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Dec. 7, 2008 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

01:25:26

1228 Sunday Call-In Show December 7, 2008

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	Well, thank you everybody so much for joining Sunday!
	Bloody Sunday! December the 7th, 2008.
	The first year anniversary of December the 8th, 2007.
	It's not that I'm short on material.
	Why is everyone looking at me like that?
	Well, thank you everybody so much for joining us.
	It is our regular...
	Old Sunday show, and I'll just start off with a topic or two, and then it is all yours to speak of topics of which you wish to for the speaking.
	So first and foremost, Christina was kind enough to accompany me to Twilight on Friday.
	She came with great skepticism, and when she saw a fairly gay-looking James Dean who was very pale, it actually drew her right back to our first date.
	And there was much necking, which was great.
	The baby was very excited to be in a vampire fest.
	And I have done a movie review of Twilight, which I highly recommend.
	I think it is a fascinating, fascinating, fascinating phenomenon.
	It's not the best acted or best written film in the world, but it is so packed full of dense metaphor, it makes one of my podcasts look like Interspeller Space.
	So... Absolutely go that way.
	Of course, go and don't go, you know, if you're over 12, don't go if you're a guy without a woman.
	I think you get arrested for tween trolling.
	So don't do that. But if you can get someone to come along, it's well worth going to watch.
	And I will upload the podcast later on today.
	I think it's 1226. And it is Twilight, the movie review.
	I highly recommend it.
	Other than that, Christine and I have been taking parenting classes, prenatal parenting classes, and they're good.
	Actually, I must say, as far as livestock management go, this is efficient and productive breeding tips.
	So that's been very, very interesting to learn all about how babies work, which foot to hold them by, and how best to spin them so that they sleep well.
	I'm having a hard time because it's early in the morning, so I'm hallucinating a fair amount, but I think I have many of the basics down.
	Sorry, is there something you wanted to add?
	No? No.
	Okay. This very podcast will be the foundation for the lawsuit launched against me by the child in about 12 weeks.
	But it's been really great to learn all of this parenting stuff and all the baby care stuff and so on.
	So we've been very much enjoying that.
	We've done two full Saturdays and a Friday night.
	And I've read, oh Lord, I don't know how many books now, or by now, about all of this kind of stuff.
	So, it's really, really interesting, and of course, if you are a parent, it's well worth doing, of course, even as a refresher.
	The other thing that I would say, and I was talking about this with Christina yesterday, I've been trying to think of a good way to remind myself of the voluntarism of parenting, right?
	Because the kid can't get away, right?
	Christina's got the ankle bracelet on me, so I can't get away, and I'm also not very good with directions, so even if I tried to, I'd probably just end up back hungry and tired, but...
	I've been trying to sort of think about it, and the way that I'm going to try and approach it to remind myself of the voluntarism, because of course, as you know, it is my belief that quality in relationships arises from voluntarism, right?
	The fact that Christina can leave me any time, day or night, is something that really helps remind me to be as whiny and clingy as possible so that she gets guilty and won't.
	I'm not sure that will work forever with the kid, particularly if it's a boy, but what I've sort of tried to think about is something like this.
	I'm going to imagine...
	This is like the Will Kill podcast, but gentler.
	I'd like to imagine that my baby has a button.
	And that button, it's like a red button.
	And... What?
	I'm sorry, what was that?
	Stupid baby beluga.
	Oh, I don't know who typed that.
	I don't mean that the baby's a beluga.
	Wait. Can we start again?
	Hi, everybody. It's Steph.
	It's December the 7th. That's fine.
	So the baby has a big red button, and what I'm going to imagine, or what I'm going to try and picture, is that the baby, at any time, as a baby, as a toddler, as a child, as a teenager, and so on, that baby at any time can push that button and be transported to any family in the world, right?
	So if they want to go and join the Pitts and Jolies on a cruise through the Mallorcas, Then the baby can do that.
	So that's something that I'm really trying to think of, that the baby can push a button and leave the family and join any family that he or she wants to in the future.
	And that reminder that the baby is not stuck is not dependent.
	Of course, that will be the case in the future when the child gets older, particularly, of course, since I've talked about volunteerism and quality and no unchosen positive obligations.
	It's going to be rather hard for me to guilt my kid into sticking around if he doesn't want to.
	So it's a reminder for myself that I need to bring quality and curiosity and intimacy and massive amounts of love and affection to the child so that the child won't want to go to any other family any more than Christina wants to go to another husband during those times that we're not actively watching a George Clooney movie.
	So, that is the goal.
	And if you are a parent, you know, let me know if this is of interest to you.
	I think it's an interesting thought exercise to just remind yourself or to imagine that the baby or the child has a button that they can teleport to any other family that they want at any time.
	And that, I think, is a reminder of what it means to bring volunteerism and quality to your relationship.
	So, those are just the two little things.
	Oh, I guess...
	We have a minor hit on our hands, which is Status in Part 3, the Matrix video.
	It's currently cooking at around 65,000 video hits.
	It's sort of, I mean, as far as my regular video hits go, it's 10 times the average hit, even over a year or two.
	It's by far my most popular video and represents about 8% of all the video views that have ever occurred at FDR over the past couple of years.
	Just during the last week or so.
	So thank you everybody so much who has been helping to push that video out.
	And it's quite remarkable how well it's doing.
	And so thank you everybody who helped to push that out.
	And it's really drawing a lot of people to the site, which is something we can be very happy about.
	Also, over the last month or so, I've had about a thousand new subscribers to...
	The YouTube videos, sadly not to the $10, $20, or $50 a month.
	Cash all a lavish fest on FDR, but I do have some new subscribers.
	Donations are starting to crawl back after the media assault from last month.
	So if you could do what you can to kick in a few bucks if you haven't already, I would really appreciate that.
	And book sales are going well.
	There's been a huge increase in the number of downloads of the FDR books.
	Of course, people are curious about Whether it's a wonder or whether I actually have something of substance to say, hopefully they will decide the latter.
	So, yeah, things have been going very well.
	After a challenging month, to say the least, things have been going well.
	And that's about it for the news and weather.
	So I am all ears.
	If you all have questions or issues or problems or comments or lullabies, feel free to bust them out as we speak.
	I have a question.
	Do you think that it's a good idea for people to study more about babies and stuff before even getting close to that point with somebody else?
	Or do you think it's not that huge of a deal that something can pick up in a relatively short period of time?
	Well, I would suggest that it's important to study baby and child development at any time, whether you intend to have children or not, I think.
	Simply because it's important to be able to put your own family history in context, right?
	So once you understand the best practices, as currently understood for child raising, I think it's very helpful to put the kind of parenting that you had, whether it's in conformity with that or not, into perspective.
	To understand what at least is considered medically normal and healthy, I think is very important.
	It certainly has been quite an eye-opener to me to see what other parenting tips that are out there at the moment.
	I mean, we watched a video on this course, which...
	It was focused very heavily around how to comfort your child.
	And it had examples of how not to comfort your child, right?
	So a boy was tripped or something and was crying.
	And he went up to his mother looking for a hug.
	And his mother basically half shook him and said, you know, big boys don't cry.
	Stop it. You know, this is like, do not do this, right?
	And then Was it the same boy or a different boy?
	A different boy went up to a different mom and he had hurt himself and was crying.
	And his mom said, oh, the way you were crying, I thought you'd really hurt yourself.
	You scared mommy. Now give mommy a hug and make her feel better.
	Right? Oh, heinous, right?
	Just heinous. And the fact that this is all portrayed as really bad...
	Is encouraging, right?
	And I think it's positive. And I think it's good, right?
	And the woman kept reminding us, you know, that the child is not there to make you happy, right?
	You are there to comfort the child.
