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Feb. 11, 2008 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
55:12
977 RTR Squared

RTR about RTR.

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Time Text
Well, good afternoon, everybody.
I hope that you're doing well. It's Steph.
It is the 11th of February, 2008, 5.30pm.
And I wanted to have a little chat about real-time relationships about the book.
And in sort of my writing of the book, I... Really reawaken my commitment to be as honest with people as possible about my experiences of interacting with them, so I thought that I would try to apply that to this book and my interactions with people about it, and hopefully it will make some sense to you.
Now, there are two basic facts that I'd like to go over, and then I'll talk to you about how I feel about it, and you can let me know what you think.
The first is that the book's been out in audio and PDF format for a little over a week.
And I've been, I guess, talking about it fairly extensively.
And I've sold 50 copies, and there's been some people who've ventured into the land of the print version, which is just...
It's available now, though it's a sort of buy-at-your-own-risk thing.
I haven't looked over the final version.
I'm sure it's safe to order, but...
So I've sold another, I guess, eight or so of those.
And I've given a bunch of them away to the Philosopher Kings and so on.
And I find that very interesting.
And it's given me some emotional reactions that I wanted to talk about with you.
This is not a sort of blame thing or anything, just sort of examining how I feel and what might be going on.
And, you know, again, sort of keep the dialogue open and let me know what you think about it.
The first thing that I've noticed, of course, is that it makes me sad, and it makes me feel demotivated.
I'm sort of looking through my list of podcast topics that we have coming up over the next two weeks, and I just know that I don't have the emotional oomph to make them work.
And that's important for me to sort of pause and understand.
I have this basic premise that, as I've talked about before, that everything that I'm doing is right.
Because I don't have any other alternative.
I can only go sort of based on my instincts and as much reasoning as I can bring to bear.
On the challenge of creating this entirely new conversation, using this entirely new medium, and so on.
So the fact that...
And so I'm always trying to be really sensitive to how it is that my mood is playing out.
I sort of feel the more sensitive I am to the way that my moods are playing out, the more effective the growth of this conversation is going to be.
And that, of course, is what I am really focused on doing.
I quit my career to work on this, so I'm really focused on doing...
Whatever I can to make this conversation move forward as quickly and as effectively as possible in the short time that I have on this planet.
So, if I feel a sadness about something and I feel a lack of motivation about something, what that tells me is that it's really important to pause here and talk about what I'm feeling and hopefully get feedback from the community,
right? So, What I did in sort of trying to prepare for this conversation, which is not a conversation that I really enjoy, it's kind of a vulnerable thing for me, you know, that's just my experience, it doesn't mean anything to you, it's just not fun for me to do it, though I think it will be important, but it's a little scary, is I sort of wanted to go through and say, okay, well why are the book orders low?
You know, I mean, we've been talking about this book for years, The first thing...
Obviously, it's possible that the book is just bad, right?
It's badly written, badly constructed, badly read, maybe, or whatever, right?
And maybe there is a public praise for the book, because the feedback has been very positive, that people have talked about with me in call-in shows, that people have posted on the board, people have sent me emails, which I published some...
On the board, so the feedback has been very positive, right?
So then I think, okay, well, maybe to my face, people are very positive about this book, but maybe there's this underground network, right, of people who have read the book, who didn't like it, who are saying to other people, oh, you shouldn't get this book, it's not any good, or whatever, right? But then I thought, no, that's crazy.
It can't be that. It can't be that there's this...
That people are sort of lying to my face.
You couldn't read a book on real-time relationships, honesty and integrity, and then warn people off the book because it was bad, but then tell me to my face that it was good.
So that just seemed to me kind of paranoid, and I couldn't go down that route.
And then I thought, well, is it because the book is too expensive?
Well, no, it's actually...
The cheapest... I guess you can get it for $11.99 or whatever, right?
Up to whatever. But it's pretty cheap, right?
And, of course, price can't really be the barrier because, as always, I have...
You know, I'll give it to you for free, right?
This is the case with all my books.
Or if you don't like it, I'll give you your money back if you don't consider it to be worth the money that you pay for it.
So it can't be that price is a barrier.
And I've had a few requests for free books, which I've shipped off.
So it can't be price, and it can't be that the book isn't good.
Maybe the book is good, and everybody who's read it so far just happens to really like it.
But maybe that's because the book isn't good.
And to me, this is a real challenge, right?
Because just trying to sense the pulse of the community, which is a fairly full-time job for me, trying to sense the pulse of the community is a real challenge, right?
