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Dec. 21, 2006 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
38:38
567 Morals, Ethics and Aesthetics
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Good evening, everybody. Hope you're doing well.
It's Steph. Ooh, we're back to the good mic!
But I have no songs for you today.
Actually, that's not true, but I'm not going to sing it because it's rude.
But it's a damn fine song with a great beat and a great horn sound.
I listened to it a half dozen times this afternoon while grinding through some data for market research.
And the song is Sexy MF by Prince.
And it should be fairly clear to you as to why, on so many levels, it's not an appropriate song for me to sing.
It's actually far less to do with the explicit nature of the language as it is for a song that would walk up to a British accent, smack it around, and make it eat its own feet.
So we don't want that.
So Prince shall remain unmolested.
The fairy godfather of pop and rock, Freddie Mercury, unfortunately shall not.
So, an excellent post on the board today by a gentleman who was sort of asking the question, and I think, or making the comment quite rightly so, that isn't it possible that certain aspects of morality are subjective?
And I'm going to take a bit of a different approach here around my sort of usual hack and slash at the ethical question, because I think that the word ethics, morals, standards of behavior, and so on are all quite loosely bandied about, and I'd sort of like to hack at sort of defining them in ways that I think give some of the permutations and layers involved.
There are certainly different degrees of precision in the sciences, which we accept, although we do accept that there are still sciences, even though there are these different degrees.
In physics, the degree of difference is really down to the level of what can be measured.
That's what you're allowed to have as a disparity.
In biology, there's variation.
In sociology, if it's even in science, there's more variation.
In psychology, there's variation.
So we do accept gray areas and non-purely objective results and still have things classified as a science.
And I would say that morality spans all of these.
That morality spans all of these.
So there are people who say that morality is subjective, and there are people who say that morality is objective, and I think that they're both right.
It really depends on how you define morality, right?
It's true to say that science is objective in the realm of physics.
It's also true to say that science is subjective in certain areas, in particular in measurements of cultural preferences around the realm of psychology.
Now, the methodology should not be But the conclusions can be, or you can describe subjective states of mind through psychological experiments and so on.
So if you were doing a study of patriotism, your methodology should be objective, but what you're studying is subjective, which is people's conceptual responses and emotional interactions with the concept of patriotism.
Whereas in science, what you study is objective and the methodology is objective in physics.
But in psychology or sociology, the methodology must always be objective.
But what you study is not always objective, of course.
Is the bus coming forward?
I don't think so.
Oh good, now I've tucked myself in behind another bus.
Settle in, my friends!
It's the last drive before Christmas for most people, so...
Let's get comfortable.
You sexy... No, no, no!
Restrain from the singing! Do not blow your iTunes rating!
Oh, I've blown it before, but what the heck.
So... I'd sort of like to work with a triple-layer, mmm, carrot cake of morality, and you can let me know what you think of this general formulation.
So, to me, there are three layers, primarily, of preferred behavior.
There's universally preferred behavior, which, to me, is, well, we've gone through this definition about a million times, It's behavior that is reversible regardless of state, universal to all places, and so on, objectively measurable and can be retaliated against through the use of violence in the form of self-defense.
And you can go round and round with this kind of stuff as far as defining it to the nth degree, but that I think is pretty useful.
And that would be things like rape and murder and assault and direct theft with a weapon and this kind of stuff, right?
Stuff which you can't escape. Which you have not provoked and which is, you know, directly detrimental to the physical health and well-being of you or your property.
And then we have behavior which is, I would say, wrong but not evil.
Wrong but not evil, right?
And there's a lot of gray area.
I don't think there's a lot of gray area in things like rape, right?
In terms of, you know, a woman waking up and saying, you know, gee, maybe that was date rape.
I mean, that kind of stuff can be some gray areas.
But that's just a gray area in proof.
That's not a gray area.
Like, if it is rape, then it's wrong.
And whether it's rape or not sometimes is open to debate.
