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March 2, 2007 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
39:35
666 Be Nice! Part 2 - Freedom From Others
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Time Text
Well, my friends, I hope you're doing well.
Me, myself, March the 1st, 2007.
It's just before 5 o'clock.
I'm heading home because I had a lovely two hours in the car yesterday.
Sorry, it's the 2nd of March, 2007.
Had a lovely two-hour drive yesterday, a snowstorm up here.
So I'm heading home just a little bit early so I don't go completely mental with driving.
And just wanted to mention I had my meeting today and I said I would keep you posted.
And yes, lo, in fact, I have been bought and paid for.
Bought and paid for, ka-ching, I think is the phrase that we're looking for.
And I have decided, based on the conversation that I had, there was a counteroffer, which, sadly, after saying that it's all unimportant, or money is not that important, I've received a counteroffer to stay for 60 days.
Frankly, will give me another year on free domain radio.
So I really decided that two months or more of full time to get another year of free domain radio.
Well, it's kind of a no-brainer for me.
Maybe you feel that it's a sellout.
I don't mind the sellout as long as I get a good price.
So, for me, a 6 to 1 ratio of free-domain radio to full-time work, given that I can still do the podcast and so on, I think it's worth it.
So, I think that is the way to go.
So, it's nice, of course.
They're obviously looking to achieve stuff.
They wanted three months.
I said only two months, because man's got to draw the line somewhere.
So, who knows? Maybe in two months I'll be saying to you, they doubled it!
Again! So, I'm never going to leave.
But I should own all the money on the planet within about nine months.
So, anyway, I just wanted to keep that up and running.
I have decided not to hold off on the things that I need to do to get Free Domain Radio up and running.
I'm just going to work weekends and evenings, and that's fine.
I can do it as long as I know what I'm doing it for, and that way I can take a little bit of a break then when I finish this contract or this job.
But... You know, when I say, what could I use the money for?
That would be for perpetual part-time employment, but a serious sack of change for 60 days?
Call me crazy. Call me a fool!
But I think it's a worthwhile trade-off.
So, anyway, I just wanted to keep you up to date.
Let's just continue. So, after saying this morning that I wasn't going to do any shows that were self-generated, I didn't really have the time to finish up, what I wanted to this morning when I pulled into ye olde parking lot So, I thought I'd sort of continue on with it now,
because we're really kind of getting, at least what is for me, to the core of liberty, to the core of freedom that we all strive to achieve and maintain, to grow the hibiscus called liberty within the scant soil of our corrupted hearts.
From childhood, not as adulthoods.
So... I wanted to talk about the sort of freedom from reaction.
Freedom from reaction is a very essential part of philosophical freedom, of personal freedom.
Freedom from reaction.
And it has a lot to do really with unpacking what are called in cognitive psychology circles automatic thoughts, which I'm hoping to convert to automatic donations, but that brainwave tower is still under construction and sadly only in my head.
Automatic thoughts have to do with scar tissue.
It's a limited range of motion, just as a broken arm, if it's set improperly, will end up having a limited range of motion for the rest of your life, unless you go through some horrible kind of physiotherapy.
In the same way that as we're impacted as children, through the negative actions of our parents and teachers and priests and so on, We end up with limited ranges of motion emotionally because we're scarred, right?
Because we're hurt, because we're brutalized and we're humiliated, as I've talked about.
And in fact, I think fairly much screamed about before, so I don't need to again.
I'll scream about something else.
How's that? So we have this limited range of motion that has resulted from the abuse that we've all suffered as children.
And that limited range of motion tends to be what's called repetitive thinking or automatic thinking or whatever.
An example, an automatic thought would be something like this.
I'll give two sides of the coin.
The first automatic thought is something like, if this girl says no to me, I'm a bad person.
I'm worthless, I'm useless, or I'm less worthy or whatever.
That would be an automatic thought.
Rejection is to be my lot.
I am fundamentally unlovable, unwantable, and this just confirms everything negative that I think and feel about myself.
La-di-da, so be it. I am as nothing.
I am as a worm to a sunrise.
So, my lord, it is getting a little snowy here.
We might have some time to explore this, my friends.
