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Sept. 30, 2007 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

02:02:00

874 Sunday Call In Show - Sep 30 2007

Insomnia, tattoos, eschewing politics, the nature of knowledge and learning to fly...

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	Thank you, everyone, for dropping by.
	It is Sunday, the 30th of September, 2007.
	And thanks to the people who are buying On Truth, The Tyranny of Illusion, available at freedomainradio.com, and those people who wish to get 14 hours of high-quality philosophical conversations, where it's not just me talking, but me and three hand puppets.
	There is the downloadable version.
	The reason that it's downloadable is 700 megs of audio files, 14 hours of high-quality conversation from the Freedomain Radio barbecue.
	I think that you'll really enjoy it, particularly if you feel like it's important to have earrings.
	Anyway, so I hope that you will download that.
	17 bucks just to pay for bandwidth and the time to put them together.
	And last but not least, on the 18th and 19th of January 2008 in Miami...
	The Freedom Aid Radio Symposium.
	Christine and I will be leading talks and occasionally listening.
	So, I hope that you can join us.
	That's $125 only.
	We'll meet for dinner, though we won't pay for dinner because I am the cheapest man in the universe.
	And then we will have a full day of philosophical chatty stuff on Saturday.
	And I think we'll be maybe doing breakfast on Sunday if people are still around.
	So I hope that you'll be able to join us for that.
	Just let me know, s.molyneux at rogers.com.
	Alright, so here, this is from my favorite Canadian magazine, Maclean's.
	And the reason that I think this is interesting, and I've talked about this Maclean's stuff, Canada is considered to be a pretty peaceful country, and in many ways it really is.
	But it's something that I talk about in the new book on UPB, which is going through its third draft at the moment.
	And Christina is diligently putting together a logic tree to see if it all fits together.
	This is from October the 8th, 2007.
	So it's actually from the future?
	I guess so. It's from the future.
	Jeez, I should look up the stock prices.
	A soldier becomes a target.
	This is interesting because this is...
	A peaceful or pacifist country that is proud of its peacekeeping role in the world.
	A soldier becomes a target.
	It's the title of the article. The subtitle is, The Victim of a Hazing in Afghanistan Seeks Redress in the Courts.
	And there's a picture of the guy with headphones on, the sort of big army headphones.
	And he's sitting in front of a gun.
	And the caption underneath says, Glenn Brownhall, his case could set a precedent for those who have been deliberately harmed by the military.
	Deliberately harmed by the military.
	I mean, we could just take a moment here to enjoy this.
	Deliberately harmed by the military.
	The story is basically that this guy went to Afghanistan, and unfortunately, he was hazed.
	So it says here, officially, Glenn Brownhall served three years in the Canadian Army.
	He enlisted in April 2002 and was released in April 2005.
	But if you ask him when his career truly ended, he can pinpoint the precise date.
	November 24, 2003.
	I love the job, he says now, sitting in his backyard in Barrie, Ontario.
	I miss it all the time. If this had not happened, I would still be there.
	Brownhall was assaulted by two fellow soldiers during his one and only deployment to Afghanistan.
	The incident was never publicized, but both his assailants were later court-martialed, fined $1,000, and in one case, sentenced to 10 days of house arrest.
	Of house arrest, ladies and gentlemen.
	House arrest. Brownhall barely knew his attack as he had been flown into theater halfway through the tour and assigned to a unit of strangers.
	I heard someone say, Let's fuck the new guy, he recalls.
	There was a whole group of people from my section there, and they were laughing their heads off.
	The next thing I knew, I've got my head rammed into the side of the tent, catching punches.
	He was kicked, slapped, and choked.
	At one point, his comrades pinned him to the ground and dry-humped him from behind, which is actually, I think, at hour twelve of the Freedomain Radio BBQ audio tapes.
	So Private Brownhall recorded the hazings to his superiors, but that only led to more harassment, he says.
	One warrant officer allegedly called him a narc and a little girl and warned him in no uncertain terms not to approach the military police.
	From the get-go it was, Glenn, shut up, Brownhall says.
	Within days, the entire Canadian camp in Cabal was hearing rumors about this big-mouthed whiner who tattled on his section.
	I was afraid, the 31-year-old guy says.
	When everyone else came back from patrol, they could go to bed and feel fairly safe in the camp.
	I stopped sleeping, and for a long time, I stopped eating.
	Brownhall asked the brass to send him home, but instead they merely transferred him to job-to-job until the tour was over.
	He essentially spent three months looking over his shoulder.
	They kept me there and mentally tortured me, injured from the beating unemployed and suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.
	Brownhall is now suing the federal government for damages.
	Well, I mean, where do you even begin?
	Where do you even begin with something like this?
	It is absolutely, completely, and totally mental.
	Where do you even start? I mean, that you could sue the government for being deliberately hurt by the military, deliberately harmed by the military, unless I miss my guess.
	It would seem to me that that would be the entire point of the military.
	That the entire point of the military would be to inflict harm upon other people.
	And it would be rather amazing that you could sue somebody for harming you in the military.
	That's sort of the point. So that is quite amazing.
	The fact that when one soldier attacks another soldier, it's called salt, and it's a suitable offense.
	And if you shoot an Afghani, then it's not that at all.
	I mean, the amount of contradictions and mess, it's just absolutely staggering.
	And people say this, and people can actually write a caption.
	To say that you can sue the government for being deliberately harmed by the military, they can say that with a completely straight face.
	It is absolutely, completely and totally mental the way that people view this kind of stuff.
	The other thing that I would like to mention is I did go and see, fool that I am, I did go and see the movie The Kingdom with Jamie Foxx and Jennifer Garner from Alias, which is a show that I quite enjoyed.
	I must say that it is really amazing to me what they can do technically with films.
	And I had the same sort of feeling or idea when I saw Children of Men.
	It really is astounding what they can do technically with films.
	I mean, they can do the most amazing blow-ups on the road.
	They can do the most amazing combat scenes.
	They can just technically this...
	Not even counting CGI. I'm just talking the sound effects and where they can put the cameras and the quality of what can be recorded and produced on film.
	I mean, it's very visceral. It's very exciting.
	And, of course, it is so fundamentally empty.
	That, of course, is the part that is so disappointing about sort of films these days.
	I sort of thought... I didn't read any reviews beforehand.
	I thought it was more of a thriller about these guys who go to Saudi Arabia to investigate a crime.
	And I thought it was going to be a sort of cultural cat-and-mouse game and so on.
	And there's a little bit of that.
	There's a huge amount of exposition.
	And there's the cool guy, right?
	Jamie Foxx does cool guy on steroids.
	So there's the cool guy who was always in glasses and who was always vaguely sneering, but always has a soft side.
	He loves his kid. So there's the cool guy, there's the cool hot chick, there's the yappy sidekick, there's the older fisher guy, and it's all just a bunch of cliches, and even the stuff that's in Saudi Arabia, though I think this was actually shot in Saudi Arabia, it's also a cliché. And the last half of the film is literally just the most nonsensical stuff and not going to give away anything in particular other than to say that it really just gives people the most distorted view.
	They can make combat so visceral and realistic but it gives people the most distorted view of combat that you can imagine and it's exactly the same as it was Back in the days of John Wayne and this sort of nonsense where, you know, the one guy would be in the middle of the square and the bad guys would be in windows and hidden and on rooftops and so on and they'd all open up on him and he'd dive to one side and he'd pick them off one by one and I mean,
	I'm no military expert, but I have to tell you that militarily, I think that the technical term for you being caught in the open in a courtyard with people on the roof and in windows with rocket launchers and all that, I think the technical term is you're fucked.
	You're completely and totally screwed.
	And, of course, in this movie, the Americans are caught in a square.
	Their car is blown up.
	There are people all around them, all the way around them, in windows, on roofs, with rocket launchers.
	And of course, the Americans, you know, pick them off one by one, and there's this view that combat is sort of an exchange of gunfire.
	Like, you sort of point up and shoot, and then he points up and shoots, and you always get to seem to pick him off.
	And it's all just such complete nonsense.
	If you are stuck in that situation...
	Where you're ringed by people who've got automatic weapons and rocket launchers.
	You are toast. You are completely and totally toast.
	And yet, of course, the Americans get out without a scratch after taking down 50 Arabs.
	I mean, it's all just the most errant nonsense.
	Again, very visceral.
	Technically, the films are absolutely brilliant.
	But my God, the content is just so ridiculously empty.
	And they do try for a bit of a sort of universal statement at the end, which I won't sort of...
	Get into but it really is a real disappointment and it's been a while since I've seen a movie.
	And again, I thought that the Alias shows on TV were quite entertaining.
	It was a fun sort of cartoony kind of show.
	But this stuff was aiming for a lot more realism.
	Like, it's just completely mad how they portray these things and what they put forward.
	And of course, this kind of stuff does give people the idea that the military is something fun and exciting and that you have a chance in impossible situations.
	Of course, the military fact, and this is sort of fairly...
	Indisputable. The military fact is that all other things being equal, you're going to kill each other at roughly the same rate.
	I mean, the Battle of Britain, which I've talked about before, there's no hidden reserves of valor or patriotism or anything like that that makes one force better than another.
	I mean, yes, if you hurt a whole bunch of people who don't want to fight up against a whole bunch of people fighting for their lives, there may be a certain amount of change or unbalance But, you know, most things being equal, if you're facing off against a guy with a machine gun, you've got a 50-50 chance.
	Throughout most of the wars in history, the people killed each other unless there was significant technological advantage like the longbow and so on.
	Or nuclear weapons in Japan.
	Unless there was a significant technological advantage, it's pretty much one for one, right?
	It's pretty much a one for one situation.
	And of course, the reason the Battle of Britain was different was because England was out producing Germany at the time, had lots of aid from America, but most importantly...
	By the time the German, particularly the Messerschmitts 109s, had flown over from France, they were low on fuel and could not do the same kind of maneuverability and had to head back, whereas England was fighting with a home advantage.
	They had less distance applied.
	So, this idea that, you know, a few small men and women can take on this force and win, I mean, it's all just such nonsense.
	When you're in a war, everybody wants to win, everybody wants to live, and everybody wants to kill you, and they all do so with roughly equivalent kinds of skill.
	There are certain situations where that can be different.
	For instance, there were some particular aces in World War II, and of course everybody knows about the Red Baron in World War I, Who fought, I think, the Canadian ace Snoopy.
	But these are sort of unusual, and of course these are just also bell curve situations.
	Your odds of getting killed in any particular dogfight are about the same when you start, but if you just happen to not get killed, you get lucky a whole bunch of times, then you develop a certain set of skills which make you more formidable, and you get a reputation which makes you more formidable, and so on.
	But the odds for every average person in a war are about the same, and that's not something that's ever really mentioned.
	You do see some of that in Saving Private Ryan, but it's just something that is not really portrayed in movies, that you're going to get wiped out in even numbers, and particularly if you're in a vulnerable situation like it's portrayed in The Kingdom.
	You're just not coming out of it at all.
	Well, I'm not hearing too much, so I won't bother to keep going if we're not going to talk.
	Alright, there was a few people who wanted to be added.
	I can absolutely do that, but if you would like to unmute yourself and ask a question or make a comment, that would be excellent.
	Okay, so I was wondering how you came to the conclusion that piercing is in touch for self-mutilation?
	Because, I mean, I know I've never heard that before, and I heard it from you in I think you're the only person who's really said that.
	So I was just wondering how you came to that conclusion.
	Well, it's just putting the two words together, right?
	I mean, it's a physical assault upon your own flesh for non-medical reasons, right?
