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Nov. 29, 2007 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:09:43
926 The Obligations of Doctors
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Time Text
Good morning, everybody.
It's Jeff. I hope you're doing well.
It is the 28th of November 2007.
A little, little bit before noon.
And I suppose the time has come to reveal the next...
Carred up my sleeve part of this conversation that perhaps has remained obscure to you hitherto, except to your true self, which knows exactly what is going on and where we're going, and which, of course, can be quite disconcerting.
The question of no unchosen obligations is really quite complex in one certain area.
It's not complex in terms of coercion or a contract and so on, right?
But The question of no unchosen obligations with regards to children.
Obviously, you choose the action, you choose the consequences.
So, if you choose to have children, you choose to care for them or give them up to somebody who will.
That's a fairly lengthy obligation.
There's no contract. You can write a contract with your children.
Your little hands can't hold the pencils in the womb, or I guess it's a zygote.
So there are non-contractual obligations that arise out of the pursuit of certain activities, such as having children.
There are other positive obligations that are assumed by the pursuit of certain activities, But which cannot be enforced, right?
So if you have children, you have to...
You kind of have to feed them.
You kind of have to take care of them.
You have to clothe them and so on.
And that's something which, if you don't, and you're starving them or whatever, then force can be used against you to rescue the children.
So in that sense, there is a...
It's a chosen positive obligation, but you don't choose...
The positive obligation directly of caring for your children.
That is implied or implicit in the very act of having children and keeping them.
So, when you choose certain actions, you choose certain consequences which are non-contractual but simply implicit in the original choice.
Secondly, there are positive obligations that you choose that would be more aesthetically preferable or APAs from the UPV book.
You choose certain obligations or certain obligations accrue as a result of particular choices that you make which are not enforceable through coercion.
So, for instance, if you are a doctor and somebody falls down sick in a theater and somebody says, is there a doctor in the house?
And you don't put your hand up, Does that mean that you can be shot?
No, of course not. Does that imply a fairly gross violation of professional ethics?
I've got to think yes.
I mean, fundamentally, I've got to think yes.
Similarly, if you are a nutritionist and you see somebody who is 350 pounds at dinner and that person says to you, What should I do to lose weight?
Or what should I change? You know, give me five minutes on what I should change at a dinner party.
If you say, well, I don't know, or I'm not going to tell you, or whatever, is that a gross violation that they shoot you to get the knowledge?
No, of course not. But would you have a great deal of respect for the doctor who didn't put up his hand in the theater when somebody fell down sick?
Would you have great respect if your girlfriend was a great nutritionist and somebody was desperate to get help in terms of losing weight?
Would you respect your nutritionist girlfriend if she said nothing or refused to answer his questions or even let him lecture?
Other people on how to eat, right?
So if you've got someone who's 350 pounds who's saying to people a steady diet of cheesecakes, bacon, and butter will make you healthy, would you feel a great deal of respect for your girlfriend if she said nothing?
Wouldn't you say on the way home, like, why would you let that occur?
Now these people think that they think the exact wrong thing in terms of health.
If you're Girlfriend was, you know, an amazing researcher in science and had figured out that opening and closing your hand ten times a day, your right hand, that is, that that would prevent heart attacks.
And she just basically mentioned this to a few people in her personal life or whatever, but didn't do anything to get the knowledge out in a wide context.
I mean, this would not be something that anybody could aggress against her in a just manner.
But it would not be something that we would look at and say, wow, I really respect your reticence.
So, what I'm saying is that the acquisition of knowledge creates a non-binding positive obligation.
It's not binding insofar as it is like being on time.
I mean, it has more moral dimensions to that, particularly in the world that we're talking about, but let me build the case with my usual agonizing slowness.
Sorry about the background noise.
It's crunchy cold up here in Canada.
So, the acquisition of knowledge, particularly, particularly healing knowledge, creates a non-binding positive obligation to share that knowledge.
In the same way that if you study to be a doctor, you have a non-binding positive obligation.
The acquisition of that knowledge creates a non-binding positive obligation in you to help heal people.
Now, we'll get to all the problems with this metaphor as we go forward, and there are many, but I just wanted to sort of put this...
Put this out there.
Because one real question that is well worth asking yourself is this.
Why have I continued to listen to FDR? Maybe after this, that question will be answered.
But why have I continued to listen to FDR? All the stuff that you needed for personal freedom...
You got by 183.
By podcast 183, you had everything.
You could listen to all those podcasts again.
You had everything you needed for personal freedom.
183. It's a ways back.
You could even say that by podcast 73, you had the major ingredients for personal liberty.
It wasn't explicit, but it was definitely there.
So, why...
Why did you keep going? Why did you keep going past 200?
300? And I can see those fighter planes.
400? 500? 600?
700? 800? 900?
We're closing in on a thousand.
If you've listened to the premium podcast, I think you're over a thousand.
