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April 6, 2008 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

02:12:23

1032 Sunday Call In Show Apr 6 2008

Mastering small talk, showing your love for the truth, and negotiating with a girlfriend...

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	Well, thank you everybody so much for joining.
	This is Sunday, the April of 6th, 08, and a little bit after the hour, 1600 Est.
	And thank you so much for taking the time to join us.
	We are on Skype.
	We are happy to be on Skype, but we are running out of slots for people who want to come in.
	We'll find some alternative that doesn't cost hundreds of dollars a month.
	Unless donations come squirreling in, in which case we will buy...
	Or a bell. One of the two.
	So just minor updates.
	A couple of specials.
	No particular intro rants.
	For the Diamond Plus listeners, these are people who've donated.
	Some have changed.
	It's available for your perusal on the board, which Greg may type into the window for me so that I can remember.
	$150, I think.
	Anyway, something like that. There is a series out there.
	I just finished part four. This is the longest series that I've done since the introduction to philosophy.
	And... It is on ambivalence, which is the warring emotions that we have, the complexity and self.
	We have both self-love and self-attack.
	We have love and hatred.
	We have attachment. We have disgust and all of these kinds of things.
	And we have that with ourselves, with philosophy, with our family, sometimes even with our friends and with our careers and so on.
	And this is part of the ecosystem idea that we have within us an ecosystem of psychological or personality perspectives.
	And this podcast series on ambivalence is in the Diamond Plus section.
	It's pretty advanced. You have to have some grounding, at least in psychology, or at least the psychology we talk about here, in order for this to be really, really valuable.
	And so I just wanted to mention that that is available.
	If you ever needed a reason to donate to freedomainradio.com, this is the stuff that I'm the happiest with since RTR in terms of the power and impact of what it is that I've come up with.
	Shockingly, it's new.
	And so I would really – this is sort of all in preparation for the next thing.
	Which is going out.
	We spend a couple of years really looking within ourselves and analyzing ourselves, going into ourselves.
	The next thing, the next surge is going out to help others.
	That is where the real and rarest and most blissful joys are in the world, which I'd like to be able to pass along to you.
	But in order to do that, we have to get a sense of our own ambivalence so that we don't bounce back and forth like a pinball when we are out talking about the joys of philosophy.
	So... Donate some cash.
	Get those podcasts if you can.
	And just remember, I'm just laying it out for you so you understand this sort of donation thing.
	We're back on the advertising bandwagon.
	Greg and I spent about three months pounding every news group we could get a hold of and using alternatives.
	The law of diminishing returns hit us pretty hard over the last month, six weeks, so we've not been able to continue to generate the same kind of interest, so we're back to pounding the advertisements, and StumbleUpon is the best that we can do.
	It is a nickel to get somebody to come directly to the website, and that's pretty good.
	So just so you can sort of translate this to yourself, If you donate $100 and we throw that in StumbleUpon, which is where a good deal of the donations go, that's 2,000 people who get to come to the website.
	That is 2,000 people who get to come to the website, right?
	$200, 4,000 people.
	Ten million dollars.
	We own the planet. Actually, I think it's everybody who has an internet connection.
	But this is an important thing to remember that when you put cash in, what you're doing is you're buying eyeballs for philosophy.
	And not my philosophy, not your philosophy, but thinking and reasoning because we have a methodology here that we've worked very hard to develop.
	And... The methodology has conclusions.
	We are not wedded. At least I'm not wedded to the conclusions.
	I'm wedded only to the methodology.
	So by bringing people to the website, you actually don't have to worry about debating and annoying yourself with them yourself.
	Just bring interested parties to the website through your donations, and this is how we spread the truth.
	This is how we save the world.
	This is how we engage the planet as a whole in this most amazing conversation, I think, that's going on here or anywhere, perhaps even.
	I certainly believe at any time, because otherwise I'd be building a time machine and going there.
	So that's sort of where your donations are going, just so that you remember that it's not just about keeping me in gold underwear.
	Obviously, a lot of it is keeping me in gold underwear, but what with the chafing?
	I really have to go elsewhere for some things like that as well.
	So that's just sort of a brief update on that.
	The specials that are cooking around, the $79 deal is done for the foreseeable future, which was all four FDR books for $79 shipping included.
	Now it's $39 for all four PDFs, $49 for all of the audiobooks.
	The God of Atheists, the novel, is now available.
	For the first time, I guess since we started, it used to be a Gold Plus bonus, but it's now been released.
	I read the book, and I'm a trained actor, so it doesn't suck too bad.
	At least I hope not. And I think the story is great.
	So get that, you get Untruth, you get universally preferable behavior, God of Atheists, and the extended version of...
	Real-time relationships. It's over 40 hours of audio, high-quality versions.
	So, 49 bucks.
	Dear God, you can't beat that.
	It's like just over a dollar an hour, which, if you're in Singapore, gets you to make, I think, about 400 shirts.
	So, come by and grab that, or you can get both for $79.
	That's it for the sales pitch.
	The books are, of course, still available through the print versions, but if you haven't listened to the audiobooks, grab them.
	They are really cheap, all of them for $49.
	So, grab them if you can. And again, right, because that's already stuff that I've done, most of that money will be plowed into donations.
	So, if we sort of round it up, say it's $50, that gets you 2,500 people.
	Is that right? No, that's not quite right.
	Oh dear, the math part, it done died.
	It gets you a thousand people to come to the website.
	So that is really, really good stuff.
	Of those thousand people, the bounce rate, and I'm sorry, this is one last thing I wanted to say.
	This is not to do with any advertising stuff, so if you tuned out, you can tune back in again.
	I must say that while there is some baffling and contradictory statistics, The Philosophysician is a pretty damn rousing success.
	I get a half dozen to a dozen feeds a day being generated from interested people who are targeting in directly on the shows that interest them the most.
	I've stored their preferences, though no personally identifiable information, just so I can get a sense of what people are most interested in.
	But what it's done is it's lowered the bounce rate because people, they scroll down and they start playing around, and it's a great way to educate them about what it is that we're talking about here, right?
	So if they don't know what FDR is about and they scroll down through the FiFi, they will see the categories that we have.
	It will engage them and so on.
	And, of course, they can then download, listen to the stuff directly, get the feed, put it in there.
	iTunes or whatever pod feed catcher they use.
	So what it's done is it's really dropped the bounce rate.
	The bounce rate being the people who come to the site and then get distracted by the pop-up goat porn that Greg set up and go there.
	So the people actually stay on the site because of the philosophization.
	It steps them through the process.
	It engages them. So it is a huge and beneficial success and Of course, it's been great for me because when everybody asks me and says, hey, where are the podcasts on this, that, or the other, I'm like, here, go ride the FiFi into the sunset and you will get what you need to.
	So that's a huge success.
	Thanks to those who helped me test it.
	And it's working very well.
	It seems to be error-free.
	All good stuff!
	So that's it for me for the intro.
	I do appreciate your patience as we went through some of the business issues, but here you may ask questions of myself, you may also ask questions of my wife, and she may in fact answer them if she is of a mind to.
	She's very willful and relatively hard to control.
	But we will do our best.
	I have the husbandly cattle prod of patriarchy, which never seems to be able to be plugged in anywhere in this house.
	So, if you have questions, feel free to ask them, and the floor is yours, my friends.
	Don't forget to unmute yourself if you do have a...
	Can you guys hear me?
	Yeah, are you going to tap this question, or is this something you're going to ask vocally?
	I'm practicing Morse code for just the occasion.
	Okay, go for it. I prefer flags, signals, or carry pigeons, but it's up to me.
	Okay. I started a post a while ago about the small talk issue, and I figured this would be a good way to get everybody involved and have a talk about it.
	Okay. Yeah, I've put a little bit of thought into that, and I've completely reversed my former position.
	Which was? Well, I guess I had looked upon small talk as relatively unimportant, and I think that in long-term relationships it is.
	I was sort of thinking about long-term relationships, although Christina occasionally pays me for small talk because she just, you know, it's like, okay, enough windy philosophical stuff.
	Can we talk about shoes? But I've actually sort of reversed that in...
	In terms of introducing yourself to people, I actually am now a huge fan of small talk, if that makes any sense.
	But did you have any sort of thoughts that you wanted to talk about first?
	I guess I was just kind of curious as to, in particular, the worst work situation.
	I work at a place where there's a lot of different people and they're really nice and I do like them in the general, I guess, not so intense relationship way.
	They just seem like good people and they're friendly and they're open to talk, but when it comes to the actual small talk, it's It's a lot of sports and Britney Spears and my family did this on the weekend and I find I'm not really either interested in it or I just don't know much about it.
	I've tried looking into it a little bit but it just kind of puts me to sleep and I start drooling all over the place and it's just a mess.
	I'm just trying to figure out what the best approach to this is.
	Is this my problem?
	Is this everybody's problem?
	Is this something that I can do to improve or is this something that I should just kind of move on and go somewhere else and try to look for people that talk about what I'm interested in so we can approach it from that perspective.
	Right, right. Well, I'm going to just spend a minute or two on why I think that small talk is an important skill to have or to develop in yourself.
	If you're interested in doing this help the planet thing, which is going to be my big crusade for the next 12 minutes before I get distracted by...
	Ooh, look, something shiny. But I don't know if you've ever been around someone who is...
	Other than here. Somebody who's, as we sort of say, monomaniacal.
	Like if you've ever been around a 9-11 truther or somebody who's really into UFOs or somebody who's, I don't know, like a Ron Paul fanatic or somebody who's got to be in their bonnet about the Fed or international bankers or something like that.
	Have you ever been around somebody like that?
	Yeah, I have. I read the Dale Carnegie book, How to Win Friends and that type of thing.
	It works to agree, but it kind of almost seems disingenuous.
	I think it's a really valuable skill to have as far as business is concerned.
	I think it makes you more valuable in terms of networking, being able to go up to somebody that believes in UFOs or something and being genuinely interested in this and kind of getting them into a conversation so you guys can go back and forth.
	Oh, no. See, that may be Dale Carnegie.
	That's not where I was going with that, but let me sort of go.
	Oh, yeah, yeah. So when we're around people like that, and they certainly do come by Free Domain Radio as well, sometimes in single spies and sometimes, yay, as battalions, but they're compulsive.
	Like, they can't talk about anything else.
	Like, they come in and it's like, yes, but it all comes back to 9-11, or yes, but the space aliens are sending me the wrong signals, or whatever, right?
	And they have this compulsion about it, and they can't, like, you can, and they, to me, it creates a kind of tension.
	They have to talk about it.
	They can't be redirected.
	And, of course, the moment you ask them, like, well, why is it that you think your beliefs are so strong in this area, they get really tense, right?
	And, you know, you'll be labeled a disinformation agent or something like that, right?
	And these are people who are unable to make small talk.
	Because they kind of have this compulsion.
	Their Simon the Boxer thing, if this is going to make any sense for those who've read or listened to RTR, their Simon the Boxer thing is driving people away.
	So what happens is they have this sort of compulsion to be boring or to talk about things.
	And we have, of course, the truthers.
	I would put some determinants into this category as well.
	They may well put the free willers in there as well.
	But they just have this compulsion.
	They can't let it go. They can't stop.
	They can't change the topic. And that's very alienating, right?
	Mm-hmm. And we don't want to be perceived that way about philosophy or about freedom or about, you know, even libertarianism or anarchism or something like that.
	I think that small talk is a valuable thing to have because it says, I don't have intellectualism as a psychological defense.
	Because the problem with the people who are monomaniacal is you can never get to know them.
	All they'll do is they'll refer you to websites, and they'll talk about things that are not proven as if they're self-evident.
	And of course, religious people are like this as well, as are a lot of statists and so on.
	But you can't reach past the ideology to actually get in touch with the person, if that makes sense.
	Yeah. That's kind of what I'm worried like that I'm kind of doing that with the whole philosophy and religion and all that type of stuff.
	Like is there a… Sorry to interrupt, but you don't want to end up talking about this stuff because you don't have an option.
	That's not freedom, right? Yeah.
	For you or for others.
	Because I certainly know, I had some friends to whom intellectualism was just a kind of defense.
	Like, you just could never get to know them as people, because it was always about the ideology.
	It was always about, you know, they just couldn't, like, if there'd be a long pause in the conversation, it'd be like, oh yeah, and you know what else is wrong with the Fed?
	And it's just like, oh lord, I can't.
