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July 9, 2006 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

02:34:21

320 Call In Show July 9 2006 4pm EST

A silver-tongued listener reveals his inner voices, an article preview, a live dream analysis, and new ways to use the argument from morality!

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	You should have learned by now that it's hopeless trying to change the mind of anybody over the age of about 14.
	They're brain dead. The only hope for the world is to re-educate the next generations of children because basically the chances of an adult actually changing their view of the world is minuscule.
	Half of 1% of people are capable of that.
	I agree with you. Now, I would say that if you already are dealing with somebody who's on a continuum of thinking, then you have some chance.
	So, for instance, three or four years ago, I thought that there were some good things about the war in Iraq, but then listening to Harry Brown, he kind of scrubbed me free of all those kinds of illusions.
	But I think I was already on that path and already respecting rational consistency and objectivity as a good standard.
	And so when I came up against the superior argument, then I was totally fine with some effort to change my mind.
	There's definitely something wrong with you.
	You're clearly in the minority.
	You're one of those thinkers who are influenced by reasonable arguments.
	What the hell is wrong with you?
	I think I was dribbled on the head as a baby.
	That's probably it.
	I think you got something there.
	That's it. Well, I kind of fall in the same camp as Stefan.
	I've always kind of sought out a rational approach to my own thinking and it's taken me years really to kind of undo the misconceptions that I've carried around as well.
	As rational as we are, we can't avoid being irrational in the society in which we live.
	No, but once you understand that, of course, you can begin to do something about it.
	Right, exactly. In your case, that's reaching out to the 14-year-olds.
	Well, actually, that's a little late.
	I think you've really got to do it between the ages of about 8 and 10, before puberty, essentially.
	After puberty, people switch into a different mode of existence, and their epistemological underpinnings are pretty much set by that age, and the rest of their life is just sort of filling in the blanks.
	Well, plus we want to date.
	I'm sorry, what? We wanted what?
	We wanted a date, and it's a little bit tough to date if you're an Anaco capitalist and feel like breeding.
	It's tricky. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	No, yeah, after 13 or 14, it's all about sex and survival, and, you know, yeah, just forget the brain, you know.
	Well, that's why the Free Domain Radio Monastery, we're still working on the final touches of it, and we think that's going to be quite productive.
	It's a monastery-slash-breathing pen for anarchists, so we're just working on the Constitution at the moment.
	It should be quite an exciting thing, I think.
	Well, great.
	I'm all for that.
	Sorry, go ahead, Greg.
	I was just going to say, I also feel kind of bad for Nathan, because I don't know, I feel like I'm alienating him from his friends, so I don't want to do that either.
	Well, I think if his friends didn't want him dead, then it would be a bad thing to alienate him from them, but I think that given that he has...
	And, you know, you see a lot of this kind of stuff, and I... I'm going through a bit of a temper phase at the moment.
	I don't know why exactly, but I'm just sort of feeling a little bit more irritated with people than usual.
	And I just, that guy's post all about how, boy, if I ever get lectured once more in my life about how having the government around promotes tolerance and having voluntary associations between people and advocating for that and advocating that people not get shot for disagreeing with the government, if I ever get lectured about that again in my life, about how I'm intolerant, And that what we need is a lot more government to make the world a lot more tolerant and kind.
	Boy, I don't know what I'm going to do, but I think it'll be fairly profanity-laced.
	There's one thing that I might suggest for those of us with some thinner skin is that, especially during election seasons, people really dig in and get pretty snarky and snarly.
	And I noticed that I'm a pretty sensitive guy myself, and During the last major presidential election season, I just about lost my mind a few times talking to people.
	And perhaps it would just be better, you know, to, at least for the time being, you know, until November clears and the dust has settled, but, you know, maybe we just lay low and, I mean, you don't have to if you don't want to, but, you know, for me especially, I've noticed that hinging my happiness on convincing others during election season is a really surefire way to make myself depressed.
	So you can't convince anybody else.
	That's exactly the point. It really is a waste of time, and when you realize that, you just stop doing it.
	And then be weird and try to shake them up a little bit, and maybe they'll have a stroke and die.
	Either way, it's one less bad opinion in the world.
	But this is the thing I find so strange about elections.
	Of course, everybody at work is kind of going nuts about the whole World Cup thing at the moment.
	To me, it seems very similar.
	There's all of these issues around, oh, my team, my country's team, and so on.
	I find that particularly deranged.
	Of course, I grew up in England where soccer fever is complete mania.
	And I find it also very strange around elections that people who are paying 40, 50, 60% taxation, who have thousands and thousands of regulations heaped upon them that strangle their very economic beings and who have wiretapping governments and undeclared wars and being lied to in all the way, shapes and forms. What I find particularly strange is why would you get all hot and bothered about which election party gets to rob you?
	It just seems very, very strange.
	Well, this kind of makes sense from the standpoint of, you know, the election season really does bring front and center all this violence that's being meted out on us every day.
	And, you know, it's going to tweak people, you know, subconsciously.
	I mean, they don't want to address why they're getting tweaked, but it does show right up front and center that, you know, this stuff is violence.
	This is happening to you every day.
	Now choose the guy who's going to beat the crap out of you, you know.
	And so, you know, a true self, false self type thing, you know, the false self is being exposed here.
	It's saying that violence is okay, now choose the whipper, you know.
	So I think it really does, it really annoys people deep down, it's just that they never address why.
	And it's fairly, at least in the States, I think it's true up here in Canada as well, but in the States it's, It's pretty family-based, right?
	Like, what happens in families where you get Republicans or Democrats or, heaven forbid, Green Party or Libertarian people?
	Does it make for particularly awkward family conversations?
	Do people just sort of have to not talk about it?
	Or do people within the family pretty much fall along party lines?
	Well, I have to say...
	Probably all of the above. In my own family, it is...
	And once the discussion really gets rolling, it is strictly trench warfare.
	People dig in and they hang on to their opinions and then they just start lobbing their opinions into no man's land, hoping to hit somebody with them, you know.
	Right, right. Yep, sounds like those humans.
	Now, if anybody has a topic, feel free to open it up.
	I've just been working on a fairly short article that I thought I might read to get some feedback.
	I haven't submitted it yet for, I guess, web publication.
	But it's a short article on how Jefferson's Declaration of Independence might apply to George Bush at the moment.
	And so I could read that, or if somebody has another topic, feel free to plow in.
	What's people's preferences?
	Read it. Read it.
	All right. I've been working on my Jefferson imitation, so this should be quite theatrical and gripping for you.
	All right, so this is an article called Despot Cage Match, George II versus George IV. Or if the Declaration of Independence were written today.
	And it goes like this.
	In June of 1776, when Jefferson penned the Declaration of Independence, he took great pains to detail the abuses heaped upon the colonists by George II, then King of England.
	Now we have George IV, the fourth George in charge of America, and I thought it might be instructive to compare the two Georges and contrast Jefferson's list of injustices, considered sufficient cause for civil revolt.
	So this is from the Declaration of Independence.
	He, i.e. George II, has refused his assent to law as the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
	George IV has invaded Iraq without a congressional declaration of war and has suspended the Geneva Conventions for enemy combatants.
	Violations of signed treaties include the UN Charter, the International Court of Justice, the Treaty on the Limitations of Antiballistic Missile Systems, The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, and so on.
	He, George II, has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance unless suspended in their operation, till his assent should be obtained when so suspended he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
	And this, I got some of this stuff from Greg, so thanks a lot.
	George IV has used federal marshals to interdict against marijuana users in California, where as a state...
	The substance is legal as a medicinal drug.
	Then there's the needle exchange plans many large cities wanted to implement that was blocked by George IV, and after the Tereshevo case had been hurt by 19 judges in six courts and had been appealed to the Supreme Court three times, the Fed intervened.
	State-level decisions on euthanasia, minimum wages, medical insurance, food contamination, and warning labels, financial privacy laws, and so on, are all regularly blocked by the federal government, which also uses blackmail of the federal income tax to force states into adhering to all sorts of federal regulations, such as be limited education standards, OSHA regs, and so on.
	Last but not least, you might, just might, remember the obscure Fed-influenced Supreme Court decision to overturn Florida's court-ordered vote recount in 2000.
	He, George II, has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
	Well, the U.S. Constitution applies on Guam, say, as to all federal laws, but Guamanians have no voting representation in the Electoral College for the selection of the president and no U.S. senators.
	Guam is represented in Washington by one non-voting congressman in the House of Representatives.
	Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands both have diminished representation in Congress.
	He, George II, has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
	And if you're willing to brave the gunfire of Washington, you can go and visit the White House and Congress.
	Just keep your voice to a murmur.
	And if you want to trail George IV around the world to his various tight security conferences, you'd better have some frequent flyer miles.
	He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
	Bush is becoming the grand master of what's called State's Secret Privilege, which was invoked only four times in the first 23 years after the U.S. Supreme Court created the privilege in 1953, but now the government is claiming the privilege to dismiss lawsuits at a rate of more than three a year.
	Some of the targets include a lawsuit striving to penetrate the fog of secrecy regarding torture, extraditions, and a post-9-11 investigation.
	George IV has also claimed the authority to disobey More than 750 laws enacted since he took office asserting that he has the power to set aside any statute passed by Congress when it conflicts with his interpretation of the Constitution.
	The decider can now directly bypass military rules and regulations, affirmative action provisions, requirements that Congress be told about immigration services problems, whistleblower protections for nuclear regulatory officials, and safeguards against political interference in federally funded research.
	He, George II, has refused for a long time after such dissolutions to cause others to be elected, whereby the legislative powers, incapable of the annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise, the state remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without and the convulsions within.
	Now, of course, if the danger that Jefferson was most concerned with was civil revolt or foreign attack, then surely shipping hundreds of thousands of troops overseas and provoking a rather excitable Muslim population, George IV has exposed the U.S. to both external attacks and internal convulsions.
	He has, George II, has endeavored to prevent the population of these states for that purpose, obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners, refusing to pass others.
	To encourage their migrations hither and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands.
	Well, let's see. You're soon going to need a passport to get into the US from Canada.
	The Mexican border swarms with gods and the process of getting a green card has become about one chicken entrail away from pure voodoo.
	He has obstructed the administration of justice by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.
	Well, not only has George IV said that the Constitution is, quote, just a goddamn piece of paper, but he has also appointed the freedom-loving Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, who, while still White House counsel, wrote that, quote, eh, the Constitution is an outdated document.
	He has made judges dependent on his will alone for the tenure of their offices and the amount and payment of their salaries.
	Well, some judicial appointments come straight from the White House, and we're not exactly facing a buffalo stampede of independent judgment here.
	He has erected a multitude of new offices and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people and to eat out their substance.
	Well, where do we even begin with this one?
	Department of Homeland Security, the Patriot Act, the new drug prescription program, the expanded war on drugs, and deficits that will swallow future generations whole.
	He has kept among us in times of peace standing armies without the consent of our legislatures.
	Fortunately for this point, but not fortunately for us, George IV has sent a good deal of our standing armies overseas.
	He has effected to render the military independent of and superior to the civil power.
	Well, I think that this has by now become just a bit more than an affectation George IV, for instance, has declared that he will decide on when or whether to inform Congress about how the FBI is implementing its expanded powers in the new Patriot Act.
	His guiding compass is the unitary executive power of the Commander-in-Chief, thus bypassing his oath to abide by the Constitution's separation of powers.
	And so I've got a bunch more in there, and I sort of won't go through each one of them, but what I'll do is just end up with a sort of summation of the article, which goes like this.
	The colonists underwent terrible struggles to throw off the yoke of George II's oppressive tyranny, and it took less than a century for Lincoln to undo most of what had been achieved, and less than another century for America to turn into just another colonial warlord nation.
	It is for this reason that we anarchists keep saying that government is an evil that can at best be only temporarily restrained.
	It is at best a dangerous servant forever on its way to becoming a terrible master.
	Power corrupts.
	There are no exceptions.
	Every generation faces a tyranny that must be overcome.
	Previous generations successfully ended slavery, reversed the subjugation of women and children, broke the unity of church and state, extended both property rights and the rule of law, and began the process of restraining government power.
	Now it is our turn.
	As unimaginable and unprecedented as the extensions of human freedoms have been in the past, we are not done yet.
	Now, instead of striving to cure the state of its corruption, we aim for prevention, which is the dismantling of the state itself, so that its power can no longer tempt and destroy the souls of men.
	Naturally, this is a shocking idea to many, but there is no reason to be alarmed.
	Once, slavery had lasted as long as mankind, and ending it was almost unthinkable.
	The state is not a law of nature, but an invention of mankind, and its legitimacy, the only source of its power, can vanish in a flash of thought.
	So, that's the article.
	Is there any comments or additions that people want to make to that?
	Oh, I can't wait to get started.
	Go for it. Okay.
	Well, I see all of this in the context of really the emergence of the first global civilization and that we are at the end of the age of nation states, the end of the age of religion, the end of the age of economics as we've known it.
	Capitalism and communism both are the evil twins of the industrial revolution.
	We are headed into new territory and we haven't got a clue what even the questions are yet.
	But it's going to demand a new kind of openness, a new kind of thoughtfulness, and what we're doing here on Skypecast is, I think, one of the seeds of a new political and social order for a global civilization.
	The whole idea of government is illegitimate.
	It's us. It's you and me that have to manage our behavior if we are going to live together on this planet peaceably and prosperously.
	And I'm very optimistic that we can do just that.
	But it's going to take the next 20, 30, 40 years for this to all work out.
	End of rant.
	Right. No, I think that it'll either be 20, 30, or 40 years, or I think we have this whole transition scheduled for the next Free Domain Radio Skypecast, which will be next Sunday.
	So it may be longer, it may be shorter.
	We're still working that out. I certainly do agree that we're at the end of the age of illusion around the moral legitimacy of centralized power, and the idea that there are people in the world who are fundamentally elevated among the masses of mankind...
	And have some sort of right to lead us all by the nose for our own benefit.
	And I think that age of illusion is definitely waning.
	I think that the biggest stab that was taken in that direction was the creation of the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights.
	That was the best conceivable way that you could create a small state that hopefully could stay small and stay as a government by and for the people.
	The failure, the complete and total failure of that experiment, relatively quickly, I mean we're really seeing the fruits of it now, but you can pick them up pretty early after the colonies went their own ways.
	I think the end of that, nobody's going to be able to create a smaller or more rational state than the American Republic in the end of the 18th century.
	So I think that that illusion that we can sort of just restrain it or do it again, I think that has really gone by the wayside.
	And we're sort of like the abused wife or abused husband who's just finally waking up to the idea that marriage isn't going to work out.
	And I think that that's a very exciting time to be thinking.
	So in a nutshell, we're in a dictatorship.
	We're in a dictatorship.
	Absolutely. I mean, when it comes to rights which the government cannot trample on, those have absolutely vanished, for sure.
	I mean, it really is, you now are free under the sufferance of the state.
	It is not something that is innate to your nature anymore.
	But who cares? Here we are, defying it.
	You know, that's what the revolution is about, is when you say, screw you, we're going to do it anyway.
	Then come and get me. Come arrest me.
	I'm ready. Well, you're a little further ahead than I am in that area because I'm still paying my taxes and so on, but I think that the change that has to occur is in an intellectual realm.
