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March 29, 2009 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
02:14:27
1318 Sunday Show March 29 2009

Therapy, society and leadership - a must-listen!

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Time Text
Well, good afternoon everybody.
Sorry for the slight delay in starting.
It is a little after 4 on the 29th of March 2009.
And since it is near the end of the month, people ready themselves both for their rent checks and for my whining about money.
So if you have not donated in a while or feel that the show has been Spectacularly spectacular lately, then if you could toss some money my way, that would be beyond fabulous, and I promise to share at least 5% of it with the family.
The rest will be used to build the enormous gold coffin that I need to sleep in at night in order to preserve my philosophical juices.
So, actually, it all goes to Christina, and I get an allowance, which I foolishly blow on food.
So, I hope you're doing well.
The family here is very well.
Isabella is cooking along just beautifully.
She actually slept in her crib last night, didn't she?
Yes, she did. She slept in her crib last night.
I'm sleeping in the study at the moment, which means that basically I live most of my life in the red room.
It has become my womb.
Unfortunately, we looked into getting a feeding tube hung from the heating ducts in the room to really complete the womb metaphor, but I just got funny looks.
So, sad but true.
Thank you to those who...
So, anyway, hopefully I'll be able to rejoin my wife in the marital bed, because Isabella seems to want to be an only child.
Her strategy is to drive Daddy out of the bedroom, isn't it, sweetums?
Yes, you want to be the princess with the only one on the throne.
And so that will be quite nice when it occurs.
And I will be not sleeping on the floor like a servant.
But I am a servant to wisdom.
So basically, I've got some cushions from the couch, which I kind of jam together with an elastic sheet and sleep there.
It's all too primitive for words.
Yeah, absolutely. So next step is sleeping in the car, I think, for that final top-up.
So, and again, thank you everybody so much who's been giving such great and wonderful feedback.
The videos are doing well.
We haven't had anything quite viral, but there was one that I put out which I thought was quite funny.
I think it's True News 28, I think it is, which is a statist intervention, intervention for a statist.
And I thought that was...
Kind of funny. Some people got kind of offended because I appeared to be condescending, but that, to me, was part of the humor, which doesn't mean that it's actually funny.
It just means that I thought it was funny.
So, anyway, if you wanted to check that out, that's available on YouTube.
Thank you to those. I was looking for a little handheld internet device, because I found that the Etch-A-Sketch was just not...
Well, it couldn't do JavaScript.
So, thank you so much for those who gave feedback.
A netbook wasn't the answer.
I already have a netbook, and it's something I needed to be able to operate with one hand, because with the other hand, well, like all men, I get itchy.
And so I ended up getting an iPod Touch, and thank you so much for your feedback.
It is pretty cool. It can actually run the chat room.
It can do the chat room, which is really quite remarkable.
I figured out how to make it do the chat room.
And it can do, somebody had posted that it can't do board posting.
And it can do board postings, but you have to turn off JavaScript, apparently.
And I have, maybe we can make a tweak to the website to fix that.
It's a bug in community server.
So it is great.
And Christina has been using it for web browsing and so on.
So it's been absolutely wonderful.
And thanks so much for those who gave me feedback on it.
So, that's it for introductions.
If people have the questions or the comments or the mad rank praise or vicious exoriation, now is the time to spreken.
I have a question, but only if nobody else wants to take a crack at it.
Going once, going twice, going thrice.
Nobody, go ahead. Okay, so tell me if you have any thoughts on this.
I've been with my current therapist for about three months or so and I've come to the conclusion that I want to stop going to therapy with this woman and I haven't Taking the further conclusion about whether I want to start up absolutely immediately,
like next week with somebody else or whether I want to to take a short hiatus for a while um like a month or so and I'm just um hoping to have a chat about that um that's just because you know I have this this tendency to it's like as soon as I sort of get close with anybody it's kind of like oh run away
So I just wanted to make sure that that's not what I was doing, if that makes sense.
Well, how's your, I mean, how's the therapy been going overall, and why are you, why do you want to ditch the therapist you have?
It's not been going badly.
It's just not been going particularly well.
This woman, the therapist that I'm with, she has a tendency to take everything I say at absolute face value.
So, for example, last week I went in there and I had had an argument with somebody at work.
And I only realized this after the session had ended, but I was presenting the story in such a way that it's sort of Um, justified the sort of passive-aggressive fight that we kind of got into.
And she just, you know, after I presented the story to her, her comment was, oh yeah, this guy seems like an asshole.
And then we just sort of moved on.
And this has been pretty typical with her.
It's like I'll sort of present an issue or present something.
Whether I'm being completely honest or not, it's all sort of really surface.
And as much as I try to go deeper into something with her, she's just not so much with that.
And have you talked to her about this as an issue?
I'm not saying you should. I'm just curious if you have.
Yeah, I have.
And I've told her, you know, not only do we not really go deep into anything, and I mean, I want you to call me out when I'm being, you know, when I'm not being completely honest or get into something deeper with me.
And she says, okay, yeah, we can do that going forward.
And then it doesn't happen.
And also, you know, I've talked with her also about she has a tendency to, at the end of the session, she'll ask me this weird random question.
And I'll say, I'll answer it.
I'll say, okay, well, why did you ask me that?
And she'll always say, well, some guy that I was thinking of dating had posted this in his profile on Match.com and I thought that you might know what he was talking about.
And I've told her, you know, I don't really want to know about your personal life.
I'm sorry. Sorry. Let me just interrupt because I just want to make sure I follow this.
So your therapist at the end of a session will ask you a question.
You'll say, where's this coming from?
And she'll say, some guy I was thinking of dating on Match.com posted it and I wanted to get your thoughts about it.
Yeah. It's a little bit weird.
Now, in terms of the degrees that she has on the walls, how many Matchbooks with checkboxes are there that are framed?
Very funny, very funny.
No, it's a full wall of Harvard and Yale.
No, really. What?
Really? Really?
Really, really. No.
So, okay, I'm not a therapist, and I'm not even going to guess the, I mean, it's not an ethical situation, I think, but it seems a bit odd to be asking dating advice from a patient.
Yeah, and I asked her, okay, why are you asking?
Why are you doing this?
Why are you telling me about this?
And she's like, well, I just, I like to make myself seem more human to my patients.
And it's like, I don't want you to be that human.
Are you having a grave difficulty determining her species as it stands?
Yeah, pretty much.
Do you occasionally not want to lick her because you think she might be a poisonous tree frog or something?
Very funny. Yeah, so that was the justification that she gave, but she's been good since I brought up that bit.
She's been really good about not doing that anymore, so she was responsive to at least that suggestion, but the other suggestions of, okay, like, call me when I'm talking complete bullshit, That's been not so much.
So I haven't been getting really a lot out of the sessions, except for realizing on the two-mile walk back to the train station that, oh yeah, I was completely being passive-aggressive again there, and yeah, I should work on that. So it's like all of the insight that I get comes after the session and thinking about actually how it went.
Which is interesting.
It's been helpful, but...
Right, right. Now, I mean, I would say, and, you know, having had a good mock-on of the therapist, which, you know, I don't know the entire context, but that was funny to me.
You know, if you have a therapist that you've outgrown, let's say, that to me is a good transition.
Right. Right. Right, I mean, it's not wasted, it's not bad, it's not problematic from that standpoint because it's just someone that you have now realized is not appropriate to where it is that you want to go, but obviously this therapist was appropriate to where you were or where you wanted to go at some point for some time,
right? Yeah I mean like initially it was good to have a place where I could go every week where it was sort of like you know it's it's a stable influence someone that that I see and can talk to regularly and she's very personable she's easy to talk to so that was really it's been really helpful for the past three months as I've been sort of settling in here but now it's kind of like You know,
now I've got a sort of rhythm to my life where I wanted to start doing actual, like, heavy lifting work, which I don't think is, like, where she is.
Right, right, okay.
And, you know, that seems to me, you know, if you have problems with the therapy, you've tried talking about it with the therapist, and you haven't achieved a successful resolution, and there are, I would say, a couple of Warning flags about asking, what do you think of this guy's dating profile question?
Christine is saying there are some ethical issues with that, which doesn't particularly matter, other than it's not a completely subjective opinion that we're going with here.
Then moving beyond that therapist would, I think, be a good idea.
I would suggest not jumping straight into another therapist, a relationship with another therapist, because I think you need to figure out Where the warning signs were, so to speak, with this therapist?
Right? You don't want another transitional therapist.
What you want is another therapist who can take you all the way, so to speak, right?
Right, exactly. And, you know, I want this next therapist to be like the long-term relationship that when I'm done with him or her, I'm sort of...
Yes, yes, for sure.
We don't want to spend our lives in therapy.
It's expensive and time consuming.
We absolutely want to get in there.
We want to hire a personal trainer, but we're not really trying to get into the Olympics with therapy here.
We don't want to necessarily be doing the...
The seven-day-a-week kind of training thing for the rest of her life.
So, I think that you want to take a break.
That would be my suggestion.
Not for long, but, you know, journal, introspect, talk with people who you're friends with to figure out what you didn't see in this woman that got you to this point and got you to invest some time and money in a relationship that didn't go as far as it could have.
Which is, again, not to say that any of it was a waste, But I really do think that you need to, because you want to really figure that out.
Otherwise, the problem, of course, is going to be that you are going to risk a repeat, right?
Right, that makes a lot of sense.
Yeah, it's like dating. If a relationship blows up, it's usually a good thing to sort of figure it out before, you know, jumping the next set of bones, so to speak.
Yeah, Greg just asked the question, like, how can one figure that out in isolation?
But I don't think that that's what you're suggesting at all, is it?
In isolation? I think I said journal and talk to friends and so on.
Right, right. Yeah, I did.
So no, nobody's talking about isolation here.
Right. That makes a lot of sense.
But, I mean, the training, of course, and the training is to follow your feelings, right?
I mean, if you go back to the first interaction you had with this therapist, I guarantee you that there's something there that would have been some sort of indicator that, in terms of your feelings, and it may have been nothing, maybe nothing objective, but just in terms of what you experienced, that sort of blink phenomenon, and I think that you need to...
