Dylan Bain: It is time to reject the domestication of a manufacture society and reclaim the human wisdom that lives within our hearts. Welcome to The Human Revolution. I’m your host, Dylan Bain.

Jack Donovan, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for having me. I am so excited to have this conversation. When I first started my self development journey, your book, The Way of Men, was like the first one I found. And it blew my mind in how you encapsulated the way of men and how you encapsulated what I, what I was feeling was the problem in society, but I didn’t have the words for it.

So I want to start off with, and your work has evolved over the years, I would love to start off with like, *what do you see as the fundamental problem that men are facing in society?*

Jack Donovan: Well, I think there’s, you know, obviously there’s more than one problem that they’re facing, but what we’re really facing is, I mean, the reorganization of humans really is very new history in the sense of the idea of men and women having equal economic and political power is basically untested in all of humanity. Like as far as what human nature is and what, what we’ve been doing for the past like several hundred thousand years. So there’s a lot of fallout from that. And there’s a lot of bad ideas that have come around that men have had to adjust to. And I think that that’s a hard adjustment. The idea of, for instance, men aren’t really wired to compete with women. They don’t want to do it. They want to protect women. They don’t want to compete with women. And there are no situation all the time where they have to be competing with women, but not really, because you don’t want to like hurt a woman or like I crushed her, like there’s, as I’ve said, there’s kind of no honor in that for men.

Like, uh, men, if you win, you’re like, if you lose, there’s really no win in that for a lot of men. And so I think they struggle with that. And I think you see that, uh, the way they struggle in the workplace and other things. And, and also the way that the modern society is set up in terms of communication. I think it favors the way women communicate a little bit more, especially in like corporate environments.

And so more, there’s a lot more interest in, in politics like social, like cues and so forth, rather than just men being frank and straight with each other. And, and, uh, I think men struggle with that as well. I get so much contact from men who said that I had an opinion and I was, they were told me I was too aggressive. Because I had an opinion. I said something and it was, they felt threatened that I said something. It’s not like a physical conversation or anything like that, but I said something in a way that made them feel threatened. It’s something I hear from men a lot. And men just don’t know what to do with that.

So I think, we’re seeing a lot of them obviously kind of go into this gig economy where they’re making their own kind of entrepreneurial wealth and so forth. But yeah, I mean, just this restructuring of society, like men staying home, women going to work, all these things that are, that we’ve never really done and we don’t really know how to deal with. So they, you know, figuring all that out is, is a new problem.

Dylan Bain: A hundred percent. There are so many different ways I could go. When I was a wrestling coach in Arizona, I had two, wrestling is a co ed sport in Arizona. They don’t have men’s wrestling and women’s wrestling. It’s co ed. And I had two girls on my team as a high school teacher.

I sat with them before the first match. And I said, look, this is going to go a couple of different ways. Either a, you’re going to get some guys who will refuse to wrestle you because they don’t want to have, they don’t want to throw you down on the mat, break your nose, whatever. And then you’re going to other guys who are going to just try to hurt you.

But then there’s the third one. And this is the one that we, that you’re going to see most often. It’s the guy who’s going to see you as a wrestler first, and then going to go out there and it’s going to feel like they’re beating up on you, but they’re not. This is just how guys wrestle and watching them have to struggle with that was, and their parents struggle with that was an interesting thing and one that I was not necessarily prepared for as a wrestling coach.

Jack Donovan: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I, I mean, personally I’m super against that. I mean, I just don’t think boys should be put in that position and I don’t think girls should be put in that position either. But, uh, it is what it is, and that happens.

You know, obviously, I do that a lot. I literally wrestled a girl last night. So, I’m familiar with the experience. We had a few extra girls in our, in our, more than we usually have in our advanced class in Jiu Jitsu. And they were actually just white belts, basically brand new. And the difference in Jiu Jitsu, especially as an adult, what bothers me about seeing that as, with kids, is that, like, the developmental Changes are like, you know, kind of off.

Once you get to male and female adults, there’s a really big gulf there in terms of just strength. You know, in Jiu Jitsu, you see all the time, you have women, women kind of know in Jiu Jitsu, because it becomes obvious very quickly. There’s not like a fantasy of what happens, like, oh, well, he can crush me whenever he wants to.

You know, like, and they have to be like a much higher, higher belt to even like play that game than they would have to be with, whereas like I can have a white belt and come in and have a rough time with it with a guy, but with women generally, it’s like, how can I work on technique and almost none of my weight on her and use about 10 percent of my strength just to give her a good feel, but also you don’t want them to get delusional and think that

Dylan Bain: that’s not there.

Well, both my daughters are in Jiu Jitsu and they obviously it’s a co ed kids class, but my oldest is quite big. She definitely took after my side of the family. She’s taller than my wife. She’s got shoulders like mine and watching her, like you get the boys, obviously developmentally a little bit behind and she could just take them and throw them to the mat.

