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Oct. 15, 2006 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

02:35:45

460 Call In Show Oct 15 2006 - families, futures, minds and brains!

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	Well, thank you, everybody, so much for joining us on this fine afternoon, Sunday, October the 15th, 2006.
	Hope you're all doing well. I have received an invitation to speak at the Libertarian Conference, and I think that the words I'm allowed to speak are, would you like your martini straight up or shaken or stirred, so I will be the Libertarian waiter.
	I received an invitation to speak at Libertarian Conference which should be nice.
	I certainly appreciate that.
	I think that will be a lot of fun.
	And I'll post more details on the Board.
	It's still a little ways away.
	I'll have time to prepare, I guess you could say, which is a good thing.
	And so I'll be running past some ideas past what I used to call the Board, which I'm now going to call the Borg, just because it certainly assimilates a good deal of my time.
	So let's, yeah, I'll try and get it to be taped.
	Just so that you can see me getting thoroughly heckled by a group of irate libertarians which is always enjoyable because they'll be wanting me to focus on the political and the abstract and the inevitably achieved and I will be asking them to look in the mirror to find freedom where it really resides which is, you know, wherever your own underpants happen to be walking around with you in them.
	So that should be quite enjoyable and I certainly appreciate that invitation.
	And the other thing, I've been asked to submit an article or an essay for a book featuring, I mean, believe it or not, it says prominent libertarians.
	They may have misread that, but I've been asked to submit an essay on, you know, how I became involved in the freedom movement.
	And so I'm going to be, I was supposed to be working on that this afternoon, but I haven't quite got around to that, so I'll be working on that a little bit later today.
	I'll post that on the board if people would be kind enough to let me know what they think, if it sort of flows and makes sense.
	You know, most of the people are going to be talking about a political enlightenment and, of course, for myself, since I focus on the personal before the political, I'll be focusing on the wild emotional oscillations that ended up settling with me, with me settling deep into the sediment of I'll be looking forward to working on that.
	We're getting a little bit of exposure.
	I went through a bit of a donation drought which had me somewhat alarmed but that was all right.
	It's broken a little bit now.
	Because donations are going to cluster and gather and vanish in nearly random formations, it's a Brownian motion as far as that goes.
	But because, you know, if I do a controversial podcast, which is followed by an extraordinary dip in donations, so it's something that you always think, oh, they finally alienated everyone.
	I can't believe they lasted for 458 podcasts.
	No way, 459 podcasts.
	That just happened this morning.
	And so I'm very glad that people have, that it wasn't, you know, that they finally lost patience with me completely, but have actually decided to keep donating, which is good.
	You know, despite my best efforts of sheer radicalization and alienation of people, we all have managed to stick around.
	I certainly appreciate it because it's a lot more fun to imagine that some people are listening I also, this is sort of by the by technical geeky stuff, I signed up for Google Analytics.
	I was looking for a good engine to figure out what was going on on the website and it's pretty good.
	I must say that we are getting a couple of hundred new listeners a week based on just sort of the last couple of days, a little bit of extrapolation.
	There are a couple of hundred new listeners a week, of which only one goes past podcast zero.
	But, boy, that podcast zero is really, really popular in a way.
	No, I'm just kidding. Of course, there is a slight diminishment when people sort of realize maybe they come in wanting all this political stuff, and I talk a little bit more about the personal stuff.
	Who knows? But I would say that there's about a 25% drop-off from the first podcast further on.
	One of the most popular sites on the web is the videos which has sort of organized that introduction to philosophy thing and that's been quite popular, getting a couple of hundred hits in a few days.
	I still have no idea how many listeners there are.
	I still have no idea what's been going on.
	But I certainly think that we're doing well.
	I've got a couple of email messages into publicity companies because I think That, you know, you always need an angle when you're going to go and talk to people in general about what it is that you're doing.
	And I think the fact that I run a YouTube show from my car is enough of an indication either to get somebody interested in broadcasting the story to a sort of wider audience or conversely just sending me to the police to get my license yanked.
	We have yet to figure out which one it's going to be, but I am...
	I'm hoping to get sort of a publicity company to sort of get the news out there, press releases and so on, which I think would be good.
	Now, somebody has asked, is there one person alive who has listened to all the podcasts?
	Well, I guess me, but I don't really listen so much as talk.
	As you can tell from the podcast, it's really a lot more talking than listening.
	I've actually been listening to a few of the older podcasts for a variety of reasons recently.
	Because I'm very much concerned that I might even remotely repeat myself.
	So I know. See, so far I've been married for a couple of years, known Christina for a year before that, and she's never heard a single story or idea twice.
	I think we're up to about a dozen.
	Not twice, though, right?
	So I've been sort of listening back and forth a little bit to some older ones.
	Actually, I'm quite pleased.
	I think they're quite good. Oh, excellent.
	I have. I need a lump.
	Now, repeating topics, somebody has said here that they fell behind on the podcast due to a vacation.
	I don't even know where to begin with that.
	A vacation from the chatty forehead is...
	Wait, Christine is weeping.
	Take me with you. Is that what you're miming in the air?
	But vacation, I... I can't even imagine why you wouldn't take a cluster of podcasts with you on your vacation.
	I guess I can unmute, Christina.
	Steph seems fit to podcast while on vacation.
	I think that's what he's saying.
	If I can podcast, why can't you guys listen?
	Right, and fortunately I didn't actually post the podcast that I did when we were riding one of the kiddie rides at Disneyland because the all girly screaming podcast didn't seem to be quite as artistic as it should have been, with Christina sort of saying, it's okay, we haven't even started yet.
	So just strapping us in to the little tank of toy, there's no need to scream yet.
	Plus I think you're actually going higher than the Japanese schoolgirl crew behind us.
	So anyway, I think we're doing okay and we're sort of getting the word out bit by bit.
	It's been a while since I've done an email campaign and so on, what with the new job and so on.
	I guess I wanted to sort of put it out there for people who've listened to before.
	If anybody going to the videos, we've had about 6,500 hits in the last three weeks and 6,500 video views which is good, nice and I don't know, 60 or 70 subscribers but I'm just wondering if anybody who listens to the podcast also goes to the videos or whether it's all audio all the time.
	people are unmuted if you wanted to sort of respond to that.
	Can you just repeat that?
	I got something about watching you from the underground, but I didn't quite catch more than that.
	If you could just repeat that. I was just saying that I've been watching the philosophy series on the video, just because it's fun to see with the oranges and the graphs and stuff.
	Right. Well, thanks.
	I certainly appreciate that. I had August off between jobs.
	And Christina asked, you know, could I actually do something productive around the house?
	And I said, no, I need to juggle fruit in pursuit of epistemology.
	And this probably was one of the more coherent things I said in our marriage.
	So she just said, okay, here's some fruit, go upstairs, knock yourself out, I'll be seeing some patients and making some money.
	So I did get a fair amount of time in August to actually get that done.
	I kind of needed, you really can't do an introduction to philosophy I think without at least some visual stimuli because you're kind of dealing with real world things, especially a sensualist kind of philosophy so that has been, I think there's about six There are 700 people who started down the road of the Introduction to Philosophy series and naturally there are some casualties along the way.
	It's sort of like Napoleon's march into Russia that, you know, occasionally you'll get a comment from people who are on, I think, show maybe 80 or 90 of the Introduction to Philosophy series saying that they lost their boots, they've run out of goose fat, and they've had to snap off and munch on their toes, and then they've run out of goose fat, and they've had to snap off and
	But, you know, a few do make it to Moscow and then, you know, to the Promised Land of at least some relatively coherent view of philosophy, so I think that's been quite useful and I think it's been nice to… There's something about the body language that completely changes portions of what's being said, and that's interesting because, Do you mean this? I'll just unmute you for a second there, Mr.
	Gamalfi, but do you mean in terms of the swoop where I sort of lunge down and eyeball the camera like you're an optometrist examining me, or do you mean sort of the scratching or the dancing, or what do you mean?
	I'm sorry, Greg. Please go ahead.
	Hello, testing. Yes, go ahead.
	Okay. Now, what I was noticing was that with certain podcasts, I mostly just listen, but with certain podcasts, I've been jumping over and watching the YouTube videos.
	I knew I'd get it right sooner or later.
	With facial expressions, hand gestures, just general body language and mostly facial expressions, I've been noticing that there are different parts of what you're saying that your physical presence changes your focus of attention Changes the listener's focus of attention,
	I think. When I listen to the podcast, I get a completely different read off them, and I'll remember completely different things about it than when I watch the podcast.
	Right, because when you're listening to the podcast, you're not as aware of how often I'm driving without using either of my hands, right?
	So it's not quite as distracting?
	Or... More likely, I'm reading into what's being said, my own moods and attitudes and thoughts about what's being said, whereas when I'm watching, you get more of a projection of what it is that you're trying to convey in terms of mood and attitude and That sort of thing, I think. Oh, interesting, interesting.
	Yeah, I mean, it is interesting to, you know, to sort of sit and watch, and I think there's a kind of, it's sort of hard to say, to me there's a little bit more of a, What kind of conviction that sort of comes out from watching, that comes out a little bit more than just listening?
	Because there's something about sort of, I mean, not exactly the eye contact because I'm often wreathed in sunglasses, but, well, Christina, you've seen the videos.
	What's the experience for you that's different from the audience?
	I think they're more engaging.
	I like the facial expressions.
	I like the body language.
	I love the charts. I love the fruit.
	Excellent. The fruit, just for those who are joining, doesn't mean me despite the accent.
	It actually does mean the fruit.
	No, I do. I think the podcasts are, the videocasts are much more engaging than the audio, just the audios.
	The audios are great.
	They're fantastic. With the video, though, you're just, it's like watching television.
	I'm glued. Right, right.
	Well, thanks very much for that.
	I'm just going to do a short ramble-o-ramble to just get things kicked off today.
	There were some very interesting posts this morning.
	This is a slight repetition on a podcast that I did this morning to sort of warm up for the show.
	And I wanted to – something funny, Christina has noted, something funny on the FDR chat.
	I love the fruit. Add that to the FDR remix guide.
	The banana story was interesting.
	Yes, I'm sure it was.
	There was a post this morning that was very interesting in that it was talking about how these two Secret Service guys had swooped down on a 14-year-old girl Who had posted something derogatory or inflammatory about George Bush on her MySpace.com website.
	I have no idea what MySpace is so I assume it's just some sort of visual blog thing for ADHD teenagers or just teenagers and she had posted a Kill Bush or something like that with a picture of a knife going through his hand or something like that because she was very inflamed in all of her hormonal 14-year-old intellectual glory She was very inflamed about the Iraq war and was very negative towards Bush so she posted this and then she found out that this was actually a federal offense and so she pulled the site down but alas,
	it was too late. The CIA took a short break from scanning the imaginary Al-Qaeda and swooped down on her, dragged her out of her molecular biology class And berated her in the hallway for about 15 minutes, made her cry, screamed at her that it was illegal, a federal offense, that they were going to throw her into juvenile hall, which I think is a kind of boot camp for serial political offenders.
	And this was greeted with some horror, of course, by some people.
	And, of course, it is horrifying, of course, that the state would do this to basically a girl who would be still on the outer limits of girl-guidedom.
	But the one thing that I will say that's really to me extraordinarily encouraging about this, as you know I'm fairly center, the center of the solar system of at least the way I approach the world is the argument for morality and the one thing that was really powerful and I think has been really powerful for the past little while about the arguments that are brought to bear on people by authority is that those arguments Are not moral in nature at all.
	So there were basically two things that these Secret Service agents said to this little girl.
	The one was, it's illegal, right?
	And the other was, and we're going to throw you in a juvenile prison, and so on.
	And those two things are beautiful in a macabre kind of way.
	There is a real end of an era kind of beauty to these statements.
	Because to argue to a child that they must obey because it's illegal and she will be punished if she doesn't is absolutely a hegemonic structure that is completely at the end of its moral legitimacy.
	I think it's a beautiful, beautiful indication of just how pathetic and desperate the state is becoming in terms of now its naked power, its naked force It's becoming much more visible to people.
	And you know, after things like the war in Iraq and Abu Ghraib and Katrina and the failure of the war on drugs, the failure of the war on terror, the failure of the war on poverty, the failure of the war on literacy, all this kind of thing.
	We could go on and on. But now that people no longer believe in the idea that the state can get anything positive done from an ethical standpoint, the government, in order to get people to Obey is no longer saying, "Well, you must obey because it's moral to obey, we're good, we're looking out for your best interests, blah, blah, blah." They're just basically shooting guns around saying, "Obey, you damn sheep or you're going down."
	That is a fantastic development.
	I think that's extraordinarily positive.
	It does mean that you kind of need to watch your back a little bit at the moment.
	And not say anything inflammatory to anyone that is traceable or, you know, I shouldn't say that because I say inflammatory things all the time, but now is not the time to stand up to the G-men, I guess, is what I'm saying.
	But I think it's extraordinarily positive that the best that these two Secret Service agents could come up with to threaten this child It's against the law, which of course has no moral content whatsoever.
	Anything in aiding and abetting Jews was against the law in Nazi Germany, so this purely formulaic approach to legality is completely ridiculous and an embarrassment to anybody who claims a moral justification for what he or she is doing, like these G-men might do.
	It's a beautiful thing to see that the ruling class has run out of moralizing justifications that The fog is starting to withdraw from the army and you can sort of see the naked steel so to speak because what it means is that when people give up on believing in the ethical falsehoods of the state,
	the false moral arguments, the price, the cost of owning the taxpayers goes up considerably because now there's no argument that anybody really makes anymore that says you should pay Your taxes because it's a moral and good thing to pay your taxes.
	There's a funny cartoon that somebody published a couple of months ago on the Free Domain Radio boards Which was a cartoon from the 1940s before the Friedman-inspired deduction that saw income tax came in after the Second World War.
	And it was, you know, if you don't pay your taxes, you're supporting the axis, right?
	The old, the Japanese, Japan, Italy, Germany axis.
