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March 27, 2006 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
42:04
162 Goals and Objectives: The Gun in the Room Part 2
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Good afternoon, everybody.
It's Steph.
It's quarter to five on March the 27th, 2006.
A tasty and exciting Monday at work.
I hope you had a great day, too.
And I'd just like to tell everybody who didn't post on the board this afternoon what a long and slow afternoon it was for me.
So I hope you're all doing well.
I was going to start off a tasty little topic, a tasty little medley on intellectual property rights this afternoon.
But there seemed to be some, I shouldn't say confusion, because that actually puts the onus on the listeners, which is never fair, because most of them are far smarter than me.
And so it's not confusion, but rather lack of clarification on my part about this morning's podcast.
Ooh, it's so good to get this kind of instant feedback, isn't it?
This morning's podcast is about the guns in the room.
Because there seems to be sort of a three-stage-y kind of process that people are talking about in terms of gaining freedom, right?
So we start where we are, and then there's a, sort of, identify the problem, and then there's an X factor, and then the problem is solved, right?
So this X factor is how do we go about getting from here to there, and of course I've taken another, a number of swings at this little topic, but let me try taking another one at at this topic, because sooner or later, if you shoot enough arrows over a house, you will hit a bullseye, and I'm feeling that this is going to be exciting.
By the way, I started playing Oblivion this weekend, so I'd like to bid you all farewell for a month or two, as Christina and I delve into the dungeons, because it looks like a rather grippingly good game.
So I've been quite eagerly awaiting it since late last year, and I haven't had a new game in, oh gosh, probably about a year, really.
Christine and I played our way through Neverwinter Nights, which was quite a lot of fun, and brought back many teenage memories of RC Cola, greasy pizza, and way too many late nights.
So, if there's someone else there who's had the same experience, I'm sure you know what I'm talking about.
So, what I'd like to talk about in this sort of X Factor, and I know that this really troubles a lot of people, and it doesn't trouble me.
Because I ignore it, and I'm also not very bright.
No.
It doesn't trouble me, because it doesn't strike me as an issue that we need to solve.
I know that may sound odd, so I'm going to try and go on from where I was talking about this morning, and sort of see if I can't make the case for why it doesn't matter.
And I'm going to use an EP metaphor, an extended play, dance remix metaphor.
So this metaphor is going to be around a plague, or as Albert Camus would put it, la peste.
Now imagine, if you will, that you are a doctor in a plague, and your opinion is just a little bit different from everybody else's around you while this plague is going on.
Your opinion is that there is a plague, and that people are not well, and it would be really nice if they weren't dying, or if they weren't sickly, yay, verily unto death.
So that's your sort of perspective.
You have this perspective, there's a plague, people are sick, and really, you know, it would be better if they were better.
But one of the things that is different between your opinion of what's going on and everybody else's opinion about what's going on is that nobody else seems to notice at all that there's any kind of plague going on.
At all!
Like, not even a bit.
Maybe a tiny little bit.
Like, maybe it'd be nice if people had fewer colds.
But you'll see people sort of retching up their innards and falling over and losing limbs and eyeballs popping out.
So you're like, wow, you know, this is really bad.
And everyone else is like, eh, no plague.
What are you talking about?
Now, further, let us imagine, this is a metaphor for a political journey, which if I had even an iota of free time in a day, it would be interesting to write up as a shortish story.
But the next step, if you're a doctor and there's a plague going on, is you develop a vaccine.
You develop a cure.
Ideally, you develop a cure, then you develop a vaccine, or maybe you go the other way around.
What do I know?
You develop something that alleviates the problems associated with the, let me be humble and recognize that there are very, very many things which I don't have much of a clue about, and to overstep the boundaries of the few things that I'm good at is never a good idea.
You come up with a cure for the plague.
Now, you have a problem.
Because you have a cure for the plague, but nobody knows that there is a plague.
Although, objectively, there is a plague.
Now, of course, you're fairly aware, I'm sure, that the metaphor here is that violence is the plague, right?