Actually, no, I'm really trying to keep these podcasts relatively short to the point where I'm even trimming out some white space in the middle during odd times in the day.
So I will do my best to keep this all at a civilized length so as not to try your patience too much.
Plus, you can't listen to these in the shower, and as far as I understand it, to listen to these, you do need to eschew bathing.
So we will try to keep that in a more civilized quantity.
So... The automatic thinking around, if this girl says no to me, I'm going to ask her out.
If she says no to me, I'm worthless and humiliated and bad.
And all is confirmed.
That's some sort of automatic thought.
And another kind of automatic thought, which is sort of the flip side, is, you know, if this girl won't go out with me, then she's trash and worthless and nothing and this, that, and the other.
All of that sort of nonsense. So, the defense mechanism of, oh, I didn't get that job offer, I'm worthless, I'm useless, nothing good is ever going to happen to me, I never get what I want, blah-de-blah-de-blah, infinite spiral of shame, pit of depression, versus, I didn't get that job offer because they're so stupid and I didn't want that job anyway, and I was just going there for practice, and who do they think they are to reject me?
Me, of all people! Madness!
So the sort of twin flip sides of the false self of depression and self-aggrandization tend to be how people react to these kinds of stimuli.
And there's no processing involved.
It's just a recoiling. There's about as much processing involved in that kind of emotional reaction as there is at the base of your spine when it says, move hand back, is in fire.
You don't even feel the fire before your hand jerks back.
You only get the pain later.
So... That is important to understand that reaction, the brute, unthinking reaction, which is scar tissue and is an incredibly limited range of emotional responses and capacities.
And I've tried to show a little bit more about the flexibility of emotional response by being alternately enraged, hysterical, and weepy here, so that you can look forward to this kind of personal instability when you get in touch with your feelings.
Oh, wait, no. Actually, I don't need that yet.
Wait! Wait, my pretty tears!
Wait! So, the automatic thinking, of course, is something that we don't experience.
We only experience the heavy inevitability of the emotions that follow it.
So when somebody is starting to get angry at us and we get really tense and we want to control that person's being angry at us or we want to humiliate them back to make them back off, all of that heavy dread and fear and anger and all that adrenaline-burning kind of nonsense, all of that comes about automatically.
We don't think about it. We don't sort of consider it.
There's not an intellectual or philosophical or rational processing of the stimuli.
There is mere stimuli response.
It might as well be a doctor tapping your knee with that little hammer.
And that is, of course, slavery.
At the most fundamental level, that is slavery.
That is slavery. It's far worse than the state.
Far worse than the state.
I can be independent even with a state.
I can experience freedom even with a state.
But if I'm just a bundled mass of reactionary nerve tissue, then I really have about as much freedom as a paramecium.
I have about as much freedom as a dandelion spore floating across the countryside bowed to any weight of wind that chooses to fling it any which way.
So that is true slavery.
And I'm sure that there are some Buddhists jumping up and down and charting and saying, yes, we've been saying this for years and you've mocked Buddhism, you madman.
What are you talking about? And yeah, okay, absolutely.
I can shoot an arrow over a house and occasionally hit a target too.
But this...
Stimulus response that occurs due to...
Again, I don't have any proof of this.
It's just my sort of idea. Maybe it shall be proven in time.
Maybe it shall not. But it is pretty much when you keep getting hit, somebody keeps sticking you with a needle, then you're going to start to ache all the time.
And, of course, your pain responders become more sensitized to that kind of stuff.
And this, of course, constant bludgeoning of our emotional apparatus through the brute strength and domineering of the parents and the priests and the teachers and so on, siblings, that causes us to have these automatic reactions, right? So if you had a brother or a sister who teased you, Then what they were doing was playing your frustration like, I was going to say like somebody plays a violin, but it's more like somebody handles a jackhammer.
Sort of like that, right?
So they just keep pounding into your frustration.
It's a one-note stimulus response that occurs.
Somebody who teases wants to put you in impossible situations because they are enraged at rationality and independence because it's been completely smashed in them.
And so they wish to present you with impossible situations to wreck and destroy your capacity to reason.
