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March 9, 2008 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
53:16
1005 Sunday Call In Show Mar 9 2008

Two scary emails, and Socrates...

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Well, thank you, everybody, so much for joining in.
We have a full house, full house conference call.
Sorry that we have not found a way to audio stream this yet, but we maybe will figure out at some point.
But unfortunately, we can't use Skype for anything other than conference calls because the lying, filthy nonsense of the Skype car simply doesn't work.
So thank you so much for joining.
This Sunday, the 9th of March, 2008, just two quick items of business before we get started.
The Philosophysician is complete, at least this is round one, Thank you so much to Greg, to James, to Ash for all of their help, James in particular with his mad coding skills.
He was actually able to transform my ASCII COBOL into a web interface, which is really, really cool and not particularly easy.
So thank you so much for that.
You can get to it from the main page, freedomainradio.com.
Just scroll down a little bit.
You can step through the wizard.
It is a great, great way to find shows in particular.
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I just did that this morning so that it will actually email you a feed which is personalized just for you.
feed which is personalized just for you and as I said earlier you can filter out some of them ad hoc podcasts somebody asked me what they were I put the description in the Philosophysician podcasts ad hoc are also known as Ramble Tangents, Rantalongs, Tangentrums and Spittlefests so you can get those so you can also get to it if you want to go directly freedomainradio.com forward slash forward slash
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P-H-I-P-H-Y Philosophysician which is another reason as to why coders should never name their own products but anyway I just wanted you to have a step through that It's also a very easy way to sign up for the Freedom Aid Radio newsletter, the winner.
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Other news of note, Reason Magazine has agreed to look at my article on Jefferson, which is great.
It's nice to get a little further ahead in the process before being rejected as a crazy cultist anarchist, so I consider that progress.
That's nice. Also, I have been invited to speak at, I guess, one of the premier atheist conferences, which will be held in Chicago on May the...
July the 9th.
That is a long conference. May to July.
And I probably will be speaking the whole time.
Yeah, it's like July 10th or something like that.
In Chicago, Illinois. I have not been finalized as yet, but I may be up there on the podium with Richard Dawkins.
Actually, when I say podium, I mean loinclad mud wrestling.
So that should be quite fun.
I think I can take him. So, that's that.
Order of Business, freedomainradio.com forward slash books.html.
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And that's it. Thank you so much for your patience while I go through the orders of business, the minutes from the most recent FDR, Conglomeration Business Meetings.
And I turn now the microphone over to you.
If you have a question or a comment or an issue or a problem, then you can either type it into the chat window where the lovely and talented Christina is staring at all the funny jokes that have nothing to do with what I'm saying.
and you can also just tap the mic three times, and I will make up a question for you in a funny accent.
Hi, Steph, it's Colleen.
I sure can. I just received a sort of interesting email from my dad.
I posted it on the Gold Forum.
I'm not sure if you've seen it yet.
I have seen the title, have not seen the content.
So if you'd like to read it, if you don't mind, or you can scrub bits of it, or you can just talk about the general thing if you like.
Okay, it's a bit long, so if that's not a problem...
I leave it to your judgment. Okay, um...
Sorry, have you slept? Just kidding, go on.
Yeah, it's just...
I'm having trouble, um, because I'm trying to analyze it to see what's really being communicated.
And I'm just having trouble, like, because usually these letters from parents are, you can point out certain things that are like, oh, you know, obviously they're blaming me, or they're being hypocritical, or they're, you know, guilting me, and I just, I can't, it's very unique, I think, as far as letters go.
Okay, well, if parts of it bother you, or the whole thing bothers you, whatever you feel would be helpful, just spill it, and we'll see what we can make of it.
Okay. I'll see if I can just pick out things.
He says, I'd like to share with you my personal odyssey over the last few weeks.
Dare I say it, perhaps it is good that you left because I don't know if I would have gone through this if you had not.
You have been on my mind constantly.
Okay, people express hurt in various ways, not always healthy or mature.
Sometimes it appears as anger.
You saw some of that.
And then he says, I've done a lot of introspection about me, you, our relationship, my relationship with my parents.
I've had to ask myself a lot of painful questions, or rather questions with painful answers.
One of the hardest questions I had to ask was this.
Why, despite my deepest hopes to the contrary, do you seem to feel the way about your parents that I felt about my parents when I was your age?