A thousand podcasts.
Three years of university.
The equivalent of three years of university.
And it's not like FDR doesn't come with homework.
Why did you keep listening?
Why did you keep going?
Beyond that which you needed to be free yourself, just you.
Why? If you are overweight and you study enough nutrition to lose the weight...
Why would you keep studying nutrition?
Let me see where I'm going with this a little bit.
You're 350, you get down to 190.
Well, surely you've studied enough nutrition to lose weight yourself.
Why is it that you continue to study nutrition?
Well, it's because you want to make the final leap, the final leap to health.
I would submit, and you can tell me in every which way that I'm wrong, I would submit that you have continued listening to FDR not because you want to be virtuous.
That was dealt with a long time ago.
Not because you want to live with integrity.
Not to take!
Only for yourself.
I believe... In my irritatingly all-knowing way.
Know-it-all. Well, not all-knowing.
Know-it-all way. I believe that you have continued to listen to FDR because you want to make the final leap.
And the final leap doesn't mean this last podcast.
that's just the beginning of talking about the final leap.
The final leap in virtue, the final leap in philosophy, the final leap in wisdom, the final leap in health, the final leap in happiness is not being the final leap in happiness is not being virtuous, though that is a necessary prerequisite.
it.
The final leap in truth is not being virtuous, but making virtuous.
And this is why I've been pounding on reciprocity for the last little while.
The final leap in philosophy, in morality, in truth, in virtue, is not being virtuous yourself.
It's creating virtue in others.
It is only a necessary but not sufficient step in being an effective nutritionist To lose weight yourself and maintain a healthy weight.
If you are an effective nutritionist rather than an effective dieter, you are judged by the effectiveness with which you can help other people lose weight and maintain a healthy weight.
You're not a psychiatrist if you only analyze yourself, and you sit there in your office completely alone saying, boy, am I ever mentally healthy.
I am so happy.
That doesn't make you a psychiatrist.
The key, the unchosen positive obligation, sorry, the chosen positive obligation, non-binding, that the chosen positive obligation, non-binding, that you
Create in yourself, through the acquisition of knowledge in excess of what you need to live happily, is to help others.
And this is the reciprocity with the world that is the hardest thing To achieve.
It was for me. Maybe you will sail through it, although I doubt it, based on recent evidence.
Maybe you will sail through it, and you will achieve this becoming...
not building your own fire, but becoming a lighthouse to help others avoid the rocks.
To inculcate virtue in others, to provoke, and often it is to provoke...
Honesty, integrity, and virtue in others.
That is the challenge.
to turn from player to coach, from dieter to nutritionist, is to make the leap that the objectivists and many libertarians never is to make the leap that the objectivists and many libertarians
And that is what I mean and what I talk about in The God of Atheists and what I've talked about here a number of times.
That is the process of subjecting yourself to something far larger than yourself that is so hard for we individualists.
So hard for we individualists.
For a couple of reasons, which I'll just touch on briefly here.
First of all, the people that we see who've subjected themselves to a larger...
Paradigm to a larger goal than themselves are all batshit mental, for the most part, right?
I mean, you've got crazy religious people, you've got crazy people who get into Buddhism, you've got Nazi people who join monasteries, you've got people who send their life savings and their cat fur into the Ron Paul campaign, you've got people who will sacrifice them, move to New Hampshire, people who will submit themselves to a goal larger than they are, but they're mad.
Or defended, or immature, or, you know, whatever.
I mean, it's not rational.
It's not working from first principles in a universal manner.
So when we see people shuddering around on the floor at a Presbyterian church, speaking in tongues and handing over a tithe, I mean, speaking in tongues and handing over a tithe, I mean, they are submitting themselves to something larger than themselves, but that's exactly the same as exploitation, as I mentioned in the call with Monsieur Leric.
I'm This is, when we see people subjugate themselves to a larger cause, it's always exploitive.
There's always some asshole in the ashram with a Rolls-Royce, right?
There's always some Kool-Aid on the counter that you drink for the larger cause.
The larger cause is also your nation, the military, defense, service to the collective.
And that's all exploitive, and that's all hideous, and that's all vile, and almost always ends up in evil.
So I understand our hesitance and our reticence towards submitting ourselves to a larger goal.
But this is what I have tricked you into becoming.
Ha ha ha!
Through my oh-so-clever-rambly-and-entertaining musings, I have tricked you into getting your medical degree.
In the Middle Ages.
I have tricked you into getting your medical degree in the Middle Ages.
And I haven't tricked anybody.
You know this, of course. There's nothing unusual if you went past 183.
183 could have given you enough for a decade, but people kept going because they desperately wanted.
Not to be healed, but to be healers.
That's why you studied far in excess of what you yourself needed.
