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Dec. 16, 2007 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

01:50:02

941 Sunday Call In Show Dec 16 2007

Sad cops, sexual tension, nihilistic friends and self-consciousness...

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	Well, thank you, everybody, so much for coming by the Freedom Aid Radio Sunday Chat-O-Rama-A-Thon, December the 16th, 2007.
	This is not the last show before Christmas.
	I guess we're doing one on the 23rd.
	And for those of you who have been eagerly awaiting the latest musical massacre from Free Domain Radio, FDR 900 Sympathy for the Minarchist has been completed with all due apologies to all the originating artists and apologies to those who have to listen in the future, but it certainly was fun to record, let me put it that way.
	So... I'd like to just start off with a little bit since we are taking our friendly little looks at our cats in blue.
	There is an article from December the 15th, The Globe and Mail, Canada's.
	This is the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
	Demands top to bottom overhaul.
	Force should become arm's length agency with civilian oversight, Task Force says.
	And the story goes a little something like this.
	The Royal Canadian Mounted Police is infected with rampant despair, disillusionment, and fatigue.
	And struggling rank-and-file members are being failed by the outmoded police force, a federal task force said yesterday.
	Massive structural changes are needed to rehabilitate the 133-year-old national force, including granting the organization separate employer status from government, the adoption of a civilian oversight board, and the creation of a new, more powerful independent complaints authority,
	according to a report from the five-member panel convened to help overhaul the RCMP. During its five-month investigation, the panel encountered, quote, fierce pride in the force paired with, quote, despair, disillusionment, and anger with an organization that is failing them, said David Brown, a Toronto lawyer who chaired the group.
	With remarkable but disturbing consistency, we heard of chronic shortages of people and equipment, of overwork and fatigue, of issues of wellness, health, and even safety, he said.
	We learned about basic human management systems that haven't worked for years, mandatory, unpaid overtime, discipline, and grievance systems that don't work.
	A promotion system with little or no credibility and sometimes embarrassing record of accounting to the people they serve.
	Mr. Brown said rank and file members are, quote, struggling to do their best under the tremendous burden of an inefficient and inappropriately structured organization.
	To survive, the task force said that the RCMP must shed its cloak of secrecy and quickly adopt serious changes that are, quote, not for the faint of heart.
	The RCMP, sorry, they also set a strict two-year deadline for the changes to be instituted and asked that a civilian body be set up to oversee their implementation and set the foundation for an additional 45 recommendations.
	So it's interesting, and I'll just touch on this briefly, I'm sure that the full and massive irony is not lost on a group of voluntarists or anarchists, which is that, strangely enough, the police, when the police feel that they do not have control over their destiny,
	The police are filled, you see, with fear and despair and depression and anger and futility.
	And that, of course, is a remarkable statement.
	Now, I'm not sure what we're supposed to do with this.
	Perhaps cheer that life as a state-owned thug is not as much fun as it could be or should be?
	Are we supposed to feel sorry for these poor, paid thugs?
	Because, as it turns out, Being a uniformed member of the National Mafia is not a joyful omelette to be consumed every morning.
	Can you imagine if in a prison where the guards were ruthless and brutal and sadistic and tasered people and killed them and as I remember From tales told when I was younger,
	would take the inmates down to the basement where they would beat them around the head with blunt instruments while a telephone book was placed upon their head so that no particular or specific bruises were left.
	This is what happens in the Toronto Police Department.
	There's a name for it that escapes me now, but there's even a place that you go down to to have this occur.
	That these brutal and sadistic thugs in a prison environment were unhappy, were feeling sad and upset and helpless.
	And this memo about how sad the prison guards were was circulated among all the unjust and brutalized prisoners.
	What? Oh, what should the reaction of the prisoners be?
	If they have even a shred of pride.
	Too bad for you is sort of what I feel.
	Yes, these people are sucked into an enormous amount of propaganda, but police forces are about the most corrupt institutions on earth, if you don't count the military, full of the most bizarre, exploitive, destructive, sociopathic characters.
	There was a Gentleman mentioned on 60 Minutes recently, or not too recently, a little while, about a year ago, who was a hitman who decided to join the police force, and he joined for a couple of years and then went back to being a hitman, and then he was back on the force for a little while.
	Clearly, Somebody who is a mugger can't step into the shoes of a surgeon with any efficiency, but somebody who's a hitman, apparently, can join and work perfectly well within the police force without any problems.
	Why? Because it's the same personality structure.
	So I just wanted to point out, of course, you know, there may be those of us, and I don't count myself out from this number, who can find it within their hearts to have some sympathy for these poor deluded people, Who step into a national uniform of infinite thuggery,
	who steal the money from the people they are supposed to protect, who threaten with jail and endless rape by your contemporaries, anybody who disobeys with or disagrees with in any practical manner, their political masters.
	These attack dogs, these Praetorian gods of the ruling class, I do understand that they are subjected to the wildest propaganda about the cats in blue and what a thin blue line separates us from anarchy!
	And isn't that true?
	But just not in the way that people think.
	That's all I had to say as an introduction.
	I am more than happy to take out your questions now, and if you would like to pipe up, remember, just seize the gap.
	We can be assertive here, and the fewer gaps, the less editing, which makes us as a team up here in the North American FDR matrix much happier.
	So please, if you'd just like to grab a mic and jump in.
	And just for those who have been calling in a little bit over the last, like using up some bandwidth, which is fine, over the last little while, just hold back for a sec in case we just have any new comments or questions.
	So please, if you have a comment or a question, the floor is yours.
	So here's a question for you.
	Sure. Um, let's say, uh, let's say I know this guy named Bob, and I know this girl named Jane,
	and Bob and Jane have been arguing with each other over Fairly...
	Silly...
	I don't want to say silly, but...
	Surface issues.
	And trying to recruit...
	Friends of theirs...
	For...
	As allies.
	If you will. And...
	I'm curious how, if you were stuck in a situation like that, how you would deal with it?
	You mean how would I deal with it if I was an impartial third party or somebody who was trying to be dragged into the melee?
	Exactly. If you were being enticed or entreated to take the side of one person or the other, and it seemed to you like there was dysfunction on both sides, well, I would tell them to jump in bed and get it over with.
	Or at least have phone sex or something, you know, like take the sexual tension elsewhere and don't bother me with it and don't pretend that this is about any kind of surface issues.
	So you think that's what it is then?
	Oh, sure. Yeah, no, I mean, when sort of, and we can generally jump into the stereotypical view of the opposite sex, but, you know, this is a form of sexual immaturity, right, where there's a certain amount of bickering that occurs, which is a sort of Playful,
	on the edge of dysfunction kind of frisson or friction that is going back and forth between two people who are sexually interested in each other and can't say to each other, hey, I'm sexually interested in you.
	I think you dropped something or something like that.
	Well, that's one angle I hadn't thought of.
	I mean, that's...
	I guess that's a possibility.
	Well, we have a very strong don't engage suggestion, right, at Free Domain Radio.
	So if this stuff is occurring within the bounds of this conversation, then have you suggested that they should not engage with each other?
	Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	In fact, I even suggested that to the one person, if it was that significant a problem, why not come to the Sunday show, right?
	Well, sure. I don't know if this is something that's occurring in the FDR community.
	If any of the people are listening to this, then just type into the chat window and the lovely and talented wife will see it and we can bring you out to have a chat about it.
	I don't know anything about the content of any such dispute, but...
	There's a phase, which is usually slightly before puberty, where the way that you know if a boy likes a girl is he dips her pigtails in the inkwell, so to speak, right?
	He throws snowballs at her.
	I mean, it's just... It's a very primitive or immature style or phase of sexual development where the only way that you know there's a positive feeling is when there's a negative acting out.
	And it does tend to get into this kind of bickering, right?
	And so on. And it's clearly such a deviation from the general tenets of this conversation that it must be something fairly primitive.
	And if they're not willing to disengage with each other, right, if they genuinely don't like each other, then, of course, they simply would not talk to each other, right?
	Or they would talk to each other privately in such a way as to resolve their differences, even if the resolution of their differences was only that they agreed to disagree or agreed to not engage with each other if they came across each other in the chat window or sort of wherever, right?
	But if they're not willing to disengage, then clearly there are a bunch of secondary gains that are going on.
	And between a male and a female, you know, the first secondary gain to look for is sexual tension, right?
	Because it's a pretty primitive and powerful drive.
	By primitive, I don't mean unsophisticated.
	I just mean sort of satanic.
	So, sorry, please.
	Does that make any sense?
	Yeah, yeah. Given the parties involved, I think that does make some sense.
	Right. Now, the other thing, of course, is that if they are, if they do decide that there is some sexual tension that they wish to discuss, it just would be helpful for them to let us know when they're going to discuss it and where.
	So that we can critique, right?
	Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.
	Put it in a form that's digestible for everyone.
	Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.
	I like lemming suits.
	Everybody has a different thing, though, that kind of gets them going.
	So we can, of course, make suggestions in many different ways.
	Maybe one of them can wear a beaver tail and the other one a peacock tail.
	Maybe one of them can have a beak.
	There's lots of different ways to approach it and that can be satisfying to everyone.
	And maybe what we can do is just pile all of their fetishes onto one person.
	So have them in a scuba gear with a leather mask.
	You know, there's lots of different things that we can do.
	As a community, to help this along.
	Self-expression is the key.
	So you've given up the fur glove then?
	Actually, I just don't wear it on my hands anymore.
	Because I like pacing back and forth, but given what I've done with the fur glove, the amount of static buildup that comes along is actually quite startling, and it makes very, very slight tufts of hair stand up on my head.
	But perhaps we should continue.
	I had actually a second question about yesterday's Mark Stevens program.
	Yes.
	The, uh, the, there were a couple of callers on that show, um, that, uh, it seemed to me, uh, it sounded to me like they thought it sounded to me like they thought they were calling into a different show.
	Ha ha ha.
	You mean like the polar opposite, black is white, up is down show?
	Like... Like the questions...
	Like the one guy with the...
	For example, the one guy with the business about redirecting...
	Oh, nationalizing interest payments in order to pay for government?