	It just, it doesn't feel comfortable.
	It doesn't feel like they're comfortable in their own skin.
	So from that standpoint, I think that it's really good to have the optional skill of small talk.
	And that way, if you talk about philosophy, it will be because you are making a choice, not because that's all you can talk about, if that makes sense.
	Yeah, that makes perfect sense.
	Now, as to how...
	I don't know that there's any particularly tricky answers, sorry, easy answers to that.
	Making small talk is tough. But I think the first thing to do is to recognize that small talk is just another option in your social arsenal, so to speak.
	It's just another card in your social deck, so to speak.
	So it's not because, you know, small talk that is relentless is completely soul crushing, right?
	And it diminishes you and it's another way of pushing people away, right?
	Anything which is not sensitive to the moment, that is not flexible, that is not responsive to the environment and so on, tends to be alienating to others.
	So if it's nothing but relentless small talk, Then that is alienating to others.
	And people, then the moment they hear anything that's deep, they tense up, right?
	Whereas those who are into philosophy often, the moment they hear anything shallow or inconsequential, they tense up, right?
	So neither, I think, groups are particularly free, and having the option to engage in small talk is important.
	And that has something to do with remembering, of course, that there is a life outside of philosophy, right?
	Certainly for me, there isn't.
	But for you people, there could be.
	Save yourself where I cannot be saved.
	But there is.
	I mean, you know, I have played sports.
	I garden, or I'm told to garden.
	I clean, or I'm told to clean myself.
	And I play video games and so on, right?
	And I also enjoy comedy, TV shows, right?
	So there's things that you want to have that enrich and inform your pursuit of philosophy, but you don't want to, like, see everything through the lens of philosophy, right?
	Because that's saying that philosophy is an outward-only direction where we analyze, like, a searchlight going out from a lighthouse, but we also want to absorb.
	I talked about this in last week's show, and I'm just touching it briefly here.
	I've been getting an enormous amount of fantastic insights about the state from a show called The Wire.
	And it's really, really good if you get a chance to rent it.
	It's a little slow to start, but really good.
	And I don't look at that...
	And say, ah, here's an example of how anarchism could do it better.
	Here's an example of how statism screws up the police department.
	Like, I try to get into the souls of the people, try to understand the story and what's going on.
	And yeah, there's lots of, but what happens to these people is very well written by a newspaper man and an ex-cop.
	So these are people who know what they're talking about.
	It's really well written. You can absorb that kind of stuff.
	And you can talk about that show with people, you know, because you haven't just looked at it Like, I saw this show, The Wire, which tells me this and this about philosophy and anarchism and libertarianism and the failures of the state and this and that and the other, right?
	But you can say, wow, I've really been enjoying this show, The Wire.
	Have you seen it? And you can talk about the story.
	And you don't necessarily have to put everything through the lens of philosophy, but you can just absorb it and allow that to sort of nurture philosophy rather than put it through the lens of philosophy.
	This may all be too abstract to be of any use, but maybe does this help at all?
	I kind of see that as taking well-known and mainstream culture and kind of manipulating it to a conversation about politics or philosophy.
	The kind that I'm thinking of, you were very successful in the business world, right?
	You were good with people and you could talk to them pretty easily and get along with everybody.
	Yeah, but I was a bit of a weak-winged, spineless yes-man as well, right?
	Which is one of the problems that led to my insomnia.
	And I would say that I was successful.
	I mean, I have a yardstick that includes people like Bill Gates and stuff like that.
	So I would say that I was successful, and certainly very successful relative to where I started.
	But yeah, I could talk to people about stuff because the way that I would approach something like The Wire would be more like, well, what did you think about it, right?
	Or, you know, the war on drugs, man, the way they portray it, it seems to be completely hopeless, right?
	I mean, the way they portray the war on drugs, that it corrupts everyone it touches, isn't that fascinating?
	And that's not mentioning anything about libertarianism, right?
	You don't sort of say, my thesis completely shows how statism is a complete abject failure from an epistemological, psychological, and moral sense.
	But just ask them what they think and feel about it, right?
	And they may have had some direct or personal experience, right?
	So maybe you talk to them about The Wire and they say, oh man, my brother-in-law?
	Got involved in this drug culture and he went through this and he went through that and he went through the other and you can gather just empirical information.
	I mean it's not like a scientist but just listen to people about their experience of stuff like that.
	And you can just get a lot of information and useful stuff out of all of that without necessarily hitting them with the two barrels of philosophy right up front.
	What I found, at least where I work, is that people – they're smart people where I work, but I found that when topics kind of drift towards that end of examining the whys and the hows of political things,
	economic things, anything to do with philosophy, any type of stuff like that, things kind of get a little uncomfortable because you kind of put a – I'm thinking because I'm putting a proposition forward, like, well, this is what I think, and then I'm thinking it kind of backs them into a corner where they have to say,
	well, no, I don't think that, or maybe they just, because they can only watch CNN and Fox, or that's all they're exposed to, they're just kind of confused and muddled, and they don't really understand the topics, and they don't want to appear unknowledgeable or whatever, so I'm not sure what exactly is going on there, but I think it's something like that.
	I can certainly understand where you're coming from, but I think this is a classical trap that people who are consciously wise get into.
	Everybody is wise in their own way.
	Everybody's a genius and everybody's a philosopher.
	The reason that people avoid particular topics is because they know that it's going to be a disaster for them.
	And I used this metaphor the other day.
	I'll resurrect it because, you know, new metaphors are work, man.
	But it's like I'm standing in front of somebody who's talking to me in Chinese or Mandarin or whatever, and I say, oh, I don't speak Mandarin.
	I don't speak Mandarin, right? And then at one point, after like 10 minutes, he says, I'd like to give you a million dollars.
	And I say, oh, I'll take that, right?
	Well, then clearly, I'm not ignorant, right?
	I'm just pretending not to understand because of whatever.
	Who knows what the reason is, right?
	But with philosophy, of course people don't want to bring out their core values, right?
	I mean, my God, if you say to somebody at work, right, you get somebody to say...
	Like the Iraq War. People don't want to bring that stuff into their work environment, right?
	They don't want to bring that.
	Somebody turns out to be a pacifist or a chicken hawk, and somebody turns out to be a warmonger, right?
	That is out there in the open, and people avoid that for very good reasons.
	Because if you allow that into your work environment, that's allowing statism to mess up your income.
	Now, I can do that because that's my particular fetish.
	But not you young people starting out.
	You need money to help me buy eyeballs.
	But does it make sense?
	If you start getting into philosophical topics at work, we know what this does to our families.
	And families are much tighter than business associations.
	It's just going to detonate them, right?
	But it's not just philosophies.
	They can talk about Britney Spears and all start throwing out possibilities as to why she's so damaged or what she's doing.
	Just to try to talk about what they're talking about.
	But as soon as it goes into – as soon as the transition starts from what she had for lunch yesterday to what she was like when she was being raised or how her parents were, like the conversation just kind of stops and people kind of scatter.
	Do you feel that talking about the family who influence on dysfunction is less personally volatile for people than philosophy or the war?
	more.
	Well, no, I'm just curious, right?
	Because when you think about it for a moment, that's even more volatile, right?
	Yeah. And since you're such an intelligent fellow, the fact that you thought this was a less volatile topic must mean that you have a Simon the Boxer thing going on here.
	I'm sure I do on many levels.
	Yeah, I mean, do you have a historical experience of feeling like the outsider, of feeling misunderstood and maybe even perhaps feeling a little superior over that?
	Um... Superior?
	Well, yeah, I guess so. Like, I'm not sure if it's a feeling of superiority, more just different.
	No, it's different. I mean, the way you're talking about it here is that it's superior, right?
	That you have depth and wisdom, and other people are doing all the shallow nonsense, right?
	And perpetually, and avoiding the truth, right?
	I mean, that's not neutral.
	I'm not saying you're a vain guy.
	I'm just saying that that's not a neutral approach.
	Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense.
	Right. Yeah. So what this means, I would guess, is that there may be something like around this leveling thing that's going on.
	So you feel put down because other people aren't interested in what you have to say or think about.
	And so as a result, you need to put them down in your own mind by calling them shallow and inconsequential and so on.
	But unfortunately, that causes us to escalate, right?
	So then what you do is you bring up something which causes them to reject you, which you then feel is like, oh my god, I get rejected, these people are so shallow, what am I going to do, blah blah blah, right?
	And then there's a little bit of superiority in there as well, like this poor and pitiful biped, right?
	Well, the way I kind of look at it is maybe because I don't integrate into the whole sports and Britney Spears thing, because I was kind of alienated from that, I was kind of more put onto the path of looking at other things that I think are now interesting.
	But it's not that these other people are bad or stupid or ignorant or anything.
	It's just that they haven't really been exposed to it.
	Yeah. You know, like the whole politics, philosophy, all that kind of stuff.
	So when it comes to like...
	They know it. Sorry to interrupt.
	they know exactly what to avoid, right?
	Like, do they ever mistakenly get involved in a political or a philosophical conversation?
	Thank you.
	No, I don't think so. No, they don't.
	Promise. Right.
	So it's like, imagine that there's a, you know, one of those rooms in those movies where there's lasers, you have to spray this mist to see where the lasers are, and then you have to get, I don't know, like Michael Douglas to go through it in spandex or something.
	If somebody manages to make it all the way from one side of the room to the other without touching any one of those lasers, could it really be said that they have no idea where the lasers are?
	No, so they're consciously avoiding it.
	I don't know about consciously because I don't know the situation.
	But for sure they know, right?
	We're all equally deep, right?
	Some of us are conscious of our depth and other people are not, right?
	But we're all equally deep in my opinion and in my experience.
	So you guys are engaged in an unconscious battle, right?
	So you're like, I'm going to lead you to depth.
	And they're like, let's see you try, right?
	Lead a horse to water.
	Gotta make a drink, right? So you guys are engaged in an unconscious battle.
	Again, this is sort of the way that I would start to look at it.
	And you're saying, I'm going to talk about things that are going to mess up your career.
	Are going to cause you huge amounts of problems, are going to make you upset, are going to cause you to lose sleep, are going to create conflicts with your wife and your family for no positive benefit that you can see or understand.
	And they're going to be like, hey, you know what you're not going to do?
	Is any of that, right?
	Yeah. So they know, right?
	It's not that they're confused, it's not that they don't know.
	Like, if all they do is watch Fox and so on, they do that because that's their social environment, right?
	As we said, people don't believe in God.
	They're afraid of other people, right?
	So these guys watch Fox and say, oh yeah, Bill O'Reilly totally had it.
	We nailed this guy about this, that, and the other.
	Because if they don't say that, people will reject or attack them, right?
	But, like, aren't we aware of those same things, but we don't do that?
	Well, sure. Well, sure.
	But, um... But you take pleasure in philosophy, right?
	And they don't, right?
	I mean, are the people that you're talking to in general, are they older?
	No, they're about the same age.
	Are they in relationships?
	Yeah. A lot of them in relationships?
	I'd say it's about three quarters, maybe.
	Right, okay. And you're not, if I remember rightly, but correct me if I'm wrong.
	I am, I am. And has your relationship been managed to absorb the cannonball into the fat gut of your relationship, the cannonball of philosophy?
	Yes, it has.
	So far. We've gotten into some pretty heated arguments.
	By God, that was like a sentence with such a faint question mark at the end of it, I could barely see it.
	Yes, it has so far.
	As of right now, there's been some things where we've run into a couple problems and contradictions, and I've pushed them to a point, and She's gotten upset about him, but it didn't take me an instant to...
	I didn't go, okay, well, this guy's right.
	I'm going to just agree with that.
	I had to think about it for a while, so I don't want to just rush in and attack and say, okay, well, you're wrong, you're evil, like that.
	I kind of want to give it time to think about it and maybe come back and have more talks about it.
	Right, so if they don't take pleasure in philosophy...
	Then clearly what you would be proposing to them from a short-term, merely practical standpoint, as the book says, it would be a complete disaster for them, right?
	Yeah. They'd get booted out of their family.
	They'd get booted out of their church.
	They'd probably lose their relationships.
	You know, they'd end up with dead hookers in the Vegas gutter, right?
	Okay, maybe not that last bit.
	I don't know, right? But it would be bad for them.
	Yeah. Right, so when you propose a net negative to people, right, pay me 20 bucks and I'll punch you in the stomach, right?
	Well, people are not so positive, right?