So, I haven't talked about this explicitly, but I have kept piling on, knowledge after knowledge, after insight, after enlightenment, after fact, after knowledge, after debate, after conversation, after insight, until you have far more food than you can eat.
In a starving world, you are sitting on a pantry that can feed thousands.
And you can't take it with you.
You're going to die with this knowledge in your skull.
There's a reason you've accumulated all this food, and it's not because you're that hungry.
It's because you don't want to eat anymore.
You want to feed others.
Feed the world! Burst into song.
not me though it's too cold you have accumulated all of this knowledge and wisdom far in excess of what you could ever implement in your own life top to bottom in a lifespan you have accumulated So why did you get all this knowledge?
Well, you may say to yourself consciously, it was interesting.
And it is interesting.
But that's not the main reason.
And now that we have taken from philosophy, now that we have taken from philosophy and we have used philosophy to that which gives us now that we have taken from philosophy and we have used philosophy to that which gives us more immediate advantage, and I don't mean this but getting the bad people out of your life...
Gives you immediate advantage, right?
Losing the weight gives you better health.
I'm not saying that losing the weight is easy.
That's not what I'm saying. Don't misunderstand me.
This is a sensitive issue.
I'm going to try and be as accurate as possible.
I'm not saying here that losing the weight is easy.
I'm not saying that quitting the smoking is easy.
Getting the corrupt people out of your life is easy.
It's not. But now that we've done that, now what?
Right? Right? Well, it's getting the corrupt people out of other people's lives.
Now that you've lost the weight and you're healthy, the next thing is to get other people to lose the weight and make them healthy.
Now, I can feel all around me this rising tide of massive cynicism, indifference, frustration, hopelessness, despair, and anger.
Got it. You don't need to write me and tell me about it.
I got it. Because the moment I say you have to help others, people get mad.
They do. And I understand it.
Totally there. Understand it.
Understand it.
But let me tell you something first before we deal with that, and I hope this makes some sense.
Only we have this knowledge.
you Thank you.
It is only us who are carrying the torch for philosophy, for wisdom, for truth, for virtue, for freedom, for peace.
It is only us who hold the elixir that poured on the heart of mankind can end war, can end poverty, can end violence in all but the most sporadic forms.
It is only us Who hold the magic to set the world free.
It's only us.
I don't say this with vanity.
I don't say this with self-aggrandizement.
It's just a fact. We have gone so deep into the human condition and into philosophy and psychology and economics and ethics.
And we have the proof for virtue, for ethics.
And we have the actions to become free in your personal life.
Only we hold the key that unlocks the door to the future.
It's only us. It's only us.
That's why I say I have tricked you into becoming a doctor in the Middle Ages.
The world is yelling, is there a doctor in the house?
The house is the world!
And we are the only doctor.
You are the only doctor.
No one else is going to put their hand up.
Or if they do, God help them.
God help the person who's sick.
Because they're going to be a witch doctor, a voodoo doctor, a priest, some sort of nonsense.
Only you have the knowledge to save the world.
There's no one else who's going to do it.
There's no one else who's going to do it.
In your world. Right?
What's that? I've mentioned this before.
That's this Nathaniel Brandon thing where he says to all of his patients, no one is coming to save you.
No one is coming to help you.
Nobody is coming to set you free.
And one of his patients said, well, you came.
And he said, yes! And I came to tell you that no one is coming.
Well, I'm here to tell you nobody's going to save the world except you.
I'm not going to do it. Greg's not going to do it.
No one else is going to do it.
No one else is going to save the world that you live in but you.
And then people are going to say to me, well, I don't want to be a pirate.
I don't want to save the world.
Well, too bad. You already know how to.
Right? I don't want to put my hand when somebody says, is there a doctor in the house?
I don't want to put my hand up.
It's like, too late! You're already a doctor!
Too late! So sorry!
You fell for it. You're already a philosopher.
I mean, my God, if you're here, you have knowledge that simply is not anywhere else.
Look, I think that we have knowledge.
We've reinvented or discovered for the first time a little something that can reasonably be called the truth.
It's nowhere else. It's not in history.
It's not in the mouth of Socrates.
It's not in the mouth of Nietzsche. It's not in the mouth of Hume.
It's not in the mouth of Kant. It's not in the mouth of Aristotle.
It's not in anybody's mouth except ours.
With all due respect for the past, We've moved it so far forward that we can barely see those who allowed us this, or who propelled us, us who created the capacity for this.
We're not flying higher than the prior birds.
We are out beyond Jupiter, out beyond Alpha Centauri, up around Betelgeuse.
juice.
So the fact is that you are already a doctor and there are no other doctors.
Except which doctors?
No.
Who everybody thinks are doctors and who make people sicker.
As medieval practice of leeching and it drained the blood, drained the humors, killed far more people than it saved, So, the problem is, of course, the reality of the metaphor is that when people say, is there a doctor in the house?
