Ep. 10 - Contrasting Views on Manhood: Andrew Tate vs Jordan Peterson

Embark on a journey through the intricate landscape of modern masculinity, where the philosophies of Jordan Peterson and Andrew Tate stand as towering figures. Guided by their unique narratives, we scrutinize the essence of manhood, faith, and society's evolving expectations. In a candid discussion, we dissect Peterson's heralded virtues of discipline and the pursuit of a meaningful life, contrasting with Tate's brand of assertiveness and his recent embrace of Islam. Their divergent paths offer a compelling look at how religion and personal beliefs shape our understanding of what it means to be a man today.

As we traverse the tumultuous terrain of relationships and self-worth, we dissect the societal ripple effects of choosing monogamy or embracing a life with multiple partners, as presented by our thought leaders. This conversation is not just about the choices themselves but about the profound impact they have on the structure of family life and the cultivation of an individual's sense of value. We navigate through the intricacies of humility and assertiveness, noting how these traits manifest within the guidance offered by Peterson and Tate and how they correlate to one's approach to life's hurdles, including personal anecdotes that reveal the strength and resilience inherent in Peterson's character.

The episode concludes by emphasizing the significance of companionship on life's journey, reiterating the long-held wisdom that our friendships are a mirror to our future. With an open invitation for listeners to contribute to our upcoming dialogues, we underscore the importance of carefully selecting those we walk with side by side. The echoes of this conversation are set to linger, inspiring our audience to contemplate the virtues that shape their lives and the company that influences their destiny. Stay connected as we continue to explore poignant themes and engage in enriching discussions that challenge and enlighten.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:02

Welcome back everybody to the Psych and Theo podcast, the podcast that tackles cultural issues from a psychological and theological perspective. I'm Sam, my co-host, tim and Tim. We've been talking about a lot of really cultural trendy topics as of late, which we do all the time, but these last ones that we've been doing have been very um eye-opening in a sense, and today we're talking about two key figures in the masculine world, or men's life, and we're we're comparing, basically comparing and contrasting their different styles and different approaches to resolving men's issues yeah, yeah, yeah, so two figures who weigh heavily in the manosphere, as we might call it.

Speaker 1: 0:51

Yes, and who are these two figures?

Speaker 2: 0:53

Yeah, so we're going to be talking about Jordan Peterson and Andrew Tate. Now if you don't know who those two people are, we're going to get into it. Obviously, jordan Peterson most people know, unless you've been living under a rock for the last seven, eight years. But Andrew Tate may be a lesser known figure to a lot of people, but he's no less important, I think, for just cultural influence right now. So we can get into who these guys are and then why we're even talking about them yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 1: 1:28

And you know, one interesting thing as we start, as we start talking about these, uh, these guys, is that, um, at some point or another, they have referenced some aspect of their faith and they have referenced christianity a lot. Um, even though you know and again we're going to talk about tate more in depth but even he was on an interview with, uh, candace owens and he referenced being formerly a christian and he says, and candace kind of presses into that and she says, uh, oh, you were formerly a christian. Well, what happened? Or why'd you switch? Or whatever the case is. And he said you know, I started looking at the western world and I started looking at christianity and I started seeing at how these christians would just allow the culture to, how they talked about god, and they wouldn't say anything, like they were very passive and just kind of let these things happen.

Speaker 1: 2:22

And and you know, you have all these atheists now here and where he's from, I guess they had a higher view of God. So that's kind of one of the reasons why he said that he left Christianity. Again, I don't know how genuine or how real that is, but when you listen to most of his content, he will always make some sort of reference to having this respect for God and having this desire to honor him. Now, the reason why I mentioned that to kind of start off with, is that we can have a very different perspective of what honoring God means, and for this guy in particular, it means just kind of acknowledging that he's there and then just knowing that he could punish him if he needs to, that God can punish him if, if he needs to. That's kind of the perspective and feel that it got from him when he talks about God. I don't know if you've seen or heard anything about him when he talks about his. You know about God.

Speaker 2: 3:20

Yeah, I mean not not particularly, but but let's, let's get into who these guys are and what they say. Yeah, how about that? Yeah, so let's um, because I think both. So I haven't heard tate talk about religious things as much as I've heard jordan peterson talk about oh yeah, religious things, so both of them appeal to some sort of religion.

