28 - EP28 w/ Quintus Curtius: 'Pencil Necks', Protecting Your Homeland + Timeless Wisdom from the Ancients

Fantastic, man. Well, listen, I'm, I'm at your service. You know, you hit me with whatever questions you want, or your, your, your readers, whatever they want to ask. I'm, I'm, you know, I want to, I want to give you an entertaining session here, man. So we don't— I'm not, I'm not, uh, you know, sensitive.

And yeah, good, I didn't think so. I didn't think so. Uh, I wanna— it's kind of related to what I wanted to ask you first up, is, um, I don't want you to get banned on Twitter. And all I see now— well, like, I've seen a few posts of yours where you've been going hard against Big Soy, against, you the people in power? What has kind of made that happen?

Yeah, I mean, well, I don't think— I mean, I don't think they really— believe it or not, the people that get banned on Twitter really, at least from what I understand, if you're deliberately harassing people or attacking people or discussing subjects that they've viewed as, uh, off-limits, like for example, you know, election contesting or, uh, some of these COVID vaccines or things like that. I mean, if you really look at what I do, I, you know, I do use a lot of profanity. I do that, which is not going to get— is, is, is fine.

Yeah.

Uh, and, and criticizing the power structure and, and the elites, that is not and should not be off-limits. But I, if you notice, Sol, I don't, I never, I never target in, I never harass people, I never target people, I never do anything that, um, that would cause any, anything to happen. But you're right, I mean, there are probably times when I need to calm down a little bit, and maybe I, I regret, I, I probably regret, uh, but then again, you know, that's just the way I am. And, and I, I think I think my— I think in some ways you have to be kind of true to your personality, and I, I try to speak from the heart. I have a reason for saying the things that I've said— I'm saying. I think I can back them up. Yeah, but, um, yeah, sometimes maybe I do— I probably do cross the line.

But no, no, I mean, I'm just speaking from a purely— you never want to give them a reason to ban you, like Yes, it may not be fair that you can't call someone a dickhead when he's being a dickhead, um, you know, but you gotta play by the rules a little bit. I think it is more beneficial for us to, um, you know, be in the fight of internet discourse, you know, withholding 5-10% of that extra kind of bit you want to do, because on these mainstream platforms they will eventually, because it's only getting worse, they will eventually find the slightest little thing for you to, you know, because you are not part of the mainstream thought.

Yeah, no, you're probably right. I mean, you're, you're probably right, uh, Sol, and I, I probably do need to pay more attention to that. And, um, not telling you what to do, of course, at all. No, no, no, I, I know. I don't— I'm not taking it that way. I, I, I, I don't see it that way at all. And, and I guess I need to be mindful of that, and thank you for saying that. I probably need to sometimes calm down, but man, you just get so fucking furious when you see some of this shit. Yeah, I just, you know, it's hard to— it's just hard. I didn't come from that era of— and I don't know how old you are, but I didn't come from the era where you have to mince your words.

Yeah, say things And I don't think it should be like that. You know, I'm only mid-20s, um, so wow, you could probably, um, speak more to this. Is, you know, you've seen really, you know, firsthand the change and the shift in culture from when you, you would grown up. And I want to go into, you know, how your kind of life has played out so far, uh, how you got involved with all the, um stuff that you like to talk about. Um, but what would you say, you know, what have you seen be the major kind of shifts in culture? Have you been in America for this whole time to view all this take place? And what are your thoughts on that in general?

Yes, uh, well, this is, you know, I, I'm 52 years old, so I have, compared with a lot of other guys who have a social media presence, I probably have climbed a few rungs on the ladder higher than maybe the average person.

Yeah.

And by the way, I think it is not a good thing for so many older guys to have abandoned social media. I think we need more guys my age. But the problem is, I think a lot of them, they get so wrapped up in career and family that they think that social media is, is unimportant when it actually is the arena now. It is the arena. They need to be there. But anyway, leaving that aside, I grew up in, you know, I would say, you know, late '70s, early— late '70s, '80s, '90s. And the biggest changes that I've noticed are there just seems to be— well, I suppose we can— and you, you would know more about this than I would— there's less and less of a focus on bodily health, and we talk more about health, but yet the paradox is the more we talk about it, the less healthy we seem to be. Obesity, when I was growing up, was, was, was relatively rare. You know, there was always, you know, the quote, the, the fat kid in the classroom, um, and now they're all fat.

Yeah.

And, and, and just the exercise has just declined, and playing outdoors has declined, and you You know, going around with no shoes on is decla— you know, there's just, there's just much, there's just— I think parents now are far more worried about things, and we suppress the natural instincts of young people far more than we ever did when I was growing up. But then, then concurrent with that, there's also this, you know, the rise of, um, the hypersensitivity culture where people weigh and gauge every single thing that they say, so that they almost are pulling punches on every conversation. And you can't even have a meaningful dialogue with very many people now.

Yeah.

Because you have to be pre-screened in some ways. So there's that. But what really blew the Bismarck out of the water, what really was the changing event, was as you would expect, the onset of the internet and the good things that that brought, and also the bad things that it brought with it as well. And it just resulted in this— oh, I don't know, man.

Acceleration.

Acceleration. This— exactly. It exacerbated pre-existing trends.

Yeah.

There were always a lot of these pre-existing trends that you see now. A lot of that you saw in the late '80s, early '90s, but what it did was it just focused it like a prism, and it just really focused it. Maybe I should say like a lens. Prism would diffract it. That's a bad analogy there, but it focused these trends like a lens and just made them much, much more much, much more destructive, frankly.

Yeah, I think, um, the health of society comes down to the health of the individual, and the health of the individual now is so fucked, for lack of a better word, in every realm. You know, no one's playing outside, everyone's eating these hyper-processed foods, um, with, you know, metabolically inflammatory seed oils, which I think is the main reason why everyone's getting so obese, is everything has these horrible seed oils in them. Couple that with no exercise, um, sugar, alcohol, Netflix, all the rest of it, that, you know, you cannot have a healthy society and you cannot even have healthy dialogue. Because when you are in that hyper-processed food state, like, you, you react to things so much more. Like, you're sensitive to food, but you're also sensitive— like, you're so much more reactive. It's like if you're tired, you're much more angry in conversation, it's the same thing. If you're much more likely to be depressed and anxious, and if you're not operating from that state of health, then you can't have a, you know, any meaningful dialogue or enact change or put energy towards anything outside of yourself, which is at large what society needs.

You're absolutely right, uh, Sol. You know, it's funny, um, This kind of ties into some— you made a tweet relatively recently, I think it was today or yesterday, that was very good. You talked about how young kids have an instinctive understanding of what's healthy. They avoid vegetables, maybe they like to go around barefoot, they don't like to be washing every day. I thought that was a very, very informed tweet because it ties into some things. I've just out of interest, I'm not into I don't— I'm not really the physical fitness type guy like you are. I mean, obviously I stay in shape, but I'm— it's not really what I do. Yeah, but I, I learn a lot from reading guys like you. And lately I've been reading a lot of the ancient, um, medical texts. I've been getting into Hippocrates, Celsus, Galen, uh, Avicenna. And it's amazing to me, just a lot of what they say matches what we see in the modern— like, guys, what guys like you were talking about, like, it hasn't changed. It hasn't changed. It hasn't changed. It hasn't changed. We— it's exact— and I really think even though these old guys, these ancients, they did not have the technology that we do now, they understood certain fundamental things about foods, about temperature. There's nothing temperate— we don't— no one talks about temperature and tepid, and— but they spend a lot of time talking about this stuff. So there must be something to that, and about balances, and about, you know, You know, for like eating, you know, different grains. And, and I, I just think I never paid much attention to that, and maybe I should start doing more of that.

