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Aug. 18, 2008 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:04:32
1128 The Drug of Truth

The pushers are out there...

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Good morning, my Glories!
I hope that you're doing well at Steph.
It is August, well, it's 11.06am, August the 19th, 2008.
And I guess I wanted to do a bit of a follow-up from the conversation that I had with Greg on Sunday, because it is a topic that had been rolling around my head, and I talked about it, as I mentioned,
with Christina. The Friday before the Sunday, so I thought I'd like to go into a little bit more detail about this very interesting configuration and challenge that is going on at FDR. Not only is this the biggest and most successful, conversation that philosophy has ever known.
I mean, tens of thousands of people, tens of thousands of books, but what I think is really unique about it is not just the size and the success, but what is really unique about it is the barrier to entry.
If you wanted to, you know, hang with the Socrates in ancient Athens, You kind of had to be a sort of a rich punk, right?
He's not like your average field worker or slave was going to have the leisure to get educated, to roll around, to go to Plato's Academy and to sit and philosophize.
And I was thinking about Banana Hands Anthony Robbins and Anthony Robbins is interesting because he's like three days and two grand or something like that.
Or you can buy the tapes, which I guess are relatively cheap and so on.
Actually, I have no idea how much the tapes are.
It is beyond my ken, but let me look it up while we...
While we keep talking. There's the Landmark Forum, which comes out of Werner Erhard's Est program from the 1970s.
And that...
That was pretty pricey.
And that was like five days and $3,000.
And this would be, I guess, about ten years ago or something like that.
So that's pretty pricey, and I guess there's a huge time commitment there.
But this is...
There's no barrier to entry at FDR, right?
And that's kind of new, right?
That's kind of unprecedented that you don't have to give up to sort of get engaged in a deep...
Philosophical conversation.
And I'm putting the Anthony Robbins and the Landmark stuff kind of loosely into that category for want of a better set of examples.
Or, of course, there's higher education.
You can get involved in higher education, study, take a course in philosophy or take degrees in philosophy, which is years and Thousands of dollars in tuition, tens of thousands or more in deferred income or unpaid income, lost income.
And all of those engagements in a philosophical conversation, they all...
Take a huge amount of time and money.
And so, in a sense, you kind of have to, not even in a sense, really, in fact, in reality, you have to be pretty motivated to get involved in those kinds of things, right?
You have to sort of have recognized an issue already.
You have to have explored alternatives, right?
You have to have something that You need to fix.
You have to have a problem, you need to fix it, and so on.
And you have to have researched the alternatives, and you have to have invested the time and money to say, okay, well, I'm going to overcome my skepticism, I'm going to invest five days, and those landmark days, they're like 18 hours, right? I mean, it's like boot camp.
And you have to get involved in all of that in order to participate in the conversation.
And the other thing, too, of course, is the amount of material is pretty huge, right?
So you go to the Anthony Robbins thing, or you go to the Landmark thing, and you can keep going in Landmark.
I mean, my God, can you keep going in Landmark?
They have no particular objections to that.
My brother's been into it for, I don't know, gosh, 12 years?
And, I mean, he's still taking courses and doing stuff and involved in that aspect of things.
And he's probably paid them...
Oh, I'm just guessing.
$30,000? $40,000?
It's a huge amount of money, right?
But that takes a very large amount of time commitment, right?
So, that kind of thing is different.
It's quite different. From what it is that we do, what we do here.
Because there, as I said, you have to have identified a problem, researched the alternatives, get involved, invest a very large amount of time and money and all this and that, right?
And with this, though, it's very different.
And if you want to keep going, you have to keep investing the time and money in those other things.
And this means everything from the Socratic sitting on the steps in the sun talking about philosophy to going to another Robin seminar or buying more stuff or, you know, whatever it is that you're going to be doing.
And a landmark, you've got to keep paying them to get involved in the courses.
So... All of that kind of stuff is limiting.
It's limited, right? By the amount of money and time that you have available to you.
And it pre-selects people who already know that they have an issue or already have a thirst for philosophical knowledge and so on.
But that's not how FDR works.
At all. You don't have to defer...
This is going to sound like a pitch for the economic value, which I've already done, but that's not what this is about.
But you don't have to defer any income to get involved in philosophy at FDR. You...
We can listen to the podcast while you're driving to work, at the gym, walking, you know, while making love, of course, and all of those kinds of things.
So, there's no need to give up, really, any particular thing in terms of days and thousands of dollars in order to get involved in philosophy.
And, I mean, it is a sort of infinite try-before-you-buy situation where you don't ever have to buy, right?
So it's very different from that standpoint.
You don't take a landmark course and then pay them what you feel like it's worth at the end.
And, of course, getting involved in the conversation is free, of course, insofar as, I mean, no cost for podcasts, and...