Like, I have watched her just grab somebody and just place them on the mat. But then you flip the script, when I’m in the advanced class, some women in the class will seek me out because I’m one of the biggest guys. And they’re like, well, if I can beat you, then I know I’m safe. And it’s like, yeah, the problem is, is that mass and physics still count so I can literally pick, stand up and hold you by your belt and there’s nothing you can do about it. So it’s interesting when you talk about like, there’s, this is brand new in society because there’s, you know, we’re both aware of, you know, the tradwife phenomenon. People saying like, Oh, I want a trad wife, I want a trad wife.

And they’re in their head thinking about like the 1950s and I have a background in history. And so my whole thing was like, dude, the 1950s were an aberration as much as today is like the, the traditional, like you go back to the 1800s. Yeah, exactly. Surviving the flu or strep throat. But you look at what was actually traditional. It was those households working together where the men were the external facing economic force and women were the internal facing economic force. That to me is the tradition that we’ve lost.

Jack Donovan: Right. No, absolutely. Women didn’t sit and file and do their nails for most of human history. I mean, they were working too.

Men just did the harder jobs that women couldn’t do. You know, like they, they did some things that women didn’t want to do or weren’t as good at. It’s just division of labor, you know, like whether you’re talking about primitive things, women were out there gathering roots and doing all the things that they could do, or, you know, talk about a farm.

I mean, women had a lot of work to do, like on a farm that was hard work and that men needed and respected. I mean, you wanted a wife who could do the work. You didn’t want a wife who just sit there and wouldn’t do anything. You needed the extra help. So yeah, I mean, that is what’s normal is men and women working together, it’s just, it becomes a weird thing when there’s You know, there’s *this concept of sex pollution* that I’ve tried to like bring back up in society just because, just because it’s the concept I came across in an article many years ago when I researched some feminism and it was in an article about some feminist professor writing about, uh, you know, jobs in New York or something like that.

Once women went into a field that was predominantly male oriented and made a position there, then men didn’t want to be in that field anymore or it wasn’t as appealing to them because it wasn’t this boys club. It wasn’t like this super masculine environment and men was just like, Oh, that’s not really high status anymore.

And they didn’t want to be in it, but it actually comes, the concept of sex pollution actually comes from an anthropologist named Mary Douglas. And from, I think the book is 1966, a lot of weird, interesting things came out in 1966.

Dylan Bain: Drugs will do that.

Jack Donovan: Yeah. Yeah. But, uh, Well, that was 1969. But, uh, but no, no, there were a lot of interesting conversations happening in the 60s and you keep going back to that stuff.

But *Mary Douglas basically wrote a book called Purity in Danger* and basically talking about cleanliness and the way that cleanliness is seen as kind of like if something is out of place, like something is here that shouldn’t be there. And she talked about the concept of sex pollution, which, you know, the Stereotypical or old fashioned example is, uh, the menstrual huts.

Whereas like, men would create a place where women could be during that thick, so they wouldn’t get woman stuff on them. You know, like they didn’t want to be polluted by femininity, and I see that so much today. And what she said about this, which is very interesting, is that taboos about what men can and cannot do actually increase with financial and social like equality between women. If women have more power in a village because say they catch all the fish while men are preparing for war and their wars never happened, but like the women are doing a lot of the work and getting a lot of things done. It’s in those villages that there’s more, there are more taboos about what men can do and what men can’t do and whatever. Whereas we’re, if there’s a patriarchal order that’s fairly well established and of course, men do this and of course, women do this and it’s all very cut and dry, then there’s a little bit less, uh, tension about those taboos.

So I like to take that idea and bring it into the future. It will in the present, because we see it happen so much around us all the time. It’s just the way that men and women operate because men want to differentiate themselves from women. They want to be different. That’s kind of their job is to come out of the womb.

That’s mom. I have to go and become a man, which is a different thing. And so they want to maintain that identity. And what happens is that you see it all over society in all different ways. Like if women start doing one thing and they become really known for doing it, men don’t want to do it anymore. And it could be a totally neutral thing that really doesn’t have anything to do. That’s fundamentally ungendered, but the example I always use because it’s so emotional for men, but like trivial is taking pictures of food. Okay. So many dudes get angry about taking pictures of food, which is totally genderless activity. It’s like, okay, this is a cool looking meal. I’m taking a picture of it, but because their girlfriends and wives do it.

Their girlfriends and wives are always taking pictures of food. So dude’s like, like, dude’s get so mad about it. And there are a million little things like that. It’s because women do a thing that men don’t want to do it. Now I’ve talked about that as well in terms of what I think happened to the arts and culture and so forth is like, uh, when, when we got involved in that space, Women in a certain kind of man, when women in a certain kind of man got involved in that space, men were like, that’s for them now.

And they, they didn’t want to do that anymore. And that’s become kind of a, a place where masculine culture, you have to have masculine men making masculine culture*. And if you don’t, then you get a more feminine culture because women are making all the culture, you know, like, so*

Dylan Bain: say more about that. Cause that’s something about your work that fascinates me.

I’ve seen that you you’ve said that on, on various platforms and essays. And once you said it, I couldn’t unsee it. At the time I was reading the Iliad, I’ll get to where I’m going here in a second, and the first thing I noticed was these men, these heroes in the Iliad are highly emotionally expressive.

