June 10, 2024 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:53:36
5530 Community Council: Friend Marrying Badly!
Friday Night Live 7 June 2024In this episode of Friday Night Live, we discuss retirement savings, health maintenance, and societal changes. We delve into the importance of investing in health, sexuality in relationships, and challenges in mixed-culture marriages. We conclude with reflections on parental authority and ethical communication. Tune in for insights on health, relationships, and personal growth.Join the PREMIUM philosophy community on the web for free!NOW AVAILABLE FOR SUBSCRIBERS: MY NEW BOOK 'PEACEFUL PARENTING' - AND THE INTERACTIVE PEACEFUL PARENTING AI AND AUDIOBOOK!Also get the Truth About the French Revolution, the interactive multi-lingual philosophy AI trained on thousands of hours of my material, private livestreams, premium call in shows, the 22 Part History of Philosophers series and much more!See you soon!https://freedomain.locals.com/support/promo/UPB2022
Boy, that's a birthday of somebody I used to know.
7th of June, 2024, and we're doing a slightly different Friday Night Live.
We're doing a Chitty Chat, and we can voice it rather than just me reading stuff, which is, I think, nice, and a different approach.
I'm going to give that a little bit of a try.
I certainly have my topics in a half, but let us talk to you, the fine listeners.
And just a tiny tech reminder, if you're not talking, if you could be muted, that would be excellent.
And I guess just get your topics ready, but the Babylon Bee is pretty funny.
And we've had a running gag in my marriage for, I don't know, 21 years.
That every time my wife touches my arm, I have to flex.
I don't know why that is a rule.
It just is a rule.
And anyway, so I just saw today and I showed my wife with, you know, the crowing excitement that I'm not alone.
The Babylon Bee had a title, In Major Gaff, Husband Forgets to Flex When Wife Touches Arm.
And it kind of goes on and on and it's very funny.
And yeah, I like one of the things about comedy is
That it just reminds you that you may not be particularly alone in your own little particular quirks.
And I just thought that was funny enough to make an actual article and I thought it was just an inside joke in my marriage.
But she's like, you don't need to do that.
I'm like, yeah, well, you know, you don't need to dye your hair or wear makeup, but we all have our things, man.
We all have our things.
All right.
So, I'm happy to have questions, conversations.
If you have anything, you can, of course, type it in the chat.
And if you have something, you can just unmute and peck away at my brain, and we'll see what good stuff we can come up with, and I'm sure it will be massive amounts of excellent, fine stuff.
There is a max limit on who can be in here, so if you end up
Wondering off if you could cancel or exit.
You could always listen to it later, but it would be better for other people who might want to come in, because there are some limits.
There are some limits.
So, I don't have any particular big format for this.
If you would like to ask a question, you can type it in the chat.
I'll just pause here for a second in case anybody has something that they would like to ask or talk about right away.
Don't forget to unmute, of course, if you do have such questions.
All right, somebody still is unmuted, but that's all right.
Just remember to mute if you can.
So, there's a great quote from Thus Spoke Zarathustra from Nietzsche, the philosopher who is mostly peachy, and
He wrote, So much kindness, so much weakness do I see.
So much justice and pity, so much weakness.
Round, fair and considerate they are to one another, as grains of sand are round, fair and considerate to grains of sand.
In their hearts they want simply one thing most of all, that no one hurt them.
Thus do they anticipate everyone's wishes and do well unto everyone.
That, however, is cowardice, though it be called virtue.
But they lack fists.
Their fingers do not know how to creep behind fists.
Virtue for them is what maketh modest and tame.
Therewith have they made the wolf a dog, and man himself man's best domestic animal.
Ooh, that's so good!
That's the kind of prose that I pray to the Battlestar Galactica gods to bless my brain with on speaking.
And that's just lovely.
That's just lovely.
And that's what's great about Nietzsche.
He's half religious, half aphorism, but it packs an emotional wallop.
Sometimes second to none.
So I just thought that was really, really great.
Now there's, and if you want to talk, just, I'll just throw something in the chat, just say, you know, drop a T in here, in the chat, if you want to talk, and we'll take it from there.
There's a book called Disappointing Affirmations.
It's a little harsh.
It's a little harsh.
And some of them are, stop overthinking, you're the only one who cares.
Yeah, that's interesting.
I remember hearing this many, many years ago.
It actually had a fairly large impact on me, which was, somebody said, you think everyone's thinking about you?
They call it the spotlight phenomenon, that you feel like everyone's looking at you, you make a mistake, you mess up, and everyone's looking at you, and then they think about it, and it echoes in your brain, and it's a sort of basic empathy thing, where you say,
Everyone's thinking about me and the mistake I made.
It's like, okay, no, they're not.
They're not.
They're thinking that everyone's thinking about them and the mistake they made, right?
And it is really not the case.
If you think people are thinking about you all the time, all you have to do is think how often you think of other people rather than your own problems.
This is a pretty harsh one.
Don't let anyone make you feel bad about yourself.
That's your job.
And nobody does it better.
I thought that was kind of funny.
Another one.
It's never too late to change.
So just wait until you absolutely have to.
Right.
Another one.
Picture of a mountainside.
It says, you will never be alone.
All the stupid things you've ever said and done will always be there to haunt you.
Another one, just because it didn't work out doesn't mean you failed.
You successfully effed it up.
Let's see here.
This is the introvert's prayer.
I'm exactly where I want to be, at home, avoiding people.
Another one is, ask the universe for guidance, then just go and do whatever stupid shit you were going to do anyway.
I had one of these demotivational posters actually hanging in my office, and it was a ship upending into the water.
It said, it could be that the only purpose of your life is to serve as a warning to others.
And I thought that was a really great way of putting it.
And it could be, right?
That's all it could be sometimes.
All right.
Why is this not giving me my bookmarks again?
I must know.
There we go.
Now, there was a psychologist named Laszlo Palgar, and he had this theory that any child could become a genius in any chosen field with early training.
So, he took his daughters, and he taught his daughters in chess from about the age of four, and all three of his daughters went on to become chess prodigies, and the youngest, whose name is Judith, is considered the best female player in history.
And I think we all know the problem with this, right?
So if you're a brilliant psychologist who believes that any child can become a genius, and you then train your own children, well, you are making a fundamental categorical error, which is that if you're a brilliant psychologist, and I'm certain that he married a brilliant woman,
Well, their children are going to be highly, highly, highly intelligent.
So, that's not... And, you know, it's really horrible.
It's really, it's actually incredibly cruel to say any child can become a genius in a chosen field with early training.
It's not true.
You know, they tried to close the black-white achievement gap.
Oh, under George W. Bush, George W. Bush Jr.
And, what's it, a hundred billion dollars they spent?
And they closed it very briefly, and then it just went right back to where it was, and it's kind of cruel.
Anyone can be a great singer!
And it's like, well, okay, if you're the kid of a great singer, hey, two great singers had a kid, and trained that kid on singing, kid turned into a really good singer!
And it's like, yeah, well...
So, it's cruel.
It's cruel to think that everybody has all of this potential because then people feel like failures when they didn't necessarily have the mechanics to succeed.
It's a pretty good quote from Frank Zappa.
He was a Lebanese musician.
Died quite young, I think of some sort of bowel cancer or something like that.
And he had some, he had the pretty wild hair and a mustache.
And I remember he did a, Sting had a song when he was with the police called Murder by Numbers that's actually quite creepy and good.
And Frank Zappa did a version with Sting, Mr. Sting, as he referred to him.
And he said, Frank Zappa said, if you end up with a boring, miserable life because you listen to your mom, your dad, your teacher, your priest, or some guy on television telling you how to do your shit, then you deserve it.
And I think that was quite interesting as well.
And Nietzsche also said, when we are tired, we are attacked by ideas we conquered long ago.
Victor Frankl, author of Man's Search for Meaning, a Holocaust survivor, I believe.
He said, when a person can't find a deep sense of meaning, they distract themselves with pleasure.
Indian philosopher Chanakya said, a man is great by deeds, not by birth.
Well, that's very true.
Lao Tzu, great Chinese philosopher, said, doing nothing is better than being busy doing nothing.
Very true.
You ever had one of those jobs?
You ever had one of those jobs where you have to look busy?
Ooh.
Ooh, that's very tough.
Ooh, that's very tough.
Somebody, if you're not muted, if you could just remember to mute.
Now, this is an unknown, and it really, it hit me in the feels, man, if not the Nads themselves.
And it's a picture of a, I guess a Roman warrior.
And the quote is, he who sweats more in training, bleeds less in war.
That's a great quote.
He who sweats more in training, bleeds less in war.
And that's very powerful because preparing for life, you know, I love this concept of choose your suffering.
Just choose your suffering.
And you can either suffer now by eating less or you can suffer later by being fat.
You can either suffer now by working out hard or you can suffer later by injuring yourself or, you know, being flabby or lazy or out of breath.
Like, it's just choose your suffering.
There is no not suffering.
There's only you choose your suffering.
Well, I don't want to work out.
Okay.
Then you're choosing another kind of suffering.
Just a reminder for those of you who've just joined, welcome to the slightly different Friday Night Live.
And you can type, just hit the word T here to talk.
And you can unmute or, you know, you can just unmute and interrupt.
It's a show for you.
It's a show for you, so.
This woman
Wrote on Twitter, or X now, she wrote, uh, Confession time, I'm almost 49, I have zero retirement savings.
No exaggeration, absolutely nothing.
Maybe about $900 in my checking account.
No idea what the F I'm gonna do.
And I know I can't be the only one.
And that is really, really something.
That is really, really something.
Yeah, there is necessary suffering and stupid suffering, yes.
Yeah, I mean, you either do the right thing now, or you suffer the pain of regret later.
There's no non-suffering.
There's only the deferral of suffering.
And the deferral of suffering is usually a cause of greater suffering than if you just do it now.
So, hit me with the number of people, I'll check the chat here, hit me with the number of people that you know.
Who have pretty much smack saved up for retirement.
Now they could say, oh I have an asset and so on.
But a house is not a particularly fantastic asset.
I mean I suppose if you have a bigger house you could sell the house if you're going to move to a condo or some smaller place because you've retired.
