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Aug. 17, 2008 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

02:47:56

1127 Sunday Show Aug 17 2008

The FDR approach to and getting on the beam...

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	Alright, well thank you everybody so much for joining.
	It is a little after 4 o'clock this beautiful day, Sunday, August the 17th, 2008.
	The baby is doing wonderfully, kicking up a storm.
	We were watching a little bit of gymnastics and we feel that we have a belly shadow puppet that seems to be pretty much inspired by some of the gymnasts on the screen, which is pretty cool.
	And I think he's actually doing flips.
	So that's kind of cool.
	And it actually, if he grabs hold of the right organs, Christina also does flips, which is kind of neat.
	So it's dial-em-on. We had an ultrasound done.
	We got a semi-freaky alien invager behind shots of the skull, which I may post.
	Not the proudest daddy pics we've had so far.
	Yeah, Christina likes them, but I feel that it's something that not should be in Christina's belly, but emerging from mine.
	So... We'll see about that.
	Other news of note, I suppose, just a reminder that the novel The God of Atheists is available at freedomainradio.com forward slash free.
	You can pick up the feed and enjoy that because my production is down a little bit.
	I thought I would throw... A book out.
	We've had over 15,000 FDR books out now, partly as a result, actually largely as a result of your generosity combined with my cheese-eating business sense of releasing everything for free.
	Just a reminder, if you are listening and haven't donated in a while or haven't shockingly donated at all, if you could go to freedomainradio.com forward slash donate dot html.
	August is a tough month.
	Lots of people on vacation. Lots of people selfishly saving up for food.
	I also created a new level, $10 a month, 33 cents a day.
	And I hope that you will sign up for that if the $20 a month is too rich for your blood.
	That kind of predictable income makes it a lot easier to plan FDR as a business.
	So I hope that you will be able to sign up for that if you haven't already.
	And last but not least, the...
	Book, the print version of Practical Anarchy, is out, and it's gorgeous.
	I've actually been necking with it for most of the week.
	A couple of paper cuts, but lots of tongue, which is great.
	And so I hope that you will pick that up.
	You can get that again, freedomainradio.com forward slash books dot html, or free, forward slash free.
	Just scroll down to Practical Anarchy and click on the print link, and you can pick it out from lulu dot...
	So thank you again so much for everybody who gave me feedback on the book and my excellent proofreaders.
	And as usual, any mistakes that remain in the book are the fault of Loki.
	So I hope that puts or quashes any possible objections to errors that remain.
	So that's it for my introduction.
	I am all with the earrings to listen to questions or comments, issues, problems from the listener community as a whole or in part.
	So speak now or speak later.
	Well, I do have one.
	This is Greg. I do have one clarification if you're up for it.
	Or request for clarification, that is.
	There are two emotions questions.
	Sure, go for it. Yes.
	So, you describe two different kinds of emotions.
	And actually, I have two questions about this, and I'm just going to go ahead and read the snippets that I picked up of the two kinds, and you can kind of tell me what it means.
	Sure, and just before you start, in case there are contradictions in the text, remember, I do have to forward these to Loki, who just sometimes takes forever to get back.
	But please go ahead, and we'll try and sort it out.
	Sure. So, Type 1, I'm just labeling it Type 1, is the kind that you were sort of going with through most of the first...
	Roughly the first two-thirds of the book, and some of the ways you describe it is as such.
	Emotions are not objective responses to the outside world, but rather objective responses to internal premises, i.e.
	standardized responses to subjective stimuli.
	However, it is important to understand that we cannot control our own emotions either.
	Once we believe certain premises within our own minds, the emotions that will result from those premises are utterly out of our control.
	And then there was a Type 2 kind of emotion that you switched to about two-thirds of the way through the book.
	And the way you described that is this way.
	Most of our deepest and truest feelings accumulate from years of experience.
	These feelings cannot be eradicated or changed.
	Any more than our experience can be eradicated or changed.
	These deepest emotions occur in the body and the body is immune to propaganda.
	Emotions are the empiricism of values.
	Emotions do not equal knowledge any more than our senses equal the scientific method.
	So, What I'm trying to figure out here is just from these two descriptions, I'm having a hard time seeing how these two kinds of emotion are really all that different.
	Because like in the first one you say...
	We cannot control our own emotions.
	Once we believe certain premises, the emotions that will result from those premises are out of our control.
	But then in Type 2, you say feelings cannot be eradicated or changed.
	And also that emotions are the empiricism of values.
	Emotions do not equal knowledge.
	There are parts of what you say about the second kind of emotions that seem to imply the first kind to me, and vice versa is what I'm saying.
	So I didn't quite understand the distinction.
	And then my second question is...
	Sorry, do you want me to... If you have two questions, then maybe I should answer the first ones first.
	Because, I mean, there's no way that we'll remember it towards the end.
	So, I mean, this is excellent questions, and I think that in part two – sorry, I guess in the round two of RTR, perhaps this should be more distinction.
	And let me sort of go what I was trying to get at with these ideas, and perhaps we can see if it can make some sort of sense.
	So if we look at the emotion type one, not objective responses to the outside world, but rather objective responses to internal premises.
	So let me give you an example of that.
	If I believe that there's a God who's going to punish me for disobedience and send me to hell, I'm evil because of Adam and Eve or whatever Once you have those internal premises,
	the emotions will flow from those.
	Does that sort of make sense? Right.
	And that much, I pretty much...
	I kind of understand what you're saying there.
	That basically, it's the cognitive model, right?
	That our conscious thoughts about ourselves will...
	Elicit certain emotional responses.
	Now, the second type, the deepest and truest feelings, right?
	And to me, it's the deepest and truest aspects that maybe should be better categorized, but that to me is the differentiation.
	So if I believe that prayer works...
	Then I'm going to want to pray.
	And if I avoid praying, I'm going to feel guilty and so on, right?
	And that's the cognitive conscious model.
	If I accept the premise that prayer is virtuous and efficacious, then I will pray because I want to achieve something good, right?
	It's like going to the gym or whatever, right?
	However, the deepest feelings accumulate from years of experience.
	Now, years of experience indicate that prayers don't work, right?
	Because they don't. So as we go through life, the experiences that we have in the world are empirical, right?
	I mean, we can make up premises that we – whatever we want in sort of – in church or in the army or whatever.
	But as we go through life, we get empirical evidence that accumulates at our deepest and truest emotions, right?
	Right. So, the deepest emotions occur in the body, and the body is immune to propaganda.
	So, if I believe that there is a God, but of course there is no God, as I go through life, deep, deep, deep down, where the empirical emotions sit, right?
	Right down in the core, which is just years and years of interacting with reality, empirical, objective, material reality...
	Those feelings, those feelings deep down, can't believe in God, right?
	So the second type of emotion is some sort of pre- Pretty rational then?
	No, no. It's that there's some stuff that you can just make up.
	There is a God. America is virtuous.
	George Bush is wise or whatever.
	There's just stuff that you can make up.
	But there's also stuff which simply results emotionally from years of experience.
	So, someone can say, like a woman might say, I've been put on this world to help my abusive husband become a better person.
	And I love him for his potential and deep down the part, right?
	But if he's just abusive year after year, she can say that and then she'll feel guilty if she's going to leave him and it's virtuous to stay with him and so on.
	But deep down, she's going to get depressed anyway, right?
	Okay, so...
	It's the difference between conceptual premises, which are manipulatable, right?
	We can just make up, there is a God, my husband is virtuous, whatever.
	But the second type of emotions arise out of empiricism, right?
	Arise out of direct experience within the world.
	Which is different from emotions based on internal premises.
	You're immune to propaganda, right?
	So a woman who stays with an abusive husband because she considers it, quote, virtuous, and God will give her her reward and her priest tells her to stay with her husband and so on.
	She will feel guilt and this and that, and she will feel this sort of flickering devotion or love.
	But deep down, she's been treated like crap by him year after year.
	And that's going to wear her down deep down, right?
	Deep down, right in the core of our being, we have emotional responses that simply respond to empiricism and nothing else.
	They can't be propagandized.
	We can't talk people in or out of being that kind of depressed.
	And the reason why we need these two types of emotions to differentiate, this is false self and true self, right?
	In my opinion.
	Now, this doesn't mean that type one cannot be true self.
	But if they're false, right?
	If they're patriotism, if they're religion, if they're the cult of the family, if they're false, then you don't change your whole emotional apparatus.
	And you don't change reality by changing your mind.
	right, that much. Believing in God does not create a God, right?
	I mean, we all understand that, right?
	So if your conscious premises are in alignment with empiricism, with science, with reality, with rationality, then we have a continuum of an aligned personality, right?
	Not a minimum of self-conflict, right?
	But if our conscious premises and emotions are in opposition to empiricism, reality, sanity, what is, then we're going to be conflicted.
	Now, if we didn't have deep-down feelings that we couldn't just manipulate, then there would be no such thing as depression or mental illness of a non-biochemical nature, right?
	Because if we just believed in God, and the moment we started believing in God, we saw people walking on water, we had miracles, we could live forever, we had visions, we could fly, in reality...
	Then there would be no, you could just choose whatever you wanted to believe, like you were in a holodeck, right?
	Right, choosing your reality along with choosing your perception of it.
	Right, but the problem is, I mean, one of the basic realities of psychology, or the basic premises of psychology, is that we have reality processing that is unavailable to our conscious mind.
	Oh, um...
	Everything after basic reality of psychology?
	We have reality processing that is unavailable to our conscious mind.
	Right? Okay, yeah.
	The five senses connecting to the brain in places that either precede or supersede, not supersede, but bypass conscious or cognitive facilities.
	Right, and we know that. We also know that because babies have emotions before they have what we would consider consciousness, right?
	And animals, of course, have emotions without having what we would call consciousness.
	That's also true.
	So we have a reality emotive processing that occurs at an unconscious level that is untouchable by our conscious premises.
	And so...
	Okay, well that helps.
	That actually kind of answers the second question.
	Sorry, just to do one more annoying metaphor around that.
	You can say to yourself that chocolate is a slimming substance, right?
	You can say that and you can genuinely believe it, right?
	But that doesn't affect how your body processes chocolate, right?
	Even more directly, you could say, I like broccoli and actually not like it, but sort of will yourself to eat it anyway,
	right? Right, and there would be no need for humility or rationality if we did not have that essential ingredient to happiness that was empirical reality processing beyond our control.
	We wouldn't need to subject ourselves to rationality and evidence and science, right?
	Right. Wait, I kind of lost you there.
	If we said chocolate is a slimming substance and it immediately tasted like chocolate but it had the properties of celery, then we wouldn't need the science of nutrition, right?
	Oh, right, just by saying it, making it true.
	If we didn't have a reality processing that was emotional and essential to our happiness that occurred deep down and that was beyond the control of our conscious decisions...
	Then we wouldn't need philosophy or psychology because happiness would be whatever, you know, it would be pure hedonism.
	Whatever you wanted would make you happy and you'd never have to discipline yourself or subject yourself to anything larger or deeper or truer.
	Well, we'd just be non-rational animals, right?
	We'd be primates or other kinds of animals.
	No, I wouldn't say that at all.
	I'd say that we'd be gods or devils.
	I would say that we'd be gods or devils.
	We would be like the Cartesian demon.
	We would just be making up whatever we wanted, right?
	A primate has to deal with reality.
	If a primate is hungry, it can't imagine food.
	It has to actually go and find something to alleviate the discomfort.
	Oh, right, but he doesn't have to actually rationally reason out how and why.
	I mean, he just is sort of automatically, not automatically, but he's instinctually driven to find it, right?
	He doesn't have to...
	He doesn't need rationality to decide, okay, well, it's good for him.
	He sort of already knows at a pre-rational level.
