The War On Men? (How Hedonism & Fear Are Reshaping This Generation)
Diving deep into the world of masculinity, we explore how self-imposed structures and personal values shape a man's identity. Our guest, Christian, also known as Better Man, shares his journey from the music industry to masculinity coaching, touching on how the chaos of modern life has left many men feeling lost. He argues that true masculinity isn't about external validation or societal expectations but rather about establishing personal boundaries and values. It's about understanding the rules we set for ourselves and how those rules can lead to genuine freedom. We discuss the dangers of fame and the 'fame monster,' a metaphor for the external validation that so many men chase, often to their detriment. Christian's insights challenge us to reconsider what it means to be a man today, pulling in various psychological perspectives and philosophical thoughts from thinkers like Nietzsche and Jung. This episode is a real eye-opener for anyone looking to understand the modern male experience and the importance of self-awareness in personal growth.
Takeaways:
- Masculinity can be seen as a self-imposed structure that gives us actual freedom and individuality.
- Fame may feel like a high, but it's a dangerous monster that feeds off our insecurities and need for validation.
- The journey of self-discovery is crucial for men today, especially as they navigate modern relationships and societal expectations.
- It's vital to establish our own rules and values to define masculinity for ourselves rather than relying on societal standards.
- In a world obsessed with pleasure and immediate gratification, finding deeper meaning and fulfillment can be a real challenge.
- We need to take control of our inner peace instead of blaming the chaos of the world around us for our struggles.
Companies mentioned in this episode:
- Better Man
- Robert Greene
- 50 Cent
Transcript
As a man, to me, masculinity is self imposed structure, self imposed rules.
Speaker A:That's actual freedom, that's masculinity.
Speaker A:I can do anything.
Speaker A:So what are my rules?
Speaker A:What are my values?
Speaker A:What are my standards?
Speaker A:What are my boundaries that I build myself?
Speaker A:Like fame in of itself is the fame monster.
Speaker A:It's the ultimate drug for anyone that doesn't have a self, you know, and so it's sort of externalized value through, you know, external validation.
Speaker B:Hello everyone.
Speaker B:Welcome back to another episode of the Breaking Point podcast.
Speaker B:Today we are here with Christian, AKA Better man.
Speaker B:And we're going to talk a bit about dating, but we're also going to talk about just like male life and his opinions and his background and what's going on.
Speaker B:So that's a very short introduction on my part.
Speaker B:Christian, do you want to tell people what you're doing and how long you've been doing it for?
Speaker A:Yeah, well, thanks for having me, Ollie, and good to be on the show.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:So I have been working in the masculinity coaching space on and off for about five years in different formats.
Speaker A:And so I just started this Better man brand this year actually at the beginning of the year.
Speaker A:And yeah, I've sort of transitioned over from being.
Speaker A:I was in the music industry for 25 years as a producer, originally as an artist and then as a producer and then really in around Covid when everything started to get a bit weird, work started drying up in the music industry and I just was wondering about why I want, why else I wanted to do and I think as part of the hero's journey of any man, you go through different parts of your life and, and discovering new aspects of your own self and masculinity.
Speaker A:And you know, I was married and all that and, and got divorced and sort of came out the other side trying to figure out what was gonna, what it meant to be a man in this modern age.
Speaker A:And that led me down this pathway of self discovery and, and, and sort of getting to understand my role in society as, and the feminine and female psychology and, and, and then why, why my relationships all turned out the same.
Speaker A:Ultimately if you look at the patterns and then what my part of that part of that was mine.
Speaker A:And then also what are we working with?
Speaker A:What am I looking at when I'm looking at a woman and, and sort of trying to understand the, the game essentially, which is what it turns out it is.
Speaker A:And so Better man sort of is the accumulation of my own life's experience and also just I've gone Completely obsessed into understanding female psyche.
Speaker A:And then also just psychology, Jungian psychology, Nietzsche, Arthur Schopenhauer and.
Speaker A:And even like newer people like Peterson and just, you know, the red pill.
Speaker A:Space certainly was a world that I flirted with and, you know, there's so much to talk about, but essentially I went through my own version of discovery of all of this and have sort of collected it all into what I would say is my brand of it, which is, I think, offering something new, but with a lot of similarities with.
Speaker A:With.
Speaker A:With the.
Speaker A:The things that have come before us and the.
Speaker A:And the great men that have come before us, that have taught us.
Speaker B:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker B:I mean, you got to try and re.
Speaker B:Invigorate the traditions with modern isms, but you've got to hold on to what was key because if it's stood the test of time, then it's.
Speaker B:There's probably a good reason why it's so relevant.
Speaker B:So that's a lot to get through.
Speaker B:That was a really.
Speaker B:That was a really interesting.
Speaker B:I wasn't expecting all that, so I guess, I mean, I'm interested in a music producer bit.