	I don't see any point, particularly for myself, in defying the government and getting arrested because you're not going to have much capacity.
	Well, no, I pay my taxes.
	I try to stay under the wire, you know, but the point is...
	To not have any allegiance to that anymore, to not be afraid of that.
	The fact that we're saying these things out loud is outrageous and contagious.
	Hopefully contagious.
	The simple fact that anybody would question free discussion is outrageous.
	Right, and I think that the main reason why we're able, this is almost the mistakes that governments make, the reason that we're still able to have these conversations is that we're considered to be completely unimportant, right?
	I mean, you know, because we're speaking merely about ideas and we're not talking about any kind of insurrection or anything like that, We're certainly not in any danger, at least according to the government, of doing anything particularly subversive, because all we're doing is talking about ideas.
	They don't really care about that.
	If we didn't pay our taxes, then they'd get upset, but us just mouthing off about ideas they don't care about so much.
	And I also think that the real issue here is not governments at all anyway, because governments are composed of people.
	The problem is humans themselves.
	I mean, really, if we're going to have a reasonable planet, we're going to have to be populated by reasonable people who don't believe everything they hear their language machines say.
	I mean, it's pointless to create a new government and fill it up with the same kinds of idiots that we've been filling up the governments all over the planet for the last 2,000 years with.
	We need a new species, and that's only going to come about by educating children.
	Well, I think you're right. And one of the things that I got from Harry Brown, which I've sort of expanded on in my own little way, is this idea that it's not the fault of people that they're subjected to 14 years of straight government propaganda when they're children, and also, of course, religious propaganda through the church and through the media.
	And then that same level of propaganda persists in a kind of background hum kind of way through almost all of the major media outlets.
	So it's not really the fault of human beings that we're susceptible to propaganda.
	I mean, that's just our nature, because we're more designed to conform than to survive independently.
	Because for most of the history of our species, you couldn't survive independently.
	You needed the tribe to survive.
	So I think that human nature is perfectly fine.
	It's just that we need to have...
	I mean, if I could do one thing to make people free...
	I would privatize education tomorrow.
	That would be the first thing that you would do to get the world to become free.
	Instead, what we have to do, what I'm trying to do is sort of reach out.
	I've got some podcasts for children and teenagers designed to teach them about freedom using the The grippingly powerful analogies of newspaper routes and so on.
	Also reaching out to parents, right?
	What we've tried to do at Freedom Aid Radio is reach out a little bit more to women.
	That sounds a little sinister, but it actually is supposed to be positive.
	We're reaching for the women here!
	We sort of try to branch out a little bit more into topics that get women a bit more interested, for the most part.
	You know, stuff like personal relationships and so on and child raising.
	And I think that's had some good degree of success in terms of trying to influence parents and also trying to get in touch with teenagers as well.
	Yeah. I don't really...
	Sorry, go ahead.
	Got to start earlier than teenagers.
	It's too late by that time.
	You've got to get them before puberty.
	That's when it has to be done.
	Other than that, then you're going to have to start trying to reprogram the nonsense out that was put in in the beginning.
	That's got to stop.
	Right. Well, maybe I'll work on a children's book.
	That might be a good idea. I was just going to object to one small point that Heron brought up.
	I don't think the problem is the species.
	I think we're just behaving exactly as we would behave.
	Given the system, you put a rational being in an irrational system and the state is what you get.
	The politician is what you get.
	Right, right, yeah. Everybody, in pursuit of their self-interest, people adapt to the prevailing trade winds, so to speak.
	But the concept of self itself is flawed.
	That's part of the problem, is that people think their self is something inside their skull, and therefore they're in competition with other selves that are other than them, when in fact we are all united in a very real biological system.
	We are not separate.
	And the idea of self is something that is a big problem, the way it's presently conceived.
	Well, that's interesting.
	I haven't had that idea before.
	Could you tell us a little bit more about that?
	Oh, I could give you a quick overview of what I call Adam's error.
	I was brought up Catholic, but I never believed any of that stuff.
	Even when I was a kid, I thought it was nonsense.
	But I learned to keep my mouth shut.
	But anyway, I had rejected Christianity and all that stuff from the very get-go.
	But curiously enough, my studies in linguistics have led me back to look at the story of Adam and Eve as a fairly accurate depiction of the beginnings of humanity.
	But not that Adam was the first sort of language monkey that looked like you and me.
	They were all around. They've been around for 100,000 years.
	But it was only about 6,000 years ago Adam was the first being who identified with the voice in his head.
	The voice had been there for probably tens of thousands of years, but previously, in fact, even if you look at the Iliad, people did not...
	People did not anguish over making decisions in the Iliad.
	In fact, the voice in their head told them what to do.
	The voice was the voice of a god, or an ancestor, or a king.
	They heard the voice, but they didn't think the voice was them.
	Adam, sometime around 6,000 years ago, started this new idea that, hey, that voice is me.
	I said that. I can think that.
	I can do anything I want to.
	That was the fall that they talk about in the Bible.
	If you can think about it for a minute, Adam would have been a very confused guy, surrounded by a bunch of language machines who interpreted the voice as God, and here's him saying, no, no, no, that's me.
	Well, they did.
	That's the story. They kicked his ass out of Eden because he was too weird.
	Anyway, now, 2,000, 4,000, 5,000 years later, That attitude has pretty much prevailed on the planet.
	Most civilizations, except outside of New Guinea and some tribal societies around, the voice is now considered to be me, that we have been brought up from childhood to think that that voice is who I am.
	But since the 1950s, since the advent of computers and computer languages and studies in linguistics took on a new twist, We've come to realize that that voice is not me.
	It's merely my language machine.
	And it's not a very well-programmed language machine at that.
	But once you disidentify, once you break the identity with the language machine, with the voice, you can be about the process of reprogramming it to become less unconscious and less stupid.
	When I talk about a new species, I'm not talking about a new biological species.
	I think evolution has moved beyond biology to culture and linguistic inheritance.
	What really counts now is how we think, not who we screw.
	This new species that I'm referring to are the people who actually are not identified with the voice in their head, who can listen to the voice, weigh it, Just determine whether it makes any sense or not and begin to reprogram it rather than to blindly obey whatever the voice tells them to do.
	I think I understand.
	So in the language that we've been using sometimes in the podcast, we would sort of say that if you come from a mystical mindset, then the impulses and the ideas and the voices in your head you associate with external deities of some kind.
	And that the first person to sort of say, actually these voices are coming from within me and are manageable by my own mental processes and are open to evaluation means that I don't have to blindly obey every impulse or instinct that comes along, which is usually programmed into me through some propagandistic mechanism from the family or from the state and so on.
	And what I'm saying is that Adam, in a sense, Adam being the first guy who said, hey, I'm me, what I'm saying is that he's really not any different than the ones before him who thought that the voice was God.
	Both of them obey the voice blindly.
	In one case, people today think the voice is I. I said this, I said that, I thought that.
	They obey it in the same way that the people who thought the voice was God obeyed the voice blindly.
	It's only when you're not identified with the voice, when you can make the voice other than me, that you're no longer subject to obeying the voice.
	And that's a small percentage of the population at this point.
	But isn't that what the mystics are doing when they say that the voice is God?
	No, I don't. Well, I don't know.
	I mean, obviously it's not as simple as I've just painted it to be.
	I mean, there are a lot of complications to this, and to actually go into it, we'd have to sidetrack the whole conversation and go into another conversation, and I'm not here to do that.
	So, yeah, there's a lot more to it than what I just said.
	Well, and the use of the word voice is both, for me at least, it's both explanatory and aposticating and so on.
	I understand what you mean, but voice is a sort of human agency thing, so it can be a challenge from that standpoint.
	Do you have a website where you chat about this stuff more?
	No, I have a website, but there's nothing specific.
	This is stuff that I'm sure...
	I've been talking about this for a long time, but I've been talking about it in a new way just in the last couple months, and I think this is a much more effective way of talking about it than what I have.
	My website is gendo.net.
	There's a bunch of stuff there about a bunch of things, but it's totally disorganized.
	I did it years ago and haven't updated it in a long, long time.
	Well, I'm sure you'll get some feedback from people who go there and enjoy it.
	I'm also a digital artist, and my art gallery is there, too, so you can look at that.
	Very nice. I can give you some live feedback right now, just as a bit confused by what you're saying.
	I think what would be helpful, maybe, is when you're using this analogy of voice, you might want to be...
	I don't know. You might want to translate that to all of us language monkeys out here.
	What do you mean by voice?
	Well, I don't mean it as an analogy at all.
	I mean the voice in your head.
	If I ask you, what are you going to do tomorrow?
	And I don't say anything.
	In your head, there's probably something going on like, what does it mean, what am I going to do tomorrow?
	Oh, well, tomorrow I'm going to...
	There's a voice, literally, that you hear in your head that talks to you all day long.
	It tells you the story of your life.
	It evaluates what's going on all through your senses and turns it into a story.
	And it's automatic. It's all being done below the level...
	I mean, for instance, I have no idea what I'm going to say next.
	I mean, word by word.
	And there isn't time for me to actually think about what word I'm going to use in my next sentence and what order I'm going to put those words.
	The whole thing is being constructed below the level of consciousness according to the rules of programming in my language machine.
	And most people are swept along with that voice and identified with it and literally live in a state of linguistically induced hypnosis in a plant.
	Aren't you referring to the subconscious then?
	No, I'm talking about the voice.
	I think the interesting thing about that is that you could say that the rules of grammar, even, that you're taught as a child or the rules of how the language is put together actually does influence how you think because what you're saying...
	Absolutely! That's exactly what I'm saying.
	Like what you said is, as you're creating a sentence word by word...
	The rules of how that sentence is put together in your language has to necessarily affect how you're thinking.
	Absolutely. There are unconscious assumptions built into our language that force us to say certain things certain ways, and for the most part we are totally unconscious of that and buy into the unconscious assumptions that are coded in the language itself.
	And often those assumptions are wrong.
	It might also be instructive to maybe consider how, when you look at different languages around the world, a lot of them share a certain construction of how you have a subject and a verb and an object and things like that.
	And it might be interesting to ponder how much of that actual structure of the language is influenced by biology, is influenced by the brain, is influenced by how the brain Is able to understand the world around it and how, you know, the brain does think in cause and effect reaction type things.
	And so the cause is, you know, there's an object or there's a subject acting on an object.
	So that naturally implies a cause and effect.
	Yeah. So it also, you know, you might have the language is influencing the biology, but also the biology At first, it had to influence that language sometimes.
	It gets very complex.
	The rabbit hole goes very deep, as they say, and there's a lot to it.
	But there's a lot of really simple stuff that can be dealt with without even dealing with some of those issues.
	But you're right, of course.
	Hi, it's Christina speaking.
	I was just very interested in this conversation.
	You were talking about the voice in our heads, and I missed the beginning of it.
	I was distracted by something else, so I'm not too sure if you're talking about sort of the free thoughts that we just are bombarded with, sort of our mind never stops.
	Is that what you mean? Yeah, yeah.
	Basically, you know, especially when people go to sleep at night, they often feel like they're plagued by it.
	They're trying to go to sleep, and there's just on and on.
	Oh, this peanut butter sandwich, and that guy at work today said this, and tomorrow when I see him, I'm going to say this, and oh, and I have to make my car payment, and it just goes on and on and on and on.
	It never and ever really seems to stop, right?
	And in psychology, in cognitive psychology, we call these automatic thoughts.
	And we look at different layers of thinking.
	We have the automatic thoughts, and underneath those we have rules and assumptions, and the rules and assumptions are guided by our core beliefs.
	The core beliefs are pretty...
	Firm. They're absolute.
	They're very difficult to alter.
	And that's what we try and figure out in therapy is what are some of these core beliefs.
	And you're absolutely right. These core beliefs come from our very early experiences, how we interrelate with other people in our environments.
	We have thoughts about ourselves.
	We have thoughts about others.
	We have thoughts about the world.
	And that's where our core beliefs come from.
	That's what guides our thinking.
	That's what sort of guides these automatic thoughts that I think that you're referring to.
	And we also try and, you know, one of the things that we try and do in core therapy is challenge the people's, the shoulds.
	These are the values that people have.
	I should do this.
	I should do that.
	You know, people should behave in this way.
	I'm not sure if that's in line with what you're saying.
	Well, yeah, I think literally, I said earlier that I think most people most of the time are literally living in a kind of linguistically induced trance where they are under the influence of that stream of language and they are sort of swept away by it.
	And I know people who are just stuck in their story.
	They have an analysis of their life And they can't even conceive of analyzing it from another point of view.
	They just keep repeating the same story over and over and over again, and that's that.
	Right, and a lot of people don't even recognize that that's a problem.
	Yeah. Can I offer a possible solution?
	Please. That would be India's gift to the world of yoga?
	Uh-huh. Well, just the simple fact that through their practices, they reduce that chatter in their head.
	Well, I don't think it's necessary to actually reduce the chatter.
	The main problem is being identified with the chatter.
	The chatter can...
	I mean, it is helpful to be able to...
	I've done a lot of meditation, and in fact, I do yoga, too.
	And I would say those are both very beneficial.
	However, I don't think either one of them are necessary to break the identity with the language machine or the voice.
	That's the key issue.
	I mean, my voice continues.
	I get swamped by it a hundred times a day.
	But I only go a couple seconds before I catch it and realize, oh, I'm getting swept away by that nonsense again before I stop.
	Whereas in my youth, I might have spent months or years stuck in a story.
	Now, I don't stay stuck for more than a couple seconds or a couple minutes, maybe, at the longest.
	Can you hear me?
	Yeah, I can.
	I was wondering what it is.
	. Hi, sorry to interrupt you.
	Is anyone else having trouble hearing?
	I'm just getting fragments of words.
	Yeah, he was brought in most of his packets, that last guy.
	Sorry, you may be in a modem, in which case you'll need to use carrier pigeons or smoke signals, because I don't think you've got the packet width, the bandwidth to get this in.
	No, that's not a problem.
	I've talked to people on dial-up.
	That still works here. His connection is dropping packets, is what the problem is.
	He's probably got an infection on his PC, or someone else on the network is infected.
	And wireless is the problem. Do you want to try that question again, just to see if you can get any more words through this time?
	Ah, why don't I type it?
	Indeed, why don't you?
	That will get.
	You're not going to drop letters, even if you are dropping words.
	You might try talking, though, because sometimes those are the intermittent problems that go away.
	Hello? This is Adi, and I was having a question.
	I didn't exactly follow from the beginning, so I may be just in the middle of things, but I was wondering, what do you think could be done to remediate this problem of language?
	Do you suppose that people should learn more than one language, or do you suppose that we should use maybe a more logical form of language?
	I hear something like Lojban, if you're familiar with that.
	Yeah, I am familiar with it.
	So if you can maybe say something about it?
	Yeah. Well, I've created something that I call English 2.0, which is a debugged subset of Wild English that's designed for clear thinking and accurate communications.
	I don't think stuff like Esperanto or Loglan are really going to work because English is already taking over, and the job is, I think, to debug English.
	But I think it's really quite simple.
	I think the major thing is to break the identity with the voice, that that is almost entirely responsible for most of our psychological, spiritual, political difficulties, People are identified with the story in their head and they think that is the way it is rather than merely their way of thinking about it.
