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Sept. 16, 2007 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:48:58
865 Sunday Call In Show Sep 16 2007

Confronting parents, drugs and the 'real time relationship' in action

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Time Text
Hello, are we back in?
And do you guys hear that buzz too?
I do hear a little bit of a buzz, so if you could just...
Mute your microphone. Sorry about that.
I think we lost the first bit of this recording because computers are just annoying.
But nonetheless, we're recording now, so let's continue.
So there's one possibility, which is that you asked for the truth and then you did not speak the truth, right, in order to reaffirm your father's control over you.
The other thing, the other possibility, of course, is that you asked for the truth because you are, in fact, ready for the conversation, right?
Okay. And neither one of these are right or wrong.
It's just sort of where you are, right?
But it is important.
If you're going to talk to your dad about your relationship with your dad, you want to do it directly.
You don't want to do it through the proxies of political conversations, right?
Sure. Although it certainly must be said that as far as proxy conversations go, that one was pretty good, right?
Because you got to really probe his level of comfort with principled argument.
Right. So tell me a little bit more about the anxiety that you feel when we talk about this area.
I don't know. It's just when you started to get into the one of two situations and asking me why I haven't talked with him about our relationship yet or just started coming over in my gut.
Just like butterflies.
Right. So it was sort of an anxiety laced with fear?
Probably. Well, only you can tell.
Now, I just want to double check.
Do you think or do you feel that it had anything to do with me that I was like honoring you or criticizing you or putting you down or anything like that?
That doesn't seem quite right now.
I'll have to try harder then.
Right, so it had something to do with the fact that there's this cliff edge in your life called the conversation with your father about the past abuse, right?
Uh-huh. And instead of playing around the edges of it, and we started talking about this because you were feeling sad or depressed around your father, very sort of sad, sort of quasi-sympathetic, right?
So when we get to this area where you have the conversation with your father about the historical abuse, and of course ideally it should be with both your parents, but that is where things are very unpleasant for you, very difficult, very challenging.
That is the dizzying lean over the cliff edge, right?
Right. And I can tell you why you're not doing it, if you like.
I would love to hear that, yeah.
Well, who is going to gain and who is going to lose from that conversation?
In what terms?
Gain and lose what?
Who is going to gain happiness or validation or some form of honor?
Who's going to come off better and who's going to come off worse in that conversation?
Oh, I would come off better.
Well, for sure, because you're the victim, right?
Sure. So, clearly, it's not fear of physical attack that is going to keep you from this conversation, right?
You sound like a husky fella, so I'm sure that it's not fear of...
Plus you can get the Free Domain Radio approved parental taser available for only $69.99 from the website.
So there is not going to be the same fears that you would have if you tried to do this at the age of 8 or 10 or something, right?
Okay. Yeah, you're right about saying that.
Okay, so...
We are...
As you know, in these families, in these situations, we are raised as slaves to our parents, right?
We are there to please our parents.
We are there to obey their wishes, to make them feel better, to comfort them when they're down, to be their punching bag when they're angry.
We are simply there as water poured into a glass to conform to our parents' needs, not to have needs of our own, right?
Yeah, yeah. So, who doesn't want you to have this conversation?
They don't want me to have this conversation.
Why, that's entirely true.
That is entirely true.
If you are given a hundred dollars as payment and it turns out to be counterfeit, who doesn't want you to bring the hundred dollars back?
The counterfeiter.
Right. You gain by bringing the hundred dollars back because the counterfeiter has to cough up something real and the counterfeiter doesn't want you to come back and have that conversation.
He wants you to come back and take another hundred dollars of worthless money as payment.
Sure. It's they who don't want you to bring this up.
Not you. Not you.
The truth doesn't destroy you.
The truth doesn't attack you because you're the victim as a child, right?
The truth condemns them.
Right.
Right.
So when you get a hold of the truth, your father changes his tactics.
In what way?
Well, it's as we described earlier on, right, that you see him fiddling with some cables, you see him watching a television show.
And when he had power and control over you, he was a bully, right?
Wow.
Yeah. And now, as you begin to awaken to moral understanding, who has the power?
I do. I'm not sure.
Are you asking or saying? That was the perfect combination of a statement and a question at the same time.
I do. Well, I guess that kind of sums it up.
Yeah, I have a lot more power and authority than I used to.
Well, it's reversed. It's not just like you've gone up 50% and he's gone down 25%.
It's completely reversed, right?
Where he had the ultimate moral authority when you were younger, and whatever he said went, and you were bad if he said so, and he was great just for being who he was, that is completely reversed, right?
Right. Right.
Because now I've got that, the power of that conversation.
Yeah, you have the truth. You have the truth, which does not make him look very good, right?
So you have power over him now.
So he's not bullying you anymore, is he?
Well, he's not physically abusing me.
I wouldn't go so far as saying he's not bullying me.
Sorry to interrupt. He's not coming on as strong as he used to.
And certainly you've said that over the last two weeks, you've felt some sort of pity and sadness for him, right?
Oh, I felt that, yeah.
Right, so he's gone from bully to what?
What's the flip side of bully?
Flip side of bully?
Well, flip side in terms of like re-manipulation or in terms of like the bullied victim?
There's bullies and there's victims, right?
So, when he has the power, he's the bully and you're the victim, right?
And when you have the power, you're the bully and he's the victim.
But you don't have the constitution to be cruel towards somebody who's helpless because you have the little magical thing we call empathy, right?
But you have to be careful because empathy renders us susceptible to manipulation.
Okay. So before, he was able to control you, and now the power has passed to you, so how is he going to provide value to you now?
Because before, he didn't have to provide value.
He was just the dad, and you were the son, and you just did stuff, right?
Okay. So, is he providing value by withholding a feeling of guilt or something like that?
Is that... Well, sure. I mean, it's something that I sort of termed negative economics.
Yeah. Right? So, it's like, instead of me going to my mom's house because I want to see her, I go to my mom's house because if I don't, I feel guilty or bad.
Okay. So now that you have knowledge and understanding and wisdom, how is he going to provide value to you?
He can't do it by bullying because he knows you're onto it because of your non-aggression principle, right?
Yeah. So how is he going to provide value to you given that he's not a good man?
Through sentimentality?
Well, through negative economics.
Right. So you're now going to feel sorry for him, and that's why you're going to give him resources.
Before, he could just take stuff, right?
You just had to obey.
Now that you don't have to obey, parents always do this.
They switch to being pathetic and sad.
And that's how they control you then when they don't have power over you.
They switch from bullying to negative economics.
Okay. Makes sense.
Man, there's...
Everybody's a genius, and everybody's a philosopher.
We ignore that at our peril, right?
Right, right.
There's so much, I... There's so much other stuff.
I better let other people talk.
I just like to, I don't know, talk with you or I guess my therapist about, but I feel, I don't know, at this point, I feel like...
I don't know about opening up the concept of defooing with my therapist at this point.
I don't know if she knows that or how she feels about that.
I mean, there's so much that I would like to talk with her about, but it's like it all is around defooing.
Right. Well, the way that you can explain this to your therapist that will help calm her fears is you say...
I feel that my family is a kind of cult, but what I found is another internet cult that is so much better.
So I'd like you to help me transition from my family cult to the cult of this crazy Canuck guy who aims to have discovered absolute morality and perfect truth.
And occasionally we'll wander around the parking lot of his old office building talking to his glove that is wrapped around him.
If you could just help transition me into that new cult, I would pay for that.
I would pay good money for that advice.
Help get me a ticket to crazy land, because I just want to change and break and I need a new cult.
I need a new cult!
You know what I mean? That will help.
Okay, okay.
I have actually talked about Free Domain Radio a little bit, which has been kind of fun.
I must tell you, and I'm sorry to interrupt you for just a second, the people who are doing this stuff right now, you guys are so lucky.
You are so lucky, because parents don't know about us that much yet.
And this is spreading already very quickly, right?
But as it continues to spread, at some point it's going to hit the radar of parents, right?
And then somebody's going to start asking questions of their parents, and they're going to immediately roll their eyes and say, oh, this is just the free domain radio junk, isn't it?
Yeah, we've heard about this.
It was on John Stossel.
Or something like that.
We have camouflage and the camouflage is nobody knows yet.
We're stealth bombers. It's a lot easier for us than it's going to be down the road when we become a known cult and then can be criticized for that.
Get all the negative press.
Yeah, and then there'll be flares sent up and everybody will see us coming and this, that, and the other.
Now, I certainly don't mind spending another few minutes if you had another question.
If other people have stuff, they can just type it into the chat window and then we can switch to them.
So we'll just wait for a second if you're listening.
If you can hear my voice.
Then if you could just say, me talk, me want to talk, or send up some signals, release stuff, whatever it is.
I'm sorry? Oh, there was another voice in the background.
Oh, you heard that too? I'm so glad.
Yeah. All the better with confirmation.
Oh, I finished the first draft of the book on universally preferable behavior.
It's long relative to my last book, which is not saying a huge amount, but it's good.
It'll be another couple of weeks until the second draft is finished, but I'm quite pleased with it.
It's going to come with a table of contents, shockingly enough, because it's not going to be just one of these read on a long bus ride kind of books.
Well, it looks like we don't have any other monster takers, so if you'd like to continue, we can certainly wait for other people to catch up.
Okay.
Sounds good.
But just to summarize, it's not your feeling that you don't want to have this.
That's why I was loathe to say coward, right?
Because you haven't identified what is your feeling and what is your father's feeling.
And your father has changed his strategy because he knows where you're going with this.
and he knows that he's not going to be able to pretend to you for much longer that he's a good person.
