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May 17, 2007 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
40:39
760 Board Attacks Part 5: Anger Puppets

After the trolls come the shadows...

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Good afternoon, everybody. Hope you're doing well.
It's Steph. It's 11.58am on May the 17th, 2007.
Thank you so much for joining the conversation.
I'm going to continue on another board issue, which a member has brought up, not because I'm just thrilled and dying to continue to spend time on board issues, but because we are at a sort of crossroads as a community, right?
A place where we're really starting to put our values into action.
And as I've said before, I'm putting the values into action by leaving my career.
Other people have left careers, have left families.
Other people have taken on new jobs and new challenges, improved their relationships.
So this is quite a fascinating time for the community.
So I just think we can't spend almost too, we almost can't spend too much time on this, but you can let me know what you think.
Thank you.
Thank you.
So there's a user named PuttyTat, and we'll just call him Putty, and he has sort of been around, and he's got a good sense of humor, and he's quite smart, but definitely off the wall, and certainly strange, not one given to a lot of hyper-rational arguments, but certainly someone who jumped in and was a jester in some ways, a fairly aggressive jester, but a jester nonetheless.
And then, I don't know, a month or two ago...
Maybe a little bit more, maybe two or three months ago, he posted a picture of a man holding up a severed woman's head and said that this is really defooing, right?
This is defooing. I can't remember defooing in the extreme or something like that.
Or this is the real definition of defooing, which was murder and decapitation.
And I deleted the post because I just thought it was gross, inappropriate, and, you know, I mean, I'm kind of disturbed, right?
I mean, defooing is simply about Not having bad people in your life.
Not beheading them. And I didn't really see the comedy and so on.
So we got all happy and angry and sent me a bunch of nasty emails and so on.
And anyway, it just sort of died down and I didn't deal with it any further.
And then when the latest eruptions occurred on the board...
He came back and still complaining about my censorship and not allowing free speech and this and that, right?
And insinuating that other people were my intellectual slaves and, you know, just this kind of trollish stuff, right?
Just this stuff where it's negative and hostile and kind of...
Creepily insinuating, you know, like never outwardly saying stuff.
But, you know, I see this stuff very clearly.
I mean, people think that they're doing some big, camouflage-y, confusing thing, but it's all very clear to me, so I didn't appreciate it, right?
I mean, I don't think it's valuable.
So I banned him, and I banned the IP, as I usually do, right?
Because I just don't like giving people the convenience of coming in under an assumed name.
What is it called? It's called whack-a-mole, right?
When you ban someone, they come in with another name, and so on.
So, anyway, so then I got an email, an angry email from him that says, don't, don't, stop projecting with like 12 exclamation marks and says, capiche?
Don't think that you can stop me from coming in through a proxy and blah, blah, blah, you know, like I'm, so this is unworthy of your virtues and, you know, nice enough, right?
And then he says, so, so stop all the fuck ups and, you know, stuff like that, right?
So just aggressive and weird and creepy.
And so, of course, what happened is he got through to somebody on the board.
I don't know if they're friends outside of the board or whatever.
And it's the usual thing, right?
So when someone gets banned, what they want to do is they want...
They can't sort of come back themselves.
This is kind of the game they play, and this is only important, of course, because people will play the same kind of game in your life, right?
I mean, what do you care about wranglings on the board?
But this is about you and your life and your relationships.
This is what people do. So they get through to someone, and basically they have little chats on the side and so on, and they're, oh, it's so bad, and oh, it's so hypocritical, and Steph's a dictator, there's no free speech, blah, blah, blah, what a hypocrite, you disagree with him, and he's a tyrant, and Bans people who question, you know, all the same kind of things.
They get each other all worked up, right?
And then this guy, you know, someone will come and post.
So somebody put forward a post which said, Putty was banned yesterday.
He said, I fail to see why throwing a few eggs around the place requires interdictory action.
Must we all walk on eggshells and submit ourselves to blandness of expression?
Personally, I prefer some yolk with my albumin.