	Yeah. What the government is going to do is take a certain percentage of all interest payments made within an economy and use that to fund its own growth.
	Right. But here he is calling in on a show that specifically...
	Is directed toward the goal of no government, right?
	And he's giving you a solution for how government could work, right?
	Well, this, of course, is largely how government does work right now, right?
	In that, given that inflation is a form of taxation that raises interest, this is exactly how government funds itself right now, and this guy thinks it's going to be some massive difference.
	And, of course, what happens if I want to set up a loan and don't want to pay part of my legitimate usury to the government, I still get turned into a prisoner, right?
	But... But sorry, so your question is like, why are people such...
	Well, I just found it fascinating how, you know, for some 45-odd minutes you've been going on, you and Mark both have been going on about how, you know, politics is not the answer, how government is not a solution, how force is exactly the problem, and voluntarism is...
	Is the only real solution to this.
	And people keep calling up anyway and talking as though...
	They didn't even hear what you were saying.
	But they didn't, right? I mean, and this is just a psychological phenomenon that is fairly well known, which is that the amount of human creativity that is consumed by pseudo-answers could literally power a galaxy, right?
	So this guy obviously feels certain kinds of anxiety about the size and power of the state, and he comes up with some pseudo-answer called We can pay for the whole government with a proportion of interest rates and blah, blah, blah. And he just goes off down.
	But that has nothing to do with an answer.
	That just has to do with keeping the question at bay.
	In the same way that saying God did it is nothing that's to do with an answer.
	It's just a way of keeping the question at bay.
	And it, of course, allows you to avoid...
	The actual ramifications of the real answer, which is that your society is founded on force and pointing the gun a different way, is not going to solve the problem.
	But everybody knows somebody in their life who has these kinds of pseudo-answers, right?
	So my mom has an answer as to why her life turned out the way it did, and her answer is that she got Or rather, the doctors made her sick, right?
	So the doctors injected her with all of these horrible diseases, and she had chronic fatigue syndrome, and You know, my fibromyalgia and, you know, Epstein-Barr, all these things that don't show up anywhere and, you know, so on.
	And that's her answer, right?
	And she has poured an enormous amount of time and energy into doing pseudo-research.
	And, you know, there are other people who say that the answer to exposing the evils of the government is to prove that JFK was shot by the guys who were defending the Fed or that 9-11 was an inside job.
	But it's got nothing to do with the facts.
	It's got something to It's all to do with just keeping anxiety at bay.
	So this guy is like, yes, the government is a problem, and I've got a solution called we'll pay for it through interest rates.
	And he may spend an enormous amount of time poking around the edges of that black hole of insanity.
	But of course, it has nothing to do with solving the problem.
	It's just about self-management, if that makes any sense.
	Oh, sure. Absolutely.
	And I expect that when I'm talking to, say, some average schmo on the street or anyone in my own family about politics, right?
	I mean, there's so much of an obvious disconnect between principle and what it is they're talking about that it's almost comical at times.
	But... These are people who are coming to a program that's dedicated to Anarchy dedicated to a society without a government.
	And you guys are explicitly telling them all this stuff.
	Well, but I'm sorry to interrupt, but it just seems to me like you may want to crank up your respect for people's defenses.
	And the basic thing that I generally work with in this realm is if people aren't willing to listen to reality...
	Then they're sure as hell not going to be interested in listening to me.
	Because I'm just a tiny subset of reality for them, right?
	So, you know, I'm just, I'm like this guy who's rambling away on the radio, whatever.
	If they're not willing to listen to reality as a whole, then why on earth would they be interested in listening to me?
	So the fact that these people call into a show with non-sequitur crazy arguments...
	It doesn't seem to me wildly implausible, especially when you look at the ads on the show.
	Yeah, that's a good point.
	Like it would be weird if it weren't that way, right?
	I mean, weird in what sense?
	Well, it would be weird if somebody who didn't have a bizarre theory...
	Like, if somebody called up and wasn't listening to us, for sure they're going to have a bizarre theory.
	Right. Right? Because if they're able to reject and ignore reality, then why would they listen to guys in a talk show?
	Right. And these are all the people who, when you confront...
	And you know this, right? And that's why I didn't bother confronting any of these guys.
	So when you confront these kinds of people...
	With, you know, a basic one or two sentence repudiation, right?
	Which is, this has got nothing to do with controlling government.
	If government makes its money off interest rates, all it will do is drive up interest rates.
	I mean, it didn't solve anything, right?
	But what happens is they get offended, they get upset, they take it personally and they say, hey, hey, you know, hey, you know, I'm just putting it out there.
	And it's like, you are way out there.
	But they don't want to debate it, right?
	They have to cling to this because it's a religious answer for somebody about some way that they can keep avoiding this nagging question of what are we going to do about this Leviathan?
	What are we going to do about this new Rome, this imperialistic monster?
	Like, ah, I've come up with a magical set of sentences called nationalize the interest rates.
	And that's how I stave my anxiety about my growing lack of freedom.
	Yeah, that sounds really educated and really complex, so it intimidates people.
	Well, it intimidates people who don't know much about anything, and it makes people who know something about something roll their eyes and also not engage with you, right?
	Right. So it's a perfectly self-seeable.
	But people just come up with pseudo-answers.
	It's a mythology, right?
	This is just a mythology. And they come up with pseudo-answers so that they can avoid the anxiety.
	And then they claim that they're really worried about freedom, and they're not.
	They're just worried about the anxiety that the lack of freedom provokes.
	Because once they've solved that anxiety, they don't give a shit about freedom anymore.
	Right. Right. That's absolutely true.
	That's absolutely true. But I guess I'm wondering...
	I mean, there must be some audience out there that's...
	That's learning from this because otherwise shows like yours or his, I mean, they wouldn't be around, would they?
	Yes, but just because people don't comment doesn't mean that they're not learning.
	In fact, quite the opposite.
	It's the people who will say, oh, these guys are talking about Ron Paul.
	I'm going to phone him with my theory because I really want to get it out there and it's an important theory and blah, blah, blah.
	It's those people who aren't learning a damn thing.
	But the people who are learning are just sitting there going, what?
	What's he talking about? Stateless society?
	And what kind of weird accent is that?
	Why is he saying us when he's a Canadian?
	You know, like he's doing that kind of thing.
	And they're doing that kind of thing. Go to this website.
	This is like ridiculous stuff.
	It doesn't make any sense. They can listen to a couple of podcasts.
	They're going to get themselves knocked on their ass and they're going to say, that can't be right.
	You know, you're going to come back. Those are the people who are going to get engaged, who are going to learn something.
	But the people who call in and just find out their theories through a microphone, they're not going to learn anything.
	And that's why I don't engage with them.
	I guess I was just sort of trying to clarify that in my own mind, because at times it seems like the two of you are just kind of yelling into a black hole I have no doubt that that certainly does seem to be the case.
	I have had some people who've come by FDR from the No State Project and so on, and I certainly enjoy chatting with him.
	He's a fun fellow to do a show with, and it's good practice for me, especially when he doesn't show off and I get to start it.
	But no, it definitely is that sort of thing.
	But you never know.
	You never know, right?
	I mean Harry Brown didn't live long enough to know anything about FDR and the mad praise that I give to the superannuated libertarian gentleman.
	But if he had – or if he's floating above me right now – if he had, then he'd say, well, okay, at least I got through science.
	Yeah, that's a good point.
	That's a very good point.
	But just mull it over, right?
	Because wherever you're surprised, it's because you are rejecting a certain form of knowledge, right?
	Oh, that's an interesting point.
	Because to a very different degree, what you and the caller are doing is the same thing, right?
	Because when this happens repetitively, and it does in life, where people just come up with their own weird non-sequiturs as if you've just, you know...
	Because all you're doing is Charlie Brown's teacher in front of them, like...
	And they're just waiting for you to stop talking so they can keep going.
	And they're just sort of rejecting the information that you're putting forward.
	But whenever you find yourself surprised by common behavior, it's because you're rejecting knowledge about people's motivations.
	Yeah, that's a good point.
	And actually, I think that probably ties into the first question, too.
	It may indeed.
	It may indeed. All right.
	So did you have any other questions about that?
	Okay. I thought I'd get the show started.
	Thanks. I appreciate it. It's nice to have questions, and I sure do hate to surprise people every week.
	I feel like I'm popping out of their boxer shorts saying, give me a question now!
	And it's like, dude, I'm in the shower.
	It's like, why are you wearing boxes in the shower?
	Anyway, we can go through that conversation another time.
	But it's nice to have some questions on a Sunday because I know it does sort of take people by surprise.
	So we had a question from, was it Le Edge of Forever who had a question or a comment?
	Hey, what's up, Steph? I sure can.
	Okay. I just wanted to bring up the subject.
	I've been thinking about this a little bit.
	I wanted to bring up the subject of speaking up at work.
	Basically, I was thinking about this when I was thinking about, at the beginning of On Truth, you have the three types of relationships.
	And I think I'm talking about the second type of relationship.
	And that's the relationship you have, like, your grocer, your boss, when you go down to Walmart, those people, essentially, the relationship you have where there's a value being traded for another value.
	Is that correct?
	Am I talking about the right relationship?
	Yes, that is the right relationship!
	Sorry, I'm just trying your thing about speaking up at work.
	Sorry, go on. Okay.
	Well, typically, for me, at work, I really try to have a positive demeanor.
	I joke with coworkers, I smile, all those good things.
	But what I kind of notice is that, you know, I'm usually always on the FDR forums during the day, so it kind of feels like in certain ways, like I'm sort of living a double life in certain ways.
	Just because, I mean, with my co-workers, I mean, I'm kind of afraid to bring up my beliefs, at least in any obvious way.
	I even work with a couple people which I pretty much know If they knew what my beliefs really were, they would probably hate me.
	There's a Mormon that I work with.
	He's a really brilliant programmer, but I see his Book of Mormon on his desk, and I'm like, uh-oh.
	And many of them I know are ex-military, which is...
	And that's not always bad, of course, because I've known really cool ex-military people.
	I'd work on the Mormon first if I were you, but it's up to you.
