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May 12, 2006 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
43:04
235 Libertarianism for the Young: Freedom for the tweens
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Good afternoon, everybody.
Hope you're doing well.
This is a podcast specifically for all of our younger brothers and sisters out there.
So I'm talking about you and to you if you are sort of, guess, around-ish, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 years old, maybe.
Maybe 15 and a half, if we're going to push it, and I think we can't.
So, this is to the young libertarians who are potential libertarians or potential market anarchists or whatever you want to call our crazy crew.
This is going out to those who are out there who are stuck in the public school system, who are maybe having some questions about your family in a sort of fundamental number of ways, which I think is, of course, a very healthy and good thing to do.
The more questions in life, the better.
As long as you have some good way of coming up with answers, questions are good, right?
Questions without any ways of coming up with answers is just like confusing, right?
It's just marching into a fog off a cliff, but we try and give you some way of figuring out what's true and false, what's right and wrong, So in that sort of environment, questions are really, really great.
In an environment where you don't have that, they're really, really not so much with the greatness.
Let's just say that there are some real advantages to doing what you're doing.
If you're listening to this podcast and you're younger than most of us old hoary libertarian guys, I myself am 39, which is an absolutely unimaginable age for you.
If you're 13, that's like three times your age.
But don't worry, I was 13 once to pretty much remember what it was like, and one day you'll be sitting there at 39 going, holy crap, I really did make it.
So, the thing to understand about your situation, right, if you're sort of thinking about these ideas, like the ideas of right and wrong, the ideas of truth and falsehood, philosophical ideas, ideas about ethics and morals and the nature of society and all that good, juicy stuff that makes life really deep and exciting...
Is that you're way better off than most of us who are older are.
I mean, take a bow first and foremost right there because you're doing a whole lot better than I was.
I was 17, 16 or 17 when I got into this stuff and I really wish I'd gotten into it a whole lot younger.
So... Good for you if you're younger than that.
It's okay if you're older than that.
That's fine. But if you're younger than that, that's really great.
Like, good for you. And there's other real advantages to having a look at these ideas when you're young.
First of all, you know, you're right in there, right?
I mean, we sort of, as libertarians, are kind of not so...
Not so down with the whole public school thing, right?
We think that government-run schools are really bad for your brain and should have those warnings like you have on cigarettes, right?
Like inhalation of public school air will cause your brain to turn into a turnip if you're not very, very careful.
And so you're right in there and you can see...
The effects of sort of the government controlling everything right there in your classroom.
And so it's easier for you to see the kind of stuff that we're talking about, because when we talk about public schools are bad, and I'm like 39 years old, so it's been like over 20 years since I was in a public school, so it's easier for me to say it, but harder for me to really remember how bad it was, but you're right there, right in the middle of this horrible...
It's sort of brain-eating fog that is public school education.
So, first of all, it's going to be great for your brain to get into this kind of philosophy.
You're going to get a lot of great, exciting ideas, the ability to ask questions and answer them, which is really the important thing.
But you're also right there in this horrible little lab of public school, assuming that you're in public school.
If you're in private school, then you're just in a slightly less horrible lab of private school because you're still taught by teachers who probably went through public school and so on.
But you're right there in terms of school, so you can see stuff really clearly.
And I'm not saying it's going to be easy to know more about the truth than your teachers, but it will give you a chance to make several secret smiles at yourself a day, which, you know, is not the end of the world, I guess.
And the other thing which we talk about, at least in this sort of free-domain radio context, is that Families are not always the best of institutions.
I mean, I guess that's about as mild a way as putting it, as I can think of.
But your family is not likely to be very good.
I'm sort of talking to you like I know you, but I do from this standpoint that I can guarantee you that your family is really not very good.
And they may be nice to you, and they may buy you clothes, and they may put food on the table, and so on.
But if you really start asking them questions about right and wrong, and good and evil, and truth and falsehood, they're going to get kind of mad at you.
And that's just...
Kind of for a lot of reasons I guess you could say.
But the main reason is that they've been telling you all about right and wrong and good and evil and true and false since the day you were born.
But unfortunately they don't really know what they're talking about.
And, so, when you sort of ask questions, then it sort of begins to reveal to them and to you that they don't know what they were talking about or are talking about.
And, so, they're going to get kind of mad, right?
Like, if you've ever had a teacher where you know something more than the teacher does, and then the teacher is sort of saying stuff up there that's not true, and you put your hand up and you say, Oh, sir, or ma'am, if you don't mind, I'm going to correct you on this.
Well, it's not really very common that the teacher is going to say, Why, thank you.
That's wonderful.
I love being corrected by my students.
More likely you're going to get a bit of a look and the teacher is going to be a little bit cold because, you know, people like to think that they know what they're talking about, but unfortunately almost nobody does.
