00:03:24.180Welcome back to another exciting edition of Victory Never Sleeps.
00:03:27.280as you might notice tonight i am joined once again by law speaker alan turnage
00:03:33.300this is the third install monthly installment of adulting with alan and alan is going to learn us
00:03:41.040some stuff um first or attempt to learn us some stuff so uh thank you to witness fawn for
00:03:51.340We're covering for that last hour last week as I went to the airport.
00:03:56.880All of our Witten, except for the lovely Brandy Fassett, were able to make it to Ostara at Thorshof, and it was a fantastic event.
00:04:04.980I'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.
00:04:27.700It was a fantastic event, and I'm very, very glad I was able to be in attendance.
00:04:34.980I suppose next up, and it's sneaking up faster than I would have thunk it, is Midsommar at Odenshoff.
00:04:46.080Midsommar is going to be, let's see if Nick's got the graphics set up.
00:04:52.180I don't know that he does, but it's going to be the fourth weekend in June.
00:04:57.320That is Odenshoff in Brownsville, California.
00:05:01.220Here we go, June 27th through the 29th.
00:05:03.940Again, that's in Brownsville, California. It is the first Hof of the Ausatru Folk Assembly.
00:05:12.820We acquired Odin's Hof 10 years. At the end of midsummer, we will have first seen it
00:05:22.66010 years ago. And in October, we will have had it for an Ausatru Hof for 10 years, which
00:05:31.920is quite an accomplishment in this day and age.
00:05:35.740So come out, help us celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Aus True Folk Assembly at the AFA's
00:08:52.420First of all, that's a lot of the way that I've tried to guide my own life.
00:08:58.680And actually, I've thought about all the iterations of that in thinking about today's topic for myself.
00:09:10.320Certainly, I think the religious aspect focuses directly on, first of all, some of the things from the Lord.
00:09:17.440Most 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.
00:09:30.480There's golden milk in this Auburn mug, but to each his or her own.
00:09:35.700Um, but, um, as the lore admonishes us, uh, the heron of forgetfulness hovers over Phylar's
00:09:45.120hall and mead is, ale is not the friend of man.
00:09:49.780Um, and certainly a little wine is okay.
00:09:54.360And so in the broader picture, then I've often considered that, um, in guiding our folk and
00:10:02.740guiding myself that that this religion and any way would be easier if it could be extreme i mean if
00:10:14.020we could just say you shall not drink at all that would be easy or do what you want that's easy too
00:10:24.180but the hard part is hewing that line down the middle and walking that middle path so in a lot
00:10:30.500of ways i i hearken our own folk way to that of another aryan faith that of buddhism um where it
00:10:42.180is all about the middle path um the the path down the line between the extremes and um
00:10:50.500lest people have any doubt you know the the vedic texts talk about well not today but the buddhist
00:10:56.980texts talk about the Buddha, um, who had eyes like cornflowers. And so, um, yes, uh, he was
00:11:06.820not, not the dark, hot, dark eyed, low caste Indian. He was one of us, one of the Brahmin
00:11:12.100caste. So, uh, so I think we can get a lot of benefit from studying that, uh, studying
00:11:19.080that path. Uh, although I do not agree with a lot of what Buddhism has to say, I don't
00:11:24.360think that life is suffering. I don't think attachment causes suffering. You know, that a lot
00:11:29.760of those things, again, are too extreme to sit in a wood, to sit in the woods by yourself and
00:11:35.980meditate like the ascetics did is a form of extremism. So that is certainly not the path
00:11:43.480for us. We are people of the world because this world is beautiful and joyful. And but we just
00:11:50.240can't get too extreme in any of the ways that we approach it. One of the fundamental things that
00:11:57.640came up, now it seems like a lifetime ago, maybe it was, was we got a lot of inquiries, certainly
00:12:05.460I did, about being able to take a religious exemption for the COVID vaccine. Now, I don't
00:12:14.240want to harsh anybody's buzz. I did not take the vaccine. I think it's a terrible idea and I think
00:12:19.640that it's proving out that it was a terrible idea and always was, but there's nothing in our
00:12:25.020religion that says you can't take a vaccine. I think most vaccine schedules are overdone.
00:12:33.840That's a personal opinion, not a medical opinion. And if there was an Ebola outbreak, I'd be the
00:12:40.040first one in line down there getting the Ebola vaccine. But there are other means of preventing
00:12:45.620those sorts of things without being that radical extreme of of all or none
00:12:53.700was it the source family that the guy um that there was a guy who
00:12:59.220um you know he had a whole bunch of followers and again in the in that idea of extremism and
00:13:05.060extreme renunciation they gave up all their goods they lived together they ran a restaurant
00:13:09.780And 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.
00:13:33.840And 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.
00:13:54.320Um, 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.
00:14:05.840I'll tell you again, a, a personal example from my own life, um, in law school.
00:14:11.980Um, 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.
00:14:33.580And, you know, that's that's just not the kind of lifestyle that I think is healthy.
00:14:39.740The the moderate lifestyle says you earn enough money to make a decent living for yourself.
00:14:48.460No, I don't want my antivirus to renew. You can make a living for yourself, but without being too attached to the material things.
00:14:57.800there are studies, there's a whole couple of documentaries out there about how much money it
00:15:04.320takes to be happy. Most people that they interview say that how much they ask the question, how much
00:15:12.140money do you need to be happy? And people say that the answer by and large is about 20% of
00:15:19.320whatever 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
00:15:30.840happy with what you have. The other way to be happy is to want less, to live a moderate lifestyle.
00:15:37.880I drive old cars, I thrift shop, and I come home and read stories to my kids. Well, not anymore.
00:15:47.140They're 25 and they're not interested in what I have to say anymore.
00:15:51.120But back in the old days, you know, I made a modest living for myself.
00:15:55.740I 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.
00:16:09.500Because enough is where you need to be.
00:16:12.620which reminds me I meant to say before I started talking about moderation that I think of these
00:16:20.440shows as cumulative so if you have a question about the financial stuff that we talked about
00:16:26.300in the way back when and maybe you couldn't join the show then but you watched it in the interim
00:16:30.360and you have a question about your financial stuff I will I'm happy to answer that question
00:16:36.080I'm happy to answer questions about my approach to health but you know some of the things I do
00:16:41.660are not what everybody would do, a cold shower. So some of those things are, you know, are
00:16:49.220moderation, just writ large with, with approach to health, with approach to lifestyle in general.
00:16:58.060Again, like, and again, the health aspect is a, is another aspect of living in moderation.
00:17:05.140I don't think raw veganism is the way to go.
00:17:09.580I 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.
00:18:05.240i think when people say moderation we immediately as alan mentioned we think about
00:18:11.880alcohol um i think we also as alan mentioned think about food
00:18:18.280But what I don't think we consider enough is moderation in other things in our life.
00:18:30.800Many of us, and I think a lot of our audience, we find ourselves in a very politically extreme time.
00:18:39.540to where if whoever you identify as the other team says one thing the response is to immediately run
00:18:48.340as far to the opposite side and pick the edgiest thing over there to say to somehow counterbalance
00:18:55.400it or counter signal it and in doing so we allow our enemies to determine our narrative
00:19:06.280And 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.
00:19:22.480The 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.