	That was supposed to be the evil socialism that the allies were fighting so that they could furthermore put socialism more freely into their own houses.
	There was this real moral argument.
	If you don't pay your taxes, you're taking bullets out of the guns of the heroes who are fighting, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
	And it really was a very strong moral argument.
	And I remember this when I was younger, that people who worked under the table We're kind of considered to be, it was sleazy, it was bad, right?
	And recently, I can't remember anyone who hasn't said, who's a salaried employee, my God, if I could only get me some of that gray market, I'd be a whole lot happier.
	If I wasn't being taxed at 50% or 60% at source, I'd be a whole lot happier.
	And we look at certain groups, tradespeople and so on, who we know, you just know we're working under the table.
	And we don't look at that like, gee, that's a That's a bad thing.
	They're not doing their civic duty.
	We just think, man, for me at least there's an irritating kind of envy to it because it's just that my taxes are deducted at source so I don't get to be very creative in what it is that I do with my accounting.
	There is no argument from morality that supports obedience to the state anymore.
	It really is only just, am I going to get caught?
	As I mentioned this morning, I flew to Boston on Friday just for the day for a meeting and I was flying back and I was watching a pretty bad sitcom on the plane because I was a bit zombied.
	It's good to get up at 5 o'clock in the morning to get through all the security stuff.
	And in the sitcom, this woman was saying, I take cold medicine to get to sleep at night.
	And her brother says, well, I'm not going to make fun of that.
	And she's like, yeah, maybe you shouldn't.
	And I won't make fun of your, quote, glaucoma medicine, which, of course, is a reference to part, right?
	And, of course, the audience just laughed.
	And it struck me while I was watching the plane in my sort of semi-haze of sleepiness that if she'd said, you know, well, okay, I won't talk about your pedophilia then, right?
	Then obviously there would be a horror.
	There would be no joke at all, right?
	It would be complete horror. But glaucoma medicine and people who smoke pot is considered funny, right?
	Funny enough to put in a mainstream sitcom.
	This isn't an HBO thing.
	This is a totally mainstream one.
	And that's kind of funny that people laugh at stuff that's illegal.
	It's become a joke. That is an extraordinary distance from where the war on drugs started.
	Let's not even get into this whole Prison Break series which I do plan to do a podcast on because it really is quite fascinating A, the sort of meta messages that are in Prison Break and B, the fact that it's extraordinarily popular is really to me quite indicative of where people stand in relation to the morality and authority of the state of the people who are sort of running the show that it really has become a state of nature.
	We don't live in a moral state anymore, even in an illusory moral state.
	We live in a state of nature.
	The state of nature is okay, that's your chess move, you pass this regulation which is bullshit and it's designed simply to extort money from people like if you look at the legislation that went into play in the US this last week about online gambling, you just know that that's because people are doing online gambling rather than buying lottery tickets or going to state sponsored casinos.
	And also because there was some sort of shakedown that the people didn't pay them off enough and so now they'll have to pay them off to get exceptions from these rules.
	As you know, these things will certainly exist, right?
	There'll be charity casinos and all that.
	So there'll be lots of ways of getting around the rules.
	But the way people view the government now is the government simply goes through a series of moves that's like chess or it's like tennis.
	It's like, oh, you're going to hit the ball over here?
	Okay, I'll run there. I'll try and do a backspin to get it over in that corner.
	And it's simply become a maneuvering that occurs There's no ethical basis involved.
	When the government raises taxes, nobody thinks it's to do good works anymore.
	And what this does is it really begins to raise the cost of ruling people.
	When they don't obey you voluntarily, as Murray Rothbard says, you know, that these totalitarian systems tend to fall after the second or third generation who grew up with no revolutionary allegiance to the initial turnover of society, right? So the first generation goes in all lordy-lordy and let's get all these great things done and then the second generation is raised by those people but by the third or fourth generation, People don't believe in it anymore and I think we're kind of getting to that point.
	Certainly in conversations that I've had with younger people, they have no ethical allegiance to the fantasies of state virtue at all.
	I mean at all, not even a little bit.
	And that's really quite fascinating.
	They don't believe any of it.
	They think they'd roll their eyes when you talk to them about the virtue of the welfare state and so on and they know that it's a pure scam.
	And what that means is that it's going to be much, much harder to rule people and as the cost of ruling people goes up, The power of the government will inevitably get broken and of course it's my opinion that a lot of the stuff that's going on militarily is because people want to scoop as much money out of the public treasury because they know that it's all going down.
	Like the US, I think last month, the Fed stopped printing the money circulation, right?
	And that's because they know that they need to print lots of money to pay for the war in Iraq which doesn't mean of course to pay for the war in Iraq.
	It means to pay off people who are involved in the war in Iraq, right?
	The public to the private sector so they stop printing the money supply.
	Now that doesn't mean that the money supply is unknown, it just means that only a small group of people know it who can manipulate it for their own benefit and so that's a huge, enormous signal that the US government is giving up on the US dollar in any long term strategy because as soon as you don't know the money velocity, how much money the Fed is printing, then it's very clear that it's not going to be a viable currency for very long.
	So these kinds of things are just giving me an enormous sense of hope and excitement about where we are and it certainly does drive me to ramble on even faster and more furiously about freedom because I think that there is a great expectation, there is a great intake of breath and a great change I think coming along.
	I can sort of feel it which doesn't mean that it's real, it just means that I think it is and I think that we really should try and be excited about what's coming.
	I know that the government seems monolithic and the government seems bigger than the sky, higher than the moon, deeper than the Narayana Trench, but government is really just a fantasy of virtue and when that fantasy of virtue is pierced, the government collapses extraordinarily quickly as we've seen in the Soviet Union and of course as we've seen in a variety of other cultures throughout history.
	So I just wanted to point out that, you know, again, we don't need to lift a finger.
	There's nothing violent in anything that we need to do.
	We just need to keep talking about the value and the virtue Of freedom and of voluntarism and of pacifism and of a stateless society, the possibility that a stateless society is going to prevent problems rather than point guns at people, steal all their money and leave the economy of the land smoking ruin.
	And I just wanted to point out that the longer we keep talking about this and we make something possible by showing to people that what has always existed in human society does not need to continue to exist from here to eternity, that there are alternatives to using violence to solve people's problems.
	There are alternatives To grinding people down with taxation and theft and regulation and bullying and special interests and mercantilism.
	There are alternatives to everyone standing there like idiots in a Tarantino film pointing guns at each other and screaming.
	That there is a more peaceful world that we can all inhabit.
	That people are so beaten down by history and by everything that they taught that they can't even think of it as a possibility.
	And I think the more that we keep talking about what is possible, Then the more quickly it's going to come about.
	So I just wanted to point out, I know that that's quite a lot to pull out from an article about two guys yelling at a girl, but this is sort of in conjunction with a number of other things that I've been reading lately.
	I think that it's getting closer.
	What's that song? It may seem a million miles away, but it gets a little closer every day.
	We have no way of knowing how quickly things are going to change when everything really begins to fall down and I just think that's going to be a very, very exciting thing and we shouldn't necessarily think that we're going to shuffle through this life in the shadow of the state and with manacles around our ankles and sweat dripping from our brows with these heavy loads and that perhaps there is something that might change for our great,
	great, great grandchildren I think I really do think it can be a whole lot more imminent than that.
	So with that, I'm going to open the boards to anything that anybody wants to say.
	any questions comments issues criticisms the for those who have joined recently my name is Stefan Molyneux I'm the host and I guess board runner of Free Domain Radio which is FreeDomainRadio.com and I'm an Anaco capitalist a pacifist a
	I guess an economist and so on.
	We talk about the way that society can work in the absence of a government, in the absence of the economic incentives for war and for predation and the sort of organized civil war of special interest group conflicts, the way that society can work in the absence of a centralized government and all of the benefits that will accrue to society through that.
	So if you have any questions about that, please feel free to ask away.
	Well, I am going to...
	Let me just see if I can find you here.
	I don't actually see you.
	I don't think I see you on the list here.
	Alrighty, let's do that.
	Sorry, this is an audio conference.
	I'll just say go ahead here in the window and then you can add.
	We'll do it that way.
	Stephen Greenway is very interesting.
	Gosh, can you add a maybe juice?
	I'm so sorry. I'm going to have to just let him...
	Okay, so what was the question that Nils had asked?
	Stefan, why do you hate your country and causality?
	Well, of course, the interesting thing is that if I really did hate causality, I would never think that there was anything to do with hating my country that could be causally explainable.
	So what I did sort of want to mention was that you do, of course, get accused of this quite a bit when you talk about not wanting to have When you talk about not believing in government, not believing in countries, why do you hate your government and country, which is kind of interesting.
	It's like people just haven't really listened to you.
	It's really quite fascinating.
	People haven't really listened to you.
	If you say, I don't believe in leprechauns and then people say, well, why do you hate leprechauns so much?
	It's like, well, I don't because they don't exist.
	I hate the fantasy and the violence that results from the fantasy that leprechauns do exist if people believe that leprechauns tell them to go kill other people and that makes it morally okay to do so, whether those leprechauns are called Cretien or Bush or Blair or Mumbatu or whoever.
	I hate the fantasy that people believe that these leprechauns called politicians can morally tell them to go kill people and it's all going to work out hunky-dory.
	But that's not really an issue.
	I don't hate the leprechauns themselves.
	I hate the fantasy that results in the violence from people who do believe in the leprechauns.
	Somebody said here, I've missed the monologue, what was it about?
	Okay, I'll just start again.
	Okay, I will unmute Mr.
	who had a question, I believe just wanted to praise the extraordinary levels of coherence that came through in the monologue.
	If I read that correctly.
	Hello?
	Two questions.
	First of all, do you think that the intimidation that this girl received will be the most Do you think it will...
	How can I put this?
	Do you think she'll learn the lesson from that that the state is...
	Not her friend, or do you think that she'll take from that that she has to conform?
	I guess what I'm saying is, does those two Secret Service agents doing that to her make it more likely or less likely that she'll grow up a statist?
	Right, right. No, I think that's a very interesting question.
	And I think that that question really revolves around, obviously, the definition of status.
	Is she going to grow up believing that the government has great power and is willing to use it in an aggressive manner?
	Well, of course, of course she will.
	There's no question of that. Will she grow up as a status and say, well, I'd better obey the state because it's the most moral thing in the universe?
	No, I don't really think that she will.
	And so, what are your thoughts on that?
	You don't think that the overwhelming intimidation can sort of coerce you into believing that the state is good?
	That the punishment that was threatened of her was because she was bad, not because they were bad?
	Well, I will pull my semi-usual shtick here and we'll try and personalize it because it's tougher to theorize about what she may be thinking.
	But you certainly experienced some fairly significant aggression from your own father, say.
	Did you believe as you got older that your father was a good man Or that he was a flawed man with problems but that there was some sort of virtue in family proximity or did you sort of think that your family was like a glowingly moral and sort of center of excellence?
	Well, actually I used to believe that, yeah, that our family was somehow different from everybody else and that somehow my parents were the only ones that were good and everybody else was kind of, you know, askew somehow.
	And, you know, of course the reality is exactly the opposite.
	I don't know, you kind of think that, you know, the punishment that you're receiving is because, you know, there's something wrong with you.
	Not because there's nothing wrong with you, but there's something wrong with whoever's punishing you, right?
	Right, right. Okay.
	Now, I think that you're right, that that generally, I think, does occur.
	During certain kinds of situations, repetitive exposures and so on, but I think that it's not going to be the case with this girl because being descended on by two screaming Secret Service agents is pretty scary and pretty traumatic and I think it certainly is going to give her the sense That the government is at best a little trigger happy in terms of its reactions to these kinds of issues.
	It's not going to make her an anarcho-capitalist, of course, without some intervention.
	This is very hard for people to make this up.
	I think I would say that it's going to be quite likely that if somebody comes up to her and says the government is forced, which is the basic thing that you need to get when you talk about the government is you kind of need to get, not you of course, but people kind of need to get that the government is an agency which has a monopoly on the use of force.
	I mean that's the one differentiating characteristic between the government I mean that's not brain surgery but of course people have an enormous amount of emotional resistance to that and I think that when she's presented with that proposition it seems to me likely that she's going to say, she may say well they were using the force inappropriately but I don't think she's going to have a real problem that you know understanding that the government is sort of about you know there's at least an aspect of it that's around threatening people.
	I come at it a little bit differently.
	I think it's equally as likely that she's going to come away with this thinking, well, actions have consequences.
	You do bad things and bad things happen to you.
	Right? And so she's going to think that what she did was bad and that what she received as a result was precisely the reaction she should have received.
	Well, certainly, let me just dig up because we can get a little bit out of the theoretical side of things here.
	Let me just see if I can't dig up, and I think I can.
	Let me see if I can dig up the actual article.
	We'll sort of see. Because when I read the article, I certainly didn't get the sense that it was occurring, that she sort of felt, well, I'm just bad, and I got what was coming.
	I think she just felt like, wow, that was like a really overreaction on the part of the state, and that certainly what they did was wrong.
	You had a second question about that, just while I search for this stuff, if you'd like it.
	Yeah, just to backfill there, you know, when people are threatened, they're going to defend themselves in any way they can.
	So, of course, in the paper, she's going to say, I was completely right.
	That means she really believes it.
	I don't know. And the second question was, with regard to your particular comments on it, do you think that this little...
	The corner of the internet that we've kind of carved out for ourselves here is really going to be enough when the day comes that the whole thing collapses around us?
	That people are going to actually notice that there's another alternative out there besides just reconstructing another state?
	Or do you think that this is really going to have to spread to a much broader audience At least the basic idea of it before we can expect it to be viably considered as an alternative.
	I'm sorry, I just wanted to, before we answer that, there was a comment from Andrew who's currently vacationing in Nitpicky City that you said this corner of the internet.
	He just wanted to point out That the Internet does not in fact have right angles, so I just wanted to mention that so that we could move the debate forward in a productive way.