But I don't know.
I think it's still pretty good for... I'm not sure that I want to be old and living in a condo myself because I'd like to be sort of out as much.
But yeah, how many people do you know who don't really seem to have much set aside for retirement?
Because it seems to be a pretty big thing for a lot of people.
They're just, I guess, what, are they going to rely on the state?
They're going to rely, like, on what?
So people are saying, only one I know of, one everyone I know, zero.
Yeah.
I know a number of people who have not saved up for retirement.
Let me rephrase that.
I used to know a number of people who had not saved up for retirement.
Now, why don't I know anyone anymore?
Why am I not close to anyone anymore who hasn't saved up for retirement?
Because, you know, at 57, it's not exactly way over the horizon.
Because they will all come a-knockin'.
That's right, James.
That's exactly right.
They're all gonna come a-knockin'.
Knock, knock, knockin' on Stephen's door.
Yep, they're all gonna come a-knockin'.
And, uh, you know, part of getting older is pruning those who are gonna be in desperate need of everything.
Part of pruning as you get older is
The people, and it's also, it's like the people who don't take care of their health are gonna be less and less fun to know when they get older.
Somebody says, I know one, he's late 40s, who will be able to retire at 65 with his 401k and house, but like you said, the house is not an asset for retirement, and I agree, yeah.
Yeah.
Oh, someone here says they're already knocking.
Yeah, yeah.
Says, I knew two people at my job who ran 150k a year and they both say they cannot retire until they're at least 70.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, I was a little bit, I mean, I started saving for this stuff kind of early.
I mean, I got life insurance in my early twenties, just because it's real cheap back then.
And by the time I was 35, it's all paying for itself.
Cause I put a little bit extra in and now they don't charge me, haven't charged me for like over 20 years.
But there are... Sorry, just a reminder, if you've joined, if you could remember to mute, please.
There's a little bit of background noise.
So, it is rough, man.
And the people who get older, if they're in bad health, and I mean chosen bad health, you know, three quarters of people's health problems are the result of lifestyle choices.
So the people who haven't exercised, they're overweight, you just... I've pruned those people long ago because
Well, I like to do things with people, like when I socialize.
I don't just want to sit on the couch and chat.
I do that sometimes, and that's fun.
Dinner parties are fun.
But I want to go do things.
You know, when we have people over, let's do a sport.
Let's go for a hike.
Let's, you know, play pickleball.
Let's, you know, whatever, right?
And I just have less and less in common with people who have less and less strength and mobility.
And they're going to start needing things and they're going to start having complaints and problems.
And I just, you know, the old sort of, the old myth about, you know, what happens, people get older.
Oh, we just sit around complaining about how expensive our medication is.
And we just sit around complaining about all the aches and pains that we have.
And it's like, I cannot, I cannot.
And I, uh, I do remind people that I know, like, you know, really try to avoid that kind of stuff.
As a whole.
Oh yes, of course, freedomaid.com slash donate.
I forgot to mention that too if you'd like to help out the show.
I really would appreciate it.
We're going to have something pretty cool for you guys soon.
Pretty cool for you guys.
Soon.
And we are, obviously we take your support and donations very seriously and are always trying to apply.
What you offer, out of the kindness and charity of your heart, what you offer we try to put to the very, very best use.
And we really do appreciate that everyone's really enjoying the Real-Time Relationships AI.
That's the most popular one, and it sort of goes in accord with the call-in shows.
And people are still enjoying very much the StaffBot AI, the Peaceful Parenting AI is getting heavy use, and so on.
Somebody says, all the people that won't work to change their lives are just a drag.
I've been pruning and surrounding myself with people who are ambitious and trying to improve the situation slash driven people.
Yeah, yeah.
That describes my old mother to a tee, always complaining about some ailment never exercised in her life.
Yeah!
I mean, I swear to God, my mother lived on... I've been living on coffee and nicotine.
That's an old song from Sheryl Crow.
My mom, it was like Nescafe, instant coffee, and Dunhill's cigarettes.
Oof.
Wouldn't really exercise.
And she was skinny because she barely ate anything, but yeah, wouldn't really exercise.
Smoked.
No, she didn't smoke much.
She wasn't like a chimney smoker, but she certainly smoked.
And then would complain about her health.
And I'd say, well, maybe you could do this, that, and the other.
You know, here's the other thing about health.
I sort of mentioned this briefly before, but I really can't emphasize or express this often enough.
That you just don't know when you're gonna need to withdraw from the old health bank, right?
So, when I got cancer, what, 10 or 11 years ago, whatever it was, you know, I needed to withdraw from the old health bank to beat the cancer.
And I will never ever begrudge, and occasionally I think of the amount of time I spend exercising, and it's like,
You know, it feels a little bit like it's taking time off your life.
Now I get, you know, it sort of helps you with all of that, you know, going forward stuff.
But man, man, man, man, it is so important.
Because you just don't know.
You just don't know.
You don't know when you're going to need to have a big withdrawal for whatever reason, right?
Steph, do you have any recommendations on how to best use the AIs you've released?
I'm not sure I understand the question, just ask it what you want to know the most and see how it responds.
I mean, you can look up how to work with AIs as a whole.
Somebody says, I told my mom to take better care of her health because she would get sick.
She said, all old people get sick, that's just how it works.
Okay, but sickness is different from entropy, like the wearing out of stuff.
I remember when I was younger, I just didn't really understand how this kind of stuff worked.
And I was like, oh, you know, maybe if I walk too much, I'll wear out the cartilage in my knees.
And it's like, no, no, because the more you walk, the more your cartilage regenerates and is healthy.
Like it's, in a sense, as far as I understand it, it's like a muscle.
And so, you know, use it or lose it.
Or if you ain't using it, you're abusing it.
And there's one thing to get old.
Obviously, there's going to be some decay, a little bit of decay.
But the illness, I don't know that that's entirely necessary.
And you can see, I saw a video the other day, that this woman, she's a grandmother, she's in her late 70s, and she's working out at the gym pretty hard.
She's full of muscles and... You don't have to be soft, flabby, and falling apart when you're old.
Personally, I mean, my sort of amateur view on this kind of stuff is that people are punishing themselves for bad things they did.
Like, they don't take care of their health because
They are punishing themselves for bad things they did.
If you do bad things, I'm not saying everybody but I think a lot of people, like it's just so, it just makes so little sense to let yourself go like that.
I mean it just makes so little, like why would you do that?
Why would you?
You're given this incredible, beautiful, amazing, wonderful, perfect body.
And you just take a slow, high-cholesterol dump all over it.
It just seems completely bizarre to me.
It's like being given a bazillion dollars and then spending it all on fillets of fish or something.
It just makes no sense to me.
Just makes no sense to me.
Somebody said, I had quite the back injury at work earlier this week.
I've been recovering well, mostly due to being in overall good health.
Oh yeah, no, they were pretty clear with me.
They said, you know, probably, you know, you're going to beat this cancer because you're so healthy.
And yeah, I just, and you know, it's like, all the stress of like,
I don't know, you get a twinge in your chest if you haven't exercised or whatever, right?
Every now and then everybody, I think everyone, gets twinges all over their body and I don't worry about that stuff because I know my heart's good because I just cardio, whatever, right?
So, anyway.
So, let's see here.
Yeah, old people who haven't taken care of themselves will say things like, you'll be old one day!
It's like, yeah!
And I'm still doing pretty much the same workout I did in my teens.
And I'm not some big muscle guy.
I don't have any particularly faithful genetics for muscle or anything like that.
It's just, just keep doing it.
Just keep doing it.
Just keep doing it.
I mean, a life without moving is not even worth getting out of bed for, as far as I'm concerned.
Let's see here.
Finished Peaceful Parenting yesterday.
I signed up for therapy.
Finished Peaceful Parenting yesterday.
I signed up for therapy.
Oh, well, that's good to hear.
I'm glad that the book had an impact on you and all of that.
Often though, bad things are done to them and people will eat to distract themselves from their past trauma.
Yes, so
I think having a bad conscience takes away your dopamine, and then people need to find a way to replace that dopamine, and they do that with sex, they do that with drugs, they do that with food.
I mean, I suppose some people do it with exercise too, but a bad conscience is a pretty terrible, terrible thing to have in your brain.
And people distract themselves in their bad conscience all the time and they look for substitutes.
I mean the ultimate dopamine is a good conscience.
It's a good relationship with yourself having done reasonably well in the battle for virtue in this darkening world.
That's the best you could hope for.
And to have a good conscience is
The best reward of all, and because it's through that reward that all other rewards like love and self-respect come, having a good conscience is the best reward of all.
And I don't know, you guys tell me, have you had or what have you seen?
Have you had or what have you seen in terms of people who've had a bad conscience and how miserable they are?
Oh gosh.
And they will constantly insist they're happy.
But there's a restlessness.
You know those people?
Someone said that all of life's problems stem from people's inability to sit in a room quietly for an hour with themselves.
This restlessness.
You ever known these people?
They're like sharks.
They can't stop moving.
They've got no bladder.
They've got no buoyancy.
They just have to swim, swim, eat, eat, swim, swim.
Restlessness, right?
They sit down and they're bored and irritated and, oh, this is so boring and, you know, they're just restless and it's like everywhere they sit is vague cactus and everywhere they walk is against the wind.
It's really, really...
Unpleasant.
I find those kinds of people pretty unbearable to be around.
If you can't just enjoy your own company, if you can't just sit with your own thoughts.
I mean, I obviously have, you know, 4,000 idea hamsters working at cocaine levels in my brain at all times.
So, for me, my brain is a circus.
Like, it's a really fun place to be in terms of debates and I always enjoy that time alone or walking or whatever it is.
When I'm podcasting while walking around, I'm doing kind of the same thing that I'm doing while I'm walking around without podcasting.
So, yeah, those restless people.
I grew up with one.
It's just... It's just appalling.
So, let's see here.
What is it?
$517 billion in unrealized losses hits the U.S.
banking system as FDIC warns 63 lenders were on the brink of insolvency four days ago.
So, you know, who knows what happens to people's retirement savings.
