All Episodes
Previous Next
April 16, 2006 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:38:36
192.5 Call In Show #2 - April 16 2006
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Early 20s is a good time to get that?
I guess so, yeah. I still get...
My dentist still nags me because I don't have my wisdom teeth out yet.
And I just don't really want to do that.
It wasn't bad. I got my dentist.
Your wisdom teeth? Now, did you take the laughing gas or did you go all the way under or did you, like, really top of death?
Yeah, it just went under. It was four impacted teeth.
They pretty much have to put you under. Right, right, right.
I've been on it twice now.
I guess so. And how is it?
Is it nice? I have to say it's a very interesting experience when you come back out of it.
It's like realizing everything all over again.
Like, oh, I forgot about this place.
I was alive once. Right.
You're like rebooting from toast to state, right?
Yeah, it is very interesting.
And especially when you're all hopped up on these crazy painkiller drugs.
The Lawton, that stuff's powerful.
Oh yeah. No, and Christina worked at the hospital, I kept asking her to get some of that stuff for me, but no luck.
Now, I think I've heard on that too, is to take some questions via the chat room, answer them via voice, problems with their, yeah, those shows are live, yeah, so that's a little tricky.
I think, I mean, I was really hoping to get a bunch of people in through TeamSpeak, but my...
Well, there were people signing on to TeamSpeak, were they told to come here?
They never signed on to my TeamSpeak server because although I tried to open up every single port and turn off the firewall and everything, my computer just never responded.
Even though it was fully available, I just kept, every time you'd connect, it would show up on the list, but it would just never, you weren't able to connect to it.
So then they went to Neil's, and then I don't know what Neil's did with his, whether it's still running or not.
But the problem is...
Sorry, go ahead. For those of us using Macs also, we don't have the search feature in the TeamSpeak client, so we need an actual URL to go to with the port number.
Well, it's one of these things that, you know, we'll get the hang of it at some point, but it's going to take a couple of swings.
This is even worse than trying to podcast from a car, so it's going to take a little while.
I mean, I figured that the odds of it actually working flawlessly the first time around, with us being able to record it and everything, too, were not better than about one in five, so I can't say that I'm wildly shocked.
Yeah, tell me a little bit about this Shoutcast thing.
I've read about it a little bit, but I haven't worked with it at all.
It's a radio distribution and you have a server and people can connect.
It's pretty easy. And you use Winamp to broadcast to the server.
And Winamp is multi-platform, right?
You can receive Winamp protocol feeds on iTunes.
Ah, okay, very nice. Well, now, I guess we've got the maximum number of people in that we can get today, right?
Yeah. I'll try setting up the shout-outs, but go ahead.
Okay. Well, there was an interesting question that was posted on the board today.
I don't know how many people have answered it, which is whether people came into libertarianism or, I guess you could say, minarchism or narco-capitalism, whether people came into that through the left wing or through the right wing.
I just wanted to throw that out to people and sort of see what the answer is to that.
I was a lefty. Really?
Tell us it all.
Tell us the whole sordid tale.
It's always funny because you ask somebody that and to tell a full story would take hours.
It's sort of funny when I think about how to sum stuff up like that.
I don't know, just raised a typical Democrat by my parents.
We vote the Democratic Party line.
You're going to register to vote and do the same as us.
I don't know. I was very much pro-free healthcare.
That was always one issue in my mind.
I always view Europe as very superior to America on that issue.
Oh, they have free universal healthcare and we don't.
Our government is behind theirs and all this stuff.
Well, wouldn't free healthcare be the best thing in the world?
I mean, who could argue with that?
It'd be wonderful. I might be dead by now.
It's impossible, but it's nice to think about.
Now, your mom's a public school teacher, right?
She's a public school psychologist.
Psychologist. So, wow, a public school worker or somebody who works in the public school system, who's a Democrat?
You never hear about that, do you?
Oh, in southern New Jersey, they're all Democrats.
I know, I'm just kidding. You can't see me putting my sarcasm hat on.
I'm sorry. What about you, Eddie?
Is he there? He hasn't said anything.
He apparently is in progress.
Greg, is Greg in? Oops, sorry about that, yeah.
I had my mic on mute.
Oh, hi, Greg. What about you?
Did you come left or right? Well, the household I grew up in, my mom is a conservative democrat, my dad is a liberal republican.
I've always been sort of a right-leaning moderate myself, pretty much up until I graduated high school, but I've always had an anti-authoritarian streak in me.
When I stumbled upon the Libertarian Party, after looking into that for a while, I was pretty much a Libertarian ever since.
I've been Libertarian for probably about 10-12 years now.
It sounds a little bit like you came from the centrist sort of area, since your mom and dad sort of blend into the middle.
Yeah, exactly. It was kind of a right-leaning centrist position.
But for myself, I've always, because of my own anti-authoritarianism, I've always kind of leaned toward the Libertarian Party itself.
But I was never really...
How can I put this...
I was really only identifying as a libertarian, not really understanding why until probably about four or five years ago when I really started looking into the philosophy and everything.
And for you, was there a defining moment or a defining argument that got you over the fence, so to speak?
I wonder if anyone can hear me.
Is she back? Hello?
I think we're out again.
Are we out again? Yep. Oops.
What?
Yo.
Why not in the picture?
I got off.
It's nice that you actually have something that's not...
Hello?
Hello? Oh, he's restarted.
That you actually have a chat rather than just everything going dead.
I thought maybe I got boring and everyone dropped.
Call us.
But who? Hi!
Can you start the conference with everybody?
Hi.
You bet.
Hello.
Hello, Stefan.
Hi.
So I guess, sorry, Greg, I guess the moral of that story is to just beat up your stories a little bit.
Yeah.
Ha, ha, ha, ha. - No.
You know, you gotta keep it snappy.
I know that from podcasting.
Don't even take a breath if you can avoid it.
Sorry, Greg, I guess the moral of that story is to just speed up your stories a little bit.
Whoops. Who's doing this?
Who's that sexy sounding British guy?
Somebody's using speakers He's that sexy-sounding British guy.
We're all skype-ing. You know, this is about the best conversation I think I've ever had in my life.
You don't need this to report.
All right.
Ah.
All right.
So let's just see if I've got any kind of linking going on here.
Can you guys hear this? All right.
Oh, I think I hear an echo.
Nothing indeed. Now, just for those, you probably know this, right?
But you're getting an echo because you've got speakers with...
Yeah, I think so.
It's really weird. I've got two sound cards, and all the different pieces of software have their own input-outputs defined, but somehow it gets messed up.
I don't know how. But I think that the excellent thing about this is it sounds pretty close technically to being possible to allow me to answer my own questions.
Is that where we're going?
Like playing tennis with yourself.
Absolutely.
Wait, is that a metaphor?
No webcams.
We need webcams.
Oh, Christina almost gave me a look there.
Okay, so we're going to keep going?
Yeah, I'll stop using shoutcast.
It's just problematic. Alright.
So, let's start again.
So Gregory, you were saying that you came in through the middle, through your sort of left, your right-leaning leftist mom and your left-leaning rightist dad.
Yeah, that's about the size of it.
Cool. And was there an argument that gave you, like, sort of really jolted you over the fence as far as libertarianism goes?
I'm just sort of trying to figure out what appeals to centrists, what appeals to leftists, and what appeals to rightists.
Well, for me it was logical consistency.
Most definitely.
That's something that I've always been sort of attracted to is a logical framework to work from that's unassailable.
and As you pick apart the attitudes and opinions and policies of the left and right, you start to see where Especially around the notion of state power where it's bad sometimes but not others and the division line always seems to be arbitrary.
And so that's kind of where I came from.
It was sort of in search of a consistent philosophy to subscribe to.
Now, was that something that you knew was missing from your life or from your thinking?