	So if you go in and have surgery, then you are obviously assaulting your flesh for medical reasons.
	But if you are attacking yourself, causing enduring pain and causing wounds within your own body for the sake of adornment, or for any sake other than medical, then clearly it is self-mutilation.
	You're harming your own physicality for the sake of non-medical reasons.
	But is it wrong to adorn yourself in other ways?
	Because, I mean, like, someone wearing a necklace that's too tight might hurt, and are you getting all that self-mutilation?
	Or is it just if you put a hole in yourself, Well, I've got a sort of new policy with people who quibble on this kind of stuff because this is exactly the same thing that I went through with the prostitution debate and with the drugs debate and with the free will debate and so on, right? What happens is when people get upset by something that I say, what they do is they start quibbling and picking at stuff.
	So instead of getting into all that, because for me comparing a tongue piercing with a necklace is just something I can't take seriously, so why don't you tell me what bothers you about what it is that I say?
	Well, I mean, I just, I never thought of it like that.
	I just always thought that it was just something someone could do to make, I mean, if they wanted to do it to make themselves look different and stuff like that.
	I didn't think of it as anything bad, really.
	You know what I mean? Well, sure, but I mean, what reasons do you have?
	See, I gave some reasons for what it is that I believe, and what reasons do you have for what you believe?
	I've been trying to work through it, and I just can't get through why I think that.
	I just know I do. Probably because I have them.
	Right. Well, let's run through a little experiment, if you don't mind.
	Okay. Tell me a little bit about your childhood.
	Well, what do you want to know? Well, what were your parents like?
	What was your upbringing like?
	Were you loved? Were you cared for?
	Were you understood?
	Were you treated with respect and empathy?
	You know, that kind of stuff. I mean, we've had conversations about that before, about my mom and such.
	Not really so much on her part.
	My dad is a little bit better, but like you said, there's no good parent, bad parent.
	Both of them have to be pretty bad for one of them to be bad.
	So, I would say on most of those, not too well taken care of.
	Right, and all I'm simply working on is two particular correlations, and you can sort of let me know what you think.
	The first is that while not everybody who's had a bad childhood ends up carving into their flesh various adornments or putting holes in themselves or whatever, not everybody who comes from a bad childhood self-mutilates, but there is nobody who self-mutilates who comes from a happy childhood or even a reasonably happy childhood.
	That's sort of the first thing. The second thing is that we know that there is a psychological problem or a psychological manifestation of a problem called self-mutilation, which is where you cut yourself or you push pins into the soft part of your thumb.
	And people do this because they are dissociated, because they can't feel and they panic.
	And they also start to get off on the endorphins that are released.
	It's the closest they get to psychological happiness is the endorphins that are released During self-inflicted pain, right?
	So if we put these two things together that there's nobody I've ever met who's got tattoos and piercings, who comes from a happy background, and the fact that we know that people who come from abusive backgrounds sometimes have the characteristic of self-mutilation, then we put these two things together and clearly there's no medical reason to get piercings or tattoos.
	Clearly, you are saying something pretty substantial about yourself when you get these things.
	You're putting a whole bunch of stuff on display about yourself.
	And clearly, it's a form of very shallow vanity as well, right?
	You say, well, it makes them look different, but why is it that you want to look different?
	Why can't you just be different, right?
	Rather than have to put it...
	To me, it's akin to plastic surgery.
	I consider plastic surgery, unless it's restorative, to also be a kind of self-mutilation as well, right?
	And the question is, like, when I look at a woman who's got hyperinflated boobs...
	Then, clearly, that's low self-esteem, right?
	It's a form of vanity.
	Because, like, you can be a good enough person without, you know, de-cut breasts that look like, I don't know, two beach balls in a...
	But you can be that.
	You can be who you are without the external adornment.
	So I view people who go for extremes in external adornment or plastic surgery, it's just a form of low self-esteem.
	It advertises that, I think, pretty clearly.
	Well, I mean, where do you draw the line, though?
	Because I know a lot of girls have piercings, but just in their ears, is that bad?
	Like, where do you draw the line with that?
	You know what I mean? Well, I don't care, really.
	And I don't really care about that discussion.
	Because that's like saying, you know, how old is a child exactly when they become an adult?
	Well, I don't know. I mean...
	I would certainly be happy if my daughter didn't pierce her ears, right?
	But if she did, I would say she's immediately a self-mutilator.
	But there is a difference, of course, between somebody who's got their ears pierced when they're 10 and have earrings that fit and so on, and it doesn't hurt anymore, and it's not a permanent wound, right?
	Because they can heal over, right?
	That's sort of one thing.
	I don't consider that to be any kind of extreme self-mutilation.
	And then there's people with like 15 eye hooks in their eyes and tongue piercings and nipple piercings and testicle piercings and all this kind of stuff, right?
	Clit piercings and so on.
	That's clearly mutated as far as self-image, self-esteem and so on goes, right?
	So it doesn't really matter where you draw the line, but we do have to recognize that there are extremes.
	And certainly, of course, it's just more unusual for men to adorn themselves in this way, at least in our culture.
	Yeah. Okay.
	So, alright, that's about all I had on that.
	Alright. Well, thank you very much.
	I appreciate it. I am certainly happy to move on to whoever next may have...
	And I don't find it attractive.
	I think earrings can be nice, but I don't think that earrings need to be pierced.
	You can get some good clip-ons and so on.
	But I don't think that piercings at all are attractive.
	And it's an advertisement, as I talked about on the FDR stuff.
	It is kind of like an advertisement for this kind of stuff.
	So... Yeah, somebody said here, clip-on earrings are like push-up bras.
	And that's interesting.
	Alright, was there anyone else who wanted to chime in on this?
	Hi, Steph? Yes.
	Can I ask you a question about a different topic?
	You sure can. I have a friend who is suffering from a long...
	She's been having insomnia for quite a while.
	And I've heard before in your podcast that you've also suffered from a prolonged period of insomnia.
	So I was wondering, what advice should I tell her if she wants to get this resolved?
	Like, what do you think could be some of the reasons?
	Well, first I'll start with The Cure, which for me was Chippendales and Quaaludes, but we can come back to that a little bit later.
	The cause for me with insomnia was...
	A high degree of divergence between my professed values and my lived values, right?
	So I was all about integrity and virtue and philosophy in the abstract, although I hadn't worked out...
	This is long before Freedom Aid Radio, about, I guess, seven or eight years before Freedom Aid Radio.
	So I hadn't worked out the stateless society or the real-time relationship or the argument for morality or UPB or any of that.
	I hadn't worked out any of that stuff.
	So I was basically just interested in ideas and philosophy and read economics and so on.
	And I was all about the virtue, right?
	I was all about being a good guy and being virtuous and being strong and being brave and being noble.
	But at the same time, I was involved, as I've mentioned, in some pretty corrupt business practices that I was profiting heavily from and in business with people that I knew were not good people, all the stuff that I've talked about in the God of Atheists.
	So, when...
	When I really began to profit from my capacity to corrupt other people, or to self-corrupt, then my ideals clashed in a way that I didn't understand at all at the time.
	I just thought I was stressed, right?
	But my ideals clashed with how I was actually living, and the hypocrisy gap opened up to the point where I just didn't like myself anymore.
	I mean, the most fundamental thing, I'm not saying this is true about your friend, I'm just sort of talking about my own experience.
	I just didn't like myself anymore, and I could not respect myself anymore.
	I could not get up, shave and look in the mirror, and be happy about who I was.
	And I couldn't admit that to myself, because I was greedy, right?
	I mean, when you are exploited, as I was as a child, there is this latent want-to-get-your-own-back on the world, right?
	This is, of course, the root of a lot of criminality, both white-collar and blue-collar and worse.
	So when you're exploited heavily as a child, There's a part of you that wants to get the world back that feels that you're owed something.
	And I went through a very nihilistic period of shoplifting and petty criminality when I was in my early teens.
	And there's a great deal of cynicism about the world and how it sort of claims to care about the children, but nobody actually does anything and so on, right?
	So I think that for me, I was sliding into that, you know, the corruption that gave me that sense of entitlement, like, I've been taken from and nobody cared, so I'm just going to take from people and I don't care, clashed with my values to the point where...
	I was living a really hypocritical life and not being honest with myself at all.
	And I just stopped being able to sleep and after a couple of months of that I was going insane and I went into therapy and sort of plunged into the black night of the soul that awaits all people who begin to really try to live their values.
	So that was sort of what it was for me.
	Does any of that sort of ring true in terms of what you might think about with your friend?
	Well, she's been mentioning that she's, you know, been having these recurring dreams, and that probably, you know, disrupts her sleep.
	So, I just wondered, perhaps, maybe, you know, what are some of the things she should probably consider to resolve this issue she has?
	Like, what would be the next steps to take?
	Well, can you tell me a little bit about her?
	In terms of...
	Is she a happy person?
	What are her values like?
	Oh, she's in a relationship.
	I'm pretty sure she's in a...
	No, she's a happy person and she's in a relationship.
	Well, no, she's not a happy person.
	I mean, I'm sorry to be so blunt.
	She's not a happy person if she's going through insomnia and her sleep is being interrupted by recurring dreams that I'm assuming are not very good dreams, right?
	Well, yeah, that's probably right.
	But, you know, I was wondering perhaps if you thought that maybe therapy would be, you know, the next step to take or, you know, just because it's been so prolonged and that it's affecting her sleep so much that she wants to get this resolved, you know, as soon as possible.
	Well, let's just back up for a second, right?
	So she presents herself as a happy person, right?
	I mean, I assume you're not completely insane and making things up, right?
	So she presents herself as a happy person, right?
	But she's not. Well, she seems to me to be a happy person.
	Okay. Like, I mean, I could, you know, ask her specifically, you know, how she feels, but my guess would be she's a happy person.
	Okay. But she's not.
	Again, not to be too blunt about it, but if she's having insomnia and she's having recurring bad dreams...
	Then she can't be a happy person, right?
	I mean, I'm not saying she's fundamentally miserable and blah blah blah, right?
	But she can't be a happy person.
	I mean, at this moment, right now, right?
	Because she's obviously troubled deeply by something.
	Again, I'm assuming that there's no medical reason and whatever.
	Right.
	I see what you're saying.
	So I think there's sort of an issue with that.
	It's nothing particularly terrible or anything, but it is sort of an issue that she's presenting herself as a happy person.
	She's telling you that there are some indications that she's really not happy, but that is not real to you in a way, if that makes sense.
	Um, well, you know, I mean, there's times when, you know, probably, you know, what you're saying would probably be right, that, you know, there's times when, you know, she might show that, you know, she's not being, you know, happy all the time.
	Right. But, um, yeah, so, um...
	So, yeah, I mean, there could be all these different reasons for this.
	So, like I said, I was just trying to wonder what would be, like I said, the next steps to take if she wanted to get this resolved.
	Well, of course, therapy would be helpful, of course, right?
	But my question is where you are in this, right?
	Because I can't talk to her.
	I can only talk to you. And it sounds to me like you're not taking her evident distress too, too seriously.
	And you may be right, or it's just sort of what I'm sort of thinking while looking into it, right?
	So you say she's got sort of recurring nightmares and she can't sleep and so on, right?
	You say she's happy.
	Yeah, I would think so.
	Well, what do you mean you would think so?
	I mean, sorry to be annoying here, but I just kind of want to understand, what is it that makes you think she's happy?
	Well, you know, she's very optimistic in our life.
	I'm not in the person's head, so I can't know for sure, but just my general impression would be that she's happy.
