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Dec. 27, 2008 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
15:56
1240 Holiday Blues and Interviews

Two thoughts to brighten your holiday season.

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Good afternoon, everybody.
Hope you're doing very well. It's Steph.
It is December the 27th, quarter to two, and I am doing what fathers do, which is errands.
That's what we are up to.
We have lists, and I have to go and pick up some very interesting things, which I know not much of, including girly things that make me edgy.
Anyway... So, I hope you're doing well.
I wanted to put out two little thoughts when we had a Christmas chat.
We were talking about...
Some people were saying that they were experiencing some Christmastime blues, and there is a cure for the Christmastime blues.
And I thought that...
I sort of put forward a cure for the Christmastime blues.
These are for people who maybe have taken a break from families, or...
Who feel separated from former friends and so on, right?
The people who have taken breaks from particular relationships and feeling sort of lonely and blue over the holidays.
I mean, there's lots of stuff that's real complicated about philosophy, but this one is actually relatively simple.
There's a very quick and easy cure that I mentioned and which people seem to find helpful, so I'll step you through it and hopefully it will help chase away some of the azures.
So, the cure is this, right?
I mean, so let's say that you have taken a break from your family and you feel lonely and so on over Christmas.
Well, I think that the important thing to remember is that...
Freedom, of course, is the freedom to speak with or to see your family or to not speak with or to see your family.
And freedom, of course, is always the right to the capacity that you have to change your mind.
So, if you have taken a break from your family and you find that you miss them and that...
The issues that you had with them are not particularly important or you feel a strong desire to work them out and so on, then by all means, right?
Call them. Talk to them.
Work it out. One of the goals of the conversation here, and I would say that any reasonable philosophical or psychological conversation, is to help you end up avoiding impossible And clearly,
or at least clearly to me, it is an impossible situation if you do not want to spend time with your family, but you feel sad and depressed if you don't spend time with your family.
That's a lose-lose situation all around.
So the way that I would suggest, if you feel blue and lonely over the holidays, the thing that works for me, or has worked for me for like a decade, is pick up the phone.
Pick up the phone and dial all but the last number of whoever it is, family, friends, siblings.
Just so you pick up the phone, and you dial all but the last number, and you have your finger hovering over that last button.
And how do you feel about pressing that last button, initiating the conversation, going over to your family?
Let's just say your family could be there.
How do you feel about that? And if you feel like, wow, that would be great, I'd really want to go and see them, I'd really like to talk to them, then, for heaven's sake, push the last number and And go talk to them, right?
Because that's your genuine, honest desire.
Or if you don't want to go that far, you can just sit down, close your eyes in a silent place, in a dark space, and imagine being at your parents' for Christmas dinner or Boxing Day or waking up in your parents' house, sleeping in your own bed, your own room. Or your old bed, your old room, whatever it is, right?
And just say, okay, well, so how do I feel if that's the situation?
And not to layer my experience.
I mean, my experience was, dear God, I would pay a lot of money to not be in that situation, right?
To not wake up at my mom's place or whatever my dad's place, let's say.
I would pay a lot of money to not be in that situation.
And your experience, of course, is probably different, but my experience was like, God almighty, would I ever not want to be in that situation of having to go downstairs, or actually my mom lives in an apartment, open the door and see my mom and try to eat breakfast with her and so on, right? I mean, that would be like, wow, I would do a lot to not end up in that situation.
And I think that's pretty important, right?
Because that helps you to break out of the impossible situation, right?
If you feel, oh, you know, sad and lonely, and then the alternative to feeling sad and lonely is to...
I'm not saying it is, but if the alternative is then to feel the horror of being with your family or friends or whatever, then the sad and lonely is sort of in perspective.
At least I hope so.
I hope to some degree that it's in perspective.
So just, you know, if you feel sad and lonely...
Picture making the call, picture being with them, and of course if you miss them, then make the call, and if you feel, you know, queasy and horrified at the idea, then I hope that that helps at least to break apart some of that impossible situation, that that is a ship that has sunk, and you have to swim on to new shores, and I hope that that helps with the blues.
Now, the second thing that I'd like to talk to you about is something I've mentioned in passing a couple of times before, but I thought it was worth going into in more detail because I've been sort of reminded of this habit through being a co-parent with the lovely and loving Christina.
And that is this idea that it's important to survey the people in our lives.
Because RTR, we've talked about in terms of figuring out what your experience of other people is, and I think that's all very good and healthy and helpful.
But there is another side to RTR, of course, which is to probe and try to understand and open ourself up to other people's genuine experience of ourselves.
Now, this is tricky, right?
And the reason I sort of held off on it is it is very tricky.
Because it's sometimes hard to tell whether people are being honest with us, right?
So people who dislike me with a vehemence bordering on apocalyptic, if I said, ooh, what's your genuine experience with me?
You're an asshole! Or whatever, right?
So it's a little trickier because we can't...
It's not quite as easy to validate other people's authenticity and honesty as it is to validate their own.
But nonetheless, I think it's very important to, because the RTR, it goes back and forth, you know, like those lava, those swivelly lava things that you see in kitschy therapist's office, I guess.
There's one on the in-treatment set, April Burns Show.
Anyway, it goes back and forth, right?
So I think it's important, people that you have in your life, Friends, lovers, family, so on, husbands, wives, children, particularly children, right?
To sit them down and to say, you know, a time where there's no distractions, you know, or whatever.
What is your experience of me as a...
You know, so I ask Christina twice a day, at least twice a day, if not more.
You know, how's your experience of me as a co-parent?
Is there anything I can do different or better?
Or is there anything that I'm doing too much of or too little of?