But when it is rape, nobody sort of has any sort of question that it's wrong and the woman has a right to use self-defense and so on.
Now... That to me is sort of the core.
That's what I would call sort of core morality or, you know, there's lots of different ways that you could phrase it.
Universally preferred behavior.
That's what I would sort of say. Universally preferred behavior.
Preferred by everyone regardless of circumstances, regardless of time, regardless of place.
Don't murder, don't rape.
Pretty universal rule.
I think that stuff's objective.
Now, again, there's a proof, and there's a he said, she said, there's very rarely the smoking gun, five video cameras catching it on tape, and so on.
So, there's lots of stuff that makes this rather tough to figure out.
But, when it is figured out, the answer is clear, and someone did something pretty evil.
Now, The second layer of ethics is something around exploitation.
And if you hire someone who doesn't have any self-esteem and you browbeat them, And you underpay them.
And you verbally, you know, humiliate them or, you know, in some manner that's not just screaming your lungs out at them, which would be obvious.
You put them down. You cut them down.
Their lack of self-esteem arouses the bully in you.
And you bully that person, but not in a sort of physically violent or directly fraudulent way.
Like you don't promise to pay them and then don't pay them.
But you just sort of enjoy...
Pardon me. You just sort of enjoy humiliating that person.
Well, that's wrong, I think.
I mean, that's unpreferred behavior.
But it's not the initiation of the use of force.
And a lot of what we deal with, I would say the vast majority of what we deal with in society is composed of just this kind of behavior.
It's the parents who mock their children It's the parents who undermine their children's self-esteem.
It's the parents who ridicule their children.
Not to beat them, not to scream at them or shake them, but just roll their eyes whenever their kid says stuff and just kind of belittle, constantly to whittle down and belittle a human being.
That's not evil, but it sure ain't good, right?
And it's a big gray area, right?
We've all, at one time or another, rolled our eyes at someone we care about, I think.
Maybe other people out there are more shining examples of virtue than I am, but I think, with Christina, I can't remember, but I'm sure I have.
I know that I have.
I know that I have. She can be a little bit fussy, which is a good thing, because she waited to marry me, but sometimes it's a little like, oh, I'm sorry, is the sock not on quite correctly?
Are your slippers not on quite well enough?
You know, that kind of stuff.
And, of course, she's lactose intolerant, and she doesn't eat any meat, and she's allergic to chocolate, but she still eats it, and then complains.
You know, there's a little bit. I mean, and I'm sure I have...
Oh gosh, at least one habit, if not more, that I'm sure gets heard the same way.
So there's a difference of degree.
Like, I've never strangled a guy with two hands, but I have done it with my brain like Darth Vader.
But I have rolled my eyes, and so there's a difference of degree, right?
If I just once had strangled a guy, that would be a pretty black mark on my conscience and would be a pretty strong indication of who I was.
Just once rolling your eyes at someone that you love doesn't condemn you to the ninth level of immoral hell for the rest of existence.
So there are some differences in this realm, and this realm is the vast bulk Of what occurs in the realm of personal morality.
I mean, assuming you're not a cop or a soldier or a drug dealer or a mafioso or something, this is the core of what we deal with at a personal level, right?
This is the kind of belittling and sort of aesthetic, sort of around exploitation and so on.
And this is where...
A great deal of human conflict occurs, right?
So the two big fights that we've had in Free Domain Radio around free will was around prostitution.
And both of these are sort of in a gray area, for me at least, as far as sort of real ethics go.
I mean, without getting back into the free will debate, which until we get the science we can't resolve, To me, if there's no free will, there's no such thing as ethics, however much people redefine stuff, but in the realm of prostitution, As I said, and people kept misunderstanding me, at least on the board, for, I would say, their own personal reasons, which would be fairly clear, that I was saying that it was evil, and they were saying, well, I'm not using violence.
And it's true, you're not using violence, right?