00:19:32.180the challenge is our religion is about nobility we use the term Aryan because our people identified
00:19:42.680themselves as the noble people a part of nobility is having the discretion in your own life to make
00:19:51.320meaningful choices to choose when to indulge and to choose when to refrain to choose how far down
00:20:01.160path to go what's right for you you know again we all have different tolerances for a lot of things
00:20:09.240their case in point over the years and this has gotten increasingly better it's not a significant
00:20:16.840problem these days but we'll have somebody that will be at some kind of function and they will get
00:20:23.640far too far in their cups the immediate response is shouldn't we make a rule that there's no
00:20:32.080alcohol at this or no hard liquor or only this or only no we shouldn't the drunkard should
00:20:39.380stop drinking and everyone else who has control of themselves should be able to
00:20:44.020make noble choices as noble people or no dogs anywhere near something because ill-behaved dogs
00:20:51.680are becoming a problem. No, the ill-behaved dogs shouldn't be there. The others, you know,
00:20:58.320can figure it out. Making sweeping rules is very, very easy, but a virtue in our faith
00:21:05.880is developing the nobility in people for them to make correct choices about how to balance their
00:21:14.360lives. And again, let's not be immoderate in our moderation. We're not saying everything needs to
00:21:22.820be 50-50. That's ludicrous. What we are saying is everything needs to be intentional.
00:21:31.560If you choose to indulge, fine. If you reach a point where, man, this feels good, I'll have a
00:21:40.680little bit more. Fine if that's something that you weigh and measure and decide to do. But what
00:21:48.360we don't want is you to get carried away by your whims, by unanalyzed emotion, by, I don't know,
00:22:03.220trying to impress the dude next to you, whatever the case might be, to make stupid choices.
00:22:10.100and when i say that i'm not admonishing anybody i think that we've all done that i guarantee you i
00:22:14.820have i think that everyone does that from time to time but one of the things that has been meaningful
00:22:20.260to me is you know the all-father seems immoderate he is he is the the master of ecstatic fury
00:22:30.260but there's meaning in that he is not mastered by ecstatic fury he masters the ecstatic fury
00:22:39.180he's able to consume a tremendous amount of overwhelming stimulus to do things and he is
00:22:50.480able to ride that stimulus in accordance with his will i'm not none of us are suggesting that
00:22:57.940You ought to be free of emotion or free of indulging in things or enjoying things.
00:23:05.880But it always needs to be done mindful to your will.
00:23:09.420And if your will is not in the driver's seat, that's when we would caution you to exercise some moderation.
00:23:17.360Right. And there's the I think there are several points that illustrate what you're talking about very well.
00:23:24.900Certainly one that I have to bear in mind often is the idea of delayed gratification.
00:23:31.860I 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.
00:23:44.660You have to think, well, I need this money for some other higher use next week, next month, next year.
00:23:52.880when you're deciding how much buffet to put on your plate, you know, how much is this going to
00:24:00.220affect my long-term health? Am I going to be able to eat dessert? Am I going to be able to have that
00:24:05.040second beer after I, you know, if I eat this much bacon? So all those sorts of things, if you keep
00:24:11.900the long-term in mind, that helps you moderate your present, knowing that there is, knowing that
00:24:18.980will also be a future and certainly the idea of emotional moderation is an important thing
00:24:29.220my youngest and i were talking just this evening about
00:24:34.420some of the wrongs that have been done to me and the wrongs that i've done to other people
00:24:42.740And 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.
00:25:00.420Because we have to keep it in the framework of the imperfectibility of the human condition.
00:25:12.220We 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.
00:25:25.960The other thing that came to mind during that discussion, too, was sort of the idea of confidence.
00:25:34.260If you're confident, that is one thing.
00:25:38.120If 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.
00:25:55.420Too much confidence is hubris or egotism.
00:26:00.160and again that you know we're in that balance point we have to live in that balance point
00:26:04.320where where we're okay but not tremendous
00:26:21.520this is all right there's a couple of things the emotional thing plays in a lot of different ways
00:26:29.040and it's interesting just formulating this conversation how much it plays on tonight's
00:26:36.800subject a lot of us tend to be emotional eaters i do not need strong emotion as an excuse to eat
00:26:46.720because i i could put down some food but i do notice that if i'm um if i'm adjusting my diet
00:26:55.440and maybe there's an overage i'm countering for and i'm really low on carbs you feel an emotional
00:27:01.920pull to eat and it's interesting on how you handle that a lot of people i've known especially
00:27:10.000i'm sorry but it's true especially ladies have a tendency to emotionally eat and they'll find
00:27:16.240comfort in they will find comfort in over consumption of what we all know as comfort foods
00:27:28.160and it very seriously does affect them emotionally and it does make them feel better for that moment
00:27:36.400being able to recognize when emotions are making you act a certain way
00:27:42.000and then moderating that action and for anybody who's picking up on how many times we're going
00:27:48.360back to the night's theme it's called branding we're doing it on purpose but but it's there
00:27:54.340it's a thing so that goes to your consumption of food or when you're depressed and you just
00:28:00.740want to have a drink because it makes you feel better and chill out and it does and then you
00:28:05.260want to have, you know, six or seven drinks to chill out. And, you know, there's a point where
00:28:10.920it becomes counterproductive to what you're trying. But it also comes in how you treat other
00:28:18.240people. If you are upset, and something offends you in some way, or maybe something hits a
00:28:25.560insecurity that other people aren't aware of, it is easy is easy to be emotionally compelled to
00:28:32.100overreact to something or to somebody or to make really big emotional decisions about
00:28:40.740quitting something you're involved in or breaking up with a partner or severing a friendship
00:28:46.160over something that wasn't well thought out. You just reacted emotionally because you got angry
00:28:53.020or more likely you got embarrassed or hurt feelings. Very little is sacrificed in taking
00:29:01.060a breath, sleeping on it overnight, and then making a decision. But, you know, many of
00:29:06.800us fall into that trap all too often. I've always said that being Aryan is about making
00:29:14.020choices. It's very easy to always find yourself counterpunching something or just in a constant
00:29:26.820state of responding to the things other people do. And as best we can, we want to get out of that.
00:29:34.000We want to absorb the information that comes into us. We want to process it. And then from that
00:29:40.360place, we want to make a decision about how to act. When you get to where you're always reacting,
00:29:48.020it's very hard for you to accomplish the things you want in life. It's one reason that in fighting,
00:29:54.920it's a very good strategy to constantly keep your opponent on the defense because as long as they're
00:29:59.640reacting to what you're doing they're not executing their plan and uh that's something to keep in mind
00:30:07.800i'll say this is you know now is the time of the program that we go to matt's matt's uh cringy
00:30:13.960bouncing stories but uh i used to always tell my guys like hey i'm cool if you know whenever you
00:30:24.200I've got your back. If you feel the need to get us involved in a fight, cool, I'm there for you,
00:30:30.280got you. But don't you dare stumble into a fight and then have me have to pull you out of it
00:30:36.440because you weren't thinking. When you're interacting with other people, there's a lot
00:30:41.140of stuff if you think about what you do and you think about the consequences of it that you can
00:30:45.560manipulate the situation. And again, most of these things about the idea of moderation,
00:30:50.940You 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.