	It's impossible for humans to negotiate to settle differences if I'm convinced that my way of thinking about it is the way it is rather than merely my way of thinking about it.
	If you and I have differences and we both acknowledge that you have your way of thinking and I have my way of thinking, There's some possibility that we can sit down and figure out some solution.
	But if both of us think that we know the way it is, there is no negotiating.
	It's impossible. Are you maybe implying that there is no way of thinking?
	No, there are all sorts of ways of thinking, but they're all simply human construction in the domain of language anyway.
	Are you thinking that all opinions are valid?
	They're opinions. Well, they're like maps for territories.
	Some maps are more useful under certain circumstances than other maps, but they still have no more status.
	I mean, a topo map and a street map, nobody would feel the need to choose between a topographical map and a street map.
	They're each useful for different purposes.
	And there are other kinds of possible maps.
	Would you say that there is a connection between opinion and what is valid true?
	Or would you say that we are all wandering in this sea of perpetual uncertainty?
	What's your point on this?
	I don't think it's either or necessarily.
	To answer that kind of question, I don't think I can answer that question simply with a yes or no answer.
	I think the reality is somewhat complex, but I think it is useful to make a distinction between a map and a territory, and that no map can ever achieve any greater ontological status than that of a map.
	Is the territory or can possibly cover all of the territory.
	So there can be multiple maps for the same territory.
	Those maps may be more or less accurate for different intentions and those are always questionable.
	Can I just jump in a little bit too?
	I would add to that to say that human beings can only negotiate productively in the realm of reality, objective material, empirical reality.
	We can't negotiate and say, my dream is better than your dream, or my preference for colors is better than your preference for colors.
	We can only productively negotiate.
	And of course, we only have conflicts with relationship to material objects and to the external world.
	We also have conflicts over abstractions like words like freedom and dignity and honor too.
	We do, but those things always end up tying into some sort of transfer of material goods in the material world.
	Perhaps. And so I would say that what we need to keep doing is to keep reducing language to its essentials.
	One of the things that we've talked about quite a bit in the podcast and on the boards is that the great danger of language is that it can seem to give concepts life independently of the mind, right?
	So the problem is when we have concepts that exist as if they are real, right, in the sort of platonic sense, then we are in a great deal of danger because then we think we're negotiating with things that exist in the real world rather than ideas within our own mind.
	And so our concepts always need to be derived from material empirical reality and we constantly need to keep checking those concepts and...
	As we pointed out earlier, something like the government doesn't exist at all.
	A country does not exist at all.
	A race, a god, a church, a religion.
	None of these things exist.
	Well, the church, I guess, physically, but none of the concepts exist.
	The buildings exist.
	Right, but the concepts do not exist in reality.
	Here's a totally minor example that I've noticed since the 9-11 world.
	Every time you see about an attack on America, nine times out of ten, you hear the phrase, an attack upon American soil.
	Which, of course, is complete nonsense, right?
	I mean, it was buildings and people that were attacked.
	If they'd driven the planes into the soil, it really wouldn't have been so bad at all, right?
	They would have missed if they'd actually attacked the soil.
	But the reason that they want to use the word soil is because of its connotations of fertility, of life, of food, of farms, of loyalty.
	Like, it's not a lot of connotations for people emotionally.
	So people prefer to use those kinds of language.
	And when people say an attack upon American soil, what you need to do, I mean, yeah, we can certainly say that an attack happened because there was an initiation of violence with the attempt to harm or kill or destroy property.
	So an attack definitely happened when someone says...
	There was an attack on American soil.
	You say, okay, well, let's break this down a little bit so that we can start dealing with the actual facts rather than manipulate a whole bunch of empty concepts.
	So basically, a bunch of people, you know, this is the story, right?
	Like a bunch of people took a bunch of planes and flew them into some buildings to kill people.
	And if you start looking at those kinds of things, the question is, and I think this ties in very much with what you're saying, the question is always not...
	What's my story about what happened, but what happened?
	What actually happened?
	Rather than, what's my story about what happened?
	What are my emotional context around what happened?
	So you get these kinds of things in relationships all the time where the husband or the wife will say, well, my husband's really mad at me, the wife will say, and so somebody might say, well, what happened?
	Well, he didn't talk to me for the whole evening.
	It's like, well, those two things are very different, right?
	He didn't talk to me for the whole evening is a fact, but the story that you make up around that is, therefore, he's angry at me, right?
	So there's a difference between the interpretation and the event, and I think we need to keep focusing our language back on the actual events, rather than the story that we make up about those events, which may or may not be true, and probably isn't true.
	Well, you brought up a point that is, when I talk about English 2.0, I often say it's English minus the five stupidities.
	And one of the five stupidities is what I call reification, which is just exactly what you're talking about.
	The noun structure of English, I mean, I was, as a kid, taught that nouns are persons, places, or things.
	But there are whole classes of nouns, like dignity, freedom, happiness, love, honor, religion, you name them, that are not things.
	And basically, if it's a thing, you can put it in a bucket, even if it's a very large bucket.
	But all these other things are not things at all.
	There is no such thing as love or dignity or honor.
	And the failure to acknowledge that difference makes most political and philosophical discussions Literally meaningless and endless and no solution whatsoever.
	Can I just say, sorry, we had one update, a factual update from the chat room here.
	Somebody has pointed out that United Airlines Flight 93 did in fact attack American soil.
	Another gentleman has mentioned that we did lose some patriotic mushrooms on 9-11, so that is something that's just sort of, because we're trying to talk about the facts here, that there were attacks on American soil that day.
	Although they never say like sod or mud.
	It was an attack upon American mud.
	American mud. No, that will never fly.
	That won't inspire anybody.
	I'm sorry to interrupt the floor here, but when you mentioned that there's a chat room, is there a room that I can jump into with a lot of people, or how do I...
	Yes, there is. I'm not sure who's running it.
	It just sort of goes. I don't know.
	Is anyone running the chat room?
	Can you tell people how to join the chat?
	Yeah, whoever's running it can just send a message from that chat to whoever is asking about it, and then they will be in it, too.
	Somebody included me in it some time ago.
	This is Rob Peterson, by the way, if anyone wants to throw me a line.
	Rob, you started the cast.
	So I think we've done the language thing.
	Now, are there any other topics, issues, questions from the podcast, from the board, anything else that people want to bring up that you've all been thoroughly well prepared in before joining the open forum chat discussion thing?
	Let me rush off tonight.
	Take a comment at these type of floorboards.
	Can I also just mention one person is doing a fabulous imitation of a heavy breather on the old style of, I mean, don't get me wrong, it's quite erotic for me, but it might not be as pleasant for everybody else who may not like the but it might not be as pleasant for everybody else who may not like the feel that they're If you could just check your mic is not right close to your mouth because we're getting a nice rumble off it.
	You know, as a host, you can mute microphones and keep the room clean.
	I can. I'm just wondering...
	I think it's gone better.
	For the most part, people are kind of getting the hang of it, but we also get a couple of new people who come on.
	Yeah, and I'm amazed that 13 people in here in this room is quite clean.
	Everybody is really doing a good job except for the heavy breather.
	Right, who may think he's in a completely different kind of conference call.
	Sorry, the heavy breathing is still going on.
	Could you please check your microphone and make sure it's not very close to your mouth.
	It's not in a direct line with your breathing.
	Just move it off to one side, please.
	You know, and if he doesn't do it, you can just mute all the mics and turn them back on one at a time until you discover who it is.
	Yeah, that seems like quite a lot of work, but I guess I could.
	It's not that hard. Well, anyway, it's a possibility.
	One thing that was kind of fascinating, All that talk of symbology in your analysis of my dream and I was kind of wondering if you could go into some more detail on that.
	You know, what the numbers mean and a lot of the little different things that you Referred to like water and animals and stuff like that?
	Sure. I mean, I found just sort of on my own dream analysis, which I find to be a very powerful and effective tool for sort of understanding about my own sort of unconscious processes.
	As I've sort of talked about, there is a constant processing of reality that is occurring within our own minds all the time.
	And you know what?
	This heavy breathing is still going on.
	I'm going to mute everyone and take the suggestion, and then I'm going to unmute people and find whoever's got the heavy breathing going on.
	So I'll just keep chatting while I go through that process about this sort of symbology thing.
	And so what I find is that there are a lot of symbols that are...
	that are in my dreams that mostly come from a very early childhood And things that have occurred for me in sort of the first time that I came across sort of powerful symbols, they launched in my unconscious.
	And it was then, in particular, when I was not allowed or able to process what was actually occurring, that the symbols sort of got frozen in time in my mind.
	And I found that to be a very powerful thing in dreams, that those symbols were constantly recurring and constantly recurring.
	And what happened was, as I began to understand them, I would then liberate sort of intellectual energies around those kinds of issues.
	And so I'll sort of give an example that I've mentioned in a podcast that I kept having these dreams up until probably about four to six months ago, wherein I would be facing a huge wave.
	And then I was like a huge tsunami, like a wave that was literally hundreds of feet high, and then I would face some sort of disaster by being hit with that wave.
	And what then occurred for me after that, after sort of analyzing it from a bunch of different angles, what I got was...
	That it was other people's impressions of what it is that I was saying.
	Now this occurred before I started podcasting.
	It's been going on for a couple of years.
	But once I understood that it was people's impressions of what I was saying, that I was coming across very strongly to people in a very powerful way, and I wasn't...
	Really understanding or experiencing that too well.
	So when you start talking about personal responsibility, you start talking about freedom, you start talking about violence, you start talking about personal liberty, you start talking about the family in people's childhoods, that there's an enormous amount of power.
	And what I was saying was really overwhelming to people.
	And so what was happening was my unconscious was trying to get me to empathize with other people with this sort of tidal wave that was bowling me over.
	And once I understood that and began to moderate my discussions towards other people to make them more gentle and more curious, then all of that dream imagery kind of went away, and I haven't had a dream about it since.
	So it's not always the easiest thing to understand these kinds of imageries, but once you do get them, they can be incredibly productive for helping out with your life.
	Does that help?
	Right. I was kind of hoping you'd go into specifics.
	What do numbers mean in dreams?
	Is there any specific reason why you would see a specific number in a dream?
	Yes, I do believe that everything within a dream is very specific.
	And there are certain theories, Jung was very big on this, Freud to a smaller degree, there are certain theories that numbers are absolutely essential within dreams.
	That when you see, like for instance, a dream that we talked about, that you had around the halls in the landscape.
	If there are only three holes, then that's a choice that your unconscious is making in terms of its representation of an inner landscape that is specific, right?
	There's no random number generator in the unconscious that says that there's only three or five.
	So it's always a very particular thing.
	And so for you, when you had these hundreds to an infinite number of holes, it was very clear that what was being talked about there was larger than just your family.
	But was either the society around you or the society as a whole, so it's a bit larger than something that's just personal, which meant that whatever was afflicting your family was also afflicting society as a whole, so to speak.
	Hey, look, whole. We're just working it in every direction.
	I've certainly found in my own dreams that numbers are very precise.
	I think, at least I've heard it reported, that people who are mathematically inclined have numbers that are mathematically significant and can be parsed out in certain mathematical ways.
	I'm not mathematically inclined, so I don't intend to have those dreams.
	But I think that numbers are very, very important.
	Just if we look at that one to do with holes, if you had, say, six holes, that would represent everyone else within your family, say.
	If it was in four holes, it would just be your brothers.
	But since it's hundreds and hundreds of thousands of holes, it's obviously in your dream you were trying to deal with a problem that was larger than your immediate family, but which was reflected within your immediate family.
	Hmm. So then...
	So then, like, I don't know, I had a dream a couple of nights ago where I was trying to get to a hotel room, and the strongest image I got from the dream after I woke up was the room number, which was 888.
	What the heck is that?
	888. Okay.
	I'll sort of mention two things where you can start with dreams, and I sort of need a little bit more to be able to provide anything useful.
	There are two things that are important in dreams.
	One is your personal relationship to the imagery.
	So there's no way that a hotel room means the same for everyone.
	There are certain dreams which are kind of common to everyone.
	People may have dreams about a lack of gravity or a low situation of gravity, so every time you try and run away from something, you kind of fly up into the air and you can't get away.
	Or you might have dreams about trying to run away through a thick liquid or a jello or a water where you're sort of slowed down.
	People also have dreams quite constantly about showing up to school with no pants on or something like that.
	What's that line from When Harry Met Sally?
	I think Rosie O'Donnell, someone says, you know those dreams where you're naked all the time?
	She's like, yeah, I love those dreams.
	And there's some theories around those dreams.
	My particular theory around the dreams where you show up naked is sort of one of two things.
	One is that it's sort of saying that you can't be around people and be vulnerable.
	Because nakedness, obviously, is a symbol for vulnerability.
	So within your social environment, you're not allowed to be vulnerable.
	So it's your true self down at the bottom saying that you can't be vulnerable around the people that you are.
	And the dream sort of serves two purposes.
	One, it says you can't be vulnerable with the people that you're around.
	And the second is that even though you end up being at school or at work with no pants on, you just wake up and you're fine, right?
	So you can't be vulnerable with the people that you're with, but you will survive it if you try to be vulnerable with them, right?
	So, I mean, the dreams are also there to help make you more confident about those kinds of situations, because you don't die, right, in the dreams.
	You just kind of struggle through it.
	So, as far as the hotel room goes and the 888, the thing that is important about the number 8 is, of course, it's a homonym for eating, right?
	So maybe there was a situation in a hotel room where you had a lot of food or not enough food, and so there's ways that the unconscious plays around with language within dreams to try and find an oblique approach.
	Do you have any memory within your life of being in a hotel and having any issues with food, eating too much or too little when you were a kid or maybe older?
	Actually, not really.
	And what kind of hotel was it?
	Was it a nice hotel or a nasty hotel?
	Oh, it was a huge, expensive, lavish hotel.
	And the hotel room was at the top of the building.
	And were you able to get into the room or no?
	Oh, yeah. I mean, the dream, most of my time in the dream was spent inside the hotel room.
	In the hotel room? And so what was the tension or the struggle within the dream?
	You know, I'm not really sure.
	Yeah, so that would be a sort of important thing to understand, right?
	Because if the dream doesn't have any tension within it, then it's sort of hard to understand what the goal or the purpose is.
	So if you just went into a hotel room and went into, oh, wait a minute, you were at a barbecue.
	Yeah. Right? On the 4th, yeah.
	Okay, okay. All right.
	I'm going to take a swing at this, and please don't feel free to tell me I'm full of it, of course, right?
	But I'm just going to take a swing at this, right?
	At the end of the post that you had about your barbecue, just for those who don't know, Greg was questioning the value of going to see...
	His family over the 4th of July weekend for a barbecue, because his family are statists and military associations, and so there's lots of conflict around that.
	So I wonder if it's something like this, that you are in a hotel, right?
	So this is a place where you go and other people deal with hospitality for you, right?
	Other people take care of you in a hotel, which is similar to going to a barbecue.
	It's similar to going to a barbecue at your parents' house or your brother's house.
	It's very similar to going to a hotel.
	And when you talked about going to the barbecue on the board, you said, I'm not sure that I really got along with anyone there, but I am sure that I really enjoyed eating and eating and eating.
	Does that ring a bell for you?
	Uh, yeah. Alright, so I'm just going with this, right?
	This might lead me straight off a cliff.
	I'm perfectly aware of that, right?
