Wisdom For Men with Orion Taraban

I felt for a long time I described it to my therapist that I had this frozen lake of pain that was just like right in the middle of my chest I couldn't feel it but I knew that it was there the fear that if I were to access that that I would just be overwhelmed by the grief by the sadness I was sold on the idea of like okay as scary as that is maybe I do have to feel it maybe I do have to experience it so how do I do that Orion taban welcome

to the space thank you for having me David I'm excited to speak with you today you just said something interesting uh nobody wants to pretend but we all have to sure what is that what that sounds true what do you mean by that well I mean you could take it at so many different levels uh I do think that pure unvarnished contact with reality is probably not possible for human beings nor is it necessarily desirable uh among other things I think One of the most useful fictions that we have is a sense of self and

an identity and I sort of prescribe to a more Buddhist perspective with respect to that it's that it's very useful for me to think that there is some sort of permanently enduring self inside of me and to assume that one exists inside of you despite let's say no empirical evidence to support that belief and so there are certain We can call them fictions that make life meaningful that make life interesting and that make life possible I don't think we can live without fictions yeah there's a a saying that I've heard um that I really like

that um what's uh useful is more important than what's true and I gets implied there at least the way I think about it is getting to the truth is pretty much impossible so if you apply strategies That are useful in some sense they must be true true in the sense that they give you the outcome that you want which would then indicate you have an accurate map of reality yeah that is interesting it's like if something works could it truly be false or else how else is it really engaging with reality to move the needle

which suggests that maybe there is a post empirical metric of truth that just Hav't commonly accepted and I can understand why because we're entering into non-verifiable territory and then people can make all kinds of claims and it's hard to know which is true and which is useful but absolutely I have sort of like a a quadrant here where you know I examine my thoughts and beliefs for whether they're true or false but also useful to useless and obviously the false useless beliefs we want to get rid of as quickly as possible we want more Of

our beliefs to be true and useful but not everything true is useful and not everything useful is true it's true yeah well you're putting out a lot of useful information uh right now well it is the Practical strategies practical Frameworks that really um I think are are showing I mean we we've seen some of this before but not in the way that you articulate it and and certainly not with the style that you articulate it because a lot of these ideas are very Confronting to a lot of people they they uh run counter to some

of the narratives that are out there about the Dynamics between men and women and you're kind of cutting um right to the to the heart of it at least in one perspective so um how like how is that for you that your your work is having uh such an impact I'm not really sure I've been very fortunate with the channel I was certainly talking to the void for quite some time before the psychc got any Traction whatsoever and what was the secret sauce I think on some level it was consistency it was persistence and a

little luck um I think I'm have a bit more credibility than some folks who talk in the space of intersexual Dynamics because of my academic background um I don't often I'm not like a Andrew huberman Channel I'm not uh I'm not translating studies to the to the lay population I think there's a lot of problems with basing Your models of reality on randomized control trial results we can get into that if you'd like well I saw you talk about that on Joseph's podcast and I really like what you said oh I'm glad you watched that

I thought that conversation with Joseph was really interesting because I got out onto topics that I don't often discuss Consciousness Psychiatry and its foibles uh yeah that's how we know each other right because we have our mutual Friend Joseph well just you were saying that the studies are essentially they're unreliable that it it's almost impossible to remove the the human bias from the study and the in the evaluation of the results or the setup of the experiment that that that wasn't your language but that's how I heard it well that's certainly true but I would

go one step further it's not that these people are even necessarily trying to be Unbiased and generally the result precedes the experiment in the vast majority of studies and given my understanding of research design and statistical analysis is I could make any study prove whatever I want basically uh and I could hide it in a way that even folks who are knowledgeable about statistics and research design might find it difficult to know how I fudge the numbers to get the outcomes that I Desired and it would certainly be invisible to the average person then how

how do you um sort of test your own theories and and and wisdom like but by what how do you measure them um for validity and Truth yeah for me what really started to turn my life around especially in the domain of dating and relationships was not was to surrender my models like my models are what had led to my lack of success in that space I thought that I Knew what women wanted I thought I knew what caused relationships to succeed and my models and assumptions of reality pre ceeded reality and after just one

more instance of not getting the desired outcome I said well screw it it's like if I knew how to do this I I wouldn't be in this situation so maybe my fundamental assumptions about women and relationships and dating are are wrong so I'm going to approach this in the spirit the true Spirit of Science which is I don't know and I'm going to let the outcome of the experiment guide my process and to build my relationship based uh my models of reality based on what worked and that led to some very sometimes uncomfortable and counterintuitive

places but that's sort of my model of Truth is does the plane fly like I'm I don't want to hear anybody's theory of aerodynamics if they haven't gotten into the plane that was based on that principle and they could Fly across the Atlantic and if they can fly across the Atlantic but they can't they can't define the model of reality upon which is that is based that's more trustworthy for me than somebody who's you just theorizing over here interesting um I assume you got into this you became curious about all of this to solve well

you suggested that a problem that you had sure trying to relate to women Trying to navigate the relationship world is that what initially LED you into to all of this oh yeah I talk about it on the channel that uh you know to the extent that I possess wisdom wisdom is pain plus insight and the reason why I've worked so hard is a self-interested problem is that I was experiencing pain and a lack of success and I wanted to solve that issue to get out of pain and to get what I wanted and it didn't

happen right away but over the years I I Think organically developed a model of dating and relationships that seemed to be associated with consistent success and it's really turned this franchise around I'm I'm I'm guessing that you now get a lot of female attention uh I do I get reached out a lot on social media in particular MH it's got to feel good sure it's if if nothing else it's a validation that what I'm saying is accurate it is really interesting though Because all Charming you're also charming and I'd like to think so and probably

uh as your book suggests you've you've mastered to some degree The Art of Seduction I've gotten much better at that I I do have more experiencing the average person I think being an actor helps it helps you to get out of uh let's say your habitual behavioral repertoire and to be more flexible with your presentation of self because nothing works on everyone but everything Works on someone and you know I don't know if you've gotten to that chapter the book about the game of please no is that the more strategies that you have and the

more flexible you are at deploying them based on the interpersonal feedback you're receiving the more likely you can lead towards the desired outcome interesting yeah I actually want to I want to talk to you about um your life as an actor because I was an actor for a long time I heard Yeah we have a lot in common in that capacity and then you got into therapy right exactly exactly but I want to I want to touch on this idea and I think I heard it in the book or maybe been from one of your

uh your lectures I think it was from the book about awareness like sometimes um awareness is it's a disadvantage like knowing what we're doing gets in the way of what we're doing is that did I read that right yeah talk about that in Chapter one about the which is probably the most complicated chapter in the book about the sort of value calculus that goes on behind the scenes and how we don't generally need to be aware of the billions of little weighted calculations that our perception is recalculating a new dozens of times every second we

do need to be aware of sort of the summation of those calculations because those lead to uh important consequences for the Individual in reality should I approach this should I run away from this and what I posit is that all of these calculations sort of get transmuted into an emotion right and as long as we're aware of what we're feeling we don't really need to be aware of what caused that feeling to flues inside of us which is why the typical experiences of feelings especially attraction is just that it sort of like comes out of

nowhere people generally Experience their emotions to be spontaneous they C and if you ask them why they feel a certain way maybe they can give you one or two post Haw rationalizations but they're very easily disproved because they don't feel similarly under those conditions when they're replicated with a different person you know what I'm saying right so uh I do think that selfawareness has its limits and that uh but it is a use tool if your unconscious programming has been Skewed or trained on bad data right right so emotions are a signal it's information it's

it's data and and I guess the awareness comes from understanding what that signal means and how to act on it yes I think that there's two components that's that's true about tions in general like for example if I feel fear the impulse inside of that emotion is to run Away or to at least gently avoid contract and get out of there the question is is the programming that gives rise to the fluoresence of fear inside of me completely aligned with reality or I I becoming afraid inappropriately and that takes longer to us out and different