00:31:10.020um yes a lot of what i'm go ahead but then this is the time for my boring yoga stories
00:31:19.380um because that that always brings that point one of the ways that uh that i cut my drinking
00:31:28.040down 95 is when i started meditating because even just after a couple of beers at night i
00:31:33.120could tell the difference in my meditation the next morning um so i sometimes say i went from
00:31:39.680three beers a night to three beers a month um you know and it's that but that too i
00:31:46.760the yoga school that i went to teaches complete abstinence but uh i don't follow that school i
00:31:55.220follow our way and our way says you can have a couple of beers occasionally um so it's uh so
00:32:02.600as long as you do it in moderation you know set and setting those sorts of things
00:32:07.980there's two things that i wanted to kind of mention um when it comes to spiritual practice
00:32:14.540a lot of people when they're incorporating runic work into their spiritual practice
00:32:21.020one of the first things or a strategically used thing is the galder and invocation of
00:32:32.040of isa the rune of ice thank you baby of ice and stillness because it many people myself included
00:32:43.560use it for a a centering or a bringing you back to a place of stillness
00:32:50.920taking a few deep breaths getting in a place where you've detached yourself from
00:32:58.880emotion and you can be objective and go into your practice and i think a lot of people do that in
00:33:06.840different forms when they're doing their spiritual practice but i think that has value and i think
00:33:12.500that's all about removing yourself from the impulses that might make you immoderate in your
00:33:21.380actions and i think that's like too much isa is rigidity so you can't you have to be still but
00:33:29.460without being brittle so again you know it's uh there's a little bit a little bit is plenty
00:33:39.060yeah and and the other thing that i kind of wanted to mention is
00:33:42.180is there is no such thing as equality that is it really does not matter what your religion is
00:33:52.500that is demonstrably true that is a lie that is a lie that people have fed you please reject that
00:33:59.700in in the entirety of it it is not true there are no two things no two people no two anything that
00:34:08.820equal to one another and that predict presents an additional challenge if you have a low tolerance
00:34:16.420for alcohol or maybe you're just a bad drunk and your friends have a high tolerance for alcohol
00:34:23.940they get to drink what they want if they're in control of themselves and maybe you don't
00:34:30.260and that's something nobody likes to hear you know maybe some people with awesome metabolisms
00:34:36.420can eat whatever they want and they're cool and maybe you either you balloon up or maybe
00:34:43.700you have a health condition where you can't it doesn't mean everybody else shouldn't have fun
00:34:50.420because you are at a disadvantage it means you need to recognize your circumstance and make
00:34:58.660willful decisions based upon that and that is a challenge when you realize that it's not fair
00:35:06.420and that other people maybe can do things you can't do or maybe you can do things that other
00:35:11.220people can't or should not do we started walking to watch it malcolm in the middle again and that's
00:35:17.540the you know that's their theme song is life is unfair so that's just that's the starting point
00:35:24.340you know and if and if you don't like your situation you can do something about it um
00:35:29.140Um, and certainly the, uh, the other members of the Witten, your GoTar, um, have life experiences
00:35:39.560Uh, I'm happy to talk to anybody, any member about, uh, you know, their, uh, legal situation
00:35:46.220and try to help you some stuff I know about some stuff I can guide you in the right direction.
00:35:51.340Um, but, uh, those, those are the sorts of things that, that don't be afraid to ask for
00:35:56.840help. Because again, that, you know, that to, to get back on the point of moderation, you know,
00:36:03.240we are expected to be self-reliant, but not everything. I mean, I, uh, there's, there are
00:36:11.520some construction projects that I can do. There's some stuff that I will not undertake. Um, there,
00:36:16.820you know, there are mechanical things that I can do, you know, with my car, the rest I'd make,
00:36:21.940get my mechanic to do this is for good or ill this is an era of specialization and there is no
00:36:29.880there is no shame in asking for help from somebody who has been down the path and who
00:36:37.280has experienced those things and can do something better than you can it's like what matt's talking
00:36:42.240about and that's a big part on the self-reliance is that is a caution against becoming a victim
00:36:51.020that is helpless part of community and it's always been the case with our ancestors
00:36:58.580is you're able to pool resources physically but also you know with your wisdom base and your skill
00:37:09.680base from all those experts that alan talked about and that's a really beautiful thing about
00:37:14.340the astro focus assembly if you're a member i would highly encourage you to talk to your local
00:37:19.080folk builder about some of those options one of the cool things about having as many members in
00:37:25.880the astro folk assemblies that we have we have a member in just about every trade you can imagine
00:37:32.520we have a member with some kind of relevant life experience to most any situation that you're
00:37:37.880facing i talk about this a lot amongst our gothar the longer that our priesthood is in place
00:37:45.080face and the more we are tightly knit to one another we have a vast wealth of experience
00:37:52.520awaiting any new Goethe when they face a new problem hey I've seen something similar
00:37:59.960we have that and it's a tremendous resource so remember that's there
00:38:05.720you are we have an image in our head of the the rugged individual being able to just pull
00:38:12.200himself up by his bootstraps and do everything himself. And
00:38:15.960that's awesome. If you can do that, you are amazing and we
00:38:19.680will celebrate you and it's fantastic. But as I say on here
00:38:24.500a lot, don't let perfect be the enemy of good. What we want is
00:38:28.760for you to win. And if you can win through some, you know, force
00:38:33.700of will alone, fantastic. But if you need to call in your buddies
00:38:38.480to help you win the victory is what's important and we want to help you get there and i hope that
00:38:44.180you guys will help me get there or help alan get there we all have times that we need help with
00:38:48.260stuff there are quite one one of the reasons this is called adulting with alan alan is my go-to when
00:38:56.280i need adulting advice on things because there's all kind of stuff that he's got figured out in
00:39:02.800his life in a different way or in a better way than than I have that I want to know about and
00:39:09.320I hope that we all do that to one another that is the entirety of the Witten is there people who
00:39:13.700bring a different experience a different set of eyes to situations that I face and that we all
00:39:21.940face that I'm able to get perspectives on and get advice on and we should and this goes into the
00:39:27.840question I want us to answer from Rachel Kinsler. Could you speak on tools for people to develop
00:39:32.980the practice of moderation? How can someone who struggles with moderation learn how to
00:39:37.960recognize and navigate it? Alan, do you have any thoughts? Many thoughts. I think one of the things
00:39:50.040that I had to practice for a while, and I had to do it physically when I started a reduction
00:39:57.800diet. Anything you eat is a diet. But when I started trying to lose weight, one of the things
00:40:05.380that I had to do was portion control. And so when you're talking about baby steps or as a starting
00:40:11.700point, I would put my normal portion on a plate and then I would take 20% of that and I'd put it
00:40:19.460back in the put it back in the pot and that was making that physical decision right there you know
00:40:28.200in a very graphic way I want this much but I'm only going to take that much
00:40:34.200or part of the rest of it is I had to stop keeping snacks in my drawer because I would sit and eat
00:40:43.000nuts all day because I thought they're good for me and they are but not sitting there eating it
00:40:47.860all day. But that's a start. One of the things that, again, a long time ago, I started practicing
00:40:58.740as a form of reinforcing moderation is when I started drinking less, I started buying more
00:41:07.940expensive beer. So I could, at some level, I wasn't spending any less in the aggregate, but
00:41:16.120If 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.
