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March 9, 2006 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
43:07
133 Personal Freedom and Responsibility
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Time Text
Good evening, everybody.
It's stiff.
I hope you're doing well.
It is 10 p.m.
Yes, it's one of the very rare evening podcasts because I have just spent The day with my friend.
It is the 9th of March 2006.
We have been going through the difficult and unpleasant task of trying to figure out where his mother is going to be laid to rest.
So, it is a big purchase with a very little learning curve, a very short learning curve, and no experience.
So, it is not the easiest thing in the world to go through.
It is the first time I've ever gone through it.
And so, of course, my heart goes out to everyone who's ever had to go through it, because it is not Not at all easy.
Now, I had a conversation with my friend tonight that I think might be worth recounting, because it does seem to be something which a lot of people have a lot of problems really understanding.
And I'd like to spend just a few minutes on it as I drive home.
I'd really like to talk to Christina, but it's kind of wet and kind of unpleasant.
Actually, it's very wet and very unpleasant.
And I didn't bring my I did not bring my headset for my cell phone, so if I wanted to talk to Christina, I would have to have my phone sort of cocked up against my ear, which is not good in this kind of driving.
Of course I do, because I know how to prioritize in an insane kind of way.
I do have my headset for my podcasting, so I wanted to put down my thoughts about this conversation I had with my friend.
And for a variety of reasons, we were talking about stress.
And he was talking about he feels frustrated because he used to have a great credit rating but for a variety of reasons he had some health issues and for a variety of reasons he let things slide because he found that when he was stressed his health got worse and of course given the ailment it's perfectly understandable and it's perfectly logical that that would be the case.
And so he was saying that he felt frustrated with himself and upset with himself because he'd let his credit rating slide because he had been lax in paying some bills.
Now he paid them and he said that he felt his credit rating was worse now than it was when he was younger because of this issue.
And I was sort of baffled, and I wasn't baffled because I didn't understand where he was coming from, but I was baffled because he's been my friend for 30 years and doesn't seem to have any understanding of what it is that I mean when I talk about freedom!
It's madness!
Surely repetition, if not intelligence on my part, would have gotten it through to him.
Anyway, so I sort of said to him, and this I think is sort of important when you look at something called freedom, to understand this possibility.
Again, I'm not saying this is perfectly rational.
I think it's logical.
I think it's empirical.
But I'm not saying it's an open-and-shut case.
But he was saying that he felt frustrated that his credit rating was lower and that he He was doing bad things relative to what he did with his credit rating in his 20s.
And I said, but I don't understand.
You chose a bad credit rating and now you say that you don't want a bad credit rating.
And he said, well, what are you talking about, you crazy bald guy?
What are you talking about?
And I said, well, you chose a bad credit rating because you chose when you got bills coming in, when your bills came in, you chose to throw them on your computer table And let them lie there until you got sort of a second or third notice, and then you would sort of pay them.
And he said, well, yeah.
And I said, so you chose... I mean, you knew the consequences of that, right?
It wasn't like you had no idea that if you didn't pay your bills on time, your credit rating was going to suffer.
And he's like, well, yeah, of course I knew that.
And I said, well, then you chose to have a bad credit rating.
And so I don't really see why... I mean, you may choose to want to make that different now.
Like, you might choose to say, OK, now I want a better credit rating, and that's fine.
But I'm not sure what you mean when you say that it was a bad choice.
And so again, we went back and forth on this for a while, and I wasn't trying to be deliberately obtuse.
It's just that I've sort of found that when you want to get someone to understand something that's completely non-intuitive for them, that you have to get them baffled first.
And the only way you can get them baffled is by talking about something that is completely non-obvious to them, as if it were completely self-evident.
That is a very interesting and powerful technique for getting people to start thinking.
Because what they do is they think you don't understand.
It's wonderful.
They think you don't understand, and so they spend more time explaining it to you.
But as they start to explain it to you, they're actually, in fact, explaining it to themselves, and they start to come up with illogical errors.
It's a pretty advanced technique, but I find that it can be very useful.
So, he was saying that it was wrong of me, it was irresponsible of me to let my credit rating slip.
And I was, you know, I just don't understand how that could be the case, because you wanted this bad credit rating relative to other things.
And he's like, well, what are you talking about?
I said, well, you had an illness which was based on stress, and you found it stressful to deal with your bills the moment they came in.
And so you threw them down until you got your second or third notice, and then you paid them.
