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Rachel Denning (00:10.606)
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the extraordinary Family Life podcast. We are your hosts, Greg and Rachel Denning. And excited today to have kind of a... Excited or nervous? Both. It's the same emotion. Excitement and nervousness are the same. I'm excited. I don't know where this is going to go. And so we're going to kind of wander with you through...

different avenues, but we're going to kind of talk about some big picture stuff. So we'll zoom way out and take this, you know, maybe 30 ,000 foot view, but also zoom way into your family and your life and into your own mind and heart and kind of.

get philosophical maybe and historical and prophetic. Yeah, I guess we always love to do that. Right. But I want to, this has been on our mind for a long time and it's growing and more and more big thinkers are talking about it or.

Well, actually, there's only a few who are really talking about it in the way we're going to talk about it today. But there's many speaking about aspects of it that we're taking that and going, you know, we hear somebody say, well, this problem is happening, and this problem is happening. Like, oh, that's just one of the pieces of the puzzle. And so we're going to try to just kind of share some ideas and circle around this whole idea of our current society. The state of the.

country, world, state of the... So it's no longer the country because we're so interconnected, but it's not global either. It's not all societies. Like there's going to be countries that will just keep rolling on doing their thing while others just erode and even some collapse. And we might want to think, oh, it's global. It's happening everywhere. It's not.

Rachel Denning (02:18.158)
But neither is it isolated because we live in such an interesting time where we're also interconnected via the internet and economies. But there's still, you and I have traveled to enough countries where we're like, man, this country's completely independent, independent from everything else that's going on. And all the mayhem and the chaos that you think is pervasive, you go to these communities, there's nothing here. I felt like that kind of in Turkey because...

I'm sure partly because of government restrictions and whatnot. They don't have all of the same things that we do, at least not imported. They have their own versions of it. And so in a lot of ways it does make them independent of perhaps Western economies. Yep. Absolutely. Okay, that was an interesting one because there were so many things you couldn't even access at all. Yeah, like no Apple products, at least officially. And so they have restriction. That's a good point. So even

Even simply facing economies, some people have, some of their borders are more porous and others are more closed. More free market. With their more closed...

they'll have their own problems, right? They have economic problems. Turkey does too. I talked to a few people. They have their own problems, but that's an example where they may not have the same problems. And that's also true culturally. And it's not going to be as affected by what may happen in Western civilization. Same with the culture, because the culture is very independent. It's a completely different culture with different priorities and focuses. So yeah, it's a different culture.

It's not going to be affected in the same way by what happens in the United States or what happens in other developed countries. And even, so we're currently in Europe living over here and you see the interconnectedness.

Rachel Denning (04:21.87)
to, I guess we could, again, this is so complicated. This whole conversation is so complicated. We're not even sure what we're talking about. We're going to simplify some things to make them kind of simplistic to talk about, but we realize it's not.

It's not black and white, right? I was going to refer to like Western civilization versus Eastern civilization. And obviously there's tons of little intricate crossovers there. But for simplification of the conversation, we're going to try to simplify it and say, you know, Western societies and civilizations. Right. You still see so -called Western influence in plenty of those countries. I mean, I think about going to Egypt and KFC is like their favorite restaurant. And we ask, you know,

our host, hey where should we eat? He's like I love KFC. And so it's that type of stuff that they're a totally different culture with a different religious base and you know Arabic speaking and yet...

there's kfc everywhere and i don't know what else it was burger king or something and and the clothing over the last few generations is coming in and that's worldwide i mean i think all clothing worldwide except for indigenous people say in like guatemala or ecuador but even that's been lost it is being lost when i was i was in peru and guatemala roughly twenty years ago most of the people were wearing uh... indigenous clothes but now you know they all wear them

American style they call it. Culture is being lost. Language is being lost. They used to speak their indigenous languages, now they're all speaking. That was true in India as well. Food culture, again, is another example. That's a tragedy. Fast food is disgusting. There was all these delicious, authentic meals and they just eat fast food. The other irony, and this is what happened because we asked, it was our Airbnb host, where should we go eat?

Rachel Denning (06:22.448)
we get good food and he's like oh I love KFC and when we say no we don't want KFC. Like I want authentic Egyptian. And he had to think about it. Or and ask his dad he's like let me ask my dad. Yeah exactly and then when he gives us a reference it was a great reference but it was for a very fancy restaurant and so in some ways the traditional food now is being maintained or you know exists primarily in

high -end restaurants, right? They're taking the traditional food. I know it is, it's interesting. Something that used to be, say, street food or whatever. Now they're taking this original food, which is good, this traditional food, and they're maintaining that history and culture around it. And that was a phenomenal food experience. So the restaurant, the experience itself, the service and the food, everything we ate was just unique and amazing. Except maybe the green soup.

I wasn't crazy about the green soup. It looked kind of like slobber. And it had the texture of slobber. It was like gooey. And they were all raving about the green soup. Well, they did a big presentation with it, because I guess it's a big cultural thing. But I think they do the presentation, because if they just served it on its own, you'd just be like, oh, no, why did you give me this? Even when you put it in your mouth, they're like, it's like a gooey slurp. That was awesome. What a great experience.

So the concern is, okay, you guys have heard me say this before, one of the best ways to understand or know the future is to study the past, right? If you want to know what's coming, and we should all care about what's coming, we should constantly be thinking about what's coming, what's ahead. Well, I want to jump in right there already. I think one of the dangers of our current society, especially because...

We've had so many years of peace time in general. That doesn't mean there haven't been wars along the way like, you know, Desert Storm or, you know, the other things that have happened. In general, it's been a major time of peace. At least not, you know, there's since World War II, it hasn't been massive, major scale. And because of that, and because we live in societies, many of us, where...

Rachel Denning (08:48.174)
They're so peaceful and prosperous and abundant. We don't even realize how peaceful, prosperous, and abundant they are, for one thing, because we think, no, they're not. That we have, I think, tend to forget or not even think that there are cycles of history. There are problems that will repeat themselves. Like the...

we just think about it in this, well things will continue to go on like they are going on. What do you mean? It's just going to keep moving forward in this generally peaceful way. What are you talking about?

But it's never been like that. It's never happened like that. We're so disconnected from our grandparents. We're like the last generation. Our great grandparents would have even been more in it. But because we've lost that connection of them saying, oh, no, we lived through horrendous times and you need that can happen. It happened to us. It can happen to you. You need to heads up for that because now that that

generation is gone. Right. And we do. We live in so much prosperity and peace. And it's funny, we, you know, the little ups and downs that we experience now, we're like, so far down or so high up. And they're like, no, those are ripples in the tide. Exactly. And you're right, Rachel. It's so important. It would be extremely naive of all of us to think that things will just carry on as they have been for the last few decades.

And, you know, in a lot of ways...

