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Jan. 10, 2007 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
33:43
592 A Listener Argues for the Value of FDR

Do I undersell myself?

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Good morning, everybody.
Hope you're doing well. It's Steph.
It's 8.13 on the 10th of January, 2006.
And I hope you're doing most excellently.
Thank you so much for tuning in again.
Had a very interesting email this morning from a gentleman who had...
Two interesting approaches or perspectives, one of which I found valuable, the other one I found interesting, which is not to say not valuable, just not what I was thinking of.
And he said that he was very pleased with the podcast, that they were very interesting, unique, innovative, but that I was underestimating my value in the marketplace, and that he actually signs up for the subscription services, which...
We'll give him information about what to invest in from time to time.
And they cost 200 bucks a year, 400 bucks a year, and so I should set up a subscription service like that.
Because he said, I don't actually tell people why I want them to donate.
And, I mean, I've mentioned it briefly.
He probably hasn't gotten to that podcast yet.
Not that I can blame him.
But basically, it's obviously because it's an exchange of value.
So the benefit to me is clear.
The benefit to you is twofold.
One is the good and cuddly feeling you get from exchanging value for value, otherwise it's a free lunch situation, which is going to make you feel bad over time, because it's unjust.
The second reason, of course, is that if you listen to the podcasts and don't donate any money, fundamentally, it's not going to mean that much to you.
In terms of change, our unconscious looks at our actions, not our desires.
Our unconscious, our personality, our motivation, looks at our actions, not our desires.
So if you lean over a cliff, even if you don't want to fall, your heart is going to start, like even if you're not intending to jump, maybe even if you are, if you lean over a cliff, you're going to get a very visceral reaction from your personality, from your body, from your entire being.
And so if you listen to all these podcasts and you say, wow, this is really great stuff, this is really important stuff, well, that's very interesting.
But if you don't donate, then you really don't think it's very valuable.
So, the most important reason for you to donate, other than the cuddly wormsies, is because it will change you.
I mean, I know that sounds awfully self-serving, but frankly, it's going to change you in a way that nothing else can.
It's funny, you know, and capitalism, we recognize, as capitalists, we recognize that People's desires, what they say is important to them, what they say means something to them, what they say is valuable to them, doesn't really mean anything unless they're willing to fork over some cash.
This is the whole argument about value in the free market, which is completely ephemeral, undefinable, and the only way it becomes crystalline and real is when somebody forks over some good old warbucks.
So, the other reason that you should donate, other than the warm and cuddlies, the fact that it's just, and the fact that it will benefit me materially and give me the chance to work in a full-time, which will increase the quality of what I'm doing by many times, is because it will actually get your body to react as if you take philosophy seriously.
I mean, I'm not saying you give me a million dollars, but...
As I've mentioned in podcasts before, if you say, if you listen to these podcasts and you say, wow, you know, this is great stuff.
Philosophy is really important. I'm getting a lot out of it.
I really want to live my life by some sort of whatever, whatever.
But then you sort of look at, well, I could donate 50 or 100 bucks to Free Domain Radio, but I think I'd rather buy some music from iTunes, then your unconscious goes, well, actually, your false self goes, whew, oh, man, I thought we were close to some real change there.
Thank heavens that we're going back into the way things were.
I'm so, so glad that it's all just talk.
And that is going to keep you locked into, in this short life, it's going to keep you locked into a particular kind of diminishment, which I think is a real shame.
And I know that this...
I'm fully aware that this sounds vaguely preachery, you know, give me your money and I'll save your soul.
It's nothing to do with that. You can donate to any...
area or group or person that you feel is enriching and deepening and widening man's understanding and your view of yourself and ennobling the species.
Do whatever you can in that situation.
And that will help, because that way you're saying that philosophy is more important.
As I say, I get these 20 bucks a month donations, about 18 bucks a month for US dollars.
It's about 70 cents a day.
And I'm going to guarantee you that 70 cents a day could go missing from your income and you would barely even notice it, unless you're living on 72 cents a day, in which case don't donate and give back whoever's iPod you've got when you're listening to this.
But... If you don't, if you say, well, I don't really want to spend that much money.
I feel uneasy about that.
That's bad. It's not worth it.
Well, that's fine. I mean, it's not so much me.
I know how much these things are worth.
And I'll get to that second point, which was interesting in a minute or two.
But I know how much these are worth.
So if you don't donate, it just makes my life a little bit more difficult.
Because I have to weigh how it is that I'm going to make ends meet without a full-time job.
So, if you don't donate, it doesn't diminish my view of the value of what I'm doing.
But it does diminish your value of philosophy.