So he has to switch to negative economics and start using guilt and sadness and manipulation.
Thank you.
It's like once we figure out that the counterfeiter is giving us bad money, he just switches straight to being a thief.
Okay. And the money in this metaphor is love, right?
Well, value. Love comes from value.
You can't give love. You can only give value, and then that evokes love, right?
Yeah, right.
Right.
Now, um...
Okay.
If you want to continue, I mean, I have...
Some other stuff. I actually...
I mean...
Well, I guess the most important thing was being...
I think...
I think, you know, being able to talk about this sort of stuff with my therapist.
And I know that you kind of gave a tongue-in-cheek answer earlier, but is that basically...
Also the real answer?
What, do you want to join a new cult?
No, I would not say that.
I mean, certainly you don't want to not tell your therapist about an important conversation, right?
But just say, you know, I was chatting with a guy I know, I'm pretty sure he was outside my head.
And he was just sort of saying that, you know, that my feelings of not wanting to do this conversation, right?
I mean, you can talk about it not in terms of defooing, right?
But you can talk about it with your therapist in terms of, I want to have a conversation with my parents about family history, about the truth of my experience.
So she'll certainly help if she's competent, and I'm sure she is, and she'll certainly help you with that.
I would also say not to use the term defooing because it's not a technical term.
It's just something that Steph and I made up.
So I mean, who comes from it?
I've explained this before. Foo is my acronym.
Acronym? Yes. Short form, whatever.
My short form, when I was a student, when we were taking notes in class, family of origin kept coming up.
Family of origin, family of origin, family of origin.
Too long to write. So it became FOO in my notes.
And so when Steph and I started having this conversation, we kept talking about the family of origin, I just started referring to it as FOO, and it became FOO for the whole FDR society.
And so it's not a common, at least not that I am aware of, I want to get to the bottom of my history.
I want to have conversations about my history with my parents.
I want to be honest about my concerns about my family with my family.
I want to be honest about my concerns about my family with my family.
Yeah, like no therapist, unless you're directly in physical danger, no therapist is going to say, that's a bad idea, or telling the truth with your family.
Okay, yeah, sure.
That makes a lot of sense.
And if, I mean, when we are talking about breaking with my family, or when we're working through that, I had kind of in my mind gone through and thought about how this isn't...
It's not something that's weird for wives that are beaten or anything like that.
It's just people don't do it generally with...
You know, they're parents, but it's the same situation, right?
Well, sure. I mean, as we've talked about before, if a woman has been beaten by her husband for 20 years, right, and now he's old and sick and feeble and can't beat her anymore, there's very few therapists who would say, you should stay with this man.
Because the only thing that's changed is he's too weak to beat her now.
It's not like he magically became a better person.
This is why by the time you hit puberty, if you're still being abused, your relationship with your family is never repairable.
It's like if I'm a serial womanizer and I keep sleeping around with my wife and then, I don't know, I get hit by a truck and end up impotent and then I say, you know what, honey?
I'm giving up women. It's a little too late, right?
Because I just can't have sex anymore.
And so the fact is that since your parents did not wake up to their own abuse and change their approach to you until you became strong and they became relatively weaker, right?
That's why it's never going to work because you know, deep down in your gut, they just can't get away with it anymore.
That's why they stopped, right?
And that's the only reason that they stopped.
All right. Okay.
Okay. Well, yeah, because a lot of the other stuff I was going to talk about, the stuff I'd like to talk about with her, it's just, you know, it's hard to say, well, me and my brother were talking about...
You know, the fact that I might be leaving the family, you know, it's like that's, you know, kind of spells it out for...
You could say that you have a very intimate relationship with a hand puppet named Candy Apples.
that can help quite a bit as well.
And that's who's been giving you this advice.
Then bring the hand puppet to a couple of sessions and have a tape with me.
*laughs* Just put the podcast in.
Candy Apples is almost famous!
What this should do is help you defooing by getting you institutionalized, which certainly will deal with the moving out issues, right?
So that's just another way of approaching it.
Then I have to just work on the relationships, you know, in the silence.
Absolutely. And, you know, you can learn a lot of self-love with those self-huggy jackets.
So that's good stuff.
Alright, alright. Well, um...
When I was having my conversation with my brother, I don't want to go on too much longer if there's other people that want to talk, but, um...
We were – I mean I was feeling – like I was explaining what was going on because he's like, Steve, you seem really to yourself lately and what's wrong and just trying to figure all that out.
And I told him basically what I was feeling knowing full well that he wasn't going to – Be able to empathize with me because it – and he basically came out and said this because, I mean, it applies to him too and he doesn't empathize with himself.
So I knew full well that that was going to be the case but for some reason I still wanted to be honest with him when he was expressing concern for me.
So, I don't know.
I felt at the time, and I even said this to him, I don't know why I'm even telling you this, because there's no way that you could possibly...
There's no way that you could understand where I'm coming from.
There's no way that he could understand where you're coming from?
Because he lacks self-empathy?
Well... Well, no, it's because it's a complex topic founded on a bunch of other – founded on prior knowledge.
I mean, it's seemingly – it'd be like showing – I remember you had a friend of Nate's, I think, who showed like a podcast in the 600s to a friend of his.
Right, right, right. It's like – Yeah, it's a little advanced, for sure.
But, of course, the best way to teach empathy is to be empathetic with yourself, right?
The best way to teach is to do, right?
It's sort of the reversal, right?
They say those that can't do teach, but in this conversation, it's quite the opposite, right?
The best way to teach him empathy is not to show him empathy, right?
Because the problem is he lacks empathy to himself, right?
So, if I don't have 50 bucks and somebody says, lend me 50 bucks, there's not much I can do, right?
But if I see somebody earn 50 bucks, then I can go and earn 50 bucks by watching that.
So the way that you teach empathy is empathy to yourself.
Which means to speak honestly in the real-time relationship that's going on.
So yeah, it sounds good.
It sounds like you're verbalizing your concerns and thoughts with him.
Because I believe that everybody's a genius and everybody's a philosopher, he gets all of this stuff.
He doesn't have the pipeline to it.
He's got a map of the subway and the subway's built and functioning, he just doesn't have a way of getting down into the subway.
There's no passage that he can find.
But it's all running. He gets it all deep down, everything to do with your family in the same way that your father does.
So the best way to give him access to himself is to be relentlessly honest about what you're feeling and thinking in the moment that you're talking with him, and that will teach him or show him how to do it.
So it was a good thing for me to tell him how I was feeling and why I was feeling that way.
Absolutely. The way that we solve dissociation is with passion.
And passion doesn't mean sort of frantic.
It just means a connection with yourself and your own emotions and a willingness to express them.
Because what that will do is it will start to provoke anxiety in him, and anxiety is the labor of the true self, right?
It's the pain. Okay.
Sure. Even if it doesn't...
Even if it's not actionable in his own life, it's still a good thing for him to hear.
Well, this is the thing that's going to be hardest for you, I think, to implement, which is that it doesn't matter what honesty does in the world.
It doesn't matter whether or not people accept you for being honest or reject you or whether they can act on honesty or whether they can't act on honesty.
Because the moment that you say, my degree of self-expression and the honesty of my communication is dependent upon the effect it has on others, then you're giving other people control over your soul, right?
Yep. That's like a...
That's a little bit inflammatory.
I was going to say, that's like voting for Ron Paul.
You're letting other people affect your philosophical actions.
Well, yeah, that's a hope, right?
And that's a hope that has people break with their principles, right?
But you just stick with your principles.
They're going to work. They're going to get you through, right?
You don't...
Because fundamentally, this is right back to your dad, right?
So... The fact that the conversation that you're going to have is going to provoke anxiety in your father is not your business.
It's not your business.
In fact, you have the obligation, I would almost say, to speak the truth in any of the relationships that you have.
To be honest. Because if you're not, then it's just a shell game.
It's just a shadow puppet.
It's nothing. It's a badly scripted play.
So you're just honest with people and you say what you think and feel.
And if they like it, great. And if they don't like it, that's too bad.
You can't surrender your commitment to honesty and openness to other people's anxiety, because that's letting the bad people, in a sense, the disconnected people, the untruthful people, to end up running the lives of truthful people.
All it does is it spreads dishonesty, evasion, and dissociation, right?
We want to be the virus that spreads the truth, and we can't be the virus that spreads the truth if we get infected by other people's anxiety.
So, okay.
Okay. Because that's my brother's issue and it's my father's issue that they feel anxiety because they should feel anxiety.
For reasons that I will get into quite shortly, I've been hammering and hammering and hammering this point over the last week to week and a half.
Which is that fundamentally, it's not your father's anxiety that you're managing, it's your own.
The reason that you don't want to talk to your father is fundamentally not because your father will be anxious about it, but fundamentally because you will be anxious about it.
But the whole problem with your family is that everybody tries to manage their own emotions by manipulating everybody else.
So if your father feels angry, he just yells at you.
Or the guy who was on the phone the other day whose parents wanted him to clean up his old room or whatever.
They just feel anxious and so they just nag him.
But our emotions are our own, and it's not other people's job in life to manage our own emotions.
Or, you know, if I feel anxious, it's not okay for me to lash out at Christina or whatever, right?
It's not other people's job.
It's my anxiety. It's what I have to manage.
That is what a mature man and woman does with his or her emotions, is to accept them and not to ask other people to manage them.
If I say I get totally anxious every time Christina drives the blue car, it's my job to deal with my anxiety.
It's not Christina's job to manage my anxiety by not driving the blue car.
So you didn't like the fact that your father would take his anger on you, attempt to manage his own anxiety and frustration by yelling at you.
