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March 22, 2009 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

01:31:41

1312 Sunday Show Mar 22 2009 - 4 Dreams

4 dreams for the price of one!

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	Well, thank you everybody so much for joining us.
	It is 4.14pm on March the 22nd, 2009.
	That would be the Sunday.
	And thank you so much to Brain Police, with whom I had a rousing debate about ethics, libertarianism, and UPB last night.
	He has written some articles critical of UPB, so we took a step through the objections, and it was very enjoyable.
	It was, in fact, My terrible mistake, though.
	It was Brain Police, a.k.a.
	Alex, who showed up to do the debate.
	I thought it was the Dream Police and he was going to pull every kind of cheap trick in the book.
	Oh! Snap, if you get that joke, you're too old to listen to this show.
	Anyway, thank you so much for joining.
	I wanted to mention, this has nothing to do with any kind of self-praise, but as a way of reminding the gorgeous, wonderful, talented listeners That, you know, we get some flack and we get some negativity in this conversation, but you don't really get a chance to see all of the positive feedback I get.
	And so I thought I would just, this is just over the last two days or so, or three days, a sort of selection of the emails I get.
	At least a half a dozen of these kinds of emails a day, and you can see some of these comments on the Freedom Aid Radio YouTube channel, which has comments that are posted to the channel as a whole, as opposed to individual videos.
	There are close to 6,000 subscribers to Freedom Aid Radio on YouTube.
	I think we're close to 1.2%.
	A million views as a whole.
	This week, sorry, last week, I think it was the 16th of March, we had over 111 gigabytes of podcasts downloaded.
	Now, a lot of that was the monster file for the New Hampshire speech, but that still is by far, or not by far, but the largest I think we've had before is 90 gigabytes.
	So that's something which is just fantastic.
	And again, you know, there's some self-praise I think we can have about this, the persistence and sharing of the conversation.
	That we've done. But I think that it's well worth giving ourselves a pat on the back for that kind of stuff.
	Almost 200,000 people have viewed the channel at Free Domain Radio, which is good.
	That's the easier one to measure than podcast downloads and so on, which gets to be Channeling.
	Challenging. So, that having been said, this is a note.
	These are a couple of notes that I got from donations, from donators over the past few days.
	One guy sent me a nice donation and he said, I skipped a casino visit, so you're lucky tonight.
	And I have more pleasure by watching your videos.
	A win-win situation, I guess, with a smiley face.
	Another donator wrote, Steph, the podcast just keeps getting better and better.
	I've been listening to 1288.
	Over and over. I've been seeing a counselor through my EAP at work, and I think you've saved me a lot of time in getting to the real problems I need to deal with.
	Thank you so much for everything. Hello, Steph.
	I made this donation prior to activating my FDR account.
	I'd like to know if it could apply to my donator status level.
	I really enjoy FDR. It's made a hugely positive impact on my life.
	Thank you so much. Another...
	Donator wrote, Thank you for relentlessly promoting and publishing these ideas over the past two and a half months listening to your podcast series has helped me walk out of the cage of nihilism.
	Thank you for speaking the truth that I knew to be true but that nearly everyone around me dismissed, chided or pretended did not exist.
	This fellow went into therapy too, which is great.
	Just emails, a couple of emails over the last few days.
	These were pretty much selected at random.
	Hi, Stephen, you know, because getting my name right is a lot more challenging than UPB. I just wanted to thank you so much for your work.
	You've really helped me to expand my perspective on many issues.
	I personally crave the truth, and I've never come across a site such as yours that gives such a complete overview of how the human condition really is.
	I feel your work is very important.
	So with my thanks, I would like to give you my encouragement to continue your intelligent, honest and very important work.
	And from the YouTube channel.
	Excellent, excellent, excellent, excellent information out of truth.
	Some guy posted, you my friend have a skyscraping intellect.
	God bless. Fight the good fight.
	Another guy wrote, love your philosophy videos.
	I just want to say that I enjoy watching your posts on ethics.
	It was very interesting and educational.
	Thank you, another man or woman wrote.
	I've watched pretty much all your videos in a very short time span.
	The premises you put forward are so simple and easy to understand, but unfortunately get covered with the aesthetics put forth in society.
	Your methods to analyze and decipher, quote, complex issues, scientific method, are also simple and amazing.
	I've been spreading your ideas to people who seem willing to listen, and I constantly use your ideas and methods in debates with others, and I have gotten more and more people addicted over time.
	The addicted is in quotes. I will definitely buy all of your books.
	Once I get another job, you're doing a great service with the Enlightenment, and I hope you continue to make videos.
	Another guy wrote on the channel, the 9-11 video was excellent, a pivotal video for everyone.
	So I had to delete it and reproduce it.
	It put a majorly important perspective on the 9-11 conspiracy.
	And videos have been doing quite well.
	We're getting about 5,000 video views a day, which I think is pretty good.
	Frankly, I think that's actually really good.
	150,000 video views a month.
	That's, to me, fantastic.
	Of course, the big hit is the Matrix video, which is, of course, very popular.
	I'm just going to check the numbers here, but it's some monster.
	It's 120,000, I think, that people have...
	Have downloaded, which I think is just great.
	And just see the next most popular one.
	Yeah, most popular is the True News 13, Statism is Dead, Part 3, with 120,000 views.
	Job interview skills is still cooking at 55,000 views.
	True News 15, Statism is Dead, 43,000.
	The Truth About Voting, 32,000.
	Procrastination, 21,000.
	And it sort of goes from there.
	And Purebras. Purebras are Existencia de Dios is number 10.
	So that's great.
	I've had a bunch of people who are working on translating some of the more popular videos into other languages, either with subtitles or with alternate audio tracks, which I think would be great.
	So I say this just to remind everyone of the view that other people, you, you sitting right there, might not see very much of, which is the positive feedback that comes in and certainly gives my spirits a lift and I hope also helps with your spirits which is the positive feedback that comes in and certainly gives my So I just wanted to mention that because we do seem to be a little bit, you know, it's all gunfire and no sunrises.
	So I just wanted to give you a peek of that.
	So that's it for the introduction.
	Shockingly short, everything is doing fine here.
	Isabella is doing wonderfully, and we are doing wonderfully.
	And I will throw a few pictures into the...
	into the chat window so people can see and so I now passed all along to you and thank you so much for listening as always thank you to the donators and of course the delicious subscribers and I hope that you feel that you're getting Your money's worth.
	Oh, one other thing, too. We are waiting for the video of the New Hampshire speech.
	There is a new copy of the audio that is out there that was recorded from the PA system, and so the audience questions are much clearer, and the audio as a whole is much, much better.
	And so I hope that you will get a chance to listen to that.
	It is really good.
	I will post that in the chat window as well, if that helps.
	So over to you listeners All right So um The Dream Factory's been working a little overtime lately, and I just thought I would toss a short one out there for a little bit of your insight, if you would.
	Yeah. Do you have it written down at all?
	Sure do. Let me get the link.
	I think the one that I want...
	You can look at, hang on, let me get this specific.
	It would be number three in this list here.
	Unless you think one of the other ones is more interesting.
	Those all came in last night.
	Okay, why don't you read it and that way people who don't have it or in the future will be able to hear it.
	Sure. I'm walking around in a very large city.
	I'm standing on the sidewalk at the corner.
	There are attack helicopters everywhere, flying between the rows and columns of buildings, firing guns and dropping bombs.
	The city is in a state of pandemonium.
	The streets are clogged with drivers trying to escape.
	Men and women are running everywhere frantically.