Especially when stuff that is...
Unusual or unnerving or unsettling for me is occurring.
So this is sort of just the process that I'm going through, and maybe it will be helpful for you in thinking through your own challenges in your own life.
So then I thought, okay, well, the book is good and is somewhat eagerly anticipated, and price can't be a barrier.
And then I thought, well, is it the time to order it?
That is the barrier, you know, like it takes, you know, log into your PayPal, you know, click on a button and whatever, right?
Well, that can't be it, because people bought books before, right?
And I get donations. Because the other fact of the matter, too, sorry, I said there were two facts at the beginning.
The first is that the book sales are low, and the second is that since the book came out, donations have virtually stopped.
I mean, that to me is very interesting.
And then we've had this conversation before where I say, look, if you buy a book, I hugely appreciate it, but it's not the same as donating.
It's got nothing to do with donating.
And donating is a separate issue.
Donating is for the podcasts, the call-in shows, the listener convos, and so on, and use of the site and the board and chat room and so on.
But the books are separate.
So... So, I sort of wanted to figure out, well, book sales are so low and donations have dropped off and so on.
So, what this tells me is that the community, this massive philosophical amphitheater that I talk to and we talk between and amongst, is trying to tell me something.
I was talking about this with Christina.
And so, I'm trying to sort of figure out and listen to what is it that people are trying to tell me, right?
Because... Something relatively clear is being communicated.
It just takes a little while to figure it out, and I'll sort of work through the process, see what you think.
So then I thought, well, maybe it's because not that the book is bad, or that there's a barrier to entry in terms of price or time to buy.
And again, time to buy a barrier to entry can't be, because if somebody emails me and says, I want a free one, then I'll send the link to a free one, they can download right away.
There's no time. Time is, please give me a free book, right?
So, that can't be it.
So then I thought, well, maybe it's because relationships aren't of interest to people.
So the application of philosophical principles to relationships isn't of interest to people.
Well, okay. But that can't be the case.
Because... When we look at the direction of this conversation, and this is something that I talked about from the very beginning, that we're going to work out the abstracts, and then it's going to impact your personal life.
That's going to be the way that it happens.
Philosophy happens in the here and now, in the ecosystem of your relationships.
So it can't be that...
That when I sort of say to people, well, it's going to be about your relationships, and we do the listener convos, we do the ask a therapist, and of course the ask a therapist are almost always and inevitably about people's relationships, and the listener conversation is almost always about people's relationships, and The call-in shows are almost all about people's relationships.
My emails are full of borders and people's relationships.
So it can't be that the RTR book is stalling free-domain radio because people aren't interested in relationships and how to apply philosophical principles to their relationships.
So, I had to sort of keep working at it, right?
Sort of keep working on trying to figure out what the issue is and sort of consulting my own feelings.
And then I thought, well, okay, so I feel very sad.
Like, what is it that I feel?
Because when people do stuff to me, and again, to you too, but let's talk about me.
When people do stuff to me, very, very often what they're trying to communicate to me, what this community is trying to communicate to me is how they're feeling, right?
How is this conversation making them feel?
When the conversation is making people feel frustrated and they're unconscious of it, then what they're going to do is they're going to go onto the board And they're going to frustrate everyone.
This is how the conversation...
Sorry, this is how the feeling that is unconscious infects other people.
And for those who are gold-plast, there's a Sunday call-in show from last week, I guess the 3rd, February 3rd, which is what we're listening to in this regard.
So when the conversation is frustrating people or making them feel tense, then what they'll do is they'll come on the board or they'll send me emails or they'll send each other emails.
And... They will make other people feel what they can't feel.
So, we also can see that somebody just posted on the board and said, well, I asked my father and my mother to look at the Intro to Philosophy series and my father said it was just nonsense or crap and the mother said, oh, it's just intellectual masturbation and stuff.
So, they feel angry.
And they feel that this Introduction to Philosophy series is going to end up rejecting them.
And so they make their child feel angry and rejected.
So when there's an unconscious thing that's occurring within the community, then people will try to make each other feel what they can't feel.
It's not a conscious, nobody's planning it.
It's just this is the way that our minds and our hearts work.
And so I'm going to go out on a limb here, and I'm going to say that I think that what I'm feeling must have something to do with what people are feeling now that this RTR book is out.
And what I think people are feeling now that the RTR book is out...
Is they're feeling sad and they're feeling scared?
It's just my theory. Because I'm feeling sad and scared.
