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April 22, 2007 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

01:58:50

725 Call In Show April 22 2007

Career challenges for the philosopher, self trust and what to do with your life...

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	All right. Well, thank you everyone so much for joining.
	It's Sunday, the 22nd of April, 2007.
	And thank you for the kind comments.
	I was on the Mark Stevens Show, which you can find at adventuresinlegalland.com.
	There's a link on the board. We had an enjoyable Amy, Bill, and mutually congratulatory chat yesterday, which was enjoyable.
	And thank you so much for those who listened in and gave the kind comments back.
	And Mark got a kick out of what was posted on the board where...
	Somebody said, Mark and Steph are good together, and then somebody else wrote, I hope that Steph's wife, Christina, will understand.
	And she actually will.
	She was enormously relieved to have somebody else listen to me, even for half an hour.
	It's like when you finally get that baby down with large amounts of Novocaine and whiskey.
	It's quite a relief for her.
	She gets to really collapse in exhaustion.
	So it's a benefit, and so she's very pleased that I have somebody else to talk to.
	So, because my level of speaking is constant, so the fact that I'm bleeding off an hour and a half of it in the car is, again, very good for Christina.
	And good for me, because if I talk less to Christina, she medicates me less, and that allows me to talk more to you.
	So, thanks so much for joining.
	I wanted to start off with an interesting comment about a listener's post on the Freedomain Radio board at FreedomainRadio.com.
	And it is a gentleman who said, dealing with anger.
	And he said, And it's in fact pie, which is more tasty.
	But after listening to many podcasts and questioning previously held assumptions, it all came together so naturally I could not understand how such an obvious truth evaded me for so long.
	Although I bet you he's younger than I was when I figured it out, so maybe he's not doing that badly.
	He said, now I am angry.
	I'm going to do the rest of it in the Marvin the Martian voice.
	No, actually, I'm not. I'm in a mind of pure effing hatred.
	Whenever someone quotes the law or tells me that anarchy won't work because it's stupid, I want to shoot them in the effing kneecaps.
	How do you deal with this?
	Well, clearly, with the solitude and the knowledge of how to cover up crimes, that's the first and foremost thing.
	But the... The thing that I would suggest about that, and I totally understand where you're coming from, and I think that your anger is very healthy, but obviously you don't want to shoot people in the kneecaps unless they're about to shoot you and your Jack Bauer or something.
	The way that I would suggest approaching this is both empathy for ignorance and an understanding of corruption.
	The sort of one-two punch that I would give to this anger of yours, and it's going to take a while to dissipate and find its proper focus, is first and foremost, when we say that we're really angry at people who are ignorant, of ethical and rational and consistent moral theories, then we can dump on them and we can get angry at them, we can feel they're idiots and so on.
	But if we all take a mental spin back to our own histories, we can all know a time when we didn't know any of these sorts of things, when we didn't know rational and objective ethics and a better way to run society and How to live with integrity and consistency.
	We didn't know philosophical truths and so on.
	And if we rail and rage against those who don't know, then we apply the same levels by universally preferable behavior, by that same maxim.
	We then say that everyone who is ignorant Should have their kneecaps shot off, then the moment somebody invents a time machine, we have to go back and shoot ourselves in the kneecaps before we learned these sorts of things.
	Because he says, well, I didn't know, and then it all came together to me, and now I want to shoot everyone who doesn't know.
	And I know that that's hyperbole and so on, but...
	The real fact of the matter is that we all didn't know at some point.
	Everyone in the whole human race didn't know.
	And if we apply that, that the people who don't know should be aggressed against, then the entire human race, this knowledge could never have arisen because everybody would have been shot or aggressed against or something.
	So I think it's important to have gentleness because there's two types of ignorance, right?
	There's the ignorance There's the ignorance of those who will see when they are shown, and the ignorance of those who refuse to see even when they're shown.
	And there's nothing wrong with feeling angry towards the latter, but the important thing is to just get them out of your life and not spend much time worrying about them.
	But with the former, I think the gentleness and encouragement is very, very important.
	We all start off ignorant and we all learn.
	And I think compassion, both to ourselves and the actions that we took when we did not know, And compassion to ourselves and to others and what they are doing when they do not know is important and the transmission of philosophical truth, the transmission of knowledge is so essential.
	It is the absolute Lifeblood of civilization, the transmission of philosophy.
	It is so absolutely essential.
	You don't just take a bag of penicillin and throw it at somebody who's sick, right?
	You find the vein, you inject, you're very careful, you disinfect the needle, you make sure that you don't cause any problems, you tell them what's going on.
	You know, just sort of lunge at them with a lance or something, right?
	The communication of philosophy is such a delicate surgical procedure that you have to, I think, I've never been able to achieve it successfully without gentleness, compassion, firmness, and positivity.
	So those are the skills that I think you really need to work on.
	And compassion for the ignorant is absolutely essential.
	We were all there at some point or another.
	It is the most crucial thing that you do in your life is to talk about philosophy with anyone because philosophy shapes the world that we're all going to grow old and die in.
	And the world that our children are going to inhabit and grow up in.
	And it shapes fundamentally the way that the world is going to be for the next thousand years.
	I mean, look at old Jesus, right?
	I mean, the tracks that he laid down were pretty much on a constant rotation for 2,000 years.
	So what it is that we say is laying the tracks of the future as surely as if we were putting a railway car together and putting it down a set of tracks.
	So it's very, very important to be delicate and positive when you communicate with people.
	That way, if they tell you to go screw yourself, it's their issue and you don't have to worry about it with them.
	Somebody said, how is this consistent with the way we should treat our parents and siblings?
	Well, that's an excellent question.
	Can you kick him off?
	That's too good a question.
	Well, no, I mean, that's an excellent question.
	I'm talking about people that we meet for the first time.
	This guy's talking about strangers, and we'll get to the second reason.
	There's a difference between talking with people who have not abused us in the past and talking with people who have abused us in the past.
	When we talk with people who have abused us in the past, We need to be frank about, the first thing you need to establish is that the abuse did occur, that it was painful, that it was horrible, and so on.
	And if you can't establish that, then you can't have a relationship with these people, right?
	And then you can work towards apologies and restitution and them paying for your therapy or at least going into therapy themselves to figure out all of this kind of stuff.
	I'm talking about mostly when you're dealing with people in a social setting or at a party or at a bar or whatever.
	And that to me is a very, you can have gentleness with ignorance there.
	Because you have no evidence that they're going to reject the truth.
	When you just meet someone at a dinner party or a party and the conversation turns to politics, you don't know that they're going to reject the truth.
	With your family who have acted in an abusive manner towards you, it's pretty indicative that they're going to reject the truth.
	It's still worth giving it a shot so that you can free yourself.
	But that's a very different situation where you don't have knowledge of somebody's reactions versus when you do.
	So I hope that. I was just going to say the exact same thing, that with your family you can try and speak to them about the truth and see what kind of a reaction you get from them.
	And chances are you're going to get all their defenses.
	You're going to get them minimizing your thoughts, your feelings, your beliefs and erasing you.
	So you can certainly try it and I think it's important to try it if you're trying to defoo or if you're trying to understand the truth within your own family.
	So you absolutely do the same thing with your family.
	And Greg is pointing out he's just offering the opportunity for me to clarify the obvious questions for the sake of new listeners.
	And I think that's an excellent story.
	And Greg was nice for quite some time and seems to have turned on me more recently.
	So I understand that that's a cover story and we'll talk private.
	No, that's an excellent point.
	Thank you. Thank you so much. And the second thing I would say to this listener, of course, is that the anger that he feels is not too...
	I mean, and it's so obvious, and he's going to kick himself, right?
	Because he's already kicking himself about how obvious anarchism is.
	And anarchism is obvious, right?
	Which is why ignoring it and denying it is so corrupt.
	But he's going to kick himself even more, right?
	Because he is saying, gee, I'm really angry at people who didn't tell me these obvious truths.
	And, of course, these are not strangers that he meets at a party.
	This is his family.
	This is his parents. This is his teachers.
	This is his community. This is his priests.
	This is his politicians.
	This is the whole culture as a whole.
	This massive hide-and-go-seek game of pretend the virtue and screw the virtuous that is called modern culture, and, in fact, not just modern culture but all culture.
	The massive shell game and playing whack-a-mole of keeping any true ethics at bay while claiming all of the protection and benevolence of ethics is the game of living in society.
	The people that he's really angry at are not these unknown people in the future who don't understand anarchism or people he meets at work.
	Because what have they done to him?
	All they do is they don't know.
	It's like me getting angry at people who don't speak Mandarin.
	Just because I've learned Mandarin doesn't mean that everyone else should automatically know Mandarin.
	It's a hard thing to learn. But his real issue is with his parents, with his family.
	And we all love to get angry at the government.
	We all love to get angry at strangers.
	We all love to get angry at the future or the past or whoever, but it's not very productive relative to getting justly angry at those who lied to us about virtue.
	The last thing I'll say on this, of course, is that I know that I'm saying two things at once, and I hope that that's not too confusing.
	I'm saying that anarchism is both very easy and anarchism is very hard, and I'm going to try and resolve that as briefly as I can before turning over to you, the fine listeners, to tell me your side of things.
	Anarchism is very easy because It is just so logical, right?
	Everybody says that violence is a bad way to solve problems, and all we do is we say, well, if that's a principle, then that's a principle.
	The government is a group of individuals who initiates the use of violence and calls it law and calls it justice and so on, and it's just not true.
	A soldier is a guy who pulls a trigger because someone tells him to, and he's paid for by another guy in a blue uniform who points a gun at you if you don't pay your taxes.
	All of this is violence, as I talked about on the show.
	Yesterday, for instance, those who say that gun control is good, right?
	We should not let people have guns or certain types of guns.
	What that means is that people commit crimes when they have guns, and so we should give the police more guns.
	Well, of course, if crime is defined as the initiation of the use of force against somebody who's innocent, Then, naturally, if we say to the police, you must initiate the use of force against people who own guns who are not doing anyone any harm, then that's a complete violation of that moral principle.
	All we're doing is taking what everybody believes and making it consistent, just as Galileo did with certain aspects of astronomy, just as Kepler did, just as Einstein did.
	We're just taking what people already know and making it consistent.
	The principles are easy, but the enacting of it is hard, and it's mostly hard because people fight it tooth and nail continually and constantly.
	They fight the truth tooth and nail.
	This has been true from before Socrates, and it will be true after we are dead and buried, but we can do our part to move the debate forward.
	So, that having been said, the question that has been put forward is, how does one determine one's life work?
	How does one determine One's life's work.
	And that is an excellent question.
	I've had a couple, and I don't know why.
	It's interesting how the collective Borg brain of the Free Domain Radio listeners works.
	I've had a number of emails, and then this seems to be a pretty popular topic all of a sudden.
	I'm always trying to be as sensitive as I possibly humanly can, to the point of being psychologically paranoid, to the movements and tides of the Freedom in Radio listenership, of which I think there's coming on to be quite a few now.
	So I'm trying to figure out why is this issue coming up.
	I think that's because Through listening to these podcasts and through participating in this conversation, through becoming a philosopher yourself, not just listening to philosophy, which anyone can do, but becoming a philosopher, acting in philosophy, acting with integrity and with truth, what happens is when you get the bad people out of your life or you deal with historical hurts and injuries and so on, You begin to stop just surviving by facing the path, right?
	By facing the past.
	Like, you're not driving any longer, just looking in the rearview mirror and wondering why you keep getting into accidents, right?
	There's that great Sting song off a recent album called Forget About the Future, and the line sort of goes, let's forget about the future and get on with the past.
	And I think that's an excellent song.
	It's a great song, by the way, if you get a chance to listen to it.
	But I think what's happening is through...
