Asatru Folk Assembly - 3⧸26⧸25 Victory Never Sleeps, Episode 142 - Adulting with Allen： Moderation

00:00:00.000 Transcription by CastingWords

00:00:30.000 Thank you.

00:01:00.000 We'll be right back.

00:01:30.000 Thank you.

00:02:00.000 Thank you.

00:02:30.000 Thank you.

00:03:00.000 Hello, everyone.

00:03:24.180 Welcome back to another exciting edition of Victory Never Sleeps.

00:03:27.280 as you might notice tonight i am joined once again by law speaker alan turnage

00:03:33.300 this is the third install monthly installment of adulting with alan and alan is going to learn us

00:03:41.040 some stuff um first or attempt to learn us some stuff so uh thank you to witness fawn for

00:03:51.340 We're covering for that last hour last week as I went to the airport.

00:03:56.880 All of our Witten, except for the lovely Brandy Fassett, were able to make it to Ostara at Thorshof, and it was a fantastic event.

00:04:04.980 I'd like to thank all of the local leadership at Thorshof, as well as all of our members who gave of themselves in their time, their effort in auction items, in auction purchases, in support of us, of Thorshof itself, and of the mission that we are working so hard together to accomplish.

00:04:27.700 It was a fantastic event, and I'm very, very glad I was able to be in attendance.

00:04:34.980 I suppose next up, and it's sneaking up faster than I would have thunk it, is Midsommar at Odenshoff.

00:04:46.080 Midsommar is going to be, let's see if Nick's got the graphics set up.

00:04:52.180 I don't know that he does, but it's going to be the fourth weekend in June.

00:04:57.320 That is Odenshoff in Brownsville, California.

00:05:01.220 Here we go, June 27th through the 29th.

00:05:03.940 Again, that's in Brownsville, California. It is the first Hof of the Ausatru Folk Assembly.

00:05:12.820 We acquired Odin's Hof 10 years. At the end of midsummer, we will have first seen it

00:05:22.660 10 years ago. And in October, we will have had it for an Ausatru Hof for 10 years, which

00:05:31.920 is quite an accomplishment in this day and age.

00:05:35.740 So come out, help us celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Aus True Folk Assembly at the AFA's

00:05:42.040 very first Hof.

00:05:43.040 We'd love to see you guys there.

00:05:44.640 It's always a very nice event.

00:05:46.540 We love to show off Odense Hof, and it's going to be pretty special, so we'd love to have

00:05:52.180 you there with us.

00:05:53.780 If you are a member, awesome, reach out to your local folk builder, they'll get you all

00:05:57.340 set up.

00:05:58.340 If you're not a member, also awesome, we would love to see you fix that.

00:06:01.600 and we'd love to see you come to the event uh again reach out to any member of afa leadership

00:06:06.640 and they will get you all set up or ask any questions here we got folks here that'll

00:06:11.280 that'll help you out we had members um invited from this broadcast that showed up at thorshof

00:06:18.800 for ostara so it's not just idle words this actually gets some of you guys to come out

00:06:24.400 and be part of our afa family and again you don't get what you don't ask for so if you're listening

00:06:29.680 to this broadcast, either if you're listening or if you're watching it as a video, if you are a

00:06:35.560 heterosexual white person and you would like to come home to the gods of your folk, we invite you

00:06:41.380 to join us. Check us out at runestone.org. There's a join link there. We're doing amazing things and 0.98

00:06:50.900 we would love to have you be part of the team. So please consider that. Also, like, share,

00:06:59.180 subscribe comment anything you do that boosts the algorithms that helps us out biggest hurdle

00:07:06.460 or the biggest i guess obstacle in uh getting as many members as should be in the austro folk

00:07:14.380 assembly which is all of our folk is a lack of people knowing we exist the more people know we

00:07:21.660 exist the more people join so spread the word we appreciate you guys if you know anybody out there

00:07:27.820 that you think would be entertained by this program,

00:07:31.820 be educated by this program,

00:07:33.360 or find spiritual value in it,

00:07:36.900 send them our way.

00:07:38.380 We would love to have them be part of our audience.

00:07:41.420 That said, our audience,

00:07:43.000 so much of the show is a question-driven program.

00:07:47.960 So Alan's got some things to present to us tonight.

00:07:50.920 There's some things I'd like to speak on.

00:07:52.520 And then we are very happy to answer

00:07:54.580 any and all questions you guys might have.

00:07:56.860 So if you've got those questions, please go ahead and send them in.

00:07:59.840 And you can send in questions at any time at vns.atrunestone.org.

00:08:07.960 Also, I want to start the show off thanking GW Farnsworth, who donated $100 to help a family keep a roof over their heads,

00:08:15.280 which is one of our folk services endeavors right now.

00:08:19.700 And also $30 to this very program.

00:08:24.080 And he also bought a couple of flags.

00:08:26.000 So thank you very much for that.

00:08:28.400 We appreciate your generosity, your consistent generosity on the program.

00:08:32.800 Thank you.

00:08:34.800 So, Alan, a lot of people may not initially think that moderation is something we focus a lot of attention on.

00:08:44.300 So take it away.

00:08:46.780 Tell us why we should.

00:08:48.620 Well, many reasons that I.

00:08:52.420 First of all, that's a lot of the way that I've tried to guide my own life.

00:08:58.680 And actually, I've thought about all the iterations of that in thinking about today's topic for myself.

00:09:10.320 Certainly, I think the religious aspect focuses directly on, first of all, some of the things from the Lord.

00:09:17.440 Most of the things, most often when people think about the term moderation, they think about alcohol and, you know, being able to drink a little, but not a lot.

00:09:30.480 There's golden milk in this Auburn mug, but to each his or her own.

00:09:35.700 Um, but, um, as the lore admonishes us, uh, the heron of forgetfulness hovers over Phylar's

00:09:45.120 hall and mead is, ale is not the friend of man.

00:09:49.780 Um, and certainly a little wine is okay.

00:09:52.840 A lot is not.

00:09:54.360 And so in the broader picture, then I've often considered that, um, in guiding our folk and

00:10:02.740 guiding myself that that this religion and any way would be easier if it could be extreme i mean if

00:10:14.020 we could just say you shall not drink at all that would be easy or do what you want that's easy too

00:10:24.180 but the hard part is hewing that line down the middle and walking that middle path so in a lot

00:10:30.500 of ways i i hearken our own folk way to that of another aryan faith that of buddhism um where it

00:10:42.180 is all about the middle path um the the path down the line between the extremes and um

00:10:50.500 lest people have any doubt you know the the vedic texts talk about well not today but the buddhist

00:10:56.980 texts talk about the Buddha, um, who had eyes like cornflowers. And so, um, yes, uh, he was

00:11:06.820 not, not the dark, hot, dark eyed, low caste Indian. He was one of us, one of the Brahmin

00:11:12.100 caste. So, uh, so I think we can get a lot of benefit from studying that, uh, studying

00:11:19.080 that path. Uh, although I do not agree with a lot of what Buddhism has to say, I don't

00:11:24.360 think that life is suffering. I don't think attachment causes suffering. You know, that a lot

00:11:29.760 of those things, again, are too extreme to sit in a wood, to sit in the woods by yourself and 0.83

00:11:35.980 meditate like the ascetics did is a form of extremism. So that is certainly not the path

00:11:43.480 for us. We are people of the world because this world is beautiful and joyful. And but we just

00:11:50.240 can't get too extreme in any of the ways that we approach it. One of the fundamental things that

00:11:57.640 came up, now it seems like a lifetime ago, maybe it was, was we got a lot of inquiries, certainly

00:12:05.460 I did, about being able to take a religious exemption for the COVID vaccine. Now, I don't

00:12:14.240 want to harsh anybody's buzz. I did not take the vaccine. I think it's a terrible idea and I think

00:12:19.640 that it's proving out that it was a terrible idea and always was, but there's nothing in our

00:12:25.020 religion that says you can't take a vaccine. I think most vaccine schedules are overdone.

00:12:33.840 That's a personal opinion, not a medical opinion. And if there was an Ebola outbreak, I'd be the

00:12:40.040 first one in line down there getting the Ebola vaccine. But there are other means of preventing

00:12:45.620 those sorts of things without being that radical extreme of of all or none

00:12:53.700 was it the source family that the guy um that there was a guy who

00:12:59.220 um you know he had a whole bunch of followers and again in the in that idea of extremism and

00:13:05.060 extreme renunciation they gave up all their goods they lived together they ran a restaurant

00:13:09.780 And this their leader said that Western medicine is poison. Do not ever go to a Western hospital. Then he had a hang gliding accident that caused massive internal injuries. And he said, take me to the hospital. And they said, no, that's against our teaching.

00:13:33.840 And so he died because he was an extremist. So we can eschew a lot of the trappings of the modern world, but still remain a part of of the good parts of technology and of health care and of the printed word, which you see displayed behind me.

00:13:54.320 Um, the, uh, the, all those sorts of things are good, uh, modern inventions that, that can make your life better if you're not too extreme in your approach to any of it.

00:14:05.840 I'll tell you again, a, a personal example from my own life, um, in law school.

00:14:11.980 Um, I mean, there were some of those students who were there at the school 60, 70, 80 hours a week, which was good because they were preparing themselves for a career, the kind of career that they wanted, where they were going to be slaves to some big law firm for 60, 70, 80 hours a week.

00:14:33.580 And, you know, that's that's just not the kind of lifestyle that I think is healthy.

00:14:39.740 The the moderate lifestyle says you earn enough money to make a decent living for yourself.

00:14:48.460 No, I don't want my antivirus to renew. You can make a living for yourself, but without being too attached to the material things.

00:14:57.800 there are studies, there's a whole couple of documentaries out there about how much money it

00:15:04.320 takes to be happy. Most people that they interview say that how much they ask the question, how much

00:15:12.140 money do you need to be happy? And people say that the answer by and large is about 20% of

00:15:19.320 whatever your number is. So if you're making $50,000 a year, you think, man, if I just had

00:15:23.700 $60,000. If you're making $100,000, if I was $120,000, then I could be happy. But you can be

00:15:30.840 happy with what you have. The other way to be happy is to want less, to live a moderate lifestyle.

00:15:37.880 I drive old cars, I thrift shop, and I come home and read stories to my kids. Well, not anymore.

00:15:47.140 They're 25 and they're not interested in what I have to say anymore.

00:15:51.120 But back in the old days, you know, I made a modest living for myself.

00:15:55.740 I made enough for me and my family, but without being so attached to the material things that I felt like I needed to have a new car or live in as big a house as they would sell me or go on some big, real expensive vacations.

00:16:09.500 Because enough is where you need to be.

00:16:12.620 which reminds me I meant to say before I started talking about moderation that I think of these

00:16:20.440 shows as cumulative so if you have a question about the financial stuff that we talked about

00:16:26.300 in the way back when and maybe you couldn't join the show then but you watched it in the interim

00:16:30.360 and you have a question about your financial stuff I will I'm happy to answer that question

00:16:36.080 I'm happy to answer questions about my approach to health but you know some of the things I do

00:16:41.660 are not what everybody would do, a cold shower. So some of those things are, you know, are

00:16:49.220 moderation, just writ large with, with approach to health, with approach to lifestyle in general.

00:16:58.060 Again, like, and again, the health aspect is a, is another aspect of living in moderation.

00:17:05.140 I don't think raw veganism is the way to go.

00:17:09.580 I also don't think eating every time you come across a McDonald's and, you know, you've got to hanker in for some terrible French fries.

00:17:18.680 That's not the way to go either.

00:17:19.980 So you have to walk that middle path where you eat enough, you eat healthy, but you don't gorge yourself.

00:17:28.260 And again, that is a life of moderation.

00:17:30.780 um that's the that's the starting point so someone bought us three coffees that's 15 donation

00:17:42.120 nice appreciate you someone i don't know whether that was nick being clever or that's literally

00:17:46.980 the pseudonym they chose either way we appreciate it that's just what it's saying fair enough

00:17:54.040 all right something that i wanted to

00:18:00.040 mention about moderation that i don't

00:18:05.240 i think when people say moderation we immediately as alan mentioned we think about

00:18:11.880 alcohol um i think we also as alan mentioned think about food

00:18:18.280 But what I don't think we consider enough is moderation in other things in our life.

00:18:30.800 Many of us, and I think a lot of our audience, we find ourselves in a very politically extreme time.

00:18:39.540 to where if whoever you identify as the other team says one thing the response is to immediately run

00:18:48.340 as far to the opposite side and pick the edgiest thing over there to say to somehow counterbalance

00:18:55.400 it or counter signal it and in doing so we allow our enemies to determine our narrative

00:19:06.280 And we may not think that we do. It is, as Alan said, it is a much easier thing, were we to say, ah, the AFA says, you know, infinite drunkenness, or the AFA says, you know, complete sobriety.

00:19:22.480 The AFA says, you know, you lose if you cannot consume the most food at whatever table you find yourself at, or, you know, we don't see ribs and you're not doing it right.