This thread is for supporters of Putty Tat to express their preference for his return.
Now, that's a very interesting statement, and again, this is not about the board, this is about you and your life, and about ways to look at what people are actually doing in their lives that is worth analyzing, worth having a look.
So, yes, certainly, without a doubt, it was banned.
And then, what is the story that is put forward?
All of this is part of the mythology series, and thank you so much to everyone for providing me with such rich and abundant material.
So, now there has to be an interpretation or a story around the banning.
Around the banning. He said, I fail to see while throwing a few eggs around the place requires interdictory action.
Must we all walk on eggshells and submit ourselves to blandness of expression?
Personally, I prefer some yolk with my albinin.
So here, this is throwing a few eggs around the place.
And he was just having fun.
He was a provocative clown and so on.
And Steph slammed him down and got rid of him.
And we have to walk on eggshells because Steph is such a volatile and moody fellow that if you put anything negative on his boards or anything mildly critical or off the wall, then he just comes down here like a ton of bricks and blah, blah, blah.
So the story is, right?
I mean, this is a whole wonderful narrative in like just two or three sentences.
Three sentences.
It's a wonderful, wonderful narrative about me and positioning me and positioning this putty fellow and so on.
I mean, it's beautiful in its concision, right?
This is a story. This is a story.
See, there are no facts being dealt with here.
There are no facts being dealt with here.
And the other thing, too, is that the wonderful thing is to create a thread saying people should vote to bring someone back or to allow that person back into the board.
That is a wonderful, wonderful way of saying that what Steph did is not principled.
What Steph did is not based on principles.
If you put something together, and this will occur in your family if you challenge, people will get together and they'll paint a story, they'll create a mythology, they'll create a screenplay about you and call it a documentary.
And what they'll do is say that you're not acting on principle.
That is almost the inevitable result when you do something that somebody finds problematic.
They'll say, well, you're not acting on principle, right?
So when you defoo, People will say, well, you have to learn to forgive.
You have to rise above it.
You have to love people.
So they'll say that you're not acting on principle, that you're just being petty or vindictive or mean or resentful or whatever, right?
So here, when somebody says that they're going to put together a support group for this gentleman that I banned, what they're saying is that Steph is not acting on principle because clearly you would not put together a support group To convince someone who did something moral to do something immoral.
So when you put together a group of like-minded people to convince someone else of something, you're saying that this person is acting irrationally and is acting in a destructive manner, but maybe if enough people tell them, like an intervention, then they'll change.
You don't get together a group of people when someone says 2 plus 2 is 5 to really work to convince that person that 2 plus 2 is 4.
You just don't. I support us for Putty to express their preference for his return.
And that, of course, implies that it was my mere preference to ban him.
See, this is a wonderfully concentrated myth that is just wonderful.
And I said, do you need his email?
I'm sure he'll be willing to converse with you.
And the reason that I said that is this gentleman who posted this said, I prefer some yolk with my albumin.
I prefer a non-blantness of expression and so on.
Well, I have no problem.
If you want to talk to this fellow, what the hell do I care?
It's your life, your time, right?
And so maybe I thought this guy didn't know that you could email members or whatever.
And so I said, you want his email.
I'm sure he'd be willing to converse with you if you prefer that kind of expression.
By all means, you know.
If you want to have a chat with someone like that, then absolutely.
So then there was a little bit of something fart.
So I'm just having a look through here.
And then he said, it's easy taking cheap shots at his expense when he's not able to defend himself.
Where were you when he was here?
We didn't see you rush in with retorts then, did we?
Additionally, I have it on good authority that Putty Tat will debate with you in a one-on-one thread any time you have the guts.
Putty Tat versus Steph, public debate challenge.
Only thing is, you can't censor him and true free speech is permitted.
Got the balls? Again, here we have just a wonderful mythology that is being put forward, right?
That I'm taking cheap shots at his expense, which of course is a complete projection, right?
