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Oct. 9, 2008 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:29:54
1171 Designing Our Life

Reminding ourselves of death helps us design our life.

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So, James, career malaise.
Career malaise.
That's a very appropriate way to put it.
When did it strike?
That's kind of assuming I've ever had career satisfaction.
Yes, but it's more now, right?
And just remember, for those who aren't talking, if you could mute, please.
Thank you.
I guess.
I mean, I haven't felt...
I haven't really felt anything remotely relating to satisfaction for at least three years now, I think.
I mean, it's hard for me to say whether it's more now, because...
I don't know if it feels different or not.
I mean, it's hard for me to put my finger on it, you know?
Right, right. Because never having had an actual job that I enjoy, you know?
It's kind of like, well...
I mean, at first I thought it was...
You know, well, I'm just in the beginning of my career.
I'm just getting started. I have to, you know, take my licks, right?
You know, or what is it called?
Do your time, right?
Pay your dues. Pay your dues.
There you go. There you go. You have to pay your dues.
We were so close to blue collar we could taste it.
Right, right.
You know, do your time in the trenches, right?
And so, you know, I... I've never had like a...
In one sense, I've had like trenches jobs.
But in another sense, I haven't had like trenches jobs.
I've been like the guy in an organization which does IT. I don't know if that qualifies.
Anyway. Yeah, it's definitely become more...
I will say that it's become more of a feeling of urgency as time has gone on.
Because I haven't become more satisfied.
I haven't discovered anything that seems more satisfying.
So, if that makes a little more sense.
Sorry, when you say you haven't discovered anything that seems more satisfying, what do you mean?
In terms of...
Well, certainly I haven't been engaged in a job that seems more satisfying, for sure.
Right, okay, and by job you mean sort of salary-paid kind of thing, right?
Yeah, you go in, you get paid, and that sort of thing.
You trade your time and experience for money, basically.
Right, okay. And where do you stand at the moment in terms of what you want to do next?
I don't want to quite put it as I don't know, but I'm kind of at a loss.
I can't, at the moment, consciously point to a category of jobs that I, you know, or a career path or something that makes sense that I feel anything remotely excited about.
Yeah, like you were talking about, I can be a sales support engineer.
Yeah. That would be like a different elephant sitting on my chest, and that would be like progress, right?
Yeah, I suppose. Or, you know, I could do management, but I don't really feel one way or the other about it, right?
Right, right. So you're facing this indifference, right?
Yeah, I mean, even just getting a job for money, right?
I feel incredibly indifferent.
And sometimes the indifference grows into disappointment and despair because it's like, well, I know I don't like where I am now.
And in the chat you did point out that it's more about I don't like who I become, who I am.
When I'm in the job more than not liking the job itself.
Right. I mean, it's important to be precise about the things that we don't like, right?
Otherwise, we can't fix it, right?
Right. And I didn't make a lot of...
I didn't come up with anything really new in the couple of hours I was...
I stepped out of the chat, but I... Oh man, what was it?
The one thing that I thought I might have come up with.
If it was really important, you would have remembered it, right?
So you don't like who you are in that environment, right?
That's what you said, I don't like my job.
And I say, well, you can't dislike a job because a job doesn't exist, right?
There's no such thing as a job, right?
Right. It's like a country.
It's just a description of a relationship, right?
Right. Like, there's no such thing as a marriage, there's a man and a woman, right?
And snacks. But there's no such thing as a job, right?
So you can't dislike that which does not exist, right?
No, right, right. So it's who you are or who you become in that job that does not give you satisfaction, right?
No, right, right.
And I'm not trying to be semantic, right?
So, I mean, if I'm wrong, tell me, right?
I just don't know how you can really dislike...
You may dislike the people who are there.
You may be unstimulated by the tasks.
You may be, I don't know, physically uncomfortable, or you may be mentally burned out.
But you can't dislike that external thing called a job, right?
Right, right. Well...
I don't particularly care for any of my coworkers.
Not like a malevolence or anything.
If it turns out that I never saw him again, I wouldn't lose any sleep over it.
Does that make sense?
Oh, totally, yeah. I definitely don't like the owner.
She tends to yell at people.
So she's sort of intimidating, like bullying, that kind of stuff?
Yeah, yeah, and I'm still there, right?
You mean when you say you're still there?
Well, I mean, the fact that she's bullying and intimidating, but I'm still working there, right?
I guess those are two different issues.
I don't know.
I definitely...
Sorry, go ahead.
Sorry?
No, go ahead.
No, I was just going to say I definitely don't like interacting with her.
There have been a couple of times, you know, the few times that I've interacted with her lately.
And, you know, it could be any number of things.
But I just...
I'm getting some sadness from you, but I'm also getting sort of shame, if that makes sense.
Yeah, I think that does make some sense.
Because, you know, it's like I... You know, I felt humiliated sometimes when I've interacted, to use that neutral sort of term.
Or I feel something like that.
You feel humiliated by the woman?
Well, she'll... No, I mean, I don't need examples.
I mean, I know this from the class, but sorry, do you feel humiliated by the woman or by the fact that you're still there?
Oh, yeah, I'm not sure.
Because what I got from what you said was not that you felt humiliated by her, but that you felt like you said, well, but I'm still there.
You know, like I'm still stuck.
I know it's bad, but I haven't changed.
I think that's where I got...
Oh, I see what you're saying.
No, I think that does fit.
I think that does fit. And that was the same with Beth a little bit, right?
Yeah, it was kind of embarrassing after a while, I think.
Right, because it was like, I know I need to, but you kind of hold on against hope and that kind of stuff.
We've all done it, right?
We've all done it. Yeah.
Right, right. To what degree...
How old are you again?
Oh, um...
29 and a half.
Okay. So good.
This is a good time, because you're coming up to a decade, right?
Yeah, I'm coming up to a big round number.
To what degree do you...
And I don't mean this at all in a condescending way, because it sounds that way.
I don't mean it that way at all.
To what degree do you get that you're going to be dead?
Sometimes it's more present than others, you know?
I didn't experience that as condescending at all.
Sometimes I don't get it, sometimes I do.
It comes and goes, if that makes sense.
Oh yeah, no, it's true for all of us, right?
I certainly don't, you know, I'm not nose-to-nose with death 24-7, right?
But it is the ultimate project manager, right?
Because, you know, the project ends at some point, whether you like it or not, right?
Right, this is true. Because I'm trying to understand your relationship to time, right?
Because you spend your months and your years like...
It's like they're inexhaustible in a way, right?
Yeah.
And, uh, I definitely, I definitely see what you're saying.
I, It's like Groundhog Day, that movie, you know?
Same day every day, do you know what I mean?
It's like there's no time passing.
Yeah, and it feels like Groundhog Day a lot of the time.
Same thing. Right, right.
And this is particularly true when you're single, right?
Well, it wasn't that much different when I was dating Beth, but yeah, yeah.
Well, yeah, but there's a little more variety and do stuff as a couple and so on.