00:19:32.180 the challenge is our religion is about nobility we use the term Aryan because our people identified

00:19:42.680 themselves as the noble people a part of nobility is having the discretion in your own life to make

00:19:51.320 meaningful choices to choose when to indulge and to choose when to refrain to choose how far down

00:20:01.160 path to go what's right for you you know again we all have different tolerances for a lot of things

00:20:09.240 their case in point over the years and this has gotten increasingly better it's not a significant

00:20:16.840 problem these days but we'll have somebody that will be at some kind of function and they will get

00:20:23.640 far too far in their cups the immediate response is shouldn't we make a rule that there's no

00:20:32.080 alcohol at this or no hard liquor or only this or only no we shouldn't the drunkard should

00:20:39.380 stop drinking and everyone else who has control of themselves should be able to

00:20:44.020 make noble choices as noble people or no dogs anywhere near something because ill-behaved dogs

00:20:51.680 are becoming a problem. No, the ill-behaved dogs shouldn't be there. The others, you know,

00:20:58.320 can figure it out. Making sweeping rules is very, very easy, but a virtue in our faith

00:21:05.880 is developing the nobility in people for them to make correct choices about how to balance their

00:21:14.360 lives. And again, let's not be immoderate in our moderation. We're not saying everything needs to

00:21:22.820 be 50-50. That's ludicrous. What we are saying is everything needs to be intentional. 0.89

00:21:31.560 If you choose to indulge, fine. If you reach a point where, man, this feels good, I'll have a

00:21:40.680 little bit more. Fine if that's something that you weigh and measure and decide to do. But what

00:21:48.360 we don't want is you to get carried away by your whims, by unanalyzed emotion, by, I don't know, 1.00

00:22:03.220 trying to impress the dude next to you, whatever the case might be, to make stupid choices. 0.99

00:22:10.100 and when i say that i'm not admonishing anybody i think that we've all done that i guarantee you i 0.99

00:22:14.820 have i think that everyone does that from time to time but one of the things that has been meaningful

00:22:20.260 to me is you know the all-father seems immoderate he is he is the the master of ecstatic fury

00:22:30.260 but there's meaning in that he is not mastered by ecstatic fury he masters the ecstatic fury

00:22:39.180 he's able to consume a tremendous amount of overwhelming stimulus to do things and he is

00:22:50.480 able to ride that stimulus in accordance with his will i'm not none of us are suggesting that

00:22:57.940 You ought to be free of emotion or free of indulging in things or enjoying things.

00:23:05.880 But it always needs to be done mindful to your will.

00:23:09.420 And if your will is not in the driver's seat, that's when we would caution you to exercise some moderation.

00:23:17.360 Right. And there's the I think there are several points that illustrate what you're talking about very well.

00:23:24.900 Certainly one that I have to bear in mind often is the idea of delayed gratification.

00:23:31.860 I think that's part of the idea of of whatever you're again, whatever you're looking for, where you're whether you're spending on a new suit or a car.

00:23:44.660 You have to think, well, I need this money for some other higher use next week, next month, next year.

00:23:52.880 when you're deciding how much buffet to put on your plate, you know, how much is this going to

00:24:00.220 affect my long-term health? Am I going to be able to eat dessert? Am I going to be able to have that

00:24:05.040 second beer after I, you know, if I eat this much bacon? So all those sorts of things, if you keep

00:24:11.900 the long-term in mind, that helps you moderate your present, knowing that there is, knowing that

00:24:18.980 will also be a future and certainly the idea of emotional moderation is an important thing

00:24:29.220 my youngest and i were talking just this evening about

00:24:34.420 some of the wrongs that have been done to me and the wrongs that i've done to other people

00:24:42.740 And just the idea that you can't be so completely emotional with your heart on your sleeve all the time so that the least bit of grievance makes you fly off the handle and do and say things that you're going to regret.

00:25:00.420 Because we have to keep it in the framework of the imperfectibility of the human condition.

00:25:09.940 We all make mistakes.

00:25:12.220 We all have offended people and taken offense, but there's a line in there, a line of moderation where I can take a little bit, but I won't take a lot.

00:25:25.960 The other thing that came to mind during that discussion, too, was sort of the idea of confidence.

00:25:34.260 If you're confident, that is one thing.

00:25:38.120 If you're comfortable, as the saying goes, comfortable in your own skin and you feel like you're – that you are in a good place and those sorts of things, then that can be a good thing, that sort of moderation in the way that you conduct yourself.

00:25:55.420 Too much confidence is hubris or egotism.

00:26:00.160 and again that you know we're in that balance point we have to live in that balance point

00:26:04.320 where where we're okay but not tremendous

00:26:13.600 yeah i

00:26:18.560 so

00:26:21.520 this is all right there's a couple of things the emotional thing plays in a lot of different ways

00:26:29.040 and it's interesting just formulating this conversation how much it plays on tonight's

00:26:36.800 subject a lot of us tend to be emotional eaters i do not need strong emotion as an excuse to eat

00:26:46.720 because i i could put down some food but i do notice that if i'm um if i'm adjusting my diet

00:26:55.440 and maybe there's an overage i'm countering for and i'm really low on carbs you feel an emotional

00:27:01.920 pull to eat and it's interesting on how you handle that a lot of people i've known especially

00:27:10.000 i'm sorry but it's true especially ladies have a tendency to emotionally eat and they'll find

00:27:16.240 comfort in they will find comfort in over consumption of what we all know as comfort foods

00:27:28.160 and it very seriously does affect them emotionally and it does make them feel better for that moment

00:27:36.400 being able to recognize when emotions are making you act a certain way

00:27:42.000 and then moderating that action and for anybody who's picking up on how many times we're going

00:27:48.360 back to the night's theme it's called branding we're doing it on purpose but but it's there

00:27:54.340 it's a thing so that goes to your consumption of food or when you're depressed and you just

00:28:00.740 want to have a drink because it makes you feel better and chill out and it does and then you

00:28:05.260 want to have, you know, six or seven drinks to chill out. And, you know, there's a point where

00:28:10.920 it becomes counterproductive to what you're trying. But it also comes in how you treat other

00:28:18.240 people. If you are upset, and something offends you in some way, or maybe something hits a

00:28:25.560 insecurity that other people aren't aware of, it is easy is easy to be emotionally compelled to

00:28:32.100 overreact to something or to somebody or to make really big emotional decisions about

00:28:40.740 quitting something you're involved in or breaking up with a partner or severing a friendship

00:28:46.160 over something that wasn't well thought out. You just reacted emotionally because you got angry

00:28:53.020 or more likely you got embarrassed or hurt feelings. Very little is sacrificed in taking

00:29:01.060 a breath, sleeping on it overnight, and then making a decision. But, you know, many of

00:29:06.800 us fall into that trap all too often. I've always said that being Aryan is about making 1.00

00:29:14.020 choices. It's very easy to always find yourself counterpunching something or just in a constant 0.99

00:29:26.820 state of responding to the things other people do. And as best we can, we want to get out of that.

00:29:34.000 We want to absorb the information that comes into us. We want to process it. And then from that

00:29:40.360 place, we want to make a decision about how to act. When you get to where you're always reacting,

00:29:48.020 it's very hard for you to accomplish the things you want in life. It's one reason that in fighting,

00:29:54.920 it's a very good strategy to constantly keep your opponent on the defense because as long as they're

00:29:59.640 reacting to what you're doing they're not executing their plan and uh that's something to keep in mind

00:30:07.800 i'll say this is you know now is the time of the program that we go to matt's matt's uh cringy

00:30:13.960 bouncing stories but uh i used to always tell my guys like hey i'm cool if you know whenever you

00:30:24.200 I've got your back. If you feel the need to get us involved in a fight, cool, I'm there for you,

00:30:30.280 got you. But don't you dare stumble into a fight and then have me have to pull you out of it

00:30:36.440 because you weren't thinking. When you're interacting with other people, there's a lot

00:30:41.140 of stuff if you think about what you do and you think about the consequences of it that you can

00:30:45.560 manipulate the situation. And again, most of these things about the idea of moderation,

00:30:50.940 You can do lots of stuff that you want to do. Make sure it's because you have chosen to do it, not because something outside of you has compelled you to do it, and not because the lower portions of yourself have taken hold of your senses and drug you in a direction.

00:31:10.020 um yes a lot of what i'm go ahead but then this is the time for my boring yoga stories

00:31:19.380 um because that that always brings that point one of the ways that uh that i cut my drinking

00:31:28.040 down 95 is when i started meditating because even just after a couple of beers at night i

00:31:33.120 could tell the difference in my meditation the next morning um so i sometimes say i went from

00:31:39.680 three beers a night to three beers a month um you know and it's that but that too i

00:31:46.760 the yoga school that i went to teaches complete abstinence but uh i don't follow that school i

00:31:55.220 follow our way and our way says you can have a couple of beers occasionally um so it's uh so

00:32:02.600 as long as you do it in moderation you know set and setting those sorts of things

00:32:07.980 there's two things that i wanted to kind of mention um when it comes to spiritual practice

00:32:14.540 a lot of people when they're incorporating runic work into their spiritual practice

00:32:21.020 one of the first things or a strategically used thing is the galder and invocation of

00:32:32.040 of isa the rune of ice thank you baby of ice and stillness because it many people myself included

00:32:43.560 use it for a a centering or a bringing you back to a place of stillness

00:32:50.920 taking a few deep breaths getting in a place where you've detached yourself from

00:32:58.880 emotion and you can be objective and go into your practice and i think a lot of people do that in

00:33:06.840 different forms when they're doing their spiritual practice but i think that has value and i think

00:33:12.500 that's all about removing yourself from the impulses that might make you immoderate in your

00:33:21.380 actions and i think that's like too much isa is rigidity so you can't you have to be still but

00:33:29.460 without being brittle so again you know it's uh there's a little bit a little bit is plenty

00:33:39.060 yeah and and the other thing that i kind of wanted to mention is

00:33:42.180 is there is no such thing as equality that is it really does not matter what your religion is

00:33:52.500 that is demonstrably true that is a lie that is a lie that people have fed you please reject that

00:33:59.700 in in the entirety of it it is not true there are no two things no two people no two anything that

00:34:08.820 equal to one another and that predict presents an additional challenge if you have a low tolerance

00:34:16.420 for alcohol or maybe you're just a bad drunk and your friends have a high tolerance for alcohol

00:34:23.940 they get to drink what they want if they're in control of themselves and maybe you don't

00:34:30.260 and that's something nobody likes to hear you know maybe some people with awesome metabolisms

00:34:36.420 can eat whatever they want and they're cool and maybe you either you balloon up or maybe

00:34:43.700 you have a health condition where you can't it doesn't mean everybody else shouldn't have fun

00:34:50.420 because you are at a disadvantage it means you need to recognize your circumstance and make

00:34:58.660 willful decisions based upon that and that is a challenge when you realize that it's not fair

00:35:06.420 and that other people maybe can do things you can't do or maybe you can do things that other

00:35:11.220 people can't or should not do we started walking to watch it malcolm in the middle again and that's

00:35:17.540 the you know that's their theme song is life is unfair so that's just that's the starting point

00:35:24.340 you know and if and if you don't like your situation you can do something about it um

00:35:29.140 Um, and certainly the, uh, the other members of the Witten, your GoTar, um, have life experiences

00:35:37.420 that you can talk to them about.

00:35:39.560 Uh, I'm happy to talk to anybody, any member about, uh, you know, their, uh, legal situation

00:35:46.220 and try to help you some stuff I know about some stuff I can guide you in the right direction.

00:35:51.340 Um, but, uh, those, those are the sorts of things that, that don't be afraid to ask for

00:35:56.840 help. Because again, that, you know, that to, to get back on the point of moderation, you know,

00:36:03.240 we are expected to be self-reliant, but not everything. I mean, I, uh, there's, there are

00:36:11.520 some construction projects that I can do. There's some stuff that I will not undertake. Um, there,

00:36:16.820 you know, there are mechanical things that I can do, you know, with my car, the rest I'd make,

00:36:21.940 get my mechanic to do this is for good or ill this is an era of specialization and there is no

00:36:29.880 there is no shame in asking for help from somebody who has been down the path and who

00:36:37.280 has experienced those things and can do something better than you can it's like what matt's talking

00:36:42.240 about and that's a big part on the self-reliance is that is a caution against becoming a victim

00:36:51.020 that is helpless part of community and it's always been the case with our ancestors

00:36:58.580 is you're able to pool resources physically but also you know with your wisdom base and your skill

00:37:09.680 base from all those experts that alan talked about and that's a really beautiful thing about

00:37:14.340 the astro focus assembly if you're a member i would highly encourage you to talk to your local

00:37:19.080 folk builder about some of those options one of the cool things about having as many members in

00:37:25.880 the astro folk assemblies that we have we have a member in just about every trade you can imagine

00:37:32.520 we have a member with some kind of relevant life experience to most any situation that you're

00:37:37.880 facing i talk about this a lot amongst our gothar the longer that our priesthood is in place

00:37:45.080 face and the more we are tightly knit to one another we have a vast wealth of experience

00:37:52.520 awaiting any new Goethe when they face a new problem hey I've seen something similar

00:37:59.960 we have that and it's a tremendous resource so remember that's there

00:38:05.720 you are we have an image in our head of the the rugged individual being able to just pull

00:38:12.200 himself up by his bootstraps and do everything himself. And

00:38:15.960 that's awesome. If you can do that, you are amazing and we

00:38:19.680 will celebrate you and it's fantastic. But as I say on here

00:38:24.500 a lot, don't let perfect be the enemy of good. What we want is

00:38:28.760 for you to win. And if you can win through some, you know, force

00:38:33.700 of will alone, fantastic. But if you need to call in your buddies

00:38:38.480 to help you win the victory is what's important and we want to help you get there and i hope that