That's the yes is no, no means yes, and maybe means certainly, do you want me to hit you?
That kind of stuff, where you just can't win.
And so that kind of stimulus response we all go through as children, and we all get this kind of repetitive, brutal stimuli impressed upon us.
And what happens is, it then creates grooves in the brain, where stimulus then equals response.
It's Pavlovian. You know that Pavlovian experiment where every time they ring a bell, they feed a dog, and then they ring a bell without feeding the dog, but the dog still drools.
Stimulus response. That's where a lot of people live, no matter how wildly developed and impressive their language or education skills or debating skills.
This is where a lot of people live. Stimulus response.
Somebody disagrees with me.
They're a jerk. Somebody disagrees with me.
I'm wrong. Somebody's angry at me.
I'm bad. Somebody rejects me.
I'm worthless. Somebody accepts me.
I'm great. Somebody thinks I'm hot.
I'm great. People pay me a lot of money.
I have value. Oh wait, no, that's me.
I can't get a job.
I have no value. I didn't get into grad school.
I'm stupid. This is the kind of stuff that goes on.
It's just stimulus response. They don't actually have any independent capacity or any independence from stimuli.
They are enslaved to reality as surely as a shadow is enslaved to whatever's blocking the sun.
Ooh, that was going to become really pithy, but then it just fell apart at the end, and I couldn't think of anything better.
As surely as a falling leaf is enslaved to gravity, people are enslaved to stimulus.
And I do remember, I'm going to all credit where credit is due.
This isn't where I came up with the idea, but I read a good example of this.
And I normally can remember.
I can't remember if I've mentioned this before.
But nonetheless, on We Shall Plunge.
Where a guy wakes up and he's got a bit of a headache.
You know, he sleep wrong or whatever. He's got a bit of a headache.
So he's like, I've got a headache.
And then his shoes have been sitting on the heat overnight.
He just kicked them off, but they happen to land upside down on the heater.
And so his shoes are warm, so he's like, oh, that's nice.
My feet are warm now. And so he's happy again.
And then he walks downstairs.
He finds he's out of coffee, so he's unhappy and frustrated again.
And then the mail comes through, and somebody's mailed him a check for 500 bucks that he'd forgotten about.
And he becomes really happy again. Whee!
Ah, 500 bucks! And then the next, he's being audited by the IRS, the next letter.
And so he's really miserable again.
And then the phone rings, you know, like this kind of stuff that people just are reacting to stimuli, and they're basically being jerked around like a fish on a hook.
Actually, like a fish on 12 hooks with really strong fishermen all sailing their boats in opposite directions.
That's not independence, my friends.
That is slavery. That is sensual statism of the worst kind.
Your senses are your dictators.
Stimuli is your dictator.
And that outperforms and out-enslaves any secular dictator that you can imagine who currently does not have you in old cattle prod chair.
And to come back to what I was talking about this morning, this is what is so important for me with people on the board.
Right? Process.
Think. Evaluate.
Understand. Learn.
Be empathetic. Be wise.
Listen. Be curious.
But don't just be like stimulus response.
That guy's intimating that I'm a jerk, so he's a jerk.
Well, that's slavery.
I mean, you're not free. You don't really understand anarcho-capitalism.
Freedom of association doesn't just mean people.
People? It doesn't just mean people.
Freedom of association means stimuli of which people are just a subset.
Stimuli of which people are just a subset.
Freedom of association is only tangentially related to individuals.
So, if you have a mother who screams at you, yes, of course it's your mother that you don't want to see, but most fundamentally you're trying to manage your stimuli.
She screams. I hear it.
It makes my heart rate go up.
It makes me feel faint and dizzy and angry and scared.
So I need to control the stimuli.
And people make the mistake of trying to control the stimuli by controlling the person.
That you cannot do.
That you cannot do.
You can work your legs.
You can't work your mother's vocal cords.
You can walk out of the room.
You can walk out of her life.
You can go and move to Botswana.
But you cannot make your mother stop screaming without doing something that would be pretty morally wrong.
Very. Totally. So you're trying to control, in a sense, not just your stimuli, but your physical integrity.