	Listening to a virtually endless stream of heavily babbled philosophy, you end up changing things in your life, and that's all the stuff that Christina has brought to the conversation through continual focus on a family and personal history and personal relationships.
	She keeps me out of the interstellar space where there is no gravity, no air, lots of movement, but no effect.
	It keeps me on the ground.
	I think that through listening to all these podcasts and bringing philosophy to bear in your own life, I think what's happening is people are beginning to slowly shift their focus away from being lost and enslaved and entrapped in history, in the past, and are starting to look forward, right? So when you stop driving by looking in the rearview mirror, you get into fewer accidents, and so you're not as afraid of looking ahead of you.
	But now you can look ahead of you, and I think that people are sort of saying, okay, well, I've done some work to clear up the past.
	I've done some work to deal with my history.
	And that is, if not totally complete, at least on its way to closure.
	And by closure, I mean donations.
	And what's happening now, I think, is that people are saying, okay, so I'm no longer photocopying the past in this Groundhog Day kind of way.
	Now I have some closure with the past.
	Now I can think about the future.
	And because I've spent so much of my time, as we all have, right?
	I lost in the past. There's this question of like, okay, but what now?
	What do I do? Now that I'm looking ahead, I'm not driving in the rearview mirror, where am I going to go?
	What road am I going to take?
	What am I going to do? Of what practical use is philosophy to be now in terms of shaping real-world decisions rather than merely living consistently within my own mind, applying that to my own past?
	And there's that bit, right, where you've now fixed the car, And you now can sort of say, okay, now that I've fixed the car, now that I have some gas, now that I have some maps, where do I want to go?
	And I sort of have the feeling that that's one of the reasons why this seems to be clustering at the moment, these questions about where it is that you go in the future.
	And there's been a large number of posts about this recently.
	So one poster put it this way.
	What are you doing with your freedom?
	In other words, what positive real steps are you taking towards true personal freedom?
	Soliciting for living examples.
	Defoeing is of course the most obvious example around these parts, but there must be other things that people are doing.
	Maybe that's too testimonial.
	Well, I mean, I can certainly start it off by just saying that I've given up I've thrown up my highly lucrative but spiritually and intellectually empty software executive gig, thrown up a career that I basically spent over 20 years developing so that I can devote myself to moving this conversation forward as best that I am able.
	And there's other things which Christina and I are planning around the future of Free Debate Radio that we can get into another time, which we think is going to be a lot more helpful in getting people out of the repair bays with their cars and getting them on the road and getting somewhere.
	That's one example.
	The other question that comes up is, what is it that I should do in my life?
	When you encounter a life-changing set of ideas, and this has certainly been the case with me and with other people, that your life changes.
	What are you going to do in the future relative to what you did in the past?
	It's like, I now understand that the world is different.
	You can't end up doing exactly the same thing.
	I'm not going to try and talk about this because this is more about your questions with regards to this.
	So there are principles that I certainly believe in around how it is that you figure out what it is you're going to do with your life, but that's not something that I'm going to enact.
	So if you have questions about that, or of course about any other topics, but we'll take those first, if you don't mind, if you could click on the Ask for Mike.
	Request Mike. Give me the Mike.
	I am Mike. Call me Mike.
	My dog's name is Mike or something like that.
	Then I would be more than happy to put you on the air to talk about career aspirations, life aspirations, once you start to move out of driving backwards and start to look down the road, how it is that you choose, where it is that you're going.
	I certainly have some thoughts about that.
	And if you have any questions, I would be really happy to.
	Christina rules. Oh, you have no idea.
	She certainly does.
	So I can wait all day, class.
	But he hasn't clicked on request mic.
	So, Mr.
	RP, I do believe that you are on the air.
	Howdy. Hi, how's it going?
	Fantastic. Well, sort of fantastic.
	Well, fantastic because it's after 4 o'clock on a Sunday, but other than that...
	Right. Yeah, this subject that you're talking about right now is front and center in my life as we speak.
	I mentioned on the chat window here that I feel like the world that I'm living in right now was created by the person that I was a few years ago.
	My career, my...
	My social circles that I'm in and things like that.
	And it's kind of like I sat down to work out a plan of action, you know, a roadmap for myself in starting with this Freedom Rain Radio process of self-discovery and all that.
	And then I was satisfied with that map and I looked up and discovered that I'm in the middle of a burning building.
	Right. And it's like...
	It seems to touch on so many aspects of my life that it can be a bit overwhelming sometimes when I think about it all.
	One of the things that I've been facing most recently is my increasing dissatisfaction with my work and in particular my lack of respect for my boss.
	I actually had a very powerful confrontation with him just this last week that I I felt very satisfied leaving the confrontation, but it just was a very, very strong reminder that I shouldn't be working for this guy.
	Is there anything you can give us any details about, or is it more personalized than that?
	I mentioned a few weeks ago that I had gotten a really just wonderfully glowing annual review this year.
	And I attributed a lot of that to the, you know, the newfound self-respect that I have been discovering.
	But at the same time, you know, of course the company has all these wonderful excuses for why they can give you all kinds of glowing praise but then not back that up with any kind of reward or benefit in the material sense.
	So I got a, you know, a very meager I've raised just like I have for the last year.
	One of the problems with really understanding economics is that you understand that inflation is much higher than what the government says it is, so I'm actually earning quite a bit less than I did when I first started this job a couple of years ago.
	And so I discussed this with my boss, and he came up with all these excuses for, oh, you're paid very well, you shouldn't feel bad about it, or maybe you should step up a little bit more and we can give you a promotion and all that stuff.
	And it was basically just a non-answer.
	I could tell it was a stalling tactic just by the tone of his voice and all these little subtle non-verbal cues that you can pick up on.
	Does he have the power to give you a raise?
	I'm sure that if he pushed hard enough that a promotion would be possible.
	It's just that I don't feel that he...
	It seems like he's the kind of guy who is a bit afraid, I think, to take a strong stand with anyone above him, so to speak.
	I've been a manager for many years, so I'm just going to run some questions past you so I can get a sense of the fiscal and then we'll talk about the philosophical aspect of it.
	I know this for a fact, that when an employee asks for a raise, it's because their job dissatisfaction no longer matches their income.
	That either is because their job dissatisfaction has risen and they want a raise to compensate for the increased dissatisfaction, Or because their satisfaction has remained high, but they feel they can earn more money elsewhere.
	That's sort of really the reason that people push for...
	I mean, obviously, if nobody was going to be willing to pay you more than what you were making right now, then you would be unjust, in a sense, in asking.
	I mean, it's not the end of the world to get paid more than market value, but it's sort of an unstable position, so to speak.
	Sure. Yeah, there's actually...
	Oh, go ahead. No, you go ahead with your point.
	I'll finish up in a second. Actually, the major detail that sort of precipitated all this talking between me and my boss, this is actually, I've met with him about three times over the course of the last couple of weeks, and the first two times I met with him, I expressed a little bit of dissatisfaction about certain things, and he pulled some kind of Jedi mind trick on me, so I left his office, you know, thinking that I'd been hurt and everything was going to be fine.
	And then I got home and thought to myself, you know what, I got absolutely nothing out of that conversation.
	And then I went back in a second time, same thing happened again, and this time I went in there and actually just, you know, really described in depth what was going on.
	And the precipitating event was Over the last couple of years, I've been very willing to step up and work overtime, do side projects that are out of the scope of my job description, things like that, with no complaints.
	Everything was always fine, and everyone was always very appreciative of that.
	Recently, I'm working on a very High profile project for the company right now that is, I'm part of a team of mechanical engineers working on the hardware design part of it.
	And we've been given an extremely tight deadline that for all intents and purposes is a bit insane to begin with.
	And one of those things where the people All the teams working on the project before us were kind of delaying, delaying, delaying, and the deadline kept on creeping forward actually instead of moving back to accommodate that.
	So we're sort of the last department or the last team in the line to put our stamp on it before it gets to the production phase.
	Anyway, that's probably too much detail.
	But the problem was that they said We've got all this extra work to do.
	By the way, the deadline just moved up one extra month.
	I said, you know, that's fine, but is it possible for you to stick us in a soundproof room and don't let anyone come in and bug us?
	I was being a little bit sarcastic.
	And they kind of chuckled about that and said, yeah, we're going to try to make sure that we don't let other people or other projects distract us from this one.
	And I said, well, maybe it's possible, you know, just kind of thinking outside of the box here, maybe it's possible that I could trade off one of my weekdays for a weekend day because on the weekends there are very few distractions.
	I've always been able to get a lot more work done on the weekends.
	And my boss said, well, I was kind of thinking that you could work all of your weekdays and a weekend day.
	Right, sure, he was thinking that.
	Absolutely. And I said, well, you know, that's nice and all, but I do work for money.
	So, yeah. It was, that kind of started and it got me, you know, along with a lot of other just, I've noticed a lot of disrespect being shown toward a lot of the employees in my company and a lot of people are actually leaving right now.
	So I went in and I talked to my boss about this and I said that the problem that's happening now is that I've always been willing to put in extra time.
	I've always been willing to, you know, when something's going Kind of haywire.
	I'll come in and put in a little extra time.
	Everything gets done. Everyone is happy.
	Yada, yada. But there's a very subtle but extremely important difference between I'm willing to put in the extra time and it's now expected that I put in the extra time.
	Because if it's now expected, that means the scope of my job has changed.
	And if there's absolutely no negotiation ability for me to say, Okay, I now recognize that the scope of my job has changed.
	I would now like to be able to say, you're changing something, I would now like to change something as well.
	But that was never given as an option.
	I think that was extremely disrespectful, and that was what was really bothering me.
	Right, right. There are two types of people in the world, and I'm not trying to be over-simplistic today, it's just that this part to me seems relatively clear, and you can let me know what you think.
	There are two types of people in this world.
	There are people who have their own standards.
	And when other people give them too much, other than, you know, really big donations, then they will reject that as a standard, right?
	So as a manager, I've always been pretty sensitive to when people work a lot of overtime.
	And then I say, take the rest of the week off.
	Or, you know, I'm aware that there has been a deficit.
	And you have to be aware of this in your personal relationships, right?
	So there are times when Christina does more than I do in the relationship, and I'm aware of that.
	I have been pretty conscious of the fact that I'm going to be home now, so I don't want to be an additional amount of work for Christina, right?
	That I have to start taking on more chores around the house because I'm not going to be gone for 10 or 11 hours a day.
	So there are those who are sensitive to equality in a relationship and will Take more than their fair share, but it accumulates within their own mind as a debt which needs to be paid off.
	And those kinds of people are depressingly rare in this world.
	And there are the other kinds of people who don't have any internal standards other than what you let them get away with, so to speak.
	So in the realm of the second kind of people, the long-term goal of any decent human being is to get those people out of your life.
	Because what happens is if you're around people who just like, oh, you're going to work overtime?
	Fabulous. That makes me look great.
	And they will just take and take and take.
	And they don't accumulate because they're entitled.
	And a lot of people who have become bosses tend to be entitled, right?
	In other words, I'm entitled to just things.
	Why? Because I'm me, right?
	So if you give these people things, they will take them and they will not accumulate any debt that they feel that they owe you for going above and beyond the call of duty.
	What they do is they invent a term called excellence which only applies to you and involves you transferring money and resources to them, right?
	I mean, that's why I have a huge amount of skepticism about this whole idea of excellence because it's always for employees and not so much for managers, right?
	So if you have the kinds of people in your life who take and take and take and don't accumulate any sense of mutual obligation or payback, Then they're doing what you've trained them to do, right?
	I mean, they have no more sense than a goldfish eating, right?
	Goldfish will eat until it explodes.
	That's why you have to monitor their input.
	They're sort of like husbands. But the people who will just take and take and take, if they're taking from you, that's just what you've trained them to be entitled to.