You can self-study at your own time, at your own pace, based on what your own interests are, and participation, of course, in the board and the Sunday shows and the chatroom and so on.
It's all perfectly free, on your own time, and the relationships that you form through FDR are, obviously, your business at your own time and at your own pace and so on.
So, the interesting thing...
The interesting thing about all of this is that it's just very different from anything that's come before, because the barrier to entry and the cost of getting involved in philosophy is so low.
That, and I think, I mean, I think, because I'm not a motivational speaker by any stretch, in fact, quite the opposite in many ways, right?
I seem to push people to the brink of terror fairly regularly.
But, I'll make myself a nice omelet here.
Omelet to cheese or not to cheese, that is the question.
So because the barrier to entry is so low and people are not self-selecting or not self-selected for existing problems and there's no particular dedication to philosophy at the beginning and I don't really get into the personal stuff for the first 60 or 70 podcasts particularly because of course it's important to give away free crack before you start charging for it.
So the barrier to entry is really low And there's no self-selection for existing problems, and there's no concomitant or associated dedication to bringing things into practice.
I mean, FDR really is philosophy for the masses, and it is out of my enormous respect for the masses, that would be you, that I don't dumb it down a shade.
Philosophy for the masses.
The masses are fucking geniuses, right?
You are, and you are an incredible philosopher and a genius, and so FDR is philosophy for the masses with no barrier to entry.
Never existed in the history of the planet before.
And it's nine-tenths the medium, and one-tenth me, I think, I hope.
And I don't dumb it down a shade, and I also don't I pimp it up a lot.
Use all of these big, heavy words, and you get these people on the board who'll come by who will talk all about these big, ugly scientific terms and quote obscure passages from books and say, you know, well, if you can't read this in the original German, you know, blah, blah, blah, right?
So I don't pimp it up, and I don't dumb it down a shade.
And I assume that everyone is a genius, and so far, that thesis...
More than stands.
I mean, people are even smarter than I thought at the beginning, which is why the conversation keeps growing.
So this is the first instance of philosophy for the non-philosopher's philosophy for the uncommitted, let's say.
And please don't misunderstand me.
Uncommitted simply means that There is not the same investment up front that is required.
Therefore, the level of commitment is not required to be as high.
It doesn't mean that every grad student is committed to philosophy.
Lord knows! We've seen more than a few of those who just plain aren't.
But what it does mean is that people get involved in philosophy without the same level of commitment to it.
And we will say, grad students are committed to something to do with philosophy, even if it is only, you know, being pompous windbags and wanting to become academics, right?
But they're still committed to something in philosophy, something to do with philosophy.
So, this has created a very interesting situation, I think.
And the situation runs a little something like this.
And I'm going to generalize wildly and hopefully not enormously and accurately about this.
And you can see if it sort of fits, right?
Now, since we've been plugging away at this thing for a couple of years now, three years or so, I guess, since we've been plugging away at this thing for a couple of years now, there are no...
no excuses left for inaction, for not doing it, other than it's incorrect.
I was talking about this with Christina last night.
Just look at something as simple as RTR, which is one of the hardest things.
RTR and UPB are really damn hard.
As far as know what you feel and express what you feel without coming to conclusions, And the curiosity, all of the aspects of relatedness that we talk about here and that there's the book on.
Maybe there's a big flaw with UPB that we haven't thought of yet, and that's certainly possible, of course.
But I was talking about this with Christina last night.
It's really hard to think of what's wrong with RTR. It's really hard to think what's wrong with being honest about what you think and what you feel and not mythologizing and jumping to conclusions.
It's really hard to figure out how that in personal relationships is bad, right?
So, if that is good, or something that is positive, then doing it is important, right?
It's a positive.
But... What's happened, or I think what's happened because of the extraordinarily low barrier to entry, is the level of commitment is lower, and philosophy, again, wildly generalizing, philosophy has reached you, and in the past, philosophy never would have reached you, right?
I mean, there's people who are involved in FDR, Love them!
They got like a high school education and they work on a factory line and so on, which I think is wonderful.
They are as brilliant as everybody else.
But if you're one of those people, you're not exactly designed to receive philosophy, right?
Because of the cost and the commitment and so on, that it would have been absolutely impossible for you to listen to hundreds or thousands of hours of philosophy for free In the past, right?
So there's kind of like a mismatch in a way, right?
And I think that's causing a lot of challenges.
I mean, I think it's an essential passage, right?
Because I think that everybody should be a philosopher, or rather everyone should recognize that they already are a philosopher.
So there is definitely a mismatch in terms of the availability and ease of consuming this stuff versus the commitment to changing based upon it.
So basically, we have a lot of people who have, in a sense, they'd be moved to a cliff edge that they were never supposed to stand on.