Did you think it was possible that you went in search of it, or did you find it in libertarianism and then sort of realize simultaneously that you...
You know, it's hard to pick either side of that coin.
It's almost as if it happened both ways.
I'm having a hard time figuring out a way to describe it, but...
Like you didn't know you were missing it, and then when you found it, you realized that your life was now, like, sort of differently...
Right, well, you know, I explored pretty much...
Everything that politics had to offer.
I was once a member of the Democratic Party and was once a member of the Republican Party.
I spent a lot of time listening to radio pundits and bouncing from this one to that one.
And every time I switched, I switched because it was like...
You know, you just kind of sense that there was something wrong, you know, and after a while you could start picking out where, you know, people would say one thing and then, you know, a couple days later would contradict themselves on another issue saying exactly the opposite.
And so it was sort of like, you know, you realize that there's a problem there but you can't quite put your finger on what it is and then Libertarianism was sort of like the answer to that question, but even it still at its core, at least the political libertarianism at its core, suffered from the same kind of problems.
And so when I stumbled on your podcast and your forum, it was like, you know, the light bulb went on and it was like, well, of course, you know.
And all you had to do was wait for podcast 189 to get the point.
So I'd say that's pretty efficient.
I'm just curious about something.
I just want to know how visible the Libertarian Party is in the United States.
It certainly is not here in Canada.
And in fact, until I met Steph, I knew nothing about it.
In the United States, it's not visible at all.
Except for a few random news stories, right, that will just portray it in a really silly light.
Yeah, like they did a thing once on Libertarians on the Daily Show, I think, and they really made fun of them in a lot of ways, you know.
Yeah, so it does show up, but it's, you know, like the Ralph Nader's or the Green Party.
It's considered to be a fringe movement.
Sorry, go ahead.
I think something like South Park, you know, this season, season 10, has gone full-blown libertarian, except for the fact that they're still South Park, so they can't...
Like, they're just held back from doing certain things, you know?
Like, their latest episode was great, you know, and basically...
They wanted to show Muhammad that Fox wouldn't let them.
Comedy Central wouldn't let them.
We're going to make this an issue and really show that this is harming us.
They're really going with it, but they're still held back in many ways because of their format.
A lot of the things that Stephen Colbert or Jon Stewart said, Stephen Colbert, I think, has a great sense of how to pick up on what's wrong, just like Alex Jones, but his format doesn't allow him to offer solutions.
Sorry to interrupt for just one sec.
Can I just ask whoever's typing to maybe switch off the mic while they're typing?
Yeah, like just... Sorry, go ahead.
Michael Brown, the former FEMA director on there, and absolutely just like pandered to him.
And I was like, come on, you need to tear this guy up.
Like, you know, you want to be a...
Well, it's the same thing that happens when you look at Jon Stewart with John Kerry, right?
I mean, it's the same kind of issue that these guys definitely need to get their political contacts.
They need to get inside information.
I mean, The Daily Show, a little bit less.
But they need to get those people on there who are either involved in the state or in the state so that they can get the interview stuff that they need.
You should have seen Jon Stewart kissing the toes of Senator John McCain the other night.
It was... I saw that one.
It was like watching a remora hit a shark.
It was terrible. So yeah, that's one of the main problems.
I've still yet to get started on my whole thing on the media.
Niels was kind enough to give me access to an interesting, called Orwell Rolls Over in His Grave or something like that, which is a fairly long-winded but interesting critique of the media, which of course lays the foundation of the problems in the media at the ground of, well, the FCC did this, and Colin Powell's kid did that, and we've changed the ownership restrictions.
That's the problem. The problem is that we just don't have enough regulations to make the media work well for us, because Lord knows it worked so well in the 50s, right?
I just think that stuff's so funny.
And if you were to go to any of these people, and the central thrust of what I want to talk about in this is that if you go to these people and you say, so you feel that a uniformity of communication is a bad thing, but you like public schools with one curriculum for an entire country.
I just think that's funny that they look at the media, you know?
And if the consumers don't seem to notice that there's a uniformity of opinion, is that because they've been involved in public school for 14 years rather than they might listen to a commercial or two or a news show or two?
I just think It's the normal thing that people just miss for me.
They miss the entire forest looking at the root of one tree.
And at the same point, there's this whole forest that they just could look up and have a look at, which they just, for reasons that still escape me to this day and may escape me until I die, they just can't see the basics.
That if you're concerned about uniformity of opinion, the last thing you'd worry about is the media, and the first thing you'd worry about is public education.
Now, I think, was there someone who...
Is Neil still working on the Shoutcast-y thing?
Are you on, Niels? Now, did you come from the left-wing or the right-wing or out of a heart?
Well, I'm from the Netherlands.
Well, we're not really that much into the whole left-wing, right-wing thing.
Pretty much, centrist is considered good here.
And it's really an American thing, you know?
Right. But something pulled you out of the centrist quagmire, right?
Yeah. It started when I listened to Frank on the Hellbound Ellie Show.
And they sarcastically mentioned that they were talking about libertarianism, how bad it was.
But I could sense that they weren't really meaning it, although I really had to listen good to it.
And it was just all logic from there.
You read up a bit and there's no stopping it, you know?
And then I listened to your first three podcasts.
And I was completely convinced.
It took no effort whatsoever.
Yeah, it's funny when that stuff does work.
I mean, I certainly had that same issue of sort of self-convincing when I began working with these ideas.
But it is funny how when you're ready for an idea, it sort of comes right into you and sort of almost takes you over.
And you don't have to, I mean, you still have to reason it out and validate what you're saying.
But I just think that that's a particularly fascinating phenomenon.
And if we understood a little bit more about that, how to create those conditions, I think that would be really cool in terms of getting the message out further.
That's why, to me, that journey about how you get to believe what you believe is really fascinating.
Because, of course, if it is just genetic, I mean, for want of a better phrase, then we're kind of doomed, right?
But if we can find some way to get the beliefs across to other people in a way that was as compelling to them as it was to us, then I think we've got a really exciting opportunity.
Now, is Andy in?
Yeah, I got to take off.
I don't mean to cut out early, but I got someplace to be at 4.30, so I got to go.
Someplace more important to be.
Is your house currently on fire?
Is that the issue?
But it's already 5 o'clock.
Maybe not more important, but scheduled before you were scheduled.
Got it. Well, it's either a woman or a paying job.
A paying woman.
Okay, do you want to drop off?
See you guys later.
Alright, we'll do it a bit more securely next time.
Okay, bye. Now, Francois does want in.
Anyone? And Adi.
Alright. And Adi.
Hello, everyone! Oh, and Adi.
Hey, Frank. Hello!
Glad to see you all again.
Now, Addy, did you make it in?
Well, what is the discussion about?
Addy's microphone is broken, I believe.
Oh, Addy's microphone is broken?
Oh, well, gee, I'd sort of like to have people in here who could actually participate, call me crazy, but...
Well, let's just wait until somebody else wants it.
Francois, what we're chatting about is, did you come from the left or come from the right in terms of getting towards libertarianism?
And we've had one left, one right, and one person from the Netherlands.
Oh dear. They're Niels, I guess.
Which apparently is a free agreement.
Those people from the Netherlands are pretty weird.
I have to agree with that.
I live in Molen.
Right, but you are being called weird by somebody from Quebec, so that is either really weird We're being what? Oh, I was just saying to Niels that you're being called weird by somebody from Quebec, which means that you're completely weird or totally weird.
Yeah, that makes sense.
Excellent. Hey, it's about time.
So, Francois, which way did you come in from?
I think...
well, I became a libertarian pretty young, so...
but I would say that before that I came perhaps from a more right-wing perspective, but not necessarily ideologically, but not because I didn't really know about What a right-wing person was supposed to be, just from my individual preferences, I think I was more right-wing, per se.
Right, right, right.