Today I've been wrestling with the ugly truth.
Perhaps I've simply found different ways to make the same mistakes.
And he goes on about his parents, his childhood, I think about you and me, I think about the same problems we face today.
First, being open and honest about opportunities I missed when you were a child, and second, our ability to forge a different relationship today.
I realize, you know, he says, I'll always be your father, but if you're feeling the way I felt at your age, then perhaps it's because I failed to realize it's time for me to stop being a parent.
And he goes on more about breaking from his parents.
And at the very end he says, I'm not saying I flipped a switch and not everything's better.
I do feel like I've flipped on a light switch and I'm starting to see the clutter in the room for what it is.
I'd like to propose two things.
In time, at your pace, we should probably talk about some of the things in your past where I've made mistakes.
Perhaps it would be good for both of us if we confronted them together.
You tell me. Is there more?
Is there more?
Hello? Oh, yeah.
I mean, sorry, what I mean is, is there more that you wanted to share?
Because I've got enough, and I've got a Latin term for this, if you like.
Sure, go ahead. The Latin term is just EW. Ew.
And, I mean, I completely get a gross sense from this, just my subjective nonsense perspective, so, you know, keep it or trash it as you see fit.
But I get kind of dizzy, and I feel kind of grossed out.
What was your experience of the letter?
I... Okay. It definitely...
At first, it definitely made me feel sad.
Tell me a little bit more about the sadness.
Yes.
Well, I just felt like...
I mean, if he's waking up to things that he's done wrong, and I don't want to have a relationship with him, then I'm just kind of like...
I guess part of me felt bad for him.
Go on. Why?
Because if I don't answer back to him, then it's just going to be even worse.
I guess I would feel better if he would just blame the whole thing on me.
Right. Do you think that he's interested in making you feel better?
No. I don't think so. Right, so the fact that you feel worse is not an indication that you've done wrong.
If you say to somebody, I don't want you in my life because you make me feel bad, and then they send you an email which makes you feel bad, do you see that that is not exactly disproving the thesis?
Right. Yeah, I mean, I kind of got...
I mean, especially because this made me feel worse.
And at the very beginning, he mentions that he knows that I'm preparing for finals in the move.
And it's like he drops this emotional bomb on me right at the worst time.
Right, but it's not the worst time for him, right?
Because he's feeling discomfort or anxiety about what you have done.
And so he wants to do something for himself.
This has nothing to do with you.
And that's not even me making anything up for once.
It's clear that it has nothing to do with you.
And how do we know that it has nothing to do with you?
Well, that...
I mean, that he even sent me an email.
No, I don't think so.
I don't think so. Again, assuming anything was possible, I guarantee you that he could have sent you an email that would have had you feel better.
And actually would have had you want to talk to him.
So it's not that he sent you an email.
What else? How else do we know?
And I know this is hard to see because we're all retarded around our family, right?
Families lower IQs.
They're like a frontal, like a sharp blow to the head.
But how else do we know?
how do we really know that it's not about you?
I don't know.
Well, who does he spend the email talking about?
Himself, yeah. I know, it's subtle, right?
It's really subtle.
But if you look carefully, you can see that he doesn't ask you one single question, right?
Right. I, this, and my parents, and my choice, and my mistakes, and possibly this, and possibly that, and who knows, and this, I... There's not one question.
Right.
Right. Now, if it is true that his mistreatment of you was just a mistake, and you are condemning and attacking him for a mistake, which he tried the best he could, he did the best he could, you know, whatever, whatever.
If you attack and condemn him just for mistakes, what kind of person are you?
Exactly. The more he takes the knife, like the more he lets himself off the hook, the more he lowers you on the hook, right?
He never once said, I did you wrong, right?
Despite my best efforts, there were mistakes.
Mistakes were made.
But he never said, look, I've done you wrong.
He also said, you seem to feel bad about me as a parent, right?
Right. That's not even giving you your feelings, right?
Right. Sorry, go ahead.
Yeah. I just...
I don't know why I totally missed that.
Well, because you're trained not to see your father's selfishness, right?
And he's good, right?
He's good. He's not just sending you an email saying, you effing this, and he's not just cannoning up the F-bombs, right?
Which would be easier for you.
So clearly he's good at this, right?
It's not that you're dumb, right?
It's just that because you're very smart, right?
It's just that we're trained not to see these things because you're there to serve your father's needs, right?
