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June 22, 2008 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

01:33:14

1093 Sunday Call In Show June 22 2008

Going to war against a military family, academia and nailing job interviews.

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	Well, thank you everybody so much for joining us.
	This is the Sunday Freedom Aid Radio Call and Show, 22nd of June, 2008.
	And just before we get started, there is a Peter on the call.
	And this Peter, I just wanted to say to him...
	You gave something to me that nobody else has done.
	I'd like to say to you now, thank you for giving me lots of food now.
	See, we only get that in pink text on the chat room.
	So I just wanted to send that out there as a completely bizarre disincentive for big donations.
	But Peter dug deep and sent a bone marrow and a box of kittens.
	And I just can't tell you what that tastes like in a blender.
	So thank you so much for that just wonderfully kind donation, Peter.
	It was just spectacular.
	And what it does, because Christine and I measure the power that we have in the marriage on a daily basis by the amount of income that we bring in.
	And so for one day, oh, one day, I had the power and I can't even tell you how much I abused it.
	So perhaps Christina can at some point when she's got over the trauma.
	Of seeing me with any power at all was quite a shock.
	So thank you again so much.
	And also thank you so much to – we had a couple of people who subscribed to Free Domain Radio this weekend.
	The $20 a month, about, what, 70 cents a day.
	And so I wanted to thank you so much.
	This is just a reminder. I mean, 20 bucks is really a month.
	Not that much for people who claim to dedicate themselves to freedom.
	Just a small amount of money, but hugely helpful to me because it gives me a predictable form of income.
	And just as a reminder, you know, if you've listened to...
	Oh, I don't know, what, 500 shows, let's say?
	If you subscribe now, it'll actually take you about a year at 50 cents a podcast to pay off.
	If you've listened to 2,000, it'll be like two years or so.
	The whole, it does get deeper if you don't donate.
	And I say this, of course, because I have self-interest, but guaranteed that it will make you happier as well, as I talked about in some recent shows.
	The money doesn't buy happiness, oddly enough, at least empirically and scientifically enough, does not seem to buy happiness unless you give it away.
	And I can certainly tell you that from my standpoint, giving up a large income has made me very happy and Christina...
	Not so much. Anyway, we can get into that another time, but I just wanted to point that out.
	So thank you again so much to those who have signed up for the subscriptions and to Peter and to other people who've donated this month.
	Thank you so much.
	It is such an absolute thrill.
	I can't tell you what a thrill it is to get those kinds of donations.
	And as I mentioned in the...
	The email that went out, I promise to not, or at least to try not to blow it all this time on hookers and blow, but in fact use it for some good.
	But, you know, the hookers have to eat as well.
	That's sort of my philosophy. So thank you again so much.
	I was going to start this show with some conversations about...
	The scientifically empirical effects upon the brain of psychotherapy.
	I'm just going to tease you though because in doing research on the topic, I've just come up with some absolutely fascinating things.
	So I'm going to try and put those together more into a show or I guess a video and a show and put them more together.
	But just two of the things that have come up so far, which I'll just touch on here.
	The first is that people who suffer significant physical or sexual abuse as children actually have a reduction in the hippocampus, which is to do with regulating emotion, have a reduction in that of 12% statistically, whereas those who've seen severe combat have a reduction of only 8%.
	So this, of course, indicates that it is significantly worse, I guess by about 25%, to experience child abuse than it is to experience combat.
	And that is something that I read about years ago, but it was more anecdotal.
	There seems to be some new brain scan studies that are coming out that seem to verify that.
	Which I think should give us some comfort because, of course, those of us who've gone through that kind of stuff do have some challenges in self-regulation and in emotional management.
	And it's physiological, right?
	I mean, we want to take the superstition out of the self at all times, right?
	Once we get rid of the soul and we get rid of the magic brain that remains the same regardless of the level of trauma that occurs.
	And so we're just working with a different brain and that, of course, is why it's a real challenge.
	On the plus side, the indications, and this is a study that's coming out of McMaster University up here in Canada, the indications appear to be that therapy can increase the size of the Hippocampus.
	Psychological treatment can restore some of the functioning of the hippocampus so that we get more emotional self-regulation and so on, despite what you see in my historical videos.
	I hope that that will be the case for others, even if it didn't seem to quite take for me, but I'm pretty sure that Christina is spiking my coffee with stuff.
	That's the only way. Sedatives.
	Sedatives. Let's hope it's sedatives for sure and not uppers.
	But... So, the brain damage, and I think that you can actually legitimately call it brain damage that results from severe trauma as a child and, of course, to a lesser degree, combat as an adult in war… Can be ameliorated or reversed to some degree through psychological treatments.
	This is no longer just self-reporting.
	The brain scans are getting good enough that people can see this.
	But I'm going to aggregate some more of this research together.
	I guess I have a video, the first one in a couple of weeks, that I'm going to put together tomorrow or the day after, which is a response to an article that was published regarding...
	I shouldn't say it's not exactly a response.
	It's actually an aggregation of a bunch of questions that I've had where I have responded to the claims that – I'm responding to the claims that religion is a bulwark against totalitarianism, and thank you to those who have had a chance to look at it and give me some great feedback.
	And I will be incorporating that and erasing this part to claim sole ownership myself.
	So thank you again for those who've given feedback on that and thanks to Charlotte who's gotten some – or is going to get me some feedback on Practical Anarchy Diamond Plus.
	People have the computer-generated audiobook and the Word file if you – Want to get some changes in?
	I'm going to finish it up this week for sure.
	So if you want to get some changes or feedback in, I would appreciate it if it would be in the next day or two.
	That would be great. And that's it for the news and the weather and the business of philosophy.
	So I turn it over to the fabulous, fine, and talented listeners to take the show in whatever direction they choose.
	I have a question that somebody brought up in the chat room a little bit before we started, Steph, if that's okay.
	I think given the number of non-questions floating around, I think any question is okay.
	Okay. This guy mentioned that he was listening to...
	I can't remember which podcast somebody's going to post the number I know because they're much better than I am about this.
	But he was saying that you had said in one of the podcasts that...
	You know, if you say that you love philosophy and all this stuff and then you don't end up donating or you go out and you buy other things which are completely useless instead of donating, then you can't really claim that you love philosophy.
	And this guy, I'm not sure...
	What was going on with him?
	He seemed to spin that out into, well, then I can't reasonably do anything except donate to Steph.
	I can't buy a computer.
	I can't go out and do X, Y, and Z. I can't do anything except donate to Steph if I say I love philosophy.
	That's got to be the sum total of my life.
	And that's obviously not...
	Not what you were talking about, and it obviously is a false dichotomy, but I was wondering if you would kind of clear that up, because I've had a number of people come and ask me the same thing.
	I'm sorry, I'm not exactly sure why that would not be exactly what I'm talking about.
	I mean, we've got the tent city up here, we've got the fortified compound, we've got the polygamy greased up tarpaulin pit.
	We are set to go, so perhaps you can tell me how it is that that's not what I mean.
	All we need to do is buy a few Iron Maidens for the dissenters.
	That's right, I forgot. Contribute to the Iron Maiden Fund, everybody!
	It could be white snake.
	It could be poison. There's lots of 80s hair bands that we could go with.
	Oh, God. No, thank you.
	Well, see, this is the punishment that I'm talking about.
	So, I mean, that's an excellent question.
	The psychology is quite interesting, which is that we all have complex value systems.
	Our values are a complex ecosystem.
	And so I love Christina, but I will do a podcast.
	And when I'm doing a podcast, I'm not talking specifically to Christina.
	Often I'm talking about her, but that's more for the premium section.
	But I'm not talking to my wife when I'm doing podcasts.
	So I love my wife and I love philosophy.
	And so basically podcasts have become our bedroom porn.
	So there are ways of merging these two things in a way that gets you fierce glances from your wife.
	We didn't even want to know that.
	I'm sorry, Stan. Just be happy that it's play, not record.
	So when I'm doing a podcast, I'm not talking to my wife.
	When I'm talking to my wife, I'm not talking to my friends.
	When I'm talking to my friends, I'm not doing podcasts.
	I mean, it doesn't have to be one thing.
	There's no such thing as a value.
	I mean, I love philosophy, but I also like to sleep.
	I like philosophy, but I also like to go to the gym, and I like to watch television, and I like to watch movies.
	That doesn't mean that... If I like to watch television, I have to prop my eyes open in some kind of Guantanamo Bay situation and do nothing but stare at television until I'm dead.
	So the fact that we have complex value systems that compete with each other that rise and fall, that it's quite an ecosystem, is going to be – for people who are feeling insecure or guilty or defensive or whatever, it's going to be reduced to an argument from it's going to be reduced to an argument from absurdity.
	And the point that I was trying to make – and I think most people get it.
	I don't think it's actually that hard a point.
	And the reason that we talk about psychology here is to avoid calling people dumb because it's a dumb thing to say.
	Well, Steph says that if you don't donate, then you don't love philosophy.
	Well, that's not actually true.
	It's not exactly what I said.
	What I said was that if philosophy doesn't change your actions, then empirically it's just a game for you, right?
	And I certainly stand by that.