And that was less stressful for you, and I can perfectly understand why.
It's less stressful to let bill collectors prioritize which order you pay bills in.
And it's less stressful to have stuff happen later than to happen right immediately.
And so, as I said, it's perfectly understandable to me that you chose to have a less beneficial or a worse credit rating by not dealing with these bills up front.
And what did you get in exchange for that?
Well, you got your health.
I'm not saying for sure, but I think it seems to me entirely possible that you bought your health by paying a poor credit rating.
And he's like, you know, he's a smart guy, but this was quite a reorientation for him.
And I think it's important to look at your choices in this manner.
I'm not talking about moral choices.
I'm not talking about rape and murder and theft and, you know, all this stuff which, you know, we don't really have to worry about.
I bet you there's not one person who's listening to these podcasts who's ever even been really tempted by these things, let alone actually done them.
But what I'm talking about are the choices that you make in your life.
Which aren't around these gut-wrenching, mind-busting moral issues which none of us ever have to deal with anyway.
But choices like, should I pay my bills on time?
And I can't for the life of me see why you have to pay your bills on time.
I just can't fathom why that's an absolute.
I don't see any way... I get that the law of gravity is an absolute.
I really get that.
I get that I'm so numbingly white that if I go out into the sun without SPF 9 million for more than 20 minutes, I'm turned into a lobster.
I get that ultraviolet radiation is not something that's negotiable.
I understand that lung cancer lowers your chances of long-term survival.
I get that.
That seems to be like a fact to me.
And I understand that and I appreciate that.
I nowhere see written into the nature of physics that you have to pay your bills on time.
I really don't.
I gotta tell you, I just don't.
So, I do see that there are consequences to me not paying my bills on time.
I surely get that.
And so, for my friend, the consequences for him not paying his bills on time were that, well, you know, he had to pay a little bit of extra interest, and sometimes he got some mean letters, and sometimes, you know, maybe his credit rating deteriorated, and, you know, okay, so what?
So, those are the consequences.
And if people choose to not lend him money anymore, or the cable company cuts his cable off, then those are just consequences.
And I just can't see for the life of me, and you know, please explain it to me if I'm wrong, I just can't explain for the life of me why it's an absolute moral commandment to pay your bills on time.
Now, I understand that if you don't pay your bills, then you're stealing, and I do understand all of that, but this is not the issue.
The issue is paying your bills on time.
Maybe he's got this fantasy, like this Martha Stewart financial fantasy, that what he really needs to do to be a good person is to sit down the moment he gets his bills, and write out a check, and mail them off, and blah blah blah, whatever, right?
But I just don't see why that's the case.
If you're somebody who sends people bills, and you've got any kind of brains at all, and these people are pretty smart, then you do the following.
You say, OK, well, here's how it's going to work.
I'm going to send a bill out for my cable.
Some people are going to pay the same day, and they're going to be over here on the bell curve.
The vast majority of people are going to pay within a couple of days, and then there's a couple of people who are going to pay like 60 days afterwards.
There's going to be a bell curve of when people pay.
I don't know when the hell it is, but that's just some sort of general approximation.
And so you've got this bell curve and my friend fits right into that bell curve.
They've completely planned for people like him and they're perfectly comfortable with that as a business reality.
And we know that because they put something which says if you pay more than 30 days after this bill is due, you owe us an additional 2%.
And so you pay the 2% and everybody's perfectly happy.
So, I just don't understand what the moral rule is called pay your bills on time.
I got pay your bills because otherwise you're taking services and you're stealing and so on.
But I don't get, kind of like, pay your bills on time or you're a bad person, or it's better to pay your bills on time.
If you have a stress-based illness that flares up and could kill you, let's just say, I'm making it up.
You have some stress-based illness that can flare up and kill you, and the only way that you can manage that is by paying your bills later.
I know when I would pay my bills.
I'm not gonna die for the sake of some company having a slightly more efficient set of cash flow projections.
So that was something that, you know, when I talk about freedom with people, I'm talking about choices and consequences and choosing what it is you want to do.
I said, you know, I said to my friend, I said, you know, Christina, I said, take an example.
Christina and I, tomorrow, could choose to sell her house, to sell off Christina's business, to sell off our cars, and to go and buy a sailboat, and to sail around the Caribbean until we die eating fish.
And doing odd jobs for people to buy vitamins or something.
I know one person who's done this and it's a pretty exciting and an interesting opportunity that that person has taken advantage of.