	Yes, and that's the level that we need to work at, I think, in terms of developing happiness and mental health, right?
	Which is to accept that there is a foundational emotional basis to happiness that is beyond our control and which we can only access and enhance happiness.
	through humility and rationality and empiricism.
	Right.
	So, so in a, so in, um, the reason for the two types as described by this book then is to sort of, or at least why you present them both in this book is to sort of get us to, um, uh, align.
	If there were no emotions that changed depending on our premises, then there would be no possibility of a science of psychology, right?
	Because changing our mind would have no effect on changing our feelings.
	Oh, right. Sorry, let me just finish the thought.
	And in the same way...
	If there was no objective state that we were supposed to get to as human beings, there would be no science or philosophy or psychology because it would all be whim-based, right?
	Supposed to get to? What do you mean by that?
	Well, I mean, if you want to be happy, then reason equals virtue equals happiness.
	There's an objective series of steps that you have to go through in the same way that if you want to lose weight, you have to consume fewer calories than you burn, right?
	Right, right, right. And the vast majority of people are motivated by happiness.
	Right, so there has to be a certain aspect of our emotional life that is under our control.
	And how do we control it?
	We control it relative to that emotional aspect of our lives that is not within our control.
	We align it, right? Ah, gotcha.
	Okay, so these fixed emotions or these fixed...
	I don't know what you would call it.
	I would say they're authentic emotions, because they can't be faked.
	They can't be manipulated. They can be repressed.
	You can ignore them. If you're depressed because you're staying with your abusive husband because your priest told you to, you could say that your depression comes from Satan and it's evil, right?
	I mean, you can make up, but you can't will away the depression.
	Right. Right.
	Until you change the circumstances that gave rise to it.
	So you have to change your mind about the reasons why you ought to stay with your abusive husband.
	Well, that is – sorry, go ahead.
	And you also have to change – I was just going to say you also have to change your physical circumstances.
	Well, yes, but the first thing that you need to do is you need to have curiosity, right?
	Instead of having an instant answer where people say, well, I'm depressed because the devil is trying to make me be bad, right?
	Or I'm depressed – I'm religious and I'm depressed and the reason that I'm depressed is I'm not virtuous enough.
	I'm not a good enough believer.
	But that's just making up answers.
	That's like saying, I'm gaining weight because it's autumn.
	As opposed to looking at the...
	So you say, I'm depressed and I don't know why.
	That's the RTR with the South.
	I feel X. So you say, you want to jump as everybody does to, you have to change your mind.
	But to what? And from what?
	And the answer to that is, why am I depressed?
	Right? It's not a plan of action, it's a plan of exploration, if that makes sense.
	The action comes out of that, but first of all, you have to deeply understand why you're feeling depressed.
	And if you go in with a predisposed answer, you'll just never know, right?
	Is it safe to assume though that if your goal is happiness and you're depressed, that something needs to change?
	Well, yes, but what needs to change is your relationship with your depression, and that is simply...
	Changing your mind about...
	You know what it is?
	It's looking within and saying, I don't know the answer, but the answer is within me.
	And I need to be curious and I need to explore and I need to approach my feelings in a non-prejudicial manner.
	Because there's knowledge in the depression, right?
	There's knowledge and there's value in the feeling of being depressed, right?
	What do you mean by that?
	We feel depressed because there is falsehood in our life.
	That's not an instant...
	No, no, that's just saying there's something that's false in my life.
	I don't know what it is, right?
	Okay, alright. But a mismatch between our conscious values and our empirical experience will always breed disquiet.
	Now, it might breed mania, it might be depression, it might be aggression, it might be manipulation, it might be obsessive behavior, it might be compulsive behavior, it might be sexual addiction, it might be gambling.
	It will breed disquiet when our conscious values...
	Oh, you're...
	Is that happening for other people, if you can just type in the chat room?
	I know that, Greg, you're cutting out a little bit for me as well, so I don't know if it's just us.
	But wherever you have a mismatch between your conscious values and your empirical experience, between what you believe and what is true, then intellectual disquiet, to say the least, emotional disquiet, restlessness, depression, aggression will inevitably result.
	And most people's response to that is to increase the use of their conscious mind to try and solve it, to try and change behavior, to try and – right?
	As opposed to to relax and to try and explore and accept what is going on in the deepest part of the selves.
	Right.
	Right.
	That makes sense.
	Thanks.
	So then it is safe to assume that there's a That in this state of disquiet,
	whether it's depression or aggression or whatever, that there is a, not a disconnect, but a conflict between these deeper emotions and the cognitively driven emotions.
	Right. There is a mismatch between, well, there's elements of fantasy within the personality.
	Which is a willed rejection of reality for the sake of usually an emotionally scarred preference.
	Okay, can you give me an example?
	Oh, sure. I mean, you come from a military family, and you're pressured to join the military because it's virtuous and good, and so you have a fantasy about the virtue of being a paid killer.
	is completely at odds with reality.
	And you have this fantasy because you have been bullied and you've been threatened with death or rejection or both for – if you don't conform to these fantasies, you will be attacked, right?
	So the fantasy is the scar tissue of abuse as I've always said and it's where we have fantasy mixed in with the reality elements of our personality which is almost always the case with everyone.
	Then we get emotional disquiet, upset, depression, and so on.
	The scar tissue results from being attacked for not accepting the fantasy.
	Right, and the scar tissue is the reaction formation against the attack, which is the elevation.
	It is the worship. Okay, so then – well, that's interesting.
	So the scar tissue then is both the results of the attack and the fantasy itself within you at the same time.
	Yes. Yeah, I mean if somebody attacks us for – just to take a simple example, if you don't stand up to pledge allegiance to the flag in school, then you will be attacked, you will be mocked, you will be derided.
	I mean the repercussions would go on and on, right?
	So you stand up and you do it.
	And children can't just sit there and say, well, this is bullshit, but I'm going to do it because otherwise I'm going to be attacked.
	You think that there's a conscious decision made there.
	Well, I think that it is the conscious experience of a fear, for sure.
	And the decision is to avoid the fear.
	And really, of course, what you're doing when you conform in that way is you're avoiding the knowledge of your environment. Avoiding knowledge of your environment.
	Right, so if you're a kid in school and you're told to recite the Lord's Prayer or to salute the flag or whatever, then the reason that you do so is because if you don't do it, you're going to get attacked.
	And then you're going to go home and you're going to say to your parents, Mom, Dad, I got attacked, mocked, scorned and bullied today because I didn't want to salute the flag, right?
	Right.
	And what are your parents going to do?
	Well, they're going to demand to know why you didn't salute the flag.
	Yeah, because if you start pulling at that thread, it all begins to unravel, right?
	Whereas if your parents had said, look, we can't afford to send you to private school or homeschool, you're going to have to go and do this stupid-ass thing called saluting the flag.
	You've just got to grit your teeth and do it.
	We're really sorry that we can't put you in a better environment, but this is the society that we live in.
	It's just easier to do it.
	You don't have to believe it.
	But if they had prepared you ahead of time, then you wouldn't have been surprised by that, right?
	Moment. Well, if they themselves actually even thought that.
	I mean, I can't even – well, I've never known any parents that actually thought that way.
	Right, right. Because they're afraid that their kids are going to say to other kids, oh, my parents told me to just go ahead with this bullshit because – right?
	Well, the parents that I knew, they weren't worried about their kids saying anything like that in school.
	What they were worried about was their kids not actually loving the flag.
	Right. Well, you grew up in the epistemological equivalent of the 12th fucking century, so I have no doubt that the friends of your parents were all along this crushingly tribal route.
	But if the kid comes home and says, well, I was attacked for not saluting the flag, then basically what's going to happen is his parents are going to attack him, right?
	And then what is revealed to him, as I talk about in Our Truth, is that his parents are revealed as people who use his desire for virtue to bully and control him, which is about as evil as you can get, right?
	I mean, it's one thing to bully someone by sticking a knife in their ribs and saying, give me your wallet, but that's just appealing to their base desire for survival, right?
	You're not using their ethics to turn them into your slave, right?
	Whereas if your parents are revealed to you as those who use your desire for virtue in order to impress you into the service of corruption, then they fully understand ethics and they're using it to harm and destroy you.
	So then – Sorry, and your reality processing center totally understands that.
	Because your reality processing center says, "Hey look, some cloth." Right, right.
	Yeah, look, it's a cloth, right?
	It's like an eiderdown, right?
	You know, worship the pillow cover.
	I mean, the only...
	Right, there's no empirical significance to the flag itself, right?
	I mean, it's just a piece of cloth.
	Yeah, I mean, nobody sits there and says, I'm going to found a religion on a pillow cover, right?
	And so because there is this skepticism, this scientific skepticism at the root of every human soul, aggression has to be substituted for empiricism.
	Whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a minute.
	How did you get to that?
	Well, when you're trying to tell someone something that their sense is...
	And their empirical experience completely contradicts, right?
	How are you going to get them to believe it?
	Right. Oh, okay.
	Right, right, right. Gotcha. So then you have to employ aggression in order to...
	Right. Yeah, that replaces...
	That's the only substitute there is for a reason.
	Yeah, wherever you see aggression, you just know you're in the presence of a morally, usually morally exploitive lie.
	Right. Right, that makes sense.
	That makes sense.
	But that leaves me with a rather deep suspicion of cognitively driven emotions at all.
	Because it sounds to me like the cognitive form of emotion is really just a kind of a socialness of emotion.
	Social necessity.
	Okay.
	What I mean by that is like if – well, I wouldn't need the cognitive form of emotions if I could rely entirely upon my experiential emotions.
	Sorry, why would you not?
	Let's say you don't need them.
	Why would you not want them? Well, because the cognitive form is so susceptible to...
	To social pressure, right?
	I mean, the only reason that I would feel any kind of emotions at all around a piece of cloth with colors on it is because I'd been either bullied or manipulated.
	Sorry, there's only bullied.
	Because manipulation always implies the threat of bullying.
	Oh, that's interesting.
	Manipulation always implies a threat.
	And you can see this in my combos with the nihilists.
	They're always implying that you're an idiot, basically, for thinking that anything has any value or whatever.
	So there's always bullying in manipulation.
	There's no such thing as manipulation where there's no negative judgment for failing to comply.
	Right. Right, right.
	That's a good point.
	That's an excellent point.
	But it just makes my point that much stronger.
	I mean, why not only… Not only does it leave me with a distrust of cognitively driven emotions, but it has me questioning why I would even need them.
	If my experiential emotions are really the ones that are telling me what I need to survive, to be happy, to actually thrive.
	Well, I would say it's because empiricism is always about the past, right?
	I built a bridge and it fell down.
	I remember it well, right?
	Whereas the cognitive model, the cognitive approach is about the future, right?
	What can I learn from my bridge falling down consciously that I can extrapolate and reason out and use to prevent my bridge from falling down again?
	Right.
	Okay.
	But emotions are always sort of – I mean, you say yourself, they're...
	The empiricism of values?
	Sure, and the values that we accumulate empirically are past-focused.
	I mean, if I remember a place that I went to vacation and I sort of picture it in my mind, that's because I had an empirical experience of that place, but that memory is lodged in the past, right?
	Right. Whereas if I sit there and say, I wonder where, like I sit down and say, well, I want to have a vacation.
	I wonder where I want to go.
	Then I can picture all these things about where I'm going to go in the future.
	I have much more agility because it's not fixed on the past, right?
	Sure. And let me give you another example just before we go on.
	Your experience of ethical systems prior to FDR was of, you know, grim-willed but...
	Ultimately, dyspeptic dissatisfaction, right?
	Like, I really want it to be true, and I know that it is true, but man, it just doesn't quite feel true.
