From Rogan to Huberman. The salto mortale of Self-Help Solipsism and the Misery of Vulgar Libertarianism
by Sebastian Edinger
Self-help literature usually revolves around the solipsistic axiom: Only you yourself can be the source of your salvation. What I just called the solipsistic axiom is closely related to what Philip Rieff called the therapeutic doctrine: “The psychological man of our therapeutic doctrine is not reconcilable with the moral man of preceding doctrines.”1 Not just your pop science-rooted worldview-fabrication nonsense like Dawkins or Harari are atheists, but also a secular pseudo-religion that is based on metaphysical castration and an inward turn, which itself functions as a principle of labor. The soteriology is castrated; salvation comes in the shallowly mundane form of money and fame. The motto is: Become the best version of yourself; this is how you do it. But one very important piece is missing: the person who tells you how to do it – your guide, your mentor, your preacher, your guru, your savior, and nowadays, often, your ersatz father. A few people have stepped into that role lately, and their popularity has a lot to do with Joe Rogan's massively influential podcast (Huberman has also made the list at 3.0 M).
Jordan Peterson was the gateway drug to a new self-help religion (new because the US has a tradition of getting obsessed with self-help gurus; the earliest "mega success" maybe being the evangelist Billy Graham, who already preached self-discipline) that found its, in my opinion, grotesquely overblown and comically overrated gurus in John Gretton "Jocko" Willink (from here on "Jocko") and Andrew Huberman.
Rogan and Peterson
I don't want to spend a lot of time on Joe Rogan, whom this article isn't aimed at, but it has to be mentioned that his podcast is the birthplace of Jocko and Huberman, as well as several other podcasts started by people who utilized the notoriety Rogan gave them through regular appearances on his podcast (Lex Fridman, for example). And I’ll also keep my remarks on Jordan Peterson very, very short because he is not what I want to get to here. But he needs to be mentioned briefly since he is, as far as I can see, the first self-help guru who appeared several times on Rogan’s podcast and grew his audience considerably through his relationship with Rogan. Also, Peterson is the first person in this sphere, once labeled the “Intellectual Dark Web," who specifically centered on self-help, the need for men to grow up and take responsibility for themselves; in short, he is the inception point of a new wave of self-help publishing specifically aimed at depressed, directionless, and often desperate young men.
Rogan gives us the journey of a man who understands mixed martial arts as a self-help project, with its center being the overcoming of fear and the limits of burden through hard work. Ultimately, MMA for Rogan is, besides a display of athletic prowess, about growth through self-overcoming (aside from obsessively hoping that his beloved sauna routines will someday be considered the philosopher's stone). What makes him relatable is his obsession with personal growth mediated through the self-help industry's recipes; what makes him likeable is his humility and his conversational style: Whether he asks the best or the right questions or not, the questions he asks are genuinely his own. He is not working his way through a script handed to him, nor is he insulting his viewers with scripted-TV sterility.
Jordan Peterson represents a more mature and less solipsistic approach than Jocko and Huberman: "Clean up your room" has as its goal: Get yourself prepared for the dating world and, ultimately, for taking on the responsibilities of adult life. As far as I can see, Peterson has not used the term "voluntary apprenticeship" that he uses in Maps of Meaning, although the term points to what his rules of life are about: "After all, dedication to an ideal necessitates the development of self-discipline. This is a voluntary apprenticeship.”2 The term "ideal" appeals to the psychologist who knows distinctions like that between the "ego ideal" and the "ideal ego." Problems of psychological reflection that have to occur at a considerably high level, if one terminologically refers to "ideals" in self-conceptualization, are not part of Jocko's extreme ownership.
From Jordan Peterson's approach, you can go in different directions and end up on different paths. The absolute worst route one can take is the one that leads to Jocko Willink, who is basically a complexity-stripped military Jordan Peterson, and I say this while agreeing with the description of Peterson as "the stupid man's intellectual." Jocko, then, is the guardian of the very stupid man.
Jocko
Extreme Ownership is the propagation of military leadership principles into an ideology of mastering your personal life. You are not successful; you collect victories in a world full of enemies in which survival means outcompeting and outgrinding others and thereby triumphing over them. "This book provides the reader with our formula for success: the mindset and guiding principles that enable SEAL leaders and combat units to achieve extraordinary results. It demonstrates how to apply these directly in business and life to likewise achieve victory."