	You are there for the child's needs.
	The child is not there for your needs.
	So I think it's very helpful and very important to study...
	Good parenting, you know, you don't need to know about how to bathe a baby if you're not imminent and that's not that hard to learn, right?
	I mean, they come with little scuba gear as far as I understand it because I don't know how they would survive in the womb otherwise, right?
	But I think it is very important to study good parenting techniques.
	You can't start to get those laid into your head early enough and I think it can be very helpful in comparing them to how you were raised so that you can notice the difference and whether you have kids or not, that will serve you in good stead.
	What was the movie called?
	Oh, it was produced by the Hospital for Sick Kids in Toronto, the mental health unit.
	We tried looking for it online, we couldn't find it.
	But you had quite a reaction to that.
	I certainly did. So, yeah, it's definitely worth looking.
	But whatever it is that you can get, whether it's development over the first two years, which is a video we have, whether it's just good parenting stuff, right?
	Again, you don't need the technical how-tos of how to care for a baby, and you don't necessarily need to see that vermix-coated cauliflower head coming out of a hoo-hoo.
	But you definitely, I think it really, really comes in good stead to read good parenting hat books, no matter how old you are and whether you plan to become a parent or not.
	Okay, I kind of have another follow-up question.
	Okay, yeah, my follow-up question was, I was looking for parenting materials online, and I found this natural parenting site that also listed some Alice Miller books, but they suggested, they seem to suggest co-sleeping, and that freaked me out.
	Co-sleeping with the baby?
	Yeah, and with children up to something like four years old or something like that?
	Well, I don't know about that.
	Certainly what we've been told is that it's very helpful and productive and positive to have the baby sleep in the same room for the first six months.
	The material that we have had has been somewhat contradictory about having the baby sleep in the same bed, but generally tends towards the negative.
	That it is not good and not healthy to have the baby sleep in the same bed as the parents at any time.
	I don't go into any emotional traumas associated with it, but there are certain risks, a slightly increased risk of sudden infant...
	The reason they suggest that the baby sleep in the parents' room for six months is because there's a higher incidence of sudden infant death syndrome And they have research showing that the incidence of SIDS goes down when the baby is in close proximity to, they say the mother, but I would assume both parents, just because we can pick up on the cues that the baby might have if he or she is not breathing properly.
	Right. Just for those who don't know, sudden infant death syndrome, it's rare.
	It's like two or three babies a week in Canada out of, I don't know how many born, but quite a few.
	It's rare, but it is just when a baby, for no known reason, dies in a crib.
	There are some theories that it's a blanket goes up around the face to deoxygenate the blood or whatever, but I don't know.
	But yeah, not sleeping in the same bed because of the risk of crushing the baby, I think.
	But in the same room for the first six months seems to be the recommendations at the moment.
	They also have some guidelines that if the baby is going to be sleeping in your bed, that the baby should be up at the headboard and that the parents should be sleeping further down towards the middle of the bed.
	So there's at least, I guess, like about a foot separating the baby from the parents, that there are no blankets or no pillows.
	The parents shouldn't use pillows.
	And that shouldn't be any gap between the headboard and the mattress so that the baby doesn't sort of fall in.
	So again, health risks are the issue with younger children in the bed.
	Yeah. So, I don't know.
	I've not read any of the Alice Miller stuff.
	And I don't know... No, it's not from...
	...with regards to infant care.
	But certainly post it on the board if you have questions and we can look into it.
	Sorry? It wasn't from her.
	They just listed a bunch of her books on their site.
	And some of her... linked to some of her articles on their site.
	So, that's just how I found it.
	So, I have no idea how much it makes sense or if it's, like, weird...
	I don't like it. The idea of a child in the same bed as the parents, it seems completely weird to me.
	Weird to me doesn't mean anything, but it's been specifically not recommended in the material that we've got.
	And the material that we've got is socialized medicine and so on, but they do rely on On a fair amount of science for some of this stuff, and so I would definitely say that that's not a mainstream opinion, at least from what we've heard.
	Yeah, I mean, it would just strike me as bad for individuation, at the least, at the very least.
	I mean...
	Okay, that was all the questions I had.
	We have to remember that in different cultures, in different parts of the world, I mean, families do sleep together, and it's considered the norm.
	I mean, I don't know if it's just Western or North American practice, but in many cultures in the world, the whole family sleeps in the same bed.
	So that sometimes has to do with socioeconomic status, but in other countries and other places, it just has to do with cultural beliefs as well.
	So it's something that we have here in North America, and to me it seems kind of weird as well.
	Most families that I know, in fact, all families that I know, have their children in a separate sleeping area.
	For more on culture, have a look at the new video, Freedom Reason Cults.
	Did you have any other questions or comments about that?
	No, I thought I said I was pretty much done.
	I mean, I'm curious in getting into this stuff and I put together a list of books to get that seemed good.
	I really liked this baby human documentary that I saw.
	I thought that was just incredible.
	Absolutely blew my mind.
	What stuck out?
	Oh, the language development stuff in particular.
	Just how early babies start learning language, how they intuit Language and rhythms and so on.
	Just was really cool to me.
	And the stuff about how they start learning language in the womb and that kind of thing.
	Oh yeah, when the baby, because I've been talking and singing to the baby every day, the baby will actually reach out probably before he's even born and slap me across the larynx for disturbing his rest so much.
	But he will actually turn towards my voice, because he's been listening to it and hearing it in the womb, for sure.
	And the teacher constantly emphasized, as to the video, as I said, babies are brilliant.
	The instructor kept saying, babies are geniuses.
	They are incredibly adaptive.
	They are incredibly sensitive to their environment.
	For instance, she was saying that if you give a baby a bottle in the first six weeks, because the bottle pours milk down the baby's throat, I mean, for want of a better way of putting it, the baby will gravitate towards the bottle and will reject the breast because it's easier to get the milk through the baby will gravitate towards the bottle and will reject the breast because it's easier to get the milk through the bottle than it is to get it through It's like you can set up a little oil derrick or something.
	And so the adaptive intelligence of babies to maximize resource intake and minimize energy expenditures and so on is really quite amazing.
	The moment that they're born, you put them on your chest and they will start to worm their way towards the breast.
	They're very much like me on a first date.
	So it's very important to...
	To recognize just how intelligent, it's so easy to look at babies as inert, you know, it's just like intake and output machines, but it is really amazing just how intelligent and adaptive they are.
	Yeah, that's really cool.
	Another thing I like from that documentary is how cognitive development happens, how their vision develops, especially at a really young age, just kind of how they look for this pattern of a few dark splotches, you know?
	And they are able to identify their mother through the shadows on the face.
	Just stuff like that just struck me as...
	Very cool. Yeah, I mean, we're actually somewhat concerned that if we have, because we have some spiky bushes in the house, we're actually quite concerned that the baby's going to mistake huge exploding spiky bushes for Christina's hair.
	So we're going to have to keep that very, very separate because we don't want them attempting to breastfeed off the trunk.
	Baby's actually...
	So babies actually can see about a foot ahead of them.
	So if you're a foot away, they can make images out.
	And other than that, it's mostly shadows that they do respond to.
	And it takes a little while for their vision to come in.
	Right. And if I'm away and the baby misses me, it's very easy for Christina to just hold a giant thumb up to the baby's eyes and it will be play a podcast.
	It will be almost identical.
	And so that gives me, of course, some flexibility.
	They also respond in the first few months to bright colors like red and blue and black and that sort of attracts their attention as well.
	They're very big on eye contact and of course the touch is completely essential.
	As much skin-to-skin contact is very essential with babies.
	I plan to get a sling and simulate pregnancy for a while but without the whining.
	Actually no, probably a bit more. All right.