Every ass clown dipshit in the world sticks his hands up and say, oh, I'm a doctor!
Unpack the leeches! Right?
Time for a little bloodletting.
Oh, another one died.
Must be the will of God. So...
You are not speaking into a silence.
You are speaking into a cacophony of falsehood.
into a rising, orchestratic, anti-orgasm of sheer, blinding noise.
And you face the challenge, which...
all...
doctors with new knowledge face...
Which is that you have to not just say that you're right, but that everybody else is wrong.
and be humble in the methodology that we all serve, which is truth and reason and evidence.
And all the doctors who profit, all the witch doctors who profit from their false cures will shout you down, We'll hurl insults at you.
We'll claim that you, as somebody did on the Ron Paul video part two, we'll claim that you're living on welfare.
I just make up anything, right?
Right, right so all the fat nutritionists and all the people making money off selling bad food to fat people under the guise of dieting billions of dollars at stake false selves virtue perceived virtue and
They're all going to come at you with a take-no-prisoners approach.
Right? And you know this.
There's nothing I need to tell you.
You've probably already experienced it to one degree or another.
But what are the choices?
You can't unlearn what you've learned.
Because you've let this conversation into your skull, you can't ever be a non-doctor.
You can't. It's impossible.
It never happened. You can't unlearn what you know.
You can't unlearn the importance of what you know.
And there is no metaphor that encompasses the importance of this conversation.
We can talk fat, we can talk AIDS, we can talk health, cancer, whatever.
There is no metaphor that encompasses the importance of this conversation.
And the challenge, as we all know, is to love the world that hates you.
Thank you.
And fears you, and reviles you, and in its secret heart of hearts, worships you.
Oh, we've seen this with certain people's reactions to me.
So, in order to understand what I mean by that at an emotional level, let me try explaining it in in order to understand what I mean by that at an emotional level, Thank you.
The world, without a doubt, had a fair amount of hatred towards me.
This is just the reality of the contempt and derision and hostility that I faced pretty much everywhere that I went.
And it isn't because I'm such an annoying person.
I'm sure I am at times, but it's not fundamentally because I'm such an annoying person.
And there is ample precedent for sick people attacking the doctors while crying out about their need for healing.
And the greatest challenge of my life was learning to love the world that hated me, that desperately needed healing and bit and scratched and scorned and reviled and spat on.
Whenever healing was brought to bear.
The truth, reality, integrity, virtue.
Actionable items, not scratching a ballot, or listening to a podcast, or making a speech, but actually making changes in your own life.
Bring that to people, then they get pretty mad, right?
So how can you love the world that you need to heal that hates you for being a healer?
Not easy. And we could go into long and challenging things about reaching through the flames to rescue the people.
We could talk about not allowing hostility to beat your love.
We could talk about loving the future that we can create.
We can talk about if only people had been more courageous in the past, such degrees of courage would not be required of us now.
And we could talk about all of that, about standing for the beauty of philosophy, talking to as many people as possible, yes, wearing the t-shirts, buying the books for people.
Surrendering yourself to the creation of virtue through example, through conversation, through inspiration.
But let me just put it to you in this way.
That hopefully will make some sense to you.
Imagine your life without philosophy.
Imagine your life without this conversation.
Imagine who you'd be, where you'd be, and how you would be, and what your life would be like Through to its end.
Through to its end.
Without this compass, without this map, without this truth, without this conversation, without this knowledge, without this wisdom, without this certainty.
What would your life be like through to its end?
What kind of boyfriend would you be?
What kind of girlfriend would you choose, or vice versa?
What type of wife would you choose?
What type of friendships would you have?
What type of family would you still be in contact with?
What kind of parent would you be?
What kind of parent would you be?
What kind of happiness would you be able to sustain as you continued forward in a life bereft of wisdom, bereft of knowledge, bereft of guidance?
Not my guidance, the guidance of reason and evidence.
I want you to look down the tunnel, that fork in the road called never learned philosophy.
Never learned the truth. Look down that tunnel.
Look down. What does it look like? What are you wearing?
What are you saying? What are you doing?
What kind of human being are you?
Are you radiant? Are you joyous?
Are you wise? Are you benevolent?
Are you happy? No, of course not.
You look down the tunnel of that other life, of that life without knowledge, isn't that horrible?
Isn't that just horrible?
To not be a force for knowledge and virtue and good even in your own life, but to be a transmitter of corruption and falsehood.
That tunnel, that tunnel without this conversation, is as bleak and black and destructive at a spiritual level as medicine without science was at a physical level.
That's the fork in the road.
In the absence of philosophy, you know.
You know exactly how your life would have gone.
I don't need to tell you that.
I don't need to tell you that.
Because I promise you, my friends, that your true self was staring down that goddamn tunnel when you first heard this conversation.
I promise you that you know every wrinkle, inch, abusive, screaming, fight-fest, nightmarish life moment in that tunnel.