people have different programming obviously and sometimes their emotions are more or less aligned with reality they can trust them they can trust that this is an Actual threat that I need to avoid versus something that's not an actual threat but the alarm Bells inside of me are ringing off because this seems familiar based on my family of origin and my limited data set that my programming was trained on so self-awareness is useful to kind of figure out to what extent our programming is aligned with vertical reality I guess what you're describing is it's how I

think about therapy it's It's going in and trying to understand the the you know bad programming the the false conclusions the distorted belief systems that we have that are that are causing us frustration in reality to become aware of them and then change them is that how you think about therapy therapy is definitely helpful for bringing that kind of self-awareness to the individual facilitating it but as I talk about in the first chapter that's not necessarily sufficient to actually Change the feeling or even to change the behavior like a woman could go to therapy for

years and learn how she's attracted to narcissistic manipulative men because it reminds her of her alcoholic father and her mother uh told her in so many ways that this is just how women should behave and they should be doormats and Longs suffer Etc and she could potentially speak that with all kinds of insight and therapeutic language but she could still find Herself authentically attracted to narcissistic manipulative men she can't stop it she can be aware of it which actually could be kind of torturous like if I'm a machine I'd rather not be a self-aware machine

who's aware of its own deterministic patterns you know what I'm saying yeah so I don't think that awareness by itself is sufficient to change people's patterns they actually have to do something different enough times and to collect more good data to Kind of drown out the bad data that they were trained on because for better for worse we can't actually delete or erase that stuff so ultimately it means doing something despite your feeling which is one of the hardest things for people to do yeah that's exactly what I say to my clients at some point

you're GNA have to take a risk you're gonna have to do something different um otherwise you're just going to stay stuck in in the Pattern the problem with data in relationship sorry to interrupt is that for a while there was this really bad Hobson's choice so for example this hypothetical woman who's attracted to these manipulative men she might feel that desire for a particular individual and say no I'm going to be a good I'm in healing I'm in recovery I'm gonna resist that emotional impulse I'm GNA date that good loving nice guy over there and

she's gonna say that you know he's a Great man on paper he treats me really well but I feel nothing for him and so for a while she's going to believe that the choice is between let's say a dysfunctional exploitative relationship that she actually feels something for she feels alive she feels that love and attraction or somebody who's very good on paper that she's just bored and disinterested by and until the programming is sufficiently healed um that's going to be the experience I do Think that it's possible to change authentic desire to an extent but

that it can take years and it generally does require kind of dating the boring person the boring person for a while resisting the impulse to get involved with the wrong person and to continue to like understand where some of these emotions are coming from yeah well that that was my pattern uh I would date uh quote unquote you know crazy unstable women And I was aware of the pattern but I couldn't stop being attracted to them and and eventually I had to tell myself that if I felt that charge a strong charge in relationship to

a woman that that was in fact a red flag and to move away although it was it was difficult because my mind is you know telling me a story that well if you're this attracted to somebody they've got to be good for you and eventually I did uh make that transition I don't want to call my wife boring she's not boring at all but it was a different Dynamic um that I had to get I had to get used to and I didn't I didn't trust it at first but I I just kept showing up

and saying well no I want to see her again I want to see her again I had a good time and there was enough chemistry to keep it going and now I'm in a very happy very stable very fulfilled relationship but it took me a long time to sort that out I hear you I I think that boring becomes peaceful once people have healed some of that stuff like I think they're kind of two sides of the same coin and until a person has matured and healed some of their emotional wounding that might make them

more compelled to seek out dysfunctional relationships peaceful does look boring but once you kind of mature and grow and heal boring can look very peaceful and desirable but I'm with you man it's like and it could be that We were both actors and actors aren't really known for their emotional stability you know it's kind of a liability in a in a profession where you're supposed to assume different roles like you need to be very flexible and fluid with respect to your emotions and your personality Etc I think it was Marlin BR who said uh the

desire to be an actor is an Erotic Impulse and giving it up is a sign of maturity so we both have that yeah I do Miss performing from time to time but I don't miss being an actor it's a very hard life yeah well how did you get into it what Drew you to acting and and what was that like for you oh the origin story for act is not so Noble so I was forced into acting by my school like all the students were required to take drama for a semester and at that point

I think I wanted to be a scientist I thought the Arts were Silly and stupid and but I saw This as a necessary obstacle for me to get through to move on with my education and I remember for a semester we got together and we were rehearsing this really terrible Western melodrama and I got cast is the villain's bumbling henchmen and I thought okay this isn't easy I just memorize these lines I stand here I say the line where it's my turn to speak and okay we'll get through this and even though we were rehearsing

for a show for you know three months and I Knew that we'd been performing in front of an audience I remember the day of the show peeking out from behind the curtain and seeing it looked like every person on the planet was out there and their friend and I got the most terrible stage fright like my heart was beating I was nauseated I I honestly didn't think I could do it but I knew I wouldn't be able to live that down and I wasn't the most popular kid in the school anyway so You know no

matter how so I just basically made a promise to myself that all I just need to do is survive the next two hours and I'll never [ __ ] do this again so uh I was so scared that I went out there and I couldn't do what I'd rehearsed to do so like when it was my turn I couldn't look anybody I was too embarrassed so I just closed my eyes the whole time and I clenched my fists and it was my turn to speak I just shouted out my lines which completely Freaked out all

of my co-stars um they didn't know what was going on but the audience didn't [ __ ] know what I was supposed to be doing and they thought it was a character choice and that it was hilarious how old are you at this point uh this is seventh grade so I was like 12 or 13 okay and I won the drama award that year because I think that no even though everyone who was involved in the process knew that things had gone sideways they had to get Behind sort of the popular reaction to what happened

and so uh I was invited back the next year and to be honest this was the first time that I experienced positive social uh feedback and it was like people were coming up to me they were they thought I did a good job they wanted me to join them and that was kind of intoxicating so even though I felt my life flash before my eyes the first time I went on stage I was like man this is this is the best that I've experienced Socially in a long time so I might as well keep going

and over the years this stage fright began to e and I started to get more authentically interested in drama and I decided to go to NYU and study acting at a conservatory there and I was a professional actor in New York for about 11 years so I'm really grateful for the experience it taught me so much about myself and it's taught me a lot about being a therapist too like it was An excellent preparation yeah I feel the same way what has it taught you about being a therapist how's it helped you I think first

and foremost it's helped me with perspective taking and empathy like to be a to inhabit a character well as an actor you can't really judge the person um certainly the character that you're designed to portraying thinks that they're right and that their world view makes sense even if they're the villain of the story right so to be able To kind of see things from another person's perspective that might be radically different from yours without judgment I think is uh first and foremost what makes for Effective therapy so that's one two is I think it's helped

me to become a more effective Communicator so I've studied voice I've studied facial expression I could be the most compassionate warm understanding person in the world which I'm not but I could be and if I wasn't Able to communicate that to another person it would almost be wasted be like a million dollars in a vault at the bottom of the sea so For Better or For Worse it might actually be more useful to folks if I can Express understanding than to actually be understanding of course it would be best if I both but it's more

useful to the client if I express it and don't feel it then I Feel it and don't express it well there is a a performance aspect to being a therapist because in some sense you are an avatar and they're projecting on to you and so you're you're you're holding a a screen in some way for them and you know yeah all those things tone of tone of voice facial expressions how you dress how you present yourself it all has an impact on on their experience positive and negative certainly you're Using some some psychoanalytic terms there

which is very far away from how I practice it's how I thought I was going to be this is interesting so one of the reasons why I got into psychology is because I was helped very much by my own therapist in my 20s and I'd seen a few people in my early 20s and I think the best that I could say for them is they didn't make me worse though maybe a couple of them did like I actually ended up I think not As good as when they started but when I found somebody that I

felt could really help me and I felt that from the very first session I worked with him for like seven years and he was a yian dream analyst so every hour we would get together and I'd tell him some background of my life and then I tell him a recent dream and we would analyze that together in the beginning he would analyze it then as I got more advanced we would analyze it together and because That was really my model for Effective and successful therapy I thought that I was going to be like him and

