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May 21, 2006 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

01:44:09

246 Call In Show 21 May 2006, 4pm EST

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	Alright, so thanks again everyone.
	We will start off today by talking about a topic that has been floating around for a little while on the boards and Christina and I have talked about it as well.
	And that question is raising children the libertarian way.
	And what I generally mean by that is trying to get them into a situation where you can begin to use their labor As young as humanly possible, and of course that means training them to do things like heavy yard work, hopefully painting,
	shoring up things around the house, going grocery shopping, doing your taxes, and this is of course a very important thing because you've got to get those kids into the free market as quickly as possible and have them try and become productive citizens of the capitalist economy as quickly as possible So we'll be talking quite a bit about,
	you know, things like setting up sweatshops in the basement, helping their little nimble fingers to do things like sew and pickpockets, and just trying to get as much sort of capital utility out of children as is humanly possible.
	So that, I think, will be the approach that...
	Oh, no, maybe not?
	What do you think, sweetie? Because it's either try and get the children to do it or try and get me to do it.
	And I think that, frankly, we have more odds of trying to get the children to do it.
	So, of course, we, at the extreme end or the logical end or the logical center of the libertarian movement, those of us who are anarcho-capitalists, are faced with a challenge when it comes to raising children, and the challenge basically is that everything that we teach our children will be in direct opposition to the general falsehood fantasies and myths that society runs as a whole.
	Now, Dr. Phil, who as you know, I hold in variable degrees of esteem, talks quite a bit about this issue of helping to socialize your children.
	And what he means by that is to, you know, crush any sense of individual thought and individuation.
	But he also means that if you teach your children your own values and those values are in direct opposition to the general standards of society, then those children are going to face a good deal of difficulty.
	And Christine and I have talked about that as well, insofar as, for instance, we have a neighbor next door who's a Christian and he has four kids, right?
	So once we start breeding like rabbits, we're going to have a challenge, right?
	Because we're going to say to our kids, God, not so much.
	The state, not so much. Public school, kind of corrupt, but, you know, maybe the best that we can deal with because we're forced to pay for it anyway.
	And then, of course, our kids are going to go over to slumber parties maybe once, maybe twice.
	And then the question's gonna come up and other parents are then gonna have all these problems with what we're saying relative to what they're saying, right?
	So if we come across any kinds of parenting or parents, which there's gonna be many kinds around, The parents who have these particular opinions, not only are they going to have problems with what we're saying, but they're going to have problems with what our children are saying to their children, right? It's like being the first kid on the block whose parents tell them that there's no Santa Claus.
	It's going to create conflicts with other parents, and so there's a particularly high degree of social problems that is going to occur.
	Now, I don't particularly mind about those, but I just wanted to sort of cast this out there as an idea or a question around what people think about this in their own lives in their own circumstances so as adults we face this problem as well and also what ideas people had about when it comes to raising children whether you have them or not so if you could just sort of share with me your thoughts about that I'll sort of cast that out to to the group as a whole well there seems to be other problems with parenting as well as far as dealing with this power disparity and How to resolve,
	how to justify parenting at all because of the extreme power and possibility for extreme corruption that's involved with it.
	Maybe some of these issues may be taken care of if that fundamental issue could be addressed.
	Can you tell me a little more about what you mean?
	About the power disparity?
	Yeah, just, I mean, both in terms, I mean, I understand the power disparity thing, but just because other people who may not have gone through all quarter of a thousand podcasts might not be fully up to speed.
	And also how you see that relating to the improvement in parenting as a whole.
	Well, the worst corruption comes out of the higher disparity of force.
	And the largest disparity that exists is between a parent and a child because the child is completely helpless and the parent wields the power of life and death directly over that child.
	And that's why there's a lot of problems that come out of abuse and bad parenting and corruption in the family in general.
	Which also leads to the generation of the state, which is the other big power disparity.
	So there has to be some sort of way to get children or reduce the power disparity or eliminate the power disparity in parenting in order to have it be, I guess, a less corrupt system.
	And there's thoughts about how this may happen, how science may.
	Um, increase the development of children or how, um, maybe having the elderly raise the children there won't be such a, quite as large, uh, power disparity, things like that.
	But once there's a contract between the parents of the children, um, that allows for, um, Arbitration and restitution and representation on the children's part,
	then I think a lot of the parenting issues are going to be kind of taken care of with that kind of a contract situation.
	Yeah, I see what you're saying.
	I see what you're saying. I think that's interesting.
	I think that there is an interesting challenge around parenting, and I sort of tried to go into this in the novel The God of Atheists in an artistic way.
	And I think the great challenge for parenting is that parents don't have a clue what's going on in terms of why they have authority and what it is that they're trying to teach their children.
	So in all of the moral rules that I was ever...
	Instructed on as a child and as a teenager the basic problem was that nobody could ever give me any good reasons for why they were telling me to do what it was that they were telling me to do and that basic problem I think that parents don't know anything really about truth or ethics because we're trying to develop a pretty new approach here and we think it's pretty valid it's pretty logical it's it's pretty empirical and so I think what happens with parents is they don't know why it is that they're doing what they're doing,
	and so they end up really having to come down pretty hard on the children, right?
	I don't think authority naturally has to be abusive.
	I mean, an even greater degree of power disparity is between the surgeon and the patient that he or she is operating on, and yet we don't automatically assume, because you're unconscious, right?
	You have no capacity to defend yourself at all.
	But we don't automatically assume that's going to be abusive, but that's because the surgeon really knows or is aiming to know what he or she wants to do, and so I think that doesn't necessarily have to be corruptive, but where there is authority and a need for conformity or a need for rules,
	right? Parents, you can get away with having a sort of relativistic approach to ethics or truth within your own life if you're just like a single guy or a single woman roaming around the world, but when you have children, You have to teach them, to some degree, what is acceptable and unacceptable behavior.
	And if you don't have any reasons behind what you're teaching them, you end up having to bully them.
	In other words, when you don't have legitimate rational authority, you end up having to impose conformity.
	And the imposition of conformity is a very different...
	kind of situation because when you're imposing conformity you can only do it through bullying because there's no self-interest or rationality in the imposition of conformity and so I think that I sort of have this fantasy and I think it may have some rationality behind it that as parents if we really genuinely understand the reasons that we're telling children to do this or to do that then I think that we'll be more benevolent, basically, because we're appealing to self-interest.
	So sort of a minor example that I'll have of that is that when I was a kid, everyone told me to brush my teeth, but never told me why.
	And then I remember reading something, I can't remember where, about why you need to brush your teeth, you know, the sugar, and then the bacteria attack the sugar, which undoes your enamel, which causes problems here, there, and that.
	And after that, I've never had any problem with oral hygiene because it just kind of made sense and it was particularly kinds...
	It just made sense.
	It was rational. It appealed to my self-interest.
	And so that kind of instruction is very much lacking in the modern world because of religion, because of state schools, because of people's belief in collectives.
	They end up just trying to make children conform, which requires bullying rather than to be good, which requires rational self-interest.
	Does that strike anyone else as relevant or true?
	Yeah, I think that's incredibly important having that kind of knowledge and even awareness of the power disparity itself I think will help things tremendously.
	I still think that there's a problem with some sort of voluntary contract and the child not being able to seek arbitration, you know, for bad parenting or something like that.
	The awareness is great, but still leaves open the possibility.
	I think that's right, and I think one of the things that's occurred with the growth of state power and also with the imposition of religious ethics like honor thy mother and thy father is that we generally, if we don't have ethics that is taught to us,
	In a way that is based on rationality, self-interest, and provable morals, then what happens is that the parents themselves end up bullying their children, often with the right intentions.
	Not like all parents just sort of wake up every morning and say, how can I best further destroy the mental capacities of my children?
	But I think that what's happened with the growth of state power and with religious injunctions around respecting your parents is that the consequences of poor parenting have been bypassed by the moral injunctions of providing resources to your parents regardless of how well they treated you.
	So, for instance, I mean, if with my own mother who was, you know, a complete monster when I was growing up and is still a monster now, The fact that she is on disability and welfare and now old age pension from the state means that I have absolutely no control over her at all.
	And that is an issue because my brother and I were never able to affect any change in her behavior like sending her to any kind of counselor or anything because we never had any control over her resources.
	And I think that's a problem.
	And so I think that one of the things I focus on is to try and get children to recognize that if their parents didn't treat them well, they're under no obligation.
	We owe our parents what we owe everyone else.
	which is that we owe them justice and so I think that parents at the moment can treat their children badly and escape the consequences of those actions both through state support and by being able to guilt their children based on this universal injunction of you must take care of your parents when they get older no matter what they did to you and I think that when you escape the consequences of bad choices it's really hard to oppose those kinds of bad choices it's another thing that the state and the church does Which messes up the issue of the consequences of bad choices,
	And that's another reason that it's important for children to not continue to respect their parents if their parents have not been behaving in a respectful manner.
	Does anyone have any comment about that or should I start off on another topic?
	Okay.
	Yes, Stefan, I have a comment.
	Excellent! How are you doing, François?
	Oh, I'm fine. I just think you should talk about what part of your childhood takes you to talk like me.
	For those who haven't been following this particular drama on the boards, and for those of you who maybe have never visited the boards, Francois' question about what part of my childhood has caused me to dislike him, it's that I was beaten by a bag full of Quebecois men quite often when I was a child, so I do apologize for allowing that trauma to overshadow my natural respect for people who cuss and curse people on my boards, so I hope that explains it to you.
