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Oct. 7, 2007 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

01:57:25

881 Sunday Call In Show Oct 7 2007

Dating and relationships, mortality and choices, voting to reduce taxes - and how to communicate with enthusiasm!

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	So thank you everyone so much for joining.
	It's 7th of October 2007, just after 4 o'clock in Canadian Thanksgiving.
	And for those of our U.S. friends who are confused by a wide variety of things that are occurring this weekend, it is Canadian Thanksgiving, and the Canadian dollar is actually higher than the United States dollar, which is actually approaching parity with monopoly money, which is quite exciting if you play.
	So this is going to be a listener show.
	So, Rod, I think you had something that you wanted to mention.
	I can bypass my intro with thanks, so go ahead.
	Yeah, so at my main client's company, I've been working for them since middle of June or something like that.
	Everything's been going very, very well.
	I'm getting along swimmingly with everybody there.
	They like my work. And they have a...
	Like a corporate partnership with a company in Germany.
	And the topic has come up a couple of times and it looks like it's kind of gaining momentum that the German guys would like a couple of people to come over from the United States and teach them how to use SOLIDWORKS, things like that.
	Just kind of like an employee exchange kind of program or something like that.
	And they've said something like it could be up to two years.
	And I was thinking, man, wouldn't that be fun?
	Because they've actually suggested me going.
	And I've been thinking, wow, that would be so much fun.
	And wouldn't that be great?
	And it's something I've always wanted to do.
	But I've had this lingering apprehension about it.
	Something about, like, I'm just starting to really enjoy my life now.
	And... Back in the time when I was completely unsatisfied with my life, something like that would have been, oh heck yeah, my bags are packed, let me go.
	But now I'm just thinking, I've got an apartment that I really love.
	I'm waiting for this furniture that I've ordered that I can't wait to get it.
	And my life is starting to become something that I'm creating myself from the ground up and it's really nice.
	And now this wonderful opportunity comes up, and I'm starting to think, I don't think I want it.
	And I'm just wondering, is this one of those things where it's the anxiety of...
	I really want it, and I know I can have it, and that's what's giving me anxiety about it?
	Or is it genuinely a, I don't really need to go to feel happy about myself?
	It's kind of one of those, I'm not sure what side of me to trust type thing.
	Right. Can you just remind me, I know that this was sort of an exchange program, can you just give me a little bit more details about it so that I get a better sense of what the opportunity means?
	Yeah, sure. When I started working for this client, I'm still working as a contractor right now, which is fantastic.
	I love this type of work where I bill by the hour and if I'm not working, I don't bill anything.
	It has built-in incentive to stay productive and all that stuff.
	The company that I'm working for right now I'm giving most of my time to, all of my time to.
	They just started up a partnership with a German company.
	They're a really whiz-bang manufacturing company over in Germany that I guess the Germans have bought in like 50% share of this company that I'm working for, which is a very small company.
	So far, the Germans have sent some people over for a few weeks to help my company set up their Kaizen manufacturing systems and things like that.
	The two different companies have their own unique strengths.
	The Germans are really, really great at efficient manufacturing.
	And the company I'm working for is really good at creative design, solving problems quickly, developing new devices, new instrumentation, things like that in an effective way.
	And so I guess one of the things that we do at the shop that I work for is we do 3D solid modeling with a program called SolidWorks.
	And I'm pretty good at it.
	I can jockey it around pretty easily.
	Now, the guys over in Germany, I guess, are wanting to learn SolidWorks and also maybe some other stuff, getting to know the Americans or whatever.
	I don't know what it is they want to do, but the president of the company I'm working for has suggested me as a possibility for sending over there because I have no family, no ties, and I'm pretty good at what I do.
	They've been getting kind of excited about this whole thing, and it's a possibility of being there for up to two years.
	So I guess I'd be living over there, teaching people how to use the software, hanging out with the Germans eating schnitzel and stuff like that.
	And it sounds just like all kinds of fun, and it's one of those things where, yeah, I can't pass up an opportunity like that, but at the same time, I'm finding that I really just don't want to leave this life that I've been building for myself.
	It's really exciting now.
	Right, and of course, this falls into a larger umbrella, which is the context in which you make life decisions, which is no simple matter.
	And this really comes down to the if-then situation, and it's all sort of compared to what.
	And the if-then situation is what is the highest value in your life?
	What is the value that is sort of the center of your solar system that your planetary decisions, so to speak, would orbit around?
	And if I were to pin you up against the wall and ask you that, what would you say in terms of the values that are the highest?
	Oh gosh, highest values right now is...
	Well, the thing that I want to pursue the most invigorously right now is continuing this process of, I guess, healing myself from...
	We can go in from the person I was and where I started and developing into...
	Developing into Space Invaders, apparently.
	Are you guys hearing that?
	Yeah, sorry, I had to bump.
	Okay. So, yeah, I want to give myself a really solid chance to continue this development.
	And I'm sure I can continue it there.
	It's just... I'm not really sure if it would do me a lot of good to be completely ripped out of my comfort zone in the process.
	You know what I mean? Well, sure. Well, sure.
	So, I mean, you've got these sort of parallel paths in your life, one of which is the technical and the other of which is the philosophical, right?
	Or the acquisition of wisdom, let's just say, for want of a better phrase, right?
	And where does going to Germany...
	We understand where that fits in the technical aspect of your life, which is not to be devalued or, you know, it's not lesser than.
	I mean, you've got to eat to be wise, right?
	So we understand where going to Germany would fit into the technical aspect of your life's goals.
	But the technical aspect of your life's goals must be subordinated, I think, to the acquisition of wisdom, not because I say so.
	It's just that we need to be wise in order to be happy, and happiness is the key goal in life.
	So, we understand the technical aspect of going to Germany, but how does that fit into the acquisition of wisdom aspect?
	Yeah, part of the technical aspect is that, you know, I really would love to continue on the development of my own business and someday making it into a bigger thing where I've actually, you know, I could hire people on and have a really cool...
	I think that this would definitely help that because I would gain a broader perspective on business and manufacturing and things like that as well.
	So that's very appealing but on the wisdom side of things, I don't know, it's really tough because right now I live a pretty solitary life anyway.
	Most of my contact that I have with people on a truly personal and meaningful level It comes through either the internet with people like you and FDR or else a couple of, well, I can't even really say that I have a couple of really close friends that I share really deep things with.
	I'm living a pretty solitary life.
	And so it's not like I couldn't pack up like a turtle and move over there with a solitary life and still be fine like that.
	But there's something that is Not quite sure about it.
	And the fact that I can't put a finger on why it's bothering me is making me wonder if it's just some kind of a defense mechanism thing.
	Right, right, right.
	Right, so it's not that you would lose a particular human contact, so to speak, by going to Germany.
	Not really, no.
	But you would lose continuity in terms of your life and your furniture and your place and this and that.
	And that's not to be shrugged at.
	I mean, that's not insignificant. So there's a kind of continuity, and I think you're getting the feeling that some kind of process would be interrupted, if that makes sense.
	Yeah, I do.
	And there's another thing, too, is that I've...
	I spent the last couple of years in a roommate situation where the circumstances of life made it not really possible for me out here in California to live on my own for a little while, just the cost-wise.
	And I finally got back on my feet to the point where I could get my own place again, and I'm feeling just like, you know, I feel like a million bucks because of that.
	It's a goal that I had for a couple of years, and I'm back at it now.
	And I'm not sure, but I think that...
	That if I went across to Germany, it's looking like the guy that I was rooming with might be coming along on the same trip, and I would then be pretty much in a de facto roommate situation again, I think.
	I'm not sure if we'd be rooming together exactly, but we'd be the only people that we know on the other side, and it would just be me spending just tons and tons of time with him again.
	And what is it that you're looking to gain, or what's your ideal situation socially and romantically?
	Socially, I just want to continue the process of making sure that the people in my life are there for the right reasons.
	Romantically, I mean, ideally I'd like to, you know, be married, maybe start a family, things like that.
	Of course, that all depends on me.
	I've taken a couple years off from dating, and I want to make sure that I'm sufficiently fixed to be worthy of someone's relationship.
	And where do you feel you are on that continuum?
	I think I'm doing pretty well.
	I know that there are several areas that I need to work on there.
	A lot of it has to do with just being able to be honest with my feelings and things like that.
	Yeah, Greg says fixed.
	What does that mean? When I say fixed, I mean the patterns that I grew up knowing as how you treat people that you're close to and things like that are not really healthy.
	I tend to be quite impatient with people sometimes.
	I can be...
	I guess, non-curious, like when people come to me with problems and things like that, I want to solve them quickly, and I don't want to empathize with them, things like that.
	And so, a lot of the recent conversations that have been going on on the board and stuff about the real-time relationship, and I know that Nate's brought it up about, you know, it's one thing to talk about the real-time relationship, but it's a completely different thing to apply it, and it's extremely difficult for People like us with the backgrounds that we have.
	And so that's one of the things that I want to be able to work on.
	And of course, working on that in a vacuum isn't all that easy, so I would probably want some therapy to help me out with that.
	Well, I would say, just based on the conversations we've had over the last, I guess, year and a half, I would say that you are more than ready to engage in a relationship because, as you say, you can't work on the real-time relationship with a handbag, right?
	A glass of peanut butter.
	So, if you want to get into a relationship, and of course I think that you have an enormous amount to offer a woman, then you need to just get into a relationship.
	And again, that's easier said than done.
	But I wouldn't say that you want to spend your whole time practicing tennis and not playing tennis.
	And I think that you're sort of aware of that, right?
	Yeah, yeah. So I would say that one of the things that may cause you to hesitate about Germany is that Germany, without a doubt, or at least with very little doubt, will postpone marriage and kids by about two years, if not more, and probably about three years, right?
	Yeah, yeah.
	And how old are you now?
	Um, what am I, 32 now?
	Yeah, 32. Right, so here's the challenge, right?
	And again, there's just some very practical challenges around dating in your 30s, right?
	So... If you go to Germany, it's possible.
	It's possible that you're going to meet a German woman.
	Ah! Sorry. It's possible that you're going to meet a German woman who's great and who's going to work out and so on.
	I think that the cultural gap is not insignificant.
	There may be language barriers.
	And Germany is, you know, objectively speaking, a bit of a freaky country, right?
	I mean, the Sprockets thing on Saturday Night Live is not entirely incorrect.
	And I say this having come from a half-German family, so...
	Yeah, I'm not really down with the discotheques and David Hasselhoff, so I'm not sure that that would fit with me.
	Right, and because the David Hasselhoff thing is all to do with cynicism, and it's all to do with nihilism, and I mean, Germans are just, you know, freaks, objectively and logically.
	You know, I mean, of course, this is based on some experience with the German culture, but...
	The odds of finding a rational, sensible, libertarian, philosophically inclined woman in Germany, I mean, it's not easy to find in any country, but there are certainly countries that are more easy to find it in, and I would say that the US of A would be California accepted, of course, and anybody that Ricky's ever dated accepted.
	But it's more possible to find somebody...
	Who's closer to you philosophically or at least open to that possibility in your own culture, right?
	So I think that you're sort of getting that if you go to Germany, it's going to be interesting in terms of your career and it's going to help you with your technical skills.
	But basically, screw that, right?
	Because what you want is happiness.
	And increased technical skills are not going to bring you happiness, fundamentally.
	What is going to bring you happiness is getting involved in a positive romantic love relationship, having kids if you want them, and so on.
	And so if you go to Germany, you're going to spend two years basically dating or not dating.
	Maybe you'll find someone there. Maybe they don't want to leave.
	Then, God help you, you're going to...
	I mean, Germany is like Greece in the way that it's very embedded in the extended family.
