0:00
When you need to build up your team to handle the growing chaos at work, use Indeed! sponsored
0:05
jobs. It gives your job posts the boost it needs to be seen and helps reach people with the right
0:10
skills, certifications, and more. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing
0:15
candidates who check all your boxes. Listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsor job credit at
0:20
indeed.com/podcast. That's indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need a hiring hero?
0:27
This is a job for Indeed! sponsored jobs.
0:30
This is Undaunted Life, a man's podcast. I'm your host Kyle Thompson. Let's get into it.
0:45
Rules? More rules? Really? Isn't life complicated enough, restricting enough without abstract rules
0:54
that don't take our unique individual situations into account? And given that our brains are plastic
0:59
and all develop differently based on our life experiences, why even expect that the rules
1:03
might be helpful to us all? People don't claim her for rules, even in the Bible. As when Moses
1:09
comes down the mountain after a long absence bearing the tablets inscribed with tin commandments
1:13
and finds the children of Israel in revelry. They'd been pharaohs, slaves, and subject to his
1:17
tyrannical regulations for 400 years, and after that Moses subjected them to the harsh desert
1:22
wilderness for another 40 years to purify them of their slavishness. Now, free at last,
1:28
they are unbridled and have lost all control as they dance wildly around an idol, a golden calf
1:33
displaying all manner of corporal corruption. I've got some good news, and I've got some bad news,
1:39
the law giver yells to them. Which do you want first? The good news, the hedonists reply.
1:44
I got him from 15 commandments down to 10. Hallelujah cries the unruly crowd, and the bad?
1:51
Adultery is still in. So rules there will be, but please not too many. We are ambivalent
1:57
about rules, even we know that they are good for us. If we are spirited souls, if we have character,
2:03
rules seem restrictive and affront to our sense of agency and our pride in working out our own lives.
2:08
Why should we be judged according to another's rule? And judged we are. After all, God didn't
2:13
give Moses the 10 suggestions. He gave commandments. And if I'm a free agent, my first reaction to a
2:19
command might just be that nobody, not even God tells me what to do, even if it's good for me.
2:24
But the story of the golden calf also reminds us that without rules, we quickly become slaves
2:29
to our passions. And there's nothing freeing about that. And the story suggests something more.
2:34
Unshaperoned and left to our own untutored judgment, we are quick to aim low and worship
2:40
qualities that are beneath us. In this case, an artificial animal that brings out our own animal
2:46
instincts in a completely unregulated way. The old Hebrew story makes it clear how the
2:50
ancients felt about our prospects for civilized behavior in the absence of rules that seek to
2:55
elevate our gays and raise our standards. One neat thing about the Bible story is that it
3:00
doesn't simply list its rules as lawyers or legislators or administrators might. It embeds
3:05
them in a dramatic tale that illustrates why we need them, thereby making them easier to understand.
3:11
Similarly, in this book, Professor Peterson doesn't just propose his 12 rules. He tells stories too,
3:17
bringing to bear his knowledge of many fields as he illustrates and explains why the best rules
3:22
do not ultimately restrict us, but instead facilitate our goals and make for fuller, freer lives.
3:28
All right, that is part of an excerpt from the forward of the book 12 rules for life and antidote
3:34
to chaos written by Jordan Peterson. And that part of the forward was by a guy named Norman Dios,
3:40
or doji. I can't, I can't pronounce his last name is doi dge, whatever that says. But he's a
3:46
colleague of Dr. Jordan Peterson's. And he wrote a very, very fantastic forward introduction to the
3:53
12 rules for life book. So obviously, we have talked about Jordan Peterson on this podcast before.
3:58
Episode 16 of this podcast, just one podcast ago, I answered one of the questions about, you know,
4:03
the people that I've gotten the most influenced by in the last year or so he was one of the three
4:09
people in addition to Jocka willing and Ben Shapiro. On episode nine, I did an entire episode about
4:14
Jordan Peterson and his effect that he's having on people, especially young Christian men. But the
4:19
book 12 rules for life and antidote to chaos, if that sounds familiar, it's because it's literally
4:23
like the number one book on the planet and has been for weeks and weeks and weeks. It's a number
4:28
one national bestseller, a number one international bestseller. It's the number one most read and the
4:33
number one most sold book on Amazon right now. This book was released at the end of January
4:38
of 2018 of this year. And already there's around 2000 reviews for the book on Amazon. And it's got
4:44
a 4.7 rating out of five. Okay, this book, I just finished reading it about a month ago.
4:50
This was the first book to bump another book from our 10 books every modern Christian man
4:55
should read list. Okay. And if you haven't seen that list or if you're not familiar with it,
4:59
if you go to our website, www dot undaunted dot life backslash book list, you will see that list
5:05
there. And there's 100 books from all kinds of different categories, everything from apologetics
5:09
to philosophy, to health and fitness, to business and leadership. But this book was the very, very
5:15
first book that actually sent another book packing. Okay. So just an incredible, incredible book.
5:22
It's really, it's already the early favorite for the best book that I've read of 2018. I've read,
5:27
I think nine books up to this point in the year. And it's easily the best one I've read so far.
5:32
And some of the ones I got coming up, I think are going to be fantastic. But it's going to be
5:36
really, really hard to beat this one. So this episode, I want to go into a really a review of the 12
5:42
rules for life book by Jordan Peterson. But I don't want to do a normal review kind of like how I've
5:47
done book reviews in the past where maybe I'm taking big things from every section and trying to kind
5:52
of give you the pros and the narrative that's being presented in the book. I just want to kind of
5:57
highlight some things for you and maybe make some things come to life for you in a special way.
6:02
But let's start out right now by me actually listing the 12 rules. So according to Jordan
6:06
Peterson, these are the 12 rules for life that will serve as an antidote to chaos. Rule number
6:12
one, stand up straight with your shoulders back. Rule number two, treat yourself like someone you
6:18
are responsible for helping. Number three, make friends with people who want the best for you.
6:23
Number four, compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today.