Speaker 2: 3:41

Now, tate is a. I think he's a muslim. I think he identifies as muslim. Yeah, yeah, okay. So jordan peterson is a clinical psychologist. Um, he used to teach, I think, the university of toronto for a number of years. He became very famous in 2016, uh, when he stood against these mandatory speech codes that um canada was trying to push on everyone to mandate that everyone use the preferred pronouns of the person, and if you didn't do that, then you were basically going to be punished in some way. And so he stood up against that and he became very famous. He kind of like burst on the scene at that point.

Speaker 2: 4:23

Now he had, he had been a clinical psychologist for many, many, many years and taught and published all kinds of scholarly material taught in college classes and things like that. But he's he's become very prominent in the space of men and men's issues because of how he writes and the issues he writes on. He's he is put out a lot of content basically showing people how to take back control of their life, not in a egotistical way, but in a sense of I like, if you feel like you don't have control over your situation. Well, here are some disciplines to put into your life to get control of yourself Make your bed, get up early, go work out, go to the gym. All these like habits and structures that you can build into your life. But not just like habits, also virtues that you can build into your life. So one of his books is called the 12 Rules for Life, and it's these principles that he's distilled down, that you can live by to help you navigate this world. And it's become very popular with men, because the culture in which we live in is very influenced by feminism. We've talked about that in a few different episodes now. But there's this idea that masculinity has become toxic, no-transcript, other things, and so a lot of men feel like they're not allowed to express themselves as men and what that does is it kind of destroys them inside. They feel very defeated, they feel like no one hears them, that they're not allowed to be themselves and who they are, that society wants them to act, act weak and and effeminate in some way. Um, and they're not allowed to just be who they are. And jordan peterson has come along and not intentionally said, yeah, like, beat your chest to be a man. He hasn't said those things, but and he hasn't even intentionally sought out the men as an audience, but they just gravitated to him because of how he was talking about these things and how we we don't need to destroy masculinity, we need to let boys be boys, and because there's important physiological, biological things that that need to happen with boys to develop properly. And so he's become this. He's been put on this pedestal as sort of a symbol of men pushing back against the feminist society and, of course, with that there's the whole LGBT movement and he's said a lot about that, specifically the transgender issue. But that's jordan peterson.

Speaker 2: 7:25

Andrew tate is sort of the uh alter ego of this. Uh, andrew andrew tate is a what you might call the bravado. He's a professional, okay, he's a professional athlete, uh, amateur kickboxing champion, who became, who made some, who made a lot of money from that, became famous. But then he also then built a business of online webcam online webcam business for women, sort of like a pre only fans thing, if you get my drift, okay, and he made a lot of money doing that, basically a quasi kind of pornography business and and he's very infamous for that, that's no secret. So he kind of built his wealth on that, and he's developed this persona of being, this machismo, manly man like flaunts his wealth, flaunts his status, flaunts his strength, flaunts his sexual promiscuity, all these things, and that's what it means to be a man. So it's like this, uh, it's like if someone took jordan peterson's teachings and bastardized them into this horrible caricature, I think that's what you'd get with andrew tate.

Speaker 2: 8:39

So that's my view of andrew tate is that. So those are the two guys that we're dealing with. Is that now Andrew Tate is facing charges in Romania dealing with sexual abuse, sexual exploitation? He's also facing those charges that are looming in the UK on this as well. Whether or not there's any merit to those charges I won't get into. I'll let the courts handle that. But let's just say he has a lot of enemies and his supporters say say well, he's just, it's because he's trying to get people to escape the matrix. That's, that's one of his lines he'll say is like escape the matrix, get out of the matrix.

Speaker 2: 9:15

Uh, which is the society that tells you to be weak and, uh, you know, put down your own masculine, deny your own masculinity and so an example of this would be jordan peterson would say hey, men, uh, have the courage to to marry a woman and stay with her the rest of your life. Andrew tate will literally tell people, like the monogamy is for suckers, yeah, and so real like, uh, women know that real men can cheat. It's natural for men to just cheat and to have many, many women in their lives. So he makes no secret about that. No, apologies for it. That is who Andrew Tate is. One thing you can't call him is a hypocrite.