00:38:44.180 you guys will help me get there or help alan get there we all have times that we need help with

00:38:48.260 stuff there are quite one one of the reasons this is called adulting with alan alan is my go-to when

00:38:56.280 i need adulting advice on things because there's all kind of stuff that he's got figured out in

00:39:02.800 his life in a different way or in a better way than than I have that I want to know about and

00:39:09.320 I hope that we all do that to one another that is the entirety of the Witten is there people who

00:39:13.700 bring a different experience a different set of eyes to situations that I face and that we all

00:39:21.940 face that I'm able to get perspectives on and get advice on and we should and this goes into the

00:39:27.840 question I want us to answer from Rachel Kinsler. Could you speak on tools for people to develop

00:39:32.980 the practice of moderation? How can someone who struggles with moderation learn how to

00:39:37.960 recognize and navigate it? Alan, do you have any thoughts? Many thoughts. I think one of the things

00:39:50.040 that I had to practice for a while, and I had to do it physically when I started a reduction

00:39:57.800 diet. Anything you eat is a diet. But when I started trying to lose weight, one of the things

00:40:05.380 that I had to do was portion control. And so when you're talking about baby steps or as a starting

00:40:11.700 point, I would put my normal portion on a plate and then I would take 20% of that and I'd put it

00:40:19.460 back in the put it back in the pot and that was making that physical decision right there you know

00:40:28.200 in a very graphic way I want this much but I'm only going to take that much

00:40:34.200 or part of the rest of it is I had to stop keeping snacks in my drawer because I would sit and eat

00:40:43.000 nuts all day because I thought they're good for me and they are but not sitting there eating it

00:40:47.860 all day. But that's a start. One of the things that, again, a long time ago, I started practicing

00:40:58.740 as a form of reinforcing moderation is when I started drinking less, I started buying more

00:41:07.940 expensive beer. So I could, at some level, I wasn't spending any less in the aggregate, but

00:41:16.120 If your beer costs twice as much and you only drink half as much, you're making progress, but it doesn't feel like a doesn't feel like punishment.

00:41:25.340 And that's part of the way that your brain is set up is you have to reward yourself for those small things, which, again, is why moderation is is the key to it in a lot of ways.

00:41:39.020 Because, you know, if you if you go three days without a drink, then you can reward yourself with a drink.

00:41:46.120 If you go four days without eating any sugar, then, you know, maybe you can have a small treat after you've eaten all your vegetables on that fifth night.

00:41:56.340 So those are the sorts of things where you can moderate your approach to moderation is by taking it in small steps where you don't feel like you have to turn completely from the modern American super chaos process diet, but you can start by, you know, drinking half of an energy drink and then throwing the rest away.

00:42:26.180 because you know it's bad for you i don't know that at all

00:42:32.340 see that that way you can wean yourself off of uh that that particular brand of why would i want to

00:42:41.540 i want to be moderate in awesomeness oh yeah yeah well yeah um so and and even

00:42:49.940 financially uh you know if you there's a difference between being super stingy with

00:42:56.820 yourself with your family um and being frugal i mean frugal just means getting the most for

00:43:03.140 your money so you can still buy things occasionally but you just don't buy

00:43:10.580 go in for and again if you you know like say you go all week without stopping at starbucks

00:43:18.180 first of all why are you going to starbucks and secondly um you know but if you if your habit is

00:43:23.060 you go through starbucks or the circle k every morning for a cup of coffee and then you cut it

00:43:29.940 off for four days maybe then that fifth day you say well i've been really good this week i can

00:43:34.820 i can indulge myself you know in this two or three or five dollar indulgence so it's a way of

00:43:40.740 of rewarding yourself for taking steps down the path to moderation

00:43:51.460 all right i'm looking at a couple of things on our our questions situation here on the topic

00:43:56.900 though we have a couple um one thing that someone asked and i can't find it in the questions lineup

00:44:03.700 but i saw it was you know have we ever had you know how do we know when someone's had too much

00:44:09.140 at an afa event and have we ever had to like intervene in that kind of a circumstance

00:44:18.180 so truth is one of our virtues and again it doesn't look that it look good this is

00:44:24.660 not a frequent thing at asa events but way back when there was a lot more of a drinking culture um

00:44:32.340 um it is a we have had a variety of people come through the Astro Folk Assembly some of them with

00:44:46.140 problems with

00:44:49.560 various I was gonna I was gonna blame it on alcoholism but there's some of that but no 0.99

00:44:54.480 some people are just jerks that don't know how to behave in public um and the alcohol brings it out 0.98

00:44:59.940 And yeah, and the alcohol enables us. I was going to say some people are actually alcoholics. Some people are just bad drunks and don't know how to handle their liquor. And, you know, some people have a lower tolerance. 1.00

00:45:11.440 There have been people at AFA events. And here's the thing. Everyone wants us to have these precise answers. And the trouble is equality doesn't exist.

00:45:21.460 We don't have some kind of a breathalyzer that we go around with.

00:45:24.860 And if you blow up, you know, 0.08, we kick you up. 0.97

00:45:27.680 That's silly.

00:45:29.480 But we do have, when we observe that you are not in control of your actions or your speech,

00:45:34.880 and you seem to be compromised in a way that is having a negative effect on yourself and the folk,

00:45:42.800 then, you know, we talk to you and we assess that.

00:45:46.100 And that might look different with different folks on what happens.

00:45:48.520 But yeah, there have been people that have been, you know, helped to sober up or that have been, you know, asked to leave or perhaps their friends have been asked to take them somewhere to let them sleep it off and get back in control of themselves.

00:46:04.720 That has occurred. Again, I'm trying to think and not very often that was a problem when we had a lot of skinhead members.

00:46:12.520 That was a thing and very problematic.

00:46:17.400 It's been a long time, and it's really, like I said, not a frequent thing.

00:46:22.960 But when I was a folk builder, there were times at events that I've had to, you know, be on the front line of monitoring certain people and making sure they were not a nuisance to the rest of folks.

00:46:37.140 So, you know, it has happened, but it's certainly not a frequent occurrence. 0.61

00:46:40.600 That's one of the great things that I would say we, I'll take a tiny bit of credit for nudging us along this path, because it did used to be, you know, what we still disparagingly refer to as brosatru culture, where it was, you know, we would get together and drink like we imagined the Vikings did.

00:47:06.360 And I think that that, first of all, I think that stereotype is a little bit overblown, but I also recognize that the Vikings are at least the ones that are so often portrayed and end up being the role model in some ways for this sort of extreme or, what is it, inebriate behavior.

00:47:33.900 uh they were you know they were in life or death situations every day and when you're risking your

00:47:41.500 life uh to try to make a living for yourself and you're you know you're where your very likelihood

00:47:49.580 is that you know you're going to end up on the wrong end of a spear point um then maybe you've

00:47:55.820 got an excuse for overindulging in alcohol more than occasionally but in the in the modern world

00:48:05.820 that excuse is largely uh that you know that that that time is over and uh you know and especially

00:48:14.780 you know net and again it's it's the circular thing where it's hard to say what what has been

00:48:20.060 cause or an effect but now that we have so many beautiful women around so many lovely families

00:48:26.140 around that are an integral part of the afa folkish culture um you know we men behave ourselves

00:48:36.300 better around women that that too is a part of that natural behavioral cycle um and something

00:48:42.620 that i've watched happen we used to be guys so also true has evolved quite a bit in uh in alan

00:48:51.980 and my time of being involved in it um when he and i started out it was a lot of single guys

00:49:02.620 it's a lot of simple guys with varying degrees of social competency and you know they'd get

00:49:08.540 together and they'd drink and they'd beat their chest about viking stuff and there was

00:49:15.660 there were good things at that time but there were some things that definitely needed some

00:49:18.780 work and some tweaking uh there's been no crack down on alcohol culture in the afa what has

00:49:26.380 happened is we've grown up and we have families and you don't see that anymore you don't see

00:49:35.340 that kind of silly nonsense because most of us have grown up and realized that we're there for

00:49:42.140 a spiritual purpose so yeah people can drink and have a good time but we typically don't have

00:49:47.880 problems with that and if there are problems um they're handled i don't know quickly and gently

00:49:55.260 and and it gets dealt with um the other thing that so okay we got we got a couple of questions

00:50:03.500 stacked up here, and one of them is long, and I'm hoping I'm going to get to it right.

00:50:14.100 Anyway, so let me see where we're at.

00:50:15.720 All right.

00:50:16.240 While you're reading that, let me go back and talk about something that I forgot, which

00:50:22.940 is I was actually just reading today an analysis about why it is that we have this stratified

00:50:31.600 youth culture in our world nowadays and it and it comes out of um the the way that schooling is done

00:50:41.680 you know we we have this um k through 12 and maybe some graduate school and whatever where you're

00:50:49.120 where for hours and hours and hours a day you're isolated in people of your own age group and so

00:50:56.320 you get so and it used to be that that education occurred organically your father taught your trade

00:51:02.480 your mother taught you women's skills and you know you were you were more integrated into a

00:51:11.040 into a an all-age culture but now we've got this idea like you know like the hippies used to say 0.81

00:51:19.280 You know, don't trust anyone over 35. And that's because hippies smell bad and don't know anything. But we've gotten out of that idea of going to the elders for help. 0.95

00:51:38.440 But we're we, find me, and you're getting there soon, Matt.

00:51:45.220 You know, we elders have, you know, we've, what's the farmer's commercial?

00:51:50.340 You know, we know a few things because we've done a few things.

00:51:53.680 You know, I've made lots of the mistakes out there,

00:51:58.240 and I can try to guide you off the worst of them.

00:52:00.000 And I am happy to share my experience, how to keep you off the third rail.

00:52:04.120 And that was a natural, organic part of the culture until very, very recently.

00:52:11.120 And so this strong-headed, isolationist ideal that we think of as being part of the Viking culture, I don't think was part of their thing.

00:52:23.800 You know, they were, you know, you didn't go off in a boat and row and try to take on a village yourself.

00:52:30.940 it was you and your men and you know because and the women and the the family was waiting for you

00:52:36.540 at home it was an integrated holistic approach to everything absolutely and i think in moderation

00:52:44.140 also goes i think this worth saying then we'll get to the next question here but it also means

00:52:51.580 don't be a pearl clutcher if other people are drinking too like what i have noticed too is when

00:52:59.260 you have people who have a bad experience if they have had an alcoholic problem then all of a sudden

00:53:06.780 no one else can drink because drinking's bad no drinking was bad for you and that's a really

00:53:14.140 different thing we run into that in a number of different situations when you decide what's good

00:53:21.500 for you and what's not good for you if you genuinely believe it's a good thing then by all

00:53:29.100 means encourage your fellows to do that but don't be obnoxious it's not your job to dictate to

00:53:35.800 everybody else where their set points are we notice those when they become burdensome upon

00:53:41.780 others and that's how we notice when somebody's going too far with some stuff so keep in mind

00:53:47.840 part of moderation is don't be extreme about everything all the time sometimes be willing to

00:53:56.720 let somebody else have a different idea than you do about something without automatically putting

00:54:02.400 him in the camp of you know the enemy somehow we do that a lot to our own disservice

00:54:08.640 so moderate your zealotry when it comes to what you think everybody else should be doing all the

00:54:18.720 time and we would find a little bit more peace within our folk and a more productive place to

00:54:24.060 have those discussions in ways that are going to yield better results for all of us.

00:54:29.960 Absolutely.

00:54:31.060 We have a question that was asked of Svahn last week, but he would like to get, or the

00:54:38.360 asker would like to get mine and your opinions, Alan, or takes.

00:54:43.120 What are your thoughts on the manosphere, alpha males, sigma males, and Andrew Tate?

00:54:50.720 Alan, what are your thoughts on those things?

00:54:54.060 I have some vague awareness of who Andrew Tate is. I think if I'm reading his spot correctly, I think he is an overreaction to the feminization of the culture.

00:55:11.680 uh i certainly think that men should be men um and you know but again if you're you know if you're

00:55:22.880 uh that the too macho over the top women are only here for my amusement you know that's the sort of

00:55:30.160 extremism that is um too far the wrong way way too far the wrong way um the uh you know so

00:55:39.920 So I don't know about the Sigma male thing, although if it's in the same quadrant as where Andrew Tate is, I would have a similar distasteful reaction to that sort of thing.

00:55:57.580 But that being said, what these men are reacting to is the feminization of men, especially in the West, where for too long the culture has been feminized and there's a long psychological, literally psychological reason for why that began to happen.

00:56:22.500 And starting with Freud and his irrational approach to the human mind, but so many men have become feminized and, you know, they want to act like women.

00:56:39.500 And I don't mean even necessarily just the transgender thing, which is its own psychopathology, but just in general that, for example, education, the entire approach to education has been completely feminized in the sense that girls, for the most part, generalizing, girls for the most part can sit in rows in a desk and learn from a teacher teaching them. 0.68

00:57:09.500 stuff boys like to be out and doing stuff and they need to get out some of that energy which 0.53

00:57:14.300 is why so many american males have been um you know doped down because we don't have an outlet

00:57:22.780 for uh that american maleness for for the innate genetic maleness that uh that is uh men and but

00:57:33.020 But so, yes, there's, you know, there's so Andrew Tate and people of his ilk have just taken what could be a good idea and go way too far with it.

