when I was a kid I I wanted to be a commando like I don't really remember wanting to do anything else when I realized that there was that role that you could play in life that's what I wanted to do and a lot of my friends in the SEAL Teams wore the same way that's what they wanted to do and soon as they figured out like oh that's that exists oh I can do that and I just have to sign this piece of paper and go do this stuff and then that's what I'll be where
does that come from well I mean that that's a very good question I mean I would say it's temperamental you know people differ tremendously in their temperaments and to think that there's a warrior temperament is a perfectly reasonable thing to think I mean there's been whole cultures many many cultures who were devoted to fostering that warrior mentality you know where if you weren't like that you were the outlier I would say that's probably true of most human cultures across most of time you know we've been fortunate enough to live in relatively peaceful times at least
the vast majority of us so the necessity for that like right at the edges of actual warfare is much less than it might be under other historical circumstances but but it's it's it's a deep part of many people's nature and so the question is what do you do with that right and I mean one alternative potential potentially is criminal behavior and you know the fact that so many people like watching movies about bad guys you know is an indication of how attractive that is to people and I think the reason for that is is that
well Nietzsche observed at one point that most of what people regard as morality is just cowardice and what he meant by that was that people don't do bad things not because they're good but because they're afraid to do the bad things and then when they see people do the bad things they were actually really deeply attracted by that because it speaks to part of them that could go beyond the rules and that's actually a necessary part it's a really necessary part like you don't make men safe by making them weak in fact you they're much
more dangerous when they're weak because they'll stab in the back when they get the chance or take advantage of you when you when they get the chance you make men safe let's say by making them strong and then by making sure that they're disciplined and so you know you've got people like you've got this let's say warrior mentality that's a part deep part of their temperament and then you have some choices about what you might do with that you might try to discipline it and bring it under voluntary control and integrated into your character in
which it then it can make you someone who's stalwart and indomitable and and who will move forward you know in the face of tremendous risk and well that's the optimal that's the optimal pathway if you have that kind of temperament and I I think like it's the men that have the most what would you call it it's not aggressive exactly but we'll leave it at that aggressive and fearless temperaments that can be the best men but it's like having a very powerful dog you better civil you better discipline because otherwise it's gonna be a monster
yeah well I had the I was a rebellious kid right and I could have easily gone down the path of crime and as a matter of fact many of my friends that I you know left when they stay - no at home they they did end up as criminals and having big trouble with the law or going down even paths of drugs and everything else that you can get into but but when we were kids or younger everyone kind of had the same thing but like you said I kind of jerky because I just designed
that piece of paper and I saw that I could do something and I could take all that aggression and all that energy I could do something that was good and positive and and we joke about that in the SEAL Teams that many guys you you you actually to be a good seal you sort of you sort of have this criminal mindset that you you've somehow harnessed and you keep under control most of the time yeah and occasionally it does get out of hand and we got guys that get in trouble and that happens and if
we if we only took guys that would never get in trouble we wouldn't have anyone in the ranks really well well you also see two in the classic hero stories I mean you see this with Harry Potter for example which I'm making reference to because it was such a phenomenon I mean when when something makes welfare mother richer than the Queen of England you shouldn't take note right and when kids are reading five hundred page books and and standing in line waiting for the next one and when you produce a whole movie Empire around something
you should take note of that well Harry Potter's little team aren't the delinquents right who have no discipline but they're also not the good kids they're the kids who will break rules when necessary and that's that's the issue break rules when necessary now the question is win is that necessary well that's sort of the ultimate ultimate ethical choice but you know you're why did that work for you do you think you know like what why was it well two questions one would be why did you decide to step into a discipline structure I mean that's
obviously very difficult and why do you think you did that and some of the other kids that you knew that were like you didn't it was really one of the most rebellious things that I could do was to join the military so I come from a small New England town people get done with high school they go to college they get a job as whatever people get jobs as they follow that very normal path and and I didn't even know anyone that joined the military and and so that was the most rebellious thing I could
