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May 28, 2008 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
48:08
1077 Tension (Part 1)

The social challenges of Freedomain Radio.

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Good afternoon, everybody.
It's Steph. Hope you're doing well. We're back in the car, and we're heading to the gym.
And I thought, my friends, that it was time for you and I to have a little chit-chat.
Now, we did have a conference call about this, and it's out there in the Gold Plus section for a variety of reasons, which will be fairly apparent if and when you ever get a chance to hear it, for the low, low, low, low, low, low donation price of $150, but I thought I'd throw something a little bit out,
like, yea verily, the chef into the wind, to people as a whole or in general, just so that you could get a sense of what it is that we're talking about and why I think it's an important issue.
So, I am learning about this conversation, which I think is unprecedented in history.
Not because, well, certainly not because I'm so all-fired smart, but just because the technology has met philosophy in a way that it just hasn't been able to before.
Christina was asking the other day, yesterday, we were talking about it, and...
And she was asking and she was saying, you know, do you think that...
Is it you or is it the technology or is it the truth or is it the technology that is making the difference or making such a difference?
And I said, well, I don't think that the two are separated or separable, if that makes sense.
I never would have written UPB if there hadn't been anybody to read it, and there wouldn't have been anybody to read it if I hadn't done the podcasts.
But I wouldn't have done the podcasts if there hadn't been anybody listening.
But people wouldn't have listened if it wasn't free and a podcast.
So it is a complicated and convoluted thing.
I mean, a lot of skill sets just, I mean, by the by, had to come together for me.
That I had to have some vocal training to make sure that I could be expressive.
I had to have some technical knowledge.
I had to have some philosophical knowledge, some software, some computers, some business, all this kind of stuff had to come together for me.
But in general, the technology is fueling the truth that I'm willing to work on and that other people are willing to work on.
It is a communal endeavor.
I can't be any smarter than my audience, which is why if you think it's a smart podcast, you should take a bow.
Because if everybody just kind of went, huh, to everything that I was saying, I wouldn't really be able to get beyond the basics.
So it is really the brilliance of the audience that drives any intelligence that's in the podcast.
It's you who make FDR and drag me semi-unwillingly at times along.
Look at that. What a victim am I. But something changed.
As I said in this conference call, something changed over the last, say, four to six weeks or so.
And what changed for me was a kind of punchiness came into the community.
Now, this was accompanied with a not catastrophic but not inconsiderable drop-off in donations.
And I couldn't figure out what the hell was going on.
It's driving me nuts.
I was like, think until my brain melted, trying to figure out what was, you know, why is it people getting punchy and why is there this, I mean, certainly some pretty heavy criticisms and not too pleasant criticisms of me, which, you know, I dish it out, I can take it, but I was sort of wondering what was going on.
I couldn't figure it out. Is it the London thing?
Is it because people are spending money to come up to the barbecue?
None of that sort of made sense.
And I couldn't really figure out what was going on.
I think I sort of have an idea.
I think I have an idea. And I think it is actually cause for enormous optimism.
If this makes any sense.
I really do. I think it is cause for enormous optimism.
So the thesis, for want of a better way of putting it, is sort of like this.
The Book of Everyday Anarchy and the Self-Contained Arguments.
We're just going to call this the new stuff, right?
Because I want to give the Book of Everyday Anarchy plus the Self-Contained Arguments.
But these very short, pithy, punchy, self-contained arguments, you know, Social Contract, Banana Republic, and so on.
And to some degree, even the proofs for God and so on.
Well, they're not personal.
They're not complex. It's not like DRO theory where you can debate them forever.
You know, well, how will Child Protection Services work in a free society?
Hey, let's talk about that.
And you can debate this stuff back and forth pretty endlessly.
But the purpose behind the self-contained arguments was to try and find a way that we could talk to people effectively and rapidly.
And you didn't have to listen to 100 podcasts.
And it's like lowering the barrier to entry to getting the truth.
That's sort of really what this conversation has been about.
So I thought, of course, I'd wait until the 1150s to...
Ah, well. Come back to that another time.
But it's around lowering the entry to philosophy, to the conversation.
And as long as the books were...
And, of course, the books before Everyday Anarchy...
Untruth was something that you could work through yourself or you could go into it.
It was your history. You could talk about it with your family or not.
You could introspect. You could journal.