	Yeah, you must have a traumatism from your childhood that makes you repel from that kind of dialogue, which you shouldn't, because it can be very emotionally filling and useful as well.
	Well, I mean, I don't agree with that.
	This could be my conservative British side.
	Who knows, right? But my particular approach to discussions is that I think that respect for another person's viewpoint is the first principle that needs to be taken because we're all in a process of learning here and we're all in a process of trying to figure things out.
	And so I find that calling people effin' morons and so on doesn't really add a lot to the elevated nature of the discussion.
	And we could talk about this another time.
	This isn't actually specific to the parenting topic at hand, and we certainly can come back to that.
	But I do want to make sure that other people get their own thoughts, if such they are, to the topic that we're talking about around parenting.
	So, as far as the issue goes of parenting, do we have any people here who actually have children at the moment?
	No. Okay.
	We got something from the Skype chat.
	Well, that's no problem. I mean, I have received some emails because I have dared to broach the topic of better parenting in podcasts, despite the fact that I have no children.
	Of my own, that I know of, and so people have said, how dare you possibly talk about parenting, which I think is quite silly.
	I mean, we can talk about politics without being politicians, and we can talk about the nature of astronomy without being astronauts or astrophysicists, but I found that in my own experience, With children, I worked for a couple of years as a daycare teacher when I was younger, and I also grew up with two nieces that I was close to until, unfortunately, my brothers, they're my brother's children, and a number of things occurred.
	That have caused significant problems, mostly because I don't see my mother anymore, and my nieces began to ask questions about that.
	And unfortunately, my brother, up until a couple of years ago, actually allowed my mother to babysit his own children, which was a desperately bad idea.
	until she let the dog get out and the dog got hit by a car and killed which of course could have been any one of my nieces but the fact that I don't see my mother has caused significant problems between myself and my brother because as my nieces got older and they wanted to know more about this I had to begin to tell them more of the facts because I don't really think that children should be lied to and this of course caused an enormous amount of problems between myself and my brother Which basically ended up with me not being able to see my nieces,
	which is sad, but something that is an inevitable consequence of living a life where you try not to lie to people, especially to children, and you also don't take on ownership for moral problems that you didn't create.
	Like the fact that my mother is a bad person is not a moral issue that I created.
	I mean, the fact that she was born Uh, in Germany in 1937 and went through the wars and, you know, pretty much from orphanage to orphanage probably had a lot more to do with her, um, problems later on in life and of course her own choices related to that than anything to do with anything that I was like as a child.
	And so those kinds of issues do come up quite a bit when it comes to other people and their children, right?
	So if I have children around me, as I did when I was a daycare worker, who would ask me questions, these kids were, I did a room of 30 kids or so, some of them were sort of 5 to 10 years old, And the older ones absolutely had questions about the existence of God and what was the government and what was taxation.
	And of course I would tell them the truth as I saw it at the time, which is not very dissimilar from the truth as I perceive it to be now.
	I've just gone a little bit further.
	I wasn't an anarchist back then, but I was more of a Randian or objectivist minarchist.
	And so I would answer those questions and it would cause problems, especially the questions around religion and God because no one was talking to these kids About these things in any way that was respectful to them.
	And I found that these kids, a lot of them came from a pretty bad neighborhood.
	And I found that when I was talking with these kids in an open and honest way, I had no problems with their attention span whatsoever.
	I remember sort of sitting down for an hour with about 10 kids.
	They're just asking me questions and I was telling them what I thought and the reasons why the methodology for thinking.
	I found them to be absolutely riveted by it because it's not very often that children get any kind of truth.
	or any kind of honest opinions or methodologies from adults so that was very important to them but unfortunately caused a lot of problems between the parents and the daycare school and so that became something that I had to do a little bit more delicately and I guess my concern is that when I have kids myself with Christina's assistance of course It's going to be something else that is going to occur.
	And even if we don't have kids, I think we can also talk about it in terms of our own social circles, because that's really what happens when you have kids, right?
	You get drawn into a lot of social circles.
	If you take your kids to public school or to Gymboree or Playdates or whatever, that you get drawn into a social circle.
	So how's it been for people just in their general social circles as these ideas develop within you?
	What is it like for you in your social circle?
	And we can talk about the family or, of course, we could talk about, just in terms of friends and acquaintances, how does it work for you with these ideas in social situations, of which children, of course, would just be a subset.
	So I'll put that out as well.
	Well, I can tell you that, for myself at least, most of these topics are pretty much off-limits to my nieces and nephews when it comes to me.
	And is that because you're trying to get them more into Satanism, or is it just because there is a real hostility on your siblings' parts about these?
	Yeah. Do you see how he's thinking about this?
	But more of a fear.
	They don't know what it's going to produce in their kids, so they basically tell me, hey, you know, want to talk about that, talk about it with me.
	Right, so don't pick on children with the truth.
	Pick on an adult who has his own prejudices and can't be swayed.
	Yeah, pretty much.
	Well, and I can sort of understand that in a sort of transactional-based kind of way, not necessarily in an ethical way, but in a transactional kind of way.
	I think the issue that the parents, your siblings as parents, are going to have is sort of like, well, our kids are in sort of church, our kids are in Sunday school, our kids are in school as a whole.
	They're in a chair. I think that creates a good deal of challenge for people because let's just say that you as the demonic rationalist managed to put some ideas or questions into your nieces and nephews minds about the viability of fantastical objects like a deity and also maybe point out a little bit about the coercion that is at the basis of public schools or the public school system.
	Well, what's going to happen with them?
	Are they going to go to Sunday school and start asking questions?
	And what's going to happen when they start asking their own parents those questions and their parents can't answer it?
	And I think that's really the most fundamental thing because the parents Are saying to their children, you must believe in God.
	God is good. God is love.
	God is going to give you candy.
	And then when the kids say, well, what about this?
	And what about that? And what about the other?
	And evil Uncle Greg wants to drag us off to Stonehenge and do nasty things with all the other Satanists.
	And he's given us all of these questions about God.
	Then I think it's the parents...
	Own feelings or fears of humiliation and being exposed as people who have commanded absolutes that they don't understand, or had commandments around absolutes that they themselves don't understand, that I think is what they're most afraid of.
	Do you get that sense at all, or do you think it's something else?
	Well, I haven't really pushed it that much, though.
	In a vague sort of way, that's the sense that I get, but I'm not 100% sure.
	So I guess that the assignment could then be to push it to the max this week and report to us back next Sunday.
	You know, that would be excellent. So you're looking for nuclear holocaust then?
	Absolutely. I think that what we should do as a whole is to look at your family relationships as expendable in the quest for knowledge.
	And I think that would probably be an excellent approach for the rest of us, if not necessarily for you.
	Well, I'll gladly throw myself on the funeral pyre.
	Excellent. Well, now we have it recorded.
	We're going to be submitting this to our local DRO as an actual contract.
	So this is going to be great. Adi, are you on the line?
	Right. Sorry, go ahead.
	I'll send you the bill for the cremation.
	Actually, we'll just give free therapy from Christina.
	that that will be the solution, which I'm sure will be more than adequate.
	Now, is Addy on the line?
	He's here. Because if I remember...
	You had talked a couple of, probably about six weeks ago, about your own mother, who seemed to be a tad on the religious side and also a tad on the, I don't know, how would Greek people put it, over-emotional?
	A little hysterical. A little hysterical or a little over-emotional.
	Have you had any conversations with her about this kind of stuff?
	His light's still on. I don't know if he's going to say something else.
	No. And can you...
	Yeah, sorry.
	Your light was still on, so I wasn't sure if you were going to say something else.
	And is that because she's given you indications that she's unconvertible, or is that because you don't feel that she's capable of it, or because it's just not relevant?
	Excellent. Well, I think that Greg will be opening up a home for people like this probably within about a week.
	So you guys should definitely stay in touch with each other because I think that could be helpful.
	I do have more of a theoretical question.
	Let's hear it. Actually, I posted on the board, too, once a while back.
	In an anarchist society where, you know, you could pretty much raise your kids any way you want.
	New player.
	say even in a DRO society like the one you've proposed, how would a society like that deal with people who say just absolutely refuse to educate how would a society like that deal with people who say just absolutely refuse
	Say some kind of an extreme religion or something like that and insist on isolating them from society as a whole in order to maintain their mythology or whatever they have.
	I got it.
	Is that acceptable for First of all, and if it is, is it even workable?
	Yeah, no, I understand the question.
	So let's say we've got some cult out there that believes that the best year of human existence was like 1522.
	And so they don't teach their kids anything about technology or anything about the outside world.
	They keep them in a sort of fence, sort of like that, with that movie, what was it, where, it was an M. Night Shaniahen movie.
	Yeah, but there was a movie about this that the guy who made The Sixth Sense...
	The Village? The Village, that's right.
	Yeah, The Village, where...
	Beware, spoilers.
	These people end up...
	They think that they're living in the 16th century, but it turns out that they're living in, like, the 20th century.
	They've just been really isolated.
	Well, I mean, I guess, first of all, that can occur now, right?
	I mean, you can go and...
	In Canada, in particular, but, of course, in the U.S., it's quite possible as well.
