Going Bald / Shaving Your Head / Getting Laid.
28 May 2018 [link youtube]
Toxic Masculinity 101. Includes references to Batman, Buddhist monasticism and Jordan Peterson.
https://www.patreon.com/a_bas_le_ciel
Youtube Automatic Transcription
so a bunch of people asked me to make a
video about shaving my head about being bald ah maybe like five people and they're they're all guys they're I guess they're guys who are dealing with going bald or with was shaving their heads and wanted that me know they phrased in different ways like how did you how did you own this as part of your identity and you you seem to think it's it's an interesting time I don't know I mean I don't have a whole lot to say about it I started shaving my head before I started going bald so I started my shave man when I was still in high school I think I was 16 it's possible I just turned 17 oh great sorry I didn't even know it's yeah I'm wearing my wearing my branded t-shirt here cuz I'm ready to go to the gym no no no I'm gonna say no six more times no no no I mean so for me I got a question on and I'm related Walt but yet profoundly related topic on discord where someone was asking me about going vegan in my life before I went vegan and some of these kind of ethical and it's those choices before I even became vegan and before I got involved with Buddhism I already had a lot of stuff in my life that reflected this kind of error SATs militaristic self disciplined aesthetic right so I've told you this way back then maybe I guess 16 you know again it could have been 15 but you know back then you know what got rid all my furniture I had a bedroom where I slept directly on the floor and the only like furniture had the only little bits because that it could be fold up and put it away in the closet it was a small closet so so like if friends came over I painted the walls of the room silver and a metallic silver walls and a gray a grey carpet and yeah I had this very bare you know when I got into this kind of you know so you know so I went through a period of not even using blankets that's right yeah and then I think of it well no but okay so why did I do that I was horrified by the I knew a lot of kids growing up who said oh I can't sleep this comforter I can't sleep without this heavy blanket I met a couple kids who said they literally couldn't sleep without having the radio on they needed the noise of hearing the raid on earth few known people like that like a metal these people who had these weird requirements for how they slept and again I was growing up in the the shadow of the Cold War you know I told you this is we did a video but this a few days ago it was like World War 3 is coming and again the sense of toughing and toughening up for it was partly intellectual and partly physical and partly partly pragmatic when have you but it was this sense of I live in a decadent culture nobody's prepared to deal with anything none of these people can sleep in a tent if they have to or sleep on the ground if they have to and you know I want to learn to sleep without a pillow you know I want to learn to sleep without you know blankets that I'm comfortable with her or used to or something you know so is this sense of yeah it does I mean it ultimately does you know connect a little bit to the the ancient Greek stuff a lot of that stuff that the Stoics and the skeptics and there's a lot of discussion you haven't read that well right you haven't read that that's sorry - the great philosophy but the the the stoah were now remembered as the Stoics and the skeptics and the debates around them there was a lot of talk about kind of what does it mean to toughen yourself up and their conception of it had a lot to do with like you know when you're thirsty not drinking water Emile it wasn't it wasn't like bodybuilding you know what I mean it was an absolute strength it was a kind of intellectual it was kind of strength of character that they were interest which is you know but anyway peels the 15 year old boys reading some that stuff so yeah you know is this sense of one to live a meaningful life willing to live a self disciplined life and you know when I figured it was actually it was this girl at a crush on and she took me aside and she explained to me that I didn't know anything about haircare right my parents had never taught me how to do anything yeah yeah yeah yeah she was like look you know like you don't actually know how to shampoo your hair and which was true I'd never been taught anything you know I had really thick curly hair and I was like no you know if you don't actually work it in with your fingertips and then do this and just she taught me through these like six steps yeah yeah yeah yeah I never slept with her I mean I wonder if my whole life would be different in a weird way if I had but you can tell she and I were like we were kind of we were close we're intimate in a sense you know that she was actually like in my bathroom explaining to me how to shampoo my hair and stuff yeah yeah but that's that's how it is when you're when you're a teen it was for me I mean I remember having kind of close relationships with women I didn't sleep with who weren't my girlfriend you know they I remember uh you know type of that and I realized like okay this whole having hair thing there's like a fork in the road but basically I've grown up like a you know child in the you know of growing up feral not knowing what having hair really involves and this girl has explained to me like look if you want to have hair there's all this haircare stuff and hair stones that I forgot to do which also made sense cuz you know it was very hard for me to get my hair to look like a normal person's hair it was just very curly and vibrant and so you can see that my daughter my daughter's got some ID and she has this very you know lustrous high volume hair whatever yeah it's totally different that's right that's right yeah that's right yeah yeah [Music] you