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July 4, 2008 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

02:02:05

1099 Optimism and History - A Conference

You are not your talents.

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	So, Allie, did we fix your problem yet?
	Um, I don't know.
	I don't know. It seems like we're...
	What we're going to do is continue joking around like a bunch of idiots until your patience completely runs out, which should only be about 90 seconds, and then we'll do it in the moment as it happens.
	Okay. So, alright, so if you guys can mute yourself if you're not talking, that would be great.
	And also mute yourself if you say anything, if you have any impulse to disagree with me, or Ali, who will take you down.
	Yeah, so when did you start to lose the patience?
	I want to say...
	You're a bad doctor. I know.
	I want to say it's probably about like two weeks, right about when I broke up with Jesse, actually.
	So how long ago was that?
	It was longer than two weeks ago.
	I think that was three or four.
	Wow. It's been a long time.
	Sorry. Yeah, it was...
	I want to say it was like three or four days after I broke up with Jesse.
	Sorry, just making a note here.
	There's no question that Ducky starts drinking before noon.
	Okay. Just checking that out.
	Okay. Sorry, just going that over.
	And do you know what may have caused that?
	I actually, I mean, I'm sure that I know somewhere deep down, but I'm not aware of it.
	Right. And did the loss of patients occur all of a sudden, or was it something that slowly came along?
	Kind of all of a sudden, like all of a sudden I just, it was like one day I went from being the patient's queen to the next day people started talking and inside my brain I was like, oh my god, they need to shut up already.
	Right. Which isn't normal.
	Well, and I think that the answer is at least to me fairly clear, which is that you're odd.
	Yes, well, I already figured that one out.
	No, I don't mean odd as in strange, I mean odd as the acronym.
	The acronym? Yeah, it's an acronym, ODD. It actually just means oppositional defiant disorder.
	And I think what happened was the moment that I pointed out you were very patient, you're like, oh yeah?
	I'm not going to be patient if you're going to call me patient.
	I'm going to be the exact opposite of patient now.
	Probably. Because it was about that time that I started to get that whole reputation for being really patient.
	Right. And you're like, I am going to confound everybody's expectations.
	Yeah. I feel like doing that a lot in general.
	I can't even tell you, and I wish we had a webcam for this experiment, I can't tell you how absolutely necessary it is.
	You have to breathe. You must breathe.
	Okay, now we're just going to wait for her.
	We're going to hear a thud as she passes out.
	Not quite. I'm not that defiant, okay?
	Right. See?
	She's being defiant about me saying how defiant she is.
	Ooh, it just doesn't end, does it?
	Interesting. Okay, so now I know that I really don't like to live up to expectations because I've done that my entire life.
	So that's probably got a lot to do with it, thinking about it.
	It's just the fact that I had that expectation now, all of a sudden, that she's this really patient person, and she's always happy and whatnot, and she listens to everyone, and asks five gazillion questions, and never gets mad or snaps at someone, and then I started snapping.
	And I think it was around the time that we started talking about you as the St.
	Jude Statue of Infinite Patience, right?
	Yeah, I think so. That was a couple of days after I broke up with Jesse.
	Oh. Oh.
	Interesting. Yeah.
	And I've noticed that you have been dampening down the serious topics a little bit in the chat room as well.
	I mean, we talked about it last night, but...
	It is something that I have noticed that you have a kind of deflationary approach.
	Like if a deep topic comes along, you will put it the shallowest conceivable explanation, which, you know, it certainly could be the case that there is a more simple explanation, but it seems different.
	Like you've gone from someone who's like, tell me more to, no, no, it's just because it's summer.
	Yeah. I actually didn't notice that I was doing that until you pointed it out.
	Well, I hope not. Yeah.
	It wasn't on purpose.
	That's for certain. Yeah, for sure.
	Just when he started pointing out, like, oh, that was just a really, really shallow explanation.
	I was like, it was?
	Because in my brain, that was, like...
	The explanation that I had, and that's, you know, what I really thought.
	And then all of a sudden I realized, I was like, oh my god, that is a really shallow explanation.
	Why didn't I try to think more about this?
	This isn't normal.
	It's not. It's not.
	And just for those who weren't in on the conversation last night, who were, I don't know, incomprehensibly doing something other than staring at the FDR chat room, I was talking about how I'd been noticing in the chat room over the last couple of, maybe sort of six to eight weeks, How there had been a kind of shallowing out of the conversation and a sort of – like people were either talking about stuff that wasn't particularly important, which is fine.
	It doesn't always have to be 24-7, but I felt that it was a shallowed out conversation and also that people were responding to more serious topics either with shallow explanations or – Yeah,
	it does.
	Yeah. Which I've been noticing, like, now that people are bringing it up, I've been noticing it in, like, everything that I've been doing.
	Like, even just in, like, real life and not just in the chat room and real life and, you know...
	Everything. I guess I can't just do it in one aspect of my life.
	It just boiled over to every little thing I did.
	And so this patience that I had and this ability to listen that I, you know, really liked and that all of my friends really liked.
	I was talking to one of my friends last night and he even mentioned it.
	He was like, wow, you've gone from like really super listening and really kind about everything to where you almost snap at me all the time we talk.
	And I was like, I do?
	Right, and you will seriously, in a philosophical chatroom, say, well, I have to work here three times a day, right?
	Because it's bikini season coming up.
	It's just like, when did we chat into America's Next Top Model?
	When did that cross over?
	I'm so sorry.
	I'm so sorry.
	That actually had to do with something deeper.
	Okay, I'm all ears.
	Okay. No, that was actually something deeper, and I couldn't even pose it in the deep way that I was trying to talk about.
	It just came out as this really shallow thing, and then I just left it there.
	Like, I didn't even try to go any deeper into what...
	I was trying to say.
	I know. It's like, I don't know, like, what would Kierkegaard say about, like, whether you should have a belly ring?
	Like, I don't know. It was just surprising.
	I know! It's like, at the time, I was actually thinking about how I'm starting to conform to, you know, what society wants of me, like, image-wise, and I've never done that before, but instead of saying that, I was like...
	I need to work out more because I have to wear a bikini all the time because I'm in SoCal and then I just left it and let people to go.
	Bikini? Okay.
	Let's talk about something else now.
	I didn't know that Toys R Us just came out with a philosophy Barbie that someone ordered and you pull the back.
	Maybe I'm feeling angst because I'm getting too much vitamin D or something.
	It just seems kind of odd compared to the way that you've been interacting in the past.
	It is really odd because I don't think I've ever done that before.
	Ever. Right.
	So, this is something that's just like a completely new thing to get into for me.
	Right. Right.
	And it probably isn't a new thing insofar as you obviously, living in SoCal, you have been exposed to certain levels of sunshiny shallowness in the past, right?
	I mean, it's not like unprecedented.
	It's not like you suddenly broke into fluent Armenian or something, right?
	Right. Right, but I was never that shiny, shallow person who only cared about dyeing her hair and going to the tanning salon at night.
	So, like, it's new in the fact that I've never, at least from what I've been told from my friends, this is like a new part of me that they've never seen before.
	Right, right. And I don't think it's just you, to be honest.
	I mean, I've also become obsessed with my bikini line.
	So it's complicated.
	No, I think that this is what's going on in the community as a whole, is there's been a bit of a sort of shallowing out and a sort of regression in a way over the past sort of six to eight weeks.
	Mm-hmm. So I think that you may be leading the charge in certain ways, but you're certainly not unattended by followers in a way.
	Right. But I feel really bad that I'm leading the charge.
	Well, I don't know that you are.
	I just, it was a good way of putting it.
	I mean, it's hard to say who leads and who follows.
	It's kind of a dance in this kind of stuff.
	But it does definitely happen that it accumulates, right?
	So as people bring up more serious or intimate or deep topics in the chat room, if people start making jokes and distractions and rolling something shiny into the sunlight or something, then it tends to...
	You know how bad money displaces good money?
	That sort of currency displaces real money?
	The shallowness can displace more of the authentic...
	And again, I don't want to say it's not just you.
	I was talking about it with everyone in the chat room last night.
	But I was interested in the reaction that you had...
	When I said that this chat room, I view it as the philosophical equivalent of the Sistine Chapel.
	And that doesn't mean that it has to be perfect and flawless and we can't ever make jokes or anything like that.
	But what I was trying to do over the last couple of weeks was I was trying to figure out...
	I would come in as a guest or sometimes I would even come in as myself...
	And I would say, okay, if I knew nothing about this community and I saw what they were chatting about, what kind of community would I think it was, right?
	Mm-hmm. And certainly if you go to like a, I don't know, like a board on gardening, there'll be questions about gardening for the most part and there'll be other things too, right?
	So I was sort of thinking, okay, well I come into this chat room as a guest, as somebody who's like just clicked on philosophy and have come to Freedom Aid Radio and they say, oh, there's a chat room and they come in and what is it that people are talking about?
	And certainly over the past sort of six to eight weeks, what I have felt is...
	I don't know. I don't know what people would think that the community is about.
	And again, this has nothing to do with...
	We only can talk about epistemology or anything like that.
	But it just...
	It seemed kind of like people would come and not talk about anything that was particularly personal or important or relevant or whatever.
	And they'd get into some snaps with the guests and so on.
	But I wasn't...
	If it didn't say, this is a philosophy chat room somewhere, I'm not sure that I would have.
	Or a psychology or a relational or whatever it is, all the topics that we talk about.
	I wasn't sure that – in fact, I was quite sure that people wouldn't see that if that makes sense.
	Yeah, that does make sense.
	And I want to say it changed around 2 o'clock in the morning my time when there weren't a lot of people in here and it did shift a little bit, but it never fully went where you thought it was going to go and it was never all the way there.
	You mean in terms of pursuing a topic to a more solid or deep place?
	A deeper level, yeah.
	Right, and I sort of got the feeling that it was sort of like, imagine a scuba diver that has like 20 helium balloons that he's trying to pull down.
	It's like you pull one down, another one pops up, and it was kind of that, there was an upward momentum to a shallower and more showy and jokey kind of place.
	And I wasn't sure what had turned us from scuba divers to helium balloons, so to speak.
	Right. No, that makes, yeah...
	I feel like that happened now, too, now that people are mentioning it.
	And I know that I'm definitely one of the people that does it.
	I mean, it's definitely something that I have to figure out why I do.
	And it was funny, because even while we were talking about it last night in the chatroom, and I have it saved, I'll post it on the board, but even when we were talking about it last night in the chatroom, it was kind of funny, because it actually happened while we were talking about how shallow the conversation was, right?
	That two people said something at the same time, and it's like, I don't know what this is, it's like, you owe me a Coke if we say the same thing at the same...
	I don't know what that means, but...
	Oh, jinx. I'm sorry?
	It's called jinx.
	I know Jinx, but I don't know how it got into a Coke economy.
	Which, you know, doesn't really matter.
	But then it was just like, oh, I owe a Coke.
	Well, you can subtract it from the Cokes that you owe me.
	Well, I don't think I owe you that many Cokes.