do Oh College no education no I'm gonna go be a commando that's what I'm gonna do and and it was the most rebellious thing I could do I think that's one of the reasons why I did it it was also a complete break away from you know family okay I have no reliance on you you know I'm going you don't have to worry about me anymore I'm done I will not rely on anyone else I will be self-reliant which I wanted to do and so I think those are the main things that that got me
there and then what's great about it for me was when I got there you have a completely blank slate and you have very clear directions of what you need to do to to ascend the the dominance you do this you do this you follow these rules you you literally fold your underwear in this way when you're going through boot camp and you get a better grade on your military performance so they give you very clear rules that you're supposed to follow and very clear tasks that you had to do and and it was great for
me because it's a blank slate because when I was in high school I was a I was a screw-up not bad but not good and and so I hadn't really set myself up properly and now all of a sudden all I had to do that that was all gone it didn't matter that the past did not matter at all I have completely blank slate if you do this stuff properly you'll you'll do well and you'll ascend that yeah well that's a tired that's a very interesting thing because then it's not merely a matter of following
a set of arbitrary rules it's following a set of rules that have a clear path to success right that's a very different thing and and that that's also something that's honest because the rules of the game are well established and then if you play it properly you get to win and that's a big deal as well you know and you mentioned the seal types and I've met a number of people like that you know they're they're they're capable of breaking rules let's say or maybe even inclined to break them but I also think that that's
this is part of the reason that I'm an admirer of Carl Jung because Jung makes it very clear that see he was very interested in the barriers to enlightenment because if there's if there's such a thing as being enlightened let's say then why isn't everyone enlightened if it's just a matter of taking the glorious route and and following your bliss let's say it's like well that sounds pretty easy why isn't everyone enlightened and but Jung's thinking isn't like that at all you know he he believed that in order to transform your personality that first of
all you had to be disciplined that's for sure but you also had to integrate that part of you that was terrible and capable of breaking rules and make it part of you and so then and I really like that idea well here here's an example so about twenty years ago I would say there was a newspaper headline in one accounted his major newspapers and it was the Minister of Foreign Affairs at that time Lloyd Axworthy and he was talking about what had happened with Milosevic and in the former Soviet Union in Yugoslavia and the atrocities
that were being committed and he said that he that he was caught unawares by that because he didn't have the imagination for that kind of evil and I thought well you know you think that what you're doing is signaling your virtue by making a statement like that but from my perspective all you're doing is stating your cowardice and your historical ignorance because if you're gonna be Minister of Foreign Affairs you bloody well better have imagination for that kind of evil because if you don't then anyone who does wins they beat you and so you you
know and again in the Harry Potter stories you see he's touched by evil right he actually has a soul fragment that's embedded within him that's as black as anything can possibly be that's why he could talk to snakes but without that he wouldn't be able to have any victory and that's exactly right psychologically unless you can think the way that an evil person thinks then you're defenseless against them because they'll go places you can't imagine and then they win and so the best man I've met I was interesting even when I was in junior high
in high school because most of my friends dropped out you know by the time their grade 10 thereabouts and a lot of them were guys who developed physically they're pretty powerful and they're just damn sick and put up their hand to go to the bathroom I was like you know they're not doing that anymore one of my friends got kicked out when he sort of challenged the gym teacher you know physically and the gym teacher he could do an Iron Cross he was a tough guy and so it was no trivial matter for my friend
to stand up to him but he got expelled anyways but you know I noticed that it wasn't it was often the kids whose character I admired that either quit or got expelled and they were the tougher guys who were just sick and tired of following rules that didn't take into account their character and then they go off and work on the oil rigs or whatever and you could do that in Alberta at that time that was really hard work you know so it wasn't like they were necessarily taking the easy path but like a harmless
man is not a good man a good man is a very very dangerous man who has that under voluntary control and you know you also see that like one of the central mmm female stories let's say if the hero archetype is the central male story there are variants of hero archetypes that are relevant to women and one of them is Beauty and the Beast and you know Beauty isn't interested in the guy who isn't the Beast she's interested in the guy who's the Beast and that's exactly right but she's interested in the guy who's the