	But it's just a possibility that you had in this dream that in the real world you're questioning whether or not just going to be fed is enough value from your family, right?
	Just that you go over there and they give you lots of ribs.
	Was it ribs? Is that right? I remember that right?
	Oh, yeah. He's very good at barbecuing.
	Yeah, and I think you mentioned that a couple of times in the post.
	So in your real life, you're saying, well, I don't get a lot of value from my family in an interpersonal way, but they do take care of me and feed me.
	And in your dream, you're in a hotel, which of course is not something that you would say, I am very close to the people in the hotel because they take care of me and feed me, right?
	Like, that's just a commercial relationship.
	Yeah. I suppose.
	You can hear the enthusiasm, can't you?
	This may work, it may not work, right?
	This is like edge of the seat dream analysis.
	So who knows, right?
	We'll just give it a shot. But I would say that any relationship which can be replaced by a commercial relationship is not really a very close relationship, right?
	So a good meal of ribs would cost you, what, 20 bucks?
	Actually, you live outside of the city, right?
	Like 15 bucks? Yeah, roughly $15 to $18.
	Alright, so $15 to $18.
	But I don't think that you would go to a restaurant where people argue with you all the time if they gave out free ribs, right?
	You'd probably just pay for the $15 to $18 to get the ribs?
	Yeah, that'd be annoying.
	Right, that would sort of be annoying, right?
	The waiter just keeps dismissing your politics and peeing all over your values and stuff, right?
	So, in the dream, this is just a vague possibility, right?
	In the dream, an excess of eating, 8-8-8, I ate and I ate and I ate, is a commercial relationship where there's no particular stressors, and the value that you're getting in a commercial relationship with a hotel is exactly the same as you get with your family, but you wouldn't go to a hotel where they treated you like the way that your family treats you in terms of respecting your values.
	So I think the dream might be saying that there's no more value to your family providing you food and drink than going to a hotel.
	I think I've convinced him.
	I think the silence is sheer convincement.
	Look, I'm just playing around with it.
	It's one possibility. I set that as a tentative explanation, but more to the point...
	I guess, actually, as a more abstract point, even if I were to provide all the possible details of the last two weeks of my life, aren't all we doing is just mapping those details to random collections of images in my mind and saying, gee, this seems to fit?
	And how scientific is that?
	How scientific? Greg, it's pure science.
	Can't you smell the sulfur? Absolutely.
	There is no scientific evidence that you can say that your dreams are wise elder Aztec guides trying to help you through life, without a doubt.
	But what we can do, though, is we can have a look at our dreams And see if they're helping us emotionally, right?
	I mean, the purpose of life is not to be scientific or anything like that, but to be happy.
	And if you are facing a conflict in your life, which is, what is the value that I'm getting from my family?
	It seems to me quite likely that because you've known your family for 30-odd years, you absolutely know what value that you get or don't get from your family.
	There's no sort of question here.
	But what we do have is an extraordinary amount of inhibition in simply being honest with our own feelings about our family, simply because we're supposed to like our families, you know, your brothers until the day you die, and your mother and your father loved you and wanted to take care of you.
	Maybe didn't do the...
	Maybe didn't do the best thing, but tried the best with what they had and all that, right?
	So we've got a lot of propaganda around the family that really interferes with our very basic experiences of the family, which is, did we have a good time?
	Do we look forward to seeing them?
	Do we love them? Would we be great friends with them even if we just met them at a party or something like that?
	So I would say that...
	What we truly believe about our families, just for instance, right?
	Could be anything. What we truly believe about our families, we know for a fact, and there's no ambiguity about it deep down, but we have a lot of inhibitions, and so the way that it comes out is in dreams, right?
	That's the standard idea behind dream analysis, that it's stuff that you can't consciously accept or don't want to consciously accept, like your false self, which is always what you prefer to believe rather than what actually is.
	It's your story. Rather than what actually happened, that the false self won't let the idea come forward, and therefore it has to come out in dreams, right?
	Because the idea has to find expression somehow.
	That's what the truth does.
	So it's not a purely scientific process, of course, any more than when you try to write a novel, there's no scientific method by which you can write a great novel.
	But you still can produce a great novel if everything goes right.
	So I think that it's not scientific, but I think that it's still a very valuable process, much like most of art.
	So it's more or less somewhere between the dream means whatever you want it to mean and here's the symbology dictionary.
	Look it up. I think that the symbology dictionary can be very helpful, but I don't think that you can say that the dream means whatever you want it to mean because the dream is usually associating with some objective process.
	of psychological growth or improvement or, I guess, a further acceptance of the facts of reality.
	So I don't think that the dream is subjective in that way, at least mine aren't, once I examine them.
	I don't think it can just mean whatever you want it to mean.
	I think that there is a specific meaning, but I think that it means what we don't want to accept.
	Usually that's the closest thing.
	Okay. Greg?
	Greg, just around the 888, I mean, I have sort of a different idea, but we don't Oh, I'm sorry.
	Christina's mic seems to have broken because she had a different idea from mine.
	We'll come back to that. Just kidding.
	Sorry. Go ahead. Okay.
	The technology is very sophisticated here at Freedom Aid Radio.
	I'm just curious, I mean, I heard 888 and I thought H8, I thought grade 8, I thought 1988.
	These are all potentially important associations with the number 8 and maybe something happened That was significant for you either when you were 8 years old or when you were in grade 8 or in 1988 or something to do with an actual age or time.
	Or a past life, 1888.
	I'm just going to ignore that.
	Again, not knowing your history or anything, maybe that can give you some insight or help you figure out what the association is with those numbers in your dream.
	Yeah, I thought about that a little bit when I first wrote the dream down, but I'm not really sure.
	Sorry, did this dream occur after your barbecue?
	I'm still trying to rescue this theory.
	Say yes, say yes.
	Yes, yes, there we go.
	Thanks. Just kidding.
	Christina needs a good cattle prod, somebody says.
	Boy, it's like you were just watching us last night.
	Yeah, that happened on the 8th.
	That happened yesterday.
	Sorry, you had the dream yesterday, right?
	Yeah. You know, we can certainly see if you can dig up more details.
	And of course, the great thing about dreams is if you don't figure them out, they just keep coming back.
	So it's not like if we don't get the right answer, then you really don't have to worry about it because it's definitely going to come back.
	Like the number of times I had those wave dreams was just ridiculous until I figured it out.
	So there's no stress with dreams other than maybe wanting to have a slightly different set of programming at night.
	August 8, 2008.
	The state will crumble on that date.
	Dude, we're rapping!
	Or Addy has a slightly darker suggestion.
	The date you died.
	You'd never guess which guy comes from Eastern Europe, would you?
	Now, do you know anything about standard symbology?
	Have you ever worked with that, sweetie?
	Standard symbology, like water means.
	Water means, and air means, and flying means.
	What do bicycles mean?
	Yeah, bicycles always means bisexuality, so be sure to tell us about those dreams, and don't be shy on details.
	Really, that's all we're saying.
	Because at Free Domain Radio, we're very happy to resell to Penthouse Forum.
	We have no problem with that at all.
	Okay, there's no bicycles in any of my dreams.
	If you could just start with, you know, Dear Free Domain Radio, I never thought this would happen to me, but...
	Greg, I had a dream recently that...
	That, at least for me, indicated that the symbolism is more than just random mashups of ideas and stuff.
	I recently had a conversation on our fraternity message board, the alumni message board for all my fraternity brothers, and it was kind of a debate over religion, things like that, and I just stated that I was atheist and everything.
	One of the guys brought up the fact that in our fraternity constitution, one of the first articles, I think, is that the fraternity asserts in states or whatever that, number one, the belief in God is essential to our well-being and things like that.
	And so I thought to myself, well, that's interesting.
	I wonder if I then have to be, you know, if I have to believe in God to be in a fraternity, maybe I should, you know, bow out of the fraternity.
	Anyway, later that night I had a dream, or I was roused from a dream, and what the dream was, or what was happening in the dream was, I was, from my perspective, I was watching a small boat, kind of like a lifeboat, sailing, or not sailing, but just kind of floating by a dock, and I was standing on the dock, and in the lifeboat was, you know, a bunch of sailors dressed up in dress uniform, and they all...
	And they were kind of packed into this little boat.
	It's like a dinghy with just tons of people in it.
	And, you know, they did one of those things where the sailors, they all launched their caps up in the air in celebration.
	And then, you know, apparently everyone caught them except for one because there is one cap floating now in the water.
	And I remember thinking in the dream, well, that's kind of interesting.
	You know, I wonder if people who drop their caps or sailors who drop their caps in the water get in trouble for that.
	And then I had an impression that, well, perhaps the person who dropped the cap had a higher priority.
	Maybe they need to save someone or whatever, you know, and then the dream kind of ended after that.
	Well, to me, the symbolism was very clear when I woke up and thought about it because I won't go into it in detail because I'm sworn to secrecy, of course, but part of the symbolism of our fraternity is It has to be something with sailors.
	You know, we refer to each other as sailors in a certain symbolic sense.
	And so obviously the sailors were, you know, my fraternity brothers and myself included.
	And the dress uniform, I believe, symbolized the formality of the constitution of the fraternity.
	And everyone launching their caps up in the air was whatever, I don't know what that meant, but the fact that one person missed the cap on the way back down I thought, well, that could have been me, because I was thinking, you know, here's the formality of the Constitution, everyone celebrates that or whatever by launching it up in the air, and by me not catching it again, it meant that, well, I do not accept that formal declaration of the belief in God.
	And so, also, it was kind of interesting that the, just the kind of, the thought, or the story that was going on in my head at the time, in the dream, Was that, well, maybe they won't care as long as they think that he was doing something more important.
	You know, so maybe it wasn't...
	I was guessing maybe that meant that people wouldn't care so much about me not believing in God as long as they believe that there was some greater purpose for, you know, the reason for me dropping the calf.
	You know, maybe I was saving someone from drowning or whatever, you know.
	So I just thought that was a good indication to me that there was a lot of symbolism in there.
	It was very easy for me to decode because it made such perfect sense to what I was thinking at the time.
	Well, I think also the symbology of everybody acting in unison within uniform, right?
	The great thing about the word uniform, and you can often find this in dreams, is that it has more than one meaning, right?
	So uniform is both the external dress, the symbolic dress that everybody wears is the same, and uniform also means doing everything in uniform, right?
	Doing it all marching in uniform means also marching lockstep, right?
	I think by having a...
	And sort of everyone throwing their hat up in the air, which is a symbol of graduation.
	As far as I understand it, you all see that in those movies with the guys in those white navel suits, right?
	They graduate, they all throw their caps in the air.
	And to drop it, to let it go, is very interesting because a hat is often in dreams a symbol of a limitation of thinking, right?
	Because it's a cap for the mind, right?
	It's something which sits over the mind and also keeps you sort of from seeing the sun.
	It's often a limitation in thinking.
	And also the fact that this is dropped and that if the unconscious is generally represented by the sea, it's often a very common metaphor for the sea, you're in this boat, which means that you're separated from the unconscious, from the sort of deeper sense of life, through conformity, right? Through being in the sort of uniform with other people.
	And that the hat or the limitation of thinking gets reabsorbed into the unconscious by not graduating with everyone else into this sort of kind of conformity.
	And there is also indications of violence within that conformity as well because, of course, sailors in uniform are generally military in nature, right?
	So it's a very packed symbology.
	That's the kind of stuff that the unconscious does.
	We all want to go to movies, and I just find the movies that occur every night are just about the most powerful things that you can ever have, and it really is quite a gripping thing.
	Yeah, I found that particular dream to be really just fascinating.
	Actually, I remember dreams very seldom, so the fact that I was roused from that dream by a phone call, actually, and I made sure that I tried to lock in the details of the dream while I could remember it, because it did seem that it was quite packed with...
	Nice symbolism. What has happened since then about this in your real life?
	Well, actually, what's been going on recently for me is that previously my relationship with the guys on this message board has been one of quite a bit of frustration, I guess, because for a while I was trying to convince people of this, that, whatever, whether it was political views or whether it was Getting on with this whole non-aggression thing that I've been studying with you guys and everything.
	And very recently I've just decided that it's really kind of foolish of me to hinge my happiness upon other people's beliefs.
	And so to try to convince them of a superior way of thinking used to drive me nuts when I couldn't convince them I thought it was a personal failure or whatever.
	But now I'm just kind of saying, well, okay, the heck with that.
	I just don't need to worry so much about it.
	I'll still share ideas with these guys, but I'm not going to get all upset if they just don't accept it.
	Right. I mean, so I don't want to keep talking about my own dream, but one of the things that I found quite liberating through understanding the dream about washing away, this huge wave that washed people away, was that if it is that overwhelming for people to hear about real freedom, and I think that it is, and of course I spent years trying the political route and it didn't get me very far, like arguing politics with people, which is why with Christina's help I began to examine the family more.
	But once we understand how completely overwhelming it is for other people to even remotely think about freedom in a personal context, people will argue politics, but who cares?
	It's not something we can directly affect.
	But when you start talking about freedom in a personal way, like in a belief in God or a relationship to your family, people feel extraordinarily threatened and overwhelmed.
	And once you understand that, it actually gets you quite a bit off the hook for any responsibility in changing them.
	Once you realize how overwhelming it is for other people to think about freedom, you feel less responsible or feel less of a failure for failing to change their minds, right?
	Because you get how difficult it is for them.
	Right. Yeah, and also I've been recently just to, you know, when you say what else has been going on in my life around the time of this dream is I've actually recently started to To break off relationships with people that I've found have been complete dead ends.
	One was a girlfriend that I dated for three years and I was still in a friendship type relationship with her but all the problems that had propped up in the relationship while I was dating her were still there as we were friends and stuff.
	So I've actually recently decided to just stop that.
	Just stop talking to her because it's never going to do me any good.
	And a couple other people have just decided that they're I'm kind of starting to let go of the things that I'm able to recognize as being not beneficial for me.
	That's fascinating. Could you tell us a little bit more about your criteria for not beneficial?
	Is it more of an abstract rational approach or is it more of a feeling based approach or how are you sorting the people out in your life relative to those two categories?
	Well, I find that when I actually focus on the You know, the problem of, you know, do I keep someone in my life or don't I, I find that, you know, my gut instinct on these people has been correct for a very long time.
	And my gut instinct, you know, what's mean by that is just a general feeling of, you know, if the phone rings and I see their name on caller ID, what feeling do I get?
	You know, is it one of apprehension or is it one of like, oh great, they're calling, I can't wait to pick up the phone.
	Things like that or like, you know, I'm having discussions with people, and I notice that the level of curiosity that they're displaying toward me and my feelings and things like that is extremely limited there at all.
	Yeah, because curiosity is always the flip side of enthusiasm, right?
	When you feel enthusiasm, it's because somebody is curious and open, and when you start to feel embattled and depressed with the conversation, it's because you're wrestling with a false self that can't be penetrated, right?
	Right. And so, especially with this ex-girlfriend in mind, the thing that was always frustrating to me with her is that she's very, I guess, inaccessible emotionally.
	She hides all of her emotions behind, except for maybe, say, emotions of frustration or things like that.
	She doesn't believe in...
	The notion of two people leaning on each other to strength or to share, you know, problems, things like that, in a mutual kind of constructive way, she just believes in individual people that stand completely alone without any help or support.
