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April 7, 2006 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:06:11
183 Freedom Part 4: Parents (and everything!)
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All right.
Good afternoon, everybody.
It's Steph.
Hope you're doing well.
It is 12.30 on the 7th of April, 2006.
Just did a nice, juicy, tasty two and a half hour demo.
Two hour demo.
Sort of half an hour of aftermarket chit-chat.
And you know, if you've ever done software demos, there's always the IT guy in the room.
It is the saddest thing in the world, but there's always the IT guy in the room.
Who always has to be the smartest guy around, and always has to try and prove that the vendor is not being honest, or something, something, something.
And it's a staple of the industry, especially if they work in the public sector, because they don't know if they're bitter about private sector vendors having more fun.
Who knows?
But there is much oddity around this sort of thing.
I can't figure out.
Maybe they've been burned by vendors in the past, or something like that.
But hey, what do you care about my difficult meeting?
Not much!
Not because you're not a nice person.
It's just that, you know, you kind of have your own thing, right?
Now, let's talk about what I think is not so much for me, but for a lot of people, the greatest impediment to freedom, which is the relationship with the parental units.
Now, the great challenge of the relationship between you, your parental units, and freedom is that you yourself You did not enter into any kind of contract with your parents, implicit or explicit, and yet they also will require pretty large numbers of resources from you in the future, right?
So as they get older and they're going to need... And they also seem to want a lot of resources from you in the present, right?
So even if you're in your 30s or 40s or 50s, before your parents begin to really sort of decay and fall off the vine, They seem to want a lot of resources.
They seem to want a lot of attention.
They seem to want to engage in one form or another with their children, which has always been sort of... I mean, I can understand it if it is something that is really based on sort of mutual values and so on, but that doesn't really seem to be the case very often with parents.
That it's not a question of mutual values that cause them to want to cleave to their children.
But rather, it seems to be just the sort of boring, whining, and complaining, and sludgy-headedness of an automatic and unchosen obligation.
So if you have a relationship in your life, I mean there's very little freedom in a relationship which is considered to be an obligation, which is not chosen out of a vibrant and joyful sense of mutual value.
So if there's not a relationship, any relationship that's not like that in your life is a real source of coercion of one form or another.
Because basically, pressure is a form of coercion, and I know that that sounds like it's non-libertarian, and maybe it is, and I'm certainly happy to discuss whether it is or it isn't.
And I wouldn't say that that's really the case, like if a car salesman is pressuring you to buy or something like that.
I don't really feel that that is the case, that there's any coercion in that.
But the relationship between parent and child is very different from every other relationship, because you have been subjected to, you know, 15 to 20 years of out-and-out authority from your parents.
It is a relationship that is inherently unequal.
It is a relationship that sort of fundamentally is not going to be open to very much negotiation.
Now I know that some people on the board, and I think more power to them, they have sort of, I guess, figured out a way to come to some sort of rapprochement with their parents in regards to being sort of an adult to an adult, that kind of stuff, you know, now that they're older and so on.
And I think that's great.
Good for you.
I have a tough time understanding exactly how that happens, because it seems to me that that is a kind of development that should occur organically, just as parents age and children age into adults.
That seems to me that it should be something that is just kind of a natural phenomenon that occurs between a parent and a child.
So if it has to be strongly negotiated when you're in your 30s or 40s, it seems to me that that's not an organic process, and it seems to me somewhat initiated by the adult child, and that's going to be a challenge to maintain, because you can't get other people to do anything.
I mean, you can sort of bully them into compliance for a short amount of time, but then it's going to be insistently undone over time.
So you're constantly going to have to sort of... unless the other person is fully and totally committed.
It's like chasing someone around not to drink, right?
I mean, if they're not committed to not drinking or not smoking or whatever, then they're just gonna find some way to do it.
It's gonna turn into cat and mouse and... I mean, this is sort of the enabling waste of time that a lot of people get into with the sort of addictive personalities.
And so with parents, if it's not something that they are very strongly committed to, And organic towards.
And I do know one or two parents who are like this, who I've talked to, who say, yeah, you know, my kid is now 16 or 17, so I'm really having to make sure that I pull back from the parental sort of tell them what to do kind of thing, and get them more into, I recognize that they're going to be dating, and they're different from me, and that they're going to have to stop making their own decisions, and now it's all about consequences, and it's not about telling them what to do, it's about sort of giving them, helping them understand consequences and choice.
So that seems to be a pretty organic process that occurs naturally, I think, when you have sort of, I guess you could say, enlightened parents, or that sort of thing.
But if you don't, then you are going to maybe have to try and achieve this as an adult.
And that's not going to be very easy in any way, shape, or form.
That is not going to be something that you're going to get through very easily.
And I think that if you have to initiate it as a child, and the parent is sort of going along with it, then it's going to constantly be unraveling.
As you continue, but you know, let me know if I'm wrong.
I certainly could be, and this is many other things, but that's sort of my gut sense.
But let's do a little bit of deconstruction in this relationship, which could be said to be the relationship which carries with it the most sense of obligation, of unjust obligation.
This relationship between child and parent, and I'm talking about this sort of Once the child becomes an adult.
Because the moral responsibility is on the parent when the child is young, and then it is on both parties when the child grows into an adult, becomes sort of an adult child.
And the fundamental contract, or the implicit contract, that is pretty much universally talked about with regards to parents, which I've always had a tough time really understanding in any way, shape, or form,
Now, the contract that is pretty much universally talked about between parents and children is that of reciprocity, which is the idea that your parents take care of you when you are young, and in return for that, you should take care of your parents when you are older.
Now, there's a huge number of problems that I have with that.
Which is, some of which are, that the obligation or the choice to have children creates an obligation, which we all are pretty aware is pretty implicit in the idea of parenting, that it's good if you have children to give them food and shelter.
It seems to be like a pretty nice thing to do, and I think that's a pretty universal kind of rule.
But the act of being born is in no way a choice.
I mean, you don't choose to be born.
It just sort of occurs, right?
And so, on the one side, you have a choice which implicitly creates a moral obligation, i.e.
you choose to have a child, and therefore you must support that child.
And on the other side, you have no choice to be born, and therefore it's sort of hard for me to understand exactly how one situation which involves choice is morally equivalent to another situation which does not involve choice.
Now, I'm not saying that you should not ever take care of your parents as they get older.