	I realize at some point I'm standing with my father and my brother John.
	Another thing I noticed is that the bombs being dropped by the attack helicopters don't explode on impact.
	They hit the ground and bounce around for a while before they explode.
	It seems like they're mistimed for this altitude.
	So I take it upon myself to collect up the ones dropping near us and then run down a relatively unoccupied street or alley and chuck them as hard as I can down the street.
	During this process, I remember looking around at the women running down the streets and thinking to myself, now's really not the time for that.
	At some point, I run down an alley filled full of Nazi soldiers, all sitting on crates around a large sort of makeshift campfire.
	I have an extremely large bomb in my hands at the time.
	I decide to try killing them.
	I slam the nose of the bomb into the pavement to try and break up the innards.
	The bombs are all shaped like cylindrical projectiles with round tips and fins on the back, like you see in the cartoons.
	I'm hoping that it will detonate more quickly that way.
	Then I toss it into the group of Nazis.
	It hits the pavement with a clatter, bounces off one of the crates, and lands at the feet of one of the Nazis.
	They all turn and look at me, and I think to myself, oh shit, I've had it now.
	And then the dream ends.
	Alright, alright.
	A very large city. How do you know it's a very large city?
	You mean just because high buildings, you're like downtown?
	Now, maybe it could be that this particular scene is better understood in the context of the other three dreams that I had last night as well, but I just thought I'd try that particular image specifically to see if there's anything that we could get out of it.
	All right. Let me just check here.
	I just want to check with the people.
	I'm happy to do four dreams.
	It's been a while since we've done some dreams, and they're fun and exciting to do.
	I just want to check with... Because it didn't seem like other people had a lot of other questions.
	Sorry, I just wanted to check with the listeners to see if it's okay if we do a longer...
	Did we do the set of dreams?
	Because there didn't seem to be a lot of other people who had questions.
	So I'm just going to see if...
	Yeah, okay. So why don't you read the first, second, and fourth dream as well?
	Okay, sure.
	Okay, so dream number one.
	I'm on board a cruise ship that's owned by a Colombian drug lord.
	My brother John and I are spies and we're trying to infiltrate his operation.
	At some point, I lose track of where he is on the ship, and I end up working alone for a long stretch.
	Basically, my job is just to mingle and make small talk with the hundreds of guests on board and collect whatever intelligence I can from those who are there for some sort of celebration, birthday, or something like that. I remember walking around with a mixed drink in my hand, wearing a stiff suit and tie, the kind like James Bond would wear in a spy movie.
	I remember there was a swimming pool on board that was, for whatever reason, built into a lower deck of the ship so that there was a ceiling and a floor.
	Because normally those things are right on the surface of the ship.
	I also remember chatting up a bunch of women out on a patio deck.
	The deck had, you know, the umbrella tables with web chairs and waiters walking around with towels over their arms, that sort of thing.
	I remember this was all at night.
	There was a full moon and we were out in the middle of the ocean.
	I remember being afraid of being caught.
	Ostensibly by the drug lord and his goons.
	As the party begins to wind down, the drug lord meets me in the dining room of the ship.
	I'm getting ready to sit down and have dinner.
	He's figured out that I'm a spy, and I'm incredulous because I'm thinking to myself that there's no way he could have figured it out on his own.
	His men take hold of me, and they drag me to the deck of the ship, and there they're going to lock me in a wooden crate and throw me overboard.
	I can see my brother John standing sort of in the background, slightly around the corner.
	Watching me. Watching this whole scene as the dream ends.
	That particular dream.
	Okay, so I don't want to do all...
	I don't want to... Then dream number two...
	I'm in a shopping mall.
	Because otherwise we're going to have too much to process, if that's alright.
	Sure, sure. Okay, and what happened the day before these dreams?
	Okay, yesterday.
	Um... Yesterday was Saturday.
	Let's see, I worked all day.
	You worked at your office job?
	Yeah, exactly. I have a Tuesday through Saturday shift, so I end up having to work.
	And I was working extra hours, too, yesterday, the day before, on a project that they put me on that I was actually kind of happy to be connected to because it was something to keep the mind occupied, but...
	Anyway, let's see.
	I remember I got up a little bit late yesterday because I was kind of tired from the previous two days.
	Work was pretty uneventful.
	Nothing really bad happened yesterday at work.
	After work, I remember coming home and being so tired that I needed a nap.
	So I took a nap for about two hours.
	At what time? Then I got up.
	That would have been about 7.30 my time, roughly.
	Right, okay. Maybe 8 o'clock.
	So 7.30 to 9.30 or 8 o'clock you had a nap, okay.
	Yeah, yeah.
	And then, oh, no, no, no.
	It would have been about 8 o'clock that I actually got up from the nap.
	I got home about 4.30, 5 o'clock, somewhere around there.
	Now, you realize that you're giving me entirely non-Dream-related content, right?
	Right, well, I'm trying to...
	I'm picking my brain trying to figure out what...
	It's like, hey, what happened that might have provoked the dream?
	Well, I had cabbage soup for lunch.
	You know what I mean? Well, this is one of the confounding things about these.
	When I get these dreams in batches, they don't seem to have anything to do with the days that surround them.
	And that's fine, right? I mean, this is just the first place below.
	So let's dig into the dream, if you can't think of anything, and maybe either something will come up or it won't, right?
	But we'll see, right?
	Sure. For those who don't know this history, and I'll just touch on this briefly, your brother, who was an FDR member for a while, you've taken a break, and he's rejoined your family of origin.
	That's a fairly decent summary, is that right?
	Yes, that's correct.
	And just to add some additional context, I have been thinking a lot about some of the things that you've said to me recently as well, and trying to connect with My feelings around our history together, my brother John's history and mine together.
	Because he shows up. I'm sure that that probably plays pretty heavily.
	Yeah. Okay.
	Now, the first thing that...
	Sorry, go ahead. No, I was just going to say, I'm pretty sure that that probably plays pretty heavily into the first dream and the fourth dream.
	Right. Now, the first thing that strikes me about the first dream is that a Colombian drug lord, right?
	And you're there trying to infiltrate his operations, right?
	Well, that is directly against just about every value that you hold, right?
	In what way?
	In what way?
	Well, you're not for the drug war, right?
	No, certainly not.
	Right, so why on earth would you be on a ship trying to infiltrate a drug operation?
	That's a good question. There didn't seem to be any reason for why I would be doing that in the dream.
	It's a very specific, right?
	So you're not there trying to free a slave ring.
	You're not there trying to rescue children who are destined to be sold overseas or something, right?
	It is a non-crime that you are investigating or putting yourself into, right?
	So you must be in the government, right?
	Which is against your values.
	You must be trying to infiltrate what you would consider a non-crime, which is completely against your values, right?
	Right, right. That's exactly correct.
	The dream did not specify that I was doing this in some private capacity, that I was literally some kind of 007 style government agent.
	So that would definitely be an anti-value for sure.
	Right. Okay, so that's the first thing to notice, right?
	And the fact that you didn't notice it is the dream trying to tell you something as well, I would suggest.
	Sure, sure.
	Did you see what I mean?
	Trying to tell me that there's something I'm doing that's against my values in my waking life?
	Well, because the first, and again, none of this is obvious because it's your dream, right?
	That's why it's important to get other people's feedback, in my opinion.
	So none of this is particularly obvious, but the first thing that, like when I pointed out, it seems obvious, right?
	That's true. Like, you're working for the government, you're infiltrating a Colombian drug lord, which would not even be...
