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Aug. 19, 2007 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
02:11:21
847 Sunday Call In Show Aug 19 2007

Dealing with siblings, criteria for breaking with family, and learning how to speak Wookie...

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Well, thank you everybody so much for joining us at 4.07pm on Sunday the 18th and 19th of August 2007.
And this is the Sunday call-in show.
I was in with my bum buddy Mark Stevens on his radio show Out of Vegas Baby yesterday.
So that's available at AdventurousInLegalLand.com if you'd like to check that out.
We had interesting chats about the housing bubble And, ooh, even a little bit about the oft-requested topic of the Fed.
And I want to, I'm sort of going to, it's on the list to do more on the Fed.
But I want to sort of do it justice, and that's going to require quite a bit of research, and I want to make sure I get it right.
It is sort of a very arcane and challenging topic to get straight answers on, because a lot of people who write about the Fed are insane.
So I want to make sure that I get, you know, but the other stuff, the stuff that's not insane is really dull.
So... I'm sort of trying to work that part out.
We'll get there. Other news of note, I'm going to...
I'm thinking of, sort of depending on the level of interest, to have a sort of book donation for On Truth, The Tyranny of Illusion, my short, highly concentrated philosophical hammer blow to the core of illusions, which is available at freedomainradio.com.
You can search for it at lulu.com, and it's $19 and change, a couple of bucks for shipping.
You can read it in a day, but I think you can spend a lifetime living it, or at least so far.
That's been my experience.
But for those who have read it, who would like to have somebody else be able to read it, I'd like to set up a sort of donation thing, and anybody who would like to buy a book for someone else, I won't charge them full price for it, and we'll sort of figure out a way to get that done.
So you can go to freedomainradio.com forward slash B-O-A-R-D, and you can send me an instant message or a private message with the address of somebody you'd like to send the book to, and we'll work it out from there.
So, of course, you can just buy a bunch of copies yourself.
You get bulk discounts for as few as 26 copies.
So if you have extended family that you want to completely alienate in one fell swoop, you know, I could consider this book, a handing out this book could be a core part of the defu process.
So if you want to just get rid of everybody all at the same time, then that may be the way to do it.
In other news, I have finished, as I've mentioned, finished reading The God of Atheists, and so if you've had a chance to listen to the audiobook, feel free to let me know what you think.
And I've booked an editor to start working on it in August, and I think that is going to be a very interesting part of this sort of free-domain radio thing, because...
Getting people to listen to the podcast is a challenge.
Getting people to read a book on philosophy, even a short one like on truth.
Sorry, when I say short, I mean concentrated.
in the same way that Christina has concentrated.
But I think that getting people to read a novel is a whole lot easier than it is to get them to read something like that.
So, I'm hoping that when The God of Atheists comes out, and I'll be working with the editor for a little while, mostly just to check for name consistencies, time frame consistencies, and of course, the things which I suck at, which is catching typos.
So, hopefully that will be out, and you'll be able to give that to...
In the God of Atheists, not in the title, the foreword, or anything.
I might throw something just at the back for more information or whatever.
But this will be a book that you could hand out to friends and family that has, in a sneaky kind of way, a lot of the philosophy that we talk about here, but in a sort of indirect, dramatic kind of way.
And, you know, not to pat myself on the back too hard, but having read the end of the book, and I haven't read this book in a while.
Man, I love that book.
I really do. I think it's just great.
And it certainly has its funny bits, but I really like the manic swing between tears and laughter, which of course is pretty much part of the lithium-fueled nature of this show as a whole.
So anyway, that will be out, I hope, early September.
I'm going to, again, self-publish, since my experience with publishers is not positive, so I'm going to self-publish, and I think that will be a very interesting book for you to hand to people, because there's enough philosophy in it that It will open people's minds.
But I think that it's well written, dramatic enough.
And I found the characters very vivid.
It was very vivid for me to read the characters out loud.
It was kind of fun to do the acting thing again.
Especially the salesman from New England.
I had so much trouble doing his accent because I kept laughing while I was doing it.
I kept sort of breaking into laughter.
I had a very, very tough time keeping a straight face with the New England accent.
But anyway, so if you get, of course, if you are a Gold Plus subscriber, you can get the audiobook.
Speaking of the website, a brilliant listener has stepped up and has bitten off a little bit of a bullet for the site redesign.
I did get a quote that was a little over $5,000 to do a site redesign.
That's a lot of donations.
I'd actually rather spend the money on advertising.
I've had some compliments on the site, even as it stands.
I think that if you're a highly technical person, you look at the website and you can sort of, with your practiced eye, you might be able to see some stuff which would indicate that it's a template-driven website.
But I'm not sure that the average person gets that impression.
But I think that I certainly have wanted to move the site beyond its current claustrophobic elevator shaft 800 by 600 scaling, and the template, of course, doesn't scale.
And trying to get it to scale is a mess and, of course, wouldn't look very good with the top graphics.
A listener has started plowing his way in for which I will be rewarding him with back rubs and other things which we don't really have to get into here but which definitely will be a private YouTube account.
So thanks very much to him and you can see a preview of that on the board if you like.
He's got a site running with that so that's great and it's going to be a little bit less cluttered, a little bit less busy.
And Christina actually likes it more than my website, so we're not talking at the moment, so she won't be on the show, because I consider this...
Infidelity and betrayal really works on the technical level for me, far more than the sexual level, because I love robots.
Anyway, so let's move on with the show.
I just wanted to do a very sort of brief beginning part, and if you could...
Then just let me know in the chat window if you want to speak or you just unmute yourself and speak.
I haven't finished watching the film.
I'm not a huge Ryan Gosling fan because pretty much every movie he makes he looks like he's trying not to vomit all the way through the film and that's considered to be intense acting.
But I'd heard very good things about his performance in Half Nelson where he basically plays a communist teacher who talks about There's no spoilers, because nothing happens in the movie.
It's impossible to spoil.
And, of course, if you've heard anything about it, you know that the teacher is addicted to drugs, and that's revealed in the first few minutes of the film.
But it's interesting, because he says, he's talking about the civil rights time of the 1960s, one of the great mythological, nonsensical watersheds, quote, watersheds in American history, where liberty...
For our black brothers and sisters were supposed to be enforced by the government herding them into, not by setting them free of state schools, but by herding them into different state schools, right?
Because if you move cows from one field to another, that's pretty much the same as setting them free.
So he's talking about all of this with a group of black students.
And he's not talking about, you know, what is the system that keeps us enslaved?
You know, what are the aspects of the system that keeps us enslaved?
And the kids are like, you know, prisons, right?
And schools and whitey and so on.
And he's like, yeah, yeah, that's all very good.
And of course, one of the kids says, but that's you, Peach, right?
And of course, that's a very interesting phenomenon, right?
And he says, yeah, I'm absolutely part of the system.
That is keeping you down.
But we're all part of the system that keeps us.
He goes into this hole like he has to blur the lines.
And I thought it was a very effective...
This is the unconscious agony of a culture that is trying to find its own wounds and is trying to heal itself.
And it is horrible to watch.
I mean, because it really is horrible to watch.
It's like, I don't know, it's like somebody who's had their leg bitten off trying to find it in the ocean watching these artistic kind of films trying to identify the wounds in the culture and heal them.
You know, accidentally, and of course they would have no solution for this, right?
Other than some vague, petific, zen, collectivist, hippy, dippy nonsense.
But, you know, they're absolutely right.
How on earth can a teacher teach a child about criticizing the state?
Because the teacher... Because the government, the prisons...
And he said, school is like a prison, right?
And he said, you guys don't want to be here.
And they're all like, no, we don't want to be here, man.
And of course, how can a teacher who works for the government...
Who is participating in the system that herds these poor children into these mental brain-mashing gulags?
How can he teach them anything about freedom?
And this, of course, is part of the unconscious agony that is going on in the film with his drug use and so on, and his alienation and so on.
And, you know, they're onto something, but of course they're onto something in a way that is just provocative but doesn't point any way towards healing or improving the situation.
If you watch the film, look for that scene.
I haven't watched to the end.
Basically, it's kind of a dull film.
I mean, nothing really happens.
And they weasel everything, right?
So this guy obviously is a communist.
He's got lots of communist books on his bookshelf.
So this woman says, are you a communist?
He's like, oh, you've got a copy of communist books.
He's like, oh, so if I have a copy of Mein Kampf, does that make me a Nazi, right?
And again, it's not really an argument or anything like that, but it's just dodging the question.
But it is very interesting to see just how agonized a rebel is in the system.
That gives him access to children only at the cost of him not being able to give them any kind of evidence of integrity, and that is very much mirrored in his drug use.
Anyway, it's an interesting film, and certainly it's well worth sitting through it just for that scene, to see the agony of this film.
This wound that is being explored blindly and doing more to open it than to close it.
But of course you can't do that with art.
You can only do that with philosophy.
But I wish I'd had a chance to have a final script rewrite on that film.
Boy, it would have been quite a different film and would, I'm sure, never have been able to be made.
The name of the movie is Half Nelson.
Half Nelson. It's, I guess, the name of a wrestling move where you get somebody into the crook of your elbow.
So... That was interesting, and I hope that you will get a chance to have a look at it.
It really is. And the acting is very good.
I think of all of the ex-Mickey Mouse Club members, he probably is the most accomplished actor.
He is? Yeah, he is actually...
He was with Britney Spears, and Christina Aguilera, and Justin Timberlake, and not me.
So, I think he's just started his own vanity band, like Keanu Reeves with Dogstar, because...
Christina is very interested in the celebrity magazine, so sometimes we buy them for her.
Yeah, Ryan Gosling, basically he's like a black hole of depression in every movie.
I've only seen a couple of movies that he's been in, but he looks like he just wants to fall into a vat of black hole tapioca and drag your soul with it.
So that's just something you have to get a little bit used to.
And that's sort of like, have you ever seen the movie The Wall with Bob Geldof?
He looks like he's just on the verge of vomiting throughout the entire film, and that's called intense acting.
And of course, in Ireland, that probably is.
So it's a similar kind of acting school.
Basically, what they do is they put, I think, a bunch of diseased meat with maggots in their mouth throughout most of the movie, and that, of course, gives them a burning kind of nihilistic intensity.
And this is art.
So anyway... We don't have to get into that kind of method acting.
That's all I really had for an introduction.
I've had a fun week.
I don't know if anyone's got up to the conversations, I guess, that I sort of had on the board with regards to the enslavement of women and the fact that women are sort of raised to be slaves and that they transubstantiate?
Oh, I'll get the word.
It's coming! They sublimate this into a kind of Zen rising above kind of stuff.
And I haven't actually had any reaction to them yet.
And it's really great to be podcasting again.
I'm still working on this new book on ethics, but it's really tough.
So I am plugging away on that.
We shall see what some of the lovely ladies comes back on.
All right. Sorry?
Yeah, Christina has listened to part one, and so we shall see.
I think, you know, it's very hard to have...
I find this kind of rising above it, you know, don't repay kind with kind, to be annoying.
It is very annoying, and it's hard to have compassion, but again, having talked about it with Christina and some other women, It's really hard when you're sort of raised to be the social lubricant, so to speak, and to never cause a fuss, and to smooth everything over, and to monitor everyone's emotions and manage and control them.
Why such a woman would choose to marry a hysteric like me, obviously, is somewhat baffling, but I guess she wanted to go for the Olympics of husband management, and so far, she's...
Oh yeah, she's way ahead of the pack.
Absolutely. It's sort of like watching the Boston Marathon, where one person gets a jet.
Anyway, so...
I guess we can...
I can sort of take on your questions now if you have any.
That was sort of as much as I wanted to start with, so feel free to pop them up!
