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Dec. 2, 2007 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

02:23:39

929 Sunday Call In Show Dec 2 2007

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	Good afternoon, everybody.
	It's Stefan Molyneux from Freedom A Radio.
	Thank you so much for joining me on the second day of December 2007.
	And some brief orders of business or items of business.
	We had a big advertising blitz.
	This month, which has resulted in, I guess, approximately a couple of thousand more listeners, certainly about 10,000 to 15,000 additional podcast downloads, which is great.
	This is your advertising dollars at work.
	And thank you so much to the donators who have made all of this possible.
	It's a big spend to get people to come into the show.
	Thanks also to Greg, who has been helping me to pound through the Yahoo and Google groups and join them and send them messages to come and join this conversation.
	And he's also set up a subscriber section.
	We're going to start running a Free Domain Radio newsletter, which I think will be a lot of fun.
	It will be cool.
	This is where I'm going to try and put some more of the current events in.
	I'm almost concerned about adding current events to the mix of the stuff that I hope is going to be a little bit more timeless.
	I'm fairly cognizant of the fact that Charles Dickens wrote some great novels and he also ran a newspaper for a while and nobody cares or remembers anything about the newspaper stuff that he did.
	So I'm concerned about current events mixing in with the general philosophical thrust of the program, but...
	At the same time, I think it would be helpful for debates to have some interesting perspectives on current events.
	So that's going to be part of a subscription service.
	And the people who subscribe to Free Domain Radio, that's the $20 a month thing, they're going to get additional material.
	But there will be sort of news and updates and some stuff that goes out into a newsletter.
	If you want to sign up to that, just go to the freedomainradio.com page and click on podcast or just about any other page and you can subscribe there.
	And the subscribers, as I said, the people who subscribe for money a month will get some additional goodies.
	I have been slow to provide greater additional value to the subscribers, for which I apologize, though I thank you enormously for subscribing.
	And that's going to start up, I guess, next week.
	So thanks so much for that.
	The freedomainradio streaming.
	Sight is now up.
	In other words, I guess about a year and a half after we started, we actually have become a kind of radio show.
	So if you'd like to get a hold of that...
	Just go to freedomainradio.com and click on the Podcasts tab.
	It's Steph 24-7.
	In other words, when you are sitting down with that special somebody and your tea lights are flickering away and you're on your fifth or seventh glass of absinthe, then you can just, you know...
	Crank on a little BCF to set the mood.
	I'd certainly recommend more of the weeping podcasts than the shrieky podcasts.
	But of course, depending on your level of masochism, it's entirely up to you.
	One thing you can do, if you're very adept technically, I would suggest, is play the podcasts really, really slowly.
	Good morning. That kind of stuff.
	That's really going to set the mood.
	It's mostly going to be for lovers.
	That's what I'm saying.
	For those single people around, don't let that stop you.
	Thank you again.
	You might want to go and check that out.
	It's at the podcast page on freedomainradio.com.
	And you can either listen to it embedded, just on the right-hand side, scroll down a little bit, under streaming podcast, you can listen to it embedded from the site.
	Or you can click, if you've got Windows Media Player, click on the icon below that.
	And below that, if you have iTunes or Winamp, you can click on that.
	And it's just cycling through the podcast.
	So you can pick up, dip your foot in the stream anytime you want.
	And it's really cool.
	Actually, I'm glad to have got it finally set up.
	And it's really neat because you can just dip into stuff that you may not have heard for a while and remind yourself just how bad the audio quality was on the earlier podcast.
	Always important to remember how much we've improved.
	So... Alright, so that's about it for the news and views of the site as a whole.
	I would like to continue to crank out the advertising.
	Lord knows people need philosophy in December because it's Christmas, which means family, which means...
	I'd say that if you could crank some donations my way, I promise to crank most of them into advertising, which is very effective.
	And thanks also to the listener who gave us some marketing tips on how to advertise the site more effectively.
	I think comprehensibility and succinctness was key.
	We can't do any of that, so we'll just spend money.
	So, thanks again.
	Look forward to your donations. I guess...
	Oh, Miami. We're, I guess, almost totally...
	Full, but not completely.
	So, if you'd like to come meet a whole bunch of other listeners, enjoy sun, sea, surf, and karaoke, which apparently means, in Japanese, empty orchestra, which is...
	Something I'm going to ponder for a while, but not right now.
	Okay, now. No, wait. No, later.
	Let's do it later. So, we will be having a great deal of fun.
	It's 125 bucks.
	Christina will provide the content, and I will provide the empty flash, and it will be a good deal of fun.
	So, if you can come by, please do.
	I'm sure... Greg, I think, only has about nine listeners per bed at the moment, and I believe if we stack them like cordwood, we can probably get to ten.
	So let's aim for that.
	All right, let's start with the topic very briefly, and then we shall move on to the fabulous listener questions.
	This is an article from a good source called Homework Hysteria.
	This is a good source from the Maclean's.
	From December the 10th, 2007.
	Again, for future...
	Sorry, whoever just joined, if you could mute yourself, that would be excellent.
	I'm just hearing a...
	kind of noise. So here, the great intractable issues of our day.
	Middle East peace, radical Islamic terrorism, world trade and inequality often seem quite distant from the everyday regime of life for Canadian families, and thankfully so.
	But there is one perpetually controversial and apparently unsolvable topic that does play a major role in family routine.
	Bum, bum, bum, bum, bum!
	Homework. Too much, not enough.
	Should parents help? Does it improve grades?
	Is family time more important?
	There is no household issue more contentious.
	Last year saw the publication of several anti-homework books such as The Homework Myth and The Case Against Homework that gave voice to parental homework angst.
	And this week, a major survey on education released by the Canadian Council on Learning, CCL, revealed that nearly three-quarters of all parents see homework as a frequent source of stress in their house.
	In their house, the other quarter are drunk.
	This comes as no surprise.
	The homework debate has never been about kids.
	Rather, it's about parents and their inability to reconcile two competing anxieties, concern over the quality of their children's education, and the availability of family time.
	Homework is an obvious intrusion into the modern besieged workday.
	A common rule of thumb cited by teachers is that students should get 10 minutes of homework per day for every grade attended.
	It seems reasonable enough for first graders, but this quickly escalates to a full hour for sixth graders and two hours per night in grade 12.
	Homework now consumes 9.2 hours per week For the average Canadian adolescent, according to Statistics Canada, much of it requires parental participation.
	Add to this commute times, dinner making, hockey and dance practices, plus at least some sleep and home life has all but disappeared.
	Yet these same stressed parents also see homework as tangible evidence that their kids are getting a good education.
	Despite the obvious tension, over 80% of the parents surveyed agreed that homework enhanced learning.
	An even greater percentage considered it a necessity for building good work habits.
	And a third of all parents have hired tutors for the kids, supplementing school-provided homework with the private sector variety.
	For parents who bring their own work home, watching their children do homework must appear validating and reassuring.
	However, the case for homework's necessity is murkier than most educators will admit.
	The recent Trends in International Math and Science study looked at science scores for grades 4 and 8 students in 50 countries, including Canada.
	It found that, on average, internationally spending a lot of time on studying was not associated with higher achievement.
	It was the poorest performing countries that assigned the most homework.
	Let me say that again, shall I? It was the poorest performing countries that assigned the most homework.
	Overall, there is scant evidence that elementary-level homework serves any purpose other than conditioning children for homework in high school.
	Ahhhh! Compulsion, compulsion, compulsion, violence, violence, violence, enslavement, enslavement, enslavement.
	Where could you even begin?
	And I'm just going to touch on just a couple of points that come to mind when you read this kind of horror.
	This is supposed to be a service, right?
	This is supposed to be something the taxpayers are paying for that is beneficial to them and to their children, and it is turned into a kind of penal colony.
	And it is just staggering and unbelievable that the kids are in school, now they've moved back here to 8.30 in the morning, which for teenagers, particularly boys, might as well be 3am.
	Actually, 3am might even be better, because teenagers just biologically cannot get up in the morning to get things done.
	So they've moved the time back.
	Why? Well, so that people can go to work, and people can go to work and pay their taxes.
	And then the kids get nine to ten hours of homework a week!
	A week! They get these kids for six or seven hours during the day, and then there's another hour to hour and a half of homework every night.
	And I remember my nieces bursting into tears about the amount of homework that they had.
	It's just staggering.
	But, of course, also the kids need something to do between the time they get home and the time their parents actually come home.
	So that's just another kind of filler because the parents are dragged off to the tax mines.
	The kids have to be kept busy.
	And what kind of insane system is it where you get to teach kids for six or seven hours a day and then they have to go and do homework?
	Well, of course, it's a system based on compulsion.
	And it is a system, as all government systems are, based on the appearance of success, not upon success itself.
	Nobody ever says, the goal is the best possible education, what are we going to do to get there?
	The goal is, what is the best way that we can convince people that a good education is occurring, given the fact that it's all based on coercion and incompetence?
	And so they just pile more homework onto the children.
	And the parents are like, well, I guess that's part of educational quality, so we'll just trail along like bruised sheep and try and keep up.
	And it's just a complete and total mess.
	But of course, it also readies the kids for the endless busy work and lack of free time that occurs later on in life when you are reproducing and doing the whole damn thing over again.
	So... It's just interesting that this enormous amount of busy work is just being thrust onto the children for no statistical reason whatsoever.
	But it is to keep everybody busy.
	The busier you are, this is something that the Soviet system knew very well in the 1950s or earlier.
	That you simply had no free time.
	You had to go from this meeting to that meeting, be busy with this, that, and the other.
	And the whole point is to keep people running so fast on the treadmill that they can't ask real questions.
	And that's where we come in. So speaking of asking real questions, I turn it over to you, the fabulous listeners, who I just, I tell you, I gotta tell you just before we start, this is the highlight of my week.
	This Sunday afternoon call-in show is the highlight of my week.
	Wait, sorry. Yes, no, that's true, Christina.
	It is. I mean, except for all the time that I spend with you and all that.
	That's good stuff, too. But this is the highlight of my week because I just love you guys so much.
	You are so smart. You are so courageous.
	And you are so generous.
	And I just love the spirit that you guys bring to this conversation, the quality that you bring to this conversation.
	So I just wanted to let you know in the spirit of honesty and forthrightness that this is the highlight of my week.
	I start looking forward to it from about 7.01 p.m. on a Sunday night.
	So thank you again so much for taking the time to stop by.
	So I believe that Mr. J had a commentary about taking 183, Podcast 183, or the recent podcast on Ron Paul politics versus personal freedom seriously and talking to a friend about this.
	So you had a bit of a blow by blow about that?
	Yeah, yeah.
	I was just going to tell you about a conversation I had which ended with nuclear fallout.
	The fallout is probably the best way to describe it.
	So, it was...
	It was very useful, actually, the Ron Paul thing that you did recently because the podcast with the against me argument in it, which I thought was really inspiring.
	With that in the background, I met up with some friends who I've known for over 10 years and who I've known since I was a minikist and they've sort of seen me We've discussed politics in the abstract a lot in the past but in very sort of safe abstract terms of differences of views about these sort of completely non-personal abstract political topics if you like.
	This is a guy who I used to be a roommate with long ago and I've done some business with him in the past and I've done occasionally recently as well.
	He's a very nice guy, we'll call him Bob.
	He's in his personal life I think is quite outstanding.
	He's a computer scientist.
	His wife has worked in local government for a long time and has been around I've been wondering about, you know, we don't see each other very much because they've got two small kids.
	So we haven't really had a great deal of talking in the last couple of years.
	One of their kids must be coming up to two years old and the other one's about six months.
	But they know my views.
	And recently, I met up with The guy told me that his wife, having been off work for a long time, is not just going to go back into local government.
	I think she's on maternity leave or something, but is not just going to go back into work, but is also wanting to get involved in politics and to get actively involved in one of the parties in the UK. I gave him my views about that and I told him what I thought about the state and I thought it was just a bunch of thugs and I thought it was a really bad environment to be involved with and so forth.
	That conversation ended and then we met up and they wanted to ask my views about her getting involved in politics.
	I won't go into the details of what they discussed but essentially They had some concerns about this political party and whether or not some of the private funding that this party received was from good sources and should they get involved on that grounds or whatever.
	Which was kind of weird to be asking me that question given that I have sort of directly said what I think about the state but I felt like this was really asking for it.
	I did a more intense version of the talk, I suppose, and it was very interesting because it led to all of the classic arguments being put to me,
	which was you're not being coerced, if you don't like it you can leave, you're only here because of all of the things that the government does, you're so lucky and all of these things.
	And we did do the, I did the whole, you realize of course that what you're saying, my views according to your beliefs, you think it would be right for me to be thrown in prison and to get raped or if I were to resist arrest, eventually potentially to get shot.
	And so we went down that route and it basically ended up with them saying, well, yeah, yeah, but, you know, I mean, of course, then again, you know, we'd wanted to see the laws changed and yeah.
	But it clearly went down that route and they clearly said yes, which was quite bizarre because there you go, you know, it's just sort of flat on the table.