So the world is steeped in violence, but except for a few egregious examples which are quickly forgotten, like genocides and so on, people don't see it.
Because obedience masks the violence, right?
So we pay our taxes and blah blah blah.
So you, as a libertarian, are aware that there is a plague in society called violence, and nobody else has any clue that there's a plague in society called violence.
So people's major question is, okay, so we, as this small group of Médecins Sans Frontières, have figured out that there's a plague and that we got the cure, but the problem is That every time we go to inject people with our cure, they think that we're attacking them.
Which is perfectly logical, if you don't think that there's a plague.
So, when we take out our trusty hypodermic syringes and we want to inject people with our cure to make them better, They're sort of shrinking back from us, going, what the hell are you coming at me with a needle for?
I don't know what the hell you're putting into me.
You're sick.
Get away from me.
And we're like, no, no, you're really sick.
You just don't know it.
Let me inject you.
And they're like, if you inject me, I'm going to clock you one.
I'm going to call the cops.
He's trying to inject me.
And the cops come slithering over, not knowing that they're part of the plague.
In fact, that they're one of the major viruses in the plague.
And they say, if you inject that person with the cure, we're going to shoot you.
To a large degree, this, I think, is a fairly accurate metaphor for what's going on.
And, of course, this is why I call it the Extendo-4, the Extended Metaphor, because I'll be working it out probably at least about 25 minutes.
So let's pace ourselves, shall we?
Now, my argument is that all we need to do is say there's a plague Over and over and over again.
And if you want to understand what I mean by over and over and over again, just start listening at podcast one.
From podcast 160,000.
So we have to say over and over again to get people to understand that there's a plague.
There's a plague called violence in the world.
And if they don't understand that there's a plague, then they're not going to be interested in our cure, and we are going to seem both deranged, i.e.
we have umbrellas out in a clear sky situation, a clear blue sky, and we're running around with umbrellas saying, it's raining, you know, it's raining, there's lightning, bring your cats in!
Bring in your children!
Don't stand under that tree!
Because people, they don't think there's any rain, there's no storm, right?
If people don't understand that there's a plague called violence, then we don't look sane at all.
I mean, this is very important to understand.
We look completely mad.
As the Queen song goes, we look like we're one wave short of a shipwreck.
So it's important to understand that.
We look completely insane to people who don't understand violence.
Who don't understand the prevalence of violence in the modern world.
Or throughout history, but in the modern world.
So there's no trick in this sense to getting people to understand that there's violence in the world, that it's endemic and everywhere and perpetual and always, other than by saying there's violence.
Now, we are way ahead of most cultures throughout history because at least our culture does not condone violence.
And I wish that there was a better word than condone.
Doesn't it sound too close to condemn?
When I was a kid that always got me confused.
But at least our culture condemns violence.
So if we can get people to understand the prevalence of violence, at least they will accept the argument that that violence should be minimized to whatever degree we can.
There's plenty of cultures throughout history that were sort of death cults, where violence was like, yay, double plus good, we're happy, let's get more.
These sort of clockwork orange societies, which is sort of most societies up until the Enlightenment.
So, that's a pretty important thing to understand, that in the absence of establishing the prevalence of violence, we ourselves look both mentally ill and oddly violent.
Because if you understand that, then you can understand why I'm talking recently about the need for some sort of common ground, to find common ground between us and between those who we're debating with.
Find common ground, get them to understand that we want all the good things that they want, but that we want those things without the whole violence thing.
We think that we have got a solution to social problems which doesn't involve violence, which of course is not at all a benefit to people, That's why I say, there's a gun in the room, there's a gun in the room, there's a gun in the room, there's a gun in the room.
That's what we need to say.
to repeat that.
I'm sure you understand.
So that's why I say there's a gun in the room, there's a gun in the room, there's a gun in the room, there's a gun in the room, right?
That's what we need to say.