From September 2022, defying science, American parents are turning away from male circumcision.
Excellent, excellent, excellent.
I read.
I started to read.
You know, I would say that I have a fairly strong stomach.
I have a fairly strong stomach.
And I can take a fair amount when it comes to fairly horrifying information.
So, if everyone here has ever been truly naughty, I will read from a thread I saved.
A few people shared their worst sex experiences.
And I was vaguely curious.
Obviously, I went in with a full hazmat suit.
I read a couple, and I was like, I now need to burn my tablet with holy water.
It's like, oh my god.
So if you're ever really bad, I will lock you.
down and I will read to you from some of these worst sex experiences.
I don't mean to, I don't mean to tease you.
Trust me, you'll be very happy that I didn't read them, because that stuff, it's like reading about that guy who, in Germany, who advertised that he wanted to be eaten by a cannibal and, and, you know, like, these are things you don't want in your head.
So I bookmarked it.
I was like, oh, gosh, what, this could be kind of funny and interesting.
And I was like, oh, God, I've been turned to salt.
So here's another one that I thought was interesting.
This is posted by Eric Hall.
And he said, they buried the lead on this new study.
It's not that exercise beats out SSRIs for depression treatment.
It's that just dancing has the largest effect of any treatment for depression.
That's kind of beautiful.
Isn't that neat?
Isn't that neat?
So in terms of benefits,
In terms of benefits, this is the list from most beneficial.
No kind of advice, I'm just reading your data, right?
So don't do anything based upon what some podcaster says, right?
But this is the data.
So from most beneficial to least beneficial.
Number one, dance.
You can boogie your blues away.
And it's funny, you know, I used to, um, when I was in my teens, I had a, I had a, I can't even remember, remember where I got them from, but I got a really great pair of Sennheiser headphones that just had fantastic sound.
And somewhere along the way, I lost the headband and I ended up having to use a coat hanger and duct tape to get them around my head.
But I used to,
I used to stand in a darkened room in my teens when nobody was home, and I would put on two songs and just dance like crazy to them.
One was Face to Face by Pete Townshend, the other was It Can Happen by Yes.
I mean, Pete Townshend was a little easier to dance to, not that he makes a lot of dance music, but that's a fantastic dance song called Face to Face.
I mean, it's got a drum like gunshots through the ears, and the Yes song is just so powerful and inspiring.
It's just a beautiful, beautiful song.
So yeah, dance is fantastic.
And I used to go, gosh, I think starting from the age of 15 or 16, I used to go to discos.
I went to one called Nuts and Bolts.
Didn't even really think about the meaning of the name until years later.
And I remember some kids from my high school finally came in when they were 17 and were very impressed to see me boogieing away.
I just danced.
I danced my teens away.
Absolutely loved it.
And so, yeah, dance is number one according to the data for depression.
Walking or jogging, number two.
Cognitive behavioral therapy, number three.
Yoga, number four.
Exercise plus SSRI, number five.
Aerobic exercise plus therapy.
Next is strength.
Next is relaxation.
Next is mixed aerobic exercises.
Next is tai chi or quickong.
Aerobic exercise plus strength training, next.
Cycling, next.
SSRI, next.
Physical activity counseling, next.
And waitlist control.
So dance.
You can dance your cares away.
And you see, this is why, this is why, not many people know this statistically, not many people know that this is why COVID went away.
It's because of all those TikTok dances.
All negativity can go away because of that.
All right, let me get to your questions, comments.
Yeah, I haven't... Somebody says, yeah, I haven't been able to finish peaceful parenting now.
It is a lot.
Did start therapy and have been relentlessly trying to clean my conscience and offer restitution.
Everyone has been like, you don't owe me anything.
If that's the worst you've done, you'll be fine.
Somebody says, I have a step-grandfather who's drank himself into dementia, had a very abusive father and was also one himself.
Him and all his descendants are addicted to something.
Yeah.
Yes, indeed.
Yes, a bad conscience will make you do some pretty self-destructive things.
Uh, even worse than the bad sex experiences?
Oh, the Library of Alexandria.
So what was lost when the Library of Alexandria burned in the ancient world?
Well, our entire—this is from Culture Critic—well, our entire knowledge of the Greco-Roman world comes from about 500 volumes.
700,000 scrolls were potentially lost at Alexandria alone.
Our entire knowledge of the Greco-Roman world comes from about 500 volumes.
700,000 scrolls were burned in Alexandria.
Alexandria was once antiquity's greatest city, a trade port connecting Africa, Europe, and Asia.
When Ptolemy took control of Egypt in 305 BC, after the death of Alexander the Great, he built Alexandria into his thriving capital.
He wanted it to be the intellectual center of the world, the new Greece.
He had a great library and museum built and the lighthouse was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world.
The library was to contain all the knowledge of antiquity under one roof.
Ptolemy acquired books aggressively and scholars came from across Egypt, Greece, Persia and India and were paid handsomely.
Every ship docking in Alexandria had to submit all written material on board for the library to make copies.
It became the world's largest collection of manuscripts.
Some say 700,000 scrolls at its peak.
So what was really in there and what did we lose?
Ptolemy's buying spree furnished it with manuscripts of incalculable value.
Plato, Homer, Herodotus, and very significant original work took place.
Earth's circumference was calculated for the first time in Alexandria.
Among the most precious lost works were the writings of Aristotle, which Ptolemy II paid a fortune to acquire.
Aristotle wrote as many as 200 treatises in his life across philosophy, natural sciences, economics.
Today, we have just 30 of them, none of which survive in complete form.
Just these had immeasurable impact for centuries, so imagine what might have been in the remaining 90%.
There were the last plays of Aeschylus and Sophocles, who wrote over 73 and over 100 plays respectively, the vast majority now missing.
They might have been foundational works of Western literature and taught us things about Greek life we'll never know.
But if we could have just one last item back it would easily be the Pinnakes of Callimachus.
Callimachus was a librarian who cataloged the library by subject, author, with a summary of each book's content.
The first time this was ever done in the West.
It was 120 papyrus rolls of information, essentially a detailed guide of the entire intellectual world of antiquity.
It hurts to think just how much we might know if it had been recovered.
So what happened to this library?
We don't really know.
Some say Caesar's men raised it by accident during a civil war in 48 BC, or Diocletian did when he sacked the city in 298 AD.
These events likely did damage, but something worse happened.
Texts throughout history weren't generally lost in fires, but because they weren't copied in the first place.
Cultures need a reason to preserve them.
We have so much Virgil and Homer today because they were in school curricula for centuries.
And remember, papyrus was fragile enough that regular handling eroded it.
Ancient libraries had to continually recopy their text, so commitment was required to maintain them.
If that commitment fell away, so did the knowledge.
The fate of Aristotle's works is unclear, but one account says they weren't burned, but confiscated by Sulla.
Why?
The historian Plutarch said it was because they had fallen into idle and base hands.
Alexandria's texts were at risk long before any disaster struck.
Successors to Ptolemy didn't share his commitment to knowledge and the library fell into disuse.
By 400 AD there are no accounts of a great library at Alexandria at all.
The great library died because classical culture did.
Cultures aren't lost in great fires.
They die from something much worse.
Apathy.
That's very powerful.
And it's agonizing.
No, no off-site backup!
Are they crazy?
The most important stuff is philosophy!
No off-site backup.
Oh, a man whose wife was lost in Japan's 2011 tsunami still goes diving every week in the hope of finding her body 11 years later.
Wow.
Wow.
We do backups.
And you understand why it's very important that we have you doing our backups as well.
And that's really something.
That's really something.
Now, let's see here, let's see if I can just hold this up to the mic in some very sophisticated fashion.
I don't know if you've ever heard, there seems to be a tiny tiny little bit of complaining about where all the good men have gone.
So let's see, I don't know if we can hear this or not, but let's crank it up and see.
Not sure why nobody wants to speak up about this, but I guess I'll be the one to do it.
There is a serious shortage of attractive, eligible, mentally stable, emotionally available men.
We need to get a search party together.
Figure out what has happened, where have they gone.
I'm not sure why nobody wants to speak up about this, but I guess I'll be the one to do it.
There is a serious shortage of attractive, eligible, mentally stable, emotionally available men.
We need to get a search party together, figure out what has happened, where have they gone.
I'm not sure why nobody wants to speak up about this, but... Yes, so, sorry, there was just a bunch of messages that came in that dimmed her out.
So that is a very, very big
Question, where have all the good men gone?
Where have all the good men gone?
All right, let me just see here.
Steph, what a great topic and article.
I love hearing you speak and read.
This is a fantastic Friday night Skype call.
I appreciate that.
Thank you.
Have you considered sharing also the AI language models so we can back them up too?
I'm not sure what that might entail.
I'm not sure what that might entail.
So, what do you guys think?
Is it true?
For the men and the women here, is it true that there is a shortage of good men to date?
I know that men complain about this with regards to women.
Where have all the cowboys gone?
Is that Paula Cole, right?
Yeah, that's a way old song.
But yeah, where have all the good people to date gone?
Somebody says, yes, there is a... There is a what?
Shortage.
There is a shortage?
It's funny because there doesn't seem to be a shortage of attractive people as a whole.
But there does seem to be a shortage of attractive men.
Now to me, this is the wages of sin.
I think that there is a shortage of attractive men, and I'm sure that's the case with women too, but I think that there is a shortage of attractive men.
You know, women don't blame themselves for much, in general, right?
There's exceptions, but women don't blame themselves for much.
So the simple answer to me is, well, women voted to take away the negative consequences of not having a good father in the home.
Women voted to have a welfare state, which means that not having a good, strong father in the home, there's no consequences for that.
In fact, there's positive consequences for having a child outside of wedlock, because you get to stay home and raise your kids, and you don't have to serve a husband.
A husband doesn't have to serve his wife, of course.
So when voters, and this was women, right?
Women drove the welfare state.
You don't get a welfare state in general without women voting.
So women drove the welfare state, the single mother state.
So women said, hey, you know what would be great?
If we pay women who have children with unsuitable men, and then drive those men away.
And it's not just the welfare state.