00:57:45.320 And again, that's the, you know, we and that's that middle path.

00:57:49.820 We respect women.

00:57:52.140 We love women for their differences, not we don't want to be like them, except in the idea of mutual respect.

00:57:59.800 We are not equals, but complements to each other.

00:58:04.900 You know, we can be the man, they can be the woman.

00:58:08.680 Look, those two parts make a whole.

00:58:10.860 That's the, you know, whereas the hookup culture has ruined all of that, both for men and for women.

00:58:21.200 Again, the vulgarization of the beauty that is biology has been vulgarized by, I hate using air quotes, but I will this time, culture.

00:58:38.720 And again, because they're reaching toward the lowest common denominator, because that's the one part where we are all equal.

00:58:44.540 We can all be based, we can all be vulgar, we can all be profane, but it takes more than that to be a higher person who can reach the higher goals that are inherent in high culture.

00:59:03.140 And to be noble is not something everybody can do, but something that we can all aspire to.

00:59:10.340 um is that anywhere near the question that we were talking about no it absolutely is and i'll say this

00:59:18.020 to achieve nobility might be beyond the grasp of some but to be more noble tomorrow than you are

00:59:25.480 today is not um lift yourself up look upwards try to be better than that so as far as the

00:59:33.700 manosphere as a concept it's very broad and it is kind of i don't know it's difficult to have a

00:59:41.680 sweeping statement on the manosphere there were a lot of really good things you know about 10 years

00:59:50.680 ago in that space um it became really redundant over time the exposure that i've had to it so it

00:59:58.020 becomes a little bit cringy in some of its manifestations but I don't think all of it

01:00:06.620 has to we have for better for well for worse but it is what it is I guess is the thing I want to

01:00:14.200 say we have found ourselves with a

01:00:17.140 alarmingly high percentage of young men that have no concept or context for being young men

01:00:32.280 they don't know what to do with it they're in a society that has

01:00:38.480 demonized masculine impulse labeled it as toxic and has feminized them to a shocking degree and

01:00:49.100 in a way that they're not even aware of how they've been feminized feminized we have a lot

01:00:54.140 of weaklings and the effort to take those young men say hey we've got you we'll be your older

01:01:03.680 brothers your fathers your you know insert the male in your life you haven't had here

01:01:10.080 and try to guide you towards masculine things that is fantastic and i'm very much in support of that

01:01:18.080 i think one of the really valuable things we can provide as a community is mentoring young men to

01:01:25.520 grow into manhood in a healthy whole way that contextualizes their masculinity in a way that's

01:01:36.620 healthy. And I think that's very much needed. I understand the concept when talking about

01:01:45.880 wolf packs of alphas and betas and sigmas and i get those things

01:01:53.480 they get over a lot of good things really make me cringe because

01:01:59.880 i don't okay those concepts exist i get it but every man who sees those concepts wants to think

01:02:17.340 they're the alpha male or i guess what's now been popularized as the sigma male um

01:02:22.820 it's even more funny to think that the scientists who first wrote about alpha males and dog alpha

01:02:33.000 dogs alpha wolves has now said yeah that's all bs i was wrong it's one of those i but i mean we

01:02:41.360 we get the base concept that there's going to be men that are um assertively masculine that through

01:02:50.040 their assertion and exhibition of masculinity other men are going to follow and other people

01:03:00.280 in society are going to naturally fall in line with and i think that is a social concept that

01:03:06.280 we see but i don't think it's helpful because again every guy everyone thinks they're the alpha

01:03:12.520 male and they're not it doesn't work like that and but at the same time we uh we what we have

01:03:19.080 to avoid is the more modernist approach to where um you know everybody becomes an omega male and

01:03:26.360 you know we're all retiring and shy and make every concession to the feminine because that puts us in

01:03:33.240 the opposite place where yeah as an ideal to strive towards sure but it goes into the metastasized

01:03:41.640 silly like caricature of masculinity that is the i guess the the dark side of the manosphere 0.96

01:03:52.760 is this you get these lame virginal dudes that want to talk about you know white sharia now and 0.99

01:04:01.640 whatever else and it's real silly delusion for them to go in and it messes up a lot of potentiality 0.94

01:04:09.320 for them so i think where we can find positive mentorship for young men that's amazing andrew

01:04:16.360 tate is silly um i don't always disagree with him on everything but i don't consume a lot of

01:04:23.000 andrew tate me dude's in good shape but like all of his stuff he needs to have a shirt off 0.95

01:04:27.880 all of the time in a conspicuous way um there's a lot of a lot of stuff to unpack there

01:04:34.520 What I think is really important that comes up in terms of moderation, when the feminists and the left go so far in their feminization of everything, then people think that the answer is to comically, absurdly, and sometimes abusively be quote-unquote hyper-masculine.

01:04:59.760 and it's not the answer the answer is to move towards a reasonable and measured and appropriate

01:05:07.020 masculinity and bring people to that and as much as there's the outliers and the extremists like

01:05:12.580 Andrew Tate there's also a big thing about no here's how you dress here's how you do grooming

01:05:17.860 things here's how you build a fire here's how you learn how to fight here's how you there's a

01:05:23.920 current within the manosphere

01:05:25.920 that is completely healthy and amazing.

01:05:28.380 And I really do like that.

01:05:32.300 Our next thing

01:05:33.900 is the complex one.

01:05:35.720 And whoever...

01:05:37.200 Oh, no, it's not. Cool. We got a reprieve

01:05:39.760 from that.

01:05:42.520 So,

01:05:43.600 nice bell music

01:05:44.720 for Matt for Later.

01:05:47.540 This is Later. Later is now.

01:05:50.320 Did you by any chance have two minutes

01:05:51.840 to listen to that song I emailed you?

01:05:54.320 if so any feedback if not all good i understand you've got a lot going on no i remember you

01:05:59.280 talking about a song and talking about emailing i don't remember getting any such song i asked nick

01:06:05.040 if we got one somewhere that i didn't see so just in case it's winding up in a strange folder

01:06:11.040 somewhere if you would send it to bns at runestone.org i will have it and nick will have it

01:06:19.040 and i promise as soon as it brought to my attention i will gladly give it a listen

01:06:23.040 and give you some feedback um because i am very interested here's the here's the one all right

01:06:34.080 okay so nick says he's repackaged it different yeah tip go to it further down where you'll see

01:06:41.520 yeah you'll see three posts in a row that are making nice and clear um cool let's hope i got

01:06:47.920 the right ones so white horse house true i have a question about the giant builder myth being a

01:06:54.560 parallel to the harem abif story the three ruffians being an aristocracy priests and folk

01:07:04.480 equaling the sun moon and freya the giant disguised himself as one of us

01:07:10.800 or a god not a giant sounds like the shapeshifters

01:07:14.960 a giant builder story sounds like the freemason story from our perspective very trippy three

01:07:24.520 ruffians sun moon and freya in the giant builders deal represent cosmic balance needed in society

01:07:33.300 uh hyrum abeif was attacked by three ruffians uh with the ruler a square with a ruler square mall

01:07:43.380 representing aristocracy and aristocracy priesthood and the folk and the three pillars of civilization 0.82

01:07:51.440 if the sun moon and freya represent kingship priesthood and the folk then without them society

01:07:59.440 collapses just as the ruffians destroyed hyrum abeif represents the collapse of sacred knowledge

01:08:06.040 in the masonic tale seems like the same story from an opposite perspective ours versus our

01:08:13.260 enemy. Alan, do you have meaningful response to that?

01:08:27.540 Well, having been a Mason, I certainly recognize the, you know, the, where some of that stuff is

01:08:38.780 coming from. Uh, I could unpack it maybe a little bit. I'd have to have like a Venn diagram and,

01:08:51.400 you know, a cork board and some string, um, to, to try to make all those cross correlations. Um,

01:08:58.720 And I don't think that, at least from what I was able to pick up, I don't think that the parallels are exact in the difference between if I'm getting the right thing, you know, like the Egyptian mythos is quite different from ours.

01:09:28.720 The Temple of Solomon is certainly, you know, is antithetical to our approach to things in a lot of ways.

01:09:41.940 Certainly many have questioned what I still think of as the Dumazilian approach to the tripartite hierarchy.

01:09:55.760 different civilizations by the way have different um tripartite hierarchies they just have you know

01:10:03.200 they have still have three segments but just swan would be proud different order um so there's so

01:10:12.320 i i do think that um that there's value in analyzing those things in that way i think that

01:10:22.640 um that um our warrior priests were uh very much um again at some of this is self-interest the you

01:10:35.360 know but or because of the way that we have constructed it in the reconstructed at the afa

01:10:43.120 um you know there's the high council um there's gothar there you know um and i think that that

01:10:50.480 that in the in the in the folkish approach to things the radical traditionalist approach to

01:10:57.680 things um you know it's it's very much a you know a pyramidal structure in the sense that we can

01:11:06.560 you know that only a few people can be in charge and the rest need to again with the you know with

01:11:14.560 uh a degree of moderated input then they need to um track out with the direction that we're taking

01:11:25.200 beyond that i i don't see a lot of value in trying to fit you know a horizontal structure into a

01:11:35.280 vertical or you know a pyramid into a rhombus or any of that sort of thing that you know it's just

01:11:41.680 it's a different thing we have we have our um dollar um you know came and created the three

01:11:51.040 casts and um we we we can each live a fulfilling and whole life within that structure

01:12:05.120 i feel like i'm dodging the question because it's so complicated i wasn't able to keep it

01:12:09.280 all in my head all at the same time all right so i don't know about the question but i do

01:12:13.280 do know about jared abbott bought buying us five coffees this 25 donation thank you jerry we

01:12:18.800 appreciate you um i know i'm not going to just completely dodge the question um

01:12:25.920 the person who asked the question is certainly much more familiar with masonic more than i am

01:12:33.680 i'm unfamiliar with hiram or him getting jumped by three ruffians or any of that tale it's not

01:12:41.760 germane to my folks so i'm just i'm really unfamiliar with it um i don't think there's

01:12:48.240 any reason to believe there is a connection between freemasonry and the etic description of

01:12:58.400 the giant and his building of the walls around house garden um i think our brain really likes

01:13:05.680 to see patterns so when we see similarities between anything it is very compelling to

01:13:12.560 immediately find connection oftentimes where connection is not sometimes where connection is

01:13:19.600 that we just don't know it so i can't without knowing more about it i can't

01:13:23.600 say for sure but i don't see any compelling compelling reason to think so i think there's

01:13:30.160 also a assassin's creed thing that we get into now to where everything's got to be connected

01:13:36.880 to everything else and everything is a super overarching whatever i think

01:13:44.720 again other people who are more knowledgeable about masonic things will

01:13:48.240 have a different view of this and there could be parallels that are unintentional and as one writer

01:13:55.500 said sometimes a cigar is just a cigar and those parallels can be it's funny because we're talking

01:14:01.840 about a gentleman named Hiram we're also talking about another gentleman with

01:14:05.840 nasal proportions different from from ours um

01:14:11.180 but it is true nonetheless I don't know here's the thing I think Freemason stuff

01:14:18.100 is tremendously powerful and important in the 1700s and i think a lot of stuff before that

01:14:30.620 is backfilled with connectivity and meaning that wasn't present certainly in distant corners of

01:14:37.140 the world that are claimed to have some relation to it i think it's really easy to co-opt old stuff

01:14:43.900 for new purposes um so i would i would i would advise against finding too much parallel there

01:14:52.360 now here's another although i'd be glad to talk to the guy like whoever it is that's asked the

01:14:56.480 question if you run into me irl um i would be glad to so if you if you don't run into him irl

01:15:04.700 turnage at runestone.org uh and you guys like long emails though i he may not respond to you

01:15:13.540 But you're welcome to email him if you would like to know.

01:15:17.540 And so my levity at the comment is just because I'm not familiar with the Masonic lore and I don't think the two are connected.

01:15:25.660 But Alan may have a lot more perspective for you. And I really appreciate you asking the question.

01:15:30.200 It was a very nuanced question. And I do think there was a lot there. So thank you for asking.

01:15:34.940 And for what it's worth, Edward Thorson wrote a piece that I bought.

01:15:44.060 It's like a pamphlet book about that a lot of the Masonic symbology as currently adopted is actually Western culture, Germanic stuff, like the way the doors open and the way certain things go along.