	That you can take your friends all and go and live somewhere up north and you can end up coming up with your own community and you could be undiscovered for years and years and years and you could raise children however it is that you wanted.
	There would be almost no access for society to come in and do anything about it.
	This is also the case, this occurs with the native reservations that we have up here in Canada.
	I'm sure it's the same. They exist in an unbelievable state of nature, wherein there's just no controls whatsoever.
	And I know this from having worked up north.
	I mean, the way the children are treated is just savage.
	First of all, this happens right now, so if it happens in a DRO society, it wouldn't be like a reversal or a deterioration from what has happened right now.
	The people who do teach their children, let's just say, crazy religious culty things, They have to teach their children language because you can't communicate crazy religious ideas or any ideas without language of some kind.
	And they also probably would be unable to keep their children from learning about the outside world in any way, shape or form.
	There would be something. I mean, they'd see planes flying overhead at the very minimum.
	So they'd have some sense, I mean, unless they turned those into angels with farty contrails or something, you know, in their mythology, they would have some access to the outside world.
	And so I would say that those children would be...
	Unlikely to be covered by DROs because they're just like a remote Montana cave dwelling society or however you want to put it.
	So I don't imagine there would be a whole lot of DROs.
	Those children would learn language.
	They would probably learn how to read because there would be religious texts.
	And then the thing that I would say is that the best thing that could be hoped for would be that the world outside needs to be as enticing as humanly possible to get the children out of that situation.
	So you want to make sure that you have tons of jobs available, that the pay is good, that the living is cheap, that, you know, as free market a situation as possible so that people can at least escape those communities.
	Right now, of course, in Canada, the Native American or the Native Canadian communities are so heavily funded and the children are so badly raised that they've become virtually unintegratable into normal society and also because Everybody requires high school.
	There's not a lot of apprenticeship programs.
	Unions have got a sort of lockdown on physical labor, which has made the barriers to entry enormously high.
	All of those kinds of things have contributed to make those kinds of communities somewhat unescapable.
	And so I think that it does occur right now in a way that's permanent, right?
	Like, I mean, poverty will occur in a DRO or anarchist society as well, but it won't occur in the kind of permanent and reinforced way that happens right now on welfare.
	Does that help as a sort of first stab at the topic?
	So essentially, as long as it's not institutionalized, then it's acceptable.
	So like a Mennonite or an Amish community could certainly live right alongside of modern people, and there wouldn't be any Well, I think there would be, though.
	I mean, again, it's hard to look at religion or religious communities, which is what we sort of mean by, I think, this for the most part.
	It's hard to look at religious communities as independent entities.
	They're heavily subsidized by the state.
	I mean, first and foremost, churches are not subject to taxation.
	Secondly, at least in Canada, I don't know what the situation is in the United States, churches are also not subject to property taxes.
	And so it's important to understand that there's a heavy degree of subsidization that occurs for religion within these kinds of communities.
	Oh, sorry, within Western societies.
	And so I wonder, I always kind of wonder what would happen to these societies if they actually had to bear the full cost of what it took to sort of keep them going.
	So they do get some sort of Western medicines and they do get some, they have plumbing, they have all these things that come in from the outside world.
	They don't pay their sort of, I wouldn't say fair share in taxes, but they pay far fewer taxes than anyone else.
	And what that means in a free society, is that since there is no taxation a lot of their appeal would be less relative to what it's like outside and so I think what would happen is there would be a constant exodus of people from this kind of society and I don't think they would last more than a generation or two because people would just there would be so much more appeal and opportunity and freedom and so on outside of those societies and you can sort of see this It's happening in the immigrant,
	right? So in immigrant societies.
	So if you have like Greeks or Italians or Polish people who come to, those particular communities generally aren't subsidized.
	And what happens is that within two generations, or at the most three, they're pretty much indistinguishable from those who just were here sort of Generations before.
	And so I think that it is something that would maybe a charismatic leader would get it started but I can't imagine that in the absence of subsidies that make it more attractive that it would last very long.
	I actually hadn't thought of it that way as seeing them as an immigrant community but I wasn't aware that at least in the states that the The Amish or the Mennonites weren't really being subsidized at all.
	I'm not sure if that's true or not.
	Well, I pretty much can guarantee you that they don't pay the property taxes that they would be paying if they weren't those kinds of religious communities.
	I'm not entirely positive.
	I'll try Googling it as we go along.
	For sure in Canada, the churches don't pay.
	Religious societies do not pay property taxes, and they pay much less in general taxes.
	And so I would be surprised.
	Let me have a look at it. And so, of course, they're not paying property taxes, and since they're large property owners, it seems to me quite...
	If they were to be...
	So everyone else is paying a lot more taxation, which makes them artificially wealthier.
	So... I found the Amish FAQ page and of course I have no idea.
	The fact that they have an FAQ page is actually quite interesting.
	Do the Amish pay taxes?
	Self-employed Amish do not pay social security tax.
	Those employed by non-Amish employers do pay the social.
	They do pay real estate, state and federal income taxes, county taxes, and sales taxes.
	They do not collect social security benefits, nor would they collect unemployment or welfare funds.
	Self-sufficiency is the Amish community's answer to government aid programs.
	Section 310 of the Medicare section of the Social Security Act has a subsection that permits individuals to apply for exemption from the self-employment tax if he's a member of a religious body that is conscientiously opposed to Social Security benefits, but that makes reasonable provisions for taking care of their own elderly or dependent members.
	So they do seem to pay some taxes, of course, but they also have a religious body that is opposed to Social Security benefits, and obviously that would be our next move as a society.
	That would be...
	They do have some exemption.
	Here in Canada, it's a lot more for church owners.
	Okay, so... Sorry, one other thing I'll say, and it's not on the FAQ page, but it just sort of makes sense to me, but what I would say is that the Amish probably do a lot more barter than cash-based economy, right? So the question is, if you're in a cash-based economy, you're subject to a lot more obvious taxation than if you have a barter type of economy.
	So that could be considered a kind of subsidy.
	It's a little bit of a stretch, but it would have the same effect from a sort of a taxation standpoint.
	Okay, so ultimately, Okay, so ultimately, do you think that in a more free society, that groups like that would just normally fade away over time?
	It certainly does seem to be the case when you look at immigrant cultures, those where the cultural beliefs are pretty unusual, they do tend to get sort of smoothed out as people get exposed to a wider variety of beliefs.
	And this is of course one of the reasons why those kinds of cultures don't like to get involved with outside cultures.
	When Christina was growing up, She didn't actually know until about the age of 23 that there were non-Greeks in the world.
	And so that was something that was quite a shock for her, if I remember rightly, wasn't it, sweetie?
	Especially when I found out that there were good British boys, too.
	Good British boy, absolutely.
	So, no, but when Christina was growing up, she spent most of her time around other Greek kids.
	Her parents are still with the same sort of community that they came over with 40 years ago.
	And there's a pretty strong reason as to why people who have irrational beliefs like cultural preferences or religious preferences and so on, They like to stay within their own communities, and the best way for me to undermine those kinds of communities is to make leaving them as enticing as possible, which means I think it's having as free a market as possible.
	That's an excellent question, though.
	Does anyone else have any comments about that?
	So I guess as a follow-up to that, then, how do you make the children...
	In a community like that, that are so highly isolated from the rest of the society they exist in, how do you make them aware of it and make them aware that it's actually better?
	You mean to be outside of that kind of community?
	That it's worse. Right, they've been isolated from society and they've been raised to believe that society is worse.
	And you have very few avenues of penetration into that society.
	I would think that it would be difficult to make an enticing case.
	Yeah, I mean, one of the ways that I would think of approaching that is you could rent a plane.
	And, you know, there's the sky writing, right?
	So you could have, like, you could write in the sky over the children's playground, God hates Amish, or something like that.
	And of course, as children, they would look at that and see that as a sign from on high.
	So there's ways that you could approach it that I think would at least begin to get some questions going in the minds of the children.
	Very smart idea.
	Leaflet bombs. Leaflet bombs, that's right, absolutely.
	Filled with pictures of nude women.
	Here's what awaits you in the outside world.
	Corrupt and easy harlots.
	You know, whatever it takes.
	No, I think that's an interesting question.
	Isolated communities and how to make them more rational is a very difficult question.
	I don't think it's something that can be solved through any kind of centralized agency or force or whatever.
	I think that children...
	And it comes back, I think, to the real question around...
	Because every family, to some degree, is a highly isolated community.
	And I think this is why this question is very important.
	Obviously, it's not going to be a hugely difficult question in a DRO society, because there's going to be very few of these kinds of societies, and it wouldn't make any sense to infringe on other people's rights for the sake of those societies.
	But I think what's also a sort of powerful underlier to this kind of question is the fact that families are incredibly isolated communities within society.
	There is an enormous amount of course of corruption that occurs within families within society and there's no methodology at the moment that That can deal with that effectively.
	I mean, I've tried to write articles about how DROs would help that, but what happens is that parents who corrupt their own children, who...
	We'll just talk about the obvious stuff, like a physical or emotional or sexual abuse that has a significant impact on the children's productivity as adults.
	Parents pay nothing For this.
	They pay no fines.
	They pay no negatives.
	I mean, for instance, if I were running a DRO, I would be very interested, as I've mentioned in articles before, in trying to make sure that children were not being raised as criminals.