Yeah, I mean, I certainly came from...
I think I came more from the right-wing than the left-wing.
Because I think that I had a perception that right-wing people were more elitist, which I was even when I was younger, so I think that's why I tended to more stick to that.
Right, right. I think I also found that the machismo side of things where it's nice to sort of sit in your middle class home and talk tough about war and welfare appealed to a sort of base caveman sense of mind that I think led me a little bit more down the right wing than the left wing.
I don't really know about that, sorry.
Now, I guess I'd like to ask something else, too, which is around a very interesting thread, and I'm going to try and podcast either tonight or tomorrow morning on this, about this issue of child raising, which is a very interesting issue.
Do we have any parents?
I don't think we have any parents yet on this call, right?
No parents? Maybe. I don't think so.
So, that's good. We can keep it nice and theoretical.
Maybe. Would you like to share something?
And so...
I think that that's kind of interesting around, it would be very interesting if we could find something in common about our childhoods that gave us some sort of leaning towards this.
I think, because I mean, it's my sense that we all have sort of pretty diverse backgrounds when it comes to our childhoods, but it would be interesting if there was anything in common, because it might help us ask some sort of qualifying questions to those that we're trying to convert, if there was some sort of common factor that we could...
We could find. I know that for myself, sort of my own negative experiences with authority when I was a kid, and also the fact that I sort of became my own authority sort of pretty young, sort of being on my own since I was like 14 or 15.
So for me, the idea that you needed an authority in your life to make your life run better never really made any sense to me at all.
And so I think that would sort of have something to do with me, but that's pretty different from what other people have experienced here.
So I was wondering if we could just sort of talk and Share a few ideas about anything that might have occurred, any book we read, or any teacher that we had, or any ideas that we came across, or any sort of innate tendencies that may have been further, I guess, enhanced in our childhood experiences that might have led us to be receptive to these kinds of ideas.
What happened was, when I was very young, around 12 or 13, I think, I naturally started to resist the things that people wanted from me just because they wanted it.
I started to be skeptical.
I said, well, why?
And they've never given me any answers, so my skepticism just grew.
And also the fights grew.
It was a big shout contest, my youth.
But that's just me.
And ultimately it led to some answers, but it took years and years.
Now, did you have any sort of catalytic moment or anything which you think might have given you more skepticism?
I'm not sure if this has anything to do with it, but my father was abroad for one and a half years without us when I was about ten, I think.
Maybe that's got something to do with it, I'm not sure.
Or maybe... So your father was away for a couple of years just before puberty for you?
Interesting. When your father left, did you experience that as a really bad thing?
We were living in Saudi Arabia and the war started there.
So when we were vacationing in the Netherlands, the war broke out.
And we stayed here and my father had to go back for some time.
And my sister always told me that she really had a tough time with that, that she thought it was a bad thing of him not to be here.
But I myself can't really consciously remember any strong emotions from that or something.
I don't know. Interesting.
So you didn't particularly miss your dad, and I'm just trying to think, yeah, that is interesting.
So you didn't miss your dad too much, which meant that your bond with your father wasn't rock solid, which might have led to more of a sort of independent analysis.
Like when you have a very strong bond with an authority figure, it can be hard to sort of think for yourself a little bit more, but if your bond is not as strong, One story my mother tells me is when I was about four or five years old and we were living in another country and she drove me to preschool And all the children were crying and didn't want their mothers to leave,
but I went straight to the garden with the toys.
It was just like, bye bye, see you later.
Right, right. She's one and a half years older.
She's older or younger than you are. She's older, so she may have been just more aware of your father's absence just simply through her age.
And were you close with your father growing up?
Well, both my parents are really the type that really want certain things from you, and I think it will make you happy, but they'll never really understand you, you know?
Like you were talking about, if there's a problem, don't be angry.
But my parents were always angry.
Ah, and now what were they angry about?
Being lazy. Being a bad boy.
Just typical youngster stuff, you know.
Nothing special. Right, right, right.
Forgive me, you may have already answered these questions on the chat on the board, but are you from Saudi Arabia?
No. I'm from the Netherlands and I was born here and we quickly left to other countries because my father works for a big oil company.
Okay, so that's why you were in Saudi Arabia?
Yeah, so I'm quite used to changing environments and living in very hot countries.
Now, just for those I...
Lance, I guess you've got your speakers on.
So if you could just mute that.
So if you could just...
Thanks.
I mean, we do love to hear ourselves, but maybe not quite that quickly.
Lance has just joined us, so because his microphone was down, I thought I'd bring Lance in.
Hi, Lance. I guess he muted everything.
We shall see.
Yeah, I'm trying to figure out the Skype on the Mac.
I just got the MacBook Pro, so I'm trying to figure out how to mute this crap.
Beautiful. Well, it's actually sound good.
I think we can hear you, and we couldn't hear any echo, so that's good.
So we have Niels on the couch, which is good, because we're improving his relationship with his father to try and find commonalities between our experiences and anything that may have led us towards sort of libertarian ideas.
So, invite us to the chat room as well.
Well, there may be something you also already mentioned, is that It's an ability you have to look through some things.
It's a different kind of intelligence.
And people can be really great at math or really technical skills, but they can't see the plain things right in front of them.
Right, right. And there's a real resistance to seeing things plainly in front of them as well.
The thing that I always find quite astonishing is that libertarianism is astoundingly easy.
It is the easiest political thought in the world.
I mean, even if you just look at minarchism as opposed to anarcho-capitalism, which has its own challenges around substitutes for the state, just sort of saying violence is bad just seems to be about the easiest thing in the world.
But it's something that people have such a great amount of difficulty with, which is what has, I think, always baffled most libertarian thinkers.
It certainly did me for many years until Christina told me the answer.
So that helped a lot.
And then, did you have any teachers who you think had any effect on the growth of your libertarian ideas or anything like that, or was it mostly self-study that got you along?
Well, I got onto it fairly late, just about two years ago, I think.
So no teachers were involved with that.
Well, one thing I got on was I started to get interested in atheism and evolution.
I really got into that debate on the internet and slowly I got into the whole documentary thing, you know?
All these things you can download, there's a million of them out there.
When you start getting interested in that, it's a snowball effect, you know?
You want to learn and learn and learn.
Because you can choose what you find interesting and not the other way around.
Well, again, the great thing about any kind of rational philosophy is you have a way of organizing the knowledge.
Well, you have a way of seeking it out based on some principles that make sense.
Like, I've learned this. Now, the next thing that I need to learn is this.
You can organize it that way, and the information that you do get coming in, you have a place to put it, which is great, because otherwise you're just learning randomly, sort of grabbing.
What you're saying is quite interesting, because the evolution thing tied very well with the...
The planets thing and the stars and it also tied good in with the psychology and you probably are familiar with the great documentary maker David Attenborough and he's got this series called Life on Earth And he goes through all the stages.
He starts with the smallest organisms and he ends up with humans.
And it's just also logical and natural.
It ties in fantastic with all the small and big things, also with the big things like stars and planets.
Right. And once you learn about the scientific method and you learn about syllogistical reasoning, then you, I mean, for me at least, once I learned about that kind of stuff, then you are stuck with the problem of, like, everybody believes silly things.
Like, everybody. Except for, I think, us five, which is good.
I mean, I'm glad that we can't actually do more than five on this because there wouldn't be any point.
But once you realize that people believe silly things, then you're naturally drawn, at least I was, towards psychology to try and figure out, well, why would people believe such silly things?
When it's so much work to believe silly things and it's so easy to believe things that make sense.
So that to me was a natural step, and it sounds like you were similar, a natural step towards psychology, which is why is everybody sort of crazy?
Theology is a very simple to understand problem.
Why are people like that?
Once you know that everybody is insane, and it's an easy to understand problem, you can also move to other fields like political beliefs.