They write poetry. They do music. And I went to my men’s group and I said, do you guys think we’re missing something? And they all went, that’s for women and certain types of men. And we all let the audience imagine what that certain type was. And I was like, well, but hold on a second. I bet you we can get laid more if we write poetry for our women.

And so I tried my hand at it. I wrote this poem. It was terrible. But my wife was like, oh my God, that’s the hottest thing you’ve done in like years. And I’m like, Oh, okay. So, so here we are. So I’m interested for your perspective on like, *what was masculine culture and where have we ended up with the lack of men in these cultural and these writing spaces and these cultural expressions?*

Jack Donovan: There’s a lot of reasons why it happened. It’s also political and ideological as well. Of course. Yeah. I mean, you had a culture that kind of came into the arts and maybe as a result of the photography. And certain things that, you know, in the 20th century, art became about questioning things and destroying things, whatever.

And art really wasn’t about that for most of human history. You would hire an artist who was really good at making things beautiful. And, uh, you know, you would have him paint your favorite myth because you were a rich guy and you wanted the myth painted on your wall and he would do a great job at it.

And that was a lot of, you know, you sculpt the hero in the center of town. You know, that was a lot of what art was for most of human history. And in the 20th century, I think. In many cases, because, you know, artists used to get paid to paint portraits, right? And went away with photography. That was their bread and butter for a lot of these artists.

And art began to become about something else. And then art became about it, like signing your name on a urinal or like, you know, this kind of culture destroying vibe, which it doesn’t have to be. And I, I actually love a lot of modern art and contemporary art and conceptual art and things like that, which people find strange, but I went to art school.

So I haven’t had a big exposure to it. But what you find is that a lot of men who were against masculinity in this, against strength culture and so were increasingly attracted to the arts. And also, obviously, when women got involved in arts, because women didn’t really, they weren’t really known as painters or poets or whatever, except for, you know, rare exceptions like throughout history, but they’re very, very small number compared to other things.

You know, so I think it’s those two cultural waves. It’s women entering the space, but also this culturally destructive and undermining, let’s throw out everything about the past and move towards the future, which is kind of the 20th century zeitgeist is like the past who cares, but everyone before us was retarded, and now is all that matters. That’s kind of the 20th century zeitgeist and modernism and so forth. And so those two things together, you take a more traditionally minded man, and it’s just kind of repellent to him. And so, you know, if he wants to create Lift up strength, like this culture of strength and beauty.

And they’re like pulling scrolls out of their vaginas. Like that, that is a very different mindset. And so I just think it alienated a lot of men. And, and also, and feminists have written about this extensively is that men’s identity was much more in question in the 20th century. And you could say sex pollution is actually part of that, but men’s identity was brought into question in terms of not just that, but also the industrial revolution and all these other things that have changed the way that men operated.

So there’s a real question. They’re a little bit more insecure about their position in the world. And so again, it’s kind of taboo come the situation happens where it’s like, well, that’s all for women. So it’s a combination of this fact. Same thing if you look at like poetry, men are like poetry, you think of like Sylvia Plath and like, uh, you know, people E. E. Cummings and people who were forced to read in like, like high school and so forth. And I’m like, Poetry is the Iliad. It’s about war. You know, like poetry historically has been this very masculine thing. This is how we’re going to tell stories. And they’re easy to tell if we tell them in verse. And so like, it’s all the epic poetry in the world, all the way up to like your Kiplings and so forth. And this is very masculine poetry and it’s about things that men care about. But then in the 20th century, poetry became about things that men didn’t care about. And so they’re like, ah, that’s, that’s for like navel gazing. And they’re like people like crying about their feelings and all kinds of stuff. I’m not getting into that.

And so I think they, they divorced that. The other thing is something that’s happened in America that hasn’t happened as much, I think in Europe, because we have never had a noble class. We haven’t never had this aristocracy that did both. I mean, Europe has this old aristocracy that fights wars and writes poetry. That was part of their culture for, you know, like you were a lord and you went out to fight war and also you were very highly educated in the arts and all kinds of things. And so you did all these things. We have the poetry we have is from the lords.

Dylan Bain: Lord Byron.

Jack Donovan: Yeah, exactly. That was the first one that came to mind, but there’s tons of them, you know, but in America, we never really had that. And so there’s separation, like those kinds of things are for fancy city people and real working men don’t do those things.

And that was really nice, whereas there was never this elevated class of like the manliest men who also write poetry and care about these things, and that’s why I think in Europe you can have a James Bond, but you don’t have the same kind of vibe in American culture that you have with this cultured thug that James Bond is always described as.

And you see that Very much in the arts in terms of theater. I always joke with people that like we don’t have any American actors who can, we have to import our heroes because we don’t have, no masculine men went to theater school. They haven’t learned how to do Shakespeare. You have to do Shakespeare before you can get up and do gladiator.

