All Episodes
Previous Next
April 26, 2007 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
37:27
732 False Self Kills True Self?

How many stakes does it take to kill this vampire?

| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Good morning, everybody. It's Steph.
How's it going? This is a video, too.
For those who are listening to the podcasts, it's 8.30 in the morning, and I should be going to work, but I only have two more days before I become a full-time internet philosopher, podcaster, video guy.
That's going to be on my business card, and it'll be about three feet wide, given the font I want.
So, if you can have a look at Podcast 729.
This came a little bit before the major question.
But before that, I wanted to talk about a few paragraphs that a listener put on the board, which I think is beautiful.
Under the title, Compulsion, he wrote, We cannot become happy by ridding ourselves of our compulsions.
We rid ourselves of our compulsions by becoming happy.
We cannot become happy by, quote, exuding happiness.
We cannot become happy by pretending.
To be happy. We become happy through personal growth.
We grow by embracing virtue, by loving and seeking to gain knowledge, by learning to empathize with ourselves, by loving ourselves and loving life.
We grow and become happy through self-respect and by freeing ourselves from those who do not respect us.
We grow and become happy through freeing ourselves from stagnation and in the quote safety of the familiar.
We grow and become happy by learning about ourselves, by becoming aware of ourselves, by experiencing ourselves, by experiencing and feeling all of our emotions and the physical sensations they produce.
We grow and become happy by thinking with honesty and by having the courage to have integrity in that honesty.
We become happy by recognizing that we're human and what it means to be human.
Happiness and self-esteem must be achieved.
They must be earned. Apparently this calls the birds to the car.
It's so well written. Where we want to be, yet fear to tread, is where we will achieve the greatest happiness.
Our fears tell us where we can be happy.
If we do not like where we are, yet fear to leave, we know that we must leave in order to be happy.
Everyone is waiting for a hero to come and do these things for them.
That hero we wait for does not exist.
What we must realize is that we must become our own hero and that we cannot become a hero to others until we become a hero to ourselves.
We must put our own oxygen mask on first before even trying to assist others.
Beautifully put, I must say.
It reminds me of a book that I read, oh God, time flash, lo these many moons ago, The Psychology of Self-Esteem by Nathaniel Brandon, which I would very much recommend as a book if you're interested in psychology.
In it, actually in a related book, he talks about a group therapy session.
He was a psychologist associated with Ayn Rand.
And I think with Ayn Rand's help, he wrote The Psychology of Self-Esteem, which, like Leonard Peikoff's book, comparing the growth of Nazism with the growth of fascism in America, Ominous Parallels, which is also a very good book, I thought.
Nathaniel Brandon wrote some great stuff in that book.
I didn't find these follow-up books that he wrote alone to be as illuminating, and I saw him in Toronto and didn't find him to be wildly illuminating.
But in The Psychology of Self-Esteem, which is an excellent book, or in one of the follow-up books, he writes about that he says that the whole point of therapy is to say to people that no one is coming to save you.
No one is coming to save you.
And, of course, one of his oh-so-clever listeners said, but you came, you came, Mr.
Brandon. And he said, yes, I came, and I came to tell you that no one is coming, which I think is quite true.
Certainly, I think that we can be enormously influenced by people that we find value in, in their thoughts and feelings and ideas.
But the final responsibility to be ourselves is, of course, totally just ours.
So, in a podcast that I did yesterday...
Sorry, I didn't do the video, but it's a real hassle.
I'm going to get set up and I was running late.
Which will change as of next week, as of Tuesday next week, Tuesday the 1st of June and the first day of the rest of my life, wherein I get to simmer, brew, and communicate the heady stuff of deep ideas to all and sundry on the Internet.
And thank you so much for watching.
Thank you so much for listening, and thank you so much for your donations.
I had a lovely one yesterday, two very kind ones this morning, and I just can't tell you how much they motivate me to do better and to dig deeper and to screech the truth in my vaguely fruity accent all the more vociferously, all the more shriekily, or something like that.
So, I did a podcast yesterday, which you might want to check out.
I think it's 7.29pm. Or 728, which is called...