So that's the main reason.
And this is not going out to the people who've been very generous so far.
I really appreciate that, but it's time for others to step up.
But it just diminishes your value in truth and virtue.
If you've listened and if you've invested this much time, and this is, I mean, to be perfectly frank, this is what the Christians understand a lot better than libertarians.
The Christians understand that when you charge for something, people will assume, in a sense, that it's more valuable.
It's the leaning over the cliff idea.
So they'll take a lot of your income, and they'll baptize your children, and they'll withhold the marriage vows to their exclusive domain.
So that once you give, then it becomes valuable.
Once you give, it becomes more valuable to you.
It starts to change.
And if you have given to Free Domain Radio some decent amount of cash, and this is not the case, I mean, please let me know.
I certainly don't want to put out any ideas that are false, especially when they can so much smack of self-serving.
Justifications. If you have given and you have not felt a certain release or a change or a commitment to a growth or a new kind of life, then let me know, because I certainly would not want to put this out if it's a false idea.
But it's been my experience that when I donate to people, I feel better.
Now, the second thing that this gentleman said was he said, you seem to be a rather self-effacing fellow.
And you don't seem to have a very strong sense of the unique value of what it is that you're providing in the marketplace.
Now this is an interesting question, and this wasn't going to be the topic of the morning, but I think it's worth talking about.
This gentleman is entirely right in understanding the form of what it is that I'm doing, in that I'll make jokes about myself, I'll mock myself, I'll make fun of my verbal tics and all this kind of stuff.
And of course that is to bypass the false self, as you are probably well aware by now.
So, that you can be entertained and I can get past the defenses.
That is, the shiny things which I use to get into your house.
Look, over there, I've tossed something shiny and everybody, oh, look, something shiny!
And then I'm like, I go in and I rearrange the furniture in a more feng shui kind of way.
Ooh, look, I just did it again to get past your defenses.
Anyway, it's not manipulation exactly, but I'm really trying to use it for the power of good.
So yeah, without a doubt, there is a self-effacing aspect to these podcasts.
No question. But to say that's the same as me not knowing the value of what it is that I'm providing is, I think, a bit of a leap.
I think that, I mean, just between you and I and the other people who are listening...
I am perfectly aware that this is a breakthrough conversation in the world.
I'm perfectly aware of that.
I am perfectly aware that this is an unprecedented conversation.
That this is an unprecedented conversation in the world.
I have never heard of, or seen, or listened to, or read, or had any indication of a conversation that is both this philosophical, this personal, this artistic, this, I believe, entertaining, this Functional in terms of economics and business and the other things,
which includes aspects of philosophy, economics, art theory, history, therapy through my wife and through my own experience of and understanding of the field, and dream analysis.
I mean, there is no conversation that's comprehensive in the history of the world.
That's my understanding.
I mean, maybe I'm wrong, maybe there's something in Tibetan I have no idea about, but I strongly doubt it.
So I'm fully aware that this is completely, absolutely, and totally unique and unprecedented in the history of thought.
And I know that that sounds like, oh my god, how megalomaniacal can you get?
And I fully appreciate that sentiment.
And I resist these ideas like the plague.
I really do. I resist these ideas like the plague.
I resist thinking about what it is that I'm doing in the context of what has been done before.
First of all, because I feel enormously humble, I was much more I taught than I am for many, many years.
I was much more learning than I was teaching.
And it really was only in the last couple of years that my heart grew, largely because of my lovely wife, that my heart grew enough to connect the dots with personal relationships.
And of course, it was only in the last few years that I began to have the kind of integrity with which...
I could speak about these kinds of things without sounding false, without sounding like there was something wrong.
So, yeah, this conversation is unprecedented.
And how much do you charge for an unprecedented, soul-deepening, heart-widening, brain-expanding conversation?
Well, a lot.
I have no doubt.
I could take 100% of someone's income for a year over their life, and they'd still be better off.
I spent $20,000 on therapy.
Willingly, voluntarily, happily.
And that has come back to me in spades.
Some of the people who listen to Free Domain Radio, yeah, it has an effect.
It has an effect. They get better jobs, they get out of bad relationships, they move on with their life.
What's that worth? What's it worth to not waste years in a bad relationship?
What is it worth to not fester away in a job that is beneath your abilities?
What is it worth to not live as a miser In the world of men, hoarding your heart, resentful, unhappy, belligerent, nervous, insecure, but to feel that there is a real truth out there that we can connect with in a way that diminishes the lack of understanding of those around us.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know it sounds culty.
Forget that. Forget that just for a moment.
I mean, I know all the fears about ideas and absolutism and reason that are all cloaked with this culty stuff, but...