And... Oh, one last thing!
Actually, one last thing just before we start.
Ooh! What a tease he is.
But the other thing that I'd sort of like to mention is that this morning I had a quick game of Unreal Tournament 2004.
And my call sign on that, if you play the game, it's Free Domain Underbar Radio...
Because I am a slave to advertising.
And, oh, I've also spent some money on some more advertising through a bunch of blogs, and also I started up Google AdWords because I'm curious to see if this sort of top 10 in the 2007 podcast awards is going to get more people to come to the site.
We shall see. And last but not least, thank you to the one person who has come by to put a review of Untruth, Autority, and Illusion at Lulu.com.
If you could come by and do that, there's a link on the board, or you can go to Lulu and search for my name, write a review of the book, that might help convince people who are on the fence.
So I was playing Unreal Tournament this morning, and I think there was a fan on the game, because I was playing for about 20 minutes, and of course, like any first-person shooter player, I only got killed once, naturally.
In that 20-minute time period, and I have the text-to-speech feature enabled.
And so a very proper British female voice said, Ha!
Ha! I think I just killed Free Domain Radio!
And I've got to think, that only came from a fan.
And of course, I would have found out more, but naturally I didn't get killed again during the entire game period.
So, anyway, I just thought that was kind of fun.
Can you talk about working from philosophy rather than smash your head in empiricism?
Actually, I get killed pretty rapidly in those games.
I have pretty much a kamikaze approach, as I do with most things in my life, so I get usually the highest points but the most deaths in these games.
If you actually didn't get points, like if you got points deducted for being killed, I would absolutely end up in the negatives, and there'd be some sort of scientific notation after it.
But I'm the guy with 800 mines and 12 rockets always at the ready.
Anyway, you can add me as a buddy in Unreal Tournament if you play it, and it would be great fun to...
Because I know most of the listeners are quite young relative to me, so it would be great fun pitting my tired old Battlestar Galactica impulses against some well-oiled young neurons.
So you can...
You'll beat me in something, so...
All right!
I'm good at sniping. Yeah, sniping is...
You've got to have a lot of patience for sniping and pretty quick reflexes, so it's quite the opposite of my sort of mental criteria.
All right, so I think I'm not hearing anything, so if you do have something, just click on the mute button next to where you are, if you have muted yourself, and pump away with the questions.
Hi, Steph. Hello?
Can you hear me? Uh-oh.
Well, can anyone else hear anyone?
I can't hear anything.
Yeah, you can hear me, but can you hear...
Oh, I can.
Oh, I wonder.
I haven't got my mute on. Let me just make sure.
Nope, no mute on. Sorry.
Let me just... Speakers, volume is at 100.
I was hearing things earlier.
You don't hear anything, right? My volume is up.
My volume is up. I'm so sorry.
I must have hit the monitor button while I was doing the massive engineering feats.
Sorry, if you have a question, please, if you could re-ask it.
Hello, Steph. Hi.
Hi, this is Carl here.
Hi, how's it going? Good, how are you doing?
I'm just great, thank you.
I had some comments about the Fed and money, because I read a very interesting book recently called By Jesus, actually, a book by Jesus, but no.
Jesus Huerta de Soto.
Money, bank, credit, and economic cycles.
Right. He's a Scottish writer, isn't he?
Well, he's Spanish-speaking, actually.
Just kidding. Is he from South America or is he from McSpain?
I think he's from Spain. That kind of looks like a big old textbook or something.
It was put out by the Mises Institute recently.
It was written in Spanish in the late 90s, but it was translated recently to English.
It went into the history of money, the mutim contract, the irregular deposit contract, and showing the basic understanding of what is a loan and what is a deposit and so forth, and the whole history of it.
It has some wonderful charts that illustrate what happens to the productive structure, how it gets distorted by the excess money and so forth.
I thought that was a great book.
Much more interesting than it looks on the outside.
Well, that's great. If you could email me the name of it, then that would be great.
You can do it through the board or you can do it through the website.
Then I will try and pick it up. And if it does look too daunting for me, also I might just email you back and interview you about the book if I end up not having time to read it.
I feel that's the Jon Stewart approach.
I can't imagine that guy reads a book every day for his show.
I think he just skims it and then asks people questions.
So that might be your role if you'd like to take that on.
But if you could send me the list, that would be great.
Sure. I don't know if you've checked out the stuff available on Mises.org.
You have the Mystery of Banking, which Rothbard wrote, which you can just download for free, and that has a lot of interesting stuff in it, too.
Thanks. I have looked at some of the stuff.
I've got some of his stuff on audiobook, read by the guy with the really mellifluous voice that is actually pretty much like Novocain, straight to my forehead.
Oh, yes. Banking, yes.
Well, thanks.
I appreciate that. I have stuff which touches on the Fed in my library, but I don't have a book on the Fed, so maybe that would be a good thing to go through.
Well, thanks.
Did you have any other questions or comments that you wanted to bring up?
Gosh, here's something I thought of, because I listened to the podcast about women and so forth, and of course, I'm just wondering, of course, defooing, there could be different reasons, but I'm wondering if some cases, you know, if defooing by just leaving the family can also be an example of leading the battle, as it were.
I mean, it's often necessary to get your own space, and if there's no point to the relationship, then of course there's no point to it.
And you may need time to take off, but sometimes there are other people involved, there are other extended family members and so forth you could possibly help.
So I was just wondering if you had any comments about that.
Well, I think that's an excellent question, of course, and that is, there is a very important fulcrum, I think, between engaging to win and beating your head against the wall.
Can you think of examples wherein you would put an interaction into the latter categories?
You mentioned extended family and so on.
I mean, I have some myself, but this is basically your show, so can you think of criteria that might differentiate these two situations?
Well, if you have...
I mean, I get along pretty well with my family in general.
I haven't seen food.
But in particular, I think my involvement, and there have been times where I've been less involved, but I have two nephews, and so I felt very important to be a role model and involved for that reason.
And so that was one extra reason for me to stay involved.
Right. And so that was an example of that, but I happened to be in a situation where I didn't feel the need to be through anyway, but that was one extra reason to make more effort.
Right, right. Well, I mean, you're perfectly right in that there's no such thing as, you know, defooing is the gateway to happiness, right?
I mean, you're just stopping.
The simple act of ceasing to see people is not going to make you happy.
So, and of course, if you get along well with your family, then defooing would make about as much sense as me divorcing Christina, right?
I mean, if you're overjoyed in a relationship, you should definitely stay in it, and especially if you quit your job.
There are certain criteria that I could think of which I'll get to in just a second but you said that you wanted to be a better role model for your nephews.
I would assume what you mean by that to some degree is that your brother or your sister is not a good role model for your nephews or not as good?
Well I think that the more they have the better.
I think it's like having When I was growing up, I had various people, extended family.
They weren't actually extended family, but they were friends of the family.
I had other adults to look to to see what kind of behavior I might want to emulate.
It was nice to have more examples.
I guess I probably don't want to get into detail about the shortcomings of my particular family and so forth, but I think there are qualities I can...
Let me just...
Sorry, let me just ask because I know that I don't want to lead you into anything that you feel might compromise privacy for people, but would it be fair to say that you would Is it your brother whose kids you're talking about?
My sister. Your sister, okay.
Would it be fair to say that you would still be friends with your sister if she wasn't your sister, or would you be less likely to have a relationship with her?
Well, I would...
I would be less likely probably.
We have certain things in common, but certain things not in common.
Now, is it things like religion or statism or relativism?
Where is the barrier or the divide between your value systems?
I would say religion, not organized religion, but religion and statism, although I'm able to speak pretty openly about it, although that's been a struggle at times, but I've found a Non-combative ways to discuss that subject openly more recently.
Okay, and if I can just...
And I'm actually bringing around...
I'm bringing around, I think, the adult people as well as, you know, being able to discuss it with my nephews as well.
Right, right. And look, that's fantastic.
As long as people are engaged in a conversation that is in pursuit of truth, and as long as it's not just one person, you know, lecturing other people, then it's a wonderful relationship to stay in, right?
And if you can... salvage family relations from enlightenment.
It's wonderful. I mean, it's an incredibly great thing to do.
There is a challenge, though, right?
There is a challenge, and the challenge which I'm sure you're fairly aware of is, you know, if you say openly, and whether you do or don't is obviously up to you, and there's no particular need at any particular time to do it, but if you say, well, God does not exist.
There's no such thing as God, and the government uses violence to get what it wants, And, you know, therefore to support the government is to support an evil institution, right?
At some point, this is going to come to a crisis, right?
You don't have to say that.
It doesn't really matter. At some point, it's going to come to a crisis, right?
And at some point, your nephews are going to say to their mom, to your sister, but, you know, uncle so-and-so says that the government is an evil institution and you support the government.
Or uncle so-and-so says that there's no such thing as a god.
And you say that there is.
Like at some point, it's going to come to that, right?
As your nephews get older.
Right. I think I'm probably talking to their parents at least as much about politics and the government as I am directly to them.
So it's kind of going...
I would say it's pretty well synchronized, my conversations with both generations.
Well, that's fantastic. I mean, you must have some very, very good conversational and reasoning skills.
So that, of course, speaks very well about your family and your parents, of course, right?
So I think it's absolutely wonderful what you're doing, and I certainly wish you all the best.
And if you have tips on how to achieve this, I mean, if you have time to jot them down, that would be great, right, to other people who have family situations that can handle these kinds of fundamental conversations, and that does speak very well.
To your family as a whole and, of course, to you as an individual, I'd say, you know, take my hat off to you.
Well, thank you. That has taken many years.
I was exposed to Rand Objectivism and Rothbard over 20 years ago and I've had periods when I haven't felt I've been able to communicate with people and periods when I haven't seen much of family members.
But your podcast has certainly helped me to learn to be open and just, as you say, just be yourself and see what happens and take the risk of it.
It's not going to work. And that really opened up a new possibility.
Right, and if family conversations do become volatile in this area, I certainly do recommend switching to dolphin speak, which will certainly distract people from what's going on at the time, although you may not want to do it when there's a lot of expensive china around.
Exactly. Well, good for you.
I wish you the best with this conversation, and it is a great thing that you're doing.
I certainly do understand the...
I have two nieces that were part of my brother's kids, and that is a very challenging part of the conversation.
But, of course, your family sounds a lot more stable and open than mine was, so good for you.
I would say that, for me, the criteria are sort of threefold that will determine whether you're running away from a battle that you should stay in or whether you are stopping beating your head against the wall.
There are some long-term listeners who are actually in this very chat who are still doing a bit of the head against the wall thing, which is fine.
I mean, good lord. I took a job in a company not nine months ago, which was very much the same thing.
So this is no stone casting from an ivory tower of perfection, but the criteria, to me, are sort of threefold, and this would be the case for any relationship.
The question of its value to you.
So if we assume that there's some kind of innate value of a relationship For you, then there's three criteria which will say whether or not it's a conversation that's worth staying in.
If there's physical abuse, that of course is a complete and total and utter and complete deal-breaker.
There is no possible productive relationship that could ever involve physical abuse.
If there is verbal abuse, that is a complete deal-breaker.
And what I mean by that is not somebody muttering occasionally, oh, don't be such a jerk, right?
That's not exactly quite the same as verbal abuse.
Verbal abuse is anybody who questions your absolute loyalty and devotion, both financial, emotional, and perhaps sexual, to free domain radio.
That is really the sin qua non of verbal abuse.
But, I mean, if somebody sort of regularly puts you down or scorns you or rolls your eyes or calls you names or whatever, Then, clearly, this is not someone that you can stay in a productive debate with.
And the third criteria is, and we can see this, a woman is courageously confronting her mother and is telling us about it on the boards.