No, 727. I'm sorry.
It's called Your Children Do Not Love You.
It's really aimed at parents or those interested in breeding.
And it's really well worth looking at.
And in it, I talk about an idea that I have been enormously unclear on.
You know what? I don't think I actually need my sunglasses today.
Let's have some eye contact.
Shall we? And in that podcast, I touched upon an idea that I've mentioned a few times before, but which I have been enormously unclear about.
So, I'm sorry about that.
I will try to clear up the unclarity.
I will try to demuddy the waters a little, and you can let me know what you think.
So, I use the phrases, and this is more for the uvon ubi tubers, I use the phrase true self and false self, which is not sort of my phrase.
I've just sort of inherited it from other bright people.
The true self is our authentic experience of reality.
It is really the scientific self.
It is a self that works empirically, that is not snowed under or swamped by all of the clichés and cant and bromides and patriotism and religion and country and all of the things which don't exist in reality.
Countries don't exist in reality.
Imaginary lines on a paper map, right?
They don't exist in reality.
There's no big wall between Canada and the United States.
Countries don't change color.
Physics isn't different, right?
It's the demarcation of one gang of thugs who take your money from another gang of thugs who take your money, i.e.
the government. So, our true self is that which authentically experiences reality and does not place concepts as the primacy, right?
Somebody says that God exists, but there's no physical evidence and no logical consistency in the concept.
The true self is that which says, you're right, you know, bring me some proof, bring me some proof.
The true self is the one that says it's skeptical but has a criteria for truth, which is reality, right?
And this is our reality processing.
The true self is that which is wedded to the senses and to logic.
However, we are not allowed to exercise our true self in the modern world.
So when we are born and shortly thereafter, our parents and our teachers and the officials and politicians and everyone else and policemen, they all lie to us.
They say we have an obligation to the state that we should be good citizens, that God exists, that the country exists, that we must help the poor through government, that the government is not violence but a benevolent entity that just wants to help people quit smoking for their own good, just wants to help the old and the sick and the poor, not an agency of violence that tends to historically and eternally destroy the society which gives it birth.
Or rather, which it takes over since nobody sits there and says, ooh, I want a government.
What happens is people take over.
And then they take over the education of the children and then they say, you really need a government because otherwise there'll be no roads and the poor will die and all this kind of stuff, right?
Terrorism. Terrorism.
So the false...
But we are told all these lies by our parents and our teachers and we have to obey.
I mean, as children, we're helpless, defenseless, dependent.
We have to obey. So...
We believe lies, we forget that they're lies, and we split, right?
So we have reality processing for like driving the car, and yet we have social conformity when it comes to the really important values in our life, like truth and honor and integrity and loyalty and virtue in general.
And this split is really unhealthy.
It's really bad, right?
Have one methodology for what you consider good or what is considered virtuous in your life, which is to just obey the lies that people tell you about virtue in order to control you, as Nietzsche pointed out so beautifully so many times.
Morality is a lie invented by the strong to keep the weak weak.
When there were slaves, there is no doubt whatsoever in my mind that the slaves were told that being a slave is virtuous, and obeying a Christian master is virtuous, just as is said in the Bible very explicitly.
So what really rules the slaves is the concept of virtue, the false concept of virtue, the virtue that exists for one, but not another, right?
The different set of rules for the rulers and the ruled, right?
That is the definition of false virtue, right?
So, you know, George Bush can levy taxes, fund a group of hitmen called an army, and go and invade another country and murder lots of innocent civilians.
But I can't do that.
And if I try to do that, I am considered an insurgent, and I am shot or thrown in jail.
So just different rules, right?
The government can impose taxes on your neighbor and you, but you can't impose taxes upon your neighbor.
So it's just different rules, right?
The government can fund educational institutions through violence, through the force, through the threat of property taxes or jail, pay your property taxes or go to jail, but I can't do that.
I can't set up a free domain radio school and then just go up and down my neighborhood with an Uzi saying, I'm afraid you're going to have to pay me $4,000 a year.
