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April 20, 2008 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

02:06:47

1043 Sunday Call In Show April 20 2008

A new book, some free books, unmasking a girlfriend, dreaming of de-friending, and the joy of service...

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	Alright. So now, I would like it very much if we could start off with something a little bit different.
	And if everybody could unmute, please.
	Unmute. Grab your mics.
	Drop your something and grab your song.
	I can't recall it exactly.
	Um... No.
	Is everybody unmuted?
	Yes. Yes.
	This is the first ever gathering of the Freedomain Radio birthday choir because we have a birthday in...
	Oh God!...and it is in fact Nathan's birthday so I thought that we could give him a little happy birthday song for his birthday.
	As off-key as you can make it.
	Is everybody ready?
	We're going to do it in the key of F minor.
	And Greg, if you can harmonize in a C-flat, that would be excellent.
	So, we're going to give him a happy birthday.
	And we'll start with a one, two, a one, two, three!
	Happy birthday to you.
	Happy birthday to you.
	Oh, my God.
	Happy birthday to you.
	Somebody bring in a guest camp.
	Oh.
	Happy birthday to you.
	And many more.
	Mm. God.
	I'm weeping, and I think it's with tears of musical joy.
	Wait! I think I just heard Carl's head explode.
	Good to know. All right. Okay, back into the pits, everyone.
	Mute! Mute, damn it!
	Thank you very much for joining us on this beautiful, beautiful Sunday afternoon, the 20th of April, 2008.
	And Nathan, along with our birthday wishes, we'd like to send a profound apology to all the gods of harmony in music.
	So, I don't have any particular thing to start with.
	Other than to tell you that philosophy has once more made me a prison bitch and I am lashed into the galleys of a book production.
	The book is called Everyday Anarchy and it is designed to be or it's aimed to be a book that you can, it's a short and friendly and positive and perhaps even mildly witty book that you can hand out to people Who have no idea what the hell you're talking about when you talk about anarchism.
	Or rather, they have an idea which is entirely incorrect.
	So this is not a book that talks about the family.
	It is not a book that puts you in direct confrontation to your bloodline.
	It is not a book that causes you to drop all of your friends and touch an academic and explode.
	It is a book that really is just designed to gently introduce people to the questions that anarchy is designed to answer.
	This is a book that is resolutely not about answering questions as to how the roads will be run in a free society.
	It is a book which points out deficiencies and inconsistencies with existing views of how society should be structured and it is just about saying an anarchist is somebody who looks at these questions and says these Answers are not real answers.
	The answer of democracy, the answer of fascism, the answer of Nazism, the answer of the welfare state, these are not moral, logical, and valid answers.
	But it's not designed to say to people, and here's how DROs will handle interplanetary contracts in the year 2250, because that is a complete non sequitur.
	Pointing out the limitations in Newton's theory, is a good thing to do even if you don't have an alternate theory.
	And of course the pursuit of truth in an anarchistic or philosophical context is about, in the Socratic method, finding the flaws in the existing arguments or approaches and then you can work to come up with answers.
	But if people don't even know there's a problem, they won't understand what anarchism is trying to solve or what a state the society is trying to solve.
	I think it's certainly...
	I don't want to write another book.
	I didn't want to write another book.
	They don't make a huge amount of money, but they do move the discussion forward.
	And I'm trying to write this, or rather this annoying book is writing me, because what happened was basically I couldn't sleep this last week, until I started working on this damn book.
	Fascinating how interested I am in questions of free will.
	Very interesting, but we don't need to stop there.
	Let's keep going. So the book should be...
	It's going to be relatively short.
	It shouldn't be much longer than on truth.
	And it really is, as I said, just aim to be something where, you know, somebody says, you're an anarchist.
	What the freaky kind of hell post-apocalyptic nightmare mohawk scenario are you inhabiting?
	And you can hand them this little book and say, well...
	You know, this doesn't have any answers, but it does point out the deficiencies in the existing answers, right?
	So the first thing that you talk about with somebody who's a Christian who finds out that you're an atheist is not, you know, here's UPB and here's all of the atheist answers, here's all the science, here's to just say, well, these are the logical problems.
	With the proofs for the existence of God.
	If they're interested, they move forward.
	If they're not interested, then you've saved some time.
	So, as UPB is supposed to be a time saver and has been a huge time saver for us, as Untruth was a time saver with philosophy and the family and why we focus on the personal aspects of the truth, and as RTR, hopefully, is not so much a time saver but an enhancer of your relationships.
	This book is really designed to be a time saver For how it is that you bring this question of anarchism to other people.
	It's just my approach, there may be a better approach, there may be a different approach, but I'm aiming to have this be efficient.
	Anybody who can really think is going to be at least interested in the questions that are raised by the book.
	Anybody who can't think is going to be annoyed and condescending and will very likely hold a PhD.
	Thank you for your attention.
	It's just a brief introduction.
	The books are free! Oh, right, right, right, right.
	Instead of whining and complaining about the new book, perhaps what I can do is talk to you about the existing books, the three nonfiction books, On Truth, UPB, and Real-Time Relationships, The Logic of Love.
	Thank you to the wonderfully kind donators.
	Except that one sperm donator.
	No thank you. But thank you so much to the kind donators who have stepped up and given enough cash for me to survive without the additional income of the books, which has given me the opportunity.
	And I did this in consultation with the Philosopher Kings who were around.
	Thank you so much. To hand out these books, like Candy, for free, you can get the audiobooks, you can get the PDFs.
	I obviously can't hand out the print books for free because they cost money to produce and mail, but there's no limitation on any of these things.
	I did not even insert any advertisements.
	Obviously, if you like the books, I would appreciate a donation, but The key thing is to get the books out to whoever you want.
	The highest quality books are out there.
	The DAT CD quality of RTR. All of the extended RTR conversations.
	Everything has been released into the public domain.
	If you bought these books just prior to me going public with them, sorry.
	I am more than happy to credit your purchase price.
	As a board credit, so you upgrade you to a new level on the board to give you additional podcast access to the private board and private chat rooms.
	But this is just something.
	And, of course, the goal is twofold to, A, spread the truth that we talk about here, philosophy, to as many people as we want.
	And you can't get any better than public domain, as far as this goes.
	And B, it's my hope that since I'm spending a lot of money on advertising that having free books out there that people are mailing around with free domain radio on them will be something that will help us in terms of getting the word out and maybe cut down some of the advertising costs.
	So I think it's going to be revenue neutral and on the plus side.
	So to me, anything that's revenue neutral but gets the word out more is fantastic.
	Other minor notes, we passed 300,000 Views on YouTube, which is about one month of podcast downloads, but that is really good.
	Now, I had a couple of comments, just not too, too recently, but over the last month or two.
	Where people are saying, you know, well, geez, you know, I look at your videos, you've only got a thousand views on the video, and, you know, you can compare this to the Cat Playing Piano, which gets 12 billion views.
	And you can look at it that way for sure, but my particular way of approaching it, which may be of interest to you, is to say, look, I mean, if somebody said, Steph, I'm going to get you, I want you to come and give a speech in a hall with a thousand people who will be listening, I'd be like, I'm in, out of my way, get me to the hall on time.
	So, to me, that's a great thing.
	6,000 or 7,000 people have gone through good chunks of the Introduction to Philosophy series.
	That's good! I mean, when I was in graduate school, and these are pretty advanced topics, my classes were like 20 people.
	So, even if I were a professor who reached like 500 people a year, which would be a pretty large group, it would be a first year intro course, it would take me 10 years to get to 5,000 people, so that's pretty cool.
	Of course, the most popular video with over 35,000 hits or something like that is job interview skills.
	So that's fine.
	So I just did a second one there with a gentleman.
	We did a conversation about it.
	If you're looking for a job, please have a look for that.
	Job interview skills part two.
	How to nail that second interview with a nail gun, actually.
	So it's an innovative but creative use of job interview hardware.
	So yeah, just be enthusiastic and happy.
	300,000 people is a lot of people to have watched Free Domain Radio videos.
	And they do tend to cluster around.
	The Procrastination series is popular, as are jokes about putting off watching the Procrastination series of Procrastination video.
	Free Will series is popular.
	Intro to Philosophy is popular.
	And people, they just do love the job interview stuff.
	Thank you again, since that's not a particular, certainly that's not a revenue-enhancing situation.
	I do appreciate, again, the donators who've made that possible.
	And thanks to all the kind feedback on the new presentation format.
	Some of the recent podcasts, Proofs for God, Religion, Family, and the Bible, and so on, really, really, really worth watching the video rather than just listening.
	To the audio.
	If you don't see the dragon steak sizzling, the metaphor just won't stay with you as well.
	And what it is, this is a PowerPoint presentation with my talking head in the top left.
	It's a very effective way of...
	I mean, just hearing it, it kind of passes one ear out of the other, but when you hear it and you see it being spoken and you see the text and the argument and the graphics flying around on the screen, I think it's a very effective way.
	So I'm going to be using more of those, and I will be using those in...
	Substitution to the brief experiment with the pen tablet where it looked like I was killing an enormous number of tarantulas with my drawing skills.
	So that's just something I wanted to mention.
	So that's it for news and intros.
	To get to the free books, just go to freedomainradio.com.
	There's a link on the main page and on pretty much every page on the website.
	But if you want to go there directly, freedomainradio.com forward slash free dot html, of course.
	That's it for me. If we have questions or comments or issues or problems, I think we have one from the engineering lady.
	Nathan was not on the happy birthday.
	I think what actually happened was Nathan heard it coming and voluntarily hung up, or his computer decided to die on him out of mercy.
	So it's a shame, but we do have it recorded, so we shall survive.
	All right. So that's it for the intro.
	Feel free to jump in with questions, comments, issues, problems, and the board or the airwaves, my friends of yours.
	Hey, Steph. Hello.
	Hello. Hello.
	Can you hear me? I sure can.
	Ah, okay. This is Sizzle.
	Sorry, can I just interrupt for a sec?
	It does always amaze me when people say hello, and I say hello back, and they ask me if I can hear them.
	It's just one of these things that I find it's touching, if insane.
	I just sort of find it kind of interesting, but it's worth checking, of course, but go on.
	Okay. Well, I'm just covering my tracks multiple times.
	But yeah, I... As I was talking about on the board, I just mentioned it briefly, I got into a little spat with my girlfriend today, and I talked about this with Greg for a little while, and we came to some interesting conclusions, but I just kind of wanted to hear your side of it, to kind of help me think through things.
	Basically what happened is...
	Her sister is married to this guy and they bought this house like three years ago when housing prices were a little high.
	And she was telling me about this and she was saying that there's this neighbor of theirs that builds houses and he went to the real estate agents or whatever and he found out the asking prices for all these houses and he's going to the buyers and stuff and telling them that he'll build these houses for them like $10,000 cheaper.
	And she was saying how upset she was about this.
	I'm sorry, I lost track of that story for just a second.
	I was distracted by something.
	I really do apologize. Can you go back like 30 seconds and just give me that part again?
	I just want to make sure I follow it right.
	They want to move their house to a different location.
	They want to be closer to their family.
	Their neighbor, he builds houses.
	He went to the real estate agents and he found out how much they were selling these houses for.
	and he's basically going to the buyers and he's telling them that he can build these houses $10,000 cheaper.
	Well, it's kind of like the housing prices are trying to balance, like if this guy was He can't really build houses for $5.