He's with his wife, decided to just retire at the age of 50 or so and just spent his life sailing the Caribbean.
Well, that's great!
Every day that I get up in the morning, I say to myself, or when I remember, I say to myself, but it's true no matter what, do I want to go to work today?
Do I feel like going to work today?
Do I want to go to work today?
Or do I not?
And that's something that's kind of important, because it's a fact.
I can choose not to go to work today.
I can choose to never go back to work ever again.
Now, there are going to be consequences to that, but it's still a fact that I can choose it.
And it's absolutely true with all things that you have in your life.
I mean, you can choose to smoke.
You can't choose, if you've got lung cancer, to not have lung cancer.
But you can certainly choose to smoke.
And you can't choose to live without working.
But you can certainly choose whether or not you want to work.
And I know that this sounds like an abstract principle, perhaps, to you.
But it's really not.
It's really not an abstract principle.
It's a fundamental aspect of freedom.
Because my friend was saying, what I really want to do is to get back to paying my bills on time like I used to, but not be stressed about it.
And I said, well the best way not to be stressed about it is to recognize that you don't have to do it!
That it's a perfectly open, optional, do it if you want to, don't do it if you don't want to, it's a perfectly open and optional choice.
Then there's no stress in doing it, because you're not forced to do it.
You don't have to do it.
You don't sort of face, oh, if I don't pay my bills this month on time, I'm a bad and irresponsible person, and I'm getting a bad credit rating, and that's lackadaisical, and I'm lazy, and I mean, that's stressful.
That really is stressful, and nowhere exists in reality.
Those kinds of moral absolutes nowhere exist in reality any more than governments do.
And so when I'm talking about freedom, this is a pretty important aspect of it.
In fact, you could say that it's the most important aspect because it's something you can do every day.
So when I get up in the morning and I say, do I want to go to work today?
I'm saying, do I enjoy living in this house with Christina?
Now, fortunately, Christina's business is going so fantastically that my goal of becoming a kept man is coming so close, so close.
I can almost taste it.
Oh, and it tastes like plums.
So, with Christina, she could pay the bills, I could choose to stay home, and I could choose to pick my nose and eat bonbons all day.
And that's a perfectly viable option.
I'm perfectly free to do that.
What are the consequences?
Well, Christina might leave me.
If I see some attractive woman at the gym, I can go up and chat with her.
I can choose to have an affair with her.
Absolutely.
I'm perfectly free to do that.
Christina might leave me, and I might hate myself, and I might have betrayed every value that I stand for, but I'm perfectly free to do it.
I'm not faithful to Christina because I will be a bad person.
If I'm not, I'm faithful to Christina because I love Christina so much, I want to have her around in my life, and I don't want to do anything to hurt her.
Because if you make up these rules called, if I don't pay my bills on time, I'm a bad person.
If I don't show up to work at 8.59 in the morning, I'm a bad person.
If I don't get an A, I'm a bad person.
Well, you're just a slave.
You're just a slave to a bunch of made-up rules that you use to bully yourself, which don't exist anywhere in reality.
And I don't want to spend this podcast talking about the difference between rules like pay your bills on time and rules like don't kill, don't rape, don't steal, because that's something that would take a little bit of time and I sort of want to focus just on this aspect of freedom.
You don't have to do anything.
You, my friend, do not have to do anything.
If you're in school, guess what?
You don't have to turn your assignment in.
You don't have to take an exam.
You don't have to pay your taxes.
You don't have to do anything at all.
Nobody can force you to do anything.
There's no rule out there which marks you as a good or bad person for things like showing up to work on time, Paying your bills on time, dotting your I's, crossing your T's, keeping a tidy house, eating well, eating badly, gaining weight, not gaining weight, being obese, being too skinny.
There's nothing.
I don't understand this thing with weight.
You're not a bad person if you're overweight.
You're just making a choice.
And there are choices.
Like all choices, those choices have costs and benefits.
You know, the cost is, yeah, okay, maybe you've got diabetes, maybe you won't live as long, maybe you won't feel like you look good in a bathing suit, maybe you won't look good in a bathing suit.
But so what?
You get to eat bonbons and you don't have to go to the gym.
There are times when I'd love to sit down and eat bonbons and not go to the gym.
And I choose differently.
But as long as your choices don't... I mean, freedom is the value, right?
Freedom is the value because freedom is a fact.
Now the reason that rape... I won't get into this in a big deal.
The reason that rape and theft and murder... They infringe on other people's choices.