	I just started, I read a little bit of a book that somebody gave me called A Market for Liberty this weekend, and it was a rehash of Ayn Rand, and I couldn't get too far into it, because it's just like, well, I know this argument doesn't work, right?
	Yeah. The Tannehill book, right?
	Yeah. So you were exposed to these arguments and empirically you got that there was something wrong with them, right?
	I missed all that.
	You were exposed to these arguments and empirically you felt deep down that there was something wrong with them.
	Now, that didn't give you UPB, right?
	No, that's absolutely correct.
	In the same way that if you eat a combination of berries that makes you sick, then you'll say, shit, I shouldn't eat those berries again, right?
	But it doesn't tell you what combinations of berries in the future will not be.
	But even more so, that was what was motivating my search on the internet in the first place, was the fact that I didn't like what I'd found in Rand.
	But I wanted something that worked, right?
	Right, right. So your empiricism had you process that which was as deficient, but it could not create that which worked.
	Right, right, right.
	And for that, obviously you need...
	Well, I mean, you need...
	You need cognitive capacity to do that, but I'm not sure where the emotion comes in.
	I mean, if I recognize that something doesn't work, I mean, that's an empirical recognition, and the desire is to find something that works, then you apply reason and evidence to come up with another solution, right? But how is that relevant to...
	A cognitive, emotive state?
	Well, I can only speak from personal experience here and we'll see if it sort of fits with what you've experienced and we'll see if we can get some principles out of it.
	But I first of all had to go through quite a depression when I recognized that the arguments didn't work.
	The moral arguments, every moral argument that I'd heard didn't work.
	And there's a depression...
	Involved around nihilism, emptiness, meaninglessness, right?
	What if ethics is a complete illusion?
	What if it's all bullshit?
	What if I've been pretending to know something well that I just don't know?
	So there's a humility where you just say, well, I can't believe this stuff anymore.
	And that takes some guts, takes some balls to go through that, right?
	Yeah, that's for sure. And of course, the people who don't go through it or who face it and don't go through it, they become aggressive, right?
	Because aggression is always the response to – it's the immature response to fantasy, right?
	Right. Well, it's the rejection of...
	It's a refusal to believe that you don't know actually what you thought you knew.
	Right. And there's nobody who's more aggressive than the man who has doubts, right?
	He has to shout them down.
	Right. Right.
	Right. That's true.
	Well... Nobody more aggressive than the man who has doubts and refuses to acknowledge them.
	Yes, no, you're right, who views those doubts as wrong or immoral or impossible or whatever, right?
	Right, right, exactly.
	So the mature response to doubt is to go into the cave, right?
	Not to wall it off, not just to say, the reality is that I doubt.
	That's reality.
	And if I respect my basic empirical emotional side, then there's something to that.
	It's not weakness. It's not immaturity.
	It's not a lack of conviction.
	It's not a lack of ethics.
	It's like, I'm not going to make up a story about it.
	The reality is just that I doubt, right?
	Right, right, right.
	So the first thing that you have to do is decide to accept your deepest feelings.
	To accept your deepest feelings, right?
	I doubt. That's just a reality.
	I doubt and it's damn uncomfortable, right?
	Right, right, right.
	And so, that has to be a conscious decision, right?
	Based on... Your desire for the truth.
	And the truth isn't what's on the other side of the doubt.
	The truth is that I doubt.
	Well, I mean, there's two truths there, right?
	I mean, well, there could be.
	What I mean is I doubt and then also – I mean if you're actually in pursuit of the truth, then there has to be another truth there too,
	which is that I – not I don't want to doubt, but – Like, the desire for the removal of doubt, right?
	I mean, even for the guy who...
	Well, if you don't care that you doubt, then there's never going to be any impetus to change that.
	You're just going to stay in a state of doubt.
	No, sorry.
	Doubt by its definition.
	Doubt, particularly ethical doubt by definition, creates discomfort, right?
	I mean we want to be good and we want to do good.
	And we know that because everybody uses moral arguments.
	Everyone, right? Because they're so effective.
	So, doubting your ethics is exquisitely uncomfortable.
	Right.
	So I don't think there's anyone who doesn't care that doubting reality is exquisitely uncomfortable because it feels like you're mad, right?
	Oops.
	Ask – what was that question again?
	Well, doubting reality is very uncomfortable because it feels like you're mad, right?
	So, doubting reality, doubting ethics, doubting truth, doubting self, right?
	If I was a Christian and now I don't believe or I doubt, who am I, right?
	There's existential discomfort in all that.
	Right, right. So doubt is, sorry, doubt is by definition discomfort.
	Discomfort, that's sort of all I wanted to point out.
	Well, doubt is by definition discomfort, right?
	If you're uncertain of that, think of you, I don't know if you ever had this, you're taking an exam and you're certain that you got the right answer for question number two, right?
	Right. And then you come out, and the first couple of people you talked to gave a completely different answer, right?
	And you suddenly doubt whether you gave the right answer, right?
	It's pretty uncomfortable, isn't it?
	Right, right, absolutely.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But there's a self-confidence in accepting doubt, right?
	The reason that we avoid doubt is because we believe that we're incapable of certainty.
	But if we say, okay, like we've heard a million times from people who won't leave their dating relationships because they say, well, I'll just be alone for the rest of my life, right?
	That's an unempirical certainty.
	Right. So if you feel that if you let go of this log, even if it's sinking, you will drown, then you'll hang on to the log, right?
	Whereas if you say, well, I'll leave this log behind because I'm going to swim and find a boat, then you'll leave the log and go and get a boat, right?
	So being willing to cast away your certainties is fundamentally based on the self-esteem...
	Of saying, I can figure it out.
	I can handle being wrong, and I can figure it out.
	Or even if I can't figure it out, I'd rather be honest about being wrong, or at least having that potential, rather than pretend.
	Oh, I see. So, to go back to your metaphor, even if I can't find a boat, I'd rather drown?
	Well, no. It's recognizing that you're drowning anyway.
	Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	Like, if I stay here, I'm going to drown, so I've got to go somewhere, right?
	Right, right.
	Right, because empirically, you can't say for sure whether you're going to find a boat or not, either.
	Well, but what you can do is you can say, empirically, that I'm not going to find a boat for sure if I don't leave.
	Right. Right. Right.
	That much is guaranteed.
	If I don't admit doubt but instead become aggressive, I will absolutely not find happiness.
	I may not find happiness, so to speak, if I let go of my doubt, I may not achieve certainty.
	But I have an infinitely greater chance Than if I aggressively attack other people.
	Or actually, do you mean if I let go of my false certainty?
	Yeah, yeah, you're right. If I accept my doubt...
	Right. Self-esteem is humility.
	Self-esteem is humility, fundamentally.
	Self-esteem is saying, you know, my angry or resentful or immature preference does not win against truth and evidence.
	Reason. Right, right.
	Which gets me back to the point I was making earlier about the experiential emotions, right?
	I mean, if that's where truth lies, then this cognitive layer...
	Of emotions seems to me to be something that we ought to be...
	I wouldn't say avoiding, but if there's an experiential emotion that we can access, it's preferable to...
	A cognitive replacement for it.
	Well, I think that you're – because they're so often used in opposition, I think you're saying that they're innately in opposition.
	I'll give you another example of how your conscious values can enhance your happiness.
	So you did a very moving and beautiful tribute to FDR for FDR 1000, right?
	Yeah. And how did you feel when you were doing that?
	Did that feel, I mean, obviously it's a little weird, you did a video and all that, but it had a certain kind of emotional richness to it, at least that I felt, right?
	Yeah, it felt pretty good.
	So this was you consciously talking about your values in alignment with your deepest values, which brought you additional pleasure, right?
	Yeah. So, Christine and I are pregnant and we're thrilled, but we get even more thrilled when I sit down to read a story to the baby, right?
	We're currently going through The God of Atheists.
	No, I'm kidding. But when I sit down to read a story to the baby and we see the little divot bumps and we can feel the baby moving and so on, it's even better, right?
	Yeah. When someone asks me what I love about Christina, I feel even more love when I talk about how much food she brings me.
	When I talk about how much I admire and respect her and how much I worship her because of her courage and her integrity and her humor and all that, I feel more love consciously talking about what I love about my wife than I do with it just cooking on the back burner as it does all the time. I feel more love consciously talking about what I love
	I feel more love when I talk about what I love about my wife, right?
	Amen.
	Thank you.
	So the ability to give conscious expression to those...
	I don't want to say unconscious, but to those deeper level emotions. but to those deeper level emotions.
	Yeah, you can't have certainty without the conscious aspect of things, right?
	Because otherwise, I don't know, I just put out a bunch of UPB and a bunch of cocaine, right?
	The book would come with a little vial of cocaine saying, snort this while looking at UPB and get a positive correlation of happiness, right?
	No. Well, that's an interesting question.
	I mean, if we look at I apologize in advance for doing this, but I can't think of any other way to put it.
	If we look at a lowland gorilla, can we say...
	I mean, we admit he has emotions, right?
	That he doesn't have the same rational capacity as a human being.
	But can we say that he doesn't have certainty in his...
	Well, we can't say any of that, but we do know for sure that human beings are happier when they have rational certainty.
	That doesn't mean that it's easy to get there, but we know that human beings really like certainty.
	And the reason we know that they really like certainty is they make up so much bullshit to support irrational certainties that we know they really like certainty, right?
	Bye.
	Right.
	Right. So the only way to get certainty and happiness is to have rational certainty, which requires conscious values, reasoning, evidence, trial and error, empiricism.
	Gotcha. Well, wait a minute.
	How does... Well...
	Empiricism...
	Well, because it's certainty about what?
	Certainty about truth, certainty about reality, which means the scientific method includes empiricism.
	UPB includes empiricism, right?
	Which is, let's look at murder and rape and theft, right?
	Right.
	And I guess where I was going with that was the – you're saying that empiricism is a component of both our cognitively driven emotions and our experientially driven emotions or these deeper emotions.
	Well, empiricism by definition is always about the past.
	We can't empirically experience the future because it ain't here yet, right?
	Right, so empiricism is always about the past and the purpose of the scientific method, so to speak, is...
	You cast your theory out into the future to predict what will happen and then you measure it, right?
	What is actually happening which then moves to the past and you evaluate it, right?
	Right. So empiricism can't go into the future because it's experiential.
	It's sensual, right? So it's about what is happening and what has happened.
	But the conscious mind can go into the future.
	Right. Right, right, right.
	So I guess what I'm saying then is how can empiricism be a component of our rationally driven emotions?
	Because before you were saying that, at least according to To your definition that those are about the future, whereas the deeper ones, the experiential emotions are about the past and that's where the empiricism is?
	I don't think that I recall saying that our emotions are only about the future.
	Our reasoning, our concepts, our predictions, our theories...
	I mean, clearly theories have to be about the future, right?
	There's no point having a theory about the past, right?
	Because that's like measuring how a rock bounces down a hill and saying my theory is how this rock bounces down the hill.
	It has to be about something to do with predictive behavior, right?
	Or measurable behavior.
	Right. So then both sets of emotions, the rationally driven ones and the experiential ones, both are about the past.
	Both are about expressions of something that has happened, but not what will happen.
	Well, the problem is we've got something new into the mix, which is rational theorizing, right?
	Right. I mean, certainly, let's put it this way.
	If the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior, the reason that I can feel secure in my love for my wife is because she's not going to be the opposite tomorrow, right?
	So there's some level of predictability in that.
	Right. And because you know that her expressed values and her behaviors are consistent and consonant,
	and so there's no valid reason to presume a change in that Well, and if there is a change in how she behaves, we sit down and talk about it relative to her values,
	right? So even if she acts in a way that is not in consistency with her values, then I know that by saying this is not in consistency with your values, that she will adjust her behavior to match her values or will figure out whether values are incorrect.
