Jon Symes on Stories, Masculinity & Protecting Life

In this episode of the Real Men Eat Plants Podcast, co-hosts Justin and Bruce welcome author, mentor, and speaker Jon Symes for a powerful conversation about the stories we live by—and how they shape our health, our masculinity, and our planet.

Jon has spent decades helping people uncover the narratives that hold them back, a process he calls “narrative liberation.” His upcoming book, The Stories That Are Killing Us, dives deep into how cultural myths influence behavior, sometimes even costing us our lives. As Jon explains, “If you were to say to me, give up meat for a week, and my reaction is strong resistance, that tells me a story I’m clinging to—one that makes me feel safe.”

The discussion takes a bold turn into masculinity and diet, with Jon pointing out how the meat industry has long sold more than protein—it has sold an identity. “Men are meat eaters. Meat is strength. Meat is power. Sometimes even virility. The industry isn’t in the business of selling food—it’s in the business of selling masculinity.”

He also challenges traditional gender roles, noting that research suggests women hunted alongside men in early societies, flipping the common narrative. For Jon, true masculine strength lies not in domination but in protection—of children, of women, of animals, and of the planet itself.

Jon urges us to reimagine masculinity as rooted in compassion and guardianship. “What could be more manly than protecting that which cannot protect itself?”

🌱 This is an episode for vegans, the plant-curious, and even skeptics willing to question old stories. If you’ve ever wondered how culture, gender, and food intersect, you won’t want to miss it.

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Episode’s Transcript

Please understand that a transcription service provided the transcript below. It undoubtedly contains errors that invariably take place in voice transcriptions.

Justin Garfield (00:01)

This is the Real Men Eat Plants podcast. You've welcomed in to the vegan world. I'm Justin.

Bruce Da Silva (00:09)

I'm Bruce.

Justin Garfield (00:11)

And today we have a very special guest joining us all the way from Northern California, very devoted to his vegan diet among many other things, Mr. Jon Symes welcome in.

Jon Symes (00:23)

Thank you very much. Thank you for having me here. It's a pleasure to be here.

Justin Garfield (00:28)

Yeah, thank you for being here. We appreciate you. So Jon, first I want to start this off with, let's get our viewers to know your story a little bit. Tell us about you.

Jon Symes (00:38)

Okay, well, some of your viewers and listeners here in the US might think I've got a funny accent. That's because I was born and brought up, spent 40 years in the UK. And as I got into my working life, what I discovered was my fascination with the whole world of personal development and transformation. And so I've really been working in that field ever since. And for...

15 years or so I was working, I was doing that in Europe. I was a consultant to corporations across Europe in helping them with individual and team development. And then by some wonderful ⁓ act of faith, I wrote a book in 2026 called Your Planet Needs You. And it was subtitled as a handbook for creating the world that we want.

And it was, it was at point in my life when I was waking up to making, wanting to make sure that what I did in my working life had ⁓ an impact that was valuable in the world. So having written that book to my surprise and delight, it was picked up by a nonprofit based in San Francisco and they invited me to come and join their team.

So my then wife, my then partner, now wife, Sand and I, we sold our belongings, packed up a home and moved out here nearly 20 years ago. And with that work.

we were engaged in helping ordinary people in, in fact, all around the world to recognize that the choices we make in our lives have an impact on the future of the human family. So I think that plays into the, you know, some of the interests of why we would, for instance, pursue a vegan diet. We were looking at individuals wanting to see and wanting to take responsibility for the impact of their own actions.

And I worked with that organization for nearly 10 years. And now I work in my own name as a coach and a mentor, as an author and a speaker. And my work is really about all of these years in Transformation Guys have led me to see the power of stories, cultural stories and personal stories in shaping our lives. And so my work's devoted to helping us find the stories that serve

And more importantly, in some ways, finding the stories that don't serve, that limit us. And I'm in the process of writing a book which is called The Stories That Are Killing Us, because some of those cultural stories that we live within...

are doing just that. So for me, my work's about finding stories and my methodology I call narrative liberation. How do we free ourselves up from the stories that are constraining us, limiting us, and sometimes in the worst possible cases, sometimes even killing us. Yeah.

Bruce Da Silva (03:35)

That's powerful. The notion of the story component, and there's a quote that you probably heard of, Justin, I think we talked about this, where, well, it starts with a question. You ask, who's the most powerful person in any room? Right, not a powerful in an oppressive way, but just in general. And I think it was by Steve Jobs, and he said, it's the storyteller.

person who can weave and carve the stories and create the stories. Because if you think about it, I always like to say, ⁓ you have, let's just say from a religious standpoint, you could have the Bible. And you have the same book that was used to justify slavery.

Jon Symes (03:56)

That's really good.

Bruce Da Silva (04:08)

is the same one that that had inspired MLK to lead the civil rights movement, right? Who was telling the story? So like you're saying the narrative liberation, think that's what it was. ⁓ With that, mean, it's one is literally enslavement and the other is liberation. So then now for me, it's like figuring out how do you get to the point where you can first be aware that there are stories around it? Because I only became aware of that when I was maybe

Jon Symes (04:18)

Yes, yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

Bruce Da Silva (04:34)

24 about this whole story concept. How do you get to the point where you're first aware and then how do you find a way to deconstruct a limiting story and construct a limitless story?

Jon Symes (04:37)

Yeah.

That's exactly what I do. That's the methodology right there. How do we find the story and free ourselves from it and then adopt or create ⁓ a new, more liberating story for ourselves, a more empowering story. So that's where I'm, that fascinates me and I'm looking at the world now through the lens of what are the stories that are.

affecting this situation. And a really good clue for where we are affected by stories. Well, we need a clue. Let's just establish this first. We need a clue because most stories operate unconsciously. We don't even see them. As you said, Bruce, you didn't know until you were in your early 20s, this whole concept of stories. I think I was even older than you in the sense that I was probably in my 30s when I realized

Bruce Da Silva (05:37)

Yeah.

