Is this an IEI? What is it? (Actually I now basically think this is an IEI.)
Frankly, I love this monologue.
Except for the part about ditching/shaming friends, I suppose. I'm referring mostly to where he said something along the lines of, "if your friend's a banker, shun that person for not being morally perfect enough, and get that person out of your life." It seems kind of callous. It's like, 'yes I'll keep Bob and Diane, but John, he works fairly high up in a bank right now. He has got to go. I'll be sure to tell him that he's a POS according to my possibly new philosophy. Whatever time we spent building our friendship, none of that matters.'
If one has too serious of a value clash with someone else, they may sort of drift apart anyway, so I don't see the point in actively going through it like that. So I suppose if one is close friends with John it may mean that their own values don't really clash with John's. So then it can be like distancing oneself from druggie friends when one is trying to go clean and improve their life. Their druggie friends just influence them to ruin their life and so they have to cut them out of it. I don't know. I've always felt touchy about the subject of cutting out friends, and what that even says about what the friendship was pre-cut.