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May 17, 2008 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
40:01
1067 Train the Trainer vs Political Action

Some thoughts on where we are as a movement.

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Good afternoon, everybody.
It's Steph. Hope you're doing well. I'm going to do...
I know that, again, we've missed doing chores together.
And since it is cleaning the bathroom time, I thought we would go through that together.
And I'll just put a couple of thoughts that are out there.
This is not a particularly focused podcast.
Or perhaps what I should say is this is an even slightly less focused podcast than the usual, than the normal.
So... These are just some thoughts that I have out there.
Now, I watched D4Shawn had a great video out there.
It's been posted on the board. It's also D4, the number 4, Sean, on the internet about a dinner party or a dinner that he was at from hell where he began to question people's assumptions using this self-contained argument stuff.
And, you know, the level of sophistication of the responses of the misdirections of the emotional manipulations and so on that he got back We're, of course, highly impressive as these things generally tend to be.
People are incredibly sophisticated in their defensiveness.
And so he has a great video about that if you'd like to see it.
And I truly remember this phase, and I think he's going through it, so kudos and sympathies to you, my brethren.
But I remember going through this phase when I was in...
It's not my legs that are creaky.
I'm just cleaning the tub.
Oh, it might be actually.
I'm over 40. Could be my back.
Who knows? This question of why people get so hostile when you bring up fundamental questions around how they know what they know and so on is really quite fascinating and it really is bewildering until you sort of Understand it.
And I talk about this in RTR in terms of slave-on-slave action, so to speak.
And so there's some ways to understand it that I think are positive and helpful.
But it is always quite surprising when you come across this, when you ask people who claim to have knowledge.
And this is, you know, nothing new to us.
This is as old as Socrates and older in a way.
Some pre-Socratics went through the same thing.
But when you ask people...
How it is that they know what they know?
There is this astounding level of hostility that arises in people and manipulation and projection and, you know, it really wildly triggers their emotional defenses.
And I think that we, because we're comfortable with these questions for a variety of reasons that we don't have to get into here, I think that we forget the stakes That are going on here, right? That if we reveal to people that they do not know what they think they know, that we put them outside of society, we rip them out of the matrix, and so on.
But watch with all the sympathy that we can feel for the difficulties of those choices.
I think it's also important to remember another thing, which is that these people are guilty, right?
They're guilty, right? Because it's easy to look at them as kids and so on and see the propaganda that they suffered and so on and to feel sympathy for how they were lied to and would be punished for telling the truth and so on.
But I think that's something that we need to understand that's darker than that, right?
Why is it that they get so angry?
Well, because they're no longer victims, right?
And they're They're now victimizers and that's a very different position to be in as a human being.
So it's like the person who, which of course would be the case if we had abusive parents or whatever, that there is a situation wherein the parents themselves, they had their bad childhoods and they were, you know, hurt by their own parents or betrayed or lied to or They're all, you know, all the standard dismal list of what goes on.
But they then become abusers, right?
And there our sympathy stops, right?
So it's easy to sort of get hurt and upset and a little bit bewildered.
But, of course, when people are attacking the truth and attacking those who...
Who tell the truth, they're now participating in the corruption of a brutal and violent system, right?
A system that... It's the apologist for the Soviet Empire, right?
I mean, a lot of us look at this system that we live under and we see the more...
We see the freedoms and we taste the freedoms, the freedoms to have these conversations if you want or if you can.
And we see more benevolence than I think perhaps sometimes that we should, but...
You know, when people are choosing the state, they are choosing to, you know, lock people in prison who smoke drugs or whatever, rather than leave them be to pursue their own desires and get treatment and get help if they want.
And we create organized crime.
We create, like when you have a government, you have Anti-prostitution laws that get people raped and people get thrown in prison where they get raped.
This is a brutal and ugly, ugly, ugly system, particularly in terms of the public school and what happens.
So when people defend this, when they repeat the propaganda that the system relies on to survive, they are participating in crimes.
They are justifying the crimes, aiding and abetting criminals.