Jon Symes (05:42)

that not everybody wants to speak in the kind of rational way that I was trained in and which comes quite easily to men more than women quite often.

and women can follow a more intuitive route and the conversation can move in different directions. ⁓ A typically male way of speaking is quite purposeful. Where are we trying to get to in this conversation? How do we get there? Exactly that. Woompf. So first of all, we have to recognize there are stories and the place we find them is where we default to habits. That's a good clue. And where we experience extreme resistance.

Bruce Da Silva (06:08)

Yep.

Jon Symes (06:23)

So if you were to say to me, ⁓ give up meat for a week, and I go, no, no, I don't want to do that. If my reaction to it is strong, there's a chance it's infringing a story that I hold dear, that I feel that you're trying to move me with that request or something else. My resistance tells me that I'm holding tight to something that makes me feel safe, yeah?

Bruce Da Silva (06:50)

Yeah, totally. Justin, feel free to go into it. There's just so many things with this. I read a really good book. Maybe I have it. It's somewhere on my bookshelf, but it's called The Story Factor. It was similar to telling stories and stuff. And I think what you're saying is so true because if you tell someone, for example, it's important to be super generous and give.

Jon Symes (06:53)

Thank

Bruce Da Silva (07:08)

okay who are you to tell me what to do? In my world I gotta take care of myself, blah blah blah blah But instead you can tell them a story. And the story framework was more so just kind of an analogy but it was asking about the, like in the Fertile Crescent you have the Dead Sea, right? And in the Dead Sea it's the lowest body of water on earth.

Jon Symes (07:29)

Yeah.

Bruce Da Silva (07:29)

Right?

And there, there's, it's dead. There's no life in this sea. Right? But then you have, I think it's the Jordan River or the Sea of Galilee. I think Sea of Galilee. Right? So you look at these two, the Dead Sea and the Sea of Galilee. One of them is, has basically all death, right? The stall, everything like that. No life in the Dead Sea. The Sea of Galilee has fish and life and all that stuff. What's the difference between the two?

Jon Symes (07:38)

Right.

Bruce Da Silva (07:51)

many, but in the Dead Sea, there's only water that comes in, but it doesn't go out, right? It's stagnant. But with the Sea of Galilee, it's a flow of coming in and it's a flow of going out. So if we tell people, I'll be generous, be giving, blah, blah, blah. No, who are you to tell me? We live, there's inflation. My job's not good. I need this food. I can't eat plants. What is this? I got to be a member. Wait, maybe if I, that's an interesting point how in nature, if you give, is sustained. But if you keep selfishly, not that the Dead Sea is doing that, but that there's no life

that can come from. So in your experience, which one is likely going to resonate with more people?

Jon Symes (08:23)

Yeah.

Well, I'm not sure which would resonate right now, but the idea of reciprocity, which is what you're talking about, you're saying in the Sea of Galilee, there's a reciprocity, there's a flow, there's an exchange. And we know that's more powerful. I mean, when we stop and really think about it, we know it's more powerful.

The idea that I could just accumulate things to me, the Dead Sea model, might initially be appealing because that's how I'm gonna build my bank account or get the bigger house or whatever it might be. What's really interesting, one of the formative experiences in my life has been the opportunity to work for, work with, learn from indigenous people in different places in South America, here in North America particularly.

And ⁓ one of the core principles of the Quechua people in the Andes is called Aini, and it's the principle of sacred reciprocity. And so it's the idea that everything is constantly in flow and our relationship to life and our relationship perhaps to the mother earth that we live on wants to reflect this same reciprocity. Because we're fed and clothed and watered every single day whether we think about it or not.

We are the beneficiaries of this enormously beautiful, mysterious planet that we live on and typically give very little back except our waste products.

Bruce Da Silva (09:51)

Right.

Yeah. Well, that's right. That's right. mean, even

then, isn't it that we're drinking the urine of dinosaurs from however many years ago, right? Because it all gets cycled in and out and it's like, wait, this was from a T-rex? Whoa. I just say, no, no. But it's true, right? Because that whole process from it. Now, Justin, how do you see that kind of that cycle?

Jon Symes (10:03)

I... I... Yeah... Yeah...

Justin Garfield (10:08)

Ha ha ha.

Yeah,

no, I think you make a really good point. know.

through all of our conversations over the last year that I've known you, Bruce, we've talked about you need to give and you need to receive. It's like a yin and a yang. You need to give a little and then receive a little, just as we're talking about the Sea of Galilee versus the Dead Sea, where one of them just feels like it's a black hole, where it's going nowhere or just sits and decays, whereas one flows and cycles, and that's what keeps water pure, and that's what allows life to continue on and everything with that.

Bruce Da Silva (10:38)

Mm.

How do we keep it then maybe for Jon, like in the sense of, let's say you're a guy who's vegan, which you are, in that sense of, know, especially when you're on the come up, typically, let's say just in general, we're always kind of going through that process, but someone who's a teenager, twenties and thirties, who's really looking to climb, looking to just make their mark. How do you, how do you find it from your experience? are able to adopt a story and create a story that can empower them to really want to accumulate and grow, but also be

of giving, not just in one dimension, let's say to the planet, to animals, to other men, and to collaborate instead of just compete.

Jon Symes (11:23)

Mm-hmm.

Of course, I think so much of the teaching that happens, the way we learn when we're in those early years is what's modeled to us. And so a lot of it's just, a lot of our learning is subsumed without words. It's the way dad acts or the way I see other men operating. So we have to know that a lot of the teaching is happening in that way and not in a prescribed lesson context.

But I think the core in so many ways is to value authenticity. You know, I've got a son, he's about your age, guys. And I love him for a couple of reasons. I love him because I saw him born. But I love him because he's his own man.

Bruce Da Silva (12:06)

Mmm.

For sure, we can do it.

Jon Symes (12:15)

And he's the guy that when he was in school, he wore his hair long. It was not popular to do that. I remember him coming home from school one day and I noticed something in his hair and he got chewing gum in his hair. said, how the hell do you get chewing gum in? He said, I get bullied every day. And I had no idea that that was going on. And he was sufficiently strong in himself to continue to wear his hair long.

Bruce Da Silva (12:31)

wow. Yeah.