	So I said, well, you know, It presents a real problem for me because you can see what am I supposed to think about that.
	It was very late at night by the time we got to this.
	I wanted to try to get also not just to completely flame in the argument.
	I wanted to also try and be constructive in the sense of saying, look, I understand you want to do good things.
	In the world, which is great, but, you know, here's the problem.
	Let's talk from first principles about coercion and if you want to do good things.
	We just had a sort of from the bottom up discussion involving the argument for morality as well.
	But where it got to in the end was this friend of mine saying to me that he didn't think the morality existed.
	And I asked him, well, is that what you're teaching your children?
	Oh no, I'm sorry, go on.
	And he was quite upset by that comment, as you can imagine, and he said an interesting thing, which was, yes, well, yes, you've got to bear in mind that his kids now, they're just at the stage where talking about ideas, you know, obviously up until now, I don't think the words mean very much, it's the actions, but now the son must be coming up to two, and the daughter is just six months, but...
	So he's clearly, you know, having conversations with the son, you know, on a basic level.
	And he said that the way he's been approaching it is to say, it makes me sad when you do that to your sister.
	What was he, raised by nuns?
	Anyway, sorry, go on. So, well...
	I mean, that was really the end of the conversation.
	And it ended on a kind of slightly uncomfortable, them saying, oh, well, you know, we've got to get back to the kids and we've got to go.
	Right. And sorry, sorry, just before you continue, I just sort of wanted to highlight this point that the way he's teaching ethics to his son is to say, I feel sad when you do this or whatever, right?
	Yeah. But the way he wants to teach ethics to you is at the point of a gun.
	Yeah. Yeah.
	So he's no problem using the gun on you, just he'd rather use guilt and manipulation on his children.
	But anyway, sorry, go on.
	Well, yeah, I mean, my reflections on this, a few things.
	Firstly, it was a very, very clear discussion in the sense that we got right to the heart of it quite quickly, which was really...
	Really good for me, at least to see things that clearly, if you see what I mean.
	The other thing was that I felt remarkably calm, actually, in this discussion.
	They got quite aggressive a few times.
	I think it's partly because it's just these arguments.
	They're all the bloody same.
	They're just the same arguments that I've heard hundreds of times on the board and elsewhere.
	So that was like, oh right, if you don't like it, you can leave argument.
	So that was kind of weird, but it was quite calm.
	I was quite pleased that it was a constructive approach in the sense that I was trying to To sort of make sure that there's no way that they could pose this as me being a nihilist who wants to just have the Mad Max anarchism.
	Do you know what I mean? Basically, I think I managed to make a good case in that respect.
	The other thing that I think about it is that I got a very clear message from that.
	We've had a lot of discussion on the board recently about Not, you know, disengaging before you really are finished with this.
	And partly because I was pretty calm in the whole thing, I definitely want to make sure that I don't miss anything that I needed to I just wanted to say that the against me argument is totally nuclear and gets you to a very clear discussion with things pretty fast.
	Right, right. And, I mean, I can understand the calm, and I'll paraphrase it for you, and you can let me know whether this was your experience.
	The reason that we're calm is that, fundamentally, philosophy, of course, is not about us.
	It's about the truth. But we're so used to having debates which are essentially theological in nature, whether those are debates about religion or debates about We're so used to having discussions that are theological in nature.
	In other words, there's no external truth that we're calmly reporting, but there is an opinion that we need to impress, either through force of personality, through manipulation, through rhetoric, through humor.
	We need to impress our opinion on somebody else, and they're trying to do it on us.
	But there's no third party called the truth which arbitrates.
	But because you were simply pointing out Facts, right?
	I mean, if somebody rejects that 2 plus 2 is 4, you don't tend to get that excited because it's like arguing with a very little child, right?
	You just say, well, no, I mean, 2 plus 2 is 4.
	I'm sorry that it upsets you, but it's not personal.
	It's not me trying to impose this opinion of mine on you.
	It just is a fact. And the calmness comes from simply referring that we are simply reporting the facts.
	You know, like it was raining yesterday.
	Well, what do you mean it was raining yesterday?
	I hate rain and blah, blah, blah.
	It's like, I'm sorry that you hate rain, but that doesn't alter the fact that it was raining yesterday, right?
	I mean, so reporting the facts is very, very different from trying to convince someone, and the comment that comes from that means that you don't end up processing their emotions, and that's why they feel more than they would have otherwise, if that makes sense.
	That makes total sense.
	That's exactly how it feels.
	And that's why those arguments, because they do strike me as so kind of ridiculous now, It was something that you said a few times on various podcasts, that you have to think really hard to avoid some of the obvious problems in these.
	That's what I was thinking. My God, how can you make that argument?
	The other thing I wanted to say, and I wasn't expressing it very well, I just thought it was an interesting experience that this guy who I've had many very productive things happen in my life together with this guy in the past.
	We've done business together and he's always been totally upstanding.
	In terms of people who I know, obviously there's a very serious issue with morality in the kids.
	From what I have seen, he's always been a very upstanding guy towards his wife and his kids.
	His wife has some other issues, but what I found interesting was that there's clearly a lot more going on there We either had just deliberately chosen not to think about or see, but that conversation really got us through it pretty quickly.
	Right, right. I'd like to ask you a little bit more about your feelings, but before we go on to that, I just wanted to point out, again, you can tell me whether or not you feel that this is the case, First of all, it's a lot easier when you understand that people are just rejecting the truth rather than rejecting you.
	Because people say to me over and over, like, Steph, I don't know how you can stand the slings and arrows of outrageous internet denizens who constantly keep slagging you and attacking you and calling you this, that, and the other.
	And it's because it doesn't have anything to do with me.
	I am simply speaking the truth.
	And I'm more than happy to be corrected if I've made errors.
	But it's not about me.
	If somebody gets mad at me, Obviously, I mean, I know what's really going on, and we'll talk about that in a sec, but there's no need to get that offended because getting that at me, shooting the messenger, doesn't change the truth, right?
	I mean, if you strangle the doctor who tells you you have cancer, it doesn't mean you don't have cancer, right?
	I mean, so it's not about me and it's not about you, but...
	I can tell you, if you like, why they fought the conversation so hard and it wasn't because they didn't agree with it and it wasn't because they didn't like you or respect you or anything like that.
	Well, that would be interesting.
	The reason that they fought the conversation so hard is not because they were afraid of the truth.
	It's not that they're afraid of what you're saying.
	It's not that they're afraid of the truth.
	That's not why they fight this conversation so hard.
	The reason that people fight this conversation so hard is that if you accept it, you have to speak it.
	So, if they...
	We're to just listen and, you know, ask the questions and make the objections, but listen with an open mind and an open heart.
	And they were to open themselves to the possibility that they've been lied to, that they've been programmed with all of this empty, repetitive propaganda, which of course is what we all experience.
	People who seem like individuals are just like pasty propaganda robots, right?
	That you go down beyond the surface hobbies and habits and ticks of their personality, and you find that everybody is just, A photocopy deep down, right?
	And that's pretty horrible. But the reason that the conversation is so unsettling to people is because if it's true, right?
	If it's true, and they accept that it's true, and all the way home they talk about it, and they, whatever, pick up a book or a podcast, and they read through it, and they go, you know what?
	This is so blindingly obvious, and we never saw it.
	And it's totally clear.
	And it's really not hard to see.
	The problem is, now that they are in possession of that truth, If you think of the truth like a football, right?
	An American-style football, not what you people talk about it with.
	But if you think of the truth as a football, it's not that they're afraid of taking the truth from you.
	What they're afraid of is having to pass the truth along to somebody else.
	So the next time they sit down with her parents...
	Or the school teacher, or the next dinner party they go to where somebody mentions politics, what they're afraid of is speaking the truth, not hearing the truth from you, but speaking it to other people.
	Yeah, that makes perfect sense.
	And I mean, the question for me is that I could tell also Especially that this friend of mine, I could tell he completely understood the arguments.
	I mean, and there's no doubt in my mind because he's super sharp and he completely got it and I can see that he was very distressed by this conversation because he was understanding it and because I think he, at one level, he knew.
	I mean, I'm interested as to why Why they came and brought this up, because I sort of thought this is a total invitation to me to just absolutely go for it, which was kind of interesting.
	I also wonder whether or not there's any way to get through.
	There's an awful lot to get through to them.
	Clearly, from this point, from everything that came out in that discussion, the best outcome would obviously be if I could help them to see through all that stuff and get to the point where they were able to not just hear the arguments but speak them and so forth.
	It looks like a pretty low probability on the basis of the discussion last night.
	Well, you would have heard today, right, if they were interested in continuing.
	Yeah, I guess that's true. Because they have the drive home, right?
	And they have the drive home where they would obviously talk about the conversation that they had, right?
	And if they...
	I mean, I sang in one of the...
	I won't sing it here, but I sang in one of the...
	I think it was podcast 800, that Free Domain Radio is the sand...
	In the shell that bugs you, right?
	The truth gets into, like a sand, into an oyster, right?
	And then the oyster creates the pearl.
	And it is an under-the-skin irritant.
	That's why people work so hard to avoid the truth, because once you open your heart to the truth, it's really annoying, right?
	Because then you have to have all of these challenging conversations.
	And I just did a podcast conversation with a listener about this this morning.
	I think it's 9.28. You might want to have a listen, but...
	Once you get the truth and you go, well...
	This is true, right?
	Or at least it's true enough, right?
	I can't find any flaws with it, and we could wait until the end of time for everything to be perfect, but it's true enough to act on, then it's an irritant that's under you, right?
	So the moment that you began speaking the truth to these people, you were pushing them to a place where they either accept the truth or reject you, right?
	Either they're going to accept the truth that it's independent of you, it's got nothing to do with you, just a messenger, Or they're going to identify the truth with you and more particularly with a pathology of yours and say, I don't know what happened to this guy that he's so freaked out about violence and I don't know what his childhood was like or what's going on with him and maybe he's having a breakdown or maybe he's...
	You know, there's something that's biochemical that's going on with him, and maybe there's just some freaky thing that's going on, why he's just so hostile to his society, and why does he pick these kinds of fights, and what kind of weird cult is he in?
	Like, if they can associate the truth with your pathology, then they can escape 2 plus 2 is 4.
	And the attempt to align the messenger with the truth is continual.
	The most fundamental defense that everybody has against the truth is to associate the truth with a negative motive.
	On the part of the person bringing the message, right?
	You can just scroll through the pages of comments on the Ron Paul videos that it's like, oh, he's a disinformation agent, or he's got really weird problems, or he's fat, or whatever people come up with.
	They just have to associate the truth with the individual and with the pathology within the individual so they can dismiss it.
	But that doesn't do any good, right?
	Because they're fighting you, but really they're fighting themselves.
	So the reason that they brought it up again was that they are on the verge of ditching you as a friend.
	Yeah. Which I'm terribly sorry about.
	But let me ask you, if your friend, the male, the guy, the dude, was the bloke, the fella, was about 10 years younger, not married with no children, how do you think the conversation would have gone?
	Well, I think it would have been a lot easier for him, because he's clearly now got himself into a situation where there's an awful lot that he'd have to re-evaluate, and I think there would have been a lot more opportunity at that point.
	Right. And this is your resources, right?
	Your finite resources and how it is that you're going to spend them, right?
	I mean, obviously the ideal situation is for us to bring someone to the truth who is going to go for it and communicate about it with other people.
	Because if you spend a year convincing someone of the value of voluntarism or whatever, and then they say, well, that's great.
	I totally agree with you.
	And they never speak about it to a single other soul.
	You've basically built a ship with a big hole in it, and you've launched it into the ocean where it quickly goes to the bottom, right?
	I mean, it's nice that you've changed one person, but what we want to do is to spend as much time and energy as we can.
	And this is pure activism philosophy, right?
	So I'm sorry for putting your friendship into this category, but given that the time is relatively short and the truth is very powerful, Where we want to spend our most efforts is on those people who are not only going to get it, but who are going to effectively be able to talk about it.
	So from that standpoint, they're very clearly communicating to you that the emotional cost of them accepting the truth is too high.
	And my guess, and this is totally sexist and I apologize in advance, but my guess is that He did a good chunk of the talking, but she radiated a displeasure.
	Well, the thing that surprised me was that he did actually do most of the talking, and normally she does most of the talking.
	Sure. Normally she sort of hogs the conversation and he doesn't get that much of a...
	He's quite introverted, but he did most of the talking in this conversation.
	Right, and the mechanism of that is that the woman, and this is totally stereotypical, you know, a million exceptions and so on, but this is just what I've seen.
	That the woman is the one who is terrified of the social repercussions that will accrue to the couple if they accept the truth.
	That she feels acutely uncomfortable If they go under some sort of radical plan called the truth and the conversations that she's going to have to have with her mom and the conversations she's going to have to have with her female friends and the decisions they're going to have to make about educating their children.
	The social ramifications of the conversation you were having with this couple It's something that she feels intensely and acutely uncomfortable with, and the man tends to be the one that voices that in an abstract and intellectual argumentative kind of way.
	Yeah, yeah, that's pretty much what happened.