	And so would you say there has been any change in her happiness since she stopped being able to sleep?
	Well, I guess it might affect her throughout the day.
	Because it has all these different aspects when you're not able to sleep.
	I don't know exactly, because I don't live with her, so I don't know how prominent has been the change, but I do know that she has been having this insomnia for a while, and like I said, my general impression is that she is happy.
	Okay, that was an excellent non-answer, so if you don't mind, I'll just ask it again in a slightly different way.
	Have you ever had insomnia?
	Me? Not really.
	I mean, you know, once, you know, maybe three times during a year, I might not be able to sleep pretty much, but I wouldn't call it insomnia.
	Right, okay. Would you say that she is as happy a person?
	Because there may be no problem, right?
	There may be no problem. She may be really happy to have insomnia.
	Maybe she really gets a lot of stuff done in the middle of the night.
	Or maybe something's changed in her physiology that she needs less sleep.
	So what I have to understand is, if she's happy, then there's no problem, right?
	Mm-hmm. Except for, you know, the toll that, you know, when you can't sleep, it has on you for the rest of the day.
	Well, but you said she's happy, right?
	Yeah, I would guess so.
	Well, I would assume.
	But it doesn't sound like you know your friend very well.
	No, seriously. I mean, I'm not trying to pick on you or anything.
	It just sounds like you don't really know her very well, and so I'm a little confused.
	No, I know her pretty well.
	But you don't know if she's happy or not.
	Or you don't know if her insomnia is having any effect on her happiness.
	Right. I wouldn't be able to know if that has an effect on her happiness.
	I mean, it could be that there could be other reasons, you know, that could be, you know, causing the insomnia.
	But, like I said, I wanted to know, because you've had experience with insomnia before, I wanted to know if you had any suggestions that I could tell her for a way to cure this, because, you know, she's been talking to me about it, and she's been mentioning that, you know, it's been, you know, Real hard on her, having this insomnia.
	Okay, so here's a piece of information that we can sort of put into the question of is she happy, right?
	That the insomnia is really hard on her, and how long has she had it for?
	I would say probably for a few years.
	A few years? Well, going on and off.
	I mean, not totally.
	Seriously, I mean, again, not to pick on you, right?
	But it seems that you're not quite connecting with your friend at an empathetic level, right?
	Have you asked her if it's a big problem for her?
	I did, yeah. She mentioned that it has had a toll on her, the insomnia.
	Because, you know, when you don't sleep, it can affect you.
	Look, I'm with you, brother.
	I'm just trying to understand where you are, right?
	So she has told you that it is like a minor inconvenience, like I can't believe I forgot my keys again, or it's really confusing me, or I'm feeling...
	Like I said, it's something that makes her tired throughout the day and stuff like that.
	And when I speak to her about it, she will mention that she's been having trouble sleeping and stuff like that.
	So I was just wondering what...
	No, I understand that you want to know, but what I'm concerned about is that you're trying to help somebody when you don't even understand the problem, right?
	So my suggestion would be, yeah, I think that she should go to therapy, she should figure out family issues, she should figure out any place where she's not living in a way that makes her feel proud to be who she is, where she feels strong and courageous and so on, right?
	All of those things would be fantastic.
	But I think you need to ask her, how are you doing with this insomnia?
	Lay it on me. Give me the full scoop.
	Because if you think she's happy, then there's nothing to fix.
	If you think she's happy and she's really not unhappy, then you're not a close enough friend to help her.
	Mm-hmm. Right? Then she's less than an acquaintance.
	Like, I can tell when my grocer is unhappy.
	Like, seriously. Yeah.
	Right? You probably hear some of these listener conversations with the people who sound a little bit like...
	You know, like, they're depressed, and you can tell right away, right?
	Right. Right.
	So my concern is, I think that you do know whether she's happy or not.
	I think that for some reason, though, you don't feel comfortable with her being unhappy.
	I... Sorry, I don't feel comfortable with...
	What was that last part? You don't feel comfortable with her being unhappy, right?
	Because she's a close enough friend that you're calling into a show and you're asking about insomnia, right?
	Right. You don't know whether she's happy or not.
	Well, like I said, I don't know what the person's thinking, but just my general impression would be that she is happy.
	Right, and so I would say that you're not a close enough friend to help her with this, right?
	Because if you don't know the degree to which the insomnia is affecting her, and she doesn't have to tell you this, you should be able to...
	How long have you known this person for?
	Oh, a long time.
	Right, so you should be able to get this person's mood, like, without them even opening their mouth.
	You should be able to, like, snap, get it, understand it, get right to the root of it, and often...
	We know what people are feeling even before they do, right?
	Because we have the benefit of being outside, right?
	They've got all the unconscious defenses or whatever, right?
	So this is why I'm sort of, right?
	Either you do know and you're not comfortable with it for some reason, whether she's happy or unhappy, or you don't know, in which case it seems to me completely bizarre that you'd know someone for years and not know whether they're happy or not.
	And so the thing to do is to just ask her, right?
	How is this really affecting you?
	Tell me what's going on. Like, tell me what's going on in your life.
	I mean, how are you feeling when you get up in the morning and you haven't slept?
	I mean, do you feel despair over this recurrent issue?
	I mean, sleep deprivation is used as a torture technique, right?
	You know that, right? Yeah, I've heard that.
	Right. So, I mean, if she was getting her fingernails pulled out a couple of times a month, she probably wouldn't be very happy, right?
	Mm-hmm. So it's another form of torture, right?
	So I think that before going to her with advice, and the reason I'm pestering you, and I do apologize for it, the reason that I'm pestering you about this is that if you try to help people without really getting in their skin, you don't help them.
	Right.
	And women in particular, and let me put on my ultra sexist hat for a moment, women in particular absolutely hate it when men come to them with a solution when they haven't empathized with the problem. women in particular absolutely hate it when men come to And so I would suggest that you really work to get inside this woman's head and get inside this woman's skin.
	If you want to help her, right?
	Then empathize with her and really understand what's going on for her.
	Because anyone can say, go see a therapist.
	I mean, I could call her out of the blue and say, go see a therapist and just hang up, right?
	But if you do care about this woman, and I believe that you do, and you do want to help her with this, then you don't want to just bungee in and say, hey, go to a therapist.
	I talked to some guy who had insomnia.
	He went to a therapist and he was great.
	That's not going to help her.
	If she's out of sorts with herself, what she needs is empathy and some TLC in order to build up the relationship to the point where she'll listen to you about going to therapy, if that makes sense.
	Right.
	And I mean, annoyingly enough, I am sort of trying to get you in a position where you can help this woman, but I think that you need to have more sensitivity and empathy to where she is and know where she is first before saying where she should go.
	Mm-hmm.
	And like you said, try to find out her level of happiness or how happy she is currently.
	Probably.
	Well, I think that's important, right?
	I mean, if you've known her for some time and you don't know that stuff already, which I mean, I'm absolutely convinced that you do, right?
	But right now, you don't have access to that knowledge for some reason, right?
	Well, the thing is, like, you know, happy is a relative term, right?
	I mean, how do you draw a line to say, you know, this person's happy?
	Or, you know, how do you really know when someone's happy?
	I mean, I guess that's my problem, you know, with answering the question.
	Well, but this is the same as the other questions that we get, right?
	Which I'm not going to have as much patience with as I used to, right?
	You heard me talking to the guy about the tattoos thing, right?
	Like, is a necklace self-mutilation and so on, right?
	Yes, there may be times where it's complicated to figure out whether someone is perfectly happy or not, or to what degree of happiness, blah, blah, blah.
	But nonetheless, we still know the difference between a happy person and an unhappy person.
	Like, I can't tell you down to the tenth decimal place exactly how healthy I am, but I know that I don't have leukemia, right?
	So has this been like a totally annoying conversation to you and completely unhelpful?
	No, no, no. It's been useful.
	Yeah. No, certainly.
	Yeah, I mean, if you care about somebody to really want to help them, then I just find that the best thing to do is keep asking them questions until you really get a sense of where they are.
	Right. Because if she doesn't feel any particular distress, then she's not going to go to a therapist, right?
	It's like going up to a marathon runner who's healthy and saying, you really need chemotherapy.
	You'd be like, what? What are you, crazy?
	I'm healthy as a horse, right?
	So you need to figure out whether somebody's happy or not before you start suggesting something like, you know, therapy or whatever.
	Right.
	All right.
	Well, was there anything else that you wanted to talk about with regards to this?
	No, I think that it was pretty clear.
	I mean, just talk to her and see how happy she is and try to ask her questions about it and then probably suggest the therapy option that it might help.
	Yeah, I mean, for sure, for sure.
	But I mean, again, if you don't...
	Yeah, for sure.
	I would just keep asking her and try not to get pushed off by, I'm fine.
	You know, everything's great, whatever, right?
	Because obviously she puts forward a pretty happy kind of persona, right?
	And if she's not happy but she's putting forward a happy persona, then that is exactly what the kind of stuff that I was talking about before in terms of having a real difference between your values and how you're actually living.
	Right. Okay, well, thank you very much.
	I appreciate that. It's a very interesting question.
	There is, of course, a lot of medical stuff that always needs to be checked out with regards to this kind of stuff.
	But thank you so much.
	So I will be more than happy to move on to the next person who might have.
	Thank you very much. The floor is open.
	Ricky says, can I talk?
	I would absolutely say yes.
	I've seen you do it.
	What's up, Stefan? Can you hear me?
	What's up? Not too much.
	Hey, I have a question for you.
	If cutting your nails...
	Wait, wait, wait, wait.
	Briefs. No, sorry, what was the question?
	Is cutting your nails self-mutilation?
	I'm just kidding. Is cutting your nails self-mutilation?
	I would say that cutting your nails self-mutilation is what cutting your hair is, because it's a baldness.
	Baldness is good, though.
	About the piercing thing, I don't think some people are going to have access to the conversation that we had at breakfast that one day, but what you were telling me about the...
	What you put out physically isn't what you're going to get back.
	I think that helped a lot of people trying to figure out whether what they're doing, their physical appearance is working for them or not, whether it's a good or bad thing for them.
	Sure. Do you want to give a bit of a synopsis of that?
	I thought it was a great conversation.
	Do you want to give a bit of a synopsis of that conversation and what you got out of it?
	Yeah, yeah. I was telling you about how I had gotten my ears pierced, and I wasn't sure why, but after that conversation, I was telling you how I was meeting girls and meeting people in general who were...
	Man, just to give you examples, you know, girls who believe in fairies, Wiccans, just really new agey kind of stuff, and my physical appearance for sure was that kind of resemblance, and that's definitely what I was putting out, and that's definitely what I was getting back.
	And it was because I had never changed my outward appearance when I started changing the way I thought about things and changing my actions.
	I never updated what I was putting out.
	I suppose that's why I was getting uncomfortable with my physical appearance, why I was questioning it, why I brought it up to you, and was kind of wanting to know why I was having maybe a little anxiety about it.
	So yeah, I think a lot of the people on the board were talking about how most of their social groups were people who dressed and looked exactly like them.
	When you have your clique with your friends who all have piercings, all have tattoos, all engage in the same kind of behavior, it's kind of like a tribal thing.
	It doesn't just end with personality similarities.
	It goes into the physical appearance, and it's very tribal, and I think that's something to keep in mind with it.
	I've been actually a lot happier since I I'll have to send you a picture because it was really uncomfortable.
	I got rid of a lot of clothes.
	Actually, I took them to the store where you can basically sell your clothes and they give you...
	They compensate you by getting a discount on all the new clothes they have.
	Right. And so I did that, and it was odd.