Rachel Denning (10:29.902)
We should be in awe that we wake up every morning and have electricity and we have running water and we have internet. Like, it really is amazing and miraculous that these things continue to operate and function and that we live in a society that can sustain them and support them and we have people behind the scenes doing all of these things to keep it going. And the fact that that can happen without...

major fighting death you know that you don't have to be defending your life every single day that really is a miracle and it's it's never been like that in the entire history of the world I mean this is a and we think that's because we're so enlightened yeah but the reality is history just keeps progressing but it goes through cycles and

It just so happens to be that we have lived the last 60 or 70 years in relative peace and prosperity. So it doesn't mean that now those horrendous things won't happen. It just means they haven't happened in our lifetime or in our parents' lifetime. And it doesn't mean that there aren't still horrendous things happening, of course, because our very last podcast episode we just did was about sex trafficking and sexual abuse. So yeah, there's obviously

obviously horrible things that are still going on but what we're kind of talking about today is something like we said on an even bigger scale here like the bigger 30 ,000 foot view of like okay yeah there's terrible things going on and they've always gone on but there's also things happening right now that are very significant.

in what will become history. Absolutely. And what I see as the erosion and perhaps the beginning of a collapse of society. Now, you could... You don't say that lightly. Yeah, I'm not saying that lightly.

Rachel Denning (12:37.646)
That's not something you just throw around, but you can see the beginning of the unraveling. And that's actually been going on for a little bit here. So there's quite a bit of loose threads in this already. And if you study history, you see that...

societies and civilizations and empires, they just come to an end. They do. And they follow this similar pattern. It's just a pattern that's been going on. And you go back and you study the history and you're like, well, wait a minute, things were going so well. And then they start to erode and then they crumble.

And it's so funny as humans with our hubris and our arrogance or whatever we, I guess every generation feels like they're the most enlightened one because they're on the. The tip of the peak of the. Of humanity. Growth and development of humanity so far. We're the farthest ones. Right. And then our kids and then our grandkids, they'll be the farthest ones from the very beginning. And so they're like, no, no, we've progressed beyond that. But you start seeing things erode and change.

collapse.

and you look back at societies that did, and you're like, what happened? And then again, you think, well, what happened to us? Obviously, the Romans and the Greeks and even the British Empire, when the Spanish were out, like, oh, they made all these terrible mistakes. But we won't do that. And then you start noticing things. And I guess this is the hardest part, and that's why we want to have this episode and talk about it. It's so difficult sometimes to see it when you're in it. And as you look back and read the book,

Rachel Denning (14:16.016)
the stories of the people that went through these things, they didn't quite see it either. It was only a few. A few of them saw it and were like, hey, hey, we better stop this crap. And they're like, what are you talking about?

You're just being extreme. Yeah, you're such an extremist. No, we're enlightened. We're different, whatever. And they don't see it when they're in it. And it's not until decades later, people are like, oh yeah, that was a big mistake. How did we let that happen? Right. And I keep thinking that actually, that's kind of where my thought pattern has been going, is what are we going to be reading about or learning about?

thirty forty fifty years from now about this time because with the holocaust you know people get bits and pieces of things that supposedly were happening or had happened but it was

It wasn't, not everyone believed it. They just thought, how could that really be true? But it wasn't until, you know, historians had gone through it and people had researched it and studied it and put together all the pieces. Because really history is like putting together a puzzle. Like you get a piece here and a piece there and you have to put it together to get the full picture. And so it wasn't until 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80 years later that we finally get the full picture of like, this is what happened during the Holocaust.

And then you're finally able to say, wow, oh my gosh, that was insane. That's literally how I feel about this time now. That in say 50 years, when hopefully, you know, I'm still alive, we're gonna be reading about it, we're gonna be learning, watching documentaries, movies, books, and saying, oh my gosh, I can't believe we lived through that time.

Rachel Denning (16:08.109)
And hopefully we don't say, I can't believe I contributed to that or I can't believe I let that happen. Which is why we're doing this episode today. Right. So we can all just kind of shake our heads a little bit and shake off the sleepiness, so to speak, and say, wait a minute, what's going on? Let's look around. Let's see what's going on. Let's see if we can anticipate some of the puzzle pieces. Let's see if we can notice some of the symptoms. And most importantly, that even if,

If a society erodes and collapses or an economy erodes and collapses, your family does not have to follow suit. Exactly. That's the most important piece. You don't have to participate. You don't have to be swept along.

You don't have to ride this train into the abyss. You can say, you know, I'm getting off of this stop. And I'm going to walk over here and kind of get out of the way. I'm going to get out. And in many ways, I'm going to try to give several visual examples. But you could definitely see it like an avalanche. And when it just lets loose, everything that's in the path is getting taken out. And you and your family can say, you know, we're going to get out of this little couloir here.

And you know, hopefully along the way telling people and say, hey, come with us. Let's do something. There's an avalanche coming. Let's get out of here. Let's go. Get out of the path of destruction. Yeah. And again, gosh, I know this might sound extreme to some of you. It might sound fanatical. I hope you know us well enough to know we're extremely optimistic people. And we're also very reserved in our opinions, meaning we think about something for a very long time. I mean,

We've been thinking about and talking about this for a very long time before we ever thought, hey, let's do an episode about this. Now I know we've talked about the fourth turning before. Which fits into this perfectly. Exactly. It's a part of it. We have done some episodes, or maybe there were coaching sessions about the fourth turning, which is what we're in. We're in a fourth turning right now. And the great reset. There's so many people talking about it. Well, not so many people. There are several people talking about it in a big picture way.

Rachel Denning (18:25.199)
saying, look, the tide is going out on the economy and society. So let's dive into some specific things we're seeing and ways we can.

I don't know, anticipate what might happen, but most importantly, protect ourselves and our families and not be a part of the problem. Okay, I guess it goes in layers. One layer is don't be a part of the problem, don't contribute. The next layer is become a part of the solution. At least for sure in your own family. And by doing that...

you're actually a part of the solution as a whole, just by getting your family right. Some few of you might feel like you need to take a bigger role even beyond your own family in being a part of the solution, raising a warning voice or making some big changes somehow, some way. One of the things that's becoming more and more apparent, and we've been, I started noticing this 20 years ago, it was just people were becoming so divisive.

And I can see the division. They're divided, but they're divisive. They want to create separation and animosity and enmity and madness. Whatever happened to the ability to just disagree?

and still be agreeable. Right. And can we have totally different opinions? And be able to have a conversation about it. Yeah, just talk about it. Even debate. We don't even have to argue. We can debate it. We can have passion. But it's led to this, no man, if you have a different idea, it gets violent or mean or I hate you, you're wrong, you're an enemy, you're evil. Or you're labeled as something, you know, a f—

Rachel Denning (20:18.831)
phobic of some something whatever it is that you're addressing. Isn't that interesting? If you have, if you stand for something, you're like, well, you know, I think I believe in this. Oh, you're, yeah, you're, you have some phobia. You're anti this. Yeah, you're. No, I'm not anti this. I'm pro this. You're hateful. Like, well, I'm, I'm, this is, this is one of the standards, I think, that holds society together. Oh, you mean you hate this or you despise that or you're afraid of this or you're a bigot or racist or prejudiced? I mean, it's really interesting. So it's become. No, that's not what I'm saying.

It's become very mean. Yeah. Yeah, and it's very interesting because I was just thinking back for a minute on our own personal journey because I know that...

Growing up, I grew up in a very conservative state, a conservative family, conservative background. And I really felt personally that as we began to travel and live abroad, that at least in my mind, I became more of a liberal. Like I felt like I...

my viewpoints became more, if you want to use left and right, became more left leaning, so to say. We lived among people who lived, and again, we're using these labels in generalization, again, trying to help for the conversation. I don't even like using those labels. But we went and lived among people who lived very, very, very different lives. Opposite sort of lives, yeah. And we became friends with them, and we had conversations, and openly asked about why they believe what they believe, and why they live the way they believe.

way they live. Right. And so our viewpoints and our mindset opened up a lot more, became a lot more inclusive, so to say. But I remember distinctly at a point when I felt like that switched. And suddenly now where I had viewed myself as being more liberal, now...