	Because if children were being raised who would end up being criminals, that would make my DRO protection of people's properties that much harder.
	So I would try to intervene as much as possible To try and make families not do that.
	I mean, I wouldn't be down to the last detail, but some pretty obvious things like beating kids or whatever would be something which you would strongly discourage.
	And so I think my particular question is also around not just these kinds of communities, but how do you pierce this bubble, this incredibly strong, you know, biosphere of the family to try and reach in and help children?
	And that is a very, very difficult question.
	And I have I've come up with a couple of ideas that are somewhat helpful, but I certainly don't feel like I've clinched anything.
	What do you guys think?
	I don't really have any firm ideas for myself, but there has to be a way to get the kids when they're away from their families, when they're away from their parents.
	Do you mean to get them away from their parents or to communicate them when they're away from their parents?
	To communicate to them when an opportunity arises.
	I think that just trying to talk to kids while they're away from parents if an opportunity arises, I mean, it's certainly one approach, but one conversation It may not be enough, particularly if they are constantly being subjected to their parents' ideas and perspectives.
	It's going to be a very difficult challenge.
	But if you yell it.
	If you're having trouble getting through to the children, if you just keep raising your voice, I find that that makes you feel like you're doing something.
	Absolutely. Makes you feel like you're doing something.
	Well, the Sam Kinison of Stefan Molyneux, right?
	That's right! Listen, kids!
	My way or no way!
	No, it is a hugely challenging problem.
	I've only a couple of times been in the situation in life where I've seen children being maltreated, and it is a very difficult thing to intervene.
	I think I've intervened two or three times in my life.
	And it's been a very explosive situation.
	Even if it's in public and you see a child being mistreated, it is a very explosive thing to intervene.
	I do think it's something that does need to be done, and I don't do it because I think that I'm going to change the parents.
	I do it so, and I don't claim any great virtue in it, I do it so that at least the child can see that there's somebody in the world who thinks that it's not right what is occurring.
	But it's not like I then say, and you can come and stay at my house for the next 15 years or something.
	So it really is a difficult situation to try and figure out how you can help children within a situation like that.
	Challenging children, I mean, they're also very, very defensive of their parents because of their own fears.
	So, you know, putting new ideas into their minds, I think, is a very interesting concept.
	But when you're challenging them to go against their parents, It's very frightening for them.
	It would take more than just one sort of conversation with them, I think.
	Yeah, it's sort of like saying to people in prison, you should have a revolt against your prison guards.
	They're sort of unarmed and helpless.
	You may actually be causing more problems than you're solving.
	And so, yeah, that's something that is a very...
	And it's one of the central issues about making the world free, because if children are not protected, the world can never be free, because children then grow up with a very, very unhealthy relationship to authority.
	Either they are reactive and rebellious in an unproductive way, Or they tend to be submissive and compliant, which only feeds and fuels the power of the state.
	So, you know, the issue of dealing with children is pretty significant.
	And how to make children understand that parental authority is not the same as morality, very difficult.
	And of course, you don't have, even if you have a long weekend with a kid to tell them all about morality, that's one sort of three-day period out of 15 or 20 years they have with their parents.
	When they're completely dependent on their parents, so it really is a challenging situation.
	Well, Steph and I had a discussion about something very similar.
	Steph has desperately wanted to have relationships with his nieces and trying to figure out how we can maintain a relationship with them.
	Without having to have a relationship with their parents, Steph's brother and sister-in-law, we just decided that it was going to be impossible that no matter what kind of influence we tried to have on the girls was going to be somewhat grandiose, undermined by their parents.
	Well, we were actually going to be undermining their parents' rules and values and that was going to make it more challenging for them to have a relationship with us.
	Yeah, because the question of what an outside influence can have on children is pretty questionable in a lot of ways.
	Because, you know, let's just sort of take this example because I think it could be considered relevant that, you know, I was there when my nieces were born and I was around them for many, many years, very closely growing up.
	And then when they became older and they began to...
	Of course I had problems with my brother because he kept getting involved in these corrupt business schemes that were sort of one step shy of criminality even under the existing system.
	So there were significant issues around that.
	And then what happened was my brother began to...
	Well, he always had been sort of teaching them about all these relativistic ethics, and he's very much for this kind of, you know, forgive everyone and get along with everyone.
	And the only people who ever have any problem with anybody else, this is the sort of relativistic scheme of things, the only people who ever have problems with anybody else are people who are irrationally angry, right?
	So everybody should forgive everyone, everyone should get along with everyone, and the only people who don't do that are people who are crazy and angry.
	So in this situation, of course, my mother was more moral than I was in this kind of world view because my mother was willing to forgive me for not seeing her, but I wasn't willing to forgive my mother for being who she was because she wasn't willing to change or improve or anything like that.
	And so what happened was because of my brother's relativistic moral worldview, his children, and this became very difficult for me, his children began to lecture me on how it is that I should deal with my own mother because they had been so programmed to believe that good people forgive everything and the only people who don't forgive everything are bad people who are intolerant and are holding grudges and are immature and who can't let go and who can't forgive and who are bitter and this and that.
	And so I began to, and it wasn't their fault, but it's difficult to be lectured at by a 13-year-old about how you should deal with your own mother when you've sort of been forbidden from talking about the moral crimes of your own mother by your brother, and so it becomes very difficult and very complicated,
	and I tried a number of different approaches to that, and tried delicately to say this, that, or the other to my nieces, but They were so full of certainty about this relativistic moral worldview that their father and mother, for obvious reasons, had instilled in them that they simply were not accessible to any kind of logic or any kind of discussion around this.
	They were just absolutely certain.
	And what did I have to offer them, really, when you came right down to it?
	I had the option of having them understand that their parents were morally corrupt.
	That they were going to be there for another, if you count, university, that they had another seven or eight years to go, being in their parents' care, and that their parents were morally corrupt, which would raise the question of should they accept the money from their parents for university if their parents got that money through illegitimate means.
	Their social circle was corrupt.
	Their parents' friends were corrupt.
	That their parents' friends' children, who were their contemporaries, were corrupt.
	That their school was funded by violence.
	That blah, blah, blah. I mean, my brother's not religious, but his wife's parents are religious.
	And they would occasionally go to this temple and be introduced to these kinds of religious concepts.
	And so that would also be...
	So I was really, you know, in a sense...
	I think in their mind, offering to push them off a cliff, so to speak, from a social standpoint.
	And it wasn't like they had any other options at the age of 14 or 12 or whatever.
	So it is a really tricky thing to try and communicate to children because their natural desire is to conform to their parents and to gain as many resources as possible to get themselves launched in life.
	And if you then talk to them about parental corruption, It's really hard to help them understand that, yes, okay, so the next decade is going to be really tough, but after that, yeah, things will be great.
	It's a very difficult situation.
	I've not been able to solve it within my own family.
	My only hope, of course, is that as my nieces get older, they know how to get in touch with me, that there may be opportunities for us to have better conversations or more honest conversations when they get older.
	But it's going to be me against everything else they've ever been taught.
	And they've never been taught reason.
	Or empiricism, and so I'm just going to be one opinion that's completely opposed to everyone else's opinion, and because my opinion has no more weights just because it's logical and empirical, because they don't understand the value of those things, it really is going to be hard for them to see that I have any kind of truth value in what it is that I'm saying.
	So it's a very challenging situation.
	Yeah, it sounds very similar to what I went through with my nephew.
	Now, do you see how I took 10 minutes and Greg was about 8 seconds?
	Greg, would you like to expand on that to make me feel a little better?
	Well, Steph, that's why you get the big bucks.
	That's why I got my 50 cent donation today, which after the PayPal deductions, I think actually owe them money.
	Let's see at an hourly rate.
	Nope. No, but the two oldest nephews are just now starting to get to that age where they're thinking about those kinds of things, and my brother does a very good job of keeping them closely guarded, you know, and so the handful of minutes that I've had to actually talk to either of them,
	they've already gotten into this habit of being very cautious of what they talk to Me about as well.
	Boy, you'd love to have been a fly on the wall when your brother told them about Crazy Uncle Greg, huh?
	Oh yeah, in fact that was sort of a nickname for me flying around for a while too.
	Well, no, I certainly, as another crazy uncle, that has definitely been the case.
	The one thing that did happen that was quite interesting was that my eldest niece, who I'll call Bob, no, my eldest niece did actually reach out a little bit to Christina.
	There was obviously quite a degree of shock in my family when I got married.
	For a variety of reasons.
	I had been a swinging single bachelor guy for so many years.
	I think people thought that I was rocketing on a single spaceship to the end of time.
	But there was a great deal of shock when I got married and got married so quickly.
	And what actually happened was my eldest niece did try and reach out a little bit to my wife.
	And would you like to talk about that a little bit?
	Not really. But she did.
	She did. She asked Christina what do you think of, what did she call her?
	Dingbat Grandma? She had a very unusual name for your mom.
	She did mention your mother and didn't refer to her very well.
	Sorry Greg, that's my mother, not your mother.
	She did call her grandmother a bit crazy.
	I really can't recall what she said about her.
	Because you were at the sink at your parents' place, right?
	Now, what did you say in return?
	I told her very clearly that you had some very good reasons why you didn't want to be a part of her life, and she didn't want to have a conversation about it.
	She just ended it at that point.