	It was really weird, and it was somewhat uncomfortable.
	But it's actually kind of a nice feeling.
	No, I was just going to say that I have a hard time explaining the discomfort with it.
	I felt odd when I would go out.
	And I don't know if it was because I was just completely not used to it, you know, for years of dressing the same way.
	But, I mean, the earrings was...
	It was easy. I took those out, and I haven't even thought about those, but it was mostly my style of dress that kind of threw me off the past few weeks.
	And it's weird.
	I haven't had any problems with meeting anybody that was off the deep end as far as crazy beliefs go.
	And it's not like I've changed my behavior at all.
	I just don't attract that.
	I mean, it's only been a few weeks, but it's looking that way already.
	So I can give you another update a month or two from now.
	It seems like the hypothesis is holding true.
	Well, I think that's right.
	I mean, I think that, as we talked about, I mean, you put our signals when you present yourself.
	My particular approach to dress is that it should not interfere, your clothing and your appearance.
	Should not interfere with your true self-communication to another human being.
	That's sort of my basic philosophy of clothing.
	So, I mean, if I show up in a toga, you know, to the Free Domain Radio barbecue, then people are going to say, like, what the fuck is he doing in a toga?
	And, for God's sake, could he not put on some underpants?
	Or something like that, right? But it would really interfere, right?
	So people would walk in and they'd say, oh my god, this is the crazy guy I've been donating money to or whatever.
	I drove all this way to come and meet this guy who's in a toga.
	Or if I was in some sort of Wiccan uniform or had a fez on and a thong or something, it would be interfering.
	You would need to process that and try to understand why I was making a choice to present myself in that manner.
	Similarly, if I did every one of my podcasts in a three-piece suit with a fresh manicure and a freshly buffed forehead or something, if I did all of my podcasts in a three-piece suit in a very, very formal setting, Then that would be another way that people would perceive me, and I think it would interfere.
	So when I do my podcasts on the show, like the videos, I try to dress in a neutral manner so that people can focus on...
	The eye contact, the verbal and nonverbal communication that's coming through YouTube so that they can connect with the thoughts.
	They can connect with the ideas.
	I don't want to be in any clothing that is going to distract people from the communication that is occurring between us.
	And that's sort of, I think, dress as neutral as you can that is appropriate to the situation so that people don't have to do a double take.
	There was a A friend of Christina's had a party a little while back and her boyfriend was there and he was dressed in a black satin shirt and some pretty tight trousers with this sort of cross-stitching up the side.
	And he was not...
	He was not a young man, and there was some good old middle-aged muffin top happening there, and he had a little leather waistcoat on.
	And so when he walked by, it was just like, what?
	It turned out that they were at the Renaissance Fair, which is some medieval thing during the day.
	And so once I understood that, I was like, oh, okay, so they just came from this medieval fair or whatever, right?
	But other than that, I'd be like, well, why would he make this choice to present himself in this way?
	It's distracting from the person.
	Because the clothes, you have to puzzle something out about the clothing in order to get to the person.
	Whereas if you dress in a more neutral kind of way, a bland and boring kind of way, I think.
	That's my particular approach.
	Then you can connect with the person, but it's vulnerable to do that.
	Because if you don't have any adornment, you're saying, there's nothing that I'm going to do to be eye-catching.
	There's nothing that I'm going to do to get your attention.
	Right? Because if you're really heavily adorned in one way or another, that's just going to attract false self people, right?
	Because the false self is a kind of adornment.
	Say, just me presented in a simple manner is, I have the confidence to do that.
	And that's going to attract to you, I think, more confident people.
	But tell me a little bit more what you felt when you went out without the regular getup.
	I went out and I went to dinner to do some reading.
	At first, it's true.
	It doesn't feel like your physical appearance is doing the...
	The talking for you, so to speak.
	And even when I went to class, and that was weird because everyone was kind of, I guess, used to the way I dressed before, and I'd come to class, it was a 180 appearance, and I actually got into a conversation with them about that, because they had actually asked me about it.
	And one girl had mentioned that I looked different, and I told her I took my earrings out.
	I guess I had a somewhat obvious style of dress, and it's much plainer now.
	And so, yeah, it spurred on some conversation and I got to talk about it.
	And I guess it was nice kind of being able to talk about it with people who noticed.
	It gave me some feedback with it.
	And it was nice not having my clothes doing the communicating for me.
	That way... I felt more in control, if that makes any sense.
	There wasn't a conflict.
	But it was uncomfortable because...
	I don't know if it was because I was just so used to the way I looked all the time, or if it was because...
	The newness of it.
	I'm still wondering about that, but it's not as bad anymore.
	It's becoming more comfortable every day.
	And I notice my aesthetic preference, I guess, for clothes is starting to change too.
	If I go out and I need to pick up some clothes, it feels a little nicer not being so picky.
	Not putting so much emphasis or focus on what I want to buy.
	And it's been quite an experience.
	I'm really glad I brought it up with you, and I'm glad I got some answers for it, and I'm glad I did something about it, because I do feel much better.
	But yeah, the discomfort, I knew it was going to happen, because when I was sitting there talking with you, I could picture myself being very uncomfortable, and it was like that.
	And it kind of still is, but it's improving a lot.
	But it's nice at the same time, because I don't feel conflicted at all.
	Yeah, yeah, thanks Greg.
	I'm a preppy now. It's not preppy.
	It's mostly plain.
	None of the shirts I bought are collared or anything.
	I bought some button-up shirts that do have collars that are kind of nice, and I bought some normal, not macho-sexual either, and I bought some plain kind of colored t-shirts, and I got rid of my jeans that had holes in them.
	Because I think all I had were jeans with holes in them.
	And so I bought some normal pants.
	And yeah, it's been different.
	But I'm just going with it.
	I'm anxious to see how much better it works out as far as my social life goes.
	Because my social life was not working.
	Alright, so sorry about that.
	This was Ricky doing something to me that is unspeakable.
	Okay, so that was that topic.
	I think that if you want to get more information on that conversation, you're going to have to buy, lay down your cold hard cash for the Freedom Inn Radio BBQ Weekend.
	We had all of that on tape, and so...
	So that would be the thing to do.
	So I'm not going to answer anymore about that.
	So, who's up next?
	Who wishes to speak?
	Who wishes to chat? I think there was one before.
	I don't know what happened to it, though.
	Well, I noticed that the most recent entries are very recent vintage, so I reposted again.
	And I think it's an excellent idea to have such a map.
	Because I think the people living in the same geographic area might have some opportunity to maybe get together.
	Actually, it's mostly just for a listener who's roving called Greg to have places to stay.
	But I guess it could also be used for social networking as well, which is nice.
	He's got a spare bedroom here if he ever wants to stop by for a while.
	That's very kind. Now, just be aware, he moves in, he repaints, and he will in fact impregnate many of your pets.
	So this is just something to remember.
	Well, our pets are neutered, so have at it.
	It's amazing. It's amazing what he can do.
	It's a miracle. It's a Christmas miracle, really.
	I'm eagerly awaiting the release of your new book on UPB, and I have several plans for it.
	One, a rather ambitious one, having to do with getting a hold of a talk show host out here who claims to be all about the morals and the values, and who has always maintained that there is no way short of religion to have an ethical value system.
	And it would be interesting to catch him at one of his frequent live appearances with a copy of your book and say, do you have the balls to debate this guy?
	You might want to say it nicer, but I certainly do appreciate it.
	Get him up against the wall.
	Do you have the balls? So that's my job.
	But to know, I would love to debate somebody because, of course, as I sort of argue in the book, and I'm not giving away anything too much right here, but...
	The two fantasies are that we need gods and governments to be moral, but the reality, of course, is that since gods and governments are subjective fantasies, that's like saying we can only be moral in our dreams, right?
	Because it's completely subjective and random and made up and inflicted, of course, right?
	So if it's only religion that can give you morality, then morality is impossible.
	And if it's only governments that can enforce and inflict morality on you, then morality is impossible.
	So I would not only say, well, yes, there's this religious way to get morality, but here's a better one, which is secular.
	I would say that there is only...
	A way to get knowledge about morality that is secular and rational.
	You can't learn about the solar system by imagining that God is in the middle spinning it around with his little finger, and you can't learn anything about morality by imagining that subjective interpretations of 2,000-year-old drug-addled fairy tales is going to get you there either.
	Oh, I totally... I mean, that's what I find to be so amazing about your work, Steph, is the fact that this has never crossed my mind before reading your stuff, and I've been involved in...
	You know, the quote-unquote freedom, liberty, whatever label you want to put on it this year, movement, for over 20 years.
	And I am still amazed at how I managed to miss something so frickin' obvious, which is why I picked the name Obnosis Jones in the fact that...
	Actually, Obnosis is a word that was coined by Scientology, which I... I was connected to for a number of years until I figured out that these people have no idea what they're really talking about, although they do have some interesting personal examination tools.
	But yeah, what passes for thought and discourse in this culture is utterly clueless.
	It will be fascinating to watch this guy.
	His name is Dennis Prager, by the way.
	He's got a nationally syndicated show.
	And it will be very interesting to watch his brain explode.
	Because he has such an investment.
	And what his idea of morality and truth is, and yet he also has such an investment on being all about the values and all about the truth.
	So it's like he's going to either have to fall down and go, it's all about my opinion, in which case it'll completely blow up his position on, you know, hey, give me the...
	I mean, he's...
	He's just a very amazed and good debater from point of view, and nobody has really come up with anything significant.
	The couple times I tried to call him on the air, I never got on.
	I think his screeners may...
	He delimits his subjects so narrowly so that if you try to expand, well, there's a lower level that would undercut this point you're talking about.
	No, he doesn't want to talk about that.
	But getting him at a personal appearance where he can't just hit the dump button on you.
	And once again, I realize that it's obviously getting somebody of that stature to understand and to have a tremendous breakthrough would be really a great win, but it's not something that I'm going to stake the future of Free Domain on.
	If only we can get a national talk show host to...
	No, I understand that would just be kind of like a nice icing on the cake, but you need to bake the cake, you know.
	And I loved the recent podcast about, you know, just grab an end of the anvil and start showing.
	Oh, yeah. I mean...
	That is what we've got to do.
	And I think it's that kind of commitment that kind of creates the mindset that will impress people like Dennis Prager eventually.
	We don't need them to cognize, to understand, but it would be nice.
	And eventually, as more and more of us start pushing this anvil, it will create more and more attention.
	And I think that is our ultimate goal, is just to free our own lives.
	And people will say, well, why did you do that?
	Why did you divorce your wife of 14 years when you seemed to be getting along so well?
	Well, it's because I realized there wasn't really a relationship there.
	And I tried, and I tried, and I got nowhere, and yeah, absolutely.
	Absolutely. Yeah, yeah.
	The podcast, I think it was one of the premiums.
	I can't remember the one where the guy, I think it was a premium where the guy was talking about his marriage.
	And man, it was just, you know, and you said, well, yeah, I warned you.
	Right. Nobody believes me.
	Nobody believes me. Approach philosophy fully armed with the knowledge that you think you're going to learn about philosophy, but what's happened is philosophy is going to jump on your back like a...
	You know, like a monkey, just chew through your life, right?
	And it'll be better. And let me just say, as an anonymous sort of caller, Steph isn't kidding.
	Absolutely. Well, what's your experience with this particular thing, this approach or this truth?
	Well, yeah, I have, well, as I had said, I had been, you know, in the liberty game since the early 80s when I started to realize that the money was fraudulent.
	And I went through the whole, you know...
	Federal Reserve, IRS, Gambit.
