a, with a coach? Are you gonna try to grit it out yourself for a little while longer and figure out how you can do it on your own? What are you gonna do?

• 11:52Mark Manson?

  So I think that's why that that's part of the emotional salience this week is, is

• 11:57Speaker 01

  You're trying to figure that out?

• 11:58Mark Manson?

  No, is I think, I think the ice cream was the moment where I realized like, no, I need training wheels. Like I, I cannot be allowed to operate heavy machinery. Like I need, I need a babysitter.

• 12:11Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 12:12Mark Manson?

  And in this part of my life, I just need one. That's just who I am. It's how my brain's wired. I need, so I, that the inevitable, I don't know if I need, I'm not like starting today or whatever, but between that experience and then, you know, talking to the guy soon after, you know, it, I've kind of come to the conclusion of it is inevitable. I don't know if I need tracking and accountability 24/7, 365 for the rest of my life, but it definitely seems like, I don't seem to be able to be left to my own devices for more than, say, four months at a time.

• 12:47Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 12:47Mark Manson?

  Yeah, four to six months at a time. So maybe it's a thing where it's like, I do six months on, six months off. And I just live the rest of my life that way. Or I just. Fucking get religious about it and make it a part of every day.

• 13:07Speaker 01

  Right.

• 13:07Mark Manson?

  So I don't know. We'll see. To be continued.

• 13:09Speaker 01

  We'll keep checking in on you. Okay.

• 13:10Mark Manson?

  To be continued.

• 13:11Speaker 01

  All right.

• 13:11Mark Manson?

  All right. We'll be right back after a message from our sponsor.

• 13:20Mark Manson?

  All right, we're back with brilliance or bullshit? What are we harshly judging today, Drew?

• 13:28Speaker 01

  Um, psychedelics.

• 13:29Mark Manson?

  Ooh.

• 13:29Speaker 01

  Brilliant bullshit psychedelics.

• 13:31Mark Manson?

  Ooh, okay. This is trendy. This is, this is spicy. This is a, this is, this is in the zeitgeist at the moment.

• 13:39Speaker 01

  It is. You've had some experience with psychedelics.

• 13:42Mark Manson?

  Probably too many.

• 13:42Speaker 01

  Probably too many in the past. I've only ever had one. We can talk about that too. Yeah, a really interesting study came out in Nature about the effects of psilocybin on the brain.

• 13:52Mark Manson?

  Yep.

• 13:52Speaker 01

  Okay. And what they found basically is that psilocybin, which is the, the active ingredient in magic mushrooms, right?

• 13:59Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 14:00Speaker 01

  So they, they make these people trip balls and they put them in an FMRI machine, which I can only imagine is terrifying.

• 14:05Mark Manson?

  Sounds amazing.

• 14:06Speaker 01

  Right. Yeah. Yeah.

• 14:07Mark Manson?

  It's how I wanted to spend all my trips.

• 14:09Speaker 01

  Yeah. But anyway, what they found is that there's this like massive desynchronization all across the brain.

• 14:15Mark Manson?

  Okay.

• 14:16Speaker 01

  Uh, in, when somebody's high on mushrooms, basically. And what's really interesting about this is that they found, there's these two areas of the brain where in the past, they found if these two areas are talking a lot to each other, basically they're, they're synchronized very, very heavily. Uh, that's actually correlated with depressive symptoms.

• 14:34Mark Manson?

  Okay.

• 14:35Speaker 01

  And what they found is that the, um, psilocybin will desynchronize that, that relationship between these two brain areas.

• 14:42Mark Manson?

  Okay.

• 14:42Speaker 01

  And, um, it's durable. It lasts for a few weeks, actually. And they think this might be one mechanism by which psychedelics can help people with like treatment resistant depression and other mental disorders.

• 14:54Mark Manson?

  Sure.

• 14:55Speaker 01

  And other mental health disorders. So. We're starting to find like some possible mechanisms, you know, there's the symptom in depression where people are kind of like stuck in a rut of there's a lot of negative self-talk.

• 15:09Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 15:10Speaker 01

  Along with, you know, all the mood stuff that they do, there, this could be like a neural correlate to that.

• 15:15Mark Manson?

  Okay.

• 15:15Speaker 01

  Of your brain, your brain is kind of stuck in this rut. There's these two areas of your brain talking back and forth too much. And if we can kind of reset that, that connection.