	I just think everybody's like, ah, helium balloons, right?
	Yeah, and then we had to drag it back.
	And dragging it back was actually really hard after that.
	It was like, very few people, you know, made a big effort to go, okay, now let's get back to topic.
	Right, right.
	Most of us are just happy to go with Coke.
	Right, right.
	And it almost becomes – people feel, I think, even if people were interested in the topic, and I think people were interested in the topic, but people feel, I think, helpless.
	Like if it starts to go that way, like if it just gets all kind of jokey and distracted and shallow, if it shallows out, and that happens with extraordinary rapidity.
	I think people, even if they're really enjoying the topic, they don't feel like they can say, listen, can we get back to this topic?
	This was – I was very interested in this, right?
	I'd like to talk more about this, or I'd like to get other people's thoughts on this.
	It's like someone breaks away from the herd, so to speak, and goes into jokey, shallow land, and everybody, like a flock of birds, changes flight instantly and goes over there.
	And I know that people are more interested in the deeper conversations, but – Compared to what the podcasts talk about, if you contrast the depth and the richness of the podcast conversations with what is happening in the chat room, it seems to be completely opposite planets, if that makes sense.
	Mm-hmm. Yeah, it does.
	And I almost felt a little bit relieved, actually, when we did go to the jokiness, because I was like, oh, Sirius is done, it's back to normal now.
	And then immediately I felt guilty for feeling relieved, because I was like, no, no, no, no, we're supposed to be talking about this Sirius topic that's influencing the community and whatnot, and this is bad if I don't even want to talk about it.
	Something's going on.
	So why don't you want to talk about it?
	That to me is the question. And this, we don't have to just make because other people are in the call.
	It's not about your patients, but it's more about...
	The community and the conversations that are going on, like the board has more serious conversations in the chat room, although I know that the people who are in the chat room are very deep and intelligent and serious people who have good senses of humor and so on.
	So we can – it doesn't just have to be you and I talking, Ali.
	We can open this up to anyone else.
	If you want to mention something, just mention it in the chat room or pop it up in the Skype chat.
	But the question is why?
	And I don't – This is not a criticism.
	It's just an observation because I don't know the answer.
	I have some ideas but I don't want to layer them on top of a community that obviously has a great deal of self-knowledge.
	So why do you think it became that?
	Because you went into the topics, the deep topics as well.
	I mean the very first conversation that you and I had.
	Was some serious history and psychology and family and all that.
	And that was your...
	It was one of your modes.
	I guess it was a mode that was accessible to you.
	And that's the thing that troubles me is that it's not like we have to be deep.
	The order is we go deep or we go home.
	But it's more that we want to have that flexibility and not be drawn like the helium balloons towards the surface all the time.
	So why do you think it's changed for you?
	I don't really. I mean...
	I'm not aware of it.
	And I'm sure I know. But I just, at the same time, I don't know because I'm not totally aware of what right now.
	And I was trying to think about it a lot last night, actually.
	And I actually got into a conversation with a guest how he was noticing that he couldn't come on the board.
	Like, he didn't want to talk in the chat room lately and that, you know, there was nothing going on.
	And He was like, I've seen you do that, but then I'm talking to you now, and we're having this really deep conversation, and it ended up being about Alice Miller.
	And he was like, we're having this really deep conversation about child psychology and whatnot.
	He was like, what's different? And all I could answer was, I have no clue.
	Right. Which is weird.
	What I was mentioning last night is that we all want the world to be saner.
	And saner doesn't always mean serious.
	I mean it would be great if we didn't have to worry about all these serious topics in the way that we don't have to worry about smallpox or the cult of Zeus because they've sort of been dealt with.
	But that's sort of where we are at the moment.
	And because, especially with the books out and the success of the books, lots of people are coming because they've sort of heard of the books and so on.
	And I think they're like, they come into the chat room and they're like, you know, okay, so this is like a really interesting philosophical community.
	And if we're kind of jumping around and making jokes and being shallow and not being inviting and so on, Yeah.
	Sorry, go ahead.
	fulfilling prophecy then, where it can't be sane because we won't let it be sane, but we're mad that it's not sane, and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. - Right, right, right.
	I mean, we can't disparage an illness if we're hiding the pills, right?
	Mm-hmm. And I've also noticed that some people who were around more regularly have sort of dropped off the conversation.
	I mean, the conversation as a whole is going great.
	I mean, we have lots of new listeners and so on.
	Donations are fine. But I've just noticed that I think we kind of hit a wall as a community.
	And I first noticed it with EA. And I don't know whether that's proximate or causal, but...
	I'm just sort of getting a sense that it's a kind of hump that we need to get over.
	Because I'm not on the other side of the fence, I don't know exactly what it is.
	I certainly know that I've been less involved and available because I just blew my brains out getting these two books out in two months.
	So for me, I've been less able to get involved and put some tweaks in where they're necessary.
	And I think it has a lot.
	I mean, if people are feeling like, well, it would be nice if it were deeper or, you know, I find the chatroom a little off-putting, that it would be great if we had the community integrity or security to say, does anybody else notice that the chatroom seems to be, you know, like a sort of less rich place to be?
	Yeah, but I feel like no one ever wanted to do that.
	Like, we noticed it, but we never wanted to say anything about it.
	Right, right. You know, there's a lot of tension.
	At least I felt there was a lot of tension all the time because it was like we could never come up with anything to say unless we were talking about something completely shallow.
	Like, whose hair looked the best that day or, you know, how many Cokes does someone owe another person?
	Or, like, outside it's shining and it's bright and it's sunny and, you know, let's talk about the weather or something.
	And it was just... And there's a lot of tension in that because it's almost like no one wants to do it, but we can't help but do it at the same time.
	Right. And in the audio chat room, which has been fun for me, but I sort of listened in on a couple of conversations.
	I listened a bit to the one you and Ash were having about medication, which had some interesting highlights.
	Sorry. No, no, don't follow me.
	I thought it was a very interesting conversation.
	I thought that some of his metaphors were a tad misplaced, but I'm sure the same complaint could be made for me.
	Yeah. But, yeah, I mean, people sort of sit there, they don't say anything, and there was a really desultory conversation going on the other day about some flag that has a hammer and sickle in it, and how come, and blah, blah, blah, right?
	And that kind of stuff is, it's like, God, we've got this incredible community, which is not just about philosophy, and it's not just another libertarian annoying...
	You know, political approach to things that we do have, you know, this common ground of understanding about emotional self-expression and honesty and openness and so on.
	And it's like, all you got to do is do it.
	Yeah. Everyone wants to do it.
	That's right. And there is this concern about people wanting to do it.
	I mean, I feel like with my...
	I feel like with myself, part of the reason why is because I'm almost expected to do it.
	And as soon as I'm expected, like you said, I'm really defiant in a lot of ways, where as soon as I'm expected to do something, I don't want to do it.
	You're not defiant. Oh wait, sorry.
	I was just reflecting. But that's not freedom, right?
	It's not freedom to resist, especially when the advice is good, right?
	Right. Brush my teeth?
	Never! No, I did that for a while when I was a child as well.
	I know. No, I did the same thing too until I finally figured out it's like, well, nobody goes to the dentist for me but me, right?
	Exactly. And, you know, if you don't brush your teeth, you start to smell really bad and no one likes it.
	That works well for me as a six-year-old.
	I feel like that's a large part of, at least for myself, why I've been really shallow.
	It could be because I'm expected not to be shallow.
	I don't know that anybody put that expectation out, if that makes sense.
	Because what happened was, it kind of shallowed out for two months or whatever.
	I pointed it out, and then you felt some anxiety or frustration or irritation about that, right?
	Well, the anxiety was sitting below the surface, and as soon as you said it, I was able to identify what it was about in a way.
	Because I'd been feeling really anxious and really tense and stuff like that for...
	About when I started to shallow out.
	A little, like, right around when I broke up with Justin for a while.
	I was like, oh, it's because I'm breaking up with this guy that I've been going out with forever.
	You know, one of those really shallow reasons.
	Which, you know, makes sense considering the pattern that I had at the time.
	And then finally you said something and I was like...
	And, you know, obviously my anxiety started to become a big problem.
	You know, I posted about...
	You know, the fact that I'm starting to have panic attacks again, and I'm losing control of my life and whatnot, so obviously this anxiety is becoming a really big deal, but I could never identify it.
	I would sit there and I would think, and I would journal, and I would do all this stuff, but I couldn't figure out what this anxiety was about, and I could feel it reflected in the rest of the community, and then as soon as you said it like that, as soon as you said that You know, this community is kind of seen as this really philosophical and really deep community.
	I was like, that's why.
	People are expecting this community to be something, and so now I don't want to, you know, I don't want to live up to that expectation.
	Well, and I appreciate that.
	And just again, for those who weren't in on the chat last night, I said that this is supposed to be the premier philosophical community that is easily accessible to people, if not in the world.
	And then you were like, oh yeah, well, you know, let's get back to my bikini or something like that, right?
	No, actually, I think we talked about a tankini.
	I'm not sure what that is, but I think it comes with a turret.
	But the thing is, though, it wasn't that...
	It wasn't that the community became deep because people expected it to be deep, right?
	It wasn't like we had this chat room and I said to everyone, all right, you people, there is no shallow end to this pool.
	There is only the deep end and there is a hell of an undertow, so go deep or go home, right?
	The community was rich and rich is probably a better term than deep because deep implies that we don't have the flexibility of being funny or deep or whatever, right?
	But the community was rich and then you have a reputation, right?
	And of course the conversation is that way.
	So it wasn't like, well, I didn't want to be deep because we're supposed to be deep.
	It's like if you have a reputation for being a really good runner and people say, oh, this is a really good runner.
	Then if you say, well, I don't want to run well because people expect me to.
	Well, people expect you to because you are already a good runner, if that makes sense.
	But it's almost like if it becomes a conscious expectation for other people, then you don't want to do it.
	Exactly. I'm fine as long as people, you know, aren't identifying me that certain way where, you know, as long as they don't consciously figure out that I'm this really deep person and I'm, you know, really patient and I'm really kind and whatnot, I'm okay. I'm gonna stick with, you know, being that person.
	But as soon as someone Starts to notice that I have this reputation that I've built up by my own actions.
	All of a sudden I'm like, oh crap, I have a reputation.
	Time to ruin it. Right, and that's really just around messing with other people's rationality, right?
	Because when we act in a consistent manner, it is not at all unreasonable for other people to say, I expect you to act in this consistent manner, and that doesn't mean perfectly or all the time, but that is my expectation, right?
	Right. I mean, that's a perfectly reasonable thing for someone to say, right?
	Yeah. And there's nothing wrong with saying that if all the actions have shown that that's the way it is.
	Right. And then it's just like, I'm like, well, excuse the language that's going to come up, but I'm just like, well, fuck you!
	Right, right. And I think that comes from a different place than this community, because I don't think this community has created and imposed those expectations on people, because it's a perfectly voluntary community.
	What I would suspect is it's more family-related for you.