You know it exquisitely, intimately, horribly.
In the same way...
That even if you don't know how to swim, and perhaps especially if you don't know how to swim, when you hit a riptide undertow, you're going to grab for whatever floats.
Because you know where that riptide leads, and it's a kind of death.
It's worse than a kind of death.
You know that fork.
Incredibly, intimately, perfectly well.
You could probably describe every day of every year going forward down that road.
And I mean down.
And that's why when you were going under and you saw a life raft, and you saw it as a life raft called philosophy, this conversation, reason, evidence, empiricism, rationality, Logical virtue, integrity, honesty, intimacy with self and others, reality.
I bet you reached for it before you even saw it.
I bet you reached for it before you even saw it.
You saw it out of the periphery.
The way that you can duck when a ball's coming at you, you barely even see it.
That's why you grab this.
And I say, now you know, so help the world.
Help the world. And you say, well, I don't want to.
But, but listen to me.
Listen to this. I get that you don't want to help the world.
I get that. I really do.
I understand that to my bone marrow.
But listen, what if I hadn't wanted to help you?
What if there had been no fork in the road?
What if there were no podcasts, no conversation, no board, no listener chats, no Sunday shows, no get thee to a therapist, no conversations with Christina, no ask a therapist, no...
There was no exit to that tunnel down.
And you sailed right past it with no more options than if you were in a water slide.
Look down that tunnel.
Look down that tunnel.
That's the life you would have had if I didn't love your potential, loved the potential of the world enough to do what I'm doing.
And there are six billion people out there who are sailing right past the tunnel that every day you don't love the world enough to try and help it.
Millions of people are just slipping right past.
collectively for all of us, millions of people a day, are slipping right past that tunnel exit, down into that horrible life of cultural, empty, blind, abusive repetition.
If I had not overcome my own dislike of the world and reached through that drenching waterfall acid of hostility to reach to you and to you to reach back, where would you be?
Hell, where would I be?
Down that tunnel, to nothing, to a bitter, empty, ashen grave.
That's why I say, now that you've become a doctor, you must heal.
You must. You must, since you value this knowledge so much, and I had to overcome my hostility to the world to reach out in a relentlessly positive manner to the world,
which has benefited you enormously, enormously, that since you value so highly my overcoming of my own disgust at the world and my belief which has been validated my belief that out beyond the dismal trawls of immediacy is a beautiful crew of like-minded souls Well,
it's true. Well, it's true.
But it never would have been true for me.
It would have remained only a potential truth if I had not submitted myself to a course larger than myself.
and if I had not said after 20 years of studying medicine it's time to become a freaking doctor and that's why I keep pounding everyone on reciprocity and It's not about...
I mean, yes, it bothers me, the t-shirts and this and that, but it's not about buying the t-shirts as a payback to me.
That would be a decent idea.
You know, geez, Steph, I've gotten so much from this conversation and everything that Steph's put out there.
That a t-shirt, if he wants it, hey, I don't think it's going to do that much good, but so what?
If he wants it, why not?
If my wife has supported me for five years as I pursue my dream and then she asks me for a cup of herbal tea, do I get to say, well, I don't really like that herbal tea?
So I'm not going to get it for you.
Or just not even answer her.
No, of course not. Hey, whatever you want and you can ask me for 10,000 cups of herbal tea.
I'm happy.
Generosity is strength. Generosity is strength.
Reciprocity is strength.
reciprocity is self-esteem.
If you take from this conversation and you make it all about you and your happiness and your pursuit of knowledge and your study and your increase of wisdom, then you will stall.
This conversation is an arc.
This conversation is like you climbing steps, right?
And if you don't climb the next step, you simply fall down a staircase.
And I don't bother the people who stopped at 183 and said, well, I'll come back in 10 years when I've cleaned up my own personal stuff.
I don't bother people about this.
Go to it. All you want to do is be a dieter?
Don't worry. I'm not going to bug you about being a nutritionist.
But if you keep going, as so many of you have, and I hugely appreciate that, then you must continue.
And I know how much people hate to hear this, but I'm going to say it anyway.
You must find it in your heart to love the world enough to help it.
Because nobody else is going to.
Nobody else is going to step up.
There are no other people who are going to enlighten a darkened world.
There are no other people.
There are no alternatives. There are no backups.
There are no pinch hitters. No one's going to step up if you don't in the world that you live in.
And it is a very emotional thing.
It is a very emotional thing to love the world.
To see the beauty under the ugliness.
To see the beauty under the ugliness of the world.
To drill for oil, as the song says, in a city street.
It is a very challenging thing to open up your heart with strength and confidence and to take all blows and continue through to reach through the flames, that acid, that bile, to continue to reach through, to connect with the people who get it.
The bleeding edge, way too early adopters or way early adopters of truth and integrity and virtue in a rational sense.