And similarly, it's equally unjust for you not to have this conversation because you'll feel anxious.
Not talking is just as manipulative fundamentally as lashing out at someone.
Withholding the truth from someone is just as manipulative as inflicting a lie.
And on a deep level, I'm aware of that.
I dislike it just as much whenever I do that.
And look, you're the victim.
Right? You're the victim, you were the kid, and so on, right?
But there is that tipping point where we go from victim to victimizer.
And the challenge, of course, is to say, look, I have the truth here that I want to talk about, and you know that you want to talk about it, because otherwise you wouldn't have called me.
You know that you want to talk about it with your dad.
You know that you're desperate to talk about it with your dad.
But in order to avoid the anxiety, you're avoiding the conversation.
But that's unjust, and that's repeating the family pattern.
Sure.
Because his dad, and I'm sure all the way to his...
Oh, man.
Joe, so when you say we move from victim to victimizer, I would be victimizing him by staying in the relationship.
You will be victimizing him by staying in the relationship and not being honest.
Right. Because I would be facilitating...
His own slow and steady demise, which is what I was probably experiencing.
That's partly it, but even more fundamentally, there's two reasons that you would be in the relationship and not tell him the truth.
One, because leaving the relationship would cause you anxiety.
So you're in the relationship because you want to not feel anxious.
But you're not telling the truth in the relationship because telling the truth would also cause you anxiety.
So the only reason you're spending time with this man is because you'll feel bad if you leave or if you tell the truth.
And we don't hang around people to make ourselves feel better.
That's exploitive. Okay.
And that's what you have to break with your dad.
Otherwise, sure as sunrise, you're going to do it to your kids in one form or another, right?
That's why I say get real or get gone.
But don't hang around because leaving is going to make you feel bad and telling the truth is going to make you feel bad.
That relationship is not there to serve your emotional needs and make you hang around people just to escape anxiety of one form or another.
You have to accept the anxiety and act on principle.
You don't get to bypass the principle because you just don't feel like...
You can do that if you're home alone, whatever, right?
Because it doesn't impact on other people, but you can't use other people that way.
I know that that's all you were taught, and I have full sympathy for that.
But that is a standard that we do have to hold.
Okay.
All right.
Man.
Man. Thank you. That makes a lot of sense.
This is like the PhD of FDR, right?
So, I mean, this is totally advanced stuff, right?
But it's just a way to give you a little less confusion and a little, like, it doesn't matter when you have the conversation, right?
You just have to not have the conversation honestly.
Which is not, oh, I'm afraid of hurting him.
No, you're afraid of being upset yourself.
You're afraid of being anxious.
It's your anxiety you're trying to manage.
It's nothing to do with him.
And then you can be honest.
It gets the fog out of the way.
The confusion out of the way.
So you might not have this conversation for six months.
But you won't imagine that it's because of some financial thing, and you won't imagine it's because you don't want to hurt his feelings, and you won't imagine...
You'll know the truth, which is that I want to control my own anxiety by avoiding this conversation.
And I'm going to feel it and do it, right?
At least you'll know the truth, right?
And then you can make your decisions honestly, right?
Okay. Okay.
How long... How long would you wait?
I mean, I know that you can't really say that because you're not me, but is this something...
Oh, I do it. I would do it now.
I would not even finish this conversation, but go and sit down and do it now.
Or at least make that commitment.
Like if you want to role play, if you want to sort of figure stuff out or whatever, that can be fine too.
But the commitment would be as soon as possible for me, right?
And I'm not saying that I would then do it immediately, but that would be my commitment.
That once I knew the truth and wanted to speak the truth to someone, that I would then speak the truth to that person at the earliest reasonable opportunity.
Yeah, sorry, Christina was just mentioning that use your therapist.
See, that is a relationship where you can use people because you're paying them.
But you can use your therapist to prepare for this as well, but at the earliest reasonable opportunity for sure would be the way that I would approach it.
And that's what you're ready for, right?
Because otherwise you wouldn't have called me.
Okay, alright.
And you also know exactly how this conversation is going to turn out, right?
But you just need to see it.
You need to see it.
Okay. Thank you very much, and I'll keep you posted.
I don't... I don't know if I'll be able to do this conversation.
No, no, you don't. You're not obligated to have this conversation ever.
The whole point is freedom, right?
You can spend the rest of your life hanging around and biting your tongue and talking about the oil and gas industry and Ron Paul and whatever you want, the weather and your college grades or whatever.
You're not obligated to have this.
There's no point substituting an FDR have to for a parental have to for a God have to for a government have to, right?
You're not obligated to have this conversation, right?
You just have to be honest with yourself about what's going on.
And you are remarkably honest with yourself, and full marks for that, for what it's worth.
Sure. Well, again, thank you.
You're welcome. You're doing a magnificent, magnificent job.
I mean, if I could levitate, I would be levitating with admiration right now.
I appreciate that. Alright, well we will move on then.
If somebody else has a question or a comment, there's no request mic in this conference call-y kind of thing, so you can just speak up using your high voice.
Hello, Steph. Hi.
Can you hear me? I sure can.
Oh, good. How's it going?
I'm doing fine. How are you?
Good. I'm adjusting the mic level.
I'm just not sure if this is a Working right.
Sorry about... It's my first time on Skype, so...
Welcome. If I had a first-time caller ring-a-ding, I'd ring-a-ding it.
Oh, here. I can hear a little better now.
I just don't want to create any feedback loops.
Yeah, we need feedback for the solos.
Sorry, go on. Yeah, sorry.
I missed a little bit of the chat in the beginning, but...
I don't know.
I've been contemplating a little bit of what you talked about...
Two weeks ago regarding the caller talking about your position on marijuana and other drugs.
Yeah, I thought that one might come back up.
Let's hear your perspective.
Sorry, I'm a little bit nervous.
Don't worry, there's only seven people in this conversation.
Don't think of the 30,000 who'll end up hearing it.
Just kidding. You know there's some great ways to relax that involve a medicinal herb known as...
Anyway, sorry, go on. Yeah, I'll save that one for a little later.
But I guess what I was wondering was, you seem pretty sure of the fact that what people experience on Various substances is in fact an illusion,
right? I was wondering how you came to this like so assuredly like how you know that I don't know like it seems like if you're gonna do that or say that that you would also have to include dreams and other natural forms of you know displacement from regular consciousness in the realm of Not being authentic,
right? Well, and one of the gentlemen on the board proposed a novel as a mind-altering substance as well, right?
Right, sure. Or an album or music.
Yeah, I mean, the body does produce natural endorphins.
The body does produce various biochemical agents that can have an effect upon your mind.
And of course, sleeping is a key one, right?
Wherein we go through these absolutely wild, you know, I mean, if it were artificial, it would be illegal for sure, right?
I mean, because it's Absolutely, right.
If they could find a way to turn off your dreams.
Yeah, it's a complete alternate reality state and so on.
But to me, there is a difference between what occurs to the body naturally and what occurs to the body through an external and artificial substance.
And by artificial, all I mean is not natural to the body.
I don't mean like it's produced by the feces of space monkeys or something.
Go ahead. I wonder if you've heard of, I mean, you mentioned a few specific ones in your podcast, you know, ecstasy and marijuana and heroin and all these drugs that you despise, but have you heard of DMT before?
I have not. It's dimethyltryptamine.
I've never experienced it, but I've sort of been listening to a series on the internet how there's incredible new information out there.
And people have just reported a lot of trips that they've had on this DMT, which is actually a naturally occurring in the brain substance.
It's actually, from what I understand, is what induces dreams to a certain extent.
Like, we experience dreams and REM sleep because of this DMT in our brains.
And I'm wondering, do you still consider that?
Like, people take the DMT... By itself, and it's more than you normally have in your brain, but you're, from what I understand, able to experience a sort of waking, dreamlike state.
And seeing that it's naturally produced, and you're just sort of adjusting the balances, so to speak, do you consider that also to be unnatural?
Sure, sure it is, because you're not adjusting the balances.
You're adding new stuff, right?
Well, it's not unknown to your system.
Your system knows exactly what it is.
Well, sure, but I mean, our body naturally produces insulin, right?
But unless you're diabetic, if you take a lot of insulin, you're going to get very sick, right?
So the fact that a substance occurs naturally in our body does not mean that it's not unnatural to add more.
To have that ratio.
Right. I mean, now, I would certainly say this is why I put in the thread, like, drugs for non-medicinal reasons, right?
So if you've got glaucoma or you have queasiness from chemotherapy, I'm sure marijuana is great, right?
It helps keep the medicine down.
Well, sure. If somebody is missing this stuff in their brain and is not able to sleep and is not getting there, they should take some, right?
If it's restoring the body to its natural state, and I know that there's a gray area and this and that, which we don't need to deal with because I don't think that's really what people are talking about when they talk about it.
No, I know. So for you, it's all about intention.
In terms of, like, if you're using it for recreational or versus using it to supplement some sort of, you know, get you back to a normal state, right?
Right. I mean, I'll just give a very, very short speech, which I'm going to put in a sort of YouTube video because I haven't actually pissed off the YouTube community quite enough.
And I'm sure some people watch my stuff stone, though I can't imagine what that would do to them.
Oh, I mean, I think, yeah, sure.
It might help. But the issue for me is that the continuum that I go back and forth with drug users is this, right?
So I say, look, I mean, I'm a very happy person and creative in this and that and so on without any drugs, you know, whatsoever.
And of course, they'll bring up, you know, coffee and Twinkies and novels and stuff like that.
But to me, that's all just non-sequitur, right?
Because it's not... Well, coffee is a fairly strong drug, especially in terms of its, you know, potential for addiction.