00:41:25.340And 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.
00:41:39.020Because, you know, if you if you go three days without a drink, then you can reward yourself with a drink.
00:41:46.120If 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.
00:41:56.340So 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.
00:42:26.180because you know it's bad for you i don't know that at all
00:42:32.340see that that way you can wean yourself off of uh that that particular brand of why would i want to
00:42:41.540i want to be moderate in awesomeness oh yeah yeah well yeah um so and and even
00:42:49.940financially uh you know if you there's a difference between being super stingy with
00:42:56.820yourself with your family um and being frugal i mean frugal just means getting the most for
00:43:03.140your money so you can still buy things occasionally but you just don't buy
00:43:10.580go in for and again if you you know like say you go all week without stopping at starbucks
00:43:18.180first of all why are you going to starbucks and secondly um you know but if you if your habit is
00:43:23.060you go through starbucks or the circle k every morning for a cup of coffee and then you cut it
00:43:29.940off for four days maybe then that fifth day you say well i've been really good this week i can
00:43:34.820i can indulge myself you know in this two or three or five dollar indulgence so it's a way of
00:43:40.740of rewarding yourself for taking steps down the path to moderation
00:43:51.460all right i'm looking at a couple of things on our our questions situation here on the topic
00:43:56.900though we have a couple um one thing that someone asked and i can't find it in the questions lineup
00:44:03.700but i saw it was you know have we ever had you know how do we know when someone's had too much
00:44:09.140at an afa event and have we ever had to like intervene in that kind of a circumstance
00:44:18.180so truth is one of our virtues and again it doesn't look that it look good this is
00:44:24.660not a frequent thing at asa events but way back when there was a lot more of a drinking culture um
00:44:32.340um it is a we have had a variety of people come through the Astro Folk Assembly some of them with
00:44:49.560various I was gonna I was gonna blame it on alcoholism but there's some of that but no
00:44:54.480some people are just jerks that don't know how to behave in public um and the alcohol brings it out
00:44:59.940And 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.
00:45:11.440There 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.
00:45:21.460We don't have some kind of a breathalyzer that we go around with.
00:45:24.860And if you blow up, you know, 0.08, we kick you up.
00:45:29.480But we do have, when we observe that you are not in control of your actions or your speech,
00:45:34.880and you seem to be compromised in a way that is having a negative effect on yourself and the folk,
00:45:42.800then, you know, we talk to you and we assess that.
00:45:46.100And that might look different with different folks on what happens.
00:45:48.520But 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.
00:46:04.720That has occurred. Again, I'm trying to think and not very often that was a problem when we had a lot of skinhead members.
00:46:12.520That was a thing and very problematic.
00:46:17.400It's been a long time, and it's really, like I said, not a frequent thing.
00:46:22.960But 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.
00:46:37.140So, you know, it has happened, but it's certainly not a frequent occurrence.
00:46:40.600That'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.
00:47:06.360And 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.
00:47:33.900uh they were you know they were in life or death situations every day and when you're risking your
00:47:41.500life uh to try to make a living for yourself and you're you know you're where your very likelihood
00:47:49.580is that you know you're going to end up on the wrong end of a spear point um then maybe you've
00:47:55.820got an excuse for overindulging in alcohol more than occasionally but in the in the modern world
00:48:05.820that excuse is largely uh that you know that that that time is over and uh you know and especially
00:48:14.780you know net and again it's it's the circular thing where it's hard to say what what has been
00:48:20.060cause or an effect but now that we have so many beautiful women around so many lovely families
00:48:26.140around that are an integral part of the afa folkish culture um you know we men behave ourselves
00:48:36.300better around women that that too is a part of that natural behavioral cycle um and something
00:48:42.620that i've watched happen we used to be guys so also true has evolved quite a bit in uh in alan
00:48:51.980and my time of being involved in it um when he and i started out it was a lot of single guys
00:49:02.620it's a lot of simple guys with varying degrees of social competency and you know they'd get
00:49:08.540together and they'd drink and they'd beat their chest about viking stuff and there was
00:49:15.660there were good things at that time but there were some things that definitely needed some
00:49:18.780work and some tweaking uh there's been no crack down on alcohol culture in the afa what has
00:49:26.380happened is we've grown up and we have families and you don't see that anymore you don't see
00:49:35.340that kind of silly nonsense because most of us have grown up and realized that we're there for
00:49:42.140a spiritual purpose so yeah people can drink and have a good time but we typically don't have
00:49:47.880problems with that and if there are problems um they're handled i don't know quickly and gently
00:49:55.260and and it gets dealt with um the other thing that so okay we got we got a couple of questions
00:50:03.500stacked up here, and one of them is long, and I'm hoping I'm going to get to it right.
00:50:16.240While you're reading that, let me go back and talk about something that I forgot, which
00:50:22.940is I was actually just reading today an analysis about why it is that we have this stratified
00:50:31.600youth culture in our world nowadays and it and it comes out of um the the way that schooling is done
00:50:41.680you know we we have this um k through 12 and maybe some graduate school and whatever where you're
00:50:49.120where for hours and hours and hours a day you're isolated in people of your own age group and so
00:50:56.320you get so and it used to be that that education occurred organically your father taught your trade
00:51:02.480your mother taught you women's skills and you know you were you were more integrated into a
00:51:11.040into a an all-age culture but now we've got this idea like you know like the hippies used to say
00:51:19.280You 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.
00:51:38.440But we're we, find me, and you're getting there soon, Matt.
00:51:45.220You know, we elders have, you know, we've, what's the farmer's commercial?
00:51:50.340You know, we know a few things because we've done a few things.
00:51:53.680You know, I've made lots of the mistakes out there,
00:51:58.240and I can try to guide you off the worst of them.
00:52:00.000And I am happy to share my experience, how to keep you off the third rail.
00:52:04.120And that was a natural, organic part of the culture until very, very recently.
00:52:11.120And 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.
00:52:23.800You know, they were, you know, you didn't go off in a boat and row and try to take on a village yourself.
00:52:30.940it was you and your men and you know because and the women and the the family was waiting for you
00:52:36.540at home it was an integrated holistic approach to everything absolutely and i think in moderation
00:52:44.140also goes i think this worth saying then we'll get to the next question here but it also means
00:52:51.580don't be a pearl clutcher if other people are drinking too like what i have noticed too is when
00:52:59.260you have people who have a bad experience if they have had an alcoholic problem then all of a sudden
00:53:06.780no one else can drink because drinking's bad no drinking was bad for you and that's a really
00:53:14.140different thing we run into that in a number of different situations when you decide what's good
00:53:21.500for you and what's not good for you if you genuinely believe it's a good thing then by all
00:53:29.100means encourage your fellows to do that but don't be obnoxious it's not your job to dictate to
00:53:35.800everybody else where their set points are we notice those when they become burdensome upon
00:53:41.780others and that's how we notice when somebody's going too far with some stuff so keep in mind
00:53:47.840part of moderation is don't be extreme about everything all the time sometimes be willing to
00:53:56.720let somebody else have a different idea than you do about something without automatically putting
00:54:02.400him in the camp of you know the enemy somehow we do that a lot to our own disservice
00:54:08.640so moderate your zealotry when it comes to what you think everybody else should be doing all the
00:54:18.720time and we would find a little bit more peace within our folk and a more productive place to
00:54:24.060have those discussions in ways that are going to yield better results for all of us.