And the conversation that I had with a listener recently called The Velvet Mirror.
If you're just not listened to, that is another kind of relationship where you simply cannot have.
A productive and forward-moving discussion with anyone.
And so if those things aren't present, if you're not beating each other up, if you're not getting yelled at and put down, and if you're actually being listened to, and being listened to doesn't mean that people always agree with you.
Lord, I know that one.
But it does mean that they respect your thoughts and thinking and that you have a criteria for resolving disputes that does not involve being ignored or being put down or being physically aggressed against.
It can take a long time to change people's minds, as you know, it certainly did for me, and we should be patient with that, but there does have to be a willingness of people to stay in the conversation, right?
So, you know, militarily, if you sort of take the analogy of a sword fight, right, then the sort of physical abuse side is, you know, you're taking out your sword and somebody drops an H-bomb, right?
You can't win that battle.
I would run away, too. The second one is...
Where they use verbal abuse, it's like you pull out your sword and they just open up a trap door and you fall under some poison spikes or something.
And the third one that I would analogize in terms of not being listened to is that everybody else runs off the battlefield and you're just swinging your sword completely alone.
Well, that's kind of ridiculous, right?
So that would be a case wherein I would regretfully sheath my sword and leave the battlefield myself, right?
So if nobody's responding to you or they put you down and reject you then, You're fighting alone and nobody's actually on the field with you, so there's not much point staying.
But if somebody also brings out a sword and you're enjoying the thrust and the parry and so on and it's a safe fencing environment or whatever, then I would say absolutely.
It's absolutely essential to stay in the conversation because there's real joy in discussing those kinds of fundamental issues with people, although it can be scary at times, of course.
Does that sort of make sense?
Yes, I think one thing that I used to join in the escalation of the battle in terms of trying to win the argument rather than trying to get to the truth, of course the truth is scary enough, volatile enough, but I found that by de-escalating, and this won't work with everybody,
but that by de-escalating and sticking to the discussion, rather than trying to win the argument and dominate, the urge to dominate, that that really That elicited over time the same behavior from the other side.
That happened to work in my case.
And that was very important.
No, that's an absolutely essential insight that you got there, that when you try to beat other people to win, that reflects a situation when you're growing up, or situations that you've had in your dating or social life, which is not centered around win-win.
The whole point of an intellectual debate is that both people come away with something.
Something more than they went into.
That's a win-win, right? We all know this from economics, that every voluntary transaction is a win-win.
You buy a pen for five bucks, you want the pen more than five bucks, the other guy wants five bucks more than a pen.
You both walk away with something more.
And if you have a desire to dominate other people and to win and to erase them and sort of get them to conform to your way of thinking, that's because there's not as much experience in the win-win negotiation.
And, of course, the win-win, though, requires A shared methodology and a shared respect.
So if I start debating with somebody about the welfare state, I have to assume, if I'm going to debate with them, I have to assume that they care about the poor and they want the poor to have better lives.
So if someone starts talking about foreign aid, I've got to assume that they want the people starving in Africa to have a better life.
I assume that they're not like Tony Snow apologizing for the empire or something.
Because then I won't debate with them because they're malevolent.
And so finding things in common, right?
I mean, when people say, oh, you want no government, and they think that that means that I want to, you know, I don't know, push old ladies in front of buses or something, then we have to say, well, you know, we both want less violence in the world.
I mean, who wouldn't be happy with less violence in the world?
We'd both love to see an end to war.
We'd both love to see more opportunities for poor people to get out of poverty.
We'd love to see kids getting better educations.
We'd love to see the price of health care come down.
You have to assume all of these things, right?
And, you know, like two scientists both want to discover the truth about the universe.
They may disagree. They have a common methodology called the scientific method.
But you have to assume that the person you're debating with is benevolent and wants the best.
And they just maybe have a mistaken way based on being over-propagandized about...
Like an environmentalist. We have to assume that an environmentalist wants a healthier planet for the longevity of life, right?
And they just think that the government will provide that, right?
That's the mistake. But you have to assume that they want that, right?
Right. And you may not convince somebody right away, but I think the desire sometimes is to convince people on the first half, but as long as they're willing to listen and discuss things rationally, you can accept that it may take quite a while to convince them.
Well, it's actually not a good sign if you convince them right away.
Right. Too bad. Because it means that they're just conforming to you because of some hang-up, and it just means that then the next guy who comes along will get their allegiance, right?
You definitely want it to be a spirited battle, right?
With a win-win outcome.
And people who sort of agree, oh yeah, I'm an anarchist now too, right?
Well, the next guy who comes, oh, now I'm a democratic socialist, right?
So you absolutely want them to fight for what they believe in so that when they do change their minds, that you know it's something that will stick.
Right. Okay, that's all I have for now.
Well, thank you. Again, excellent topics to bring up.
I certainly do appreciate that.
And I look forward, if you could just recall that into the name of the book and send it to me, I'd really appreciate it.
Okay, I'll do that. Thanks so much.
Great to chat with you. Thank you.
All right. Now serving.
Bing! Number 23.
Number 23 with the Deli Rose Sandwich.
number 23.
Anybody else who wants to chat can just say so.
I'm trying to make Christina laugh so that she's painting her toenails so that she actually ends up And she's actually got... It's very nice because I have some fairly decent-sized orangutan toes.
She's actually got a paint roller to do my toenails next with a smartly can of pink because I don't actually have a job anymore, so it doesn't really matter.
You should see all the piercings I've got.
Alright, so...
I'm sorry? And the mascara, absolutely.
Rod. Roddy.
What's up, dude? Hey, how's it going?
Pretty well. Yeah, my question was just I wanted to know what shade Christina was using on her toes so I could get some of that.
Hang on, let's get it straight from the...
And one of the listeners has asked if I do have a perm.
Yes, but it's neither on my head nor in my armpit.
Let's just say I'm doing boxers at the moment.
Okay, so my less important question on the toenail color was I was wondering earlier if you could talk a little bit about the difference between working from kind of well thought out philosophy versus continuously bashing your head against the empirical Test over and over again.
And the reason I brought this up is that Greg's been mentioning some things on the boards lately about this, but it's also been popping into my head a little bit.
We briefly went back and forth a couple of posts on this where I think Greg had said that he had mentioned something about me having You know, kind of bashed my head against the wall until I realized that my family wasn't going to come around to it, but I think he had a mistaken impression of me, actually.
I had one phone call with my mom, one phone call with my brother, and didn't even bother talking to my dad about any of this stuff, and I just stopped talking to them.
And I know a lot of it has to do with, oh yeah, Greg said he was talking about himself.
Okay, maybe I just misunderstood.
He often calls himself Rod from time to time, or great Rod, or big Rod, I don't know what that means.
Yeah, you know what's funny?
I found out what Rodzilla means in street slang, and it's not even, oh man, it's dirty.
Okay, what does it mean?
Does it mean that your man's member is both scaly and fire breathing?
Because that's pretty cool. I think the word colossal came up in there, but anyway, it was...
It's not right for a family show, but anyway, that's a complete tangent.
No, but what I was saying is that I believe that I was, when it came time for me to do the whole de-fooing thing, I pretty much figured it out before I even talked to them what was going to happen.
I just kind of, the phone call with my mom just confirmed it and the one with my brother also did, even though that one was a lot more painful because I was still holding out a little bit of hope that maybe, you know, since he was in much of the same boat that I was, that he might understand it.
But, you know, it didn't work with him either, so I had to drop that one.
And, of course, my dad's just completely off the deep end religiously now, so I'm just not even going to bother with that.
But every now and then I think because I took An empirical shortcut, even though I used, I think, pretty sound reasoning in it, I wonder if that might bring doubt into my mind sometimes about this stuff, especially when I hear things about my mom threatening to come out here and talk to me face-to-face and it freaks me out and everything.
I don't know. So, do you have any thoughts on that?
Sure, I think I can, out of that ramble, I think I can pick out some useful stuff.
Yeah, that was a pretty good roundabout, wasn't it?
I certainly ask that of my listeners many times a day, so I'm not going to complain about it.
Somewhere in between him talking about his hairdo, his toenail, and his fire-breathing penis, there was some useful stuff.
So, yeah, I mean, this is, and certainly Greg, feel free to join in on this as well, but, you know, Greg talking about his conversation with his brother, which left him feeling depressed.
And his brother is somebody who works for the government, for the army, and has spent time in Afghanistan and so on.
Well, philosophy, of course, as a discipline, will give you a very clear understanding of where this conversation is going to go, right?
There's no doubt, you know, where this conversation is going to go, right?
I mean, if you start arguing, let's say if my brother was, I don't know, in the SAS or something, I was in the Special Air Service or whatever it is, some crazy ninja gang of murderers or whatever, Where would the conversation go?
If I sit down with my father, who is entering his St.
John the Baptist, lives in my head, religious phase, what would the result of the conversation be?
Well, philosophy will be very clear about what the result of the conversation will be.
And if you sit down and talk with someone who has ignored you your whole life or whatever, or who is mystical or who is patriotic or who is whatever, whatever, Philosophy, when you get immersed in it, will tell you, and psychology as well, but we'll put that under the umbrella of philosophy, will tell you where that conversation is going to go with extraordinary accuracy, near psychic accuracy, where that is going to go.
If I sat down to have a conversation with my mom, if we sat down with Christina's parents to have a conversation, we would know exactly where that conversation was going to go.
People's personalities, particularly as they get older and particularly when they have children, people's personalities become more predictable than quantum mechanics, become more predictable than gravity, become more predictable than, you know, open your eyes, stand under the sun and see.
And so there is a hardening or a calcification that occurs with people as they get older and particularly after they've had children.
And it's natural, right?
Because they have more invested in their world view, right?
That's why it's important to talk to younger people, right?
Freedom in Radio, the other slogan is, we like them young, but I'm not sure that I'm going to go with that one.
But there's a certain kind of truth in it, right?
As the guy says, I think it was some crazy-ass Jesuit nutjob who said, you know, give me a man when he's, give me a boy when Until the age of seven and he's mine for life.
And that, of course, is the Catholic philosophy as well.
It's also something which you could call the waiting for the bus syndrome, right?
The longer you wait for a bus, the less likely you are to walk.
And so when people, as they get older, they have more and more invested in a particular worldview, right?
So Greg's brother, if I remember rightly, has been working for the Defense Department for quite some time.
That's his career. That's his job.
That's his pension. That's his stability.
That's his security. That's his world.
And he has two kids, right?
And he's also teaching them about the world, and about life, and about the patriotism, and about God, and about the military.
I'm sorry? One kid.
One kid. One kid. Okay.
And so, but, you know, he's probably going to have more, right?
But even if he doesn't, right?
That's all it takes, right?
So, if we look at someone like my father, who is now entering into his third or fourth decade as Well, the guy is like, what, 72 or 73 years old?
Is he going to say, gee, since I was 35 or 40, I've been going to church, I've been praying, I've been this, I've been that, I've raised my daughter, my half-sister to be religious and this and that, right?
Is he going to say, okay, I'm backing off this thing now.
I'm probably only a couple of years from dying.
Maybe he'll live to be 80 or 85 or whatever.
But is he really going to throw in the towel now?
Well, no.
He's not. Because he's right at the hump, at the peak of Pascal's wager.
He's invested a heck of a lot into being religious.
And if it turns out that he's right, then giving up on it now would be ridiculous.
It would be completely illogical.
Because then he's going to go to hell, or at least not go to heaven, or whatever.
And if he's wrong, what has he gained?
Well, he gets to look back over the last...
40 years of his life and say, well, that was kind of stupid, wasn't it?
He's going to have to...