Obviously scared because nobody's buying the book, or a few people are buying the book, and donations have dried up.
And the people who decide not to donate, they're trying to tell me something.
It's not bad or manipulative or nasty.
They're trying to tell me something.
So, if I'm feeling scared and sad, then I'm guessing that...
The community, or a lot of you out there, are feeling, let's just talk about you, you and me, baby, are feeling sad and feeling scared.
So then I say, okay, well, if that's the case, right, if people are feeling sad and scared, what is it?
Well, of course, I do say that this is an evil book in many ways and will, you know, be a great challenge to your personal relationships.
But I've said that from the very beginning.
I've always said from the very beginning that this is going to turn your life upside down and it's going to cause huge upheavals in your relationships and a few of them are going to make it.
All that kind of stuff.
That's all stuff that I have talked about before.
And so it can't be that when I say...
There's a real personal aspect to philosophy that is going to impact your personal relationships, going to be a great deal of challenge for them, that then when the book comes out, the details there, I don't think that people can be surprised, right?
Because I'm not feeling surprised from the community, if this makes any sense.
I don't want to sound like Mr. Borg forehead, but just trying to suss this kind of stuff out is a challenge.
It's very interesting. So...
I think that what's happening for the community is that you're feeling sad or anxious, sad, anxious, scared, and a little angry.
I think a little angry.
About the RTR book.
And this may be all nonsense. This may not apply to you at all, in which case, you know, go on to the next podcast, which will be about something else.
But if this rings a bell with you, if this makes any sense to you, the people are like, oh, I can't wait for the RTR book.
Oh, give me the RTR book.
It's out! What a very interesting phenomenon.
So... The sadness, I think...
That I'm getting, or if I had to guess at this sadness or this anxiety, I think that you know what the RTR book is about.
I think you know what the RTR book is going to do to your relationships, your existing, your current relationships.
And I think that you want it to go away.
I think that you want it to not land like a comet or like a meteor into your relationships.
Because this is where people are still having the greatest struggle, greatest challenge, greatest difficulties, is personal relationships, right?
Bringing these philosophical principles to your personal relationships.
So, I think that people are avoiding, right?
Because, I tell you, this is a very kind community in my general experience.
This is a wonderfully kind and benevolent community.
And people have just been amazingly and wonderfully kind to me.
I mean, obviously the generosity that lets me eat and do this is beyond words.
I mean, there's no words for how grateful I am to all of that.
And so when there's a change in that, when there's a change in kindness, that to me signals something that I really need to stop and pay attention to.
And I don't want this to be just me theorizing.
I mean, let me know what you think.
But this is something I think that's very important for me to sort of take a pause and say, okay, well, what is actually happening?
And the reason that I say that, you know, there's a shift in the kindness that I'm experiencing is I mean, if you're this far in the podcast series, you really care about this conversation.
You really, really do. I mean, you really, really care about this conversation and you want the world to be this beautiful place that we can start creating, start forging through this furnace of language, this logic that we're building.
And I also know that you care about me.
I mean, you kind of just listen to me for like 800 hours.
Me spilling my guts, weeping, yelling, kissing, you know, laughing.
Because I'm not emotionally distant, right?
In these podcasts, you can't have listened to me for this long and not care about me or not think that you want the best from me and so on.
And so... When I sort of put a book out, and it's like, you know, for 12 bucks you can put a smile on my face, and people don't do that, that is a failure of compassion that is so unusual for this community that it's crying out for me to pause and sort of say, okay, well, what is going on?
And as I'm sort of talking here, I'm feeling this Great sadness.
I think that's underneath or beyond the anxiety.
There's great sadness.
And what is that?
That is...
I think the feeling that...
That arises or opens up from taking what we talk about really, really, really out of the theoretical and into not the practical like how do you build roads without a state, but into the practical like your relationships.
Like your relationships, I think?
I think that you know, you know, you know what this book is going to do to your relationships.
You know. And I think that this book or this aspect of the conversation is connecting with a very deep sadness.
A very deep sadness that you have for your relationships or about your relationships or In a sense, you're non-relationships.
A sadness and a loneliness.
A sadness and a loneliness in stasis, if that makes any sense.
So if the world stops, if the world is frozen in time, like a freeze frame, then I get a very strong sense, a very deep sense of sadness and loneliness.
And self-contempt is too strong a word, but hiding.
Do you know what I mean? Like taking the beauty and the gifts of who you are and what you believe in and what you reason through and what you value and what you respect and hiding it from everyone around you.