It's not... But it's not a mind-altering drug, right?
It can be the first or second time you take it.
I mean, it's not like... No, I mean, maybe for some people, but honestly, I've never had visions because I had a mocha latte.
Like, that just doesn't happen, right?
Well, right, but I mean, if you took enough, it could be.
I mean, it was, many, many years ago, thought to be a divine substance, you know, a very...
Because, you know, people took it in much larger dosages, but, you know, imagine having a lot of caffeine.
It is... It is a mind-altering drug.
We just don't take it in mind-altering levels.
No, it's not a mind-altering drug insofar as I've never heard that caffeine can produce visions or alter your perception of reality.
Or if you have three lattes, you can see music or something like that, right?
Well, I guess, yeah, it's not like magic mushrooms or marijuana or anything.
But it is a mind-altering drug.
I mean, I just don't want to totally trivialize caffeine, but I understand what you're saying, so go ahead.
I mean, it's a minor drug compared to the others.
Right. So the issue is that when I talk to people about drugs, there's one of two situations that can occur.
So either they say, well, my normal happiness level is like 50%, but when I take drugs, it goes to like 90% or something like that, right?
In which case you say, wow, that is a huge jump in happiness, right?
So normally you're like trundling along, you're not happy, you're not sad, but then when you smoke marijuana, you go from 50% to 90% or something like that, right?
And then that, to me, would make some sense in the short run.
Because then you'd say, well, who wouldn't want to be at 90% happiness rather than 50% happiness, right?
So that makes sense, right?
And so I then say, well, the problem with using drugs to go from 50% to 90% happiness is Is that because you don't get there naturally, it's not sustainable, right?
Now clearly, just from a sort of cost-benefit analysis, if you can go from 50% to 90% happiness and stay at more or less 90% happiness without drugs, that would be better, right?
Well, even if it involved like a one-time shot, you mean?
No, like if you didn't need drugs to get to 90% happiness.
You mean if you didn't have to keep buying them again and again?
Right. Like, if you could just take it once and then get there, and then you wouldn't have to keep taking it?
No, no. Like, if you didn't have to take any drugs to go from 50% happiness to 90% happiness.
Okay, right. The people would prefer that, right?
Because it would be cheaper. It would be less legally complicated, let's say.
Right. And there would be no risk of dependency.
There would be no health risks.
I mean, smoking marijuana is not the healthiest thing in the world.
I know that you can take it other ways, but...
Well, right. I mean, if you could get to the 90% happiness without taking the drug, then that would be better.
I mean, I'm sure everybody would agree with that, right?
Well, I don't know. I mean, you said in your last podcast that you thought that people could reach these same states that they reach, like, you know, these intense psychedelic states of being able to compose great music by, like, You know, adequate therapy and other, you know, like internal reflection and these kind of methods.
And I was just wondering if you really still stand by that, you know?
Oh, sure, yeah, because I mean, I do, right?
I mean, I write novels, I write poetry, I get an incredible high off podcasting.
Absolutely. And I don't do any of that, and I'm a very happy person, and I don't do that with any drugs.
Let's just talk about the illegal drugs.
Okay, that's fine. You know, the thing that kind of keeps coming back to me is that I don't know how you can say that without having a point of reference for the experience that people do have and the ability.
I mean, you're putting together a great work of art, I think, with Free Domain Radio, but it's not like a...
Swirling Sgt. Pepper meets Queen or anything like that.
I'm not saying that that's the epitome of art.
Maybe this is the epitome of art.
I don't know that the desired state that a lot of people want to reach can be reached just through psychology and figuring it out for yourself.
There does seem to be some value in that experience.
And I guess I just don't also understand why you don't think it's, you know, or why you just think it's an illusion or, you know, in the sense that you kind of like want to You know, distance yourself from the drugs, but not from other things that are drug-like, like dreams and other things like...
Well, it is an artificial illusion, right?
To put a drug into your body does give you...
And this is one of the reasons...
Let me just finish up my earlier point, if you don't mind, and then I'll get...
Sure, no, no, no, please, please. So what happens is people say, well, I go 50%, I double my happiness on drugs or whatever, and clearly that's an addiction.
If you rely on a drug to make you happy, that's an addiction.
Why do you say that?
Let's say you find out one day when you're 13 that, oh my gosh, there's this thing, masturbation, right?
And it's like, you start to do that, and it's like, are you addicted to it?
We have to go back to our earlier distinction that masturbation does not introduce new substances into the body.
In fact, it just introduces new substances to your furniture.
Well, that's true.
But chemically, it's very much like a drug trip.
As a 13-year-old boy, I didn't just get tennis elbow from tennis, and I don't ever remember reality being distorted through or after the act of masturbation.
Not even for 20 seconds.
It is a mind-altering experience.
It's not hallucinatory.
I don't see visions.
I can't see music during an orgasm or anything like that.
I don't know. Maybe I've had different kinds.
You know, it's...
You know, you can store those hands.
They could make quite a bit of money from you.
It's a rub tug at...
Maybe. I could be mistaken.
But, you know, it seems...
And, of course, orgasms don't last hours, and they're not illegal, and you don't have to worry about what's going into your body and stuff like that.
But what I'm saying is that if there's a big jump in happiness from taking drugs, then clearly that's a kind of addiction, right?
Because you can get to happiness without taking drugs.
I know that. Because, I mean, I've been unhappy, and I... I've been happier because of working on myself and learning the truth and so on.
So you can get to a state of great joy and a permanent state.
I mean, I'm a really happy guy for the most part, always, but a very sustainable state of joy without taking drugs, if you do the work, right?
If you sort of earn it, right? It's the difference between going to the gym and taking steroids, right?
Right. I'm sorry.
So on the other hand, though, so when I point that out, that clearly going like doubling your happiness or going 50 to 90 percent happiness is addictive, then people say, well, no, it's not that big a deal.
It's just a slightly better thing.
It's just like I'm going from 85 to 90 percent or whatever, right?
In which case, then the risk doesn't make any sense, right?
Because there is risk in taking drugs.
There's legal risk, there's medical risk, and there is of course the risk that you think you're gaining something that you're not.
And that's the fundamental issue that I had, right?
So I have, which is that To me, the most dangerous thing is the illusion of knowledge, right?
So there's all these people I've talked to throughout the years who say, oh, I get the most amazing connections on drugs.
I really understand a whole bunch of stuff.
Stuff becomes really clear to me and so on and so on, right?
And so I say, well, tell me.
And I say, first of all, The fact that a drug is going to create receptions in your brain.
It's going to join neurons together, right?
And it's going to give the illusion of oneness and the illusion of understanding.
But there is a standing joke among every single stand-up that I've ever seen who talks about drugs.
Which is, you wake up at two o'clock in the morning after an LSD trip or during an LSD trip and you've solved the problems of the universe and you've understood the meaning of life.
And then you jot it down and you wake up six hours later and it just says, you know, the frog ate my aardvark or something like that, right?
So the problem is it gives you the illusion of connections.
It gives you the illusion of wisdom, the illusion of knowledge.
And then when you ask people, so what are the great things that you've gotten out of drug use, you just get the most banal stuff, you know, like we are all one or something like that.
It seems to me that that's kind of an unfair condemnation of the whole experience, and I'm sure that a lot of it is like that.
Sorry to interrupt.
Just because you said unfair condemnation, I'm just saying it's everyone I've ever talked to about drugs.
And this is going on on the board at the moment, right?
So I'm asking people, what are the great insights and revelations that you've had with drugs?
And I also ask them, and again, I'm sorry to be interrupting, I just want to make this...
No, no. I also do ask them, if you get a revelation on a drug that's supposed to join, I don't know, the universe and herrings and solar systems together...
Then, clearly, you need to work it out logically as well, right?
The feeling of a connection, the feeling of an insight, especially when it's drug-induced, is not the same as knowledge, right?
No, you're right. If you say, well, if I eat a light bulb, I'll cure cancer, and that came to me during an LSD trip, clearly you need to do some research before eating a light bulb, right?
No, I think anything you take back with you still has to...
Sorry, I just finished the point, and then I'll turn it back to you.
So then what I do is I say, okay, so you've had these connections.
Why don't you tell me what they are?
And I assume that you've worked it out logically to validate that it is in fact a real connection and not just something that occurred because of a drug, right?
So you validate it. And I have yet, after talking about this issue for 20 years, I swear to God, I have yet to meet anybody who has had a revelation that is genuinely original, who has gone through and worked it out logically.
But that doesn't phase them at all.
They still say, I'm getting all this knowledge and wisdom from drugs, even though it's demonstrably, at least in my experience, talking about it with a large number of people.
Not there! And the illusion of knowledge is worse than ignorance, because you think you're somewhere when you're not, right?
Right, and I mean, you're absolutely right that I think that anything you do, any epiphanies that you have have to be checked against a sober reality as well before you sort of go about implementing whatever you want to bring back from that realm.
But, you know, it just seems like...
There are things in that state that are boundary dissolving, just general epiphanies that you can have.
For me, on marijuana, it was just more sort of the acknowledgement that, yeah, And I do think a lot about politics and religion sometimes during these experiences.
And maybe that's not what most people are thinking about.
I have no idea. But for me, it kind of clicked.
Yeah, government is totally an illusion.
And that's something I think you generally have put out on your show.
That's the case with abstract power structures.
They're just... You know, these mental abstractions, right?
Well, I mean, that was just sort of reinforced to me, you know, in that state.
And so, I mean, I guess I can't...
Reinforced is not a statement of cognitive ability, right?