They infringe on other people's freedoms.
If I'm a single guy and I live alone and I say to myself one morning, I get up and I say, you know what?
I don't want to go to work.
I'm going to go downtown.
I'm going to score me some horse.
I'm going to get me some smack.
I'm going to get me some heroin and I'm going to become a heroin guy.
Fantastic.
Perfectly valid choice.
I don't like the consequences.
I'm not going to do it.
But you're not infringing on anybody else's freedom and you're perfectly free to do it.
And if you do end up being some, I don't know, I'm just sure that there are people who can manage the heroin addictions with methadone and so on.
So I'm just taking a ridiculous and stereotypical result.
But let's just say you end up some sort of leprous, scabrous junkie selling himself or herself for For sex, for drug money, whatever.
Well, that's just a consequence.
But you're perfectly free, don't you?
At any moment of the day, I can just choose to leave whatever the hell I'm doing, go downtown and find a way to buy some heroin.
Perfectly valid.
I might get busted, that's a consequence.
I might get addicted and lose everything, that's a consequence.
But I'm perfectly free to do it.
So my friend was also talking, oh, I get into work around 9.30.
And I said, well, I'll tell you my work schedule is that I am an IDAL.
I've always been an IDAL since I was a little kid.
And the way that my brain or physiology works is that I really can't get to sleep before one o'clock in the morning, and I generally need like eight hours of sleep.
I'm not one of these people who can function on less than eight hours of sleep.
I can function, but I'm not happy.
I'm really not very happy.
I hate being tired.
Now, if I could fall asleep at nine o'clock at night, then I would get up at four o'clock in the morning.
Or three o'clock in the morning, or five o'clock in the morning.
And then I'd be at work by 6.30.
And I would look like the most virtuous guy in the world, maybe, if you sort of think that the early bird gets the worm, as if anybody wants a worm.
But that's not me.
It never has been.
There's no switch on my leg that I can flick that says, ah, I am now asleep and I'm going to wake up in eight hours fresh.
That's just not the way my physiology works.
The way my physiology works is I fall asleep at 12.30 and I get my best sleep from about 10 to 8 or quarter to 8 and 20 past 8 in the morning.
That is the situation.
I'd love to change it, but I can't.
I go to bed at 11 o'clock, I don't fall asleep.
And then what happens is I sometimes miss the 12.30 window and don't get to sleep till 2 or 3.
So that's just the facts of my physiology that I'm working with.
So I need 8 hours, I can't fall asleep before.
So what does that mean?
Well, it means that I've got to get up at 8.20.
That's the latest I can conceivably get up at and get to work by 9.15.
And when I first started this job, the guy who I was replacing was sticking around for a couple of weeks to help me transition.
And so when I started as the director of technology at this company about three years ago, the guy said to me, can you be here at 8 o'clock in the morning?
And I said, physically, yeah.
And he's like, well, what do you mean?
I said, yeah, I can be here at 8 o'clock in the morning.
There are times when I have to get up at 4 o'clock in the morning to get a flight to Des Moines, Idaho or someplace.
And I can do it, but I'm just not going to be alert.
I know myself now.
I'm like almost 40 years old.
I know myself enough now to know when I sleep and when I'm rested and how my alertness is going to be and so on and what's best for me.
And so he said, we'll be here at 8 anyway, right?
Because this is why I do things.
It's one of the reasons why I had to change the culture when I came on board of this company, because it was very military top-down.
So, of course, I came at 8 o'clock in the morning.
And I didn't say very much, and I was tired, and I couldn't stay focused.
And, you know, so I did that for him while he was here for a couple of weeks.
And then the moment he left, I started coming in at 9.15.
Why?
Because I don't get a day back if I'm tired.
Let's say I get up half an hour earlier, it has a significant effect on me whether I'm tired or not.
And I don't get that day back later if I drag my butt through the day tired, as opposed to feeling fresh and happy.
I don't get that day back later, you know, Why would I give up that half an hour?
And of course I stay till 5.30 or 6 o'clock quite often as well.
And I do get up at a moment's notice if somebody has to make another meeting and I have to go and cover a meeting.
I will absolutely fly out on a Sunday afternoon or early on a Monday morning at 4 o'clock in the morning to go and make a meeting.
Sure!
Absolutely.
It's not like I just expect, right?
I do that so that I can keep getting the 9-15 thing, because it's the difference.
To me, it's the difference between a happy life and a life not so much with the happiness.