00:54:31.060We have a question that was asked of Svahn last week, but he would like to get, or the
00:54:38.360asker would like to get mine and your opinions, Alan, or takes.
00:54:43.120What are your thoughts on the manosphere, alpha males, sigma males, and Andrew Tate?
00:54:50.720Alan, what are your thoughts on those things?
00:54:54.060I 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.
00:55:11.680uh i certainly think that men should be men um and you know but again if you're you know if you're
00:55:22.880uh that the too macho over the top women are only here for my amusement you know that's the sort of
00:55:30.160extremism that is um too far the wrong way way too far the wrong way um the uh you know so
00:55:39.920So 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.
00:55:57.580But 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.
00:56:22.500And 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.
00:56:39.500And 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.
00:57:09.500stuff boys like to be out and doing stuff and they need to get out some of that energy which
00:57:14.300is why so many american males have been um you know doped down because we don't have an outlet
00:57:22.780for uh that american maleness for for the innate genetic maleness that uh that is uh men and but
00:57:33.020But 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.
00:57:45.320And again, that's the, you know, we and that's that middle path.
00:58:10.860That's the, you know, whereas the hookup culture has ruined all of that, both for men and for women.
00:58:21.200Again, the vulgarization of the beauty that is biology has been vulgarized by, I hate using air quotes, but I will this time, culture.
00:58:38.720And again, because they're reaching toward the lowest common denominator, because that's the one part where we are all equal.
00:58:44.540We 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.
00:59:03.140And to be noble is not something everybody can do, but something that we can all aspire to.
00:59:10.340um is that anywhere near the question that we were talking about no it absolutely is and i'll say this
00:59:18.020to achieve nobility might be beyond the grasp of some but to be more noble tomorrow than you are
00:59:25.480today is not um lift yourself up look upwards try to be better than that so as far as the
00:59:33.700manosphere as a concept it's very broad and it is kind of i don't know it's difficult to have a
00:59:41.680sweeping statement on the manosphere there were a lot of really good things you know about 10 years
00:59:50.680ago in that space um it became really redundant over time the exposure that i've had to it so it
00:59:58.020becomes a little bit cringy in some of its manifestations but I don't think all of it
01:00:06.620has to we have for better for well for worse but it is what it is I guess is the thing I want to
01:00:17.140alarmingly high percentage of young men that have no concept or context for being young men
01:00:32.280they don't know what to do with it they're in a society that has
01:00:38.480demonized masculine impulse labeled it as toxic and has feminized them to a shocking degree and
01:00:49.100in a way that they're not even aware of how they've been feminized feminized we have a lot
01:00:54.140of weaklings and the effort to take those young men say hey we've got you we'll be your older
01:01:03.680brothers your fathers your you know insert the male in your life you haven't had here
01:01:10.080and try to guide you towards masculine things that is fantastic and i'm very much in support of that
01:01:18.080i think one of the really valuable things we can provide as a community is mentoring young men to
01:01:25.520grow into manhood in a healthy whole way that contextualizes their masculinity in a way that's
01:01:36.620healthy. And I think that's very much needed. I understand the concept when talking about
01:01:45.880wolf packs of alphas and betas and sigmas and i get those things
01:01:53.480they get over a lot of good things really make me cringe because
01:01:59.880i don't okay those concepts exist i get it but every man who sees those concepts wants to think
01:02:17.340they're the alpha male or i guess what's now been popularized as the sigma male um
01:02:22.820it's even more funny to think that the scientists who first wrote about alpha males and dog alpha
01:02:33.000dogs alpha wolves has now said yeah that's all bs i was wrong it's one of those i but i mean we
01:02:41.360we get the base concept that there's going to be men that are um assertively masculine that through
01:02:50.040their assertion and exhibition of masculinity other men are going to follow and other people
01:03:00.280in society are going to naturally fall in line with and i think that is a social concept that
01:03:06.280we see but i don't think it's helpful because again every guy everyone thinks they're the alpha
01:03:12.520male and they're not it doesn't work like that and but at the same time we uh we what we have
01:03:19.080to avoid is the more modernist approach to where um you know everybody becomes an omega male and
01:03:26.360you know we're all retiring and shy and make every concession to the feminine because that puts us in
01:03:33.240the opposite place where yeah as an ideal to strive towards sure but it goes into the metastasized
01:03:41.640silly like caricature of masculinity that is the i guess the the dark side of the manosphere
01:03:52.760is this you get these lame virginal dudes that want to talk about you know white sharia now and
01:04:01.640whatever else and it's real silly delusion for them to go in and it messes up a lot of potentiality
01:04:09.320for them so i think where we can find positive mentorship for young men that's amazing andrew
01:04:16.360tate is silly um i don't always disagree with him on everything but i don't consume a lot of
01:04:23.000andrew tate me dude's in good shape but like all of his stuff he needs to have a shirt off
01:04:27.880all of the time in a conspicuous way um there's a lot of a lot of stuff to unpack there
01:04:34.520What 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.
01:04:59.760and it's not the answer the answer is to move towards a reasonable and measured and appropriate
01:05:07.020masculinity and bring people to that and as much as there's the outliers and the extremists like
01:05:12.580Andrew Tate there's also a big thing about no here's how you dress here's how you do grooming
01:05:17.860things here's how you build a fire here's how you learn how to fight here's how you there's a
01:05:54.320if so any feedback if not all good i understand you've got a lot going on no i remember you
01:05:59.280talking about a song and talking about emailing i don't remember getting any such song i asked nick
01:06:05.040if we got one somewhere that i didn't see so just in case it's winding up in a strange folder
01:06:11.040somewhere if you would send it to bns at runestone.org i will have it and nick will have it
01:06:19.040and i promise as soon as it brought to my attention i will gladly give it a listen
01:06:23.040and give you some feedback um because i am very interested here's the here's the one all right
01:06:34.080okay so nick says he's repackaged it different yeah tip go to it further down where you'll see
01:06:41.520yeah you'll see three posts in a row that are making nice and clear um cool let's hope i got
01:06:47.920the right ones so white horse house true i have a question about the giant builder myth being a
01:06:54.560parallel to the harem abif story the three ruffians being an aristocracy priests and folk
01:07:04.480equaling the sun moon and freya the giant disguised himself as one of us
01:07:10.800or a god not a giant sounds like the shapeshifters
01:07:14.960a giant builder story sounds like the freemason story from our perspective very trippy three
01:07:24.520ruffians sun moon and freya in the giant builders deal represent cosmic balance needed in society
01:07:33.300uh hyrum abeif was attacked by three ruffians uh with the ruler a square with a ruler square mall
01:07:43.380representing aristocracy and aristocracy priesthood and the folk and the three pillars of civilization
01:07:51.440if the sun moon and freya represent kingship priesthood and the folk then without them society
01:07:59.440collapses just as the ruffians destroyed hyrum abeif represents the collapse of sacred knowledge
01:08:06.040in the masonic tale seems like the same story from an opposite perspective ours versus our
01:08:13.260enemy. Alan, do you have meaningful response to that?