• 15:24Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 15:24Speaker 01

  And, and give space for new connections to occur, that that might be one mechanism by which we could treat depression and other health disorders.

• 15:33Mark Manson?

  So one thing that I've heard anecdotally is just that the, the promise of psychedelics, what they've generally like in laypeople's terms, what they found with psychedelics is that it temporarily boosts neuroplasticity. So for listeners who aren't familiar, when you're young, your, your brain is what's called very neuroplastic. That means that your brain is still very malleable and you can learn and change and shift identities and change your views of the world very easily. And then as you get older, that neuroplasticity slows down and it becomes harder to change and remove deeply embedded beliefs or identities.

• 16:11Mark Manson?

  And so my understanding has been that, you know, psychedelics can just kind of like, almost like a steroid injection, like just a jolt of neuroplasticity. So it like shakes all those old beliefs and perspectives loose and makes it easier to kind of reformulate new ones. Is this related to that? Like, how is this mapped up?

• 16:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, definitely. Definitely. Yeah. So what they think is going on is when you do kind of scramble this synchronicity across the brain, it forces the brain to make basically new connections.

• 16:44Mark Manson?

  Interesting.

• 16:45Speaker 01

  And so, yeah, there is more what they call synaptic genesis, basically two, two cells linking up to each other. After you do psychedelics, there's kind of this reset and then there's a rewiring.

• 16:55Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 16:56Speaker 01

  So that they think that's what's going on. Yeah.

• 16:57Mark Manson?

  So that maps pretty well to my subjective experience of psychedelics.

• 17:02Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 17:03Mark Manson?

  My subjective experience of psychedelics is that most of like the, the basic beliefs and assumptions that I have just get.

• 17:14Mark Manson?

  Scrambled and disconnected and I start making very disparate connections between very odd things than a sober person would ever make connections between. And I can see how, I mean, I would, I would personally say 80% of the time, those, those new disparate connections that I made, those new meanings that I created when I was, when I was on psychedelics were completely frivolous and just incredibly amusing. You know, I would just kind of giggle like a, like an idiot. But I'd say 20% of them were particularly profound and very insightful and helped me like, see things or realize things about myself or about my life. So I could see, I could see how that explanation could work.

• 17:57Mark Manson?

  And I can also see how like, if you were put in a clinical setting and you had a licensed clinician there with you who was like directing you with questions and helping guide you into thinking about the right strands of meaning and connections that you've made or the beliefs that you've had. I could see how that could be extremely therapeutic.

• 18:20Speaker 01

  Right.

• 18:20Mark Manson?

  What, what is your overall take on this?

• 18:22Speaker 01

  I think like anything else psychedelics are a tool.

• 18:25Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 18:26Speaker 01

  And, um, you know, just like you can't use a hammer to screw a screw. You can't use psychedelics for certain things. I just don't think they, they work for certain things. This study, actually, they mentioned this in the study and one of the interesting findings they find is that the, the degree to which the synchronicity is, is exploded basically in the brain is related to how, how strong of a mystical experience people have. They're making these weird connections. They're, they're having these, these feelings of one with oneness with the universe. That's very common, you know, when people are tripping on psychedelics. And yeah, so the degree of synchronicity is related to that.

• 19:07Speaker 01

  And I, I think that that it's like this window that pops open for people and can pop open for people. What you said though, about having the set and setting there with a clinician and intention, probably 80% of the connections you said you made were kind of bullshit. A big part of that was probably set in setting. You were just, you were off fucking off and you had no intention. I'm just popping some acid and here we go, right? Like that, that sort of thing.

• 19:33Mark Manson?

  Totally.

• 19:33Speaker 01

  And I, I've had one experience with psychedelics, only one. It was with DMT. So it was 90 seconds long. It was in the mountains in southern Mexico.

• 19:43Mark Manson?

  Did you speak to aliens?

• 19:44Speaker 01

  Um, I spoke to somebody, something spoke to me. I'll say that. I'll say that. Something spoke to me.

• 19:53Speaker 01

  And

• 19:53Mark Manson?

  This is turning into the Joe Rogan podcast.

• 19:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, right. Yeah. Yeah.

