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March 16, 2008 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

02:19:42

1013 Sunday Call In Show Mar 16 2008

Dreams, dreams - and is it right to copyright?

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	Alright, thank you everybody so much for joining.
	It is Sunday the 16th of March 2008.
	This is Stefan Molyneux from Free Domain Radio.
	And thank you for the radio show hosts who had me on this weekend.
	I was on Free Talk Live at freetalklive.com.
	On Friday the 14th of March 2008, we had a rousing and interesting discussion.
	And then I was on Mark Stevens' No State Project at WeThePeopleRadioNetwork.com.
	Home of Jack Blood on Saturday night.
	So that was cool and fun.
	And I've actually been invited back to Free Talk Live to mud wrestle with some of their crazy listeners.
	So that should be fun. They have a pit, a hose, and I'm fairly slippery, as you all well know.
	So I just wanted to start off with...
	I'm almost trying to keep my pulse on the nation, so to speak.
	And this is not particularly targeted at the people who are listening in who are stellar and fantastic donators.
	And this is not a plea or a beg for money.
	This is just something that I find may be an interesting allocation of resources.
	I'm going to try and give you an off-the-cuff big-picture view of FDR just so that I can liberate you from bugging me as much as I have liberated you from hopefully bad people in your life and Ron Paul, which of course is to say that you have liberated yourself.
	I've just been whiny and nagging in your ear perhaps.
	So, I just, you know, over the last week or so, it's been sort of interesting.
	I've had a flurry of long and complicated emails from people who write in to me, who say to me, Steph, oh God, the state is growing, the economy is tanking, the dollar is turning into asswipe Kleenex.
	And I just don't know how it is that we're actually going to go about achieving freedom.
	I feel, yay, verily despaired unto the darkest bowels of the universe and I'm confused and I'm upset and I just don't know and how is it possible and, you know, do you have a podcast series?
	Can you do a podcast series?
	Can we talk by the phone? Will you take carrier pigeons?
	Can I send smoke signals to help you recover me from this pit of despair about the growing power of the state and so on and so on.
	And this, of course, I would imagine has something to do with the fall of the great false prophet of freedom, so to speak, Ron Paul.
	And I just wanted to put something out there for the people who are in that state of mind.
	And just sort of... I haven't responded too much to these people, or if I have, it's been a little curt.
	And I'll sort of explain why.
	And hopefully that will make some sense.
	So... Let's just say, this is totally off the cuff, I haven't done the analysis, it's certainly in the ballpark, let's just say that FDR has pinged or reached or been notified to about 100,000 people over the past, I guess it's coming on for three years, no?
	Two and a half years or something like that, let's say.
	Let's just say, right, that FDR, let's just say from the very first time that I published on Lew Rockwell, it's about three years, let's just say that about 100,000 people have been pinged by FDR and, you know, have come by the site or whatever.
	And let us further suppose that two-thirds of those people find it annoying, unpleasant, irritating, boring – And we have about 30,000 people then who remain listening, dipping into the podcast stream from time to time, and so on.
	And let us say that about a third of those have come significantly towards or achieved the concept of a stateless society and...
	And or some aspect of applied ethics within their own life and have gotten bad people out of their lives, have improved their parenting, improved their romantic relationships, ditched bad parents, bad boyfriends, bad girlfriends, and so on.
	And that to me...
	It's a staggering and wonderful and significant achievement and to those who have donated, that's your glory.
	That's your treasure. I'm just a megaphone but with no batteries.
	I'm just yelling at myself in a car which isn't going to do much for anyone.
	That, I think, is a reasonable way of looking at it.
	Now, if you say, well, you know, gosh, that's only, you know, what is it, three or five thousand people whose lives have been significantly affected by this conversation, and it's like, yes, that's true, and so far, I would say that that probably is about right.
	And that is fantastic.
	I mean, to me, that is absolutely fantastic.
	Let's just say that there are 30,000 people who listen to, you know, a couple of podcasts or more on any given month, which seems reasonable based on the analysis of the server logs.
	Well, do you know, because I sort of think about this, say, well, if I become a professor, how long would it have taken me to reach 30,000 people?
	Well, even if you can teach 1,000 people a year in your courses, that's your whole career.
	35 to 65 is kind of your whole career.
	So, in one month, we reach more people than I certainly would have had I been a professor.
	And, of course, if I'd been a professor and it would have been a one-year course...
	Then I would have reached 30,000 people, but then if you count, maybe I would have taught them for four years, which is about how many podcasts there is.
	It's real close.
	If you count the books to go, the audiobooks to go, the premium podcasts and so on, we're at a four-year degree or damn close to it.
	So, if you look at it that way and say, okay, well, I would have reached 30,000 people over the course of my career, but let's divide that by four.
	That's less than, you know, 8,000 people, right?
	that I would have taught in the course of a career.
	And that's what we hit now in a month.
	And that is amazing.
	And these people do not have to interrupt their lives.
	They don't have to spend tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars to attend college.
	We've got people who are listening to philosophy, listening to philosophy, getting into philosophy, while they're working on the line, while they're painting houses, while they're at lectures in university, which seems to me an entirely good idea, while they're going for walks, while they're at the gym.
	It is a self-paced, and particularly with the wizard that's on the website that helps you find the podcaster.
	The Philosophysician, it's a self-paced, self-directed course study that touches on so many areas of essential human thought.
	So, when, and this is sort of around the donations, and again, just not to nag you for money, because money's great, but, because with money, I mean, Greg and I eat, and then we eat, and so far what we've been doing is we've been shifting resources from advertising to pounding the news groups, and we've been hitting psychology news groups with the procrastination video.
	I spent about a day last week hitting Iraqi, Iraq groups, anti-war groups with the space aliens from Luxembourg video and podcast and article.
	So, and we've, Greg spent a huge amount of time pounding job search boards with the, still by far the most popular video I've ever done, job interview skills, which of course has drawn a large number of people to the site as well.
	So, I mean, that's what we're doing.
	And this is nothing that we have to do.
	This is nothing that we have to do alone.
	I mean, if you have the time, you have the inclination, and you really do care about how free the world becomes, then promote Free Domain Radio.
	Now, is this the only way the world can become free?
	Good heavens, no. But I think it's the best way, obviously, because otherwise I'd be doing it differently or I'd be working for somebody else.
	So I think it's the best way that we can help the world become free.
	It's a proven way.
	I mean, politics doesn't free anyone.
	It just wastes a huge amount of resources.
	If the libertarian movement had taken the 20-plus million dollars and hundreds of thousands of hours and applied it to educating people about principles rather than getting them to chase Ron Paul off a cliff, we would be much further ahead.
	And, of course, we have proven testable results in terms of freedom and ready of people becoming freer and happier.
	So, to all of the people who are out there who feel despair about the lack of freedom in the world and the increasing size of the state and this and that and the other, I just have four words to say.
	Get off your ass!
	Get off your ass!
	And stop writing to me complaining that That the world is not as free as you'd like it and do something about it.
	This is what it feels like when I get pounded with all of these emails and communiques and pop up IM messages about people's despair about freedom.
	I feel like I'm a doctor who discovered a cure for an illness that is plaguing mankind, and I'm really trying to teach other people how to apply this cure to people.
	And there's all these people who keep interrupting me and jostling me and saying, but there's so many sick people!
	It's like, yes, and here's the cure!
	Go tell people. No, there's just so many sick people.
	I don't know. It's just so sad.
	It's so bad. I don't know what's going to happen.
	It's so sad. It's so bad.
	But if you really were interested in there being fewer sick people in the world, you'd either discover a cure or find somebody who you felt had the best cure and do something about it.
	You know, there's this thing that they say, if you don't vote, you can't complain.
	Well, that's all nonsense. But I will say this.
	If you don't try to make the world a better place, stop bitching about the world not being a better place.
	You know, we've had this thing out, and some people have been wonderful about this, and I really, really appreciate that.
	We've had this thing out, you know, where it's like, You know, scour the web.
	Spend an hour. If you've got no money, that's fine.
	Scour the web. Send us a couple of emails of people you think might be interested in this conversation.
	We'll send one email and never contact them again.
	It's not spam because everything's free on the site.
	But people will literally spend an hour writing me an email that goes on and on about how bad the world is.
	Now, could they have spent that hour?
	Sending people to the FDR site or whatever site you feel is going to be the one that makes the world a better place.
	No, can't be doing that, see?
	Gotta just trip up the doctor.
	Gotta just interfere with the doctor.
	You've got to just knock over the medicine and then complain that there are lots of sick people in the world.
	It does get a little bit exasperating.
	If FDR is the best way to get people to become free, and by FDR, it's not me, it's not...
	Well, okay, it is Christina, but it's not me, primarily.
	It's just philosophy. It's the discussion.
	It's the debate. It's the standards.
	It's the rigor. It's the power of what it is that we all collectively talk about.
	If that's the way to get people free, then stop complaining about the world being...
	A degraded place.
	And start doing something about it.
	Get off your ass.
	Or stop complaining.
	See, this is the thing. This is around freedom for you, the complainers, too.
	The whiners, the negative, the depressed, the unhappy, the miserable, the despairing.
	Oh, the future is doomed for everyone!
	But see, here's the thing.
	Right? Here's the thing.
	It's important to understand whether you really care about the world or whether you just like to complain.
	And this is like no prejudice, no criticism, this is just a fact, right?
	How much do you care about helping the world become a saner place?
	How much? Is it too much?
	To sign up, say, for 20 bucks a month to help get the word of philosophy, the truth and liberty of philosophy out to the world.
	Is it 20 bucks a month too much?
	That's fine. Then you care about the world less than 20 bucks a month.
	And that's fine. Is it more than an hour a month getting emails or contacting people about FDR? Is it more than spending 15 bucks on a t-shirt that at least has the website on it that people might see and come visit?
	Is that too much? Is it too much to go to a board or two that you know about and post about free domain radio and say this thing is electric, fascinating, brilliant, wonderful, exciting, scary?
	Maybe culty. Decide for yourself.
	Is that too much?
	Well, that's fine too.
	Then all that you know is you don't really care about the world at all.
	At all! And I'm just trying to free you from that.
	Because if you're in love with complaining, then don't pretend to yourself that it's because you despair about the world.
	because if you won't get off your ass and do something about the state of the world, then at least I want to free you from pretending that you're really, or at all, concerned about the state of the world.
	If an hour a month is more than you're willing to spend trying to help the world, whether it's through FDR or through something else, if an hour a month or 20 bucks whether it's through FDR or through something else, if an hour a month or 20
	then I'm telling you, you saying that you care about the world and you're unhappy about the future of the world is complete and total bullshit.
	I'm not saying you're lying. I mean, you genuinely believe it, all you people who complain about the world.
	You genuinely believe it, but empirically, it's not true.
	It's not true. You care about the world less than half a cup of coffee a day.
	Now, you're willing to spend an hour writing me a long, complicated, convoluted email.
	There's an example of a guy like this.
	On Free Talk Live.
	Nothing on the show on Friday.
	Nothing to do with FDR. It's just sort of an example of the stuff that I've sort of noticed has been swelling my YouTube inbox and my inbox in my various emails and private message board on the board for the last week or two.
	And if you don't care about the world...
	Then you can stop complaining about the world.
	Then you can be free of that and you can deal with it as a personal issue.
	Because the reality is, if you complain about the world but don't do anything to save it, it's not the world that you're interested in.
	It's your own personal future that you're despairing about.
	Because your values are completely disconnected from your actions.
	If you are a chain smoker, And you despair that the world is going to die from lung cancer.
	It's clearly not the world that you're concerned about, about your own future.
	And if you stop complaining, you will find that you will actually end up dealing with your anxiety or your depression or your fear of the future as a personal issue, which is where it should be.
	You shouldn't go around infecting other people or trying to with your despair about the world if you're not willing to get off your ass and do something about it.
	So there it is, a little BCF tough love.
	And really, I'm trying to help you.
	I'm trying to help you.
	I know it's like yelly help and all, but it's a real thing.
	It's a real, real thing.
	Oh, I'm so concerned because there's toxins in the air and there's all this cancer.
	It's like, oh, here's the cure for cancer.
	Oh, I don't have any time to tell anyone about that.
	But oh, the world and cancer and people are dying and like...
	Here's the cure. 20 bucks a month can help get the cure out to people.
	No, I don't. Oh, but the cancer of the world, the deaths, oh God, it's so terrible, right?
	It's just nonsense.
	It's self-indulgent nonsense.
	Don't confuse the world for yourself.
	It is your future that you despair about and your lack of integrity that you are worried about.
	And I'm not saying you have to have integrity.
	I'm not saying you have to save the world.
	Just don't pretend that that's what's motivating you.
	That's all I'm saying. With all the love and respect in the world and all the sympathy for the childhood upbringing that left you in such a state.
	But those are the empirical facts.
	If you spend more time complaining about the state of the world than actually trying to fix it, And the beauty of FDR is that you don't have to come up with a philosophy.