6:30
Rule number five, do not let your children do anything that makes you dislike them.
6:34
Rule number six, set your house in perfect order before you criticize the world.
6:39
Rule number seven, pursue what is meaningful, not what is expedient. Rule number eight,
6:46
tell the truth, or at least don't lie. Rule number nine, assume that the person you are listening to
6:53
might know something you don't. Rule number 10, be precise in your speech. Rule number 11,
7:00
do not bother children when they are skateboarding. Rule number 12, pet a cat when you encounter one
7:06
on the street. Some of those may not make any sense. Some of those you can pull some things out of
7:11
it immediately. Be precise in your speech and tell the truth and stand up straight with your
7:16
shoulders back. That's fairly specific. Some of the other things don't really make a lot of sense
7:21
when you just say them immediately. Pet a cat when you encounter one in the street. That doesn't
7:26
seem like you could build like a 40 50 page chapter on the concept of how that's important.
7:31
But I do want to encourage all of you to get this book and to read it. Okay. And I'm going to say
7:37
that about a billion times in this podcast, but every single one of those chapters is so meticulously
7:42
put together, but it's so digestible. Now, and if you've ever heard Jordan Peterson speak before,
7:48
you know, I've suggested his biblical series to you about the psychological significance of the
7:52
biblical stories, especially in the Old Testament. It's incredibly dense and somewhat hard to understand
7:58
at times. But this book is incredibly incredibly readable. And that was the concern I had before I
8:04
got this book, because I haven't read his other book called maps of meaning. But that one is like
8:07
a clinical psychologist wet dream. Like that's that book, right? So if you're a highly technical
8:12
clinical person, that's like a really, really good book for you to read. But it's not as palatable
8:17
for the general public. This book is palatable for just about anybody. Okay. So what I want to do
8:22
here is I'm not going to do an exhaustive review of each rule. Okay. I want to leave that for you
8:27
because I'm going to encourage you again a million times billion times to actually read the book for
8:31
yourself. But what I'm going to do is I'm going to highlight four rules, because there were four
8:36
rules that I felt like were the most applicable to my listeners. And so I want to kind of pull
8:41
some things out from the chapters where those rules are discussed and just just kind of leave
8:45
it out there. And just to kind of give you forewarning, these are going to be all over the place.
8:49
So the subject matter that he goes into even within each individual rule can really span all
8:55
kinds of different subjects. But even the four rules as I give them to you, they're all over
8:59
the place, right? But the thing is, is there's going to be something that, you know, gets your
9:03
interest that kind of gets you going and may want to get you to the point where you want to research
9:07
a little bit more. So the first rule that I'm going to go into and talk about is rule number two.
9:12
And to remind you that is treat yourself like someone you are responsible for helping.
9:17
So he goes into a lot of different subjects here. One of the first things he talks about is,
9:22
you know, how interesting it is that people are actually better at administering medication
9:26
regiments to their pets than they are to themselves, right? It's kind of like, you know,
9:30
if you're going to treat yourself like someone that you're responsible for helping, you would
9:34
think that you would need to take care of yourself mentally, physically, spiritually,
9:37
like those types of things. But it's something that we don't really do. He goes into a great
9:42
amount of detail on the relationship between chaos and order and kind of how those things kind of
9:48
coincide with one another. So chaos is kind of unexplored territory in your brain or in society,
9:53
in order is kind of explore territory. And there's a, there's a quote from here, and I'm going to do
9:58
a lot of different quotes. I'm just going to go, you know, say, Hey, we're going to the book here.
10:01
I'm not going to say quote, unquote. So just follow me whenever I'm doing these. Okay. So here's a
10:05
quote. Before the twin towers fell, that was order. Chaos manifested itself afterward.
10:12
Everyone felt it. The very air became uncertain. What exactly was it that fell?
10:17
Wrong question. What exactly remained standing? That was the issue at hand. Okay. So the relationship
10:24
of chaos and order, he goes into that and he also goes into how that relates to masculinity and
10:29
femininity. He goes into the subject matter of good and evil. And he really goes deep in here.
10:34
And so back to the book here. And even if we had defeated all the snakes that beset us from without
10:39
reptilian and human alike, we would still not have been safe. Nor are we now. We have seen the enemy
10:46
after all, and he is us. The snake inhabits each of our souls. This is the reason, as far as I can
10:52
tell, for the strange Christian insistence made most explicit by John Milton, that the snake in the
10:57
Garden of Eden was also Satan, the spirit of evil itself. The importance of this symbiotic
11:04
identification, its staggering brilliance, can hardly be overstated. It is through such
11:09
millennia long exercise of the imagination that the idea of abstracted moral concepts
11:14
themselves with all they entail developed work beyond comprehension was invested in the idea of
11:20
good and evil and its surroundings dreamlike metaphor. The worst of all possible snakes is
11:25
the eternal human proclivity for evil. The worst of all possible snakes is psychological spiritual
11:31
personal internal. No walls, however, tall, will keep that out. Even if the fortress were thick
11:37
enough, in principle, to keep everything bad whatsoever outside, it would immediately appear
11:42
again within. As the great Russian writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn insisted, the line dividing good
11:47
and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. So obviously, you can see there's a lot
11:52
of religious connotations throughout a lot of his examples. Again, what I said in episode nine
11:58
and reiterated, I think a little bit in episode 16, is this is a guy that delves deep into subject
12:02
matters of all types. And again, like I said, he's not a binary guy, I was just going to tell you,
12:07
hey, yeah, you know, you ask him if he believes in God, he just doesn't even understand what you
12:11
mean by the question. And that doesn't mean he's a simpleton, it just means he thinks of things in
12:15
in a much higher level. Okay, but he even goes in time to follow up on that on the Bible in the fall.