	I mean if you read a whole bunch of philosophy and it doesn't in fact inform any of your actions – Then it's just a kind of self-indulgent mental Sudoku, right?
	It's not something that you will put things into practice.
	It's like if you're overweight and you read a bunch of diet books but never actually alter your eating habits.
	Then clearly you don't take dieting, nutrition and health very seriously, which then of course would beg the question, why would you be reading all the diet books if you don't intend on changing your diet at all, right?
	So this would be like someone saying, well, you're not serious about losing weight if you don't alter your diet.
	And then somebody saying, oh, so the only way to be serious about your weight is to stop eating completely until you're dead?
	It's like, well, it's such a retarded response that it clearly is emotionally defensive and not something that somebody would process mentally.
	Now, one of the things that I do say is that I think that...
	Contributing to philosophy is important, and contributing to philosophy can be a wide variety of things.
	It can be talking to people in your life.
	It can be supporting a philosopher, whether it's me or someone else that you find to have value and insight and communicative abilities.
	It could be writing an article.
	It could be, I don't know, buying ads on behalf of someone.
	It could be simply, as I said before, wearing a T-shirt and answering questions if people ask them.
	It can be hiring a plane to do skywriting at Venice Beach, California, saying philosophy has to be at least as important as your abs.
	It can be any number of things wherein your behaviors or actions are actually going to change relative to the values that you claim are very important to you.
	Now, when I talk about FDR and I talk about the 70 cents a day, you know, half the price of a cup of coffee a day...
	And somebody was in the chat room earlier saying, well, I have to pay rent rather than donate to FDR, but really, $10?
	I mean, there are very few people in the world, at least in the Western world, to whom $10 is just not possible in any way, shape, or form.
	And if it's not possible, of course, I've got requests out there for help with FDR things.
	If you have more time than money, then you can contribute to that.
	Or some other course that you find...
	That you find valuable.
	But because we are an empirically based philosophy club, that we don't judge the actions.
	We don't judge the words only.
	And because we are empirical, if somebody says philosophy is really important to me...
	But I'm not going to contribute half the price of a cup of coffee a day to help spread the word of philosophy, and assuming that there are no other actions that are particularly taken to help spread the word about philosophy, then what do we know for sure?
	We know for sure that philosophy is worth less than 70 cents a day.
	And if this person has never donated, we know that it's economically worth less than I think?
	But what happens is if you haven't listened to 100 or 200 or 300 or more podcasts, then clearly they are valuable enough for you to spend a couple of hundred hours listening to the podcast.
	So clearly they're a high enough value that you're willing to invest time in consuming them.
	And let's say that you have a job that pays you 20 bucks an hour.
	Or 10. It doesn't matter what the number is.
	Let's just say 20 bucks an hour to make the math simple.
	Then you just have a mismatch between your consumption and what you're willing to give back.
	So what that means is if you're listening to a couple of hundred podcasts, I assume that you're listening to 20 or 30 or 40 hours.
	A month, right?
	So let's just take, I don't know, the low part.
	Let's say that you're listening to 20 hours of podcasts a month, and it will cost you an hour of labor to donate $20 a month.
	Then what happens is you are investing 20 times more in learning about philosophy than in contributing to philosophy.
	In other words, I'm not saying you need to have a one-to-one ratio, right, that every podcast is 20 bucks.
	I mean, that would be ridiculous. But if you are consuming podcasts At the rate of 20 hours a month, and it costs you one hour to do the $20 a month donations, then you're saying that actually acting on my values is not worth even 5% of the time that I am devoting to learning about them.
	In other words, translating philosophy into action is not even worth 5% of the time that I'm devoting to learning about philosophy.
	And that's just a mismatch.
	It's a complete mismatch in terms of what you are doing versus what you say is important.
	And I just – for me, that's something that needs to be examined, right?
	That's all I'm saying.
	Because also there's a lack of empathy I think for others fundamentally in a way as well.
	I don't mean sort of completely but just in this particular area.
	That someone introduced you to the podcast and for people who have subsidized FDR that have made it possible – Then those people have created the means or the ability for me to create YouTube videos, to write articles, to write books, to advertise, to create the mailing lists and so on.
	Other people have then created that environment where you got to even hear about FDR and then they have paid for it.
	The server, they've paid for the bandwidth, they've paid for the advertising, they've paid for the technical equipment, they've paid part of my mortgage, they've paid for my food, they've paid for all of the things that have gone on and some people have paid quite a bit.
	So if you listen to FDR, it's because other people have contributed to spreading the word about FDR so that you could, in fact, hear about it.
	And if you find it to be hugely valuable...
	Then it would seem to me that you would want to help other people in this way.
	Like if you find a cure for the flu...
	Which seems to be a red pill or blue pill, a red pill.
	If you find a cure for the flu and for 20 bucks a month you can get lots of other people to find a cure for the flu, if you appreciate not having the flu or not ever getting the flu then wouldn't you want to do a little bit to help other people?
	It's just around having empathy for other people because the 20 bucks a month is going into me writing the books, me advertising, me getting the word out there so that more people can get hold of the resource that you find so valuable.
	And that just would seem to me to be kind of like a basic kindness, if that makes sense.
	And of course we all want the world to be a more rational place, and that's not going to happen unless people become philosophers.
	So that's the spiel that I have, and it doesn't matter to me whether...
	You know, if you donate to some other philosophy site or you write an article or help out in some other way, but do something.
	I mean, philosophy is about doing stuff.
	Philosophy is, and that's a benefit to you, because when you actually do stuff, you gain empathy for how difficult it is, you gain patience for how long it takes for some people to put it into action and so on.
	The action part of philosophy, the doing part of philosophy, is where the real wisdom is.
	I mean, there's lots of intellectual arguments in the debating side of philosophy, and in the abstract, the argumentative, the The merely rational analysis of things, there's wonderful fun in that.
	But philosophy, in terms of translation to wisdom, and in terms of embedding itself into your personality, in terms of giving you certainty and empathy and patience, some real virtues, those cannot be achieved.
	Through merely thinking about philosophy or reading about philosophy, there are certain virtues that are core to philosophy that can only be achieved through action.
	And that's why I constantly urge people to take action.
	And one of those actions is donations, which obviously I like.
	Obviously, I think that I have – I think that I run the best philosophy conversation in the world.
	And the reason that I think that is that if I didn't, I would go and work for whoever did, right?
	Me, someone out there who's really great, who's doing it in Sanskrit, I don't know.
	But obviously I am putting a huge amount of my resources into that which I consider the most important thing, which is philosophy and the philosophy that we talk about here.
	And if other people have other things that they do, my strong urge is to get it out of your head and into your legs, so to speak, to walk the talk.
	And that means taking action.
	So I hope that that's not too long a spiel and I hope that clarifies at least where I'm coming from.
	It makes a lot of sense. Hopefully it helps this guy and other people out of the same question.
	I doubt it, because there's emotional resistance in this area, right, for this person.
	But for other people who maybe just don't find it as clear.
	I hate asking for money, obviously.
	I've had to do it for years now.
	And I used to have a paycheck where I didn't have to beg and dance for cash, right?
	I used to just go and look at my bank account and see the magic numbers.
	So I basically seemed to work for the Fed, or rather Christina would say, now I can increase your allowance to $12 a month.
	So it's not fun to ask for money, and there's always the problem of the response being cynicism and cultishness and exploitiveness and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
	So it's no fun to do that.
	It's just, you know, it's the jagged pill you have to swallow.
	It's the emotional difficulties that I have to undergo.
	I mean, it's like cold calling.
	It's like if you have to spend an hour or two a day cold calling people to try and sell them something that they were very skeptical about, that would be tough.
	It certainly doesn't come naturally to me, but...
	That's just keeping my eye on the bigger price and saying, well, I'll do that in order to get the word out because my responsibility is to the world and to the truth, not to my own particular emotional distaste for asking for money.
	Yeah, so if it makes other people uncomfortable, the only thing that I can say is I'm sure it makes me at least as uncomfortable, if not more.
	Hello, Steph.
	Hello.
	Hey, I have a quick question or to get an opinion from you.
	What is your opinion of entering academia philosophy, like going back to school to study philosophy if you never have done it before?
	What would be your goal in that?
	To waste time and read books.
	Well, why would you need to pay to do that?
	Because at least you can get a piece of paper that says you went to school and it's easier to get a job.
	To get a job in what?
	Anything. It doesn't have to be the field, but you generally have an easier time getting a job if you have a degree in anything, at least in the United States.
	Actually, actually, okay. Well, I mean, if your goal is to get a piece of paper that's going to help you get a job, in the most...
	I guess, pleasurable and economically efficient way, then I can certainly see why going to study philosophy would not be necessarily the worst decision in the world.
	I mean, as long as you know what you're getting into, right?
	Because getting a degree is not wasting time in reading books.
	Unfortunately, getting a degree is, in my experience and not just my experience, it is having to Write stuff down that you loathe.
	It's having to conform to the opinions of statist and relativistic and lazy and petty and cowardly professors.
	It is really having to kneel to the stunted.
	That is a very long exercise in frustration and humiliation.
	At least that's to some degree what my experience was of...
