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July 7, 2008 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

02:34:52

1102 Honesty and Apologies

I apologize...

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	Hi, everybody. It's Steph. Hope you're doing well.
	We had this impromptu conversation that came out of the new audio chat room at Free Domain Radio, and we switched to Skype because we had too many people in the chat room.
	It kept cutting us out. And the question, sort of the basic question, which has been floating around for some time at Free Domain Radio was, why is it that people had kind of ignored or not given me feedback on the And Ash stepped up and was giving his reasons,
	and we were going through an analysis of those reasons just to find out what was going on in the community as to why people were avoiding giving me feedback when they'd given me feedback before, when I'd asked specifically for feedback.
	And we had an absolutely fascinating conversation that I think really shows how this sort of real-time relationship stuff, this curiosity, can really help uncover...
	Some very, very important and very, very hard-to-parse problems in relationships.
	So it's a little bit of a long show, but I hugely recommend that you listen to it.
	I think it's very, very important, and I hope that you agree with me about that.
	So this conversation seems to start a little bit in midstream, but it was fairly early on.
	And what had happened was Ash had volunteered a number of reasons as to why he hadn't given me feedback previously.
	On the new books.
	And we were talking about that, so that's where this picks up.
	There we go. All right, sorry about that.
	All set. So, Ash, are you there?
	I am. Excellent.
	Okay, well... So...
	Yeah, sorry. I'm not trying to be obtuse, although I sometimes am.
	I'm not trying to be obtuse here.
	I'm just generally trying to follow the reasoning of what you're saying.
	So just to recap, if this ends up being a podcast, that your thought was that you didn't want to impose your feedback on me even after you sort of heard that I wanted feedback on the books because...
	You felt that it would be a time imposition for me or that your feedback wouldn't be helpful because you would say something like, I started a new job, I didn't enjoy EA as much because I prefer the psychology stuff, which is where my main focus is right now.
	I just want to make sure I'm understanding what you mean.
	Right. It was something along those lines.
	It was that, you know, if there is some movement in a community that's, you know, having a large reaction to what you're doing at the moment, that I don't think, you know, I think the situation for me personally would be different because I've just taken on a whole new pile of stuff.
	I have less time. And so I didn't think that That particular thing would be hugely helpful to you, although I think you were right when you made the point that it was me deciding what would be helpful for you rather than just telling you and letting you decide.
	Well, if you...
	Let me put it to you this way.
	I mean, if you're in this new job, and of course, congratulations, I think it's fantastic, but if you were at...
	This new job. And for some reason, you felt you were doing a bad job.
	You know, like you handed work into your boss or whatever or you did what your job is and you just got almost no feedback.
	Whereas before, your boss had been sort of saying good job.
	Now he wasn't saying anything like that.
	What would you think?
	I would assume there's nothing wrong, I guess.
	I mean, at work, I don't particularly get a huge amount of feedback unless it's something in terms of corrections or whatever.
	Okay, let's try it another way then.
	So, if your girlfriend stopped returning your calls, right, would you rather know what the reason was or would you like to not know what the reason was?
	I would prefer to know what the reason was.
	Okay. And why is that?
	Because I'd want to know what I have to do to fix the situation or to resolve the situation.
	And if she said, well, I was busy with X, Y, and Z, and I didn't want to burden you with the reasons as to why I wasn't returning your calls, would you say...
	That would be good or reasonable?
	Or you'd say, yes, be sure to do that again in the future?
	I'm sort of leading the witness here, but you know what I mean?
	Right. No, I wouldn't say that.
	I'd say, you know, just please let me know what's going on in the future.
	Right. And the reason that I'm pointing these obvious things out is because you have two rules, right?
	Do I? What are those?
	Yeah. Well, in one relationship, your girlfriend and yourself, if you ask for feedback, you want feedback, right?
	Right. But in your relationship with me, if I ask for feedback, you don't want to give me feedback, right?
	It's a different rule. You assume that I don't want your feedback.
	Right, yeah, that's true.
	And I think it's interesting. It's not a big criticism.
	It's not even a small criticism.
	To me, it's just – it's interesting because the energy and the positivity of the community was – it's my feedback.
	It's how I know what's going on, whether I'm doing the right thing, whether I could be doing something different, whether I'm focusing on the right thing.
	I mean, I'm everyone's slave, right?
	And I'm very happy to be in that position.
	This is not me leading, this is me negotiating or dancing with, I guess you could say, right?
	And so, when I don't get feedback, when I ask for feedback and I don't get feedback, it takes a certain effort of will to not create disastrous scenarios, right?
	Right, that's true. I think we've all been in that situation, whether it's at work or whether it's in a personal relationship or whatever where we get nothing back and we have a hard time not imagining the worst, right? Yeah, that's true.
	And I think that everyone understands that, right?
	And the way that I generally work is because I think everyone, at least on this call, if not just about everyone in the community, is a kind person and everybody is aware that if I ask for feedback And put myself in that vulnerable position, right? It's not fun to ask.
	It's not fun to ask for money, and it's not fun to ask for feedback, right?
	Because I haven't really had to ask for much feedback before, right?
	Because I've been getting responses, both positive and negative, back from what it is that I'm doing, which help me sort of navigate, right?
	You guys are my sonar as to particularly the people who I've had one-on-one convos with, who've been in the conversation for a while, who've been active board members, who are donators, right?
	I mean, you guys are invested...
	In many, many ways in this conversation, right?
	You've invested financial resources.
	You've toasted lifelong relationships.
	I mean, you're invested, right?
	You guys are my sonar.
	And you're kind people, right?
	So... This is what, to me, is confusing, right?
	Which is, I'm trying to sort of understand why it is that, because everybody knows what it feels like to not get feedback when you ask for it, and everybody knows that it's hard to avoid the worst-case scenario from that.
	Now, I've, through, you know, talking about with Christina, working on it myself, I've certainly managed to avoid the worst-case scenario, but it wasn't the easiest thing in the world, if that makes sense.
	Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
	And so, because, you know, everybody likes the bit where I say everyone's a genius and everyone's a philosopher, and that is good and that is true, but what it means is that in situations like this, people want me to feel that.
	Anxiety, they want me to feel that.
	Insecurity, they want me to feel that.
	Worst case scenario, right?
	Okay. Yeah, that would make sense.
	Although, of course, I don't think it's conscious on our part.
	But why do you think that is?
	Well, I don't know. I don't know.
	I don't know. I agree with you that it's not conscious because that would be cruel, right?
	I mean, yes, I could make Steph feel a whole lot better.
	And this doesn't mean praise, right?
	What I'm asking for is not praise.
	If people said...
	I thought that EA was abrupt and badly written and PA was too long-winded and I didn't like the reading.
	But that, to me, is feedback that is very helpful, right?
	I've certainly never been shy about soliciting and appreciating negative feedback, right?
	Because there's no such thing as negative feedback.
	There's only honest and dishonest feedback, right?
	That's true, yeah. So...
	So when I ask for feedback and people can't – they say, well, I didn't have time.
	Well, of course. I mean people have time to listen to six million podcasts.
	They have time to break with their families.
	They have time to – whatever, right?
	They have time, right? Even if it's like a five-minute email.
	So when there is no feedback and everybody knows what that does – I don't know.
	I don't know why people would want me to feel that.
	I don't. I mean, I could sit here and spin theories, but the whole problem is that there's a lack of feedback, and so I don't know.
	I would be theorizing in a vacuum if that makes sense.
	And also that would mean that...
	I would have to do the work to figure out what other people are not telling me, right?
	It's hard enough to do the work when people are telling me honestly stuff about their history, right?
	Like it was hard enough doing the work figuring out, you know, your father issues, some of your mom issues and so on back when I guess we first talked about eight months ago.
	When people are giving me a lot of feedback, it's hard enough, right?
	So it's hard enough to do a dream analysis, say, but it's even harder when somebody says, do a dream analysis but also invent the dream for me, right?
	Right, that's interesting.
	I'll tell you what comes to my mind if I think of giving you kind of negative feedback or feedback of what I'd like to say or something.
	The thought that pops into my mind immediately is that's kind of, you know, selfish on my mind, but like, who am I to say that this is where, you know, I would like FDR to go or something like that, because it's not about me, of course, it's about everyone.
	Well, but see, this is the interesting thing though, right?
	This is the UPP, right?
	So if you, Ash, say, it's not about me, it's about everyone, but everyone takes that same approach, then I get no feedback at all, right?
	And then the community is about no one, right?
	Right. Which is kind of what's happened, right?
	Like you've got not much feedback at all.
	Oh, yeah. No, it's almost nothing, right?
	For sure. Does anyone else on the call, do they identify with that at all?
	Could that be a possible scenario rather than people trying to send you a message to make you feel their anxiety and stuff?
	It could be, but I think that you're far too intelligent for that.
	I mean, I think everyone is far too intelligent for that, to say, well, I'm not going to give Steph feedback because it's not about just me.
	Because, of course, I know that it's not about just one person.
	Otherwise, I wouldn't have put it out.
	Otherwise, I would have just emailed you and said, Ash...
	Buddy, it all hinges on you.
	Whatever you tell me is exactly what the community wants as a whole, right?
	It's you are the perfect mirror of the future of philosophy and you just got to tell me how it's going to be, right?
	But I didn't send an email like that.
	What I did was I put out a public request, right?
	So I'm perfectly aware that it's not just one person.
	But if you say, well, I don't want to give feedback because it's about everyone, A, that's not logical – B, that's not what I asked for.
	And C, if everybody followed it, I'd get no feedback at all, which is exactly what I'm complaining about in the first place, if that makes sense.
	Right, that's true. And, you know, I mean, that's not hard, right?
	That kind of reasoning? Yeah, I guess so.
	So it must be something else, right?
	Right. I'm just thinking about my own thoughts and I think I'm uncomfortable with Giving negative feedback in general in a situation like this where obviously you do all this for free basically.
	There's no obligation on us.
	You're just putting it out there.
	I don't know. I guess I have the idea that to give negative feedback would be kind of rude or whatever.
	But of course you've asked for the feedback.
	So that's not necessarily true.
	But that's just the kind of thing that runs through my mind.
	Right, okay. Okay, that's good.
	I can see how that might be important.
	That's anti-empirical though, right?
	Yeah, it is, of course.
	It's just based on past associations and things like that.
	Because it would be implying that if you gave negative feedback that stuff would say, you ungrateful bastard, why did you do that, right?
	Right, I get it. Yeah, which is why I said it's based on past things rather than the current situation.
	And also, Ash, I mean, unless there's something that you're holding back, that you felt that EA was a vulture pecking your eyeballs out or something, that what you're saying is, yeah, it's good.
	It just doesn't particularly suit my needs at the moment because I'm more interested in the psychological stuff and I'm really busy with a new job, so I didn't really have a chance to get into it as much.
	I mean, that to me is not negative feedback, if that makes sense.
	Okay. Yeah, that makes sense.
	But is it useful for you just to have like one person tell you that they're busy with other things at the moment?
	Well, but you don't need to ask me that question, right?
	This is why I'm confused that you would ask me whether your honest feedback to me is important or useful.
	Because we already established that silence is not useful, right?
	Right. And so the only other option is if you're not going to be silent, then you either tell me the truth or you lie to me, right?
	Right. So I'm not sure what you're asking whether telling me the truth would be useful to me.
	I mean, you're saying to a philosopher, would telling you the truth be of any use to you whatsoever, right?
	Yeah, that's true. But that's what I genuinely can't understand, right?
	Yeah. Yeah. I guess I was being completely anti-UPB because one of the thoughts that came through my head before when you were asking for feedback is, you know, someone else would do it.
	Like, mine isn't particularly important, but somebody else will do it.
	So, yeah.
	Okay, so you feel that yours isn't important because you couldn't give me detailed feedback or you were sort of indifferent somewhat to the book because of other issues that are going on in your life or whatever?
	Yeah, something like that.
	And if you had sent me an email containing what you had said to me, what did you picture my reaction would be or my response?
	So that comes into my inbox and...
	What did you picture me responding as?
	Well, you might think something like, you know, how does that help me that, you know, that's not useful or something like that.
	Okay, so let's say that it wasn't useful to me, right?
	Right. It's cost me, what, 15 seconds to read it?
	True. True. So, if it's not useful, it's not exactly like, you know, a wallaby chewed my leg off, right?
	Right. See, I'm working on localized metaphors.
	Yeah, I noticed. That's the kind of service we provide here, custom metaphors, with bigoted views from outside the camera.
	I'll be talking about polar bears and Eskimos here for Canadian metaphors.
	So, even if it's something that is not hugely helpful to me, right?
	Then it's not a negative, right?
	Right. And you have fulfilled a mild obligation that if someone who's done a lot to help you in your life asks you for a little feedback, spending five minutes jotting something down and setting it off, at least you've done that, right?
	Right. And if I don't find it hugely helpful, it hasn't really cost me anything, right?
	Right. I'm still not sure where the big negative is.
	Yeah, I'm not sure about it either at the moment.
	But yeah, I think you've probably explained it to me pretty well.
	I think a lot of it was kind of subconscious and I didn't really think it through.
	Well, sure. Sure, no.
	I mean, I believe that you didn't have a flowchart saying, hmm, you know, plus one for here, minus two points for here.
	But certainly if you had known, right, given our relationship, and this would be true with other people as well, but given our relationship, if you had known that it would have been positive to me to get the email that you describe, you would have done it, right? Right.
	Because you'd have said, you know, hey, this guy's putting it out there.
	He's done some stuff to help me that's been pretty significant.