And that's kind of what What it's important to remember, because we feel, sometimes we feel victimized and bewildered and frustrated and how could this be happening and so on, but I mean these people are selling The victims of the state down the river for the sake of their own stupid ass fears, conformities, anxieties.
And there is a lust for, you know, if people really care about humanity, I mean, the first thing that should be on your list is to find an alternative to the state, if you really care about people.
But these people, of course, Use their, quote, concern for people to justify this violent and abusive monopoly that causes wars and enslaves people and miseducates and corrupts the minds of children.
You know, this corrupt and brutal dictatorship of democracy or whatever system is floating around.
But they're actually participating in these crimes, right?
They're participating in the corruption of the minds of the children.
They're participating in the rape rooms of state prisons.
Not participating directly, but justifying, which is what is required.
So, I think it's okay to let fly, right?
I mean, these kinds of situations where you're in these social environments where...
Where people are saying this kind of stuff.
I mean, it's okay to be patient, but it's okay at some point to say, well, so you guys are just like, you're just all you're interested in is in repeating propaganda at the expense of the poor and at the expense of the, if you're in the US, of the Iraqis and so on, that you're just justifying this brutal monopoly because you are, you corrupt propagandists, right?
You might as well be defending the Soviet empire as far as that goes, all the brutalities that resulted from that.
Now, of course, without a doubt, when you go that route, obviously things are completely and totally done, right?
I mean, then you don't say, but hey, enough of this, let's get on with dessert, right?
And this is, of course, the ugliness that comes when you start talking about philosophy in real terms, right?
Like when you say to Christians, for instance, well, your book counsels that I be killed, right?
When you say to statists, well, you know, for the sake of the roads or the fear of the robber barons or whatever, you're supporting a brutal institution that regularly gets people killed, corrupts the minds of children, you know, gives endless rapes and so on in the state prisons and so on.
So the institution that you're supporting is a downright evil, and you don't even have any good reasons for supporting it.
And it's hard to take that step, right?
Because, I mean, that's the end, right?
That is the end.
This is the end, right?
That's the end, right?
So if you're at a dinner party, that's where you get up You get your code, and you say, well, I really can't socialize with people this monstrous.
That's the unspoken, right?
And, of course, we get...
I mean, this is the paradox that I've been talking about for quite some time, but what the hell?
It's worth revisiting, I think.
And the paradox, of course, is that we are frustrated that these people don't have answers but merely mouth certainties, right?
But, of course, it can very easily be said, and I think accurately too, That those philosophers who continue to debate with people that they themselves, sorry, that the philosophers themselves define as corrupt,
people who don't have answers for, but make up answers and propagandistically defend violent and brutal institutions like the state and the prison system and so on, that we get frustrated because these people are hypocritical and Don't defend their values with any rationality and believe things which they can't prove and act in contradiction to their beliefs and so on,
right? But the simple reality is that if you continue to debate and be friends with these people, you know, give them opportunities, you know, give them opportunities to think about it, right?
It can be shocking, it can be surprising, or whatever.
Though, as I've said before, it has certainly been my experience that the people who are going to be into the truth You can't stop them, right?
I mean, the people who are really going to be self-generating and self-sustaining philosophers, the moment they hear a new idea, they simply love it.
They simply love it.
They're just excited. You can see their whole mind light up.
And they will pester you for additional arguments, for information, right?
These are the people that we want to get a hold of, right?
As I've said before, we are not...
As a philosophical movement, or as a movement for rationality and empiricism, we are nowhere close to being big enough that we can do anything other than train the trainer.
We're looking to find people who are of high enough quality, intellectual integrity, curiosity, rationality, social skills.
We're looking for the needle in the haystack, which is the people who can go out and do what we do.
We're not looking for Like, we're looking to train the trainer.
We're not looking to train the people.
We're a long, long way. We may be a generation or two away from actually being able to train the people.
What we're looking to do is to train the trainer.
And so, what we want to do is find people whose eyes light up irresistibly, like a child's eyes on Christmas morning, to find people whose eyes light up Irresistibly.
When they come in contact with truth or with rationality or with these kinds of questions.