Because he's a compulsive letter writer, which email has only turned into an outright addiction.
And so all the people that he's tried to convert to Anglicanism, how's he going to deal with that?
He's going to have to say, oh, sorry for pestering you all these years and years and years.
He's going to have to undo the programming that he inflicted on his kid when he sent her to Sunday school and so on.
You know, this... You know, barring him getting hit by lightning or something and his brain being completely reorganized, there's no possible situation under which he is going to reverse his position.
Greg's brother, is he going to quit his job?
Is he going to retrain? I mean, we all know how hard it is to change even when you're not hugely invested in the system.
I found it unbelievably difficult to change.
And I didn't have any kids and I wasn't married.
And I had savings...
That allowed me to take time off for my career.
Right? If you're working for the government paycheck to paycheck and you've got kids and you've got bills and you've got debts, are you going to quit your job?
And if you're not going to quit your job, what is enlightenment going to do but torture you?
Right? So that's what I mean by sort of looking at the evidence, looking at the psychology, looking at the reality that we know of how addicted people are to self-justification and how incredibly painful it is To reverse those self-justifications, particularly as you get older, and almost insanely after you've inflicted them on children.
So that's sort of what I mean by when you sit down to have a conversation with someone, then you need to understand where the disease is in them, right?
Where the disease of mythology is in them, right?
So if I'm a doctor and I sit down with someone who's, you know, got type 4 cancer and is like three weeks from dying...
I'm not going to sit down with them and say, you know, I hope that within a month I'm going to have you climbing Mount Everest.
You're sitting down to break the news to them, to say, sorry, you're not going to make it.
And you don't sit there and say, gee, I'm a bad doctor because I can't save this person.
You have to recognize where the disease is, where the illness is in the person, the illness of mysticism, of rationalism, of patriotism, of religion, of...
of mythology as a whole.
Where are they? To what degree are they in the grip of this disease?
What are the positive reinforcements they are getting?
People pay you well to lie.
People pay you well to lie to yourself, most first and foremost.
And so where are they in this?
What are the costs and benefits to this person?
And once you recognize and accept that, you can still have the conversations, but you're having the conversations knowing that this is a terminal situation.
Now, It's certainly true, I guess, that somebody who's got incredible stage 4 advanced cancer could spontaneously go into remission and live another 40 years.
But as a doctor, you know that the odds of that are completely and totally minuscule.
You would never even mention that possibility.
Because maybe it would happen once in every three careers.
It's possible, but you don't go in with that expectation, right?
So if you're going to sit down and have a conversation with somebody who's in this kind of situation, your parents, your siblings, or whoever...
You recognize that this is a farewell concert, right?
That there's not going to be any possibility of them hearing, understanding, and acting on what it is that you're saying, on the truth.
Being curious about it, accepting it.
The best you're going to get is some sort of Weasley, as Greg mentioned, with his brother.
Well, I guess we both have our own perspectives, and our own perspectives make sense in their own way, and blah, blah, blah.
Right? Which is even worse than just calling you an asshole, right?
Because it's saying we're both assholes, right, in our own way.
So that's what I mean by looking at things proactively, right?
Once you understand philosophy, once you understand how this stuff all works, going in with a full understanding of what it is that you're facing and accepting the minuscule possibility and rejecting it as a viable possibility, right?
So if you go in and the conversation doesn't work out and you get depressed, it's because...
You didn't go in with realistic expectations, right?
Like, if I go in thinking I'm Jesus and I can heal people who have stage 4 cancer and they keep dying, I'm going to feel depressed.
Because it's like, what's wrong with my healing power?
I should be healing these people.
Something's wrong. And it's just not possible, right?
The question, though, is...
I mean, especially after this length of time...
And after the fact, I did kind of reason out that it was kind of pointless to expect anything out of it because, I mean, he pretty much is heavily invested in the idea of power, and there's no escaping that for him.
But the question is, after this length of time and after having been Down that road four or five times already in the past, why wouldn't I have gone in with much lower expectations than I had?
Well, what were your expectations, like looking on it in hindsight?
Well, I was kind of Not so much expecting but hoping that it would work out the way it did with John where there would at least be an open door there where he kind of understood what I was talking about and actually thought about it and over time has been kind of internalizing it himself and coming around to Understanding all of this.
With Chris, it was different, but I thought it would be kind of like that experience, or at least I hoped it would be like that experience.
But with Chris, it was like everyone else.
I was looked at as just sort of a challenger to be bested.
Every topic brought up or every question asked was It was meant to be vanquished rather than considered or actually discussed or thought about in any real way.
All right. What are the salient differences between Chris and our good friend, Captain Beeble?
Salient differences?
Yeah, that would have an effect on their receptivity towards this kind of conversation.
Oh, you mean like in terms of their material circumstances?
Yeah, let's start with those, for sure.
Okay, so... Well, John is single, of course, and has no kids and...
He's just starting his career and not really established yet.
And he was living with you when you began this conversation.
Yeah, and that's true.
So he had to listen to you because you were the landlord.
Just kidding. When you come to visit us, the word but is not allowed.
That's the only thing I'm going to have as a landlord, but that's different.
I'll switch to German.
Well, also... Right.
But there's other things which are relevant too, right?
I mean, you say he's just starting out in his career, but his career has nothing to do with the government, right?
Well, in a way it does.
I mean, he's in the fine arts, so he has to vie for patronage just like every other classical musician does.
Well, sure, but I mean, that's like student loans or whatever, right?
I mean, his goal would be to not have to deal with that and he's not sort of propping up the empire and he's not...
You know, handing weapons to the troops or, I mean, not saying that your other brother is, but he's not voluntarily injured.
This is a necessary evil for his profession, right?
Because taxation is so high that private patronage has diminished, right?
Right. So, this is just something, it's like using the roads, as far as I'm concerned.
So, it's quite different.
It's not something that he would seek out, it's just something that has to be done, right?
Right, it's not a state job as such.
It's a career in which the state has monopolized our access to it.
Right, that's like saying, well, I have to use the government invented internet to do a podcast, therefore I support the state.
I mean, you know, it's just something that you have to live with, right?
Right, right, right.
And I mean, I read, and this would be, I guess, about eight or nine months, maybe a year ago, I read Chris's report I mean, he's really in there, right?
He's absolutely using all of his skills and talents to support the Beast, right?
It's interesting, too, because when he had the opportunity to make that decision after the Army, I had some long conversations with him back then about it and kept encouraging the private sector.
Even back then, I could tell his mind was already made up.
Well, sure, and we know something about the psychology of people who choose.
Again, when there are options or opportunities, we know something about the psychology of people who We'll choose a public sector position over a private sector position, right?
Sure, sure. I mean, there's a deep emptiness, right?
So they have to merge with a fictional collective because there's a deep emptiness in their personalities.
And there's a deep insecurity about their abilities, right?
Because they don't want to compete and duke it out in the private sector.
They really want to get into a secure position and so on.
And there's a deep insecurity And it's like the people who favor arranged marriages, right?
I don't think that would be Brad Pitt, right?
I mean, that's not who would be in favor of arranged marriages.
It would be people who maybe weren't as willing to try and make themselves appealing to marriage partners and so on, right?
That's actually kind of ironic that you bring that up as a metaphor because...
One of his best friends is in an arranged marriage and is a huge supporter of arranged marriages.
Right, and that would make sense because where you want coercion or bullying to create your relationships, it's because you don't believe that you would be able to earn those relationships in the free market, so to speak, right?
Both in terms of...
Sorry, somebody's just pinged me.
Can you just tell him that we're on the show?
He can join us if he wants. It's Gizmo Projects.
So, I mean, where people eschew voluntarism, it's because they're deeply empty and insecure people.
And asking him to confront that in himself, I just can't even imagine how that could be conceivably achieved.
Right. Sorry, there's no one to talk to in your brother, right?
I mean, he's just inhabited by empty mythology and conformity.
And he's aggressive about it.
Both implicitly and explicitly.
So there's no one to talk to.
You're shouting down a well, right?
You're trying to wrestle with the ghost.
Yeah. Yeah, that's pretty true.
But what I... I don't know why, though.
Why... Why did I think that there was still something there worth pursuing?
Well, it's because you don't believe, and again, this is no, I'm just, I'm going to be, like, I'm going to sound like a jerk here, even more so than usual.
Right, no, and I'm only doing this because, you know, it's sort of to be blunt with you, though I'm absolutely, I mean, not nine months ago I was in the same position of like, Hey, I can join this company full of statists and religious people and have a great time.
So, I mean, I'm, you know, I'm right there with this.
But sort of to put it bluntly, it's because you don't trust philosophy.
Right? So you have these two Greggs, and the fact that we've got it down to two is great.
But we have these two Greggs, right?
Because what is it? A self-critical Gregg now sleeps with the fishes.
So we get it down to two Greggs, right?
So there's the Gregg who lives in this platonic world of philosophy.
And manipulates concepts in a free-floating, otherworldly, neurominal, platonic realm.
And loves it! He's on the board and loves talking philosophy and loves reading and loves writing.
And then, there's the real world.
Where you can't bring these concepts to bear directly in the real world.
You don't trust that Gossamer thread that goes from the platonic world to the real world.
And you have to sort of like, okay, Platonic Greg, I have to go to the real world, I have to go to the real world, so I have to leave you here in the playroom of philosophy, and I'm going to give you some blocks and some podcasts and so on, right?
But I'm going to have to just leave you aside, because here I have to go into the real world.
And I can't have you in here because what you think about doesn't really apply to the real world.
Well, if that were really the case, though, then what have I been up to the last 12, then what have I been up to the last 12, 14 months?
Thank you.
Well, you have been living in isolation to a large degree in this platonic world Which is a mirror of the real world.
And I mean, it's valuable and it's valid and so on, right?
But the great challenge is to bring the world of philosophy directly to bear into the real world of interaction.
And especially in interactions with people who are blind.
Right? Who are blind, who have no boundaries, who are highly infectious.
Right? Your brother Chris, his personality is highly infectious.
Right? Because he is so blind to his own falsehoods.
That he's infectious.
Right? So, it's his depression that you're feeling.
And it's his emptiness that you walk away coated in.
Right? It's the horror and the emptiness of living in this life of mythology that you walk away feeling, thinking it's yours.
It's not yours. It's his feeling, right?
Because when people are incredibly unconscious, they're highly infectious in terms of their emotional states.
And... So it's not that you...
I mean, you've been building this fantastic framework of philosophy, and you are bringing it to bear in your life, right?
So the decisions that you've made over the past 12 to 18 months vis-a-vis your life, I think, have been great and sensible and healthy and wonderful.
But it's very hard to maintain this world of philosophy when we...
Are in the presence of somebody who is utterly committed to falsity, to mythology, and doesn't know it.
Right? Thinks that this world of mythology that they live in is the real world.
And has no conscious doubt about any of that, right?
Because all that doubt and all that depression and all that emptiness then sprays off to everyone else.
Sorry, if you've just joined us, if you could click on the mute button.
Just to the right of the screen just because we can hear you typing in my brain.
So, I mean, it's not that you've been doing, but it's bringing this world of philosophy, this delicate house of cards that we build in isolation, it's bringing this into the real world and having it still stand is really hard.
It really is the final challenge of what it is that we're doing.
Okay, can I jump in and say something real quick here?
Alright. Yes, is that okay with you, Greg?
It's about the subject that you're on right now.
And I was just thinking about how different it is for me to have conversations with guys on the boards or if I do the live chats with Greg or Brian Teller, one of those guys, and how How easy and free and open the conversation is and how enjoyable it is.
And then when I have a conversation with an acquaintance or somebody who just doesn't get this stuff, who doesn't really understand this philosophy, the conversation, as long as they're not just how's the weather type crap, but if it's something meaningful, the conversation becomes very It's like carrying a weight or something like that.