	And so one of the things that you can do, right, because, I mean, it sounds like you did a magnificent job in terms of the argument, but at the beginning you said that it felt weird that they would come to you for advice about politics, right?
	Yeah. So what's one possible way of approaching that that doesn't have anything to do with intellectual argument?
	You mean tell them how I feel about this?
	Yeah. I did.
	Sorry, you said this feels weird.
	You know what my beliefs are, right?
	Yeah, I did.
	I do have to say, though, that I didn't stop there.
	I sort of launched in.
	I started off by saying, well, you know, this is...
	This is quite... I feel quite tense because, you know, this is a very clear thing that you're communicating.
	You're asking me...
	I think you know what I'm going to say, but, you know, and it feels strange that you've given...
	given that you know what I'm going to say, that you've asked me about this, but I think I have to tell you.
	And I sort of launched in.
	So I could have stopped there and said, let's talk about the feelings part, but I was sort of...
	Prime to go, if you see what I mean.
	So I said that very briefly at the beginning, and then enough we went.
	Right, and again, this is just a possibility.
	I'm sure that you handled this the exact perfect way, but one possibility...
	Is to say to the person who's not talking, but who you sense is radiating discontent or anxiety, to stop and say, well, look, forget about all these abstractions, right?
	Let's just say, let's just say, for the sake of funsies, for the sake of the emotional donut clusterfuck that is philosophy at times, let's just say that what I'm saying is true.
	If what I'm saying is true, how does that make you feel?
	Yeah, I didn't say that.
	No, and look, I'm sure you handled it totally right.
	I'm just saying that there is a possibility.
	If what you're really arguing about is we don't want to take a stand with our friends, then if you can get that onto the table, then you can go a lot further with stuff.
	I went through this just this morning, so sorry for droning on about it, but And I find this is particularly true with debating with women.
	If this were true, if I just snap my fingers and manage to rearrange your neurons in a cult-like, sinister fashion so that you could believe that what I'm saying is true, what do you think would happen from there?
	And the reason that I think it's so important to focus on the women in these conversations is that women get it in a way that men don't.
	And men get it in a way that women don't, and again, this is all so ridiculously blanket, but women get it in a way that men don't, right?
	So to sort of put it in a silly way.
	So your male friend is like, hey, we're playing three-dimensional magic brain chess, you know?
	We're just moving these pieces around, and all this stuff is going on, and it's cool, and it's an argument, and we're getting heated, and this and that.
	So he gets it at an abstract intellectual level, and he's enjoying playing that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern kind of tennis with verbs and adjectives and logic and so on.
	But I bet you dollars to donuts that his wife got it right away.
	And she was like, oh, fuck.
	Because if we believe this, if we can't snatch this pebble from his hand, socially, we're completely hosed.
	So women get it in terms of, and of course this is a great value that Christine has brought to this conversation, is that women get what it means, the truth, in a proactive and action-based way.
	If this is true, because I think that women have a kind of relationship integrity in the way that men have a kind of intellectual integrity, So men will get something intellectually and they'll work it through.
	But women get the implications socially of beliefs.
	Women have this amazing instinctual integrity about what ideas mean in relationships.
	So I'm guessing that there was this big seething, oh my god, what are you, crazy?
	We're not doing this!
	That was coming out of this guy's wife.
	And also, this means that we have to raise our children differently.
	Yeah, it's interesting that you say that because she even said at one point, oh, you know, these things that you're saying about taxes, I mean, it's just ridiculous.
	And then she sort of backtracked and said, well, no, I don't mean it's ridiculous.
	But you could see that she was just trying to find...
	He was trying to find a way of blocking the whole, not even going into the conversation, but just sort of blocking it.
	Whereas he was trying to unpick flaws in the argument, but that was a different level of conversation.
	I see what you mean, and I think that was going on.
	In that sense, she got it on a On a more emotional level.
	Right, and it's the fact that libertarians or whatever, it's the fact that we don't address the silent woman in the room that I think is one of the great challenges for change, right?
	That women get.
	Because if you'd said to her, what if this is true?
	If this is true, let's just pretend that I can snap my fingers and have you believe it.
	What would change in your life? What would she say?
	I think she'd say, I have to...
	Get out of politics and talk to my parents and talk to my sister.
	And what was her career? Local government.
	Right, so what would she have to do with her career?
	Resign and start again.
	How would she feel about her return to leave money?
	Well, that is almost...
	Oh yeah, absolutely.
	About the past money, you mean?
	Yeah, I'm not saying that she's evil for taking maternity leave money.
	I'm not saying that, but I'm just saying she would have to re-evaluate that, right?
	Yeah, I will say that the one thing that did happen bizarrely in this conversation is that she ended up saying that, well, she's having second thoughts and maybe she doesn't want to get involved in politics after all.
	And I mean, this is not a big, big victory, but at least I was thinking, well, you know, If nothing else, that would be good.
	Better than nothing that she doesn't do that.
	That's the only positive outcome that happened in the discussion.
	That is something to be enormously commended because if that's the only effect that you have, that's going to be a whole lot healthier for the kids.
	Would they be able to send their children to public school if they totally got this?
	No. They'd homeschool.
	Right, so as far as I understand it, the translation of what you're saying to this woman is, you bastard.
	Not only are you taking away my career, but you are wildly extrapolating and increasing the costs of raising our children.
	So this conversation is going to cost us £50,000 a year.
	Yeah, yeah, that's right.
	And estrangement from my family, unbelievably ugly fights with lifelong friends, massive social and economic costs, our children growing up with no friends, not being able to socialize with other people, not having built-in babysitting from mom and dad.
	For what? Is this going to make a free world?
	No. So I'm pushing this baby away because it's not going to make the world free and it's going to cost me 50,000 quid a year and it's going to mean that I have no extended family for my children to be raised in and they grow up isolated freaks of anarcho-capitalism, right? I mean, that's where the conversation occurs for women, and I can't honestly say that that's wrong.
	Truly and completely, those are very, very important concerns to have.
	For the sake of this abstract thing called right, I'm going to pay through the nose in every conceivable way, and the result is going to be not a free world.
	Well, yeah, you're absolutely right.
	And the interesting thing is that the only argument that really landed on her was when I said, You've got to get out of politics.
	These are awful people. It's really bad for you to be around these people.
	It's not healthy. For your own life, get out.
	Because she knows that they are awful people.
	Because that's a cost that she could take, right?
	She could still bear getting out and then have all the other things, if you see what I mean.
	I think it made sense to her on a sort of pretty straightforward level, but I think that's why that led on to her agreeing that, yeah, I do want to do that.
	Right. And that's, I mean, I think that's great.
	And I think you did a wonderful thing there.
	But if you can get emotionally what it costs people to accept the truth, then you can more easily allocate and more productively allocate your resources.
	And it sounds like you did a great job with these people.
	And I don't mean to diminish what you did, which is wonderful and amazing.
	But... It was never going to work, is what you're saying.
	Well, it worked, right?
	I think that the investment that you made, and it sounds like these friends have earned it, right?
	They don't sound like bad people, as you say.
	This is an upright guy who you've been in business with.
	He's a stand-up fellow. So clearly they earned the energy that you put into it, I think, right?
	For whatever my opinion means.
	And you did an enormous good.
	So, okay, they're not renouncing the mafia, but she's not joining the mafia.
	And that's, you know, at least she's thinking about it.
	And that is a really, really good outcome.
	Now, asking them to give up the £50,000 a year and all of their extended family and this and that when they have kids and to start changing radically the way that they raise their children and, I mean, have all of these awful conversations with people, I mean, that's asking quite a lot, right?
	I mean, that is asking quite a lot.
	And I think that if you can explore with people how they feel about the possibility of this being true, Then I think you get to the real issues, right?
	Because, as you say, this stuff is dead simple.
	You know, violence is bad. I mean, it's retarded.
	It's embarrassing how stupid this philosophy is.
	Like, really, it is.
	And everybody agrees that violence is bad, except in self-defense.
	So that's what the big mystery is about what we're doing, right?
	It's brain dead. A two-year-old can get it.
	And everybody believes it already, but nobody admits it.
	And the challenge is this underlying social and financial equation that occurs for people.
	So the Ron Paul people, they're mad at me not because they want Ron Paul to get in, but because they like hanging out with Ron Paul people.
	Yeah.
	There was just one other thing I was going to say about it, just a reflection of the way that this kind of conversation can go, which I really noticed last night.
	And that was that as these points were coming up and as objections were being made, I found myself seeing a path back from what was being said to where it comes from.
	And it was very vivid for me in the conversation.
	So for example, when he said, oh come on, I mean morality, there is no such thing as morality.
	And I could just see where that was coming from in terms of him having had morality used basically as a bludgeon in his own life when he was a child and his response to it It's just people trying to make it up for themselves, if you see what I mean. To control others on an emotional level.
	Exactly, exactly.
	But you can't put a stir up at every point and go down that.
	There's a whole conversation in that one sentence, do you know what I mean?
	And I just saw it, and then it sort of passed, because there were so many other sentences with their own meaning to kind of get through with them.
	I think you're exactly right.
	And the sad thing, of course, and this is where you might want to get him a copy of On Truth, not to proselytize, but just for his own parenting well-being and a copy of UPB, and just say, you know, don't ever talk about this with anyone.
	This is your secret mistress called The Truth, right?
	But the problem, of course, is that he says, oh, morality is just an emotionally manipulative trick that other people use to control others.
	And then he turns around to his two-year-old son and says, now you shouldn't do that because it makes daddy really sad.
	I know. And it's like, dude, come on, look in the mirror.
	What are you doing? Yeah, what are you doing?
	You hated it when it was done to you, but he doesn't know any other way to do it, right?
	I mean, he doesn't know. He's like a medieval doctor, doesn't know anything about antibiotics.
	All he can do is put leeches on people, right?
	And say that leeches are bad for you.
	So, there are some possibilities.
	Like, you can get them on Truth or UPB or whatever and just say, you know, this is just interesting stuff to kick around in your head, right?
	And let them sort of chew on it and so on.
	But there are also some, you know, you can watch Supernanny or whatever, some basic parenting stuff that has to do not with controlling your child through sighing and guilt and, you know, like you've got drunken Elizabeth Taylor raising you or something, right?
	I was amazed at that.
	Yeah, no, I think I will do that.
	I think on Truth would be It's a good thing just to have lying around in case it can infiltrate under the wire somehow.
	Right, and the pop-up book for the two-year-old is almost ready.
	So that's pretty cool.
	Defearing preparation.
	Absolutely, it's it.
	Well, that was it for me.
	Thank you very much. I just wanted to tell you about the conversation.
	It's great stuff. Listen, I mean, it's magnificent stuff.
	And it sounds like you just did a fantastic job.
	And I am, of course, sorry that...
	But empathizing with what you're asking, like the chasm that you're asking them to leap across when they can't even see another side of the chasm on the other side is, you know, can help them understand it.
	But there's still things that you can do if you're content with incremental gains.
	And as I say, this is a multi-generational project, so the fact that his mom's not going into politics is going to do a lot, not just in an abstract way, but politics will infect her as a human being.
	Oh yeah, absolutely. And so she would become a brutal mom if she went into politics, so the quality that the kids' childhoods has been raised exponentially just through this one conversation.
	So, I mean, I think you should be proud of that, if that means anything.
	Well, thanks very much. Well, thank you.
	I appreciate that. We have a spot open.
	Sweetie, do we have a spot open for the next caller?
	How is the queue looking? Hi, Carl here.
	I didn't have any big subjects, but I was thinking something that popped into my mind.
	I was just thinking, of course, spreading the word is great with t-shirts and everything.
	And networking is something also just for mutual support, to meet like-minded people.
	And you kind of need some emotional support from people in order to feel more comfortable about spreading the word, as it were.
	And, of course, the two can go together as you work on it.
	But you're actually right that speaking the truth, that's the tricky part, that you learn the truth.
	And I was always willing to learn the truth and think the truth and speak it when I was comfortable.
	But, of course, you get the crickets and all that stuff.
	But the networking and actually just chatting on people on the FDR chat I found very helpful for meeting like-minded people and enjoying their company and so forth.
	Well, I think that's a good point.
	And I'll just give you a sort of brief commentary on that, at least since there's nobody queuing up.
	From my standpoint, this is sort of what I see as the hub, in a way, of some parts of this conversation.
	Over the past 18 months, people have said, well, if I have X, I can go and speak about this.
	If you, Steph, give X to me, whatever that is, then I can go and speak about this conversation.
	If we go all the way back to the beginning and say, well, if you can encapsulate your theories, particularly your ethical theories, in a short way, So I did that.
	It's going back almost two years.
	And then it was like, well, you know, if the podcast could be more generally available, I'm going to spread them around and so on.
	It's like, great, you know, I'll buy more bandwidth.
	I'll upgrade the server.
	And it's like, well, if I could discuss stuff on the board, then I'd be more certain to go.
	We put a board together, right?
	And this sort of goes on and on.
	And people say, well... If I had widgets that I could embed Free Domain Radio on my website, then I would be very happy to sort of help spread the word.