	Of academia. But again, maybe you can find a place that's closer in line to your beliefs or your perspectives.
	But I mean if you can do that, like if you recognize that university is – you're going to be asked questions that if you give honest answers to, you will be marked down or you will be failed.
	As long as you accept that and know that going in, that the culture is corrupt and the academic culture is unbelievably corrupt.
	And as long as you know that going in, that you're going to have to count out to corruption for a couple of years, and you can stomach that and you're aware of that, then I think more power to you.
	It is a great environment to read and to learn, but definitely the heaven to bow to midgets is a tough thing.
	Did you already have your philosophical viewpoint before you went into university, or did you develop that while you were in university?
	I was more of an objectivist before I went into university.
	I definitely entered into university as a rationalist, as an empiricist, as someone who believed in objective morality, as someone who believed in the virtues of the free market.
	I was not an anarchist.
	I was a Randian sort of minarchist.
	which is let's pretend that the government is a private agency and make it really small.
	That's the closest that I could get.
	But yes, for sure, before I went into higher education, I mean, that was when I was like 16.
	And I then went into higher education initially with an English degree where it wasn't quite as bad.
	Then I went to theater school where, I mean, other than a couple of arguments, it didn't really matter – But then in history, it turned – history and philosophy, it turned into a real problem.
	When I finished, I started – I did two years of English, two years of theater school, two years of history, which gave me an undergrad.
	And then I did a year of – oh, I got a master's at U of T in history, mostly focusing on intellectual history and some economics.
	And that was not the easiest transition in the world for sure.
	Did you find that you were being intellectually discriminated against from your status professors when you would write papers and things like that?
	Oh, yeah. Oh, continually.
	Oh, yeah. Absolutely. It's horrifying.
	It's absolutely horrifying what happens in – because they use all of these petty and pathetic – Right?
	Because it's really hard to argue against some of the positions that objectivists hold, right?
	And it's really hard. And...
	But what they would do is they would just, you know, they would roll their eyes, they would use mockery, they would use, you know, humor, they would get the class to laugh at you, they would pretend to be exasperated.
	And so what they would do is they would kind of create this insistent hostile and toxic environment for your questions or criticisms of their positions.
	And they would basically try to enroll the class in the story that you were just emotionally weird and wasting everyone's time.
	Rather than, of course, respond to your arguments in any detailed kind of way.
	And that was really hard, right?
	I mean, that was really hard. I did not find that to be quite so much the case – I had a professor of Aristotle and I wrote a voluntary paper to try and work out the problem of – Well, his criticism of forms and the problem of identity, and she was great.
	She sat me down.
	She said, right, this is great.
	I don't know. Where did you come from?
	And why do you write this stuff?
	And so on. And she was actually quite good at helping me with that kind of stuff.
	But of course, as an Aristotelian professor, she was very devoted to logic.
	So you can sort of pick and choose and get some better people.
	But, oh yeah, for the most part, it was just – and of course, it was on every front, right?
	The fact that I was a strong atheist and have been since I was about 15, well, since I was about 10 or 11, I think.
	But definitely intellectually since I was about 15 or so.
	The strong atheist position is a problem.
	The pro-free market is a problem.
	The anti-state thing is a problem.
	And, of course, I've always been very interested in psychology.
	So that was also a challenge as well, right?
	Because when you are interested in psychology, you can't just get pissed off at people.
	I mean, you can, but you then at some point have to say, well, if this is a consistent response that I'm getting, what is causing it?
	And you can't just say, like the Randians do...
	Well, the culture is just corrupt and people are second-handers and they're social metaphysicians and they're bad and so on, right?
	You have to go to a bit more of a sophisticated and detailed level and that of course is what led with Christina's help to the family and stuff.
	So I hope that is somewhat of a useful answer.
	One other question then.
	Did you find that your professors were actively trying to prevent finding the truth or were they just trying to maintain the status quo to keep their position and that kind of thing?
	I don't think that I can say that they have an active habit.
	Are fighting the truth because I just think the truth is so irrelevant to academia that I... You know, I just can't imagine that they really sit there and say, how are we going to keep the truth at bay?
	I just think it just doesn't come up, right?
	It's sort of like saying to a bunch of football people, well, how are you going to win the tennis match, right?
	A bunch of football players, they'll say, well, we're not playing tennis.
	What do we care, right? Maybe we watch it once in a while, but we don't play tennis.
	Oh... So, it's irrelevant to academia, right?
	I mean, just for example, right?
	We have experts in society that are called upon when society hits a problem, right?
	So, when we have a problem with levies, we call upon a bunch of engineers.
	And when we have a problem with disease, we call upon, what, epidemiologists or something like that?
	I can't remember the word. The disease specialists or whatever.
	And yet, when we have a moral problem in society, can you remember the last time that an academic philosopher was called upon to provide a response?
	I mean, it's all complete nonsense.
	It's a completely self-contained, navel-gazing, petty, vicious, dumbass little world.
	So I don't think that they actively hated the truth.
	I think that when the truth came across, or at least a good argument came across, They just batted it away.
	And of course, you know, why wouldn't they, right?
	I mean, they can't get fired anyway.
	So it's sort of like when you come up for an idea for improving things in a Soviet factory, the Soviet factory foreman is just going to say, go back to work, here's some vodka, who cares, right?
	So it's not like a Soviet factory group of workers.
	It's not like they're just against inefficiency.
	It's got nothing to do with what they're up to, if that makes sense.
	Yes, that makes sense.
	And one quick last thing.
	Did you have any friends or other people in your classes that, you know, would kind of help you along or you would help them along as far as getting through the classes?
	Yeah, I mean, there were a few.
	I mean, I hung out with people, but then I was always in the theater world where philosophy is not particularly important, where basically, you know, it's just about getting jobs and being sexy.
	But... Yeah, sorry.
	There's an ice cream truck.
	And what's happened is I'm just cutting back on sugar a little bit.
	And this thing, this ice cream truck for the last couple of Sunday shows has driven past.
	And one time I think you actually went off in hot pursuit of it, right, Christina?
	But I don't think he could see you because anybody looked in the rearview mirror.
	Three feet, no. Anyway. And so what's happened is now that I've decided to cut back on my sugar for a bit.
	Not for any particular reason.
	It's just at the barbecue we had carrot cake and stuff, so I had a bit of sugar there, right?
	So now it's actually stopped for 10 minutes right in front of her house playing its music.
	Because you know why? Because God is evil.
	That's why. And that's why I'm a strong atheist.
	Because the sugar gods are most cruel.
	So just in case anybody was wondering, that's not the ringtone of my telephone.
	So... So, yeah, I mean, I had some friends and so on, but I didn't particularly go to my classmates in history or in philosophy to pick up friendships and try and change people.
	So I just had other interests, and I wouldn't particularly talk about my theories with those in the classes because particularly at the master's level, everybody was there to find a job in academia.
	As I've talked about in the book in Everyday Anarchy.
	So, I mean, so my theories would have absolutely nothing to offer them, right?
	Because the approaches that I was taking the truth would be the exact opposite of a career in academics.
	So, it just wouldn't make any sense, right?
	Okay, thanks for the opinion and the viewpoint.
	Okay, well, keep us posted about what you end up deciding to do.
	I will. Thanks, Emil.
	Alright, we have time for 12 more questions.
	Sorry, was there a discussion going on while I was talking?
	Can you kick those people?
	Oh, they were talking about my topic!
	But they were typing and trying to listen at the same time.
	I'm sorry, I just don't understand.
	Wait, is that like trying to lift weights while doing a podcast?
	Glass houses? Stones?
	Anyway, sorry, we had somebody with a question.
	Do you want to bring that topic up just now?
	No, I just wanted to say that to the caller who was on, there was a whole discussion about people's experiences bringing up alternative ideas in, I guess, philosophy and history classes, if you want to look at that on the FDR board.
	Yeah, and of course the goal is to make FDR a degree-granting institution that you can get your degree, your black belt in Philosophy Ninja from FDR. So, anyway, sorry, we had somebody who had a question or a comment who was just coming up.
	Steph, I had a question about how to deal with extended family members that have served in Iraq or Afghanistan.
	Can you hear me okay? Mm-hmm.
	And, um... I mean, this is probably on the lower end of the totem pole as far as my family issues I need to deal with, but I do have an uncle and a cousin who both have gone to Iraq and Iran, respectively.
	I'm sorry, did you say Iran?
	Oh, I'm sorry. I'm in Iraq and Afghanistan, sorry.
	I was going to say, did I miss something on the news?
	Okay, sorry, go on. I'm sorry, I just get all nervous getting on these calls, my heart's all pounding, my palms are sweating, so bear with me.
	Anyways, You know, I pretty much view soldiers as hired murderers, and I have a real visceral kind of emotional reaction whenever I start talking about these wars.
	Even though I haven't even been there, I mean, everything that I read is just so sickening to me and disturbing.
	Just to think that one of my family members has been over there participating in the slaughter just really gets me fired up, and I feel like I'm torn between I want to confront these people.
	I don't know. I mean, there's not that I'm going to say this is really going to change.
	They're not going to renounce their career in the military.
	I don't really think I'm going to change their mind.