	You don't have to read 25 years worth of philosophy.
	You don't have to get a master's degree.
	You don't have to learn how to communicate.
	You don't have to learn how to run a website.
	You don't have to learn how to run a board.
	You don't have to learn how to make YouTube videos.
	You don't have to do any of that.
	You don't have to learn how to write and publish your own books.
	You don't have to learn any of that.
	Nobody's asking you to give up two decades of your life to make a philosophy that can really help the world.
	We're talking 20 bucks a month!
	Then you can complain. Think of it.
	20 bucks a month buys you the right to legitimately complain about everything!
	Boy, you just can't spend 20 bucks better than that.
	Alright, well that's it for my intro rant.
	Thank you so much for your patience.
	And I now open it to all of the people who are now afraid to talk to me.
	Thank you for your patience.
	We can do DTOLL's ferocious dream.
	I saw that on the board, although I haven't had a chance to read it.
	I know that he had quite the XXX explicit dream, although I don't think it was sexual, but if you have your mic on, we can do that dream if we like, or Greg has had some dreams from beforehand.
	Or any other questions, topics, issues, problems for people who may be around?
	Um, hello?
	Hello. Hey.
	Hey. If no one's going to talk, I guess we can do the dream thing.
	Alright, let's do the dream thing.
	Sorry, just to interrupt, but this is like Mr.
	Annihilus, dude, right? Yeah, yeah.
	And there are some people, someone said on the board, oh, I'm so glad that that problem was dealt with, which of course is not the case.
	It's not like, I may be somewhat good at this, but one conversation does not a personality turnaround make.
	Just, I mean, so people are aware of that.
	It's the beginning of the process, not a sort of open and shut thing, but do you want to read the...
	Oh, no! I've completely changed.
	The world is different.
	The lights are coming on.
	I'm floating away.
	Hey, Mr.
	Sarcasm, we've missed you.
	It's quite the congregation here.
	No, but hold on.
	Let me pull this up on the forum.
	Just while you do that, can you mention maybe what happened that may have been significant the day before the Night of the Dream?
	It wasn't the night after we talked, right?
	It was a night or two later? Yeah, it was like a night or two later.
	The only thing... I mean, the only thing that was significant, I guess you could...
	I don't really know if it was significant, was...
	I mean, I was at my girlfriend's apartment.
	I mean, I don't know if that's significant or not, but that was...
	I mean, nothing really huge happened that day.
	I mean, I just kind of went out, and then when I came home, it was more...
	Which is what shocked me about it, because I didn't see anything that was that horrible.
	I didn't... Do anything that that was radical and then I had this dream and it just like woke me up at like four o'clock in the morning and I just couldn't.
	I was just like shaking and I had to write it down.
	And tell me a little bit about your relationship with your girlfriend.
	Yeah, it's been kind of an up and down ride.
	It's kind of like...
	Sorry, I'm looking for sexual detail.
	No, I'm just kidding. Go on. Okay, maybe I am.
	No, no, just kidding. Well, no, just kidding.
	Well, first we started out pretty, I guess, positive and it was just like, you know, first courting and all that and everything's wonderful and good.
	Then we got into this little problem because she couldn't let her parents know that I was dating her because she's white and black and her parents are racist.
	And so that had a little problem.
	We had a little issue with that.
	Sorry, a little issue? Sorry.
	Maybe I'm measuring things by a different yardstick than you.
	Maybe you're dealing with epochs or something.
	But that doesn't strike me as a little issue.
	Yeah, yeah. Well, no, it wasn't.
	I'm trying to...
	To downplay it, to get to the dream, but it was a big issue.
	I did have problems with it.
	Her mother predominantly, I thought, was a little controlling because she tells her mother almost everything.
	They're supposedly great friends, but she told me some other things about her mother, which I think she's just really controlling.
	She just doesn't realize it.
	But anyway, she told her mother she was going out with me, and then her mother said, yeah, well, we can't tell your father.
	And then after that, she was like, okay, and everything was okay for a little while.
	I was like, yeah, sure, you don't want your father to bust the gut and have high blood pressure and die.
	I mean, that's fine. I don't care.
	Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
	Now, you see you're minimizing here?
	Now, what effect do you think minimizing is going to have on your unconscious?
	Let's say it is a big deal and it is a big issue, and you consciously minimize it, what does that do to your unconscious?
	It probably makes it pretty upset.
	Yeah, I mean, what you do is you're basically piling, you're saying, well, I'm minimizing it on one side, so you're taking all the bricks off one side of the seesaw and you're putting them all on the other, which just makes that so much more pressured and intense, right?
	And I'm just trying to figure out, I don't even know what the content of the dream is, but obviously dating the daughter of a racist and keeping it all secret from her dad, that is setting yourself up for a rather volatile environment, right?
	Yeah, yeah.
	I mean... I don't know.
	I just... At the time, my thought process was kind of like, well, you know, her father's racist, but obviously there's some good in her because she's not.
	She's been able to, you know, look past that and like me for kind of who I am.
	Wait, wait, wait.
	Again, sorry to be annoying.
	Just to interrupt. I don't, I mean, you obviously may know that for sure.
	I don't know that for sure.
	Right? So, for instance, you had mentioned the last time we talked that some people like you as a friend because you're like the token, I'm not a racist black guy to have around.
	Yeah. Right? And again, I'm not saying there's any truth in this whatsoever, but the fact that she's dating you does not necessarily indicate to me that she for sure is not a racist.
	Like, you could be, screw you dad, right?
	Yeah. Yeah.
	Just possible. It's all nonsense theory, right?
	But the fact that she's dating you doesn't – like the fact that people like having you as a friend because you're like the token black guy so they can make, I don't know, make bad jokes or something and say, well, no, some of my best friends are – but that's not necessarily an indication and that's – I'm not trying to portray anything whatsoever.
	I'm just saying that that – because she's not telling her dad, right?
	Well, no, but her mother, what eventually happened was her mother said, I can't keep a secret from your father, and I can't do this, and when you come back during the holidays, you need to tell your father.
	So what happened is she went back, and she told him, and he blew up at her and told her that she needed to break up with me.
	And so then after that, her mother and her...
	I guess this was supposed...
	I guess this supposedly helps her mother solidify control over her.
	She goes, oh yeah, we'll just...
	You can keep dating him because obviously he makes you happy and we'll just keep this a secret between us.
	And so I didn't think about it until like maybe a year later.
	I was like, wait a minute.
	If she's able to keep it a secret afterwards...
	I mean, why couldn't she keep it a secret before?
	And that was like... I'm like, so obviously I was thinking, like, maybe she wants to torture.
	And I've told her this.
	I told my girlfriend, I'm like, I think your mom's a bit controlling, and I think that she's a...
	You know, I brought up the fact that, you know, if she can keep her mouth shut now, what was keeping her from keeping her mouth shut earlier?
	And she goes... And she was kind of receptive to – she was receptive to that and she goes – she wishes that they could just be happy for her and blah, blah, blah.
	And so – but yeah.
	So I mean generally that's the way our relationship got – it was toward the beginning of it was – that was kind of the hardest part.
	And so we – it's still keeping – been kept a secret from her father and we just kind of see each other and then – Wait, sorry.
	Then in the relationship – Wait, wait.
	Sorry. Again, just – I just did one.
	So – Her father knows, but it's been kept a secret.
	Do you mean her father knows, but he thinks that she's broken up with you?
	Yes, yes, yes.
	And what do you think the long-term prognosis is for this?
	In your heart of hearts, what do you think is going to happen over the long run?
	I think eventually either she's going to have to...
	See, the thing that I've been thinking about is either she's going to have to have a confrontation with her family, wherein most people have told me that when that happens, usually the family rejects her.
	And then that, or she's going to obviously choose her family over me, and the relationship's just going to end.
	But... Well, that's not the worst case.
	The worst case scenario may be something else entirely, which is where the father grudgingly pushes down the bile of his racism and, quote, accepts you as a son-in-law and you get to hang with a racist for the next 20 years.
	Yeah, that might not be so great, yeah.
	Right, seriously. I mean, that might...
	Either she's going to go through a process where...
	She's going to reject her family or her family is going to reject her.
	I don't view a racist to be reformable, in my opinion.
	Certainly not by the time they're in their, what, 50s or 40s or whatever, right?
	And certainly not in a family environment where everybody tiptoes around his racism, right?
	Because they should have sat down with this guy and said, look, you need to go to sensitivity classes.
	You need to go to anger management classes.
	You simply, you know, we cannot accept this in the core of our family, this kind of racist bigotry, right?
	This is not acceptable behavior.
	Yeah. Yeah.
	Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Excuse me. And how long have you been going out with this girl?
	About two to three, maybe three years going on.
	Two to three? About three years.
	A lot of heavy drinking in that first year, you're not sure?
	That's mostly... Yeah.
	I think I remember her thigh.
	Sorry? It was definitely tough.
	I guess...
	Predominantly the reason why is because at that point in my life, I was kind of like...
	Most people who met me were usually scared.
	And especially when I mentioned what my...
	My doctrine or my philosophy for life was, which was at the time Satanism, or Anton LaVey Satanism.
	And when I mention that, usually people start going, I've got to go.
	I've got something I have to do.
	And so...
	But she actually was fascinated by it and was really interested in it.
	And I guess that was...
	Being the fact that I like to dress in all black and was doing this whole dark, evil thing, that didn't scare her and that was really kind of big in my book.
	I felt like, well, maybe she can appreciate me for who I am and isn't just judging me on the base of image.
	That was more than image for you though, right?
	I mean, it wasn't opposed, right?
	I mean, as we talked about last time, you genuinely did, or at least large parts of you genuinely did believe that ethics was this, you know, milky white, you know, ass-drowning substance that weak people invented to control strong people, and you weren't going to have any of it, and it was kind of this primal Nietzschean will to power us.
	It was more than just, you know, hey, great outfit with nihilism, right?
	You know, it was like a real view.
	Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
	So, I guess from there, it, uh...
	I guess we had a couple issues I had to talk to her about.
	I felt like in the relationship it was really one-sided.
	A lot of in her family, there's a lot of pampering.
	I think she tries to emulate some things, I guess, that happen in her family with her mother.
	her mother spoils her a lot, but at the same time, I guess, has this death grip on her soul.
	But, so, I mean, she, there's always this kind of feeling of unbalance, which I talked to her about, like, I was trying to come clean and be very honest with her.
	It felt like she was higher up than I was.
	Once getting into the relationship after about...
	The first year, no big deal.
	Second year, I started to notice things that seemed like that.
	I confronted her on those.
	She was just like, oh, I'm so sorry.
	I've been a horrible girlfriend, blah, blah, blah, blah.
	Let's see if we can fix this, yada, yada, yada.
	And so we've been talking it through.
	In my mind, she's been getting better, and I feel as if by talking to her, there's more appreciation there.
	But I mean... The problem that happened in between, it was just like, I think I sent you an email once about it, but it was the whole, what was it?
	It was kind of about the...
	Her whole little desire of fantasy or whatever was kind of like, you know, if you're sexual roleplaying or whatever, it was kind of like me being the slave and her being the southern belle and stuff like that.
	And I'm like, oh, that's disgusting programming from the parents.
	Let me see if I can't, you know, as horrible as it sounds to me, if I can't fix this and try to talk to her about it and see if I can't help her.
	See if she can't reason out why this is kind of inappropriate.
	So I confronted her about that.
	In what way is it not inappropriate?
	Anyway, sorry. Yeah, it pretty much was.
	But it really bothered me.
	I guess the reason why I still stay attached to her, I mean, when I really internalize it, was just kind of like no one has ever really accepted me for quite what I am, and she was the first person to do that.
	And so I kind of see her as like this special person who, I mean, obviously I should take instead of just...
	Damning every mistake she makes.
	Because I've had people do that to me in my past.
	I just try to take the time and explain to her, this is how I feel, this is how the way it is, this is kind of not inappropriate, blah, blah, blah.
	I understand you come from a culture and family like this, and I have a family that has the same problems on my side, but I see you not as a person of this collective, but I see you as a person individually.
	It doesn't matter who you are or where you are.
	What your ancestral comes from.
	It's just, I enjoy being around you for you and, you know, blah, blah, blah.
	So I had, so that was, that was a problem.
	And then I, I, I broke up with her.
	I'm sorry to interrupt you. I'm sorry to interrupt you, just because, um, uh, uh, I have a more pointed question to ask, if you don't mind.
	And this background stuff is really, really helpful.
	But, uh, do you mind if I just ask you a more pointed question?
	Yeah, sure. Okay. Um, we talked, was it Thursday we talked?
	Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
	So you and I talked on Thursday.
	You had a dream Saturday night?
	Something, yeah. Yeah, probably about Saturday night, yeah.
	Okay, so did you see your girlfriend Thursday night or Friday or Saturday during the day?
	I think I saw her...
	Let's see. It's about...