So, we're going to have a sort of quick chat about that today, but I just sort of wanted to point out that because you're kind of in with your family, because you're kind of in with the school system, you can look at things and see them a lot more clearly in terms of the problems that are going on, the things that you're going to have to sort of fight your way free of to become free as an adult, right, or as free as you can be as a teenager, because...
You're really right in there, right?
I mean, you're really right in there so you can see things a lot more clearly.
And I'd really recommend pursuing this line of thinking or this kind of philosophy because it really will help you see stuff that is very important that will make you a lot freer now and a lot freer in the future as well.
You want to build your adult foundation of how you're going to live as an adult on a solid foundation, like a solid base Of logic and reality and truth and knowledge and so on, not just stuff that other people tell you that they want you to think is true because it makes you more obedient to them.
That's the fundamental issue.
I'm going to point out just a couple of ways, just a couple of ways in which you can start to think about these kinds of, like the world that you're in, the kind of environment that you're in, based on what we as, you know, libertarians, let's just use the word libertarians.
There's lots of words. You could just say philosophers or rationalists or whatever, but we just use the word libertarian.
This is sort of a thing that we would say or an approach that we would take to your life.
So you're going to get up to school tomorrow, you're going to get your backpack and your duotang and all those funky markers, and you're going to sort of tootle after school, and then you're going to sort of sit down and you're going to get your man-in-society courses, or I guess person-in-society these days, you get your history lessons, your civics lessons, and so on.
And there'll be lots of stuff that you'll be taught about, about how violence, like, is bad, right?
Beating people up is bad.
It'll be in your courses.
It's probably somewhere in your school charter that, you know, wailing on someone is probably not the best way to solve your problems.
Hauling off and clocking someone pretty much not.
The way that you want to go in terms of solving your problems.
And if you try it in the cafeteria or the schoolyard, it seems quite likely that large numbers of people are going to descend upon you, drag you, and so on, send you to the principal's office and wave lots of naughty fingers at you.
So pretty much schools talk a lot about how, like, violence is not a good way to solve problems, right?
Beating people up and threatening them and so on is a bad thing.
But let's sort of take a look at how these schools get paid for.
This is kind of important, right?
What we're doing is we're just sort of lifting the lid on the world that you live in and one of the reasons why schools are so bad, and maybe we'll talk another time about why families generally tend to be so bad.
But in the realm of school, let's just look at sort of where the school money comes from.
Well, I don't know if you've covered this in your civics courses, but we'll just go over it really briefly to show you why every time a teacher says, don't use violence, they're not really telling the truth, and it could be said that they're being kind of hypocritical, right?
Kind of two-faced about the whole thing.
So, your teacher, of course, gets paid by the school board, and the school board gets paid by the ministry or whatever, but basically at some point it comes back, To taxes, right?
So, taxes. Now, taxes are the money that some people take from other people, and if you don't pay your taxes, they're kind of going to send you some letters, and then they're going to get mad and send you some really angry letters with, like, red font and big printing and lots of danger, danger, danger signs all over them.
And then at some point, a cop is going to come by to drag you off to court.
And if you don't go with him, if you resist, and I hate to say it, but I mean, this is not the system we set up.
It's just the way the world is, right?
If you continue to resist, the cop's going to pull out his gun, and he's going to try and subdue you.
And if you keep resisting or pull out a gun of your own, then you're going to get shot.
Right? So, it's kind of like a long way from your teacher's income to a guy getting shot, but it really is a direct line.
It doesn't really matter how long a line is, it's still a direct line.
So one of the things, I'm not suggesting that you sort of raise your hand and say, teacher, teacher, oh teach, could you maybe answer for me a question that if violence is bad, why is your salary funded by people with guns?
That's kind of not a wise thing to do for reasons we can get into another time because you want to sort of really, really understand these ideas.
But just sort of you think about it logically, right?
Like, if your mom and dad don't pay their taxes, then basically they're going to get hauled off to jail, and if they resist, they're going to get shot, and they're going to get killed.
I mean, this is serious stuff.
There's like no fooling around kind of stuff that's going on here.
If you don't pay your taxes, I mean, you're toast.
You're pushing up the daisies.
You're six feet under. You've got dirt up your nose.
It's a bad scene all around.
So, that is sort of one pretty significant thing to try and grasp about your school, like your school situation.
The whole thing is built on violence.
The whole thing is paid for.
With violence. And if people choose, like they say, oh, you know what?
I really don't like the public schools.
I want to teach my kids at home.
Well, they've got to pay their taxes for it anyway.
And if they say, you know what?
I think I can get a lot more to educate my kids if I take them sailing around the world for five years.
Well, they've got to pay for the school taxes anyway.
And if they don't, they're going to get shot the next time they put in port.
or they're going to get dragged off for sure.