	No, of course, absolutely, this isn't going to be enough.
	This isn't going to be enough at all, but it is, you know, the degree to which we can put ideas out there and using whatever talents and skills and abilities we have, I think is going to be enough.
	It's certainly more than the freedom movement has ever had in the past.
	I mean the freedom movement has never had a medium where people who can exchange ideas in the absence of a middleman, in the absence of publishers, in the absence of radio shows and the FCC and the media and the government regulations.
	The fact that human beings can directly talk to each other is just enormously powerful.
	Certainly my own ideas have taken enormous leaps forward by engaging in debate with You know, very, very intelligent people like yourself and others who have spent a good deal of time and energy communicating just through this particular medium and it's certainly been revolutionary for me in terms of idea clarification and it simply would not have occurred in any other time in history.
	It simply would have been impossible for it to occur and so for me the fact that we can really push the envelope of human thought and really reach to a kind of consistency and communication That was never possible before I think gives us a good degree of power.
	I don't know where that power is going to lead but I do know that it's greater than any power that has historically existed in terms of allowing people to connect in the realm of ideas and communicate in the realm of ideas.
	From that standpoint, freedom almost won.
	If you look back in the late 18th century, the government was inconsequential compared to anything that came before, anything that developed all too sadly quickly after that within a couple of decades.
	So freedom almost won when all you had was the printing press, carrier pigeons and smoke signals.
	I think that the ideas of freedom are just so powerful, are just so consistent with the way people actually live that the fact that We have the ability to communicate in a reproducible, non-commercial, direct contact with feedback, with communities, with conversations, with conference calls like this.
	The fact that we have this ability, which is infinitely greater almost than what was going on the last time that Freedom almost won, If Freedom almost won with sailing ships and you have to carry them around with five donkeys kind of printing presses,
	I think that we have such a greater edge now than we did before and of course remember the people who are coming up who are younger than us are using the Internet more and more as their primary source of information because there's no meaning in the media.
	There's no meaning whatsoever in the media.
	There is meaning on the Internet if you can find people who are willing to be rigorous and think and communicate.
	So I think that with the new tool that we have here, if freedom almost won beforehand, I think that this could easily and I believe it will be enough to put it over the edge.
	So tell me what you think.
	So the question really comes down to since we agree that If this isn't enough necessarily, what would be the next logical thing to add on to this or expand from this or build from it?
	Does it make sense to engage in political activism or some kind of social networking?
	What would be sufficient?
	So yeah, the next step, right?
	Just before we get to that, I'm going to pull the easy answer out of the internet.
	And this girl says, I wasn't dangerous.
	Do you want to imitate the girl?
	I wasn't dangerous.
	I mean, look what's stenciled on my backpack.
	It's a heart. I'm a very peace-loving person, said Wilson, an honor student who describes herself as politically passionate.
	I'm against the war in Iraq.
	I'm not going to kill the president.
	Her mother said two agents showed up at the family's home in the city's upscale land park neighborhood Wednesday afternoon, questioned her and promised to return once her daughter was home from school.
	So this is such a teenage girl thing, right?
	After they left, her mom sent her a text message to her daughter's cell phone telling her to come straight home.
	There are two men from the Secret Service that want to talk to you.
	Apparently you made some threats against President Bush.
	Are you serious? Oh my God!
	Am I in a lot of trouble? Her daughter wrote back using shorthand for, Oh my God!
	So, and then her final comment was, they yelled at me a lot.
	She said, they were, like, unnecessarily mean.
	And so from that standpoint, I think that she may have felt that, and, you know, the fact that she's from an upscale neighborhood obviously gives her parents who aren't just purely terrified about that.
	And, of course, you know, unnecessarily mean is kind of funny.
	I mean, of course, it's totally typically mean.
	Yeah, so from that standpoint, I think it's possible that she might end up having some questions about the virtue of the state.
	Right, being fully imbued in the upper-middle-class social entitlement mentality, you know, government agents aren't supposed to bother us, right?
	Right, right. There's a Mexican down there.
	I think there's a green card.
	Don't you just go talk to the janitors?
	Yeah, it certainly would be more of that sort of stuff.
	Okay, I guess that makes sense.
	But I still don't see that leading to a general, I don't know, distrust of the state as an idea as opposed to just ire at the current administration, I suppose. Right.
	Well, for sure, for sure. But I mean, that's not.
	Now somebody's asked, who pays these ducks to go shake down little girls?
	Well, it's a lot more fun, right, because this is the basic problem with this whole shakedown of the little girl who threatened Bush, right, is that what are these Secret Service agencies going to do?
	Are they going to go down and they say, little girl, it's morally wrong to threaten people, because she's going to say something like, oh, my God, right, so if it's wrong for me to threaten people, isn't it, like, way more wrong for President Bush to, like, kill people?
	And so from that standpoint, they're going to have a fair amount of difficulty holding up.
	Sorry, Christina, I'm just really enjoying my Valley Girl impression.
	I totally feel like doing the rest of the show in this voice, huh?
	And somebody has also asked, he said, raise your hand if you think Stefan played a woman at least once in theater.
	And I'm actually not playing a woman here, I'm playing a teenage girl.
	It's a very fine distinction that requires a fair amount of Theatrical skill, thespian abilities, let's say.
	Because, you know, I don't do caricatures, as you all know from my series on Full Disclosure.
	But also Freddie Mercury and the car when the PC mic off, yeah, absolutely.
	The car, it's like I used to do these open air concerts actually where I'd lower the sunroof on the car, but I don't do those as much anymore because it was, of course, now I'm doing the...
	But now I'm doing the podcast so I don't get to do that as much, which is a real shame.
	But as to the question about what comes next, well, I don't think there's any answer.
	I mean, for sure, you want to get the ideas out in a sort of positive and passionate and, I guess in my case, omnipresent kind of way as possible.
	And, you know, that I think is exciting and a really great challenge, right?
	Because it takes a lot of repetition to get people to change their minds.
	It takes a lot of repetition to get people to change their minds.
	You can play this back to yourself a couple of times more if you like.
	It takes a lot of...
	Don't egg me on, wife.
	You know I'll do it. But I think that you're still in the phase, and you may be right, this is just my particular opinion, but you're still in the phase of looking outside of yourself For change in the world, right?
	I mean, I think you may have seen the Philosophy is Joy, a Philosophy is Happiness video or listen to the podcast.
	There is no political action that's going to occur that's going to make the world fundamentally free.
	Political action is to absorb the premises of those that we oppose, right?
	And that's not really a good idea.
	It's like hiring slaves for the day to march against slavery.
	To me, that's not Exactly cutting the tree at the root.
	So I think that what we need to do and I think that your approach is excellent in this area to learn more about yourself, to free yourself from the corrupt relationships that are within your own life.
	And you then kind of automatically become a beacon of sorts to like-minded people and they themselves become a beacon.
	It's like you see those sped up kind of animations of how phone lines or railway lines spread across the country.
	It's very much like that. That you work on your own issues, you work on your own issues, that's how you change the world.
	You go inward, you don't go outward, you decode yourself, you don't carry signs, you become free yourself and that's how freedom spreads because I'm very concerned, not so much with you of course, but with most people who are in this kind of movement, That they substitute subjugation to the family or subjugation to the state or to religion to now I am subjugated to the cause of freedom and that of course seems to me an entirely unbearable kind of paradox.
	So I think that there is no external action that we can take there itself, knowledge and honest and passionate communication and in my case once in a while rational communication that we can take in terms of getting these ideas out here but the primary journey is inward and that's how you gain the strength to change the world.
	You don't aim at the world to change it, you aim at yourself and I think through that the world can change.
	Right. Actually, I did listen to that podcast, and that's one of the reasons why I brought this question up, because it sounded like you were starting to point outward again there, you know?
	And your own example is kind of a...
	An inward and an outward example, if I can put it that way, you know, because you didn't just, you know, work on your own issues and then that was that.
	I mean, you set up this whole podcast and the board, the weekend call-ins and all the writing and everything.
	I mean, all that is Sort of an attempt to reach outward, isn't it?
	Are you saying you actually exist?
	Oh, my God! Sorry, I'm going to have to go lie down.
	Christina, would you like to take over?
	I've been doing this whole beautiful mind thing here for the last year.
	Oh, my God! Or maybe I'm just...
	I'm really good at making up stuff that he's going to say.
	Interesting. Okay, listen.
	I'm going to put down the hand puppet. Try talking again.
	Okay. So I certainly understand where you're coming from.
	I certainly understand what you mean.
	And I don't want to sort of over-dramatize what it is that I've been doing, but, excuse me, for myself, there's been this incredibly concentrated tightrope walk for the past year.
	The reason that it's been such an incredible tightrope walk is that obviously when people like yourself, I'm going to talk about you, you sort of kind of come across me in the Internet, right, and I'm just sort of this, you know, random chatty, vaguely accented guy in a car driving around, you know,
	talking about life and truth and philosophy, there's been quite an incredible kind of tightrope walk for me in order to get people interested and involved in I mean, my primary basic focus is to get people interested and involved with their own souls, with their own life, with their own depth, with their own identities, with their true selves and so on.
	The politics is fun and that's interesting, but the primary thing is your relationship with yourself, which is a completely ridiculous thing to get from an anonymous voice on the Internet.
	I'm sort of perfectly aware that that's, you know, a voice in your ear.
	And the Socratic gadfly saying, you know, focus on yourself, focus on yourself, learn about yourself, live with integrity or give up virtue altogether, blah, blah, blah.
	And for me, it's been quite a concentrated courting dance of you and other people who listen that, you know, I sort of put in some humor to keep it entertaining and then I'll put in a couple of whammies.
	Like every time I do a dream analysis, I'm nervous about getting back on the board because I think people are just going to totally flame me before discussing their, you know, most intimate problems that I'm only guessing at based on a single paragraph dream analysis in a car on my way to work.
	So, it can be a bit nerve-wracking and it really has been kind of a very, not exactly conscious but not exactly accidental kind of, for want of a better word, a kind of seduction to the self that I've been trying to communicate to people and of course there's a high degree of volume in what it is that I'm talking about, a lot of different angles that I sort of bring the same principles to bear on.
	I would say that if I hadn't spent 20 years trying to learn about myself so that I could do that dance while juggling 12 flaming knives on a trapeze with no net in a sense, I would not have been able to do that if I hadn't spent a good deal of time ironing out my own thoughts and learning about myself.
	To the point where I could go out into the world with a message without having to constantly correct myself without, I mean, not more constantly than I have to but without having to constantly correct myself and I think that it was you who mentioned or who has mentioned that back at the beginning instead of listening to some of the early podcasts and I think you actually said it with a certain amount of annoyance that there seemed to be a kind of consistency from back at the beginning.
	Was that you who said that? Yeah, actually that was a couple of weekends ago, or actually I guess maybe a couple months ago now.
	I went back and re-listened to all the family podcasts and convinced I was going to find something there, right?
	And it was uncanny because a lot of the stuff that you were saying in later podcasts was almost word for word what you were saying months and months earlier.
	I find it a mark of a pretty solid character when you can restate your position numerous different ways and never contradict yourself.
	It means you actually have figured it out, that you're not just repeating something you read in a book.
	Right, and that's sort of the whole purpose of That's sort of what it is that I've been doing is that I sort of want to put out ideas that are interesting and I like to think sort of on the true side of things.
	So the people go like, wow, that's really interesting.
	I haven't heard that before. That's pretty cool.
	That's really, oh, that's very interesting.
	Oh, I hadn't thought of that either. That really does tie it together.
	And then at some point it's like, wait a minute, do you mean me?
	Right? I mean, that's sort of, I want to get the ideas out there in a way that's sort of entertaining and enjoyable and thought-provoking and stimulating.
	You know, I live with integrity and virtue and logic and so on.
	And then people are like, yeah, that's great.
	You know, that's true that the government should be like that, right?
	And then I sort of talk about things a little bit closer to home.
	And then at some point people say, oh, I think he means me.
	I think he means me in my life, not Libertopia in the future, not the government in Washington, not foreign policy in Iraq, not the soldiers in Afghanistan.
	I think he's talking about me.
	And that was a fairly conscious kind of journey, right, that I sort of wanted to get people across so that they get interested in the ideas and that there's some credibility, at least for the ideas built up over time, and of course, given the number of podcasts, It's a considerable amount of time.
	The end result is that you kind of go like, yeah, I guess this is sort of what I believe.
	It kind of makes sense. And then there is that kind of final thing where it's like, oh yeah, this is totally about you, right?
	Not about anything abstract.
	And I think if I hadn't gone through that process of really learning about myself with the therapy and the isolation tanks, the heavy medication, the time of the cult in Indonesia, all that kind of stuff, I think one of those is true.
	I wouldn't have had sort of the stamina or the focus or the consistency to be able to do that because, right, I think you wrote, and I think it was a very good, actually, would you mind if you can dig that up on the board?
	I thought you wrote a really beautiful piece of text, which you often do, of course, but about this metaphor of hanging from a branch on a cliff edge.
	Oh yeah, I can't find the post, but I could pretty much restate it verbatim.
	I was talking to another poster, actually, about what this whole process has kind of felt like.
	Coming into it, it was like I had somehow fallen over a cliff and grabbed onto a root sticking through the cliff wall, and I've been clinging to it for so long that Afraid that I was going to fall to my death, right? And then you walk by and you're like, no, you're not going to fall.
	There's nothing to be afraid of.
	Just let go. So at first you're like, this guy's a lunatic.
	And then after a while, because you keep repeating it.
	So after a while you're like, okay, well, I'm just hanging here.
	I might as well give it a try, right?
	And then, you know, at that point, most people take a deep breath and close their eyes and let go.
	But for myself, it was like, I'll just try one hand.
	Right. And then the vine starts slipping and you panic and you grab tighter, right?
	And you pull yourself up against the wall and you're like, oh, crap.
	Now what am I going to do? But then for myself, in my own case, I kind of had my youngest brother along with me, hanging on his own line, and I didn't actually notice him there all the while.