	So everything you're doing, kind of, is against your values.
	You're lying, which is what undercover work is, and you're lying in service of an evil agency for a bad cause, right?
	Right. Acting on false pretenses in a highly dangerous way.
	Right. Right. And you're putting yourself at risk in the service of a state you don't believe in for a cause that you despise, right?
	Right. No, that's quite right.
	And this didn't strike you as unusual, right?
	That's exactly right. Because the first thing to do is to compare the values that are in your dreams.
	Sorry, the first thing to do is to compare what's occurring in your dreams to the values and experiences of your waking life.
	And if there's a disparity, that's important, right?
	Sure, sure.
	I agree. Absolutely.
	Sorry, you were saying something else. Well, I was just going to say it struck me as unusual because I don't usually have these kinds of...
	I don't have dreams about war or political intrigue or things like that.
	So that's why this and the third dream struck me as particularly unusual.
	Right, and it is unusual, so it is worth sort of noticing.
	So good, we've done the first sentence.
	Okay, so you're trying to infiltrate this operation.
	You lose track of where your brother is on the ship.
	You end up working alone for a stretch, just mingling and making small talk with the hundreds of guests on boards who are all there for some sort of celebration.
	You say you remember walking around with a mixed drink of my hand wearing a stiff suit like James Bond.
	I remember a swimming pool, surprisingly, in a lower level of the ship.
	Swimming pool. Mm-hmm.
	I remember chatting up a bunch of women out on the patio back.
	Right, because you... Yeah, they're normally outside, right?
	Because you want sunlight. Right.
	So, the drunk lord figures out that you are a spy, right?
	Yeah. Now, it's interesting that you're on a cruise ship as well.
	Again, nothing in a dream should be taken for granted.
	Or as accidental.
	Because it's no more accidental than something in a movie, right?
	Because it is kind of an inner movie.
	And nothing in a movie is accidental.
	So a cruise ship as opposed to...
	It could be anywhere. It could be Chichen Itza.
	It could be a ziggurat somewhere.
	It could be a disco. It could be, you know, anywhere.
	But it's a cruise ship, right?
	Which is interesting because there's no escape from a cruise ship, right?
	That's true. That's true.
	You're surrounded on all sides.
	Yeah, you can't go anywhere.
	You can't get out. So, I mean, this is a highly, highly risky operation, right?
	Yeah. Yeah.
	Now, since the drug lord knew that you were a spy or an agent or a cop or whatever, And you are completely shocked at this, then it would seem to me to indicate that he always knew.
	If you didn't give yourself away by shouting, I'm a spy, while you were on the ship, then it seems likely that he would have known when you came on board, right?
	That actually resonated because I got the sense when I was writing this dream, I got the sense that he did always know and that I was just trying to avoid capture, if that makes any sense.
	Right. Right.
	So mingling with the guests and all that to kind of stay out of the sight of his goons.
	Right. Right, right.
	That makes sense.
	So... So if that's the case, then the whole thing, which you think you're, you know, in a sense, being so clever and being so devious and subterranean and that you are the master of the situation, right? Sure, sure.
	But quite the opposite is true.
	Sure. Yeah, that makes sense.
	Quite the opposite is true.
	In fact, the whole thing is a setup.
	That's an interesting approach.
	Well, again, tell me where it's not born out in the dream, right?
	But if the guy lets you on his boat, knowing you're a spy, lets you circulate and mingle with his guests, and then confronts you near the end, then it's a setup, right?
	Right, that would make sense.
	And in a sense, kind of...
	By waiting until the end, using me as some sort of an example.
	Right. Now, here's the question.
	How did they know that you were a spy, but not your brother?
	That I don't have a clear answer for.
	He was there at the beginning of the stream, and then he just kind of faded away.
	And then he was there at the end of the dream, and I knew he was connected somehow, but I don't know exactly how, whether he told them or whether he was already in league with them or what it was, but I knew that he was involved in some way.
	But I remember also when I was originally exposed, I did not have, in the dreams, I didn't have the thought, oh well, John must have told them.
	I didn't have that thought.
	It was just sort of like, what?
	How could you know? Right.
	And the fact that he disappears for a time and then you are, quote, apprehended?
	Would certainly make it suspicious, right?
	Right, right, exactly.
	Anyone watching a movie like that would immediately suspect him, right?
	Yeah, anyone who's like, oh, he's vanished and then I'm caught.
	And of course he's not intervening when you're being thrown into this wooden crate, right?
	Right, he's just watching from a distance.
	Okay, so let's, again, I'm not saying we've solved that whole dream to begin with, but I think we've gotten some themes, and let's see if the second dream follows those up.
	Right, so the second dream I'm in a shopping mall with a bunch of other guys.
	We're all in our 20s or 30s, and we're all best friends, kind of like one of those college buddy movie kind of things, right?
	All the stores are closed.
	It's nighttime. But the hallways of the mall are bustling with...
	No, these are all strangers.
	Thinking back on the dream, they're all strange faces.
	I mean, I've never seen them before, but in the dream, I know who they are.
	They're all best friends of mine, and we're all kind of pals.
	Right, okay. If that makes any sense.
	Yeah. So, it's nighttime.
	All the stores are closed.
	But the hallways in the mall are bustling with other men and women all our age.
	We're trying to find a spot that we can sort of cordon off as our own home base inside the mall.
	Eventually we stumble across an alcove that to me feels a little bit like a mausoleum or shrine room.
	It's very large and round.
	It has fancy plaster work on the walls all along the lower half, and there's kind of a chair rail in the center made of plaster with all kinds of ornamentation on it.
	I didn't put that in the text, but I'm just adding that as some detail I'm remembering now.
	And there's a heavy Victorian wallpaper in a rose pattern on the upper half of the wall.
	There's one entrance leading in and out of the alcove to the mall, and the hall is wide enough to accept two people standing side by side.
	I and the group rush around the mall, gathering up all the decorator furniture in the mall hallways.
	You know, they have those leather chairs and easy chairs and potted plants and things like that and footstools and whatnot.
	We're dragging up all this furniture and we're bringing it back to the alcove to furnish the alcove.
	The idea is to make it a comfortable spot where we can all mingle and party together with the women in the hallways.
	Two of us, not myself, but two of the people I'm with, sort of stand a sentry to the entrance of the alcove, announcing when anyone attractive comes by, and scaring off all the rest of the people.
	The dream ends as we're deciding how exactly to arrange the furniture in the alcove.
	Right, okay.
	And this to me, again, not to try to make the evidence fit theory, but this is very much, again, a contradiction of the values that you hold, right?
	I mean, creating a lair in a nighttime mall which only attractive women are allowed to come into is not really your idea of what an ideal dating situation would be.
	In fact, it would be quite the opposite, right?
	Yeah, yeah. That's true.
	Because when you say anyone attractive is coming and scaring off the rest, what you mean is that you're trying to create a kind of beer commercial, you know, with only the itsy-bitsy, teeny-beeny, yellow, polka-top bikini women allowed in and the others not, and this is all very much not, you know, how you would approach love and romance and so on.
	Yeah, when you said that, it really resonated.
	This stream really did have a kind of beer commercial feel to it.
	Yeah, like a shirt boy kind of thing, right?
	Yeah, yeah, exactly.
	That's exactly right.
	Well, and the fact that this alcove is like a mausoleum and a shrine, that's very interesting.
	A shrine is for worship and a mausoleum, of course, is for death, right?
	Yeah, yeah, that's true.
	And these two things side by side seem to me that there would be kind of a...