01:08:27.540Well, having been a Mason, I certainly recognize the, you know, the, where some of that stuff is
01:08:38.780coming from. Uh, I could unpack it maybe a little bit. I'd have to have like a Venn diagram and,
01:08:51.400you know, a cork board and some string, um, to, to try to make all those cross correlations. Um,
01:08:58.720And 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.
01:09:28.720The Temple of Solomon is certainly, you know, is antithetical to our approach to things in a lot of ways.
01:09:41.940Certainly many have questioned what I still think of as the Dumazilian approach to the tripartite hierarchy.
01:09:55.760different civilizations by the way have different um tripartite hierarchies they just have you know
01:10:03.200they have still have three segments but just swan would be proud different order um so there's so
01:10:12.320i i do think that um that there's value in analyzing those things in that way i think that
01:10:22.640um that um our warrior priests were uh very much um again at some of this is self-interest the you
01:10:35.360know but or because of the way that we have constructed it in the reconstructed at the afa
01:10:43.120um you know there's the high council um there's gothar there you know um and i think that that
01:10:50.480that in the in the in the folkish approach to things the radical traditionalist approach to
01:10:57.680things um you know it's it's very much a you know a pyramidal structure in the sense that we can
01:11:06.560you know that only a few people can be in charge and the rest need to again with the you know with
01:11:14.560uh a degree of moderated input then they need to um track out with the direction that we're taking
01:11:25.200beyond that i i don't see a lot of value in trying to fit you know a horizontal structure into a
01:11:35.280vertical or you know a pyramid into a rhombus or any of that sort of thing that you know it's just
01:11:41.680it's a different thing we have we have our um dollar um you know came and created the three
01:11:51.040casts and um we we we can each live a fulfilling and whole life within that structure
01:12:05.120i feel like i'm dodging the question because it's so complicated i wasn't able to keep it
01:12:09.280all in my head all at the same time all right so i don't know about the question but i do
01:12:13.280do know about jared abbott bought buying us five coffees this 25 donation thank you jerry we
01:12:18.800appreciate you um i know i'm not going to just completely dodge the question um
01:12:25.920the person who asked the question is certainly much more familiar with masonic more than i am
01:12:33.680i'm unfamiliar with hiram or him getting jumped by three ruffians or any of that tale it's not
01:12:41.760germane to my folks so i'm just i'm really unfamiliar with it um i don't think there's
01:12:48.240any reason to believe there is a connection between freemasonry and the etic description of
01:12:58.400the giant and his building of the walls around house garden um i think our brain really likes
01:13:05.680to see patterns so when we see similarities between anything it is very compelling to
01:13:12.560immediately find connection oftentimes where connection is not sometimes where connection is
01:13:19.600that we just don't know it so i can't without knowing more about it i can't
01:13:23.600say for sure but i don't see any compelling compelling reason to think so i think there's
01:13:30.160also a assassin's creed thing that we get into now to where everything's got to be connected
01:13:36.880to everything else and everything is a super overarching whatever i think
01:13:44.720again other people who are more knowledgeable about masonic things will
01:13:48.240have a different view of this and there could be parallels that are unintentional and as one writer
01:13:55.500said sometimes a cigar is just a cigar and those parallels can be it's funny because we're talking
01:14:01.840about a gentleman named Hiram we're also talking about another gentleman with
01:14:05.840nasal proportions different from from ours um
01:14:11.180but it is true nonetheless I don't know here's the thing I think Freemason stuff
01:14:18.100is tremendously powerful and important in the 1700s and i think a lot of stuff before that
01:14:30.620is backfilled with connectivity and meaning that wasn't present certainly in distant corners of
01:14:37.140the world that are claimed to have some relation to it i think it's really easy to co-opt old stuff
01:14:43.900for new purposes um so i would i would i would advise against finding too much parallel there
01:14:52.360now here's another although i'd be glad to talk to the guy like whoever it is that's asked the
01:14:56.480question if you run into me irl um i would be glad to so if you if you don't run into him irl
01:15:04.700turnage at runestone.org uh and you guys like long emails though i he may not respond to you
01:15:13.540But you're welcome to email him if you would like to know.
01:15:17.540And 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.
01:15:25.660But Alan may have a lot more perspective for you. And I really appreciate you asking the question.
01:15:30.200It was a very nuanced question. And I do think there was a lot there. So thank you for asking.
01:15:34.940And for what it's worth, Edward Thorson wrote a piece that I bought.
01:15:44.060It'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.
01:16:02.180it you know when i was more involved in it i could have
01:16:07.100um been a little more up to date with it so he too saw some parallels
01:16:13.300just like the way that that you know people can say and i've heard it in several mainstream uh
01:16:23.360um podcasts lately just taking for granted the the truism that um that christianity was
01:16:30.680germanized by the way that it um by the way that it um came through europe so that it's it's a very
01:16:39.240distinct practice from what it what it would have been if it had stayed where it belonged
01:16:45.800well absolutely and i've mentioned on the show a lot of times if you look
01:16:52.440i mean it was of note during the crusades when you had european christians interacting
01:16:59.080with middle eastern christians or like egyptian and african christians their christianity looked
01:17:06.840real different um and for a good reason so um the next thing up uh from nice bell music
01:17:23.480if the music that you send me does not incorporate bells i'm going to be a little
01:17:27.320bit disappointed i'm just saying um nice question i mean yes i'm assuming they're going to be nice
01:17:35.400or he would at least like my uh my critique if i do not find them to be nice no i'm sure whatever
01:17:41.640your sentence can be lovely i'm genuinely excited to hear it uh matt how did your bouncing experience
01:17:47.720prepare you for your role within the afa so this is a good question i was matter of fact just
01:17:53.720talking to a member this weekend at ostara thorstoff about it so
01:18:05.720that was an amazing series of jobs and it's a lot of fun there's girls and everybody's partying and
01:18:16.040it's a good time and it's awesome and i've got really cool fight stories or whatever
01:18:22.120but 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
01:18:29.800physical stuff I learned a lot about myself but I also learned about working with a group of men
01:18:37.480that were depending upon me to help make sure they were safe and them to help make sure I was safe
01:18:43.120and it's it's nothing compared to what soldiers go through please don't get me mistaken but in
01:18:50.200small way it's the closest thing i had to an environment where i mean we had guns and knives
01:18:57.320pulled on us and such so yeah there was sometimes life or death things that i was able to work with
01:19:02.920a brotherhood of people through and i'm very thankful for that but outside of that in the
01:19:09.560way that's relevant to afa stuff i was very this was a part of me pursuing bouncing so
01:19:19.800i was lame we talk about this manosphere thing and we talk and i think this adds
01:19:24.840into that in a really syncretic way i was lame um during my formative years i didn't
01:19:35.000from like fifth grade until adulthood, I didn't have much contact with my dad.