	And values are something that we discover within ourselves, not actually assume or synthesize or choose?
	Well, I mean, values are a broad spectrum descriptor, right?
	Cannibals have values, right?
	I like to eat brains, right?
	So there are rational values.
	I mean, if we just choose values as preferences with a conceptual argument behind them, then religion is a value and so on.
	But there are true and rational values, which is consistent with empirical evidence and rationally internally consistent as well.
	Well, the reason I ask that is because –
	Wouldn't a behavior that contradicted an expressed value be an implied desire to change one's values?
	No, I don't think so. I don't think so.
	I mean, a smoker may still yearn for a cigarette, but that doesn't mean that he wants to be a smoker again.
	It just means he wants a cigarette, right?
	I mean, that's a physiological response.
	It doesn't mean that he is immediately going to change his values about not smoking.
	Like dieting, right?
	Right, but if he picks the cigarette up and actually starts smoking it, what are the implications of that? what are the implications of that?
	Well, a smoker who picks up a cigarette almost never, that I can imagine, would say to himself, I'm now going to become a pack-a-day smoker again.
	What he says is, I'll just have one and then I'll go right back on the wagon, right?
	Yeah, that's the case. So he's not rejecting his values.
	He's just saying, I'm going to do a sneaky little cheat here and then I'll be good again, right?
	Right. Well, what would that be?
	If it's not rejecting your values, what would that be?
	Well, that would be like pain management, right?
	That would be like, you know, going to methadone instead of heroin.
	It's like, I'm finding it incredibly stressful to quit smoking.
	I'm going to just have one cigarette to help manage me through the transition.
	Cold turkey was too much.
	And sometimes that can work.
	But of course, a lot of times it just ends up as a relapse.
	Well, and those are rationalizations too, right?
	They're not really proper justifications for changing his behavior.
	He's just trying to rationalize the contradiction between his behavior and his expressed value.
	Oh, sure. I mean, we all have that tension all the time, right?
	And the reason that we have that tension is because we all raise it badly, right?
	So somebody who was raised a Catholic is going to have echoes of Catholicism.
	No matter how long he's an atheist, there's still going to be those floating shreds of scar tissue, right?
	You can't be as if you were never a Catholic, right?
	Oh, sure. That's for sure.
	That is... And there's this Randian revolution that seems like, oh, you know, people can just transition and never be like who they were.
	I mean, that's all, the Howard Rocks, the John Galtz, it's all nonsense, right?
	I mean, it's just a fantasy. And a lot of people break themselves up on the rocks trying to reach that shore, right?
	Right, right, right.
	Right. So...
	Okay, so going back to the guy who wants to quit smoking, going back to that analogy, if he picks up the cigarette and makes a bunch of rationalizations to himself about why he's smoking, just the fact that he's doing that alone is an indication that he hasn't abandoned the value.
	If he's abandoned the value, then he's going to be like, fuck it.
	I'm just gonna smoke, right?
	Right. A bear just chewed my leg off, I'm gonna be a smoker for the remaining 20 seconds of my life, right?
	Right. In that case, it would be an indication of a change of values.
	So, okay, so, alright, so then in that case we also have an implied change in his cognitive emotional state as well.
	Because if he's making rationalizations, he's obviously feeling anxious about the actions he's doing.
	Yeah, rationalizations and aggression are the two ways that we can figure out doubt, right?
	Okay, where those two are present, then obviously there's unacknowledged doubt.
	Yes.
	Yeah, and certainly I would say that rationalizations are closer to acknowledging doubt than aggression is.
	Right.
	It's like you know the elephant's in the room, but you're just looking the other way, whereas aggression is like looking right at the elephant and insisting he's not.
	Yeah, it's like with the Ron Paul guys, right?
	I mean, they did the video series against Ron Paul.
	There are a bunch of people who said, you know, you're an asshole disinformation agent who's here to whatever, right?
	Well, that's aggression, right?
	And there are other people who are like, well, shit, but I don't know what else to do other than political action, right?
	So the first is aggression where the uncertainty is almost completely unconscious, right?
	And the anxiety that I provoke is considered to be an attack upon them and therefore they respond in quote self-defense by attacking me.
	But the people who are saying, well, shit, all I have left is the argument from effect, which is the only way it can happen, that's more conscious doubt, right?
	Right, right, right.
	Okay.
	Right, because they're sort of partially acknowledging that there's something wrong in what they're doing, but they're not sure what or how to change it, right? Right, right. Okay.
	And so, that makes sense.
	Um... From the standpoint of figuring out how to align the two, the deeper set of emotions or,
	dare I call them core values, with the cognitive set of emotions or And they're not really the values themselves.
	They're the expression of the values, right?
	The effect of the values, right?
	So whatever your core values are, when you're actually achieving them, the experiential emotion you have is going to be in line with that, right? And when you're not achieving them, the experiential emotion is going to be not in line with that.
	And the same with the rational values, right?
	Oh, you butted yourself.
	Cool. Go on. Nice!
	I'm just going to sit back for a while.
	It's a cage match, a self-mutilation!
	Well, I'm just trying to stitch the two halves together here.
	Because in both cases, it feels very cognitive to me.
	Like, I still don't...
	Sorry, are you still there?
	Yeah, what I'm saying is, how do you know...
	No.
	No.
	What am I saying?
	Well, I had it there for a minute, but it's gone now.
	I knew there's a reason I didn't put this explanation in the book.
	Okay, let's go back to the framework and we'll just sketch it out very, very quickly here and then we can see if there's anything that's still missing for you, right?
	So there's an accumulation of reality evidence, right, that accumulates within us, right?
	And where we have a mismatch between our conscious values and the accumulated evidence of our lives, we get stress, aggression, depression, unease, whatever, right?
	Now, we can change...
	No, sorry. If we change our conscious mind about certain values, we can change certain emotions.
	And we know this because people claim, and we don't have any reason to disbelieve them, that when they accept Jesus Christ, they feel a certain euphoria for a time, right?
	Right? So they change their mind, and they actually change their emotional.
	So there's a layer of emotions that are open to conscious manipulation.
	We can't affect them directly, but we can affect the thoughts, which then...
	Contribute to those feelings, right?
	Now, there are other feelings, though, that we can't change because they are the result of accumulated experience, which we can't rewrite.
	Right? Like, if I have a memory of going to Thailand, I can't ever not have a memory of going to Thailand unless I get brain damage, right?
	I just, I can't not speak English if that's what I speak, right?
	I can't not learn English, right?
	So there's stuff that accumulates within us based on our experiences that we can't consciously control.
	And then there's stuff that we believe that has a more direct effect on our surface emotions.
	And if we could...
	If I could have an example of that kind of thing in a non-metaphorical way, like if I have an experience of...
	Like what would this accumulated evidence be?
	Like if...
	Well, sorry. It's just basic empirical rationality.
	It's science, right?
	That is the accumulated, we could say, unconscious emotional apparatus because we live within reality and reality is not random.
	It's not religious. It's not weird.
	There's no – I mean it is just a fucking piece of cloth that is flapping around with the stars and stripes on it, right?
	So we have to have aggression to have us infuse meaning into bullshit, right?
	God, Jesus, flags, countries, families, right?
	You're a fucking sports team, right?
	So that experiential emotion would be basically the anxiety of...
	The fear of attack, is what you're saying.
	So that kind of fear would be one form of an embedded emotion, an experiential emotion.
	Sorry, say that again? Sorry, say that again?
	Is that what you're saying? Right, so...
	So that fear of being attacked for not accepting some social fantasy, that would be one form of this experiential non-cognitive emotion?
	No, no. The non-cognitive emotion is just a flag.
	Like, I don't care. It doesn't have any meaning.
	It doesn't mean anything.
	That is actually a feeling.
	It's skepticism.
	It's irreverence.
	It's like... But we are aggressed into these artificial attachments and these artificial feelings.
	There's loyalty to bullshit, right?
	Which is inflicted through aggression.
	The fundamental feeling is indifference, right?
	Oh, okay. So the fear... Right.
	The fear would be the cognitive emotion that was the reaction to the attack or the past history of the attack.
	Yeah, I mean, there would be two emotions, right?
	A patriot feels, quote, love of country, which is the flip side of fear of attack, right?
	Right, right, right.
	Right. And both of those would be the cognitive...
	Well, there are two levels, right?
	So the top level that he consciously says he feels or maybe even genuinely does is love of country.
	Underneath that is fear of attack, right?
	Those two would be in the conscious realm.
	One's deeper than the other.
	But at the very bottom is the empirical knowledge that it's just a piece of cloth and that there's no such thing as a government.
	Right. The empirical knowledge would be indifference.
	Right. Right. And because of that indifference, because there is that fundamental indifference, there is no God, there are no countries.
	Anarchism is just childhood, right?
	It's our original experience of the world, right?
	That's all it is, and that's why people get so mad at it, right?
	Oh, okay, so that's what you mean by it being about the past.
	Yeah, anarchism or philosophy, it's just an attempt to get to our original experience of the world.
	The world without bullshit, right?
	Right. The world without aggression, the world without conformity, the world without mythology.
	The world as it is.
	Right. I was going to say, and so the tension between the two, the tension between, using the example again, the tension between the indifference and the fear slash love, that tension is...
	The anxiety or the depression or whatever.
	And this is, of course, why so many cultures are so hostile to children.
	Well, that's interesting.
	Well, children just look at that and say, that's a pretty piece of cloth, right?
	Right. Oh, right, right, right, right.
	Yeah, they don't know any different...
	Well, they know the truth.
	Right, right, right.
	Yeah, you're right. They don't have...
	They're not conditioned yet. They're not brutalized yet.
	And so the innocence and rationality of a child provokes hostility in the people who are addicted to lies.
	Because that's the only choice they have, the only tool they have for competing with it.
	Well, it's because the child's innocence, it was their own innocence that provoked attack originally, right?
	So when they see an innocent child, it raises huge anxiety in them because they expect an imminent attack, right?
	Right, and when it doesn't come, they produce it themselves.
	In order to relieve the anger. The son of a military guy who learned how to fold the flag in that special way, when his son steps on the flag, what does the father feel?
	Oh, yeah, there's going to be a huge amount of rage and anxiety there.
	Get off the flag! Right?
	Because that's what would cause him to be attacked, right?
	So it feels like the child is aggressing against him, right?
	And so he aggresses against the child, right?
	And in a sense, it is to, quote, protect the child, right?
	Yeah, that's the way it's always presented.
	I obviously will teach my child that a hot stove is not something to put your hand on, right?
	And in the same way, people say society is not something you contradict.
	Right, right. And it's interesting, too, how those are the sorts of examples that always come up whenever we talk about physical punishment against children, right?
	What about the hot stove?
	And what about running into the street?
	And those sorts of things.
	It's almost like it's not an accident that those are the counter examples.
	And, of course, they're completely lunatic, right?
	A hot stove is physically dangerous to a child, and the solution to something that is physically dangerous to the child is not hitting the child, which is, of course, physically dangerous to the child, right?
	I mean it's just a ludicrous example, right?
	Right. Right, right.
	Absolutely. But it just struck me as interesting that that was the example that you pointed out here as just exactly how they would sort of justify, you know, attacking their child for stepping on the flag, right? Right.
	Equating it to pulling them away from a hot stove.
	It just struck me as interesting because that's the sort of examples that those sorts of people would give you, too.
	And that's conflating these two kinds of emotions, right?
	A child will objectively experience pain putting his hand on a hot stove, right?
	But a child will not objectively experience pain if he steps on a flag, right?
	You don't need to have a parent in the room for a child to be hurt by a stove, but you do for a child to be hurt by stepping on a flag, right?
	Right, right.
	Right, exactly.
	They don't need classes in not touching stoves.