Whether you send your kids here or not, whether you have kids or not, whether you homeschool your kids or not, whether you send your kids to private school, it doesn't matter.
You've got to pay me $4,000 a year, and if you don't, I'm going to lock you up in my basement, or I'm going to shoot your ass off.
And this different set of rules is the foundation of false morality.
This is all the lies that we're taught, that the government is virtuous, that it's there for our own protection, and we're, of course, taught this fundamental paradox that People are so selfish and evil that they can't organize themselves spontaneously and voluntarily.
They must have a government to order them around at gunpoint and herd them around like pathetic, mewling, broken sheep for the rest of their damn lives because they're just so evil and selfish that without a government people would just go nuts and kill each other.
But democracy is the ideal because people are so wise and benevolent and intelligent that they can choose their leaders, even if they've only had a grade 8 education.
They can choose their leaders wisely, they can evaluate and judge public policy, and they can voluntarily surrender their liberties to an external agency because they're so good and virtuous and wise.
Of course, if people are good and virtuous and wise, we don't need a government.
And if people aren't good and virtuous and wise, we sure as hell can't have a government.
Because in a democracy, people will just vote bad people into office.
And of course, in any other sort of situation, we have a dictatorship, which is going to be populated by evil and bad people who have infinite access to guns and bombs and planes and ships and so on and terrorize the world and their own population.
So all of these lies that we're told about morality and what it is to be good, which means obey people to whom these rules do not apply, obey those people.
Rulers are defined as those who don't have to follow the bullshit rules that they inflict and impose upon those who are...
They're slaves, right? I mean, it's effectively the same, right?
Whether or not a slave gets to choose his own occupation and surrender most of his income to the state, as is the case up here in Canada.
Whether you get to choose your own income or not is not the prima facie definition of a slave, or a definition of a slave is...
Somebody whose labor is taken from them by force in a perpetual and continual basis.
So I'm a 60-70% slave up here in Canada and in the US. It's not that different, actually, especially if you consider the national debt and the military obligations.
So the true self connects with reality, works empirically, and deals with consistency and logic.
The false self is just cowering and bullying and afraid and believes in lies.
And it's the scar tissue that comes from being lied to and bullied when we're children.
So I have a number of times talked about this true self, false self thing.
And sorry for the podcast listeners who are getting a slight rehash, but it's done.
We're over. I talk about the true self can't be killed.
The true self can't be killed.
It can only be ignored.
And then I say the false self can grow to the point where it overwhelms the original personality and there's no way back.
There's no way back.
And so what people understand by that, and I certainly can't blame them for it, what they understand by that is I'm saying that the true self Both is killable and is not killable.
He's like a superhero Christ figure or something, you know, like a phoenix.
So the false self can be killed because there are harms that you can inflict on others, particularly children, that render your conscience so ravaged that you can never return to mental health again.
That's sort of my empirical observation based on seeing a number of really corrupt people in my life, having been raised by them as well.
So, on the one hand, I'm saying that the true self cannot be killed, and on the other hand, I'm saying that the false self can kill the true self.
So, I just wanted to... I know we're getting somewhat metaphorical here, but if you can bear with me, I think there'll be some useful stuff here for you.
So let me start with some sort of personal observations that I have never seen anybody who has harmed a child.
I mean, other than like, I don't know, like you yell at a child because you're really stressed and then you apologize and explain that it wasn't.
I mean, it's not like nobody has to be perfect, right?
We don't have to be perfectly healthy.
We can get a cold and still be generally healthy, but there's a big difference between a cold and a cold.
And cancer, right?
Terminal cancer. So we don't have to be perfect in our relationships, but there's a very large difference between healthy and unhealthy.
I have never seen anyone who fulfills these three criteria who has ever achieved or sustained or recovered mental health.
Happiness. The first is that you harm a child.
Of course, that's the necessary precursor or anybody who is dependent upon you.
The second is that you do this repeatedly and hide it.
You don't do it in plain sight, which means that you know that it's wrong, but you continue to do it in private.
And the third is that you justify this morally, or you justify this in some way to the child.
We'll just use children as the most common example, right?
So, first, you have to harm a child.