If you're somebody whose mind has been lit up by philosophy as a result of FDR, if you've listened to dozens or hundreds or more of the podcast, and no matter what you've donated,
and I say this with all due generosity and respect to what it is you guys have done in terms of your donations, but If you have...
No matter what you've donated, it's not the same as the value that you've received, because it's a unique value, and there was no need to...
For you to spend money or invest time up front, you've got to evaluate the quality and so on, right?
So, I know that it's worth almost infinitely more.
The truth is worth more than 50 cents an hour, right?
50 cents a podcast. So, no matter what you've donated, you've still received more value.
And, I mean, I've had some pretty honking donations, and I really appreciate those more than I can even express.
But still, the value.
The largest donation that I have received is still about...
One-fifth the cost of one year of university, like when you sort of count the full cost of living.
And I know that FDR is worth more than one-twentieth of a degree in terms of money, right?
And of course, people find degrees worthwhile pursuing, even if degrees don't help them get bad people out of their lives and save all of that money on not having to buy presents for people who treated you badly for the rest of your damn life.
So, you know, again, this is with all due respect and all due generosity and all due, I mean, respect for the generosity and all due thanks.
There's almost no way, unless somebody dies and leaves FDR, I don't know how much money, which, you know, if you're thinking about it, I certainly appreciate it.
But you just, you can't, there's no price, in a sense, for the truth.
There's no price for certainty about ethics and reality.
And there's no price for...
Starting and pursuing the process of self-knowledge, which is the result of the psychology approach or aspects that we have in this conversation.
And this is not, you know, a pain of self-praise, because this is a community, and I can't be any smarter than the listeners.
But what's happened is that a lot of people have been pushed to the cliff edge of philosophical action.
Some even in the graduate school community.
They've been pushed to the cliff edge of putting values into practice, right?
And clearly, you can make a hell of a lot of money giving people non-confrontational actions.
You can make a huge amount of money Selling the illusion of integrity to people.
That's one of the most essential human businesses that there is.
You can look at the Ron Paul campaign, you can look at churches, you can look at motivational speakers, you can look at Dr.
Phil. Selling the illusion of integrity.
Because people have a hunger for integrity.
They have a hunger for action.
That is meaningful. They have a hunger for the pursuit of truth.
Deep down, we all have that drive, that desire.
It's a primal need.
And selling false meaning to people, selling false integrity, is one of the most basic human things.
Economic activities. Well, economic exploitations.
That's what people do, right?
So I was talking last night with a listener who doesn't really like his mom and can't say as I blame him, and he didn't get her something for Mother's Day.
She called him up and guilted and bullied him, and he sent her something for Mother's Day.
Because she was, of course, saying to him...
That a good son, a good person, would send me something for Mother's Day.
I'm hurt and upset. You shouldn't make me hurt and upset.
That makes you bad. And the only way that you can redeem yourself is to send me a present.
That, of course, is the illusion of integrity.
The illusion of virtue.
the exploitation of virtue, as I talked about in Untruth.
Religion, of course, sells nonsense integrity.
*shriek* It sells nonsense progress.
It sells nonsense virtue.
Pay me money and I'll tell you you're good!
Give me a present and I will stop calling you bad.
This is the negative economics that we've talked about before.
But charging for approval is a fundamental aspect.
of human life. This is one of the most fundamental exploitation.
starts with the family, goes through public school, goes to the churches, goes to the state as a whole.
If you don't pay your taxes, you can't call yourself patriotic.
You can't call yourself good.
You're a cheat. You're a dead beater.
That one has actually become less Valuable over time, less important over time.
Excuse me, there was a cartoon, I think put out by Warner Brothers in the war, which was about, you know, if you don't pay, the Axis powers will kill our children.
If you don't pay your taxes, then in the war, Second World War, Axis powers will kill our children, blah, blah, blah.
Support the troops. So, selling virtue, selling approval.
It's a foundational human activity.
It's really at the root of an enormous amount of human economic interactions.
Synagogues, I guess rabbis, will go to Jewish couples and say, well, you have to have children or you're continuing the work of Hitler.
You have to join the synagogue at two grand a year or three grand a year.
Because that is virtuous, that is respecting your heritage, that is honoring your forefathers.
So they're just selling you virtue and charging you huge amounts of money.
Imagine if I, in order to listen to FDR, you had to subscribe at $250 a month.
Madness. And of course, the people who want to be the most...
This is the perfect thing about this system.
The people who want to be the most virtuous are the people who end up the most enslaved, ensnared, entrapped, obedient, conformed.
Because the people who want to be the most virtuous, who care the most consciously about virtue, will be the people who will take the cues from their environment and pay whoever...
We'll convince them that they are virtuous by paying them, right?
So that doesn't occur very much within the realm of philosophy.
It does occur actually within the realm of academic philosophy, which is not a free market situation, but a communist situation, right?