know we first met her hair is not picked up well on camera the color of her hair IRL kind of a little bit escapes photography so that was a surprise the first time we met him it was striking to me that all of your coloring the color of your hair eyes and skin was not what I was expecting anyway but yeah I genetically I'm attracted to you so that we can have children with less slice realistic try to compensate for the hair deity I've got the the untamable hair but it was like there's there was like this fork in the road you realize like dude I'm not gonna be a guy who puts an hour into my hair this is ridiculous and you know up to that plan so yeah so at that point was it and then again the whole thing I mean oh right I didn't measure sorry another thing I was just mentioning sleeping on the floor you know I only ate two meals a day for years and years and then later our founder that actually is a Buddhist thing that's a traditional Buddhist thing I'm not eating after lunch doing breakfast and lunch and of course it doesn't mean if you wake up at 5:00 a.m. lunch is pretty late in the day for you right and some Buddhist monks wake up at 3 a.m. where they're really on it just if it's oh really they're eating three meals a day they're just not eating afternoon but they go to sleep really early so it doesn't matter but yeah there is a there is a principle in Buddhism for for monks of not eating after midday so yeah which I didn't know about but again it was this very vague sense of wanting to be you know self-discipline and what-have-you yeah as I you know whatever as I was going through puberty and yes struggling with I mean look you know what is masculinity and what is culture and what is civilization you know you look around at you know the people I went to school with you know I had no positive role models in my life none you know and that's like well you want to end up as a totally decadent totally fatuous totally self-indulgent totally innervated person most of the middle-aged people I know mostly adults they couldn't walk two or three city blocks you know this is kind of before like the I mean here here right now in Victoria everyone wears spandex everyone does yoga everyone goes to the gym I mean people here in their 50s and 60s who are in great physical shape you know but I mean Toronto at that time in Scotland was even worse you know you're surrounded by people who are very very physically lazy and undeveloped and you were very very intellectually emotionally you know lazy and and undeveloped people ooh you know I remember Satan people hadn't read a book since high school you know you know and it's like well this is not what I want to be so what do I want to be and I didn't find any role models for that in the kind of you know in the kind of literature rooms but anyway so this is part of my life like you don't know it just never comes up but I said Melissa her BA was in English literature and in a lot of ways I know you're just you're dissatisfied with that was just like English literature was not deep enough not real enough not inspiring I mean oh it's not a zero interest but it's just not it's a little bit underwhelming to get your be in English literature well you know in the same way I mean my parents were people who put a lot of value on you know literature you know in that sense fiction so you know especially theater my father to some extent worshipped Shakespeare and this kind of stuff kind of high tradition of English English literature in theatre and you know of course the visual arts painting the history of art and painting you know it's etcetera as part of our lives so when looking at that you look at those people you're looking at intellectuals within the tradition of painting and the big Wharton and literature and drama and again there was nothing you know there was nothing positive there was nothing even more positive as a role model like compared to Batman you know and I mean you know a lot of people talk about that as a young man that I mean Batman it's precisely that he doesn't have superpowers well what did that man do he does a lot of push-ups he reads a lot of books you know Batman superpower was just that he seems to take life seriously and if you're in a culture a situation where nobody's taking life seriously you know where and even even where the model of what it is to be an adult put in front of you you know it's it's people like these kind of lazy self-indulgent French Communist intellectuals some only jean-paul Sartre you know it's like well the image of you know an adult revolutionary it's someone who sits around smoking cigarettes and cheating on his wife and kind of writing books and poetry about how self-pitying he is about his life as a you know an intellectual who cheats on his wife or like really that was what you were so but this is a digital at that time wasn't yet wasn't yet cognizant of Buddhism wasn't yet cognizant of veganism at all when I started shaving my head but it was part of you know wanting to lead a lead a meaningful life and and yeah you know I mean even owning that stuff you and I both our bathrooms still real real simple but I mean you know owning shampoo and conditioner and figuring out what works for you and and harristown paying a barber but as a man okay women's haircuts are more expensive going to a hairstyle soon was more expensive but you do it less frequently as a man is supposed to be like every two weeks you haven't in years yeah right yeah yeah but you know but as a man you're supposed to go to a barber like every two weeks I know you know look you just have like normal employable haircut yeah so I couldn't I couldn't believe that you know like you know going and getting a trim and paint yeah right so all that I mean oh if you try to estimate how much money and time of save by shaving my head versus going to a barber every two weeks you know it's it's massive yeah it's inestimable yeah yeah I don't know