	He's not going to build a house for $5, so there has to be a median price of what the houses are actually worth.
	I was saying this guy really isn't evil, and then I brought this argument up, and she goes, Well, it's fucking evil.
	She's upset because she could have got the house $10,000 cheaper, is that right?
	No, this is her sister.
	She's mad that this guy is undercutting her sister.
	She wants her sister to get more money for the house.
	And this guy is going to all the buyers saying he can do it $10,000 cheaper, so they're going to have to lower their price and they're not going to get as much money as they want.
	Which I completely understand.
	They'd like to get as much money.
	Who doesn't, right? I basically said that this guy wasn't evil and he was just, you know, it's part of the market balancing itself out.
	And I said, you know, it's...
	And she interrupted me and she goes, yeah, it's business.
	It's fucking evil. And I just kind of was like silent for a little bit and I was like, well, what just happened there?
	And then she goes, so I guess you're...
	What did she say?
	She said, you're just not a good person.
	And that really floored me.
	Like... She said you are not a good person for pointing out that her greed is exactly the same as his greed, right?
	Yeah, yeah. Sorry, that's one of the fundamental issues here, that she's greedy, and there's nothing wrong with that.
	I mean, what's wrong with greed, right?
	But she's greedy, and she wants to maximize her returns, and this guy has found a way to maximize his returns for $10,000 less.
	So her greed, which makes her very angry when it's thwarted, Is exactly the same as his greed, but he is evil, and her greed is virtuous and noble and good and should be satisfied.
	Is that right? Yeah, but this is for her sister, though, so it's like she's greedy for her sister, I guess.
	Yeah, it's not that...
	I mean, whether the value is the money or the sister's money doesn't really matter.
	She has a preference, and her preference should be satisfied, but he has a preference, and the satisfaction of his preference is evil, right?
	Yeah. I was just floored when she said this, and I said, I can't believe that.
	You just called me a bad person.
	She goes, no, no, I didn't call you a bad person.
	I just said you weren't good. I was completely amazed at that, and I got pretty mad.
	I got up and I ate breakfast, and I didn't see her, so I ate breakfast, and then I just left.
	What's your girlfriend there?
	Sorry, somebody just asked.
	Fire up, can you mute your microphone?
	We're going to have to boot you. Sorry.
	Sorry, go on.
	I basically ate breakfast and she just stayed in the room.
	Put your girlfriend there at this point.
	Where? Sorry, was this your girlfriend or your girlfriend's sister you were having this conversation with?
	My girlfriend. Oh, this was your girlfriend who called you evil.
	I'm so sorry, I thought it was his sister.
	Okay, my mistake. I'm still working on my second coffee of the day.
	I've cut back, so apparently my high five flashed.
	Okay, so your girlfriend called you a bad person.
	In her words, I was not a good person, which is apparently somewhat different.
	You've known this woman for six years, right?
	Seven. Seven years, okay.
	So what is my next comment going to be?
	Um, you can type it in the window if you're muted.
	Not you, but other people.
	I can throw this question out wide with all due sympathy, but what's my next question going to be?
	Or my next comment? I'm reading in the chat, and I'm guessing that that's the question that you're going to ask.
	No, that's not exactly the question I'm going to ask.
	The question that I would ask next, or will ask next, is how is it possible to know someone for seven years and be completely amazed at something they do?
	Because you say, like, I'm shocked, I'm amazed, right?
	Makes no sense. Yeah, like, I think this stuff has been going on before, but I've just started to realize it, I think.
	I get that.
	I'm obviously not saying that you're telling any fibs or anything, but I'm sure you genuinely do feel amazed.
	But I guarantee you that you're not, deep down.
	Let me give you an example.
	What is your girlfriend's relationship to your relationship to philosophy?
	She knows that I really take it seriously, and I guess that's kind of what hurts so much.
	I've been really trying to better myself, and for her to say something like that, it seemed like she didn't want to talk about anything, she just kind of wanted to go straight from my throat.
	Yeah, sorry, maybe I was not clear.
	Let me just back up a little bit.
	So, it certainly has been the case, was it three or four months that you've been down with this philosophy stuff, or is it a little bit longer?
	Yeah, about three or four months.
	Okay, and you and I have talked a couple of times about this kind of stuff, and I know that it's been hard Row for you to hoe, right?
	You feel a lot of numbness, you feel a lot of indifference, you feel some despair.
	So it's a hard thing for you to work with, right?
	Yeah, there's still a lot of fog.
	I still don't trust my senses, I guess.
	I'm kind of in that gray area.
	When it comes to fog, you could rent yourself out as the flash fire front row stuff for the Metallica concert.
	So I'm aware of that and know that it's been really tough for you to work with that kind of stuff.
	So my question is, a couple of months ago, you decided to really commit yourself to truth and philosophy and self-knowledge and wisdom and so on, which is highly admirable, and again, with all due sympathy for the troubles that it's been, or the troubles that it's created for you, what has your girlfriend's relationship been with your interest in philosophy and self-knowledge for the past few months?
	Kind of indifference.
	That's interesting because that's a statement about Switzerland actually said in Swiss.
	kind of in what I don't understand that sorry is it indifference or is it kind of indifference Because I'm not sure what kind of indifference is.
	Is that indifference and enthusiasm?
	Is that indifference that short circuits?
	Is that indifference that eats its own tail?
	I'm not sure what kind of indifference is.
	Do you know what I mean? And you and I have had this conversation before.
	It's in the Gold Plus section, but it's around this issue of statements that are foggy, right?
	Yeah, I'm really good at those, apparently.
	You really are. Again, what I'm doing is thrashing what's left of my hair and using the devil's horn sign because I do feel more like a Metallica concert with all the fog rolling forward.
	But there's no such thing as kind of indifferent, right?
	Yeah, like the...
	Like when I bring stuff up about philosophy, she just doesn't seem like she really cares.
	But when I started talking about...
	She doesn't seem like she really cares.
	Again, I'm going to just be really annoying and just point this out, right?
	With that kind of stuff, there's nothing for someone else to say.
	And there's nothing, in fact, for you to say.
	It doesn't seem like she really cares.
	You know whether she cares or not, right?
	When somebody cares about something that you're doing, you know it because you get excited, because you get goosebumps, because you want to stay up and talk, because you're thrilled, because you're frightened, right?
	When somebody really gets interested in what you're saying, you notice it, right?
	Yeah, she doesn't care.
	Well, and not to be totally annoying, but it also is not true that she doesn't care because she's avoiding a topic that's of interest to you, right?
	So it must be threatening to you in some manner, right?
	Sorry, to her. It must be threatening to her in some manner if she short-circuits when you talk about it.
	Yeah. And I think it is, because we had this conversation before about, this is back when I was working through the whole DFU process, and I'd mentioned that if we were going to have kids, that I would be completely on their side, and if they felt that they wanted to leave for whatever reason, we'd do whatever we could, but that's not up to us.
	And she basically said, well, if I'm going to have that position, then I don't want to have children with you.
	Right. Like if you don't change.
	So that really worried me.
	Sorry, and what did that mean in terms of your relationship?
	I mean, did you bring the topic up again?
	Did you try and talk about it with her further?
	Yeah, I did. I brought her up and I said that she was being manipulative when she said that and she was saying that she didn't mean it like that and she thought that I was saying that she was going to be a bad mother and I said, well, you obviously don't think that since, first of all, that's not what I said. Second of all, I would have no reason to call you a bad mother and if I did, you could say, well, why would you call me that?
	Okay, I understand where that kind of conversation goes.
	How did that work out for you?
	She apologized. She said she was sorry.
	Yeah, but did you feel that there was resolution?
	I mean, not just apologizing, but did you understand why she took the approach she did?
	Did you get to the root of things?
	Did you achieve some sort of new understanding and so on?
	Because if you had, I don't think that she'd be blowing up with you about this stuff, right?
	Right. And so, I made a groaning sound when you said, I said that she was being manipulative.
	Because now that RTR is free, there's no excuse for that, right?
	Yeah, I'm actually reading it right now.
	I'm only on page 90 now.
	Okay, so you have some idea of why saying you're being manipulative is not a very productive approach to...
	I mean, you can do that on the board if you don't care or whatever, right?
	But in a personal relationship where you have a lot invested, that's not going to be helpful, right?
	Yeah. Because the thing that you need to do, and this is based on what you have expressed as a preference, is that you need to get in touch with your feelings, right?
	Yeah, I really need to do that.
	You really need to. And I find that a fur glove and hand puppets is the way to do that.
	Everybody has their own approach.
	That's a little later on in the book.
	But the first thing you want to do is you want to not be inflicting your conclusions on other people.
	You're being manipulated if we talk about how you feel and how you felt about the interaction and how you feel in the moment.
	And a lot of fear and anxiety will come up and that's what the not feeling is helping you avoid.
	And I don't want to flog the subject too, too much.
	I just sort of wanted to point out That being surprised about your girlfriend calling you not a good person when she already has called you not a good person for defooing and for your approach on how to raise children is not shocking, right?
	Yeah, maybe it wasn't a surprise that I felt that I was kind of mad.
	Kind of mad. Yeah, there I go again.
	And I understand it's a hard habit to break, right?
	It's a hard habit to break, and I understand that.
	You know, Swiss is the default language of traumatized children, so I certainly do sympathize and understand it.
	But... The reality is that you have been feeling rejected by your girlfriend probably from the very beginning, and that's part of the Simon the Boxer thing which you'll run into later on in RTR, which is that you enter into situations which allow you to manage feelings of rejection and dissociation.
	But the important thing to understand is that This particular day was coming, certainly since you decided to get into truth and philosophy and self-knowledge and a foo evaluation and so on.
	Because she wasn't with you on that journey, right?
	So the tension builds up because she can feel your values separating and she can't talk about it.
	She's obviously not in touch with her feelings because things don't linger and fester and then we blow up when we're in touch with our feelings, right?
	Right. The infection gets bad when we can't feel, right?
	Like if you've got a tooth infection, it gets bad if you don't get any pain signals, right?
	Yeah. Do you think I'm doing this because I want to play the victim so that I can feel some kind of moral superiority?
	Oh no, no. You're doing this because you want to break up with her.
	Because why? Because you want to break up with her.
	Sorry, was that too abrupt?
	No, no, no, I'm thinking about that.
	Well, what did you feel when I said that?
	Um... It actually wasn't really too shocking, but...
	Okay, well tell me what the prediction is if you continue on with self-knowledge, with philosophy, with bringing these rigorous standards into your life and with being emotionally honest and vulnerable and all the stuff that's going to pound your head around as it did with me with the RTR book.
	What is your prediction about what's going to happen to this relationship?
	Well, I'm not really, I guess I'm not too knowledgeable about this, so I'm really not sure what the best way to approach it and what the usual results are, because I read some of the things that you said in RTR. Sorry, I'm going to interrupt you for a sec, because I just felt as evolved into the stratosphere of analytical interpretation, and I got a little dizzy there.
	What is your emotional prediction about what is going to happen to this relationship if you continue along the path that you're continuing along?
	Misery. Well, is your relationship going to survive the path that you're on?
	I really don't know, because in the book, RTR, you mentioned that you and Christina had problems.
	I forget the term you used, but she was jabbing you, and then you guys worked through that.
	So I guess that was kind of my hope, that we'd be able to work through these things.