I mean, another form of the
Welfare state is alimony, child support, and all that kind of nonsense, right?
It's just another form of welfare state.
So they're going to say, okay, so if we massively incentivize women to have children with bad men, unsuitable men, and or drive those men away.
So if we have an entire generation of men raised without fathers, an entire generation of boys raised without fathers.
Oh, wait a minute.
Our daughters are having a tough time finding men they want to date.
Well, honey, ladies, ah, the fairest sex.
So often the unfairest sex.
Ladies, ladies, ladies.
You voted to take fathers out of the home, and now you're complaining that your daughters don't have strong men to date.
Are you kidding me?
You've absolutely, completely, and totally got to be kidding me.
We had our daughters raised by the all-man, he-man, woman-haters club.
Turns out they didn't grow up to be very feminine or attractive.
Wouldn't that be not shocking?
Are you kidding me?
You demonize men.
You drive them out of the home.
Everything's toxic masculinity.
Men are bad.
Patriarchy.
Male chauvinist pig.
Blah blah blah blah blah.
We're gonna have nothing but female teachers, female daycare workers, mothers at home, boys can get to the age of their mid-teens never coming across a male authority figure of any way, shape, or form.
Oh no!
Isn't that weird?
Isn't it weird that we don't seem to have strong men that we want to date?
I don't
You literally injected three generations worth of testosterone into women, and estrogen into men, and oh my gosh, there seems to be a slight lack of attractiveness everywhere!
What a shock!
Well, that's why we used to have a rule called, Thou Shalt Not Steal.
Thou shalt accept the consequences of bad decisions.
Thou shalt accept the consequences of bad decisions.
No, no, no, say the female voters.
No, no, no.
You've got to be kidding me.
It wasn't her fault.
I mean, he just changed.
Bad things happen.
Nobody could tell.
It couldn't be predicted.
He just, you know, there's no way to, there are no red flags.
We can't possibly tell a good man from a bad man.
But we really, really, really want to be able to vote for politicians.
See, we can't tell.
We can't possibly tell who would or would not be.
A good father for our own children, but we can totally tell an honest politician.
I can't do these shows without half-dying from laughter sometimes.
We spread our legs for every random tattooed junkie in the neighborhood, but don't worry, we can tell who's going to be a fantastic president.
We can't tell the quality of men we let inside our bodies.
But we can totally tell an honest politician with integrity.
Oh my gosh.
Adam, how do people survive this planet with even remotely a straight face?
I just do not understand it.
Oh my gosh.
Just crazy.
All right.
Retail is facing a multi-100 billion dollar problem.
Excess inventory is up 23%, sales growth is down 5.8%, foot traffic is down 2.3% year-over-year at malls on Black Friday.
But it gets even worse.
So, did you know a list of retailers who've announced closures so far this year alone?
I get to see a lot of the stuff in the economy because I toodle around with my daughter during the day sometimes.
We'll go to malls or we'll go if she wants to.
She's in a teen phase, right?
So she's shopping for dresses and prom stuff and all kinds of cool stuff and she goes to parties and all that.
So she's into clothing.
So we're around a lot and the ghost town known as malls is really kind of chilling.
So, list of chains that have announced closures this year.
Walgreens, almost 650 workers were laid off.
Restructuring process of closing 150 stores in the US as part of a paring down strategy launched in 2023 in a bid to cut costs.
Well, you know, it's kind of a funny thing.
When you stop arresting shoplifters, it turns out that the economies die.
And shoplifters and most criminals, it's the Pareto principle as well.
It's a tiny minority of people who cause most of the crime, as you can see from El Salvador.
So that's Walgreens.
Walmart is shuttering nine of its locations in the US, blaming financial underperformance for the decision.
It does plan to open 14 new sites in 2024.
Walmart will close five stores in California, of course.
Of course.
So Walmart is taxed for a justice system and a police system, which lets criminals go, and so, yeah, it's terrible.
Rue 21, the teen fashion chain, is set to close all 540 stores after filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy at the beginning of May.
The Body Shop cosmetics and toiletries chain, the Body Shop, closed all of its U.S.-based operations in March along with the closure of dozens of its Canadian stores.
Family Dollar.
Some 600 Family Dollar stores were shut this year with hundreds more closures planned over the next few years as the discount retailer's location leases come to an end.
Best Buy has some.
Party City closed 35 stores after filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
CVS, hundreds of the drugstore's pharmacy inside targets, was slated for closure.
It's going to reduce its workforce as well.
Foot Locker are underperforming stores and shopping malls with the focus of a shake-up by the sportswear company.
Some 400 stores across North America are set to close by 2026.
Now it's really tragic because I used to meet a lot of people, and girls in particular, at the mall.
What's that great line from an old Kevin Smith movie called Mallrats?
They're not there to shop.
They're not there to work.
They're just... there.
Very true.
Very true.
99 cents only.
All 371 US stores will be shuttered as the business winds down.
Yeah.
Clothing Chain Express revealed that more than 25 states will lose stores as it closes more than 100 sites after filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
Not ideal.
At all.
Indoor malls.
This is as of six days ago.
Mall traffic is down 14.2% versus 2019.
Outlet malls down almost 18%.
Open-air centers down almost 12%.
And...
So this is part of the COVID thing too, right?
So once people get used to a new habit, they don't really go back to their old habits.
So under COVID, people got used to, and there was a barrier for a lot of people.
They'd say, oh, you know, I like going to malls.
I like being able to touch the fabric.
I like going to see the stuff directly.
I don't want to shop online.
It's not blah, blah, blah.
And then what happens is during COVID, when everything was shut down and so on, then people got used to shopping online.
I think we've all had that kind of thing, where something we don't want to do, we end up doing it, and then it ends up being great!
So people got used to shopping online.
And they got used to, well, I guess I can't see it, and the tools also improved so that you can put the clothes on a virtual model of you and see and rotate them and see how they look.
Plus people get used to the returns thing.
I used to order things thinking I would return them, and then I just, like, unless they're very expensive, I just don't return them.
They just end up in a box in the basement, so I should actually just set fire to them and save myself the trouble, but... So, people transition to, and particularly the boomers, right?
And the older people, they transition to shopping online, and they just don't go back to the mall now, because that's what they're used to.
They're used to the benefits, they're used to the convenience, and so on, so they just don't go.
And it's also not great for walking, because when you're older, particularly in Canada here, right, and you're older, you go to the mall to walk around, because you can't walk around outside, because if you're old and you slip and fall, it can be a real challenge.
So, people don't do that, so, it's just another challenge of COVID.
The top retail challenges, this is of Q1 2024, top retail challenges, inflation costs.
Yes, inflation costs.
Very, very big problem.
Revenue, 29 percent.
Inflation costs, 52 percent.
Revenue, 29 percent.
Interest rates rising, 20 percent.
Adding employee benefits for healthcare, 17 percent.
Supply chain issues, 16 percent.
Employee retention, 12 percent.
And it sort of goes down from there, but it's a brutal thing.
It's a brutal thing.
So, big problems with retail, right?
So, first big problem is inventory.
And this is from Cody Sanchez.
When you buy retail supplies to sell in your store, you pay for it all up front.
They ship the items to you, which you hold until you can start selling them.
Leftover infantry?
Too bad!
Order full styles and summer accounts sell for 60 to 90 days?
Ouch!
2.
High rent for high traffic.
You live and die by sales per square foot.
But in order to get enough volume, you have to pay rent that's equivalent.
It's a paradox that exacerbates number three, cash flow problems.
The cash flow realities of a high overhead business model like specialty retail are not to be understated.
A lot of mom-and-pop stores are hobbies funded by people with big pockets or marketing to bolster an online brand.
But we're not talking about mom-and-pop specialty retail, we're talking about your mom's department store.
What's going on with Kohl's, Macy's and others?
Let's start with the inventory problem.
Retailers are sitting on a mountain of excess stuff they cannot sell.
The top 20 US apparel companies have 26% more inventory than pre-pandemic.
Why?
Shifting consumer spending and reduced foot traffic.
But if they want enough foot traffic to move all their products, gotta get pricey, high visibility real estate, check out retail rent over 10 years.
Even at high volumes, margins are thin.
And the retail is brutal.
U.S.
dollars per square foot, and this is normalized for inflation.
Q2 2013, under $19.50.
By Q4 2022, it's $23, right?
So that's a good 20%, 25% increase in that, and then you've got inflation as well, right?
Cash flow is still brutal.
Take Bed Bath & Beyond, they couldn't keep up online, then turned to stockbuyers and other debt for years, leading up to a bankruptcy.
That's brutal.
Bed Bath & Beyond was unfashionably late to the e-commerce gala and didn't adapt to changing consumer behaviors, but the company also made monumental financial mistakes.
Since 2004, it spent almost $12 billion to buy back its own shares, an amount that eclipses the $5.2 billion in debt reported in its last SEC filing.
The company began borrowing money in 2014 to repurchase shares and continued doing so through a dismal 2022 holiday season.
In February, a billion-dollar hedge fund deal that was a last-ditch effort to stave off bankruptcy failed to materialize.
It's just appalling.
So, yeah, it's rough, man.
Going into stores these days is really tough.
He's really tough.
The cash register population is down, which means any bulge in traffic means a big lineup, which you don't want to do.
I hate this.
Lining up in stores, I just hate it.
Why am I spending my money and my time to buy from you?
That really doesn't make much sense.
At all.
At all.
And that's really, really rough.
And I'm happy to take a pause here.
I've got, you know, lots of stuff to talk about, but if you have a question or a comment, I'm certainly happy to hear from it.
But I did want to talk about sexless marriages.
I'm not going to point any fingers, obviously, except for you.
About a year ago somebody says a CVS employee was rather desperate to get me signed up for some new membership program.
He told me CVS is worried Amazon will get into delivering prescriptions.
Now Amazon has announced they will begin delivering medications.
Yes.
Very tough.
Very, very tough indeed.
Just hit a T if you wanted to add, or I can keep, if yeah, I consider it a compliment if you want me to keep chatting because I've got some very interesting stuff to talk about, but if you have questions, comments, issues, challenges, problems, criticisms, I'm more than happy to hear.
