“Perhaps someone might say: But Socrates, if you leave us will you not be able to live quietly, without talking? Now this is the most difficult point on which to convince some of you. If I say that it is impossible for me to keep quiet because that means disobeying the god, you will not believe me and will think I am being ironical. On the other hand, if I say that it is the greatest good for a man to discuss virtue every day and those other things about which you hear me conversing and testing myself and others, for the unexamined life is not worth living for man, you will believe me even less.” (Italics mine, for reasons that should soon become obvious.)
Fast-forward 2,400 years. Just recently, we received two very different takes on how to go through life, from two men who would certainly claim to be cornerstones of Western culture, though your mileage may vary depending on 1) how much you like watching people beat the shit out of each other, and 2) how strongly you believe in the inevitability of a coming techno-utopia. I speak, of course, about UFC president and CEO Dana White and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen. Here are their respective quotes about examining one’s life:
“I’ve just found [that] people who dwell on the past get stuck in the past. It’s just, it’s a real problem. And it’s a problem at work and it’s a problem at home,” Andreessen told David Senra in a podcast earlier this year. “Like, 400 years ago, it never would have occurred to anybody to be introspective. I mean, just all of the modern conceptions around introspection and therapy and all the things that kind of result from that are, you know, kind of a manufacturer of the 1910s, 1920s…. Great men of history didn’t sit around doing this stuff at any prior point, right? It’s all a new construct.”
“When you’re a man, you are the provider,” White said on The Katie Miller podcast that posted earlier this month. “You are the one that takes care of your family. You are the example for your kids when they grow up and your sons, and your daughters. You can’t be that guy that I see posting on social media. Oh, I had a bad day, and I’m so sad, and all this other crazy shit. It’s just unattractive to other males, let alone women.”
Bold claims, right? On the one hand, if you’re a man, you shouldn’t talk about being sad. On the other, all of history’s great men made their fortunes and fates by putting their heads down and pushing forward, never stopping to have doubts or wonder if maybe they should adjust their trajectory. Unsurprisingly, both of these comments have set the internet ablaze—Andreessen earned himself rebuttals from both mainstream pubs like The Atlantic and more tech-specific voices like Joan Westenberg and Fast Company, while White generated all-caps YouTube call-outs and lots of criticism from therapists. Each fits nicely into the grand schematic of the culture war dominating every aspect of our contemporary discourse.