Need to figure that one out so you can get the most bang for your buck out of the next therapist, in my opinion.
Yeah, that makes sense.
And my history with this therapist has kind of been, you know, a history of not following my feelings, because if I'm really honest with myself, the first session I went there was, I thought on the way home, yeah, she's a nice woman, but she doesn't seem particularly therapist-like.
Which has, you know, been my sort of problem with her.
Right, and that would indicate to me that it's not that the therapist won't take you deeper, it's that you chose this therapist in order to not go deeper.
Yeah. We have a rousing yes from Christina, which may, well, sorry.
My stuff's always opinions.
Christina's stuff is always complete and absolute fact.
In fact, if she ever repeals gravity, we're all completely hosed.
Nice. But yeah, I think Christina's absolutely right.
I mean, given where I was in January back in the United States for less than a month when I chose this woman, yeah, I can tell you that's exactly why I chose her.
Right, right, right.
So, yeah, time to move on and, you know, get someone who comes with, you know, three canaries in a cage, a miner's hat, and some excavation gear.
Because, you know, if you want to go deep, that's the person to go with.
Absolutely. Be like Margaret Thatcher visiting the miners.
Ooh, yeah. That 1970s British ship.
Exactly. Exactly.
That's exactly what it would be like.
Does that, does that help? Yeah, it helps a lot.
Thanks, Steph. I really appreciate it.
You're welcome. And keep us posted, of course, about how it goes.
Sure, will do. All right.
I think we have time for one more question.
Just kidding. We have time for some more questions.
Steph? Yes.
I wanted to convince you of something.
You wanted to convince me of something?
Yes. Go for it.
But it requires that you forget everything you know.
I wanted to try explaining...
I'm sorry, how far back should I go?
Well, maybe a few years.
I wanted to try to explain UPB to you as if you were somebody who didn't know anything about it.
And maybe you're somebody who...
Who's not sure what to think just yet and isn't convinced by anybody or is sort of just, you know, open to ideas, I guess, or maybe...
Or would that be too easy?
I don't think we could say that anything about UPB is particularly easy, so I would say go for it.
Well, okay.
So, let's say you're this guy and you're sitting with me and you say...
I say...
Well...
You say something about the government, let's say.
Maybe you say...
Maybe I say government is bad, and you say, well, I'm not sure what you mean by bad or good, and I'm not convinced that morality is anything to be concerned about, because I'm not convinced that there is such a thing as good and evil.
Maybe we're just all... Just a bunch of people acting on cause and effect, things like that.
I guess maybe not a determinist, but I'm trying to set the context, I guess, or the subtext as I've been trying to learn in acting class here.
Well, I mean, of course, the first thing that I would say is what are the definitions, right?
Right. Like, okay, so you say morality doesn't exist, or there's no such thing as morality, or morality is invalid.
Well, what is it that you mean by morality, right?
And if the person says, that which Zeus has inscribed on the forehead of every sentient being, then I would say, well, yes.
I would completely agree with you that by that definition morality doesn't exist, in the same way that if you define morality as a square circle, yeah, it's an invalid concept and so on, right?
So we would just start with definitions, right?
Right. Okay, so you're this guy.
And here we go.
So how do you define good and evil?
Sorry, am I the guy who's saying there isn't such a thing as good and evil?
Yes. Okay.
Well, you know, good and evil would be some external standard of behavior that we're supposed to adhere to.
Well, what does that mean exactly?
Well, you know, you shouldn't kill.
You shouldn't steal. I mean, whatever, right?
I mean, just some external standard that we're supposed to adhere to.
I don't believe that external standard exists, and I also don't believe that even if it did, we somehow magically have to adhere to it or agree with it.
So you... I'm not sure what you're saying.
You're saying that killing... You believe that killing is wrong, but you don't think there's any external standard?
No, no, no. I don't think that killing is wrong.
I think that we may, as a society, want to designate it as wrong or bad or whatever and propagandize our children to not do it because there may be negative consequences to it.
But it's not, you know, there's no external standard that makes it objectively wrong or bad or evil.
It just may be impractical for society to allow it.
So, society that you live in defines what's good or bad?
Yeah, yeah, of course.
I mean, it's sort of like, it's not evil to not change the oil in your car, but we don't like the consequences if we don't, and so we make a rule for ourselves called change the oil in your car every now and then, but we wouldn't say that's moral, and that's the way I would view moral rules.
I see. So morality or it's relative, good and bad is just sort of what society defines it as, or it depends on where you live.
Well, no, no, sorry, but you're conflating two things, because I'm saying there is no such thing as good and bad, and you're saying, okay, well, good and bad is, right?
But that's like me saying, there is no such thing as God, and you saying, okay, well, then God says this, right?
But there is no such thing as good and evil, right?
There are some rules that we may want to inflict upon people as a whole, because it's impractical to live any other way, So we can't use the terms good and evil, because I'm saying they don't exist, but you keep using them.
Hey, it's fun to be a little. Sorry, go on.
All right, so if I were to steal your wallet, what would you say about that?
Well, I'd say I don't like it.
And I'd try and get it back.
But, you know, it's sort of like if you steal, like if we're playing soccer and you take the ball away from me, I don't like that either, and I'll try and get it back.
But I'm not going to say it's some sort of universal, God-given moral rule.
So if I were to steal your wallet, you would react in the very same way as if I were to steal a ball from you in basketball?
Yeah, well, not steal, but if you were to take a ball from me in basketball, I'd be unhappy and I'd want to get it back and so on.
But I wouldn't sit there and say, you must be thrown in jail for taking a basketball away from me, right?
So you would not press charges or throw me in jail for stealing your wallet and spending the money on whatever I want?
No, no, no. I might press charges, because the rules of the system that we live in are that you can press charges.
And if I want my wallet back badly enough, then I might press charges.
But again, I'm not going to say that's good or evil.
I'm just going to say I want my wallet back, and there's this tool I can use called the law, which I can appeal to to get my wallet back.
So I'm going to do that.
Okay, so... Because you can't get the ball back with the same tool like the government, you can't press charges against a guy who's playing basketball with you and steals the ball, so you're not going to be able to use that.
Instead, you've got to come after me, grab the ball with your hands, and then get it back.
Whereas if I steal your wallet, the government is just another tool, or like your arm, to get the ball back.
Yeah, I mean, look, the rules of basketball are you can't take someone to court for taking your ball, right?
And so I'm not going to try and do that.
But the rules of my wallet and you taking it are that I can take you to court to get my wallet back and punish you or whatever.
And so those are the rules that I'm going to use.
If I don't care that much about my wallet, then I won't, but those are the rules that I'm going to use, if that makes sense.
So who defines these rules?
Well, I mean, there's many groups, many advocates.
It's like saying, who defines the English language?
It's just something that evolves based on practical usage and consequences.
So nobody's defining these rules?
Well, that's like saying nobody defines the words that are valid in the English language.
But there's no central committee, really, that defines the English language.
It's kind of a work in progress that is a cultural aggregation.
And the same thing seems to be true of the rules and laws within society, or a particular, I mean, all societies in general.
So if there's no committee defining any of these things, who are you going to get your wallet back?
Well, I'm going to the people who are going to enforce me getting my wallet back.
Who are these people?
Okay, so these are the people that are making these laws and enforcing them.
Well, yeah, but I mean, the law is sort of a collective process, right?
I mean, like the English language or rush hour or something, right?
Well, let's say we're in America.
You've got these group of guys, and they call themselves the Senate and the Representatives, and this is that group of people which make these rules.
And I'm not a member of this group of people.
I'm not part of that. These are a number of individuals in one location making up all these rules.
Are those the rules you're talking about?
Yeah, I mean, the rules that are available to me, right?
And, of course, you can try and make your own rules and see if they will be generally adopted by society, right?
So, you know, you could create your own EULA, right, and use a legal agreement or whatever and see if it's accepted by society.
Like, it's like language. I can make up a new world called Spammy Got Me Not, Which, I don't know, means something, and then I can attempt to get people to adopt that word, you know, like the word bling, bling, or the words bling, bling come up and so on, and grills and cribs and all that kind of stuff.
And if people adopt it, fantastic, you know, and there's no, again, I don't have to sort of...
We petition the OED, the people who write the Oxford English Dictionary, to say, you have to put this word in.
I mean, I guess I could try, but even if they did, it wouldn't be commonly adopted.
But you can always try and get that stuff in and see if it works or not.
And the same thing is true of laws, right?
I mean, if you have a law that you want to propose, then you can propose that law and see if you can get enough people interested in it to get it adopted.
And that doesn't necessarily mean exactly by the government, but most times it generally does.
And that sort of collective participative process is how these rules get.
But, I mean, sure, you know all of this.
Right, right.
Democracy is what you're talking about.
Yeah, for sure.
Although you could make the argument that even a dictatorship is part of a social contract, that in a sense, because there's no overturning or alteration to the existing system, that people historically or culturally have some sympathy towards the dictatorship.
But yeah, generally it would be most commonly viewed as a democratic paradigm.
Why do these certain groups, these select individuals that you're talking about, who you go to with your idea and see if it's adopted, why do they have the right to enact that sort of rule and determine whether or not I'm allowed to do something or not?
Well, but see, again, what you're doing, Nate, is you're using the word right, which I've sort of specifically said doesn't exist.
Like, there's no such thing as these absolute objective ethics written in the sky.
So you're using the word right when I've already said that there's no such thing as ethics.
So I can't quite follow the statement.
If you could rephrase it in a way that's more compatible with what we've already agreed on, that would probably be better.
Hmm. Okay, so if I want to do...
Let's say I want to start my own post office and deliver letters.
Currently, as it is in America, I'm not allowed to do that.
Thank you.
Because this group of individuals, the Congress, as they call it, is prohibiting me from doing this.
So what is it that if it's not rights and rights don't exist, then why are they able to do this?
Well, for two things, right?
One is that they've got the power of the law behind them, and the second is that there is a general social consensus that that is the way that we want things to be organized in our society.
