Video summary
The discussion begins with an exploration of the language surrounding masculine and feminine energies, noting a significant cultural shame attached to men embracing vulnerability or fluidity. The speakers critique how men often project their own irrational behaviors onto women, specifically regarding the relentless pursuit of money and status beyond the point where it yields happiness. This behavior is described as hyper-irrational because individuals continue striving for goals that no longer bring satisfaction simply out of habit or a need to prove themselves. In contrast, feminine traits such as singing, dancing, flowing, and enjoying one's body are presented not just as gendered attributes but as essential components of human experience that men often deny themselves by treating life purely through a lens of logic and optimization. A central theme emerges regarding the nature of sexual relationships and pleasure, where many men vicariously participate in their partner's joy rather than experiencing it fully themselves due to an over-focus on performance metrics. The conversation highlights how sex is frequently treated as another business venture requiring strategic execution and exit strategies, stripping away loving presence for a calculated outcome. This drive stems from early conditioning focused heavily on "people-pleasing," particularly toward women, which eventually leads to shadow frustrations and resentments when the exhausting effort of trying to make others happy no longer feels rewarding. The speakers argue that this obsession with meaning over pleasure creates a disconnect where individuals grind forward through life chasing future outcomes rather than accessing immediate joy, adhering to what is described as Frankl's inverse law: if you focus on meaning because pleasure doesn't come easily, you inadvertently reinforce the very lack of fulfillment you seek to overcome. The dialogue illustrates these concepts with vivid examples from social interactions and performance settings that demonstrate the difference between competitive optimization and collaborative beauty. One instance involves a foot tennis game where the speaker shifts the dynamic from trying to win against an opponent to playing as part of a team, encouraging spectacular tricks for their own sake rather than just scoring points. Similarly, during a pickleball match with mixed partners, the group agrees on tactical adjustments but prioritizes remembering to have fun over strict adherence to strategy or winning at all costs. These anecdotes serve to contrast the masculine thread of future orientation and limited chaos against the feminine capacity to be present in the moment without needing long-term guarantees or control. The speakers conclude that true success is not merely about achieving objective milestones like follower counts, bank balances, or perfect performances on stage, but rather about maintaining presence within those achievements. Even when performing at a high level, such as during live shows where technical issues arise and require improvisation, the ability to pause briefly and realize "I'm here" marks genuine success. While optimizing for maximum outcomes might marginally improve performance from 100% to 150%, it often prevents individuals from resting their minds in the present moment. Ultimately, the argument posits that all pursuits of money, status, or achievement should be traced back to a fundamental desire to feel good; therefore, learning to access pleasure directly and embracing an awareness of one's aliveness is more valuable than striving for external validation alone.
Read the full video transcript
What have you learned about
the language of masculine and feminine
is not one that I am super familiar with
and I think maybe part of it is that
there's a good amount of shame
>> attached to that as you suggested like
what m it's cool to say attuned
connected dropped in aware uh um
transcending including like Wilbarian
language type stuff as a guy like that
still feels it's the Same as Joe's
vulnerability definition, right? It
still feels like kind of strong, but to
say, "Oh, I need to embrace my feminine
energy." Like, do go [ __ ] yourself.
>> My irrationality. That's a big one.
Irrational.
>> Yeah.
>> This I mean, this is the critique that
men have of their wives and girlfriends.
She's so irrational. [clears throat]
>> We are irrational. I think this is one
of the big tricks that men play on
themselves is they pretend that the
women in their lives and they project
all of the irrationality onto them. How
irrational is it to try to get more and
more and more money and more and more
status past a certain point? That is
hyper irrational. Like to what end you
>> you have proved to yourself that the
thing that you are attaining is not the
thing that makes you happy and yet
you're still trying to attain more.
>> Deeply irrational.
>> Well done, dude. Yeah. Super super
[ __ ] clever.
>> So the those those pieces feminine,
irrational, singing, dancing, flowing,
uh enjoying one's body, right? I think
even from what I hear and I've
experienced with myself, part of what
men get out of their sexual
relationships is many times they're able
to be with someone that is more capable
of pleasure than they are and they're
able to vicariously participate in the
pleasure and they're making it happen
and that's good enough for them. Now,
they're not experiencing it at the same
full body level that their partner is
perhaps capable, but they're close to
it.