Rachel Denning (22:13.869)
I wasn't liberal. Like I was maybe center or I was over in the right again because the, and again we're using these labels, the left had moved significantly further left and so I was no longer in that camp and it's like I hadn't moved, originally I had moved, I moved from my conservative upbringing to more left if we want to use this imagery.

but now the left had moved and so i was no longer there and i remember thinking like what what's going on here and and people have would bring up something email me or say things in comments accusing me of you know positions are thinking that was right wing or extreme and i'm like what what are you kidding what excuse me i'm totally confused here and it was things that from my personal experience having interacted with people of all cultures all

belief systems all races uh... religion religion you know lifestyles sexual orientation all these things my views had developed from that personal interaction and from reading thousands of books and traveling to all the countries we've traveled to right so it was like real firsthand experience and then i would have these people telling me things and i'm like

No, that's not how it works in the real world. Maybe that's your theory, but I've talked to a black woman about this very thing and she disagrees with you. You know, that type of stuff where it was like, no, I don't know where you're coming from with this. I remember specifically it was something about white privilege or whatever and I said no, that's not how it works. I've talked to a black woman.

who gave me this speech essentially of saying i can't stand these people who tell me that they have white privilege and essentially i have not that was an awesome moment it was that ladies amazing yeah and so you know it was this real world experience it was this real world liberalism if you want to call it

Rachel Denning (24:15.341)
And I would start looking around and I'd be like, this doesn't match up with now what's being taught and preached and pushed and all of this craziness. I'm like, it doesn't play out in the real world with my real life interactions with real people.

So there's extremely, again, these divisive agendas. Right. And people are very... Which I think in many ways are completely, let's say, hypothetical or...

ideological but when it comes to real -world application it just doesn't work and so ultimately you have you have to be careful about adopting philosophies and viewpoints that don't actually work right because we can say oh I believe this one thing and I this is what I promote and living by but when you actually play it out in the world

No, it doesn't really work. It's kind of like the whole climate change thing too. There's people that say, well, we need to do these things.

but then when you say well why don't you start we should not be using all the electricity we use because it burns fossil fuels well why don't you start walking everywhere why don't you start even when they get their electric car you know i mean it takes so many fossil fuels to make the electricity to run your electric car that it's not actually beneficial to the environment right why don't you stop using the cell phones why don't you stop using you know it's this ideology that you want to live by of

Rachel Denning (25:51.085)
saving the planet but when it comes down to act it was like this person that left a comment on your youtube channel and was talking about your privilege or something and all of this and and i'm like if you really believed what you're saying right now in this comment you wouldn't be leaving this comment on youtube because you would be you wouldn't be able to you would be living in a forest in a commune

and you wouldn't have access to internet or your laptop because the patriarchy is what supports and upholds the internet so that you can have the privilege to sit here with your electricity with your internet and your AC and make these sort of comments about the patriarchy and all this crap you know i mean it's so hypocritical to me that it's laughable if it wasn't actually so sad and in many ways delusional

That's the frightening part about it to me. It's really becoming delusional. And people, many people are getting pulled into some idea, some trendy movement, some sort of activism.

And they aren't thinking through it wholly. They're not looking at it like, Rachel, like you were just talking about, where they're like, hey, well, this actually worked. Will it hold up? Yeah, does this actually work in real life? Let's go back in history and study societies and their rise and fall and the collapses of civilization. Let's see if this thing can hold up or what cause it's had before, because we're not the first... This is the other problem. We think we're the first one to ever come up with like, oh, we're going to do this for this group of minority people.

we're going to have this little thing and we think we're the first ones to ever have that little, that little moment. And it's like, no, those have happened before. And how does it play out? Well, we don't have to talk about it right now, but one of the things I definitely want to cover is compassion and how it can be so misplaced. But you jump on these little things that on the surface might seem like, yeah, yeah, let's, let's what's going on here. And, and we have this knee jerk reaction that

Rachel Denning (28:04.237)
ultimately is contributing to the bigger problem. Right. And I felt like that was part of our own journey, you know, into whatever you want to call it, liberalism or becoming more open -minded.

there's a place for it. Like there is a place and a need for more openness to and more compassion for all people because you know from our own background there was a lot of racism and a lot of prejudice against people and places and beliefs you know and we've been told by many people in our family and friends about oh we're going to travel to this country well you better be careful it's dangerous there because they're this or they're that or they're that and for us back to personal experience you're

you know, we learned on our own, well, that's not always true, that's not always the case. But we've also seen it now, especially, moving even past that to the extreme, and that's what's becoming...

dangerous here because I think on either extreme there's danger. Oh absolutely. Going too far, let's use right and left again, too far right and too far left are extremes that both just totally destroy society. Absolutely. And if a whole of society, like the majority move one way or the other too far it collapses it. Well it's like a pendulum. I think what I'm seeing in our society is a split from the middle. And both groups are racing towards the outer edges where

it seems like this is my prediction, seems like we're moving towards a violent civil conflict. Right. It will likely look different than past civil conflicts because we are...

Rachel Denning (29:49.709)
in a different era with different type of technology. I know I've heard someone talking about it that in some ways it's gonna, I think it's already happening in some ways. It's erupting in these mini conflicts that seem to be getting worse. Like didn't you just see in Atlanta where someone ran over a bunch of people? Just crazy things like that are starting to erupt. I think because of this

crazy divisiveness and extremeness. That's not a word. I like it though. The extremeness. The extremeness that is occurring specifically in the United States. Okay, let's take that as a symptom. The shootings that are happening.

daily. Well, I think the shootings are simply a manifestation of the mental illness that's happening. At the extreme ends, again. Mental illness is a thing and as it gets further and further more and more extreme, it results in things like school shootings. Right, and so it is both extreme but it's also very widespread. That's a big problem. Which, that's what I'm just saying. It's only speaking to the underlying problem. For every school shooting, which they're increasing, there's who knows how many

how many tens of thousands of hundreds of thousands of people that are depressed or anxious or you know are moving towards psychotic yeah exactly and so then the physical health we have a nation well over 70 % are obese overweight health disease diabetes it's all it's preventable stuff well and this is part of the irony and a part of the

red flag here going on with society is that instead of people addressing the fact that obesity is a sign of a problem, obesity is a sign of disease, maybe mental or emotional or both, well, I mean physical, mental and emotional, we're just saying let's just embrace it. Let's just glorify it. Let's just make it, you know, okay.

Rachel Denning (32:07.629)
And to me... Well, not even okay. Let's tell people it's good. Yeah, it's fine to be obese. And the truth is, no, that's not true. If you truly care and love someone or love yourself...

you're not going to be obese and remain obese and the reason why is because it's simply a sign that you are unhealthy it is your body's signal to yourself to say something is wrong here something is off I'm not okay it needs to be addressed and it needs to be fixed and you're quite literally killing yourself sooner

It's like a form of suicide. It's a fast death. Wait, a fast death? Slow death? Well, it's speeding up your death. So you're speeding up your death and well, not even to bring up all the other limitations, all the other things that it means. And that's not saying we're promoting perfect bodies. We're not promoting that. We're promoting healthiness. Here's where people are like, well you guys are prejudiced towards fat people or you're bigots or like that could come...

up again. So when you stand for like, no, no, wait a minute. This is what is healthy. This is what's healthy. You're like, oh, well, are you afraid? Are you guys phobes? There's probably a word, there's probably some kind of phobia. Like you're with me, like we have to have these stands like, no, a healthy, physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, financially healthy society is a happy society, a happy society and a successful society. If you're

If you start losing those things, you've got to talk about it. But again, this is one of the examples of the compassion thing gone way too far. Well, now we just need to have more compassion.

