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Sept. 24, 2006 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:19:48
428 Sunday Call In Show

Family histories and global warming...

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Time Text
Good afternoon, everybody. It's Steph.
It's shortly after 4 on September the 24th, 2006.
I am 40. Actually, not quite.
I was born at 6 p.m., and I'm not quite 40 yet.
But what happened was I had originally cancelled the show today because Christina surprised me with a gift of a massage.
At a sleazy 2-bit parlor downtown.
No, she got me a massage, so we went down to get the massage, but unfortunately they had two cancellations of people coming in who were sick, and so they had to postpone the massage, so we ended up coming back home, where I am in fact able to do the show.
So, we'll just have a short one today, because of course I told most people that there was going to be no show, so we'll just have a short one, and I'm going to start off by...
I had a fine gentleman, a long-time poster on the boards, a gentleman who has an almost eerie cult-like resemblance to Matthew Broderick.
And he was reading, or I'm not sure if he was reading or listening to it.
He can tell us in just a sec.
He was engaged with the novel The God of Atheists that I have written, which is on the...
It's available in audiobook or PDF format for donations, blah, blah, blah.
But anyway, he came across a description that I had put into the book.
The book is a sort of combination of character-based comedy, sort of psychological and philosophical rants.
And I think it's an interesting, a different kind of book.
And one of the things that he came across that he found troubling, let's say, is that I describe...
A type of personality which he found to be Personally engaging, let's say.
So the description of what I call this type of personality is a blank hole, and it comes from an early form of sort of scarred or scared nihilism.
And this is the description of this type of personality, and then we'll get this gentleman's feedback so that we can find out a little bit more about what happened for him when he was reading this.
So the description is as follows.
Extremely shallow aestheticism.
They do not date plain people and are repulsed by warts or descriptions of ailments, especially of the bowel variety.
And then there's a sort of bullet list which goes that they also have often extraordinary bursts of humor.
Great imaginative powers.
Extreme career paralysis.
They initiate projects in the lower rungs of a discipline, then become enraged when no mentor appears to help them up.
Extremely poor parenting, violent outbursts in close relationships, talents in a wide variety of areas, an inability to express vulnerability, a passive aggression, when they are angry they provoke others, poor financial management, constant overstretching of personal resources.
They're always getting involved in non-profitable endeavors, even when broke, an inability to decorate their homes except with ironic items like mirrors framed with beer caps, cheesy movie posters, brick and board, bookshelves.
If something in their home breaks it almost never gets fixed, they rarely read fiction but prefer the biographies of obscure people.
As they age, their irritation becomes almost constant.
The few intimates they retain walk on tiptoes.
They do not notice their own aging and often look youthful well into their fifties.
They yell at babies and have odd hygienic fetishes like hating to get dirt under their fingernails and fight a growing sense of futility with increases of irritation.
And I also go on just a short paragraph to say, socially, blank holes are a lot of fun, because frankly, they're pretty damn funny.
Humor is all about making unexpected connections, and because the blank hole's brains are so disorganized, or rather follow hidden patterns of organization, they can really make people laugh, but...
It's important to learn early on, never to discuss ideas with the blank holes.
It's like trying to walk upstream in a suit of armor.
The exploration of ideas requires a strongly supportive environment.
Skepticism kills it quicker than a bad joke in a job interview.
And this gentleman then wrote back and said, This is almost entirely too descriptive of myself.
And I actually wrote this five years ago, six years ago.
And he says, perhaps these are my worst characteristics, and for most of this list, this is who I was, but I'm not sure if all the things fit me anymore after having dealt with so much and changed quite a lot lately.
I hope you don't mind me posting an excerpt on the boards, but I felt horrible when I heard you reading this section of the book, and I began to feel bad about myself because I feel this is who I was and am today.
am I a recovering blank hole?
how much of it am I able to change?
I feel horrible about this and I'm wondering what the hell I do other than be aware of this entire list of things the meditation has helped significantly with the irritation but babies still irritate me so does dirt under fingernails not much I can do about looking youthful and I definitely don't notice my aging either I'll have to say other than the beer posters I do have a couple of awful posters I'm pretty much dead on match for this list of things So I'm going to...
Unmute the gentleman who posted this, and if you'd like to talk a little bit more about what this meant for you, perhaps we could have a chat about it, because I certainly am not aiming to, you know, scar people with my writing.
I mean, I certainly would if it was profitable, but I don't think it would be.
So if you'd just like to talk a little bit more about what this meant for you, that would be perhaps a useful thing to do.
Well, if I wasn't more aware of things now, like I wasn't then, I probably would have gotten mad and mad at you instead of, you know, whatever.
Because obviously you weren't talking to me.
Right. You weren't saying this to me.
You weren't intentionally describing me specifically.
So I had to kind of sit there and think, well, Was this me?
Or is this me recently, like six months ago?
Or how much of this is still me?
How do I change it?
Is this just like genetic or what?
Right. Right. Oh, you have...
Okay, good. Well, can you tell me sort of as you're reading through it some stuff that was sort of the closest fit about stuff that maybe was a little bit more historical and a little bit less sort of present so that we can sort of differentiate the stuff that may have been there for you in the past and the stuff that is there for you now?
Oh, hold on. Let me go look at the list again.
Do you want me to just keep reading it until you burst into tears?
Sorry. It's all fun for me to be making these jokes.
Okay, I'm going back to the board because I've seen the place I wrote it down.
It's 24681.aspx. Found it.
Let's see.
Bursts of humor. I don't know.
That's not necessarily me or anybody else I know.
It's everybody. From my perception, it's a lot of people.
But the imaginative powers thing is definitely me.
I even conjure up my own fantasies and start to react to those instead of, you know, react to the worst case scenario in my head rather than what's actually happening.
And then I've got this career paralysis thing where I don't want to leave where I'm working because it's secure and it's not offering anything new.
I try and create a project and then I just get discouraged because nobody's supporting me and nobody's helping.
The bureaucracy just basically gets in the way.
And then, of course, you know about my parents.
And then violent outbursts.
That has been quelled by meditation.
Sorry, did you say medication?
Meditation. Just kidding, go ahead.
And then, let's see, talent, yes, I'm quite a jack of all trades.
And in fact, I even write that on my MySpace profile.
Inability to express vulnerability, that's changed only recently.
And the passive aggression when I'm angry and I provoke others, I'm more aware of that and therefore less prone to do that.
Poor financial management, that is my biggest curse.
I'm horrible. No matter how hard I try, I seem to just get worse.
And so lately I've changed my tactics completely based on people's advice and so maybe that'll change.
I don't know. That's the same thing with the next one, personal resources.
That's a problem right now.
I have a horrible spending habit.
I'm very, very impulsive about that.
I get bored. I want to go out and going out involves spending money.
I can decorate my home.
I'm often given like Compliments on that, but it's always just subpar, at least in my opinion it's subpar.
I've got these awful wizard posters in my bedroom, but I call those temporary placeholders until I get better posters for the frames they're in or better pictures or something.