Second, you have to continue to harm that child, but never do it in a place where you can get caught and punished, right?
So, when there's a policeman around, you don't haul off and belt your child, but you'll do it at home when nobody can catch you, right?
Which is the basic definition of somebody who's evil, right?
If they know that it's wrong, and they just prefer to hide it, right?
Then it's one of the things that you know.
Is it first-degree murder?
Well, it was plotted and planned, and then it was hidden.
And if somebody has the capacity not to kill but chooses to kill, you know that they're morally responsible.
If somebody's just insane or schizophrenic and they just kill and can't control it and don't hide it, then they're not responsible any more than a cougar would be.
I don't mean by that a woman of a certain age who prowls bars for young men.
Other predators. But if a parent abuses a child...
Keeps abusing that child.
Abuse is really the perpetual, in perpetuity, harming a child and hiding it.
And then morally justifies that abuse to the child.
Usually the most common tactic is, well, you made me angry.
Which I've just done a video cast on, so there's no need to go into that nonsense.
But those sort of three criteria, harm a child, keep harming a child and hide it.
I guess you can make it four if you want.
And justify it to the child.
While I'm a single mom, it was very stressful.
You were a real handful.
You just wouldn't settle down.
You were sick all the time.
You wouldn't sleep. I was having trouble at work.
My mom was bugging me.
Not the kid, but the grandma.
You were a bad kid. I did the best I could.
Nobody's perfect. Nobody's parenting is perfect.
You have to forgive. Oh, these goddamn parents, I'm telling you.
When you confront your parents about the wrongs they did to you as a child, you will always get this sort of story.
I wasn't perfect, but you must forgive me.
And if you don't forgive me, it's because you're hard-hearted, and isn't that the other, right?
You're a bad kid now if you don't forgive me.
But of course, if forgiving others for their transgressions was so important and such an ideal, then the question is, why didn't the parent do it when you were a child and you did things that were, quote, wrong?
What happens is when people have the power, they bully.
And when they don't have the power, they appeal to altruism and guilt.
Wow. Is there ever a lot of police going past me here?
Maybe you can even see them.
Everyone ahead is like, oh my god, how badly am I speeding?
I mean, six cruisers to pick me up.
They're not coming for me yet.
That's good. So...
Parents...
We very fundamentally always use these sorts of false moral arguments.
You just reach for whatever, whatever will work.
Bad people just grab for ideas and whatever will work, they try.
So... When you do these things, a complicated array of psychological phenomenon kicks in.
Obviously, truth becomes your enemy.
Integrity, philosophy, virtue, consistency, universality, all of the principles that we work with here at the old Freedomain Radio moving media empire, all of those become your enemy.
Not just because you have violated them, but because you have used them falsely.
So, I mean, to take an obvious example, a parent who hits a child saying, don't hit.
Don't hit your younger brother, he's smaller than you, right?
While hitting a child who's like half your size or a third your size.
That is such an obvious contradiction, of course, that nobody can really take that seriously in any way, shape, or form.
And when you do that, you are...
Both violating a principle and appealing to a principle.
And that's a real mess, psychologically.
Because what you're saying is, it is wrong to hit people who are smaller than you, and I'm going to tell you, or inflict punishment on you to get you not to do that by hitting you.
Because you're smaller than me.
And then, of course...
You basically just make up moral rules as you go along to get people to obey you in the moment.
You recognize the value and power of morality, but you use it only to subjugate and control other human beings.
So you take other human beings, your children's desire to be virtuous, and you use it against them to cripple, undermine, and destroy their capacity to process reality, their capacity to live with integrity and consistency and honesty.
So you destroy your children's happiness, and you can't be happy if you don't live with integrity and virtue, which means fighting for the truth, not subjugating yourself to others.
So you're totally destroying your children, and you're destroying your children based on their desire to be good.
I mean, if you say to a kid who's a total sociopath, you're a bad kid, they don't care, because they don't have any value in being good.
And of course, it's the parent's fault anyway.
But you are using virtue to destroy virtue.
I mean, that's really, really bad.