Speaker B:What was, what was that like?
Speaker A:It was great, man.
Speaker A:I mean, I. I was in.
Speaker A:I got into the music industry when I was very young, when I was 15, and so I was sort of thrown into it.
Speaker A:I had a record deal in a major.
Speaker A:A major label deal when I was 16 in the UK and that sort of kickstarted my life.
Speaker A:I basically left school prior to doing in, you know, GCSEs and all that and, and just sort of jumped into being an adult.
Speaker A:Yeah, Very, very young and, and didn't really.
Speaker A:I wasn't ready to come out in the oven and I got thrown into the music industry.
Speaker A:You know, we're seeing more and more the realities of the music industry.
Speaker A:Yeah, no, we're seeing that reality of what, what you end up having to do in order for success in that industry now that everything's sort of becoming revealed.
Speaker A:But back then it was all hidden and I was in it from those days.
Speaker A:So watching it all sort of fall apart now in the modern world, where the, where the curtain's being drawn back, has been quite interesting as a.
Speaker A:As a voyeur, because I was in it, so I know all about it.
Speaker A:And anyway, so that, that sort of threw me down that path for a long time.
Speaker A:And I think ultimately the Peter Pan syndrome, in many ways, you just sort of like staying in this perpetual youth of, of being an artist and, you know, I didn't really grow up in the way that most lads grow up, I think, you know, I went through this.
Speaker A:I got thrown into this other world and I sort of had immediate value in the world and I didn't understand what really was going on.
Speaker A:I was like, you know, I was in a band and I. I didn't.
Speaker A:I didn't struggle at the.
Speaker A:At the front end, actually.
Speaker A:I.
Speaker A:My struggle came later because I was sort of thrown into this hyper world where I had value because I was a musician, you know, so.
Speaker A:Because most young men don't really have much value.
Speaker A:They're not the ones on the yacht, it's the young girls on the yacht.
Speaker A:You know, the young lads really don't really get anywhere until at least they start hitting 30.
Speaker A:But my life experience was completely in reverse.
Speaker A:And it's almost like I've.
Speaker A:I went through that struggle that the young men went through older in life when I was kind of spat out the other end of the music industry.
Speaker B:And that's.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:And there's a union.
Speaker B:There's probably a Jungian ism in there.
Speaker B:That whole sort of like reverse Benjamin Benjamin clubs style thing.
Speaker A:Exactly.
Speaker B:That's really.
Speaker A:I go more with Morindy as my reference.
Speaker B:What was that?
Speaker B:Who's.
Speaker B:Who's come?
Speaker B:Mindy, you can educate me now.
Speaker A:Morgan, Mindy.
Speaker A:Morgan, Mindy.
Speaker A:Like, it was like a show with Robert.
Speaker A:It was Robin Williams first TV show where he.
Speaker A:Yeah, it's essentially the same principle as Benjamin Byrne.
Speaker B:Yeah, great.
Speaker A:It's my attempt at humor.
Speaker B:Let's carry on.
Speaker B:No, no, no, no, no.
Speaker B:I need to check out Morkman Dick's.
Speaker B:So that's really interesting.
Speaker B:You raise a really good point there.
Speaker B:The.
Speaker B:The sort of.
Speaker B:You almost like experienced like a Love.
Speaker A:Island.
Speaker B:Fever in the sense of.
Speaker B:Nowadays we see, obviously you were a lot younger, slightly different, but in the sense that people go into like a Love island reality TV show and they're thrown up into the limelight and everyone's.
Speaker B:They've got all this attention and sort of stardust around them and then it just sort of fades away because that's what naturally happens in life.
Speaker B:Things just dissipate.
Speaker B:Um, but I mean.
Speaker B:Yeah, to be thrown in at 16, like.
Speaker B:And I agree with you about, obviously about the music industry, that is.
Speaker B:Have you read Robert Green, Any of Robert Green's books?
Speaker B:Is it Robert Green?
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:And he wrote a book with 50 Cent, didn't he?
Speaker A:48 Laws of Power.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:Oh, yeah.
Speaker A:And the 50 Cent book.
Speaker A:Yeah, he did that.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:So, yeah.
Speaker B:I mean, the music industry is that whole realm Well, I don't think it's just the music industry.
Speaker B:I think it's Hollywood.
Speaker B:But I think worse what it comes.
Speaker A:Yeah, sorry, what.
Speaker A:What it comes down to is essentially fragmented self that, you know, people that have got a lot of wounding and, you know, most people are fragmented in some way.
Speaker A:And then something like the music industry is a culturally accepted place to where we can sort of like fame in of itself is.
Speaker A:Is the fame monster.
Speaker A:It's the ultimate drug for anyone that doesn't have a self, you know, and so it's sort of externalized value through, you know, external validation.
Speaker A:And on the level of fame, you know, it's that fame monster that can never.