You could talk about it in therapy. The Untruth stuff was about your own personal history and thus was not horizontally transferable across the slave pens, so to speak, of culture.
UPB is highly technical and, well, not highly technical.
It's reasonably technical. I tried to make it as non-technical as possible, but it's reasonably technical.
And it is something that you can keep debating, right?
Like any ethical theory, there's lifeboat scenarios you can try and think of that is going to challenge the theory and so on.
So that book doesn't hamper or harm relationships.
So people bring it up and, you know, they say, oh, I didn't get it or I got this, I didn't get that.
They can debate it. It's not volatile in this way, right?
RTR, about relationships, a little bit of stuff about 9-11, and it's about relationships.
And so, again, not kind of volatile in this way.
But everyday anarchy is not that way at all.
Everyday anarchy, what are the barriers to sending it around to people?
Again, I'm not saying anybody should.
I mean, this is not a, you know, you bastard should send my book for people, whatever.
That's not the issue, right?
But the question is sort of what are the barriers?
I mean, if you're interested in philosophy or anarchy or this sort of stuff, what are the barriers to sending this book around to people?
What is hard about it?
I mean, so when it was a lot of podcasts, people could say, well, here's a couple of podcasts, but they wouldn't really follow it up.
Or if they did, it's like, yeah, listen to it.
It's interesting. Some Diero stuff I think is good.
Some Diero stuff I think is not so good and so on.
But it wasn't the same thing exactly as Everyday Anarchy.
Everyday Anarchy is also an invitational book, right?
Because I'm sort of consciously not giving answers.
Actually, not sort of. I'm consciously not giving answers.
It's just saying, well, we love Anarchy.
So how can it be that we hate it solely and we love anarchy in our personal lives and all this other stuff?
And yes, there's proofs for anarchy and so on in it, but it's an invitational book.
It's not confrontational about the family.
It's not confrontational about culture.
It doesn't provide answers.
It's not assertive. It's just...
It's musings, right?
And it's, you know, I mean, obviously powerful musings and musings that are clearly upsetting to people and so on, but it's not...
An aggressive book. And I'm always sort of conscious when I write, and also in the case of Everyday Anarchy, when I record the audiobook, I'm really, really striving to be conscious of the basic reality that you're introducing me to your friends, your family, right? I mean, it's like, you know, if we're dating and I come to meet your parents, I'm not going to be in jean cut-off shirts anymore.
Cut-off shorts and, you know, some sort of horrible Elton John spandex buffet number, right?
So, I really tried to make sure that in the reading it was measured calm and so on, right?
Reasonable and, you know, I didn't put crazy shite in the little intro video.
You know, stuff like that, right? So, I really tried to make it.
Friendly and positive and open and curious and inviting and this and that, right?
And so this came out and it's like, okay, so this is...
And it's not a big time commitment in terms of the audiobook.
It's a little bit longer.
The whole book is a little bit longer than...
A little bit longer than On Truth.
So it's not a big commitment that way.
It's accessible. It's pretty easy to...
To digest and so on.
So, if you care about the people in your life and you care about philosophy and you want to join the two and you care about anarchy and you want to have some credibility with the people around you, then sending them a book that is, I think, a positive introduction to these sorts of ideas Is a pretty positive thing, I think.
But I don't really get the sense that the community has experienced it that way.
And I've been sort of trying to mull it over and figure out what and why.
And these are my thoughts. Let me know what you think.
Oh, sorry. About the interruption, I just decided to go for a wood walk inside of the gym because I wanted to make sure that I could stay concentrated on this topic and not get baffled and confused by weights and clanks and having to dodge people who don't want to hear philosophy when they do their workout.
So if we say or we assume that we have some pretty Good and interesting and self-contained and short and efficient arguments for our positions, then what does that do to our relationships?
And we all live, more or less, in these two worlds.
I mean, I don't have any statists or religious people left in my life, but...
A lot of people do, and let's just say for the most part we have these two worlds, right?
This world of the truth and this world of society.
This world of philosophy and this world of culture.
The Matrix and the Nebuchadnezzar.
And if we have Solid, easy to understand, self-contained, efficient and rapid arguments that have kind of come out over the last four to six weeks.
Six weeks, probably closer.
Then what does that do to our personal relationships?
Well, it raises the stakes.
It brings us closer to that crazy line Which doesn't make any sense.