	When you focus on appearance over substance, you are worshipping, but it's kind of dead.
	Mm-hmm. A friend of mine, a couple of years ago, he and Christine and I were at a mall doing some Christmas shopping.
	And we were going up this escalator and there was this huge, like literally six stories high, advertisement for Victoria's Secret or something like that.
	And it was either Penelope Cruz or some Penelope Cruz-like-looking woman who was lounging around in...
	A negligee or something like that.
	And my friend basically said, well, I'll take that for Christmas.
	And he is someone who has this veneration or worship or idealization of classical, external, physical, feminine beauty.
	And yet he doesn't date, right?
	And there is a kind of, you know, when you worship the physical or you worship the appearance, to me there's a kind of inner deadness around that.
	Like you can't be stimulated by virtue so you need shape.
	You can't be stimulated by personality so you need shape.
	So you need tight clothing to look at or some sort of classical physical beauty or something like that.
	It's a need for an overstimulus that, to me, compensates for a lack of emotional connection to someone, if this makes any sense at all.
	Actually, that does make a lot of sense.
	So the fact that it's a shrine and a mausoleum doesn't seem out of bounds to me, because saying, well, we only want the attractive women in here, and we're not going to have the unattractive women in here, that's kind of a, I'm going to put this strongly, but just for the sake of clarity, I'm going to put this strongly, but just for the sake of clarity, that's kind of a murder Thank you.
	That's an interesting way to put it, yeah.
	Because you're saying, like, it doesn't matter whether you're a good or bad person.
	We just want pretty people, right?
	That's accidental. And quite often, as I've said before, you know, power tends to corrupt and beauty is a kind of power.
	And it can have negative consequences that I would consider slightly above average based on my experience with these kinds of women.
	Now, of course, knowing them as actresses and so on might be a skewed sample set.
	But basically what I'm saying is that...
	There is a kind of...
	To me, the worship of physical beauty is kind of like a death cult.
	And it is, to me, a shallow and horrible thing.
	Because you're worshipping a body, right?
	Oh, she's got a great body.
	But body is also the synonym for dead, right?
	Oh, like you were saying in that video.
	Oh, yeah. Yeah.
	Yeah, just like you were saying in that recent...
	in the corporatism video.
	Right, right. Yeah.
	Yeah, that's quite right.
	So there's a kind of death here with this worship.
	And again, this is all completely against your values.
	Okay, so we've got the large city and the Nazis.
	Just do the fourth dream, and we'll maybe do those two together.
	Sure. Fourth dream...
	I'm sitting in the back of my father's van.
	It's actually the old green van he used to have, the one that I helped him renovate back in the early 80s.
	I'm sitting back there along with my brother John and my brother Tom.
	We're all adults, just as an FYI. I've got a box of automotive parts from my car sitting between my legs on the floor of the van.
	And we're driving all over the country looking for—there's a house we're supposed to be staying in for vacation, and we're looking for it.
	And my father's just kind of randomly driving around looking for this place, not sure where to go or why.
	Despite how long we're driving, which to me, in the dream, it felt like we were driving for days— But it's always midday outside.
	The time of day never changes.
	I remember at one point, my father leaves the road entirely and we're driving across a huge farmer's field that had recently been graded smooth.
	We follow the power line towers while we're driving through this field, apparently in an effort to find another road.
	I remember arguing with him about which direction we were supposed to be going, and why wasn't he listening to me, and how did he expect to get anywhere this way, and so on.
	Eventually, we find our way back to a residential street that dead-ended at the farmer's field.
	And that's the farmer's field.
	So we're driving along? Yeah.
	Okay. Yeah. Yeah.
	So we're driving through this residential neighborhood.
	So basically you went in a big circle, right?
	Because you're driving across this field.
	No, we were like on a highway or an expressway.
	No, but you go off-road and you go on a field.
	You end up on a residential street that leads you back to the field you were on before.
	Is that right? No, no, no.
	We're on this field.
	After we cut off the expressway, we're on this field and we drive for a long distance following these power line towers.
	Right. And we come to the end of the field and drive up onto a residential street that dead ends At the field, if that makes any sense.
	It doesn't make sense to me, because does it mean that it loops around like an upside down U and ends back up on the field that you started from?
	No, what I mean is that the end of the street is where we come up off the field.
	Okay, I got it. So you're driving north, but it dead ends south, and so you keep going north.
	Right, right, exactly.
	Got it, sorry, go on. Right, so we're driving through this residential neighborhood, and I think it looks like the place in which we're supposed to find this particular vacation house.
	After the fact, after writing this down, I recognize from the dream both a child's playground and the entrance to a forest preserve footpath.
	And I'm not sure why that's significant.
	That's where the government owns a particular slice of land and doesn't lease it for development, is that right?
	Yeah, that's quite right.
	In the dream, I try to tell my father that this looks like the neighborhood we're supposed to be in, but he refuses to listen to me again.
	We get back out onto the main highway again and then continue on.
	At some point, either his cruise control or his transmission starts acting up, and the van starts going really, really slow.
	He knows exactly what's wrong and insists that I give him a certain part from the box of parts that I have with me in order to fix it.
	I remember arguing with him that they were my parts and that he'd have to replace them for me and that they wouldn't fit the van.
	But he took them anyway and somehow it worked.
	And the dream ends as we get back on our way.
	In the dream that you wrote, it doesn't say that it works, but it does, right?
	Yeah, exactly. Okay, so it works, the car speeds up, and blah, blah, blah.
	Okay. Right.
	The car speeds up, and we keep going.
	And also, something I forgot to mention when writing the dream down was that my cell phone kept ringing in the dream, and I kept checking it, and it was my mom.
	And I kept trying to answer the phone, but the signal kept cutting out, and the phone would hang up before I could answer it.
	Right. Okay. And did you ever go on a vacation with your father and John and Tom?
	Well, as kids, we, every summer, used to take these long road trips with my dad.
	We being just the whole family.
	So it's the whole family. So there wasn't a time in real life where you and your brother Tom and John and your dad went somewhere.
	This is different, right?
	Right. This is very different than what it would have been like.
	Was this a real van in real life?
	The van was real.
	The van was a 79 Chevy van, 20 that was originally a cargo van that I spent an entire summer renovating as kind of a personal project with my father's help.
	Right. And when you say sitting in the back, I mean, I have an image of, you know, like those sort of ribbed metal floors with, you know, like maybe a, I don't know, a sack of some kind to sit on.
	But was it finished, so to speak, inside?
	Yeah, the renovations were complete.
	The van that I was sitting in, in the dream, was the van that was completed.
	So we had plywood floor with carpeting laid down, and we'd built our own bench seat in the back with cushions, and the bench seat could actually unfold into a bed.
	It was kind of cool, but...
	Alright. And your father, in real life, when he would get lost, was he a traditional guy?
	How would he handle it?
	Because in driving vacations, everybody gets lost.
	That's inevitable, right?
	And what happened? Right.
	Well, typically what would happen is, especially on these vacations, one of the five of us sons would be designated quote-unquote navigator, right?
	And it would be our responsibility to make sure that he was going in the right direction.
	So this would be like a disaster scapegoat, right?
	Yeah, exactly. So when something went wrong...
	Exactly. That's exactly right.
	Don't make me know. Right.
	Yeah, no, I understand. Right. Okay.
	We were supposed to get off three accents ago.
	Why didn't you say something?
	Or you'd be asked for an instant decision and you'd be looking at a map and you'd be like, just left or right, left or right, left or right.
	Anyway. Okay. Exactly.