	And I think this is true for, you know, to put my pig-ignorant sexist hat on, I think this is more true for women, oftentimes, than it is for men, that women are supposed, or girls probably is a better way of putting it when you're younger, you are supposed to be a certain way, and then you grudgingly do that, or do that, take that approach, and then it becomes an expectation, and you feel trapped in a kind of role, and resentful, if that makes sense.
	So I'm trying to think because this is starting to go way back in my history.
	And I want to say it was more of the society that I grew up in because the influence of the society I feel like was bigger than my parents because I grew up more in the society than in a household.
	But that's still a decision of your parents, right?
	Yeah, that's true.
	To be in that community, to whatever.
	If you say, well, I had a babysitter who was more influential than my parents, in a sense, well, your parents chose that babysitter and paid that babysitter and let her babysit you and so on, so that's still a function of the family, right?
	That's true. So, yeah, it is a function of the family.
	Right. So the way that I would sort of characterize it, and this is a shallow way of characterizing it, but we don't want to go, you know, we'll get the bends otherwise.
	But it's sort of like if you just decide to go mow the lawn for some reason, then it's fine as long as people don't say, well, now you're expected to go and mow the lawn every week.
	It's like you don't want to be kind, have it become or be generous and have it become an expectation, which then you're no longer praised for doing this thing voluntarily.
	You are now only punished for not doing this thing voluntarily.
	So it turns from a positive to a negative, if that makes any sense.
	Yeah, it does.
	And I know that's been the case for, you know, almost everything I've done growing up.
	Go on. Well, I mean, like, for example...
	When I was a really little kid, I was this really smart kid and this really good student.
	And so I built up this reputation for myself, for being this really smart kid and being this really good student.
	And so as soon as I hit middle school, I went, I'm not a smart kid anymore.
	I refuse to be a smart kid.
	And you know what? I'm going to stop being a smart kid altogether.
	I ended up still getting good grades because I started to get punished for neglecting my studies where I got grounded and whatnot.
	Like, why aren't you doing your homework?
	Why aren't you turning anything into your teacher?
	You have a responsibility. You need to live up to this responsibility.
	Why aren't you talking to me?
	Okay, if you don't want to talk to me, go to your room until you do want to talk to me, sort of thing.
	Right. So I ended up pulling myself out of the shitter eventually because I was forced to.
	But it was like as soon as I had that expectation, I was like, well, fuck you, world.
	I'm going to do my own damn thing because I'm an individual.
	I mean, I assume that – was it the case that you got good grades when you were younger because you enjoyed the learning, you enjoyed mastering new topics, and you took pride in your work?
	Or was it some other reason?
	Yeah. No, I actually really, really liked school as a kid.
	It was this fun place.
	I got to be introduced to new topics, and everything was fascinating.
	I was like, oh my god, 2 plus 2 equals 4?
	No way! This is blowing my mind!
	Teach me more, teacher! What if you times 2 times 2?
	Holy crap, that equals 4 as well?
	Holy shit! I'm going to go learn more about this, you know?
	So you have a total history of turning on your teachers.
	That's good to know. That's good to know.
	Now, what was it that you were protesting when you stopped doing that?
	Just the fact that I had this expectation placed on me and I didn't want it.
	Well, no, see, but you had an internal desire, which was for knowledge and learning and so on, right?
	Right. And so if somebody says, I expect you to sleep every night, well, we like to sleep every night, right?
	When we can. So it's not like somebody else expecting us to do something that we already want to do is going to automatically make us not want to do it, right?
	I mean, people expect me to put out reasonably intelligent and wise podcasts, right?
	So for me, it's not like, well, screw you, I'm going to do queen covers.
	Oh, wait, no, that is the case.
	Let me think of another thing. But people don't – because people expect that, I actually feel that that's an encouragement.
	I always try and do better.
	I always try and still amaze people with new things that they can think about with regards to their own lives and with the truth.
	So people's expectation for quality actually drives me to want to create and produce quality.
	Things which have more quality, and of course that is a continual challenge right now.
	There are 1,300 podcasts and five books and stuff like that, right?
	So to be able to come up with new stuff is a real challenge.
	But people's expectations of increased quality actually drives me to be able to produce greater quality.
	And so what I mean is that then I have a theory, and I can either keep asking you questions or I can put it forward if you're totally stuck.
	I'm totally stuck.
	Please put it forward.
	Well, I'll tell you what makes children resentful about their achievements.
	Okay. What makes children, Ali, resentful about their achievements is when other people take it as ego gratification.
	Yeah, that makes sense because then the achievement isn't for the kid anymore.
	you know, a shallow, right?
	So a kid who just loves playing piano.
	Okay, well, forget that.
	I'll give you an example from my own life.
	So when I was younger, you know, 10, 11, I really got into computers.
	Like I'd spend Saturdays in the computer lab and learning how to program in Assembler.
	Like I just loved it, right?
	Right.
	And I took a very advanced course in computer science when I was 12 or 13 and, And my mother, she took that as a real ego boost for her.
	So every time she would introduce me to her friends or to someone I didn't know or whatever, she would say, Oh, here's my son.
	He is taking advanced computer science at the moment.
	I also enjoyed writing.
	And when I was in grade 8, I was put into a grade 13 writing class.
	Because I was, I guess, a pretty good writer even back then.
	And again, my mother was like, this is my son Stefan.
	He is taking courses five years ahead of his peers in writing, and he is in advanced computer science.
	And she took such a savage kind of ego gratification from it that it was hard for me to continue.
	Like, I didn't want to give that to her.
	It was like giving heroin to a drug user.
	I just, I resented that, if that makes sense.
	No, that makes perfect sense because that was a lot of how my childhood was when I was growing up.
	Where, I mean, we all know that I really like to draw, for example.
	And there was this point when I hit...
	Middle school is kind of where I broke down in general, where I started to defy everybody.
	And I think it was like seventh grade or something where, you know, I overheard...
	My family talking to some of their really close friends and, you know, my godmother, actually, about how I was becoming this amazing artist.
	And, you know, they were fully expecting great things out of me and whatnot and all this great stuff.
	And so I went, well, fuck you.
	I'm not going to draw anymore.
	Right. And I didn't for about three years.
	I just stopped. And it was miserable because that was my outlet.
	But I did that with everything.
	As soon as I started to hear that it became this thing that people took pride in, in the fact that I was able to do something, I was like, well, shit.
	Don't take pride in that.
	You know what? In fact, I'm going to make it impossible for you to take pride in that.
	I stopped swimming, which I was...
	Probably about to go, like, I was qualifying for, you know, Junior Olympics, and if I'd kept up, I would have qualified for the Olympics in it.
	I completely stopped swimming.
	Oh my gosh, but if you had, that would have solved the whole bikini thing.
	I know! I mean, my god, woman!
	What were you thinking? Sorry, go on.
	Seriously, I could be so happy right now.
	I'd be so fit and trim.
	You wouldn't need philosophy at all.
	You'd have a waistline.
	I'd have boys! Exactly!
	Exactly! I wouldn't need to worry about boyfriends.
	They'd be lining up in the door.
	Jeez, what was I thinking?
	Right. But, I mean, I stopped swimming.
	I stopped getting grades.
	I stopped drawing. I stopped working out in general, which was new.
	I started getting into really horribly abusive relationships with people just to say I could for a while.
	And it was this thing that just kind of...
	Almost defined who I was with the fact that I didn't want to be defined.
	Absolutely. And do you know why we hate that so much?
	I have no idea why we hate that so much.
	Please tell me. Oh, I bet you do!
	I'm sure I do, but...
	Is it because they're just using us?
	Well, that certainly is the case, for sure.
	But I think it's because it is a terrible infection that they are trying to inflict upon us when they praise us for...
	Showy abilities, and I don't mean showy like we're showing off, but when they try to indicate to people or to themselves that we have value because we can do X, right?
	Right. I mean, would I love my wife any better or any deeper or any more richly if she happened to be good at drawing?
	Right. Right.
	That makes sense.
	Yes or no? Answer the question!
	Sorry. No, you wouldn't.
	No, I won't answer the question because you're telling me to.
	Exactly. Would you love someone if they happened to be a good singer more?
	If you really loved them, absolutely not.
	No, of course not. Whether my wife could do handstands, or whether she could draw, or whether she could crack an egg with one hand, and who gives a shit, right?
	Right. But that's where I grew up, where everyone did give a shit.
	Well, and that's all, right?
	That's all they cared about.
	I'm sorry, go ahead. I'm saying that's all they cared about.
	Who cared who you were, as long as you are a size zero, and you have this amazing tan, and we're blonde.
	With boobs. It's like I'm looking in the mirror when I look into your metaphors.
	But anyway, well, it is certainly true that there are particular cultures and the Middle Eastern slash Indian slash Islamic culture is not exactly infinitely distant from this in the same way that certain kinds of Jewish cultures and other cultures are.
	It's like, you know, my son, the doctor, right?
	Right. Right. My daughter is the straight-A student who is a great at art, right?
	Right. Well, that's all bullshit, and it is so insulting to the child.
	It diminishes us so fundamentally it is an assault upon our very selves, and that's why we hate it so much.
	Because I enjoy our conversations, but if I were introducing you, And I didn't say something like, you know, here's Ali.
	She's, you know, wise beyond her years.
	She's patient. She's kind.
	She's curious. She's intelligent.
	She's really interested in self-knowledge.
	She's avoiding conversations about God like the plague, but we'll take time on that.
	Like if I, whatever, like if I introduced you as that, that would be one thing.
	And if I introduced you as, she's done some great designs for the FDR t-shirts, right?
	I mean, which one is diminishing you?
	The FDI t-shirt one.
	Yeah, because you have a specific ability.
	And that is not who you are.
	Yeah. And so...
	Yeah, that's probably definitely...
	No, that is a large part of why I just stopped living up to expectations.
	Yeah, because you don't want to feed the beast of vanity, and you don't want, like, what we so strongly resist as children, and even as adults as well, but what we so strongly resist, Ali, is this idea that says, me plus something equals value, right? Right.
	My mother cannot introduce me as my wonderful son, who I love.
	But she has to introduce me as the performing monkey who is very intelligent and creative.
	Well, intelligence and creativity are not virtues.
	They are nothing to love.
	They are abilities.
	She might as well say, my son is wonderful because he's tall.
	Well, doesn't that completely scrub out his entire personality and say, he is valuable because he is tall?
	Absolutely. Don't we hate that completely because it erases us and it makes us into a kind of shiny, empty, stupid metal for our parents or our culture?
	Yeah. Hands down.
	And they took from you, in a sense, they appropriated from you, your joy in learning and Because what we want to say about our children is, I love the fact that Ali loves to learn.
	I think that is fantastic.
	Not, hey, look, she got A+. Look at that.
	Doesn't that make us wonderful?
	Doesn't that make us great?
	When we are a status symbol, like a fucking Lexus to our parents, don't we hate that dehumanization?
	Yeah, and I was always going to be, you know, Ali, the future doctor who was going to get a gold medal in the Olympics in some sport that she did.
	I was never just Allie, their kid.