All right, people are typing.
It doesn't take that long to type a T, so I'll do the next one.
Have you heard of this sexless marriage thing?
Have you heard this sexless marriage thing?
Ah, so somebody wrote, today I gave up on sex with my wife.
This is my version of a story told many times before.
I, 27-year-old male, am going to stop initiating sex with my wife, 25-year-old female, because she never initiates.
When we do have sex, it's only because I asked and there's nothing sexy about it.
All of my sweet talk, subtle gestures, etc.
get me nowhere.
I absolutely understand that sex is not the be-all and end-all.
We are extremely compatible and she's my best friend.
I've heard the phrase, my partner feels more like a roommate, and this has helped me understand what I am feeling.
She has expressed before that sex doesn't hold the same value in a relationship that I believe it does, which hurt to hear, but I have to respect her opinion.
Before you comment, talk to her, I can assure you I have.
We've had this discussion about every six months, where I admit that I am sexually frustrated and want to talk about this in a completely neutral environment.
Normally the conversation leads to her crying and I apologize or she says she will be more open to initiating which never happens.
I'm ashamed to bring this to Reddit but I need a third-party opinion.
I love her so much and it's hurting.
Now this tweet got 22 million views.
22 million views.
Now, do you know the data on sexless marriages?
It's a wild thing to me.
It's a wild thing to me.
Let me just find my bookmark here.
I don't know, people just, what, fall out of the habit or something like that?
Certainly for old people, right?
92% of marriage respondents aged 65 to 80 reported no sexual intimacy in the past year.
Should be no reason for that, if you stay healthy.
If you stay healthy.
And yeah, the numbers are really, really tough.
Really tough.
So, let me just get you some numbers here.
In a study examining the decision to remain in an involuntary celibate relationship,
Sixteen percent of married persons reported not having sex in a month prior to being studied.
Twelve percent of all married persons aged 18 to 60 reported not having had sex for at least three months prior to participating in the study.
So, in their book, Why Men Stop Having Sex, psychologist Bob Berkowitz and his wife Susan Berkowitz report on their survey of 4,000 respondents, 33% males, 67% females, which focused on people who self-identified as men who had stopped having sex with their wives and women whose husbands had stopped having sex with them.
It's pretty rough.
The first reason chosen by 68% of the men was she isn't sexually adventurous enough for me.
This is the sort of lie back and think of England kind of thing.
You're a plank!
That's not great.
The first reason chosen by 66% of the women was he lost interest and I don't know why.
Another finding from the survey is that within the top five reasons given by men for not being sexual and for women thinking their spouses were no longer sexual was anger.
Anger is a common aspect of sexless marriages.
It is often a wall that disqualifies conversation and connection.
So that is... that is really, really rough.
And I honestly, I didn't really hear about this, and I think I had some callers some time ago who were talking about being in a sexless marriage, and I sort of had to... What does this mean?
So the accepted rate of sexless marriages is somewhere between 10 and 20% of marriages.
Now, that's a false statistic.
All right, let's do our intelligence test, right?
Why is 10 to 20 percent a false statistic for sexless marriages?
You just donated at FDR, thank you so much!
Thank you, I appreciate that.
Thank you, Adam, that's very kind.
Thank you, Jeremy, for the donation, I appreciate that.
You're eager to hear the sexless marriage stuff?
Well, the problem is you can't hear anything!
There's no creaking, no screaming, no... BRACE YOURSELF!
What's that they all call Scottish foreplay?
BRACE YOURSELF!
Somebody says, I'm very interested in the sexless marriage topic.
I know two men, one thirties, other fifties, who suffer from awful sexless marriages.
I also know a woman who says her husband of 20 plus years is like a roommate.
Ooh, chilly.
This story is breaking my heart, yeah, yeah.
80% are sexless, I'm guessing.
No, no, I don't think so.
He claims they are best friends, but she doesn't seem to care about him being frustrated.
10-20% is false because grossly underreported.
Painful to admit.
Well, no.
I mean, I think there is that aspect that some people won't.
And also, if you have a largely sexless marriage, and the question is, have you had sex in the last month or three months, and maybe you have sex twice a year,
But it just happens to have fallen in that time frame, then you would not be counted as a sexless marriage.
Though for me, four times a year would be sexless.
Anything less than four times a day.
Day, I tell you!
Like I'm not old.
But, no, so the reason why it's false is that ten to twenty percent is false is because
If you're in a sexless marriage, a lot of people will get divorced.
And that's not counted.
Because they're counting the sexless marriages that continue, not the sexless marriages that have failed.
Where people have gotten divorced.
Does that make sense?
Can women losing their looks also be a factor?
Um, I don't think so.
I don't think so.
I mean, yeah, we age out a little bit, but if you stay in good shape, you should... I mean, you can be... I mean, look at Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whatever a crappy liberal lunatic he is who wants to jail people for questioning climate change.
The guy's pretty buff and he's in his 70s, right?
So, there's absolutely no reason you can't continue to look good as you age.
I mean, as good as when you were 20?
Well, maybe even better, right?
If you start exercising later on.
His wife killed herself and he's on steroids.
Okay, I don't know about that, but let's say he is on steroids, he still looks good, right?
So yes, underreporting, and the fact is that a lot of marriages that are sexless will no longer be marriages, and they wouldn't be counted as sexless marriages, although they were sexless marriages, if that makes sense.
So that is a huge challenge.
So this is from the UK, and if you've seen British Teeth, this will make more sense.
A new survey, how new is this?
2018, right?
So, six years ago.
Passion killers include the menopause and having young children, but for the over 60s at least, not body confidence.
So, a new survey by GrandsNet and MomsNet and associated with Relate has revealed the ultimate taboo, the truth about sex and the lack of it in relationships.
Over a quarter!
29% of GrantsNet and MumsNet users currently in relationships say that their relationship is sexless.
According to the official definition, no sex at all in the past year or fewer than 10 times in the past year.
20% say they've had sex fewer than 10 times and 8% say they've had no sex at all over the previous 12 months.
Age seems to play a strong part.
With the number of people saying they are in sexless relationships growing steadily through the age groups.
Those who are in sexless marriages, sorry, those who are in sexless relationships included 18% of those under 30, 25% of those in their 30s, 28% of those in their 40s, 36% of those in their 50s and 47% of those aged 60 or older.
The big leap in sexless relationships between those in their 40s and those in their 60s might be down to menopause, which happens on average at 51 in the UK and can be associated with the physical discomfort that makes sex difficult.
Almost a third of those over 60 say they have lost their libido since the menopause, and those over 60 are significantly more likely than the average to say they would like less sex.
11%.
3% of those over 60 say their partners would like less sex.
But getting older has its benefits as body confidence surges noticeably.
However, only 14% of those 6 years older who are having less sex than they or their partner would like said they were self-conscious about their bodies compared with 37% of under 30s.
The survey confirms something that lots of parents will admit anecdotally, having young children is a passion killer.
Those with no children are significantly less likely, 16%, than those with at least one child, 30%, to report they have had sex less than 10 times in the past year.
So, we can go on and on, but... So this is parents and over 50, so it is going to be not... This is not representative of the population as a whole, but I think people in general are having less sex.
Certainly for young people, they're having less sex because either pornography or just anxiety, awkwardness, dating apps, the general 80% of women going for 20% of the men and so on.
So I think that there's a lot less sex in modern society.
There was sort of a big bulge, so to speak.
There was a big bulge in the 60s and 70s, in the 80s, and then with AIDS and so on, it began to fade out.
And then there was more sex that happened after
9-11, because disasters tend to spur sexual behavior.
It's very hard-selected stuff.
And I think it's really faded out as a whole.
And I think people are just not having as much sex.
I mean, there's a small number of guys who are having a lot of sex.
And most women of reasonable levels of attractiveness can have as much sex as they want, but they're not really going for it.
So, I think it's pretty wretched.
It's pretty wretched.
Endocrine disruptors, birth control, bad food, etc.
Yeah, I get that.
Stress for sure.
But do you know this study?
I'm, you know, I'm going to double check on this.
I, you know, I hate getting things wrong with a deep passion, but I also like to be spontaneous!
So let me just make sure I get this right.
This is the data.
About women who come into money and men who come into money.
I don't know if you've ever heard this data.
So women who come into money and men who come into money.
So they did a survey on people who win the lottery.
So, a new study from Sweden has revealed that married women who win the lottery are far more likely to divorce their spouses than men who win the lottery.
The study, entitled Fortunate Families?
The Effects of Wealth on Marriage and Fertility, analyzed the short-term effects of large positive wealth acquisitions on marriage and fertility in Swedish lottery players.
Researchers found that married women who win the lottery are almost twice as likely as married men to file for a divorce in the aftermath of a win compared to male lottery winners.
Quote, when the winning player is a married woman, our estimates suggest that a 1 million Swedish kronor, windfall almost doubles the baseline short-term, short-run divorce rate.
The study made a point of noting that winning the lottery as a woman doesn't cause more divorces, it simply accelerates them for women who are already thinking about filing for divorce.
Men who win the lottery actually lead to higher marriage rates and a reduced divorced risk.
Quote, suggesting wealth increases men's attractiveness as prospective and current partners.
Long-term divorce risk goes down when husbands win the lottery.
A lottery win for men increases the chance of unmarried men getting married in the next five years.
After they win by 30%, well, chances of married men getting divorced is reduced by 40%.
Ah, they stay for the money!
Not only are male winners much more likely to get or stay married, they also end up having more children.
This trend was consistent regardless of whether the man was married or not.
The study confirmed previous empirical studies that showed husbands with higher incomes or employment stabilizes marriages, while the wife's income or employment increase has the opposite effect.
So, fertility issues.
The wealthier women get, the less children they want.
The wealthier men get, the more children they want.
Giving men money increases the marriage and birth rates.
Giving women money decreases the marriage and birth rates.
It's not that complicated.
It's really, really not that complicated.
When you give women free money,
They have fewer children.
When you give men free money, they have more children.
When you give women free money, they get divorced more.
When you give men free money, they get married more.
And remember, the welfare state, the national debt, money printing is mostly designed to take money from men and give money to women.