	Well, yeah, I mean, I think you need to, you know, prevent and sort of say the stove is hot and explain to them, you know, what happens and so on.
	But it's an objective harm to a child, right?
	It's not a subjective harm which requires someone else to be there to enforce and inflict it.
	Right, right, right, right, right.
	That's exactly right. And I think you actually talked about that in RCR, too.
	Yes, I think I did. I think I did.
	Yeah. Okay.
	Well, that definitely helps.
	One of the things that, as a follow-up question, I was kind of wondering, though, was...
	Why you took the approach you did in presenting the two forms?
	Why you weren't more explicit about your intent to...
	Present these two forms and why you chose to wait until two-thirds into the book to start talking about the second form.
	And then there was a lot more...
	The comparison and contrast of the two was more...
	More implicit than explicit?
	Well, I mean, the purpose of the sequence was I was trying to mirror the sequence that actually occurs when we confront ourselves, right?
	When we authenticate. Right?
	You can't get to your deepest feelings if you're distracted by your conscious conformities or, quote, values, right?
	So, if you explain away your depression as being caused by Satan, then you can't get to your depression.
	So, the emotions that people experience when they're first starting down the road towards authentication, authenticity, honesty, the emotions that people first experience are based on their conscious values.
	Now, when they change those conscious values to be more in alignment with reality, then they hit stage two, whatever stage, the next stage of the process.
	And the next stage of the process is, okay, I have cleaned up My rational values, so why am I depressed?
	Why do I still experience scar tissue if I have cleaned up my conscious values, right?
	I mean, why did Ayn Rand have this hysterical aggression later on in her life when she had all these rational values?
	Yeah, that's true. And I had all these rational values, but I still wasn't able to live them.
	That's when I got depressed.
	So, it's just, yeah, you've got to clean up your thinking that you know are for sure, right?
	Yeah. And once you've cleaned up your thinking and you're more in alignment with your core values, your deepest and truest feelings, as I say, then you can begin to deal with your deepest and truest feelings, right?
	But a lot of people who are into philosophy and psychology who take the surface cognitive model, which isn't the actual cognitive model, the model deals with core values as well.
	But a lot of people want to just deal at that level, right?
	Well, I'm going to tweak my thinking.
	I listen to podcasts. They just want to stay up there.
	But it doesn't work, right?
	Oh, right. Like if I put a heavier rug over top of this pile of dog poop, then...
	It'll smell less. Well, it's something like that, but it is very much like it's using, as I talked about with Nate, this metaphor of the bike gears, right?
	But it's using the conscious mind, which we need to analyze and discover errors in our thinking to become more rational and so on.
	That's all great, but you need to bring these two together, which means confronting the core feelings.
	And that's just around acceptance, right?
	There's a level of proactive work that you need to do to clean up your conscious thinking, and then there's a kind of acceptance and curiosity that you need to do to work with your deep feelings.
	Right, that's...
	I mean, how you do that without engaging consciously, without engaging rationally is...
	Yeah, I mean, if your car is broken, you need to consciously figure out what's wrong with it and you need to fix it, right?
	But that doesn't tell you where you want to go.
	Right. Then you've got to sit there and say, okay, now my car is fixed.
	Right. Where do I want to go?
	What do I want to do? And that is more a process of self-reflection rather than conscious, creative, or proactive effort.
	Right. And actually, I've been thinking about that as well.
	And I wonder if, you know, getting back to this whole question of experiential knowledge or experiential emotions,
	if self-reflection if self-reflection just as a meditative process isn't enough,
	Like how you – I mean – so I could sit all day long in my room with my legs crossed and contemplate the idea of being a fireman.
	right? But I'm never going to get an answer.
	I'm never really going to get an answer emotionally as to whether I really want to be a fireman or not, right?
	Do you see what I'm saying? Well, yeah, but that's not what you do.
	I mean, self-exploration is, I don't know what I want to be.
	I don't even know what the question is to ask.
	I don't have any idea.
	That's self-exploration, not, I'm going to try and will myself into being a fireman by sitting here and concentrating on it.
	Or trying to discover some inner emotional push button that will tell me magically this is what I want.
	Yeah, it's always unthinkable.
	Because if it wasn't unthinkable, we'd have conscious access to it, right?
	So for me, it was like, okay, so I've got to walk away from this big business, all this money.
	I don't mean FDR. I mean prior to FDR when I took the year and a half off.
	When I wrote, like I have to walk away from a career.
	I have to walk away from all this money, all these shares.
	Oh, and I also have to break with my friends and family.
	Right? It's the willingness to be completely shocked by what you have to do next.
	Which only comes from saying, I have no idea.
	Right. Right, and this is what I'm saying, is that you actually had to be willing to actually do stuff and see how it felt.
	No, no, no. I wasn't sitting there choosing from a buffet.
	I wanted to see my family.
	I couldn't see my family.
	No, but I mean like for when you started FDR, it was something of an empirical process for you.
	That's after I authenticated.
	I'm talking about this process.
	FDR was nothing compared to what I went through.
	I didn't need two years of therapy to do FDR. I'm talking about this state where I did not know what was coming next.
	And what actually came next was completely unexpected.
	And I resisted it for a long time, which was walk away from my career and break with friends and family.
	It wasn't even on my radar, right?
	But that was going through.
	I got my conscious thoughts more in alignment with my values.
	And that was just being receptive to what was going on down in the core.
	Which turned out to be much more rational than what was going on in my conscious mind, right?
	The body is not impressed by thoughts.
	The body is only impressed by actions.
	The true self fundamentally only cares about what you do.
	Right. Right. That makes total sense.
	But that's what I'm saying, is that you could only know what you wanted to do by doing it.
	No, no, no. No. I could only know what I wanted to do.
	By first of all saying, I don't know what I want to do, by being brought very low by depression, to the point where I just, I gave up on self-control, so to speak, as I understood it at the time.
	So basically, I give up.
	I don't know what I'm supposed to do next in my life.
	I give up. And then...
	Well, two impulses came.
	The first impulse was to break with my brother, which came after, as I said, sitting for six hours in a hammock, not doing anything.
	That's quiet. Now listen to yourself.
	And the second was that I simply could not stand to see my mother anymore.
	Couldn't stand it. But that wasn't me sitting there making a conscious decision.
	That was me just listening to my instincts, my feelings, my deepest feelings.
	The accumulated empirical evidence of my interactions with them over the past 30 odd years.
	Right, right.
	And I had no idea if you'd paid me a million dollars to guess what was coming next.
	next I would never have imagined that the body is immune to So the body remembers how I've been treated for 30 years.
	And it doesn't care that I can redefine all of that abuse and neglect and violence as good because it's my...
	It doesn't care. It's just a flag.
	They're just assholes.
	Right, right.
	Right, but it also doesn't answer...
	That also doesn't give you the answer to...
	I mean, just in recognizing that...
	Well, I guess it does in a way.
	Like, recognizing that you don't enjoy being with your brother is sort of like an implicit imperative to break with him, right?
	Yeah.
	Once I got the depths of my disgust and injury, I mean, it wasn't easy, but it was inevitable.
	Right.
	Right.
	But to – I apologize if this sounds like I'm trivializing what went on, but the same thing didn't happen with the start of FDR.
	right? I mean, you didn't just lie in a hammock for six hours and then suddenly, eureka, right?
	I mean, you actually had to...
	Well, but I didn't have to.
	But I didn't have to because I had already gone through that process of trusting my feelings and I had been working through therapy in my relationship with Christina through the podcast.
	I had been working on accepting my feelings, right?
	my deepest feelings.
	So I didn't have to go through that, right?
	It's like progressively getting better in a language, right?
	After a while, you just think and speak to it, right?
	So what you're saying is then that that impulse was already – it wasn't something you had to coax out.
	It was just already there.
	Well, I knew that I wanted to do this full time from the beginning, right?
	It was just a matter of trying to put out enough good material that I could.
	Right.
	And implicit in that is the idea that you wouldn't have had that desire if you also knew that it's something that you couldn't have done full-time?
	Greg, we're just going round and round in circles here.
	What the hell is your question?
	I don't understand what you're doing.
	I mean, every time I give you an answer, we get another goddamn question.
	So what is going on here?
	You're just going round and round here, right?
	What is the point of these questions?
	We spent an hour and 20 minutes now.
	Yeah, actually, I think we got a little off track.
	Yeah, we got a little off track. No, we're not off track.
	We're on track for something.
	I don't know what it is, though.
	Well, you pretty much already answered my original questions.
	You got off onto this thing of...
	I don't know.
	I was just trying to follow what you were saying.
	Yeah.
	That's all. Okay, what is the feeling that arises in you right before you ask another question?
	So I give you an answer, right?
	Which gives you a path if you want to take it, right?
	What do you feel if you don't ask another question?
	Well... Just from what you were saying right there, it gives me a path that I could take if I want to.
	I feel frustrated when you say that, and I feel frustrated right before asking you another question because...
	I guess what I'm...
	I didn't see what you were telling me as giving me a path to follow.
	Well, sure. I'm saying that if your conscious values are in alignment, then you have to do that, relax and be curious and open yourself up to your deeper feelings and not know where they're going to take you, but just continue to be curious, self-RTR and all that kind of stuff, right? Yeah. Right, and what I'm trying to do is understand what that means.
	No, what you're trying to do is to avoid an irritation and a frustration by continuing to ask questions, right?
	All right.
	Well, there's definitely a frustration.
	What's the frustration, though?
	Um.
	Well, because I don't know...
	I don't know...
	I don't know what that means in practical terms, like part A fits into sloppy...
	Well, but it hasn't what I've said mean that we have to go in not knowing?
	Right, so not knowing makes you feel anxious, right?
	And irritated. And so you keep asking questions rather than deal with the anxiety and irritation.
	Well, because I'm trying to get the answer to...
	I've already said about a million times there's no answer.
	This is true self stuff, right?
	This is authenticity, right?
	This is the question of what should you do with your life.
	There is no answer, right?
	It's self-reflection. It's negotiating with them ecosystem, right?
	And when you get it, you'll know it.
	Yeah, see, self-reflect...
	Oops, you're breaking up.
	Go ahead. Yeah, go ahead.
	You there? Okay.
	This is what I'm saying.
	Self-reflection, I mean, I don't know how much more I can do.
	I know that you haven't been doing it.
	And how?
	Because if you had been doing the self-reflection, you wouldn't be dealing with the anxiety by asking more questions.
	Yes.
	If you had been doing the reflection, you wouldn't be blowing up at the reporter.
	Right. Oh, that's true.
	You would have been able to talk to Greg M about how you felt during that time that he called you.
	A couple of weeks ago, right?
	Oh, you mean a couple of weeks ago?
	When I got mad at him and you said, yeah, I was experiencing that irritation, but then I smothered it and went with sympathy, right?
	Yeah. Oh, right.
	So you're not practicing...
	First of all, you're not practicing being directly honest about your feelings, but you're still using avoidance mechanisms and defenses, right?
	It's not a criticism. I mean, this is just an observation, right?
	Empirical, right? Well, sure means what?
	Sure, I'm right, or sure, there's something else.
	I agree with you. Right, so you're not putting the RTR into practice, right?
	Gritting your teeth and no matter what...
	saying this is what I feel and I don't know why.
	This is without any malice or prejudice, right?
	Just looking at the empirical evidence, right?
	You haven't had the RTR breakthrough as far as I can see.
	I suppose not.
	Well, I mean, let's try to be clear, right?
	I mean, if you have or you feel that you have that I've not recognized or not seen, then that would be great.
	I certainly know that in this conversation, I had to handle your irritation.
	You weren't willing to do that, right?
	Because you know for sure that if you keep asking me question after question after question after question, what's going to happen in the end?