Sorry, what kind of posters?
They're like wizards and dragons.
It's very, very geeky.
I'm afraid to invite a girl over because of the...
Right. I mean, unless she's a 12th level wizard or something.
Yes, of course. In that case, it may be okay.
Right, right. When something in my home breaks, okay, that's not me.
I always fix it.
In fact, I'm very good at fixing the holes that Got punched in walls due to the previous bullet point, violent outbursts, and close relationships.
But I haven't had one of those in a while to fix, so obviously that's changing.
Let's see, I read fiction.
Yeah, I rarely read fiction.
That's very true, except for maybe Ann Wright a few years ago I read all her series.
And then I prefer biographies, obviously.
Or non-fiction of obscure people.
Well, you're a little obscure.
Most people don't know who a lot of the people are that I read about.
At my age, yes, my irritation has become a constant, for sure.
That's kind of what ended my marriage.
It ended a lot of relationships.
Only until recently with Stephanie.
You know all about that.
I've posted all about it.
And she drove me to see my worst, I think.
And I think that's the point where I started to address it.
And I can't credit her for helping, but I can definitely credit her for bringing it out.
I don't notice my unaging, mainly because I I get that I look 24 quite often and I don't know what this means.
I don't know what this has to do with anything.
I'm not sure why you've had Rudy say this other than that maybe he was envious or something.
I yell at babies?
No. I don't yell.
I just get irritated and start making comments on the side and just get annoyed and start Well, I just get really annoyed.
And what sort of comments occur for you?
What sort of feelings do you get of being around babies, or what sort of comments do you have?
I'm reminded why I don't want to have babies.
Right. I don't think it would be you who's having them, but we can get into that perhaps another time.
I usually say, well, that's why I have no kids.
Right. Is it because they're sort of loud and demanding and whiny?
Is that sort of...
Yes, that's kind of the most irritating sound ever.
Right. I certainly understand that.
It's like Dumb and Dumber where they're...
Right. Right.
That sound he makes in the cab, right?
Right, exactly. Right.
And then the odd hygienic fetishes.
Yeah, that's...
That's me right there.
In fact, I used to clean Stephanie's fingernails all the time.
Right. And then growing sense of futility, increases of irritation, that's right.
You just nailed it right there.
Right. I mean, certainly one of the things that this kind of...
I mean, this is a personality problem, right?
I'm not sort of trying to describe a personality here like this is your organic nature from birth, but this is how a particular type of person will react to quite a bit of trauma, as just about most of us have when we're younger.
I'm sort of trying to describe that, and I did base this...
On a guy I knew for quite a number of years when I was younger and he lived with my brother and I when we were teens and we took in sort of roommates to make ends meet.
And so I did sort of try and describe this as a sort of personality type that I felt was quite common because the traumas that we go through are pretty constant, right?
I mean there's a lot of A lot of alienation from our parents, a lot of not being listened to, a lot of being ordered around.
And, you know, the one thing that is very common in the modern world, I don't know if it's more true for women than for men, but I certainly do believe that it's very true for men, that we kind of get locked into this sort of Peter Pan world of an eternal adolescence.
And I think that we could do a whole lot more with our lives a whole lot earlier.
Like, we could be finished university by the time we're 17.
We could be, you know, married by the time we're 20 and have great careers.
I think we could do a whole lot more when we're younger than we're sort of allowed to in the sort of structure of the system that's in place.
And I think that what happens is we kind of get stultified and kind of get stuck.
And certainly this occurred for me as well.
I'm not talking about anything I haven't experienced here.
And it is very hard then to break out of that orbit of adolescence, at least it was for me, because I basically was in school until I was 27.
And, I mean, it's kind of ridiculous in hindsight, but it's something that is part and parcel of the world that we kind of live in, where you do get to forego some of the more mature forms of adult manhood for quite a long time, and... It's something that I think accumulates in personalities and gives these kinds of characteristics.
As to why you don't read fiction, well, I'm so sorry that you tried to read or listen to a piece of fiction that then became extraordinarily traumatic for you.
That certainly wasn't my intention.
I mean, I can't sort of really apologize for it because I think that it's true.
But I certainly do sort of want to ask a little bit more about this, the sort of, the sense of futility and so on.
Because, I mean, that's a very important mechanism.
I guess you could say a warning mechanism.
So if you could tell me a little bit more about that, I'd appreciate that if you don't mind.
Okay, well, I totally agree with you about the, you could grow up a lot earlier if you have real parents.
Yeah. My girlfriend, she was 19 and she was a lot more mature and just looking back, just about a lot of things she was a lot more mature than some of my 23 and 29 year old girlfriends.
The age really just has nothing to do with it and I think it's more just when somebody becomes aware of themselves and somebody points something out and they're actually willing to admit it and I think the younger you You point these things out, and somebody, the less likely they'll get to that point of where I ended up being, and I'm not addressing all these things until 32.
And it's just, it's really, you know, my mother, she's 59, and she still hasn't really Gotten anywhere near where she needs to have already been at 17.
Right, and of course one of the results of that is that, and this is a cyclical thing that occurs between generations, I think, that because your mother has not matured, as almost no parents that I know have matured, because your mother has not matured, she almost has no choice, given that she hasn't matured, other than to continue to treat you in an age-inappropriate manner, to treat you as if you're much younger psychologically than you are.
Exactly. No, that makes sense.
That makes a lot of sense.
And as far as the futility goes, I think that's changing because I'm realizing things are a lot easier than they were because now I understand more, but it's in large part to a lot of things.
Just willingness to admit to my own problems is one of those things, and working on fixing them is another.
And then once I fix them, things are easier, and it's better.
And look, I certainly understand the irritation.
I've certainly had my bouts with warring with irritation in my life.
And the only thing that I sort of got out of that was that...
When I tended to feel the most irritated in my life was when I felt trapped in a situation of extreme hypocrisy in those around me and also felt helpless to do anything about that situation of extreme hypocrisy.
So when you had to put on a good front when things weren't good, when you would be told You know, when somebody would be yelling, I'm going to take a silly example here, but it's certainly one that occurred to me, right?
When I was a teenager and my mom would sort of yell at me, don't ever raise your voice at me.
She sort of screamed that at me, right?
I mean, that's kind of ridiculous, right?
Because to have somebody screaming at you that it's impolite to raise your voice, we don't need to spend a whole lot of time analyzing that logically to see why that's so silly.
And of course, the whole civic virtue thing that's taught to us constantly in government schools about how we need to be good citizens and we need to not ever use violence and so on.
And once, of course, I began to understand about the nature of state coercion and the fundamentally violent root of state education that is paid for through these coercive taxation, then it all began to feel like in my life, like there were these These sort of hoops of steel, of hypocrisy that were sort of crushing my will, you know, crushing my sense of identity, crushing my soul almost it felt.
And I didn't feel like I could get out of it, but I felt like my options and my integrity and my intellectual vistas were continually being constricted and tightened.
And I felt myself getting smaller and smaller and my possibilities getting smaller and smaller and it felt like everywhere I turned and everywhere I looked There was no way out.