And if they say, you know, I really don't like the way that the school teaches kids, I think there's a much better way to do it.
And they say, well, let's keep the kids at home.
We'll set up our own school.
There'll be, you know, cool parents in the neighborhoods.
One will stay home or a couple will stay home.
We'll set up our own school in people's houses or whatever.
Well, too bad.
Sucks to be you.
You got to pay your taxes anyway.
So the people who are paying for your school right now, they have absolutely no choice at all.
They are forced to pay for the school.
Now, I just want you to sort of picture that.
I just want you to sort of understand what that might look like for you.
Let's just say you got a paper route.
When I was like 13 or 12, I had a paper route.
And when I was a newspaper carrier, I guess a paper boy I was called.
I don't know if they're still around, but this was the sort of situation.
You go door to door and deliver the newspapers to people.
Well, imagine that you get a job as a paper carrier, a newsboy, paperboy.
Let's just say paperboy, so I keep flipping terms around like crazy.
So you get a job as a paperboy, and you might inherit a route like with 10 houses on a street, and if you want, you can sort of increase your income by...
Going up and down the street and saying, would you like a paper?
Would you like a paper? Maybe one out of 10 people or one out of 50 people are going to say yes, and you get to deliver more papers, make more money, and so on.
Well, that's like voluntary, right?
That's like voluntary. You know, the people don't have to buy your papers.
You don't have to have the job.
Everything is voluntary. Everybody's sort of deciding.
You know, when you flip TV on, you say, well, do I want to watch kids' TV or MTV or whatever?
Like, nobody's got a gun to your head saying, you will watch MTV. Or we're going to do bad things to you all over.
Well, no. That's a voluntary situation.
That's kind of good, right?
That's good in life where you get to choose how you spend your money, how you spend your time, what it is that you do with your own life.
As long as you're not inflicting your choices on other people against their will, it's kind of good to be free that way, right?
So you're this paperboy.
And imagine if you were to set it up the way that public schools are set up.
This is sort of how it would work.
Well... Not everyone in a ten block radius would have to pay for your newspapers.
Right? Every single person in a ten block radius would have to pay you for your newspapers.
Now let's say that they really didn't like your newspapers.
Well, doesn't matter.
Doesn't matter. They have to pay for it anyway.
Let's say they can't read your newspapers.
Maybe they're old or they're blind or something.
Well, too bad.
Sucks to be you. Cough it up.
You've got to pay for it anyway.
And if they move away, they've still got to pay for it.
If people move into the neighborhood, they've still got to pay for it.
And whether you deliver the newspapers on time, or you don't deliver them at all, or you take a vacation, or this or that, they still have to pay for it.
And if somebody doesn't send you a check at the end of the month, like they don't, you sort of walk up to their door, and you say, give me your 30 bucks, mister, for your newspaper...
And if they don't give you the money, you just make one phone call and the cops will go and get the money for you and then hand it to you.
And if that person resists, then the cops have the right to shoot them.
I mean, that doesn't sound too good, does it?
That really doesn't sound too fair or too right.
And it also doesn't sound to me like a situation where newspapers are going to be really good, right?
I mean, if you're delivering newspapers and you're going to get paid for the newspapers...
Whether or not anybody likes the newspapers, whether or not anybody reads the newspapers, whether those newspapers are offensive or stupid or have bad words or have stuff that just makes people mad and they hate or whatever, right?
It doesn't matter because the people who make the newspapers and the people who deliver them and the people who write for them, they're all getting paid anyway.
It doesn't matter whether people like those newspapers or not.
They have to pay the money or a phone call gets made and some thugs show up at their doorstep with weapons.
Right? I don't think that if you tried to set that up...
Can you imagine that? Like, imagine.
So you've got this 10-paper paper route, and you sort of say, Okay, I think I've got a good plan for expanding this.
This is going to be great. See, what I'm going to do is I'm going to go knock up and down the street on people's doors.
And I'm going to say to them, Hello, Mr.
Jones. I'm just here to inform you that I'm going to start charging you for my paper.
And he's like, well, I didn't...
I'm sorry?
I didn't actually...
I don't want your paper.
I mean, I'm sorry to be rude, but I don't want your paper.
That's totally fine. You don't have to want the paper at all.
We're not trying to impose anything on you, except the one thing that we're going to be imposing on you is you're going to pay me 30 bucks a month for my newspaper.
It's like, but I don't want your newspaper, says Mr.
Jones. And you say, I understand that you don't want my newspaper, but it doesn't matter.
You're still going to pay me 30 bucks a month.
And he says, well, I'm not going to pay you $30 a month.
And then you say, well, unfortunately, I've got a bunch of friends who, if I put in one phone call to them, they're going to come by and they're going to take the money from you.
And if you don't pay it up, and by the way, if they have to take the money from you, it's going to be $50 a month and not $30 a month for the next 10 years.