so the first couple years when I was in grad school starting my internships I I was doing my best to sort of Channel my own therapist because it's a very strange profession day but it's not like I it's very rare for therapists to know if they're actually any [ __ ] good you don't get to see what anybody else does Like by definition because of the confidential Rel nature of the the work so uh I think it's also very easy for people to to think that they're doing a great job and maybe they're they're not

because what's the point of comparison what's the feedback but it took me a while to sorry one last thing is it took me a while to find my professional voice and it's very very different like I'm 180 de away from yungan psycho analysis Though I think it's very interesting well this might this might be inside baseball between two therapists but how what how did you find your voice what is your voice what's your style how do you think about it uh I was really frustrated by this sort of unspoken law among therapists that you should

never be directive and I was working with some folks who had serious dysfunction and it just felt so Ineffective to not be directed from time to time it's like the person could have their hand on a hot stove and the skin is searing off and a traditional therapist be like well you know for your consideration I wonder if you're feeling an Impulse inside of you to potentially move your hand when really this the most empathic thing to do in the real world would be to smack that person's hand off the stove as quickly as possible

and that from a therapeutic perspective Might be a violation of the autonomy of the patient you know what I'm saying so I understand that it's not a black and white issue but I felt that if I was waiting for the client to come to the Insight or awareness him or herself organically we're going to be here three or five times longer than we need to and actually is that ethical especially if if I believe that there's a more direct path to to Patient Improvement why not take It there's enough uh disordered folks in the world

I'm not concerned about losing a patient well this gets into the heart of the uh criticisms around therapy because it's everywhere right now there's a lot of push back um welld deserved criticisms I think overextended sorry to interrup well what is it what what what what do you think what's your criticism of therapy I mean I guess you just you just said it it's too much affirming not enough directive there's So many criticisms that you could level that's one of them where like bad therapy is just the therapist is a CO for your experience and

validates your feelings and doesn't ever challenge your perspectives or doesn't actually give you directive advice that could move you in the direction of your stored objectives it's just uhuh I can see how you feel that way that must have been very hard for you it's BAS like you're right which is a very feminized way of Communication it's like that's the old joke between the husband and the wife the wife's saying the problems the husband starts offering Solutions the wife says I just want you to listen it's like of course I'm listening that's why I'm offering

These reality based Solutions no I just want you to listen well how is that going to change anything and it's like ah you know so I think it's a very feminine profession I have some theories as to Why that has become the case and I think feminine communication is less about problem solving and more about emotional coping and a lot of women just want to be told that they're right yeah it's funny I just had a meeting um I have a little business venture with two two women and they're close friends and I love them

uh but in the business context the the they were leading the meeting and there was so much emphasis On maintaining the emotional connection validating feelings and as a guy I'm like we're in business just just what's up just tell me what's going on like I didn't need any of that and I in my mind I I felt this judgment and I wanted to stop it and then I I realized like oh no this is this is how they do it and um I I need to give them space to to be that way and it's

it's important for them but for me it it felt you know I don't want to say ridiculous but it felt like a Waste of of time well yeah I've I've done thousands of consultations at this point with men and women and it's very often the case that a man will start the consultation and say something like Doc don't worry about my feelings like hurt my feelings give me the truth that no one else is telling me because clearly I don't know what is going on I never had a woman start a session that way yeah

yeah so the the the the profession is feminized I mean I don't know 70 80% of Therapists are 85% the last time I checked oh really 85% are women um so you can understand why men don't want to go to therapy but what why is that why you you say you had a theory about this why why is it 85% women well I think we've moved away [Music] from psychology attempting to be a hard science I mean if you look at the first half of the 20th century Freud did a really he did his Best

to try to ground Psychiatry and neurology there was the behaviorists there were psychometrics it was very empirical um therapy got taken over in the sense that it was a caring healing profession it became less uh science and more of an art which maybe it always was to begin with I think it was inappropriate to kind of clothe therapy in a lab coat as it were right my theory about that is it goes back to Anna o which I'm sure you're familiar with no Oh maybe I'll just jog your memory or I'll teach you something new

but um Freud when he was sort of like experimenting with talking as a road to the Cure uh he was often he he often had to work with the only people who are willing to work with him and as a Jew living in Vienna and dealing with the anti-Semitism at the time that basically meant women because Most Gentile men would not go see a Jewish doctor so the majority of his practice were women the majority of his practice were let's say middle to upper class women because originally therapy occurred five days a week it it

wasn't a once a week thing it was five consecutive days a week for one hour so these are women who had the ex the time and the resources to uh consent to that kind of treatment so that's important to Understand but you know he was trying out various things and one of the the great things you can say about Freud he was very open to experimentation and uh and leading where his his thoughts and outcomes led him and he was trying something out on one of his female patients that we know as Anna o and

basically in mid session she was just like hey just shut the [ __ ] up like just stop trying with your whatever your theories like just just [ __ ] shut up And listen basically nicely I'm sure she didn't say that in the you know 1900 but Freud was like okay well this won't hurt I guess I can give it a shot and so he just sat there quietly and she talked for an hour and at the end she says wow I feel so much better and Fred was like yeah there is a decline in

her neurotic symptomology and so it's like that's the where the talking cure was born I think it was a very gendered uh expression of therapy which Is women sometimes just need the space to talk it out but I think a lot of men look at therapy and say why would I pay 200 $300 to just tell my problems to a guy who's going to reflect back that sounds hard like I'd rather I think I'll be happier with the $200 like that doesn't sound useful at all and I think we've moved away from therapy as problem

solving therapy as um directive that's why I basically say That what I do do is therapeutic coaching is I I give people assignments to do afterwards I I I don't they don't have to I ask that they at least be willing to try everything out but if it doesn't work they can throw it away and if it works great we'll keep doing it and we'll keep fiddling with the knobs until they get what they want and let me tell you some guys especially minority men non-white men Are much more open to consultations and coaching than

therapy if you just start calling that therapy a lot of guys are just going to say no not for me no thank you but you call it a consultation or a coaching session and they they'd be more interested in listening that's interesting because I think a lot about that I mean fortunately for me I had that um interview with Andrew Tate so it kind of gave me uh credibility in the space because he seemed To uh it worked and he he he liked me so the Tate fans I have a lot of men now come

to me yeah it is it is great um it's that's that's a that's a really interesting thing I mean so a big part of is how you frame it well not just the frame but the approach although I guess there is something to be said for listening because what I find is that a lot of men have never been listened to they've never been heard their experience hasn't been validated and um They feel alone in it and that uh aloneness creates a kind of Shame so like when I'm working with people the first thing I'm

trying to do is just well I'm trying to listen to their story and um and just be yeah just be understanding to gain that trust before I begin more uh directive measures but there there is a lot of sad lonely dudes out there who don't know who to talk to have no one to talk to don't even have any relationship to Their emotions don't understand how their childhood impacted them and uh do you do you think about that oh sure uh you certainly have to validate before you attempt to change like acceptance interventions always have

to come before change interventions so that's certainly true and it's a part of what I do I don't just lead with trying to give people advice of course um but I do think that advice and and directiveness has its place yeah sometimes is speaking I guess I'm I just to to frame it I guess I'm just speaking to the the crisis among men right now on a on a broader scale like what what do you think is going on there I think there's a lot of things going on um I don't I don't think that

I think men are confused and they're isolated and I think those two things in Conjunction lead to a lot of poor outcomes and then were you confused and isolated as a young man oh yeah absolutely and that's why you started going to therapy um I had a very tough adolescence I went through a lot of bad things hard things let's put it that way and uh I was also very stubborn and proud so I resisted help for many many many years and it was only when I got to a place where my life Was actually

unbearable to continue that I was willing to um entertain the possibility of talking to someone else about it but I had to reach that point and my hunch is that a lot of guys are like that too like it would have to you'd have to come to the brink of your own dissolution to be willing to accept a helping hand I I I I wish it weren't the case I can look back at myself and and call myself stubborn Um I wish I had accepted help earlier but I also know that you know that's who