But, you know, single guys dating, a lot of them are the same, right?
Yeah. Yeah, I got up, went to work, picked up something to eat, had something to eat, watched some TV. Read a bit.
Then I went to bed. But then I got up and I went to work.
It's the same thing, right? It's the same day, right?
Right. I don't know if I was talking to somebody or writing it down, but I said something very much like that the other day.
This is all I do. Right.
It's like a photocopy with fading ink.
You run out of ink and you're dead, right?
Yeah. Yeah. And I don't say this, of course, in any negative way, but that, you know, gonna be dead thing is important because the moments fly by and, you know, as the song says, you know, ten years have got behind you.
No one told you when to run.
You missed the starting gun, right?
And the reason that I say this is that you are a man of ferocious depth.
In my opinion. Right?
I mean, you have an extraordinary facility for introspection, for communication.
You go in and out of role plays, which some people find very hard, you know, with great depth and energy.
Right? And that's sort of what I'm trying to sort of get a handle on.
If that makes any sense.
Or rather, what I'd like you to get a handle on.
That you have this depth, right?
You have this depth. You have this emotional energy.
You have this introspection. You have this courage.
You have this communication ability.
I mean, you have...
You know, you can't live the rest of your life typing...
Right. And you experience that as kind of stress, right?
The typing? No, I mean the change, looking at a change.
Yeah, just a kind of stress is definitely one way of putting it.
If I freeze, time will miss me.
Right. It will take down everyone else, but it will go like the tsunami will magically go around me.
the tsunami called time which washes us all the way, right?
I mean, what you're saying makes sense, but for some reason I'm...
It's not like I can rationally argue against it, but for some reason I'm not connecting to it.
You mean connecting to the depth that I'm talking about within you or something else?
To the emotional reality of time?
Right, right, right.
Okay, well, tell me a little bit about how time was embedded in your household when you were growing up.
God.
I mean, I'm more conscious of time a little bit because my mom was vain, right?
So she was aware of the passage of time and what it did to her looks, right?
So it's not always healthy, but, you know, that's sort of where...
And my brother is very much around, you know, don't waste time, you know?
And I'm not quite that way.
I'm quite happy to waste time sometimes, but there was a lot of emphasis on...
On time and achievement and mortality and so on.
In my family, and it's different for every family, and it wasn't because anybody was healthy or happy, but it was brooding, you know, as that Celtic-Irish, you know, our days are numbered and the sod is rising, you know.
Well, the...
You know, I can't imagine that the attitude would have changed overnight at all.
But, you know, when my father became...
My father became a born-again fundie, right?
So... See, I can remember my father constantly...
Wait a minute.
I was going to say I used to...
My childhood is so similar to my present day, just day in, day out.
A series of photocopies, just a blur, and all of a sudden I'm five foot tall, and all of a sudden I'm six foot tall.
You know? Like you step from one photograph to another, right?
There's no intervening time?
Yeah, all of a sudden there are these changes, you know?
Like, you know... Like the movies with the caption two years later, that kind of thing.
Yeah, except there's not much of a fade even.
It's just sort of a cut.
Yeah, right, got it, got it.
Now, your father's fundamentalism was fairly serious, right?
I mean, he wasn't just like, well, the fundy basement is where all the chicks are, right?
I mean, he was into it, right?
Yeah. He basically made a point of telling everybody that was close to him that if they didn't believe in Jesus, they would be going to hell.
So, for your father, see, religion fucks with time completely.
Yeah. Completely.
Right, because this is just an eye blink in eternity.
This is a veil of tears you struggle through.
Nothing here except for praising God means anything, right?
Right. I mean, it really messes with your sense of time.
Right, and what I was pointing out with my father anyway is that, you know, I don't think that just sort of appeared when he became a fundamentalist.
Right? I think that...
I mean, that kind of attitude...
Like, he was ripe for that sort of fundamentalism.
I think that he would have had to have had that...
Well, hey, when they were in their early 20s, right?
Just when I was like one before I was a baby, they lived all high in the hog and got deep in debt.
It's really like we have forever to pay our dues if ever, right?
Oh, so it's like spend like there's no tomorrow, right?
Yeah. Sorry, I'm not sure what that syllable was.
Well, no, yeah, sort of.
Yeah, yeah, it's been like there's no tomorrow, you know, just...
But not even, it's kind of, it's weird because it's not even like spend like there's no tomorrow because, you know, you still have to deal.
Well, I guess, you know, you have to deal with the debt payments like, you know, and that's not tomorrow, right?
That's like, you know, months or years down the road, right?
Or weeks, depending on how much you spend.
But that sort of is also a timeless quality, right?
You know, you know.
Eat, drink, be merry for tomorrow we die.
That sort of thing.
Right, right. So there's this blink through eternity and this completely 100% hedonistic balls to the wall,
drink till you drop. Right, and both of these are anxiety management mechanisms around The problem of time and mortality, which is a horribly pretentious sentence, but I'll see if I can back it up a little bit.
Time is...
Mortality.
But when people are going through life and they're...
And I don't mean this to be you, but they're missing milestones, right?
Like they miss a milestone to get educated.
They miss a milestone to...
You know, get a career, and this could be self-education, I don't mean a degree or anything, but I kind of miss these milestones.
What happens is the true self kind of says, hey, we missed the turn-off here, right?
And it shoots up this anxiety, right?
And then the false self wants that to be wished away, wants it to just go away, right?
And so the false self invents or absorbs either this hedonism, which is like there are no milestones, and this can show up as very abstract philosophical stuff like nihilism too.
There are no milestones, there are no markers, it's all made up.
Relativism comes from this as well.
Relativism is a new way of dealing with the problem of time when people stop being able to believe in religion.
Everything's made up. It's constant flux.
It's quantum physics. Schrodinger's cat leads me into tomorrow.
And so one of the ways of doing it is just hedonism, right?
And we all know this because we've all been this person or been around this person.
Someone's got a test tomorrow or an essay due and everyone's like, oh man, you know, stay out.
It doesn't matter. Blah, blah, blah.
Right? Right.
Just attacking and undermining and, you know, screwing up their lives.
So there's that kind of hedonism.
But when you get older, that's tough to sustain, right?
Yeah. Like Chris Rock says, you don't want to be that kind of too old guy at the club.
Yeah. You know, that guy who, you know, are you looking for your kid?
You don't want to be that guy, right?
That's not good. No.
And so what happens is people then flip into something else around sort of, you know, late 20s, early 30s.
Again, this is not you. This is more your parents, I think.
And what happens is they sort of deal with their rising anxiety about time and about progress and about mortality, right?
Because this is a black train that...
It's always driving towards us, right?
We're strapped to the tracks, we can do our charades, but this train will thunder past and wipe us out.
And that makes people anxious, and it makes people want to get things done with the time that we have left, right?
And it makes you not want to waste time in bad relationships, it makes you in bad jobs, right?