So you either pay me the $30 a month up front, or I get some friends to come over and rough you up.
And at which case you have to pay not only me, but you have to pay for my friends as well.
It's going to be $50 a month.
So it's really up to you.
It's your choice. You can take the newspaper.
You cannot take the newspaper.
You can use it to wrap fish in.
You can use it to wipe your butt with.
You can use it to lie in your birdcage if you want.
You're going to get the paper.
And if you don't want the paper, that's fine.
We won't deliver it. But what we do want and what we do need, what we will get from you, Mr.
Jones, is $30 a month.
Well, how do you think that would go over?
LAUGHTER I mean, wouldn't you get arrested?
Wouldn't Mr. Jones say, hey, I've got some young punk on my doorstep here who says he's trying to shake me down for $30 a month, and if I don't say that I'm going to pay him $30 a month for some raggedy-ass newspaper that I really don't even want to begin with, if I don't pay him, he's going to get me beaten up, and then I'm going to have to pay him even more?
Well, of course, that's going to be illegal, right?
That's what's called being illegal.
It's forcing people to pay for things that they don't really want.
Well, that's the school system.
I mean, it's exactly the same.
Your parents don't have a choice about what kind of schooling they get.
They don't have a choice about whether to pay for it or not.
And if they decide not to pay, if they decide not to pay for the schools or for any other thing that the government does, then what happens is they have to pay double or triple, right?
It goes from $30 a month to $50 a month or more.
So it's even worse if they decide not to pay.
And if they resist, then they're going to get beaten up and dragged off to jail, where they're going to get beaten up pretty much every day.
So I kind of want you to just consider that as a perspective.
Just consider that as like a weird, maybe, kinda, kinda possibility.
Just way out there. Let's just say we're gonna go on a walk through some pretty wild areas of thought.
And that one of the things that is absolutely the case, when you walk up to your school tomorrow, yeah, it's a building and it's got some people in it and it's got, I don't know, I'm casting my mind way back here, right?
It's got those cheesy metal lockers with all the graffiti maybe on them or certainly on the inside.
It's got all these kids dressed in like wildly different stylish to, in my case, not so stylish clothes.
And it's got the papier-mâché on the walls, and it's got those little styrofoam things on the ceiling where if you're really bored, you can try and count how many there are in a single square.
All of these kinds of things.
That's all your school, right?
That's the physical thing about the school.
But it's kind of built on guns, right?
It's kind of built on people being forced to pay for stuff that they don't want or might want or shouldn't have to be forced to pay for.
And that's kind of important.
Like when you look at your school, you're looking at the end product of that whole chain of stuff that happens in a row when you hold a gun to someone's head and say, you've got to pay for this school.
And if you don't want to, sucks.
You've got to pay for this school.
And would you feel like that would be fair?
Do you think that a society would be good if everyone got to do that all the time?
Well, no, of course not. You don't get to do it if you're a paperboy.
If you work in a CD shop, you don't get to say to every customer who walks by, hey, listen, I just bought five CDs for you.
Here's your money. And they say, well, I don't want these CDs.
I don't even have these tastes. I don't have a CD player.
It's like, doesn't matter.
You can leave the CDs. You can take the CDs.
But I'm going to charge you the 50 bucks for the CDs.
Well, that's not really how the world works in any sort of reasonable or nice way.
But it is exactly how your school system works.
And if you kind of want to understand why your school system is so bad, then what I would say is, can you imagine how bad CDs would be if people just had to buy them regardless of whether they liked them or not?
I mean, it'd just be a bunch of guys going, ooh-wah, ooh-wah, ooh-wah, beep-beep-beep-beep.
Doing that for like 20 minutes and saying, hey, here's your big hit CD. There you go.
We've just saved ourselves a whole lot of money in production costs and we didn't even need any backup singers.
And CDs would suck if you didn't get to choose them, right?
Because people wouldn't be really trying to please you with the best songs or whatever it is that you kind of like.
And if newspapers, like if you had to buy newspapers even if you didn't want them, they would kind of suck too, right?
People would just put out any kind of crap and junk and stupid stuff to sort of say, well, I put a newspaper out and now people got to pay me.
It's just not the way that it works, right?
I mean, if everyone got a straight A, regardless of whether they showed up to class or regardless if they turned in any homework or whatever, unless you really loved the topic, like for me it was like English and history, I love those things, then...
You kind of wouldn't work that hard, right?
I mean, if you just got all the rewards without really having to work for it, then, you know, your work wouldn't really be good, right?
I mean, one of the things that makes people do well is the fact that nothing comes easily.
You've got to compete with other people.
It's tough, and that's part of life.
Like, that's a good thing, and it's part of growing and getting better at stuff is kind of cool, right?