Who are unstoppable in this.
Who are self-sustaining, self-generating.
Maniacs! For the truth.
You know, it's that sort of old thing that You know, if you train someone who can't train anybody else, you end up with one person more, right?
Who knows the truth, let's say.
But if you talk to somebody who themselves will become a passionate advocate for truth and reason, then you are multiplying your effects enormously, right?
Enormously, right? It's the difference between...
If you want to sell widgets and you're the CEO, right?
What you do is you don't run around selling widgets.
What you do is you set up a training program for people to learn how to sell your widgets, right?
And that multiplies the effects of what it is that you're doing almost immeasurably more.
This is the... I mean, this is the multiplicity effects of the Internet, right?
And we should really try and leverage this, right?
This is why... I publish the listener convos, right?
I mean, I wouldn't do the listener convos if I couldn't publish them, right?
And the ones where I have done it and then have not received approval to publish are a huge loss to me.
And, you know, I think a loss to the community as a whole, but that's why I record and publish these conversations, because The value is in having 10,000 people listen to this conversation, right? I mean, I'm sorry to be so redundant when it comes to the math, but this much we can understand is self-evident, right?
That if I want to change people, I want to create a one-time reproducible medium called a podcast or a video or a book so that, you know, was it like 2,500 people have downloaded Everyday Anarchy over the past...
11 or 12 days. And that's a whole lot better than me trying to phone 2,500 people and talk to them about the book Everyday Anarchy, right?
So we are not in a position as a movement, as a philosophical movement, we are not in a position where we can debate individuals With the goal of changing their minds.
I mean, you can do whatever you want, obviously.
I'm just talking about if you want to be philosophy's bitch, right?
Which is sort of what, what's the new slogan for FDR? FDR, the canon of truth, straight to the nads.
But we're not in a position where we can have individual discussions and change one person's mind about the robber baron, right?
I mean, that can happen later on, once the truth and the methodology and the premises as a whole are more widely understood, right?
But when we're facing a population of which, you know, 99.9% of people are not only ignorant of, but unconsciously hostile towards what we do, having those individual, I changed your mind about X conversations, simply won't work.
I mean, they won't work.
It's not going to grow the conversation In anything other than the most linear, grindingly slow manner.
What we want to do is only re-restrain ourselves, in my opinion.
Again, this is just basic activism.
We want to restrain ourselves from getting heavily involved in individual issue discussions with people who aren't going to change and we need to keep our eyes on the prize and keep our ear to the ground and instead look to talking to those people and only talking to those people or at least focusing on talking to those people and this is trial and error to find them but those people that light up irresistibly when they hear the truth Because those people will be beacons,
right? And we'll pay it forward, right?
We'll pass it along.
And if they themselves don't waste their time on individual conversations with uninterested people about individual issues, even of which we force agreement on them through relentless reason, they will simply pop back to their original shape the next day Because you have to be mad to love the truth to the degree that we do.
You just have to be. It's so irrational to be rational from a social benefits situation.
You just have to be a little deranged about it.
That's the case with every early movement.
The first abolitionists were empirically insane.
The idea that you're going to get rid of an institution that has been around ever since human beings have been around is It's laughable.
It's ridiculous. Now, I'm flushing here, but only because I've cleaned the toilet.
Do not panic and do not rewind listening to ghastly backsplashes, just so you know.
I'm accused occasionally of the toilet cast, but yet we have not.
As yet, we have not hit that low.
perhaps sometime when I'm old and it's involuntary but not yet my friends right so to be a slave to the truth which I am avowedly and confessedly and manically this is manically I'm just like, whatever it takes to get the truth across, I will do.
And that just comes from putting your ego aside.
Well, it comes in a way, but it's just like, what is your dedication to a larger goal?
I mean, that's the only way to overcome pettiness.
And I'm as petty as the next man, but it's the only way to overcome pettiness.
That I know of is simply to have a goal so large that you can't give yourself the excuses of smallness, right?
You can serve the world by being small.
So you have to have a huge goal, right?