And that's a very sad thing.
It's a very sad thing.
And that, of course, has a certain lack of compassion for the nobility and beauty of your true self.
Saying, I'm going to hide beauty for the sake of For fear of bullies, I'm going to hide my beauty.
This is very sad, and it's very lonely.
And I think that...
I know that I've spent a lot of my life hiding the beauty of who I am from those around me.
It happened in my family, it happened in prior relationships to Christina.
It happened in my professional career.
Academic career, and acting, and in...
In the world of software, in the world of business, that the depth and the beauty of who I am, what's in all, right, was that I hid that.
I sort of extinguished the sun in that sense.
You know, like, if you could imagine that the sun is a You know, the sun is about the size of a dime held at arm's length.
You can sort of lick your thumb on your finger, reach up and hiss it out and turn the world to darkness, that I did that for many, many years.
And I feel, I feel that you did that too, or have done that, and there's a lot of hiding.
And it's not shame, it's not shame, the feeling, because the hiding is necessary, given your environment.
So in the freeze frame, there's a great deal of sadness and a great deal of loneliness.
And then, if we sort of growl the movie back up to full speed and put RTR into the mix, what comes after that is a great deal of hostility and storm and stress.
Storm und throng. And attacks of being attacked.
And this is sort of something that I talk about in the book itself.
And I think, I think that Because RTR is going to bring this out for you.
It's going to bring this sadness up for you.
And I've not written anything.
I guess the end of The God of Atheists makes people cry.
And there's a section in this book about the future that makes people cry.
And it certainly made me cry when I was writing it.
And I think people sense that.
Almost like the book would have a relationship with them that is deeper and more compassionate than anything they would have ever experienced before, which would bring up a lot of sadness, right?
I mean, it's almost like you don't feel thirsty until you see the oasis.
And so, I think that people are...
They know what's down there.
They know what's through the rabbit hole of the RTR book.
And they feel or they sense the sadness that is in that place, the loneliness, the sadness, followed by the fear.
And to your credit...
To your great credit, you're not running away.
You're not going to other places, other boards, other whatever, or just leaving the conference.
So you're staying in there. And you're staying in there, I think, because you want what you're experiencing to be named.
That this sadness and this loneliness and this fear, this fear, what is going to happen when I'm honest in my relationships, right?
Right? What the hell is going to happen when I am honest about my experience of people in my relationships?
When I was talking about this with Christina earlier, she said that the sense that she was getting worse from the community was, you know, too much, too soon.
It's overwhelming. So I'm trying to sort of figure out what might be going on there, right?
What is being communicated to me through the drop-off in donations and the lack of book purchases, right?
And I think there is this feeling of sadness, of sadness, and of fear.
What is going to happen to my relationships?
Even if I've defuded, but what is going to happen to my marriage?
What is going to happen to my relationship with my children?
What is going to happen to my relationship with my friends?
Or if you still have family, what is going to happen to my relationship with my family, my boyfriend, my girlfriend, when I'm really, really honest about who I am and what I experience?
Now, I'll say this, and I feel that this is right.
It just doesn't mean anything other than I feel that it's right, but hopefully it will have some resonance with you or make some sense to you.
But I'd like to sort of tell you something, or sort of go over something which I hope will make some sense to you.
I hope it makes some sense at all, but I hope it makes some sense to you.
And that is this. Clearly, it's not about the 11 bucks and change, right?
This is not... I mean, obviously, I like it.
I need to eat. I gotta pay bills.
I'd like to advertise. But forget about that, because you get the book for free.
I mean, my goal is to eat and sleep and go to the gym and sustain the conversation.
So, don't worry.
Forget about the money. The money's not the issue.
But... The question is, let's look at the continuum of time here, because I think it's reversed in your mind.
So, if the RTR book, right, you said, oh, what's it about being honest in your personal relationships?
What, all of them? Right?
And then if that makes you feel, at some level, it may not be conscious, hell, it may not even be there.
This is just my theorizing, right?
But if it makes you feel, at some level, Sad and scared and maybe angry, maybe a little fearful, maybe a little frustrated that you're being pushed into being honest or whatever, right?
That if it makes you feel that, feel all of that, avoiding the book will not have you really avoid that feeling.
It won't. It just won't.
Because you already have the feeling.
See, people think that we live in the past, but it's not true.
It's not true. We live in the future, not the past.
We live in the future.