It's very difficult, and it's not enjoyable at all.
So I'm starting to really become conscious of these little subtle differences now.
I mean, they're turning from subtle differences into just huge boulders in the room.
Oh, somebody found an old school typewriter.
Yeah, sorry, if you could just, if you've just joined, if you could click the mute button so we know who you're typing.
Well, I completely agree with you with one minor caveat.
It's actually not too minor.
Which is you say that people don't understand this philosophy, but I would completely disagree with you on that.
I think that everyone absolutely, completely, and totally understands this philosophy.
Because they know exactly what to oppose, unconsciously.
Right, right. Of course.
And that's the weight that you feel is the weight of their defenses.
Because they get the truth.
Right? When you say to somebody, you know, violence is bad.
Yes, violence is bad. You know, if you don't pay your taxes, the government uses violence against you.
They get it. They get it immediately.
They get it completely. They get it totally.
Yeah, so the weight that I'm feeling isn't me trying to lift them up.
It's actually them pushing me down.
That's a very important difference.
Well, again, just to be annoyingly precise, I think it's precise, I would amend that to say that it's them pushing themselves down.
Ah, yeah, yeah. Kind of like when you're trying to pick up a little kid and they go all limp and suddenly they become like five times as happy as they once were.
Yeah, for sure, for sure.
But it's them rejecting the truth in themselves, right?
It's their false... This is, again, this sounds mythological and I apologize for that, but when you speak the truth to someone and you speak it directly, and having done this for a while and seen the rather explosive reactions that regularly hit my inbox and the board sometimes, when you speak the truth to someone, You cut right through their defenses because they're not expecting it, right?
They're just expecting you to have some preformed opinion, right?
So if you talk to a Democrat and they find out you're a Republican or something, they don't mind the difference because it's like, I know where this person's coming from.
I have all the labels and I know where they fit in the mythology and so on.
When you speak in a philosophical, i.e.
an anti-mythological voice, what happens is you cut right through their false self.
And you hit their true self, which is lying there in wait for any sign of life beyond the false self.
And then what happens is the false self, you know, snack!
I must kill, right?
It's like the metaphor, to use a metaphor that is, you know, quite appropriate to my level of non-geekiness.
At the end of Lord of the Rings, right?
Suddenly Sauron goes like, there's...
The ring is at Mount Doom, right?
And all of his Nazgul come flying back to Mount Doom, right?
Because it's like, oh my god, the hobbits, they've gone right to Mount Doom and I've got to withdraw all of my forces from fighting the outside army of Aragorn and I've got to have them fly to Mount Doom to protect the ring, right?
The true self or whatever, right?
So when you speak the truth to someone, you reach through to their true self and their true self rises up.
And it's like, thank God somebody's finally thrown a rope over the wall.
Right? And they charge towards the rope and they want to get out.
They want to get to the world.
They want to get out of the prison that they're in.
The prison of the false self.
And the weight that you feel is the person not attacking you.
You're just a catalyst.
They're attacking themselves to crush the false self.
The true self, right? Because...
Whenever the True Self was released before, they got maimed by their parents or by their teachers or whatever, right?
So the False Self is just a bear trap grown to the size of the planet, right?
And there aren't even any bears around anymore.
So... I just wanted to sort of mention that.
I have to agree with you that he definitely already...
He already knows all this stuff.
There was definitely a sense that...
I mean, he didn't consciously know, but it felt like he already knew what I was going to ask him before I asked it.
Like he was just taking through a toolbox of rationalizations for For questions he'd already asked himself.
Right. We're not speaking Mandarin to people.
We're speaking a language they already know completely and totally and deeply.
It was like putting a quarter into a record machine almost.
Yeah, for sure. People and moms are particularly good at this as far as that sort of Elephant sitting on your chest kind of guilt thing, right?
Because, you know, they're just like, we know exactly...
Oh, that's okay.
I don't mind. Just call me once in a while to just let me know that you're okay.
I don't ask for much.
I can't breathe.
Right, I mean, that's what...
They know the phrases to use.
And, you know, it is my complete inability to recognize these phrases.
You know, it's completely bizarre because in The God of Atheists, I was noticing that people are wielding these phrases with quite a good deal of But I myself have never been able to bring these phrases to bear in conversation.
The phrases that just wound or asphyxiate or undermine or leave people feeling just whatever, terrible.
And that's what people do.
But you're not part of the equation, right?
I mean, Chris was entirely involved in self-management, not a debate with you.
Right, yeah. That's the sense that I got, definitely.
Sorry to laugh. Somebody just wrote, Mom, run!
How did you figure out, Gizmo, there's nowhere to hide?
Sorry. I will start trying to imitate people's moms, because it does really freeze.
I will definitely not do that quite as much.
Sorry. Is that you, dearie?
I will do it because grandmoms, though.
All right. When you're engaged in a conversation with Chris, he has no access to the real world.
The only way that he knows that the truth shows up is he feels incredibly anxious and aggressed against.
You can't get through the false self to talk to him and you know that because of his life choices.
Yeah. I guess maybe I just thought that there was a slightly better chance.
Right, and so you're now summoning the dream crusher, which is my second job.
Because there's no chance.
There's no chance. There's no chance.
Sorry, go ahead. And after the conversation, afterwards, I knew that.
No, you knew that before. You knew that before.
Okay, well, what if I put it this way?
I knew it before, I knew it after, but...
Hmm.
Maybe... I was kind of ignoring it before?
Um... I can tell you what I think was going on, if you like, and then you can tell me that it's right.
Who is it who needs you to deal with him?
It's too simple a question, but the question is important.
Who is it who needs you to deal with him as if he has hope?
Who is it?
Who needs him?
When you sit down and talk with, or when you even think about talking with Chris, who is it who benefits from thinking that Chris has hope?
Is it you? Well, I would think that we both would.
Well, you went in thinking that Chris had hope and you came out feeling depressed.
Yeah. Oh, I see.
I think that empirically it's not to your benefit to think that, right?
I see. Yeah, that's...
Well, sure, if the truth is that he doesn't, which he doesn't, right?
Because then I just kind of carry around this torch and He gets to use me in that way.
Right. Let's take a more extreme example, and it may not even be a more extreme example, but it would be a clear example.
Let's say, Chris, you're in 1937 or whatever, and Chris is in the Nazi Party, right?
Who is going to benefit from thinking that you can be in the Nazi Party and be a good person?
Yeah, the Nazis, of course.
Of course, right? Of course.
Right, so... The reason why it's so dangerous to be around these highly unconscious people is that it's not even your hope.
It's his hope that you were acting out.
You knew the truth, but he wanted the fantasy that he could be a Nazi and be a good person.
So I just imposed it upon myself.
No, he imposed it upon you because you're used to reading what people want and providing it to them because that's how you were raised.
That's how most of us are raised.
And that's how I earned an income for the last 15 years.
And you're well paid for it, right?
So absolutely. Sure, sure.
That makes sense. Right?
What is it that people want that's going to keep me out of trouble?
What do I have to say? Well, I have to raise a toast to my parents on their anniversary, because if I don't, holy Christ, am I going to get screwed around with.
I have to smile, and I have to do this, and I have to figure out what people want, and I have to provide it to them.
And if I don't do that, then I'm going to get really screwed up.
I'm going to get attacked, I'm going to get bullied, I'm going to get beaten, I'm going to get yelled at, I'm going to get humiliated, whatever, right?
So we're just used to that, right?
Well, what is it that people want that's going to make them feel better?
Okay, I'm going to slip into that and do that for them, right?
That's what slaves do, right?
What is it that's going to make my master not beat me?
That's what I'm going to do, right?
So we have this radar at all times.
What is it that people want from me that is going to make them not attack me?
Right. Right, right, that's exactly right.
So then this conversation that I had was really more like me just trying to re-engineer the demand matrix.
No, you were there as a drug for him, which is why you felt depressed and empty afterwards, because you'd been used.
You were there so that he could be in the Nazi Party and still feel that he was a good guy and a nice guy and that he was worthy of debating and that there was a possibility of a debate in this area.
So... Well, what you're suggesting is that...
that I had no part in the motivation whatsoever.
No, you were trained...
To provide people justifications for their existence.
That's what all too many of us are programmed to do.
People always need justifications.
They need to feel that they're in the right.
They need to feel that they're strong.
They need to feel that they're good.
They don't want to actually do the work of being good.
Most of us are raised as ego donors.
So the same way that if you're an alcoholic, you might have kids so that you can take part of their liver when they get older and know that they're going to be a good match.
And so, you know, our parents make really bad decisions about ethics and religion and patriotism and virtue, and they inflict all of those bad decisions on us.
And what they do is their conscience festers, right?
I mean, your brother is miserable deep down.
We know this. You can't be part of an incredibly brutal and corrupt regime like the U.S. Defense Department and feel good about yourself.
Right? So he needs a drug called I'm a good guy.
And if he can get the guy who's totally into philosophy to debate with him, then clearly, that makes him feel better.
Right, so...
So then...
Would that have been the case with this entire plan, then?
Or, I mean, because...
It was my intention all along to talk to every one of them, to have this conversation with every one of them.
Okay, and that may be a good or bad idea, I'm not sure, but I will tell you this for sure, that if you didn't go in knowing that your brother is really corrupt and is not going to change, right?
Then it was not your motive.
Any time you come out of an interaction feeling like crap, then you're serving the needs of somebody else's and bad needs of theirs.
I know that conversations that I have with people, they find those conversations tough, but I don't think anyone has ever said to me, man, after I hung up from you, I just felt so depressed.
They say it's really tough, but generally it's an energetic conversation and so on.
There's possibilities that open up and sometimes it's a little bit like cocaine to the brain, but it doesn't leave people...
But any time that you come out of an interaction feeling emptied out or enervated or depressed or whatever, it's because you're just there.
You just got fed on like a vampire.
Okay, I guess I could see that.
I mean, with two of my other brothers, I definitely went in with no expectation whatsoever and got exactly what I expected, nothing.
And that wasn't anywhere near as problematic for me as the conversation I had with Chris.
And in terms of the corrupt-o-meter, where would you put Chris relative to your other brothers?
Well, it's kind of interesting that you asked that question because I've been kind of thinking about that the last couple weeks and...
And especially after talking to Chris, I really can't see a whole lot of difference between any one of them.
There's just stylistic differences.
One brother who's, and this is the one that I had absolutely no illusions about, he'll demand that you do what he wants you to do just because he's him, you know.
Right, so Cassie doesn't get entitled to him.
Yeah, he does this not just with me, but also with his own wife and kids.
Really? Does he know how?
Like, how does he achieve this?
Does he have an email, website, anything?
Well, actually it's very easy for him because his wife has progressive MS. Oh.
Suddenly I felt the wind of the joke go out a little bit.
Okay, sorry, go on.
Sorry about that.
It really wasn't funny for me.
Anyway, with him I kind of knew what to expect.
I was just going to tell him flat out exactly what was going on and And why he shouldn't be concerned about it, and that was that.
And the same with the next younger brother.
The two of them are kind of in the same camp with each other.
But I thought... Chris has a pretty sophisticated intellect, and I thought that that might be a sign that he was capable more, but...
Well, but if he has a pretty sophisticated intellect, but he has found a way to positively work for the army, that tells you the role of his intellect, right?
Right, exactly.
I mean, it's just become a kind of servile tool for his desire for power.
This is the tool that he uses as intelligence to support mythology, right?
And this kind of predatory mythology like patriotism and militarism, right?
So the question is that, I mean, if we sort of go back to the 1938 Germany thing, if your brother was in the Nazi party, would you have had a conversation with him?