Like, because you could be a bigot who says, I don't know, I hate Chinese laundromat people, right?
And maybe you smoke drugs, and that is reinforced.
But reinforced is not a statement of knowledge, right?
No, I mean, I'm not...
I'm not looking to validate these theories in any sort of psychedelic state, but it is, for me at least, a useful tool for contemplation and trying Trying to bend the mind a little bit to see what else you can get out of it.
And obviously you have to meet that with some sober reflection too and just kind of look at the whole picture.
So you're making a claim which is that you have insights or revelations during drug use that turn out to be true under rigorous analysis, right?
So, you're making a claim that when you smoke drugs, you have insights, which then turn out to be true.
Well, some of them. I mean, some of them don't make any sense at all.
Step me through one of these insights that turned out to be true based on a rational analysis.
Well, I mean, it's not that simple.
It's kind of like... I want to go back to the dream analogy in that you can just sort of get little things out of it that you probably wouldn't have otherwise.
You know... When you're in a dream, it's not like the dream tells you exactly what to do.
You have to think about it and decipher it.
To come up with one exact example, I can come up with some nebulous sort of like, here's kind of how I felt and here's how this helped me.
It's more of, you know, like...
But you do understand that this is why when people tell me that on the other side of these doors of perception are all these mental treasures, and I say, okay, well, just show me one, and nobody ever can, that makes me...
This is exactly the same, and I'm not saying that you're epistemologically the same, but this is everyone who says to me, well, if you really pray to God, then he'll answer to you.
Like, on the other side of...
All this beautiful stuff to do with truth and Jesus and, I don't know, statues whose eyes bleed blood and stuff, right?
They say, well, if you believe, then there's all this stuff on the other side that God has knowledge and wisdom.
And then I say, okay, well, tell me something that God has told you that is true and original and so on and they can never do it, right?
No, you're right. But why does it have to be a specific thing as more of a tool for experience?
I may not be able to pinpoint the exact revelation.
I don't keep detailed logs or anything, or I don't keep dream journals either.
But to me, the insight that I get is roughly the same.
Then how do you know? And the reason that I'm bugging you on this, and I do apologize, No, sure.
No, please. How do you know that they're real revelations?
If you don't keep a dream journal and you don't have a review and an analysis of the things that you've experienced on drugs, how do you know that they're genuine revelations rather than just your brain being tricked into thinking that it's made a connection when it hasn't?
Well, either way, I mean...
You know, like you can go watch a movie that you totally disagree with, but then come away from it with, you know, just maybe one sort of like, hmm, you know, that triggered this thought, which triggered this thought, and now I kind of understand where they're coming from on that.
You know, it doesn't have to be, oh, wow, I found Pythagoras theorem in my drug-induced state or something.
Like, it doesn't have to be... I don't know.
I mean, I do have to, you know, understand why I'm asking these questions.
Right.
Again, not just to be annoying or to be like, you know, the square who's like just a facts man or whatever.
Right.
I don't mean to be Friday.
Right.
But when somebody puts forward a claim that says there is knowledge and wisdom, which are two things that I highly value, which I think is the result of dedicating your brain to rationality and creativity and and and and reality and so on.
When someone says that there is great creativity in distorting the mind, and I know that one of the things that occurs on drugs is people feel that they're achieving a knowledge when objectively they're not, then I have to ask, if someone says that the road to wisdom is the opposite of the one that I have found to be the most productive, I have to ask for evidence, right?
Right, but I hope I didn't make the claim that it is like a road to wisdom.
It's just a tool for sort of looking at things different ways.
And that's really all it is. I'm not trying to say it's the ultimate key.
It is a tool not for looking at things different ways.
It is a tool for looking at things incorrectly.
I mean, according to objective reality, right?
I mean, because drugs distort the mind.
It's looking at things different than how they are in ordinary...
I'm sorry, I'm going to have to stop you.
Interrupt as much as you want.
When you say ordinary waking existence, is there another existence that I'm not aware of?
Is this a platonic thing you're talking about, a higher realm of forms?
What other reality is there that I'm not aware of?
I don't know exactly what it is.
I wish I could articulate it.
And I have to admit, you know, I'm coming at this, you know, this is not like, you know, the one topic that I feel really strongly about.
It's just this one topic that has been really on my mind because I can't make sense of it fully.
And the things that you say seem somewhat logical, but they don't seem to match my experience.
And then my experience is that These trips are valuable.
I wish I could articulate that.
That's exactly what the drugs would do.
They would give you the feeling That your trips are valuable, but in fact, they would not be valuable in terms of real knowledge and insight.
They would feel. I mean, I guarantee you, just based on my knowledge of what psychoactive drugs do, that you would feel that you had achieved great value through this trip.
But the reality is that you wouldn't have.
I mean, just according to my understanding of it, and I'm certainly not a pharmacologist or anything like that, but what would happen when you take drugs is you would really have a very strong feeling That you had achieved wisdom or knowledge or truth or connections or insights or something like that.
But then you would be unable to articulate them in a rational manner.
That's what you would expect from drugs.
Because that's what they do to the brain.
They create connections artificially.
Right. So when you say to me that you get these insights and I ask you what they are and you can't tell me, what that does is, and of course, for sure, whether I'm right or wrong, I definitely have dedicated my life to destroying illusions, especially the illusions of knowledge, right?
So if drugs create illusions of knowledge, they're going to be my mortal enemy, so to speak, right?
Sure, and I would absolutely agree with you.
I mean, I've read your book.
I think it's great. And I think illusion is the culprit here.
And I think, you know, culture is an illusion and all these other things are illusionary in nature.
Just for me, it hasn't been that long.
I fully respect and understand that you're telling me the complete honest and total truth.
I believe that of people who use drugs.
I don't for a moment think that you're trying to fool me.
It's to know that drugs give you the illusion of connections.
That's what they do. They wire up the brain in ways that aren't empirical.
Well, I mean, rather than illusion, I mean, I don't know if it would be any different at all to just say distortion or, you know, maybe that's the same thing.
Well, an illusion is usually a more powerful distortion, but I'm fine with distortion as well, right?
But it's definitely an erroneous interaction with reality.
Like, it's not valid, it's not true, it's not empirical, it's a distortion of your perception.
It just seems to say that, I mean, I understand fully, fully where you're coming from on that, because I used to feel that way myself.
I mean, I thought that anyone that participated in drug culture was clearly just using it for escapism.
I mean, there was no way around it.
And I didn't even try drugs until I was, you know, 21.
Or I guess I was 20. Just kidding, go on.
Well, I do remember. I just sort of...
Well, listen, can I just ask you for a favor then?
Because, look, I don't want to be wrong about drugs.
You know, if there's a way for me to...
Right, and I don't want to be wrong about it either.
I'll be riding the horse as quickly as I can, but...
What you can do for me is you can start to write down the stuff that is occurring for you while you're on drugs.
You can write down the insights that you get on drugs.
You can write them down and then we can see if they play out logically.
Right, because that's the test. Logic and reason.
I'm not saying that everything is logical, but like, you know, your dreams aren't logical, right?
But they're still somewhat useful.
And I think they are, right? I mean, I've done a lot of dream analysis.
I think that there is... You think all dreams are logical?
I think that, well, I mean, all the dreams that I've had handed to me that I've done a dream analysis of...
So you think you'd be able to analyze any dream?
Maybe not you, but it could be analyzed given the right technique and the right insight.
I mean, I couldn't state that as an absolute theory, but I certainly can say that the dreams that I have analyzed have had a real logic to them.
So, I mean, if you have a belief, right, and obviously you don't want to have the illusion of knowledge rather than the knowledge itself.
You don't want drugs to be giving you a feeling that you're achieving something that you're not, right?
Because then you stop. True.
As I said in the book, right, if I'm driving home and I get home, I stop driving, right?
So if drugs are giving you a knowledge that is illusory, then they're actually blocking your search for knowledge.
They're retarding your search for wisdom, right?
If, if, I'm not saying they are, but if they are.
Yeah, I guess so.
But everything that you say, it always seems to come down to your personal experience, and that seems key to the whole equation, right?
You have to look and...
Analyze your own personal experience on these things, right?
Yes, but according to reality and logic, not according to just what you feel, right?
Like a parent who gets angry at a kid and yells at the kid really feels like the kid should be yelled at, right?
But that doesn't mean that it's just or fair.
So, yes, absolutely, you need to analyze your own thoughts and feelings, but with regards to reality and consistency, right?
No, I understand that.
It just seems like it's too heavy-handed, in my opinion, to just throw out there that all drugs are pure deviation from what we...
What the human experience is all about.
And, you know, it seems like drugs have been around forever.
I mean, they're older than humans are, right?
But I mean, that doesn't mean that it's good.
And of course, religious people feel all the time that they're getting a cosmic oneness and so on, right?
Which we don't take seriously. No, I don't take that seriously either.
I mean, I've always wanted this to be a testable thesis.
I'm not willing to test it by experimenting on myself, right?
Because I don't think that they're good.
But nonetheless, I'm more than happy to make this an experiment that is testable, right?
Because I'm all for reason and evidence, right?
So what you have to do...
It's just write down the stuff that you feel is insightful when you're on a drug and we'll have a look at it.
You can post it anonymously or you can just IM me or whatever.
I don't mind being public about it.
We'll see whether these connections that you feel you're making are valid or not.
Because if they're not Well, I mean, a lot of the things I'm going to be writing are things that, you know, we both already agree on.
You know, like, you know, a lot of the feelings I have in both, you know, stone and un-stone states are very much the same.
You know, it's like reinforcement, or just not reinforcement, but...
Well, yeah, see...