And the goal is not, I'm going to change these minds of these people at this dinner party about the robber barons, right?
But what I'm going to do is I'm going to see, hey, is anyone interested in thinking here?
Is anyone interested in thinking?
So to take a psychological example from my own history, Because heaven knows, y'all need to know, y'all want to know more about my personal history.
But to take an example from my personal history, so when, you know, one of the things that occurred for me when I was in my mid-twenties was, it was late-twenties, no, mid-twenties, I think, was that my sister-in-law asked a simple and basic question about my family, you know, which is why my brother and I split up when my mother went to Germany for surgery, and I spent, my brother spent two years in England, and I was not in England.
Why would you split up the kids?
It wasn't like... There wasn't a big house in England.
Two kids would have been fine.
And, of course, I didn't have an answer to that question.
But I was enormously excited or thrilled or frightened or, you know, but I just, I seized on that.
It was a fairly innocuous question.
And I could have just made something up and shrugged it off and said, oh, there must have been some reason.
I don't know. It's a long time ago. What does it matter, right?
But what happened was I began to really examine my family as a result of that question and say, well, Yeah, that does seem like a counterintuitive thing, and that's where I got the inequity, right, that my mother split us up because otherwise we would have told, and there was the whole family plan and process, and everyone was involved in keeping these crimes hidden and so on, right? It just takes you down this whole road that is incredibly horrible, exciting, illuminating, instructive, and so on, from one little question.
I was going to get married when I was in my late 20s, God help me, right?
Bought the ring, proposed, everything.
And a woman who was a friend of mine at the time, she said, you know, a lot of people who are going to get married, they seem to be a lot happier about it.
It was just a little comment, right?
And I could have, of course, as a lot of people do, gotten offended, shrugged it off, you know, said, oh, well, I guess, you know, it's a stressful time.
I could have just made up an answer, right?
But what I did from this tiny little comment, this innocuous comment in passing, what I did from this tiny little comment was I said, shit, I mean, that's kind of right, right?
That's kind of right. I should be happier.
Why am I not happy? Right?
And from that, right, began the whole process of Examining that from first principles and undoing the mess or the disaster of those impending nuptials and breaking the engagement and moving out and, you know, all of that kind of stuff, right?
Just from these little comments, right?
These little comments, right? So, again, do whatever you want, right?
But I'm just saying that if you want to be philosophy's bitch and, you know, work for her benefit solely or largely, then my question or my suggestion would be To, you know, if you're in these kinds of situations where people are just talking a bunch of trash, right? You say, well, I've never been able to figure that one out, right?
Robber barons, right? It just sounds kind of silly.
It sounds cartoony. And of course it does, right?
Robber barons, right?
They weren't thieves and they weren't aristocracy.
So it's just too convenient to label, right?
But, um... I just, you know, I've never been able to figure that one out.
Like, it just doesn't make any sense to me, right?
I mean, there's these stories, and I, you know, it could be a complete failure on my part, but I just can't figure them out, right?
And maybe you all can help me with it, right?
But, you know, and then you go through the logic, as I've talked about in EA or, you know, whatever you've got in terms of your own knowledge and so on, right?
But, you know, help me out because I'm stupid is actually quite an effective thing.
Explain it to me like I'm three years old, and then ask questions, right?
And this, of course, this is...
You can never go wrong reading your Plato, right, in terms of his dialogues.
I don't particularly care for his books on philosophy at all.
They're quite vile, but his dialogues are wonderful, right?
Oh, well, help me out, right?
Instruct me, if you are so wise, because I can't understand it.
Like, maybe I'm an idiot, but...
And what you want is, in that group, you want to find the person who, the moment that you're confident enough to admit your supposed or quote ignorance of these matters and your inability to follow these arguments, you want to see that person.
Whose head explodes, right?
You know, that Krakatoa detonation that occurs when a mind wakes up, right?
That a mind that is sitting there, waiting for the thin crust of cultural habits and bromides and cliches and propaganda to crack even a little.
And then you can't stop it from...
Rising up and enlivening itself and going on a lifelong pursuit of knowledge, right?