It's a propeller. It's good, right?
It's propulsion. And so people then say, They adopt a philosophy or a religion, usually it could be a philosophy like Buddhism, it's a religion, where they say, when I feel anxiety about mortality, I'm going to remind myself that that's a sin, right?
Or it's an illusion.
Well, yes, but with Christianity, it's actually a sin, technically, right?
To say, I have to get all of these things done before I'm dead, is to express a kind of doubt in the afterlife, right?
Yeah, I guess so.
I just...
I didn't quite experience it like that, but...
Well, look, your experience counts, not my theory, so tell me what you experienced.
We'll throw all the theories out. Well, the way...
I mean, I can see the kind of people you're talking about, you know, that was sort of...
Like, if in your...
Sorry, let me explain it a little better, just with one sentence here.
The people who say, I put my faith in Jesus.
I put my faith in God.
Jesus, take the wheel, right?
Yeah, the Hindu caste system, right?
Basically. I wouldn't quite put it in that category, but I would put it in the category of, I'm going to surrender my decisions to God, right?
What God wills, right?
Inshallah, what God wills, and so on, right?
Right. No, my experience of my father was that he didn't generally leave things up to God, if that makes sense. Sure, okay.
And how did he then get things done that way, or get things done at all?
Well, if it was something he expected you to do, he'd bullwhip you until you...
Oh, look, I mean...
Sorry to interrupt.
I completely understand that.
I mean, I'm not saying that these people sit back and let life roll them over at all.
Okay. Sorry, and you're totally right in getting that from what I said, and I wasn't clear about it.
I mean, these people can be incredibly brutal, for sure.
For sure. Right. Because they've got to beat the devil out of the kids, and children are naturally evil, and all that natural stuff, right?
Because children don't believe in God, right?
So they're evil. Yeah.
Sinners. Yeah. So, sorry, I don't mean about child abuse or anything like that.
Well, I wasn't, I mean, that's one way, but also in just being abusive in general, right?
Just, you know, by yelling or, and not just in me, you know, like other people.
Right, okay, but why didn't he experience any anxiety about that and say, at some point, like, I should outgrow this, right?
Because that's what time does to you.
Time does to you, it says, you should have outgrown this by now.
I see what you're saying, but...
How is it he got stuck in this behavior, right?
That's a good question. Because to me, and again, I'm not trying to bend him to fit my theory, maybe it would, does or doesn't, but to me that indicates a lack of conception of time.
I mean, I remember being, because obviously I emotionally matured late, right?
Some people believe it's still to come.
But when I was about 12, I was at a summer camp and I picked up two brooms, threw a broom to a kid and said, you know, let's play Star Wars.
And he's like, I'm actually a little old for that.
And we've all had that, right?
And of course, I had the lame ass, you're never to only have fun.
It's too sad, right?
But that kind of stuff where you're supposed to outgrow stuff.
Now, I mean, the way that kid communicated it wasn't particularly nice, but there was kind of a truth in that, right?
Right, right. So how is it that you never got that?
Shouldn't I have outgrown this by now?
You know, that's something I'm not quite getting consciously but would be very interesting to look into because I know he's basically said to me that I should be more mature or act more my age.
He said that to me for sure.
Okay, so he's aware that time is passing for you.
Yeah. But not for himself, right?
Right, like he can just keep being the asshole he's always been.
I mean, isn't this amazing?
I mean, we all know these kinds of people and it's like, how can you be the same idiot you were when you were 15?
When you're 70.
I mean, it's amazing, really.
This lack of progress in personalities is astonishing when you think about it.
Right, you really have to work at changing yourself, right?
Well, I think what you have to do is you have to dismantle a lot of anxiety all the time.
And I think that drives a lot of thought, such as it is within society, like religion and other things.
But you have to dismantle the anxiety of I really should have outgrown this by now.
There's that great line from King Lear where the daughter says to her father, thou shouldst not have been old before thou wert wise.
Because he's a child.
He's a spiteful child, even though he's in his 70s.
How did you get old without becoming wise?
Well, that's not easy.
No, my paternal grandfather is very much the same way.
Right, right. Completely cemented in his brutality.
Right, and I bet you if you were to hook him up with someone who knew him when he was 12, they'd say, same fucking guy, right?
Yeah, right, right.
Now, I think it takes a lot of work.
Have you ever seen the movie Jaws?
I've seen parts of it.
Well, what they do is they shoot these, to tire the shark out, they shoot these barrels filled with air into, like, where they use harpoons and attach the barrels to the, shoot it into the shark's back, right?
And so for the shark to keep swimming down underwater is really hard because it's got this huge buoyancy, right?
It's got these whole bunch of barrels, like, harpooned into its back full of air, and the barrels keep popping up, dragging the shark to the surface.
Well, I think that, you know, keeping, like, staying immature is really hard.
It's like staying, it's like keeping that shock down with all these barrels of air dragging it up to the surface, because naturally we want to grow, right?
Right. So how do you thwart that instinct?
Well, you fuck with time, basically.
Right, right. You mess with time.
You mess with mortality.
Because, and I'm sorry to use this language, but at some point there's a true self in everyone that says, I don't want to die an asshole.
Hmm. Right?
I remember a guy I knew went to a wedding and this...
His mother-in-law, he was the groom, and his mother-in-law Had been estranged from the family, and she was a total troll, like just a total bitch, right?
And, you know, she came storming in with all her friends.
She got drunk.
She yelled at people.
You know, she flirted inappropriately.
And she was really angry because she hadn't got the invitation at the right place or on the right day.
And so she just made a complete spectacle of herself.
And it was just mean and messed up the whole day.
You know, wedding is what...
People look forward to their whole lives, right?
And she's just petty and entitled.
And she was like 60.
She was in her late 60s.
It's like, how do you do that?
That's like getting to 60 and not having hit puberty.
Right, right.
But this infection of dreamy photocopy Groundhog Day thing comes down from these people who use these massive mental mechanisms to evade the passage of time and the inevitability of mortality.
Right. So, there's something to mull over, right?
Because you had the same thing with Beth.
You're having it with your job.
Your father has it.
I'm sure your mother has it, too.
Your grandfather has it, where they just...
Mythology is the opposite.
Mythologies live forever, right?
But the time, the body weakens, and your age, and all this kind of shit, right?
Right, right. I mean, I've spent half my time after 40.
I haven't had more than three months straight workouts, because I keep injuring myself.
And now that I'm over 40, it takes, like, forever to heal.
It's ridiculous. But that's what happens.
Time is reminding you. Time's passing.
What are you going to do? How are you going to live?
What are you going to achieve? And the people who remain assholes their whole life, nothing to do with you of course, they don't ask that question.
They don't ask the questions that the imbibing of mortality demands, which is, what is my life going to stand for?
What do I want to achieve with my life?
How do I want to leave the world?
What impact do I want to have on the planet?
Right. Right.
Every asshole is tactical and never strategic, which means they just do anxiety management in the moment and they never raise their head to look at the big picture and say, how's my life going?