	I think I saw her, well, definitely Friday in the afternoon.
	Well, actually, no. It was morning.
	It was morning because I had a shift that was like 8 to 2.
	So, yeah, I saw her in the morning.
	Okay. And then we hung out for the rest of the day.
	Did you tell her about the conversation that you and I had?
	Um, no, I didn't talk to her about that just yet.
	Okay, and I knew you hadn't, because that's why you're having a dream.
	Yeah. Really?
	Do you follow? Um, not precisely, but maybe...
	Oh, come on, this conversation that you and I had, you've never had that before, right?
	Right, right. I mean, that kind of peeled back a whole load of layers for you about your personality, right?
	Yeah. Exactly, exactly.
	And it exposed what I consider to be a rather beautiful aspect of you, which is the idealist under the nihilist, right?
	Yeah. And you had the conversation Thursday.
	You didn't immediately pick up the phone and call your girlfriend and say, holy shit, honey, you know, drop the bonnet and let's, you know, talk about this.
	The podcast itself, I think, was released on Friday and you haven't told her about it and she hasn't heard it, right?
	Yeah. Right.
	What, my friend, is up with that?
	I just... My thing is I kind of want to...
	The whole thing about FDR is I wanted to kind of ease her into it.
	I didn't really want to...
	I've told her because I'm reading the books and I've been talking to her about it and trying to show her the website.
	She hasn't had internet for a little while because she's dealing with something with Comcast or whatever.
	But I've been trying to...
	I've been trying to slowly get in there because I've talked to her about my views on anarchy and things like that, and she wasn't quite sure she's ready to jump out of that.
	She's had a lot of views that we've had discussions about that kind of jump straight to her parents' views that are like...
	It's like she hasn't really thought of these things before.
	They're just kind of acquired from her family life.
	Sorry to interrupt you again.
	I appreciate that and I just want to keep the focus on the present.
	Because you've got two statements here, right?
	You've got a statement which says, she accepts me for who I am, right?
	Yeah. And now, you're saying, I can't tell her about what really moves me or what really interests me, and I can't tell her about a really radical conversation that I had about myself, right?
	So, I'm not sure which...
	I mean, these are two contradictory statements, right?
	She accepts me for who I am.
	I have to hide things that I really love and care about from my girlfriend.
	Yeah. Yeah.
	Because I'm the annoying empirical guy, right?
	And look, you genuinely believe this and I accept that and I respect that, but I'm always going for the evidence, right?
	Yeah, true. Because everyone says, oh, I love my parents so much.
	It's like, well, do you like it when they call?
	No. Do you like going over there?
	No. Do you like having meals with them?
	Oh, God, no. Right?
	How do you feel around Christmas?
	Oh, I throw up all Christmas because I hate them.
	But I love them, right?
	And it's the same thing with governments, right?
	You talk to some American patriot, right?
	And he's like, I love the government, right?
	And then you say, oh, really?
	Do you like interacting with the Department of Motor Vehicles?
	Hell no, right? Do you like the IRS? Oh, hell no, right?
	Do you like this? How do you feel the roads are being maintained?
	How do you think, oh, it's all crap, right?
	How do you think they're dealing with illegal immigration?
	Oh, it's crap, right?
	And it's like, okay, so you dislike every single thing that the government does, but you claim to love this abstract thing called the government.
	And it's the same. So you dislike everything that your parents do, and you don't like being around them, but you love them in some other sense.
	I'm not saying that your relationship with your girlfriend is in that category specifically, because I don't know.
	But I will say that...
	The actual empirical evidence is that you don't believe that your girlfriend really accepts you for who you are.
	Because otherwise you would have told her.
	Yeah. Yeah.
	And we can't solve this now.
	This is just something to think about, right?
	It's just that you've got to go with the evidence of what you do rather than the words of what you say, right?
	True, true. Very true.
	Like, some guy says, oh, I'm not a racist.
	Oh, shit, I'm late for my Klan rally, right?
	I mean, the Klan takes precedence over him saying, I'm not a racist, right?
	Right, right. So, anyway, look, I don't want to...
	Because that's something just for you to mull over.
	But I think that all of this stuff is relevant to what happened with the dream.
	And you were quite right, and you said nothing special happened...
	Friday or Saturday. And you're exactly right.
	Nothing special happened when something special damn well should have happened, right?
	Yeah. Which was?
	Yeah. Should probably have had this new way of thinking.
	Well, maybe just... Walking up to my girlfriend and talking to her about it and I guess, I don't know, this kind of different way of looking at my life and looking at things in general and expressing that to her and that would have kind of changed I guess the scope of the way I looked at the world and the way that we looked at our relationship and other things and I guess that kind of didn't happen.
	Yeah, something like, you know, there's this guy on the internet, and already I know I have no credibility with you, because I'm saying, honey, this guy on the internet, right?
	Really smart, or a complete and total lunatic, and I can't for the life of me figure out which one it is, but this is what happened, and this is how I felt about it, and so on, right?
	Yeah. But you hit it, right?
	Yeah. Okay, can you read the dream?
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	I'm walking home with a small friend from school.
	I walk home with him to his apartment and ask him if he wants to hang out.
	Or I assume he will, but he says he can't.
	He's got homework or something, and it's okay.
	I walk out of the apartment.
	He waves goodbye from his window to me, and I see my – he's like my silly friend with his white fish cap on.
	That covers his eyes. He kind of reminds me of me, just skinnier.
	I head home, and I'm immediately then flashed upstairs in my parents' home, which is an amalgam of all the places we've lived in.
	I'm in my sister's room, where I ridiculously say to myself, my sister thinks she can get away with anything, so I'll mess her room up.
	I find my sister's radio stereo, and I naturally select my metal station and turn it up.
	So no one would – basically my thinking is so no one would suspect me for messing up her room.
	At least that's what I'm thinking at the time.
	Then my mom breaks into the room suddenly.
	She shouts, what are you doing, in her normal accusatory and harsh voice.
	I say nothing, and then I say I was just trying to help clean my sister's room.
	I lie. I shake it in fear.
	My mom doesn't believe me, obviously.
	She repeats, what are you doing?
	And then turns and stomps into my room.
	There's nothing in there, I yell, but there's no reply.
	My little sister says blankly, what are you doing?
	And I respond, helping to clean.
	She replies, oh, thank you.
	Help me with this.
	She gives me a white lace mesh curtain to put on her window, and I do, and she's thankful.
	I hear from my room my mother throw out something valuable.
	Sounds like my radio, though it was never turned on.
	I don't understand why she would do that, and still unsure of what she's thrown away, I go find her and see she's in the hallway, looking off into space to my right with her normal cringe and frown on her face.
	I woke up to her and ask, what have you done?
	In a more scared and yet angry tone, she doesn't respond.
	She just says, she just stays as she is, cold and distant.
	I raise my voice at her and demand she answer me again.
	I get nothing, but finally, slowly, her head turns a bit toward me in a low, cold voice, back off, or F off.
	I start shouting at her, listen to me.
	She goes back to ignoring me.
	I desperately and angrily grab the back of her head and say, listen to me.
	And I lightly knock her head against the wall of the hallway.
	Nothing happens.
	She still ignores me.
	I say, listen to me, and I knock her head again against the wall again.
	She still isn't listening.
	I shout, I'm an adult, or at least a teenager.
	You need to respect me and answer me.
	Listen to me. This time, I hit her head hard against the wall.
	You can see the blood form in her mouth, and she is still not listening, just ignoring me.
	Now I become furious.
	I grab a square black sheet of metal and nick her neck with a cut that is deep, but not enough to cause any serious damage.
	Is this what it takes for you to listen?
	Is this what it takes? I shout hurt and yet also damningly.
	I believe she says F off again here.
	She reaches into the shadows, pulls out a knife, cuts me open from...
	From the inside of my elbow to the edge of my wrists on my left and right arm.
	I'm severely wounded. And then she says in a malevolent dark growl, nobody will listen to you.
	Nobody will believe you.
	Nobody cares for you. I am now furious and distraught.
	I cut my mom's arms just like she had slashed mine.
	I shout defiantly, so this is what it takes for you to listen.
	More angry than hell, she takes her kitchen knife and lunges for my gut.
	I move out of the way just in the nick of time, but not without countering her attack and slashing open her jugular.
	Blood spurts out of her neck as her eyes roll back into her head.
	My sister screams no and runs in between me and my dying mom.
	I pull out a katana out from the darkness or the ether, and for the last time, with my katana pointing directly at her, I say, sad and distraught, so this is what it takes for you to listen.
	With acute precision, I cut past or around my sister and sever my mom's head from her neck, and her bloody body drops to the floor in a pool of her own blood.
	My sister looks up at me, shocked and scared.
	I lower my eyes and walk away.
	And my dreams are never that violent and never really...
	I mean, they've been vicious, but they've never been like that, and there was never blood.
	And that kind of scared the crap out of me, so...
	No, I understand. I mean, it's a terrifying dream.
	There's no question of that.
	But you're right.
	I mean, it's a very, very important dream.
	I think. So I'm just going to, I've got it up here, so I'm just going to have a quick look at the major movements of it, and we can see what it is that is the transition point that provokes the violence or brings the violence into the environment.
	Because it starts relatively innocuously, right?
	You're walking home with a friend, if he wants to hang out, but he's got homework, so you walk out of the apartment, and he's kind of goofy, right?
	Yeah. All right?
	Yeah. All right. So you head home, and then you're upstairs, your parents' home, and you're in your sister's room.
	My sister thinks she can get away with anything, so I'll mess her room up, right?
	That's what you say to yourself.
	Yeah. So this is passive-aggressive, right?
	Yeah. And by that, I don't mean anything dishonorable, because how old are you in this dream?
	Is it your current age?
	I'm confused about my age because I think I'm taken back to when I was living with my parents, and my sister's a lot younger, and the hallway looks like the way it did when we were living in these old apartments when I was probably no older than maybe 10, maybe, or like between 10 and 7, somewhere in there. Right, okay, so already...
	When you get home and you sit in your sister's room, you're already in a situation where people aren't listening to you.
	Because you're frustrated that your sister can get away with anything, but you can't talk to your family about that, right?
	I mean, in the dream, let's just say, because dreams can go anywhere and do anything, right?
	They're the ultimate CGI, right?
	And so dreams can do anything.
	So there's a reason why in the dream you didn't come home and sit down with your mom and say, Mom, it really frustrates me because it feels like my sister can get away with anything, but I can't.
	And I feel like there's favoritism and blah, blah, blah, right?
	Yeah. So I'm assuming that that was not how things were in your household, right?
	Yeah, it wasn't like that, no, definitely not.
	No, I'm pretty sure it wasn't, because if it was, you wouldn't be dreaming this, right?
	So already, you're in a situation where you're upset, and you're acting out your anger in a very oblique and passive-aggressive way.
	You are stating a complaint in an environment where you can't speak honestly or openly, right?
	Yeah, yeah. Now, when you say that you find your sister's radio, you select the metal station and turn it up loud so no one would suspect I'm messing up her room.
	Now, that doesn't make any sense, right?
	Yeah, no. Okay, so you want to be caught.
	Yeah. Well, I'm not getting that I'm convincing you, and I'm not trying to convince you, but just logically, if you, I don't know what your sister listened to, but you'd put on, I don't know, candy-ass Britney Spears or something, right?
	Yeah, something like that.
	Yeah, yeah, some damn thing, Sade or whatever, right?
	So, nah, Sade is too old.
	Anyway, so clearly, if you crank up the metal station in your sister's room, your mother is going to know that you're in your sister's room, right?
	Right. Because as you said in our last conversation, you're the guy who's into the death metal, right?
	Yes, yes. Okay.
	So you want your mother to see that you're upset about something in this dream.
	Yeah. Huh?
	Yeah. Again, you sound not...
	I'm perfectly happy to hear alternate explanations of why you would crank metal music in the hopes that your mother would not think that you were in your sister's room.
	Looking at it retrospectively, yeah, I could see that.
	I guess when I was dreaming it or anything like that, it just didn't make any sense.
	But yeah, looking at it retrospectively, yeah, I can see that.
	Well, and the reason why I'm pausing on this point is that the reason why the violence comes later in the dream is because the dream is coming from your unconscious.
	But in the dream, you are still unconscious because you're acting in a way that is contradictory and you don't know it.
	Right?
	Yeah.
	You're just saying, I want to express upset, but I'm not going to do it directly.
	And I don't want my mother to find out, so I'm going to play this death metal really loud, which of course is going to immediately draw her.
	So this stuff, your dream is saying, look, there's some stuff about your family that is still entirely unconscious.
	Hello?
	Can you hear me?
	Thank you.
	Yeah, it's kind of...
	Yeah, if you've just joined or if you're not talking, if you could please mute your microphone.
	We're getting a lot of background noise here.
	Yeah, it's still there.
	If you're not talking, if you could just turn your mic...
	Okay, that's better. Thanks. So in the dream, the dream is normally an expression of the unconscious.