I mean, I was in an embryonic state of potential thought until I read the Rand and others.
And you want to find, you know, again, this is my suggestion, but if you want to be the slave to philosophy and her most beneficial guardian and angel, then I think that you really do want to Focus on the people who are just going to light up irresistibly.
And if people are hostile and angry and so on, say, okay, well, I guess I'm wrong and I'll never understand it.
That's fine. And our temptation is always to engage, right?
Our temptation is always to say, but you guys don't understand it either.
I may not understand it, but at least I know that I don't understand it.
That's always our temptation, right?
But that's... That's usually...
I mean, that just never works out, right?
And this brings us to the second sort of minor topic of this conversation, I guess, which is...
This is how we know that, you know, for instance, the Ron Paul supporters are distinctly not philosophies, slaves, so to speak, right?
Because to be a slave of the truth is simply to say...
Reason and evidence rule all of my decision-making processes, and whether I like it or not, I will follow reason and evidence wherever they lead.
And this is a disconcerting process because we all inherit these beliefs, even from wonderful thinkers like Ayn Rand and so on, where there's limitations and so on, and when we come across stuff that Doesn't make sense, right?
Then we have to readjust our perceptions.
But that, of course, is the scientific method, and that's capitalism, and there's all the good things that we know and love as thinkers and reasoners, right?
I mean, certainly in my own case, I swallowed for many years the Randian approach, and even to some degree the Brandon approach, that emotions are not tools of cognition, that You know, feelings are simply reflections of what we program our minds to think based on our thoughts and so on.
And there's cognitive psychology models that support that to some degree as well.
But when I went through my terrifying and ferocious growth period in terms of actually really starting to live my values, what happened was my emotions simply took over and they possessed huge wisdom and insights that I did not know consciously, right? And, of course, I hated that because this was not what should have been.
There shouldn't have been anything in my unconscious that I had not thought about at some point beforehand, but empirically and irresistibly, this simply was not the case.
And I had to readjust.
Now, of course, when we discover in ourselves wisdom that we should not have, wisdom, knowledge, facts, the blink stuff, right, that we should not have, the great temptation for most people is to go mystical, right, and say, my God, it's past lives.
It's God, it's, you know, there are elves in my head, right, all that kind of stuff.
Ooh, there's a snippet for the next mix.
But, um... So that, for me, was just like, okay, well, so this theory is not true, right?
It's not true that emotions are simply the results of what your conscious thoughts are or what is programmed into you, but they have a life of their own, they have wisdoms of their own, they have, you know, we are an ecosystem of thoughts and feelings, and it's not individuation is multiplicity, right?
All this kind of stuff, right?
Which explains a whole lot of other psychological phenomena, such as dreams and projection, right?
So, we cast out parts of ourselves we don't like to other people and attack them and so on.
It explains a huge amount of psychological phenomenon, this sort of approach.
So, when we have facts that are against the theories that we have, then what we have to do if we are responsible thinkers, and this is what I think, this was the genesis of FDR for me and where my originality, such as it is, came from, which was the basic reality that Things were occurring in my mind that did not fit the theoretical model, and because of my training as a rationalist, I could not escape to mysticism.
So, what was I to do?
Well, that's where, you know, the unstoppable force meets the immovable object, and we are forced to become creative and come up with new ideas and new solutions and so on.
And the great temptation of people who want to avoid the anxiety of ambivalence, of wanting the truth but not having it, as we sort of discussed before in the premium section, what occurs for people is they just want to make up an answer, right? Make up an answer.
And this, of course, is the case with the Ron Paul supporters as well, right?
That they... It's after-the-fact reasoning, you know?
Like, I did this grueling thing, therefore it must have been worthwhile.
Or I did this horrible and difficult thing, therefore it must have been worthwhile.
But of course, there's no guarantee that if you do something horrible or difficult, that it actually is worthwhile.
Quite the contrary could be the case, and often is.
Right? And so there's this post that's floating around on the board, this active thread, which is, you know, Ron Paul did good because people came to the movement.
I've talked about it before, I'm not going to talk about it again.