Where do I want it to go? How do I want to live?
What do I want my life to stand for?
or how do I want, what will make me proud on my deathbed to look back and see how I've lived?
And that's your challenge too, right?
Yeah, yeah.
I just...
It's not like it's completely invisible for me, right?
I mean, I can access it sometimes, but...
You know...
Like, I haven't even thought about that at all today, right?
Which might be a bit of a, as you put it, propellant, right?
Well, but when you think of that, you know, when you sort of say, okay, I, James, have another 50 years on the planet, or 40, or 10, or 5, or 1, we never know, right?
Right. I mean, I remember that.
I think I mentioned this before.
I remember that. When I was a kid, I always hated that my brother was older.
He got to stay up later. He got more allowance and stuff like that.
He's two and a half years older than I am.
And I remember very clearly, very clearly, I can't have been more than four.
I was over at my aunt's place.
And I was saying, you know, oh, he's two and a half years older.
Of course he gets these things, right?
I remember saying, well, fine, but at least I get to live two and a half years longer.
And they said, no, you don't.
I was like, what?
Because I thought we all had a fixed lifespan, right?
So I'd get two and a half years at the end that would make up for all this shit at the beginning, right?
No, no, you could be dead tomorrow.
I was like, what?
Well, who planned this?
I think that's when we began to fall away from me.
Well, this is definitely not fair, right?
This is not planned. But I mean, I think that is important.
To look into, right?
So when you look and you say, well, what do I want my life to be?
Not, you know, monuments and other people think I'm this, that, or the other, but for myself.
What would be a satisfying life for me that I'd look back and say, damn, that was a life well spent.
Because I can tell you, it's not what you're doing right now.
No, I'm... You don't have to tell me.
That's not what I'm doing right now.
I know that much. Okay, so what is it?
Because if you're just making decisions about what's most comfortable in the moment, you'll always just keep doing the same damn thing over and over, right?
Because you know that. You're familiar, right?
Right, right. Now, it's a big question. We don't have to answer it now.
And it's a horrible question to ask and answer it, right?
But the alternative to asking and answering it is worse, right?
Which is that famous quote, men living lives of quiet desperation.
Inertia is a quicksand that hardens around us over time, right?
Yeah.
Right. I tell you the first thing that comes to mind is that if I could be the kind of man Who is a loving father and husband?
I mean...
That...
That's like the first thing that comes to mind.
And that's wonderful.
And that's wonderful. And you can't be that man in your current job, right?
No, no, I can't.
So this is in the way.
Right, right. And you don't have...
I mean, it's not like you're 19.
You don't have decades to mess around, right?
No, no, I really don't.
I mean, you don't want to be...
You know, an ancient Zorb with a Greek dad like me, right?
He fathered children well into his 90s, right?
I mean, you don't...
I mean, it's not bad, don't get me wrong.
I'm thrilled about it, right?
I could maybe handle being a little younger, but, you know, this is the way it worked out.
Very happy to be here. But even if you want to aim to have a kid in, you know, 10 years or 5 years, right, you've got to design that now, right?
Right. No, I get you.
But that's not something your family does, right?
No. No, my father is presumably going to work until he can't work anymore.
Which might be, you know, his fingers fall off or he dies.
Right. My mother got a union job and she's going to pull, she's going to work until she can start pulling pension that she's probably going to roll over and die five years after that.
Who knows? Yeah, well, a lot of people do, right?
A lot of people, I mean, the death rates after retirement are really high.
Yeah. And my brother got his job at a big insurance company and he's got his house and he's got his wife, you know.
But I never really got a sense that it was some sort of grand plan.
It was just sort of what you do.
Right. You take whatever opportunities happen to come your way and you hang on to them like grim death until grim death, right?
Right. But you don't design a life.
No, no.
And, uh...
Yeah, I...
And I'm going to put something forward here.
I mentioned it in the chat room, just for those who are also on the call.
This sounds completely self-serving, and I completely understand that, and people can be as cynical as they want about this, but I genuinely mean this, right?
So you work your 40 hours a week, right?
Mm-hmm.
Sorry, one second.
And you said you spend 10 hours floating around FDR, right?
Yeah, that's probably...
Floating around FDR is probably...
Yeah, right.
And that's good, right?
I mean, I think that's great.
I mean, good.
I'm glad people are using the resource.
It's thrilling. It's great.
But bringing the value that philosophy has brought to you to others would be a pretty good way to live, right?
Right. I mean, just in general, right?
Right, yeah. I agree.
But you don't do that, right?
To my knowledge. I mean, and this is not to say you don't donate and you're not generous and all, and then that's...
Right, but we're not talking about me.
I mean, we're just talking about you, right?
It's not something that's on your radar, right?
Right, it's not something I do personally, if that's the way to put it.
Right, right. And...
This is my brief story around all of this.
Once I realized how good I was at this, and this is like long before it ever even remotely became possible to even donate to FDR, right?
This was like way back at the dawn of the beast.
Once I realized how good I was at this, and I always knew that I was a good conversationalist, and I've always had people say, oh man, you know, you should be on the radio, you should write, and I did some radio stuff in college, but once this technology came along, and this possibility opened up, and this is, again, long before there was even donations, let alone any kind of sustainable income, I was like, oh my god, I have to get this out to people.
And I would spend nights and weekends trolling the web.
And this is how I didn't have any money to advertise.
And this is how a lot of the early listeners came along.
I just found them.
I was like wandering in the bar.
Hey! Listen to my podcast.
And so on. And because it was like this is really important stuff for people to hear.
And not only will I not live forever, but society...
Is not doing well, right?
Right. And people still, I still occasionally get comments about the great t-shirt conflict, let's say, right?
Because I couldn't get it, and I still have a tough time getting it.
You know, if there's a resource that has changed your life, and you And this is to everyone, right?
This is partly why we're sort of getting this email thing going.
And this has nothing to do with, you know, ooh, let's get emails, right?
But this is really around designing a life, right?
And designing satisfaction, right?
That we have this cure called philosophy, this amazing resource, which is not me, but the community as a whole, the conversation as a whole.
And everyone's taking the cure and no one's giving the cure, if that makes sense.
Right.
Now, if...
And to appeal to your greed, rather, I mean, your greed is for happiness and, you know, helping others makes people happy.
It's just the way we're wired. And there's a lot of UPB in it, right?
If I've got benefit from it, then other people will as well, and so on, right?
But to appeal to your professional greed, right?
I mean, FDR was running for a long time before I even took donations, and then it was a long time before...
It became even remotely possible to think of it as a gig, right?
Like as a job. And all of that time was 30, 40 hours a week over and above a regular demanding career of travel, doing podcasts in food courts in Washington, right?
I mean, stuff like that, right?
But it was through that, not, ooh, you know, I'd really like to build this up so I could, you know, sit around and sit in a chat room during the day.
Because that was never even part of it.