Because it's kind of tough to be happy when you're really tired.
And I just can't get any other way, after many years of experimentation, I can't find any other way to get good and regular sleep.
So there's no rule for me called come to work at nine o'clock in the morning that makes me a good guy or makes me responsible.
For me, coming into work at nine o'clock in the morning is completely irresponsible.
Now, just as I'm free to say I want to come in at 9.15 in the morning, my employer is perfectly free to say you're not allowed to do that.
You have to be here at 9 o'clock in the morning, right?
So if I worked on a factory line and the factory all came whirring up into action at 8 o'clock in the morning, and if you showed up at 8.15, they lost a billion dollars worth of productivity, well, of course you would have to be there.
And if you weren't there, they would be free to fire you, right?
Everybody's free!
Everybody's free!
There are no external rules which say you have to do this, or you have to do that.
Other than, I don't pinch on people's freedom, blah blah blah.
So, I was just saying to my friend, I said, what on earth is wrong with showing up at 9.30?
Does that make you a bad guy?
Do you leave at 3?
No, you stay till 5.30.
I know I've called you a couple of times on a Sunday over the past month or two, and you've been in at work for four or five or six or seven hours.
So how on earth could it be called responsible to show up to work at nine?
My basic concern about this is what is called responsible.
It's usually something that benefits somebody else, right?
It's another word for exploitation, right?
It's another thing, I'd say business excellence.
Excellence in business.
Well, you know what?
It always just means overtime.
It always just means work without compensation to enrich shareholders.
So, I have a certain amount of suspicion when people start saying, should and better and responsible and optimal and, you know, whatever.
I mean, whatever labels people put on these things, like punctual or whatever, right?
No!
You don't have to be punctual.
You don't have to show up anywhere at any time for any reason.
You don't have to go and get an annual checkup.
You don't have to go to your dentist.
You don't have to go to work tomorrow.
You don't have to do smack!
I don't have to go to work at 9.
I don't have to even go to work at 9.15.
If I want, I can roll into work at 11.
And he said, but people, they have a negative opinion about that.
And I said, well sure, but that's not because they know anything about the truth.
They have a negative opinion of you showing up at 9.30.
Why?
Because you have a negative opinion of you showing up at 9.30.
Not because of them, it's because of you.
People will just Give your funny looks or make jokes that you could sort of take as a bad comment on you.
And then if you exhibit guilt, then they'll go, ah, he's guilty about something, therefore he's doing something wrong.
They don't have the something wrong to begin with because moral philosophy is not even remotely advanced to the point where anybody has general knowledge of right and wrong in any kind of real or meaningful way.
I mean, it's sort of like astronomy to the ancient Egyptians.
I mean, nobody had any clue what the facts of astronomy were.
6,000 years ago, because the science of astronomy hadn't been developed enough.
And for us, the science of ethics is nowhere close to being developed enough, even within elite specialist circles, let alone academic circles, let alone artistic circles, let alone the general population.
It's inconceivable.
So nobody's sitting there going, oh, 915 or 930, that's bad.
He's bad.
He's irresponsible.
He's a bad person.
He's lackadaisical.
He's careless.
He's unreliable.
I mean, people, they don't know anything about it.
They just make words up.
What they do is, basically, they throw muck at you, and wherever it sticks, they call it morality.
That's the modern moral mind.
It's just complete nonsense.
They just make up anything they can come up with.
And you know that.
You know that because these are people who say that if I go out and kill a hobo, I'm a murderer.
But if I go out and kill an Iraqi, I'm a hero.
You're telling me these people, the general population, that's even the remotest freaking clue about ethics?
They have no idea whatsoever.
They just throw mud at anybody, and wherever it sticks, they call it right or wrong.
So, for instance, I mean, it's just a matter of showing confidence and knowing yourself.
When people gave me funny looks, or still do give me funny looks about rolling in at 9.15, then...
I say, oh man, it's an early day for me.
Oh man, I'm normally not even able to think straight until ten.
And they sort of laugh, right?
Because I'm not buying into this rule that I've got to be here at nine o'clock or I'm a bad guy.
Because there's no such rule.
There's gravity, but there's not that rule.
I've never seen that written in the nature of things or inscribed upon the surfaces of atoms.
Must be at work by nine!
So it's no moral absolute, of course.
I mean, there are time zones.
It doesn't take a lot to dissolve that.
Or if they say, oh yeah, oh Steph, he only comes in at 9.15.