So it's hard for you to see your father as selfish because that doesn't serve his needs, right?
Yeah. It's...
Yeah, and until somebody on the board pointed out, I didn't notice this part where he said...
People express hurt in various ways, not always healthy or mature.
Sometimes it appears it's anger.
You saw some of that. Like, could you be more disconnected from your own actions?
Like, could you take less responsibility?
I just...
Because he's referring to when he, you know, took me out to dinner and called me childish and all this, and said I was in a cult, you know?
Right. And who are these people?
Like, is he talking about tribesmen in Borneo?
I mean, that's you and your dad, right?
Who are these people? I mean, that's just strange.
I've done a poll. Right?
Now, I'd like you, if you don't mind, because it's very hard to separate the content from the form, right?
Because the first thing you said was, him sending me an email was bad, right?
But I don't think that's true, in my opinion.
And I'll just take you for a mental test drive and see if this resonates at all with you.
I'm going to just go totally out on a limb here and try...
To explain or try to give you a very, very brief sense of what an alternative email from your dad could have looked like.
Right? And then you can tell me whether that would have been something you would have responded to.
So if you got an email, Colleen, that said, My daughter, I have signed up for therapy.
I have been reading book after book.
And I am appalled by my own parenting.
I am appalled by what I have done to you.
There is nothing that I can do to make it better that I should not have been doing year after year ago.
I also totally understand that me having an about face after you kicked me to the curb, and rightly too, Looks totally suspect, right?
Like, the torturer only apologizes when he's threatened with jail, right?
So I said, I totally, like, I'm just, you totally jolted me.
You totally did the right thing.
I am just appalled at what I did to you.
I became exactly my parents because I was too chicken to deal with my own issues.
You have done the healthiest thing that has ever been done in this family in God knows how many generations.
I'd like to make an offer to you.
No strings attached.
I want to pay for your therapy.
I also would like to be your punching bag because I know that what I did to you was appalling.
I would really like it to offer this, if it would be even remotely helpful to you, for you to sit down with me.
I will not... Be defensive.
I will not tell you that you're wrong.
And for you to tell me all of the things that I did that hurt you.
Because I know that that would be incredibly helpful for you.
I believe that it would be. I believe that I deserve it.
And that is the tiniest gift that I can give you after treating you badly for so many years.
How would you feel if you got an email like that?
A lot better.
Now, you may not immediately, but you would at least sit there and think like, wow, this guy got something, right?
I'm not going to sit here and drive over and we're not going to have a big TF, but I've got something to think over, right?
And what does that think?
Sorry, how does that make you think or feel, the idea of that kind of email?
I mean, listening to you describe it actually just kind of made me angry.
Go on. Because it just...
I mean, it points out all that was not said in this email.
And all that was said. Right.
Which was basically, fuck you, it's all about me.
Right. You're stepping out of the script, young lady.
And I'm too much of a coward even to yell at you to your face.
I'm just going to manipulate you into feeling bad.
That's my punishment. Acknowledgement, like, time heals nothing.
Only the acknowledgement of wrong and rational restitution heals.
Defense heals nothing.
Passive aggression heals nothing.
Redirect, minimization, counterattack, heals, nothing!
It just adds to the wounds.
Complete ownership of wrongdoing with the maximum possible rational restitution is the only possibility of healing a long-term dysfunctional relationship.
And even then, the odds are slight.
But, at least there can be some disengagement with reasonable honor.
I've never heard of one parent doing anything within a million light-years of that.
So you're not alone in this.
And I'm really, really sorry.
Okay.
That, I mean, thank you, because that helps me look at it a little bit more clearly.
And how do you feel? I feel better.
I mean, I've been kind of depressed all morning, and now I just feel sort of back to normal.
Good. Yeah, well, the depression was the goal, right?
The doubt, the confusion, the fogging, right?
That's what parents do, right?
That's what parents do when they're confronted.
I mean, bad parents or whatever.
That's what they do. And the last thing I'll say, Colleen, and this is just a sort of a little flourish at the end here, but...
One of two possibilities exists.
Either your dad is capable of being a good human being, or he's not.
If he's not, you'll be less angry at him.
So, there's no good way out of it for him, which he kind of gets, other than the route which I've taken, which is never going to happen.
Because if he's capable of being a good person, but he just withheld it until you bullied him, So to speak, by not seeing him.