	If I had t-shirts, if I had bumper stickers, and the latest is now business cards, and the latest now is like, well, gee, Steph, if I only had a brochure that I could print out and take and sort of hand around to people or leave behind, or, you know, if you could only put this into a book, like... Say, universally preferable behavior on truth.
	Something that I could buy and hand out to people.
	If you could just put this stuff together in some format that I could grab and repackage, I would be really happy to do that for you, right?
	And now I don't believe anybody.
	To be perfectly honest with you, I believe no one when it comes to this stuff, right?
	Because after spending a huge amount of time and money putting together, you know, FAQs and t-shirts and books and audiobooks and, you know, everything under the sun that you could imagine, and CDs and DVDs, like...
	After spending all of this time, energy, and money, putting all of this stuff together, what happens is people say, well, you know, if I just had one more thing, if I had a holographic, big, bald, talking staff that I could mount on the hood of my car that would rotate and spew anarchy out like a fire hose, by God, I would do it!
	And then I could sink a fortune into trying to develop that and get about five orders, right?
	So we've had about 15 people buy t-shirts, right?
	And The number of people who've bought multiple copies of my book?
	Maybe 10 or 15 people.
	Multiple copies. I mean, the book has sold quite well, but people are just buying one copy.
	Right? So, the latest thing is like, oh, Steph, you know, if you could earn, oh, and if you had a symposium, I'd get lots of people to come and so on, right?
	And so, because I try to learn within about the 20th time, I think I've got the hang of this now.
	I think I've got the hang of this pattern of interaction now, right?
	And the pattern of interaction is this.
	I don't want to talk about free-domain radio, but I don't want to admit to myself that I don't want to talk about free-domain radio, because then I'm going to have to deal with that.
	So what I'm going to do is say, well, Steph, if I only had X, Y, and Z, if you could just come over and give me a foot rub, and then just prop me up and walk me down the street like some bizarre puppet, and if you could just give me a flashing, rotating LED belt that I could put, like, if you just put all these, then I'll go and do it.
	But then when these things are provided, the bar just goes higher.
	And the reason, which I finally sort of figured out, is that people don't want to talk about free domain radio.
	And it's not that people are openly saying, look, it doesn't matter what you give me, I'm just not going to do it, because it's too scary.
	Right? And even after some of the 920 series, which I know a lot of people have listened to, there were some additional orders of t-shirts, but not very many, right?
	And so, in trying to sort of listen to the community, which is pretty important for me to do, and without any sense of blame, but just to work empirically...
	The clear message is that people don't want to talk about free domain radio.
	And that's fine. I mean, nobody has to.
	There's no obligations, whatever.
	Nobody has to talk about free domain radio.
	I just get that it's a waste of time to provide more materials, right?
	Because after spending two years providing materials for people, I get that this is a private conversation that people have with me and with other people who are in this conversation.
	And that the vast majority of people...
	Don't want to and I couldn't pay them enough to put a t-shirt on.
	Or I couldn't pay them enough to, you know, we've got a whole page on the Free Domain Radio website of widgets, right?
	Things that you can do to help, you know, you can embed Free Domain Radio books and there's a, you know, you can embed the audio.
	It's all very easy peasy. People also said, oh, Steph, if you could just find a great way to share a podcast so I can embed a link and just point people towards specific podcasts, that would be great, right?
	So I spent a whole weekend programming a database and a web interface to be able to do that, where you could pick out either particular categories or particular podcasts.
	And I have never heard of anyone using that.
	People say, well, gee, if there was only a better way to navigate through the podcast and so on.
	So what I kind of get out of that conversation is Is that you are having a private relationship with Free Domain Radio that is outside your social sphere.
	And that is hidden from...
	I'm like the ugly but slutty girlfriend who puts out but you don't want to take out.
	So that's okay.
	I'm happy to spread the seed in whatever way I can.
	But I very much recognize, just based on the pretty empirical feedback that the listener community has given me, that you want me to do it.
	And that's fine.
	I mean, as long as I'm not wasting more time thinking or pretending to myself that one more piece of material is going to be what gets you to go out and do it, then I can just focus on doing podcasts and not think about enabling the listenership to do what some people are doing within this conversation and what I'm doing.
	And that's fine.
	Again, it doesn't bother me that people are saying and wasting a huge amount of time and money that I have, limited amounts of both, that they're saying, well, you know, spend money producing this and I'll go out and get stuff done for you, Steph, because it's actually worse...
	If people just didn't listen, that would be one thing.
	And if they listen but don't do anything, that's fine too, right?
	I'm happy to pay for the bandwidth.
	And if they listen and donate, that's great.
	But if they listen and then request stuff as a way of staving off their own anxiety about going out and talking about philosophy, that's very negative to me, right?
	Because that's a big waste of time and energy, as I said, which we don't have a lot of, right?
	So... It cost us quite a bit of money to get the t-shirts going, right?
	And we've made a grand total of like 30 bucks, right?
	So that's just less money for advertising and so on.
	So what I'm getting is that it's not a shortage of material.
	It's not because you don't have the red-eyed Steph flashing button on your t-shirt.
	That is causing people to not want to do this conversation.
	It's just because it's scary.
	And that's totally fine. I know.
	I really do understand.
	But that's sort of where I am, right?
	So if you feel like telling me, boy, if only I had the rotating flag that streamed fire, I would put it up and do that for sure.
	Just don't hold your breath for this stuff to be provided.
	There's more than enough material out there for now.
	More than enough resources. More than enough...
	I mean, there's books.
	There's t-shirts. There's...
	There's email referral programs.
	There's lots and lots of stuff that you can do.
	And, you know, this is not to castigate or dismiss the efforts that some wonderful people have put forward in this area, but just in terms of the thousands and tens of thousands of listeners...
	Versus the people who are actually engaged, those people I know, all of them by name, and I don't need to worry about everybody else, and I understand that you don't want to do it, and it's not because you don't have the right color bumper sticker and so on.
	And that's totally fine. I'm not saying you should.
	I should do it, but I get that you don't want to do it, and that another piece of schwag or paraphernalia isn't going to get you to cross the Rubicon.
	You'll cross the Rubicon when you want, and when you want to cross the Rubicon and talk about this conversation, there's nothing that will stop you, right?
	So anyway, that's just a bit that I sort of get and wanted to sort of reflect back to the community.
	All right, that's my short rant there.
	Carl, did you have anything else that you wanted to add?
	You just dozed off while I went on.
	No, I'm here. It's funny the way you talked about it.
	It's like herding cats because people are sort of independent and then they keep things themselves because they have all those experiences where they get crickets or where a relationship just sort of ends because somebody thinks you're some weirdo who likes Ayn Rand.
	And so then you don't want to be a weirdo who likes free-domain radio and then you feel...
	But I'm still in the process of adjusting my social life and trying to be integrated so I'm the same person wherever I go and I'm still doing that.
	I do hope to bring this conversation to more people.
	I do gradually talk about it a little bit more as I go along.
	But the t-shirt thing was instructive and it actually encouraged me to start pushing myself a little bit just thinking about that issue.
	So bringing it from the hidden relationship Well, if it's something I'm proud of, I don't have to hide it.
	I haven't gotten there, but I'm really I'm trying to move that direction, so that's where I'm at.
	Oh, and I totally respect that, and I just want people to understand I'm not out here to try and castigate people for not buying t-shirts.
	The only thing that I struggle, I always struggle to make sure that I'm listening to what people are actually telling me, not to what their mouths are telling me, right?
	I mean, that is the struggle, to make sure that you listen to what people are actually telling you, and that's sort of what I was talking about with The Last Caller with regards to his friend's wife.
	What is she actually telling you?
	By not saying anything but being very unhappy in the conversation.
	So I'm trying to listen to what people are actually telling me.
	And what they're actually telling me is, I don't want to have this conversation with people.
	And I don't mind that.
	Just be honest about that.
	That's all I'm saying. Don't send me off on a wild goose chase and have me spend hundreds or thousands of dollars preparing materials because you say, if I only have these, I'll do it.
	That's all. And I'm not talking about you in particular, Carl.
	I'm not talking about you at all.
	And I appreciate everything that you're doing and have done.
	But all I'm saying to people is I get it, right?
	And I'm sorry that it took me so long to get it, but sometimes I can be even more dense than the densest person I criticize.
	But I do get it that you don't want to do it, and I'm totally fine with that.
	All I ask is that you stop asking me to give you the right tools.
	If you're not going to dig, don't keep asking me for different shaped shovels.
	That's all I'm saying, right? I'm totally comfortable with you not digging.
	Just don't send me off to the hardware store every day.
	That's all. To get you a shovel that you're not going to use.
	And that's really all I sort of wanted to point out.
	Right. Just one last comment.
	Yeah, there's a point of...
	I posted a little something on the Gold Plus section, but there is a point of no return when you get involved in these kinds of ideas and philosophy.
	And I think a lot of people will get there and hope, you know, and with a little prodding probably doesn't hurt.
	But yeah, you get started on this path, I think people will eventually start doing more.
	You know, whenever they're ready, but, you know, it doesn't always hurt to...
	I go into the pool just inch by inch, and then, you know, I get about close to a crotch, and I'll either dive in or you don't go in, so...
	Right, right. Or you're in and you either swim or drown, which is one of the two, right?
	Right. So, anyway, that's about all I have to do.
	Speak on, my brethren.
	Hello? Hey.
	Hi. Hi.
	The conversation you're talking about having, that people are afraid to have, is that the conversation...
	Who was that?
	Was that Tuttle or the other UK... It was Tuttle.
	Yeah. Was that the conversation Tuttle was having?
	Or is it a conversation about Free Domain Radio?
	What is it?
	Well, it's whatever, right?
	I mean, people say, well, I'm not that comfortable having a conversation about Free Domain Radio, but I would like materials to give to people who are interested in Free Domain Radio, right?
	Now, if people, I mean, I'm not expecting Jake to sit there and say, now that we've had these conversations, can I offer you some lovely t-shirts, right?
	Like, I'm not sort of expecting that, because, of course, he'd be wearing it, and just the t-shirt, let me add, as well.
	Or maybe the baseball cap and the t-shirt, you know, because he wouldn't want to be rude.
	But, no, it's people say, I'd love to help spread the word about Free Domain Radio, but I need all of this stuff, right?
	And then I keep providing layer upon layer upon layer of this stuff, and it doesn't get used, right?
	So I'm just saying that I kind of get that.
	Now, as far as people having the conversation about the use of violence against you as an individual, yeah, I mean, there's lots of people who don't want to have that, and God knows I can understand that it's a horrible conversation to have.
	It's just, unfortunately, what is needed to save the world.
	So I'm trying to focus my efforts on helping people to have that conversation, because that's where we need to go right next.
	I see.
	Yeah, so it's the communication of the ideas themselves, I guess, right?
	Well, sure, and there's no possible...
	I don't just have 900-plus podcasts because I like to hear my own voice, right?
	I mean, nobody likes to hear their own voice.
	Trust me, try singing into a microphone and hearing yourself back, and it's like, oh, that's a long way from Monsieur Le Peverati.
	But the reason is because it's a long and involved dismantling of culture within us.
	It's a long and involved dismantling of mythology.
	Among us. And we are all layers upon layers of false defenses and like 99.9% false self sitting on top of a true self that is everything.
	And so it is a long and involved process.
	There's no way to have a conversation and enlighten someone in an hour or two or three or ten or fifty or a hundred or two hundred.
	It's not going to happen.
	I'd like to think that I've tried to be as efficient as possible in moving the conversation forward.
	I've not figured out a better way to do it than the way that I've done it.
	Maybe there's some magic flash animation out there that can bypass anybody's need, but you can't become a doctor in less than seven years, and we've now been working at this for less than two.
	And if you think about Martin Luther King's speech in Washington in 64, I think it was, the I Have a Dream speech, that was the culmination of decade upon decade of civil rights work.
	And this all started in the 20s.
	This all started in the 90s, 1890s under the Jim Crow, right?
	This I Have a Dream speech is the culmination of decades of under-the-table kind of work.
	And if you look at the Fabian socialists in England and America in the 1890s, they saw the fruition of their plan for socialism in the United States 30, 40, 50 years later.
	If you count the Great Society, it was 80 years or 70 years later.
	So, it takes a long time to change an individual, and it takes that much longer to change society.
	So, that's why I say to people, it's great if you have the conversation, but in some ways, it's better if you just point them at the site.
	I mean, to be honest, unless you want to sit there and create your own podcast series, which is totally fine with me, why would you want to reinvent the wheel, right?
	Right. And I try to do that sometimes.
	It's just like, And for some people, it's worked, and others it hasn't.
	I mean, it's not worked. I know the reason that it's so horrible, and the reason that it's so horrible fundamentally is that it's hypocritical on our part, right?
	We have a great deal of difficulty in this area, and I'm not talking about you, or just in the abstract, right?
	You can sort of see if it fits.
	We say to people, I get so mad at them because the truth is so obvious and they just reject it.
	The truth is so obvious and they just attack it and they reject it.