I mean, that's a perfectly valid thing to do.
That's absolutely up to you.
But the fact of the matter is that the implicit fact that your parents took care of you when you were younger in no way creates any kind of obligation for you.
Now, the other reason that I find this to be sort of not valid is that You have one situation which is prior to any ethical consideration.
So if two people decide to have children, let's just call them a man and a woman, they decide to have a child, then that is prior to any moral evaluation.
That choice to have a child is not moral or immoral, it's just a choice.
It creates moral obligations, but there's no moral content to that choice.
Now, in comparison to that, there's the situation at the other end of life.
Now, the situation at the other end of life is that you have 50 years of moral examples, of moral history, with which to evaluate the decision.
So, parents have children, there's no moral content other than a moral obligation that's created by having children, but in terms of taking care of your parents, you're in a post-moral situation, right?
So, a pre-moral situation before you have kids, but you are in a post-moral situation after you have children.
And that's pretty important.
So your children, then, when it comes time to them to figure out, let's not even go to retirement, when they turn 20 or 18 or whatever, whenever they leave the house, the question for children is, do I wish to have anything more to do with my parents?
And I very much hope that for you the answer is in the affirmative.
I very much hope.
I think that would be absolutely wonderful if for you the answer were in the affirmative and you love your parents and things are great and everything's hunky-dory and nobody could be happier than spending time with each other.
I think that's wonderful.
More power to you.
That's a wonderful, great, beautiful thing.
However, If it is not the case that you want to spend time with your parents, but you feel an obligation, then it's important, I think, to start trying to deconstruct that obligation, so that you can figure out whether you do, or do not, in fact, have an obligation.
Now, we'll spend just a moment looking at the moral differences between parenting and children in just a moment.
But first, I need to have a sandwich.
Because I work out, so I've got to eat every couple hours.
All right, one Burger King affiliate fish later, I'm good to go.
So, the essential thing to understand about a relationship that is premoral, such as deciding to have a child, and a relationship that is post-moral, is the fact that your feelings about it, your evaluation of it, your Perspective on it is not up to you.
This is part of the mad vanity that I had when I was younger.
Maybe I'm projecting it onto other people, so let me know if this isn't the case with you.
But whether I love my wife or not is not up to me.
Whether I love my brother or not is not up to me.
Whether I love my job is up to me, to some degree.
Whether I forgive somebody or not It's not up to me.
It is, in fact, up to Zeus.
Thank you.
That's probably my best argument so far today.
It's not up to me at all.
It's up to the other person.
I know this sounds like a loss of control, like you're ceding your ability to choose to the other person.
But this is pretty important.
You don't have any choice about whether you love somebody or not.
You do have a choice about clarifying your values to yourself, understanding morality, learning about the world, freeing yourself from bigotry and prejudice and propaganda and all that sort of nonsense that we get stuffed to the gills with.
And I will be using stuffed to the gills because I just had a fish sandwich.
This may not be the last fish metaphor because fish, you know, kind of hangs around in the mouth a little, right?
Let's just be happy that this is only audio and not olfactory.
But you don't have any choice about how you feel about people.
You have a choice about your values and how clear you are about your own values.
And that will have an effect on how quickly you determine.
How you feel about other people.
But freedom is recognizing where you have control and where you do not have control.
If you say to yourself, I want to be free to not eat, then don't eat, but you're gonna die.
Right?
And you can say to yourself, I want to be free to sleep around with empty women.
Or empty men.
Or both!
And you can say all of that, but you cannot be free, you are not free to choose the consequences of that in terms of self-esteem, in terms of self-worth, in terms of self-image, and all those sorts of things.
Once you understand that, this is the final area of freedom that you need to, in my humble opinion, and please forgive me if I sound messianistic, but this is the final area of freedom that you need to understand, which is that you don't have any control about your opinions about others.
That is under their control.
This is unbelievably liberating, my friends.
This is the greatest liberation that you can achieve, in my particular opinion, in your own life.
Instead of assuming unchosen and unassumed obligations, you simply look into your heart, you lie in the Guatemalan hammock, and you simply say to yourself, how do I feel about this person?
I'm curious.
Because we've talked about this sort of blank book of this thin slicing and so on, and I felt for a long time that we know everything about everyone very, very quickly.
It's whether we choose to accept that knowledge or not, whether we choose to accept it or reject it or not, that really is the issue.
Well, if you relax into yourself and you try not to, try to give up controlling things that you can't control.
I mean, how many times a day do we talk ourselves in and out of opinions?
And I don't mean sort of intellectual opinions where you are trying to figure out various alternatives and going back and forth over the evidence.
I mean in terms of our evaluations, our moral evaluations of another human being.
Well, they're like this, but then they said that, and then she was mean to me here, but we had a great weekend then, and this and that.
All of that is just pure static and noise, and it is paralyzing, and it is the exact opposite of freedom.
You know exactly, you know exactly, down to the final T, dotted I, and cross T, and down to the last ethical atom.
You know everything about everybody within a few minutes of meeting them.
And I would say even shorter than that.
But we're talking about parents here, where you have had decades of intimate and highly vulnerable exposure to their behaviors and their choices.
So, how you feel about your parents, whether you want to see them or not, it's not up to you.
It's not your choice.
It's not your option.
You can pretend that it is, but it's not.
Because our hearts, our souls, our emotions, our deepest passions are drawn towards virtue like ivy towards sun.
It's a gravity well.
Virtue, integrity, honesty, intelligence, whatever you want to call it.
I mean, we've got the argument for morality, so we have some good idea what virtue is.
Virtue draws our hearts with complete inevitability.
I am absolutely helpless in terms of loving my wife or not.
I love her passionately, desperately, wildly, and I have no choice about that.
Because I'm so organized and recognize my values that courage and virtue and integrity and honesty and all this sort of stuff are things that I highly value and they are not just subjective values in and of myself, they're objectively real and valid values.
And because she displays all of those qualities, that is a magnificent courage, and magnificent depth, and magnificent curiosity, and is an unbelievably exquisite life partner for me.
Because there are some things which are moral, and some things which are preferential, right?
On the moral things, she's got to be a good person.
The preferential things is she's curious about psychology and philosophy, and we have the most wonderful conversations that last entire weekends.
Fantastic!
But I have no choice.
about my feelings towards her.
I can accept them or I can reject them.