12:21
Okay, so back to the book, the entire Bible is structured so that everything after the fall,
12:27
that is the history of Israel, the prophets, the coming of Christ is presented as a remedy for that
12:32
fall away out of evil. The beginning of conscious history, the rise of the state and all its pathologies
12:38
of pride and rigidity, the emergence of great moral figures who try to set things right,
12:43
culminating in the Messiah himself. That is all part of humanity's attempt, God willing to set
12:48
itself right. And what would that mean? Again, he posits a lot of different questions throughout
12:53
this book that, you know, he doesn't actually answer. So at the end of that statement, you know,
12:57
and what would that mean? He doesn't really offer you an answer to that. And I'm going to go into
13:02
the best quote of the chapter. So in each of the rules, I'm going to go over, I'm going to kind
13:05
of tell you the best quote I found from the chapter, but also a summary quote. So here is the best
13:10
quote from the chapter for that second rule. And this really goes into kind of God and his
13:15
standards. So here we go to the book, God says, who told you that you were naked? Did you eat
13:21
something you weren't supposed to? And Adam in his wretchedness points right at Eve, his love,
13:26
his partner, his soulmate, and snitches on her. And then he blames God. He says, the woman whom you
13:33
gave to me, she gave it to me. And then I ate it, how pathetic and how accurate the first woman
13:40
made the first man self conscious and resentful. The first man blamed the woman. And then the first
13:46
man blamed God. This is exactly how every spurned male feels to this day. First, he feels small
13:52
in front of the potential object of his love after she denigrates his reproductive suitability.
13:57
Then he curses God for making her so [inaudible], himself so useless, if he has any sense and being
14:03
itself so deeply flawed. Then he turns to thoughts of revenge, how thoroughly contemptible and how
14:09
utterly understandable. At least the woman has the serpent to blame. And it later turns out that
14:15
the snake is Satan himself, unlikely as it seems. Thus, we can understand and sympathize with Eve's
14:22
heir. She was deceived by the best. But Adam, no one forced his words from his mouth. I think
14:29
this is such an incredible quote because we've heard a lot of different people talk about the
14:33
creation story. If you go to any church on the planet, you're going to get some Genesis one love
14:37
in your life and, you know, go on through Genesis two and three. But but really, we focus on Adam.
14:43
Obviously, we focus on how Adam pointed out his wife and pointed at God and didn't take any
14:48
responsibility. I mean, Jocko Willink would call that extreme ownership, right? Adam did not take
14:52
that the first man did not take that and it took Jesus basically taking care of the first man's sin
14:57
in generations later to really cover that up. And a summary quote to kind of wrap up this chapter
15:03
is this. So back to the book, don't underestimate the power of vision and direction. These are
15:08
irresistible forces able to transform what might appear to be unconquerable obstacles,
15:12
inter-tiversable pathways and expanding opportunities, strengthen the individual,
15:17
start with yourself, take care of yourself, define who you are, refine your personality,
15:23
choose your destination and articulate your being as the great 19th century German philosopher
15:28
Frederick Nietzsche so brilliantly noted, key whose life has a why can bear almost any how.
15:34
Rule number two, treat yourself like someone you are responsible for helping.
15:40
All right, so let's go into rule three, make friends with people who want the best for you.
15:44
Okay, so in this one, the beginning of this chapter, I remember highlighting this because
15:49
he's kind of a technical guy, but he really is an incredibly talented writer. He displays his
15:54
incredible prose skills and his narrative skills with just a basic description of what growing up
16:00
in like way northern Alberta, Canada was. I think he said where he grew up, you know,
16:05
the railroad ended about 15 or 16 miles north of their town. So they're in way the hell up there,
16:11
Canada, right? So when the winter time you're looking at six hours of sunlight and, you know,
16:16
30 below zero temperatures, that's kind of what you're looking for, right? And in this chapter,
16:20
in going into this rule, he talks about the ability to help people versus helping yourself. So to the
16:25
book, but a villain who dispairs of his villainy has not become a hero. A hero is something positive,
16:32
not just the absence of evil, but Christ himself, you might object befriended tax collectors and
16:37
prostitutes. How dare I cast aspersions on the motives of those who are trying to help? But Christ
16:42
was the archetypal perfect man. And you're you. How do you know that your attempts to pull someone
16:49
up won't instead bring them or you further down? I think this is an incredible thing for us to
16:54
think about guys. How many times have we been put in a situation where we were helping somebody
16:58
help? And we ended up getting pulled down that happens a lot. You might have been the [inaudible]
17:02
that was pulling somebody down at some point, right? And you can see that in yourself and you
17:06
actually have enough personal awareness to where you see that you've done that to other people.
17:09
And he really talks more in this section about how you can't help people that don't want help. It made
17:15
me think of a guy I went to college with. I won't won't say his name here on the podcast, but you
17:20
went to college with me at the University of Central Oklahoma and has since become homeless.
17:23
And he's been homeless for I mean, goodness, six, seven, eight years, maybe longer. And he's homeless,
17:29
but he's in my city. And I've tried every time I've seen him, I've tried to help him. I've tried
17:33
to get him to come home with us to stay with us. I've tried to get him to let me buy him food.
17:38
I've taken him supplies before, you know, new shoes, you know, new shirt, like toothpaste,
17:43
you know, just basic things. I just had it sitting in my truck waiting for the next time that I saw
17:47
him. And there are times where I'll see him once every couple of weeks and there's times where I'd
17:50
see him just two or three times in a year. But this is somebody that I can't help. This is something I
17:55
just have someone that I had just have to pray for. I can't just throw him over my shoulder or toss
17:59
him in the back of the truck and drive him home. It's not really going to help him. So let's go
18:02
into the best quote of the chapter. So here we go back to the book. Here's something to consider.
18:06
If you have a friend whose friendship you wouldn't recommend to your sister or your father or your
18:11
son, why would you have such a friend for yourself? You might say out of loyalty. Well, loyalty is
18:18
not identical to stupidity. Loyalty must be negotiated fairly and honestly, friendship is a reciprocal
18:24
arrangement. You are not morally obliged to support someone who is making the world a worse place.
18:31
Quite the opposite. You should choose people who want things to be better, not worse. It's a good
18:37
thing, not a selfish thing to choose people who are good for you. It's appropriate and
18:41
praiseworthy to associate with people whose lives would be improved if they saw your life improve.