I mean, the person who was taking cheap shots at someone else's expense was this putty tat who came in and called me a censor because I deleted a post about a beheading of a mother.
And was, you know, creepily insinuating that everybody was my intellectual slave and, you know, that it's all false and it's all a dictatorship, all this kind of stuff, right?
I mean, this is all the insinuations that were going on, right?
So it's easy taking cheap shots at his expense when he's not able to defend himself.
And I did say, I did say, look, I found him coming back, not using intellectual arguments, insinuating a bunch of stuff, and that it was kind of creepy.
Right? That was my evaluation of the situation.
And some people agreed with me, and I'm sure some people disagreed with me, but that's fine.
Right? It's my evaluation of the situation.
I don't know that me saying, I found it creepy, is a cheap shot at this gentleman.
I mean, if people have curiosity that I can say, well, what is it that you found creepy, right?
And then, of course, right here, I have it on good authority that Puddy Tat will debate with you, right?
So here's someone saying that I'm in contact with the gentleman who was banned.
Right? In a one-on-one thread, anytime you have the guts, right?
So here's another story that I'm a fearful, cowardly bully, right?
Like, I'm not just a bully insofar as I ban people for having a slight difference of opinion or having, you know, strange or unusual modes of expression.
You know, not only am I sort of an arbitrary dictator, but also I'm a cowardly, arbitrary dictator, right?
Anytime you have the guts, you can't...
And then the only thing is you can't censor him and true free speech is permitted.
So again, this is back to, like, not only am I a coward, but also I am a knee-jerk censor guy, and true free speech is permitted.
Right? And I don't see how a server that costs me $3,000 is exactly free speech, but perhaps this gentleman would be willing to share the costs, and then we could call it free speech.
But, you know, got the balls and so on, right?
So this is a sort of hyper-macho, very strange sort of approach that is attempt to provoke a reaction within me.
And I genuinely didn't understand.
It's a wonderful story. It's a wonderful story, right?
This is like the bully, you know, and the person who's been cast out is willing to come back and have a debate any time you have the guts, right?
I mean, but that's not a debate, right?
Once you start putting provocative language in, like, any time you have the guts and you have the balls and you can't censor him and true free speech is permitted, well, that's not an environment where rationality is going to win, right?
This is clearly an environment where...
Where aggression and manipulation and all these kinds of horrible things are going to occur, right?
So it is not a, right?
And saying cheap shots at my expense, sorry, this gentleman saying that it's easy taking cheap shots at this buddy's expense, and then saying anytime you have the guts, you have the balls, no censoring, true free speech, that's all cheap shots at me, right?
And this goes back to the mythology part we were talking about with relation to the board stuff, which was that you really can't attack someone for the same behavior that you're showing.
You can't attack someone for taking cheap shots and then take cheap shots.
I mean, you can, but it's just pathetic.
It just looks completely stupid to anybody who's got, even remotely, one eye vaguely squinting open to see what's going on.
Right? So, taking cheap shots by calling me a dictator, by saying that I'm a coward, that I don't have the balls, that I censor people, that I don't want free speech, and so on, right?
And then saying that I'm bad for taking cheap shots?
My God! My God!
And my anger towards this guy doesn't matter, right?
I just want you to feel free to be angry at this kind of manipulation and hypocrisy in your own life.
In your own life. This is not about the board.
This is not about me. This is not about this strange cat fellow.
This is not about the poster who had all this stuff.
And I said, not offering any logical arguments, and kind of creepy, right?
And he said, if you want logical arguments, I'm sure he will be more than happy to provide them in a debate.
But you see, and this is when I said, I don't understand what cheap shots I took, and then he quoted me back saying, not offering any logical arguments, which was true.
I have not seen any logical arguments, and kind of creepy.
Absolutely, this insinuating, this undermining, it's just kind of weird and creepy.
And so this gentleman said, with regards to this never-going-to-happen debate with this cat fellow, if you want logical arguments, I'm sure he will be more than happy to provide them in a debate.
And this, of course, is something which, when you have the eyes to see, you're not tempted at all.