>> Well, think about that. You know, if you
want to really [ __ ] point the finger
at guys, how many guys during sex treat
sex as another business that they need
to successfully exit?
>> Well, if I can go through this
particular sequence of steps and, you
know, in the past, I've managed to build
and exit a similar business [laughter]
>> in this particular way. So, I've got a
blueprint and I got a, you know, I got a
few I got a few tricks up my sleeve that
I can deploy in this way. It's like, oh,
not only did you turn your video game
Hades 2 into a business and that you had
to optimize, but you turned this thing
which is supposed to be like loving
presence
>> into a business that you're supposed to
build and exit.
>> And what I've seen in myself that I
believe could be a pattern at least with
some men is
the
part of what drove early Charisma and
Command and early Charlie was deep
peopleleasing. that was particularly
directed at women. Like I was okay if
some of the guys didn't like me, but I
desperately desperately wanted women to
like me and was willing to shape my
habits, my uh exercise routine,
everything to like bring in as much
female attention as I could. And I know
that experience in sex of like trying to
make it good for the other person at a
at a high level, which I didn't realize.
You do that for long enough, you just
you just want to get out of there. you
like I'm tired of just trying to make
this other person happy and it can
create you don't realize it or I didn't
realize it shadow frustrations shadow
resentments shadow things because you
don't know and I've heard you talk about
this you're so obsessed with meaning
that you don't know how to access
pleasure
>> mhm yeah that's I mean the uh Frankle's
inverse law I think is so [ __ ]
prevalent dude that's another one that's
robust it's a little bit harder for
people to grasp and and took a real long
time for me to look at but yeah if
Pleasure doesn't come easily to you. You
say that pleasure is basically for
suckers and you focus on meaning. It's
like I will grind set my way through
life because the uh slow accumulation of
progress uh towards something which is
supposed to be a well-meaning goal uh is
kind of more reliable actually. I think
to a lot of men it's like you it's it's
more objective. Mhm.
>> It's like, huh, I see where I was on
graph yesterday versus today.
>> It's it's forward projected. The outcome
is the meaning in many ways. Like, I'm
fighting for the freedom of my country.
It's it's this I know what I'm doing.
I'm going to break it into smaller
steps. We're going to have these little
battles on the way. This this is
persistent and clean and I'm directed at
that thing.
>> Limited chaos, limited uncertainty.
>> Pleasure is right now. It's right now.
Right now, I could be left. Right now,
it could be right. I have I'm going to
follow this flow. And it and it doesn't
provide any long-term guarantees,
context, or anything. It's gone the next
moment. And so, it's it's this obsession
with the masculine thread, I think, in
many ways, of of future orientation and
driving in towards something rather than
can I just be present and understand
that I can't control it. It's going to
leave, and that's okay.
>> Two examples from my my life of your
Hades 2 thing. Um, George Max's 30th
birthday in Miami last year. Uh we were
playing uh like foot tennis over a net
and we were playing this game and I
realized that it was competitive but not
very beautiful and I said okay well why
don't we change it to be even though
we're on opposite sides of the uh net
will be part of a team and the goal is
to have like the fanciest tricks like
two of the guys are ex champion
freestyle footballers but neither of
them were using their skills both of
them were trying to win the
I'm like, I don't want to see who can do
this. I want to hand the ball off to the
guy that can do three round the worlds
in a row and like watch him do something
and go [ __ ] sick, dude. And then and
then watch him pass it across the net.
Uh, so he did that and as soon as I said
it,
>> one of the guys was like, "Yeah, yeah,
yeah." And then we can like count how
many we do and that can be I'm like,
"No, I'm not going to [laughter] keep
doing the thing again. You're reverse
engineering it." And the second time, it
seems to happen around uh nets, I
suppose. [laughter] The second time I
was playing pickle ball, a co-ed game
with this uh girl who was 21 and uh
Austin, Texas, me and her versus another
guy and girl and it's uh 1-1 on games
going into best of the final game and
we're like we've done the little thing
where you tap paddles over the top of
the net and we turn around and we walk
him back to the baseline and I'm like
okay so we need to remember that like
when he comes up to the net he's really
bad in his backhand so we can force that
in but we need to play into the kitchen
the dinks need to be a little bit wider
and we got to do this like, "Look, I'm
loving your service, but go with being a
little bit deeper in this." She turns to
me and she goes, "Yeah,
let's not forget to have fun." I was
like, "Yeah, yeah,
very good." And that moment of
[sighs and gasps] I can just enjoy
what's happening right now. Sure, there
are times if you're a neurosurgeon,
probably the inmoment enjoyment of what
you're doing, that's not the time for
it. But, and this is where I think the
the definition of success that I
mentioned earlier on is a a really
important piece.