probably today you can't get a haircut for $20 so they're probably really cheap to have someone else cut your hair yeah yeah yeah do you ever feel self-conscious about the fact that you were holding or was that right why I only noticed it probably a long time after it started because you're shaving your head you don't really notice and like I remember noticing it for the first time that it was just easier to shave my head kind of up here then over here I was like oh it's less dense there so no it really didn't wasn't a part of my my life in a big way you know um during university notice sure yeah yeah no he did he did bold but much later in life yeah and of my brothers you know you see a spectrum was I have so many brothers right from those that bolded really early in life and again I'm sorry but guys male pattern baldness is linked to testosterone levels and so like you know one of my brothers the one who went bald early in life he's a very high testosterone character with the advantages and disadvantages that brings you know he puts on muscle very rapidly but he also is very sharp temper or room you know he has he has a lot of those traits and then I have other brothers who kept their hair their whole lives who you know have long hair I never went bold and are low testosterone with again with a different shape of jaw it all corresponds to kind of the textbook stuff you know the the big jaw and the high testosterone levels as opposed to the more feminine narrow John Lotus ocean level so sadly yeah the the sciences have predictive power on this on this topic but yeah I didn't know any of that and wasn't thinking that way yeah I mean I think that the real thing that lurks in the background is one the symbolic significance of being bold in Buddhism which then later became a part of my life it was a big deal I mean like in in Thailand there were time n who were just amazed that I would shame ed they saw it as a kind of humiliation or humbling thing like you know like okay so you're either really serious about Buddhism or you're in the US Marine Corps like for them that was the only explanation for why man would shave his head like that was such a big deal which is very alien so being in those cultures that was a big deal and what being bold meant as a scholar of Buddhism you know during that that time of my life and I guess the other one is just you know are people gonna perceive you as right wing or a neo-nazi or something because you're a tall white guy with a shaved head I think that's been very very rarely a problem for me but it does come up once in a while sure and where people see it as a as a tough look that's associated with you know the old I don't even if people are skin ads anymore the skinhead thing that's really 1980s yeah you know but that that Association that way and stuff yeah sure that's a deterrent would be that you are Jewish it as much as it comes up well and I and I reach I knees I'm involved in all this other this other stuff that's obviously not you know not right wing or what-have-you yes so I mean you know head-shaving has become mainstream during my lifetime from being a marginal thing to being a mainstream thing and I think the main impetus for that was the rise of hip-hop culture you know obviously a lot of athletes black and white shave their heads that made it that made it normal so again between the 1980s and present that was a huge change we're just the number of people you saw on TV or in the newspapers the shaved head really changed you know with during my lifetime so athletes both black and white as part of that but yeah hip hop culture a huge part of that we're you know like I told you this like there was a time I can remember what hip hop culture was really marginalized and really stigmatized and it went to being music you heard in the background of the mall and then again it's mostly black artists but a few white artists also there's the being completely normal to have adult men with shaved heads and that that really changed the perception of it yeah so head shaving went from being something kind of stigmatized but me yeah sure when I was still in high school like I would have been the only white guy with a shaved head in the whole high school yeah you know like I own so I'm trying to remember if there was even in in that high school because I come sorry I went to two high schools I remember one guy with a shaved head and that in the earlier high school which was huge that a huge number of students but in the net second high school I might've been the only guy with a with a shaved head you know so it wasn't it wasn't calm and it did make you stand out yeah but I mean today I don't think anyone would say like if I go to a job interview like wearing this suit like oh don't go with the shapes head like today it just doesn't have any negative energy it's just a completely normal aspect of modern bourgeois life yeah yeah that is interesting what you were just saying that somebody tie - yeah it was a big deal yeah right um it just made me think of that V for Vendetta scene obviously that's a woman who is shaving her which is totally different you know like a woman shave your head like you know Arnie Spears 2008 like crazy right problems or something it's totally different between the genders but like it is interesting that that for men it's it's really not seen as something like oh wow he's gone off the deep end something normal right well I don't know I I think it will be for women in the future too I mean you know he seems to be inevitable no but hey look this is the other issue you mentioned this I proposed some friend of yours is that you know once you bury your skull we're not all equal I mean not everyone has a good shape of skull for this for this and most people most people don't know it until they shave their head yeah she's always right like she was immediately after she did it she bought a wig or she bought like multiple right she