I was at the time did did you know that you were uh troubled did people around you know that you were troubled I mean I don't know if troubled is the right word I was troubled um yes but they didn't know what to do about it right so I was dealing with things that as a teenager every once in a while I would try to confide in some of my my close friends about what I was going through at home And some of the things that I was thinking and feeling and they just looked very

um awkward and unsettled and uncomfortable and I came to realize that the things I was going through well not uncommon to The Human Condition were there was no one in my high school who was dealing with the [ __ ] that I was dealing with and they just didn't know what to say they didn't know what to do and so they just often withdrew it's Sort of like when people don't know what to do around death because they don't really have any close and personal experience with that and so they don't want to say the

wrong thing they're afraid of putting their foot in their mouth so they just don't say anything and so anyway from my feedback from my social feedback at that time I I realized that I felt very alone because no one could sympathize with even remotely about some Of the things that I was going through and so I just stopped talking about it I stopped talking about it it didn't make the problem go away you know but I think what made the problem go away was now talking about it it was I think that was a a

component of healing from that but I think it it really got better when I stopped doing certain things to numb the pain and cope with the problem and to move in the direction of more Constructive habits and action did you have a moment where you realized like Hope was possible or or felt inspired to make a change oh yeah yeah so it's like they say in AA you know sometimes a person's bottom is uh like a like a jewel it's a precious treasure it doesn't feel that way at the time by any stretch the imagination

but it can keep a person sober and on the right path 20 30 40 years down the line And I can think of a moment where you know the inflection point of my life it didn't get worse than that thank God because my life was just unbearable at that point now it didn't get better right away but it never got worse than that so are you afraid that I guess you're not you're very stable and successful now but I know for me because I I had moments like that there was always that fear as I

Was you know getting getting better or growing or changing and becoming more confident that like I was going to slip back into it or something bad was going to happen again almost an anticipation of of the pain or the cycle repeating I don't think I've ever been that afraid of that um I think it's more just feeling somewhat haunted by the sins of your past as it were you know and to what extent Something that I I did 20 25 years ago is is that going to undermine my credibility or all the progress that I've

done in in the minds of others yeah I can relate to that uh and now you're uh a public figure you're uh out there for the world to see it's a lot of exposure and a lot of uh admiration but I'm sure a lot of criticism H how is that to uh to have that kind of attention and um become an expert in the world and you you know You're I'm peing on all the top podcasts everybody wants to talk to you H how is that experience for you I don't know if I'm that popular

but it it has been nice to get invitations it's it's really great to feel that other people care about what you have to say and I do think that's a fairly recent phenomenon for me and I don't know if many people men and women actually get to that space where someone's actually authentically interested in their point of view Maybe their friends and partners or close family if they're lucky but you know random strangers interested in what you think and what you have to say it's quite a privilege um how do I deal with the the

criticism so on the I have been fairly fortunate is that on the whole my feedback has been quite positive I would you know the algorithm is very good at putting my content in front of people who I think are most likely to benefit Or enjoy it so you know on the channel anyway it's 98 99% positive but when I appear on other podcasts and get in front of audiences that uh aren't as siloed as my YouTube channel it can produce some negative feedback I remember the first time I appeared on sock white underbelly which was

probably my most controversial uh interview to date I woke up in the next day there was like 50,000 women who were just furious with me and you know I I'd never had the Experience of 50,000 people being upset with me before you know that was a new one and um but what's really interesting is at first it's like oh my God there's this there's this sort of panic or my heart starts beating fast and I'm thinking oh my God these people really don't like me and uh I do think that it's it's like building a

resistance to iocane powder you know the more that you kind of come Into contact with it the less that it stimulates any kind of physiological response I think that's where I've gotten to at this point after about a year and a half um and I think it's actually easy because a lot of the the negative criticism it's not very substantive usually when when people are negative they just resort to name calling uh they call me all kinds of names or they they attack how I look or How I sound or Etc and to my mind

there's no better confession that you're out of arguments than resorting to ad homenum attacks so if I felt that the criticisms I were getting were thought out and substantive it might give me pause in what I'm arguing but you know just being called names it's not very I don't enjoy it I don't it's not very pleasant but it's hard to take seriously to be honest right but but the first time it happens It is it is a little disturbing because I've I've certainly had it and I've had to uh become a little more Teflon about

it well I'm sure you I don't know um but I imagine that you have it not because you of your beliefs or your ideas per se but maybe because you're guilty by association just like even speaking to a man like Andrew Tate makes you an irresponsible misogynist because you are giving that kind of a person a platform for his ideas I and I don't think that They might even listen to the interview they might just see that you're hosting Andrew or somebody else and say and and make their own judgments about that I I don't

think that the people who call me names really listen very carefully to what I have to say well they probably can't hear it because they're so rooted in their own ideology and it Taps into something that's painful for them that they they just can't confront uh because that's what you're Do I mean you you yeah you're getting a receptive audience but you know breaking down romance I mean I did a lot of Hallmark movies you know I know I know know actual Hallmark movies that's hilarious dude I was no I had a run where I

was like you know one of the guys I was like the guy were you the small town guy with the good heart or were you the corporate small town Carpenter I was always the the hero The Regular Guy and the you know the busy City girl came in and and I remember um and this was kind of at the end of my my career but my whole career was sort of women's television Gilmore Girls is what I'm best known for uh but I remember at one point just feeling like I don't want to participate in

this fantasy it doesn't feel good it's not reality I understand it's candy for women but there was something almost felt like unethical for me no kidding because I yeah I didn't I didn't I didn't feel Good about myself especially as I was learning more and more about psychology and and just trying to understand the truth and and struggling with my own relationship so I had a a real crisis there and so I I I think about you know your work which really gets down you know the sexual Marketplace and breaks it down in a very

well a very direct way about what our unconscious motivations are talking about power talking about you we're Trying to get the best choice that we can get that really flies in the face of the Hallmark romance movies and I imagine people that are tied into that are going to they don't want to they don't want to look at that they don't want to face it yeah I talk about that in the introduction where it does feel like I'm dissecting a sacred Hindu calf on some level and it's in the service of preventing idolatry which we

might think Is a very let's say Noble or high-minded goal but certainly people are attached to that totem and they suffer when it is destroyed or at least revealed for what it is I don't think that I think romance can have its place in people's lives but I think that I mean if someone really were to buy into the Hallmark fantasy if they were a woman what are they going to do just like hang around a Small town and wait for their meat cute I mean that the well maybe it's one of the reasons that

women are so unhappy right now they've been fed a stream of [ __ ] about how relationships are supposed to be well no argument there sure men have men have been fed a line of [ __ ] too and I think the lines of [ __ ] are a little bit different that men get told and women get told uh but yeah there's I think if I were to be most generous I think people are trying To do what they're supposed to do I think most people are good-hearted maybe a little soft-headed and they're trying

to do the right thing what Society is expected of them as men and women and what does Society expect of women these days in the west it's kind of like being a boss [ __ ] and you have to be everything and you have to be you have to have the corporate job and a mother of three and you hand write all of your birthday thank you cards and you go to Pilates eight times a week and etc etc etc um and I think for men in the intersexual space it's you have to defer to

women you have to treat them like equals which I think in the male imagination often gets translated as women are the same as you and they want the same things as you and treating them like you would treat a man is sort of the pathway to success and I think that in general relationships are suffering because women are treating men like Women and women are treating and men are treating women like men and it's almost I think we're we've turned a corner a little bit in the last year or so but just to state that

men and women are different like maybe fundament Mally it has been you know it could melt the internet like it's an athema to think that way well it's it's it's created a a war because we're we're in Distortion that's what I was told that's what I believed When I went to the University of Toronto this was in the late 80s and you know feminism was alive and well and I thought I was being good by making the assumption that uh women were were just like men and I proceeded that way for years until I dated

a woman from uh Texas a kind of nice Southern lady who set me straight very quickly it's like I don't know what you're doing but I'm a lady and I want to be treated as a lady and and I I didn't know what to do with That initially but over time it really felt good and and right and then I started to uh crave a more tradition relationship but I felt shame about it I felt that there was that that was not a good thing to do and and and with my wife we we've sort