The entire aim of democracy, when women vote, is to take money from men and give it to women.
And that kills marriage rates.
And that kills birth rates.
Now why is that?
Yes, sir.
Go ahead.
So kind of on the sexless marriage thing, what it's not for me, but it's for a friend per se.
So he's getting married in August and he already knows that he's going to have to be a quote on quote passport, bro.
Cause his wife was worse.
Beyonce current fiance is going to withhold section of him and put him in timeout.
Long story short.
I guess my question is, if you were in my shoes trying to counsel him away from this marriage, would you even try, or what would you do?
Because I see him stepping onto a landmine.
But it's not a marriage.
Yeah, it's not a marriage.
A marriage is founded and cemented on sexuality.
Because that's what marriage is for, is to manage and control sexuality and the product of sexuality, which is children.
So, a sexless marriage is a contradiction in terms.
Again, I'm going to just preface this by saying, if the woman is going through some horrible illness, and you know, obviously there's times and so on, right?
There's going to be times of more or less, right?
And when you have a bunch of little kids all over the place, if you're homeschooling, you know, there's going to be times where there's less.
So, I get all of that, right?
So, but we're just talking in general.
There's no such thing as a sexless marriage.
That's a complete contradiction in terms.
That's like saying a costly income.
An honest politician, like these things don't, a short answer from me, right?
These things just don't exist.
There's no such thing as a sexless marriage.
You can call it a marriage if you want.
But it's not a marriage, because a marriage is founded upon the management and control of sexuality.
The reason we have marriage is because of sexuality, the dimorphic nature of our reproduction.
And so that is why we have marriage, is because of sexuality.
So a sexless marriage is not a marriage.
And so he can say that he's getting married, but he's not.
And a sexless marriage is not cemented, right?
Sexuality is... pair-bonding is sexuality.
I mean, of course there's love and respect, but you can have love and respect without sexuality.
But for human beings, pair-bonding is sexuality.
And so you can't be pair-bonded without sexuality, because pair-bonding is evolved to
Manage and retain the connection of partners who are having children, because you need both people to raise the children to be fully committed.
So there is no marriage without sexuality.
Now, sexuality alone doesn't make a marriage, but it's necessary, but not sufficient.
I mean, there's a good marriage, which is, you know,
Virtue, respect, love, and so on.
So, I would say, and particularly, here's the funny thing too, right?
This is the funny thing too, right?
So, as a whole, we're really going to go here, right?
So, as a whole, women like successful men, right?
They really, really like successful men.
Successful men tend to have a lot of high testosterone.
I don't want to make this causal, because for men, success
Gives you more testosterone, and more testosterone gives you more success.
It's a virtuous cycle, right?
So, women want tough, aggressive, successful men, and that means a high sex drive.
Right?
So, for instance, this is for the ladies.
If you want a successful man, he's going to have a high sex drive.
And the more successful a man you want, the higher sex drive he's going to have.
And if you don't give him sex, it's going to be really tough for him to stay successful.
Because, what for?
Right?
What for?
So, it's funny just that women want all the positive economic attributes of high status, high success, high-T men, and that comes along with a high sex drive.
And I just think that's the deal.
Wanting a man to be successful without accepting that gives him a higher than normal sex drive is like a guy wanting a woman to be really attractive, but for no one else to notice that she's attractive.
Right?
Never.
I mean, it's just not a possibility.
And of course, I've talked about this before, that it's important for men to keep women happy, and it's important for women to keep men happy.
And men do things to keep women happy, and women need to do things to keep men happy.
That's the deal you make when you say you become one flesh, that you work very hard to keep each other happy.
And it shouldn't be work, because the other person's happiness should be your happiness.
You know, my daughter got interested in a show recently, and we watched it through twice.
I don't really like the show, but it gave her great happiness, and she loves telling me about the lore.
She's really into the lore, the history of these various things.
Video games have this lore, and so on.
And she's so delighted to tell me that it brings me happiness to hear what she's talking about, though I could care less about video game lore.
I just like shooting demons, or something like that.
But it should be, you know, when my wife is a vegetarian, she's lactose intolerant, and so it's tough for her to get a good meal.
So when we find a place where she can get a good meal out...
I'm thrilled to go there.
And you know, half of our family is debating to make each other happy where we're going to eat, right?
I like a good steak, but I don't want my wife to just have to order french fries and a salad, right?
And so I, you know, whereas my wife wants to enjoy a meal, but she also knows that I enjoy a good steak.
So we're all just trying to be very nice and sometimes it's a bit paralyzing, but you focus on the other person's happiness because their happiness is your happiness.
What I've understood about male and female sexuality is that men want to have sex often more than women, but women enjoy sex as much as men.
And that does mean that the man is going to have to initiate sometimes more.
So, you just deal with that.
I mean, that's...
The way that men have what, like 15 times or 17 times the testosterone levels of women?
And it's not the only factor.
But yeah, as a man, you're going to have to initiate more.
That doesn't mean you're unattractive.
It just means that men and women are different.
You don't want your wife to be a man if you're straight.
And women, you don't want your husband to be a woman if you're straight.
And that means you're going to have to accept some differences, and there's some benefits, and there's some minuses.
Men tend to be more decisive, more direct, and tend not to overthink things and don't get as clogged up by social disapproval.
And that's a strength.
It's also a weakness.
And women tend to be more concerned with other people's opinions and they tend to be more concerned with the beauty of the interior and exterior of the living space and so on.
And that is a strength and a weakness.
And men and women are designed to fit together and work together in a beautiful and complementary fashion.
So, if a man, if you take it personally that you have to initiate sex more, you're missing the whole point.
If you didn't have to initiate sex more, you'd be married to a dude!
So I don't, like, it just seems to me, I want a lovely feminine woman with as high a sex drive as I have.
Well, that's, you know, not usually really the thing.
That's not really the case.
So I don't, you know, wanting
Wanting to have a partner who has all the strengths that you have and none of the weaknesses you have is wanting someone who's not the opposite sex, right?
So, I don't know if this makes any sense, but no, I would say to my friend, no, you are going to set yourself up for a life of frustration.
And torment, and pornography addictions, and fantasizing, and potential affairs, and just a mess.
Just a mess.
And that's... Sorry, last thing I'll say, like, I remember going on a date once with a woman who announced at the beginning that she just didn't have really much of a sex drive, she enjoyed it on occasion, and I was like, yeah, okay, you know, I've no issue with that, I mean, that's... but it's not for me, right?
I couldn't live like that in a million years.
So, shook hands and wished her well, but she's going to need to find some low-testosterone guy, and then she's going to be upset because he's not successful and can't fight for what's his due in this hurly-burly, rough-and-tumble world.
But yeah, I wouldn't get involved in a relationship or a marriage where the woman had a low sex drive.
I mean, that would just be
It would just be torture.
I mean, that would be, for me, that would be like, you know, some women, and it's true of some men too, but I'm talking as a man, some women are very sedentary, right?
They don't like to go anywhere, they don't like to do anything, they don't like to, and it doesn't mean that they're overweight or anything, but they just don't like to move.
And, you know, of course I met my wife playing volleyball and then
First weekend, we went away together.
We went dirt biking and just fantastic stuff.
I'm an active kind of guy.
This is why these shows are kind of nice.
If I'm doing them, I can actually walk around rather than just sit in front of a camera.
I'm a moving kind of guy.
When I sit, I feel like I'm slowly being gazed at by Medusa and turning to stone.
So you just need, you know, the fact that my wife is, I might have called her action wife from the very beginning because she's very adventurous and does wild, she's gone ziplining over crocodiles.
She's, you know, she's really adventurous.
We go dune buggying, we went dune buggying once and just, you know, really she's up for just about anything and she's very adventurous and she likes to move.
So that's compatible, right?
And so if he's marrying a woman
With with a low sex drive or was it is it no sex drive is it like what's the story there?
Yeah, I mean long story short she's hitting the jackpot on him.
He's a blue-blooded Haitian and she's Dominican from like lower lower class lower economic class.
I knew them both in college and long story short after college they separated and he got back with their
End of 2023 and proposed in January of 24.
And I was just like, dude, like trust and believe if she went and got her masters in the Northeast and you were in the Southeast, trust and believe that she fooled around.
Right.
Um, sorry, but why did he propose to her?
I mean, so after trying like fleshing it out from him, he says that
If he knows that he's married and that he has a kid on the way, he's going to work a lot harder.
Just because he's going to go get an MBA.
He wants to get this CFA and become like president of a bank.
And he says having a woman or having a kid and being married just puts more pressure.
And it took me a few months to get that out of him.
Is she classy?
Classy?
No, I would, I mean, to be, I'd call her an adjustable five.
No, I don't just mean in terms of looks.
I mean, does she understand how the wealth of wealth and status works?
Can she talk to other wives of CXOs?
Does she have sophistication in the realm of art and finance and the world?
Is she classy?
It doesn't necessarily mean, which, I mean, I didn't grow up rich, but I'm classy.
Is she going to be a wife who can socialize and move easily among wealthy people?
So, I mean, from the time that I spent around her, about three years, she's really abrasive.
Okay, so she's not going to be an asset to him, and she's going to limit his career.
Because a man at the highest circles is going to be judged by his partner.
Yeah.
Every single investor that I've ever had wants to socialize with me and my partner.
Oh, I guess my wife now, right?
And because they want to know what your judgment is like.
They want to know what your self-esteem is like.
They want to know what your sensitivity to status is like.
They want to know that you make good decisions.
Especially if you're starting out, and it sounds like he's starting out, they're going to say, okay, so you're going to have to, we're going to have to figure out whether you make good decisions before we give you a million dollars to start a business, or before we hire you and put you in charge of a ten million dollar budget, right?
Like, when I was in the software field, I had a multi-million dollar budget that I had to manage.
And people want to know, do you make good decisions?
And, especially when you're starting out,
They want to look at your partner and say, well, here's an example of a decision you've made.
This is the person you chose to marry.
And if you've made a bad decision with that, if that's not a decision that people can really respect and look up to, they won't hire you.
They won't give you the money.
They just won't.