What qualities is Jocko promoting? First and foremost, it's discipline, specifically self-discipline. (While he promotes it, Rogan can't stop masturbating ferociously over it when sitting down with Jocko. Isn't it deeply unsettling to you to see an adult in that kind of frenzy over "the grind"?) The latter implies willpower, rigidity, and toughness. What you must be able to add is a lot more innate than these qualities: intelligence. You need it to effectively organize your tasks and execute them, which again requires analytical thinking, recognizing the right steps you need to take without losing sight of higher-order problems, and supervening structures. All the willpower alone doesn't cut it, and intelligence cannot be created through willpower. If you choose Jocko as your guardian, chances are you are intellectually severely limited and, therefore, all the more reliant on putting your energy into becoming a highly disciplined servant who devoutly follows orders or, when it comes to modeling his own life, recipes handed to him by self-help gurus.
Who could have guessed that (self-)discipline, hierarchical thinking, and task organization would prove useful in so many aspects of life that are defined by competition? Who could have guessed that these qualities are necessary for those in high positions in the military? Does anyone truly believe that renowned researchers (old-school, pre-wokeness, not the people you find on today's campuses), accomplished scholars, or dedicated and studious individuals from all backgrounds lack these qualities? What Jocko adds on top of it is a military story that is centered around brotherhood, the social-bond form of discipline, and the necessity to grind (instead of studying/working hard) in the face of mortal danger, which adds the readiness to put your life on the line to a whole bunch of qualities otherwise unaltered.
How much he is captured by this world he inhabited for the majority of his lifetime is reflected not only in his application of the principles in question but also in the entire rhetoric of war, as in the above-quoted passage. I quote again because it gives you the whole Jocko package (or gimmick) in two sentences: "This book provides the reader with our formula for success: the mindset and guiding principles that enable SEAL leaders and combat units to achieve extraordinary results. It demonstrates how to apply these directly in business and life to likewise achieve victory.” Jordan Peterson advises you to clean up your room and strive to become an employable and marriageable person, while Jocko adds that you can only achieve this as your own success if you follow military guidelines (determination and consistency are not enough; you need the real grind). Your job is a victory, and your spouse is a victory; whatever you achieve, you are a conqueror in doing so.
Instead of reflecting on how and why the military is a very special area in the lives of nations, closed and walled off from civil life (which is why transitioning back to civilian life is a complicated task and even a topic of psychiatric study), Jocko suggests that civilian life is a form of life that fails to live up to the standards of military requirements. Military principles are superior to civilian ones; therefore, life in the civilian world has to be enhanced by the application of military principles to it. I have to admit, although I consider this ridiculous, that I can understand the appeal of this approach since people, men especially, have generally become too soft, whimsical, whiny, petty, and pet-like and are bombarded with incentives to become shells of their potential selves. But if you want to find a cure for all the illnesses of degenerate civil society in the age of hedonistic mass democracy, you have to find a way to bring about a responsible man who can become a responsible husband, not a commander. Here, Peterson is a lot closer to how we can reasonably approach the problems at hand. This brings me to a fundamental distinction: Jocko exemplifies that the opposite of collectivism is not individualism, but solipsism. And he has to exemplify it, since the military is a tightly organized collective with no room for the development of a truly substantial individuality; the more the participants suppress any individuality, the better everything functions. It is collectivism in action, and if you try to strip away the military structure and top-down organized discipline, you are left with a shallow sense of responsibility, rigorous task focus that knows neither left nor right, and the thirst for victories that drives you onto the path of empty trophy hunting; in short, you will get militant solipsism as a result. You will get caught in an 'it's me against the rest of the world' mindset, but in civilian life, especially in a truly humane world, Jocko's ideology only helps you become a militantly self-centered jerk. What responsibility is he promoting? Execute your task successfully, or humbly admit, "Yes, it was my fault." Responsibility comes without complexity; all you get is a strictly task-dependent victory or humiliation. It's like succeeding on the golf course or feeling humiliated; nothing closely resembling real human life is involved here. It's all about task execution.
What you will not get is responsible individualism. The military does not prepare you for becoming a responsible individualist. Your social existence basically merges with military brotherhood, a brotherhood that is embedded in an organizational structure that completely determines it. Bonds are needed for survival and fulfilling the task; friendships may arise at some point, but friendships are not required in the military, nor are they desired, nor is there room to cultivate them in any meaningful way; if you want to do the latter, you need a much more complex life setting. The particles (or members, if you want to be nice) of the brotherhood are not individuals but ideologically hyper-conditioned task fulfillers. Especially if you apply Jocko's principles to civilian life, you may turn task fulfillment into a "me, me, me" mentality, striving for victory as if it were a physical fight for superiority. The collectivism of military brotherhood is not replicated by friendships or networks, and the principles of discipline, hierarchical organization of tasks, and determination to execute them properly in order to achieve victory become everything. Brotherhood is embedded in an organizational structure that determines it gaplessly.