It was like, wow, I think I've got something here that could really help the world, and I'm going to get it out there.
And through that process, it grew into a living.
Now, I can guarantee you, this is not just a living for me.
Right? Right.
And... I can't offer people full-time jobs because I can only grow it so much while I'm producing the material and running the site and answering questions and so on, right?
Writing the books and all that.
But if the community as a whole, right, if you're like, well, man, this has turned me around, And I'm going to promote this site, and if I could get a job out of it and work in philosophy doing X, Y, and Z, that would be fantastic.
You know, if not, at least I have, you know, helped a thousand people receive what I have received, and then what I'll do is I'll let them imbibe it for about a year or a year and a half, and then I'll say, okay, now you guys go find a thousand people each, right?
Hmm. Right.
Right. And it doesn't have anything to do with whether you do it at...
I'm just taking this as an example.
It could be anything, right? Maybe you want to become a horse whisperer.
I don't know, right? But this is just an example, right?
Of how you design a life.
And... The moment that somebody said, you should start taking donations, I hadn't even really thought about it.
I hadn't thought about it at all, actually.
And I started doing that. As soon as I began to really see the value that people had through the donations, I was like, fuck it, man.
I'm going to move heaven and earth to make this a full-time gig.
I'm going to do whatever it takes.
I'm going to... Reach so far deep down inside me, I can tickle my toes from the inside, right?
Pull out the most amazing shit, no stops, full on yelling, crying, screaming, singing, whatever it takes to get people's attention.
I am going to make this Into a full-time gig.
I don't care if it takes me five years to do it.
I don't care if Christina and I have to live in a one-bedroom apartment with three screaming children.
I am going to make this into a full-time gig.
And that had a lot to do with getting Christina into her own entrepreneurial situation, right?
Because that lowers expenses and lowers taxes and so on.
And, you know, we did a lot of work to figure out what our budget would be and when I could take the risk.
And I worked for another couple of months at my last job as a contractor to pull some money to fund FDR at the beginning.
It was just like, I am going to fucking make this into a full-time gig no matter what, right?
I don't care if I've got to make up stuff and pretend to donate to myself after I give blood.
I don't care how I need to do it, but I am damn well going to make this happen, right?
Right. And it's been great.
I mean, it's been great.
The show is chugging along.
It's not growing hugely.
I mean, doubling every year, but it could do a lot better.
And through it doing a lot better comes additional income through donations and subscriptions and books.
End that, right?
I mean, if you said to yourself, and again, this has nothing to do with FDR, it could be anything, but if you said to yourself, in one year, I'm going to be working full-time at FDR, this is for anyone, right?
You could absolutely make that happen.
Wow.
But that's what I mean about saying, what the fuck do you want to do with your life?
When you look back and you say, man, I grabbed myself.
I grabbed life by the cojones and gave it a squeeze that it will never forget.
right? Right, right.
And it's hard work, I mean, obviously, right?
Because you can't quit and get a full-time job, right?
So I did it for like a year and a half.
With very little income and part-time and so on, right?
But I was just like, man, I am going to make this happen.
Now, lots of people say that and it doesn't happen, right?
So there's no guarantees, right?
It's not like willpower. There's no magic.
There's not like willpower alone, right?
No, right, right. But, you know, where something has been proven, right?
We have a business case which says, yes, you can, you know, one guy...
And I say this recognizing and fully appreciating your help and other people's help are on this call.
But, you know, one guy basically willed it and made it happen, right?
In terms of generating an income that he could live on, right?
Right, right. You know, it's like they say in the movie The Bear or whatever.
What one man can do, another man can do, right?
I don't think that we need another philosophical podcast to But in terms of, you know, driving, generating, I mean, I'm not going to say, I don't need a lot of money.
I want to say, oh, if the income doubles, I want to offload shit.
I mean, I'm working too hard as it is.
And of course, it's going to diminish when the baby comes, right?
Right. And so this is just a pitch.
And again, I'm aware of how self-serving it is.
But what I'm trying to say is, you know, choose what you want to do that's going to give you.
Joy, satisfaction, richness, meaning, kindness, benevolence, cure the world, whatever it is you're going to do, or be a horse whisperer, whatever it is, right?
And design it and will it.
And if you fail at that, and FDR is, I mean, except for my business, which ended up tanking, not the business tanking, but my involvement in it, is the most successful thing I've ever done, right?
And I failed at So many things.
I mean, the list is long.
But everything that I failed helped prepare me for this, right?
Getting used to that. So you can't fail when you will and try.
I mean, you cannot succeed in a technique, but you can't fail fundamentally because you gain the pride, right?
Right.
I mean, when I go two weeks without a donation, yes, it can get rather exciting for me, right?
Yeah, I can imagine. But, because I have no control, I mean, all I can, it's just like pushing string.
I have no control over, it's nothing that I sell, right?
But, so there's, you know, there's stress and there's risk and there's trawls and there's, you know, but man, you couldn't tear me away from this with a team of horses, right?
And whatever that is for you, I think it's something to do with philosophy.
I think it would be something to do with technology.
You know, obviously FDR is an amalgam of both or whatever, right?
But whatever you can do that is going to give your life richness and meaning and to differentiate your days, right?
Because you don't want to have that life where you look back and you're like, man, it was mostly just a blur, right?
I remember this vacation, but two weeks a year I remember and the rest of it was just a blur of deadlines and typing and yelling bosses and cubicles and so on, right?
You know...
I think you may have taken a dip off the Inspiration platform.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
I mean, it's a lot to mull over and I need to chew on it, but there was something I wanted to mention.
Maybe a couple of weeks ago now.
And I don't know what significance this has or what, but I just sort of...
I was driving home and I think I was taking the long way home and I just asked myself, what do I want to do?
The general sort of open-ended question.
I got something inside of me saying philosophy and I just felt all kinds of anger.
Excellent! Did the voice sound a little fruity?
I don't know what it sounded like, but I was like, what the fuck is this?
What the hell does that mean?
Go on. Well, tell me, what does that mean?
Well, I don't know.
I mean, I know, but I know, I know.
Don't make me come over there. At least I catch myself, right?
Yeah, yeah, true. Oh, I got points?
Great. So that's 10 for me.
Right. Well, I didn't think it meant like I do a podcast.
It didn't feel like it meant like that.
It didn't feel like I meant...
Oh, crap.
Yeah. I'm not sure what it meant positively.
I think it didn't mean like generating content, though, if that makes sense.
Right. Well, look, we already, to put it in a ridiculous way, we have a Microsoft of philosophical conversations already, right?
Right. And anything I produce will probably just get bought out.
Right. Well, it's just that, no, but Microsoft actually would not buy an operating system company, right?
No, you're right. Right.
Right, until in the instance, in the event that they discovered that they were doing better, in which case they would scramble like mad to improve.
Well, but a company would never do better.
I mean, if you go to a bunch of investors, not to stretch the metaphor, but I think it's useful, right?