Jon Symes (12:44)

continue to ride his skateboard and do the world his way, he had the confidence and the strength to do that. And that allowed, and he's been vegan since he was 15, you know? And so he's been able to find the strength to be himself.

Bruce Da Silva (12:56)

No.

Jon Symes (13:04)

And when we've got that strength, whether it's about what we eat or what we wear or the music we listen to, I think it allows us to be confident in reaching outside the Orthodox. ⁓

Bruce Da Silva (13:16)

How do you develop that strength if you don't have a model of it? Because I'm assuming that you probably modeled that to some capacity, even though it was sort of maybe his own thing. How do you basically generate belief and evidence when you don't have any? Right? It's kind of the whole thing of, okay, you need experience to get a job. Yeah, you need a job to get experience.

Jon Symes (13:34)

Yeah. And we're caught. It's the catch-22, isn't it? Yeah.

Yeah. ⁓

Justin Garfield (13:40)

There's a very funny

meme about that, by the way.

Bruce Da Silva (13:42)

yeah, what's the meme?

Justin Garfield (13:44)

It was from that old, forget if it was like the Chopper show, I think it was called, where it's the two guys yelling at each other and the guy throws the chair. I need a job. You don't have experience. Well, how do I get experience? Work? Well, how do I work? Experience? And then just keep shouting.

Bruce Da Silva (13:57)

You?

Yeah, yeah, it's

terrible. It's terrible. It's good. It's true. It's so cool.

Jon Symes (14:03)

Yeah.

Well, you know, there's there's so much. And again, let's take a reference to some of our ancient traditions here on Earth, some of the intact indigenous communities. What one of the things that mark out indigenous communities is from from from my perspective is they'd figured out how to create a human life that was fair to everybody and sustainable. And we don't have that. We don't have a process now to help.

young boys step into manhood. We don't have a comparable process for women either. Rights of passage. ⁓ Rights of passage in themselves are important, but they're also part of a larger scheme in which we know that we are educating boys to become good men. Good meaning men that can fit into and embellish the community in which they live.

Bruce Da Silva (14:52)

Mm-hmm.

Hmm.

Jon Symes (14:59)

So I'm not making a judgment about what good is, but if we want to raise men to serve our community ongoingly, then we know we're in a process of education. If that's missing, guys, as it is so much in our world, if the only education we get is in that brick building called a school, which focuses on cramming us full of facts so that we can go and get a job, then it is, super difficult.

Bruce Da Silva (15:14)

yeah.

Jon Symes (15:27)

And so I think the mentoring of young men, the mentoring of teenagers, the mentoring of young adults can be a really important ⁓ element.

Bruce Da Silva (15:34)

Hmm.

Well, yeah, why even remember facts when you can just chat with your Google everything, right? So that's even just that last part. But even in exactly what you're saying, know, in certain religions, groups, for example,

In Judaism, you can have a bar mitzvah or bat mitzvah, right? But I don't know, I mean, just because you have a celebration, know, what responsibilities comes with it, right? Which I know there are some as well with the torrents, things like this. But then in the US, at least one of the ways that there was sort of that transformation or that transition was what? Military or it was doing something overseas. For myself, I did Peace Corps when I was 22. So that was kind of like it's a American program.

Jon Symes (16:16)

Yeah.

Bruce Da Silva (16:17)

But yeah, it's like you've on too far.

Jon Symes (16:18)

I just want it. Yeah.

Bruce Da Silva (16:19)

27 months. to some extent, these are those things. But nowadays, you know, just the need to even join the military has decreased a lot, which is pretty much a good thing, right? Trying to minimize the amount of combat as much as we can. But then also at the same time, a lot of the rites of passages that I think a lot of young men have from, let's say, 15 to 28, right? A lot of it could be, you know, playing a sport where it's somewhat physical or interpersonal. Now all the sports are just in a video game where, yeah, there's still competition.

collaboration but there's no really ⁓ pushing yourself to a different limit. It's all mental. And then in the other sense, let's say if it's even in a relationship dynamic,

Well, why would you go ahead and actually approach someone and build that muscle where you learn how to communicate, you learn how to present yourself, you learn how to deal with rejection. After a while, if you get rejected by 200, let's say ladies, okay, you may build a pretty thick skin, but if you only get rejected by two and then now you're fully depressed and you're on your phone and you're just doing Tinder and all these other things, where are you building that muscle? So yeah, we don't have that initiation. There's certain groups that are mimicking that. One that I actually did called the Mankind Project.

Jon Symes (17:07)

Yeah.

Bruce Da Silva (17:30)

which maybe you're aware of, yeah. Okay, awesome. There you go. So yeah, it's okay. Yeah. I mean, if you want to talk about that too, I did my initiation about a month and a half ago and it was a great starting point. There's definitely way more to get done. But yeah, I mean, even from that, like how do you think something like the mankind project and even just more modern ⁓ rites of passage can kind of fill in that gap that's currently there?

Jon Symes (17:31)

I'm in the Mankind Project group. I'm in an iGroup, yeah.

Well, there's a couple of things. There's the Warrior Weekend which you attended. Yeah. And that in some ways is an initiation. I mean, what do they do? They take us to that event and they disorient us deliberately. And then they put us in different situations to learn about the different aspects of being a man and how we might respond.

Bruce Da Silva (18:01)

NWTA, yeah, it was great.

Jon Symes (18:25)

positive ways we can respond and ways that are going to trap us. We're encouraged to get into conversations to start to open up our inner world because men notoriously don't want to do that, aren't trained to do that, and the condition to think that doing that is weak. So the initiation weekend I think is wonderful and then the iGroup, which is for anybody that doesn't.

know what that is. That's ⁓ a group of men, perhaps about a dozen men, who meet regularly, probably weekly or every two weeks, ⁓ and meet either in person. Our group meets mostly in Zoom. ⁓ this is ⁓ following a prescribed format. This is men ⁓ sharing with each other the challenges they're facing and the triumphs that they're experiencing.

but then looking and doing inside that group, doing the inner work that helps us meet the challenges we're seeing in life. Those groups, think, I can't recommend them highly enough to men. Most men in the US in the middle of life don't have a single close male friend. That's a shocking statistic. Yeah.