But what is interesting is that, you know, in the absence of evidence, answers are just made up, right?
So, you know, a guy says, well, there's a poem.
50% of Ron Paul supporters are atheists, right?
And, of course, that doesn't matter, right?
Because the question is not how many atheists are in the Ron Paul camp, but rather how many people never made it to the Ron Paul camp because of Ron Paul's religion, right?
I mean, that's, of course, the challenge, and it takes a certain amount of intelligence to recognize that as an important question and so on.
But that's... I mean, that's an important reality to deal with.
And so it's like, wow, you know, there are these polls on the internet where X, Y, and Z... Because somebody did, God bless his heart, did go and figure out these polls.
You know, average sample size of 250 people, self-selected, no scientific control group, no double blind, no...
Nothing like this. It's not a poll, right?
It's just a bunch of opinions from a self-selected tiny sample.
There's nothing relevant about that at all.
And... People say, well, the Ron Paul group, why would Ron Paul commission a study now that it's all over?
It's like, well, because if they were truly interested in being philosophy's slave and so on, then they would recognize it as an enormously valuable investment, right?
You couldn't get a better investment.
Let's say this poll would have cost you $50,000, but you were able to prove that That people's knowledge and appreciation of libertarianism rose as a result of the Ron Paul campaign.
I mean, imagine how much that would increase your donations next time.
I mean, the Libertarian Party should do it, right?
Because they can run some libertarian candidate.
And if they can prove that people's knowledge, understanding, and receptivity towards libertarianism arises as a result of political activism...
Then there would be a, you know, this document could be used for the next 30 years to answer the skeptics who say that there's no evidence that this is the case, right?
So just imagine, just imagine what a massive increase in donations libertarians could receive, the Libertarian Party could receive simply, or the Ron Paul campaign, or whatever's going to be next in that line.
Imagine what a huge boost in donations they could receive By simply commissioning this study, for the sake of spending $50,000, or I don't know what it would cost, something like that.
For the sake of spending $50,000, they could get, you know, 10 times at least that back in additional donations from people who are skeptical about the value of political action.
I mean, you could not think of a better investment.
10 times return.
Minimum, right? And that's assuming that only...
What, 1% of the, you only got 1% additional donations out of the 2.5, out of the 25 million.
Huge, huge, huge investment.
This would go on and on, and the question as to whether or not libertarianism as a concept benefited from political action would be laid to rest, and all the skeptics would come over, start donating, and so on.
Right, you simply couldn't come up with a better investment if you tried.
And the fact that this investment has never been Put to the test.
This investment has never been made.
Tells you all that you need to know.
Not about the facts, but about libertarians' perceptions of the facts, right?
If you have a thesis and you actively avoid putting it to the test, despite the fact that there would be obvious benefits to putting it to the test, then you understand that libertarianism or political activism is merely another form of religion.
It is simply another form of religion.
And even if some of the tenets of libertarianism are true, non-aggression principle and so on, the fact that they're reached through a process of indoctrination and faith-based anti-reasoning means that they're useless, worse than useless, because they're true without being reasoned through.
It's like accidentally getting a math answer right.
It doesn't mean anything. I mean, Christians say thou shalt not murder.
The problem is not thou shalt not murder is wrong.
The problem is that it's arrived through indoctrination and culty anti-rationality.
And that's the harm that political activism does.
So what happens, of course, is that people say prayer works.
Prayer, it works.
I know three guys who were cured of NAD cancer by the power of prayer, right?
So I say, okay, well, Let's put it to the test.
And they've actually pissed away money on something that was a foregone conclusion, which is that prayer doesn't work.
Because people... They tried this, you know, random people play for random people, and of course it had no effect whatsoever, right?
And then people lie about the results.
Well, this was proven, right?
And you say, nope, it wasn't.
Well, the test went done correctly.
Well, I'm going to believe it anyway, right?
And that's just fundamental intellectual dickishness.
Of the most pathetic and contemptible kind.
To claim truth based on evidence and then reject all contrary evidence is just intellectual dickishness of the most contemptible kind.
