{"id":3068,"date":"2024-07-06T05:22:41","date_gmt":"2024-07-06T05:22:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.jack-donovan.com\/sowilo\/?p=3068"},"modified":"2024-07-06T05:34:23","modified_gmt":"2024-07-06T05:34:23","slug":"john-lovell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jack-donovan.com\/sowilo\/2024\/07\/06\/john-lovell\/","title":{"rendered":"John Lovell"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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John Lovell photographed by Jack Donovan in Cancun. 2021.\u00a0<\/em><\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Originally published as part of the CHEST magazine project in 2021-2022.\u00a0<\/em><\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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When John Lovell was born, he cut his own umbilical cord, backflipped off the operating table, and stuck the landing perfectly.\u00a0<\/p>

That was the first thing he said when I asked him about his backstory. He didn\u2019t miss a beat.\u00a0<\/p>

John Lovell is a genuinely funny guy. I met him at a men\u2019s think-tank that we were both invited to in Cancun this past December, and he had the entire roomful of men laughing heartily more than a few times.\u00a0<\/p>

We conducted this interview on the beach, where I found John surrounded by his boys \u2014 who were hard at work crafting spherical projectiles out of sand. Mr. Lovell was working his way through some historical fiction set during the War of the Roses. After we shot the photos for this interview, he offered me a cigar.\u00a0<\/p>

John is a war veteran and a former member of Special Operations, having served in the 2nd Ranger Battalion with numerous combat tours to Iraq and Afghanistan. He also spent time in Central America as a Christian missionary.\u00a0<\/p>

With his business partner Evan Temple, Lovell founded the phenomenally successful\u00a0Warrior Poet Society<\/a>, \u201ca values-based community dedicated to physical protection, the pursuit of truth, and living for a higher purpose.\u201d Lovell and his collaborators offer\u00a0tactical and self-defense training courses<\/a>\u00a0through the Warrior Poet Society brand. They also produce a range of high-quality instructional, philosophical, and entertainment content that can be found both on the Warrior Poet Society\u2019s\u00a0YouTube channel<\/a>\u00a0(which boasts over 1.2 million subscribers) and the\u00a0WPS subscription network<\/a>\u00a0that Lovell has been building to combat big-tech censorship. Lovell\u2019s\u00a0Warrior Poet Supply Company<\/a>\u00a0also offers a wide range of branded merchandise, including innovative, patented products like his\u00a0Raven Steel Target Stand<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 which I\u2019ve thought about buying myself. Anyone who\u2019s had to stop by Home Depot to pick up 1×2\u2019s on the way out to go shooting can recognize the handy utility of having some self-supporting steel that\u2019s always ready to go.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>

An unfortunate and persistent bug in American culture tends to render the warrior and man of action as a dumb jock thug. John Lovell is pushing back against that with the name of his company itself and demonstrates through both word and deed that strong and courageous men can be and should be \u2014 and\u00a0are<\/em>\u00a0\u2014 so much more.\u00a0<\/p>

Lovell said, \u201cI strive to be broad, but also to have depth.\u201d He wants to be well-rounded as a man but also wants to go deep on the things that are most important to him.\u00a0<\/p>

He pointed to his sons playing nearby and expressed how \u201ccritically important\u201d it was to him to be a good father.\u00a0<\/p>

\u201cI want to make [my sons] strong because the world is dangerous. I want to make them bold because lies are all around us. I want them to be lovers because that\u2019s where a lot of your meaning and substance comes from. I want them to be men of faith and recognize that they belong to something \u2014 or, rather, someone \u2014 greater than themselves.\u201d<\/p>

Like many men, John sees himself as a \u201csacred protector.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>

He says that he carries concealed everywhere he goes, not because he thinks he\u2019ll be a likely target, but because if something went down \u201con his watch\u201d and he wasn\u2019t ready to put someone down who was hurting others, he doesn\u2019t believe he could ever recover from that. So it is important to him that he keeps developing and practicing his skills in that area and passes on what he can to other men.\u00a0<\/p>

In this way \u2014 in his own search for a balance between breadth and depth, between private and public, between emotion and reason, between being a man of the heart and a man of action \u2014 John believes that he has been on the journey of the \u201cwarrior poet\u201d himself for a long time. And he wants to help other men along on that same journey.\u00a0<\/p>

Lovell told me that he started creating and publishing content for YouTube and Instagram because he wanted to \u201cgrow with others.\u201d He wanted to build a community of like-minded people around him and invite them to come along with him while not making things so narrow as to make their journey all about his journey. His entry points for building community with men include an agreement that \u201cwe live for a higher purpose\u201d and that \u201cwe are willing to sacrifice in defense of others.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>