And some societies will have it differently, and in the past it was different in our society.
But, you know, there's a consensus which is backed up by the power of law.
I mean, again, you know this, right?
Well, no, I don't know what you mean by power of law.
Well, that you can be prosecuted for competing with the state monopoly of the Postal Service, right?
Prosecuted by who? Well, by...
What do you mean by who? You know, the law, I mean, who do you think?
Well, are you talking about this group of individuals who call themselves Congress?
Well, no, I don't think that the people in Congress go down and arrest people, unless something's changed in the law that I don't know about.
Well, what do they do?
I'm sorry, is it that you don't know, or is this a rhetorical question?
Just humor me.
It's a rhetorical question.
What do they do?
Explain to me like I'm three years old.
What Congress does?
Yeah. Well, I mean, they listen to their constituents, they attempt to respond to the most generalized and pressing concerns of the population and pass laws that are going to require a minimum of force to...
To enforce because most people already agree with them and want them to be the case, right?
So they use force to keep me from starting a post office?
No, they don't. I mean, no congressman is going to come to your house with a gun, right?
Well, the cops would.
Yes, but then we're not talking about Congress, right?
Well, who are the cops paid by?
Well, the cops are paid by the taxpayers, right?
And why do I have to pay these taxes?
What happens if I decide not to pay the taxes?
Well, then you're going to face the sanctions of the representative body of the will of the people.
Well, I don't know what you mean by will of the people.
Is this a guy I can talk to?
Well, that's a rhetorical question, right?
It means that, in general, people are relatively comfortable with a state monopoly on the Postal Service, to take your example, and therefore they have voted for and permit and support Congress having a monopoly on the Postal Service, and this is with the idea of general fairness that you should have a flat fee for sending mail to wherever, right?
And that's generally what Society wants not to penalize people in rural areas with much higher costs of postal delivery and that's just a general egalitarian thing that society has decided is something it wants and so it's put a law in and that's what's enforced.
Well, it's interesting because you're using all these concepts like the will of the people or society or the law of the land or law in general.
What is it that people are actually doing?
You're saying that society wants this, but what if I don't want it?
Well, I mean, this is the old Socratic argument, right?
I mean, if you don't want it, then you have three options, right?
You obey it even though you don't want it.
In the same way that some guy who wants to steal, like if some guy wants to steal your wallet, you hope that he's going to obey the law even if he doesn't agree with it, right?
Well, I hope that he's not going to steal my wallet.
Right, but I mean, if it's illegal for him to steal your wallet, you hope he's going to respect the law rather than just pursue his own wishes, right?
Sure, sure. Right, so in the same way, society as a whole prefers or hopes or people as a whole prefer a hope that you're going to follow the law even if you don't agree with it in the same way that you hope other people will follow the law even if they don't agree with it, right?
That's just a basic kind of we live in a civilized society thing.
So your first option is just to obey the law even though you disagree with it.
The second, I guess you have four options.
The first is to obey the law even though you disagree with it.
The second is to disobey the law.
Hopefully to set a precedent or take the consequences or whatever, or maybe you'll just get away with it, like some people don't pay taxes and don't get prosecuted.
work for change within the system and open up, you know, try and sell your idea to people as a whole in the same way that an author tries to sell his book or I guess a philosopher tries to get his podcasts out.
You just try and get your ideas out to society and if it, you know, catches wind and so on, then it will change as a result of your efforts.
Society will change and there will be no monopoly post office or whatever it is that you want.
And then, of course, if you don't want to obey, you don't want to disobey and take the consequences or take the risk.
You don't want to work for change within the system.
Your only other option, of course, is to move to a locale that is more in accordance with your particular preferences.
of course, if there is no locale that you are happy with, then, you know, you either live in some inaccessible, undisclosable location within your own society and, you know, basically jump out of the social contract or you find some island or you go to some place where there is no social contract or state and, you know, try and create a new society and win people over that way or just live on your own or whatever, right?
So there's a number of options if you don't.
Okay, so this is the classic social contract argument.
Yeah, I mean, I think so.
Yeah, for sure. Alright, so that is...
The social contract is what defines what is quote-unquote good or bad in a given geographical area.
Okay, let me just interrupt for a sec.
Nate, how are you experiencing the debate?
You're quite slippery. Oh, I'm good at evil, if that makes any sense.
It's frustrating. Trying to...
It may help if we reverse roles.
Yeah, I mean, I thought so, because it is...
I mean, what I'm presenting is a kind of glass wall, and you're trying to put some repels in, right?
Yeah. Yeah. Okay, good, good.
And I wanted to stop that because clearly we could do that all day, right?
Until one of us had manuals, right?
I think I was about to.
Yeah, because it's really frustrating, right?
And I can tell you what I was doing, if it's of any use to you.
And, of course, I was being as evil as I could be, so to speak.
And I think that's important, right?
Because these are the kinds of...
You know, we obviously want to go up against the best qualified people, in a way.
And I tried to put on the relativist from hell hat as much as possible, right?
Right, right. Okay, so I'm going to just...
I don't want to do a full role reversal because it'll take a long time.
I'm just going to sort of point out where it is that you could have taken another approach and whether that would have worked or not, I don't know.
But I can tell you the approach that I might have taken.
And, you know, it doesn't mean that it'll work.
It's just my particular...
Right, so... So the difference was that you were attempting to establish a prescriptive set of rules, and all I was doing was describing what actually is, right?
So there's a very big difference between descriptive and prescriptive conversations, right?
Yes. If we were two doctors, right, it's like the difference between saying, here's how we should cure people, and saying, people are sick, right?
Here's how we should cure people is prescriptive, I guess in the double sense of the word, and people are sick is descriptive, right?
Right, I see this approach quite a lot.
You know, people are violent, everybody, you know, Whoever's in power controls the gold, you know.
What is that? The golden rule.
Whoever has the gold makes the rules.
Right, and those are all descriptive statements, and what I was doing was merely describing the world that is, right?
With no value judgments other than like an anthropologist says, yes, they used to sacrifice goats and occasionally children, right?
Right. With no value judgment, it's a description of what occurs within Aztec or whatever, a particular society, right?
Right. And so the difference was that you were attempting to create a prescriptive conversation, but all I was doing was providing descriptions of what it is, right?
Of what society is. Yes, and I couldn't seem to jab my stake in to change the...
I couldn't seem to turn the direction of the conversation in any direction towards prescriptive versus descriptive.
Right, right, right.
And if you can't turn it from descriptive to prescriptive, you can't have a conversation about philosophy.
All you are is two people describing a tree.
It's tall. It's green, right?
Right. It's in the ground, right?
Right. Right.
All it is is, well, you're attempting to say, this is the most beautiful tree ever, and the best tree ever, and someone else is saying, this tree is brown, right?
Exactly. Right.
So that's an important distinction to understand when it comes to debating, that if you're facing a descriptor and you're attempting to impose a prescription, you have to make that clear.
And there's only one way that I know how to do that.
You have to break the person out of the descriptive pattern.
Because if you can't do that, then you can't ever get to the should.
All you're doing is, you can't get to the ought, right?
All you're describing, all you're getting is the is, right?
Exactly. Right. And of course, there is, I shouldn't say of course, right?
But there is, so right at the beginning, you need to establish if there's any kind of ought at all, right?
So rather than asking about what you think about morality, ask if you think anything ought to be.
Well, no, you need to be more assertive than that, because if you give someone who's into descriptors the chance to define the conversation, then you're just going to end up in description land, right?
So the Socratic approach doesn't work with him?
I mean, I don't think so, because otherwise UPB would have been just a series of questions, right?
Right. So the way that I would focus on the logical contradiction of the descriptor perspective, or the description perspective, which is if someone says, morality does not exist, right?
Right. Then I would say, so is it wrong to say that morality does exist?
Oh, wow. Do you see?
Yeah. That's the fundamental logical problem with nihilism or the descriptors or whatever it is, however you want to call that perspective, is they say, basically the person is saying there is no objective truth, right?
There is no objective right or wrong.
Okay, so is it wrong to say that there's an objective right or wrong?
Oh, that would have worked so well.
Right? You see, you don't have to go down to what is the job description of a congressman, right?
Yeah, that was going nowhere.
Yeah, that was going nowhere, and that's not a conversation that, I mean, if I were that kind of guy, I just wouldn't stay in that conversation.
And you would be frustrated and feel futile and helpless, right?
Right. So you could say that, I mean, you could either sort of state that question directly, or what you could do is you could say, no, moral rules do exist, objectively, right?
And he's going to say, no, they don't, or approve it, or whatever, right?
And then you say, oh, so is it objectively wrong for me to say that moral rules do exist?
And he's going to say, well, yes, it's not just my opinion, right?
Right. He's going to say, you're wrong, right?
And as soon as he says, you're wrong, then he's in UPB land, right?
And we can start to work from there.
Brilliant. Brilliant.
You've got to start with the premises, right?
And it's hard because you've got to get the person you're debating with to understand the logical contradiction of the nihilist or descriptor position.
Because what they're doing is they're saying what is is the right.
Yeah, he's saying there's no ought in reality, right?
And if you remember my conversation with Alex, I mentioned, and I think I can't remember if I've mentioned this before, when somebody says you cannot get an ought from an is, they are getting an ought from an is.
Right, you ought not to say that there's an ought, right?
Right. They're creating a universal rule Against universal rules, because there's no such thing as a universal rule.
Saying there's no such thing as a universal rule is itself the invocation of a universal rule, right?
Right, self-detonating.
It is self-detonating, and this is why UPB is so absolutely and fundamentally inescapable.
Yeah, I was at a philosophy group meetup, and these are not always, you know...
These can be enjoyable because you're sitting around a table, you're eating food, and you get all kinds of people in there, and you discuss a topic and you stick with that one topic.
But the guy who heads this up is a psychotherapist, and at the end of the last meeting he had said something along the lines of, well, truth is relative and there's no such thing as, you know, nothing is really true.
And the guy next to him, surprisingly, and I thought maybe I should go back and find out who this guy is and meet him.