You're not tempted at all.
Because the best predictor of future behavior is relevant past behavior.
So if you've been debating with someone back and forth, or at least you've seen their style of debating for about a year, and they don't put forward a lot of logical arguments, I'm not saying he hasn't put forward any, of course.
I mean, absolutely, right? I mean, the guy's intelligent, and the guy's got great verbal skills, and, you know, there's all those other kinds of talents or abilities.
But when I deleted his post with a decapitated head...
I'm saying that this was defooing, and defooing is a virtuous, non-murderous process.
To associate that with violence and murder is, to me, to take a virtue and to turn it into a vice without even the attendant comedy.
Then, when you see the hostile and angry emails that I got for the guy for deleting a post, deleting a post, like, good God, get over it.
Is this the biggest moral issue that you have in the world, as one guy deletes an offensive post?
And I've deleted, what, maybe like 10 posts in the year and a half or the year the board's been running?
If that's your big moral issue, then clearly it's not about morality.
If this is your big moral issue...
And so I didn't get any rational arguments then.
I didn't get any rational arguments when this Putty Tat fellow came back.
And so when this guy who's his friend says, if you want logical arguments, I'm sure Putty Tat will be more than happy to provide them in a debate, I know that that's not going to happen.
I know that that's not going to happen because I'm already being insulted by being called a dictator, somebody who's against free speech, a censor, and a coward.
Right? And this is his friend.
Right? This is his friend.
So this is the emotional space they're coming from.
And if this gentleman has not put forward logical arguments in the past, then he's not going to put forward logical arguments in the future.
And naturally...
If this gentleman is still interested in this board, he's still browsing.
He's just browsing as a guest, right?
And he's seeing this, and if he's not saying to the person, don't you dare say that to Steph.
Don't you dare call Steph a coward.
Especially when people think that you're associated with me.
Like if someone who claimed to be my friend posted insulting stuff to someone, I would say, I am not associated with this guy.
He does not speak for me, and I think that you better apologize.
None of that's happening. So there's not going to be any logical debate.
There's not going to be any logical arguments in the future.
There's not going to be any. Not any, not any, not any.
And this is not, again, it's not about the board.
It's about you. It's about you and the people who are in your life.
That this is the kind of stuff that you're going to deal with.
And, I don't know, some Saki fellow came in.
I don't quite understand that.
And somebody else posted, and I think this is a good way of approaching it.
Though, again, I mean, to not engage is probably the key, and I'm not saying I'm always perfect with it either, but someone said, I assume you have no problem with Steph's podcast about his mother.
Please correct me if you wish. Please show logical consistency by explaining how Steph's comments about Putty Tat were cheap shots, but his comments about his mother were not.
Cheap shots is a mythological phrase.
It's like negative. And it is directly self-contradictory.
And there's a million of these, and maybe we'll do an analysis of them at some point.
But cheap shots is a phrase that is not designed for debate.
It's not designed for knowledge or understanding.
If I call someone negative, I'm being negative.
And if I say that someone's taking cheap shots, I myself am taking a cheap shot.
It's a gun that goes off in your hand.
This is just one of the, and he's pointing this out, right?
Quite rightly. And I said, and then I posted, right, so I got an email from this putty-tat fellow.
I said, I got an email from him telling me that although I could ban his IP, I couldn't stop him coming in through proxies.
Oh, and also he demanded that I stop the fuck-ups, right?
That's a quote from his. And I said, you might want to reconsider who you're hanging out with on this one.
And I said, we'll get through all this nonsense.
It's just growing pains. This was sort of to everyone else.
Right, so the reason that I posted this was because this gentleman is saying, if you want logical arguments, I'm sure he'll be more than happy to provide them in a debate.
And also that if I say it's kind of creepy, and he's not offering logical arguments, right?
I mean, that is an accusation, I guess you could say, or that is a statement of fact.
He's not offering logical arguments, and it's kind of creepy.