18:47
If you surround yourself with people who support your upward aim, they will not tolerate your
18:51
cynicism and destructiveness. They will instead encourage you when you do good for yourself
18:56
and others and punish you carefully when you do not. This will help bolster your resolve to do
19:03
what you should do in the most appropriate and careful manner. People who are not aiming up
19:08
will do the opposite. They will offer a former smoker a cigarette and a former alcoholic a beer.
19:13
They will be jealous when you succeed or do something pristine. They will withdraw their presence or
19:19
support or actively punish you for it. They will override your accomplishment with a past action,
19:24
real or imaginary of their own. Maybe they are trying to test you to see if your resolve is real,
19:30
to see if you are genuine. But mostly, they are dragging you down because your new improvements
19:34
cast their faults in an even dimmer light. I think that's a fantastic quote again. I mean,
19:39
just a great, great lesson for all of us to learn. And here's a summary quote that kind of wraps
19:43
up this rule here. Don't think that is easier to surround yourself with good, healthy people
19:48
than with bad, unhealthy people. It's not. A good, healthy person is an ideal. It requires strength
19:55
and daring to stand up near such a person. Have some humility. Have some courage.
20:01
Use your judgment and protect yourself from too uncritical, passionate and pity.
20:06
So that's rule number three. Make friends with people who want the best for you.
20:10
Let's launch right into rule number four. Compare yourself to who you were yesterday,
20:15
not to who someone else is today. So one of the first things he talks about is kind of the reality
20:20
of present circumstances. So to the book, we are not equal in ability or outcome and never will be.
20:26
A very small number of people produce very much of everything. The winners don't take all,
20:31
but they take most. And the bottom is not a good place to be. People are unhappy at the bottom.
20:36
They get sick there and remain unknown and unloved. They waste their lives there. They die there.
20:41
In consequence, the self-integrating voice in the minds of the people weaves a devastating tale.
20:45
Life is a zero sum game. Worthlessness is the default condition. What but willful blindness
20:53
could possibly shelter people from such withering criticism. It is for such reasons that a whole
20:58
generation of social psychologists recommended, quote, positive illusions, unquote, as the only
21:03
reliable route to mental health. Their credo, let a lie be your umbrella. A more dismal,
21:10
wretched, pessimistic philosophy can hardly be imagined. Things are so terrible that only
21:15
delusion can save you. This is something that I think is incredibly important. And I may really
21:19
expand this in a future podcast to kind of encapsulate this. But a lot of guys, you know, speaking to
21:24
my audience here, a lot of guys kind of create that philosophy for themselves. They would they
21:28
want to live under a lie because it's the lie that they feel like they can control. And if anyone's
21:32
ever been caught in a lie, I certainly have been some big ones, actually, those are things that
21:36
you can't control. You think you have complete control over the darkness, but the darkness has
21:40
you the entire time. It's the illusion that you've created for yourself. But he also talks about
21:45
the concept of better, which I think is a good way to look at that. So back to the book. Standards
21:51
of better or worse are not illusory or unnecessary. If you hadn't decided that what you are doing
21:56
right now was better than the alternatives, you wouldn't be doing it. The idea of a value-free
22:01
choice is a contradiction in terms. Value judgments are a precondition for action. Furthermore,
22:06
every activity, once chosen, comes with its own internal standards of accomplishment.
22:11
If something can be done at all, it can be done better or worse. To do anything at all is therefore
22:16
to play a game with a defined and valued end, which can always be reached more or less efficiently
22:21
and elegantly. Every game comes with its chance of success or failure. Differentials and quality
22:27
are omnipresent. Furthermore, if there was no better or worse, nothing would be worth doing.
22:34
There would be no value and therefore no meaning. Why make an effort if it doesn't improve anything?
22:39
Meaning itself requires the difference between better and worse. How, then, can the voice of
22:45
critical self-consciousness be stilled? Where are the flaws in the apparent impeccable logic of its
22:51
message? Again, another question he just leaves us there. Where are the flaws in the apparently
22:56
impeccable logic of its message? Really, there's a lot of things in life that goes to that whole
23:01
concept of everybody gets a trophy. No kid is better than any other kid. No person is more
23:07
important than any other person. In terms of the Amago day, that's absolutely true. But in most
23:11
settings in life, especially in a capitalist society, a Western society, that's just not the case.
23:15
One thing he talks about, I really liked how he put this, he talked about the underworld trinity.
23:20
So he talked about arrogance, deceit, and resentment. So that was a fairly interesting section.
23:25
And then after that, he got into a section about self-reflection and also self-knowledge,
23:30
which I see is kind of an issue for some guys. They kind of over-inflate some of their value,
23:34
or maybe some other guys go the other direction. They've kind of deflated their value. They have a
23:38
very, very poor self-reflection and self-knowledge. So let's go back to the book here.
23:43
Does that mean that what we see is dependent on our religious beliefs? Yes. And what we don't see
23:49
as well, you might object, but I'm an atheist. No, you're not. And if you want to understand this,
23:55
you could read Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment, perhaps the greatest novel ever written,
23:59
in which the main character, Raskal Makov, sorry, decides to take his atheism with true seriousness,
24:06
commits what he has rationalized, and as a benevolent murderer and pays the price.
24:12
You're simply not an atheist in your actions, and it is your actions that most accurately reflect
24:17
your deepest beliefs, those that are implicit, embedded in your being, underneath your conscious
24:23
apprehensions and articulable attitudes and surface level self-knowledge. You can only find out what
24:30
you actually believe, rather than what you think you believe, by watching how you act. You simply
24:35
don't know what you believe before that. You are too complex to understand yourself.