Speaker 1: 10:00

Right, right, yeah, that's very true, and when you were talking about and they're different personalities, right? So there's different personalities one's much older, one's like late 30s, I think.

Speaker 1: 10:10

well, late 30s you're so much older, so you have the different generational gap there. But then there's there's some overlap in what they speak on in regards to a man developing himself. So not so much in relationships, and I think that's probably the biggest distinguished, distinguishing factor when it comes to relationships. Very different, completely opposite Jordan Peterson. Much more marriage, family oriented. You know, care for, care for your wife, care for your kids, find a way to, you know, protect and take care of them. With Tate, it's very much. You know, care for your kids, find a way to protect and take care of them With Tate, it's very much. Basically, what you said, like that's for suckers, they don't deserve to. You know, don't put yourself in that position. Have kids outside of that, just as long as you provide and keep on doing what you want. Build yourself up, and here's how you can do it right.

Speaker 1: 11:01

Very different approaches in regards to relationships. And then, when it comes to this aspect of developing disciplines as a man, because that's a big part of this, one of the things that Tate emphasizes a lot more is this aspect of stoicism, right, he talks about not allowing for your emotions to drive your behavior, and he seems to do that in some instances, but not in all instances. So when it comes to his uh, maybe restraining his sexual promiscuity, he does not really, he doesn't restrain that Right, but when it comes to his interpersonal conflicts with other men, he seems to have a stoic approach along with that. Now, the problem with that that affects men is that it forces men maybe not to even address deep-seated emotions or hurts or pains that they may have experienced. It's interesting because when I've seen Tate talk about past relationships or past pains, he does it very passively, like, yeah, I've had my heart broken before, but you know I've had to get up and just move forward. But the way that he's behaving is not from a place of healing, because he's still treating women and hurting them in different ways too right, he frames it. He frames it in a way where it's he makes it seem like it's not hurting them, but he is.

Speaker 1: 12:19

You know, when you use someone for, you know for, for sex or for whatever the case is like, that hurts them in the long run and he doesn't see it that way. You know his perspective is, you know, if we're both on agreement with, we're just going to have sex, and you know, you can come on my yacht or you can come do this, then that's, it's a transaction for him, right? Obviously, peterson would have a much uh, actually he him and he had a very strong critique of Tate and his approach to relationships, which we may get into a little bit later. But yeah, he does have this aspect of stoicism that he tries to teach to men, like be in control of your emotions, address things differently, you know, don't even let that pain really hurt you. You got to keep moving forward, and so on.

Speaker 1: 13:06

Peterson takes on the approach of creating disciplines in your life as well, and he will come at it from this aspect of how does your faith influence that, how does your family influence that, how your relationships influence that. So, again, just going back to the idea of is there any overlap that you see from the things that they both teach? Or maybe we see more of their differences? I don't know.

Speaker 2: 13:30

Yeah, I mean I don't know if there's much overlap with them. I think the overlap is that men are flocking to both of them. I think that's the commonality. The reason we wanted to do this episode is that the title was like which Way Western man? Because both of these guys are having an outsized influence on men in Western culture and men are going to have in the West, are going to have to make a choice of what type of man are they going to be based on the caricature or or maybe archetype that these two guys are promoting?

Speaker 2: 14:08

You know, jordan Peterson is say a man needs to look this way. He takes responsibility for his community, he takes responsibility for his family, for himself, he sacrifices, he actually even men who are could have multiple women. He says, do the courageous and selfless thing and choose one. Because if you, if you expand that out to lots of different men who could have multiple women, what that does is it creates a society in which some men get a lot of women and other men don't get any sort of mate, mate, partner, and it also encourages the women to sleep around too.

Speaker 2: 14:48

And it has produced a lot of kids out of wedlock. Terrible for families. It actually spells doom for a culture and the selfless thing to do is say you know what I'm not going to do, that I'm going to choose one woman and I'm going to live with her and I'm going to sacrifice myself for her, for my life, and I'm going to raise our children this way. So that's the kind of man that Peterson pushes, because he says look, if you're going to have casual sex, you're not just treating that person as an object, you're treating yourself as an object, and that has long-term effects on you.