Then for years he withheld being a good person for you because you didn't have enough power over him, which is not the action of a good person, right?
If you have to force people to be good, they're not good, right?
Or he's never going to be a good person, in which case...
All the emails, everything you get from him is going to be self-justifying manipulation.
I was saying this to somebody I was talking to last week, that one of the illusions, like I'm all about trying to get rid of as many illusions as possible in the short time I have on the planet, right?
Because it is the illusions that breed such astounding suffering in the world.
And I was saying to him that one of the illusions that I've really spent a huge amount, the one that I've gotten the most flack for For attempting to expose is the myth of the bond of the family.
The myth of the bond of the family.
I can talk trash about the founding fathers.
I can take on the state.
I can even talk trash about God.
And some people will spit, and some people will stone, and some people will cheer.
But this myth, which all these other myths are founded on, the root of all of this, It's the myth of the bond of the family, because there's so much propaganda around this.
Oh, we would do anything for our children.
Blood is thicker than water.
Closest brothers. Family bonds.
We would, yeah, we may fight, but when push comes to shove, we're right there on the barricades with each other.
It's all total bullshit.
There is nothing weaker that I have ever seen than these family bonds.
Quote, bonds.
The reason they feel so strong is they paralyze us, and they put us in impossible situations, so they loom overwhelmingly large in our own minds.
But they're nothing.
Family bonds equate to the following.
If you lie, you can stay.
And that's it for this supposed family bond.
Because as we can see now, and we've accumulated, I think, enough evidence over the last two years that we can start speaking with some mild authority in this area.
As we can see over and over and over and over again, the moment that people begin to speak the truth...
About their families? They are kicked out beyond the stars.
The trap door opens and they vanish.
The moment that people speak the truth within their family structure, their family structure vanishes completely.
Explodes, detonates, puffs into nothing.
It is the weakest and most fragile thing on the planet.
If you lie, you can stay.
That is a bond of degradation, self-annihilation, guilt, obligation, fear.
If you lie, you can stay.
That's all there is to these supposed family bonds.
If you tell the truth, fuck you, you're gone.
And this is happening over and over and over again.
I am really, really, and people say, well, you know, Steph's down on the family.
It's like, hey, prove me wrong!
I would love nothing more.
Than for one of y'all to receive an email like the one I described to Colleen.
I would love that.
I think that would be fantastic.
I would give that parent any time they wanted on this show to explain what happened for them.
How they did it. How they figured it out.
I have spent a huge amount of energy trying to bring families closer together.
It's not my fault that when you tell the truth your parents and your siblings attack you.
I wish that weren't the case.
And if a parent were to do the honorable or decent thing, admit their wrongdoing, offer to make rational restitution, I would give that person nothing but time on this show to explain how it happened.
We would go nuts trying to figure out how this came about and how we could tweak the process to make this more likely.
But it doesn't happen.
It's not my theory. This is what we experience.
So this myth of family unity, of family bond, of the blood as thick as the water, is a total lie.
And it is the one foundational lie that philosophy has not sunk its teeth into yet, as far as I know.
And that is the one explosive lie, and that's the one I get criticized the most for, right?
That and Ron Paul, which of course is the same goddamn thing.
But that's the one lie that you cannot approach, because that's the one lie that really runs the world.
And since I did not want to depart this planet without having done the most that I could conceivably do, however hard to oppose illusions that matter, That's the one that I had to focus on and that's the one that I get attacked the most for because that's the most important one.
That's the one that philosophers and libertarians and psychologists and academics and reporters and intellectuals, that is the lie that nobody touches.
That is the third rail of human society.
You touch it. Well, actually you live, but it takes some pretty staunch stuff to hang in there, and I certainly appreciate you guys' support for this process.
This is the most important thing that we can be doing with our lives, is to help bring this lie to the light.
Because if this lie, if the bond of the family is not exposed, everything else we do will be completely meaningless.
We'll be completely and totally meaningless.
The lie of the family is the volcano.
If we focus on politics or religion or the state or economics, we're pissing into a volcano thinking we're putting a fire out.
If we go for the lie of the family, expose the lie of the family, empirically, rationally, as I've been doing since...
The early 100s of this podcast series.
If we expose the lie of the family, we can change the world in such a way that all of these other things will fall away.
This is the core.
This is the root of it all.
If this can be changed, everything else will fall away.