	And then the way that they will perceive you going back and saying, I'm not going to do that anymore, you are unjustly changing the equation.
	That's how they're going to perceive it, right?
	That you are being totally unfair.
	It's like, but you give me foot rubs and bring me cappuccinos every morning.
	Now that you're not doing it, you're stealing my foot rubs and cappuccinos, which are rightfully mine, right?
	So that is a real challenge when it comes to renegotiating with narcissistic people.
	They just don't understand that you've gone above and beyond and that they owe you something.
	It just doesn't occur to them as managers.
	In fact, it occurs to them that you have been giving them all this great stuff and now you're taking it away and that's mean and selfish and disrespectful and not being a team player on your part.
	So if you have one of those types of managers, the odds of you changing him is almost nil.
	You can probably negotiate something out of bullying him, in a sense.
	And I don't mean bullying in a bad way, like getting back what's used just for yours is not bullying in a bad way.
	Like, I'll give you sort of a very brief example from my own career that once when I was at a company that was going through some very hard times, I was laid off for a month.
	And I was fine with that because, I mean, I was making good money and a month off in the summer is never a bad thing and I got to work on a book and so on.
	I was laid off for a month, and then that stretched to two months, and I was fine with that too.
	But then I said, you know, we said I have to make a decision about this, right?
	And then my manager, the CEO of the company, he said, okay, well, we're going to bring you back, right?
	Because, you know, we want to bring you back.
	And I found that none of my scheduled projects had moved in terms of their delivery dates, right?
	So I had a couple of month projects.
	I was off for two months. And then I came back, and none of my projects had moved in terms of their delivery dates, right?
	So I had six-month projects, I think, and I was gone for two months, and they stayed the same.
	And I said, well, that's not really laying me off then, is it?
	Because what you're doing is, I have six months' worth of work, you've laid me off for two months, you're bringing me back on the same pay, and so now I have still six months to do of work, I just have to do it in four months instead of six.
	So you didn't lay me off.
	All you did was you gave me a break, and now you're giving me double the work.
	So it wasn't a break. In fact, it's worse, right?
	Because I would rather have the work spread over six months than four months.
	So I said, the only way I'm going to come back to work is if you pay me for the two months that I was off, and then I will get these jobs done in four months instead of six months.
	So he balked at that because, of course, his whole point was to try and pay me.
	He didn't pay me money, but he did end up paying me for the time that he laid me off, and I did end up, through working a lot of overtime, getting the jobs done in the allotted time.
	So I did get what I wanted, but the relationship didn't succeed, and I left the company less than a year later, because there was a resentment that had accumulated on his part.
	He viewed, because these people have unjust demands of their own, whenever you put forward a demand, no matter how legitimate, they view it as an unjust demand and something which is going to interfere with their legitimate self-interest that, in a sense, you've trained them to expect.
	So, I think that you can probably get something out of this guy if you push for it, and I think that that would be helpful if you want to stay in the field and get a new job, because you'll then be able to leave with a higher salary and have a legitimate demand for a higher salary that way.
	But my suggestion would be, push hard to get an increased salary, but then recognize that your time there is going to be on a ticker.
	Yeah, actually, one thing that came out of this final meeting, and it's interesting that you mentioned the...
	I've trained people how to treat me.
	I actually brought that up in the meeting.
	I wasn't sure if it was such a...
	Looking back at it, I'm not sure if it was really worthwhile to directly address that with him as I did, but it felt good saying it.
	I said, you know, I do realize that up until this point, you know, every action that I've taken, every word that I've said to you, I've been training.
	I train people how to treat me.
	I instruct everyone how to treat me.
	And I feel that this non-response that I've gotten to if the expectations for me are increasing and there's no congruence increasing in what you're giving me, well then that's obviously something that I've communicated is okay with me.
	But I'm now saying that it's not okay with me and I need to I think that's important.
	I'm sorry to interrupt, and I think that's essential, but what I would argue against very strongly is that if you train people how to treat you, which you do to some degree, but you don't trade virtuous people how to treat you, because virtuous people have their own standards about how to treat people.
	That is not dependent on how those other people act.
	So I don't treat people that way.
	I don't treat people like, hey, if they let me get away with murder, I'll get away with murder.
	I have an internal set of standards.
	So it's true that we do train empty people how to treat us, people who just react to what they can get away with.
	The solution to that is not to stick around empty people and keep bullying them in a sense, but to recognize that you want to be around people where that is not a requirement.
	And they're hard to find in the business world, to be frank.
	Right. Yeah, actually, the resolution of this meeting that That allowed me to leave this one finally satisfied after two previous ones where I was not satisfied was that I think somehow in the course of the conversation I broke through enough of his defenses where he actually admitted that you know after I had said something to the effect of I'm probably just not a good match for this position I should probably be moving on eventually or sooner than later and he said well it's probably a good thing that you say that because it would make for a A win-win type of situation for us because after this super high-profile project is done,
	the pipeline's looking a bit lean, so we may need to decrease the workforce a bit.
	Ooh, right. Yeah, so what I got out of that was, and he even admitted that the carrot that he was trying to use for me in the previous two meetings was Step up now and maybe we can work on that promotion thing and of course there's nothing in writing it's just that work harder and I might reward you in the future type thing and of course that was just what was eating at me.
	That's a very irresponsible thing to say to someone if you know that layoffs are imminent.
	Right exactly and so once I found out about these possible future layoffs and he admitted that even with the promotion the bonus that comes with that would be would not be coming in until maybe early 2009 I'm sorry, did you say 2009?
	Yeah, because you would have to work a full year in the promoted position.
	What, are you going to mail it to your grandchildren or put it in your grave posthumously?
	Exactly. I think it was probably pretty clear in his mind that I wasn't going to be around when that possible reward could finally pay off that he was promising to me.
	The other thing, too, that I would mention is that I do believe and I think I have good reason to believe that you're an excellent worker.
	Now, a good manager, if he's faced with layoffs, will make sure that he keeps the most valuable people and gets rid of the least valuable people.
	But this guy is taking a total easy way out.
	And the total easy way out is I have someone who wants to quit and that's one less person I have to lay off and that's good for my emotional well-being.
	I mean, that's not earning your paycheck as a manager.
	I mean, you have to make tough decisions and you have to let go.
	And often the people who aren't as good at their job are the ones who are more emotionally immature and volatile.
	And so laying off the mature people is actually easier for a manager than laying off the people who need to be laid off.
	He's totally not earning his paycheck as a manager and that's probably another reason why this may not be the place for you for the long run.
	It's interesting when you say immature and hostile or emotionally volatile.
	He can be that way himself.
	He commonly brings his personal home problems with him to work.
	I've noticed several times A distinct feeling that when he's talking to his employees, including me, he's actually talking to his children.
	As a bad father, right?
	Because a bad father should not be treating his children that way.
	As a very bad father, yeah.
	So anyway, what was really interesting, though, is that by the end of this meeting I said, well, it looks like we have an opportunity now that you're seeing me pretty Honestly, I'm seeing you honestly and you know both sides of this can come at this from a new perspective.
	Why don't we treat this as if it's a short-term contract type thing?
	We can negotiate on that.
	He kind of said, yeah, sure, whatever, and then he had to run to a meeting.
	You could also ask if you wanted, and this is what I did at my job here, was just say, look, there's work that needs to be done.
	You want to get me off the payroll so that you don't have to worry about as high a set of expenses, so move me off book.
	Have me come back as a consultant for, at least this was about two months that I came back as a consultant.
	And that's another way that you can do it.
	What that does, of course, is it gives you income which is going to be taxed less.
	If you've got any sort of experience with that, you end up, at least up in here in Canada, it's about 30% more to be a consultant because of all the write-offs.
	It may not be as good as that in the U.S. because you can already write off your mortgage, but it's another way to give you some more flexibility, some more cash on the exit scenario, and then if you do end up wanting to be a consultant, you're already in that groove, so that can be helpful.
	Yeah, I've actually brought that up with him before, and he tried to talk me out of it, but it sounded to me like he was...
	Again, it was like he was trying to...
	You know when you have these conversations with people where you express an intention for yourself, and they try to talk you out of it because they're talking themselves out of it?
	He was trying to say to me that you don't want to do that because X, Y, and Z, and I said that's exactly why I want to do it.
	I think the thing for him was the instability, the lack of a sure thing.
	With a salary, you have a paycheck, you know exactly what it's going to be.
	With a contract position, you have to fight and claw for it and stuff like that.
	I said that's actually motivating to me instead of terrifying.
	It's a positive for me.
	So yeah, I brought that up and I think I'm going to try to go at it again from that angle with him now that I really have seen his hands, so to speak.
	I think I can just say, look, it's time for me to take this as a consultant, I think, because that's pretty much the way that the job is now defined between us, I believe.
	Right. And you may want to do that before the end of this big project while you still have some leverage.
	Right. Listen, I mean, the other thing, too, is once you give up on your boss and your career at this place, you can totally go above his head.
	Right. Once you don't have to care about that relationship anymore, then you can go above his head and you can negotiate.
	If he's not going to negotiate with you in a productive and positive way with regards to this consulting position, you can easily vault him.
	And I don't recommend vaulting the hierarchy very often, but in this situation, it certainly would be a rational thing to do.
	This is good. I appreciate the reinforcement here.
	This is sort of what I've been thinking I should be doing.
	It's just... It's nice to get a reinforcement from someone, especially who's had a managerial position before.
	Yeah, I've managed up to 25 people.
	I mean, that's not huge, but it's not bad in my career at a time.
	There are lots of managers out there who like to pretend to their employees that their employees don't mean anything to them and have no value to them.
	And that's how they maintain their power.
	And parents do this all the time, right?
	They say to their kids, you can be replaced or whatever, right?
	Yeah. And the managers who try to create insecurity in their employees are malevolent evil people, in my sort of opinion, right?
	Because they're just degrading and humiliating people.
	Being an employee is like being a student, right?
	I mean, the student is as powerful as the teacher.
	It's just, in this particular instance, there's a knowledge transfer.
	I'm equal to my doctor.
	My doctor just knows more about medicine than I do, right?
	So employee-employer relationships are are merely about experience, merely about wisdom, merely about knowledge, and not about better or worse.
	But there's lots of people who are out there as managers who basically like to pretend that their employees can always be replaced, to keep them insecure, to keep them nervous.
	That is the side of capitalism, and it's not part of the free market.
	It's more family histories manifesting themselves in economic situations, but that's the part where abuse is definitely part of the equation.
	At least it's better in capitalism than it is in the government, because you can leave.
	But there's a lot of people out there who do that, and it's pretty bad.
	And we're all very susceptible to it, because we all start out not worth that much economically, right?
	My first job, I got $2.40 an hour, right?
	The job I just left was $160,000 a year.
	So you claw your way up over time, but we all have that vestige of, well, I'm not worth that much.
	And people who exploit that, I think it's pretty corrupt.
	Right. Yeah, just a final comment on this, and just to reiterate to everyone listening, the real power of this Free Domain Radio conversation that we're having is, when I was in this meeting with him,
	he brought up a, somehow he was trying to build an analogy between what we were talking about and something else, and he mentioned something about his father, And about, he started talking about his dad and it was just like, as he was saying this, I mean, it's just like I had, it seemed to me that there were neon signs blowing around this guy pointing at him saying daddy issues, you know, all these, you know, all these horrible through issues.
	And it was, you know, before this kind of a thing used to work on me.
	It was, it was like a guilt trip.
	It would hook into all those things that I felt, you know, the things that were controlling me about my own through relationships.
	And now it just stands out as a just a glaring beacon of a damaged person and it was just it was really empowering.
	It was fantastic. It was just to see this stuff happening Right in front of me and to know that I used to react so differently to it and now it has no power over me.