	But I guess maybe the question is, do I kind of let the rest of the family know that I will not be associating with this person and this is why?
	Or do I just kind of blow them off and not really tell people?
	I'm at the point right now where I don't really talk to much of my family at all.
	Lately, I've just kind of felt like doing my own thing.
	I just have a lot of ambivalence.
	A lot of that, I think, has to do with my relationship with my two primary parental units.
	But I just don't really feel like I care that these people really have much to offer me.
	I'm sure there's a lot of corruption in myself that I need to fix, I guess, before I start judging them.
	Or maybe that's a Christian's concept.
	I don't know. I'm just going to turn it over to you because I'm done rambling for an hour.
	No, it's good. We can pass back and forth the FDR rambling stick, which seems to be the only stick that's available for conversation.
	So I can ramble for a bit and then you can ramble for a bit.
	What do you think the response would be of your family if you began to talk about your moral issues with the military personnel that are in your family?
	Well, you know, I've already kind of, a couple years ago, I really kind of unloaded on my dad by email because, you know, my cousin was over there serving and we should, you know, pray for him or whatever.
	You didn't say that, but it's basically like, you know, they're all worried and concerned and I guess maybe proud to at the same time.
	But I'm just, you know, so I kind of went off about how those people are murderers and yada, yada, yada.
	And My view is that if somebody is really opposed to war, or if the war is clearly morally wrong and inexcusable and just flat out butchery, then your only moral course of action as a human that's in the military, drafted or whatever, is to go to prison and not fight.
	And I use this kind of argument as if...
	I use it actually in the philosophy meetup, like if somebody across the table puts a knife in your hand and then points a gun at your head and says, you need to stab that other person, otherwise I'm going to kill you, your only real justified use of violence is to stab back, however futile it may be, at the man with the gun that's threatening you rather than stab the innocent victim.
	Does that kind of make sense? Well, yeah, I mean, I think it does, but I think that the abstract reasoning isn't going to help you with your family, if that makes sense.
	Because it's too personal.
	It's too visceral. I've not found it very easy to apply abstract ethical principles, particularly the kind of guy with a gun to your head scenarios.
	I just don't find that they're going to bring a lot of clarity to the complexity of history and relationships that are involved in family.
	And that doesn't mean that those aren't helpful theories to work with, but I just find that they don't quite fit into the complexity of family, if that makes sense.
	Because, I mean, for instance, soldiers, they are heavily propagandized from day one.
	You're in the States, right?
	Yeah, yeah. Are you in the South?
	Southwest. Southwest.
	I mean, I've been in San Diego for a significant portion of my life, which is a hugely military town, and you get a lot of that.
	I'm living out in Phoenix right now, and you get a lot of, you know, there's this kind of...
	I don't know, hickish kind of mindset out here in the Old West, you know, like the Minutemen on the border type mindset too, so...
	Oh yeah, I know there's lots of guys who've got like beards longer than their haircuts, and so there's just a huge amount of propaganda, and when you grow up with that large amount of propaganda, moral decision-making becomes muddy, to say the least, right?
	If not, it becomes eliminated completely.
	And so it's sort of like if you grow up in 1950s Russia and you say, I'm a communist, well, what does that really mean?
	All it means is that you have been propagandized from day one about the virtues of communism.
	It doesn't mean that you have evaluated a wide system of moral philosophies, you've examined them, you've learned the arguments for and against, you've examined the evidence and you've come to a sober and rational conclusion about communism.
	It just means that If you didn't say I was a communist, you'd have been beaten up and thrown in a gulag, so you learned to say I was a communist, and it sort of slithered into your personality and displaced some of your natural humanity.
	And it's the same thing with the people who grew up in these kinds of, as you say, hicktown, pro-military environments.
	It's not that they are pro-military any more than we can say about your average population.
	I don't know, the average Muslim kid in Afghanistan, that he is a true Muslim, right?
	Because he's not. He's just, well, my parents forced me to go to this, what was it, madras, and I would have been beaten up and punished and beaten if I hadn't chanted this stuff back.
	So I think that it's highly complex.
	To look at the ethical decision-making that results in someone who's been propagandized from day one saying, I'm going to be a soldier when everyone is cheering him and saying it's noble and it's honorable and you're serving your country and you're patriotic and we owe our freedoms to you and you get all the positive feedback and I love a man in uniform and all that kind of stuff.
	And you get the media that's constantly reiterating how brave and how noble and support our troops.
	And you, of course, not just you, but even your soldier family members would have had other family members who were soldiers.
	And are they going to take a stand against the family?
	Do you see what I mean?
	To me, it's hard to use these abstract things because, like, you know, some guy's got a knife to your throat and blah, blah, blah.
	Because there's just such a...
	Can I interrupt you for a second?
	I feel like you're maybe taking the abstract reasoning argument I gave and running with that more so than I really intended because I just use that for my own personal, I guess, justification of why I think that these family members are doing something that's incredibly wrong.
	I haven't really busted out the abstract, you know, logical reasoning with them yet, and I didn't really plan on necessarily doing so unless pushed.
	But it's just kind of heartbreaking for me because one of my cousins, you know, I worshipped him when I was a kid and he was a really funny guy.
	And then I guess, you know, for whatever reason, he wanted to make a career out of the military and he couldn't because of the budget cutbacks.
	But just to think that he went over to Afghanistan and was over there Probably shooting up innocent people.
	It's like, who is this person?
	I just feel like they're dead to me.
	Somebody that I was once close with can go do that.
	It's so obvious to anybody with two brain cells to rub together that it's a criminal war.
	It's totally immoral and justified.
	How could you just not see that?
	Even if he did, he made a comment like, God, it's kind of messed up over there.
	But he made some comment about how cool it would be to serve with those guys and how kickass the team was.
	I don't know. It just kind of made me...
	I don't know.
	It was sickening, it was.
	And how old was he when he was making these decisions?
	And I'm sorry that I went off on the abstract thing.
	Let's stay focused on your direct experience.
	But how old was he when he was making these decisions?
	Making which decisions?
	The ones like he wanted to be in the military?
	Yes. Oh, I'm sure he was probably early in his early teens, you know?
	And what was the family feedback to his statements that he wanted, who was interested in the military?
	You know, I don't really know, because I haven't really discussed that in detail with his aunt, well, his mom and dad, which would be my aunt and uncle.
	But, you know, his mom is my dad's sister, and...
	I don't know. The more I've listened to Free Domain Radio, the more I've kind of used it to analyze my parents and my dad's, you know, primarily my dad, but their brothers and sisters and how they're, you know, this opens up a whole other can of worms.
	It's basically like, you know, I really got it.
	Drilled into my head when I was a kid that the highest virtue was to please one's parents.
	That's how my dad and his sister were raised.
	And so everything that a kid did should be designed to make their parents proud.
	And why didn't we want to make them proud like they made their parents proud?
	And I just wonder what kind of screwed up behaviors and pathologies were passed down from my dad's sister to my cousin.
	That made him want to join the military.
	You know what I mean? Well, sure.
	And, you know, if a kid is in a family situation and says, I want to join the military, the family system is going to have a huge influence on what happens over the long run, right?
	So clearly, if he ended up in the military, he really could only have done that fundamentally with the support of his family structure, right?
	Right. Sorry, go ahead.
	Oh, I don't know. I mean, I know that my cousin has had, you know, he's an alcoholic.
	He's battled with that and had to get sober and has, you know, addicted to cigarettes.
	I don't really know what you think about cigarette addiction, but...
	Well, one topic at a time.
	Let's do war in the family and then we'll deal with it.
	Yeah, okay. And he's had money problems, had to borrow tens of thousands of dollars from his mom.
	And he was an only child.
	And it's just like, I don't know, it just really makes me wonder if he got the same kind of crap from his mom that I did from my dad growing up.
	And that's part of the reason why the way he is.
	Because of their parents, which would be my grandmother and dad or grandfather on my dad's side who's passed away 10, 15 years now.
	And are they religious, your family as a whole?
	No, my dad's...
	I mean, they're religious in the sense that there's kind of like this soft Christianity, like where there's a God.
	But, you know, when I was a kid, my dad was always really openly professed his kind of disgust and...
	For organized religion, you know, I mean, his view was basically that, you know, these people go into church and sit and nod and pray, and then as soon as, you know, they get out, this one guy screws the next guy out of five bucks.
	That's kind of how my dad put it.
	So, I found that encouraging, but I think later in his life, you know, like when I left for college and stuff, and I have a couple little brothers, they started going to church.
	I think more of my mom's urging, but...
	I don't know if people get older and they get more fearful of the end coming, that they succumb to...
	You know, they try to find solace or comfort in religion.
	I don't know. Sorry, just to interrupt.
	It's not that people get old and get afraid of death and find solace in religion.
	It's that people who were jerks find fewer and fewer people as they get older who are going to like them, so they have to make up friends.
	Could very well be. I've known some atheists who've gotten old and died.
	They haven't turned to religion.
	They haven't even been tempted by it.
	But I know that people who've been pretty unpleasant as parents in particular do turn...
	My own father as well, right?
	They tend to turn towards religion as they get older because very few people want to have anything to do with them, right?