Communism and statism coercion, of course, corrupts everything it touches, which is why you get people who are not interested in the truth who go into academics, but they are interested in getting academic positions, which means conformity with Academic hirers, not with the truth, right?
Which is why they're so freaked out and hostile when they come across a cogent argument for the truth that they can't bring to their environment.
It brings up that contradiction to them, right?
And just as a last example, if you look at the Ron Paul campaign, this was the illusion of integrity, the illusion of action, the illusion of progress That, I've got to say, was sold at a pretty high price.
I mean, what did they raise?
$25 million? That's a lot of money to charge people in order for people to feel that they are doing good.
You're selling the illusion, or the feel-good, you're selling the endorphins of virtue.
That's what these institutions do.
This is what... This is what churches and governments and families do.
They sell the endorphins of virtue, and there are.
I mean, when you feel that you're being virtuous, you actually do.
Endorphins are released and you feel good and so on.
We've all experienced that.
So, you know, it's a drug, right?
Virtue is a drug that institutions sell for a vast profit, because it's very, very cheap to produce.
All you have to do is approve of someone and call them good, and that's not exactly like producing...
An iPhone, right?
I mean, it doesn't require a lot other than sophistry and, quote, credibility.
But, of course, the older the institution, the better it tends to be at this kind of stuff, which is why there's a lot of conservative elements in these sort of, quote, virtuous people.
So, if someone believes...
Like if someone believes that, sorry, if I believe that if you tell me I'm good, I'm good, then I will continue to pay you for that hit, those endorphins, those feel-good hormones and experiences.
And of course, conversely, once I can convince you that my judgment of your virtue is the same as integrity, then not only, it's a double-edged sword, right?
Because... Then my approval gives you the high and my disapproval gives you the low, right?
So I can then play you like a puppet and continue to extract as much cash and obedience from you as I want, really.
And, of course, I want you to give me your children first and foremost as a way of...
Children are the livestock that this farming...
This drug system relies on.
So, there's a way of avoiding the personal terrors of actual integrity in person.
There's a way of avoiding these things which is commonplace and widespread among humanity.
There was a guy, sorry to be talking about a guy who was in the chat room, he seemed like a nice fellow, intelligent fellow, and he was saying to me, he said, Steph, do you think that you're going to change a lot when you have a kid?
Do you think that your fundamental outlook is going to change?
And I said, no, I don't think so.
It didn't change when I got married, and it didn't change when I hit 30 or 40, and So I don't think that my fundamental outlook is going to change.
I'm sure it'll be refined. But a child is a miracle, and it's a beautiful thing, but it's not a philosophical revelation, right, where you suddenly, you know, up is down and black is white and so on.
And he said, well, I think that you will.
I said, I think that you will find that your feel-good philosophy will give way to a real dedication to make the world safe for your children.
I cranked out five books in the last year, and 200 podcasts, and 100 videos.
Lord knows how many emails and board posts and so on.
I'm cranking stuff out like a philosophy factory.
I don't think that I could actually be more dedicated to making the world safe for my children without courting an aneurysm, which would be the net result of attempting to increase my workload.
That was a non-positive experience.
And, of course, I asked him, because he's a father, right?
So if he says, look, your commitment to making the world a better and safer place will vastly increase once you have children...
And I said, okay, well, you know what I'm doing with my life, right?
Which is attempting to bring as much philosophy to as many people before I plunge into the old dirt nap.
And so you know the amount of effort and risk and challenge that I am taking on.
And the cost that is there is clear for all to see.
And the benefits, of course, right?
I'm not trying to cry a river here.
If this person is saying to me, as this person did, he said, well, you know, you'll become really dedicated to helping the world.
And so I said, okay, well, you know what I'm doing.
Can you tell me what it is that you're doing as a parent who's had this revelation to change the world, right?
Of course, I knew it was nonsense, but it's important to ask the questions, not because I want to prove that I know that what he's saying is nonsense, but because I want him to see what he's really talking about, right?
And he said, well, I... You know, I read Lou Rockwell.
I've been reading a lot of books on Austrian economics, right?
I've been doing X, Y, and Z. And all of it was just abstract, self-educating.
I'm not going to say nonsense, because, you know, knowing stuff is useful and important.
But I said, but that's about you, right?
That's about educating you.
That's not about saving the world.
Well, I've talked to a couple of people and managed to sway their opinions to some degree, and blah, blah, blah, right?
And he said that he had donated to Lu, he hadn't donated to FDR. But that to me is not a lot, right?
Frankly. That's not a lot to be doing if you say that, you know, I am really dedicated to saving the world and Steph is not, right?
Then, you know, at least give me the respect of doing a lot more than I have, you know?
Well, I sold my house and took out advertisements for, you know, I... I talk to people on the street and try to get them interested in philosophy.