	So what's he asking for?
	A five-minute email?
	I can manage that, right?
	Right. And, of course, I did ask for the feedback, right?
	Yeah. So, I didn't say, I'd like your feedback unless you don't feel it would be useful, right?
	Right. Or, unless you're, you know, busy at work, or unless you, whatever, feel that it might be a waste of my time.
	Right. So, when you hear that request, right?
	Because I think... I mean, I don't make requests of the community very often, right?
	Obviously, you know, there's the whining for money and all of that, right?
	But I certainly don't say I would like feedback on X, right?
	Not in general, right?
	I mean, there are a few people who will help me if they've got time to pound through some books or whatever, right?
	But that's not something that I really ask for, right?
	Yeah. So, I gotta think...
	That people felt it was some kind of trap.
	I mean, that's all I can really think of, right?
	Yeah, that makes sense.
	Because given the benefits that people have gotten out of this community and all the material that I pump out for free, asking for a couple of minutes to jot down your thoughts is not a lot to ask, right?
	It's not like I'm saying, and now you've got to give me a kidney, right?
	Right. That doesn't cross us over into cult status yet, right?
	So it must have brought up something from people's histories where this was like a trap, you know?
	Like, tell your crazy mother what you really think of her cooking.
	No, wait. It's a trap, right?
	Yeah. I don't know what that is for people, but certainly I'm all ears.
	Well, it could be just as simple as, you know, does my bum look big in this type thing?
	Like, asking for something, but no matter what you say...
	Sorry, can you just lean into the webcam a bit?
	I can't actually tell. You know what I mean?
	Like, from people's histories, of course, people wouldn't think this of you consciously, but like a kind of a passive-aggressive asking for an opinion, but wanting a specific answer type thing.
	Right, right. Okay, so it's sort of like, yeah, does my ass look big in these pants?
	And if you say yes, then it's like, well, what do you mean?
	Right? And if you're telling the truth, then they get over, why didn't you tell me I was gaining weight?
	Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right? Right.
	That's very interesting. But it's strange that there'd be that much of a disconnect when it comes to you because, I mean, of course, nobody would consciously put you in that type of category.
	And if it happened kind of community-wide, then it's strange that it happened on such a scale as well.
	It really is. It really is.
	And I can definitely feel that people are trying to train me out of asking them for feedback.
	Whatever you do, Steph, do not ask me for feedback.
	Yeah. But that's unusual because feedback has been provided before, right?
	I mean this whole conversation has been exquisitely if not expertly navigated by the feedback from the listeners, right?
	So when there's a thunderclap of absence in feedback, right, that is a lot of feedback, right?
	Yeah. So there's something associated with this particular book series.
	Or it could be the books for free.
	It may not because the EA was the decision point for putting the books out for free.
	And it was also the time that we created the, or I wrote with James' help, the FDR referral system.
	And we created the custom landing pages, which are very easy to distribute to others, right?
	Right. And there was a philosophization as well, but sorry, go ahead.
	So I was thinking maybe it might have something to do with you as an authority figure.
	But if that were the case, then the feedback, the lack of feedback would have been universal from the beginning.
	Yes, for sure. Not necessarily triggered the way it seems to be.
	Ashley's got a few things to say.
	Why don't you just message me in the chat?
	Who? Ashley.
	Oh. Well, uh, yeah, yeah.
	Go right ahead.
	Hi. Um, like, part of the reason why I've never given any, like, obvious feedback...
	Can you hear me?
	I sure can. Okay.
	Part of the reason why I've never given any obvious feedback besides personal feedback through personal emails has been because I kind of feel like I'm so new here that my feelings aren't really relevant.
	And it's not anybody else's fault.
	That's totally me.
	It's more obvious to me, and I think about that all the time because I'm really self-conscious, Especially with this process that I'm going through.
	But the important thing is that I would not be able to go through this process without FDR, you know?
	So it's almost like a humbling thing for me, you know?
	It's like a hierarchy almost that I'm creating.
	And I just wanted to mention, like, This fear of rejection that I have, of confronting people with my honesty, especially the people who are trying to help me.
	Does that make any sense for anybody?
	Oh yeah, no, totally.
	Totally. It makes sense to me, for sure.
	I think that your reticence with your feedback obviously is not because you're new to this conversation but you've had a history of that obviously with your family and with your husband and so on.
	So it definitely predates the conversation for sure.
	But, and of course, I mean, this is more to do with, you know, the books that came out a couple of months ago and so on.
	So I'm certainly not, you know, we'll get to you in a minute.
	No, we're not picking on, I'm not trying to pick on anyone in particular because I don't want this to be sort of an exercise where it's like, you know, you ratbusters didn't give me the feedback or whatever, right?
	I genuinely am curious because this is an incredibly warm and helpful community in so many ways, right?
	And I think that people did feel uncomfortable about something that happened a couple of months ago, two and a half months ago, whatever, and we've talked about some theories as to why.
	Because I get these sort of quote reasons, if that makes any sense, from people that just don't...
	Stand up to the standards of the community and the intelligence of the people involved.
	And again, that doesn't really help me to solve the problem, but it does help me to realize that the problem is pretty unconscious, which I'm actually kind of relieved about.
	Because if it was really conscious, that would not be a good thing.
	So no, I appreciate that.
	But this is more aimed at the people who've been around longer, particularly those who've gone through the RTR thing.
	Right. Okay.
	Thanks. Thank you.
	I know that it took me like a week to get back to you and my excuse was one of the ones that actually Ash mentioned earlier with a little bit of a change.
	You know, it was two or three days and I was just, you know, I was not up to reading anything.
	I didn't read anything in those three days.
	But after the fourth day, my excuse to myself is, well, everybody will have sent feedback by now and surely I can't Do anything useful, because, you know, everyone will have caught everything, and why send yet a 15th set of corrections, right? And then when you mentioned in the chat, hey, you know, one person has sent me feedback on, like, the half of the book that I gave him, I realized, oh, hell!
	You know, and I finally had no excuses whatsoever, and that's when I sent you my stuff.
	But definitely that, you know, thought of, well, everybody else has done it, surely, was very tempting.
	And I think that as a meta-narrative is important, right?
	Because this doesn't have anything to do with the book, right?
	Obviously, this is not about FDR or me or the book or anything like that.
	This is just a symptom, right?
	And I've tried to sort of get good at reading the tea leaves of these symptoms, right?
	Because this is about something that's important to people in the community, right?
	It's nothing to do with the book or anything like that.
	But it's interesting when people say, someone else is going to do it.
	Someone else has done it.
	My feedback, my input isn't that important, right?
	Well, isn't that a refrain that was coming up in the conference call the other day, too?
	Other people will spread the word about FDR? Why do I have to do it, or why...
	Right. I think you're quite right, Greg.
	I think that is a very important aspect of what's coming up.
	And again, that isn't even anything to do with spreading the word about FDR, right?
	Because what is it that people think when they hear statements like, oh, other people will do it.
	Steph's not going to be interested in my feedback.
	I don't have anything really valuable to add.
	I'm new here. What is the refrain that is going through people with that?
	It's obviously that they have, you know, nothing to bring, nothing to add, nothing to offer, right?
	I mean, it's just permutations on that sort of thinking.
	Yeah, for sure. I mean, it definitely strikes me as...
	The lack of capacity to negotiate.
	Well, no, I don't think it's a capacity to negotiate.
	I think it's, you know, what could I conceivably have to offer that would be a value, right?
	So self-worth of some sort.
	Yeah, I mean, to me, it would be a pretty intense feeling of...
	Why would Steph be interested in my little opinions?
	And, of course, this is ridiculous because it's not like people have been shy about giving me their opinions in the past, right?
	So this is new, right?
	Yeah, that's a good point.
	Do you get that also – has that also been the case with the broader listenership, broader readership, or just strictly with the more active community?
	I'm sure I'm not sure what you mean.
	Well, you're saying people aren't shy about giving you their opinions.
	When you say that, do you mean, or haven't been in the past, do you mean, you're meaning the active community and the broader community as a whole, like the thousands of emails you get every day, right?
	Or hundreds of emails, or whatever it is.
	Are those still coming in now, right?
	Yes, those are still coming in now, but they're more related to some of the early work that I've done.
	But yeah, those are still coming in now, and I did get some feedback, both positive and critical, in the book series.
	But it's a change in the longer term, the more active the longer term listenership.
	And there's not everyone in this call, right?
	Just to sort of be clear. I don't want to sort of point out, but some people in this call have been very helpful.
	But, I mean, for instance, Greg, right?
	So you helped me a lot with RTR, hugely, right?
	Yeah. And then not, I mean, no feedback whatsoever on any of the drafts of EA or PA, right?
	No, that's quite true. Well, actually, I did give you a little bit of verbal feedback on PA, but nothing formal.
	Well, no, but not before I had read the audiobook.
	Hmm? Because I posted, it was a couple of weeks ago now that I posted earlier parts of PA in the Diamond Plus section, right?
	Well, you gave me a copy, an early copy of PA, and I converted it to voice.
	And then I went to the barbecue and gave you feedback on that.
	Oh, I don't recall. Sorry.
	What did you say? Well, we just had a conversation on one of the walks about it.
	And also we talked a little bit in the chat room about it, too.
	I gave you a little bit of feedback.
	I was mostly commenting on the metaphors used in it and some of the argumentation, the transitions from argument to argument and some other things like that, but nothing like formal or serious.
	It was more casual than usual.
	Right. And EA completely was, like, not in your orbit at all, right?
	Right. Right.
	For some reason, I just sort of, on EA, I just kind of, I don't know, I blanked out.
	Right. And, I mean, that's interesting, right?
	Because it's not like you're obligated to help me or give feedback on any of the books, but...
	I mean, having been involved in previous books to then have it vanished, right?
	And it's not just you, right?
	It was Jake and lots of other people even who were involved in the previous books with EA, which is – and it's not because EA is 12,000 pages.
	People say, oh my god, I don't have time to go.
	I mean, EA is one of the shortest books.
	In fact, I think it's even shorter than On Truth, right?
	So it's not – and it's easy to read.
	It's not terribly technical like UPB was and so on, right?
	So even people who'd given me a lot of feedback on previous books just kind of vanished, right?
	And again, that's totally fine.
	People can say, look, I just...
	I don't feel like doing this book, if that's okay.
	Sorry. I mean, whatever. Not that that's okay.
	But you know what I mean? It's like noticing the transition, if that makes sense.
	Right, right. No, I understand what you're saying.
	And my own anxiety was more around...
	I was more concerned with disapproval or rejection in the fact that I didn't want to give any than in the fact that I might have had some to give.
	Because if I had some to give, I knew you'd appreciate it.
	But not having given any, it was like, oh shit, I should be doing this, but I just don't have the...
	I don't have the desire to do it.
	Well, sure, but having just gone through RTR, what would be a reasonable thing for a friend to say to another friend who doesn't want to do something?
	Right, you're exactly right to say, for some reason I don't have any desire to do this.
	Right, right. Right.
	Right, that's exactly right.
	And again, this is not particular to you.
	I mean, there was nobody who gave me...
	Sorry, there were two people.
	Charlotte and Greg Minton gave me feedback before I had to read the audiobook, right?
	And that was after I'd posted the text, then I posted the audio, waited a week or two while I was finishing up the book, and then mentioned on a Sunday show, could you get me any changes in or any feedback for the...
	And it was just like nothing, right?
	And... Again, it's not that I certainly don't have an expectation that people, you know, drop everything, stare at the book until their eyes bleed or whatever.
	But even to say, you know, as a sort of friend to friend, right?
	And certainly for the longer term listeners, we are, you know, more than just, you know, voices on the internet.
	Friend to friend to say, you know, I just, I can't get my muster up.
	I'm too busy.
	I don't feel like I have the energy, whatever it is, right?
	But it's the silence, right?
	And the reason that I'm giving you this feedback, or everyone this feedback, is because the silence is really disconcerting to people, right?
	Disconcerting to people.
	What do you mean by that?
	It's certainly disconcerting to me, and we talked about it earlier with Ash, that if he didn't get feedback from his girlfriend who stopped calling him, that's more disconcerting than getting feedback, right?
	Right.
	Right, that's true.
	Thank you.
	Thank you.
	That is definitely true. Oh, so I see where you're getting the unconscious desire to make you feel anxious.
	It's something. Again, I don't have really good answers because it's harder for me when I'm involved, right?
	Because I've got my own feelings to sort out.
	So I can't be quite as certain about my instincts as far as that goes.
	But it's disconcerting, right?
	And we all kind of know that.
	Yeah. But this is a hard one for people to get through, right?
	And it was surprising to me in particular with PA, right?
	Because after EA, I was like, you know, well, I need feedback, blah, blah, blah.
	You know, I'd really like people's feedback.
	And if you can't give me feedback, at least tell me, you know, what's going on and blah, blah, blah, right?
	And it feels humiliating for me, right?
	Because – and I don't believe this is anybody's genuine or true intention.
	But – It's irritating and frustrating and humiliating for me because it's like, so after all of this, I'm not worth a few minutes of email, even to tell me that I can't, that the people don't want to whatever act.
	Right, and conversely, you have to keep going back to people and begging for some sort of feedback, right?
	Somebody please tell me something, right?
	Yeah, that's a test for echo, right?
	I mean, it is a very strange situation to be in, right?
	Right. So it's localized to just this particular book series, and it's localized to just...
	Oh, no. No, it's not these book series.
	I've gotten almost no feedback on the podcast recently either.
	Oh, really? Oh, I hadn't known that.