	So you go meet a German girl.
	Let's say you guys hit it off.
	Well, you're going to have to pry her free from the German coven of the family, which is not the easiest thing in the world to do at all.
	And having done that with a Greek girl, I can tell you that it's not always the...
	The most funny when you have a rational woman on your hands.
	So I would say that you are basically then looking at not being able to date until you leave, leaving and being in an uncertain or unstable or vague dating situation for two years, and then you're going to come back, and before you can get married, you know, I mean, Christina and I did it about as quickly as you can, which we met, and ten months later we were married.
	Because I was almost, as I said before, almost out of money.
	And Christina's property.
	And, well, anyway.
	So, you know, we all have master plans.
	And so I think that what's going to happen is you're going to be in your mid-30s when you're going to be starting to date, right?
	Now then you've got the biological time pressure, right?
	You've got the clock. The clock.
	And the clock, of course, for a woman in her mid-30s is going to start ticking fairly quickly.
	So you're going to have to make some decisions fairly quickly, which may be hazardous if you haven't been dating for a while.
	Or you're going to have to date a woman who's five years or six years or seven years younger in order to have the kind of room.
	And then you have the challenges of the age difference, right?
	So I think that as far as getting what you want in terms of what's really going to make you happy, The reason that you're not that keen on Germany is because it's going to give you some technical stuff, which isn't going to make you happy, but it's going to be at the cost of risking the other great dream that you have, which is romance, marriage, and kids.
	Yeah, yeah. And, you know, if my theme song was still, I still haven't found what I'm looking for, I think Germany would be great, you know, because it would be...
	Hey, I can go explore a whole new corner of the world and see what I can find over there, and yada, yada, yada.
	But now it's just like, I have found what I'm looking for, and I know I don't need to run around the world trying to find it.
	It's right here.
	It's right in front of me.
	It's inside me. Sorry to interrupt, but I think the great challenge that you're going to have, as we all do have, is once you go to the depths of what you need to fix, and we'll just use that term loosely in a moment, but once you go to the depths of what it is you need to fix in your life, It's hard not to feel like damaged goods, so to speak. It's hard not to feel like, well, yes, I have stitched myself back together, and most of the stitches are holding, and I can stand upright if I prop myself, and so on.
	It's hard not to feel like you're going out there, sort of like a war veteran with one leg trying to win Dancing with the Stars.
	So I think that the challenge is going to be to understand, and it's a hard thing to really get the hang of, sort of from a logical and particularly from an emotional standpoint, The work that you've done on yourself has made you incredibly strong, incredibly attractive, incredibly self-confident, and very virtuous. All of those things are prerequisites for love.
	Going through the phase of doubt and uncertainty that is essential for the acquisition of wisdom.
	We don't learn that which we already think we know.
	I don't sit there and go through basic arithmetic again unless I have to do my taxes.
	But because we have to go through this whole implosion of the ego, that is the bringing down the false self, the submission to wisdom and to reason and to evidence, there's a humbling aspect to that, right?
	But of course the world is full of pompous and arrogant fools who think they know what they do not know and seem to be as confident as the day is long.
	Whereas we feel like Cautious and tentative and humbled and so on.
	And it's hard sometimes to go forward into the world, looking for a romantic partner, feeling full confidence in your own humility, if that makes any kind of sense.
	That's sort of a mental expectation adjustment that is very important to make.
	Because you don't want to go out and say, well, philosophy broke me like a twig, right?
	And now I have to go in among all these tall pine trees and try and be noticed, right?
	There's a quiet confidence that comes from the humility of philosophy that you need to trust in yourself, right?
	And that's why I was saying you're totally ready to date, you're totally ready to bring the world to an incredibly lucky woman, and you should be very, very confident about that, that this process of breaking down the false self and rebuilding a true and confident ego is something that has made you incredibly valuable, though, of course, few people see that value, and that's what can make it hard.
	So, I get all of that.
	I'm wondering now, like, I wonder why there's such a blank spot when I try to focus on this Germany issue, though.
	Is it that, or is it something else?
	Sorry, what do you mean by blank spot?
	Well, when I try to put my finger on the lingering doubt that I'm starting to have about this Germany trip, because a few weeks ago, Well, it was probably quite a while ago.
	It was very soon after I started working there, this thing was first mentioned.
	At the time, I was like, heck yeah, sign me up.
	Now, in just the last couple of months, I guess, in the intervening time, I've moved into my own apartment.
	I've gotten this other stuff, kind of really geared up my business and everything like that.
	Now, I'm starting to really become comfortable with myself and with my life again.
	And I think maybe that...
	I mean, that's the only thing I can point to, the difference between when I was saying, heck yeah, let me go, and now I'm saying, ah, gee, I don't know if I want to go at all.
	Well, the other thing that I would suggest as a possibility is this may be the first life decision that you're making based on mortality, your own mortality.
	Ah, yeah.
	Yeah, because actually, now that I think of it, when...
	When I've been mulling this over in the last week or so, I have actually been thinking about age.
	And I think I wasn't thinking about that before.
	Or I know I wasn't thinking about that before.
	That's a good point. You know that line in The God of Atheists where I think the woman says that she began to realize that her life was not something that was going to happen, that there was not an infinity of time to correct her mistakes, that her future was going to be composed largely of who she already was.
	And I think that when you get into your 30s, there's not an infinity of time for you to do what you want.
	Like, you don't just sit there and say, well, if you're going to live forever, you say, what does two years in Germany matter in the face of eternity?
	Nothing at all, right? That's the perspective of your teens and sort of early to mid-20s, right?
	Late 20s, early 30s, you have to start making those decisions based on, well, I'm going to be dead.
	I'm going to be dead and to some degree I have to work backwards from that in order to get what I want.
	So I don't have two years in a sense to piss away on merely technical advancements.
	I don't have an eternity of time to spend or an eternity of life to throw away in various pursuits.
	Mortality brings focus and this may be why there's a bit of a blank spot around you.
	Mortality also of course will propel you with more energy into the dating arena too.
	Right, right. Yeah, there's a fuse on me.
	Like, if you could put a personal dad's out there, like, I don't want to die, let's gather.
	Or, I know I'm going to die, would you like to go for a frappe?
	Or something like that. Please don't let me die alone.
	Please don't let me die. God, I've got to reproduce before I shuffle off this PowerPoint.
	Yeah, I need to offset the broken world with my genes, right?
	Yes, of course. Yeah, we should all be breathing like rabbits, absolutely.
	Right. Throw away the condoms.
	Yeah, so... No, it's even better than that.
	Tell her you've thrown away the condoms.
	Hey, baby, check me out.
	I've poked holes in all the way.
	So... Yeah, this is bringing some focus, I think.
	Yeah, I know it's bringing focus because it's starting to feel less blank.
	This is good. Right, and look, that's why it's so important to bring this up.
	And I had a feeling this was more important than it's just a business decision.
	And we know that because of the blankness, right?
	So, once you get the whole mortality thing, then your life takes on a certain kind of prioritization that is sort of important, right?
	So you say, okay, well...
	It's like what Dustin Hoffman said once.
	He said, you know, well, when I was 30, I could double it and still be alive.
	And when I was 40, I could double it and maybe 45.
	But he said, now I'm like 60.
	And you know what? I can't double it and be alive.
	It's not going to happen. So there is that aspect of things.
	And this is part of what goes on in, you know, there's this sort of famous thing, or I don't know if you've heard it, where, you know, the people who are at the top of the social pecking order in high school tend to not do very well in life, and the people who are at the bottom tend often to do better.
	Like, you know, 10 years after high school, like, the jocks are working in a car wash, and the geeks are running computer companies, or whatever, right?
	I mean, it's all this kind of thing. But the people who have a lot of fun, who generate a lot of envy early on in their life, you know, there's the Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan phenomenon, the people who generate a lot of envy early in their life tend to not have very happy sort of second halves of their lives, so to speak. And I think it's that sense of preparation for the second half of your life.
	Jung said, and I think it's quite true, he said, the first half of your life is about, you know, just pushing yourself out into the world, making things happen, making decisions, and so on.
	And then there's a point in middle age, and not that you're there yet, but you're not that far.
	There's a point in middle age where you say, okay...
	that I can make happen, and now I have to accept certain realities, certain limitations, right?
	So you get older, you can't quite do as much physically and so on.
	Your eyes naturally, you need glasses, 42, whatever, right?
	But you have to make decisions based on the limitations.
	So the limitation on will when you're young is a very bad idea.
	But the continuing of this sort of infinite time, infinite will thing into your 30s and 40s is not a good idea.
	And I think it's that recognizing the limitations that mortality in a finite lifespan are going to bring to you that is rearranging your priorities in a way that's, it's a little bit melancholy, right?
	Because it is that sort of, okay, I guess I don't get to live forever and now I have to make decisions based on that.
	Yeah. One of the things that's bugging me about this is that I'm getting a sense that part of the reason that I would go would be to not let someone down.
	As in, they've suggested me as one of the people to go.
	And if I turn them down, then I'd be disappointing someone.
	And that really bothers me that that even enters into it at all.
	Sure, that is definitely, and that's very much a child to abusive parent relationship, which you definitely want to work on letting go.
	But there is a worst case scenario, which you need to be aware of, right?
	The worst case scenario is you don't go to Germany and you don't date.
	So if you decide not to go to Germany because you want to settle down, then you've got to start dating.
	It's got to be like a job. It's got to be a plan.
	And dating is a whole complex thing which we don't have to get into right now.
	But looking for a life partner is like looking for a job.
	I mean, you don't sort of say, I'll send out a couple of resumes a month, you know, that kind of thing, right?
	I mean, if you're not employed, then looking for a job should be a full-time job, right?
	You should be working at it from 9 to 5 or whatever, right?
	And if you really are interested in getting a life partner...
	Then it has to be something that you approach like you getting a job.
	I mean, I know that sounds terribly romantic and all, but there's a fact in it.
	You don't sort of wait for these things to land.
	You didn't get to be a contractor by waiting for it to land in your lap.
	So, you know, you find your interest, you know, and you join, oh, I like photography, I'll join a photography club or I'll, you know, I'll join a gym or I'll join a hiking club if I like active women or whatever.
	And you just sort of start putting yourself out there and start looking at women sort of critically and evaluating them in terms of life partner potential and so on.
	It's something that you really have to work to achieve, and that's uncomfortable for a lot of people, right?
	Because there's that whole thing about rejection and this and that and the other, right?
	But there's ways to make it easier on yourself, which I sort of meant to do a video on breed you philosophical bastards breed or something like that.
	But there's ways to sort of bring it about that are easier.
	And I think that's the challenge, right?
	So if you say, well, I'm not going to go to Germany, then you have to say, I'm not going to Germany because I'm going to die and I want to have a wife and kids.
	So now what I have to do is go and get a wife and kids or, you know, go get a life partner that leads in that direction.
	And that can be... I mean, how do you feel about that as an active plan?
	I think it's...
	I'm more comfortable with that as an active plan than going to Germany, actually.
	I mean, when I consider that path, it holds more appeal to me than going to Germany for a couple of years.
	Good, good. Well, I mean, that is the exciting thing, right?
	Because then you have a plan. You say, okay, well, I would have gone to Germany for two years.
	My plan is now to be married in two years, right?
	Right. So the opportunity cost of missing out on two years...
	Dancing on sprockets.
	I better make a life that's worth that.
	Yes, and that's really the key about looking at opportunity costs, right?
	Is to make sure that you get the most that you can out of it, right?
	That's what always drove me nuts about the people who would go to school and sort of show up half at classes and get drunk every night and so on.
	It's like, you know, you could just get drunk at home and not go to the library, you know?