Bruce Da Silva (19:32)

Hmm.

Yeah, fact, that's very shocking, but it's very true. It's

Justin Garfield (19:42)

Yeah.

Bruce Da Silva (19:45)

very true.

Jon Symes (19:46)

And

so where do we go? Where do I go when life's challenging me? Where do I go when I'm feeling down, when I'm depressed, when I can't see an answer, when I, whatever. Where do I go to solve that problem? And obviously, historically, we'd have had a ⁓ band of brothers in the same community as us that had probably had some...

a prior experience that would help or could offer me some guidance or just listen to me while I figure it out myself. That's what happens in the Mankind Project iGroups and it's super valuable. I recommend to anybody that's listening, check it out. It really is a fantastic resource for men to find friendship and support with other men who are trying to live a good life, who trying to expand and become more capable.

Living a good life. Yeah

Bruce Da Silva (20:41)

How do you feel that would transition for, say, just with vegan men specifically, right? Because there's that joke that we said before the call of, know, a vegan, like a vegan men's group or something like that. First, you're vegan, what's wrong with you? Second, you're a man, nowadays, what's wrong with you? So now you have the situation of, wait a second, no, no, no. Like, for me, I'm not gonna do that because there's already so much of being vegan and being a guy. We're not being persecuted, we're not, you know, so I don't wanna make it dramatic, but at the same time, you know, one of the worst forms of

is a solution.

Jon Symes (21:13)

Yeah.

Bruce Da Silva (21:13)

I mean, the capital pun, all these things. So a lot

Jon Symes (21:13)

Yeah.

Bruce Da Silva (21:15)

of guys are actually putting themselves in the worst form of at least social punishment to some extent because they feel ostracized, they feel weird, and now you're vegan too? Dude, what are we doing? So what's your suggestion to, let's say especially people in my and Justin's generation as to how we can maybe look at it of, all right, let's connect with guys. Maybe there's that one certain style where we don't need to sit in a circle and share or whatever it is. Maybe we do, maybe we don't. But ⁓ what's a sort of starting

point that we can just build and have some initial momentum to start getting the ball rolling.

Jon Symes (21:48)

be in the company of other men, other men who are making the same life choices. I'm fascinated by the group that you've created in LA, and my guess is you could spread that virtually as well. And when we're in the company of other people who have the ⁓ same ideas and maybe face the same challenges, and I get, I'm with you on this one, Bruce, I don't wanna...

Bruce Da Silva (21:56)

Thank you, yeah, yeah.

Jon Symes (22:12)

Let's not over-emphasize how difficult it might be, but there are challenges. And so when we can be with other people who have the same interests and values and face the same challenges, then we can help each other in enormously powerful ways. Even just gathering as men, whether we're vegan or not, identifying ourselves as men. I resisted men's work ⁓ for a number of years because I didn't think being with other men had...

sufficient value compared to other ways I was engaged. I was always engaged. I have always been engaged in personal transformation of some kind. I didn't appreciate how valuable the forum of being with other men was for a while. Now I can't believe that I missed it for so long. ⁓ yeah, yeah, it is, it is. So getting into good company with other men, I think is really valuable, yeah, yeah.

Bruce Da Silva (23:00)

hindsight 2020 always. ⁓

Justin Garfield (23:02)

Yeah.

Absolutely.

Jon, I want to kind of take the conversation back a bit to the beginning of this, where you talked about there are certain stories that are killing us. Could you give us like one or two examples of ones you think fit that criteria right now?

Jon Symes (23:23)

Yeah, let's just talk about the man box. So Tony Porter, I don't know if you know, but Tony Porter's done some great work in helping identify ⁓ the challenges and difficulties of being a man in today's culture. And he describes the man box, which is in essence a set of stories that we feel we have to adhere to in order to be a real man, a proper man.

You'll know most of these. know, we as men, we're discouraged from showing our emotions. We're encouraged to be super independent, to be able to sort things out. You know, isn't the joke always that, you know, the man and the woman are driving the car and you're lost. And she says, should we stop and ask for somebody? And he'll always say, no, no, I know where we're going and won't want to stop and wind the winder down. Yeah.

Bruce Da Silva (24:17)

Yeah, that was a big building to build.

Justin Garfield (24:19)

Mm-hmm.

Yep.

Jon Symes (24:20)

It's like, because I have to prove my independence. So strength, independence, lack of emotionality, being stoic, those are some of the core stories. Identifying strongly with the role as the provider. Those are core stories about being a man. Now, those stories...

start to affect how we behave. They influence our thinking and they influence the behavioral choices we take. As I said earlier, I think most of that happens unconsciously. We don't actually stop and say, ⁓ I'm not going to buy that shirt because it's not manly, but I just, move past the rack that's got the pink shirts on unconsciously looking for some bolder, more masculine kind of color.

So these stories are operating unconsciously. Now here's where it gets super interesting. Those stories become biochemical messages that actually shorten our lifespan. When we live inside the need to stay within the man box, my heart function is going to be affected.

Justin Garfield (25:29)

Wow.

Jon Symes (25:41)

the incidence of stroke amongst men who are clinging to masculine identity is much higher. And so, so guys, we just by dint of being men have a lifespan that is nearly six years shorter than women born into the same circumstances. Today. Today. I'm gonna die six years younger than my wife. If the averages play out.

How is that the case? How is it the case that men are four times more likely to end their own life than women? So when you ask Justin about stories that are limiting and killing us, that's actually what's going on today. Men die younger. And the difference is we're living inside the constraints of being a man.

Bruce Da Silva (26:18)

Mmm, yep.

Justin Garfield (26:38)

And that's so interesting that you bring that up too, because I agree it's true, especially when you mentioned that men dying six years younger on average than women because of all the factors too. But one of the things that you talked about that I really resonated with was these stories that we continue to be told or tell ourselves, they can really affect our own behavior, our own belief system and the way we see the world. I'll give you an example that's not exactly aligned with this.