	I mean, that's clear, right?
	There's no mystery there, right?
	Yeah. Yeah.
	And if you keep going round and round in circles to the point where even you get lost, then you know that the pursuit of knowledge is not your primary goal at that time, right?
	Yeah. No, that's true.
	So, I had to, you know, put a stop to the questions so that we could deal with your irritation and frustration, right?
	But then you say to me, well, how much more self-aware and self-actualized and honest can I be?
	Well, quite a bit, right?
	Yeah, yeah, yeah, you're absolutely right.
	Yep. Yep, that's true.
	So you still don't have that commitment, right?
	to falling on your ass or your face with your feelings in public.
	Because you feel anxiety when I'm talking to you because I don't have a practical, quote, plan of action.
	When, of course, I've been talking about a practical plan of action for a year or more, which is, to be honest with your feelings, which you haven't done, right?
	Again, I'm not saying never, but it's not a consistent conscious plan for you, right?
	And there's only so many times over 18 months that I can hear someone say, after I've told them every day to go north, but which way do I go?
	Right. Right.
	So when people say to me, well, I'm paralyzed, and you're not alone in this.
	That's why we're dealing with this, right?
	Because I've seen a lot of people in the community over the last four to six, maybe three to four weeks, I've seen a lot of people say, I just can't put it into practice, right?
	I get it, but I can't talk about it with so-and-so.
	I'm stuck in this relationship, and I can't do it with this.
	I can't put it into practice, right?
	And that's part of the getting on the beam thing, right?
	Which was the podcast I had with the guy who was continuing to complain about his parents 18 months after joining the conversation, right?
	I'm having trouble doing it.
	And I totally sympathize with that, right?
	I totally sympathize with that.
	It's really, really, really horrible and hard to do, which is comfort to us because if it was easy to do and the world was still sick, we'd be kind of screwed, right?
	Yeah.
	That's true.
	The harder it is, the better it is.
	Right.
	For the world, I mean.
	Well, just in terms of understanding the task and handling.
	I don't mean in terms of understanding.
	I mean the harder it is, the better it is because it means that there's a reason why the world is not well, right?
	If it was totally easy to do, well, and the world was crazy and sick like it is, then there would be no explanation, right?
	Right, right, right, right.
	That's, yeah, that's what I mean.
	That's what I meant. But I mean, just in general, I tend to prefer things that are easier.
	And I think most folks do, right?
	Well, but here's the thing.
	This is the contradiction though, Greg, right?
	If you prefer things that are easier, why the fuck are you here and not at a Baptist church with your family?
	Right. Like, make a decision.
	There's plenty of places to go if you want things to be easy, right?
	Well, because that was incredibly hard.
	Right. This is easier than, like, you're in the null zone, right?
	So you're not in mythology land and you're not stamping your passport to authenticity planet, right?
	Yeah.
	And you can spend another 10 years, right, listening to podcasts and reading and going to therapy and all this kind of shit, right?
	Yeah.
	You can blow a lot of money and time on this, right?
	Or you can just do it.
	Or rather, I can say, and you can just do it.
	It's not either or. Right.
	Right. Nope, that's true.
	And you don't have to do it, right?
	There's no obligation, there's no necessity to, whatever, right?
	Yes, it would be good for the world.
	Yes, it would make you happy. Yes, it would make your online dating successful.
	But you don't have to. Well...
	How would it...
	I'm not sure I see how it would do that.
	Make the online dating successful?
	Well, you manage your interactions with people.
	The only option to authenticity is management, right?
	So, we're not going to get into a shred of a detail here, right?
	But when Greg called you up with his problem, you had an initial response, and then you ended up managing the conversation, right?
	Ooh, I can't feel this.
	That's wrong, so I'm going to pretend to feel this, or I'm going to focus on him, right?
	Right. So, you have this conscious or hyper-conscious sometimes, and this is true of...
	We all do this, right? I mean this is not – I was pretty conscious with the reporter too, right?
	So I mean this happens, right?
	This is not a criticism. It's just we all do this, right?
	Sure.
	So you look for, quote, appropriate behavior when you're interacting with people rather than be genuine and authentic with them, however messy that might be, right?
	Okay, yeah.
	If we go with that particular exchange, that's right.
	That's a good example of that, yes.
	Right. And you've had it with other people on the board.
	You've had it with me and so on, right?
	Where other people end up having to absorb and deal with your emotions because you're not expressing them.
	And I don't know whether you feel it or not.
	It doesn't matter particularly. But because you're not expressing them, other people end up having to manage you, right?
	Because you're managing them, they end up having to manage you, right?
	Right. Right.
	That makes sense. So, if somebody of genuine authenticity comes across you in the online dating world, and then they experience you as inauthentic in managing them, and trying to create a particular impression, then they won't respond to that, that, right?
	Be like trying to date a billboard, right?
	That's true.
	And so you'll be, and of course, you'll be proud if you have a value called self-expression, honesty, openness, whatever, and you actually do it despite your fear, and I have the same fear and everyone has the same and you actually do it despite your fear, and I have If you do it despite your fear, you'll feel proud, right?
	You'll feel proud.
	Say again?
	Well, when we do that, which we value, which is difficult, we gain pride, right?
	Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
	And you'll also feel very alive, right?
	It's impossible to be bored when you're being honest.
	It's impossible to be understimulated when you're being authentic with people.
	I guarantee that. Yeah, that's an interesting point.
	Right, because you've got a problem with ennui, right?
	Ennui, with a sort of slight boredom, with a sense of lack of purpose, with a sense of where's this going, what's happening, a certain lack of concentrated excitement, right?
	Yeah, yeah, I think that's true.
	So that's the price, right?
	right?
	Of not being authentic with people.
	And of not being empathetic, right?
	Because at no point did you say to me in this conversation, we're talking for almost an hour and a half, at no point did you say to me in this conversation, Steph, I feel this urge to ask you another question, but it must be getting kind of exasperating.
	At no point did you say, this is supposed to be a call-in show, there are other people who might have questions, right?
	Just plowing doggedly on, right?
	That's true.
	So you were lacking empathy with yourself, which meant that you couldn't have empathy with me, right?
	Yep, yep, that's true.
	And so that's how I know that you haven't been doing this self-reflection.
	I just, there's 100% knowledge of that.
	Because these are all habits you actually came into the conversation with two and a half years ago, right?
	Yeah, that's true.
	Where you try to figure out what is the appropriate response, where you avoid your own anxiety, where you manage the conversation, where you are unconscious or not sensitive to the experience of the other person and so on, right?
	Now, I'm not saying it's the same as it was two and a half years ago, for sure.
	But that core pattern remains, right? - Yep. - Well, I'm happy to hear how it's not that case.
	I mean, maybe this has happened with other people.
	I'm just talking about what I've seen and experienced and heard about.
	No, no, I'm saying you're right.
	Actually, no, you said it seems that way.
	I'm not trying to be picky.
	I just want to make sure that we're building our house on a foundation.
	Alright, so put another way, that's the empirical truth.
	And the reality, Greg, is that our habits are like slowly forming and setting concrete around us.
	I am interested in creating a sense of urgency in the community.
	Because people postpone doing what they value, doing what is honest, doing what is real, being authentic with people.
	They postpone it one day, one day, one day.
	Tomorrow, day after.
	Not right now, not right now.
	Isn't that the addiction, right?
	Isn't that the addiction? Not right now.
	Not just now. Tomorrow.
	Later. Yeah.
	Well, of course, empirically, tomorrow never comes, right?
	And there is a kind of null zone that people are floating in.
	I'm sorry you're taking the brunt for this, but the kind of null zone that people are floating in.
	Where, oh, they've got the theory down pat, right?
	They may not be able to argue it in the face of strenuous opposition and so on, but they've got the theory down pat, right?
	They certainly have the speak honestly about your thoughts and feelings without coming to conclusions, right?
	Right. And the habit of not doing that is not something...
	That can be indefinitely extended without cost.
	You can eat badly for a long time, one day you get diabetes, right?
	And it's irreversible.
	It's like smoking and lung cancer, right?
	Oh, I'll put off quitting, right?
	Well, one day you're going to get lung cancer and it's incurable, right?
	And what I mean is that the habits that you have that you're unwilling to confront Of distance, of self-management, of the management of others, of inauthenticity, of a lack of commitment to honesty, lack of honesty.
	These habits are like concrete forming around you.
	Every day, you get weaker and they get stronger.
	Yes, that's true.
	Now, I think acting prior to knowledge is unwise.
	It's reckless, right?
	But once we have the knowledge, to not act is something that causes long-term problems.
	And I think eventually irreversible ones, right?
	If you have a habit of not acting on that which you hold as a value, at some point you will just, like pulling a rubber band, at some point it's just going to snap and your theory and your practice won't have anything to do with each other.
	And it can't be stitched back together.
	The false self will always tell you to do it later.
	The false self will say, first of all, no, it's not true.
	And if you keep on with the reasoning, it will say, yes, it is true.
	Let's think about it.
	Yes, it is true. Let's do it later.
	Yes, it is true, but right now isn't the best time.
	Yes, it is true, but this situation is not the right one to do it.
	It's always the same as if it's not true.
	Yeah.
	If you say there is no God but I'll believe until tomorrow, it's exactly the same as there being a God, right?
	And if you say, honesty and authenticity is a real value, but I'm going to do it tomorrow, it's exactly the same as it not being a value.
	It's functionally indistinguishable.
	Right. Right.
	Like the guy who wants to quit smoking, but just keeps smoking.
	Yeah, it's exactly the same as not wanting to quit smoking, except with the torture, right?
	If you're going to keep smoking, at least want to keep smoking, right?
	Right. And at some point, like this rubber band, this elastic band between your actions and your values, at some point, if they continue to widen, it will break. And either adjust your actions to match your values or adjust your values to match your actions.
	But I don't think that you're in that state of unease, right?
	Well, I'm not sure I – You said to me, what more could I be doing?
	Thank you.
	Basically, right?
	And it's like, what more you could be doing is doing it!
	You're right. Nope, you're absolutely right.
	That's an excellent point.
	So, and that's why, like, this is where you are.
	Like, you genuinely believe that you're reflecting, and maybe you are.
	I mean, it doesn't matter to me, because all I can do is judge the actions, right?
	And I don't mean judge. Evaluate, if that makes sense.
	Nope, that's right. Right, right, right.
	So it means that you're addicted to discrediting yourself with yourself, right?
	That's your Simon the Boxer thing, is discrediting, right?
	Wait, what? You were discredited in your family, right?
	Everybody thought you were an idiot, right?
	Pretty much. And in your community, you've been the outsider.
	You have been the guy without credibility, right?
	Who just has wacky, weird ideas that nobody can make head or tail off, right?
	Right, so managing a lack of credibility is what you do, right?
	It's certainly what you grew up with, right?
	You mean managing the anxiety or what?
	No, just managing not having credibility.
	Yeah, the pain, the anxiety, the frustration, the humiliation.
	Because I thought you said that the Simon the Boxer scenario was about managing emotions.
	So when you don't have credibility with people...
	That you care about who care about you.
	It's embarrassing, it's humiliating, it's unsettling, it's uncomfortable.
	So yes, you're managing the feelings, but the mechanism is what you've grown up with is lack of credibility, right?
	How you summon those feelings is through a lack of credibility.
	There's lots of ways of being embarrassed, right?
	There's lots of ways of feeling ashamed.
	There's lots of ways of feeling that you're not up to scratch, right?
	Yeah. Yeah, sure.
	Sure. That's right.
	But the way that you're most familiar with is through lack of credibility.
	He's all talk, right?
	Right. He just talks about change.
	Oh, I see. I see. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
	He just likes to learn these theories, but he's never going to do anything with them, right?