	I mean, as far as that goes, right?
	You're spending $250,000 to $300,000 to get a degree.
	What are you doing with all that?
	I mean, that certainly helped focus my desire to get as much as possible out of the school experience.
	So, yeah, once you get the opportunity cost, you don't want to end up with the worst of both worlds, where you give up the technical but don't gain the personal.
	Right, right. Yeah, no, this is, of course, as always, it's bringing a lot of clarity to this.
	Yeah, no, this is good.
	I'm going to think about this one for a while.
	Don't think about it. Do it!
	Do it! I can't think about it for too long, actually.
	I have to make a decision soon.
	But yeah, no, this is...
	The blank spots are filling in mighty quickly here, so this is good.
	Right. Well, listen, thanks. Keep us posted how it's going.
	I think that's fantastic. And you might want to post some of your dating meeting tips on the board, because we do have, you know, the odd under-socialized person or two on the Free Domain radio boards, and it may be worth them getting these kinds of tips.
	That's a whole new discussion.
	I know that it's been mentioned before that you and Christina don't put online dating all that high on the awesome list, but where the heck do you go to find good quality women?
	Especially in Southern California here, at least in Southern Orange County, I always make the joke that this is where trophy wives go to breed.
	And so we have just oodles of gorgeous women walking around this place.
	I mean, this place is filthy with hot chicks.
	But that's all they are.
	And it's really sad.
	I mean, there are very, very few women that I've known that are, you know...
	I guess, well-adjusted.
	Because if they're not just knock-down, drag-out gorgeous, and probably come from a wealthy family, they're bitter because they haven't, you know?
	Right. No, I mean, it definitely is a challenge.
	Maybe we should have another conversation about this, or I'll throw some videos out with you so that I can talk about this stuff.
	I mean, if you can wait, we're hoping to have daughters which we're eventually going to raffle off.
	There's lots of different options around that.
	But you can imagine the dowry.
	Actually, you know what? If you want that option, you better go to Germany to make the money for the dowry because that's the next step in free domain radio donations.
	Anyway, we can get into that.
	It is a challenge, but there are very specific things that you can do to increase your chances, just like looking for work.
	I've been meaning to get to that one because I know that a lot of people who are abstract, intelligent, and introspective have a tough time finding women of quality, but they're definitely out there.
	We beat up Ricky about that, and I'm sure we can beat up others.
	Okay, cool. Maybe I should just stop wearing so much pink.
	Well, you know, perhaps I should have just said life 100.
	You never want to miss you.
	Okay, cool. Yeah, thanks a lot.
	Again, this is top-notch.
	Excellent. Okay. Well, let's move on to somebody else who may have questions or comments or issues or problems.
	Christine is here as well, so if you're looking for something that's less rambly and more focused, give her a shout.
	Oh, Jessica, you need to give us your actual...
	Yeah, but she needs to give us her ID. Yeah, we need to know what your ID is in order to be able to add you to the call.
	All right, so now what you have to do...
	Yeah, this is the challenge, because if she's not on our list, you have to find her, right?
	So you have to go here, and then search for Skype users, and blah, blah, blah.
	Yeah, no, she gave it to us. Never mind, Steph.
	She's leaving. Oh, okay. Excellent.
	Driven another woman away. Fantastic.
	Okay, go ahead. Whoever wants to chat next, please step up to the mic.
	Hi, Steph. Hi.
	Can you hear me? I sure can.
	Great. This is David, DB. How's it going?
	Doing okay. How are you?
	Great, thanks. Just finished the fourth rewrite of the UPB book, which I think I can confirm will be out within a week.
	I'm very excited to hear that.
	I actually just gave up on ending it, and what I did was I just had a priest exercise it, and that seems to have done it.
	So that's good.
	Let's trail off a little bit towards the end, and in the end I'll just say it's true, damn it, stop pestering me.
	And I think that that should be a good closure.
	At least it's an honest one. So, sorry, go ahead.
	Praise God. I have a question about the efficacy of working within the state to achieve political ends and political reform.
	I am now in the Free State, New Hampshire, and I have a lot of friends within the Free State Project Membership that I've tried talking to about this sort of issue that we really won't be able to achieve anything substantial through political action.
	One of the things that they keep saying is that things are different here in New Hampshire, especially on the level of local government.
	For example, there's one couple I talked to at a meeting the other day who said that I was wrong, because when they went to their town hall meeting, the two of them voted in this big town meeting.
	On a lower budget, to lower the tax rate.
	And the motion to lower the tax rate carried by one vote.
	So if these two people hadn't been there, the vote would have gone the other way and taxes would have been increased.
	By how much? I'm not entirely sure.
	I didn't ask, but it was...
	But it's a municipal tax, right? I'm sorry?
	It's a municipal tax, right?
	It was pretty local? Right, yeah, it was a local land tax, yeah.
	Right, so just looking at it from a purely practical standpoint, and I'll let you continue, I just wanted to sort of pause you for a second there.
	So let's say that they saved $300 by fighting this tax increase, right?
	Well, they went to a meeting and voted.
	Yeah, okay. But they had to learn about the meeting.
	They had to figure out what their position on it was.
	They had to learn the odds of it passing.
	I mean, there's stuff that they had to do to save a couple of hundred bucks a year, right?
	Right. And so they went to this meeting, and after spending, let's just say, five hours...
	And I'm guessing it's more than that, right?
	But we'll, you know, we'll not stack the case in this favor, right?
	And then spend five hours to go and save a couple of hundred bucks.
	So it's 70 or 80 bucks an hour that they got paid, and they may continue to save that money in the future, although, of course, they're likely going to have to go back and vote on it every year, right?
	So, you know, 70 bucks or whatever, an hour, they're getting paid, assuming the best possible case scenario for this.
	I don't think that's a particularly great return on investment as far as liberty goes.
	Myself, right? I mean, because they are then spending a fair amount of time to save a small amount of money, possibly.
	Possibly, right? Because given that it passed by one vote, it was pretty close to equal chance that it was going to fail.
	In which case, they would have spent all this time for nothing.
	To not even get the small amount of savings.
	So when you look at evaluating these things in the future, it has to be close in order for your vote to count.
	If it's not close, then you're just wasting your time.
	So you actually have to discount it by half the value that you're going to be gaining by pursuing political action.
	So in other words, they were spending five hours or whatever to save the equivalent of maybe $100 or $150, which is starting to not look very good in terms of return on investment.
	The other thing that's the case, of course, is that just because they got this tax increase passed, what does that mean?
	Well, all it means is that they're going to defer the money that they would have paid in taxes now to the future in terms of deficit financing.
	Because if the government says, I need X amount of dollars, and somebody puts through a tax cut or rescinds a tax increase or prevents a tax increase, What would a genuine...
	You talk about reform your family, how does reforming, as far as the theory of being able to reform hegemonic power structures goes, what would that look like on the scale of the government?
	I'm sorry, I'm not sure I understood that last part.
	Can you just rephrase the question?
	Sure, sure. I'm pretty sure I know what it would look like to reform your family, but I'm not entirely sure what it would look like to reform the government as far as that lasting sort of reform goes.
	Well, it's the same thing as reforming the family.
	It's the elimination of unchosen positive obligations, right?
	Which means eliminating the government as a concept.
	And it also means reforming your family is eliminating the concept of the family as far as it contains or is embedded with unchosen positive obligations, right?
	So reforming your family is going to see your family because you really like and enjoy spending time with them and you love them and you can't wait to see them and you look forward to when they call.
	So then it's not really, it's like biological buddies, right?
	It's not family insofar as you have obligations to the family or to your people.
	It's just close genetic friends.
	Yeah, it's just close genetic friends.
	So it's not a family in terms of family creating obligations.
	The same way that if everybody in a democracy exactly wanted what the government is providing right now, then you don't need any force to provide it, right?
	Right. Because, like, if everybody in Canada wanted socialized medicine, then we could get rid of the government and it wouldn't change a damn thing, right?
	Because there'd be some group called the government with two Gs or the government GU, right?
	And they'd do exactly the same thing and everybody would pay them all this money and so on, right?
	The only problem is you wouldn't be able to justly have deficit financing because you can't tax the unborn, right?
	Or I guess the deficit financing would accrue to the people who were involved in the situation to begin with, which of course they wouldn't want.
	So it's just about making things voluntary rather than coercive with the state, and it's about making things voluntarily rather than guilt-ridden or manipulative or this sort of heavy obligation thing with regards to the family.
	Right. So the only sort of reform that would be...
	Effective, in any sense, would be the reform of just getting rid of the government, getting rid of the force involved in the government.
	So, in other words, an anarchy, or what some of the anarchists talk about with voluntary taxation.
	Yeah, I mean, voluntary taxation is like voluntary rape.
	I mean, and I held this idea for many years, so I'm not going to criticize anybody who does, but it is definitely a self-contracted idea.
	Right. Yeah. Taxation is theft.
	And taxation, by definition, involves the use of violence.
	Right. And I would just hate to be nitpicky guy, as I often complain about nitpicky guys, but I would jump slightly on your use of the term reform because it's not a reformation.
	It's simply an acceptance of reality.
	The reality is there's no category called mother or father or family that has any moral content.
	You might as well say unicorns are happy.
	It doesn't have international content.
	I use the word reform because that's the word that you've used.
	I listened to one of the Gold Plus podcasts recently where you talk about reforming your family and reforming the government.
	And that's the word you used.
	You might have...
	Yes, so sorry, and let me explain that without sounding too weaselly, like, oh damn, are you quoting me back?
	Run! The whole point of the podcast is never to be able to quote me back to myself.
	But, no, sorry, what I mean by that is that reformation of the government is impossible and reformation of the family is impossible.
	Right? So the reason that I was using that, if I remember this correctly, and of course correct me if I'm wrong, is saying that the people who say we should reform the government, I say to hell with that.
	Go reform your family and see how well that works.
	And if you can't reform your family, as you will find that you can't, then you can more rationally give up on the idea of reforming.
	Because I think it's an impossible thing.
	I mean, I've never seen it work and so on, right?
	So, I mean, I guess theoretically it's possible, but...
	So you're absolutely right that reformation is a term.
	I use that, though, when people talk about reforming the government, just say, no, forget that.
	Go reform your family. Quote, reform your family.
	You'll find that you can't do it, and that will give you some humility with regards to the state.
	But no, you're right. I shouldn't be correcting your language when I've used it myself.
	And what you mean by...
	It seems like you're almost creating a situation where you're almost changing the definition, it feels like, of what it means to reform, so it becomes impossible to really reform your family, because if you're saying that you can't reform your family, and that by reforming your family, what we really mean is you just admit the reality of it, you recognize the guilt in the room, as it were.
	It seems like I'm not sure if that's...
	Okay, maybe what you're saying is just an invalid concept to begin with, that reform is impossible to begin with.
	But then you...
	I'm not sure why you go into the...
	Use the word...
	The idea of reforming your family first before the government.
	What you really want to say is to define reform differently than they are.
	Well, sure. And the reason that I focus on this sort of reformation of the family, for people who say that they can use the state to reform the state, right?
	Then I say, well, that's not testable, right?
	You can't test that theory.
	But what you can do, because you and I don't have control over the state, and no individual has control over the state.
	It's a runaway train of violence, bloodshed, and slaughter.
	But you do have control within your own family.
	As I said in that podcast, you have much more weight with your family than you do with the state.
	So when you say, I can reform corrupt institutions, then what you need to do is start small.
	You don't start big.
	If you want to put fluoride in the drinking water, you start testing it on bacteria or rats or something.
	You don't sort of say, hey, let's put it all in there.