We didn't hang out because he asked him, is it true that nothing is true?
Before I could even jump in there.
And he said, yes, even that is true.
Even that is relative?
Yeah, it is even true that my opinion that truth is relative is true.
Is not true. Is not objectively true, right?
Right, and then the next question is to say, true compared to what?
And if he says, compared to a platonic ideal standard, right?
Well, probably. Well, but then you have to say, well, what's the proof for that standard, and how is it enforced?
And if it's a standard that can never be reached, right, then you're basically saying that the only definition of health is a human being Who has no cells dying anywhere in his body.
Everybody else is sick unto death.
Right, a perfect platonic standard.
You have the exact right number of bacteria in your belly.
None of your cells are dying or anything like that.
And of course, that is an impossible standard of truth.
So if you say everyone is sick relative to this perfect, pristine, formaldehyde-based life form where no cells are dying, Then, clearly, you have an irrational standard of health, right?
And if you were to take that standard of health and attempt to bring it to a medical conference, you would be laughed out of the room, right?
Right. Right, and what I noticed is the way he approaches this to, quote-unquote, keep everything civil in the conversation, I think, because you get a couple of different nutters here and there coming in.
Right. He will say that we should respect everyone's beliefs.
We should, you know, assume that truth is relative and nobody's position is the right position.
Well, but see, there's a fundamental contradiction there too, right?
Right, it's self-contradictory.
Well, if we should respect everyone's beliefs, should we respect those who don't respect everyone's beliefs?
Exactly. That's the question that came to mind.
Here's where I'm going to get you off the hook.
I just want to point this out.
By the way, I also wanted to mention, Nate, that your posts and comments have been crackling smart lately.
Really? Oh, yeah.
Just great stuff. I'm just sitting back and watching the fireworks of the Nate's Brain Show, so thank you for that.
What are you referring to?
Like, what comes to mind, or specifically?
I'd have to email you that.
I just wanted to mention that, and I can email you the details if you like.
But here's the thing. I want to know where I'm doing right.
No, no, but I just wanted to point this out, and this is for everyone, right?
Because I can tell you something that's really important for you to know, right?
Because I bet you, dollars to donuts, that after this call, and maybe even now, you're going to be kicking yourself a bit, right?
For not having thought of this before?
Well, for, you know, going down this road of not looking at the self-detonating statements, not getting the definitions and so on, right?
Um... Yes and no.
I would have probably done that but stopped myself.
Right. Let me help you stop yourself.
Let me help you stop yourself.
The reason that it's hard to point out the self-detonating statements in someone's initial premises is what is his emotional reaction going to be when you do that.
The irritation or anger.
Yeah. He's kind of eye-rolling, you know, the usual.
No, what's the emotion that goes on deep down, not the surface irritation?
All I can get is anger.
Yeah, no, and I think that you're exactly right.
I think that you're exactly right.
They're going to get really angry.
Well, when you get them to define terms, even, they get kind of annoyed.
They're like, oh, come on, you know what that means.
The mainstream media uses it all the time.
Yeah, you get the surface irritation, right?
But this is what Socrates faced, right?
And what we face as well, to a smaller degree, of course, right?
But it's people are kind of pompous windbags in general, right?
Right. Like this guy...
Talking about anger on the boards recently.
Oh, I'm sorry.
I didn't get a chance to follow that thread.
And it's not because they're necessarily nasty or bad people or whatever.
It's just that we don't have a culture which values calling people on their nonsense.
We have a culture of everyone gets an A. And we have a culture where When you say nonsense, those around you Don't really call you on it.
Now, we do in some areas, right?
I mean, if you say some racist statement or some sexist statement, the herd has been programmed well enough to frown or attack or criticize or leap to defense or whatever.
But as far as philosophy and ethics and metaphysics and epistemology and politics and all of that goes, you can say the most outlandish nonsense and think that you're just the biggest philosophical genius in the world, and we don't have a culture which says you should not...
Let people do that because it's bad for them and it's bad for the world.
Right. So everyone sails along, able to say the most outlandish nonsense, self-contradictory mishmash of cross-eyed brain fart nonsense.
And people don't care enough to say...
Okay, this is going to make this person really pissed off.
I'm going to get uncomfortable.
But I can't not say something.
Because that would be like, if I hear a man tell his wife that the cure for cancer is prayer, I would not be able to say nothing.
Like, I'd have to say, I'm sorry, that's actually not true.
Because I would not want this woman to die, or the child, right, if it was a kid, to die because of the superstitious nonsense believed by the husband, right?
Yeah, there's a house episode with that situation.
Right, so we have a culture where, you know, you can just say the most outlandish nonsense and people don't...
They don't get the cause and effect, the consequences of letting people speak all of this kind of nonsense.
The consequences of letting people speak all of this kind of nonsense is war, the coercion of statism, religion, the welfare state, the military-industrial complex.
It is massive deficits.
It is the rape of the middle class by the money classes in the banking industry.
It is the nonsense rhetoric of Barack Obama.
It is that society is corrupted.
By allowing people to speak nonsense.
And that's kind of fine for the people who are already in society and so on, but that's not the world that we want to leave for our children, right?
It's not their fault that we're full of crap, right?
No, and it's not our fault that we're in this plague of irrationality, spreads like a virus, and hooks into the...
Well, sorry, let me just interrupt.
I'm not saying it is our fault, but it's not that you don't understand the arguments, and it's not that you, because, you know, when I pointed it out, you were like, of course, right?
Right. Right, so you got it emotionally the moment I started talking, right?
And I'm sure that was the case for everyone, right?
Which means you already know the argument, and there's a reason you don't apply it, and that's because it's the fear of attack, right?
There's almost nothing worse than to disprove an intellectual's argument in 10 seconds.
There's almost nothing worse.
You can slap his kid, you can punch his wife, you can run over his dog, and he will usually be less angry than if you point out That he's been speaking nonsense for 30 years with pompous certainty.
That freaks people out like nothing else.
So you're thinking that I already knew the question, so it is wrong to say that there is such a thing as good and bad.
Yes, you already knew that question, because you knew it the moment I mentioned it.
I didn't have to go over it 20 times, right?
No. Even before I'd finished the sentence, you were like, oh, of course, right?
You know it. I'm not totally convinced that I knew this, just based on that.
Okay, well, if I started going through the math of the theory of relativity, you wouldn't go, oh, after the first four words, right?
Right, right. So there's a difference with this one, plus, I mean, this is the principles that we've talked about here, which you've been listening to for years, and I respect your intelligence enough to know that getting the definitions and looking for the self-detonating arguments is the first place to start, right?
Right, and I also know that there's a lot of anxiety and resentment that I feel when debating people who have some Irrational things to say or irrational beliefs.
Somebody's got irrational beliefs and I confront them and there are ways to helping some of them at least, or maybe a rare few of them, see the light of reason.
But I'm definitely not going to do that if I just lecture them Yes, but it's because you lack empathy for them.
And remember, empathy doesn't mean sympathy, but you lack empathy for them.
Right, I feel...
What's it like?
To do otherwise would be a lot easier than going to figure out...
To go to prove that the Fed caused the Great Depression to last longer than it should have.
I'd have to do a lot more work and effort to explain...
By lecturing than I would to use these other techniques that, you know, we're talking about here, because it may be pretty simple to say, oh, is it wrong to say that there's an objective right or wrong?
Okay, yes, but what happens, let's just call this guy Bob, what happens to Bob on the receiving end of that question?
What is his emotional experience when he's been pompously windbagging for decades that there's no such thing as truth, and you get him to understand that it's a logical contradiction, not just glibly writing it off as, and even this statement is not true, and blah, blah, blah, right?
Well, he gets angry.
Right. But I don't think that's all.
I don't think that's the whole story.
I don't think you get how deep that is.
How deep his anger is?
How deep it is and how wide it goes.
Remember, you're never dealing with someone in isolation.
You are always dealing with somebody in a familial, friendship, professional, work-based context.
Right, right. So when you point out to someone, when you say to Bob, listen, Bob, I mean, an eight-year-old could tell you why this is wrong.
What happens to his view of his life in the context of everyone he knows?
Well, the first thought that comes to mind is that he feels a lot of humiliation right then.
Okay, go on. Uh...
Because, you know, if a three-year-old can figure that out, that's got to be humiliating for a 30-year intellectual to...
Yeah, but you're still looking at him in isolation.
Look at him in the context of his social environment.
What does it mean about his wife?
What does it mean about his friends, his siblings, his parents, his teachers, his job?
What does it mean that he's been able to say nonsense for decades and no one has brought it up?
It means that the moment he decides to change his mind...
No, no, no. Not the future.
Sorry to interrupt you. The past.
What does it mean about his marriage, his relationship with his friends, with his family, with his colleagues, with his boss, with his employees, with his squash partner?
What does it mean that everyone has let him go on talking nonsense with this pompous certainty for decades?
Well, it's all a big lie.
Go on. It's all a big ball of lies.
It's all a ruse.
It's a big con. Everything, his entire structure of his entire social life, from his family to his friends to everything, is a lie.
Okay, that's important.
That's important. But let me ask you another question.
If you love someone, do you let her or him continue in error?
No. So it also means that they don't love him.
Right. I mean, if you know that the brakes aren't working in your car and your wife or your child wants to drive it because they think the brakes are working and you love your child or your wife, you say, don't drive that car because you're incorrect in your assumption that the brakes are working, right? Right.
Or if a doctor sees that there's a large tumor growing on your spine that you might want to be told...
Right. Or if you go to your doctor and you say, I think I'm getting emphysema, so I'm smoking cigarettes in order to prevent it from getting worse.
I mean, you don't even have to love your patient, but just to have a bare care for his or her health, you would have to say, actually, that's quite the opposite of what you should be doing, right?
Right. And it's interesting just to know how...
I know it's not a perfect example because, you know, you can point out flaws in this, but...
Like, let's say with House, he's considered to be rude because he's kind of blunt and honest, and he'll tell people...
But they don't like him because he tells them what is.
Well, let's just stay with this Bob fellow.
