you ever seen Robert crumb's representations of bird-headed women no no I haven't Robert crumb is an underground cartoonist and he was the feature of a documentary which you should you and everybody else who's listening to this should definitely watch uh it's it's absolutely it's the best documentary I've ever seen about anything ever it's and he he dra draws these women they're Pro he was a loser in high school by his own admission by every single category you could possibly generate and so it's a study in loser psychology but it's really complex because he was a loser who was extremely intelligent and unbelievably creative and who had two brothers who were probably more intelligent more creative than him although also more psychopathological and then he became successful he was one of the establishers of of underground cartooning back in the in the 1960s and and and and spawned arguably even graphic novel you know I mean he's he's a major player in that in that and and the documentary is a brilliant analysis of the relationship between failure and success and sexual failure and sexual success because in one memoral memorable scene he talks about he drew this card when he was a high school kid of a heart being ripped apart when he got rejected by this girl that that or by all girls he said he was beneath contempt he couldn't he wasn't even in the category of comprehensible dating partner right he was outside the game entirely so he's rejected by the feminine as such he draws these pictures of bird-headed women with teeth you know and they're powerful big thighs Big W big uh big rear end like powerful physically powerful intimidating women like mothers draws sometimes these characters of little tiny men climbing up the legs of these huge treel likee women but they're very aggressive and and and and uh domineering and the reason for that at least in part is because every woman he ever approached was rejecting and aggressive in the extreme treated him with nothing but contempt and then he says in an unbelievably memorable piece of the documentary um that all changed when I got successful and you can just hear the resentment and the bitterness in his voice even though it did change and he wasn't that old when he became successful he was in his mid 20s you know plenty of time to be on the outs completely and to experience life at the bottom of the male dominance hierarchy and and even farther down the female dominance hierarchy let's say in terms of desirable men it's a it's called crumb the documentary I would highly recommend it and it's it's absolutely brilliant study and and he had well he had an authoritarian father and a indulgent mother and she plays uh a key role in the documentary and uh it's it's awful it's it's awful it's a it's a a study in Freudian Psychopathology that's deep beyond belief I've seen it like 40 times showing it to my classes and walking through it clip by clip but but anyways it's a study you don't see the world from the perspective of down andout male loser you know there are subcultures that that sort of exist there but this is the this is the only examination of that place in the world I've ever seen that I thought really really nailed it the the document was a friend of the family so he and Charles Brothers one of them ended up a sexual offender who lived on the Streets of San Francisco and the other committed suicide by drinking furniture polish when he was like 55 after being bullied terribly in high school and living in his mother's basement essentially for his entire life oh awful awful but you know you watch the documentary it's not it's not like people really there's you you generate some compassion for the people in the documentary and what they gone through but I wouldn't say that compassion is what's primarily elicited by the documentary and that goes back to this discussion we had right at the beginning about you know what kind of empathy we have for the men who aren't making it and the answer seems to be very very little let's go to social policy with that we might ask okay in light of this what do we do and I would say this is what I've recommended I've recommended to young men that they take that these are the facts on the ground and they're not going to change and that if you're being rejected chronically by women or if you're terrified out of your mind about that and and perhaps rightly so you should take a good hard look at yourself and see what it is that you have to offer and so like are you as educated as you could be are you working you know are you looking for a job at least are you trying to get out of your parents' house are you taking the steps necessary to become gainfully employed productive generous and attractive and you know that Tangles us back up with something we also talked about in the beginning which is the criticisms that have been directed my way by men which is well you're asking men to live up to a stereotype that essentially um undermines and devalues the vast majority of them you're part of the problem not part of the solution and your emphasis on uh responsible marriage given the state of current family law is nothing short of reprehensible and so you know my Approach is do what you can at the individual level to put yourself in the game but there's there's much more to the story than that absolutely this is really complex because the good news is there's a lot you can do to choose a woman who is the right woman um and so for example looking at when when you go both both go out to dinner um does she is is she open to paying is she if she if she isn't paying does she does she cook a dinner for you the next time around um how does she treat the waiter uh somebody that can't do her um any any good um ask her about her uh former relationships um how they broke um how they broke up and who was at fault was is there any accountability and responsibility on her part of course ask these same questions of yourself as well especially about former relationships and they broke up um and um and so