just felt like she didn't make it look too something like the shape right yes so not not I mean you know so that's a really funny you know there's there's good skull privilege good phrenology good privilege yeah and you know you could see that a lot you know there are minor differences in the shape of the skull for East Asians versus you know Europeans and if you hang around at Buddhist monasteries you can see I've been at Buddhist monasteries with our white guys there were Koreans and Chinese guys and there are like people from Sri Lanka you know and you got pillows all the food that's you do actually really see the the range of you know the phrenological variables the skull shape of your of your fellow man oh you're you're you're you were into it I know you wanted to make the video it's cool from my perspective that's true people people asked supporters on patreon asked click on the link below this video the joint patreon it is true that some men are right because you know right right that starts to go away you just just you just mentioned that Jordan Peterson who's got an air trans right Elon Musk right so that's stepping away from the Buddhist monk thing the real question here is do do chicks dig it and I think that's you know what what you're getting at and you know and then the male vanity element so they're two really interesting examples Jordan Peterson who's only 55 he looks 70 I mean he's aged badly I'm sorry let's take out Beth's um what I'm gonna look like at 55 compared to George because he looks like on that ol meat diet a hundred percent me diet um he paid for follicle transplants right and he's lied about it or he's avoided admitting it and so on you know which is also interesting you ain't my all meat diet I don't write Elon Musk I don't know if he's lied about it but you know but that's that's another public guys who's done this um you know but I think anyone is but if you're not thinking about hair transport and I think the question is will women you know prefer is in terms of male vanity or being attractive to and how you're perceived by a woman is it preferable to have a lousy haircut as opposed to being being bald that's the choice most men have whether you're bowling on whatever your situation is right yeah if you're not a guy is gonna put a lot of time and effort into your hair you know yep any any most most dudes how lousy hair go for most dudes wear a baseball cap you know you know what it is you know they do not want to put in the time and effort to have fancy hair and it is I mean it seems effeminate I don't I don't wear jewelry either and would I be more attracted to women if I wore jewellery at see here so real question me oh did the type of women I'm after are not drawn to a man who has those kinds of affectations and and and what-have-you right so I mean different strokes for different folks there's a lid for every pot you know blah blah blah I don't know see I don't I can't contrast the the experience I don't know what it's like to be a dude with long flowing hair he puts a lot of time into and how women react to that but their me more there are a lot of dudes you know doing that there are a lot of youth putting in the time and effort to have fancy ass hair you know but you give me to do with short hair that still is fancy that's still a lot of time and effort yes you know they connect you can be have a lot of product in here in your hair and then yeah yeah yeah yeah but um you know I mean my my experience women are women are most attracted to me when I'm exhausted pissed off and covered with stubble that's always been my experience it's exactly what I don't want to deal with women and when I think I'm looking most ugly but that ruggedness of having you know the stubble all over being exhausted and pissed off there were so many women you know it's it's really it's a really you know an observable difference from when I'm like clean-shaven well rested and with it or whatever yeah yeah yeah yeah so what's what's the moral of that stuff I don't know but obviously it's a at least a million dollar interest industry or TV late at night and seen infomercials for write products that claim to make you're right well okay but look there's apparel here with women's sexuality and beauty for a man if you're putting the time and effort into your appearance is that in order to get women or is that just in order to compete with other men you know I think that's also something like is it that you want to be the dude at the office with the most impressive hair look is it something like that like you feel there's a hierarchy at the office or hierarchy at the gym or what it like is it is it male competition with other men or is it actually about you know attention from females um yeah I think a lot of people never ask themselves that question also because because with women there's so many women who put the time and effort in it and it's just it's just to show that [ __ ] Cathy at the office just to show Cathy I I can look better than her like it really is like just women competing with other women yeah and not doesn't have to do with what men want are their relationships with men or what have you yeah so that's it man 21st century head shaving has definitely become become mainstream and I don't know like to see men that are mostly balding but they still try to like hang on to like the sides and right there's you know statues from ancient Greece and right yeah showing men that right right just just like just a crown like just the last vestiges around their head right yeah but I don't know maybe for them that connotes a kind of you know respectability or what have you you know yeah maybe there's something they feel is you know okay you know the courts to their status about that I don't know well yeah like I say you know it's you know how are you gonna live a kind of highly effective life and for me I know to some extent you and I everyone wastes time every day but this is a choice you can make are you gonna waste that time or you're gonna commit it to something more meaningful yeah okay guys give me up