Like, I can stick my hand in a fire and I can choose to do that, and I can even choose to tell myself that it's a growth experience because I'm learning how to handle pain, but I can't choose whether or not it's going to hurt me or heal me.
Sticking my hand in a fire is going to hurt me, with the possible exception of cauterizing a wound in the absence of antibiotics.
It is going to hurt me.
Not eating is going to starve me.
Not drinking is going to dehydrate me.
I don't have any choice about that, about the effects.
And the greatest freedom in life, the greatest freedom that I can offer you, after years and years of painful experiments and experiences, the greatest freedom that I can offer you is to stop trying to have opinions about people.
It is absolutely a case of a tail trying to wag the dog.
You are absolutely helpless in the face of your opinions about people which are already formed by your unconscious analysis of all their actions and demeanors and choices and words.
I really can't stress that enough, but I'm going to, because it's something that's so important to understand.
It is the greatest relaxation in life.
We relax into relationships that are productive and sweet and wonderful.
I mean, nobody says, Oh, I don't have a value which says, Oh, Steph, you have to go and write on the board.
I love writing on the board.
I think it's a brilliant crew.
They're all fantastically brilliant and stimulating and wonderful companions on this journey.
Fantastic.
The emails that I get.
Wonderful.
I appreciate it when anybody sends me one word.
That's not something that I have to will.
My relationships are not something that I have to will.
And where I do have to will my relationships, it is entirely inappropriate for me to do so.
Because I'm acting against my values in an unsustainable manner.
And that's what I got eight years ago.
And again, I guess five or six years ago with my brother.
I'm not here to serve others.
I'm not here for the pleasure of others.
They are here for the pleasure of me.
And the pleasure that they provide me or do not provide me is not up to me.
Because there's my unconscious which absorbs everything that they do.
My values, which tell me to what degree I'm going to condition my unconscious.
Your unconscious has integrity.
Your unconscious will absorb things and act with right morality because your unconscious is all about processing reality.
And it is only unconscious to the degree with which we have conscious values which contradict the unconscious values.
So the unconscious values are always about truth and reality and integrity and honesty and so on.
Because that we can't do anything about.
In fact, we wouldn't survive as a species if our unconscious did not process things objectively.
And the degree to which we then have conscious values that conflict with our unconscious observations and facts is the degree to which we become neurotic and helpless.
And self-hating.
And ineffective.
And we waste time in relationships that are not even relationships.
So from my standpoint, from my example, to speak personally, and you can apply this to your own life as you see fit, of course, I didn't like my mother.
I hated my mother.
Always did.
Never loved her.
Never once.
Never even a shred.
Never even a tiny little bit.
But I had lunch with her.
Why?
Because I felt it was an obligation.
Because I had an argument for morality that said a good son does X.
And that came from my brother.
That's not innate to me.
That's sort of my brother.
He had all these arguments, which seemed plausible until I began to think about them for more than 20 seconds, about how, you know, you have to be bigger than the person, you have to be there for them, you have to forgive them, you have to, you know, take the high road, and, you know, it's nonsense.
It's complete and utter nonsense.
All I had to do was listen to my heart and let it guide me.
As Sting says, let your soul be your pilot in times like this.
Your instincts, your soul, know your values, know what to do, all perfectly valid and perfectly going to work out for you.
So listen to yourself.
Listen to your instincts.
Don't talk to yourself.
Don't lecture yourself.
Don't tell yourself you should or should not do this, that or the other.
In relationships in particular, in terms of paying your taxes, yeah, maybe you can do that stuff, right?
But in terms of relationships, which are the voluntary, right?
Our relationship with the state is not the voluntary.
The fact that we had to go to public school, not the voluntary.
The fact that we were born to the family we were born into, not the voluntary.
But our relationships as adults are voluntary.
And we as libertarians constantly talk politically about nobody has a right to a job, nobody has a right to health care, nobody has a right to an income.
And yet in our personal lives, and I speak for myself first and foremost, is it not the case that we are continually creating positive rights with our relationships?
Parents have a right to see their children.
I may not love my girlfriend, or she may be bad to me at times, but she has a right to be in this relationship.
She has a right to my time.
I may gain no pleasure from seeing my siblings.
I may gain no pleasure from going back home for family reunions, but they have a right to my time.
Do you see the inconsistency?
Do you see why the libertarian movement has never succeeded?
Because if you can't apply it at the personal level, you have no right to talk about it at the political level.
If there are no positive rights, If nobody has a right to a dime of another person's income, if the government does not have the right to contradictory values from those of the citizens, then to hell with that at the political level.
What we need to do is live it at a personal level.
And if we cannot live it at a personal level, we have no right to ask society to accept it at a political level.
Because we're not even doing it.
And the place where positive rights, the right to somebody else's time and effort, Regardless of their preferences, of their choice, of your history with them.
We have control over those manifestations of positive rights within our own mind, within our own relationships.
We do not have control of them in relation to the state.
We do not have control of them in relationship to schooling.
We may not have control of them in relationship to our jobs.
There's one job that we're good for and we're staying there because even though the people around may be sort of bad or corrupt or whatever, But we absolutely have that choice in our personal relationships.
And if we cannot exercise the reality of negative choice, that nobody has the right to my time, I have the right to nobody's time, nobody has the right to my allegiance, my loyalty, my phone calls, my money, my anything.
If we can't live that at a personal level, everything we talk about politically is hypocritical.
Everything.
You are not a libertarian.
If you spend time with people you do not love, you are not a libertarian if you show up for family functions that you don't enjoy, or which you'd rather be doing something else than be there.
You are not a libertarian if you are involved in a relationship Which is against your values, which is exploitive, which is negative, which is difficult, which is abusive in any way shape or form obviously, which is manipulative, which is where you do not love the person and you do not feel a gush of love when they walk into the room and a desire to jump in their arms.
You are not a libertarian if you are involved in a relationship with a partner simply because they're available and they're willing to have sex with you.
You are not a libertarian if you're involved in a relationship with the dream or the fantasy or the hope or the expectation that that person will change.
Because you don't have the right to be in a relationship and expect somebody else to change.
Because that is a positive right.
You must change for me.
I'm in this relationship conditionally and you must change for me and until you do change for me, I will not love you.
Or I will not love you as much.
Or I will reserve the right to not love you and you do not exhibit behaviors that I like.
You're not a libertarian if you're in those situations.