	Right, so I think what she was doing was trying to sort of probe you to see where you stood in this situation.
	I don't think she was curious about my mother.
	I think what she was trying to do was to try and figure out if you were going to be someone who said, oh yeah, Steph's got real problems with his mom, but I think we can work them out and we can be a happy, close-knit, crazy quilt of a family again.
	But since you didn't do that, I think that she then backed away from the topic because deep down she knows the truth, right?
	Deep down she knows the facts about everyone.
	Every child knows the facts.
	And you know that they know the facts because they're most resistant to the most honesty, right?
	So they have to know what the facts are because that's what they resist.
	And that's true of just about everyone, right?
	So, that really was the only time that I think that she reached out to you.
	I think there may be one other time where she sort of reached out to you in a way that could be considered trying to validate that question around my mom.
	No, I think that was the only time she really did that.
	I think other times she was just trying to figure out what I was all about, whether or not she could have me as a confidant.
	And I think she realized pretty quickly that I wasn't supporting her parents' viewpoints on a lot of things, and we weren't able to make much of a connection after that.
	Right. She was looking for an ally to reinforce her parents' beliefs and then...
	Yeah, so it's really tricky.
	I've never figured out a way to do it successfully.
	Although I tell you, I really do think, thinking back on my own childhood, I really do think that If somebody had reached out to me that I would have been very receptive to it.
	So I don't think that there's a reach out scenario.
	I don't think there's a reach out scenario that can change that situation unless the child is receptive and willing for it to begin with.
	So that I think is pretty important to understand.
	It's worth reaching out a little bit to see if there's any reach out back.
	And so, I mean, the first time I came across Ayn Rand or Aristotle or sort of rational philosophers, I just sort of swallowed it whole and just went for it the whole hog.
	And so I think that that was sort of a reach out in a sort of textual format, like in a book.
	And so I responded to that.
	Player left. I responded, can we turn that damn thing off?
	Sorry, this player left, player coming?
	I'm just going to see if I can turn that off.
	It's really, really annoying. Dee-dee-dee-dee.
	Options. Can we turn off the sound notifications?
	Yes, we can. Disable all sounds.
	Ooh! That doesn't disable me, does it?
	The horror. But I've just never had any luck reaching out to a child, except that I do know that when people did reach out to me, like I had a camp counselor who I would stay up late with and chat, who was a smart guy who really thought about certain ideas.
	So when I have had that kind of stuff, it's been great, but it's been really rare.
	And I was, for some reason, that I've never really been able to fully figure out.
	I was very receptive to that stuff to begin with, whereas very few people as children or as adults tend to be receptive to any kind of rationality either.
	I like to think that it's just a matter of brains, but I'm sure it's more than that.
	As we talked about, I think, in our very first or second show, most of us seem to have a situation where our own parental authority figures or our authority figures in general did not seem to be people that we could innately respect, and that seemed to give us a certain amount of skepticism towards the idea that authority was innately valuable or virtuous in and of itself, so... So that's interesting.
	Now, Greg, did you have more to say on that?
	Or I'm just going to sort of throw it open to any other questions that people might have as well.
	No, I'm pretty much in agreement with you.
	Although I'd have to say that at the age of 13 or 14, I doubt pretty highly I would have been very receptive.
	Oh yeah, no, it definitely is touch and go with Greg even now.
	Thanks, Greg. I'm just going to edit you out as soon as you said although, because up to that, it was great.
	Right, no bad stuff, right.
	No, no, no. Just no questioning of the central authority.
	The question of childhood as a topic seems to be drawing a deafening silence from everyone except Greg.
	So what we'll do is manfully abandon that topic completely and I'll throw it open to any topics that anybody feels like chatting about and we shall radically reorient the show to any other topic that people would like to chat about.
	So here it is being thrown open.
	All yours. Now, see, one of the ways that this is different from a podcast is that other people get to speak.
	So, if people have fallen asleep, that's fine.
	I can podcast all afternoon, but if you would like to have any questions, anything, in the last 245...
	Oh, I just did 245, but I haven't actually posted it yet.
	But anyone who would like to bring up any topic or any questions, please feel free to do it.
	Oh, Christina has a question.
	She wants to know why I still haven't cleaned the bathrooms yet.
	But that's all right.
	Okay, well, I'm going to continue with the topic, and this will be something that I touched on in a podcast today.
	Has anybody else ever been accused of arrogance in the realm of ideas because they have standards for truth or falsehood, which aren't just around opinions?
	Has anybody ever been accused of being arrogant in this situation?
	Because this occurred to me with...
	Yeah, you're being so rigid.
	Yes, I get that sometimes, too.
	Gregory gets accused of that all the time, but that's mostly on the Free Domain radio boards.
	I'm talking about outside of that, Greg, just, you know, not necessarily within this community.
	But can you sort of give me some examples of that from other people, if you could give me examples of that, where that shows up in your life?
	Because I think I might have an answer to that that doesn't involve swearing.
	Sorry, Francois. Oh, sorry.
	Francois, for those of you who can't see the Skype chat, Francois is once again praising my manhood and saying that I am, and just a direct quote I'm translating from the French here, a veritable titan of manhood.
	So, thank you, Francois. I certainly appreciate that.
	So, one of the main objections I get all the time is that I'm being too simplistic that Things aren't black and white.
	Life isn't an on and off switch.
	Like it's not binary, right?
	Exactly. And what's your response to that?
	Well, typically I try to counter with the law of non-contradiction. typically I try to counter with the law of non-contradiction.
	Oh, yeah, yeah.
	That a proposition is either true or it's false, and that the basic laws of logic are pretty much black and white.
	Precisely. So, like, when you're dealing with questions of, say, You know, whether or not somebody is moral or somebody is virtuous.
	Like an argument I was having with my brother John the other day.
	He has this friend who her parents are awful, I guess.
	But she still likes them.
	And he likes her.
	And I'm like, well, you know, that's Isn't that a problem?
	Because if they're awful people, how can she still like them and still like you?
	Right away it was, well, things aren't black and white like that.
	It's not a yes or no answer.
	You can still...
	You can do both at the same time.
	And...
	I didn't really have a clear answer to that other than to say, you know, just to try and reinforce the whole point around the recognition of virtue and vice and Once you do that,
	you really can't love both at the same time.
	Right, right. Now, I certainly, certainly understand.
	And the one thing that you can try...
	This may appeal to your nature if I do understand your nature to some degree, but this is something that you can try that can be quite effective, which is to say something like this.
	And you have to try and do it with the straightest face as possible, and I'm not that good at it, so maybe you can do it better.
	But it would be something like, wow, I thought I knew something about love.
	Like, I thought I had this understanding about love or respect or affection that, for instance, if you love...
	Honesty. Like you love people who are honest or you love people who are brave or you love people who are generous or kind or whatever.
	I didn't know that you could actually love the opposite as well, right?
	So I love somebody who is kind and I also love somebody who is vicious.
	Like I sort of had this idea about love that it sort of if you loved something you couldn't love the exact opposite because then it wouldn't really sort of make sense What it would mean to say love, right?
	So you have, obviously, a more sophisticated and a richer understanding of love than I have, like, because you're very certain about this, right?
	You're not saying to me, well, that's interesting, tell me more.
	Like, you're saying to me, like, if I'm a kid in school, and I say 2 plus 2 is 5, the teacher doesn't say, well, that's very interesting, tell me more.
	The teacher says, sorry, that's incorrect, and here's why.
	And so if somebody corrects you...
	That depends on the school. Yeah, that's true.
	Sorry, a decent teacher. But what you could say is something like, you obviously have a very deep understanding of love, so maybe you can tell me how it works so that I can further understand what it is that you're talking about.
	And then just sit at their knee and look upward and wander as they're going to instruct you on the nature of love.
	Who is able to say that to you when you're bringing up a pretty obvious point.
	How do you love something and it's complete opposite?
	What does that mean? It's like saying you can live on food and it's complete opposite, the absence of food, right?
	Well, that's not anything, that's an incoherent statement, right?
	And so...
	You can sort of just say, well, instruct me.
	It's the Socratic method, right?
	Explain it to me like I'm three years old.
	Instruct me. And then just keep asking questions until that person realizes that they don't have a clue what they're talking about.
	But that's something that I find quite helpful to approach.
	Is that something that you think you could swing or would that just be too galling for you?
	It depends on the subject matter, because like this particular topic, after a while, it was, you know, the hands go up and it's like, you know, discussion is over, kind of thing.
	Like the other person says that?
	Exactly. Right, right.
	That's a shame.
	Because people who do...
	And Socrates had a great response to this kind of stuff.
	Because, of course, Socrates ran into this all the time.
	Whenever somebody would say, well, love is this, or justice is that, or truth and honor are the other, then Socrates would say, Wow!
	This is fantastic because I've been thinking about these things for like 30 years and I can't for the life of me come to a firm conclusion.
	But you obviously have come to a very firm conclusion and I really respect that.
	That's something that I've been unable to achieve.
	So I would really appreciate it if you could share with me your wisdom so that I could become more knowledgeable and more wise because I have not met anyone who knows this as well as you do.
	And of course, the person then knows that they're caught, right?
	They know that they've just been spouting off all this rhetoric and nonsense, and they've been caught.
	And so generally what they would do, as I'm sure you could imagine, is they'd do exactly the same.