Rachel Denning (33:57.517)
And so that means, well, don't hold a standard. And don't, and well, what we're here to say, don't make anybody feel bad. Right. That's gone way too far. That's when compassion has gone too far because compassion is meant to be shown to people who are helpless. I mean, it's very specifically infants. Compassion works great with infants because they're helpless. But.

as your child grows older if you continue to show too much compassion you actually cripple your child and that's essentially what's happening in society we're showing so much compassion to everyone everywhere that we're crippling people they now can't function because there's no standards there's no boundaries there's no no one's saying this is where you should be to be healthy and happy not because we're controlling or mean and want power but because in order for you to be your

self, you have to live by these guidelines. You have to be able to meet these personal standards needs and standards. Exactly. You have to live up to your own potential. Right. But we're facilitating a digression in helplessness.

And the way we're reacting to this is people are becoming less and less capable. So again, another symptom. We're just naming symptoms here. Another symptom is the failure to launch. All these adults who are acting like helpless children. Yeah. And at 30, they're still living with their parents. They can't keep a job. They can't make it through university. They can't stay in a marriage. I mean, they can't change a car tire. I mean, it's amazing. We have this whole generation.

of young adults who just are incompetent. And they have whole divisions at colleges and now major corporations. Even the military. To help...

Rachel Denning (35:59.085)
to interact with the parents of the students and or new employees. So it's now no longer like they're adults and they handle it themselves. Their parents are stepping in and so now they have the human resource department to deal with the parents of the new hires. They're coming up with like, I'm calling it this, like a baby level entry for things that before you're like, no, you just expected like show up and do the work. Let's go. Figure this out. Yeah, it's uncomfortable. Yeah, it's hard. Like you got it. Let's go. Now that,

oh no no no let's do the infant entry level because you're only 22. By 22 I was married you know and I had my first child by the time I was 23 and yet now it's true that someone just said this recently I forget who but like the teen years have been extended. I remember hearing that.

I think it was someone we just met. It was in England. Our tour guide. Our bike tour guide. The teen years have just been extended. Now teens are just older than they used to be. I remember studying this one. It must have been maybe 10 years ago. Studying this very thing. Where did the term teenager come from? It was like you were a child or you were becoming a young adult. There was no like, let's give us years. All these years here.

just to kind of figure themselves out and kind of work through this. And again, there was misplaced compassion in an effort to kind of be kind and gentle. We've gave them all these years to just flounder. And then now we've extended it even more. So again, this is just another symptom. You guys, we're just, we're throwing out all these symptoms here that if you, if you make it a list or you start kind of graphing this out on a board, you start seeing like, wow.

our society, our culture is really at risk here. Like what, just with what we've described so far, what could that conglomeration of people endure? Not much. Well, and then add to it, of course, what we talked about last time in our...

Rachel Denning (38:15.885)
episode on human trafficking which we of course reference pornography and it's rampant rampant um... okay there's another symptom that roughly seventy percent of males in our society starting as early as age eight

addicted to porn. And now porn has gotten worse and worse and worse where it got really bizarre, then it got very violent, and now like the number one thing is child porn. Right? So let's let that sink in as another symptom.

that a majority, 50, 60, 70 % of the males in your society are addicted to bizarre, violent, childish porn. Well, okay. Or child porn. Not 70 % are addicted to porn. Not necessarily to child pornography, but it almost always leads there. At the extreme ends, it's becoming a child pornography, but... But way more prevalent than just the extreme anymore.

Okay, but the other point of this, the other problem with this is that we kind of addressed it in our podcast episode we did about masturbation, where you have all these men who are watching porn and masturbating to it, essentially. What it does is it removes their drive to actually do something with their lives. It removes the drive for them to have the need to get off their butts, to go out, to have sex,

to put on some clothes, to look presentable, to get a job, to work, so they can earn the love and respect of a woman. If they don't need that because now they have porn,

Rachel Denning (39:56.333)
What's the point? They don't need to do anything else with their lives. They can sit at home, they can play video games, and they can get, you know, they can masturbate to porn. So what does that do to a society when you have all of these men who have literally lost their will to contribute, essentially? So then this leads to more symptoms like as a whole, dating has gone away. It's like non -existent, practically.

Geez communicating for that matter has gone away. It's it's texting and and no this is a whole thing of like the inability to just have a conversation face to face right the communication skills have just dropped out of the roof people are not getting married there's a there's this Massive part of society. It's like no we're not gonna get married. We're just gonna kind of and or or just Well, yeah, I mean I guess I Think the getting married

factor is important because

Even though some people are saying they're committing to long -term relationships, the statistics just show that unless it is more formal, like with marriage, it just doesn't last as long. And that right there, I mean, I remember thinking this just last week or a couple weeks ago, like one of the biggest contributing factors to a lack of stability in your own life over time is to have a continual changing of partners, specifically.

Because when you have...

Rachel Denning (41:29.261)
When you have people that you share a lifetime with of experiences and conversation and intimacy and all of that, like that just builds stability. That right there is the foundation of stability. And people ask us all the time about stability, you know, because we move and we've lived in or traveled to 50 countries. They're like, how do you have family stability? Well, the stability is not built on staying in one place. The stability is built upon your relationships. So when you strengthen the relationships and you have continuity of relationship over time,

that contributes to your long -term happiness and fulfillment. And so if you regularly have, and I mean regularly like even five years, if every five years you had a different partner, that's going to be extremely destabilizing to your own mental health and well -being. It just is. And all the people in your life. Right, because breaking up and divorcing is just hard. And that's another factor though. And I mean we started to see this years ago, not we personally, but society started to see this years ago.

with divorce and now people's excuses why i'm not gonna get married because they don't want to get divorced well but that's another symptom is the divorce rate is so high right that's what i mean uh... so essentially people have just given up on marriage while in reality marriage is a thing not because of some conspiracy in the patriarchy but because i think over in my opinion tens and thousands of years of human history it's something that actually works

It's not perfect. It has its, you know, challenges. But ultimately...

it just works. Marriage is what works for men, for women, and especially for children. Ultimately it works best for children because when children have that stability in their lives, like I was saying, you know, over time, think about it that way. If it's destabilizing for an adult person to go through breakup and divorce, how much more destabilizing is it, and I mean that was your growing up years, to constantly have a new dad in your life?

Rachel Denning (43:31.885)
Yeah, it's crazy. And so, and that has gone up.

I just recently saw another statistic. I think it's close to 45 to 50 % now of all births in the United States are to single moms. Think about that. I know it's above 40%, but let's even say, just let's say 40%. 40 % of the babies born in the U .S. are born to fatherless homes. That...

will have a major negative impact on society. It's been like that for a couple decades. Yeah, already the statistics on prison inmates, I mean I think it's, I want to say at least 70 % of prison inmates. It was in the 90s. Oh, okay. Well, I was going to say 90, but I'm like, I don't want to over estimate here. 90 % of prison inmates grew up in a home without a father. In fact, one of the biggest predictors of...

future of criminal behavior and future prison time is not having a father figure in the home. I mean that's sobering statistics right there. This isn't someone with an agenda. This is just like, hey, why are all these people in prison? Let's figure out what they have in common. Oh, one major thing they have in common is they didn't have a father around. And couples who do get married are waiting to have children or not having children.