that's um so choosing the right woman is probably so what are you looking for there you're looking for um generosity you're looking for kindness down the hierarchy right so that's how does she treat people who are socially inferiors so to speak at least in that context like waiters and then with regards to previous relationships is she capable of some self-analysis or is is it always the guy's fault that reminds me of that Atlantic Monthly article one of them I'm unfortunately can't remember who wrote it but was this woman in her late 40s detailing out all the highquality men that she had rejected many many many men by her own um account and during the entire article there wasn't any recognition whatsoever of any time when it might have been her it was like I these 40 men didn't live up to my standards it's like well after the fifth one didn't you start thinking maybe the problem was on the other side of the dating table but the answer was obviously no and she was obviously still single so but so what are you looking for there exactly and why did you why did you bring that up at that point well because one of the ways that you can be involved in the game of marriage in a way that is positive um is by making the the choice of the woman differently than what we tend to do we many men look at a woman she's beautiful and um and our desire to be sexual with her uh leads us to sort of okay we'll pay for dinner we'll promise this we'll go we'll go here we'll go there and we should point out too I just want to point out something I talked to Randy Thornhill recently one of the world's preeminent biologists and before we get to thinking that this sexual attractiveness is nothing more than mere shallow-minded and impulsive gratification is all the cues of sexual attractiveness are tightly associated with physical health and Fundy which is the ability to procreate and so even if men are blinded by Beauty which which I do believe is true enough there reasons for that at the deepest possible level still have to do with the desire to continue the human species so it's it's shallow in one sense but not in another but your point is there are other mark that are characterological that are more subtle that need to be taken into account yes both sexes have very um huge reproductive draws I mean every from an insect right on up through human beings women tend to procreate and have children with the with the the alpha male a good example of this is Buck Elks and among Buck Elks um the females 85% of them will have um reproduced with the with the male that has the biggest rack um but the and that but what it takes to get that biggest rack is an exhaustion of 30% of the minerals nutrients and calcium um in the buck elk U so the second that he reproduces if he doesn't get rid of his rack immediately he's likely to die before winter sets in and he's able to replenish the um the nutrients and the and the minerals and so on so his his his rack was very productive for being able to prog create it was very productive for being able to attract the female but it was also his weakness that is and that's very symbolic of men that men's weak weaknesses our facade of strength um because it was strength because we could use that rack or they not me but the buck Elks could use that rack to you know to to get rid of other um Predators or people that were the female didn't want to protect the female when she was um you know creating the child and so on but once but he was also being used U for being part of the next generation's benefit of producing the next generation's machine and as you said when we you know we once we have children we really live for the next generation and so now then the the next question becomes as humans are we are do we want to create more options for ourselves and so and are we at a point now where survival is mastered enough in the middle and upper middle class that we have with them that we are chosen merely for our success and I think the best explanation of that um comes in Japan where the Millennials in Japan have a game called Koshi and of course Koshi means death at the desk or death from overwork and the the game each person has a little kroi figure and they compete to get to the top of the ladder it might be the political ladder might be the economic ladder might be the religious ladder and and as they compete to get to the top of the ladder the one who gets to the top of the first commits suicide not in real life but in the game and the point that the Japanese Millennials are communicating with each other um is that the um that what we did to become that successful man who was a who was the most attracted uh who was the most able able to be eligible for sex and for love um is we unbe a human U doing um go climbing to the top of the ladder um and we I'm sorry we unbe beame a human being we didn't even think of ourselves as a human being that's why we're committing suicide we have just just by competing to be at the top of the ladder we've worried about what position we wanted how to working more hours um pleasing the B boss pleasing the corporation um not not selling something we wanted or doing something we wanted and we we've lost we never even considered ourselves as a human being and so now we Japanese Millennials are going to start U looking at the um the loss of ourselves as human doings uh uh the loss of ourselves rather as human beings and that is um and that's the in my opinion the where we need to consider going that as we have children we there's this Balancing Act um of do um of helping our children see uh the value of being that artist that painter that you know doing what you love to do combined with is it creating enough income to be responsible to your family to do that and um and and yes it will lose you some women but if you're developing emotional skills and emotional intelligence uh that may not attract as many women as the football player that risks his life and spal cord and injury but it may attract the type of woman you want [Music]