	Right. Who we love for characteristics that have something to do with who she is as a human being.
	Not the empty abilities that our genes provide to us, right?
	Right. And it was never fair.
	Right. I think that's what I was starting to rebel against because I started to notice that it wasn't fair.
	What is not fair? The fact that I couldn't be appreciated for me and said I had to be appreciated for everything I did, you know.
	Even though that really had no value in anything other than the fact that maybe one day I'd make me, you know, money.
	Which, I didn't give a crap about.
	I was loving. Right, right, right.
	Right, right.
	And we want to be loved for who we are.
	and when we are turned into showpieces when we are turned into performing monkeys for the organ grinders of our parents vanity we hate it but I feel like as soon as that stops you know and when I went to college let's stop because I started to get friends and distance myself from from my family and who I was always expected to be and what not
	And I started to be recognized as, you know, Allie, the really sweet person who, you know, you can talk for hours with and, you know, she'll listen to you and she'll be really kind and she's a really smart person and whatnot.
	And these things that were, you know, Who I was, not so much just values that I had, you know, earned, like I was a straight-A student and stuff like that, you know.
	It felt so uncomfortable.
	You know? Yes, yes, it did.
	Sorry, go on. I mean, I was like, I almost wanted to go back to just being a little trophy again, because that's what I knew, and that's what I knew how to handle.
	And that's the bikini talk, right?
	Me plus good bikini line is value, right?
	Right. Yeah. And that's – I don't think that you're alone in that at the moment, that there seems to be a bit of a food regression that is going on a little bit in the community, at least in the parts that I have visibility to, where we are not feeling that it is we ourselves who have value for being who we are.
	But rather, it has to be me plus wit, me plus joke, me plus funny story, me plus entertainment equals value, right?
	Right. And that's not fair to think, to have to do to yourself.
	Well, if we have to, if it is me plus X equals value...
	Then I can never be who I am because I keep having to do this performance called x, right?
	If it's me plus drawing that equals value, then I've kind of got to be drawing all the time, right?
	Otherwise I don't have value.
	Right. There's a question because we just breezed past this thing where I said intelligence and creativity are not things to love.
	And I truly believe that.
	Now, there is a thing in terms of compatibility, right, which is that if you are intelligent, you are very likely to be more compatible with somebody who is intelligent.
	In fact, you will be. Pretty much only compatible with somebody of a similar level of intelligence, and there is compatibility in that, but intelligence itself is nothing to value, nothing to admire, nothing to skill.
	It's just skill, and intelligence is a kind of skill.
	The only thing that we can love is virtue and intelligence does not equal virtue.
	But that having been said, if somebody is 20 years old, they're not likely to have a lot in common with somebody who is 60.
	So compatibility would probably put an appropriate partner within some age span that's relatively small off the age of 20.
	So it's not like 60 is evil and 20 is good.
	It's just a matter of compatibility and intelligence falls into that category.
	But it is not something that we cannot love something that is innate.
	We just can't because that is to say that some people are more or less worthy of love depending on whether they are tall or pretty or good at drawing or whatever.
	And love is something that is available to everyone who has the capacity to act in a virtuous manner.
	In other words, everybody who's got basically a functional mind.
	So I just wanted to sort of point that out, that intelligence is not what we value.
	There are geniuses.
	Thank you. Sorry, I just wanted to point because people were going on about that.
	I certainly don't think that I bring anything particularly valuable to the table because I am intelligent.
	There's lots of smart people in the world, right?
	It's what you do with it and how courageous you're willing to be and how vulnerable you're willing to be and how sensitive you're willing to be and how you use that, right?
	Because if I were to use my intelligence and language skills and psychological abilities...
	look smarter and better and to win people over, or sorry, to beat people or to trick them or to be a sophist or whatever, then it would be pretty repellent.
	I would be using my intelligence in a way that we've seen other people use their intelligence in a way that is pretty gross and disgusting, and therefore it can't be intelligence itself, which can go either way.
	That is what we love.
	Right.
	It's how you use the intelligence.
	Thank you.
	Thank you.
	Right, right. And I try to use my intelligence not to make other people feel that I am intelligent, but to make other people feel that they are intelligent, which is sort of the point, right?
	Like a doctor doesn't sit there and say, look how many push-ups I can do, you sick person, right?
	What he wants to do is to use his strength to make the other person strong and healthy and well, not to show off how healthy he is, right?
	Right. So, yeah, sorry, just wanted to point that out, and I think that is the, that is where you feel that the expectation breeds the resistance, right?
	So, if you felt that, look, if you felt I was saying something like this about the chat room, I can totally understand your response, which is like, okay, look, Ali, you are part of this philosophical community, and there are certain standards that I expect you to uphold as part of this community, right?
	Tangtini's not being one of them, go back to talking about deep stuff, or I don't want you around, right?
	Right. That breed all kinds of, like, fuck yous, right?
	Yeah, but I didn't feel like you were saying that.
	I don't think that you felt that I was saying that, but a part of you recognized that as familiar in some way.
	In other words, an expectation of behavior equals control, vanity, and a dehumanization of you.
	Right. Yeah.
	I'd have to say definitely.
	And that is what I mean when I say messing around with people's rationality, right?
	Because then you show things which create expectations for consistent behavior, and then you resist it when people say you seem to be deviating from consistent behavior, right?
	Right. And then I have a fuck you moment.
	Yes, and sometimes that can stretch on for more than a moment, right?
	Exactly. Like a month and a half.
	Like a month and a half, maybe.
	Like a month and a half, maybe.
	Exactly. And again, we're talking to you, but I don't think it's singular to you.
	Exactly. Now, I would be happy if anybody else wanted to talk about this particular topic, I would certainly be happy to talk about it.
	But I also have some other thoughts as to why it may have coincided when it did.
	But if everybody else wanted to talk about what we're talking about, I would certainly be happy to hear.
	All right.
	Well, I'll go on.
	This is going to be a minor little speechlet, but I hope that people will have a listen and let me know if it sort of makes any sense.
	It actually began a little bit before EA. It happened with some of the ideas in EA when they sort of came out to Common Coinage.
	But EA was the first book...
	Which was about the world, right?
	So because Untruth was about our own personal histories.
	UPB was about philosophy.
	RTR was about our personal relationships.
	But EA and PA are about the world as a whole.
	And I sort of noticed that when people were looking inwards...
	They were relatively comfortable.
	Not completely, but relatively comfortable when they were looking inwards through untruth, through that sort of lens or prison.
	When people were looking at abstractions...
	Then they were still relatively comfortable, and when people were looking at their personal relationships, they were not as comfortable, right?
	Because RTR was the book that people have had the least success with in terms of implementing.
	People can debate UPB pretty well, and they can certainly trace some of the family stuff pretty well.
	RTR remains a bitch and a half for people to put into practice.
	There's a constant failure rate that's pretty high when it comes to RTR. But when, through the lens of EA and PA, people looked at the world and could actually have an ironclad and airtight proof for anarchy, for the functionality and practicality of anarchy through the democratic argument in EA and other things as well.
	And once, in EA as well, we looked at and rejected the possibility that professors, even free market economists and libertarian professors, were going to help us.
	In fact, they were going to get in the way.
	And so it became up to us, right?
	This burden fell to us.
	Right? To try to save the world.
	And again, this is all stuff that is hard for people to process because it seems grandiose and so on, but this is certainly my plan as I've always talked about it, right?
	So that's why I put this book in Practical Anarchy.
	Which was about how the truth bows me down because it sure as hell does, right?
	I mean there are times when I wish that these rat bastards of truth had picked somebody else's brain to feast on but that's not something that I can particularly do anything about at the moment having come down this road so far or rather been propelled down by it.
	So, when we started to talk about how to change the world, the airtight arguments we can bring towards people in the world, the community kind of caved in on itself, in my perspective or in my opinion.
	And the reason I think for that is that the amount of courage that it takes to go out and talk about this kind of stuff in the world is prodigious, is huge, is monstrous.
	And so I think when people would read or listen to Everyday Anarchy, they would say, oh yeah, yeah, we've heard all this before.
	We've heard all this before, right?
	And I've been getting the same response back.
	It's like a broken record.
	I mean, the same response back from Practical Anarchy.
	Oh, these arguments I've all heard.
	Oh, I've all heard these arguments before, right?
	And the reason for that, the reason that people...
	Want to say that is they want to say, this book does not impose any new obligations upon me for action in the world, right?
	For action in the world. This is stuff, it is a synthesis of the podcast, so I don't have to do anything new.
	I don't have to do anything different because this is a recap or an encapsulation of what has gone on before.
	As a synthesis, as a summing up, there is nothing new that I have to do.
	And so people are kind of backing away from the action that everybody knows is next, right?
	Everybody knows deep down what the next thing is, and that is the mad promotion of these ideas, right?
	I mean, if we do have our theory of relativity when it comes to the proof for anarchy and so on...
	Then everybody knows what they have to do next.
	And it doesn't involve anything like going in street corner and your tighty-whities and yelling at people about anarchy is freedom.
	But in terms of promoting, right?
	I mean, it's really hard for the community to get behind these books and to say, oh, gosh, this is great.
	Let me dig it. Let me post it to forums.
	Let me get the word out. Let me do stuff so Steph doesn't have to run the community, do the podcast, write the books, promote everything.
	But the community as a whole is not getting behind the work that I've been doing or I guess we've been doing in this sort of way.
	And I think that when people take a step back, they can't ever take one step back.
	They take a number of steps back.
	And so I think that it's hard if we have the proof, right?
	If we have the proof, and I think we do in the same way that I think we have the proof for ethics, we have the proof for statelessness, we have the proof for anarchy, and I think we have great resources now which we can start to put out there, right?
	And I know that there's lots of people in this conversation who are deeply involved in the web and have huge email lists and so on.
	And, you know, is it crazy to say, well, if you really want the world to be a sainter place, why don't you spend an hour or two a week?
	You know, nobody's talking about a full-time job.
	An hour or two a week, sending the word out, posting the book, seeding it.
	I mean, there's this whole referral thing, right?
	But we don't want to do that, right?
	We don't want to get behind that, right?
	I mean we've got people on the religious side of things, and I've talked about this before.
	I'll just mention it briefly, but we've got people on the religious side of things, the Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Mormons, the Watchtower guys.
	I can't remember their names, right?
	But those guys will go door to door, right, knocking on people's doors and so on, right?
	But we brilliant philosophers who have all these amazing materials that can be sent for free, right?
	And this I think occurred also with the free books, right?
	I mean if I had to sort of trace it back, it's the free books thing, right?
	Because now we have all these free resources that we could spend an hour or so a week or two sending out to people and so on, but we don't want to do that, right?
	And so we have a kind of inertia as a community that is not shared by political parties, is not shared by religious parties, right?
	And so, if we're not even willing to do one thousandth of what people do to promote crazy, stupid, dangerous, toxic ideologies like religion and politics, if we're not willing to do that as a community, if we're not willing to get behind this material which is free and send it out and encourage people to read it and so on, then I think it's very hard for us to say that we really value the rationality of the world.