So then we have, see this, we're just painting a picture here, you guys. Of all the problems. It is, but it's symptomatic and we want to step way back and think, look at all the things that are happening in society. Now this is not the, oh, the end of the world is coming. It's all lost. What's the point? What's the hope? It's just saying, look, stop.

Rachel Denning (45:28.269)
Stop with your crazy to -do list, checklists, going through all the motions, busy, busy, busy, running your errands. Stop. Thank you, by the way, for listening to this. I'm not yelling at you or getting angry. You're stopping to listen and think about this, but I want you to really stop.

I'd be like, man, what's happening in society? And most people don't sit around and geek out about all this stuff like Rachel and I do. That's why we share this stuff. Because you're going to think, oh my goodness, I had noticed that, or I had noticed this other thing. But wow, to see it all together. Well, to start to put all the puzzle pieces together, which is essentially what we've been doing. Now, you look at that as a sum total, and you think, we are really...

really vulnerable to some major problems and collapsing. And we haven't even touched finances yet. The unbelievable amount of national debt and consumer debt and the total inability of people to provide for themselves and to be self -reliant. To even know where their food comes from. And to know that like the bone has been removed from a boneless skinless chicken.

I thought they grew on the boneless skinless chicken ranch. Right? Like what? Like oh man, it is such a huge problem. Well, you said we haven't even touched on finances, but something I've been thinking about is we haven't even touched on sex. And when I mean sex, I'm not talking about sex, I'm talking about sex and gender because I just did listen to a podcast and this is what made me think about it. It's by this, it was with this woman.

who's written a book, she's from the UK, I think she's from Ireland, and she's written a couple of books actually, but she was being interviewed by Jordan Peterson and they were just having this conversation. She's also very interesting because she actually, she's a journalist, but she also has a background in mathematics, like she was a mathematics major or something like that.

Rachel Denning (47:41.485)
And he was asking her about why she had not gotten on board with all of the trans, gender fluid stuff. And she's like, because as a mathematician, I just couldn't. Like I couldn't, I could never get that to make sense in my brain. She's like, I'm a very logical person. You know, I love math because it's A plus B equals C. Like there's plus and equal and equal means something. She's like, equal means something. And she's like a man.

does not equal a woman. I don't care how you try to add it up. It doesn't." And she said, the thing about this is she's like, if you look at math and you're doing these formulas, they all add up and they're beautiful and they work together and they create this sort of truth and beauty. She's like, but if you take even one small part of that formula, you know, and you're like, oh, well this little teeny part of this formula, it doesn't matter. It's over here in the corner. It's not that important.

And you try to manipulate it or but she says you make it not true you take away that equal sign and now it's no longer true She's like it can literally destabilize the entire rest of the formula. She's like it's no longer correct. It's no longer right everything in the formula Gets undone. That's what I'm talking about that right. There is the point of this whole episode is it starts to unravel the whole society exactly and this this Bizarre

distorted view with sex and gender and all this stuff that now they're teaching to little kids in school. That is another symptom of the destabilization in unraveling society. Well, and that was one of the things they were talking about in this episode. I would highly recommend it. I think it was just called Sex Matters. I think her name was Helen Joyce and Jordan Peterson. They said ultimately, and he said from a biological and a philosophical perspective.

He's like, I can't think of anything that is more like base level, like more fundamental than sex, meaning male and female. He's like, I think that's existed before anything else we know of if we think evolutionarily. Like there was...

Rachel Denning (50:02.925)
different sex chromosomes and cells all the way back from amoebas, you know? And I'm, I've shared this before, you know, I am a Christian but I believe in evolution and this type of stuff to me is very foundational in thinking, man, sex has been around for who knows how long.

you know it could be hundreds of thousands or millions of years it's been around a long time it's not just something that was made up it's not a social construct at all it is fundamental it is foundational to essentially all life

all life forms you know and so if we try to as society tries to convince us that no actually that's not true that's not a real thing he's like what else can they confuse us about you know if we no longer believe that what do we believe do we believe it do we believe anything is anything true if that's not true and so in some ways you know they're saying

This is a big deal. Well, I'm glad you bring up that specific principle of we're bringing up symptoms.

that are making us vulnerable and weak and kind of tearing down civilization and society, but there's groups trying to convince us that those things are good. They're strong. Yeah, they're actually helping society to progress and to become better. And when you stop and look at it or just study history or whatever, you think, wait a minute, that's not going to work. It would be one thing if you're like, hey, yeah, here's this weakness. Yeah, it's a problem. We really should do something about it. It's bad. It's an entire

Rachel Denning (51:43.855)
different thing to be like, no, no, no, this is a good thing and this is a strong thing and it's a helpful thing and wow. Well, and here's the thing, you know, I know for us our approach has always been very pragmatic. We are going to do what works. And so when, you know, when you talk about how they're trying to promote these ideas and saying this is the advancement of society, this is the enlightenment of society, this is the next step and

to be honest i have examined that because i thought if that's true i want to know i want to be on board with that so i have spent time thinking about it and examining it and like rotating it like a rotisserie chicken in my head trying to see okay is that true but when it comes right down to it the pragmatic side of me says no it doesn't work

Because ultimately, I'm going to do what works for me, for my family, and for society as a whole. And hands down, I know, not just from personal experience, but from traveling to dozens of countries and reading over 1 ,000 books, that what works is a family. That's what works. So.

If you're trying to tell me something that ultimately destabilizes the family, no, that's not going to work. That's not going to play out in a way in society that's going to be good. It's not. In fact, it's going to have very negative consequences for society as a whole. And it's terrifying in a lot of ways.

because it is unraveling our society. And what's interesting is even by us speaking this boldly, people would hate us and label us and classify us and accuse us of all kinds of things. And that's another symptom of the bigger problem. Right. It's true. And it's leading to, I think, a civil conflict. But...

Rachel Denning (53:55.181)
absolutely some form of collapse in society. When you step back and look at it, how can it not?

if we're physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, sexually, financially, and socially unhealthy. I think we've given an example of all seven of those things. So if we're unhealthy in all of those things, how could we possibly thrive?

But let's not even go there. Or even survive. Well, that's what I was going to go next. How can we survive any kind of disruption that could come from an implosion from the inside, which is most likely to happen, but also an attack from the outside? Well, or even something as simple as a natural disaster. I mean, we've all seen what happens when a natural disaster occurs, and society's not at their best. Society is kept in check every single day. Like, I mean, we mentioned before, it's a miracle.

that you can wake up and have the power on and the internet working. The only reason is because society is kept in check by rules and regulations and standards and expectations. But once we start to question everything like, well, is sex even a thing? Then, you know, why go to work? Why get up? Why do anything?

And then what happens after that, you know, so say a natural disaster, well now society is no longer kept in check by these things and chaos and hell break loose, essentially. And I don't think any of us fully realize how close we are to that happening at any time. Our son is in Florida right now and they're expecting a hurricane next week. I think, did that hurricane ever hit in California? Yeah, it did. Yeah.