Right. In most cases, I think I can nail it, but, uh, but, but you have to, most of these guys, you have to be able to have those chops to play these heroic roles. So all of the guys who would play our heroes are English and Australian because they come from more of these cultures where the arts weren’t as discouraged for young men.

Whereas like in America, if you’re in theater as a young man, you’re, you’re raising some eyebrows. People have questions and not always, but it’s the case generally speaking.

Dylan Bain: So I’m giggling over here the way you said that my high school that I went to was really small and I was on the wrestling team and we had the basketball players and they were going to do Westside Story But not enough men went out to theater.

And so the girls who were in theater came to our practice and said, Hey, we would love it if you guys would come in and be so we can put on this musical. And so the, the wrestlers were the Jets and the basketball team was the Sharks. And that’s how we ended up being able to put on this musical. But there was a by product of being at such a small school, right?

There were 60 guys in my graduating class. So, but then again, this also brings you into, we have a smaller Pool. We know each other. And when you have a smaller pool, there isn’t as much differentiation. I’m fascinated by the observation that we import our heroes. Because I was like, but Hugh Jackman, Oh, wait, you know, he’s from Australia.

What about Arnold Schwarzenegger? From Austria? Superman. Jason Statham.

You know, so that’s an interesting way to go about it. I would be curious to know your thoughts on *what role suburbanization had to do with this*. And I’ll kind of what’s going on in my head is I remember like the twilight of my grandfather’s generation.

When I was a little boy, we would go to these mixers, I don’t know what to call them, like, you know, it was the Harvest Fest. And there’d be Leander, and there’d be Clarence, and there’d be Dale. And then somebody would be like, Dale, did you bring your fiddle? And you’d be like, oh yeah, I brought my fiddle.

And then like, pretty soon we have a band going, and people are dancing around. Nobody of our generation does this. And I wonder if it has to do with that they grew up on farms in these farming communities versus us growing up in the suburbs. What are your thoughts on that?

Jack Donovan: Yeah. I mean, maybe it’s, *it’s also just generally the breakdown and atomization of people generally*, I mean, uh, there was this book that came out, I think in the 2000s or 2010s called *Bowling Alone*.

Oh yeah. Great book. Cause that was also something that happened even in the like fifties and whenever there were bowling leagues and people got together and went downtown and did things.

Dylan Bain: Camping clubs and bridge clubs and all sorts of stuff.

Jack Donovan: Yeah, yeah. But, uh, that doesn’t really happen anymore. I mean, it does, but in very different ways and more in a business situation, I think, than, uh, you know, like their businesses, like, you know, we all go to the CrossFit gym and we’re a part of the CrossFit team, but we’ve all paid for that.

It’s not like a community mixer, the same extent. I do think you have that. I think just it’s a size of community. I mean, in, in that kind of, uh, Dunbar’s rule is like, you can only really know that many people. Well, if you’ve known Harry that plays the clarinet or whatever for your entire life, then it’s like, obviously Harry’s going to play the clarinet, but if you don’t know anybody there, I mean, it’s just hard to get to know anybody in real life.

I mean, I live, I live in a very suburban area with a golf course in the center. And I don’t know anybody in my neighborhood. The next door neighbors are Indian and they brought me like a plant once, but have never really actually said hi to me in real life. They just put it on our door. Like it’s very, very closed down and very separate culture.

But most people are like that. I mean, yeah, I talked to people who pass me by and know my dogs at this point and stuff like that. But it’s really hard to connect with a lot of people, unless you’ve been around for a long time and grew up together with them.

Dylan Bain: Oh, and I think about that a lot because I just recently got a dog. And I go out and walk around my neighborhood all the time. Like I’m, I’m very active, but then when I got a dog, like suddenly people talk to me. I was not expecting that result, but in retrospect, it makes sense. I also think about like my hometown and who left and who stayed. Everyone who had an option to get out did, and everyone else who didn’t married each other.

Then five years later, divorced. Everyone stood up one seat, moved over, sat back down and continue to cycle. There weren’t, we’re on round three now. But I think about that in terms of our suburban design and how we’re doing this and that starting to dissolve culture, because instead of getting culture from our neighbors and our friends and people that we’re trusted and bonded to, we’re now getting it through whatever internet connection we have and however, whatever streaming service we’re looking at. And I think specifically of like the Star Wars universe and what’s happened there where you used to have these epic tales and heroes journeys and now suddenly.

We have to deconstruct everything. We’re deconstructing the hero archetypes and we’re girl bossing our way through with no character development and it’s weird because there’s been so much crap that’s come out of there. And then you have Andor. I don’t know if you’ve seen Andor, but it’s like everything that’s good about Star Wars, it’s dark, it’s gritty, but it also has this like amazingly diverse cast with their same sex relationships, but they’re just normal.

Like it would be the idealized version of the future in the middle of this horrible tale. I’m curious, you released Fire in the Dark, and you talked about this idea of solar culture. And, you know, as an antidote to, admittedly, a dark period we find ourselves in. *Tell me more about solar culture. What is it? And how can this be woven back into the fabric of our society?* Well,

Jack Donovan: I mean, I’d have to explain what solar is to me, right? To make that make sense. And basically my solar perspective was a reaction to basically people who were always mad about society. And there are a lot of things to be mad about, don’t get me wrong.