Let me see if I can explicate that a little better.
Everybody in the world believes what he or she believes or says or thinks.
I believe what I believe because of reason and evidence.
There's nobody who says it's purely prejudicial.
I mean, even the...
Religious people will say, if they say, well, I believe on faith, well, as soon as they say, I believe because of faith, as soon as they say because, then they've got reason and evidence, and they would say they experience God, and therefore it's empirical, and, you know, all of this stuff that goes on.
Everybody says that they believe what they believe because of reason and evidence.
Now, to a large degree, the role of science, philosophy, reason, and evidence...
What I would call UPB, but what other people would call a bunch of other stuff.
Reason and evidence to science.
The role of that has been to attempt an uneasy coexistence with rank, prejudice, bigoted thoughts and irrationality and so on.
Statism, religion, cult of the family.
Priests, politicians and parents, as we have said before.
And science always Tries to expand its own sphere of authority and tends to, at worst, have a kind of live-and-let-live thing with religion.
Religion deals with the spirit, science deals with the flesh, with the physical world, and, you know, science gives empirical truth, religion gives spiritual meaning, and, you know, it's two worlds.
But what we're doing in this conversation is changing that.
If we solve the problem of ethics, if we've solved the problem of social organization, without religion and without the state, then we look across at religion and statism, and we say not only, what do I need you for, but you're in the way.
It's like the origin of life, pre and post-Darwin.
Look at Genesis after Darwin and say, what do we need you for?
Ooh, it's a metaphor.
It's whatever you want it to be.
be, just keep giving us money, saith the priests.
So we're pushing all of this stuff right back.
Now, when we go with something like EA, let's say you send a link to a friend of yours who's not an anarchist, but still says that he believes what he believes because of reason and evidence.
Say you send a link to Bob, our famous friend.
Well, Bob... Believes in the state because of reason and evidence, believes in his culture, believes in whatever, because of reason and evidence.
And when we point out that we both love and fear anarchy, as the book does, what does that do to him?
Well, it's so steamingly obvious, right?
It's so wildly obvious, the argument.
And I've used it before.
You are an example of an anarchy that works, relationships are voluntary, but it's never been quite put together this clearly.
So, what does Bob look at when he gets the thought canon of EA straight to the nets?
What's his experience? Well, he is going to feel incredibly disoriented Like, you know, the ripped out of the matrix thing.
And he's going to feel angry.
Because he rested in these comfortable certainties before.
And the death of statism is harder than the death of religion.
Thank you.
The death of statism is harder than the death of religion.
Because when religion died, you had statism to swarm to.
Those who couldn't make it as priests became politicians.
The same mythologies, the same oratorical skills, the same manipulative skills, and the same indoctrination of children.
Statism, like history, is the new religion.
So, getting rid of, like, when religion fell from its supreme grace, or its ultimate grace, enlightenment and beyond, it wasn't the end of the world.
It's like, hey, if you don't believe in Judaism, you can go to communism.
19th century, right? Late.
So, the stakes are far higher to get rid of statism than it was to get rid of religion, because If people didn't believe in religion, there was a second con game called politics where people could go.
We get rid of this and the family, the cult of the family, then no place to hide, right?
No place to go. So we're going to be fought a lot harder on the death of statism than people will fought about the death of religion, in my opinion.
Because it's the last hiding place, right?
Last refuge. For crazy bastards.
People whose reasoning, whose manipulative and oratorical skills, let's just say, are somewhat in excess of their commitment to rationality and negotiation.
For narcissists, right?
Narcissists go to religion and go to politics.
Because they don't like to negotiate.
Narcissists can't negotiate because it fundamentally doesn't process the reality of other human beings.
It only dominates them. Either dominates them because I've got God on my side, or dominates them because I've got the guns of the state on my side, or because I'm your father, damn it!
But no negotiation, right?
So, what's Bob going to feel?
Well, he's going to feel, well, shit on a stick.
That's totally obvious.
Shock! Right?
Of course I love and fear anarchism.
Of course I would violently defend anarchism in my personal life.
The anarchism of choosing your own mate, choosing your own job, and all this and that.
So, of course I desperately love anarchism at the same time as I'm taught to fear anarchism in politics.
So you bring him or you open him wide up to ambivalence, where before he has a certainty, an apocalyptic certainty, the evils of anarchism, the necessity of the state, and so on.