Rachel Denning (55:50.575)
I mean, and Maui, with the fires. I mean, there's so many things going on. So it can happen anywhere. And I'm giving a presentation next week on this very thing, which is so, so, so disturbing. For most of us, when there's a natural disaster or a man -made disaster, our initial thought is, oh my goodness, those poor people, is there something I can do to help?

but for predators which unfortunately I think there's a growing number of people who are predators yes because this is another example when you get rid of expectations of what's okay and what's not the boundaries get pushed I think a perfect example that definitely ties in with the anti -human trafficking which you're going to be talking about is that

Now there are people out there saying, well, I'm just attracted to children. Like, you know, it's not my fault. Some people are gay, some people are trans. I'm attracted to children. What's the wording they use? I forget. Well, now they're again misdirected, mispointed compassion. They're saying, oh, they're... They had some term for it. Child attraction or something. Yeah, I suffer from child attraction or something. So now they're

They're trying to normalize it and some people are wanting to legalize it. Even at the UN level. Child attraction is just a thing. What can you do about it? If there's no boundaries, if you can be a man, a woman, or a cat, why can't you be attracted to children?

Where does the line stop? Where do you draw the line? There is no line as long as you continue to push it. And so then, like you said, the number of predators are growing. Massively. So that when there is a natural disaster. That's what my presentation is all about, is that malicious people, they're waiting around for any destabilization. Of society. Anything that's keeping society in check. So anything that's keeping society in check.

Rachel Denning (58:02.767)
that disrupts normal function of law and order and standards and protection. They are searching out any vulnerability they can find, any weakness, any loophole. They're opportunists and they're... Oh man, it makes me want to swear. They are cowards.

pathetic cowards and they are waiting to prey on any weakness. And they love, it's so sick, they love natural disasters and any problems like that, man -made disasters, anything that disrupts normal functioning so they can take advantage of it. But if society as a whole begins to crumble and gets a little weak, they take more advantage of it. Yeah, but so they go in during those circumstances and they gather children up, they

you know, try to help women but really they're putting them into sex slavery. So yeah, I mean that's happening in increasing numbers, essentially. And the numbers continue to increase, whether it's displaced people, refugees, the...

the millions, the numbers of millions of refugees is increasing, the numbers of millions of slaves is increasing. It's a very huge growing problem. So let's kind of shift to what you can do for yourself and your family. And as I'm sitting here thinking this and you kind of take a step back, like it's actually really easy to stand out. Eat well, exercise, read good books,

work on your relationships, increase your earning ability and save and invest in things and like have good high moral standards for yourself. Study history, pay attention to what's going on. That's a lot of stuff, Greg. No, it's not. That's like, that's so easy. That's the kind of stuff you do in your morning routine. Like that's the kind of stuff you do before everyone else wakes up.

Rachel Denning (01:00:10.029)
because they all stay up late and they're all sleeping in and so you get to bed at a decent hour, you get up and you do your morning routine, you already have this gigantic advantage over all the other people that are self -destructing. I saw this reel on Instagram the other day that it was like our society, specifically the food culture, has become so warped that 90 % of what they're selling in the grocery store is...

not even real food, so that if you even eat real food, people think you're on a diet or something. Like, why are you only eating eggs and meat and milk and cheese and fruit? It's true, though. Societies become so, and again, to me, that's just another symptom of this whole problem. Obesity, that's why. Because the whole food system is corrupt and messed up with, filled with food that's not really food, with all these additives,

and preservatives and things that cause inflammation in your cells, which then leads to...

being obese and health problems and disease, I mean it's all interconnected and all contributing to our ultimate demise. You know, so I took my, this, it reminded me of something else too, as a society. So the whole food culture is a symptom of the problem. Right. But so is the social media thing. I took my kids and we woke up early, went paddle boarding in one of the most stunning areas.

the planet here in Portugal it was unbelievable I mean paddleboard in this cave

Rachel Denning (01:01:52.173)
We did this again and again, all these caves, these places. We'd stop and just, you're just standing there as your jaw drops, cause it's so amazing. And we're just, just taking it in and we'd put our bags in our dry, our phones in our dry bags. So we didn't even, we were just like, this is amazing. Like, I don't even think I want to go through the effort of pulling out my dry bag, pull my phone or take a picture. I'm like, okay, we'll do it. Grab a picture or two. But what we saw,

was again a symptom.

It was these people and you know they were doing it for their social media feed that they just all this these exaggerated movements and and I mean this is big promenade this this elaborate show everybody doing this this dance and the the hair and the arms and the facial things and the weird walking moves and in and out of the beach and and like this big show and effort to get somebody else out of their picture and like move around.

it and then they're there they're standing there they're not looking at the actual view they're not looking at the hole in the cave and this epic thing they're looking at the person taking a picture of him then they run over and look at the pictures and they take more pictures they look at the pictures and then they pack up and leave I'm like I wonder if they even stopped and looked up and noticed the very thing they were coming to see or if they'll just see it on their own feed like it's like but it's so elaborate and so overdone I'm sitting there my kid

and we were just standing there watching like, this is bizarre. And I told my kids while we were sitting in the cave, we were just sitting there observing this. I'm like, if somebody from a totally different society or planet rolled up and saw this, they would be like, what are these people doing? This is so bizarre. They're holding these little phones and the person on the other end of that screen is just acting so strange. Like what's going on? But it's a symptom. It's

Rachel Denning (01:03:56.655)
one of the symptoms of our society. Right, and yet, like, in so many ways, I think that that's what's happening on a bigger scale. Like, if we zoom out, that's what's happening. It's this strange parading and exaggeration of movement and behavior and beliefs and ideology. And if you were to come from another planet...

you'd say, what the heck is going on? Another thing I always think about too is because we've been to a lot of museums, well, we've been to a lot of museums in general, but we've been to a bunch about World War II, because we've done a couple of World War II trips that we've led. And it's so fascinating to me, because I love to look at the ads for propaganda. And from our perspective, looking back 80 years or whatever, you think,

So obvious, you know? I mean, look at this propaganda. You can just point it out. You're like, there's the propaganda right there. And yet, we're right in it. We're right in the middle of it.

and it's can be harder to notice I think but if and I always like to think about it from that perspective I'm like if I were looking back twenty thirty forty years from now am I gonna pick that out and say yep look at that that's propaganda right there. So obvious. Looking back it's so obvious but in the moment why are we so

trusting and naive. I think we want to think like, no, they have our best interests in mind. They're doing this for the good of society. And I know that it's true even for me that you don't want to be the extreme one. You don't want to be the one. I know, but you know me. I don't want to be an extremist. I don't want to be calling people out. You know, and you mentioned before about speaking up. Some people could hate us for saying that.

Rachel Denning (01:05:53.935)
the things that we've said in this episode. And in part that's why we haven't said things before is because...

you can be, you know, it can be terrifying to speak out. So I get that, I understand that. I don't know why it feels terrifying, but for some reason it does feel slightly vulnerable, you know? And that of course is part of the problem. That's why we've gone to the point we have is because so many people are afraid to say what they think or speak out or disagree or say, no, that's wrong. And yet...