	And, you know, that's about it.
	That's as far as I ever got with her, even in three years of a relationship with her, I could never get beyond the, you know, we're still completely wholly separate people that will never be You know, able to share deep, you know, emotion with each other.
	So she never complained about anything?
	Oh, yeah, she was very good at complaining.
	Oh, so she didn't mind sort of leaning, it was just sort of a one-way thing?
	Yeah, when I mean leaning, I mean leaning for strength, not leaning for pressure.
	Right, so it's sort of like instead of us leaning on each other, I'll just keep falling on you?
	Exactly, yeah. Got it, got it.
	No, I've known people like that, too.
	Go ahead. So yeah, I guess recently one of the major themes I guess in my life has been to really take a hard look at relationships that I have with people and what is it doing for me?
	Is it actually making me a better person to be in a relationship with these people or not?
	And even, I mean, the hardest one that I'm dealing with right now is I'm trying to figure out my parents.
	Do I... Do I dread talking to them?
	Sometimes I do. And why do I? I'm trying to figure out if there's going to be a way for me to address with them.
	Now, sorry to interrupt, but if you don't mind me, I'll ask a couple of questions.
	And if I get too personal, just let me know.
	Okay, somebody has got back inside their washing machine and is now listening from in there.
	Can somebody stop moving their microphone, please?
	Because showing up is kind of loud on the boards.
	So with your parents, you say that sometimes you enjoy talking with them and sometimes you don't.
	Did I understand that correctly?
	Yeah, I guess when I speak with my parents, frequently I feel just exceedingly bored.
	And I live about 2,000 miles away from them, so it's a phone conversation.
	It's usually the only contact I have with them for half a year at a time.
	Right. My conversations with my father are absolutely just, you know, kind of how's the weather type stuff, you know, and anytime it starts...
	I've noticed that it's kind of funny is whenever I start feeling really bored with the conversation, I notice myself falling into political discussions because that always...
	You know, it turns them off pretty quickly and we, you know, don't need to end the conversation.
	Right, so it's your repellent mechanism, right?
	Exactly. With my mother, it's a bit different, though, is that, you know, I've always had a pretty good relationship with her, but recently she's become very, I guess, clingy, almost stiflingly so, on the phone or in emails, things like that, is that, you know, she's talking about how She misses me so much and she worries about me and she wishes that she could see me and she wishes I was there and all this stuff.
	It's become such a recurring theme, it's just become a real distraction because I haven't been able to communicate with her either over email or on the phone for months now without it coming up at least once and every time that she talks to me.
	So the problem is really that you're very cold to your mother.
	No, I'm kidding. Look, I mean, we've all had the experience, I think, at least most of us had, where, you know, somebody turns from mother to smother, right?
	I mean, it's just one little extra letter, but boy, does it make a difference.
	And when did this start happening with your mom?
	It's been kind of recently.
	I think what may have triggered it, I'm not really sure, but I have an idea that recently I started dating a girl for a while.
	It's a short time, and this is another story altogether, but it turns out that this girl was very devoutly religious, and of course I'm not at all.
	And so I kind of think that I put myself into that relationship just to kind of test it.
	It's kind of a perverse way of doing it, I'm sure, because, you know, I was playing with some other person's wife here, but, you know, at the same time it was like I was...
	I was putting myself under this, you know, laboratory situation of how do I react to someone in a relationship who is, you know, religious?
	So anyway, it was a, you know, kind of a fun relationship, but then, of course, it fell apart, and it fell apart because of the whole faith thing, and then, you know, I discussed this with my mom.
	Soon after that, that's when she started, you know, talking about all this stuff, and I kind of wonder if, you know, she thinks that, you know, probably Yeah, because I've never really discussed this whole, my lack of religious faith with my parents all that much.
	I mean, they know that I don't go to church and things like that, but I think when I actually directly addressed it like that in a conversation with her, that I think that may have been one of the things that triggered, or if not the thing that triggered, this kind of feeling of smothering that I'm doing from her.
	Do you think that her relationship with your father has changed at all over the last little while?
	Oh, they're actually divorced.
	They were married for 40 years, and they divorced when I was graduating college.
	And how old are you now, if you don't mind me asking?
	30. 30, okay.
	So she's been on her own for like seven or eight years, is that right?
	Correct. Yeah, actually, both my parents are remarried.
	She's remarried to a really great guy, actually.
	My stepfather is a fantastic guy.
	So I'm actually pretty happy for her.
	And that's what's kind of surprising to me that just recently she's been displaying this kind of forlornness, I guess, or loneliness because it seems to me that he is a pretty solid stand-up guy.
	Has she had any health issues?
	Yeah, yeah. Actually, a couple of years ago she was facing some big problems.
	She had shingles, I guess.
	Yeah. And I guess shingles can be pretty life-threatening.
	And so what's really interesting is back when she had it, she had the stiff upper lip type attitude about it.
	So I figured that she dealt with that okay, but I wonder, I'm not sure what's going on right now.
	If she does have any health issues, she's the type of person that usually doesn't share it with people, so I wouldn't really know.
	And how old is your mom? Let's see, she is what's the year?
	Oh, 66. She's 66.
	And did she retire last year?
	She's been retired for several years, actually.
	Because, I mean, the only reason that I'm sort of asking you all of that stuff, and I mean, I obviously can't sort of figure out what's going on with your mom in any particular thing, but the one thing that I would sort of mention, which I think might be of help, is that at some point in just about everyone's life, they realize that their time is limited.
	And that occurs for different people to different degrees within their life.
	And when you realize that your time is limited, that you don't have forever, that every day that goes by, you're one day closer to the end, if people realize that early enough in their life, That can be a very great, sort of what you're going through at the moment, right? Which is to some degree saying, well, since I don't have an infinite amount of time left, and I don't have an infinite number of resources, I kind of need to choose how I'm going to spend my energies.
	And then being in these dead-end relationships with people that don't give me a lot of pleasure, once you realize that you're just going to die on the day you're going to die, and you don't get any time extensions for spending time around people that you don't like or don't value, Once you kind of get that in your heart of hearts, it's kind of a shock.
	It certainly was for me. You know, you all kind of know it intellectually.
	But once you really accept that, and that's why your true self knows all of that stuff.
	Your false self, of course, thinks it's going to live forever, right?
	It's the fantasy of the soul, right?
	The soul is the fantasy of the false self.
	But once you kind of get that you're going to die, if you get that early enough, then it can really propel you to make some great decisions in your life.
	But what I've noticed is that If you get that later in life, like really fundamentally kind of get it, but later in life, then it actually is kind of depressing for a lot of people because they kind of look back on their lives and to some degree or another, they realize that they wasted a lot of it.
	And to your mom, right, 40 years of marriage, obviously her tolerance for boredom is much higher than yours because you can't do like half an hour on the phone with your dad, right, without wanting to crawl out of your own skin.
	And your mother obviously spent a lot of time, well, 40 years with your dad.
	And so the sadness and the clinginess that your mom might be experiencing might, might, just possibly, I mean, it's maybe something you can explore.
	Because these are all questions that both atheists and Christians can talk about, right?
	I mean, there's lots of stuff that you can't talk about.
	But mortality is something that's a pretty universal phenomenon.
	And it could be, I always associate clinginess with a kind of sadness that people don't want to deal with, or a feeling that you've made a mistake and you can't express it.
	So what you do is you start clinging to someone.
	And it might be, especially if your mom had health issues and retired, kind of at the same time, a couple of years ago, it may be sort of growing within her that this might be the case.
	And so, I mean, that's just something, and I don't know if you have the kind of relationship where you can chat about that stuff with your mom, but it certainly would be a lot better to, if you can get through to that topic with her, that would be a lot better for your relationship than having her be clingy, which is, of course, just going to drive you away at some point, right? Sure. Yeah, actually, I've been...
	The majority of my thoughts on this has just been I'm trying to figure out the best way to broach the subject because she is very good at communicating.
	So I think that probably won't be a problem in the long run.
	But anyway, I do appreciate all of your thoughts on this.
	But it looks like from the chat room that we're kind of boring some people.
	So if anyone else wants to jump in on this.
	You know, but they're just young people who haven't hit that whole mortality thing yet.
	But in about 10 years, they'll go, crap, I really should have listened more to that.
	Yeah, but no, it's a good thing.
	I think that this is a good thing for me because, you know, just the fact that I'm recognizing this feeling and, you know, what I'm feeling with her when she talks about this stuff and it gets clingy with me, then I think just the fact that I've had the,
	during the time that all this has been going on, I've had, you know, Occasionally I've had a good podcast from you that says a lot of stuff about relationships with parents and with family and stuff and it really is helping you to understand what the heck to do about it instead of just to feel pissed off.
	I do thank you for that.
	Do you mind if I take the phrase occasionally I get a good podcast from you to be that you don't listen to them very often rather than you listen to them continually but only occasionally.
	I meant to say I get a good podcast on the family.
	All of them are very good. I appreciate that.
	Thank you. I appreciate that.
	All right. Well, listen, given that us old fogies...
	Sorry, the last thing is that, of course, you might just be dying for grandchildren and you teased her with this Christian woman.
	Who knows, right? But for those who are on the chat room who believe still in their own immortality, would you like to come up with any other topics in the time that we have remaining?
	I throw the net wide.
	Can you hear me, Steph? I certainly can.
	Ah, finally. Thanks.
	This is Paul from...
	The determinism group there.
	Paul, how are you?
	I just knew you were going to call.
	I'm doing great, and I do not want to debate determinism today.
	As if we had enough time anyway, right?
	As if we had a choice. I'm just kidding.
	Just tweak it a little bit there.
	Don't take the bait. I'll let it go.
	That's fine. I did want to say how much I appreciate the forum in terms of the boards.
	It's a great group, isn't it?
	I mean, I've got to tell you, I think people are just doing a fantastic job of debating in a way that I find really positive to interact with, which is great.
	It is a lot of fun, and it's great.
	And I also want to say that I had no intention of frustrating you in any way.
	I know lots of other people are in the debate, too, but it definitely is from a basis of curiosity and my kind of just following my own train of logic there.
	It's certainly not, you know, that...
	I brought this up to you because I was really interested in the way you think and how you came to these conclusions and because it does have an impact on morality from my standpoint and so much of what you talk about is about morality that I think it matters.
	No, I appreciate that, and I never for a moment would imagine that anybody is ever trying to frustrate me or anything like that.
	And also, my frustration doesn't mean anything.
	Obviously, the fact that I'm frustrated doesn't have anything to do with whether your arguments are true or false, right?
	I'm perfectly aware of that.
	Sorry, go ahead.
	No, I'm sorry to interrupt. You said, I feel like I probably have to interrupt the talk, right?
	You're getting the hang of it. He's a quick litter, ladies and gentlemen.
	But I was just going to say, there's some stuff in the latest podcast about, you know, that some of the approach from the other side was frustrating and so forth.
	And I'm just, you know, I hope that...
	That doesn't derail the conversation, basically.
	Bottom line is you mentioned a debate.
	I'm really pretty uncomfortable debating you in a discussion forum, in a verbal forum, just because you are one of the characteristics that I've commented on about you is just how quick on your feet you are.
	Well, obviously that's why I wanted it to be in the forum that I'm best at.
	That's why I don't do a lot of nanchot combats with determinists, because I lose.
	And I think I have a good brain, but not necessarily a quick brain, so that might not...
	I know I'd walk away from that thinking, you know, I wish I'd have said, you know, about fill in the blanks a hundred times, so...
	All right. Well, this is no problem.
	I mean, if you feel like it at any time, just let me know, and I'll...
	I'm gracious, obviously, of those kinds of things, so I mean, I'm not going to try and sort of dominate or anything like that.
	But if you feel like it at any point, let me know.
	And the other thing I just want to...
	Sorry, go ahead. There's a lot of things in that podcast that still were not...
	You know, you're still saying some things that don't really connect with...
	You know, basically in terms of the results, you know, the consequences.
	Right, right. Okay, well, I know that somebody posted, I can't remember if it was you or Fugle posted a response to the podcast, which I haven't had time to go over in detail, so I certainly will look into that, because, I mean, the last thing I want to be is wrong about this.
	I just, either I have...
	A good instinctive reason for my position or rational reason, or I have a massive emotional block, right?
	Because normally I'm pretty curious about this stuff, so I'm sure I'm just willing to keep hammering away at my own perceptions to see if I can't find a chink to get closer to your position.
	That would be great. Hopefully the debate will continue, but it's all in the spirit of understanding where rationality leads and Right.
	And then, you know, one of the reasons that I think that when I get frustrated or when I get angry or when I get emotional, it's sort of in the podcast, I mean, it doesn't mean anything other than they're my feelings, right?
	So it's no demand on anyone else to do anything.
	It's certainly no demand on anyone else to manage my feelings.
	But the reason that I do that is not just because I think, it's not because I want to be honest, just because I want to be honest about what I feel, but I also kind of want to demonstrate that you can be both passionate and logical at the same time, because a lot of people in the freedom movement, I think, are a little bit over-intellectual.
	Myself, I have that tendency as well, right?
	Point out that passion and rationality can go hand in hand.
	And I also want to give people some sort of demonstrations because we all do face frustrations in our debates.
	And my first tendency based on sort of my own emotional history is to sort of pretend that I'm not or feel that it's immature to get frustrated or to get whatever.
	And so I sort of want to point out that it can be very helpful.
	And I've actually had it in sort of conversations where I've been frustrated, and through the process of being frustrated, I've actually come to another person.
	There's an old in Tennessee, I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee, that's fooling me once.
	I'm sorry?
	I don't know what that was.
	I think we have our president.
	I think George W. is interfering here.
	I think you had a lot of reason to be frustrated.
	One thing that Fogle points out in that post is just that there's a big difference between non-compatible determinism and compatibilism determinism.
	I think it's interesting in a way because you and I agree a lot on On just about everything in terms of the consequences and whether compatibilism makes sense and all that stuff.
	You know, we just disagree on which side of the, you know, which assumption makes the most sense given the evidence.
	But in terms of, yeah, does that change the nature of responsibility?
	Does it change the nature of morality?
	Does it change the nature of good and evil?
	Definitely. You know, no doubt about it.
	And that's why I think it's important.
	It is. Well, yeah, because, look, I mean, if everything's determined, then the last thing I'd want to do is waste my time on all the podcasts, right?
	Now, that's different.
	That I still disagree with you on, because what you're doing there is feeling like you don't impact reality because it's determined, and I understand that that's deep and almost mysterious and complicated.
	It's tough to... But I'll have a look at that, and what I'll do is I'm sure it'll be a great post by Fugle, so...
	What I'll do is I'll read it on a podcast as a rebuttal to my previous podcast because I'm very aware that with the exception of the Sunday afternoon talks that I kind of have the microphone and so I would really want to make sure that when people are debating with me that I give them their voice.
	That's why I post as many negative emails as I can or critical emails, right?
	Is there any chance of engaging you in a slightly more maybe formatted written debate with a couple of pre-established ground rules?
	Because one of the things with the boards is the conversation is so easy to sidetrack.
	You mentioned that you came into the thread and posted some things about the consequences and didn't feel like you got a satisfactory answer.
	But part of the reason for that is just the conversation went a different direction.
	Right, right. There's so many different ideas coming into any one of those threads.