Because it wasn't just my family.
It was the whole world. If it had been just my family, I could have looked somewhere else.
And even like the really good families...
Okay, good family.
I knew one family that I considered to be very good at this time in my life.
And even they...
Would never ever talk about, like they were perfectly aware of the difficulties that I was going through at home.
They were aware that at some point my brother and I had to get rid of our mother and we had to sort of make it alone.
And nobody ever talked about it, right?
So I really felt like there was no honesty, there was no openness, there was no directness, there was no visibility for what was sort of important going on in my life.
In sort of the larger world, right?
Teachers didn't care. Me and my mom never showed up for, you know, parent-teacher conferences.
And nobody ever sort of asked and said, well, what's going on at home?
And everybody recognized that I had a good deal of ability, but that I wasn't achieving the kind of stuff that they felt I was capable of achieving.
But nobody asked and nobody cared.
And so what happened for me was I began to feel like society was just bullshit, right?
That it was just bullshit all around, all over, top to bottom, all that everybody ever did was just walk around spouting pious, empty platitudes and had no real idea about any kind of visceral or emotional connection to some kind of ethics or courage or bravery.
It just felt like I was being crushed to death by...
An avalanche of tiny dead ghosts, if that makes any sense.
And I found that for myself, what came out of that was a kind of chronic irritation.
And again, I'm not going to try and guess or project my experiences onto you, but does any of that sort of make sense to you?
Not only does it make sense, but you just described my entire last 32 years, I guess.
Right, and it certainly is true.
I mean, I think it's true that what is the most closest and what we can be the most open with about our own experiences is where we can connect and sort of understand each other as sort of souls in society, right?
Because society is just so full of this dripping, sanctimonious, pious emptiness.
You know, it's sort of like we grow up in this Bible camp society where the priests are all corrupt and everybody knows it, but everybody goes to church and spouts all this pious nonsense and nobody ever talks about anything.
And no matter what happens in society, the only people who ever get attacked are those who try to point out the truth.
And that's a kind of gross and hideous society to be in, and certainly that's the one that I felt that I was in and that there was no way out of.
I didn't feel like I was drowning and I could sort of strike out for shore and come to a beach and set up my own hut or anything like that.
I felt like it was a water planet.
It wasn't like I got tossed out of a vessel and I'm in the ocean and I can find some way to shore.
It felt like the whole planet was made of water, but everyone thought it was land.
I felt irritation because I felt trapped and hopeless in that kind of environment and that there was no way out, that there was no...
beacon to guide me by.
There was no sort of way to get out of that situation.
And certainly when I began to really study philosophy and began to understand that the world that I grew up in, the social world that I grew up in, It was pretty aberrant.
You know, like what is considered to be normal in society these days is not normal.
I mean, it's normal like it's average, but it's not healthy.
And I think that for me, finding a way out of the social world that I was in and all of the hypocrisy and falsehood and kind of hideous assaults on anyone who spoke the truth or brought anything of importance up...
Finding my way out of that did involve studying philosophy so that I could, in a sense, through rational understanding, denormalize the society that I lived in.
This is an extreme example, so I'm not trying to connect the two.
If you grew up in a Nazi household and everyone around you is a Nazi and so on, at some point you have to study the history of philosophy and recognize that that's kind of an aberrant belief system.
And this addiction to unreality that really characterizes the modern West, you know, that we sort of gave up on God and then just slipped the state in its place, and now we're giving up on the state, whether people admit it or not.
Nobody really says with any enthusiasm the state can solve all the world's problems.
We keep manufacturing new illusions to replace the illusions that don't work.
Personally, I think we're sort of running out of illusions, which is why everyone's so sort of paralyzed and so sort of hostile towards any kind of truth.
Because when you gave up on God, you could put the state in its place.
And then, of course, when the state begins to fail, a lot of people will say, well, I'll put my emphasis on family.
And then, of course, family doesn't work that well either because it's based on illusions as well.
And I think that now we're sort of in a world where a lot of the false things that we believe in are kind of becoming exposed and it's a very volatile emotional time within our history.
I couldn't think outside of the social environment that I grew up in until I began to study deeper and more logical ideas and could kind of put some of that in perspective if that makes any sense to you.
Makes a ton of sense.
I'm... The internet, I think, is really a good thing.
Yeah, for sure. You're kind of like this, I don't know, like a rock hitting, you know that whole butterfly effect thing?
You're a rock hitting a pond that's in this one way, and now you're changing the status of it, just rippling outwards, and it's kind of that kind of metaphor there.
Yeah, for sure. I mean, I think that certainly some of the struggles that I've had, which makes you feel alone, right?
Because nobody else I know, with the exception, of course, my wife and a few other people that I've been able to have very powerful philosophical discussions with over the past sort of 30 years or perhaps 20 years or so...
Nobody goes through this, right?
Everybody just kind of barrels forward in this blind, sanctimonious way in their life, and the only people that they ever get angry at are the people who speak the truth, right?
Which is a pretty horrible kind of vermin-infested social environment, and that was the world.
It wasn't like that's part of the world or that's where we are now.
That was the world for me.
Sorry, go ahead. Well, I was just going to say, like on my MySpace, every time I put in that profile thing, and I think I put this in a number of places, but every time I point out the elephant in the room, I get an eye roll and just all that, you know, oh, here he goes again.
Right. I remember, oh gosh, this is many years ago, I knew a woman who had been sexually attacked by, and I'm sorry to bring up such an unpleasant topic, but I think it's part of what we're talking about here, and I think it shows the depth to which people who speak the truth get attacked in a society that's addicted to illusions, which is perfectly understandable.
It's perfectly to be expected.
But I knew a woman who'd been sexually attacked by her father, and she wanted to bring this up at a family gathering, right?
Because there was this whole, obviously, as you can imagine, a completely falsified family existence where they'd get together and, you know, watch some sports and have some food and talk about other people.
And, you know, right in the middle, in the center of this family is this absolutely horrendous crime.
And so she did.
She screwed her courage up, and she went to a family dinner – It was not wholly extended, but sort of medium, I think, to like aunts and uncles kind of thing.
And she brought this up.
And I was naive enough to think that everyone was going to get really angry at the father for sexually attacking his daughter.
I was naive enough to think that that might be the emotional response of people.
But, of course, what happened was everybody got really uncomfortable.
Everybody got pretty...
They didn't say anything. They didn't rush to her defense or even to attack her.
They just got uncomfortable that anyone had brought up anything that was true.
And they felt resentful towards her.
And that, I think, really is the sort of status of society, that people want to live in this constant empty drivel of distraction and stimuli and gossip and nonsense and so on.
And the moment anyone brings up anything real, and I talk about this, I mean, it doesn't have to be a sort of horrendous family crime of this kind, but anytime anybody brings up anything real...
The almost universal reaction that you get is hostility and contempt and eye-rolling and all of the general assaults that passive-aggressive people will put forward towards anyone who's trying to work out the truth or to talk about the truth.