	But the problem has always been with that.
	Okay, what do you do with this information?
	You can't really fight these people.
	And ultimately, if your own personal life is crap, then what's the point?
	Now, I had...
	And you can find people who you can be happy with, play the game of happiness, as long as you stay within the little boundaries that they set for you.
	And what happened to me was, when I realized that this game is so much bigger than exposing the IRS... Getting back to the Constitution, it's like the game just detonated.
	I love the word detonated.
	It is so apropos.
	It just detonated the boundaries to the point where I could see so far.
	I mean, it's like I'm staring at looking at this little box and all of a sudden I'm looking at intergalactic space going, oh my God, all of this stuff is connected.
	Right. And all of, you know, what's, and I will quote L. Ron Hubbard, whose phrase, you know, where he talks about a discovery he made, but I like the phrase, which is, all of the complexity would, all of a sudden, just resolved into simplicity.
	And it's correct. I mean, when you see what's really going on, it's really simple.
	Right, right. And it's similar to, you know, this thing where they thought that the Earth was the center of the solar system and the way that they calculated the movements of the planets as they got more and more information as the telescope was invented and so on.
	Everything just got more and more complex and they couldn't figure out how to make all of this stuff work with the Earth at the center of the solar system.
	And then... Yeah, you can't explain all the data.
	You can't explain the data, except by coming up with more and more weird complexity, right?
	And then it takes someone to come along and say, okay...
	And it's so obvious in hindsight, but it's hard to come up with and say, okay, well...
	Let's just put the Sun at the center of the solar system and see how that works.
	And it's like, click! All the complexity is gone.
	And everything resolves itself to a mathematical purity.
	And that shift, right?
	Einstein did the same thing. Newton did, of course.
	Einstein, Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, these people all did these things where they said, okay, well, if we change our perspective to this...
	What happens, right? And so it's like, okay, well, if all moral theories have to be logical and empirical, what happens, right?
	Can we come up with morality?
	And if you sort of take that, and it's no big genius, in a sense, in hindsight, because you just say, well, it's a scientific method, and it's also the price system in economics.
	And if you say, well, if freedom is a human concept, then it should apply to human beings first and foremost, not to political systems, not to familial systems, not to religious systems.
	And therefore, it's you who needs to enact freedom, not have it be something that you beg for from permission from someone else.
	Absolutely. It's the most amazing thing that's ever happened in my life.
	And I am more optimistic about my life in the future than I ever have in my entire life.
	I mean, yes, I'm going through a tremendous amount of turmoil right now because I'm now having to make adjustments in my own personal relationships.
	And I still don't know exactly what my life is going to end up looking like.
	But I do know that when...
	I am now on a road that actually leads somewhere.
	That you have control over, right?
	That you don't have to wait for other people to understand how bad the Fed is and for someone to get voted in and for someone to change.
	That makes you crazy because you can't control any of that, right?
	It is so liberating to know that it doesn't matter what other people do.
	I am in control of my life and I am in control of whatever obligations I choose and don't choose.
	And that is just an amazing gift that I don't know I could have gotten from anywhere else.
	Well, I'm absolutely thrilled.
	Because nobody else is talking about it.
	No, it's not. And that's because, I mean, as you go through this kind of turmoil that occurs when you begin to really bring...
	And it's not like we're bringing really weird values into our lives, right?
	The whole basis of what I'm doing is just take people at face value, right?
	So if people around you say, I think it's important to be honest with each other or to share what I'm thinking and feeling, and everybody says that, right?
	Then we just say, okay, well, let's do that.
	And then if they run screaming, then obviously that falls into the big vat called life's too short to waste time with that kind of hypocrisy.
	But it's not like, the funny thing is we're not bringing any weird values, right?
	Like communism and fascism and I guess even Scientology did bring some weird premises to the table, but this stuff is not that weird, right?
	It's like, yes, property rights exist, you know, human beings are individuals, morality is important, logic is a science, they're valid, honesty is a virtue, courage is a virtue, nothing that weird, we're just taking it to the logical conclusion.
	Yeah, well, it's funny because, you know, what attracted me to Scientology was Hubbard, you know, had a lot on the ball.
	I mean, he'd say things like, no one is responsible for you other than you.
	You know, no one's responsible for the condition of your life other than you.
	And he went on to say, this is a horrible state of affairs.
	Because it's right against the, you know, the general wisdom is that everyone else is ruining your life.
	So he got a lot of important things, but what he did with the information, you know, one could have...
	Well, it's all true, but it's not proven, right?
	That's always the challenge with these kinds of guys, and it's the same challenge with the guys who do the landmark and so on, the Werner Erhard crowd.
	There's some truth in it for sure, but it's not proven, right?
	So, you know, I can be in the 12th century and say, the world is round, the world is round, the world is round.
	That doesn't make me a scientist.
	It happens to be true, but I haven't proven anything.
	Yeah, but the point is that wherever you get your inspiration from, if then you make conclusions that aren't based on reality, that's the problem.
	If somebody says a few wise things and then you start taking everything they say as gospel, that's where people go off the rails.
	Right, and that's why I keep telling people to focus on the methodology and not on the conclusions and certainly not on me.
	Exactly. And to me, that is the great gift of this discussion, is that it's not just we've come up with a bunch of amazing conclusions.
	We've come up with a methodology by which we can check any conclusion.
	And that is like, you know, the super acid of, you know, of the universe.
	It'll burn through anything.
	Yeah, and I mean, part of this multi-generational project of freedom, I mean, I don't mind, I mean, I don't like that it's a multi-generational project of freedom, right?
	That you and I, and probably even the younger people who are listening to this, we're building a bridge to the future that we're never going to get to cross, right?
	We're never going to go and live in Ancapistan, and we're never going to live in a stateless society, and we're never going to live in a society that is not mutated and twisted by various forms of collectivism and religion.
	Familial cults and so on.
	But as long as we know that we're going in the right direction, I feel relatively happier because the freedom movement from a political standpoint has had hundreds of years or thousands of years, if you count Socrates and Aristotle, to get the job done.
	And it hasn't. It's gone in the opposite direction just about every time.
	So I don't mind that we're building a bridge that we're never going to get to cross because I know that it's going to get to the right place, not building a bridge just into the ocean that's going to end up with no progress.
	Yeah, well, knowing there is no political solution, I think that is the meme that has to be promoted at this time.
	And just to be consistent with one's own...
	I mean, it does seem kind of ridiculous, the idea that all you have to do is be consistent with your own values.
	But that is the toughest lesson.
	And when you say to people there is no political solution, they get really angry because they really want to be free and they think that politics is going to do it for them.
	When you say there's no political solution and here's the evidence, right?
	What happens is they kind of stall and you can see it and they get angry.
	And the reason they get angry is if there's no political solution, then you have to act in your personal life.
	On the principles of libertarianism or freedom or philosophy.
	You have to act your values in your personal life, not surfing the internet and writing letters and donating to Ron Paul.
	You actually have to talk to the people in your life about what you value and what is true and become intimate with them and challenge them And people would much rather donate thousands of dollars to Ron Paul than have one conversation with their wife or parents or brother.
	You know what I mean? The moment you take away the political solution, people get really mad because it's like, what do you mean I can actually act on stuff now and don't have to cross my fingers and hope and cajole and write, but I actually can go and have this conversation now today?
	They don't like that at all, right?
	It freaks them out. Oh, yeah.
	Well, because the podcast you said he had recently rebutting this guy, Limey or Leamy or whatever, where he kept saying, what are you doing?
	And he says, well, I don't know.
	I'm just putting out the truth there and inviting people to take it, you know, to...
	I mean, it's like, yeah, the endless question for the libertarian is, well, what can we do?
	Well, we now have an answer to that question.
	Yeah, which will bring you freedom regardless of what the state is doing.
	Yeah. So my whole life is being refocused.
	I'm closer to my goals than I ever thought I was.
	Now, true, whether Ancapistan will happen in my lifetime, I don't know, and it's possible it won't, but at this point, I'm happy to be part of the journey.
	Right, and look, I'm just thrilled.
	I'm absolutely thrilled that it's working for you.
	I'm glad that you're over some of the initial shock that happens when you start talking about what really matters to you with the people in your life.
	Well, while it's shocking and discombobulating, whatever word, but on a much deeper level, it's so much more liberating because now I know that I'll never have to suffer with this What were you talking about?
	I can't remember the podcast I was just recently listening to, but the idea of, you know, giving up the idea of constantly being in, you know, not knowing and in doubt, and finally there is such a thing as certainty.
	And, of course, that means that you then have to do something about the certainty.
	But if you have enough, it's the action that creates the certainty, right?
	So as long as you're talking about the Fed and Ron Paul and a government solution and the Constitution, you're never certain about how it's going to happen.
	You're in a state of tension.
	You're in a state of, I don't know how we're going to get there, but I'm panicking because I want it to get there, and it's not going the right way, and you're stressed and you're upset and blah, blah, blah, right?
	So that is not certainty because you don't know if you're going to achieve it, right?
	And you also fundamentally don't empirically know whether it works or not.
	But when you actually put these libertarian principles to bear in your own life with the own people that you have in your life, then you see that it does work, and you are happier, and you are more productive, and you are more content, and you are more energetic, and you are more all of the good things.
	And then you get certainty, because you've actually acted on your beliefs in a sphere that you have influence over, not running for Congress or voting for this or that or the other.
	And so once you put these things into practice, you get a kind of passionate conviction, because now you know that they work.
	It's not in a book.
	It's not something that Milton Friedman wrote 20 years ago.
	It's not something that Mises wrote 60 years ago.
	It's not something that Rand wrote 50 years ago.
	It's something that you've actually done.
	And once you've done it, then you get a kind of certainty that I think has eluded the libertarian movement, which has always been kind of naggy in a way.
	They nag people. They're like whiny in a way.
	Because there's not that personal certainty that comes from actually having achieved it.
	Yeah, it's like, well, why don't you, you know, once again, it's waiting for somebody else to change.
	One of the things that I've been going through recently and going through marriage counseling is every counselor says, well, if you're going to sit there and expect the other person to change, This is an unworkable philosophy.
	And I'm sitting there listening to these people going, this is perfect.
	All of this stuff that had been remained unresolved is now resolving into simplicity because it's like, yeah, if somebody is waiting for somebody else to change before they'll be happy, well, I know about their potential for happiness and I don't have to hang around waiting anymore.
	Because I know how I can get happiness.
	I create myself. Right, and if you go to the political solution and you spend 20 or 30 or 40 years doing it, and you find out it was the wrong thing, and you're old, I mean, you know, it kind of sucks a little, right?
	I mean, that's why I'm sort of trying to get as much out there as possible so that people can get that they're not dependent upon democracy to give them freedom.
	And they'll never get it, right, A. And B, you know, they don't have to wait for that, right?
	Never going to happen. Well, I've already distributed six copies of your On Truth book, looking to buy more, and I'm really looking forward to the UPP when it's released.
	Because, you know, that's where it's at.
	And, you know, I'm going through people that I know, and either they will...
	I understand, and they will be a part of my life, or they will kind of, you know, scratch their head and go, gee, what kind of weird crap is he into now?
	And I'll know that, well, they're not ready for it yet, you know, but I won't waste a lot of time.
	Right, most people don't make it, right?
	That's the painful part, right?
	Most people. Most people will choose what is familiar to what is true.
	And of course, it would kind of suck, totally suck, if someone, whether me or somebody else, came up with some methodology and we got encapistan in six months.
	Because then it would be like, man, are we ever retarded, right?