I don't want to go off on someone else.
So if it's true that if you love someone, you do not let him continue in error, Then what does it mean that no one in his life, for 40 or 50 or more years, has interrupted his statement of error?
That they must hate him.
Or they don't care about him at all.
I think that's very interesting what you said, because the logical response would be that they don't love him, but I think that to let someone continue in error is a form of passive-aggressive hatred.
Right. Right, and of course, those around him would hate themselves as well, right?
Because they would be letting him continue in a destructive era, right?
Right. So, this is what I mean by having empathy for his experience of being corrected, right?
Right. And I think that's part of my resistance to taking these approaches is because there is a part of me that hates the irrationality that was inflicted on me so much that I want to be vengeful in some way.
Okay, yeah. We're not talking about you just now.
We're talking about your empathetic understanding of this guy.
You have to look at the world through a clear glass, not with it half being your own reflection.
Which means take your own ego out of the examination of this question of empathy for this guy.
We can get back to your ego and the concept, right?
We understand that, right? But take your ego and your relationship to irrationality or rationality out of the equation and just, we want to look directly at this guy and see what happens to his world when he realizes that everyone around him has been letting him speak the most appalling nonsense for decades.
That could have been corrected In five minutes.
And they may even have been encouraging him.
If my wife knows that smoking will make me sick and she keeps buying me cigarettes and lighting them up because she says they're good for me, what happens when I realize, what happens to me emotionally when I realize that the cigarettes will very likely make me sick?
And that she knows that.
That she hates you, she wants to kill you, and she's poisoning you.
Exactly. Now, these are strong words to use for people who let you continue in philosophical era, but not too strong, I think.
No, I don't think it's too strong.
So you understand that this lands like a nuclear bomb on his life.
Right. It's not about you, and it's not about your argument, and it's not about the truth of what it is you're putting forward.
It's always and forever about the implications on his relationships.
So approach it No, no, no.
Now you're looking for solutions.
Fuck that.
Stop doing that. It's not about you and it's not about solutions.
It's just about empathy, right?
It's understanding that you are ripping the veil off this guy's illusions about his life and his relationships and that he lives in a kind of hell where people don't like him, to say the least. And that he doesn't like himself, and that he is also...
It's an unholy bargain that people make, right?
I'll believe your lies if you believe mine.
So then he has to look at how all of these people that he thinks he loves, he has been lying to about virtue and truth, and what lies of theirs has he allowed to continue in return for them allowing his lies to continue.
Do you see what lid you're lifting here?
Thank you.
Yeah. Now, unconsciously, you do see it, which is why you didn't take this argument, the one that I gave you to begin with, because you know exactly what's going to happen, and you know why to every last detail.
Right? We know this, right?
I mean, I've done a million podcasts where I say, when you disprove God, it doesn't mean anything to people other than to do with their relationships, right?
With those around them. It's not God, it's not the loss of God that they fear, but the attack of those who claim to love them, right?
And who are only, in fact, quote, loving them because they're allowing, everyone's allowing each other to continue in this delusion called supernatural beings live in the sky and in your head, right?
Yeah, and I think I have a lot of trouble right now trying to, I can understand, like, I can imagine that this would be like telling a guy that disease is terminal.
Just like delivering the bad news or...
I'm trying to reach the empathy that you're talking about for...
Yeah, you're trying to figure out what to do, right?
Which is a way of avoiding the feeling.
If you try to figure out what to do in these kinds of highly complex and difficult situations, it's because you're avoiding your feelings.
Once you get your feelings, you will know exactly what to do or not to do.
Right, like you were talking about with Phil.
Yes. Yeah, as somebody pointed out, this is the huge wave that I used to dream about early on at FDR, which was the incoming relationship slash family podcast, right?
Trying to get how it hits other people.
I'm not feeling anything.
Okay, when people talk about the social contract in the abstract, they're not really talking about the social contract in the abstract.
They're talking about the social contract they have with other people in their lives.
It takes years and years of study, self-knowledge, reflection, therapy, conversation to begin to think about the world objectively.
So when people are talking about the social contract, They're talking about the unconscious or implicit, quote, contracts they have with those around them.
Right. So when you try to say to people there's no such thing as a social contract, they unconsciously experience that as you have no valid relationships.
Which is why they fight so tooth and nail for such an abstract bit of nonsense that has no relevance to their daily life, right?
Right. Right, and you've been saying this for a long time.
Right, so if you are going to...
Imagine, you walk up to someone...
And you say, I have a button right here, right in my hand, little button.
If you push this button, you will realize that the people who love you in fact hate you, that the people you claim to love you in fact hate, that the world that you claim to want to instruct you have in fact been misleading and corrupting, and it's almost certainly too late to do anything about it.
Would they push that button?
Hell no.
No, of course not.
No, of course not.
And I'm wanting to push it for them.
No, no. No?
No, because if you were wanting to push it for them, you would have taken the argument that I gave you at the end and used it right at the beginning.
With me. And with this other fellow.
Okay. Good point.
Good point. You want to...
help them...
avoid the truth.
That's your Simon the Boxer thing, right?
Participating in illusion is what all too many of us were trained to do as children, whether it was in families or public schools or church or wherever, right?
So I was being...
Like I was saying, I have a vengeance thing going.
Like I'm...
I mean, I'm...
I don't know how to word this.
Well, you were... You hate this guy.
Again, this is all just theory, right?
But we'll see if it fits.
I hate the guy you were roleplaying.
Yeah, you hate the guy that I was roleplaying, this Bob fellow.
You hate him. And what you're going to do, which is the Socratic vengeance, is to lose the argument so that he continues in his error and his emptiness and his nihilism and his misery and his aggression and his loss.
Right. I'm not sure...
Sorry, and that's why people don't get UPB. It's got nothing to do with the complexity of the theory, which is really dead simple.
People don't get UPB, as I've always said, because of the implications to those around them.
Why do you think that I hate him?
Well, you tell me.
I really hate irrationality, but to say that would – When what I'm doing is perpetuating it, then I can't say that I hate irrationality logically there.
But I hate this guy.
First of all, you don't hate irrationality because there's no such thing, right?
That's just an abstraction. It's people, right?
So it's a misanthropy.
Well, I don't know about the whole thing.
Let's just stick with Bob, right?
Okay, Bob. I hate Bob. Because you keep wanting to pop up into these big abstractions.
Like, it's everyone, right? Right?
This guy, this psychologist, this guy, right?
It would seem to me that based upon your behavior, you hate him, right?
Yeah. So, what do you hate?
I'm not saying you're right or wrong about hating him, you understand?
We're just... now we're going for descriptors rather than prescriptors.
What do you hate?
All I can feel is just like a lot of...
anger...
towards him.
Just... hatred.
That's the feeling. Okay.
Of what?
And you understand, I'm not trying to disprove your feelings, I'm just, let's be clear.
Because he, um, advocates the system that I'm trying to bring down.
Okay. Go on.
He's my enemy.
Okay, let's say that he's your enemy.
I certainly would not dispute that.
Let's say that he's your enemy. What do we do with our enemies?
We attack them.
Well, I don't know. I mean, this is an interesting question, right?
I'm not going to come to a conclusion about this, because this is something that needs to be explored, but your first response was interesting, and it may be right.
I don't want to put my perspective out there, because I want to try and empathize with the way you are, and look at you through the sort of clear pane of glass, rather than with my own reflection, right?
So, if this guy's an enemy, and it seems that he would be, what do we do with our enemies?
Isn't this a very fundamental question that we have, right?
And you say to attack them, right?
Destroy them. That was just the first thing that came to mind, which is interesting.
No, no, that's fine. Let's go with that, right?
I mean, let's explore that for sure.
I mean, yeah, let's explore that because I know that nowadays, you know, I just get away from people like this.
But for now, let's just say I want to attack and destroy them.
Okay, let's say that you want to attack and destroy them.
What is the best way to attack and destroy them?
Well, since I can't literally take out a knife and stab them with it, or shoot them, without some kind of consequence...
Yeah, let's say that that's not an option.
Go on. Yeah.
So the next best thing is the sort of slave vengeance response, which is to enable their destructive habits.
Right. Now, let me just pass this out to the 35-odd people in the chat room who are listening, and this will, of course, go out to the people, tens of thousands of people in the future who will be listening.
When Nate and I were role-playing, Who was gaining in strength and who was weakening?
Who had a stronger position and who had a weaker position?
who was defining the terms of the debate and who was running around in circles?
Okay, so people that I gained in strength, and I was the sort of sun, and you were the orbiting asteroid, right?
You were trying to find a way in.
I was the Mike Tyson, and you were the guy trying to punch the kneecaps or whatever, right?
And missing. Right.
Now, I would say that that is not because of my towering intellect or blah, blah, blah, right?
That is when we look at...
How your anger and your hatred plays out in these kinds of debates, I think it's pretty clear what you were doing.
You mean the passive-aggressive slave vengeance sort of enabling your bad habits or continuing perpetuating your rationality type of thing?
Well, I don't want you to ask me questions.
Feeding your irrationality?
I don't want you to ask me questions.
I want you to tell me what your thoughts are.
Well, those are my thoughts. That's my answer.
Can you repeat it? Not in the form of a question.
I was feeding your irrationality.
Right. I was feeding your ego, your pomposity, I guess.
Right. You were allowing my erroneous position to strengthen itself, and you were weakening the truth in the minds of myself and of other people, right?
Right. Now, if someone has cancer, and you have a pill that cures cancer, and you put out, and you don't like this guy, and you want him dead, let's say, again, to use a strong metaphor, this isn't just a metaphor, then...
Then you would say to him, this cure doesn't work.
It's not a cure. Well, he wouldn't take it.
Well, he sure as hell won't take it if you say it doesn't work, right?
Right. And if you discredit the truth in the eyes of an irrational person, you are inoculating them against reason and the truth, right?
Right. And that's the anger, right?
Right, I basically radiated away your immune system so that there was no chance of curing.
Yeah, here, let me light you up another cigarette.
Right. Ah, these people who say that you should quit smoking, they're crazy, it's nonsense, right?