	One day, he just let go, and as he let go, he grabbed me and pulled me with him.
	Ever since then, it's been like, I don't know, You're just kind of floating along now, you know?
	There's a buoyancy to your overall attitude about life and your mood and your demeanor when you really kind of internalize all this stuff.
	It makes it a lot easier to do things, I find.
	Right. I mean, there is a real weight to illusions, especially ethical illusions, that it's like being 200 pounds overweight and trying to play squash.
	You know, everything feels kind of sluggish and heavy and you've weighted and, I don't know, maybe it's like trying to do the sidestep on Jupiter or something.
	But there really, yeah, there is a lightness and a joy to being in alignment with reality regardless of other people's silly opinions, right?
	That there's a real alignment to it.
	Are you swimming with the current, right?
	Is that sort of what you mean? Yeah, it's like, you know, you feel like your whole life that you're supposed to be swimming against the current, right?
	Right. And then you figure out that, no, you're made to swim with it, so swim with it already, right?
	Right. And then it's like, oh, well, That's sure a hell of a lot in here.
	Right. Right.
	Right. If I pedal my bike forward, hey, you know, hey, you get some traction here.
	All right. I'm going to just unmute her to ask if anybody else has anything, questions, comments, issues, problems, all that kind of good stuff.
	If you'd like to say something now, please.
	Go ahead. Hello.
	Hi. Hello.
	Did I make it?
	Am I on? You are.
	If you could just give me your handle, then I'd be more than happy to.
	I just want to mute everyone else and unmute you just while you ask your question.
	Hi, this is Ron Peterson.
	Ah, a very mysterious handle.
	Okay, we're going to call you Candy.
	Okay. I like Candy.
	Okay, anyway. The thing that Greg was just talking about, or you and Greg were talking about, where it takes a while to get this stuff really working in your head, I think it's kind of like learning a new language.
	When you're first starting to learn the language, you are constantly having to translate back and forth between your native language until you finally get to the point where the new language is your, you're able to kind of think in that language in your own mind.
	And one thing that I've been noticing with my own little debates with people, friends, and stuff like that is that, like, my roommate has told me that I'm becoming a lot less agitated in my debates, I guess.
	I think the reason for that is because my natural operating system now is starting to finally switch over to this, you know, non-status, non-groupthink type of, you know, thinking.
	And so it's much easier for me to access the new language.
	And it's taken me, you know, a couple of years of going through this stuff, especially over the last year with, you know, listening to free demand and all that stuff.
	But it's finally starting to become my new language to think without the group, you know, to think as far as individuals and things like that.
	Well, that's very interesting. Can you tell us a little bit more about what you experience emotionally as different?
	I may assume that it's not just your roommate who's noticing your difference, but what is it that you're experiencing that's different when you're having conversations with people about important philosophical issues?
	Right. Before, it just seemed like I was – well, it seems like when I first started listening to you especially, I would just Frequently get these flashes of insight and say, oh yes, of course, it makes so much sense to me now.
	It was such a strong impression in my mind, but then a couple weeks later I'd be talking to someone about the same type of subject, and for some reason I couldn't recall what it was.
	I couldn't communicate in the same way those ideas that were such a flash of lightning to me.
	It just seemed like I couldn't Or if you tell them that they just need to go and worship the big forehead, And all will become clear.
	That doesn't also help them move often over to the side of truth and life and reason, right?
	Exactly. Go to the big, shatty forehead.
	He has all the answers.
	All will become clear.
	He won't move you over with eloquence, but eventually you'll just be exhausted.
	He'll just bludgeon you with volume.
	Repetition. That's right.
	So anyway, my roommate, we were talking about this last night, and he said, you know, he's kind of going out and trying these debates with people, too.
	And, you know, he was just mentioning to me how He's still kind of stuck in the frustrated stage, whereas he's noticed lately just by observing me that I've, you know, calmed down a lot more and my answers are a lot quicker and a lot more ready and they're actually a lot more relevant to the conversation.
	And, you know, it's getting people to start to pause and think now instead of just digging in trenches and doing the whole two TVs arguing with each other thing, it's actually starting to become more of a conversation now because I'm able to access this stuff instead of trying to translate through my old You know, goofy, statist brain, I'm now starting to be able to speak from the true self, you know, individual side of things.
	So it's really, it does take a long time, and I'm a pretty radical thinker among my peers and stuff like that, and it still has taken me a long time to get this far.
	So it's just, it's a lot of work, I think, just to tear down those old language centers, I think.
	Right. I appreciate you talking about that because nobody wants to live in this world where you're doomed to argue in a futile way against people who will never understand what you're saying.
	Philosophy becomes a nightmare.
	I definitely didn't want to do any part to add any chunks of that to the world.
	But I think that one of the reasons that I do talk about the dream analyses and Christina and I talk about the psychology is that once you get a sense of your own depth, right, that we are, each of us, like a universe in terms of our depth and complexity, then you can really go deep into yourself and then what you can do and this may be a little bit sort of what you're experiencing is that the deeper you go within yourself and the more you become genuinely and authentically yourself,
	The more you can bypass the false selves of others, the more you can communicate directly with their often very buried true selves.
	That is a very, very powerful thing.
	It occurs with the simplicity of language as well.
	But I think where it really occurs, like most communication is both nonverbal.
	It's sort of in the tone and it's in the, you know, you could get some, I don't know, some kid to sort of droningly read out the podcast and they wouldn't hold anyone's attention.
	But I think that as you get a sense of your own depth and also as you get a sense of the challenges That's one of the reasons why I say to people, you know, if you're asking people to get rid of the state, the least you can do is to have gotten rid of the corrupt people in your own life.
	Because how on earth could you ever end up asking people to do something that you're not willing to do without tripping all over their false self and your false self as well?
	So I would say that you've probably had quite a positive thing going forward there.
	It's quite a powerful thing.
	That's why I ask people to go inward and to recognize how deep they are themselves.
	It's interesting that you speak about having to learn a new language in order to debate.
	This is something that I say to my clients when I'm doing psychotherapy.
	I try to teach them to think differently about themselves and to think differently about the world and to think differently about other people.
	A lot of people have a lot of negative or pessimistic thoughts.
	They're very cynical. They're quite hopeless or quite frightened.
	There's a lot of fear in this world as well.
	Teaching people how to become free of those fears and those feelings of despair is teaching them essentially to talk differently to themselves, that sort of self-talk that we have.
	To talk differently and to speak a new language, essentially.
	And it's hard work. It really requires a lot of practice.
	Practice makes perfect, but it's not going to happen if you don't at least try to do something about it, to try to speak differently, to try to debate differently, to try to challenge your own perceptions and ideas.
	I think there's also another aspect to it as well, is that having gotten a lot further in the In the area of, I guess, really nailing down these ideas in my own mind, I'm no longer as frustrated with other people who aren't getting these things because before,
	I think, when these people would bring up their counterarguments, which I'm now starting to see through and to understand why they're seeing them, I guess when they would bring those up, I would see the doubt in my own mind and it would frustrate me because I still wasn't able to let go of that old language.
	And so when I would see them bring forth these types of arguments, it would trigger that, oh yeah, I'm still there myself, and it started to kind of tick me off sometimes.
	So that would kind of lead to my frustration, too.
	Right. And I think anywhere that you want to take people, you have to have been there already yourself.
	Freedom comes very easy to us.
	People, for whatever reason, and I'm going to try and write about this in my book submission to this gentleman who's publishing these articles, Freedom comes easily to us for whatever reason and so when we talk about freedom, we're asking people to do things which we haven't done which is to make a real struggle to change your mind about something and that's another reason why I think it's important to go through in a sense the boot camp for both pragmatic and ethical reasons of consistency to go through the boot camp of really examining your own personal relationships and giving up the ones that you may have a sort of historical attachment to but obviously have no moral value and a negative moral value in your current life Because then you've kind of gone through the boot camp of actually giving up something that you treasure that is false and there's a kind of authenticity to that when you then talk to other people about giving up their illusions about gods and about devils and about races and nations and states and so on.
	Yes, I'm asking you to give up something that you treasure that's false and I know how hard it is because I've been there and I've done it myself so I can be sympathetic to how hard it is for you.
	Right. I think that's what I was trying to say but just not quite as eloquently.
	Well, then I should probably try and say it at least five or six more times, but in different ways.
	Right. Now, there's a gentleman who's interested in talking about the war in Iraq, which is a very exciting...
	Oh, come on!
	If you say that you're a master debater and you're for the war in Iraq, let's have a chat about it.
	I promise to be friendly. And it's a very interesting topic, something, of course, that is controversial.
	And something that definitely needs to be talked about.
	There are not too many more important topics in life than war and peace.
	But he says that he's not willing to debate.
	Oh, he's got no microphone.
	What a shame. What a shame.
	That's a shame. Anyway, listen, come back next week if you can.
	Get a hold of a microphone. And I would certainly like to debate somebody who's for the war in Iraq.
	I do enjoy these kinds of debates.
	I myself was for the war in Iraq when it started.
	Because there were certain things that I hadn't thought of which of course could be correct or incorrect but I'm certainly willing to talk about it.
	I've had a bit of a change of heart but if there is anybody on the chat today who is for the war in Iraq I would certainly be happy to talk further about it.
	I've unmuted everyone so if you would like to add something else Yeah, somebody mentioned, but the war in Iraq has now been going on longer than the Second World War has been.
	So it's quite interesting. So if anybody has any other questions or issues or comments, the mics are wide open.
	Ah, who says pro-war?
	Christina is pro-war. No, actually not.
	If people have questions about philosophy, politics, psychology, economics, art, or anything that's really important, feel free to chat.
	I, of course, can continue, but the mics are open to think.
	That's Gamalfi. Yeah, here you go.
	Feel free to speak.
	You've been talking an awful lot in the last few podcasts, four or five or so.
	You mean just in general or about a particular topic?
	About happiness, in fact.
	Joy, happiness, that sort of thing.
	If you can be specific, what's your definition of happiness?
	Obedient to Christina.
	That's also Christina's definition and I'm not saying that was easy to achieve.
	You know, the spine is a hard thing to get rid of but it actually is working out perfectly.
	What distinguishes it from just pleasure?
	What's the difference between happiness and pleasure?
	And can you even define happiness in a general philosophical way?
	Or is it all completely subjective?
	No, no. I certainly wouldn't say that it's subjective.
	To me, pleasure is the neurological stimulation, right?
	So pleasure is, you know, you inject just about anyone with heroin and they're going to feel mighty good for some time and we can get back to Andrew a little bit more about that.
	There's a physiological stimulation which you can get from electrical stimulation in the brain, you know, the pleasure center.
	You can get that from drugs, you can get that from sexuality.
	Some people will even get that high from extreme sports, skydiving and so on.
	So there's that sort of basic physiological universal electrical stimulation kind of biological thing and I would put that in the category of pleasure.
	There is another form of pleasure that is very sort of similar in the mind to what goes on in the body, right?
	So the body feels good when it's, you know, rested and exercised and everything is operating according to its intended function, right?
	So the liver is doing whatever the hell the liver does and the stomach is doing whatever the heck the stomach does and everything is sort of operating in accordance with its stated objective, its biological objective, its purpose, I guess you could say.
	And there are two states of pleasure that I sort of believe are occurring, sorry, two states of happiness that occur within the human mind.
	The first is in a more general sense when your mind is doing what the mind is intended to do, right?
	So when the mind is operating in a rational context, because the mind is designed to help us align with and to master reality by serving the physical laws of reality, right?
	Nature to be commanded must be obeyed and the sense of efficacy that comes from having a rational philosophy that is derived from and aligns with empirical objective external reality gives you a sense of happiness that is common to everyone.
	So everyone who's rational and who's virtuous and who is courageous and who, you know, practices ethically and morally positive behavior, everyone is going to feel better.
	Everyone is going to feel a certain level of happiness and that's kind of the general thing.
	And that's sort of like when your body is functioning well, you at least have no interferences to happiness.
	I mean if you've got some sort of splitting migraine or a shark's just bitten your foot off, you're going to have a certain amount of physical discomfort that's going to preclude any kind of happiness.
	So when your philosophy is in alignment with reality and you're thinking rationally and you hold integrity and virtue above all things, then everyone's going to feel at least the greatest capacity for happiness that they can.
	Now that's in the general sense.
	In the more specific sense, every individual has some characteristics, some possibilities, some career, some activity that's going to make him or her happy individually.
	So for you, you're very interested in teaching or writing or journalism or teaching.
	That would make you happy.
	That may not make other people happy.
	They may want to be a rock star or they may want to be a garbage man or whatever it is that's going to be fulfilling for them as an individual.
	I would say that generally everybody needs to at least have the base happiness of having rational philosophy, living ethically, doing the right thing, being courageous, being virtuous, that's going to give you a baseline of contentedness and happiness, but for real joy you have to find out what really makes your Thank you very much.
	and skills based on capacity and desire and all that kind of stuff.
	So that's sort of my general definition.
	If that's hopefully not too broad to help, let me know what you think.
	So in the first case, then, it's a sort of existential contentment based on rational consistency.
	And in the second case, it's a sort of wish fulfillment.
	Well, I guess if you sort of take an athletic metaphor, the first thing that you need to be an athlete is you need to be healthy.
	You're not going to be an athlete, you're not going to start out your career as an athlete when you're in bed with a flu or you've got a broken leg or something.
	So in order to have the capacity to be an athlete, you need to be basically healthy.
	Anybody who can't do the basic minimum isn't going to be an athlete.
	But then, you know, what kind of athlete are you going to play?
	Squash, you're going to be tennis, you're going to play whatever, right?
	How far are you going to take it?
	How often are you going to practice it? Those things are very individual.
	I would say that the first one is you basically need to be healthy in your mind which means to have a basically rational philosophy.
	That's the bare minimum. You can't be happy with a migraine.
	You can't be existentially happy with a migraine because it's agony.