But I remember years ago, if we have NBA fans out there, this is back when LeBron was still on the Miami Heat. And one sports center writer decided to read his article with a LeBron quote, I would love to spend the rest of my career in Miami. But you open the article and the whole quote listed in there was, as much as I'd love to spend the rest of my career in Miami. And so,

Bruce Da Silva (27:14)

Bungo!

No way! ⁓

Justin Garfield (27:34)

Clickbait

can really affect the way people think or the story that you craft, the narrative that you tell yourself. It's crazy. Even just the slightest little thing can get us on a full different direction. And how do you feel like that intertwines with how men view veganism as a whole?

Bruce Da Silva (27:37)

Wow.

Jon Symes (27:54)

Gosh, well, I kind of want to come back to the way that stories are manipulated to control the population. So we might come back to that one if you want to. In terms of veganism, gosh, well, you know, I was reflecting on this ahead of this conversation. And so much of the messaging that we get, the stories in our culture about meat.

are really tightly tied to masculinity. Men are meat eaters. ⁓ Meat is strength, meat is power. Sometimes even meat is seen as feeding our virility. And these messages are consciously expounded by the meat industry, which isn't in the business of selling protein, it's in the business of selling masculinity.

Bruce Da Silva (28:26)

Mm.

Hmm.

Jon Symes (28:51)

And if you look at the advertising, that's exactly what's happening. And in contrast, people who make educated choices about what they eat are often portrayed as fussy, ⁓ privileged, and often with connotations that it's feminine and therefore not masculine to be fussy about your food. So the messages about

Bruce Da Silva (28:51)

Mm.

Jon Symes (29:20)

meat messages about veganism and masculinity are intertwined. They really are. And you see it in the way that the meat industry, for instance, advertises. But you'll see it in the culture. We're in this fascinating place in the culture wars where we are literally hearing people tell women to get back in the kitchen.

get back in the, your place is in the kitchen. I'm hearing reports of 10 year old boys in school in the UK telling women teachers, go make me a sandwich.

Bruce Da Silva (29:59)

Hmm.

Justin Garfield (30:00)

Hmm.

Jon Symes (30:01)

I mean, so it's shocking. But when there's meat to be cooked, when we have the barbecue out, who's doing the cooking?

Bruce Da Silva (30:12)

Mm-hmm.

Jon Symes (30:14)

And

in UK culture, we'd have had a big meal on a Sunday, a family meal on a Sunday, and we'd have roast the Sunday roast. And when the Sunday roast comes out, it gets put in front of at the head of the table. Dad picks up the carving.

Justin Garfield (30:20)

The roast, right?

Jon Symes (30:31)

knife and sharpens it and dad carves the meat. So we've got our culture constantly reinforces this idea that masculinity and meat are somehow connected. that's how I see it. I guess you guys have got other examples of how those things are entwined as well.

Bruce Da Silva (30:49)

Yeah, I definitely have some perspective that's similar, has some variation, where I like to look at things a lot through the lens of evolutionary psychology.

And in the sense of how much of our psychology is intertwined with our evolution, because a lot of the strategies that we take today and the conflicts that we have, especially when it's intersex, especially just societally, is things that were advantageous when we were more in the savanna and these small hunter gatherers sort of subset. So I think with the capacity of, let's say, even being masculine and being able and eating meat, I think back then when we were sustaining ourselves, not with nuts, seeds, berries,

gooms and all that. But when we were hunting, as they would call it, game, right? That at that point, yeah, it was pretty difficult. It was pretty risky. You basically had to approach another creature that could pretty much kill you quite easily since homo sapiens were not actually that.

physically powerful, our intellect is kind of what gets us. So that I think at a very primal level, although we were gathering berries and all these things before we hunted, I mean, that's what I've researched. I think what it does is it taps into this past sort of archetype.

how we were and saying it because we used to do it we should still do it now. And I think while there is some ⁓ some grains of like a semblance or understanding that just because we were doing it doesn't mean we need to do it now. And even then wouldn't it be more masculine to defend individuals who are helpless than those people are going like I'm gonna go hunting and such a brave masculine thing. No it's not.

Put down your weapon, go fight the bear with your hands. No, no, I don't remember. So you're not naturally more, but my intellect is a part of my strength. Well, just, you know, if you go to a fight and let's say two humans are gonna fight, you never see a boxer fight someone who has a gun, right? Because the match is just not fair.

Jon Symes (32:41)

No.

Right.

Bruce Da Silva (32:43)

The box

is going to fight another boxer, hence the rules are clear. So I think a lot of it may come from evolution. That's just my take. But even then, our evolutionary history and past isn't a prophecy and a dictate for how we had to live moving forward. So hopefully, as we're doing this stuff, we can sort of change the narrative or at least evolve it.

Jon Symes (33:04)

This is so fun guys. So there's some recent

research and I don't know well enough to quote, but we have this story that the hunters were men and the women were collecting the berries and ⁓ digging up the roots. that was the gendered way in which food was brought into the cave or the fireside, I suppose. There's some very recent research looking at the bones of ⁓ people

peoples from those hunter gatherer time periods, which shows there's as much damage to the bone structure of female corpses as there is male corpses. And the idea that the interpretation that is being promoted is that

the principal way in which bone damage happened was in hunting. That was the most dangerous activity. And if it's true that most of the injuries came from hunting accidents, then it looks as if women were doing as much of the hunting as the men. And maybe that's true because we do have a way of projecting our current worldview into history to make sense of it.

Bruce Da Silva (34:17)

Yep. Mmm.

Jon Symes (34:28)

So it could just be that everybody who was able bodied and able to was out hunting, unless they were perhaps carrying a child or caring for a young child that was suckling. And so it could be that actually both men and women were the hunters in those days. We won't know, but it's interesting to test the bounds of the assumptions that we make about where this has come

Bruce Da Silva (34:42)

Right.

I know it's a good point because then like you're saying, let's just say the females were the ones who were maybe carrying children. And I mean, I think typically if we look at the anatomy and this is one of the positions that they put forward is just typically that males tend to have a wider shoulder to hip ratio and females tend to have the opposite. And even though those are different measurements, like you're saying, how do we find a way to understand the evolution and like...