	It was fun. Knowledge has the real power that way.
	The last thing that I sort of ask you to take on is, and this is like black belt stuff.
	This is stuff I'm still working on.
	Let's see if it does any good for you.
	Just a suggestion.
	You can try this on as you like.
	For the next couple of weeks, I would say, give yourself complete and total permission to be perfectly right in everything that you think.
	All right.
	I'm going to take another run at that because this is a huge leap.
	I was waiting for you to continue.
	You suggested this for me before with looking back at my childhood, and the difference now is that I'm applying it to the present.
	Right, so you, and I certainly respect, look, the validation aspect is important, and I validate with Christina and so on, you know, does this dress make my butt look too big, and all those kinds of questions.
	I mean, all the normal questions of a married British guy.
	But the real sort of question which you can throw at yourself, or I guess the answer you can throw at yourself is, What if everything that I feel about my job, what if everything that I experience with regards to my boss and with regards to my professional career, what if everything that I feel is perfectly and completely true?
	And it doesn't mean that you have to act any differently in a sense, right?
	Right. I truly believe that we are all complete geniuses at being correct, but we're just taught...
	Society and our families and our teachers, they just oppose our instincts so much that we end up second guessing ourselves for the rest of our lives.
	But as a very intelligent and increasingly wise human being, At some point, you have to have complete certainty in your own perspective.
	And that doesn't mean that you don't validate things.
	It doesn't mean that you're now, you know, I can fly and I'm immune to logic.
	But I think it's worth giving a shot to just say, I know exactly how to handle things in this situation.
	I'm going to wait for just the right moment.
	When the right moment hits and I act, I'm going to do exactly the right thing.
	And just... Bring that into the present.
	Bring that confidence, which you've applied to the past, into the present.
	And then, of course, the next thing is to the future, which we can sort of get to a little later.
	But I would say just bring that complete calm, serene knowledge that you're going to do exactly the right thing, that your perceptions about everyone is exact down to the atomic level, that you've got everyone nailed in your head.
	And that you're going to be perfectly correct in everything that you do.
	And I think you'll find that that's kind of liberating, right?
	Because that second, that Hamlet that we all have inside of us, right?
	The second guessing, yay, almost into infinity, is something that we can easily let go of if we just keep working on it.
	Yeah, definitely. I do relate to that Hamlet character very well.
	And I think that's one of the things that my My mother planted in me so well is the endless self-doubt.
	And it's resulted in a lot of, a lot of times, procrastination.
	It's an unwillingness to make a leap into something that I know full well that I should be able to do.
	And it's always the, gosh, maybe I shouldn't take the risk.
	Maybe I shouldn't do this, shouldn't do that.
	But you're right. I think my instincts now are Becoming much more powerful and strong, I think, especially in relation to these interpersonal relationships, like with these meetings with my boss over the last couple of weeks,
	the powerful revulsion that I felt following these meetings kept driving me back into more conversations with them until I finally, in the last meeting, I started out the meeting with the words, I'm extremely angry.
	And once I let those words out of my mouth, the anger stopped sticking in my mind as a roadblock.
	It was out there and I was then able to say, oh gosh, now I feel great and now I'm going to express myself honestly.
	And once I did that, that's when all of this other information came out from him about the About the status of the future of the company and all that stuff like that.
	So it was a liberating thing to finally acknowledge that instinct, the anger that I was feeling, and once it was out, I could go.
	And that's fantastic, but that's not exactly what I'm talking about.
	And that's because I haven't made it at all clear.
	Which is, look, if you feel that you want to express your anger and you're in the meeting and you express your anger, that's fantastic.
	My concern is that if you don't express your anger, that you walk out of that meeting saying, oh man, I can't believe I didn't express my anger.
	That was really bad. I should have done that.
	And then you're sort of like, okay, well, why didn't I express my anger?
	Am I still stifled and am I still muffled?
	Does that sort of like, if you sort of give yourself a goal, I can express my anger, and you do, that's great.
	What I'm suggesting, though, is that if you're in a meeting and you don't express your anger, even if you think you should, that that's the right thing to do as well.
	Right. No, I see that.
	That means that you're in an emotional environment where expressing your anger is not going to be productive.
	The purpose is to trust your instincts, not to express your feelings.
	If you're in a situation where you express your feelings, once you have knowledge, it's not like everything we do is perfectly right, but once we have knowledge, If you're in a meeting and you express your anger, that's great.
	If you feel like too nervous or too scared or too upset or too full of trepidation to express your anger, my concern is, and I've done this to myself a million times, right?
	I walk out of the meeting and they go, man, I should have really told those people X, Y, and Z. But then when I sort of think about it a year later, it's like, well, that would have been a disaster.
	I wouldn't have been strong enough for it.
	I would have got fired when I didn't have any alternatives.
	It's the idea that once you accumulate wisdom, you can't do anything wrong.
	Once you accumulate knowledge, you can't do anything wrong.
	That's the whole point of virtue, that if you express your feelings, fantastic.
	If you don't express your feelings, even if you don't know why, there's a damn good reason for it, and you should trust that as well.
	Yeah, and I think that in the previous two meetings, I don't think I had fully established In my own mind, why I was angry.
	And I think in this last one, going into it, I had understood myself a bit better.
	So when I let loose with that, I'm angry, I didn't even make a conscious decision to say it, I just did it, and it felt right.
	You know what I'm saying? That's fantastic.
	That's fantastic. But if you felt that impulse, and then you stifled it, there was a good reason for that too.
	Okay. Gotcha.
	I'm going to work on this.
	This is good stuff. Excellent.
	Excellent. Well, listen, congratulations.
	Keep us posted, for sure. That's a very, very exciting thing.
	Wherever you go, for sure, as we accumulate knowledge, every choice that we make in life gets better and better.
	The thing that is amazing about studying philosophy and really bringing it to your life is that every decision that you make gets better and better.
	So I absolutely guarantee you the next place that you're going to be, even if it's living in my basement, is going to be a better place.
	I got a nice basement. It's not the end of the world.
	There's a futon from when I was a bachelor, which, don't worry, has been steam cleaned.
	What's that? They said there's an old Dennis Miller joke.
	It's like, oh, this thing's more disgusting than Billy Idol's futon.
	Which just always struck me as kind of funny.
	All right. Well, listen, do you mind if we move on to somebody else?
	Go ahead. Thank you again. Appreciate it.
	Thanks so much. Thanks so much.
	Okay, if you'd like to...
	You've got to move him out and...
	Move to basement. Yeah, just hang tight.
	And then we have the next person coming in.
	MrJ.A. He's in.
	I think you are live. If you'd like to say hello to the hordes of listeners, both current and to come.
	Hello. Hello.
	Hiya. Hi, how's it going?
	I just came onto this.
	I'm sorry? Hiya.
	Hi. Hi.
	What am I meant to be doing on this?
	Are you getting that? I'm sorry.
	I'm having a little bit of trouble trying to hear what you're saying.
	Can you try saying it again, but a bit more slowly?
	You might be from the north of England.
	Right. Where are you, sir?
	We're going to need these Trainspotting subtitles, I think.
	I'm from Scotland. Hi, from Scotland.
	Hi, great. How you doing? All right.
	Apparently Scotland has a firewall.
	Do you know which chat you're in or are you just sort of joining chats today?
	I don't know. My friend's just guiding me like a...
	Oh, so you're sort of like an unwilling participant.
	Go ahead. John Mayne's my friend and he's guiding me about like a hepless deer.
	Excellent. Okay, well, this isn't the Helpless Deer show.
	So I'll tell you what, I'm going to move you to the listening.
	Keep listening to the show if you like.
	We're trying to talk about sort of professional concerns, people's concerns having their job.
	I'm going to move you to listening, and then you can give me a shout.
	Just click on Ask to Talk if you want to sort of bring up something in that sort of topic.
	This is a show about philosophy.
	So keep listening, and if you have anything else to ask, just give us a shout.
	All right. All right.
	So we have another Jay.
	Thank you so much.
	Mr. J. John, I think that you're on, if you'd like to say hello.
	Good evening, or good afternoon.
	Good afternoon. How are you doing tonight, Stefan?
	I'm great, how are you? Are you a collective, or are you a single talker?
	I'm a collection of cells, but a single larynx, if that helps.
	Oh, that's great. That's great.
	I'm also one of those.
	That's good. That's good.
	So, no ghosts and no clams.
	That's pretty much the order of the show.
	Well, you know, you guys are talking about philosophy and reading philosophy about how to enrich your life with philosophy.
	That's what I gathered. I might be wrong.
	Am I wrong? No, you're right.
	Well, you know, I always believe that the best answers are the answers that come from within yourself and not the answers that come from an external source.
	Okay, tell me more about that.
	I would certainly be interested in hearing more that you had to say about that.
	So can you tell me the difference between what's coming from within you and what's coming from outside?
	Well, you see, the thing is, I believe that every, and I'm sorry if I sound pompous, listeners and my host, but I believe that every information that you gather from an external source is recycled.
	Ideas have been recycled since the ages of time and have been reused and reversed and re-sayed.
	In different languages and in different forms, but convey the same solid message.
	And if every information that you gather from the outside entities is recycled, then is it not true that the same information that you gather from one source is the original source?
	Well, I think that's an interesting question, but if you don't mind, I'm going to have to just back up a little bit first, because I think that you and I may have different approaches to truth, and if we have that, then we're never going to be able to sort of have a productive discussion.
	One of the basic things in the discipline of philosophy is that, much like the scientific method, much like logic, it helps you determine something that is true from something that is false, right?
	So you're putting forward propositions that says what comes from inside you is always better than what comes You're putting forward a philosophical proposition, but I don't know the methodology that you're using to know that that is true rather than false, if that makes sense.
	I need to know what methodology you use.
	The one that I use is empiricism and logic and the scientific method.
	I just want to ask what the methodology is that you use to determine something that is true from something that is false.
	Well, you see, that's the funny thing.
	When I studied in high school theory of knowledge, and we also got into the gasps of talking about logic and euphoria logic and the other type of logic that exists.
	But the thing is, one thing that remains certain is that you could not define truth, but you could only deduce what the truth could be, but you could not define the truth.
	Sorry, I just have to stop you because I don't want you to go on too far past what I can understand because then I get lost.
	So are you saying that you can't define the truth?
	You can't know what is true?
	You can only deduce what could be true or what is true in the introduction but not define truth itself or find the truth in itself.
	In itself, in the original being, of course, in different aspects you have mathematical conclusions, but at the same time, when you get a number, that number can be translated into different forms and in different notations.
	So to get the precise truth of what one topic is or one point is, you have to conclude that to deduce the truth, you can only deduce it and find through methods What could be the truth, but the truth itself still remains unclear.
	Okay, so again, I appreciate you being patient as I try to sort of figure this one out.
	So when I say that 2 plus 2 is 4, how do you categorize that?
	Do you categorize that as a truth or a falsehood?
	I categorize it as 2 plus 2 can be 3.999.
	No, only if you round it up.
	2 plus 2 is not 3.999.
	You can just choose to redefine 3.999 as 4 because you're rounding it up.
	But that doesn't make the two the same.
	Exactly. But at the same time, when you conclude that 2 is 4, you must also conclude that there can be other notations in that 4 That can also build up to the same conclusion that 2 plus 2 is 4.
	You mean like 1 plus 3 or 4 plus 0?
	1 plus 3, 4 plus 0, exactly.
	You can still...
	No, I understand that.
	But the fact that something other than 2 plus 2 can equal 4 does not interfere with the truth value of the statement that 2 plus 2 equals 4.
	No, it doesn't.
	Okay, so we do agree that 2 plus 2 equals 4 is a true statement.
	Exactly, but that's through deduction.