The bleeding edge, way too early adopters of truth and integrity and integrity and integrity As I mentioned, it's like that bit in Fight Club.
Paws lie on the guy's head.
It's hard to stay with that pain and continue onward.
Past the rejection.
Past the hostility.
Past the derision. Past the negativity.
Past the cynicism.
Past the skepticism. Past the fogging.
Past the minimization.
Past the ridicule. Past the insults to you and to your wife.
It's hard to keep reaching out in happiness and joy and love past all the inconsequential idiots to not be distracted by rats,
by ants, To be larger than the smallest among us should not be that difficult, but it kind of is.
To be able to stand tall enough to look beyond the little kicks of little people should not be that hard, but it is.
Because We're raised with such derision.
We're raised with such diminishment, with such rejection, with such indifference that it's potent.
People, little people do that because it works.
And because it was done to them and they won't admit it.
But we have to, with the knowledge that we have, which is unique in the world, which is unique in history, which is a shining new world, which is unique in history, which is a shining new world, a new continent, a new planet, almost a new universe, with the knowledge that we we must have the strength to at least be larger than the little people.
To have the strength...
To step over ants.
To reach through a fire that cannot burn us.
to connect with others in the way that I connected with you.
FDR, fundamentally, philosophy is not about listening.
It is about talking. Medicine is not about being taught medicine.
It is about healing people.
And there's lots of people that go to art school and then they bail out and so on, right?
Go to get an undergrad degree or a college degree and then they bail out.
Go off and do something else and that's fine.
But you've now finished your PhD in teacher's college!
And you kept going for a reason, and the reason is that you do want to have the strength and the courage.
I'm almost done, I promise.
This is so, so important. You kept going because you do have the courage to do this.
And yes, you have the inhibitors of cynicism and fear and anger and And so on.
And that's all stuff. These are all the alligators that we Tarzans have to wrestle with.
I understand that. But don't back away from the river you've got to cross.
You can beat the alligators.
They're only in your mind.
People's eyes rolling.
People dismissing you.
People attacking you. People being hostile to you.
It means nothing!
Less than nothing. It's like saying I can't run the marathon because there might be an ant on the road.
I can't leave my house because it might be a little windy.
I can't leave the ambulance to help the car crash victims because it looks like it might be a spot of too rain out there.
To wedge yourself to the truth and to virtue.
is to become big enough to become strong enough to become powerful enough in a non-dominant and non-leveling manner to become strong enough and powerful enough that the slings and arrows of minuscule idiots mean so little mean so little what they are is a guidepost,
a signpost that saves you time.
They're doing you an enormous favor.
The people who attack you, the people who roll their eyes, the people who sigh, the people who say it's a cult, the people who...
whatever. They're just saving you time.
Thank them. Right?
If they were really sophisticated and really smart...
What they would do, and I know that some people do this, and we need to be better at seeing this, if they were really smart, they wouldn't attack you.
they'd suck you into a conversation where they'd be seeming to make progress and you'd waste weeks or months.
But if you're set up on a blind date with a girl, and she's supposed to phone you with the time to meet and she never phones you...
That's great!
Thank you, my sister, for saving me so much time.
If you want to help people lose weight and everybody's chanting at you, I love being fat!
say, thank you for helping me not waste my time, my precious short time.
And it is a mark of honor to be attacked by petty people.
it is an inevitable mock of honor to be attacked by petty people and if you can be so much bigger than
Then the endless cavalcade of little people who will nip and bite at your heels, if you don't even walk faster, if you, like, you spread courage by being courageous, not by talking about courage, not by talking about virtue, not by sending people to FDR. If you want to help people become free of their false selves, then you need to be true self.
Not talk about the true self, not say, hey, I'll do a dream analysis for you and we'll kick you into high gear.
That doesn't hurt unless you're not doing it.
People write to me at least one email a week, sometimes more, saying, I don't know how you do it.
All these people nipping at you, attacking at you, and so on, right?
But how could I have arrived at these truths about philosophy without a strict and non-sentimental examination of reality?
Which is that the truth threatens a hell of a lot of people.
And most people, when they're threatened, they perceive it as an attack or they tell themselves it's an attack and they lash out.
I mean, that doesn't take a philosopher.
That just takes a Thanksgiving dinner at most families to figure out.
That's just a reality of the world that we live in.
And of course, if it wasn't a reality of the world that we live in, this job would have been done centuries ago.
And we'd be in a levitation hammock in Aruba.
The world is what it is and people are where they are.
People have been twisted and broken and taught horrible things.
And when you put responsibility on most people, because responsibility is almost always used as a term of abuse and control and diminishment, you need to be responsible means you better obey.
Of course they're going to attack, but who fucking cares?
Everybody wants to be free of fear of attacks, and I'm not free of it, and I never will be, and I wouldn't want to be fundamentally If you watch that second Ron Paul video, response to criticisms, when I talk about the attacks on me, Christina, myself, you can see it hurts.