	Yes, but we didn't have seven years of dysfunction behind us.
	And we had shared values, and she got food and there was a little bit of venom, and this happened to me as well, but we were working within a shared value and a 99% positive relationship.
	In fact, 99% is probably shy of the mark, right?
	And of course, she didn't call me a not good person or anything like that, right?
	So it was painful and it was hard to work with, even though we had a new fresh relationship.
	We were already married, so we knew we wanted to spend the rest of our lives together.
	But we did not have this history of dysfunction.
	And she was a psychologist, and I had already been through a couple of years of therapy and was well-versed in good communication skills, right?
	So there's a lot of different circumstances here.
	I mean, I wouldn't want...
	I understand how it can happen, but I wouldn't want the idea that, well, Christina and I had problems and we worked them out, therefore, all problems can be worked out, if that makes sense.
	Yeah, and why is that?
	Well, because it's not true.
	Because if all problems can be worked out, you shouldn't have de-food, right?
	Right. And that's the message that she's getting, right?
	That you have standards around truth and integrity in relationships, and if people don't meet those standards, then they're going to be gone from your life.
	You defooing has also communicated very clearly to your girlfriend, and I would say unconsciously more than anything else, that you're going to get corrupt relationships out of your life, right?
	Mm-hmm. And do you think that she views the relationships deep down around her that she has as virtuous or corrupt?
	She thinks they're very virtuous.
	And is she right? They seem to be.
	They seem to be.
	What does your gut tell you?
	See, I think that you are in touch with your feelings.
	I just don't think that you like the conclusions that they give you.
	I can tell you there is no conceivable way that her relationships are virtuous and that she has high standards of integrity in her relationships.
	How is it that I know that and can be so confident of that other than being insane?
	We can go with the insanity thesis if it doesn't pan out, but how is it that I can be confident of that?
	Because the relationship with me isn't virtuous?
	Well, you got into this stuff recently.
	You were highly enmeshed in a corrupt relationship with your mother, to say the least, right?
	Yeah. And she was good with that for six and a half years, right?
	I wouldn't say she was good with it.
	She would make jabs at my mother from time to time.
	Yeah, that's not exactly the same as helping you, right?
	That's not exactly the same as having high standards about the quality of your relationships, or even low standards about the quality of your relationships, right?
	I mean, just jabbing your mom doesn't help you, right?
	In fact, it makes you feel more anxious and nervous, right?
	Yeah, so how do you know that hers aren't virtuous?
	Well, she dated you for six and a half years!
	And this is not to say that you were a bad guy in those six and a half years, but you were enmeshed in a corrupt relationship with your mom, and she was fundamentally choosing that, right?
	Because she could have gone out with other guys, assuming she doesn't look like the elephant woman or whatever, right?
	And even if she did, she could have gone out with other guys, right?
	So she chose you, given that you were emotionally unavailable, enmeshed in a corrupt relationship, With your mom and showed no signs of changing that, right?
	I mean, for six years or whatever.
	Showed signs of changing what?
	You showed no signs of changing that with your mom for about six years, right?
	Oh, yeah. Also, she's willing to call somebody that she claims to love and has been with for seven years a not good person, which is about...
	One of the harshest things that you can say to somebody, right?
	It's even worse than calling you an asshole or a bastard, which at least can be written off as something said in anger, right?
	Or not written off, but viewed in that context.
	Yeah. So either you're not a good person, in which case she can't claim to have non-corrupt relationships, or she thinks you are a good person, or at least that's where you want to head, But she's using that because she knows it will hurt you the most, right? Yeah.
	So there's no conceivable way that somebody who does that is surrounded by happy, loving, and virtuous relationships.
	Zero chance whatsoever.
	But she seems so happy around them.
	That's what I don't understand.
	Oh yeah, and I can't speak to that because I don't know anything about her family, right?
	Right. But let me ask you this.
	Did you seem happy around your mom?
	Yeah. But you weren't?
	Yeah, I did. But you weren't actually happy, right?
	I'm not really sure what happiness is.
	Is there degrees of happiness?
	Like you had mentioned before that you used to be like a three or four and now you're at like an eight.
	Like I don't know where I am.
	I've been kind of in this gray area for so long that I can't really tell.
	Well, do you feel better not seeing your mother or better seeing your mom?
	Like if I said to you, your mom's on her way over and she'll be at your house or at your place in five minutes, how would you feel?
	Kind of scared. Kind of scared.
	Is that like half scared and half barbecue sauce?
	Well, I wouldn't be terrified or anything, because I think I can have those conversations with her now, but...
	Sorry, you think that you can handle...
	And I'm sorry to be breaking you down so much, right?
	Because you're flailing around a little bit here, right?
	I mean, what did you say to...
	I mean, do you feel that...
	Sorry, you feel that you can handle these conversations with your mom, and productively and positively?
	Yeah, I think so.
	So why did you defoo then, if you can do that?
	I think that's part of the productive conversation.
	I don't think I'm scared to not do that anymore.
	Like I can say, no, what you did was wrong and I'm not going to accept that.
	So like I think I've made that kind of progress towards where I can have a conversation that's more open and honest, even if it is kind of corrupt by calling it as such.
	And when did you defoe?
	About two months ago.
	And you're in your mid-twenties, right?
	Right. And I'm afraid, with all due respect, and this is literally with all due respect, I have to call complete bullshit on this statement.
	And this is, again, I'm not saying that you're telling me anything that you don't believe is true or anything like that.
	I genuinely don't. But if you want help in terms of getting at this, you're in your mid-twenties and you were enmeshed in a corrupt and destructive relationship with your mom for a quarter century, right?
	And she had total power over you, and she dominated your life, she manipulated your emotions, she ran you like the mafia runs a street corner, right?
	And two months afterwards, you say, well, I'm only somewhat afraid of her.
	That is just, that can't be true.
	I mean, just to take an analogy, right?
	If some soldier has been in a war for 25 years, there's no way that two months after he agonizingly leaves the military, he's only going to have some residual scar tissue or psychological effects, right?
	25 years in combat.
	Yeah. I mean, he's hardwired this way.
	We all are. Because there is a feeling when we defoo, we're like, whew, you know, whew, you know?
	Done, right? And that's good, we should have that feeling, it is a great step.
	But I know that you're not processing your defoo, and the reason that I know that is because of what's going on with your girlfriend, and also because of what you say about your mom, right?
	I'm not processing it.
	And the reason that you're not processing it is because, deep down, you know that your defu is going to claim your girlfriend.
	Right? There's no way that she...
	I mean, she just called you a not good person, which is the worst thing that she can say to you.
	Right? She has not been interested in your personal growth.
	She has values around raising kids, if I can call them values, and around, say, free market competition, that are diametrically and morally opposed to yours, right?
	Yeah.
	Where's that going to go?
	Bad places.
	Well, I would say no.
	I would say it goes bad places.
	It's like you're in a truck that's rolling towards a cliff, right?
	And you're saying, oh my god, I'm going to go off a cliff, right?
	And I'm saying, no you don't have to go off a cliff.
	Because the door is not locked, right?
	Just remember to roll when you hit the gravel.
	so So I guess the inevitable question I have to ask would be, if I want to have a happy relationship with somebody, do I need to date a therapist?
	There are a lot of messed up therapists.
	Yeah, sorry. We just saw a little glimmer of hope there, and we needed to bring the rain clouds down on it.
	It's basically taking long slow peas on Hallmark cards here.
	That's the nature of this show.
	Look, and look, this is, again, with all due sympathy and so on, the only reason that I'm able to laugh about this is that I know that there's no love in your relationship with your girlfriend, that it's a dead habit, and also it's a retreat from a necessary growth for you and for her.
	See, don't worry about who you date to be happy and what goes on with all of that kind of stuff, right?
	And I've said this from the beginning, right?
	From the very beginning, and I don't know if you've listened in sequence or not, but if not, you may have missed this one, that all our relationships...
	The Defoo isn't about our family, and it isn't about our history.
	It's about our future, and it's about all our relationships.
	And we know that, or at least I know that, because of UPB, right?
	UPB is not one rule for mom and another rule for the girlfriend.
	So all our relationships go through this scanner of wisdom or of knowledge.
	Truth, virtue, curiosity, emotional self-expression, honesty, openness, vulnerability.
	All of our relationships go through that.
	And you know that too.
	Yeah, so if 99% of the world is corrupt, does that mean I'm probably going to be alone for the rest of my life?
	Well, and I understand what you're doing here, right?
	Which is exactly the same as what people do when you say, we shouldn't have a government, and they say, well, that must mean that all the poor are going to starve in the streets, right?
	There's an immediate catastrophizing when the truth comes along, which is what we use to try and not have to live the truth, right?
	Yeah.
	See, you don't know, and again, I really, really apologize if this sounds condescending, but it's the best I can do with the thoughts that I have.
	So you as yet do not know what the world looks like on the other side of real integrity.
	Thank you.
	No, I really don't.
	So you look over there.
	People look beyond no government and see all of these ridiculous, horrible, post-apocalyptic Mel Gibson movies, right?
	And you look at the world that you have and you say, well, if I get rid of everyone in this corrupt world, I will be alone forever, right?
	And it's true. If you stay in a corrupt world and you get rid of corrupt people, you will be alone forever.
	But that's not what actually works or the way it works in reality, right?
	How does it really work?
	What really happens in reality, in my view, it's like saying, "I can only work for assholes, so if I stop working for assholes, I'll be unemployed for the rest of my life." Yeah, so it's just a matter of finding them?
	Well, first of all, you have to say, I work for assholes, and why am I drawn to working with assholes?
	And you go through your history, and you figure out your Simon the Boxer scenario, you do all the RTR work, and the cognitive therapy work, if you want to get a book on that, and you do some therapy, and you talk on the board, and you do all of the work that you have to do, right?
	I mean, if you want to get an Olympic gold, you've got to get up early, and you've got to train, right?
	And that's what philosophy is, right?
	And there's great rewards, but it's a lot of work.
	But the first thing you do is you say, well, why is it that I've always ended up working for assholes?
	And it's not the asshole's fault.
	It's my fault, fundamentally.
	Or my responsibility.
	Maybe my parents' fault, whatever.
	My responsibility to fix that in the future.
	But once you say, I'm not going to work for assholes anymore, you end up working for good people.
	Because you deal with all of that stuff that drew you towards the assholes as bosses.
	And then you have a different world.
	What's on the other side Of refusing to work with assholes is working for good people.
	Or maybe being self-employed.
	But if you say, well, everyone's an asshole.
	If I'm not going to work for assholes, I'll never have a job again.
	That's just another way of saying, I want to keep working for assholes, right?
	Yeah. Because I know that for you, the reason that you're with This woman, and the reason that you're with your family, is at its root, nihilism.
	That you genuinely believe, at some level, that there are no good people in the world.
	And if there are no good people in the world, then you might as well hang out with these people, because it's not like there's a better alternative.
	It's like, if you're in the ocean, and any old piece of wood comes by, you'll grab it, right?
	But if there's a big pleasure cruising coming by, you'd want to go there instead, right?
	Yeah. But you hang onto the wood, you can't see the pleasure cruisers.
	I'm stretching the metaphor too far, but we'll see if we can survive.
	See, I don't think that good people don't exist because I think everybody on FDR is great people, right?
	They're inquisitive and they're nice and they're friendly.