	And that makes me so mad because people should want the truth even if it hurts.
	People should want the truth even if it's difficult.
	People should embrace the truth even if it screws them up for a while.
	And we say this and we get so mad at the world and then we reject the truth about our friends.
	Because the reason that people don't want to talk about this stuff with their friends, whether it's sending them to the side or having the conversation with them about violence or honesty or integrity or whatever, truth even, even metaphysics, whatever it is that is part of that conversation for these people and their friends, they say, well, they're going to reject me.
	And everybody avoids this conversation because they know that They're going to be attacked and rejected.
	And they want to not have that piece of information.
	They want to actively reject the fact that their friends are going to attack and reject them.
	And then they get mad at people for rejecting the truth.
	But the whole reason that they're not talking to their friends, or their so-called friends, is because they're rejecting the truth about their friends.
	And this is where people get stuck, right?
	Because if you thought this conversation...
	And look, we know that this conversation...
	We can only meet in reality.
	We can only meet in objectivity.
	We can only meet in rationality.
	There is nothing but solitude and depression in fantasy.
	And a hideous mutation of our soul.
	So we all know that if we could have a successful conversation with someone, we would be thrilled beyond words.
	That we'd love it if we could get an absolute guarantee...
	That our girlfriend's mom would thank us until the day she died for waking her up.
	We would have that conversation.
	Nothing could stop us. Wild horses, Cerberus, fire-breathing dragons, Britney Spears, well-jellied.
	Nothing could stop us from having that conversation.
	And so the reason that we don't have that conversation is because we know we're going to get attacked.
	And we're frightened to have that information.
	And then we get mad at other people who reject the truth because it hurts.
	So that's where people get stuck, because they've got a truth that they know instinctually, which is why they avoid the conversation.
	They just don't want to know it consciously, because then they'll have to act on it.
	And then we look at Tuttle's friends in the earlier conversation and say, well, gee, they should just accept the truth.
	But we spend all our time rejecting the truth that we already know.
	Yeah, that makes a lot of sense and fits perfectly with my feelings and What I've been doing and my slowly shrinking circle of friends.
	But last week, I've been reviewing last week's Sunday Tall and Show conversation, the end part especially, over and over and over, just kind of processing it all.
	The part about There's one point where you said if you're not able to teach, or if you're having a problem teaching someone, or if you think you're a bad teacher, then you should probably stop teaching and figure out what you're doing wrong.
	But then, I think a few sentences later, I asked if I should stop teaching, and you said no.
	Are you there? Yes, I am.
	I said no, you should not stop teaching?
	Call drop. Are you...
	Yeah, you said no.
	I'm sorry because, I mean, it doesn't sound like me to contradict myself so wildly, at least not that close together.
	So I would have to sort of re-listen to that and have a look at the context.
	The solution to a problem is not just to withdraw from the situation, right?
	Because if you want to learn how to teach, you're not going to do that by not teaching, right?
	So the way that you learn how to teach is to learn how to teach better, and that means just keep being curious, keep asking questions, and not providing an opinion until you're certain, right?
	Not rushing in with the answer.
	Right, good point. Like, if I'm afraid of heights, sorry, if I'm afraid of heights, the psychologically adroit way to deal with that problem is through repeatedly and incrementally increased exposure, not just to stay away from all possible heights, if that makes sense.
	That makes a lot of sense, right.
	I just, I keep approaching the conversation wrong.
	The other night I was out with One of the older circles of friends.
	Decided to give it another whirl, you know, just try a different angle, try a different approach.
	And it did seem to work a little better just starting out with a curious approach, but I still felt very afraid.
	And I don't know if I was legitimately afraid because I knew they were A couple of them might attack me, the other ones might show more curiosity.
	There's one guy that sees my enthusiasm for something and doesn't crush it like the others do.
	But he's kind of weird in a different way.
	He'll come back with like...
	Arguments that are kind of irrelevant, like you'll go through some kind of historical, you know, explanation of what happened this, this, and what happened next.
	And it was just like, well, I'm not sure how that argues against the principle.
	But, and then there's this other guy who likes to be a little more crushing towards my enthusiasm.
	Oh, there's, you know, UPB doesn't exist.
	And, I mean, he did the whole argument.
	I tried that conversation that you have posted in the back of the book.
	Basically, it went exactly like that conversation.
	Sure. It's just kind of funny.
	And I had the book with me because I was going to give it to one of them.
	And I went to the back of the book and I pointed at that page.
	I said, does this sound like the conversation we just had, by the way?
	And he looks at it and He gets this grin on his face, and then he just sort of stops and just sort of just, I don't know.
	He has this strange expression on his face, and then he says, well, these two lines could be easily reversed.
	I'm like, what? Will to live, escaping my body.
	Yeah, no, I know what you mean. Right, right.
	Well, look, I mean, the way to test your fear is to test your fear, right?
	I mean, if you are afraid that you're going to be attacked for speaking your mind, there's no way...
	Like, you either act on that fear and you don't hang out with people that you can't be honest with, or you speak your mind and see if you're right.
	Right. Right. But the null zone that people get stuck in is, I'm gonna hang out with people who I'm afraid to speak my mind, to be honest with, And my solution to that is to continue to hang out with them and not to confront my fear.
	That is death in life.
	That is like being a ghoul, a ghast, or a zombie.
	That is being dead while alive.
	That is being in a cage of dysfunctional parents.
	That is childhood rewritten with a bar bill.
	Right. Because you're just stuck in between this...
	But you can't leave, right?
	You can't leave... But you also can't approach them.
	So you're stuck in this dead zone orbit out there beyond Pluto, but not even free.
	Not close enough to the Sun to get any warmth, but not free to go find something else.
	Oh man, that really lit up a few areas of my brain just then.
	Go on. Well, I just kind of...
	I get it a little more.
	Because you're saying something that I didn't already know or something that you haven't said a billion times.
	It's the billionaire one that does it.
	Sorry. Right. It's just that now when I do that, when I... Like I did on Friday.
	Because I decided, you know, I don't know how these people are going to react.
	I should just try it. Try it with just one of them.
	You know, and see what happens.
	So I tried it with one of them, and I got the reaction I expected.
	But with the other one, I didn't get that same reaction.
	I got... Well, this is really interesting.
	That makes a lot of sense.
	Because I was using a lot of your...
	I was stealing a lot of your metaphors.
	Like the... He would say, well, this is a great piece of work here.
	I mean, it seems to be pretty logical, and I can see how these logic tables work out.
	But the thing is, most of the people don't get this kind of logic, and they don't understand.
	And I'm like, well, and I said, that's true.
	A lot of people aren't And they don't, I mean, just because, you know, nobody accepts, not everybody uses the scientific method doesn't mean the scientific method isn't valid.
	And he was like, oh, that's true, that's right.
	And that makes sense. Well, and of course, it's a very dense thing that he's doing.
	And I mean, not dense like stupid, but dense like complicated.
	Insofar as he's saying, well, most people reject logic, you see, but what's he doing?
	Rejecting logic. Exactly. It's like most people out there in the world, somewhere over the horizon, you see Nate, they reject logic, and that's just terrible.
	But what he's doing is he's not addressing the logical arguments.
	He's just saying logic is irrelevant because most people don't believe in it, but he's one of these people.
	Exactly. Exactly.
	It's like, do you reject logic? No.
	So you say, do you reject logic?
	And if he says no, then it's like, well, that's you and me.
	Right? And you go to the other person, do you reject logic?
	Do you reject logic? Well, look, there's five of us around the table who don't reject logic.
	So who are all these other people?
	You say, well, there's lots of religious people in the world.
	It's like, of course there are.
	And they reject logic.
	I understand that. But so what?
	I mean, the first guy who invents penicillin doesn't sit there and say, well, you know, most people in the world don't take penicillin, so there's no point doing this.
	Right, and I used several different metaphors just like that.
	And then I pointed out the false dichotomy of it all.
	And he got it every time.
	He just kind of sat there and thought.
	It was so much easier talking to this guy, despite that I know he's the minarchist type.
	I feel a lot better talking to this guy than I did the other guy sitting right next to him.
	Right, but sorry, sorry.
	Because the other guy's sitting right next to him.
	Let me just interrupt you for a second.
	I'm not sure what you mean when you say, I feel a lot better.
	Well, I feel a lot less top-down, too crushed.
	Like with the other guy, he would give me these...
	Oh, Nathan, Nathan, Nathan.
	You're such an idealist.
	This is not how the real world works.
	Sometimes you've got to leave the library and go out into the real world.
	Oh yeah, now we all know this stuff.
	But I'm not sure why you think it's important for you to feel better.
	It's important that I know who I can talk to among these people.
	I think. Who I feel good about talking to, like, there's some traction.
	Okay, I understand that.
	But you're still going out with the guy who makes you feel bad, right?
	Um, right.
	Unfortunately, they're all mixed in, so, uh...
	And what does it tell you about the guy who's mixed in and joined at the hip with the guy who attacks you?
	Um... I wouldn't say they're joined at the hip, actually.
	Well, you just did. You said the package, right?
	Sometimes. They're not usually...
	It's a strange circle of friends, because it's like, this guy's sometimes there with this other guy.
	But this guy's more in the group with...
	He doesn't even have this guy's phone number in his phone, for one thing.
	He asked me just to make sure everybody meets up in the same spot.
	Sorry, I'm just going to interrupt you because I'm getting a little confused.
	So there's a guy we'll call Bob who you don't like to talk to.
	There's a guy you call Joe, or we call Joe, that you do like to talk to, right?
	So why are you going out with anything to do with Bob?
	Because... He's a friend with...
	What's another name?
	Well, it doesn't matter, because what you could do is call up Joe, and you could say, hey Joe, let's go and grab a bite to eat or whatever, right?
	Right, I could do that.
	So... And I'm just curious, or I'm just genuinely curious, like, why haven't you done that?
	Um... Actually, I have in the past, just not recently.
	Now, if this guy who you don't like to talk to, who's condescending and sarcastic and bitchy and hostile or whatever, why are you in the room with him?
	Like, that's what I can't quite understand.
	I don't know.
	I mean, other than that he just happens to be at the same table.
	Wait, sorry, you don't know who's going to be there when you go out with people?
	No, normally it just starts with one of my closer friends, who I've kind of gotten through to, Mark, to an extent.
	I mean, he... He came back and apologized quite a bit for that last conversation we had.
	It starts with just him and this other guy that I feel good about talking to.
	Let me just tell you, it's not because I want you to be alone, it's because I want you to have great friends, right?
	But if you talk about virtue and integrity and getting corrupt people out of your life, and that's really what we're talking about in sort of the most fundamental ways, in some ways, right?
	If we are...
	Did we lose everyone?
	Everybody's gone. Maybe we lost the internet.
	Sorry, that wasn't Skype.
	That was not Skype. I'm just having some intermittent internet outages.
	It's cold up here, and apparently they never plan for ice.
	So, unfortunately, it's not...
	Anyway, it's just been slightly problematic.
	So, sorry, just to continue...
	Is Nate back on? Yeah, sorry about that.
	So just to continue, right? So you are in a conversation with a bunch of people, and there's one guy around who is condescending and so on, and you're talking about integrity and virtue and so on, but you're willing to hang out in a room with a guy who is condescending, negative, difficult, nihilistic, this, that, and the other, right?
	You don't sort of get up and leave.
	And again, I know that this is an explosive or stressful thing to do and so on, but what I'm really trying to suggest to you is that if, not saying you have to, if you want to really do the greatest conceivable good with every waking breath, If you want to. That's why I say it's not about your comfort.
	It's certainly not about my comfort and what makes us happy in the moment, but about what is best for the world overall.
	Since we do have this great thing called the truth, we want to try and get it out as much as possible.
	Then what you need to do is to raise your game.
	I'll give you a metaphor because that's what I do and it sure beats coming up with arguments.
	If you want to be a coach, Clearly you want to coach the best possible athletes.
	You want to get people to the Olympics, right?
	So what you don't want to do is you don't want to go down to the fat old guy's cigar club to pick up your marathon runners, right?
	So in the same way...
	What I would suggest is that for you, if you want to do the most that you can to raise the conversation, what you do is you don't hang out and try and reform your existing circle of friends who are intertwined, as you say, with somebody who's really nihilistic and hostile,
	right? Because that's really going to the old smoker's The old fat guy cigar smokers club and saying, well, you know, there's one guy in here who can do 100 meters in two minutes, and that's better than the guy who won't even show up to the track.
	But what I'm saying is, you want to raise your game.
	You want to raise your game, and you want to say, you know what?
	The people that I want to talk to are going to end up being professors.
	The people that I want to talk to are going to end up writing the most amazing blogs.
	The people that I'm going to talk to To get them into this conversation are going to just be the most amazing people around.
	And I'm not going to take any coaching...
	I'm not going to be a coach for anyone except the best.
	Except the best runners.
	I'm not just going to sit there in the old folks' home and say, well, here's a guy who doesn't have a wheelchair.
	Maybe I can make a runner out of him.
	Right? You don't just work with the materials that you gathered around before you got into this conversation, but you say, if...