For example, I'm reading someone, a lot of his work that has really helped me understand veganism in and of itself. But what he said was that lot of the evolutionary psych and all these things are kind of an equal opportunity offender.

because if you have both sides of the spectrum, let's just say from a political standpoint, could have, evolution can kind of offend people who are more to the right because if they believe more in creationism and, no, this is like, created, we weren't involved, this is how we're, okay, it creates some conflict there. But then people who tend to be more in the left of, no, no, this can't be true because just because it's evolution, blah, blah, blah. So it's kind of interesting how it's kind of.

Jon Symes (35:41)

Alright.

Bruce Da Silva (36:00)

in a way affecting both sides. But I think the through line, is a lot of the work that you do, which we're loving, at least right now, is what story do we create with the objective information that we have? The bones say one thing, okay, what's the story we're gonna really get behind that can actually best represent reality? And not just listen to the fictions and all these things. What can we believe in and create?

Jon Symes (36:21)

Yeah.

Yeah. Well, there's that famous saying, isn't there, that, that history and history is really his story about what happened in the past. History is written by the Victor. And so we've interpreted the past from the ⁓ perspective of the Victor. And if we're talking about ⁓ masculinity, the Victor has been

is men. We live in a patriarchal culture. And what that means is we live in a culture which is designed around what men like and what men want. And we we've designed the entire culture around that perspective. And we have been living in a patriarchal culture for 1000s and 1000s of years. And so we have a history

which justifies where we are now. And so we will say, it's traditionally been this way. We talk about the traditional role of men. Well, what we're talking really about in that case is the role of men inside a patriarchal culture, because that's as far back as we look. That's how we tell the story. I'm fascinated by the traditional role of men.

Bruce Da Silva (37:23)

Mmm.

Mmm.

Jon Symes (37:47)

if you go back more than 12,000 years ago, you go back to a hunter gatherer community. And what is it that you would call on a man to do? What would a man do that a woman couldn't do? And one of the key roles is around, I believe these are my views, is around protection. And so you call on the man to protect that which can't protect itself, which might be a young child. It's certainly

Bruce Da Silva (38:12)

Mmm.

Jon Symes (38:15)

a woman who's bearing a child or suckling a child. And so you have the sense that one of the traditional roles of men is to protect life and to protect those that carry life. And so women, this oversimplifies in a way, but women are blessed to the carriers of life in a way that we can't be. Our spark, our seed, our semen is essential to the

Bruce Da Silva (38:17)

Sure. Yes.

Jon Symes (38:44)

the creation of new life, but we don't carry the impulse of life. That's carried by women. And I argue, and I've found this from mystical sources as well as historical sources, that the key role that men play is that of protecting life and protecting the sacred. When we talk about men in today's world taking choices to protect life by, for instance,

Bruce Da Silva (39:06)

Mm. ⁓

Jon Symes (39:14)

choosing a particular diet.

then we're returning towards the idea of men protecting other forms of life and protecting the possibility of our future. I think it's beholden on us to wise up enough to start to take serious action around protecting the future of the human family. Because right now it's under threat. It's under severe threat.

And that's not used to anybody. If you pay attention, shouldn't be wasting our, we should be putting emphasis on what it takes to develop the next generations who can protect the planet that we live on that feeds us every day and give respect and dignity to every inhabitant, human and otherwise. That's the recipe.

Bruce Da Silva (40:11)

Hmm, I love that.

I just want to mention there is a...

It's beautiful points. was a study in the UK that happened recently. I don't know where in the UK, but just like you were saying about the nature of typically the expectation is to provide, protect, all those things. And they were studying couples in the UK. And what they found was that when the baby was in the next room, but when the baby would cry, I believe over 90 % of the time it would be the mother

would wake up and attend to the baby. The father would sleep. Now the narrative could be, the father blah blah blah, why is he sleeping, he doesn't care. Well hold on. They saw another angle that when they were sleeping there, it's father and mother and then they had the baby as well, when there was a sound of rustling leaves outside, the father was consistently more likely to wake up.

Jon Symes (40:49)

Hmm.

Right, right.

Bruce Da Silva (41:11)

How does that happen?

mean, I don't know if someone says, hey, you gotta wake up when there's sounds of leaves. No, the mother would sleep right through the leaves. And the father would sleep right through the baby because from a very primal level. But then now, like you're saying, how do we take...

Jon Symes (41:16)

Ha ha ha ha ha

Bruce Da Silva (41:25)

what we know or what we prepare to know and embody that now in the world. Because what does it mean to protect? To take advantage of those that are the weakest, that can't defend themselves? No, that's being a bully. And why would you be a bully to someone so helpless who needs your protection? And what could be more manly than protecting that which cannot protect itself?

Jon Symes (41:42)

Yeah.

Exactly, exactly, yeah. I think we've got the idea, the rules about what it takes to be a man in today's world were written to keep men in the driving seat.

Justin Garfield (41:48)

That's right.

Jon Symes (42:01)

I mean, to me that's super clear. And the arguments that we have in the culture wars right now, where people will be talking about, let's return to traditional male values and traditional women's role. We've got trad wives who want to live in the kitchen and we've got traditional men who want to perpetuate that situation and be the leader of the house and so on. A lot of that is designed to keep the status quo as it has been.

which is a world that's tilted towards what men prefer and what men need and want. So the culture war is a...

It's ⁓ demand for a conservative point of view. And I mean, I don't mean conservative in a political sense. mean, keeping it the way it is. Because so many people are advantaged by that. And certainly most men are in some ways advantaged by that. So yeah, I think it's a very rich time to be re-examining what it...

Bruce Da Silva (42:50)

Like protecting and sort of, yeah.

Jon Symes (43:08)

what role men should play in order that we, and Bruce, you used this phrase earlier, that we meet this moment. You know, we meet, let's just remind ourselves that we live in a time in which the ⁓ human capacity to influence the planet that feeds us is so out of control now. We have such power, it's being used with such little wisdom that we're...

Bruce Da Silva (43:15)

Mm-hmm.

Mmm.