You know, when I hit my insomnia and busted out of my family and my friendships and my career at that time, when all of that occurred, when my life just blew up, or rather coalesced for the first time, It wasn't because of the past.
It wasn't because of where I was coming from that everything changed.
It wasn't that at all.
It was because of where I was going to that everything changed.
We're not afraid of the past.
We're not. We're not afraid of the past.
Past has already come and gone. We're afraid of the future.
I'm not afraid of... I don't know, pain I had at the dentist five years ago.
I'm not afraid of that. I'm afraid of the pain of the dentist coming up.
See, the pain that you feel, or the fear that you feel, or the anxiety that you feel about really being honest in your personal relationships, it's not about the past.
It's about the future.
See, We say, well, I feel sad because I have been not honest, or I have not had relationships where I can be really honest in the past, and that's why I feel sad.
Like, the past accumulates and produces this feeling called sadness.
But when you think about it, that would serve no use whatsoever, biologically, psychologically, evolutionarily, nothing.
It would serve no purpose whatsoever for that to be the case.
Like, for instance, your pain receptors are not about the past, but they're about the future.
If they were about the past, right, then you'd hit your thumb with a hammer, and then two days later you'd feel pain, after you'd mashed your thumb into a pulp because you didn't notice or whatever, right?
But when you hit your thumb with a hammer and you feel pain, the pain is designed to not hit you hit your thumb again.
It's about the future, it's not about the past.
Because the past is irrevocable.
Why would we have feelings which are designed to help us change our course?
Why would we have them about the past, the course of which cannot be changed?
And this is a little bit of something in the book.
Again, it's nothing that you don't know.
You know all about the RTR book, otherwise there wouldn't be such a strong, in a sense, non-reaction to it.
But the feelings that you're feeling, like the sadness that you're feeling, are not about the past.
The feelings of loneliness are not about the past.
It's about the future. Right?
When you feel, if you do, if you feel this sadness and this anxiety, this fear about what's in the RTR, what's it going to do to your relationships, you feel all of that because you know that your relationships are not relationships.
Right? And you are afraid that you are going to be stuck there forever.
Forever. And if you're going to get sent to jail, you fear the future of being in jail.
Right? You look forward into the future and you say, God, ten years in prison, oh my God, what a nightmare.
Right? Your fear, your anxiety in that situation is about the future.
It's not about the past. Now, of course, if you've been in jail before, but see, if you've been in jail before, you might have less anxiety.
We could debate that, but you'd know.
It wouldn't be an unknown. Or, if being in jail is really terrible, you'd have even more anxiety about the future, if you were experienced in jail before.
But if you've been in jail for five years, and then you're free for ten years, and then somebody says you're going back to jail for ten years, you would not feel sadness about the five years you were in jail before.
You'd feel sadness, anxiety, fear, hostility, dread about the future.
And your knowledge of the future would be informed by experience of the past.
But it's the future that your feelings are trying to point you at, the future.
Not the past. When you feel anxiety or horror, and let's say unjustly, about going back to jail, you feel that because you're supposed to avoid going back to jail.
Right? I mean, the feelings are there to help you.
The feelings are there to help you.
The fear, the anxiety, the concern, the spacing out, whatever is happening to you about this RTR book, That have caused people to hang around but stop donating because they want to tell me something.
And I think what you want me to tell you is that it's not about...
Your feelings are not about the past.
Your feelings are about your future, which you know.
Which you know. So, if you have been in jail for five years in the past, and you're being unjustly sent back to jail, and you feel dread and you feel fear, the purpose of all of that dread and fear is not to try and get you to go back to the past and resolve all of your issues about the past, about being in jail for five years in the past, because that's already happened.
And the problem is not that you were in jail for five years in the past.
The problem is that you're going to be thrown in jail for ten years in the future.
So your feelings of dread and anxiety are trying to get you to change the course of your future.
Not to go back and resolve your past.
The dread that you feel about jail is telling you to jump bail and go live in Ecuador or something.
Right? The feelings of dread that you have about all too familiar situations is because you're supposed to change your future.
You're supposed to make decisions based on your knowledge and experience of the past to change your future.
And that... These feelings, the sadness, the frustration, the fear, the anxiety, all of that is designed to have you change your relationships in the future, not to examine them in the past and come to some sort of closure, and then continue to do the same thing.
The reason we feel pain when we burn her hand when we put it on the stove is so that We don't put our hand on the stove in the future.
That's the purpose of that pain, is to get us to change our decisions.
Personal pain, emotions, feelings, instincts, they're all about the future.