	And in this case, it is as well.
	And the unconscious is expressing that even in your dreams, you're unconscious, which means that in your waking life, you're like doubly not aware of certain things, right?
	Yeah. And you have a habit of minimizing, right?
	Yeah. Yeah.
	You love the fog language, you know?
	Somewhat inappropriate for me to play act as a sexual slave.
	You're big into Swiss language, like the neutral territory, right?
	Yeah, yeah. Okay, so that's why the violence comes out, in my opinion, later.
	But let's just go forward just a little bit in this.
	Okay. So your mother comes in and shouts, what are you doing?
	In her normal accusatory and harsh voice, right?
	Yes. Right. So, your mother introduces violence into the interaction.
	Yeah. Again, I'm not sure that I'm convincing you of anything.
	Oh yeah, definitely, definitely.
	Okay, good. So, your mother being aggressive, we're okay with, right?
	Okay. Yes, yes, definitely.
	And you lie in the dream, right?
	Yes, yeah. Now, you are shaking in fear, right?
	Yes. Yeah.
	Now, you have created a situation where you are being attacked and you are frightened, right?
	Right. Did you get to the part in Real-Time Relationships where I talk about Simon the Boxer?
	I haven't read up there yet.
	No problem.
	Read the Simon the Boxer stuff.
	Even if you've got to skip everything else, just read that bit.
	Okay, so...
	Your mom doesn't believe me, obviously, and she repeats, what are you doing?
	And then in turn stomps into my room.
	There is nothing in there you yell, but what does that mean?
	Why would you yell that? In the dream, why?
	Why is your mom going into your room?
	I really don't know.
	I don't know. I mean, the only thing I could think of is when I used to live at home, a lot of times when I did something wrong, they would go in there and take something of mine.
	Well, I guess to them, it was never mine.
	It was like, well, we paid for it, so it's ours, and so you have the privilege of having this, but if you do something wrong, we'll just take stuff, which is...
	So I guess...
	I don't know why I would think that there's nothing – I would say there's nothing in there.
	But I do remember I would be fearful when I was younger because if I did something wrong, they'd just go in there and grab something and be like, well, you can't listen to the radio anymore until you straighten up or you can't listen to – you can't draw anymore and we'll take your – Your drawing pads or you can't look at your comic books and they just take all those and put them somewhere in a box.
	But that was the only other thing I could think of.
	Okay, so you are concerned that they're going to come in and hurt or take some of your stuff, right?
	Yeah. Okay.
	And your little sister says blankly, what are you doing?
	And you lie to her as well by saying, helping to clean, right?
	Yes. Now, your sister is ignoring your mother's violence here completely, right?
	Yeah. Right.
	That's important, right?
	I guess it is. She's pretending that nothing's going on, right?
	Yeah, yeah.
	All right. And then she gives you this white lace mesh curtain to put in her window and you do and she's thankful and so on, right?
	Yeah. And then you hear your mother trashing like your radio or whatever, right?
	Yeah. Okay, so now she's trashing your stuff, right?
	Yeah. Okay. So you go and find her.
	She's in the hallway looking off into space to my right, you say, with her.
	Excuse me, her normal cringe or frown on her face.
	I walk up to her and ask, what have you done?
	In a more scared and yet angry tone.
	She doesn't respond, she just stays as she is, cold and distant.
	I raise my voice at her and demand that she answer me again.
	I get nothing but finally slowly turn her head.
	Slowly her head turns a bit towards me and in a low, cold voice, she says back off or fuck off or something like that, right?
	Yeah. And now, you start shouting at her, listen to me, right?
	So, what's going on here is she has acted aggressively against you and then gone and broken something of yours and now is not responding to you at all, right?
	Exactly, yeah. Now, that, of course, is going to provoke a lot of anger in anyone, right?
	In you, right?
	And you want her to listen.
	You say, listen to me, right?
	And that's a real theme. And...
	What would it mean for your mom to listen to you?
	Like in this dream scenario, if she had actually accepted your desire or request to be listened to, what would that have looked like?
	Well, I mean, something that would have never happened in my family's household, but it would have been something like she would turn to me and I would explain to her why I was doing what I was doing and I would try to talk to her and be open with her and express how I was feeling.
	She was always kind of like, I don't know, just maybe just not paying attention or even when I did say something, You know, talking over me in a sense of, I just expelled,
	like, I did this to my mother, I would tell her how I felt, I would tell her how I was feeling, blah, blah, blah, blah, and then she would just kind of be like, well, that's nice, yada, yada, but, you know, we really don't do that, and, you know, just kind of talking over you, and saying that the points you were making weren't really valid points, and that this is the way the house is run, and, you know, but I guess the...
	It just would have been her being open and being able to really express my feelings to her and I guess not being able to do that or to have her pay attention to me like I actually existed and it wasn't just her force of will on everything, I guess would have been really big for me.
	And that, to your knowledge, has not happened, right?
	You would remember that if it had to.
	Okay. Yeah. So, I mean, you largely feel rejected and controlled by your mother, right?
	Yeah. Right.
	And are you aware of the depth to which you feel rejected and controlled by your mother?
	Well, this is something I've been battling with recently, and it's kind of been like, I've been trying to, I mean, I know that I don't, Like my parents and I know that I don't want to be near them and I'm really sick of their attitude.
	But at the same time, I have this disgusting ping of guilt that if I just like push them off completely when they get like old and like retired, then that would be, you know, that would just be a horrible thing to do.
	And I'm just like, but at the same, but at the same time, it's like, I really don't want to interact with them.
	Or I don't really want to interact with my mom.
	And the thing that's been disturbing me even more is that recently...
	I guess that I stopped talking with them and they – I mean sometimes they would used to call me and see how I was doing but they just – they don't call.
	It's like they really genuinely don't care and my mom has adopted this Somali family now that she's taking care of.
	And all her time and energy is doing that.
	And the only way I can, you know, before when I was trying to actually work within the confines of the family, I used to be able to talk to her and now it's just talking to my dad and it's only about, you know, I need money for rent and blah, blah, blah. And so...
	And sorry, are you living with your family or near your family or like...
	I'm like 30 minutes away from them, and I live in an apartment, and they're paying the rent, but I'm paying for everything else, basically.
	And why are they paying for the rent? Basically, they said that they wanted to help me.
	I told my dad, you don't have to.
	I'll get a second job if you don't want to pay.
	If it's too much, I'm perfectly fine with that.
	And he was like, no, no, we really want to help you out.
	We're going to always be there for you, blah, blah, blah.
	We're really going to help you out.
	And so they said, we'll help pay for your rent.
	So I'm kind of letting them pay for it.
	Yeah, that doesn't end the question.
	Why are they paying for your rent? The fact that they want to, so what, right?
	Why are they paying for your rent?
	Why are you letting them pay for your rent?
	How old are you? I'm about 25.
	Yeah. What the hell are you doing letting your parents pay for your rent when you don't even like them?
	Like, seriously, I mean, this is just a blunt question, and I apologize for being clear, but that's an important question.
	Oh, no, no, no. I think there are two issues involved.
	One, I'm trying to do this.
	I mean, I graduated from college, but yet there are still some things I wanted to do.
	And I don't know.
	I guess I'm still kind of a bit...
	This is the thing that I've been battling with a lot.
	It's just I'm still a bit scared of just managing it all on my own.
	And I guess that still bothers me.
	That's not going to happen while you're still taking money from your parents that you dislike, right?
	True, true. Right, that's like saying, well, I'm scared of giving up heroin, so I'll wait until I'm comfortable giving up heroin.
	Well, no, you've just got to give up heroin, right?
	Yeah. I mean, to be blunt, and that's nothing, I mean, you knew I was going to say that, so I'm sure that's not controversial, right?
	Anyway, okay, so let's move on with the dream.
	Now, you are now locked in a cycle of escalating violence with your mother in the dream.
	Because you now have a demand that you want to be visible to her.
	You want to be heard by her, right?
	Yeah. But you have set it up, and I'm not saying this is true of your childhood, I'm saying this is just true of the dream.
	You have set it up so that you don't ever talk directly to her, right?
	Because you went into your sister's room and you put on this death metal, and you were messing up the room as a form of protest, which is a very oblique Way of communicating something, right?
	Exactly, yeah. Right?
	Yeah. You know, it'd be like, I don't know, like if your girlfriend crashed your car because she was mad at something you said, that would be a pretty oblique way of saying that she was mad at something you said, right?
	Right. So you're not communicating to your mother, and then you get angry because she's not listening to you.
	Yeah. Do you see that paradox?
	Yeah. You're asking her to read your mind when you don't even know.
	Why you're doing what you're doing in your sister's room, right?
	Exactly. So you're asking her to know you better than you know yourself, which is obviously impossible.
	Yeah. So this is one big massive setup, right?
	Yeah. Again, I'm not sure that you're convinced.
	You have these non-committal...
	I guess I can see the setup of me trying to get her attention.
	But you start becoming physically aggressive with her, right?
	Yeah. Now, what's a fantastic way to get somebody to not want to listen to you?
	Becoming overly aggressive.
	Well, becoming aggressive at all, right?
	If you start yelling at people and grabbing their head and knocking her head against the wall of the hallway and so on, right?
	And look, I mean, I understand the feelings.
	Don't get me wrong. I mean, I have real sympathy with the feelings.
	I mean, you obviously went through a lot of shit that made you really angry, which I totally understand, and your anger is healthy.
	Right? This kind of twisted stuff that's going on in the dream, it's not because you're twisted, right?
	This is just you had a messed up family structure, right?
	Completely. Right?
	And my strong suspicion, though of course this is just an amateur opinion over the internet, so take that for, you know, with all the grain of salt that's in the world.
	But it does not sound in the dream like you have bonded with your mother, like you can trust your mother for empathy, for understanding, for sympathy, for discipline in a positive way, for boundaries, for, you know, to see you as a real human being and so on.
	And that, of course, provokes a lot of rage.
	To have a child and then ignore the child is an act of rage on the part of the parent, and it provokes rage on the part of the child.
	Yeah. Yeah.
	So then he says, if this is what it takes for you to listen...
	Right? And then she's swearing at you, and then...
	So you've knocked her head against the wall, and there's blood forming in her mouth.
	She's still not listening. So she's become like a rag doll, right?
	Yeah. Right. Which is obviously completely enraging you, right?
	Because she was acting in a very dominant manner, right?
	And then the moment that you get aggressive, she gets all limp, right?
	Yeah. That's very manipulative, right?
	Right. Like, if I walk up to you and punch you in the face, right, and then it turns out that I don't knock you down and you come back at me and I curl into a ball screaming like a little Japanese schoolgirl, which is probably what I would do, right, that's kind of manipulative, right?
	Yeah. Because I'd be coming on all tough and then when you fought back, I'd be like, I'd go all limp, right?
	Yeah. Alright, so this is all kind of enraging, right?
	Definitely. Definitely. And then you say, I'm an adult or at least a teenager, you need to respect me and answer me, listen to me, right?
	But what you're doing cannot be respected.
	Attacking, like I'm not saying you don't have any right to be enraged at your mother, but to physically attack someone will never make you respect them, right?
	And you know that because you did not respect your mother earlier in the dream when she verbally aggressed against you, right?
	Right. So,
	even in the dream, you clearly cannot logically believe that screaming at and physically assaulting your mother is going to create respect in her, right?
	Yeah. It's just more frustration.
	No, no, no. I understand. I understand.
	I understand. But logically, it could never work, right?
	Right. Right.
	What this means is that you are creating situations, and I bet this is true in your life as well, but you can let me know.
	You're creating situations where you get really angry.
	Would you say that you get angry rarely, medium or often in your life?
	It doesn't mean that you're, you know, hacking people with bits of metal or whatever.
	I'm just talking about getting angry.
	It happens quite a bit, yeah, I have to say.
	Right. It happens quite a bit.
	I would bet, and this is just a real brief recap of the Simon the Boxer thing, but this is my guess, right?
	This would be my bet. That you grew up in a family where you were consistently provoked into being angry, right?
	Yeah. So you gained a feeling of competence and efficacy by controlling your anger, right?
	Yeah, definitely.
	So now that you're away from home and you're not in that environment anymore, you feel at a loss if nothing is making you angry.
	It's like you've grown up.
	Everywhere you've walked, there's been this incredible wind blowing against you, right?
	And then the wind stops and you can't walk.
	You fall down, right? Yeah.
	And so you've got to go and find another wind so that you can walk because that's all you know how to do, right?
	Right, right.
	So I'm betting that you put yourself in situations or even create situations where you get to manage and control your anger, right?
	Yeah, yeah.
	Definitely. I mean, yeah.
	Especially at my job and other places.
	But yeah, definitely. Oh yeah, I believe it.
	I believe it, right? So let's get to the heart of darkness here, so to speak.
	And so...
	Your mother says, fuck off again.