But I'm telling you, I know that you've come this far, 591, that you know that you've got a connection with the truth, not me, not me, and not my truth, but a connection with the truth, because what I'm doing is not trying to teach you what to think.
I mean, that would be horrible, and that would be Celtic, and that would be fundamentally religious.
I'm just trying to be a jester.
And a deadly serious gesture at heart.
To awaken your capacities.
It's not about just learn how to think.
Learn how to think doesn't really lead you to defu if you've got a problem family.
Learning how to think doesn't get you out of bad relationships and bad jobs and doesn't expand your heart.
That's the big problem with objectivism, right?
Yes, the reasoning is often razor sharp, and the insights are often deep, but it does not enlarge the heart, which is a ridiculous thing to say, and I'm fully aware of that, but it doesn't enlarge the heart.
So I know that it's worth almost any price, but the problem is, or at least what I conceive the problem to be, Is that if I price it out of the market, and the reason that something new is tough to price is that it's not in a category.
So I remember somebody posting, or I think they posted, I can't remember, maybe they emailed me and said, well, Air America is only $3 a month, and Free Talk Live is only $3 a month.
Absolutely, that's certainly completely and totally true.
And those shows, while they're fine in their own way, will not change your life.
They might change your politics, they might change your thinking in certain areas, but they will not dig into the root of that which is challenging in life, which is not the state, but is our personal relationships, and most fundamentally, our most fundamental personal relationship, which is with ourselves and reality.
So, I mean, I don't think I'm lifting the lid too much here, and I don't think that I'm, you know, parting the curtain in the land of ours.
But I am aware, and I think it's important to be aware that we are the most fundamental innovators, I believe, in the world.
And I resist all this kind of stuff.
I hate thinking about this kind of stuff, but it's important to understand that this is very deep, this is very powerful, this is unprecedented, and this is a huge leap forward.
This is a huge leap forward.
We scale up and down every topic, left to right, in and out, in a very animated and positive way, in an enjoyable way, and I absolutely, hugely appreciate, though I understand the value that I'm providing, I hugely appreciate the fact that people are willing to take the leap, and I know that it is a leap, and they're not taking the leap because of me, but because of the truth, or the ideas.
I know. You know what? They are so-so.
I mean, because somebody posted yesterday and was asking, why don't we have a tax revolt?
Why don't you talk about a tax revolt?
Well, because I'm not willing to do it.
That doesn't mean that it's wrong.
It's just that I try not to advocate things that I haven't done myself.
De-foo, de-god, de-state, de-friend, quote, friend.
I'm not going to advocate these things and have other people be the guinea pigs.
That would be horrendous and would cause me great misery.
So I'm not willing to go to jail.
I'm not willing to stop podcasting.
I'm not willing to submit myself to the brutalities of jail.
I'm not... Most fundamentally, I'm not willing to leave my wife.
And... I don't believe that you bring down the state through a tax revolt.
I think it's far too risky, and I think unless the ideas are in place, then you have to be strategic in this area.
I know that everybody gets the itchy finger and wants to go and do something.
Oh God, enough talk, let's just go do something.
We're going to talk and talk and talk.
Libertarians have been talking for decades and nothing has changed.
Let's go do something. Well, the fact that we've talked for decades and nothing has changed...
is a pretty important clue as to whether we can succeed in action at the moment.
When the time is right, things change of their own.
When the time is not right, no amount of willpower or action will work.
People as a whole don't even have a clue that taxation is theft.
People as a whole think the government is a positive, though overbearing institution.
If you want to act now, you're trying to end slavery before people even understand that the slaves are human beings.
If you went up to a farmer and you said, you must release your pigs.
They have all the rights that you have.
They are as human as you are.
He's going to look at you like you're completely insane.
And of course, this is what occurred throughout history for the slavery, which occurred for many races in many areas.
It was a perpetual feature of life.
And the farmer's going to look at you and say, are you nuts?
And then the next time, he's going to tell all his friends and they're going to laugh about it.
Ha ha ha, the big freer.
What a nut. That actually does a lot of harm to the movement, and I've mentioned this before, but that does a lot of harm to the movement.
I know it's very tempting, but please don't debate with people until you're ready.
I know it's very tempting.
I know people say a lot of stupid shite all the time.
But if you take out the sword of libertarianism, and it shatters in your hand, or other people see it as a toothpick, then it's much harder the next time a libertarian wants to talk to them.
You have to ready yourself for battle, right?
I mean, in the First World War, you don't just grab a spoon and run to the front in your jammies.
You train, you prepare.
For months, sometimes years.