So when your mom screeches at you, and Lord knows this would be the case for me, if I see my mom walking down the street, I swear to God, I'd wet myself.
That'll never stop. That's why I can't see her.
But if your mom screams at you, you're not even trying to protect.
Fundamentally, you're trying to maintain the integrity of your physiology and maintain the pleasure in being inside your own skin, right?
It's no fun being inside your own skin when somebody screams at you and then you kind of freak out and your heart starts hammering and your adrenal glands start pumping and everything just gets messy and unpleasant.
Difficult and unpleasant to live within your own skin in those situations.
Right? So, freedom is the freedom to own your own process, your own bodily process, your own internal processes.
It's the freedom to own your own heart rate.
Raise it, go to the gym. Relax, don't go to the gym.
Lower it. But, it's really about controlling the negative stimuli that's within your own body.
Of course, you need to do that by controlling the external stimuli.
There's a very tall building here called the CN Tower.
A nice, statist antennae for radio stations.
And in it, there is some very thick glass that you can stand on, which, like, is 1,500 feet down.
You stand on... It looks like you're standing over, like doing Flintstones, right?
Before they look down and notice they're going to fall.
You're standing there. Now, if you're afraid of heights...
Then you don't want to stand there, right?
Because if somebody forces you to stand there and look down, then they own your physiology, right?
They're making your heart pound. I mean, you can't control that.
Maybe you could sort of reduce it through long-term progressive reduction in stimuli or that kind of stuff.
Or slow increase in stimuli is a better way of putting it.
Successive reduction of response.
Yes, it's important to focus on this stuff.
Let's just keep moving, shall we?
Don't fight the dead yet!
So owning your own body also means owning your own stimulus response.
In the classic asshole sibling model, my brother would pretend he was going to hit me and then say, what are you blinking for?
Relax! Try it again.
What are you blinking for? Relax! Try it again.
So he's trying to invade and own my nervous system and guess what?
It works. He was bigger, he was stronger, he was meaner.
So it works.
We can't control that, right?
Unless you're total zen or have lost some essential nervous system capacities.
If somebody flicks their fingers at your eyes, you're going to blink.
Stimulus response.
So freedom is very sort of fundamentally...
is very fundamentally...
around owning your own nervous system and owning your own internal processes.
And you do that by managing your stimuli.
So, to sort of bring it down to something highly practical, so you come on the board and somebody has posts and says, anarcho-capitalism is never going to work because the DROs would all turn into governments and you guys are dreamers and it's all ridiculous anarcho-capitalism is never going to work because the DROs would and this and that and the other, right? -
Well, if you get angry and irritated, then you're more enslaved than he is.
You're not free. You don't get the whole thing about anarcho-capitalism.
Freedom of association from stimuli, with stimuli, with relation to reality, on the basis of what that reality does to you.
Freedom of association means I assert ownership over my own body, my own nervous system, my own physiological responses.
And I accept that there are some that I can change and some that I can't change.
I don't think I could ever be zen if I had a grizzly charging me down in the woods.
I don't think I'd want to be.
Although I guess you're not supposed to move.
Oh, don't go to another tangent!
Must focus! You know, the emails pop into my head whenever I say something like that.
Somebody's going to email me and say, well, that's exactly when you need to be most zen because you need to pretend that you're dead.
I think you get it, right?
Let's talk about a lion. A shark!
Playing dead doesn't matter with a shark.
So it's having control over your own body.
And that doesn't mean not having people stab you.
That means if somebody's screaming at you, And it makes you hot, palpitate, and it's taking years off your life.
It is making you stressed. Freedom of association means I am going to act to reduce the negative stimuli that I cannot control my response to.
This does not include me yelling in podcasts.
Always beneficial. Always lovely and wonderful.
and positive, positive I tell you.
So when we look at the why of something like defooing or whatever it is that's going on, could be defooing, could be something else, we look at the why.
Look at the why. What are you trying to do?
What are you really trying to do? Are you trying to get rid of your mother?
No. Are you trying to have your mother stop yelling at you?
No. I mean, if you were suddenly struck deaf and blind, your mother could be standing in front of you and yelling at you, and you wouldn't know.