Speaker 1: 15:20

Right, right, but see even as you mentioned those things like, aside from just choosing one woman, protecting your family, taking care of them, providing for them, tate would say, yeah, I agree with all of that. I agree with all those aspects, but the aspect of choosing one, maybe it's not wise for me or it's not good for me, whatever the case is. But he actually did. Again, I don't know, we don't know how much of this is true. I don't think he's being genuine about it.

Speaker 1: 15:46

But Candace Owens, in that interview she also asked him do you ever think that you'll get married? And he kind of paused for a little bit. He's like I don't know. I've been. I seem to be more open to it now. I mean the guy's 38, 39. Maybe he's. He's thinking about it differently and as you get older you start thinking about it a little bit differently. But I don't know. Again, I didn't see it as genuine. I feel it, because of who the audience of Candace Owens is, that he may have tailored his response to that, but I don't know. I don't know. But he would say all those other things that you said, that Peterson said about protecting your family, taking care of them, not so much on the virtuous side, that Peterson would address side that Peterson would address.

Speaker 2: 16:32

Yeah, one of the key differences is that Peterson is going to say look, there's virtue in humility. You don't need to be a doormat, you need to stand up for yourself. You don't need to be this agreeable or overly agreeable person who doesn't know how to say no to things, doesn't know how to put your foot things, doesn't know how to put your foot down, because if you don't, you're just going to be a doormat and you're going to end up being resentful in life. So, like the men who are buying into this, this idea in the culture that I can't express, I shouldn't express myself as a man like they're going to end up being resentful and angry in life. So he's trying to mitigate that. But tate would. Tate would say look, humility. What's humility? Like? Be proud of your accomplishments. You know, boast in them, like, and we could go on and on about, about what he says. You know, one of the appeals that he has to men is he gives a lot of relationship advice, like how, how to talk to your woman, how to treat your woman, and he doesn't come out and say like, oh, like, beat your woman. He won't say that. You know, that's that's.

Speaker 2: 17:36

There's people who will accuse Tate of things that are not fair, and so I don't want to do that, but he'll. He'll give advice to men and some even Christian men that I've talked to have been influenced by this. He'll give advice that is very, very bad advice. I'm trying to think of an example right now. I should have written it down.

Speaker 2: 18:03

A friend of mine was talking about this and some things that he was hearing from Tate, and I just remember thinking like these things are not compatible with the way a Christian man should think about relationships. It's not compatible with how a Christian man should think about their wife, you know. So again, I know that's vague, I can't think of the example right now and I don't want to put words in Tate's mouth, but in general, hear from tate is is a lot of uh, bravado, a lot of bragging and a lot of uh, a lot of caricatures of of women that they're kind of, these lesser, the lesser species that doesn't, is not as smart, is not as sophisticated, and they're just looking for a man to tell them what to do.

Speaker 1: 18:50

Basically, yeah, yeah that's my, that is the summation of andrew tate that I would give from his, from the things I've heard him say yeah, yeah, and you know, as we kind of mentioned this in an earlier episode, um, but one of the things that I could say about this, these two comparisons or these two men, is that Peterson is speaking about these men's issues from a healed perspective and Tate is speaking about these issues still from a hurt perspective. Right, and obviously Peterson being much older, being a clinical psychologist, having some reference to, like he's looked at a lot of pain. I mean, I just found out, maybe two, three weeks ago I was hearing about his relationship with his daughter and how she's had these, this medical condition since she was really young. You know where she was close to dying and the way that he would approach it was kind of he kind of had this talk with her and said you know, you're going to have to be ready to face this head on, like, if you're, if you're going to face death, then you know we just kind of prepare yourself mentally and emotionally for that.

Speaker 1: 19:59

And she responds with you know, I it wasn't maybe the most sensitive thing, but I understood where my dad was coming from and I started to, you know, change the way that I thought and not feel sorry for myself and try to find the best that I could in my life. So she's kind of taken on this strict meat diet, like, I think, for the last six years that's all she's eaten, just you know, meat and that's it. But I say that because it speaks to that aspect of him being a man, being a father, of the truth sometimes, that you have to share with your kids and address those difficulties, um, difficulties with them. But he's again speaking from a healed perspective. Only a healed man can address those difficult topics in a appropriate or in a, um, uh, encouraging way. You know cause he's experienced his own pains and hurts, um, so yeah, so that's how I think. That's how I would summarize both of them, one of them, peterson, speaking from a healed state and Tate, speaking still from a hurt state of mind.