Yeah, well, it's, um, I've also been kind of reading a bit more into it. Like, you can have the standard bodybuilder approach of, okay, only calories matter, or only macros matter. But on a more fine-tuned level, you know, in the— these Ayurvedic texts, which you know, are thousands of years old. They say don't mix fruit with other types of food, don't mix dairy with fish. I mean, not that you would really, but I think a lot of the, you know, bodily dysfunction that we see as chronic disease— chronic disease, like, in the, the Western medical kind of view of it is that it's something you have. And you just can't get rid of it, like it's a, like a virus or something. But what it actually is, it's just a symptom of your body not operating correctly. And whether that's something to do with how your body is moving or not moving, or the inputs that you're putting into it— usually the inputs as in food that you're eating, or I, I don't even want to call it food because it doesn't deserve the label, you know, it's this It's this garbage that people are eating, and just because it has a caloric value doesn't mean it's food in that sense. Um, but again, even if you think you're eating healthy, a lot of the time if you're mixing these, you know, foods that shouldn't go with another, um, maybe some food that's better digested in a more mucus environment in the stomach, uh, that can in turn, like, you're not digesting as well, and that can, you know, inflame these other things in the body. So you know, Ayurvedic, uh, if anyone's interested, Ayurveda is the study of all of that, or the, you know, thousands of years old, all these health practices and food mixes. And the same with the cold water, like they say that you shouldn't really drink iced water because it's very shocking to the system in general. And so you look at people that are having these seed oil infused meals like fries, burgers and then having it with an ice cold beer, that's just this bomb of, you know, all gets mixed up in the stomach at the same time, not digested properly. Like all these things which over time, if it's the prevailing kind of discourse in a society, is like everyone's going to be sick, everyone's going to be inflamed. And that I think I see is what's happening at the moment. And it comes from, you know, years of these power structures trying to make more money, uh, trying to sell their junk food, putting out this propaganda, uh, which essentially what it is, that goes against this innate, um, knowledge that we have that, you know, they figured out thousands of years ago. This is nothing new really. Like, there's our technology, for all of its good, um, it— I think a lot of people discount old advice just because it hasn't been discovered through this relatively small window of new science, uh, which is kind of stupid. Um, but yeah, it's, it's a, it's a big issue.

Well, I, I, I have a lot to learn, and I will, uh, I will continue to do my own, uh, do my explorations and read your, um your thing, your pointers and your recommendations. So yeah, it's something that I never paid much attention to, but obviously, yeah, I mean, even allergens too, that's another thing. Have you noticed that? Like, it doesn't seem like there's— I mean, when I was growing up, you never— allergies were rare, you know, there was always the kid in class who was allergic to eggs or, I don't know, you know, shrimp or something. Now it's like You know, you, you everywhere you go, you're, you're, you're congested, you're coughing, sneezing, unless you're by the ocean. I've noticed that seems to be a very therapeutic, but it just seems like our environment is a lot more polluted now to an extent that I don't think we really appreciate. That's the sense that I get anyway.

Yeah, well, everything that we've been putting in the water and the air with kind of no second thought, and I guess, you know, people didn't know, they people didn't understand that if you put a pesticide on a crop, that's eventually gonna go into the water table and then guess what? Where does your water come from? And then you're drinking pesticides and then you're eating the food that has had those pesticides on it. And now we're kind of seeing with these longer term studies, now people are kind of getting on board with the idea that, okay, let's not do that because even if you are not eating the food that has been sprayed, like say you, you want to eat organic or whatever, all of that shit is still eventually rinsing down into the water table where you eventually get your water from, right? Uh, and you get poisoned that way. Um, so there's all of that. There's also— it's both. It's like we are so much more protected in our youth when we are building these natural immunities and these exposures, which are good if you have a little bit. Um, the natural exposure to kind of deal with these, uh, you know, things like nuts. You know, nut allergies can be fixed if you expose the body to a little bit and a little bit and a little bit over time, right? Um, so I think if you have a growing child that's kept indoors all day, um, never playing around with dirt, uh, eating these hyper-processed foods that don't have, you know, the microbiome of nature within that then of course their body is going to be dysfunctional. And, you know, you have that at scale again, and it's, it's, it's really making, uh, for me at least, a very good case for kind of retreating from the larger city areas, uh, and making sure that you have a source of your own food that you know what goes into it and, you know, where it's come from.

Yeah, I think you're right about that, man. You know, it's— I, I couldn't agree more. It's— I, I think the extent of it is probably something that most of us don't know and maybe don't even want to know. I mean, we— and you haven't even— you, you, you know the whole story about the decline in testosterone as well. I mean, that's, that's catastrophic, and there's got to be reasons for that tied to pollutants and, uh, yeah, you know environment and all the other issues, you know.

Yeah, I mean, we could go on for days about that, but I do want to— I mean, you know, I think it would be very beneficial for, you know, even if you say you're not an expert in that area, but you are, you know, digesting these texts from these experts back in the day, that you tweet out all the stuff that you learn as and when you learn it. It's just—

yeah, you know, it's funny, it's just very interesting to me. I've never, I've never really had much of an interest in medicine, but it— I just like how they blend philosophy and practical application. And I also like the fact that— yeah, exactly. I like the fact that we're led to believe that these guys were fools or credulous or very naive, and that's not the case at all. I just don't think— I admit, I just don't think a lot of people actually sit down and read these old books. They talk about them, but they don't— yeah, they don't— they don't— so they don't know.

They—

and I mean, Hippocrates and Galen, they never advocated not doing experiments. They always said you should base your knowledge on experience. It's just that they didn't have the paradigms that were— yeah, the paradigms that were available at that time. They didn't have, you know, they didn't have microscopic technology, they didn't have scanning techniques, they didn't have a germ theory of disease that was fully developed yet, but they knew— they had a general idea. They could make deductions from premises. And observations. So I just don't think, I just don't think we give them enough credit. I just think we, um, and I just found that just learning that to me was very interesting and very, very liberating in some ways, you know.

Yeah, well, I think a lot of the issues that young guys find themselves in can be solved by just reading, you know, reading these old guys, uh, It's all been figured out 100 times over by people a lot smarter than me, a lot smarter than you probably, and they've condensed their wisdom into these books which now we have access to. You know, that's, that's one of the benefits of the modern world is you can get any information you want from any source delivered to you in a book. And to not take advantage of that and not read these things that, you know, it's, it's it's, it's wisdom distilled, uh, and it, it does fix a lot of the issues that young guys have and talk about emotional control if you go into like Stoicism and all the rest of it. Um, but a lot of people, again, with the screens that, you know, it's a lot easier to watch a video than it is to read a book. Um, that's what's happening, unfortunately.

Yeah, no, I know, man. Well, what can you do? You know, you got to just keep moving forward. You got to keep getting your message out there. That's all you can do. You know, we can only control a certain, yeah, a certain sphere of influence and that's about it. So, you know, yeah.

So let's shift a little bit. So your life, how did it develop with your history of, you know, everything that you learned? I know your higher purpose is to inspire, educate, entertain. You aim to equip the reader for the turbulent voyage of life. Which I think is awesome, by the way.

But my compliments, you've done your research.

Well done.

Well done. Yeah, well done.

Well, you know, you have to. And yeah, why don't you just take us a little bit of history in your academic background and how it's kind of played out to where you are today?