They're not about the past.
They can be informed by the past, but they're all about the future.
So, when this book comes out, and it is a great book, and you absolutely should read it, and you don't have to do a damn thing about any of the information that's in it, although you know that you will, because otherwise you wouldn't feel anxiety.
If you think that avoiding the RTR book is going to help you avoid the pain of Or the anxiety, or the frustration, or the sadness, the loneliness that you feel in your personal relations.
If you think that avoiding the book is going to somehow result in those emotions going away, I guarantee you that that won't happen.
I mean, you will dissociate, you'll get some temporary relief from anxiety and so on, but...
It's not going to help you.
Avoiding the book is not going to help you.
And avoiding the dentist doesn't make your teeth get better.
And your toothache doesn't tell you to brush your teeth better five years ago, because it's all impossible.
It tells you to do something about your tooth now.
Right? I've said from the beginning that you're a genius and you're a philosopher, and with regards to your own life, you're an infinitely better philosopher than I am, right? Maybe with regards to everything, right?
But I do what I can.
And so I wanted to just talk to you about this aspect of our relationship, right?
That I have said it's going to blow up your life philosophy.
I have now put the resource together for you to go through not all, but some of the key main or core arguments as to how to bring truth to your personal relationships.
And what's happening is, now that the book is out, now that the book is out, People have, and of course people have stopped asking me to a large degree about their relationships, right?
And that is highly instructive, right?
Highly instructive. And I think it's because people are asking me, in my humble opinion, this could all be nonsense, right?
This is my thoughts, right? And people could be asking, I think people are asking me, like, Steph, I need some help, I need some clarity here, I need some clarity.
Right? And the important thing is that you need to accept your feelings.
You need to accept the knowledge that you have in your gut about your relationships.
Hiding from the RTR book is not going to do any good.
It's not going to do any good.
Because you already know what the RTR book is going to tell you about your relationships.
Because we talked about...
It's not the first time. We've talked about RTR for many, many months now.
But real-time relationships is continual honesty in the moment with your relationships.
That is...
You already know where that's going to lead, because you haven't done it.
If you had done it, then the book would be...
Like, nobody could stop you.
Nobody could stop you. I mean, the benefits of the book are so clear.
I mean, that you can have these wonderful, great relationships.
The benefits of the book are so clear.
But... You already know this knowledge.
When you avoid the RTR book, when you avoid this part of the conversation, you're not avoiding the RTR book.
You're not avoiding me. You're not avoiding the catastrophic loss of 11 bucks and change from your PayPal account, right?
What you're avoiding is yourself.
What you're avoiding is your own knowledge of your relationships.
And Lord knows you can avoid me.
I got no problem with that.
But I don't want you to avoid the knowledge that you have about your relationships, of which the RTR book is a mere visible symptom. of which the RTR book is a mere visible symptom.
I mean, you know, you know whether you can be honest in your relationships or not.
And you know, you know down to the last umlaut, you know...
Exactly what is going to happen when you become honest in your relationships.
You're not avoiding honesty because you already know what is going to happen when you're honest.
And the RTR book is going to help concentrate and formulate that knowledge so it becomes harder to avoid.
But the RTR book is not going to create any knowledge in you.
It's not going to create any knowledge in you.
It's not going to create any course of action in you.
It's not going to generate one...
I mean, maybe some insight, but it's not going to generate one new thing within your soul that you don't already know.
And that's my concern.
Not the 12 bucks, not the donations.
Those are nice. But my concern is that people are avoiding themselves.
People are avoiding themselves, because RTR is primarily, fundamentally, is about yourself, about your relationship with yourself, as we talked about in this Sunday show, this last Sunday show, with Rod, the ecosystem.
And that's my concern, right?
My concern is that your lack of empathy to me, you know, like Steph bled his brain white to crank out this book, I care about Steph.
I'm sure he's got some interesting stuff to say.
I'm sure that what Steph has written over the past few months is going to be at least worth $12.
Or $13.99 if you want the audiobook.
Because when people don't do that...
Because I know you care about me.
I know you care about me.
I know that I care about you.
I know that you care about me.
But when you...
Don't get the book for free or for money or for whatever.
Then what you're saying to me is, Steph, I've now listened to 975 podcasts, but the concentrated wisdom that you've injected into this book that's getting really great acclaim is not worth a movie, the price of a movie to me.
Right, you see that that is such a...
That is such a radical disconnect that it would be highly dissociated of me to not pause and comment on it.