You know, I'm thinking about liberty and, you know, person...
What's it called?
You know, just personal integrity issues.
Like, these are constantly afloat in my mind whether or not I'm high, right?
And so what I would write down probably, you know, Would be somewhat indistinguishable from anything else.
And I guess I know where you're going to go with that.
Well, then you don't need it.
I'm not trying to catch you.
It's just that when people make truth statements to me, I take them very seriously, right?
So when people say to me, I get insights on drugs.
And of course, if you could get the insights without the drugs and the happiness without the drugs, you'd never take the drugs, right?
So if people say to me that I get happiness and insights on drugs that I could not get without drugs, then I just can't take that on drugs.
If somebody says, I saw Jesus dancing in my tapioca last night, right?
Right. I don't know.
I mean, I hope we can kind of use this as a platform for maybe an ongoing chat every once in a while where, you know, because it just has been really, it's the one thing, you know, that you've put out there that I'm That stopped me in my tracks.
And look, I mean, I want to be more rigorous than just have it as an occasional chat topic, right?
You need to write down, and I can totally get that you don't want to do this, right?
No, I would love to.
The thing is, you know, I'm not unwilling to talk about my drug use.
I smoke, or I guess now I vaporize marijuana, you know, probably once a day, maybe not every day, but mostly every day.
And, you know, I've had a great, you know, last couple of years.
Things have been really, really good for me.
And these, you know, rather than write down thoughts and epiphanies or whatever, I've been working on, you know, putting together a recording studio here in California.
And it's only been the last few months, but I mean, I can tell you that, you know, these...
These drug-induced states have really pushed me to envision how this studio is going to be laid out, and I think it's come together really, really well.
That may or may not have happened in the absence of the drugs, you know, and hopefully it would have anyways, but I'm just saying it's helped me.
I mean, it's not been a neutral...
It hasn't been a neutral part of this whole thing.
It's been kind of an active part.
I sort of let myself get overwhelmed, or not overwhelmed, but I let myself get taken in with the essence of being in this recording environment and, you know, just...
Turn on the vaporizer and just let my mind wander and I draw these pictures of how I think it should go.
It's really been productive.
It hasn't been what you say in terms of just being purely illusionary.
It's been a tool for me and a useful one.
Well, I'm sure, and I have no doubt that people get positive effects from taking drugs, right, as they perceive it, right?
I mean, there's no question of that for me, because they exist and people take them, so there are positive things that come out of it, right?
I have found that, because I used to smoke when I wrote, right, I smoked cigarettes, And I found that breaking that association was highly worthwhile for me.
I got to not be reliant on it for creativity, and I found that my creativity...
The God of Atheists was the first book that I wrote without...
Without smoking. And I was never a heavy sign of two cigarettes when I wrote over the course of four hours or whatever, right?
So I was never a heavy sign. But I found that breaking that habit opened up new creativity for me, right?
Because it kind of wears a groove in your brain.
But nonetheless, look, I mean, I can't argue with your personal experiences and neither would I want to because, I mean, that would be respectful to what it is you're telling me, which, of course, I'm sure is the truth.
But there is a risk of looking towards drugs to manage anxiety and to use drugs to lower self-criticism, right?
Because drugs are a disinhibitor, right?
Physically. Like alcohol is, right?
Like too much alcohol. So there's always a risk that people use it to get to places, to take shortcuts to places within themselves that I think they could more reasonably get to more persistently and consistently.
I'm not saying you did, but if you had certain kinds of self-criticisms that inhibited your creativity, I think it's worthwhile to work on those in a therapeutic setting rather than to mask them with drugs and say, I've made progress, if that makes sense.
Yeah, that does make sense.
I guess that's true to me to a certain extent, that I'm able to not think about Being criticized as much, you know, and just go ahead and start creating.
And, you know, in the absence of that, you know, I haven't tried in a while.
Maybe I should try and just see what it'd be like to work on my music in my studio in the absence of something I've become used to, which is marijuana.
It just seems like it's there.
It's a tool. It helps, at least in terms of my perception.
My perception is that it helps.
And I can't really just say, no, you're right, it doesn't.
Because that would be contrary to my experience.
Yeah, of course. I guarantee. I mean, I perfectly believe you that it does help.
The interesting thing would be to find out if you could now do it.
If you have a crutch, and it is a kind of crutch, right?
I mean, obviously you're trying... Well, I mean, I do it every day, so I guess you could call it that.
The key thing you want to do, right, is let's say, I mean, let's just say for the sake of argument that it's a useful crutch, but the point of a crutch is to put it away, right?
True. I mean, but, you know, a crutch also, you know, gives it a connotation of something that you definitely want to get rid of someday.
And I'm saying that if you can get to the same creativity...
And I would say even more creativity.
I've certainly had more creativity since I stopped smoking.
I guess I last smoked when I wrote about six or seven years ago.
So I've had more creativity in the absence of that.
So I would say that the problem if you keep using a crutch is your leg keeps staying weak, right?
Yeah, that's true.
But I guess I would have to make sure that this is in fact a crutch and not just something that came around and is beneficial to me all around.
There's lots and lots of people who are able to integrate these substances in their life that it works out in a positive way.
There's tons of examples of people who have increased the net, and it's hard to say increased because we don't know exactly what their lives would have been like in the absence.
Yeah, and also that self-reporting, right?
So this is like people saying, well, belief in God makes me a happier and better person, right?
True. I mean, but belief in God is kind of a very specific thing, and the God part isn't there.
But drugs are real.
Maybe the illusions aren't, or the...
Maybe the different aspects of what you see during a trip are not real, but the drug itself is there in your brain.
It's more real than religion, right?
Sure, absolutely. There's no question.
You don't have to do whatever you like to do.
It's fine with me, of course, right?
Not that it matters. Well, right.
I'm not trying to, you know, it just hits you when you're taking drugs.
I also would give it a shot.
This has nothing to do. I mean, of course, I don't think taking drugs is immoral, right?
I think that it's irresponsible if you're a parent or if you're driving or whatever, right?
I would agree. But I would just say, give it a shot.
I mean, this is just sort of from one guy who used to smoke to a guy who smokes marijuana or vaporizes marijuana now.
Try it without, right?
Now, if you find that you get really anxious without the drug, Then the drug is masking something that you need to deal with.
I mean, I think we can agree on that.
You don't want to be atom-bombing your anxiety out of existence with a drug, right?
Because that's not going to help you in the long run.
So you might find that new creativity will come out without the drug, for sure.
Right. And, you know, I just wanted to specify, you know, I'm not trying to advocate all drug use, but I, you know, of recent...
Sort of the last maybe year or two, the category of drugs that's really just caught my attention would just be the psychedelics, you know, and you didn't mention anything really specifically about that in your last podcast or two podcasts ago?
You kind of clumped them all together, right?
The cocaine with the ecstasy, with the marijuana, it's all kind of clumped together in your mind, more or less, right?
Anything that's going to distort your ability to process reality, I mean, of course, I'm a philosopher and a materialist, and I'm a rationalist, so anything which distorts people's ability to correctly perceive reality, you know, whether it's God, the state, the myth of the virtue of the family, or direct psychoactive drugs is going to be something that I'm not going to be a big fan of,
right? Right, but I guess I just, you know, I wanted to know in your mind if there was any distinction between, you know, the harder like speed and meth and crack versus magic mushrooms, LSD and DMT and marijuana.
You know, boundary-dissolving, mind-expanding drugs.
There's a difference to me between Buddhism, or I guess Unitarianism as far as religion goes, and radical Islam, right?
So for sure, if I had to be in a country where there was a state religion, I'd rather it be Unitarianism or something like that.
Right. And if there's a drug holding the culture in place, you'd rather it be marijuana and magic mushrooms than crack cocaine.
If I had to take a drug, then I would rather take marijuana than smoke crack, for sure, right?
But that doesn't mean that I don't want to do either, right?
Okay, right. No, I know, but, you know, I've sort of been listening to these other...
I guess the whole movement, if you want to call it that, calls itself the psychedelic movement, and I know that's probably...
To you, it doesn't mean one thing or the other.
You probably think they're equally departed from reality as any other drug user.
But some of the things that they talk about, and I know you're going to say I'm hesitating for not mentioning any specifics, and the specifics are kind of It's weird in a lot of cases.
You know, some of the things that people do report really do kind of make you think they have taken something kind of funny, you know.
But I don't know.
I just sort of, when I listen to it, I sort of appreciate what they're saying.
And like, even when I, you know, even before I ever tried drugs, I knew what it was like to be in this psychedelic state.
And I'm sure you do too, right?
If you're really tired and close your eyes and just sort of have this euphoria, right?
I mean, you know about all that.
Well, yeah, but I mean, the fact that you take the statements of other drug users with some seriousness, to me, doesn't mean anything more.
Not that I'm saying you're telling anything not true, but it doesn't mean anything more than the fact that when the Baptist priest says hallelujah, everyone says, who's a Baptist in the church?
Amen. It's just because they all have the same premises, and for drug users they all would have had the same sort of experiences, so stuff would click.
The real question is, does it click with non-drug users?
And I don't know whether that's true or not.
Right, and I doubt that it would.
That's kind of the problem, is that people who haven't experienced it can't know what it is that those who have experienced it are talking about.
And I'm not trying to say, like, it's absolutely real, this other realm.
I'm more confused by it than I am advocating it.
The other realm is not real, for sure.
I mean, there is no alternate reality to the one that is, right?
So the other realm is not real, for sure.
It's just your brain short-sighted.
You know, as sort of, you know, empirical, rational, logical thinkers, you know, I tend to come to that conclusion, too.