It's like getting people to see, you know, those, they used to be popular, and there's a Seinfeld episode about one, they used to be popular a number of years ago, where you had these sort of holographic, or not exactly holographic, but these geometrically designed images that you sort of hold up to your face, and you relax it, and then you suddenly see this three-dimensional but these geometrically designed images that you sort of hold up to your face, and you That's kind of what it is that we're getting people to To see, except what they see, what they're going to see is really horrible, right?
Which is that they have been blind to and participating in a culture of extreme violence for most of their lives, right?
The modern West is a culture of extreme violence.
I mean, 60% of people's wages, 50% of people's wages taken from them at the point of a gun.
I mean, that's just the tip of the iceberg as far as state control and state coercion goes.
There's the gulags, the war on drugs, the war on poverty, the old-age pensions, the national debt.
We could go on and on, but we live in a culture of extreme violence that thinks that it is peaceful and wonderful at the same time.
This is the disconnect that we have to deal with as libertarians.
This is the oh-so-exciting challenge that we face as communicators.
In this plague, to continue to work the metaphor, this is the difficulty that we're facing.
The plague is such that it saps people's energy and will and joy and love and capacity for intimacy and this and that.
It enervates them.
It's like if Epstein-Barr or fibromyalgia were true, chronic fatigue syndrome.
It's like that.
And the cure is really, really painful.
Right?
So this is another situation.
Violence.
If you conform to violence, what happens... And you're still, like, you're not locked in a gulag.
If you conform to violence, you pay your taxes.
If you conform to violence, your energy, your will, your joy, your love, your life, all of this slowly gets sapped away from you.
But it's relatively painless.
It's like a neurological disease where you just sort of vaguely go numb in various areas, but you feel no pain.
Now, this is the plague that afflicts people in the West.
So they go along with the violence and they conform and obey and they get pretty good social rewards.
They can get financial rewards.
Okay, so their relationships become completely horrible because fundamentally you cannot accept violence as a good methodology for dealing with problems and not have it affect or infect Your interpersonal relationships.
But they don't make that connection, right?
I mean, it's not an obvious connection.
Well, sort of it is when you figure it out, but it's not obvious unless you...
So marriages are bad and parenting is bad and people are unhappy and depressed and angry and bitter and so on and vaguely just not enjoying life because you're soaked in this vat of lukewarm blood and so you don't feel it but it's kind of disgusting and So people are just unhappy in this sort of culture of extreme violence that we have.
And again, there's more extreme violence in the Muslim world, but I'm just talking about extreme violence relative to what we think.
The Muslim, where you stop and talk to a Muslim and you say, is the Muslim society somewhat violent?
And they say, hell yeah!
But you go to the average North American or British person or French person and say, is your culture violent?
No, it's not violent.
So that's why I focus on America.
That's why I focus on the West.
That's why I focus on Canada, right?
America with its foreign policy and Canada with its domestic policy.
It's the big areas of blind spots where people don't see the culture of violence.
So we go up to these people and we say, you know, you're sick, and they say, I don't feel sick, and everybody else feels exactly the same way, so how on earth could you say that I am sick?
And maybe we work to start convincing them, but the moment that we start to poke around their sore spots, which they can barely feel is causing them any real pain directly, they explode in the most unbelievable agony.
So it's like a neurological illness that doesn't cause you any pain until somebody pokes the afflicted spot, and then you're in agony.
Because this is what happens.
Some people are generally miserable, generally depressed, but they're miserable and depressed sort of like everybody else.
And they're getting social rewards and this and that.
And then we come along and say, you know, there's this culture of violence, and if they start to understand what we're talking about, they feel the most unbelievable fear and rage.
Fear and rage.
Right?
Fear, because they've been feeling that fear their whole life.
and rage because they're angry at us for making them feel that way, right?
Because immature people will always get angry at the person who causes them painful symptoms, or who causes their painful symptoms.
An immature person will get angry at somebody who is applying the cure, the ointment that's supposed to cure, or at least alleviate some of the symptoms of their sunburn, right?
So the idiots go out and get a sunburn because they don't use any SPF and then you're putting some lotion on their back and they're getting angry at you, right?
This is an immature, stupid people.