All the other institutionalized evils in the world will fall away.
So, anyway, I said I wasn't going to rant.
I did a little bit. Thank you so much.
That was an excellent, excellent comment.
Excellent, excellent. Question.
So, the mic is open.
If you have another question or comment, please feel free.
Yeah, we can certainly...
Christine and I have joined a new gym, and I've been introducing her to the fine art of squash, and she is absolutely fantastic.
She actually got a shot the other day by climbing out of my nipple.
It blew my mind. She's very quick.
Actually passes through matter.
It's amazing. Well, not the hair.
But anyway, it's too much gel.
But yeah, so we've been playing a lot of squash.
We played for an hour yesterday. We're going to go tomorrow, and she's very good.
And she's really making me run.
It's quite a lot of work, and I'm very old.
But she's younger, so it's a little bit easier.
Yeah, racquetball, same thing.
Well, we don't have to have a show that's very long.
We just had a big and heavy topic, and there still is time to go and play squash, so we'll just give it another 30 seconds, if any.
But don't feel like you have to drag the show out.
I mean, having a non-19-hour Sunday show is not the end of the world, so if you have a question, great.
If you don't, no problem. We can wait until next week, but I'll give it another 30 seconds, and we can have a shorter show today.
Yes? I've got a rather abstract question.
I finished reading The Last Days of Socrates a couple of months ago, and there's been something that's been on my mind about the Socratic method, and I've kind of got a bit of a love-hate relationship with it, I think.
Obviously, it's very useful, but it seems to me it can also be quite kind of condescending at times.
If you know what I mean by that, it seems like Socrates kind of already knows the answer and is sometimes a little bit sarcastic in exposing the other person's lack of knowledge.
So I'm wondering...
So when do you use the Socratic method and when do you not use it?
Because I think it's probably easy to fall into the trap of getting a bit sarcastic.
Sometimes it seems like kind of a good idea, but when you kind of already know the answer, it seems a bit ingenuine to me.
So I was just wondering what you thought about that.
Yeah, that's a great question.
Oh, wait, sorry.
Well, no, I think you're right.
And I've done a podcast on this, that Socrates was what is often technically known as a passive-aggressive asshole, with a massive amount of respect for the intellectual brilliance of the guy who, you know, you can only stare up at that kind of...
But basically, emotionally, he was just a passive-aggressive jerk.
And the Socratic method, at least as described by Plato, since Socrates didn't write anything we don't know, the Socratic method appears to be dismantling other people's opinions by showing the shortcomings in their definitions and the contradictions in their approach or in their arguments.
And then when you've beaten the wind out of their sails, you then launch into a lofty speech which violates all of the strictness of the previous set of questions.
You launch into some windy quasi-mystical diatribe.
Which then is supposed to answer all of the questions, right?
So Socrates is a lie, in my view.
I think the Socratic method is very good in many ways.
It is an instructional method, which means it is a master-student or a teacher-student relationship, so it's not to be used, I think, among people that you would consider equals in terms of learning and ability.
But if you look at the last trial of Socrates, the symposium in particular is just rancid this way, where love is deconstructed away from lust and avarice and political ambition and so on.
And so then we find out what love is not, and then in order to inject what love is...
Socrates goes on this long windy exposition about the union of disparate souls outside the cave of illusion, which if that metaphor and definition were subject to the same Socratic method, it too, like almost everything that Plato said or wrote, would completely fall apart.
So in the way that Socrates is portrayed in the Gorgias and in the other writings, he is somebody who dismantles other people's beliefs in order to be able to Smuggle in his own weird and screwed up beliefs.
So I don't find, and I think that may be one of the things that's irritating you about the Socratic method as it is described by Plato, if that makes sense.
Yeah, that does. I found it interesting that you said it's for kind of a teacher-student type of relationship, so you don't think it is suitable for, you know, kind of two equals that are curious and trying to understand each other's positions and stuff like that?
No, I don't think that it is useful for that myself, because a Socratic method is when you have an answer and you're stepping somebody through it.
First of all, you dismantle there.
He's got this argument for the afterlife in The Trial and Death of Socrates, which is complete and total nonsense, and just couldn't even stand the most cursory scrutiny.
So, the way at least that I use the Socratic method, if and when I use it, is that if I know that somebody is coming along and says, you know, my country, love it or leave it, you know, or if you don't agree with the government, then you can leave, right?