But... If you just get all the rewards without having to compete or do any work or whatever, you know, it's sort of cool for a little bit, but then you get kind of lazy and depressed after a while, right?
I mean, it sort of feels kind of hollow, right?
And so if you sort of want to understand why your school sucks so badly...
It's because everything that's in the school is kind of forced on everyone, and the teachers get to be teachers, and the principals get to be principals, and everyone gets to be in charge, and they don't really have to work for it.
I'm not saying like your teachers, they come to work and they do stuff like, but they don't have to be really great at what they do.
They don't have to be really clear.
They don't have to really motivate you.
They don't have to teach you in the best possible way for you to make your brain just like burn up with joy and excitement at learning and growing and becoming knowledgeable about new things.
They don't have to really excite you and make you just jump out.
I mean, I know it sounds weird, but it's possible.
They don't have to make you want to jump out of bed thinking, oh, I can't wait to get to school.
I mean, if you're anything like me, and I kind of guess you are, because we both grew up in the same system, though I'm guessing your system's even worse than mine, right?
The stuff that's based on violence and forcing people to do stuff always gets worse over time.
So, you know, my sympathies to you, props to you, because it is absolutely worse now than when I was younger.
And when I was younger, I'd sort of wake up in the morning, and I'd be so depressed sometimes because I had to go to school, I'd like to have to sort of move my legs off my bed with two arms, sort of prop myself up like a marionette or a puppet or something, and just sort of shuffle off to school like, oh, here we go, into the great brain-eating sausage factory of boredom and cliques and bullies, and ugh, it was just a nightmare.
So, I gotta think that if you've got any kind of brains at all, and I'm guessing if you're listening to this that you do, and that's some blatant propaganda and praise for you, just to keep you coming back for more.
But if you've got any kind of brains at all, you really don't like school.
I mean, you really don't like school.
There may be courses that you like, there may be subjects that you like, but that's just your particular thing, right?
You're not being led into any place that's new and exciting and challenging.
And also, you can't put it all together, right?
Like, you can't put the whole world together based on anything that you're taught in school, right?
So you're going to learn a little bit of chemistry, and you're going to look at, I don't know if they still do a frog's innards under a microscope.
That was pretty gross.
But you're going to look at plants under a microscope, and you're going to learn about mitosis and meiosis, and you're going to learn about physics, a little bit of physics.
You're going to read some books.
You're going to mush mouth your way through some really confusing Shakespeare going, dude, what's with the language?
Couldn't you write a little more clearly?
And you're going to do all these kinds of things, and you're just going to learn these little scraps and bits and things like, oh, 1776 was this, and then there was the War of 1812, and then there was the First World War, and all this kind of stuff.
None of it's going to hang together at all.
It doesn't give you any kind of consistent thing, any kind of consistent way to look at life that makes sense.
Why are you studying World War I? I don't know.
1914 to 1918, it was started by this guy, this Serbian, who shot Duke Ferdinand, Archduke Ferdinand, and so on.
And you're just going to sort of learn all of this stuff, right?
You're going to stuff it down into your sort of short-term memory centers, and then you're going to ralph it up and spew it out on a test, and then you're going to promptly forget the whole damn thing.
And this is pretty much the cycle that goes on in school, right?
You get inflated by like a balloon and then it all goes straight out again, right?
And that's what they call learning.
I'm afraid that's not learning at all.
It's really not learning at all.
Learning is when you kind of know some basic principles, like about how to say something is true or something is not true, where you have some basic principles about how you can figure out whether something's right or something's wrong, and so on.
And then you can sort of build stuff up bit by bit, right?
So, like, if I were to say to you, like, the scientific method is pretty cool.
It's a pretty effective way of determining truth from falsehood.
So if I were to say to you, well, the way that you know something is true is that A, it's logical, right?
Like it makes sense. And B, it's something that you can sort of see, touch, taste, smell, and feel.
Feel? Touch? I think there's five senses.
I can't sort of do it off my head at the moment.
But if you can sort of perceive it through your senses, then it's real, right?
So if you walk up to a tree, you knock at it and so on, and it's like, hey, that's a tree, right?
But there's a whole bunch of stuff that you're taught about that doesn't exist, but you're taught about it like it's more real than the nose in your face, like the nose right in front of you.
So, for instance, you'll hear a lot of talk about...
Your country, right? So let's just say you live in America, right?
America. America's the big thing.
America this, we stand for America.
Patriotism, the Star-Spangled Banner, and how a bill becomes a law, and so on, right?
So you get all this stuff about America.
We're proud to be American. America is the best, this, that, and the other.
The weird thing about all of this is that America...
Ooh, how am I going to break this to you gently?
Got to really figure this one out.
I don't really know a nice way to say this, so let's just go out front and say it, and then I'll sort of tell you what I mean.