And this is the same thing that happens when somebody has accepted a culture of violence and it only takes about 10 seconds to sit down and think about it and figure it out and there's lots of material on the web and blah blah blah blah blah.
But they have decided not to.
They've decided to go along with the culture of violence and pretend to themselves that evil is good, that violence is virtue.
So then when we start poking around in their lives and say, you know, there's this violence, there's a culture of violence, and if you don't see it, you know, it's a problem, and so on, then they feel fear and rage.
They feel intensely, acutely, unbearably uncomfortable.
It really feels to these people like we're hanging them by the ankles out of a 20th story window.
It feels like we're pushing them over a cliff.
So, given that they are immature and irrational personalities to begin with, when we begin to talk to them about violence, they feel assaulted.
They feel as if we are being violent.
So if you've got this neurological ailment, and you kind of go numb around the edges, but you don't feel really bad, and everyone else is complaining about the same thing, and then some doctor comes along and pokes you in the ankle, and it feels like a shark is eating your leg, you're going to get angry at the doctor.
And you're going to say, Oh my God!
Are you ever hurting me?
Stop it!
You're sick and evil!
Why would you do that to me?
Because they don't know that the doctor is merely exposing an underlying pathology.
So when we talk to people about nonviolence and freedom, they feel this fear and rage, and they don't understand that we are talking about an underlying pathology within their personality structure called acceptance of, and acquiescence to, evil.
So then we say, here's the cure!
So even if we get them to understand that there's a plague, and even if we get them to understand that their vague numbness and depression is not the standard of human health, but rather a standard of extreme ill health, of extreme mental ill health, that they do not have the vitality, the energy and the joy that should come from being alive, that they're dragging themselves through a diminished and pathetic and depressing existence because of their acquiescence to evil.
Even if we get that far!
And we say, OK.
They say, OK, I believe you.
I can deal with the shattering pain of you poking around my neurological evil ailment, and now I want to become better.
Well, then we bring out this bloody great horse needle, this rabies needle, and we say, you'll need about six months of daily injections from this, and then you will maybe feel better.
But you see, this is what we're up against, right?
This is why the arguments for freedom don't work.
And I don't want this to be depressing for you, because we will prevail, absolutely.
But I just want you to understand that it's not your fault that we're not free yet, and it's not my fault either.
Because the pain is muted of the ailment, of the acquiescence to evil.
But the pain of change is blinding for most people.
And that's why I applaud the people on the boards who have staunch wills of iron and backbones of steel.
It's fantastic.
And yet sometimes they blame themselves for being weak.
Oh my heavens, don't even think about it.
You are as strong as the gods out there if you have come this far in the podcast.
You are as strong as the gods combined.
Now, the final problem that we have is when we talk about the plague.
When we talk about the plague in society, we have another problem.
It's not like we don't have enough problems.
We have another problem.
Now the other problem is the problem of association.
So one of the things that I've talked about in my podcasts is this.
If we think that violence is evil, then those who advocate violence are evil or corrupt at best, but definitely on the bad side of goodness.
They may not be in pure night, but they're definitely in shadow.
So as I've talked about before, if you're a Jew and a Nazi wants you killed, there's only a certain amount of time that you can hang out with the Nazi before your beliefs or your faith or your feeling that Judaism is worth anything becomes somewhat suspect, right?
So if you're a black guy who wants to join the KKK, then you're going to look a little suspect.
It's going to look like you don't really believe anything that you're saying in terms of, you know, I'm black and I'm proud.
Now pass me that white hood.
It's going to seem kind of contradictory.
So it's, again, to take this metaphor and stretch it just a little more, I think it can take it, this is the equivalent of saying That this disease, this plague, is highly contagious.
This plague is highly contagious.
And that's why it's so dangerous.
It's so contagious.
And yet, we are going up and hugging all of the people that we say are plague-ridden and highly contagious.
Right?
So we say, oh, this plague, it'll kill you.
It's airborne.
It's skin-borne.
It's, you know, it's in their aura, man.
And then we go up and sort of chat with these people and give them a hug and kiss them on the lips and so on.