If you want to win the gold, right, you don't just have to wake up and say, hey, you know that downhill ski jumping, that looks like a blast.
I'm going to hitch me over there and I'm going to go down the hill.
Well, it's going to be a mess.
Those people trained for 10 years to get there.
And the art of human communication, I'm not where I want to be as far as communication goes.
Especially when I'm talking live, I would like to, when I'm communicating live or when I'm doing live speeches, I would love to be more free and more animated.
I would even like, believe it or not, to be more free and more animated in what I'm doing here, to the point where I think it's going to turn into a squealing sound, sort of like somebody faxing you.
So it's a never-ending journey as far as that goes, but if you are not secure in yourself, if you're not secure in the truth, and you go up against someone, and you're not willing to go all the way, because other people are, If you get into the old ring with Mike Tyson or Muhammad Ali, and you say, well, I'm going to bat them around a bit, but I don't really want to hurt them.
Well, guess what?
they really want to hurt you.
And if you go in thinking, well, I'll shadow box, I'll jab around a bit, maybe I'll slap them on the thigh a little bit, Well, they're going in for the kill.
Well, not for the kill, but you know what I mean.
When you start talking about these sorts of topics with people, you are going right down to the core of good and evil.
And you're going right down to the core of their family, their childhood, their history, their Wife, their husband, their lover, the way they've treated their children, their obligations to their parents as they age, you're going right down into the core.
And people, most people, would rather you die than you go there.
Does that sound like an exaggeration?
I don't think so. Watch Richard Dawkins' The Root of All Evil and see how people respond to when he even gently starts to probe their beliefs.
beliefs, you can see the rage in the background.
So they're going to use every rhetorical, contemptuous, emotional, manipulative trick to get you to back down and to humiliate you in one form or another.
And if you're not prepared to fight, which doesn't mean get angry necessarily, it might, But if you're not prepared to fight, if you're not prepared to go all the way, then don't get in the ring.
Keep training. You don't even have to get into the ring.
You can spend your whole life not correcting a single person.
But if you're not ready, don't get in the ring.
I mean, why didn't I publish any libertarian stuff for 20 years?
I didn't have anything to add.
I didn't have anything to say.
say.
I didn't make the connection.
It had all been said before, and it all has been said before, and that's why I think this conversation is new.
But don't get in the ring if you don't have...
Your personality, in a sense, on your side, if you don't have your whole self on your side.
And there's nothing wrong with going into the ring and failing, but it's important not to get back into the ring until you've figured out what went wrong.
So if you start to talk to someone about a free market system and they say, well, investors just wouldn't be protected, and you're like, uh, uh, right.
Well, that's bad. Well, that's fine.
Then, no problem.
You just haven't got the whole violence thing yet in your gut.
Because the great challenge of ethical debating is if somebody already agrees with you, you're not advancing things that much.
I mean, a bunch of mathematicians standing around eating canaps, nodding, yeah, 2 plus 2 really is 4.
If people are very close to your position, well, there's no such thing as very close to the free debate radio position.
There's no such thing as really close to this conversation.
A little bit of wife-beating is not close to no wife-beating.
Right? It's still on the opposite side of the fence.
Libertarianism or minarchism or statism is not close to anarcho-capitalism.
In fact, the closer that you get to anarcho-capitalism when you're a statist or a minochist, the further away you get, because you're admitting that things are wrong, but you're still not willing to let go of that which is wrong, the use of force.
So, and rational arguments have been put forward for centuries about force and ethics and so on, and by libertarians for over a century.
If you include the classical liberals in the 19th century, century and a half, century and three quarters.
And they haven't, as I've said, they haven't worked, and so my approach has been to keep people entertained, keep them laughing, and come at them from every angle.
One of the reasons that I talk about so many topics...
It's because when you push, when you eliminate error in one area in psychology, the false self will simply shift that error to somewhere else.
It's like one of those annoying magicians with the cups and the peas and so on.
The false self will just switch.
Oh, okay, well, it's not, violence is bad in politics.
Fine, okay, well, I'm not going to argue with that, because that would reveal my hand.
So, instead, I'm going to move, I'm going to make us less obedient in terms of politics, but I'm going to make us more frightened of people.
I'm going to make us more obedient of, I'm going to make us more obedient to my parents.
When you get rid of corruption in one area, psychologically, the first defense is to move it to somewhere else and hide it.
And that's why I come at it from different angles and using a bunch of different tools and topics.
So that we don't dislodge your dislike of authority from the state and have it then redouble in terms of religion, which is what you can see for the Christian libertarians, right?
Ooh, unjust authority in the form of the state is bad.
But the very basic principle is not opposed.