• 19:59Speaker 01

  I, I, I, what I got from the experience more than anything was basically what I just said is these things are not to be fucked around with. I don't, I don't think, I don't think you get a whole lot of, there's going to be a lot of people who disagree with this, but I don't think you get a whole lot of value of tripping on acid at a Phish concert or whatever, right? That's just not.

• 20:20Mark Manson?

  I mean, you get entertainment value. You don't get.

• 20:23Speaker 01

  It's entertaining.

• 20:23Mark Manson?

  You don't get like mental health value.

• 20:25Speaker 01

  Yes, yes. But what they're finding now is that these tools can be used in very, if you're very intentional, very specific ways, these tools can be used with great effects.

• 20:34Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 20:34Speaker 01

  And that's very, very encouraging. The one caution I see though, too, a lot of these effect sizes that we're seeing coming out of these early studies on psychedelics and treating like uh, major depression, treatment, resistance, depression, um, alcoholism, all of that. Those effect sizes are very similar to what we saw in like the eighties with the new antidepressant drugs. And they were being used, you know, on people with treatment, resistance, depression.

• 21:02Mark Manson?

  Like the hard cases.

• 21:03Speaker 01

  Right. And so I, I just, I'm concerned that as they, as the, uh, the tools get applied to more and more

• 21:11Mark Manson?

  Sure.

• 21:12Speaker 01

  people and edge cases and where they're maybe not going to be as effective, we're not going to see these huge effects.

• 21:17Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 21:17Speaker 01

  And it's, it could be very similar to like the antidepressant story.

• 21:21Mark Manson?

  I, I feel we see that not only with drugs, we see that with therapy modalities as well. It's like some new therapy modalities developed, it's used on super hard cases. You get a great effect size and then you apply it to the general population and that effect size goes away.

• 21:35Speaker 01

  A hundred percent. Yeah.

• 21:36Mark Manson?

  Back to the synchronicity thing really quick and the plasticity, one thing that I've noticed, and this, this is always. You know, people ask me all the time, what is your opinion on psychedelics? It's kind of a hot topic at the moment. I would say overall, I'm very bullish and optimistic, but I do think there are caveats. And one of those caveats would be I've noticed that there are the people that I've known who take lots of psychedelics. Yes. Over a long period of time, they, it's almost like they desynchronize so much and they open themselves up to so much meaning that they start believing anything and everything. And I've, I've watched this happen, you know, back when I used to party a lot and do a lot of drugs. I watched this happen to a number of friends.

• 22:21Mark Manson?

  And now that I'm out here in California and I've got, I know a bunch of people who are like into psychedelic therapy and doing ayahuasca journeys and have shamans and are microdosing and all this shit. Like I've noticed that the ones who go very deep down that road, they kind of just start believing everything. And I think that's a under broadcast danger of this is that when you knock loose all those connections of meaning that we make and open up your neural system to like wiring anything together, you will see somebody who is basically just, has not heard anything that doesn't make sense to them. Definitely. And that, to me, that's just as dysfunctional as, I mean, if you look at, so this, this

• 23:06Mark Manson?

  also gets, this is a whole nother podcast, but you know, there's, there's an interesting discussion around what is the difference between a mystical experience and like a psychotic break? And is there a difference? And because it's like, when you look at, say, like a schizophrenic person who is having an episode, they see meaning in a bunch of different places. And it's usually mystical meaning in a bunch of different places that have no mystical meaning. And if you look at somebody who's done a fuckload of psychedelics, they find a lot of mystical meaning in places that they don't have mystical meaning. Right. I will, I will leave this with a, a fun memory. I remember the, the biggest trip I ever had, one of the, one of my favorite things about

• 23:49Mark Manson?

  it was the day after, just walking around the house and finding the most absurd things and just like laughing to myself, being like, how did this make any sense? Like, I remember the next day I opened the microwave and there was a bowl of cereal in it.

• 24:04Mark Manson?

  And I was like, how does this make sense? Like, what, what was the thought process?

• 24:10Speaker 01

  Some warm Cocoa Puffs, yeah.

• 24:11Mark Manson?

  Seriously, I'm like, how, what, what on earth was going on? Uh, so just, uh, I guess that's just a word of caution.

• 24:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, for sure. They're, again, they're tools.

• 24:21Mark Manson?

  Yes, absolutely.

• 24:22Speaker 01

  And tools, tools can cut both ways, so.