I sold my car and used it to book a speaking hall where I invited people to come and listen to philosophy, you know, this kind of stuff.
But it's like, well, I spent some time on some message boards and I read some books.
I mean, come on.
Everybody knows that that's just not going to do it, right?
But, but, What the Lou Rockwell sites, the Ron Paul campaigns, the, I guess, Reading Murray Roth, but what that gives you is the feeling that you're doing something.
And people will pay for that, right?
Now, the challenge...
Sorry about these noise.
I'm just putting the plates away from the dishwasher.
The challenge with FDR, right?
What is unique about FDR is...
You know, it's like that Janet Jackson song, right?
What have you done for me lately?
That's what philosophy says, right?
What have you done for me lately?
It's what the virtue of the world says.
What have you done for me lately?
And that, of course, is a very important question.
So, when people say, I am worried about freedom in the world, then they want to do something, right?
Because they say, Well, the lack of freedom in the world is a bad thing, it's making me anxious, the government's getting too big, I don't like the war.
Wars. And so, they have this impulse to do something, to achieve something, to take a stand.
And, sadly, With this honest and noble impulse, or in the face of this honest and noble imposter to help improve and change the world, in come riding a whole bunch of assholes.
And those assholes say, if you do what I say, you're doing something.
If you read my website, you're doing something.
If you buy my book, you're doing something.
If you donate, you're doing something.
Ah, I hear your cynicism.
Listen, I will get to it, don't you worry.
So it's sort of like...
There's a bunch of people in the world who wake up, thousands of people in the world, smokers, who wake up every day and say, man, I've really got to quit, right?
And then there are a whole bunch of assholes who come in and say, you don't have to quit.
If you buy my chewing gum, you will be safe from cancer, right?
They're using people's legitimate concerns and fears and desires for a better state to sell their shit.
So people say, well, I'm afraid of the state, afraid of the powers in the world, and then all these assholes come along and they say, well, don't worry, because all you have to do is give to Ron Paul, right, or read this site, or read that site, or go to this, listen to this podcast, or, you know, educate yourself, right, consume our stuff, and you're doing something!
And people will swallow that nonsense because they wish to gain the relief of feeling like they have integrity and are doing something without actually having to do something, which is, as we all know, who have actually done something, is pretty uncomfortable,
right? So, these asshole interventionists who come in and take away or exploit people's desire for a better world for their own personal gain and almost always financial those people are kind of like a curse in my opinion and the difference here and of course this is the big challenge that we face with the low barrier to entry to tie into what we were saying earlier the challenge here is that I say yeah You can do something.
You don't have to pay anyone, right?
Because you don't have to donate to Ron Paul.
In fact, donating to Ron Paul is nonsense.
Reading another article about the Fed is nonsense.
That once you get the basics of, you know, violence is bad, and, you know, if UPB helps you with that, fantastic.
If there's another way of getting there, fantastic.
But once you get those basics, Then integrity is both very simple and very hard, right?
Because what happens then is integrity comes down to using the against me argument, right?
Which is not, do you support taxation in the abstract or violence is bad in the abstract, but mom, dad, sister, brother, friend, cousin, roommate, do you support the use of violence against me?
Do you support me getting shot for your preferences, for your Virtue.
Does your virtue consist of me getting shot or thrown in prison and gang raped?
Is that what your ethical argument comes down to?
Do you support the use of violence against me?
And that is actually living with integrity.
I would go to my grave with that on my lips.
That is living with integrity.
Because if violence is evil and people are supporting the use of violence against you, Then that support is immoral.
If evil is bad, then you should not want immoral people around you.
And if they support the use of violence against you, then they are immoral.
I mean, this is not complicated.
That aspect of things is not complicated.
So bringing the against me argument, and the against me is just one example of the many that we've talked about here, where we bring personal arguments to bear.
Right, so the one about, well, I had to hit you as a child because you were forgetful.
It's like, okay, so if you forget something as an adult, I'm allowed to hit you, or if you develop Alzheimer's, I'm allowed to beat you.
Well, no, that's right. Or say, well, I was totally fine with hitting you as a kid.
Say, well, why did you hide it?
Why did you never do it when there was a cop around or in public or anything?
That kind of stuff, right? So the personal arguments that we bring to bear, right?
If violence is bad, then clearly the violence of the people around you is more important than the violence of the state in your life, right?
And of course, it's far more actionable, right?
The violence of the people around you, you can actually do something about in terms of confronting them and Speaking your mind about the damage that the emotional or physical or, heaven forbid, sexual violence to those around you, right?
Their support for violence against you in the form of statism and all that, that's stuff you can actually do something about, right?
Reading the Fed doesn't help you do a goddamn thing except bore people and alienate them from the truth.
So, at FDR, It's all about what you can actually do in your life that you have effect over, that you have power over, that is virtue in action, right?