It wasn't that of a hard transition for me at all.
Now, how did you deal with the whole problem of self-confidence?
Because when you look at a world that is structured in a way that does look like a complete, like the ravings of madmen and madwomen, and you look at yourself and you say, "Okay, there are six billion people here, me and two other guys are right, and you all six billion minus two or three are wrong." Did you have any problem with that kind of leap?
No. Or is it just starting now that I've mentioned it?
It's so easy to see.
If you understand how one person can be religious, and you can see how an entire continent can be religious, then it doesn't make any impact.
What does it matter if 50 million people believe in some crazy god?
I don't see how that makes any difference.
Right, right. So you had no problem with the self-confidence that the world is wrong and I'm not.
Excellent. That's good.
That's good. That's good.
Andrew, are you still there? Okay, now we'll come back to Nils in a sec as I formulate my next excruciatingly personal questions.
I'm lying down. Now it's your turn.
I'm lying down on my experience couch.
I'm sorry? Yes, right.
We're going to take you on a journey.
You're back in the womb. You're not going to smother me, are you?
That's right.
This was almost exactly our third date when Christina put me through a question to find out if my childhood was as bad as I claimed or not.
Ha, ha, ha. Sorry about that.
Just getting used to the whole conference thing.
Somebody's knocking at me.
Did you have that same transition where you began with one particular area of rational examination or scientific thinking?
Yeah, I mean, my first real...
The first time I was ever conscious of doing this was with a sophomore year debate about marijuana legalization.
And that was really the first time I ever remember being against a party line.
Just in doing research on the internet and finding out that all these things that I've been told were false and that it's actually better to have it legal.
It sort of snowballed from there, yeah.
The first experience I ever really had where that sort of transferred into political belief was on a phone conversation I was discussing with a Republican school colleague.
This is when I was maybe 17, the 2004 election.
He had said on the phone, you know, like, plain and simply, you know, I work for my money and I don't think I should have to pay my taxes based on what I do.
And it was a very simple question, but it really made a lot of sense to me.
And it really wasn't hard to accept what he was saying and sort of, and it was really funny because just as he was, I was having that conversation, I met Frank and started talking and reading about libertarianism and it just snowballed from there.
And the massive amount of confidence that it takes to sort of stand up to the world and say, y'all are nuts.
Did that face you at all?
I love it. I wanted to go around this morning.
I was with my friend Matt. And my appendix isn't too well.
So I wanted to...
It's missing, in fact.
So I wanted to get a wheelchair.
I wanted to get a wheelchair and walk around the block in robes and just enjoy the beautiful scenery and the birds that were out.
The trees in bloom, anyway.
Not beautiful scenery. And we were thinking that people would think we were crazy for doing that.
But you know what? We're... I totally embrace that.
I love it. And I think that medically you're doing a lot better than your appendix is currently.
Which is probably in some seagull's belly heading south.
So that's interesting. So basically what got you going was the war on drugs, like the idea of legalization of marijuana.
Sorry to interrupt, but before you started studying in that particular topic, did you have an opinion about it, or did you just start exploring it?
My opinion on that was from my father, who was pro-legalization of drugs.
I guess he was somewhat of a hippie, so he...
I don't know. For whatever reasons, he wants drugs to be legal, but then you say you want to get rid of another government program, and he doesn't support that.
It's very inconsistent, but I think him sort of having that and conveying that to me allowed me to see the inconsistencies, I suppose.
Right. Okay, yeah. So, from a particular instance, you were able to extract a principle and apply it even in areas that made you uncomfortable, whereas your dad is, like, he has that particular thing, which is around a personal preference, but he's not able to extract that as a principle and apply it in other areas.
Now, did you ever go through a phase where you came to some particular area of government action and you sort of hesitated a little bit like standing at the edge of a cliff and said, okay, well, I've got all these principles and that's great, but this one's a bit of a doozy.
I mean, I've spent some time as a status libertarian, I guess, of the two types, you know, the anarchist and the pro-state libertarian kind, you know.
But I... Right.
Yeah. The ones we call maddeningly close.
No, I guess, you know, like...
I don't know.
Everything became so clear with the podcast.
What can I say? So you haven't had an area where you hesitated before saying, okay, well, I can keep going.
I mean, yeah, I did stop along the way at several points, but nothing...
Well, I guess to ease the passage, it's good to get reconciled to marijuana first, right?
Because then the rest of it's pretty easy and pretty smooth.
Anytime I feel uncomfortable, I just take a little ganja man and it's easy.
Yes, that's right. Are you still on?
By the way, before you get started with probing my whole life story, I want to mention that you guys should all be jealous because I have Peter Byland on my Skype and you don't.
I just chatted with him.
I invited him to your conference, but he said he didn't have a microphone right now.
Now he left. I thought it would have been really great to have you and Pear together.
You two should really hit it off.
You know who he is, right?
No, he's a great anarchist thinker.
I would say he's similar to you in terms of ideas, but he's really great.
He has a lot of great articles.
I'm really a big fan of his too.
I was getting excited there, but no, he couldn't come.
But he's great.
We're going to have him on our show next week.
Oh, well, great. I'll listen in and send me his email.
I'll send send you an invite to the podcast. And no, he's not German.
I think he's Norwegian.
All right, he's cheating on their microphone.
Sorry, there might have been me there.
Somebody has an echo? I think the one thing that kept me from being an anarchist, well, first of all, the lack of knowledge of it, of course.
And this second area, which took me a while, even when I was listening to you, was this notion that we need to have a...
No, I'm not on headphones.
This notion that we need to have a standard of objective law, of objective rights, and that society should be oriented towards that, and that anarchy would not have that aspect.
I think that's a pretty standard objectivist argument, Which I really thought was correct for a number of years, until of course I thought about your moral arguments, etc., and realized that in fact an anarchy would probably sustain objective rights over a period of time better than a government.
Yeah, I think that was the main blockage for Anarchy for me.
Yeah, well certainly Ayn Rand was pretty aggressive about the need for a small state.
I mean, looking back on it and having re-read Atlas Shrugged, or actually I listened to it in audiobook for the last, I guess, couple of months ago, it is a wonderful, wonderful story, and she's so close.
To the answer and then at the very end to say, well, now the smart guys are going to design the government and so everything's going to be fine.
It's just the saddest thing in the world, right?
Because even if John Galt is the most brilliant guy in the world and he's the philosopher king who is going to make the whole thing work, Well, he's going to die, and then there's going to be some other James Taggart who's going to come along and take over the whole structure and begin the whole process of corrupting it again.
So, just having gone a little further in my own thinking since the last time I read Out and Shrugged, hearing it again, I was startled by how close she was to so many of the things that we're talking about now, but also disappointed by the ending, where it seems to take the fizzle out of the whole book.
And I think that if she had gone the whole hog...
And said that we're going to go back and have a voluntaristic society, I think the book would have had a lot more impact in the general culture because it would have had a much greater sense of consistency.
I understand her argument from a purely theoretical standpoint, but I think if you look at it as a comparative issue, which I think we should always do, And you look at the dynamics in both cases.
I think it's pretty obvious, if you think about it, that objective rights and law are more likely to be sustained.
I think an anarchy would tend towards objective rights, while a government does not, obviously.
It's the reverse, if anything.
Brian. Brian.
Now, what was Ali's status when you met her?
Where was she along this particular journey?
She was about the same place I was.
Libertarian, atheist.
Ah, okay, cool.
Well, she said she was liberal, but you didn't really know what libertarian was.
That's the whole thing. I think exposure to an idea is really the main problem.
Really? It's not really being convinced of it.
Once I was exposed to ideas, you know, I knew that those were my positions.
I didn't really have much of a problem in adopting new positions.
It was just knowing about them.
And do you think you have anything similar to what Niels was talking about in terms of his relationship with his father and maybe being more of an authority and having a slightly less strong bond than some other people with his own father that may have led him to have less to lose?