	Yeah, well...
	Explosive issues with people who aren't trying to kill me with their hands.
	But anyway, go on.
	The funny part is this programmer is brilliant and he's extremely logical when it comes to his job with programming.
	I'm just always wondering how he switches that off.
	Basically, the scare scenario I have is if I start speaking up at work that I'm going to piss off the wrong people And it's going to hold me back at my job.
	So I guess the ultimate question here is, in order to maximize happiness at my job, should I treat coworkers as strictly that type two type relationship and try to just, you know, keep the personal stuff at home or with my real friends and my close relationships?
	Absolutely. I can guarantee you that bringing up philosophical topics with people who are ex-military or fundamentalist religions is going to be about the equivalent of walking into a board meeting and saying, okay, everybody, clothes off, I've got the rubber duckies, let's have an orgy, right here, right now, on the conference table, cue the Barry White.
	They are going to look at it with that level of alarm and with that level of concern about your So I would no more attempt to have multiple affairs at an office than I would bring up philosophical conversations with people who had given strong indications of cultish insanity.
	Okay, so just kind of do what I've been doing?
	Yeah, I mean, the important thing is to recognize that...
	Philosophy is highly intimate.
	I mean, we all know this, this phase in the conversation, because we know how explosive it is, how it has the power to shatter the pseudo-bonds between parent and child or sibling and sibling.
	We know how it justifies the most rampant and destructive militarism and the murders of millions throughout the world, and we know just how much...
	Power and money hinges on people's blindness towards philosophy, how Their personal pseudo-relationships all hinge on an active and insistent rejection of philosophy.
	So, if you are looking at getting into chats with people about philosophy, then I think that you may still not be fully down with how powerful it is, right?
	Because you certainly know within your own life that it's been enormously powerful, right?
	Absolutely. Well, I'm just saying, personally, for me, I haven't brought it up directly or anything like that.
	Little ambiguous conversations about politics have been brought up, but that's about as far as it's ever gone at work.
	I'm really afraid to tell people what I really think.
	Well, and I would trust that fear.
	Alright, that's fair enough.
	I know I'm trying to learn to trust myself a bit more.
	Right, and the difference, because then I know that the question is, and I'm not saying it would necessarily be yours, but the question is, like, when do you surrender to your fear and accept it as a valid indicator of how to act, and when do you not accept it?
	And the difference is where you have personal control, right?
	So if you are afraid of talking to your mom about X, Y, or Z, you don't surrender to that fear because you have personal control over that.
	It's the same thing with your spouse, your partner, or whatever.
	You have personal control over your actions.
	And also, you're not dependent on your mom anymore.
	Like you'll notice that I don't tell 16-year-olds to have the final explosive foo conversation with their parents, right?
	Because they're still dependent on their parents.
	And you are still dependent upon, and this may be permanent, right?
	We're dependent upon acceptance at work, right?
	And so where you have control and not a complete dependence upon the existing environment, and it's not like there's some anarcho-capitalist company out there that you can go and work for tomorrow.
	So I would say that where you lack control over the interactions, And where you have very high stakes and you're afraid, then you should respect that fear.
	Where you do have control over the interaction, like you can choose not to see your mother, you can choose not to go to work because, you know, philosophers got to eat.
	So I would say that those would be reasonable criteria for differentiating between pushing through your fear and recognizing and accepting your fear.
	Okay. I think that's a fair answer.
	Thank you. Oh, I really welcome that question.
	That is a very, very important question.
	Ayn Rand had a different opinion that you had to say, if somebody was saying, well, I think we should be in Iraq, right?
	And if they turn to you and say, well, what do you think?
	You can just say, well, I don't follow politics, right?
	Because, you know, as an anarchist, it's kind of hard to follow politics, right?
	And it's, you know, like expecting some guy born in New Jersey to follow cricket in India, right?
	It's even less relevant in terms of politics, right?
	Or, you know, who are you going to vote for?
	It's like, oh, I don't follow politics or whatever.
	What do you mean you don't follow politics?
	It's the responsibility of everybody in a democracy to follow politics.
	And it's like, well, I could tell you why I don't follow politics, but I promise you're not going to like the answer.
	So let's just leave it at that, right?
	And you can just, you know, if people continue to bug you and continue to bug you, just say, well, I don't get into political conversations at work, right?
	I mean, I don't follow politics, so there's not much point in me getting into a debate about politics, right?
	It's like you're asking me about, you know, who's going to win the Super Bowl when I don't even know which end of a football has the laces on it, right?
	So you can easily avoid these conversations in a good-natured way, and you, of course, are not...
	You are not drafted into any army of truth.
	Philosophy is about self-knowledge and freedom, intimacy and joy.
	It is not about having to go out and charge every single barricade you come across, right?
	Because that's pretty exhausting.
	Yeah, most definitely would be really exhausting.
	And I think that would be kind of being enslaved to your cause, essentially, instead of, I mean, it's just like regular libertarians out there, the small L and big L, you're enslaved to freedom now.
	Yeah, that's not good. It's kind of the same idea.
	And you can have a lot of fun with people, which has nothing to do with philosophy or politics, right?
	I mean, Christina squirms through all of my lame jokes with waiting staff, right?
	I know it's a sucky job because when I was a teenager, I sort of try and give them something to make it laugh.
	I don't know if they're a neo-Nazist fascist head.
	I have no clue, right?
	But you can have fun with people and you can sort of have shits and giggles with people and talk about some of the absurdities of life, which have nothing to do with politics and can be perfectly congenial.
	And you don't have to lift a finger.
	To save anybody, right?
	Where you feel a strong desire to, and, you know, keep yourself for that, right?
	Don't squander your energies beating your head against the wall, especially with Book of Mormon types.
	I mean, good Lord. The amount of child abuse that they've suffered through, which they're unaware of, is just one aspect of how explosive that conversation would be.
	You know, when I was thinking about this, the Mormon guy at my work, he always, you know how all Mormon families are always extremely, or they appear to be really, really happy?
	Yeah, I think too, but yeah.
	Yeah, I'm always just curious how, I mean, how genuine some of that happiness is, or if it's all just a complete, a complete...
	Sorry, I lost the word there.
	You know, I understand. It's a complete hoax.
	For this kind of stuff, you can look at...
	I mean, there's a great philosophical resource that's out there.
	You might be able to get it from iTunes called Dancing with the Stars.
	And on Dancing with the Stars was Marie Osmond, this last...
	And I only know this because, just in case anybody's confirmed themselves in their own minds about my latent homosexuality, the reason that I know about this is because Christina likes watching the show.
	Because she really, really enjoys watching men who dance well.
	And then she remembers her wedding and sobs softly to herself.
	But Marie Arsman out there with a big smile and, you know, she's an entertainer and she's committed and she's having a great time and she's dancing up a storm and so on.
	She's just going through a divorce.
	Her dad just died and she's going through a divorce and clearly she has She's had a history of anorexia and some significant, significant psychological problems, right?
	Anorexia and this is not a mild ailment, right?
	That is character logic.
	That's core to a person's identity, right?
	So this is somebody who's just grown up to be polished and to be somebody who puts on a smile and puts on a show.
	But, you know, it's very, very easy I would challenge that.
	And having to, and all the sales managers telling you, oh, you get a smile.
	That's how you get people to buy more stuff.
	You get a smile. And that just drew, drove me at the wall, especially when I didn't believe in the products, pushing products that I didn't really feel that were very ethical.
	Like they're just kind of like tricking people into spending an extra 60 bucks or something.
	Well, but then all you have to do is keep smiling and don't blink, right?
	And very easily, people slowly back away.
	Sorry, I don't mean to say that it's psychologically totally easy to do it.
	What I mean to say is that it is easier than the alternative, right?
	And the alternative is to go through...
	The horror of having been lied to by your parents and exploited and put out on display.
	I mean, these people, this is like a Michael Jackson family, right?
	Donnie and Marie have been performing since they were like five or six years old.
	I mean, obviously, they're born performers, so to speak, but there's a lot of dysfunction in that kind of controlling your environment.
	And of course, I mean, most celebrities are sort of...
	At least according to some of the research that I've read, most celebrities tend to fall along the narcissistic personality disorder diagnosis.
	So that's why their personal relationships are so unstable, right?
	Because it's like, if you've ever seen the film, I think it's called Truth or Dare with Madonna.
	There's a bit where Warren Beatty is in there, and Madonna's seeing a doctor, I think, about some problems she was having with her singing voice.
	It sucked, but she couldn't...
	Did we lose everyone? No.
	But... And he says, why are you bringing a camera into the doctor's office?
	I mean, this is serious business.
	This is your livelihood. You're a singer.
	And you're bringing a camera in to the doctor's office.
	And she says, well, I just didn't want to do it off camera.
	And he's like, you don't even want to live off camera.
	And they didn't last very long past that, right?
	And it's like, well, when the audience isn't watching them, they tend to get very depressed.
	That's why they're drawn back.
	Even when they've made their millions and even when they've had all the success, they can't live without the audience.
	They tend to feel very depressed and empty, right?
	Because when they're not showing off and being hyperinflated by other people's mania and envy and adulation, they tend to feel very empty.
	So what I'm saying is it's easier for them to just keep smiling than it is for them to go through the inevitable crash and restructuring and expulsion, of course, from their family and social group.
	That's just easier for them to just keep smiling and stay in and cross their fingers in Pascal's wagers.
	Hope for heaven. That's pretty interesting.
	I didn't really look at it.
	Yeah, I couldn't imagine having to live my life like that.
	For my type of personality, my head would explode.
	Right, right, right.
	Well, I mean, this is, of course, the great danger of talent, right?
	Talent is... We're good to go.
	But George Bush is just the Freddie Mercury of the band called Kings, right?
	And it's just talent, right?
	I mean, he has the talent to look cranky and all-American, and he has the talent to, I don't know, spend time on a ranch for months without shooting himself, and he has the talent to be authentic and to be convincing, as any actor is, to be authentic and convincing about nonsense that he knows to be false.
	And he's just paid for that talent, right?
	I mean, people get so mad at George Bush.
	It's like getting mad at George Bush.