	But the truth in itself cannot be concluded as that being the only answer for 2 plus 2.
	I'm sorry, so you're saying that 2 plus 2 is 4 is both true and false at the same time?
	That's what I was taught. I understand that's what you were taught, and I was probably taught as much nonsense as you were taught, but when I sort of thought about it for myself, when I hand in a math test and I say that 2 plus 2 is 5, the teacher doesn't say, well, that's kind of true, I'm going to give you half a point.
	They say, 2 plus 2 is not 5, 2 plus 2 is 4, so I'm going to give you 0.
	So the world doesn't work like kind of true, sort of true, true by definition, true by deduction.
	The world kind of works like science, kind of works like true and false, right?
	And logic kind of works true and false, and so it's math.
	So I don't think that something can be both true and false at the same time.
	My humble narrator, what I'm trying to put forth is when you take that joke 1 and 1 equals 11, You also have to deduce that everything that you've learned in mathematics has already been decided for you and you cannot decide it for yourself because it's already been regulated by rules and laws in mathematics as well.
	I appreciate that.
	Do you think that the proposition 2 plus 2 equals 4 is something that a human being just made up, or do you think it's an identification of a logical truth that is independent of mere human thought?
	Human beings, we didn't invent gravity, right?
	We discovered gravity. Exactly.
	Exactly. So it's not a matter of...
	Sorry, go ahead. The thing is, let's take, for instance, in Stone Age time, before mathematics even existed, If you had four apples, if you had two apples, then how would you define those group of apples?
	Of course, you had to come up with a word that made sense in defining those two apples.
	And in order to make comments with other tribes, you had to deduce a methodology of how many apples can be put together to make a sum that can be feasible to trade with.
	Right, and so we didn't make up 2 plus 2 is 4.
	That's an identification of objects in reality.
	It's not made up by human beings.
	No, not at all. Okay, so there's a truth that exists independently of opinion, that 2 plus 2 is 4.
	Exactly. But I thought that earlier you said that 2 plus 2 equals 4 is not a truth that exists independently of human opinion, but it is something that has been handed down to us by the decisions of others.
	It is. At the same time, we had to identify that We could have called four another figure or we could have called four another name.
	We came up with the letter four, with the word four, for the mere fact that we needed to define those groups of apples.
	We didn't come up with the mere satisfaction of the sum that is equal to four.
	Well, I agree with you, of course, completely that the language, but the language doesn't mean anything with regards to reality.
	For instance, if I'm a guy whose name is Stefan, if I change my name to Stephanie, my penis doesn't fall off and I don't grow a vagina, right?
	So if I change my name, it doesn't affect my physical being.
	If we call an apple a fish, it doesn't turn into a fish, right?
	Language has no power. To alter physical reality.
	Language is a mere label that we apply to the physical reality which exists external to our consciousness.
	So the fact that some people call it four, and some people call it quatre, and some people call it whatever, eins, zwei, drei, vier, so the Germans call it vier, it doesn't matter.
	I mean, it's still just a label that we apply to external reality, and that external reality exists independently of our label, and the label doesn't change it a bit.
	I agree with you 100% when you say that but at the same time we have to look at what's tangible and what can we actually have in the physical world and not in physics itself because physics is a build-up of numerology and of equations which are just like what you call it on the equator, Capricorn and Cancer.
	You have those imaginary lines but it doesn't mean if you go to those It's a concept.
	Yeah, it's like the equator. There's no line running around the middle of the Earth.
	It's a label. It's a label, yeah.
	But the label is not, I mean, as far as I remember, like the equator is obviously the equinox of the planet and a third above and a third below is the tropics of Cancer above and the Tropic of Capricorn below.
	Yes. I remember learning how to remember those, that you get cancer in the lungs, so it's above the waist and you get corns on your feet.
	So the Tropic of Cancer and Capricorn, that's sort of above and below.
	That's neither here nor there. I just remembered that.
	but those lines don't exist in reality for sure and you can't spend the concept of money and you can't ride the idea of a horse but still those things describe very real things in the world so the equator does describe the central point of the planet and then a third above and a third below is the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn so like the number four does not exist in reality but still Four objects do exist in reality,
	and calling four objects the number five is incorrect relative to reality.
	So I think we still do have a way of determining the truth value of our propositions, and we do that by comparing the propositions and what they're stating to either reality or to logic.
	And I think that it's not just inherited opinion or something that we make up.
	I think that's very wise in saying that, in fact, through my deductions and my deducing methodology, is a true statement.
	Right, and it's not a true statement because I say it's true or because you say it's true or anything like that.
	It's a true statement because we can validate it through the scientific method, right?
	So if I say that the Sun is the center of the solar system, I can validate that by looking at the retrograde motion of Mars and I can validate that by a variety of modeled methodologies for figuring out what is the simplest explanation for the behavior of the planets.
	So when people thought that...
	Sorry, go ahead. You know, At the same time, that draws back to my original statement where the knowledge of philosophy is recycled knowledge which has been handed down by generation and been reviewed and re-stayed and rewritten and re-made to suit this society in which it lives in and to suit the future societies.
	So it's not also valid in truth that the only pure knowledge, which is the basic knowledge, Of understanding the world you live in comes from within oneself.
	I would take the complete opposite opinion and I would say that the only thing that is valid is the opinions that you subject to the valid test of external sources.
	So if I'm a scientist and I say that an object falls at 9.8 meters per second per second towards the center of the earth, Then that's an opinion that I have, but it's only valid if I go outside myself and I measure it against the actual behavior of existing reality,
	right? So Galileo said a bowling ball and an orange will fall at the same speed, and nobody believed him, but then when he went to the top of the Tower of Pisa and he dropped the orange and the bowling ball down, that's how you determine whether your beliefs are true or false, is you subject them to empirical factual tests.
	I would say that the answers that come within Other than your personal answers, like you say, what is it that I should do with my life?
	Well, I want to go on to American Idol and become a great singer.
	And I do, but I'm too old.
	The things that come from within you, like what is it that I should do with my life, that stuff is going to come from within you.
	But in terms of that which is objectively true, we have to subject that to the validation of the scientific method, of logic, of external reproducibility, and so on.
	That's how we know the difference between opinion and truth, is measuring it against objective reality.
	Okay, can I give an example which supports my point of view as well?
	Please do, yes. Have you heard of that mathematician who deduced some of the logical equations in mathematics by finding a minor's book on maths and by using his own methodology and his own thinking from within oneself, he deduced many calculations and equations which solve many problems in mathematics without having learned mathematics as a major in university.
	I've heard of that person. Yeah, I mean, you could call him any of the ancient Greek mathematicians, but I think there's also a modern fellow who's from a small village in India who did the same thing.
	He found a book and he worked his way through it.
	Who's the guy from the Greek?
	I'm thinking of the Greek guy. Names begin with A, who was the mathematician.
	Aristotle. No, no.
	I mean, yes. It's even more basic than that.
	I can't remember his name.
	But of course, I mean, human beings discovered mathematics long before they were universities, right?
	Because the human beings accumulate knowledge and then they transmit it.
	So yes, I absolutely agree with you that there's many ways to deduce the laws of mathematics from the behavior of matter.
	And people come up with their own stuff all the time.
	Yeah, but so you're telling me if I was to leave you alone You're completely cut off from information in the world.
	You'll not be able to gather your own conclusions and your own knowledge about many basic things in the environment I put you in without having to read a book or be told by someone else what the environment is and how to use it.
	We know that that's the case.
	Archimedes thinks that's who I was thinking of.
	We know that human beings can deduce important facts about the environment that they're in without books because otherwise no human being would ever have been able to write a book.
	So, knowledge existed before books.
	Sorry, books are the effects of people already learning things.
	So, without a doubt, pygmies in the Amazon who know nothing about the scientific method and who know nothing about physics know how to use their little blow darts to bring down a monkey or something like that.
	They know the cause and effect of reality.
	Yeah, but what I'm merely trying to assume a humble narrator is that it is not a mere Point of view that everything you see and hear and experience through literature, through mathematics, through the sciences, and through euphoric logic is original.
	What I'm saying is could be recycled and what you could also do is seek within oneself to find the basic truth of what you need to find out at that specific time, of course, what you get from the answer word, all that All that literature, mathematics and sciences and euphoric knowledge is useful in explaining the methodology you have to use in order to find yourself the answers within yourself.
	But to be totally reliant on them and not to be reliant on one's own inner voice is, to me, a bit absurd.
	Well, I think that we agree insofar as we can't take everything that other people say as gospel.
	Just because some people said, oh communism is a very virtuous system, and of course it wasn't.
	There is lots of things that we should be skeptical of.
	Every advance in human knowledge arises because people are skeptical of the existing explanations.
	That's how we know the world is round and not flat.
	I certainly do agree with you that we need to be skeptical, and of course we can get great inspiration from within ourselves, but we still need to submit Our inspirations to logical and empirical tests in order to find out if they're true or not, right?
	Because there are crazy people who think that God talks to them and tells them to go strangle cats or something, and we'd really like it if those people would subject those visions to an external test of logic and the scientific method.
	So I agree with you that we need to be skeptical of that which we're handed down.
	And we also should be sensitive to the inspiration that comes from within, but there still is a final step, which I'm not sure we agree on about logical validation from external sources.
	And by that I don't mean other authorities, I mean sort of reality itself.
	I don't think we should agree.
	I think it's better to have these conflicting thoughts because if we were to agree on it, then none of us would get anything out of this conversation.
	Well, that certainly is very interesting.
	Now, listen, I do have some people who are queued up who wish to talk about, and I really do appreciate this wonderful discussion.
	I do have some podcasts which at least talk about the approach that I take to metaphysics and epistemology, which I think you sound like you're very interested in, and perhaps you'd like to have a listen to them.
	Unfortunately, we have a bunch of listeners who've already gone over that material, so I don't want to sort of go over some of the earliest stuff I've gone on.
	But if you'd like to drop I would like to have future conversations I'm with you because I can see that you can challenge my ideas and you can also challenge me in a level that I appreciate.
	So maybe...
	Well, and you could be right.
	I could be totally wrong. I mean, I'm always willing to be corrected.
	No, no, no. So please do come back and give it a shot.
	Let's keep up the conversation.
	Exactly. So I'll go down to listening now.
	And if you want, you can just ask me to come up and we can talk more if you want to carry on.
	Well, thank you so much. And how old are you?
	I'm 21. Well, fantastic.
	Listen, whether we end up agreeing or not, I just got to tell you, this is the most important thing that you can be studying right now, is philosophy.
	No matter what you end up doing with your life, having a clear and cogent way of figuring out truth from falsehood is going to help you in love, it's going to help you in your career, it's going to help you with your family, it's going to help you with your friends.
	Whether we ever talk again, and I hope that we do, and whether you find my podcasts on philosophy useful or not, really, I would strongly suggest this is the most important conversation that you can have.
	The younger you are, the better it is, right?
	So keep up the conversation, and thank you so much for dropping in.
	Now, if we have other listeners who wish to join in...
	Oh, really?
	Greg? Okay, bring him on!
	Let me just wrap myself into the Greg chair.
	Woo! Mmm, nice vibrations in the Greg chair.
	Use your deep voice.
	See, if I get him to laugh, he forgets his question and I'm off the hook.
	Greg always has the best questions.
	What's up, brother? Well, I just thought I would pose a hypothetical situation and see what...
	I have a friend who has a problem.
	Right. Yes, this anonymous friend of mine...
	No.
	Call him Ben.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	OK, so you have, let's say, you have total blank slate.
	No commitments, no responsibilities, no particularly burning desires, and a big sack of cash.
	How do you decide what to do with it?
	I'm going to insert a donation joke.
	You can just assume that it was very funny.
	I have no desire to work on a donation joke right now, but I feel that one is called for.