	Yes, but sorry to interrupt.
	That's not what you said to me.
	But that's not what you said to me.
	What you said to me is, if I let go of this woman, basically I'll be alone, right?
	I said probably, because I said if 99% of people are corrupt, then finding somebody that's compatible in that 1% is not as likely.
	Absolutely, but you want to make sure you're moving in the circles where those 1% are, and you're not!
	Do you understand? They said to this guy named Willie, I can't remember his last name, he was a bank robber, I think, in the 20s.
	And they said to him, why do you rob banks?
	And he says, duh, because that's where the money is, right?
	You want to go to where the money is.
	If you're hanging around dating this girlfriend in her corrupt family, being called not a good person, you're not going to be within 12 light years of where that 1% is, right?
	Right. So it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, right?
	While I cling to these bad people, I can't see any good people, so I can't let go of these bad people.
	But while I cling to these bad people, I can't see any good people.
	Do you see? Yeah, it's just an endless loop.
	It is an endless loop, right?
	This is a self-fulfilling prophecy, right?
	But you say, look, I'm not going to find the good people until I let go of the bad people, and it might be quite some time, right?
	But that's the basic reality.
	You let go of the bad people, you become happier, you become more buoyant, you work on yourself, you begin to attract the notice of good people.
	Or you might find someone in the middle who will come your way because of your example, right?
	I mean, Christina was not an atheist when I met her.
	But because I had good, solid arguments, I was a happy person, and I had worked on myself in therapy, I had credibility for her.
	I've since completely eroded that, but for a brief moment there, probably for about 20 minutes from the second date, I had real credibility.
	It was beautiful. But because of my example, she was in the middle, right?
	But she was trained as a scientist, so with reason and evidence came her allegiance.
	Not to me, but to reason and evidence, right?
	She'd just never been exposed to these things before.
	But I never would have met her if I was dating some woman I didn't like, fundamentally, and wasn't going to work out, right?
	Because she'd have looked at me and she'd have said, okay, it's certainly true that you're ravishingly sexy, and if I squint, it's pretty much a Brad Pitt photocopy with a shiny egg, big thumb surface top.
	She would have said, yes, that is all true, but you're dating this woman who's a complete lunatic, so that tells me all I need to know about you.
	I'm going to keep moving, right? Yeah.
	Does that make sense? Yeah, it's making sense.
	Oh, you sound so enthusiastic.
	Yeah, I think I can see what's coming and it's gonna hurt.
	It is. It is going to hurt.
	And this is where my heart does go out to you.
	And it is painful, and it is ugly, and it is difficult.
	And it is tempting, right?
	Because you're like, you know, I can turn this thing around.
	One more day, one more day, one more day, right?
	But you've already put seven years in, and your relationship is not in a self-sustaining place, right?
	Right, but I wasn't into philosophy then.
	Oh, no, no, I understand that.
	But you put seven years in, And you still have total disagreements about family, virtue, economics, children, very basic things, right?
	Yeah. So, I don't have any way, obviously, and neither do you, of recovering the last seven years, but I can tell you this.
	Do you want to be where you are seven years from now?
	Do you want to be in your mid-thirties And still going, well, man, we still can't get together about this.
	We still can't agree about that.
	She's still enmeshed with her family.
	She still calls me a not good person.
	Do you want to be in your mid-30s and doing that?
	No.
	No, I don't.
	No, you really don't, right?
	Because we can't do anything about the stuff that we've done in the past, obviously, right?
	But we can learn from it. And there is that temptation, one more day, one more day, one more conversation, one more meeting, one more sit-down, one more pow-wow, I'll read RTR book again, I'll hand it to her, maybe she'll listen, maybe she'll read, maybe she'll understand, maybe she'll sympathize, maybe she'll grow, maybe she'll change, maybe, maybe, maybe, right?
	But life is finite, life is short.
	And every step we take down the wrong road is a step we gotta turn around and take back again later, right?
	Days turn into weeks, into months, into years, into decades, into a lifetime.
	And so, you want to look not at one more day, one more day, which will be your temptation, I think, because it's the path of least resistance in the moment.
	You know, like people say, one more cigarette, one more drink, one more whatever, right?
	One more one-night stand.
	But the reality is that you want to take the big picture view, with my humble suggestion, take the big picture view and say...
	Where do I want to be in five years?
	And work your way back from that.
	Well, I want to be in a happy and loving relationship.
	Maybe I want to be married. Maybe I want to have kids.
	Maybe I want to do all these things.
	And then you say, well, which direction am I going towards that now?
	Tomorrow? Am I going towards that now?
	And if you're not, I mean, if you're going in the wrong direction, Going further doesn't help you, right?
	In fact, it's quite the opposite.
	So you just want to say, okay, maybe these seven years were kind of like a wash with this woman, and that's painful, because we all have investment, but don't follow the fallacy of sunk costs, right?
	Well, because I invested seven years in something that doesn't work out, let's invest another year or two or three or seven.
	And for her too, right?
	Because if you care anything about her, if she's not able to make the leap to philosophy and so on, and if you're going to end up not marrying her and not having kids with her or whatever in seven years, then she'll be in her mid-30s and she'll be kind of screwed when it comes to having whatever she wants out of life, life, right?
	Yeah.
	And I'm not saying that you've got to rush off the phone and do it now.
	I myself would listen to the other Twelve hundred hours of RTR. It's only nine, I think.
	But listen to more of RTR and maybe other books that you find that are out there, the useful, the helpful, whatever.
	But particularly listen to the Simon the Boxer stuff and the definition of love that I propose.
	It doesn't mean that all of this is right and some of this is more metaphorical than philosophical, but be aware and alert to that which meshes with something within you.
	It gives you strength for what it is that you want, right?
	Do you think it's possible to love people that are half-virtuous?
	I don't know what half-virtuous means.
	You mean they only do a bad person half the time?
	Say they're really honest, but at the same time they can be hurtful.
	Is that possible?
	Well, I mean, yeah, people can be hurtful, of course.
	But the question is, what do you do after you've been hurtful?
	That's the real question when it comes to honesty.
	Because if you're really being honest, then the hurtfulness will diminish over time.
	Because you'll work it out, you'll figure out where it came from, you'll apologize, you'll feel really bad for what it is that you've done.
	I mean, if I snap at Christina, I literally will feel bad for like five days.
	Because she's got some voodoo thing.
	It's really scary.
	I don't know where it is. Once I find that doll, I'll be able to do what I want.
	How often do you do that? How often?
	Let me ask her.
	Not very often at all.
	Has it been decreasing over time?
	Oh yeah, certainly. For sure.
	Oh, maybe once every few months?
	Yeah, a couple of times a year.
	I'll probably say something that's snappy and then feel bad.
	So is this something where like when it occurs in a relationship you guys were like right on it but if you let it go it kind of gets worse?
	Yeah, when Steph says something that is snappy and I instantly feel it, I feel hurt immediately and if I don't say anything the look on my face will certainly let him know that there's a problem.
	So it gets dealt with right away.
	It gets dealt with right away, and it needs to get dealt with right away.
	And it can sometimes take our hours just to figure out what the source of the snappiness is, whether it's something that I'm doing, whether it's something that's coming from stuff.
	Either way, the snapping is just not allowed.
	So you guys are both really highly intelligent, very educated.
	You have a deep understanding of psychology.
	How are normal people supposed to go through this type of stuff?
	Frankly, I don't think it has anything to do with level of education.
	I think it's just understanding one's own feelings.
	So if your girlfriend says something that's hurtful, you call her on it.
	You just say, wow, that really hurt.
	You pay attention to your feelings.
	You just focus on your feelings over and over and over again and just explore the root of those feelings.
	And I don't think that that requires a lot of education.
	I think that in terms of formal education, academic education, it does require some of the kind of education that Steph is trying to do through Freedomain Radio.
	But not necessarily formal education.
	See, for instance, when Christina said there, Steph is trying to do, I felt both panic and blind rage.
	No, I'm sorry. Just kidding. Go on.
	So, but it would also require some kind of intelligence, right?
	Like a person with a 90 IQ would probably have trouble with this type of stuff?
	Yeah, I think so.
	I think intelligence, a certain degree of intelligence, is necessary but not sufficient.
	I mean, you sound like an intelligent guy.
	You know, I think this is something that you could certainly do.
	And certainly the people that you're going to have in your life are going to be of equal intelligence.
	People that you're going to have relationships with are going to be at your level.
	At least. So you went through something like this, right, Steph?
	You mean like a seven-year relationship that didn't work out?
	Yeah. Yeah, pretty much.
	Did you also quit your job or any of that type of thing?
	Sorry, you mean at that time?
	Yeah. No, I didn't.
	I didn't quit my job at the time.
	I moved out.
	I was living with the girl, and I moved out.
	And I was a roommate in somebody else's apartment.
	I did have my own room, but I moved out.
	I guess I was in my early 30s.
	I moved out and got my own place.
	Not my own place, but again, a roommate kind of situation.
	I did keep my existing job, though it wasn't more than a year later that I quit that job to work on writing The God of Atheists and other kind of books and so on.
	But my barrier was, and this is what I'm trying to help you over with in terms of a hump, my barrier was that When you apply those relationship standards to people, then they flow outwards, almost against your will, almost against your desire.
	They just flow outwards.
	It's like, you know, you can't put the genie back in the bottle.
	You can't put the toothpaste back in the toothpaste tube, right?
	Once you say, yeah, I have to be heard.
	Yes, I have to have a valid voice.
	Yes, I have to be treated with dignity and respect.
	Then that flows out everywhere.
	So yeah, you're like, hey, I like this match, and suddenly the whole world seems to be on fire.
	What makes people respectful?
	Why am I respectful?
	Well, I'm going to stop here, because just for interest in terms of time, I also get the feeling that these questions are going to go on forever, with all due respect, right?
	Because you can't think your way out of this one, right?
	And I know that you're very analytical and very smart.
	So what I would suggest is, you know, I think you've got enough food on the plate for today, if that makes any sense.
	And you've also got the RTR book, which I'd strongly suggest that you continue listening to and thinking about.
	And you've got this stuff to work on in terms of maybe being a little bit cocky about getting over the defu and being, you know, like a rock-solid Stone of Gibraltar guy about all that stuff to some degree.
	So I don't want to keep going because you've got a lot of stuff to work with here.
	And I think that you're trying to overload yourself in a sense so that you can go back to paralysis, which I know is your secret addiction, right?
	I get more information, and I get more possibilities, and I get more stuff than I can sit here and mull it over forever, right?
	I don't want to give you that, right?
	Because, I mean, you have this thing where you want to slide into procrastination and this sort of stuff, right?
	I want to do that?
	Well, sure, because you do it, right?
	I mean, deep down, you prefer it to the alternative, right?
	Whatever we do, we want to do to some degree.
	Oh, now he's going to ask another question about how that can be the case when it doesn't make him happy.
	But anyway, you're going to keep asking questions until you feel paralyzed, and I don't want to go down that road with you because I want to keep you hungry and dissatisfied.
	It's the kind of stuff that we change.
	We'll let other people have a chance to talk.
	I'll read the book and I'll work on it some more.
	Thanks very much.
	It was a great conversation.
	Yeah, thanks both guys. Okay.
	And so now we have a little bit of open time for other people, eh?
	Hello? Hello.
	I would like to...
	I'm sorry?