	Well, thank you. I appreciate that.
	Do we have next questions, other questions, comments, issues?
	Whatever is on the Borg brain, we will publicize.
	Hey, Steph, I got a couple of questions.
	I'm feeling really, really angry and frustrated lately about politics.
	And I know this is a subject that I'm sure has been covered over and over again.
	And I feel like I'm at a point in my life in which I'm very satisfied and very happy with just about everything except for things that involve politics.
	well, I guess you could say politics.
	Like for example, my company is starting to lay people off right now because of the economic situation.
	And I feel very angry every time I flip through the channels on TV and there's some talking head basically propagandizing about how great the bailouts are and things like that.
	And I get angry. Angry so much because their sort of stupidity is really affecting my life.
	And I don't know how to get past that anger.
	Right. I think that's a very, very important question.
	I don't think it can be covered too many times, so I really, really do appreciate you bringing it up.
	Tell me what you mean by when you say their stupidity, because that's a word that I think is worth breaking down a little more.
	Well, I know there are some people in the government that actually know what they're doing when it comes to the bailout.
	So I don't consider them stupid.
	I think they know they're trying to get the wealth from everybody else.
	But there are people that you see on TV that I don't think are politically connected.
	They're just sort of TV pundits talking heads.
	And it's almost like an ignorance that they have, that they don't see – they claim to be economic experts, but they don't understand Economics, really.
	So I guess it's stupidity and...
	I don't know if there's a difference really between stupidity and ignorance.
	Maybe I would define it as more stupidity as sort of...
	Well, ignorance is just you're not aware of something, but stupidity is you're aware of something, but you choose to ignore it.
	You know, obviously the bail arts aren't helping, so...
	I'd have to consider if I believed in the bailouts and I was a rational person, I would have to say, whoa, it's not working.
	Maybe we should think of something else.
	But these people are actively going out there and saying, oh no, it'll work, it'll work, don't worry about it.
	So I consider them stupid because they can see that it doesn't work.
	They can look at history and know that the Great Depression was prolonged by government intervention, but yet they ignore it.
	Does that make sense? Put a way of looking at it that I don't know if it's going to help or not.
	But I think that your frustration is only increased by the perception that they're stupid.
	Because then what you feel is the obligation to educate people, right?
	Like what's missing is knowledge, right?
	Yes. And that's a great temptation, right?
	Yes. Because if you can educate people...
	And this, of course, is the idea behind using politics in the libertarian context to educate people, right?
	And if you can educate people, then they will change their minds, they will talk about the realities of the economics and the politics, and this will start to create a sea change or a shift, and will turn things around.
	I'm not saying that's your thesis, but that's the general thesis around education, right?
	Right. It's sort of like they don't have enough to eat, so once we give them enough to eat, then they will not be starving, right?
	Right. I don't think that there's evidence for that at all.
	And I'll ask you, if you can imagine someone who is a representative of the post office union, right?
	He's some high-up quasi-mafia fellow in the post office union.
	When he says that privatizing the post office would be a complete disaster...
	Is he stupid? No, I think he's obviously defending his self-interest.
	Yeah, I would say that he's not stupid at all, right?
	Right. Now, the purpose of pundits, for the most part, is they work for think tanks, they publish books, they publish articles, and their income, their value, is measured by exposure, right?
	So if you're a pundit on CNN, then you can get speaking fees, you raise the profile of whatever organization you're working for, which gets more newsletters out or more people to the webpage or more people buying the whatever, in which case you end up with more ad revenue, more donations, you know, whatever it is, more matching funds from federal, whatever, whatever, right?
	So the more that these people get exposure, the more money they make and the better they do professionally, right?
	And so, if you were to go, as a pundit, if you were to go and say, well, Barack Obama is doing exactly the wrong thing because government bailouts of industries are catastrophic for the economy and it simply represents a pathetic power and cash grab from people who know that the whole thing is coming crumbling down,
	then... Since George Bush has done the same thing, you won't get either on a Democratic or a Republican venue, right?
	Right. And so what happens is you simply don't get a callback, right, to be on the show ever again, right?
	Right. Which is very bad for your career as a pundit, right?
	And people, it takes a long time to become a pundit, right?
	It's hard work.
	You start...
	By being a junior editor of the newsletter in your high school, right?
	So these people have put 20 years into raising their profile and saying that which gets them callbacks, right?
	To be pundits on these shows, right?
	So they're not going to detonate 20 years of very hard effort to rise in the ranks.
	Right. Right.
	Right. And that's a whole lot easier than it is to actually go out and do the research yourself and be independent,
	right? I mean, the death of real investigative reporting has been quite a tragedy over the past 20 years in American politics, right?
	I mean, ever since Nixon, ever since the Watergate thing, no American president has been vilified for lying.
	It has never happened in the mainstream media.
	And that's because there's been...
	I mean, the deal has been...
	You, the government says implicitly to the media, you ignore the core ethics of the issue, you ignore the facts, you ignore, right?
	We'll give you little bits of corruption from here and there with people that we dislike, right?
	So when the mafia wants to get rid of a hitman, they simply rat on him to the police, right?
	Right. Right. Right. From a cost per word standpoint is tens or hundreds of times more.
	So they save a lot of money on reporting.
	They get instant pre-baked stories from the government.
	And because they can spend that much less, they will submit to more taxation.
	And so they get locked in, right?
	The media becomes a propaganda arm of the government.
	And I know that sounds like a strong phrase, but...
	We saw that very clearly in the Iraq War, right?
	I mean, it was just ridiculous.
	I mean, they might as well have been an arm of the army.
	Right, not one person said this was wrong.
	Exactly. Oh, it was lunatic.
	I mean, it was complete lunacy.
	And in Lions for Lambs, they touch on this.
	It's actually a very interesting scene.
	And it was embarrassing to watch.
	It was just hideous and heinous.
	And the media, of course, has not done much to circle back at all, right?
	Because they just want to keep moving, right?
	Like you hit the bum in your car, most people just want to keep moving and not turn back, right?
	So it's a completely unholy alliance that has been entered into, and the government, like higher education – sorry.
	The media, like higher education, has become completely dependent on government handouts.
	In this case, it's information more so than it is money, but it's the same thing fundamentally.
	So I think – and the reason I'm sorry to go into this long lecture, as usual, but the reason I wanted to point all of this out is they're not stupid.
	They're very smart, completely corrupt, right?
	I mean, we understand that.
	But they're not stupid at all.
	It is not a lack of information.
	At all. It is simply supply and demand, right?
	So now where does this leave the people that are, like, ignorant?
	The ones that have never been exposed to the argument that government intervention screws things up?
	You know, if they're turning on the TV, most of them just aren't aware that they're getting this sort of propaganda from the talking heads.
	I mean, to me it seems like, okay, now they're getting the propaganda from the government and they're believing that the bailouts are a good thing.
	I was hoping that there would be some way that we could approach it.
	But you know what? Actually, I just answered my own question there with my frustration.
	It's realizing that it's not my job to go and teach everybody about this stuff.
	But it's my frustration is that I want to be able to explain to people that we're in such a screwed up position because of statism and not because of freedom.
	But I get so frustrated.
	Okay, so let's pretend that I'm your average uninformed citizen, right?
	Who doesn't use spoon-fed propaganda and so on.
	Tell me why I would want to know.
	Well, because it affects you in your daily life.
	Well, yeah, but I can't do anything about it.
	Right, so my daily life is actually negatively affected by knowing this stuff.
	Not positive. I can't change it, right?
	I mean, this is the biggest government the history has ever seen, right?
	They don't give a shit about the opinion of the average voter.
	They don't give an opinion about any of the voters, right?
	So, I'm just playing devil's advocate position here, right?