So what does it really mean to us?
What does it really mean to others to say that the plague is contagious and then handle all the plague victims?
It doesn't seem to me that that makes our position that the plague is contagious really all that believable.
And so the problem that we face as libertarians is Violence is evil.
Those who advocate violence, those who advocate that we be killed for our beliefs, have got to have something to do with that evil.
They really do.
Otherwise, what does evil mean?
And if you have any sympathy for the Nuremberg trials, where they focus on the civilian leaders, for the most part, not the foot soldiers, then you have to understand that it's the ideas that kind of drive it, right?
I mean, if being a cop was illegal, we wouldn't really have more than one cop in the country.
And it's only legal because it's morally justified.
So to me that's fairly important to understand that it's the ideas that drive the ethics.
And so the people who say to us when we say taxation should not be, the government should not be, or taxation should be voluntary or you know whatever you want to however you want to put it.
The people who then say I really don't agree with you and I really don't agree with you to the point that I think you should be shot.
To me, that's sort of important.
Because if people want you shot, and you say that violence is evil, but you continue to hang out with them, then you have no credibility to yourself or to others.
Then it's obviously just a kind of game, right?
It's just a kind of contrarian position.
You're like that person who disagrees with everyone because it's kind of funsies, right?
You have no It's serious commitment to your own beliefs in the nature of evil and of virtue, and the role of violence and evil, the co-joining of violence and evil.
That's the other problem that we have, which is that we cannot associate logically and morally with those who want us killed.
Now, I'm not saying that you lock yourself up in the attic and don't talk to anyone.
Go out and talk to people by all means.
You can choose not to bring the topic up.
You can choose to avoid it.
You can choose to do whatever.
But the moment that somebody looks you in the eye and says, yes, if you don't support the war in Iraq, if you don't want to pay your taxes, if you don't want to do this and you don't want to do that, then you should be shot or imprisoned for the rest of your life, which is sort of the same thing.
And if somebody says that to you and you're like, okay, are you free for lunch on Tuesday?
Then obviously you don't care about your own life.
You don't care about your own ideas.
You don't have any integrity.
And that's fine.
Nobody's forcing you to have integrity.
You've got to be aware of that.
That's a fact that you need to understand.
You're doing great harm to the freedom movement.
You are destroying your own self-esteem.
You are destroying the respect of people around you.
Because, my God, can you imagine how sickening it is to see someone who licks the boot of the guy who's kicking him for no reason.
I can understand that if you're in prison and you're being beaten up, hell, give me ten boots to lick, I'm all over it.
But in a free society, in terms of freedom of association like we have now, if you say to someone, I think that you should be shot for your beliefs, even though you're perfectly willing that I not be shot for my beliefs, and then that person says, great, let's do lunch on Tuesday, don't you feel the most disgusting contempt for that kind of person?
I mean, isn't that just sickening?
So I'm not saying, hey, I get friends that don't agree with me 100%, but I steer clear of these topics.
And we go to karaoke, or we go see a movie, or whatever, right?
That's what we do.
That's fine.
I don't get into these topics with them, because I know that if we get to that position, if they don't end up agreeing with me, that it's all over, and I don't enjoy going to karaoke with people.
So that's sort of the final area in this sort of plague metaphor that we need to understand.
That if we say people are contagious, if we say violence is evil and the advocacy of violence is evil, then we do kind of end up in this situation where people are saying that we should be shot for our beliefs.
That's what I'm always hammering, as I mentioned this morning, with the Christians.
It's very nice that you think Jesus was a very nice fellow but you do realize that he wanted me shot or drowned or killed for my beliefs or my lack of belief in these silly deities, right?
It's kind of important.
A Christian says, yeah, you know, I got you there, but I can live with it.
Okay, well, at least I know where I stand now, that you want me shot.
And now I get the hell out of my house.
I get the hell out of my life.
How can you have it any other way?
How can you conceivably say that you're at all interested in morality, when people nakedly and openly want you gunned down for your beliefs?