	She reaches into the shadows, pulls out a knife, and cuts me open from the inside of my elbow to the edge of my wrist on my left and right arm.
	I am severely wounded. And this is actually, this is fascinatingly enough, this is the identical wound that another...
	Listener's dream had.
	I won't go into who it is, but this is exactly the same wound that another listener had in a dream.
	We can go into that perhaps another time, but she says, nobody will listen to you, nobody will believe you, nobody cares for you, right?
	Right, right. Now, what size are you relative to your mother in this dream?
	Bigger, same size, or smaller?
	I would say a little bit smaller.
	I mean, I'm smaller when I'm talking to her, and then when the fighting breaks out, I'm almost her size, but never taller.
	Right, right, right.
	So you are trying to inflict pain upon your mother and suffering upon your mother because that will allow her to at least see you as someone who exists, right?
	Right. Exactly.
	And this is the root of, and I'm not saying this is your diagnosis or a definition of you, but this, of course, is the root of sadism, right?
	That we feel like we do not exist, and the only way that we can exist is as a fist imprint in other people's soul, right?
	Yeah, yeah. So this goes...
	So you sever your mom's head from her neck, and her bloody body drops to the floor, and this is what it takes for you to listen.
	This is what you say, right?
	Yeah. Right.
	Right. And, of course, this is a wildly illogical statement, right?
	Yeah. Clearly, if you behead your mother, listening is going to be a challenge for her, right?
	Yeah. Right.
	So, what the dream is saying, and I'm not going to even ask you because I think it's so dense and obscure, but this is my opinion again, just, you know, some guy on the internet, right?
	But the dream is saying, for you to become visible, your mother must be gone.
	Hmm. Hmm.
	Because what you're really saying is for me to listen to myself, I have to get rid of my mother.
	For me to become real to myself, for me to be listened to by anyone, I have to get rid of my mother, right?
	Right. And the reason that this occurred is because I listened to you.
	And then you couldn't talk to your girlfriend.
	Hmm. Yeah.
	Huh. Right, because you had an experience of being listened to by somebody, and I don't know if it's the first time, right?
	But I was really...
	The amount of work that goes into these listener conversations in particular is...
	Like, I literally sweat.
	I walk around with my eyes scrunched shut, like trying to listen with my little toe and my spleen and my left ear.
	My kidneys are listening.
	Like I'm trying to really, really, really listen to everything that's occurring, everything that's not being said, every layer of meaning that's going on.
	I'm trying to figure out nuance because I don't have body language or because it's audio.
	I'm trying to figure out nuance.
	I'm trying to figure out subtext.
	I'm trying to figure out... What's being missing?
	I'm trying to figure out why this topic is coming up, why something else is not coming up.
	I'm trying to figure out why the sequence of words is coming up, or the sequence of ideas is coming up, and so on, right?
	So, it's work to really listen to someone.
	And it may be that the conversation that you and I had on Thursday was orders of magnitude away from how you had possibly felt visible to other people before in your life, right?
	Yeah, definitely. So you had the experience of being listened to, which inevitably is going to bring up all the pain of having not being listened to, right?
	Right. And then you didn't tell your girlfriend, hey, somebody listen to me.
	Yeah. Right?
	Yeah, right.
	And the dream is saying that it's going back to your mom.
	Hmm. Hmm.
	Huh. The way that you describe it, I can kind of see that.
	That's kind of eerie. Well, we're all geniuses, right?
	I mean, we all get it down, right?
	We're all geniuses.
	Yeah. Yeah, but I, after explaining, yeah, I can see how that relation can definitely, can go hand in hand with that.
	Well, you don't, obviously, I mean, I'm not saying you don't believe me, but there's no reason to believe me, because there's a very simple test.
	Yeah. Yeah.
	Just let her listen. Yeah.
	And if you doubt this about your mother, what's the other test?
	Letting her listen, but...
	And bringing the dream to her.
	Yeah.
	And if she listens to the dream and says, wow, you must be really angry.
	I can totally understand that.
	But help me understand what happened.
	Help me understand how I can be a better mother.
	You know, help me if I've missed something or, you know, what is it that I could do?
	You know, if she listens to you, then obviously my theory doesn't mean anything.
	And you've got to look elsewhere for the reasoning behind the dream, which is, you know, perfectly fine.
	I don't think so.
	But, you know, because dreams are very – it's your mom, not Mother Teresa or something.
	So it's not accidental, right?
	No, yeah. I mean, my basic thing is whenever I came to her with things that are really disturbing in nature psychologically, it wouldn't be about her.
	It wouldn't be her problem.
	It would be, I have a problem.
	I need to seek help, blah, blah, blah.
	So the best thing I could ever even imagine coming from that kind of connection would be, you know, oh, you have some really disturbing thoughts.
	You should seek counseling. Now, you see you're doing that laughter thing again, right?
	Yeah. That's not funny.
	It is not funny when your child comes to you with a psychological challenge or something which scares your child.
	It is not funny to say to your child, you're crazy, see a doctor.
	Yeah. I mean, I know that there's this impulse to laugh.
	I really do understand that and you wouldn't believe how common this is.
	But you've got to fight that with every fiber of your being because every time you laugh...
	Your history gets a little more vengeful towards you, right?
	Right. I mean, you certainly wouldn't appreciate it if I brought up slavery and started laughing, right?
	No, no.
	But your slavery, you should laugh about even less, right?
	True, true. It's, I don't know, it's just, it's hard to catch it because it's just so involuntary now.
	But yeah, I see your point.
	It is hard to catch it, and it is involuntary, but it is really going to cost you happiness and peace of mind and security in your relationships if you surrender to the urge to giggle at that which hurt you the most, right? Because the dream is nothing to laugh about, right?
	The dream is nothing to say, oh my god, how terrifying, I'm going to go behead my mother.
	I mean, it's nothing like that, right?
	But the dream is an indication of an extraordinary amount of pressure and fear, right?
	Right. And lord no, black women can be a little bit difficult on the matriarchal side, right?
	Oh, yeah. I mean, I only see them in videos and I'm scared, right?
	So, I mean, I can't imagine growing up in this sort of environment, right?
	But, you know, there is this, I mean, Malcolm X has all these theories, you know, about how because the men could be sold off at any time, the matriarchy got really tough.
	But, you know, you look at the gangs, right, in the black ghettos and they're the dark side of this matriarchal power thing, right?
	I mean, the women run the planet for black men and it's terrifying and it creates all these problems with masculinity which result in violence and hyper-masculinity and there's all this mess, right?
	But, I mean, it sounds like you got the sort of, you know, the black matriarchy straight in the nuts, right?
	Yeah, yeah, very much.
	She's very feminist, very, you know, she's even editing the Bible to like, well, I think they just used it for that time period.
	I don't think it applies to women now.
	I'm like, how can you say that?
	She's editing the Bible?
	Editing the Bible in her own mind.
	So she thinks she can improve upon the word of God Almighty?
	Apparently she thinks that it's like, you know, it only happened in that time period.
	You know, I think that was just a code for that time period.
	It doesn't apply now.
	I think women are totally different and thought of in this way.
	So the Bible is only talking about, you know, some of the conditions then.
	But, you know, like she's omitting certain pieces of the Bible and rearranging them to her own philosophy.
	And I saw this hypocrisy and I was like, whoa, wait, wait.
	So does she believe that God is telling her what to write?
	Or is she just saying, I can edit God?
	Basically, she can say, I can edit God.
	Wow. So she might not have gone to that whole humility sermon, right?
	No, I don't think so.
	I don't think so. Right.
	Now, I would suggest, this is my sort of two bits worth of suggestion, then I'll move on because we spent a long time on this topic, but I really do appreciate you sharing this.
	I know it's a tough dream. But, I would suggest that, I mean, I think it would be great for you to see a psychologist, and not because you're crazy or anything like that, but because you want to start to learn how to undo some of these defensive habits that you've got, like laughing at your history and so on, right?
	And these are all understandable and they were all helpful for you in the past.
	And they were all very, very positive and healthy adaptations to a situation of invisibility and stress and control and abuse of various kinds.
	So I think that it would be good to do that.
	Now, you say that you need a second job.
	I mean, if I were you, I'd sort of not see my parents for a while.
	I would take the money that they're giving you for rent and use it on therapy and get a second job to pay my rent.
	That would be my particular approach.
	And if you find the right therapist, I mean, you're a very, very intelligent fellow, very verbal.
	And you have a good submarine capacity, right?
	Because you can go down into the unconscious without getting freaked out, and that's a really good thing.
	It's more rare than it should be.
	But that would be my suggestion about how to move forward, if that makes sense.
	Yeah, that makes sense.
	It makes sense. A bit scary, but it makes sense.
	Definitely, definitely. And not because you're broken, right?
	But you go to see a psychologist like the way an athlete gets a coach, right?
	Yeah, yeah. Not because you don't know how to do the sport, but because you want to get a gold.
	You want to be on the Olympics, right?
	You want to be, you know, a living man-god of self-actualization, right?
	Yeah, yeah, definitely, definitely.
	And talk to your girlfriend about this stuff.
	Yeah, I probably will, yeah.
	All right. Well, thank you very much.
	And I really do appreciate that.
	That was a great conversation.
	And keep up with what you're doing.
	You're doing amazing work. Thanks.
	And I really appreciate what you do.
	I just want to say thank you.
	My pleasure. All right.
	So we have time for a few more questions.
	If other people have comments or issues or problems, please let me know.
	Hello, Steph. Hello.
	This is Vincent. Hello.
	Hi, I'm sorry, I'm just really nervous right now, but I was wondering if you wanted to do another dream analysis?
	Sure, I'm happy to give it a shot.
	Well, actually, it's two in succession.
	The first one is my neighborhood is burning down.
	I'm sorry, just sorry, let me interrupt you when you start off.
	Do you have these typed into a computer?
	Yeah, I'm reading it. Can you send them to me an email, or are they on the board by chance?
	Sorry, I haven't typed in a text file.
	Oh, okay, no problem. Then go ahead.
	Yeah, so my neighborhood is burning down, and I had to flee with my parents in a car.
	So we drove to this river at the edge of the neighborhood.
	But when we got there, we realized the river was going to flood over the whole world.
	So I somehow got out of the car with some superhuman ability.
	I dashed above the water to the top of this mountain island in the river, but I just got short of getting to the top, and that's where the first stream ends.
	And the second one is I was traveling to see Steph U, and I was driving through this beautiful, sunny, foresty mountain area.
	At some point, I have to cross the border from the U.S. into Canada.
	There was no checkpoint.
	Just a sign. So it went smoothly.
	But then when we got into Canada, actually it was just me.
	It got a little dimmer.
	About a mile, I arrived at your house, which was in the middle of the forest.
	I don't remember the conversation, but it was just like, you were talking about philosophy, psychology, all that cool stuff, and we were just having a great time.
	But then I figure out we're in this public place, restaurant, airport, just this big place with huge windows and nice and sunny.
	But then I noticed we're being spied upon, and some helicopter from the I don't know, Canadian intelligence service was hovering nearby and watching us.
	And that's where that ends.
	Right. Okay, can you just read me the first dream?
	I think I get the second dream, but can you read me the first dream again?
	My neighborhood was burning down, and I had to flee with my parents in a car.
	So we drove to this river at the edge of the neighborhood.
	However, when I got there, I realized the river was going to flood along with the whole world.
	I got out of the car, and with some superhuman ability, I dashed across the water and onto the top of a kind of mountain island, but I just fell short of it.
	That's where it ended. So, fell short of it means what?
	Did you stay in the water, or did you not be able to climb the water?
	No, I was going up it, but then I didn't quite get up it.
	I don't know. Maybe I fell back down or something.
	Okay. Okay. And what's happening with your family at the moment?
	Well, I'm at a crossroads.
	I'm in 12th grade.
	I'm a senior, and I'm headed off to college.
	And I'm feeling... Part of me says that I want to get away from them as far as I can, because...
	Would you like some background on my parents, or...?
	Whatever you feel is appropriate, I'm happy to hear.
	Well, my mother is basically schizo-bitch from hell, and my father is...
	He just goes along with it.
	I mean, I have trouble getting that emotionally, but I just know it's not good because he's supporting her.
	Right. And when you say schizo-bitch from hell, do you mean that she is, like, is she diagnosed mentally ill or just crazy evil?
	Yeah, paranoid. Yeah, she diagnosed paranoid schizoaffective disorder.
	Okay. And that, so, sorry, is that, Christina, is that biologically based, you know?
	Yeah. Okay, so she has some biological basis, as far as I understand it, for her mental illness, right?
	Yeah. And beyond meds?
	Lots. Lots of meds.
	Okay. And has that helped or changed anything?
	I don't think so. Maybe a little bit, but not much.
	And was she always this way?
	Maybe around just before my parents.
	Probably at the end of her adolescence, she became like this.
	But for you, she's always been this way?
	Yes. And how many siblings do you have, or do you have any?