	Mickey Rooney is just a performer.
	That's true. I think that answers my question.
	Okay, well, thanks very much. Very good question.
	Thanks. All right.
	So, next!
	Don't make me do the song.
	I insist you do the song.
	No, I don't think I can do it again.
	I did like four takes and it was like, I think I'll just stay with this one.
	There's a reason why people get paid a lot to do this.
	And I'm not one of them.
	I still think it was one of your best, I think.
	I did quite like it.
	The song is actually an octave down, and I can do most of the song an octave up.
	I do actually have, I might throw it out to the PKs, I do have a version which is in the correct register, but there's just one or two notes up there where I'm sort of on tiptoe.
	Yeah, I'm straining a little bit, and I just figured, and it was actually kind of cool the way it came out with the deeper voice, right, with the vaguely manly voice.
	Yeah. As opposed to my usual shrieky self, it was actually kind of cool.
	So yeah, I'm pleased with that.
	I think it came out well. Greg's going to try and up the vocals a little bit, because I know that some of the mad rappy rants towards the end are a little hard to pick out from the driving beats, so we'll hopefully get a version back out there with slightly upped vocals.
	But yeah, I think it came out okay.
	Alright, next question, my brothers and sisters.
	Feel free to spill your guts, spill your brain.
	Spray your thoughts.
	Greggy M? Yes?
	You rang? Yes.
	You can hear me? Yes.
	Good. Alright. Well, my heart is pounding just thinking about it, and this is such a silly question.
	It seems like it, but I think there's more to it.
	But last night, I saw a picture of me, and I was in the background.
	Just vaguely recognizable.
	I mean, that was a blur, and I could tell it was me because I knew I was there, and I was just in the background.
	And I just felt this anxiety, and my heart was pounding, and my neck was sweating, and my palms were sweating.
	And I'm thinking, I mean, you've noticed it before, that I'm very sensitive to being public.
	Yes. And I know this had to do with it, but it was so...
	It was completely irrational of me to feel anxiety about it because no one unless they knew I was there and knew that I had What clothes I was wearing.
	I was wearing a Freedom Aid radio hoodie.
	Although you can't tell.
	Run! Although you can't tell that it's it.
	Oh. But I could tell the blue circle was...
	Right. Sorry, you gave me a flash of hope about Mark being there for a moment.
	But I crashed it! So that's okay.
	Please continue. Right.
	No, no. To reply to Nate in the chat, this was not a dream.
	But this was...
	I saw this. Someone put it on one of the social networking websites.
	Right. And I'm acquainted with this person.
	I don't know them really well.
	And I knew it didn't have to do with the people I was with.
	It wasn't like I was seen with someone I didn't want to be seen with.
	And it wasn't the hoodie.
	I mean, I can imagine if I was...
	Anxious about being seen in public with the hoodie on, but I wear it all the time, and all my friends know that I listen to it and like it as well.
	I mean, my close friends listen to it.
	So I was working it back with some people on the chat last night, and we went back to my childhood, that perhaps if my privacy was violated in the past, which it was, it could be like someone who grew which it was, it could be like someone who grew up in the Depression with almost no money.
	Sure.
	And then they just are very overzealous about money or overzealous about hoarding or hoarding.
	very frugal, over frugal when they grow up, even when they have plenty.
	So maybe if my privacy was, if I had very little privacy when I was growing up, maybe even when I have the capacity to be private now, I'm very overzealous about hoarding it.
	Does that make any sense? It could.
	It's certainly a possible explanation.
	Another one popped into my mind, which may or may not be pure nonsense, but I just sort of want to put a thought experiment forward and let me know what you think.
	Sure. If the picture had been with you in the foreground sort of smiling or whatever, would you have felt more anxiety or less?
	Probably more.
	Yeah, I think more.
	Because this has happened before with my picture in the foreground and I felt more.
	Okay, now when you're looking at a picture of yourself, and this is going to sound odd, and maybe it doesn't make any sense, but just go with it for a sec.
	When you're looking at a picture of yourself, do you feel like you looking at a picture of you, or do you feel like someone else looking at you directly?
	Wow, that's sort of a mind twist.
	twist let me think about that um i feel see i don't know i i think i feel like someone else looking in Thank you.
	Yeah, I mean, that's sort of what I was thinking.
	And the reason, because I was just looking at a couple of pictures of me as a kid, because I was going to throw them up on that new photo thing that's on Free Domain Radio.
	And when I look at pictures of myself as a child, I feel a little more anxiety, not massive amounts, but I feel a little bit more anxiety than when I'm just looking at my big pink giant thumb head in a YouTube video nowadays or something like that.
	And the reason for that is that when I look at a picture of myself, I feel more like I'm a parent looking at, like I'm my mom or my dad or somebody older looking at myself, if that makes any sense.
	Yeah.
	Well, so it's almost like I don't relate.
	Well, this was a recent picture, though.
	No, no, no. I understand. But that's why I was sort of asking about when you're looking at yourself, are you looking at a picture of you or are you sort of like...
	Because, I mean, obviously, in the real world, we can't look at ourselves in that way.
	So you're actually getting a perspective of yourself from someone else, right?
	Well, I felt last night like I was me looking at a picture of me.
	But if I were in the foreground, just smiling, I think it goes either way.
	Okay, then we'll scrap that because that could just be my thing.
	But what is your disaster scenario that occurs if you are identifiable on the web?
	Nothing rational. Well, it doesn't matter whether it's rational or not.
	Well, I mean, there's nothing that goes through my mind like, oh crap, people are going to do X. I mean, there's nothing.
	But I do feel anxiety.
	Although... Like, on Skype, I've got my picture up and stuff like that.
	Like, I don't care about that.
	But you're in control of that, right? Right, I'm in control of that.
	But then I... I do want to compare this.
	Someone on the chat just reminded me.
	If this helps, it's very similar to the vulnerability if I were to muster up courage to talk to a girl or ask a girl out.
	Right. That gut-seeking feeling is that...
	Almost the exact same feeling, if that helps at all.
	Right. So would you say that the feeling is something like exposure and vulnerability?
	Yes. Okay.
	And is it because...
	I mean, there must be something that is an expectation.
	The feeling doesn't... It's not possession, right?
	It doesn't come out of nowhere. It's not a devil in your heart or anything.
	There must be some sort of thought or feeling about what might occur...
	If your picture is out there and you have no control over it, and of course you do actually have control over it.
	Like a friend of mine posted some pictures of me doing some cheesy karaoke moves.
	Well, just karaoke moves.
	I think cheesy is redundant. And I had to ask him to take them down because when people came to my Freedom Aid radio thing, they clipped on pictures of me.
	They saw me doing the funky chicken, right?
	Not exactly what I wanted people's first impression of me to be.
	So I had just put the nude pictures back.
	And so you have control over it, right?
	You can ask your friend to take off your reference so that you don't show up and just blur it out in the background.
	But there must be some thought that triggers the feeling.
	Some thought that, oh God, now X, right?
	Right. And that's why I toyed with the possibility of, oh, it was at Starbucks is where it was.
	And I was just chatting with an old acquaintance I hadn't seen for a while, and I was in the background.
	And I thought... Well, maybe I don't want my close friends to know that I was talking to this person, but that can't be the case because I don't care.
	That's not something that I've ever crossed my mind before.
	No, sorry, it's not that.
	Because, I mean, it's something that results from that.
	So, I mean, if it was your old friends, it's that then they're going to attack you, they're going to be mean to you, they're going to do something destructive for you, they're going to take away your dreams, they're going to take away your future, they're going to diss you everywhere.
	Like, there's some Snowball effect that comes out of your image being out of your control, right?
	There's something that hurts for you that is disastrous.
	So maybe what we should do is talk about your feelings when you're going to ask a girl out.
	Sure, yeah. And it hasn't happened often because I'm very...
	I mean, I think probably twice, three times in my life.
	Sorry, twice or three times what?
	That I've asked a girl out.
	And what happened? She said, I'd really like to go out with you, but there's these pictures of you on the web.
	I'm sorry, I'm just going to have to put this brand on your forehead and you're going to have to die alone and be eaten by dogs.
	Sorry. Well, it was an acceptance one time.
	Yes. Yes.
	Another time it was a rejection, but sort of a passive.
	Yeah, those were the two.
	There weren't any more.
	There was one that was sort of a friend set me up with another person, but that was just not good.
	So you're batting 333, right?
	Right. That's not bad.
	Like seriously, those are not bad odds, right?
	Right. But is it that you've had lots of other girls that you've wanted to ask out but haven't?
	Not lots.
	But some. There have been, yeah.
	But, I mean, that's...
	But I've been very cautious.
	I mean, you can tell from my personality.
	Like, after we record chats, I'm very cautious about putting it out...
	Right. The S on my use of the word station here was just a little long.
	If you could shave that down by a tenth of a hundredth of one percent, that would be excellent.
	And also this, if my voice got a little high here, if you could just take it down a little bit, make it deeper, that would be great.
	I'm not that bad. I'm just kidding.
	I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding.
	No, no. But you know what I'm talking about.
	I'm very cautious and I think a lot of that might have to do with my situation at the moment.
	Yeah. Well, no, I don't think so, because if it was about your situation, it would be something that you would have rational access to, right?
	No, what do you mean?
	Oh, okay, I don't want...
	I mean, just to use that hypothetical example, I don't want Steph to release this podcast publicly because X. Yeah, it wouldn't be sort of fear-driven, right?
	So when my friend put the picture up of me karaoke-ing or whatever, and I asked him to take it down, I mean, it was because of myself.
	I don't care about the photos.
	I think they're pretty funny, but it's just not something that I wanted as the first thing to show up on my profile.
	So because of the situation, I just asked.
	But it wasn't anxiety-based, right?
	It was just, well, you know, maybe people should get to know me before they look at idiot stuff, you know, a bit better, right?
	So let me build up a tiny bit of credibility, because otherwise, knocking it down is just no fun.
	Sorry, go ahead.
	Like what you were talking about on Skype the other day about putting up the video of the song.
	Yeah, yeah, that's right.