So this guy says it's a cheap shot, and I responded with that, not for this guy, because, I mean, this guy's not going to listen to reason, but for everyone else, right, who's sort of on the border, right, to understand that there can be consistent behavior.
Right, so not offering logical arguments, and it's kind of creepy, well, saying stop the fuck-ups is not a logical argument.
And saying that although I can ban his IP, he can still come to my servers through proxies is kind of creepy.
It's stalking. Please don't come to my house anymore.
Well, I'm going to come and stand three inches outside your property and stare at your house with binoculars.
That's kind of creepy. So saying, I don't want you to come to my server anymore and saying, oh yeah, well I'll get there through proxies.
I mean, that's just kind of creepy, right?
That's just a violation of my property rights.
So, anyway, so then this gentleman comes back and says, so you would publicly quote a private correspondence without permission?
Did you notice at the bottom of Putty's emails it says copyright 2007, all rights reserved, so much for universal property rights.
Right? So, now, there's a...
Here's a new story, right?
Here's a new story, which is Steph is a hypocrite.
And, of course, this has been going through the whole thread.
And, again, it's stuff for you to just sort of see what goes on in these kinds of interactions, right?
So, I'm clearly pointing out that this putty-tat is not logical and is kind of creepy, right?
At least in my sort of interactions.
What do I know about everything else?
But... So, this guy says that you saying that it's creepy and he's not logical is an inaccurate statement, that it's unfair and unjust.
So, I then post my evidence that, no, it's not unfair and unjust.
And then I get attacked for posting the evidence.
Do you see how this goes?
This is somebody who's not even remotely interested in a debate.
Oh, your accusations are unsubstantiated.
Oh, here's the substantiation.
Oh, now you're publishing private emails.
So much for universal property, right?
So this is somebody who's just angry and scared and childish and kind of broken, right?
I mean, it's going to be upsetting for the gentleman to hear, and I'm sorry about that, but I'm just going based on the evidence, right?
And copyright, if you send an email to me, it becomes my property.
If I choose to publish it, I choose to publish it.
There's nothing private about it.
It's on my hard drive.
You've sent it to me. And, of course, if this gentleman is...
His first story, the most important thing, the first issue is that I'm...
I'm a bully, I'm a coward, I suppress, I'm a censor, and blah, blah, blah.
And then I say, well, no, these things that I'm saying about this gentleman I have some validity for.
I'm just making up negative arguments.
And then the accusation shifts.
This is so important to sort of understand how this all works.
Then the accusation shifts.
This is when the accusation shifts.
And this is so essential to understand that this is how you know whether somebody is interested in a logical argument.
Because there's a sort of question, right?
When is somebody just disagreeing with you?
And when has it just become kind of weird and gross?
And we all kind of get that gut sense when things are just going off the rails very rapidly.
We all kind of get that gut sense.
But how can you tell?
How can you tell? Well, the key way that you can tell...
It's that the priorities keep shifting.
The arguments keep shifting.
Nothing ever gets addressed.
Like, this is how you know you're in a false self-defense mechanism vacuum, right?
This is how you know.
Somebody puts forward a knowledge statement, right?
Steph is a coward and is attacking somebody and taking cheap shots and so on, right?
That is the priority, right?
That is the priority discussion point because it's the thing that's posted, right?
It's the thing that's posted.
And again, forget about the board.
It's about you. When somebody brings up a criticism of you, that is the most important thing that they have to deal with.
That is their biggest issue.
That is their biggest issues.
So when somebody posts a criticism, and let's just say for the sake of argument, though of course it's not true at all, but let's just say for the sake of argument that what Free Radical was posting on the boards was a criticism of me.
That the biggest issues that he had with me was that I was unjust and cowardly and a bully and all the kind of stuff that was right there in the posts.
And also that I was taking cheap shots at this putty-tat fellow.
Okay, so those are the big issues, right?
And that I'm afraid to debate him.
Well, then when I say, well, here's why I said what I said, here's the proof for it, and here's why I'm not interested in debating.
then the accusations shift, right?