I mean, come on!
What do you need as a hint?
I mean, what do you need to understand the facts of the situation?
I mean, they're kind of being pretty honest with you, aren't they?
Yeah, you should be killed!
That seems pretty honest to me.
Let's just say that that's the metaphor, and that's the situation that we're dealing with.
I admit it's tricky.
I will say that it's not the easiest thing that you'll be up to today, is advancing the cause of freedom.
But that's no problem.
It's not easy to win a gold medal or produce a gold record either, but it's worth it.
It's exciting.
It's not always easy to do these podcasts.
It's not always easy to spend the time, but it's worth it for me.
I'm guessing if you're listening to this, it's worth it for you too, for which I'm enormously grateful.
But, oh brothers and sisters, there is an answer.
There is an answer.
There's an easy, easy, easy solution.
And I mean easy in terms of methodology.
Like, easy like, if you want to climb Everest, all you have to do is get to the top.
I mean, it doesn't make it easy.
Like, it's easy to climb Everest.
But it certainly makes it easy.
Insofar as you can definitely end up getting to the top if you know what you're doing.
And that's all I'm really talking about.
So what is the answer?
The answer is, as you may have imagined from my podcast this morning, to keep saying that there's a gun in the room.
Now let's try and figure out what's going to happen in this plague scenario.
What happens when people finally figure out that they're sick?
Well, how do you get people to figure out that they're sick?
Well, the first thing that you do, of course, is you have to have, conceptually, within your own mind, you have to have a definition of health that is not exactly the same as being sick, right?
So one of the problems with psychology is generally that there's pathologies or structures or models of human behavior that are based upon pathological individuals, which is not really very fair, right?
I mean, saying that the average human being is somebody racked by spina bifida and therefore all the chairs should be Shaped such and such, right?
I mean that's not a very fair way.
You have to have a standard of health that is around right functioning and healthy functioning and so on.
And so you have that sort of within your own mind and certainly non-violence seems to be pretty much the best one in human history.
And so we'll just go with that for the moment and violence is bad and you know lying is bad.
But violence is the real, it's the real kicker as far as ethics go.
And after that the sort of descending steps of intellectual corruption and all this other stuff.
And the lying which justifies violence, the lying is possibly the worst crime of all.
It's the one that actually is the one that ends up getting the most people sick all the time.
So this is definitely not what you want in your life, in your situation, in your moral sphere, I guess you could say.
The first thing you've got to do is have some standard of health, right?
You've got to stick by it, right?
Some standard of health called nonviolence.
You've got to stick by that thing.
You've got to make it up.
Sometimes yes, sometimes no.
Okay, well this guy disagrees with me, but what the heck?
So, once you have that, then you can start to get involved in comparing that standard of health with the people that you meet.
Okay, I meet this guy.
He's a mystic.
Okay, obviously mentally ill.
I meet this guy.
He's a socialist.
I'll spend time explaining it to him because maybe he's never seen the facts of the situation.
So I'll spend some time with him.
Once he understands it, then continues to be violent, then obviously mentally ill, blah blah blah.
There's lots of things that you can talk about in these kinds of situations to figure out how sick, right, how plague-ridden somebody is.
Because violence is a plague and our culture is really addicted to and justifies and has a sort of fetish for violence, which solves all social problems with the law, with a gun, blah blah blah.
And then you need to, of course, demonstrate.
You need to demonstrate health.
So if everybody's in a wheelchair and they think that everybody's in a wheelchair, they're not going to understand anything different until they see somebody, say, who's not in a wheelchair.
So you have to demonstrate health to people if you want them to understand that they're not well.
So demonstrate vitality, demonstrate goodwill, demonstrate joy, demonstrate happiness and good relationships and successful whatever you're setting your mind to and demonstrate happiness and vitality to people because of course the purpose of Libertarianism is not freedom, is not the small state, is not this, is not that, it's happiness!
So, the first thing that you need to do if you want people to accept that there's a standard of health that's different than what they're practicing, is to be healthy!
I mean, that seems to me, you know, kind of the number one thing.