Yeah, that makes sense.
And something that I put towards them that was huge, especially for this potential kids is that.
He's politically conservative and she's politically liberal.
And I don't mean liberal like fiscally conservative and socially liberal.
I mean she's like, I mean, stand off of politics.
She's just with the current thing.
Okay, so but can she be reasoned with?
I mean look, everyone grows up with bad information.
Lord knows I did.
So but can she be reasoned with?
I mean he, in that area, he just taps out of the conversation.
So she can't be reasoned with?
Exactly, she can't.
So how are they going to resolve disputes?
How are they going to resolve disagreements if she can't be reasoned with?
That's what I told him and where I'm caught is he wants me to travel to his wedding in August across the country and I'm like, why?
Do I or why should I put my time into something that I do not support?
That I've spoken against.
But I want to do it because he's my good friend.
So that's where I'm kind of just like, I'm stuck.
All right.
And has he done the research on how best to raise biracial kids?
No, he hasn't.
So I mean, he... So he doesn't care about this stuff.
What the hell is he getting married for?
Well, I mean, he's, they're both, you could just say black.
He's Haitian and she's Dominican.
Oh, sorry.
I thought you said blue eyed.
My, my mistake.
Sorry.
Blue blood, blue blood.
So he's Haitian and she's Dominican.
Okay.
So still biracial, but right.
Okay.
So, I mean, which culture and, and which identity are they going to be slightly gravitate towards and, and all of that, right.
The, the, the biracial kids have some, some challenges, right.
I'm sure they can be overcome, but it's really important to be aware of them.
Okay, so he wants to be a top-level person, but he's gonna marry a fairly low-rent wife, and they can't resolve disputes based on reason and evidence.
And now, are they Christians?
Yeah, they're both Christians.
Okay, so is she willing to let him take the lead in the marriage and to submit to him?
So, I haven't gotten that far with him yet, but I just told him, I was like,
As a friend, you need to set the tone like early on, if you go through with this.
How do you, sorry, how do you set the tone after you get married?
I don't understand.
That's like saying you really need to be careful about which car you buy after you buy the car.
Well, as I know, we were talking before he got engaged and before he proposed.
And did he listen?
Hell no.
He didn't listen to me or his father.
And I was like.
Oh, so his father is saying don't marry the woman.
Yeah, exactly.
I mean, I told, this is my friend.
I said, Hey, look, I found a private investigation firm for you in her Metro area because you live a thousand miles away.
And if you come from, he comes from pretty good money, like what's going on in Haiti with the crisis and the military, like he's not even, it doesn't affect whatsoever.
He's insulated.
It'd be like.
In an American sense, it'd be like part of the politically elite, or I guess in Canada, maybe being part of like a Trudeau extension.
Somewhere.
Kind of bulletproof.
Yeah.
I mean, maybe literally he has to be right.
Yeah.
So it's like, she's marrying up.
He has all this ambition, all these things that he wants to do.
And all she brings to the table is.
I like.
And I'm like, it's so... Sorry, all she brings to the table is what?
Is that he likes her?
To me it's just frustrating.
But what does he like?
Is she super pretty?
Is she super sexy?
But that doesn't really matter if she doesn't want to have sex, right?
Yeah, and that's the thing.
I genuinely have no clue.
I feel as if there's something in his childhood that he hasn't overcome because I told him, I'm like, there's nothing.
And I said it polite.
I don't see why someone of your stature would go for someone at that level, not just that class, but just her demeanor.
And sorry, and has she already indicated that she will prefer a low or no sex marriage?
Well, me and him talked about it in depth and she was like, you know, my fiance is already mentally
She's stressed out.
She's feeling this type of way because of the crisis in my home country.
And I'm there now.
I already know that as I get, once I have kids, I'm going to have to travel because I can't cheat on my spouse in the States.
Cause I'll, I'll be exposed pretty easily.
So it's like, he's going in knowing that he has to have an affair consistently out of the country.
So isn't she just going to take half his money?
I mean, I was raised Christian, but I wouldn't claim the...
The identity so much.
I would just say I was raised Christian and that colors the view.
Thou shalt not bear false witness, I assume is fairly important, right?
Yes, of course.
Okay.
So can you honestly celebrate this wedding or are you going to be lying through your teeth?
I will be lying through my teeth.
So, when they say, does anybody know of any reason why this marriage is not a good idea, are you going to lie?
Woo!
Man.
You just sounded like the ghoul there from Fallout.
I don't know if you've seen it.
Woo!
It's a great actor.
Are you going to lie at a wedding?
I was going to.
You know, it's funny.
I thought about that.
I was going to keep my mouth shut just to make him happy as a friend, because I've already said my piece to him plenty of times.
Yes, but if you go, you're there to celebrate.
Okay.
Right?
Yeah.
You're not there to give a speech which says, uh, I'm betting against the marriage continuing, and I sure wish I got 10% of what she's going to pull out of his ass with her lawyers, because it's going to be a lot of fucking money.
You're not going to be doing that, right?
No, not at all.
Okay, so you're going to be going up there, and you're going to be giving a little speech there?
No.
Are you going to be giving a speech?
My brother, are you going to be giving a speech?
No, I'm not.
No, I won't give a speech.
I won't do what I can't do.
Well, you're not that close then.
Wouldn't he want you to give a speech if you're close?
So since I've known both of them three years in school, it's been a sheesh, quite some time now.
It's like I've told him, even when he first met the girl and started dating her, how I felt about her.
So I kind of feel as if I'm beating a dead horse.
So why does he want you there if he knows you don't approve of the marriage?
In fact, you strongly disapprove of the marriage from what I can see.
Because, so, he's from blue blood, and I'm from, say, red blood, pretty much like lower economic classes.
And what I've done with my life, and how I've turned it around, reminds him of his father and what he did.
Okay.
Like, just carved it into solid rock.
Now, does your friend have his own money, or is it largely family money?
Largely family money.
So why doesn't his father cut him off if he goes against his... He's going to lose the money, right?
Um... That's... Yeah, because his dad isn't bankrolling the marriage either.
He's paying for it out of pocket.
No, no, but what I mean is why doesn't he cut him out of the... Say you marry this woman, you're out of the will.
You want to go against my advice?
No problem, but you've got to make it on your own.
If you don't respect me enough to take my advice, then surely you wouldn't want my money.
So that I don't know all of the intimate details with that.
Um, I just, it bothers me when, when fathers don't actually show any real authority.
It just bothers me.
You know, it's like if the kid is like, Hey, you know, I'm, I'm, uh, um, is his father, does his father have credibility in the realm of marriage?
Oh, I mean, I don't know his dad, but they've been married.
Only one marriage partner and two kids, so... Okay, so he's got some reason to be respected when it comes to marriage.
So if his son is going to engage in a bad marriage where he's already planning to have affairs... I mean, if I were the dad, and my son was doing this, I would try and talk my son out of it.
I'd give all the reasons why.
And if my son decided to go ahead, then I would say, okay, then if you don't respect my advice, if you don't respect me as a moral person, if you don't respect my ethics and my arguments,
Then any money that I've made out of my ethics and my arguments, you wouldn't want, because you wouldn't want the bad fruit of a bad tree.
So I will liberate you from the will, so you don't end up touching any of the assets that I've gathered through being a good person, because you don't think I'm that good a person and therefore you wouldn't want any of the fruits of that, so I'll liberate you from any responsibility regarding inheritance.
Sheesh.
But that's authority, isn't it?
Yeah.
You can't help but respect that either.
Well, I mean, respect or not, that would be the fact.
I mean, if you want to go your own way, go your own way.
That means don't take my money.
You know, like if some son said to his father, I think you're a shitty, dishonest businessman, but I really want you to invest in my startup, what would the father say?
That part one more time, I was just looking at the chat.
My bad.
If a son were to say to his father, I think you're a bad and dishonest businessman, and I want you to invest in my startup, what would the father say?
Oh, he said get lost.
Yeah, if you don't think I'm a good person, then why would you want my dirty money?
And if you won't take my advice as a happily married man, and you're already planning, this isn't a subjective thing, you're already planning on having affairs before you even get married, and you're Christian.
So you're already planning on how to have affairs.
That's a terrible situation.
And so if I'm telling you don't marry this girl, then if you're right and it's going to be a great marriage, then the reason I would tell you not to is because I don't want you to be happy.
I'm a bad father.
I'm a bad person.
I just want to sabotage you.
It's like, okay, so if I'm a bad father and a bad person, you clearly wouldn't want any of my money.
And maybe that would cause some problems and some estrangement.
Maybe it would stop the marriage.
Maybe it wouldn't.
I don't know.
But there will come a time when your friend is going to wake up, as all people do, from bad decisions.
And if you're going into a marriage planning on how you're going to have an affair, and how you're going to hide it, and where you have to go in order to hide it, and that's your approach to a marriage,
Then you're a terrible Christian, and you're a terrible family man, and you're going to get taken to the cleaners.
And a woman who's willing to marry a man who's already planning on having affairs, to me, would be a predatory gold digger.
Like, why else would you marry a man who's already planning on cheating on you?
I don't know these people.
Obviously, I can't tell for sure, but that would be my first thought.
Yeah, and something to add to your point about red flags or my point about red flags.
I had told them, I was like, yeah, I mean, I'm, I'm guessing you guys are going to, you know, have joint accounts and everything, joint bank accounts.
The house would be in both your names and whatnot.
And my friend was like, no, she actually wants to have her own.
We both have our own finances, um, separate really.
Is she bringing much money to the table?
Sorry, I don't quite understand.
Six figures, six figures.
Okay.
And so, uh, and that's the red flag.
I mean, yeah, I don't understand this.
I've, I've heard of these married couples.
Ah, it's gross to me that these married couples were like, well, I have my bank account and he has his bank account and I write my check for half of this and I do my laundry, but not his.
And whatever, like you make your side of the bed, but not hers.
That's just so unbelievably petty and ridiculous.
I don't understand separate finances.
You're supposed to be one flesh!
You're supposed to be one person.
I don't have separate bank accounts for my left and right hand.
So, you know, I don't know whether you should go or not, but I wouldn't go to a holy place, and whether you're Christian or not, it's holy to them, right?