	That's exactly right. I've traveled with family too.
	I know that it can be depressively the same.
	Okay. All right, so we'll jump back, just go very briefly over a certain large city.
	This is the dream before, on slide by the corner.
	Attack helicopters everywhere, flying between the rows and columns of buildings.
	Firing guns, dropping bombs.
	City is a state of pandemonium. The streets are clogged with drivers trying to escape.
	Men and women are running everywhere. I realize you're with your father and your brother John.
	Another thing I noticed, the bombs being dropped.
	Don't explode on impact.
	They seem to be mistimed for this altitude, so I take it upon myself to collect the ones dropping near us, running down a relatively unoccupied street.
	Or alley and chucking them as hard as I can down the street.
	So you're grabbing these shells and you're throwing them down so that when they explode they don't hurt people, right?
	Right, right, exactly.
	So I remember looking at the women in these streets and thinking to myself, now is not really the time for that, and time for that means going up and saying, how you doing?
	I mean, what do you mean?
	Yeah, exactly. Just kind of scoping for chicks while I'm trying to rescue myself and my family.
	Well, actually, you're not trying to rescue yourself and your family.
	If I understand the dream, and maybe I don't, right?
	But aren't you just grabbing bombs and...
	Throwing them somewhere else. Is that to protect your family or is that to protect others or...
	Well, it's actually both.
	I don't want the shells to explode near me, and I don't want them to explode near anyone else.
	So I'm frantically looking for as empty streets as I can find to throw these things into so that when they do explode, no one's going to get hurt or as few people as possible.
	So it's not entirely specific to my family, but they're an element, a part of that.
	And what is your family doing at this point?
	My father and my brother John in this dream, right?
	Yeah, they're just standing there.
	Okay, alright. So then you run down an alley filled with Nazi soldiers all sitting on crates around a sort of makeshift campfire.
	You have a large bomb in your hands.
	You decide to try and kill them. I slam the nose of the bomb into the pavement to break up the innards.
	The bombs are all shaped like cylindrical projectiles with round tips and fins on the back.
	I promise not to turn that into a penis.
	Hoping that it will detonate more quickly, then I toss it into the group of Nazis who then kiss it and rub it with baby oil.
	No, sorry. It hits the pavement with a clatter, bounces off one of the crates and lands at the feet of the Nazi.
	So basically it doesn't go off, right?
	Right. That's exactly right.
	Total dud.
	So this is interesting, of course.
	Let's just start at the end here.
	First of all, attack helicopters and Nazis don't really go hand in hand, right?
	I mean, I don't remember that the state of helicopter technology was such during the Second World War that you had a whole bunch of attack helicopters, right?
	It took... Right, it is completely disparate.
	Right, right. And that sense of timelessness or no time is also in the next part of the dream.
	No matter how long you're driving, it's always midday, right?
	It's like you're following the sun, almost, if that makes sense.
	Yeah, exactly.
	That's exactly right. Now, the interesting thing is that if the attack helicopters...
	Are attacking the city as they are, and the city has Nazis in it, then the attack helicopters are, quote, the good guys, right?
	Right, because they're attacking the Nazi city, right?
	No, the Nazis were occupying it, but the people weren't Nazis.
	But if the Nazis are occupying the city and the helicopters are attacking the Nazis, we assume, right?
	Then the helicopters have to be, quote, the good guys.
	Again, tell me if I'm way off base, but that's sort of what would seem to me logically.
	Well, the flow of the dream, I felt like both were enemies to me.
	But I felt also like...
	The people in the attack helicopters, or the attack helicopters themselves and the Nazis, were two different groups of enemies.
	They weren't necessarily friends, but they weren't attacking each other.
	They weren't attacking each other.
	So, who were the helicopters attacking?
	The people in the streets.
	Just the civilians in the streets.
	Okay, okay. Now, if you were in this situation...
	But it did feel like they weren't...
	But it did feel like they were not...
	The tech helicopters and the Nazis were not allies.
	No, I get that for sure.
	I get that for sure. Okay.
	Now, if you were in this real-life situation, what would you do?
	I would get the hell out of Dodge as fast as I could.
	Well, yeah, my guess is that you would either try and escape, which to me would be less likely to sort of help you survive, but the more likely thing, if I understand the dream correctly, would be to find a basement or something, right?
	Yeah, find some place to hide until the siege is over.
	Right, because although...
	Now, do you actually see any of these bombs go off?
	That's interesting. I know that they're going off somewhere, but nowhere in the dream do I visibly see any of them go off.
	Right, because the bombs you're trying to protect people from, but they don't actually seem to be going off.
	But of course, it's the firing of the guns that would be also really dangerous in this situation, because you can't do much about the bullets, right?
	Right, and that's interesting too, because I know the guns were being fired, but nobody was falling over dead.
	Right, okay. So it's almost, it has a kind of video game feel to it.
	Yeah, yeah it does.
	You know, like it's simulated, right?
	Because it's like the bombs aren't really going off, the mistimed you have to collect these bombs and save your family.
	Like it seems almost like a video game level.
	Yeah, putting it in those terms, that's exactly how it felt, that dream, yeah.
	And there is an air of comedy to it, right?
	Because you're running around trying to get these bombs, and then you're like, hey, how you doing?
	No, wait, there's no time for that now.
	I've got to get these bombs, you know, that kind of stuff, right?
	It's almost like a burlesque or vaudeville, right?
	Yeah, yeah, that's quite right.
	And there is this...
	Also this comedic aspect or vaguely comedic aspect, you know, where you roll the bomb to the Nazis and it doesn't go off and you're like, oh shit, I've had it now, right?
	It's almost like a comedy.
	Yeah, there is kind of a comic element to this whole dream.
	That's interesting. It didn't even occur to me until you sort of brought it up.
	But yeah, it is kind of funny.
	Well, we both know, and everybody who's had dreams knows, that dreams have no particular problem being staggeringly horrifying, right?
	I mean, if this dream wanted to show you a city being bombed, right?
	You'd see babies' heads flying through the air.
	You'd see arms embedded in walls.
	You'd see buildings collapsing on nuns.
	Dream centers can produce those kinds of images if they want, right?
	Oh yeah, and I've had some really horrifying images in the past like that as well, for sure.
	Right, so the fact that there are these attack helicopters who aren't really hurting anyone, and you're pausing thinking like, well, I'd like to scope these chicks, but hey, you know, I've got to deal with these bombs, and you know, these comic scenes, you're rolling bombs at Nazis that don't go off, and the Nazis are just sitting around, they're not fighting back, it's kind of like not real, right?
	Yeah, it's totally surreal.
	That's quite right. And similar to the previous dream, there is this certain amount of sexuality or romanticism is floating around.
	Because in the previous dream, you're part of a group of shallow frat guys trying to snag pretty women.
	And in this dream, you know, well, I'd like to chat up these women, but now is not the time.
	I've got to roll these bombs to safety that don't seem to go off.
	There is that aspect to it, right?
	Right, right. Yeah, that's definitely true.
	Right, okay. And also, there's some of that in the first dream, too.
	And there is, in these last two dreams...
	I'm trying to think about the first two dreams...
	In the first dream and the third dream and the fourth dream...
	So in the cruise ship, the helicopter attack, and your father's van, there is, to me, a strong sense of helplessness and ineffectiveness.
	So in the first dream, you're like, oh, I'm taking down this drug lord, right?
	But you're not. You're actually being taken down by a drug lord with the suggested implication that your brother is ratting you out, right?