	I mean, if it's that possible, the harder it is, the more we can relax about not having achieved it in the past, because it is damn hard.
	Yeah, it's sort of such a way as to, well, I don't feel so bad that we haven't done it yet.
	Exactly, and man, do people kick and scream when you take it out of the abstract and put it into their lap.
	And boy, have I been experiencing that.
	All right, well, listen, I wanted to give anybody else who wanted to have a chat, so thank you so much for sharing where you're at, and do keep us in touch.
	I'm just going to open it up to anybody else who wants to get any words of wisdom in before the end of the show, so I'll open it wide.
	I'm stopping all the people on the chat window.
	Speak. Speak.
	Hey, Steph. Good.
	How are you doing? Okay.
	Not yet. Well, I don't know if you've...
	I guess we've been talking in the chat window for a little while about what happened yesterday.
	I had a confrontation with my father.
	He kind of assaulted me a little bit.
	A little bit? Okay, let's hear about it.
	Tell us the story. Well, okay, I was...
	I'll just make it really short, because I don't think that's the important part.
	I mean, I wanted to go watch the football game with a friend of mine who lives in, well, at the college, and this particular friend is not a friend that they have a very high opinion of,
	and so they said no, and I kept asking them for consistency, you know, and They just got really upset and started blaming me and calling my mom especially, saying pejorative things about me and my friend and all this stuff.
	And then she started blaming me for, quote, ruining her day even by asking.
	And I just said, I don't care if I ruined your day, and then that's when...
	I said it kind of flippantly, so it was probably a little bit too hasty, because there was a million different ways of saying, you know, I don't want to be manipulated, and I probably didn't pick the right one, but...
	My dad just instantly picked up on that as disrespectful, and so he was enraged and just kind of grabbed me.
	And he didn't hit me or anything like that, just grabbed me and held me up against the wall, something like that.
	So anyway, it was pretty...
	I don't know. It was scary. It was shocking.
	I'm 20 years old.
	I didn't expect that at all.
	Right. Well, I'm sorry to hear that, of course.
	I mean, that is assault, right?
	I mean, by any legal definition, that would be reasonable.
	That is assault.
	Sorry, go ahead. Right.
	Right, and I'm obviously not going to press charges or anything like that, but it really – what we were talking about on the board was that some people are saying, like, when are you leaving and all that, and I am planning to.
	But what I was – I mean I'm not going to charge in front of any of this.
	What I'm thinking is this just really – Increases my conviction for leaving when I was already kind of planning to.
	Can we just back up for a second?
	Why is it that you would not press charges?
	Um... I'm not saying you should.
	I don't know. It seemed to me an unthinkable thing, and I'm not sure why it's unthinkable, right?
	I mean, certainly if somebody grabbed me and pushed me up against a wall, I would be very likely to press charges, right?
	I mean, simply because I view it kind of minor civic duty, right?
	Like, I mean, if somebody's violent towards me, then if nobody ever says anything, they get to get away with it for the rest of their life, blah, blah, blah, right?
	So, I mean, there's arguments. I know we don't have a perfect police system and so on, but There are certainly arguments that could be made as to why you could or should even press charges.
	So I'm just wondering why it was a completely unthinkable thing.
	Yeah. I don't know.
	Just because I think that leaving will be good enough...
	I don't feel the need to...
	I don't think that I'd get anything.
	It would cause me to have to see them and deal with them.
	You know, more as the court stuff went on.
	Maybe. I don't know.
	But just, I think that it's plenty good just to leave, I think.
	I don't know. Well, I would say that if by leaving what you mean is to sort of leave from their life without looking back kind of thing, then I can certainly understand why pressing charges would not be wise in a sense, right? I mean, because then you get dragged in and dragged back and so on.
	Like, if you're just going to leave, then leave.
	And is that sort of your intention?
	And again, this could change as time goes along, but is your intention to leave and not look back?
	That's pretty much my intention, yeah.
	Right. Well, then I can see why it would make some sense to not.
	I just always want to make sure that people don't just throw things out of their mind because they're, quote, impossible or unthinkable or whatever, right?
	I mean, you absolutely have the right to press charges against anybody who assaults you.
	Yeah, I know.
	You know, it's like there's issues of proof and I'd feel like I'd be trying to get back at them or something like that.
	I just don't feel like getting into that.
	You know, it's fine talking about it.
	I just don't, you know, I don't feel like going that direction.
	Right, like it would overcomplicate the exit strategy, right?
	Right. And that's kind of partially why I'm not leaving just right now.
	My feeling is like this particular incident did not hurt me any more than all the previous incidents did.
	It just happened yesterday, so it's so much easier for me to see how bad it must have been for me when I had infinitely less defenses against that.
	I don't know.
	I kind of lost my train of thought there.
	Well, you were saying that this did not hurt you any more than the previous times.
	I wouldn't agree with that myself.
	I don't think that that's true. I think that any time we're assaulted, it's ugly and it's horrible.
	I mean, it's not like, oh, well, it's been a thousand times, so a thousand and one doesn't hurt me anymore, or whatever.
	It certainly is an incredibly ugly and unpleasant thing to have to go through.
	It can be helpful...
	Right? I mean, I think if I understand your sort of goal or process here, what you're doing is you're expressing your needs in a way that is more assertive, and because you're being more assertive, you're being attacked, right?
	Yeah. Yeah, I was, you know, and even while I was, you know, being attacked, I felt like, I mean, I wasn't, I was being more assertive.
	I was standing on my ground.
	I wasn't attacking back or anything like that, but just, you know.
	Not letting myself get tossed around either, you know, physically.
	Right. But, you know, what I would say is that you are...
	This would be my suggestion.
	You say you've got two months to go, right?
	Two or three. Okay, let's say two or three.
	This would be my suggestion.
	You are in a physically volatile situation, and a parent who will aggress against a child at the age of 20 is a volatile and dangerous person to be around, right?
	You know enough now to leave without regret, if I understand this correctly, or without doubts or ambivalence or mixed feelings, right?
	Yeah, that's how I feel right now.
	I mean, I didn't feel that way.
	I felt that way intellectually for the past few months, but I haven't really got it, especially with my dad, because I tried to save the relationship with my parents through him.
	Sure, sure. So my suggestion would be, if you know that you're going to get out of the mafia, you don't pick fights.
	Right. So, if you've reached the place where you have some closure in terms of the possibility, and I would say that physical assault is probably one of those places that you can get that kind of certainty.
	Right, it was kind of helpful that way.
	Right. So now, what I would suggest, in fact more than suggest, strongly advocate that you do, is to simply be meek and obedient until you go.
	Yeah. Yeah, and I mean, I'm not...
	I wouldn't say I'm really too far from meek and obedient from just average, you know, day-to-day life.
	Well, sure, I understand that, but I don't think that you want to get into the situation where you're repeating the assault or instigating or being part of the process that leads up to, I don't mean your fault, but instigating the assault that occurred yesterday.
	Hi, sorry, just to interrupt, somebody's sort of pounding on the keyboard or mic or something, so if you could...
	Yeah, it seems like that. But sorry, go ahead.
	You know, yeah, I guess what you would mean by that is, since the instigating incident was demanding consistency, what I should stop doing is demanding consistency, since I know that they'll be inconsistent.
	Well, exactly, exactly.
	I mean, you don't argue with crazy people.
	Once you've established that somebody is crazy, you don't argue with them anymore, right?
	Because then it becomes masochistic.
	And so you don't ask, you don't try to establish personal boundaries with narcissistic or violent people.
	Because you can't do it.
	It's impossible, right?
	Right. And so since you can't ever get boundaries from somebody who's willing to physically assault you, and you can't have a reasonable or peaceful or animated or passionate discussion with somebody who is willing to physically assault you, then what you do is you just don't pick fights with that person.
	You just get away from them, right?
	Right. Because you're going to want to fight with your dad.
	You're going to want to fight with your dad because you're mad, right?
	Not as much as some would think, but yeah, I mean, not really that mad.
	I don't know if that's a good or a bad thing, but I'm not.
	Well, just be alert to the possibility that this may come up in you, right?
	Because if you've been assaulted over the years by your father, you've got some rage.
	No one who's alive could not be that way.
	Sure. I just guess I don't feel it.
	Just be careful.
	You're in a volatile situation, and you need to be aware that your assertiveness has brought something to your consciousness, which is the degree that you've gotten very viscerally of your physical humiliation at the hands of your father over the years.
	That is going to let a kind of beast loose in you.
	It's going to destabilize you for a little while.
	And given that the instigator is around, I would suggest get out as soon as you can.
	It doesn't matter what your circumstances are.
	If you can't do it, you can't do it.
	But you have to be careful that...
	See, the reason that you should get out sooner rather than later is because your father may do something he regrets, or you may do something that you regret.
	Right. Because you've got two alpha males.
	You've got two alpha males in a situation of physical dominance here.
	And you're old enough now and you're big enough now that you've got a lot of rage in there because being physically assaulted for many years always breeds...
	I mean, there's no possible way that it can't breed a lot of anger, right?
	That's something you need to deal with before you get into more longer-term relationships, I would say.
	I don't want to repeat any patterns.
	But you're in a situation where somebody who's instigated violence against you, which you're now conscious of, is going to be pushing your buttons for the next, you know, 6 to 8 to 12 weeks, right?
	Okay. Right, right.
	When you said something about the...
	Two awful males, I kind of like that clicked because I was thinking, like, I've been trying to assert my independence, you know, as a person, and that's, okay, that makes sense.
	Yeah, this is primal, right?
	I mean, this is very primitive, what's going on between you and your father, which is around the overthrow of the older generation.
	There's something almost simian, and I don't mean this in an insulting way, but there's something very primal about it, right?
	Sure. That you're attempting to assert your authority against the sort of leader of the pack, so to speak, and there's physical violence that ensues.
	In the ape world, this doesn't end well, right?
	I mean, and we have all of those instincts still.
	So, just don't get into fights with your dad, and for heaven's sake, just whatever you can do to get out as quickly as possible is essential, and be aware, monitor yourself for your own temper.
	Don't let a flare-up get the better of you and make you do something you'll regret.
	Sure. Alright.
	That makes sense. Can you get to a counselor or therapist, psychologist, psychiatrist?
	I'm in therapy, and he's paying for it.
	Oh, good. Okay.
	Well, you know, that's fantastic.
	That's fantastic. So then I shouldn't do too much more, because I'm sorry, I didn't realize you were in...
	I try not to sort of, hey, and here's the philosopher's take on what your therapist is saying, or whatever, right?
	I don't know. I appreciate both.
	Should I nod or...
	No, no, look, if it's abuse to you, it's abuse to you.
	I just, I don't want a therapist calling me up and saying, what the hell are you saying to my patient?
	You don't know the history, you don't know this, you don't know that, that kind of stuff, which they could have every week.
	We're not that far into it yet, so, but yeah, I understand.
	That makes sense. Right, right.
	So I hope that this is helpful.
	You know, the self-mastery that you're going to need until you get out is not going to be insignificant.
	It will actually be better for you psychologically to submit to your dad because that's the humiliation that you need to deal with, right?
	Because when you were a kid, you could not fight back.
	Now that you can, if you do fight back, you won't actually be really re-experiencing what happened to you as a kid, which is what you do need to be able to move on.
	Okay. Well, that makes sense.
	Thanks. Oh, you're very welcome.
	Well, listen, I'm so, so sorry that it's come to this.
	It is just an awful, awful thing that anybody should ever lay a hand on you in anger, or anyone.
	I mean, it is a terrible, terrible thing, and my heart absolutely goes out to you.