No question. But that's okay.
I note that it hurts.
I understand that it's part of my sensitivity.
And that I don't want to show people what it's like to live without fear.
Because that's called being a sociopath or a psychotic.
I don't want to show people what it's like to live without fear.
I want to show people what a life is like when you're larger than your fear.
And you can't be larger than your fear without hooking into something larger than yourself.
You have to hook into something larger than yourself so that you can surmount your own pettiness, your own fear, your own caution, your own concern, your own anger, your own hatred.
Of the world. That has done you wrong.
I understand. The world has done you wrong.
Terrible wrong. Awful wrong.
And continues to do it.
And guess what? We'll continue to do it for the rest of your life.
Whether you speak openly or not, people will get it anyway.
People get everything about you when they meet you.
Wearing a t-shirt is just a little more honest.
They already know.
They already know.
It's in your aura.
It's in your eyes. It's in your posture.
It's in your voice.
They already know.
Everybody's a genius and everyone's a philosopher and you can't hide anything.
They already know that you have the truth.
They already know that you have the truth.
And then they say to themselves, this is the test, right?
They say to themselves, oh, Holy shit!
This guy has the truth.
Wow! Never seen that before.
Huh. Well, let's see.
Let's see what the truth does for him.
He's got the truth. I can smell that off him.
Like a refined and reversed sulfur, I can smell that truth off him.
Let's see what he does with the truth.
So, if you are larger than your fears, if you are larger than your hostilities and your hurt and your hatred, if you are larger than all of that, then you if you are larger than all of that, then you rise above it and you tower above it without rejecting it.
without saying, me no fear!
No fear for me! Because the truth doesn't rewire your brain, right?
Right? It doesn't cut off your autonomous nervous system that produces or provides fear or caution or anger or hatred.
Just say, no, I'm bigger than that.
I understand that. I respect it.
it, it's a helpful guide to me, but I am not going to let it dominate me.
And then people say, well, he's got the truth.
And the truth makes him huge.
Makes him strong.
Makes him courageous. That's what the truth is doing for this person.
Then do you think you'll have a tough time getting people to listen to you?
Or go away from you?
All I'm saying is be 150% up front.
It'll be incredibly efficient.
If you're not, then you're being manipulative.
And if you're not, you're also going to get sucked into...
Negative or wasteful conversations.
And then you're going to say, and it's going to make your hatred worse, right?
This is what the world does to you.
This is how people try and tempt you into wasting your time.
Because once you waste your time and you keep beating your head against the wall of other people's hostility and indifference, you'll get more and more of the perception that the world cannot be saved and then you'll give up.
If you want to help people lose weight and somebody says to you, I'm not that, I don't want to lose weight.
And you continue to debate and argue with them, try and get them to lose weight and say, hey, I don't want to lose weight.
I'm not even fat. You're fat.
If you keep beating your head against the wall, how long is it going to take for you to say being a nutritionist is a complete waste of time because nobody wants to lose weight?
No. No, no, no.
It's because you're not listening to what they're saying that you end up in despair.
It's not the world.
It's you that creates your despair.
Because if you note how you feel when you're interacting with people and you don't feel good and you leave the conversation because life is short...
And everyone you're wasting time with, you're not only diminishing your own capacity to enjoy the conversation, and if you're not enjoying the conversation at a fundamental level, if it is not a ferocious demolition dilly of warring for the future for you that's exciting and thrilling, then you will become cynical, and you will become negative, and you will become hopeless, and that's how the bad people win.
And I can't argue against this.
Well, we got UPB.
We got the whole thing nailed.
So all they can do is try and bleed us emotionally.
I That's why I say, trust your feelings, don't like the conversation, move on.
You owe nothing to anybody.
Except the world, if you're this far.
And even then, you're not evil for not doing it.
You're just kind of a jerk.
Because you're like the doctor not putting his hand up knowing there are no other doctors in the house when somebody falls down sick.
And that's not what you want.
because if you really wanted that, you wouldn't have kept going in the conversation.
The last point that I make, and thank you so much for your patience in this, I know that we're ripping off a whole new passageway here, but you can pretend to be surprised.
You can pretend to be surprised that after 920 podcasts, I asked you to do what I've been doing that got you through 920 podcasts.
The guy who says UPB is now saying you should do what I do if you find it valuable.
That can't be a shock to you, right?
I mean, that just can't be a shock to you.
But, as I've said before, we need to outpace the state.
We need to outgrow the state.
We need to be so large and so powerful in our lives and in our demeanor and in our interactions.
We need to be so large and so powerful that the idea of a state becomes ridiculous.
Like the idea of a crutch to a marathon runner looks stupid.
When people are hobbling around, then the crutch seems to make everybody needs a crutch.