Yeah, I didn't really have big bonds with my parents.
And my father's dad has been dead for a while.
So, no, I've never felt much bonding with my family, no.
Interesting.
Andrew, sorry to get back to you for a sec, but I didn't ask you the question about close bonds with your own father.
Not really. I mean, that's the thing.
You look at it and you seem like every other relationship.
It's like a... Every other father's own relationship seems the same, but really there's nothing there to it.
That's the thing I've come to realize recently.
It never was close.
You can think it was. You can tell yourself that in your own mind, and you do.
But deep down you know it's not, I guess.
Well, yeah, and I think that I know that for myself, one of the things that I've mistaken around things in terms of like closeness or the idea of closeness is that when you're very young, well, your parents are going to play with you and they're going to feed you and they're going to clothe you and they're going to take you to the zoo and they're going to do this and they're going to do that, which is great. But none of that has anything particular to do with your individual personality.
That's just stuff you do with very young kids.
And there is a great challenge for parenting, which I'm going to try and dig into this week, right after the whole thing on the Marxist theory of value, which is the idea that when your child begins to develop a distinctive personality and thoughts of their own, that's where a lot of parents kind of don't make the transition to appreciating the growth of individuality and encouraging the growth of independent thought within their children.
And that's because their own authority is not based on anything particularly moral.
It's just based on I'm bigger and stronger kind of thing.
I mean, however nicely that's portrayed.
So I know that for myself, looking back on my very early childhood, where there was some fun stuff that was going on, that stuff had some resonance for me and gave me some sense of closeness that I don't think existed because the moment I began to think for myself, that sort of...
Fun stuff didn't evaporate completely, but it definitely diminished, and then more friction came about, which I think was a shame, but I think is something that's very common.
Does that make any sense to you, or is that just my experience?
Definitely my... I guess my mom was always, I think, good with me as a child.
You know, she did certain things to instill the very simple, you know, we don't use violence, we don't hit, you know, things in me, you know?
But beyond that...
I'm not sure, you can take the mic, I'm sorry.
Yeah, I'm right here.
Lance, are you still in?
Good, okay. Well, I know you've been eagerly awaiting questions about your own father, which I'm sure is exactly what you expected to come out of a libertarian conference call.
And, of course, you know, you can answer it or not, but I guess I've already put my own history out there, so you're free to, of course, answer it or not, as you see fit.
I kind of joined into the conversation a little bit late.
I was trying to figure out where exactly we were going to be holding this, whether or not it was still going to be on the team speaker.
If it decided to go to Skype, so I... Would you...
Yeah. What was the question, or...
What was going on exactly.
Alright, so what we're going to do here is attempt to recreate your birthing experience.
So if you could just close your eyes for a second.
No, I'm kidding. Everything's all blurry.
It's like whitewater rafting, but very slowly.
You can see? Wow!
So what we're doing is at least one thing that I'm curious about is trying to find the commonalities of experience that we've had.
And so the reason for that in the larger sense is that it would be nice for us to sort of try and figure out if there's a personality profile of people who are more pro-libertarian or who have that capacity if they're exposed to the ideas.
Because we want to try and get as many people on board as possible and not waste our time sort of beating our head against the wall of people who aren't going to change.
I think that now we have a sort of community growing of people who have similar ideas.
It might be worth asking a little bit about sort of backgrounds to see if there's anything in common.
So the way that I started asking of this was to look at something like when you began to sort of have these ideas, what was the triggering incident, and was it difficult for you to progress in them, and so on.
Sure. I was introduced to libertarianism really from a friend during Right before the last election in the United States.
It was through the Libertarian Party that's in the United States.
I did some research on LP.org and researched their stands on a lot of things, and they just made sense from a logical perspective.
Especially with the war on drugs, with The stance on gun control and other such things.
I was brought up around guns and stuff.
I live in California so I never got that whole nobody's allowed to carry a gun kind of thing.
Those were some of the things I was struggling with in my own area.
So, after researching all of that, I came to my conclusion that I agree with the libertarian stance, so that's what I started voting on.
And then, of course, I started expanding my horizons and started trying to get more information about libertarianism, and I stumbled upon your podcast by a simple Google search.
Precisely. We're just looking for a libertarian podcast or a crazy guy who can't stop talking.
It's one of those two.
Either one will get you to the right place, I think.
A guy who never seems to inhale.
I started listening to your podcast, and I agree with most of what you say.
I'm struggling with the Christianity thing, because I am a Christian.
Well, it's good to listen to that perspective because I was born into a Christian community and you've got to be able to test your faith, at least I believe.
I can't just believe something blindly for the rest of my life.
No, I agree. And I know that there are some people who are a little bit more like, oh my god, a Christian!
Oh my god! But I mean, for me, it's great.
I very much appreciate the intellectual rigor, the curiosity, and of course, I know that it takes quite a bit to listen to pretty strongly dissenting viewpoints.
It takes quite a bit of energy and effort, and we libertarians know that, because of course in politics, that's all we ever get from the popular media is stuff that rubs us the wrong way.
So I know how difficult that is.
So I certainly appreciate you sticking it through and giving the atheistic viewpoint a chance.
Sure. It's a struggle for me, to say the least.
It's a struggle because atheistic views are very logical, and being born into a Christian community and...
Being part of it for so many years of my life, it's hard to break free of that ideal and switch to a different paradigm, especially since even though I do agree with the logical process that you've taken us through in your podcast, I can't really see myself not believing in God, even though...
You know, you've kind of debunked Jesus as, I guess, the historical Jesus.
I understand.
It's an accumulated life experience for you that would feel almost like taking a picture out of your body, right?
Do you mind if I interrupt for a second?
Can I just, sorry, Christina was just tugging at my sleeve to ask a question, and then we'll go back to you, Francois.
Well, I was just wondering how you deal with the struggle.
I mean, today was or is Easter Sunday.
I mean, are you a practicing Christian to the extent that you go to church, that you celebrate the religious holidays?
How does, you know, your new, these ideas that stuff is putting forth, that atheists have put forth about the existence of God, how does that affect you?
In terms of your own practices? I'm, number one, I'm not a, I guess a, how do I say this, typical Christian?
I was raised in a Seventh-day Adventist, it's kind of a It's a different sect of Christianity.
I don't know if anybody's ever had any experience with Sabbath-day Adventism.
Saturday's off. Saturday's off.
I heard off. I don't know. Yeah, precisely.
Saturday is the Sabbath. We understand that the Sabbath was changed from the Jewish Sabbath to the Sunday worship because of Constantine.
But we kind of go back to the Jewish belief that Saturday is the Sabbath.
So we rest on that day and go to church on that day.
And I still do that.
I still go to church because I love the community.
I love being around good people, good intentioned people, I guess.
It's a struggle to listen to...
I guess to sermons that are pretty much based on pick and choose from the Bible.
Personally, I don't believe that the Bible was written by God through some kind of trance or something.
I think it was a semi-historical record of people believing that God touched their life in a way, and so they had to write it down with their Influences throughout their life.
But yeah, to go back to what Christina asked me, it's difficult dealing with it, and definitely my views have changed.
I don't know.
Being Easter, I never really kind of did anything on Easter except for hunt for eggs.
Because I was part of the Seventh-day Adventist community, we were always taught that it is a pagan holiday.
And so even though we would recognize that we are now celebrating it as Christ being risen, it was actually a pagan holiday to begin with, and we just kind of adopted it.
Right, so they do know something about the historical origins of some of the rituals which I guess were overtaken by Christianity from previous religions.
Okay, that makes sense.
And just before we go back to Francois, this exploration that you're going into about other ways of looking at religion than the one that you were brought up with, what effect is it having on the conversations that you're having with other people, obviously I guess some of whom, or the majority of whom of which have not gone through the process that you're going through at the moment?