video about shaving my head about being bald ah maybe like five people and they're they're all guys they're I guess they're guys who are dealing with going bald or with was shaving their heads and wanted that me know they phrased in different ways like how did you how did you own this as part of your identity and you you seem to think it's it's an interesting time I don't know I mean I don't have a whole lot to say about it I started shaving my head before I started going bald so I started my shave man when I was still in high school I think I was 16 it's possible I just turned 17 oh great sorry I didn't even know it's yeah I'm wearing my wearing my branded t-shirt here cuz I'm ready to go to the gym no no no I'm gonna say no six more times no no no I mean so for me I got a question on and I'm related Walt but yet profoundly related topic on discord where someone was asking me about going vegan in my life before I went vegan and some of these kind of ethical and it's those choices before I even became vegan and before I got involved with Buddhism I already had a lot of stuff in my life that reflected this kind of error SATs militaristic self disciplined aesthetic right so I've told you this way back then maybe I guess 16 you know again it could have been 15 but you know back then you know what got rid all my furniture I had a bedroom where I slept directly on the floor and the only like furniture had the only little bits because that it could be fold up and put it away in the closet it was a small closet so so like if friends came over I painted the walls of the room silver and a metallic silver walls and a gray a grey carpet and yeah I had this very bare you know when I got into this kind of you know so you know so I went through a period of not even using blankets that's right yeah and then I think of it well no but okay so why did I do that I was horrified by the I knew a lot of kids growing up who said oh I can't sleep this comforter I can't sleep without this heavy blanket I met a couple kids who said they literally couldn't sleep without having the radio on they needed the noise of hearing the raid on earth few known people like that like a metal these people who had these weird requirements for how they slept and again I was growing up in the the shadow of the Cold War you know I told you this is we did a video but this a few days ago it was like World War 3 is coming and again the sense of toughing and toughening up for it was partly intellectual and partly physical and partly partly pragmatic when have you but it was this sense of I live in a decadent culture nobody's prepared to deal with anything none of these people can sleep in a tent if they have to or sleep on the ground if they have to and you know I want to learn to sleep without a pillow you know I want to learn to sleep without you know blankets that I'm comfortable with her or used to or something you know so is this sense of yeah it does I mean it ultimately does you know connect a little bit to the the ancient Greek stuff a lot of that stuff that the Stoics and the skeptics and there's a lot of discussion you haven't read that well right you haven't read that that's sorry - the great philosophy but the the the stoah were now remembered as the Stoics and the skeptics and the debates around them there was a lot of talk about kind of what does it mean to toughen yourself up and their conception of it had a lot to do with like you know when you're thirsty not drinking water Emile it wasn't it wasn't like bodybuilding you know what I mean it was an absolute strength it was a kind of intellectual it was kind of strength of character that they were interest which is you know but anyway peels the 15 year old boys reading some that stuff so yeah you know is this sense of one to live a meaningful life willing to live a self disciplined life and you know when I figured it was actually it was this girl at a crush on and she took me aside and she explained to me that I didn't know anything about haircare right my parents had never taught me how to do anything yeah yeah yeah yeah she was like look you know like you don't actually know how to shampoo your hair and which was true I'd never been taught anything you know I had really thick curly hair and I was like no you know if you don't actually work it in with your fingertips and then do this and just she taught me through these like six steps yeah yeah yeah yeah I never slept with her I mean I wonder if my whole life would be different in a weird way if I had but you can tell she and I were like we were kind of we were close we're intimate in a sense you know that she was actually like in my bathroom explaining to me how to shampoo my hair and stuff yeah yeah but that's that's how it is when you're when you're a teen it was for me I mean I remember having kind of close relationships with women I didn't sleep with who weren't my girlfriend you know they I remember uh you know type of that and I realized like okay this whole having hair thing there's like a fork in the road but basically I've grown up like a you know child in the you know of growing up feral not knowing what having hair really involves and this girl has explained to me like look if you want to have hair there's all this haircare stuff and hair stones that I forgot to do which also made sense cuz you know it was very hard for me to get my hair to look like a normal person's hair it was just very curly and vibrant and so you can see that my daughter my daughter's got some ID and she has this very you know lustrous high volume hair whatever yeah it's totally different that's right that's right yeah that's right yeah yeah [Music] you know we first met her hair is not picked up well on camera the color of her hair IRL kind of a little bit escapes photography so that