Okay. If you go to a bunch of investors and say, I'm a guy in a basement and I want to compete with Microsoft and I'm going to write an operating system, they're not going to take the meeting, right?
Right. Right, okay.
I hope that wasn't too irritating.
No, no, it's a good point.
I mean, it's a good point, but I think that your participation in this conversation as a whole, right?
I mean, the converse are always very good that we have, right?
So this participation that you do is great, right?
I mean, and you've gotten a lot of positive feedback, not from your inner critic, but from people about your inner critic, right?
You get a lot of feedback from that, right?
Oh yeah, for sure, for sure.
And your openness and your generosity has helped you forge some strong friendships and relationships, right?
Through the people you've met in this conversation, right?
For sure, for sure.
So bringing that to other people is a pretty good way There's no better way to spend a life than philosophy.
Philosophy is that on which everything else depends.
Everything. You say, well, I should be a doctor.
It's like, well, without philosophy, there are no doctors.
Because there's no science.
And without philosophy, there's no free market, which means you get crappy socialized medicine.
Right, right. So the biggest lever and the hardest one to move and the one that it takes the most courage to keep beating your head against, the biggest lever is philosophy.
There's no deeper, richer, more powerful, more influential science or thought discipline that exists or will ever exist.
As I said in the Sunday show, we don't remember a single one of the Roman senators, right?
But we know the name Lucretius.
Right. So there's nothing better that you could do than philosophy.
There's your participation and your donations.
I mean, it's been great. But that's not designed by you.
That's another opportunity that is coming to you, right?
Right. No.
Right.
And actually, it just sort of struck me that...
Oh, it seems like it went away.
It seemed like it was good, but unfortunately.
So, I'm sorry if I interrupted you.
No, no, no, I can feel like I'm interrupting you.
So, we're trying to figure out what your Miko system said when it grabbed you by the throat and said, philosophy, or whatever voice it uses, right?
It wasn't, it wasn't, it was just like, it was like clear, right?
You know, no frills, no nothing, just that was it, you know, philosophy.
Right. And so what does that mean to you?
What does it mean that you could do for philosophy?
Because, like, I'm philosophy's bitch, right?
It's like, I fight and it doesn't work, right?
I'm like, I want to go to bed.
They're like, nope, fuck you, got to write a book, right?
Yeah. I mean I'm just – like I'm philosophy's bitch and how does she want to – where does she want you to bend?
All right. Oh, I remember what I was going to say earlier but – The work, the value that you get out of FDR, and I think this is something you've said before, the value that you get out of FDR isn't really complete until you give it to other people.
Oh no, no, that's right.
Because you don't get UPB if you're consuming.
Right. But you fundamentally don't get UPB in your gut if you're consuming.
And there's nothing wrong with consuming.
I mean, people should drink deep from the well...
For quite a long time, but then at some point it's like, okay, now you're being greedy, go help others, right?
Right, right. Or now you're using philosophy to avoid the world, right?
Which is the great danger of introspection.
That we want to dig like we're going to China, but we want to come out in the real world, right?
Right, right. For sure.
Now, as for what Ye Olde Miko System was saying...
You know, I don't really know if I got much of an answer.
I was kind of dealing with the anger, you know?
And I was saying, well, where did this anger come from?
I think I maybe got as far as where did this anger come from?
Well, you know where the anger comes from, right?
Oh. I mean, sorry, do you?
You may be too far inside to see, but...
Yeah, I don't know.
All I knew was that I felt really pissed off Well, because you feel like you're getting an order, right?
Oh, yeah. Like your dad, right?
I mean, do this!
Philosophy! God damn it!
Right? And my response was, basically, who the fuck are you?
Yeah, don't you tell me what to do, right?
Yeah, exactly. Right, and that's a false self-response, in my opinion.
No, and I agree.
That's what the irritation, right?
Because... When we've been subjugated, this is why philosophy is so hard for me, anyway, and I think it's true for others.
When we've been subjugated through families, through school, through lovers, when we've been subjugated, we have this fantasy that if we resist any form of subjugation, we gain freedom.
Right, right.
If I just float around and don't ever let anyone tell me what to do, I gain freedom, but it's not true.
It's a very, very seductive fantasy, but it's quite the opposite of truth, because of course if you don't subject yourself to reason and evidence and helping people, you may be free, whatever that means, but you sure as hell won't be happy.
Right, right. So when your Miko system rises up, and it's very rare that you get something that unambiguous, right?
The Miko system is usually like, can you guys shut up so I can hear one of you at a time?
The Miko system is very rarely shouting.
It's not exactly a barbershop quartet, right?
It's more like a bunch of drunk heavy metal guys hitting each other with guitars, right?
That are plugged in, right?
Right. But when they all say with one voice, right?
And I do this round robin with my own characters from the book Crazy Talk, right?
When I was trying to figure out about, you know, geez, I really feel like I want to do this, right?
And so I sort of sat down and went around the table.
And Lord Gruul and Shockfit and Mama and all the, what do you guys think, right?
And everyone's like, fuck, do it.
Are you kidding me? This is what we've been waiting for.
Right, right. And I, you know, I just had to get a commitment out of them, which is like, so you're not going to fuck me, right?
Like, you're not going to say, go do this and then abandon me, right?
Or then turn on me in six months.
And they're like, no, we're in it, right?
We want it. Right, right.
And they haven't.
They have been unbelievably great in terms of creativity.
Right. In terms of propping me up when my courage falters or when the conflict levels get too high.
And of course, my wife is fantastic.
But they've really stuck to their bargain in ways that...
I mean, I'm incredibly honored to have this crew.
I mean, it's a remarkable...
It's amazing, right?
I feel like the Starship Enterprise.
Top of the cream, right?
Cream of the crop. But...
So when they all talk in one voice, that's the time to really listen, right?
Yeah. And you know what?
In that moment, I didn't do it.
And that's fine. That's totally fine.
And they probably knew you weren't going to do it, right?
And actually, what happened was I asked a follow-up question, like a totally practical question after I calmed down a little bit.
It's like, well, I've got all this debt.
What do I do about that? And they're like, well, get a contracting thing, IT contracting or whatever you have to do in order to just get that down.
Instead of working the job with the boss you hate, at least be your own boss or something like that.
Well, look, there's other ways to do it as well, right?
Sure. And what I mean by that is, look, if I could find a way...
To give kickbacks, right?
Donation kickbacks to people.
You go find somebody, right?
He listens, he becomes a donator.
I'd love to kick back some money to you.
I'd much rather give money to listeners than to, you know, Google and Bibbitizer and stumble upon, right?
Right. And so you've got an email you find and, you know, maybe there's some technical problems or, you know, when I donate, I can match up the email with the people who submit them and, you know, whatever, right?
But I don't know how that works, right?
But that could work and it can make people some money, right?
Sure. For sure.
For sure. And that's, you know, that's the thinking outside the box thing, right?
Yeah, that's a nice juicy problem.