	Oh, sure. Absolutely. Yeah, no.
	Relative to the feedback that I've been getting on podcasts previous, it's been almost non-existent.
	I mean, entire massive – the two bits that I did on UPB and Objectivism, those were huge podcasts.
	And I received not one comment on those, either in my inbox or in the chat room or on – Wow, not even from the broader listenership then.
	Not from anybody. Wow.
	Wow. And that was a huge, huge thought, right?
	Yeah. Yeah, it was.
	And so it just means that our free flow of communication is not open, right?
	Right. So then we can't say that it's localized to the books or to specifically the broader – I mean the more active listenership.
	I think that's right.
	Or another example would be the conversation that we had about money issues.
	Right. I mean there are lots of people in FDR who have challenging relationships with money, right, just because we know they've posted even the things that I haven't heard privately of which I've heard some as well, right?
	Right. Right. That's absolutely right.
	So, not a comment about it.
	There's something that's interfering with the free flow of communication and it's reducing my desire to produce podcasts because it's sort of pointless, right?
	I mean, if I'm not getting feedback, then I am yelling down a well, right?
	Because I don't know if I'm doing the right thing or the wrong thing or what people are interested in or anything like that, right?
	Right. Something's making it a one-way street.
	Right. And if it's not the books...
	Well, no, it might be the books and it might have spilled over to the podcast.
	It might be the podcast that spilled over to the books.
	It might have nothing to do with them but to do with other things that were going on at the time, either on FDR. I guess it would have to have something to do with FDR. But all the stuff we talked about earlier, right?
	Like the fact that it is so much easier to send emails out.
	I'm going to put together the referral thing and the custom feeds and so on, right?
	Right, right, right, right.
	And also EA in particular is a very easy book to send around, right?
	Right. Oh yeah, as a pocketbook, I mean, sure.
	Well, even just as a, it's like three podcasts in terms of length.
	You know, it's got the beautiful music from Carl, it's, you know, it sounds really professional, and it's not about the family, it's not about relationships, and it's not about, it's not, you know, the explosive UPB technical ethics thing.
	I mean, it's a really easy and professional introduction to what it is that we're talking about, right?
	Yeah. Actually, yeah, that's true.
	It is by far the easiest thing to send around, and there's even a thing where all you have to do is drop an email in and away it goes, right?
	Yeah. So it could be that.
	But what do I know?
	Because I'm not getting any feedback.
	I'm just yelling at the moon, right?
	Well, I mean you've removed all the excuses, right?
	Well, it's costly.
	Well, it's lengthy. Well, it's bulky or I have nowhere to ship the books or – there are no more excuses.
	Or the content is going straight into the technicalities of a stateless society.
	I mean EA was written particularly as an introduction to an intelligent layperson about how anarchy could conceivably be of value, right?
	Right, right. I mean, it is the most introductory thing that we could conceivably have.
	I couldn't write anything that would be more of a gentle and generic and enjoyable introduction to...
	The very concept, right?
	And just making the case that anarchy is valuable in our life, but we're just kind of ambivalent about it.
	I mean, that's pretty sophisticated.
	It's intelligent. Again, it's professionally done.
	It's got nice music. It is by far the most gentle intro, right?
	It's more concise and more condensed even than untruth in terms of the content and the message.
	I mean, it's a lot easier to explain EA than it is to explain untruth in a lot of ways.
	Well, sure. But untruth puts people's faces right up against the family, right?
	Yeah, yeah, that's true.
	This doesn't do that. This just says, hey, we don't have a department of dating, and we'd hate that, right?
	So anarchy has some value, right?
	You would think so. Well, I mean, that's just the case, right?
	And so, I don't know.
	Again, I sort of get an image like...
	Like I drew a map to our secret hideout or something.
	I don't know if that makes sense, right?
	It's also by far the most successful book that we've put out, right?
	I mean, it's... That's an interesting point.
	Fuck, they're going to find us, right?
	All these people! Because you've mentioned this before about how things were a lot more active when the community was focused on introspection.
	What if, like what you said here, drawing a map to the secret hideout, right?
	Having a cloistered community where we're all facing inward.
	And this kind of goes back to something else you were saying earlier as well.
	The cloistered community where we're all facing inward and we're all kind of agreeing with each other.
	And we have these important ideas that actually do make sense and matter.
	It's... In a sense, I want to say that if you then throw the doors open, all the value evaporates, right?
	Sorry, all the value?
	What do you mean? Value in the sense of false value because while we're here and we have this valuable secret, we're valuable in our own minds.
	But as soon as you throw the doors open and everybody has it, then we're just like everybody else.
	You can't use that as a way of saying that I have value anymore.
	I don't think that's the case.
	Because if that false self vanity had been around over the past two years, I'd have noticed for sure.
	Yeah, that's true.
	And people wouldn't have been celebrating the expansion of the community, right?
	That's true also.
	And they wouldn't have donated for the sake of advertising and, right, I mean, I don't think, I don't, my gut is that that's not the case, but of course there's lots of people on the call who might want to chime in with that as well.
	Right, it was just a thought I had.
	Sure, yeah, yeah, yeah. So what else could it be?
	Well, it just seemed to me that the idea of...
	This question of self-worth...
	It clicked for some reason, but I can't explain it.
	I can't explain why. And it could just be me.
	But that seemed important.
	And the idea of...
	Like you were saying, drawing a map back to the secret hideout, the revealing of the secrets is...
	It seemed...
	It seemed important for some reason.
	And I was just trying to formulate some kind of an explanation for why that might be.
	Well, I mean, it could have something to do with this question of whether, like, is FDR a refuge or a charging station, so to speak, right?
	Is it a place, like, is it like a resort where you go to get away from the world?
	Or is it like a boot camp where you, you know, you suit up to and you practice to go and take on the world?
	Or is that even itself kind of a false dichotomy?
	Well, it would be a false dichotomy if it was a false dichotomy, and sorry for that tautology, but what I mean by that is that if this breakdown in communication had not occurred, then it would be a false dichotomy, but it may be some explanation as to why it has, and then it wouldn't be a false dichotomy, if that makes sense, if it does help to explain what happened.
	Well, what if FDR is both of those things?
	I mean, something we were talking about on the voice chat before was the idea that maybe the rest of us don't feel ready to take this to the world yet in the same way you do.
	So maybe we're still in that phase where we're building ourselves up and we don't have the confidence yet to be taking this to the world.
	And EA was kind of Got rid of all the possible excuses why we couldn't take this to the world.
	So that, you know, produced this feeling in us.
	Right, right. In which case, it's not yet a boot camp.
	It is a spa, right?
	And there's nothing wrong with a spa.
	I mean, spas are good, right?
	But there's two things that I think...
	The first thing that I would say about that is that then people could say, this book is making me feel anxious, right?
	But that's not what they said, right?
	What they said was a howling nothing, right?
	Or, I'm sorry, alternatively, I think that since EA went out, I think, or my gut tells me that it's not going unnoticed in other areas, right? Like in other libertarian circles and so on, right?
	Oh, really? Well, I mean, what, six, actually 60, almost 7,000 books have gone out, right?
	I mean, how many libertarians are there?
	I mean, not a huge amount, right?
	That's a good point, yeah.
	And, I mean, particularly the academia thing, which I had some real anxiety about beforehand, right?
	Right?
	I mean, it's...
	And the other thing too is that...
	Now, the thought vanished.
	I'm sure it will circle back when it needs to.
	So, yeah, I mean, if people feel that EA is sort of inviting a wider audience into this, then the interesting question then to me becomes...
	I think I know what people's relationship is to FDR, right?
	Which is, you know, that it's a wild and exciting and challenging and scary and dangerous and invigorating conversation to be in.
	But I guess my question is, how do people feel about their relationship with other people and FDR? Or rather, when outsiders come in, how do they feel about it?
	I guess it depends on who the outsider is.
	Go on. Sorry, go on.
	Well, just using the barbecue as an example, I mean, we had one new listener show up, and my initial feeling around that was some anxiety and some ambivalence.
	But... But that's not an outsider, right?
	I mean, somebody who drives eight hours to come to a philosophy conversation when she has social anxiety is not exactly an outsider.
	I mean, there's an unknown factor there for sure, but I don't mean that kind of outsider.
	I mean like the more mainstream academic political libertarians or something.
	Oh, oh, oh, oh.
	Well, actually, in that case, well, right.
	And see, I guess that's sort of...
	That sort of builds on my argument because after initially being introduced, it was like there was no – I mean it was completely comfortable.
	But the thought of bringing in, say, like a prominent libertarian into FDR, I mean just – the taste in my mouth is not too good at that thought.
	Okay, go on. Sorry, go ahead.
	I think you rephrased the question, but you asked two different questions at the same time, because you said, what's your relationship in terms of FDR with outsiders, and then how do you feel about outsiders coming into FDR? And in my mind, I had different responses to those questions because I feel quite comfortable when people come to FDR as new members because they're kind of declaring their interest and they're wanting to find things out.
	But in terms of just general outside people who kind of don't know anything about it, I have a completely different relationship with.
	That's a good point.
	Yeah, and it's that latter part that I'm talking about.
	And that's what I'm saying. I don't mean to turn the question around on you, but you wouldn't exactly be jumping out of your skin with excitement at the idea of trying to convince...
	Greg mentioned some names here, which I've deleted.
	...that they ought to be fans of FDR, right?
	No, I would view that as a horrible, scary, nasty, unpleasant task for sure.
	Right. And so that's what I'm saying.
	I mean, just from what I know of libertarians, I'm not at all excited about the prospect of bringing them into FDR. Well, but I'm not asking around bringing them into FDR. That's not sort of what it is that I'm talking about.
	Okay. Okay. There's, and we'll expand this, right?
	So there's the world, there's you, and there's FDR, right?
	I mean, to create three silly categories, right?
	But there's the world, there's you, and there's FDR, right?
	So if people come to FDR to escape the world, then they're going to feel free to converse.
	If they feel that the world is watching, they're not, right?
	Right. Oh, okay.
	I see what you're saying. So if EA is real popular, then that means that all these people are watching, and then all the people who were at FDR, because it was an oasis, a hideout, a respite, then they're going to be afraid to speak up the same way they were afraid to speak up in general public, because now FDR is part of the general public.
	Right. Or to be more psychologically precise, FDR got food.
	Yeah. So, the way that some people feel, right?
	I mean, the explicit freak out that people feel when family members show up in the chat room or show up in the board, right?
	I mean, that's a little bit of a chilling effect when it comes to spontaneous self-expression, to say the least, right?
	Right. Right.
	I think that this goes with something that you've been noticing recently, which is obviously the dearth of philosophical conversations in the chatroom.
	Of course, they've been going on outside of the chatroom, right?
	So if there's this thought like, yeah, outside people, not so much, can't really be free, can't really talk, be open, vulnerable around them, then the philosophical conversations kind of go underground.
	I think that's an excellent observation.
	Sorry, go on. I know that personally for myself, and this is scary to say, but I figured that I'll just put myself out there if the bus would go away.
	Personally, with some people who come on FDR, you know, especially new people who, and these are the words in my mind, kind of want to muscle in on my territory, or, you know, people where I'll be talking with certain people that I know, certain people that I have an affinity for, you know, in the chat room, and they'll be like, oh, let's have a Skype call.
	And then the noob says, oh, would you call me too?
	And I feel this weird resentment, like, who are you?
	I don't want to talk to you.
	I want to talk to my friends.
	I don't want to be on display.
	So I think certainly for me, though I don't know for other people, FDR has certainly been a refuge more than a training camp for going out and bringing it to the people, as it were.
	Right. And I mean, I certainly, when there's someone in the chat room that I don't know, and they give me a Skype ID, I am aware that that is a risk, for sure, right?
	But, of course, you can just kick them, right?
	If they turn out to be weird or whatever, right?
	We don't know who those people are.
	But, I mean, that's something that's been there from the beginning, if that makes sense.
	Yeah. Sorry, Charlotte.
	It doesn't mean that what you're feeling is not valid.
	I'm sure that it is.
	But it's got to be something else, right?
	If it's something that's relatively new.
	And the weird thing is, I mean, you know, what is it?
	80 days troll-free and counting, so to speak, right?
	I mean, we haven't had any particular problems.
	And, you know, we stood through the free will stuff.
	We stood through the determinism stuff.
	We stood through the prostitution stuff.
	We stood through the Ron Paul stuff.
	And this drop-off in communication, this shallowing out of the conversation, this refooing, in a sense, didn't occur, right?
	Right, you're right. And I know that for me, these feelings of resentment, you know, they haven't been, it's not new, and they haven't been increasing over time.
	They've actually been decreasing.
	So that's, you're right that that's probably not the root or what's going on lately.
	Right. So, I mean, that is the challenge.
	I mean, what is happening?
	And the problem is that we can't really isolate any one particular thing to it, like active listeners versus inactive listeners, books versus podcasts, certain books versus other books.
	There's no...
	There's no constant you can hang your hat on.
	Everything's a variable. Right.
	But we have always and only forever been five minutes away from the answer, which is whatever it is down there that you have to dig deep to get a hold of, right?
	Because when our behavior changes, it is for a particular reason, right?
	And we know what that reason is, and there has to be that reason, otherwise our behavior wouldn't have changed, right?
	So... So I don't know what it is because I'm working to regrow the communication, but the people who have felt that that communication has, who have been avoiding that communication, you all have the answer, but I don't have the answer, right? And there's just no way to get, I mean, we can't work it out empirically because this is a core belief issue, right?