And I did it because I hate Bob.
Yeah, so what you're saying, I represent reason and evidence, and I'm going to throw this fight so that you respect reason and evidence even less, and that's my vengeance against you.
Which is the opposite of respecting reason and evidence, though.
Well, I don't know that it is, right?
Because we're just talking about your anger, right?
Again, we're trying to come to a conclusion about the respect for reason and evidence.
I don't know, right? But we're just talking about Bob and you and our role play, right?
And what it means, right?
Because I absolutely...
I mean, everyone's a genius and everyone's a philosopher.
And everyone glows when I say that.
And then when I point it out in specific instances, they get annoyed and feel frustrated.
And I understand that, right?
But, you know, you don't get one without the other, right?
You absolutely knew how to win this argument.
But you did not like the person enough to give the truth.
In fact, you dislike the person enough to discredit the truth in his eyes.
Right? Right.
Now, what that means, I don't know what that means in the abstract, but we're just talking about the meaty, beaty, big and bouncy, what happens in the moment, right?
I just don't know why.
Why I feel this kind of hatred.
But you said earlier, didn't you, that this person is an enemy?
Right. I don't know why I feel they're an enemy.
What do you mean you don't know why you feel that they're an enemy?
Because they stand for everything I'm opposed to.
Yeah, they oppose everything that you have reasoned out, and they stand for everything that you consider to be utterly destructive towards the world, and if this guy has kids, he's teaching them all this same nonsense, which is going to make them miserable and just be more enemies to deal with in the future.
So I have a very good reason to.
I'm not saying he's evil or the devil, but it's not irrational to look upon him as an opponent, let's say.
Okay. Right.
If we believe X, and these other people believe the opposite of X, and we believe that X is virtuous, then obviously they believe things that are the opposite of virtuous, and therefore they are an opponent when it comes to the propagation of virtue, right?
And truth. It's all about morality.
Right.
And so if people are preaching anti-moral philosophies, then yes, they are an opponent, if not an enemy.
Right?
I mean, if we say you shouldn't beat children and someone that's out there saying you should beat children, in fact, it's the only moral way to raise them, would not we view that person as an immoral enemy?
Thank you.
Thank you.
Not to us, but to children, right?
Right. And this guy's a therapist.
So how much influence does he have over the lives of vulnerable people who are probably unhappy because they lack the truth, and he's telling him there's no such thing?
How destructive is that?
I mean, he's not some guy who's a postman who doesn't have this, quote, moral instruction as his job, right?
Yeah, and that thought did go through my mind.
So not only he's an enemy, but he's a powerful enemy.
Who's going to have a great deal of influence over the lives of vulnerable people who need truth, objectivity, moral sympathy, and he's saying none of these things exist.
And he's getting paid to propagandize them about things that are false and wrong, thus making them more unhappy, right?
So he's a lung doctor prescribing cigarettes, and we care about people's health, and of course we would consider that person a corrupt and immoral enemy.
Not of us, but of the people who are coming to him for help, right?
Again, this is the empathy just goes down like dominoes, right?
And I'm not trying to paint the world as, you know, it's you and me against the world, baby, and we're an embattled minority and so on, right?
But you can't love virtue without hating vice.
You can't love reason and evidence without hating irrationality, subjectivity, nihilism, and superstition.
You can't, right?
And you can't want a more rational world without considering those who are actively working to make the world worse and more irrational and more superstitious and more bigoted, more prejudicial and more prone to illusion.
They're enemies, right?
You can't... I mean, the only way you can not have that...
And it's not like boxing or basketball.
I mean, this is, you know, right and wrong, good and corrupt and so on, right?
Right. I mean, and I'd love, you know, if anyone can think of a way out of this, I would love to hear it, right?
But I just don't think that you can have a strong commitment to truth and virtue without recognizing that those who have an equally strong commitment to irrationality and nihilism, that they're enemies.
And not enemies of us, but enemies of the happiness of mankind.
Because if reason equals virtue equals happiness, then those who are Preaching irrationality are creating misery, and out of misery comes violence and danger to us and to the innocent future.
So you're...
No, wait. I don't want to ask it that way.
So... What I want to conclude right now is that I cannot turn off this Enemy switch.
I can't turn off this hatred.
I cannot turn off this anger because it's kind of rational.
It's just, in a way.
Well, I mean, I'm not saying it's a final conclusion, right?
And of course, I've been wrestling for years about how to deal with opponents, let's say, or enemies, right?
I mean, it's complex and it's challenging.
But clearly, If we are right, you know, the reason and evidence as our standard, UPB and so on, right?
If we're an RTR, if we're right, then this guy is working in direct opposition to that which we consider good, noble, true, virtuous, and moral, right?
Right. Which is like, if I want to be happy, this guy's working against it.
No. Because he doesn't have direct control over your happiness.
I mean, he doesn't have direct control over your happiness.
He is a negative influence in a world, right?
So if you want to quit smoking and some other guy wants to keep smoking, he can't make you smoke, right?
Huh. Right, so he doesn't have direct control over your own happiness.
The real question...
So it's not about me?
My hatred isn't about me in that case?
Well, I mean, now we're getting to this, right?
So why do you keep going back?
As you said at the beginning, well, there's good food and blah, blah, blah.
The real question is, look, we keep going back to negative or destructive or unproductive situations because we're missing a fundamental truth that we need to get.
And our true self will keep returning us back to the firing range until we get hit with the bullet of truth, right?
And then we can limp away and not be tempted to return, right?
Well... The reason I thought I was going back, and this may be the reason, is because I was hoping to meet somebody that isn't my enemy.
Well, okay, let's say that that's true.
How long have you been going? It's once a month, so maybe about four months.
All right. I think. But I've been four times.
Right. And this isn't the first group that you've gone to there, right?
No, there's an atheist meetup thing that's not real structured, and I have met a couple of pretty cool people there that I... at least...
we're on partially the same path, and I don't think I have...
I haven't had enough conversation with them to really...
But I do establish that they loved the arguments about religion, they loved the ideas, and they certainly weren't opposed to the idea of objective ethics.
So, you know, I'm considering going back there because I've had more luck there, let's say.
All right. So why do you keep going back to...
I mean, because let me ask you, when this guy says nothing is true, what do other people say?
Well, the guy next to him said...
asked him, is it true that nothing is true?
And he's why I would consider going back.
Well, and what happened when he said that?
Again, I'm not saying go back or don't go back, right?
I understand. I'm just trying to understand what the emotion is for you.
Um... What happened when the guy next to him asked that question, or what happened when...
What happened when he said, well, is it not true that nothing is true, or is it true?
I was thrilled.
Right, but what happened then?
The guy responded that, yes, even that is true, that nothing is true.
And what happened then? I felt irritated and angry.
No, no, no. Now we're talking about your feelings.
I'm asking what happened then.
I felt irritated and angry.
No, no, no. Those are your feelings.
What happened in the real world?
Oh, I left. No, no.
That's what you did. What happened in the group when he was responded to with this objection?
Everybody sort of...
Scrambled onto another subject.
Okay. And what does that...
And so tell me, what does that mean?
What does that look like? What happened? I think it looked as if everyone was uncomfortable for a moment.
And then... And then somebody chimed in with something sort of irrelevant.
And then he, as the facilitator, got it back on to the topic at hand, which was, I think, civilization at the time.
Okay, and what does that mean?
That means nobody wants to talk about it.
Thank you.
Okay. Go on.
I mean, this is a philosophy group, right?
Somebody made a knowledge claim that turned out to be completely self-detonating, and what did they do?
They avoided it.
Just like they avoided the gun in the room when I pointed it out several times during the entire conversation.
They gave me that thousand-yard stare, and then somebody, you know, Went on with the conversation as if I'd spoken to a wall.
Right. So you bring up an argument that, let's say, is not proven, but has, you know, just from their perspective, but has a lot of validity to it, and they completely ignore it.
This guy, this psychologist, makes a claim that turns out to be complete nonsense.
And so they get close to the truth, or have the truth brought to them, and they freak out and change the topic.
And this is a group, of course, that is ostensibly together, or gathered together to pursue the truth, right?
Right. And so this is a group that is aiming at the truth, the truth comes along, they freak out, panic, and evaporate, right?
Right. So my question is, why are you going back?
And again, I'm not saying you shouldn't, I'm just trying to understand why you're going back.
Like, it seems to me that they're being pretty unambiguous, right?
Right. I don't think it has anything to do with the objective or the purpose of the group.
Okay. It has nothing to do with...
I want to meet people that are interested in pursuing the truth.
And people will see philosophy.
Oh, it's a philosophy group. They're going to come and join and expect the pursuit of truth.
And hopefully I'll be there to meet them.
Okay, let's say that that's a theory that we could take issue with as far as our collective experience goes.
But let's say that that's your theory, then you go and you start to gather empirical evidence, right?
So if you have a group that says, well, we're about finding the truth, and you believe that empiricism and reason and evidence are the ways to differentiate truth from falsehood, right?
Then the first thing that I would do if I were joining a philosophy group is I would say, oh, that's interesting.
Well, how is it that we are going to determine truth and falsehood?
How are we going to know when something is true versus false?
I mean, that would be the first question.
The guy's going to say, oh, there's no truth, nothing is true.
Right, so why didn't you ask that question?
Oh, and I already knew that question a long time ago.
You knew that question donkeys years ago, right?
And you get to be a genius and philosopher, which means you can't say it never occurred to me.
Right. Because...
I see them as an enemy.
Okay, let's say you see them as an enemy.
So why the fuck are you going...
You see we're going in circles here.
Why are you going back? Why am I going back?
Um... Because you understand you're giving them sanction, right?
Yeah. You're pretending...
You're playing along, right?
Well, I say that the goal is to use this as a net for fishing out the gems of the world.
Yeah, but you're not giving them the gems.
You're not saying, well, here's how we can differentiate.
You're not taking a leadership role, right?
You're there diminishing reason and evidence, right?
Right, I'm not even being the gem.
I'm expecting to find...