But, you know, our first premise in all this has to be That we're open-minded to the possibility that things aren't as they seem, right?
At least, you know, open-minded.
And it has to be shown using reason.
There's no reason that it's ever shown the existence of this other realm.
And we know that drugs distort perception.
So if you perceive another realm while on drugs, and I don't while I'm not, I don't have to be wildly curious and open-minded to the point where I lose standards, right?
Well, I mean, you say absolutely for sure there is no other realm, end of story.
And, you know, I'm inclined to agree with that.
I really am inclined to agree with that.
As somebody who's followed your line of reasoning for a year and a half, and before that, you know, even, I really do tend to side with, yeah, this is the only realm, and let's not worry about what happens after death, or what happens in religious state, or, you know, when people are tripping out on drugs.
But, um... It just seems that you don't know if there's another realm.
I don't know either. I've experienced something that causes me confusion because it's in conflict with my more rational side.
It's in conflict with the side of me that says, wait a minute, no.
That's not how the world works.
The world is just physics.
If you stop taking drugs and you still continue to go to this other realm and you can bring back evidence, then we can...
Well, no. There's no way I'll ever get to that other realm unless, you know, I have a concussion or something.
You know, drugs are it.
You know, that's the way. Listen, I'm going to stop this if you don't mind.
I really have enjoyed the debate, but I just think anybody else had something else that they wanted to mention.
I really appreciate you calling in, and I think it's time to please clarify my narc-like bigotry towards this other realm.
I really do appreciate it. Well, I mean, I'd like to hear, you know, if you do have any more formal, you know, podcasts on the subject, and I may call in again, you know, in a week or two, just if I have any other thoughts on it, just because it is something that's really kind of just confusing me right now, even though it's not, you know, the end of the world one way or the other.
And just for those who don't understand the psychology of a marijuana user, when he says a week or two, he actually means about four to six weeks, just in case.
You're probably right. It took me about five weeks to set this microphone up.
Okay, so I'm going to open this up to anybody else.
Thanks again for chatting with me.
It was a great conversation.
Definitely. Thank you very much.
Do we have anybody else who wanted to come in with questions, comments, issues, challenges, problems?
Mad praise for On Truth, The Journey of Illusion, available at freedomainradio.com.
Speak! Speak!
Speak, my spirits!
I think I heard something! Hello?
Yes? Hello?
Can you hear me?
I sure can. Oh!
Hey, what's up? Is this...
Is this... Is this...
Wait, somebody else was before...
Sorry, somebody else was just before you.
Nobody... He's not...
Yeah, he's not...
Nobody's muted. There is no mute in this...
No, there's no mute. I'm not muted.
No, no, there was somebody else who wanted to come in who says he's just a...
Hmm, no sound.
Hold on. Yes, no, absolutely.
In a live show, we love to hold on.
Just take your time.
I'm going to go get a sandwich. I go to the washroom, get a quick back rub and shave, and come back.
I'll hide in the bathroom where the L train won't make any noise.
Take the L train.
We thought that's... Or maybe make it worse.
Excellent. Greg is actually, he's in the belly of a whale.
What we're trying to do is test the reality of particular biblical myths.
So we had him swallowed by a whale, and he's going to see how long he can last.
So we're going to see what happens there.
I think I swallowed a bone.
Yeah, that's not one of the biblical myths that we're trying to figure out, Greg.
But if you could, do the walk on water thing, and also find a leper.
I know that can be tough to find.
Fine, try Minnesota.
They're buried underneath all these parkas.
Thank you.
Absolutely. No, it's tough.
It's tough. If you can find a blind person, that's great.
Otherwise, get a fork, and we can speed it up a little.
All right, so is he coming in?
Is he boing?
Somebody boinged. We don't know what that means.
No, he's in. All right, Greg, well, I don't know if the other guy's coming back in, so you're allowed one question and no buts.
One question... Alright, so I've been actually talking to my brother for the last day and a half and came up with a couple of questions.
Hang on a second here.
Sorry, I'm doing like eight things at once.
Did he say a couple of questions?
Trying to pick which one would be the best one for the show.
I think he's trying to sneak something in there. I can feel his hand on my leg.
Ooh, that's nice. Oh, sorry.
Sorry, I just thought you had a really good cell phone.
More of a psychology question.
Hang on, let me hand it over. Hello.
Can you still hear me? Yes, we can.
Okay. So I was talking to my brother yesterday and he was talking about some of the conversations he has with his girlfriend and he was talking about how open his girlfriend is and how she isn't inhibited About talking about,
you know, any subject at all, and we'll actually volunteer things like, I don't like it when you do that, that kind of stuff.
Sorry about the noise.
And I was wondering if that was I was wondering if that was similar to...
You know how Steph talks about the real-time relationship, right?
Where you talk about how you feel rather than how the other person feels.
Can you guys still hear me?
Yeah, we can hear you.
Oh, I'm sorry. That's a good question.
Actually, Greg, if you could just put a few more pauses in between each question, in between each word, that would be even more exciting.
Yeah, sorry, guys.
I'm in the car, out of the car.
It's like getting a phone call from the voice box of Captain Kirk.
So, question about the...
Okay. Now my attention is entirely on this.
And... What he was saying was that his girlfriend will tell him things like, I didn't like it when you did that, or I liked it when you didn't, when you did this.
Expressing like and dislike rather than a specific feeling.
And I was trying to figure out if that was, if that If that could be considered something comparable to what Steph calls a real-time relationship where you describe your specific emotions to each other.
Can you give me an example?
Sure. What was he saying last night?
Where... Where he would...
I can't remember the exact example he gave, but something like, you know, like...
say he laughed at something she didn't think was funny.
Sorry, Greg, can I interrupt you for a question?
Sure. Are you stoned?
No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Oh, is it something else then?
Is it something even hotter? I'm just wondering what your own experience of your speech patterns is like at the moment.
Pretty choppy. Yeah, pretty choppy.
I think I understand the question, right?
So if I say, I really like that you put away your dishes, or I don't like that shirt, or I like that guy's haircut, or I don't like that kind of car, is that what you mean?
Yeah, that kind of stuff, except they're directly related to each other as opposed to somebody else.
Yeah, I don't believe that's the real-time relationship thing that I'm talking about.
I think that sounds a whole lot like minor cost corrections through subliminated nagging.
I think there's a time and place for that.
It can be quite useful in certain situations, but it's not what Steph's talking about, the real-time relationship where you're actually talking about feelings and emotions when someone has done something hurtful or even something really good and really wonderful in the relationship.
It can be a situation wherein somebody is attempting to move the joystick a little to get someone to do something that they like through providing a stick and a carrot in terms of their opinions of everything that you're doing.
So saying something like...
I guess I'm trying to figure out what the distinction is between saying something like...
You know, I was really bothered by what you did there versus I didn't like what you did there.
Well, the distinction is close semantically, but I think, this is what I think would be the distinction between the real-time relationship and the possible endless sort of Chinese water drip of nagotomies.
It would be something like this, right?
So if I say to Christina, it really bothered me when you did X. If she feels that she needs to stop doing X, then it's not a real-time relationship.
If I say, Christina, it bothers me when you do X, and she feels perfectly comfortable saying, well, tell me more, and she feels no obligation to change her behavior because of my feeling, That's a real-time relationship.
But if she then feels, or if your brother feels, that he has to change his behavior because of what his girlfriend is saying, then it's manipulation.
Okay. So, if during the course of that discussion, if he ends up changing his behavior, well, either way it would be manipulation, right? Oh no, because he might end up changing his behavior.
The question is, is she putting her feelings forward as a problem to be solved by him doing something?
Changing his behavior, doing more of what she likes, doing less of what she doesn't like?
Or is she putting it forward like, I feel this, right?
So let's say he's going out dressed like me.
I don't have to tell you what that means.
So he's going out dressed like me.
Now, if she feels anxious, she feels like, oh God, people are going to look at this and think that I'm picking up a homeless guy or something.
If she feels anxious and she says to him, I don't like it when you dress like that, that's not a real-time relationship.
That's just nagging. But if she says, you know, When you dress like that, I feel anxious about going out, and I'm not sure why.
What do you think? She's not asking me to change.
This is, of course, not Christina.
She's not asking me to change.
She's just saying, the way that you dress makes me feel anxious.
And the solution to that is for us to talk about what I feel, not for you to change your clothing because I feel anxious.
So, okay, so it's not really the...
It's not really the expression that's the problem, it's the intended goal of the expression.
Well sure, you can take any sentence and it could mean just about anything, but does your brother, the question for your brother is, does he feel that he could be curious about his girlfriend's statements, or does he feel that he needs to do something to either gain the carrots or avoid the sticks?
I see, I see.
Right, so it's really the response to that statement then that determines whether they're...
So she says, you know, I really don't like it when you do X. If he just stops doing X rather than asking, then that's where the problem arises.
Right, and by X, I assume you mean ecstasy, which I think you're currently on, is that right?
I'm sorry. I was trying to pack the truck and lock the doors.
I was doing 14 things at once and I shouldn't have been doing that.
No problem. So that's really the question that's going on.
What do you feel when you're on the receiving end of that stuff?
Do you feel chastised?
Do you feel praised?
Or is somebody just expressing a thought or a feeling?
Like if Christina comes in and says, I feel like an ice cream, then that doesn't necessarily mean that I'm a bad husband for failing to provide her stuff.
Oh, sorry, that one is not a good example.
But there may be some...
Of course, this would be a pretty unhealthy relationship, I imagine.
There are going to be people out there that will interpret that as a command, right?