	Right? So, the idea is, for people who say, I know how to reform corrupt institutions, well, you have more influence over your family than the state, and if you can successfully reform your family, then you can reform your in-laws, and then you can reform people on your block, and then you can reform the mafia, and then you can reform the drug dealers, and so on, because you have much more influence over those people, and you can arm yourself relative to them in a way that you can't relative to the state.
	So it's just when people say, I know how to reform corrupt institutions, I'm just saying, okay, well, let's put it in a testable scenario and let's find out if this is true or not.
	Okay. I guess the question then is, what does it mean to reform your family?
	Well, it means to remove unchosen positive obligations from your family, right?
	And to have a corrupt...
	I mean, if your family is corrupt, I mean, if your family is great, then you don't want to reform the state.
	Because anyway, we can get into that another time, right?
	Because you're already free, as free as you can be.
	But if your family is corrupt, then you can't reform your family because you can't undo the past, right?
	Reformation or rescuing moral situations is only possible when restitution is possible.
	So if I steal a piece of pizza from you, I can give you a coupon for two free pieces of pizza, and you may consider yourself content.
	The restitution is possible.
	If I shoot your kid, restitution is not possible.
	If I rape you, restitution is not possible.
	You may take some money or whatever, but we'll never be buddies.
	We'll never be friends. So anyway, there's no restitution that's possible for an abused childhood.
	You can't have restitution when your parents have lied to you or if they've hurt you or if they've damaged you or if they've controlled you or manipulated you or used you for their own selfish satisfactions or avoidance of anxiety or whatever.
	So there's no possible restitution because you can't go back in time and have another happy childhood, right?
	Because there's no capacity for restitution, there's no capacity for friendship, right?
	And I've gone through these arguments with parents a million times, right?
	It takes 10 to 1 good things to bad things to happen for a relationship to be sustainable on average.
	And if you've known your parents for 20 years and they've treated you badly, it would take 200 years of perfect behavior on their part to restore balance to the relationship, even if we didn't count the fact that the first 20 years are pretty important in terms of impressions.
	And that's impossible, right?
	So that's when I sort of say that family reformation in a corrupt situation is not possible, right?
	And that's why people are drawn to reform the state, because they like to avoid dealing with their family, right?
	But their desire to reform a corrupt institution is psychologically motivating them to go and try and take on the state, right?
	And fail, right? Okay, okay.
	So reform the family in this case would mean remove that, the positive obligation aspect of it, and still maintain A positive relationship?
	Sure, yeah, of course, right, yeah.
	Okay. Sorry, I shouldn't say of course, but yes.
	Okay. And then the same thing would be with the government, then, to remove the positive obligation and still have a positive interaction with the government.
	Yes. Which, as a...
	A handful of people are experiencing it's not possible.
	No, it's not possible because, of course, the government is responsible for our tyrannical and highly destructive educational experience when we're children.
	Nobody who comes into the government, or even if I got a hold of the government, all of its power tomorrow, I could never restore my mind to what it could have been had I not gone through this brutal state machinery of dullard miseducation.
	They can never give me back all of those years when I was a kid and all of those thousands of hours when I was a kid where I just had to sit there like a brain-dead bag of salt in a row with all these other brain-dead kids.
	They can never restore that to me.
	There's no restitution that is possible for that.
	I mean, they can give me back money as an adult that they've taxed for me and this and that.
	But they can never give me back the mental abuse that I suffered at the hands of state educational systems.
	So restitution as far as the state goes is utterly impossible.
	Right. They can also, sorry, they can also never give me back the control that I may have had over my mother if I'd have had some financial control over her, right?
	But because the state was giving her all the money to live, she never had to obey any of my wishes, right?
	I mean, if I was paying for her bills, I could have said, look, you have to go to therapy, you have to, like, if you want, and I would have had some leverage, right?
	It may not have been the nicest and kindest way, but I would have had some leverage, right?
	But because the government has now paid my mother's income for 25 years, there's 25 years that I've never had any say over what she does.
	She could thumb her nose at me and get the money that she wants.
	And she hasn't worked in that long.
	So I can never get that back.
	So there's no possibility of restitution.
	Somebody's been sent to jail by the government.
	Somebody has been unable to send their kids to private school because their taxes are so high.
	There's just no possibility of restitution from the government.
	Okay, so voting down a tax is certainly different than reforming the government.
	And it'd be one thing if they said, oh, my goal is to stop taxes, but it'd be another if they were trying to actually reform it.
	Although I guess that's an argument from effect, not an argument from morality.
	Yeah, I mean, we wouldn't say about a woman who said, well, I'm going to stay with my abusive husband, but what I'm going to do is I'm going to beg him to hit me one time less a month.
	Right. Right, we wouldn't say, well, there's a free human being.
	Right. Right, well, you might say that's a, yeah.
	Yeah, you're right, but I guess the difference would be that we don't have the option of leaving the state.
	We don't have the option of leaving the state, though there is an enormous amount that you can do to reduce the state's effect in your life.
	And Harry Brown's written, I've never read the book, but I know he's got a book out that's about that.
	There's a lot that we can do to minimize that.
	And of course, anything that we invest in trying to control the state is a net negative, right?
	I mean, as I sort of talked about at the beginning, we're just never going to be able to make anything back.
	Was there anything else that you wanted to ask about that?
	No, there was a... Okay, well, thanks so much.
	I will open this up to anybody else who has questions, comments, questions, issues, problems, rank, praise.
	Anybody who may have started listening to the On Truth book, I was listening to it the other day, and I was actually quite pleased with how the recording came out, so feel free to drop your pluses or minuses into the column for that.
	Hey, Steph. Hello.
	Hi, this is John. Go to you.
	Hi, John. Hi.
	I've got a question about something relating to what we were just talking about.
	I borrowed about $10,000 from my father to purchase a car and for other school expenses and stuff like that.
	And this was kind of well before I had my epiphany about What's been kind of going on and everything?
	And I'm kind of grappling right now because I'm finding there's no real relationship between me and him and me and my mother and me and most of my brothers.
	And I don't want to have that in my life, but I also feel financially responsible to him.
	And I was talking with Greg.
	I don't mean to be bringing out the conversation and stuff like that, but I was talking with Greg and we were discussing about really...
	If I owe that back to them or not, and I don't want to be coming from the standpoint where I'm just trying to get out of paying $10,000 to someone that I owe them, but at the same time, that's like an unbreakable connection if I feel that obligation to pay them back.
	I'm just curious what you kind of thought about that.
	Well, I mean, it's a very good question.
	I mean, obviously, there's no simple answer like, oh, 2 plus 2 is 4, and then you don't have to pay the money back, or you do.
	So there's no particular easy answer to this, and to some degree, there is a gray area involved in obligations incurred in abusive relationships, right?
	So there are some gray areas here.
	But I would say that you are not obligated to pay a penny of this money back, and I also would not spend any more time worrying about it than I absolutely had to, simply because you are not in a relationship that was chosen.
	You are not in a relationship where you are treated with respect.
	And, of course, you would pay probably dozens of times more than $10,000 to have had a happy childhood, right?
	There's almost no amount of money that I would have ever accepted to have had the childhood that I had and having had some knowledge of the brutality of your childhood.
	There is no... I mean, you're born into a prison, right?
	You're born into a prison, and the guard lends you some money.
	And then you break out of prison, do you have to go back and pay the guard back the money?
	Hell no! No, no, not even a little bit, right?
	I mean, to take as a ridiculous example that I think still holds a moral weight, if you...
	If you borrow some money from a concentration camp guard, if you're in Auschwitz in 1944, and he gives it to you, are you then obligated to find him and pay it back after the war?
	No. No, because he's in an immoral situation of abusing you.
	So it becomes a state of nature, and I don't think that any contracts that are entered into with people who are abusive are valid.
	I mean, that's just my particular opinion, right?
	I mean, I just don't...
	I think you're in a state of nature.
	I think that you treat people the best you can the first time you meet them, and after that you treat them as they treat you.
	And your parents have no problem exploiting you for their own personal emotional gain.
	So I'm not sure why you would have to have a higher standard with them.
	I sort of get quite...
	I mean, I really do appreciate the fact that you want to act honorably in this kind of area.
	But I think...
	I just sort of give you a perspective that maybe will help you or maybe it won't.
	Maybe it's just me being a jerk, but you can let me know what you think.
	All the bad people in the goddamn world do all the evil they can and never think twice about it.
	And all the good people in the world and all the honorable and decent people bite their nails over every damn little thing.
	I'm not mad at you.
	I'm just sort of pointing this out, right?
	Right, right. I understand.
	The bad people in the world are full of the most amazing, staggering confidence about everything that they're doing because they're so entitled and they're so narcissistic and they're so megalomaniacal.
	Everything I do is right, damn it.
	And then we bite our nails and I've done the same thing.
	Should I take a government loan to go to school?
	And what about driving on the roads?
	And I use the internet, which was developed by the guy.
	God, I mean, what is going to happen to the world if the only people who are certain are bad people, right?
	And what's wrong with just saying, I don't feel like paying the money back to this person?
	Right? What's wrong with trusting your instincts about that?
	Because you know that you're an honorable and decent guy, and if you incurred a debt with somebody who was a good person, you wouldn't even question it.
	You wouldn't sit there and say, ooh, how can I wheedle out of this one, right?
	What's wrong with trusting your moral instincts to the point where saying, you know, if I'm not eager to pay this back, I'm not going to do it.
	That's a really good point. I mean, my brother's been...
	I've been talking with him a lot only because I don't have a chance usually to be able to chime in and to be able to participate in the board as much.
	So I guess I've been getting mentored by him.
	But he's been making a good point about...
	And I've been struggling with a personal relationship, a romantic relationship right now on this very nature of the fact that I'm not trusting my own instincts when it comes to this stuff.
	But at the same time...
	I almost feel like I have a contractual obligation with him that was outside of our relationship as father and son.
	Am I getting confused there, you think?
	Yeah, you can't. Look, I have a contractual relationship with the banker who we borrowed the mortgage from or borrowed the money from to pay our home, right?
	Now, this guy didn't treat me like crap when I was a kid.
	So I can't say to him, screw you.
	My mom was bad to me and you're paying the price, buddy.
	But I don't have any desire to do that.
	So I trust my moral instincts.
	So I don't have any desire to screw the guy who lent me the money to buy the house.
	And when I say me, I mean Christina.
	But I don't have any desire to do that, right?
	So if I download a movie off the internet, which I really enjoy, I'll go to Blockbuster, and I'll rent it, and I'll put it in the return bin, right?
	Because that's just what I want to do, because it's a good movie.
	Maybe I couldn't get it, download it, and maybe they didn't have it in the video store when I wanted to see it.
	If I do that, I will go and pay them, because I'm happy to, right?
	And it's like, that's great. You know, I'm glad you guys made a great movie.
	I had a good couple of hours, and, you know, good for you, right?
	Yeah. Right. It's an honest exchange.
	But when I don't want to pay people, it's important.
	When I don't want to pay people, it's important.
	I'm not going to club myself with some abstract moral rule called obligation, because when it comes to your parents, there's a history there that can never be erased.
	If you enter into a voluntary contract with a banker and the banker suits you honorably and decently, fantastic, right?
	And when we bought our house, they tried to screw us by putting these really ugly bricks on that we didn't order.
	And we called a lawyer and we threatened the hell out of them and they finally backed off.
	And they kept building it even after we pointed it out, right?
	So we had to get really mean and aggressive, right?
	And, you know, it's too bad for you, right?
	I mean, it's like if you're going to treat me that way, I'm going to come back double force, right?
	So there's no contractual obligation with your parents that exists independently of your history with them.