	You know, I don't know. I don't know if my dad has more or fewer friends now than he did then because we don't really talk that much.
	So, let me just ask a provocative question here in general because...
	There's a way to solve this problem that some people would consider extreme, and I wouldn't, but some people might.
	So make the case as to why you'd want to have anything to do with your family, because your father sounds pretty cynical and pretty down on the planet, right?
	Like, everyone's a hypocrite.
	They talk about loving Jesus, and they'll shaft you for five bucks.
	I mean, that's pretty toxic and negative kind of cynicism, right?
	Your mother is religious.
	Your aunt raised a...
	Weird, sociopathic, irresponsible, smoke-addicted kind of murder guy.
	I mean, help me understand why you want to go here at all.
	Well, that's just it. I just really...
	I'm just kind of like over it, you know what I mean?
	I just...
	Well, no, no.
	Let me be even more annoying, though, because that's not what you started with, right?
	What you started with is how do I deal with these soldiers in my family, right?
	And my question is, well, why deal with the family at all?
	I need to preface that.
	That is assuming that I re-establish contact with my family because I've been putting off this, you know, I've basically blown them off and I don't, I don't know, you know, I don't know if I want to disconnect from my entire family or just, I feel like I kind of, I don't know if I owe my parents, but you know, the whole defooing process, you at least send them a letter, you tell them what's going on instead of just blowing them off with no explanation.
	And just as a result of like this and my other uncle from my mom's side of the family being in the military.
	I don't know if having like a family member in mom's side or dad's side of the military is grounds alone just to blow everybody else off but Well, no.
	I'm not talking about blowing your entire family off because there's someone in the military there.
	I'm just listening to what you're saying about your family as a whole and saying, you know, I'm totally happy to hear the case, but what is the plus case?
	Like, if they weren't your family, obviously it wouldn't be people that you would seek out and want to hang with, right?
	And maybe there's some hidden riches, some hidden gems, some hidden gold here that makes it more ambivalent for you.
	Other than the history and the inertia and the cultural stereotype of the good family or the family you owe things to or whatever.
	But what's the case for staying around these people or being in their orbit at all?
	You know, right now there isn't much one.
	Maybe this is more of a hypothetical question.
	Let's just say I had a good relationship with my immediate family.
	Okay, I'm sorry to interrupt you again and I really do apologize for this.
	But if you're ambivalent, then there must be a plus case.
	Because otherwise you wouldn't be ambivalent, right?
	Oh, right. I would just easily...
	Yeah, I wouldn't even be asking you this question if I wasn't ambivalent.
	Okay, so make the case for staying in the family orbit.
	I would get to participate in family functions and at least enjoy the company of those people.
	I mean, for the most part, I enjoy the company of people in my extended family.
	And I even really like this cousin of mine.
	Or he used to, but I didn't know...
	I mean, just... The decision that he made to go over there to Afghanistan and quote-unquote fight, serve, whatever, just totally makes – I'm like – it really angers me and it saddens me.
	Okay. I'm going to – sorry to be annoying.
	Sorry to be annoying. I'm going to have to interrupt you again.
	Do you know why I'm interrupting you this time?
	And look, I mean, this is hard stuff that you're doing, so I apologize for being annoying, but I asked you to make the positive case and you almost immediately veered into criticizing your cousin, right?
	Okay. Well, I mean, the positive case would be, I guess, spending time with the family, having a good relationship with them, and all the wonderful positive things that come with knowing people in the family.
	But I just... And sorry, what are those wonderful and positive things about knowing people in the family?
	And, like, genuinely, you must believe that there are, and maybe you're right.
	But I think that you've got to get behind that case if you want to figure out what's making you so ambivalent.
	So sell me. Say I'm looking to be adopted by a family.
	Sell me on your family. Well, it's a tough sell once you've gotten into the free domain radio and the philosophy because you feel like these people don't have anything to offer you on a philosophical level.
	And that's not the only thing you're going to base a relationship on.
	But I don't feel like I have a damn thing to learn from anybody in my extended or immediate family about the world or philosophy or truth or any of these other things that are important to me.
	Morality. Okay, I'm going to interrupt you again just to say that you're actually giving me the impetus to join the military.
	And the reason that you're giving me the impetus to join the military is so that I can invade America and force you to answer my question.
	Right? Because you have – so tell me the wonderful and positive things.
	And I don't mean this with – I'm not leading you.
	I'm not trying to be cynical here.
	Tell me the wonderful and positive things that will accrue to you from staying in the orbit of your family.
	I have a hard time answering that right now because I am feeling kind of like cynical and negative and just like, what do these people have to offer me?
	That's kind of what I've been asking myself.
	Well, but if you remain ambivalent, it's because you feel they have something to offer you and that's what we need to figure out, right?
	Because either they do have something to offer you, in which case...
	Talking to them, being close.
	Because you're stuck, right?
	You're stuck in the middle here, right?
	You're in the null zone. Because you're not away from your family, but you're not close to your family, right?
	Right. Right.
	And this limbo is where I put my laser scope, right?
	Because I hate seeing people in limbo.
	Because that's the worst place of all.
	Because you neither get the freedom of defooing nor the intimacy and pleasure of having close relations with your family.
	But you're just orbiting somewhere between Mars and Jupiter in the asteroid belt, right?
	Like there's no planet, there's no sun, there's no warmth, there's no freedom, you can't go to other star systems.
	It's just this null zone, right?
	And so we're clear, I think, or at least I get that you're clear about the negatives.
	But you must be...
	You must have the positives there, and I think you either need to pursue those or unearth them as illusions in order to get out of the null zone, right?
	Well, let me give you kind of the other side of the case.
	It's like on my mom's side of the family, my aunt's brother is my uncle, right?
	And so he went and served in Iraq, and now he works.
	I'm stupid.
	But he's basically made a career out of the military too.
	I think he's commander of the National Guard.
	I'm sorry to interrupt you, and I really do apologize a million, million times.
	Are you giving me the negative case?
	Because I get the negative case.
	I'm not a big fan of the military, as you know.
	And you're telling me that I'm telling you about the negative case.
	I get the negative case.
	That's not what you have a problem with.
	And we know that you have a problem with it because you keep avoiding the answer, right?
	And I'm not allowed to waterboard because I'm a philosopher.
	So give me the positive case for staying around these people.
	Okay. If you'll listen to me for 30 seconds, I'll try to get there.
	Okay. I just want to give you a little background information on that kind of dynamic.
	So... Now, my aunt and my cousin, they live in Palm Springs, so they're close enough to me to drive and visit.
	I enjoy their company. I go there, etc.
	But I feel awkward talking about the uncle.
	I mean, he's in Hawaii, and his wife and my aunt hate each other anyway, so that's probably not a huge loss there.
	But, you know...
	I don't know. Sometimes I just feel like I should bring this issue up with him.
	Like, hey, does it bother you that Uncle So-and-so went to Iraq and participated in this criminal murderous invasion?
	You guys ever talk about that?
	That's what's called leading the witness.
	Sure it is. You know what I mean?
	Like, am I the only person who's bothered by this?
	And if so, that doesn't really speak to me well of the rest of my family.
	Or maybe just everybody's all uncomfortable to talk about it, whatever.
	Well, look, I mean I can clearly see that you're not going to make the positive case for me and I don't want to keep hounding you for it.
	So my advice – and this is only nonsense advice, so you can flush it with yesterday's salmon if you like.
	But my advice would be to go and ask this question of your family.
	But I wouldn't put it quite as leading as that.
	Are you bothered? He's a genocidal murderer because that's – That's a little provocative.
	I would just say, well, we've sent people to this war that appears to have some somewhat shaky grounds.
	I mean, how do people feel about that, right?
	I'm troubled. I'm torn.
	I'm ambivalent. How is everyone else doing about that?
	I mean, I would say just go and talk to these people.
	Don't hang around in the null zone.
	And clearly, I don't think I'm able to convince you to take after the stars.
	So I would say fall directly into the sun and see if that can warm you.
	Well, if I were to make the positive case, how would I... I mean, give me a short example.
	I'm sorry. I guess part of the positive case I was trying to make is like, you know, I could go visit these people and I enjoy their company and we could have relationships.
	I mean, how specific do I need to get?
	I'm not really sure. Well, I mean, the positive case would be some...
	I don't know about your family, right?
	But the positive case would be something like this.
	I feel a great deal of anxiety about leaving my family.
	And I also don't feel a great deal of faith in my ability to make new friends.
	And here I have this ready-made set of companions who've known me for years.
	They can be really funny.
	They can be a lot of fun.
	As long as we stay away from, quote, serious topics, I can really relax and kick back and have fun with them.
	And, you know, it's fun to travel together with.
	You know, they've got a wicked wit or they're great storytellers in the family that I feel kind of warm and cozy and connected to my history when I'm around them.
	And I really do think that there's a lot of honor within the family.
	And it is the hijacking of that honor that has led them towards a career in the military.
	I think that I would really like to be curious about exploring how to use that honor for more of a virtuous and philosophical understanding of the term.