Because you're recognizing the power of virtue, and you're using it to destroy virtue.
I mean, if I... I think we've had enough metaphors.
Let's plow on, shall we?
So, if you do that, then how can you ever achieve virtue?
Because you have used virtue to destroy virtue.
And you know that deep down.
I mean, you know that. Because the true self can't be killed insofar as until we become completely insane, we simply cannot stop processing reality.
We simply cannot stop processing reality.
The true self, which is the self connected to the senses that doesn't believe what other people say, but Instead, expects evidence and proof and has a sovereign relationship, a sovereign loyalty relationship to empirical reality, not to the opinions of others.
In the Randian terms, he's not a second-hander.
He doesn't say, do people think this is true, but says, is this true?
And how do I know?
Reason and evidence and so on.
Scientific method. Philosophy.
True. Rational philosophy.
We simply can't stop doing that.
We simply can't stop doing that.
My mother, who is corrupt and evil to the core, when she wakes up in the morning, I don't know, I haven't spoken to her for years, but when she wakes up in the morning and she wants a cup of coffee, she doesn't pray for it.
We can't stop reality processing.
We can't until we're mad, insane, or dead.
When she wants a cup of coffee in the morning, she goes through the logical sequence.
Well, I need to get up. I need to walk to the kitchen.
I need to open that moldy jar of Nescafe.
I need to boil it. I need to put this in the cup.
I need to stir it. I need to add my milk and sugar.
You can't stop reality processing.
You're dead. If she's hungry, she doesn't beat her couch in the hopes that it will satisfy her hunger.
She doesn't go out and strangle a bunny in the hopes of quenching her thirst.
She knows the cause. If she's hungry, she'll go and make herself something to eat.
If she's thirsty, she'll get a glass of water or something.
We can't stop reality processing.
To stop reality processing is to die.
If you stop reality processing, you have maybe a day and a half.
You'd be dead. So...
Given that we can't stop reality processing, that's what I mean when I say you can't kill the true self.
You can't kill the self that evaluates and acts in a rational manner with relation to reality.
You can't kill that because if you kill that, you're dead.
Then you have no cause and effect with relation to reality.
There's no stimulus response that is affected within reality, and if we don't interact in a rational way with reality, we're dead in a day and a half.
We just dehydrate and die.
Thirsty, get a drink of water.
Well, that's somebody who's rational. So, we can't kill the true self.
Somebody who kills the true self, you'll never get to hear from them, I mean, because they'll be dead.
Like 36 hours, however long it takes to die of dehydration.
It's not very long. So, we don't have to worry about that at all.
So, the true self can't be killed.
Because if you kill it, you go with it.
But it can be ignored.
it.
It can be ignored.
And where the true self tends to get ignored is where the consequences are far often diluted, which is why government is such a dangerous entity.
And why parenting is such a dangerous entity.
And why I strive and strive and strive to put forward the proposition that parenting without consequences, if people who are parents can abuse their children without consequences, then they will continue to abuse their children.
And that the best way to stop child abuse is to get rid of parents who abused you when you're an adult.
So there are consequences!
We all know that if you can't get fired, you don't get a good job.
Sorry, you don't do a good job if you can't be fired.
If parents can't be fired, what kind of good job are they going to do?
And of course, they're not going to go back and re-parent you, but the tale will spread.
If parents now know that if they abuse their children, their children will leave them and never talk to them again as soon as humanly possible, then they will change their behavior.
It's the only way we can reach into the black, diamond-hard biosphere of the family, which can't be affected from outside sources.
Almost invariably can't be affected from outside sources.
Bring the market to bear on the family.
This is a book I'm working on, just sort of fleshing out the content of called Privatizing the Family, which we'll get into later.
So, what happens is if you use reality to destroy somebody's capacity to process reality in the moral sense, in the loyalty sense, in the virtue sense...
If you use logic and virtue to destroy someone's capacity for logic and virtue, then you're saying logic and virtue have value, but only in terms of destroying logic and virtue.
It's a contradiction. Like all evil is, fundamentally, it's a totally irrational contradiction.
Sorry, you can't have a rational contradiction.