	Oh dear, cutting in and out.
	In fact, pretty much just now.
	Now it's working again.
	Yeah, if you could just lead into your mic and speak up a little bit, I can't hear you very well at all.
	I'm leaning into the mic.
	It looks like it's modulating close to 100%.
	Alright, I think we can survive with that.
	Please, go on. I would just like to share with you sort of like a metaphor.
	I know FDR really doesn't like those, but I'll throw this at you.
	I'm sorry to interrupt you just when you're getting started.
	Were you serious when you said that FDR is not big on metaphors?
	It's also not big on humor either.
	Or tangents! Okay, sorry, go on.
	One of the issues in getting these ideas across is that I suddenly realized that there's sort of like our vision.
	There are two blind spots in our field of vision that we don't see because the brain fills them in.
	And I'm thinking that the human mind likes this idea of having a complete picture all the time.
	Even if we don't And so people's view of the world always has this apparency of completeness to it.
	Even though there's a lot of really And the trick is to get people up to speed to realize, you know, like Twain observed, it's not so much ignorance, it's knowing so many things that ain't so.
	And it's bridging across that idea that in order to learn anything, it's not like you have to know something you don't know, you have to challenge something you think you already know.
	And that is the difficult thing to do.
	And I like this vision thing because people understand that, well, yeah, they have blind spots.
	And if somehow in the conversation you could make that map onto, well, they have blind spots in their own beliefs and their own worldview.
	And true human progress and personal growth has to do with You know, finding, testing all the information you have and finding, oh, well, that doesn't work.
	That's one of these blind spots where information just got made up.
	I just thought that was an interesting mental map.
	Well, I think that's, I mean, I can't say that you're wrong because that's exactly what is one of the core arguments in UPB. I'm guessing that you haven't availed yourself of the recently released free versions of all these books, but you may want to have, in fact, strongly suggest that if this is your approach, and it certainly is my approach as well, there's nothing more dangerous than a pseudo answer, right?
	Because if you're driving home, if you think you're home, you stop driving.
	And if you think you have an answer, you stop looking for an answer.
	So these pseudo-non-answers like, you know, God made the world.
	This is a classic pseudo-non-answer.
	Or, you know, the government will organize society is another classic non-answer.
	And where we have these non-answers, we stop looking, we stop thinking.
	And it is actually that which retards the intelligence of the species more, I think, than any other single factor.
	But if you go to freedomainradio.com, Just click on the free books thing.
	Have a look at the PDF or listen to the audiobook of UPB. I think that you'll find...
	I call it the null zone, but I think it's very similar to what you're talking about here.
	No, and I have read the book, and I was just wondering, did you have the thing about the vision in there, or...?
	I just go past that.
	No, no, that was good.
	I like the vision thing, though.
	I think that the problem that I have with the vision thing is that the brain actually does it very accurately.
	Like, the brain doesn't... When you're looking at a sunset...
	You know, the brain doesn't fill it in with Jennifer Aniston's breasts.
	Oh wait, actually it does sometimes.
	Sometimes, but not always.
	Actually once it didn't for me.
	But see, you're actually looking at something real and the brain is filling in a physical deficiency quite accurately, but that's certainly not what happens in the realm of philosophy, right?
	Yeah, I realize that the metaphor doesn't match totally onto the idea, but just the idea that the mind will make stuff up and the mind wants to have a complete picture of everything.
	Where this information comes from, yes, the brain does pretty good with the vision, but the mind doesn't do so well with making other things up.
	Actually, I did recently, this is in the premium section, but in the ambivalence series, I did recently use what I considered a fairly good eyeball metaphor.
	Eyes are pretty good for metaphors and so on.
	And I was talking about how ambivalence is having more than one, is feeling about a certain topic differently, depending on which way you look at it and so on.
	And I was saying that, you know, if you only have one eye, you really can't perceive depth very well.
	But if you have two eyes, you can perceive depth.
	Yeah, I really like that series.
	The multiple viewpoints give a much more accurate picture than just the one, yes.
	And it's also very cool when you're in social situations and you introduce yourself as the plenary Star Council of Truth.
	I find that will get you some questions or at least some personal space.
	Yes, quite. Anyway, keep up the good work, Steph.
	I admire everything you're doing, and I just want to help the forward flow.
	Well, thank you so much, and of course, I really do appreciate your extraordinarily kind donations, and I hope that you're getting bang for your buck.
	Oh, I've gotten way more than my money's worth.
	I almost, almost feel like I'm cheating.
	I'm happy to be so cheated, so thank you so much again.
	Alright, the phone line-ish internet thing is open.
	Oh, and if you want to listen, I had an interesting hour or two on the radio last night on We The People Radio Network, the Mark Stevens Show.
	You can find that for...
	A download, I'll also...
	What I do is I clean up these shows and take out the ads for toxic internet cyber blobs and Jack Blood's House of Infinite Rocket Launchers Against the State and clean up the audio a bit.
	But I put those in the premium sections if you want to listen to it with a little less internet cheapskate advertising nuttiness.
	It's available there.
	But if you don't have access to that, you can go to that other site or somebody usually will post it on the board.
	But it was a good show. I thought it was interesting.
	So... Anyway, that's it.
	whoever wants to speak next, the mic she is yours.
	Okay, well, since Nate is on now, happy birthday.
	No, just kidding.
	Sorry, go on.
	I figured I'll chime in since no one else is doing that.
	Time away. And the nice thing is, as you've said in the chat window, birthday boy equals birthday suit.
	And thank you very much.
	Just remember to clean your chair.
	So thank you very much. And happy birthday.
	Yes, you're all very lucky I don't have a webcam.
	By the way, thank you for the webcam image.
	I had a question, one for me, one about a kind of a dream I had and this, well not new guy, but newly identified guy who you talked about in the ambivalence series.
	It's Mr.
	Past equals present equals future.
	Right, right. And he's been full of despair all weekend.
	I've recently dumped the remainder of my so-called friends, I guess.
	All the little stragglers.
	Easy, give me your answer, too.
	My mental system doesn't want to have anything to do with you.
	Sorry, go on. Right.
	That's basically it.
	I call him Doc Brown because I don't know if you've seen Back to the Future.
	It's a very fitting name.
	Yeah, pretty much. Yeah, look in the mirror at that wild-eyed crazy scientist guy.
	Right. Right.
	So, I had this dream after talking with him last night, and it's a very...
	I know what the dream involves as far as this guy.
	It makes a little bit of sense.
	I don't really get it entirely.
	Hold on, I'm looking for it.
	No, no, I understand that.
	I mean, the show's been going on for an hour.
	It's tough to get prepared in that kind of time.
	Take your time. I'll just go into another song.
	No rush. There's a procrastination coming along these days, by the way.
	Sorry, go on. Well, this dream involved the past, present, and future.
	It starts out kind of skippy.
	It skips around a little.
	I'm not sure what came first.
	Sorry, what happened the day before?
	We need to know what happened the day before.
	The day before, I had been feeling very full of despair all day, and before that, the day before that, I wrote this long post and dropped all my friends off my LiveJournal, and I'm not really responding to Maisie anymore, who hasn't bothered to talk to me since I asked her a bunch of hard-hitting questions the last time I saw her, and she just kind of disappeared off the map.
	So I don't think she's coming back either.
	So I have this dream after a day full of trying to talk with this past future guy and it starts out with like somebody points me to some videos,
	YouTube videos that Maisie made talking about me saying not so nice things and then suddenly I get zapped into a park which is a Houston area park with a theater that's outdoors and And there's some kind of weird ceremony going on on a hill with these men in blue robes that are all spread out perfectly even around the hill all over it.
	And they're all doing some kind of weird thing.
	And I take out my iPod and suddenly it's got a radio feature and I try to tune into the radio because I was expecting there to be something on the radio about it.
	And usually there's some kind of music that goes along with these outdoor things on the radio on some stations.
	So I realized it only tunes into AM radio, so I looked for an AM radio station for it, and I was expecting something patriotic, but I couldn't find it.
	So I get to the top of the hill, turn around, and suddenly I'm on this train platform, and there's this train.
	And there's an actual train that goes around this park.
	Which is strange, but it doesn't look anything like this wooden train that had these wooden tracks.
	And there's a bunch of people getting into the train, into this wooden train, and they go around the tracks, and it goes really fast.
	And I'm like, wow, how efficient.
	And so I follow it fairly quickly, and I watch it as it goes, and it tips over, and at the end, this, like, Obviously, this lady works for some kind of the city or something, some kind of state organization.
	She stands up and gives a speech about how they're going to improve the efficiency and the problems on the train and the issues with it tipping over.
	And then suddenly I get zapped into...
	And to the year 1100.
	And there's this guy, he's King Henry I, I guess.
	I mean, everybody was saying around me that he's King Henry I. He's this old, gruff-looking guy with a beard, and he's wearing these clothes that look old underneath, but around him hanging on top of him is another outfit that looks like a regular business suit from modern times.
	And so I'm trying to point out to him that the suit is something from modern times, and this is something that happens in the future.
	And he's got this grey tie, and it's tied very loosely, and it's like, wow.
	I'm amazed, because I think that somehow, in the dream, that people got this kind of dress in the future from this old-style clothing.
	And then I... I go on and on about the suit and he laughs and he says, ah, yes I know, you're from the future.
	Like kind of as though he doesn't believe me but he's just humoring me.
	So I pull out my car keys and I say, these are my car keys.
	And yes, car, car, I know.
	And I say, that's how we get around.
	And he still doesn't believe me.
	So I pull out my cell phone that I expect to be a trio but it ends up being an iPhone.
	And I don't plan on getting the G3 iPhone model until like June or later.
	So I have this iPhone and I'm showing him the iPhone.
	And I say, see?
	This is proof. I'm from the future.
	And he laughs. And then...
	I'm still fumbling with it.
	My mother shows up behind me and I turn around and I go up to her and I show her, I mean just without even thinking I walk up to my own mother who I prefer to just avoid and I show her the map on the iPhone and it's a map of of a castle in this place and I show her where I've been and she pretends to be interested and excited for me and then I'm trying to zoom the map in and out and suddenly we're in a bus going somewhere to some kind of It's supposed to be the port of Houston,
	but it's not. Then across the docks, across this big giant sea thing, you can see China.
	The US is going to war with China, and I get really angry.
	I try to express to my mother this passionate anger that if And everybody else on the bus, too, that if the US goes to war with China, I'm not going to fight in that war.
	I'm going to escape. I'm going to move.
	I'm not responsible for the actions of the state, nor the consequences they bring upon themselves.
	And I get really kind of incensed and enraged and then just kind of ignored.
	We arrive at the docks and then I go into this restaurant and I go up following my mother who disappeared and then I find my grandmother and my aunt sitting at a table and they know that I've been gone a long time, meaning deep food, and then I know I'm not supposed to be there and I don't want to talk to them.
	And I maintain my anger at them as I sit there at the table and I'm still trying not to talk to them.
	I ask myself, how did I get myself back into this situation?
	Why am I with them? Why am I back with these people?
	I grumble a few words and then wake up.
	I've had recurring dreams where I end up back with my family and I wonder what the hell I've done to get back with them.
	Why I'm there with them?
	And then I had another reoccurring dream of a water park and I was going to ask you what water parks signify.
	I don't know. I don't want to overload my circuitry with 12 million dreams because you already have a dream here which has four major elements in it.