Repeat that, it got garbled.
If your brother was in the Nazi party in 1938 Germany, Would you have had a conversation with him?
Oh, well, that's an interesting way to put that.
You've got this rule, like, I've got to have this talk with everyone, and I'm not sure why.
Right? This no-unchosen-positive-obligation thing, maybe you feel it's sort of in the platonic room, you know, playing on its own or something, right?
Yeah, but I don't know why you would have to have this conversation.
I don't know why that's a mission for you, right, or why that's a standard.
Well, I just thought that there's no better teacher than direct experience, right?
Yes, there is a better teacher than direct experience.
We call it philosophy. I mean, please, what's the point of this conversation for a year and a half if you have to keep beating your head against the wall?
You're right. You're right?
So what you're saying that...
It's all about prevention, not cure, right?
Sure, sure.
I agree with that.
So in other words, we're kind of back in the same square then.
I should have been able to look at the example of any one of my other brothers or even my parents and know that I wasn't going to get anywhere with him.
Well, you don't need the example.
You just need the theory. I mean, you could only have had one brother.
You could have had some... Right, I mean, if I said to you, I don't know, or if someone had said to you, hey, Greg, this friend of mine, he works for the Defense Department, would you like to talk to him about the virtues of anarchism and pacifism?
What would you have said? If that was the only thing you knew about the guy.
Yeah, that would have been kind of crazy.
You know, we say, thanks, but no thanks, right?
I'm also not going to go to the policeman's ball and give a big lecture about, you know, the corrupt cats in blue, right?
I mean, because, you know, there's no point.
I forgot about the calling.
Yeah, I guess that's true.
So... So if you look at all of the immense...
Sorry, if you look at all of the immense knowledge you have about your brother, and you just boil it down to that salient fact that he works for the military...
And loves it.
And loves it. And has no doubts about it.
And feels that he's doing the perfectly most wonderful, protect my children from the evil terrorists, that he is the best guy in the world.
With just that little piece of information about a perfect stranger, you'd have said, thanks but no thanks.
Yeah. Because you know that it would just be masochistic to do it.
Yeah, you're right. And so when you say experience is the best teacher, I'd say, no, just...
you know everything you need to know to avoid this conversation.
So I really didn't actually have to have the conversation with anybody.
Well, I mean, you can choose to, right?
But what you're then saying is that there's no way that I can use my values or philosophy or knowledge of the world Or these individuals to determine the outcome ahead of time.
It means that you have to learn everything ex post facto in this regard, right?
But what I'm saying is that with one-tenth of one-millionth of one percent of the knowledge that you have about your brothers, or we're just talking about this guy, you know exactly how the conversation is going to go.
Yeah. Yep, that's true.
That's true. I mean, there's no...
What did I expect him to say?
Yeah, and of course, you had so much knowledge, right?
If you couldn't know how this conversation was going to go, then knowledge about humanity is impossible.
So all along, I've just been sort of using these as a way to beat up on myself.
No, I know. You've got to remember the other people's needs here.
What is the case is that you've been programmed to be there to serve the needs of other people.
And it's hard to break that programming.
To then proactively intervene philosophy between the knee-jerk response that most of us have to serve the needs of others.
Other people needed you to justify their existence.
And the more you got into philosophy, the more tasty a justification morsel you became for them.
Well, that's interesting.
Sure. The prettier a girl gets, the more that Bo wants to date her.
Oh, whatever. You know what I mean, right?
But, you know, the more wise you become, the more value you have as a tasty morsel of self-justification for people.
That definitely explains a lot with my relationship with Tom, the brother just next to me.
And the higher the stakes become of you rejecting them.
My brother never went through any agony in his relationship with me.
He was perfectly composed and self-justified and so on, but the true agony that he went through went through after he realized that I was hot in pursuit of wisdom, that I'd gone to therapy, that I was really learning about, How to bring philosophy and wisdom to bear in my life, and I stone rejected him.
He went nuts. Yeah, yeah, that's kind of how it's been with Tom.
We literally didn't even look at each other from about the age of 14 to the time that Just after he graduated college and slowly but surely he had been kind of you know palling up with me and doing things with me and talking to me a lot and stuff like that but what I noticed was that he's kind of a chameleon he would hang out with me and be one person with me and then when he was at home with his family Was a completely different guy.
Like somebody I didn't even recognize.
And that's when I kind of realized that, at least with him, that, I mean, he was kind of playing a game.
That for him, I was kind of just a chance to pretend he was somebody he wasn't.
But I never got that sense with Chris.
I don't know why.
Well, I don't know. Do you mind if I just...
Sorry to be abrupt.
I just wanted to ask if anybody else had questions or comments on this or other topics.
If they don't, we can certainly continue.
But I just wanted to see if anybody else had stuff.
If you want to type it into the chat window.
Yes. I have somebody who says, I might, and they're just flashing me a little bit of leg.
Yes. I've had plenty enough to think about, too, so I can just go off and listen for a while.
Somebody has asked. Ah, okay, he says.
Yes, Stephen, if you'd like to, go ahead.
We can make this the brother show.
Oh, brother, where art thou?
Hello? Yes, go ahead.
Hey, Steph. I had a brother who was...
Into atheism, or was an atheist for a few months, and then he just dropped it, and it really got me scared.
Had a brother. Is he gone?
No, no, he's still alive.
Yeah, and Rod pointed out, it's the girl.
Oh, I see. I thought you had a brother, but then he was abducted by aliens.
Okay, so just tell me a little bit about what was going on for him when he took this dip into...
And I assume when you say atheism here, what you mean is a rejection of religion, not necessarily a philosophically founded kind of rationalism.
I think that may have been the problem, is that it wasn't as philosophically founded as, I suppose, I guess, the atheism that we talk about here.
Right. It's like saying that when somebody gets a letter from the IRS that they're being audited, in that moment everyone's an anarchist, right?
But that's not quite the same as being philosophical about it.
Right. Right.
I don't know. He said it like a couple months ago, and I just found out about it the other night when I was talking to him about, I guess, anarchy in general.
But, um, what kind of bugged me was that he...
A, that he didn't tell me, and B, that...
I guess I thought that he would be a little bit more reasonable than that, I suppose.
Reasonable than what? Than, I guess, finding God again?
It seems like once you're an atheist, it doesn't seem like you should be able to go back.
It doesn't make sense. You mean it's like cheating?
It's like saying I'm gay and then getting married, right?
Like it's like cheating? Yeah, something like that.
Something like that. Well, sure, but I mean you could imagine a Catholic saying, you know, man, God, I really want to masturbate, so I'm not going to be a Catholic for a couple of months until I, you know, de-blue myself or something, right?
So, I mean, there's lots of reasons why people might get hostile towards religion for a particular that have nothing to do with rationality, right?
Somebody may read about the fact that thousands of clergy in the Catholic Church have been implicated in child abuse and say, well, that's it.
You know, I'm not going to church anymore.
I don't believe in God and blah, blah, blah.
And of course, a lot of Jews went through this, right, in the post-Holocaust period where they say, you know, could we be the chosen people for something other than Nazi furnaces?
Because, you know, if we're supposed to be all chosen of God...
Why is it that God is getting us killed and there was this huge crisis of faith?
And that's had a lot to do with the secularization of the Jewish culture, right?
Where they became more of a race and a culture than a religion.
But that's not because they awoke to any kind of rationality, right?
They just recoiled from a particular kind of evidence, if that makes sense.
Right. And I think the case would be here that we live in a very religious town and generally the religious type people aren't very deep.
So I think he was rejecting that more than actually working from first principles.
Right, right. And now, unfortunately though, what's going to happen, if I can put on my prognostication hat for just a moment, what's going to happen is he is going to put forward the attitude to you that atheism is just the kind of immature phase that people go through.
So when you say, I'm an atheist, he's going to pat you on the head and say, ah yes, I remember going through that immature phase, but I've outgrown all of that now, and it's going to be kind of humiliating to talk to him about your philosophy, right?
Or philosophy as a whole. That's definitely been the case with anarchy.
He thinks I just don't like authority, as he says.
Right. I would be cautious about using the term anarchy with people.
Because it comes so heavily laden with connotation, I would recommend, and it's true, I mean, it's not manipulation, I would recommend saying that I'm very interested in philosophy, not I'm an anarchist, because that's talking about a conclusion rather than a process, and it's the process that is all important.
Right. Right, people, scientists don't say I'm an Einsteinian, right?
They say I'm a scientist.
Right, similarly, we don't want to say I'm an anarchist or I'm an atheist, but I'm...
I'm a philosopher. I'm interested in philosophy.
Focus on the approach, not the conclusions, I suppose.
Yeah, yeah, because when you present conclusions to people that are freaky, they assume that you've jumped straight to the conclusion, which is what they do in terms of being religious or being into patriotism or whatever.
That you've just jumped to a conclusion and that's made you dogmatic.
But the beauty of philosophy is that it can't be overturned, right?
You just can't, right?
I mean, you can reject thought and rationality, but you can't do that.
Rationally. Yeah, you can't do that.
So people can sort of say, oh, anarchism, well, that's crazy.
That's, you know, that's Molotov throwing cocktail people who've got dreadlocks and shouldn't and so on, right?
But if you say, well, I just love philosophy, which is really what we're about, right?
This is a philosophical show.
It's not fundamentally about anarchism or God or family or any of that.
It's just about... The love of wisdom, truth.
People will say, oh yes, I remember being a rebel and I went through that phase, but then I outgrew it and so on.
But nobody wants to say, I outgrew the love of wisdom.
I outgrew my weird addiction to determining truth from falsehood, and now I just make it as I go along.
Nobody wants to take that approach.
And it's more accurate to say that you're into philosophy than you're an anarchist, if that makes sense.
That definitely makes sense.
I suppose the thing that really shook me about it in a lot of ways is the fact that I got this feeling that maybe getting into, I guess, the truth in general is Something that you have an inertia, like, that has an inertia about it, and then, like, at some point, you know, like, if you don't make any actions on it, you just, I don't know, lose it, or something like that.
I don't think that's okay. If that makes any sense.
No, I totally understand what you mean.
Like, is the truth like going to the gym, right?
Like, you have to keep going to the gym, or what's the point, right?
In a sense, right? You just hurt yourself and then get flaccid again.
But that's not Just the way that I've experienced it, and other people can certainly say their own experience, but this seems to be quite common.
The truth is more like you take a gingerly step from the top of a mountain, thinking that maybe you'll think about climbing.
And then you take another step, because it seems kind of cool, and then another step, because it's like, wow, that's interesting.
And then suddenly it's like, ahhh!
Right? Because you free-fall.
What happens is the truth turns into a bobsled that you're just trying to hang on to.
Right? I mean, so, if you find a way to control that process, y'all let me know, because I've not been able to find a way to do it, right?
And I don't know people who have, right?
The truth is so innate to our experience, right?
Because we have a very empirical...
That it's constantly reinforced through our interactions with reality and rationality.
So, you know, we think that it's an escalator, but it turns into like a bobsled run.
We're just kind of holding on, trying not to get our brains dashed out, if that sort of makes any sense.
I would say that at the beginning, it might feel a little bit like you're pushing a rock up a hill, but after that, you're just kind of hanging on to this thing going down a hill, if that makes sense.
Yep. Running the rock back down.
Yeah, you turn into one of these cartoon characters who runs on top of the rock that's rolling down the hill.
It's like, must keep running or I'm going to get crushed!
Now, it does get a little bit easier after a while, but it definitely is a kaleidoscopic multimedia brain on LSD kind of experience for a while there after the inertia gets going, and then it's just a matter of managing it as it goes along.