01:16:02.180 it you know when i was more involved in it i could have

01:16:07.100 um been a little more up to date with it so he too saw some parallels

01:16:13.300 just like the way that that you know people can say and i've heard it in several mainstream uh

01:16:23.360 um podcasts lately just taking for granted the the truism that um that christianity was

01:16:30.680 germanized by the way that it um by the way that it um came through europe so that it's it's a very

01:16:39.240 distinct practice from what it what it would have been if it had stayed where it belonged

01:16:45.800 well absolutely and i've mentioned on the show a lot of times if you look

01:16:52.440 i mean it was of note during the crusades when you had european christians interacting

01:16:59.080 with middle eastern christians or like egyptian and african christians their christianity looked

01:17:06.840 real different um and for a good reason so um the next thing up uh from nice bell music

01:17:23.480 if the music that you send me does not incorporate bells i'm going to be a little

01:17:27.320 bit disappointed i'm just saying um nice question i mean yes i'm assuming they're going to be nice

01:17:35.400 or he would at least like my uh my critique if i do not find them to be nice no i'm sure whatever

01:17:41.640 your sentence can be lovely i'm genuinely excited to hear it uh matt how did your bouncing experience

01:17:47.720 prepare you for your role within the afa so this is a good question i was matter of fact just

01:17:53.720 talking to a member this weekend at ostara thorstoff about it so

01:18:05.720 that was an amazing series of jobs and it's a lot of fun there's girls and everybody's partying and

01:18:16.040 it's a good time and it's awesome and i've got really cool fight stories or whatever

01:18:22.120 but that's not the meat of what I got out of it or what I learned out of it now in a lot of the

01:18:29.800 physical stuff I learned a lot about myself but I also learned about working with a group of men

01:18:37.480 that were depending upon me to help make sure they were safe and them to help make sure I was safe

01:18:43.120 and it's it's nothing compared to what soldiers go through please don't get me mistaken but in

01:18:50.200 small way it's the closest thing i had to an environment where i mean we had guns and knives

01:18:57.320 pulled on us and such so yeah there was sometimes life or death things that i was able to work with

01:19:02.920 a brotherhood of people through and i'm very thankful for that but outside of that in the

01:19:09.560 way that's relevant to afa stuff i was very this was a part of me pursuing bouncing so

01:19:19.800 i was lame we talk about this manosphere thing and we talk and i think this adds

01:19:24.840 into that in a really syncretic way i was lame um during my formative years i didn't

01:19:35.000 from like fifth grade until adulthood, I didn't have much contact with my dad.

01:19:43.800 Some of that was my doing is what it is. But a lot of that was my mom raising me and

01:19:52.580 father figure that I had until eighth grade was my grandfather and he passed. And then a lot of

01:20:01.940 was me trying to figure stuff out on my own and i was nerdy and lame and scrawny and you know a lot

01:20:08.340 of ways deficient from who i wanted to be so i reached a point in 2000 yes if you're doing the

01:20:17.620 math in 2000 i would have been you know what 19 um but enough was enough i was going to try to do

01:20:26.820 some things so i started going to the gym and over time i had some different things go on but

01:20:32.340 eventually in 2007 i'm like you know what i'm gonna put the roughest bar in town and i'm gonna

01:20:38.180 go bounce it and i dove in i learned a lot about myself physically but what else i did was i was 0.88

01:20:45.620 this nerd i had good nerds at least have their little nerd posse of like fat nerd chicks and

01:20:53.140 whatever else they had i just a loner all by myself i didn't even have that i had like four

01:20:59.700 guy friends and that's what i had so i'm going out there in the world and i'm jumping in the deep end

01:21:06.980 and what i learned most was this is a long meandering way to get to your point so

01:21:15.860 i was thrust into a situation let me tell you a little bit about the place i worked i had 10

01:21:23.140 10 bars. That's not fair, but there were 10 bar surfaces where they served drinks. Functionally, though, there were like three dance floors that played different things. And Anchorage, Alaska is a really diverse place. So it was the world famous Chilkoot Charlies, and it was like the place to be in town. We had a military base outside of town.

01:21:44.300 we had a whole bunch of mong refugees we took in in the 80s that since had children and

01:21:52.380 a huge pacific islander population a lot of blacks in the military base not a lot of hispanics um 0.89

01:22:01.100 but a whole lot of different kind of folks and they would all come to the bar in their little

01:22:05.900 groups and then when the band had changed they'd all mix up but i was dealing with all of these

01:22:11.900 people i've never had experience with and i'm dealing with you know hell's angels runs the 0.58

01:22:17.740 territory up there so i'm dealing with these like ha affiliated bikers and gang members and various

01:22:27.180 samoan guys claiming different whatever they were claiming and all of this stuff was brand new to me

01:22:34.380 and i was dealing with these people in very emotionally charged situations where people

01:22:40.540 are drunk or they're high or some people are just crazy or maybe they've had a bad interaction

01:22:47.500 between all the different things they're doing and so i'm dealing with all these different groups

01:22:54.620 of people in crisis situations and i'm doing it all the time one of the coolest things about

01:23:02.220 jumping and bouncing there because it's such a busy place i was getting experience in life like

01:23:10.540 At a vastly accelerated intravenous rate that just pumped me full of experience in just a few years very quickly.

01:23:22.040 So what I learned a lot was dealing with people, de-escalating people, dealing with different kinds of people, and becoming comfortable in uncomfortable situations.

01:23:35.660 And that's what's really helped me.

01:23:37.940 and it's cool to talk about fights in those situations but realistically a number of them

01:23:45.680 that stick out to me the most are women who clearly were emotionally disturbed going through

01:23:52.400 stuff where they were crazy but they needed somebody to listen to them and I was able to

01:23:58.580 help them or um remember some guys that had like a psychotic break I don't know what all

01:24:05.960 going on with them but i was able to be helpful there was other guys there that were returning

01:24:09.960 veterans that were having some extreme ptsd stuff and i was able to recognize that to learn to be

01:24:16.920 comfortable within that and to make that situation turn out a lot less ugly for a lot of people

01:24:23.000 involved and it helped me a lot i got to a point there where people were pulling knives and guns

01:24:30.360 on me that i could maintain my calm enough to resolve that in a in a way that nobody's getting

01:24:40.760 hurt and that's more challenging than you might think what i did experience in my bouncing

01:24:47.640 that was always bad is when you experience when you get scared when you're scared and you react

01:24:55.560 scared people smell scared on you and it makes them victimize you or react to you in some negative

01:25:04.680 way i saw more and more guys get into stuff they didn't need to because they were scared

01:25:10.840 my ability to work with different people at different points in their life in different

01:25:17.160 very extreme circumstances prepared me a lot i think for being able to counsel people as a gofi

01:25:24.120 um i have counseled of i have been blessed with the opportunity to counsel

01:25:30.780 so many of our folk at different points in their life and a lot of those are regular people who's

01:25:37.660 going through hard times some of those people have very severe mental illness some of them

01:25:44.160 were going through very very horrible situations in their life i felt the bouncing prepared me to

01:25:52.960 have that conversation in a way that didn't make the people that i'm counseling and talking to

01:25:59.360 feel strange i was able to maintain to not be shocked by things that are outside of my norm

01:26:09.920 and that helps a lot and i think it helps a lot in life i'm very very thankful for that opportunity

01:26:16.160 and that doesn't involve anything about whooping anybody's butt i did some of that but this is

01:26:21.440 a lot about learning to understand people when they're at traumatic points in their

01:26:27.120 life and being able to help them and it's fun to talk about different fights bouncing but i

01:26:33.520 learned a lot more when i got when i was when i was on the losing end of those things i learned

01:26:40.160 a lot more than when i was on the winning end of them and the people that i was able to help

01:26:46.000 in some way i'm a lot more proud of than you know the people i was able to knock around a little bit

01:26:54.400 but yeah i'm really thankful that it may sound sounds however it sounds that was a tremendous

01:27:02.240 tremendous benefit for me in my life and i'm very thankful for the opportunity and i'm very thankful

01:27:07.600 for the men that i got to bounce with and learn lessons with i miss those guys and they taught me

01:27:14.320 a lot um alzie coleman miller the fourth bought us three coffees that's 15 we appreciate that

01:27:24.720 thank you so much um from i want to make sure i'm getting these in order here that last one

01:27:35.040 was a lot of different spots tyler should be the next one and you should be able to go down from

01:27:39.760 there. That's what I was going to. Tyler says, what do you

01:27:43.780 think the best way is to beat a nicotine addiction?

01:27:47.500 I'll do good moderating and cutting back and then fall off the deep end.

01:27:52.700 Alan, what say you?

01:28:00.260 I've many times said that I'm glad I never picked that up because

01:28:03.680 I am, I have

01:28:06.840 that sort of addictive personality where if I had ever gotten in that habit, I know it would

01:28:14.660 have been hard to break both because the physical addiction of the nicotine and because of the

01:28:21.740 fidget, right? I, you know, I'm always, you know, if you got, if I ever got in that habit of having

01:28:28.800 the cigarette and, you know, having the thing, you know, that would have been hard, a hard

01:28:34.480 physical habit to break um as far as breaking the habit i mean i would certainly defer to the

01:28:42.880 experts there i'm sure there are you know there are lots and lots of resources out there um

01:28:49.760 and for so many people um

01:28:55.840 one of the reasons that there are so many approaches especially to

01:28:59.280 breaking nicotine or alcohol addiction i think it's particularized to there's an approach out

01:29:05.200 there that will fit you that's what i'm trying to get at you know some people like one of the

01:29:11.040 um the ways and again i just i read about this you know this guy who had been a lifetime smoker he

01:29:17.040 just he took a cigarette and put it on his desk and he would look at that cigarette and he would

01:29:22.720 go i'm stronger than you and so that for for for that approach you know that was you know this guy

01:29:30.560 just you know he was not going to be vested by this inanimate object and you know just as a sheer

01:29:36.640 act of will he uh you know he took it in in that direct confrontational way you want me to be your

01:29:45.120 slave but i am not your slave i am your master and i will prove it by leaving the cigarette right here

01:29:50.080 and not smoking it um that you know that's that's the kind of thing and it's that that can work

01:29:58.240 um there are other ways that can be like you know the slower thing where you

01:30:05.360 you know you're right down every time you smoke a cigarette and you know you go from 20

01:30:10.720 on day one you know 15 a day the next week and then you know you just gradually ease off again

01:30:17.600 just by strict record keeping and again making yourself accountable to yourself that you're you

01:30:23.600 know i i am not uh i'm not smoking that many cigarettes today and i think the psychology

01:30:31.680 of the way that you talk to yourself about it is also important this is one of the things that

01:30:36.160 i've had to discipline myself to do is um rather than saying i'm not smoking you know you know i

01:30:45.520 don't smoke anymore it's that that's that sort of self-reinforcing way where you can

01:30:53.360 bring it into the present that you don't smoke right now you're not going to smoke five minutes

01:30:58.960 from now you don't smoke anymore i mean that's that again that's one approach and um

01:31:07.920 you know be strong within yourself find find the path that will get you there that's a that's

01:31:12.560 it's a tough uh it's a tough habit to break and i uh admire you for trying so here here um if you

01:31:21.760 recognize that your consumption of anything is compelled by forces outside of your control and

01:31:29.760 not your will you doing what you need to take control of your life is admirable and the struggle

01:31:38.320 itself is admirable. So good on you. I think physical addiction is different than mental

01:31:45.520 addiction and figuring out maybe what it is might affect how you address it. The other thing that

01:31:52.940 I'd throw out there, are you addicted to nicotine or are you addicted to smoking? And I ask that

01:31:59.600 because there is a difference. I'm not convinced that nicotine is bad for you. I'm convinced

01:32:05.620 inhaling cigarette smoke is absolutely bad for you but there may be ways to get nicotine that

01:32:12.460 are not having those kind of effects there's a lot of stuff there but I know a lot of people

01:32:20.920 who are addicted to cigarette smoking specifically and it's not about the nicotine it's about the

01:32:27.840 having the thing in their hand it's about the associations when they're drinking they gotta

01:32:31.660 smoke there's a wide variety there i am very fortunate that i am not a i've never had a

01:32:40.460 chemical addiction i maybe it's because i have a pretty high tolerance for a lot of things i don't

01:32:48.220 know i think there's probably things that i get psychologically addicted to or have been in my life

01:32:54.460 as far as a chemical addiction i've never i've never fought that fight and i know that's probably

01:32:59.740 a lot harder than most people who haven't had that experience think that it is so don't let

01:33:05.740 perfect be the enemy of good any little bit of progress you can make that's something it counts

01:33:11.900 and it's something to be proud of if you're able to wean it back for a while and then you mess up

01:33:16.860 that's it's a lot better than it would have been had you not tried so and don't beat yourself up

01:33:22.140 for slipping a little bit because then you you know you know you will fail today i might as

01:33:27.420 smoke this whole pack that's you know that's you know yeah you can you can be moderate in

01:33:33.100 your approach to the way that you uh throttle back some's better than a lot and at the end of

01:33:41.900 the day some of these things are cumulative and they're negative effects so you know successes

01:33:49.900 here and there are better than no successes at all and you know don't don't let perfect be the

01:33:56.620 enemy good go out there and do what you can and everybody at everything fails every single time

01:34:02.860 until they make it that's the thing is you chart all of those up the only way to get from here to

01:34:09.740 there is by making those efforts that are very likely to end in failure here and there but

01:34:17.180 eventually if you stick with it they won't and there's there is no effort without error and

01:34:21.820 shortcoming absolutely and so it's worth doing and i'm glad that you're doing it if that's

01:34:28.060 something that has control of you take the control back and reach out people would be happy to help

01:34:34.380 you in that struggle corey asks we do coming of age ceremonies for boys right so yeah but sort of

01:34:49.420 we're in our infancy on it um an important thing is in the astro folk assembly haha

01:34:57.020 i didn't catch that but i'm glad glad you did alan um it's a it's process so some important

01:35:04.860 things to know in the afa sometimes we will start a what gets called a man-making kind of ceremony

01:35:12.700 at 13 ish and it's a process that culminates in adulthood what has always been very important to me

01:35:22.820 ritual has to mean something if you have a man-making ceremony and when you are done

01:35:31.820 with it you are a grown man we do that when you're 13 you can't do that and then say okay

01:35:38.140 now it's your bedtime can't do that and say yeah but here you got a sharp stick because