But the people who were focused on enemies and anger and no creation, they weren’t coming from a place of creation. All they could do is criticize. And, you know, that’s not how you actually move into the future. The people with the vision for the future move into the future. The people who just criticize are kind of already losing.

And so I really felt that there was a need for a positive masculine culture. Cause you can’t just say, Hollywood doesn’t make any masculine movies anymore. We don’t, there are no masculine stories. I know you actually have to make them, you have to make the stories yourself. You have to create a culture that is more solar.

And by solar, I mean. I use the sun as a metaphor for a positive masculinity in the sense of it being expansive and also has its own gravity. Like it basically gives off so much energy. The sun gives off so much energy that it has energy to spare. And the energy that the sun gives off warms the planets all around them and makes life possible.

And that’s really what a good father and a leader and, and a good man is actually doing is they have this abundance of energy that people are like feeding off of basically, but in a positive way. And I wanted to, in terms of solar culture, that would be, you know, creating a culture that is like that, you know, creating culture again, rather than complaining about it and creating a culture that Elevates that kind of masculinity, that kind of, that kind of powerful, unmovable masculinity, though, you know, not necessarily a masculinity that’s just whatever I want it to be at the same moment.

But the, you know, the orbit of the sun kind of, it does what it’s going to do. The sun does what it’s going to do and we’re along with it for the ride, but it has its own will and direction. And so it’s, it’s just a great metaphor. And obviously it’s a metaphor that most people, most cultures have used, elevated the sun as an ideal of good.

You know, they look up and they see something bright and the bright thing makes the crops grow and makes everything possible in life. And so you want to be that enabler of positivity in your environment. I just thought that there was something that really was necessary. And then if you build it in the archetypes that I talk about in Fire in the Dark, you have the father archetype, and the striker archetype and basically the father and the warrior.

And, you know, those are the things that we need to create societies. Like the father orders things and the, and the striker protects them. And those are two things elevating. Those ideas are things that men have that we’re not seeing in contemporary culture as much, this is the kind of father and striker ideal, and we’re seeing less and less of those, at least from a positive perspective.

Dylan Bain: *Tell me more about the three archetypes that you have* with the father archetype. Cause when, when I read that, it was like, Oh, this makes a lot of sense. about, you know, sitting in the high seat and being able to, to guide. And then I look at like my own family structure, like, Oh yeah, I’m, I’m the paterfamilias and I’m married to a very educated woman who has a very good career and she still looks to me for guidance. *So would you expand more on those archetypes and, and how they play out in our lives? Or at least in your idealized solar culture*.

Jack Donovan: In my idealized solar culture. Well, I mean, the idealized solar culture, I got that from taking all of history and all the myths in history and kind of like putting them into a simple cycle and people can, you know, a simple little pantheon.

And because we see the same themes repeated over and over again, and there’s always a father figure leading this group of gods or, you know, in Christianity or whatever, there’s just the one father figure and that is all the God. But, you know, you always have some kind of father of the gods, some kind of leader who makes the rules, some king archetype.

And I think that that’s so natural to men to do that. That’s why we keep creating the same idea over and over again. It’s like when you’re a young boy, you literally look up to your father, like you’re, you’re, you’re small, you look up to your father, your father is this idea of, for a woman, it’s, it’s an idea of what a man is. For a young man, it’s an idea of what I will become. Like, it’s an ideal. And so your father is this ideal thing. And then sooner or later, you actually realize he’s a human and not this thing beyond, but there’s an ideal, like a platonic form of the father that exists beyond that. Well, my father and I may or may not be the ultimate father, but there’s an idea of what a father should be.

And that’s a bigger thing. And that’s more universal. I think this idea of, well, what are the, well, this benevolent figure who maintains order and creates rules and makes it so that we have some kind of structure. And that’s really what God is in most religions or the God King figure, whatever. That’s he’s the final word.

He’s the decider and he determines the boundaries of reality to a certain extent. And the striker figure. The father is generally like an ascended striker. Not all strikers become fathers. The father is usually an ascended striker and someone who has, mythologically speaking, is someone who has fought chaos and overcome it.

So he’s gone out to the end of the world. He’s challenged chaos, this chaotic form that was threatening his people or him or his family or whatever, and he’s overcome that. And that’s the only way that he gets to become the father is because he’s overcome this chaotic form. And, uh, you know, it relates to the way of men in terms of like taking over a perimeter, like you have to like, here’s this chaotic space, you have to create an ordered space within it.

And that’s what every military group does and whatever. It’s like, well, we take this place, then we create order within it. And then we expand that order and so forth. But so the striker is really this figure that makes order possible. Now you have to go in and actually overcome chaos first and then and keep it at bay and then the father can begin to create order. And then the third archetype is the figure that maintains order, which is not as sexy to men. Men want to think about the striker and the father. They want to think about warriors and god figures. But 90 percent of the work that we do every day As men is Lord of the earth work.