	They're not so good with that, right? You sound like you're doubting again, which is fine.
	I just want to make sure. Yeah, that makes people uncomfortable and I understand you have to approach it really carefully, but is there any validity?
	I think these are nice people and I would like to network with them and give myself more value in the business world.
	So is there any value to me studying up on sports and being able to converse on these topics that I'm not really interested in just for the sake of being able to converse with them?
	Well, only if you want to spend the rest of your life talking about sports, right?
	I mean, you don't want to network with people who bore you to tears, right?
	Because there's no amount of money, unless you're totally starving, that's worth that.
	So when you were in the work environment, how would you...
	Sorry, go ahead. When you were in the work environment, how would you relate to these people?
	I don't know if you encountered these because you were in the software industry.
	I'm not sure if it's any different than the other industries, but did you encounter these people that were all sports, Jesus and Bush, that type of thing?
	Not so much the Jesus Bush thing because it's Canada, although I did a lot of business in the south of the US, so we certainly had that, right?
	Let's say grace. It's like, okay, grace, right?
	I mean, let's do grace, right?
	People didn't ask me about my religious beliefs.
	I didn't talk about atheism.
	In fact, when I recognized that people were in this category...
	Where the truth would make them crazy and hostile and destabilized, I'd be like, hey, you know what I don't want to do?
	It's make people crazy and hostile and destabilized, right?
	I mean, outside of the financial interest that I had in keeping these people happy as clients, and this was not the majority, but it certainly was some, to me, that's just cruel, right?
	I mean, they're not going to change.
	It's going to make them actively hostile towards something like...
	Like, what they're going to do is they're going to go home and they're going to say, God damn it, you know, I lunched with this bald mother.
	Right? And he was talking about...
	He was talking trash about Jesus.
	God damn atheists.
	They don't know their ass from a hole in the ground.
	Right? Something like that.
	And he would scare his children about atheism.
	Right? They'd see all of his frustrated rage about atheism.
	Right? I don't know.
	Sorry? So when you talk to these people, would it be just strictly business or would you actually, would you kind of go to their side or would you kind of like take a middle ground and just argue just about nothing or talk about the weather?
	I would talk to them about the business stuff.
	I'd ask them about their families.
	I'd ask them about their hobbies.
	I'd ask them, you know, where have you gone in the world?
	Where would you like to go? All this stuff.
	I mean, to me, that's fine. It's a fine way to pass the time when you have a relationship with somebody that's more acquaintance-based than a friend.
	Right? Or I'd say, you know, tell me about, like, the most disastrous project you...
	Let's do disaster project stories, right?
	That's the worst project you ever had, right?
	And then I'd say, actually, it's this one.
	No, I'm just kidding. You just don't...
	No, but I don't want to turn them into raging, hateful, like, get their hate on against atheist kind of people, because that's just against my cause, right?
	Mm-hmm. I don't want them to go home and yell at their kids about this asshole atheist they met, and if they ever meet another atheist in their life, they're going to rip his nuts off, right?
	Because that's just going to make their kids say, ooh, atheism, let's not go there, right?
	That's not reasonable, because we've got to look to the future, right?
	You know, I want this guy to say, if he ever did find out I was an atheist, right?
	Or if it ever came up, let's say, after working together for six months, and this did happen with one guy, he just openly asked me, he said, you know, y'all don't talk that much about God, right?
	And I said, well, my relation to religion is complex, to say the least, right?
	Which is true. It is complex.
	I think that religion has got some very powerful stuff that we can learn from psychologically, but it just happens to be all false, right?
	And I just let it go at that, right?
	And then, you know, a couple of months after that, this was a long project, he said, well, what do you mean complex?
	I said, well, I respect a few of the psychological insights of religion.
	I respect those who are in religion because they desire virtue.
	But I can't believe in the existence of a god.
	I've not been able to do that.
	Because I have this hyper-analytical brain.
	Like, I was willing to put all the blame on myself and so on, right?
	And we had a great conversation about religion.
	And I've got to imagine or I've got to believe that at some point in the future, right, this guy would say, oh yeah, I met an atheist once.
	Nice guy. That's important for me, right?
	It's important for what it is that I'm trying to do with my life.
	If that makes sense. Whereas if he says, oh, that goddamn atheist, he was weird, and every time he opened his mouth, people got kind of weirded out and just changed the topic.
	That's not what I want.
	It's not the impression that I want to leave in the world.
	So is that kind of what the whole, why the whole truth or movement kind of turns people off Because they just kind of rush it and say, this is what we're talking about, and they don't let the curiosity come to them?
	Well, I mean, the difference is that there is no God, which is, you know, at least completely established, right?
	But the truth of stuff, it's like, A, why does it matter, right?
	We don't need a parking ticket to convict a mass murderer.
	We don't need complicity in 9-11 to understand that the government caused the deaths of half a million Iraqi children just to take one crime of thousands.
	We don't need 9-11.
	Why the hell is this at all important to you?
	And also, do you not admit that there is ambiguity in the case?
	That the evidence has all been destroyed, that it's conflicting, that nobody really knows for sure.
	But where people have this absolute certainty where clear ambiguity exists and where they have an enormous amount of emotional investment in something that makes a damn nothing bit of difference on the planet, then yeah, that's just kind of weird.
	It's off-putting. Because you know it's not about the truth.
	You know it's not about 9-11.
	You know it's just some fucked up...
	some Simon the Boxer acting out, rejection, I want to be called crazy kind of thing.
	Yeah.
	So like at my work, a bunch of people around me, they're about my age.
	They'll all get together for lunch and they'll sit down at these tables and they'll all talk about sports and that type of thing.
	I I've overheard them. Every time I've overheard them, it's always about basketball or football or something.
	What would you suggest as a way to be more friendly and open with these people or is that something I want to avoid?
	Oh, I can't do sports.
	Like, I just can't.
	I'm sorry. I mean, I wish I had some advice to give you there.
	I can't do it. Like, I don't care if I was up for the CEO of Microsoft.
	If I had to spend a lot of time learning about sports and going to sports games, I just couldn't care less.
	You know, what I will talk about is sports that I'm interested in.
	I'm like, oh, I'm a big sports fan.
	Like, for instance, I'm a huge fan of my wife who's, like, incredibly great at sports, and she's, like, wicked.
	She actually comes out of my shorts playing squash.
	She's that life. It's alarming, yet very exciting.
	But swing less, honey!
	I'll talk about sports.
	This may be my limitation.
	I never got the whole sports thing.
	What is the thing?
	I'm real big on sports teams that I'm in.
	If I'm playing volleyball or I'm playing squash or I'm playing tennis or skiing or whatever it is that I'm doing...
	I'm very keen on the sport or the team that I'm actually in, but I just can't quite get into the sports thing, right?
	And maybe it's because I was born with like, I don't know, three quarters of a testicle or something.
	Maybe there's something that I'm missing, but I don't get into the sports thing, right?
	And you can talk about that with people, right?
	And they can tell you, you know, it's like, well, it's because you're not a, you know, He-Man, Manly Man, Sailor dude or something, right?
	But you can ask them, like, what is the thing with sports?
	Like, I feel like I'm missing the sports brain, right?
	I just don't get it. What is the thing with sports?
	And you can ask them about it, right?
	And then, sure, they'll be happy to tell you, oh, my dad took me to the games.
	I've got all these great memories.
	You know, and of course, there is an addictive element to sports, like gambling, where there's real positive biofeedback stuff when the sports team wins and so on.
	But, you know, I also say, as I sort of mentioned when I was a kid, that...
	The football team that was in my neighborhood was composed almost entirely of people with, like, really thick African accents from far corners of the world, more than a few Rastafarians, right?
	So, me, little sort of dewy-eyed, ruddy-cheeked, blonde boy, was like, this is your team, Heidi, right?
	I mean, it's like, I didn't understand it.
	So, basically, you went and bought some colonists, and they're supposed to represent me?
	I mean, that's not supposed to work, right?
	I don't understand it. So, there was just some barriers to entry for me when it came to sports, and I just never really got into it.
	But you can ask people, just be honest, like, I don't get it.
	It's a huge phenomenon, but I just don't get it.
	Tell me more about it, or whatever, right?
	Or, do you play any sports, or do you just watch sports?
	Do you watch sports? Do you play sports?
	Get them into something that you're interested in.
	You can move them over that way, but you can't pretend to be interested in something you're not.
	I mean, you can pretend, but it's going to come across really false, you know?
	Yeah, I'm almost just like you in the way you look at sports.
	It's just agony for me to talk about it or read about it.
	Oh, I seriously feel that people who have more than two statistics about sports...
	I'm not a huge fan of the death penalty in general, and I think it's highly misused by most governments, but that's the one area.
	You know, train spotters and people who know more than two sports statistics...
	I just feel it should be open season.
	In fact, I'd be willing to make that with any endcap society.
	I think a bounty would be more than reasonable.
	Maybe. We can talk about that one later, maybe.
	Yeah, right. It's like, hey, you want a sport?
	How about manhunting? Sorry, go on.
	Put on this blue jersey.
	Go! No, but when you say, turn it around to a question that you'd more like to talk to, like twist the topic around and talk about why sports is so valuable to them, I see that as something that would be very alienating, like jumping into a discussion about the war or something like that.
	I think it would kind of get into their roots of, you know, there really is no reason to like this team or that team.
	It's just almost a conformity thing or a feels-good thing.
	Well, and if they get really uncomfortable talking about sports and why they like sports, then all that tells you is that you won't be able to talk about them with anything.
	In which case, it's like, hey, you know who I paid lots of money to not network with?
	Is anybody in this crowd, right?
	Is this their problem?
	I'm kind of uncomfortable saying it's their problem.
	All you guys want to do is talk about sports, but at the same time, I kind of feel uncomfortable.
	I kind of feel alienated from all these people.
	It's almost gotten to the point where I'm avoiding making eye contact with these people just because it feels weird.
	I'm not sure if there's some kind of psychological problem there or If it's all me or if it's them, I'm kind of having trouble wrapping my head around it.
	Well, no, I understand that.
	And if you genuinely do find these people cripplingly boring and limited, then that's going to show up in your eyes, and it's very wise to not make eye contact.
	We generally can't hide anything from people, particularly when we look them in the eye, which is why we avoid eye contact so studiously, right?
	There's that Dilbert, two guys walking down a hall.
	It's like they know each other, and it's a long haul.
	It's like, when do we make eye contact?
	If we make eye contact too soon, then we have to make eye contact again before we pass each other, and it's going to feel too intimate.
	If I don't make any eye contact at all, the guy's going to think that I don't like him and I'm out to get him.
	It's going to cause me problems, right?
	So this timing of when you have eye contact, I mean, it's all very primal, but it's all very important stuff.
	If you genuinely don't like these people, then don't network with them, right?
	You've got the freedom to not do that.
	You can find people that are closer to your mindset that...
	And yeah, I do think that it's kind of stupid and ridiculous and pointless and pathetic to talk about sports your entire life.
	But where I do have sympathy for that is I say, oh my god, can you imagine?
	Can you imagine what kind of life these poor people must have had that has stripped their soul so bare that all they can do is weakly cheer other people's accomplishments?
	And all they can talk about is the prowess of other people.
	I mean, that's just sad.
	That's just sad.
	Yeah, it is. But from a business standpoint, is there any reason that I should be trying to, just so maybe I can advance?
	No, no, no. This is an integrity thing, right?
	If you genuinely don't like people, don't network with them, right?
	I mean, that's like saying, I hate her, but she's got big tits, so I'm going for it.
	Right?
	I mean, that's just not honorable, right?
	Yeah, I could never push myself to do it, but...
	Well, yeah, and respect that.
	Respect that. Because that's just marching off a cliff, right?
	If you find people boring and you say, well, I should network so I can spend more time with them, it's like, where's the logic there?
	I hate this girl.
	I must marry her, right?
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	I was looking at it from a short-term standpoint.
	I won't have to see these people for very long, so maybe just get along with them for months or whatever.
	Wait, wait, wait. No, no, no. Don't you slime me, brother.
	If it's a short-term thing, then it's not networking, right?
	Yeah, that's true. Yeah, ew.
	Hang on, I'm just wiping myself down here.
	Right. Like, you don't network at a...
	I had a job as a guy, a carnival barker, when I was like 13 at a fun fair.
	I was like the guy who was like yelling out the prizes in the spin the wheel contest.