	This is a core issue which has eclipsed.
	So, I mean, we will forever remain into the dark until somebody digs deep and dredges it up, right?
	What is that? What do you think that core belief is?
	I don't know. Sorry.
	When I say the core belief, I mean there's a core reason why this has occurred now rather than six months ago or six months from now, whatever, right?
	And it is progress, right?
	I mean if we weren't going into new ground, we wouldn't be hitting new resistance, right?
	I mean that is just the natural when you – as an athlete, right?
	You plateau and you keep working.
	You hit a new – no matter if you're an Olympic athlete, you hit a new barrier, right?
	So this is all – Useful and helpful stuff, but it is something that is in, because it's common, right, to just about everyone, it is something that can only be dredged up through introspection because we can't find an empirical thing that's going to answer the question, right? Can I ask you a question, Steph?
	But yes. Something just popped up in my mind, and it might be totally and completely unrelated, but it's interesting that it should have popped up now.
	Why did you choose now to start talking about doing things like, you know, the boot camp or whatever?
	And why is it now that there's been...
	I know that there's always been an emphasis on taking the message out, right?
	But why has there been such an emphasis lately?
	On doing so.
	Was there something that you noticed or something that changed?
	Because I noticed that, you know, around the time that you started talking about the boot camp and stuff like that and the hard sell, as it were, kind of came out to start, you know, taking the message to the people or whatever.
	I don't know. There seems to be like a correlation, at least in time, if not in reason.
	Yeah, I mean the basic reason – it's an excellent question.
	I'm sure it's not unrelated. But the basic reason for me, Charlotte, was I just think that we've – I think that you all have gotten about as far as you can get in terms of happiness without helping others.
	Yeah, absolutely.
	So I mean I just want to give that gift of the greatest joy that you can have is devotion to the truth and through that devotion to the welfare of the planet, right?
	I mean and – I just sort of felt that the pettiness, which we all have, I have, and everybody, the only antidote to that is, you know, a grander goal and a bigger vision and so on.
	And of course, there's such an enormous amount of talent and charisma in the community that, I mean, this is...
	It's just the next thing. And it's for the happiness of the people involved, right?
	The biggest payoff in terms of FDR is still to come for people, right?
	Which is when you get the joy of surmounting your own little fears and devoting yourself to helping the world.
	That is the greatest joy.
	It is not just my makeup story.
	This is empirically, scientifically proven fact that generosity and devotion to the welfare of others It makes you happy.
	I think we're good to go.
	I mean, there is a selfishness in victimhood, right?
	And I've experienced it and I still do from time to time.
	But when we have been victimized, and a lot of people in this conversation have been, even more than the average.
	But there is a selfishness in it, right?
	Which is why we don't want to give back because the world didn't help us and we were exploited and nobody cared.
	So what that gives us is an excuse to be selfish.
	But I think that when you have a lot of gifts, as this community is just incredibly full of talented, brilliant, verbally acute people, the way to defeat your past is to live like you were never hurt, right?
	The way to bring down history for ourselves is not to guard or even reject the habits that were inflicted upon us as a survival mechanism, but the way out of history is to live like you never were abused. but the way out of history is to live like I mean, isn't that the end of abuse, right, is to not be subject to it, to not react to it, to not engage with it, but just to live like you were never hurt.
	That to me is the real – and you can't do that until you can generate within yourself the benevolence for a world that didn't particularly help and quite often tended to hurt and denigrate us.
	But to me, it is just...
	I did not...
	This is some years ago.
	I just said to myself, I want to live like I've never been hurt.
	I want to live like...
	Nobody ever hit me. Like, nobody ever yelled at me.
	Like, the world never betrayed me.
	Like, teachers never ignored me.
	Like, I want to live like none of that ever happened.
	And there's a certain amount of magical thinking in that, right?
	Because I don't know who I would be if that had never happened to me.
	But since I'm very happy with who I am, I'm not going to complain overly much.
	And getting to that place where we're not bouncing off the past or rebelling against the past or submitting to the past or avoiding the past or, you know, stepping around landmines or triggers from the past or whatever, right?
	Where we're hoarding ourselves to ourselves because when we expanded or spread out before, we were lopped down and cut off.
	But to just live as if we'd never been hurt, that to me is the final overcoming and the final triumph over the evils of the past and the corruptions and destructions of the past.
	And, I mean, this is a bit of a leap forward in terms of the conversation, but that is the real challenge, right?
	And so when...
	And not to pick on anyone in particular, and this is not even a negative comment in particular, but when Ash says, well, I didn't really feel that I had anything of value to add, and it's just like, I mean, I see a four-year-old kid who's not being listened to and who's being put down for his opinions,
	right? And it's like, if that environment continues to inform your decisions, in fact, to make your decisions for you, Then we're never free of the past.
	And the bad people win, right?
	Because the bad people then cut you off from honest and clear communication in the present and in the future, right?
	We never get out of that tomb if that is how our decisions are run, if that makes sense.
	So, for me, and I think that was a great question to ask in terms of firing off another booster rocket in terms of FDR, but...
	The little fears and the, oh, I don't want to impose on people and, oh, I just send out emails and, oh, well, Steph isn't going to be interested in my little opinions and, oh, Steph gets so many emails and blah.
	That's all little, broken, abused thinking.
	And when we make our decisions based on that, we're still at home.
	We might as well have not got out of our goddamn diapers, right?
	We're still at home. We're still under the sway and the power of bad people who hurt us.
	Absolutely. Sorry, let me just finish.
	It's just the way you say, okay, that should happen.
	Man, it was bad and yes, it left me with inhibitions and fears and oh, I don't know if I'm valuable or not and insecurities and this and that.
	And you say, well, those are scar tissues, right?
	And those are things that I need to deal with but I'm not going to deal with them by letting them make decisions for me.
	But I'm going to make my decisions based on a commitment to whatever it is that I'm choosing in my life to dedicate myself to.
	And then when those things come up, I will work through them, but they don't make my decisions for me because I'm not having my parents make my decisions for me for the rest of my natural goddamn life.
	Okay, that's it. End of rant.
	Go ahead, Greg.
	Oh, no, if you wanted to finish up, go ahead.
	Well, I just wanted to say, and sorry for getting really impatient during your rant, but that brought up like 65,000 things for me, right?
	I mean, because if the people who most commonly participate are all sort of on the cusp of making that realization and that cusp of taking it to the next level and living in that manner, Well, you always say that people sort of regress just before they're ready to take the next step, right? So obviously a couple of us have made, I know, pot kettle situation have gone off the rails recently, right?
	But if we, and I don't mean this to sound pretentious, but if the people who participate the most and drive the conversation forward the most are, you know, as a body, Kind of there.
	Wouldn't we all sort of regress a little bit in terms of, you know, being or putting ourselves out there and being open and honest and vulnerable and keeping on task or whatever and sort of pull the rest of the community with us just a little bit?
	That's at least what popped up for me.
	You mean that the plenary council of FDR would regress to some degree and pull the community down as a result?
	Is that what you mean? Yeah.
	I don't want to sound pretentious, but that's...
	Yeah. Well, of course.
	Look, and I keep reminding people that the people who've been around for a long time and who have respect within the community are looked to as the future.
	So if someone has been around for 18 months and is in the chat – and this is not about anybody in particular or anyone on this call, but this is just a purely theoretical example.
	So someone has been around for 18 months and they're in the chat room and they are – I don't know.
	Being nutty or shallow or distracting or compulsive or jokey or whatever, right?
	Then all that happens is newbies come in and say, oh, okay, so that's what it looks like after 18 months, right?
	And they make their decisions based on how it looks to say, okay, well, so I can go through 18 months of this.
	I can make defu. If I have to, I can confront all my personal relationships.
	I can try to live with integrity.
	And what I end up with is neurotic and compulsive jokiness and empty conversations, right?
	And that's a terrible thing for sure.
	But if it's a fact that people regress right before a huge breakthrough, then it's a terrible thing that's to be expected.
	Oh yeah, absolutely.
	Absolutely. But my question is, what work are people doing...
	To break the regression.
	Because you'll just... I mean, people just fall back into the past forever.
	I mean, you've got to work.
	I mean, it's not like puberty, right?
	It's not like you just got to wake up and notice the knobbly bits all changing, right?
	I mean, it's something that you have to work at.
	It's not an automatic process.
	Okay, agreed. And that actually is an interesting segue into the comment I had a little bit earlier, which is...
	I totally agree with you about...
	The fact that...
	That we've sort of reached the capacity of happiness as individuals and that to go any further, we need to sort of take this out into the world.
	But that phrase is a convenient way of saying, I don't know what to do to take this out.
	And that is just a convenient way of saying, I don't want to find out.
	So the question is, how do you find out?
	Here we had a slight technical interruption, but we continue just now.
	Sorry, yeah, Greg, so I remember your question.
	Can you hear me okay? Yeah, yeah, I sound good now.
	So part of the problem is that you want to leap over the emotional challenge to the practical solution, right?
	I'm willing to work with that.
	Okay, good. Thank you.
	So, for instance, not to nitpick, but just one that pops in my mind, so with EA, you just sort of stopped having any interest in working on the books, but you didn't tell me that you were decided not to or whatever, right?
	That's true. And again, this is not a criticism.
	This is just a pointing out, right?
	But in terms of how do I move to change the world, well, I have a commitment to honesty in my relationships, right?
	That's true. And if you have a commitment to honesty in your relationships, and I'm not saying that you don't, right?
	But if it becomes just a...
	It's not optional.
	Do you know what I mean? I mean, that's discipline, right?
	And the discipline is for happiness.
	It's not for discipline's sake, right?
	But if you have that commitment which says, I am going to be honest in my personal relationships, and I'm not going to evade, and I'm not going to give myself the excuse of not, and I'm not going to give myself the stories that, you know, some people are saying, like Ash was saying earlier, well, you know, I don't have anything to contribute and blah, blah, blah, right?
	If we have that basic approach, which is, I'm just going to be honest in my personal relationships, and I'm going to be as honest as I can be, and if I can't be honest, I'm going to be honest enough to say, I can't be honest, right?
	Oh, that's an interesting point.
	Okay, yeah. Which is the same thing as saying, if Steph asks me for feedback and I feel that it would be fair and just to give Steph feedback after the stuff that he's put out, right?
	Right, right. Then I'm going to give Steph feedback, and if I can't give Steph feedback, I'm going to tell Steph I can't give him feedback.
	That's what I mean by commitment to honesty, right?
	Right. But it's sort of a...
	Agreed.
	But it's sort of a...
	It's an impossible situation, though, because if my commitment is to honesty in all circumstances within my personal relationships, and my commitment is also to provide you feedback where I have and my commitment is also to provide you feedback where I have decided that to not provide you feedback is unfair and Thank you.
	Then to be honest and say, I'm not going to provide you feedback is the same thing as saying, I'm unfair and unjust.
	Right. See how hard it is to avoid being bad when you're honest?
	Sorry, see how hard it is to avoid being good when you're being honest, right?
	This is why I say honesty is the first virtue, right?
	Right. And so I'm going to spend 10 minutes giving you feedback.
	And if you say, well, I'm going to call Steph up and say, well, I'm not going to give him feedback because I feel too anxious about it, that would be pretty hard to do, right?
	Wait, if I actually said that to myself?
	Well, if you said, I'm now going to call Steph and tell him that, yes, it is fair and just to give him feedback when he asks for it because, you know, he's given a lot.
	But I'm not going to do it because I just don't feel like it, right?
	Right. Or whatever, right?
	I don't feel like I have anything to offer, this and that, right?
	That would be a hard call to make, right?
	Yeah, that would be. So this is why honesty is the first virtue, because...
	And maybe that's why the calls aren't being made.
	Well, because people are giving themselves an out.
	Call slime, right?
	I'll just avoid it, right?
	Right. Right, that's, yeah.
	Yeah, fog. Yeah, what if we don't have that, right?
	What if the way out of our past is to not self-fog, to not fog, to not evade?
	To be honest, even about our desire to be dishonest, which we all have that desire, right?
	Yeah, yeah, that's true.
	That's true. That's absolutely right.
	So, that's why honesty is always the first virtue, and if you can achieve the honesty commitment, not you personally, but if one can achieve the honesty commitment, it's really hard to get anything else wrong, right?
	Well, right, right.
	I agree with you there. It's hard to get anything else wrong.
	If... If you're actually committed to honesty.
	I mean, actually in the sense that you actually act on it.
	Right, and this of course...
	Sorry, go ahead. But that doesn't necessarily translate automatically into clarity about next steps.
	Well, but forget the steps, right?
	You're saying, well, which dance steps should I take?
	I'm saying find your feet, right?
	Right. I have an idea here, Greg.
	This is Carl here. I mean, I've just been thinking about this, and I mean, what I'm working on this summer partly is just trying to...
	I mean, what I think is each one of us needs to work on our personal life in such a way as to be effective, enthusiastic, and brave communicators, you know, the way...
	Steph is, and some of us can be at times, I'm sure.
	And yeah, so setting up ourselves, of course, with this honesty and making sure that we do that all the time.
	And I'm just trying to kind of set up that general mentality for myself and make sure that my relationships are that way.
	And of course, I've got some work to do.
	And that kind of comes along at the same time as we're getting...
	Steph, when did you open up the chat to guests again?
	Was that after RTR or was that at Everyday Anarchy?
	It was after RTR. Right.
	I was just thinking of the things, you know, that was one thing that probably made people a bit shyer, was having a lot of guests coming back in.