So it's disorienting.
And if you've been in therapy or you've had those kinds of illuminating moments yourself, when everything clicks into place and becomes clear, and things which were formerly completely invisible to you, now become entirely vivid to you.
If you've ever had that moment, maybe you've had it with podcasts or other intellectual pursuits, where you're like, pah, pah.
You know, the glory of thought and understanding rises before you when you see vividly, clearly, that which was formerly invisible.
Well, that's what happens with something like EA or these other self-contained arguments that are now available with, like, no barrier to entry, completely free, right?
So Bob's going to be stunned, surprised, and then he's going to feel anger.
Now, the truth of his anger is important for you to understand, I think.
Because the truth of his anger is, well, I was lied to.
And this is the same anger that somebody feels when you get through to their true self that God does not exist.
Well, shit, I was lied to.
And they're angry, right?
Because all of this host of other associated questions crowds into their mind, right?
I was lied to.
Why was I lied to?
Why was I lied to by everyone?
Why was the lying so consistent?
Why was the lying so perfect? And who was I that I believed it all?
What's missing from me that I did not notice this absolutely obvious truth until it was pointed out to me?
Because nobody looks in the mirror and says, I'm a piece of tax livestock slavery.
I'm a battery.
I'm a tax cattle.
Cannon fodder. I'm free.
I'm patriotic. I'm good.
And I believe what I believe because of reason and evidence.
They think. They believe.
They feel. They know. And then, in the space of a few minutes, you point out to them, you detonate this entire superstructure, this entire foundation, this entire universe for them.
And you say, well, look, you don't believe what you believe because of reason and evidence.
Your absolute certainties are absolutely wrong.
Ka-boom.
They're frightened, they're disoriented, they're bewildered, they're angry, they're fearful.
Because it takes them back to that place where they once thought, as we are all born thinking, and once had integrity, and were bullied out of it.
it and then took that bullying, internalized it, and turned it into a virtue.
If the slave truly believes he's free, and in a few minutes, a few bare scant minutes, you can have him see the manacles you can have him see the manacles on his arms and on his legs.
Is not his first defense going to be that you have conjured these manacles into existence?
That I was not a slave?
until you made strange gestures and produced these manacles on my leg and these handcuffs and these chains on my arms.
You have not revealed myself to myself as a slave.
you have made me a slave.
Somebody listens to, gosh, the first 10, 15, 20 minutes of EA.
It's impossible I don't have to become an anarchist, but it's impossible!
To listen to the first little bit of that book, And not say to yourself, well, there's a whole bunch of questions here that are worth asking.
There is a contradiction between our love for and fear of anarchy.
And it's not talked about by anyone.
And that's the frightening part, right?
Because it feels crazy.
You feel like, oh my god, there's a conspiracy.
Oh my god, everyone's in it.
Well, how could it be? There are no meetings, there's no newsletters.
How could it be? Well, of course, this is exactly the proof for anarchy.
That it works perfectly without compulsion.
Just with incentives and false first principles.
Human beings follow virtue and self-interest.
That is the proof for anarchy.
Their disorientation at the uniformity of their enslavement and of the lies that were told to them by everyone with no planning, spontaneously, with no forethought, with no meetings, with no research.
Why is it that everyone says that anarchy is universally bad?
Because anarchy works.
And it either works for evil or it works for good.
Let's harness it for good.
So, the uniformity of the lies they were told to about freedom, about the country, about patriotism, about the gods and devils, both secular and religious, that enslaves us on the soft chains of virtue, that all of those lies were told uniformly.
To everyone, unconsciously, perfectly.
That this virtual world of mythology that people live in is perfect in its physics down to the last detail and utterly false.
That is the proof for anarchy, right?
Spontaneous propaganda is the proof for spontaneous order.
Spontaneous propaganda is the proof for spontaneous order.
The fact that anarchy is universally reviled is the proof that anarchy will work.
Work. Beautifully.
Now, you send this to him, and he knows.
Unconsciously, he knows what's in it, right?
He knows. He knows.
He knows that you're cocking your little finger and inviting him on the footsaw, blood-blistered, deathmarch, Bataan gulag frogstep into the hellish, bayonet-pointed migration to truth we call philosophy.
Join me on the Bataan deathmarch to reality.
Well, he doesn't want to.
I don't want to be a philosopher.