	Right. And in the third dream, you're supposed to be saving everyone from these bombs and bullets that aren't actually hurting them.
	It's kind of futile, right?
	Right. Yeah, exactly.
	And in the fourth dream, you are trying to get your father to change his course of behavior based on some kind of rational criteria, right?
	Yeah. Something you've mentioned about your father, you know, he goes off the highway and he goes onto a farmer's field, right?
	Usually not a good way to take a shortcut.
	That's kind of like a boundary violation.
	Yeah, and not even sure it's a shortcut, just randomly going off onto this farmer's field for no reason, apparently.
	Right, it's no respect for property and common sense and whatever, right?
	Right. Not stopping to ask for help and so on.
	And the whole time, in the dream, it seems to me, you're arguing, oh, we're supposed to be doing this, this would make more sense, this would make more sense, and he's not listening to you, right?
	And that's interesting, too, that you say that, because common sense was that, in air quotes, was something that he used to rail about all the time, but then he was prone to these sort of flights of ridiculousness himself.
	Right. And something you said to me about your father, where his phrase was, you know, there's the There's three ways of doing things.
	The right way, the wrong way, and the Gautier way, right?
	In other words, we live in a narcissistic dimension all of our own where willpower equals positive results.
	Yeah. Don't bother me with your fans, son, right?
	Right. No, that's quite right.
	Willpower was another one of those air-quote phrases that you like to use a lot as well.
	Right. And the interesting thing, what you didn't write in the post and what you said was that after all of this Not listening to you, and you're stuck in this van, which has no time, right?
	It's always midday, no matter what happens.
	You're going for days, but the sun never goes down, and so on.
	And that indicates a moment that doesn't end, which is kind of the definition of trauma, right?
	PTSD is the moment that does not end, right?
	I mean, to...
	That's interesting. And this can happen even with a single traumatic incident.
	It can be a car crash or something, but it's the moment that doesn't end.
	It's the replaying of it and so on.
	It's the broken record that results from trauma.
	And the interesting thing is that you're sitting on this box of tools and the van gets stuck in first gear or doesn't work or something like that.
	You say to your father, your father wants to fix the van and he wants your tools, right?
	Right. Particularly, there are two parts in the box that he knows will fix the van.
	And I'm saying, no, these are for my car.
	They're not for the van. They're not going to fit.
	And if you take them, you're going to have to replace them because I have to make my car work.
	Right. Now, again, not to get overly phallic, but the tools from between your legs, I'm just saying, right?
	It may be something to consider.
	If you'd said bullpen, we would have been home free, but we'll just stay with this for the moment, right?
	Sure. I mean, there is some indication of that.
	But the interesting thing is that you say...
	That when I give my father my tools, he fixes the van and it works, right?
	Yeah. Which seems to indicate a positive outcome, right?
	Yeah. But really, it's not a positive outcome.
	Because now you get to go back into the eternally noon moment that never ends trip to nowhere forever, right?
	Yay! We fixed the van!
	Now I get to go back in and not be listened to forever, right?
	Right. Whereas if it stays broken down, then we have to figure something else out.
	Right. And you also talked about fixing up your father's van as a personal pet project?
	Yeah, that was something I did in reality.
	No, no. I understand that you did that in reality, but I strongly doubt that it was a personal pet project.
	Thirteen or fourteen...
	You probably did that to, because, you know, given how violent and ugly your family was, you probably did that to get away from them.
	You probably did that to get them off your back.
	It was like your solitary cave or something like that, right?
	But it probably wasn't just a fancy, fancy personal pet project.
	Well, there was definitely an element of escape in it for me, for sure.
	I got a lot of pleasure out of going out in the afternoon after my schoolwork and just spending hours out there working on it until 11, 12, 1 o'clock in the morning.
	Even after my dad had gone in and gone to bed, I'd still be working on it.
	Right. Right.
	And it was sort of the one time that I could kind of interact with him without it being weird and obnoxious and sort of either frustrating or painful.
	And in this last part of the dream, were you an adult of the age you are now or was it some other time?
	Yeah, we're all adults at this point in the dream.
	Actually, throughout the dream.
	My brother John, my brother Tom, and myself were all adults sitting on the back bench.
	Right, right.
	Which is odd because that van is long gone.
	It's been gone for decades.
	Right, right. And here we have also, I think, quite an interesting situation of Betrayal of values, because you would not do this as an adult, right? Oh hell no!
	No way!
	And if we look at the Nazi dream, you are working like hell to protect your family, who is not working like hell to protect you, right?
	Or themselves, for that matter.
	Yeah, or themselves. And of course, in the first dream, you are, in a way, working to protect people who you would not respect, right?
	And fighting drug dealers or whatever.
	And your brother, when you're being put into a crate, you're not betraying your brother, right?
	You're not saying, well, he's with me, or I'll tell you who else is with me if you let me live, right?
	No, that's quite right.
	I'm not doing that.
	Right, and your brother is not.
	So you're still working to protect your family who is not working to protect you, right?
	Right, right.
	And in the dream with Yvonne, you are working to engage with your family in a rational debate or your father, and yet your father is not returning the favor, right?
	Right, right. Trying to help the situation and getting sort of rejection in response.
	Right, but you're providing the illusion of some sort of interaction by trying to interact with somebody who obviously is not being rational or interacting with you in a rational way, right?
	That's right. So I think that's important as well.
	Yeah, that does sound relevant.
	So the question is, what value have I been sort of betraying in my waking life that these dreams are trying to tell me about?
	And also, If that last point is true, who is it that I've been engaging with that would be sort of a representation of that?
	Well, that's a good question.
	Right.
	So, right.
	So pretending to have rational discourse with somebody who's not interested in rational discourse.
	I mean, do you want to hint or do you want to do it yourself?
	What's your pleasure? Well, if you have some idea, I'd be glad to hear.
	Well, I mean, I'll just talk about my own experience with my family, which is not to say that this may have nothing to do with your experience with your family, but...
	And this is not just my family, but the people I've talked to.
	The great enemy of principles is trauma, right?
	Because trauma creates...
	Splitting and schisms and excuses for bad people and a nihilism within the self and a conformity to the irrational preferences and aggressions of others.
	The trauma, particularly abuse, particularly from family members, shatters.
	The self, the identity, and philosophy, by attempting to provide insight and consistent principles, is, I think, has the specific goal, not its only goal, but a specific goal, of re-knitting together back the fragmented identity that is like,
	you know, it's like you take a cane, if you've ever seen the first Superman movie with Gene Hackman and Christopher Reeve, at one point Gene Hackman is talking about using a nuke to Right.
	startburst of cracks, right?
	And that's what trauma does to the personality.
	It does, you know, the self should be a mirror held up to reality.
	And when we are traumatized, particularly by family and particularly for long periods of time, which seems to be after the case where trauma exists, we have to kind of piece together the world from these fragments.
	Which are very hard to unite into a cohesive whole.
	And philosophy applies the great heat of principles and scalding self-examination not to repair the glass, which can't be done, but to rather melt it so that when it cools, it is whole again, right?
	Right, right.
	So in a sense, the original self is In essence, still there, but the original self as it originally was could never be there again.
	Yeah, no. I mean, we can never be who we are.
	If we've experienced that kind of trauma, we can never be who we would be if we hadn't.
	But we can be better.
	It's the six million dollar man, right?
	I mean, better or faster or stronger, right?
	Well, different for sure.
	No, better, I think.
	I think better. We can go into that another time, but I think better.