Jon Symes (43:37)

You know, we can't even own up to the fact that we're warming up the climate. That's become a ⁓ political point now that we can't own up to the fact that we're warming the climate. And if we continue to do that, we're going to make large parts of the world uninhabitable. We're going to have millions and billions of refugees, people fleeing areas where they can no longer live safely.

And we don't have any, we're not agreed about the cause of that and we're not agreed about what to do about it. We humans are facing a very daunting set of very serious challenges. And if we continue to meet them with the thinking and the gender roles that we've had historically, it will end badly for a huge numbers of people, I believe. Yeah.

Bruce Da Silva (44:29)

Mmm.

Jon Symes (44:30)

So if we talk about narrative liberation, let's start talking about stories that empower us. Let's start imagining.

Bruce Da Silva (44:32)

Yeah.

Justin Garfield (44:37)

Yes.

Jon Symes (44:39)

the value that comes out of a diverse community, not a homogenous community of white men deciding what to do. Let's reevaluate what comes out of diversity. Let's reimagine what it is to be in reciprocal relationship with the planet and all of her inhabitants. Let's reimagine the way we connect to the natural world. Let's reimagine the world in which we...

Bruce Da Silva (45:00)

Hmm.

Jon Symes (45:07)

recognize that actually we are insufficient and starved of feminine wisdom and perspective, and that we're paying the price for that. And let's imagine a story in which we honor and elevate the feminine, in which we honor life in all of her forms and reciprocate with it. Let's imagine that we elevate the common good over our individual needs and wants.

Bruce Da Silva (45:36)

No, I'm

totally behind that. I think the one challenge that we have though in the society is we need to elevate the feminine wisdom. We need to stop shaming the masculine imperative. I think that's where we go into flux because even if you have any, even like the planet, right, if you have the North and South Pole that operate because of ⁓ an opposite charge, and it could be a man or a woman, but just masculine and feminine to that capacity, we need to honor both because if we're shaming people who are, let's say a vegan guy, hey, you're a man, shame on you, but that's not gonna work.

And the same way we wouldn't want to shame a woman for having these things. I don't know how these things work in the sense of let's elevate one, but it's like that concept of the rising tide lifting all ships. How do we find a way to bring people up? Because Justin and I, and even yourself, we weren't around, let's say in the 1800s. these times where we didn't do a lot of these things, it may not be our fault, but of course it's our responsibility to step up. But how do we elevate and honor the feminine without at the same time diminishing and

the masculine who is showing up in a world where from our perspective, at least my perspective, where it's really transitioning for young men a lot, right? We shift from a muscle economy to a mental economy. And a lot of men, their main skills like... ⁓

Jon Symes (46:48)

Mm-hmm.

Bruce Da Silva (46:52)

Bronze over brains. I know I'm stereotyping to an extent, but now if you have the typical young man who feels I can't compete in the marketplace, I don't know a lot of software and personal skills on average, how do I find a way to really present myself in a world now where I'm sensing, okay, me just being a guy is a problem. Me having just a desire to want to show up, to do these things is a problem. And then, at the same time, how do we find it so that it creates like...

the narrative that basically connects the two together, where it's like any virtue taken to its excess becomes a vice. If you're too much of, if you're too, like, if you're too much of, too much courage, you could be reckless. If you don't have enough, you're a coward.

Jon Symes (47:27)

Yeah.

Bruce Da Silva (47:36)

Right? So there's the element of there's a toxic feminine, there's a pure feminine, let's say there's a toxic masculine, a pure masculine, maybe a version of both that are kind of to the extreme of too much. So I think, I don't know how you see it, but how do we find a through line where we can, we can honor both and then be cognizant of how to just say, Hey, these elements may have worked in the past. Let's take the good that we can from that, but let's evolve to what's where we're heading to save the planet, to save the animals.

Jon Symes (47:42)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Bruce Da Silva (48:06)

to save humans, have more compassion. How do you think the narrative could look for us to segue to that reality?

Jon Symes (48:14)

But firstly, I agree with your analysis and I agree with your assessment that it's a very difficult problem to solve because we tend to live in a zero-sum game. So that if we're going to elevate one party, that we're going to diminish another. And that isn't going to work as you rightly point out. So how do we find and honor the best of everybody's contribution? And I don't have a simple answer to that question.

Bruce Da Silva (48:36)

tough.

Jon Symes (48:41)

but I think it's about a story. You know, because if you boil it down, the way we decide to operate in our culture is based on a story. Almost everything can be reduced to a story. So what stories do we have about the future at the moment? You know, we've got a pretty dystopian ⁓ story that says things could go badly wrong.

Bruce Da Silva (49:02)

Mmm.

Jon Symes (49:12)

We've got a story, a very strong ⁓ story that says technology will save us. We actually don't, we don't need to do anything different. We just need to wait for, is it AI or something else to catch up and it'll solve all our problems. It'll make it okay with the climate, it'll clean the oceans, it'll make sure everybody's fed. So we've got a very strong adherence to a story that technology will save us.

We have very few stories about a re-imagined harmony between human beings. We have very few stories that say, if we trust the human genius and create the circumstances for collaboration, we can meet any challenge that comes our way. And I believe that we can. I do believe that the, I mean, the human genius, that there is,

We are so amazingly smart. And if we can combine that with respect for each other.

and I think there's one other element as well, but in a new story, then we're living into a story. The element that gets overlooked, I think, quite often is the pride we have as humans, human hubris. We're very reluctant to confess that we don't know answers to particular problems.

Bruce Da Silva (50:28)

Mmm.

Jon Symes (50:47)

We're always wanting to have an answer, turn up with an answer, have a solution, usually one. And one of the indigenous elders that I learned with put forward the older way of thinking, said, if you find a problem you can't solve, see if you can come up with six different explanations for it. Six? Six? Yeah, isn't it?

Bruce Da Silva (51:10)

Hmm, well, that's pretty creative.

Justin Garfield (51:11)

Wow.

Jon Symes (51:15)

Because who's to say that

Bruce Da Silva (51:15)

Well, look at that.

Jon Symes (51:17)

my one answer, my one answer is going to be different from your one answer maybe, and yours as well, Justin, and then we've got three of us fighting over who's right. But if we each come up with six, we might find that actually there are different perspectives on this problem. And if we don't have to be stuck with any one of them, it might open up all sorts of ways of collaborating.