• 24:25Mark Manson?

  All right, we'll be right back for another message.

• 24:33Mark Manson?

  All right, we're back. What are we answering today, Drew? Audience, what does the audience give me the fuck about?

• 24:38Speaker 01

  Masculinity, Mark, modern masculinity. It's been a while since you've talked about this.

• 24:43Mark Manson?

  Can we give a fuck about masculinity? Yes, we do give a fuck about masculinity.

• 24:47Speaker 01

  I guess I should ask that first, yeah. Um, no, we, we got a, a question from somebody on YouTube. Mark, I'm a college student. Uh, but I don't know how to grow up as a man. I'd like to hear some men's advice. I seriously lack so much nurturing for men. I don't want to talk to my brother. My dad died a few years ago, and even while he was alive, he was never really around to guide me into manhood. I didn't hang out with him much. Um, I were my friends when I was growing up, and now I seek a lot of male connection. I don't know how I should think as a man. How should I feel as a man? Um, so can you help me? I need some male advice.

• 25:21Mark Manson?

  Well, it, it's ironic that, uh, we open the show mentioning men's groups. It, it's interesting, actually, my experience in men's groups, both being a part of them and also speaking at them, uh, is that they are generally mostly populated with men who grew up without a, a male role model.

• 25:37Speaker 01

  Right.

• 25:38Mark Manson?

  Um, and that the group is kind of acting as the communal male role model for everybody.

• 25:43Speaker 01

  Communal father, yeah.

• 25:44Mark Manson?

  Yeah, so, I mean,

• 25:48Mark Manson?

  this is the sort of question, I want to preface this with like, anytime I see, first of all, there are a lot of influencers and YouTubers and... Creators out there who will like start their answer with a man needs to be this or you know, every man needs this. And I, to me, that's a red flag. Like, there is men, there's as much variation between men as there is between anybody in the human race. So what feels very true and important for, for one young man is going to feel very different for another. But I, I do think in general, in human nature, I think it's, it's important to look for both role models

• 26:28Mark Manson?

  and fellow travelers on the path of life who are similar to ourselves and, and have the same lived experience as ourselves. So if you're a young man, that means finding other young men and finding some older men that you can look up to and admire and get advice from, etc.

• 26:49Mark Manson?

  My general piece of advice to young men is, is to simply channel their angst and their energy towards something of value. That ultimately, like if you look from an evolutionary perspective, the man's role, other than making babies, the, the, the man's role in human society is to produce more value than he consumes. Whether that's going and killing a water buffalo to feed the tribe, or devising a new piece of technology, or protecting people from invaders, you know, whatever it is that you're doing, you, you should feel that you're adding value

• 27:33Mark Manson?

  in some way. And, you know, Arnold Schwarzenegger wrote a book last year that is very simple, and I love the premise, is just be useful. Be useful. Like, his, his answer to kind of every life problem is just get up and go be useful. And most things will kind of take care of themselves. And I think in general, for, for men, that's more often than not going to lead to the solution. Is like, if you feel lost, just like, go be useful. Go do something useful. Like, go help somebody. Go build something.

• 28:08Mark Manson?

  That's the starting point, in my opinion.

• 28:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, there, there's kind of this common lament among men that, you know, oh, society sees us as we're dispensable, you know, we're disposable.

• 28:19Mark Manson?

  And we are.

• 28:20Speaker 01

  No, we, and then.

• 28:21Mark Manson?

  We are.

• 28:22Speaker 01

  But the point you're making is, it's like, make yourself less dispensable, right?

• 28:26Mark Manson?

  Make yourself indispensable.

• 28:27Speaker 01

  Right, go add value.

• 28:29Mark Manson?

  Yes, so if, if we want to get into, like, if we want to go hardcore on the evolutionary psych, like, let's do that for a second, which is,

• 28:39Mark Manson?

  historically, men are completely dispensable.

• 28:41Speaker 01

  Right.

• 28:41Mark Manson?

  Dispendable. Dispendable, dispensable.

• 28:43Speaker 01

  Dispensable, disposable.

• 28:45Mark Manson?

  Disposable, that's the word. Men are completely disposable. I mean, it's, and it's just, it's simple biology is that, you know,

• 28:55Mark Manson?

  one woman can only have a child every nine months, whereas one man can have like a fucking hundred kids.