And I said, and the beauty of it is that I also leave at 3.15 after a two-hour lunch.
So I really, I think I've got it made.
Right?
So they realize that I'm not going to be cowed by anybody making sort of snarky jokes about when it is that I come to work.
Because I choose to come to work at that time.
And I don't have to justify my choices to other people.
If they ask me, I'll certainly tell them.
If they say, I'm curious, why do you come to work at 9.15?
And I say, well, I'll give them the same spiel that I gave you.
And, you know, they sort of understand.
Or maybe they think, oh, that's irresponsible.
Oh, that's selfish.
Oh, that's bad.
And, you know, so there's this woman at work, basically, I haven't received, I mentioned this a couple of, about six weeks ago, I haven't received my expenses since October of last year.
I thought about $2,000.
So I kept asking, I kept asking, I kept asking, and I kept getting promises, kept getting promises, and nothing came across.
So finally I just took the corporate credit card and I went out and I put $2,000 of personal purchases on the corporate credit card.
And Then the CFO came into my office and asked me to attend a meeting and I said, some personal goods I ordered came in and I've been really maxed out, I have no money, so I had to put it on the corporate credit card.
I'm sorry, we'll fix it up.
And he's like, oh okay, that's fine, we'll sort it out.
And then when the actual bills came in, the woman who's the office manager kind of came down on me like a ton of bricks, like, have you been using the corporate card for personal purchases?
I said, yes, absolutely, I have.
And it's a real shame.
But I just don't have any money.
And these goods came in that I ordered, and if I didn't buy them, they were going to be released.
It's been really tough for me not to get my way.
I didn't get my expenses, blah, blah, blah.
So I had to use this.
And she's like, oh, so you'll write us a check.
Well, first she said, Does the CFO know about this?" And I'm like, well, yeah, I mean, I told him.
And she's like, oh, so you'll be cutting us a check then right away?
And I said, no, just deduct it from what you owe me.
And so, I mean, she's really upset, and the CFO is upset, and they're acting as if I've done something really wrong.
And, of course, it's the last thing in the world that I wanted to do, other than being out $2,000, right?
So, I mean, this is something that you don't really want to do, but you just have to do, right?
What are you going to do?
The funny thing is that I actually miscalculated, and I actually owe them a couple of hundred bucks, and I feel absolutely no pressure to pay it.
Because they took five months, and Lord knows how much longer they would have taken to pay me, but they took forever to pay me.
And so I do owe them this money, and I will get to it when I get my next pay.
Well, they owe me a bunch of money in commissions, right?
Percentages of software deals that I've closed.
And so when they ask me for this money, I'll say, oh, I'm still really strapped for cash, but as soon as you give me that check, I will absolutely give you the couple of hundred bucks.
And I'm sorry to have to do this.
I really am.
I think it's a very sad thing.
And, of course, I won't get into the reasons why I'm still at this company, because hopefully I'll be able to talk about it soon, but it's sort of part of a larger plan and so on.
But, of course, people who say, oh, it's bad.
You use a corporate card for personal reasons.
You're stealing from the company and so on.
It's like, well, They're just choices and consequences, right?
They chose not to pay me, and that's fine.
They can choose not to pay me my expenses.
I put money out for business trips and so on, and they didn't pay me, and that's fine.
That's their choice.
I think it's wrong, but I'm not going to take them to court for that, for a variety of reasons.
So I just make my own choices back.
Okay.
So now I will simply take the money back through the corporate card.
And then they could say, well, okay, we're going to cancel your corporate card because you obviously, you're not handling it responsibly.
You're taking from the company.
Well, that's fine.
Then I simply can't go on business trips.
I mean, everything is just a choice and a consequence.
I could, if I wanted, choose to go on business trips and fund it with my own visa and then hope, like heck, that they would give me the money back at some point.
I choose not to do that.
But they're all just choices.
Of course, people who want to exploit you are going to throw around terms like responsibility and punctuality and excellence and career commitment and a dedication to quality and team play.
They're going to say all of these things, but none of these things exist in reality whatsoever.
They're all just choices and consequences.
People will always want you to make choices based on consequences that they themselves would never accept.
So they, the people who run the financial side of this company, have absolutely said to me that they don't feel that it's important to pay your bills within five months of receiving them.
Because I handed in my expenses five months ago and have every month since then.
And I have done more than my fair share in keeping the bargain up because I haven't charged them any interest for the money that I've lent them for five months.
So I'm not out there trying to be punitive.