	I have one older brother who was severely autistic, and I lived with him for pretty much 16 years of my life.
	Oh man, you really got your shitty hand, didn't you?
	Pardon? I mean, I said, oh man, you really dealt a shitty hand, didn't you?
	Yeah. And then, a few years, about a year ago, he got sent to this group hall, which, for me, is like, yay, he's gone.
	Yeah. Was he violent?
	Was he difficult? Was he dangerous?
	Somewhat. Right.
	Right. Okay.
	And so, when you're thinking of going to college, you said that you were at a crossroads between what and what?
	Well, one part of me says I want to get away from them, just go somewhere else and not be around them, but part of me just is afraid of going out into the world.
	Like, I don't want to leave.
	I'm comfortable where I am.
	Bad things will happen to me if I leave.
	Now, I don't know if you've heard this kind of stuff before, but I'll just mention it here, and you can tell me if you've heard this sort of stuff before.
	Your desire, I believe, Vincent, would be to leave.
	Your parents' desire would be for you to not leave, right?
	Exactly. Your parents want you around, right?
	Well, they encourage me to go off.
	Yeah, I go off to college, but they want to keep me in their orbit.
	Right. Why?
	Like, oh, we'll come and visit you and send you some money, etc., etc.
	Sorry, why do they want to keep you in their orbit?
	I'm not sure.
	Right, because you don't feel loved, right?
	No. No, I mean, of course not.
	In fact, you probably feel quite the opposite.
	So when people who don't love us want to spend time with us, that's a bit of a mystery, right?
	Yeah. Do you have any memories or experience?
	I'm trying not to put words in your mouth, so don't feel...
	I mean, this is just me spinning crappy theories and see if they make any sense.
	But do you have any memory or thoughts of being a bit of a buffer between your father and your mother?
	I.e., if you weren't around, would your father find your mother less pleasant or more difficult to be around?
	Maybe. When I was younger, I often find myself acting as a diplomat, like telling him, hey guys, stop fighting!
	Calm down! Wait, wait, sorry, your parents were fighting?
	I thought you said your dad went along with stuff, and I just want to make sure I understand it.
	Well, some people argue, but she's basically pulling the strings.
	But he puts up some kind of fight, right?
	Like he argues as well? Yeah.
	Yes, some fight, but in some issues he's, like, particularly financially, he's, like, final and saying, no, we're not going to spend money on such and such, but with other issues, he's wishy-washy.
	Right. Right.
	And do your parents fight a lot?
	Yeah. And what do you think, or rather, what do you know will happen if your parents fight and you're not around?
	Maybe the same one I am around?
	No, it wouldn't be the same.
	Because you intervene, right?
	Yeah. Well, I think they'd argue they'd be even worse.
	Right. Right.
	So, your father, let's just say, and it could be either one, your father finds you a useful human shield with your mom, right?
	Right. Possibly, but I'm not feeling it.
	Okay, why do you intervene in your parents' fights?
	Because I don't...
	Because I get nervous whenever they start fighting.
	And does it have any effect when you intervene?
	No. No, okay.
	They just say, Vincent, stay out of it.
	It's not your business.
	Right, but by arguing in front of you, they're making it your business, right?
	Exactly. Yeah, parents should not argue in front of their children.
	It's just a no-no, right?
	You just don't do it. Exactly.
	Right. Okay. Right. Tell them that.
	No, no, I mean, they're insane, and I probably couldn't, right?
	So, but, um...
	Okay, so we don't have an answer then, which is fine, but we don't have an answer as to why your parents want you around or why do your parents want to still be around you.
	Are they in a social community?
	Are they part of a church or any sort of social group?
	They have a minimal social group.
	We have this group of other people who also have autistic children, but they don't meet that often.
	It's like on special occasions they'll meet.
	But otherwise... Pardon?
	Sorry, what about extended family?
	Just basically for holidays, usually for Christmas.
	We just go see our grandparents.
	Okay, so, because you know, I mean, you know deep down why they want to have you in their life, right?
	I mean, that's just my annoying thesis always, right, that we know.
	Yeah. And I don't know what that, but I think that's important relative to your dreams.
	Well, judging from past experiences, it's probably something to do with their own anxieties.
	Sure, but how would their anxieties increase if you just said, bye, I'm out of here and don't ever contact me again?
	They would probably feel that they, it would make them realize they didn't do a good job of parenting.
	Okay, so the purpose of you being in their lives is so that they can pretend that they weren't abusive?
	Right. I guess so.
	Well, again, if it's neutral language, we can't really move forward, which doesn't mean anything other than if it doesn't feel right, we can keep looking.
	But if it does feel right, we need to be more certain than I guess so.
	Right. Which is fine.
	I mean, I'm not trying to corner you.
	I'm just saying that if we're going to build a bridge, this side of it at least has to be firm or we're just going to fall into a chasm, right?
	Right. So, does it feel true, but you're not sure consciously?
	Or is it that the feeling is that it's not true?
	Or not very true?
	I'm sorry, I've lost my place.
	No problem. So, you were saying that your parents want you around so that they don't feel like they were bad parents, right?
	Yeah. Now, with that as a thesis, and I'm not saying this is the only reason, but usually there's a central reason, a sort of core reason.
	When you say, or we look at the thesis that your parents want you around to justify their own parenting, which was in fact crap that they wished to believe was not, does that thesis, you said, that's kind of true.
	Now, does it feel very true, but consciously you're not sure, or does it feel like it's not really the truth?
	I don't know.
	I'm sorry, I just don't know.
	No, that's fine. I mean, that's fine.
	If we move forward with that as a thesis, will you let me know if it just suddenly doesn't feel true anymore?
	Right. Okay.
	So, in the first dream, your neighborhood is burning down, right?
	Yeah. And this means...
	Yeah.
	Right. Does that mean my whole social environment is vile?
	Well, this is a possibility, right?
	If your whole social environment was vile, that would explain why your whole neighborhood was in flames, right?
	Right. And it's interesting that you couldn't flee inland.
	You had to flee to the river, right?
	Right. And that indicates that, to me, that you're either on an island or something.
	The whole thing is uninhabitable, right?
	Because that's not where you'd normally go to flee a fire is go stand in a river, right?
	Right. I mean, unless you're on an island, the whole island is on fire, right?
	Right. So, I would just look into your social circle as a whole...
	And, you know, with a cold and jaundiced philosophical eye, right, and just sort of see what the virtues and values and integrity is.
	Because, well, answer me this if you don't mind.
	Did anybody that you know or have known try to intervene in your family to help you out when you were a kid?
	When I was a kid, no.
	Okay, so here we have a social environment that you live in.
	Where nobody intervened to try and help you, although there were tons of people who knew that your mom was nuts and your brother was dangerous, right?
	Or somewhat dangerous.
	Right. That doesn't look too good for your whole social environment, in my opinion.
	Right. A bad example.
	Sorry, tell me what you mean? I mean, this is...
	Bad way to...
	I'm just trying to say it's a bad way to grow up having an angry, basically animalistic brother.
	Right. And a schizo mother.
	Right. And a dad who decided that the best thing in the world was to give this woman children and to not protect them, right?
	Yeah, that's what I'm having trouble getting emotionally.
	I know it intellectually, but emotionally just not getting it.
	And that's fine. That will take some time.
	You just have to keep combing over that one until you get it.
	And when you get it, you really will.
	So what you've been taught is a very harsh truth about the nature of the world, right?
	Right. And the nature of the world, which I know the lesson that you've learned because it was also a lesson that was inflicted upon me very young, which I think was also inflicted on Mr.
	Nihilist and most of the other people who've had difficult parents in this conversation, is that the world talks a whole lot of shit about virtue, right?
	Myself having hated...
	I'm sorry?
	I just went through a period several years ago where I just found the whole world to be evil and bad, and I just wore black all the time.
	Oh, sure. Look, I mean, I totally understand that, and that to me seems like an entirely healthy and sane reaction, because the world talks a whole lot of shit about ethics, right?
	Oh yeah. Right? I mean, the church does, and people do, and everybody talks about how good and virtuous you are, and the government is only out to do good, and there are social programs, and everybody's out to help, and everybody's talking about how fucking virtuous they are all the time, right?
	Yeah, and it's all bullshit.
	It is complete and total bullshit.
	Because here, you were a child suffering in the midst of a social community that knew the pressures and stresses and dangers that you were in, right?
	Right.
	Nobody did it.
	Nobody did a goddamn thing, right?
	Right.
	They didn't even tell you, shit, we're sorry, we can't do a goddamn thing.
	They pretended everything was hunky-dory, right?
	Well, no, my dad gave me the old, well, we did the best we could.
	It's the only thing we could do.
	Yeah, but your neighborhood is in flames.
	Yeah. Not your dad's room.
	Not your house, right?
	Yeah. Everything.
	Have you read or listened to the On Truth book?
	Sorry, no. Oh, you don't have to apologize.
	I'm just, if you get it, if you can't afford it, just send your free copy.
	Well, since my dad's money is still connected, no, my money is still connected to my dad, so it might seem a little weird if I was giving money to a bald Canadian guy over the internet.
	Is it the bald part? Because I can put a wig on for a video.
	Anyway. Oh yeah, it's the bald part.
	But no, just send me an email.
	I'll send you an audiobook of it, right?
	So there's not even any physical evidence that you've read this dastardly little tome.
	But this book, I think...
	I'm sorry? The On Truth book?
	Yeah. Yeah, just send me an email.
	Sorry, go ahead. Yeah, but I've been really wanting to read those.
	I would appreciate that.
	Yeah, listen, to anybody who's out there, if you really want a copy of the book but you can't get it for some reason, send me an email.
	I'll give you a free copy.
	You're not going to die now.
	You're not going to die in two years.
	You can pay me whenever, and if you think the book sucks, don't pay me at all.
	But seriously, I give you the book for free.
	This is not just for you. This is for everyone, right?
	Yeah. And PDF, audiobook, if you don't want a physical trail, if you don't want something delivered to your house, that's totally fine.
	But just send me an email.
	I'll give you the book. And I won't go into the thesis here because you'll get it when you read it.
	But yeah, everybody just talks a whole lot of shit about ethics to make themselves feel good and nobody does a goddamn thing about it, right?
	Right. So, this is why your whole neighborhood is in flames, and you flee to the water, and then the water rises up and drowns the world, right?
	Yeah. And what that means is that you don't know how to be good without being angry.
	Right. Does that ring true?
	Because I have...
	Yeah, I'm...
	very angry.
	I can be a very angry person.
	Right, so you flee...
	hypocrisy...
	To the opposite of hypocrisy, which for you is anger, right?
	Anger at hypocrisy.
	Yeah. That's a bit of a false dichotomy, right?
	Do you want to be a hypocritic moral jerk, or do you want to be a really angry, nihilistic rageaholic, right?
	Right. And that's why, when you run from the burning house to the opposite of fire, which is water, it rises up and drowns the world, right?
	Yeah. The opposite of hypocrisy is not anger.
	Anger is... Sorry, go ahead.
	They're saying the opposite of hypocrisy is the truth.
	Yeah, the opposite of hypocrisy is freedom.
	Freedom. Right, because this, like this last guy's dream, he got so angry at his mom that he killed her, right?
	Yeah. But that's not freedom.
	Freedom from his mother's hypocrisy is walking out of the house and not coming back, right?
	Yeah, you've said freedom is fundamentally the freedom from illusion.
	Right. And the illusion, see, he gets so angry because he thinks his mom should listen to him, but she's not.
	And the answer is she'll never listen to him.
	And if he accepts the fact that she'll never listen to him, then he won't be as angry and he'll just leave and not come back, right?
	Right. Like if you're digging in a mine and your fingers are bleeding and your nails are breaking off because you think there's a diamond down there somewhere, you're going to go totally crazy, right?
	Right. But if you go, holy shit, I'm digging in a sandbox on a beach.
	There's no diamond down here.
	You just get up and say, I'm out of here, right?
	Right. Right.
	So wanting to make bad people be good or wanting narcissists to see you Is falling into a trap.
	The opposite of hypocrisy is freedom.
	It's not anger. Anger is a trap set by hypocrisy to keep you around.
	I don't have anything of value to offer you, say the hypocrites, so I'm going to keep provoking you into getting angry and then you'll stick around so you'll lash out at me.
	But at least you'll still be around.
	It's a trap. Right?
	Right. And your dream says that to me, very clearly, because your neighborhood is on fire, you flee to the opposite, and you drown.
	The whole world drowns, right?
	Because if you spend your life getting angry at hypocrites, you're not going to run out of hypocrites, and you're not going to run out of anger, right?
	So true.
	So, does that seem like a reasonable way to approach the first dream?
	Yeah, quite possibly.
	I'm still not totally sure, but I think I'll mull it over.
	Now, in the second dream, you're trying to flee, and you go up to a mountain and you don't reach it, right?
	No, that was the end of the first one.
	I'm sorry, what was the second dream again?
	I was going to travel to see you.