	Because, you know, working with a microphone was my thing from very early on.
	But I didn't network there because I didn't want to be a carny, right?
	I mean, that wasn't my big thing.
	And it just seemed to involve so many tattoos that it just didn't seem quite worth it.
	But so there was, I mean, if it's a short-term thing, there's no networking, right?
	So you can't go that route.
	I mean, I admire the try, but you can't try it.
	Yeah, and from a long-term perspective, I guess one of the reasons I think that there could be a problem with me is there's a guy that sits next to me and he can talk about just about anything, but I'm not sure if it's really genuine or not.
	We've had some decent conversations, but I always feel really uncomfortable around him.
	I think because he's so good at what he does.
	Sorry, can I stop you again?
	Yeah, go ahead. Why am I stopping you?
	Am I sliming you up again?
	No, no, this is not slime.
	You're sliming yourself, not me.
	Anybody type in the chat window?
	Why did I stop our fine friend?
	Anybody? Bueller.
	No idea. Okay. You said, uh, I'm not sure if he's genuine or not.
	right so why would I stop you on that statement I don't know do you have the chat window open I think it's been mentioned there a few hundred times.
	It says I'm sure. Yeah, of course you're sure!
	Come on, you're a brilliant fellow, you've been exposed to this guy for quite some time, and yes, you feel creepy, right?
	Yeah. Do you generally feel creepy about people who are being honest and authentic?
	No. Do you feel creepy now?
	No. Okay, I'm adjusting my hand on your leg.
	Do you feel creepy now?
	I'm popping the Crisco.
	How about now? Sorry. Christine is feeling a little creeped out, so we'll call later.
	But seriously, right?
	I mean, you know, right?
	Yeah. Wow.
	Mr. C is the fastest typist on the planet.
	Hey, do that Matrix movie in the chat window.
	That's cool. Right, but you know.
	You know whether this guy is being authentic because of your feelings, right?
	Yeah. That's another convincing semicolon question mark, huh?
	Yeah, I'm really bad at that.
	I'm still working on my whole feelings thing.
	But you had the feeling, right?
	You felt creeped out, right?
	Yeah. So, you know, right?
	You don't want to say it. I understand that, because maybe you feel like the moment you say it, you have to, I don't know, zip him up and throw him down the incinerator.
	I don't know, right? But there's no problem saying, this guy is inauthentic and creeps me out.
	It doesn't mean you have to do a damn thing.
	You've just got to respect your own knowledge, right?
	So is there any way that it could be me feeling inferior to him being better than me at what he does?
	No, then you'd feel resentful, right?
	Because he'd be trying to put you down, right?
	Because if you're better at something and you're a kind human being, you try to share your knowledge.
	You try to help other people to become knowledgeable.
	Yeah, I think he does that though.
	Right, so you wouldn't feel...
	If he were putting you down and calling you...
	Like when I worked in a hardware store for a couple of years when I was in my mid-teens, and this hardware store was one of these monster places where they had, you know, 6 million shelves, 12 billion categories, and everything was all over the store, at least to me, seemingly without rhyme or reason.
	And there was this guy who'd been there for like 900 years, and every time I came up to him to say, where is the X-Acto knife sharpener, right?
	He'd be like... IL-72, for Christ's sake!
	Right? I'd be like, oh, man.
	I said, you know, I don't expect this knowledge, except I've got to go to university.
	Sorry. Enjoy your career, right?
	But this is somebody who wasn't sort of helping me, but was lording it over with his own petty extra knowledge, right?
	Like, he had all this knowledge because he'd completely failed in his career because he was basically a glorified stock boy.
	To me, the inconceivable ancient age of 30 at the time, right?
	He wasn't going anywhere else.
	And so this is somebody who was putting me down, so I felt resentful.
	And because I was young and foolish, I said, you know what?
	What you do is totally disrespectful.
	I mean, the fact that you've got this knowledge doesn't make you anything that special, right?
	You've just been here for a long time.
	It's not a matter of skill.
	It's just a matter of being around, right?
	Which was great. Yeah.
	Because, you know, I still had a long way to go in terms of figuring out appropriate language.
	But no, you don't – I mean if you were resentful that he had more knowledge, right, then you'd have to say, well, when I first started listening to FDR, did Steph seem to at least have more knowledge?
	You can answer actually.
	Oh, yes.
	Yes, Steph seemed to have more knowledge.
	Now, did you feel resentful at the fact that I had more knowledge?
	No. Okay, so you don't feel resentful when people have more knowledge, right?
	As a rule. Right.
	So, that's not a pattern.
	I mean, there's ways of figuring this stuff out, right?
	Yeah, that's interesting.
	I'm going to have to think through that a little more.
	No, no, no. Why am I stopping you again now?
	Because I already know. Well, no, like, I gotta think through this some more.
	No, you don't need to think through this some more.
	You already have the feelings.
	Like, there's no point pedaling when you've got a jet engine.
	There's no point swimming when you've got a hydroplane, right?
	So in this situation, would you just kind of look for a different job, or...?
	No! See, you're jumping...
	See, the thing is, you feel, oh my god, if I accept my feelings, I have to jump straight into action, right?
	If I accept that I've got a creepy cubicle mate, I have to go find another job, right?
	You've done the RTR book, is that right?
	I haven't gotten it yet.
	Oh! Well, okay, then I won't get into this, but you'll see.
	Your feelings don't have to lead to any action, right?
	Right. So you can feel stuff without acting.
	Like, I can get angry without strangling a dog, right?
	I prefer kittens because they're less dangerous.
	But, like, I can do those things.
	I can have those feelings without acting at all, right?
	Right. Just have the feeling.
	But if my feelings lead me directly to an action which I consider unpalatable, I'm going to repress the feelings because they kind of possess me and make me do bad things.
	Yeah. So in this situation, though, it makes the whole day very full of anxiety?
	No, no, no. I guarantee you it won't.
	I guarantee you that if you just accept your basic knowledge that this guy's a little creepy, you will feel actually less weirded out.
	Because right now, you're like, should I do this?
	Should I do that? Is it weird? Is it creepy?
	I don't know. I feel this. But that's stressful.
	If you just go, yeah, he's kind of creepy.
	You can still talk to him.
	You can still ask him questions.
	But you're not rejecting your own basic knowledge in order to get through the day.
	Blindfolding yourself does not reduce your stress.
	It's just knowledge.
	That's all it is.
	It's like saying, oh my god, I can't learn about market anarchy because then I have to firebomb the Fed.
	I will give that a try.
	Wait, what? Firebombing the Fed?
	No! Just checking.
	You heard it here first, folks.
	My place is going to be bugged in about two weeks.
	Yeah, no kidding. But yeah, that sounds like a good something good to try.
	I think I'm going to do that. Yeah, just try.
	Your feelings are there to help you.
	They're not there to possess you and make you do things that you don't want to, right?
	Mm-hmm. So just give that a shot.
	Just trust your feelings and your feelings will lead you to the right people to network and they'll lead you away from the wrong people to network with, right?
	Because when you listen to, I don't know if you've ever listened to any business books, but if you listen to someone, I've listened to a whole bunch of them, like someone like Jack Welsh, the CEO of GM, one of the most successful CEOs in the history of the planet, raised the market capitalization of GM by tens of billions of dollars through his unbelievably great leadership, That guy did not sit around talking about sports 24/7.
	Guaranteed.
	Guaranteed he had really rich, deep and exciting conversations with people.
	And you listen to him talk, he's got these, he's quit and he does these Q&A talks around the world with business.
	People come and ask him questions and so on.
	He's having really deep and complex conversations with people about challenges, right?
	And really creative and intelligent solutions.
	Like one of the ones he came up with just by the by, right?
	It's interesting, right? He said that they used to, departments would get raises or bonuses based on their performance in absolute terms, right?
	So if the electronics department went up by 10%, but appliances only went up by 5%, Then electronics would get double the raises, right?
	But that was completely unrelated to the actual performance of the market sector as a whole.
	So he changed that and he said, well, what we're going to do is measure people relative to the market sector as a whole.
	So if electronics went up 20%, but our electronics only went up 10%, that's bad.
	But if appliances only went up 2% as a market sector as a whole, but ours went up 8%, that's really good, even though it's less than electronic.
	So just things like that, where he's trying to really put things into...
	I mean, those kinds of decisions just change a business, like, staggeringly in terms of productivity and feelings of justice and resentment and making sure that the best people go to the most troubled sectors and so on.
	This is not a guy who sits around talking about sports all day long.
	In fact, he's the complete opposite of a guy who talks about sports all day long.
	He's looking for creative solutions to really challenging real-world problems.
	So if you want your career to work in a way that is going to get you into the most creative and the top notches, you just trust your feelings.
	You don't want to be around creepy people.
	You don't want to be around sports people.
	They're going nowhere fast.
	You want to be around the people who welcome with open arms the stuff that you have to say.
	It's practical to trust your feelings in this area.
	Yeah, I like that. Your feelings are here to help you.
	They're here to get you what you want.
	They're here to get you to where you need to be, to be happiest.
	Right? What concerns me is like, yeah, I can listen to my feelings.
	This guy is creepy and that'll make me comfortable.
	But how do I know that's not my false self or if there's some kind of fog that's lingering and...
	Confusing me. Well, to me, that's just a choice, right?
	You can either say, I'm going to spend the rest of my life doubting my feelings, or I'm not.
	I'm going to act as if they're true.
	But to me, that's like driving and saying, well, what if there's a creepy, invisible alien wall somewhere on the street?
	And then getting out of the car and checking every 10 feet, right?
	When we drive, we say, hey, I assume that what's ahead in the road is what's ahead in the road, right?
	And if a truck's coming towards us, we don't say, hmm, I wonder if I fell asleep at the wheel and I'm actually dreaming, right?
	Or what if that's just a phantom truck, right?
	The ghost truck, no, we say, shit, I better get out of this lane, right?
	So it's up to you. You can certainly spend the rest of your life doubting your feelings.
	And there's, I mean, when there's evidence against them, for sure, right?
	But why not just go instead with, I'll trust them until proven otherwise, rather than, I'll doubt them until proven otherwise, which will never happen because you doubt them all, right?
	Yeah. Like, what if you're just right?
	And then, if you're totally proven otherwise, you can sit down and figure stuff out.
	But why not just go with the assumption that you're right?
	That's the payoff for self-analysis.
	And people get trapped in self-analysis, right?
	Because you go into yourself and you realize that you have some bad thoughts or some incorrect thoughts or some contradictory thoughts and so on.
	But the whole point of that is so that you can come out and be confident, right?
	Not so that you say, oh my god, I had all these thoughts that were incorrect, so now all of my thoughts in the future could be incorrect, right?
	Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
	We get the core right, and then we come out and we play.
	And we just assume that we're right, and then if something else proves to be wrong, we'll go and check it out, but then we go right back to being certain.
	That's the payoff, right? Otherwise, you just get...
	Philosophy then just hamlets you, right?
	You can't make any decisions because you could be wrong, and then it's just a kind of paralytic, which is not what it's supposed to be.
	It's supposed to be an accelerant, right?
	Yeah, that's me to a T right there.
	Yeah, for sure. I mean, that's why I said, when you said I have to go off and think about it some more, I'm like, bet you don't.
	I know you want to, but I bet you don't.
	Yeah, I'm going to give this a try.
	Thank you much, Steph. You're very welcome, man.
	Great question. Great question.
	All right. Monsieur, the atheist of pride, Bill.
	You question half?
	Could you do it like Yoda?
	Sorry, go on. Can you hear me?
	Yeah, you're a little quiet there.
	You might want to deep throat that thing a little.
	Do you know how to change the sound?
	Do I know how to change the sound?
	I don't know. Windows, Mac?
	Just lean in and talk as loud as you can and we'll be fine.
	Okay, I'll try. I guess my parents will tell me to shut up in a bit.
	Actually, Steph, my question is about the situation that I have here where I live.
	I live in Colombia, South America, and, you know, we've talked some while ago.
	I was relating your articles, all this stuff, before I got into college.
	But after I got into economics and philosophy, well of course, after seeing you, after getting to know who you are.
	But the thing is that since I've been living here, it's been probably a couple of years, one and a half.
	The community around here, I mean, people are very religious and they tend to be, well, Catholic, for the most part.
	I'm in a university whose...
	I'm sorry for the English...
	No problem, better than my Spanish.