It's just opposed in one area, and what that actually makes them is more dictatorial in other areas.
It's like pushing that balloon.
You push one side in, the other side bulges out.
It's not that metaphor is a proof, but we could just pass along this one for a second.
If you get rid of unjust authority in a person's thinking in one area, but you don't get rid of unjust authority as a basic principle, then it's simply going to show up more harshly in other areas.
This is why people who give up their Christianity often become socialists.
This is why people who give up statism become fundamentalists in the Christian world.
You know, it's like you have 100 units of obedience to authority, and if you subtract 50 units from the state, when you start off with 50-50 state religion, and you subtract 50 from the state, it ends up being 100 on the religion.
You pull your kids out of school and start nattering them about lunacies like creationism.
Or if on the other hand, you say, well, I'm taking 50 points of obedience to unjust authority away from God, well, it ends up in the state, and you end up being Sam Harris, or even Richard Dawkins to some degree.
These amazing, brilliant thinkers, great writers, still don't get it.
Still don't get it.
Richard Dawkins with his, well, it's very important to talk about science.
It's very important to talk about evidence.
And it's all nonsense, because God doesn't exist, but then he starts talking about the government, as if the government exists.
The evidence is that religion has produced deaths and murders, and he talks about 4,000 people in the Intifada being killed in the Holy Land, while next door, Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis are murdered by governments.
Governments are that which make religion very dangerous.
Genocidal, really. So he's all about reason and evidence and all about not believing in false moral things.
But then he talks about democracy in the state.
And he focuses on the minority of people who were killed In overtly religious conflicts, in sort of privatized state armies, fueled by religious nuts.
But he simply can't make the leap.
It's inconceivable for him to make the leap to the state.
If he's concerned about irrational murderers, I mean, in The God Delusion, he talks about the responses to the people who say, well, Stalin was an atheist, and Hitler was an atheist, and look what they did.
There is no morals if you're an atheist.
And he goes into a fairly long-winded, and I think not particularly bright, justification for all this kind of stuff, without saying, well...
And of course, some people have said, well, the problem is that the states become too much like religions, and that's bad.
So the religion is the enemy, and if the state is brought into question, you simply reframe it as a kind of religion and say, well, when it becomes too much like religion, then it's bad, then the state is bad.
And he talks about how children should not be indoctrinated, that religion is a virus which spreads, and children should not be indoctrinated in religious schools.
No, they should go to state schools instead.
Oh, it's so tragic.
It's so tragic, but it really does speak to how difficult this conversation is, that these very intelligent people, very adroit people, who can do a million things that I could never dream of doing, when they wander into the realm of philosophy, and I think that... Dawkins does an okay job of attacking Christianity.
I don't think he does a very good job of defending secularism.
and he's woefully inadequate when it comes to the state, and barely even mentions the family, except in a negative context with regards to religious instruction.
And it's not that he's a bad guy, He's not betraying the truth.
He's a very sweet, nice guy.
But... He really doesn't see the state.
And this is true for a lot of scientists.
A lot of scientists, what, 93% of the people who are scientists are atheists.
But they all still love the state.
In fact, they probably love the state even more since they gave up on God.
As we've mentioned before, you subtract, you add.
How many scientists are anarcho-capitalists?
Well, I would say probably none.
So they don't believe in abstract concepts that other people believe in, for which there is no physical evidence, like God, but they believe in the state.
Because that's hard.
If you shift, and again, it all comes back, I think, to the parents and also to one's personal level of corruption.
Because if you get rid of the idea of just authority, just hierarchical authority as a whole, then...
You can still be a scientist, because science is a conversation.
It's not a dictatorship. If it's a dictatorship, it's not science.
Which is where I stand with all the government funding stuff, which is another reason why scientists have a great deal of difficulty with the state.
Because a lot of them are paid by the state, you see.
Usually a lot of them, their education was subsidized by the state.
They are part of state bodies or state agencies.
They may be advisors to state officials.
They get grants from the state, and they teach in state colleges, universities, or schools.
So, yeah, it's a little tricky for them to really get the whole state thing, because then they have to get their dark side.
And that's, you know, Richard Dawkins will deal with the dark side of Christianity very well, His own dark side, which is his willingness to take other people's money.
Again, I'm guessing.
I don't know the etymology of Richard Dawkins' scientific fortunes, so this could be completely unjust, for which I apologize in advance.
But this is why.
These people are bought and owned by the state, and so they can get mad at religion.
But, fundamentally, they're unable to see the state and its corruption.
And, fundamentally, it's because once you get rid of it in God and the state, then you end up looking squarely at the source of the problem, which is the family.
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