	Because nobody's going to do it but us.
	Nobody is going to do it but us.
	And if we don't do it, it's not going to happen.
	I can't do it, right?
	This is an individual decision for everyone.
	If you have a pill that can be handed out for free, why don't you hand it out for free, right?
	And there has not been a lot of that.
	Like maybe once every two days, somebody will use the referral tool, and this is where we have tens of thousands of listeners, right, who are aware of.
	I sent the email out to everyone who's a board member.
	It's almost 3,000 people.
	I just have a certain degree of frustration in that the fact that I've kind of ditched all the friends that don't know about this, and it's kind of like I have nobody to send it to anymore. and it's kind of like I have nobody to send Well, but that's not true at all.
	I mean do you not know that there are libertarian groups, that there are atheist groups, that there are anarchist groups that you can very easily get a hold of on the web?
	Do you not know that there are forums out there or anything like that?
	Right, right.
	Or do you not know that there's – you could go and grab some emails from people, just do a search for libertarian blogs and get email lists.
	I mean if somebody were paying you to do this, it's not like you'd say, well, I can't take that million dollars because I have no idea what to do, right?
	And I was just thinking offline.
	So, yeah, you're right. And the thing that I think is the real shame is that, and this is back to Ali's point, right?
	The last thing that I want to do Oh, you know, absolutely, random posting of links will do a lot.
	Absolutely, random postings of links will do a lot, because it will also raise FDR in the search-o-meters, right, because there will be more links to EA and PA. It does do a lot, and I know that because we've done it before.
	So, sorry, somebody was just posting that.
	I'm sorry? Yeah, I have the feeling that if you just give a link, you look the same as someone with a watchtower who rings your doorbell and the reaction is you need to have some credibility first and to have some foot in the door.
	In that way, RTR is most accessible because many people have Yeah, some problems in relationships or personal problems.
	And if you then send them a link, you can point them out to the Simon the Boxer story, for example.
	And it is a very low threshold, I feel.
	But yeah, for UPB, for example, then you need to prepare the ground first, I feel, before they start to invest time in reading it.
	And how do you know that is true?
	Well, if you already start talking about it, you get a lot of...
	Sorry, let me ask that question again.
	I understand that it sounds believable, but have you tried both approaches and measured the responses?
	I mean, how do you know that it's true? Yeah, I couldn't tell that for sure, no.
	Right. And the other thing, too, is that the work that I've been doing and also that Greg was doing when he was working here have helped the conversation to grow up 400% a year, which is pretty damn good, right?
	And people haven't asked me what it is that they could do, right?
	By the way, Joey and I are actually still sending out emails.
	That's great. That's great.
	And I hugely appreciate that, right?
	But it's Peter, right?
	Is that who's talking? Yeah.
	I think that you're saying, I haven't done anything, and I think here is why.
	But that's not... I mean, if I know how to grow the conversation...
	I say me, and it's me and other people.
	But if I know how to grow the conversation, and you wanted to help grow the conversation, the first thing that would be logical to ask would be, Steph, how have you grown the conversation, right?
	Mm-hmm. And so you're saying to the guy who's grown it 400% a year, what you do doesn't work, right?
	But what I do does work because it's grown, right?
	What do you think has worked the most or is it just a variety of different things over different periods?
	Well, I know that doing something is going to help more than doing nothing.
	I can guarantee that, right?
	I don't know.
	I mean, because if people said, well, I tried this and this was this success rate and then I tried that and then we could all get together as a community and figure out more stuff, right?
	But if we do nothing, for sure, nothing's going to happen, right?
	I don't know.
	Yeah, that is not a good idea, I think.
	But people don't just start reading a book, I think.
	Certainly with this subject where there's so much hostility and defenses, you need to catch their interest first.
	Well, see here, but Peter, you're just telling me the same thing you already told me, right?
	And you don't know that this is true.
	I mean, there's lots of people who said, and see, there's a false dichotomy, right?
	Because people are saying, like, some people are saying, well, but posting randomly won't help.
	But I'm not talking about posting randomly, right?
	That's just a defense. Because everybody's too intelligent to think that I'm saying, you know, go to a flower-loving forum and post about anarchy and, you know, go to a paleontologist group and post about RTR. I mean, nobody's talking about randomly, right? Mm-hmm.
	But even libertarians, I sometimes go to a libertarian meeting and try to promote it also.
	It's not that I'm doing nothing.
	But many of them are very self-righteous and they like to talk all the time about monetary policy and not listen a lot and not doubt a lot also.
	Well, sure, but all that indicates to me is that that doesn't work, right?
	But then when you say, do you then say, well, that doesn't work, so I'm going to not do anything?
	No, no, I do a lot, believe me, but yeah.
	I can only, it is my feeling then, yeah, that this need to be pushed with great delicacy.
	Okay.
	And have you found that that works?
	Yeah, some results, yeah.
	It works best, I think, with people who are already closest to the IDs.
	Oh sure, no question.
	So numerically, and I'm sorry to be picking on you, and I recognize that you are a fantastic donator who has been incredibly supportive financially of this conversation.
	And that helps a lot too, obviously, right?
	Because it allows me to advertise and so on.
	So this is with all due respect to how much you have contributed to the conversation, which is fantastic.
	But can you give me a rough figure of how many people you've gotten interested in philosophy who have continued with their interest through the approaches that you're taking?
	Yeah, I also post a lot on boards, so I don't know exactly what my yield is from that.
	Okay, so then you are doing the stuff that I suggest, right?
	Oh, okay. Sorry. I thought you weren't.
	So, my mistake.
	Well, because, I mean, it is really hard to get the word out there, right?
	And the only way that I've been able to do it, after spending a couple of years doing it, is it's just a volume business, right?
	You post to...
	You know, 50 places and you get, you know, maybe 50 people who will come to the website and of those, maybe five people will continue in the conversation and get heavily involved.
	It's just – it's a volume business and this is the way it works in any kind of, quote, cold call business, right?
	That you – I mean this is how it worked in software and so on, which was – You call a thousand people, you get ten meetings, and from those ten meetings you get one sale.
	And you can predict how many sales you're going to get simply based on the number of cold calls.
	There's just funnel. And I don't know any other way to do it other than volume, which is how you have to do very new ideas and so on.
	And the reason that I bring this up is not because you have an obligation to philosophy and you should promote these materials or anything like that.
	It's not anything like that.
	It's for your pleasure.
	It's for your satisfaction.
	It's for your enjoyability.
	It's for your own self-credibility, right?
	As I've said, we talked about this with regards to some recent libertarian articles where we say, I can't hear what you're saying over what you're actually doing.
	We judge ourselves by what we do, not what we say, right?
	And if we say, I really don't...
	Like the fact that the world is irrational.
	You know, Steph has written and made available these free books.
	If I'm not doing anything to get the books out there or whatever...
	Then I don't actually mind that the world is that irrational, if that makes sense.
	And again, donations, financial donations such as you've been doing, Peter, are fantastic and they help a lot because obviously they allow me to write the books in the first place.
	So I don't want to diminish the fantastic monetary contributions that people have made.
	But your...
	Certainty, your own certainty, right?
	What we want to be is certain and what we want to be is content with ourselves, have self-respect and so on.
	And if, I mean, if people can't donate or if they don't feel comfortable in that milieu, to promote stuff, you know, an hour a week, right?
	An hour a week is not, I mean, people spend more than that time on the toilet and playing video games and stuff like that, right?
	Yeah. And we judge ourselves by what we do.
	That's what a conscience is, right?
	A conscience isn't what kind of stories can we invent, but what have we actually done relative to our values.
	That's why soldiers, even if they are the most patriotic people on earth, become mentally ill after they become paid killers, right?
	Because we judge ourselves by what we do, not what we say.
	And the reason that I invite people to action is not, you know, hey, give me free marketing or anything like that, but rather because...
	It will make you confident and it will make you happy.
	And it will also help you to have the pride of, I mean, yeah, living by your values and making the world a saner place.
	But if these books turn out to be real classics, I think they will, obviously.
	Otherwise, I would have tried to write them better if I didn't, right?
	But if these books turn out to be real classics, imagine saying to your grandkids, I helped get that into the world.
	I was a midwife for this new world.
	I was right there at the beginning.
	And I spent time getting this work out into the world.
	wouldn't that be something that would make you incredibly proud?
	Yeah, providing you have grandkids, that would be great, yeah.
	Well, even if you don't have grandkids, because how the world is going to look in 50 years, and I certainly plan to be around to see it, is going to be quite different from how it looks now, because of the work that we're doing.
	And, I mean, it's how we, I mean, the grandkids, in a sense, ourselves, our own conscience, right?
	What it is that we feel satisfied in terms of what we're doing, if that makes sense.
	Yeah, maybe the thing is that with Everyday Anarchy and PA that people feel a bit powerless for the big story.
	It goes downhill anyway and it doesn't seem any way to stop it.
	You mean the world is going to go downhill and so on?
	Yeah. Well, but that's interesting, right?
	Because to me that's a kind of contradiction, and I think that you're right, that this is what people do feel to some degree.
	But then why would people get involved in philosophy at all if it was pointless, right?
	Maybe for the personal stuff.
	Well, but if society is going to go down into fascism or social collapse or whatever, then being able to RTR in the gulag doesn't really do you much good, right?
	In fact, it would almost be worse, right?
	So you say truth equals virtue equals happiness does not always apply?
	I'm sorry, I don't quite follow that.
	Well, if you say it doesn't help you in the Gulag, then you imply that it has a kind of limited usability.
	Well, it's because you can't speak the truth and you can't act rationally and therefore you're just trying to survive, right?
	Like we were in our families.
	What I mean is that if we believe that the world as a whole is going down the tubes...
	Then what we're saying is that, well, I'll use FDR to improve my own personal relationships in the few years that we have left before the descent of general fascism and the world government and lasers from space or whatever, right?
	Yeah. But if that were the case, Peter, then I would expect that people would be using the chat room to talk about how to improve their own personal relationships.
	But it's not even being used for that, right?
	Yeah. Sorry, go ahead.
	Well, I think if people try to put these ideas out there and they sense all the hostility and negativity and all the false selves and defenses, then they think it's about a yield of one in a thousand.
	That's going to be too late or too slow to have an impact.
	Well, sure. I think there is something to do with that for sure, but they still want me to do it, right?
	If it wasn't valuable, then people should be saying to me, oh, Steph, you know, like, don't bother.
	I'm not going to donate any money.
	But people want me to do this stuff, right?
	So how can it be something that they find valuable for me to do, but not for themselves?
	Yeah. I think if anyone can make a change, then you can.
	You certainly know how to bring this out there.
	Well, but is it the case that I am better at posting something, a link to practical or everyday anarchy?
	Is it that I am better at posting like I have a faster mouse click or I have a better font or something?
	Is that the rhetorical question?
	Yeah, sort of. I'm sorry. That was kind of rude.
	But you know what I mean. In terms of some of the stuff that can be done, it's not specific to me.
	I mean, yes, maybe I'm the only person who can write the books because it's my particular fetish or whatever, right?