To hell with the state.
To hell with God.
To hell with the church.
To hell with priests.
It doesn't matter.
It's your personal relationships where freedom has to show up in.
And if it doesn't show up in there, don't talk to me about politics.
Don't write to me emails about... Can I get an alt from an is?
I mean, it's nonsense.
I'm not looking at anybody in particular in the audience in my mind, but...
I just want to really emphasize that.
Put your money where your mouth is.
If you believe that there are no such thing as positive rights and that nobody has obligations at a political level, but you steadfastly cling to self-destructive obligations at a personal level, then you're not a libertarian.
You're just a political blowhard, frankly.
And you don't want to be that.
You want to be a libertarian.
Not because it's good to be a libertarian, but because you want to be happy and you want to be free.
If you have those relationships in your life which you don't love and want and treasure and look forward to, if your father phones you up and bores you nearly to tears and all you can do is cross your fingers and hope that you can get off the phone soon, or a meteor is going to strike the phone company, or your phone's going to explode, then you're not a libertarian.
Because you have a positive right.
You have somebody that has the right to your time, in your mind, and in your behavior.
So how are you going to oppose taxation?
It's impossible.
It's inconceivable.
You can't.
I mean, you can, but it's just going to seem, it's going to be nonsense.
And you're not going to get anywhere.
You're not going to get anywhere.
And I'm not saying to you that you must be a hermit.
I'm saying, if you have these relationships in your life, you are a hermit already.
You do not have connection with people who do not have virtue and values that approximate yours.
Approximate, not identical.
You do not have relationships with these people.
You have sickening and degrading obligations.
And that is not freedom.
And you have no choice, my friend, about whether or not you love people.
So sit back in your hammock, close your eyes, relax your entire body, and review every relationship in your life, that you have any kind of choice with.
Parents, siblings, friends, co-workers, lovers, acquaintances.
And explore your feelings about those relationships.
And if those relationships don't immediately produce within you a flood of joy and satisfaction and pleasure and eagerness to see the person, Then you're not free.
And if you think that you can... Oh, okay, so she's a bit of a drinker, and she kind of makes fun of me in public, but she's very sporty, and she's got a great sense of humor.
You can weigh all of these things in your head, like you're coming up with some sort of massive weighing scale, multi-dimensional weighing scale, but you don't need to do that, because your unconscious already does that for you.
And if you agree with the unconscious, why not just use the unconscious already?
And if you don't agree with the unconscious, why bother?
Because the feelings come from your unconscious, and you can't program your unconscious.
You can cease to resist the innate knowledge within your unconscious, within your instincts, but you cannot program it.
It's below your level of volition.
It's like opening your eyes and willing not to see.
You can't do it.
You can poke out your eyes, Which means suicide in this matter, but you cannot open your eyes and will yourself not to see.
You cannot change fundamentally your evaluation of people.
It's not up to your mind.
So I really do recommend take this time out.
Take Sunday afternoon.
Take whatever time you need.
Lie on your bed.
Don't put any music on your headphones.
Lie there for a couple hours.
Think about a relationship or two.
Explore your feelings about it.
Don't try and guide them.
Don't say, I should feel this, or I should feel that, or I'd like to feel this, or I'd like to feel that.
Just find out what you do feel.
Because that's the fact about the relationship.
And if you do have a number of people in your life that you don't love, but on the other hand you have a bunch of people in your life that you do love, then ditch the ones you don't love and find the ones you do love.
Spend more time with them.
Focus on enhancing those relationships.
And if everybody that's in your life is somebody you don't love, then move!
Get away, physically, psychologically, emotionally, whatever it is.
Get away!
I'm not asking you to be solitary.
You're already solitary.
Because you're in these pseudo-relationships that are blocking off any other kind of relationship that might actually open your heart and be something vibrant and alive and beautiful.
By hanging around with these murky nothing people that you do not love and who you are simply there to serve out their fantasies and their needs and their desires which are crazy, irrational and greedy to begin with because if they weren't you wouldn't feel bad.
You're not serving their real self-interest because supporting other people's needs for us does not serve their self-interest at all.
That's called being an enabler.
That's like offering to go and pick up drinks for an out-and-out drunk.
That is sickeningly bad behavior.
It doesn't serve you, because you can't be happy.
Happiness is not up to you.
Happiness is up to your unconscious.
Happiness is the neurological endorphins released when you're in a state of conformity with reality and morality.
There's nothing you can do about it other than be rational and moral, and that means listening to your instincts.
Because all of the patchy details of everybody's little life, and everybody says this, and then says that, and they're nice, and then they're not nice, and they're this, and they're that, you can't figure all that stuff out logically.
You just can't.
You just can't.
Anything more than you can simultaneously name everything in your field of vision, you can't.
That's an action of the unconscious.
That integrating mechanism is the unconscious.
It is the large part of your brain.
You're just the tip of the iceberg in the conscious world.
That doesn't mean that you don't have any power.
But you've got to focus on where you do have power.
And magically producing pleasure in the absence of taking heroin is not something that your conscious mind can produce.
You can only get pleasure and happiness, which is the goal of life, by acting in conformity with truth and reality and morality.
And that knowledge of how to do that and your evaluations of all your relationships is already completely tied up in a box, tied up with bows, full printout, big font, small words, simple text, all perfectly done within your unconscious.
And you just have to relax and see what you feel like doing.
You need to not will your relationships because that is slavery.
That is slavery to others.
That is living in a small, little, totalitarian regime all by your very lonesome.
Without even anybody pointing a gun at you.
Which is the worst part.
We're asking people to wake up to the gun in the room, which I think is a perfectly valid thing to do.
Are we willing to wake up to the slavery that is involved within our own lives, where there isn't even a gun in the room?
Because if we can't eliminate those slaveries, is it even remotely possible for us to ask other people to give up their compelled slaveries?
If we can't even give up our voluntary slaveries, how can we ask people to give up They're compulsory slaveries.
Because, look, giving up a compulsory slavery is a hell of a lot harder than giving up a voluntary slavery.
I'll tell you that for sure.
Because you've got to fight the guns, right?
The voluntary slavery is you don't even have to fight the guns.
And so, if we can't do that, we have no right to ask people what we will not do ourselves.
That's called hypocrisy.
That's called, do as I say, not as I do.
And that is not where we want to be as philosophers.