	So let's deal with that as briefly as we can and we'll maybe save the water park for another time or maybe this aspect of the dream will help you.
	Dreams about early trauma almost always occur when we stop self-medicating with either social stuff or drugs or dating or sex or drinking or whatever, right?
	So you have stopped self-medicating with the illusions of these relationships, right?
	With Maisie, with these other friends, and there's been this process of de-escalating or de-involving yourself in these relationships over the past few months, right?
	Right. So, then you have a dream that you're back...
	Well, I mean, there's lots of complex elements to the dream, and we can't get into each one of them, but you have a situation at the beginning of the dream where there's a kind of precision that is supposed to be accompanied with propagandistic music, right, on this AM radio?
	But you can't find it, right?
	Now, the question is, of course, if you are a philosopher, an anarchist, and so on, then you should not be wanting to tune into that which is patriotic anyway, right?
	Right. Right.
	So, in this sense, you're doing something that is against your values, right?
	You want to watch this outdoor show, which, if it's got patriotic music, must be funded by the state, because most of these things are, right?
	these outdoor plays or these installations in New York, they all receive government money, right?
	Right.
	So in the beginning here, these guys in the blue whatever suits, they're in precision and you're supposed to be listening in to this patriotic stuff, so already you're kind of against your values, and then you go and talk or go and listen to a politician who talks about how they're going to avoid train wrecks, and you don't and then you go and talk or go and listen to a politician who talks about how they're going to avoid train wrecks, and you don't feel any outrage about that, you don't Right, right, right.
	And that's important. So this says that in these situations you have no connection to the truth, to your values, to your accurate and philosophical or anarchistic interpretation of the world, right?
	Huh. So then when you are not in connection with your values, what happens?
	You go back in time, right?
	Interesting. When you're not in connection with your values, you are in effect back in time because when we were kids we could not be in connection with our values because our parents would attack us for being in connection with any rational values, right?
	That does make sense.
	So you go back in time and then you're trying to say to people, no, I'm from the future!
	And for them, there is no such thing as time, right?
	And they're profoundly unimpressed by the fact that you're from the future.
	Because they're like, yeah, you're from the future, I got it, right?
	They don't care, right? And they also know that there's this future, but they don't even want to go there, right?
	Right. Clearly, we'd rather be in 2008 than the year 1100, right?
	Definitely. You know, which had a massive galactic suckiness to it, right?
	You get the plague, you got crazy ass religious people, you've got a life expectancy of 12 seconds, I mean, but these people are profoundly unimpressed by the future, by the toys, by your claims, and you want to tell them, you want to prove to these people that you're from the future, right?
	These primitive, barely out of the caves, dark ages people, right?
	Right. And you've had these friends that you've wanted to try and bring philosophy to, right?
	Yeah. Does that make any connections for you?
	I've been trying to convince them for a long time, and there's no change.
	Nothing. They believe that you're from the future, right?
	They're like, oh shit, yeah, we get people from the future here all the time, right?
	Right. Right, so they accept that you're from the future, they just don't care, right?
	Right, right.
	Your friends accept that you're a philosopher, that you speak the truth, they just don't care.
	Yeah, they go back off and start talking about stupid, pointless things, like how they got drunk the other night, or how Britney Spears did X, you know, whatever.
	What did Britney Spears do? Sorry, sorry, get back to your dream.
	Let's go back to your dream. Ooh, baby, baby.
	So, these people, they don't care, they're profoundly unimpressed, but you still want to convince these people that you have value, that you're from the future, that you have these great toys, you want to create value, About yourself or interest in yourself for something that you didn't earn, right? Obviously the iPhone is cool in the year 1100, but it's not like you invented it.
	It's not like you even sweated your brain to build a time machine.
	You just fell back there, right?
	Right, right, exactly.
	So you're trying to claim, look, I'm valuable, I'm interesting.
	It's not your inventions and it's just accidental that you happen to be there, right?
	Oh, right. Yeah, because I just popped in there.
	And you're not sitting there saying to them, you poor bastards in 1100, what a terrible life you must be having, right?
	You're all about, hey, look, I'm from the future, I've got shiny, it's all about you, right?
	Oh, interesting.
	And when you're trying to provide, when you're trying to create value that you did not earn, you're trying to create the impression that you're valuable for things that you did not earn, for other people who don't care and it's all about you, who comes along?
	My mother.
	Mother! Right?
	Right. Not surprising.
	Right. Right.
	And you're still completely disconnected from your values because now you're trying to convince your mom that you have value and you're of interest because you come from the future even though in the reality of this dream she also has come from the future and she doesn't care either, right?
	Right, she doesn't care either.
	She seems interested Only in that, hey, she gets to have me back in her life or whatever, for her own nefarious purposes, whatever those are. But you want to be there too, because you follow her, right?
	And then you're like, holy shit, I've ended up here with my aunt and my grandmother, and it's like, well, yeah, this is what happens when you're disconnected from your values.
	Oh, jeez.
	And I think this is very encouraging.
	I know that this blah blah blah, right?
	You feel negative. But I think this is hugely encouraging.
	Because this is the great secret of what we're up to, right?
	I always have these new shell games.
	It's like, ooh, here's the great secret of what we're up to.
	And I've talked about this before, but it has yet to connect with the community.
	Partly because I've talked about it in the premium section and we talked about it in ambivalence part 6, the conference call and so on.
	But this is the great secret of what we're up to.
	That it's not about us.
	Philosophy, like medicine, is not about the health of the doctor or the philosopher.
	We need those things. I mean, you can't be a doctor if you're dying of something.
	So you need to be healthy.
	But your health...
	As a doctor is only the necessary but not sufficient criteria for being a good doctor.
	You have to be healthy, but health is, after that's achieved, becomes irrelevant.
	And so, for you, you still want to, and I understand that, it's very common, and I did for many years too, so again, it's just me, I'm still trying to get out of this pit.
	But we want to use philosophy as a means of self-aggrandizement, right?
	I'm smart, I've got the answers, I want to instruct you, I want to inform you, I'm from the future, I'm superior, I'm, right?
	Oh, yeah. But our love of philosophy is just accidental, we didn't wish it, in fact, there are many goddamn times we'd wish to not have it, right?
	Right. So this dream, in my opinion, is about the following.
	Fundamentally. I think this works into the China thing later, but...
	The doctor is only measured in the cure rate, right?
	The value of the doctor, the efficacy of the doctor is only measured by the amount of people that he fucking well cures.
	Not the amount of people he talks to, not the amount of people who come stampeding through his office or linger there and whine and complain and bitch about this, that or the other that they don't want to change.
	It's not measured by the number of prescriptions that he prescribes.
	It is not measured by the amount of words that come out of his mouth.
	It is not measured by the degrees on his wall or the number of hours a day he spends as a doctor, right?
	By the number of people he cures.
	Right. Right, right, right.
	And we know that every time a doctor is investing time, energy, and resources, pissing down a bottomless pit of somebody else's indifference, that he's not curing a whole bunch of other people, right?
	That was the essence of what I wrote about.
	Right. Philosophy is all about the audience.
	Philosophy is all about how many people You light up with truth and reason.
	And the opportunity costs are always being recorded by our conscience.
	If we're in it to be smarter, to be comfortable, to try and work existing relationships, rather than strike out to wherever we can have the most conceivably positive effect, that is all recorded.
	And to the degree that we do that, it's about us.
	It's not about the world.
	It's not about our love of truth.
	It's not about our desire to ignite the minds of others.
	We are only measured in our own conscience.
	There's no external measurement.
	We are only measured by the degree to which we light up the world.
	We are not measured by effort.
	We are not measured by words.
	We are not measured by creativity.
	We are not measured by blog posts.
	We are not measured by board posts.
	We are not measured by chat interactions.
	We are not measured by conversations.
	We are not measured by anything but how many times do we light up a mind.
	Do we pass this infection of the love of truth to other people?
	Because for most people, even if you have a temporary success with someone, and we've all experienced this, if you have a temporary success with someone, you reason them into submission.
	It's like lifting an iceberg.
	You lift this iceberg and you strain yourself and it's massive and it's huge, this big boulder of ice, and then the moment you let go of it, back into the water it goes and it bobs there in a lackadaisical manner, right?
	Yet we arise from the ice, the Arctic ice, like rockets from a submarine.
	We are unstoppable and those are the people we need to find and those are the people we need to wake up and those are the people we need to light up and there's nothing else that matters in terms of philosophy, in terms of our efficacy as philosophers.
	So all those people on the bus who were indifferent, same thing I guess.
	I was yelling about my not being responsible for the actions of this gang and the consequences.
	Well, yeah, you're talking to people about how angry you are at the state, right?
	In other words, it's about your feelings about the state.
	Which is annoying, right?
	Fundamentally. Because what it's really about is other people.
	Not about your feelings, not about your thoughts, not about your ideas, not about...
	It is about other people.
	It is about not whether they get that you don't like the state, but about whether they get to think.
	Not about your conclusions, but about their capacity to think, right?
	I always hate them.
	This is why I did this new book with no answers whatsoever.
	There's not an answer in there.
	And I know that I've given answers in the podcast of this and that, and forget that for the moment, just put that down to an yet unexplained possible hypocrisy.
	But it is about lighting up your mind.
	It's about lighting up the minds of the listeners.
	If I have to make jokes, if I have to cry, if I have to yell, if I have to reveal embarrassing secrets about myself, if I have to talk about my mom one more time, if I have to pretend to be a space alien from Luxembourg, if I have to learn a new way to present information on PowerPoint with a little talking head in the top left corner, that's what I'll do to get the message across.
	Because it's about the receptivity on the other side.
	It's not how brilliant the iPhone is, it's how many people will buy it.
	Not want to buy it, not might buy it, not go, ooh, that's shiny and cool, and put it down again.
	It's about how many people buy it.
	I mean, we've all had these sales I don't know, maybe you have these sales people.
	You go to Best Buy, you go to Radio Shack or something, and you have these sales people, and all they do is bore you with their technical knowledge, right?
	Right. And you end up going, well, I guess he knows some shit, but I don't want to buy anything, right?
	Yeah, it looks nice, but...
	Why? He hasn't asked me about my needs.
	He hasn't established my readiness to buy.
	He hasn't figured out how what he's got can match my needs.
	He hasn't asked me any questions.
	It's about the other person.
	It's not about giving them answers.
	It's not about showing how smart you are.
	It's about meeting the need of the other person.
	We are slaves to the future of the world.
	Right? We are slaves to the effect that we have on others.
	Because that's what philosophy is for.
	After you've got the oxygen mask over your own face, then you turn to the other.
	We've had to go through this process, right?
	The first thing is it's about abstracts.
	That was the first part of the series.
	The second part is that it's about our own lives.
	And the third part is now we can completely devote ourselves to others, to the world.
	Because there's such astounding joy in that, right?
	As I've said before on my recent call with JC, how is it that I keep going?
	Because once you get a hold of the heroine of helping others, There's no substitute.
	There is nothing other than love, which this is a part of, that makes me happier than getting somebody excited and thrilled about the truth.
	There's nothing that is better than that.
	And that's, of course, since philosophy is happiness, that is the happiness that I want other people to have.
	And once you get that happiness, you won't waste your time in a frustrated, pointless interaction with people who don't give a shit, or who claim to, and it doesn't matter if they do or don't, the effect is the same.