And, of course, there's nothing in EA that says you have to send it to him, and there's certainly nothing in EA that says anybody has to be a philosopher.
What EA does is it says right now you're not a philosopher.
Right now, Bob, you're just a bigot.
Just another typical garden variety, clogged to the gills with history, full of it.
Little old KKK wannabe booster cheerleader for bigotry and prejudice.
Small-minded, petty assertions of falsehoods for the sake of enslavement to masters.
You're a cow who says he's not a cow.
You're a slave who says Save for his freedom.
You're a booster for the betrayals of your betters.
You're a cowering, fear-mongering, attack your fellow slaves, broken down, subjugated, tax cattle, war, cattle, cannon fodder.
And I don't want to see that.
They don't want to see that.
They don't. But after EA, or even if...
See, it's what I said about untruth, even if they slam it down, even if they get mad, they throw it away, they've glimpsed a truth, an ugly truth, well, the ugliness that they are compared to their truth.
There's no ugly truths, fundamentally.
They've glimpsed this ugliness within themselves.
And they then believe that you have stained them, that you have made them ugly.
So they want to believe that everything they believe is based on reason and evidence.
A few minutes with EA, which does it in a way that none of my other books have done before, and certainly no single podcast or a few podcasts have done before, that what they believe is not true.
And it's obviously not true.
It's obviously and it takes a moment's thought only to realize and recognize that is not true.
It's not like the world is actually round not flat because it looks flat.
It takes a lot of conceptualization to get that it's not flat.
But this is like 30 seconds introspection and comparison with personal evidence says anarchy is not the evil we claim.
And as he awakes to the world of propaganda.
And he awakes to the world of not thinking.
And he awakes to the world of slavery.
And he wakes to the world of the perfect physics of falsehood.
The universe of lies that he lives in.
And the spontaneous organization of those lies, which, as I said, is the proof of anarchy.
He doesn't want that.
He wants to continue...
with the golden trophy of reason and evidence while holding this shit statue of narcissistic propaganda enslavement.
And he knows.
He knows what's coming.
And you know what's coming with that link to a genial little work.
This is thought-provoking, is it not?
You would say in an email.
I'm not sure that I agree with everything, but it sure got me thinking, right?
That's pretty innocuous. I'm not making positive claims.
There's nothing in there about the state is evil, taxation is violence, and, you know, we should all live on motorcycles with Mel Gibson.
It's just a kind of, huh?
Isn't this an interesting contradiction that is not noted?
In fact, it's rather perpetually passed over.
Is that not interesting?
Well, of course it is.
Of course it is.
And people don't want to get it.
And they don't want you to send it.
And so people who live in these dual worlds...
See, I'm not saying to anybody you've got to send the book around.
There are no unchosen positive obligations.
I mean, if I pay you 200 bucks to send the book around and you take the money, then yeah, you've got to send the book around or give me my money back.
But that's not the case.
It's all voluntary, right?
But what is happening, in my opinion, in my belief, what is happening is that people are recognizing that they're not setting the book around and it's kind of making them anxious.
Now this means you, the listeners, not other people, right?
And it's not because you don't want to send the book around.
I mean, I've got nothing but very positive responses.
Sometimes a little blank, but positive responses.
I certainly have had a number of people who've said to me that they introduced the book to some people and converted them to anarchism in two hours, which they had not been able to do for months or years.
So I know that it's effective in that sense.
So it's not you who doesn't want to send it around.
It's other people who don't want to read it.
Other people who don't want to read it.
They don't want to climb out of the swamp.
And they want to continue to picture that their swamp is a beach house.
The beach house of truth.
The swamp of mythology.
They don't want to know. And this is incredibly positive.
This is the best news ever.
This is the best news ever.
Now, yes, it sucks. I mean, a little bit for me.
Yeah, if you could pry your way free to give some donations, particularly before the end of this month, May 2008, I would hugely appreciate it.
Things, you know, I gave up the book income to hand them out all for free, and people kind of went with the not so much with the donating.
But I just sort of wanted to point out that it's incredibly positive.
It's incredibly positive news that it's this hard, right?
The easier philosophy gets to disseminate, the harder philosophy gets to live.
The lower the barrier to entry to the truth, the more stressful and unpleasant the truth becomes, right?
Because, fundamentally, we run out of excuses, right?
We run out of the excuses.