01:35:45.340 i don't trust you with the gun you can't say cool do that but it'd be really creepy if you're dating

01:35:52.220 my adult child like it has to actually mean something so in the afa we do not certify or

01:36:01.660 pronounce someone an adult until they are legally capable of being an adult in our society

01:36:08.140 um it I'm sure that looks different at different times in our history but that's an important note

01:36:15.940 to make for anybody don't do a man making ceremony and then treat them like a boy the

01:36:21.940 moment after defeats the whole purpose so in the AFA we like to start process to where you get

01:36:28.480 increasing responsibility when you're in that period and where ideally you have the men of the

01:36:35.080 they mentor you and help you to learn the things that you need to learn to become a man so that

01:36:41.640 we can wholeheartedly and excitedly take you through that threshold when you reach adult

01:36:49.160 it's something that we have that many of us spend a lot of time talking and thinking about

01:36:56.120 it's frustrating when we are so dispersed geographically to be able to do it in a

01:37:03.800 you know in in a meaningful way that can then be reinforced by the members of the community if it's

01:37:10.280 you know um if it was like in you know in the thousand years ago when the um you know and this

01:37:18.280 is your first shield and spear and you know then the first time you bring home a pouch full of

01:37:23.880 silver you know now you're a man those are the those are the things that would be easy to to make

01:37:28.600 that demarcation same time i think it's important to give it a lot of thought as we have um i think

01:37:35.960 it's i think that we're trying to come up with that right triangulation between

01:37:44.360 just because you reach a certain age milestone that doesn't necessarily mean manhood especially

01:37:51.240 with the complicated relationship that uh the modern world imposes on contracts and um

01:38:02.040 alcohol intake and those sorts of things uh so it's a you know it's it's a complicated thing it

01:38:09.560 it's definitely one that is a work in progress for us in the afa i really like the period of

01:38:17.000 cool let's start this process and let's work to get you there because i don't want to 1.00

01:38:23.000 i don't want to conduct any kind of coming of age right for some panty waist that i don't 0.75

01:38:27.400 care if he's 35 i'm not going to dishonestly declare him a man if i don't trust that he is

01:38:33.640 in fact a man this is a random side point on that people used to like ceremonially to give

01:38:41.800 they would do these man-making ceremonies when this kid's like

01:38:45.240 12 and then they'd ceremonially give them some kind of

01:38:55.400 historic recreation sword i'm gonna try to not be rude but

01:39:05.240 all of that's cool if that's the aesthetic that you like if you would not hand him a nine millimeter

01:39:12.360 or whatever in wherever the jurisdiction you're in if you would not hand them a shotgun or a rifle

01:39:19.000 right don't hand them a sword it's disrespectful when our ancestors gave a young man a sword they

01:39:27.000 were trusting him with the responsibility of life and death if you do not trust this

01:39:33.880 this 12 year old boy in front of you to have your back if you know in a firefight yeah if

01:39:44.200 if the enemy's coming for you and you don't trust this guy with your life don't give them that it

01:39:50.140 cheapens everything um and that doesn't mean cast the person aside they're worthless it means take

01:39:57.520 them by the hand and get them there build them up until they get to that point and I think that's

01:40:03.400 we're moving and i like that um question for the law speaker uh what is your take on david ramsey

01:40:13.560 and his seven baby steps to financial peace i'm not familiar precisely with um though with that

01:40:22.600 aspect of the dave ramsey program um i have steered many people toward dave ramsey i think

01:40:29.880 he has a lot of good ideas um again i i think he is a little too austere in his approach to budgeting

01:40:39.240 and i can give you some specific examples but um i think if he has seven baby steps out there

01:40:47.880 i would probably agree with five of them i mean uh um i i certainly like his uh overall approach

01:40:56.680 in the sense that disciplined budgeting is the first step in getting control of your finances

01:41:06.520 by i mean i i still like cash i don't have my wallet in my pocket but i could you know

01:41:13.080 i like to spend cash because there's a very different feel um to go into a store and you know

01:41:20.200 you know and spending fifty dollars if you have to take out the money out of your wallet

01:41:26.680 then it feels very different from just swiping that card because swiping 50 on your debit card

01:41:32.280 is the same as swiping five dollars on your debit card as the exact same mechanism so i i think one

01:41:40.200 of the things that dave ramsey advocates and that i do too is you know you set aside cash out of

01:41:46.440 your budget for your incidentals and you you know and when that info when when that envelope is

01:41:53.480 empty you don't buy any more coffee you don't go to the movie again you don't go bowling

01:41:59.720 um when that envelopes empty your attain your entertainment budget is over for that month

01:42:07.400 so yes i but like with uh ceasing smoking i think those are the sorts of things that

01:42:13.400 you can do in small steps and gradually change your life over a period of

01:42:19.240 weeks or months and with the goal being to be better tomorrow than you are today to be better

01:42:29.060 next year than you are right now and so by all means and if you want to email me a link I can

01:42:38.820 I can pick some of the stuff apart based on my own experiences in case you don't know I'm a

01:42:44.820 bankruptcy attorney. I've looked at thousands and thousands of budgets over the years and,

01:42:50.420 you know, I have a good feel for what works and what doesn't. And, you know, I think that both

01:43:00.080 the carrot and the stick approach tend to work pretty well, especially in combination. So yeah,

01:43:05.520 by all means, if you're, if you look at those things and find they have value to you, then

01:43:11.460 And I would agree with, you know, if it resonates to you, then you can make it work.

01:43:17.600 So if you want financial peace, Dave Ramsey says that, one, you should save $1,000 in an emergency fund.

01:43:25.800 Step one.

01:43:27.320 That's a start.

01:43:28.900 That is the step one typically is.

01:43:31.760 And he knows that it's a start.

01:43:33.320 I've heard him talk about it every time.

01:43:35.060 He knows that it's not even nearly enough.

01:43:38.640 Nick's on the train.

01:43:39.680 Good.

01:43:40.440 Barely yet.

01:43:41.460 yeah hopefully we can get everybody on on the financial piece so step two here's something i

01:43:48.960 want to say up front dave ramsey is a devout christian and he his big thing is no matter

01:43:55.500 where you're at you give your 10 tithe to the church he advises that if you are broke broke

01:44:05.740 and at every step of the way that is admirable and he is of a different faith than us

01:44:14.300 but that says a lot that he puts his values first even when you're in a point of desperation

01:44:23.660 we run into members from time to time that are financially struggling and it seems like

01:44:28.860 their first choice is to cut back on you know their afa donation and it's unfortunate because

01:44:36.460 i think that getting in good with your god or gods is a really solid investment no matter where

01:44:45.900 you're at and it's something that people of faith something that sets people of faith out from

01:44:52.380 people who like the idea of it but don't put a lot of stock in it you literally put your money

01:44:58.860 where your mouth is on it i think that's admirable that is a point of days but point two is pay off

01:45:04.540 all your debt except for your mortgage and he does that through the debt snowball by paying off the

01:45:12.140 the smallest debt first and uh go in that direction step three get a three to six

01:45:21.820 months of expensive and of expenses in an emergency fund and to keep that in your account so if

01:45:28.140 something happens to you change your job you have an emergency whatever you've got that sitting there

01:45:34.060 step four to invest and these are after you achieve the previous step these aren't simultaneous

01:45:41.340 once you have that invest 15 of your household income for your retirement

01:45:46.140 step five save for your child's or your children's college fund so you can self-fund that

01:45:55.500 if the alternative is to go into crushing school debt then that makes a lot of sense

01:46:05.820 um step six once you've done that and you have your kids college take care of

01:46:14.420 pay off your home early um and then step seven is build wealth and give so you can invest and

01:46:26.020 you can give money to stuff and you can save like no one else so you can give like no one else

01:46:31.060 that's what dave ramsey says um no it's really good stuff and uh when mandy and i moved out to

01:46:39.220 california when odenshoff was purchased when i became australia goethe we had some time there

01:46:46.260 it was pretty tight and we tried to uh you know really listen a lot to dave ramsey and his his

01:46:52.580 method of doing stuff and i feel like that helped us a lot so i think it's a nice thing

01:47:01.060 one other quick point dave ramsey also makes and i think it's also important is

01:47:05.380 he's so vehemently against buying a new car like you've got like in his mind you've got to be

01:47:12.260 to the level of rich before you even consider it your only steps happen if you're buying a new car

01:47:17.860 yep i've never bought a new car i've never owned a new car

01:47:28.020 yeah i it's hard to justify when

01:47:30.820 And there's so much depreciation the second they're not new.

01:47:37.180 Like buying last year's car, I've never been in that life.

01:47:43.300 If I get a car that's 10 years old, I feel like it's the newest, best thing I ever had.

01:47:49.280 It's amazing.

01:47:50.580 As one car lot advertised in one place I lived, everybody drives a used car.

01:48:00.820 Ah, where are we at on this? All right. So okay, I skipped one. Why do you call your

01:48:19.440 Haas churches we don't we call the AFA a church because it has an implied legal meaning certainly

01:48:32.340 in the United States and it has a social meaning as far as a large religious body that isn't

01:48:41.700 um equivocal there's no other like

01:48:46.080 certainly in the United States and there may be somewhere else there's no other term that captures

01:48:53.920 the meaning more precisely as a organized religious body um but no our buildings are

01:49:02.880 Hoffs uh they've always been called Hoffs they are Hoffs sometimes the neighbors will refer

01:49:08.040 to it as oh that Viking church or whatnot but no we don't refer to the the Hoffs themselves as

01:49:15.060 churches and then we've got all right has anyone in the AFA ever tried to secretly or openly pursue

01:49:24.540 an interracial relationship and how do you handle that situation yes lots and lots of people in the

01:49:30.960 AFA over the course of years have secretly tried to pursue that some of them have openly tried to

01:49:37.440 pursue that step one is to counsel them not to do that and to explain why that's counter to our core

01:49:47.580 values and if they pursue that and are officially engaged in said interracial relationship then

01:49:56.760 they are are not eligible for their membership in the Astru Folk Assembly and they are removed

01:50:01.500 for membership until they get their head on straight uh hold on a second i looked up the

01:50:10.460 definition of or actually the etymology of the word church and it comes from the greek word

01:50:17.100 kurios which uh is a proto-indo-european word meaning to swell spread out to be strong and

01:50:23.900 prevail so yeah there's talks about perfectly good um anglo-saxon word well and the the current

01:50:34.460 connotation is not the only possible meaning i mean church temple hoff and that's the thing

01:50:43.580 our house of worship is a hoff the organization as a body is a church because church is defined

01:50:50.540 specifically in legal terms under 501c3 religious designation it's like 501

01:50:56.380 c3 religious in quotation marks church right um so it has a meaning certainly in the united states

01:51:05.660 if you find yourself someplace different i can see it being confusing and i felt i don't think

01:51:11.420 anybody really doesn't know what we mean so i think that's some of that semantics i've also heard

01:51:18.460 etymological connections to uh the german kirka or like circle right which is which is derived

01:51:26.780 from that same etymology that's right so you don't want to get too bound up in trying to

01:51:31.740 attach uh norse words to well good anglo-saxon terminology

01:51:39.660 that's silly because the norwegian kirka goes back to the exact same root what it doesn't do

01:51:45.100 is go back to any semitic roots so no it's not right that's not theirs that's ours but again

01:51:52.940 um it's a point you know we do not internally refer to our uh our houses of worship as

01:52:00.540 as churches but the organization as a whole we do so um where are we at on the next one

01:52:09.340 Have you ever heard of Return to the Land? Yes, we have.

01:52:16.440 Alan, do you have anything to say about Return to the Land and whether we are aware of them and what our thoughts are on them?

01:52:25.240 Yes, they are a good bunch of folks. I've talked to a couple of them.

01:52:31.820 I think the model they are working is really effective.

01:52:38.060 It could be potentially effective for us.

01:52:41.440 And in fact, if one of you listeners out there has $700,000 that you're willing to loan to us, we can implement the RTTL model today.

01:52:53.500 Well, not today, but you know what I mean, tomorrow.

01:52:56.720 There you go.

01:52:57.500 There you have it.

01:52:59.940 Matt, when you say backyard barbecue, in quotes, backyard barbecue with five fat dudes arguing over who gets the big piece of chicken.

01:53:08.060 That sounds very specific. Were you actually at a cookout like this? And can you give details?

01:53:18.640 So, I am very happy that you, Aum Oden Petraya Namaha, were not at said cookout.

01:53:31.660 i am very proud that we have evolved also true to where that is no longer the norm

01:53:41.780 most of us who practiced also true before

01:53:47.100 20 i don't know 2010 2015 that was that was the coin the rotisserie chicken the big piece

01:53:59.560 rotisserie chicken was the coin of the realm um we yeah so my example is kind of an amalgamation

01:54:10.440 of a lot of things and so

01:54:19.080 i mean zero disrespect to where i come from to my roots to austritus roots in modern times

01:54:26.120 as opposed to sitting around on my computer complaining about how i wish the world was

01:54:33.740 i will gladly eat some rotisserie chicken in a camp chair even if i gotta fight fat dudes i

01:54:41.440 i'm game for it really and truly that's where a lot of stuff started because that's the resources

01:54:48.100 folks had we made the best with what we could um but i can remember you know a lot of

01:54:56.940 So I had some younger. OK. And I say it. I say it disparagingly because there's people that that's as far as they would like to see how so true of all.