	I mean, there I was certainly caution-driven, let's say.
	I wasn't afraid to release it like, oh, but it's making my hands sweaty and whatever, right?
	But I was just like, I feel a certain caution that I'm going to listen to about releasing the video to FDR 500.
	God knows what the guy's going to do with 900, but...
	But I would sort of...
	If it was just your circumstances rather than a kind of fear-based decision, then you would have much more evaluatory capacity, right?
	Like you may feel a certain kind of caution, but you'd evaluate and so on.
	But this sounds like a real base-of-the-spine reaction, right?
	Oh yeah, my palms are just dripping right now.
	Right, right. Now, do you like...
	What you see when you look at a photo, and this is with the caveat that nobody does, right?
	We all think we're better looking when we do, right?
	So I sort of look at myself from the inside, it's like, hey, how you doing, right?
	But then I sort of see a photo of myself and it's like, wow, that's a lot of pink.
	There's lots of different ways of looking at it.
	It's like, hey, I remember when I didn't have jowls.
	That was fun, right? So, you know, we all look at our photos of herself and we never quite see exactly what we want to see because, you know, deep down, it's our inner George Clooney who is always parading around nude in my mind's eye.
	But we can talk about that another time.
	So when you look at a picture of yourself, what is your reaction in terms of just how you look and so on?
	Sort of... Indifference leaning towards, okay, like, I'm not, like, ashamed when I look at a picture of myself.
	Like, I'm not like, oh, what the hell is that?
	But I don't, just, I guess, indifference, like, yeah, that's me.
	Indifference. So it's neither positive nor negative.
	Well, it leans towards positive, but not really, like, not effusively positive, but neither is it just completely negative.
	Right, right. So if it's like, well, I'm better than a kick in the spuds, but I'm not as good as cheesecake, right?
	Then I can certainly understand why you might feel somewhat anxious about asking a girl out.
	Yeah. Right?
	Because seriously, I mean, this is going to sound completely ridiculous, but you have to be madly in love with yourself and not from a like, you know, I don't know, I've got a six-pack stomach or all that sort of nonsense, but just in terms of the light and the energy and the joy that you bring to your interactions and so on.
	Like you just have to give yourself those props so that when you go to ask someone out, right, you put your entire best foot forward and then if you're happy and positive and they say, no, right, I don't go out with bald guys who've got like muffin tops or whatever, right?
	I mean, then you say, okay, well, I'm happy and I'm bringing positive things to the interaction.
	So if she doesn't want to go out with me, that sort of allows me to do a little bit more judging of her than of me, if that makes sense.
	So it's comparable to your be rational and curious and open when discussing with someone and then if they get hostile towards you, you know it's their fault.
	Oh yeah, for sure.
	And if you're going to...
	You want to put as much positivity into...
	Right.
	I never stop shaking or anything like that.
	Right, right.
	But you want to put as much positivity into your interactions so that when you get rejected, you know that it's not you, right?
	So, I mean, I can tell you this from having hundreds upon hundreds of Ron Paul supporters, you know, wrench open my eyes and spit in them, right?
	I mean, I know.
	I know that the way I'm putting the information forward is not hostile.
	I'm not denigrating anyone.
	I'm not attacking anyone.
	And because I put the Ron Paul videos forward with a huge amount of positivity, I just know when people attack me, it's like you're just making yourself look stupid, right?
	Like, you know, when you speak to someone calmly and they start screaming at you, of course it's alarming, but you don't sit there and say, well, I should have done something wildly differently, right?
	Exactly. So, I think that it may well be worthwhile looking at pictures of yourself, right?
	And just saying, okay, try and be as, you know, look at yourself from a foreign eye and say, well, is the way that I'm standing the way, like, is my energy or my animation, is it appealing?
	Is it positive? Is it this?
	Is it that? Yeah. And then you just sort of work to correct yourself, right?
	Like if you look at a picture of yourself and you're hunched over like a hunchback, you say, oh, well, maybe I should stand a little more straight or whatever.
	You just look at pictures of yourself and see what you can do to rectify what may be missing, right?
	Because you are in a situation where you were talking to me about looking at yourself and feeling kind of anxiety, right?
	And you may want to look at pictures of yourself and say, Maybe there's something I can do to be more positive and energetic in a conversation, if that makes sense.
	Well, it does in some instances, but in this instance, and I don't mean to keep up too much time, but in this instance, it didn't make sense because I was laughing.
	I was happy. I was standing.
	I mean, I was...
	If I was looking at that, I was happy with how I was projecting myself.
	Like if this picture...
	Looking at it, I was happy with how I was projecting myself in hindsight, but just instantly I felt this reaction.
	There's not much I can do until you know what the thoughts are behind your reaction.
	Right? So if you don't know what thought occurs, like, oh God, now, whatever, right?
	Now I'm going to get attacked. Now people are going to be down on me.
	Now people are going to hate me.
	Now people are whatever, right? If you don't know what that thought is, then, you know, given that I've sort of cast my net a couple of times off different sides of the boat, which is fine.
	I mean, it's just sort of throwing things out there.
	And I'm sort of coming up with seawater and a bit of seaweed.
	And there's no need to, you don't have to sort of get it now.
	We can talk about it another time.
	But if you can't figure out the thought that precedes the anxiety, then we can't work with the feeling itself, right?
	Because you can't undo a feeling.
	You can only undo a thought.
	Okay, great. Well, yeah, I think we're on to something, though, with the looking at pictures of myself and figuring out what I'm doing.
	Yeah, figure out what thought comes before the feeling.
	The thought always precedes the feeling.
	Okay. Just figure out what you're thinking.
	The disaster scenario that's going to unroll that gets you in a full fight-or-flight mechanism, without a doubt, it's deeply ingrained in your childhood, and there's a couple of different possibilities, but until you can connect with that, at least there's not much that I can do to go further.
	Alright, great. And I just want to point out the irony of Me talking about anxiety of being public in my...
	This is the first time I've talked in a public column.
	Right, right, right.
	That's good. How are your hands doing?
	Are you losing a lot of body weight here?
	Do you need to go and reliquify?
	Yes, I am. Excellent, excellent, excellent.
	I suggest for the anxiety-ridden, sit on the show with a catheter because I'll just keep talking and you're going to have to go.
	So, I know I do.
	Oh, wait. Okay, sorry.
	Go on. Well, thanks so much, and I'll just get off, but I'll get back to you on how I'm working with this.
	Please do. Yeah, please do.
	At least you've got a stimuli that's repetitive, right?
	It doesn't have to be, you know, a black cat at midnight on a northward street, right?
	You've got something that you can trigger the thought again, and you can slow it down to see what happens.
	Okay, thanks. Okay, thanks.
	Appreciate it. Bye. All right.
	We have more people.
	Can you speak? Hey, Steph.
	Hello. Hi, I've got a question about my friend who's really into Nietzsche.
	I was wondering if you could give me some advice on how to approach debates with him?
	Well, I've been listening to your introduction to philosophy series again, going back to metaphysics, because I realized that when me and my friend talked about some of the higher, more complicated issues around politics, we didn't really go anywhere.
	And then I realized, I remembered that you said that you wouldn't just jump into a debate with someone about that, you'd Go back to metaphysics and epistemology and talk about the basics of philosophy and reality and stuff.
	And so I found your introduction really useful.
	But I'm just a bit unsure on how to approach him, because he seems very open to the philosophy which you're suggesting.
	I mean, empiricism, objectivism, An anarchism.
	He seems very open to it.
	In fact, there's a lot of signs which make me very confident that he's very enthusiastic about it.
	But in your podcast, you seem to be a little bit dismissive of people in that first category.
	In your podcast, you describe three categories in your metaphysics podcast.
	Got the first category who will say, like, nothing is real, your perceptions are all illusion, etc., etc.
	Second category, they believe in the higher realm, and then third category is empiricism.
	And I was wondering if you could bring any more clarity to that, which might suggest, like, how to, how could you, like, hit the nail on the head with someone who's, like, like...
	Like, when Nietzsche says, like, there is no God, everyone is believing in these false illusions, and you just need to...
	Like, you get rid of God, and then there's nothing to replace it.
	Like, how do you explain to something what replaces God, for example?
	Okay, I'll give myself 90 seconds on that.
	Sorry, just... Well...
	What I would say is this, that mysticism, and I would put Nietzsche down as a mystic philosopher because he substitutes this Darwinian brute willpower in exchange for God.
	Yeah, there is a little... Yeah, there is a little...
	Oh, I can... But, yeah, so I would say that mysticism deep down is all about retaining control.
	It's really hard to understand mysticism because it makes zero sense from a philosophical standpoint and nobody lives their lives according to mystical principles because you'd never get out of bed.
	You wouldn't even know you were in bed or whatever, right?
	So mysticism fundamentally is about the attempt to maintain a selfish, childlike, narcissistic control over this magic elixir called the truth.
	And philosophy in science is a humble approach that says, I cannot create the truth any more than I can create matter or energy.
	So mystics don't want to surrender their control over the truth.
	And of course, when you control truth, you control other human beings.
	When you control the truth, you control other human beings.
	That's the foundational aspects of religion and so on, and statism.
	So people who are mystics, they lack the ego strength to say, the truth is not mine.
	I don't own the truth.
	I can't create the truth.
	I can't manipulate the truth any more than I can manipulate or create or move the orbit of the moon with my mind.
	So, the problem that you have when you are debating mystics is that when you say to them the basic question, how do you know the difference between truth and falsehood?
	They are inevitably drawn to a very paradoxical and complicated place within themselves psychologically, and that place is.
	I can't call it the truth if it's merely subjective, because then it's personal taste, it's opinion, it's I like ice cream.
	So they have to call it the truth in order to give it, to infuse it with value, But it can only be the truth if it's objective.
	However, because they don't want to give up control of the truth, which is really what objectivity is, You take them to a really naughty, complicated, and ugly place within themselves, and they get very tense and frustrated about it.
	And you can see this over and over again when you debate with mystics, either of the materialistic or Nietzschean or socialist or statist or whatever, or the religious mystics, right?
	When they say, this is true, and you say, how do you know?