	Oh, I don't really have time right now, or, oh, it's, you know, it's, I don't really want to get into it, or, you know, they'd come up with some kind of nonsense about it.
	And, uh... Somebody just wrote here, Steph's got to be really old to have known all these old philosophers.
	I used to call him Saki, and only his close friends would call him Saki, and I try not to use that, because I really don't like to drop names too much, like Hobbesy, and Saki, and Nietzsche, which is also something that only his close friends could mention to him.
	But oddly enough, Aristotle, always full name, although he was sort of like Madonna, because I don't remember his other names.
	But... And so these people would then try and get out of the conversation with Socrates, and he would chide them.
	He would say, oh, come on, you can't do that.
	You can't tell me that you understand the nature of love or virtue or truth or justice, and then refuse to educate me on it.
	I mean, if you've got this incredible wisdom, you must share it with me.
	I mean, it's very unkind to tell me that I'm wrong, and then not to help me out of my error.
	That's just cruel. It's like a doctor diagnosing that something you're doing is going to kill you, and then refusing to tell you what it is.
	It's just very cruel. So I think that that might be an approach where, you know, you just chide someone.
	I mean, it doesn't often work, but at least it does mean that they're not going to be as glib in correcting you in the future.
	And I think that's actually quite useful.
	I think what you want to do is just shoot across someone's, shoot a sort of harpoon across their bows so that they're not going to be quite so glib at just dismissing your ideas in the future because you're not going to sort of go, oh, okay, well, I guess I'm wrong.
	And you're not going to get angry, you're just going to be somebody who's like, okay, well, then instruct me if you know so much.
	I really want to learn this stuff, so great.
	and then they'll obviously try and run away, but overall, I think that they will have more respect for you and will be less likely to sort of try and dismiss your ideas in the future. - It takes an awful lot of I think that they will have more respect for you and will be less likely to sort It takes an awful lot of work to get even to that point.
	Like you were saying...
	Was it last week or the week before?
	For example, the rabbit and the breadcrumbs.
	It's taken me three months to come around with a point of view on the board.
	And I was already sort of disposed to the whole approach already anyway.
	And so it's tough to take a tack like that, the Socratic tack, unless you've already primed the pump someone.
	Otherwise, you just chase people away.
	Right, but I think the tracing...
	I'm gonna shut the discussion down.
	I think that's true, but I think that chasing people away and shutting the discussion down, I think can be an enormously productive thing to do.
	And in this, I differ from a lot of people in the movement.
	I really don't believe in outreach that much.
	I know that that's odd for a guy who's got a quarter of a thousand podcasts cooking around, but I really don't believe in outreach at all.
	I'm not emailing off invitations to come and listen to Free Domain Radio.
	To, you know, socialists or Democrats or Republicans.
	I do have occasionally, I've got a couple of conservative tags in the Free Domain Radio tags, so I do get some conservative emails from time to time, but all that the conservatives and the Democrats seem to want to do is tell me that I'm morally insane and mentally ill, and that's not true anymore.
	Is that right, sweetie? You really, really don't want to go there on the radio show.
	Wait, wait. Oh, chewing one of those tablets.
	Ah, so much better.
	So, I mean, there's no discussion at that point, right?
	I mean, so, I think that closing down the discussion with people is a good way to go.
	And somebody here has said, word of mouth is the best way to go.
	And I think that's very true as well.
	Because we are trying to find those people out there whose natures are aligned with, you know, empiricism, scientific method, and rationality, and so on.
	Because we simply, the ideas are so unusual given the current climate of society that reorienting someone from a very different perspective is a lot of work relative to the gains and there's going to be a lot of backsliding.
	To those people as well, right?
	So what's going to happen is, and I did this when I was younger, like I'd work like a Viking climbing a mountain.
	I'd work to get someone to change their mind about one topic.
	And then what would happen is they'd just immediately backslide and go, because their nature wasn't aligned with it.
	Now, I think that as...
	As we begin to have more effect, and this is why I'm sort of trying to make sure that I communicate as much as possible to people pre-children and when they're young and so on, we'll begin to liberate human nature from all of this conformity and all of this compliance and all of this cultural imprinting and religious imprinting that is currently smashing up their natural natures.
	We will begin to have an effect, and it's probably going to be intergenerational, though it could be sooner than that, But I think that getting rid of debates is as important as debating.
	You want to get rid of people that you're not.
	This is something I've learned in sales.
	You don't spend a lot of effort on somebody who doesn't have any interest in your product.
	They're just not going to work. So I think that closing down discussions can be a very useful thing as well.
	Because then, you know, it doesn't mean you don't ever have a relationship with that person again.
	It just means that you stay in the safe realm of small talk if You know, if they've got a good barbecue.
	Like my neighbor. He's a Christian.
	And he barbecues beautifully.
	And he's always got a fridge full of beer.
	So I'll go over and I'll shoot the shit with him from time to time.
	And, you know, I don't tell him that he's raising his children in a corrupt manner because of the aforementioned meat and drink.
	So, you know, it's not a constant.
	But, of course, I wouldn't have that discussion with him because, you know, I've got to live by the guy for the next 20 years, I hope.
	And what's the point? So then, would you say the same thing goes for families?
	No. No, I don't feel that to be the case with families.
	I have no history with this guy.
	He has no hold over me.
	The thing that I think is different with families, Greg, is that families will always have incredible power over you.
	There's just no way that 20 years of first impressions can be...
	Ameliorated in any way shape or form it would be like trying to unlearn English right you sort of got imprinted and so families will always have an enormous amount of power over you and that's why I've always found that it's impossible to be around a corrupt family in the long run that's sort of been my experience and it's something that Christina and I still debate from time to time and it's something that I put out in a number of podcasts but I think that I think that it's not possible to be around family that is corrupt in the long run because they just always have so much power over you that just based on history.
	So I think that is quite different.
	Now, there may be people out there who found a way to not have a family have as much power over them, and I think that's great.
	I'd certainly like to hear more about that.
	Just before we get to that, Adia said, so you sell out your ideas for a few cold ones.
	Perfectly valid question, of course, and the answer is no, I don't, because I'm not discussing my ideas with this gentleman.
	So if he said, I will give you a beer if you tell me that what you believe is wrong, and I took that beer, then yes, I would absolutely be selling out my ideas, not even for a few cold ones, but one possibly even lukewarm one.
	But if I'm not discussing my ideas at all with this gentleman for reasons that I've sort of mentioned, I don't think it's the same.
	So I think that...
	Cohabitation, not collaboration, is an excellent phrase that I'd like to claim for myself, though it actually came from Greg.
	So, yeah, cohabitation, not collaboration, I think is...
	Now, somebody else has said here, I'm going to call him Cassandra, my family is very into the church and very Republican, but I was raised to have an open mind.
	But I was raised to have an open mind.
	Can you tell me a little more about that?
	If you have no microphone, just tap.
	Because I'm not sure I understand the sort of sequence of that, a tap.
	I know Morse. Cassandra, if you could just give me a little bit more about that, that would be great.
	My family is very into the church and very Republican.
	See, that sounds like not so much with the open mind, but I was raised to have an open mind.
	That actually sounds a little bit like Greg's family, if I remember that correctly.
	Greg, your father was, privately at least, when he was allowed by your mother, interested in having you guys think for yourself, but then in public, not so much.
	Does my memory serve me well there?
	Yeah, mom's a Roman Catholic, a die-hard Roman Catholic from an immigrant Irish family, and dad is a moderate Republican, and dad was always more the dominant figure in the household, so when he got it in his mind that we were going to have a discussion on something, my mom would take a back seat.
	Do you have any tips about how a man can become the dominant member of the household?
	I gotta tell you, it's not working for me very well.
	I don't think any tips would help you.
	Actually, that's not really a... That's not really a complete characterization either, because my mom used to manipulate my dad a lot.
	But every once in a while, he'd get a, you know, stubborn streak in him, and we'd...
	And off we go down the rabbit trail.
	Right, right. Now, Cassandra has actually gone into a little bit more detail here.
	He said, they had taught me to evaluate everything.
	This is the gentleman or lady who has the church and Republican family, a church-based and Republican family.
	They said, they had taught me to evaluate everything.
	They are okay with me believing what I want as long as I don't embarrass the family.
	So I guess they're Italian.
	Don't embarrass the family.
	I can believe what I want as long as we speak behind closed doors.
	Never disagree with others in front of the family.
	They will question me to death to ensure that I have thought about what I believe.
	Now that's interesting because if somebody says that their parents have taught me to evaluate everything, If they are okay with me believing what I want as long as I don't embarrass the family, that's interesting.
	What does that mean to say that you can believe what you want as long as it doesn't embarrass the family?
	That is interesting.
	So that means that you can have beliefs, but that those beliefs are not valid or helpful or productive or useful if they offend people Well, I would wonder what it means to take you behind closed doors and question you on your beliefs.
	Do they then try to talk you out of those beliefs?
	Do they say, well, okay, those beliefs are sound, and if they do say that, then are you then allowed to talk about them?
	It's very confusing.
	Same thing when I found out about Santa Claus.
	I could not tell my cousins that he did not exist.
	Interesting. Yeah, no, I mean, this whole Santa Claus thing is another thing that should never, ever, ever, ever be taught to children, just in my view.
	I think teaching Santa Claus is a by-the-by, minor rant.
	I'll get back on track in a sec.