Yeah, yeah, no, good questions, man. You know, when I was growing up, I was always a very avid reader And I would say I grew up in a semi-rural environment. I grew up in a small town called Westport in Massachusetts in the southeastern part of the state. And I was very lucky in the sense that I had a lot of space to roam around. I grew up in a, you know, a middle-class environment, and I had, you know, I could I could roam around in the forests and fields of where, where my house was. We were relatively close by the ocean, so I could have access to the sea. And I think a lot of that helped me develop a very soaring imagination, which I think has been a real attribute as I've gotten older. I've noticed I think I have a very, uh, active imagination, which is a benefit which I think is— which I would encourage everyone to cultivate. Imagination is, is very, very important important. So, you know, I went to college, you know, I went to local small public schools there, and I went to college in Boston, Cambridge, at MIT when I was, you know, in my college years. And I was in the ROTC program, so I had a commitment after I got out of about, you know, 4 years or so, 4 and a half years. And, you know, after that, I was kind of looking around for what to do. And I decided that being a lawyer would match my interests best. So I went to law school. And I thought, you know, I've been practicing law now for about 21 years. So it's been a long time. You don't notice how fast time goes by, but it does. You know, so, and I'd already had, I always had an interest in travel. You know, I was, even when I was on active duty, I lived for a few years in Japan, I traveled to Korea, I'd been to Europe, I'd been to South America, you know, blah, blah, blah, all that, all that stuff. So anyway, you know, I had thought that I would just kind of be a country lawyer, and because I live in the Kansas City area right now, and I am that in many ways, but somehow, you know, about 2012 or '13, and this is again, it's hard even for me to— I had never written anything in my life, I had never had anything published, I had never had any interest in writing books or translating or anything, I always had interest in reading and talking about these things, but I never took it to the next level of actively, actively doing it. But somehow, in a process that I'm really not sure about to this day, you could almost liken it to almost a religious conversion maybe, I somehow just reached a point where I just got so, uh, frustrated and infuriated with what I saw happening around me with what was going on in the culture, what I was seeing in the books, what I was seeing with people. I just said, I have to, I have to make my views known. I have to get it out there. I'm not going to allow these things to go on anymore without saying something. And you just reach a point where you just do that. It's almost like the closest thing I could— the novelist, the American novelist James Fenimore Cooper, he never wrote anything when he was— until he was in his 40s either, I believe. And I think he was just— the story is he was just reading a book one day and he just threw it down. He said, I can do better than this, I can do better than this.

Yeah.

And what followed was a literary career. So you really— I guess the takeaway lesson is, and what I think every— anyone listening to this podcast should, should, uh, appreciate, is that you will undergo different changes as you get older. You will reinvent yourself every 7 years, 10 years, maybe, who knows. Uh, you are not the same person that you are now as you were 10 years ago. You will not be the same person probably 10 years from now. So these types of changes you have to roll with. Uh, so luckily I found that what I had to say resonated with people. Uh, I, I believe it was based on honesty, on sincerity, on passion. And as long as you have that the number one criteria is sincerity and honesty, and if you are speaking from that position, then the passion will come naturally. That's my view of it. So that's really where— that's how I got to be— there's no other, you know, I basically just got to a point where I saw the opportunities to contribute. I started out writing essays and I contributed those to Return of Kings, which was a website which you may have heard of, you know, which is no longer really active, but it was in operation for a few years. I contributed there, and then I decided, after I'd done a few years there, I decided to just, you know, start my own site and start focusing more on my own books and things. And that's really where it is, man. I just, I love doing this. I love— because I've always had maybe a teacher mentality, a professorial mentality. And I can get to do that now. I can just get to, um, yeah, say what I think.

Yeah, well, I think a lot of guys on Twitter look up to you as a masculine role model for sure.

You know, man, I appreciate that. I'm very happy that they do, and I hope that I will— I hope that I can, uh, I hope I can serve them adequately and do them justice. Because I didn't feel like when I was growing up, I didn't have a lot of supervision. I did not have a— I did not come from an environment that had a lot of structure to it. In many ways, I mean, in some ways, being left to your own devices has its benefits in that you develop a very active imagination and fantastical— you live in your fantasies, maybe. And maybe that's good in some sense, but another sense, maybe what drew me to the military was I— there was a need for structure.

You need both.

Exactly. Yeah, maybe you— if, yeah, if you have— I don't know what your background is, but if you have a military— but I felt like I needed a structure. I didn't have a lot of guidance. I didn't have good teachers growing up. I didn't have any good role models. I didn't have any teachers that ever gave a shit about me or that ever maybe cultivated the latent abilities that they may have observed. I didn't, I didn't have any. I didn't have any. In those days, we didn't— you, you know, you were told to sit in your, you sit in your chair and shut up and do what you were told and to, uh you know, just go with the flow, and that's fine to some extent, but I wanted— like when I first started writing books, I, or like, you know, I've got two types of books: essays, collections, and translations. When I was starting to put out translations, I felt like that the existing translations were inadequate. They were not suiting the needs of the modern reader. They were inept, they were out of date, they were obsolete, and I said I want to do— I want to give them something that I wish I had had.

Yeah.

You know, where it's— they explain things in footnotes, where the language is straightforward, where you can understand what is being said, and we have to get the message out there that way. So I just felt like I wanted to try to improve on what I felt was lacking in my own experience growing up.

Yeah.

That's really what it comes down to. It's that simple. It really is that simple.

Yeah, I definitely have the same, uh, feeling in myself with, you know, the writing that I've done. Um, it's mostly in Twitter form or tweet form, um, or the shorter kind of social media blog posts. But it is, it's just, it's almost, well, it is like I'm speaking to a younger version of myself and just, you know, in plain language, the life that I've led you know, very short term, you know, I'm aware of that. But so far anyway, the things that I've learned and the mistakes that I've made, just explained in a kind of plainer language, that it doesn't have to be super elaborate or lugubrious or anything like that.

Yeah.

But for people to digest, and that's all the health advice as well, which I think resonates with people is like, if they can read a tweet, that they, okay, they understand. They may not like— they don't— you don't need to understand the innermost machinations of the, the cell in the biology and what's going on. Whereas if you just know, okay, X leads to Y, I can digest that in the tweet form and, you know, go about my day. And now I have that. And that is mostly what I want to do is like just put out little bits of information that will improve people's life that I didn't know and now I do know, and I could just download that bit of information to them and they can take it away and hopefully share it with their kids or, you know, their friends or whatever.

Uh, yeah, I, I think you're doing a great job at it, Sol, because I, I think what, what you do and what I do, I think, are linked and tied together in the same way, in the sense that you, you have to respect your audience. You respect your audience. I try to respect my audience. And, you know, one of the things I think is very damaging and very unfortunate is you see that there's not a lot of older guys speaking to these younger guys online. There's nobody out there. There's no one that cares. There's no one that listens. There's no one that is willing to put themselves out there and do anything. You know, for example, you know, it's very easy for a lot of the— a lot of people to be dismissed. And I see this all the time. I see this all the time with you and other guys who focus on health and fitness. It's a very dismissive attitude and say, oh, weightlifter and this and the hell, every, you know, blah blah blah. It's 'What's the big deal?' You know, that's not— that like, somehow that's not important. And you want to say, 'Look, you know, to these younger guys,' or to any guys of any age, it should be any age, but especially I think when you're a younger guy, your body matters to you. Being— having muscles or developing physically, that's important to these younger guys. That matters to them. They don't have a lot of decades of experience in the work world or to draw on. That to them, that matters. So you have to respect that. You cannot just shrug that off. You cannot condescend to that and say that's unimportant. It matters. I mean, how many profile photos do you see of guys out there with their shirts off or flexing? That matters to them. It's important to them, and it should be important to them. It's important to me too. I mean, I, you know, I'm not a bodybuilder, but I can tell you you're on the right track because as you get older, you know, if you don't keep your body in good working condition, you're going to have health problems as you get older. So it's— trust me, it's important. And I, you know, I go to the gym, you know, 4 times a week myself. I don't neglect that at all. But what I'm saying is, I think there's a very contemptuous— the mainstream media takes a very dismissive attitude towards young men, and I find that very maddening and unfortunate and very cruel in many ways.