I am just trying to figure out the best way to ensure that I get what's fair for me, and what's fair for them, and what works out.
And so that's all it is.
Choices and consequences.
Choices and consequences.
That's sort of all I'm really talking about.
And if you don't get the consequences, then you can't really, I think, you can't really understand or appreciate the choices.
And that's a very, very, very important aspect of freedom that I hope I'm not beating to death.
It took a very intelligent friend of mine, who obviously is going through a very difficult time, some time to understand this.
But that's really what it is around freedom.
So to circle back to where he came from to begin with, how can I end up wanting to pay my bills without being stressed, without doing it, because it's a have-to?
Because I'm a bad person if I don't pay my bills on time.
And I said, By understanding that it's a choice.
By understanding that it's a perfectly valid and interesting option to pay your bills on time.
And maybe you want to do it, and maybe you don't want to do it, but there's absolutely no reason why you should have to do it whatsoever.
And that, to me, is a very, very important aspect of life, and of maturity, and of understanding the facts of reality.
That there is absolutely no reason why you have to do anything.
There is absolutely no reason why you have to get up and go to work tomorrow.
There is absolutely no reason why you have to brush your teeth or floss.
It's all just a matter of choice.
And the more that you pile down labels upon yourself which force you using the heavy hand of absolute morality, which really should only be reserved for evil, for violence, not for showing up to work at 9.
Like, don't use a club, don't use a scud to kill a fly.
Come into work at 9, 9 o'clock, who cares?
It's not important.
What's important in life is things like, you know, ethics and love and integrity and respect and all of those things which are around fighting the good fight for moral reasons and around opposing violence and evil and the things like the state and collective concepts like racism and, I mean, that's important in life.
Showing up to work at 9 to use the sort of heavy, emotionally charged and bullying terms of ethics to say that it makes you a good person to come to work at 9.
I mean, it's just such overkill.
It's ludicrous.
I remember somebody saying to me once that their father was a lawyer.
And their father said, That if you spend more than 30 seconds searching your desk for a piece of paper, for a document, you have fundamentally failed as a professional.
And I thought, oh my goodness!
Are you kidding me?
Fundamentally failed as a professional?
I mean, my God!
Looking for a piece of paper?
I mean, that's just insane!
I mean, I would say that you've probably fundamentally failed as a professional if you're a surgeon and you get paid to kill a guy and you take the money and kill the guy.
I can sort of see there that you've kind of fundamentally failed as a professional.
Because, you know, you just killed a guy.
But I really can't see that if you spend more than 30 seconds looking for a piece of paper that you've fundamentally failed as a professional.
You know, if you're a security guard and you steal everything that you're supposed to be guarding, I can see that you've kind of fundamentally failed as a professional.
If you're an accountant, and you are supposed to do somebody's books, and you steal from them, and get them thrown in jail by covering up, I mean, by covering your tracks so they're the guilty party, or they look like the guilty party, yeah, you've fundamentally failed as a professional.
I mean, the idea that it's got something to do with looking for a piece of paper, I just think that stuff's kind of funny, right?
It's all just a choice.
I'm not saying that there's anything wrong at all with having an organized desk and being able to find a piece of paper in 30 seconds.
But there's no such thing as everything else being equal, right?
So my friend said in the car, he said, well, everything else being equal, wouldn't, isn't it better to have a better credit rating?
And I said, well, of course it is, but there's no such thing as everything else being equal.
It's like everything else being equal, wouldn't it be great to live forever?
Well, sure, but there is no such thing as living forever.
So, so what?
Because all of the time that you spend Organizing your desk so that you can find that piece of paper in 30 seconds is time that is subtracted from your day exactly the same as the time that you spend looking for papers when your desk is disorganized.
So if it takes you five minutes to find a piece of paper rather than 30 seconds, but it takes you four and a half minutes to tidy your desk so you can find the piece of paper in 30 seconds, so what?
What have you done?
Nothing!
You've gained nothing!
Now, there's a cost-benefit analysis to it.
So maybe it takes you 10 minutes to organize your desk and it saves you half hour a day.
Well, maybe that's good.
But maybe you hate tidying your desk and you would rather spend the half hour a day looking for a piece of paper.
Are you allowed to do that and be happy rather than to organize your desk and not be happy?
Okay, of course you're allowed to do that.
Does that mean that you may miss a promotion because you're slightly less efficient than somebody else?
Sure, maybe that's what's going to happen.