I wouldn't go to a holy place and bear false witness.
I don't think there's any amount of money in the world that would make me go to a holy place and bear false witness.
Oh God, makes sense.
So yeah, I'll call them and I'll tell them, I'll just say, hey, I can't
Honestly, celebrate your decision.
I feel as if that's going to really tarnish our friendship.
But if it does, it means we're more friends to begin with.
Well, okay, you can look at it that way for sure.
I'm not disagreeing with you, but I think a more important thing is, do you want to be friends with someone whose marriage is going to descend into hell in fairly short order?
Because he's going to be calling you up, and he's going to be miserable, and he's going to be frustrated, and then he's going to get divorced, and he's going to have lawyers go after him, and he's just going to be a wreck.
And he's going to be that way because he didn't listen to you, or his father.
Right, so do you want that amount of suffering?
And if he's got kids, the kids are going to be involved, and maybe she's going to make allegations against him.
It's so often the case in divorce.
Like, do you want to spend the next five years of your life propping up a friend's disaster that could have easily been prevented if he just listened to you and or his father?
Because he's not going to be the same guy.
Now, maybe, maybe he won't get divorced.
Maybe he'll just be going to have affairs.
Now, you say, hey man, how's it going?
And he's like, yeah, you know, I just went to this place and I had sex with this person.
Or he's going to say, you know, marriage is bad because, you know, she won't touch me.
Or, you know, like I got an STD or I got some woman pregnant in Manila.
Or it's like, I don't know, whatever, right?
In Laos.
So do you want this seedy mess in your life?
No, I definitely don't.
Um, yeah, I mean, it's where, I mean, you pretty much helped me figure out the answer.
It's just like, tell him, be honest with him where I stand.
I'll just put it out there.
The way that I feel is that I feel it's like, I'm going to take a punch in the gut because I told him I'll be there to support you.
And I already gave him my word.
So that's where going back on my word is like... So what do you mean when you say support?
You'd be there to support him.
What does that mean?
Just another body, another face in the audience.
No, I understand what being there means.
You'll be there, I get that.
You'll be a face in the audience.
The question was support.
What does support him mean?
You don't support him.
You don't support this decision.
It just means so one way the way that I see it is I mean a case in point would be like let's just say have your daughter likes a video game lore and you don't necessarily this is a terrible you know comparison it really is but go for it man yeah terrible comparison just but it's like how
Your daughter likes video game lore and you don't particularly care for it, but because that's your daughter, you love her, you want to encourage her, all that stuff, you go at it and you support her and you take part in it.
I don't view him as a child at all.
I view him as a brother to me.
We're a few thousand miles away from each other, but we've had some authentic, honest conversations over the years, some pretty deep, heartfelt ones.
What I mean by support is just like, all right, I don't understand necessarily why you're taking this action, why you're doing this, but because we have some, we have good credit together, I'm going to go ahead and give you the benefit of the doubt.
And just go, so therefore you don't have any, we don't have any bad blood towards each other.
Okay.
That all sounds very Sicilian.
I want bad vows, right?
I want bad vows.
All right.
So they're Christians, right?
And what are they going to say to each other?
Are they going to say before God himself—now, whether you believe or not, they believe, right?
Right?
So, they are going to go in front of Almighty God and say, forsaking all others, aren't they?
Yes, they are.
Is your friend going to be bearing false witness in these most holy and sacred of vows before Almighty God?
Is he going to lie through his teeth?
Because he has no plans of forsaking all others.
In fact, he's planning to forsake her for others.
He's going to have to lie through his teeth.
To God himself on the most holy day in his life.
You think you can trust this man?
He'll lie to God, you don't think he'll lie to you?
That's a good point.
That is a good point.
Oh man, I'll lie to Almighty God, but I got your back, bro.
Also, and this is a good point, somebody's saying, also, he's gonna tell you about the cheating, and then you're gonna hang out with his wife.
And you're gonna have to keep his secrets.
Will you have this woman as your lawfully wedded wife to live together after God's ordinance in the holiest state of matrimony?
Will you love her, comfort her, honor and keep her in sickness and in health for richer and for poorer, forsaking all others and keep yourself only to her for as long as you both shall live?
I do!
And the lightning bolt blows his testicles through the stained glass.
And you know it's a lie.
And you're there cheering.
Breaking bread, drinking your glass.
You know it's a lie.
I couldn't, man.
I don't know what you should do.
I don't know.
I'm just telling you that there's going to be a price to pay.
There's going to be a price to be paid.
I don't know what that price is going to be.
But it's going to have to be paid.
By you.
Yeah, that's true.
I mean, that's why I haven't bought a ticket.
I haven't got a hotel.
None of that, because it's like, wait, I don't support this.
Like, I don't agree with this.
Sure.
I called a friend about it.
I was like, dude, are you going?
He's like, no.
And I asked him why, and he was like, well, I wasn't invited.
That's it, right?
It just wasn't invited.
Yeah.
I hate it when you don't get that invitation to hell, man.
That's tough.
You know, Satan is just like, you're not invited.
Like, oh man, I can't go.
Anyway, sorry.
Go ahead.
Yeah, no, I mean, it's, it's, it's just kind of like, I mean, I don't know.
I mean, it's, I want to, you bring up a good point.
Right.
And I mean, you pretty much helped me see the answer that I need to, or the decision that I need to make.
But I guess the only, not even a but, it's just, I have to be honest with him.
And if I'm being honest with you about, you know, this friend of mine, I mean, he does have his flaky ways, but I've tended to overlook.
Which is just not following through on his own word, his own commitments.
I used to, long story short, like a little business group, we'd have accountability meetings every week about the things that you had done, call them leading indicators, and your lagging results.
And I always had to whip him up like, dude, what?
What is stopping you?
What is going on?
These are your promises.
These are your goals.
These are your commitments.
This does not have any impact on me.
You're coming to a group with me, some of my friends.
I got people that I know.
You're just one of a selected few.
What the hell?
What's going on?
How come I can't get you to be here on time?
You always sound defeated.
Dude,
Figure it out.
So it was always a lot of like, redirection and motivation with them.
And it's like, man, I can't.
Okay.
If you're late, just to me, it's just like, Hey, just shut up, fall in line, say your part and leave.
Don't come in and make a scene.
Hey guys, I'm so tired and a lot going on.
Nobody cares.
I don't care.
We're here for a 10 minute meeting on a Monday morning at 6am.
Everyone has a busy life.
We got 10 minutes.
We don't need to hear you lament for three of those minutes.
Right.
Um, so yeah, he has that.
Yeah, and it could be that his father's really, I'm sure his father is extraordinary, and then there's a regression to the mean where he's more average.
So maybe he's in over his depth and he's got, you know, this is quite common in families, right?
They call this rags to riches to rags in three generations, right?
So maybe it could be that.
And he's going to say, he's going to, you know what he's going to say?
Oh, I know what he's going to say.
You say, maybe if you say I'm not coming, you know, what is he going to say?
You promised!
Right?
He's not gonna say that.
He's just gonna say what he would probably say is, you know, I get it.
I understand.
And we probably just part ways.
That's what I would assume.
Oh, so he wouldn't even try and understand or even further?
Yeah, because if he did say, you promised, or you gave me your commitment, he'd be like, well, but I didn't give a commitment to forsake all others in front of God, and you're going to give that commitment knowing you're going to break it, so I really don't think we should talk about broken commitments as a whole, but if he's not going to even say that,
Yeah, you have to be able to disagree with your friends and you'll still be friends.
Otherwise, the friendship is just based on conformity and that's not real.
It's not honest.
It's not genuine.
All friends disagree and that's helpful.
I mean, if you're doing something wrong, you desperately need people to disagree with you.
So, yeah, I'm sorry that this has come to this, but, you know, you're probably saving yourself a lot of suffering by not getting involved in this marriage.
I can't stand being around bad marriages.
Like, I had many, many, many, many years ago, I had a friend who
Well, things were just getting worse and worse with his wife over time, and I just had to bail.
I would give them some advice, and I'm not too terrible at that.
I'd give them some advice.
They just wouldn't listen.
They ended up getting divorced years after I stopped.
I just couldn't.
I just couldn't.
Just being around bad marriages, it's toxic for the soul.
It's horrible.
It's a big window into hell.
I don't want to do it.
Yeah, that makes sense.
I appreciate it.
You're welcome.
Listen, great, great topic to bring up, and I sympathize.
I really do.
You know, it's tough when friends that we have prior to big life decisions start making bad big life decisions.
That is a tough situation to be in, and I really do sympathize with that, and sometimes it's just a band-aid off situation that can help that way.
All right.
Well, yeah, drop me a line.
Please let me know.
Let me know how it goes.
I really would appreciate that.
Okay, I think I'll close it off tonight.
How are you guys, if you want to just, you know, either give me a brief thing, audio, or just type, how was it for you having one of these kinds of shows?
I like it in some ways.
I think there's some cool stuff about being able to just bring up topics, draw up topics, and that was interesting to me.
But of course, you are the donors.
You are in charge.
I am your willing, well-greased philosophy slave.
How did you find it as a whole?
You liked it?
It's very good?
I think it's interesting, yeah.
I think it's interesting.
And, you know, when people are more chatty sometimes.
Nice to see a real-time convo?
Yeah, I like that too.
And, you know, it's a great topic to bring up and I really do sympathize and appreciate the conversation.
So, yeah, maybe we can do this once a week instead of me always having to be in the studio.
That would be kind of nice.
And it does give me a chance to sort of grab things and read them and get topics going off that way.
And you know, we've got a nice variety of topics.
So yeah, good to hear.
Maybe we'll do this on Friday nights, see how people think.
And we'll also get people's feedback if you're listening to this later.
If you could.
It's also nice to have an opportunity to talk instead of just writing in the chat.
Yeah, I think that's right.
I think that's right.
I think we could also do Zoom, too, at some point.
But I think this works out pretty well.
So yeah, thanks everyone.
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I really do appreciate that.
All right.
Thank you.
Have yourself a beautiful night.
I will talk to you guys on Sunday.
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