	Oh, right, and then you're watching.
	I was driving to the nice forest area.
	Right. So do you have any ideas?
	Well, other than the feeling that it's hard for you to be in this conversation while you're still around your family, right?
	Because the more you become enlightened when you're still around bad people, the more you become enlightened, the more you have to hide, right?
	Yeah, I'm scared right now because my parents are, I think, outside and there's just this fear that the dad will come in and say, what are you doing?
	Right. And that'll be a mess.
	Right. I'm talking about family secrets over the internet.
	Why? Right. Right.
	Right. So I'm crossing my fingers right now.
	Right. We'll keep this brief because I don't want to get you outed or anything, right?
	So we'll keep this brief. But yeah, it says that you're enjoying this conversation.
	This is a positive thing.
	But for you, when you're around corrupt people, an increase in truth, in honor, in dignity is an increase in danger, right?
	Yeah. So, that's why I sort of say to people, you know, you don't want to be, as I was saying to the last guy, right?
	This is the theme of the week, right?
	Don't learn and hide.
	Don't learn the truth and stay with liars.
	Because the truth will become a target.
	It will become like marinade. It will become like chum in the water with sharks around, right?
	Or like an open wound in the shark tank.
	Or the hidden mistress.
	Yeah, oh, the hidden mistress. That's right.
	That's right. Don't make a...
	You know, philosophy will be your bride, but she won't be your bitch.
	That's sort of what I'm trying to say.
	Right. Yeah, but...
	So I might have stumbled upon your sight too early for my own good.
	No, no, you didn't stumble upon my sight too early.
	In fact, it is a perfect time for you to do it.
	But... As you acquire more knowledge, the choice will become harder and harder, right?
	That's all it's saying, right? I mean, you don't get caught by this Canadian government, guys.
	You don't get thrown in jail. You don't get beheaded.
	It's just saying, as you talk with Steph, your danger increases.
	And that's just something to be conscious of, right?
	It doesn't mean that it's bad that you found the site.
	In fact, I think it's good that you found the site.
	Otherwise, you wouldn't...
	Sorry, go ahead.
	Yeah, just be conscious of, right?
	Because if you're not conscious of the danger...
	Then you might make a mistake.
	You might blow up and get mad and say, well, there's this guy on the internet.
	You might. If you're not aware of the danger, you might do something that you regret.
	Sorry, go on. Actually, I'm all too aware of the danger.
	Oh, good. Good. Okay.
	Okay, the dream is saying that there may be some way in which the joy of philosophy and the danger of your environment are not together.
	It's a possibility.
	It's just something to mull over.
	I can't say for sure.
	We'd have to ask about which podcast you listen to or what happened the day before and so on.
	And I don't want to do the whole show on dreams just because in case anybody else had some more technical questions.
	But that would sort of be my approach to these and you can listen to this again and see if it makes any sense.
	All right.
	Well, thanks. I really do appreciate it.
	I know it's a really tough place where you are.
	I know that. I mean, I was there, right?
	Thanks for giving me part.
	Well, thanks for sparing some of your time for me.
	Sparing some of my time?
	This is what I do, right?
	I'm glad you called.
	This is what I do these shows for, and particularly, you know, this is what we say at FDR, the younger the better, right?
	And I'm 18, so perfect.
	So, again, send me an email through the web.
	I will send you an audiobook, and you can listen to Untruth.
	Or do you think you could just private message me?
	On the board? Yeah.
	What's your board name? Yeah. Vincent.
	All right. Just Vincent. Got it.
	Okay. I will send it to you through PM. Just keep the link to yourself.
	And if you get some shekels or when you get your first credit card or PayPal account and you liked it, if you can pay me, but there's no rush for that.
	And thanks so much for the call and best of luck.
	All right. Well, adios.
	Take care. And we have time perhaps for one more semi-shortish question.
	Hello? Hello?
	Yes, hello, can you hear me?
	I sure can. Oh, okay, I had a question.
	Why do you copyright your books?
	Why do I copyright my books?
	Because they're my company.
	Do you not think that there are more non-violent alternatives to copyright, like Creative Commons or Copyleft, or simply a contract that does not use the state?
	Well, I've never used the state.
	I've never sued anyone for copyright violation.
	So you have copyright, but you don't plan on ever enforcing it?
	Well, no, I enforce it insofar as there have been occasions where people have put copyrighted works of mine in sort of the public domain, and I have contacted those people and asked them quite firmly to stop doing it, and they have complied, so I haven't needed the state to enforce it.
	I do believe that I have the right, when I create a book, To enter into a contract with whoever buys it which says when you buy this book you can read it but it does not become your property for you to distribute as you see fit.
	In the same way that when I go and rent a hotel room I don't get to take the bed or live there forever, right?
	When I go to rent a hotel room I get it for one night and I can't trash it, right?
	So the full ownership, the ownership of the form of the book passes to an individual.
	The full ownership of the content of the book does not pass to the individual in the same way that the use of the bed for one night passes to an individual with a hotel contract, but the bed itself and the entire hotel room does not.
	Correct. Wait, that was too easy.
	Now I'm alarmed.
	I'm sorry. My connection was breaking up there.
	What I'm curious about is why not use...
	Something alternative to the state to enforce the contract is my question.
	Not the contract itself, not the property, not the transferring of property or the renting of property, but simply the limit of enforcement, i.e.
	thugs with guns. Okay, well tell me a way that I can enforce contract without the state and I would certainly be happy to look into it.
	Well, I think probably the best alternative at this point would be to use maybe Creative Commons, if you're familiar with that group, who provide agreements that you can put your work under that can ask the resident of the work whether or not they want to agree to certain restrictions or not use the work at all.
	And what happens if people violate those restrictions?
	I think it would be dependent on what you put the consequence in the contract as.
	Sorry, how are those enforced?
	Let's just say in my contract that if you hand out my book to other people who haven't bought it, that you owe me $1,000?
	How is that enforced?
	What if somebody just says, well, I don't want to pay $1,000 and I'm going to hand your book out anyway?
	Well, in that specific example, you could just require that you hand somebody maybe some billing information and then if they don't agree to the contract, But how do I deduct money from people's accounts?
	If they've bought the book over PayPal, I don't have any of their financial information.
	Well, the infrastructure, I don't know.
	That's a different technical question.
	I'm just trying to understand.
	You're saying that I have a contract that I can enter into people, but if the contract is not enforceable, then it's not a contract at all, right?
	Right. I'm just giving you one example of how to enforce.
	No, no, no. You're not giving me an example of how to enforce anything because I can't enforce it, right?
	In the way that you're saying it, right?
	Well, I'm giving the example of when you go to a movie rental store, and when you sign up, you enter into a contract, and that contract says, if you violate our rules, for example, not returning the movie on time, we have the authority to take the money out of the account because you have agreed to that.
	That's just one way to do that.
	But they do that using the state, right?
	I don't know if all movie places do that, but you wouldn't need the state in that sense.
	Sorry, if you go and rent 10 movies and then you cancel your credit card, they will then use a collection agency which is authorized to get the money and they use the state to enforce access to your bank account to deduct it at source with interest and with penalties if you don't pay.
	So your example of the movie store rental place completely involves the state.
	So I'm just missing exactly how without the state.
	Look, I agree with you that it can be done without the state.
	But unfortunately, the state is preventing competition at the moment.
	so I don't have any alternatives, right?
	It's like, I'd love to drive on a private road, but the state has a monopoly on roads.
	I'd love to, you know, have private sewage system and garbage collection, but the state has a monopoly on those, so I have to use state services, right?
	I mean, I agree with you. I don't want to use the state, but I didn't invent the system and the state is suppressing all viable alternatives.
	There are no DROs as yet.
	So, you know, you deal with the world as it is, right?
	Right. I was just curious on, you know, why you were copywriting your books and...
	If you could not copyright them at all, you could use a concept of copy left.
	Would that not be preferable or is the protection of your property more important than not using violence of the state?
	I don't see those as a false dichotomy.
	I believe that violence in the defense of property is entirely viable.
	So the fact that the state is going to use violence to protect my property, to me, is not illegitimate.
	I don't like that the state uses violence to protect alternative solutions from arising.
	But I believe that using violence to defend your property is perfectly valid.
	Okay. I didn't know that.
	Forgive my ignorance on that part.
	Well, do you think that we should not use violence to protect our property?
	I'm not sure about it yet.
	I haven't really thought about that too much, and I am a newer listener, a newer reader of the site, and as somebody who's coming from a so-called libertarian viewpoint into an entirely voluntary viewpoint, I just I don't have the thought to really discuss that at this point.
	I'm not sure about property either.
	I'm not sure that absolute property Well, let me ask you this.
	And look, I appreciate your call.
	I think this is a great topic, to be honest with you.
	I really do. And I certainly do appreciate that you have every right, and it makes perfect sense to me, to say to the anarchist thinker, why are you using the violence of the government if you consider it evil?
	Your question to me is perfectly valid and perfectly sensible, and I completely applaud you for bringing it up.
	So that to me makes total sense.
	But would it be fair to say that I can use violence to defend somebody who wants to take one of my kidneys from me?
	Generally, I would say yes, but I have not thought through the whole idea of property rights well enough to discuss it at length or even intelligently at this point.
	So...
	I'm very, very ignorant.
	Would you say that self-defense is a valid response to a man who wants to rape a woman?
	I think so, but I'm still mulling over the idea of pacifism, and I'm not sure how it fits into the philosophy of non-aggression.
	So, for purpose of discussion, I would say yes.
	Right, because her vagina is her property, just as my kidneys are my property, and I can prevent somebody who comes at me with a rusty spoon wanting one of my kidneys, and a woman can use force to prevent a man who wishes to use her vagina without her permission.
	So, you know, those sort of foundational aspects of property rights.
	And basically, from my perspective, and there's a podcast on this, it was actually just posted about somebody on the board, maybe can mention on the chat room, it was 338 or something like that.
	But you can use the philosophization to get to the podcast that you want.
	It's at freedomainradio.com.
	But also, if you have a couple of bucks, and I think it is only 13 bucks or so, highly, highly recommend picking up a copy of Universally Preferable Behavior, Irrational Proof of Secular Ethics.
	It's dirt cheap. You can get it in audiobook.
	If you can't afford it, just let me know, and I'll give you a copy.
	You can pay me if you like it, whenever.
	See, that's how ferocious I am about copyright.
	But that will, I think, at least answer some of the questions that we have here or at least some of the approaches that we have here about property rights and it may save you a little bit of thought.
	And was it 388?
	No, no, it wasn't 388.
	It was something else. Let me just do a search for it.
	It's in here. Somebody just posted about it this morning.
	So the way – at least there's some arguments that we have here about property rights.
	There is, of course – 329.
	FDR 329.
	That's 329.
	You can have a look at that with regards to property rights.
	I also, just for today only, for you only, my friend, we have a podcast series which I've done on intellectual property, and I will give you...
	And again, this is not like, ooh, this is the answer, right?
	But this is at least a way that I approach the question.
	It's podcast 164...
	1-6-5 and 1-6-6.
	So you can have a listen to those.
	And again, not all answers.
	I'm not saying, you know, ooh, if there's a question, go listen to a podcast and all will be revealed.
	That's for the book of BCF, which is coming out soon, which is really going to be accompanied with the trumpets and cherubs.
	But you can at least – at least it's a place to start with the framework of the discussion, at least as we talk about it here, if that helps.
	Okay. So one quick maybe comment about that then.
	The idea of a right is something that inherently exists, but isn't it also true that you only have the rights that you can defend with violence?
	So how can you inherently have something but at the same time only be manifested if you defend it with violence?
	That's one of my questions that I'm trying to work through right now.
	Yeah, and look, I mean, obviously you are a savagely intelligent fellow whose mind leaps right to the core of the issues, and I perfectly agree with you.
	I quite dislike the word rights, but there's just not a better one in certain situations, at least that you can't invent your own work like Flubar or something and say, I'm talking about that.
	I don't think that human beings have rights.
	I think that human beings have properties.
	So, for instance, a human being has life.
	Life is a property of humanity.
	Do we have a right to that life?
	Well, I don't know. But either whatever theories that we have around positive moral obligations must be common to all human beings.
	And that really is the central thesis behind my argument for universally preferable behavior as the rational proof of secular ethics, which is to say any ethical statement that you make about humanity must be applicable to all humanity.
	And therefore, if people have the right to own property, then all people have the right to own property.
	It can't be some people do and some people don't, but some people have the right to property and other people can violate those rights.
	And that, of course, is why the government is an irrational, not to say immoral institution.
	So what I think is more important is to look at the properties of a human being and say that those must be common, which biologists fully accept, but political philosophers and other kinds of philosophers seem to have a great deal of difficulty with.
	So human beings have properties, but you're right.
	I mean, rights don't exist in reality any more than ethics or the scientific method does.
	Great.