I mean, the pimp is using the violence, and you're not using the violence directly, you're just profiting from it.
Now, as a guy who's taken his share of government contracts in my time, you know, we can get into a complex argument about that another time, but...
You almost can't live without dealing with the state, right?
But you can live without dealing with prostitutes.
To me it's a little bit different, but we can get as slippery and slidey as we like on that one.
But in the realm of prostitution, there was a great deal of And I fully understand it, right?
I mean, if somebody goes to a prostitute and then they hear somebody say, well, that's evil, then of course, I mean, you're calling someone out in their honor, as the gentleman did who wrote to me about how I had overreacted to just his specific email with regards to the Trust Me, Trust Me podcast of a couple of days ago.
Perfectly right. If somebody calls you out on your honor, absolutely, flame up.
Stay rational and stay open to evidence and reason and argument and so on.
But yes, if somebody calls you evil, that's a pretty strong term.
I certainly would not take it lightly at all.
And in the realm of prostitution, What this meant was that people misunderstood, sort of why I'm saying it's exploitive.
I think there's a certain kind of corruption to it, but it's not evil because you yourself are not directly initiating the use of force or fraud.
But people got that so they weren't differentiating, right?
Evil is the initiation of force or fraud, right?
I mean, the fundamental sort of fraud aspect.
And there's some gray areas to fraud, and there's some gray areas to violence as well, right?
I mean, if somebody pinches me on the, what is it, the back part of the arm, which is really painful, I don't get to blow them away with a shotgun, right?
So, I mean, even in terms of retaliation, there's lots of gray areas, right?
It's the difference of degree that is a challenge.
Yes, we all have the right to self-defense, but what is proportional self-defense relative to our knowledge of the person's intention, relative to the provocation?
I mean, who knows, right? There's no objective way.
This is something that DROs in society just have to work out, and will work out, of course, in the absence of a government, and cannot work out with the government around.
Because there's no optimization principle, no minimization of the use of resources principle, and no prevention.
Motivation. This second layer, the first layer, you know, I don't strangle guys.
Yeah, I've rolled my eyes, but it's not a habit of mine and I try to be positive towards people and treat them very well until they treat me badly and so on.
So in that second realm, this is a very large area of what we need to deal with.
So I'll call the first area morals, and the second area ethics.
And I know that there's no real...
I just need two words, so forgive me if I'm not going to make up Florida Bartkast or something like that.
So morals is sort of the big don't stab, don't strangle, don't rape, that kind of stuff.
And ethics is more around it's nicer if you don't.
You're a better person if you don't.
And this is more in the realm of...
Suggestion ethics. Morals are like commandments, right?
And so if I see you strangling some guy, I can shoot you if it's the only way I can reasonably get you to stop.
If I see you going to a prostitute, then I can try and talk you out of it.
But I can't shoot you for going to a prostitute.
Now, the prostitute can shoot the pimp if the pimp is using violence against her.
But you... And if I see the prostitute, I can't shoot you for going to the prostitute, right?
And that's... I mean, I never made an argument remotely to the contrary.
So, in the second realm, this is where debate occurs, right?
In the first realm, There is self-defense and moral condemnation, and this is the guys who rape and kill children.
I mean, they're the real sort of sociopathic monsters who are rare, right?
I mean, absent of the state, these people are almost non-existent.
At the presence of the state, the state arms tens of thousands of them and gives them huge weapons and so on.
But in the absence of the state, these people are relatively, actually extraordinarily rare.
And not really a big factor.
Not really a big factor at all.
The real challenge, to me at least, in human motivation and right and wrong behavior is in this realm of ethics, which is, it'd be nicer if you didn't, or, to some degree, if the situation were reversed, Then you wouldn't like it.
And of course, there's some truth in that to some degree with morals, right?
With the real good and evil, down and dirty, Satan and Satanic kind of psychotic stuff.