Well, I think it's by design as well. Like, you if, if you have a— the mainstream media view is like they put out things that are meant to weaken us and make us sicker and make us unhappier. And whether or not the individual journalists are aware that they are doing that, and I don't think that they are, and I don't think that they're kind of realizing what's happening at a broader level, but the result of what we're seeing now is propaganda from you know, the wrong health sources that say, oh, it's okay to have a dad bod, girls prefer it, you know, like it's at a face level, you just innately know that it's bullshit, you know. But a lot of the time when you are, you know, you're at a population level trying to sway people into, you know, consuming more, and that's ultimately what these things do. Who owns the mainstream media outlets? Okay, cool, the guys at the top, they also have financial stakes in these other entertainment companies or food companies or whatever it is. Like, it's all linked, and that's just the nature of business. That's just the nature of a corporation when it gets big enough. Uh, but I think people have to be aware of that, and I'm sure everyone listening to this, like, you are aware of what's going on. And I think our responsibility is to push that awareness to people that aren't necessarily in the space, um, you know, friends and family, maybe the older ones that do still listen to the TV as like, oh, this is the best health advice or whatever. And it's not because we're getting sicker, we're getting fatter, we're getting, you know, more depressed, more anxious by the day. Uh, so it's obvious that what we're doing isn't working. And what we're doing, and I think everyone knows it deep down, is like the Western model of society is not working and it is in its decline.

Yeah, yeah. No, it's hard to dispute, it's hard to refute that. And I agree with everything you said. And we've just got to keep getting the message out there. I think you're right. If even you can plant a little bit of a seed of doubt in someone who may be wavering, who may be on the fence, then I think you will have done your job. Maybe I will have done my job. That And that's what we really have to try to do, because there's hope. I think people just need a little bit of a nudge in the right direction, and they will understand. But you're right, it is a— that's really what's so discouraging is a lot of these reporters, these media figures, you know, they're struggling too. They have— they're getting paid nothing. They want— they know they have to say certain things in order to get published. It's just this cycle of just oppressive groupthink that at some point you have to break out of. At some point you have to say enough. At some point you have to just say, look, I'm not going to play the game anymore. I'm not going to participate in this charade anymore. And everyone, every man has to come to that decision at some point. And, uh, some never do. Some go through their whole lives and you've seen them. You've seen a lot of these old guys that are walking around in denial. And, um, but the younger generation, there's hope because there's a lot of angry young guys out there and they know they're getting screwed. They know that the system is rigged, that they've— it's been set up where they have no opportunities, no jobs. No women that have any practical skills. They, they, and they're mad, and they should be mad. They should be fucking pissed because they got sold out. They got sold out. So I mean, look, the reality is they did. They got sold out. I wish I could, I wish I could tell them otherwise, but yeah, we have to plant the seeds now of this renaissance. And that's what I like to call this. If there's one thing that I want to, I would like to be, I would hope to be, or like to be I want to help trigger a renaissance. That's what I want. I want to be that Petrarca, that Boccaccio. I want to be that guy. I want to, I want to help rekindle that interest in the knowledge that has been lost, and it comprises both body and mind. Body and mind, the two are completely co-equal. One is not superior to the other.

Yeah.

And we just have to keep doing it, and eventually truth will out. The, the truth has to out. It has to. It will.

It always comes back to the truth. And you know, that's the beautiful thing about the truth is that it doesn't need lies to cover it. And eventually all those lies, all the creations to try and tell people not to feel this when they innately feel the truth, or whatever it is, that all falls away, uh, and the truth comes out. And I think, yeah, it's that, it's that innate thing that every, every dude feels where this is all bullshit. Like, what are we doing here, you know? Like, I felt that from, you know, maybe like high school, going through puberty, and you kind of, okay, moving from child to man in a way is like, there is so much bullshit. There's so much bullshit in the educational institutions. Just in day-to-day life, you know, like you read about, you know, ancient Spartan civilizations and I think that's why young men romanticize that as well so much is because it's ancient living, it's pure and it, you know, it speaks to the soul and there aren't all these like technology bullshit which we again innately feel is kind of weird.

Everything was organic. Can you imagine those days? Everything was like literally everything you ate And if you wanted, if you wanted meat, you just went out and slaughtered a goat or sheep or cattle or whatever. And you had, I mean, everything was right there. There was no filtration, no plastics, no nothing, pesticides or anything. T levels must have been off the charts, man.

Oh man, can you imagine in those days?

I can't even, I can't even, I mean, in some ways I think, in some ways sometimes you read these, I was reading You know, just— I'm working this translation I'm working on right now on Tusculan Disputations, and I'm on book 4, and there's a passage in there that talks about how Ajax— Cicero quotes the Iliad, and he says Ajax went into battle giddily, like he— as he was preparing to go to do battle with Hector in mano a mano combat, he was ebullient. He was happy. He wasn't depressed. He was happy just doing it. And you say to yourself, my God, these guys were snake eaters, like I mean, how many guys, you know, there wasn't, there was none of this, you know, you know, morose. I mean, they just, they, the mentality of the whole, it was a whole different mindset, you know. And just the other day, another example I posted, I found, I was lucky enough to find on YouTube a, um, a learned man. I don't know if he's a professor or not, but he had memorized the entire Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf, and he was reciting it with a an Anglo-Saxon lyre. I don't know what the name of it is, but he was reciting it and it was entertaining. They had the translation on a screen behind him and it was the best connection to the Dark Ages I've seen. In those days, the bard would travel from village to village and sing songs about heroes, about heroism, about valor, about commitment, about courage, about sacrifice. I mean, we just, we just don't get that kind of training anymore. We don't get it. It's not, it's not part of any— in fact, if anything, it's shamed.

Yeah.

So anyway, I just, I just thought, I just think, I think that's why on some instinctive level, I think a lot of young guys and older guys know that the, uh, our ancestors were tapped into something that we have definitely lost and that we need to get it back and fast. If we want to still remain viable as a species.

Yeah, 100%. And I'm not saying that I'm, you know, at all in that world, having lived a very sheltered life. Uh, well, we all have.

We have to do the best we can. I mean, nobody is— we're all products of our environment to some extent. But if we can at least be aware of what's out there, I think that's, that's a big part of the battle, man. Awareness.

Yeah.

And humbling yourself, you know. So, so no, you're, you know, I mean, you're— we're all doing the best we can, man. We're all doing the best we can. Yeah.

And that's all we can do at the end of the day.

Yes, sir.

Uh, that kind of links to a reader question I have here. What, what are some of the common ways that you see that guys delude themselves or fall into excuse making? What would you think, how to avoid those traps? Or what do you see younger guys doing that you would advise not to do?

Well, one of the, one of the things that I— that's a good question. I think a good measure of that is, is when you start to get into a very doctrinaire, fixed way of thinking. When you think that you've broken the code on everything realize that you're deluding yourself.

Yeah!

You know, because let me tell you something, as you get older you find out that what you know and what you're certain about is but a fraction of that vast ocean that, that really is the universe.

Yeah!

So anytime you think you've broken the code and you know the right way and you have the solution to everything, take a step back and realize that you don't and I see a lot of guys on Twitter and that message me, and they get very roped into these channeled ways of thinking. It's like, Bitcoin is the way, man. Bitcoin solves everything. Libertarianism. We gotta decentralize everything. And you're like, well, dude, you may think that now, but in 10 years from now, come back and talk to me.