01:19:43.800Some of that was my doing is what it is. But a lot of that was my mom raising me and
01:19:52.580father figure that I had until eighth grade was my grandfather and he passed. And then a lot of
01:20:01.940was me trying to figure stuff out on my own and i was nerdy and lame and scrawny and you know a lot
01:20:08.340of ways deficient from who i wanted to be so i reached a point in 2000 yes if you're doing the
01:20:17.620math in 2000 i would have been you know what 19 um but enough was enough i was going to try to do
01:20:26.820some things so i started going to the gym and over time i had some different things go on but
01:20:32.340eventually in 2007 i'm like you know what i'm gonna put the roughest bar in town and i'm gonna
01:20:38.180go bounce it and i dove in i learned a lot about myself physically but what else i did was i was
01:20:45.620this nerd i had good nerds at least have their little nerd posse of like fat nerd chicks and
01:20:53.140whatever else they had i just a loner all by myself i didn't even have that i had like four
01:20:59.700guy friends and that's what i had so i'm going out there in the world and i'm jumping in the deep end
01:21:06.980and what i learned most was this is a long meandering way to get to your point so
01:21:15.860i was thrust into a situation let me tell you a little bit about the place i worked i had 10
01:21:23.14010 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.
01:21:44.300we had a whole bunch of mong refugees we took in in the 80s that since had children and
01:21:52.380a huge pacific islander population a lot of blacks in the military base not a lot of hispanics um
01:22:01.100but a whole lot of different kind of folks and they would all come to the bar in their little
01:22:05.900groups and then when the band had changed they'd all mix up but i was dealing with all of these
01:22:11.900people i've never had experience with and i'm dealing with you know hell's angels runs the
01:22:17.740territory up there so i'm dealing with these like ha affiliated bikers and gang members and various
01:22:27.180samoan guys claiming different whatever they were claiming and all of this stuff was brand new to me
01:22:34.380and i was dealing with these people in very emotionally charged situations where people
01:22:40.540are drunk or they're high or some people are just crazy or maybe they've had a bad interaction
01:22:47.500between all the different things they're doing and so i'm dealing with all these different groups
01:22:54.620of people in crisis situations and i'm doing it all the time one of the coolest things about
01:23:02.220jumping and bouncing there because it's such a busy place i was getting experience in life like
01:23:10.540At a vastly accelerated intravenous rate that just pumped me full of experience in just a few years very quickly.
01:23:22.040So what I learned a lot was dealing with people, de-escalating people, dealing with different kinds of people, and becoming comfortable in uncomfortable situations.
01:54:19.080i mean zero disrespect to where i come from to my roots to austritus roots in modern times
01:54:26.120as opposed to sitting around on my computer complaining about how i wish the world was
01:54:33.740i will gladly eat some rotisserie chicken in a camp chair even if i gotta fight fat dudes i
01:54:41.440i'm game for it really and truly that's where a lot of stuff started because that's the resources
01:54:48.100folks had we made the best with what we could um but i can remember you know a lot of
01:54:56.940So 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.
01:55:07.500Right. 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.
01:55:14.100Well, so we started in mom's basement. Complaining and other people on the computer about what it should be if it ever happened.
01:55:23.880some of us got out of the cave and actually went out and had went to the store and got some chicken
01:55:33.420and went to our buddy's house and brought a camp chair and did something
01:55:38.220but doing that the dream was always we talked about doing this bigger and doing it better
01:55:47.780and doing it more and having a bunch of people um having a bunch of people get together and all
01:55:54.340doing this and having families and having hoffs we all talked about that there's a lot of it
01:56:01.620is funny to me and i do say it pejoratively in 2025 when the same guys with the same chicken
01:56:10.260in 2015 never got up out the camp chair because we've invited them um no i can remember a number
01:56:19.300of bloats like that it was almost always either in someone's backyard or often at like a park
01:56:30.260and you'd get a group and it was almost exclusively guys and you'd sit around in a circle in camp
01:56:38.180chairs i could almost promise you at least one of those perfect people was morbidly obese
01:56:45.940wasn't always rotisserie chicken there's deli sandwiches there was like the you
01:56:51.540may if it was real classy you could get a veggie tray
01:56:55.780um i remember you know you'd have a variety of different beverages
01:57:02.740and there's nothing wrong with any of that stuff as they were not top shelf beverages
01:57:07.620um and you'd sit around there and you'd rotisserie chicken was good you'd have a lot of chips
01:57:14.260all of that so i joke i remember some fond times with some amazing people doing that
01:57:21.940with a you know a half a loaf of bread and a half a cup many a friend were made
01:57:26.740it doesn't the point is not to disparage people doing the best they can
01:57:31.860it's to why are you still doing that when you can be over here doing something that we're all doing
01:57:39.080this is what we all dreamed about so we all talked about hey come over here do this with us
01:57:44.600and celebrate the success and that's where we're trying to move and evolve no i had some awesome
01:57:52.060just me and a couple of dudes in the backyard um i can think of one we're at my friend's house it
01:57:59.740It was in Mountain View, which was a rough area of Anchorage, Alaska, and, you know, very humble apartment.
01:58:11.720And out in their backyard complex, there's a big hole.
01:58:15.720We burnt junk furniture for the fire in the hole, and we gathered around in the camp chairs.
01:58:23.780I honestly think there was some rotisserie chicken present.
01:58:27.340there's a number of those honestly it's so many of our roots I can remember so many of those people
01:58:35.640and I look back at the people in the camp chairs very few of them are with us today here doing what
01:58:43.260we're doing that makes me sad I wish those guys were here with us um yeah it's it's more of a
01:58:53.300statement of, you know, I did, I, okay. It would be the same thing as me complaining about stuff
01:59:01.240in mom's basement, which I often do. No, when I'm 17, I did a lot of things in mom's basement.
01:59:08.000That was okay. But I'm a grown man. It wears differently in the forties. If I was in my mom's
01:59:14.100basement, there's a lot of stuff we did when we were first starting out in the, uh, the,
01:59:20.560you know teenage years of our also true expression the goal is you don't stay there
01:59:27.820you evolve into something bigger and something more um so i'm not trying to just be insulting
01:59:34.580yeah obviously there was a problem with it all being dudes and some obesity going on and i poke
01:59:40.300a little bit of fun but i'm not immune i was there i just tried to move it forward and accomplish a
01:59:46.080little bit of something. If all of the people and all of the camp chairs arguing over the big piece
01:59:53.500of chicken got up, came over here to what we were doing, we would be so much better for it. And the
02:00:01.120truth is, so would they. The other argument I want to say on it, and I know your thing is
02:00:06.880trying to get me to say some fun story about it. I'm all for it. I get that. But another kind of
02:00:28.580yeah, lost my train of thought a little bit on it. The big sadness is that there's so many people
02:00:33.800who talked about so many things they wanted to see. Alright, I found back what I was going to say.