And that certainly has been my experience as a philosopher, and it certainly, I think...
Was much more my experience prior to the internet where you can actually share and sort of we points of light can sort of see each other, right?
Because beforehand it was like you're looking up at the night sky and there's one star and it looks kind of weird, right?
But now with the internet you can kind of look up and you can see that there are more stars, there are constellations and, you know, that I think is a real blessing for those of us who are kind of laboring to get some truth out there in the midst of almost universal social condemnation.
Can you hear me? Yes.
Oh, okay. For some reason, the whole window, just everybody left the room or something.
No, it's a Skype thing.
It just keeps blanking out.
I don't know why. It seems that everything keeps working, but it just seems like everybody just keeps vanishing.
But sorry, go ahead. Well, I was going to say that my...
Well, I don't know.
I can't call her my aunt because she's not really a blood relation, but she came over...
She's the only one I mentioned in my letter to my mother, mainly to my parents, that probably felt the same way I did, that she was ignored and made to feel guilty if she didn't come over.
And she emailed me back after sending her the letter.
She was the only one close to my family that's read it, and she agreed with every bit of it.
And she came over the other day and told me that she had been over at my parents and I haven't talked to them since I sent that email.
Apparently she started talking about how she felt around them.
She talked about how she felt, you know, left out and just kind of she felt bad around them.
I don't know what the exact word she used was, but maybe she's just being too sensitive.
And then there was something about an album that she wanted their help with, you know?
They always want her help, but when she comes over and brings an album, she wants help unsticking the picture so she can put it in another, so she can put it in a scanner and scan them.
And she wanted to put water in a pot and steam it, but my grandmother just said, oh, that'd be too hard.
Let's just not do it.
And they wouldn't help.
So... She goes, well, okay, and then she starts bringing up how she feels, and then my mother and my brother, especially, immediately attack her for saying these things.
And then she ends up, my brother ends up kicking her out of my mother's house just for telling them how she felt.
Right. And it's just, it's like, okay, well, this is why Nathan isn't around anymore.
Right. Right.
And that is the great fiction.
I mean, that is the great corrupt and, dare I say, almost evil fiction that is at the root of all of this supposed social and family and blood bond that everybody talks about all the time.
That there's nothing more important than family and no one is ever going to love you.
Like your family, to which I can only say thank God.
But this is the great fiction that your family says, we love you.
And the problem is, though, that any time you bring you to the equation, like your thoughts, your feelings, your ideas, what interests you, what excites you, right or wrong, your family just all says over and over again, we love you, you're the most important thing, my son, my daughter, we love you, we love you.
But the moment that you bring yourself, not like a cliche, not like a conforming kind of empty family robot, but once you actually bring your soul to the equation, what really interests you, everybody just scatters like a bunch of birds before a gunshot, and then they attack you.
We love you, but we'd really rather not hear from you.
We love you, but we just don't want you to tell us anything that might be even remotely important to you.
And that seems to me like an entirely claustrophobic and airless kind of situation.
And I think that's where I was sort of trying to build this series of characterizations from that I use in The God of Atheists in a number of different characters, right?
I'll just go through the list a little bit here and talk about where at least the root of these characteristics that you found to be quite descriptive came from.
Shallow aestheticism, where these kinds of personalities, what I call the blank holes, that they are very outer-directed.
The guy I was basing this on got married to a woman who had a little wart on her upper lip.
And he...
I mean, there's problems with the marriage, as you can imagine, with this kind of personality.
But he fixated, I would say, on this little wart on her upper lip.
And he found that it was hard to kiss her because she had this little wart on her...
Well, good God!
I mean, how ridiculous a thing!
When you have the love of your life, we're all going to get old and ugly and wrinkly and all this kind of stuff, right?
What does he think is going to happen, right?
But this kind of stuff where there's this shallow fear of sort of physical imperfection, right?
That comes from a real belief that if things aren't perfect, then they're shit.
And this is a very common thing in society.
We libertarians or we philosophers are often accused of being intolerant when, of course, the enormous dark and secret truth is that everybody's intolerant of the philosopher.
Well, almost everybody, right?
Everybody's intolerant of the person who speaks the truth.
Yet we, of course, get the projection of this intolerance is sort of foisted upon us.
And so in this kind of personality or in this kind of scar tissue, I would say, things have to be perfect Or they're shit.
There's not a whole lot in between.
And that's because, deep down, the true self knows that that is true about the family.
Like, an inability to handle ambiguity is a mark that you're in a corrupt environment.
Because you have to have things being perfect with your family, because the moment you penetrate that, things are shit.
And I don't mean your family, but I'm sort of just talking in general.
And so how did this manifest itself?
Well, it manifested itself with this guy, with my wife is either gorgeous or she's ugly.
And it comes down to, oh my God, she put on four pounds.
She's getting fat. I find that kind of gross.
Because it has to be one or the other.
It can't be ambiguous because that's his family situation.
So, often extraordinary bursts of humor, for sure.
A mind that is defensive, has an enormous, defensive around trying to avoid the central problem of family corruption, makes unexpected connections, is a little bit randomized, which can mean for a lot of creativity.
It can mean for great imaginative powers.
But one of the problems that occurs, and this certainly has happened to me in the past and may be occurring for you as well, is that there is a kind of paralysis.
These people are fundamentally unparented, which is why they grow up with a lot of creativity and a lot of energy, but with a great difficulty in completing things.
The mental development is younger than the physical development.
There's a great inability to complete things because...
The willpower has always been ineffective in the family situation, so the willpower does not then feel effective in a professional situation.
Because when you're a kid, you build some stupid little fort with popsicle sticks, and you bring it into your parents, and you want them to say, well, that's great.
Maybe you could try this, or maybe you could try that.
I think what you've done is fantastic.
Let's sit down and we'll paint it and we'll put toy soldiers around or something like that.
You want people to help you bridge that creativity that you've got into something great.
And what happens then is these kinds of people, when they get into professional situations, they'll start things...
But they constantly feel the need for some hand to reach down or to reach across and to help them to complete it because they've not gone through that transition of fair to good to great with somebody's mentoring and somebody helping them along.
And so what happens is we start these things with great enthusiasm, but then we find that our enthusiasm begins to diminish and we begin to feel resentful That people aren't giving us more help.
That people aren't getting more interested in what it is that we have to offer.
Now, of course, the real people that we're resentful at not taking an interest in our productivity are our parents.
But what happens is we project that irritation onto the world as a whole, which is perfectly natural because we're also not trained about anything important psychologically because it's really important to learn the dates of the 1812 war and all this sort of nonsense they teach us in school.
So we have this great desire to be mentored and, dare I almost say, cradled.
To be parented in a productive and positive way so that we can learn to take a positive measure of our own capacities and to achieve things and to feel that our willpower has effect.
And because we didn't get that, and because it's very hard for us to look at that with our own parents, we end up Trying to get it from other people, which is totally inappropriate, right?
It's nobody's job to parent you but your parents.
And the fact that they didn't do it can never be recovered.
You can't go back in time.