Right?
So it's like, I charge you with murder.
I have a perfect alibi.
Oh, did I say murder?
I meant rape. No, I have a perfect alibi for that as well.
I'm functionally impotent.
Oh, I didn't mean rape.
I meant theft. I meant fraud.
I meant libel. I meant this.
Well, there's a kind of common thread there, right?
Clearly, the person is not interested in the exposing of a wrong or just criticism of a person's actions.
Clearly, this is how you know That trolling is occurring.
This is how you know you're with a manipulative false self.
Right? This is the poo throwing.
I'm going to see what sticks.
Ooh, what's going to stick? What if I call...
If I call Steph unjust, if I call him a coward, if I call him brutal, if I call him hypocritical, if I call him censorious, if I call him this, what is going to get at Steph?
What is going to get Steph?
Right? And of course, I mean, this is just an assassination, right?
And of course, it's not an assassination of me.
Right? It's not an assassination of me.
I mean, this guy is...
He's spitting on himself, right?
I don't even show up in this conversation, right?
Because there's no evaluation of my actions, right?
And this is how you know that there's no rational debate that's going to be occurring.
And of course, this person is taking the side of somebody who's kind of disturbed, right?
And I'm going to tell the truth, right?
This is kind of disturbed behavior.
If this guy comes in, I've got to play whack-a-mole?
Then I've got to play whack-a-mole. That's fine.
That's fine. I can delete a million posts if I need to and I can ban a thousand users if this guy keeps coming back in with new names.
No problem. No problem.
I'm going to keep this conversation where it should be, which is focused on positive rationality.
I don't care how much time and effort it takes me.
I'm going to keep this conversation rational and productive.
I promise you, promise you, promise you that.
So, here are the warning signs, right?
And this is just for you to...
I mean, as soon as this guy posted, I was like, oh lord, here we go again, right?
Because you know, you know exactly what's going on.
This guy has taken the side of this putty-tat fellow, which tells you everything that you need to know about where the conversation is going to go.
You can be that rapid and that quick about it.
This tells you everything you need to know about where the conversation is going to go.
The shift in accusations, right?
The basically throwing anything at you that may conceivably stick.
The hysterical hypocrisy of saying to somebody, you're taking cheap shots.
And then changing the story of what the problem is when those cheap shots turn out to be accurate statements of character and personality.
Do you see how efficient we can all be in these conversations?
Does this resonate?
Does this sort of make sense? Just to say how efficient we can all be with these conversations.
How much insinuation and mythology there was.
All the way from the very first post.
From the very first post.
This is something that can help you just be enormously efficient.
Because when someone says, the biggest problem I have with you is that you're cowardly, you're a bully, you're censorious, and you take cheap shots at someone, right?
If that's the biggest moral issue, then fine, right?
Then what you do is you say, well, what you call cheap shots and so on, they're not cheap shots.
I mean, here's why I sort of say what I'm saying, right?
Not cheap shots. This is why I'm saying what I'm saying.
Then that is the issue that needs to be dealt with.
I didn't prioritize what Free Radical's issues were with regards to this conversation.
I didn't make that priority.
He did. He said, this is the most important thing that needs to be dealt with, which is, Steph, that you are making unjust accusations towards putty.
So then I provide evidence for the accusations.
And then it should be, oh, well, you know what?
I can see that that's kind of creepy.
And I do apologize for saying that you had no reason, right?
No reason to say what you're saying.
That would be the rational, honorable response.
Of course, a rational, honorable person would not be taking the side of this putty fellow.
But, you know, let's just say.
Let's just say. So what happens next?
When somebody says your knowledge claims about putty are unsubstantiated, like projections or whatever, and I provide evidence, does somebody say, oh, well, that answers that.
I'm so sorry. I was unjust.
No. No.
What the person says is, well, now you're quoting private correspondence, and that's hypocritical.
No reference to the prior discussion.
You've got to see this kind of stuff, people.
Not for the board, who cares, but for your own lives, for your own selves.