He believes that these simple principles have resonated with so many men because men who hold these ideals no longer feel represented in Hollywood or the media.\u00a0<\/p>

ON FIGHTING CENSORSHIP<\/strong><\/p>

This brought us to the topic of censorship, which John has been very outspoken about recently. Like many of us, he believes that we are engaged in an ideological war, and last year he just \u201cgot sick of being bullied.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>

He said he no longer feels free to have his own values and ideals and be left alone.\u00a0<\/p>

\u201cThe ideological opposition, the canceling, the bullying, the defaming \u2014 it\u2019s come to my doorstep.\u201d<\/p>

To others who are facing the same sorts of censorship, Lovell says:\u00a0<\/p>

\u201cWe are not in times where we can be quiet and apathetic. We actually have to go on the offense in the war of ideas if we hope to maintain a world in which our values can actually live and in which we can have free expression.\u201d<\/p>

AESTHETICS AND ENTERTAINMENT ARE IMPORTANT – BUT KEEP <\/strong>\u201c<\/strong>REALITY\u201d REAL<\/strong><\/p>

A considerable part of that offensive action includes creating content and culture. And being successful at culture-creation requires us to become \u2014 however counter-intuitive it may seem to some \u2014\u00a0\u00a0entertaining.\u00a0<\/em>\u00a0<\/p>

I\u2019ve been trying to explain to various purists and men of ideas for years that we are all competing with Hollywood, whether we want to or not.\u00a0<\/p>

John understands this well, and one of the first things I noticed about his content is that the production value is extremely high. Anyone with an eye for it can look at what Warrior Poet Society is putting out and see that someone with professional-level skill and attention to detail has thought about composition and lighting design and so many of the visual elements that we are all used to seeing and which we take for granted in the other content we consume or have consumed in the past. Quality and artistry are noticed by more people when they are absent than when they are present, but when quality and artistry\u00a0are<\/em>\u00a0present, they confer a certain baseline of credibility.\u00a0<\/p>

Lovell recognizes that, due to social media and Twitter and the persistent deluge of modern distractions, almost everyone\u2019s attention span is \u201cfrightfully short.\u201d<\/p>

\u201cIf you want to teach anyone anything, or you want to mobilize anyone in any direction, you have to be able to somehow capture their attention. If you\u2019re a communicator of truth or a philosopher [\u2026] you\u2019ve got to frame that in a way that is entertaining enough that people can process it very quickly and get on board. If you\u2019re in education, but you\u2019re not also doing a little bit in the entertainment vein, you\u2019re just not going to have an audience that will listen to you – much less learn and transform from you.\u201d<\/p>

John acknowledges that he\u2019s not always the guy with the best eye for aesthetics or design, but he recognizes the importance of presentation, so he\u2019s surrounded himself with a team of men who can help him in that area. As we were talking about it, he stopped and laughed and said:<\/p>

\u201cHere is a reality: Never judge a book by its cover. Here\u2019s the second reality: Never think people aren\u2019t judging the book by its cover.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>

Lovell is passionate about connecting with people in a genuine way, and he believes that they are hungry for it.\u00a0<\/p>

\u201cSocial media and YouTube works because it is REAL. People are socially cut off and desperate for connection. As we\u2019ve retreated into our phones and streaming services, we\u2019ve lost our ability to connect with individuals in the real world. I think part of the reason folks jumped onto reality TV was that they were thirsty for those connections they weren\u2019t getting in the real world. And then reality TV started failing years ago because it started becoming a performance, and people could feel that the \u201creality\u201d wasn\u2019t \u201creal\u201d anymore. So they turned to social media and YouTube, where it is still real.\u201d<\/p>

ON <\/strong>\u201c<\/strong>NICE GUYS\u201d <\/strong>VS. GOOD GUYS AND THE LOSS OF COURAGE<\/strong><\/p>

I turned the discussion to men and asked Lovell for thoughts on some of the challenges men face today.\u00a0<\/p>

\u201cThe loss of courage is the greatest tragedy we see in men today, and masculinity cannot survive it.\u201d<\/p>

\u201cDudes today are too focused on being \u201cnice guys,\u201d and I think the \u201cnice guy\u201d may flatter \u2014 and flattery may just be outright lying. Something might be a nice thing to say to someone, but if it is a lie, then you are exalting the idea of \u201cniceness\u201d over integrity. And that is a cowardly thing to do \u2014 though society really wouldn\u2019t blame you for it.\u201d<\/p>

\u201cIf you were smashed drunk and wanted to drive home, a nice guy would let you \u2014 but I certainly won\u2019t. You may give me a bloody nose in the process, but I\u2019m not interested in being a nice guy. I\u2019m interested in being a good one. In the age of tolerance, there\u2019s no room for that superior virtue. Only with courage can we find our way out of that hole.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>

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