But if you hire someone and belittle them, or if you go up to a woman who's ugly and you say, you're ugly, you know, and that's painful, right?
It's painful. I mean, look what happened to Linda Tripp, right?
16 surgeries or something after...
She was told that she was ugly, and Paula Jones had a nose job and stuff.
I mean, it's hard, right? It's hard for...
It's cruel, right?
It's kind of cruel. Is it evil, right?
Somebody comes up to you and says, you're ugly.
Do you get to blow them away with a shotgun?
Well, no, of course not, right?
I mean, that would not be a...
But it's not a very nice thing to do, right?
It's rude and kind of universal, right?
Kind of universal. And obviously the motivations for it are not good, right?
Because if you really are concerned that somebody's overweight, you don't just walk up to them and mock them for being fat, right?
You gain more weight so they look thinner.
I mean, you know, have some compassion.
So there's those, and that's pretty universal, I would say, although, again, not in the realm of self-defense.
Because it's emotional harm that you're inflicting, and emotional harm is not objective in the way that stabbing a guy in the ear is.
There's a hole, there's blood, there's less ear.
Whereas emotional damage is kind of tough to quantify and easy to fake.
You can't fake a guy stab me in the ear, but you can fake I feel upset because this person has belittled me.
So, it is largely in the realm of proof and objectivity that this second layer, which we're sort of going to roughly call ethics, it lives, right?
Now, the ethics bleeds over to the third layer, which is something like aesthetics.
Or you could think of it as aesthetics or politeness.
We'll just call it aesthetics, because it sounds like ethics, so I'll get confused.
Now, aesthetics is things like Which side of the plate does your salad fork go?
And it's nice to show up to somebody's dinner party not in gym shorts and a t-shirt, like a muscle tee.
It's not emotionally abusive.
It's just kind of impolite.
You could say kind of disrespectful to somebody, but you think of Travis Bickle when he takes this, what is it in the movie Taxi Driver, when he takes, is it Candice Bergen?
Some chick, to a porn show on their first date.
Well, it's not exactly that he's emotionally abusing her, but...
It's sort of impolite, right?
It's sort of inappropriate, which is not a word I like very much because it's kind of abused itself, but it is more around if you talk...
Oh, maybe I shouldn't talk about this one.
If you talk all the time when you're in conversation with someone and you never let them get a word in edgewise and you don't ask them anything about themselves and you just go on and on, then that's not emotionally abusive.
I mean, I think it's kind of a little in a subtle kind of way, but you're not screaming at them and calling them stupid and fat and lazy and a jerk and this kind of stuff.
But it's kind of rude, right?
I mean, unless, you know, I don't know, like everybody's enjoying your conversation, nobody has anything else to say.
This does sometimes happen. I don't know if they're enjoying, but they certainly don't have that much to say sometimes on the Sunday call-in show.
But... That is really in the realm of aesthetics.
And this is culturally relative as well.
And I know that I've been slamming culture and so on, but I think that there'll still be some of this stuff left over.
Simply because people need ways to organize stuff, right?
I mean, you just need ways to organize stuff, right?
Where the cutlery goes and so on.
And if I'm at your house and I drop a favorite teacup of yours and smash it, then I should say that I'm sorry.
Now, if I don't say that I'm sorry, then that's not emotionally abusive to you, and I'm certainly not initiating the use of force or fraud, but it's not polite.
I remember when I was much, much younger, like I'm talking 12 or something like that, A kid, I was a kid, right?
He would come over to my place and he would play my computer.
We had the basketball game on the Atari 800.
And he came over a couple of times and I'd sort of sit there reading and he'd play the game and so on.
And then he'd just leave without saying thank you.
And, like, after the third time of this where he didn't say thank you, I was too young, right?
I mean, to sort of be helpful towards him and say, you know, among we earthlings.
So I just sort of got mad and just stopped inviting him over, right?
Because I was just like, well, that's kind of rude, right?