	There's two answers to that, at least from my opinion, and you can let me know what you think.
	The first answer is whatever you feel like.
	And that's not an unimportant answer, right?
	Because the purpose of life fundamentally is to gain happiness, right?
	So whatever you feel like is important and relevant.
	I wouldn't act On whatever you feel like, but it's important to know what that is.
	To define what it is that you want in life is the first goal.
	It's the first step to getting what you want.
	But the second answer is, and also what is good, right?
	And also what is good to do with that money or with your time or with your energies.
	So it's pretty much the same as eating habits, right?
	I mean, we all want to live on chocolate cake, or at least I've never eaten so much chocolate cake that I don't want to have more.
	So, you know, I know that I like chocolate cake, and that's important for me to know.
	So that doesn't mean that I'm going to end up living on chocolate cake.
	So defining what it is that you want, I think, is the first step in that.
	But I think the second step, which a lot of people forget, I mean, a lot of people forget the first one or are never taught that it's important.
	But the second part is, and also what is good.
	And I think that we who have this ability, and certainly everybody who's in this conversation has this ability, nobody is excused, nobody gets out of having this responsibility.
	You don't have to accept it, but everybody has this ability, and I think with this ability comes some implicit responsibility, not to make the world a better place, but simply to be happy.
	And I think that there's nothing better that we can do with our lives than to try and make the world A more rational, a more kind, a more gentle to children, a more just to adults, a more fair and more rigorous and happier place.
	I think to leave the world a happier, more rational place than we found it, it certainly gives me enormous satisfaction, and I don't want to say that just because it gives me satisfaction is what everyone should do, but I think that those who have applied philosophy to their lives in action We have achieved enormous amounts of good through this conversation and through other conversations,
	of course. But the joy that we have achieved through applying philosophy to our own lives, I think we should try to bring to others.
	That's certainly my philosophy.
	In terms of what it is that I define, and I'll talk about this more another time, I've been working on what it is that I define as success for Free Domain Radio, and it really comes down to I can eat and I can talk philosophy.
	I mean, that's all it comes down to.
	Because if I get more money, through whatever reason, I'm going to pour it back into Free Domain Radio to get it to a wider audience.
	And of course, the people I want to talk to the most, who tend to be younger, don't have money and whatever is still at home.
	My dad watches my visa or whatever.
	It's not a big cash group, but it's a big reward from happiness group.
	So I think that knowing whatever it is you want to do and that that should be part of the equation is important.
	But to me, it's fairly irresistible.
	And I don't think it's just me making this up because I like to do it.
	I think it's a fairly irresistible proposition to say that to bring happiness To others is extraordinarily rewarding and beneficial.
	So if I got the big bag of cash, first thing I'd do is make a list of everything I want to do, and I'd get some of it done.
	If I want to go to Chile, I'd go to Chile, right?
	Because you've got to have happiness to give happiness, and you need to get done what you've done.
	Not to the point of, like, I really want to strangle a hobo with a kitten's tail or something.
	That I wouldn't do, unless I was in Chile, where I think there's no extradition laws.
	Figure out what you want to do.
	Get some of it done. This is not unfamiliar to you because this is where you are in life.
	You've got a bag of cash and you've got some desires which you're going to go and fulfill.
	We talked about the kitten thing.
	On the other hand, in the longer run, there's bringing joy and rationality to the world.
	I can't think that that's a life you're going to look back on or anyone is going to look back on with regret.
	Right, so I guess I'm just wondering what exactly that means, though.
	I mean, in material terms, what is a life of bringing joy and rationality to the world?
	What does that mean exactly?
	Right? It's mostly performance art on YouTube, at least that's my plan.
	Well, I mean, you sent me the bag of pomegranates too, so we're well set for props.
	But no, I mean, that's to some degree everybody's individual choice, right?
	So if you like to write, then you can write.
	If you like to talk, you can talk.
	If you like to write plays, you can write plays.
	If you like to teach children's theater, you can teach children's.
	Almost any venue which puts you in contact with your fellow man is going to be a good venue.
	For getting ideas across.
	It also might involve five years of not doing anything.
	And this is part and parcel of what I was talking about with the earlier caller about trusting your instincts.
	And this is all the way back to if you don't know what to do, I mean, assuming you've developed some wisdom and you understand the principles of philosophy and so on, right?
	Once you learn how to drive a car, you don't, like when I was first driving a car, I had to keep the hood ornament on the stripes.
	You know, like you're looking down the front of the hood and it's like, I can't fear.
	All I can do is look at the hood ornament, keep it on the stripes, right?
	And now I can podcast and half the time I barely even look out the window.
	What I do is I guide myself through horns and screams and the curb.
	But once you've got some of the real basics of philosophy down, and I think that anybody who's come this far in this conversation is good for that, right?
	That much they've got down, right?
	Sure. At some point, you have to trust your instincts.
	And if you don't know what to do, then you shouldn't do anything.
	And if you want to go to Chile, you should go to Chile.
	And you won't want to do anything wrong because you've got the basics of philosophy down, right?
	So you're not going to sit... The cat and the hobo are safe, right?
	So I don't think that's something you have to worry about.
	If you don't know what to do, you need to not do anything, and you need to trust...
	That the answer is going to come to you at the right time, and the answer is going to be great.
	That's part of self-trust.
	That's part of trusting this incredible inner, true self, child, man, whatever part of us that guided us through all of this hell that most of us experienced to a very benevolent and beneficial part of our life.
	But that self-trust is to say, I don't know what it is going to make a living.
	I sit on my couch for two weeks and think about it.
	I don't know exactly what the next step for Freedom in Radio is.
	I have a list that's ridiculously long, but I don't know.
	And my plan is to spend a couple of weeks sitting on my couch and thinking and feeling to get the answer.
	I don't know exactly what it is, but I do know that I've managed to get myself where I am through a rather Cirque du Soleil bunch of childhood and adolescent and young man acrobatics, which I didn't even know I was performing to get me sort of where it is now.
	And given that I kind of did the right thing when I had no clue about doing the right thing, which is exactly what you did when you were a kid.
	Then we can trust that to give us the next best thing, the next good thing that we're supposed to be doing.
	And that's what I mean by self-trust, that you don't have to know, but it's important that if you don't know, that's exactly right.
	And then if you wait for the knowledge to come, that's exactly right.
	And when the knowledge comes, it'll be fantastic and better than you could have imagined.
	So that's sort of what I'm talking about in terms of self-trust, if that helps.
	And yeah, I guess the dirty little secret is I've kind of come to that realization myself that it's okay not to know, right?
	You just, you know, just stop and take some time and think about it, right?
	Right. And the things that I have known in my life for certain, often I've been completely wrong, right?
	I'm like, oh, this is the girl for me, right?
	And we've all been in that situation in one form or another, right?
	Oh, I was wrong six months ago.
	I'm like, oh, I'm going to take this job.
	Now, to me, what it did, I mean, it was wrong and right at the same time.
	And so I took this job six months ago.
	Why? Because I was blinded by the gold and so on.
	But what happened was that I got to start Free Domain Radio 70 grand up.
	I mean minus taxes, so it's actually about 12 bucks.
	But I got to start Free Domain Radio with some additional money.
	Now if I started it last fall when donations were still less, then it would have been much more scary and I wouldn't have been able to relax into it the way that I can now that I bought myself a couple of years of stability.
	Combined with donations and the money that I made over the last six months, now I can take the time to do it right.
	Whereas if I'd started last fall, I would have felt a great deal of pressure to get the book out, to start public speaking tours, to start the seminar weekends and all the other stuff that we're talking about up here at Free Domain Radio Central or whatever.
	And I would have made mistakes because I would have felt that I needed to do it more quickly.
	So I took the job and sort of looking deep down, I took the job, which was the right thing to do, but I didn't know that I wasn't going to keep the job, which was also the right thing to do.
	So that's sort of what I mean by trusting instinct.
	It was right to take the job and it was right to leave the job.
	But that's not what I said to myself at the time.
	Yeah, and I kind of feel like that's my situation as well.
	At some point it kind of feels like it's all happening by accident.
	I didn't really have a conscious plan in mind, but it just happened to work out that Where I'm at right now is at a point where I really do need to just kind of stop and sit down and think a while, and I just happen to be materially exactly able to do that thing.
	Right. And that's not a total accident, right?
	I mean, the god of atheists is sort of funny, right?
	I mean, I wrote about a guy doing podcasting like six or seven years ago before it was even technically feasible or possible or anything like that, right?
	So you kind of know, right?
	Believe it or not, like years ago, I was practicing speeches in my car for no reason other than to draw odd looks from people I met the traffic light with.
	With no recording device, you kind of know what's coming in a way.
	It's not psychic or anything like that, but there is a plan to our lives, which our true selves have, and at some point we have to give up control and say, well, if I navigated my way through my childhood and got to where I am right now, which is a great place, I've got to be doing something right, and what I'm doing that's right is not always completely evident to me.
	I mean, this is where people get God, right?
	And this is where the idea of God actually has some use, although it doesn't have any truth value, right?
	That you sort of pray for answers, and it's like, yes, we do have a lot more answers than we sometimes think, but we like to control, and we like to think that it's all our conscious choice, and that cuts us off from a lot of our instincts.
	I'm probably ending up agreeing with the last guy, but But I do think that once you get the basics of philosophy down, you can have such a high degree of self-trust that you do not need to second guess or doubt.
	And if you don't know what you want to do, that's exactly right.
	I think what you're doing with the dreams, too, kind of points to that as well.
	But the amount of knowledge, of course, that's embedded in dreams is everything we need to know pretty much for happiness.
	I mean, outside of the technical aspects of philosophy and validation and thought versus reality and so on.
	But once you get those basics down, I mean, yeah, the amount of stuff that's in dreams, that's one of the reasons I do the dreams is I enjoy them, but also I really want people to get just how brilliant they are.
	We are all such unbelievable geniuses and we're all taught to second-guess ourselves and have doubts and be careful and worry about other people's opinions and not offend people and not upset people and so on.
	But I really truly and totally believe that we are all just unbelievable geniuses and we all know the exact truth and we just have to be receptive to it.
	But we can't be receptive to it until we have a structure, until we have a way of validating The true self from the false self.
	And the true self is that which connects us to reality and logic.
	And the false self is that which is fearful of other people's opinions or wants to manipulate and control other people, right?
	So the metaphysical reality is either social or empirical.
	And once we point ourself at the empirical methodology, we can relax and trust our instincts because the only ones that will make it through will be those from the true self.
	And I really feel that very strongly.
	I just haven't really pumped it on the show because then it starts to sound kind of mystical, you know?
	The answers are all within.
	That's not necessarily what I'm trying to say.
	That's easily misinterpreted.
	We are all geniuses.
	We all know everything. Our life has a plan.
	Then I start sounding all mystical and I wanted to get my street cred in rational empiricism up before I started talking about some of the inner world stuff.
	In a counterintuitive way, certainty It means exactly that you have the courage to question your own understanding of what's going on, right? Yes, that's certainly true and the period of great doubt is essential because it cracks the tyranny of the false self and cracks the tyranny of conformity.
	When people get all confused about the false self thing and it probably is not the most helpful term except that the true self is very important because we don't want to just say that we're blind slaves to empirical reality, then we should all be identical and clearly we're not.
	But conformity is something that we absolutely have to question and criticize and uproot within ourselves, like taking out some malevolent cat-eating tree or something.
	But once we've done that, then we don't need to keep doubting.
	You don't keep going in for surgery when you've had your appendix already taken out.
	You don't need to keep going in for surgery.
	So once you've taken out the diseased appendix or the false self, then you don't go back into the hospital all day long.
	You're like, hey, I feel great, right?
	And then when I get a symptom of not feeling great, then I'll go and get checked up or whatever.