of landed in a traditional relationship and we're both very happy in that Dynamic but both of us had to let go of images and judgment about uh our our part in that she didn't feel comfortable not working or not Making money not contributing in that way she felt it was weak or or she was betraying you know women in some way so um you know there's a lot of distortion out there people are unhappy and I guess you know this is where you show up like it's almost like you're the per you're like the man

for the moment I mean I know there's a lot of people out there talking about this and I don't mean to like blow smoke up your ass but it like It does have to be named like there is a way that you are are are speak you're speaking to something that's really important and you are articulating it in a way that people can hear because a lot of people saying similar things like in the The Red Pill Community you You' you've heard not exactly what you're saying but but things similar and um but it comes

with this tone of uh resentment you you feel that they're not all of them but many of them are kind of angry At women and uh it's hard to you really take it in and of course women are going to be triggered by that they're going to be suspicious of that they're not going to not they're not going to listen to it they're not going to trust it but there's a way that you have of delivering the information I mean I noticed with the questions asked like could like the way that you're you're very fair

minded very deliberate about um building a large frame so that people Feel um heard and understood and I guess the question is after all of that did you have an intuition that I mean obviously you must have known at a certain point in your life that you were an excellent Communicator that you knew how to string sentences together and and convey complex ideas like you did you have an intuition that you were going to have an impact oh well I Didn't know that I would have the impact that I currently have today that that wasn't

necessarily my expectation my my hopes for the channel were much more modest I I I remember when I got to a thousand subscribers I thought that I I was like over the Moon I mean that was more people than I would act in front of on the stage in a year in New York City and they were you know if I was a teacher which I was for 20 years to have a a lecture hall with a Thousand people I mean it's I think social media has distorted our sense of number on some level it's

like a thousand turn out of a thousand people thousand people show up to your funeral you're like an important person in your community that's huge so I mean I'm I never thought that I would get this far um but I'm very grateful for the way things are going I think I've always been pretty good with words uh I was in speech and debate in high school I I was A I went to the national championships when I was like 14 um I started acting when I was 13 i'llbe it against my will it's something that

I think because I'm not the biggest guy you know I'm 5'11 but I'm you know I'm not the most athletic guy I've played some sports um I'm not the most attractive guy certainly wasn't the most popular guy so it's like I had to find some kind of Niche to uh you know to find a place In the world I used to think it was my intelligence and I realized that that intelligence is very good but women don't want to [ __ ] you just because you're smart like that doesn't happened smartness can lead to wealth

it can lead to success it can lead to humor like I think you have to be smart to be funny and women do respond to those things but they don't respond directly to let's say being able to do differential equations as it were you know it is really Interesting though David like I'm I'm still pretty much the same guy but the number of women who have dm'd me in the last year saying that they love the way I think is very suspicious because I had never heard that from a woman before in my entire life

and I not thinking very different in the past year than I did in previous years I think it just might have to do with the fact that I'm now reaching you know 10 or 20 million people a month um but they can't say That you know or they might not even be conscious of that but like they're responding more to the the fame or the status than let's say my actual ideology but to go back to I'm sorry go ahead well you have a lot of power I'm still trying to figure out to what extent

that's true being a social media personality is it's very strange like you have power to an extent from those who know who you are but I'm completely invisible in just an an Average normal person to everybody else and yes I I suppose I have the ability to direct attention towards certain issues or topics or towards certain guests but there's also much bigger fish in the she in the sea as well so yeah it's the power that you have obviously because you've become a you know social media star but also you have personal power in that

you're in command of yourself like you know what the [ __ ] you're talking About and you articulate in a very strong way and you there's something about the way you look and there's something and also your name okay Orion tabon I mean like that's a very unique interesting name like the Avatar that you are online is very interesting oh interesting like even because I when I saw you the first time it's like I felt like I'd seen you before somehow oh it's kind of like an Actor when you see them in a movie you

they're just meant to be on TV and it's that you just buy them right away and there there's a kind of a familiarity with them instantaneously and you have that what from my perspective you have that quality and that's fascinating I haven't thought so much about that I I generally have just had my head down focus on producing my content um but I am pulling back on my content production I went down from two episodes to one Episode a week recently and I think I'm having some space to consider you know what this moment means

and what's possible given uh you know what's occurred over the last few years yeah I can I can imagine that your mind must be running with all kinds of ideas about I to capitalize on it uh to you know for the reason to have the most impact well yeah there's definitely a Temptation there so you know I'm an entrepreneur as well I've I've worked I Have a number of businesses I've never worked for somebody else actually I worked once my first job out of college was with the Princeton Review doing SAT prep well as an

actor you're working for somebody else that's what I realized when I got to Hollywood I'm like I I'm an actor and I'm like I'm a cog and a wheel working for Warner Brothers I'm just on the factory line you're absolutely correct guess I didn't consider that because I never really Made any money from acting I was I never got into film and TV which is where the money is I was in theater and you know you just get paid with exposure and and honorarium from time to time so uh I don't really consider that as

a career which is part of why I got out of it like it was just too hard to make a living that way yeah fair enough but there is I I'm full of ideas like I have at least five different projects that probably would take a year to really Build up to fruition and I have to figure out which if any I do and in what order and I'm cognizant of not being too much of a shill like I still have not done any kind of paid advertisements on psyx and I think that does it

leaves a lot of money on the table as far as I can tell but I do think that if I start to shill I'm not saying I'm above it but I'd probably be a very expensive shill um it would decrease my credibility so one of the accusations that's often Leveled against folks in this space or that you know I'm a grifter and I'm just trying to like capitalize on men's anger or their misguided hopes to sell my products and I don't really have much to sell I have my book I have my community but uh

I don't sell like 10 steps to you know getting the grill of your dreams kind of a thing yeah I know you're totally in your integrity like it it comes off that way there's there there's no grifter Vibe at all at least How I experienced you and there's a lot of them out there so um do you miss uh the creativity of acting I mean I know what you're doing in in some sense is is creative obviously writing a book is a creative project and there's a there's a lot of there's a kind of uh

poetry in in your writing the use of of metaphor and there's a nice flow to it is is is you are you creatively satisfied through this work yeah I think I am I think psycha is my little stage right now so I Do get to get in front of people it's not quite the same visceral immediate sensation of getting in front of a live audience but it is nice to know that you know what I say and what I do has you know it has reception it's very difficult to be I mean I don't know

about you but I've acted to two people yeah you know it it's it's demoralizing it's very hard to keep going right now I'm actually working on a piece of fiction about the final days of Van go So very different from what I have been working with in the relationship space but this is a story that I've been taking with me for the last 25 years I actually wrote a one act play about it in college when I was 19 I'm fascinated by these last few days of Van go and so it's about Madness and art

and creativity and Faith and Hope and science a novel of ideas as it were so I get a lot of creative expression I'm I'm very grateful for that do you have a Sense of why why you're drawn to that story I haven't well certainly I'm drawn to it for its um well it's narrative possibilities so a lot of people know that Vincent Van go killed himself he shot himself but he missed and he's trying to shoot himself in his heart but he he missed his heart so it took him two days to die so the

book is about those two days between when he shot himself and when he Actually passed away and in my imagination thinking about well what actually changes for a person inside when they go from being actively suicidal to now they have a they're still alive but they have a concrete death sentence that's really yeah interesting premise go ahead it's sort of I watched a a documentary a long time ago about I think it was called the bridge and it's about um the Golden Gate Bridge which I Think at least until recently maybe still was the number

one suicide site in the world and the documentary was able to track down some of the survivors and like without fail their common experience was as soon as they cleared the bar and gravity took over was what the [ __ ] did I just do and as they're freef falling they're basically praying for a second chance and a survival and of course most of them don't unfortunately but I think that's a Very interesting premise you know Aon Beck talked about how suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem or it's based on poor Insight

or decision-making and to what extent do people just want to escape pain versus no longer want to exist and of course you know van go is fascinating because he sold one painting in his lifetime which is why I brought this up it's like we his paintings now Are valued at hundreds of millions of dollars he hangs in the best galleries in the world but he was completely unknown and and disrespected and unregarded in his life time and you know what does what impact does that have on the person you know day after day month after