America... Let's just say the fact is that America doesn't exist.
Does not exist.
Not so much with the existing.
Existo neparos.
That's not even Spanish, so don't worry about asking me for a translation.
But America doesn't exist, right?
America's an idea, right?
What does exist is, like, land and trees and grass and clouds and people and earth and the Rockies.
Like, that stuff really exists.
Like, the sort of knock on it and you can really see it, that stuff exists.
But America is like an idea.
It's like a concept. It doesn't exist.
It doesn't exist. Like, think of it like this.
So you're walking in the woods, right?
You're in the woods, and you're looking all around you.
And you say, wow, there's a whole bunch of trees around me.
Well, the trees, they exist, right?
They exist like for real. They're real trees, right?
But when you say, there's such a thing as a forest, well, a forest is like a word that you use to describe a whole bunch of trees that are growing close together or something like that, right?
So a wood or a forest is something that you use to describe a whole bunch of trees growing together.
Now, the idea, like it exists in your head and that all makes sense, right?
So when you say a forest, I don't look at you all googly-eyed and say, what are you talking about?
I look at you and you say forest and you point over there and I'm like, oh, that whole bunch of trees, right?
Now, trees exist individually and that's great.
We all understand that. If you want to make a toothpick, you take a really small tree, whittle it down and away you go.
You're good to go. So trees exist.
I think we're all comfortable with that.
But a forest is just like a mental tag that we use to describe a whole bunch of trees.
And that is something that's pretty important to understand.
So the individual things exist.
The words that we use to describe those individual things, like in a group, They don't exist in reality.
They'll exist like words in her head, but they don't exist out there in reality.
They're like even worse than a mirage.
Like if you're in a desert and you think there's a lake and you sort of dive into it and end up eating a whole bunch of sand.
It's even worse than that because at least the mirage kind of exists like you can see it.
The water, it's just a lot further off than you think.
But something like any kind of thing that you use to describe a group, So when you say a crowd of people, well, the people all exist.
Like, individually, they exist.
You can measure them. You can sort of knock them on the head and then run because they probably won't like that.
But people exist, and we're all pretty comfortable with that.
But this idea, the word crowd, it just doesn't exist.
It doesn't exist anywhere out there.
If you could take away all of the people, From a crowd, there would be nothing, right?
So you've got all these people, let's say there's a square in the middle of your town, and you've got a hundred people all just sort of milling around going, what the heck are we doing here?
And you say, hey, you're part of a philosophical experiment.
Don't sweat it. We'll let you go soon.
And you say to me, hey, look at that crowd of people over there.
And I'd say, sure, okay, that makes sense.
That's a crowd. There's a hundred people.
I understand the word crowd, and we're good to go.
But then you say to people, you sort of get your bullhorn out, right?
You get your bullhorn out and say, People, it's time to disperse so that we can now prove the non-existence of crowds.
Well, they're probably quite free and happy to disperse because they probably won't know what the heck you're talking about, but if then the square is empty of people...
And you say, look, there's a crowd over there.
Well, I'm going to say no, there's no crowd.
So each one of the individual people left, and there's no crowd like a kind of fog or a cloud sitting around these people.
It's just a word that you use in your head to describe a bunch of stuff in the real world, but it doesn't exist out there for real.
That's something really, really, really important to understand because people, and let's just say that they do it because they don't know any better.
We can talk about it in another way, but that's a topic for another time.
People spend your whole life, well their whole life, your whole life, several lives, who knows, right?
They spend all this time, time, time and energy telling you that all of this stuff exists, like America, like law, like the government, you know, like all of the cliques, all of this kind of stuff.
They don't exist in the real world, right?
There's people, there's land, there's rocks, there's trees, there's clouds, there's whatever, right?
There's you. Most importantly, there's you.
But these things don't exist in the real world at all.
But everybody, everybody, everybody all the time keeps telling you that they exist.
They exist, they exist, they exist.
So, I mean, I'll give you another sort of example, right?
So... When you hear the word soldier, so somebody says, oh look, there's a soldier.
Well, I sort of understand, right?
a man exists and a man is dressed in like, I don't know, like a pretty unflattering green uniform or something, and he's carrying a gun or he's saluting or doing something, blowing in a bugle or something.
Well, it's just a guy, right?
It's just a guy in a uniform.
I mean, soldier is just like a tag that we use to describe a guy in a uniform.
So we don't have to keep saying that guy over there in the green uniform who the president sends over to kill people somewhere, sometimes overseas, sometimes not overseas.
You know, that's kind of a mouthful to keep saying all the time so we come up with these like descriptions.
That make things kind of shorter to talk about, which is, I think, a good thing, right?
Because your mouth would get kind of tired and it would be really difficult to describe anything if you had to give the whole, full, complete description every single time.
