540. Former NFL Player on Masculinity | Tim Tebow

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The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast 1h 21m 3 speakers 8 chapters transcribed
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How does competitiveness relate to higher service?

Jordan Peterson 0:00
I'm very curious about how you see the relationship between the competitiveness that has characterized your athletic career and this calling to higher service.
Tim Tebow 0:11
To sum it up, it's the fight for people that can't fight for themselves and competitiveness is not the problem. It's where you steer it. So you saw a lot of people who were suffering, and you knew that that was wrong. I see the boy laying on the cot. I see his legs. I see they're on backwards. And so I get a little bit emotional, but I hold it back. And Sherwin is the name of the boy who looks at me and said, I've been told my whole life that I'm not impressive.
Jordan Peterson 0:35
Let's go back. I don't understand how you developed your athletic ability in relation to team sports and were homeschooled. How did that come about?
Tim Tebow 0:43
Can I back it up even to my birth? There was issues with the entire pregnancy. The placenta wasn't properly attached. She had amoeba dysentery. She went into a coma. The doctor who had finally helped my mom give birth, he looked at my parents and said, I don't know how your baby boy is alive. And God's got a special plan for your life. Do you know what happens when you hear that over and over and over again? You start to believe it.
Jordan Peterson 1:08
So what did it mean to believe that when you were little? I had the opportunity today to talk to one of the world's premier athletes, Tim Tebow, and we had a very interesting conversation. And I would say the crux of the matter is the relationship between Masculinity, masculine competitiveness, masculine striving for excellence, and virtue, all things considered. Our culture is set up now in large part on the presupposition that competition is And that masculine striving for dominance and excellence is in itself a form of patriarchal oppressiveness. And that's wrong. And it's not only wrong, it's wrong in a deadly way because it demoralizes young men. And when that happens, well, then young women don't have anybody to partner with.
Jordan Peterson 2:14
And so that's just a complete bloody catastrophe. And Thiebaud is a very interesting case because he's an excellent athlete and in multiple different athletic domains. And he's extremely competitive and averse to failure. But at the same time, he's a very good man. And he's figured out how to take that competitive striving and that desire for excellence and that hatred of losing and to transmute it into a form of high-level motivation aimed at not only the good of winning, let's say, in local competitions like athletic competitions, but the aim of winning at the higher order purposes of life. And so a lot of our conversation revolved around putting... masculinity in its proper place so that everything beneficial about it can flourish at the psychological relationship and social levels. And so this is a crucially important conversation, and I think we got to the core of the matter. Now, that was embedded in a broader framework because Tim started out as a
Jordan Peterson 3:23
stellar athlete and then a stellar team player but he's expanded his endeavors into the business and philanthropic realm and so we were able to have an abstract discussion about the relationship between competitiveness let's say and virtue but we're able to ground that in something very solid which is his transition from athlete to businessman and philanthropist and so Well, these are important issues to sort out. And if you want to develop your clarity of mind in relationship to such things, and if you want to become a good, what would you say, a good motivator for your own purposes and a good father to your own sons and a good leader to the people who are around you, then these are issues that you have to be straight about.
Jordan Peterson 4:10
And this discussion can help you figure out why you should do that and how you could go about it. So join us for that. So your team sent me a video detailing out the operations of your foundation. And I thought we might as well start by talking about that. I was struck by its breadth. And so I'm very curious about, well, I'd like to know more about the foundation. I'd like to know

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