It's... I'm kind of trying to...
I'm struggling with trying to prove God from a logical perspective.
Yeah, laugh if you will, but I mean...
No, listen, if you can do it, let me know, and I'll be the first one to podcast it.
Well, I don't think I can do it alone.
I mean, there's obviously a reason why there are still Christians to this day, other than they've been brought up.
I mean, there are logical people in the world who are theologians and who have struggled with exactly these questions that you've brought about.
So I think that I am pulling from my own resources.
I do work at a Christian university, or a Seventh-day Adventist university, and there are plenty of theologians around, so I have been asking them questions, and they've actually asked, one of my professors have asked me to take part of a philosophy of religion class.
He said you can sit in on it and everything.
So I will be posting about it on the Once I actually get some information that's worth hearing and reading about, I'll be posting it on the forum.
Well, I'm certainly eager to get those perspectives and get those viewpoints because it is a very challenging position to alter.
I mean, I think that, as we've talked about in the podcast, of course, the question about why there is still a religion, if it's not true, is obviously a very complicated one and a deep one, and I've sort of certainly touched upon my particular opinions on it, but I certainly think that debating with Christians is a very important aspect of atheism, and I think it's something that's a little bit underrated by some atheists.
I just want to say one thing.
Me just being here is just to obtain knowledge.
It's not to try to convert anybody to Christianity.
I mean, you've obviously gone through a lot of logic and gone through your own process and everybody here has gone through their own process and the reasons why they have become atheists or just are atheists, period.
By no means is my goal here trying to convert anybody to Christianity.
Good, but at least there's one side that's not trying to convert the other, then that's good.
So Francois, did you have a question?
I think Francois's head just exploded.
Can you hear me?
He's probably just reassembling his head and will join us in a moment.
Sorry about that.
I'm eating the most delicious pork tenderloin you've ever tasted.
That's great. On a Sunday?
Yeah, exactly. On a Sunday?
No, really, it's great. It's delicious.
Anyway. My question was, how do you reconcile the values of libertarianism and market anarchy with the anti-values and the sacrifice mentality and the slave mentality and the altruism inherent in the Christian doctrines, which are really, in fact, at its very foundation?
Me personally?
Yes.
That's a very good question.
I... Should we go back to asking you about your father?
Okay, go ahead. Sorry.
Well, I believe that Sorry, I wasn't really kind of prepared to join this and start talking about Christianity and my personal beliefs.
I was just going to kind of listen in, but hell, since we're doing it.
Well, I mean, and you're certainly free to do that, but I mean, if you can do it, that would be great.
It would certainly be an interesting question for us to hear.
Right, I'm more than willing to speak about it.
I've just got to kind of collect my thoughts and put them in an order that other people would maybe find logical.
No problem. Can I jump in a bit, Stefan?
Yeah, I think Lance would appreciate it.
What I wrote in the chat, Andrew shares this experience with me.
He said I wasn't impressed with my parents and I also didn't experience that they were very happy.
Or that their relationship was very great.
So that means that their power structure over me didn't impress me in any way.
You're breaking up, Andrew.
Sorry. We have an echo too.
We have an echo too.
Well, all of that combined with being raised as an atheist I've heard that my Christian neighbors were bad because they took their case to church and all that stuff.
So I was already set against everyone else, so to speak.
Fundamentally, the same thing was unimpressed, as Neil said, with my parents.
So I had both aspects of it.
Well, I can certainly share that for sure in terms of not being impressed with my own parents who just looked like, you know, a very long, slow and tortuous train wreck going on pretty much perpetually.
So it was hard for me to look at that and say, oh, leadeth me on, oh, fair shepherd.
But there are people who can impress you, you know.
When you're a kid. People with strong opinions or look tough or have any kind of thing that impresses you.
But I just didn't experience that.
Yeah, and I think it's certainly very true that children very much want someone to look up to to lead them in a path that is going to be productive and make them happy.
Now, this echo keeps coming back.
Is there somebody who's turning on speaker?
Is it from the pork-eating infidel corner?
I'm trying to lower the microphone, but I still want you to hear me.
You can use Skype to actually turn it on and turn it off.
Do you still hear me?
Uh, yeah, we can hear you, but we also got an echo.
Uh, yeah, we can hear you, but we also got an echo.
Okay, well, if it's that low and you can still hear it, it might not come from me.
Let me go...
I'm going to turn off my microphone.
Okay, now we can talk about...
Actually, did you hear the echo?
No, it's you.
It's me? Well, there's really nothing more I can do about that.
Just go to headphones.
No, I'm eating.
You're eating so you can turn around your head.
Follow your headphones.
I don't care. But I'm eating.
Anyway, go ahead. I was wondering, I have a question for Francois, actually.
Could you repeat your question to me so I can write it down and think about it for a minute?
Well, the question I asked you was pretty fundamental, which is basically, how do you reconcile the moral contradiction?
More specifically, how do you reconcile the libertarian values, market anarchist values such as freedom and benevolence and traitor principle, etc., and honesty, versus the Christian anti-values?
Which are basically to repress choice and value.
And the preaching of sacrifice, which is fundamental to Christian doctrine.
And altruism and submission of your mind, etc.
And all that juicy stuff.
Now, are you saying...
To reconcile moral differences because of what the church has done in the past, or are you saying that because of like a biblical...
No, I'm talking purely ideologically.
I don't think I've ever been raised to believe that there's some kind of ideological sense in Christianity that it's supposed to be against morals, but...
No, I'm not saying you were thought that.
I'm asking you how you reconcile the conceptual facts involved in Christian doctrine and in the Bible versus the values of libertarianism.
I don't think I understand.
I'm not...
Pardon my ignorance.
I mean, this is...
No, it's okay. Is it something like, do you mind if I... Can you just send your speakers down for a second?
How's that? It's just that, with the...
with the Lance... sorry, with the echo, it does sound like God, and that might sound like we're begging the question.
Children, So I think the question might be something like in libertarianism you have very much an individual conscience.
The individual does not need to be sustained by any kind of social entity or central organizing entity that is very much around individual conscience and thinking for yourself and using rational principles and that there is a non-sacrificial, like there is no possibility that the individual can be justly sacrificed to the collective.
That there is no sort of good Samaritan positive set of rights, that you have to help others in libertarianism, but in the Christian sense, in the Christian ethics, particularly in the New Testament ethics, there's quite a lot of that.
And if I understand Francois' question, it's something like, in the New Testament you're very much, you know, you are your brother's keeper and render unto Caesar what is Caesar's and you should help throw off everything that you own and help the poor and it's easier for A camel to pass through the eye of an eagle then for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.
That there's quite, and there's no, usury is very much condemned, like lending for interest and so on.
So there's a lot of sort of anti-free market, I guess you could say, or anti-individualistic, anti-rationalistic moral principles within the New Testament and to some degree in the Old Testament.
And how do you reconcile those with some of the libertarian stuff that makes you tick?
And this is a question I have as well, of course, because if we could tap into the Christian libertarian stuff without so much getting the God stuff, that would be great for us for the libertarian movement as a whole.
Okay, I think I'm understanding it.
The common point is. Obviously, I'll be corrected if I don't.
I think, personally, to reconcile it myself, I see a complete split between Christianity and morals.
I think that morals have been around a few hundred years or thousands of years before Christianity.
So I don't think that Christian beliefs are, at least for me, maybe it's for other Christians, but I don't think that they're based on morals.
I think they're based on teachings and God's influence and participation in humanity.
Okay, then I have a little problem here.
Sure. If you're saying that Christianity If the teachings of Christianity are not a competing morality, then what are they?
I'm not saying that morals are wrong or morals are not there.
No, what I'm saying is...
You said that...