02:00:38.240the argument over the big piece of chicken is a reference to this and we did see that in the day
02:00:45.420over a number of things especially in the theotish circles those of you don't know the theotish guys
02:00:53.020were guys that had a really particular anglo-saxon flavor to what they were doing
02:00:57.460and they really liked wearing smurf hats i think they still like wearing the smurf hat
02:01:04.860so there were and i read this online like this is the thing i'm not making this up
02:01:11.340the theods men would have this very elaborate pecking order for their their feasting and they
02:01:18.300would argue about who gets the first pick of whatever the food was be it rotisserie chicken
02:01:23.740or not and it was this literally five guys fighting on who they're going to call king
02:01:31.180and who they're going to call earl and who they're going to call like the master of horse and
02:01:37.980there's five guys i don't fault anybody wanting to be the king but to be a king you need a kingdom
02:01:47.500they would rather fight about how to divvy up five noble titles amongst dude five dudes sitting
02:01:56.380around in a circle then not have a big fluffy title but be part of you know tens twenties
02:02:06.700a hundred people gathered at a half worshiping our gods in a way that builds legacy for our children
02:02:14.300and that's the small-mindedness that i kind of you know take a jab at when i make that expression
02:02:22.860but alan knows about the five fat dudes and small and the rotisserie chicken that's that's our roots
02:02:28.860that's legit yeah and two liter of mountain dew right and um the and i too have been frustrated
02:02:39.420by a lot of the folks that i know and have known um through uh through all true circles when i was
02:02:49.100doing the florida moot and and and that sort of thing that you know there's so many of those people
02:02:55.580who are cons you know that like they're concerned that we're that we've become too
02:03:05.420i don't know modernized you know like they just still have that viking mentality that you know
02:03:11.580You 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.
02:03:28.700And 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.
02:03:41.580in you know in the modern iteration of what also true is which is what we do i mean you know we
02:03:47.980talk about folkish also true but that's redundant you know also true is by definition folkish
02:03:55.500and we are the folk and we practice the way it's funny i like that one and if you want to practice
02:04:02.940also true if you want to lend credence and validity to to the gods of your own people then
02:04:11.580Join the team and come in for the big win.
02:04:16.700That's so hard for so many of our people.
02:05:46.660especially if you've been doing it a long time,
02:05:50.920whoever is the leader of the backyard,
02:05:53.320whoever is the emperor of the five fat dudes,
02:05:59.880you're you can either be the exalted emperor of backyardia or you have to be a um a smaller cog
02:06:13.800in a much grander wheel and a lot of guys because we've had a number of groups of people and I
02:06:25.020some of them in their fives some of them 20 plus that we've tried to get join the afa but what we
02:06:31.740run into is if you're the person who's been leading that for a number of years are you
02:06:39.420willing to not be the king of your 20 guys that's the best case scenario let's say let's put an
02:06:48.140average your six guys and instead maybe be a folk builder in the afa maybe even talk to us work
02:06:59.020something out and get in a program so we can get you to be a go-fi in the afa
02:07:04.860but it's cooler if you can be the top guy in your really small group and that's seductive
02:07:11.340and i i don't know if i was that guy if i might not think the same way i hope not
02:07:18.140but again I know where I'm at when I'm saying it I get it there was something before I joined
02:07:26.200the AFA called the heathen folk revival and there was I was I was top three I think I
02:07:38.820was the third guy in the heathen folk revival and it was Wyatt Kaldenberg I don't know if
02:07:47.520guys remember but the dude that broke heraldo's nose with the chair he was the top guy underneath
02:07:54.480him was sean ridland who was a friend of mine at the time i haven't spoken him in many years if
02:08:01.200he's listening i miss you sean i hope you're doing well uh he had moved up to wasilla alaska
02:08:09.200and he was like the second guy and i think i was like top i think i was through number three
02:08:13.040and we're trying to start something and trying to get something going and
02:08:17.760um but i told those guys i'm like hey why don't we just join the afa
02:08:24.080they believe the things that we believe and look they're successful and they're doing these things
02:08:30.960and they're moving this forward what are we doing over here by ourselves trying to reinvent the wheel
02:08:36.040instead of getting on the team and they didn't want to do that and they didn't want a part of it
02:08:41.300So 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.
02:08:52.180And 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.
02:09:00.740And I think it just misses the big picture.
02:09:04.620And I think folks that that's their version of Alistair True, that dies with them.
02:10:54.640And we have fun with it, but I think we earned it because some of us have been there.
02:10:58.480And I'm glad that you guys don't see that as the norm.
02:11:02.000that means we've all one of the things that i think is very gratifying for people
02:11:08.080who've been involved in this in an active way for a long time
02:11:12.880we've worked hard to change to where that's not in the north
02:11:16.640i run into people now that assume we've always had hoffs
02:11:22.400that's beautiful and that's the goal that we want is for that to be the new paradigm like what are
02:11:27.680are you talking about not having coughs that's crazy what do you mean that wasn't always the
02:11:33.760case 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
02:11:39.340spirits and it's it's in proportion well I guess this kind of follows on to that what are some of
02:11:49.020the biggest changes that you've seen in the AFA since having taken over as I was here you go through
02:11:54.420So 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?
02:12:10.380Well, yeah, a multitude, all for the good. Certainly, you know, when I first started practicing Austro 2005, it was almost all guys.
02:12:30.260Um, 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.
02:12:50.060You know, those, uh, those bad people took this away from us.
02:12:57.240And 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.
02:13:21.320And 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.
02:13:36.100We're not just living, resenting the past and standing around being irritated.
02:13:42.080We're elevating each other to a better, higher place in our practice, in our personal lives, in our conduct of our daily selves.
02:13:54.240And that's what that to me is the purpose of religion.
02:13:57.660And that's something that we didn't have a real concept of in the beginning.
02:14:05.200And 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.
02:14:24.980And 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.
02:14:40.020I 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.
02:14:57.720That 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.
02:15:10.020our methodology, our understanding of what exactly we are doing in ceremony is so much
02:15:20.620clearer and more thorough than it was back in those days. I mean, we were, I really feel like
02:15:28.020we were going through the motions without any foundational understanding. And, you know, but we
02:15:34.180had to dig through that. And in a lot of ways, I don't like to say we were faking it, but, you
02:15:39.900And we did sort of probe our way into it.
02:15:42.960And I think as we practiced, we reached an understanding of what it is that we're doing on a psychological and metaphysical level.
02:15:53.220And I think the gods have blessed us with a journey towards success.
02:16:00.220so to piggyback on Alan's a little bit
02:22:43.060I'm more well read in the theory and practice of radical traditionalism.
02:22:49.300So I have some recommendations on, you know, along that line.
02:22:53.900If you can find a copy of Aristocratia, first of all, if you buy me a spare, I will loan you one of them.
02:23:05.280They are currently selling on eBay for like $600.
02:23:09.760But those and the tier journals, super, super good writing.
02:23:17.020The guys over at tier are friends and allies of ours.
02:23:23.900The tiered journals have, to me, what is the – everybody has their own way of looking at these things, right?
02:23:33.980But 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.
02:24:36.200like his presence his force of character as a man to be able to accomplish the things
02:24:42.920in his life and in the husk of the roman empire is fantastic and i find him extremely extremely
02:24:49.560interesting um what is bittersweet is that he's in that period of our people that
02:25:01.720betrayed our gods and broke troth with the icr and i can't support or celebrate that theodoric
02:25:09.800uh was an arian christian um and again relatively few generations before that all of his folk
02:25:22.200worshiped our gods so that's sad to me but as a man as a warrior as a leader of men his
02:25:33.240presence on the stage of the the late roman empire is fantastic to me and i
02:25:39.800There's no way not to be impressed and not to find that super interesting.
02:25:46.140It 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.
02:25:55.660But I'm not really familiar with the, you know, medieval epic poetry of him.
02:26:01.120I 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.
02:26:09.800But 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
02:26:30.900and were willing to give their lives knowingly,
02:26:34.260willingly to throw their lives into the breach,