But you know that that person is incorrect.
You also know that there's going to be resistance, and so you have to give them a step-by-step argument.
You have to get them to agree with every step, right?
Like in the same way, if somebody comes along and says, there is a God, you can use the Socratic method.
To get them to understand that there is no God.
That doesn't mean that they're going to end up agreeing with you.
They may be cornered and then they'll just invent well but in another dimension or whatever.
But when you know the answer, but you also know that the person is going to be defensive about it, then you have to use the Socratic method to extract agreement with them every step of the way so that they have to agree with the final conclusion, right?
Like if you've agreed with all the logical steps, you are then bound to agree with the final conclusion.
And so the Socratic method is like a way of disarming, in a sense, an opponent who is ignorant.
And I think that there are certain times when that is highly appropriate, and that can be a friendly thing.
I had a call, I think it was six or eight months ago, with a teacher who said that she was undecided about whether the surge in Iraq should go forward or not.
And I used the Socratic method on her to get her to understand that the question didn't have anything to do with the surge in Iraq, but it had to do with whether she was willing to advocate the use of violence against me, which is, of course, the essence of the question that she was proposing.
But I couldn't just say, if she said, well, I support the surge in Iraq, I couldn't say, oh, so you support the use of violence against me?
Because she wouldn't make that connection.
So you have to build that bridge for people because they think they know something, which they don't, which is why the initial part of the Socratic method is about disassembling people's certainties.
Because until you become uncertain, it's the phase that nobody wants to go through.
Until you become uncertain, you can't learn anything.
If you think you know, you don't keep learning.
I don't keep checking back whether gravity works every morning or whether 2 plus 2 is still 4.
So, yeah, there are times when you can use it when you are trying to, either in a benevolent or assertive manner, because there are times when I'm debating with somebody who's being a dick, so to speak, and I'm doing it not because I expect that person to change, but because I want to expose that person's irrationalities and emotional immaturity to other people, and that sometimes occurs in this show, and sometimes it occurs in listener combos and so on.
So, yeah, I don't think, I mean, Christina and I don't use the Socratic method with each other, because she'd always win.
So, we use arm wrestling, and she wins only about 80% of the time, because I have curiously Japanese schoolgirl kind of arms.
But anyway, so does that sort of help at least about the way that I would approach the Socratic method?
Yes, it does. Thanks for that.
Just as a definitional type of thing, would the difference between the Socratic method and just asking questions be that you're trying to lead someone to a conclusion?
Yeah. I mean, if somebody says, should the war in Iraq go on or not, I know that the real question is, do they support the use of violence against me in the form of taxation to fund the war?
I also know that if we argue about whether the war in Iraq should continue or not, it's just going to be a bunch of opinions masquerading as truth, which means it's going to be emotionally volatile and we're going to get precisely nowhere.
Now, I also know that if somebody's talking about the war in Iraq without noticing or without knowing that it's founded on violence against citizens in whatever the host country...
Then they don't know what they're talking about, but they also don't know that they don't know what they're talking about.
So then I would use the Socratic method to break down what it is that they mean.
You can do this with people who advocate voting or whatever, the state as a whole.
And so if you can get them to understand that they do not know what they think they know, and this of course was the We're good to go.
Socrates went to the oracle at Delphi because he was interested in wisdom and said, oh, oracle, I know nothing and I want to learn who is the wisest man in the world.
And the oracle said, you are, oh, Socrates.
And he said, well, that's nonsense because I don't know anything.
So in order to prove the oracle wrong, he went around and examined everyone.
That's how he developed the Socratic method.
And as a result of examining everyone and pissing everybody off with his passive aggression, he ended up realizing that the oracle was right.
Because Socrates said, I don't know anything.
And that was actually a wise statement, because all human knowledge prior to Socrates, in Socrates' mind, was considered to be amoral and manipulative posturing, usually for political and economic gain, in the form of politicians or sophists, those who taught how to make the worst argument appear,
the better. So that fundamental getting yourself just totally smacked down by the truth, laid low, ground under, pounded down, Like a shrub under an asteroid, that's what it feels like in terms of what philosophy does to your certainties.
Everybody wants what's on the other side of that, which is when you climb out of the crater, you are akin to a god relative to who you were before.
At least that was the case with me, which doesn't mean that I'm a god.
It just means I was really not very knowledgeable at all beforehand.