When you stand up on your own two feet and you stride with purpose and confidence, the crutch looks stupid and the motives of the person offering the crutch, i.e.
I want to break your legs, becomes much more clear.
Technology, science, capitalism allowed us to outgrow The original sin corrupted, twisted version of humanity that was the legacy of Christendom.
It became kind of ridiculous to look at the modern statue of David, which is a psychological manifestation of most people's souls in a post-medieval world, and say, this is a being twisted by original sin.
Doom to failure.
Doom to disaster.
But how can we...
Help people to understand that we're far too large for the state if we are dwarfed by our own fears and hostilities and hatreds and angers.
If we're not larger than our fear, how can we possibly convince people that we need to be larger than God?
Larger than the state, larger even than the historical prejudices of our own parenting.
If you can't tower above fools, including your own foolishness, fears, hesitancies, hostilities.
If you can't tower above your own fears, which does not mean rejecting them, you can't conceivably convince people of the validity of a stateless society.
The state, as I've said before, is a massive and brutal anxiety management mechanism.
People don't have the answers and they use a gun.
How do we help the poor? How do we deal with criminals?
How do we defend the country?
They don't have an answer! So they reach for a gun.
In the same way that when religious people don't have an answer or humanity as a whole doesn't have an answer, it reaches for a god.
and corrupts the children in the way that the violence corrupts the adults.
Since...
This is so advanced...
Since the government is a massive mechanism for anxiety management...
My mother's getting old.
What should I do? Let's have social security.
Use a gun! Use a gun! There's an answer.
I don't have an answer. Put a gun in somebody's face.
Look, we have an answer. Now pretend there's no gun.
Look, it's like we earned an answer.
Like raping a woman and saying, look, she had sex with me.
She loves me. Forget the rape.
Don't talk about the rape.
Since the government is a massive mechanism for anxiety management, at the point of a gun, if you can't manage your own anxiety, you can't overthrow the state.
A stateless society, at this point, before it's proven, empirically, is saying, well, I don't have all the answers, right?
When people write to me and say, well, I don't think the DRO system is the final answer.
It's like, dude, of course, right?
no question Francis Bacon doesn't have to invent the transistor for the scientific method to be valid if you can't overcome your own hostility - I see.
and your own fear and your own anger and your own concerns about rejection by petty people if you can't manage your own anxieties and hook into something larger than yourself that gives you motion and propulsion then you can't overthrow the state you can't the state is a psychological manifestation it doesn't exist in reality it is a psychological manifestation of people's fear about freedom Of people's fear about freedom.
Which goes back to the pain of their being parented, the way they were parented.
People are afraid of freedom and that's why they believe a state is necessary.
Without the state, criminals in the streets, violence, bloodshed, horror, starvation, sick, poor people, corporations running everything, military takeovers.
That's people's fear of freedom.
And how can you tell people to give up their fear of freedom and their hostility towards the idea of freedom if you can't give up your fear of them and your fear of their rejection?
You can't say to a mouse, don't be afraid of a dragon when you're afraid of the mouse.
Thanks.
You understand? You can't say to people, don't be afraid of freedom.
When you're afraid of their disapproval.
Because you're not free. And that's what people get.
Down to the very core.
Takes me an hour, takes, I swear to God, everybody, a tenth of a second.
We are that smart. Look at your dreams.
At the amazing processing that goes on every night.
the accurate, dead-on processing that goes on every night.
Look, we're all afraid of a stateless society.
I mean, let's be honest. I am.
I know that it would be the right thing, but I'd be pretty nervous if it came around tomorrow.
And that's okay. But to demonstrate the kind of courage that you're asking from people is the only way that you're going to have any credibility.
All right. I mean, if I kept talking about freedom and integrity and virtue and a lack of fear, but I kept folding in terror every time somebody criticized me, I would have no credibility with you, right?
Or at least I damn well shouldn't.
And since you can't go back, since your true self has propelled you along this journey to the point where you are the most advanced doctor the world has ever seen, The most knowledgeable doctor for the ailments of society that the world has ever seen.
You're not the best doctor in your neighborhood.
There are no other doctors in your neighborhood.
Since you've come this far and you cannot turn back, I strongly invite and suggest you to bestow the benefits that you have received to pay me back with courage in the conversation.
with a self-overcoming of the historical scar tissue and bruises of having been condemned, of having been put down, of having been diminished, and of the existing and current and future condemnations that you will receive by speaking the truth.
There's somebody on the board who has a proverb saying, It's a Mongolian proverb.
It says, he who would speak the truth must keep one foot in the stirrup.
I don't agree. He who would speak the truth must keep his finger lightly resting on the eject button for others.
Keep moving, keep moving, keep moving.
Reach through the fire, reach through the acid to find the people who you can help.
That is how the world gets saved.
Thank you so much for listening. I look forward to your donations.
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