If the non-aggression principle is valid, and of course I believe that it is, then the place that you then bring it to is the people who have been violent or abusive towards you in your life.
That's where you go. And if you don't have people who are violent and abusive in your life, wonderful, fantastic, I think that's great, then you need to bring to them the problem that if they are a statist, then they support the use of violence against you, right?
Which is abusive, right?
If I say, if I said to you, if you disagree with me, I'm going to hire some guys to come over and gang rape you, Clearly that would be abusive, right?
If I put that on a forum, if I put that in an email, if I yelled that at someone during a debate, I'm going to shoot you in the kneecaps, drag you to a room and have people gang rape you, clearly that would be an abusive statement.
I mean, if that's not an abusive statement, there's no such thing as an abusive statement.
And if that is implicit in people's support of statism around you, and you don't confront them on it, Then you're just not living with integrity.
I mean, just not. Then violence isn't really that bad, right?
If you can be threatened with assault, bullets, and gang rape, and that's not that big a problem, then clearly the non-aggression principle is meaningless.
It means nothing.
It means less than nothing. It's an embarrassing distraction.
So... People don't want to confront that, right?
You don't, I don't, nobody does, right?
People don't want to actually live with integrity in this realm because it's really hard, right?
If you get out of the NAP and you get into Sunday dinner with people who approve the use of violence against you and talk at that level, its philosophy becomes, at least for a time, distinctly uncomfortable, right?
And people don't, they want the benefit, right?
They want the benefit, they want the endorphins of virtue, They don't actually want the trials of virtue.
It's like people want to lose weight, they don't want a diet.
A heroin user wants to be happy, he just doesn't want to actually do the things and live with the kind of integrity that will make him happy.
So people who want the effect without the cause in A free market philosophy are derided, right?
In the objectivist philosophy, in the free market philosophy, they are derided.
Freeloaders, second-handers, parasites, leeches.
So state unions are considered immoral because they want the effects of higher wages without the cause of higher productivity and greater competition.
The welfare, oh man, they want the effects of Money without the cause, which is productivity or charity.
We deride these people who want the effects without the causes as an unjust situation.
But if we want to be virtuous and we accept the NAP, and what we do is go and read a book or an article, rather than talk to the people in our lives about virtue and the horrors of what it is that they support, which is the use of violence against you, Then you want the effects of virtue without actually the cause of virtue.
You want the effects of integrity, the endorphins, and the self-respect of the pride that comes from, quote, living with integrity, without actually having to go through the messy and unpleasant process of actually living with integrity.
And before this was confined, before FDR, this was confined to a relatively small number of people.
A relatively small number of people.
Now, That people have listened to millions, millions, literally millions of FDR podcasts.
People have watched half a million FDR videos.
And especially with the free books, there is no barrier to access to getting a hold of these ideas.
It's read in a pleasant way, in an audiobook.
I'll hand out the print books for free or send them to people at my expense.
There's no barrier to entry.
To getting hold of these ideas.
So this is kind of unprecedented, right?
And there's a lot of people then who have been led to this cliff edge of direct action, of actual integrity, of living the NAP rather than just talking about it.
There are a lot of people Who have been led to this place?
Who never would have been there before?
And there are...
Maybe...
I mean, if you accumulate all the listeners of FDR over the last couple of years, it's probably at least over 100,000.
That doesn't mean there are 100,000 listening to this right now.
But people who've dipped into and out of FDR, who've listened to a couple of podcasts...
Got to be over 100,000, and maybe even higher than that.
I mean, it's 30,000 to 40,000, as we say, listeners.
Just in total, 100,000 to 200,000.
So 100,000 to 200,000 people, that's a lot of people, right?
I mean, you found a university that processes 10,000 students a year, that's 10 to 20 years.
We've done in two or three.
Really two. Two and a half, maybe.
since February of '06, when the website went up.
So...
This is unprecedented, right?
That hundreds of thousands of people have now been exposed to philosophy from the ground up with actionable intent, with a refusal to be drugged by the appearance of virtue, the appearance of integrity.
The appearance of action.
There's no precedent for that, right?
So, what does this mean?
Well, it means that there's lots of people trembling on the brink.
And it means that Like, the people who are into political libertarianism, again, just to pick on something that we've already discussed a number of times before, the people who are into the sort of Ron Paul love illusion, those people, they're not actually interested in helping the world.
Because when you're actually interested in helping the world, like when you're actually interested in discovering something true about the universe, you don't pray, you use science, right?
if you're actually interested in discovering a mathematical truth, you use logic, right?
So, the people who are, you know, give all this money to the Ron Paul thing, it's not because they want to change the world.
They're buying the endorphins of feeling like they're doing something without the anxiety and the fear and the terror of actually having to do something personal and meaningful and true in their own lives, right?