Speaker 2: 21:00

Let me ask you this as a as a counselor what would be if you're a young guy and you're encountering these two men? What? What is the appeal for a young man? Like if you were a counselor and you're advising. Like this young guy comes to you and says I've been listening to andrew tate, he's got a lot of good things to say. You know what? What in your mind immediately? What do you think's going on there?

Speaker 1: 21:26

Yeah, well, you know I think about this now. I guess you know, as a father of three, you know I remember growing up there would always be someone trying to tell another parent like, hey, you know, tell your kids this, or teach your kids this and so, so they can learn how to be like this. And I would think to myself, well, I don't want my kids to be like your kids, like I don't like the some of the traits that your kids have, right, some of the traits that your kids have right. So if I want to teach my kids to be strong, independent, standing up for their faith, then I have to teach them different things than what I'm seeing you do, right. Because if the result is going to be how your kids came out, then I don't want that. And what I mean by that is that these young guys have a lack of some strong paternal or male figure in their lives. So Tate kind of comes off like the big brother, right? The big brother who's going to protect you from everyone else and he's going to give you the advice that you need, and Peterson is kind of like the grandpa or the father figure who's trying to guide you in a way that is gonna be helpful for you creating a family.

Speaker 1: 22:32

So what it really comes down to is what do these young men want? What were they lacking when they were younger? What did their parents teach them? What did they not teach them? So these younger guys who are looking to Tate, what they're wanting is they want money, they want girls and they want cars. So they're gonna follow the example that he's given them, right? So Tate has all those things. So that's what I'm going to follow, because that's what I want. If I want wisdom, if I want a family, if I want morals and values, then you're going to follow what Peterson is teaching. So it really comes down to what do these guys want? If they want girls, fame, money, cars, then they're going to follow Tate. If they want family values and faith, cars, then they're going to follow tate. If they want family values and faith, then they're going to follow peterson. And again, that all speaks to what were they lacking or what were they missing when they were um in their growing up, in their own families?

Speaker 2: 23:21

yeah, that's really good. Um, I would another, maybe another spinoff question. You know the culture, our culture has this idea of a couple different types of males. In our culture there's alpha males, there's beta males and then there's a third one called sigma males. I don't know. Have you heard of that one?

Speaker 1: 23:42

Tell me about the sigma. I haven't heard of the sigma one.

Speaker 2: 23:44

Oh, so yeah. Well, we actually have planned to do an episode on the alpha, alphas and the betas, so we need to throw sigma in there too. But sigma is this third group that's come out.

Speaker 2: 23:56

Think of it like the lone wolf a lone wolf, loner guy who's okay being alone, doesn't need to show off or anything, uh. But so we'll set that to the side for now. With the andrew tate problem or issue, I think that a lot of guys feel like, well, andrew tate is this quote, unquote alpha male. He is the, he is the quintessential alpha male and he's he's telling guys how not to be betas. So a beta is someone who is a follower, doesn't get the girls, doesn't got the money, doesn't got the cars, doesn't get laid. You know all these things, but the alpha, you know alpha does what he wants and tate is the quintessential example of that. Like, what do you think of that?

Speaker 1: 24:48

I think uh gosh, I'm trying to think of the illustration or where that actually came from, because I remember hearing a story about how wolves actually protect themselves or how they actually leave their backs and alphas are usually leading from behind, so they're kind of protecting their, their pack, and they're not always at the front.

Speaker 1: 25:09

But the alpha that we see in modern society with men is that they are always at the front. But the alpha that we see in modern society with men is that they are always at the front, they're always in the spotlight and you have to take control and you have to be in that position like very assertive, very aggressive and so on. So those are, I guess, characteristic wise. When you say alpha, you have to look at what is that being attributed to? Is it being attributed to the characteristics that the alpha has? Like, do I want those traits? I think it goes back to what I was saying earlier. Is that? What is it that these guys are looking for? What were they lacking? So, for example, a guy who doesn't grow up, who grows up and doesn't have a strong male figure in their lives, they're going to be seeking those characteristics in other men. What do I know is masculine? So here's this big voice in the room or in social media that's saying here's what it looks like to be masculine, but I don't have anything to compare that to. Then, yeah, I'm going to believe that being an alpha is what it means to be masculine and for betas is kind of the same thing is if being a man, or if you had a weak father or maybe just a dominant mom growing up for you, those characteristics that they displayed are the ones that are going to make sense to you, because that's what you are able to compare it to. So there's a lot of factors that go into that.