And you'll—

once, once you've seen how the world works, you may, you may think very differently. Or they think that, oh, it's the Illuminati that's causing everything, and we gotta go, we gotta do this, we gotta do that. And you're like, well, dude, you know, maybe there's more to it than that. Or they think that, well, if I just, if I just, you know, change my mindset and I just go to the gym more, then everything's going to be great. Well, it's like, okay, dude, you know, there's more to it than that too. Nobody has all the answers. Nobody has all the answers. So the, the most important thing for that, that, that this Questioner should realize is keep an open mind, and you should always be seeking more. Seek knowledge, always seek knowledge, never be satisfied with a plateau level of progress. Just like in the bodybuilding world, Sol, as you know, when you plateau out, what are you going to do? You're going to mix up your routine, you're going to mix up your— you got to change. Your body is comfortably setting into, settling into a rut, and you've got to shock the system with new information and with new stimuli.

Yeah, it's almost like a, uh, a law of the universe is that once man thinks he knows everything and he's the king, and oh, something's gonna come and just sweep the rug out of your feet. And, um, that's right, shake yourself up. And that's, you know, that's the journey of life really, is like, okay, we get some, not some knowledge, we learn to master our environment a little bit better, uh, and then something comes which is gonna, you know, it fucks us up, right?

And they should have confidence, you know, and a lot of, you know I think part of the— honestly, the big thing that I wish I could communicate to these younger guys is relax, relax, have confidence in yourself. Don't— you're not going to know everything. Don't try to know a lot of the stuff, a lot of the wisdom, you know, that's out there, that's the timeless wisdom. It's not gonna— you know, I could show it to you, I could put it in front of you, like I could give you the translation of Sallust, or so, and even though you read it, it's not gonna fully— it's not gonna really resonate and sink into your consciousness until you've suffered a little bit more in life, until you've been beaten up by life, until you've gone through hard times, until you've been at that bottom position of, you know, the, the black hole of Calcutta, where you know what it means to, to be really at the, at, uh, at rock bottom. So be patient with yourself. Gather experiences. Gather, uh, uh, you know, collect experiences. Do things, travel, gain wisdom, you know, read as much as you can, do as much as you can, but just, you know, do your homework, but realize that you may not connect all the dots until later. It's important to get the stuff into your long-term memory now. You should read the good stuff now when you're— you should develop the good habits now, the good working out habits, the good reading habits, the good work habits. But you won't really understand how precious those are until later. It takes time, takes time.

Yeah, it's the, the wisdom of old age. And you know, what is the— I can't remember who said it, but, um, youth is wasted on the young. And you know, yeah, I think it's, it's just a matter of you know, learning it for yourself. And it's like, you know, the first girlfriend that you have. You can have people tell you, okay, don't do this too much, or, you know, whatever. But then you— it won't actually go in until she breaks up with you, and then you're like, fuck, you know, dude.

How many— what you've just described, how many times I've told my other friends, man, how many times have I said, you know, if I wish— if I knew now, if I knew when I was in my 20s what I know now, I could have been, you know, but that, that's, but then everybody said it's that race between knowledge. The life is basically a race between knowledge and time. Your knowledge has to catch up with where you are temporally, yeah, uh, in terms of temporal, you know, position on the temporal timeline. You've just gotta, you've gotta try to get as much knowledge between your ears as you can But even then, you know, you're gonna— I mean, you know, you're not gonna know everything. That's— you're not— but you're not supposed to know everything, man.

You're not expected.

You can't know everything. In fact, some things you have to learn by suffering. Some things you're gonna make mistakes. When I was a young lieutenant starting out, I made so many leadership mistakes you would not believe. I look back and it's painful. It's painful. I want to crawl under the desk, but that's how— that's what gives me the passion to write about these things because I've been there, man. I know what it's like to fuck up. I know what it's like to make the mistakes. I mean, I've been practicing law for 20 years. Those first few years, man, when you start out, you don't, you know, you have even with all the knowledge in the world, you don't know how to meet with a client. You don't know how to console them. You don't know how to do things in the smoothest way. You have to learn. That's how this is, how this works. Oh, by far. The phrase that we used to use in the Marine Corps, the zero defect mentality. Don't have a zero defect mentality. Don't think that everything has to be perfect. It's not going to be perfect. You're going to be, you know, great men are going to, are going to fuck up multiple times. That's the way this is supposed to work. What matters is that, what matters is that you keep going, you know. It's the, the chicken shits and the wimps are the ones who just give up, who just, you know, always want to be perfect, never want to show their ass, never want to look like they made a mistake. Those are the ones that are the chicken shits. That's what I think anyway.

Yeah, yeah. Well, it's, it's, if you think about it, it's, it's not a failure, it's just a step in the road. And the whole road of life is, it was made up of potholes, and sometimes it's going to go well and sometimes it's not going to go well. And if you can just have the view of that and know that, you know, the temporary sensations and feelings that that you have in the moment, it's not going to last forever, you know, the good times and the bad. And I think so many people, they get lost in the moment to moment. Oh, this is the end. This is, this is the worst thing ever. And it may be, but all the other times that you've thought that, you've gotten through it. So that'll be the same case now. And I think And once you go through that a few times, maybe you internalize that and just realize, okay, this is not the end. Am I dead? No. Cool. Let's just brush it off and keep moving.

And then that's exactly—

you have, you know, you have a broad, a broader set of experiences from which to base, you know, your knowledge from. And then that experience is not gonna fuck you up as much, you know. The first time that, like you said, you have to sit with a client or do a business deal or something, that's hard and you're going to make mistakes and that's scary. But then the next time it's not that scary because you've done it before.

That's right.

And then that's right. Now has— it's the same within the gym. The first time you go in and start doing a bench press, it's like, oh shit, are people looking at me? Like, how do I do this? Where do I put my hands? And, you know, after a few weeks you're fine. Yes. Smashing through it. Everything in life is like that.

That's right. Yeah, that's right, man. Yeah, that's, you know, that's— it's funny, it's, uh, one of the, you know, it's kind of things like that. When I think about things like that, it kind of reminds me that I think I would have been a, you know, a good, like, a teacher in some ways, or a, you know, a professor or a teacher in some ways. Because one of the things I enjoy about dealing, interacting with a lot of young people is that they're very— it's hard to explain this in a way, but it's very— they're very charming, or they're very— I don't want to say the word cute because that's really not what I mean, but it's— they're very endearing. They have the questions they ask and the tribulations that oppress their minds, their sorrows and their anxieties in some ways are very endearing in the sense that they're all up in their own heads. Like, they— like, some guy will send you some email that's like a wall of text about all this stuff, and it's like you want to— you want— you just want to kind of put your arm on this guy's shoulder and say, look, bro, calm down, man. You're going to be all right. Don't worry about it. You're thinking— you're overthinking. You're thinking about what is Mary Jane Rottenkrotch going to say to Joey, and what is Joey going to say to someone so-and-such, and my brother— my, my brother said this to my father, my father, and— or, or, you know, it's all this convoluted implications. And but then you say to yourself, because as an older person, you say, look, what you're, what you're worried about doesn't matter, doesn't amount to dry shit. But then you say to yourself, no, no, when you were that age, that's— you were the same way. To him, it's important. This matters to these guys. It matters to them. So you have to, you have to realize that, look, don't, don't be dismissive of this guy's question. Don't be dismissive of these concerns, because these are legitimate concerns but at the same token, you have to try to, to encourage them so that they get beyond that. And that's the balance that you have to strike, I think, in my view anyway, you know. It's so— I enjoy— it's, it just, I guess what, what's interesting about dealing with a lot of different age groups, a lot of younger guys, is it reminds you of the progress of life, the, uh, the, the progression of life, you know. How life goes through phases, and you say to yourself, look, you were like that too. You were just like that. You were just as neurotic about nonsense as this guy is. So be understanding, you know. Don't be dismissive. Don't be a dick. Don't be an asshole, you know. I mean, I've never been that way to Guy, but I'm just saying, don't. I think a lot of— there are some if I had to be a parent, I, I would try to adopt that same philosophy too, you know.