Well, shit. They don't have to understand DRO theory.
They don't have to understand UPB. They don't have to understand the golden gun.
They don't have to understand the argument for morality.
They don't have to understand all the other tricks and tools that we have disseminated in this conversation.
I can't really debate with them about how roads are built in a stateless society.
I don't have to debate with them about how education for the poor will be provided in a stateless society.
They themselves have become the proof for anarchism.
By not wanting to read about anarchism.
But this is fantastic news.
Because for two and a half centuries, philosophy has got its Grecian ass kicked all over the map.
Philosophy has got its ass kicked by statism and religion and the cult of the family for Millennia.
Thousands of years. And if it turned out...
I mean, wouldn't this just suck beyond words?
If it turned out that all we needed to overcome that was a short book with some good arguments and a hyperlink...
Man! I'd be like, why the fuck did that take us two and a half thousand years?
But it's not the case.
It's not the case. The more resistance you have to sharing this book with people or to sharing the thoughts they're in or anything, right?
To closing the deal.
Be a philosopher or don't.
Think or don't.
Go with reason and evidence or don't.
The greatest challenge we have in making that part of the conversation real, the greater relief that we can have as to why it's never happened before.
I know I'm using absolute statements, forgive me.
Rhetorical flourishes abound, let's just plow on.
Why has philosophy always lost?
Is it because we didn't have good enough arguments?
No. Is it because there weren't great books?
No. Ah, yeah, okay, we didn't solve the problem of ethics, but...
That's, as I said at the beginning, it's partly technological, but...
Philosophy gets its ass kicked because the world kind of hates philosophy.
The existing world, not children, not the world-to-be, not people's true selves deep down, but their defenses, their loyalties to the false gods of their fathers, that false self, the false self, the lies, the enslavement, the belief in virtue and integrity in the presence of the reality of corruption and subservience and corrupting others.
Oh, the world fucking hates philosophy.
Right? And you know that.
And you know that.
That's why everyone got so tense.
And if y'all hadn't gotten tense and punchy and messed up when EA and other kinds of self-contained arguments came out, then the fact that philosophy got its ass kicked for 2,500 years would make no sense.
Your attention...
Forgives history!
Your fear, your punchiness, your desire to turn on the conversation, even to go for me, all of that forgives history, absolves the past of cowardice to a large degree.
The harder it is for us With all the freedom, all the independence, and all of this amazing technology at our fingertips that I can walk in the woods and talk to you an hour from now, thousands and thousands of you,
with all of this amazing technology, at our disposal, the barriers to entry to philosophy, to reasoning with others, to exciting other people about thinking and ideas and so on, the barriers to entry...
Have vanished, leaving nothing but our own fears, leaving no excuses left for us.
If you're excited by ideas, and there's a free book, and you hesitate to send it to people, then all that's left is the raw fear.
No excuses, all that's left is the raw fear.
It's like you want to ask the girl out, oh, she's always with a bunch of friends, and Then she's got headphones on.
I don't want to startle her. Finally, she's sitting on a bench staring off into space and you're there.
Then your fear is going to mount, right?
Because you have no more excuses.
You are going to do it or you're not going to do it.
When the potential is the greatest, the fear is the greatest.
And so this is good news.
This is why it doesn't work or hasn't worked in history.
This is why philosophy has not triumphed.
Because it's terrifying.
And it's not your fear, it's the fear of others who don't want to be on the receiving end of this unmasking of their falsehoods.
They just want to stay eating the shit sandwich and pretending it's roast beef.
And it's your fear that communicates it to them as well, right?
And so they don't want to join you in your fears, right?
You're so afraid of spreading the ideas of philosophy, and then you say, come join me, and we can spread the ideas of philosophy together.
It's like, why? You don't even seem to like it, right?
Come, join me, and together we will be unpaid messengers who will spread this word of truth and virtue that I really don't like doing because I'm afraid of you.
Join me! I don't think so.
I'm not saying that the fear is not real.
It is, right? But it contributes to the problem.
And we've seen this kind of stuff before.
T-shirts and stuff like that.
But this is a little different.
The T-shirt still had a barrier to entry.
Right.
And again, like, for me, the solution, I mean, I would come up with a positive prescription or two, I suppose.
I suppose.
And that is, you don't have to send the book, you don't have to make any of these arguments with anybody.