	But assuming that you have the basic rationality Then what happens is you then have the capacity to further exercise your own individual skills, talents and potentials and that's going to bring you not just sort of contentedness but it's going to be more than neutral.
	It's actually going to be a very positive state of joy and it can't be achieved, I think, in any sustainable way without the original sort of basic rationality You know, you can be an athlete if you have a lot of natural talent, right?
	You can be an athlete who smokes or, you know, whatever, eats crap, but it's going to catch up with you and you're not going to be able to compete in the long run with the people who both have the natural talent and also treat their bodies well.
	So, yeah, there's a bare minimum of health that's required that's going to at least give you no pain and a general sense of contentedness in the same way that you feel when you're sort of physically healthy.
	But the joy really comes from the exploration and exercise of your particular talents in whatever it is that gives you pleasure, and that's much more personal than what is suitable for everyone.
	Isn't that just freedom?
	Maybe. Can you tell me more about that?
	I'm just, you know, I think about what is happiness.
	Well, I don't know if I have a definition for happiness per se, but I think happiness is derived from freedom.
	I think when we try to free ourselves from illusions and we try to live within reality, like you said, using rational thought and logic and morality, I think then we can achieve a state of happiness.
	When I speak to my clients, I talk to them about achieving a state of peace of mind, contentedness, happiness, because they're no longer going to be burdened by illusions and false beliefs.
	Right, but there is, you know, I'm not going to use any of Christina's real patients, but if you had some woman who was, you know, to take a cliched example, right, some woman who was being beaten up by her husband or something, right, there would be a state that she would need to get at first, right, which would be to get out of the violent relationship, right?
	You wouldn't say, if she said, I'm being beaten up by my husband and I really want to be a painter, You wouldn't say, well, forget about the being beaten up by your husband thing.
	What you really want to focus on right now is being a painter.
	No, you're absolutely right.
	Right. So there's sort of a bare minimum of things that you need to achieve before you can go for something like self-actualization and the expression of your greatest talents, drives, and desires.
	And that's sort of what I'm talking about.
	You need to be rational. First, and everyone needs to be rational.
	Like, nobody should be in a violent or abusive or derogatory relationship at all.
	Like, ever. Right? There's no way that...
	Oh, we totally agree. There's no way that's ever going to be a positive thing.
	But not everyone has to be a painter.
	No, not everyone has to be a painter.
	I agree that no form of coercion or abuse should exist in relationships.
	Right. Now, certainly you're right in that freedom is required in a personal sense to get out of corrupt and abusive and historical relationships Freedom is also required in a very sort of talent-based or almost existential sense in that Let's say that you want to become a carpenter.
	Your greatest joy is to make furniture, but in your country, there's a huge union that says, if you want to be a carpenter, you've got to be an apprentice for seven years at eight bucks an hour, and you simply can't become a carpenter because there's all these laws in the way.
	Lots of people would like to start their own businesses in India, but it takes you three years to get the paperwork done, and you've got to bribe everyone.
	Right? So even if they don't have corrupt relationships, they can't achieve self-actualization because there are all these legal barriers in the way.
	So I agree with you that freedom in a personal sense and also in a political sense is required for the greatest degree of self-actualization, which is why when I was saying earlier that the degree of conversations that we can have in a venue like this is far greater and deeper than we would be able to have in any kind of regulated or state-controlled or state-influenced media.
	I agree, Steph, completely.
	Thank you very much. I appreciate that.
	Go ahead. I'm just going to get this straight, then.
	Hang on one sec. Sorry, we've got a little bit of background noise.
	We have, I think, a couple of truckers calling in.
	Sorry, go ahead. To see if I've got this right, let me see if I can summarize what you're saying.
	Is that happiness is the capacity or the freedom To satisfy your desires, but only in a state where you have the capacity to ensure that your desires are rational.
	Can you just do that once more?
	I just want to make sure I've got that correct.
	You could be right. I just had a slight short circuit.
	Please try it again. Okay.
	So I'm saying that if I'm understanding you correctly, then Happiness is the capacity to satisfy one's desires, but only when you have the capacity to also ensure that those desires are rational.
	So the whole thing is predicated on the necessity of a consistent philosophy, right?
	And so from that, you should Should arise desires that are rational and then happiness then would be the fulfillment of those desires or the capacity to fulfill those desires.
	I would say freedom is the capacity to fulfill those desires.
	Happiness is the fulfillment of those desires.
	I wouldn't really say that happiness is the fulfillment of those desires as long as those desires are rational because if they're not rational then you're not going to end up being happy.
	Sorry, like saying that good health is not sawing off your leg, well if you saw off your leg then obviously you're not in good health, it's a bit circular but I agree with you that The rationality of one's desires is an important thing.
	Of course we all have a desire, at least speaking for myself, I have a desire to love the society that I'm in without opposing people.
	I have a desire to be seen as a good son and a good brother and go and see my, you know, my ailing and mentally ill mother and I have a desire for all of these things but I recognize that they're desires that are inculcated in me Through corrupt and self-interested philosophies and therefore should not be given any credence, right? I mean, if I grow up in a household where my mom feeds me Twinkies all day, it doesn't mean as an adult, although I may be jonesing for Twinkies 24-7, that I should go and eat them.
	We recognize that as sort of historical habits that need to be broken.
	So, yeah, I certainly do think that you focus on depth and you focus on rationality and self-knowledge.
	From that will come desires that are positive.
	And are beneficial to you because, of course, the great danger that you face in the absence of self-knowledge is the fear that your desires are self-destructive in some manner, right?
	And that's sort of the feeling that you wrote about, I think, a little bit when you were hanging from the tree branch on the cliff edge, right?
	It's like, well, okay, Steph might be right.
	He certainly seems to be consistent in a way, but it's kind of a long way down.
	I don't want to be wrong in this area, right?
	Here, at least, I can sort of breathe and survive, right?
	But if I let go, and this guy who's saying, you know, you think you're going to fall forever, but if you open your eyes and look down, you're two inches off the ground, right?
	I mean, that's a pretty big thing to go for.
	And so, yeah, I think that you're right.
	You certainly do need to have...
	I believe, which comes from self-knowledge and rationality and philosophy, a belief that your own desires are positive, right?
	Because you don't want to end up in a situation where it's like, you know, I've always wanted to round up girl guides in a bag and set fire to them, that that's the exercise of your desire.
	But, of course, with self-knowledge and with empathy and with working through historical pain and breaking from corrupt relationships and living with integrity, I find that I'm able to successfully fight back desires like that, most times.
	Not last Sunday, but most times.
	Okay, then I think we're in agreement then.
	Hey, first time.
	We have opened the board to questions on philosophy, psychology, economics, politics, art, or else on your collection.
	Feel free to ask away.
	The mics are all open just now.
	Hello? Ah, from across the pond.
	How are things? Let me just give you a goodbye and then a hello.
	Are you in there?
	Ah, thank you very much.
	Okay. Mr. Lapp, feel free to frax away.
	Okay. Yeah, at the beginning you were talking about that the spot, as the state is Continually growing, that the eventual creation of a market anarchy would arise.
	Basically, my question is, what is your opinion regarding general libertarian strategy?
	Until the state does crumble, what do you think the best methodology or method is of spreading liberty or libertarian values?
	That's an excellent, excellent question and perhaps the most important question that's floating around the movement.
	I got invited to submit an essay on, you know, what's the best methodology for spreading libertarian values, but I'm not sure that I'm going to submit one because I just think it takes a little while to even get to my perspective on this, which I think most people on this call probably are at, for better or for worse.
	But for me, I think that we need to really understand that the power of truth is far larger than individuals.
	The power of truth dwarfs like one man who's in the right and who knows it and who is passionate about it can psychologically or metaphorically blow away a billion people who are just acting on habit and prejudice.
	For me, really combing over the ideas until you're certain of them.
	By certain of them, I mean that you live them in your daily life.
	If you have some friend who's like, I think that you should be taxed, I'll give you an example.
	You have a friend, we'll call him Bob, and he says, Bob says, I think taxation is a virtue.
	When you say that you want taxation to exist, you're saying that I should be shot for refusing to pay my taxes.
	Everybody who's a libertarian faces this moment of choice, this moment of truth at some point.
	And if the person, if Bob, you sort of had this conversation and say, but you realize, Bob, that you're threatening me with violence, that you're saying that I should be shot for wanting to keep my property.
	You're advocating theft against me, that if I resist, I get shot, and if I don't resist, I get thrown into these prisons where, you know, based on the documentary evidence of prison break, not so good in there, right?
	I mean, it's Abu Ghraib.
	Every jail is Abu Ghraib, right?
	So... If you come to that moment with your friend Bob, where Bob says, you should be shot, and you say, I don't think I should be shot, if Bob is not willing to adjust his position, if Bob is going to continue to say, yes, you should be shot for your opinions, then if you continue to be friends with Bob, then you're basically saying, ideas mean nothing.
	You're saying that, yeah, my life means nothing, my freedom means nothing, My anti-violence stance means nothing.
	And of course, that's going to do absolutely...
	It's going to be worse than doing nothing with regards to freedom.
	It's going to completely discredit ideas of freedom if you're going to continue to hang out with people who think that you should be shot.
	I mean, if you're against violence, if you're against racism, you don't hang out with the Ku Klux Klan.
	And if you're against anti-Semitism, you don't hang with a bunch of Nazis.
	Right? So if you are against violence and then you can't hang out with people and you can't give your moral sanction to people who think and advocate and argue and approve of you getting gunned down for non-violence activities like wanting to hang onto your own property.
	So, as far as what the best thing is that we can do for the freedom movement, what's the best thing we can do to bring about freedom in the world is simply this.
	Take freedom seriously.
	Take the ideas with all of the respect and the reverence that they deserve.
	Take rational facts, objective empirical philosophy and morality, take it seriously.
	If somebody says to you in a debate, I think that you should be shot Then don't debate with them.
	Walk out, walk away with the strongest possible moral disapproval.
	And if you really want to advance the freedom movement, All you have to do, and I'm not saying it's an easy thing to do, but all you have to do is take ideas seriously.
	Mean it when you say that I'm against violence as a solution to social problems.
	I'm against people pulling out guns and pointing them at each other in order to sort of quote solve problems.
	I'm against theft, I'm against rape, I'm against murder, I'm against war, I'm against the state.
	And if people then say, well, I disagree with you and I think you should be shot, then you simply stop being friends with them.
	And if that includes your family and if that includes your friend of 30 years and if that includes, I hate to say it, but if that includes your spouse, if your spouse says, I think you should be shot for your ideas, well, I think that you either need to give up libertarianism or you need to give up those relationships.
	You need to give up any kind of If you have spoken allegiance to ideas of freedom and truth and say, okay, well I'm just going to descend into the general suit of error that claims most of mankind or you need to stand for those ideas.
	But if you continue to say, I'm for freedom and continue to surround, I don't mean you, but if you continue to surround yourself with people who enslave you and openly advocate your enslavement and murder, Then you are totally discrediting the freedom movement and should not do that.
	So it's not a political movement for me, at least in the larger sense of let's write letters to Congress or I guess in your case the Houses of Parliament, let's go march in the streets, let's put up signs, let's, you know, hang, I don't know, Libertopia ribbons from the bumpers of our car.
	It's very much around taking ideas seriously within your own and that to me is the greatest approach that you can take for that kind of stuff.
	Does that make any sense to you?
	Yes, it does.
	As I say in your podcast, you say that, well, personal freedom is more paramount over political freedom, if you want to call it that.
	It's just that I think in general that libertarians across the world, not just in one specific country, I think we need to basically rethink our base strategy.
	Because, you know, libertarians have been, well, our city ideology has been around for, let's say, four or five decades in its modern form.
	We haven't really gotten anywhere in that period.
	We have political parties, but as I say, I don't really think that is the correct method of actually spreading literacy.
	Sorry, you had a question there?
	Sorry? Sorry, but your question is the sort of political approach, is that a good way to spread liberty?
	No, I was saying I don't think it is a good way to spread.
	No, no, it's absolutely terrible.
	It's absolutely terrible. I mean, for a group that claims a logical and empirical approach to the world, libertarians seem to be entirely addicted to completely futile and time-proven futile strategies.
	Libertarianism as a philosophy goes back at least to the 17th century, 17th, early 18th century.
	I mean you get all of these human skepticism, classical liberalism, everything that went on through that, through the 19th century, through Spencer's philosophy, through the anti-Fabianists in America, through the And then of course Mises erupting on the scene in the 1920s.
	We've had hundreds and hundreds of years to bring our ideas about and we have failed completely and totally and utterly abysmally in so far as not only have we not achieved our stated aims But we have gone entirely in the wrong direction.
	We now live in societies where states are 10 to 20 times larger than they were two or three generations ago.
	Not only have we failed to achieve a minimal state, we have stood by and watched the state escalate like a massive accelerating cancerous thunder-trained tumor And we still continue with the same principles, right?
	This is how you know that mainstream libertarianism is not an empirical discipline.
	This is how you know that it is an irrational, culty kind of nonsensical idiocy, in my humble opinion, right?
	The mainstream stuff, right? I mean, the stuff that I think that we're trying to work in from the fringes that I think is going to have a lot more power.
	And in my view, the reason that it failed is that everybody talks about political freedom and nobody really lives personal freedom.
	And so you just don't have any credibility, right?
	It stays on the outside.
	The people in the libertarian movement, and again, I'm grossly generalizing here and I absolutely apologize for that, but the people in the libertarian movement Love to lecture people, love to be the sort of, you know, fat, dispectacled, smarter kids in the back of the class that everyone makes fun of, love to be self-righteous, love to be more right than everybody else and completely futile in their communications with the larger body of society and that's because they don't have empathy for how difficult it is for people to achieve freedom in their lives.
	Political freedom is simply an effective personal freedom.
	You can't have political freedom in a society where everyone's enslaved to their family.
	It's simply not going to happen.
	The state and the church are going to take advantage of that initial subjugation to authority and use it to rule people until their dying days.