	But it's not the case that I'm the only one who can produce or promote links to this, right?
	No. And this, I think, is the complexity and contradictions.
	If people did not believe that the anarchy could be advanced as a concept, and it was only their personal relationships that they were interested in, then this conversation, which did not talk about personal relationships in a really fundamental way for the first 200 podcasts, Podcasts should not have succeeded at all, right?
	And maybe, yeah, the personal relationship stuff helps to build trust and leverage and that people trust you enough that the personal relationship stuff helps to build trust and leverage and that people trust and you're not one to have the poor die in the street without roads and to be able to bring the rest forward.
	War II.
	Well, sure, but the books do that, right?
	I mean, I hope that the everyday anarchy and practical anarchy do, I think, make the case with that kind of credibility.
	So it's not that I have to sit there and read them to everyone, right?
	I mean, those books, I think, will make the case in a way that is positive.
	Now, if people think that those books don't make the case, then I could rewrite them, right?
	I mean, that's always a possibility, but I think that they do.
	Yeah, certainly. And that's, I think, the contradiction that people are having.
	And I think that I've sort of noticed there's been a rise in posts about nihilism.
	And I think that we are coming to the core of our hopelessness, right?
	Our sense of defeat, our sense of despair about this.
	And I think that's where the paralysis and the shallowness and the avoidance is occurring.
	Yeah, it's interesting.
	Well, I mean, when was the last time that we saw a really positive and happy post from somebody who's been around for a while on the board?
	Great.
	Greg had a good experience on the dating side.
	That's correct. And Greg is actually doing a lot to promote the conversation, right?
	So he's not got this sense of hopelessness, if that makes sense.
	Yeah. And what this means to everyone else is you're more hopeless than Greg Gauthier.
	I mean, if that doesn't jolt you into some kind of action, dear God, I don't know what will.
	You're looking up and seeing Greg Gauthier's sunny personality six miles above you.
	If that doesn't electroshock you into some kind of frantic activity, that's all I can say, right?
	That's like being bolder than me.
	Yeah, Greg is smiling.
	Right, right.
	I mean, I can't come up with anything more compelling than that, if that makes any sense.
	But UPB says, if it works for me, then it works, right?
	That's UPB. We can't say, it works for me, but everybody else is going to hate it.
	Yes, of course a lot of people are going to hate it.
	Of course a lot of people hate it.
	They get frustrated, they get angry, they get bitter, they get difficult, they get obstructive, they get defensive, they get hostile, they get bitchy.
	We've known that from the beginning, right?
	But if we have...
	Some great philosophical works available for free around the world at the click of a button, listen-to-able, through portable MP3 players.
	If that doesn't work, philosophy will never, ever work, right?
	Because we can't make it easier unless there's some philosophy gene we can inject into fetuses, right?
	It can't ever be easier.
	It's not like people have to learn ancient Greek and pay 500 bucks for a book, right, to read it.
	This is instantly available around the world in audiobook and PDF format and available for like 10 bucks in print form, right?
	It can't get easier than that, right?
	Nope. And so if some really great philosophical work is available for free, And whether it's the books or even the podcasts or whatever, I mean, you can create your own list of things and send them around to people if you want, or create your own feeds and post them on your blog or whatever.
	It doesn't really matter, right?
	But if great works of philosophy available for free at the click of a button...
	If we feel that's not going to work, then I'm totally open to what will work.
	But I can't think of anything else that could be easier or more positive.
	I mean, they're written in an accessible style.
	They're read, I hope, in an enjoyable and entertaining manner.
	They're full of metaphors and stories, some humor.
	I mean, if that's not...
	I mean, I've been trying to listen to Murray Rothbard's History of the Great Depression.
	Sweet mother of God, talk about a book matching its title.
	It's like... Really, really boring to get through.
	And I don't think particularly energetically or well-written.
	So, I mean, obviously, I think that we've missed some sort of sparkle and wit in philosophy and accessibility and philosophy for, lo, these many thousands of years.
	And if that's available and it's not going to do anything to start turning things around, then I don't know what will.
	If this technology...
	And this accessibility and this no money cost is not enough.
	I don't know what is. Well, I've noticed also that some people, when they hear it, they drink it in and they love it to death.
	Those are very rare.
	But you have also people that have a slow impact, so maybe it needs some time also.
	They turn around very slowly.
	Yeah. Sure.
	I mean, that's fine, right?
	But again, if people aren't doing—I'm not talking about you—but if people aren't doing stuff, all of that becomes academic, right?
	And people should do it because they want the world to be healthier, not because they should do something for FDR or me or, God forbid, anything like that, but they should do it because— That way, they can approach things with more certainty and positivity, right?
	I mean, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
	The world can't be saved, so I'm not going to lift a finger.
	Well, guess what then? The world won't be saved, right?
	Again, not you, but if other people want to chime in on this, just let me know.
	But if you do stuff, then you get hope, right?
	Hope results from action.
	You don't just get this magical hope, which then allows you to act.
	Hope grows through action.
	It grows through what you do.
	It grows through your commitment.
	I'm incredibly positive about the future because I could not bend one more muscle fiber to try and make a better future for the world.
	So because I do it, I get hope.
	We don't get hope in the absence of action, just like you don't get self-esteem without changing behavior.
	Thinking about quitting drinking does not make you sober, right?
	You actually have to put down the drink and blah, blah, blah, right?
	So, it is a willed thing where you say, what is my goal?
	My goal is to make the world a sainer place.
	It is to share the benefits of philosophy that I have received.
	That is my goal, right?
	And then, how do I get there?
	Well, you do X, Y, and Z, and you overcome your fears and so on.
	But if people say, well...
	My goal is to enjoy my next five minutes or whatever, right?
	Then, of course, people are going to say, well, I feel indifferent.
	I feel cynicism. I feel despair.
	I feel hostility.
	I feel resentment.
	I feel ODD, right?
	And then they won't make those changes, right?
	And then the world just continues on its decline, right?
	And nobody props up that sagging side of the tent.
	So it's just a matter of what are the goals?
	And this is more directed to the people who've been in this conversation today.
	It's like, what are your goals as a human being?
	What is it that you want to achieve with your life?
	Do you want a bigger car?
	Do you want a better job?
	Do you want more money? Do you want to add to the wisdom and virtue of the world?
	Well, if you don't have a goal other than get through the next day, then you're not going to achieve anything particularly important.
	I think big or great or powerful, which comes with all the attendant difficulties and satisfactions, right?
	And if you don't ever look at a map or you don't have a goal that is larger than your own immediate pleasure, then it is very hard to...
	It's almost impossible, really, I think, to get that kind of stuff going, if that makes sense.
	So... I'm sorry?
	Well, that reminds me of some of the stuff you've been saying about self-indulgence lately, too.
	Yeah, I mean, there's a discipline involved in being happy the same way there is a discipline involved in losing weight or exercising.
	I mean, there's times when you don't want to do it, there's times when you're really hungry, there's times when you would kill for a candy bar, there's times when you have a headache, and so on.
	And we have, like, what is the road bump that stops us from achieving what we say that we want to achieve, which is to make the world a happier and saner and wiser place?
	What is it that stops us in that?
	And the size of the road bumps that stop us is inversely proportional to the size of the goals that we have.
	Like, if we have little goals, then we'll be stomped by little things.
	And if we have big goals, then we'll be stomped by bigger things.
	And whatever stops us, all that we have to do to get over that hump is make a bigger goal, right?
	Because then the goal will pull us over the hump, right?
	But if you just have these little things like, well, you know, I guess I maybe sent an email to a friend of mine, you know, then I'm going to play World of Warcraft for nine hours, right?
	Then, you know, if you don't feel like sending, then it's like, okay, well, my goal was to send an email.
	I didn't really feel like doing it, so I won't do it, right?
	Whereas if the goal is much bigger than ourselves, then we can overcome those obstacles.
	Sorry? Well, just empirically, in a case like that, the goal really wasn't to send the email, right?
	Yes, I mean, I think that's quite right.
	That's quite right. I mean, it is a real shame that only the crazy people are really energetic, right?
	It's, you know, that Barack Obama has, you know, six million volunteers who are never going to see a penny of political patronage out of it, who get so involved that they're willing to man phone banks for 20 hours straight, right?
	Fundraising and all that.
	And the Christians have people who are willing to go and live in mud huts in Africa for five years to convert people to Christianity.
	And, you know, I've made all these books available for free and people can't be asked to, you know, send a couple of emails, right?
	It is the most energetic who are going to win, right?
	And if we don't do anything, then the world will not get any saner because nobody else is going to come along and promote philosophy with the premier philosophical conversation in the world at the moment.
	Thus turning the nihilism, the cynicism into a self-fulfilling prophecy.
	Yeah, then we get to sit back and say, oh, I knew it wasn't going to work.
	Look how crazy the world is, right?
	But that's just our, you know, self-indulgence, right?
	And nobody's saying, I mean, you don't have to do anything.
	I mean, you don't have to send emails out.
	You don't have to get books out to people.
	You don't have to do a goddamn thing at all, right?
	But the consequence of not doing anything is that, you know, just shut up about complaining about the world, right?
	But that's my only message to people, right?
	Is that if you're not going to lift your finger to spend half an hour, an hour a week getting the word of philosophy out to people, then don't complain that the world is irrational.
	Because you're actually part of the problem, right?
	Right. Or at least just make sure that your words match your behaviors, right?
	I mean, if you're not interested in promoting this message, you're not interested in actually acting on what this philosophy says, then empirically it must be the case that you think everything is fine, right?
	And so jabbering about how everything's not fine is sort of contrary to What empirically must be the case for you.
	Yeah, I mean, if the people who have the truth don't promote the truth, then complaining about the irrationality of the people who've never been exposed to the truth is completely ridiculous.
	It's embarrassing, right?
	Right, well, it's sort of, it's kind of using the truth as a way of lording over other people, right?
	Yeah, I mean, it could be that.
	It could be a number of other things.
	But, you know, it's like if I have a pill that cures aging and I never take it to the old age home, then it's sort of pointless for me to complain that people are getting old, right?
	Because I have the cure and I'm not getting off my fucking lazy boy to go hand it out, right?
	Right, right. So maybe we start a section on the board for how people are,
	for stories about how people are actually acting on these ideas and actually trying to, and some of the successes around promoting them?
	I would say no.
	Yeah, no. Yeah, I would say no because I think people got to just get it internalized, right?
	It's like having a meeting about the meeting.
	Yeah, like people are either going to say, I'm going to spend a little bit of time every week doing something a little bit larger than my own immediate concerns, or they're not, right?
	They're either going to do that or they're not, right?
	They're either going to sort of buy this sort of thing.
	They're either going to say, well, I'm sure glad Steph isn't cynical, but I'm going to stay cynical.
	Because if I'd been cynical, there'd be no FDR, right?
	I'm going to reap the fruits of other people's optimism and energy, but I'm not going to get off my ass and do anything myself, right?
	Right.
	They're either going to get moving, in which case nothing can stop them and self-organization will occur, or they're not, in which case a forum section is going to do nothing other than make us more depressed, right?