	And then Everyday Anarchy came out with all this information that was easy to communicate to people.
	And more guests came in, right?
	And more guests came in.
	And the free books were at the same time.
	And so there's more outsiders and more chatter probably in the libertarian community.
	So I think a lot of things happened.
	I don't know what the steps are.
	I have no idea. I want to make a bigger contribution to this conversation as time goes on, but right now I'm just working on the very general sense of getting my personal life and my personal relationships in a way that I get in the habit of just being an enthusiastic and effective communicator.
	Well, and I appreciate that.
	Let me just jump in before Greg says that doesn't point me anywhere but towards more fog.
	And just to say that you don't know what comes out in your life, what shows up in your life when you make that kind of commitment, right?
	To honesty. For instance, I mean...
	I would not have guessed that when I made this commitment to honesty, which is really the basis of my relationship with Christina and through that my relationship with everyone here, If I hadn't made that – God, please.
	I mean I make mistakes.
	I fog. I write. Carl had this legitimate complaints about the fade out in the music and I was like, oh, I really don't want to open up that audio book again.
	But I was like, nope. I'm going to do it and I emailed you yesterday I think to say that I would do it – or today to say that I would do it on Monday because it's a reasonable request.
	You put a lot of work into making this music beautiful and – I want to give it its proper volume.
	So, it's not like I'm always perfect at it or anything like that, but that's where I try to get back to, right, when I go off course.
	So, if I... If I hadn't made that commitment to honesty, then FDR would be like nowhere, right?
	I mean, it would be a couple of podcasts about a stateless society, and then it probably would have gone off the rails, right?
	Or something like that. But because I'm always trying to get back to, and you hear me a million times in these listener conversations, right?
	I mean, remember the one with...
	It's like, man, I don't want to ask these questions.
	I don't want to, you know, and I've had other more private conversations with people where you have to talk about stuff that's really tough.
	And, you know, but it's like, that's the commitment, right?
	I mean, just, if I hadn't...
	Made that commitment, then there would be no FDR, and they wouldn't have found out that the next thing in my life was to talk about this in this weird kind of way, right?
	This format. Just weird, because it's new.
	It's actually a lot better than the radio or anything that came before.
	So, you don't know what comes out of your commitment to real honesty, right?
	Maybe, Greg, just to give you an example, right?
	Maybe – and I don't mean to say that people don't have a commitment to honesty here.
	I just – I don't mean to say that at all.
	But you all have a big backdoor, right?
	Which is like, well, I still have fog land, right?
	That's still my backup position if I don't feel comfortable, right?
	And all that does is deny you self-knowledge and it denies you growth.
	Because it's not about, oh, my commitment to Steph.
	Oh, give him feedback. I owe him a drudge myself to do it.
	It's nothing like that. It's just that when we get ourselves into fogland, we just deny ourselves self-knowledge, which is why are we fogging?
	And we fall back into the past.
	We reassert the dominance of people who had control over us and misused that control in the past.
	And we deny ourselves growth.
	That's all we're doing when we fog.
	We don't win because it's completely obvious to everyone else when you're fogging, just as it's obvious to people when I'm fogging and so on.
	So we don't win.
	We don't move anything forward.
	It's all completely obvious.
	We discredit ourselves.
	We deny ourselves self-knowledge.
	We deny ourselves growth.
	It's not a very sensible decision.
	So let's say, Greg, that this woman that you're dating, we'll call her Susan.
	So, let's say that you make this commitment to yourself to be honest because you don't want to deny yourself that kind of opportunity for growth and for rich and deep emotions, right?
	I mean, when we're really honest with people and vulnerable and open, we really feel very strongly.
	Life has a great deal of power at that level.
	Then you have this – she then sees in you.
	It's like, wow, this guy can really express himself honestly.
	He's really committed to this.
	I'm going to give him a job as a writer.
	We don't know what happens in our life when we are just unusually honest with people.
	And that doesn't mean wear your heart on your sleeve and we don't have to go to extremes like that.
	But just have that commitment as your bedrock where it is deserved.
	And you simply have no idea – Maybe she doesn't have a job for you.
	Maybe there's somebody else who's looking for a proofreader.
	I mean, let's just take a silly example if you – because you're interested in writing, right?
	But let's say Susan says, I don't have a job for you.
	I don't know. I work at Women's Press Year Monthly or whatever.
	So I don't know. She doesn't have a job for you except – but she knows and it's like, oh, well, this guy Greg, he's really honest in his feedback and he says the tough things that need to be said and so on.
	I think he would be perfect for this other position.
	Yeah, he doesn't know anything about the field, but man, he's got that upfront communication thing down really well.
	We don't know what our life looks like after we make that commitment to honesty, what personal barriers we will have overcome that have been holding us back, what depth of self-knowledge we can achieve, what kinds of assertiveness we can achieve, what kind of effect we're going to have on the people in our lives and how they're going to view us in a new light.
	We... So the commitment is to honesty.
	What comes out of that, I don't think can be seen ahead of time, if that makes sense.
	Yeah, and that allows one to be more spontaneous and just to jump.
	You see an opportunity, you don't sit there and think about it and do it tomorrow or next week.
	You just, you know, you can speak immediately or, you know, and either be fearless or you just get in the habit of acting past your fear or past your anxiety.
	Yeah, if you feel like you don't want to call someone...
	Call them up and say, I don't want to call you.
	Seriously, it's that silly and that powerful.
	I agree. I definitely agree with that.
	And I think that's what people are telling me, right?
	By not responding, right?
	By not responding, is they're saying, I'm not quite there with the honesty thing, right?
	And I need it to be noticed, right?
	Right, just empirically.
	I mean, I don't think it's unfair to say that I must not have a commitment to honesty if this is where I'm at.
	Well, you do have a commitment to honesty, but you're ambivalent about it, right?
	Right. Yeah, I guess that would be a better way to put it.
	I mean, somebody said to you, okay, so you ditched your family, you ditched your God, you ditched the country, you ditched whatever, right?
	Obviously, you'd say, it's because I have a commitment to honesty, right?
	Right. To truth, let's say, right?
	To truth and honesty. Honesty is just truth in action, right?
	Yeah, fundamentally it's to truth.
	Right. Because truth equals virtue equals happiness.
	Right, right. But there's no truth without honesty, right?
	Honesty is the catalyst for truth.
	Wait, wait, wait, wait.
	I'm not sure I follow?
	Well... If people had written to me and said, I really don't want to write to you, right?
	Right. That would have been a very honest statement, right?
	And they would have discovered a truth, right?
	But wait a minute. Isn't it something of a contradiction to do that, though?
	I mean, I'm sending you an email saying I don't want to send you an email.
	Yeah, that's called honesty.
	But seriously, that is what honesty means, right?
	Ash, are you still on? I am.
	Right. So Ash earlier gave me a bunch of fabulous tales about why he hadn't given me any feedback, right?
	Yes, true. So, Ash, if you had written an email with this kind of dedication to honesty, you would have realized that those were not true, right?
	Right. That's what I mean when I say you can't get to the truth without being honest.
	Because if you fog...
	Or you say, well, I have an answer, right?
	Oh, you know, he's busy.
	Or God made the world, or whatever, right?
	The government will fix it.
	It's a pseudo answer.
	And without real commitment to honesty, you don't get to the truth about yourself or about what's going on.
	Right, because honesty in that instance is not the...
	I mean, that's not the truth, because a contradiction can never be the truth.
	Well, sure, but he doesn't get the contradiction unless he has the commitment to honesty, right?
	And again, Ash, I'm not saying you don't have a commitment to honesty or whatever.
	We're just talking about it in a different context, right?
	Sure, I understand. Right, so you open up the email app, you start an email, and you type in, I don't want to send you an email.
	Then all your feelings will start to come up, right?
	I'll give you an example, Greg, because Steph mentioned the email I sent him.
	So I sent him an email a number of days ago about the audio, and I kind of wondered, well, did he get it, or should I bug him again?
	Well, I don't want to bug him. He's busy, or maybe he'll get angry.
	I could have just sent him another email and said, look, I'm feeling anxious about sending you an email about bugging you about the audio.
	Yeah. Right, and that's a perfect example of me fogging with Carl, right?
	I mean, I do it too, right?
	So, again, there's no pedestal here, right?
	Because for two days, Carl didn't get an email back from me.
	Why? Because I didn't want to spend the two hours to open up.
	Re-edit the audio file, save them, compile them, upload them, name them, blah, blah, blah, right?
	Although, I think Carl's entirely right that it would be better if I did that.
	I just didn't want to, and I didn't want to tell him that I didn't want to, right?
	So, I had to, you know, so that's why I wrote to him.
	I thought, oh, I'm sliming him, so I'm going to write to him and say, sorry, I'll do it.
	I'll do it on Monday, right? And it didn't occur to me to...
	It's just a learning experience.
	It's like I was trying to decide whether to send them another email or not, but it didn't occur to me to send them an email saying, I'm feeling anxious about this.
	I should know that for RTR, but I mean, I just didn't...
	It's interesting to look back now and think, oh yeah, I could have just done that.
	Right, right. And because I so much appreciated what you've done in terms of the music and how great it may sound and all that, I wanted to do right by the music, right?
	But we all know that from RTR, right?
	That if you were feeling frustrated and anxious and so on, and I should have, of course, written to you and said, I need two days of not looking at Audacity for the first time in weeks, so I will do it in two days.
	I mean, I should have done that right away.
	I'm really sorry because that was not right.
	I kind of assumed that, but yeah, yeah.
	But yeah, I should have told you, right?
	Because what that left you with was a state of, I don't know, right?
	Did he get the email? Did he miss it?
	It puts an additional burden on you, right?
	So that's not the way to repay your generosity in recording and giving me the music.
	So that's why I do apologize for that.
	That was definitely not my finest moment of proactivity.
	No, but in the future I'll certainly feel much freer to just, you know, communicate.
	And this is a good lesson for me to, you know, just send you another message with my thoughts and feelings as, you know, what's going on for me, you know.
	Absolutely. Yeah. No, for sure.
	And that's something that we all know from RTR, but we still have – and this is probably just something I should have put in RTR, but the Lord knows the book was long enough.
	But it's just – we don't give ourselves a backdoor, right?
	Yeah. I mean we don't do that in terms of ethics, right?
	We don't do that in terms of God, right?
	I mean we hate that – at least I hate that backdoor of like, well, maybe in some other universe there is a God, right?
	Right, right, right.
	And I hate that backdoor where people say, well, yes, the initiation of the use of force is wrong, but we need a government.
	Right. It's a null zone, right?
	We just create this null zone where anything can happen, right?
	You can't say for sure that psychic ability could never exist, right?
	Or that thing where we say, as turtles all the way down, everything that exists has to be created.
	Oh, but there's an exception. God can just exist without having to be created and therefore is not subject to...
	There's a back door, right?
	Right. Right, right.
	That's true. So why would we have a back door in being honest?
	Right. Right.
	One thing that I thought of as you were speaking is, I mean, your first commitment to honesty, I mean, Greg or Ash are doing the edits or commentary on PA, right?
	I mean, your first commitment is not to honesty with Steph, right?
	I mean, your first commitment is the honesty to sit down to yourself and say, I'm really feeling anxious.
	I don't feel that I have anything to offer.
	Sitting down and figuring out You know, the truth that, or the quote-unquote truth that you're working with, right?
	And then, you know, tell Steph whatever.
	But one of the things that I tend to notice is that people who fog, they fog themselves first and most of all.
	So if you have a commitment to truth, it's fundamentally, I think, a commitment to truth with yourself and then with others.
	Yeah, absolutely. The first RTR is always with yourself.
	And when you work through that with yourself, you actually can be a lot tidier in your communication with other people, right?
	Right. I mean, you know, you can't be open and honest with somebody if you're foggy with yourself.
	You know, no matter how hard you try to say, I'm trying to be open and honest here, you know, I'm trying not to obfuscate.
	If you're foggy in your head, it's going to be foggy when it comes out.
	Right. And, you know, you can be all kinds of foggy and still be honest, right?
	Right. Because you say what?
	You say, look, I'm feeling really confused and weird and foggy here.
	Right. Yeah. And this is why, right, I mean, because I tell you what, you know, what doesn't work for me, right, and this would be to take Ash as the guinea pig again.
	If Ash had written to me, like, if I had said, I'd like feedback on my book, and Ash had written me 12 pages of what he thought and felt about why he wasn't giving me feedback and asked me for feedback on that, I would have been annoyed, right?
	Right. Right.
	I mean, he's asking for something that he's not giving, surely.
	Well, yeah. I mean, I'm asking for feedback, and then he's saying, not only am I not going to give you feedback, but I'm now asking for you to wade through a big, long missive of mine, right?
	And he's saying it's...
	The amount of energy it would have taken me to write up a 12-page dissertation on...
	PA, I spent on this instead.
	Right.
	And so with Carl, right, I could have sat there and said, well, I feel a little bit of irritation because I thought I messed around with the sound for quite a while and I couldn't get it right.
	So I just went with what was best.
	But I kind of know that you're right and I don't want to do it again and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right?
	I could have written all of that.
	But of course, I just ran through all of that in my head and said, OK, well, if this thing is going to be around for a thousand years, what's an hour or two to make the audio better?
	better given especially how wonderful carl's playing is and his generosity in doing this for me and so on um so i didn't have to write him that email because i sort of rtr'd with myself and worked to the conclusion and said i will do it monday because you're right right i mean it needs to be a better right
	so the the um the commitment to honesty in your communication with people kind of forces you to to distill what is going on for you and get used to exploring uh what it is that you're thinking and feeling and coming to conclusion It helps you to trust your instincts because you realize that you're right so often and so on.