was a surprise the first time we met him it was striking to me that all of your coloring the color of your hair eyes and skin was not what I was expecting anyway but yeah I genetically I'm attracted to you so that we can have children with less slice realistic try to compensate for the hair deity I've got the the untamable hair but it was like there's there was like this fork in the road you realize like dude I'm not gonna be a guy who puts an hour into my hair this is ridiculous and you know up to that plan so yeah so at that point was it and then again the whole thing I mean oh right I didn't measure sorry another thing I was just mentioning sleeping on the floor you know I only ate two meals a day for years and years and then later our founder that actually is a Buddhist thing that's a traditional Buddhist thing I'm not eating after lunch doing breakfast and lunch and of course it doesn't mean if you wake up at 5:00 a.m. lunch is pretty late in the day for you right and some Buddhist monks wake up at 3 a.m. where they're really on it just if it's oh really they're eating three meals a day they're just not eating afternoon but they go to sleep really early so it doesn't matter but yeah there is a there is a principle in Buddhism for for monks of not eating after midday so yeah which I didn't know about but again it was this very vague sense of wanting to be you know self-discipline and what-have-you yeah as I you know whatever as I was going through puberty and yes struggling with I mean look you know what is masculinity and what is culture and what is civilization you know you look around at you know the people I went to school with you know I had no positive role models in my life none you know and that's like well you want to end up as a totally decadent totally fatuous totally self-indulgent totally innervated person most of the middle-aged people I know mostly adults they couldn't walk two or three city blocks you know this is kind of before like the I mean here here right now in Victoria everyone wears spandex everyone does yoga everyone goes to the gym I mean people here in their 50s and 60s who are in great physical shape you know but I mean Toronto at that time in Scotland was even worse you know you're surrounded by people who are very very physically lazy and undeveloped and you were very very intellectually emotionally you know lazy and and undeveloped people ooh you know I remember Satan people hadn't read a book since high school you know you know and it's like well this is not what I want to be so what do I want to be and I didn't find any role models for that in the kind of you know in the kind of literature rooms but anyway so this is part of my life like you don't know it just never comes up but I said Melissa her BA was in English literature and in a lot of ways I know you're just you're dissatisfied with that was just like English literature was not deep enough not real enough not inspiring I mean oh it's not a zero interest but it's just not it's a little bit underwhelming to get your be in English literature well you know in the same way I mean my parents were people who put a lot of value on you know literature you know in that sense fiction so you know especially theater my father to some extent worshipped Shakespeare and this kind of stuff kind of high tradition of English English literature in theatre and you know of course the visual arts painting the history of art and painting you know it's etcetera as part of our lives so when looking at that you look at those people you're looking at intellectuals within the tradition of painting and the big Wharton and literature and drama and again there was nothing you know there was nothing positive there was nothing even more positive as a role model like compared to Batman you know and I mean you know a lot of people talk about that as a young man that I mean Batman it's precisely that he doesn't have superpowers well what did that man do he does a lot of push-ups he reads a lot of books you know Batman superpower was just that he seems to take life seriously and if you're in a culture a situation where nobody's taking life seriously you know where and even even where the model of what it is to be an adult put in front of you you know it's it's people like these kind of lazy self-indulgent French Communist intellectuals some only jean-paul Sartre you know it's like well the image of you know an adult revolutionary it's someone who sits around smoking cigarettes and cheating on his wife and kind of writing books and poetry about how self-pitying he is about his life as a you know an intellectual who cheats on his wife or like really that was what you were so but this is a digital at that time wasn't yet wasn't yet cognizant of Buddhism wasn't yet cognizant of veganism at all when I started shaving my head but it was part of you know wanting to lead a lead a meaningful life and and yeah you know I mean even owning that stuff you and I both our bathrooms still real real simple but I mean you know owning shampoo and conditioner and figuring out what works for you and and harristown paying a barber but as a man okay women's haircuts are more expensive going to a hairstyle soon was more expensive but you do it less frequently as a man is supposed to be like every two weeks you haven't in years yeah right yeah yeah but you know but as a man you're supposed to go to a barber like every two weeks I know you know look you just have like normal employable haircut yeah so I couldn't I couldn't believe that you know like you know going and getting a trim and paint yeah right so all that I mean oh if you try to estimate how much money and time of save by shaving my head versus going to a barber every two weeks you know it's it's massive yeah it's inestimable yeah yeah I don't know probably today you can't get a haircut for $20 so they're probably really cheap to have someone else cut your hair yeah yeah yeah do you