No, I understand. You're saying that Christianity is not a competing morality for you, so that you separate it from all issues, but then I have to ask you, then what is Christianity?
Christianity and the belief of Christ and God.
So, to you, Christianity is a purely ontological issue.
It's just a claim that God exists.
That's all it is. It's a belief that God has somehow come down and spoken to humanity.
Because there's no way that a wholly other person, something that we cannot reach on our own, something that is beyond all of our comprehension, there's no way that we could, I guess, reach it.
So our only understanding of God is God coming down and giving us information throughout the ages in order to say, here I am, I do exist, these are little bits and pieces of my persona.
Okay, so you don't believe that Jesus is your savior and that Jesus came to save humanity from sin, correct?
No, I do believe Christ, Jesus, was here on the earth.
I'm asking you specifically a moral issue.
I'm asking you if you don't believe that Jesus is your savior and you don't believe that Jesus came to save mankind from sin, right?
Because these are moral issues.
I believe that Christ came here to save us from death.
To save us from an eternal death.
Okay.
And the reason why is because...
now...
I'm sorry, this is now getting into a completely theological stance.
No, no, but listen, you said that Christianity has nothing to do with morality, but now you do realize...
That's because I believe that the original sin and the only sin is not that we have these moral beliefs that we have to follow by.
It's because I believe that the only sin that there is is we believing that we somehow know what is...
A God's eye perspective.
We know what is best for humanity.
Okay, but you do understand.
You're saying that Christianity has nothing to do with morality.
And on the other hand, now you're saying that Jesus came to...
What?
The moral standard. What moral standard?
The moral standard.
Look, if you want to talk to him, you can come in the mic.
But I'm just saying, it's just Alice.
But you're saying that Jesus came to save us from death, but did you realize that if death, if you believe that death does not exist, then you have a serious moral problem.
Why? You do realize that, don't you?
No, I don't think I understand what you're saying.
How do I have a moral issue if I don't believe that there is an eternal death?
It's an extremely grave moral issue because if death exists, we have a finitude of resources that necessitate us making moral judgment.
It's the finitude of our life resources and material resources which necessitate Moral judgment, we have to decide how to act.
But if life is not right... We have to decide how to act in order to get along with humanity as a whole, not because we have an impending death.
You know, that's not the case.
You have no reason to be nice to other people.
Why? I mean, if I want to get along with other people, I'm going to be nice to them.
I mean, that's just human nature.
I mean, that's just the way it is.
I mean, if I want to live in a community, and if I want to get along with other people, I must have morals perspectives in order to protect other people's livelihood as well as my own.
And that has nothing to do with, in fact, if I believe in God or not.
Sure it does. If you believe that you're not going to die...
Well, now, if I can just jump in for a second, because I think that the possibility of resolving Christian versus atheistic ethics is probably not going to be used in moral competition.
Well, all I'm saying is there's a basic contradiction in moral approaches.
I fully understand that for sure, but I think that's a complicated topic that I think it also might be fair to give Lance, I mean if he wants to, and I certainly would appreciate it if he would, to give Lance a chance to prepare for that because we've had 20 years of reading and thinking to prepare and he's jumping in a little bit unprepared so I think it may be a little bit pouncy.
I'm willing to ask for these answers, and I think that it's well worth talking about for sure, and I certainly would appreciate hearing more of Lance's opinions, but maybe we can let him dig into the philosophy of religion a little bit more so that he can come fully armed, because we definitely want him to be on his best game when we have that conversation.
Does that make sense, Lance? That's perfectly fine.
I appreciate that, because I do really feel kind of unprepared.
Yeah, we want you to be suited up for the biggest lance you can find.
Because we want to make sure that we've got the best perspective on hand.
I don't want to think that.
I don't want to change any chance for that.
Well, like I said, I didn't come here to convert anybody.
I'm simply trying to understand it from an atheistic point of view and from a more libertarian point of view.
But the question that Stefan posed to you was one part of my question, but my real fundamental question is how to reconcile the completely anti-value sacrificial approach of Christianity versus the positive values and the...
The moral realism of libertarianism and market anarchy.
I think that's really the fundamental basic question, the basic contradiction.
The points that Stefan brought up, I think, are a consequence of that contradiction.
I think he made a lot of big points, but the really fundamental problem is that it's just not the same approach at all.
They are two completely opposite So, you're saying that since Christian beliefs are based on sacrifice and submission, that that is somehow a problem because...
It's not just based on sacrifice and mental submission.
It's a system of anti-value at its core.
Well, yeah, but I think in order to make that statement comprehensible to a Christian, I think we need to start with a lot more sort of basic definitions.
Okay, okay. And I think pretty much metaphysics.
And I think we need to sort of back off and start from that.
And I think it's a great conversation to have, and I really do enjoy those conversations, but I think that the problem is that we're going to have to start a little bit further back.
Just so that our position makes a bit more sense, because if we start arguing about ethics without the metaphysics in place, then it's going to be a little bit confusing.
And I'm sorry to be throwing around all these $20 Greek words, but, you know, Christina's early Greek education needs to pay off somehow.
No, I think let's have that conversation for sure, but let's dig into a little bit of his coursework.
Now, is there anyone we haven't picked on?
Now, Lance, you didn't seem particularly...
No, I can talk about my dad.
I mean, it's a short subject.
I mean, he left my family when I was three.
Well, I mean, it's no big deal.
I've reconciled him many years ago.
He was never really around.
I kind of lived with him for a little bit.
Me and him didn't get along.
He... He didn't seem too keen on the idea that I wanted to be a part of his life, so I was like, okay, not a problem.
And after which I just kind of adopted, I guess, my grandfather as more of my father figure, because he was a more stable person.
He stayed with my grandmother for 72 years, so...
I mean, they had, in my eye, the perfect marriage.
So that's what I kind of based my, how I would find my wife.
And, you know, that's why I believe that I have such a good wife now.
Now, did your grandfather and your father get along?
No, my father was very... Shady person.
He cheated on my mother many years.
I have two oldest brothers who are 14 and 11 years older than me, and then I have a half-brother who is four years older than me.
So, do the math there and he can see what happened.
Wait a sec, carry the five and two.
Yeah, that doesn't spell fidelity to me for sure, and I'm certainly sorry to hear about that too.
So would it be fair to say that relative to Andrew and Niels' own particular fatherhoods or father situations, that...
Is somebody, just out of curiosity, somebody playing music in the background there?
That may be me. Hello?
Yeah, I'm...
Maybe. Just let us know if the conversation is not too interesting to you.
And it's the music in the background.
It's so fun. Would you be able to mute your microphone?
No problem. Let's see.
I can lower the volume on the recording.
Yeah. Okay. Great.
This is the first time we actually have some music in any sort of thing.
Anything to do with free debate radio.
That sounds good. That's nice. So, would you say, I mean, it seems to me fairly obvious, but I just want to have you confirm it, that if Andrew and Niels are correct in terms of not having a lot of respect for their own fathers, and that's one of the things that led them to try and think more for themselves, and if you don't have a good template on how to live, then you do have to do a little bit more work.
But it can end up propelling you, sort of in that tortoise and the hare situation, it can end up propelling you further in terms of intellectual clarity than those who had a good template or a fairly good template.
Does that sort of resonate with you at all, that the lack of that template led you to do that?
Yes and no. The reason why is because, yeah, I think it resonates with me, but no, because I have my friend who introduced me to libertarianism, He had a great father, and he has a great relationship with his father, and he is a very critical thinker.
So I think it comes down to probably more than just a relationship with a single parent.
No, and I would agree with that for sure, but let me ask you a further qualifying question about your friend.
Does his own father encourage his independent thinking and that sort of stuff?
I would believe so. I've never met the man, but the way that my friend does speak about his father, that seems to be the case.
Because, I mean, that's very similar to the friend of mine who first got me into reading Ayn Rand.