	Okay, so the college that I'm in is state-supported.
	The state owns the university.
	And most of the people are very leftist and have these socialist ideas.
	And I've been trying to debate with some people that I can, but Most of them just tend to be reluctant to even hear an argument.
	You know, the thing is that In 99, or at least I think that the whole community that I have among me are religious and statists.
	And I've been trying to put these ideas in front and to debate with them and, you know, try to get some, I don't know, recognition, I mean.
	I don't know, it's hard because I don't...
	Mute him if you can.
	Yeah, you have...
	I think I... Sorry, the sound was a little bit bad, though of course the bits are coming quite a ways.
	So I'm going to just paraphrase what I got from that, and you can let me know if it sort of makes sense.
	Um... So you're in Colombia, and you are in a state-supported university, which of course is, I mean, all universities in the world are state-supported that I know of, or state-regulated, or state-controlled, or state-subsidized, or whatever.
	So that's all of us, right?
	And there are either socialists or Christians around you, and you're not having much luck bringing arguments to bear upon them.
	Is that right? Okay.
	Why do you think they are Christians and socialists?
	Why do you think they've ended up that way?
	It's got to be cultural, right? Because the culture is either Marxist with this sort of fetish for Che Guevara and I guess even for this new nut job Chavez.
	But that's a cultural thing, right?
	And it's also a situation where...
	The culture leans heavily towards this sentimental Catholic Christianity, right?
	So I would say that people are not reasoned into these beliefs.
	And you may want to watch my video, which is called God is the Fear of Others.
	As I mentioned before, people don't believe in God.
	They're just frightened of being attacked for saying they don't.
	You can't believe in something that's not there.
	They're just frightened of other people.
	And so there is no easy answer to this, but what I would say is if you take the approach that I call the argument for morality, which is where you start, you know, do you disagree or do you think that violence is a good or bad way to solve problems?
	And everyone's going to say violence is a bad way to solve problems.
	And my experience has been within a relatively small percentage of human beings, There is a kind of beautiful treasure, and it's latent, and it's under the surface, and it doesn't show up until somebody brushes off the dirt or brushes off the dust with a question or two.
	It's nothing, this treasure...
	This archaeological glory, you don't find it by debating with people.
	You don't find it by arguing with people.
	You find it, as Socrates pointed out, by asking questions.
	And this tiny minority of glorious souls, I don't understand what they're about and where they...
	Our very first call in Joe was about this.
	We made some progress, but we don't know for sure.
	And... If you ask questions, the majority of people will get hostile or get scared or get angry or get contemptuous or level you or whatever.
	They'll just run away. Haughtily, right?
	But a few people, a few people can handle it.
	What comes up for them is a beautiful kind of doubt where they say, wow, I never thought of that before.
	I'm not saying it's true, but I never thought of that before.
	And isn't it interesting that this obvious thing that may be true has never been spoken of in my community?
	I don't know what makes people able to do that.
	Man, if I did, I'd bottle it, right?
	I don't know. Where they get this third eye from that allows them to doubt, allows them to love the truth above their history, to love the truth above their family, to love the truth against their friends, to love the truth against their money, to love the truth against God, to love the truth against all priests, to love the truth above everything.
	I don't know What fills people with that love?
	It doesn't come from outside.
	It is triggered from outside.
	It is triggered, I find, through passion and through curiosity, through steadfastness, sometimes through gentleness, through tenderness, through joy.
	I don't know how we trigger this love of truth that is in a few people.
	Everybody loves the truth because everybody claims that they have the truth.
	The Marxists, the Christians, the Socialists, the Anarcho-Communists, the Statists, the Republicans, they all claim they have the truth.
	So everybody loves it because they use the word.
	But there are a few people, a few people out there who love the truth beyond the words.
	Who love the truth that is reason, that is evidence.
	Who love science, not religion.
	Who love reason, not mysticism.
	Who love logic, not conformity.
	I don't know how to make these people because I don't think they can be made, maybe multi-generationally.
	But I think I know a little bit about how to find them.
	And the way that you find them Is to ask them the basic ethical questions and be willing to admit confusion.
	If violence is a bad way to solve problems, why do we always think the government, which is violence, can solve problems?
	That's a basic question.
	It's elemental, and a four-year-old could understand it, and it's never, ever spoken.
	And there are a few people out there who, when they hear that basic question...
	Will absolutely ignite and burn even for the rest of their lives.
	So you just got to keep striking these matches until you hit the inferno of somebody else's mind.
	I wish I could give you another shortcut.
	I know tons of ways that it will never happen if you're argumentative, if you're hostile, if you're angry, if you're bitter, if you're frustrated.
	That will never happen.
	But if you're open and passionate and mild and tender and curious, and if you show your love of the truth, that will awaken the love of the truth in others, if it can be awakened, which is rare.
	But it's about wearing your heart on your sleeve.
	It's about putting your heart out there.
	It's about showing your love of the truth and the beauty that the truth creates in you and the joy that the truth creates in you and your surrender, your subjugation, your self-enslavement to the truth, if that makes sense. Nature to be commanded must be obeyed.
	Truth to be enjoyed must be surrendered to.
	So it is a very emotional, intimate and tender and vulnerable action To speak your love of the truth.
	And most people will scamper and spit on your shadow when you do it.
	But a few people, a few people will love you and love the truth forevermore.
	And those are the people that we need to guide the world to a better place.
	I know that was kind of abstract.
	Does that make any sense or help at all?
	Yeah, I mean, you have a strong point in so far as I get kind of frustrated sometimes because I feel like I'm lonely in this.
	Well, you know, I know you and I know some of the people on FDR, You know, in the everyday living, I feel like I'm kind of lonely, but I know what you mean, and that's what I've been trying to do.
	And I love that, I don't know, I've been talking to some friends that said that would help me translating your articles and all that stuff, but Eventually they, I don't know, they back off.
	And I feel like I have to start all over again.
	Because I feel that if we could get all this information that you're bringing on Spanish, that would be great.
	I mean, that would make what I want to do much easier.
	And the message would be spread more easily, you know?
	I agree with you, and I certainly wanted to say that I appreciate what you've done with the articles and putting them into Spanish.
	I think that's completely wonderful.
	There is a Dutch version of On Truth, by the way, in case anybody's interested and speaks Dutch.
	The only answer that I can give you, and this is going to sound completely cliched, because unfortunately this language has been owned by a lot of religious people, but...
	You know, our love of the truth has simply got to master people's hatred and fear.
	I mean, we just have to love even more.
	This doesn't mean masochism.
	This doesn't mean the Christian thing, like if your enemy asks you to walk a mile, you walk two, or if he asks for your cloak, you give him your shirt, too.
	I'm not talking about that. What I'm talking about is the reason that people are failing is Is that you, as a leader, are failing.
	You're looking to find people around that you can connect to.
	It's not going to happen.
	You have to make the people around you.
	This is so new, what we're talking about here.
	The depth of the conversation, how far down and how deep into the family it goes and how deep into religion it goes and how deep into society and statism and how deep it all goes.
	This is so new.
	That we're not going to find people who are like ourselves.
	We are going to ignite people into being like ourselves.
	And the reason is that you want to connect with people like equals, but I think if you are going down this road, and it sounds like the road is rolling over you almost, which is as it does for me and most other people in this conversation, if not everyone.
	But the reason that they're failing is they see your frustration.
	And they judge the truth according to you.
	They judge the truth according to you.
	And if you struggle through your frustration and return to the love of the truth and the love of the potential, we see these incredible glorious souls around us like fireflies, the size of the sun.
	And they're frightened and they're extinguished and they're scared and they're addicted to sports.
	And they're addicted to families, cults, religions, governments, flags, armies.
	They're tortured. And we still have to love the future.
	We still have to love the potential that's out there.
	And if you struggle to overcome your frustration and return to the leadership of love, you can't help but be a beacon that is almost visible from the moon.
	From Pluto. And that can't help but rouse people who love the truth, who see the love of the truth they didn't even know they had, inspired by your devotion to and love of the truth.
	We have to lead people because it's like somebody said very early on in these conversations, Steph, are you from the future?
	Because it sounded so ridiculous, all the stuff that I was saying, and I can understand that.
	But as I've talked about before on this chat show, yeah, kind of like we are from the future.
	We're leading people to something that we're only beginning to see.
	And the depth of the emotional commitment that it takes, the degree of vulnerability, the degree of love and devotion to the beauty of the truth, which fundamentally is selfish and joyful, is staggering.
	We have to out-love the indifference, hostility, and hatred of the world.
	It is staggeringly hard.
	It is an ambivalent task.
	But there is such joy in it.
	That, to me, there's just no other way.
	Yeah, yeah.
	I think I agree.
	I agree with everything you said.
	I think that, yeah, of course...
	I don't know.
	So I'm feeling like, well, like you're completely right.
	I have to do that.
	I have to show love for the truth.
	And I was thinking that when I heard the We All Have Treasure podcast, I think it was just great when you said that you don't try to find people like ourselves, but you make them.
	I think that was the main idea that I got.
	And you can understand this to analogize this in a cultural context that is going to hit home.
	The first Christian doesn't try to find other Christians, right?
	He's got to find Christians from people who are skeptical and scornful of his faith.
	Because he's first. He's got to make Christians.
	He's got to find them because he's a new religion.
	And this is not a religion.
	It's quite the opposite. But we can't find people who love the truth this much yet.
	We can only stimulate them.
	We can only excite them.
	We can only create them by showing them how much we love the truth and how much it moves us and how much it fills our life with beauty.
	Yeah, and I don't know if I can touch another topic with you.
	It's kind of related, but I'm feeling kind of frustrated still because when I moved back from the US, I was living in Atlanta, but I lived there a couple of years and I had to get back to To get to college and all of that.
	But after I moved in, when I was in Atlanta, I worked and I made my own money and I was living alone.
	And I had like a good time with that, with my privacy, with the kind of relationship that I was having.
	But when I got back, I felt like I had to live under my parents again and ask them for money and they had to pay me for college and live again and all of that.
	I feel like I don't have The option to go away, you know, to be through, at least, and to keep studying.
	That too makes me a little frustrated.
	I don't know what you may say about that.
	That you feel like you have to rely on your parents to continue your studies, is that right?
	Yeah, yeah, and I can live.
	I mean, economically.
	Right. Well, this is what I would ask you, and I'm going to unabashedly continue this language, but this is what I would suggest.
	If studying, if learning, if acquiring wisdom and knowledge is going to help you love the truth the more, is going to help you express your love of the truth all the more, Then, yeah, take your parents' stuff, in my opinion. I don't know anything about your parents, but let's say that they're culty, religious, whatever, right?
	But that's a way of transforming hatred into love, right?
	I mean, you can take the money from these people.
	There's no clean money anywhere in the world.
	This is just a gray area we have to navigate.
	Unless you want to go live in the woods and eat your own toenails, there's nothing you can do to be out of a status system.
	But you can...
	This, to me, doesn't mean you join the military.
	Not that I'm suggesting that.
	But you can find ways to turn hatred or control or bullying or whatever is going on in your family.
	And maybe they're pretty good people.
	doesn't matter, right?
	But you can turn that into inspiring love.
	But if you take the money, I would suggest that's the only goal that's going to make you happy.
	Like if you take the money because you don't want to get a job, it's not going to make you happy.
	If you take the money because you're using, studying to avoid life, not going to make you happy.
	But if you take the money because you want to perfect your ability to love the world despite its flaws and hostilities, that to me is a way of turning hatred or negativity into love and positivity.
	And And that, to me, is an alchemy that we just can't do without.
	Well, that's...
	I mean, I've never thought it that way.
	You know, I may think it subconsciously, probably, but not like explicitly.
	And I'm feeling like Like, happy?
	I don't know. You're feeling happy?
	I'm glad! Because you didn't sound very happy when we first started talking, so tell me a bit about that.
	Well, I mean, I don't know.
	I was kind of persuaded, but after what you said, like, transforming that situation, that uncomfort, For something positive.
	For seeking the truth.
	That's a way to look at what I'm doing from a perspective that it's...
	I mean, I like it.
	And that's what I'm doing.
	I'm not saying...
	Well, and in many ways, the work that you'll be taking on by continuing to learn the truth and to speak passionately and with sensitivity and vulnerability and anger about your love of the truth, that's the hardest job of all.
	So I don't think it's to avoid anything that you would be doing this because it is the highest calling and the hardest work of all to speak your love of the truth to a cynical world.