You can never be reparented any more than you can go back to being three feet tall.
I think you're taller than three feet, so...
If you're not, don't be offended.
So we constantly want to start these things because we have the enthusiasm of a toddler, but because we never got our parents to help us bridge our creativity into more productive and organized and disciplined.
We never saw the effect of that, but basically people would say, oh, that's nice, you know, and not get very interested in what we were producing as children.
What happens is we start these business ventures and we want people to take us to the next level and we get resentful when they don't, which means for sure it's never going to happen, right?
The things which we don't acknowledge, we repeat.
It's like a photocopy over and over again.
And so I think that's one of the reasons that I wanted to put that kind of characteristic into this And that was five years ago.
Weird. Yeah, that was five years ago.
But remember, I did two years of very intensive therapy to get to that point.
And of course, I wouldn't say, because there's a talent aspect to this that I'm not fully conscious of, I wouldn't say that I could have had this description of what I was writing about five years ago.
But I had just dropped 20 grand on therapy.
I'd been going for three hours a week, which is quite a lot of time.
And I'd spent most of the evenings writing in a journal and doing, you know, this sort of work on psychology to sort of uncover my own history and their own connections.
So I've certainly learned a lot more in the five years since, but this was after a fairly intense bout of therapy.
That was very, very productive and powerful for me, and one of the things that helped get me sort of out of the philosophy side and into the psychology side, which I think the combination of the two gives you kind of like the wisdom side, which is, I think, what I really wanted.
Yeah, I guess getting to the next level, I assume that's like getting to the next realization.
That's how I see things.
I go from one realization to the next, and then I start to focus on Acting on those realizations.
I also wanted to add about the family stuff.
I talked to a lot of my friends about it, or my aunt even.
I said, well, there's no value in family.
She just adamantly objected to that.
I was like, well, what value is there in genetics?
And what about children whose fathers were never around?
You would think those children wouldn't mind at all if their father wasn't around, but they do mind.
Well, I remember even as a very little kid, my dad left my mom.
I was, I don't know, like six months old.
I don't ever remember him being around when I was a kid.
And when I was a little older, when I could write, everybody kept pressuring me, like, write to your father.
Write to your father.
And it just didn't make any sense.
It was almost exactly the same for me as writing to Santa Claus.
And I just remember, and this is why I think that some of it might just sort of be inbuilt to the personality, but I remember as a six- or seven-year-old kid, I was in boarding school, and I had to write to my dad, and I wrote to him, Dear Tom.
His name's Tom, right? I wrote to him, Dear Tom, and I'd sort of tell him what was going on.
And then what would happen is...
Somebody, they read your letters, right?
Because it was a kind of, you know, they really prided themselves on the British-slash-Soviet style of child incarceration.
And so somebody read my letters to make sure I wasn't saying, you know, please, please get me out of this hellhole.
And they said, well, you can't send this to your letter, your dad.
Your dad is going to be so offended by you calling him Tom.
And even back then, I remember thinking, offended?
I mean, he leaves the family, and he's offended by three letters.
Like, that's the big problem that's going on here, is that I'm calling him Tom, not Dad.
It comes down to me to fix this as a six- or seven-year-old child.
It's my job to fix this upset by pretending that he's something that he's not.
It's not his job to actually be a dad.
It's my job to call him a dad.
And it's, I think, at that point that I began to sort of really think about, like, What the hell are these people telling me?
Like, why am I the only variable in the equation that needs to be changed?
Why is nobody ever saying, you know, I can understand why you're writing about this because it is kind of a weird thing to write to this guy you've never met and to call him dad.
I mean, it's a bizarre thing for a child to do.
But people will always try to...
To change the people who are the most vulnerable, right?
People will align themselves with whoever has the most power and they will attack and try and control and get to alter the behavior of the people who have the least power.
So my dad was contributing some good cash to this school in terms of paying for me to be there because he couldn't be around but he did want me to be sent off to a kind of child prison so that I could really appreciate his presence in my life.
And so, of course, the school Didn't want to say to my dad, you know, your son is writing Dear Tom, not Dear Dad, and so we can sort of understand it.
We don't want to change it because, you know, he's got his feelings and so on and so on.
You should talk to him about it.
No, of course not, right?
They didn't want to offend my dad because I certainly wasn't paying the bills with my agile child labor.
And so I became the person that they wanted to change the behavior of.
And of course, we all went through this about a bazillion times when we were children.
There's some problem.
We have some discontent.
Someone has treated us badly.
And people will just side with whoever has the most power and undermine or attack or diminish or poo-poo or roll their eyes at whoever has the least power and get them to change.
And that's not the end of the world.
The problem is not attacking the vulnerable.
The problem is attacking the vulnerable and calling it morality.
That's the problem.
The problem is not that people are jerks.
The problem is that people are jerks and they call themselves knights and heroes.
That's the fundamental.
Like if they'd sat down with me at this point when I was a kid and said, you know, you're going to have to change this because your dad's paying the bills.
I mean, I wouldn't have been that impressed, but at least I wouldn't have been disgusted.
But this kind of stuff that goes on with your family, it's not even that they were crappy parents.
It's that they still say that they love you, right?
That's the major problem.
Not that people do bad things, but they do bullying, bad, cowardly things and cloak it in this veneer of wonderful, altruistic, perfect, ethical, moral behavior.
That is where the world really gets screwed up.
Not because bad things are done, But the fact that people put all this shit on the...
They put all this icing on the shit pie and say that you should enjoy the taste.
I think that's the...
I mean, that's, I think, the real problem.
I completely agree.
It's the same thing. I mean, all I see is people always attacking the victim.
And it's just...
It gets old.
I mean, it's in everything, too.
It's in these magazines I read, the status magazines...
Even new scientists will do it all the time.
Now, I just wanted to invite people.
We have a number of people who are in the call.
I certainly appreciate you joining.
This is Stefan Molyneux from Free Domain Radio, and we have a show at www.freedomainradio, where we talk sort of politics, economics, psychology, and, yes, occasionally literature and family, as you can hear.
And if you had...
I've opened up the microphones to anybody who wants to talk, if you would like to add or...
If you have any questions, feel free to do so now.
May I speak? Certainly.
Is this our good friend Lapafrax?
No, this is Craig.
Oh, okay, sorry. Let me just...
Sorry, one British accent sounds the same as any other one for me because it's been a while since I've been in the Fair Isle.
But you are unmuted.
Please go ahead. From what you were saying there, you were totally going against the family.
Me and my family, we've been through some really terrible times, but my experience as a family, my mum and dad, sometimes I wish that they would get divorced and that they would just leave me all alone, but I'm about 35 now and I'm I'm really pleased that we stayed together as a family.
As a family we have all put money into the pot together to make sure that we've saved our house and I just think that the way you've portrayed that everybody should be an individual isn't particularly right.
I just think that families have to go through hard times and if that means them splitting up then fair enough but My experience as an individual within a family is that we have come together and we've really been a good thing.
So I'd just like your thoughts on that.