	Right. That's an excellent point.
	If people want to come to your house for a party, they'll show up whether you want them or not.
	And if people don't want to, sending out invites is just going to make you depressed, right?
	Yeah, that's a good point.
	That's an excellent point.
	I mean, there's just no way to communicate it because it's the kind of thing you just have to experience to get it, right?
	That when you do stuff to make the world a saner place...
	Everything in your life improves.
	Everything in your life improves.
	And if you look back on your own history with FDR, the more that you have done to promote philosophy, the happier you'll be.
	I can guarantee you that's the case.
	And this is just not my opinion, right?
	This is actual scientific fact, right?
	As we talked about in a Sunday show about 10 weeks ago, people who are philanthropic, who devote themselves to a cause that is larger than themselves, report far greater happiness.
	In fact, the MRIs show the happiness centers in their brains light up and are more powerful than people who just say, well, I'm going to do what I want to do and I'm not going to sacrifice anything of mine to anything that's larger than me.
	And again, I'm characterizing it in two extremes.
	But if people just understood, it makes you happy, right?
	What do I get out of FDR? A fantastic marriage because my wife unbelievably respects and admires to the point where she'll actually cry when she talks about it with me.
	She hugely respects and admires the efforts that I am making to make the world a better place, right?
	So when we have kids, that the kids will grow up in a slightly saner world than we did.
	And that's the kind of admiration that you get from those around you.
	That's the kind of love and respect you get from those around you.
	And that's the kind of love and self-respect that you get out of those kinds of actions.
	So I'm not trying to exploit anyone.
	I'm actually saying people. For an hour a week, you can be a whole lot happier and a whole lot more positive and a whole lot more optimistic than you are now.
	Or two hours a week. Whatever you put in is going to come back tenfold.
	And that's why – I mean the crazy people understand that a lot better than we do, right?
	Rationalists can be pretty fucking selfish is what I'm saying, right?
	And we have the greatest gifts to bring to the world.
	So the fact that we're in a sense the most lazy and selfish is kind of weird, right?
	But the reason that – Crazy people go door to door with Watchtower books, the Jehovah's Witnesses, is because they become happier thereby, because they are surrendering or sacrificing their short-term interest for the sake of a more virtuous, as they call it, and larger goal.
	And it's just one of these things.
	Nobody believes it when you say it, and everybody gets it once they've done it.
	Sorry, go ahead. Can that be called happiness, though?
	Well, they're happier than if they didn't.
	Now, they're not as happy as if they would be somewhat reasonable, right?
	But I genuinely believe that somebody who has a big goal that is irrational ends up happier than somebody who has a little goal or no goal, even if they claim to be a rationalist.
	And that is also empirically true.
	It doesn't matter in particular in the basics whether you have a big goal called bring people to Jesus or a big goal called bring people to reason.
	The person who has a big goal called bring people to Jesus who actually acts on it will end up happier than the rationalist who does nothing to make the world saner.
	Okay, so it's more a question of degrees rather than happy or not happy as a binary.
	Oh yeah, there's no binary for happy, I think.
	Okay. So if you're irrational and you walk around with a watchtower, you're super, super happy then.
	No, I wouldn't say that you're super happy because I think the super happiest are the people who are spreading truth and wisdom and virtue from first principles, not spreading fantasies and exploitation.
	But I do believe that the person who is devoting themselves to a larger cause is happier than the rationalist who doesn't lift a finger to support what he believes in.
	I also think to some extent it's self-reciprocal, right?
	Because the more you do to try and improve the world, the happier you are.
	And the happier you are, the more you'll want to improve the world, right?
	Yeah. And the greatest happiness tends to accrue to the people who feel that they have some power and effect in the world to create good things.
	And... You know, if we feel that knowledge breeds paralysis and despair and nihilism, then of course we're going to end up depressed.
	And of course people are going to get stuck emotionally, be unable to move to the next level, right?
	The challenge of optimism in the face of overwhelming odds is huge, right?
	I mean, it's hard to overcome and the only – because we wait for – Our feelings to lift us up like a hot air balloon, right?
	To lift us up and to take us aloft into the world and so that we then feel motivated.
	Or we put a little bit of effort out and we wait for positive feedback.
	You know, well, I sent out ten emails and five people wrote to thank me for the amazing thing that I had given them in terms of philosophy, right?
	We put out one percent and we wait for half a percent positive feedback so that we can go up the next step.
	And that's not how the world changes.
	Certainly not... With the amount of effort that we need to put out, what you do is you just fucking walk through walls.
	You just do it and you keep doing it because your end goal is to make the world a sane place.
	And you recognize that most people are not going to want the world to be a sane place because they're corrupt or they're nasty or they're paid by the state or whatever, right?
	You just keep doing it.
	You just keep doing it.
	And people fall into line with – not with you but with reason and evidence.
	And that doesn't mean that every day is fun and it doesn't mean that you always get this positive feedback as we can see from the stuff that I post and I post only a tiny percentage of the negative feedback that I get.
	But so what?
	Some people don't get out of the way of the train, right?
	Not our fault, right?
	But you just have a goal called, I'm going to just do everything that I can to make the world a saner place.
	But that doesn't mean that people have to work at it as hard as I do, but that's obviously, that's my job, right?
	So, but it's not about whether I like the next five minutes.
	It's not about whether I have something – I didn't like bringing up that topic last night.
	I don't even like bringing up the topic today.
	But so what? I mean what does my particular like or dislike in the moment have to do with anything?
	I don't like going to the dentist either but I still managed to find a way to do it because I recognize the alternatives are just not going to be good, right?
	Right. I've also found that, at least in my own experience, that I've experienced the greatest degrees of increases in happiness from Consistent repetition of right behavior, of acting on these things.
	The single occurrence might give you a boost in the moment, but it never lasts.
	It's the consistent repetition of...
	Of actions that make you happy, that give you the capacity to maintain that happiness.
	Yes, for sure. I mean, just like Aristotle said, right?
	Happiness is the habit of virtue, which we, you know, perfectly but continually attempt to inculcate and to act upon.
	Right, a lifetime of small habits, right?
	Right. Relative to big goals, right?
	Relative to big goals.
	And why not? Oh my god, why not?
	Why not have big goals?
	It's not like we get any prizes for playing at small, right?
	It's not like we get any medals for being little.
	I mean, even in the chat room, I saw people, we were talking last night, and people were saying, and I was saying, well, if somebody comes in and starts joking around when a serious topic is going on, why don't you just whisper to that person and say, can you hold off on the jokes because we were trying to deal with this topic?
	Right. And then if they keep going, you can ask someone to kick them.
	Just be assertive with what it is that you want, because people have said, well, I really wanted to pursue this topic, but then everybody started joking and blah, blah, blah.
	If we can't even muster The, you know, quote courage to unoffensively whisper to someone and say, listen, can you just hold off on the joke?
	And I do it all the time. Can you hold off on the joking or we're trying to deal with this topic or whatever?
	I mean, if we can't even get ourselves balled up enough to whisper to somebody who's being disruptive in a positive or polite way, I mean, our whisper is positive or polite.
	And what are we talking about taking on the state of the church and the family?
	If we can't even do that little thing, then we don't really have any right, I think, to talk about our hostility to the Fed, right?
	Because, I mean, it's easier to do this whisper in the forum than it is to do anything about the Fed, right?
	Right, right.
	Absolutely. So that's sort of it for why I think that people are bottoming out a little bit.
	I think it's because they have enough resources that they can really act to make the world a saner place.
	And I think that people are not making it to that place.
	And I think that's causing people to back away from any kind of openness and intimacy because I think that's sort of just how the ripple effect works.
	But I'm certainly happy in the last few minutes if anybody has anything else they wanted to add or tell me that this is a...
	theory or whatever.
	I mean, that's just sort of what I'm thinking, but I'm certainly happy to hear other people's thoughts if they wanted to chime in.
	One thing that I'm finding a little frustrating is...
	I'm connecting the small habits with the big goals.
	I'm finding that I want, you know, a big action to match the big goal, right?
	And in the sense of, well, you know, if the goal is change the world, then my action is change the world, right?
	So what does that mean exactly, right?
	And how is...
	And seeing from, say, like the example you've been using in the call, just sending out weekly emails, seeing the big goal in those actions, right, is a little bit difficult.
	Well, for sure, right?
	But, I mean, if your goal is to lose 100 pounds...
	Then saying, well, where do I get the chainsaw that lets me do that in a week?
	It doesn't do any good, right?
	Then it just comes down to putting down that bag of chips, right?
	It comes down to going to the gym that time.
	Everything that is of value is an accumulation of little things, right?
	Right. I guess what I mean, to build on that metaphor, I guess what I mean is that a lot of people, when they see a goal like lose 100 pounds, then they look at the bag of chips and they go, oh shit, I'm not going to lose 100 pounds.
	There's no way I'm going to do that just by putting this damn bag of chips down.
	Forget that. I'm just going to keep eating, right?
	Well sure, and then they won't lose the weight.
	Right? And that's fine. Right?
	I mean, that's just a choice that we make, right?
	So if we say, well, I don't want to send out emails and I don't want to spend half an hour a week or an hour a week posting, promoting stuff and, you know, whatever, then that's fine.
	Then, okay. The world is crazy and we're being out-energized by people who are completely insane and then the world is going to get crazier, right?
	That's just the consequence, right?
	If you eat the bag of chips, you're going to continue to maintain or gain the weight.
	But this is a little different because this is about the world, right?
	We've got something that heals ourselves, that makes us happier.
	And we've got a pill.
	So we're healthy, right?
	We're good, right?
	And it's different though because we could actually help other people.
	This is like I've lost the weight but I'm not going to tell anyone else how I lost it and I'm then going to complain that people are overweight.
	Right. Right, right, right.
	Yeah, that's actually a better way to apply it.
	But just carrying that back, like in my own situation, when I did finally decide to lose a bunch of weight a long time ago...
	I actually made a conscious effort not to think about how much weight I wanted to lose or losing weight at all.
	I just told myself I wanted to be healthy and did whatever the books I was reading said was the healthiest thing to do in terms of exercise and diet and so forth and did that until I actually started seeing measurable results and then I actually made Small goals and then started making larger goals based on that.
	As I saw progress.
	So it was a little easier to start with no goal and see what happened and then build on smaller goals into bigger goals and then so forth.
	Rather than just starting with this gigantic Mount Everest goal and And having that constantly looming over me as I was working my way through it.
	Well sure, but I mean losing weight is a lot harder than sending out some emails, right?
	Oh sure. I mean you had to spend what?
	If you include gym time, commuting, reading, researching and so on, you probably had to spend 10 to 15 hours a week dieting, right?
	Oh it was more than that actually at the beginning.
	Yeah, so probably maybe 20 hours a week, right?
	Right, right. And if I said to people, you should spend 20 hours a week promoting FDR, which I think it would be great, but they would say, well, you've got to be crazy, right?
	Probably. And of course, we don't need to do that because the electronic medium is so...