And that means some technical stuff, right?
Where people upload email lists and they go out and we track who comes in and who donates and all that kind of stuff, right?
I mean, there's some juicy fun technical stuff in that and it can be a way of, you know, it gets money to the community, it gets people to philosophy.
I mean, there's no loss at all, right?
Right, right. And I did get the sense that my contribution could certainly be technological in nature.
I mean, if nothing else, for sure, right?
Well, you like it too, right?
And it's necessary and it's useful.
I can definitely get into it, for sure.
Right, right, right. And if you're doing something like that, You know, does it increase your job set for doing contract work, your job skills?
Absolutely. For sure it does, right?
Is it creative? Does it expose you to creative and innovative problem solving?
You know, does it expose you to someone who's had a reasonably successful career as an entrepreneur who can give you tips?
It does all of those things, right?
It's not a lose situation, right?
You say, well, but this is my spare time, this is my free time, and so on.
And that's great, but compared to what?
Hmm. Right?
I mean, compared to what?
Let's say you do this some amount of time, you know, five hours, ten hours a week or whatever.
You say, well, that's my free time.
And of course, yeah, we all need downtime and so on.
But a year from now, what do you want who have built?
Right? Right.
Well, I gave up.
I mean, I had two jobs for the first year and a half with almost no money.
And what did it give me?
Give you your dream. Yeah.
Amazing freedom, people reading my books after 20 years of writing, and unbelievable.
I can't express the satisfaction of doing what I'm doing as opposed to, hey, I sold another software system or I coded another software system and it's going to be obsolete in a year and a half, right?
Right, right. Hmm.
It's eyes on the prize, right?
Eyes on the prize. What do you want to do?
And how are you going to get there?
Is it going to take sacrifice? Yeah, but compared to what?
Exactly, yeah. Compared to a lifetime of a cubicle?
Being a little troll, the code troglodyte.
Right. I, for one, wouldn't mind getting some more sun.
Right. Right.
So, where do you want to live, right?
There are no taxes in the Bahamas, right?
And you can work wherever if you've got whatever, right?
FDR is portable. Philosophy is portable, right?
Sure, I may not make it in the frozen wastes of Canada, but...
Right, no, hell, I mean, if Christina wasn't tied here...
Because of her hard-won registration and all of that, we'd be a lot more mobile.
But, you know, it's more freedom for us here than it would be in Bahamas, right?
Oh, yeah. Yeah, because, you know, Bahamas, you're not going to have the client base, right?
Just as an example. She would not be registered, so she wouldn't be able to collect the insurance.
It's cheaper for her clients if they can build the insurance, right?
And if it's not registered, she can't.
So she'd have to get re-registered, which would mean a loss of her income, the equity we've built up in her business here, blah, blah, blah, blah, right?
So... Right, okay.
Right now, it's freedom for us here, right?
Which is not to say that down the road, it might not be nice to go that route or whatever, right?
But it's just a matter of...
All of these sorts of things are trade-offs, right?
But all I'm trying to say is, if you want...
And we go right back to where you started, right?
Because I really... This is about you, right?
It's not about... Ooh, get donations for Steph, right?
If you are a guy who is switched on about what you're doing, and you're like, fuck it, I'm going to pull myself into a goal to bring philosophy to people, however it's going to happen, whatever I can do, right?
And if I can't get anyone to agree with me, if I can't get anyone to buy into it, I'll just do it anyway, right?
If you get switched on and turned on and excited about that stuff, and there is no, and there is an incredible thrill, I'm telling you, there's an incredible thrill when, I mean, I'll just give you a brief example, or a very brief, I don't want to keep you up all night, I know you've got to work, but, so I do these current event vids, right?
Mm-hmm, right. And, uh, listenership, the watching, it doubles, right?
Mm-hmm. 2,500 views, A day, right?
It was before 1,000, 1,200 or whatever, right?
Right. And some of those people come to the website and some of those people come to the chat room, right?
And I get the emails where it's like, wow, you know, someone sent me this and I'm listening and it's blowing my mind and blah, blah, blah, right?
I'm yanking them up from primitive psycho classes, like with depth charges, right?
Right. Right. And when you do that, when you bring people to a resource that has brought you so much richness and challenge and fear and happiness and all that, and they get excited and they get switched on and they're like, you know, their whole life has changed, right? Which means the lives of their kids and their grandkids and so on, right?
When you make that kind of fundamental alteration in the life arc of a gene pool, it's completely addictive.
I mean, there's nothing better.
And if you are involved, and whether, again, maybe it's horse whispering, you'll find out, but whatever it is, when you're switched on in that kind of way, you get to be the loving husband and father that you want to be.
Because you're appealing, right?
To the right kind of person.
Right, right.
Whereas if you're like, I hate my job.
The only thing I hate more than my job is my commute.
The only thing I hate more than my job and my commute is my debt.
My loneliness and the emptiness of my life.
want to get some sangria right and my sudden resemblance to ayn rand in that last bit Oh, what do you mean?
Oh, I just sounded that? Oh, your voice went kind of gravelly there.
Right, right.
But that's going to give you the right kind of person, right?
Right, right. Someone you can share your happiness with.
Someone you can share your excitement with.
Someone you can share your dedication with.
And to be perfectly honest, someone you can arouse interest in.
I mean, I like to code, and I like pizza.
It's fine, right?
I am completely into philosophy.
And I'm trying to get people interested in philosophy.
That's not a bad conversation starter, right?
Oh, not at all.
Not at all. People will at least say, what?
You'll get to the second conversation base, right?
Right, right. So you got to picture what kind of woman you want.
You know, what kind of family life you want?
Who are you going to have to be to attract that kind of woman and to be attracted to that kind of woman?
Because she's going to have to be interested in something big, right?
Something powerful, something that she's turned on by, something she's excited by.
And she'll have had to overcome this hurdle of inertia, right?
Because we're all raised to be livestock, right?
We're all raised to just sit there, bang our heads and produce milk, right?
Right. So breaking out of the paddock is hard, right?
And you want someone like that in your life.
For sure. Or at least with the potential.
I mean, Christina was not a natural entrepreneur, but, you know, she's taken to it after some pretty rough beginnings, right?
She's really taken to it.
And... In the same way that I'm not a naturally, say, hygienic person, but I've taken to it.
I'm not naturally tidy, but I've taken to it.
I know there's compromise and all that.
But... You know, who do you want to be the mom of your children?
And how are you going to...
Who are you going to be together?
Well, you can't be who you are now, right?
No, no, certainly not.
And that's what I mean by designing a life.
It really is designing... Who you want to be.
Everything else is peripheral, right?
And you know, I mean, it's when I got married that I began taking time more seriously.
And it's also when we, you know, because we talked about having kids before getting married, right?
So I'm looking like, what do I want my son and my daughter to look at me and think?
Especially that question, Daddy, what do you do for a living, right?
Huh. I yell at computers.
Well, that would be my father.
Oh, he yells at your goddamn thing.