You can go through life trying to
optimize for maximum outcomes, like
maximum objective success. Like other
people can see it, I can touch it, feel
it, put it in a photo album or a bank
account or a follower number or whatever
online. Uh but you will peer over the
present moment's shoulder a lot looking
for what's coming next. The
hypervigilance will cause you to never
really have your mind rest where your
feet are.
>> Yeah.
>> Uh I'm seeing this with my live shows.
I'm on tour at the moment playing uh
Regent Theater this Saturday in LA. And
uh I can go out on stage and do my show
at like as close to perfect as I can get
and never be there.
>> I'm not there. I'm not at the show. And
in some ways, maybe that's part of a
flow state. But I think even within like
the flow stateness, like when you lose
yourself in it, you're not you're not
fully like
this rules. Like this [ __ ] rules. So
you have to I found for me there are
moments where in the set I can pause and
be like
>> for just like two seconds I'm like,
"Fuck, I'm there." And when I look back,
this is how I kind of know that it's
working at least a little bit. This is
super white belt like fresh clay [ __ ]
But that's what I remember. I don't
remember delivering the lines. I don't
necessarily even remember the laughs or
I remember incidents where that break
the pattern. So the sound went out in
New York and uh I was working with just
the stage wedges pointing at me bouncing
them off the back wall to 1500 people
while they tried to fix the sound. So I
had to like freestyle some [ __ ] on
stage. And I remember that and that was
cool. But the only other bits that I
remember are where I've gone like and
seen inside of my own mind and gone,
>> here I am. I'm walking back to the
baseline and we're about to have fun.
We're playing foot tennis and we're
going to try and make it beautiful. And
I get the sense, this is where the
success thing comes in that I don't know
if this is true. Maybe it gets you from
100% of performance to 150 or 101. or
maybe it gets you to 95 or even 90. But
regardless of that plane of success,
outcome based stuff, it's like how much
more presence and how much more joy and
and awareness have you got of what's
going on? And ultimately, why are you
doing these things? Presumably, you're
trying to achieve success to create some
sort of an emotional state that is
sufficiently enjoyable for it to be
worthwhile.
>> Or else why why would you be doing it?
Like even if you ask the why question
enough times, it ends up being like
because it feels good. It's like why do
you need money to get the house, to get
the car, to get the girl, to get the
because it makes me feel nice and
enough. And you're like, well, what if
you could access that more directly by
just going [gasps]
>> [ __ ]
I'm here.
Yeah, I'm here. I'm [ __ ] here. Like,
holy [ __ ] we're alive.
>> Yeah,
>> that [ __ ] rules. Like, you know what
I mean?
>> That's it. That's it. Yeah. Before we
continue, if you think that all protein
powders are basically the same,
congratulations. That's exactly what
they want you to think. Most brands
never test their products after they
leave the factory, while Momentous tests
every single batch for purity and banned
substances, which is why I partnered
with them. They're literally the best on
the planet. They're unparalleled when it
comes to rigorous third party testing.
And this stuff tastes phenomenal. This
whey protein is sourced from grass-fed
European cows. No hormones or
antibiotics or GMOs. fast absorbing, low
in lactose, designed for gut health, and
mixes very, very smooth. Basically, most
clean proteins suck, and this one
really, really doesn't, and you should
buy it. You need more protein in your
diet. This is the one that I use every
day, and uh the chocolate is just
straight money. It It's fantastic. Best
of all, there is a 30-day money back
guarantee. So, you can buy it and try it
completely risk-f free, and they ship
internationally right now. You can get
up to 35% off your first subscription.
and that 30-day money back guarantee by
going to the link in the description
below or heading to
livemus.com/modernwisdomd
and using the code modernwisdom at
checkout. That's lie
mus.com/modernwisdom
and modern wisdom
at checkout.
Thank you very much for tuning in. If
you enjoyed that clip, the full episode
in all of its glory
waiting for you. Brilliant.
Come on, press