	But you'll keep looking for the person who will light up, and who will then become somebody else who will learn the truth and spread it, right?
	That's how we're going to spread, not by pounding our head against the wall of indifferent people, but by finding other people like ourselves who are potentially Powerful philosophers and lighting them up, right?
	That's kind of what I stopped doing this weekend.
	Right, and that's why I think you had this dream, right?
	Which is all about ineffectiveness, right?
	You can't convince anyone of anything in these dreams because it's about you.
	It's not about them. How do I make it about them?
	Well, you just keep asking questions.
	Because what we do is we open up like a fusillade, like an 1812 overture cannon fire of facts, information, conclusions, philosophy, and this and that and the other, right?
	Right. But we don't ever ask, are you worthy of what I have to offer?
	Does what I have to offer meet any kind of need in you?
	Am I going to waste time talking to you when there are 20 other people in the room?
	One of which... Might just light up in the way that we see people.
	I keep coming to the board. We get these messages.
	I get them in my inbox. I found this and I was like a man in a desert finding his first oasis.
	Those are the people we want, not the people where it's like pushing string to get it to move, right?
	You just wiggle the tail and nothing happens anywhere else.
	Man.
	But if you just make it about, "Am I connecting with somebody?" And if I'm not connecting with somebody, if they're not excited, I'll change what I'm doing, I'll switch the person I'm talking to like I'm like water, trying to find a way downhill.
	I hit a rock, I go around it.
	I hit a gully, I fill it up till I spill over.
	But the sole goal, and this is advanced stuff, right?
	This is like total next level, right?
	But the sole goal Once you've got your shit together, it's to spread the shit.
	The only measure that we have of success is connection with others.
	And the world is not in a place where we're going to connect with many people relative to the number of people that we talk to.
	You and I, I think we both talked to this one guest one time about something about gun rights.
	It started off with gun rights, and I thought, okay, I'm going to take Steph's advice and start asking questions in the chat room, engaging a guest, asking questions to engage my ecosystem.
	One of the guys in my ecosystem appeared right away and just started lambasting me about, you know, I'm incapable of doing this right and I'll fail and all this stuff and I'm trying to ask this guy questions and I do okay with the curiosity thing for a while but then suddenly I get irritated and I stop being curious and then But that's good.
	That's good. What's wrong with that?
	That's incredibly helpful.
	I thought...
	Well, when you came in after...
	There's a rule, Steph, called curiosity, right?
	And at the moment I'm no longer curious, I have failed.
	I have broken the rule, right?
	Right. Well, when did I ever say there was a rule called curiosity?
	I think there's a rule called authenticity and integrity to what you feel and trusting your instincts, right?
	Right. But there's no rule called curiosity.
	That's an outcome, right?
	You can't have a rule called be happy.
	I mean, if you could, there's no need to philosophy.
	He's a heroine, right? So you're curious, and I think curious is a rational way to approach an interaction, but then if you get annoyed, you're like, shit, I'm annoyed.
	That means that this person is not worth talking to.
	Huh. That's your mycosystem saying, stop investing here and find someone else to talk to.
	Today I call the guy bitchy on the board.
	I'm not curious about him and I'm perfectly comfortable with that.
	Yeah, I saw that.
	Right, I mean, so it's just a rule called authenticity and self-trust, right?
	You can call that a rule.
	But your ecosystem is perfectly helpful here, right?
	Because when you get irritated, you don't have to continue.
	Because it's not fun, right?
	I was making a false dichotomy out of it, I guess.
	Well, you're like, I have a rule called curiosity, and the moment I feel irritation, I'm not following the rule, right?
	But you can't program philosophy.
	The philosophy of interaction, for sure, right?
	RTR is not a series of rules, right?
	And the RTR is with you, and you say, I'm now angry and not curious, therefore that's bad.
	You say what? I'm angry?
	Well, yeah, but you knew you were angry.
	What's the question you ask?
	Why am I angry? Yeah, I wonder why I'm angry.
	You look back over the chat window, you stop that annoying scrolly thing, you look back over the chat window and you say, okay, is this person treating me with respect and curiosity and dignity?
	Are they dogmatic?
	Are they annoying? Are they insulting?
	Are they condescending? You just look it over, right?
	And if you find evidence of that, you say, oh, well, that's why I'm angry.
	Do I want to continue this conversation?
	No. So I don't, right?
	It's just strange that I got kind of anxious right away.
	Why would that be strange?
	We've always talked about how we know everything, even in the chat room, on the first interaction or two.
	Like there's this guy comes in and he keeps talking about what the definition of existence is and what the definition of concepts are and so on, right?
	So he argued me into mute exhaustion when not being able to find any of his terms.
	He rejected the offer of a Skype call, which I would have enjoyed and so on.
	And then he came back later in and he started engaging exactly the same way with me.
	And I said, are you the guy from before?
	And he said, yes. And I said, well, why didn't you introduce yourself?
	It seems kind of, you know, if I didn't enjoy the conversation before, coming back and not introducing yourself seems kind of slimy.
	I didn't say that, right? Well, it depends how you define introduction.
	Oh my god. It's like, okay, I think I get this, right?
	I just have no desire to interact with him anymore.
	No desire to be curious.
	Like, I just don't care. Because life's short, and there's ten other people I could be talking to, or a million other podcasts I could be working on.
	I could be working on more of the book or I could even be taking a nap, be more fun.
	Yeah, I need to listen to these guys more often.
	They seem to be right.
	More often? All the time, I guess.
	I'm going to come in there with you and haunt your dreams.
	All the time. Yeah, listen to them all the time.
	It doesn't mean you're their slave, doesn't mean they're your slave, but don't be the guy who tries to manage the Miko system and then claim that you're against statism, right?
	Right. I hate the state because it's censorious.
	It's censorious people. Oh, I don't want to talk to you now.
	You're not convenient. Well, thanks, Steph.
	And let me just say one last thing, Nate, which I think is important.
	You have a tendency...
	Along with Greg, the dark lord of magnificent nihilism, you have a tendency of just looking at the downside, right?
	The breakthroughs pass by unnoticed, but every hiccup feels like a disaster, right?
	You nailed it.
	Right, I know, I know. But look, since you started being curious in the chat window, what has happened with your friendships, your quote, friendships?
	They're gone. Right.
	Now, feel free to type in the chat window if you feel that this is a disaster of epic proportions and that Nate could chase after these people he has told us so much about over the last year or two.
	Anyone? Anyone?
	Anyone? I assume that's cynicism.
	It doesn't seem to be that there's many fans of these, quote, friends of yours, right?
	Because we've seen how you've been hurt in your interaction with them over and over again, and we've all recognized that you're Simon the Boxer shadowboxing and so on.
	So that's a huge breakthrough.
	So through the ambivalence series, through the ambivalence conversation that we have, particularly around the Jeep dealership or the Saturn dealership, I think it was, And if you haven't heard this, you're Diamond Plus.
	I can't remember the number, but it's Ambivalence Part 6.
	It's in the 90s. Listen to it if you listen to none of the other Ambivalence stuff about this.
	But what's happened is you've taken on this curiosity thing in the chat window, and you've lost interest in these, quote, friendships, right?
	Well, I think this, yeah, my ecosystem sort of, they did come to life.
	There was a correlation there.
	Well, it's too close in time to be a mere coincidence, right?
	We had this ambivalence chat, I think, about 10 days ago.
	You started being curious in the chat window, and these friendships that have lasted for years are gone, right?
	It's a very, very interesting quinky-dink there.
	Don't make me come over there.
	I'm going to team up with Mr.
	Shocklord and you, and...
	It's more than a coincidence, right?
	It can't conceivably be a coincidence that ten days after, actually in fact if you count Friday, I think it was seven or eight days after you start doing this, you've lost interest in these addictive friendships that have gone on for years and years and years, right?
	and all I'm trying to say is that's a huge breakthrough and that's what came out of the work you were doing in the chat window where you think you somehow have mysteriously failed right because you were curious in the chat window which led to irritation in the chat window and what happened with your friendships right They vanished.
	Because you felt irritation with your friendships, you see?
	Curiosity in the chat leads to irritation in the chat window, leads to irritation with your friendships and dumping unproductive relationships.
	Yeah, that one girl came along and she's gone now too.
	But you see the pattern there, right?
	I'm not trying to make anything up.
	This just seems to me the clear correlation, right?
	Yeah, that...
	I can't deny it.
	I was curious in the chat window.
	It led to irritation and a disengagement with people in the chat window.
	I'm curious with my friends, which leads to irritation and a disengagement with unproductive friends, right?
	Right. So you should be celebrating.
	Magnificent solitude.
	That's what FDR is all about.
	Yay, solitude.
	Oh, my birthday.
	Yeah, there's a party in my head at least.
	Yeah, sometimes we'd wish to be a little bit more alone, right?
	And just think, what is it, April?
	When were you originally going to get married?
	May? May 5th.
	May 5th. Hmm, I'm really looking forward to the dream you're going to have on May the 4th.
	It's an epic murder mystery starring anyone.
	So I have a question for you, and this is about your book that you're writing.
	You're writing about the...
	You're writing about anarchy, and you're not giving answers, and this is a new approach.
	Sorry, is this a new approach?
	I mean, I could tell tons of answers through the podcast series, right?
	But this is really designed for people who have never been in this conversation whatsoever.
	And so it is merely designed to show the shortcomings of existing theories, which opens up the possibility for people to become curious about anarchism.
	That's really all it's about.
	So it's another save game.
	Sorry, that just geeked me out a little bit too much.
	Perhaps you could try that again.
	You're the one that came up with the metaphor.
	Your save game metaphor.
	When? Where? I've been on a good ecosystem party on that podcast, so maybe I didn't catch.
	You said UPB, RTR, and the Untruth books were save games where you can just go back and you're done with that.
	We can move on. I remember that part.
	I don't remember the save game part.
	It doesn't matter. I'm sure that you're right.
	But anyway, you had a question about the book.
	Yes. The question is, where does the academia thing fit into all this?
	And is that just coming later?
	No, that's coming later.
	And that's not going to be a book.
	That's going to be a presentation.
	Or a series of presentations about academia.
	No, that's not in the book.
	But the ambivalence led me to this book, right?
	The ambivalence series led me to this book because fundamentally human beings are incredibly ambivalent about anarchism.
	We desperately want it in something like the dating world.
	We don't want the government to tell us who we have to marry.
	So we desperately want free choice and a non-centralized, non-coercive free market situation when it comes to dating, getting married, choosing a career, whether to have kids, where we live, where we drive.
	We want that to be completely uncoerced and a free market situation and we love that to death.
	So we love the anarchy that we live, and we are terrified of the anarchy that is the abstract political boogeyman.
	So we have a highly ambivalent relationship to anarchy.
	And that's really just all I'm trying to point out.
	Because anarchy is a word that's just considered evil, like murder or whatever, right?
	But the truth is that we don't have in life...
	We don't say, well, somebody strangled five...
	Kids in the morning and then helped an old lady across the street in the afternoon, so they're both good and bad, right?
	You say no, pretty much the strangling kids trumps the helping the old lady across the street.
	Given that we both love and fear anarchy, we just have to figure it can't be both that it's really, really good and it's really, really bad.
	UPB doesn't allow for that, so we have to figure out what's really going on.