	But why would I want to know?
	What benefit would it give me?
	Wouldn't it just make me frustrated like you?
	You're right. It's a fundamental problem that libertarians have.
	It's like... Aren't we just inflicting, you know, stuff on people?
	Which is probably why people don't open up so easily to the libertarian point of view, because it is kind of painful.
	You do walk around with this sort of stress that you know what's going on, you know a way to fix it, but there's nothing you can do about it.
	Right. And you're not just condemning people to a lifetime of personal frustration and dissatisfaction with the media, but you're setting them in direct variance with their friends and family, right?
	Right. And for what?
	I mean, libertarianism is a huge hair shirt.
	It's like a monasticism.
	It's like self-flagellation.
	I mean, the political libertarianism stuff, right?
	Right. It's like, why do I want to know this?
	I'm going to set myself at variance with everyone, I'm going to end up biting my tongue all the time, I'm going to end up with my pulse pounding whenever the news is on, and whenever I read a book, and I'm going to feel this heavy obligation, and so on, right?
	So, why would somebody want to know that?
	You're right. It's like, you could theoretically go to, I don't know, force people to watch The children in Iraq being blown up and killed, right?
	endless footage of that.
	It would just make them completely miserable, and they can't do anything about it.
	And isn't that what you're facing?
	Yes, exactly.
	So why do you want to spread this stress?
	Because the illusion is that knowledge will bring change, right?
	Right. And it will.
	It will. But I would suggest not in the way that you think.
	Sorry to be annoying, as usual.
	No, no, no. This is extremely helpful.
	I mean, I've been having these frustrations for a while.
	And to be able to talk it over with people is extremely helpful.
	So I appreciate it, definitely.
	You want... I mean, this is just fundamental annoying sales guy, right?
	But it's important.
	If you want to change people, if you want to enlighten people...
	The first thing you need to do is recognize that you need to inspire them, not inform them.
	You need to inspire them, not inform them.
	Information changes no one.
	Information changes nothing.
	What does change people, I think, is desire.
	Right? I mean, this is why Car commercials aren't just lists of statistics, right?
	They're cool music, they're girls in bikinis, whatever, right?
	Beer commercials aren't just, you know, alcohol content and number of bubbles, right?
	They are the enticing pictures, they are the pool parties, they are the, you know, the guy from the love boat, right?
	And so, to create desire is essential for creating any kind of social change.
	What do people remember about the civil rights movement?
	They remember the Mississippi burning stuff.
	They remember the people who got killed going down there trying to register black voters in Mississippi.
	But what they most remember is the I Have a Dream speech.
	Now, that's all thrilling candy apple nonsense.
	That whole speech is just thrilling nonsense.
	This is not philosophy. It's not facts.
	It's just inspiration.
	But it really works.
	And Barack Obama, of course, is the prime example of that laughing gas Novocaine to the forehead called charisma and inspiration, right?
	Right. And unfortunately, you're saying, man, I'm really frustrated about this stuff.
	Join me. Right?
	Right. And no one's going to want to except masochists, right?
	Right. Right. So then the question is, how do you inspire people?
	Well, you want to use that power for good, right?
	I mean, obviously most people use it for not so good, right?
	Politicians and... But you want to use that for good.
	And... Well, by showing them that I'm free in my own life.
	By showing them that I'm free in my own life.
	Oh, you're a genius. Take it away from here.
	There's nothing else I need to say. You know, because I do feel free in my life, and...
	Now that I sort of have this different perspective, thanks to you, about the frustration of it, I think, yeah, I mean, it makes sense.
	I'm done. No further questions, Your Honor.
	I'm done. I'm true with this guy.
	We're done. Okay, is there anything else you wanted to add?
	You've got it, and there's nothing else I need to add.
	Is there anything else you wanted to add to that?
	No, thank you.
	That's pretty much it.
	Just aim for freedom until you're so fucking happy that good people love you, indifferent people are filled with envy and desire, and bad people loathe even the shadow you cast.
	That's the only way that I know that it can be done.
	And maybe there's a better way.
	I don't think there is, but you just gotta aim at your own personal freedom and happiness, right?
	And... Be like a flare that goes up over a battlefield that throws everything into sharp relief and shows people the way out.
	And there's just no other way to do it that I know of.
	And so focusing entirely on bringing freedom and happiness to your life, to your relationships, that's all that hasn't been tried.
	So it's got to be the one thing. It's the hardest thing.
	So it's got to be the one thing that will work.
	Right. All right.
	Well, thank you. That was an excellent, excellent question.
	And keep us posted if you don't mind about how this goes.
	And, you know, just get this elephant of responsibility and the feeling that all people are is uninformed.
	Get that off your chest because it's not true.
	It's an illusion. And we know this because when we do inform people, they don't change, right?
	If you call up one of these pundits and you say, hey, I'm going to send you a copy of Murray Rothbard's book on the Great Depression just so you finally get and understand all of this stuff, he's not going to say, guaranteed, he's not going to say, great, thanks, I'd love to read it.
	He's going to read it and then say, holy shit, I'm going to have to completely reverse all of my prior opinions.
	I'm going to have to do a big tour and say that this Barack Obama is driving us into the ditch and it's terrible and so did George Bush and the whole system is based on coercion.
	He's just not going to, right?
	Right. Anymore than the post office union rep is going to say, yes, let's privatize.
	People respond to incentives and it's the system that's the problem.
	Anyway, I won't keep going, but it's an excellent, excellent point.
	I know that a lot of people, and God knows it happens to me as well, so I'm not in any ivory tower loftily levitating above all of this human mess.
	It happens to me as well.
	I have to...
	I use a wrench sometimes to physically unclench my rear end after watching 60 Minutes, but it is something that I do try to remind myself of, that it is a corrupt system, and the individuals who act within it are just following their own self-interest, however corrupt that may be, and to remember that it's personal freedom and joy that will bring about the change.
	All right, thank you again.
	Keep us posted how it goes, and feel free to walk out of the cage of attempting to influence people you think are dumb, yes or not.
	And we open now for the next question.
	If anyone has a comment or issue, Sprakenji up!
	Can I add a comment?
	Not a question. I recently sort of broke away with a couple of friends who were sort of libertarians, sort of the Ron Paul libertarians, and I realized fundamentally that they were so statist that they were just becoming libertarians to sort of gain some kind of popularity to it, even though I don't understand what popularity they could be getting out of it.
	And I just wanted to comment that I feel so much better sort of getting rid of the stressful sort of relationships and people who wouldn't listen to reason and wouldn't listen to really or don't even care how I felt about things.
	They would just sort of say things, whatever they wanted to say, and they supported Ron Paul.
	They were very phony, and I got rid of them, and I feel better for it.
	Oh no, I lost the stream here.
	I'm very glad. Was that something that happened right away, or was it something that happened over time?
	It's something that happened over time.
	Right. Well, I'm glad.
	I'm very glad. There is something when people are very interested in freedom, and you come up with good arguments as to why a particular approach hasn't worked, doesn't seem to be working, doesn't seem like it will work, then it is challenging for that person to realign their goals, right? You're heading south.
	You think you're heading north.
	Somebody shows you on a compass that you're heading south.
	It's a moment of choice, right? And then some people will say, your compass is wrong.
	You're trying to manipulate me.
	I'm going south, right?
	I just get mad or whatever. And other people will stop and reassess.
	And a lot of people in the political libertarian movement don't do that stop and reassess.
	They don't do the damage report.
	They don't do the triage after the failed project plan to do that kind of stuff.
	And I would say those people don't have the goal of freedom but something else.
	Exactly. And I've seen these kind of people before.