I mean, to say thank you in terms of appreciation is sort of important because then, otherwise, you sort of feel like you're taken for granted and exploited a little bit, right?
And... So, as far as that goes, that's not...
I mean, you obviously don't get to blow away a person for not saying sorry or not saying thank you.
You don't get to blow away a person just for raising their voice at you or calling you stupid or anything like that.
But these three sort of general realms of ethics, right?
The morals, the ethics, and the aesthetics or politeness, I think are useful things to organize within your own mind and to sort of figure out which one is being talked about.
When you are in a debate regarding ethics with someone, which one is actually under discussion, right?
Because this, in my sort of experience, this overlap between these three different views of ethics, or sorry, these three different views of right and wrong, convolutes a lot of people's discussions, and I think that's a real shame.
A lot of people, when they're talking about corruption, they are thinking good and evil, which is much more to do with what we've talked about morals, at least in this context.
And sometimes when people say, well, morals are relative, they're thinking more like social graces or In the Greek culture, they pretend to spit on you when you go past for good luck, whereas in England that would be considered fairly rude.
So that's not for sure.
It certainly is subjective.
I think where the problem of subjectivity comes in is in the realm of exceptions.
In the realm of exceptions.
So, there's no moral theory that I've ever heard of that says murder is good.
But the problem is that people have moral theories that are completely inconsistent.
And that's sort of my basic argument about the argument for morality, my basic approach, is just to say That if you have a moral proposition or a moral theory that very rapidly produces innate self-contradictions or innate contradictions, then you have a poor moral theory.
As we've talked about before, no theft is a logically consistent moral theory.
Theft is good.
Theft is bad is a universally consistent moral theory.
Theft is good produces immediate contradictions in that nobody would steal and somebody who's currently in the act of being stolen from.
So no theft simply means two people in the same room should not steal each other's stuff.
Are you going to take the lame or what?
Sorry, not you. This guy's just had a signal on forever and then thinks of coming into the lame and doesn't.
I didn't know whether to pass them or not.
Oh, let me rewind, let me rewind.
I was young and could remember things a long time ago.
Um... So,
in the realm of this confusion thing, people say that killing is wrong, but killing is good if you put a costume on and somebody tells you to.
And that's really where the confusion around the subjectivity of ethics really arises, subjectivity of morals.
I would say morals are objective, right?
The don't kill, don't rape, don't steal.
And the argument for morality is simply focused on those aspects of right and wrong, the good and evil moral side of things, and making it consistent, and just saying if you have a moral theory about these things, a moral theory, then you can't argue from effect, you can't argue from utilitarianism, you can't argue, well, somebody put a costume on, so now it's totally different.
That is a universal argument.
A statement of good or evil.
A universally preferable behavior.
And the reality of moral practices throughout the world is that everyone makes up every conceivable exception to these rules.
It's like, yes, killing people is bad, unless they don't pay their taxes.
Stealing is bad, but you must pay your taxes.
Rape is wrong, but, you know, if we define people as criminals and throw them into the rape rooms, we'll turn the other cheek.
We'll turn, we'll avert our eyes.
That's the wrong metaphor. Wrong metaphor.
Rejected. And it is this very randomness and inconsistency in all these moral theories that gets my heart a-fluttering, so to speak.
And that's when I really get on the warpath, right?
is when I see that somebody's putting forward a theory of morality, a theory of good and evil that immediately results in self-contradiction.
Right, so there's this guy, Octo Thorpe, who has posted on the board, he's supposed to post it today, and I think people quite rightly jumped all over his eight-sided height, Octo.
And he said, oh, what you people seem to forget is that people are really bad, and there are lots of bad people, and oh, they're so bad, and there's lots of scum around in the world, and so we need authority.
I mean, there's a clear, not thought out, for even a shred of thought, moral position.
It's not that this guy's dumb, it's just that this moral position he has, has not been thought through at all, right?