Sure, and then what you say in the real-time relationship is you say, you know, when you came in and you said, I feel like an ice cream, I suddenly felt that I was a bad husband for not already having had an ice cream for you.
Isn't that funny? And then you talk about that.
Oh, that's interesting.
Yeah, because...
Okay, so then it's all about just questioning the entire interaction rather than...
No, I wouldn't want to give you, of all people, anything to do with questioning even more.
All it's about, Greg, is being honest with how you feel.
So it's not questioning, right?
It's just if Christina comes in and says, I want ice cream, and I feel like a bad husband because I don't have ice cream ready for her, even though, whatever, I didn't know or whatever, then I'm going to say, you know what, when you came in, I just felt really bad because I didn't have ice cream ready for you.
Isn't that weird? And we'll talk about it, right?
There's an alternative to that, though.
I mean, you might feel, not bad, but you might feel like, well, it wouldn't be bad, but like an impulse to get up and get the ice cream, right?
Okay.
Well, yeah, but I might do that because I wanted to give Christina an ice cream.
But if I did that because I felt bad, then that would not be a good thing to do, right?
Because then I'm manipulating stuff to avoid anxiety or to avoid feeling bad.
Like, I feel bad, and the solution is to go get some ice cream.
If I just, oh, I'll be happy to get you some, right?
I don't feel bad for not having gotten it.
I just, you know, I like to make her happy and if ice cream does it, let's do that, right?
Then you don't need to stop and analyze anything, right?
But if I suddenly feel weirdly out of the blue like a bad husband because I don't have ice cream ready for her, then I've got to say that.
Because we've got to figure out where that's coming from, right?
So that it doesn't trip us up again in the future.
So if she actually said that, And you actually got the ice cream, and you didn't feel bad.
You didn't feel bad, then...
There's no problem.
Yeah, I guess there's no problem, right?
No big deal. Yeah, I mean, if Christina comes in and says, you know, I've got a headache, accusingly, right?
Like I did something wrong, right?
Then we'd have to talk about that and say, you know, that came across really sharp there.
Like, I felt like you were really blaming me for that, right?
Right. That's one thing. But if she just comes in and says, oh, I have a headache, right?
And I say, oh, let me get you an aspirin, let me give you a back rub or whatever, right?
There's no problem there, right?
So then you're actually making a presumption based on tone of voice and body language and whatnot.
Well, it's not a presumption, right?
Because in a relationship, we all know the truth, right?
So if Christina comes in and says, I have a headache, dammit, I know she's accusing me.
Right? I'm not going to doubt that, because if I start to doubt that, then I have no bearings in the relationship.
I have to think everything through, and I have to hamlet myself into 1,600 kaleidoscopic Gordian knots every day.
I just have to trust my instincts.
So if I feel that she was being accusatory, I'm going to say, you know, that really felt accusatory.
What's going on for you right now?
And if she says, no, it wasn't accusatory, I'm going to say, I think it was, right?
I mean, that's what I really got from it, and I'm going to assume that that's right.
Right, and in that instance, though...
Aren't you kind of expecting a change in behavior on her part then?
Well, I'm expecting honesty on her part because I'm providing honesty, right?
That's UPB. So because I'm being honest and saying that really felt sharp, then I expect her to be honest and say, you know, I really was irritated with you.
And then we can talk about that.
Well, what if she wasn't?
Well, that's a theoretical.
It's never happened, and I believe that if we trust her instincts and are honest about them, it's never happened where Christina has been sharp with me where it turns out that she wasn't being sharp with me.
We know this stuff.
We know this stuff. And vice versa.
Okay. So, fundamentally, then, it's just a question of, um...
I mean, if...
Well, I mean, let's take, like, you know, there are a lot of people who say, you know, Steph, I don't like it when you tell stupid jokes, or I don't like it when you...
Your podcast style is weird, or, yeah, too many tangents, or whatever, whatever, right?
Right.
Why wouldn't you...
Why would you...
How to put this...
Why wouldn't I change my behavior?
Or rather, why would you assume that someone making a statement like that on the board was actually expecting a change of behavior and wasn't just...
Venting an opinion, right?
Well, but this is how I feel, right?
How does the post make me feel?
Does it make me feel like this is somebody who's really trying to help me?
Right? Or do I feel that this is somebody who's just bitching at me?
Right? So you remember the guy who came on and said, Steph, why is it you dress so goddamn scruffy for your podcast, for your videocast, right?
Remember that guy? Yeah, yeah.
Right, so this jerk comes on and he's like, oh, you're so scruffy and blah, blah, blah.
And I said, well, You know, the key thing is not me or how I'm dressed, but the message, right?
So this guy's focusing on the form, not the content.
Right. And I was saying, you know, anybody who wouldn't listen to me because I'm not in a suit, I don't want them to listen to me anyway, because they're not going to get the conversation.
And then he said, well, Socrates was very well-groomed, which is something I just know.
And I mentioned Socrates.
Like, Socrates did not worry about the cut of his toga, right?
There's no fashion reports on Socrates, right?
We remember his thoughts. Right.
Or at least Plato's interpretation of them.
So he said, well, no, that's not true.
Socrates was very well-groomed, right?
So I found a citation that said, no, Socrates was a total slob, which I'm not.
And then he never came back, right?
But it's all about how you feel, right?
This guy instead on the board was pestering me about, you know, it's time for you to define your stand on why you think drugs are bad, and you better define this, and it's time for you to do it, step up and do it.
And it's like, I don't like that.
I don't feel good about that, right?
So I'm just not going to participate.
And in that case, they're just making demands.
Yeah, and it's like I don't preach a philosophy of freedom and then have some people on the board tell me what to do.
I mean, what do they think is going to happen?
Right. Right.
Yeah, that example got a little confused.
Well, it wasn't confusing for me.
I totally got the aggression, right?
And there's people on the boards who say that.
You feel the aggression, and then you say, well, I don't enjoy this.
I don't enjoy this conversation, so I'm not going to participate in it.
And then, of course, they say, oh, and he's just running away.
But it's like, but whatever, right?
But you know it.
You feel it. You feel it, right?
So the question to ask your brother is, how do you feel when your girlfriend says this stuff?
Okay, yeah, that makes sense.
Then whatever the emotion that's evoked by her saying something like that, you should just trust that that's exactly what her intent was.
Oh yeah, we should absolutely, completely and totally trust our feelings.
And that doesn't mean that if I'm angry at someone, I'm going to hit them, right?
That's acting out our feelings.
But we should totally trust them and say, you know, I feel really angry at this interaction.
I'm not enjoying this interaction.
I'm not going to participate in this interaction anymore.
Just take the tone of voice and the inflection and everything at face value.
Yeah, I mean, how does it make you feel when you trust your feelings?
So if she says something like, you know, it's weird, I really didn't like it when you did that.
Then it's more like something along the lines of, let's think about that, as opposed to wagging the finger and saying, I don't like it when you do that.
Right, then you say, you know, I really get the feeling that you want me to change my behavior just because you're upset.
And you talk about it.
What everyone is afraid of is that they start down that road and they find out that the people are just lying to them.
And they're just going to keep lying to them, right?
So I'm not saying this is true with your brother and his girlfriend, but that's what people are afraid of.
They're going to start down that road, and people are just going to say, no, I wasn't.
No, I won't. You were totally imagining things.
That wasn't the case at all. That's not at all what happened.
That wasn't my intention. You're just making things up.
You're imagining things. You're paranoid.
But they're just going to keep getting their perspective walloped, which ends the relationship.
Undermining the original experience.
And then it's over. You can hang around for as long as you want, but the relationship is done.
When somebody tells you that your instincts are wrong over and over again and doesn't take any evidence, right?
Then they don't care about you, right?
They'd rather... Defenses are so strong that they'd rather screw up your ability to trust yourself than admit to a possible character flaw.
Yeah. Okay, that makes sense.
That makes sense. I wasn't sure because...
I mean, it sounded like...
At least to me, it seemed like they were...
They're on a good footing, but the way he described the interaction, the language that he used, it didn't have that same sort of...
Well, I mean, it's expression of preference as opposed to expression of emotional experience, right?
Yeah, it's the emotional experience, for sure.
As opposed to, this is what you did just made me feel like this.
They're saying, I don't like when you do that.
Right. So, I mean, I guess I was wondering if that kind of betrayed a certain amount of...
If you could use that I mean it seems like a subtle shift in language, but if you could use that as a red flag for differentiating between a genuine curiosity and a demand for submission to preference, right? Well, yeah. Dislike is not a feeling.
I don't like is not a feeling, right?
So if you say, well, I feel irritated, or I feel upset, or I feel angry, or I feel sad, or I feel anxious, or I feel afraid, right?
But I don't like is kind of finger-waggy.
It's not a real feeling. It's just a statement of opinion that's kind of emphatic.
So I definitely would be concerned about that and say, well, tell me more about what you don't like or what was your feeling when you saw me dressed like this or whatever, you know, and just find out what what is the thought behind the feeling.
OK.
OK, well, I cleared it up.
Wow, shocking. Well listen, thanks so much for calling in.
I do appreciate it. And I'll give, just if anybody had a really, really quick question, I would be more than happy to answer it because we've had a couple of people who've been waiting.
I'm not sure if they've got themselves sorted out technically, but I'll give you all five seconds to say if you're going to say.
Hello. And I guess that's our show for today.
Thank you so much for joining in and have yourselves a wonderful, wonderful week.
I will be continuing to work on the book on UPB this week and I'm going to spend some time putting together the audio for the Free Domain Radio Weekend.
We do have quite a lot of audio which I'd like to put on.
But thank you again for joining us and we will talk to you soon.
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