So, there's lots of things in the world, and you can kind of play this game, and I think it's a really important thing to understand, right?
So, like, I'm driving right now, right?
So, I'm just sort of looking around and saying, okay, cars, yeah, well, cars exist, right?
Traffic jams, well, no, they don't exist, right?
Because traffic jam is just a relationship between a whole bunch of cars moving, sorry, not moving, that are kind of close and packed together, and a whole kind of bunch of people getting bulging foreheads and red faces and so on, and turning around and yelling at their kids to shut up at the backseat or something.
So, like, cars exist, sure.
Traffic jams, no.
They don't exist.
That's just sort of a description of stuff that...
There's a relationship between all the cars sitting on the highway and stuff.
So, you can do this, and it's a very important exercise, I think, to do, right?
Because the first thing you've got to figure out is what's real and what's not real, right?
So, that's, like, the first basic thing you've got to do if you want to understand the world.
And, like, understand the world for real...
Not like understand the world, like people just tell you, oh, this is how it is, you know?
Because you kind of want to think for yourself, right?
I mean, that's the real joy and pleasure in life, and it's a very powerful thing to do, and it makes you really, really free if you stick to it, although it's a bit scary at the beginning.
I'll be pretty frank with you about that.
But the first thing that you want to do as kind of a mental exercise, just to sort of, you know, warm your muscles up to get your gears in motion, so to speak, is you just want to start looking around, I think, and just sort of say, okay, well, the classroom that exists, yes.
The class does not exist, right?
The class is just a bunch of kids in a room and a teacher up front droning on about heaven knows what.
And so you can say, yeah, the classroom exists, the teacher exists, this kid, that kid, the other kid exists, the class is just a group name, so that doesn't exist.
Like, it's a funsy thing to do, I think.
I mean, I could be a total philosophy geek, but I think it's a fun thing to do.
And it's something that can be really powerful in helping you just kind of begin to sort out the mess.
Because, oh, I hate to tell you this too, I mean, I really do, because I wish the world were different, but so far it's not, and we'll make it that way, but it's going to take time.
Like, everyone's kind of lying to you.
Like, everyone's kind of lying to you.
Like, can you imagine that you got to the age of being like a puberty or early teenager or mid-teener or something?
You got the whole way through the public educational system.
I mean, you're within spitting distance of the end, and that's a good place to be.
And so you've been in there for 10 years, 12 years, 13 years, whatever.
And no one really kind of told you and sat down and said, well, everything that we do is kind of based on, like, violence, right?
Everything we do is based on forcing people to pay for us.
Whether or not they want to and whether or not they like it, whether or not they think it's right.
And if they don't pay for us, well, by golly jeez, we're just going to hold a gun to their neck and force them to do it.
You'd think that would be, you know, kind of important, I think.
It would be kind of an important thing to talk about with your teachers and so that you get some basic understanding about the world, right?
And another thing that would, I think, be important to talk about but you've never heard is that people don't say...
Okay, you know, like this politician, like George Bush or Tony Blair or whatever, they exist, like, as people.
And there are a bunch of cops, they exist, but they're just names.
Cops is just a name we give to people who are wearing a certain kind of uniform and whatever, whatever, right?
So those people exist, but this thing, like, called the government, it's just a name.
It's like forest. It's like crowd.
It's like class. It doesn't exist in the real world, right?
So, if you want to sort of understand how the real world works, then you've got to stop looking at all these ideas, these words, these concepts that don't exist, and you've got to start drilling down to the actual facts about what's happening, right?
So, if, you know, somebody says, well, you have to pay your, you know, the government is trying to help the poor, the government is giving money to the poor, right?
You hear this kind of stuff all the time, right?
The government is out there building roads for you and making your country safe and helping the poor and the sick and the old and the...
Well, the government doesn't exist, right?
You want to start drilling down to the facts of what's happening just so you can really understand the world in a clear way.
And it's not that hard. It's just that nobody's ever probably taught you how to do it, right?
So, the way that I would sort of suggest, like let's say you sort of read in the paper, well, the government is helping the poor, right?
Okay, well, let's sort of look at what's actually happening, right?
Not sort of what people say is happening, but what's actually happening, right?
You want to be a live eyewitness.
You don't want to sit here at third hand, right?
If you have played that game of telephone where you sort of, you know that as soon as people say things to three other people, you can't figure out what the heck's going on anymore.
So you say, oh, the government is helping the people, the poor people.
Well, what's actually happening?
Well, okay, you know the government doesn't exist.
You know that poor doesn't really exist.
Like, there's people who don't have a lot of money, but poor is just a label, like it's a description, right?
So you want to break it down to what's actually happening, right?
Well, what's actually happening...
Is that, like, a bunch of people over here are forcing a bunch of other people to give them money, and then they may or may not be helping the poor, I mean, or whatever, right?