So, a number of people responded to him by saying, well, if people are so bad, the last thing we'd ever want is to give them a monopoly on the use of force.
It's not like a chopping block where you get to slice and dice people into good and bad and then separate the good people and stick them over on the government.
It's quite the opposite.
When you create a universal monopoly of force, all the bad people in the world thunder to get control of it and to dominate everyone else.
All the people who have nothing of real value to offer.
If you have something of real value to offer, you don't need to become a politician.
If you have something of real value to offer, you don't need to force a damn person.
If you are an attractive person, or even if you're not attractive, but women want to sleep with you voluntarily, then you don't need to rape anyone.
This is quite misunderstood.
Politicians are the people who have absolutely nothing to offer the world, and so want to control the government, because that way they get to force people to interact with them.
Hey, that's back to the...
No, let's not go there.
Because it's not for us. So, the problem is in the realm of morals, and that's really the realm that I focus on the most.
I do certainly focus on some of the ethics and, to a smaller degree, on the aesthetics, mostly to mock them as people live and die by these aesthetics when they're a tiny, small effect of the morals that need to be dealt with, right?
Of the right and wrong that needs to be dealt with in society, which is the, you know, a bunch of people getting killed and evil governments and so on, and corrupting churches, right?
There is...
To me, a bit of a gray area too, and it may not be once I put some more brain juice into it, but right now, the juicer, she returneth with this, which is that if you consistently lie to a child, there's something kind of abusive about that that goes a little bit beyond the mere corruption aspect of things, a little bit more beyond the ethics, more towards the morals.
Right? If you, I mean, If you lie to a child and you say chocolate is good for you and veggies are bad for you, and that, I don't know, you should wash your hair with feces or something and rub salt into your open wounds, are you initiating the use of force?
I don't know, it's kind of evil, but it's kind of, you know, I'm not sure that I'd shoot a guy for doing that, but it would be pretty damn close.
And this is where the realm of religion comes in.
I've talked about this extraordinary level of corruption that is involved In teaching children that there is such a thing as a God, which is very abusive, in my mind, or in my opinion, is very abusive.
And it's abusive more in the emotional side, although to me it's really close.
It's really close because the effect of it is violence in the world, right?
So even if you're not violent towards your kids, but you tell them that the Jews or the Muslims or the Christians or the atheists are your blood enemies, that you must be sworn to kill, it's...
It results in a whole lot of violence.
So parents to me are in a slightly special category because they simply have so much power over their children.
I mean it's the biggest power relationship that will ever exist in the world.
And so parents just have so much power and their children are so dependent on their approval that to me there's a bit more of a gray area around parental instructions and I'm not going to say I've got it all finally worked out.
Wait. No, no, not yet either.
But that to me is a sort of instinctual gray area.
I mean, that's nonsense. You can take it for what it is, but to sort of explore your own heart, maybe you can come up with a solution that can help me rationally.
But it is kind of like not right.
You know, if I say to a five-year-old kid, if I say to you, jump off that cliff, you'll fly, you're probably not going to.
If I say to a four-year-old kid, jump off that cliff, you'll fly, you know, it's kind of wrong, right?
I'm not initiating the use of force.
It's kind of fraudulent. But then I can say, oh, I was only joking.
But it's kind of evil anyway, right?
So, I don't know.
I mean, if I say to a kid, there is a boogie monster, Mr.
Eyeball Plucker's going to slither out from under the cupboard door and suck out your eyeballs during the night and you will be blind for the rest of your life.
Yeah, it's kind of fraudulent.
I mean, we would see that as, I think, kind of sadistic and abusive towards the child.
I'm not sure exactly why God is watching you and will cast you down to eternal hellfire if you touch your naughty parts or disobey me.
I'm not sure why that's any different.
That's just about getting the sense of religion as superstition, as we were talking about yesterday.
So it really is in the realm of morals that the key issues are, and where the really destructive bullshit is.