So, what do you care about that, right?
It's the fact that the stimuli is entering your body and that your body's autonomic nervous system response is negative for you.
Right? By now, I have an autonomic nervous system response to my wife, which is joy.
Not negative. Does not need to be controlled.
But where you have your negative stimuli response within your own body...
To information coming in through your senses, you need to control that.
And what you're really trying to do is you're trying to stop your heart from beating too fast.
You don't want to wear yourself out.
You don't want to put wear and tear on the system.
It's not aerobics, just terror.
Defooing is self-ownership.
Freedom of association is association with sensual stimuli.
And maybe you really want to be a doctor but you find blood kind of icky.
Well, you'll do something to overcome your natural response to that or your autonomic response to that.
But other stuff, why would you want to, right?
You could probably train yourself to find it less unpleasant to stick a fork into an electrical socket.
But why would you? Why would you want to bother?
What a ridiculous thing to do.
And of course, the value judgment wherein you'll differentiate between what you will evade and what you will learn to tolerate is up to you.
And there's some rational standards and some not rational standards, I would say.
But fundamentally, being a slave to the senses means that somebody does something and you react, that reaction determines.
This is defenses. This is false self.
Action-reaction, action-reaction, stimulus-response.
Attack, attack. Attack, defend.
Rejection, self-criticism.
Anger, depression. Depression, anger.
That's not freedom.
That's determinism.
Oh! Oh!
He said it. No, he didn't say it.
He takes it back But You can Change that But that's hard It's hard to do it. It's only hard to do it because we're raised so badly.
I mean, we're raised so badly, so badly, that it's very hard to change that stimulus response, but it's very essential to do it.
I mean, I'm just going to tell you, it's essential to do it.
If you want to be happy, if you want to have self-respect, self-respect, pride in yourself and your actions, you've got to do it.
So that's defooing is self-ownership.
Getting bad people out of your life is, well, why would you want to try and undo 30 years of Somebody yelling at you or making you feel bad.
You can't. I was talking with a friend of mine today at lunch and he was saying, I was saying, my brother's on this landmark forum again, which means I'm getting a call every day, every couple of days.
And he's offered me 20 grand of money to, because of X, Y, and Z that occurred in the past where he kind of hosed me out of some cash.
Oh, I want to make it up to you.
Give you $20,000. But that's nonsense right now.
So he said, was there anything that your brother could do to change these things, right?
And I said, I can understand it.
I appreciate that. I said, but, you know, he was a jerk when I was younger.
I didn't see him much in my 20s.
And he was a jerk in my late 20s to my mid-30s.
Haven't seen him six or so years for any protracted or extended period of time.
Haven't been friends with him for six or seven years.
Haven't hung with him. So I said, you know, you need a 10 to 1 ratio, right?
Most relationships, this is fairly true, I believe.
It's fairly well proven that you need ten good things for everyone.
Bad things, right? I'm sorry about all the podcasts that aren't good, but hopefully they're lost in the shuffle.
So you need ten good things for bad things.
35 years of bad relationships with a guy.
Ten to one. If I decide to Get back in touch with my brother and he becomes a flawlessly positive person to be around for the next 350 years, then yeah, we're good to go.
I'm not sure where nanotechnology is, but I'm fairly sure that I'm not going to have much luck living to be 400 years old, other than through these podcasts, where I shall live forever.
And just by the by, he was like, wow, 20 grand.
I'm like, yeah, but... What does that mean, right?
20 grand. Never going to happen.
And even if it did happen, it's not going to be something that's going to be based on me going for dinner with my brother.
Somebody's owed you 20 grand for 10 years, 8 years.
And they say, well, maybe I'll give it to you if you'll have dinner with me and tell me I'm a great guy.
It's like, hey, screw you.
Give me the 20 grand or don't give me the 20 grand, but you're not buying dinner and forgiveness for 20 grand, which, of course, I'd never see anyway.
Somebody wants to pay you 20 grand, they just put a goddamn cashier's check in the mail and send you the 20 grand.
It's not conditional upon them having dinner with you and you committing to a relationship with them.
Forget that. It's ridiculous.