Speaker A:You can never quench that.
Speaker A:That.
Speaker A:That insatiable lust that comes from offloading yourself to another in order for you to exist, in order for you to have value.
Speaker A:And, you know, so many of us are coming through the ranks into the, to the world out of our primary care takers, and we're already fragmented.
Speaker A:We've already learned about what love is through the family that we were with, and they've learned it from their family, and it's, it's just gone down the line.
Speaker A:And the more we've disconnected from nature over the last hundred years, sort of.
Speaker A:That's why we're seeing, to me, such a fragmentation of self, because all of these things that have come in from the culture to sort of numb out the, the, the lacking within people.
Speaker A:The human's daily life prior to the Industrial Revolution was just.
Speaker A:You had fulfillment by just surviving by being alive and being in community and, you know, tending to the land and looking after the children.
Speaker A:And in the village, you were just.
Speaker A:You were just part of a small community where everybody was responsible for the community.
Speaker A:And as we've, you know, multiplied that out through technology, everybody is sort of removed from responsibility of their own contribution to, to society.
Speaker A:And then technology comes in and fills the, Fills the gaps of all the things that you, you know, you make, you solve one problem and you make 10 more from the technology that comes in.
Speaker A:And it's sort of like whack a mole, but in survival it is.
Speaker A:Yeah, you have to go after.
Speaker A:You have to go to the gym now rather than spend all day hunting for food.
Speaker A:You know, you just have to synthesize these aspects that were part of sort of life that was not just pleasure.
Speaker A:Oh, and like, you're in a hedonistic society now where we don't.
Speaker A:We don't have meaning.
Speaker B:Narcissistic ones other than if.
Speaker B:Yes.
Speaker A:So it's like there's no meaning, there's no frame.
Speaker A:And it's just.
Speaker A:Does it feel good?
Speaker A:Is it?
Speaker A:And therefore it is good.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:And that's how we're now measuring the value of something, as if it's pleasurable, which is basically going into full on.
Speaker A:I mean, we are in.
Speaker A:We just.
Speaker A:It's just hedonism on steroids.
Speaker A:We are at the end of the empire.
Speaker A:This is what it looks like.
Speaker A:It's just affluent on steroids.
Speaker A:And now we're eating the grapes like the Romans were waiting for the barbarians to come.
Speaker A:And that's where we are.
Speaker B:I am.
Speaker B:Have you seen the film?
Speaker B:Or you've probably seen Back to the Future seen Back to the Future 2?
Speaker B:Absolutely.
Speaker B:Then, yeah.
Speaker B:Great film.
Speaker B:It's the best one.
Speaker B:Back to the Future 2 is the best.
Speaker B:Back to the Future.
Speaker A:And then I saw that at the movie theater.
Speaker B:Really?
Speaker B:No, you're old.
Speaker A:I'm 44 now.
Speaker B:No way.
Speaker B:That's nuts.
Speaker B:Okay, well, you clearly haven't abused.
Speaker B:Did you abuse alcohol whilst you were in.
Speaker B:Yes.
Speaker B:You did?
Speaker B:Well, yeah, I've done everything, man.
Speaker A:Oh, yeah.
Speaker A:I was a complete lunatic.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:No, I think.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Well, maybe there's a benefit to that.
Speaker B:Maybe we can get into that.
Speaker B:Coming out the other end, it's probably helped you in some ways.
Speaker B:So.
Speaker B:Yeah, Back to the Future, too, and It's a Wonderful Life.
Speaker B:So both of those films, yes, we see sort of like a dystopian future, like Castonified.
Speaker B:One is when if goes and gets the almanac and becomes like Biff Tower and all that.
Speaker B:And then the other is when George Bailey doesn't exist and we see what happens to Bailey.
Speaker B:Whatever it's called Bedford Falls.
Speaker B:And I think that we're now living in.
Speaker B: they predicted back in, well,: Speaker B:So we've the.
Speaker B:And obviously the problem with existence and life is that nothing occurs in one giant.
Speaker B:In one sudden turn from 90 to 180 degrees.
Speaker B:It just trickles through degree by degree by degree.
Speaker B:The given how like, our society is.
Speaker B:Is it's salacious beyond belief.
Speaker B:It's the things that we promote, as you were talking about, like hedonism, narcissism.
Speaker B:And what's even more interesting is that.
Speaker A:A lot of that.
Speaker B:I don't really want to get political because it's more deeper than that, but a lot of that has fallen under the realm of the left, which is supposedly the progressive.
Speaker B:When People use the term progressive.
Speaker B:They basically what an honest progressive person thinks progressive means is better.
Speaker B:Progressive is better.
Speaker B:And we've actually regressed in so many ways in society that it's quite.
Speaker B:It's alarming, I think.
Speaker B:And I think one of the reasons that's happened is because we've demonized the past a lot.