Speaker 1: 26:25

But yeah, I mean, it's basically how is culture presenting that? Because it can present alpha in a positive light or in a negative light. Same thing with the beta. It could present it in a positive light or a negative light. The positive way would be this is not someone who's going to be putting people down. You know, they're going to be respectful, they're going to be kind, they're going to want to work together on teams and so on. So those are good things, right. But the association with betas is that they let themselves get walked over, right? They never say anything, so their opinion doesn't matter. The girls don't really care about them because they're not assertive enough, right? So it just depends, I guess, on how they want to frame it. But there are those characteristics and personality traits that I think we look at.

Speaker 2: 27:06

Yeah, Okay. So let me ask you. You usually ask me this question, so I'm going to ask you what advice would you give to men who are considering listening to Peterson or Tate? What advice would you give them?

Speaker 1: 27:22

Yeah, well, you know, obviously, for us being a Christian podcast, we're tackling these cultural topics, these cultural issues. We want to have a strong biblical worldview. So that's one part of it, right, knowing your Bible, knowing characters in the Bible, knowing the principles that we learn from scripture. But another one that's a little bit more tangible is identifying healthy men in your life, and it's hard to identify that if you've never had that before, right? So I think what you want to have is a strong community of Christian brothers. So, as Christian men find a strong community of Christian brothers. Now here's one thing that I will say, because there's a lot of pressure to try to have this huge group of guy friends who all love the Lord. But even if you have one, that's good, and the way that I like to present this is have a strong mentor, so someone who's older than you, who's lived a longer life than you have, that can pour into you. Then someone who walks alongside you, who's maybe the same stage of life that you are, and then someone who's younger than you, someone who you can then also teach what it is that you're learning in your stage of life, because, remember, you're impacting the next generation of men, right.

Speaker 1: 28:37

Whatever you believe and do right now is going to influence those who are younger than you, because sometimes there's people who are looking up to you that you don't even know. Right, you may think that you're not influencing anyone, but you are right. Especially if they're younger than you, especially if you have character traits that they want to develop, they're going to be looking towards you. You know, for me that's my sons, right? I know that as they continue to grow up, they're going to be looking at me. So everything that I do, it's going to influence them.

Speaker 1: 29:03

Who do I have in my life right now that I want to associate with that can also contribute to my, my growth in Christ, to my Christian walk? Right, men who are in similar stages or that we're doing the same thing. I want those men next to me, and then someone who's had longer life than I have, that's been through a lot of different stages and situations, that they can also pour into me and teach me what it is to walk with Christ in the long term. So I think that that's a good way to look at it to have a mentor, have men alongside you and then also being aware of those who are maybe following your example.

Speaker 2: 29:36

Yeah, that's good advice. Because those men can also tell you like if you're hearing really bad ideas from the culture because isolation, if you're isolated, then you start hearing someone like Tate and you start soaking in his quote wisdom, worldly wisdom. You don't have that soundboard of an older man or a brother in Christ that can kind of come alongside you and say I don't think that's a good idea. That doesn't sound like a good idea, because the voices we listen to impact our behavior a lot. Oh, yeah, yeah, a lot.

Speaker 1: 30:10

Oh, yeah, yeah, a lot, even passively. We might think it's not, but if you are being exposed to that, there's just subtly. These little messages do creep in every once in a while.

Speaker 2: 30:23

Yeah, paul says, bad company corrupts good morals. Or to put it in a popular phrase show me your friends and I'll show you your future.

Speaker 1: 30:35

That's true. Yeah, that's very true, yeah.

Speaker 2: 30:38

All right. I think that's it All right.

Speaker 1: 30:41

Awesome, brother. Well, we will come back with another thrilling topic next time and hopefully we could do a bunch of mini series. But again, if you have any topics that you would like for us to discuss, feel free to message us on Instagram or even Facebook, and we will try to address those as soon as possible. All right, take care guys.