	So it really is an amazing gift to give yourself to just have that commitment.
	And as I said, it completely...
	It doesn't break the past.
	It just walks out of the cell, right?
	It's like the past...
	Well, it's not abusive, right?
	Because I don't want to live like that.
	Wait, what? Well, if you can be honest, I mean, wasn't honesty the opposite of our histories?
	In school and in our families and in our churches?
	Sure, sure, absolutely.
	So if you make a commitment to honesty, you're not even rattling the cage cell anymore.
	You just walk out.
	It doesn't mean that it's never going to be scary.
	It is, right?
	But the commitment is to live like you weren't hurt, right?
	Sorry? Right, but what caught me off guard is you said the past wasn't abusive?
	Yeah, you live like the past wasn't abusive, right?
	As if. So you tell yourself a lie.
	No, but it's not. If you have somebody hurt your leg when you were a kid, and you can walk around the rest of your life with a cane, right?
	Well, you could.
	You could, right? Or you could say, I am going to envision a future where my leg is as if it was never hurt, right?
	Or you could go into physical therapy and...
	No, no, no. Let me finish my metaphor, right?
	So if you say, I envision a future where it's like my leg was never hurt, right?
	Okay. Well, of course that means you go into physiotherapy, but it's with the goal of walking as if your leg was never hurt.
	Okay, but you don't just...
	Please don't insult me with that next sentence.
	Please. Not after all my podcasts, right?
	Right. Well, you were kind of freaking me out with what you were saying there because...
	But it's important that I'm freaking you out because I'm not saying...
	Look, I've always been honest about my history and my past, right?
	Right.
	But I don't think that many people, if they heard the average Sunday show, would say, oh, yeah, this is a kid who was, you know, beaten and abandoned and thrown into boarding school and and terrified.
	And, you know, his mother was institutionalized and he had to start on his own at the age of 15.
	And like people wouldn't say that about me.
	Right.
	Not based on my general interactions with people if they knew nothing about my history.
	Right.
	Right.
	They would assume other things.
	Yeah. They would say, you know, okay, this seems like a pretty confident and pretty forward and pretty open and pretty honest person who seems to be willing to be able to confront people in a way that's positive.
	They wouldn't assume that I'd had the past that I had, right?
	Right, because... Exposure to people like that who've had pasts like that has conditioned them to think otherwise.
	Right. So the purpose of any kind of rehabilitation is to be like you were never sick, right?
	As close to that as possible, sure.
	Well, if you aim for that, you will get as close to that as possible, right?
	Right. There's no way to get any closer than to aim for that, right?
	Right. Or above it.
	Sure. I mean, we could absolutely aim to be healthier than if you certainly can.
	If you've broken a leg, you can end up far healthier than if you'd never broken a leg, right?
	The rehab gets you a taste for exercise and blah, blah, blah, right?
	Right. So, that's my, you know, when you aim for honesty, I mean, obviously, sorry, not obviously, when we aim for honesty, not only are we breaking the habits of our past, we're breaking the average of the culture as a whole, right?
	If we assume that our pasts were more tragic on average than the majority's, which may or may not be the case, but even if we assume...
	That it is the case.
	When we aim for real honesty, a commitment to real honesty in our relationships and we get rid of the back door of fogging and evasion and so on, then not only are we aiming to live like we were never hurt, but we're aiming far beyond the average of the culture as a whole.
	Yeah, that's true.
	And surely we would want that as an ideal that our...
	Abuse. The abuse that we suffered could be turned around and become a sort of glowing cathedral of health for the culture as a whole.
	Yep, yep. And wouldn't it be great to live like we were never hurt?
	It sure would be.
	So that's... Yeah, I mean, of course, I don't hide my past.
	If people ask, it's there, right?
	But... Well, it's in all the podcasts, too.
	Yeah, it's in the podcasts. I've been open about it.
	I don't bring it up when it's not appropriate, and I'll certainly answer the questions if people ask.
	But for me, I like to think that I live like I haven't been hurt.
	Like I didn't have the bad luck to be born into the family I was born into.
	Well, would it be more reasonable to say that you live the way you do in spite of, or regardless of, not as though you haven't?
	Because, I mean, you just have, right?
	I mean... Well, yeah, but that wasn't, I mean, that was just a bad, that's just bad luck, bad accident, right?
	That certainly doesn't, obviously, I don't want that to define who I am and the choices that I make in this life.
	And of course, yeah, I'm not saying that I haven't been hurt.
	Of course I have, right? But I want that to go into the past, right?
	I want that to be like, yes, and I was once four feet tall, too.
	So what? Right.
	It's true, but it's not relevant to who I am now.
	And we're no longer being directly threatened by the people who abused us in the past.
	I'm not even being indirectly threatened by them.
	I see you as blowback from abuse, actually, Steph.
	I'm sorry, say again?
	I see you as blowback from abuse.
	So, you know, you've turned it around and learned from the experience and shared your learning, you know.
	I don't know if it makes sense.
	No, you know, I think I would see it a little differently, Carl.
	Based on the recommendations of somebody on the board, Christina and I watched a show called Intervention Tonight.
	And I don't want to get into any of the details, but in that show, there are lots of ex-addicts who become intervention counselors.
	You know, it's like I was addicted to drugs or alcohol for 20 years.
	I quit. And now I've become part of the self-help movement, right?
	Right. So they manage interventions for the addicts in the present and they have learned these skills because they were addicts in the past, if that makes sense.
	Right. That to me is blowback from abuse.
	That to me is not being free of addiction.
	Right. I'm not saying that they shouldn't do it or whatever.
	I don't know, right? I guess I was thinking that after the abuse you suffered, that people who are abusers now are facing this knowledge that's getting disseminated to people who will come back and have conversations and defoo and whatnot, whatever they have to do to fix their lives.
	Well, but if you're trying to get other people out of prison, you don't really care that much about the prison guards, right?
	Other than you want to avoid them, right?
	Right, right, yeah.
	Now, if you break out of prison and then you want to go strangle the prison guard, that to me is not actually breaking out of prison, right?
	Oh, right. I see why the blowback thing doesn't work, right.
	Okay, yeah. I mean, I'm not interested in taking vengeance upon – I'm not interested in getting involved in interventions that are supposed to keep families together.
	I'm not interested in helping people attack their parents.
	I don't talk to abusers and try to change them.
	You know, I just – I want to be out of prison and I want to help other people to get out of prison.
	I don't want us to hunt down guards.
	I mean, that to me is taking – Unless you're enslaved by that, right?
	Yeah, then I'm enslaved by having to hunt down them.
	It's not out of prison, right? Right.
	To me, being out of prison is like living like you never were in prison.
	That's the only way to really get out of prison.
	Right. And Greg's thing is like, well, but you were in prison.
	It's like, sure, absolutely.
	Right? And that's why I'm saying it's important to live like you've never been in prison.
	If I'd never been in prison, I wouldn't say that.
	I think if you get in the habit of speaking and acting past whatever the anxieties and fears are or were, that one, you know, that you can essentially...
	It's kind of an exercise and you get yourself out of it eventually.
	Sorry, is that the last part again?
	I'm sorry, if you speak and act through whatever anxieties and fears as if you never had them in a sense.
	Knowing they're there, not pretending they're not there, but just...
	Right. Right.
	I mean, if I say, okay, I want to walk like I never had my leg broken, but then half the day I'm using a cane, that's never going to happen, right?
	Yeah, and if you walk and you stand up straight and you have an erect posture, you might actually feel more comfortable.
	Better. You will for sure.
	Now, that doesn't mean that you throw away the cane and go stumbling off into the sunset, right?
	But what it means is that you have the cane and you do your physio and you do your work with the goal of throwing the cane away, right?
	But if the cane obviously is the fogging or the backdoor or the Swiss speak, right, in this conversation, and people are still leaning on that cane a lot, right?
	Right. I have a question for Carl.
	Sure. I was just wondering if you could give me kind of an example from your personal life of this sort of commitment to honesty in practice and how it's worked for you.
	Oh, wow.
	An actual personal example.
	Oh dear, okay.
	I'm trying to think of working through fears of...
	Trying to think of a good example.
	I mean, I've certainly been sharing things with various people more lately.
	I'm trying to think of something that stands out.
	It takes me a while to come up.
	I'm sorry, Greg. I don't know if I... Do you have another comment?
	Another thing maybe you could...
	Well, I'm just asking because, I mean, I'm really...
	I mean... Well, sorry, I can think of one.
	Carl told me that he didn't like the way the audio sounded on PA, right?
	Oh, right. I mean, you were honest about your feelings about that, right?
	I was honest about that.
	I, um... Yeah, I had a little anxiety.
	I said I didn't want to nitpick, and I figured...
	Yeah, but you did it, right? I mean, so you told me that you felt some anxiety about it, but you didn't just say, well, I'm sure Steph did the best he could, and we'll leave it at that, right?
	You actually communicated to me and expressed your preference for how you would like it to sound better, right?
	Right, but I did have some...
	When I didn't hear back from you, and I didn't see the files change, I did have some bad feelings that I could have...
	Well, sure, but your commitment was at least to be honest with me about what was bothering you about the files, right?
	Right. And, I mean, if I hadn't written back, you would have written to me at some point and said, hey, did you get the email or whatever?
	I mean, but the commitment was there, right?
	Yeah. And actually, Greg, I can think of something else.
	I've shared podcasts with...
	And...
	A podcast and a video with a couple of family members, and I remember feeling a lot of anxiety, and I didn't do it at first.
	And then there was just a certain point where I just kind of...
	I knew I had some anxiety, but I just blurted out like, oh, let's take a look at this.
	Let's go to the computer and take a look at this.
	And then it was fine.
	But I had all this fear from my childhood of like, I don't know what, but whatever the dysfunction was back then that...
	I'd be ridiculed or put down or somebody wouldn't take me seriously or criticize or whatever.
	It's just kind of just that you have this anxiety, but then you just say something, you just blurt it out, you just do it.
	And I'm sure you've done that as many times anyway yourself.
	Okay, no, that helps.
	Thanks, I appreciate that.
	Well, that's all I had to say on the topic.
	Does anybody else have anything that they wanted to add on this?
	Steph, I was RTRing with myself when you were talking before, and I think I realized why I didn't give you feedback on EA and PA if you were interested in hearing that.
	Absolutely. Right.
	Well, I was thinking about PA because I downloaded it the day it came out, but it's been sitting on my hard drive.
	I don't really want to listen to it.
	I don't want to, but I felt I needed to as kind of an obligation, which is rubbish, of course.
	And then I started thinking about what EA and PA represent to me, which are the tools for us to get rid of all the excuses for not going out and saving the world, so to speak.
	And the more I thought about that, I kind of came to the conclusion that I don't want to save the world at the moment.
	I don't want to do that. And I've experienced that task of saving the world as kind of an obligation in terms of, like, I've gotten so much from FDR and to pay it back I have to Pay it forward to go out and to spread the word and to help others and I'm not saying that I'll never want to do that but right now I don't want to do it do that and I think the reaction I had which was to create or subconsciously create these feelings in you was was trying to getting back at you like as resentment for for imposing that obligation although that that's just rubbish that's the story but No,
	no, I don't think it's rubbish.
	I think that's admirably honest.
	I can totally understand that.
	Sorry, go on. So yeah, I think the reason maybe that I subconsciously created these feelings in you by not giving you any feedback was there was some sort of anger going on towards you because of this obligation to save the world, which is something that I just don't want to do right now.
	Right, right, right.
	Right, that's interesting. I mean, I think that makes a lot of sense and I think that there are a lot of people feeling that.
	A story that just popped into my mind was before I got married, I dated this woman who was older than I by, I guess, seven years or so.
	And so I had just come out of therapy or I was just finishing up therapy.
	And this woman, I guess I was 33 and she was 40.
	And our relationship was fairly serious.
	But I said to her one day, I said, you know, and this was the beginning of the end.
	I said, well, it's kind of like a problem because if we're going to have kids and you're 40, you're going to have to...
	We're going to have to get busy, right?
	If we get married, have kids, like really, really quickly.
	I said, I don't feel like I'm ready to be a father because I just became who I am through a year and a half or two years of therapy.
	So I've just become who I am and I don't think I'm ready to be a mentor or a father to someone else just yet.
	But there's this time pressure because of your age and so on.
	And that was the kind of – this was after my commitment to honesty thing, right?
	Yeah. And it's sort of like, well, I want to be who I am for the first time for a little while before I go charging off on some crusade.
	Does that sort of ring a bell?
	Yeah, it does. And I was also thinking for you, this desire to change the world, it came about...
	And you completely, kind of spontaneously, it was self-generated.
	Whereas the way I've experienced it, which is not to say anything about what you've done, is I've experienced it as something external coming in, like an obligation.
	This is the next step of FDR. This is what you have to do next.
	Right. I'm not at the point right now.
	I don't love the world yet like you do.
	I'm still very ambivalent about it, and sometimes I just think, you know, fuck them.
	I'm not at the point where I want to go out and save the world, and I don't like admitting that to myself.
	It's kind of scary when I realize that.
	I don't want to do that.
	I just want to say fuck them sometimes.
	I think it was because of that, how I experienced it as a kind of pressure to do it, that I didn't give you feedback and that created those feelings inside you as kind of a payback, if that makes sense.
	So I'm really sorry about that.
	No, and I appreciate that, honestly, and I appreciate the apology.