Everybody wants to climb, like fly out of the crater like Superman.
Nobody wants to get hit by the asteroid.
So the Socratic method for me is also a way of understanding whether somebody has the emotional maturity and capacity to be crushed by logic.
Not my logic, right?
Just logic as a methodology as a whole.
Because if people are at war with reality and won't respect logic or empirical evidence, then they're just insane, right?
So you can't argue with them, right?
Alright, that's helpful. Thanks for that.
You're very welcome. Alrighty, and that was...
Hey, look at that! Milked another few minutes out of the afternoon.
Next! I'd also like to thank the listener who sent in the book.
It usually begins with Ayn Rand, which is a history of the libertarian movement, which has Murray Rothbard and Walter Block and all these sorts of people in it.
It's a history of the libertarian political movement throughout the 1960s, which has done an enormous amount to help remind me why I think the approach that we're taking here is so very good.
And I'll do a review of it in more detail this week.
But I'd like to thank the listener.
I know that's an expensive book because I looked for it once on eBay.
So thank you so much to the listener who sent that in.
It's been very, very helpful.
And, of course, it reinforces my prior decisions, which is about the greatest gift that I think I can get.
So I appreciate that.
And I will do a review of that this week.
Hey, Steph.
I promise I won't share excerpts from my paper on Petrarch and Cicero.
I won't do that. Sorry, just because you don't know, Petrarch and Cicero, a good round to antibiotics should clear that right up.
Sorry, go on. Right, exactly.
I just kind of wanted to give everyone an update since everyone and their dog has been asking me.
Yes, I sent a letter to my aunt's thesis dissertation advisor person.
Wow, wow, wowzy, wowzy, wowzy.
Go on. Well, it just said, like, to whom it may concern, I did most of her coursework, and though she did the research, I wrote the dissertation.
And he sent me back, it was like a one-sentence email saying, thank you, we'll look into that.
Right, right. And how did you feel...
I didn't expect any more...
Sorry, how did you feel by doing that, and have you felt afterwards?
I was completely...
I alternated between feeling really sick and really not there until I figured, okay, I kind of have to do it eventually.
So I just pressed the send button.
Excellent. So we have absent and sick.
and what has been occurring for you since then? - Yeah. - You've got a sales job here on the moral growth.
This is great. So you can vomit, and then you can vanish.
The double V.
We'll call it the W.
But anyway, sorry.
Right.
Since then, I've been sort of okay.
I haven't really thought more about it.
I'm not sure why that is.
I guess I'm just kind of waiting to hear what happens.
I'm expecting some sort of horrendous contact from my aunt very soon.
I would not expect that.
To which I will not.
Yeah, no, I did not expect that.
I'm kind of curious as to why.
Oh, well, because they're not going to do anything about it.
I'm sure they're not.
I'm sure that she won't even know.
And actually, that was one of the things that I was most afraid of.
I was kind of afraid of that nasty email, even though she can't do anything to me, really.
I guess I didn't want to go through that stuff.
Your aunt is kind of a bitch, right?
Like an unholy terror.
And I have worked...
When I was younger, I worked briefly, I guess, for a couple of...
Two months in the summer, working on a union contract for the Department of Education here in Toronto, Canada.
And again, what does this do?
It doesn't make me an expert on anything, but I did notice that what it took to get somebody fired in a public institution was pretty much if you found them in the Taliban or as part of al-Qaeda, you might be able to get them suspended for three days with pay, maybe, if you really you might be able to get them suspended for three days with Right?
So there's no possibility.
Yeah.
Even if she was caught literally abusing children.
You could pop the head of George in a bag and the union would file a grievance for any disciplinary action.
So, given that that's a reality, whoever you sent it to is going to say, excellent, I can either go with an unsubstantiated claim, which is going to piss off an unholy bitch in my organization for no benefit whatsoever, or...
I can just leave this one simmering away and do nothing about it whatsoever.
And because it is a public institution, it is ringed by violence and therefore is not subject to the efficiency and ethical strictness of the free market interaction, right?
So yeah, I mean, nobody's going to do anything about it because it's never in their interest to stir up this rat's nest for no benefit whatsoever.
Yeah, my first thought when you said that was, then why the hell did I do it?
But I know why.
Because you like the vanishing vomiting thing, right?
Yes, exactly.
I like either not being here or being all too here.