You don't. I think it's important to be gentle with yourself and to recognize that the better and more efficient the arguments get, the more scary they get to have in your head, right?
Because all that then gets left is our own excuses, and I think we should be gentle with our own excuses as well.
I mean, this hard stuff, right?
I mean, I have no less an objective than philosophy kicking everyone else's ass instead of getting its own anemic toga-clad ass kicked the whole time.
I have no... I have a goal nothing less than...
Being Charles Atlas Bowflex to philosophy's 98-pound weakling.
Turning philosophy into Mr.
Universe. Not that it has to go kicking sand on everyone else's face, but goddammit if we haven't had enough of that.
To us, for the past, say, two and a half thousand years.
But it's hard.
I mean, if it was easy, it would have been done by now.
And we'd be living in a whole different world and it would not fall to us to be these kinds of existential heroes to conquer all amazing fears.
But at least we have the technology behind us and with us, and what we're doing here will last forever.
forever.
So I think that you're feeling the anxiety that other people feel around these self-contained arguments and these very, very short and simple proofs for anarchy.
And I think that's okay.
I mean, I think that's fine.
I think that it's important to feel that tension.
I think it's important not to act it out, not to get punchy, not to get messed up, not to get tense and not to, you know, get mean towards people whose fault it is definitely not.
But I think it's okay to be tense about it.
You don't have to send them out.
I mean, if you don't send them out, though, that's something that you need to process.
Why am I not sending them out? What's really going on?
What am I afraid of? And not give yourself an absolute.
Like, I either have to prove Steph wrong or I have to send them out.
I mean, screw that, right?
I mean, we have enough stressors as it is without adding all that stuff to the mix.
But it's just information, right?
It's just information to have.
It's information to work with.
I have a great short book.
I have whatever these podcasts with these self-contained arguments.
I have this stuff to send about.
It's not volatile. It's inviting.
It's rational. It's clearly intelligent stuff and so on.
And I'm not sending it out.
And this is the RTR. It's just RTR with yourself.
Why am I not sending this out?
What's going on? Why am I not doing it?
That's all I'm really saying is that it's just important to ask that question.
And it's not an easy question to answer.
I mean, I've thrown a few things out here.
That I think of the case. But it's certainly not an easy answer or an easy question to answer.
But I think it's important.
I mean, let's talk about it. Talk about it on the board.
Talk about it with people. Call in the Sunday shows if you're feeling tense about it.
If you don't even...
If you're not feeling tense about it but you're not sending the book in, then why?
Or if you're making the arguments without the book, share how it went.
Positive, negative. With other people so they can learn, right?
But let's stay talking about this stuff as a community.
Of people who are demanding massive amounts of existential courage, you know, from ourselves and to some degree with encouragement from each other.
But, you know, it's tough.
I'm also glad because, you know, we're covering new ground, right?
We're covering new ground.
And that's good. I mean, philosophy is an endless journey, right?
There is no destination to self-knowledge, to knowledge of others, to knowledge of the world, to self-understanding, sympathy, empathy.
You can almost go further. At least, I certainly haven't reached anything close to a limit.
So I'm glad that as a community we're feeling all kinds of tense because it means that we're getting closer to the real core as to why philosophy has failed for so many millennia.
And I hope that you will continue to talk about the concerns, the fears, the feelings, the hostilities, all of the mycosystem ambivalent soup that is bubbling up and splattering all over the place.
I hope that you will continue to talk about that with other people as a community.
And, you know, don't sweat it.
You can take a year, two years, five years, ten years to...
Send out EA to talk about it with anybody.
You don't have to send it out at all.
Maybe you've got better arguments.
We can talk about those. But you don't have to do smack about it.
But I think that it would be really good to figure out why it's causing so much tension.
These are just my thoughts. Maybe other things are going on that I'm not aware of.
Or maybe the book just sucks right now.
I'm embarrassed to send it out, but that certainly isn't what I think about it, but you can certainly never know if that is the case, and if you could, you know, see your way clear to throwing the old philosopher a few shackles, I would hugely appreciate it.
You can sign up for 20 bucks a month, you can donate, there are like, I don't know, 150 premium podcasts floating up around the upper levels and you get access to those private boards and so on so I'd really appreciate it if you could throw some cash my way so that I can keep the advertising and survive the loss Thank you so much for listening,
as always. Beautiful, beautiful community.
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