24:40
Now, I gotta be honest, this one tripped me up a little bit, and not just the Russian name that I
24:45
tried to pronounce and absolutely slaughtered. Anyone that's out there that knows how to pronounce
24:48
that name, go ahead and shoot me a video with that and let me know. But this is a really interesting
24:54
concept to think of that we don't actually know who we are until we look at our actions,
24:59
and I think from a Christian context, that's incredibly important for us to look at, because
25:02
some of us are Christian and name only. You know, we just basically operate with this idea, well,
25:08
I was born in Oklahoma, so that makes me a Christian, or I'm an American, so that makes me a Christian,
25:14
when that really has no reflection on anything in terms of your setup with the creator God,
25:20
at all. And for a lot of us, when you think of just being Christian and name only, and that's
25:25
where you kind of get your morality, some people don't operate with that paradigm in mind. They
25:29
just don't do that. So create some issues there. And he also made a little very short statement
25:34
about kind of New Testament God people. I mean, you've heard a lot of people like that, you know,
25:38
you have guys like Rob Bell, that ridiculous guy that just basically like, oh hell couldn't
25:42
possibly exist if God is love, right? Because apparently judgment's not a real thing. But
25:47
these people that are like, they got really uncomfortable feelings about the Old Testament
25:50
God. So here, back to the book. There's been a price paid, however, for such plotting. And I mean
25:57
that in both senses of the word, the tendency for modern people to think, when confronted with
26:02
Jehovah, I would never believe in a God like that. But Old Testament God doesn't much care
26:06
what modern people think. I thought that was an incredible line, because I mean, that's kind of
26:10
the deal just because how God has been portrayed to you. It's just that doesn't really change.
26:16
Basically, your feelings don't change the reality of who God is, right? So if the Old Testament God
26:22
doesn't make sense to you, it doesn't mean that God changed all of a sudden in the New Testament.
26:26
Like it does, he's still the same God. He's the unmovable mover. So here's the best quote from the
26:31
chapter. And this quote was basically talking about sandbagging and kind of success overall,
26:35
which I think you guys will enjoy. So back to the book. It's also unlikely that you're playing
26:39
only one game. You have a career and friends and family members and personal projects and
26:45
artistic endeavors and athletic pursuits. You might consider judging your success across all the
26:51
games you play. Imagine that you are very good at some, middling at others and terrible at the
26:56
remainder. Perhaps that's how it should be. You might object, I should be winning at everything.
27:01
But winning at everything might only mean that you're not doing anything new or difficult.
27:07
You might be winning, but you're not growing. And growing might be the most important form of
27:12
winning. Should victory in the present always take precedence over trajectory across time?
27:18
I freaking love that quote. I think that is incredible. Again, this quote here,
27:23
you might be winning, but you're not growing. And growing might be the most important form of
27:28
winning. All of us have those pockets of life where we dominate, right? Maybe you're a really,
27:33
really good golfer. Maybe you're a fantastic salesman. Maybe you're a good preacher. There's
27:39
just things that you do really well at. And then when someone suggests something for you to do that
27:44
is outside of that normal skill set, you're like, I think I'm out on that. You just don't really
27:49
know how to feel about that. And look, I bring a lot of things back to jujitsu. But the same thing
27:53
is true in jujitsu. Aside from the person who has basically done, you know, wrestling freestyle or
27:58
Greco or judo most of their life, the transition into jujitsu for most people, especially if they
28:04
came from, you know, ball sports. So baseball, football, basketball, soccer, those types of things.
28:08
It's not always a smooth transition. It's just a completely different game. And so some guys will
28:13
try it. And then they'll be done after day one or week one or month one or something like that.
28:18
It's just way too difficult. They're going to run back to the pitching green, uh, they're going to
28:23
or putting green, whatever they're just going to run back to the pockets of life where they can
28:27
dominate to video games or whatever it is they can do. And they're not going to push themselves,
28:31
but it's only when you push yourself that you grow. So the summary quote for this rule is very
28:35
short. And so here it is. Attend to the day, but aim at the highest good rule. Number four,
28:42
compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today.
28:47
All right, guys. So the last rule I'm going to go over for you today is rule number 11.
28:51
Do not bother children when they are skateboarding. Okay, so obviously this is one where you read
28:56
the chapter time and you're like, what in the world is he talking about? I'm telling you guys,
29:00
rule number 11. So this is that chapter of the book. This chapter is worth the entire book.
29:06
Like this is the most robust chapter. I don't know what it is in the paper version,
29:09
because I do all e-reading, but it was over 100 pages on my e-reader, um, this one chapter.
29:15
It could have been sold by itself. I feel like if this was sold at as a 100 page ebook,
29:20
that it would have still done really, really well. This is an incredible, incredible chapter,
29:24
because it goes into so many different areas that are going to be very important, but also
29:28
very interesting to a lot of you listening out there. So he kind of starts off and this is where
29:33
he gets the title or basically the description for this rule. And he was talking about these kids
29:38
that were skateboarding. And so these are young kids and you know, they're trying to go down a
29:42
rail and they're just constantly messing up. If you've seen any type of street skateboarding videos,
29:47
I mean, these guys are just bailing out and crashing all the freaking time. No number
29:51
wearing helmets or not wearing pads. Like that's not the point. They're just basically out there
29:55
to see who can do it. And he really puts it out there that, you know, how kids do dangerous things
30:01
basically in search for competence, right? So they're doing this dangerous thing so they can become
30:06
competent at it. So I mean, I never really did the skateboard thing because I busted my tail once
30:11
going down the driveway. And I was like, I think I'm good on my own two feet. But I remember whenever
30:14
I first tried to bunny hop on a bike, you know, BMX bike when I was, you know, a little kid.
30:19
And I couldn't get it. I didn't know I didn't understand like the mechanics of doing that move.
30:22
But eventually I figured it out. I just kind of clicked one day. And then it just became old hat.
30:26
And so I could bunny hop really high. And that was just kind of one of those interesting things
30:30
where it was just like, I was in search for competence. And I was doing something dangerous.
30:35
It wasn't terribly dangerous. I wasn't going off a mega ramp or something like that.