And, of course, it's the same thing with the Ron Paul thing.
Make these claims, it's like, okay, well, where's your proof?
Oh, here's my proof. Well, that is not proof.
Well, it doesn't matter, right?
It's a Paul. No, it's not a Paul.
It's just a bunch of opinions from a self-selected small group of people on the Internet.
Well, clearly you're not going to be satisfied by any evidence that I bring forward, blah, blah, blah, right?
So, and of course you can see this in the endless reams of hostile and negative responses that I got.
And it's not about the Ron Paul thing, it's just about understanding where we should apply our efforts.
And I'm as guilty with less reason sometimes than most, right?
I'm misapplying my efforts and this is something I have to remind myself of.
But when people say, well, Ron Paul, you know, he's going to win the presidency.
Okay, he's not going to win the presidency, but we brought more people to libertarianism.
It's like, well, show me the proof.
Well, here's the proof. Well, that's not proof.
Well, here's the more proof. Well, that's not proof either.
Well, why would we waste money on determining this?
Well, because it would be a massive investment that would pay off at least tenfold.
Well, if you're so smart, why don't you want the libertarian party?
Like, it's exactly the same as the people who say...
Prayer heals people because I know some people who've been healed by prayer.
It's like, well, that's just your opinion, and that's your subjective experience, and so what, right?
It's not proof, it's just something you notice.
Correlation is not causality. Guy prayed and was healed of cancer.
Well, so what? Ten guys prayed weren't healed of cancer.
It doesn't mean anything. So this political stuff, it just has a core element of weaseliness.
And we've seen this in the whole Ron Paul thing to begin with.
And this doesn't mean that some Ron Paul supporters get saved because of FDR and so on.
And that's great, but that's not the point, right?
The point isn't that there's this poison floating around the social bloodstream and some people end up tougher because of it.
Because they develop antibodies, and it's like, well, why not just not poison people to begin with, but toughen them up with exercise and good nutrition, right?
So it's just understanding that Basic phenomenon of just making up answers for the sake of your own prejudices is people who can't think, right?
And as I kept putting out argument after argument after argument about the Ron Paul thing, you know, forget about starting with the federal government.
Start with the local Hispanic organization and turn it against Hispanics.
Start with the mafia and turn it against violence.
Start with all this stuff. Argument after argument after argument, what happened was people just got angry.
People just got upset. People just got bitchy.
People just got negative. People just started misdirecting.
They started redirecting. They started being defensive.
They started fogging. They started aggressing.
And that just indicates that people are no likely to think.
And they don't like to think that they can't think, so they just get aggressive.
And the same with the dinner party we talked about earlier.
This happens as well. And...
You know, with some forgiveness of myself, I engage these people on the board, but I don't engage them in email, I just engage them on the board so other people can see that these aren't people who can think.
So these are people saying, well, Ron Paul brought a lot of intelligent thinking people to the movement, and you ask for evidence and they get angry.
It's like, well, clearly they're not in that category, right, of smart, intelligent thinking, reasoning, evidence-based people that Ron Paul...
Ron Paul has only brought people to politics, and a few people survive politics and make it to philosophy.
But a lot more people are turned off by the politics and never even get close to the philosophy.
And that's just a basic fact in reality until, you know, the fact that the libertarian and the freedom community Spends $25 million on a massive waste of space, skin, and resources boondoggle of electoral presidential candidates.
The fact that they blow $25 million on this and won't spend a tiny percentage of that to prove their own theory tells you everything that you need to know about their belief in their own theory.
If you don't want to put stuff to the test, that's because you know that it's going to fail.
And that's all we need to know, right, about that kind of stuff.
So I just sort of wanted to put that out there.
Don't waste your time with these people.
Just keep moving, you know, for that one person who just bursts into life.
And you can't stop them.
You don't push podcasts on people, right?
What you want to do is say, hell, this is a great site.
Listen to this. And if they're like, wow, my mind is blown.
I'm so excited. I can't sleep.
Those are the people you want. Train the trainer.
We're a long way from training the pupils.
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