Yeah, it's, it's always— you gotta lean more to being understanding and caring and loving in anything that you're doing, right? Because, you know, that's ultimately— that's just what people need a bit more of, uh, especially now when everyone is so segmented and disconnected. Uh, yes, they have their, their virtual selves and everything, but You know, most people in the city, do you know, even know who your neighbor is? Most of the time, no, no, you don't. Literally don't even know who you mean.

Yeah, you know, or you try to, you know, you try to make contact with them and they slither away from you like, uh, frightened rats.

Yeah, exactly. Um, and I think if, if you're in an apartment in a big city, it's even more like that. But there's no, you know, there's no community, there's no a genuinely, oh, okay, I actually do care about what my brethren is doing across the road. We're all in this together. And I think that gets brushed over because it's just the nature of being online. Like you can't care about every single person.

Right.

You know, to some degree, but recognize that every username and every profile picture has a person attached to it. Even, you know, whoever it is. And it never hurts to just give your advice, but don't, like you're saying, don't be dismissive. Don't be, you know, oh, you should know this. Like, that's never helped anyone in life, really.

Agreed, man. Agreed. Well said.

So one other topic that I want to raise with you I think that there's a bit of a growing movement now with kind of leaving the country behind, the country as a whole. Let's, let's say the United States is like, they recognize the United States is decaying and maybe going to a different country and setting up shop there, right? Do you think that there is a— because I see both sides, I see you know, if you actually want to stick up for your country and, you know, be proud of what it was and hopefully what it can remain and all of those things. And, you know, do you have some kind of response, innate responsibility as a man to do something like that? I think you do, you know, defend your country against the forces that seek to just, you know, rape and pillage it in a way. Versus do you also, you know, like I said, I see both sides. You know, there are massive power structures now that do want to see you, you know, taxed to the nth degree, never really, you know, all of your food and water is poisoned.

Right.

Does it make more sense to set up shop somewhere else in another country? Maybe, you know, with Uruguay, 0% tax.

Yeah.

If you have the capacity to do so and make money online, which a lot of people are now, what is that balance and how do you see that playing out? I think that you can do both to some degree now that the social media and internet realm, it is real life. And can you push for the larger ideas and the battle of ideas that hopefully then go on to infect the minds of people in a good way, uh, the people that remain. But can you do that while being physically removed yourself, uh, without having to, you know, actually go down with the ship in that way?

Yeah, no, this is a very— this is a very, uh, a very, very good question, Sol. And there are, as you said, there are different schools of thought on that. In the early 2000s, you probably remember there was a lot of push in the direction of the international lifestyle, the Tim Ferriss, let's just sit on a beach in Thailand and click away at your laptop and all's well with the world and just unplug and do that. And I think that taps into a lot of people's latent fantasies about traveling and living abroad, and there's nothing wrong with that, uh, to some extent. And I, I, I have always believed that guys should travel and should travel extensively, as often as they can.

100%.

Um, in— now, in terms of permanent expatriation, that's a decision that I think each man has to make up his own mind about, and I think there are arguments both ways. However, at this point in my life, I tend to take the view that we've already lost enough good men. We've already experienced— and I've done podcasts on this— we've already experienced a prolonged period of what I call leaving the playing field. Guys just walk away from the playing field. They've left the football field, or the rugby field in Australia's case maybe, or whatever, and they've just turned over the field to what I call the unworthies. And so this is why we have the dunces, the incompetents, the selfish, the grifters in positions of leadership in our countries, our respective countries, these opportunists, these unworthies I call them. And this is why we've let good men languish. And I'm at the point, I'm kind of, as I've gotten older, I've taken on more of a fighting a fighting demeanor. And I'm at the point now where my view is, I come down on the side of, no, this is, this is our thing. This is— we have just as much right to be here and to have a vision of our countries as someone else does. And if there's a problem, you fucking fix it. If there's a problem and you see there's a legitimate problem, you have a responsibility to fucking fix it, or at least try to fix it. Now I understand that that is not a view shared by everyone, and there are situations where if you are legitimately being, I don't know, targeted for persecution, for example, it would be hard for, let's say, to make that argument to tell Einstein to stay in Germany in 1933. It's just not going to work, okay, for obvious reasons. It's just not— that's not the kind of— there are certain— I get that. But I don't think we're anywhere near that level. I think what we are in right now is we are in a situation where we have severe institutional deficiencies, deficiencies of leadership, deficiencies of courage, deficiencies of fortitude. And I have a great deal of faith in your generation. It may be too late for ours, for, you know, the ones in our 50s, the boomer generation, I'm not a boomer, but, uh, you know, it may be too late to sway people my age, but I sure as hell can persuade guys your age. And don't ever think that running away is an option, because one of the other arguments that I make along these lines are pretty soon there's not going to be anywhere to run to. Soul, where the fuck are you gonna run to? This shit is gonna follow you everywhere you go. You're not gonna escape. There are no more— there are no more Narnias. There are no more Middle Earths. There are no more Fantasylands. What we have right now is what we have. We have to be here now. We have to take a stand now for what we believe in. And I'm not saying what— I'm not saying that you have to you know, go off the deep end or anything. But what I am saying is, if you want to change the system, you have to become the system. As, uh, uh, I tweeted today, this, this, this guy on YouTube that I watched a lot of his videos, Wes Watson, this, this guy that spent 10 years in federal prison— you've got to become the system. You've got to make yourself— you've got to forge yourself to such a degree, to such an extent, that your mind is like a sharpened instrument, that your body is like a, uh, a, a medieval mace. You, you and your generation, you're going to have to be tougher, smarter, faster, stronger than any generation before you. But I know that you can do it. I know that you have within you the seeds to do that. I know that you have the seeds within you to be that man. And so do not ever think that running away is an option. Now, there's nothing wrong with— if you want to have a— if someone wants to have a take an extended leave of, you know, spend a few months and whatever. But honestly, the older I get, I just— there's something, there's something not right about just basically saying, hey, hey, that, that mess out there, that's your mess, you deal with it. Um, I'm gonna, I'm gonna go off to Uruguay and I'm gonna, I'm gonna count, uh, I'm gonna count rainbows. I don't— I don't— I'm not buying that, man. You know, this is— this is our society. This is— this is our country, and we have just as much right to present our vision as anyone else. So don't you ever back down to anyone. Don't you ever apologize to anyone. Don't you ever concede any playing field to anyone else without a fight. That's what I say.