	And I'll have my regular checkups, not to extend the metaphor too much.
	But we don't need to keep doubting ourselves once we've gone through the major transition of connecting to reality and living by our values.
	Then we can relax. And, you know, like after you learn how to ride a bike, you can actually have fun, right?
	Right. Certainty is knowing that you can eventually answer a question.
	Right, and confidence is knowing that if you're wrong, you're not bad.
	Right. That makes perfect sense.
	And so, in a way, what you said at the beginning is kind of exactly the right answer.
	Just do whatever feels right.
	Yes, with the knowledge that what you find pleasurable for you, you will also get pleasure out of giving to others.
	And that will be greater pleasure than you can just get from satisfying yourself.
	So what I'm saying is an orgy is better than masturbation.
	LAUGHTER Sorry, let me rephrase that.
	You know, there's something about these conversations with you.
	Anyway, it must be the videos.
	Maybe if you turn off the webcam, I can concentrate.
	No, sort of what I mean by that is that to create joy in a thousand people I think gives us more joy than just doing exactly what we want, selfishly in a sense.
	And there's nothing wrong with selfishness and I don't mean to be anti that or whatever.
	But joy is such a great thing that to create it is even more powerful than just to consume it.
	To create it for many others is even more joyful than just to consume it for yourself.
	Which is not to say that you shouldn't consume it for yourself.
	That's the great thing. You have to know what gives you pleasure before you can bring joy to others and so on.
	And that's sort of my thoughts and feelings about it, right?
	I mean, this is sort of my experience with the podcast.
	I guess why I spent like 20, 30 hours a week on this show, even while working full time and so on, because it's just incredibly satisfying and joyful to bring some of the liberation that I sort of accidentally worked for and achieved to other people.
	Right.
	It's unbelievably satisfying to think of the people out there who are walking a little bit lighter and breathing a little bit easier and living a little bit less fearfully because of the conversation that all of us are having.
	I mean, that's just I can't even tell you how wonderful and beautiful that is, because I know what joy freedom is for me and with Christina and the degree to which that could be brought to other people.
	Oh man, it's beyond, I mean, it's the best thing in the world.
	So maybe giving joy is how you get it.
	Well, I think I had to go through a period of selfishness, right?
	I mean, first, I had to figure...
	Like, I couldn't just say, well, I've been a slave to my family my whole life, and now I'm going to go and I'm going to bring joy to others, right?
	Because I hadn't experienced enough joy of my own, right?
	So you need to...
	Yeah, you can't just go from being a slave to yourself to being a slave to the happiness of others.
	That's too close to becoming codependent and fusion and all that kind of stuff, right?
	So you need to have money before you give money, right?
	You need to earn money before you give it away.
	I mean, unless you're the government, in which case, you just rob it and hand it out like candy, but...
	And that's why I sort of said that the first question is, what gives me pleasure?
	And then to take that and enjoy it.
	And that gives you a real rootedness in pleasure and happiness and joy.
	And then you can bring it to others in a way that's not manipulative and that's not dependent.
	And you're not really giving it away.
	In a sense, you're kind of making an investment, right?
	So once you earn enough that you can invest, then it starts earning on its own.
	Yeah, it pays dividends, I mean, without a doubt.
	I mean, I can't think of how many metaphors we've now brought into this arena, but it's all very true, but it's all very valid.
	Yeah, it absolutely pays off in spades that until you've experienced it, it's very hard to communicate, right?
	You had some of this, I think it was with you who was talking, was it your niece or your cousin or was that somebody else?
	There was conversations which people have had where they've managed to bring some level of enlightenment or curiosity to other people or to break down some prejudices.
	Yeah, that was a while ago, actually, with a niece of mine, my brother.
	Right, right. And of course, you can't then say, well, I'm now going to open up a children's school of ultimate rationality, right, and all that, right?
	But if you remember the pleasure that that gave you, it is a really delicate and, like, butterfly-like joy that you get out of helping people to see Something which is going to bring them a great deal of joy, right?
	I mean, it is a beautiful feeling, but it's something that you can't just sort of leap into doing for others before you've experienced a good deal of joy yourself, I think.
	And it may just be me, right?
	But I remember you had a real deep sense of satisfaction and pleasure out of that interaction that you had, right?
	Yeah, that's happened actually a couple times in the weekend chats, too.
	I remember there was a...
	Right, right. Ryan, you and I had a personal chat about something which we don't have to get into here, which also brought you a good deal of almost euphoria, but certainly liberation and pleasure, right, talking about other issues.
	And that is something that is, I mean, it delights me as well, right?
	I mean, because that's what I want to do is, you know, I mean, if I happen to have inherited more money than I can spend, and people can use it, to me, giving it away would be great.
	I mean, it's not that I don't want to spend it for myself, but it's like if it's more than I can spend and I happen to have lucked upon and tricked upon and thought upon some ways that I think can really help people live more free and so on.
	And it is a multi-generational project, so you almost can't start too soon or do too much, so to speak.
	I think that's just a real joy for me.
	But I'm always concerned about people then leaping into saying, well, now I need to become an internet philosopher and help the world.
	But I think the first thing to do is, you know, most of us have experienced scant little personal joy in our life, right?
	I mean, it's been a bit of a drudge, at least it was for me, until my sort of mid-30s.
	And I think that I had to experience a good deal of pleasure and liberation before I could start giving it out.
	Yeah, the euphoria can definitely confuse you up front.
	I know it did me for a while, but...
	Then there's a period of, I don't know, kind of...
	At least for me, it was kind of a period of...
	You know, the calm after the storm.
	You just take a deep breath and you go, okay, well, now what, right?
	And that's the question that's floating around on the boards and in my inbox at the moment.
	And that's, you know, I mean, people have a tough time believing me when I, as they do you, I'm sure, if you say to them, yes, you can get involved in these podcasts and they're going to be funny and they're going to be entertaining and, you know, the guy's got a funny accent and you're hoping he's not going to crash his car and so on.
	But this will completely crater your life.
	I mean, you say you think you're taking a step but it turns into an ice chute and you just got to hang on and then who you are and what your life is after philosophy is nothing to do with what it was before.
	It's not a reaction to it even.
	You're not doing what you are as a big reaction to who you were before, it's just that this is who you are now, and it's not a reaction to or the opposite of who you were before, and it's not like you've been transmogrified into a different human being, but still this precious little fundamental relationship between who you are now and who you were a couple of years ago.
	And on a totally minor level, you can see that with the progress of your avatars, right?
	Oh, you actually noticed.
	Of course. I mean, your first avatar was you pulling a very unpleasant face, which I can understand, because your life was pretty horrible, right?
	I mean, in a sort of fundamental way.
	And then, you know, now your avatar has progressed, and now you have a very serene, calm, and positive-looking avatar.
	I mean, everybody notices everything, right?
	I mean, you can't miss a beat.
	Yeah, I suppose that's true.
	Yeah, this last one was kind of a conscious change of avatar.
	The last few were more subtle, I guess.
	Sure, sure. But clear in terms of at least how it appears to other people.
	Your presentation of yourself is much more calm and much more serene, which is a beautiful thing.
	Oh, yeah. No doubt.
	Hey, did you fire your therapist yet?
	Did you can him like Charlie?
	No, I have no idea.
	I'm still leafing through the phone book.
	But I guess I'll just have to be satisfied with staying unemployed for a while.
	For sure, yeah, for sure.
	And knowing that what you're going to do next is going to be just right.
	Yeah. Yeah, I think so.
	But I have no idea where to even begin with the therapist thing.
	Yeah, I mean, I would certainly get rid of the one you've got now if he's not engaged and positive.
	And, you know, that's a part of trusting yourself.
	You're right about that. And that's just it.
	I mean, he was positive, and I don't think there was a moment when he didn't have a smile on his face.
	Did that expression ever change?
	Because that can be kind of alarming, too.
	Listen, I just told you my cat died.
	Could you maybe stop grinning like an idiot for, like, 30 seconds?
	It was a little bit disconcerting.
	I mean, he had basically, you know, not a smile, but kind of a stretched blank look, and then he had a huge smile, and that was it.
	And the conversations were mostly just me describing my day-to-day activities, and him Telling me that's interesting.
	Wow. You know, and that's interesting is one of these phrases in English that you know is the complete opposite.
	Yeah. It's like, let's be friends, right?
	Let's be friends means, like, you don't turn me on and I'd never want to see you again.
	And that's interesting is, like, I had to say something because I was about to slip into a coma.
	Right. Right. You're totally boring me.
	It's his fault, not yours.
	Right. Right.
	So yeah, I guess-- I don't want to get stuck, though, Just, you know, okay, I'll try this guy for a week.
	He sucks. And I'll try that guy for a week.
	He sucks. Oh, I wouldn't even try it for a week.
	I would go off the phone call. I would totally make the decision on the phone call.
	I wouldn't make an appointment with anyone until I could get them on the phone, and I wouldn't consume half an hour of their time.
	I guarantee you, though, this is the self-trust thing.
	You will know within 10 seconds whether this is the right therapist for you, and you have to trust your instincts that way.
	And you don't have to go and try someone for a week and then try someone else for a week.
	You will have to challenge yourself.
	You don't have to, but it's an important thing to, I think, trust yourself.
	To say, I'll decide in 10 seconds whether this is the right therapist for me.
	I'm going to really consciously listen with my whole being and see how I feel in the conversation with this person in the first 10 seconds.
	And that's what you did.
	Yeah, absolutely. I went to one therapist in my 20s who was exactly like you describe, without the fixed grin.
	He didn't even have that level of animation.
	But, you know, I told him about my sort of history and why I thought that I wanted to do some therapy.
	And I swear to God, I thought he was going to fall asleep during the time that I was talking, right?
	And I'm not the most boring talker in the world, so I wasn't sort of droning.
	I'm not saying that you were. And I just didn't go back because it's like, well, I was ignored as a child.
	Hmm. You know, at least I wasn't paying for that.
	So why would I want that as an adult, right?
	So, but then when I was talking to my next therapist, I got on the phone with her and she seemed, you know, very sort of energetic and positive.
	And then when I, I couldn't find her place.
	I couldn't find her office because it was kind of in an obscure location.
	And so I phoned her from the car and I said, oh man, I'm like, I'm circling you like a shark here.
	I don't know where the things are going round and round, right?
	And so she comes in, she sits down, and she says, okay, tell me about the associations you have with sharks.
	And I'm like, oh, yeah.
	Oh, this is going to be good.
	Because it's like now she was really listening to me, really picked up.
	And of course, I have a very strong association with sharks.
	I was quite obsessed by them as a teenager.
	And so we got into a great conversation about that.
	Led to my mom, led to my brother, blah, blah, blah.
	So they were great sessions, challenging and exciting.
	And I look forward to them. And I left them energized.
	And they were very powerful.
	So that comes right off the first conversation.
	You shouldn't even need to go to find out for sure.
	Hang on. I was just going to say that I've actually had clients come in and tell me that they've been to therapists who've actually literally fallen asleep during the therapy session.
	So Craig, if your therapist is close to doing that, time for a new therapist.
	Holy cow. Or maybe you're just really boring.
	Like, maybe no therapist could survive the minutia of your daily life.
	And then I thought, where's my blue toothbrush?
	And then I thought, did I leave it in my mouth?
	And I checked my mouth, but it wasn't there.
	So, no, no. I mean, it's not your fault at all, right?
	I mean, this is the job, right?
	right?
	I mean, this is the job is you've got to get paid.
	And if, if, if, if, if you're boring a therapist, the therapist's job is to say what?
	Therapist, a therapist needs to point that out.
	A therapist needs to be able to bring that to the therapy session and work on that particular issue because whatever happens in the therapy session gets recreated or actually it's a recreation of what's going on in the person's life.