The idea of the Lord of the earth is this is the figure that actually perpetuates life and keeps things going. And there’s nothing striker exciting about doing your taxes, but they need to get done. You know, like there, there’s all, all these basic things that, you know, just the minutiae of life that you just tasks that need to be performed every day so that things can continue as they are, that you need to keep your eye on.

It’s paying the bills, do it, whatever. That’s not order work and it’s not a great ordering father work. It’s just what needs to be done. And, but that also includes relationships and maintaining relationships because that’s not sexy father work necessary or striker work either. That’s the work of like, well, uh, I’m going to watch this movie that I don’t want to watch because I need to maintain this relationship and connect with my kids or my wife or my friends or whatever.

So much of life is about building and maintaining relationships. So that’s also a huge part of what we do every day and what our time is, you know, like, well, I’m going to have to go to this event that I really don’t care to go to, but in order to maintain our relationships, I have to do that. And so that’s just three basic forms.

The way that paganism generally works, and these aren’t literal things, but the way that paganism generally works is that you just then take those forms and infinitely make like tinier and tinier versions and more specific versions. It’s like vocabulary. You just keep creating like smaller and smaller versions to the point where you have like the ancient Greeks and Romans, you have gods that really don’t aren’t really any more than a concept.

Like virtue. Okay. That’s like some woman who sits somewhere, but she really doesn’t play a role in any story or do anything. It’s just a placeholder for a concept. And so you can keep doing that, but obviously all these figures overlap to a certain extent, but these are the three main archetypes that I like.

And many people created many systems. There’s obviously like King, Warrior, Magician, Lover that a lot of people use. Mine was just a little bit more compact and I wanted to separate from that particular paradigm, but there’s a lot of overlap in that too.

Dylan Bain: A hundred percent. I love what you said about the Lord of the Earth, because I think there’s a lot of guys who get wrapped up in the like warrior, warrior, warrior.

We have to fight, we have to defend. And I, I’ve been having this conversation with some other men in, in other various groups where I’m like, that’s like 10 percent of life. Like, yes, we need the capacity for it. But really my day to day is cooking and cleaning and maintaining and, and doing this other stuff.

And I had somebody say, well, like, that’s not powerful. And I was like, well, okay, but if you stop and think about this, I’m a phenomenal cook and I take these ingredients and do some magic. I read from an ancient tome. I put things in a pot, I boil it. And then I produce this meal that now turns into laughter and breaking bread and community.

I’m a great sorcerer. And that’s what it sounds like when you’re talking about the Lord of the Earth. Like it’s that stuff that’s going to create the base. Like that’s what we’re fighting for. That’s why you need strikers is to defend what the Lord of the Earth is creating and maintaining.

Jack Donovan: You need the strikers to create the safe space where all this stuff can happen.

But that’s not 90 percent of life. Like you said, that’s, that doesn’t need to happen most of the time you may, especially in modern society, I mean, it’s like you may call to be called on to be a striker and you better hope that you don’t, but that’s something that could happen and you have to be aware of it.

And that’s part of your role as a man. But. Yeah, 90 percent of life is not that it’s mostly just keeping these things going. And yeah, the, I mean, cooking, yeah, for sure. It did, especially like, uh, one of my favorite movies has, as a associate and, uh, that, I mean, it’s literally making magic potions. Yeah, I definitely see it that way too.

And again, that, that’s a, that’s a sex pollution thing. A lot of things like, uh, women have traditionally actually been doing a lot of the cooking. I mean, that’s that division of labor. That’s what happens a lot. Yeah. But a lot of guys don’t care about cooking. They think, men like to pretend that they don’t know about things that they don’t think that they should know about.

There’s not just like a resistance in terms of like, I’m not going to do that. There’s a resistance in terms of, I can’t even know about that. Like, I don’t know how to match my clothes because I can’t possibly learn how to match my clothes, which is ridiculous. You know, but men tend to have that. Like, and like I said, that’s, that’s like a sex pollution thing.

Like, like, well, women, that’s a woman’s job and I can’t do that or I can’t know about that. And it’s just very, you know, it’s one of the criticisms of, of masculinity in terms of the sense it’s like, well, you actually don’t have to limit yourself in that way. You can do a lot of those things and enjoy them and you don’t have to, they can’t, and especially in modern society, we find that there’s a lot of different role sharing that wasn’t happening before.

You know, and of course, any of these things in the old days, the top guys in the field are always actually guys, you know, like that’s whether it, whether it’s fashion designers or, or, uh, cooks or whatever, but I think, I think with cooks, that’s been a little, we’ve lost a little bit of that because of food network and your Gordon Ramsey’s and all that kind of stuff, like people were used to seeing men cook, you know, like that’s a, that’s a new thing.

It’s not just, you’re allowed to barbecue and that’s it. That used to be the way, but

Dylan Bain: yeah, you can barbecue, you can smoke meat. That’s it. I love you brought up the, the cookie shows. This is my, my dirty secret is that I’m addicted to cookie shows like you put chopped on and I’m going to lose an hour of my life.