	And the history outshadows and overshadows every single thing that you could conceivably imagine with regards to any monetary amount that you could ever come into it with.
	Excuse me. Excuse me.
	I'm still kind of in the middle of thinking on all this stuff.
	Stop thinking about it.
	Stop thinking about it. And I know this is a philosopher saying don't think.
	But seriously, dude, don't think.
	Don't think. You're a Gauthier.
	Thinking is your...
	Don't do it!
	Whatever you do, stop thinking.
	Stop thinking. It'll kill you.
	What you want to do is say, do I feel like paying this money back?
	Yeah. And if I don't feel like paying this money back, I'm not going to pay the money back.
	And if later I wake up feeling incredibly guilty for the right reasons and I realize my dad was actually a saint, and that bastard Greg's been lying to me all this time, I had a wonderful childhood, he's just, you know, he's insane.
	Then you'll wake up and you'll phone up your dad and you'll say, I'm so sorry, I was a total jerk.
	Because you have the ability to make a bad decision and to apologize, right?
	Yeah, yeah. So if you don't feel like paying the money back, don't pay the money back.
	And then if later you find out that you're being a total asshole about it, you say, oh my god, I was such a jerk.
	I thought I was doing the right thing and I thought, you know, my feelings have changed and I've thought it through.
	But don't just sit there and think and go back and forth.
	I mean, you guys can hamlet yourselves into, you know, atoms, right?
	Right. It was bringing up in mind the whole idea of retribution and stuff like that when they do lawsuits and such.
	I was always wondering, you can't put a price on this stuff, but how can you legally oblige someone in any sense to pay that?
	So that's a hypocrisy right there.
	But at the same time, how...
	You know, in this situation, let's say my dad, you know, maybe I'm just, you know, seeing how many, you know, angels I can fit on the head of a pen, but let's say my dad just hit me, you know, backhanded me once across the face and bloodied my lip.
	And I was the only thing he ever did.
	What I still, I guess this is kind of where I'm coming from.
	Where's the line in this?
	Well, you feel it, right? This is the disease that you guys have, right?
	And Lord knows, it's not like I'm immune to it, right?
	So I'm not some high power here saying, ah, you people with your overthinking.
	But seriously, your gut will tell you what's fair and what's not, right?
	We have this incredible processing engine right below our conscious mind that absorbs and tallies and creates patterns and does all these incredible things like give us dreams to point us the way in our life.
	We have this incredible processing engine I mean, when you're playing tennis, you don't sit there and think, well, how do I move my arm?
	I mean, just play, right? I mean, that's what the unconscious will do for you.
	Keep your liver running. It'll give you dreams to help you.
	It'll give you gut feelings, which are a just evaluation of your situation.
	But you guys are always trying to substitute your gut with your conscious mind, right?
	It's like you're trying to walk on your hands.
	Of course it's exhausting, and of course it feels debilitating, and of course it feels like you've got to lift a heavy weight to get out the door, right?
	Because what you're afraid of is your dad is going to call you up and say, where the hell is this money?
	And you're not going to have a good reason for him, right?
	Or my brothers or whatever.
	And you can just say, you know what?
	I don't feel like paying it.
	And they're going to say, well, that's really bad.
	It's like, okay. I still don't feel like paying it.
	And you know what? This whole goddamn family just runs on emotions anyway.
	You guys feel like being in the military, you go be in the military.
	You feel like believing in God, you believe in God.
	Dad felt angry at us, he just beat us.
	And now everybody's getting mad at me?
	Because I'm doing something that feels right for me?
	Even if it costs somebody else?
	Come on, the whole family is built on this goddamn thing.
	Don't single me out Yeah, you know what I mean?
	They can't validly come to you and say you have to act on principle.
	Your whole family is a bunch of amoral chimps.
	When they're not acting on principle themselves, it's pure hypocrisy.
	So they're only going to use the principle to hurt you and to bully you.
	They don't care about the $10,000.
	They don't care about the principle.
	They do care that they can stick the knife in you, called principle, right?
	Yeah, that's true. So, screw them.
	You're in a state of nature. You don't have to act on principle with people who don't act on principle.
	That's like saying, you know, the guy sends a note saying, show up at 10 o'clock for your own execution.
	You're like, okay. I better be on time, because it's rude to be late, right?
	Yeah, if I mind my P's and Q's to let me get up there without a house.
	Right, I hope I don't leave too much blood splatter.
	That would be terrible. I mean, God, how terrible it is to clean up.
	That's a really good point.
	Yeah. I'm only passionate about this, not because I want to yell at you or anything, but just because it is the passion and it is the trust in your own emotions that will get you through this, right?
	Because you'll go back and forth a million times and probably already have.
	You've probably got a nice groove in your brain, right?
	You could see in an MRI for this question, right?
	And this is only one of 10 billion questions that are going to come along, right?
	But the only reason that I'm sort of letting loose the passion a little bit here is that this passion to just be certain about your feelings.
	Know that you're a good person, that you've got theoretical stuff to check your feelings against, right?
	I mean, act randomly, but you're not going to act randomly.
	You're not going to just be some bigoted guy who goes around like, well, if I don't pay this debt off, the next thing I'm doing is shooting crack into my eyeball, right?
	I mean, that's not going to happen. Right.
	You get to trust yourself. If you don't feel, that's why I say to people, you know, like, oh, should I talk to my parents or not?
	How do you feel when the phone rings?
	I mean, do you want to pick up the phone or not?
	Well, I don't want to pick up the phone.
	Well, why are you asking me whether you want to talk to them or not?
	You're already telling yourself emotionally whether you want to talk to them or not.
	And if you have huge, significant questions about paying off the debt, then don't pay off the debt.
	And see what happens. It's okay to be empirical with your emotions.
	In fact, I'd say it's essential.
	Okay. I think, yeah, I've been noticing that, I don't want to get on tangents and stuff like that, but I've been noticing that with, I'm trying to date again, and it was just kind of interesting that the first conversation with Rod was about that, because I'm having an issue right now with that.
	I'm, you know, I keep falling into this kind of paranoid personality disorder kind of, I'm not trusting what I initially feel, and so that dissonance that's in my mind keeps fucking everything else up.
	I fail to act rationally with certain things.
	It's frustrating that you said this, now Greg said this, another friend of mine has said pretty much the same thing, and I keep falling into the same kind of thing.
	Well, you don't find that the intellectualism brings you any certainty, right?
	No, it doesn't. No, and it won't.
	And it won't. It won't. And there's nothing wrong with you because it doesn't.
	It's impossible for intellectualism to bring you certainty.
	Because there's always shades of grey.
	There's always more questions. I mean, it is the wrong thing.
	Certainty is an emotional state.
	It is not an intellectual state.
	Right. So more arguments won't clarify the matter.
	What you need is to understand how you feel and act on it and trust yourself.
	That's how you get certainty.
	Certainty is an empirical emotional experience.
	It is not something you can reason yourself into and out of.
	And we know that because all the assholes in the world believe in gods and governments and the virtue of families with no evidence whatsoever.
	In fact, with all the evidence against it on the planet, right?
	So people have certainty when they have no facts whatsoever.
	So we know that certainty has nothing to do with facts.
	I mean, rational certainty does, but I'm talking about the emotional experience of certainty, right?
	I mean, you're sort of patriotic, and they're certain about things, right?
	And I know this from you and Greg having no luck dislodging them from their madness, right?
	So they're certain completely and totally, and they're totally wrong, right?
	So obviously being wrong is no impediment to certainty.
	So if being wrong is no impediment to certainty, then being right is not going to grant you certainty, right?
	Yeah, that's what you mean.
	Sorry to interrupt.
	What is the paranoid state of mind that you get into with your girlfriend?
	Honestly, I'm kind of discovering that I'm continuously, whenever I become physically involved with someone, I get into a state where I'm constantly thinking that the next thing they're going to say is, well, I don't want to be with you anymore.
	And so I kind of let them own me, but they're not actually owning me.
	It's all in my head.
	It's kind of the cycle of I go through all the processes of what's going to happen when they break up with me and such.
	Like you feel it's imminent, right?
	Exactly, all the time. You're about to get fired, so you get sort of paralyzed, right?
	Exactly. I feel it's hard to talk to them anymore on any sort of basis.
	It's hard to not have that kind of thing sitting in the back of my head when I'm with them, and especially when I'm without them.
	It's like in the forefront that keeps coming in waves, or I'm getting like these...
	This really, really nervous tension kind of pains in my chest and I go nuts thinking about what's happening with them when I'm not seeing them, you know?
	Right, okay, so let's just try a little something here and you can let me know if it works for you or not.
	We'll call your current girlfriend Sue, if that's alright.
	I hope her name's not Sue. So, are you enjoying, if you could get rid of this feeling in your chest, the fear of a breakup, is your experience of dating your girlfriend very positive and pleasurable?
	I'd say, for the most part, yes.
	There's a few things that I don't like about her, but that's nothing really huge.
	Okay, so where is she at sort of philosophically or emotionally or like where is she at in terms of what you understand by this sort of the wisdom conversation that we're sort of trying to struggle our way through here?
	It's interesting, actually. The girl actually doesn't...
	She thinks a lot of the same things that I agree with.
	She doesn't have a really good relationship with her parents because of the things that they've done to her in the past and stuff like that.
	She's kind of okay with that.
	But she didn't come to it from an intellectual point of view.
	She came from an entirely emotional point of view.
	I just didn't like being around them anymore, so I wasn't around them anymore.
	She sometimes doesn't have much more depth than that, though.
	She doesn't think through the things she does.
	She kind of just goes entirely on impulse.
	Right. Every year one normal human being.
	Go ahead. Yeah, kind of, sort of, actually.
	She keeps getting frustrated.
	I ask her why she thinks something, and she doesn't know why, so she actually has to think out why she does that, and usually it winds up, well, because I feel this way, because I feel that way.
	So there's that that kind of worries me, and I think that's something that maybe she is thinking about it, or maybe she isn't thinking about it, but I don't really know yet.
	This is one of the things concerning me, too.
	I'm having these problems when we've only been dating for about two and a half months now.
	But then also...
	This really concerns me.
	She drinks quite a bit.
	At first, I didn't think it was a problem, but every time I've been with her, she's drank.
	She says it's usually just when she's with me.
	I'm like, well, why do you have to drink around me?
	But then she's also making quips about how her dad has said in the past, well, you're an alcoholic, blah, blah, blah.
	So I'm wondering if she has a problem that way, too.
	So can I just interrupt for a second?
	You're not wondering, right?
	This is part of trusting your instincts, right?
	So what does your gut say about her drinking?
	That there's a serious problem.
	She's not emotionally stable, and she's covering it up with alcohol.
	Okay, and what is it that indicates to you that she's not emotionally stable?
	Um... Some of the flippant way she acts towards things, she's really passionate about things.
	Like, for instance, she's a huge fan of U2, but she's like an obsessively big fan of U2. She's got U2 stuff all over her house, stuff like that.
	And normally that wouldn't be a thing, but like...
	It's as though she worships them.
	It reminds me of someone that is a zealous churchgoer.
	They know everything about it.
	She seems kind of disconnected from the states of mind she's in.
	Does that make sense at all? It does, but tell me a little bit more what you mean about disconnected.
	Well, the simple idea that she doesn't Sorry, a train going by right now.
	She doesn't seem like she's...
	She doesn't seem like she's completely aware of the emotional states that she's in.
	For instance, when we're together, she doesn't seem entirely aware of a lot of things, I should say.
	When we're together, we're talking about something, she'll kind of do the ADD, completely segue into a different conversation in the middle of me talking and stuff like that.
	She'll... I'll ask her a question about what happened when she was a kid.