	I'm certainly sorry to provide the impression to people, and I don't think that you're alone in this, so I'm going to just go with the community.
	I'm sorry to have provided the impression that this is an obligation that people have to fulfill in a self-sacrificing manner.
	Because, I mean, that's definitely not what I want to communicate, right?
	Because I sort of want to... I think I had sort of compressed that process, if that makes sense. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
	Of course, consciously...
	I mean, I'm sure we all realize that you're not trying to just get us, getting us to do things for, you know, whatever sake you're doing it because, you know, that genuine happiness can come out of it.
	But I guess it may be, maybe the same feelings won't come if it's forced upon us rather than, which I'm not saying it is forced, but I'm saying that that was kind of my experience rather than having it be like a self-generating thing.
	You know, it'd be different if I woke up one day and said, you know, I want to save the world now, rather than having someone tell me, now you've got to go out and save the world.
	Right, right. No, you know what?
	This seems to me like an entire supernova of truth about what's going on, so what do other people think?
	Oh, I totally agree with Ash.
	So you're turning on me too?
	Just kidding. Sorry, go on.
	No, I agree with what he's saying.
	And to some degree, I don't think that's the entire reason I was avoiding the book.
	I mean, there was a lot of focus problems and concentration that I just couldn't concentrate on it.
	But I think there's other aspects that had to do with that.
	Like the job situation, but it's definitely true that I have been resisting going out and sharing this with everybody else, on the internet at least, because it's scary for me to do and I don't want to I went to the psychology website today to share the books and I honestly thought I was just going to get booted or the thread would get deleted or something like that.
	Can I just...
	Sorry, go ahead. I don't know if this is significant or what, but I just wanted to volunteer that while Ash was talking, I had a spike of sadness or despair.
	Was it with regards to Ash or to yourself or something else?
	What he was saying about not wanting to do this.
	Right. And I don't know if it's relevant.
	Well, it's relevant, right?
	It's what you felt, right?
	But was it sadness about Ash or was it sadness about yourself or something else?
	It was triggered by Ash talking about feeling compelled to sort of save the world, as it were. as it were.
	Actually, between that and what you were saying about wanting to have time to be who you were, I guess.
	And do you think it was to do with you?
	I'm not sure. It might be.
	I don't know. Okay.
	Well, I mean, if you don't know what the sadness, who it was about, then it could be any one of a million things.
	So it could either be because you would like that, to not have the mantle of saving the world, to not have to suit up, that you would like more of that, to explore your relationship with Susan, to do other things in your life that would be less crusader-y, if that makes sense, that you would like that to do other things in your life that would be less crusader-y, if that makes sense, that you would like that and you would like that space to be more of who you are without there having to be
	Yeah, what he was saying was definitely resonating, but I'm not sure where the sadness came from.
	Thank you.
	Well, Greg, what about your childhood, like your teenage years?
	Did you have a chance to be yourself back then?
	Because I don't think you did, and maybe this is kind of a repeat situation of that in some ways.
	What do you mean? Well...
	I mean, you and I were the same in terms of, you know, not having the normal social and relationship developments, like, as teenagers and stuff like that.
	Like, we didn't get that chance to be ourselves back then.
	And I guess with FDR, it's opened up that possibility for us to really become ourselves and kind of, while still going through that process, I mean, we're having this...
	seeming obligation imposed on us to go do something else before we've had that chance to just be ourselves for a little while.
	Does that make sense? Yeah, that's possible.
	Definitely. I mean, it makes logical sense.
	Something I was thinking of in terms of this was kind of like the revenge of the slave.
	When you have to do something, you'll kind of do it badly to frustrate the slave master.
	And of course, that's a ridiculous example to put you as the slave master step.
	But my experience of that obligation of saving the world was coming from you.
	So I think perhaps I was subconsciously causing this frustration in you because of that.
	Right. Well, it certainly would have been more insensitive on my part if I had – well, let's just say that it's true, and I certainly think that it could well be.
	So it would have been more insensitive on my part to be encouraging or pushing people towards a kind of bigger goal than if I hadn't remembered my own couple of years where I had to be myself before I could take on a big goal.
	If I had sort of compressed that part out of my mind – I remember the therapy part very vividly of course because I had a journal and all this and that and we've talked about it a lot in FDR.
	But my sort of latency period between therapy and FDR where I got to be more myself without a big crusade, I – I guess I hadn't really remembered that too well because it was not a high stimuli time, although it was a very enjoyable time.
	And so I think that that had sort of not been part of my memory of how I grew through this kind of stuff.
	And so because it hadn't been so vivid for me, I think that it had become less important as a phase to recognize in other people.
	So if I hadn't remembered that and I had been Less sensitive in my sort of encouragement and desire, you know, ooh, taste the fruits of being a crusader, it's wonderful, blah, blah, blah.
	Then it's not that I was being a slave driver, and I appreciate that distinction, but it certainly was insensitive to something that I found very important for myself and wasn't being clear about that with other people, if that makes sense.
	So it would feel like a premature obligation relative to where people were.
	Actually, that just kind of reminded me what I was saying earlier, much earlier this evening, that maybe the next thing is just to relax for a while.
	I mean, for yourself.
	Yes, but that's true.
	But I think that we're talking about the community more than me at the moment, if that makes sense.
	That may be right, but that would show up as symptomatic in some other way.
	Okay, right, right, right.
	Yeah, well, Greg, maybe that's the next thing for you rather than for Steph.
	Because, I mean, the reason, Steph, that I'm sure you find it so wonderful, so joyous to help people is because the motivation to do it came from within yourself.
	It happened in its own time.
	It happened spontaneously. And I guess maybe that we have to wait for that same thing to happen.
	Yeah, and it may be a completely different thing than what I'm talking about for sure, right?
	Yeah, I'm not sure of the answer, but maybe that next step has to come from within ourselves rather than from you giving it to us.
	Well, and I think that I'm quite sure that it does have to, and I think that it was definitely insensitive and abrupt for me to say that this is the next thing, because it made sense to me, but then again, it had been like, what, eight years since I went through that phase, and I don't remember it too particularly well, because it was, as I say, not a very high stimulus time, so...
	I'm quite sure that – and I'm thinking back to even things like when I was talking about the T-shirts.
	Remember everyone said, I want the T-shirts.
	We want the T-shirts, right?
	And the T-shirts came out and it's like, we've bought 12 T-shirts, right?
	You know, whatever it was, right?
	I think it was even less than that, like five or something.
	And I think that was something that I expressed quite a lot of frustration about and so on.
	And I think that that's not me listening to the community and saying, which I've tried to do more this time.
	And not saying, oh, you people, you say you want these books on anarchy and then you don't give me any feedback and blah, blah, blah, right?
	Where's your commitment? Blah, blah, blah.
	But just to keep asking the question, you know, like, why is it that we think that this is occurring?
	So I think that you're totally right that I really should shut up about what people need to do next.
	For me personally...
	I was...
	Can you hear me all right?
	I can hear you now, yeah. Okay, sorry.
	Um... For me, personally, I was just thinking about, while Ash was describing his own reaction, I mean, I just got out of the last big bad relationship,
	and I'm just on the cusp of just beginning to discover who I am, you know?
	Who I might even be.
	Yeah, I felt some sadness too.
	I'm not sure where it's coming from, but I think it's related to that whole thing.
	Right. I think it is that idea that you don't have to do anything.
	Right, because the whole time I was dating Beth, there was all these things I had to do.
	And now I don't.
	I don't have to do a thing.
	And it's great.
	And it's also anxiety provoking.
	But, you know, I'd like to not have to do something for a little while.
	Right, right. Okay.
	No, that is – I think that is a perfectly excellent – and that is – you know, it really is all starting to come back to me now, right, that that's very much what I felt when I got out of therapy.
	It's like, oh my god, I finally am who I am.
	And I was still in the business world and so on, so I still had all of those obligations.
	Right. But I just remember not wanting to take on any additional obligations, and that lasted for quite a while.
	I mean, I was like, I was even like, Beth, you're taking the cat or I'm giving her away because I don't even want that.
	Right, right, right.
	Right, it's like, not only do I not want unchosen positive obligations because my whole life was defined by unchosen negative obligations, right?
	So having those taken away, I didn't want to take on another obligation right away because I didn't know who was going to take it in a sense.
	I didn't know enough about who I was in the absence of obligation.
	But sorry, go ahead. No, I was just saying, even the small stuff, you know, aside from keeping my apartment clean, I don't want to do anything else, really.
	Right. The thought, I can't remember the context now, but I think it was Charlotte, Greg, G, and me, and maybe Greg M, in a voice chat.
	And I can't remember the context, but I think it was either me or somebody mentioned, I think it was me, that...
	I got the exact time wrong, but you've been doing this for almost a decade.
	You had therapy so long ago and we're all just sort of just starting.
	And you know, I mean, in various degrees of therapy and personal discovery and development.
	Now it seems to be...
	I just threw it out there sort of off the cuff, but now it seems like it's really kind of central.
	Well, I think you're right that I've compressed a section.
	I certainly wouldn't think that...
	I don't think that you're just starting at all.
	It feels like that sometimes. No, I mean, it always does, but...
	You know, the just starting would be a guest coming into FDR saying, hi, what's this site about?
	And I say, you have to start promoting philosophy.
	Okay. Right. Right, right.
	I mean, that to me would be just starting, right?
	And that would be, I mean, obviously we all, that's funny because it's so inappropriate, right?
	So what...
	Because when I was talking about this with Christine, I was sort of saying, well, you know, it's about two years seems to be the time that you have to work through the most significant issues in the past and so on.
	And so that's sort of the time frame that I was working on.
	And then I thought, and then enthusiasm for saving the world will be the next step, right?
	And that's because that's genuinely how I remembered it.
	But then, in hindsight, there was this other little thing called no obligation, which was really key for me.
	Yeah. So, yeah, sorry.
	That kind of slipped my mind.
	And I think that's... So, I'd say that you're sort of in the middle stage, right, rather than the starting stage.
	But sorry, go on, Craig. Well, and also, wouldn't it be more like, and then enthusiasm for dot, dot, dot?
	I mean, why would every single person end with enthusiasm for saving the world as a singular goal?
	I don't want to overblow the saving the world thing.
	I mean, certainly my suggestions around...
	Post-DA on a couple of places and wear a t-shirt is not exactly, you know, shave your head and join me at the airport, right?
	So... Right. This is...
	Let's remember that certainly what I was saying is, you know, quit your job and, you know, whatever.
	Wear a human billboard for FDR and wander the streets without underwear, right?
	I mean, that was not...
	No. So I'm not saying that everyone started to quit and go save the world, but I think that...
	even to say, because what I was saying is half an hour a week or whatever, but I think that people are feeling, and I get that sense very strongly, that it's like, but I don't want that to be an obligation that comes from outside, right?
	Right, right.
	And that's kind of why I relate to Ash on that one.
	That's how I felt, and I'm trying to slough off all these other obligations, like James got rid of his cats, and I'm kind of envious of that.
	I'm trying to get rid of mine and get rid of the house and everything, because it's just all been an obligation.
	Right, right. Right, so even a smaller obligation.
	And it's interesting, because it's interesting that, and this is why I think this was so hard to track, because it wasn't like I said, EA is out, now you have to go promote it, right?
	That's true. Because I never mentioned that.
	It's like, oh, here's a new book.
	I think it's pretty cool, right?
	I made a video. And so for me, the reason I think that it was so hard to track was because I mean, the go promote the book was a possible solution as to why people were resisting the book so much.
	So it's almost like people picked up on the promotional aspects of the book before I did, if that makes sense.
	Well, when you guys say save the world, what does that look like?
	I mean, what does that involve?
	Is that just posting a link somewhere or is there more to it in your heads?
	Well, it doesn't matter what it involves because what it involves is not organic for people, right?
	It certainly doesn't feel organic for me.
	Yeah, if I say do the hula or shave your head, it doesn't matter what it is that promotion means to people because it's not coming from them, right?
	So saving the world is promotion, right?
	Well, saving the world sort of came to mean...
	We were floundering around the other night trying to solve this problem, and one of the things that I was talking about was that people may be feeling anxious about EA because EA is...
	Or the books. That they may be feeling anxious about it because it's so easy to promote, and they really want to promote it, and they feel resistance because it's scary, and so maybe just start with half an hour a week, post a link or two, whatever, right?
	So... It wasn't that I sort of said, you know, this book is out, we have to save the world.
	But that was a possible solution that was around that.
	But I think that what Ash brought up, I think, is much more accurate, which is that people get that this is highly promotable stuff, that it was kind of written that way, and they feel that as an obligation slowly flowing down to them, you know, like sap over a mosquito, so to speak, right? And that's what they're resisting, if that makes sense.
	Rather than it feeling like a rising desire internally.
	Right, right, right.
	I think it goes back to, I think it was podcast 920, which is like, you know, the next thing and everything.
	But that was kind of easy for us to dismiss because we didn't have the tools or we could make excuses.
	But all those things were still sitting in the back of our mind.
	And then when EA came out, they got rid of all the excuses.
	So that's when we had the big flare-up of the reaction to it.
	Yeah, no, I think that's entirely right.
	I think that's entirely right.
	And with all those ideas of...
	All the ideas of, like...
	Going to save the world is the next big thing and everything.
	It made it quite hard for me to admit to myself that I just wanted to be selfish.
	Like, the thoughts which I resisted were, I've just got a new job, I've got a new relationship, I'm going to move soon, you know, fuck the world for now, I can deal with that later, I just want some time for myself.