That's why we're here. And so, yeah, I mean, we can look back and we can say, yeah, that was propaganda. But in our own time, we're - Can we see it? Yeah, can we see it? And if we do see it, can we say something against it? And I think that's the harder part because it is harder to say, no, that's a lie. Why are you saying that or teaching that? Especially like we were talking about.

on the other end people can be very vicious about them because we've lost that ability to debate and that's probably a part of it we've lost the ability to debate about it and to have a conversation about it you're now just attacked or labeled or even worse canceled, censored all of those things so yeah I mean that's definitely we've been threatened to be deplatformed yeah we have actually how is that even a thing? that was even before I knew it was a thing I just thought they were making it up and I'm like

My response was like, I don't even think that's a thing unless you believe in totalitarianism. Well, turns out they do. And it exists. And it is a thing. And it is happening. That's what's great. Okay, talk about another symptom. Another symptom of a societal collapse is that people are speaking up and saying, hey, wait a minute. This...

Rachel Denning (01:07:52.365)
this thing well even hey wait a minute I have a different opinion and they're like nope shut down you may not speak you can't have a different opinion I mean talk about dystopian novel here they're taking down videos and podcasts and there's all kinds of censoring happening right that that's a huge symptom of a much bigger problem because you start you start censoring free speech where does that end?

Well, and on the other side, if it's all free speech, then that allows, that's why pornography has gone so rampant, so huge, because it was all under the name of free speech. And so there's the, both far ends are wrong and bad for society. Yeah, I do get that. Although in some ways,

I've heard some people talk about it where, you know, if you allow free speech and you allow people to put it out there, whatever it is they want to say or do, yeah, at times you're going to be offended or you're going to do something wrong or bad or horrible or terrible or say something inappropriate, but...

That's kind of the point because then society will respond and say, nope, don't do that. No, I disagree. You're going to get kicked back from those things. It's kind of like this free market of speech type thing. When you have this free market, like we were talking about before, the flow of goods, things tend to work themselves out. Same with free speech. It was kind of like they said,

If you allow the people who have extreme opinions to share their extreme opinions out in the open, then they're going to get corrected by society. If you don't allow them to have those opinions, then they go off in some dark corner and build a little cult around those opinions and there's nobody there to correct them or put them in line or to know what's going on until almost it becomes too late and it's dangerous. So I get that. I think one area where that might not play out, and I think that's what we're seeing, is if as a whole you have an undereducated

Rachel Denning (01:10:07.023)
populace. Well, absolutely. And I think that's the quality. Education is more available now than it ever has been. And I think... People are less educated. Yeah, exactly. Under -educatedness is more rampant than ever. Right. And which, in some ways, that was... This was a conversation that we had when we were in England with our friends of part of the problem. Well, part of the problem, because we listened to a book and it was comparing the time now to Nazi Germany.

Germany, like pre -Nazi Germany especially.

I think one of the problems with society as a whole is that we're not educated enough, like we said, to recognize the patterns of history. We're not educated enough to understand what totalitarianism looks like and why it's even dangerous. Why is that a concern if leaders are doing things that lead towards...

lean towards authoritarianism or totalitarianism. Like, why is that a problem? If we're not educated enough to know where that leads or what that looks like, if we've never read the Gulag or don't understand what it's currently like in North Korea right now, or Cuba, then we're basically uneducated and we think, well, what's the problem? Why can't we censor some speech? Why can't we force everyone to use pronouns?

Right, why can't we do these things? And you think, well, it's not about that thing really. It's about where that leads. It's about where that's going. Do we want to live in North Korea? Do we want to have that type of society here in the United States? No. You're being extremist, Rachel, by saying things like that. But ultimately though, that's the problem, is because...

Rachel Denning (01:12:03.789)
In general, we're not educated enough to realize that that's how it started. When you study the history of those places and those cultures and those times, it started in simple ways. You have to go back and study those beginning years where it was still subtle. Right. It was very subtle. And then watch it grow. Right. And I think we're in the growth period. It started in easy, simple ways. It's like...

I don't know. I know there's analogies about frogs being boiled in water, you know? You're starting out in lukewarm water and you're like, oh, it's not too bad. No, it's good. And then before you know it, you're boiled. And it seems like to me we are close to a boiling point where there's going to be some kind of catalyst that's...

Sparks. It's sparking. And we're already seeing sparks all over, right? Every time we see a riot or a shooting or some... So many running over people. Just some kind of like where you're like, wow, that's crazy. That's weird and disturbing. That's off. That's disturbing. Which is happening more and more. How is that? Yeah, almost daily now on the news, you're like, what?

Is this made up? How could that happen? How could a normal person do that or think that? How are people getting away with these things? Or the messages that are happening, like the lawsuits, you're like, are you kidding me? That passed? Or these laws? Or, you know, I just heard about parents getting arrested in California because they, and I don't know the details of that, but,

schools and the school districts are being fined and punished by the California government for not teaching their little version of sex education in elementary schools. And so the schools are being fined. So the parents rally, I don't know what happened in the rally, but parents are being arrested and maybe they got violent or something. I don't know. But the fact that that's going on, you're like, are you kidding me? Is that really happening?

Rachel Denning (01:14:18.605)
well and again just sent it was putting as many symptoms we can think of right in this episode to say we're not in a good place as a whole right and there was a father in canada i think that was actually sent to jail because he refused to call his daughter he no more something they wanted the surgery well but

the i think the official reason he got sent to jail is because in canada there is now the law where you have to use someone's preferred pronouns and he continued to call her she and so they sent him to jail

I mean I don't know all the details for something like that. And then I think like the doctors can perform the surgery without the parents consent. Yeah, well okay, so that's the other thing. The doctors can perform the surgery of, I think they were going to do a mastectomy on her or whatever and give her puberty blockers or something, but they can literally perform that without parental consent. And so they basically told him, well we're just going to go ahead and do it, and he said, no you're not, she's 13. You're not going to give my daughter a mastectomy.

Because what does a 13 year old know? I'm sorry. They're trying to figure themselves out and you're gonna make, let them make a decision like that that will last for the rest of their life? Anyone who has kids should know that there's something wrong with that. It's disturbing. And this is one of those things that I think back, you know, in 50 years from now, we're gonna be saying, what the hell?

were they doing to our kids? And people will say, how did they allow that? Exactly. What were they thinking? Right. I mean, these were the kind of atrocities occurring in Nazi Germany with all the experimentation they were doing on people that had any sort of mental incapacities.

Rachel Denning (01:16:18.413)
or elderly people or gay people or anything that you can get anyone that didn't fit into their definition of the ideal you know german they they were doing experiments on them and that's essentially what we're doing because don't kid yourself that these are not experiments this is the first time in history this has happened

and to be giving our children drugs and cutting off body parts that's experimentation. It is. So what we're gonna let this these people now in this time experiment on our kids? No, I'm sorry. Not okay.