	Teaching Santa Claus to children is a really specious and corrupt thing to do.
	It is really for the delight of the parents and the delight is in basically lying to the children and abusing their trust.
	But I will come back to that another time.
	They didn't try and talk me out of anything, just I cannot undermine the aunt's and uncle's teaching.
	My father's family were hellfire Baptists.
	I guess that means bad Baptists who went to hell, is that right?
	My mother's family were Jehovah's Witnesses, so they agreed that whatever they believed, a preset of family will believe they were cursed.
	Therefore, I was raised to have an open mind.
	Right. I got it.
	I got it. So, basically, everybody has crazy, opposing, random, vicious, absolutist beliefs, and therefore, since everybody's up to their nose in gasoline, nobody's going to light a match.
	Right? Is that a fair way of putting it?
	That because everybody is both irrational and absolutist, and that it's all an argument for morality, you can't talk about anything that has any kind of weight.
	I said canceled themselves out.
	Right. Boy, if only all those religious people did cancel themselves out, that would actually be a good thing.
	We're going to put all the religious people into a mud pit.
	See who comes out.
	But unfortunately, what happens is that a mental paralysis and a social paralysis comes along instead, and nobody can talk about anything whatsoever.
	And so I would imagine that if this kind of emotionally volatile situation That you end up in the situation where you agree to disagree.
	Yes, he adds, yes, we have come to the point of understanding that we have different beliefs and just avoid the subjects.
	And that is...
	A bad thing, in my humble opinion.
	That is not an appropriate way to deal with conflicts of ideas in a family.
	Basically what happens is you say that we agree to disagree is not how you deal with things in any kind of rational situation.
	Because what you're saying then is that everyone can have whatever opinions they want, nobody can oppose those opinions because everybody has nothing but opinions, but everyone believes it in an absolutist way.
	Like if I have an opinion that, I don't know, Fight Club is a great movie and you have an opinion that it's not a great movie, well we can discuss that, right?
	We can sort of have a back and forth about it.
	If I think that the theory of relativity is better than Newton's theory of, you know, material organization, we can have a discussion about that.
	We can have a discussion about how good a writer Dickens is.
	We can discuss all of that kind of stuff and come to some really valuable things out of it, because we recognize that what we're bringing to the table is opinions.
	Right? And so, I think this is a pretty girl.
	Well, I think it's not a pretty girl.
	We can discuss it. It's an opinion.
	But if what we bring to the table is absolutes, right?
	That Jehovah really should have had witnesses.
	I don't know what they believe, but, you know, the Baptists, they believe it's absolute, that it's a fact, that it's real, that it's objective, that it's true, but everyone believes things that are completely incompatible, but everyone considers that their beliefs are true, then you're in a profoundly irrational situation because it's logically impossible.
	for opposing positions to be equally true.
	2 plus 2 is 4 versus 2 plus 2 is blue is not a situation where compromise can exist.
	And so it's not helpful for children to say that everyone can believe whatever they want in an absolutist manner and we just can't talk about it because it's going to create too much conflict.
	It's very unhealthy. It teaches children that ideas are something you can't discuss, that ideas are something that make you lonely, that absolutism causes conflict, that any kind of integrity causes social violence, It's a really terrible, terrible situation to be in, in my view, and I think relatively objectively, because ideas or truth or virtue then becomes the enemy of intimacy.
	And it is, in fact, quite the opposite in life, that what is logical and what is true brings us closer together.
	And intimacy is based on reality.
	It is based on what is objective.
	It is based on what is true and what is virtuous in an objective sense.
	So it is incredibly isolating to have a community where everyone has opposing beliefs.
	They can't resolve them in any kind of way and nobody can talk about anything.
	It's a profoundly isolating place to be and a situation wherein children are inevitably taught that ideas are dangerous.
	Does that Does that ring at all true, or is that just, he says, no, okay, if you could tell me more, that would be good.
	Because again, it's a lot more succinct than what I was saying, so, that would be good.
	Yeah, my thought on it was that if you have silence in situations, that allows for you to develop your own ideas.
	Well, sure, I understand that, but what does it mean to develop your own ideas?
	Can you develop ideas like the world is shaped like a banana and birds actually burrow underground instead of flying?
	I mean, what does it mean to say that you can come up with your own ideas if there's no criteria by which they can be discussed and refined?
	Are you then pretty much developing your own ideas purely in isolation?
	How do you determine whether the ideas that you're developing are valid or not valid or true or false?
	Well, I went to the library.
	Yes, but of course, the library is most often, especially in the realm of philosophy, just filled up with other people's ideas.
	So I'm not sure that that helps.
	A little, but my ma and pa are not prone to anger, so we can discuss a little.
	But for debates, I listen to and discuss with my friends, which is good.
	But again, when it comes to the debating, how do you know whether or not what you're debating, the conclusions that you come to are true or false?
	Like in science, they have a scientific method, right?
	Where they can determine, with some degree of accuracy, the truth or falsehood of various propositions and positions.
	In health, in medicine, they have the same thing, right?
	Does it actually cure the illness or make someone better or worse?
	And so, when it comes to debates which have come out of a family, in this situation, If you have no methodology for determining truth and falsehood, then what does it mean to debate with people?
	How do you know whether or not you're getting closer to the truth or not?
	Or do you often end up in a situation where you either agree with the people to begin with, or you just end up with agreeing to disagree at the end of it?
	Now, somebody here has mentioned, I started with the scientific method, which is good.
	I'd certainly like to know what you've grown into, because I can't think of a better one.
	If you have microphones, feel free to speak.
	That would be nice too.
	Because otherwise what I'll start doing is start giving everyone girly voices and obscure foreign accents.
	Well, I just started listening to you.
	Someone says, so I have only yet begun to run with the scientific method.
	Okay, good. Excellent.
	So we are still searching for the truth.
	That's correct. Absolutely. And of course, the truth is a journey.
	And the journey is the signpost and the methodology for navigating that is logic, empiricism, objective, reality, the scientific truth, the evidence of the senses, all of that good stuff.
	I just did a podcast today Wherein because I was accused last week and have been accused many times before of being arrogant I have always found that to be a difficult thing to hear about because I think I feel incredibly humble as a thinker and the reason that I feel incredibly humble is that I'm always Subject to correction because none of my opinions mean anything,
	right? None of my opinions mean smack.
	They're not a fart in a strong wind, as the Texans sometimes say.
	And so I feel incredibly humble because if somebody can disprove me, if somebody can show me evidence to the contrary, then obviously I'm going to, like any good scientist or theoretician, I'm going to adapt my theories to both logic and empirical reality.
	So I've always found that It's very humbling to subscribe to the scientific method.
	What is not humbling, what I think is profoundly the opposite of humble, and is in fact very arrogant, is to say, my opinions are true because I believe them.
	So, because I believe there's a God, because I believe soldiers are virtuous, because I believe the state exists, because I believe in the collective good, without any proof, any evidence, any empirical justification, or any of that stuff, It's true because I believe in it.
	It's true because I want it to be true.
	That, to me, seems incredibly arrogant.
	Anybody who subjects themselves to logic, the test of empiricism, the test of reproducibility, the scientific method, even the realm, of course, of science or in capitalism, in the realm of economics or consumer demand or in philosophy to logic, And in society or politics to empiricism and logic, anybody who subjects themselves to an external criteria for truth is naturally humble.
	And I think that's something that people who are religious or who are statists don't understand.
	When they say to us that we're arrogant because we demand or expect some sort of proof for somebody's opinions.
	Like if I say that the sky is plaid and somebody says to me, well, can you prove that?
	And I say, well, it's really arrogant for you to expect proof for me.
	Well, actually, I'm the one who's being arrogant because I'm saying that my opinion should be respected regardless of any kind of external proof or logic.
	And so I think that kind of arrogance has always troubled me.
	Arrogance is occurring in the situation between a statist or a religious person and an empiricist or a rationalist.
	But it is not...
	It is not arrogance on the part of the person who's demanding some kind of proof.
	I mean, can you imagine going to a scientific theory or a mathematical theory and saying, a mathematical conference saying 2 plus 2 is 5, and somebody says, well, I don't think that's the case.
	Can you tell me how you arrived at that conclusion?
	And they say, well, that's really arrogant for you to expect that from me.
	I think it's actually really arrogant to just expect people to respect 2 plus 2 is 5 when you have no proof for it.
	Now, somebody has asked, do you know if there is gold in China?
	Not exactly the next question I was expecting to get, but I'm sure that there is...
	Oh, wait, no, that was the response to Francois, who has, says, I know all truths.
	It was Francois. I got it.
	I caught on that religion was bunk after reading Greek mythology.
	Ah, very interesting.
	Right. And you know what's interesting about that word mythology, just by the by?
	That people like using the word mythology for other people's religions, but they don't feel nearly as comfortable using that word for their own religions, right?
	So when I talk about Christian mythology, people get sort of upset.
	I also find it quite useful when I'm talking about people, with people about religion, to not use the word God, but to use the word gods.
	Do you believe that gods exist?
	Because as soon as you go into the plural, then you begin to short-circuit the religious person's mind, which is good because it can start helping to think a little bit more originally.
	Well, are there any other questions that people have?
	It is now quarter to six, so we've been plugging along for a little bit over an hour and a half.