	And it was, because of those things that were just floating around in my head, it was really hard to admit to myself that I just want to be selfish for a while.
	Right, right, right.
	Especially when I'm saying, well, the real selfishness is helping the world, right?
	Which short-circuit thinks even more, right?
	Right. I mean, in order to try to enlighten people, you have to have a kind of emotional support system.
	You have to have some good relationships.
	And I mean, one thing I noticed, I mean, Steph, how many people have the kind of quality of relationship that you have with Christina?
	So that's a real, or qualities of friendships or whatever.
	But we all need a lot of emotional support to people we can come back to.
	And, you know, you can't do this alone, you know.
	Yeah, no, that's true. Yeah, it's like, I mean, you came into this with, you know, a great marriage and everything already set up.
	So it's like, you know, let me get there first, at least before I have to go start saving the world.
	Well, to be slightly more precise about the chronology, my saving the world before FDR was writing novels, and that's actually how I met Christina.
	So I was already in that phase before FDR, if that makes sense.
	Oh, okay. Fair enough.
	But, I mean, that's not stretching right back to right out of therapy.
	So, I mean, that gap is right there still, but it's, I mean, as you know, I met Christina because I had just got a book published and...
	She agreed to read it.
	So because I already had that sort of goal, I'd already gotten past the selfish bit, and I use that word loosely, but that bit is really important to me.
	And I remember very clearly that resistance to obligations kind of thing that was so important to let myself heal more completely and energize myself up.
	So that's good. That's good.
	Well, we can start off the Sunday show tomorrow then with sorry about floating around these unchosen positive obligations.
	And, you know, the next thing is nothing.
	The next thing is be at ease.
	Or the next thing for the rest of your life is do what you want, right?
	I mean, that's the whole point of freedom, right?
	I mean, I do think the next thing, when you've reached happiness, when you've got your relationships the way you want them, is that, gee, there's limits to what I can do unless I live in a better world, unless I can share this with more people.
	And I think it will be an organic thing for people at a certain point when they start getting their lives straightened out.
	Yeah, it's the old, you know, put the oxygen mask over your own face before helping those around you, right?
	Right, right. The next thing is commitment to honesty.
	Well, I mean, I think that's something, you know, I was thinking about your relationship, Ash, and your relationship as it's starting out.
	However far it goes, we don't know, but I mean...
	With Susan Gregg and other people's relationships.
	Like this commitment to honesty thing is killer no matter what you do, right?
	And that to me is selfish in the way that I think even conforming.
	Well, let me know, Ash. So when we talk about this honesty commitment thing, does that feel like an obligation that is a drag from the outside?
	No, not at all. It's fantastic.
	Yeah, I mean, I think, because that's something that really enriches your relationship with yourself, with those around you, and so on, and it's not a, you know, march out and live with the pygmies and teach them about Jesus, right?
	Right, exactly. Okay, good, good idea.
	Okay, so I think you're right, Carl.
	Next thing is the commitment to honesty.
	Steph, I'm wondering how you're feeling about all this because something just popped into my mind which was kind of like a parent-child metaphor in that when a child grows up, the parent kind of has to let them go and find their own path in a way, which is kind of what we're talking about here.
	Once we get to a certain point, you kind of have to let us go and let the inspiration come up within us rather than you giving it to us.
	So I'm just wondering how you feel about that.
	Well, I think that's an interesting way of putting it.
	I hadn't thought of it like that.
	I feel fantastic.
	I mean, I feel like this mystery that has been grinding me down for months is solved, which to me is completely wonderful, and thanks to Ash in particular for the breakthrough, but everyone in this conversation as well.
	I think it's fantastic.
	I do think that you're right insofar as I was...
	I was certainly... I'm trying to be fair to myself as well, right?
	And I think that in saying that...
	Yeah, it's interesting because I thought that people were resisting the – one, I didn't have an answer as I sort of said at the beginning.
	But I thought that one of the possible answers was that people were resisting the books because they really wanted to go and promote philosophy but they were afraid to and that's why they were avoiding and so on.
	And so that was one possible answer.
	I certainly wasn't saying you all got to go out and proselytize or whatever, right?
	I certainly have been talking more recently in the chat room, you know, be more positive and when you help people it makes you feel good and they – I went diving into that and had some great experiences with it and so on, as did Charlotte.
	So I don't think I've been really pounding the feeling of obligation arises because I've been pounding people to go and promote philosophy.
	Because I certainly wasn't doing that when EA came out and wasn't doing that beforehand.
	But I think that people got how promotable this stuff was and that there was a kind of obligation in the air.
	And again, I don't want to try and excuse myself if I'm not being just or fair, but I can't remember pounding people to go proselytize before EA came out or when EA came out or even after EA came out.
	But I think that – and I think because if I had been doing that, then it would I think have been easier for me to try and approach it as something that would be clearer.
	Like, remember all these podcasts where you said you people have to go out and change the world, right?
	And people, oh shit, yeah, that's right.
	But that did happen at that time.
	I think it's even more complicated and interesting than that, which is that I think the accessibility and readability of EA in particular kind of struck people.
	And it was like, this is so accessible, it's almost like it needs to be proselytized about or whatever, if that makes sense.
	And so the obligation kind of came out of the book rather than out of me.
	And I know that I have been talking a little bit more about it, but that was one of my ways of trying to approach solving this problem.
	But I think that your solution – and I think that the solution, which is not that people are reacting to me, say, go save the world, because I don't think I have talked about – I have certainly talked about the next thing being, gosh, we should go out and help people more and so on.
	But I haven't been talking about that, certainly in the last two or three months, that I can remember.
	I mean, maybe there's some stuff that I've forgotten, but I can't remember it coming up in any listener convo, and I can't remember doing any specific convos about it.
	Sorry, any solo podcasts about it.
	But I think it's much more interesting than that.
	I think that the book created that, through its accessibility, the book created that obligation which people then responded to.
	And then we floundered around as a community trying to figure out what was going on.
	And one of those solutions was proselytizing or whatever.
	That's, to me, more interesting and I think more of an accurate response.
	But I also don't want to be excusing myself if I can't remember something that I've been talking about.
	So... And we'll get back to your sort of parent-child thing in a sec.
	But does that seem like a reasonably fair assessment or am I missing something that I've been doing?
	Well, I agree with that.
	I think because you were talking about the next thing quite a long time ago.
	So I think that just kind of implanted some things in our mind, in our subconscious, which...
	Well, it was kind of, this is the next thing that we'll do someday.
	It was like one of those things that could be put off indefinitely because there was no way to do it.
	But then you came out with EA and it's like, here you go, this tool, this is how you do it.
	And that's when the obligation kind of took form, became real, if that makes sense.
	Right. And I just – again, I want to be critical of myself but not burden myself.
	I don't remember saying this is the tool.
	This is how you do it. Did you mean that metaphorically or did I say something I can't remember about?
	I don't think you said it but I think that's definitely how I experienced it.
	And I mean there were some talks about EA. I had some conference calls where it was pointed out that it got rid of all the excuses.
	Like, you know, you can easily say, I'm not going to give UPB to somebody because it's too technical.
	They won't get it. Or I'm not going to give on truth to somebody because, you know, it's going to cause all sorts of shit.
	But with EA, there's none of that.
	So that combined with the next thing that was happening a few months ago, it just kind of made the next thing possible.
	It was like the tools in our hand to do it.
	And I think that's why it was hard to identify as well because there was that three or four month Right, and I remember those conversations, and I think those conversations came up because of the lack of feedback about EA, if that makes sense.
	Like, so something was already in process by the time we were talking about that kind of stuff?
	Right, but I think people got subconsciously that that's what EA was, that got rid of all the excuses.
	I think people realized that before the conversation, so I think that was kind of subconscious.
	And you combine that with the fact that it's all free, which really changes it for people, right?
	In a very fundamental way.
	Not only is the book really accessible, but it's totally free, right?
	Which means that there's like...
	So it lowers the barrier, which I guess increases the implicit obligation, if that makes sense.
	Exactly. I mean, you took away every barrier.
	So it's...
	I think we were denying the knowledge in ourselves that we don't want to do that at the moment.
	Because, I mean... It's pretty obvious that we didn't want to do it because we weren't doing it and there were no excuses for us.
	There were no barriers. Personally, I didn't want to face that.
	I didn't want to say, you know, I don't want to go out and save the world right now.
	I've got more selfish things to do.
	Right, and somebody just pointed out on the board that I said that EA was the first book for the masses, and that's certainly true, and I think that would have also increased that sense of, you know, please don't press any pamphlets in my hand.
	I don't want to go to the airport and I don't look good in this bathrobe, right?
	Right. Well, also, something that, like, do you remember, like, a premium, it was a conference, and I think it might have just been for donators, and it was like, what's next for the conversation?
	And I piped up early on in the conference, and I was like, well, I'm just kind of curious, what's happening with that freeing others thing?
	And you said something like...
	Well, can you tell me how what I've been doing the past three months isn't that?
	And it bothered me, not that, not what you said, but it bothered me for like a while after that, why didn't I see that?
	Why didn't I see that? But what you're saying now is kind of clear that it was pretty implicit and it wasn't explicitly said that this is the freeing others, right?
	Yeah, I mean, I certainly had talked about people being more positive and friendly in the chat room and talked about the joys of helping people and so on, and certainly had aimed for there to be more materials for people.
	But yes, it wasn't something where I said, you people have to go proselytize or whatever or save the world.
	But yeah, it certainly was part of what I was moving towards.
	And I think that's where people, because it wasn't explicit on my part, the response wasn't explicit on other people's part, if that makes sense.
	I just want to second Ash's experience of EA. I had sort of the same reaction to it.
	And what you were saying about it being...
	about the implicit obligation coming out of the book and not out of what you were saying necessarily.
	Yeah, again, it's hard for me because I produce so much.
	Sometimes people say, hey, remember this podcast?
	It's like, nope. But I don't recall there being a specific drive of that.
	But I think to Greg Minton's point, making the books all free, writing a book that was popularly accessible, writing The Philosophysician, putting out the custom feeds, and in particular the referral service, the referral page or whatever, right?
	That all of that was kind of implicit to put some time into...
	Do spread the word. And I think that because it wasn't a conscious program, the response was unconscious as well.
	And I think, yeah, so sorry, just in response to your question, I feel fantastic about the way this conversation's gone.
	I really appreciate people's time and effort into this.
	I think that you're right about, for me, it's not sort of parent-child, if anything, and I learn as much from this community as anything I teach, but maybe sort of mentor students, right, that, you know, if everybody's already snatched the pebble from my hand, hands, so to speak, then, you know, it's not up to me to provide that kind of guidance or guardrail.
	Then it's just, you know, trusting that the work that we've done up to now is going to pay off as it's supposed to for each individual in terms of authenticity and being who you are.
	And yeah, I mean, I think that is wonderful.
	And it is great for me to think of that as being a burden that's off me, right?
	Because if I were to think that I still had to manage people into authenticity, that would be kind of contradictory, right?
	Right.
	And I mean, I wasn't trying to say that your relationship with everybody is parent-child, but there's kind of an element to that or a mentor element, as you say.
	And I was just thinking then that because, of course, you want us to go out and save the world, which is like a desire of you.
	And I thought kind of it goes back to what I experienced as a child with children.
	I'm wanting to do what my dad wanted me to do, as an authority figure, to satisfy his wants.
	That's nothing that you've done, of course.
	That's just my own history.
	But it kind of reminded me, I wanted to save the world, but I didn't want to save the world, if that makes sense.
	Sure. But if what I'm doing is indicating a lack of trust, and if I'm trying to guide people towards...
	Do X to save the world, right?
	Whatever that is, right?
	Whatever people were perceiving that was going on, which I'm not going to argue with the perception, right?
	But if I'm saying to people do X to save the world, that's actually not very respectful to the people I'm saying it to, right?
	Right, right. Well, for obvious reasons, right?
	Whereas, of course, when I say that it is authenticity that will save the world, that it's being who we are that will save the world, then you can't tell anybody how to be themselves, right?
	Right, right, exactly.
	So, no, this is excellent, excellent, excellent stuff.
	I mean, I feel relieved and energized, and certainly a burden is off my shoulders, and I think also it's great that as a community we tackled this because it was a motherfucker of a problem.
	So I'm content with where the conversation is, but if anybody else had anything they wanted to add, I'm certainly happy to listen.
	I'm curious about something, if you don't mind.
	This is just fantastic, the way the conversation has gone.
	I totally agree. I'm just curious, just on the side, how are your feelings and emotions regarding doing this solo podcast at the moment from when they were at the beginning of this conversation?
	Well, I think that the logjam was that I need to apologize to people for not treating them with the respect that they deserve in that sense, right?
	I mean, so I think that that'll be a good podcast for me to do.
	And I think after that, for me, the only thing that I really care about is that the lines of communication stay open and that we all keep talking to each other, right?
	So if that communication is open, as I sort of feel that it is now, then I'm happy to keep talking, right?
	But there wasn't much point...
	Piling up more things behind the logjam, if that makes sense.
	So, enthusiastic would be my short answer.
	Oh, that's fantastic. Yeah, that's great.
	Yeah, that's definitely good.
	All right. Anyone else?
	All right. Well, thank you again.
	And thanks again in particular to Ash and the Greggs and Charlotte.
	And Ash definitely gets the gold star for the breakthrough on this one.
	So, yeah, thanks a lot, everyone.
	I really, really appreciate the time and energy to work through this.
	And I'm glad that this couple of months of minor oddities have been laid bare.
	And I certainly do apologize for...

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