Rachel Denning (01:17:01.069)
symptoms. Everything we're bringing up here is a symptom, symptoms, symptoms of a whole that's very ill, very, very ill. So again, the whole point of this was to help all of us see what's going on, kind of a big picture, but then make sure in our families we are doing everything we can for ourselves, our marriage, and our kids to be healthy and whole.

right because it's the big piece it is this it's the holistic part of this it's not one thing it's not the other it's not this it's not that it's the fact that it's all connected and it's all interconnected i think ultimately that's the major issue all of these things are happening in all these other different areas like you mentioned the seven different things that's seriously concerning

in a major way. So, and I'll say this as boldly as I can, if we don't deliberately address it, not hoping, if you're crossing your fingers hoping your kids make it through, good luck with that. If we don't deliberately address it, then by default,

We're not addressing it and we'll slip right into it. The kids will absorb it. They'll pick up this crazy thinking. They'll get confused. They'll get unhealthy. Whatever it is. Or it'll just all of that crap will just encroach and just it's like a weed. It'll just get coming to your home and your life and your family. The neighbors, whatever. If you're not protecting yourself and your family and keeping that a bay and deliberately working to keep it out, it's going to come in and it's going to wreak havoc on your family. Right. Yeah. It's just the

garden analogy. If you don't pull the weeds and plant something intentionally, something's going to grow. It is. It can't not grow. So you have to be intentional about what actually grows there. And that means you have to have the hard conversations. And it's not necessarily about telling your children what they need to think exactly, but it's a matter of having this conversation. That's not as effective as helping them think through it. Right. It's having the conversation of like, okay, what's the long -term consequences of that? What's the

Rachel Denning (01:19:18.319)
What's the outcome? What does this lead to? What does that mean ultimately for you? Who do you want to become? Yeah, for society as a whole. What does all of this mean? And you have the conversations about it, not in an offensive or defensive way of trying to make your children...

Because that doesn't think what you want to think want them to think long because otherwise they're in danger You know it's not that it's don't hide them Don't hide them from it either right because that creates naivete that then becomes even more dangerous right exactly and so it's just having openness about it and and having the conversations and watching things that Insight conversation, you know as a family we watched a documentary the other day. That's a controversial documentary But we thought we should watch it

and discuss it and you know, those things are helpful.

uncomfortable sometimes but necessary because this is the culture our children are growing up with and they need to know what to think or how to think about it not what to think per se but they need to know how to think about it or else they're going to automatically pick up the thinking of the people around them like we said and that's when you're dangerous if you parents aren't addressing it and addressing it well very well

We're all in trouble. Yeah, we're all in trouble. This is literally why Rachel created the 28 day challenge and the coaching we do for the women. That's why I created the Be The Man Masterclass in Tribe for men. We're sharing the tools and the strategies and the systems and the tactics. Everything.

Rachel Denning (01:21:08.717)
that we are actively and deliberately working on. We're doing this because we see what's happening in all societies and all these places. So we're making it happen. And then we're sharing because people are constantly asking, like, well, what do I do? How do I teach it? How do I have my kids? How do I keep our family safe and strong? And you're like, well, do this and do this and do that. That's why this all exists. It's not just for fun for your little family. It fits in part of the bigger picture of what we're talking about. Because.

The only way I think any of us are going to make it through this, like you bring it back to what you said before, getting out of the way of the avalanche and then being able to survive and thrive, right? Because no matter what else goes on in the world, there are still these microcosms of things that are happening and we can be a part of that. We can live in our own, so to say, economy, social, mental, emotional, spiritual, everything like that. We can create our own little...

Environment, independent economy. But it's going to require lots of strategy and lots of tactics. Because it will not happen by default. If you just live by default, you're going to get what the world is offering. And that's pretty much a crap sandwich without the bread. And the consequences, the cost for that?

Well, here's the problem. The pain, the remorse, the suffering. Here's even the bigger problem, because not only the consequences for that, but the putting back together of society. Because as we go through the fourth turning and all of these things happen, and then we come move into a first turning, well, there has to be...

leaders who can lead through that and so we have to I know for us that's part of our vision we have to be preparing our children because it's going to be our children and their children who are leading through this and there needs to be those people so you need to decide is that going to be us is that going to be our family and that you have to be prepared for that you have to be preparing yourselves

Rachel Denning (01:23:26.733)
to be able to help put society back together after it goes through this whole tumultuous change that it's experiencing. And if you're sitting here listening right now saying, I can't even keep myself together. I can't even make it through the day. Unless you guys seriously.

I'm being sincere here. We do this out of just absolute love. So join this. Invest in it. Get in the coaching. Get the tools. Read the books. Get in the best health of your life and stay there for the rest of your life. Teach your kids. Do whatever you have to do. It's worth any investment in every effort.

to keep our families in a good spot. We have to. Like you and I feel so strongly about this. And that's why we live the way we live. That's why we've been so deliberate from when we started dating. We knew we had to do things differently if we wanted different results. And it's worth every effort. And you're right, we are raising leaders.

I was talking to the kids about that just yesterday. The experiences they've had, the books they've read, the things they've done, accomplished, and become already in their teens.

is so far above where I was in my teens. Or even in our 20s. Yeah, exactly. And as Rachel and I have voraciously pursued growth and education and experience and leadership and advancement, we just naturally brought our kids with us. It was a family affair. It was a family journey, a family pursuit. So in our own growth, our kids in their childhood have picked up most of what we experienced.

Rachel Denning (01:25:30.447)
in our 30s and 40s, that was their life. And now they have this quantum leap advantage over what we had. And that's exactly what we want for them. So they can lead out and make a difference. Man, I love this stuff. So thanks, you guys. Thanks for...

listening to us philosophize. I hope you'll talk about it more. Think about it, write about it, read about it. Hope you'll share it with people. Share this episode with friends, family, and colleagues. Talk about it with your spouse. Talk about it with your kids at age appropriate levels. Share it. Talk about it in your circles. We have to...

do our part and if we can't stop the avalanche, which I'm kind of to a point where I don't think we can stop the avalanche, but we can get ourselves and people we love out of the way. And then when it collapses, we can help clean up the mess.

Yeah, and you know, in some ways I know personally I've, there's been a sense of helplessness and hopelessness sometimes to think about trying to stop the avalanche when I don't really think it's possible. But that doesn't mean there's still not good things we can do to...

I don't know, in some ways at least save humanity as a whole, right? Even if you can't save it all, you save part of it. And just even today we were watching some stuff with our older kids and our daughter who's 16 shared this, you know, a quote we know that...

Rachel Denning (01:27:16.077)
most people are familiar with it, all that's required for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing, right? And that's, I feel like, where we're at right now. And I know personally for me, it is something that I've been afraid to do, to speak up more, to say what I think, even to share things on Instagram sometimes, or share things, you know, like, for some reason.

That's been something that I've been afraid to do and yet I know that I've just been having this growing sense of like it's something I do need to do. I need to not be afraid because if I do nothing as a good person, which I view myself as a good person that knows a lot of truth, I feel like I understand truth, not all of it, but a lot of it. And if I'm not willing to speak up and to share that,

or to point out when I see mistruth or outright lies, then I'm ultimately just contributing to that myself. And so I know it's terrifying and sometimes overwhelming and, you know, a lot of things, but I think it's something we have to do. A moral obligation. Right. For each of us to do.

do our to be well I think ultimately to become the very best version of ourselves right that's the best thing we can do for society. That part that's for me that that's easy for me I guess is what I'm saying it's easy for me to sit home and I know that that's the first step I know that's a necessary step like it has to happen but I'm like that's the easy part I can be home and I can become my best self all day long but if I have to like outwardly outwardly speak up

That's a whole nother thing, you know? And... And yet we have to. And yet we have to. Because if we don't, not that we're going to stop the avalanche by speaking up, but there may be people that we could have saved, but we won't be able to because we haven't spoken up. Because we remain silent. Oof.

Rachel Denning (01:29:31.277)
saved and or helped contributed to their well -being ultimately. So ladies and gentlemen what do you want or need to do? What's the next action for you and your family? Think about that, write it down and get to work. Love you guys, thanks for listening, thanks for being great people, reach upward.

Rachel Denning (01:30:03.565)
you