Guys, we have a problem

On Jordan Klepper, Andrew Tate, and the overlooked option (The Forge Letter #14)

Donald Trump is a poor person’s idea of what a rich person looks like.
Andrew Tate is a 14-year-old boy’s idea of what being a man looks like.

— John Mulaney and Jimmy Carr, quoted on Diary of a CEO.

Guys, we have a problem.

The world is changing. What it means to be a man is changing.

That's not the problem. The old model had ugly corners, and we’re better off shedding them.

The problem is we’re overcorrecting.

Too safe to be useful

I like the Jordan Klepper specials for the Daily Show. He’s good at showing contradictions and making it funny. Seems like a sharp guy I’d be happy to share a beer with.

But his on-screen persona? A twitchy man-boy scared of a real challenge. In his latest special, he’s in Norway for the Nobel Peace Prize bit, and he pretends to try some Viking reenactment sword fight.

Instead of even trying, he just screams and runs.

Sure, it’s a bit. A persona. But it’s exactly the kind of man I don’t want my sons looking up to.

The man weak enough to not be a threat is also useless when he has to stand up and fight. And the fight always comes.

I got laid off in 2024. Four days after our son was born, wife was still in the hospital, and I was looking after our firstborn.

I sure didn’t need to fight a bunch of Vikings but the last thing my family needed at that time was a Klepper-style nervous breakdown.

The capable assholes

Then there’s the other extreme.

I recently watched Louis Theroux’s Inside the Manosphere on Netflix. And the fun thing is, I agreed with plenty of what those guys said. Get your shit together. Provide value. Stop waiting for the world to carry you.

But the actual means to get there?

Selling trading scams to men and putting women down. Whatever pays today.

They pretend they’re building a good future for their families, but they cash in on men losing theirs and women being told to know their place.

As if they weren’t that strong after all. As if they needed to make others weaker first, so they could feel strong themselves.

Sorry buddy. If you need others to be weak so you can feel strong, you have it upside down.

The punch machine

So that’s the landscape.

A useless man on one side. Maybe smart, but never strong because strong would make him dangerous.

A selfish asshole on the other. Maybe capable, but capable of anything.

But it’s not all that black and white.

When Louis opens the documentary, he’s leaning into how unfit and unthreatening he is. “Have you seen my arms?” he says when he’s asked about fitness.

And then he ends the film with a video of himself setting a new PR on a punch machine.

He’d just spent the whole film disagreeing with those guys. You could say he’s firmly in the other camp. But he still couldn’t resist quietly admitting that strength is part of being a man.

I respect him for that. And it’s the kind of thing that gives me hope.

A warrior in the garden

Being a man is not the opposite of being feminine or emotional.

It’s the opposite of being childish and immature.

The strength I’m talking about isn’t just physical.

By all means, train your body. At minimum, be healthy. But it’s bigger than that.

It’s being the rock your family can grab onto.

Holding your shit together even when your family completely depends on you and you just got a massive sucker punch.

That means resilience. Stress tolerance. Good calls when the pressure’s on.

And just like muscle, that kind of strength needs reps. Practice. And a value system that tells it when to fire and when to rest.

It’s why we chose Faith/Filosophy as one of our core pillars in the Better Brotherhood. Because we saw how lack of self-regulation destroys men just as surely as lack of strength does.

The jacked brute who can’t hold himself together is still a boy, just in a bigger frame.

The rich asshole is still an asshole. In the end, neither is really that strong.

So maybe the real strength is hidden in the old saying:

Better to be a warrior in a garden than a gardener in a war.

Capable of being dangerous. Wise enough to not be, unless it’s actually needed.

Four days after my son was born, I needed the warrior.

Four weeks ago, I dragged a bloody magnolia tree for 800 meters so my wife could plant it in the back yard.

This Saturday, I mowed the lawn in peace.

Today, I’m writing this with two small sons in the house.

What they see in me becomes their baseline for what a man is. No pressure.

Talk soon,
Jan

P.S.: Yes, a tree. About 3.5m tall. It was kinda fun.