When the collectivist superstructure disappears in the civilian world, solipsism takes over in the conqueror's mind because it is inherent. This solipsism is reflected in reactionary habits: Due to the lack of a τέλος the grind itself has to be its own purpose; growth is just perseverance in repeating the grind. Solipsism, collectivism, and responsible individualism operate with very different anthropological core models: The core model of solipsism is the libido-ridden intellectual toddler. The core model of collectivism is the insect-like functional agent and the functional units they constitute. The core model of responsible individualism is the adult human being with a refined relationship to the common good on the one hand and to the good life, which can only be instantiated in a highly individual way, on the other. Responsible individualism does not know the collapse from one extreme (e.g., solipsism) into the other (e.g., collectivism). It acknowledges that there are not only comrades and enemies but also women and children, possible partners, close friends, grandparents, and obligations of marriage that are entirely alien to military life. Marriage and close friendships are not bonds comparable to the bond of brotherhood in the military; extreme ownership is the best recipe for self-exclusion from your wife, tyranny against her and your children, and being married to your own protocol of success. If you think I am arguing against the meaning of discipline in marital life and family organization, you have fallen for Jocko's extremely narrow ideology. Propagating that extreme ownership should be applied to all kinds of relationships according to their own logic sounds nice, but that's it.
Huberman
Huberman stands for the extension of Jocko's extreme ownership approach to the cellular level. Discipline is necessary to take full control of your physiology, which is who you are. You can't succeed in life without physiological integrity and control (manifesting themselves as supremacy in physiological competition), and Huberman tells you how to achieve it. What he lacks in military talking points, he makes up for with his deep immersion in therapeutic talk. The cultural illness of therapy talk merges with a physiological regimen of self-control to turn people into the best version of themselves. But don't forget that you'll get the specific Palo Alto version of therapeutic self-obsessiveness. Inez Stepman, herself from Palo Alto, wrote a great article on the specific structure of Palo Alto-originated identity crises entitled “Ambitious Nihilism”; there she says: "The angst in Palo Alto isn't bequeathed by the alleged crimes of Leland Stanford, but springs up because the closest thing its hyper-distilled neoliberal worldview can offer to transcendence is the dream of merging with circuitry." With Huberman, you get the physiological complement of finding transcendence in merging with circuitry. The difference from the literal circuitry focus is that you are your physiology and the master of it at the same time; it can't take you over like AI can in dystopian scenarios. (Of course, desperation is an irremovable sting in this shallow self-optimization attempt since the transhumanist enhancement ideal, as expressed in Cyborg fantasies, is not achievable; adult physiology is too imperfect, and you attack your human imperfection too late and not on a deep enough level.)
When Huberman became a guru-like figure, he had to extend his advice beyond just physiology due to his interest in his personality alone. You will receive a manufactured product, not a person; he has a team behind him, the job of which is to protect and polish his image, not to let the public know who he truly is. It would be easy to bombard me with quotes to exemplify that he is not only a preacher of a La Mettriean-style gospel, but an advocate for wholesomeness. And, again, of course, he can create this illusion since he basically grew up in therapy talk. Every child of therapy talk knows how to emulate a cheap and empty wholesomeness that appeals to the masses. His personal life is testimony to his real message, which is: How do you reconcile your everyday life and your relationships with what is at the core of everything: your dopamine levels, the center of your hedonic experience, the physiological mecca of your addictions? What we found out about his private life represents authentically what his core message was always mainly about: optimizing addictive joy through the application of physiological knowledge. He was laying out more truth than he literally articulated when he got lost in ranting about dopamine, and he also didn't lie when he engaged in therapy talk since he is, when it comes to this, a true believer like so many people; he is truly relatable in this regard. He just didn't confess to his audience that, between dopamine and therapy talk, women and family life cannot have the status they need to have if relationships are to flourish. But this missing piece is what the usefulness of everything he says is tied to, and here he has nothing to offer but another shallow regurgitation of therapy talk. In the end, Huberman is a better counselor when it comes to optimizing your jerk-off after long dopamine starvation – caused by not touching yourself – than he is at giving the kind of advice Jordan Peterson aims to offer. Is this a formula for civilizational renewal? - This shallow antidote to DEI self-worship porn could be called grind porn. The common denominator is “me, me, me!”.