• 29:01Speaker 01

  Right.

• 29:01Mark Manson?

  Every nine months. So men are very disposable and we are evolutionarily adapted to that reality. That we are,

• 29:10Mark Manson?

  we're stronger, we're more physical, we tend to have more physical energy. And we tend to, to seek out danger, we're more risk-taking. We tend to seek out danger and, and are more willing to put ourselves in harm's way. And so I,

• 29:30Mark Manson?

  I think it's, it's, don't lament the fact that men are disposable, like, embrace that fact and, and as you said, find ways to be indispensable. Like, what is the value you can create that people are like, oh, no, don't send him to war? Like, we fucking need that guy, you know?

• 29:47Speaker 01

  Right.

• 29:48Mark Manson?

  So it's like, ask yourself that and,

• 29:54Mark Manson?

  yeah, basically just try to, try to create far more value than you're consuming.

• 29:58Speaker 01

  Right. Yeah, and you mentioned the not having good role models. I'd looked up some research on absent fathers.

• 30:05Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 30:06Speaker 01

  And consistently, what the, the most rigorous research around this finds is that there's consistent effects of, of absent fathers on high school graduation rates. A child socio emotional adjustment and their adult mental health.

• 30:21Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 30:21Speaker 01

  And if you look at those three things, so education, socio emotional development and mental health, those are three areas that modern men are really, really struggling with.

• 30:31Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 30:31Speaker 01

  Right now. Educational attainment is, has been on the decline, decline for men while it's going up for women.

• 30:37Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 30:38Speaker 01

  Socio emotional adjustment, a lot of men in their twenties and thirties are either feeling or are labeled as being a little bit stunted.

• 30:47Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 30:48Speaker 01

  In the emotional department. And then mental health, men's mental health is just, men commit suicide at nearly four times the rate that women do.

• 30:54Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 30:55Speaker 01

  So these, these just so happen to be three areas.

• 30:59Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 30:59Speaker 01

  That we're seeing that men are, they have a plight right now.

• 31:02Mark Manson?

  Well, and what we're seeing, we're record, it's a record number of households are growing up with single mothers.

• 31:07Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 31:08Mark Manson?

  You know, or a record number of children are growing up with single mothers. So it's, this is like, this is just one of those highly under discussed topics. And, and I think the, the messaging around this is, is just been bad. Like I think, I think conservatives have actually fucked this up because this is an issue that they are a hundred percent right on. And they're just really bad at communicating that. I think it's, um, most people, when they hear like family values or the importance of family, it's always attached to like some religious connotation, you know, whenever, at least here in the US, whenever you hear, you know, some conservative politician rail on about family values, pretty high, high likelihood, you're going to hear the words God or Jesus

• 31:52Mark Manson?

  very soon afterwards. And I think that just turns lefties minds off completely. They're like, oh, he just said the G word. I don't have to listen to him anymore. Whereas if they just presented the data, like the data on two parent households versus one parent household is, is absolutely staggering. And it's the, the level, the, the amount of children growing up today in one parent households is like epidemic proportions. And as you just pointed out, like the outcomes are so much worse, both like cognitively, but also emotionally and just in, in general, educational attainment, wellbeing, et cetera, et cetera. So like,

• 32:32Mark Manson?

  I get frustrated around this of like, you guys are right. Like you're just fucking up the messaging. Like just like, just, just put some studies in front of people and, and it'll be undeniable. So, so yeah, I, I do think it's, it's, and there are a lot of, there are a lot of young men out there who do feel lost, who don't have role models like this, this, the, the guy who asked this question, I mean, there's a huge amount of guys like this in my audience. And I think it's, a lot of them are turning online to people like myself or Jordan Peterson, or Chris Williamson, or Joe Rogan, you know, to like, kind of try to find those male role models and, and,

• 33:12Mark Manson?

  and more importantly, like a sense of community, like a sense of, like a group of guys who like, think the same way and deal with the same struggles and have the similar aspirations. So, people can trash the quote unquote, you know, manosphere or alt-right or whatever.

• 33:27Mark Manson?

  To me, it's just like an inevitability of the demographic issues that society is going through. So.

• 33:33Speaker 01

  Would you have any recommendations around that though? We talked the other day about creators and kind of people having these parasocial relationships. You and I discussed that and

• 33:44Speaker 01

  do you think that's a good thing? Can it be a good thing? Can it be a bad thing? You know, if you, if somebody's glomming onto like, you know, there's varying levels of toxicity out there around this.