	And basically it comes down to, well, I've got an opinion that I can control, which I call the truth in order to Gain the medal called objectivity.
	I just pretend I fought in this battle called objectivity and got the medal called truth.
	I just made my own medal and made up the battle.
	So if you want to clarify things with this gentleman, you say to him, well, you're into Nietzsche.
	That's great. Nietzsche is a really provocative thinker.
	As I've written in one of my books, he puts out these snares for the careless.
	If you just march through Nietzsche, you'll come out I'm energized, but fundamentally confused, right?
	So you just ask him and say, okay, well, but let's go back to the basics, right?
	Because I get very confused when we jump into these big topics with different definitions, right?
	So how do you know the difference between We're good to go.
	Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
	I mean, thinking about what he'd say to that, I can kind of imagine.
	And it's kind of funny, because when I ask him what Nietzsche actually talks about, because I don't know a lot about Nietzsche when I first met him, my friend that is, not Nietzsche, he basically just responded like, well, I've read some of his books, but he uses so many metaphors and stream of consciousness, I don't really know what he's talking about half the time.
	So he doesn't really say anything.
	And he's got this idea, my friend, of this, like, he's really into this whole idea, like, he'd really like your podcast on masculinity.
	Like, he's seen Fight Club, and he was like, oh yeah, like, raised by, like, this idea about a civilization of men raised by women, etc., and Like, that's the forefront of what he's breaking out of, like, just in his mind, I think. Like, he's trying to work through his childhood, and he's open to talking about that with me.
	Like, if I ask questions, he doesn't hold back or raise up any defenses.
	He's quite happy to talk about it.
	But, sorry, going off on a tangent, going back to the point, like, his response to that would be, How can you objectively look at reality if all you can really measure is your own perception of reality?
	And you can only come to collective conclusions about reality By what he would call convenience.
	Like, it's not because, like, reality exists, like, for definite, and, like, that's what we live our lives by.
	We just have our own perceptions of reality, and the only time we ever, like, question is when those come into contact.
	And, like, we'd only, like...
	All we'd bring into the debate would be our own perceptions of reality and our own understanding.
	And this is where I'm kind of like reaching a block.
	It's like he's saying everything is subjective.
	Sorry to interrupt. I mean, I certainly do understand this perspective, but it's...
	The thing to do with people who are debating this kind of crazy-ass shit, if you don't mind me using a technical term, is you simply bring it to the immediate, right?
	Because philosophy is like a whole bunch of people blowing a whole lot of fart winds up around in the stratosphere, but you've got to bring it down to the table that you're sitting at.
	So if you're sitting across from this guy in a coffee shop and he says to you, Reality is just a social agreement, right?
	It's a social contract or whatever, whatever, right?
	Then you say, okay, so there's no objective reality that we inhabit and receive through our senses?
	And he says, no. I said, okay, well, are the sound waves that you're generating from your throat that are coming across this coffee table and into my ears, do they exist or not?
	And what would he say? Not quite sure.
	I think he might be a little baffled by that.
	I mean, the way...
	No, I can predict what he'd say, because in a lot of debates we have, he does tend to play devil's advocate.
	Like when we talk about your podcast, which I've lent him a few, given him a few to listen to on his MP3. Like, he's very interested in listening to them and, like, reading your books and things.
	And when we're in debates, he'll often sort of zone out and go into this, huh, like, that's kind of interesting.
	I've just been blown away and I'll have to come back with some thoughts.
	He's a bit of a thinker.
	Well, sorry, but does he actually do that?
	Does he actually come back with the thoughts about what it is that you're saying?
	Or does it kind of just fall off the edge of his world?
	It does. No, it does come back, actually.
	Like, when I learned from UPB, like, we went off on a load of, like, really in-depth talks and debates about, like, whether universally preferable behavior exists, and, like, the whole thing about, oh, no, but surely only preferable behavior exists, not universally preferable.
	How can you possibly, like...
	Tell someone they have to conform to the subjective reality because it's also just subjective, etc., etc.
	I guess that was when it fell off the edge of his world.
	Sorry, but again, you would come back to that and you would say, if everything is subjective, is the sound waves that I'm currently hearing, do they have anything to do with what you're saying?
	Is there an objective medium called the air and sound waves and the auditory canal and the nervous system and so on?
	Are the sound waves that are moving between us, objective or subjective?
	Because if they're subjective, then he's saying, I don't exist.
	Because you're perceiving that he is speaking to you.
	If he says that the sound waves that he's using to communicate to you are purely subjective, then he's saying they only exist in your mind.
	There's nothing outside your mind.
	This is basic Cartesian stuff, right?
	That there's a demon who could be manipulating our every sense and just manufacturing a world like the Matrix or whatever.
	So you just ask him that. Is the sound waves that you're using to communicate to me, do they exist objectively or are they only existing in my own mind?
	In other words, you look across the coffee table to someone and you say to them, are you saying that you only exist in my mind?
	Yeah, that's a very interesting way of looking at it.
	Well, no, that's not just a way of looking at it.
	That's what the person is saying. No, right, it is.
	Exactly, you're right. And that's like yelling in somebody's ear that sound does not exist.
	Exactly. Right? If somebody has to sit across the table and argue that they don't exist, that's a completely self-contradictory position, right?
	Right, right. Yeah, it makes a lot of sense.
	And if you can get one hook, sorry, if you can get one hook and he can at least say, yes, the air between us and the sound waves I'm using are objective, then you're 95% of the way there.
	If you can get him to admit one atom of this universe is objective, then you guys are on the same side of the happy, sane philosophy world, right?
	Right, right.
	But the last thing that I would say is that you've got to recognize that his primary problem is not philosophical.
	It's psychological because he was doubtless raised in a family where you just weren't allowed.
	He was not allowed to have opinions.
	He was not allowed to express opinions.
	And so he's just made up a world called not expressing opinions is virtuous, right?
	It's just a scar tissue for a lack of self-expression.
	Yeah, and this is where I really want to get to with him.
	I guess that's why my question was really going to go after sorting out reality, going to basic principles, taking a rational, objective view on philosophy.
	Because he's an academic.
	He does philosophy and ethics class.
	He's got a lot of experience being told that philosophy is just a load of people's opinions from thousands of years ago written down in books that you learn for an exam and then forget.
	And that's all philosophy is.
	You can't prove anything because of Descartes.
	It's just ridiculous.
	Well, you might want to get him a copy of The God of Atheists, too.
	He might enjoy that. But the other thing you can say is you can ask him the emotional aspects, right?
	Anybody who says that reality doesn't exist is obviously so emotionally deranged, right?
	This guy obviously is very intelligent, as are you.
	Anybody who says I don't exist or reality doesn't exist, I mean, it's just, it's so insane that clearly there's an emotional reason why they're doing that.
	So if I were you, I would throw the philosophy out the window and I would talk to him one-on-one about his feelings.
	And I would say to you, how do you feel if reality does exist and is objective?
	Let's just say, let's just pretend that it is true that reality, like, how does that make you feel?
	And I guarantee you, that's going to make him feel anxious.
	And what he's doing by rejecting reality, it's not a philosophically thought out position.
	It's just that it makes him anxious.
	To believe in reality because his childhood or whatever, what he was punished for and the fact that everyone's lied to him and you've read on truth, right?
	People are avoiding the fact that they've been lied to when they avoid the truth, right?
	They're not avoiding the truth because the truth is actually great.
	What they're avoiding is the knowledge they've been lied to and manipulated and controlled and that's what he's doing, right?
	So you want to deal with the cause, not with the symptoms.
	Yeah, that makes a lot more sense.
	I guess I was kind of putting the cup for the horse.
	Well, when people say crazy stuff, you can't argue with them until you get to the root of the craziness, right?
	Right, right. Now I understand, like, why you said in your podcast, like, well, someone that crazy is not really worth debating philosophy with until you go to the basic principles of, like, what they feel like, more to the point.
	Well, that's why I did Untruth before UPB, right?
	Right. Unfortunately, I read them the other way around.
	Well, no, that's fine for you, right?
	But until people understand that they've been lied to and that's really painful, there's no point talking to them about the truth.
	Yeah, yeah. When I talk to him about that, I mean, he's mentioned his family.
	He's mentioned the fact that his general disillusionment with philosophy itself, like philosophy classes, the fact that this teacher has the emotional maturity of a five-year-old, etc., like...
	How can a student possibly know more about philosophy than a philosophy teacher?
	What's the point in going to them to learn about philosophy if they know nothing and they're just giving you a book like it's not teaching, right?
	Well, but that's like saying, how can Galileo know more than a priest about cosmology?
	Because human knowledge progresses, right?
	And people get stuck in bad thinking.
	And of course, when he talks about other people having certain challenges with emotional maturity and then basically says to you that he doesn't exist, that may be a little bit of what is technically called projection.
	He feels that other people are irrational because of their emotional biases.
	But then he says that he doesn't exist and reality is subjective.
	And it's objectively true that there's no truth.
	Like all this kind of stuff, right?
	So I would just talk to him about his history, his childhood, understand how it is that he came to view the emotional costs of assertive decision-making and self-expression and so on.
	Because you can't deal with crazy through logic, right?
	You have to deal with crazy through intimacy.
	Yeah. Yeah, that really works, yeah.
	What about, um...
	I kind of get the feeling with him, and a couple of other people I know, that the feeling of facing up to this, um...
	Like, really, like, expressing how they feel.
	Like... Accepting the fact that what they believe, whether it's my friend's illusion, like obsession with Nietzsche, for example.
	Obsession with this one philosopher he's found who says, yes, it's okay, you can believe that nothing exists, and validates that idea.
	Which he was forming in his own mind.
	Like, I get the feeling that his reaction to the conversation with me opening up about that stuff wouldn't be anxiety, it would be depression.
	Yes, but he would feel anxiety about feeling depression.
	Sorry, I don't mean to sound tricky, like I'm just hanging on to the anxiety word, but avoidance is always based on fear, right?
	And so he's afraid that if he becomes depressed, like, he's never going to stop being depressed, he's going to throw himself off a bridge.