That makes a lot of sense.
How do you think I should approach it, I suppose, talking about that type of stuff with my brother at this point?
Well, my question is why do you want to talk about it with your brother?
I don't know if I really do, but it comes up, and I mean, I don't know.
We don't talk a whole lot anymore.
I'm still living at home, I guess.
Yeah, no, I know. Well, if it does come up, you can bite your tongue.
But that's mighty hard to do, even for an ancient geezer like me who's 40.
So for you, it's going to be really hard, I would imagine.
But what I would say is something like this.
I'd say, Dude!
Okay, I won't insult your intelligence by pretending to be a teenager.
But I would say, Man!
I would say, Look, we can have these discussions if you like.
I love philosophy.
I love debate.
I love trying to figure out the truth.
So we can have these conversations if you like.
But... Oh, brother of mine.
What we do need is a methodology that we can use to figure out whether we're making any progress, right?
Like if your brother sits there and says, I want to play a game of basketball, right?
And then he pulls out a hunting rifle, you have every right to say, I'm a little confused, right?
This isn't, you know, the competence, right?
But you have to have some rules for the games that you're playing with people.
And if you're going to play a game with people called The Pursuit of Knowledge...
Then you have to have some rules about what constitutes knowledge, right?
Otherwise, you're not doing anything, right?
You know, one of you is playing chess, and the other one of you is playing shuffleboard.
You're not actually interacting at all, right?
So you can say to him, look, I have no problem with us pursuing knowledge in this way.
I mean, it's something I dearly love to do.
You might not want to use the phrase dearly.
That's okay if you have a British accent, but otherwise everyone's just going to think you're really fruity.
I mean, I have a British accent.
They already think I'm pretty fruity, so...
Something that's great, but we have to have a methodology, right?
So if we're going to discuss these issues, you can't pull the faith card, you can't pull the patriotism card, because those things are not about knowledge.
They're just about mere prejudice, right?
Or whatever, you know.
So you can have these debates with your brother, but if you don't have a methodology that you both agree on, it's just going to be fruitless and pointless.
And you really, really, really want to stay away from pointless debates, because...
What it does is it turns the love of wisdom into masochism, right?
So you have to preserve your joy of the pursuit of truth.
And you will always poison that desire if you debate with people who don't believe in rationality or evidence or whatever, right?
Or who just make up answers or who are defensive or manipulative or they use the truth as a way of putting you down or whatever, right?
But you'll get this in the book on truth.
Just have a methodology. If you don't have a methodology, you know, it's like a funny game.
The only way to win is not to play, right?
Right. Right.
Well, I really appreciate that.
It just kind of came as a shock to me, that's all.
The whole thing.
Well, do keep us surprised of how it goes, but I guess you heard the conversation with...
With Greg, you know all there is to know about your brother.
You know whether he's capable of being rational.
You know all of this. You just need to not beat your head against the wall if that's the case.
And if you do feel deep down in your gut that there's the possibility of a productive pursuit of wisdom relationship with your brother, then approach it delicately and sensitively as you can.
But you know the truth about whether this is going to work or not.
Well, thanks for your help.
Oh, any time. Listen, keep us posted with how it goes.
All right, I will. Thanks, man.
Did somebody say they were impressed with me?
Did I read that? With iMac?
Oh, masochism.
What if his brother is imposing the desire on him?
Yeah, for sure. For sure, that is the case, right?
I mean, if that is...
This is just for the guy who was just on the...
Yeah, I mean, you...
People who go down this irrational road always want to suck rationalists in to pretend that it's a debate, right?
So somebody who's religious is going to want to debate the existence of God for the rationalists just so they can pretend that they're being rational, right?
But just don't get engaged in that kind of...
Don't support. Don't lend your sanction, right?
That's the Randian thing, right? Don't lend your sanction to the corruption.
Boot camp for Windows.
Okay. Alright, does anyone else have any questions, comments, issues, problems?
we have a few more minutes.
Bueller? Anybody? Bueller?
Well, yes.
Oh, is somebody coming in or is it just teasing?
Chewy wants to talk.
Thank you.
What you meant when you said, as you develop philosophically, you become a more juicy self-justification for others.
Oh, did he just have...
Oh, just have my question answered.
Yes, sir. Well, if you back up, what I'd like to say is...
Sorry.
You know, that's going to go in the next mixtape of Free Main Radio.
The philosophical walrus.
Yo, Steph, I got one for you.
I need a whale as well. Sorry, go ahead.
Yeah. So I was just kind of curious.
This is Beau, by the way.
So we were talking about your sales background.
I just want to know, how long were you doing sales before you actually started doing well?
Well, I started doing sales really just because I was the chief technical officer.
And so I've always had a good ability to explain technical stuff to a non-technical audience.
Philosophy, I guess, was part of that as well.
So, when we would have a sales presentation, I would go in and I would do the presentation and answer questions.
And then I began talking at conferences and so on a little bit.
And then I began to move more into a commission-based structure in the last job I had before the last job I had.
So, I moved into it pretty gratefully because I already had a good deal of experience talking with clients and establishing a value proposition for them.
But sales, of course, is really just about...
Establishing that if someone gets you a buck, you'll give them two bucks, right?
I mean, there's a lot of technical stuff or economic stuff involved in really good sales, right?
So if you're selling an IBM system, a mainframe or something to some bank, then you say, okay, well, you know, like I was many years ago, I was involved in a very big presentation to Unisys for a check clearing system that would interpret people's handwriting and process checks and so on, right? It was a $10 million system and I was only involved At a low level, so I wasn't at the top, but anyway.
And so basically what we did was we did an analysis of how much labor they were spending processing checks manually, right?
And we said, okay, well, we can reduce it from this many hours to this many hours.
The system costs $10 million, so it'll pay for itself in 18 months or whatever, right?
So a lot of sales is around...
It's not around sort of that, you know, quasi-herbtalic kind of charisma.
I mean, there's certainly some aspect of that, but mostly it's just around...
Being patient, taking a lot of rejection, and establishing a value proposition.
It's not about personally winning people over with the force of your personality.
That doesn't tend to produce very long-term success in terms of sales, but it's saying, if you give me $100,000 now, I'll give you $100,000 back in a year, and then you'll make $100,000 every year after that, and then actually delivering on that.
That's how you build success as a salesperson, and you have to Really want your clients to do well.
You have to put a methodology in place that they can use to assess the value of what you're selling them.
All these other kinds of things.
But there's a lot of technicalities around sales in terms of establishing value for other people.
And you have to believe in what you're selling.
So if you can find a company whose product you really believe in or found a company whose product you really believe in, And you can also do stuff to reduce risk, right?
So when I was working at the company that I co-founded with my brother, you know, there was the risk, like if you didn't report to the government about all of your environmental stuff, you faced risks of fines of up to, you know, like millions and millions of dollars.
Whereas if you had a software that was not totally eliminated, but at least your fines would be far lower because you would have a good methodology in place and so on.
So you just have to find a credible value proposition, work to establish it, And then, you know, if you're in a startup, you make sure that you put the processes in place to track, right?
So you say, we're going to save you X amount of dollars, and I'll put the processes in place to track it so that when...
And then you use that person for reference, right?
So you say, well, I'll give you 150% back over two years, and then you have that person as a reference, and then...
When your next client calls, they say, oh yes, they did deliver that and so on, right?
So it's just slow but steady as far as that goes.
But there's no huge trick to sales as far as that goes.
You just have to be really, really obsessed and focused on creating value that's measurable and tangible to clients and things sort of move themselves.
Yeah, okay. No, I was more or less just asking because, you know, when I brought that up on the boards, I was just like, woo, panic, anxiety, sales, Jesus Christ.
Come on. But that comes out of that, right?
Well, that is...
I mean, that comes out of a desire.
Like, if somebody says to me, Steph, you should be a dentist, I don't feel any anxiety, right?
Because I don't want to be a dentist, right?
So, the reason you feel anxiety is because you think that that might be a great thing for you, and just based on my interactions with you, I think it would be as well, right?
Right, yeah, it's just trying to make that leap, you know?
It's like, wow, I'm not doing the accounting thing and business stuff, and it's steady and slow, but at least nothing's wrong, but...
It's just that sense that anything I do doesn't matter.
I'm not going to get paid anymore.
So it's just... I don't know.
That's why I was like... When you hit the sales button, I was like...
I didn't know how to really respond.
Well, you can, of course, what you can do, which is not a bad thing to do at all, is lots of larger companies will have sales training programs, right?
Some of the best sales people in the world come out of the IBM or the Dell or the sales training programs or the Microsoft one.
So you can always look into that.
Where you will get paid to learn, right?
And those skills will serve you very well for the rest of your life, if that's something of interest to you.
That's definitely a thought.
Cool, just wanted to get your opinion on that there, Steph.
Sure, no problem. And how's everything else going?
I'm still dealing with 836, but I did take your advice to stop pursuing my crap addiction.
Right, right.
That part is at least kind of going by, but in the process of the last two weeks, I've lost three women that were just friends because of this whole thing.
Well, and you know that that's an effect of the conversation that you're in, right?
I mean, there's a reason it's clustering all around this now, right?
That there's a crack in the false self thing, which was pretty solid when we first met, and because of that, some vulnerability is coming out, some authenticity is coming out, and It's not necessarily a bad thing that these women have left your orbit, right?
Because clearly, as you become more real and more authentic and more vulnerable, if they head for the hills, you know, it definitely is not your last, right?
Well, yeah, but at some point, you're just like, ah, I don't know.
It's kind of one of those feelings where it's just like, you know, it's like, I don't think it's such a freak-out feeling of, you know, Jesus Christ, what the hell just happened?
I had all these people around me, and now all of a sudden, it's like, oh, great, it's I'm back to where I was.
As I mentioned before, there's this freefall aspect of individuation or becoming more authentic about who you are.
When you change your perspective on yourself or on the world, and particularly when you begin to approach something that's more real and honest, people will leave.
But that's good. I mean, I know that sucks, in a way, but it's good, because you can't get to the next level without leaving this level behind, right?
Yeah, it's just trying to make the transition between the two, which is a real bitch, I tell you.
Oh, it creates a lot of anxiety, right?
And you think, oh my god, this is great, so I now have some more of the truth, but I'm a social leopard, right?
But that's only with the people...
You couldn't have the same people around when you weren't being honest about who you were, now that you are being much more honest, and again, massive It's true, but some aspects of that come out any time I have an interaction, and it's just like, oh, hold on, I've got to pull the brakes on.
Hold on. I didn't mean it in this manner, but I had to, and it's just like, it's just so hard to break the cycle of just continuously being, you know, it's just, I don't know, it's trying to deal with just perceptions, I think, of the different people I have to interact with, which is really tough, which is what you're kind of dealing with when you gave that podcast.
So, I don't know, it's still trying to deal with that in a manner that's not so, you know, I don't know, it's just, Trying to deal with it, I guess.
That's all. Right.
I mean, you could look at it analogously in this way, right?
So, if you have a very simple set of language skills, and you have a bunch of friends who have that kind of simple set of language skills, you know, see Jane, run, see Spot, jump, or whatever, right?
And you say, okay, well, I'm now going to expand my vocabulary.
I'm going to start reading lots of books.
And this is an analogy.
I know this is not the case with you, a very good guy.
But, say, I'm now going to start using bigger words, bigger concepts, and so on, right?
Well, People either got to keep up or they're going to go away, right?
Yeah, I think that's probably a lot of what's happening.
Just because it seems that the nature of the relationships that I was deriving were ones that weren't really based on any form of logic, but more just like, I don't know, it's a very basic need.
Right, right. So, I don't know, it's tough.