So it's recognizing that there's some stuff that you can own in terms of your physiological relationships and there's some stuff that you can't own.
And recognizing that the stimulus response is very primitive and very much enslavement.
This is why it's so funny to me.
I mean, fundamentally funny.
Really. I mean, when you get it, you'll find it hilarious too.
You really will. I mean, it's fundamentally funny to me that...
People are automatically reacting with irritation to people who suggest that they're not free.
No control of hysterical laughter.
So, when people are...
Anaku capitalism is all about freedom.
No state freedom. I'm so angry.
I'm so angry. I mean, there's Marvin the Martian head explosion that goes on when people talk about, when people criticize tennis of freedom and then other people just jump right in, savagely biting and tearing and getting all crazed with anger because somebody has intimated that they might not know something about freedom or they might be ignorant about freedom.
Well, boy, talk about proving the thesis, eh?
Talk about proving that thesis.
I don't think freedom is essential.
I don't think taxes are violence.
Taxes are violence!
Freedom is essential! Pop goes the forehead.
Yeah, well, okay. Looks like you've just got a whole truckload of freedom right back and up into your brain, right?
So, ownership, right?
I mean, self-ownership. Oh, libertarians always talk about self-ownership.
Self-ownership is essential.
I'm going to get angry at anybody who contradicts me.
Oh, yeah. Great fucking self-ownership that's going on there, right?
Oh, we're all about the self-ownership.
That's why when anybody says something that appears to be remotely negative towards my belief system, I'm going to get angry because I'm all about self-ownership.
You see, I own my actions.
That's why I'm totally enslaved!
To the stimuli provided by other people.
And I do not own my own emotions.
I own my emotions about as much as a horse being ridden in a dressage contest owns its own legs.
Yeah, you're working them, but so what?
That's not freedom. That's not freedom.
That's not freedom.
This is back to 183.
I'm not going to go into all of that, but I just sort of want you to understand that when you get that flush of anger and frustration and irritation and negativity and hostility and this and that and the other, don't you dare lecture anyone else about freedom.
Don't you dare stand with us on this parapet.
Don't you dare stand on this barricade called freedom.
Because you have no right to stand here.
And I say this, I don't stand here all the time either.
We have no right to stand on this promontory of freedom when we lash out at those who criticize freedom.
Because they're criticizing freedom through words.
We're criticizing freedom through actions.
And who is worse? Who is betraying freedom more?
The person who criticizes it verbally Or the person who undermines it in action or in reaction?
Are you free if you must get angry when somebody contradicts you?
Are you free if you automatically get angry when somebody contradicts you?
Are you free if you must meet contempt with rage?
Are you free...
When you must meet skepticism with impatience.
Are you free if you must meet incomprehension with irritation?
No, of course not.
You're not free. You're not free.
And that's why I focus so much on this curiosity thing.
Because curiosity really is freedom.
I don't have to drag you around somewhere or bully you.
You don't have to. Just let's play around.
Let's see what happens. Let's see what happens.
Let's give it a shot. Yeah, make the case.
I'd love to hear it. Tell me all about it.
That's freedom, isn't it?
I mean, am I wrong? Tell me if I'm wrong.
I really maybe rage to rage and escalation and frustration and contempt and driving people away from the board and driving people away from truth, driving them away from philosophy when they've only got one shot, one shot to get it, one shot.
Maybe that's the way to go. I can't see it.
I just can't see it.
How can you say that you're dedicated to creating a world of freedom when you bully people?
How can you say that the welfare state is an unthinking response to poverty?
And then have an unthinking response of anger towards anybody who is pro-welfare state.
We must not manifest what we criticize.
That is hypocrisy.
We must not manifest what we criticize.
We say the state should not bully people.
The state should not use violence.
The state should not abuse people.
Well, damn it, you're wrong!
So basically you just don't like the state because it's a competitor, right?
I mean, the church and the socialist, communist, the church and the state, they're just competitors.
And I want to bully people.
And I just don't like the fact that they have guns and I can only write snippy comments on a bulletin board or whatever.
I'm not picking on the board members.
This happens all the time in life.
But I'm telling you, my God, people, my friends, my brothers, my sisters...