Well, sure. I'm certainly never, and I appreciate you sharing with that, and thank you for bringing that to the forefront, because I'm certainly not someone who says, well, look, my family didn't make it, so nobody's family should make it.
I mean, that would be irrational, and I would certainly never say to anyone who is having a positive relationship Right?
With their family, that that's somehow false or nonsensical or this or the other.
If you have a great relationship with your family, if you can be self-expressed, if you can talk to them about what's important to you and they will listen to you and they really care about you and they're willing to allow disagreement and they're willing to allow debate and they're willing...
Fantastic! I mean, I would never in a million years say that that's anything that anybody should give up.
When I talk about my family, I talk about...
The semi-technical term is family of origin or the foo.
I am blissfully married now with a wonderful wife who is my family and you couldn't do anything to get anything between us because we're an incredible team.
So I'm not talking about my experiences, everybody's experience and so on.
But perhaps you could tell me a little bit more about your family because it's certainly my belief that Not that family is good or bad, but that family as a biological description is value neutral, right?
Like we don't walk around saying white guys are good and oriental guys are bad and we base good on genetics like Caucasian and we base bad on, I don't know, like oriental genetics, right?
That would be considered racism and that would be a very bad thing.
And so this kind of preference based on DNA, or the idea that there's virtue or value in a human being because of DNA, to me is illogical and bigoted.
And this just means to me that your family have to be judged not as having value because they're your family, but having value because of who they are.
And if that's been the case with your family, and if you met them at a party, you'd be best friends and so on, I think that's wonderful.
So perhaps you could just sort of tell me a little bit about that based on sort of what I've said.
Right, okay.
Well, I have two sisters, a mom and a dad.
One sister is the boyfriend of a world famous DJ. The second sister has got a range of Danish restaurants in Manchester.
My mom is my hero.
She is my hero.
My dad, on the other hand, has been in prison and has a drink problem.
But, as a family, we have stayed together, even when he was inside.
And now he's outside.
He's still a bit of a knobhead.
We still love him. We still love him, even though he causes arguments.
Even though, as you say, if I met him at a party, I probably wouldn't like him.
But you know very well that the phrase in English is, blood is thicker than water.
So I want you to know that within every family, there are going to be people that don't meet our expectations.
And my dad hasn't met mine.
He hasn't been The best dad in the world.
But as a family, I know that, you know, genetically our gene is a good gene.
It's a good gene. So, you know, I just think that family needs to be looked after and it needs to be promoted.
And I just...
I think, from what I hear, you've had a bad experience about family, and at the moment I live in Spain, and in Spain the family is hugely important.
And it works, it works over here.
I can see it deteriorating here as well though, but I believe in the family and I know that you have to make decisions based on people's personalities, but I just think family is hugely important and the more we let family dissolve, The worst state we'll be in.
That's my opinion.
So I'm going to leave it over to you now.
No, listen, thank you very much.
I really appreciate it, but I'm going to pester you, if you don't mind, for a few more seconds, because I just sort of want to understand where it is that you're coming from.
Your father, you said he was in prison, he's got a drinking problem, he's argumentative, I don't know whether or not he's physically violent, that's not too, too important, but can you tell me what it is that you love about him?
He's got a great, he's got a huge sense of humour and he's always the centre of the party.
Whenever anybody's around, he's the perfect host and he is a good person.
He just has these moments and we just have to deal with these moments.
Okay, so he's funny, right?
And again, I apologize if this is offensive to you.
Please tell me if at any point... No, no, no.
Fill your boots. Fill your boots.
But, like, you go to see a comedian at a nightclub, they're funny, right?
I mean, but you don't necessarily walk out and say, I love that, right?
Comedy... Love should be something that is unique to a certain kind of virtue.
It's not that... Right, it's not just that he knows how to hold a crowd, okay?
It's the fact that...
He went through, he made very great sacrifices to send me to private school.
He has been a good dad in every other sense, apart from the fact that he has these moments.
Well, it's probably a little bit more than a moment if he ended up in prison, would that be fair to say?
Yeah, but it was white-collar.
It was white-collar. Okay, and so he obviously...
I'm going to assume that it wasn't something that, you know, a good libertarian wouldn't have too much problem with, something like tax evasion, but...
It was very close to that, yeah.
Right, okay. Now, of course, without getting into the whole complex conversation about what laws are just and what laws are valid to break and not break, which is a whole other topic, it certainly could be said that he took risks that were brought to his family.
Yeah, well, the thing is that not really because By that stage we already had the houses so it was possibly greed on his part.
Right, okay. Now, the question around that he made sacrifices for you, I would certainly say that I would find it hard to say that if I... Like, I got married a couple of years ago, and I just love getting married.
But what's happened?
Okay, well, I don't go down to the pub and go pick up a woman on each arm.
not that that was a regular occurrence, but let's just say, I don't get to do that anymore because I'm married.
But I think that I would not characterize that as a sacrifice because I wanted to get married to this wonderful woman.
And of course, monogamy is part of what it is that we talked about.
And that's something which it's not a sacrifice that I would go out with women beforehand.
And now I don't because I got married.
I wouldn't sort of call that a sacrifice.
And I would sort of make the case that it's not a sacrifice to do things for your children.
If you choose to have children, then that's kind of like the job, right?
It's not a sacrifice for me to get up and go to work because I get a paycheck, right?
And if you choose to have children, I'm not sure that it's a great virtue to give things up for them.
I mean, I'm not saying that it's a bad thing to do.
I think it's a good thing to do, but I'm not sure that I would characterize it as a great virtue.
I'm not saying...
We're talking two different timescales here.
The sacrifices that he made were before he ended up Go and spending time at Her Majesty's pleasure.
He made the sacrifices before, in my opinion, he got greedy.
So I don't think you can...
You know, it's my story.
And I am telling you that you can't associate the greed with the sacrifice.
That was one period of time and another period of time.
Oh, did we lose him?
Okay, look, I'm certainly not going to try and hack at the root of your paternal devotion, but the only thing that I would suggest is that it's...
So when I think of love, when I sort of think of this term, when I think about what I love about my wife or my friends, then it's a combination of what I would consider to be very positive and to some degree unique virtues.
So what I love about Christina is her courage, her honesty, her nobility, her generosity, her vulnerability, her openness, her passion, her like all of these very, very positive things that are not...
Kind of average across the population.
And again, not to say that you shouldn't feel what you feel about your parents or anything like that, but things like he's funny obviously is not unique enough.
It's not virtuous to be funny, right?
Even bad guys, and I'm not saying your dad's a bad guy, but even bad guys can tell a good joke and be funny.
So that's not quite the same as virtue, although it is definitely a pleasurable thing to find co-mixed in a virtuous personality.
Sacrifices for your children, that's just the job.
That's just the job of being a parent.
And yes, some parents don't do it, and some parents do, but to me that's not a unique enough thing to create a feeling like love, right?
If you have children, then the children are dependent upon you, and you have to provide for them.
And you can provide in positive ways, you can provide in neutral sort of financial ways, and so on.