	That's why I call it everyday anarchy, because we absolutely desire, need, and love anarchy in the everyday lives that we lead, but then there's this abstract political anarchy that terrifies us and so on, and we just have to recognize that that's a contradiction that we need to figure out.
	If we want to be wise and we want to deal with things that are honest about the way we actually live and think and feel.
	That's really the core of the book, to prove that people love anarchy and fear anarchy, and we need to unravel that.
	Makes all the sense in the world.
	Thanks for all your help today.
	Make the book shorter, actually, come to think of it.
	No, I'm kidding. Okay, well, thanks.
	You're very welcome and glad that it was helpful.
	I guess we have time for one more very short question, if anyone has it, just because I love giving up the bandwidth to the Sunday shows.
	So, anything else?
	Any other questions? Don't give me any...
	Yeah, I have a question.
	Yes, go ahead. Okay, what you said about paying attention to your own annoyance, so you're saying there's such a thing as being too polite, and is the time to stop being polite when you feel annoyed?
	Or should you just, if you think that expressing the annoyance is going to screw it up, I mean, what does that mean?
	Well, my approach is that To be conscious of the public space, to me, is important.
	And this, you know, is complicated, but I'll try and keep it brief.
	If I am in an email conversation with someone who's pissing me off, then I simply will tell them I'm not going to continue the conversation.
	And you've seen me do this, if you've listened to any of the later shows to do with religion or with The guy who thought something to do with military voodoo or whatever, right?
	That if people don't have a standard of truth, if they're just evasive and manipulative, then I just stop talking with them and so on, right?
	So that's sort of one situation.
	There's no need to be rude with these people and to get angry, because it's just a one-on-one situation, right?
	I'm somewhat... Sorry, go on.
	Yeah, of course, but I have a question.
	I mean, if somebody's being evasive, I can still know exactly what they're talking about, but it's harder work to, you know, get the truth out of the fog, if that makes sense?
	Well, sure, and you will know whether that work is worth it ahead of time.
	Just in your gut, right?
	You'll know. You'll know for sure.
	Okay. Like, I mean, to use a coach metaphor, right?
	Some people are very hard to coach.
	They don't work, they show up late, they smoke, this kind of stuff, right?
	So what's the only reason you'd continue to coach someone like that?
	Does that mean if you see potential in them or something?
	Well, staggering potential, right?
	Because for every roadblock that somebody puts in towards the truth, they would have to have staggering potential for achievement with other people, right?
	And remember, we're all about training the trainer at the moment.
	We're not about training the population, in my view.
	It's far too early for that.
	We're training the trainer. I'm trying to turn you guys into philosophers.
	I mean, this sounds ridiculous, but I'm not trying to turn you guys into people who live philosophy.
	I'm trying to turn you into philosophers, which is people who can communicate in a positive and magnetic and electric manner about the value and virtue and happiness of truth.
	So we're in a train-the-trainer situation, which is why I go so deeply into communication skills in this area.
	Because if you're just into making yourself happy, people could have stopped listening like a long time ago.
	There's enough in the early podcasts, the first couple of hundred.
	But people who are up here at this level, we are trying to get them to be positive.
	And that's what I mean about to be positive and effective in terms of getting other people in the role of communicating about people.
	Because maybe I can change the minds of a few thousand people in my lifetime.
	Well, compared to the population of the world, that's nothing.
	So what I have to do is to recognize that I need to train those few thousand people to each themselves change the minds of a few hundred other people who each themselves can change the minds of a few hundred others.
	That's the only way that it can work.
	Even with the magnificent replicative power of the Internet.
	The only way that it can work is to not get people to change their minds, but to change their minds and become amazing communicators, or at least effective communicators, about the truth and beauty of philosophy.
	So with that in mind, if I'm in a public situation and somebody's being a jerk, I actually will be somewhat rude.
	Because I'm sick and tired of this whole idea that the most rational person in the room is never allowed to be rude.
	Okay, sure.
	Right, so when when some guy comes on the board as he has recently the Stuart fellow and starts talking trash about how you know, UPB is is an embarrassing and pitiful theory that has no respect anywhere and blah goes on on these long diatribes about it and without actually taking the time to disprove a single one of the arguments that it puts forward, it's like, yeah, I get that you're fucking with me, and I'm going to go back at you, right?
	I was polite to him, but I mean, it was kind of interesting to see how that worked, I thought.
	Sure. And if you felt like being polite, there's no right answer here, right?
	It's just to do with instinct and where you are in the conversation and what you're comfortable with and what is appropriate for you and what you can sustain.
	There's no right answers here.
	I mean, obviously, I'm not going to sit there and call his mother horrible names or whatever.
	But no, if he's being bitchy and condescending, I'm going to say you're being bitchy and condescending, right?
	And... So, from that standpoint, and earlier I said to the guy, to the fellow I was talking about earlier, don't call your girlfriend manipulative, right?
	And here I'm saying that you're being bitchy and condescending.
	The difference is, as I said, I don't want a relationship with this guy, right?
	So I can talk. And also, I've gone through this with so many different people now over the years that I just trust and know when things are going on.
	You don't have to RTR from here to the grave once you get comfortable with the conclusions that you come to and you know you're not projecting.
	You can be a little more efficient.
	People are going to write to me because everybody's hungering for sniffing out these contradictions.
	So I just want to sort of preempt that one.
	But no, I think it's okay for us to be a little punchy.
	If we've got truth and reason on our side, and we're open to the methodology of being corrected, and someone comes along and just starts saying, you know, well, this little book, which is 140 pages, it has absolutely no footnotes, it doesn't reference Wittgenstein whatsoever, all that kind of stuff.
	It's like, screw you, you pompous windbag, you know?
	You know, if you're so wise about all the limitations to UPB, why don't you actually do us the kindness of letting us know what those limitations are so that we can fix up the theory?
	Well, yeah, sure, that makes a lot of sense.
	It's just that, I mean, my personal problem is being too punchy all the time.
	So, I mean, I guess I can see why I would overcompensate in that area.
	Right. And for you, I mean, again, this is the context relative to your particular situation, right?
	Because you've got a world of hurt that's going on at the moment, that you're going to be a little brusque and abrupt with yourself in particular and with other people as well.
	And you've got enough to manage with what's going on for you at the moment without necessarily having to get into punching bag matches on the internet with other people, right?
	You need a certain amount of stillness and calm.
	at the moment around you and a certain amount of peace and sympathy that these kinds of environments would probably not be good for you at the moment, right?
	I don't know. I think I've been doing all right in that manner.
	I mean, like at work, I was criticized for something and they said, okay, this doesn't work.
	And, you know, I felt a little bad about it, but then I caught myself and realized, well, I can make this work.
	So then I just redid the piece and sent it over and, you know, it was perfect for them.
	And, you know, it didn't give me like a crushing depression, like or anger or rage, you know, because before being criticized, it would be like, OK, DEF CON a million.
	It's time to open all the silos.
	And, you know, look, sorry, I do understand all of that.
	And I'm not talking.
	I mean, I don't want to bring any of this up on on on this show, but just based on the private conversations that you and I have had.
	That's not the level that you're working at.
	And that's good, what's going on right now, but the stuff that you're working at is much more raw and more sensitive and more historical than these work situations, which is not to say that that's not amazing progress in those situations.
	But the other stuff that you're working with is just highly volatile and very difficult, right?
	Yeah, and I mean, a lot of stuff is changing in my life at a very physical level.
	That's the best way I can describe it.
	You're becoming a unicorn?
	No, I mean, I'm not growing a horn, but I mean, for instance, like Appetite, Before, I didn't really eat when I was hungry, but when I thought I should eat, it was sort of like an intellectualized thing or like an anxiety management thing.
	But now, it's like I feel my body's actual hunger.
	So, I mean, I'm not like eating massive meals and having to work out for two hours to work it all off, stuff like that.
	Right, but you're awakening back to the sensitivities that, due to your early trauma, was blunted in your body, right?
	And that all, to me, is totally wonderful and fantastic, but because you're dealing with a lot of early conflicts and problems, it may not be a good situation.
	In fact, I'd suggest it wouldn't be a good situation for you to be in a conflict, conflictual situation at the moment.
	That would just be my, again, that's just my nonsense opinion, right?
	Obviously, whatever works for you is great.
	Yeah, that's part of why I'm avoiding conflicts, making sure that they don't really show up.
	I don't know if that makes sense.
	No, that's totally right.
	Once you get that your leg is broken, you stop moving it for a little while until you strengthen it again.
	Yeah, and actually my legs are weak.
	I have to hold myself up on a chair or something.
	I've kind of gotten better with that, but the first two days I couldn't really stand up.
	I was like bow-legged.
	The body remembers everything.
	I mean, this is an amazing vessel of wisdom that we have with us, which is so easily distracted into submission or traumatized into submission.
	But, I mean, this doesn't surprise me at all.
	I mean, my body stopped me from sleeping for 18 months before I figured out all of the stuff.
	And the body leads sometimes, and if we refuse to follow, then we kind of get rolled over like a mass under a cement mixer.
	Yeah, so I can totally understand those kind of manifestations of what you're dealing with right now, to me, would make perfect sense.
	Well, yeah, I don't know.
	It's like I've just been hatched out of an egg.
	You know, it's just incredible.
	Yeah, well, I mean, you're working damn hard, and I think very well.
	For what it's worth. And I know that it's...
	Obviously, this is one of the reasons why I wanted to talk to you earlier.
	It's because certainly you are one of these people who, you know, once you see the truth, all the angels of God and the devils of hell cannot keep you from the truth.
	And those are the people that we want to be talking to, right?
	Yeah. Yeah, I think so.
	I think so. No, come on.
	Look empirically at what you're doing.
	This is not an opinion situation, right?
	Well, yeah. I mean, I realized that I could have decided to work two jobs and stuff like that after I broke up with my girlfriend.
	But instead, you know, I found a job where I could work four hours a day and support myself and spend the rest of the time working on myself.
	And, you know, it really worked.
	It really helped a lot. Yeah, and of course, down the road, what you can do is just start a podcast.
	You don't have to do anything.
	Beautiful. But I don't want to tell everyone that, so let's just keep this between you and I. Okay.
	Well, I don't know. My speaking voice.
	Anyway, listen, was there anything else that you wanted to add?
	Speaking of hunger, the stomach, she is growling like a balrog.
	So was there anything else that you wanted to add at the moment?
	Oh, well, just thank you very much, and thanks to everybody who is a part of this community, because it would have been absolutely impossible without them, I think.
	I think I would have been, you know, I would have been with a woman that hated me and that I didn't really like for years and years.
	I don't know, you know, it's hard to tell, but it wouldn't have been good.
	Yeah, no, we are truly an amazing Borg and very similar to Star Trek.
	It has actually eaten the balls for former captain.
	So I think that the parallels are eerie and I'm not sure I want to dwell on them too much.
	Makes it. Alright, well thank you everybody so much.
	It truly is an amazing community and I think that we should be incredibly excited and thrilled to be part of this very new and very exciting and very powerful conversation.
	So thank you everybody so much as always for the donations, for the support, for the purchase of the books.
	Download the books, send them to whoever you think would be valuable.
	Let us make them go viral and I think that we will do an enormous amount to really help the world from there.
	So thank you again so much, everybody.
	Have yourselves an absolutely wonderful, wonderful week.
	And I will talk to you online and dans la bourde, too.

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