ever feel self-conscious about the fact that you were holding or was that right why I only noticed it probably a long time after it started because you're shaving your head you don't really notice and like I remember noticing it for the first time that it was just easier to shave my head kind of up here then over here I was like oh it's less dense there so no it really didn't wasn't a part of my my life in a big way you know um during university notice sure yeah yeah no he did he did bold but much later in life yeah and of my brothers you know you see a spectrum was I have so many brothers right from those that bolded really early in life and again I'm sorry but guys male pattern baldness is linked to testosterone levels and so like you know one of my brothers the one who went bald early in life he's a very high testosterone character with the advantages and disadvantages that brings you know he puts on muscle very rapidly but he also is very sharp temper or room you know he has he has a lot of those traits and then I have other brothers who kept their hair their whole lives who you know have long hair I never went bold and are low testosterone with again with a different shape of jaw it all corresponds to kind of the textbook stuff you know the the big jaw and the high testosterone levels as opposed to the more feminine narrow John Lotus ocean level so sadly yeah the the sciences have predictive power on this on this topic but yeah I didn't know any of that and wasn't thinking that way yeah I mean I think that the real thing that lurks in the background is one the symbolic significance of being bold in Buddhism which then later became a part of my life it was a big deal I mean like in in Thailand there were time n who were just amazed that I would shame ed they saw it as a kind of humiliation or humbling thing like you know like okay so you're either really serious about Buddhism or you're in the US Marine Corps like for them that was the only explanation for why man would shave his head like that was such a big deal which is very alien so being in those cultures that was a big deal and what being bold meant as a scholar of Buddhism you know during that that time of my life and I guess the other one is just you know are people gonna perceive you as right wing or a neo-nazi or something because you're a tall white guy with a shaved head I think that's been very very rarely a problem for me but it does come up once in a while sure and where people see it as a as a tough look that's associated with you know the old I don't even if people are skin ads anymore the skinhead thing that's really 1980s yeah you know but that that Association that way and stuff yeah sure that's a deterrent would be that you are Jewish it as much as it comes up well and I and I reach I knees I'm involved in all this other this other stuff that's obviously not you know not right wing or what-have-you yes so I mean you know head-shaving has become mainstream during my lifetime from being a marginal thing to being a mainstream thing and I think the main impetus for that was the rise of hip-hop culture you know obviously a lot of athletes black and white shave their heads that made it that made it normal so again between the 1980s and present that was a huge change we're just the number of people you saw on TV or in the newspapers the shaved head really changed you know with during my lifetime so athletes both black and white as part of that but yeah hip hop culture a huge part of that we're you know like I told you this like there was a time I can remember what hip hop culture was really marginalized and really stigmatized and it went to being music you heard in the background of the mall and then again it's mostly black artists but a few white artists also there's the being completely normal to have adult men with shaved heads and that that really changed the perception of it yeah so head shaving went from being something kind of stigmatized but me yeah sure when I was still in high school like I would have been the only white guy with a shaved head in the whole high school yeah you know like I own so I'm trying to remember if there was even in in that high school because I come sorry I went to two high schools I remember one guy with a shaved head and that in the earlier high school which was huge that a huge number of students but in the net second high school I might've been the only guy with a with a shaved head you know so it wasn't it wasn't calm and it did make you stand out yeah but I mean today I don't think anyone would say like if I go to a job interview like wearing this suit like oh don't go with the shapes head like today it just doesn't have any negative energy it's just a completely normal aspect of modern bourgeois life yeah yeah that is interesting what you were just saying that somebody tie - yeah it was a big deal yeah right um it just made me think of that V for Vendetta scene obviously that's a woman who is shaving her which is totally different you know like a woman shave your head like you know Arnie Spears 2008 like crazy right problems or something it's totally different between the genders but like it is interesting that that for men it's it's really not seen as something like oh wow he's gone off the deep end something normal right well I don't know I I think it will be for women in the future too I mean you know he seems to be inevitable no but hey look this is the other issue you mentioned this I proposed some friend of yours is that you know once you bury your skull we're not all equal I mean not everyone has a good shape of skull for this for this and most people most people don't know it until they shave their head yeah she's always right like she was immediately after she did it she bought a wig or she bought like multiple right she just felt like she didn't make it look too something like the shape right yes so not not I mean you know so that's a really funny you know