But those things to me don't spell out...
The real virtue that would evoke the kind of love that I sort of believe is the most valuable.
And again, this is just my opinion, right?
I mean, your feelings about your family or your own.
But what I generally talk about in terms of the family or the approach that I take...
It's that you can't fundamentally love somebody who doesn't display great virtue.
And I know that there's a lot of loyalty, and I know certainly I'm aware of the British expression that blood is thicker than water, but it is just an expression, of course, right?
Not a proof.
And so I just am always trying to reiterate the point that you can't love somebody just for being related to you.
You can say that you do and you can believe a lot of stuff that you're told about the value of family, but fundamentally I think it's psychologically impossible, you know, that's just my opinion again, I'm not saying that you're wrong, that it's impossible to love somebody except for virtue.
You can't love them for being a third cousin.
You can't love them for being a great aunt.
You can't love them for being a mother or for being a father.
There's a certain amount of exposure and there's a certain amount of repetitive habit that's involved in family.
And there's a certain kind of predefined relationship that can be quite comfortable.
But to me, that's not the same as love.
And what I mean by that is not that people should just say to their family, well, that's it.
You did something wrong.
I'm never going to talk to you again.
What I mean is that I'm actually trying to really improve family relations.
So when I talk to people about their families, I'm not saying to them, you don't love your family, you shouldn't see your family because they're not angels of virtue.
What I am saying is that if you take family relations as close and intimate and good and strong simply because of the biological relationship, then you're not bringing your whole self to that relationship.
Right? I mean, if I say, well, I'm going to go and have lunch with my dad, and we're, you know, bonded because of our histories, that's not the same as me going to say, I'm going to go and have lunch with a friend of mine, where I have to work, you could say work, and it's not really work, but you have to sort of work a little bit harder.
The moment we take things for granted, or they become absolutes based on circumstance, we don't work at those relationships nearly as much anymore, neither on the parental side nor on the child side, especially, as you say, when you're an adult child.
So what I'm trying to do by talking about this kind of stuff is not to sort of try and lay some sort of flamethrower to the root of family, but simply to say that we should not look upon family as people we're just close to because of our biology.
That they should be relationships that we bring ourselves to, that we ask questions about, that we examine and that we are open to different approaches to, because that's what keeps those relationships alive and that's what keeps them vital.
And that's, I think, what I'm...
You just don't take it as an axiom or as an automatic that family is, you know, just good and close and loving because it's family.
To me, that's not quite as engaged and active as saying that we need to treat our relationships with our families as...
Things which are alive, not to be taken for granted, not founded on mere biology, not founded on history, not founded on circumstance, not founded on repetitive exposure, not just something which is going to be there like the sky or gravity, but something which we should take an active participation in and bring more of ourselves to, if that sort of makes any sense.
Can I respond?
Sure, of course. Obviously the big debate is nature versus nurture.
And for me, I've got a keyring with my grandad on.
My grandad was, for me, my hero.
Bigger than Kenny Dalgleish.
An absolute hero.
And he had an absolutely...
He was just a saint.
His missus was a nasty piece of work.
My grandma was a nasty piece of work.
But my grandad was an absolute saint.
And they say that it skips a generation.
I think I'm a nice person.
I don't often blow my own trumpet but we're on the radio here so...
But I think I'm a nice person and I think that They say that it skips a generation.
And I like to think of myself as my grandad.
Well, not my grandad, but that gene that skipped a generation.
I like to think of myself as that nice generation.
And I'm not saying it's just the gene.
I know that it's a mixture of nature versus nurture.
I know it's the gene plus the circumstances.
I know that.
What I'm saying to you is that...
Oh, I've lost my chain of thought now.
I've lost my chain of thoughts.
But do you understand what I'm saying?
That it's not just nature versus...
It's not just nature, it's nurture as well.
And I just think it's both.
And I think that you've got to bear that in mind.
And obviously, nurture is, for most people, Family, that is half of the equation.
And I think that what you're doing is you're saying that half of the equation that, well, you can just, you can throw that away.
It just sounds as though that you're, and I'm not trying to insult you, but it sounds as though you're slightly bitter, that you've been slightly made, a little bit twisted by the way, Your life has turned out.
And I should be twisted by the way my family turned out.
But I'm not, because I, at the end, you know, if everyone in a family does stick together, then it can.
It can work out.
It can. And I just don't want you to...
I feel that all families are bad.
I know you haven't said that all families are bad things, but I got that feeling at one point.
It's your turn. Sure.
No, listen, thanks. That's great.
I really appreciate that. Can I just ask you if you have or are planning on having children, given that this evil gene seems to skip a generation?
Because, you know, you might get some sort of Damien Devilchild coming out there, right?
I'm so glad my girlfriend's gone to bed.
You should go after her now because, you know, you've got to bring this demon spawn into the world, right?
She wanted kids yesterday and I'm in a big, big philosophical dilemma about whether I should About bringing kids into the world today.
Not because of the devil gene, but because it's just...
I don't know if a kid of mine will end up living to the end of his life.
That's another question.
Because I just think global warming is going to kill them before the devil gene does.
So anyway, anyway, that's another story.
But I'm sure that your girlfriend perfectly understands this argument because women are really interested in this kind of political reasons as to why not to have children, right?
So I'm sure you've had no trouble convincing her of this, right?
Oh yeah, oh yeah, yeah.
I love that hint of sarcasm there.
That was the English coming back out of you.
Absolutely. I could immediately tell that there was a little bit of English.
How long ago did you move over there?
Oh, I've been here for over 25 years now.
25, but it's still there.
And which bit of England were you from?
I grew up in London, and I lived for a little while in Africa, and I went to boarding school near Wales.
All right, okay. It's a tour of the colonies accent, I think.
I'm a linguist, that's what I wanted to know.
Right, do move on. I do apologize.
Oh, no, no problem at all.
No problem at all. The only thing I'd say, look, I mean, kids, it's a big question, and I'm not going to try and give you anything vaguely useful.
First of all, thanks for the compliment that I may only be slightly bitter because I consider that great improvement.
So I appreciate that.
That's great. I mean, that's like sunrise for me.
So thank you very much if I've got it down to just a little.
Wow! That medication, I've got to tell you, it must be really kicking in.
Anyway, as far as kids go, This is sort of my personal opinion, right?
I mean, again, whether it helps you or not, it's totally up to you.
But there are bad things in the world, right?
I'm not a big...
Global warming isn't even in my top ten of things to be afraid of, but everyone has their list, and I'm not going to try and gainsay yours.
But the world has been an on-again, off-again good and bad place for the past 100,000 years or so.
And I would say that if you want to have kids...
Then that should be the decision that you make in isolation for all the bad decisions that other people in the world are going to make, right?
So for me, it's like I'm a little concerned about the old national debt and whether any kid I have is going to have a job or not, right?
So that's sort of what my concern is, or political freedom as they continue to diminish, which I know, of course, is occurring in the UK after July of last year as well.
So is the kid going to have the kind of opportunities and freedoms that I had?