	Just all the sympathy in the world for this really, really difficult situation, and I absolutely wish you the best of luck over the next couple of weeks, and do keep us posted.
	All right, I will. Alright, well thanks to that listener.
	Does anybody have any last minute questions, comments, issues, short term, short time, small time problems?
	Hey, what's up? I've got something.
	Go for it. Alright, well...
	Something that's been coming up in philosophy a lot is another one of these, you know, fake philosophical problems, and it's what is knowledge exactly?
	And I ended up getting into an argument with my epistemology professor over...
	She was saying, oh, well, is it possible for a person to schizophrenically form a belief about something like it is raining outside and have it be for the wrong reasons?
	And, you know, would he have knowledge just like, you know, you have knowledge if you come to that conclusion?
	Well, I was contending in the first place that our beliefs are fundamentally not even about the same things if he's not doing it with any justification.
	So I just wanted to see what your take was.
	You know, what is your exact definition of knowledge?
	Well, knowledge is the facts about reality that we arrive at through repeatable methodologies, right?
	So, yeah, she's absolutely right.
	Somebody who's locked in solitary confinement could have a dream that it was raining and be convinced that it was raining, but have no knowledge, right?
	The problem is that's not a reproducible methodology, right?
	So... If you think about archery, like the shooting bows and arrows, it's a very difficult sport.
	The bows are really heavy. I've tried it a couple of times.
	Any idiot can wander up and hit a bullseye once every 500 pulls, right?
	Right. But we would not call that skill.
	So skill is when you can reproduce.
	Skill is when you can reproduce it.
	I was saying to somebody the other day, when I first started to learn tennis, because I'm pretty strong, I was able to rip off some fantastic serves, but like one out of ten times.
	So now I've got it down to one out of two times, which is like 20 years of practice.
	But the fact that I could hit a great serve did not make me a great tennis player.
	It's the methodology of practice and reproducibility that counts, right?
	So it's not knowledge if you just have an opinion, right?
	As I said earlier, if I just went around, if I wrote a children's story in the 12th century entitled The World is Round, we would not call that a scientific proof.
	I would not have knowledge that the world is round.
	I would just be saying something.
	Similarly, if somebody teaches me a phrase in Japanese that is something horribly offensive, but they teach it to me as if it's a polite greeting, and I go and say this horrible statement to some Japanese person, it's not that I'm trying to offend them, right? I just lack knowledge, and I've been misled, and listen, that and the other, right?
	So knowledge is the accurate statements that we can make about Reality based on a repeatable methodology, which is a scientific method, which is UPB, which is philosophy, which is math, which is logic itself.
	So the schizophrenic doesn't pass that test because it's not a repeatable methodology.
	Right. So using the skill analogy to the archer, it seems that you're defining knowledge in this way that you're requiring repeatability as a criterion.
	But I guess what I was wondering is, is there a more tightly knit logical proof, like when you actually show the steps like that, let's say to lead to mind belief formation that it's raining outside, you know, there's a set of steps that leads down to the law of identity at some point, right? The schizophrenic person who forms this thing forms that belief without any regard to the law of identity, or at least the lineage, the spatial and temporal arguments for why it's raining outside and what it's arguing about.
	You see what I'm saying? I think your explanation is sort of like attacking it from a different side.
	Well, sure. I mean, I'm not going to claim that that's a syllogistical proof of the idea.
	But, you know, the basic thing is that something that is accidentally right is not right, right?
	It's not correct. Something that is accidentally correct, you know, if I wake up from a dream in the 12th century and I say E equals MC squared...
	It doesn't make me Einstein.
	That's just an accidental sort of aggregation of images or words or whatever.
	That's not knowledge. The same thing that would occur with a schizophrenic.
	That is a delusion because it is not accurately derived from the properties of reality.
	What I'm saying to you is that the belief isn't even saying the same thing if the schizophrenic comes to that conclusion.
	If the schizophrenic says, it's raining outside, he may happen to be saying it in the same sentence format.
	And somebody who has knowledge may even be interpreting that in such a way that they have knowledge.
	But in terms of an internal state, it's impossible.
	So I guess what I'm trying to say is that the belief that any schizophrenic forms or somebody forms without a justification is something that by definition cannot be true.
	Well, it has no relationship to truth, for sure, right?
	I mean, if the schizophrenic says, it's raining, and it is in fact raining, then you can't say that what they're saying is not true, because it is true, right?
	It's just accidentally true, right?
	But the professor is kind of funny, right?
	Because she's saying, well, this, you know, schizophrenic truth statement and so on, then you could ask her and say, well, this is your theory, so you would be perfectly comfortable having a schizophrenic as a philosophy teacher, right?
	And if she said, yes, I would be perfectly comfortable, then she's insane, right?
	But if she says, no, I would not feel perfectly comfortable having somebody with a delusional mental illness teaching philosophy, then you would say, well, then you understand that there's a difference, right?
	So, what you said about the schizophrenic saying it's raining outside, you're saying that it's not necessarily false.
	I mean, in terms of language and operating by common language standards, it's not false, as long as we understand the words that he's using in the way that corresponds with truth.
	I'm talking more in terms of an internal state.
	What types of things is he ascribing to be contained in the words, it is raining outside?
	To him, what's contained and raining?
	Without justification, right, it's missing facts that would go into that, which would include the things like the law of identity or certain physical laws or, I don't know, certain things like certain phenomena.
	It would have to be derived, like, the reproducible methodology is accurately derived from sensual information about observable reality, right?
	So I could write a computer program to randomly say, once every 24 hours, it's raining outside, right?
	And if my computer happened to say it's raining outside when it was in fact raining outside, we would not call my computer a meteorologist, right?
	We would just say that this is just a coincidence, right?
	Now, it's not that what my computer is saying is false, it's just that it's not any kind of reproducible methodology, and the information that is being spoken is only accidentally coinciding with external reality, but it is not derived from external reality.
	And knowledge does have to be that which is derived from reality, Or, you know, the laws of logic or whatever.
	But what the knowledge that the computer would be spouting off in that case is a sort of external form of knowledge.
	Like, let's say human beings from now...
	Left a bunch of information on a hard drive, and there was a huge dark age, and humans of the far future came and picked up that hard drive.
	The knowledge that they gained from that is...
	In other words, the hard drive itself doesn't have knowledge on it.
	It has something, some symbols on it, some collection of binary You know, of some bits strung together that they can interpret as knowledge and end up learning about by, you know, piecing together their theories about what humans in the past were like.
	But it itself does not have knowledge.
	So I guess what I'm trying to say is that from a person's perspective, if a person happens to be forming the, quote, correct beliefs for the wrong reasons, All they're simply doing is giving us that hard drive, right?
	They're only giving us a set of external symbols that we can tend to manipulate in such a way that it corresponds with our true knowledge.
	So, I mean, this is like splitting hairs almost, but, I mean, it's a big, quote, philosophical problem, and I think with this kind of clarity, it's important.
	So do you see what I'm saying about the difference between a sort of knowledge as an internal state and knowledge as external storage?
	Well, sure. I mean, the book is not the writer, without a doubt.
	But I still think that the reproducibility is the key.
	I really do. I mean, because, you know, you could take some random berry and it might cure your sore throat, right?
	But unless you had the scientific method, you'd never be able to reproduce it because maybe it was just a coincidence or maybe, you know, just your sore throat happened to heal of its own accord or whatever.
	So we all understand that somebody who's schizophrenic cannot give you consistent statements about reality.
	And anything that they say that correlates reality with reality only correlates with reality accidentally.
	And therefore, it's not really a correlation with reality.
	So the fact that a schizophrenic is only going to be accidentally right, quote right, in a randomized manner, and that that is going to be very slight, The reason that you don't have schizophrenics as meteorologists is that 99.99999% of the time, their knowledge is going to have no bearing on reality.
	Because, you know, it's just random.
	It's just randomly generated.
	It's the reason that we don't have computers type random code into themselves to come up with a program.
	I guess once in a billion years, they might come up with something as big and bloated as Microsoft Word.
	But that's not how we do things because it's not a reproducible methodology.
	It's just random stuff.
	So the reason that we have logic and the scientific method and the evidence of our senses and so on, validation and so on, sort of the empirical validation, is so that we have a reproducible methodology and that's how we know that something is knowledge rather than just static, right?
	So yeah, I guess in quick summary...
	You're suggesting that reproducible methodology is something that necessarily arises from knowledge, right?
	And that's a good criterion for seeing if something is knowledge or not.
	But when it comes down to it, I was just trying to see if you agreed that when a schizophrenic comes up with a belief, right, it can't even logically correspond with reality.
	It can only be something that's said externally, that can be interpreted as something that correlates with reality every now and then.
	Yeah, it's like if the wind carves to be or not to be on a beach just accidentally, we don't say that the wind is as good an author as Shakespeare, right?
	It's just a random happenstance.
	It's not reproducible. It's not anything which is consistent.
	It can't be evaluated.
	It can't be retested. Knowledge is a slippery thing, right?
	Knowledge is a thing that needs to be looked at from a bunch of different angles.
	It needs to be tested by a bunch of different people, particularly in science, right?
	This whole fusion in a jar nonsense, right?
	Nobody else could reproduce the experiments.
	Knowledge is a slippery thing, and that's why this reproducibility is very key, right?
	And that's why when you've built a bridge before, you know you can build it again, and it's going to stay up if the last one did, because reality is consistent.
	And that's why, like, reality is consistent, and therefore true statements that we make about reality should also be consistent, which means reproducible.
	And therefore, you know, if there is water falling from the sky, then it's raining, right?
	We can say that's a consistent description of the behavior of Well, that was the short question, I guess. Well, that's great.
	Thank you so much.
	All right. Is there anybody who is dying, dying, I tell you, for any other questions or comments before the end of the show?
	Hey, Steph. Dude!
	What's up, man? Wait, wait.
	I'm just licking your arm in thanks for your donation this week.
	Oh, hey. That tickles.
	That's what I was going for.
	So I just wanted to give you some mad props on that The God of Atheists thing.
	I finally got done with the audiobook about a couple weeks ago.
	Oh, I'm glad you liked it.
	It was just, wow.
	Seriously. When did you write that?
	I wrote that in 2003.
	2002, 2003, I think.
	Okay, so this is the thing that really just kind of gave me chills when I was listening to it, is that the concepts that are driving FDR were there that long ago.
	And the fact, I don't know, maybe I'm just...
	Totally blowing your method here.
	You might want to edit this out or something like that.
	But the fact that you've been able to release this stuff in such a slow burn that allows people to keep up with it and you're literally bringing hundreds, thousands of people along on this conversation that it has to be taken slowly.
	It was just amazing to me that you have The patience to do this so methodically and so purposefully, because I just always assumed that the whole FDR thing was just you rambling and then figuring things out as you went along, but it's really not, and it's quite amazing when I finally understood that, you know?
	Well, I appreciate that.
	Yeah, this I wrote years before.
	I guess this I wrote two or three years before my first article was published on New Rockwell, which was prior to Free Domain Radio.
	Yeah, no, I mean, I had a pretty solid idea of where it is that I wanted to take people, but I also knew that if I started off with the family stuff, that it would be culty and without context.
	You have to get people to believe in stuff, or to...
	I shouldn't say believe in stuff.
	You have to get people to understand stuff in the abstract before they can apply it in the personal...
	And that's why, of course, I started with the DROs and the Stateless Society and so on, so that I could get the idea that voluntarism was a virtue and coercion was never required.
	And then, of course, if voluntarism is a virtue and coercion is never required, then how was your childhood, right?