	Yeah, yeah, I think you're right.
	It's good to hear this.
	I should have called earlier.
	Well, you know, the first thing to do is to enjoy your happiness, not necessarily to start saying, I should have done this.
	Just enjoy your happiness, and that's my gift from the cold north to the warm south.
	Well, yeah.
	Thank you. You're very welcome.
	I'm glad that you asked the question.
	It's a very, very important one.
	So, thank you so much.
	Okay. We have time for another question or comment.
	If you've just finished, my friend, if you could just mute your microphone just down on the bottom of Skype, that would be fantastic.
	It's a bit hissy, but we had another question or comment.
	Greg, we had him already. Yeah, we had him already.
	Hello? Hello?
	Hello? Hi, this is David.
	Yes. Hi, this is my first time in the chat room, so thank you for taking my question.
	My pleasure. Thank you so much for calling in.
	I'm very happy to talk to somebody who's fresh-faced before the philosophy has crushed the life and dreams out of them.
	Just kidding. Sorry, go on.
	Well, just to give you a little background, I'm an objectivist, and I came across your YouTube videos because a lot of the ideas and philosophies you were talking about seem very sort of influenced, if not aligned, with objectivism.
	Oh, sorry to interrupt. I'm claiming complete originality, so if you could just not mention it.
	Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Right.
	I'm sorry, go on. I love the rant.
	I got started with the rant, so I'm a huge devotee and fan, so absolutely.
	I'm just trying to build on that, but go on.
	Yeah, no, I think that's great.
	I mean, that's awesome that you're sort of building off of the ideas of others.
	It's good. So anyways, I guess straight to my question.
	So I just read RTR, which is Real-Time Relationships, of course, and I started sort of using it in my life, and I recently sort of, I've been dating this girl for about three months, and she's She's been telling me about her friend who is immoral in many ways.
	She sort of is very loose and just sort of having sex all over the place and doing a lot of lying and sort of hiding and whatever.
	So she tells me this, and obviously I'm like, well, why are you friends with this person?
	Why are you spending time with this person?
	And it eventually got to the point where I said, you know, you can't really say that you love me for my virtues and then say that you, like, want to spend time or call this person your friend who you know and who has expressed to me to be immoral and against even your own values.
	So But she, I mean, she's decided to do that, but in this...
	I'm sorry to interrupt you.
	I can't believe you got this far without me being annoying, interrupting guy.
	But what you've talked about there is the complete opposite of RTR, right?
	Okay. Right, because with RTR, you would say, because you're troubled by this, right?
	Right. Right. Right, so instead of, you know, because, you know, forgive me, and having been an objectivist myself for many years, I know that we have a bit of a tendency to lecture.
	You have to look carefully, but you can see it if you squint.
	I agree. Right, so what you've done is you've provided some moral abstract arguments, none of which I would disagree with, but RTR isn't.
	If I'm troubled by something, I'm going to lecture someone about ethics.
	Right. And I just wanted to – I don't want to interrupt your story.
	I just wanted to pause to point that out because according to the theory, this approach shouldn't have worked, right?
	So I put that right out there, right?
	This should not have worked for you.
	So why don't you keep going and tell me what happened?
	Sure. So, she basically was listening to my reasoning and agreed with all of it.
	She said, you basically are saying things that I already knew but wasn't ready to admit to myself.
	But she said that she felt kind of In between, being pulled in two different directions, almost like it was my fault that she had to choose between this immoral friend and me.
	And I was saying that...
	I don't know. It was sort of harsh, maybe sounding in retrospect, but I was sort of saying, well, that's like me saying, you know, that's like you jumping off a cliff and then saying that, you know, by me telling you that you're going to die by jumping off this cliff, I was somehow imparting gravity onto you.
	Like, it's just you can't choose two opposite values in your life.
	I don't know. Sorry, did you say you had read RTR? Or you'd read RTR. Yeah, I'm clearly...
	It's bizarre TR. Sorry, go on.
	I read it. I didn't say I was very good at practicing it.
	Oh, okay. Okay, just checking.
	Go on. But I mean, yeah, I mean, throughout this whole process, I wasn't...
	I'm shortening, obviously.
	I mean, during this whole process, I was talking about, you know, asking her how she felt about the whole situation.
	And I guess I didn't talk about...
	Not necessarily just my feelings.
	I was clearly saying, this is my world view and this is why I think you should do this.
	I guess I wasn't using RTR very well.
	Now, I'm guessing that you're not particularly big on hyper-low IQ women.
	Is that right? That's very correct.
	She's obviously got a couple of the old brain cells rolling around, right?
	Yes, yes. So, do you think that when you tell her that you can't logically love a trait and it's complete opposite simultaneously, do you think that that's something that she wouldn't understand?
	Like, do you think if you said to her, look, it's really important that you understand that you can't go north and south at the same time?
	No, I mean, that's why I kind of used the point.
	How do you think she would react to that?
	Oh, you can't deny that.
	I mean, that's obviously not true.
	Right, so she already knows that there's a contradiction here, right?
	I'm not sure. At some level.
	Right. Well, she understands that that can't happen, but I guess, can people not sort of admit to themselves that they're sort of being hypocritical, I guess?
	Yeah. Oh, absolutely.
	Absolutely. There's no question that people repress this kind of stuff.
	And you know me, I'm much more fetishistic about psychology, I think, even than Brandon, let alone, God help us, Rand, who had the psychological acuity of a soap dish.
	But for sure, people can repress it, right?
	Right. But she's got an unconscious conflict.
	My approach, which you may have heard, is that everybody's a genius and everybody's a philosopher.
	There is nothing that you could tell this girl about the contradictions in her, quote, friendship that she doesn't already know.
	Because she's lived it, she's experienced it, and there's a reason why...
	She's friends with this girl.
	And of course, I use the term friends loosely, somebody who lies and cheats and this and that.
	They can't be a friend to anyone, but we'll just use the term for now.
	So, in your conversations with her, what has come out about why she's susceptible?
	Because she's clearly intelligent enough to understand this is a contradiction, and yet she lives it anyway.
	So, why do you think, or what are the conclusions that you've come to as to why this person is in your girl's life?
	Right. We talked about it, and a lot of the reasons she put forth for still having this person in her life was that they've had a long history together and that she is actually the daughter of a family friend.
	And to make things worse, her dad actually...
	Kind of uses this friend for favors to like book hotels for his business.
	So it's a sort of weird thing where her father kind of asks her to ask her friend for a favor to book this really cheap hotel in China or whatever.
	So it's a strange sort of obligation to her family as well as an obligation to this long standing history.
	So if I understand this rightly, and I don't mean to oversimplify, but otherwise things get too complex for my pretty little head, but is it fair to say that her father pushed this friendship on her as a matter of financial convenience for himself?
	I think that's the way that it has continued, yes.
	Right. Do you think that the primary problem here is with your girlfriend's relationship to her, quote, friend, or is it with her relationship with her family?
	Oh, obviously, yeah, definitely family.
	Well, but you say obviously, but you're talking about her friend with her, right?
	Right, right. Well, obviously, I didn't know that initially, but we finally got to that, yeah.
	You mean you and the girl finally got to that?
	Yes, we talked it out and we realized that that was the main problem.
	Wait, so you and the girl both realized that this is just a symptom of a more core dysfunction with the family unit, right?
	That's correct. And then what?
	So then now she's decided to sort of have a serious conversation with her quote-unquote friend and say that, you know, I don't want to have anything to do with you until you sort of change.
	I'm sorry, sorry to interrupt.
	Sorry. So you realize that the friend is a symptom, not a cause, and so together you've decided to deal with the symptom and not the cause?
	I'm just... Oh, no, no, no. That's another thing, too.
	She's also told her parents that, and her dad obviously was resisting, and she's now sort of on the ropes with her dad in a sense that, like, I've decided to not help you with this anymore.
	And I'm not going to be friends with this person, and I've told you the reasons why.
	And so he's, I don't know, he's sort of like, well, why don't you do this for me, kind of thing.
	And so they're kind of working it out, or I don't know, not working it out, they're sort of arguing at the moment.
	Okay. Sorry, I interrupted you, so sorry, please go on.
	Oh, no. I mean, that's basically where it is right now.
	She's living at home, and she's sort of feeling not comfortable in her own space right now because of her parents.
	Sorry to interrupt, but if I understand this right, and I just want to try and get to the issue that you're having, that she's putting some of the onus upon you as to why she's been put in this predicament, right?
	Yeah. She felt that I was sort of forcing her into a choice.
	Right, right.
	And do you want to know why I would imagine that happened?
	Yeah, yeah. That'd be great.
	So I can avoid that in the future.
	Yeah, well, you kind of cornered her with mathematical logic, right?
	Right. Right?
	Yeah. Still would have been a better way.
	And also, sorry, also you were emotionally invested in her doing something to reduce your discomfort to some degree as well, right?
	Oh, absolutely. For selfish reasons, yeah.
	Right, so when a guy pushes her into doing something she's not comfortable with because it's convenient to him, who does that fall into the same category as?
	Ah, her father.
	Yeah, so you don't want to be doing that, right?
	If there's one category, and I don't care how good a relationship a girl has with her dad, that's not a category a boyfriend wants to be anywhere near, right?
	Like, I don't care how good a relationship I have with my mom, I do not want a girlfriend who reminds me of my mom.
	It's just a basic fact.
	I don't care if Freud is right or wrong, it's just not right, right?
	Right, right. And it's bad, just saying it's bad even if...
	Even if I was stating it in a sense of this is better for you?
	I mean, obviously it's better for me if it's better for me.
	Objectivists are all about telling people what's right and what's wrong, right?
	Right, right. And I'm not saying that you're wrong at all.
	I mean, obviously, right? I mean, you can't love honesty and falsehood at the same time, right?
	Right. But the problem is that what's happened is you've grafted on something to her that she can't disagree with.
	Right? And so, she's Oriental, right?
	She's already what? Is she Oriental?
	Is she Chinese? Oh, yes, she's Chinese, yes.
	Okay, so one of the things that I've sort of had some experience with Chinese people, done a little bit of business in China, if you can convince an Oriental in general, and a Chinese person in particular, that you're right, they will grudgingly acquiesce, right? It's like, fine, dammit, you win, right?
	And so they have a great deal of respect for analytical argument, right?
	Right. But the culture is not so much with the feelings, right?
	Like if all Chinese people had to do was engineering, they'd be like the happiest people on the planet, but the culture is not very friendly towards what I would call sort of the true self or the whatever, right?
	Uh-huh. Yeah.
	not the final arbiters of truth, but I think that there's a lot of truth in our guts and our instincts.
	So with the approach that you took, you convinced her that she was contradicting herself, right?
	Right.
	And now she's on this conveyor belt of logic, which she hasn't really bought into, but which she has to surrender to because she respects logic, right?
	I just want to get a sense if that's a reasonable, I'm not saying perfect, but a reasonable look at the situation.
	Yeah, yeah, I can see that.
	I think it would be better to see it better if you could walk me through what would be an ideal way to bring it up as opposed to what I did.
	Okay, can I freak you out and ask you to play your girlfriend?
	Okay, sure. Okay, we're going to call you Candy Apples.
	Just kidding. Sorry, that's my other screen name.
	Okay, so I'll try, and this is like a lunatic thing to try, but let's give it a shot anyway.
	Like, I'll just try the RTR stuff, right?
	Yeah, okay. So, you are, can we just give this girl a name?
	Sure, Emily. Emily, okay.
	Now, Emily, I'm going to pretend for the next five minutes that I'm not an objectivist.
	I'm going to keep all the truth that objectivism has, but in terms of interpersonal relationships, I'm going to pretend that I haven't heard anything about Ayn Rand because she was not necessarily the queen of that.
	I'm going to try putting on, you know, a Care Bear hat and just see.
	Objectivist rationality Care Bear hat and we'll sort of see what goes, right?
	Okay. Okay. Now, I have a huge amount of respect for your intelligence, Emily, and your sensitivity, and I know, like I just know, I just know like I know gravity, that you really, really want to be a good person.
	Now, there's something that troubles me, and the something that troubles me has absolutely nothing to do I just want to talk about my feelings, because I'm troubled by something, which is nothing that you're doing anything wrong or whatever, right? But I am a big consistency combine harvester.
	What I do is, like, if I come across something that I emotionally perceive as inconsistent, I get all freaked out, right?