That's my fetish. I mean, you did it, of course, because of your relationship with your aunt, not because of your relationship with the school board, right?
It's better to tell the truth, even if nobody's going to listen.
You can't control that, but you can control whether you tell the truth about this or not.
Right. And anyone can recognize my pomo, by the way, to the people on the chat.
I can prove I wrote it just by sending y'all this Petrarch and Cicero paper.
Yeah, there's no need to threaten people, I think.
Just kidding. Yeah, if y'all read it, your heads would explode.
Nothing. Okay, well, I think that's...
And you still haven't told me...
I don't know why. Don't make me come over there.
You still haven't told me how you feel since, or has there been any feeling change for you since you sent this?
Other than the dread...
Since...
Other than that, it's been like...
It's like I don't know quite what to feel.
I think if I had to put it in a word, it would be okay.
Now what? You know, am I supposed to feel magically better?
It's like feeling like I want to feel something, but I don't really...
Well, I would say...
It was sort of like...
I'm sorry.
I just wanted to sort of mention this briefly.
There's a diet for people who are at the godforsaken age of 40 plus and And people go on this diet, which is a pretty mild diet, and they say, you know, I haven't lost any weight, right?
So 10 years later they say, well, I'm still the same weight, so this diet doesn't mean anything, right?
And the dietician keeps saying, this is true, right?
He says, look, in general people gain about a pound a year over 30 or over 35, right?
So the fact that you don't weigh any more than when you started on this diet is good.
That's the effect of the diet.
It's what has not accrued to you in the future that is the effect of this diet.
In the same way, how this is going to show up for you, if I were to hazard a guess, and I think it's a fairly good one, how this is going to show up for you, Charlotte, is how you feel the next time somebody wants to exploit you.
And what I think is going to happen is that you're not going to be in that situation.
Because you have now the voodoo aura of, if you bully me into being exploited by you, then I will...
It's the way you carry yourself, it's the eye contact, it's the firmness of the handshake, it's the shimmy you do, I don't know, but it actually communicates itself to people.
That this is going to keep you safer in the future.
So there may not be any big rush of relief or feeling about the past because it's all done.
You were a kid and you're not to blame and blah, blah, blah.
What is going to be interesting, though, is going to see whether or not people are going to try and exploit you in the future.
I would guess that's not going to happen.
And you may not even notice that, right?
But I just wanted to point it out. Okay.
I believe you, Steph. Wow.
That was too easy. Now I feel anxious.
Come on! Would you like to tell me some more about that?
We can work this out.
Don't make me use my Socratic method on you.
Oh no! Oh no!
The asteroid! It's incoming!
Actually, it's more of a hammerlock, but okay.
I think we can go with that too. Well, good for you.
Thank you. I appreciate that. I appreciate the update as well.
That's great. That's great.
Do keep us posted about how you feel.
And if you do end up getting into an exploited situation, for God's sake, don't tell anyone and ruin my perfect record of prediction.
So, thank you again for sharing.
That was great. Is there anybody else?
Anybody? Anybody?
Anybody?
I got a couple of-- this is Greg.
I got a couple of dreams we could walk through if you want.
I think that would be interesting.
I'd rather not do that today, if that's okay.
I've just been up since like 7.30.
I know that a few dreams will be at least an hour and a half.
No, it's true. And not because your dreams are particularly insane, though they are.
No, I'm just kidding. But no, that's a big time investment.
I'd rather do that when I'm a little bit more mentally fresh.
No problem. No problem.
You're just looking for conversation topics.
No, and I do definitely want to...
I mean, your dreams have been great of late, right?
And I do definitely want to spend some time on them, but I'd rather do that one-on-one if we could.
I don't know if great's the way I would describe them, but...
Entertaining for everyone else, I think, would be the key.
Yeah. Yeah. Sorry to be a...
I don't feel like I could do them justice right now.
Oh hey, no problem at all.
No problem at all. Alright.
Anybody else? Last chance for us.
I mean, compile the show and work very hard because we get donated.
All right. Well, listen, thanks, everybody.
It's no problem that we have a slightly truncated show.
I have been cranking them out with fair regularity.
And, of course, we may have a listener who's kind enough to share some lengthy conversations we had late last week.
He really wants to. I think I can feel that already.
So we'll be releasing his name so that everybody can send him begging requests.
And I think he also wants a big box of hamsters.
Thanks so much everybody for dropping by today.
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