01:55:07.500 Right. That's what I was going to say that, you know, that that's where we all started. Some of us have moved past that.

01:55:14.100 Well, so we started in mom's basement. Complaining and other people on the computer about what it should be if it ever happened.

01:55:23.880 some of us got out of the cave and actually went out and had went to the store and got some chicken

01:55:33.420 and went to our buddy's house and brought a camp chair and did something

01:55:38.220 but doing that the dream was always we talked about doing this bigger and doing it better

01:55:47.780 and doing it more and having a bunch of people um having a bunch of people get together and all

01:55:54.340 doing this and having families and having hoffs we all talked about that there's a lot of it

01:56:01.620 is funny to me and i do say it pejoratively in 2025 when the same guys with the same chicken

01:56:10.260 in 2015 never got up out the camp chair because we've invited them um no i can remember a number

01:56:19.300 of bloats like that it was almost always either in someone's backyard or often at like a park

01:56:30.260 and you'd get a group and it was almost exclusively guys and you'd sit around in a circle in camp

01:56:38.180 chairs i could almost promise you at least one of those perfect people was morbidly obese

01:56:45.940 wasn't always rotisserie chicken there's deli sandwiches there was like the you

01:56:51.540 may if it was real classy you could get a veggie tray

01:56:55.780 um i remember you know you'd have a variety of different beverages

01:57:02.740 and there's nothing wrong with any of that stuff as they were not top shelf beverages

01:57:07.620 um and you'd sit around there and you'd rotisserie chicken was good you'd have a lot of chips

01:57:14.260 all of that so i joke i remember some fond times with some amazing people doing that

01:57:21.940 with a you know a half a loaf of bread and a half a cup many a friend were made

01:57:26.740 it doesn't the point is not to disparage people doing the best they can

01:57:31.860 it's to why are you still doing that when you can be over here doing something that we're all doing

01:57:39.080 this is what we all dreamed about so we all talked about hey come over here do this with us

01:57:44.600 and celebrate the success and that's where we're trying to move and evolve no i had some awesome

01:57:52.060 just me and a couple of dudes in the backyard um i can think of one we're at my friend's house it

01:57:59.740 It was in Mountain View, which was a rough area of Anchorage, Alaska, and, you know, very humble apartment.

01:58:11.720 And out in their backyard complex, there's a big hole.

01:58:15.720 We burnt junk furniture for the fire in the hole, and we gathered around in the camp chairs.

01:58:23.780 I honestly think there was some rotisserie chicken present.

01:58:27.340 there's a number of those honestly it's so many of our roots I can remember so many of those people

01:58:35.640 and I look back at the people in the camp chairs very few of them are with us today here doing what

01:58:43.260 we're doing that makes me sad I wish those guys were here with us um yeah it's it's more of a

01:58:53.300 statement of, you know, I did, I, okay. It would be the same thing as me complaining about stuff

01:59:01.240 in mom's basement, which I often do. No, when I'm 17, I did a lot of things in mom's basement.

01:59:08.000 That was okay. But I'm a grown man. It wears differently in the forties. If I was in my mom's

01:59:14.100 basement, there's a lot of stuff we did when we were first starting out in the, uh, the,

01:59:20.560 you know teenage years of our also true expression the goal is you don't stay there

01:59:27.820 you evolve into something bigger and something more um so i'm not trying to just be insulting

01:59:34.580 yeah obviously there was a problem with it all being dudes and some obesity going on and i poke

01:59:40.300 a little bit of fun but i'm not immune i was there i just tried to move it forward and accomplish a

01:59:46.080 little bit of something. If all of the people and all of the camp chairs arguing over the big piece

01:59:53.500 of chicken got up, came over here to what we were doing, we would be so much better for it. And the

02:00:01.120 truth is, so would they. The other argument I want to say on it, and I know your thing is

02:00:06.880 trying to get me to say some fun story about it. I'm all for it. I get that. But another kind of

02:00:13.280 poignant point on it. Those

02:00:28.580 yeah, lost my train of thought a little bit on it. The big sadness is that there's so many people

02:00:33.800 who talked about so many things they wanted to see. Alright, I found back what I was going to say.

02:00:38.240 the argument over the big piece of chicken is a reference to this and we did see that in the day

02:00:45.420 over a number of things especially in the theotish circles those of you don't know the theotish guys

02:00:53.020 were guys that had a really particular anglo-saxon flavor to what they were doing

02:00:57.460 and they really liked wearing smurf hats i think they still like wearing the smurf hat

02:01:04.860 so there were and i read this online like this is the thing i'm not making this up

02:01:11.340 the theods men would have this very elaborate pecking order for their their feasting and they

02:01:18.300 would argue about who gets the first pick of whatever the food was be it rotisserie chicken

02:01:23.740 or not and it was this literally five guys fighting on who they're going to call king

02:01:31.180 and who they're going to call earl and who they're going to call like the master of horse and

02:01:37.980 there's five guys i don't fault anybody wanting to be the king but to be a king you need a kingdom

02:01:47.500 they would rather fight about how to divvy up five noble titles amongst dude five dudes sitting

02:01:56.380 around in a circle then not have a big fluffy title but be part of you know tens twenties

02:02:06.700 a hundred people gathered at a half worshiping our gods in a way that builds legacy for our children

02:02:14.300 and that's the small-mindedness that i kind of you know take a jab at when i make that expression

02:02:22.860 but alan knows about the five fat dudes and small and the rotisserie chicken that's that's our roots

02:02:28.860 that's legit yeah and two liter of mountain dew right and um the and i too have been frustrated

02:02:39.420 by a lot of the folks that i know and have known um through uh through all true circles when i was

02:02:49.100 doing the florida moot and and and that sort of thing that you know there's so many of those people

02:02:55.580 who are cons you know that like they're concerned that we're that we've become too

02:03:05.420 i don't know modernized you know like they just still have that viking mentality that you know

02:03:11.580 You know, that they think we're going to bring back the Viking era, much like the Theodes, you know, want to bring back this very rigid and, frankly, artificial structure to the practice.

02:03:28.700 And I don't think that type of, I think either of those extremes, to bring it back to the topic, I don't think either of those extremes are proper.

02:03:41.580 in you know in the modern iteration of what also true is which is what we do i mean you know we

02:03:47.980 talk about folkish also true but that's redundant you know also true is by definition folkish

02:03:55.500 and we are the folk and we practice the way it's funny i like that one and if you want to practice

02:04:02.940 also true if you want to lend credence and validity to to the gods of your own people then

02:04:11.580 Join the team and come in for the big win.

02:04:16.700 That's so hard for so many of our people.

02:04:19.940 And I wish it weren't.

02:04:21.960 I think, sorry, let me, you know, as we're talking through, you know,

02:04:27.540 maybe part of it is that the fact that, you know, if you're in a group of five,

02:04:34.800 then you're in the top 20% of leadership, even if you're at the bottom.

02:04:38.400 But if you come into a group of 50,000, then all of a sudden, you know, you're not so far up top the hierarchy anymore.

02:04:49.060 This is something I talked to somebody last week and about as well.

02:04:52.860 This is real and it's honest.

02:04:56.100 And I want to preface this.

02:04:59.940 I am the else here you go to the else to focus in me.

02:05:03.240 I sit as the autocrat of the most successful, biggest, has the most cool stuff,

02:05:13.240 also true, anything that has existed in the modern age.

02:05:20.640 I am very blessed and very fortunate.

02:05:23.660 I don't lose sight of that.

02:05:24.700 I know how it sounds.

02:05:26.420 What I'm about to tell you, I promise you, I believed,

02:05:29.880 when I was just a guy that sent in, at the time,

02:05:33.720 it was $2.50 to be a member of the Astro Folk Assembly.

02:05:40.000 So all of these backyard groups,

02:05:46.660 especially if you've been doing it a long time,

02:05:50.920 whoever is the leader of the backyard, 0.84

02:05:53.320 whoever is the emperor of the five fat dudes,

02:05:59.880 you're you can either be the exalted emperor of backyardia or you have to be a um a smaller cog

02:06:13.800 in a much grander wheel and a lot of guys because we've had a number of groups of people and I

02:06:25.020 some of them in their fives some of them 20 plus that we've tried to get join the afa but what we

02:06:31.740 run into is if you're the person who's been leading that for a number of years are you

02:06:39.420 willing to not be the king of your 20 guys that's the best case scenario let's say let's put an

02:06:48.140 average your six guys and instead maybe be a folk builder in the afa maybe even talk to us work

02:06:59.020 something out and get in a program so we can get you to be a go-fi in the afa

02:07:04.860 but it's cooler if you can be the top guy in your really small group and that's seductive

02:07:11.340 and i i don't know if i was that guy if i might not think the same way i hope not

02:07:18.140 but again I know where I'm at when I'm saying it I get it there was something before I joined

02:07:26.200 the AFA called the heathen folk revival and there was I was I was top three I think I

02:07:38.820 was the third guy in the heathen folk revival and it was Wyatt Kaldenberg I don't know if

02:07:47.520 guys remember but the dude that broke heraldo's nose with the chair he was the top guy underneath

02:07:54.480 him was sean ridland who was a friend of mine at the time i haven't spoken him in many years if

02:08:01.200 he's listening i miss you sean i hope you're doing well uh he had moved up to wasilla alaska

02:08:09.200 and he was like the second guy and i think i was like top i think i was through number three

02:08:13.040 and we're trying to start something and trying to get something going and

02:08:17.760 um but i told those guys i'm like hey why don't we just join the afa

02:08:24.080 they believe the things that we believe and look they're successful and they're doing these things

02:08:30.960 and they're moving this forward what are we doing over here by ourselves trying to reinvent the wheel

02:08:36.040 instead of getting on the team and they didn't want to do that and they didn't want a part of it

02:08:41.300 So eventually I broke with them and I said, you know, hey, I want to go move Alistair True forward so we have a legacy for our children and for what we're doing in the future.

02:08:52.180 And again, they're so resistant because they wanted to be part of their own little, everybody wants to be the king of their own little thing.

02:09:00.740 And I think it just misses the big picture.

02:09:04.620 And I think folks that that's their version of Alistair True, that dies with them.

02:09:09.100 That doesn't go into the future.

02:09:10.540 that doesn't build something for their kids or for their grandkids,

02:09:13.660 that doesn't make Ausitru 50 years from now something more

02:09:18.720 or something better than it is today.

02:09:21.060 And I hope everybody can adjust the view on that.

02:09:24.280 But I know what it's like.

02:09:25.700 I've been in those backyards.

02:09:28.100 I've eaten the chicken.

02:09:31.380 I tried to fight for mine, make sure I could get a breast,

02:09:34.040 but it wasn't always the case, depending on the backyard. 0.99

02:09:38.000 That was better anyway.

02:09:40.540 It's better, but it's less meat in it.

02:09:42.380 It's a lot tastier, though.

02:09:43.620 I can still get the skin on the breast, though.

02:09:45.460 The rotisserie chicken did good about getting the flavor to permeate.

02:09:50.120 I'll tell you what, right now, talking about it, I could go for a rotisserie chicken right now.

02:09:54.780 That's what I had.

02:09:55.700 That's what I had.

02:09:56.400 Go ahead.

02:09:57.500 I had rotisserie chicken that I picked and then cut some bacon up and grilled it with cheese.

02:10:05.800 My cousin and I used to go to the store.

02:10:07.760 we each get a rotisserie chicken and then we get a like a bag of of of biscuits not biscuits i guess

02:10:15.680 of rolls that we just feast on that um no i joke about all these things no i get it i'm not i'm not

02:10:24.880 too good for that i'm down if you're hosting a if you're hosting a mood at your house that's

02:10:29.920 a rotisserie chicken and some camp cheers around a trash fire in your backyard i'm not joking give

02:10:36.960 Give me an invitation.

02:10:38.020 If it's anywhere close, I'll be there.

02:10:39.720 There's a place for that.

02:10:40.800 But you have to.

02:10:41.440 There's nothing wrong with that.

02:10:42.740 That's just not the end result.

02:10:44.180 That's not the building.

02:10:45.540 That's a building block to get us into a bigger, higher.

02:10:50.640 Exactly.

02:10:51.720 Exactly.

02:10:52.900 And that's all that is.

02:10:54.640 And we have fun with it, but I think we earned it because some of us have been there.

02:10:58.480 And I'm glad that you guys don't see that as the norm.

02:11:02.000 that means we've all one of the things that i think is very gratifying for people

02:11:08.080 who've been involved in this in an active way for a long time

02:11:12.880 we've worked hard to change to where that's not in the north

02:11:16.640 i run into people now that assume we've always had hoffs

02:11:22.400 that's beautiful and that's the goal that we want is for that to be the new paradigm like what are

02:11:27.680 are you talking about not having coughs that's crazy what do you mean that wasn't always the

02:11:33.760 case so a lot of us can kind of poke fun at where we come from a little bit but it's it's in good

02:11:39.340 spirits and it's it's in proportion well I guess this kind of follows on to that what are some of

02:11:49.020 the biggest changes that you've seen in the AFA since having taken over as I was here you go through

02:11:54.420 So before I get to that, I want to ask Alan, Alan, what, since 2016, what have you, I guess, since OSTARA of 2016, what changes have you seen in the AFA that are important to you?