there's there's good skull privilege good phrenology good privilege yeah and you know you could see that a lot you know there are minor differences in the shape of the skull for East Asians versus you know Europeans and if you hang around at Buddhist monasteries you can see I've been at Buddhist monasteries with our white guys there were Koreans and Chinese guys and there are like people from Sri Lanka you know and you got pillows all the food that's you do actually really see the the range of you know the phrenological variables the skull shape of your of your fellow man oh you're you're you're you were into it I know you wanted to make the video it's cool from my perspective that's true people people asked supporters on patreon asked click on the link below this video the joint patreon it is true that some men are right because you know right right that starts to go away you just just you just mentioned that Jordan Peterson who's got an air trans right Elon Musk right so that's stepping away from the Buddhist monk thing the real question here is do do chicks dig it and I think that's you know what what you're getting at and you know and then the male vanity element so they're two really interesting examples Jordan Peterson who's only 55 he looks 70 I mean he's aged badly I'm sorry let's take out Beth's um what I'm gonna look like at 55 compared to George because he looks like on that ol meat diet a hundred percent me diet um he paid for follicle transplants right and he's lied about it or he's avoided admitting it and so on you know which is also interesting you ain't my all meat diet I don't write Elon Musk I don't know if he's lied about it but you know but that's that's another public guys who's done this um you know but I think anyone is but if you're not thinking about hair transport and I think the question is will women you know prefer is in terms of male vanity or being attractive to and how you're perceived by a woman is it preferable to have a lousy haircut as opposed to being being bald that's the choice most men have whether you're bowling on whatever your situation is right yeah if you're not a guy is gonna put a lot of time and effort into your hair you know yep any any most most dudes how lousy hair go for most dudes wear a baseball cap you know you know what it is you know they do not want to put in the time and effort to have fancy hair and it is I mean it seems effeminate I don't I don't wear jewelry either and would I be more attracted to women if I wore jewellery at see here so real question me oh did the type of women I'm after are not drawn to a man who has those kinds of affectations and and and what-have-you right so I mean different strokes for different folks there's a lid for every pot you know blah blah blah I don't know see I don't I can't contrast the the experience I don't know what it's like to be a dude with long flowing hair he puts a lot of time into and how women react to that but their me more there are a lot of dudes you know doing that there are a lot of youth putting in the time and effort to have fancy ass hair you know but you give me to do with short hair that still is fancy that's still a lot of time and effort yes you know they connect you can be have a lot of product in here in your hair and then yeah yeah yeah yeah but um you know I mean my my experience women are women are most attracted to me when I'm exhausted pissed off and covered with stubble that's always been my experience it's exactly what I don't want to deal with women and when I think I'm looking most ugly but that ruggedness of having you know the stubble all over being exhausted and pissed off there were so many women you know it's it's really it's a really you know an observable difference from when I'm like clean-shaven well rested and with it or whatever yeah yeah yeah yeah so what's what's the moral of that stuff I don't know but obviously it's a at least a million dollar interest industry or TV late at night and seen infomercials for write products that claim to make you're right well okay but look there's apparel here with women's sexuality and beauty for a man if you're putting the time and effort into your appearance is that in order to get women or is that just in order to compete with other men you know I think that's also something like is it that you want to be the dude at the office with the most impressive hair look is it something like that like you feel there's a hierarchy at the office or hierarchy at the gym or what it like is it is it male competition with other men or is it actually about you know attention from females um yeah I think a lot of people never ask themselves that question also because because with women there's so many women who put the time and effort in it and it's just it's just to show that [ __ ] Cathy at the office just to show Cathy I I can look better than her like it really is like just women competing with other women yeah and not doesn't have to do with what men want are their relationships with men or what have you yeah so that's it man 21st century head shaving has definitely become become mainstream and I don't know like to see men that are mostly balding but they still try to like hang on to like the sides and right there's you know statues from ancient Greece and right yeah showing men that right right just just like just a crown like just the last vestiges around their head right yeah but I don't know maybe for them that connotes a kind of you know respectability or what have you you know yeah maybe there's something they feel is you know okay you know the courts to their status about that I don't know well yeah like I say you know it's you know how are you gonna live a kind of highly effective life and for me I know to some extent you and I everyone wastes time every day but this is a choice you can make are you gonna waste that time or you're gonna commit it to something more meaningful yeah okay guys give me up