	Right. Right, that's true.
	That's true. And I'm, you know, this was going to be a podcast, but we might as well finish it off now, right?
	I mean, but this question of, like, people got to figure out why they're drawn to FDR if they're not planning on doing it.
	Why are you drawn to philosophy if you don't have an active plan to do it?
	And I'm not saying after you've had three podcasts, now the plan is, I'll do them all, right?
	I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about after you've had some real exposure and emotion in philosophical ideas.
	And some of the stuff we talk about is complicated and some of the stuff isn't, right?
	Around being authentic with your feelings.
	Open and honest with your feelings.
	Self-RTR, right? Right.
	It's not easy to do, but it's easy to have as a plan to achieve, right?
	Right. Like, learning Mandarin isn't easy to do, but it's easy to say, I have to take some Mandarin lessons and then I have to buy a textbook and I have to do X, Y, and Z, right?
	Climbing Mount Everest is damn hard, but at least you know you have to...
	The first thing you have to do is go to Nepal, right?
	So people who are interested, who've been around in FDR for a long time, who've got philosophy or FDR philosophy down pad...
	And who don't have it as a plan of action to do, I think you've got to look at your own motivations there, right?
	What's it for? It's not for actual achievement, it's not for doing, so it must be for not doing, right?
	And why would you pick something in order to not do it and still stay in the community, right?
	Because if you're not going to do it and somebody leaves or whatever, right, then we don't know, right?
	But if you're around not doing it, what's that for?
	So what's it for? That's a good question.
	And that's something to reflect on, right?
	Yep. For sure.
	And it's a two-way relationship.
	What you're saying is I am going to undermine my own credibility by not doing it, but I'm also going to undermine the credibility of philosophy by not doing it, right?
	Right.
	It's like – It's like purposely trying to discredit philosophy along with yourself.
	Yeah, I mean if I show up at a diet convention at 300 pounds saying I followed this guy's diet for three years, I'm either discrediting myself by saying, well, I'm lying, or I'm saying, well, I have done it and I'm discrediting the diet writer guy.
	Right. Right.
	Somebody's got to be discredited, right?
	Somebody loses in this equation, and that's your family, right?
	In your family, someone had to lose, right?
	It was always a zero-sum game.
	If your parents became more confident, it was at your expense, and if you became more confident, it was at their expense, right?
	So in this situation, either FDR loses credibility or you do, right?
	It's a zero-sum game, right?
	There's no way that both can gain credibility.
	I see what you're saying.
	Yes, that's correct.
	Thank you.
	Somebody just wrote on the board, I think it takes time and a lot of struggle with thoughts and feelings.
	Absolutely. It doesn't take time, though.
	At some point, you have to just have an action plan to do it.
	At some point, there has to be a commitment to do it.
	At some point.
	And then what you do is you struggle with the difficulty of doing it, right?
	Right.
	Right.
	And...
	And I kind of thought that that's where I was at, but I obviously am not.
	Well, empirically, though, I mean, it's very easy for you to figure out that you're not, right?
	Because RTR is around honest expression of feelings, right?
	And you know you're not there, right?
	What happened with Reporter?
	What happened with Greg?
	As of a few weeks ago, you weren't there, or even close, right?
	Right. So even if you say, well, I'm there now, then what you'd have to say is, I've completely turned it around in the last few weeks, right?
	No, that would be ridiculous. Well, you could say, I've realized that I wasn't there a few weeks ago, and I've made a complete commitment to do it now, right?
	I could say that, yes.
	But that would be bullshit too, based on the contents of this conversation.
	Right. And the behavior is twofold.
	The first of the behavior is to be unconscious of your anxiety and some of your hostility.
	And also, it is to say to me, what more could I do?
	I don't think that I could conceivably do more than what I'm doing.
	Right.
	And of course, the key word is doing, right?
	Right. That's right. Right?
	Listening to podcasts won't change a damn thing in your life, right?
	Reading RTR won't change a damn thing in your life.
	What will make a change in your life is doing it.
	Right? Reading diet books does not make you lose weight, right?
	Wait. Sure.
	Reading diet books does not make you lose weight.
	Looking at pictures of scarred lung, cancerous lungs does not cause you to quit smoking, right?
	Right. That's true.
	So if a guy who's overweight is staring at pictures of skinny men in diet books, right, and not changing his diet, he's doing it for the self-humiliation, right?
	He's doing it to torture himself, right?
	Yeah. Yeah. Right.
	Right. Right.
	That would make sense. And all that has to happen, fundamentally, is you just have to love the world more than your history, right?
	It has to come out of love.
	You have to love the world more than your history.
	You have to love the future more than the past.
	You have to love the possibilities rather than the scar tissue, right?
	Because if you say, well, I'm done with discrediting philosophy, I'm done with discrediting myself, I'm done with that as a habit, as a compulsion.
	And why would I go through all of that discomfort?
	because I want the world to be a better place.
	Right.
	Right.
	And I can't really say that until, I mean...
	it's true.
	Because otherwise I'm just saying it.
	And we can spend the rest of our lives not living the truth.
	And then we get thrown in the ground, they throw some dirt in our face, and we take the dirt nap for eternity.
	And the world continues to be the shit pit that it is, right?
	That's our choice, right?
	That's right. But if we do want to start to turn this thing around, if we do want to start to make the world a saner and healthier place, it has to start with what we do in the world.
	Not what we listen to in the privacy of our iPod planet, right?
	Right. Right.
	Right. Or what we claim we do.
	Right. Right.
	And that is just an act of love.
	And it really is an act of self-love, right?
	It is an act of self-love for you.
	And it's a very hard one for you to do.
	It's hard for all of us who've grown up without love, right?
	It is an act of self-love to rise above the habits of our histories.
	To say, they forced me to eat shit when I was a kid.
	But I'm going to change my diet now.
	In the real world.
	In real time. Right.
	I'm not going to sprinkle some icing of philosophy on it and eat the same stuff.
	Because there's no path to leadership without doing it.
	And there's no way to have credibility with other people unless you have the unconscious, incredible credibility of having done it.
	Right.
	Everyone's a genius.
	That doesn't just mean us. That means everyone we talk to.
	And if we talk about the values that we hold without the unconscious credibility that comes from having done it, We are discrediting ourselves and our values, right?
	There's a difference between, like, if you have, right?
	But, I mean, if you donate to FDR, then you can say to somebody, of course the poor will be taken care of in a free society.
	I know that because I'm doing it, right?
	Because I am the poor in your free society, right?
	As are the listeners, right?
	Right. But if we say to somebody, oh yeah, the poor will be dealt with in a free society, when we haven't actually done it, they don't get the words, they get the unconscious reality.
	There is no way to convince people in the absence of having done it.
	There's just no way to do it.
	Because everyone's a genius and everyone's a philosopher, and they get whether we've done it or not, whether we say it or not.
	That's correct. And our genius comes out of doing it.
	It doesn't come out of thinking about it.
	It doesn't come out of postponing it.
	and it doesn't come out of avoiding it.
	The genius, the lever, the levers that we have, we all have to change the world, only flash into existence after action, after achievement.
	And not on the gathering of theory.
	I'll give you a completely sick example.
	Hitler was able to convince the Germans to murder people because he had murdered people.
	There is an integrity that comes with having done stuff.
	There is an integrity in communication.
	Why is it that Barack Obama can talk without ever talking about the war crimes of George Bush?
	Because everybody wants to avoid it.
	If everybody wanted to talk about it and he wanted to avoid it, he would fail.
	But he's giving people what they actually want, right?
	Which is to avoid it and to talk about bullshit like the audacity of hope, right?
	And where his genes come from rather than the war crimes of the empire, right?
	He's doing the avoidance that they're doing.
	That's why he has traction with them, right?
	That makes sense. There is no substitute for the certainty that comes from action.
	And if you love the world enough, you will act because that's the only way that the world can be helped, right?
	If we all have cancer and I say I have a cure but I won't take it, nobody will buy my cure, right?
	Say again?
	If we all have cancer and I say I have a cure but I won't take it myself – Nobody will take the cure, right?
	Right. But if I take it myself and I'm cured, I am irresistible.
	So in a strange sort of way, you're making my point?
	Uh-huh. The certainty comes in doing, not in contemplating doing.
	Well, the contemplation has to come first, right?
	You have to look at a map and you have to calculate how much gas you've got, but at some point you've got to put the pedal to the metal, right?
	Right. And you are not short of theory.
	Right. No, certainly not.
	So you have to say, look, I've got to stop using philosophy as a substitute for my family.
	I've got to stop using the FDR community as a way to lose credibility.
	And I have to act out of love for the world and for the future and put away my addictions.
	Right. And make this conversation alive and real to people.
	Show them what is possible when you act upon the truth.
	Show them a fiery commitment and a willingness to be ridiculous.
	Show them courage not avoidance.
	Show them action and achievement not theory and avoidance.
	Love the world enough to inspire it with action, with doing.
	rather than paralyze it with questions.
	Because your whole thing was, man, it's so fucking complicated, all this theory...
	And by the way, I've been doing it for years and it doesn't get me anywhere.
	Your whole conversation with me, Greg, was...
	It's complicated, incredibly complicated, and it doesn't work.
	How inspired do you think people would be when they listen to all this shit that you come up with?
	And your questions were great. Don't get me wrong.
	I enjoyed them, right? It was fun.
	But they say, okay, this is a guy who's been in FDR for a couple of years.
	He's got all these questions and he says, okay, Steph, well, everything that you've been telling me I've been doing and it doesn't work.
	How inspiring is that to people?
	How encouraging is that to people?
	How is that going to make people want to get into philosophy?
	No, you're right. So what you're basically saying to me, Steph, is I'm pissed off that I have to do it.
	I'm pissed off that I have to put my money where my mouth is.
	I'm pissed off that I can't just think about it.
	I'm pissed off that I can't just read a diet book and shed 100 pounds.
	And the way that you act out that aggression Is to try and drive people away from the conversation Oh, that's an interesting point.
	And that manifests itself in...
	Endless questions, endless complications, endless cross-questions, being confused yourself, and then at the end when I give my saying, I don't know what to do that is different from what I'm doing, and I say, well, this is what you do, and you say, well, I've been doing that for years and it doesn't work, right?
	That's you saying, well, I'm not going to be discredited, Steph, you're going to be discredited.
	Right, you're right, you're right, that's right.
	And all of that comes from an anxiety which is you're just sick and tired of not doing it, right?
	Fundamentally, aren't you completely bored with your life at the moment?
	Right. Yes, I am.
	So what you're doing to me is saying, Steph, I'm completely sick of where I am.
	Well, and not willing to admit it.
	Right, because when you admit it, then you have to start acting, right?
	Right. Right.
	Because I promise you, you won't spend a boring moment as an authentic human being.
	Well, maybe a moment or two, but not many.
	With genuine empathy, curiosity, authenticity, you will light up the room.
	You will light up the chat room.
	You will light up your Skype conversations.
	You will leave people energized and empathetic themselves.
	Right? Right. It's more than hope, I know.
	Right, that's true.
	That's true. Just from your own experience, right?
	And that has nothing to do with perfection, right?
	We all paralyze ourselves with, I've got to get it perfect, but that's nonsense, right?
	If you can get it perfect, there's no courage, right?
	Right, right.
	Right, right. If you have foreknowledge of that, then you don't need courage.
	Right. And so this is where your ennui leads you.
	This is where your avoidance of action leads you, right?
	Which is to boredom and creating frustration in other people, right?
	And to feeling exasperated and frustrated yourself, right?
	So when I pointed this stuff out before, you're like, oh my god, that's so right, right?
	And then you go right back. And the next time, it's, oh my god, you're so right, right?
	Yep, that's true. And that's why I say to people, right, you either got to do it or you got to go on to some other place, right?