And so, one way to approach that, like, to sort of really understand it, is to say, okay, let's get rid of the word government, let's get rid of the word help, let's look at the facts, right?
Well, the facts are...
Group of people over here taking guns out and saying to these other people, you've got to give me money.
And, oh, by the way, I'll help the poor.
But the first thing you've got to do is give me money.
It's like, well, can't I help the poor on my own?
No. Well, I mean, yes, you can, but it doesn't really matter.
You've still got to give me money. It's like the guy saying, well, can't I buy other newspapers?
Yes, you can. But you've still got to give me my $30 a month.
And then you've got to pay for those other newspapers yourself.
So... That's sort of a really clear way of looking at these kinds of things.
Now, we can talk another time about, you know, is this right?
Is this wrong? Does it help the poor?
But the important thing to understand right now is that, you know, there's no such thing as the government, right?
The government doesn't do anything. There's only people who do stuff.
The same way there's no such thing as a forest, there's just trees.
And so that is something I think that's really important to understand.
And it's so simple when you think about it.
It's really, really, really simple. Who's doing what to who?
That's what a lot of this idea sort of comes down to.
Let's get rid of all the big sort of fancy $10 words that don't add up to smack.
And let's say, who's doing what to who?
So the government's helping the poor.
Well, a whole bunch of people are being held up at gunpoint, forced to give money over to other people who then may or may not help the poor.
I mean, those are the facts, right?
Now, if you draw some principles out of that, right?
So let's say your teacher says, and again, I'm not saying you want to fight with them until you kind of know what you're doing, but we're just sort of talking about the ideas themselves up front.
But let's just say that your teacher says, government's helping the poor, that's a good thing, right?
So then you sort of break it down in your own mind.
You can say something like, okay, so that means that some people can use force to take money from other people.
And if those other people don't like it, it sucks to be them.
They get guns to their heads and they have to give the money over anyway.
and so on, so on, right? Well, of course, the way to figure out if this is good or bad, sort of this is the last thing that I'll talk about, but I think it's interesting, right?
So you kind of got down to the facts of the matter.
You got down to what's actually happening, rather than just a whole bunch of big words that people say is happening, right?
So then you say, okay, well, so it must be good to use violence to threaten people to get money from them, right?
Because this is what the people in the government are doing, right?
They're saying, I'm going to help the poor, so give me money, and if you don't give me money, I'll throw you in jail.
Well, that must be a good thing to do, right?
If it's good for the people in one place, it's got to be good for people in another place.
Because if it's not good for everyone, then what does it really mean?
It's just a bunch of people with guns then, right?
And so the question then you can ask yourself is say, okay, well, can I do that?
Is it okay for me to do that?
Like that's kind of important, right?
This is fairly, fairly significant.
And this is how you can pretty much in your gut figure out whether stuff's right or wrong.
So if you're in a classroom and your teacher says this, then you can sort of say to your teacher, okay, so, I mean, just in your mind, right?
I'm not saying you do this out loud because you've got to sort of figure this stuff out pretty deeply up front.
But you can sort of say to your teacher in your mind's eye, okay, well, if it's good for some people to take money from other people and maybe give it to the poor, maybe not, maybe help them, maybe not, we don't know.
Then there's lots of kids in this classroom whose parents make more money than I do or who may currently have more money on them.
So am I allowed to take a shiv out and hold it up to their kidneys and say, give me money because I'm poorer?
Well, I bet you if you try and do that...
You're probably going to get expelled and you might end up in juvenile court, right?
So they really won't think that's so good if you do it.
So given that there's no such thing as the government, if you can't do it, then why would anyone else be allowed to do it?
If they say that it's wrong for you, shouldn't it sort of be wrong for everyone?
Because otherwise, isn't it all just a whole bunch of made-up nonsense when people say there's right and wrong and this and that and the other if they really don't know what they're talking about?
So, it's just a couple of examples that I wanted to share with you if you're young.
If you're really curious about it, of course, just come by my website, www.freedomainradio.com, and you send me an email, there's a form there, or whatever, there's a bunch of discussion boards, you can ask these questions, because there's lots of other stuff we can talk about.
But those are some sort of basics about how to understand the world and how people really aren't so much telling you the truth.
And we can talk another time about whether that's intentional or not intentional or whatever, but your family's not telling you the truth and your teachers aren't telling you the truth and your priests, for sure, are not telling you the truth.
And so come on by and be sure to think about this kind of stuff.
It's really, really, really important.
I'm sure you get kind of a sense of how important it is, but I can't tell you how important it is.
And whatever importance you think it is, you times that by about a million, and then another million, and you're kind of in the neighborhood.
So I'd really recommend thinking about this stuff, and I hope that you've enjoyed this.
And be sure to drop me a line and let me know what you think.
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