And you're not taking on the bad guys and you're not, you know, riding in with the cavalry and you're not, you know, taking the best deal.
And you're right.
You're just kind of losing arguments and clamming up.
Right.
You're right.
Because I know exactly how that conversation would go.
well.
And I would have to get up and leave right then.
Right, and maybe somebody would email you and say, wow, that took some, you know, balls of steel, right?
And they'd be interested and curious, right?
Most likely, they would all just sit together, you know, picking their noses and whining about there being no truth while considering themselves to be epoch-cracking intellectuals, right?
Right. Wasting time being miserable and spreading lies and filth, right?
Right. Yeah, and bitching about the strange guy who left, as someone mentioned.
Right? Further drawing in the wagons against reason and evidence, right?
That guy's just, you know, intolerant or...
whatever.
Right. He's got emotional problems, right?
Right. And they know you're an atheist and they probably know you're an anarchist or they know that you're a rationalist or that you're whatever, right? Right.
And you're coming, and they're saying the most outlandish things, the most astoundingly wrong things, right?
And you're just sitting there being annoyed, right?
Right. How many times does the anti-racist go to the Klan meeting?
And why does he go?
Is this like that, um...
the woman who works for the corrupt boss and complains about his corruption every now and then but continues working for him?
Well, let's just not go to an abstract woman but stay with you, right?
Okay.
Why does the rationalist go to an anti-rational group and sit in misery?
To get the what?
I didn't say anything.
Thank you.
Oh. Somebody had an answer there.
Maybe to get approval.
No, I wouldn't say approval.
Sorry, if someone's talking, I can't hear.
He said to get approval?
Yeah, but if you, see, if you're a racist, sorry, if you're an anti-racist and you want to go to the Klan group for approval, you go there and pretend to be a racist, right?
Right. But I'm not doing that.
Right, you're not doing that. I, you know, I could say Simon the Boxer, but I don't think that's an answer that, that And look, I hope you understand. We've all been there, and we're all there sometimes now, right?
This is not, you know, oh, look at Nate, the funny person trying to fit into an irrational society with rational ethics, right?
So we're all in the same boat here.
We're just trying to figure out what kind of rapids we're riding, right?
Right. You're not seeing...
I don't know if you're following the chat, but people are pointing out that we're all dealing with this, right?
Yeah, this is extremely tough for me to want to help people who I hate.
Well, you can't want to help people you hate.
But if that's the only way to change the world, is to call people out on their bullshit?
Well, no. Because we're not saying, what should you do when you're there?
We're saying, why are you there?
Or we're asking. And look, you may have a perfectly good reason for being there.
I don't know, right? But the issue is that if you don't know why you're there, then you're always going to lose, right?
Because you lack an elemental piece of knowledge about himself.
Well, my reasons for being there are one thing, but my methodology...
How I'm going about accomplishing those goals is doing the exact opposite of how I get to that goal.
Sorry, somebody's just said he's there because he wants to be part of a group to being among like-minded individuals.
You may have missed the earlier part of the conversation, but they're not like-minded individuals.
They're quite the opposite. No, they're the exact opposite.
That's not the answer. Sorry, go ahead.
If I say my goal in going there is to meet other Jim-like people, Jim as in Jewel, who are like-minded because they think that it's a philosophy group, then I'm going about it all wrong.
Because they're not going to...
If I just sit there and not be that person myself, then I'm definitely not going to accomplish that goal.
So I can say that my goal is to meet these rarities, but I'm not...
I'm doing the exact opposite of what would accomplish that goal and continuing to do the exact opposite.
Right. What I'm doing is not working at least.
Yeah, I understand. Okay, so if you're there to find, you said you're there to find the gems, right?
Right. Not going to work.
It's not going to work.
And we know that because, well, I shouldn't say we know that.
A piece of evidence that would support what I'm saying is that that's not what I did, right?
No. No, you had to sort of lead.
Yeah, to take a silly way of putting it, but one which has some essence of truth, is that I did not try to find gems.
I tried to make gems.
Just as I made myself into a gem and think I have found some way of making that repeatable by others, I recognized the singularity of what I thought and who I had become.
And that doesn't mean that I'm the only person, blah, blah, blah, blah.
As far as I knew and with the knowledge that I have of psychology, economics, philosophy, and all those other kinds of good things, I was able to turn myself into a gem, to use your metaphor, and I recognized that, in a way, I was the first gem. Of the kind that I knew, and I had some confidence about that, having been so well educated in the subject and having, you know, 20 years experience and knowing lots of people and so on.
I was the first gem that I knew of, of anyone that I had ever read or heard about.
Again, I'm not saying it's an absolute statement, I'm saying that is a statement of my experience, my recognition, right?
Right, and it And what you've done has worked as far as creating gems.
I hope so.
I hope that the alchemy that worked on me is working on others, and I'm glad that it's compelling and interesting enough for me to have the privilege of working at it full-time.
But I recognized that if I have invented a new language, I'm not going to wander the streets waiting for someone who already speaks it.
Right, I think you...
You used this once before with Mandarin.
Right, but what you're doing is you're saying, "Okay, I've learned a new language, which seems to be unbelievably rare, and so I'm going to go to some random group and wait for them to start speaking this language." Right, which isn't going to happen.
There may be somebody that wants to speak it, but nobody that already speaks it.
Well, and if there is somebody who already speaks it, they will have come to that group once and probably come back, right?
Right. Or, if they speak it fluently, they're going to look at you and see you sitting miserably when nonsense is spoken and not think that you're a gem, right?
Exactly. So that's just not going to work.
Right. And you know that too, right?
Because you're brilliant, right?
Right. So I'm not going to ask you how I make my own gems because you don't know the answer to that.
Well, I do.
But, I mean, you've already done your own way of making gems.
I can't make another FDR. Or maybe I can.
No, but that's not the issue, right?
Because the issue is not how we do things.
The issue is who we are.
Right? It is not the how.
It's the who. And what I mean by that is If you have internalized and recognized and dedicated yourself to reason, evidence, courage and discretion in your interactions with people with the full recognition that not one person in a million or not one person in a hundred thousand is likely to get it or be interested in it or know it already.
With that recognition, we just work empirically, right?
You have thousands of people on the board we've had.
Lots of people flow through this conversation, and not one person has come with the address for Galt's Gulch, right?
Right. So, working empirically, we know that we are part of an incredibly new and powerful conversation, right?
Right. If you're the Wright brothers, you don't say, well, we need an airport to launch this thing, right?
Because they're the first people to invent manned flight, right?
So there's no airports.
And if you're the first person to invent an airplane, you don't sit there and say, well, I'm not going to fly this thing until I can join an airplane club, right?
No, but the answer there is far more apparent as to what you would do.
Thank you.
And maybe it's totally apparent to somebody else, but it's not apparent to me because for the Wright brothers, you just take the plane out and find a big open space.
You can't even conceive of an airport because you don't even know if it's going to work.
Well, you can conceive of an airport because you wouldn't put that amount of time into designing a plane if you didn't think it could really work and be powerful and be incredibly useful, right?
Right. So I can tell you why I think you're there, if you like.
Okay.
You're there to avoid leadership.
That does strike a bell.
Thank you.
Go on. Well, if I... Yeah, yeah.
Because I'm not the leader of this group.
No, I don't mean you're there to avoid leadership of this group.
Of that group. Right.
I'm there to join another group because I don't want to form my own.
Thank you.
Yeah, I mean, you are taking a passive approach to revolution.
Right. It's the same as I want to...
Yeah, I'm going to go to this group where there will be prefabricated philosophical people who are into reason and evidence and psychology and introspection and therapy and blah blah blah, right?
And this prefabricated group of people is going to accept me with open arms, be the family I never had, and I'll barely have to lift a finger.
Right. Kind of like...
I'm going to get a job instead of starting my own business.
Yeah, kind of, although this is a little bit more difficult.
Right. Invent a new product.
Well, again, you're still minimizing and diminishing what we're doing, right?
I mean, this is not a fucking widget, right?
Right, this is 10,000 years huge.
Yeah, this is the most fundamental revolution that exists.
And the most...
Well, anyway, it's a big and powerful thing that we're doing, right?
Avoid leadership.
That makes sense.
It fits. I just don't know what to do with it, and maybe I'm not supposed to do anything with it.
Well, I think you want to recognize the reality that I guarantee you that nobody, not one single person in this conversation who's been around for more than 20 minutes does not have the capacity for leadership.
because it would take a pretty evil true self to get you drawn into a revolution which requires leadership when you had no ability or capacity for it.
I've never thought of myself as a leader.
I've never thought of myself as a leader.
Well, if you had never thought of yourself as a leader, why would you have invested years in a philosophical course that you know for certain requires leadership?
I mean, you knew this part was coming, right?
And I've talked about it before, a couple of Sunday shows ago, how there is...
We can't be followers because there's no one ahead of us, right?
You understand? Well, I've been known to get myself into...
into conundrums before.
Okay, and we'll know whether...
We'll know whether this is a conundrum or a possibility quite easily.
Which is, do you feel any anxiety about the question of being a leader?
When the suggestion comes up, when I say you are there to avoid your capacity for leadership, what I'm also saying is that you have a capacity for leadership that needs to be suppressed, right?
Like, I don't have a capacity for ballet dancing that needs to be suppressed, right?
Yeah. I told my therapist that metaphor and she liked it.
Right, so you don't have a...
Do you feel any anxiety around the question of being a thought leader?
Yeah, pretty enormous.
Okay, so what are the thoughts and feelings around that?
That I don't have the...
The charisma or the confidence or the...
I don't have what it takes.
But I really want to be able to do it.
It's like...
I want to do that, but...
Like a guy in a wheelchair really wants to dance, but...
He's in a wheelchair.
Yes, but a guy in a wheelchair who's gone through years of therapy and psychological self-examination does not torture himself with the desire to dance after years, right?
Right, he's come to accept that...
He doesn't wake up and then, you know, punch a wall and say, damn it, I can't believe I still can't dance, right?