Strive to be free.
Strive to let go of reactions.
Strive to let go of hostility.
And I have no problem with people getting angry.
But for God's sake, have it be organic.
Have your anger be organic, not just mere reaction.
Kick the soccer ball with skill.
Don't just move your leg because the doctor taps your knee.
Get angry. Absolutely.
Get angry. I'm not saying don't be angry.
I have an entire podcast about the power and virtue of anger.
But for God's sake, don't napalm.
Be a rifle shooter, not a carpet bomber.
Have a choice. Put down your gun.
Pick it up when you need to.
Clean it at times.
Forget where it is. Go to find it.
Don't just spray gunfire into any questionable situation.
That's not freedom. It's abusive.
And it just means that you don't believe what we talk about here.
I mean, not really. It's an attitude.
It's a stance.
It's a posture. And I'm not saying that you don't believe it at some level.
I'm sure you do believe it at some level.
But if we wish to remove authority and unthinking abuse...
From the world. Surely we must show it.
Surely we must show it and not talk about it.
Right? If we want to convince people that we can justly live as a society without a state, that we flourish in the absence of bullies and dictators, then being a bully and a dictator, it doesn't really fit together with the theory, if you don't mind me saying so.
Be a stateless society.
Don't argue for a stateless society.
Be a stateless society.
Live without mere reaction.
Let it go. If we're going to ask people to give up family, God, culture, country, the state, The military, the fantasies, everything.
We're asking them to give up all of that.
All of that. And we get irritated when they don't.
But this is the thing.
And it's quite a thing, right? This is the thing.
If we think that it's easy to give up the state, the church, God, family, if we think it's easy to give up these things, eh, fine.
But if you can't give up reactionary anger, hostility, frustration, negativity, scorn, snarkiness, whatever, if you are Mr.
Ten-Fingered Typist Cranky Pants on the board, then I don't know that you have the right to ask anyone to give up anything.
I don't know that you have the right to ask anyone to give up anything if you won't give up Your reactionary anger and frustration.
And this is, I mean, whatever. It could be lust.
It could be the desire for status.
It could be anything. I'm just focusing on this because it was talked about recently and it's sort of been on my mind.
If it's easy to give up the state, or if it's easy enough to give up the state that a couple of posts on a board ought to be able to Allow people to do it or encourage them to do it.
If that's the expectation, a couple of posts on the board, you can give up your whole history, your whole culture, your whole family, your whole religion, whatever.
Because you've been told now that taxation is violence or God doesn't exist or the family is not innately virtuous or whatever, right?
Whatever we talk about here. If we have this expectation that it's so easy for other people to give up their illusions, then surely it should be far easier to give up on irritability, to let go of irritability.
To recognize it for the scar tissue it is to deal with the root cause, which we'll talk about another time.
But to at least have the standard called, I'm not going to be bitchy and irritable towards people, even if they're bitchy and irritable towards me.
I'm going to be free of their negativity.
I'm going to be free of their hostility.
I'm going to be free of their anger.
Because I own my body and I have freedom of association, which means association with stimuli.
And since I can't control the world and I can't control the stimuli that's in it, all that I can control is my own response.
And I can't even control that very well.
I just have to keep working on the basic issues.
And have a standard, right?
You have a standard for yourself. We have a standard, and it is implicit on the board.
It's implicit in conversations I'm sure that people are having with people.
We have a standard called, you should get this pretty quickly.
You should get this right away. This is easy.
This is easy. But if it's easy, then why are people irritable?
Well, of course, because that's what they were taught in their families.
That's why I keep saying dictatorship is the family.
People who are irritable, frustrated, negative, hostile on the boards or in conversations or in their lives, They're just showing their scar tissue and that they are enslaved to the stimuli that comes in through their senses and that they have no control.
They have no more control over their emotions, their body, their self, their nervous system or their mind than a rock has when you throw it over its course.
So I hope that I haven't been hectoring.
I hope that I've been encouraging. I desperately want people to get this because this is the kind of freedom we can achieve.
This is the kind of freedom we can achieve in our lives.
We're not going to overthrow the state, but we can overthrow our reactions and live as free souls.
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