	I think that the culture is such that the people, even those people who are raised in a sort of healthy or normal or non-aggressive environment still have a great deal of problem because they are raised by healthy and non-aggressive families within a corrupt and irrational cultural environment, right? Right, right, quite right.
	So, in these dreams, there's three directly about families and male.
	They're all about men, right?
	No women in these dreams other than two quasi-sexual objects, right?
	Which is a sort of traditionally man-pig perspective, right?
	Yeah, that's quite right.
	Right, so it's all about men, and there are some phallic...
	There is some phallic and sexual stuff floating around, which is just a by-the-by.
	It's nothing that I think needs to be particularly focused on.
	But it is around men...
	Your male drug dealers, your frat boy buddies, the Nazis and the helicopter pilots and your brothers.
	And the women are only around as sexual things to be pursued or at least considered pursuing in the middle of an air raid.
	And of course, in the last dream, your mom can't get through.
	It's nothing but men in the van.
	So it's really around...
	These dreams are all about masculinity, in my opinion.
	And it's all about a pecking order.
	That's interesting. What do you mean by that?
	Those who have power are defeating you every time, right?
	That's interesting, right?
	So in the first dream, that would be...
	Actually, that wouldn't even be John.
	That would be myself, right?
	Self-defeating. Well, that's what I was going to get to next.
	So, I mean, excellent leap, right?
	So if you put yourself into situations where you don't reference your values, you will always lose.
	Because if you reference your values, you're very likely not going to be in those situations to begin with.
	No, quite right.
	I wouldn't even be on that ship, let alone acting in some sort of...
	Right, so philosophy, in terms of mastery in the world, to my mind, we either go for self-knowledge and philosophy, which gives us mastery over self and reality, or we go for dominance over others, right? Right, right, which is...
	Which is why the hierarchy, right?
	Right. Now, if you're going to devote yourself to dominance over others, you simply cannot get exposed to philosophy.
	Because philosophy will trip you up every time when you go for that, right?
	Sure. And kind of mess you up inside, too.
	Yeah, for sure. And that's why the social metaphysicians, as Rand calls them, are so hostile towards self-knowledge and empiricism and philosophy, right?
	Because it destroys...
	Because power over others is all about UPB violations, right?
	Creating separate rules for you than for other people and using intimidation.
	And it's all about control over others.
	Power over others is all about...
	Having them avoid self-knowledge so that you can continue to hook into the traps left by their history, right?
	Right. Having awareness of that in order to be able to use it as a tool against them, right?
	Yeah. Like, I mean, it's tough.
	It's a lot tougher to be intimidated by authority figures when you've dealt with your own fear of authority figures in your history, right?
	Right. There's not this big button which you can't see that they push and just do whatever they want, right?
	Quite right. So principles and self-knowledge, philosophy and psychology, are the two things that manipulators and controllers and abusers hate with a passion, right?
	Yeah, and we've certainly seen plenty of that.
	I think we have, right?
	In this dream, you don't reference your values and you don't notice that you're not referencing your values.
	Because if you know that you're not referencing your values, you could do something about it.
	Right, right, exactly.
	Like in the van dream, I could have just simply not gone on the trip, or I could have left the van.
	Or you could have said, look, I'm not enjoying myself.
	I want you to stop the car.
	I have a cell phone, so I can call for help, and I'll get a cab, or I'll get a plane, and I'll go do something else.
	I'm an adult, right? Right.
	Or fundamentally, I don't like my family of origin, so I'm not sure.
	You'd wake up in the dream and you'd go like, well, what the hell am I doing here?
	I don't want to be here. And you'd tell your father to stop the van and you'd get out, right?
	Yeah, that's exactly right.
	But in the dreams, you don't reference.
	There's no philosophy. There's no self-knowledge, right?
	There's just a kind of pathetic bleating to try and control or manage situations in which you fail, right?
	Yeah, which is kind of a repetition of my conscious patterns over the last 20 years or so.
	Sure, absolutely. And, you know, we've all been there.
	And I found that applying philosophical principles to friendships and family and personal relationships is the very hardest thing, right?
	That's why we spent some time in this conversation as a whole, right, in FDR as a whole, focusing on just this challenge, right?
	Because if we're going to be philosophers and we're going to pursue wisdom, truth, and self-knowledge, then we want to do it, right?
	We don't want to just read about it, right?
	So if we're going to, if we want to become Experts in Kung Fu, then we have to do more than read books about Kung Fu.
	We actually have to do it. We have to get into the ring, we have to spar, we have to stretch, we have to practice, practice, practice, right?
	You can't read books about being a pianist and think that you can then play für Elise or something like that, right?
	You actually have to do it.
	And, of course, a lot of what is called philosophy is about talking about it, right?
	It's about blogging about it.
	And this is true of libertarianism as well, right?
	It's about writing about the Fed and Lincoln and all the stuff which I've talked about before.
	And it's not about, you know, examining the non-aggression principle in the spheres that you can actually do something about, right?
	Which is your relationships and the relationships with those With those around you, right?
	So, you know, it's all about FEMA camps and 9-11.
	It's not about where the real aggression lives in society, which is in people's personal relations, right?
	In our personal relationships, that's exactly right.
	And the fact that principle, there's no, I mean, principle doesn't have a boundary line, right?
	It either applies to everything or it doesn't.
	Sorry, can you say that again? Principles either apply to everything, including our personal relationships, or they don't apply at all.
	Right, right.
	No, I can certainly understand that.
	So there's no boundary where you can say, well, this principle of non-aggression or anti-violence or whatever only applies to the church or the state or the Fed or whatever and not apply to the way that I'm behaving toward people in my personal life or Right,
	or as so many tragic libertarians do, right?
	They say, status schools are an indoctrination in irrational obedience to an irrational authority, and that's really bad, and so I want to send my kid to Sunday school or Christian school instead, right?
	Right, right, exactly.
	that's exactly right so I think in these dreams it's a window into a life without values and it may be that you're living a life without values though I don't think that's the case But it also may be your way of understanding what it's like for others in the world.
	Oh, oh. That's an interesting point.
	It's a very tough thing to empathize with people who don't have reference to values.
	But this dream, I think, is giving you a sense of what it's like to live without values, truth, and philosophy, and without even knowing that you don't have them.
	Right. Which is just reacting in a moment to attempt to get your way and influence other people, and it's all moments.
	It's all moment, moment, moment, right?
	Right. Right, right, right.
	That's quite right. So kind of, yeah.
	I wondered if they were warning dreams or what, but this actually makes more sense, this kind of emphasis.
	Well, I mean, since it's all about men and the challenges that you've had with your family revolve around men, right?
	And that your brother is a tougher case for you to process than your mother, right?
	Yeah, that's quite true.
	I think it's a way for you It's a possible way.
	It's possible that it's a way for you to get into the skin of other people, because you don't live a life without values.
	In fact, you live a life in hot pursuit of values, which for you and for me and for everyone doesn't mean that we always apply them consistently, but that's a goal, and you usually have some idea when you're not pursuing your values or living philosophically or avoiding self-knowledge.
	You usually have some idea about that, and of course you're in a community of like-minded people who tell you if they notice that or whatever, right?
	So I don't think that the dreams are fundamentally about you, but I think It's about trying to really get what other people who reject philosophy and self-knowledge, what their lives are like.
	Yeah, and that makes a lot of sense to me because one of the things I have been focusing on the last couple of weeks, couple of months in fact, is trying to Elevate the level of empathy that I have for people sort of outside this conversation.
	So that kind of makes sense.
	Well, I think that's certainly one thing.