Yeah, I'd agree. I think, um, that's, that's, that's the innate masculine energy that everyone feels. Everyone's, oh, what are you trying to encroach on my values or my fucking land? No, get fucked. You know, like, yeah, that I think— and that's, you know, maybe that's a mechanism of declining testosterone levels on the whole. You know, you could, you can make that argument with the lower the testosterone levels of a population, the more they put up with all this bullshit. And the— literally, they are weaker. So, you know, is it a question of— you can attack it in so many different ways. You got to heal the population first. And I think that that is probably the, the main mission, uh, at least that I'm going to try and, and champion, is that Everyone has to fix their bodies to have that base to attack these other things that are going wrong in society. And I think it all flows. Like, you, you see it so many times. It's like, if you can get someone in the gym, the rest of their life will fix itself because they see after a few weeks, um, oh shit, my arms are looking bigger, and you know, I just feel stronger and I feel better. That kind of implants this seed in them that everything in their life is fixable with focused intent and repetition and yeah, all the rest of it. And then you're less likely to allow the boot to stomp on what you love and what you care about. And you know, you feel that fire within you that it's like, fuck all this, man. I don't, I don't want the bread and the circuses anymore. Like Yeah, the people that are in power, they're fucking nerds. Like, they're not— yes, the battle that's— it's not even a battle that's been fought. It's just like this slow encroach of people slowly giving up their rights and slowly giving up their freedoms. There has been no battle. There's been no war, really, you know, on the home ground, right?

Because good men like you— because good men like you and me were silent, you know, maybe not us personally, but So many were silent, never said anything.

So because it was good, you're—

yeah, that's right. They, they were, they were too— they— there was a number of rationales that they used. They thought that, oh well, if we just placate them, things will— they'll just be reasonable and they'll, they'll be satisfied. No, they kept pushing for more and more and more. Or they think, oh well, politics is not that important, I'm not going to get into that, that's for, that's for nerds, or that's for— and then you turn around, you find out you're ruled over by these same pencil necks, and they're, they're pushing their shit on all of us. So we— I think the reality of this is becoming more and more well known, and, and I'm hoping that the tide will turn at some point, because I think, I think it's going to have to, because these young guys coming up, these Zoomers like your generation, these younger guys, they were left holding a bag of shit. Yeah, there are few jobs, there are fewer and fewer jobs, there are fewer and fewer opportunities. And they're looking around and they're seeing the generations ahead of them stealing and scamming and taking everything for themselves. They're not gonna— they're not going to accept that, and they shouldn't accept that. And I'll be right there with them to storm the battlements if need be, because I feel like that's the way it— that's the way it ought to be. That we've got to— any society that neglects and violates its youth does not deserve to survive. And that's the real tragedy.

Yeah, in my view, all the people that are making the decisions now, they've, you know, are in the tail end. Like, you see the decrepit ghouls that are in Congress, like, making these decisions, and they're obviously, you know, basic thing.

Even the basic things, they don't even— it's like, what planet were these people hatched on? You say to yourself, even the basics, they don't even get the basics. You know, they, they, uh, I mean, they'll legislate that people should— these, these draconian lockdown measures while they themselves collect enormous salaries. Yeah, they, uh, their own states are in the throes of terrible natural disasters and they'll just jet off on, on vacations.

They—

there's no sense of shared sacrifice. And this goes back to what I've talked about, which I won't get into too much because you've already heard it, but just the whole idea of the elites, the plutocratic insurgency, that the ones at the top are basically waging war on the rest of us. That's what's going on. That's what has been going on.

Yeah, I think, um, that, that mindset shift is critical to, to the, let's say, the layman. It's like the government actions that you see only make sense when you view it from the position of they are actively trying to enrich themselves while stealing from your pocket and actively kill you, you know.

Yes.

From any, like, any way that you look at it, it all makes sense if you look at it from that position. And that's hard to grasp for a lot of people. Like, sometimes I'll raise this in a, in a conversation with people, oh dude, the government wouldn't do that. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Have you ever read a fucking history book? You haven't ever realized that what happens when people get, you know, power to the nth degree and you have the government that can tell you where to go, or you can't meet with 5 other people. It's all, it's, you know, it's all control and it's all power. And if you accept it for this supposed, you know, disaster, this, this, you know, virus.

Grossly exaggerated, let's put it that way. Grossly exaggerated, you know, epidemic. Yeah, yeah. No, you're right, arbitrary, arbitrary. It's a law of power that arbitrary exercises of power, once they, once they become habitual, they're very, very hard to, to, to stop, or almost impossible to stop. And we've now gone down certain roads and We're going to have to look every— you know, it's again, it goes back to Sol. We've had it so in the West, we've had it so— we've been so fat and happy and comfortable for so many decades that people— these lessons have been lost, man. You look at your ancestors who could survive on one meat pie a day in the outback, and I have, I have relatives that immigrated to Australia, distant ones, one side of my— and they worked in the sugarcane industry. I know what it was like in the Depression. You have one, one meat pie a day. Those guys didn't have anything. They had nothing. They— I mean, Japan was poised to invade Australia in 1941, and they could have easily— well, they, they could— they certainly could— they came very close to doing it. It could have happened because in those days there was only the coastal strips that were populated. They don't— people don't understand that today. They don't get that. They don't— they don't see that. They don't want to hear it. Yeah, you know, people in this country, they don't— they don't have any idea. They don't have any idea what what sacrifices had to be gone through for them to enjoy what they have now. But they're going to learn, and they're only going to learn just like we've talked about earlier, that some of these lessons you have to suffer. You have to feel the fist in your face before you get it.

Yeah.

And I'm, I'm afraid that we're going to have to go through some serious readjustments, let's put it that way, uh, before we wake up and smarten up, because there's just too much moral corruption, for lack of a better phrase. And I, you know, I, you know, but we've gotta, we've gotta stay strong, we've gotta stay positive, we've gotta try to maintain a sense of humor. But, but I, I agree with you, I agree with what you're saying.

Yeah, it's— you have to laugh in the face of it all. And even though it seems dire, and you could argue that, you know, there are forces out there that do— they want to have everything that you have. They don't want you to have autonomy. They don't want your children to live in a happy, carefree life. Like, that ultimately is what you're dealing with, and that's a force of evil. And that's right. If you don't understand that, then you deserve— you deserve whatever happens. Like, if you would rather just watch the football game, sing some beers, uh, and not really understand what's going on, then, you know, we deserve it.

That's right. Exactly. The days of benign neglect are over. It's not— it's— we're even past the point where the government and the plutocrats are neglecting us. They're actively trying to literally destroy you. Yeah. And again, I know someone hearing that is probably, oh, that's just a conspiracy. No. If you objectively look at it, at the aggregation of power and control and the degree of financial control, information control, the foods, the, the— I mean, kids are not— I mean, kids are being denied basic rights like even going to school now because of this. So it's, it's, it's, it's the point where they don't even want you to have a nickel. They begrudge you even having anything. They want you literally to be a drone who goes to and fro and doesn't do anything except sit in sit in a room and consume. And that's— and even that at some point is probably going to become a threat. I mean, so bottom line is we have to retake control of our societies, and it starts with having men, masculine men, who are imbued with the necessary ideals, the necessary virtues to step up to these positions of authority and to remake by decree, not by consent, because when someone is sick, they're not going to consent to their cure. They need to be— they need to be guided to their cure.

Yeah.

And we're going to have to do it. It's going to have to be done, and it will be done one way or another.

Yeah, I think whether it's at its inflection point now or just leading up to it, is like, it seems like it's getting so ridiculous now that even the average person has to have a second look at it and go, what the fuck's going on? Like, and that's necessary.

Yeah.

And, you know, you can never go back in time. Um, there will be, uh, you know society goes through a constant process of change. Um, it just depends on whether you can direct that change into something that you see, you know, what's good and what's bad. And let's leave these old archaic, uh, things that are making us sick and fat. Um, you know, let's leave all that in the past and they'll have to burn themselves and it won't be the same. Because that's impossible, but it can be better and it will be better because the more conscious thought that we put into society rather than just kind of going through the motions, I think, is, you know, where it's leading to. And you, you have to do what you know is inherently right. And even if that comes with persecution, even if that comes with you know, fear or whatever, you have to be the person, be the first person that sticks their hands up and says, yes, you know, hey, uh, this isn't right, this isn't what we should be doing. Because 90, you know, 90% of people probably agree with you, but they're too scared to just put their hand up first. And this is, this is exactly the way that these things retain their powers, and you know, the communist kind of ideology is like if everyone's scared to speak out, everyone behind the scenes actually thinks the same way because, you know, on the whole, people are good people. There's a lot more good people than there are bad people. It's just when the bad people get into positions of power and then inflict this fear on others on to not inherently say what they believe is right or what they— to speak their truth. That is when, uh, shit hits the fan.