Let me not be too redundant.
God knows these podcasts are long enough.
So when you say that truth, reality and virtue have value only insofar as they allow you to have the power to destroy in another, in your child, truth, reality and virtue.
Truth, reality and virtue only have power to the degree that they can destroy truth, reality and virtue.
Then you can't ever achieve these things yourself.
You've set yourself up to never, ever be able to achieve truth, reality, and virtue.
You say they have value, but only for destruction.
It would be exactly the same as if you were a soldier, you picked up a grenade, you pulled out the pin, and you know you've got like five or eight seconds before this thing goes off.
Well, you throw it.
I mean, you throw it.
Right? Right? That's what you do with a grenade.
You don't pull the pin out and just stand there staring at it, unless you just want to die.
And certainly evil people do suicide, but for the most part they cause other people to suicide through the mechanism of projection which we've talked about before.
So if you have a weapon that destroys people, and you have used it to destroy people, and truth, reality, and virtue are for you a weapon of destruction, a weapon of mass and virtue are for you a weapon of destruction, a weapon It's the cause of all the other real WMDs in the world.
If you have these capacities or these attributes which you use only to destroy others, how are you going to use them to heal yourself?
They're a grenade. You pull the pin, you throw it.
You don't pull the pin and stare at it.
Why would you want to self-destruct?
Of course, the self-destructive impulses of evil people are inflicted upon others, right?
Other people are destroyed.
They are too cowardly to admit of their errors and corruptions.
So they pick on children, these brave, brave, brave people.
And sadly, all too often, it's why they have children.
As I mentioned in a podcast recently, they want to invent someone to abuse.
They need to have somebody dependent on them So that they can have power through abusing them.
It's very sad, but very common.
I mean, the Muslim world is the most fertile community.
And the most unhealthy community.
Sick, sick, sick.
So... When I say that the true self can't be killed, what I mean is that we can't stop reality processing.
It's autonomy. You can't open your eyes and will not to see.
I guess in cases of historical blindness, perhaps, but that's not really willing.
If they're true. I don't know if they're true or not.
Freud talks about them, but I don't know if they're true.
But at the same time, if you use virtue as a weapon to destroy others, you can never become virtuous yourself, because it's like standing there holding a grenade that won't kill you, just wound you terribly and because it's like standing there holding a grenade that won't kill I mean, nobody would do it.
Nobody would do it. And that's why harming others, that's why people who say, well, my parents were bad, but they've changed.
Well, no, they haven't. Because once you've used this, you can't turn around.
You can't change this principle. Once you have done something in your life that you can't undo, once you have committed a crime that you can't have restitution, you can't perform restitution for, then you're completely and totally doomed, as far as your conscience goes.
If you're an abusive parent or a bad parent, you can't go back and give your kids another childhood.
You just can't. There's no going back.
If you don't give your kids enough protein and they grow up with frail bones or no muscles or they get physically stunted, you can feed them all the meat you want when they're 16.
They're not going to go back and re-go through those development phases.
If your child grows up with attachment disorder because you're cold or withdrawn or angry...
Well, you've got yourself a permanent psychological problem then.
Almost completely untreatable.
If your child is lost in the woods for the couple of years where the language phase of development...
Development of language phase?
The phase where language development occurs.
Let's go with that sequence of words, shall we?
Let's go for something vaguely comprehensible.
If you...
Oh, you're going to let me merge my brother?
Nope. All right.
We'll try later. Oh, wait. We'll try again.
He gave me an inch. Oh, look at that.
Up here in Toronto, maybe it's the same everywhere.
People are like, well, if you had one extra coat of paint, you wouldn't be able to merge.
But I'm not going to give you a sliver more than that.
I do, though, because I think that these little kindnesses make the world a slightly better place over time.
But, um... All right.
You don't want to take it? You don't want to take it.
But, um... Oh, dear.
Oh, the thread. The thread she has been dropping.
But good, time for a sip of coffee.
So, a parent's abuse, something, something. - Amen.
All right. You might want to, uh, check your email, uh, maybe grab a cup of coffee.
I'm going to have to rewind.