	Right. So if you have a psychological – I'm not saying you do – but if you did have a psychological defense called I'm boring, then you would recreate that in the therapist and it's a therapist's job to point out that you're describing minutiae in order to keep people at an emotional distance and so that they don't want to come and talk to you.
	Right? So that would be the therapist's job.
	And that sure won't be boring anymore, right?
	I mean, if someone does have that defense, then the therapist has to challenge them on it and find out what's underneath and change that behavior, or at least work to change that behavior.
	That sure as heck isn't going to be boring anymore, right?
	So it should never really be boring.
	So what you're really looking for is someone who's, I mean, genuinely listening then?
	Yeah, I mean, that's the only job they've got is to genuinely listen because they can't do anything if they're not genuinely listening.
	They can't do anything if they're not listening to begin with, with their whole being, right?
	And that's why you're listening with your whole being when you talk to them for the first time so that you can figure out if they're listening to what you're saying and if they're engaged and if they seem like a person that you'd want to spend money and time talking to.
	Because if they're not, if they're not listening and responding to things that you're not aware of yourself, right?
	I can go up to anyone and say, what time is it?
	They'll say 10 o'clock or whatever, right?
	But you need the therapist to hear what you're not able to hear in yourself to reflect it back at you so that you can see yourself and how you land for other people.
	You need a therapist to be ruthlessly honest with you in a kind and positive way so that you can see yourself in a mirror from the outside.
	And that's just a perspective that really, really awakens an enormous amount of self-knowledge.
	That's interesting that you say that, to hear what you don't hear in yourself.
	Yeah, I make the joke about the shark, right?
	And she listens and says, well, that's a very interesting thing.
	She said, there's a certain amount of aggression in that, circling you like a shark.
	It's funny, but at the same time, it's kind of aggressive, right?
	And so we began working on...
	And I said, I don't experience myself as aggressive, right?
	And she said, not that you were aggressive like threatening me, but there's aggression in that metaphor.
	I mean, I don't want to have to go through my whole therapy session here, but there is a way...
	She began to sort of... We began to talk about aggression, what it meant for me, how I'd experienced it, whether I thought I was aggressive, whether I thought I was assertive.
	I mean, there was just an enormous degree of...
	Why? Because I said something about a shark.
	That's someone who is really listening to you and saying, how that lands for me is that that's kind of an aggressive metaphor, that you're the one who's in motion, that you're circling me and that you're a predator.
	So that's very interesting.
	That's what I experienced.
	So they've got to know, they've got to listen to themselves listening to you and reflect it back.
	And that's the most powerful part of therapy, I think.
	And that's what we should get from the people in our lives, but the people in our lives give us the exact opposite almost always.
	That's what we should get from our parents.
	This is what we call mirroring in infancy and childhood.
	This is what our parents should be able to provide for us.
	Unfortunately, because parents have their own unmet needs, because they have their own unmet childhood needs, they aren't able to provide it for their children.
	Therapy fundamentally is reparenting, right?
	I mean, it's taking us back to an earlier time in our life and so that people can actually see us and so that we can see ourselves, right?
	It's very hard to have a self when you have a narcissistic parent as most of us do, right?
	Right. I actually have had a couple of odd experiences like that with some people.
	They'll look at me and say, dude, you're really depressing me.
	And I'm like, oh really?
	I don't feel depressed.
	Right, that's because you're depressing them, right?
	If you carry this anvil, my back feels fine.
	I feel very strong.
	I don't know why you're having trouble swimming while I'm standing on you.
	I can breathe fine.
	So it probably wouldn't help then to, say, try dropping little test tidbits into the conversation on the phone.
	That would be too manipulative or...
	No, you want to be perfectly honest with the person on the telephone.
	Again, this is self-trust, right?
	If the therapist is a monotone, Oh, that's interesting.
	You can come on Tuesday, but make sure you bring a detailed description of what you had for breakfast, because that's the first thing we talk about.
	That's pretty much all we talk about.
	Breakfast and occasionally brunch, if you've had a weekend.
	I mean, if that's the kind of guy you're talking to, then it's like, yeah, I'm still not certain about it, so I'll get back to you, right?
	Because I wouldn't bother engaging that, right?
	You don't want to be the therapist to your therapist and say, you know, when I'm trying to set up an appointment with you, I feel really bored and alienated.
	Tell me about how you feel about that, right?
	I mean, who's paying who, right?
	No, I wouldn't drop hints like that at all.
	I would just be perfectly honest when you talk and see if they pick up on anything.
	No, I wouldn't say, you know, I feel like I'm a shark in your pants, right?
	And see if they notice that. I mean, that wouldn't be the way to do it.
	But that's just sort of self-trust.
	You talk to them and you listen with your whole being and see if you get a sense that they're listening because your true self knows in a split second what the reality is.
	Well, I've actually had a couple of phone conversations when I was looking for this guy, and that was back in October, November, something like that.
	And I would say, okay, these are my problems.
	This is what I want to do, and blah, blah, blah.
	And they would say, well, that's nice.
	What do you want from me? I'd be like...
	Right, right.
	Here's how I'm going to build the house, right?
	Well, why do you need an architect, right?
	That just means that you're much more developed than your therapist, and your therapist needs to work with people who are like, I don't know why I'm here.
	The police dropped me off after my 6 DUI, but there's no reason why I should be here.
	That's the level that they need to work with, where the people are just so ridiculously primitive that they just can't tell their ass from a hole in the ground.
	But when they meet somebody who's much more sophisticated, who's not looking for, I would like not to be arrested next week, but I would like to self-actualize myself into a Buddhistics type of traveling through time and space, they're like, I don't do that.
	What I do is I help people not get arrested next week, maybe.
	So you need a more sophisticated therapist than somebody who's maybe dealing with that.
	You need a sophisticated heart surgeon, not some ER hack.
	And I don't mean to...
	I don't mean to say that to be pretentious or anything like that either.
	It seemed like they were looking for people recovering from alcoholism and that sort of thing.
	That's a little bit way beyond what I need.
	Right. I mean, anybody, I mean, again, not to sort of pump FDR here, but anybody who's come through this many podcasts, I think has a good deal of knowledge about, I mean, I tried to pour everything that I've learned in over 25 years, and I'm not a dumb guy, into everything that I've done.
	There's quite a bit of information there.
	There's quite a bit of knowledge there.
	It doesn't mean that you can leap and put it into action perfectly.
	God knows I don't either, but there's quite a bit of knowledge there, and I think that we should respect that knowledge that we've accumulated.
	What we did, Christina, we did the calculation yesterday about, let's just say, out of 720 podcasts, there's about 500 hours.
	And how many years of a course was that?
	13 hours a week.
	13 weeks. 40 hours of class is a semester, and this is the equivalent of about 12 or 13 semesters, right?
	So it's normally two semesters, one class, two semesters.
	You take six semesters, six classes a semester.
	Well, you did, but I took six.
	Okay, let's say five.
	Let's say five classes a semester, and we've got 40 classes here, right?
	So FDR is the equivalent of a two- or three-year degree.
	Actually, when I first came to Freedom Aid, that's kind of what it felt like to me.
	I felt like I was taking Right, right.
	And we cover a lot of different topics in the show, right?
	So it's not just a degree in economics, not just a degree in psychology, but it's a degree on every damn random tangent that's in Steph's brain, which unfortunately is not accredited yet.
	Obviously, we're working towards that.
	Sorry, arts and sciences, right?
	Manic medieval rantings.
	The knowledge base that's in there, and there's jokes and stuff in the podcast, but there's a lot of pretty essential content there, I think, for developing knowledge and wisdom.
	So, this is like a two- or three-year degree.
	This is more than college, but slightly less than university.
	Now, I would also say, of course, I mean, there's not as much homework and so on, but there is also, you know, in a sense, this is my office hours or sort of Sunday afternoons, right?
	I'm going to ask me questions and say, you're mad, or I'm Scottish, or whatever it is that they want to say to help the conversation, right?
	But... It's a lot of information that's poured out.
	And I know that it's been sort of like people are sort of, oh, it's been a year and a half and this and that, but people have done like, I would say, at least a three-year degree through these podcasts with some pretty essential information there and some information that you wouldn't even get in a regular old college course, right?
	So it's a lot of information and people should, I think, respect the The knowledge that they've gleaned through this conversation.
	This is a pretty unique and powerful conversation.
	There's a lot of material and there's a lot of work and there's a lot of practicums in it, so to speak.
	The essay is your life that you get graded on and the grade is you.
	I think that when people get that They're not just somebody who's listened to a bunch of podcasts from this crazy British guy, but they've gone through a pretty solid education through this process, then I think they can look at it and say, well, yeah, I'm going to need a pretty advanced therapist because I've learned a lot.
	And in keeping with the philosophy here, wouldn't you really rather it not be accredited?
	Right, right. Accreditation means there's nothing left but the tangents and the bad jokes, right?
	So that's no good.
	All right, well, I'm going to bump you just in case anybody else has anything that they wanted to mention.
	What time is it now? 602.
	Okay, yeah, sorry. I'm going to bump you if you don't mind.
	Just to make room for if anybody else had any other questions or issues or comments or problems or mad random praising, that would be totally fine.
	Just click on the request mic or ask for it in the chat window if you don't see that sort of request mic or whatever.
	Or, you know, you can click on raise hand to speak or I don't know what the hell it's called in the new versions of Skype.
	If you could move, Greg, to listen.
	Do-do-do-do-do-do-do.
	And now we wait for the other people to speak.
	Thank you.
	Oh, is there any way about going, how about an advanced therapist?
	Well, I tell you, you donate enough, I'll give you an hour.
	No question, no problem.
	I've already done that before, and I'd be happy to do it again.
	And I think that the people, if they would fess up, they would be happy to, that it's well worth it.
	But that, of course, is totally up to you, so.
	The only thing is you've got to just make a whole bunch of phone calls.
	It's like trying to find a job, right?
	You don't just sort of say, hey, here's someone who'll hire me.
	I'll go and work for them. Assuming that you've got some demand for your skills and here you're the customer, right?
	So you just make a whole bunch of phone calls and you ask a person about their history, their treatment style, and so on.
	And you talk about your issues.
	You ask about what they've done before with those issues.
	You interview, right? I mean, you're interviewing them To be your employee.
	And you don't just sort of hire the first person who walks off the street and you don't go to the first therapist because you're putting your heart in their hands, right?
	You're putting your soul in their hands.
	So be a discerning consumer and trust your own instincts when it comes to whether or not you feel that you're getting enormous value out of it, right?
	Be discerning, be demanding.
	I mean, that's your job as an entitled Free Domain Radio listener.
	Do we have any other questions?
	or should we, because nobody else wants to talk right now, right?
	Okay, so one person has said that he talked to the receptionist who sounded great.
	That's certainly up to you, of course.
	But I would still ask to talk to the therapist directly before you go.
	Because you just don't know, right? Maybe the therapist is really peppy or whatever, right?
	Maybe it's a shared therapist that she didn't even hire.
	Who knows, right? Sorry, a shared receptionist that the therapist didn't even hire.
	So it could work out, right?
	And you can play the lottery for your retirement, but it's not the recommended approach.
	Were there any other questions? Nobody else wants to talk, right?
	So we can wrap it up for today? Excellent.
	Anyone else? Last chance to get in with the BCF. Ooh, tumbleweeds blowing across the internet path to my earphones.
	Okay, well, thanks everybody so much for dropping by this Sunday.
	I really do appreciate it. If the weather is as beautiful as it is where you are compared to here, then I appreciate the massive sacrifice of staying indoors and go outside and get some sunlight.
	I swear to God, it helps you sleep better.
	So, thank you so much everyone for listening and have yourselves a wonderful, wonderful week and we will talk to you soon.

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