	It bothers me.
	And that doesn't mean that it is inconsistent, it doesn't mean you're doing anything wrong, anything like that.
	That's just my experience of life, right?
	So... So you've got this friend, and we'll call her Bianca, right?
	So, would it be fair to say that Bianca has just a few not-so-minor character flaws?
	Yes. Okay, so this, I mean, obviously you're a very, very smart woman, so you know this, right?
	Now, if you were floating above yourself...
	And you had no friends and you could pick anyone in the world to be friends with for yourself, right?
	Would it be fair to say that Bianca would not be in the top ten?
	Yes. Because your virtues and your intelligence and your sensitivity and your empathy and this and that, that all makes perfect sense to me and I adore you to hell because of it.
	You have an access in these things that I'm deficient of because of the aforementioned case of objectivism.
	But I'm trying to just understand what this chick does for you.
	So just tell me a little bit about that relationship and what goes on for you.
	I don't know, not much value.
	I guess we just sort of talk about superficial things and I respond to her online and it's not too much time.
	It's just sort of like a, you know, I know her and she knows my dad and that's, you know, I don't agree with a lot of things she does but, you know, we don't really talk about that stuff.
	Okay, and just to back up for a second, when I talked about some not-so-insignificant character flaws, I didn't mean that she used up your time and was a little shallow, right?
	I mean, the character flaws that I've experienced, I'm not saying they are, maybe I just don't understand or whatever, right?
	But the character flaws that I see are kind of different from that.
	Does that make any sense? I guess, yeah.
	Well, tell me. I mean, you know her a hell of a lot better than I do, and I'm perfectly happy to be totally schooled on this and be completely wrong, but if you were describing her like she wasn't your friend, what would you say her character flaws are?
	Oh, she lies.
	She is very...
	Loose with her physicality.
	She sort of kind of sleeps around and then, you know, makes excuses for why it's okay.
	She kind of, I don't know, does this thing because it feels good in the moment.
	I don't know.
	Things like that. So, my instincts tells me that Bianca would be an excellent candidate for a three-way.
	And I just wanted to bring that up with you and talk about it.
	What? Sorry, sorry. Different script.
	Different script. I'm sorry. Unacceptable, David.
	I turned it on my page.
	I'm just kidding. Sorry about that.
	I just went to the slutty thing.
	So, anyway, I'm back.
	And I've gone to my happy place actually three times already.
	Okay, so she has some real flaws like the lying and sleeping around and so on.
	Now, tell me about her virtues.
	And again, this is me just trying to understand your relationship with her because it's baffling to me, which could be like I'm Columbo, I just don't get it.
	But... What are the virtues that you see in her that make up for this stuff, right?
	Because if this is all she had, obviously the relationship would make no sense, right?
	Well, she's pretty nice to me.
	I like talking to her about subjects or things that we like or whatever.
	We have a long history together.
	I don't know what Emily would say.
	Other than that, I don't really know what she would say.
	Have you tried bringing up...
	I'm not saying you should have, I'm just curious.
	Have you tried bringing up your concerns with Bianca, Emily, about some of the things?
	Because it's not like there's no God watching that says, ooh, don't be slutty, don't be bad, or whatever, right?
	But you don't think that stuff's going to make her really happy, right?
	Right, I don't think so.
	Right, so have you tried bringing this stuff...
	I'm not saying you should have, I'm just curious.
	Have you tried bringing this stuff up with her?
	I tried once in the past, a while ago, but it didn't go anywhere.
	She just kind of ignored it, and we kind of acted like it didn't happen.
	Right, so, I mean, in a sense, and this sounds completely ridiculous, and it may be totally over the top, but in a way, the fact that she doesn't want to talk about stuff that's pretty problematic, right?
	And that you now have to walk around all of this stuff...
	Kind of makes it like a bit of a minefield for you, right?
	Yes. So, how do you feel about this girl overall?
	I mean, that's what I can't quite figure out.
	I'm torn, right? I mean, I respect your judgment and so on, but in this case, I'm just having trouble following the value, just because I'm a blind idiot guy or whatever, right?
	But that's sort of my feeling.
	So... So how do you feel about, you know, some of the flaws or some of the dancing around that you have to do, the topics you have to avoid and so on?
	Well, I don't like it.
	I mean, and obviously it sort of limits our conversations to something, things that are pretty trivial and superficial.
	But, you know, I feel like I can't stop talking to her because, you know, we've known each other for so long and, you know, my dad, you know, has this thing with this hotel with her and so it would be like kind of a bad thing to cut relations with a, you know, family friend slash friend.
	Well, I'm not saying you have to do anything.
	I'm just really trying to sort of puzzle this together, right?
	Because like all guys, I myself, I aim for or my highest goal would be ultimate sluttiness.
	But of course, it's far harder to achieve for guys than it is for women.
	But if I was like a liar and sleeping around and stuff, clearly that would not be acceptable for our relationship, right?
	Right. Like the threesome thing.
	Clearly that's not on the table until we can get you really drunk.
	So I'm just trying to understand because for myself, when I have to have these opposite rules in my life, I get kind of messed up.
	That's just my experience. I think it's more common than people think.
	But you have this relationship with me, Emily, where I'm not allowed to do any of this stuff.
	In fact, you'd be shocked and appalled and dump me like yesterday's herring if I did, right?
	Yeah. But then with this other girl, you're like, this stuff is fine, right?
	I mean, I don't mean you mean it's fine, but it still sustains a relationship, despite, right?
	Right. So, again, I'm just anal rule guy, but just help me, like, how can it be that it's completely unacceptable for me, but fine for her?
	I mean, that's got to be kind of weird for you, right?
	Yeah, it is.
	But I guess, like, you know, I mean, you're my boyfriend, and, you know, that's very serious.
	But this is sort of, you know, I keep it on a very superficial level.
	So isn't that okay? Like, if I just keep it at that level?
	Well, I don't know.
	I mean, I don't know. I don't know.
	I mean, because I don't get a lot of positives, because when you talk about the positives, it's two things that I hear.
	My dad finds her useful, and I've known her for a long time.
	Right. I mean, those to me, to me, again, just me, right?
	But those to me would not be really good reasons to have a relationship, to continue a relationship, right?
	I mean, that's just my feeling, right?
	That's my feeling, but that's sort of what I would think.
	Well, I guess, you know, I wouldn't call it a relationship, necessarily.
	I mean, I just...
	Maybe if I just say I know her, I mean, is that good enough?
	Well, but it is a relationship, right?
	Of sorts, right? I mean, you spend time together, you have known each other for a long time, and you've been a friend and all that, right?
	Right. And if I had a friend like this, like some...
	A girl who was sleeping around and lied and stuff like that.
	What would you say to me?
	Just stop hanging out with her.
	Why would you say that?
	Because... Because I know that you're better than that.
	Right. And that you should spend your time better.
	Well, and you'd probably say to me, too, that by having this person in my life, I'm keeping someone better out of my life, right?
	Right? Because, like, everything's fixed, right?
	Life is short. And all this time you spend with people for your father's convenience over the sake of history or whatever, keeping things superficial, avoiding topics, this and that, that's all time that you could be spending with someone more fun like me.
	Like Stefan Molineux.
	Right? Could be listening to podcasts, damn it!
	Right. And so what I'm sensing, and again, this is just nonsense, but what I'm sensing is that you feel kind of uneasy about this topic, Emily.
	Is that right? Yes.
	So tell me what you feel about this.
	Because that's the most important thing.
	It's not your relationship with your friend or your dad or whatever.
	He needs cheap hotel rooms.
	I don't care about that stuff. What I do want to know is how you feel and what you think about this stuff.
	Well, I feel uneasy about it.
	I feel sort of torn.
	I know what she's doing is wrong, but I feel kind of trapped in this situation where I have to respond to this person that I don't really enjoy the company of anymore.
	And that is a tough situation to be in.
	We've all been there, where we've got someone in our life who's kind of a hangover, and not even a good hangover with fun memories, but that's a very tough situation to be in.
	And I'm not saying you should do anything.
	I'm just trying to understand what it is that you think and feel about this stuff.
	If you were to, let's say there was some way to gracefully ease out of this relationship where there may have been something in common once, but you guys have gone in completely different directions, and not neutral directions, but like good and not so good directions.
	If you could ease out of this stuff, what would be the downside?
	Like help me understand the negatives, because the negatives must be significant if you're willing to keep this person in your life despite being torn and uneasy and so on.
	Well, the first thing I can imagine would be that, you know, at some point my dad would want to book this hotel or whatever, and I would have to say, you know, sorry, I don't really talk to this person anymore.
	And then I think he would probably make me do it anyways or make me choose.
	He'd probably guilt me with, like, you know, being a good daughter and, oh, this is just the last time or, you know, whatever excuses he always uses.
	And of course this creates a lot of drama because I have friends who are also friends with Bianca and if I say I'm going to stop talking to her then it puts them in awkward situations and they'll come down on me for doing that and of course she'll come up with excuses as to why I should keep on talking to her and it would just be a lot of drama and a lot of conflict.
	Right. So, I mean, in a lot of ways, this is complex stuff, right?
	And I really, really do appreciate you talking to me openly about this.
	I know this is hard, and if there's anything that I can do to make it easier, I'm not trying to make your life more difficult, right?
	Like, I just want to get to know you, and I get a sense that this part of you kind of feels a little trapped and alone with this stuff.
	Like, you're managing a whole bunch of – keeping a lot of plates spinning in the air here, right?
	You want to keep your – Your dad happy, you want to keep this girl at peace, but at the same time, you have your own values, which are kind of different, and you want to make sure you don't do anything that upsets her, but you don't want to upset your dad, but you also don't want to betray your own values.
	I mean, this is a tough situation, right?
	Yes. And I don't have any magical answers, of course, right?
	But I think that it's where we do feel kind of like the most alone, and we do feel kind of like we're managing everyone, and we're not getting our own needs met.
	I think that one of the things that good people in our life can do is try and help us find some solutions to that.
	And I don't know that I have any, right?
	But if there were a solution, it would be worthwhile pursuing, right?
	Yeah. Now, I'm going to stop the roleplay right there just because that's a way to me of – and again, I don't know this woman and you're trying to figure out what she'd sort of say and think, so it's kind of tough.
	But that would be more of an RTR approach.
	Right. And I was sort of writing things down as you were saying it, but go ahead.
	Well, this is a recording, so don't worry about that.
	Okay. And you can have her call in, right?
	I mean, I'd be happy to take a spin through this.
	It doesn't even have to be on a Sunday show.
	Like, this is all I do, right?
	Is try and help people in this way.
	That's my call in, bro.
	Right? So you can just have her call in, and I promise I'll be gentle, and I also promise I won't suggest a threesome, just in case you're worried about that.
	But what was the difference?
	How did you feel when I was taking that approach?
	It was, I mean, I think it was a lot more curious and not sort of dogmatic.
	And there was a lot of like, I know maybe this is part of your personality, but this sort of like, sort of making a suggestion, like asking her a question, saying, but you know, I'm not, you know, I'm...
	I'm just crazy Dave here and I'm just curious, how does that make you feel?
	This constant disclaimer of I'm not pushing this down your throat, I'm just curious as to how does this make you feel or what are the negatives?
	If you could pick anyone in the world, would this person be your friend?
	Non-aggressive and sort of like, I don't know, safe, I guess, questions.
	Yeah, I mean, if you have dental surgery, we all want a little Novocaine, right?
	Yeah, yeah. I mean, the objectivists operate without anesthetic, right?
	I mean, that's the principle, right?
	Like laughing gases for the weak, right?
	I mean, that's the approach, right?
	Yeah, yeah. I can see that now.
	It's very enlightening.
	And it doesn't work, right?
	No, it doesn't. Because what it does is it imposes a solution rather than evokes a desire for a solution, right?
	What you're doing is you're snatching a cigarette out of someone's hand saying, smoking is bad for you, damn it, don't you know that?
	is smoking, what they get out of it, what the whole complex interchange of emotions and thoughts and histories has gone forward to producing all of that.
	Because what we want is to not knock cigarettes out of people's hands, but for people to really understand why they're smokers so that they can change it from the core, right?
	Right.
	And somebody sort of asked in the chat window, I said, you know, because obviously when I was role-playing you, I was very, you know, you're very smart, you're very intelligent and this and that.
	I said, well, is the praise always required for RTR?