	You want to do the greatest good.
	I just don't want you to have any illusions about what you're doing, right?
	Because what you're doing is you're going to the old age home and you're saying, well, here's a guy who can hobble off the couch.
	Let me try and make him into a runner.
	As opposed to saying, well, I'm full of the most amazing knowledge.
	I'm going to find the most amazing people to connect with, to try, to help the world, right?
	Does that make any sense?
	Right, except the big question is, where are all these people?
	Well, I'll tell you whether or not, is they're not at the bar with your friends.
	Right. Right, it's like a friend of mine, he always complains about not being able to meet women, right?
	And then when his mom was alive, he'd go down every night to his mom's place because she'd make him food, right?
	She'd cook his food, right? And this guy I know, when I was sort of telling this story, he said, well, that's interesting because, you know, he's saying, well, I can't meet any women.
	And he said, you know where there aren't women?
	It's your mom's place.
	Right? So no matter what you do, it's not there that you're going to meet the women.
	If you go to your mom's neighbor's place, maybe there'll be a woman there.
	But where your mom is, who's like 75 and she's got her old bitty friends and so on, there's no women there.
	So, the first thing to do is to recognize that there are no great budding philosophers in your friends' groups, right?
	Okay. I mean, is that unfair?
	No, it's not unfair.
	It's just that I don't know where else they're...
	I mean, people don't hang out at the library anymore.
	We have the internet. People don't...
	Sure people hang out at the library.
	I go to the library, I see people there all the time. - What do they come there? - This is just a possibility.
	You don't have to do any of this, right?
	But if you're going to go drinking with...
	I just don't want you to get stuck in the null zone.
	If you're going to go drinking with your friends, don't imagine you can turn them into great philosophers, right?
	Because it's just not going to happen.
	They're not you. They're not me.
	It's not going to happen. Right.
	And so, if you're going to go out drinking with them, that's fine.
	Go out and go to the bar and shoot the shit about sports and the weather and whatever, right?
	But what you're going is you're going to the old age home saying, I'm going to get me a great runner.
	I'm just saying, no, go to the old age home and talk about gout and arthritis and whatever, right?
	But what you're doing is you're going to the old age home saying, I'm going to make one of these people into a star runner.
	Right, that's not going to happen.
	Yeah, and you say, well, if I don't go to the old age home, where am I going to find the star runners?
	Well, the first place to go is anywhere except the old age home, right?
	Right. And I don't know what that looks like, but I sure know that as long as you're going to the old age home and imagining you're coaching any kind of real runner, you're never going to find a real runner.
	That's for sure, right?
	Right. Yeah, there aren't...
	Right.
	It's the problem lately.
	It's like, I know where not to do things...
	Like, I know where not to go, what kind of women not to date, now, at least.
	Well, sure. This is the chasm, right?
	But you don't know where to go.
	Right. Yeah.
	No, and this is why the world is so hard to set free, because we all face that problem, right?
	I've let go of the ship that was sinking, and now I'm just stuck out here in the ocean, and sometimes that ship that was sinking looks pretty good, right?
	Right, it does. Right.
	Right. Right.
	Right. I am.
	Right. I have.
	You came to these people when you were not healthy, and now that you're much healthier, you're trying to make them healthy, right?
	Right, exactly. Yeah, don't do that.
	I mean, it's not going to work, right?
	No. They're not you.
	They're not you. You couldn't be stopped from getting these podcasts, right?
	You couldn't be stopped. It's just recognizing the difference between yourself and other people.
	Right. Rachel couldn't stop me.
	Rachel couldn't stop you. If I'd IP banned you, I bet you would have thought of it, but you would have found some way to get the podcast.
	Oh, a friend, can you download, put these on a flash drive, burn them to a DVD? You would have found some way to get these podcasts.
	Nothing could have stopped you, right? Right.
	Right. That's not the case with your friends.
	As I've said before, it's not one person in a thousand who's going to get into this.
	We are elite.
	It is not one person in a thousand who is going to get this in an unstoppable way.
	It is not one person in ten thousand.
	Now we can increase those odds, but given that, the likelihood of that person being in your social circle is statistically zero.
	So far, that's pretty, yeah, zero.
	Right, and I'm not saying you can have this social circle, but just don't imagine that you're going to be able to turn into you, right?
	Right, this might as well be my golf team or something.
	Yeah, I mean, Christine and I met on a volleyball team.
	I never mentioned politics or philosophy once.
	Right. I didn't bring it up.
	I didn't bring up a state, a society.
	That's some work people. We're getting some really interesting background noises here.
	I don't know if other people are hearing them, but if you're not talking, if you could mute your mic, that'd be great.
	That was my phone.
	Sorry. Oh, okay.
	And that's all I'm saying, because you're going to end up in this frustrated place where you're going to keep beating your head against the wall of these people's indifference.
	And maybe you'll get one night where one guy's drunk and he goes, I love you, man.
	You always say the smartest stuff.
	You know, like, that's great. And you'll be like, yay, a convert!
	And it's like, come on.
	Just because a guy fell down the stairs doesn't make him a runner.
	That's true. So have your friends, and don't try and inflict philosophy on your friends.
	You can talk about your interests once or twice, and if they're like, you know what, give me that website, because that just seems like the coolest thing, right?
	Then like, hey, give them the website, and then don't talk to them about it again.
	But if you try and turn, you know, like, you didn't like the fact that Rachel fell in love with you, and then tried to change you, right?
	Right, I didn't like that.
	But I did the same thing.
	Well, you're doing the same thing with your friends, right?
	Right. Is that you chose them before you were interested in this stuff, and now you want them to share your interest in this stuff, and you're kind of inflicting it on them.
	Hmm. Yeah, I've...
	Don't be a stalker.
	That's what I'm saying.
	Don't be that Jodie Foster trailing kind of guy.
	Don't be a stalker.
	If the girl doesn't want to go out with you, just say, okay, well, I'm sorry.
	I'm sure it's her loss, but that's the way it is.
	And if you talk philosophy and people don't get really interested in it and say, you know, I read this and I listened to that podcast and, you know, whatever, I disagree with this, and they don't call you with interest and, you know, just don't pursue them.
	Because then you're talking about becoming an Olympic runner in the old age smoking guy's room and they don't even care about running!
	I see. And then you say, well I'm really about accepting reality.
	Do you see how that looks kind of silly?
	It does. Because you're not accepting their reality.
	Your friends are part of reality.
	All of our relationships are part of reality.
	It's what I was saying earlier about what people are telling me by asking me for all of this paraphernalia and then not using it.
	I can get mad at it or whatever, but that's the reality that I have to work with.
	Or not. Whatever it is I want to do.
	But I have to accept that as a reality.
	the reality that we need to accept is not that the world is round or that the state is evil, but the people are telling us very clearly all the time who they are.
	Man.
	And there's these ideas that I know Christina has mentioned, you know, taking classes or going, you know, taking classes I think is the, one of the only suggestions that even came close to an idea for me at least, that's plausible.
	Because I don't like sports, so I'm not going to go join a sports team.
	I mean, I hate sports.
	Yeah, you could try a walking club, right?
	Then you get a long time to have a conversation with someone that's not loud, right?
	That's not in a loud place. But the thing is, right, your friends are like Ron Paul to you.
	What do you mean? Because if you think that you can turn your friends into philosophers, you're not going to go and look for philosophers, right?
	That's true. It's the fantasy that we can attain something that we can't, that it gets us most stuck in life.
	If I can only get my girlfriend to be nicer to me, this is going to be a perfect relationship.
	But once you accept that you can't make anyone be nice to you, they either have a heart and a soul and empathy or they don't.
	You can't make someone be nice to you.
	If we have this fantasy that we can make other people into that which is convenient for us, then we go down with the ship, right?
	We waste our time. We can waste years, decades of our life trying to turn people into that which is convenient for us.
	And this fantasy that we can do that is what gets people stuck.
	The fantasy that Ron Paul can turn the state into something that's better for us Means that they're never going to have the conversation with the people in their life about violence.
	And your belief that you can somehow pick the lock of your friends and turn them into people who are fascinated by philosophy and love it and this and that and the other, that keeps you stuck in these friendships and it's irritating to you and it's irritating to them.
	It'd be like some guy sitting down with you every time you went out and bugging you for three hours to join his sports team.
	I'm not an athlete, you'll say.
	I'm not an athlete. Stop it!
	Except these guys don't do that, right?
	But that's what they're doing on the inside.
	You're a philosopher. You're the runner.
	Don't ask... Look, I've got five cigarettes hanging out of my mouth.
	Don't ask me to come running with you for four hours every single goddamn time we get together.
	Crap.
	But isn't there a certain amount of liberation in that?
	Like, it's not your job to turn them into philosophers.
	You can let that go.
	You could just go out and shoot the shit with them and do whatever, right?
	Play darts. Play pool.
	Have fun. Somebody says I like that response.
	What response are they talking about?
	Perhaps mine was vaguely succinct.
	He says, I love that response, Nate.
	Right, I don't remember responding with anything.
	I don't know what response was that.
	Oh, crap, right.
	Oh, he just said crap, right.
	Actually, Nate has a certain kind of Tourette's where he just describes his physical activities.
	You never want to be in the room when he says, explosive diarrhea.
	That's just not good.
	So, anyway, Nate, do you need to change?
	Are you okay? I'm just kidding. Go on.
	Oh, Double G is Greg.
	Okay. Well, no, all of this makes a lot of sense.
	And yes, it is quite liberating to reach this point to where I know where not to go.
	And I don't have to...
	It's not that I don't...
	It's not that I shouldn't go there, but it's that, you know...
	I can let go of the idea of ever getting anywhere with them other than shooting the shit or talking about, you know, crap.
	Yeah, I mean, just accept people for who they are.
	And don't think that you have some magical ability.
	Nobody does, right?
	Nobody has any magical ability to make somebody interested in what they're not interested in.
	I mean, I tried with Christina and video games, but after a certain amount of biting and falling asleep, you just, you can't.
	You can't make somebody interested in what they're not interested in.
	You just can't. And you know that because I bet you people have tried to make you interested in stuff.
	I mean, there are stamp collectors in the world, God help us, right?
	Who will sit down with you and bore your brain to weeping tears about stamp collecting.
	Philology, I think it is. And I collected stamps when I was six too, right?
	There are people who collect matchbooks who just would love it if you would come to the matchbook collecting convention.
	And yes, philosophy is more important than that.
	And there are some people who say, my girlfriend is beautiful.
	And then you meet her and it's like, ruff!
	They can sit there and say, no, no, she is beautiful.
	It's like, sorry, she has teeth coming out her cheek or eye or something.
	But that's who they are.
	It's who they are. Philosophy, in its current state, in its current state, there are people who, when they go camping, They want to go with one roll of toilet paper and a hawk to catch their food.
	And they just want to go out into the bush and live off berries and nuts.
	And that's who we are.
	We are extreme thinkers, right?
	Because we are right on the cutting edge.
	We are carving the cutting edge.
	We are Lewis and Clark out there in the wilderness.
	And there's not many people who like that kind of extreme camping.
	Most people want to go in a trailer, right?
	They want to go and, you know, have air mattresses and, you know, maybe a Super 8 or whatever.
	Five-star hotel, Christina, she touches a tent, it screams and bursts into flame, right?
	So I like camping, but she doesn't.
	Some people like portaging. Other people want to go on cruises.
	So, we are incredible, extreme triathlon Ironman athletes out there at the cutting edge of human thought.
	And you're basically dragging people along who just want to put their feet up and watch the game.
	And they're like, I don't want to be an explorer.
	Right. I just want to put my feet up.
	I got pretzels. I got nuts.
	I got a beer. I'm content.
	What are you dragging me out into the wilderness and throwing me off a cliff for?
	I don't want to be a pirate, right?
	And you've got to respect that, because that's just a reality.
	It is. Yeah.
	Wow. Well, you've given me a lot more to think about for this week.
	It's like every week I get it.
	Once a week I like to do it.
	I just want you to be happy in your relationships and just accept reality.
	These people are not philosophers and there's nothing wrong with that.
	The nihilist is an asshole.
	I'm totally fine with that.
	But he's going to be a nihilist and you're not going to be able to change him.
	You're not going to be able to change him.
	Recognizing where we have no power is having power.
	Wow. Yeah, this is definitely another winning show.
	I have something to listen to at least two or three times this week.
	Excellent, excellent. Okay, well listen, I'm glad.
	Let me move it along in case anybody else has questions or comments so we can go back to the howling wilderness of people who face-planted on their keyboards and are currently dribbling...
	Unka B? Unka B. Unka Burning B. Go ahead.
	Alright, thanks a lot, Steph.
	I'm actually headed to dinner real quick.
	Or not dinner, but we'll watch The Tin Man with a friend.
	Fantastic. No philosophy.
	No philosophy. No philosophy.
	So, have fun. Alright.
	Okay, bye. Bye. Well, I watched the Against Me video and I was really impressed by it.
	Oh my god, I'm so sorry.
	You know, let me just interrupt you for a second.
	I just understood what a listener was talking about this morning.