	And I also think that if I back down from talking about how I truly think and feel with my family, that that is going to haunt me in the future, that I'm going to sort of back down from this fight and that's going to lower my self-esteem and cause me to have problems being assertive and honest and open in other relationships in the future.
	And it's great fun to sit back and talk about back in the day or the good old days or back when and so on.
	So all of these kinds of statements could be made on the plus side, if that makes any sense.
	That is, and I actually would agree with the majority of those statements.
	I don't feel like I have a lack of my faith in establishing new relationships or making new friends by any stretch of the imagination, but...
	Well, sorry, sorry.
	What I mean by that is that if I do end up breaking with my family, then don't I have a problem insofar as when I go to talk to all these other people in the culture around me, That all these other people in the culture around me have strong relationships with their family, and they're going to ask me what the hell happened with mine, and I'm not going to have a very good or clear answer.
	Okay. Yeah, well, it would probably sound pretty extreme to them why I did decide to break off with my family.
	I don't know. Right, because if you're in the South, sorry, if you're in the South and you say, well, I broke with my family because they have military members, what happens then, right?
	Well, I just can't get over the fact how sick it is that people lionize these killers.
	And it's not even a fair fight.
	Using the analogy of the grown man beating up on an eight-year-old girl, it's like, America has never been at risk of invasion, you know what I mean?
	It's always been like this totally lopsided, come in at the 14th round of the boxing match and, you know, knock out the tired opponent.
	I mean, it's just ridiculous.
	Well, sorry, just to clarify that point, it is true that America has ever been in danger of invasion, but if you look at how differently America treated the Russians versus how they treat, say, Granada or Guatemala or Afghanistan or Haiti, you can see that when American leaders face personal danger themselves, i.e.
	when a country has nuclear weapons, they find themselves chock full of diplomacy, right?
	Absolutely. Not that they never feared invasion, because whenever they face a country that has nuclear power, or even like North Korea, massive conventional powers to strike at its soldiers, they just, they're all about the diplomacy, right?
	So they're just bullies, right? If you can fight back, they become very conciliatory, and if you can't, they kick you in the teeth, right?
	Right, but you've seen how the culture here lionizes the veteran and the soldier, and how proud everybody is, and it's just ridiculous.
	You know, I mean, it's just so...
	180 degrees from the reality of it.
	Well, sure. And one of the fallouts of imperialism is propaganda.
	And the same thing was true of England at the height of its empire.
	The same thing was true of France and of Holland and of Germany and of Italy and all of these other countries that where you have violence, you have to have propaganda.
	The greater the degree of violence, the greater the degree of lying that is required.
	The greater the degree that people have to have their ethics twisted to the service of evil.
	The two go hand in hand.
	You just can't have one without the other.
	It really makes me feel like...
	I'm really torn about living in America because I feel there's a lot of great things that have come out of this geographical area known as the United States.
	But at the same time, it's the leading or one of the leading mass murder organizations in the world.
	And so it's this sickening patriotism and lionization of the hired killers and whatnot.
	I don't know. I just, I wonder, like, as far as the list of priorities go, you'd think that, like, putting a stop to mass murder would be number one.
	And I just don't feel like I really belong here anymore.
	You know what I mean? I'm actually planning on expatriating and probably giving up my citizenship, but...
	Well, certainly. I mean, it is a very tough thing, and I really do feel for the people in America.
	Certainly, it's not your damn fault.
	You didn't invent the system.
	You didn't invent the military-industrial complex, and you are, to some degree, enslaved by it.
	But it's tough.
	Christine and I were at some point thinking of moving to the States, but we were just talking about this the other day, that it's off our list for sure.
	I think you've definitely got to get out of the South, in my opinion, particularly if you're in a more rural area.
	You just have to because you're just not going to – the odds of finding people that you are going to have anything compatible with is just very, very small.
	Well, Phoenix is going to be an exception to that, I think, because there's actually quite a sizable libertarian contingent out here, and also in Southern California.
	So I don't know if I'd really scoop those areas in with the South, quote-unquote.
	I mean, I think of the South. I'm thinking more like Texas and East.
	You know what I mean? Well, that's true.
	You would have a tough time selling me on the compatibility between philosophy and libertarianism these days.
	It just seems to be getting worse and worse, the relations between philosophy and libertarianism these days.
	Libertarianism is a lot to do with arguments from a fact, and it also seems to have very strong...
	whether it's a secular mythology about the virtue of the founding fathers and the magic of the constitution or a more explicitly religious mythology.
	But it definitely is not such a big fan of reasoning from first principles.
	And, of course, it is addicted to politics or attempting to gain control of the gun.
	So libertarianism and philosophy seem to have had an uneasy dating relationship followed by a truce, followed by some disarming reloads in the night.
	So it may be the case, but I wouldn't necessarily be convinced that if you're around libertarians, your philosophical impulses and desires are going to be met with positivity.
	Does that mean you're going to discontinue referring to yourself as a libertarian?
	Or how do you feel about the kind of bastardization of the meaning of the term, if that is in fact what's going on?
	I'm trying to move more towards philosopher.
	I still will use it from time to time just to help identify something.
	A philosopher doesn't mean free market for most people, but libertarian would mean more that.
	So I'll use it from time to time, but I'm trying to move more towards philosopher because I don't want to take a position.
	I want to know the truth, and that means going from first principles, however grueling that is.
	And libertarians don't seem to be such a fan of first principles by any stretch of the imagination.
	It just seems to be another kind of bigotry in many ways, but...
	And it's a kind of confusing bigotry because it's closer to the truth, but I was thinking about this the other day that political libertarianism in particular and religious libertarianism in specifics, the closer you get to the truth, if you think of the truth like a desk lamp and you put your hand up closer and closer to it,
	The closer you get to the truth, the more capacity you have to obscure it to other people, and that's in many ways the way I look at political libertarianism and religious libertarianism at the moment, that they're so close to the truth, and this is the Ron Paul thing too, they're close enough to the truth that they actually obscure it to other people, which I think is a real shame.
	I totally agree. I feel like the Libertarian Party actually kind of sidetracks a lot of people on their way towards the journey towards the truth or whatever you want to call it.
	Yeah, I was on a show yesterday, the Mark Stevens show, and a guy was on – they were talking like, what can you do to move liberty forward, right?
	And of course, I talk about using the about me argument of personal relationships, living with integrity and the life that you can control and so on.
	And one guy was saying, you need to buy this water filter so you can drink from your toilet.
	Yeah. Like, it was a libertarian, right?
	And it's just like, okay, I'll go into the world and talk about virtue and truth with people.
	You figure out how to drink from your toilet, and let's figure out, in the long run, who ends up serving the truth better.
	Well, that's the whole survivalist kind of strain, and, you know, I know.
	I was actually just listening to it this morning before I got on the call, but...
	Wait, listen, there's all kinds of tangents I'd like to explore, but if somebody else has a question, I'm going to go ahead and bow out.
	Well, thanks. Look, I really do feel for you.
	I mean, it is so bizarre how the hell you people come to be.
	I don't get it. I mean, from this militaristic, quasi-religious, cynical family has sprung somebody devoted to truth and reason.
	It is completely, it's like, I don't know, it's like a dinosaur giving birth to Jessica Simpson, let's say, or something like that.
	Maybe something even more advanced.
	But it is particularly strange how this conflation just happens to pop out of these gene pools.
	And it isn't easy, of course, right?
	But I can guarantee you, no matter how hard it is for you, just think if you're a nicotine-addicted, guilt-ridden sociopath of a cousin, heavily in debt, that no matter how hard it is for you and the choices that you have to make based on your commitment and desire for integrity and truth, not having that commitment that no matter how hard it is for you and the choices that you have to make
	I would like to say something profound, but...
	Okay, well, thanks. Anyway, do keep us posted.
	And the great news is that we have lots of listeners outside the South, and they seem to be relatively happy to put people up indefinitely.
	So that is very, very important.
	Tap into the Underground Railroad of FDR. That's a very, very important thing, just to help you get out.
	Some people, I think, will even be willing to send hot air balloons south to pick you up.
	So this is just stuff to think about.
	And as soon as we get Richard Branson on board, all of that will be possible.
	Thanks very much. Excellent, excellent points.
	And we have time for another question or two.
	should such be your desires at the first step up the setting and i just wanted to add real quick as one of there's any uh...
	benefit any effort has been made for after our members and cities to kind of meet up with each other and get to know each other in person Yes, it has happened in a couple of different places.
	New York and Chicago spring to mind.
	But post that stuff on the board, you might actually find people closer than you think.
	There was a thread running at some point on the board.
	Sorry? Chicago in August.
	Be there. Yeah, there was a thread on the board.
	I don't know where it's gone. But you can do a search for it where people were listing their geographical location if they were listeners.
	But I would definitely – this is something that I just – I can't recommend strongly enough.
	Don't just listen to podcasts.
	Talk to people.
	Be annoying.
	Be annoying. I mean, that's what philosophers are supposed to be, is willing to tolerate being annoying or, as it turns out, in my case, actually end up being turned on by it.
	But if you see someone you like on the board, say, hey, Skype me, baby.
	Let's chat. Learn to get into conversations with people.
	Philosophy is about action and philosophy is about networking as well.