Are they successful? Yes and no, but they are certainly symptoms of decay
According to the ideology of vulgar libertarianism (which, ironically, is compatible with what libertarianism, as an ideology, is largely incompatible with, namely mass democracy), they are, especially Jocko, who is a married father of four. Even Huberman is a success, according to a very extreme form of libertarianism, since he is wealthy and well-known. Considering how much effort he puts into hiding lies that keep women around, he certainly is not a successful person. Given that he is not doing this to "friends with benefits" (to refer to rotten intellectual underclass terminology), but even to at least one woman he wanted to have a family with, he is certainly not a success.
What probably differentiates Huberman from Peterson and Jocko is his audience. There is probably a huge overlap, but due to his Stanford credentials and his emphasis on science, which he transformed into pop science for his audience, of course, Huberman resembles, as someone on X suggested, an Andrew Tate for college graduates. Women exist in relation to your dopamine level; his physiological advice is useful for bodily optimization, which, in turn, is helpful in attracting women; in the end, it's the physiological supplement to pick-up artistry.
The huge success of all these people does not stand for America becoming healthier:
People would do a lot better if they stopped looking for saviors. If you want to listen to podcasters, listen to people who understand the principles of a wholesome human life, who are not ideological partisans of one sex (and who are therefore predominantly appealing to those who are, functionally or attitudinally, enemies of the other), who are not salesmen of some narrow-minded extremism (at least Jocko and Huberman are vulgarly libertarian salesmen of narrowly success-obsessed extremism) parading as civilizational saviors. Societal problems worsen, and these people’s success is (and will prove to be) futile. Furthermore, if a historian from a future civilization reviews the decline of the West and inquires the question, "Were there influential figures who tried to warn or guide people towards the right path amidst impending collapse?" and Jocko and Andrew Huberman are presented to them, I believe the historians will conclude, "If these were significant influencers at that time, it's evident that this society wasn't capable of surviving and didn't deserve to."3
You ask for alternatives? It’s not about saviors (or a cult of personality), but about persons who represent types of mentalities you can scale up to social philosophies. Three names:
Louise Perry (The Case Against the Sexual Revolution; Maiden Mother Matriarch podcast),
Mary Harrington (Feminism Against Progress),
and Mary Eberstadt (How the West Really Lost God; and: Primal Screams. How the Sexual Revolution Created Identity Politics)
None of the women mentioned here (many could be added, for example, Alex Kaschuta, Poppy Coburn, or Inez Stepman) tell guys to become feminine, to give up their masculinity, to not go or stop going to the gym (Perry, for example, mocks the “noodle-armed soyboys”), to effectively become pets, that their masculinity is toxic, or that society should be feminized.4 They all cherish responsible men, but they expect a lot more from men than anyone can develop who is religiously devoted to Jocko or Huberman. We are all in this mess that the West has become, and Jocko and Huberman do not possess the intellectual tools and capabilities to diagnose our misery adequately; they represent it instead. They speak to one half of humanity and address this one half in a one-dimensional, theoretically shallow way. Listen to those who have much more to offer and who represent those with whom you will need to find a way to live together if you want the West to have any chance of reversing its horrific decline.
(A little comprehension test: If you think this criticism also applies to Bronze Age Pervert, either intentionally or indirectly, you better think twice or thrice. However, it probably applies pretty well to the dumb fraction of his followers, among whom are probably quite a bunch of low-IQ people who, in proper intellectual underclass style, consider my recommendations "simping".)
Philip Rieff: The Feeling Intellect. Chicago/London, 1990, p. 32.
Jordan Peterson: Maps of Meaning. The Architecture of Belief. New York: Routledge, p. 454.
Of course, they already know that they are looking at an unserious and immature civilization that is incapable of cultivating its conditions of existence, as soon as they see that stupid nonsense like "influencers" exists in that place.
Some of the best criticisms of the feminization of Western societies have been formulated by women lately; see articles written by Heather Mac Donald, Helen Dale, and Cory Clark (with Bo Winegard), or listen to the conversation between Louise Perry and Cory Clark on Maiden Mother Matriarch, or to what Amy Wax has to say about academia. — A good article recently published by a man is Noah Carl’s Did women in academia cause wokeness?