	And I've talked recently about, in the parenting podcast actually, about how now that I have a daughter or a child, people who harm children are staggeringly And incomprehensibly alien and foreign to me now, in a way that they weren't before.
	Yeah. Yeah, that's quite true.
	And if we develop self-knowledge and an understanding of truth and reality, but we do not at the same time develop Empathy, which is not to say sympathy, but empathy with those who oppose and have no access to these things.
	We are in danger, right?
	Right, because without an understanding of what those people are like inside, they have the capacity to sort of not Not necessarily control you, but to surprise you, right?
	I would say control. Really?
	Yeah, I would, for sure. I would.
	And not just you, but control me.
	Because if you think about it, right, the amount of energy over the last six months that you poured into thinking about your brother is prodigious, right?
	It's probably been one of the biggest topics in your thoughts, right?
	Yeah, that's true.
	That's very true. And it's not like he's controlling you, but the thoughts are dominating and remain, or at least have been very difficult to resolve, right?
	Right. His sort of inexplicable self in me is what's been controlling me.
	Right. Whereas if you empathize with what a life is like lived in opposition to truth and self-knowledge, then it's easier To not have those people in your life.
	But you have to empathize with them first.
	Right. And the reason we try and empathize with them is so that if there's any possibility, then we can be turned around.
	But getting into the heads of empty people is really tough.
	But once we've done it, Right, right, right.
	Yeah. Yeah, and I think that's why it's significant that he's present in three out of the four dreams, right?
	Right. And in the one dream where he's not present, nobody from my family is present, so...
	Right.
	Right, so that makes sense.
	That makes a lot of sense.
	So this maybe still has something to do with...
	It definitely has something to do with empathizing with him.
	Right. Yeah, I think so.
	Which is interesting. And empathizing will be to become free of the thoughts, right?
	To get closure. Right, right.
	Quite right. Right, because, as you say, that sort of desire to want to...
	Well, it's realizing how distant we are from these people, right?
	Those who pursue wisdom and self-knowledge and who no longer project or exploit or at least fight those tendencies within themselves.
	Those of us who do that end up in fundamental opposition to the people who avoid or reject or attack that.
	Right. And that distance is pretty visible in these dreams too, right?
	Because in the first dream, I don't actually talk to him at all.
	And the only time that I can visibly see him is he's standing off at a distance from me.
	Well, no one interacts with you at all in these dreams.
	Right, right. And in the air raid dream, they're just kind of standing there silent, not doing anything.
	Well, it's sort of like you're standing in front of a movie screen of someone dancing, pretending to dance with them, right?
	But they're not interacting with you at all.
	Right, right.
	Yeah, that's exactly right. That's a great way to put it, because that's exactly what it felt like.
	It felt like...
	There's a script and no one can change it, right?
	Right, right. Like, I wasn't having any traction with them at all, in the sense of, like you described, where they're on a movie screen and I'm trying to influence their behavior, which is kind of ridiculous, right?
	Right, right. And, of course, as we've talked about before, this is, of course, in a sense, the free will determinist thing, right?
	That free will is something you earn through self-knowledge and wisdom and humility, right?
	Right, right. And people who don't, who lack self-knowledge, are drawn towards determinism because they are fundamentally defensive.
	And defenses are reactions.
	They are not choices.
	And so you feel like a machine because in a way you are.
	Sure, sure. And in these dreams, there's a kind of machine-like aspect to what you're doing.
	It's not empirical. It's not sensitive to the situations.
	It's not based on... Your values, it's just China struggling to survive the moment, which is again the PTSD thing.
	Struggling to survive the eternal moment, right?
	Right. Playing the part of a component in a machine.
	Right. Right. Yeah, exactly.
	That's exactly right. So then the violation of values then It's more of a representation rather than a warning.
	Yeah, it is, but it is a warning for you as well, right?
	Because if you remember what your life was like before values, then you can understand what people's life in the present is like without values.
	Oh, oh, oh, right, right, right.
	Nope, that makes good sense.
	Yeah. Yeah.
	I mean, you acted badly, as we all did.
	When you didn't have principles, right?
	I mean, I'm not saying you only acted badly, but, you know, it happens, right?
	Right. Well, minus principles, there's no way to really...
	There's no way to be sure of when you're acting well or when you're acting badly, right?
	Well, there is. It's just that it requires a kind of emotional self-sensitivity to understand that it makes you unhappy, which you don't have in the absence of self-knowledge, right?
	Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's right.
	I mean, it's like when you broke a computer in front of your brother, it wasn't like you felt really great about that, right?
	Right. No, I was pretty horrified by that.
	Right, but there's no way to extract a principle and pursue a path of, in a sense, redemption without self-knowledge and philosophy, right?
	So it just becomes, well, that was bad.
	I shouldn't do that again, right?
	And, oh, that was bad.
	I shouldn't do that again. And you basically...
	You end up passing all these laws against yourself and becoming a dictatorship which scarcely brings happiness, right?
	Yeah, that's exactly what it was like.
	It was stumbling from mistake to mistake and constantly constricting my behavior as the mistakes would accumulate, right?
	Right, right. That's exactly right.
	Alright. Well, I think we've had a good trip through the dreams.
	Was it helpful and useful to you?
	Oh, yeah. Very much so.
	I really appreciate the opportunity to pick these apart because sometimes when they come in waves like this...
	Oh, you can't figure it out yourself any more than I can figure out my own dreams.
	I mean, it is something that you have to do in conversation.
	Yeah, and it's so rare to find somebody who's not just good at this, but willing to as well.
	Right, and has a value set that is, you know, somewhat respectable, right?
	Right, right, right.
	This means Jesus wants to reconnect with your family.
	Right, right. Right, exactly.
	Not good. No, this has been very helpful and I really appreciate it.
	Oh, you're totally welcome. We do have time if somebody has another quick question or wants to jump in at the end or wants to scorn dream analysis as a whole.
	I'm always happy to get those kinds of perspectives, which are always worth examining.
	if anybody wants to jump in at the end.
	I think we have a few minutes before Isabella's head completely explodes.
	Darling, what's the matter to me, Dabbs?
	Do you want to not be held up just by your foot?
	Let's try the other foot. Her legs are getting very long.
	Not both of them.
	One of them, yes.
	What you do is, as Christina eloquently puts it, you throw a boob at it.
	Ah, I do remember the honeymoon.
	How do I get my husband away from the buffet?
	Throw a boob at him. Alright, I don't think we have any other questions.
	I really do appreciate it.
	Thanks, Greg, for bringing those dreams up.
	I'm glad that we had a chance to work through them, and I appreciate the honesty and vulnerability in bringing those dreams forward and working through it in that way.
	Obviously, you could spend much more time on these dreams, and we did have skim because there were four, but I think we got some very useful stuff.
	Out of it anyway. And I will count this as four podcasts to hit my obsessive number per week.
	Alright. Thanks everybody.
	I appreciate it. Thank you so much of course to the donators and the subscribers.
	If you do get a chance, if you could post the corporations video around, I would really appreciate that.
	I've put it on StumbleUpon and And dig and so on.
	So if you go to the videos page down at the bottom, I think you can do that as well.
	And I really do appreciate the opportunity.
	Thank you for the people who gave the kind feedback to the parenting part 5, which was posted, where we talk about our inability to impose things upon Isabella and someone in the chat room I think quite wisely pointed out that central planning doesn't work in parenting any more than it does in economics, which I thought was a very intelligent and insightful thing to say.
	And I will talk to you guys same time next week, and thanks again so much for everything that you do to make this conversation so successful.

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