month year after year to be ignored to have no place in the world to be unacknowledged and I think that's the experience of a lot of men today yeah Well I guess that's what you'll be exploring I mean that's a really interesting premise and I guess you you have to explore his psychology what speculate what might be going on in his mind the stories he's telling himself the the regret the remorse I the pain I I I don't I don't know but that that that there's a lot of possibility there that must be a really

interesting and I guess to me it sounds challenging it's Extremely challenging it's so much harder than writing non-fiction which seems to progress along a more or less rational argument now I I know what needs to happen in terms of the narrative progression but like no one sentence naturally follows from another like every time I finish a sentence it's like I'm in the wilderness and I can go in any direction from here so it's been much slower to write than the non-fiction um I I am setting my site Slower I'm shooting for a Nolla maybe around

a 100 pages but uh you know it's been challenging and frustrating and I'd like to keep at it so that's my project for the next few months that's amazing so you're just you're on fire you're you're you said you have all these creative ideas are are you um I don't know do you your what is your relationship like with with work like I'm assuming because you're so Consistent that you have a very good routine you're disciplined you're able to Churn it out relatively quickly with with relative relative ease I know writing is can be challenging

but um it seems like you're in a from the outside looking in you're in a pretty good flow I I've learned some things about myself like for example when it comes to writing I don't write if I have less than three hours of free time because it Takes me a while to get into it and I want to make some progress if I just do 15 minutes here 15 minutes there it doesn't work and the product is too disjointed when it comes to psyx you know I write a bunch of scripts I batch the recordings

so I can create a buffer for myself I only see clients on certain days I don't really think of this as work though it's clearly you know what I do to make money but I've never had a case of the Mondays which is something That like I made a conscious decision to myself not to ever do when I was younger I never wanted to live a life where I dreaded Monday where I dreaded what I had to do to make money and that meant I had to be poor for a long time until something started

to click it wasn't psycha it was something else that quicked before then but um it's it's really important like I could not work a 9 to-5 I know that about myself like I would rather do something drastic Than uh than work that kind of a job what do you what do you say to guys who come in and because who are working the 9o5 who have you know the fear Monday morning I'm sure you you talk to a lot of those guys what what do you what do you say to them right now well not

everyone is me and a lot of guys are more conventional I'm very unconventional and they would not thrive in an entrepreneurial self-directed environment some people need that I mean We all need structure but some people need that externally imposed structure way more than they're willing to admit to themselves to others so if I'm dealing with a very conventional person I would not take them or guide them towards an unconventional lifestyle it's just would be a poor match for them they might learn a lot but I don't think that they would Thrive under those circumstances how

do how do we get more men to to uh therapy because or or Consulting or or some kind of psychological exploration and and or maybe maybe you don't think that they should be but I just you know you say that and then I think about you know Alex Heros and and these guys out there who just you know you got to do it you got to work 12 hours a day you got to make this money you got to start your own business and I and I you know great if you resonate with that but

it does set a standard that is not realistic For a lot of men uh for the reasons you just said some men need to be working for other other people they need the structure and so I I I guess and maybe even for me I found like oh I I'm all of these ideas out there about how it's supposed to be I think it can get very um confusing and I guess I'm not I'm not sure what the question is but like I guess my my bias is find someplace to understand yourself To know yourself

to figure out what it is you want and then um move from that place sorry you froze for a second there so okay could you repeat the question please just the last just the last part because I think everything up to that was the prel yeah yeah yeah no it's all good yeah well it's just like how do we I mean there's so much information out there for men they're getting bombarded with all kinds of ideas and images and I think it even for me it's It it gets confusing like I I can get lost

when I get on social media and then I have all these ideas in my head about how it's supposed to be and what I should be doing and I forget sometimes about who I am and and and and what's right for me yeah you know and so and I have a bias because of what I do and and I believe in it and I'm interested in it and it's helped me a lot and I guess I guess the question is how do you how do you get guys to uh self-examine to to be More reflective

about who they are and their experiences to have to be able to have conversations uh like this about their emotions about their feelings about their fears about their their desires that and it's not seen as weak or or shameful okay yeah a lot of questions there big topic I think on the whole it's great that we have people like Alex horoi in the space I'm glad that he he exists and I resonate with a lot of his Content by the same token not everyone's is going to be a jacked billionaire you know so we're just

not all on extraordinary paths like Alex he might disagree say everyone could be I think there might be the potential for that to be true but in Practical reality it's just so far away from where most people are it's not because they're not getting up at 5: am for a cold plunge or whatever it is that these folks are recommending but I'm really glad that we Hear from him because he does have a lot of uh good ad and it could be true especially because he's at like the spear tip of what it might be

possible as a male entrepreneur but to what extent that's actually relevant to the average person's working experience I'm not particularly sure but I'm glad he exists to answer your question um I do think that 90% of successful relationships has to do with Selection and I believe that's true for romantic relationships and professional relationships and a lot of that has to do with accurate self- knowledge you have to know what actually works for you not what you think should work for you not what you think you want to work for you but what actually works for

you and what doesn't work for you so to give an example from my personal life I got to about 27 and I realized that it would be very difficult for me to continue on as A professional actor so I got to a place where for various reasons I no longer wanted to be an actor but I did didn't know that I wanted to be a psychologist yet so there was like a year and a half between not wanting to be an actor and wanting to be a psychologist where it was a very uncomfortable place to

be because I was in an in between space and I didn't know who I was or where I wanted to move towards and what I did is I was Very ruthlessly honest about who I was and what worked for me and I set just a few different criteria I think maybe six or seven and based on those criteria there were only like two or three jobs or career paths that met all of those criteria and then I did some due diligence about those two or three paths and show psychology which turned out to be a

excellent fit for me like I'm by Nature an introvert so getting on you remember my my origin story for acting It was I could do it and it was really good for me to come out of my shell and learn about my body and my voice and my presence and to be able to turn on charm an extrav version but it never felt natural and the people who succeed in that space it's not just because of what they do on stage or on camera they have to go to parties they have to hobnob with the

right people they have to keep relationships warm that has never been My forte and in terms of practical career uh elements that was going to make it so I was going to fall flat in the industry as it were from my perspective so you know some of these things that I had to decide for myself are not very socially acceptable like I had to come to the terms for the fact that I'm not a team player that's not something you're supposed to say like if I go to a job interview and like can you work

well on A team no I'm kind of a lone wolf I don't want to [ __ ] deal with people they get they kind of get in my way they Slow Me Down they're off the wrong you know well how are you taken feedback not well I like to be the boss you know I kind of want to be the guy in charge I'm not really good at following orders you know this you knew that you knew that about yourself well sure it's was probably part of my frustrations with being an actor is I realized

that the People who really had the power were the directors the casting directors The Producers Etc and I I just had to stand there on some level and say my line I didn't really have a lot of power over um the course of my career I had some influence obviously but not enough for me to feel secure in choosing that career path long term so like I wanted to be the boss I wanted to work individually as opposed to a part of a team I like working one-on-one As opposed to groups I I tend to

get lost in all of the information overload because I'm you know if there's three people that's A and B A and C B and C and A B and C there's four different relationships that you're tracking and you know it just increases more or less exponentially as you add people and it's like information overload I don't know what to do so I'm really good at one-on-one I wanted to do something that was actually helpful to People up until that time my main income Source was Private t ing which was interesting but I didn't really feel

like I was helping the World by teaching Rich Kids how to conjugate Latin or to do their prepare the SATs or whatever it is um and I wanted to make a certain amount of money because I was tired of being poor I was living in public housing in Brooklyn at the time so uh and I had to work with my my words and my ideas because I'm not very handy uh So you those are like five or six criteria and there's only a few different group there was psychologist there was lawyer but then I'd have