It would never work, right? Sorry, go ahead.
Yeah, but it's like, what do you want that answer to be?
be and what you want the look in your eyes to be, in your kids' eyes to be when you answer that question.
Wow, really?
Really.
Really! That's called designing a life.
It's to walk backwards from that bit where your kid says, Daddy, what do you do with your life?
And you get to say, I do the best thing ever.
I do the most amazing thing ever.
And I fail at it more times than I succeed, but I love it.
Right.
Because you don't want to arrive at that question empty-handed, right?
No, not so much.
I type and I grumble, right?
No, I definitely don't want to...
Because then...
I'm sorry, go ahead.
I was just going to say, I think when you get to that point, if I got to that point where all I did was type and grumble, my kids wouldn't even be asking me that question.
All you do is type and grumble when it comes to work.
Your job. Yeah.
You start talking about your job, it's like a lamprey going under my arteries.
Ugh. Right?
You're a fucking vampire when it comes to your career.
I'm telling you, just from the outside, right?
Maybe other people have a different experience, right?
But at least it's not Beth and your career.
So it's only one lamprey, which means that I can generate enough if I drink a lot of fluids to survive it.
That's all I'm saying. Right?
Thanks for the heads up.
No, but this is not a shock to you, right?
No, no, it really isn't.
I mean, you hate your job, right?
Or you hate yourself at your job or whatever, right?
And you're right to do so.
Because it's killing your future.
It's killing who you wanna be.
It's killing your family life.
It's killing your, right? It's killing the happiness or the excitement you're going to feel about sharing what you do with your life with your child.
And it's gonna turn you into your dad in a way, right?
If you have kids, right?
You know, you do stuff you hate because you've got bills to pay.
Yay, Dad, thanks.
Right? I can't wait to graduate and go out into this horrible demolition derby we call The Working World.
Right. Hey, son, feel that flicker of hope in your chest?
Let me just lick my thumb and my forefinger.
Psst! Ah, much better.
Let's go back to the darkness, right?
Right. You know, when Christina comes back and she says what she did with her day, she talks about...
What she talked about with her patients, and we'll talk about that, and she's an amazing therapist, and I occasionally can add some useful stuff, and she says, what did you do with your day?
Well, I never really liked coming home and saying, I had a meeting, and I put a presentation together, I did some coding, and I sat in on a sales call.
It was just kind of embarrassing, right?
Right, right. Well, that's nice.
What do you want for dinner, right?
Oh, yeah. I mean, because, you know, it's like, you know, you do what you got to do because you lie stuck and you got to eat, right?
Right. But that's, yeah, I wanted her to look at me with her eyes shining with admiration.
And I want that from the listeners, too.
Like, I want you guys to be proud of what I'm doing.
I think about that a lot when I think about the books, when I think about what is it I'm going to write, how am I going to phrase it, what topics am I going to...
I want people to go, I'm proud to be here.
I'm proud to participate in this conversation.
I'm proud of that podcast.
I'm proud of that approach.
And the thing I love to hear the most is, you son of a bitch, for 1180 podcasts, I got something new out of this one.
Hmm. And to not repeat yourself is not easy, right?
Every now and then I'm like, fuck, I'm old because I can't remember if I did this topic or not.
I built a search tool for you people.
No, I'm just kidding. But that's, I want, especially, of course, the donators.
I know. And the people who've invested a lot in this conversation, I want you to be proud of me.
I want you to admire the courage that I'm showing or the way that I approach things or the innovations that I can bring to conversations.
I want that. I want you to feel proud of me and I want my wife to feel proud of me and that's designing, right?
It's not second-hand, because I won't ever compromise what I believe to gain that pride, because I know that will never work.
And I also am fully aware that I have 35,000 people listening who are all amazingly attuned to contradictions and hypocrisy and beely-mouthed weasel-ness, so I can't get away with anything, because everyone's a genius, and I have a lot of people scoping, right?
Right, right.
But that's...
Right, so... I mean, just in terms of podcasts, it's like, you know, I don't wanna do the current events, but they're popular.
They bring people to the conversation, right?
And that's great, you know?
So I'll do them, right? Because I want it to grow, and I want to have the pride and the admiration of the people whose opinions I care about, right?
Right. And that's what I want for you.
That's what you want, of course.
And that's what your ecosystem is yelling at you up from that well that you're putting them down there for some reason I can't quite figure out, right?
Except that they remind you of your dad for some reason, right?
But, you know, passion is the opposite of abuse, right?
Enthusiasm is the opposite of control, right?
So there's a lot of things that you could do to design, to achieve the life that you want, right?
But you have to start opening yourself up to the possibility that it's not either or, right?
Because livestock, we're always stuck with these either or.
It's this or it's that, right?
It's like either I come and do this shitty job or I go bankrupt, right?
Right. But that's not true.
It's a false dichotomy, right?
Right. It's like that left-wing, right-wing thing, right?
Well, what do you want? Fascism or communism?
Well, neither. Okay, then you're in the middle and you're a socialist democrat, right?
Or whatever, right? Like, really?
You hate America. Right?
Do I have to just take these choices, you know?
I mean, right?
These false dichotomies, that's...
When you design the life that you want, the creativity and the fertility of the ecosystem comes right up.
It starts to provide to you solutions and enthusiasms that are way outside the box of either or, right?
Yeah, yeah, right.
All right, I mean, that's all I wanted to say, right?
I know it's a lot. And I was like, I don't want you to be too exhausted, right?
Yay! First day of the rest of my life and I'm going to drive into a pole, right?
But I just wanted to sort of put that out there because I know that you were really unhappy.
Yeah, yeah. Well, I definitely appreciate this call for sure, you know.
I sense the ambivalence, which we can talk about at a time, right?
I really thank you for this fucking call.
No, I mean, I do appreciate, even though it's like, oh god, crap.
Even though it's not you who's...
I was going to say pushing me, but it's not you who's pushing me in the way that I'm being pushed by...
All I want is for you to get what you want, right?
Or at least fail happily, right?
I mean, that's all I want, right?
And I know that this kind of inertia is hard to see from the day-to-day, right?
But I'm going to, unfortunately, pull my 12-year stack of age and just say, look, I know where that goes.
And this is not going to get you what you want.
So I'm not trying to push you anywhere to say, you know, roll out of this car because this car is going off a cliff, right?
Right.
What I was trying to say was that I don't feel myself resisting the pushing from deep down.
It's coming from somewhere else, if that makes any sense.
Sure, no, it definitely does.
All right.
Well, anything else you wanted to add?
is there anything that anybody else wanted to add um well great call Okay, good, good.
Now I have to do something.
Now I have to change.
I know. Don't worry, you know, eventually we die and then change happens for us.
It's just called decomposition and it's not very pretty.
All right, well, have a great night, everyone.
Thanks for sitting up late with this.
I think it was worthwhile for sure.
And thanks again, James, for your great participation.
Really intense call, thanks.
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