Be healthy!
And that means getting corrupt and evil people out of your life.
Sorry, but, you know, if we say that violence is bad, and those who advocate it are corrupt, and then we hang with those who do, obviously we're neither going to be having any of our beliefs taken seriously, and neither are we going to be healthy ourselves.
So there's a double whammy.
A. We don't take our beliefs seriously, and B. Our energy and happiness are all compromised and undermined and destroyed by having all of these corrupt people in our life.
So you can't demonstrate health to someone.
And I don't mean like a trapeze artist that you demonstrate health.
What I mean is you can't demonstrate, you can't be healthy and thus get somebody interested in your conception or perception of health.
You can't do any of that if you are not healthy yourself.
And you can't be healthy if you're around all these people who are plague-ridden and coffin up all their sputum on you.
Because you're going to be infected.
It's just the nature of the beast.
You can't be around crazy people unless you're a trained psychologist with many years experience and even then a whole lot of them succumb.
You can't be around crazy people without going a little crazy yourself.
Unless you really know what you're doing.
That's part of the robustness that you will develop.
And the first thing you need to do is not be around crazy people for a while.
I'll tell you that for sure.
Don't be around crazy people for a while.
Don't be around sick and evil people for a while.
And lo and behold, and miracle of miracles, you will start to become healthier.
And then after a certain amount of non-exposure, yeah, you can go back and you can deal with some of the crazies again.
But you can't do it while you're neck deep in them, for sure.
For sure.
Now, once you have got a definition of health that excludes... Now, once you have a definition of health that excludes the existing crop of crazy people, and the existing culture, and a culture of violence, and so on, and you can demonstrate health to people, then, you know, you're starting to really get somewhere.
People will judge you by what you do and how you are, rather than what you say.
So, if you're some crazy, aggressive libertarian who just yells at people who don't agree with you, You're not going to win a lot of converts.
In fact, I think you should stop trying to convert people and maybe spend a bit of time working on yourself.
And once you then are able to... Now here's a step, and I'm going to sort of have to pass over this step because it's going to take a lot of us doing it pretty consistently over a certain amount of time which can't be predicted in advance.
But once you convince people that there is a plague, you convince people that they are sick, And you convince people that you have a cure?
My friends, we will have to stand back from the stampede.
I'm promising you.
We will have to stand back from the stampede for what it is that we have to offer.
Because people kinda don't want to be sick.
That's why all these crazy governments and status people spend all this time trying to convince them that they're not sick.
That it would be sick to try and be healthy.
That's why, when I talk about the argument for morality, we want to own the definition of health.
We really do want to own that definition of health.
We don't want to hand it over to our enemies.
Or the enemies of health.
So, once we have been able to show people health so that they understand that they're not well, then they will at least be curious about our vitality and our health and our energy and whatever, right?
Or the quality of our relationships.
And then we say, well, you know, you can either say it or demonstrate it and then say it.
But then we say, well, yeah, the reason that you're not well is because you're not happy.
It's because you're not well.
And you're not well because of X, Y, and Z, right?
Now, once people really get That the definition of health that they've been working with their whole life is not accurate, and that you yourself are able to give them their health back, their vitality, their energy, then, you know, stand back.
You're going to be stampeded.
You're going to be steamrollers.
You're going to be run over.
So, I mean, that's how it's going to happen.
And that's why it's so important to work on yourself.
And that's why it's so important to learn how to communicate in a positive and enjoyable manner.
And to demonstrate health and happiness.
I mean, if I was some bitter loner sitting in an attic snarling about the world, you probably wouldn't have gotten very far along this line of podcasts.
I think.
I mean, that would sort of make sense to me.
So, those are sort of the major areas in which I think Or at least I would anticipate that we're going to be able to make the change.
Show health, understand health, and don't rail at people and get rid of people who want you dead.
That would seem to me to be a pretty good approach to dealing with this problem of the plague.
We can't ignore the plague.
See, the plague sort of impinges itself upon our consciousness.
I mean, it's not common.