	She dissembles talking about how my dad was just a jerk and kind of gets juvenile about it.
	She doesn't actually want to talk about it.
	She just kind of throws it off.
	Then when I ask her, do you have any reason why you drink so much?
	She makes a joke out of it.
	She It doesn't seem to have thought through a lot of the decisions she's made in her life.
	For instance, she wants to be a writer, but I asked her, well, what do you want to write about?
	She's like, I don't know, baseball maybe?
	You too! What's that? You too!
	Right. Exactly.
	And what does she do for a living?
	She's currently working as basically an assistant to salespeople in the textbook publishing industry.
	So like a secretary?
	Yeah, essentially, yeah. And does she have any particular goals beyond that?
	That they're achievable, not like, you know, I want to be a master of time, space, and dimension.
	Well, the only things I've really heard her say is that she wants to live in Ireland.
	She wants to be a writer.
	That's it. And has she ever written anything that she's shown you, or does she spend any time doing writing, or is that just a very abstract thing, like, someday I want to dance Swan Lake?
	It seems very abstract.
	She hasn't shown me anything. She seems very skittish about showing me anything.
	I have not seen her writing at all.
	She doesn't talk about, while I was over at the beach writing today or something like that, she doesn't talk about anything to do with writing.
	All she does is talk about this.
	She's got one example of what she wants to do, and that's all I've heard, is that she wants to tour all the U.S. baseball parks and write something about that, Sounds really neat, but she doesn't seem like she's actively working.
	It doesn't seem like a real passion in her life.
	It seems like a pipe dream or something like that.
	Oh yeah, for sure. So do you want her to raise your kids?
	I don't think so.
	What do you mean you don't think so?
	I'm not entirely sure.
	So you think that she might be a good mom for your kids?
	I get the feeling if I knew more about her, if I knew for certain that this was who she was and that this wasn't some sort of act and she wasn't just, you know, hurting or something like that, that it would be fine.
	But from the way she is right now, I don't want her to raise my kids now.
	Okay, so what are you doing with her?
	Trying to see if there's anything more to her, I suppose.
	Who?
	Okay, and what's the methodology that you're going to achieve that through?
	I actually had not thought that through.
	Right, so with all due respect, you don't know why you're with her.
	Yeah. I mean, I'm not trying to be a nasty guy, I'm just trying to sort out...
	No, no, no, no, that's very true.
	Well, I don't know why I'm with her in the sense of...
	I don't have a reason outside of I know that being without someone feels like shit.
	Yeah, but that's exploitive, right?
	I mean, you can't date someone because you feel bad if you don't, right?
	That's just you. Right, yeah.
	You're right. I mean, again, I'm not trying to be, I'm being blunt, but I'm not trying to be mean, right?
	I mean, but you can't be with someone because, well, it feels bad.
	I mean, and of course, if you were honest with her and you said, well, I don't really like you, but I sure feel like panicky when I'm not with someone, so want to get laid?
	Like, I mean, that's not, I mean, I'm cheapening it, right?
	But I mean, she wouldn't like that.
	That's essentially it. Yeah.
	Right, but she wouldn't like that and you haven't been honest with her about that, that you don't really like and respect her, but you're managing your anxiety by being with someone.
	Right. Right. So I can tell you why you always feel that you're going to be left, if you like.
	Because... I feel that I want to leave her.
	Yeah, because you don't want to be with her.
	And you're projecting that onto her.
	Because otherwise, you have to look at why you got into this relationship with this woman who you've not said one thing about her that any rational human being could respect.
	It doesn't mean that she's a bad woman or anything.
	She's not a serial killer or anything, right?
	But in terms of how you're going to spend your precious days in this world, right, this is not selling yourself out to the highest bidder, so to speak, right?
	This is basically slumming it.
	This is getting by. Right?
	So what happens is you're with a relationship that you know is going to end and that you also know that you're in an exploitive way.
	And I'm not saying that it makes you a bad guy because she's exploiting you too, right?
	I mean, it's mutual, I guess, right?
	And not in the good way. So I'm not saying that either of you are bad people, but I am saying that you haven't hit that thing that we talked about earlier with Rod, where you say, holy shit, I'm going to die, right?
	I'm going to die. And so what is it that I'm going to do with my precious days between here and the end, right?
	And given that you're going to die, like the last two and a half months have been a complete waste of time, and also have lowered your standards and have been negative for you in terms of dating.
	Right. And it's getting you into this rut, right?
	So you say she avoids her feelings through alcohol, but you avoid your feelings by dating people who avoid their feelings through alcohol, right?
	So you both are displaying addictive personalities, which is why you're in this relationship, right?
	And again, none of this is like bad or anything.
	It's just my observations, and if they work, they work, and if they don't work and I'm full of shit, just let me know or whatever, right?
	But it's because you want to leave her, but you don't want to face the anxiety of either why you want to leave her or why you're in the relationship to begin with, right?
	So you just project it onto her and you worry about her leaving you because that gets you off the hook of having to make choices.
	Right. I think I may have come to this conclusion sometime last week, but again, I need to trust myself more.
	Well, you need to be more honest with yourself, and again, this is not easy, and I've been where you are more times than I would count, so again, I'm not trying to put anything over you that's superior, but you said that you liked her, that she was a good person, you had a good time, right?
	That was your initial statement to me, and then you spent ten minutes describing a person who you could not conceivably have a good time with.
	Do you see what I mean? There's a real disconnect between the story that you have about this relationship and your actual experience of this relationship.
	Yeah. It, yeah.
	I guess I'm kind of getting, I feel maybe I'm getting desperate in a way because I've been two years out of a relationship prior to this.
	Well, it's not entirely true.
	I had a relationship about seven months ago that was kind of a, that took a turn for the worse too.
	So it was only like a month and a half long.
	And it felt around the same kind of thing, like what's going on now.
	But the thing is, I've been feeling this way about relationships, about people I've dated.
	I've had this kind of anxiety and stuff like that since I was back in high school.
	And I'm concerned because I don't know that I know what it feels like to be in a good relationship and how to find that in myself to go out and search, to be in the right state of mind before I go out there.
	I don't know that I know what that is.
	Well, I appreciate that honesty, and that's not an easy thing to say, and I mean, for what it's worth, that's huge props to you.
	That's something I have real respect for, because I know it's hard to talk about these vulnerabilities and these uncertainties that we have, for sure.
	There's no easy answer, right?
	The only thing that you've got to do, John, is you've got to cross the desert, right?
	And crossing the desert is letting go of the familiar, because the familiar isn't working, right?
	Yeah. So what you feel comfortable in terms of a relationship, the low standards and so on, this is not going to work for you.
	Clearly, empirically, logically, emotionally, psychologically, spiritually, at every single level, this is not going to work for you.
	And the reason that you have a lot of anxiety about it is that you know this.
	I'm not telling you anything that you don't know.
	That if you continue to date like this, you will date like this until you hit the old age home.
	And then you will look back on your life and you say, damn it, I never had love.
	I never had love.
	I never had a deep, passionate relationship with another human being who I could really respect and treasure and love, and who could really respect, treasure, and love me.
	And you'll feel robbed, right?
	So if you think of yourself being wheeled into the old age home, you know, dribbling on yourself, your legs skinny like sticks and so on, right?
	You don't want to look back on your life and say, damn it, I spent my whole life chasing something and never got it and wasted all my time on people who weren't worthy of me.
	You want to work your way back a little bit here, right?
	And you don't want to be 10 years or 20 years from now in the same situation.
	You don't want to be in 20 years from now or 10 years from now in a situation where you've had two kids with some woman that you don't love and don't respect and then can't have another family because you're spending your whole time playing alimony and child support and so on, right?
	So what you have to do, I mean, the only way to stimulate growth within yourself is to break your habits.
	That's the only way to create growth, is simply to stop doing the stuff that's not working.
	I mean, and I wish I could give you something more sophisticated than that, but it is sort of that simple to begin with.
	The only way to change is to stop doing what's not working.
	You won't ever be able to jump from this boat to the next boat.
	You've just got to jump in the water.
	And it feels like there's shocks that there's no boats going to come by again, and why would I do that?
	But you do that because then you swim.
	Because the boat's going out to sea.
	The habits that you have in dating are just sending you out to no man's land.
	So that boat, like staying on the boat that's going the wrong way, it's not going to help you.
	You've got to jump off the boat and you say, well, geez, I can't even see where the shore is.
	Well, that's okay. There's stuff out there that can help you orient yourself, but you've just got to stop doing this stuff and you've got to stop managing your anxiety by manipulating other people.
	Yeah. You've got to face, I mean, I keep repeating the same thing and I apologize.
	You've got to face your anxiety.
	Your anxiety is there to help you.
	Like a toothache is there to help you.
	The negative feelings, the anxieties that you have when you're not in a relationship, that's your true self calling out for you to change your behavior, and you keep smothering it, right?
	Like the guy taking heroin to fix a toothache, where the rot just gets worse, right?
	Yeah. That makes a lot of sense, actually.
	So, I mean, you can't control, you can't sort of snap your fingers until technology improves and create the perfect woman for yourself, right?
	Yeah. So you have no control over that, but you do have control over whether you date women that you don't love and respect.
	Right. Right, so you can't make the perfect relationship, but you can stop making bad relationships.
	And that's necessary, but not sufficient.
	But you're sure, for sure, will never get a good relationship if you're lost in this underworld, right, of lost people.
	Right. That really applies to every relationship, almost every decision you make in your life, too, right?
	I think so.
	Tell me what you mean.
	In the sense of, I mean, the cliché adage that you're repeating the same thing over and over in society and expecting the different the cliché adage that you're repeating the same thing over and over in And to, I don't know, I
	I guess I'm trying to look for a deeper connection to the things I'm feeling about romance, stuff like that, about girls, to something more fundamental in what I'm thinking, what I'm doing, because I guess I just don't know how to go about changing small things first.
	I'm brambling, I'm sorry.
	No, no, that's fine. Look, I understand that.
	It looks like an overwhelming task, but you just have to break it down, right?
	I mean, if you say, I want you to build this mall on your own, it's like, what are you, crazy?
	I can't do it. But if you had 40 years and, you know, whatever, right, you could do it, right?
	So I'm not saying it's going to be that long, but there's things that you can do, right, because you, as a Gauthier, are going to attempt to extrapolate every conceivable plan from here all the way through to the birth of your children and then eventually ending up at the At the old age home and have it all mapped out.
	And that's madness, right? Because you can't control that much stuff in life.
	So what you have to do is you have to say, okay, well, I don't know how I'm going to win the marathon, but what I can do is get off the couch and go for a walk, right?
	Like if you've got to lose weight, you say, I don't know how exactly I'm going to lose 100 pounds and when, but I know that I cannot eat this donut, right?
	Start living in the now instead of the 10 years from now or something like that.
	I don't know exactly how I'm going to find the perfect woman, but if I stop wasting my time and my life and developing more and more bad habits with women who I don't love, if I stop dating people that I don't love or can't love or can't respect, that I can control.
	Don't look at the big picture.
	This is the one foot in front of each other at a time, right?
	Yeah. Just stop dating the women who you don't respect.
	That you can do, right?
	Somebody paid you a million bucks to pick up with this girl tomorrow.
	I'm not saying it's up to you, right?
	But you could do that.
	You can do that, right? And then the next time that you're attracted to a woman who wants to go out with you, you sit there and you say, okay, let me run through the list here, right?
	And Dr. Phil's got some good...
	What's the name of that Dr.
	Phil book? He's got some...
	Dr. Phil has some good books about relationship matters.
	Look, there's one about how to evaluate women.
	Now, I mean, he's a lunatic in his own way, but he's got some good stuff to say about this, but...