What happens? When an accusation is refuted, what happens?
Is there an acknowledgement of the refutation?
No. What happens is just some other damn thing is thrown out.
This is how you know that you're not dealing with rational people.
It's an unreality of constantly shifting back and forth, never pinned down on anything.
Nobody can get an answer.
Everything gets dropped. Everything gets changed.
Every topic gets changed.
Every accusation gets changed.
No amount of evidence is enough for anything.
And the priorities are never constant.
And this is a very, very important thing to understand when you're dealing with somebody and, you know, you can get upset with each other and so on, but where the rational priorities are constantly changing.
I'm sorry, I'm not doing a very good job of explaining this.
Let me sort of try and let you know what I mean.
So, in any statement of values, in terms of property rights, let's just say property rights is the big issue for free radical.
So, when I say to you, I don't want you on my property.
I don't want your opinions on my property, on my board.
And then the person says, well, I'm going to come through in proxies anyway.
And proxies of course means both masking your IP address, but it also means getting somebody else to speak for you, right?
So when PuttyTat was saying, I'm going to come into your server through proxies, he both meant that he was going to bypass my IP ban, but he also meant that he was going to get other people to speak for him and cause a lot of shit and disturbance that way.
And of course he did, and Free Radical stepped up to be the anger puppet of PuttyTat and continued to create all the shit that PuttyTat, for whatever reason, felt that he didn't want to do.
So, clearly, if I don't want PuttyTat on my board, then I don't want PuttyTat saying to someone, oh, post it, I'll do a debate, post it, I'll do this, post it, I'll do that, right?
Do this, do that, right?
So, threatening to come onto my property, both through an IP bypass and also through getting somebody to speak on his behalf, it's a violation of both the letter and the spirit of not wanting someone on my server, right?
Oh, you don't want me to post?
Well, I'm going to tell my brother what to type then, right?
I mean, that's totally a violation of the spirit of the invasion of property rights.
So, if property rights is the key, then violations of property rights should be the number one, right?
The person who most egregiously violates property rights...
Should be the one who is most in the wrong, right?
So, if I want to ban you from my server, and then you come back in, either through bypassing the IP ban, or getting somebody else to type what you want them to type, that is a pretty, it's not egregious, but it's not an insignificant violation of property rights.
Copying and pasting an email is not a violation of property rights.
If you send me a letter, it becomes my property.
This is all fairly well established.
This is not anything that is unknown or problematic or confusing.
And of course, the copying of the contents of emails that people have received is a fairly common practice on the board.
And again, this is where you need to see the consistency in behavior and how the rules are simply manufactured to attack whoever you're angry at.
This is corrupt arguments.
This Free Radical Fellow has not attacked anyone else for copying and pasting.
I reported on the conversation.
I didn't copy and paste any of the contents of the email.
I mean, if reporting something that somebody told you or wrote to you is a violation of property rights, then quoting another board member is a violation of property rights.
Me saying Ayn Rand said this is a violation of property rights because I'm reporting on something that she wrote.
My father said this to me in a conversation the other day.
It's a constant practice on the board.
Never attacked before this issue, right?
Never! Rank shitty hypocrisy.
So when I report on a conversation, not quoting, I didn't quote, I didn't copy and paste anything, reporting a conversation that occurred, or an email that someone sent, if I'm not allowed to do that, if I'm not allowed to do that, then this gentleman can't quote other board members without their permission.
And the funny thing, of course, is that the picture that, I guess, months ago started this whole mess of the decapitated head of the mother being held up by a son...
That was, of course, somebody else.
That was a link put in by this putty-tat fellow, and I don't remember Free Radical ever complaining about that at the time, and I don't remember him claiming any problems with anybody ever quoting or reporting on conversations in the past.
It's only in this instance that the rule is manufactured, and suddenly the most egregious thing that can occur is not the fact that somebody swore at me in an email that someone sent me a nasty and unpleasant email.
That's not the issue. The issue is that I talked about it.