And I know this is why I don't like doing it, because it sounds like I'm just trying to do this big, long, hour-long manipulation into guilting you into buying a book.
That's not it. That's not it.
If you're not avoiding yourself and if you know all this stuff, for God's sake, don't buy the RTR book, right?
Hell, write the follow-up.
I'd be happy to promote it for you.
But... But when people communicate to me through not buying the book, when you communicate to me through not buying the book, Steph, I don't have the compassion for you to rate months of your heaviest intellectual labors.
They rate less than $12 or $13 or $14 to me.
That I would rather spend that money on a movie or a couple of movie rentals or, I don't know, dinner for two at McDonald's.
Then what you're doing is you're putting me and what it is that I've created on a scale of values so far down that listening to all these podcasts, participating on the board, in the chat window...
It makes no sense, right?
It makes no sense, and that's why it creates things, because it's incomprehensible, unless we look at self-avoidance, right?
Avoidance of knowledge that you already have in the blind hope that somehow, some way, things will change.
They won't. They won't without you acting, being honest, intimate, open, vulnerable in your relationships.
But where that puts me, right?
So I put out this book, and it's like a thunderclap of indifference or whatever.
People are very much telling me, Steph, I have to put this book so far down in my hierarchy of values.
I have to put you or your efforts or your labor or your desires so far down in my hierarchy of values.
That has such a staggering lack of compassion to me, for me.
Because the donations have dropped off as well.
People who would normally donate are neither buying the book nor donating.
That is a very clear communication to me.
People are neither buying the book nor donating.
Which means there's a lot of anxiety out there, a lot of upset, a lot of fear, a lot of, oh God, a lot of paralysis, right?
And so, if I were to take this communication like, well, everybody, they think that these podcasts are important enough that they'll...
Download them and, you know, they'll update their iPods and they'll listen to this and that.
But, you know, the RTR book is like nine and a quarter hours, right?
I mean, just buying that for 14 months, I mean, it's going to take you less time to put that on your iPod than, you know, the 15 or 20 podcasts that it would represent, right?
So, when people say to me, Steph, what you're doing is worth less than a movie to me, that's so fundamentally not compassionate, And, I mean, I would take it as kind of insulting or whatever, right?
I mean, if I wasn't really trying to sense where the Borg is emotionally.
But it's so non-compassionate that what it says to me, since you can't be any more compassionate to other people than you are to yourself, when people treat me in a highly non-compassionate manner...
Like, hey, thanks for doing all this.
You know, thanks for putting this great resource out for free.
Thanks for all this stuff. Which you all do with donations, and it's wonderful.
And if you haven't, well, you all should, right?
But when people treat me with that little compassion, I know that something has happened that has severed their compassion to themselves.
And since RTR is in its real essence about compassion with yourself, which is nothing you don't know.
You get RTR already.
Just the same way we get UBB. We don't formulate it, but we get it.
That when people treat me with this lack of compassion, I know that they've lost compassion with themselves.
And what that means is that they're avoiding something in themselves.
And as I said before, I think I know what that is, which is a true knowledge.
Of the real nature of your existing relationships.
And I guess the last thing that I want to say, and I really do mean this from the heart, I mean obviously I just...
I ear kiss you all like crazy for the bliss and benefit and joy of being able to produce what I produce and participate in what I participate in.
Generosity of people who donate time, energy, effort.
And Greg, of course, donates more than anybody, right?
In terms of the effort that he's putting into helping to outreach and spread and fix up the website and all this great stuff.
But this is sort of the last thing.
That I'd like to say, if you don't mind, then I promise I'll shut up.
And I'm... I'm going to do my absolute best to not play the...
I told you so card, but...
I'm sorry, I'm going to have to.
What I mean by that is that...
You know, I said from the beginning to...
And this was nothing you didn't know, but I sort of said from the beginning, look...
If you start down this road, you're going to feel like you're taking a set of measured or regulated steps down.
But what's going to almost immediately happen is it's going to turn into one of those Fight Club Penguin ice shoots where you're just going to be trying to hang on as best as you can while this process starts to unfold.
And... Although it feels counterintuitive and feels scary, now is not the time to start clenching and resisting.
Right? And again, it's not about the money.
You can take the book for free, but just get it and listen to it and read it.
Because you can't turn back.
But you can't turn back.
That's why, if people were really bothered, then they would just vanish, right?
But everybody gets, like, you can't turn back now.
This is like we're too deep into the woods of wisdom to just start taking off randomly on foot, right?