	You just sit there and you say, okay, well, I'm going to meet this woman, and am I feeling stimulated by her intellect?
	Is she warm?
	Is she passionate? Is she exciting?
	Is she going places?
	Does she have her life under control?
	Is there any significant issues that are showing up right away?
	Because when you think back to dating Sue, I bet you the first date that you were on, nothing was that much of a surprise after that, right?
	Yeah. No, it really wasn't.
	The signs were all there in the first ten seconds, in the first ten minutes.
	Right? And so you just have to say, I want to stop dating the bad women.
	If I'm attracted to a woman who wants to go out with me, I'm just going to run her through the test, right?
	Is this someone I want to raise my kids, or do they have that potential?
	Do they seem to have their life in order?
	Are they positive? Are they self-aware?
	Are they knowledgeable? Right?
	That's just all you've got to do, right?
	And doing that will actually open the gateway to the perfect woman, right?
	I mean, it's a weird thing that I don't even pretend to know how it works, but when you start evaluating people, the people in your life start improving.
	It just happens, and I'm not even going to guess as to what bizarre collective unconscious crap is going on, but when you start demanding better, you start getting better.
	Yeah. It's about making sure that I'm making decisions for myself and not for For an ideal outside of myself, in a sense.
	No, I got to be annoying and stop you there, because right now, by dating these women, you are making decisions for yourself, which is, I don't want to be alone.
	I feel anxiety when I'm not dating someone, so I'm going to go out with someone, like I'm going to live forever and have an eternity to fix what I need to fix, right?
	So you are making decisions for yourself.
	they're just short-term decisions.
	The avoidance of anxiety in the here and now rather than the long-term productive decisions of where is it that I want to be in 10 years and who do I want to be sharing my life with and how am I going to get there?
	Okay.
	I'd I don't mean to run off.
	I actually have to leave for a rehearsal at 4.45.
	Hey, as long as it's not a date, that's okay.
	No, just kidding. Thanks.
	I think you've done fantastically.
	I know that that's a tough conversation to have.
	I hope that it's been helpful to you, and I just wanted to say that your honesty is fantastic and good for you.
	Thank you. I appreciate it.
	All right. Have a great rehearsal.
	Thanks. Alright, so anybody else whose life I can shred from a high?
	Anybody? Yes.
	Ah, look at that! Another masochist.
	How can I help you? I have two questions.
	One of them is pretty simple first.
	I'm on the radio a lot, and something I've noticed that I have a problem with is verbal tics.
	So I just wanted to know how you got rid of your verbal tics.
	Did I get rid of them? Well, you didn't get rid of them, right?
	You say right a lot, just like I just said right.
	And you say like sometimes, but I think it's less pronounced than it used to be.
	Yeah, I don't think that I did anything conscious about it.
	I think that when I found that I have a particular repetitive habit, I assume that it's trying to tell me something.
	So what I assume is happening when I'm saying right a lot is that I'm uncertain of what I'm saying.
	And then what I do before I do a podcast is say, okay, well, am I certain about this?
	And if I'm not certain about it, what I do is I say up front, I'm not certain about this, and then I find that the verbal tics go down.
	So it's just a way, I find that the verbal tics for me were a form of, if I was pushing too far ahead of my certainty or what my sort of gut level integrity was telling me was valid, then I would have more verbal tics.
	So I tried to be more honest about what I was sure about and what I was not sure about, and that helped me with the verbal tics, if that's of any use.
	So it's kind of like a hedge.
	In other words, the ticks sort of function as logical structuring for what you're saying, except it's not really overtly logical.
	Well, the communication about my uncertainty is either going to happen at a conscious level or an unconscious level, but it's going to happen either way.
	So if I up front say, and you've probably heard me say this in podcasts, where I say, I don't have any proof for this, it's just a theory.
	I'm playing here with ideas.
	This is the stuff that makes sense to me, but I don't have a proof for it.
	If I say that up front, then I find I have fewer verbal tics than if I try to not say that and charge ahead.
	So, it's a form of unconscious communication that is trying to make you honest despite yourself, if that makes any sense.
	Alright, good idea. I'll think about that some more.
	Anyway, my second question, actually in the chat, there was sort of a conversation going on about this, how Matt Kay was saying that he feels like he's really far behind everybody on freedom in regards to philosophy.
	Well, I mean, that's not my exact issue, but...
	I've been kind of like in a funk lately in the past couple of weeks.
	I've been feeling weird. I've noticed this through all my life, too, that I go in these cycles where I become really, really enthusiastic and really, really proud of myself and feeling really, really good.
	And then suddenly one day, just a really small event happens and I just absolutely hit the dumps and I start wondering.
	In other words, I start to question the validity of my pride and where it comes from.
	So I look at it this way.
	I lack certain information for evaluating myself because the only way to really evaluate myself is by looking at the rest of the human condition and seeing where I stand relative to that.
	And that, in a sense, requires other people.
	But then at the same time, I look at other people and I see that they aren't really so great.
	So, in a way, I kind of take solace in myself.
	But this kind of leaves me with a middle ground where I almost don't really know whether my pride is validated or not or whether I'm too proud of a certain achievement I've had or not.
	Oh, you people with your feelings.
	No, I totally understand it, right?
	Oh, you people with your feelings and your reasonings.
	Oh, my God! Oh, my God!
	It's like we're all raised as brains in a tank with our emotions in some attic somewhere.
	The question of pride is, do you feel proud?
	If you feel proud, then you feel proud, right?
	I mean, if you sit there and say, well, I have no way of validating my feelings except with reference to other people, my question is, why do you need to validate your feelings?
	Like, you have introspection.
	You have your actual feelings right there, right?
	So what is it that when you say you feel something but you want to evaluate it relative to somebody else, why?
	Well, I mean, in terms of my happiness with myself, I mean, overall, it's...
	I don't let other people affect me, but I'm just thinking maybe in terms of Let's say the scientific value of the ideas I come up with, right?
	Whenever I write a paper and I come up with a sort of new idea to me, I write it very enthusiastically and I'm really, really happy about it and I'm really excited.
	Whenever I'm making an argument in class, it all feels just very logically connected and it's all very, you know, avant-garde and it's amazing.
	But then, in a way, at the end of it, I turn back and I look at it and I'm like, well, what's...
	Are these ideas really all that great, or am I just kind of doing this to justify I mean, I'm getting lost here, but my point is...
	I think I understand, and I'm sorry to interrupt you, but I think that what happens is you get very enthusiastic, and then you kind of look back with the cold eye of hindsight, and you say, it's not that big a deal.
	Like, I was so thrilled about it, and I'm looking back at it now, it's like, I'm sure somebody's thought of that before, or it's not that important, or does that sort of make sense?
	Yeah, exactly. Right, so it's what Nietzsche was talking, Nietzsche said once, he said, never leave your actions in the lurch, right?
	So don't act and then look back and say, eh, right?
	And I don't think that that's particularly philosophical, but it's an interesting place to start from.
	I would suggest, let me ask you a question, how was your enthusiasm treated by your family when you were a child?
	I always felt that when I talked to my dad, I mean, my dad is overall a pretty respectable kind of figure, but I think whenever I would talk to him enthusiastically, he was kind of like the nodding type and the quasi-ignore-me type.
	Right, so your enthusiasm would sort of drain out of you slowly, like water from a bucket with a hole in the bottom, right?
	I'm trying to make sense of your metaphor here.
	But I'm saying I'd be really excited and talking and talking, and then I'd just kind of give up.
	Yeah, so you would be enthusiastic, and you would attempt to connect with your dad in a way that, I'm so enthusiastic about this, your dad would kind of nod vacantly or be distracted or whatever, and then it would be very hard to sustain that, right?
	I mean, when I handed the book over, the UPB, the first draft for Christina to write, To read.
	I mean, her enthusiasm was what propelled me to go on to the second draft.
	I mean, if she read it and said, oh, I don't know.
	I don't know what the hell it's all about.
	And, you know, does it really matter?
	And, you know, why don't you just go back to yelling at people in podcasts and stuff like that?
	If she had done that, then it would have been very hard.
	I mean, that's part of what happens when you're in an intimate relationship, whether it's accidental like family or chosen like a romantic relationship or a friendship.
	You are at the mercy of those around you.
	I mean, that's part of what you surrender.
	I mean, if there was no risk to intimacy, we'd never have any problems with it, right?
	So what happens is when you get close to someone, or whether, you know, if you just grow up with them, Your enthusiasms, your feelings become subject to their responses, and you can't change that in yourself.
	It would take a psychotic person to continue to be enthusiastic when everybody else was yawning.
	Like, you'd have to be insane to do that, right?
	I mean, it's like a comedian who doesn't notice that the audience isn't laughing needs to be in a mental institution, right?
	So, when you're in relationships with people, your feelings become dependent upon their reactions.
	That's why it's so important to choose the right people in your life, with these people who don't react positively to what you're positive about.
	And if you ever want to see this in action, when somebody's talking to you passionately, just stare at their chin.
	And imagine that something is moving across their chin.
	I guarantee you, within like five seconds, they will lose their train of thought.
	Right? So this is just something that we become dependent upon when we're in relationships.
	So it sounds to me like you're just used to this pattern.
	This pattern is worn into your mind.
	Like you get enthusiastic, and then your enthusiasm fades.
	Because you're not getting, with your dad, you did not get a positive response that helped you to validate your enthusiasm.
	Does that make any sense?
	Okay. I guess on a very basic abstract level, I mean, in general, encompassing all the aspects, I guess it does apply.
	I'm not sure what that means.
	What do you mean by at a very abstract level?
	I don't mean at an abstract level as in relating to everybody.
	What I'm saying is that what you just stated, that relationship of enthusiasm and then the progression to the loss of enthusiasm, is something as a sort of loose heuristic that can be applied to every case where that's happened.
	Right, right. So you would get enthusiastic and then the pattern would be that you would then find your enthusiasm diminished because of a lack of response on the part of those around you.
	And of course, that makes sense, right?
	I mean, there are these psychological experiments where people are, you know, the number 66 flashes on a screen and then...
	You know, ten people are in the room, and nine people say, oh, it was the number 99, and they're actually, you know, in the experiment, and the other person says, after a while, I guess it was 99, right?
	And this is considered to be some sort of groupthink, but having other people help validate reality for us is essential, right?
	I mean, none of us came up with English or philosophy or psychology on our own, right?
	We're all relying on other people and their feedback.
	And so it makes sense that if we have people around us who are not enthusiastic, we will be unable to maintain our enthusiasms, right?
	But that's why it's so important to go through the pain of rejection that occurred for you, right?
	Because when you were trying to be enthusiastic with your dad, and he was not being enthusiastic back, that was painful, right?
	Correct, yes. Right, so if you feel that pain, then you will be able to break the pattern, right?
	But at the moment, what happens is you're recreating that pattern so that you can avoid feeling the pain of the rejection, or the indifference, which is even worse than rejection.
	I think that encompasses one element of it, right, which is why I get really, really disappointed when, you know, like one time I was engaged in this discussion in a class, and, you know, the time...
	For the end of the class had just occurred.
	I mean, this all seems to happen to me, right?
	I'm always like the last man picked, last man talking, and everybody's like, well, class is over, goodbye.
	So whenever that happens, it kind of makes me feel down for a little while because, I mean, I'm a little disappointed that nobody really cares.
	So that interpersonal element encompasses part of it, but, I mean, what about the relative standing of my ideas?
	Or, like, I guess what I'm saying is I want to know that I have capabilities that surpass everyone else's because of my merit, because of my comparative merit.
	I want to know that because I tried hard, I was more virtuous, and I was good, that I'm being rewarded.