02:12:10.380 Well, yeah, a multitude, all for the good. Certainly, you know, when I first started practicing Austro 2005, it was almost all guys.

02:12:30.260 Um, and there was a lot of, and certainly at the time I would say, you know, well-placed or well-taken, um, bitterness about the fact that, you know, especially as we first find our folk way and, and we think, you know, man, we should have been doing this all along.

02:12:50.060 You know, those, uh, those bad people took this away from us.

02:12:55.320 Yeah, they did.

02:12:56.420 And that's what happened.

02:12:57.240 And so we just have to get through that and into a place where now instead of, you know, a bunch of guys sitting around drinking, and certainly I had my spate of that during that period, but, you know, now we have families and women and children.

02:13:21.320 And I think the biggest change can be can be summed up just by saying that we that we feel a sense of hope now, you know, that we that we are building something better.

02:13:36.100 We're not just living, resenting the past and standing around being irritated.

02:13:42.080 We're elevating each other to a better, higher place in our practice, in our personal lives, in our conduct of our daily selves.

02:13:54.240 And that's what that to me is the purpose of religion.

02:13:57.660 And that's something that we didn't have a real concept of in the beginning.

02:14:05.200 And we're still really formulating it in a lot of ways, but we, but we're, we're trying to better each other and better ourselves and reach a higher place in the way that our gods are honored and the way that we honor each other and respect our families.

02:14:24.980 And so even to use that sort of language, you know, in the stuff that we were doing 20 years ago would have been viewed as out of place, if you will.

02:14:40.020 I mean, even then, we were trying, we were certainly doing classes and lectures on better living and, you know, history lessons, but it was, you know, it's like anything else.

02:14:57.720 That was like the grammar school period, and now we're in middle school, you know, as we're trying to find our way through, and I think our practice is so much better than it was.

02:15:10.020 our methodology, our understanding of what exactly we are doing in ceremony is so much

02:15:20.620 clearer and more thorough than it was back in those days. I mean, we were, I really feel like

02:15:28.020 we were going through the motions without any foundational understanding. And, you know, but we

02:15:34.180 had to dig through that. And in a lot of ways, I don't like to say we were faking it, but, you

02:15:39.900 And we did sort of probe our way into it.

02:15:42.960 And I think as we practiced, we reached an understanding of what it is that we're doing on a psychological and metaphysical level.

02:15:53.220 And I think the gods have blessed us with a journey towards success.

02:16:00.220 so to piggyback on Alan's a little bit

02:16:04.740 the idea of fake it till you make it

02:16:08.340 I want to put the caveat

02:16:12.040 none of it was ever disingenuine

02:16:14.740 but at some point you make a leap of faith

02:16:18.420 you don't know what you're doing

02:16:19.800 so you just try something

02:16:21.440 and you hope for the best

02:16:23.480 and you see what works

02:16:24.880 and I think that was a lot of the stage

02:16:26.940 we were at

02:16:30.860 during my early days in the austral folk assembly we were trying new things and

02:16:36.060 trying stuff because we knew it was kind of the right thing to do but not really sure why and

02:16:41.500 trying to listen to the gods and each other and see what what works and build on it um

02:16:50.780 i have been

02:16:51.500 i have been tremendously blessed beyond measure from our gods in my time as i'll share your

02:17:02.940 guilty i have seen amazing amazing things happen with the afa and what's what's more is

02:17:10.540 i have been tremendously blessed with

02:17:14.460 having some true heroes stand with me and help me and help the afa

02:17:27.580 and be partners in what we've achieved one of them is with me here tonight

02:17:32.940 I come before my altar just about every day thankful for the tremendous and overwhelming blessings that I have.

02:17:53.580 Hey, sweetheart, this is one of them.

02:17:56.840 So it's come a long way in a lot of ways.

02:18:02.960 I think what Alan is talking about with our why we do things we do is certainly a noteworthy part of it.

02:18:11.800 when I became

02:18:15.080 ulterior guilty in

02:18:16.620 I'm sorry at mid

02:18:20.840 summer of 2016

02:18:21.800 we only had the one

02:18:26.800 half and

02:18:28.700 now we've got four

02:18:30.480 we've got really solid plans on the next

02:18:32.900 two

02:18:33.200 so that's made a

02:18:36.820 big difference the focusing

02:18:38.660 what we're doing in our gatherings

02:18:40.940 and our worship at the hoffs has been a tremendous thing it's given us the opportunity to have a

02:18:45.980 community interaction that we'd never have before all four of the hoffs food pantries have been

02:18:52.540 during my time as also your gopi um and that's just it

02:18:58.860 it makes stuff real in the sense that the community uh other aussitua our parents our 0.99

02:19:09.420 families can go and touch and feel hey this is real i can reach out and touch it and as stupid

02:19:15.500 as it sounds hey i can look it up on google maps and it is a location it exists that's that's the

02:19:21.820 thing so the other thing i was going to say on it yeah we've had such a huge surge uh we've had a

02:19:30.220 huge surge of families of children of women at our events um i met mandy

02:19:40.700 two years before but building families within the afa has been a big thing in uh in my time

02:19:49.260 early on in alsa true our founders generation didn't have a lot of success incorporating

02:19:56.540 children into things and i think we've come a long long way with that we have

02:20:07.260 really advanced

02:20:10.540 our our scope um early on the afa was largely a west coast phenomenon now our membership is spread

02:20:21.420 evenly i don't think is fair but it's spread very significantly across the entirety of the united

02:20:30.700 states and internationally um we're a lot more unified in our practice in what we do our

02:20:40.460 leadership are daily engaged with interacting with one another and with building and maintaining the

02:20:47.340 ask true folk assembly um the commitment of our members is at a much much higher rate this is a

02:20:55.420 this is earlier on i think this is something that people interacted with maybe a few times a year

02:21:03.660 some people maybe monthly now i think that a very healthy portion of the afa interacts with this

02:21:11.020 many times throughout the week and there is a constant presence of the astro focus assembly

02:21:17.260 in their lives i think that's a really beautiful thing that's very different than it once was

02:21:22.940 and i think we're always trying to be more to reach up to do more and to achieve victory

02:21:30.300 that's why you know it's one of the reasons why this program's named victory never sleeps

02:21:34.300 there's always so much more to do and we've had a number of really hard chargers at that

02:21:39.900 and i think you know talking to our founder stephen mcnellen and his wife githya sheila mcnellen

02:21:46.620 they're both blown away with where the afa is and they've both said to me that you know never in

02:21:51.980 their wildest dreams did they think that we would be where we're at and they're both very happy with

02:21:57.500 that and that means the world didn't hear that from um what else we got tonight

02:22:05.180 i'd like to hear you discuss theodoric the great the ostrogothic king which dietrich poems would

02:22:16.100 you recommend for beginners example uh theedric saga uh rosengarten zoo worms which of those

02:22:26.180 Our favorites. Alan, your turn. Go.

02:22:31.680 That is not my area.

02:22:36.040 Getting some feedback.

02:22:43.060 I'm more well read in the theory and practice of radical traditionalism.

02:22:49.300 So I have some recommendations on, you know, along that line.

02:22:53.900 If you can find a copy of Aristocratia, first of all, if you buy me a spare, I will loan you one of them.

02:23:05.280 They are currently selling on eBay for like $600.

02:23:09.760 But those and the tier journals, super, super good writing.

02:23:17.020 The guys over at tier are friends and allies of ours.

02:23:23.900 The tiered journals have, to me, what is the – everybody has their own way of looking at these things, right?

02:23:33.980 But to me, it is a lot less important to understand how an Ostrogothic king lived 1,500 years ago than how I can live a better and more noble, more traditional life 15 minutes from now.

02:23:53.300 So that's where my focus is.

02:23:57.680 That's a long-winded way of saying I don't know.

02:24:01.760 Okay, so I am not well read in the poems celebrating Theodore.

02:24:12.920 work but i am that period of his life and his and his ruling in in italy in northern italy there

02:24:28.760 is really fascinating his

02:24:36.200 like his presence his force of character as a man to be able to accomplish the things 0.98

02:24:42.920 in his life and in the husk of the roman empire is fantastic and i find him extremely extremely

02:24:49.560 interesting um what is bittersweet is that he's in that period of our people that 0.98

02:25:01.720 betrayed our gods and broke troth with the icr and i can't support or celebrate that theodoric

02:25:09.800 uh was an arian christian um and again relatively few generations before that all of his folk

02:25:22.200 worshiped our gods so that's sad to me but as a man as a warrior as a leader of men his

02:25:33.240 presence on the stage of the the late roman empire is fantastic to me and i

02:25:39.800 There's no way not to be impressed and not to find that super interesting.

02:25:46.140 It just unfortunately, you know, I wish a few generations from him had stayed true to our gods and his story would be all the greater.

02:25:55.660 But I'm not really familiar with the, you know, medieval epic poetry of him.

02:26:01.120 I haven't, I can't say that I haven't ever read it, but it's been a lot of years and it wasn't something I spent a lot of time on because it is outside of the scope of Auschwitz.

02:26:09.800 But there are books that closely parallel that, I mean, Gates of Fire, about the Battle of Thermopylae, and that gets into a lot of detail about why the Spartans fought the way they did

02:26:30.900 and were willing to give their lives knowingly,

02:26:34.260 willingly to throw their lives into the breach,

02:26:38.500 you know, to protect their tribe.

02:26:40.700 So Sam, I do want to, I suppose, about Theodoric,

02:26:44.440 if you like Gothic history

02:26:47.200 and if the Goths are meaningful to you,

02:26:50.260 it's always been very important to me

02:26:53.780 a disproportionate amount of our focus

02:27:00.680 has been put on the vikings and i understand why and i don't fault those reasons but

02:27:10.760 it doesn't give enough attention to other historic

02:27:17.720 peoples that were true to the icr and among them were the goths so along the lines of that

02:27:25.640 um a thaneric king of thaneric uh as of the thuringian goths was very important to me early

02:27:33.880 on in my house of true development and it was important to me to honor him with a day of

02:27:39.160 remembrance when i became y'all's heritage and he's one of the first ones that i did that with

02:27:44.520 and on june the ninth we celebrate king of thaneric with the day of remembrance so um

02:27:51.400 stay tuned because there are a number of other prominent goths around that period that will be

02:27:58.420 honored with days of remembrance so in the coming days and or coming weeks and months you may hear

02:28:04.280 about a few more of those but no the goths are fascinating theodoric is just on the other side

02:28:11.200 of that christian christianization which puts him outside of the scope of where i focus now that's

02:28:19.520 the last question that we have for this evening, but I want to mention we've got a special

02:28:27.240 treat for you guys in our outro music tonight. A member named Russ decided to compose a piece

02:28:38.320 of music for us, and he unveiled it during Sambl on Saturday last at Ostar at Thorshof,

02:28:47.400 and it was it was a really beautiful piece and something we really appreciate and uh i appreciated

02:28:52.680 his performance he has uh given us a version of that to use for our outro and hopefully you guys

02:29:01.800 enjoy it uh i look forward to talking to all of you again next week when witness fawn and i

02:29:08.600 go over part two of and i promise in part two we will cover more than four chapters in the

02:29:14.840 the Volsunga Saga.

02:29:16.500 I appreciate you guys.

02:29:19.260 Test it. We'll get at least

02:29:20.720 five in there. I gave my word. I'm a pretty good

02:29:22.580 stickler on that. So five it is.

02:29:25.140 We'll see. We'll see what we

02:29:26.820 can do, but it's going to be a lot of fun.

02:29:28.880 I appreciate you guys' participation

02:29:30.340 in previous version.

02:29:32.960 Bring your questions. Any questions

02:29:34.800 betwixt now and then, send

02:29:36.680 to bns

02:29:38.400 at runestone.org.

02:29:41.280 Alan, I

02:29:42.460 appreciate you in

02:29:44.460 so many ways. Thank you for joining us and sharing your wisdom with everyone this evening.

02:29:49.820 It's my honor. Thank you for having me. Absolutely. All right, guys. Until next time,

02:29:56.720 hail the Iseer, hail the folk, hail the AFA, and remember, victory never sleeps. Good night.

02:30:14.460 You were rising up from winter's dark

02:30:29.420 With the flame we kept so dear

02:30:31.620 God sent our sisters to serve us

02:30:34.760 Now the dawn is near

02:30:36.660 Light the fire

02:30:41.240 Won't you raise the heart

02:30:46.220 Bless, bless the sea

02:30:52.260 Bless the sun

02:30:57.800 Come in love

02:31:01.280 Come in love

02:31:03.800 Come in love

02:31:06.380 Coming home

02:31:09.500 Hungry as we are

02:31:14.060 Food and coming

02:31:15.420 Bring the meat and

02:31:16.860 The wheels turn

02:31:19.080 The time has come

02:31:20.580 For play and opening

02:31:22.200 Dance

02:31:24.040 Dance

02:31:25.560 Sports

02:31:27.840 Jump

02:31:29.080 Jump the fire

02:31:32.280 Hooray

02:31:34.220 Hooray

02:31:35.760 God is

02:31:38.260 Hail

02:31:39.860 Hail the fall

02:31:42.560 Coming home

02:31:47.160 Coming home

02:31:49.760 Coming home

02:31:52.260 Coming home

Asatru Folk Assembly - March 27, 2025

3⧸26⧸25 Victory Never Sleeps, Episode 142 - Adulting with Allen： Moderation

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