	I have read your Lou Rockwell articles on your preference views and the one I was reading the other day, I was curious about whether or not instincts are indeed preferences or do they happen regardless of our You know, our thought preference, I guess, to put it in only a way that I can talk about it.
	Well, tell me what you mean by instincts.
	Do you mean like hunger or like an instinctual drive for like ambition?
	Like what is it that you mean by instincts?
	Well, you cannot control.
	For example...
	Sexual desire? You can only hold your...
	Right. You can only, you know, hold your breath for a certain amount of time until you either die or you have to breathe.
	Or, you know, when you're born, the first thing you do is, you know, you scream and you breathe.
	So, is that really preference or is it happening without your consciousness making a decision or a preference?
	Yeah, I mean, I think that's an excellent question.
	Again, I would say that, I mean, even if we look down to a single-celled amoeba, it has a preference insofar as it prefers to ingest food and it avoids things which are bad for it.
	So there are definitely preferences are built in biologically to all living creatures.
	In fact, that's the only way that evolution can possibly work, right?
	Yeah. And so, yes, I do believe that we have preferences that we share with other forms of life.
	I'm sure that, you know, field mice feel hungry, and that's what makes them go.
	And of course, they have instincts about burying nuts for the winter and so on.
	So... So there is a lot of instinct that's out there.
	If you look at a gang of ants struggling to carry a leaf across a sidewalk to the ant colony, there's a lot of instinct involved there.
	And clearly they're choosing to do that to a leaf rather than to a pebble, which of course wouldn't do them much good at all.
	So yeah, I certainly do believe that there are preferences.
	But I don't believe that there is a should when it comes to preferences.
	I don't believe that there are universally preferable behaviors that can be abstracted to a moral theory in that sense.
	For that, that requires consciousness, choice, responsibility, and all those other ethical goodies, if that makes sense.
	I think when I read those articles on Lew Rockwell about that, the problem I had in understanding them is I wasn't sure about the definition of preference.
	We wouldn't say that a virus was choosing its path.
	We would just say that that's its path.
	And maybe, I don't know if that's preference, maybe instinct is different than preference.
	That's kind of my problem with understanding that viewpoint.
	Right, right. And I think that what happens is we stretch the word to cover too many things, and then the word kind of breaks, right?
	So it's hard to say that our highest ethical abstractions, we can use the word for that, and we can also use the word for the fact that bears like to shit in the woods, right?
	I mean, so it becomes kind of hard to stretch it, I think, that far.
	Which is why I sort of universally preferable behavior is around the ethical theories and again you may want to just have a look at the book at least to step through my arguments.
	I think I've taken a pretty honorable swing at the problem of which is to me the core problem of libertarianism if not philosophy which is that we all know that ethics is valid but it seems virtually impossible to prove why or how and I've taken I think a fairly good swing at that but you can have a look at the book and let me know what you think.
	Yeah, I will definitely check out the book and I really enjoyed reading the Lou Rockwell articles and I had that same kind of problem, I guess, is how do we as voluntarists,
	or however you want to call us, how do we convince or get the message out or get the philosophy out in a way that is going to be meaningful And the only real thing I can think about is what you're talking about, is using the moral argument, because the tangible examples do not work, as every libertarian knows who's ever had an argument with a socialist.
	It seems that the moral view is the only way that we're ever going to move forward in this lifetime.
	Right, and wouldn't it really suck to, you know, just at a sort of personal level, I mean, wouldn't it really suck if we ended up hoeing this incredibly difficult stony ground to try and sow a few seeds of liberty that will not flower to anything huge within our own lifetime to...
	To oppose sometimes to the very core and to the breaking of the relationship, friends and family and sometimes lovers and siblings, and to go into the wilderness and to try and build something beautiful and wonderful for the future, for liberty.
	Wouldn't it suck if we did all that shit and we weren't even right?
	I mean, man, wouldn't that just be the worst thing ever?
	I mean, that would just be terrible.
	And so I wasn't willing...
	To commit, because, I mean, as you know, it just takes a staggering amount of commitment at times.
	I was not even close to even thinking about committing to a life of integrity until I could be sure that it was right.
	And not just right, like you have to kind of agree with certain things, like as employee number two, Greg, said, you know, he said all prior philosophies that he'd gotten into with regards to ethics was like, okay, if you accept this premise, everything else follows.
	But as he says, you know, the premise was just a flag stuck in the middle of a field for no reason, right?
	So if you're an objectivist, it's like, if life is the highest value, then everything else follows.
	And for socialists, it's like, if the good of the collective is the highest value, then everything else follows.
	But that first premise is the whole thing, right?
	It's the whole thing.
	It's like if you accept that North is this way, then you should go this way.
	And it's like, but I don't want to just accept that North is this way.
	I want to know that North is this way.
	Now, once I, at least to my own satisfaction, and I think the theory has held up fairly well over the past, I don't know how many hundreds of people I've sent who've come in guns blazing to that article and obviously to the more fleshed out book on UPB, the theory has held some pretty staunch attacks.
	And so, you know, I'm definitely saying that it's true.
	It's true for myself, and I think that it's holding up well in terms of attacks, and I think that it's axiomatically true myself.
	But again, you can have a look at it, and if there's things that need to be corrected, I'll be happy to correct it.
	But for me, it was only after it was like, okay, well, this is true.
	This is true. This is valid.
	I know that from every direction, from the ground up, from first principles, with rigorous logic, with historical examples.
	And in the face of withering criticism and opposition, the shining structure of UPB has held, okay, by God, I'll be an astronaut if there's a flight path that gets me somewhere, and I know it's going to work.
	I'm not just going to strap myself into a rocket, point myself at the sky, and hit the button, and hope that something good happens.
	So for me, I wasn't willing to commit to a goddamn thing.
	Until I knew for sure from the ground up that I wasn't pissing in the wind or running in circles because that has been done for thousands of years by thousands of thinkers and I was just sick and tired of it.
	I did not want to commit myself to an ethical absolute unless I could be sure that it was in fact an absolute that could be proven from every direction and not just I like ice cream therefore everyone should like ice cream or ethics are necessary and killing is bad so let's just make up some shit to justify that.
	So that was sort of my approach.
	So I think that – I mean your caution I think is entirely warranted and justified and caution is – caution and skepticism is the right approach to take to every philosophy.
	But I hope that at least it will be convincing for you and if not, that you'll share where its limitations are.
	I think that I was already mostly there, at least in my mind, but just I hadn't really thought out enough to, you know, quote-unquote, make the leap.
	But I was, as a quick example, I read your Strike the Root article about conversations with the statist, I think, and you have kind of a little dialogue there about How to wage someone of that persuasion.
	The day before yesterday, I was at one of these Anti-Iraq War rallies where you make a bunch of signs and you walk through the city and you get a bunch of media coverage and it's usually a socialist fest for any definition of such a thing.
	I used that approach and I am happy to report that every statist, socialist, communist that I talk to I could get every single one of them to agree not to initiate violence on me.
	If we talked about that and not any issue, not whether we need this person in office or that law passed or this regulation instituted, but simply asking them if they would commit violence on me to achieve a virtuous goal.
	And it was surprisingly effective, so maybe there's...
	Well, it's not surprising to me, but I can understand that.
	And there's a reason why most libertarians don't take this approach, right?
	And it has to do with their personal relationships.
	But sorry to interrupt. Please go on.
	No problem. I was just saying that I had never talked to someone of a statist or socialist or communist persuasion before in that way and had them be so receptive because usually it's, oh, well, you want to have a free market, there's no regulation, everyone's going to die and all the children are going to cry.
	Right. As soon as I said, look, let's not talk about issues, let's not talk about regulation or laws, let me just simply ask you the question on whether you would use violence against me to achieve something that you claim to be virtuous.
	About 12 out of 15 people all agreed.
	The others were violent thugs, as most people are.
	But it was surprising, refreshing.
	It was very refreshing as someone who's never taken that tactic before with someone.
	Right, right. No, I mean, we're all anarchists.
	I mean, I say this over and over again.
	Everybody is an anarchist because I don't know one person I don't know anybody who's got friends who has friends because he's keeping their dog hostage in the trunk of his car.
	Everybody that I know got their job by going for an interview and appealing to a free market process, right?
	Not by kidnapping the CEO's kids and saying, give me a job or Josie gets it, right?
	basis sorry i was just gonna say unless they're bureaucrats no you see even the bureaucrats they they um they delegate the violence right i mean even the bureaucrats don't like george bush didn't get the white house by shooting bill clinton right well yeah i guess so He didn't. He'd be the guy. I don't even know if he carries a gun.
	I doubt he does because he's got 12 million people around him, right?
	But nobody that I know except for a cop or a prison guard or a soldier or whatever, nobody I know uses direct violence or the direct threat of violence to get what they want, right?
	They all delegate it to the cops and so on, but that's different, right?
	So everybody is already an anarchist because that's how they live their life.
	And if we can get them to make that connection, then they'll recognize that a system that they see as dreamy, as utopian, as far out there, is their goddamn daily life.
	And if it works for their daily life, it's going to work for everything else.
	Well, I will definitely check the book out and I am enjoying all the articles.
	And I've known about the site for a while.
	I just never had the time to go and listen to the 800 podcasts that you have, but now I'm kind of getting around to it.
	Sorry, were you in prison?
	Were you in a coma?
	Were you physically disabled?
	No, just kidding. I'm glad to have you here.
	I'm glad that you finally made it over.
	I mean, there's only so many hours in the day, right?
	On this planet, yes!
	But you can listen to all the podcasts in one day on Pluto, and that's the kind of commitment we look for here.
	Just kidding. I'm glad to have you around.
	Thanks. Let's hope that the free market devises a way that we can get there.
	Well, I hope that what you did at this rally, which is fantastic, what I do with my podcasts and so on, is great.
	So, you know, this is the individual decisions.
	These are the tiny steps that seem completely invisible relative to the mammoth power of the state that we're facing.
	But this is absolutely and completely the only way that it's going to happen.
	It's these little tiny decisions that we all make, which swell to this just amazing and unstoppable wave.
	There's just no other way that it can happen.
	We've tried using the state and it doesn't work.
	And we've tried using merely education and it doesn't work.
	And now we just have to live these values until the world changes to match the physics of our beliefs because they're true.
	Or humans evolve in a point.
	That we no longer need to use violence on each other.
	No, because the state makes violence profitable.
	The state makes violence profitable for people, and it makes violence profitable for amoral and sociopathic incompetence.
	I mean, this is what I always say to people who are like, George Bush is right about everything.
	It's like, well then, call him the fucker.
	Call him up every day and say, George, what should I do with half my money?
	And then he'll tell you, and then you can go and do that.
	But you don't need to impose this living man-god of pure wisdom called George Bush on everybody else.
	If you think he's so right, you call him up every day, or you get his email saying, this is what I want you to do with your day.
	And then just do it. But you don't need force for that.
	Okay, well, I appreciate your response, and this is the first time I've been on one of these live shows, and I really enjoyed it.
	Dream analysis?
	What the hell is he doing?
	He's supposed to be a libertarian?
	Actually, that was my first thought.
	Was I listening to some kind of psychoanalyst show?
	I'm sorry, that must be wildly confusing for you, and there's a reason why we work on this kind of stuff, but as you can see from one of the dreams that we talked about earlier, the roots of violence can go very deep, and I'm not saying this is a violent guy who had this dream, but when we're trying to uproot the desire for the impulse for the justification for violence in people, you've got to go deep. This is not an instinct or an approach that comes out Just because people read an article, you kind of got to get in rough with your true self, with your deep self.
	Anyway, I know that that sounds kind of like freaky-ass stuff, and I totally understand that.
	There's about six million podcasts just about economics and politics, which you can chew on for a while.
	You can dip into some of the psychological ones, but I just wanted to let you know that it's unusual, too.
	We normally do one of these every couple of weeks, but there just seem to be a flurry of them now.
	So, you know, if you put aside a cult alarm thing, like, Oh God, he's programming people, right?
	It's part of what we do, but it doesn't make a whole lot of sense sometimes up front, but I think there's good reasons for it.
	I still enjoyed it.
	I don't think I've ever heard a real-time dream analysis before, so it was still very interesting and very relevant to the philosophy.
	Right. Well, I'm glad that you enjoyed it, because otherwise I'd have had to send this guy's mom over to your dreams tonight.
	But just kidding. But thanks for calling.
	I really do appreciate it. All right.
	Well, thank you everybody for a wonderful, wonderful show and thanks to the people who ripped open their psychological hides to show us the true depth and power and wisdom of the unconscious and all of the power of the mind that is sometimes a little bit harder to access.
	And I hope that...
	You will be able to drop by and give me a couple of bucks in donations to help spread the word about philosophy and self-knowledge, the ancient pursuit of Socrates that we're trying to resurrect here.
	And if you can't do that, pick up some books.
	The book deal is still currently chugging along for a little while, which is $79.
	Shipping included for all four FDR books, except Revolutions, which you can get just by going to the books page.

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