His own father was a professor and a very intelligent and creative thinker and so on.
I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that to be a libertarian you have to have a non-respectful relationship with your father, but I think that...
To learn how to think, it's better to be taught how to think than to have to learn how to think on your own.
So I think that your friend and my friend who have good relationships with their creative and intelligent fathers and fathers who encourage them to think, that is the best road to learn how to think.
But if you don't have that particular kind of relationship and you do have a desire for thinking or bent towards it, then I think it's not a bad substitute to have to teach yourself.
And I think that does come out of not having...
A paternal figure that you can respect, that you can lean on in terms of figuring out how to live.
I mean, basically what I'm saying is I can adapt any theory to account for any kind of theory, any kind of facts.
But I think, having gone through my podcast, I'm sure that's not a shock to you at all, so I don't want to point that out.
You know, that's why I'm a methodology.
Oh, sorry. Go ahead.
Sorry, go ahead. No, you go ahead.
Oh, me? Okay.
I just wanted to mention that Ali just left, but she told me that she idolized her father, and she still somewhat does.
She said she was the exception.
But, however, I have to say from knowing him that he's a pretty rational person.
So maybe that probably still fits into your theory there.
Well, I'm very glad for that, because if I had to crush one more category into the theory, I think it would really start to look shaky.
So far, so good.
Well, that's very interesting. Okay, well, I think that's some pretty juicy information for me, at least, and it certainly does help me to talk about what I'm going to talk about in my podcast later this week.
And, of course, to name names and provide home addresses and the exact lineage of the people.
So I certainly appreciate that.
So there's no social embarrassment.
So, does anyone else have any particular questions about that kind of topic or anything else that they want to sort of add to it?
Well, no. The general topic. I missed most of the chat today.
Yes. Oh, well, perhaps you could tell us a little bit about your relationship with your own father and whether you think that had any kind of effects on you developing your libertarian tendencies.
I can make a connection.
My father is a bit of an authoritarian figure and, well, he has other problems of his own.
I think if we were to trace my origins and this doctrine of libertarianism, I think my family might have had something to do with it.
But I think that eventually it was a decision that I made myself based on facts and information.
So, yeah.
Sorry to interrupt, but would you say that your own father did not provide you a particularly strong example of a productive, effective, and happy way to live?
Right, that seems to have some sort of catalyst.
I mean, I don't think it's...
It's not the final answer, of course.
It may be insufficient, but not a necessary cause.
We're not going to solve it in one conversation.
Right, right, for sure.
And if you could tell us a little bit about sort of, I remember you mentioning that you sort of found out about the Mises Institute through some online modeling of economics.
Do you think that there was something in your own past or your own history that gave you a stronger desire to get into this kind of, I guess, no centralized authority kind of path?
My entire family history does not concord to this what I know and what I feel.
This I have to say.
So, no, I don't think I have an environment where I could have developed these ideas on my own.
I simply walked I stumbled upon them and they appeared sensible, and so I accepted them.
I felt compelled somewhat.
I cannot explain exactly why.
And did you ever feel that, as you sort of peeled off from the social majority or the majority of people around you, did it ever feel like it was a huge leap?
Of confidence to hold onto these ideas when very few people, nobody else that you knew believed in them?
If I were to make a full disclosure to my relatives, my peers, I think they would consider me crazy in the beginning.
And maybe then, I don't know.
So these are not usual ideas anyway.
I think doctrines such as atheism may have some impact but anarchy might be something that is a little too much and I need to spend some time to explain and to make an introduction.
No, actually not.
I did grow up with religion.
I had religion in school for about 8 years.
And I received some religious instruction from my mother.
We went to church when I was younger.
And well, I didn't really like it in church.
What didn't you like?
It's good songs, it's good costumes, it's dramatic.
We have to show up on Sunday for about two hours and stand up for the chance.
It wasn't very comfortable for a young child.
I can relate, it sounds like the Greek Orthodox religion.
It's in a language that you don't understand, right?
Oh, it is?
Okay. No, I think it was extremely boring.
At times I actually spent four hours standing up and I was absolutely dazed after that.
No, that's horrible. And what happened when you began to pull away?
Did your mother sort of try and pull you back or did she just say, well, that's meant for you, you know?
No, I want to talk about it a little bit later.
I don't think she still grasps the full entirety of the steps that I have made.
I mentioned once a few times that I did not believe in God.
The first time when I mentioned to her She was very emotional about it.
She started crying actually.
So she said something like, oh you don't believe in the Virgin Mary and something like this.
Well, I think we crossed that line, but she still thinks that somehow I am still a Christian inside, but she wants to give me some room maybe to discover it on my own.
Yeah. No, I'm 21.
You're not married yet? Is that right?
Well, I would say that you really have to watch out, particularly for the Eastern Orthodox religions, when you get married and have kids.
That's when any particular agnostic playground that you've been allowed to hang around in will be abruptly closed by your social circle, because they generally tend to fall upon you fairly heavily when you get married and have kids.
On what I believe and I don't think it will have any impact.
I really think that by the time I will get married I won't have anything to do with them anymore.
So it's a future closed chapter of my life.
Well, that's probably a sensible approach, because it is a very difficult transition to this weekend to sort of talk about another time.
It definitely is a very difficult transition to try and make, so if you can do it without having to be close to your family, that's probably a lot easier.
No, I have a little emotional involvement in the family.
I was never very attached to it, maybe to my sisters, but my parents, no.
I was never very fond of them anyway, so, yeah.
And have you had any luck with your sisters getting them to understand your approach?
They're pretty mystical creatures.
I have not yet found a way to approach them on this.
Maybe I give my younger sister Some pamphlet about, not pamphlet, a kind of book from the Mises Institute about socialism, but, well, I didn't really make serious steps into persuading them.
I think that before everything I have to make what I feel and what I believe clear to me before I expose it to others.
Yes. That sounds quite right.
Do they speak English very well?
They can't really go through the entire book.
Oh, it's a shame, because otherwise you could have, if they would be interested, of course, having a pan-European British guy yelling at them for about 150 hours might actually help sway their opinions.
They'd have to get into that, which may not be the easiest thing.
Some singing voice, maybe they would listen to you, I don't know.
Absolutely. Well, I'm trying to think of a new logo, and I think I could come up with a good one based on some Photoshop, my head on Britney Spears' body.
I think that could work out nicely.
It could be about the scariest video in the known world, I think.
Oh dear. Excellent.
Excellent. Well, thank you so much for sharing that.
That's very, very interesting. Is there anything else that anybody wants to add to this particular topic?
Sure. Yeah, I would like to know, I've been thinking about this for a while, and my question is, is there a structural organizational solution to the problem of parental coercion, or will it have to be a moral awareness?
Because I've been trying to think of such a solution, but I haven't been able to find one.
Do you mean like the idea that to allow a methodology to allow parents to raise children without any coercion?
How about if parents who don't raise their children properly face the risk of them living forever?
So, yeah.
What did he say?
Well, that's certainly an argument that I would make, for sure.
Well, I think, based on the question of...
Well, I think, based on the question of...
I wasn't sure, Francois, if your question was, is there a methodology for creating a coercion-free parenting style?
Or, how do we get parents to not get their kids?
Basically, my question is, because I've been trying to think of an easy fix to the problem, Some kind of structural or organizational solution, such as forcing everyone to send their children to some kind of parenting institutions.
Which would be staffed up by professionals, that kind of thing.
Or maybe like having children moving from family to family.
But any solution I come up with seems very kind of inadequate.
I don't know if you've read the one that I wrote about how the DROs help parenting.
I understand that anarchy would be helpful.
But I'm wondering if the issue cannot be solved easily, or if it's going to have to be another moral, like slavery and government and all that sort of thing.
I doubt this can have an institutional solution to something like this.
▲
Export Selection