	So try to avoid the problem of isolation because it's really hard.
	To make wise decisions in isolation.
	There are too many factors that are going on.
	So I really, really, really strongly encourage people to find people.
	You might find someone in the chat room that you enjoy talking with.
	Guest 667 is a total hottie.
	So just keep your eyes peeled for he slash she.
	I think it's more of the hermaphrodite thing.
	But depending on what your bag is or whatever.
	Lack of bag. That could be productive for you.
	But if you find someone that you like in the chat room, just say, hey, can we exchange Skype or can, you know, whatever, right?
	And talk to people.
	I think that's just so important to stay in the conversation with people.
	I mean, obviously, I'm available, but not hugely at times.
	So, you know, these horizontal communications among people interested in philosophy, I really, really just strongly urge you, everyone, to pursue that as much as possible.
	Yeah. That was just my mention about that.
	And, oh, there was, I guess, one other thing, which maybe in a week and a half or so, maybe closer to two weeks, we're going to do the philosophy boot camp, because what's happened is, to supplement FDR income, we're actually getting a large number of listeners to volunteer, and you may not know this if you volunteered already, to make shoes.
	Specifically, we are going to be knocking off some Manolo Blahnik's.
	Christina needs some. So we'll be using wood, balsa wood, bits of glue, horses' tails, and so on to make some absolutely fabulous footwear.
	So that's just something to keep in mind.
	But the boot camp is going to be...
	Learning to argue both sides of a proposition.
	So I'll play devil's advocate and then we'll flip sides and so on and we may actually have it.
	I was thinking of having it sort of as a pyramid elimination thing.
	We could either just do it as a straight learning curve but I think in order to make it more exciting and to have people really focus on preparation that we would have this boot camp with a bunch of participants and then people would vote on who did the best.
	In a sort of American Idol kind of thing, but with different goals and objectives.
	So we're going to set that up.
	It's going to be free, just because I completely give up on charging you people for anything, except that Miami tapes are still available for $25.
	But it's going to be free, and just pay me what you think it's worth at the end, and we'll have a nice prize.
	For whoever's going to come out on top or the group or whatever.
	So that may be something that you'll be interested in.
	I'll be posting that on the board and sending it out as an email.
	But that will be something I think will be a lot of fun.
	So you'll argue the pro-status position.
	You'll argue the anti-status position.
	You'll argue the pro-UPB position.
	You'll argue the anti-UPB position.
	And you will attempt to argue against Christina and you will find that it is in fact impossible to win.
	So that's just something which will be important.
	Well, because you'll argue the pro-focus on family position and then the anti-focus on family position, the pro-psychology position, the anti-psychology position, I just think it's really important to step in the shoes of the people that you're debating with to make sure that you can...
	The whole point of this is so that you can actually mouth people's arguments as they're making them to you, and that really drives people completely insane, and that, of course, is our goal.
	Bootcamp is coming up. It's the next thing on FDR, so be sure to sign up for that.
	There's absolutely no limit on the number of people who can participate in that.
	It's going to be online, so there's no need to go anywhere.
	And it will be, I think, a very, very good practice in terms of clear thinking, debating, negotiation, and so on.
	So that's going to be the next thing which is going down in the FDR multiverse.
	Alright, so if we have time, a question, thing, people, talk, you, go.
	Yeah, job interviews.
	No thanks, I'm not looking.
	Sorry. I have some coming up next week.
	One of them in particular, I have a lot of experience in several of the areas they want me to have expertise in or experience in.
	But one area I don't have any hands on in, although I know about the technology and I know I can bone up on a study as much as I can before the interview.
	But how would you suggest going about...
	Presenting a lack of experience in a certain technology, like a VMware, ESX, stuff like that.
	In the IT world, it's like every job I go to, not only do they do the same thing differently, but...
	In which you have to learn their style and their system and the way they have things set up.
	But on top of that, they have different applications they use.
	They have different things you just kind of have to learn as you go.
	And there's never any case where there's not a learning curve involved.
	And, like, recently they ran out of things for me to do on Citrix and I had to learn Lotus Notes.
	So I was just wondering how you present that in an interview so that it's positive and they think, oh, okay, it doesn't matter whether or not he's had experience in this area, he can, you know, learn it pretty quick.
	No, I mean that's a good question and of course any human being's knowledge of IT is vastly dwarfed by his, or I guess theoretically hers, lack of knowledge, right?
	We have only a tiny slice of the cake when it comes to IT, which is true of any form of knowledge.
	There's two approaches that I've taken to that in the interview and it has a lot to do with the technical knowledge of the person you're talking to.
	The first is, and again you want to say this as loudly as possible, but the first is to say X! I invented X! I am X! So, do you know PHP? I invented PHP! I am PHP! And if you have a cape, that is so much the better.
	So that's just one approach.
	The second is a little more subtle, is to say, my middle name is PHP! Or something like that.
	I have PHP for breakfast!
	Oh dear, I just left a pile of PHP in the interview chair.
	I mean, there's lots of ways to approach it that are going to seriously have them avoid asking about your lack of technical knowledge for the remainder of the interview, and it allows you to complete your interview in the parking lot with the security guards, which is a lot less stressful in many ways, because you've got the fight or flight thing kicking in.
	Alright, next question.
	Do we have anyone else who has any questions?
	But I would say that, I mean, is there an option that you're considering other than all honesty?
	No. Okay, so what's your question again?
	So my question is, how do I present it in a positive way that doesn't say, no, I have no experience in that area?
	Other than just a... No, I mean, sorry, that is a good question.
	What I would say, let's say somebody asked me about PHP. Yeah.
	And I'd say, oh, no thanks, I haven't had that much coffee and I went just before the interview.
	Yeah. I would say, can you just, you know, I think I know something similar, but tell me a little bit about it.
	They say, well, it's a web programming language.
	It's structured this way and the other, right?
	I'd say, well, I'm familiar with web programming.
	I've done web programming in Java, in VBScript, in VB, in ASP, in ASP.NET, in C Sharp, in VB.NET. I've done web coding in this.
	I understand the concept of what it is you're talking about, that you're going to run stuff on the server, render it locally, AJAX it up a little bit, throw some flash in there, and then hard code as much as humanly possible.
	So you can certainly say...
	If you don't know the acronym at all, just say, you know, tell me a little bit more about that technology, and they say, oh, it's X, Y, and Z. For sure, you will have been exposed to something similar in your IT career.
	I mean, there's only like 12 things that ever happened in IT, right?
	And so, you know, if it's VMware, or if it's some sort of web programming language, or if it's some sort of damn database thing, or whatever, right?
	Then say, oh, you know, well, I haven't worked in Oracle, but I've done tons of coding in SQL Server or whatever, right?
	So help them to understand that you get the concept, you just might not get the syntax, if that makes sense.
	Because learning syntax is relatively easy.
	Teaching someone how to code on the web who's never coded at all is really tough.
	Teaching someone to code on the web who's coded client-server is less tough.
	Teaching someone to code on the web who's coded in another language on the web is easier still and so on.
	And going from Visual Basic to VB.NET is not that big a deal and all this kind of stuff.
	I think that you want to get a sense of the kind of technology that they're talking about and then talk about the technology that you've worked with that's very similar and help them to understand.
	It's like I've been in IT now for 220 years.
	I started with an abacus and a hippo.
	And now, like what I used to say is they'd say, you know, have you ever programmed in C-sharp, right?
	And I said, hang on, I think I can hit that note if I grab myself real hard.
	Yeah. And I would say I have not programmed in C-Sharp, but I have programmed in COBOL and Visual Basic and Basic Wayback and Perl, and I've programmed in Turtle and Pascal and all this kind of stuff, right?
	So it certainly is true that if I learned...
	C-sharp, it would be adding my 13th language to the list of languages that I know.
	And I'm sure, as you're aware, I would say to the interviewer, every language that you learn gives you skills that you'll bring to the new language and helps you to understand that new language that much more quickly.
	So that would sort of be my answer, if that makes sense.
	So you would say all of that?
	I figure if they fall asleep, I've won, because I could just say, hire this guy on their piece of paper.
	Right, right.
	You might want to leave it without grabbing yourself out and just do it.
	You don't want to say that, right? But I can't show you because we're not on the webcam.
	So I can basically cite instances where I've, you know, learned quickly before and moved over to new technologies.
	I can explain my experience in understanding technology in general in virtualized environments is...
	I mean, I'm well aware of the concept, and I understand the concept of it, and learning it would just take a couple of minutes, maybe a day or two of familiarizing myself with the environment.
	I wouldn't necessarily say how long it's going to take you, because any claim that you make in the interview is going to come back to haunt you, and it's going to make your first week incredibly stressful.
	You said a day! Are you ready to go?
	Uh-uh. So just saying relatively quickly and so on, right?
	And you can just sort of make the point.
	I said my success in IT has not been because I have a particular skill set but because I understand technology very deeply and because I'm a quick learner and I love to think and reason out problems, which is fundamentally what IT, if not business as a whole, is all about.
	Or you can take the approach that I took with a very unfunny IT manager who once interviewed me and he said, do you have experience writing ActiveX controls within a browser?