	You simply can't have political freedom in the absence of personal freedom.
	And you can't have empathy.
	For people who are having a hard time accepting philosophical freedom unless you have wrestled with the same demons in your own life as far as personal freedom goes, you simply can't communicate in an effective way to other people telling them they need to embrace freedom when you have shied away and again, I don't mean you but When you have shied away from embracing and bringing freedom about in your personal life, it's ridiculous, it's hypocritical and it's futile and I did it for 15 years.
	I say this with all humility as far as my own history goes.
	I'm certainly not up here trying to throw stones from any sort of high amount of perfection.
	But yeah, absolutely, for a supposedly scientific and objective and rational movement, libertarianism is continuing to do the same nonsensical things that it's always done and it absolutely, you know, to use the old metaphor, is rearranging the deck chairs while the Titanic is going down, missing the big picture and talking to people about freedom in their own lives rather than, you know, the sort of famous example of a Did you know that the Fed was created through self-interested international banking cartels and so on?
	It's like that's about as relevant to the average person as discussing the finer points of punctuation in the grammar of Klingon, right?
	So that's sort of my particular perspective, but I'll stop ranting and let you go with another question.
	Well, yeah, I generally agree with your point.
	Well, basically, I don't really believe we'll see a libertarian society or market anarchy or whatever in our lifetime.
	And how old are you?
	I'm 27.
	27? Yeah.
	Are you dying? No.
	Are you ill? No.
	Are you a very heavy smoker?
	No, no, no. You don't run with a fast crowd, do you?
	Don't bed dangerous girls, you don't like picking fights, you don't like coming in in a ballerina outfit to a biker bar or anything.
	I just want to sort of get the longevity picture here.
	No, I'm reasonably healthy.
	Okay, good, good.
	See, reasonably healthy, that's exactly what we were talking about earlier.
	Okay, well tell me why you don't think it's going to happen, because that's a pretty powerful, you're going to live for another 60 years probably, right?
	So that's a pretty powerful thing to predict if you think about Sixty years ago, right, the world was going into, you know, I guess was in mesh, no, the world was just coming out of the Second World War, right?
	So if you were able to sort of look forward from 1946 to 2006, that would be a pretty incredible thing to try and predict what the world would look like.
	But you feel, and I'm not trying to be facetious, I mean you genuinely do feel that you won't live to see It's a pretty amazing thing to say.
	I don't mean that you're wrong. It's just that I'm fairly hesitant to guess 12 minutes from now, but tell me what you feel is sort of the basis for that.
	Well, I just look around the world around me and see intrusive governments and Government growing bigger and bigger all the time, plus this war on terror thing, probably will last decade in itself.
	As I say, that probably does sound quite pessimistic, but, you know, I just think that the general global political climate is not conducive to, basically, to liberty.
	Of course, yes, never say never.
	You don't know what's going to happen in the future.
	Nevertheless, I think as things stay now, probably within the next 10 years or so, I can't see liberty arising.
	Well, what do you think? I mean, you could well be right.
	This is just sort of my thoughts about it.
	But what do you think is going to happen when the government's run out of money?
	I mean, that's certainly not going to be 60 years from now, for sure.
	It's going to happen a lot more soon, a lot sooner than that.
	Well, obviously they'll go bankrupt.
	Right, so they can't pay the military, right?
	They can't pay...
	I mean, we have examples, right?
	This is exactly what happened in Russia, right?
	Which was much more totalitarian than we are.
	So, the government runs out of money, right?
	So, everybody who works for the government agencies don't get paid and so on, and the currency becomes pretty thoroughly debased, right?
	I mean, this is all things. It's not me being sort of psychologically or sort of not me being incredibly prognosticator, it's just this is what happens to these societies in the past.
	So, yeah, the government runs out of money, and then what do you think happens after that?
	Well, I suppose if the government doesn't have any money, then they can't pay for their services such as education, healthcare, yard forces, all of their services basically.
	Right. So what do you think happens?
	Do you think people just stop educating their children?
	Well, I think people would do it voluntarily.
	Yeah, some of the agency would come along and would teach the children or would set up some sort of – I mean, it's not going to be black and white, but for sure, an imminent change in the state is going to occur.
	I absolutely guarantee you it will be within your lifetime and I absolutely guarantee you It will probably be within the next 10 to 15 years at the very outside.
	I certainly think it could be sooner than that given all the recent indications but also to stick by an earlier estimate that the government is just going to run out of money completely, totally and utterly and there will be an enormous wrenching change.
	I don't think that change is going to be full dictatorship because the government will be out of money and there's still quite a historical momentum towards respect for freedom in England and in sort of the Commonwealth I guess you could say.
	Yeah, well, I hope you're right, basically.
	I don't know really.
	As I said, as long as the status quo of big government remains, I don't think it's a fertile ground for starting a libertarian society or market anarchy.
	Do you mind if I ask about the degree of freedom that people have in their own life, the degree of unchosen obligations and positive and voluntary relationships?
	How would you rate yourself in that area?
	Well, I don't really have as well bad family problems as Greg or any of the other people that you I don't really have as well bad family problems as Greg or So in that context I would say there are many unchosen obligations as such.
	But yeah, I would say there are many problems in that area really.
	Okay, so as far as your family's view, and I'm not trying to dig for dirt here, I'm just genuinely curious.
	To what degree does your family accept and value your obviously clear and I think highly commendable dedication to truth and intellectual exploration and rational examination and so on?
	Well, I don't really talk about politics or philosophy or economics with my family as such.
	Well, yeah, I'm probably the most politically aware member of my immediate family.
	And can you tell me just roughly why you don't talk about those things with your family?
	I'm not sure really.
	It's just... I suppose I don't really have much interest in them as such.
	Well, not to any deep or detailed degree, no.
	What do you think would happen if you could speak to them?
	Sorry, Christina had a question.
	I'm just curious, what do you think would happen if you did speak with them about these issues?
	I think they'll be intrigued.
	I think they'll simply find them intriguing and fascinating really.
	I'm not sure if they will have any negative views on them as such.
	Okay, so I would suggest, I mean, this would sort of be an interesting experimentation, right?
	I mean, I think that if you obviously do care, I mean, you phoned in a number of times here before, which of course I hugely appreciate, but you obviously do care about philosophy and truth and intellectual pursuits.
	It's a very passionate area of your life, and I totally get that, and of course I respect that because I'm the same way.
	But I think that it is important to share your deepest self with those who are closest to you.
	I think it is very important to share what you care about with those who are closest to you.
	I think that it might be interesting to do that with your family because if you can't share this stuff with your family and it's very important to you, there is A diminishment in your relationship with them.
	There's a certain kind of, I wouldn't say pretense because that might be too strong a phrase, but you're certainly not sharing what is really important to you in this area with those who love you and who you love.
	And I think that it might be an important thing to do.
	And I'm telling you that if you can do this successfully, then your optimism will improve.
	Yeah, I can see where you're coming from.
	I mean, if you can't even share it with your own family, what hope could you conceivably have for the world?
	I mean, I'm sure you get that, right?
	But that's sort of where I'm coming from.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah, I can see that.
	And I want you to be happy and optimistic so that you can make England free for us while I'm working over here in North America.
	And I think you still have two weeks for that.
	So if you can talk to your family tomorrow, that would be great.
	Then you're still right on schedule for bringing freedom to.
	I don't think you actually have to do Scotland and Wales until the week after, but at least two weeks for the central main body of England.
	That would be great. That would sort of be right on plan.
	Okay, yeah. That's right.
	See, I do have an EET passport, but I don't want to have to use it anymore.
	I want to go back to Liberto and step off the plane and walk straight into lockdown without having to go through any of the nonsense that we have to go through right now.
	Did you have any other questions or comments before I open the board up?
	Okay, well, thank you.
	I appreciate that. Let us know how to get with your family.
	The board is wide open.
	I had an interesting experience with sharing with my family.
	Could you just send me your handle and then I will...
	This is Rod.
	Alright, Candy, go ahead.
	Okay, this is Candy.
	Alright, so I had an interesting experience.
	Wait, wait, wait. What are you wearing?
	I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Different phone call.
	Go ahead. Santa Claus pajamas.
	Dammit! No video cameras yet.
	So anyway, I was at this vacation that I took a couple weeks ago.
	I went home for a week for a cousin's wedding.
	And I do enjoy trying to start conversations about all these things that I'm really interested in with my family members.
	And this time I was sitting down to lunch with my mom and she, you know, when I was kind of launched into one of my big long this is what I believe in type speeches with her, she started to tell me how when I talk about this stuff with my brother it makes him very uncomfortable.
	And she was trying to tell me about how he just doesn't understand any of it and all that stuff.
	I really did get the impression that what she was saying is that I don't want you to talk about this stuff with Chad or my brother anymore.
	And I also, you know, when she said he doesn't understand it, well, then later on in our own conversation, she said the same thing about herself.
	She said, well, I just don't understand any of that.
	And really, I think it's just kind of a passive-aggressive way of saying, you know, stop talking about this because, you know, I don't want to talk about it type stuff.
	I'm sorry to interrupt you for just one sec but Christina, can I just ask you, this is probably a somewhat uncommon phenomenon but maybe you've seen this in one or two patients in your career that it may be possible that there are women out there in the world who would not feel particularly comfortable with conflict and would prefer that people keep their opinions to themselves rather than there be open conflict that there may be the odd mother in the world Possibly.
	I mean, we're really going out on a limb here, but it's possible that there may be a mother in the world who might conceivably prefer the appearance of harmony rather than actual harmony.
	There might be the odd father as well, who will tolerate this kind of discussion and then eventually...
	I'm sorry, can you start again? I did unmute you.
	There might be the odd father as well, I would say.
	It might be the odd father as well, I would say, who would tolerate sort of the discussion and sort of change the subject and eventually, I think, would get very angry and say, we're no longer open to this discussion.
	I think you'd see that with both men and women.
	No, I don't think so. I think men are perfectly philosophical and it's only the women.
	No, I think that, I agree with you obviously that it happens on both sides.
	In my experience, right, I think that it's a little bit more common for moms to kind of want to smooth over family discontent and sort of say, don't bring up contentious issues.
	It's not that men handle it any better because they'll just start yelling over there, right?
	And this again, gross generalizations, I think that there's a little bit more around smoothing the waters from the mom's side of things than from the dad's side of things.
	Or is that just my complete misogyny floating to the surface?
	No, I think moms like to keep the peace.
	I think moms like to keep the peace.
	But what's interesting is that Rod's brother won't tell him, please don't speak about this to me.
	Well, that's how we know Rod's brother is gay, right?
	See how it all sort of comes together that way.
	And if we could get his full name, Rod, I think that would be very helpful.
	And again, you could absolutely get him to listen to this show.
	Yeah, that'd be great.
	Actually, one of the other things that was interesting about this conversation I was having with her at lunch was that You know, after I got through the, well, I just don't understand it stuff, and I started to tell her, I said, well, you know, I really do think that people do understand this stuff, and they're just afraid to address the, you know, when you start to think about this stuff, you really have to start addressing what it means to you in your own mind.
	And I started kind of going into how, you know, my brother and I may be affected by Maybe, I say, but, you know, we're affected by, you know, the environment that we grew up in and the household and stuff like that.
	And I started discussing some of the details of that, and it was really interesting how quickly she started to turn the conversation toward or tried to turn the conversation toward the divorce that she had with my dad and then about how, oh, my dad was all this, that, and the other. And, of course, it was just she was trying to deflect Okay, whatever screwed me up when I was a kid, it has to be your dad's fault because it wasn't mine.
	I divorced him, so that must mean that it's his fault.
	Again, I tried to steer it back and say, well, no, it was a shared thing.
	It was an environment that was set by both of you and all that stuff.
	Eventually, the conversation wrapped up.
	It was really interesting, though, is when I got back here to California.
	This was back in Minnesota.
	When I was with my family. And coming back to California, I just, you know, for the next several days, I was just really in a great mood.
	And I think it was just because I had finally gotten some of the stuff off my chest with them.
	But then I got a phone call from my mom, and it was the craziest thing.
	One of the first things that she said on the conversation was, so do you like California more than you like Minnesota?
	And she was saying it with almost like tears in her voice.
	And it was just the craziest experience.
	It was, you know, I'm sorry, can I just interrupt you for a sec?
	Sure. Did she say, do you like California more than Minnesota, like, in a straight, kind of not serious way?
	Well, she was saying it was very emotional.
	I mean, I could tell that she was almost getting choked up by it.
	Do you like beaches and warmth and a muscle man governor I mean, I just don't understand that at all.
	I'm just trying to make sure that I understand what you found bizarre about that, because from the outside, these kinds of comparisons, it's like, would you like caviar, sir, or should I stick a fork in your ear?
	You know, to me, that's the comparison.
	But no, why do you think that she was so emotional about it?
	Well, to just hear those words straight up, it does sound kind of like a joke, but just, I guess, it's one of those things where, you know, I've known my mom my whole life, so just the way...
	The intonation in her voice, the inflection, things like that, it just made, it sounded to me like what she was saying is, are you glad to be away from me?
	Oh, absolutely. That's what she was saying.
	Right. And so, again, what was really great about this experience was, you know, it put me in just a crummy mood for the next few days.
	Like, I went from being on top of the world to feeling just like crap for a few days.
	And then, you know, since I was behind a couple weeks on the podcast, or a week behind on the podcast, I finally got to that one podcast that you had, Stefan, on the smothery mothers that have the kind of just about a kind of a girlfriend-y type relationship with their sons and that really just completely struck a chord with me on that one because that's exactly what it felt like was just kind of having a crazy girlfriend that I was trying to break up with,
	you know? There is a, and I certainly appreciate that.
	I'm glad that that helped. I've been reading an interesting book lately, which is written by a woman who's talking about some of the educational problems that boys have in school.
	This is one of the things that's occurring.
	In the world, right?
	There's been a very, you could say, slant towards feminine ways of learning and the boys are not doing nearly as well in a lot of the U.S. schools.