to be a lawyer um or like medical doctor and I just didn't have it in me to go to med school so it's like let's research psychology I talked to some psychologists I did some due diligence and I you know rolled the dice and it turned out to be a great fit but the same goes for relationships like one of The things that I've learned is that I'm better when I'm in charge I'm better when I'm in the more dominant role when I'm Direct and leading the relationship doesn't mean that I expect that I I

have unquestioning compliance and obedience from the women that I date but it's like we're not in an egalitarian relationship it's I'm I'm here and that comes with certain Privileges and also some responsibilities and you're coming into something that has already been Constructed before you showed up so it's the metaphor I give in the book is that captains build the ship so they're best suited to dictate its course because they actually know how the ship works you you wouldn't ask a passenger who just showed up to uh man the helm as it were and that rubs

some folks the wrong way especially in the Bay Area which is um there's a lot of left-leaning thought that that runs counter to that relationship should be In all respects egalitarian and exactly equal and I found that when I've tried to do that in the past it led to poor outcomes and now it's like this this kind of doesn't work for everyone but it's also use because like women can self select in and out like they also more or less know what works for them and what they want and trust me there's a lot of

women who don't want to be the the person running the show here's here's an example we talked about a few Minutes ago differences in in gendered perception of just around the role of let's say respect in equality so one of the things that I would do if we were going to make plans David as a sign of respect I would kind of like defer judgment to you like well where do you want to go David like what kind of food do you want to eat because I'd want to that's a sign of respect I'm I'm

taking your interests and tastes into account but unfortunately I think that a lot of When you do that in a dating context a lot of women see that as wishy-washy as unmasculine as weak for lack of a better word what I've discovered Just In This Very it is weak because you're you're on some level you're you're trying to SE them and they can feel that like you want to be good for them like what do you want like that it's that energy that I think is repulsive to them it it doesn't Necessarily have to be

that it can be polite but very often it's what you said like men defer to women or they want to be they want to be liked by them and they give away their power and and it it it leaves women with a feeling of uh yeah they don't respect it well yeah I I've had much better success just saying Hey I want to go let's go out on this day at this time to this place meet me here and you know they either say yes or say no but that's in one very small way How

being more directive and dominant with women can lead to better outcomes in dating and relationships the same thing I mean there's an element of difference in respect that can be misinterpreted in intersexual Dynamics another big thing I've talked about on the channel is that respect is asexual like from a mascul well I mean think about all of the the ceremonies that are really based on respect like an award ceremony or a funeral it's like Sexualizing the object of Honor would be completely disgusting and inappropriate it's like the person who is being respected we strip all

sexualization away from that person they're they're at odds with each other and so I think we have a generation or maybe a couple generations of men who have been told to respect women and one of the consequences of that is they've more or less stripped all of their communication from any kind of of any Sexual interest or desire because you can't you you don't desire and respect simultaneously maybe you can vacillate between the two of them in some strange compromise but I think if you want to resp like you would not feel respected if you

were sexualized as a consequence of that honoring if you were then we're doing honor wrong in our ceremonies we should be sexualizing the recipients of that Respect and um I think men when they're dealing with women in the sexual Marketplace and and dating they inadvertently and inappropriately remove their sexual desire and interest as if it's something to be ashamed of something that's at odds with respect which is ultimately what women want and I think that leads to poor outcomes of course these men haven't ceased Desiring women sexually but they which creates this sort of like

weird Deceptiveness and hypocrisy around dating that can feel creepy which is sort of like the nice guy Paradox yeah I don't I don't think women want to be respected I mean they to a enough of a degree they want to be Des I mean they they preference desire over respect they want to feel that a man desires them yeah I I I hear you it's a tough cell to say women don't want to be respected David I mean that's kind of what you Just said though like don't respect women like I I was listen I

was hearing the woman in the comments like so what are you saying oryan I shouldn't mention respect women but it's not what you're saying I it's a very nuanced thing but I like my yeah of course respect but it's not the kind of respect that you afford to a man uh or or a certain situation it's a it's a different thing simply because women are so well one we're attracted to them and there's a sexual Component to them so that throws everything off in terms of how you relate to them and that the energy of

sexuality and desire it overpowers everything I mean it really is the strongest force out there um so it's almost like you have the the the desire is is a kind of respect if it's coming from a uh a place that is respectful something like that I hear that like some women can feel disrespected if the men that they are Attracted to don't try to sleep with them that's right they feel it's like what are you gay like you don't like what you see here I had that it's like why are you trying to get in

my pants I was like I'm I'm trying to be I don't I didn't they were upset because I was being good and then I got over that Michael Stine talks about how in his conceptualization there's actually like three genders there are women and there are low status men and high status Men and they're almost like two different creatures and the issue is that women want to be desired by the men they want desire from and they really don't want desire from the men they don't want desire from but it's impossible in most cases for the

man to know which Camp he finds himself until he shoots his shot well what do we do about that because if we if we just leave it to the Dynamics won't it we be a polygamous Society like this idea of enforced monogamy that you've heard Jordan Peterson reference like it does make sense to me because otherwise you have this group of young men filled with testosterone although I guess if they're jerking off the porn all the time that goes down they're kind of subdued in some way but that's a dangerous precedent for a society to

have a bunch of young affected men eventually that they're going to get together and Probably create a lot of problems so like what do we what do we do with low status men yeah that's the theory is that if there's too many young men in particular who don't have access to women they'll band together and become like Isis kind of like they'll they'll Channel their sexual frustration into let's say societal antisocial Tendencies well dude if I was 21 and I wasn't getting laid and there was no possibility for me getting laid I would Like join

a gang and start [ __ ] [ __ ] up what else am I gonna do well you would was porn and smoke weed well there that which is generally what happens like gang still exist but there's far more young men watching porn and smoking weed than they're joining the Crips or whatever it is you know so that's actually a bigger social neutralizer and the fact of the matter is is that we've reached this point in our society where we Actually we don't need everyone to be productive in order for society to be to be

functioning and it's and that's that's dangerous from the perspective of like we're all collectively falling short of our social and Civic potential in that way um but that's that's where we've reached it it's kind of a decadence that often precedes collapse and then the values and the systems get recalibrated but I'm not concerned about sexless men uh joining Together into violent gangs there's too many other seductive anesthesi that will capture them before antisocial violence it's it feels sad to me I prefer the antisocial violence the there's something about a group of men seded on porn

and weed that just feels anti-life but that that is what it is what what what do we do about that what is is there something something to do or is Just just what's happening and as you said it precedes collapse and this is where we're at and it'll it'll remake itself in some way after the collapse yeah I think the game will the game never ends it just keeps changing and transforming over time I I I certainly don't feel like there's grounds to become nihilistic or overly pessimistic about the future it's like some things will

fall apart other things will remain and we'll have a new synthesis moving Forward and that's never going to stop what do we do about it I mean I don't know if the or to what extent the solution can be social I think that it comes from I think that the the men the young men that have been ins snared in certain ways they need an installation of Hope and they need that they need help they need and I don't just mean they need therapy they need people who are invested in their Lives and invest in

their success to walk with them as they build a life worth living and hope is a very dangerous thing and I I learned about this because my pre-doc internship for two years was at the Cancer support community in walmut Creek California which is a fascinating organization it's a nonprofit all the services are completely free of charge and for a couple years I was doing indiv idual and group therapy with cancer patients and Their caregivers and hope is a really tricky thing like we need it way more than we typically admit but there comes a time

where hope is it's causing more pain than good because it creates a false expectation sets them up for disappointment I mean yeah most people who who pass away from cancer they typically don't die right away you know there's they get Diagnosed sometimes they get diagnosed too late and then they do chemo okay and maybe that causes a remission for a year or two and then the cancer comes back and now they do radiation or more intensive surgeries if that's possible and that leads to a remission for a certain amount of time the point is is

that like you keep doing things because you have a hope that you can eventually kill a disease and live cancer free for the rest of Your days and there comes a point where that the likelihood of that occurring is just very very low if not non-existent but it's not something that I found you can disabuse other people of like people have to come to their own decision and their own time to kill the hope and this is like the black pill movement that people have been talking about a lot in the last few years where

