The topic today sounds gay. It is not about gayness, but its opposite. How do men get along with each other? Particularly how do friends get along? There is a moment in the latest encounter of Joe Rogan with Bret Weinstein where the truth is revealed. It comes at minute 58:00. Skip to that point.
How do men handle intimacy and closeness, asks Weinstein? Several things are said:
- The way men behave with each other is not the way women act among themselves (I assume this. Nothing I have heard suggests that women relate to each other as roughly as men do;
- We shit on each other, we give each other grief, we ruthlessly expose pride and conceit;
- This behaviour is very important to how men do business;
- “Increasingly I have this idea -says Weinstein – that I need this in my life”.
The important part of the conversation lasts a minute before it descends, as most male conversation does, from the heights of significance to ribaldry and silliness. But for that one blazing minute an important truth is told.
But I will echo Bret, that males need this kind of conversation in your life, and if you do not have it, you are living an impoverished version of what your life could be. You can join the Masons if you want to formalize your interaction with other males, but a group of friends who meet once a month or so around a table for a few beers would do as well.
I have had occasion to warn any woman seriously intent upon some man: does he have friends? If not, avoid him like the plague.
I recall a doctor of my acquaintance who was wooing a woman. He knew exactly what he was doing. He borrowed me and my set of friends to deceive her into thinking that he was embedded in a set of male friends. He invited me and my circle to dinner with his intended wife. He married her and we never say him again. The deception was complete, as far as she was concerned.
The diner party at which Bret Weinstein and his wife were so impressed with how males related was hosted by the comedian Bryan Callen. He seems well worth listening to.
To those men with circles of friends, nothing I said here is original. To those men without a circle of friends, I hope you get along with your brothers and brothers-in-law.