	I used to be a neocon back in the day, and it's hard to admit that, but when I'd go to these conferences with people, I'd see that they were just sort of mind-numb robots that would repeat whatever talking points they heard on TV. And similarly, when I made the transition, I was serious about it.
	I really got into the philosophy of personal liberty and anarchy, and so I take it serious.
	And when somebody comes up to me and starts talking about libertarianism, And they're totally phony about it.
	It kind of angers me.
	It's like they're just trying to jump on the bandwagon without really knowing anything about it.
	Right, but also remember, I mean, of course, the political parties serve a lot of functions that don't have anything to do with their supposed ideological goals, right?
	And, like, it's friends, it's a place to go, it's a feeling of having a good cause, it's the excitement of getting involved, it's, you know, having people who kind of have to talk to you, right?
	It's like church, right? It's some place to go where people can't turn you away, at least not very easily.
	easily.
	And it's a kind of bought friendship, right?
	It's kind of a friendship prostitution, right?
	So you get involved and you donate and you give and this and that.
	And then people have to put up with you.
	It's sort of like paying a prostitute or like paying a church, right?
	People have to put up with you because you've given the money, right?
	So it's a very low, for the people who are involved in it, for those reasons, it's a very low self-esteem, in fact, a negative self-esteem activity, right?
	What is interesting, me plus money plus labor plus conformity to the group makes me valuable and so on.
	So I think it's important to remember that when people recognize that the ideals aren't being achieved but they continue on with the goal, it's because it's serving some other need that really doesn't have anything to do with the ideals at all.
	Does that explain why there are so many weird people that are involved in sort of these political movements?
	Like, there's this one guy in particular who was just so socially awkward, but people put up with him, I guess, because he was such a big donor.
	Oh, yeah, absolutely. Again, I'm not saying this is true for everyone and there's no real way, for me at least, to know.
	Yeah, absolutely.
	The strangest people are in politics and religion.
	The real volunteerism is a party, right?
	A party is a free market, right?
	Religion and the state and politics and the family is not a free market of relationships, right?
	So people who don't have a lot to offer will gravitate towards those things and they'll either buy their way in or they guilt their way in or they'll maintain control over their children through manipulation or whatever.
	But the real free market is the job market, like the public sector.
	Sorry, the private sector job market and parties and nightclub or whatever, right?
	I'm not saying it's a fair free market, but it is more of a free market.
	And so people who don't want to compete in those kinds of arenas tend to buy their way in or manipulate their way into these places where people have to put up with you, right?
	Because you bought your way in, right?
	It's the same way a store has to put up with you if you're an obnoxious customer, for the most part, right?
	Although a store, of course, has to recognize the value of other customers, right?
	But churches and political parties are full of I mean, the biggest freaks I've ever seen are in objectivism.
	Objectivism is that way as well, although it's not quite as bad because you don't buy your way in.
	But, oh yeah, politics and churches are just full of the biggest social freaks that you'll ever, ever meet.
	It's funny that you mention that about church, because I've been to churches.
	I went to Catholic school for so many years, but coming out of it and just seeing the way people are, not only are they socially awkward, but they're just unreasonable completely.
	You can't even have a discussion about anything.
	I mean, it doesn't even have to be about religion.
	It could be about architecture or art or something, and they couldn't even...
	Stop from interjecting Jesus into it somehow.
	And it becomes so ridiculous because you can't even just have a regular conversation with them.
	Right. And that's because when you're in these kinds of groups, you don't have to develop the skills of voluntarism, right?
	Like, I mean, if you're in a culture where your marriage is arranged, you don't have to learn how to date and woo a woman, right?
	So whenever you're in an involuntary situation, you simply don't develop the skills, right?
	It's like being a trustafarian, right?
	You just lose a lot of your motivation, right?
	And so when people are in these kinds of environments where people have automatic friendships or automatic companionship based on family, based on church, based on this kind of stuff, They lose the skills to actually become engaging and good conversationalists and they lose because it's all handed to them on a platter,
	right? Sorry, was there anything you wanted to add to that?
	Does that make sense? No, it totally does.
	Just observation. I can see how this really does make sense.
	Just before, I wanted to read something that I wrote in an idle moment, of which there are fewer and fewer at the moment, but I wanted to read something called FDR Forum Physics.
	I just posted this on the board.
	It's a little tongue-in-cheek, but I think you'll enjoy it.
	In trying to understand the quantum mechanic equations of the Freedomain Radio Forum, I have come up with the following constants.
	One, there must always be at least one free will versus determinism debate occurring on the board.
	If... Such a debate dies out.
	It must be resurrected within 72 hours or the universe will end.
	Two. The same goes for agnosticism and used to for nihilism as well until the recent video.
	Three. There must always be at least one Christian, Buddhist or spiritualist in the process of becoming offended.
	Four. There must always be at least one person who is right on the edge of being offensive but is not quite yet.
	Five. There must always be at least one person whose, quote, identity is clearly someone else's.
	6. At least once a week, someone must start posting who has absolutely no idea what Free Domain Radio is about.
	Unicorn farms, anti-Zionism, homeopathic, quote, cures, anything goes.
	7. Also, at least once a week, at least one atheist or agnostic must reprimand Free Domain Radio for, quote, bashing libertarian Christians.
	Eight. If more than a week goes by without someone referring to FDR as a cult, FDR has totally become a cult.
	Nine. No week is complete unless and until someone brings up either roads, money, or national defense, followed by blanket rejections of all solutions.
	Yeah, but...
	Ten.
	No more than two days can go by without someone complaining about a friend or relative who is completely hostile to atheism, anarchism, or philosophy in general.
	Bewildered, incomprehension is a must.
	11. In general...
	12. At least once every 10 days, a blatantly hostile person must join the board, start a troll thread, and magically suck even the most experienced and mature posters into the evil moor of engagement.
	In general, this will last for 10 days.
	13. In general, those who state the blindingly obvious will inevitably end up being revealed as the most uninformed.
	14. At least once every single day, someone must egregiously and completely blindly violate his or her own moral or epistemological premises, i.e.
	a determinist must get angry, a nihilist must correct someone, an agnostic must express certainty about anything, a Christian must attack someone for intolerance, etc.
	15. Within four to eight hours of someone being banned, a quote, new account must be created from which a concerned stranger with an oddly deep knowledge of board history must demand to know why the banning occurred.
	These are just some thoughts that I added.
	Some people added some more. It's in the jokes thread.
	I just thought I'd mention that. I thought that was a frothy bit of fun.
	So, anyway, if we have more questions, we certainly have time for another question or two in the show.
	Steph, I thought I would unmute here with my lame built-in laptop mic.
	Oh, is this Mr. Looney?
	No, this is Looney, otherwise known as Obnosis Jones on Skype.
	And I owe you a video, and I'm sorry, I will give you a link to that.
	I will do that right after the show.
	I'm madly busy this week.
	Oh, you did get my phone.
	I did. Sorry, I've been meaning to dig it up and upload it.
	Okay, well, I do appreciate that.
	No, sometimes I call you on the phone and leave you a voicemail message, and sometimes I don't know if you get it, so I appreciate that.
	Yeah, I've been working on a video compilation of things, and I think that really needs to be on it, and I've been having trouble converting it.
	But I just wanted to say that I have, I just want to give a testimonial here.
	I have been happier in my life than I've ever been.
	I walk around the world looking at how beautiful things are.
	I am free.
	I can't tell you how that wonderful...
	Yes, the state is still there, but everything you say about what personal liberty really is all about is true in my life.
	I will say, for the record, and anybody who wants to interview me, I will tell them, it is absolutely true.
	You put into practice the philosophy of liberty and no unchosen obligations and get the corrupt people out of your life, and it is just a complete...
	Turn around. I have just been so happy and I'm able to talk to people.
	I don't get into arguments anymore.