	Like, there's some sort of anxiety that is usually much more pumped up than it needs to be, but there is some sort of fear or anxiety about getting depressed or being depressed or becoming depressed that he is avoiding, right?
	Right, right. I see what you mean there.
	Yeah. You know, like if I stop treading water, I'm going to drown.
	So I just got to keep treading water.
	And that's why this stuff is so repetitive, right?
	That's why he could go through the rest of his life saying all this nonsense, which is fine.
	But the thing is, I wish people who gave up on philosophy would just give up on philosophy.
	Like I wish people who said nothing is real would just shut up about philosophy.
	But the problem is that they go around telling everybody else.
	That nothing is real. They go around.
	It's like, it's not enough.
	If they want to be sick, they can be sick, right?
	If you want to take heroin, take heroin, but don't go around injecting heroin into other people, right?
	And this is where this guy is dangerous, right?
	Because he himself, you say it's formed in his own mind.
	No, this is just scar tissue from his childhood, right?
	People jump out of reality because their reality is god-awful, right?
	Not because there's some philosophical thing and they hear about Descartes and this and that and the other.
	People exit reality because it's hell where they live, and then they spend the rest of their life saying there's no such thing as reality and infecting other people.
	And this is part of the cycle of abuse that fundamentally is philosophical and not even psychological in nature.
	But this is where if he continues to openly advocate to people, including yourself, that there's no such thing as truth, then he's corrupt, right?
	Now, you can be patient with him and work through the psychological stuff if he's a value to you and so on.
	But at some point, you have to recognize, if he doesn't do anything to change, that he's just become a virus, right?
	And he's not giving up philosophy because there's no such thing as philosophy.
	He knows there's such a thing as philosophy, which is why he is using it to harm other people's capacity to think clearly.
	And I'd say to mock them as well.
	Yeah, absolutely.
	Absolutely.
	And this is just his way of reinflicting the pain that he's not willing to deal with in himself on others, which is fundamentally abusive.
	And there is no abuse like philosophical abuse.
	Yeah, yeah.
	And also, there's something I've got to, I guess, face with him as well.
	Like, when we're alone, when we're, like, say, with another friend who's interested in philosophy as well, like, when we're in that situation where he's not with, like, any other friend who's, like, not...
	Not so with it in terms of philosophy, they're just kind of conforming to their friends, like, in that group conformity kind of thing.
	Like, very shallow, for example.
	Like, when he's alone, he'll be fine to talk about philosophy, he'll be very happy to debate, he'll do all these things like play devil's advocate, it's quite fun, and all of this.
	But when he's with someone else, he'll, like, He'll make complete bold statements and very clear moves to mock me.
	And to mock others.
	I was talking to him about the importance of philosophy.
	Like why I found it so important.
	This was a few months ago.
	But I brought up children.
	How the fact that all the chaos and violence and anarchy in the world is so perpetuated by the abusive children.
	And the only response he could come up with to that was, well, I'm not going to have kids.
	Like, oh, I'm not going to have kids.
	And then someone else butted in and said the same thing.
	Like, what? Why are you talking about children?
	Like, what makes you think we're ever going to have children?
	I was like, I don't know.
	I just wanted to stand back and just like, let me just say, right, that's it then.
	I mean, like, it was a very, the way you said it was very, like, mocking tone.
	I mean, to take another example, like...
	I'd give a DVD back to a friend and, like, say how I felt about the film, what I thought about the film.
	And then he'd, like, come over my shoulder and ask me, like, why would you analyse a film if you haven't been told to, like, for an essay?
	Like, why would you even bother saying, like, what you thought about lighting or plot or anything if you hadn't, like, been, like, if you weren't going to get graded for it?
	And, like, he didn't even bother to hear my answer.
	Like, I was struggling to come up with a response to that.
	I'm sorry, sorry. This is the same guy who says that nothing is real?
	Right. Yeah, that's him.
	So nothing is real except you should not do stuff.
	Like, sorry, this is literally the guy who says that nothing is real and there's no such thing as universally preferable behavior.
	Yeah, that's him. Do you sort of see how that's deranged, what he's doing there?
	I do, exactly. Seriously, in your gut, do you get how manipulative that is?
	I really do. I mean, the thing that just, yeah, the thing that just shocks me is how, like, you look, like most people in my life, it's kind of easy to tell that they're being manipulative in some way.
	Like, it's pretty obvious.
	But with him, I guess he's not the kind of person who's very, well, he's not assertive.
	Like, he's not going to say outright, like, sardonic statements that he's going to...
	It's passive-aggressive, right?
	Right, passive-aggressive.
	I don't know. You tell me, just tell me to help me to understand, what is the positive value of having this guy in your life?
	I guess he's...
	Ask a question.
	I get the feeling that he's close.
	If I had that conversation with him, where I go to basic principles with philosophy, and I ask him about his feelings, like, what is your reaction to...
	Well, the advice you gave me.
	Like, what is his reaction to being, like, accepting that reality exists, ethics can and must be and are looked at objectively and argued objectively, et cetera, et cetera.
	Yeah, sorry to interrupt you, but just so you understand where I'm coming from, my sympathy for this guy dipped a little bit when you pointed out his sarcastic, sardonic, manipulative and denigrating side.
	Right. Right?
	Yeah. That's not a good sign, frankly, right?
	Because if somebody has access to that, then they lack empathy for you, right?
	Because they're obviously saying stuff that hurts you.
	They have no curiosity about why it is that you're doing what you're doing, right?
	This guy likes the film Fight Club, right?
	Has he ever spent two seconds thinking about the thinking about the thinking about?
	Hello? Hi, can you repeat the last thing you said?
	I think Skype just went a bit funny.
	Sure. He's a big fan of the film Fight Club, right?
	Yeah. Has he ever talked to you about the film Fight Club?
	Yeah, he has, yeah. And can you imagine saying to him, why the hell would you talk about a film when you're not being graded on it?
	Why would you even think about it?
	Right. That's what shocked me so much when he asked me.
	And then that was the question running through my head when he asked me that very question.
	And I just thought, and that's like the reason why he laughed after, because I was like struggling to find a response.
	Well, no, you weren't struggling to find a response because you knew exactly what the response was.
	Right. You just didn't want to say the response, right?
	Yeah, yeah. You didn't want to say, you know, with all due respect to our friendship, I gotta tell you, this sounds wildly hypocritical.
	Like, you're totally into this film Fight Club, and that's great, and we talk about it, and I think you've got some interesting things to say.
	But then when I talk about my analysis of film, you're like, why would you bother analyzing a film?
	Plus, you're the guy who says there's no such thing as objective values, and reality doesn't really exist.
	Right? So it's just hard for me to reconcile all this stuff and so on.
	You knew that. You felt that in your gut right away, I guarantee you.
	Right? Yeah, I did. But you didn't say it for very obvious reasons.
	Yeah, yeah. And why didn't you say it?
	This is a hard question, isn't it?
	It's an easy question.
	It's an easy question.
	I feel a great amount of anxiety.
	Yes. A great amount.
	Like when, I guess...
	No, no. Sorry. I don't want more examples.
	I don't want more examples. I don't want more examples.
	You only need one to understand someone.
	And I appreciate that. I'm sorry for being annoying here.
	But the feeling, if you were to say to him, look, what you're doing is kind of hypocritical, right?
	What would his response be?
	His response in the past when I've said these things is that, oh, like, the things I say can be quite flaky, I'm not very assertive, and I don't listen to what I say, really.
	But then next day he'll turn around and say the exact same sardonic statement.
	So I ask the question again, what is the value of this guy in your life when you are struggling to apprehend the truth to become more self-expressed and self-assertive?
	Not really there. Well, I'm not saying forever, right?
	There may be a time when you can hang with someone like this and be honest and frank and open and see what happens.
	But right now, you're in recovery, right?
	Right, exactly. So after you've been sober for 10 years, you can sit down with someone who's having a beer, right?
	But 60 days into sobriety, you can't, right?
	I guess I see what you mean.
	Yeah. Do you mean like...
	So if this guy is confusing and slippery and weirdly abusive and denigrating and sarcastic and changes colors from one day to the next and kind of puts you down and then when you call him on it says, ah, don't listen to what I say.
	Like, that's some pretty twisted shit, right?
	Yeah. So, dude!
	Dude! Oh, dear.
	Thanks for your help, Steph.
	No problem. I close up a lot.
	Just let me know how it goes, right?
	I mean, there's nothing wrong with telling this guy, talking to Ben, but...
	But don't allow him to shut up your self-expression.
	Life is short. I promise you there are better people out there for you to spend time with.
	Don't hang out with someone just because what he's doing is he's replacing a parent for you, right?
	Yeah, yeah.
	Right, because I know a little bit something about your past, right?
	So this is not unfamiliar in terms of how you've been treated in the past, right, by others.
	No, no, not at all, yeah.
	Right, so break the cycle.
	Yeah. Just say no to unhealthy repetition.
	Absolutely. Because what happens is we peel this big layer called dad off us, right?
	And then we've got this big hole called dag that we try and fill with people who are like dad so we don't feel so vulnerable and weird, right?
	But just don't do that.
	Don't use him as a substitute for your own history in the same way, of course, that he is using you as a substitute.
	It's not a relationship, right?
	There's better people out there.
	Right, right. You're absolutely right, yeah.
	I mean, I knew that so deeply that all I can do now is laugh and say thanks for just pointing out the obvious.
	Now, were you going to buy him a Christmas present?
	I was thinking, well, I don't have any money at the moment, but I was going to lend him one of your books.
	Okay, well, buy the book and give it to somebody else.
	Because I'm going to tell people, right?
	Because I'll just put this out there in general and I'm done with you.
	So thanks. I appreciate that.
	It was a great chat. But I know that for people sometimes December is tight on money in general, right?
	But let me just sort of throw this out there.
	To all the people who've gotten bad people out of their lives, I would put this out, right?
	Just put this out there. Throw a few kibbles to the philosopher who Who gave you some tools to ratchet yourself out of negative relationships.
	So if you broke up from a bad relationship, just take the money that you were going to buy your girlfriend a present with or your boyfriend a present with and donate it to Freedomain Radio.