	And let me just interrupt you.
	I'm so, so sorry. Let me just interrupt you for a second.
	So this morning, a listener popped up on the IM and said, I just watched that internet video you did against me.
	I took it totally the wrong way.
	It's like, what, you think I was targeting you personally?
	I did the whole video against you?
	Sorry, just when you said that, I understood what he was talking about.
	Sorry to the listener.
	A thousand apologies. Please continue.
	No problem. You know, I've been listening to your podcast since about May of this year.
	I think I've listened to roughly 600 of them.
	And it really wasn't until that video that I really got that it's people in general in society who support the morality of the use of The initiating use of force, you know, from the state.
	And so I'm just kind of wondering, you know, if after all 600 podcasts it took until now to really just finally really get that, that if I were to You know, get into conversation with someone and kind of spring that question on them.
	I mean, for me, let me back up a second.
	For me, that video, the Against Me video was a real kind of awakening, red pill type of experience.
	And I wonder if it's really kind of fair to spring that question on someone who really hasn't really heard much about this kind of stuff.
	And I even wonder if I could even trust their answer, even if it was yes.
	I do believe you should be shot.
	This is all, for me anyway, this is such a fundamentally radical Or fundamentally different from what the state of the world is.
	And to kind of spring that question on someone and take their answer at fixed value, I just don't know if I... This is kind of a theoretical question, but I wonder if I could even trust their answer if they haven't even listened to one podcast, to my 600.
	Right. Now, did you listen in sequence?
	I listened in sequence to around four, in the 400s, and then I started listening from the 600s and been listening to a lot of the later ones lately.
	Well, all of the answers are in the 500s.
	No, I'm kidding. So you listen to, I mean, 183 is the one where I sort of really do talk about how libertarianism is about your relationships and this and that and the other.
	There is a, I had to, with the video that you're talking about, I had to tone it down quite a bit because there's such an intensity in eye contact even on a little YouTube screen.
	There's such an intensity in eye contact that I'm guessing that it connected with you in a way that audio doesn't.
	So I didn't raise my voice at all during that podcast.
	It was very measured, very slow, very calm in a way.
	And that has a way of bypassing the false self and connecting in a way that is very powerful.
	So that could be one of the reasons why it happened.
	Certainly I have talked about the coercion of the state from the very beginning.
	As far as springing the question on someone, well, that's a loaded way of putting it, right?
	You know, it's like some guy saying, well, I don't want to spring a proposal on my girlfriend.
	It's like, well, but yes, if she's like two weeks into your relationship, but there's ways of approaching a conversation that Can reduce the tension that someone has about it, right?
	So the first thing that you can say is, this is some freaky shit I'm going to spill on you here, right?
	Or something less bad rappy, right?
	That you can say to somebody, this is a very unusual thing.
	But I think very true idea.
	This is going to shock you.
	This is going to freak you out.
	I'm perfectly happy for you to correct me if it's not true.
	But this is where my crazy ass thinking has gotten me.
	And you can let me know.
	Put them at ease that you're not saying this like it's self-evident.
	So the first person to say the earth is round couldn't just go up and say, you know, the earth is round, you know.
	Because people would be like, what are you talking about?
	But if you say, I know the earth seems round...
	I know the Earth seems flat, I know that you've walked 100 miles in every direction and not seen a single curve, but I'm working and here are the facts that I'm working with.
	You know, the ship goes over the horizon and goes, you know, we see the bottom and then the mast disappearing and then the pennant at the top of the mast.
	And, you know, when you look at the curvature of two sticks put in the ground and the shadow and they're far apart, it indicates this.
	And if you look at the moon, it's round.
	And you look at the sun, it's round.
	So I'm working, you know, so you would prepare them for this radical departure from what they consider to be true without just saying, the state is violence.
	Do you agree? Do you agree?
	No! Get out of the car! I'm not even going to slow down, right?
	I mean, that would be springing it on someone, but there's ways that you can prepare them for this.
	And doctors do that, of course.
	If you have a diagnosis, you'll be a little bit more gentle about bringing that kind of up.
	You know, sort of send an email saying, hey, cancer, you.
	You're together at last, right?
	So there's ways of doing it, but to be sensitive to somebody's listening, right?
	To be sensitive to somebody's listening is important.
	As far as trusting their answer goes, well, that's, you know, you're really asking...
	People always ask when they use the word trust, they say, well, I don't know if I can trust this other person, I don't know if I can trust the situation, but what you're really asking is, I don't know if I can trust myself, because it's going to be your evaluation of the person's response.
	The other thing, too, is that...
	The last thing I'll say is that It's not going to work most times.
	You can tweak stuff, but as we talked about at the very beginning, there's a huge financial, emotional, social cost, economic cost that occurs with learning the truth.
	Falsehood works in very many highly productive ways.
	Certainly when I was not down with the integrity I was making Well, quite a bit more money.
	So the truth is inconvenient in very many practical ways.
	And most people aren't going to make it.
	They're not going to make it over. The cost-benefit analysis isn't going to work.
	But as I was saying to Nate, in the same way that you could not be stopped from listening to all these podcasts, right?
	Nobody's paying you to listen to all these podcasts.
	God knows I'm not a degree-granting institution, so you don't even get to put any letters past your name.
	So, no one could stop you, and you want to just keep going through and going through and going through the people in your life until you find the one or two who are going to get it.
	And everyone else, they're going to freak out, they're going to get upset, and you can put it forward as a tentative thesis, you can put it like...
	A lot of people made it through UPB because I didn't say, this is the truth, dammit.
	I do believe that it is, but I didn't say that.
	I said, this is my thesis.
	I'm going to take my best swing at this beast.
	You let me know whether you think it works or not, right?
	That gives them an invitation to debate, right?
	But if you just give people the status of violence, And you want me shot!
	And I know I put that forward in the video, but there's a reason that that's podcast 927 or whatever, right?
	But there's ways that you can prepare it.
	Most people aren't going to make it, and you just got to keep moving and trust yourself with their responses.
	Right, right. I appreciate your comments.
	Was there anything else that you wanted to ask about that, or was there anything that I missed?
	No, no, it was a thought that came up when you were talking with Nate, and I just wanted to hear your comments about it.
	Okay, well, glad to have helped and just keep me posted about how these conversations go.
	Nobody's obligated to have these conversations, right?
	I mean, you just have to be honest.
	If you're not going to have them, just say, I'm scared to, right?
	And that's fine. I mean, it's just all we're looking for is honesty in this conversation and not you must go and march and nail a UPB sign to your forehead or whatever.
	All right. Did we have anybody else who wanted in or up?
	At the conversation.
	Hello. Hello.
	Hi. I was just wanting to talk to you about something that happened to me recently which has had a really weird reaction in me.
	Even now talking about it, kind of getting the whole flight or fight response and heart beating really quickly.
	I asked Jake Tuttle if it was okay to talk about this and he said it was fine.
	I had that conversation that came out where I spoke to my dad after a very long time and not talking to him saying I don't plan to see him this Christmas.
	And that kind of broke down into the me explaining all the problems I've had in our relationship.
	And as a response, he kind of withdrew the guarantor form that he was using for the flat I live in, at which point my girlfriend and I faced not being able to move into the place.
	And the only way I could get him to give the form back was basically say I was sorry, which I did because I wanted to get back into the flat.
	Okay, you know I'm going to pause you there, right?
	I know you are. Of course you are.
	That's why your heart is hammering, right?
	So tell me why I'm pausing you here.
	Because I imagine you'll have some ingenious way of telling me I shouldn't have given in or I didn't need to.
	Well, let's talk about your feelings about it, right?
	Let's talk about what your experience and your decision-making process was around that.
	My experience of that was I was very, very, very upset.
	Not so much because I had to say some pretty horrible things to my dad, because they were true, but because I felt, you know, I basically caused us to be kicked out on the street.
	And lose a lot of money in the process.
	Kicked out on the street, like you genuinely don't have any friends you could stay with for a little bit of time, like you would literally be living on the street?
	That's true. But yeah, no, not like that.
	Because there's a reason that you're using those kinds of extreme statements, right?
	There is. Yeah, I mean, you're raising the stakes of, right, so you're saying, well, if I didn't cave in to my dad, I would be thrown out on the street, right?
	Yes. So that's a story, right?
	Because it's not true. You would not be thrown out on the street.
	What would happen is you wouldn't get to move into this apartment.
	That's true. And we'd lose our deposit money, which is a lot for us.
	Right, and you would lose your deposit money.
	That's for sure, you've gone through that, you know that for sure, because you can get deposit money back if certain circumstances change, like if you don't get approved for X, Y, and Z. Deposit down on a house, if you don't get your financing, you don't have to pay.
	For this, it was to take it off the market.
	We had to pay a certain amount, and if for whatever reason we didn't move in, in the end, they said they were going to keep it.
	Okay, yeah. You might be able to negotiate with them or whatever, right?
	You might be able to find somebody else who wants the place and get them to reimburse you.
	There's options, right? That's all I'm saying, right?
	Okay, but there's definitely a financial hit for sure, right?
	Yes. And of course you want this flat, this apartment, so there's a hit in terms of your living space and so on.
	So you were weighing these two things, right?
	Yes. So what was it that your dad required from you?
	Did he require from you an apology for what you said or did he require from you an admission that it was not true what you said?
	He said, basically he said, I don't see why I should put my head on the chopping block for you if that's the way you feel.
	I think you should say you're sorry.
	But sorry for what?
	He just said, I think you should say you're sorry.
	Which allowed me to...
	But what do you think he meant, right?
	Like, if you punch me and I say that I'm mad at you punching me, and you say, well, I want you to apologize, like, I was wrong for telling you you punched me because you didn't punch me, or I'm sorry that I don't like being punched, or, like, what is it that you're apologizing for?
	That's what I can't quite figure out.
	I think he wants me to apologize for ever bringing it up.
	Because it didn't happen?
	Like, did he admit that it happened? No, uh...
	Because, I guess, bringing it up offended him.
	Oh, so he wanted to apologize, he wanted you to apologize because it's bad to offend somebody else?
	Uh, yeah. Well, no, bad to offend him.
	Well, no. See, offense is a global statement, right?
	Offense is a moral statement.
	Mm-hmm. I know, but I don't think he'd apply it that way.
	Well, no, he is applying it that way, right?
	I'm just trying to understand.
	Correct me where I'm wrong.
	If I say something you did pissed me off, that's a personal statement.
	If I say that something you did was offensive, that is a universal moral statement, right?
	Yes, yes. So was he saying that something that you did was offensive objectively?
	Um... I would suppose so, yes.
	It's hard to say, because he didn't actually tell me why he wanted me to apologize.
	He just said, you know, I don't see why I should sign this form.
	If that's the way you feel, I think you should at least apologize.
	And so I just said, sorry.
	Okay, and in that moment, right, you could have certainly said, maybe I should apologize, but I'm not sure what it is I'm apologizing for, and I wouldn't want to just say the words, right?
	Because that's kind of insulting to everyone in the equation, right?
	Yeah, that's true. Like, he might as well say, if you say Rumpelstiltskin or uncle, then I'll give you your deposit, and you say Rumpelstiltskin, it's just empty, right?
	It's meaningless. So you didn't ask him what it is that you'd be apologizing for, right?
	No, I didn't. And how did you feel when you were saying the word sorry for reasons you didn't know?
	I... Just almost nothing.
	It was kind of like...
	There was a moment of hesitation, but it was more like, you know, I can be a bit weaselly about this.
	I can just say sorry because he's being...
	I felt very unreasonable.
	If he's going to behave that way and threaten me in that manner, I'll just say I'm sorry and then go about doing whatever I want after that.
	Right. Now, do you know the primary reason that you apologized had nothing to do with your dad, right?
	Um... I'm not sure.
	What do you mean? Well, the primary reason that you apologized was not to do with your dad, because you're not moving into the place with your dad, right?
	No, no. So, why was the primary reason you apologized?
	Would it be the lovely lady I was moving in with?
	Well, of course, right? Of course.
	Because, let me lay it to you on the line, and if she's around, she's welcome to join the conversation, right?
	But if I did that, Christina would simply refuse to move into the place.
	Okay. Right, because she'd say, wait a minute, you apologized to someone who abused you, For the sake of a place that you want me to move into?
	Right? But we would only have that place because you got abused again.
	Hmm. So that's not...
	That's like starting a relationship by having an affair with someone, right?
	The foundation of our home is the only reason we're in this flat, in this apartment, is because you were abused again.
	I guarantee you, Christina would never move into that place.
	Right, so what happened with your girlfriend when you said, because she obviously knew you had this conversation with your dad, right?
	Oh yeah, yeah. And so she knew what your dad had done to you, right?
	Yes. And she agreed with you that this was pretty bad behavior on his part when you were a child, right?
	Oh yeah, entirely, entirely.
	Now, if she had gone in and said, like, so you had this conversation with your dad, and then did your dad say, I'm not going to co-sign the guarantor, or I'm not going to be a guarantor, and was it right in the middle of that conversation, or was there any breathing space between that thing and your apology?