	I mean, those kinds of things.
	And I also had to get people to understand that there was no God in order to strip away the mythology of parenting, or parenthood, right?
	So, I mean, it wasn't entirely...
	I mean, I didn't have every last word, obviously, planned out, but...
	There was definitely some, how can I get this across to people in a way that's going to be enjoyable for them?
	How am I going to slip past the false self-defenses that we all have and get them to a place where when I start talking about their family, that I'm not going to completely...
	Freak people out, alienate them, turn them off, make me feel that there's a bait and switch.
	How am I going to establish some authority and some credibility?
	It was absolutely a challenge from that standpoint.
	I think that I've had some comments from the people who've read or listened to Togo that they kind of know in hindsight what I knew back then.
	I guess I tried to make it as soft a landing as I could for people.
	Yeah, yeah. No, definitely.
	And, you know, this is...
	I got this sense as I was finishing up the audio book of that that it was something that...
	Well, I'm rambling here.
	The... The feeling that I got, I've had a couple of times during the podcast series, and one of the other times that I felt it very strongly was when I was listening to one of your premium podcasts, the series on Ayn Rand.
	I think it was the third one when you were answering questions that Christina had about Ayn Rand.
	It was this odd feeling that I had that is very rare to me, and it was one that Growing up, being a relatively bright kid and stuff in the middle of Nowheresville, Minnesota, there weren't that many people out there that truly impressed me in a mentor type of sense,
	I guess you could say. Someone who I could look to and say, this guy knows so much more than me that I have absolutely no compunction in just laying myself down at his feet and just saying, okay, teach me something, right?
	There have been a few times during this process over the last couple of years that I've had this really strong sense and it makes me really giddy when I feel it.
	It's a feeling of, I've found someone here that I can actually let my guard down with.
	I don't have to constantly be checking everything they say against my gut, well, not my gut instincts, but against facts and figures and this and that.
	And I think it has something to do with, I know we were joking about this several months back, about the whole abacus thing, you know, being so precise and certain in every little tiny thing.
	And the feeling that I get when I When I have those moments of clarity like that where I feel like I'm able to put down the abacus for a little while and just go on instinct, go on feeling.
	It's just a great feeling and I just wanted you to know that Togo and several other times during this conversation I've had this feeling and it's such a new feeling but one that I like having.
	Well, I really appreciate that, and I must say that I was...
	I think I was...
	I must say, I think I almost outdid myself a little on the Ayn Rand stuff, because she is such an incredible thinker, right?
	I mean, and I lay at her feet for many, many years, as far as thinking went.
	So, to attempt to surmount the goddess of philosophy, so to speak, was...
	It really did bring out something quite...
	Almost remarkable in me.
	I felt that I sort of outdid myself on that podcast series.
	So thanks. I'm glad that that connected to Steve.
	Yeah, definitely. That thing resonated with me.
	There's something about just hearing someone...
	Because I knew that you had this reverence for her ideas and stuff like that.
	But when you got to the point where the conversation sort of...
	Well, you reach the point of stepping up to where she got and then stepping past it.
	And the way that you did it was so...
	It seemed like I was watching some kind of crazy ninja master or something like that doing some impossible move, but pulling it off so gracefully that you're like, I can do that, you know?
	Right, right. And it was really cool.
	I mean, it was at that point where I really just felt, you know, gosh, okay...
	Whatever this guy says, I'm just going to give it a go for a while because this is really freaking cool.
	I mean, really cool.
	I mean, this is after I've made tons and tons of progress, thanks to you and Christina already.
	I mean, it's just that I'm still having these moments of inspiration.
	It feels like it's unlocking new doors now and then, so that's why I was really excited to be able to send in a donation again, and I wanted that to go toward your to-go promotions and stuff like that.
	I really wish I could have sent more, but...
	I mean, I think that that's truly a masterpiece.
	I really do think so.
	Well, thanks. And I definitely wanted to write a book that engaged people at a philosophical level, but of course, you can't out Atlas Shrugged, Atlas Shrugged, right?
	I mean, this is no point even trying, right?
	I mean, I don't think that there'll ever be a better plotted, tighter philosophical novel than that.
	But what I always felt was missing from Ayn Rand was something that I have tried from the very beginning to put into this show.
	It's a little something I call relentless benevolence.
	It's like, oh yeah, I can still be benevolent.
	Oh yeah, piss me off.
	I can be passionate and angry and still be benevolent.
	And I think that that kind of relentless benevolence is what...
	I've got some emails from just a variety of people this week sort of saying that I should warn that these podcasts are like crack, right?
	And I think that the crack is that there is a relentless positivity and benevolence, even when I'm really mad at listeners and stuff, there's real benevolence and positivity to that.
	And I think that is sort of, I think, what does get people, what really does help people to trust, right?
	Because We are afraid of authority figures and we are afraid of people who know more because people who are authority figures and people who know more so often use it to pivot themselves up at everybody else's expense and not to get under people and push them up and encourage them up and conjole them up and tease them up and make them laugh,
	right? We're so used to authority knowledge and intelligence being something which is used as a positioning kind of tool to heighten the person who has the ability and at the expense of everybody else so that we go, ooh, ah, you know, I could never do what this person does or that's so amazing that whatever, whatever. And I've really tried to not do that, of course, right?
	And that would be sort of vainglorious and pointless.
	And I think that Ayn Rand fell into that trap of, you know, look how brilliant I am and this and that and the other.
	But I think that relentless benevolence, it's sort of surprising to people.
	And when they do learn that I can be trusted, of course, the person that they're really trusting is themselves to evaluate and judge who has some knowledge and expertise that can be of help to them.
	And it does, as you say, it allows you to put down the nitpicky city, you know, map.
	Which we all have. And I get this is why I was sort of earlier in this show, I was sort of saying, no, I'm not going to differentiate between piercing your tongue and wearing a necklace.
	And I'm not going to differentiate between this, that, and the other.
	Because we know that the extremes are very different.
	And this nitpicky stuff in the middle is where everyone gets drawn to and it paralyzes people and it depresses people.
	And to be able to just... Let your enthusiasms lift you and let your trust in this conversation lift you beyond the nitpicky stuff to the really glorious high winds of thought.
	I think it's just a wonderful experience.
	Yeah, I mean, I think there's a definite link or a relationship between what you just said, letting down the nip-ticky city for me is, you know, just toss the abacus, dude, for a little while.
	And I think there's a parallel between that and what you've been talking about recently, maybe a couple weeks ago, about just completely giving in to generosity with someone in a relationship.
	You know what I'm talking about? It's the one where you just do everything you possibly can for them, and then you will achieve certainty.
	Yes, that's right. And I think that as far as the, you know, I don't know, the philosophically this conversation is going, I think it's like, it's that same feeling where the abacuses, the nitpicks are always a hedge against a perceived...
	You're just waiting for the other shoe to drop where this person's going to screw you over sometime.
	Right, right. Sorry, go ahead.
	Oh yeah, I was just saying, so this feeling that I get in this conversation with you, even though it seems awfully one-sided a lot where I'm just listening to you on headphones, it still feels like...
	I can feel that generosity that you're giving us, and it inspires in me this feeling of, I want to give everything that I can to this conversation right now without hedging it, without saying, yeah, but.
	When I get those feelings, that's when I make those big strides in my progress, like the conversation that led to my retrieving all that money from a past employer, Getting out of my last job and starting my company and all that stuff like that.
	Those are the times that I just said, okay, let's assume that this is absolutely right and I'm just going to go with it and have no doubt.
	Those are the times that I've made the biggest leaps.
	I think this is awesome training wheels for me to be able to use these things in my personal relationships too.
	It's invigorating. Yeah, no, I think you're right.
	I mean, there's a kind of, I mean, to use the flight metaphor perhaps beyond its capacity to be sustained.
	There's a kind of like when you're hunched over the controls and you're flying and you're nervous and you can't see that far ahead and it's raining and this and that and you're flying by instruments, right?
	Then you feel like you can't take your eyes away from the instruments because you don't know if there's a mountain coming.
	You don't know where the ground is.
	You're sort of disoriented, right?
	And that's where people get with the sort of nitpicky city thing.
	They're sort of fussing about everything and every differentiation blows their mind and renders them paralyzed and so on.
	And I'm sort of saying that when you take your eyes off the instruments, you can actually just step out of the plane and fly and it's a clear blue sky.
	And that's totally counterintuitive to people.
	Because they're like, well, I can't fly.
	I have to look at these instruments and I don't want to crash.
	Oh, and there's a lot of fear behind it, too, yeah.
	Yeah, it's totally counterintuitive.
	That's not quite living the way that I really try to get the idea across, right?
	That we can absolutely fly.
	We can step out of the plane.
	We can be the instruments.
	We can see 10,000 miles.
	We can do all of the Immelman curves and drops that we want.
	There's an amazing dexterity and flexibility that we have, that we're all geniuses and we're all philosophers, and we don't need to sit there hunched over the instruments, winding our way through life, hoping not to crash.
	Just let go of the plane, become the plane, become the instruments, and totally fly.
	And that, I think, is what you get in these moments where you trust, because it's trust in yourself.
	I don't need to look at the instruments.
	I don't need to triple-check everything.
	I don't need to find all the hairs that I could conceivably split that might make me incorrect.
	I can actually just fly and know that I won't crash.
	Right. Absolutely.
	No, it's good stuff.
	I'm going to let it go now, but I just wanted to reiterate and reinforce that donation that, yeah, you really knocked it out of the park with that one, and I'm really happy to Help get that out there into the world, because I think it's something the world wants.
	The editor is working on it now and should be done in about a week, week and a half.
	And there's one thing, because I pulled out, there's a whole subplot about Rudy's dating life that just made the book too long, and I pulled that all out.
	And there's a statement that Gordon says to Rudy near the end, where he says, the last act is about you, and that doesn't make any sense anymore, because that whole subplot has been taken out, so...
	But that'll be for the EP, right?
	The DVD version or something.
	So there's just a few little edits that I need to make outside of the editor who's going over it for sort of thematic and style and grammar.
	But yeah, it should be out definitely in October.
	And thank you, Dan. I'll definitely use all the cash to try and get that to fly to.
	Sweet. I think Greg wants you to take out the sex scene, too.
	Yeah, the sex scene is interesting, and I sort of mulled it over back and forth, but I really did want to show just how disconnected the postmodern false self intellectual stuff is from the physicality, and I just, I mean, I think that there was no more visceral way to do it, so. Yeah.
	Greg is kind of... Questioning us here.
	Yes, Justin does throw his bass guitar down twice.
	Thanks. I noticed that when I was...
	I've got it... Oh, yeah.
	I remember that part, yeah.
	Well, because you know what?
	It's a rubber bass guitar, so he's dribbling it more than anything.
	No, because the first time it's so like...
	You make it so clear that he throws it down that when you say it again, it's like...
	It stands out, you know?
	Right, right. Maybe there's a sub bass...
	Like, it makes an upset noise.
	Yeah, yeah. No, thank you.
	I've forgotten about that. I'm going to see if the editor gets that.
	I'm sure that they will, but I've got a note about that.
	So, yeah, I know that's quite right. It makes a wounded sound, and then he throws it down again.
	And I don't think there is a sub-basement, so I think that we should not do that.
	All right. Well, thank you everybody so much for joining in today.
	It was a great show. James, if you could just give me the WAV file, if you need a place to put it, just let me know and I'll give you access to the FTP site.
	And I will...
	Thank you so much, everyone. It was a great, great show.
	And I will talk to you guys next week, if not before.

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