That's not where we want to be as moralists.
That's not where we want to be as free people.
It's telling people to do all these things that we ourselves are not willing to do.
And we're asking them to do the harder things when we're not even willing to do the easy things.
So we're like the 300-pound nutritionist nagging everyone to cut out the diets when we won't even put down our fourth donut.
I mean, that is not where we want to be, my friends.
That is not freedom.
That is not happiness.
Now, I know it's a lot to ask.
I've talked about this before, so I'm sure this isn't hugely shocking to you.
I know it's a lot to ask to say that you need to have integrity with your relationships.
And if you believe in non-positive rights, if you believe that only negative rights exist, then you have to really live that in your own life.
Now, the degree to which you do live it in your own life is very, very, very, very interesting.
You want to be certain, as a libertarian.
The last thing that people want, I think, is to end up getting involved in a moral or theoretical system that is incorrect.
What a terrible waste of energy!
Then you've got all of the social problems, all of the people who think you're crazy, all of the people that you have to argue with, and you're not even right!
How terrible is that?
A complete waste of time and energy!
It's like training your whole life to be a swimmer and then finding out that you actually live in a desert.
I mean, it's a complete waste of time and energy.
And what the hell were you doing the whole time, thinking you were swimming when there was just sand?
So what a complete waste that would be.
But what I want to give you is the gift of certainty.
It's the gift of certainty that sets you free.
Because once you have lived the life of no positive rights, once you have lived the life of no obligation, no unassumed, no unchosen obligations, But then you need to see whether it works or not.
Because if you don't live that life, if you say that there's no such thing as positive rights, but at the same time you spend time with people that you don't like because you feel obligated, because you feel that they will be unhappy if you don't, because you're afraid to do X, Y, and Z, or you're worried about criticism, or you're worried about whatever.
Because it's easier and it's more comfortable for you to do that.
It's your comfort zone, to use a hackneyed phrase.
Then you're basically saying, yeah, I have these ideas about politics, but I don't really believe them.
I have these ideas about politics, but they're for the government.
They're for other people.
They're for those people that I'm arguing with.
Those are the people that those values are for.
They're for the Constitution.
They're for the DROs.
They're for the anarchist society to come.
They're for everybody except for me.
I don't think that's really very noble, to be honest with you.
Again, I'm not speaking from any high tower of perfect integrity.
I just told you this morning about all the nonsense that I went through and participated in before figuring this out.
So please, I'm not popping out the red-headed Howard Rourke, little guy growing up here with perfect integrity from day one.
This is hard-won knowledge.
But real freedom is to be certain of your values, so that you're not constantly living a double life and a double standard and saying, this is for this state situation, this is for my personal situation with opposing values and this and that.
And of course, if you're using the argument for morality and you say there should only be one standard of values for everybody, then what do you do in making up all these different values for the state and for yourself?
Well, the state shouldn't exist because it's a positive right, and people shouldn't have a right to other people's time and energy and so on.
Oh, my dad's calling and I feel guilty.
Let me pick up the phone and spend two hours listening to him tell me about his, uh, his corns.
Well, gotta tell ya, you're kinda missing the point.
Just as I missed the point for like thirty-odd years.
The point of freedom is personal, personal, personal, personal, personal, not political.
The point of no positive rights is don't spend time with people you don't love, treasure and value, and don't imagine that you can control who you love, treasure and value.
That's up to them.
It's up to their behavior.
It's not up to you.
Now, if you live the life of no positive values, if you live the life of no unchosen obligations, if you live the libertarian philosophy for real, not for like reading about the welfare state, but for real in your own life where it really matters, where you have some choice and power and control and effect,
If you live that life, and you're miserable, and it's terrible, and that's nothing but horror, and you can't get up in the morning because you just have such a horrible... I'm not talking... In the short run, it's going to be tough, because getting out of propaganda is always emotionally painful.
It's like peeling off a band-aid that is welded to your body that's the size of you.
It's painful.
I understand that it's going to hurt.
But if in the long run, you find that living the life of no positive obligations is not good, then you need to revisit your political philosophy, of course, and your values.
Now, I'm telling you, I'm telling you, it is the best life ever.
It is the greatest thing in the entire universe to live the life of no positive obligations, of no unchosen obligation, of no positive rights.
Nobody has a single right to a single shred of my time.
And if I don't feel like seeing somebody, I'm not going to see them.
And I'm talking at every level.
If I don't feel like returning a phone call, I won't return a phone call.
That may have consequences, but I won't do it.
Other people have to motivate me through their virtue, and I have to motivate other people through my virtue.
Look at our relationship.
You have no obligations to me.
I have no obligations to you.
It is a simple exchange of value.
You're helping me build my listenership.
I am enormously pleased and relieved and could die content tomorrow, except for missing Christina for a brief moment as I'm dying, because at least my ideas are out there in some reproducible and, I guess, relatively pleasant-to-consume form.
But this is a completely chosen obligation.
I don't phone you up if you don't download Free Domain Radio one day and say, you know, I really feel that you should download this show because I just feel so depressed when you don't.
Eek!
How pleasant would that be?
Eek!
Yuck!
Christina can get up and leave me any time.
Any time.
We already talked about this before we got married.
We would never seek a single penny in alimony.
We would divide the assets in part.
Absolutely inconceivable that we would ever do anything to restrict the other person leaving us.
Absolutely beyond inconceivable.
Christina has an iron hold on my heart through her virtue and her joy and her kindness and her everything.
It's another two-hour podcast listing off her good qualities.
And that's what's on the other side of living the libertarian life.
That's what's on the other side of no unchosen obligations.
That's what's on the other side of listening to yourself, of listening to your heart about your relationships, and giving up the idea that you can control what gives you pleasure in relationships.
That's the other person's deal.
That's not your deal.
Not your business.
So, what happens when you begin to live the real life, the real, real philosophical and moral life of no unchosen obligations?
is you gain the greatest liberation of all, which is certainty about your philosophy.
Because as you start to live this life, and after you've gone through the growing pains, as you start to live this life, the joy that is inherent within it, which I think you can hear in these podcasts, you know, most days, except when a friend of mine's mom is keeling over, The joy that you hear is exactly what you will experience.
I'm not some magically positive creature.
I'm just somebody who decided to live a life of no obligation.
No unchosen obligation.
And even the obligations I choose, I can un-choose.
