Friend Degrees

Over at Freedom Twenty Five, Frost made a post about friends. In my opinion, the post begs the reader to ask him/herself whether or not the friends he/she has are beneficial to your goals in life. Are you surrounding yourself with people who will support your ventures upwards (and vice-versa) or are you surrounding yourself with deadweight who have a net-loss effect on your personal endeavors.

At one point in the post he writes...

But will I call him when I come home from work and my wife has changed the locks and filed a restraining order? When I’m out of money and need a meal and a place to stay?* Probably not.
There are some things in life that you need real friends for. Friends that fate made for you in your childhood, and have stuck around since. It’s not impossible for adult friendships to take on the closeness and permanency that characterizes decades-old childhood friendships. But it’s tough.

He uses the term real friends. This is something I find interesting and something that the English language fails to communicate.

The English language can be pretty shitty with differentiating between different degrees of an idea. There are, as readily pointed out, different degrees of friendship that exist yet no more than two words are ever used to describe them (friend and acquaintance, but the latter seems to only come up in discussions of this nature). Love is another thing that comes to mind, as we have no words for "familial love" and "sexual love" and "brotherly love" but rather just Love. It can get confusing.

I recently saw someone on Roosh V's forums asking if having "friends" was necessary to live a healthy life (paraphrasing). I had to ask for clarification because we only have one word.

The question "is it necessary to have friends who will take a bullet for me" and the question "is it necessary to know people who I can hit up a club with" require two entirely different answers.

In short, I don't think it's necessary to have any friends. You could absolutely live a solitary lifestyle. However, I see absolutely no reason to exclude friends from your life. Friends, wisely chosen, do nothing more than enrich your life.