I mean, it's a tough transition from what I was doing and getting to now where I'm kind of in that dip in the middle, so...
For sure. I absolutely guarantee you that this will save your life in the future.
And I know it can look like a real mirage from here.
It's like, oh yeah, so this is guy's death saying, hey, just over the next mountain, it's like the happy land or whatever.
But it is the case that as you let these kinds of people go out of your life and continue to work on yourself, that better people will inevitably come along.
All right. Well, here's one other little thing.
So... Okay, for example, the one thread I was on, on the boards, giving advice to heretic about trying to go ahead and find libertarian women and then kind of getting busted because I was using, you know, the same techniques I was using back then to help this guy, you know, my cognito.
I was just kind of like, damn, he's right.
I'm in a recessive loop back there because I just went right back into what I was thinking before.
Rather than what I'm trying to do now.
Yeah, growth is not a steamship, it's a pendulum, right?
So it's a pendulum that moves.
You think it's sort of a pendulum going along a clothesline.
It still swings back and forth a lot, right?
But there's progress, nonetheless.
You'll never swing back to the way you were, and every time you swing forward, you'll get further ahead, right?
Right. Yeah, I do.
Well, that's pretty much it. I just wanted to chime in on that and ask your opinion.
But I'm still dealing with that.
That's still a lot of info.
Yeah, look, I was fairly aware, actually I was completely aware when I did the podcast that this was going to be a bit of an A-bomb, right?
So this, of course, is a huge amount to swallow and it's all very complex and, you know, again, just huge, huge admiration for what it's worth for you sticking through that.
It was a very, very challenging podcast that probably fewer than one in a hundred people would have been able to swallow, so good for you.
Yeah, okay. Well, I don't see what's a big deal about it, kind of being honest, but okay.
Well, you've seen the board.
Okay, well, thanks very much. I really appreciate it.
We've had Chewbacca wanted to know, Steph, can you explain briefly what you meant when you said, as you developed philosophically and became more, sorry, you became more juicy for self-justification by others?
Unfortunately, I can't because you used the word briefly.
So, I just don't really see how that's going to be possible, but I will do it in the way that is best.
So, root of the word philosophy is from the Greek philosophy, love of wisdom.
No, just kidding. So, look, it's like this, right?
If you win the lottery, right, then there's going to be lots of people who are going to become your friends, right?
Because they want you to give them money, right?
If you become a famous rap star, as I never was in my 20s, Then you're going to get a good old MC Hammer posse of a hundred people who want to be your best friends and smoke your Snoop Dogg drugs and hang around with your hoes and so on.
So you're going to be lots of people who are going to want to be your friends.
So the more wealthy you become, the more you attract parasites.
And the same thing is true, of course, as you develop knowledge and wisdom.
If people begin to respect your capacity for wisdom and truth, then they are going to want to use you to justify Themselves, right?
So if you can imagine an island full of vampires, right?
The first guy who washes up, who's got some real blood in his veins, is going to attract his fair share of pointy-toothed friends.
And the same thing is true as you develop the...
Let me give another example, right?
So, you know, in those teen movies, they have this girl, the sort of Bailey Quarters, for those who are not young.
They have this girl who's like, I'm not pretty because I wear glasses and my hair's up, right?
And then, you know, at some point she goes through this ugly ducking to a swan thing where, you know, the dreamy music plays and she takes off her glasses and she shakes down her hair and it's like, whoa, foxy, right?
Or whatever. And if that was a British rap star, but she would sound pretty close to that.
And so what happens is now she's a hottie, right?
And as a hottie, she's going to start having lots of guys want to go out with her, right?
So, as you increase in value, you increase in desirability, of course, for other people.
And lost and empty people are really going to want to feed on your wisdom.
So, you absolutely want to have the wise man approve of you rather than the corrupt man, right?
Adolf Hitler saying, I think he's a great guy, is not going to do you quite as much good from a sort of emotional satisfaction standpoint.
If you can get Socrates to say, he's a great guy, that's a whole lot different, right?
So as you increase in wisdom, people will want you to justify their own existence more, and there can be a dangerous situation.
But Steph, if you have real knowledge, aren't you going to clearly not validate anyone else's false beliefs?
Well, but see, there's the intellectual knowledge and then there's the emotional knowledge, as we were talking about with Greg.
If you have intellectual knowledge, but you don't bring your whole sort of instinctual, philosophical, emotional apparatus to bear on a situation, then you're going to end up being exploited by other people, right?
So, if you have real knowledge and you have full knowledge, right, full knowledge, there's a really dangerous time in philosophy, right?
And it's the time...
Like, you know, when animals are young, you think of sort of, I don't know, baby gazelle, right?
There's a time of great danger, right?
I mean, when they're in their mother's womb, so to speak, they're relatively safe, right?
But then when they get born, then first they're protected by the herd, right?
The herd is always hanging around, making sure they can get up and learn how to walk or whatever.
But then there's a very dangerous time, right?
When they're no longer protected by the herd, but they're not quite full-grown, that's the kind of time that the predators are going to really want to grab them, right?
And so, as you develop in knowledge and wisdom, there's a time where you have knowledge and wisdom, but what you don't have is the emotional strength that people will sense, right?
So, if people know that you are going to mess them up, not by attacking them, but just by speaking the truth, right?
And I get these attacks...
All the time, right? All the time from various angles, people will constantly try and justify themselves or, you know, whatever, right?
And, you know, the recent one being, of course, that, and again, no disrespect to the women involved, but the recent one being this, oh, Steph, you should take the high road, you should never let, you know, lower yourself to other people's levels and so on.
It's just other people who want me to justify their own particular approaches, right?
They want to manage their anxiety by getting me to change my behavior.
And so there's a time period wherein you have to be quite strong and not be in conversation with people because you're not quite ready for it yet.
And so you have to have the resolution to stare people in the eye and say, well, look, what you're doing is completely wrong and corrupt.
And I will have nothing to do with you in any way, shape, or form because we are complete and total enemies.
Right? If you are dealing with a relative or, you know, your brother or whatever, who is, you know, a mystic or religious or a statist or, you know, supports the use of violence or corruption and inflicts it upon his children, the reality is that you're enemies,
right? I mean, no matter how zen we might want to get and how, you know, kumbaya, one big hug, Gaia, all that kind of stuff, there are people who fight for the truth, who are relatively few in number, and most of them do it quite badly, And there are people who fight against the truth, which is the vast majority of people who do it very well, right? So we have to be very careful about this, and we have to develop our strength.
Because the great thing, of course, is that once you really have that capacity to be strong with people, they actually won't try to feed off you, right?
Because they're very sensitive to whether or not you will be there to serve them or not.
And if they know that they're going to experience great pain at your hands because you'll tell them the truth in a blunt and unapologetic manner, they'll leave you alone.
But there's that time period where you have the wisdom that will give them the approval they need, but you don't necessarily have the boundary skills and emotional skills to be perfectly honest and frank with them.
That's when they're going to prey on you, and that's a dangerous time.
All right! Do we have any other questions, eh?
Hello? Hello.
Hi, this is Rob.
Hi. What's going on?
You're not the guy who said we don't want to use the name, right?
Nope. No, okay, good.
Not anymore. Excellent.
Well, I feel that we've got good boundaries there.
All right. I was talking to...
I posted on the board, or on the talk, or whatever.
That was yesterday when I went down to drop my brother off at my mom's house for their little, they had a family vacation or whatever.
And I dropped him off at the vacation house and my mom had swore to me before I took him down there that her girlfriend wouldn't be there.
And I drove off and her girlfriend drove up.
And so I called yesterday and had my final, that's it, with my mom.
Wow. And how are you feeling?
I'm happy. I'm glad.
I really am glad. What was it like to make that call?
I mean, what were the emotions?
Well, I was just like, I was kind of mad that I saw that lady drive up, and I was just like, and the first thing I did was pull out my phone.
I was like, okay, I saw her drive up.
You're going to lie to me about this kind of stuff.
I'm not going to talk to you anymore.
She's like, well, I don't know.
I was just protecting you or whatever, and I was like, all right, whatever.
Just don't talk to me anymore.
If I want to talk to you, I'll call you.
Sorry, can you tell me why it is that you were surprised that your mom lied to you about that?
I wasn't surprised.
I just expected, I mean, at least for them to wait longer.
You thought she'd lie better, right?
Yeah, but, I mean, I would have found out about it eventually, and it was just my last straw.
Well, you know, I certainly...
I think it's great what you're doing.
You know, for what it's worth, I know a little bit more about the history here, and I do think it's great what it is that you're doing.
I can absolutely guarantee you that it was not accidental that you found out the way that you did.
Because it would be a matter of such great ease for your mother to say to this woman, wait an hour until after my kid leaves and then come by or wait a day or whatever, right?
So the fact that there was this overlap...
is not accidental, right?
So, your mom definitely, again, your growing wisdom is causing anxiety for her, right?
You're growing assertiveness, you're growing knowledge and all these great things that you're doing.
It's causing anxiety for her and she was putting a test here, right, to figure out whether or not she was calling your bluff, right?
So, oh, he says, well, I can't have this girlfriend over and then she has you see her come over and then You know, that's the bluff she was calling, right?
So, she got rid of you, if that makes any sense.
Yeah, it does.
That's actually like the same thing my dad saw.
He was like, because I called him and told him about it, and he goes, well, she meant for you to see that.
Right. But, I just wasn't, I don't know, I didn't want to believe that for the first few minutes, and then...
No, of course, of course. Um...
But my grandma had also told me that there was no way that girl was coming down.
And I know she knew because of her house.
So I kind of called her and said bye to her too.
Wow. They're all gone.
Wow. Oh my God.
And look, if you're feeling happy, I think that's great.
I think that's great. As I mentioned to the gentleman before, it can be a pendulum, right?
So don't feel too bad if you end up swinging back into some other...
Problem with your family, slide back or whatever.
That can absolutely happen. Don't feel too bad if it does.
But this is a great example, right, of this thing that people are so terrified of, right?
Oh, I'm going to defoo or whatever.
But when you do it, it's like such a wonderful weight of senseless and degrading obligation has been lifted from your shoulders.
And so your emotional experience of this seems to me, it certainly was my experience.
It's been the experience of other people that I've talked to with this area.
There is just this sense of like, you know, the future is opening up.
My life is my own.
And it's a wonderful, wonderful feeling.
Yeah, it definitely feels really good.
Is there anything else that you wanted to talk about with regards to this?
What was that?
It kind of broke up a little bit.
No problem. Is there anything else that you wanted to talk about in this regard?
That was it, I guess.
Well, fantastic.
Good for you. Listen, send me your...
You don't have a copy of Von Truth yet, do you?
Nope. Okay, this is my present to you for the DFU. Just send me your...
PM me your address that you'll be at, and I'll send you a free copy.
Okay. All right.
Well, congratulations. Keep us posted on how you're doing, and...
Fantastic. Good for you, man.
That's incredible. All right.
All right. Take care, man. You too.
All right. Do we have any other questions, comments?
The growling in my stomach indicates that the philosopher must eat.
I look forward to donations, help to, except for those who've donated generously recently, Greg.
Just throw a few bucks my way.
It's traditionally a bit lean in the summer.
People have all these selfish requirements like vacation and food for themselves.
But if you have a couple of extra coins rolling around your change jar, if you could fire them off my way, I would really appreciate that.
So thank you so much everyone for joining in this Sunday, the 19th of August 2007.
It's a great chat, great show.
Thank you so much for dropping by and again for your amazing, perfect and beautiful Stopped Recording Conversation.
What is that? No, it's such a host for podcast.
That's what he suggests. Yeah, see here, this now, this is supposed to be my recording thing, right?
So what is it now? Here. Current call?
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