• 33:58Speaker 01

  Do you have any guiding principles around that?

• 34:01Mark Manson?

  I think overall it's, it's a good thing. I mean, it's, we're filling a demand.

• 34:06Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 34:07Mark Manson?

  Right? So, and I, I think having something online, having some sort of parasocial relationship with a male role model is much better than just having no male role model, period. That said, there are, there's like, as you pointed out, there's a different, differing degrees of healthiness and unhealthiness. And, and the problem is, is that young men, especially if they're like emotionally stunted or haven't gotten out in the real world a whole lot, they're going to be very bad judges of like, what is a healthy role model and what's an unhealthy role model? Like they're probably going to mistake, uh, things that sound cool and sexy and like a dude standing next to a Lamborghini is like, oh, that's a cool role model. You know, hopefully as they get older, they're, they'll grow out of that. I think most do.

• 34:50Mark Manson?

  But I, I would, the advice that I would give is I would look at the. The ethical and emotional character of what the man is saying. It's funny, actually, I had a friend a long time ago who told me this and it's very, very true. He said, he said, the next time you start like looking up to somebody online, put on a video of them and turn the sound off and just, and just gauge like their facial expressions. And it's, it's amazing, actually, like you, there's a lot of people that as soon as you turn the sound off, they look so incredibly angry. Like it's just, you can just see this, it's just like anger is just fueling everything. Whereas like other people, there's like a joy or a levity.

• 35:35Mark Manson?

  And then other people, there's kind of like this sadness that is seeping through. So that's fascinating. That's a cool little hack. But like I, you know, I look at, I look at, I think an obvious example of somebody like Andrew Tate. Like, I get why young men see him and are like kind of seduced by it. Because especially if you're like a young 16 year old, no male role model, you know, no real friends, haven't really done anything in life. Doesn't, you know, feel very, uh, you know, have, has a lot of anger and resentment and frustration that you don't know how to express. You see a guy like that who is just clearly full of rage and very antisocial.

• 36:18Mark Manson?

  Like just very like clearly takes pleasure in upsetting other people.

• 36:26Mark Manson?

  Being obnoxious, uh, you know, saying like just arguably being unethical. I can see why that's seductive to that young guy. But I think if you're that young guy, you need to be able to look past that and ask yourself like, okay, like what is, is this actually sustainable or am I just, you know, kind of getting excited? Cause. I'm like, living vicariously through this guy in a YouTube video or whatever.

• 36:54Speaker 01

  I would not want to be a young man. I remember how hard it was, you know, when I was like this, this guy's in college.

• 37:00Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 37:00Speaker 01

  It was an intense period to go through and intense emotional experience that you have at that age.

• 37:07Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 37:07Speaker 01

  Just trying to figure shit out. And I don't know, I feel for you, man. I don't, I wouldn't want to be in those, those situations these days.

• 37:14Mark Manson?

  I feel it's, it's only gotten more complicated.

• 37:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, it really has. It really has.

• 37:18Mark Manson?

  For sure.

• 37:19Speaker 01

  That's too bad.

• 37:19Mark Manson?

  Uh, so what's the wisdom of the week?

• 37:22Speaker 01

  Wisdom of the week comes from the Buddha this week.

• 37:24Mark Manson?

  Ooh, I'm a fan.

• 37:26Speaker 01

  Uh, and it's about masculinity. A man may conquer a million men in battle, but one who conquers himself is indeed the greatest of conquerors. Very fitting.

• 37:34Mark Manson?

  He's the goat. That's the Buddha.

• 37:39Mark Manson?

  All right. Thank you, guys. That is our show this week. Uh, be sure to like and subscribe. Follow the show on any platform. Uh, leave a review. It helps us, helps juice the algorithm. If you have a question, you can leave it as a comment on YouTube, or you can send it to [email protected]. And, uh, let us know what you think. Let us know what you'd like to see, anything you'd like us to talk about. We will see you next week.

• 38:03Mark Manson?

  Stay frosty. The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck podcast is produced by Drew Burning, edited by Andrew Nishimura, Jessica Choy is our videographer and sound engineer. Thank you for listening and we will see you next week.