So they'll donate to Ron Paul, but they won't use the against me argument with the people in their lives, right?
So they're using philosophy to selfishly make themselves feel better.
at the cost of the world, right?
Because as political libertarianism as I've talked about has been pursued as a goal as a program The world has gotten consistently less and less and less and less and less and less and less free But they're like fuck the world I want to feel better!
I want to reduce my anxiety about the world becoming not free.
So I'm going to become a precinct captain for Ron Paul.
Or I'm going to read libertarian sites and articles and books and blah blah blah.
So that I can feel like I'm doing something and I can gain the relief and the superiority that comes from feeling like you're doing something.
Those people who try to use philosophy end up the most miserable people you will ever meet, right?
And this is true of people who are libertarians, political libertarians who are older.
A miserable bunch of oddities If you try to use, using philosophy in many ways is even worse than trying to use the state to get what you want.
People who are libertarians deride corporations for using the government to increase their profits.
Whereas political libertarianism, and religious people too, they use philosophy to make themselves feel better And they deride corporations who use the state to gain profits for not competing in the open and free market.
But they themselves don't live their values and they use philosophy and economics to make themselves feel that they are doing something for freedom and all they're doing is using philosophy at the expense of freedom and expense of the world in order to make themselves feel better.
To make themselves feel like they're doing something.
It's like the guy no human being would forgive running to God for forgiveness.
And that's pretty gross, right?
To say the least, that is pretty gross.
And this is the big tension, right, that FDR brings to the freedom conversation, the conversation about authenticity and honor and integrity and virtue.
I mean, this is the tension that is brought to these topics by FDR, which is, it is only the personal that is really actionable in the world.
It is not big, honking abstractions that are actionable.
It is the personal.
And when people try to use philosophy to make themselves feel better, to make themselves feel like they're achieving something, all that happens is that they discredit philosophy.
Right? I mean, it's like some...
Skinny, sore, besotted, smelly, miserable junkie saying to you, man, heroin is great!
Right? He discredits himself in his presentation.
And if people say, well, you see, the non-aggression principle is virtuous and aggression and violence is really bad...
And what they actually do is not bring this up with the people who are in their lives and make their determinations on the value of those relationships based on whether or not people are willing to accept that as a core value in their lives, in the real world, as things are, in what they have control over, then all they're saying is that this is a value that I do not believe in, right?
The non-aggression principle is a value that cannot be lived, that must be eternally avoided, right?
All they're doing is discrediting philosophy.
Discrediting the non-aggression principle.
If I say this is the highest value, and I get really angry when someone says, oh, then you should live it, then all I'm saying is, it's bullshit, right?
It's not designed to be lived.
It has some other purpose.
And the other purpose, of course, is to gain the endorphins of virtuous action without actually having to be virtuous, right?
To gain the six-pack without the sit-ups, so to speak.
And this is how those without integrity fuck the future, right?
Because, and I'm sorry, this is going to be long, but I'm really trying to crank in as much value as possible, so I hope that you will forgive me for that.
Let's just take my cod liver oil here.
People's lives overall always end up resembling their relationships.
People's lives, particularly in the second half of their life, as they get older, people's lives tend to end up resembling their relationships.
If you want to know...
How your life is going to look in the future, all you have to do is look at how you treat people in the present.
And if you allow people to exploit you in the first half of your life, if you allow people to exploit you and treat you badly, then all that will happen in the long run is that You will end up resentful and controlling of others,
right? Because if you allow people to hang around you who you define as immoral or negative or problematic, then you will end up without good people in your life, and you will end up having to spend your life managing and controlling the people around you who are dangerous, who are unpleasant, who are immoral, who are difficult, who are abusive, who are whatever, right?
Now, the immediate benefit of that, of course, is That you don't have to confront them.
You don't have to figure out how these relationships, what they really mean and how they really work.
You can avoid all of that, right?
So that's the short-term benefit of that, right?
Like, the guy who's a smoker can avoid quitting smoking by simply focusing on the anxiety reduction that comes out of Avoid having the next cigarette, right? Lung cancer is one cigarette at a time, right?
And the quality of your relationships is one interaction at a time, one avoidance at a time, one concession at a time.
That's how it works, right?
And let's say that you're 20 and you are going to have kids in, you know, 10 years or so.
If you come from a family where abuse is the default position, then this obviously has been going on for, you know, maybe a thousand years, maybe more, maybe forever. Most likely forever since we come from abuse originally, right?
Crawling up from the animal life was crawling up from abuse, right?
I guarantee you that in 20 to 30 years, certainly by 30 years, these ideas are going to be common coinage.
Because they are true and they are valuable, though they are scary, these ideas will become common coinage.
That doesn't mean everybody will agree with them, of course.
No more so than everybody believes in evolution, but evolution as a concept is common coinage.