	Is there any other major questions that people have at the moment for either myself or Christina or anybody else who's on the chat at the moment?
	Will you move to the United States?
	Well, you know, that's an interesting question.
	I sure would like the lower taxes, but it's not the easiest thing in the world to move to the States anymore, even if you're a professional.
	So it's something that we will think about.
	How would you suggest that I bring these into the light with my parents?
	What I would do, if you have a lazy boy and some Velcro, I would get them to sit down, lash them down a little bit, and play them the podcasts from 1 to maybe 230.
	You wouldn't want to go right to the end because that could be considered cruel.
	And you also might, just for the humanity of it, give them a catheter and some water.
	I guess you couldn't really pay them sped up at all because they're already pretty fast to begin with.
	But I think that would be very helpful.
	Somebody has said, as far as moving to the U.S. goes, it is very easy to just move to Mexico and cross the border from there.
	Yes, because I can blend with the Mexicans like you wouldn't believe, because that's really the blue-eyed Mexican guy.
	But bringing this stuff up with your parents is a very, very difficult situation.
	It is a very, very tricky thing to bring this stuff up with your parents.
	I think it's absolutely important to do it.
	I think it's very, very, very crucial to do it.
	For a number of reasons.
	If you haven't brought it up with your parents already, in other words, if it's not part of your regular relationship with your parents, then it is going to be, it's for a damn good reason you haven't brought it up already, and so recognize that it's going to be an explosive issue.
	When you start to talk to your parents about objective ethics, what you're saying to them basically is this.
	What you're saying to your parents when you bring up objective ethics is this.
	Did you have authority over me because you knew about morality and because you knew more and I knew less that you were communicating facts to me?
	Is that why you had authority over me as a child?
	Or did you have authority over me because you were bigger, stronger, more powerful and had the control of the economic resources?
	I mean, I know that sounds like a pretty abstract way, but that's how it hits people.
	That's how it hits people in their soul.
	That's how it hits parents in their soul.
	It's the same question that we have about God, right?
	Do we worship God because God is good?
	You can ask this to a Christian.
	Or do you worship God because God is powerful?
	These are two very different things.
	If you worship God because God is good, then you have to prove that God is good, which obviously they can't do it.
	and if you say um do you respect your parents because your parents are wise and knowledgeable then you should not feel any kind of discomfort bringing up questions of ethics with them because they should be open to and understand them and be clear about them and have a good way of communicating them because right but then it's going to be part of your regular conversation if you feel any doubt or or hesitation about bringing this stuff up with your parents it's because your parents had authority over you because they had power over you and not because of any virtue that they possessed and that is something that parents really have a tough time accepting that they all think that they were trying to do the best and be virtuous and good parents and yet what is not going to happen is that they're going to be comfortable with the position that you will have when you start to question them about authority which is that you had Authority over me because you were bigger,
	stronger, and more powerful, not because you had any kind of wisdom or knowledge.
	And parents, that's a deeply, deeply, deeply shocking and enraging thing for most parents to hear.
	So Greg has commented, don't do it if you fear losing your parents.
	And my humble rejoiner to that would be that if you fear losing your parents because you're speaking the truth to them, then that may be all you need to know about your relationship with your parents.
	It still hurts. Amen.
	Amen, brother. It is a very, very painful situation to go through.
	It provokes a lot of, you know, I'll just sort of mention this briefly because it's a difficult topic.
	But when we're children, we go through a great deal of shock and pain when we are bullied.
	But because everyone is bullied, and the whole society, all the social ethics these days pretty much are based on bullying, if you look at the state and the church, which are two primary sources of ethics, everything's based on bullying, so what happens is it becomes normalized to us.
	Everyone gets bullied, everyone is a bully, the government is a bully, the school is a bully, our church is a bully, our families are bullies, our extended families are bullies, our friends are bullies.
	Our relationships often are based on bullying.
	And so the primal shock and horror that we experience as children when we're bullied gets dissolved into this normalized social soup of, well, everyone is a bully.
	And so it becomes normalized.
	Now what happens is when we begin to ask questions of her family, is we're denormalizing the bullying.
	We are exposing ourselves to being re-bullied.
	Because what happens is we simply stop talking about these things with people.
	And the reason we stop talking about them with people is because they bullied us.
	And as soon as we start talking about it with them, we are re-experiencing that bully.
	And that is a very, very different situation.
	So somebody said, don't say amen, that means so let it be.
	You're right, I should replace that with inshallah.
	But... That is something that we begin to re-experiencing that bullying that was so shocking for us very early in life.
	And that is a very difficult position to be in.
	It is very destabilizing.
	It makes you feel like you're leaning over a cliff without any support.
	It also makes you feel, when you begin this process, that you're throwing yourself off a cliff and hoping that one random incoming wave is going to intervene between you and the rocks that you feel like you're going to hit for sure.
	So it is a very difficult and dangerous thing to go through.
	It's not something that I think you should go through without a support group of some kind, whether that's friends, whether that's us, or professional support in the form of a therapist.
	But it is very, I think it's very important to ask these questions of your family, but don't underestimate how difficult it's going to be emotionally to do it.
	Somebody who mentioned here, your statement about not being treated as a kid really struck me.
	Would you like to expand on that at all?
	I mean, treated well, or...?
	You were talking about being treated as a kid in general, you know, by the state, in school.
	Every decision you make, you cannot make on your own.
	So when you said, well, I'd like to be free for one...
	For one time, you know, if I could ever have that in my life.
	And that's when I realized that it's true.
	There's basically nothing you are allowed to do yourself.
	And that's really in the back of your head of everybody.
	And it's an awful feeling. Yeah, and when you begin to expose that feeling in yourself by demanding freedom from those in your life.
	I mean, all we're asking for when we talk to people, all I'm asking for when I talk to people is, let me be free to express my opinions.
	Let me be free to question your opinions.
	Let me be free to ask questions, to be curious.
	I'm not going to bully anybody.
	I'm not going to say to them that they're stupid for believing what they believe.
	Because if they're really stupid, I'm not going to tell them, right?
	That's like calling a retarded kid retarded.
	I mean, that's just kind of cruel.
	I mean, if somebody's genuinely stupid and based and just really based on, I just don't deal with them.
	But when you begin to ask for freedom to be yourself, to speak about what is important to you in your personal relationships, it's then that you really begin to realize what a tiny and claustrophobic little box you've been living in your whole life.
	And that's certainly been my experience.
	It's been Christina's experience.
	It's been the experience of some people who sent me emails at a more personal level through this conversation.
	But when you begin to be yourself, I mean, all you want to be is honestly yourself with people.
	When you begin to be honestly yourself with people, people start to flee, they start to attack you, they start to dismiss you, they start to bully you, they start to, they just, and generally, as somebody's pointed out here, they just, they flee like you've just lit their hair on fire.
	And that, of course, is what happened to me, as you've seen from my photo.
	When you stop conforming to other people's expectations and you begin to be genuinely yourself, and you talk about what is genuinely important to you, people panic.
	The moment that you're self-actualized, the moment that you have some sort of independent existence from clichés and propaganda and culture and history and family and bullshit and religion and statism, as soon as you think for yourself, Boy, it's like going to the gym when you haven't washed for two weeks.
	You sure get some legroom.
	They hide their kids from you, absolutely.
	Absolutely. You are incredibly dangerous to people's sense of social security when you begin to think for yourself.
	And what they're desperately afraid of is you having their kids ask the questions of them that they've never been able to ask of the people around them.
	And so, yeah, it is a very challenging thing to go through.
	It's absolutely essential, and this is why I talk about the politics, but personal freedom prior to political freedom.
	You can't be any more free in your relationship with the state, even within your own mind, than you can be with your own family.
	And that's why I really focus on getting people to deal with their own family issues instead of The state, because we can't change the state.
	We can't change the state, but we can change our situations with our families and with anybody who's bullied us at a personal level.
	That we have some effect on.
	There's not much we can do to overthrow the state from our own rooms and within our own conversations, but we can demand and expect and Extract emotional freedom from the people around us.
	And that means that being honest about what's important to you, being curious about other people's opinions, and not accepting put-downs or dismissals or hostility or indifference or anything like that to what's important to you.
	If somebody loves you, then they should love also and be curious about what is important to you and what you value.
	And if all they do is put that down, I just can't for the life of me imagine why you'd want to spend your time with them because life is short.
	On that note, does anyone have anything that they would like to add to that?
	I guess everyone's gone left to talk to their families.
	That's good! That means we'll have lots of interactivity next week, which would be great.
	Well, thanks so much, everybody, obviously, for participating in this conversation.
	I really, really appreciate it.
	Everything that people are posting on the boards, everything that people are emailing me, the conversations that you're having with others, I really, really appreciate it.
	I think it's fantastic, not for my sake, but just because this stuff is the truth.
	And this stuff is important, and this stuff is what is going to set the world free, and it is really, really hard, and there's nothing wrong with that.
	If it was easy, the world would be free already, and I'd be talking to myself again, which would be something that would require more medication from Christina than she could probably get a hold of.
	And so I think it's absolutely crucial that we do this stuff.
	It is very difficult, but we are the hardy souls who will drag the world to a higher place.
	And I think that's well worth spending your life on.
	So thanks so much, everyone, for listening.
	I will edit out the ghastly silences where my topics were not striking people's emotional chords.
	And thank you so much for listening.

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