	It's very easy. It's very difficult to hold on to one and follow it through.
	I think that, if you don't mind, the way that we might be able to approach that would be that we could have a...
	Like a Skype cast kind of typed conversation, just between you and I, say, and then we could post, like if we want we could edit and then post that on the boards as a completed discussion.
	Because then it's just you and I, it doesn't wander off into all these different directions.
	We also get time to think and to formulate our responses and that might be a good way of doing it.
	Yeah, I'm interested in that.
	Adi wants me to bring the system up.
	I have another debate forum that I've been working on that I think would also be a good forum, and maybe if we can get together and talk a minute, I'll show it to you and see if you like it.
	Okay, just send me a link through e-mail and I'll have a look at it.
	Very good. Now, was there anything else that you wanted to add to this aspect?
	I'm done. Thank you. Okay.
	No, thank you. And, of course, thanks for all of the energy that you're putting into the board.
	And also, I still have to – you guys are making a great case.
	And the fact that I'm frustrated might be because you're making such a great case.
	Right? It might not be because you're wrong, but because you're right.
	I'm going to step back. Stewart has a lot more history on this.
	I'm new to it, and his post is awesome.
	So if you make the podcast out of that, it's going to be a great direction for the conversation, too.
	Excellent. Now, David has asked a question about IP, because that's another conversation that I think we've perfectly resolved to everybody's satisfaction in intellectual property.
	Just as we've closed off the determinist debate, we've also closed off the IP debate.
	I'm just kidding. Go ahead. Hi.
	Can you all hear me? Yes.
	My question is, now you've come down to a position that supports intellectual property rights, And I certainly agree with that in the sense of, you know, that you and me can contract that if you sell me a book, I won't give it to anyone else.
	And if I do, then I'll be punished or something like that.
	But it seems like a fundamental part of intellectual property rights is that they would bind people who don't agree to the contract.
	For example, if someone else sees that book and then they start, I mean, they didn't make any agreement with you and they start distributing the ideas.
	Or it wouldn't have to be a book.
	It could also be some kind of technological innovation that you invented.
	And, you know, to everyone who you sell it to, they agree not to, you know, not to rip it off and whatnot.
	But someone else who didn't buy it sees how this, you know, figures out how it works by watching someone who's using it and makes something similar.
	So, you know, what would your, you know, I mean, a position on that be?
	I mean, to me, it seems like that would be something that would be perfectly legitimate.
	Yeah, I mean, I know what you're saying.
	So if I have some black box that does X and I say that you can't de-engineer it or whatever, but someone else sees you manipulating it and says, oh, I know how that works on the inside, and recreates something like it, is that sort of what you mean?
	Yes, that's kind of basically what I was getting at.
	Right. Well, I mean, I think I'll sort of give you the two short answers.
	I know it's shocking, but I'll do my best.
	Because I actually noticed the other day, I had only about 18 minutes to do a podcast.
	I managed to do the whole thing in 18 minutes, which led me wondering what the heck I'm doing with the extra 20 minutes a day.
	But anyway. The first thing, of course, is that if something is simple enough to be reproduced simply by glancing at it, it's probably not complicated enough to be protected even under existing patent laws.
	I know that that's a bit of a cheap shot answer, so I won't sort of linger on that, but that sort of is important that the more you want to protect the intellectual property of something, the more complicated it is, right?
	So if I have a mousetrap, someone can figure out how that mousetrap works just by glancing at it, so it would be pretty hard to...
	To patent that sort of idea, even in a sort of DRO world or in a world without a government.
	And the second thing is that I think, I mean, all property rights are optional, right?
	Fundamentally, right? I mean, if somebody steals my car, I can just sort of say, you know, I don't know, like I'm Bill Gates or something.
	I can say, you know, what's that?
	Twelve seconds of work for me.
	I'll just go buy another car. So all property rights are optional.
	And to some degree, the property rights that we pursue are those that are valid for us economically, right?
	So if somebody steals my car, I'm going to go to the cops.
	If somebody takes my pencil, I'm not going to because the labor of recovering that property is not really worth it, right?
	Which is where you get... It's the same thing with small debts, right?
	Nobody goes around trying to collect the $50 debt.
	They just report you to the credit rating guys, and that's how that's enforced.
	So, I think that for stuff where the economic interest of, say, an artist, right, like you've got a book, right, something where the economic interest of the artist is not really harmed, which is the case, like, if you lend a book to someone else and they read it and give it back to you and that person probably would never have bought my book anyway, you can't trace it, blah, blah, blah, then I don't think that's any particular sort of issue.
	I'd have a sort of problem with libraries and so on and I'd probably want to put something in there around libraries reproducing my books because that's just a violation of...
	What I would consider to be how I'd want my property to be used.
	So in the realm of IP, I think that it's something that constantly needs to be renegotiated in a way that is different from regular property rights.
	So I certainly agree with you there.
	If you steal my car, I don't get to have a car, but you do, right?
	So it's a zero-sum game.
	But if somebody photocopies my novel, it's not like I am now out one novel, right?
	So I certainly am fully aware of all of that.
	So the cost-benefit analysis of enforcing property rights in the IP realm is very complicated, which is why I think that the optimal solutions will come around through the competitive natures of DROs, who both want to satisfy and have artists come to them, right?
	So the ultimate artist DRO will be...
	Anybody who glances at my dust jacket of my book will pay me $500, right?
	That would be the ultimate artist's DRO. It's just that nobody else would want to deal with that DRO because it would be far too punitive.
	And so there would be some balance between protecting the right of artists or creators or entrepreneurs and to make sure that what they want is to get paid for their work, right?
	Which is sort of what everybody wants, right?
	So there would be some balance that would be worked out in a constantly refined scenario between the DROs, the artists, and the consumers...
	To make sure that everyone was getting paid, but nobody was sort of taking all the profits from getting paid and pouring it into fruitless pursuit of people around property rights and so on.
	So I do agree with you.
	It's a little bit different from regular property because reproduction is not theft in the direct sense, but I also think that...
	People who have those kinds of ideas do want to get paid for them, and that it's going to be some sort of network of constant negotiation that's going to keep optimizing this stuff.
	It's sort of like, you know, with insurance companies and the medical field, new inventions are coming along, and prevention is always better than cure, but if you do get sick, you want the cure, and so there's a lot of constant renegotiation that would go on in a free market around GROs and doctors and cures and so on, and I would see the same thing occurring with intellectual property rights, if that helps. I had a kind of, you know, that answer is, you know, very satisfactory to me.
	You know, it seems to solve the problem.
	But, you know, one question I have is kind of relating to that.
	Sorry, I just interrupted. That would be a great motto for free domain radio.
	It seems to solve the problem.
	Yeah, I think so.
	The illusion of solutions.
	Go ahead. Now, this kind of revolves around implicit contract.
	You know, let's say if you sell me a book and, you know, the only thing you sell to me is if I agree not to distribute it to all the rest of my friends and, you know, let them photocopy it, right?
	Yeah. And if I do that, then, you know, there can be all kinds of sanctions against me and so on and so forth.
	But I can still do it.
	Now, my friends, you know, they could, I could give them the book and they could photocopy it.
	They haven't agreed to that contract.
	Now, the question, the kind of question would be, and this might be something that DROs might establish, you know, What are their obligations as far as finding out the terms to which the book was sold and whatnot?
	Would a copyright notice from the bottom of the book be a binding contract?
	No, I don't think so.
	I would say that it would have to involve a transaction of some kind.
	You would be the one responsible if the book got to all your friends, right?
	I don't think your friends would be responsible because they haven't signed anything.
	Yeah, that's kind of where I was thinking.
	On the other hand, that would be the default state.
	But, you know, you can make kind of almost anything you want through contract, right?
	I mean, the DROs could say to anyone, there could be a large network of DROs where people have kind of an obligation before they say photocopy a book that their friend gave them to find out what license the book is distributed under, right?
	Right, right. Yeah, for sure.
	For sure, that certainly could be the case.
	There's lots of other ways that you could do it, too, right?
	I mean, you could do – I mean, this is all silly ideas, right?
	But, I mean, you could do things like have an ink that didn't show up on photocopiers or something like that.
	You could do a whole bunch of things that would be designed to sort of protect that kind of property.
	But, yeah, you can't have implicit contracts.
	I can't – Put a contract on the outside of my car that says, you owe me $500, drive through a neighborhood, and everybody who looks at it now owes me $500, right?
	So you can't sort of print something and then have it binding on somebody just by touching it or looking at it.
	So I think it does have to be with the person who primarily buys the good to make sure it's not redistributed in a way that violates the...
	You can have a contract when money's changing hands in a voluntary transaction, but you can't just by sort of printing it somewhere, I think.
	Okay, this is kind of from tangent off, but you just made an argument against implicit contracts.
	But it seems that a large part of the economy relies on implicit contracts.
	For example, I walk into a McDonald's or, you know, and I order a meal and I don't pay until I've finished ordering.
	I mean, until I've finished eating and they bring me the bill.
	If I just got up and walked away, that would be considered theft.
	But that, to me, seems like an implicit contract.
	So is there a distinction that we can make between that kind of implicit contract And the kind where, you know, it's a copyright notice in a book or an IP sticker on a car saying you owe me $500 for looking at this car.
	Well, sure. I mean, I don't think it's necessarily an implicit contract in a restaurant because the price is right next to the food you order.
	Right? So I don't know that that's necessarily an implicit contract.
	So, you know, if you order anything and it's delivered to you, then you've got to pay for it.
	Whether you pay ahead or six months down the road on a proof credit or something, I don't think it's that important.
	But the other thing I would say about restaurants is that most restaurants, when somebody welches on the bill, they don't go to the cops.
	Right? Because it's just not worth it.
	It's like a $30 meal or a $20 meal or something.
	So if somebody welches on the bill, all that happens is that They don't let you come back.
	They'll remember you.
	Trust me, I was a waiter. You remember the people who pay you well or who don't or tip well or don't or the one or two guys who vouch out on the bill.
	You remember those faces, right?
	So that's what would happen is the...
	You know, under a DRO system, right, the restaurant would simply enter the person's, you know, face or whatever.
	If they had video cameras, they might transmit something.
	I don't know, whatever, right? And say, this guy welched on the bill, and that would affect his contract rating.
	But fundamentally, what would happen is that the restaurant simply wouldn't let you back in.
	So you just sort of scratched a restaurant that you're eating at.
	And yes, people can do it when they're on vacation and never going to go back or something like that.
	You know, I still don't see that that, even if you did say that the restaurant was an implicit contract, the implicit contract in any store is, I'm open for business so you can come in and buy something, but that doesn't mean that everyone gets to come in and buy something, right?
	So, you know, if you run a store for Jewish memorabilia and some guy comes in with a swastika shaved on his forehead, you might not want to sell him something, right?
	So, I mean, I think that would sort of be my approach to solving it.
	The restaurant would simply ban you, but I don't know that it's implicit if the price is printed right there.
	Yeah, actually, now that you mention that, that doesn't make sense, given that there's a price printed right next to it.
	But it seems like... The thing that I mentioned in my very first sentence was the thing that clinched the argument, but then I just kept going, right?
	Yeah, you do that a lot, but, you know, don't feel bad.
	Yeah, don't go changing, babe.
	That's what I keep saying to myself.
	You can just have one word, you know, podcast, and, you know...
	Got it. But, you know, maybe this isn't really a quite implicit contract, but there are...
	When you enter almost any private business where you're buying something, there are implicit rules.
	You know, in a restaurant, you don't go in there and, you know, start, I don't know, shoving dollar bills down the waiter's breasts or something like you would in a strip club, for example.
	That's right, sure, yeah. Yeah, at least the majority of them.
	Or, you know, and also there's common rules of behavior like, you know, you don't talk very loudly and get up and run around the place and so on and so forth.
	Smoke cigars or whatever, yeah.
	Yeah, yeah. But, I mean, I guess that might not necessarily be implicit contract, which is, you know, they kick you out if you do it, right?
	Yeah, it's their property, right?
	So, it's like if you go to a dinner party, you tend not to urinate in the punch bowl, right?
	Because if you do, I mean, unless we're back at this gentleman's fret, but you don't, I mean, you can do those things, of course, but then since it's their property, they can kick you out.
	So, look at that. You're shocked because it was a short answer, I know.
	No, I just, you know, that seems to be the end of the interesting topics.
	I mean, that seems to have exhausted my curiosity in that area.
	Right. I mean, the great thing about the DRO theory in general is when people say, well, it should work in some kind of different way, it's like, great.
	Then if you're right, like, we don't need to disagree.
	It's like you and I arguing about what the supermarket should stock, right?
	Why should it stock pitted...
	Pitted grapes or pitted olives.
	I would never eat those things.
	It's like, well, then don't, right?
	So the great thing about the DRO model or the anarcho-capitalist model is when people get really up in arms and say, well, it would never work that way, it's like...
	Great, then you could start a DRO and make a killing, right?
	If you've got a better way of doing things that satisfies more people, fantastic.
	It's one of these really flexible systems that it's like sort of trying to have a sword fight with fog to attack the DRO model because whatever you're really offended about or upset about, I don't mean you, but whatever anyone is really offended about or upset about, they will just, you know, some market will adapt to it, right?
	Yeah, that makes sense to me.
	Especially since there can be, you know, kind of community covenants and, you know, a kind of differentiation of people separating into, you know, living under the kinds of rules that they find most amenable.
	Right, and we're so used to this government model where the first person past the gate gets to impose his or her will on everyone else that we're so paranoid about rules, right?
	I get these in moral discussions a lot as well.
	So when I'm starting to discuss things with people either through email or sometimes on the board, we're starting to discuss ethics.
	People get really tense.
	Because morals in the modern world are the fuel of government power, right?
	I mean, this is what is used to justify politicians or people enforcing their will on everyone else.
	So when you start talking about morality, a lot of people in their gut get domination, right?
	Or abuse or control or either my way wins or your way wins, but we can't both win.
	Whereas the great thing about...
	The DRO model and the arco-capitalist model is, you know, we don't have to fight, you know.
	We can all just get along, you know.
	It's the kumbaya society.
	If you have enough time, I had a question about the argument from effect.
	And the question is, to me, it seems like a lot of the arguments for, for example, the libertarian non-aggression axiom Sorry, just before you go ahead with that, we've had a good comment, I think.
	There are some restaurants which don't print the price of the food, and so if you have to ask, don't eat.
	I think that's important. And the beauty of the DRO system is that it is not a system.
	And it's ironic that as we argue against the master plan society, we're expected to come up with the perfect plan for anarchistic society.
	Just before we keep going with your question, I do want to get to it.
	There's a very important point that this is why the argument from effect is a dangerous thing.
	We'll get back to your thing in just a sec.
	Because whenever you're talking about anarchic capitalism with people, people are like, oh yeah, well what about this?
	Oh yeah, well what about that?
	What about the other? Like you're some all-knowing genius that within your own brain you can reproduce the entire power of And problem solving of a free market composed of hundreds of millions or billions of self-interested individuals.
	It's really funny. The degree of omniscience that is expected of anarcho-capitalists and the solutions that we're expected to come up with is quite funny.
	And so that's just why I sort of gave up on that whole thing prior to and went to the argument for morality.
	But just remember that when people keep saying, well, what about, what about, what about?