Speaker B:If you demonize something, you then are justified in any which way to move away and divest yourself from it.
Speaker B:And we demonize aspects of the past to such a degree that we now justify behaviors in the modern world because we've had it rewritten of what it actually was like.
Speaker B:Or at least we've had it amp.
Speaker B:We've had specific aspects of it amplified.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker B:Do you get what I mean?
Speaker B:And that's a bit of a.
Speaker A:What I, I think it.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:And I think it's ra rather than.
Speaker A:It's demonized.
Speaker A:They simplified.
Speaker B:Okay.
Speaker A:I think that that's what's happened is that they've turned it into a black and white story of morality.
Speaker A:And they.
Speaker A:It's.
Speaker A:Now we're judging from the moral compass of today is the past with today's moral, moral lens.
Speaker A:You know, and, and that, that is very.
Speaker B:Yeah, sorry, you go.
Speaker A:I'm just saying that, that that's been weaponized as a way to self impose shame on a society through.
Speaker A:Through a simplified history of the past.
Speaker A:And that is what is controlling people now.
Speaker A:Because no, nobody has a real sense of good and evil and so morality anymore.
Speaker A:It's all being eroded because we're too smart for that now.
Speaker A:We're smarter than religion.
Speaker A:We're smarter than these sort of structures that were oppressive in black and white.
Speaker A:They were just oppressive.
Speaker A:So you just rejected it.
Speaker A:All right?
Speaker A:And so it's.
Speaker A:Now you're just a headless chicken running around wondering.
Speaker A:And everybody's just constantly following whatever they're told is the correct way to think.
Speaker A:And, and it's just highlighting, you know, the, the.
Speaker A:The herd basically.
Speaker A:And that's it.
Speaker A:And it's.
Speaker A:If you are able to zoom out from that and say, okay, well if all of it's made up, then you land at nihilism.
Speaker A:But then you have to build from there.
Speaker A:You can't just say it's nihilism, peace out.
Speaker A:We're f. You've got to go into the next stage of it from the Nietzsche perspective, which is.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:If everything's made up as a man.
Speaker A:To me, masculinity is self imposed structure, self imposed rules.
Speaker A:That's actual freedom, that's masculinity.
Speaker A:You know, it's okay, I can do anything.
Speaker A:So what are my rules?
Speaker A:What are my values?
Speaker A:What are my standards?
Speaker A:What are my boundaries that I build?
Speaker A:Myself?
Speaker A:That's the.
Speaker A:That's the Ubermensch, right, that.
Speaker A:That can pull out of this.
Speaker A:Like, oh, we go another real whatever.
Speaker A:And it's just all of that is noise to control the masses.
Speaker A:And essentially what I see as is a war against masculinity and femininity now.
Speaker A:But it's been.
Speaker A:It's weaponized masculinity and weaponized femininity, essentially.
Speaker A:And that's the politics now.
Speaker A:The left is the feminine and the right is the masculine.
Speaker A:And they're both toxic.
Speaker B:They're both.
Speaker A:Yeah, you know, so it's a tox.
Speaker A:It's a toxic.
Speaker A:It's a toxic war.
Speaker B:I.
Speaker B:When I look at my generation, you know, there are exceptions, but I'm not filled with.
Speaker B:Pride is the wrong term.
Speaker B:I don't want to say pride.
Speaker B:I'm not filled with.
Speaker B:I don't know.
Speaker B:I'm not filled with inner peace, I guess, because fundamentally, peace is the piece of the goal.
Speaker B:But, yeah, no, I can.
Speaker B:I completely agree.
Speaker A:Well, that isn't on you.
Speaker A:That.
Speaker A:That is on you, though, still, ultimately, I would say that don't look at the culture.
Speaker A:Remove yourself from it.
Speaker A:And.
Speaker A:And that' where we get to as individuals to create that inner peace.
Speaker A:So I'm saying, like, it is an inside job and that all of that, when we look out, when we look outward towards all of these systems and we say, oh, look at this, like, my generation's fucked because we're all crazy in social media.
Speaker B:That's.
Speaker A:That's offloading it.
Speaker B:That's.
Speaker A:That's externalizing your inner peace.
Speaker A:So.
Speaker A:And that keeps you in servitude to the wind.
Speaker A:Yeah, the changing of the guard and the cultural shift.
Speaker A:So I would say that actually it's about taking the power back and making it an inside job despite the conditions.
Speaker A:That's the stoic way.
Speaker A:It's new.
Speaker A:Be at peace in the marketplace.
Speaker A:You know, when the, when the chaos of the market is going on, the stoic man is at peace.
Speaker A:Even.
Speaker A:Even when he's like, triggered if he's angry.
Speaker A:Is that control of feeling but not reacting?
Speaker A:And that is the work of the.
Speaker A:Of a man, I would say.