How can I make your co-parenting experience the best it could possibly be?
It sounds silly, but it's so important to do that.
I mean, I was sort of reminded of this because I got something in the mail.
I ordered some pizza like a month ago.
And I got something in the mail, which was a survey.
About what my experience of ordering and eating pizza from this place was.
And my hosting provider, whenever I have any contact with them, they say, hey, can we send you a survey?
And they want to know what it was like to deal with them, what my satisfaction with their policies, prices, services, features, and so on is.
And every business on the planet that is, of course, dependent upon direct customer satisfaction, as all businesses really are, Every decent business or professional business on the planet makes a regular habit of surveying their customers to find out what their customers experience of them as a company is and their products and people and services and so on.
And I sort of figured that if a pizza company can care about my experience of their products and services, Surely it makes sense to provide this opportunity for RTR feedback from other people.
And, you know, if they come back really harsh, then you RTR with yourself or you're honest with them about your experience of their feedback.
And look for this, right?
So when you say to someone, can you give me your feedback of, you know, how I am as a husband, lover, parent, whatever, employee, then it's important, I think, to see, to notice, to figure out And to be aware of whether or not they ask you as well, right?
Is it one side as you say, well, what is your experience of me as a friend?
Blah, blah, blah. You did this wrong, that wrong, the other wrong.
And then there's nothing else, right?
Then that's not a very good sign.
That's not a very good... It's an indication of the reciprocity, whereas if they say, well, that's very interesting.
Why did you think of this? I think it's worthwhile.
I appreciate having the chance to give you feedback, so why don't you tell me what your experience of me as a friend is, and by the way, what is your experience of my feedback that you asked for just now, and so on, to see if people notice that reciprocity.
But I think opening up that RTR possibility with other people and helping to give them that opportunity to give you feedback.
I mean, I get it all the time.
Oh, all the time.
I get feedback in terms of donations.
I get feedback on the board.
I get feedback in the chat window.
I get feedback in my inbox.
I get feedback on the YouTube user comments.
And so I'm in a constant state of...
I even got feedback from the mainstream media.
I'm in a constant state of receiving feedback.
So it's relatively easy for me To gauge how well or how poorly I'm doing in particular areas and what people's interests are.
And of course, I have the Sunday show, which is fundamentally about feedback.
You know, what is it that people are interested in?
What are the topics that are most valuable to them?
What are they wrestling with that philosophy can be the greatest help with?
All of that is pretty specific feedback.
So, I think all of that stuff is very important.
To understand. I was thinking...
Let me know what you think.
I was thinking of putting together This is going to sound weird, but I think it would be really helpful.
Putting together a kind of questionnaire that we could hand out to people, or we could use as a sort of rough script, even as just some thoughts or some ideas.
You know, what is it?
A script for husbands, a script for parents, teachers, uncles, you know, friends of whatever.
Just this feedback idea that we could use as a starting off place to try and get the best and most productive feedback from people.
I'm not saying we should mail them a survey or set anything up online, but I think it's good to sort of kick these ideas around.
Let me know if you think this would be a good idea.
I think it would be, but let me know what you think, because I do think that it is very important To get feedback.
To get feedback from the people in our lives that we care about, right?
About what their experience of us is.
You know, how...
You know, what has it been like for you, my friend, since I got into philosophy?
You know, it's funny because libertarians as a whole are very keen on...
The free market. And one of the things that the free market organizations always do, as I mentioned, is try and get feedback from their customers.
Now, libertarians have, quote, customers, which is people that they are talking to about libertarianism, about freedom, about the Fed or whatever it is that's going on at the moment.
And the interesting thing is, I don't think, at least I can't recall, of a time when I've seen a libertarian who's been engaged in a conversation of this type, or of any type to do with this.
I don't think I've ever seen a libertarian say, at the conclusion of a conversation about Some topic of freedom.
I've never heard libertarians say to the person, okay, so thanks for your time, what was your experience of this conversation?
I mean, was it exciting?
Was it interesting? Was it, you know, how was I? Was I helpful?
Did I lecture? You know, was I interesting?
Did you feel welcomed into this particular set of ideas?
Or did you feel that it was, you know, what was your experience of me as a communicator, right?
That's That's pretty important.
And you've probably heard me, to an annoying degree, do just this, right, in my conversations, right?
So, when I have a listener conversation, most of the time, I will, if I remember, right, I will ask the person, you know, how was this conversation for you?
Is there anything that I could do differently or anything that I could do better?
Was it useful? Was it valuable?
And Was there another topic that would have been more helpful?
And of course, before I move on to a particular topic with a listener during a conversation, you probably have heard me again, ad nauseum, ask, I have a thought about this, but I don't want to interrupt if there's something you would like to talk about that's more pressing, or I have an idea where a useful direction in this conversation might be, but I don't want to interrupt you if you have a different direction that you want to go in.
So, I mean...
You can't be a successful communicator unless you ask people for constant feedback about how well you're communicating.
It's like anything, right?
Libertarians love the idea that...
well, not love, but respect the idea, von Mises' idea, that you can't have efficient resource allocation without the mechanism of price.
And yet, in a sense, the lack of feedback creates massive inefficiencies in any sort of allocation of resources from an economic standpoint.
But, unfortunately, That is quite different from the way that libertarians actually work with their, quote, customers in the real world, right?
Which is that they don't really ask for this kind of feedback, and therefore they're sort of operating in a priceless, and not in a good way, a priceless environment.
So just let me know if you think that would be useful, and we'll see if we can put our heads together to come up with something helpful.
Thank you so much for listening, as always.
I look forward to your donations.
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