30:38
But it was kind of one of those things that it was a dangerous endeavor. And you know,
30:42
I crash and you know, I skinned up my my shins and, you know, got my pedals stuck on my shins and
30:47
all those different things. And you know, it was kind of a painful process. But then I became
30:50
competent at it and didn't have to deal with that anymore. So one thing I really like about
30:54
this book is it has a ton, or sorry, this this rule rather has a ton of information about issues
31:00
with boys. So kind of how boys are struggling. It talks about higher education, a lot of different
31:05
things. But I'm going to go into a really good quote kind of talking about issues that are going
31:09
on with boys. So it's a somewhat lengthy quote. So stick with me to the book. Boys are suffering
31:14
in the modern world. They are more disobedient negatively or more independent positively than
31:20
girls. And they suffer for this throughout their pre university educational career. They are less
31:25
agreeable, agreeableness being a personality trait associated with compassion, empathy,
31:29
and avoidance of conflict, and less susceptible to anxiety and depression, at least after both
31:34
sexes hit puberty. Boys interests tilt towards things girls interest tilt towards people.
31:40
Strikingly, these differences strongly influenced by biological factors are most pronounced in the
31:45
Scandinavian societies where gender equality has been pushed hardest. This is the opposite of what
31:51
would be expected by those who insist ever or more loudly that gender is a social construct.
31:57
It isn't. This isn't a debate. The data are in boys like competition, and they don't like to obey
32:04
particular, particularly when they are adolescents. During that time, they are driven to escape their
32:09
families and establish their own independent existence. There is little difference between
32:14
doing that and challenging authority schools, which were set up in the late 1800s precisely
32:18
to inculcate obedience, do not take kindly to provocative and daring behavior. No matter how
32:24
tough minded and competent it might show a boy or a girl to be. Other factors play their role
32:29
in the decline of boys. Girls will, for example, play boys games. But boys are much more reluctant
32:36
to play girls games. This isn't part because it is admirable for a girl to win when competing
32:41
with a boy. It is also okay for her to lose to a boy. For a boy to beat a girl, however,
32:47
it is often not okay. And just as often, it is even less okay for him to lose. Imagine that a boy
32:53
and a girl aged nine get into a fight. Just for engaging, the boy is highly suspect. If he wins,
33:01
he's pathetic. If he loses, well, his life might be a well as well, be over beat up by a girl.
33:08
Girls can win by winning in their own hierarchy, by being good at what girls value as girls. They
33:15
can add to this victory by winning in the boys hierarchy. Boys, however, can only win by winning
33:20
in the male hierarchy. They also lose status among girls and boys by being good at what girls value.
33:26
It costs them in reputation among the boys and in attractiveness among the girls.
33:31
Girls aren't attracted to boys who are their friends, even though they might like them,
33:35
whatever that means. They are attracted to boys who win status contests with other boys. If you're
33:41
male, however, you can't just hammer a female as hard as you would a male. Boys can't, won't,
33:49
play truly competitive games with girls. It isn't clear how they can win. As the game turns into a
33:56
girls game, therefore the boys leave. Are the universities, particularly the humanities, about
34:03
to become a girls game? Is that what we want? The situation in the universities and in educational
34:09
institutions in general is far more problematic than the basic statistical statistics indicate.
34:15
If you eliminate the so-called STEM, which is science, technology, engineering, and mathematics
34:19
programs, excluding psychology, the female-male ratio is even more skewed. Almost 80% of students
34:26
majoring in the fields of healthcare, public administration, psychology, and education,
34:30
which comprise one quarter of all degrees, are female. The disparity is rapidly increasing.
34:36
At this rate, there will be very few men in most university disciplines in 15 years.
34:41
This is not good news for men. It might even be catastrophic news for men, but it's also
34:47
not good news for women. He wraps up this section by going into many issues for women and men in
34:53
the workforce, issues with education of young boys overall, and problems at universities,
34:58
and what political correctness has done. This is such an important thing for all of us to be
35:03
thinking about because he posits that within the next decade or two, he said 15 years,
35:08
so let's say two decades, right? That we're going to see men basically disappear from universities.
35:14
Now, he's talking mainly within administration and the professorial routes, but the thing about
35:18
it is we're already seeing that happening even in the student areas, right? There are way more
35:24
female college students. There's way more females getting master's degrees, advanced degrees,
35:29
and it would never used to be that way. And there's really a lot that's exacerbating that,
35:35
and it's not really going in the other, excuse me, in the other direction. He also talks about
35:39
kind of the quote unquote evil patriarchy. That's kind of everybody's best punching bag thing
35:44
now where he talks about the patriarchy. So back to the book, consider this as well in regard to
35:49
oppression. Any hierarchy creates winners and losers. The winners are, of course, more likely to
35:55
justify the hierarchy and the losers to criticize it. But the collective pursuit of any valued goal
36:02
produces a hierarchy as some will be better and some will be worse at that pursuit, no matter what
36:07
it is. And it is the pursuit of goals that in large part lends itself lends life to its sustaining
36:13
meaning. We experience almost all the emotions that make life deep and engaging as a consequence
36:18
of moving successfully towards something deeply desired and valued. The price we pay for that
36:23
involvement is the inevitable creation of hierarchies of success, while the inevitable consequences
36:29
difference in outcome, absolute equality would therefore require the sacrifice of value itself.