	They're two years behind the girls in particular subjects.
	And one of the theories, of course, is that the boys are sort of emotionally broken and have all these problems and that the reason that they have all these problems is that they basically haven't been feminized enough and so on.
	It sort of struck me that one of the ways that a male influence makes boys rowdy and difficult and violent and so on, and one of the things that sort of occurred to me on listening to this is that the way that you would test that theory is to sort of have a look at the single sons of single moms, right?
	Where there are two people in the family, a mom and a son.
	I've known a couple of those growing up.
	Actually, in the apartment blocks where I grew up in Canada, I sort of called them the matriarchal manners because it was all divorced moms and so on.
	The single sons, the single moms, they never date.
	They never date. They really can't seem to get going in life.
	A maternal bachelor seems to be stuck in particularly 13 to 15 year old mindsets and that does make for some pretty unusual psychological consolations and so it doesn't seem to me that that seems to be a pretty good approach for how to make men We have a question from Mr.
	Mike who has joined us from the fine land of Quebec.
	And let me just see.
	Before we go there, I think we're having a technical problem.
	What do we got here?
	All right.
	So let me just, at least we're back here.
	Let me just go back to the board for a second.
	Mr. Mike, can you hear us at all?
	Hello? I just got locked out of the Skype cards.
	Could somebody post a link again?
	Oh dear! Oh dear!
	I wonder if everybody's gotten, let me just unmute everybody here.
	Did everyone get booted?
	Mike, I hope you don't mind me using your first name, is calling in from Quebec and I know that the shows where people talk about their families are much more important to him than the ones where we talk about philosophy and economics, so I know that he's called up to whinge about his own family and I just wanted to give you the capacity to do that because I know that's the main thing that interests you about these conversations.
	No, I'm very blessed. I've had a fantastic family.
	I don't have any major problems with my family members, very secure, lots of unconditional positive regard, all that kind of thing.
	The only thing is they're 3,500 miles away, which is the only problem.
	Well, I certainly think that's wonderful.
	And you had a comment on the text chat, which was to do with...
	That the testing methodologies with what was differentiating the success rate of boys or girls relative to boys in sort of the modern academic world and since you know a lot more about that than I do, I wonder if you could sort of share your thoughts on that.
	A good example of this was in the UK. Thank you very much.
	The Tory government at the time brought in this new method of assessment whereby, yes, there would still be exams, but there would also be a proportion of kind of project-based work, which would involve an awful lot of prose and composition and that kind of thing, and accumulating the portfolio, and you have to be very, very sort of fastidious in making sure you've got that all sort of up to date.
	And Eureka, all of a sudden the girls are outperforming the boys, just within one year.
	There's been lots of work done on this about the feminization of the classroom and the effect of the two wars and how the shortfall of teachers that were traditionally a male role in the secondary level meant a lot more women coming in and obviously not only were they teaching in a more feminine style but they were assessing in a more feminine style And it's been progressive.
	And all of these success indicators that come out about boys versus girls in academic achievement, it tells you, a lot of the figures tell you more about the mode of assessment than the actual reality as to how boys are doing versus girls.
	Right. So it's really just around what is markable or scorable rather than the actual intellectual developments that are occurring.
	Yeah, absolutely. And obviously there's a whole idea of multiple intelligences as well, and left hemispheric specialization in boys.
	I mean, obviously we're equal, but we're different.
	And it depends how you choose to assess.
	I mean, it's like the whole story about the blind men and the elephant, you know?
	Right, right. Now, you're in the scientific field, and there's quite a bit of debate, and sorry, just before I get into that, the woman who wrote this book, The War Against Boys, is a ridiculously hyperdramatic title, but it's a very interesting reading.
	And I know you don't like sensationalism yourself, Stephan.
	No, no, absolutely. With people putting guns to your head if you don't pay your school taxes.
	I'm all about the muting of the Beijing.
	Absolutely. But she does talk quite positively about the British role, the role that sort of British educational system performed about sort of the proactivity, the way that they sort of jumped on this issue and tried to deal with it and so on.
	And so that was sort of a very positive thing.
	There still does remain some mystery around the sort of lack of women in the higher academic circles, particularly of course in the realm of sciences and engineering and so on.
	What are your thoughts on that? Because of course you've gone through the whole process and you may have seen sort of, I don't know, thinning outs of women as you move forward.
	Do you think that there's anything cultural or do you think it's genetic or do you think it's just preference based or what do you think it is that results in You know, the men, I guess, overpopulation of men in both the higher academic circles and prisons, right?
	We have a sort of broader kind of bell curve when it comes to the spread of intelligence, right?
	Women are a little bit more clustered, sort of what I've heard, women are a little bit more clustered around the middle.
	We have sort of both the saints and villains as far as the intellectual acumen goes.
	But what are your thoughts about that?
	It's hard to say really.
	I don't know. It's very interesting if you look in the United Kingdom how this all works out.
	You've basically got three stages of education for most people.
	We've got the high school. If we forget the elementary level, we've got the high school.
	You've got two years sixth form college where people do A-levels, pre-university courses.
	And then you have university itself proper.
	And currently in the UK, you see the girls are outperforming the boys completely at high school for the reasons I mentioned earlier, the way it's assessed.
	But by the time you actually get to classes of degree, because of course, as you know, the Brits are all obsessed with class and degrees are measured in class.
	You get a first class, upper second class, lower second class, and third class honors degrees.
	You find that the proportionality of first is hugely skewed towards males in all subjects, not just the sciences.
	There are all kinds of theories as to why that is.
	One is that at tertiary levels of education, when it comes to originality of thought, etc., it's more about taking risks.
	The notion is that boys, for maybe genetic reasons, because we're the hunter-gatherer providers or whatever, Maybe more into risk taking and maybe that accounts for it, but it's hard to know.
	But certainly within the sciences, I know it's not particularly politically correct, but if you look at the neurophysiology of the brain and the kind of skewed lopsidedness of male cortical activity towards the left hemisphere where scientific thought tends to be located.
	I don't have a problem with, you know, with the fact that, you know, men are equal but different.
	Women tend to have greater communicative skills and interpersonal intelligence, etc.
	And boys, you know, we're kind of on that continuum towards autism where we're often quite good when it comes to science and mathematics, but kind of less on the kind of expressive and literal sort of arts, literary arts even.
	Oh, I'm sorry. That was more than as a man I could conceivably listen to, but the beginning was very interesting.
	I'm just kidding. That was me thinking you were quite androgynous.
	No, I think that's quite interesting.
	There does seem to be a fair amount of resistance in certain circles to this idea that, I mean, as I sort of generally thought that men and women are a great team, you know, and of course there's lots of overlap and you never want to judge a person by gender because there's far more overlap.
	Sorry, far more overlap than there are similarities in lots of ways to these general stereotypes, but it does seem to be quite a bit of resistance to the idea that we can have complementary strengths, you know, as a gender.
	And just sort of in my experience, there seems to be a lot of hostility towards that notion, which seems to be entirely misplaced, You know, there's a lot of genetics that ended up with different characteristics, and, you know, I've always assumed that it's probably a little bit more than just the naughty bits that makes men and women complementary but different, but it's a very exciting topic to get into when I was in grad school, for sure. It got quite heated at times.
	It's not just the naughty bits.
	It's a sexually dimorphic nuclear anterior hypothalamus.
	Oh, I love it when you talk like that.
	Say it again, but more slowly.
	Shall I do the husky voice?
	I'd repeat it again myself later, but I'm not sure.
	I'd have to write it down or something and probably phonetically do.
	No, but it is amazing.
	If you forget the kind of functioning of the brain, which you can only see in real time with kind of things like functional MRI or PET, positron emission tomography, if you forget those imaging methods which allow you to see the brain actually in action thinking, if you forget that and just go back to kind of geography, as it were, and actually just looking at the brain and its structures, Apart from the slight difference in size, there's only six small areas where the brain are different.
	They're kind of like little blobs, tiny, they're arranged in kind of three pairs, and they're the only difference that you can really find between the two brains of male and female, sexually dimorphic, you know, in two forms, in the two sexes.
	And the interesting thing is they found that If you look at these dimorphic nuclei in heterosexual females and gay males, the morphology is the same, suggesting there might be a brain correlate of homosexuality.
	It's quite interesting. There's people doing a lot of research on it.
	Oh, absolutely. It's completely fascinating to think the degree to which gender, of course, the sexual preference is determined by brain chemistry.
	It seems to me somewhat of a no-brainer, I mean, in that who would, you know, choose to go through the challenges of being gay, even in the modern culture where it's a lot more accepted than pretty much in any culture since ancient Greece, at least among the upper classes, but the idea that sort of, you know, it's a choice, you know,
	or an affectation seems to me rather silly, and there does seem to be, at least for me, having gone to theater school when I was younger and having spent a certain amount of time around gay men and learning far more about musical opera than I ever thought I would, There does seem to be a certain kind of similarities in behavior and so on that you could almost group into a gender-specific kind of way.
	So I certainly would not be at all shocked if it did turn out to be something biologically based, which unfortunately would put a fair number of Christian camps out of business.
	Well, I mean, the interesting thing is, even if there is, if you'd say, if you take someone who's currently, currently, as if you change, if you take someone who's homosexual, and if you have to look at their brain and see that it was, the sexually dimorphic nuclear were that, That they were very correlated with that of a heterosexual female's brain.
	That doesn't tell you that their homosexuality has a biological origin.
	I mean, it could still be an environmental origin, which has actually caused the wiring of their brain in that way, because of something called synaptic plasticity.
	Have you noticed the way I've just derailed your whole podcast and turned it into neurology?
	Have you seen that? It was subtle, of course.
	I mean, there's no way to tell about it.
	No, listen, I mean, this is the great thing about this particular version of the conversation that we have, you know, a couple of dozen people in here and we're pretty much range, we're free-ranging at the moment, so I sort of had a little rant at the beginning and now we're free-ranging, which is great.
	And, no, you're absolutely right, this neuroplasticity is basically the idea as far as I understand it that you're going to have certain, there are certain things and I think the degree of intelligence is one of the things that may be predetermined at birth, but It is your choices that are going to end up to some degree affecting the way that your brain develops.
	Choices may not be exactly the right word, but certainly things like nutrition will have an effect.
	But exposure to stimuli and so on, and then as you get older, choices that you make whether to study or not are going to have effects.
	Is that sort of what you mean in the way that your brain ends up physically?
	Well, I mean, there's something called...
	I'm turning this into a nerdy science podcast.
	I do apologize for you sociologists out there.
	There's something called activity-dependent synaptogenesis, which is just a flash way of saying that the way that you stimulate your brain and its pathways will actually determine how it wires.
	There's some amazing research, and another vivisectionist, anti-vivisectionist here will go crazy when you're saying this, I'm not supporting these studies.
	I'm just saying that they took place.
	They showed primates, neonatal primates, nothing but vertical lines, and they found that after a critical window of development, they were incapable of seeing horizontal lines, even if you showed it to them.
	And there's various other experiments like that.
	And it even goes on with something called nociception which is pain.
	They actually found that when they took dogs and actually prevented them from any nociceptive stimuli, i.e.
	anything painful, That after a critical window of brain development, those dogs are incapable of feeling pain.
	They were completely, completely resistant to any pain.
	Well, there's certainly some correlation in the psychological world as well in so far as there does seem to be certain windows.
	We know, of course, there's language development windows after which if a child does not have exposure to language, they have a great degree of difficulty coming up with even anything beyond the most basics of language, a couple of hundred words and so on.
	But there does seem to be some correlation between the experience of childhood trauma and the personality that forms thereafter and that oftentimes if a person is heavily traumatized in infancy, they will grow up as a sort of sociopathic personality and if there is trauma that occurs sort of in toddlerhood, That they tend to be not quite that bad and then it occurs sort of later on in life and it's a bit more on the neurotic side and so on.
	And certainly it does seem to be that sociopathy, if it is related to early childhood or almost infancy kinds of trauma, that it is not fixable, right?
	You can't talk someone out of being a sociopath, right?
	No, no. They have neuropsychological deficits.
	They have prefrontal lobe damage.
	If you look at sociopaths, serial killers, etc., the reason they can't empathize with their victims, etc., etc., is thought to be due to the small lesions that you find in their prefrontal lobes area.
	So yes, the whole philosophy about what is the penal system for?
	Is it for reform? Is it for punishment?
	If it comes down to the idea of rehabilitation and reform, I don't think that's possible for neurological hardwiring reasons when it comes to sociopaths.
	Yeah, but they are a very discreet group, though, obviously, because they are, well, here's a good philosophical question.
	Are they on a continuum, or are they a kind of qualitatively different group?
	I would suggest they are, based on the kind of PM work that's been done, the post-mortem studies that have been done on their brains.
	Well, I mean, I would guess like most distributions are variable, there are some groups in the middle, right?
	So we just had a question, Christina is now doing a series on Ask a Psychologist, and we've got a question about Asperger's Syndrome, which is a form of mild autism, right?
	Of course. Of course, there are people who are completely autistic and functionally retarded and no eye contact and spend their whole life hugging their knees.
	And then there are people who have mild symptoms of autism, which could be a form of social phobia, and so on.
	So there's certainly people on either end, but there's a number of people who might have, you know, a possibility in the sort of ethical world, right?
	Obviously people who are brain damaged aren't morally responsible, and people who are raised really well do have a certain advantage, but there's lots of people in the middle who maybe could go either way, depending on their choices and what they're exposed to.
	Absolutely, and if you look at the Thank you very much.
	Thank you very much.
	Valued the idea that it is on the continuum when it comes to autism.
	In fact, very recent work has been done on autism.
	Some work published only last week, in fact, about people doing EEG studies on autism and autistic brains.
	And, you know, again, getting back to this idea of wiring.
	There are some areas of the cortex that have too many connections with other areas, which is why they have the savant sort of ability on occasion.
	And other areas where, you know, it's just not working.