People, even those who disagree with it, know basically what it is, right?
Even if they distort it.
So... I'm trying to help you avoid the worst thing in the world, in a sense, which is the most difficult thing in the world, which is the defu.
I hate the defu.
I hate the defu more than I can say.
The defu is the worst thing.
Except for continuing to have a life full of abuse.
So... In 30 years, your kids will be 20.
Or, you know, late teens, early 20s, whatever, right?
And if you have kept your parents or bad people, or if you have not made this transition, right, then your kids, at some point in their teens, without a doubt, will be Exposed to the ideas of FDR. If not by you, then by someone you know.
If not by someone you know, someone at their school.
If not by someone, one of their peers, one of their teachers.
All of these kinds of things.
The ideas of FDR will be available to your children when they get older.
And what are they going to think?
What are they going to feel? How are they going to experience when they find out you listened to FDR 30 years ago and you kept all the bad people in their life?
How are they going to feel when...
I mean, we can legitimately get angry at our parents for their bad behavior when they had far less theoretical underpinnings and knowledge Then it's available through FDR. Will your children be able to forgive you if you find it very hard to forgive your parents when you have greater knowledge, greater access, greater resources, greater integrity, and greater capacity for integrity?
or, sorry, capacity for greater integrity.
Right, I'm helping you to look back at your life from a future vantage point, which is a very common technique, right?
Where do you want to be in 10 years? Where do you want to be in 20 years?
And so on. And the quality of your relationships.
What kind of relationships do you want when you're 40, when you're 50, when you're 60?
Who do you want around you on your deathbed?
Are you going to design your relationships to placate the past or to enlighten the future?
Because if your kids get to 20 and they know you've listened to FDR, they listened to FDR, and you didn't live it, and you don't have a good reason fundamentally why, other than, I guess I chickened out, I guess I evaded, I guess I took the easy path, Then it's defu or be defood, right?
It's not that extreme a choice for everyone, but let's just talk about it in these terms.
If this has been going on in your gene pool since the dawn of the species, and you chicken out too, wish I could put it in a nicer way, and I totally understand the fear, and I respect the fear, but we do it anyway, right?
If you chicken out, then first of all, obviously, you cannot criticize your parents.
I mean, you can, but it's bullshit.
You can't criticize your parents if you can't make the change.
Because if you can't make the change with all the freedom and knowledge and resources that you have, with me, a guy who will have a conversation at no cost for as long as it takes to help you with these issues anytime you want, With the Ask A Therapist series, with FDR as a whole, with all the other resources that are out there available, with all these free books, RTR, UPB, On Truth.
If you can't make the change, if you can't make that transition, you have no right to criticize your parents.
No right at all.
It's pure hypocrisy for you to criticize your parents.
To say, I can't lift a 10-pound weight, but they should have lifted a 100-pound weight.
And I want you to think of how your kids are going to look at you in 30 years or 20 years.
That certainly...
I'm conscious of that myself as a father-to-be.
How's my kid going to look at how I live my life when he gets old enough to understand how a life should be lived and how I have claimed life should be lived?
What is he going to think of me?
What is he going to think of my choices?
If you have an abusive family situation and you don't deal with it, Dealing with it simply means being open and honest and vulnerable with regards to your parents.
If you don't deal with it and if you don't get abusive people out of your life, you will be the abusive person that your kids get out of their lives.
I don't want that for you.
I don't want anybody in this conversation to ever face the receiving end of the defu canon.
I don't want anyone in this conversation to ever face the receiving end of the DFU canon.
I am trying to build, as best I can, I am trying to build wonderful and beautiful families in the future.
Wonderful and beautiful and intimate and fun and courageous and noble families in the future.
The reason you're not going to take the next cigarette is because of the lung cancer in the future.
But the lung cancer in the future, medically speaking, is only a possibility.
Only a third of smokers die of smoking-related causes.
But the defu of the future is virtual certainty.
If you don't get the corrupt people out of your life now.
If you don't get the corrupt people out of your life now, you will be the corrupt person your kids get out of their lives in the future.
I don't want that for you. You have a choice that your parents no more have.
Your parents don't have that choice anymore.
They can't go back and be better parents.
They can't go back and be better people.
All they can do is manage and bullshit about the fallout of their bad decisions.
But you have a choice.
You have a choice now.
Which is to clean up your personal relationships.
To take that leadership role within the species.
To take that leadership role within humanity.
And to go forward with your values in action.
And you don't have to do it any more than you have to quit smoking, any more than you have to quit heroin, any more than you have to quit drinking.
You don't have to quit hypocrisy.
But I'm just trying to tell you that there are consequences so that you can make a more informed decision and so that these tens of thousands of people who are standing uncertain, terrified, and eager at the edge of a cliff to the future, to a better world, to a new world, To a braver and more noble world.
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