Let's see what the hell I was talking about.
And a virtue of the parents.
And... Destroying parents and mind.
Ah, yes. So if you've missed this phase, you can't go back and fix it.
In the womb, if the baby gets the wrong hormone at the wrong time, then you get a female brain structure in a male body.
You can't add that hormone later and change that.
Well, if you cut someone's arm off, you can't put it back, right?
I mean, it's not, well, I guess you could, but let's say you can't, right?
You put it through a blender or something.
Oh, what wonderful moral metaphors we're working with now.
But if you do all of these things, you do things you can't have restitution, then your conscience won't help.
Your conscience is there to prevent you from doing bad things when your conscience is your reality processing, your true self, right?
And your conscience is there to prevent you from doing bad things, and your conscience is there, if you do bad things, to apologize and make restitution.
But if you continue to abuse someone, and you hide it, and you then justify it to yourself, you can't turn back.
You just can't turn back.
And that's what I mean when I say the true self can only be ignored, it can't be killed, but that the false self The corrupt self, the abusive and conformist self can totally take over the personality.
As I write about it in my novel, The God of Atheists, the...
The defenses which are originally designed to protect the personality can overwhelm and swamp the personality that they originally designed to protect.
And this is, of course, what happens with government as well.
We set it up to protect our property.
It overwhelms us and steals everything that we have that it can get its hands on.
The only limit being technical and procedural, not moral.
So thank you so much for listening.
I hugely, hugely appreciate your involvement in this conversation.
I look forward to having slightly less driven podcasts and slightly less of a challenge trying to work all of this stuff into a drive.
Although I must say, you know, it's interesting just sort of by the by.
It's interesting to me, and it does occur for me, that where...
I have started to switch over to doing podcasts where I'm not driving because I'm just so used to driving.
I find that they're actually tougher.
There's something about driving that's quite liberating.
It certainly distracts me from distractions, which is sort of helpful, and also I can raise my voice without feeling self-conscious and so on.
So it's kind of nice to be in the car at a podcast.
It sort of reminds me of, I saw a documentary on Der Stingle, the singer Sting, who was singing without playing the bass and he's like, oh my god, I can't remember the lyrics.
I'm so used to doing this song in conjunction with playing the bass that if I'm not playing the bass, I can't remember the lyrics.
It's all sort of wired together in my brain.
And sort of that can be a little bit what it's like.
So it'll be a bit of an adjustment to do this sort of stuff from...
I mean, not a real studio, but I have a beautiful big study with cathedral ceilings in my home, which is, I think, for me at least, nicer than a studio.
And so I'm going to...
I'm going to use that.
To be forewarned is forearmed, though, for the UbiVonUbiTubers that...
It is also the case that I have picked up a roaming or roving podcast gear.
And for those who are interested in podcasting, I'd really, really recommend this as an excellent, excellent tool for podcasting on the go.
And what it is is an iRiver $7.99.
I got the one gig version. You can get it from the iRiver store.
It is the only MP3 player that I have found that has a preamp built in for the microphone.
So if you do want to podcast on the go, I've started using this in my car rather than fussing with windows and microphone recognition and all this kind of crap.
So I would really recommend that.
It records from an external mic up to 320 kilobytes per second of MP3, which is just damn high quality.
And the sound quality is excellent.
It doesn't record in WAV format because, of course, I mean, it's only got one gig of memory.
That's the most you can get on this.
And don't do what I did and buy something that just has a line in thinking that you can use a microphone because it won't work.
You need a preamp. So you'd have to get an external preamp or you have to buy something like this.
And it was like $99 for this thing with a gig, which holds at the highest quality setting, 320.
A gig will hold over 7 hours of podcasting.
And if you want to go down to 8 kilobytes per second, then you can actually get...
220 hours of podcasting or something like that.
So anyway, I hope that that's helpful if you're interested in that.
But what that means is that since that doesn't come with a little video attachment, I'm going to be doing some walking and talking, which won't help you too much on the YouTube side of things.
But thank you so much for listening.
Hugely appreciate it. All the best.
▲
Export Selection