	Right, right. I mean, you can't just keep coming to class, right?
	At some point, the whole point is to graduate and be a surgeon, right?
	Yep, that's correct.
	That's exactly right. And with the full knowledge that you don't have to do it, you can surrender to fear, you can avoid the challenge.
	That's six billion other people in the world and all throughout history have done pretty much that, right?
	So there's no necessity, right?
	Six billion and one isn't going to change the world, right?
	But to be actively involved in the conversation without doing it after a couple of years is completely discrediting to both of us, right?
	And so you have to at least like me enough to want to do it, right?
	I hope, right? You have to at least care enough for me to want to do it.
	Or I would put that out as a friendship request, right?
	You have to at least, I hope, care enough for me to want to do it.
	Even if you don't care enough for yourself, at least care enough for me and what I'm trying to do.
	I do. I mean, I... Well...
	Because if it can't be done by anyone except me, then I'll shut the site down because I'm just being cruel, right?
	Yeah. Right, right.
	And I mean, I don't even really feel like I have the right to say that I want to do it because, I mean, if that were true, I'd already be doing it.
	Well, you want to do it, but it's unconscious, right?
	You don't – you know, you just haven't put the flag in the ground and saying I'm just going there, right?
	Right.
	That's right.
	People will accept the fact that you lost your career, moved, right?
	Living as a roommate. They will accept that if you're living a vital and honest life, right?
	Right. But if they say, okay, well, Greg before, Greg after, what are the snapshots, right?
	Right before, it's a sort of mildly morose and practically ineffectual guy in a nice place, right, with a car, right?
	The after shot is a morose and slightly – mostly morose and ineffectual guy in a not nice place with no car.
	Right.
	Well, it's just – I mean it's just – this is the Simon the Boxer, right?
	Somebody is just asking, is it discrediting if we say Greg hasn't addressed his personal history issues enough?
	I don't think that's the case.
	I think what Greg has not done is given himself the absolute of action.
	And I wish I knew what that meant.
	It just means that if I feel anything, I'm going to take pauses in the conversation and I'm going to see what I feel.
	And then I'm going to be honest about it with the person I'm talking to.
	Right? That's all it is.
	Right. If I feel the urge to speed up, I'm going to slow down.
	If I feel the urge to ask another question, after an hour, I'm going to take a pause and see how I feel.
	These are all things that you're capable of doing, even if you put it on your monitor as a reminder.
	I'm going to commit to communicating with as much emotional honesty as I'm capable of.
	That's the flag in the ground.
	And whatever reminders I have to put outside there...
	I'm gonna put those reminders and I'm gonna follow them, right?
	That doesn't mean that you immediately become Mr.
	Authentic 24-7.
	God knows. Nobody is, right?
	But that's what I mean by a commitment to action.
	I'm going to ask people what their experience of interacting with me is.
	I'm gonna tell people what my experience of interacting with them is.
	And I'm going to rigorously, consciously monitor my emotions.
	We train ourselves for honesty like we train ourselves to run a marathon.
	You start small, you have a sequence of goals, you just keep working at it.
	But it's about doing.
	It's about making that leap to say, I feel this.
	Right.
	And I know for sure I haven't been consistent yet.
	No, you don't have it as a plan.
	As far as I know, you don't have it as an actionable thing, right?
	Well, uh...
	What you say is, oh, I should be more honest, right?
	I really work on that, right?
	It comes and goes.
	I mean, I've...
	I mean...
	There have been occasions when I've done it, but it's just not a regular thing.
	But you don't have a commitment to do it.
	If it happens, it happens.
	It's not a plan, right?
	The commitment to do it is the commitment to do two things, to monitor your feelings and to speak them honestly.
	You can't speak the truth unless you know the truth, right?
	You can't talk about your feelings unless you know what they are.
	That doesn't mean you know why they are, but you know what they are.
	No, that's all very true.
	So, I don't know that you have something in your mind which says, my commitment is to be honest in at least one conversation today and to prepare yourself to sit down and say, okay, well, what am I feeling before I even start to try to be honest?
	I'm going to go into the board.
	I'm going to monitor my feelings and talk honestly about my feelings.
	I'm going to ask people for their feedback, right?
	You don't have it as a plan that I know of or I've ever heard of.
	No, you're right.
	You're right.
	You're right, I don't have that as a plan.
	There's not even a plan for a plan, right?
	You're like, hope it happens, right?
	Wait, what? Well, I mean...
	It's always been after the fact.
	I look at something after the fact and go, oh, wow, I should have...
	That should have been done a whole lot different.
	It should have been handled a lot differently than it was.
	Yeah. And I think from that that next time it'll improve because I was able to look at a conversation after the fact and see where all the mistakes were.
	And then subsequently the same thing happens again.
	It doesn't actually equate to any improvement.
	And how long has that been going on for you?
	Well, at least three or four months.
	Oh, come on. Oh, please, don't make me come over there.
	At least. Don't make me come over there.
	I will. No.
	Are you saying to me that you had this great honesty more than three or four months ago, and then it just vaporized?
	No, no, no, no, no, no.
	What I mean is more than three months ago, I wasn't even doing that much.
	So it wasn't working and you were unconscious of it for 30-odd years.
	And now for the last three or four months, you've been conscious of it and it hasn't been working.
	So normally, of course, when we want something and what we're doing doesn't work, what do we do?
	Well, we evaluate. We say, okay, well, flipping over my, you know, when I failed a math test, flipping through and saying, oh, shit, well, I got marked down for that, and then failing the next math test, right, at some point we say, well, I guess I should have a more proactive plan than looking at how I failed.
	Maybe I can study ahead of time and prepare, right?
	Right, right.
	Right, you're right.
	Or I can talk to people in the community and say, this plan I have is not working, right?
	That's right. But of course the reality is that the plan is working, right?
	Because the plan is not to be honest.
	The plan is to lose credibility.
	That's a good point. I mean, it's like libertarianism, right?
	The plan is not to make the government smaller, right?
	Because then they'd be changing their approach, right?
	The plan is to feel like rebellious outcasts and outsiders and to be disrespected and manage all of that exclusion, right?
	That's why there's so many nerds there, right?
	It's just high school with a degree, right?
	Yeah. It's just an athlete to the chess club with Austrian economists, right?
	Economics. Anyway, so the plan is working, right?
	It's just I'm inviting you to have a different plan than to lose credibility and undermine philosophy.
	Right, right, right.
	And that's why I'm getting angry.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or no, why I'm getting irritated because, not anger, but irritation because you're...
	Yeah, telling me to take my plans.
	What you want to do is have another question, have another complication, put everyone's head in another 360, right?
	And then to say, well, I have been doing it and it doesn't work.
	All of this is just a way of saying I don't want to do it, right?
	I'm too scared, right, at the moment, or I'm not conscious of it, but that's where I am.
	No, that's right.
	And when pushed to action, people get ferocious, right?
	Particularly when it's pushed to action on values that they themselves have, right?
	That's true. How do our parents feel when they tell us, we love you?
	And when we say, can you put that love into action, don't they get hostile?
	When the government says it's here to serve and protect you, protect your property, it's like, okay, well, the first thing you should do is get rid of taxes, right?
	Yeah, the last thing you want to say to somebody who says that to you is prove it.
	Right.
	But the reality is when we ask people to live by their values, they tend to get very angry because almost everyone uses values as a form of self-manipulation almost always to do with family history.
	Right.
	Right.
	That makes sense. And the way that we break that cycle is not to change our thinking, but just to do what we say we want to do.
	Just do it. Just plan for it.
	Execute on it. If it doesn't work, try something else, but just to do.
	And what I say I want to do is, or what I have been saying I want to do, is to be more honest.
	Well, I would say that the goal is to be honest.
	And the path is, yeah, just focus on that, right?
	Oh, right.
	Right. And your approach is like, geez, if I could just figure out the subtle distinction between empirical and conscious emotions, right?
	Like, that's the important thing in your life.
	Oh, if I could just split this atom one more time, right?
	Right. Well, and the whole point of...
	It seems the whole point of bringing that question up is just...
	I mean, it was just all part of this, right?
	Well, I think so, yeah. Yeah, it's just...
	Yeah.
	It's in complete contradiction to...
	Yeah, don't make me give up on people over 30.
	Some other people have been helping me along with that.
	But don't be the final nail in that coffin of like, hey, if you're over 30, get lost.
	Right? Give me a fluid brain example of a commitment to change that can be achieved.
	That's all I'm saying. Right.
	Right. Right.
	Right. And, um...
	I guess I could start right now and just say that, um...
	I feel pretty, uh...
	Um...
	Well, I feel all sorts of things right now, I guess.
	afraid, angry, sad, ashamed.
	But I don't think it's fair to say that I don't know why I feel those things at this point.
	I mean, two hours into the conversation, I should have some idea why, I would think.
	Well, I appreciate that.
	I mean, I feel good.
	I feel enthusiastic about this conversation.
	transition point, I guess, right?
	I feel encouraged.
	I feel motivated.
	I feel energetic because I feel good about this fulcrum, this tipping point, right?
	I mean, that doesn't mean you'll do it, right?
	Because that's your choice, right? I don't have any control over that, but I feel content that I have expressed at least what I was thinking and feeling, and hopefully in a way that is motivating and so on, right?
	But I feel encouraged about the possibilities in a way that I didn't earlier.
	I'm trying to see if I feel that same encouragement.
	Well, you don't have to, right?
	That's not the point. It's not to mirror my feelings, right?
	The point is just, that's what I feel, right?
	Your feelings don't have to have anything to do with my feelings.
	That's just what I feel. Right, right, right.
	Right, and... I just, I feel, okay, this I don't know why I'm feeling, but I just feel tense.
	But on the plus side, not bored.
	Tense, like...
	Yeah, well, the tension just comes from the imminence of action, right?
	Well, that certainly could be it.
	I mean, you're either going to do it or you're not.
	So you're either going to succeed or fail, but there's not going to be a null zone, right?
	I would at least be happy with failure, because then I would have some...
	Yes, absolutely, for sure.
	And that's where the tension comes, right?
	So you're going to go to the Olympics. You're either going to win or you're going to lose or you're going to trip or whatever, right?
	But at least there's going to be a culmination, right?
	Right. Right, that's exactly right.
	Now, I'm also feeling hungry.
	So I'm going to go. Yeah, actually.
	So am I. Sorry to keep you on the line so long today.
	No, that's fine. I think this is, I mean, the reason I spend so much time on this and I appreciate your patience in the conversation is that this isn't just you, right?
	This is something I was talking about with Christina on Friday night, right?
	Just this feeling that people are having tough time putting the spinning wheels on the tarmac, right?
	Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	That's definitely been the case for me.
	It's been that way for a while.
	Although, I don't think it's, in my case, I don't think it's fair to put it quite in those terms.
	It's been more like circling the airport, refusing to land.
	Right, thinking fuel will last forever, right?
	But the plane is not solar powered.
	Right. Right, right.
	Yeah, that's...
	I think that pretty much fits the situation.
	All right, well, thanks. I do appreciate that.
	I'm sure we'll get some feedback on this call.
	Mostly, my ears hurt because my...
	Headphones are pinched. But I appreciate that.
	And just to say, have a plan, right?
	Monitor what you feel.
	Take pauses in the conversations.
	Honestly express what you're feeling without conclusions.
	It's just there are some basic processes that you can go through which will guarantee to bring you to a closer state of honesty.
	You just need to keep doing that and keep doing that and keep doing that until it becomes a habit.
	And that action is completely within your control.
	Excellent.
	You can hear it at the end of the podcast then.
	At the very end. Okay, I'll talk to you soon, man.
	Have a great night. Okay.
	Bye. Thanks.

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