It's in the realm of, it's evil, but there's the government.
All gods are false, but the god that I worship is infinitely true.
Every other religion is rank superstition and nonsense, but my religion is perfectly true.
It's in these kinds of areas that The real dangers to human life exist.
And, of course, that's where we want to focus our attention as moralists, as ethicists, as philosophers.
Just as, of course, a surgeon wants to focus his attention on those who are near death's door but still savable.
You want to focus on those.
When you arrive with food to the area where people are hungry, you don't feed the fat people first, right?
I mean, I don't think, anyway.
That would sort of be my suggestion.
So, in this idea, in this realm of ethics, I think that it's important to figure out what it is that you're talking about.
Because the word, and I'm even screwing it up, so I apologize for that, but in the realm of right and wrong, you want to figure out what layer you're talking about.
Are you talking about sticking a knife in someone, not in self-defense, and not out of misunderstanding, but just sort of sadistically, you know, stabbing a guy?
Nobody's going to say that's right.
I mean, no one is going to say that's right.
In other areas, you know, if...
I don't know, if...
If some chick passes out, some woman passes out, I don't know why I'm calling them chicks today.
I do apologize. How rude.
If some woman passes out on your couch because she's drunk too much and you sneak a peek, it's wrong but it's not evil and she doesn't get to wake up and blow you away or anything.
There's lots of different things around right and wrong that are a lot more subjective and a lot less subjective.
You know, people getting killed kind of thing, right?
So I hope that this helps, at least to sort of understand how, in my mind, I try and differentiate the questions of ethics.
Where these things are conflated together, right?
Where you just put these all into a big souffle mixer or a big blender and hit frappe, you get a lot of confusion and a lot of offense and a lot of upset.
And that's not, I would say, that's not particularly helpful.
So I hope that this does help, and when you get into debates with people, it might be worth dropping this framework, you know, just to see what happens.
Just to see what happens.
So we can talk about the good and evil, the morals.
We can talk about the be nice if you didn't, or you'd be a better person if you didn't, or you wouldn't appreciate it if it was done to you.
Which is the emotional abuse, the belittling, the contempt, the eye-rolling, the stuff that diminishes another human soul.
And then you can talk about sort of mere aesthetics, you know, which side of the...
You know, saying thank you and which side of the...
The soup, the spoon goes on, and how to fold napkins so that it looks pretty.
You know, the Martha Stewart things, right?
Which is nice. I live in girly worlds.
Oh, that's why I'm using the word.
I've got a new name for my relationship with Christina, that I live in a chicktatorship.
That is my phrase, because she's making this place just look so fantastic.
We've got a whole whack load of furniture delivered on Wednesday morning.
It looks fantastic.
Yummy! Yummy! And so I live in a dictatorship in that she says, oh no, we're not going to Ikea, we're going to Ethan Allen, and we're going to drop five grand on furniture, and we're going to do this, and we're going to do that.
And I just sort of go, okay, because that's not my thing, right?
So I live in this dictatorship. I also call it girly world from time to time.
In fact, believe it or not, we sometimes will do a mutual facial on Sundays just to keep the forehead taut and shiny.
Actually, it really doesn't need a whole lot of help that way, but...
So Girlie World and Chicktatorship is a wonderful place to live, right?
I mean, it's just magnificent, right?
Everything is nicely folded and ironed and things are beautiful and my clothes are all...
I've bought clothing under the Chicktatorship and I just think it's a wonderful place to be.
It's definitely more pleasant.
I wouldn't say that it's really in the realm of morals or ethics.
It really is down in the realm of aesthetics.
But there is a great deal of satisfaction in that as well, at least for me.
And if you ever get a chance to live in a benevolent Chicktatorship, I would certainly recognize or certainly would suggest that you would be far better off by submitting to your local Chicktator.
So thank you so much.
I'll talk to you soon. And take a donation or two today.
I appreciate that. Throw some shackles my way over Christmas.
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