Do you see the insanity that is going on here?
The moral hypocrisy, the manipulation, the false self-bullshit that is going on here?
And this is, again, who cares about the board?
It's about the people in your life who just make up whatever rules they can with no reference to the past, with no reference to prior conversations.
This is a pathetic and empty and futile rage.
This is a tantrum. It's got nothing to do with me.
These are all emotional brutality skills, abusive skills, that these people had pounded into them by their families.
That, in a situation where somebody's threatening to bypass a ban and come to my property anyway, where they're sticking their angry hand up the ass with some puppet who's posting on the board on their behalf, when someone sends an angry and abusive and, frankly, quite creepy email to me, when all of this is going on, What is the greatest crime, the crime that bubbles to the very surface of these issues, right?
This is the big picture perspective that's so essential in the realm of philosophy.
This is what is so important to see.
What has it all come down to?
Oh, you reported on an email that was sent to you, right?
After all is said and done, with everything that's been going on, With all of the stuff that we've talked about in terms of ethics and the corruption of the state and the corruption of the family and the corruption of religion, of culture, of patriotism, of military, of war, the greatest and biggest moral issue that is bubbling up to the surface, that is right at the top, at the forefront of this gentleman's perspective...
It's so important not to get wrapped up into the details, but to constantly refer back to larger...
I mean, everything.
And Adam is larger than this, right?
But larger, more significant issues.
That when you get embroiled in a debate with someone about whether or not it was okay to report on an email that was sent to you, that is not at all the issue.
issue that is not at all the primary moral problem in the universe that needs to be dealt with right now.
And this is the person whose friend I'm supposed to debate...
This is the person who's putting forward a debate?
Who starts off by insulting me?
Who starts off by calling me a coward and a bully and a dictator and somebody who can't handle any spice in his conversation and somebody who's square and somebody who's conservative and somebody who's taking cheap shots?
This is the ground that is laid down, right?
And this is part of the pathological need to be rejected by somebody who maybe you perceive to be an authority.
Maybe I'm a daddy figure for these people.
I wouldn't doubt that that's probably quite likely.
But this is, I mean, how pathological do you have to be?
What kind of horrible self-hatred do you have to be embroiled in in your soul?
Right? To walk up to a woman, to spit in her face, and then get enraged and call her a bitch because she won't go out with you.
Oh, maybe you, you cowardly bitch, don't have the balls to go out with me.
Well, clearly, this is not someone you want to date.
Or, if God forbid they do want to date you, oh my God, how sick is she, right?
So, when somebody comes up and starts insulting me and changing the topic and throwing whatever shit they can at me, in the mad hope that something's going to stick, and then calls me a coward for not wanting to debate with them, If you serve me up a shit sandwich, I'm not a coward for saying, not hungry, thank you.
Or if I am, I'll live with it.
It's not cowardly to have standards of behavior.
It's not cowardly to not want to lower yourself to the pathetic and false self-ruths of people.
It's not cowardly to not debate with jerks.
It would be completely irrational.
To do that. And of course what they're going to do is...
I mean, the whole point is to put you in an impossible situation, right?
The whole point is to put you...
When you're in an impossible situation, you know it's the false self.
You know! You know it's the false self, right?
So when I'm told that my accusations are unjust, then I have one of two choices, right?
I mean, according to this paradigm, right?
I can either...
Not provide any evidence, in which case I am then considered to be unjust, and it's like, oh, well now he doesn't have anything to say, does he, right?
Or I can produce evidence, in which case I get attacked for revealing a private conversation.
I mean, it doesn't bother me, because I don't care, right?
It's just nonsense. But it's, again, just important for you to see and to understand what's going on with this kind of stuff.
So, anyway, I hope that this is helpful.
Again, I don't want to spend the rest of the podcast series dealing with this stuff on the board, but I do think that it's quite essential to really take a look at this kind of stuff and to learn these principles that are in this, right?
This is a wonderful lab for us to be able to see this stuff more clearly in our own lives.
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