you just have these hopeless men that they will never have a satisfying relationship with a Woman they won't their lives will never amount to anything to my mind I mean I can understand that like I felt so hopeless when I was a young man but that was a lie that was a lie and it was a it's a very easy lie to see through because like what have you [ __ ] tried like yeah like you can give up when you've tried everything then it's important thing that you know to potentially let go and to

pass on in with some sort of dignity And acceptance but if you've tried one or two things and it hasn't worked it's like it's it's too early to lay down and die in my opinion so I think that people need hope but hope is a painful thing I think a lot of these young men are trying to make themselves believe that it's hopeless because it might be more able to completely kill the hope well they're hopeless there's there's no responsibility they don't have to take responsibility for their their lives Ultimately and do the hard work

of making something of themselves oh it is very hard work I I talk about that on the channel and in the book being a young man is really hard it's really tough that's why that the Canon F like no one cries that an 18-year-old man has been killed it they're Expendable yeah yeah they really are I mean I I felt that as a as a young man you know when I was being told that uh you know it's a man's World and and Men run the world and and and women are not equal I was

like that's not how it feels to me that's not my experience of it and I I grew up in a home where my mother was pretty pretty dominant and my grandmother was pretty dominant so it was more matriarchal so I I I had that uh image but um in terms of power and I think you allude to this in your book or where you say it directly that that in general women actually have more power than men I mean on the Simplest level it's it's Women and Children First it's like you know when it comes

down to it you live I die you know in so in that sense they they ultimately do have more power and in that sense I I guess they should oh I don't know I don't know I mean like I like my life I I don't I mean from like but you know that you have to lay it down for your woman if if it comes to that I mean you don't Have to but most of us would or we'd think that that was the right thing and if you didn't do that you'd be criticized judged

You' be a social Pariah generally or is that changeing c oh no you would certainly be judged and probably the guilt associated with not doing it if you were to survive and the woman didn't would eat you up inside but I I I question I think the argument is made that that's sort of like a biological imperative in males to Protect and that that might be true but I wonder to what extent it's also like [ __ ] brainwashing it's like kamakazi pilots and it's like you you serve the social order by destroying by making

a sacrifice of your life and it's like [ __ ] that like I want more for my life than simply being a sacrifice potentially for the good of others including women and children like I actually want more for my life than that and that is dangerous because it's Useful to have a subass of men who are already primed up to be useful sacrifices and so you're I guess what you're implying is that that there's a structure there there's a a brainwashing that people want to keep in place because serves them I mean if we're really

going into sexual egalitarianism it's like we can't use gender as the cquin non to decide who lives and who dies in certain situations like do we do a utilitarian Analysis now we're getting into like the trolley car problem it's like you know some men they might do more good to more people than you know a woman and a child who knows but it's like it's true on the Titanic we should have lined everybody up and see who was most necessary and there's a couple of uh maybe a number of women that would have uh had

to get in the water who knows and I'm glad I'm not in a position to judge but my point is That I do think that I mean can we can we even look at that critically or does it feel too un you know transgressive to even consider that men should not just reflexively be the sacrif the sacrifice to be the one who lays down their lives yeah I I I agree with that um so I mean I'll ask you a it's a broad question you can you can answer it any way you want but what

should men do at this moment of time like what's the best course of Action what's the way that they should be thinking about their lives and and what they should be doing what's the best advice that you give what was really helpful for me was Radical responsibility and to just make a commitment to stop blaming anyone for my problems to stop blaming my parents to stop blaming Society to stop blaming my ex-girlfriends or what have you it's like my best choices brought me to this Place and so I'm fundamentally responsible if if this woman betrayed

me who chose her if these friends didn't help me in my time of need who made them my friends etc etc so it's like to to make a strong commitment to stop finding blame in external causes and to see myself in a more agentic fashion that I am the source of my decisions and for better or for ill and I can by taking responsibility I can learn and resp Bond more effectively moving forward that was A huge help for me um I stopped doing drugs like it's very difficult especially weed weed is far more dangerous

than people think um and I think it's dangerous because it seduces you into thinking you're using your time constructively I remember I get high and I would just like I could watch paint dry and I would think that that was a good use of my time um lots of things make sense or seem brilliant when you're in toxicated and then the Light of day it's like oh my God so um and there's also the time recovering from drug use as well so it's like to move in the direction of clarity which might actually bring you

into contact with your pain War this is something that I've talked about too is that it might be helpful to remove the anesthesia broadly defined whether that's porn or weed or booze or uh overwork and an unsatisfying job Etc who knows to remove those sours of Anesthesia to come into greater contact with your pain because in general misery is unsustainable a lot of guys are living like C minus lives maybe D+ lives and it's just like just bearable like if I just do this that or the other if I could just get to Friday then

maybe I can it's like and it's week after week and week after week of this um but if they were living D minus lives they would understand that that's unsustainable and they might take more Urgent constructive action to change the structure of their lives so sometimes it's a good idea to increase temporarily one's receptivity to one's pain because pain is the great motivator that's what motivated me to do all kinds of things is the desire to not experience it as much anymore and I don't which is great which creates its own problems which create new

pain which keep me on the right track as it were yeah I was gonna let you go but I I Let me just ask you one more question because that topic it really resonated with me uh the discussion about pain and and tolerating discomfort and and in in my work which you know my work is sematic core energetics is is what I'm trained in so it's very physical but when I'm working with somebody in in that realm um all I'm thinking about is trying to lead them to their pain so that they can make contact

with and feel their pain knowing that that that's the Liberation Point um and that so much of what we're doing in the world whether it's smoking weed whether it's um you know watching pornography or wasting time is really a kind of avoidance of our pain and that we will avoid taking certain actions we will avoid uh coming into contact with certain people because of what they might bring up inside us the feelings that might bring up inside us so I I'm often thinking about like you know if if I'm in Greater contact with my pain

if I'm not afraid to feel my pain if I'm able to tolerate it in some way that I'm actually a lot more free because I'm not no longer governed by it does that make sense sure yeah you do a lot of things to avoid pain which often creates more avoidable pain than just experiencing the pain itself I described it to my therapist that I had this frozen lake of pain that was just like right in the middle of my chest I could I couldn't Feel it but I knew that it was there because it was

frozen and part of that was based on just the fear that if I were to access that that I would just be overwhelmed by the grief by the sadness that if I were to open that door it would be like the ocean rushing through and I would drown and that's not true true um I don't think an emotion has ever killed somebody people have done Things under certain emotions that have been more harmful but emotions themselves if you can learn to experience and tolerate them it's okay I do think that you have to feel it

you know feel it to heal it right but it's like the the feeling of the emotion in my non-scientific conceptualization is that emotion leaving your body it's like how you Taste your food when you vomit it that you're tasting it is signs that you're it's leaving your body and until you the feeling as as difficult as that might be is a positive sign because it means like you're vomiting it you're discharging it you're getting it out so you don't have to hold it inside of you the issue for me and for a lot of guys

was you know I was sold on the idea of like okay as scary as that is maybe I do have to feel it maybe I do have to experience it So how do I do that like can you is can you can you should I read a book like do I do I push a button like I'm ready to feel my feelings it was it was it took a while for me to be able to access that and my S the suggestion for my therapist was just to set time I think it was twice a

day to sit down and just see what was ins like just to feel just to sit and to notice what was going on inside of my body and sometimes I would sit and I'd feel like a total schmuck And be like that was was a waste of time and nothing happened and and then sometimes you know I was able to access that and I'd start to cry and that was inconvenient you know so I i' learned to kind of turn the spigot back on it after 20 minutes or so so I could move on with

my day and then like slowly over time I drained the sadness and the grief out of me I don't know if it's a permanent thing that you do once and for all but it I don't feel that in my chest anymore Anyway and I do think that there I think you might have to cry more tears than you think but eventually the tears dry up like you don't have to keep forcing it you don't have to force it at all really and then it's very easy to let go of something because you've like seen it

through you've you've plumbed to the bottom and so it no longer holds a Fascination and then it's just it's very simple to Let It Go Orion taban thank you David this was great