	It's like, well, you expect me to reproduce within my own mind an entire society of Well, before I ask that, that actually is an interesting point, you know, because when they're asking us to do that, the task they're asking us to do is essentially the task that would take, you know, thousands and maybe millions of brilliant entrepreneurs, you know, to engineer all these different solutions.
	I mean, there's, you know, crime and poverty and health care and, On and on and on and on.
	And they're kind of asking us to be like the socialist, you know, economy planners.
	And, you know, we just demonstrated that, you know, you can't calculate a centrally controlled economy.
	So why would it work in the free market, you know, if we're going to kind of omnisciently foresee all this any more than under the socialist system in the USSR? Well, and the other thing I say to people is, like, you know, if I really could honestly predict the self-interested decisions of hundreds of millions of people in the future, I wouldn't be talking to you.
	I'd be going to make a killing on the stock market.
	So you may be asking a little bit more than a human being can actually achieve, right?
	And if somebody could achieve it, that would be...
	Like, if we did have an answer for everything, that would actually be an argument against anarcho-capitalism, because it would mean that one guy would be able to come up with an answer...
	For all of society, which would mean that central planning would be a possibility, right?
	It's one of these things you can't win for trying, right?
	Yeah, that's actually an interesting point that they're kind of asking us to prove their point indirectly.
	Sure, sure. That's why you've got to keep going back to the argument for morality, right?
	Yeah, yeah. I mean, to me, there's nothing wrong with coming up with ideas for what might happen in an anarchist society because, you know, someone's going to need to do it eventually.
	But, you know, certainly, you know, neither you or me is going to be sending up, you know, thousands and thousands of companies to deal with all these issues.
	No, I could love that.
	But my original question about the argument from effect was, you know, when I say something like, you know, it's wrong to murder, and, you know, the reason I say this is because, well, it's wrong to point a gun at someone and shoot them because, well, that kills them, and then you're priving of the right to life, and they have a right to life because of, you know, the non-aggression axiom which states that, you know, it's wrong to use aggression against anyone else.
	And, you know, the reason for this is because of human nature and you can't argue for violent interactions because argument is a peaceful activity, you know, at least not violence physically.
	So that kind of, you know, that seems in a way like an argument from effect.
	So, I mean, how do we differentiate that kind of argument from effect from the argument from effect of, well, you know, we need to have a state because blah, blah, blah.
	Right. No, I fully understand what you mean, and there is a real conundrum, and this is to some degree the objectivist conundrum around disproving the efficacy of violence, right?
	I mean, my general approach to the question of murder, for instance, right?
	Obviously, murder is going to happen no matter what.
	There's no utopia, right?
	I mean, otherwise we wouldn't need philosophy or thought at all, right?
	But my approach to that would be something like this.
	So somebody says, well, why wouldn't you just up and kill someone?
	It's like, well... You could, obviously.
	But the danger to human life is not the individual serial killer, right?
	Like there's, what, a dozen of those every century and they kill five or ten people, right?
	So the head count is like, you know, six minutes of World War II in one location, right?
	So the real danger to human life is not those people who use violence because they're crazy or greedy or sexual perverts or whatever.
	That's not the danger to human life, other than the random individuals that those people prey on.
	The danger to human life is...
	The argument that it is good to murder, right?
	Not that murder exists, or crazy people out there.
	The real danger to human life, what got 250-odd million people killed last century, was the idea that it's good to murder, right?
	So it's moral to obey the president and go and shoot people that he points his fingers at.
	And it's moral to go and take property from taxpayers, and if they fight back, to shoot them or ship them off to the rape rooms, right?
	So the argument that's really dangerous is that it's good to kill.
	Right? So, that's the argument that needs to be examined, right?
	And so, I don't think it's important to disprove the individual scenario.
	It's the moral argument that it's good to kill that we've really got to keep our eye on.
	And so, in that context, if somebody says, how do you go about this?
	I'd say, well, the proposition, it's good to murder.
	Like, murder is morally good.
	Killing somebody who's not directly aggressing against you or whatever is morally good.
	Then that's a moral principle that can't work.
	It can't work. Because if you're saying that killing someone is good, then that's not something that two people in the same room can both achieve at the same time.
	Ethics should be universal.
	So if I'm killing you, obviously I'm fulfilling the moral obligation of it being good to kill, but you, not so much.
	Because if you're killing me at the same time, then we're both dead.
	It's impossible to have a moral argument that says people should kill.
	So that's the one that I would sort of focus on.
	And if the moral argument that people should kill...
	Is false, then of course, you know, the police, the military, the state as a whole, all these kinds of things really fall away as moral possibilities or as morally good entities or morally good commandments.
	So I'm not so much of a big one on the human nature of the right to life stuff because I find that just tends to get very complicated.
	What I want to ask people is, are you putting forward a moral proposition that says it's good to kill people?
	Because if so, you have some serious logical problems, right?
	Because people in a coma, right?
	So people in a coma should be moral, right?
	Or at least not be immoral, right?
	Now, if it's good to kill people, then everybody who's not currently in the act of killing someone is not being moral, right?
	So a child who's, you know, a baby in a crib is evil because they're not doing the good thing of killing people.
	And, you know, when you're not actually choking a guy to death, you're not a moral human being.
	And there's something kind of fundamentally wrong with that.
	Like anyone who doesn't understand that argument, I would just sort of back out of the room kind of slowly.
	And not make any sudden moves because they're obviously kind of sociopathic, right?
	So I just, you know, I focus on like, well, what's the moral argument behind this?
	Are you saying that it's good to kill people?
	Okay, so it's morally good to kill people.
	How the hell is that going to work in reality, right?
	I mean, that doesn't, you know, what happens when you run out of victims, right?
	Once my lie is done, are you like no longer a moral person?
	So that would sort of be my approach to it.
	Does that sort of make any sense?
	Yeah. I myself, you know, believe kind of in starting from a few basic principles like the non-aggression axiom and the homesteading principle.
	And that's for Murray Rothbard.
	And, you know, he said something that kind of, you know, stuck with me, which is that, you know, no one's going to go to the barracks for improved transaction costs and market efficiencies, right?
	You know, and that's kind of your argument, too.
	I mean, you know, people don't...
	They go to the war in Iraq because, you know, efficiency or whatever, any kind of, you know, utilitarian arguments.
	They go there because of, you know, patriotism and all this other nonsense.
	But that actually kind of brings me to an interesting question, which is, you know, what is, I mean, we have emotions that generally, for most normal healthy people, tend to produce a natural avulsion to things like murder and rape.
	And it seems like, you know, the emotions, I mean, some people I don't want to discount emotions, but it seems like they're kind of trying to lead us in the right place.
	To me, it seems like it takes a lot of conscious effort to overcome the natural repulsion to those kinds of acts.
	I have a question.
	Yeah, I'm sorry. My question was kind of like, it seems like this is where emotions are leading us.
	What is the link between emotion and morality?
	It seems like emotions are trying to tell us something.
	Right, right. Well, there are emotions that are sort of innate to our human nature, right?
	With hunger and thirst and babies cry when their ass is uncomfortable and stuff like that.
	And then there's emotional scar tissue, which occurs when you're punished for not complying with somebody, right?
	So there's sort of the natural wellspring of human emotions that are sort of in nature or nature, which would occur to somebody on a desert island, right?
	I don't like desert island examples, but this one's not too bad from that standpoint.
	So you have those emotions, which sort of naturally occur within your system, and then you have the emotions which are scar tissue from the result of emotional abuse for people who are punished for not conforming with the commandments of their elders or whatever you want to call it.
	And the Marines are very clear on this, right?
	I mean, you don't get a firm handshake and a pat on the head when you go to become a Marine, right?
	You get screamed at and yelled at and, you know, you're sort of broken down emotionally.
	I mean, they're very aware of all of this and all of that's been sort of developed pretty strongly since the Second World War because they figured out that only, like, one out of five soldiers actually ended up firing their weapons, right?
	So, to me, again, as I sort of mentioned this metaphor before, and Greg gave me a better...
	Actually, I used Greg once. It's better.
	You have a natural length of your neck, right?
	You're going to be as tall as you are.
	You've got a length of your neck. But there are certain tribes in Africa where they keep putting these rings around you, and you end up with this incredibly elongated neck, like three or four times its natural length, and you can't support your head anymore, so you're constantly dependent upon these brass rings around your neck.
	Emotions that are natural and spontaneous to human nature are those that occur in the absence of coercion or punishment or emotional bullying or manipulation or cruelty or propaganda or whatever.
	But since human beings generally are programmed to survive, Not to be independent, right?
	I mean, given the choice between independence and survival, almost every human being, and logically so from a biological standpoint, will choose to conform.
	But you have to live with yourself and conform, right?
	So you have to tell yourself it's a good thing, and of course there's lots of people in society who will tell you that conforming is a good thing because they're the people who want you to conform, right?
	So they can get you to believe it's a moral thing, right?
	So I would say that the relationship between the scar tissue of emotional baggage that comes out of violence or coercion or manipulation or bullying is what leads people into conformity, right?
	And generally that's not because they're pursuing a good thing.
	They're just keeping away from a negative emotional state.
	Like if you don't conform, you experience a great deal of anxiety.
	So in order to avoid that, you'll just do what everybody tells you to.
	So that would sort of be my particular approach.
	That's why we need to get rid of abusive parenting.
	We need for parents to... And that's also why we need to get rid of public education and we need to have a more humane way of approaching our own children so that we can let their natural emotions sort of flow forward without giving them all this nonsense that makes them just so, you know, terrified of thinking for themselves and compliant and so on.
	Does that sort of help?
	Yes, this has been very helpful, and that's why I'm proud to donate to FDR, and I think other people should as well.
	Dude, I'm going to donate back to you just for that comment.
	Thank you. They mash their shoulders down so they don't actually get taller.
	I don't know. They actually just mash down their shoulders so the next don't stretch.
	The Chinese foot binding is a more accurate analogy.
	I agree. I used to use this Chinese foot binding thing, you know, like the women in the 19th century.
	In China, you had these normal developing human feet, and then they would bind them so that they sort of...
	Would curl in on their own heels and they'd hobble around for the rest of their lives.
	But I had just gone through it, a whole bunch of stuff.
	Now, Rod, did you have a question about moral, immoral, amoral?
	Christine is making a little bit of food, so I've got another couple of minutes.
	We can go a little bit over if Raj, you wanted to ask that question.
	Or is he just a typist?
	Mic me. I didn't actually unmike you.
	You should be... Yeah, you're unmuted, everyone.
	No, you are...
	Oh, hang on.
	Hello? All right, everybody is unmuted.
	All right, I guess I got into podcast mode.
	Sorry, I clicked the wrong button. Sorry, we're out.
	You're unmiked. Go for it.
	Okay, so I'm on. Oh, yeah.
	Earlier, with the Moral to Murder...
	Immoral to murder thing.
	I've brought this up before in discussions with people, and they say, you know, if I try to prove...
	Actually, I put forth a theory on if something is immoral, then I can just prove that easier than saying that something is moral.
	Right. And so when I say that land ownership is immoral...
	And I can disprove that theory really quickly because, well, I guess property ownership is an easier term right here because if I pick up an apple and eat it, you know, I'm owning that apple.
	I have fundamentally changed the substance of that apple into, you know, me.
	So anyway, it's easier to disprove the negative of a proposition sometimes.
	But then someone can come back and say, well, what if something is just amoral?
	Because, you know, if I try to use the law of the excluded middle, Sometimes, you know, people say, well, what if there is a minimal?
	You know, you can't always say that the negative of immorality is morality.
	You can just say that it's amoral, like there's no moral rule or against.
	Does that make any sense? No, it really does.
	And I've got to tell you, I mean, I know we spend a lot of time on morality, and that's just because the science has really fallen into disrepair pretty much since the Enlightenment and certainly since Socrates.
	We do spend a lot of time on ethics, and I think that's important.
	But, by heavens, the vast majority of decisions that we make in life have absolutely nothing to do with ethics.
	Nothing, nothing, nothing whatsoever to do with ethics.
	Where do you live? Which route are you going to take to work?
	Which car are you going to buy?
	What kind of house do you want?
	How are you going to paint your living room?
	All of these kinds of things. Nothing to do with ethics whatsoever.
	Ethics is like, in my own life, for instance, I've maybe made 20 really important ethical decisions.
	Maybe, right? But I mean, how many decisions do I make during the day?
	Well, hundreds, if not thousands.
	So, ethics, in terms of the really important stuff in life, Absolutely a tiny, tiny minority of your total life.
	And there's stuff like, do I tell the truth if somebody asks me something that I'm not supposed to tell?
	I mean, those things aren't really, you know, society isn't going to live or die based on those, although if your wife told you not to tell, then you might live or die based on them.
	But ethics as a sort of general overarching thing is really not a significant thing in my life.
	Like, I've had maybe a couple of times in my life major ethical decisions where I really had to wrestle with stuff.
	But for the most part, ethics is just a tiny, tiny little thing that you don't...
	It's like ER, right?
	How many times do we end up in the ER? Well, hopefully none.
	Maybe once in our life.
	And that's probably right at the end.
	But it's not really a big thing for most people to live with.
	So the vast majority of things are amoral, right?
	The moral stuff is, you know, tell the truth, be honest, you know, whatever, to the degree that it serves your self-interest and is universally applicable and so on, right?
	I don't claim to sort of, you know, somebody makes me a pie and says, how did you like the pie?
	Unless it was really revolting and I'd never want to see it again in my life, I'll say, oh, it was great, thank you very much, even if it was just an okay pie.
	I mean, that kind of stuff I don't consider to be too important.
	But the vast majority of things that we deal with in life just don't have any ethical content.
	It's only because ethics is in such a bad state of disrepair for us as a culture or for the world as a society that we need to spend a lot of time on it.
	But once it's solved and people have kind of got the basics of the We get to kind of put that stuff behind us, right?
	There was a lot of debate about the scientific method in the 16th and 17th centuries, but there's no debate about it now because it's just an accepted thing, and that's where we want to get to, I think, with ethics, where the immoral stuff is just taken for granted the same way we don't sort of reopen debates about slavery in America anymore.
	You just sort of put that stuff behind you.
	It's just generally accepted, right?
	And that's, I think, where we want to get to so that we can focus on Yeah, I'm still not really sure about addresses.
	I'm not sure if I phrased my question or intro properly there, but...
	I was just wondering...
	Is it a valid approach to say when someone says, okay, prove that property ownership is moral?
	And I say, okay, let's test this.
	Let's say that property ownership is immoral.
	Then anyone who tries to prevent me from owning property because it's immoral is then themselves owning the property because they're controlling the property.
	They're saying what I can and can't do with it.
	And so by contradicting themselves, They are proving that the immoral proposition, that it's immoral, is false.
	But is that really actually proving that it is moral?
	Or are you just proving the immoral?
	Yeah, no, I would say that if you say that the proposition is that nobody can own property, I tend to take a bit more of an immediate approach to that.
	I'll just say, okay, give me your wallet.
	And if they don't want to give me their wallet, then obviously they have some difficulty believing their own moral propositions, in which case it's like, well, why are you bothering me with theories that you don't even believe in yourself, right?
	I mean, that's just silly. But if they do want to sort of go to the abstract layer, that's fine, right?
	Then they say, okay, well, the proposition is that no one can own property, right?