And also taking no responsibility for how I feel about people in relationships.
And expecting them to take no responsibility about how they feel about me.
If somebody doesn't like me, I don't tell them that they're wrong.
I try to be as much myself and as honest and have as much integrity as possible, but I have no control about how other people feel about me and other people have no control about how I feel about them.
And I have no control about how I feel about them and they have no control about how they feel about me.
The only thing that can change is that if they dislike me, let's just say, I mean just put it on the table as far as a theoretical, it may not be a theoretical, but let's just say that it is.
If they dislike me because I have freedom And they have obligation.
And their true self is yearning for freedom, as all of our true self is.
That's what I talked about this week.
Their true self is yearning for freedom.
Their false self is all about these stifling and claustrophobic and choking off the windpipe kind of obligations.
They see me free, and their self yearns and stretches for me.
It's like, oh, get me some of that!
I want!
I want!
And they then get angry at me for provoking their true desires and threatening their false self.
Their false self will create all this hostility towards me in order to cover up what the true self and what the honest self and the real soul really desperately wants, which is not my freedom, but its own freedom.
But I'm creating a possibility through who I am, which is that you can have unchosen obligations and be full of nothing but joy.
So it only takes one possibility, right?
If one guy can jump to the moon, it's possible to jump to the moon.
So I'm trying to sort of show you what life looks like in the world of getting rid of positive rights.
My positive rights to other people's time and money, their positive rights to my time and money.
This is a libertarian life.
Not perfectly, of course not.
I still have obligations and I still work through these issues, but this is my commitment, right?
This is my goal.
This is what I'm standing for.
is a life of freedom, a life of choice, a life of acceptance.
A life that, in fact, will be far freer than most people's lives in a stateless society.
You see, if we could snap our fingers tomorrow, get rid of the government, and create a Euro-based society, or some other kind of anarchistic society, most people would still show up to family dinners that they didn't want to go to.
Most people would still go to church.
Most people would have all these obligations that they would just assume they had to do, and even if they gave them the no pleasure.
And most people would take care of their parents they despised as those parents aged.
And most people would still not be free.
And if you live a life Where you reject unchosen obligations.
Where you reject positive rights.
In this world, with 50% taxation, and the growing power of the government, and the Patriot Act, and the Patriot Act 2, and terrorism, and all these things.
If you live that life, you are free.
You are an anarchist.
You are a libertarian.
And you are more free Then you would be if we snapped our fingers tomorrow, got to the anarchist society, and you still had these unchosen obligations dictating your life, or aspects of it.
This is why I keep telling people it doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter when, how, if, under what circumstances, in what time frame, political freedom comes into being.
Because you can be far more free in your own life now.
by getting rid of unchosen obligations than you ever would be by snapping your fingers, creating an anarchist no-state society tomorrow and having these obligations be still there.
Freedom!
The DRO, the anarchist ideal, freedom, the libertarian ideal, is absolutely yours right now!
Right now, if you make that commitment!
Right now, to getting rid of unchosen obligations, you are more free than anybody just about in a DRO-based society.
And if you don't, then anarchism will not help you.
You'll have a little bit more money, you'll have fewer regulations, blah blah blah.
But you will still not be free.
You will still not be free.
And you will still be hypocritical, if you can excuse my bluntness.
Because you will still be saying to people, ah, yeah, you see, we have no positive rights and we have no under oath obligations, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Oh, shoot, I gotta go and have lunch with my parents because I feel guilty.
If I don't.
That's not freedom.
We don't have to beg the state to go away in order to be free.
We don't have to change the world into a minarchist or anarchist society in order to be free.
Freedom is ours to take every single moment of the day.
Every single moment of the day.
You can choose to be free, or you can choose to not be free.
And if you choose not to be free, I gotta tell you, don't bother writing to me and ask me how an anarchist society is going to deal with serial killers.
Because you're not really getting the point!
Screw politics!
It's about your life.
It's about your freedoms.
It's not about DROs.
They're fun to talk about, and they're a great model, and it certainly gives me some comfort to know that there's a good way of figuring out how all this stuff's going to work politically.
But if you want to bring it about, and this is sort of the last thing that I'll say on this matter, and I appreciate your patience.
I know this has been a long podcast, but this is so, so, so, so, so crucial.
I can't tell you how crucial this is.
This is the whole point of everything that I do, and everything that you can have in your life.
All the freedom, all the liberty, all the joy, all the love, all the productivity, all of the passion, all of the money.
Because if you're free, you will become wealthy at whatever you choose to do.
This is important.
I appreciate your patience.
I won't be that much longer.
Thank you so much for listening, as always.
But there's just one last thing that I want to talk about.
The effect of you assuming freedom in your personal life will be to bring freedom about in the political world.
And there's no other way to do it.
No other way to do it.
Writing on a block won't do it.
Writing on Freedom Aid radio boards won't do it.
Arguing with people over dinner won't do it.
Writing letters to the editor won't do it.
Running for political office isn't going to do it.
Sending $5 million to the Libertarian Party won't do it.
Sending $500 to me will.
Or even $50.
I'm happy with $50.
None of these things are going to do what it is that we want.
There's only one way to bring freedom politically to the world, and that is to take freedom personally for yourself.
The kind of certainty that we need to have as individuals in order to reorient society and social thinking.
It is an absurd degree of confidence that we need to do to stand in the face of history and say no state.
No positive rights, no unchosen obligations, no welfare state, no public education.
All of these things are evil and wrong.
You need to be so certain To be able to affect change within people.
And I don't mean certain like you're some crazy David Koresh or Manson kind of certain.
I don't mean insane certain.
I mean rational certain.
Passionately certain.
Certainty that is open to correction and open to rationality and open to evidence and open to logic at all times.
Open to contradictions.
Certainty like the scientific method gives you certainty.
Which is not always that you're certain of the conclusions, but you're certain of the methodology.
You have to be so certain to change people's minds in this area that if you don't actually live your philosophy, you are wasting your time, you're wasting other people's time, and you are actually moving us further away from freedom.
If you want to do something for the freedom movement, get rid of all of the slavery in your own life.
Because then you're living the philosophy, you know that it works, you know that it's powerful, and then you will change people simply by being certain.
There's no other way to do it.
What we are trying to do is lunatic.
We are trying to get rid of the government through peaceful and logical means.
We are trying to get rid of sentimentality around the family.