	I can say the most outrageous things and I don't even get a lot of blowback.
	I can say stuff like the government is a bunch of gang of thrugs running a protection racket and they'll look at me and go, yeah, that's kind of true, isn't it?
	Right, right.
	It's just amazing when you just put out there and it's like, I don't have an axe to grind.
	You know, I've spent 20 years being in the so-called, you know, freedom, political, conservative, whatever label you want to put on it, you know, movement.
	And it was always this anxiety.
	Okay. Now I don't have this anxiety anymore because I know the truth.
	It is just an incredible liberating thing.
	I'll share with you, I went to a science fiction convention last weekend, and I think you might have seen...
	I posted something about a particular science fiction writer who has a blog and I posted something about some of my interchange with him.
	Well, I actually ran into the guy and I spent an hour talking to him and it was just amazingly revealing about how fear-based this guy was.
	And, I mean, he's an incredibly intelligent, articulate guy, and it was like, you know, it was like wrestling a, you know, a 300-pound pig, you know.
	It's like, man, you could not pin him down to save your life.
	But it was fascinating watching him dance and spin and go, oh, you know, he refused to ever come down to a basic truth about anything.
	And it's just, wow, this is what we have to deal with.
	And I felt so empowered.
	I mean, yeah, I couldn't get the guy to see, you know, a glimmer of light, but...
	This isn't Neil Smith, is it?
	No, no, no, no. I'd love to meet him.
	Hope to God, Neil Smith wouldn't be that.
	Oh, I hope not. That was a bit surprising, just for one of other reasons.
	I wouldn't mind meeting that guy.
	I think he's got a lot to offer.
	He may have some trouble with the family stuff.
	I have no idea, but...
	But no, since I put the guy's name on the board, I will reveal his name is Stephen Barnes.
	And he's a brilliant writer, and he's got a lot of stuff on the ball.
	But man, when it gets down to the core of first principles, wow, he is like really...
	And it totally indicated to me the fact that there's got to be something in his life, in his family, in his background that just...
	Makes him completely blind.
	And I feel for the guy, you know, because I guess my attempt to do this is because I like the guy, and I think that he would, you know, if he could somehow wrap his wits around this and take a look, you know, I mean, what it did for me to look into my own family, and I thought I had a great family.
	Oh, yes, I remember.
	I'm able to tell people, you have no idea.
	Oh, man.
	But it's hard. I mean, I remember last year.
	Was it? No, earlier this year, the beginning of this year in Miami.
	I mean, it was a very tough time for you, right?
	I mean, it was a very emotional and in many ways, frightening and distressing time for you.
	So it is very hard to do this stuff, right?
	That's why people avoid first principles, because first principles can be applied to your life.
	As opposed to disliking the Fed, which, you know, we don't have a personal Fed, so we can't do anything about it, right?
	So the addiction to abstractions is the addiction to avoiding implementing these ideas.
	And I just want to further reinforce what you're saying by just pointing out that when we walk up to someone and say, take the red pill, right?
	The first thing that people are always going to leap to in their own mind is, have you taken it?
	Right, so they're not going to judge, and it's interesting because you say, well now you can say the government is a bunch of thugs and everyone gets it, and they don't freak out, right?
	We keep thinking that we have to have all the answers, and once we have all the answers and can provide the best documents and the right information, that everybody will change their mind and become better people, but it's not true.
	People don't even have a methodology.
	The general citizen, the general person, the average person has not, and this is even the most educated, they don't even have a clue about a methodology by which to evaluate what we're saying.
	They don't have a clue, they don't have a standard, they have no compare to watch, they have no objectivity, they have no rules.
	They don't know how to evaluate what we're saying.
	So what do they do? What they do is they evaluate how we evaluate what we're saying.
	So if we're punchy and we're frustrated and we're odd and we're disconnected and we're over-insistent, then what we're saying is we're not comfortable with what we're saying.
	And there's no shortcut to becoming comfortable with voluntarism.
	The only way to become comfortable with voluntarism, and thus someone who can compellingly and engagingly help other people out of error, the only way to become truly confident about the value of voluntarism is to live it, not to study it, not to read about it, not to present about it, not to listen to podcasts about it, but to live it.
	Once you live it you get how beautifully it works and then you can say these things without any inner friction and people will get that you know and truly believe and you have that ring of authenticity to what you're saying to people and they will then say this guy has real certainty and I can't judge what he's saying but I can judge That he doesn't have any problem and he in fact is glowingly enthusiastic and certain and calm and at peace with what he is putting forward.
	That is something you can't fake.
	You can't control it.
	You can't manipulate it.
	It's either there or it's not.
	And this badge of communication and the clear channel of convincing only comes through going inwards and really living the values yourself.
	Then you get this amazing...
	To other people where you can talk about stuff and they will be really receptive because deep down they get that you're coming from an honest and experienced place.
	Yeah, a lot of the people I'm talking to know I walked away from a 13-year bad marriage.
	Somehow they get it that there's something going on here and they're willing to listen to me.
	It was funny listening to a friend Barnes who got really aggressive and very upset on several different, but he kept coming back because it's like, wait a minute, Something in him knows there's something he's missing, but he's not ready to look at it yet.
	But I just want to share one other thing before I turn the call over to someone else.
	Something very positive.
	I've been able to start a dialogue with my 18-year-old granddaughter.
	I started talking to her about these ideas.
	And this, to me, is probably one of the more important things I can do.
	I don't want to go into all the details for life but just, you know, Know the fact that she was raised by a woman who was the child of my ex-wife.
	That may be all the information you need to start with.
	The Theosophist. Yes, so I think that...
	But I think she is very...
	As you say, we're all geniuses and we're all philosophers, and she certainly has at least her share of this genius.
	And... I made a good attempt.
	I spent a good bit of time with her last weekend and I made a good attempt to strengthen our relationship and to let her know that it's safe to talk to me and that, you know, I have, you know, learned a lot and I think her life, you know, and just kind of make, you know, not trying to push it on her, not trying to, you know, to lecture, but just sort of like invite her.
	Well, how do you feel? What's, you know, what's important in your life?
	And I think we had a really good conversation.
	So that means a lot to me.
	And I have all the greatest respect and gratitude to you, Steph, because I mean, without you and your ideas and all the other people who've helped you to get this conversation going, I mean, my life would be miserable right now.
	I really appreciate that. And, you know, of course, I'm nothing more than an incidental catalyst, right?
	I mean, it's you who've got to do the heavy lifting and obviously have.
	Done the heavy lifting. So, you know, whatever pat you give me, which I appreciate, you know, give 50 to yourself because that's where the real heroism is.
	Not me yelling in the woods, but you putting this stuff into practice in your life.
	So, I just wanted to mention that.
	And this... Sorry, go ahead.
	Yeah, I just wanted to refresh.
	And I let her know that, you know, all the caveats.
	This is, you know, this is probably the most difficult thing she's ever going to have to start wrapping her wits around, you know, because it takes a lot of work.
	And she left me saying, well, you've given me a lot of food for thought.
	It's a tremendous amount of work to get through this blindness, but boy, it's gorgeous on the other side.
	It is. It's clear and beautiful and spontaneous.
	I can't emphasize this enough.
	I'll touch on it very briefly, and then we'll move on to the next caller.
	And thank you so much for a truly lovely call.
	I really do appreciate that. If you want to convince people to lose weight, you have to be thin.
	You have to be thin.
	I don't mean skinny, lean, right?
	You can't be fat and tell people how to lose weight.
	You just can't. And if you want to tell people how to be free, you have to be free first, right?
	Because otherwise you won't know how to help them.
	If you haven't gone through every single one of those horrible and challenging and exciting and awful stages of becoming truly free to yourself, you won't know how to help people.