	And I don't want to ever think that a lot of that stuff was just blind chance.
	So I guess what I'm trying to say is what can I do to at least figure out To separate, to figure out what it was that I gained from my own merit and what it was that I didn't gain from my own merit.
	Can you give me an example?
	Okay, like my grades or what I'm getting out of my education.
	Let's say, going back to the paper example, when I write a paper in my class, I feel like I do put a lot of effort into it.
	Even though it's the night before or whatever, I do work non-stop for 10 to 12 to 14 hours on even just an 8-page paper because it's really important to me.
	But when the end product comes out, how am I even sure that I may have labored hard on it, but how am I even sure that it's valuable?
	And what criteria would you accept as valid?
	A criteria I'd accept as valid is for somebody to read it and to be like, hmm, that's very convincing, or that's a good idea, or for it to be utilizing certain advanced logical methodology or something that's respected.
	And I guess this is angst that comes about from the fact that I'm still relatively young and I'm still in my undergraduate portion of college and I can't get anything published and I'm just really a nobody.
	I still feel that there's a possibility that when I put out an idea, even in my undergraduate education, that I'm putting out some stuff that's good and that's valid.
	When I make a comment about unemployment or something, some economic analysis of an unemployment problem, I'm proud of it when it comes out because I'm like, hey, that's very sound, that's very nice, but I need to know that It's actually valuable.
	That it's actually something. And it's not just me putting some words together that look very pretty, which I'm fairly good at.
	So I want to know that it has some sort of conceptual validity.
	Right. I can tell you how to do that, but you won't like it.
	Okay. I mean, you really won't.
	Alright. And it's related to the earlier thing that we were talking about with your dad.
	I don't claim a huge amount of authority in a whole bunch of things, but I will certainly say as far as putting out ideas that I'm satisfied with, I'll count myself not ignorant of some useful information about that.
	The podcasts that, for me, are the most satisfying are the ones where I feel I could not have been more passionate about.
	I mean, that's what I'm always trying to achieve, right?
	Because empirically we know it's passion that convinces people.
	It's not rational arguments, right?
	If it's rational arguments, then we'd already be living in a free society, right?
	Like three days after Adam Smith published The Wealth of Nations, right?
	So I would say the only way that you are going to be able to achieve certainty about the value of what it is that you're doing is to put more of your heart and soul into what it is that you're doing.
	Because if you've put everything that you can possibly put into what it is that you're doing, and you have cared with your heart until your heart glows like a little sun, and you have poured everything that you can into communicating as passionately and precisely and accurately and rationally as possible, then there's no possibility that you could do better.
	Right. Whereas if you've kept something back or you've second-guessed yourself or whatever, right?
	If you've been stingy with your abilities, then you will always feel uncertain.
	But if you just throw yourself into it, like the Wile E. Coyote into a canyon, right?
	I mean, if you just give it everything that you've got, that's how you know the value of what it is that you're doing.
	Right. Oh, and if you didn't do that, right, I mean, or rather, once you've done that, it doesn't really matter if it's not valuable or not, because...
	Couldn't have done any better. What else is there?
	Yeah, you couldn't have done any better.
	Like, it's like, you know, if I sing as best as I can, and everybody hates my singing, I get closure, right?
	Because it's like, well, I couldn't sing any better, and that's as good as I can do, right?
	So... When you put yourself into something heart and soul, and this is for everything in life, this is your relationships, this is your job, when you put yourself into it heart and soul, and this is what I mean when I say talk honestly with your parents and this and that, you throw yourself into anything heart and soul.
	Don't hold anything back.
	The Grim Reaper is going to kill you anyway, so there's no point holding anything back.
	You can't take it with you. You can't store up all your enthusiasm and energy and generosity and mad courage.
	You can't take it with you, so you might as well spend it now.
	And once you put everything you've got into what it is that you're doing, you get certainty.
	Because you couldn't conceivably have done any better.
	And so that, I would really strongly suggest, is the way to go, but it's going to make you feel really horrible, because it's going to put you right up against your dad's indifference, right, which is painful.
	There's a reason that we hoard, there's a reason that we're stingy, right, and it's because we were rejected.
	And I know from my own experience, it's very hard, and Christina taught me an enormous amount about this, she's got a heart as big as the freaking solar system, right?
	To really give everything you've got is really painful because it brings up the pain of the indifference and the rejection that we face when we're younger.
	So what would you think is the explanation for the depression?
	Is it that I know that I'm not giving it my all or is it just angst from indifference?
	No, it's your dad's depression.
	Why would you not respond with mad enthusiasm to a child's mad enthusiasm?
	Because you're depressed, right?
	No, it makes sense.
	It seems right.
	I'm just wondering what else would he possibly have...
	You have to ask him.
	This is the real-time relationship.
	You have to sit down with your dad and you have to say, Dad, I've had this thought or this thing that's been going around in my brain which I keep thinking about, which I remember from when I was a kid and even now.
	I find I get really enthusiastic about something, and I can feel you.
	You're like a city going off the grid.
	I can feel you kind of shutting down bit by bit.
	And help me understand what goes on for you when I get really enthusiastic.
	You have to have that conversation with your dad.
	You have to find out what was going on for him.
	Okay. Well, that makes a lot of sense.
	So I guess that's a large portion of the angst on my part.
	But on the other hand, I guess this maybe is a good way to summarize.
	I got this feeling the other day that sometimes in a class, I'll make it a point to raise my hand and make a comment because I really feel that it's extremely, extremely important.
	How do I just get rid of that second guessing, that hindsight, or rather that sentiment, I imagine me saying, who's this guy?
	Who is this guy?
	Why does he think that it's so important?
	Or rather, why is he elevating himself to such a level of importance?
	Maybe this is just restating the problem that I just stated.
	No, it's different. My advice with that would be to say it's not about you, right?
	It's about the truth. People don't evaluate you.
	When you really get into communicating, I think, as I sort of try and communicate it at a very effective level, it's not about you.
	It's about the truth. So I'm going to do this video this week.
	I'm finally getting around to picking up on some of the stuff that's been tossed by the wayside.
	But it's around public speaking that people should not be evaluating you.
	That should not be your concern.
	That's like if you're a doctor and you've got to tell someone they've got cancer, you don't want to sit there and think, well, do they think that I'm telling them in a good way?
	Your focus has got to be on communicating the information to the other person.
	To hell with you, right?
	It's about the truth. It's about getting the information across to the other person.
	Right, but so the next step is, let's say you had somebody who wasn't very exceptionally knowledgeable about a subject, but they were making a stand and they're saying it's about the truth, then somebody would ask, well, who's this guy?
	And that's really the problem, right?
	I mean, I'm clearly, I really understand that usually when I make a comment in class, it's motivated out of a concern for just, you know, hatred for falsehood and, you know, yay for truth.
	Yes, but you understand that when you give it your all, nobody's going to say, who's this guy?
	Because they're going to be fascinated by the spectacle of somebody turning themselves inside out and giving it their all.
	They're going to say, this is a guy who's so passionate about what he's doing, he's giving it his all.
	That's why he's the guy. When you hold back, people say, well, there's a contradiction here.
	He claims to be very passionate about the truth, but he seems to be second-guessing himself, but he doesn't seem to be very certain.
	Whatever, right? When you give it your all, then people don't ask, who's this guy?
	Because it makes sense to them.
	I guess that ties into something you said in one of even the very first podcasts about, you know, you can't be stuck in this position of, oh, I'm a libertarian and I believe in all these great things and just hang your head in shame when you get socially ostracized.
	Well, because the theory perfectly predicts it, right?
	I mean, you're not a libertarian if you're shocked when people reject you for libertarianism because the theory perfectly predicts it, right?
	Right. So maybe this will be the last cycle I have ever had, and maybe it'll just be a constant up of enthusiasm from this point on.
	Not a chance. No, no, come on.
	Not a chance. I mean, let's not build up your next crash with false expectations, right?
	I mean, this is going to be something you'll have to battle for a while.
	This is grooves worn deep in your brain.
	This is not something you say, I'll have a chat with my dad and it'll never happen again.
	Oh my god, it's happening again.
	That bastard Steffi lied to me.
	So no, let's have realistic expectations.
	It takes years to turn this stuff around.
	Habits that take years to form can't be undone quickly.
	So be patient and keep working at it.
	And go through the discomfort of looking like a fool.
	And that's why I keep making fun of myself, because I don't want anyone to feel that I'm not comfortable looking like a complete and total idiot.
	Because that's essential, right?
	Because the moment that people think that I'm trying to be vain or trying to be superior or anything, then the conversation will stop.
	Right? So just be fully comfortable with everybody thinking you're a complete and total idiot.
	And I say this all the time when I'm talking to people.
	I'm just some crazy guy in Canada.
	You know, I don't know what I'm talking about.
	This is just my thoughts or whatever, right?
	Because it's not about me.
	I want to get myself out of the way so they can just get the ideas clearer.
	I want to be a pane of glass, right, that the ideas just come through.
	That's good. And I hope Matt K is listening because I think this is really relevant to him.
	Just a question for you.
	How much do you think your success right now in formulating ideas predicates on the fact that you've had so much experience in life?
	I mean, do you think that you would have been able to do this at a much younger age?
	I think that if I had come before me, yes.
	That's the whole point. I climb another three feet up the mountain, and then you guys can climb three feet higher than me.
	It certainly is absolutely possible to do it earlier in life.
	I don't think that it would have been possible for me to do it earlier in life, but it certainly is possible that it can be done by you guys.
	The next generation can do it way, way earlier.
	You can do it 15 years before I got around to doing it.
	That's the point. So how much do you think patience went into your...
	It went into your, I guess, formulation of ideas.
	Because Matt is talking about how he feels so behind and stuff, and I'm just trying to explain to him that impatience is what has destroyed development in the past.
	Because in the Industrial Revolution, the world exploded.
	It was great. Everything was doing wonderful, but somebody wasn't satisfied.
	And they tried to expedite the success by involving the state, which involved a short circuit and destruction.
	So to what degree do you think that patience plays a role in succeeding?
	I think that's a big question, and I'm not going to take it on right now.
	So I'll have to put some more thought into it.
	I couldn't really come up with anything except off the top of my head, so I don't want to disrespect that very good question with any kind of flippant answer.
	So let me mull it over, and if I haven't talked about it in the next week or so, if you could shoot me a reminder, I'd appreciate that.
	Sure, sure. Well, thank you.
	I'm going to go mull around in my room now and maybe cut myself.
	Call your dad. Call your dad.
	Call your father.
	You really think so? Yeah, absolutely.
	Of course. I mean, what did you think I was talking about when I said call your dad?
	Yeah, no. Honestly, pick up the phone and call your dad and tell him how you feel about what your experience was of being enthusiastic with him.
	I mean, if you want to solve the problem.
	If you don't want to solve the problem and you want to live with the rollercoaster, you don't have to.
	But there's no shortcut to this.
	You have to talk to your dad. Right.
	Sure thing. I'll go get my phone and then mull around in my room.
	Okay, as long as you get Smolin around, that's fine, but call your dad.
	Alright, thanks. Was there anybody else who had any last minute, minute, minute, minute kind of things for us?
	Anybody? Bueller?
	Bueller? Anybody? No?
	Okay, well thank you so much everybody for joining in on this rapidly darkening Northern October Canadian Ball Day.
	Sorry? First one, yeah.
	So I will talk to everybody next week.
	And thanks again to those couple of people who've been kind enough to proofread some of the UPV book.
	It's been enormously helpful to get your feedback.
	And thank you, but I'm not going to change it to wingdings, Greg.
	So I appreciate that.
	And I will have a talk to you guys next week.
	And talk to you soon.

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