So I think we have to lose a lot of our pride as humans in the sense that we can understand everything. That one day we will unlock the atom and one day we will be able to create artificial forms of life that look exactly like you and me look today. This hubris means that we don't allow into our lives the mysterious.

Bruce Da Silva (52:08)

Hmm.

Jon Symes (52:09)

the divine, the mystery. We don't allow that in and yet it's such an integral part of the world that we live in.

Bruce Da Silva (52:19)

I think, Jon, you love this, that, and I kind of have evolved my thinking on this, that one of the greatest discoveries in science, let's just say, or in really human history, is the discovery of ignorance.

Jon Symes (52:33)

Right, yes. ⁓

Bruce Da Silva (52:34)

If you really think about it, wow, you've really,

I of course you can say how far back you can go. My model for that is Socrates. Of course, I know there's so many, but he was really at the forefront in my opinion. But imagine that, discovering ignorance. That's pretty remarkable. So it's also discovering if you speak with someone who's not vegan or doesn't even explore any of these ideas, it's, know, there's not even, no, this is for sure. It's, okay, wait, is what Jon is saying to me.

Jon Symes (52:48)

Yeah. Yeah.

Justin Garfield (52:50)

Indeed.

Bruce Da Silva (53:03)

Am I gonna just pretend that I actually know everything or can I say, look, I maybe don't agree with you, I just intuitively I don't, but I don't know the answer to that. Let me extrapolate, explore both, if not three, four, five, six, seven sides, and then come to a conclusion that makes some sense. But instead, we wanna forget about the discovery of ignorance, and then we know everything.

Jon Symes (53:18)

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

cut, know, a couple, this is, I'm loving this conversation. When I'm interviewing people to work with me, I'm always listening for people who know that they don't know things. I love when people say, know, I don't know, because I'd rather deal with somebody who knows what they don't know, or at least knows they don't know things, than somebody who pretends otherwise. I think that's, that's one of the tracks we've worked

Bruce Da Silva (53:37)

Let's go.

Mmm.

Justin Garfield (53:50)

authenticity number one

and owning it.

Jon Symes (53:54)

Yeah, yeah. It's fascinating. So the idea that there things we don't know is just, is so important. It really is. I like that point, discovering ignorance. Yeah, yeah.

Bruce Da Silva (53:55)

Yeah.

Justin Garfield (53:55)

Yeah.

Bruce Da Silva (54:11)

I think

it's pretty good. Yeah, Justin, you were going to say something?

Justin Garfield (54:14)

yeah i was just gonna say we've had a great conversation we are getting to the our point so john first off i want to thank you so much for your time and being here and if people wanted to learn more about you in your work or reach out to you what's the best way they can do that

Jon Symes (54:28)

Thank you. A ⁓ really good starting point would be to go to my website, wholeandfree.me. It's a website designed to support men recognizing the wholeness that we have access to when we strip away the stories and the freedom that comes to us when we strip away the stories. So guys, you are whole and we are all whole, intrinsically whole, and we're on our way to being free.

to the degree that we can move out these stories that inhibit us. Holdenfree.me is where you'll find out more about the work that I do to support men and it'll give you access to the whole ecosystem where I'm posting content and supporting people, yeah.

Justin Garfield (55:16)

Love that. And if there's one piece of parting advice that you can leave for anyone watching this, what would you say it would be?

Bruce Da Silva (55:16)

Beautiful.

And let's say you have a vegan man who, because that's the main audience, who's maybe looking, yeah, any piece for a vegan man who's probably watching this, just, hey, this could probably help you moving forward as much as possible.

Jon Symes (55:38)

⁓ What I'd want to do is I would want to acknowledge those men for the choices they've already made, which have had some degree of difficulty. And I'd say in that acknowledgement, that reflects that you have a courage and an inner compass, which will serve you well. And I would encourage them to recognize that in themselves, honor that in themselves.

and make even greater use of that courage and that moral compass going forward in their lives. I'm already impressed by anybody who's taken that choice. So I celebrate those guys, I wish them well, I suggest they join your group or others where they could get with other men, certainly other men, and with other vegan men, fabulous, that's even more powerful. Yeah.

Justin Garfield (56:29)

Absolutely. Jon, thank you again so much for being here. And thank you all for tuning in to the Real Men Eat Plants podcast. I'm Bruce. Sorry, that's Bruce. I'm Justin.

Bruce Da Silva (56:30)

Beautiful.

Well, know

what? Sometimes I feel like Justin, but I'm not as handsome, so I can't

Jon Symes (56:42)

you

Justin Garfield (56:42)

And I wish I

had half the wisdom that Bruce did. Maybe that's why I want to be him.

Bruce Da Silva (56:46)

man, you know what? Come on now, come on. What do we got for Jon? Well, thanks for.

Jon Symes (56:50)

Well, I'd like

to thank you both. You guys are amazing. I love it. It's such a rich conversation that we've had. I love what you're doing. I love the strength of your conviction and the beacon that you are in the lives of other men of your age, of all ages, and strengthen the courage that you've demonstrated in treading this unorthodox path and then making a podcast out of it. You could have just been vegan, but you've actually made a podcast out of it. So power to your elbow, guys.

Bruce Da Silva (57:16)

You know what? No it isn't.

It's like having one job, it's not enough, right? You gotta be vegan, you gotta be active, you gotta be this and this. There's vegan inflation, as they call it. Right now we're going for vegan inflation.

Jon Symes (57:28)

Right.

Justin Garfield (57:29)

Yeah.

Jon Symes (57:31)

Well,

I commend you for what you're doing, guys. If I can help in any way, let me know. And ⁓ thank you for supporting your audience in all the ways that you do.

Bruce Da Silva (57:36)

Thank

Justin Garfield (57:41)

Absolutely. And once again, thank you all for tuning into the RealMoneyPlans Podcast. I'm Justin, and we'll see you next time. Be sure to take a listen for our next episode coming soon.

Bruce Da Silva (57:48)

I'm Bruce.