Beast that can be civilized and disciplined right and who can use that in the service well let's say of a family and and that's exactly well that's exactly how it should be so I gave a speech one of my very good friends got married a few years ago and I gave a speech and at this speech he was a friend of mine seal and at the speech I was talking about what it was to be a man and what when I felt like I was a man and I said there was three things that that
I felt let me transition from being you know mentally insecure about who I was as a person to being okay I'm actually good with Who I am number one was learning how to fight and you know I got into Brazilian jiu-jitsu and mixed martial arts and I learned how to fight and now all of a sudden when I looked at other people I didn't I wasn't posturing I wasn't trying to pretend that I was tough I was I knew that most people that I would encounter I could defeat in a physical altercation that was number
one number two was going into combat because even though you might be tough on him you know street fighter in a fist fight with someone when you're facing death well that's a whole nother level and for me going into combat well what was I gonna hack like was I gonna be scared was I gonna be a coward was I gonna be scared of death and when I went into combat I wasn't I was fine I was okay with the fact that I could die and I was okay with that and I made good decisions and
and did what I was supposed to do and the last one was a cup Mary didn't had kids because all of a sudden all these things these being aggressive and working to fight and be able to destroy in an efficient way well then I took that and combined it with okay now I'm gonna take care of these my wife and our children and that's what I'm gonna do and my point in giving this speech was he was a guy that had learned how to fight he was a guy that had been in combat and now
there was one more step to take which was okay now you're gonna get married and you're gonna take care of these people so it's interesting that that once again that dichotomy that that you talk about it fits perfectly into the way I figured out as a guy that went to high school and joined the military it's kind of its kind of raising but it reinforces what you always say which is that there's there's deeper meaning there's a reason why I'm thinking that and the reason is because I've because of the things that you talk about
the way these things are overlaid throughout history for human beings to have gotten to this point yeah well you acted it out you know which is what you're supposed to do and it's also it's better to act it out and to understand it you know that's that's best it's better it's better to understand it and not act it out than to not understand it at all but the best is to act it out and understand it because then you can you know then then the way that you represent the world and yourself is in accordance
with the way that you act and that's that's that's optimized yeah and it's it's something that I was kind of acting out again no no real guys like my guidelines were like I was raised in the SEAL Teams yeah that was sort of my guidelines it and here's a good example when I first got in the SEAL Teams there's no war going on so what did what did a good seal do you know you did you went out and drank and gotten bar fights mm-hmm that's what a good seal did so you know what I
did went out drank gotten bar fights that's what okay that's what I'm supposed to do it took me a while to figure out no there's actually something more than that like we're actually supposed to be preparing for war and and and so now like you said I I definitely acted things out and sort of was on a decent path but as I got older and more mature and to this day as I can look around and actually overlay the understanding on the way I've carried out my is very it's very helpful to me and it's
also helps me explain it to other people that see the path at home and go they they like that path they would like to join me on that path and I get guys that you know when I was in I I you know I kinda look like a serial killer for all practical purposes I'm that's the way I come across right nobody was not creepy enough there's there's guys that would you know guys that would work for me or guys that would be around me and they'd see me and they'd kind of latch on to
the fact that I was tough and aggressive and and and some of those guys they wouldn't catch the other part which was that I was politically savvy and I was working and I was maneuvering and I was you know figuring things out and talking to my boss in such a way that we could get where we needed to be and I was doing that whole other side and so I get these guys that would end up not doing as well as they should do because they were just a jock was just ultra aggressive and he
gets after it and so that's what I'm gonna do and I'll be in the same place the guys that would do well the guys that said oh yeah jock was awesome and he's aggressive and he gets after he's also working and he's also maneuvering he's also massaging the egos of the people around him so make sure that they get in positioned in the right spot where they can go to warp off in the right way and and so as I've gotten older I've been able to tell people that more clearly like hey it's not just
about that side of the ultra-aggressive but you got to be aggressive you got to be willing to fight you got to be willing to kill and you got to be willing to die at the same time you got to be able to tamper and temper all those things in such a way that they can be controlled and disciplined well I also think that that's part of what makes a world peaceful in the final analysis because if you're around people who are dangerous but disciplined then everyone watches their step and that's exactly what should happen everybody
should watch their step and if you do if there's no reason for that then well there's no there's no sanction for for poor behavior for example