	They're just not wired. Right, and that's not a matter.
	I mean, there's some things that the brain can do in terms of working around particular deficits, cognitive deficits.
	I mean, obviously, we know the standard one of somebody who loses the eyesight who gains significantly finer sensitivities in their other senses.
	But there's a number of things that simply the brain cannot wire around, right?
	And certainly... Depends on the age.
	Depends on the age. For example, I mean, if you take, for example, the visual cortex, for those of you who are not really into neuro stuff, you see with the back of your brain.
	The back of your brain is where the sight is, which is why if you get hit hard in the back of the head, you see stars or see funny patterns.
	If you, as an adult, Stefan, were to have a big trauma to your visual cortex, There's a good chance that you'll be blind and that's it.
	However, if you look at babies who are born with water on the brain, hydrocephalus, the intracranial pressure, the pressure inside their head often crushes their occipital lobe, their visual cortex.
	And people found a great mystery in the fact that these babies who've got Completely crushed visual cortexes could see perfectly well.
	So people are saying, well, you know, what's going on?
	Are we wrong? Is this maybe not the area that controls vision?
	What they found is when they did imaging studies is that it had rewired and that when you showed these children visual stimuli in one of these functional images, different parts of their brain would light up, parts had taken over.
	Now that will happen with the plasticity of a neonatal brain or even a fetal brain, but it won't happen with an adult like yourself or myself.
	That's fascinating. I was, for a while in my 20s, quite addicted to Oliver Sacks books.
	I don't know if you've ever read his.
	Yeah, I dated his niece.
	No. Wow.
	Did you ever meet him? Very briefly, yeah.
	I find him very over-sentimental.
	There's actually a better author called Harold Clowens, and he wrote a really good book called Toscanini's Fumble and Other Tales of Clinical Neurology, and that's even more interesting, I would say.
	Could you dispel his last name?
	K-L-A-W-A-N-S. Harold L. Clowens.
	K-L-A-W-A-N-S. Toscanini's Fumble and Other Tales of Clinical Neurology.
	And the second one was Newton's Madness and Other Tales of Clinical Neurology.
	Very, very, very interesting stuff.
	That's good. That's very good.
	It's in the Oliver Sacks mold, but less sentimental.
	He's quite good, though. He's an interesting guy.
	Just for those who don't know, one of Oliver Sacks books, I can't remember if it was called this, was the basis?
	The Man Who Mistook His Wife, perhaps.
	Yeah, that was the basis for Awakenings with Robin Williams and Robert Dindro, I think it was.
	And it's one of these sort of flowers for Algernon types of stories, but it was well done and certainly he's well worth reading, but I'll definitely check this other guys out.
	I certainly do really like, you know, the sort of, in the sort of computer metaphor, right, to not look so much at the programs but the operating system right down at the binary level to see, you know, the degree of individuality and that gets you into the whole juicy free will argument and so on.
	So that's, to me, all very, All very exciting stuff because of its obvious ramifications on ethical theories, moral philosophy and things like penal reform and so on.
	Those things all need to be conditioned by, you know, the sort of facts that are out there.
	And so I think a lot of people who are into the arts or into sort of philosophy and so on don't quite take as much, don't drink as deep as they should, I think, from the well of science.
	So I think that stuff is very, very important.
	That's because biological predeterminism is such a scary thought for a lot of philosophers.
	Oh, absolutely. Boy, we've had some very, very exciting chats about that on this show.
	Well, I mean, this is...
	I mean, maybe you're not going to get into that this week, but this is why I think that market anarchy is perhaps a very dangerous solution for the problems that you perceive in society insofar as we are neurologically hardwired to be quite selfish and nasty.
	And without that kind of state regulation, we could be raw biology.
	It could get very unpleasant.
	I certainly understand that and I certainly do understand that if you divide people into being sort of nasty and selfish and you put all of the people who are nasty and selfish on the side of those who aren't in the government and all the people who aren't nasty and selfish on the side of those who are in the government that that would be a good solution.
	I just don't think that's ever been achieved or could be achieved, right?
	I mean if people are nasty and selfish as a whole then the government would be a great way for them to use sort of violent power to transfer resources to themselves I think it's particularly because human beings have sort of plastic natures in a way insofar as if you grow up in a communist country you're going to be a particular kind of person and if you grow up in a sort of freer country you're probably on average going to be different.
	I mean people are generally kind of adapted to the social environment.
	And so I do think that certainly it's a risky proposition to say, you know, we've lived for 100,000 years for some sort of hierarchical, centralized, organized form of government, but it might be possible to live without it.
	But I think that the danger, of course, as we talked about before, is that Governments don't remain stable, right?
	Because they're such great ways of transferring resources.
	They generally tend to escalate in their power until there's a collapse.
	And so I would be pretty content and wouldn't be on the anarchy side of things if I felt that or could find a historical example of a state that didn't go through that particular process.
	And if you could keep a state small, then it wouldn't even be worth, you know, talking about alternatives.
	But it just never seems to stay that way.
	Hmm. Look at that!
	I changed this mind completely!
	How exciting! Wow!
	What time is it?
	No, it's just that avenue.
	I haven't got the energy to go down that avenue.
	We're two and a half hours into it, so we're probably going to wind down pretty soon, too.
	No, I totally understand.
	It's not, at least from my standpoint, and yet again, I'm not going to try and convince you today, but...
	From my standpoint, it's certainly not the case that, you know, to be free in the way that is talked about in these sorts of approaches to politics, to be free does not require a world of perfect virtue and everybody constantly wanting to do wonderful things for each other and nobody having a mean streak and nobody having cognitive deficits or lesions on the brain that turned them into monsters or anything.
	Can I just respond to something that Greg is saying?
	Greg said, you said that the mind could rewire itself, but then you said we're hardwired.
	Well, the first thing is, I didn't say the mind, I said the brain, and the relationship between, you know, that whole Cartesian...
	And he said, I'm just trying to understand what the dividing line is.
	Well, when I mentioned it in relation to your ideas about market anarchy, the things, I mean, people often understand the fact that there is three levels of brain, basically.
	And the oldest part of the brain, the paleo parts of the brain, are paleo parts.
	Neurology are things like that in our hypothalamus, like thirst, hunger, sex, etc.
	And they are very, very, very powerful.
	And in general, they don't get rewired ever once they've developed, assuming that you actually develop normally.
	But other things like vision, sight, smell, motor functions, and of course changing opinions, which goes on in your frontal lobe, those things can be rewired.
	So, Greg, in response to what you're saying, it depends how low down in the brain that you go.
	The newer parts, the neocortex, the neobrain, That's much more plastic.
	You can't really monkey around with the hind brain, the reptilian brain.
	It's a fait accompli.
	I know, Greg, I think he's just completed his rewiring, so you should probably feel that settling in right about now.
	Isn't that a nice feeling?
	That's right. That's right.
	And I just, you had this thing here about, you just mentioned this phrase which baffled me a little bit.
	You talked about changing opinions.
	I'm not sure I'm aware of that.
	Could you tell me a little bit more about that?
	Well, flexibility of thought presumably And I say presumably because, you know, it's not something that we can empirically demonstrate.
	But presumably, any modification of thought, behavior, etc., is actually down to synaptic plasticity, these changes in the synapse and how they function.
	So if I was to come and sign into your Skype class and listen to you and think, fantastic, down with the state, I want to be a market anarchist, then you would have affected neurological changes at some level in my brain.
	Right, you haven't been snorting any of the packets I'd be mailing you, right?
	Because we're going to take a bit of a different approach with you.
	But we can come back to that perhaps a little later.
	Okay, that's, I mean, because, yeah, certainly opinions, and I think we've all felt that in our own intellectual pursuits or endeavors where you get, you know, you sort of, you get that eureka or eureka moment in the middle of the night, you sort of wake up like, wow, what an interesting idea, and then you sort of write it down, hoping that in the light of day it's actually going to be coherent.
	But where you feel, at least for me, it's kind of like a physiological rush when I sort of get an idea that I think is good or make a connection that has eluded me for sometimes years.
	I've been unable to solve particular problems and then I'll either sort of work through them deductively or inductively to get some kind of, and it's a rush of physical pleasure that's sort of one of the reasons, of course, why I ended up pursuing a life of the mind because, you know, that's what gets me going.
	There really is a very strong sort of, when those connections are made for me at least, it is a very strong physiological reaction of pleasure and I don't know if that's common for many people but it's like that reinforces my desire to think further.
	I mean it really is that sort of mind-body unity or brain-body unity is really quite strong at least for me and I've certainly heard that from other people as well.
	Do you get that sort of same rush when When you're working through a problem, do you get that physical rush that comes out of it as well?
	Well, indeed. And, you know, it's very interesting if you look at this idea of, you know, when you're trying to solve a problem and you can't solve it, or you're trying to remember where you put something and you can't.
	So you attend to something else and move on, and then later, all of a sudden, the hard disk between your ears comes up with the answer.
	And there's a lot of ideas about how that happens in terms of delegating these executive tasks, cognitive tasks, to places on the surface of your right hemisphere in the front lobe.
	And later, it informs your left hemisphere.
	You've got the answer now.
	There you go.
	There's your solution.
	For me, it's a little out of brain experience.
	My wife just tells me, but I certainly do understand that it can occur.
	Theoretically, it could occur within your own mind as well.
	Do you remember where you left stuff or if there's an answer that comes along?
	That's part of a symbiosis thing or I guess more of a parasitical thing that I pursue.
	I'm going to just open the board if anyone has any questions.
	Certainly we have an expert on hand which is I'm sure a huge relief to just about everyone.
	And if you have any questions for Mike, he's very generous in sharing his knowledge in this area.
	The board is open if anybody has any questions.
	Otherwise, my microphone hand is getting sore as a father with a newborn.
	So I will then comment on Penrose's Shadows of the Mind.
	Never read it, but I've read The Emperor's New Mind.
	Is that what you mean? The Emperor's New Mind?
	Dr. Todd? Because the Emperor's New Mind, which compares software and the brain, and looks at quantum mechanics to actually suggest what is the location of the mind.
	Is that what you're talking about? Oh, I haven't read the follow-on.
	No, I've only read the Emperor's New Mind.
	That sounds very fascinating.
	Oh, it is, yeah.
	Are you trying to find where the mind and the brain sort of unite?
	Yeah, it's kind of like a modern approach to Cartesian dualism, using quantum mechanics.
	Go ahead, Dr.
	Todd 13. Hello?
	Yes, go ahead. Okay.
	Yeah, in Shadows of the Mind, he sort of continues on with the same sort of general hypothesis from Emperor's New Mind, but he's changed his mind on what the underlying fundamental sort of brain mechanism is.
	In Emperor's New Mind, it was something about some number of neurons existing in a quantum superposition, and then once they reach a certain size, the wave function collapses, and this sort of non-determinism somehow yields consciousness and free will, et cetera, et cetera.
	I guess it was shown that This sort of approach was impossible and then now he's changed his mind and said, well, no, it's really these, on the surface of the neuron there are these microtubules.
	And now he believes that there's some sort of quantum computation going on inside these microtubules and that these microtubules are connected to other microtubules of other neurons as well.
	So he sort of changed his mechanism by which he thinks that the mind is computing quantum mechanically.
	Yeah, but I'm not too happy when Penrose goes into that area, actually looking at the physiological correlate for what he's talking about.
	He's a physicist. He's not a neuroscientist.
	Well, he's working with an MD, I think.
	Yeah, but personally, and I'm probably a bit out of my depth when it comes to this because his area of looking at consciousness from a kind of mathematical and quantum level is not an area that I'm that much into.
	But I believe that this is all happening pre- and post-synaptically without the need for microtubules.
	The synapse itself acts in a quantum manner.
	A quanta of neurotransmitters are released in synaptic musicals.
	It's getting very bio-nerdy now.
	I hope I'm not boring other people.
	I find this stuff great, so please go ahead.
	So all I was saying, Dr.
	Todd, is I think he's a fascinating person to read.
	I think The Emperor's New Mind is a great book to read.
	I think it's an excellent idea that he would actually look for the physiological and biological correlates of the kind of things that his mathematics is suggesting.
	Why not? But at the moment, I don't think there's enough of an empirical evidence If you look at kind of micro psychological studies of neurons, I don't know if there's enough evidence to say that there's actually microtubule kind of quantum things going on.
	I tend to think it's more at SNAPTIC in terms of neurotransmitter release.
	But I don't know. I don't know.
	It's just my feeling. What's your theory on how anesthetics work?
	Yeah, it's very interesting. It depends on what type of anesthetic you're talking about.
	That's very good. Yeah, I mean, if we're talking about things like sodium channel blockers like lignicane, that's no problem.
	But yes, you're talking about the volatile anesthetics like ether and halophane and that kind of thing.
	Yes? Great.
	Yeah. I have no idea.
	I have no idea.
	It's still a big unknown.
	Hello.
	All right.
	Now, I'm going to just unmute if anybody else has any questions.
	Sorry to those people who were just joining.
	Which is fine. If anyone else has any urgent questions, that would be great.
	I certainly would like it if the people who've got in-depth brain knowledge back next week, I'd be very happy to talk more about where free will might exist in the corners.
	In the sort of quantum corners of brain activity, that would be quite fascinating.
	We've had some very powerful and exciting philosophical debates.
	I think that it would be very interesting to talk in more detail about the physiology that goes on at the root of the brain stuff of which I'm not at all familiar with in any depth.
	Join us back next week.
	It would be fascinating to hear more about that stuff and would bring some, I think, much needed clarity to the philosophical debates that we've been having.
	If nobody else has any other questions, I certainly appreciate everybody dropping by today.
	It was a great deal of fun. I really enjoy the people.
	Excellent questions about the future of libertarianism, some excellent stuff in the family, and some actual factual science thrown in just to spice up the mix.
	So thank you so much, everyone, for listening, and we will talk to you next week at 4 p.m.
	Eastern Standard Time, and have yourselves a great rest of the day, and we'll talk to you soon.

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