To see society and to see life with this kind of clarity, this is very unusual.
We're part of the mutant genes through which society improves.
And so if you have this vision, you have this sort of third eye that sees violence and sees the truth, and you have a sort of genetic requirement for logical consistency, then you're kind of like a born swordsman.
And you gotta take this on.
I'm sorry, it's your nature.
You can do what you like.
You're not going to be satisfied.
And if you are going to do it, then you should know the right moves, or the right swings, or what the enemies are, the feints, and all this, to use the sword metaphor, because this is now metaphor central.
I think we have more metaphors than pronouns now.
But you really want to know what you're doing, I think, when it comes to really being able to make this argument clear to people, to be able to make this perspective clear to people.
You really want to have a clear view, a clear eye of what it is that you're doing.
You can't really give up the fight if it's your nature, if you've come this far.
I mean, you can, obviously, everything's a free choice, but if you've come this far, then you have to react, I think, accept the reality of the seriousness of what it is that we're dealing with, that the world is sick, desperately sick.
That the world is awash in invisible blood, and we're the only ones who can swim, and we can save as many victims, or drowning victims, as we can.
And in order to do that, we have to sort of be robust, and healthy, and joyous, and happy, and excited, and thrilled.
And, you know, without compromise.
Without compromise.
And we can choose to compromise, but the compromise is never valid.
And we can choose to lie, it doesn't mean that lying is good.
Except under very rare situations, when you're under the threat of force.
So, that's sort of my suggestion about where we go.
And, of course, it's complicated.
I mean, the world is barely waking up to the fact that it's sick at the moment.
It's starting to happen.
But unfortunately, it's coming out of cynicism at the moment, and a kind of nihilism, which is not sort of where we want to go in the long run.
But at least the sort of smug self-satisfaction of the past seems to be draining away.
Certainly, it is draining away among the younger generation, which is why I spend time and energy where I can to talk to and to younger people to give them some sort of, at least, perspective, right?
That it may look bad, but it's looking a whole lot better than it did, say, 15 years ago.
Because you have this new generation of people who aren't wedded to the same nauseous, sycophantic fantasies around the power and benevolence of the state.
All you hear this from is for the sort of self-serving older generations.
You don't hear this so much from the younger generations.
And the level of skepticism around power is growing.
Now, unfortunately, it's growing in isolated spots.
And this is the danger, right?
Divided, we fall.
Divided, we fall.
United, we stand.
In this sense, it really makes... In this situation, it really makes sense.
Gotta join with the socialists in their critique of corporations and third world policies and foreign policies and so on.
And we have to join with the conservatives in their critiques of the welfare state, in their critiques of the lack of moral fiber.
Although we would probably define morality sort of differently.
We have to join their critique in public schools.
Violence is evil, whatever its source, the initiation of violence.
So let's join together with the people which we have stuff in common with and work to slowly expand their understanding.
Because those who hate violence in foreign policy at least understand that violence is evil and will have some principles by which we can drag them over to see the light on this side of the room as well.
And those who are against public schools and who don't like the welfare state, we can help them to understand that violence is always evil and get them to understand their fetish for the military might be considered to be a little morbid and potentially morally corrupting as well.
And that way we can really begin to join these sort of spots of light that are opening up on this dark lake of blood, these spots of light that are opening up to see it.
They're like lasers, like coming down from breaks in the sky through the clouds, these beams of light.
We want to unite them so it's a clear sky, we can see the whole landscape.
But the only way we can do that is to agree with the people where we have agreement and to slowly widen that agreement based on principles.
And it is going to be hard.
What we have to keep pointing out is there's a gun in the room, there's a gun in the room, there's a gun in the room and it's pointed at us.
That's my rap song.
That's my chant to freedom.
There's a gun in the room and it's pointed at us.
And the more we ignore it, the worse our lives will become.
So I hope that this makes some sense to you.
I know it's not exactly a 12-point plan, but I really feel strongly this is the way that it's going to have to happen.
And looking for some other easier way, I think, is just going to be corrupting overall.
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