Yeah, that's right. That's exactly right. You've got to, you've got to speak up. We've got to be more vocal. We've got to be— we cannot— we, you just cannot allow some of this stuff. And I hope, I hope, uh, that people internalize these lessons and that they, they incorporate that. And again, it doesn't— you know, again, people listening to this, there's always a tendency to misconstrue. It doesn't mean that you run around like a fool shouting slogans at people, or what it means is that you take a healthy, intelligent, uh, uh, you gotta play the game, right? You take a healthy, uh, right, you, you, you intelligently and, and, um, productively advance your own ideas, and you are willing to assume the consequences. For example, I was tweeting earlier today, you know, they— the Marine Corps was, uh, one of these putting out one of these press release tweets about how they've now completely integrated, uh, men and women now in recruit training. And I, I think that's a terrible, terrible mistake to just be throwing men and women together in the same physical training and with each other. It's, it's, it's the most ludicrous idea I've ever heard. Yeah. And yet not one single general, not one single general who gave congressional testimony about this stood up and said this is wrong. And I know that they don't believe it. I know that a lot of those old Marine generals, they don't buy into it, but none of them— they don't They didn't do anything. They don't say anything.

Yeah.

And they always will hide behind, well, this study says this, or this study says that, but they'll never use their common sense and their real-world experience to know what's right or wrong. So what they do is, is they condemn all of us to this regime of political correctness by not having the moral courage to stand up and say no. So their, their cowardice, it really hurts all of us in many ways. And we expect more from our leaders. We expect more from them. That's what they're— if nothing else, that's what they're there to do. They're there to take the hit. They're there to take the bullet. That's what they do. That's what they're supposed to do. They're not there to enrich themselves, to get pensions, to get, uh, to, to buy, uh, ranches in, in the Sierra Nevada. That's not what they're supposed to do. Not at least not in my view anyway. But then I'm not, I'm not the norm, so that's, you know, so that's just my view. I just, I just, it's for, you know, it's very disappointing. It's very, uh, enraging, frankly. But it's, it's, it's a symptom of— you just see it everywhere in, in politics, in business, in the courts. Yeah, you know, there's just so much chickenshitism, so much, so much jello-backed unwillingness to stand up for anything. Nobody wants that. No one wants to speak the truth anymore. No one wants to tell anyone No one wants to be hardcore anymore. No one wants to say, "No, no, that's wrong. We're not doing that. That's wrong. Yeah, you know, piss off. Get back in your— get back to your post. We're not doing that. And if you don't like it, you know, you can shove it up your ass." But nobody wants this. No one wants to do that. And I know there are guys like that in Australia. I know that. I know there are tons of guys, but they don't get— they don't— they don't get to the positions of leadership. Not— not in these times, but I'm sure that when the shit hits the fan, they'll, they'll, they'll, uh, they'll break glass in case of emergency, and they'll pull out the weapons they need. And that's— maybe that's the way it's always been, I don't know.

But yeah, I think it is. Yeah, you know, the times will create, uh, you know, a vacuum, uh, for what we all inherently know is, uh, you know, the right way forward. And, you know, I have faith. I have faith, as always. That everything—

I do too.

Will—

I mean, ultimately I'm an optimist. Ultimately, so I'm an optimist. I think you have to be. I mean, we wouldn't be optimists if we— if we wouldn't be doing what we're doing if we were not optimists.

Yeah.

And, and I, and I really, I really am. And this is why I, I never try to take a dark negative approach, because I think that's just— that does, does no good. Uh, but you know, you do, you do want— you do want to see people pay for what they do. And, and I, and I maybe Maybe someday, in some way, that the people who are responsible for these harmful and destructive things will be made to answer for what they did or what they're doing. I don't know, maybe that'll never happen. Who knows?

I think if you take a grander look at it in the, you know, universe scale of things, that the karma always has its ways of playing out. And if you have belief in that, then You know, what doesn't help is stewing about it and, you know, infecting yourself with that negativity and anger. No matter what is happening, no matter if the walls are crumbling down around you, if you can hold that spirit of, you know, if you're going through hell, keep going. That's, that's all it is. Winston Churchill. And yes, sir, there's, you know, you don't want to be the person that just gives up because The fact of the matter is these people are dweebs. They didn't earn— they're massive fucking dweebs.

Oh yeah, that's right.

No, it's just no better trial by combat or anything. It's just, you know, what happens. Um, and I think, uh, righteousness will prevail as always, uh, as long as we have the, the courage to do so. In our own lives. And because you can ultimately only control yourself, what you do, and hope that that manifests in the quality of your life and the advice, wisdom, or even just being an example to others. And hopefully that that ricochets out into the world.

Well said, brother. Well said. Well said. I like it.

I'm amped up. I'm ready to go to war now.

All right. Let's go get them.

Yeah.

No, you— and I haven't, I haven't even gotten— I'm still kind of operating at 80% level here. I get the full, the full off-the-hook version. I don't think that would be appropriate. But yeah, no, you're— no, we all, you know, we all see what's going on. And, you know, it's, uh, fate almost puts a finger on you and, and decides for you the path that you're going to take. I Yeah! I look back on my life and I say, you know, maybe there was a reason why, you know, I don't have a family or at least I don't yet to this point. Maybe I was put here to do this. Maybe I have to do what nobody else is willing to do or no one else is able to do.

Yeah!

So, I will continue to do it. I love doing what I do. I really get fired up. It's, you know, honestly, man, what I love about— I'm sure you feel the same way. I feel like I'm a teacher. I feel like I have a classroom, you know. I feel like I can I can write these articles on the weekends, or write these essays and talk about them, and, and there are guys on Twitter that we can, we can sort of get a dialogue going about things. I find that very, very, very positive. So even though, even though the internet has brought with it a lot of negativity, it has also opened up opportunities for getting one's message out that maybe did not exist in the 1980s, or even the '90s, you know.

Yeah, it's ultimately a force for good, I think. Um, and as long as we can use it for that, and, you know, everything will work out. But I want to thank you so much, uh, for joining me on the Soulcast.

Thank you, Sol. Thank you so much. This is a great— this is a great— it's a great podcast, man. This is— this has been really a good, uh really great experience here. So anytime you want to have me on to rant and rave, you just let me know. I'll make it happen.

Yeah, awesome. I'm sure we'll run it back in a few weeks' time or whenever. Yeah.

All right.

Thanks so much, man.

No worries. Yeah. So yeah, well, I'll just sign out here and you just let me— I do have a question I want to ask once we close out.

Do you want me just to Yeah, just before we close the official end, where can people reach you? What are you working on?

Well, you can find me at my website is www.qcurtius.com. That's Q-C-U-R-T-I-U-S dot com. Or you can find me on Twitter, which is— hell, I don't even know what the hell my Twitter handle is. Let me go look here and see what it is. But it's You know, I guess it's, uh, @QuintusCurtius, all one word, and there I shall be.

Very good. All right, all right, thanks again, brother. Uh, we will—

all right, hey, thank you, Sol, and, uh, we'll talk soon. And, uh, if you have any other questions, just let me know.

All right, ciao.