We're trying to get rid of sentimentality around the army, and the police, and war, and welfare, and the war on drugs, and the war on illiteracy, and the war on poverty.
We're trying to eliminate fantasy.
We're trying to eliminate moral contradiction.
It's lunatic!
I'm fully aware of how lunatic it is.
And because it is so lunatic, you have to be very certain.
Because if you're not certain, people will argue you at some level, but you know, you're going to be constantly bowled over by other people.
Their nihilism, their cynicism, their negativity, their hostility, their indifference, everything is going to bowl you over, and you're going to experience a life filled with futility and frustration, and possibly anger, if you're from Quebec.
Anyway, you are going to experience that life of futility and frustration, and you're going to feel that virtue Never wins.
And you're going to feel that everybody's stupid.
And you're going to feel that there's just no way that things can get better.
And you are going to be dissing the whole concept of morality within your own mind, within your own heart, and within your interactions with other people.
Don't do that.
Don't take that life.
Give up.
Join the herd.
Forget about libertarianism.
And go and blend.
Go chameleon in with the general craziness of society.
And I mean that.
Go and do it.
If you're not willing to do liberty, then don't do bits of liberty.
Because it's worse than no liberty.
It's torturing yourself.
It's torturing your true self.
Stomp it.
Kill it.
Conform.
Do it.
You'll be well paid.
You'll be a highly placed academic.
You might make a lot of money dealing with the public sector in business.
You're going to be on talk shows.
You're going to have a radio show.
You're going to do whatever.
You're going to get books published.
You're going to get lots of kudos.
You're going to live a pretty pleasant life.
Completely corrupt, but conforming.
Which, you know, obviously seems to be quite a valid choice for a lot of people.
You might even become a professor of linguistics.
Who knows?
So if you're going to do bits of freedom, don't bother.
I mean, just don't bother, because you're not going to be certain.
You're going to torture yourself, and you're going to become bitter, cynical, and unhappy.
I guarantee it.
I guarantee it that you're going to look at people and say, you idiots, you don't believe me.
I'm right, but nobody's listening to me.
You're all idiots.
To hell with you all.
Whether you do that nicely or do that not so nicely, that's what you're going to do.
And that's no good.
Nobody wants to become bitter.
Especially when you're not actually moving freedom forward at all and not experiencing its full fruits in your own life, but rather just torturous little bits.
Don't bother!
Don't bother!
Turn off your MP3 player, stick the CD out of your car, erase Free Domain Radio as your homepage from your bookmarks, stop downloading these podcasts, and start listening to Hannity and Comms.
That's where you need to go.
I'm serious.
I'm serious.
Don't mess around with this stuff.
Don't take little bits and argue about the welfare state and social security and the government and this and that.
Forget about it.
It's not going to help you.
It's not going to help the cause of freedom.
And it's just going to make you even more enslaved than if you were just getting along with everyone by going along with everyone.
At least there's some relaxation in pure conformity.
Yeah, the war in Iraq is good if I'm over here on the right wing, and the war in Iraq is semi-good, or maybe bad if I'm over there on the left wing, and capitalism is good, and corporations, you know, just go slide in with everybody, all the other salmon, all the other salmon in the stream swimming on the same current.
Get into the sardine can with everyone else and seal up your mind from creativity.
Just do it.
Just do it.
But if you do want to be free, if you are interested in moving the cause of freedom forward, you need to be so certain that it's ridiculous.
And I use the word lunacy and ridiculous tongue-in-cheek.
I'm sure you're aware of that.
But the absurd degree of change that we are attempting to bring to bear on society is so high.
It's such an enormous degree of change.
It's such an unthinkable change in society to have no government and no God that If we are not completely certain, in a kind and integrated way, not in a sort of wild-eyed crazy way, if we are not completely certain, we're not going to do anything to move the freedom movement forward.
Not that that's why we do it.
We do it because it brings us happiness.
But the end result is that other people will go, holy crap, now that guy is free!
That guy seems to be really free.
He's not perfectly free, because you're never perfectly healthy either, right?
You have a little cold, flu, bug, whatever is going on in your system, even if you don't feel it.
There's some damn bacteria always.
But he's pretty damn free.
He may, in fact, be the freest person I've ever met, or ever heard of, or ever listened to on a podcast.
Who knows?
That level of certainty only arises from living the libertarian ethic within your own personal life, within your own personal relationships.
Now, once you have that certainty, then you're really free.
Oh, my friends, you're so free, because you don't doubt anymore.
You don't doubt anymore.
It's sort of like if you have leprosy, but it's not really bad leprosy.
If you have leprosy, and everyone else around you has worse leprosy, and you say, I have this drug that's fantastic.
This pill, it's fantastic.
It's going to make you all perfectly happy.
And your leprosy is going to vanish, and everyone's going to be perfectly healthy.
Well, the first thing that people are going to sort of ask is, well, you've got leprosy.
Why don't you take it?
Do you see?
Why don't you take this pill?
If you say it's a damn good.
Why don't you take this pill?
And if you're like, well, no, you know, I don't, I don't, I don't think I want to take this pill.
I just, you know, I don't, I'd rather you take the pill.
I can see what happens.
Like, well, you know, then I don't really believe you when you say that you know for sure that this pill is going to cure my leprosy.
Whereas if there are a bunch of people with leprosy around, and they don't even imagine that there's no such thing as non-leprosy, and then they see you striding into the dinner party with all your fingers still on and vibrant health and so on, then there will be some among those leprosy victims who are going to say, Holy crap!
That guy might have some medicine!
Maybe I could not be a leper!
And that's the result of taking your own medicine.
No positive obligations.
No positive rights.
No coercion.
No manipulation.
No guilt.
No being there in the service of others.
No other people who have a right to your time or energy or money.
Nothing like that at all.
A volunteeristic society, not a personal society.
A volunteeristic personal society within your own life.
Your own DRO.
Your own anarchy.
Your own stateless society.
And it works.
And if you show that it works through who you are and the choices that you've made, People will come to you.
Not because you're right, but because there is such a thing as rightness.
People aren't listening to me because I'm right, but because there is such a thing as rightness.
And I'm identifying it, and we're all identifying it together in this conversation.
And I could not have this conversation if I were not free.
I could not have these four months of podcasting if I had not broken with the corrupt and empty people in my life.