	There was some breathing space, yes.
	And did you talk about this with your girlfriend?
	Yes, we did. What did she say?
	She said... It's not so important that you have to do that.
	We can find other ways to work around it.
	It's not so important that you have to do what?
	Don't apologize. We don't have to do that.
	We can work around it.
	She was thinking about calling her dad to try and get him to be a guarantor for both of us.
	Did you believe her? I did.
	But this is in part with what I was calling about.
	Jake also offered to do that after I told him about the conversation and after I moved in, because I was out of contact for a while.
	And he very kindly, really kindly offered to do that.
	And I immediately had the kind of same weird, panicky reaction to that.
	And it's kind of like, I don't like that idea of someone else doing that for me.
	For sure. Was your girlfriend's opinion that you could apologize or not as you saw fit, but that she didn't feel that you should apologize?
	Yes. Now, when you said that you did apologize, what was her reaction?
	I didn't actually apologize until later on after the conversation.
	After which conversation?
	After we talked about her.
	Right, but then you must have told her, I apologize to my dad.
	Oh yes, yes.
	And what was her response? Kind of sad.
	Kind of asking me how I felt.
	I'm not too sure, actually.
	It's fairly safe to say that she did not take a stand on this.
	Yeah, that's safe to say.
	Right. So she didn't back you up.
	I'm not trying to pick on your girlfriend, right?
	You've got to understand that you were in a highly stressful situation.
	You needed somebody there to watch your back, and we all need that.
	Right? And I think it's fairly safe to say that maybe with the best of intentions, and it doesn't matter, this, that, and the other, right?
	But she was not watching your back.
	I guess so, no. She wasn't saying, don't you dare apologize to this asshole.
	Yeah, I see what you mean. I don't want his money.
	If he abused you, I don't want his money.
	Like, you wouldn't take a loan from someone who beat up your girlfriend, right?
	No. You would say, are you crazy?
	Yeah. And we're not going to this guy.
	I'm not... I'm not apologizing to him when he beat you up.
	I'm not apologizing to him in order to get alone, right?
	Yeah. Do you feel that you would take that stand?
	Well, against that, yeah, totally.
	Now, you do realize that what your dad, and I don't even know what it was, and it doesn't really matter, but what your dad did to you as a child is way worse than somebody beating your girlfriend up when she's an adult.
	Yeah. The power differential, the lack of opportunity to escape, the lack of independence, the lack of income.
	So there's something that's missing in your and your girlfriend's perception of this interaction.
	Now, it's okay for it to be missing for you because it's your dad, right?
	And you're trained to be an apology robot, and you're trained to never offend your dad, right?
	Because he's obviously so hypersensitive, and with that hypersensitivity often comes a kind of brutality, particularly towards those who are helpless.
	So it's okay for you to not be conscious of this, right?
	But I tell you this, your girlfriend totally let you down.
	This doesn't make her a bad person, doesn't mean that she's not a good girlfriend in other ways, but She totally let you down by letting this happen.
	By not taking a stand and saying, no way, no how.
	Now that I know what your dad did to you as a child, I would not take his money if he gave it to me free a million dollars.
	Yeah. I mean, it was odd when...
	I mean, I think it's a problem I have as well in relation to when people talk about this, because I kind of understand it on an intellectual level, and I do hold a fair amount of scorn for parents like that.
	But when it comes to an immediate level, I just saw that on a base, practical level.
	So I didn't really make that connection.
	Well, let's go back in time, right?
	Let's go back in time. And you say to your girlfriend that my dad wants to...
	Like, I'm going to have this conversation with my dad because he did X, Y, and Z when I was a kid that was abusive, right?
	And if your girlfriend didn't know this beforehand or whatever, right?
	Then... How would you have felt if you'd have said, oh my god, I can't believe that we almost took money from somebody who abused you when you were a helpless child.
	And you go and have that conversation, and I am immediately going to find alternate ways for us to get into this apartment.
	And there is no way in hell that I am ever going to move into that apartment.
	There is no way in hell I am ever going to take a single thin dime from your dad.
	So you go into this conversation with the complete confidence of knowing that you have nothing to lose, that you are in no way vulnerable to this abuser, that he has nothing on you, he's got no hold over you, he's got no financial leverage over you, because I am never going to set foot in that place, and I don't care if I have to take a part-time job for the next year, I am not going to take a dime from a guy who abused you.
	How would I react if she said that?
	I'd be stunned.
	I don't know how I'd react.
	Probably very relieved.
	Very? Relieved.
	Right. Right.
	I guarantee you.
	you and i guarantee you that you would have had an entirely different conversation with your dad that wouldn't have ended up with you being knuckled under and abused again and forced to disown your own history and your own abuse and your own truth in order for a pile of bricks to pass into your temporary ownership so i don't care about i don't care about the flat i I mean, whatever.
	That's a complete inconsequential symptom of the real problem.
	Yeah, it's...
	I don't know why.
	It's really tough for me to view it at the time, to view it at that level.
	I mean, you know, I understand.
	Look, this is not a criticism of you, and fundamentally, it's not even a criticism of your girlfriend, because obviously she's got her own issues and this and that, right?
	But it's not my job to figure out my relationship with my parents when I'm in a romantic relationship, right?
	The reason that we go to therapy, the reason that we have friends, the reason that we have a social circle is in many ways, other than the sort of fund and so on, right?
	In many ways, it's so that people can help us see the things we cannot see ourselves, right?
	So, as I've mentioned a couple of times before, when Christina would drag me over to her parents' place, then she'd just psychologically vanish, right?
	I'm the one who had to say, there is something wrong with your relationship with your parents.
	And here's what my experience is, and here's what I think the problem is, and I'm going to ask her questions.
	And this took place over the course of months.
	Not endlessly, but I'm the one who had to see Christina's relationship with her parents and take a stand.
	In the same way, Christina had to see my relationship with my brother and take a stand.
	Because I couldn't. I couldn't take a stand with my brother.
	Christina couldn't take a stand with her parents.
	We need those in our lives to watch our backs because we all have these blind spots that we're programmed to not see these things and you're programmed to apologize to your dad and you're programmed to knuckle under to your dad.
	And everybody knows that because you were abused by your dad when you were a helpless child.
	So you are programmed to be a little obedience and apology robot for your dad.
	That's totally clear. Everybody who's not you can see that very clearly.
	Including your girlfriend.
	Unless She's the same way.
	And if she's the same way, then you guys have to work at getting this information out into the forefront of your relationship.
	And you have to look at this interaction, which ended up with you being abused by your dad again.
	Sure, I'm sorry to interrupt you.
	What do you mean the same way?
	Same as me. Yeah, if she is an apology robot for her parents, if she's there for her parents' convenience, right?
	Or if she herself was abused.
	I think you hit the nail on the head there.
	Because we both cut most of our family out except our dads, which is interesting.
	Right, and that's not surprising that she couldn't see in you what she can't see in herself.
	But you need to both see it in each other and you need to support each other in avoiding this kind of humiliation and abuse in the present, right?
	Because this is going to happen over and over again until you get it.
	It's going to happen with bosses.
	It's going to happen with extended family.
	It's going to happen with your dads, for sure.
	It's going to happen with your kids, too, if you don't get this, right?
	And so you need to have this conversation and you need to say, look, we completely screwed up here.
	Right? You screwed up and I screwed up.
	Now I have some excuse in that he's my dad and I'm programmed for this.
	And obviously you have some excuses in so far.
	It's not a blame session, right? You have some excuses in so far.
	But we both know that taking this money was a really bad idea.
	I mean, you're entirely right.
	But it wasn't. It's just a minor nagging point.
	It wasn't taking any money.
	It was just a guarantor.
	You're entirely right. And in a sense, if it's going to cost you money in terms of your deposit, then it's just another way of looking at it.
	It's going to cost you money. But I agree with you, and you're totally right.
	So I'll try to remember the guarantor thing.
	But you guys did not...
	I'll just talk about you, right?
	Because I'm sure this has happened with your girlfriend as well.
	You need to be there for each other.
	And you need to pause and slow things down with any kind of parental interaction.
	And you need to sit there and say, okay...
	So right now I've called my dad an abuser and we're relying on him for money.
	What do we think about that?
	How does that make us feel?
	Is that a good idea? What are we willing to sacrifice in order to get an abusive person to have no power or less power over us?
	And you need to sort of slow down these interactions with your parents, because it sounds like you're kind of trundling along on autopilot, right?
	Like, I'm mad at my dad, I'm going to tell him that.
	Oh, I need something from him, he wants me to apologize.
	Okay, I'll apologize. It's all so rapid, it's all so quick, right?
	You just blur through it, right?
	Yeah, it certainly wasn't the time I was planning to have it, but unfortunately he can get...
	The reason I don't have many conversations with him is he can get very picky and questiony and naggy.
	The conversation quickly went down into that direction.
	Now, was your girlfriend in the room while you were having this conversation?
	No. Okay, you can't be doing that, right?
	Because if you're up against an abuser...
	You cannot be alone.
	Because when you were a kid, you were totally alone, right?
	I mean, in regards to your relationship with your abuser.
	So you can't be having highly volatile conversations with somebody who has abused you without somebody who supports you in the room, right?
	So you need to kind of break that cycle, right?
	The reason that this occurred is because it was a reenactment of your childhood.
	So you need to do what you can to avoid provoking the same stimulus response that you had when you were a kid, right?
	Where you feel alone, you feel helpless, you feel like, well, I've just got to appease him and so on, right?
	You need to break those cycles.
	You need to break that habit by having different circumstances occur in the present, if that makes sense.
	No, no, that makes a lot of sense.
	Yeah, it's quite weird.
	I mean, I wasn't planning, you know, I'm actually planning quite soon now that I was waiting until I got the internet back to just drop him an email basically saying, you know, don't get in contact with me for, you know, I'm taking a break and just leave it at that.
	So the conversation thing won't happen again like that.
	But yeah, you're right.
	And so, yeah, I mean, again, this is not like, you know, you witch, you toss me to the dragon or whatever, right?
	But once you identify these weaknesses, you can do an enormous amount To work to ameliorate them, right?
	And since you do have weaknesses with regards to your abuser, as we all do, there's nothing shameful, there's nothing wrong, it's perfectly natural to have these things, but you need to watch each other's backs and you need to make that commitment.
	And now that you pointed out, I can see how I've done the exact same thing and I'm feeling a bit like a jerk at the moment.
	I have no doubt, and you need to not blame yourself, because this is how you guys are programmed.
	We're all programmed the same way.
	I don't know if you've heard in the listener conversations where we hit the null zone and it's totally obvious and you want to yell the ass to someone and they can't see it themselves.
	This is your one, right?
	Which is around integrity around abusers, because you're trained not to have any integrity around abusers, because...
	When you have integrity around abusers, you become highly inconvenient for them, and that's not why they had children was for the inconvenience, but rather for the ego gratification and the narcissistic exploitation.
	That's exemplified by my dad's behavior of, well, if you're not going to tell me everything I want to hear, why should I sign a form for you?
	Right, right, right, right.
	No, that's quite right.
	So, I mean, this is just the relationship to focus on is not the one with your dad, which is obviously just a doomed and exploitive relationship, non-relationship, but with your girlfriend so that you guys can watch each other's backs and feel more confidence and not have to get yourself out of these situations, but avoid getting into them, right? Because the whole point is to not end up in a situation where you're under the control of somebody who's abusive, i.e.
	your dad. But you want to end up not getting into situations where exploitive and abusive people have power over you, and you can only do that by watching each other's back.
	No, no, you're entirely right.
	It's a bit odd.
	I was focusing so much on his side of things, you know, where he went wrong.
	I didn't actually, which is, you know, not surprising that he'd do something wrong.
	I should have been focusing more on my side of things.
	Well, and on your girlfriends.
	Yes. Yeah, sorry. That's what I meant by that.
	To help you through this stuff, for sure.
	For sure. Well, thanks.
	And I'm sorry that I interrupted you right at the beginning of the story.
	I totally get that jerk.
	And, you know, it sounds like a perfectly viable thing to do to ditch this jerk from your life.
	But, you know, you really want to focus on the relationship where you've got some investment and some juice and some positive stuff, which is with your girlfriend.
	Yeah, no, thank you very much for the conversation.
	I appreciate it. Didn't go where I was thinking, but it was very, very, very helpful.
	I'm very, very glad. Thank you so much for sharing, and best of luck.
	Keep us posted with how that chat goes with your significant other, your main squeeze.
	Well, thank you very much, everybody.
	I really do appreciate everybody dropping by.
	If there's absolutely anybody who's desperate to talk for a second or two, I can certainly entertain one more, but I'm perfectly happy to shut it down for the week, too.
	And go and have my kibble.
	So, last chance.
	Anybody? Question? Issue?
	Comment? Pause?
	Problem? Alright.
	Thank you everybody so, so much for a wonderful, wonderful chat on this Sunday, the 2nd of December 2007.
	I look forward to your donations.
	Please buy my books.
	I can come out and cut you some great deals for Christmas to get them to you.
	You can still get them in time for the 24th.

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