There’s just no question about it. I’m stopping what I’m doing. But my, my wife is really fond of saying like, I cook day to day, but Dylan cooks for gatherings. And she’s like, you know, when, when he cooks his treat, it’s a ceremony. It’s the sacred ritual thing that he does. I think about that in terms of fashion too.

There’s a lot of guys like, I don’t need how to cook. And then there’s like, I just, I’m a jeans and a t shirt type of guy. Men don’t worry about fashion. And I always kind of like giggle because I’m like, go look at a picture of Louis the 14th, the Sun King, arguably one of the most powerful monarchs to have ever existed. And then you tell me that that man is not eminently concerned about his fashion.

Jack Donovan: Like, yeah, men have always been cared about. They’ve always cared about appearances. Uh, you know, like it’s just, they care about different things. They care about appearing a different way. But men’s fashion is not women’s fashion, but men have always cared about style and they men in most of it.

There’s whole legions of, of guys still in England that know exactly how a suit should fit, you know, that that’s their whole life specialty is just that, like a several row or whatever, you know, so, yeah, I mean, it’s again, it’s just men pretending they can’t know about things that they can know about, and it’s just, yeah, there’s appearances, appearances, it’s just a different way that we communicate.

And then so it’s, you know, as, as my friend Tanner Gizzy says a lot, uh, you know, it’s like, uh, he has that whole meme about that. Like real men don’t care what they look like. And then he puts up a picture of like some elaborately dressed warrior or something like that. Because there’s a million of them in history, like an endless supply of these guys who did care about their work. And I think in America, that’s maybe, uh, also a kind of a Protestant thing. We have a puritanical thread in America. We’re like, we’re not supposed to fancy things

Dylan Bain: or enjoy anything.

Jack Donovan: Yeah, well that’s , but you, there’s this kind of puritanical, like fancy things. Everything should be plain, everything, you know, otherwise you’re, you’re vain and, and it’s sinful and it’s whatever.

So I, I think in America we have that thread. I mean, we’re also the most like, ostentation culture in the world in some ways. But there is that thread of, of kind of puritanism that goes through American culture that I think that it overlaps with masculinity because I think a lot of, a lot of, uh, men confuse masculinity with prostatism.

Like with this, but you know, like closed down, kind of like very, don’t draw attention to yourself. Mindset.

Dylan Bain: Yeah. The only, only cry when your dog dies type of thing. Whereas then you go, you know, going back to the Iliad, Odysseus was found out because he was weeping for his men. And Zeus is weeping tears of blood on the battlefield and, and like there’s that visceral expression that’s going on there that we’ve lost.

But it’s interesting to tie it to that Puritanism of like, no, everything has to be shut down, everything has to be bland. We can’t dance, no Christmas, any of that other stuff.

Jack Donovan: I mean, it’s kind of the English, it’s probably an overlap of English and German culture too. There’s that like English stiff upper lip kind of thing that comes through.

Whereas you have like a more Mediterranean culture, you’re not going to get as much of that. But American is very much an English country and with a lot of German influence, so there’s very much like we do things by the book around here. Kind of vibe that we have, but, uh, yeah, when you take, I mean, and obviously Iliad and Odyssey are very Mediterranean, but in the order, actually, we’re I’ve been reading, uh, the Ramayana recently, and there’s a lot of that too.

Like, the father can’t stop crying when he has to banish his son. He’s like, it’s like days of just his father, like bawling. And, uh, you know, it’s a very emotional, expressive culture as well. Interesting enough, because I’ve also been going through the Republic. There’s a whole argument that Plato makes about, you know, in their perfect world, which is obviously kind of this, Horrible dystopia that they’re actually creating, but in their perfect world, they would censor the poets.

So because poets make men cry, and then like in the very verses that you’re talking about, they’re citing as like evidence of like, warriors cannot see this because then they’ll think it’s okay. So we’re gonna have to tamp that down. So there’s even that discussion happening like back then.

Dylan Bain: Yeah, I mean, it’s a pendulum that swings back and forth, you know, and I think about, you know, the works of some, some other, you know, contemporaries who, you know, they say, well, we have the Marlboro Man and the Sensitive New Age Guy and like this, who swung from one to the other, and now we got to find a third way through.

I think about that in terms, you know, for me, I don’t have sons. I got daughters and my, my oldest is getting ready to make that, that step into young womanhood. And, you know, we’ve been having a lot of conversations cause she, she goes to public school and there’s a lot of alternative lifestyles in her circle where we’re having to have the conversation of like, these are the things that we put up as what we consider as a family to be good and holy.

She was like, well, we, one of the things I was like was capability. And she’s like, is that why you go to jujitsu? I was like, yes, but that’s also why you changed the oil in the car with me, right? Is because we’re, we hold up capability. Whereas other people say, well, I don’t need to do that. And I shouldn’t be proud of my, my abilities.

You know, because then I’m breaking and that kind of ties back into that Puritanism of like, don’t, don’t be proud of yourself versus, you know, Roman ideology where it was like, you will be assessed in the afterlife by how bad ass you are in this one.