	You'll just give them empty slogans.
	You'll just give them, oh, listen to this podcast.
	But once you get how difficult it is, then you can really dig in and help people to really achieve it themselves.
	But if you want people to accept you as an authority on weight loss, you have to not be fat when you're talking to them.
	And if you want people to accept you as an authority on freedom, you have to be free in your heart.
	You have to be free in your life.
	You have to be free in your mind.
	Otherwise, it would just be a bunch of empty sloganing.
	And you actually become a negative force.
	An anti-freedom force.
	Because you talk to them about freedom and you're not free.
	You actually just discredit yourself and freedom.
	And it closes off a window that might otherwise be open.
	And that's why I say, don't go out into the world until you're free.
	And proselytize or attempt to bring the philosophy to people.
	Because otherwise, you're just...
	Turn the market. So anyway, I just wanted to mention that.
	So thanks. I appreciate that.
	That was a great call. And that kind of feedback, I really, really do appreciate.
	And I also wanted to thank the guy who's doing his book report on the God of Atheists.
	I really do appreciate that.
	I asked him to send me a copy of it, a book review.
	So hopefully I'll get a copy of that, which will be very nice.
	And I think we have time for one more question.
	If anybody has a yearning burning, I would be happy to let you talk or provide any feedback if I can.
	Somebody asked in the chat room, why do libertarians hate Freud so much?
	Well, because Freud was an atheist, right?
	Freud was a very specific, very detailed, very psychologically insightful atheist.
	He talks about Spiritualism being this feeling of oneness with the universe, that harkens back to our experience with our mothers when we were infants, where we don't have ego boundaries, we're psychologically united.
	The Future of an Illusion is a good essay to read with him.
	Psychology is the opposite of religion, particularly organized religion.
	And now I know that some psychologists, particularly Jung, have had their mystical bents to them, but fundamentally, psychology is...
	It's the second greatest enemy to religion.
	Philosophy is first, but philosophers are much rarer than psychologists, right?
	I mean, good philosophers.
	But yeah, psychology is antithetical to religion, and of course political libertarianism is almost exclusively either a religious-funded and religious-populated movement, or it is populated by a bunch of atheists who won't say anything bad about religion, right? Because... People respond to incentives, right?
	So yeah, psychology is...
	And this is one of the reasons why libertarians have a problem with FDR, because of the focus on personal psychology, on self-knowledge.
	The unexamined life, in my view, is not worth living.
	But of course, some people who like to kiss the toes of Jesus disagree.
	And it's hard. It's hard for people who are religious.
	And since the popularity of the latest True News or the video series, of course, I've been getting the God...
	Based gas bags coming out of the woodwork, and it's hard, right?
	It's hard for them to just fundamentally get, and I would say maybe it's even impossible for them to fundamentally get, that Jesus means as much to me as Zeus does.
	Jesus has as much reality to me as Sauron.
	Well, actually, I've seen better animated Sauron than Jesus.
	But, so when people bring this superstitious religious stuff to me, at least, it's hard for them to process that, you know, when they say Zeus, they, you know, when they say Jesus or God, it's the same to me as Zeus and Set and Baal and Apollo and Dionysus and all this sort of nonsense.
	It's all fairy tales, right? And it's really hard for people to get that.
	It's very disorienting and frightening for them.
	Because the important thing where a philosopher and a psychologist, somebody who's philosophically and psychologically minded, when someone brings a great intensity of devotion to a fairy tale, then you would treat that as an illness, right? If somebody comes and says, I started off in Dungeons& Dragons and now I think I'm a paladin, You wouldn't say, wow, that's an interesting cultural belief.
	You'd say, you're not a paladin.
	This is a sign of poor mental health.
	You are hiding out in a delusion because of some psychological distress or trauma.
	That has skewed and warped your thinking, there is some deep pain at the bottom of this, and as long as you keep thinking that you are a paladin, you can't deal with your real issues, and therefore we need to break the illusion and deal with the resulting flood of emotion, right?
	So that's the way any competent, psychologically inclined person would deal with somebody who's religious, and that's exactly how Freud approached questions of religion, and Jung as well.
	Jung with formal religion, with organized religion.
	But... It's tough, right?
	So why do religious people hate psychology?
	Well, because it reveals religion as a socially sanctioned quasi-psychotic delusion.
	I mean, if you were the only person who believed that a Jewish zombie would shepherd you to heaven after you were dead because a rib woman listened to a talking snake in a magical garden, And that devils haunted the world and tempted people and that bad people burned in hell.
	I mean, it would be a psychotic delusion, right?
	So psychology reveals religion as a seriously traumatized delusion.
	And they avoid that because it doesn't profit them fundamentally.
	But even more deeply, it would reveal the childhood pain that comes from this kind of superstitious indoctrination.
	So I think that's the hostility that people have towards it.
	All right.
	I don't think we have time for another question.
	Plus, it doesn't seem to be a lot of people with questions at the moment.
	So if you have anything that you want to mention, jump in.
	Somebody said, I have no mic now.
	I cannot talk. I have no specs.
	I cannot see. But how do you feel about working with a therapist who is religious?
	I felt like it was a potentially large obstacle that would inevitably be encountered in future comments, ideas.
	I wouldn't do it.
	Thank you.
	Yeah, I wouldn't do it.
	Now, the full disclosure aspect of me saying that is that my therapist was kind of into Eastern mysticism.
	I mean, it really was, we only talked about it maybe once or twice in two years, and this was like three hours a week that I was going, right?
	So, but at one point she mentioned something about monks being able to change their body temperature through, you know, she was really into that, you know, Eastern, I don't know.
	I don't know if she was Buddhist or, but she was into this kind of spiritualism.
	But it was never part of our therapy, and she certainly wasn't into any kind of organized religion that I ever knew of, and it was only tangentially that I knew of these other beliefs.
	So, I would not work with that.
	Sorry, but with a religious person, I would not work with a religious therapist myself.
	I mean, I don't know, right?
	I would strongly suggest against it.
	Again, this is all amateur nonsense, right?
	I'm not a therapist or a psychologist or anything like that.
	I'm just telling you what I would decide.
	Religion projects... The unconscious into the world, right?
	We have good impulses and we have bad impulses.
	We have a time where we thought that our parents were gods and we also had a time where we thought we were gods when we were toddlers or infants or whatever, right?
	So religion unfortunately takes all of the richness that is within the personality and projects it uselessly out into the universe where it can be controlled, hooked into, manipulated and abused by other people.
	So my concern with a religious person, with a religious therapist, would be that at some point you won't be able to go any deeper.
	Because at some point you will get to a mycosystem depth that will threaten her religious beliefs.
	Once you get to that level of, you could say, collective unconscious or universal archetypes or whatever, and I remember this phase very clearly in my therapy, where you get down so deep that you get to where religion comes from.
	And that's one of the reasons why I'm very comfortable opposing religion, because I've gone to that place within myself where the religious impulse comes from and recognize that it is an internal state.
	Right? I'm not a god or anything like that, but you get down to that level of power and depth within the unconscious where religion comes from.
	Now, my therapist did not, as far as I know, did not believe in any kind of god, believed that there were amazing powers within the mind, And was very, very into dream symbology and,
	you know, all the stuff that I've tried to talk about on occasion in FDO. So, when I went that deep into myself, I did not bump up against any anxiety on her part to do with, dear God, this is where religion comes from, right?
	And that's where you want to go in therapy, in my...
	In my opinion and in my experience, you want to go right down deep so you get the full picture of your personality, all the richness, all the complexity, all of the fear, the anger, the love, the beauty, the terror, everything that is right down there at the root, right? You stop right before your tailbone, right before you become a full-born flying monkey.