	And I said, no, because I don't like to write viruses.
	And it turned out, that was a joke, but it turned out that what their entire technology was based on.
	And that didn't go quite as well.
	But of course, why would I want to work with somebody who doesn't have a sense of humor anyway?
	Right. Right.
	That makes sense. Alright.
	That gives me plenty to work with there.
	I think I can translate all the code talk even though I may be doing some scripting to architecture and support and stuff like that.
	And remember, trying to get good stuff out of me is like trying to pan for gold on a beach.
	If you just do it for long enough, there hopefully is some kind of goddamn nugget in there somewhere.
	So I hope that there's too much sand in this ratio.
	I think I found two or three nuggets.
	Excellent. Okay, thanks.
	And also, talk to the people who are going to be your references and make sure they're not going to screw you.
	Good idea. No, seriously.
	Talk to them and say, look, I mean, I don't want to lead you, but I mean, if I ask you for a reference, is it going to be positive or negative towards me getting a job, right?
	Right. And remember that you can always put down Bill from Togo as a reference, and then I can play him in the phone interview.
	Hi! Does Nate still have my daughter?
	Still have my daughter.
	All right.
	Okay, well, thanks very much, and let us know how it goes.
	But, yeah, I mean, you know, you think, you learn, you grow.
	That's IT. I mean, anybody who wants a cardboard cutout of exactly their kind of technological person is going to be shafted if that technology changes, right?
	Because they haven't got somebody who can learn and grow.
	Right. Oh, wait.
	Yeah, that's definitely a good point.
	I need to remember. I could probably use that.
	And you can ask them that.
	You can say, well, I mean, just so I understand what the process is, Are you looking for somebody who can do exactly what your technology is today, or are you looking at somebody who can learn and grow within the organization as your technology evolves?
	Very good. Right, because then if they say, well, we're looking for somebody who can grow, well, first of all, if they say, no, we're looking for somebody who has exactly, it's like, well, then I'm a little confused because I'm in here for an interview and I don't have the skills that you want, so help me understand that.
	But if they say, no, we want someone who can learn and grow, then say, hey, that's, you know, I am learning and growth.
	It is my middle name. Right.
	Have I finished helping you yet?
	I feel very helped.
	I will often say that to Christina when the kitchen is currently inflamed.
	No, I think there's a missing fire over in the corner there.
	You might want to go... You know, also, if you have a recorder, you might want to record an interview and then post it to one or two people who might be able to give you feedback on stuff, right?
	I mean, all of that stuff can be very helpful, but you'll do fine, I'm sure.
	Yeah, I can do the Greg thing.
	I can sit that little recorder out in the middle of the table.
	Okay, talk. Speak into my crotch!
	Sorry. Right.
	Sorry, this sounds so much like the wedding.
	If I don't get Christina to blush and throw something at me at least once a show, it just doesn't feel like a good show.
	Sorry, honey, again. All right.
	Well, thanks very much. Keep us posted.
	And is there anyone else that I can, quote, help?
	I have one quick comment about what you were saying earlier about getting out and talking to people.
	And I've had a lot of success with my immediate friends by just recommending books, recommending FDR. I have a friend recently who went from total socialist democrat to anarcho-capitalist in about a year.
	So if you're skeptical, it does actually work, and you just got to get out there and try it.
	And you'll be surprised at the result, because a lot of people are actually a little more rational than we give credit to.
	Well, I think that's true now, because if I remember, you talked about him once before.
	Have you actually let him out of the basement now that he's converted?
	Not quite yet, but as the weather's getting warmer, I'm thinking about it.
	Well, if he's close, if he's close, what you can do is get somebody who won't convert and throw him in for food.
	That's just a possibility to keep that ecosystem going.
	But no, that's great.
	And I think, look, I mean, I was just saying, again, I want to recycle things from the show yesterday, but let's just remember, too, I mean, for those of us who've been kicking this can around for a while, let's just remember just how much things have changed.
	I mean, when I first started, like 25 years ago...
	You couldn't get anyone to believe there was anything wrong with the government at all, right?
	Everybody was like, what do you mean you want fewer social programs?
	We want more social programs.
	I mean you were totally fighting a staggering riptide, right?
	And now you can actually get relatively quickly to the point where somebody says, I don't think anarchy can work because of X, Y, and Z. Now, to people who are new to this conversation, new to trying to bring some truth to the world, that may seem sort of frustrating.
	But let me tell you, it is like 95% further along than we were 25 years ago.
	It is an incredible thing that we are actually having conversations about how anarchy can work.
	That is just unprecedented.
	So I think that we also need to figure out...
	We also need to remember just how far we've come.
	Not always look forward and say, well, it's still so far away to Libertopia, but also to look backward and just to see how far we've come in a relatively short period of time.
	It's an incredible revolution that over a decade or two, we've managed to move a lot of people towards the point where they're willing to at least entertain the possibility of a stateless society.
	That is just astounding. Steph, I have something to add to that.
	Carl here. Oh, is it a tangent?
	It's very directly connected.
	Sorry, it's tangent only.
	I think we mentioned this before.
	Sorry, go on. I should have realized.
	I'm so sorry.
	But I've had a lot of success giving away Alice Miller's Drama of the Gifted Child to a number of people.
	Like people who may not be maybe a little wary of the philosophical conversation but are definitely interested in psychology.
	And I find that the philosophy comes up eventually in those conversations as well.
	So that's another thing that if somebody's interested in psychology perhaps seems wary of philosophy, you can give them that book and discuss the psychology and the family issues and so forth.
	You're talking chicks, right? Yeah, chicks.
	Never mind, yeah. Okay, yeah, because you definitely want a sort of fork in the road chick slash stud muffin approach.
	Oh, right. And I pretend that I'm...
	Yeah, and I pretend that I'm interested in guys so that the chicks feel comfortable around me.
	So, just kidding. It's a good pretense.
	You know, you're really working it well.
	No, I mean, I think that's right.
	It's actually often with women. It's these discussions with women often, yeah, with the psychology.
	For sure. And I mean, to me, it's not sexist to recognize gender differences because otherwise fitting them together would be tough.
	But I think it is important to recognize, and it's not specifically male-female, but there are people who just aren't that interested.
	You know, as many tools as you can have, right, to get the lock open, right?
	You can have your credit card to slip down the side, you can have your Jimmy key, and hopefully you can have some C4. So whatever it takes to get through that door, you just want to have as many different tools as possible.
	Yeah. C4. See, as a woman, you wouldn't know that.
	It's actually a kind of explosive. No, wait.
	We watched Alias. You'd know that.
	It's a plastic kind of explosive. Oh, remember on Lost?
	In the holds of the ship, they had those big explosives, and they were all packed together.
	They looked kind of like plasticine.
	C4. Anyway.
	So, I get most of my military knowledge from Lost.
	So, anyway, just mentioning...
	So, yeah, no, and I think you're quite right.
	I think, you know, whatever it is that people – there's truth in every sphere that we talk about.
	At least I hope that we've dug some up.
	So whatever it is that people are interested in, take them there.
	You can as easily get someone to anarcho-capitalism through psychology as you can through economics, in my opinion.
	Because with psychology comes questions around authority, comes questions around the mind and reality, comes questions around – I think that's an excellent point, Carl. I would say that...
	Wherever people's interests are, that's kind of...
	I've used this metaphor before, but if you're a car salesman and someone comes in, you'll ask them some questions to say, hey, how many kids do you have?
	And if I have 12 kids, then you're not going to sell them the sports car.
	And if they have no kids, you're not going to sell them the minivan.
	So it's just around asking questions.
	You can still sell them a car, but you just have to make sure you have some idea of what their needs and preferences are to begin with.
	Right. And it could be Alice Miller.
	It could be any book about any subject that you think they're interested in.
	You can just get a conversation started.
	Give them something that you think they're going to find interesting.
	Or send them to one of my really shrieky or weepy podcasts and just say, this is my guru of stability.
	Right. I can only aspire to that kind of mental health.
	Well, thank you. Excellent, excellent point.
	I'm sorry, you were going to say? Or the karaoke, too.
	And the karaoke, absolutely.
	So, thank you.
	That's an excellent point. We have time for another question, I would imagine, if somebody else has a yearning burning that can't be treated medicinally.
	Well, look at that. It looks like people are actually preferring a shorter show today.
	I shall not complain.
	I wanted to thank the people who were recently on a podcast which I have yet to put together.
	To do with personal finances, I think it's a very, very interesting show.
	We will try to get that out tomorrow.
	And Christina's rounding at me because I'm using the word personal finances.
	What I mean by that for me is returning pop bottles in exchange for donuts.
	But some people have more complex finances that they need to work with.
	And that was some very interesting questions around debt, family history, our relationship to money.
	It was a great, great show. And I just wanted to thank everyone who participated in that.
	And thank you as always for your support, for your interest, for your participation.
	This show is only as smart as you people are.
	So if it's a smart show, take a bow and step back.
	Kiss yourself! So thank you so much.
	I will talk to you guys next week.
	I will be around this week.
	And have yourselves a wonderful, wonderful week.
	And thanks a million as well, as always, for your support of this conversation.

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