Like you can almost see Hades, like meeting Julius Caesar and be like, Julius, you son of a bitch, you know, and to me, I feel like we lost that of like, we want to have a mark. We want to have a legacy. What do you think? In terms of, you know, your, your work with the Order of Fire and the writings and, you know, and stuff, you have a new book out.

*Where do you see this going as we go forward? Like, if there’s men who are listening to this, like, wow, this is exactly what I need in my life. What’s step one and what’s step 10? *Well, I mean,

Jack Donovan: step one for someone who’s interested is probably to read *Fire in the Dark* and see what I’m actually talking about rather than just like little bits and clips of it, you know, but, uh, I mean, cause I always say there are certain people who are writers and certain people who are talkers.

I’m definitely a writer. Uh, that’s my best form. And then me talking is just me, me, like making my way throught it. But writing is my best argument for what I’m doing. And so, uh, read Fire in the Dark. But then, if someone wanted to get involved with our group, they could, you know, if they’re the right kind of guy. And we could, we kind of determine what that is over time.

The idea is really to explore philosophy. And rather than taking everything from history for granted as true or taking everything from modernity, you know, like throw the baby out with bathwater and everything new is good. Well, why don’t we just look at everything and evaluate it for ourselves? Because that’s actually what men always did.

Like, what do I think is good? Someone had to say, you set down the rules first, like it’s father work, really, like, what do I, let’s parse out these ideas. So that’s why we’re reading the Republic and, and what do we think about this? I don’t care what Plato said about it, but what do we think about it? Where are we going?

What’s, what are our values? And so we’re just kind of figuring that out. And I, so it’s fun to explore those kinds of things. As far as creating a solar culture, It’s interesting because my work is about universal masculinity, but I also realized that the paradox of understanding universal masculinity and human nature is that human nature, that humans are tribal, they’re tribal animals.

So there is no, we all get on the same page in the universe thing that ever happens. And if it is, it’s only accomplished by mass murder, right? People don’t all want to, because we want to have some kind of say in our lives. We’re going to have come in some kind of agency. So people are just never going to get all on the same page.

So I don’t see as being like, we’re going to create solid culture and it’ll take over the world. It’d be the only culture that will ever exist. Uh, because I don’t think that humans can even tolerate that. They would immediately schism into a million pieces. So we’re trying to create a culture that we think it’s good aesthetically, it’s positive aesthetically, something that’s masculine aesthetically, some future culture or some other culture may not see it that way, but we’re trying to create our own thing rather than just keeping, uh, recycling everything from the past and be like trying to carry something that’s, trying to keep something alive that’s already dead. We’re trying to invent that and have that kind of, so I would really like to see it. In my dreams, some days we have movies, movies and novels and books and so forth like that, that have a non didactic, but like clearly solar expression.

Um, but cause you have to art that’s didactic is boring. No one likes it. That’s why a lot of these movies that you’re talking about are failing. They’re telling you how to behave and then no one really wants to do that. You have to slide the message. So I would love to see these archetypes of the father strike of Lord Earth.

I mean, someone made up the images of all these guys at some point. If you look at the ancient Greeks, we were reading some of the ancient Greek plays recently, and Escalus sat down and like made the God’s characters in his stories. He’s basically writing scripts for the gods and let’s imagine how this character behaves, you know, like, and there’s no reason why we can’t do that with our own archetypes and ideals.

And that’s, we were just having this discussion this morning before I jumped on this call, the way that a lot of people do that today is through like comic books and then movies and so forth. They, they create new myths. And so that’s kind of what we’re interested in doing. And so finding guys who want to make new music and do art and or support it, because that’s the other thing is that people always think, well, if I’m not doing that, I can’t get involved.

But if you play a music show and nobody comes, then you’re not really doing that great. Like you need people to come to the show and support it. So everybody has a role to play in that.

Dylan Bain: Yeah. 100%. Jack, this has been an amazing conversation. I wish we could go for like another three hours. I’ve got so much that I would love to explore, but I think we’re going to cut it here.

If people are looking for more Jack Donovan in their life, where can they find you?

Jack Donovan: Well, I’m on X at pdh2t3r and I decided to change it, but I’m on X. You can find me. And then obviously I’m on Instagram at start the world. And my website is jack donovan. com. And we also have order of fire. com and we have an order of fire profile on Instagram as well.

And I guess I should, I’m trying to focus on YouTube, so I guess I should probably promote our, uh, YouTube channel. So I have a big, big account. If you look up Jack Donovan, you’ll find me and probably some people who don’t like me. And then, uh, you also find. We have our own account. We’ve been doing a weekly podcast there.

We’re that’s where we’re talking about Republic and so forth.

Dylan Bain: I tune in as many times as I possibly can. I think that that, that Thursday show is absolutely fantastic. Uh, highly recommend it. We’ll get all that linked up in the show notes again. Jack, thank you so much for being on.

Thanks for listening. The conversation doesn’t stop here. You can find me on all the social media platforms at the Dylan Bain. And you can sign up to get updates on workshops, events, and more at DillonBain. com.