Is that what I want to have happen?
And if there is a big problem with the economy, blah, blah, blah.
Like everyone has their list of fears.
And the way that I've sort of worked that out is that there are lots of bad people in the world who are doing bad things or making bad decisions, which have a huge amount of impact on me either because, you know, the politics or some relationship between the captains of industry and the politics and so on.
But that I'm going to try and make that decision about kids...
Based on my values, what I have control over.
I don't have control over global warming or what happens with political freedom or anything like that, despite the power of reaching dozens of people a week with a podcast.
And so for me, the question is, do I want to have children?
And I never felt too comfortable surrendering that decision to the bad decisions that other people make about pollution or the economics or whatever.
So I would say that if you want to have kids, you should just have the kids.
Because for sure, if nice and good people like you stop having children, then there's going to be just that fewer number of nice people in the world and good people in the world, which sure as heck is going to lower the odds for the planet doing well in the long run.
So that's my two cents worth, if that helps at all.
Yeah, it does. It's just that for me to have, for my grandchild to be the next good gene, then that's another 16 years.
My kid will be Satan.
Right. That might be a little bit more immediate than global warming for you.
They'll definitely be in the next high stage by then.
That's alright. I grew up British.
Go ahead. This is free domain, yes?
So there's no particular topics to debate?
Well, we have a wide variety of topics.
This is sort of an outgrowth of a videocast and a podcast that I've been doing for about 10 months talking about philosophy and psychology and economics and so on.
So, yes, it's a pretty wide open topic when we have these call-in shows.
Well, no, it's just that are you in the States or in Canada?
Canada. Oh, in Canada.
So is Canada as bad as the States in terms of...
Oh, did we lose him?
I think everyone else is unmuted.
I'm not sure if this guy, his girlfriend might have woken up and heard him even becoming remotely receptive to the idea of having children.
So it might be the case that she's actually just dragged him off To the Dungeon of Lust.
I'm sorry, go ahead. Are you back? I do apologize.
I've got a terrible microphone, so I don't know.
I think I'm causing interference on everybody.
No, so far it's fine. Alright, okay, cool.
My point was, the Canadians, do they use as much gas as they do in the States?
Oh, Canada, we're terrible for.
I wouldn't say gas. We have just about the highest per capita energy usage in the world because the country's so damn big and it's so damn cold.
So people get around and they don't like freezing.
But what we do have is 50% of our power is generated through nuclear energy, which of course doesn't produce any carbon emissions, so there's some benefit to it there.
Because the view in England is that if America doesn't That George Bush got in on an oil ticket and that if the next president of the United States isn't a Democrat then the world's going to hell because there's a certain timescale where many scientists have said that if we don't start to reduce our emissions Like,
now, then, you know, we are in trouble and hopefully, you know, the next president of the states will be a Democrat and they'll do something radical.
What's your thoughts on that?
Oh, I don't think there's any chance of, no matter who gets in, whether anything is going to happen that's radical that way.
I mean, the Democrats and the Republicans, I mean, I'm sure from overseas they look like quite a different species of animals, but this is a big complicated topic which we could just touch on now.
But, I mean, the essential machinery of government continues on despite the fact that certain people get in at the top, right?
I mean, 98%, 99% of the government you never really vote on.
Like the military-industrial complex, like the mercantilist sort of state economic system and so on.
And the only thing I'll tell you is that if a Democrat gets in, it's because they've already made promises to the captains of industry who work together with the state, right?
I mean, it takes, what, 200, 300 million dollars to run for presidential office in the United States, and you only get that money from donors by promising them favors in return.
So the only way a Democrat is going to get in is if the oil companies are willing to fund him, or her, or probably him, which means that I don't see any particular possibility of changing that soon.
But for my own self, I mean, we're not that far apart in age, but I just remember as a kid, it was like, in the 70s, originally it was global oil.
Global cooling was the big thing that was going to destroy us all.
And then we had, oh, we're going to run out of all natural resources by 1980.
And then electricity, we're going to run out of electricity.
And then there was going to be mass starvation because of the problem with food crops.
And then there was going to be massive overpopulation, which was going to cause the planet to rupture.
And So for me, I mean, again, you may know more about this, and I do, and I'm certainly no climatologist, but global warming to me is just in a series of a long series of scare things that have gone on that I can't see actually happening, and that everybody tells me is happening, but it's just the latest in a long series of things that have scared the crap out of me.
That didn't seem to come to pass.
I'm not even going to talk about nuclear war, which I spent my entire teenage years terrified of, and actually it hampered my math skills quite a bit because I never felt like studying for anything because it didn't really, you know, sort of how you feel like with kids, right?
But again, I'm no expert on this, but I just, I have a tough time taking these threats seriously because it just seems like there's an entire industry of people out there who just loves getting the crap out of people, so Again, I'm not saying whether it's true or not.
It's just that after...
I mean, it's a whole bunch of wolf crying that's gone on my whole life about the sky is falling.
The sky is falling, and I just find it tough to get too excited about global warming.
But that may be my own era, of course.
But I just...
There just seemed to be this whole industry of fear mongers out there that scare the crap out of everyone.
Can I come back on you?
Yeah, yeah, sure. I understand about the...
You know, the politics of fear.
I totally get that.
I've been looking at documentaries recently about the whole terrorist thing, about the neoconservative thing, about the politics of fear rather than the politics of aspiration.
But you sound like a very erudite man to me, and I can't believe that you are taking this with a pinch of salt.
Oh, it's more than a pinch.
Well, it seems that you're taking it with a grain of salt.
Oh, it's more than a grain. It's probably a salt like the size of Utah, but go on.
But you just seem to be...
You used the phrase, poo-pooing this global warming thing.
This really is...
I think we've got...
I really do think that we've got 20 years to sort this out.
I really do. Let me tell you one thing, right?
And one thing I found out is that the gulf stream is really important, yeah?
Yeah. And that when the polar ice caps, they're melting, yeah?
So when the polar...
they're not...
Well, I've seen contradictory data.
This is the problem. There's not a consensus.
Is this what George Bushes told you?
No, I mean, this is what climatologists and scientists, some people say that they're melting, some people say that it's caused by local factors in the 15th century.
Greenland, sorry, Iceland was so warm and Greenland was so warm that there were cows on there.
And if you look at this whole hockey stick spike that first showed up in the late 1980s with regards to global warming, the entire mathematical model was based on a computing error that no matter what numbers you fed into it, you were going to get that hockey stick thing.
And that's never been rescinded.
And that's been a complete error from the very beginning.
And there's lots of contradictory data about is it getting warmer?
Is it getting cooler? I've not seen one...
Falsifiable premise of global warming that has ever been proven, right?
They say, well, this is going to happen.
It's going to get warmer at the lower temperatures and colder at the higher temperatures.
And then the exact opposite happens.
And then they say, well, the temperature's going to go up by one-tenth of a degree over ten years, and that doesn't happen.
Or it happens in this area, but not in this area.
And so, from my standpoint, I just, A, I can't see it for myself.
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