	I'm not saying to people you need to order 100 copies of the books and strategically plant them here, there, and everywhere, right?
	And spend $1,000 and three weekends putting the books out and blah, blah, blah.
	I mean, nobody's talking about that, right?
	Saying, you know, post it on a fucking forum, a free download, right?
	This is as easy as it's going to get in terms of the commitments that people have to make to help make the world a saner place, right?
	Right, right.
	And so it just comes down to, am I going to do a little bit?
	Am I going to nudge the world towards sanity?
	That's all that really comes down. I'm going to nudge the world.
	Is doing my part to make the world a saner place worth a half hour of my time?
	Well, of course it is, because people spend 10-20 hours a week listening to podcasts and books, right?
	Oh, right. Absolutely. So, if it's worth it for you, and if somebody introduced you, right?
	The only reason that almost everyone is here is because somebody promoted it, right?
	Right. Sure.
	Right? I mean, nobody knocked on their door and handed them a DVD, right?
	But even if they did, that would still be promotion.
	Somebody promoted this site, this philosophy to people, right?
	And then they're like, okay, well, I got mine, so fuck the rest of the world.
	But the rest of the world has power over you, right?
	Right. And the whole point of doing this is, sure, to change yourself, to improve yourself, but also in the process to improve the world, right?
	It's having compassion for other people, right?
	It's having compassion for other people.
	This conversation has made me saner and happier.
	It's about loving the world.
	And I know that the world has done us a lot of harm, right?
	I know that particularly those of us who are sensitive and who were victimized as children perhaps, the world has done us a lot of harm.
	But the world has done us a lot of harm because people who were harmed before did not find it in their hearts to give gifts back to the world, right?
	It's just a self-fulfilling prophecy then, right?
	Right. Right, exactly.
	I mean, if people had found the courage that I'm hoping we will find 500 years ago, we wouldn't need to be doing what we're doing now, and we would be able to take spaceship flyby vacations to Jupiter, right?
	Right. And if we don't do it, maybe it's going to be another thousand years until someone else comes along and starts doing it.
	And then the world will have to suffer through another thousand years of crazy-ass religiosity and nationalism and the cult of the family, and there'll be another hundred wars, and there'll be another five genocides, and they'll be like, it's just a matter of choice, right?
	Right, right. Well, it's actually kind of an interesting paradox, actually.
	Because the suggestion is that at some point in time, somebody needs to say, okay, I'm going to have compassion for the world despite the fact that it hurt me, right? Well, it's because it hurt me that I want to make people saner.
	It's because crazy people hurt me that I want to spread sanity.
	I'm not doing this because, like, I don't give these podcasts to my mom saying, I forgive you and I love you, right?
	Right, right. No, that's a good point.
	It's not the people. I mean, you don't want to confuse the world with the people.
	I mean, all but 20 people in the world haven't hurt me at all.
	So why would I make them pay for the 20 people who did?
	Right, right, right, right.
	So it's not a generalization to say...
	It's a generalization to say that the world hurt me, but it's not a generalization to say that because these 20 people hurt me, I want to make sure that the rest of the world doesn't have to face that ever again.
	Right. Right.
	Right. And either we do something or we do nothing.
	I mean, that's really all it comes down to.
	to and if we do nothing then that's fine there will be specific consequences to that because there's lots of crazy people out there who are doing a hell of a lot right oh yeah yeah and if you say well Steph's energy and the donators and the people who are doing stuff they're gonna save the world for me it's like god how pitiful is that how pitiful is that to have this opportunity to do this kind of good and to not even do it for half an hour a week
	I mean, how pitiful is that?
	What are you saying about yourself when you let that kind of cynicism overwhelm and paralyze you?
	I am nothing.
	The world will win.
	I can't do anything.
	I feel despair.
	Well, who gives a shit whether you feel despair or not?
	I mean, God, stop wallowing.
	Stop having your own emotions be so all-fired precious.
	That you surrender to every dark impulse that you have.
	Don't let your dark side and your false self win.
	Because that only serves the bad people.
	Every time you feel paralyzed about wanting to do something good for the world, you're just in service of the bad people.
	You're actually working for the fucking state.
	You might as well be in the congregation.
	Right, and so in one sense those aren't really your impulses.
	Oh no, hopelessness about virtue, especially, dear God, dear God people, I mean, the fact that we inherited these amazing works of philosophy from people who lived in a far crazier world than we do, and who had far fewer opportunities to spread the truth than we have, if they could do what we can't, And we only have our gifts because of what they did?
	How is that repaying someone like Nietzsche or someone like Rand or someone like Aristotle or someone like Socrates who died?
	Who lived in a completely insane world.
	No capitalism. No internet.
	Slaves. No rights for women.
	Children viewed as little more than pets.
	Crazy ass polytheistic religious.
	Religious warfare. Endless warfare.
	Drafts that went on for 20 years, where you just get skewered through the gut with a sword if you didn't sign up.
	Those people were able to get themselves motivated.
	Guys lived in fucking barrels for the sake of philosophy, right?
	And we can't do half an hour of clickety-clickety email while watching a show on our computers?
	I mean, God! It's lunatic!
	How did we get so lazy?
	When other people only gave us these gifts that we treasure so much by expending them out of energy in the face of a despair that we can't even imagine.
	Right, spending off all that savings for the sake of self-indulgence.
	Ah, you know, when I feel a little awkward about keeping things on track in the chat room, well, so what?
	Say, that's a shame.
	I'm going to do it anyway. Sympathy to the self, not slavery to the false self, right?
	Yeah, and I think a lot of us have been confusing that lately.
	Well, authenticity to the feelings is important, and to note that you feel awkward about it is important.
	That's why RTR is failing so badly for people, right?
	Because they're like, ooh, RTR, I don't feel like talking about it.
	RTR, therefore I won't, right?
	Yeah. That's not what RTR is about.
	RTR is saying, I feel awkward about it and I don't want to talk about it.
	That's RTR. Not saying, okay, well I won't talk about it then, right?
	Right, right, right. RTR is not an excuse to indulge the false self.
	Right. Yeah, RTR is about honesty and it's about connecting with people.
	So if you're in the chat room and somebody or a group of people is joking up the place and distracting everyone, And RTR doesn't say, ooh, I feel nervous, therefore I'm not going to say anything.
	That's just self-indulgence, right?
	That's just letting the fear and the false self overcome you, and it's getting refooded, which is what the whole goddamn chat room is like some horribly awkward family conversation now, right?
	People avoiding making jokes, it's empty, right?
	But the RTR says, I'm going to be honest about what I feel.
	And I feel like I don't want to say anything, but I feel like we're getting off track, and I feel nervous about it.
	That's honesty, right? Yeah.
	Right, and doing the former is essentially no difference between that and what you were doing before you read RTR, right?
	The only difference is that you're actually conscious of the dysfunction, but you're still acting it out, right?
	No, that's right. And look, this is with all sympathy to the growth of the community.
	Regression always occurs before growth.
	Regression always occurs before growth.
	It's the gathering as we are about to leap forward.
	So the fact that people are refooing is entirely expected given that we are moving to the next level, right?
	I mean, that's inevitable, right?
	Every time we try to cross a new barrier, we regress because we are going back in time to when that barrier first came up, right?
	Reaching the next plateau on the mountain.
	Right. Right.
	So, I mean, and I wasn't particularly going to bring this up.
	It's going to wait for another couple of weeks.
	But given that this sort of came out in the chat room last night, I thought we might as well have a clear discussion of it, right?
	But yeah, just, you know, grit your teeth and be honest, right?
	If you're in the chat room and you feel that something awry is going on, or if you're in a conversation with someone and you feel something odd is going on, Just talk about it.
	That's our commitment.
	That's how we stay sane.
	And have something where you live philosophy in some manner as a continual process.
	Have something where you say, okay, half an hour a week.
	So what? I'm sitting there with a laptop.
	I'm watching some sitcom.
	Let me find a couple of forums and post about it.
	FDR or maybe it's some other philosophy side.
	It doesn't have to be FDR. Maybe there's something else out there.
	But do something that's going to make the world wiser and happier.
	Half an hour a week. See how it makes you feel.
	See how it makes you feel.
	Does it make you feel more confident?
	Does it make you feel like you can take on more crazy people because you're actually living with integrity and the actions are flowing from your values?
	Of course it does. When people say, oh, Steph, well, how can you take on all these crazy people?
	It's like, I have incredible credibility with myself.
	That kind of strength. The certainty that can only flow from action, that cannot flow from thought and discussion and feeling alone.
	It can only flow from action.
	Do it for half an hour a week and see how it makes you feel.
	Just see. It'll be awkward.
	It'll feel embarrassing. You'll feel, oh my God, I'm being exploited.
	Oh my God, I'm in a cult. All the cynicism, all the nonsense will come up, for sure.
	But that's just the world saying, I don't want to be healed.
	That's just the world saying, shut up, don't make me anxious.
	Well, so what?
	We're not for the world.
	We're for the new world, right?
	We're for the world to be, the world to come.
	Not for this pile of bullshit we live in right now, right?
	Right. We elbow this world aside, and yeah, it's going to squawk, and yeah, it's going to complain, and yeah, it's going to kick up some feathers and some dust, but so what?
	It had its day.
	It had its chance to reform itself.
	And it's not doing it.
	So, too fucking bad.
	Your time is done.
	Yeah, time to start building the next one.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's time.
	It's time, and we have all the technology and opportunity.
	Nobody's sitting there saying, you guys have to quit your job and spend 12 hours a day writing books.
	So, you know, just do it.
	Do it and accept the discomfort and you'll gain happiness thereby.
	I mean, that's what's being handed out, right?
	It's not changing the world, it's being happy.
	Yeah, and fundamentally that's the only way to change the world.
	Well, sure. Well, sure.
	But, I mean, changing the world does not have to be incompatible with happiness.
	In fact, it is the same thing.
	Oh, right.
	Oh, you're saying, right...
	Yeah. Well, the model of changing the world through martyrdom is, I mean, that's sort of what, that's what the existing model is sort of based upon, right?
	That they, the current, the current world wants you to believe that changing the world is martyrdom, right?
	Yeah. Yeah, that you've got to go live in a mud hut for five years to convert pygmies to Christianity, right?
	No. Right, or throw yourself on the police and end up getting arrested for the rest of your life.
	Yeah, don't pay taxes, live in the woods, blah, blah, blah.
	No, that's not it at all.
	Right.
	So that's, I mean, that's sort of all, sorry, Ali, I know we've kind of drifted from where you were talking about about it.
	I hope that it's somewhat helpful what we've been talking about if you've been, if you're still around.
	Yeah, it's really helpful.
	Excellent. Okay. Good.
	All right.
	Well, thanks, everybody. I certainly do appreciate it.
	And have yourselves a wonderful day.
	I think this would be a useful combo.
	Why not push it out and raise some anxiety for people?
	And I hope that people will give us a shout back and let us know what they think of this, of this particular approach and conversation.
	So thank you, everybody.
	And have yourselves a wonderful, wonderful afternoon.

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