Because all I'd be doing is talking about boring political topics, which I know people like, and I like them from time to time too, but that's an effect of the freedom that you take in your personal life.
The state is an effect of the personal.
The political is an effect of the personal.
The relationships that are in the state to the citizen is the relationships that you have in your life.
And if you're not willing to take your own pill, stop prescribing it for others.
Stop even thinking about a cure.
Because you're not going to convince anyone, and you yourself are going to be miserable.
More miserable than if you gave up on a cure.
Oh, I get this pill.
Should I take it?
Should I not take it?
I don't want to take it.
This guy doesn't like it if I take it.
These people prefer me to have leprosy.
Oh, I won't get along with these people, and these people won't like me.
My family this, and my friends that, and my job the other.
Don't take the pill.
Don't torture yourself.
Don't sit there staring at this pill saying, Oh, I should take it.
I should not take it.
Who knows?
Forget it.
Don't do it.
Don't, don't, don't, don't, don't do it.
Walk away from the pill.
Get back into the matrix, and don't worry about it.
We won't miss you, honestly, because that kind of torture does nothing for the cause of freedom.
But if you are interested in being free and in being happy, and in furthering the cause of freedom, then just take the damn pill, will ya?
Just live your values.
Give up your values or live your values.
Stop staring at the pill and trying to force-feed it to others to see if it works.
Just live your values.
I mean, it's so much simpler.
Really, trust me, it's going to work.
I can tell you from personal experience.
It's going to work beautifully.
You're going to get all the bad people out of your life.
You're going to have a whole lot more power.
You're going to have a whole lot more love.
You're going to have a whole lot more happiness.
You're going to have a whole lot more peace of mind.
And you're going to do a whole lot more to advance the cause, as an effect.
We shouldn't do it to advance the cause.
We're not here to be slaves to freedom.
But if you are interested in advancing the cause, for God's sake, start living your values, like for real.
Like for universal.
Like for everyone in your life.
And stop talking yourself in and out of your feelings about people, and listen to yourself, lie on your bed, think about your relationships, and probe about how you feel.
It'll tell you everything you need to know.
Which relationships to keep, which relationships to ditch.
Which relationships to treasure, which relationships to discard.
Because then you'll be free.
And then you will have a kind of aura around you that comes from certainty.
You will no longer be doubting the philosophy.
You will no longer view people as idiots that can't be converted.
Because they won't be.
Because you're no longer asking them to take a pill that you yourself are not willing to swallow.
So they're not going to be skeptical.
And their nihilism and their negativity and their conformity will never win against your certainty.
Never!
But if you're not living the life, if you're not living the values, then your certainty will always falter, because it will always be hedged.
Yeah, these are good ideas, but not for, really, my primary relationships.
Yeah, I don't agree with unchosen obligations, but, you know, that's for, like, reading Charles Murray and Murray Rothbard in my study alone.
When I actually go out into the world, and I deal with my family, and I deal with friends that I've had for a long time, who maybe I don't respect anymore, That's not for—this is all theoretical.
It's a little lab.
It's a lab in my brain.
It's not for real life.
Fine!
Then stop talking about the state!
Oh, please!
Stop talking about the state!
I knew a guy when I was younger who was very big into libertarianism, and who was one of the least free people that I knew.
I mean, he lived with his mom.
He didn't like his mom.
And, I mean, lots of other things which I won't get into here.
But this guy was talking about freedom?
I mean, even back then I said, but you're still living at home and you're 24.
Which is fine, if you love your mom and dad, great!
But you don't!
So, what are you doing lecturing everyone else about freedom?
I mean, please!
I mean, it's kind of a joke, right?
This is the best cure for leprosy ever.
Oh, damn, I would have handed it to you, but my arm fell off.
I mean, nobody's serious about that, right?
You can't prescribe freedom to other people and then have all of these obligations in your own life, which you don't value and don't treasure and don't like and do out of a heavy sense of guilt and conformity.
You have the nerve to talk about the state?
Oh my god.
Oh my god, please.
Don't embarrass yourself.
Stop doing it.
Fix your relationships.
Be free in your personal life.
And then you won't even need to worry about the state, because the state will fall of its own accord when the virus of freedom spreads throughout people's personal lives, liberating them From the illness of conformity, with the antivirus, the penicillin, the... I can't remember the... What's the phrase?
The inoculation!
That's it.
Sorry.
Please work to reconstruct that metaphor as it works for you, because I think I basically just crash-landed that one and left nothing but a smoking pile in the desert, so feel free to reconstruct that as you see fit, as works for you.
But that's sort of the basic message that I want to get about.
When you come to look at your parents when you're an adult, you've got 30 years of dealing with them.
You know exactly whether they're good or bad people.
You know exactly whether they're right for you or not.
But you know that based on your feelings.
Do you feel a sense of joy in their presence?
Do you feel a sense of obligation and itchiness and wanting to get away and feeling bored or feeling violated or feeling frustrated or feeling... I mean, God damn it!
Just leave!
Just stop.
Stop one or the other.
Stop thinking about freedom and torturing yourself with these horrible relationships.
Or stop having these horrible relationships and be free.
So that's the major topic that I wanted to talk about today.
I'm really glad that we had a lengthy chat about this and I'm really glad that I got a chance to get this off my chest because it's the most important thing that I can say.
So I guess I'll stop podcasting.
Yeah, I guess I'm done.
No, because there may be some comments about this, as in, could you be more passionate?
Could you take more pauses?
Would that be possible?
It's the William Shatner of podcasting.
But that is, I think, the most important thing that I want to say, is take freedom where you can.
Don't take freedom based on the state.
The state is just an effect of your personal relationships.
And you want to be as free as humanly possible, because that will make you certain, that will make you an effective advocate for freedom.
People will seek you out in the way that they're seeking out FDR, based on all our conversations here.
That is freedom.
That's where you need to get to.
That's where you need to be.
So just take the damn pill already and ditch the relationships in your life that aren't free, that aren't productive, that aren't positive, that aren't valuable, that aren't joyful to you.
And if you won't do that, then don't bother at all.
But I'm sure that you will do that, because I can tell you from first-hand experience, it will produce the most beautiful life that you can imagine, because it is in conformity with truth and reality and morality and values.
I'm sorry that I had so many coffees, but I still think it was worth it to get the passion out.
Thank you so much for listening and I'll talk to you soon.
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