But you found your way into the thicket of the truth, right?
And now only the truth and honesty and integrity is going to get you out to a better place.
But you can't turn back now, not...
After 6 months, 12 months, 18 months, 24 months, however long you've been involved in this conversation, you can't turn back.
You can't put the genie back in the bottle.
You can't unlearn what you have learned.
Right? If you have learned French...
And people are speaking French around you.
You can't pretend that you don't...
You can't say, I don't understand French, and mean it.
And you can lie. But you can't not know what you know.
So you can't go back to who you were before this conversation, when essentially you, like...
Myself was just treading water waiting for this conversation to begin.
Don't you feel that?
That we were all just waiting for this conversation to begin?
For this joy and this beauty and this intensity and this meaning and this self-relating?
And this beauty, the beauty of the virtue that we're creating, the honesty, the integrity, I mean, don't you feel, in a sense, like you were just treading water, waiting and hoping, and I think that human beings have been waiting and hoping for 50,000 years for this conversation to begin.
And now that it has begun, and we're all fucked, we're all neck deep in this conversation, there is no going back.
There's no undoing the scientific revolution.
There's no undoing reason.
There's no undoing knowledge.
And the RTR book is out now because we are about setting other people free.
This is the part three of the conversation that I talked about.
And this is about setting other people free.
And given that you can't go back, and given that the only way to stay where you are is to stop moving, to be paralyzed, To neither speak nor be silent.
To neither relate nor avoid.
And you won't be able to stay there for very long because this conversation moves you.
We are only nominally in charge of this freight train, right?
There are tracks that we don't see that move us along in this conversation.
I mean, this is a metaphor that I've used before.
I know it's only a metaphor, but it works for me.
that we are the symptoms of the planet striving to heal itself from unreason from bullying from control from hypocrisy from the use of ethics to create vice that we are the beads of sweat that form on the forehead of the planet as it strains to heal itself that we are the symptoms of the planet
From the madness, the culture, the craziness, the religion, the cults, the family, the state.
As it struggles to shake off irrationality and rank subjectivity like a fever, like a contagion, like a virus.
And we are the symptoms of that.
Massive contortion of healing that the world is long overdue.
And you can't go back.
And given that you can't go back, I know that the next step is the hardest.
I know that the next step is the hardest.
That's why I wrote the book.
And given that you can't go back, all I can say is, get the book.
Do what you already know needs to be done with your relationships, but I'll be honest.
When you're through, when you're past it, you will look back and be amazed at how scary it was and how easy it was afterwards.
Like jumping out of a...
when I went parachuting when I was younger.
Much younger. I mean, you...
You know, before you jump out that window of the plane, it seems like the worst thing in the world.
And after your parachute opens, you look back and say, well, that's pretty easy, right?
I know that it looks like you're jumping off a cliff and hoping that three seagulls are going to float you to Atlantis, but it's not that.
You're stepping out of a fog onto the shore, out of an interstellar nothingness into corporeality.
And I know it's scary, and I know it's horrifying, but there are people on the other side waving you forward, right?
As Christina and myself and other people who've made this leap, there are people on the other side waving you forward.
God, can you imagine? For me, I didn't know there was nobody forward, right?
And knowing how scary that was, I tried my best to ease other people's passage through this particular process.
Two, really living your values.
There's nothing creepy or weird about this.
It's just If honesty and authenticity are a value and a virtue, if being true to yourself is a virtue, is a value, as it's talked about in Shakespeare's time, above all, to thine own self be true, and then it shall follow as night follows the day.
That canst not be false to any man.
If this is simply a virtue that we're putting into practice, universally, like no theft means an encapistan, If honesty is a virtue and we put it into practice consistently about who we are with people, this is just what we do.
This is just the next step for the species, for the planet, for the world.
And you can't go backward.
You can't live in the fog.
You can't live with the knowledge of the value of truth and authenticity, vulnerability and courage with your relationships.
You can't live with that knowledge and then Pretend that it's not there.
You can't live a split life when you have a value called authenticity and wholeness.
You can't make philosophy your slut mistress that you keep in a hotel room downtown, right, and hope your family won't find out.
So that's what the book is about.
And you know, you know, you know that that's what the book is all about, and that's why you're avoiding it.
And I'm saying...
There's no obligation. Give it a shot.
If the book sucks, I'll give you your money back.
If you don't have any money, let me know.
I'll send you a copy of the book.
Get the book. Thank you so much for listening.
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