	And I wouldn't consider that praise.
	and that's why I asked earlier, she's very intelligent, right?
	Yeah, I mean, objectivists don't date non-intelligent women.
	That's just the fact, right?
	So I wasn't praising Emily when I was playing you.
	I was simply pointing out a fact that she is very intelligent.
	And I was also reminding myself that if somebody is very intelligent and I grant them that respect, I will not let myself tell them something obvious.
	Hmm. Huh.
	If I say, hey, I know you're a really smart guy, dude, but frankly, two plus two is four, remember?
	Suddenly, you don't feel so respected, right?
	Absolutely, yeah.
	Right, so you have to remember that, you don't have to, but if you want to be effective, you have to remember that if she's smart enough to be your girlfriend, you have to, have to, have to refrain from pointing out the obvious, right?
	Yeah. Right, right.
	Because that's just not respecting someone, in my opinion, right?
	It's very tempting, right?
	But if she was so dumb that she couldn't figure out that these were contradictory values and contradictions are bad, then you're dating somebody who's like three steps above a toadstool as far as intellect goes, right?
	Agreed. And I know that's not the case, right?
	She's brilliant, right? Yeah.
	And she's torn and she's stuck and it's a lonely, sad, unhappy place, right?
	Because it's a lot to do with family history.
	She's being exploited by her dad and no one, in particular daughters, don't want to look at that with their dad, right?
	They don't want to look at their dad who, you know, wakes up and makes the sun move and realize that they're being exploited for his own selfish gain, right?
	Yeah. I mean, that's painful stuff to look at, right?
	Yeah, yeah.
	And the other thing that I would mention just about this approach is that it's really important to have humility.
	And I know, again, objectivists and humility, a little like antimatter and matter sometimes, but it is important to have humility because you can't criticize her relationship to Bianca as contradictory because you have a relationship with Emily, which, because of her relationship with Bianca, is also contradictory, right?
	Right. And I guess I'm trying to resolve that by talking to her.
	Right. Well, but you're not doing it with humility, because she has an ambiguous relationship with Emily that's really hard to figure out and to fix, right?
	And you have an ambiguous relationship with her in this realm that's really hard to figure out and fix, right?
	So you're two people trying to find a solution to contradictions in relationships, which we all inherit because of the culture and the history and so on, right?
	So you're like two people exploring a cave together, but what you're doing is standing up in the supposed sunlight, barking down at her, saying, I know you can't see anything, but go left, damn it!
	Right? Right.
	And if you want to help people with problems, in my opinion, right, don't bark orders from outside, right?
	And I'm oversimplifying what you're doing, and I apologize for that, but get in there, and we're all on this challenge of trying to live more rationally, and it's a damn hard thing to do, right?
	Yeah. But you don't want to take on authoritarian roles in your romantic relationships, particularly if the girl has a problematic relationship with your dad, because that's a template she's going to slot you into, and you'll get some conformity in the short run, but your relationship simply will not work in the long run.
	If you make somebody feel like you're an authority and they're a child, and I'm not saying that you did this completely or anything like that, but that was the sense that I got.
	Like, I have the answers. You should do this.
	This is the answer. This is right.
	Just do it. You'll get some conformity and that's what you got, but you're really hacking away at the core of the relationship because if it's not an equal-equal relationship – and that doesn't mean that some of you, one of you doesn't lead from time to time and so on.
	If it's not an equal-equal relationship, then it simply won't work.
	You'll get some conformity for the short run, but it simply won't work.
	Can I talk to you later about, I'm taking too much time already, but can I talk to you later about how to sort of, I don't know, heal the wounds and sort of like, I don't know, apologize for that?
	Like how, do I just apologize?
	Is that enough?
	Or what, how do I sort of admit to her that like, I should not have brought it up in this manner or whatever?
	Well, I think that I'm happy to spend another few minutes on this, but I think the important thing is that you need to understand why you did it this way, right?
	Yeah.
	Like the way that I did it, and look, this is just my style.
	I put in stupid jokes and stuff like that.
	Everybody's got their own style, right?
	Some people have a style that could be called vaguely mature, and then there's me, right?
	So I'm aware that there's different styles of this, and nobody has to do goofy stand-up, right?
	But this is a show as well as a conversation.
	I'm more on your side anyway, so I probably end up saying similar things.
	Right. But the important thing is that you were lecturing her to avoid your own anxiety.
	I mean, I can be blunt with you because, you know, you're a smart guy.
	You understand this stuff, right? The reason that you weren't sensitive and going in there is that you have your own ambiguities about your relationships, right?
	Yeah. I mean, are all of your relationships perfectly rational?
	Oh, absolutely not. No.
	I still have problems with my parents.
	Right. So you have your issues with your parents.
	You have your issues with her friends.
	You have your issue with her. You also have your issues with her friendships, with her parents too, right?
	Yeah. You're not happy that her dad is making her go out with this woman because she wants cheap hotels, right?
	Absolutely not, yeah. Right?
	So this is part of the humility, right?
	It's really hard to have consistent and rational relationships where there's kindness, generosity, positivity.
	I mean, it's a really hard thing to achieve and to maintain.
	But, I mean, payoff is fantastic, right?
	But you're avoiding your own ambivalence, right?
	When you're lecturing her, you're avoiding your own ambivalence about your relationships because once you start to get in and get sensitive about her difficulties with her relationships, you kind of have to admit that in many ways you're in the same boat, right?
	Yeah.
	So you distance yourself from the difficulties of your relationships by lecturing her about hers, right?
	Right.
	Right.
	Like Ayn Rand is all about rational effectiveness and she completely exploded her amazingly movement because she got into these weird kangaroo courts and throwing people out of the organization that got all kind of culty, right?
	Yeah. I mean, that's just not living by your values, right?
	And she's also like, violence is bad, but we need a government.
	Like, just things that were problematic and which she would never hear any criticism of, right?
	Yeah. Right.
	Right. Right.
	Right. And recognize that we are dealing with very difficult and complex topics, particularly with family history, with our relationship with our family.
	We both want to be rational and we always seek the approval of our parents.
	That's just survival.
	That's the way we're built.
	And it's tough to navigate that.
	And you have your difficulties.
	I have my difficulties. Christina has no difficulties.
	She's perfect. But that's a different matter.
	But you're lecturing her Because you want to avoid your own ambiguities, right?
	So the way that I would apologize is obviously profusely but RTR about the apology and say I wanted you to deal with this relationship because it made me anxious and I ended up lecturing rather than being curious and sympathetic because I kind of didn't want you to see that my relationships are a little messed up at times too.
	Yeah. And the last thing that I want to do is exploit you for my own comfort.
	Because you get a little bit of that with your dad.
	That's the last place that I want to be in your mind is anywhere near that.
	Not like your dad's an evil guy, but in this particular way.
	Right, right. And so just, you know, heartfelt, honestly, vulnerability, why you did what you did.
	I mean, it doesn't make you a bad boyfriend.
	It doesn't make you an evil guy. The fact that you're working on this kind of stuff and you're an objectivist to boot, which means that you'll be a fabulous income earner, that's all good stuff, right?
	So I think you should be very proud of this.
	But yeah, there is nothing more relaxing and wonderful than a really heartfelt apology and sympathy for It melts glaciers.
	It really is just the most amazing thing in the world and it has a kind of humility and a we're in this togetherness that can be hard to remember as such a value until you've gone through it at least once.
	Yeah, yeah. I definitely recognize that.
	I mean, I tell her that I'm also working on this, I'm also working on my own relationships, and I don't know the answers yet, but let's try to figure it out together kind of thing.
	So, yeah, I think that'll resonate.
	Okay, and I think I've heard you enough now that I can imitate you, so what I'll do is I'll call her up.
	And you can listen in, and I'll pretend to be you apologizing.
	And you'll see, you'll totally get something.
	Just kidding. Okay, so that's the way that I'd like to be.
	You offered too much of your services.
	I think that's a fairly reasonable assessment of the situation.
	Yeah, so it's important to remind people of their positive attributes when you RTR with them, because if they don't have those attributes, then don't RTR with them, like if they're totally defensive and stupid, but that's not your girlfriend, right?
	Anyway, sorry, you had one last question.
	Yeah, I was just going to say that you were saying, you know, the situation she's in can be very lonely and sort of just painful.
	And I just called her just, you know, a few minutes before you and she said she was feeling very, very lonely.
	And yeah, I think it would be very helpful if you could talk with her.
	Obviously, you know, she needs to be accepting of that.
	I need to ask her whether she's okay with that.
	Yeah, that'd be great.
	Yeah, just tell her that this RTR book, which you read and then decided to do the opposite of, that the guy who wrote it, strangely enough, has nothing but time on his hands and doesn't seem to get out much and likes talking to people.
	And feel free to play this conversation to her and so on, right?
	I mean, obviously it's public domain and so on, but I really do.
	I mean, this family stuff, I'm telling you, it's killer.
	It's It's a killer. It is the biggest barrier to rational acceptance of philosophy.
	No matter how right objectivism was, and I just worship the very ground that Rand walks on in so many ways, it didn't work, right?
	Like, it didn't take in terms of, you know, reducing the power of the state to creating and enhancing personal liberty.
	And Lord knows the objectivists have just become a bunch of bloodthirsty nutjobs about foreign policy, at least the objectivist center and Picoff and so on.
	So it didn't work, and that's just an empirical thing that we need to understand, that with all of the brilliance of the metaphysics, the epistemology, and so much of the ethics just didn't work.
	And again, we would not be either objectivists or Aristotelians or basically just rational empiricists if we didn't look at that and try and figure out why.
	Right, right.
	Yeah. And I won't break into It Needs a Little Tenderness, that song, just because I still have a shred of humanity, even with regards to musical things.
	She'd really appreciate that.
	She loves karaoke. Excellent.
	Okay, well, thanks. Do let me know how it goes, and just give me a shout.
	I'll be around this week if there's a time when we can talk.
	I'd certainly be happy to help. Great.
	Thanks a lot, Stefan. Appreciate you calling in.
	Sorry, just before you go, was this useful for you?
	Did this help the process kind of thing?
	Oh, absolutely. Yeah, I mean, it's a difference between, obviously, between reading it and understanding, okay, what you're saying is true and I will take that into my life, but then actually doing it is so much harder.
	And having that feedback loop is really good.
	I mean, yeah.
	Otherwise, I think people might use your ideas in vain.
	You know what I mean? Oh, do I know?
	Yeah. I mean, I knew that when putting the RTR book out, that everyone's first impulse was to try and use it to get their way, right?
	It's like, I feel that you're wrong, you know, and so on, right?
	I mean, that, of course, is the great temptation with new knowledge, right?
	And that's not because we're innately bad.
	It's just that's how we're taught to use power when we're growing up, right?
	So... So I'm perfectly aware that that's a risk, but I just did the best that I could to try and alleviate that.
	And these conversations, we had this conference in Miami, which the video I think is getting close to being done, so we'll be able to release that, where I did these kinds of role plays with a bunch of different people with three hand puppets at one point as well.
	So hopefully that will help.
	Oh, great. Yeah, I definitely appreciate it.
	Thanks for keeping this up.
	It's great. It's a great end of the sentence.
	Well, thank you so much. I really appreciate that.
	Oh, sorry. I just meant it's great, not great something.
	Oh, sorry. It's a great...
	Oh, dear. He fell off a cliff. What a shame.
	Okay, well, thanks so much.
	I think that's it for our show today.
	We've been going for a fair amount of time, unless there's somebody who's absolutely dying with a gotta have, can't miss, dying, choking without it.
	Anyone? Anyone?
	last chance you've got to try a little tenderness all right okay well thanks everybody so much and have yourselves a wonderful wonderful week One last thing just before we go.
	I'm just trying some new technology out because I am the geekiest philosopher on the planet, probably in history, which is that I'm putting some arguments together on PowerPoint with a disembodied talking head that will absolutely haunt your dreams.
	So, have a look for that.
	I'm going to try and post it tonight. Have a look at that on YouTube or drop past the board.
	FreeDomainRadio.BlippTV or BlippTV.FreeDomainRadio, something like that.
	I'll put the link on the board for a higher quality version.
	But to have a look at that, it's an interesting PowerPoint, I think, which responds to the questions, is anarchism practical compared to political action?
	So it's the business case for philosophy.
	I hope that you will have a look at it.
	And thank you so much for joining us today.
	And it was a great show. I will talk to you guys next week.

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