36:35
And then there would be nothing worth living for. We might instead note with gratitude that a
36:40
complex sophisticated culture allows for many games and many successful players, and that a
36:44
well structured culture allows the individuals to compose that compose it to play and to win
36:50
in many different fashions. It is also perverse to consider culture the creation of men. Culture is
36:56
symbolically, archetyply, and mythically male. That's partly why the idea of quote the patriarchy
37:03
unquote is so easily swallowed. But it is certainly the creation of humankind, not the creation of
37:08
men, let alone white men who nonetheless contributed their fair share. European culture has only been
37:13
dominant to the degree that it is dominant at all for about 400 years. On the timescale of
37:19
cultural evolution, which is to be measured at minimum in thousands of years, such a timespan
37:24
barely registers. Furthermore, even if women contributed nothing substantial to art literature
37:29
and sciences prior to the 1960s with the feminist revolution, which is not something I believe,
37:34
then the role they played raising children and working on the farms was still instrumental in
37:38
raising boys and freeing up men, a very few men so that humanity could propagate itself and strive
37:44
forward. So obviously getting a little bit political kind of going into this whole kind of first
37:49
second, third wave feminism type of thing and kind of where people are just attacking the
37:53
patriarchy. So goes into that in this rule, he even delves down into Marxism and kind of what
37:58
intellectual utopians you have to kind of think and kind of how they view the world. But one thing
38:03
I think is good for us to look at he also talked about as a man basically pulling your weight. So
38:07
back to the book. Men enforce a code of behavior on each other when working together. Do your work,
38:13
pull your weight, stay awake and pay attention. Don't whine or be touchy. Stand up for your friends.
38:19
Don't suck up and don't snitch. Don't be a slave to stupid rules. Don't in the immortal
38:24
world words of Arnold Schwarzenegger be a girly man. Don't be dependent at all ever period.
38:30
The harassment that is part of acceptance on the working crew is a test. Are you tough,
38:35
entertaining, competent and reliable? If not, go away. Simple as that. We don't need to feel
38:41
sorry for you. We don't want to put up with your narcissism and we don't want to do your work.
38:46
So for a lot of guys, even if you feel like you're a very advanced, very nuanced person,
38:51
you have all these different layers to your personality, this is something that we find out
38:54
to be true. This is not just, you know, basically working on a, you know, construction crew or
38:58
something like that that you see something like this. We are constantly comparing ourselves to
39:02
other guys. And especially if we're in a team full of other guys, we want them to pull their weight
39:06
for all my athletes out there. If you played a professional collegiate or high school athletics
39:11
of something, some kind, and you're playing on all guys team, which would be most of you, right?
39:16
You want guys to pull their weight. Now, there are times when everything's go wrong,
39:20
you make a mistake, you know, you strike out, you know, you drop a pass, whatever the thing may be.
39:24
But those are the things that your teammates can choose to kind of come behind you and take
39:28
care of business. But if you're striking out and dropping passes and you're also screwing off in
39:32
practice, it's going to be an issue and the community is going to kind of deal with you on that. So,
39:36
the best quote of the chapter I want to get in here, it's a chapter or it's really a quote in a
39:42
section that talks about what women want, right? And he doesn't go like full on into the, you know,
39:46
the psychology of the woman and all the things in relationships. But I thought that this was
39:50
incredibly, incredibly potent. So back to the book. It is two women's clear advantage that men
39:55
do not happily put up with dependency among themselves. Part of the reason that so many a
40:01
working class woman does not marry now, as we have alluded to, is because she does not want to look
40:06
after a man struggling for employment, as well as her children. And fair enough, a woman should
40:12
look after her children, although that is not all she should do. And a man should look after a woman
40:18
in children, although that is not all he should do. But a woman should not look after a man,
40:22
because she must look after her children. And a man should not be a child. This means that he
40:29
must not be dependent. This is one of the reasons that men have little patience for dependent men.
40:35
And let us not forget, wicked women may produce dependent sons, may support and even marry
40:39
dependent men, but awake and conscious women want an awake and conscious partner. Men have to toughen
40:46
up men demand it and women want it, even though may may not approve of the harsh and contemptuous
40:52
attitude that is part and parcel of the socially demanding process that fosters and then enforces
40:57
that toughness. Some women don't like losing their baby boys, so they keep them forever.
41:03
Some women don't like men and would rather have a submissive mate, even if he is useless. This
41:08
also provides them with plenty to feel sorry for themselves about as well. The pleasures of such
41:13
self pity should not be underestimated. Men toughen up by pushing themselves and by pushing each other.
41:19
That last statement right there, that's where it is, guys, men toughen up by pushing themselves
41:25
and by pushing each other. That is why undaunted life in a lot of ways is here. We talk a lot about
41:29
kind of what the church has done to pacify men and all the things that society has done to kind of
41:33
push them into the fringes. But guys, when you toughen up the most is when you're pushing others
41:39
and when others are pushing you, right? That's when it happens. That's why with undaunted life,
41:43
that's why we do these private excursions, right? That's why we get guys out into the woods, we get
41:47
them competing, we get them talking about certain things, we get them tired, we get them exhausted,
41:51
and we kind of put them through the ringer for a weekend, because that's when you're toughening
41:55
yourself up the most. That's when you are cultivating your manly resilience at the largest clip and
42:00
at the biggest level, right? So that's why we do it in that form and in that fashion, because it's
42:05
incredibly incredibly important to do that. So the summary quote for this rule is this. So back to
42:10
the book, if they're healthy, women don't want boys, they want men, they want someone to contend
42:16
with someone to grapple with. If they're tough, they want someone tougher. If they're smart,
42:21
they want someone smarter. They desire someone who brings to the table something they can't
42:25
already provide. This often makes it hard for tough, smart, attractive women to find mates.
42:31
There just aren't that many men around who can outclass them enough to be considered desirable,
42:35
who are higher, as one research publication put it, in income, education, self-confidence,
42:40
intelligence, dominance, and social position. The spirit that interferes when boys are trying to
42:45
become men is therefore no more friend to woman than it is to man. It will object just as vociferously
42:52
and self-righteously. You can't do it. It's too dangerous when little girls try to stand
42:56
their own on their own two feet. It negates consciousness. It's anti-human, desirous of failure,
43:02
jealous, resentful, and destructive. No one truly on the side of humanity would
43:07
allow himself or herself with such a thing. No one aiming at moving up would allow him or
43:12
herself to become possessed by such a thing. And if you think tough men are dangerous,
43:18
wait until you see what weak men are capable of. Rule number 11, leave children alone when
43:24
they are skateboarding. Okay guys, as we kind of wrap up my review of this book, I want to give you
43:30
the three reasons in my opinion why every modern Christian man should read the 12 rules for life
43:35
and antidote for chaos. So reason number one is relevance. Guys, this book is the number one
43:41
book in the world right now. Like it's number one all over the place, right? There's plenty
43:45
of people talking about it. So if you're at work or you're doing things in any type of circle where
43:50
there are guys that do read things, it's going to come up. It kind of has to come up right now.