But so what?
Choices and consequences.
If you say, it's more important to me to not to have to organize my desk and to look like a slob and miss out on a promotion, that's great.
Because if the promotion means that I have to spend more and more time organizing my desk, or God help me, dealing with people who do nothing but organize their desks, I don't want that anyway.
It's all just choices and consequences.
Now, it doesn't make much sense at all, logically, right?
I mean, to say, I both want to have the promotion that comes from being unbelievably efficient in a situation where cleaning my desk means that I have to spend less time looking for papers.
That I want all of the benefits as if I had been efficient without being efficient.
I mean, that's illogical, right?
So, if you choose to not organize your desk, but to spend half your day looking for papers, and thus you're half as productive as the other guy who organizes his desk, then you can't really complain if he gets paid more and gets promotions that you don't.
I mean, you can, but it's not too bright, right?
So it's the same thing with exercise, right?
You don't have to exercise.
I don't have to.
Every day I can choose not to go to the gym.
But if I don't go to the gym, then I'm going to gain some weight because I love to eat.
I'm going to feel less healthy.
And I'm going to risk diabetes because I enjoy sugar.
All these things, they're all consequences.
I don't choose those consequences.
I choose to go to the gym.
But I'm not a better person for going to the gym in any way, shape or form whatsoever.
I mean, the only way that I would say that ethics come into it is if you're the single mom of a kid who depends upon you and you, you know, are morbidly obese, don't go to the gym, die of a heart attack, and your kid's got no one to take care of them.
Well, yeah, okay, maybe there's some ethical elements involved in that, but I can't say that that's the most common scenario for weight gain or weight loss in history.
And I think that's Where people get messed up.
This is where people aren't free.
Oh, I really should lose... I've got to lose weight.
I'd be so much healthier if I lost weight.
So?
So what?
But you don't get to eat as much food and it's a drag to lose weight.
I've only had to do it once in my life after I... for a variety of... I was just traveling all the time on business, and I lost the habit of going to the gym, and I was eating business food with clients, and oh lordy!
I put on about 10 or 15 pounds, and I had to lose it.
And it wasn't the end of the world.
I just started going back to the gym, but it was a drag to be a little bit paunchy, and I didn't like it, and so I lost the weight.
But it wasn't like I got to eat all that great food, and I didn't have to go to the gym, and I didn't feel like it.
So I just, I mean, if you want to lose weight, then lose weight.
But it's got nothing to do with being a good or bad person, or right or wrong.
Healthy is not better than unhealthy.
I mean, 99 times out of 100, healthy is not better than unhealthy.
It's just a choice.
Choose it.
Don't choose it.
Be free!
Don't organize your life with all of these little whirring clubs and knives of death of shoulds and have-tos and gottas and responsibles and excellence and... Oh, Lord, it's just a nightmare!
Who'd want to live like that?
We get enough of that crap from the government.
Why institute it in your own life?
If you recognize the facts of reality, that there is in no way inscribed in the nature of things in any way, shape or form, any of these shoulds or have-tos or better or worses.
Oh, I got to go to the gym because I got to be healthy.
I don't want to have diabetes.
Get diabetes.
It's a choice.
Get diabetes.
Smoke.
Have lung cancer.
It's a choice.
It's a choice.
And that's what freedom really means, right?
Freedom means choose whatever you want, right?
As the ancient Greek saying has it, take what you want and pay for it.
Take what you want and pay for it.
Do what you want and accept the natural consequences.
Eat chocolate cake all you want.
Don't go to the gym.
You will get unwell.
But so what?
You've had all the great fun of eating chocolate cake and not going to the gym.
If that's what you want, that's what you want.
Feel free to choose that.
And if you want something different, or if you change your mind, feel free to choose something different to accept a different set of choices and consequences.
But freedom, really, is to recognize that they are absolutely up to you.
Because, brothers and sisters, we're all going to end up food for worms.
And the choices that we make in our life add up to nothing when we're dead.
And we really should be free to make the choices that are the best choices for us.
And don't let anybody tell you that you have to or it's better or right or wrong to make this choice or that choice, to show up on time, to not eat chocolate cake, to go to the gym.
Don't let anybody tell you that.
That is just a form of subtle, insistent, tiny enslavement.
And it just whittles away at your freedom to the point where eventually all you're doing is managing the stress of all of these little absolutes and not actually living at all.
And I think that's a terrible shame, because living is such a joy.
When you're free.
Thank you so much as always.
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