	If you have defood and you were going to spend some money on family presents, give the money to the philosopher.
	If you have saved a lot of money in your relationships, if you don't have to fly home for Christmas, Okay, maybe not the whole airfare.
	Maybe just what you would spend on scotch in first class.
	But throw some money at the philosopher, right?
	I mean, you know, pay back some of the goodies that you've gotten from this conversation because it will surely help a lot of other people to get the same kind of freedom that you are enjoying now.
	So... That's my suggestion.
	Take at least the price of one present from one person that you don't have to buy.
	Now that you're free of them as a result of this conversation, throw it right at this conversation, and I promise it will be used for advertising to spread the word and so on, and the aforementioned rubber duckies and scuba suits.
	So, next up we have...
	Hey, uh, since nobody's talking, how does this sound?
	Alright, did you get a better mic?
	Yes. This thing sounds like shit.
	Are you serious? What do you got, like a yogurt cup and a piece of string?
	What did you buy?
	Really? Is that what you're hearing?
	It sounds terrible.
	I don't know what it is. Like, I mean, people can hear I sound relatively okay, right?
	I've got a $30 Logitech microphone set.
	$30. It even comes with headphones and cool stuff that I can use to match my skin tones.
	This is the headset I talked to Greg with the other night.
	He said it was wonderful. Huh.
	Yeah, tinny is all get-up, right?
	I have no idea what happened to it between three days ago and now.
	Maybe there's something with the call-in show.
	It could be that you have less bandwidth set up for your Skype connection.
	I don't know if you can set the bandwidth for Skype, but maybe it's just not transmitting that much in terms of bandwidth.
	It doesn't really matter. We're using what we're using.
	It's just that I don't think this sounds any better, but it's nice at least not to have an echo and a hiss.
	So please, go ahead. I don't see where to settle that.
	Don't worry about that. We'll just talk now.
	It's weird. You might want to bring the mic a little closer to your mouth too.
	Lick it. It's on my head.
	It's okay. Go ahead. I was funny to thank our Australian friend for the last four listener conversations.
	It helped me out quite a bit just as far as Several different aspects.
	I think I've gotten these little glimpses.
	I don't know if you know the stereogram pictures that you stare at.
	Every now and then you can finally see the picture pop out at you and then you lose it after maybe five, ten seconds.
	But I get these feelings that I feel okay being alone.
	I feel something different and I feel happier.
	It's momentarily all throughout the day now.
	It's very strange.
	I don't know if you've ever experienced that.
	First of all, just to correct you mildly, it's not that you feel happier because you sure as hell weren't happy being alone before, right?
	Right. Right, so it's the other side of the fence, right?
	And it's like, it's sort of like a pins and needles thing, right?
	Like, you're almost surprised at the fact that you're happy, and then you start thinking about things, and you're less happy, right?
	Yeah, right, right.
	Yeah, I mean, that's a phase of recovery from trauma, right?
	I mean, I mean, I'm no diagnostician, but you had some post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms based on your childhood and so on.
	So this is a phase of recovery where you are, through clarity and through understanding and through self-acceptance and through an avoidance of self-medication in terms of drugs in women, you are relaxing more into yourself and being more comfortable within your own skin and being happy, drawing breath, which is, of course, where we all want to get to.
	Okay. Yeah, it's kind of like the leg is tingling.
	Yeah, it's a pins and needles thing, for sure.
	And sometimes it's disorienting, right?
	And sometimes it's a hard feeling to describe that you're experiencing.
	Right, and then I lose it every now and then.
	It's gone, and I'm back to the old feeling.
	Well, losing it now and then, of course, is a lot better than only having it every now and then.
	Right. Right.
	Yeah, and I just kind of wanted to thank a lot of aspects in that whole set of four podcasts, including a little bit of the one with Hannah.
	Those were really helpful.
	And so I just kind of wanted to thank him and Anna.
	I know we're coming up on two hours here.
	And my microphone is bad, so I won't go in a long diatribe here.
	Well, yeah, and I just wanted to mention that I know it sometimes sounds easier when other people are having those conversations, but, you know, just again, massive thanks out to our Australian friend who was so open and so honest and so vulnerable with his information and with his feedback and with that conversation.
	That is no fun, right?
	And the fact that he went through four of them was most impressive.
	And I think that we have – and everybody in the future, seriously, for the next thousand years who's going to listen to those, owes an enormous debt to the honesty and the generosity of that gentleman.
	And I had him in my sights for quite some time.
	He kept disappearing into the bushes.
	He's very nimble.
	He's like a greased eel or like a well-oiled dingo, which I have in the basement.
	But just to be aware, I had him in my sights for quite some time, but it was a little bit like trying to get a squirrel, trying to feed out of your hand, which is full of exploding firecrackers.
	So I'm very glad that he managed to take the plunge.
	I hugely respect the difficulty of the conversations that he had.
	Obviously, I respect the fact and I understand that he gets great benefit out of them, but It is no fun being on the other side of that microphone, and I just wanted to thank him again for the generosity that he had in that conversation, because I think those are truly wonderful and beautiful podcasts.
	You don't happen to have the numbers of them there, too, just in case people are listening out of sequence.
	You don't happen to have the numbers there, do you?
	Oh, who else is talking here?
	Yeah, I think it's 9.31 through 9.33, and then it skips a couple to 9.39.
	Sorry, I think I just heard a voice.
	Was that Sheila McDingo? Is that right?
	Yes, it's the Grace Dingo here.
	Hello! Hello!
	Yeah, I was just going to say, it is 9.31 through 9.33, and then 9.39.
	So yeah, those are the numbers.
	Highly, highly recommended.
	Great podcasts, I think, and great material and great openness and great acceptance.
	It was not easy, right?
	You had to kind of brace yourself for that, right?
	Yeah, it was very, very difficult to do those.
	It was really, really rewarding.
	So I would definitely recommend to anyone else that's thinking about having these difficult conversations to definitely do it because it is so worth it in the end.
	Yeah, I mean, it's like the dentist, but everybody forgets that you do get laughing gas.
	So, you know, everybody just looks at it.
	Oh, there's going to be blood and drooling and screaming.
	That's true. There is going to be that, but there is some laughing gas.
	Because when we're in it, it's not as bad as you think, right?
	I don't know. It was pretty bad.
	It was pretty bad. We had some giggles, if I remember rightly.
	At least I don't think I was the only one who was laughing, as is often the case.
	Yeah. No, it is kind of really nerve-wracking and stuff, but it's something that I think you have to do.
	And I think probably the difficulty of it is kind of in line with the importance of it.
	You know, if it wasn't very important, it probably wouldn't be so hard.
	And if it wasn't so hard, the world would already be saved, right?
	Yeah, exactly. I mean, if it was just easy, like if it was just dead easy, if it was like eating a candy bar, then it would be like, damn, why the hell hasn't anyone done this for the last 10,000 years?
	That seems kind of stupid.
	But it is that hard.
	It is, you know, stepping out of, you know, it's like stepping out of a plane and someone's just going to throw you a parachute afterwards and you've just got to try and catch it and you're about 1,500 feet off the earth.
	It literally feels like that.
	Is that an exaggeration?
	It was amazing for me when I listened to them back.
	I couldn't even remember most of the stuff we talked about the first time because I was just so wracked with anxiety that I couldn't concentrate on it.
	It's quite difficult but really, really useful.
	Good, good. Well, I'm very glad for that.
	And again, thanks so much for your participation and also for ordering the books, which I believe that you are going to strap to the aforementioned dingoes and send into town.
	So that is cool stuff.
	Because if you can get the book off a dingo, if you can get OnTruth or UPB off the dingo, then you definitely are going to make it in the conversation.
	But it's that kind of combat that weeds out the week.
	Alright, well thanks so much.
	Do we have any other questions, issues, comments, problems, mad suggestions, praise, ounces of gold?
	Thanks again to the listener who sent an ounce of gold and an ounce of silver and the nose piercing kit.
	Thank you. They should be on next week.
	Did he send that in the mail?
	I'm not sure that I can say that because I don't know what the laws are about that.
	Does this sound better?
	Yeah. Okay.
	That's good. Yeah, I had it on the wrong, under the options, it was on the wrong thing.
	Right, the wrong thing.
	Generally, I find in the options menu, always check the checkbox called right thing.
	Because when you check the wrong thing, just bad things happen.
	We know that. The ironic thing is that you're actually quite technical, right?
	Okay, so are there any other questions or comments or issues or problems?
	Before we close down the show for today, just a reminder, you might want to go and check out FDR 900, which is, I think, quite a bit of fun.
	But last chance, last questions, last comments.
	Alright. Well, thank you so much, everybody, for dropping by this 16th of December 2007.
	I hope to get a chance to chat with you all before Christmas.
	If not, have yourselves a very, very merry holiday, and I will talk to you then after Christmas.
	Remember, if you have signed up for Miami, which is the 17th and 18th of January 2008, and you're not paying me cash on site, then...
	Pay me now. That would be good.
	That would be very good. Yeah, yeah, so that we can actually afford the airfare out, which would be good.
	Otherwise, we'll have to do that Obi-Wan Kenobi thing with the holograms, and that always gives me a headache.
	So there's that. We still have a couple of spots open if you'd like to drop by Miami.
	I think that tomorrow is the last day that you can get the cheap rate at the hotel at the Delta.
	It's the Hyatt Regency, sorry.
	It's the 18th of December.
	It's the last day that you can get, sorry, two days from now, that you can get the cheap rate, $70 off.
	And I think that there's only nine people in Greg's king bed, so I think he said he could go with ten, as long as the last person is relatively petite.
	So I think Christine is volunteering.
	So you can sign up still, the freedomainradio.com forward slash miami.html.
	Last but not least, pick up some books for the Christmas.
	Rush season slash gift-giving pickup stuff at freedomainradio.spreadshirt.com.
	And please send in some donations and make this a merry and we want to get lots of advertising out this month because people are spending a lot of time with their families and there's just no better way to get into the FDR conversation than 24-7 radioactive food exposure.
	So again, thank you so much.

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