	Well, are your vocal cords your property?
	Because you just used them, right?
	I mean, and you've got clothes on, so obviously you believe in that.
	But if you do have, even at an abstract level, the pure proposition, then...
	It's like any scientific thing, right?
	If somebody puts forward a scientific theory based on the proposition that 2 plus 2 is 5, right, all you have to do is disprove it, right?
	You don't actually have to come up with a counterexample because they're putting forward a proposition, right?
	If somebody puts a product in my supermarket shelf and I decide not to buy it, they don't call me up and say, well, what product should we put there instead, right?
	I mean, just don't ask me.
	You're the ones coming up with the products, right?
	I just didn't want to buy it. So I don't think that you need to disprove anything, right?
	If people are coming up with moral propositions, you just disprove it, and they have to then come up with another one, right?
	And if you want, you can put forward the one that says property rights are valid, and, you know, they can try and disprove that if they want.
	But you don't have to lift a finger, fundamentally.
	The burden of proof is on whoever's putting forth the proposition.
	So here's a question, Mike, from an actual conversation I've had with some people.
	Say that there's a group of aboriginals somewhere that...
	Who believe that to claim ownership of land or to claim ownership of an area of land is immoral to say.
	It's bad. So, you know, then Whitey shows up on his ships and says, you know, hey, we're going to, you know, clear cut this forest and plant some corn here or something like that.
	And he goes up to the...
	Even if Whitey's trying to be...
	I say Whitey, but I probably shouldn't say that.
	It's kind of... No, you can say Honky.
	So Honky goes up to the Aborigines, and even if he's trying to be good, even if he's trying to be moral by his own code of morality, which is to say that, you know, this guy is in charge of this land.
	I better ask his permission before I clear cut.
	And he says, you know, points at the trees and says, who owns this property?
	And the guy says back to him because it's his culture to say no one owns it.
	Well, then, you know, Honky goes and cuts down all the trees and starts planting crops.
	Well, then the Aboriginal is going to get ticked off.
	Does he have a valid right to be ticked off because he actually answered as honestly as he could?
	Sure. I mean, there's a bit of a fantasy camp in that kind of scenario because the historical reality is that the Indians sold the land, right?
	I mean, that's what you don't hear a lot about, right?
	But it's sort of kind of true, right?
	The Indians said, yeah, I own it.
	Give me some beads, right? I mean, that's not what actually happened in history, but let's just say that that is the case, right?
	The question then to ask for me is, okay, well, do the Indians own anything?
	Do they own teepees?
	Do they own clothing?
	And that kind of stuff. It's like, yes.
	Okay, so they believe in the property rights of ownership.
	They're creating an artificial distinction between, say, a teepee and a wood or a piece of forest or something or a piece of land.
	And so if the moral proposition is, I can own a teepee, but I can't own a piece of land, then that's fine.
	You can put that forward as a moral proposition, but you do kind of have to point out what is fundamentally different between a teepee and a piece of land.
	If I have a physics theory which says, all rocks fall downward except red rocks that fall upwards, then I have to prove the material difference between these two types of rocks if my theory is going to be valid.
	I can't just create arbitrary distinctions, right?
	So then you have to say, okay, well, what's fundamentally different between a teepee and a piece of land?
	Well, nothing. They're both just material objects, right?
	So one can move and one can't.
	So what, right? If moving is the issue, you cut down the tree and move off the tree.
	They probably wouldn't want that either, right?
	So if they allow for ownership in any kind, then they have to be accepting property rights, and then you can't just sort of create distinctions and say, well, you can own this, but you can't own that, unless you can prove some sort of scientific fundamental difference between these things, right?
	Yeah, my actual approach to this conversation was to say that just because these aboriginals believe something, it doesn't make it true.
	It's just that these guys are confused about something.
	They're confused about the definition of ownership.
	And perhaps what they really mean to say is that the resource belongs to all of us to be used equally, but that also implies that someone is saying that as It's a rule.
	So whoever's making that rule, whether it be the shaman or the medicine man or the council of eight or whatever the heck it's going to be, they're putting forth a rule meaning that whoever is making that rule is the owner, or they're claiming ownership at least.
	Right, and given that all property, except for like air and maybe fish in the ocean when there's not that many people around, all property is single-use, right?
	I eat the orange, you don't want what's left over, right?
	Unless you want to fertilize your fields, right?
	So, any time where people say, well, this is a collective decision and we all get to use it equally, that's nonsense because property is single-use, right?
	I get to use a car, you don't get to use the car at the same time, we're probably going to end up in an accident, right?
	So this idea that it's a collective decision is really nonsense.
	It was the same idea with communism, right?
	I know you're not suggesting anything like that as a positive, but in communism, it's like, oh, we all own this collectively, so all you have to do is go and ask Stalin for it.
	It's like, well, so Stalin owns everything, but nobody else does.
	It's like, but then you're saying property rights exist for this person, i.e.
	Stalin, but not everybody else.
	Well, what's the difference between Stalin and everyone else, where he gets these rights that's the opposite of everyone else and so on?
	That was a really good one, yeah.
	So, yeah, all we're trying to do is take the scientific method and apply it to morality, right?
	I mean, if you're going to say there's a distinction, then tell me there's a distinction.
	I understand there's a difference between an amoeba and a rock because it's verifiable empirically.
	The rock doesn't move unless something's applied to it.
	The amoeba does. The rock doesn't reproduce.
	The amoeba does. So, yeah, absolutely, let's have a distinction between geology and biology.
	Sure, because there's measurable things.
	But you can't just sort of make up rules and say, well, these things are just different.
	If you're going to come up with a rule for a human being, it's got to be for every human being.
	You know, with some minor exceptions, of course, right?
	Like all biological constructs have minor exceptions, like there's mutations and so on.
	So, yeah, people who are mentally deficient fundamentally have different rules.
	And I mean, children have different rules.
	That's all fine, but those things are measurably and empirically you can test those things, right?
	Yeah. One thing that when you mentioned the whole analogy of communism and Stalin being the ultimate owner, that kind of jogged a memory that I was thinking about with this aboriginal model or what-if situation.
	And I kind of wonder if arguments like this haven't been kind of seeded into the population by collectivist teachers and professors in schools because You know, it's the perfect analogy for communism to say that, you know, Aborigines were this poor, you know, Pisadan people that were smashed under the, you know, cruel white guys that came and took their stuff, and they believed in this perfect commune of no one owns anything.
	And so it's kind of like a metaphor in disguise these days to use the, you know, these poor Aborigines or the Indians or whatever as the, you know, the...
	I guess the group to gain sympathy from the students so that then later on they can say, and isn't this great that communism works the same way?
	Maybe we should be like that.
	They're trying to gain sympathy for it.
	I think a lot of socialists kind of have hard-ons for the whole primitive lifestyle.
	And that's a very common thing all the way back to Rousseau for this, the noble savage, right?
	Before civilization came along, we were all running through with our Dick's hanging in the wind and free and vital and, you know, all of this stuff that goes back to D.H. Lawrence and sort of this very back-to-the-earth movement.
	They love that kind of stuff.
	And the funny thing is, of course, I mean, for me it's like, well, why are you here?
	You know, if that kind of nomadic tribal lifestyle is your thing, you know, only 2% of America is inhabited.
	Go for it. I just get so sick of these philosophers who don't live their own ethics.
	If this kind of collective decision-making is the way that you want to do things, why the hell are you a unionized teacher in a capitalist economy, living in a condo?
	It's just funny, right?
	If that's the best thing that's out there...
	Go for it! You know, don't bother me with your philosophy.
	Go live it! And then you can tell me how wonderful it is, right?
	But these guys don't go and live on reservations, because if they actually did go and live on reservations, or did go and join the tribes in Borneo, they'd realize that life in the jungle is kind of shitty, right?
	I mean, there's nothing but bugs.
	There's poison ivy everywhere.
	You've got no dentistry, right?
	I mean, the food supply is unknown.
	There's predators. I mean, it sucks in a very fundamental way.
	And I just remember having a debate with one of my professors in university who was very sort of a back to the land kind of guy, very into native culture.
	And so he mentioned in one class, he said, I went to my cottage this weekend.
	Right? And I was like, you're a carnage?
	Are you crazy? I said, I thought you loved this whole native thing.
	Don't you have like a teepee?
	Or like, have you ever tried this thing on...
	Is it just something you like like in an abstract way?
	Or have you actually tried living this way?
	Because I did live in the woods for about 18 months.
	Like, I was a gold pen, right?
	I at least have some idea what I'm talking about.
	And the moment I meet somebody who's into native culture who spent more than a weekend in a log camp, and I'll be really impressed.
	But yeah, it's just complete nonsense.
	But you're right. They do love that kind of stuff.
	But even more fundamentally... Communism is how families work, right?
	And I think this is why communism has an appeal to a lot of people who can't think very well, right?
	Because, well, you know, I mean, in the family, right, you have the kids aren't charged labor.
	In the family, it very much is from each according to their ability to each according to their needs, right?
	You don't say to your infant son, until you hoe the back 40, you're not getting any breast milk.
	So, I mean, there is that aspect of the family is socialist and then people, because they can't think, they think that what works in the family can work with the military or can work with all that kind of stuff as well.
	So I think they make that kind of mistake.
	That's a good point. Their wee-wees were nasty, brutish and short.
	I think you saw the same documentary I did.
	Isn't that their lives are now Yeah, I think that's right.
	Greg's making the metaphors.
	As men, we have to focus on what's really important.
	All right, well, listen, we've been going for two and a half hours.
	Is there anything else that people have that we can top up in a few minutes?
	I can smell some food brewing on my end, so ideas will have to wait for the stomach.
	Before we finish this, I would like to make a suggestion maybe for a few additional podcasts this week maybe.
	I find Free Domain Radio most fascinating in matters of human relationships.
	Generally, then about the abstract principles of market anarchy.
	And don't get me wrong, these are very interesting debates to have, but I think your strong point is this psychological approach and human relationships.
	So maybe if you can look at, for instance, your relationship with Christina, And how you solve conflicts, because conflicts always appear.
	And I think that's a novel approach that you have, which really is difficult to see in these days, I would say, yeah?
	I think that's a wonderful idea.
	I think that I'll try and rope Christina into doing that as well with me.
	The question is, I'm just talking to Christina, Can we do a couple of podcasts on how we solve conflicts?
	And if you're not there, then it won't work because I do what you tell me to.
	So... She's laughing, but not.
	Anyway, so I appreciate that.
	I think that's a very good idea.
	I think a lot of the stuff around politics and philosophy we're kind of on the same page about, but in the realm of our own immediate lives, the stuff around personal relationships is usually a lot more important, so I really appreciate that, Eddie.
	I think that's an excellent idea.
	We will definitely do that. Yeah, that's where you're breaking new ground, I think, because there's more sort of places I can go to find Arguments for anarcho-capitalism, things like that.
	But when it comes to talking about these personal relationships with the family and spouses and things like that, this is really...
	I've never heard anything like this before.
	So that's, I think, really your strength.
	Well, I appreciate that. I will definitely...
	And you're right. I mean, I would say that most of the stuff that I talk about with philosophy and politics, I've gotten elsewhere, but a lot of the stuff that I talk about with relationships and stuff that Christina and I have worked out together.
	So absolutely, I appreciate that.
	As feedback, we will definitely focus more on that.
	Oh, I have one more feedback while I have your undivided attention.
	Sure. I'm...
	I have a lot of experience on message boards and things like that, but when I go to the Three Domains site, it really is just a monolith of confusion sometimes to me.
	Right. I mean, I said that.
	Well, that's your fault, obviously.
	There's only 15,000 posts.
	God, just read them. Yeah, I know.
	It's like, I feel that someone picking up the podcast tomorrow will be, oh, wow, I'm going to go check out this message board, and then they go, oh, my God, you know, and then they're going to just be scared off.
	You don't think the Oh My God is going to come from 340 podcast?
	You think it's going to come from the message board?
	You could be right, absolutely.
	I think just my suggestion is just to maybe, you know, the depth is fine as long as you hide it behind a nice soft veil of orderliness on the front page because there are so many subcategories on the front page that it just becomes so visually confusing.
	But if you were to kind of organize that into maybe a few more solid...
	Categories, and then underneath that have this big mess of subcategories.
	That really does go a long way toward visually, you know, de-confusing it, I guess.
	No, it's a very good point, and just off the top of my head, I would say that I would try and divide those into two categories, like Steph's opinions and error.
	So something like that would be the way to approach it.
	And I think that would help a lot of people to really sort of understand where we're coming from, so I appreciate that, and I will try to get that done.
	Free Kool-Aid within.
	That's right. All right.
	Anything else you wanted to mention?
	I was just going to say I click on active posts.
	You're talking about the message board, right?
	Oh, yeah. Right. Yeah, I just click on active posts.
	I even have a link to it where I put it up on the bar, the link bar.
	Active posts. I'm not familiar with that.
	Yeah, there is a... It's on the main page.
	Yeah, I used to do ActivePulse, but even that got a little crowded.
	I've just switched to unread.
	We never actually close anything off.
	Like, I know you're supposed to have these, like, this is more for technical things, right?
	Like, my computer keeps crashing, and then you solve it, and then you close it.
	But, of course, this is philosophy, so nothing ever gets closed.
	So I do understand what you're saying.
	There are ways of managing it.
	Maybe what I'll do is I'll write a short post at the beginning to say, you know, yes, I know there's a lot of stuff here, but, you know, here are the general categories.
	Maybe I can consolidate some.
	But the way to do it is to, you know, there's active posts, there's posts that I participate in.
	You can also get emails of posts that you're involved in so you don't have to come and browse for them and all that come with hyperlinks.
	There's some management ways to do it that the user can do, but you're right.
	I really wasn't expecting it to grow this quickly.
	I'm thrilled, of course, but I thought we'd have a little bit more time before I'd have to start organizing this sort of stuff, but I'll definitely put it on the list of things to get down to right now, at least for those who've made it to two and a half hours.
	Here's the little gem at the end.
	As of, I think, about podcast 320, I can't believe that number is real, but after 320, I've actually, in the comments section, started putting categories in, and I will at some point, when I have some time, go back to earlier versions and do that as well, because it's hard if you're just interested in one particular kind of topic to find the podcasts that are relevant, because they're not categorized, so I'm sort of getting that underway, I guess you could say.
	Are the podcast worth 55 cents now?
	Sorry, can you say that? Are they worth 55 cents now?
	Do I need to up my donation? Well, you know, there's inflation.
	And of course, the people who don't know is I'm tracking who's downloading and I'm going to charge them interest if they don't pay.
	So that's just a little tidbit for later.
	Could they expect anything less from a capitalist?
	I don't think so. Those evil capitalists.
	Those evil capitalists, absolutely.
	Okay, well, listen, thanks so much, everyone, for hanging in.
	It was a great chat. I think we had an all-time high of 14 simultaneous people.
	And until I figured out the mute thing, it was far too democratic a debate.
	So thanks for those who pointed that out to me.
	So thanks so much, everybody, for listening.
	I guess we'll be up same time next week, 4 p.m.
	Eastern Standard Time. And I'll try to...
	I'm going to try and find a way to get this out to people who haven't actually gotten all the way up to Podcast 300 or anything so we get more people coming in, even more.
	But thanks so much for listening, and I will talk to you all next week.

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