	You stop, right? Because you can't get down beyond your deepest images and impulses because then you start to talk about the spinal fluid, which can't Be accessed by your mind, right?
	But the real power of the personality, the real power of individuation and authenticity, in my experience, is when you don't stop.
	When there's no place where you say, if I go any deeper, this is bad.
	You need someone who's going to be able to go with you there.
	I think that a religious therapist is not going to be able to go there.
	Because if she believes that those layers of the personality are out in the universe and exist for real and aren't part of you, but are part of God or Jesus or angels or devils or whatever, then she's not going to be able to help you deal with these as internally generated states and impulses.
	Because if she goes there, she's going to lose her faith, right?
	And that's not going to happen.
	So she's going to pull back, and I'll tell you this for sure.
	I'll tell you this for sure.
	It only takes the slightest hesitation on the part of your therapist to prevent that self-knowledge at that level, at that depth, right?
	Because it's so unconscious down there, and I say down there in this sense, it's also up there, and it's not like the murky center of the world.
	It's also up around where...
	The cirrus clouds of God are supposed to be.
	But if your therapist pulls away or pulls back from that kind of arena because it threatens her religious beliefs, it will render it impossible for you to continue.
	Because it was so dependent upon the guidance of a therapist at that point that if she pulls back, you won't even know it.
	It'll just dry up for you.
	And I wouldn't...
	You invest in therapy to get to that point.
	That's where the greatest individuation is, right?
	Where you absorb, you pull back the projections even of things like religion.
	That's where the real power. Religion and God has so much power that if we understand that these impulses and this knowledge is within ourselves, that's where the greatest power is, right?
	That's the whole reason you do it.
	And so a religious therapist would not be able to get you there.
	In fact, unconsciously, I think, would block you from that.
	So you'd be paying 90% of the money for 10% of the value, if that makes any sense.
	That's something I would mention.
	Well, I have a question now.
	Okay. Because I don't want to waste my money, and I want to get the most bang for my buck here.
	I don't know if I've been there where you're talking about, and I don't quite understand what you mean, and I want to go there if I haven't been there.
	Statements abound question?
	Say that again? Well, you've made a bunch of statements, but what's the question?
	The question is, I have no idea what you're talking about.
	What do you mean? I don't know where to start, because...
	Well, look, I'll be very brief, right?
	And hopefully I'll explain it more quickly.
	This is also part of an upcoming podcast series that I doubt I'll get done before the baby comes, so I'll just mention it.
	But why does religion survive?
	Religion survives partly because when people pray to God, they get an answer.
	And obviously, since there's no God, they're not praying to God.
	They're praying to themselves, right?
	So there's a level of knowledge and of intuition and of instinct within us that people believe is God, right?
	So you're talking about the Miko system?
	Yeah. Essentially.
	Yeah. Okay, so I've already been there.
	No, no, no, no. But if this God thing is, right, if that's a challenge, right, then I don't know if you've been to that place where God lives within you, right?
	And this all sounds ridiculous.
	I'm fully aware of how ridiculous this all sounds, but it's entirely empirical.
	You simply can't get people to do something that never works for 10,000 years.
	You can't. You can't even get people to drink new Coke with a hundred million dollar advertising campaign, right?
	So religion must work in terms of prayer because it's the one thing that is common to all religions, almost all religions, is this prayer and this idea that you pray and you get answers, right?
	That you're praying to some consciousness that is not available to you consciously and then you get answers, right?
	Right, that tends to happen for me.
	Right, and we've done this with the MECO system conversations for probably about a year or 18 months, where I've had MECO system conversations with people where an astonishing amount of knowledge is there, and this is also why we do the dream analysis, right?
	Because this is where we have incredible answers about our life, right?
	Right. So, people pray to God because they get...
	Answers, right? And the answers are helpful, I think, for a lot of people.
	You know, let Jesus take the wheel.
	I put this in God's hands, right?
	But there is no God, so there must be some part of themselves that has an amazing amount of wisdom and utility for them, right?
	That they can only get in the metaphorical action of prayer, right?
	Right. Because if it never worked, right?
	Or if God always told people to jump off a cliff, or it never worked, and people never got any peace out of it, or never got any resolution out of it, then people would not do it, right?
	You know, things that don't work are like, I don't know, I guess, well, I was just going to say rain dances, right?
	No religion still, no religion that's part of any kind of literate society does rain dances anymore, because they clearly don't work, right?
	And people don't pray to have their severed limbs regrown, right?
	Because that clearly doesn't work.
	There's no placebo effect for amputation, right?
	But in terms of stress-related illnesses, in terms of asking big questions about your life, in terms of, you know, what should my life be, or should I be with this person or not, people pray because they get some answers back that are valuable.
	Because it works. And people, of course, think they're asking some God out there beyond the stars, but that's not true at all, right?
	Because there's no God out there beyond the stars.
	There is a layer of that kind of knowledge within ourselves, though.
	Alright, that makes sense.
	And I've gotten those answers before, just from my ecosystem, the kinds of things that...
	And it's almost like I already knew the answers that come back.
	Right. And if you were not psychologically sophisticated and you believed in a god, you would genuinely believe that you were getting answers back from a superior intelligence, right?
	Right. Right. And that's why it's convincing to people, right?
	Right. And so all I'm saying is that you want to get to that layer of knowledge and intuition and instinct, right?
	And a religious therapist, I would submit, can't get you there.
	Because if they get there, if they get you there, they are there as well.
	You can't go deeper in someone else than you are in yourself, right?
	And that would be the end of their religious faith.
	Right. Because if they can see you do it, And you're an atheist, right?
	Then clearly it's not God, right?
	I mean, maybe they could tell you it is God, but you would know better, and it would be a threat to their faith, and they would veer away from it unconsciously.
	And that's why people who are religious can sometimes seem pretty smart, right?
	Because they pray, and they get answers, right?
	Whereas a materialist atheist will look at A couple of square inches of brain cells and say, it's just a brain.
	I'm just a machine. I'm a determinant.
	Like, they don't get the depth and beauty and vividness of that kind of intelligence.
	And that's why we're trying to offer interstellar atheism, right?
	Atheism with depth. Atheism with companionship.
	Atheism with... With the kind of spirit guides that people mistake in religions for Jesus and wise old men and Muhammad and so on.
	Yeah, self-knowledge, self-intimacy.
	We can have our own Obi-Wan Kenobis.
	That's really what I'm trying to say.
	So we are more powerful than ever before when we die?
	If you strike me down, I will not return for the sequel because your dialogue is too terrible.
	So yeah, I'm going there.
	You'll be paying 90% of the value.
	90% of the cost to get 10% of the value.
	Because that last 10% is where you get most of the value.
	For me, that last level of debt.
	That's where FDR came from, right?
	All right. Well, my confusion is satisfied.
	Someone's asked, do you see me get lightsabers?
	And actually, if you get glow-in-the-dark condoms and a picture of Pamela Anderson, it's damn close.
	Christina is taking the baby away.
	You have soiled our offspring.
	Alright, well thank you everybody so much.
	I really do appreciate your time this weekend.
	And remember to, if you can, throw a little cashola at the FDR. Media box.
	The donations are slowly creeping back up, but anything you can do to help me avoid the general excitement of being a voluntarily paid philosopher with a wife who is selfishly giving up her stable income to do something or other.
	I can't remember what. I would really appreciate that.
	And thank you so much for dropping by this weekend.
	Have yourselves an absolutely fantabulously wonderful week.
	And I will try and put out another good video this week.
	I have a good idea for one. I'll put the script up tomorrow or the day after.
	And be sure to check out 1226, I think it is, the movie review of Twilight, which I was quite happy with.
	So again, thank you all so much.

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