43:54
I mean, he's traveling around the country. He's kind of going on a sold out tour where he's
43:58
talking about his book to a lot of different to a lot of different people. So it's not, you know,
44:03
a hyperbole to say that this is a cultural phenomenon. Like this is an incredibly, incredibly important
44:08
book. So reason number one, why you should read this book is its relevance. Reason number two
44:14
is how important it is. So importance, right? This will be one of the most important books that you
44:20
read. And I don't mean this year. I mean, in general, and I'm not being exaggerative. I truly,
44:28
truly mean it. A good buddy of mine who who's read the book and he's about to take a group of guys
44:34
through the reading of this book. He said this is the new seven habits of highly effective people,
44:38
right? You know, the the Covey book that is on our 100 books list, right? That book's kind of old.
44:44
It's pretty old school, especially if you've ever seen him talk before. It's kind of it's really,
44:48
really old school type of a thing. But this is such an important book in the content through
44:52
which I hope you kind of got that through some of the things that I laid out there. It's incredibly
44:57
relevant, right? That's what we talked about. But the importance of it is incredibly big as well.
45:01
And the third reason why I think everybody should read this book, all Christian men, modern Christian
45:05
men is timing. So the timing of the stuff he's talking about in the book is so specific to where
45:11
we're at right now. Okay. So we are in a time right now, we're living through a time in 2018
45:16
of tremendous political division in our country. It's a time of cultural angst. We don't really
45:21
know what direction the culture is going. It's getting way left. And there's kind of pockets that
45:25
are going way right. It's a it's a time of spiritual persecution. And again, I've talked about this a
45:30
lot. Someone not liking your scripture post on Facebook or putting a snide comment is not really
45:35
persecution, right? We have people getting their heads freaking chopped off by Muslims in the in
45:39
the Middle East. So let's just kind of chill out on the persecution language. But it is a time of
45:43
kind of spiritual persecution in the sense that we again don't know what direction we're going.
45:47
And we don't know if it's going to get better for Christians in the West or worse. And it's also
45:51
it's a time of extreme pluralism, right? No one knows which way is up and they can't say with any
45:56
definitive nature that this is good or that's bad. They just can't do that. So the contents of this
46:02
book and these 12 rules are things that you can put into practice in your life immediately. And
46:08
guys, like I said, I picked out four rules out of the 12. I picked out a third of them to share
46:12
with you. They're all money, but they're all going to hit you in different ways. But there's just
46:17
there's really not a logical outcome. It wouldn't be a logical outcome for you to read this book
46:23
and not get anything from any of the 12 rules. Like there's going to be something for you to be
46:27
able to immediately implement in your life. That's going to help you be a better person. Okay. So
46:32
guys, before we let you go, we're going to do a quick resilience boost. So as you know, by now,
46:35
we are a men's ministry and our mission is cultivating manly resilience. And specifically, we do that
46:40
by providing content that for just spiritual mental and physical toughness. So today is a
46:44
mental resilience day. And the suggestion is obviously for the billion time, read this book,
46:49
pick up this book and read it. And one thing I would suggest for you to do is if you do have a
46:54
men's group, maybe this is a regular men's group that you meet with through a ministry of some kind
46:58
or through the church, maybe you have a men's Bible study that you do or a men's Sunday school or
47:02
maybe you don't have that in any formal fashion, but you need an excuse to get get a group of guys
47:06
together. Get this book and read it, read it together, right? And when guys like this,
47:10
chapters are long, just shut up, tell them to shut up, punch them in the face, do whatever you
47:14
need to do. Read one chapter a week and then come together and talk about it. So there's a group
47:18
that I do on Sunday nights. So outside of my normal jujitsu training, this is kind of a Sunday night
47:24
men's group where we have a book, we read it on our own, we come together and kind of discuss what
47:29
we got from that chapter or from the section that we were reading at that time. And then we do,
47:34
you know, a Metcon workout, some kind, and then we train a little bit of no-gee jujitsu. So you
47:38
can do that on your own. Like the weather is, you know, getting better, especially here in the
47:43
next couple of months. So get outside and you know, play, I don't care, whatever you want to do,
47:47
play Frisbee golf, play around an actual golf or the football around, get a softball team together
47:51
where you talk in the parking lot instead of drinking really crappy beer from the, from the gas station,
47:55
you're talking about this book just figures a way out, figure out some way to get with other
48:00
guys to discuss the contents of this book. I literally could not recommend it higher to you.
48:04
Okay guys, thanks again for listening to the podcast. We always appreciate it. Please subscribe
48:08
on iTunes, SoundCloud or Google Play and refer your friends to listen and share all this on social
48:13
media. If we deserve a five star rating, guys, that's how this podcast is going to continue to grow
48:17
and reach more people. So please leave us a five star review. Again, just a reminder,
48:21
I am booking speaking engagements for 2018. So if you want me to come speak to your church or your
48:26
ministry or your Sunday school or your business or your camp or anything like that, you can reach me
48:31
by info@undaunted.life. Again, info@undaunted.life and our website is www.undaunted.life and you can
48:39
follow us on Instagram and Twitter @undauntedlife and facebook.com/undauntedlife. You can check out
48:45
our free devotionals on the U-version Bible app. You just search "undaunted life under plants" and as
48:49
always, we want to thank the band August Burns Red for allowing us to use their music library for
48:53
our content. The intro outro track on this podcast is their song "King Asaro" which is off their latest
48:58
record entitled "Phantom Anthem" and the links to all this are in the description. I'm your host,
49:03
Kyle Thompson. Remember, keep cultivating manly resilience, keep forging spiritual, mental and
49:09
physical toughness, keep seeking the lion a deal.