And I think that you've done enough work on yourself and achieved some objective and tangible successes in your life and in your relationships or lack of existing historical relationships or avoidance of destructive relationships.
that I don't think that you can say you know, I'm like a guy who just got paralyzed who yearns to dance, right?
I mean, you've been in the game long enough that that's not the situation.
Because we have a mistaken idea about leadership, and I have a podcast series on leadership coming up, which may be premium or whatever, right?
But I'll just touch on it very briefly, right?
Because we are so exposed to the idea that leadership is power over others, right?
That leadership is the assertion of power or the dominance of others, right?
Right. Yeah, I was just thinking about that the other day.
Yeah, it's not. It's the complete opposite, in my experience.
Leadership is...
Is empowering others.
Well, it's... No, leadership is surrender to principles.
It's not power over others.
It's surrender to principles, right?
It's an abdication, not a coup.
How does that look? Well...
If I'm afraid of doing something in this conversation, and because I'm always pushing the envelope and y'all are brain-hungry, you know, hamster rabbits looking for new stimulation, and that's reasonable and true, right?
I have to come up with new stuff, I have to not repeat myself, and I have to challenge myself to go deeper and faster and farther than before, and that's all pretty...
Anxiety-based, right?
And even if we look at things like going to New Hampshire for this speech, I've never done that before, anything like it really.
Actually, the podcast could be considered like it, but I've certainly never done that before.
That's all, you know, this is all a huge challenge for me, right?
There's no downhill slopes on this conversation for me, right?
All right. So, why do I do it?
Is it because I want power over other people?
Well, no, of course not, right?
I mean, I used to have 30 employees, and now I have none.
This is not exactly a power grab, right?
So, I'm starting with a false premise.
Yeah, the reason that I do it is I try to figure out what is the right thing to do for the world, for philosophy, for truth.
I'm surrendering to the principles of philosophy.
It is a subjugation of my individual preferences or preferences in the moment to that which is right in principle.
In military school I had a short period of time where I was given the command over a little squadron group of fellow peer high school students and I The goal was to get them in line and have power over them or make them obey or do what I say.
And I couldn't do it.
Right. Right.
And of course, our parents are our first leaders.
This is our leadership template, right?
Right. I'm acutely conscious of that as a father.
The definition of leadership that we have in our hearts is what we saw from our parents, right?
Right. She's awake, yeah.
Sorry. And that's what we have to fight in terms of leadership, and of course then we go to school, right?
Where our teachers are almost universal pinheads, right?
Petulant, bossy, touchy, defensive, humiliating, right?
They're not there with the sole principle of whatever it takes to light up the minds of the children, right?
No. That's quite the opposite.
Right, and then we then see politicians on television, right?
Right. And we have professors in university, and we have, as you say, a military hierarchy, and then, you know, maybe we have some good bosses or not, for sure, right?
That's always possible, right?
But I'm just talking about our first 20 or 22 years.
And generally, when we are teenagers and have a job, bosses don't tend to be great in the fast food industry, right?
you don't get Jack Welch running a McDonald's.
So all my first impressions were that leader is power.
Yeah, leadership is power over others, and it is the exercise of will, which is almost always inflicted through intimidation and humiliation, right?
Something I just can't do, which is great, I think, because that's probably where my capacity for actual leadership might be.
Yes, well, you can do it, right?
We can all do it, and I've seen you do it, right?
You have a dark side, I have a dark side.
We can all do it, right? I wouldn't just airily dismiss your capacity for that, right?
I think mine is a little more passive-aggressive.
Right, but passive-aggressive is another style of leadership.
That's the mom style, right?
Right. I'm not so much angry as I am disappointed.
Right. Don't you know you're breaking your mother's heart?
I'm fine. I don't need you to call me every day.
I just want to know if you're okay.
You do that all too well.
Right, so that's another kind of leadership, right?
And that's the soft dictatorship of guilt and obligation, right?
You know, go and have fun in the world.
world.
I just need to know that you're okay so that I can relax.
Stop.
Sorry, people are begging me to stop.
Okay.
Okay. Isabella's looking a little green too, right?
You're giving us all nightmares.
Why is my mother on the call?
Right, so this is another kind of leadership, right, that is equivalent to the chasm of aggressive, often male leadership.
It's sort of like the quicksand of, how did I end up in the bowels of the earth?
I didn't even miss a step, right?
Right. Okay, so I am good at that.
Neither of those are subjugation to principles, right?
I mean, the principle that I try to live by as a parent is that which is the best, most enjoyable, and safest for Isabella, right?
Yes, and whatever those are.
That which makes her laugh and giggle and stimulating and educating and makes her happy and so on, right?
I mean, I want to be a source of pleasure for her in the same way that I don't, you know, with the podcast, they have to be a source of excitement and challenge and pleasure for people, right?
The only, quote, leadership that I have in this realm is my ability to entertain and enlighten, right?
Right. And that comes out of a subjugation to principles, right?
Right. Nature to be commanded must be obeyed.
Right? I mean, I have no authority.
I can't grant degrees. I'm not paying anybody.
I don't have any jobs to give people.
I have no authority in this conversation, right?
I have to earn it every time I talk to someone or put something out, right?
Especially because there are significant costs to living this way.
And the only leadership that I can exercise is surrender to principles for the benefit of others, right?
This is the medical paradigm.
The first picture that came to my mind when you said there's significant cost to this was Diogenes in a barrel.
Yeah, absolutely, right?
But a doctor, right, if you have a good doctor and you listen to your doctor, you're going to listen to him because he is surrendering to the principles of science for the benefit of your health, right?
Right. I mean, if all he does is surrender to the benefits of science without any concern for your health, he'll just prescribe you any damn thing that's been proven by science, whether or not it's relevant to your problem, right?
Right. Give you antibiotics for cancer or something, right?
Well, it's proven scientifically, yes, but it's not relevant to my health issue, right?
Exactly.
And so this, I mean, the only authority, if you can call it that, that I have, is a surrender to principles for the benefit of others.
I'm trying to picture that.
Because you can surrender to principles and not have that to be for the benefit of others.
And you can try to benefit others without surrendering to principles.
But that's sort of like being a priest, right?
Right. But if you put the two together, you have credibility.
When you have credibility and you are a source of pleasure and excitement for others, then you will gain a leadership position.
But you can't aim at that, right?
You can only aim at the truth, at empathy, at benefit to others, and you will become a leader as a result.
You can't aim at leadership, right?
Any more than you can aim at health, right?
You can aim to eat well and exercise, but you can't aim at health.
It's an effect, not a cause, right?
Alright. And so, by going to this group, you are not acting on principles for the benefits of others.
You're not surrendering to principles, to reason and evidence for the benefit of others.
That's what I mean when I say you're avoiding leadership.
And then leadership makes you feel anxious because you think, well, I don't like to impose my will upon other people.
But I don't impose my will upon anyone, right?
So surrendering to principles would have been to come out on my first visit to this thing and ask, well, what's our standard of determining truth from falsehood and then leaving when I get that rubbish?
Well, maybe. But the surrender to an empirical principle would be to say, there's no chance that anyone here is going to be rational.
That too. Right?
I mean, that's, again, no chance, right?
Or if there is a chance, I'll know it in the first 30 seconds or a minute, right?
But practically, there's no chance, right?
I mean, you and I could be hit by a meteor every day, but I don't walk around with a big hunk and stone umbrella over my head, right?
Right. So the surrender to principle is to say, okay, so there's almost no chance that this group is going to be rational.
And in fact, if they're in an irrational culture and devoted to philosophy, odds are that they're going to be anti-rational.
Like the academia?
Yeah.
I mean, those are just the empirical facts, right?
So not going in there and saying, well, how do we determine truth from falsehood, right?
Because that's not being empirical.
We're just going in and... Being empirical, that's...
And say, because you can't lead a group that doesn't want to be happy.
You can't lead a group that isn't interested in the truth, right?
Which is why I don't chase after the trolls or, you know, trying IM people who call me, you know, a gay-ass fucktard on YouTube or something, right?
So I'm going to put a little bit of truth out and see if anybody's eyes light up.
So this is what's next.
Yeah, I mean, you can't try and win people over.
You can't try and exercise will over people.
You can't make them rational.
You can't, you can't, you can't.
You can only live with integrity to the benefit of others.
And see who's interested.
You can only lead by example.
And if you're with a group that you cannot summon affection for their happiness, you can't lead.
I mean, if you're in a group as a doctor and you want them to get sicker, you can't be a good doctor.
Or you don't care about their health, let's say.
You can't be a good doctor.
So the question to ask is not, how can I lead, in my opinion.
The question to ask is, is there anyone here worth leading?
Well, that guy definitely isn't.
*sniff* Thank you.
Bob isn't the roleplay, Bob.
Right. And you know about everyone else there too, right?
Right. Somebody said, but we don't want followers.
But nobody follows me, right?
Because we're in a conversation, right?
It's like saying, who leads around dinner table?
It's just a conversation, right?
But that doesn't make any sense, because if there's a leader, then there's a follower.
No, but nobody's following me.
They're following reason and evidence.
Scientists don't follow Albert Einstein.
They follow the scientific method.
It's not a person.
It's a principle. And if you ever doubt that, see what happens when I make a mistake in a podcast and see how everybody just falls in line and never fucking corrects me at all, right?
And submitting myself to these principles...
I lead in such a way that everybody else submits themselves to those principles.
Are you crazy? What are you talking about?
Everyone? Oh, not everybody, but just...
Well, no, but you've got to be precise, right?
You have no control over who's going to be interested in the principles that you're displaying.
Not talking about, but showing, right?
You have no control over who is going to be interested in the principles that you're living, right?
Right. So then, by living those principles, I become a leader.
Right. And by leader, it means that you show people the value of subjugating yourself to principles for the sake of your own happiness.
And that way they will then get the true message which is the subjugation of themselves to principles for their own happiness, right?
So my goal then would be to fish out those areas in which I am not submitting myself to principles and fix that.
Yeah, I mean to explore, right?
Like, without self-attack, right?
Curiosity without self-attack is the only path to self-knowledge, right?
So you say, okay, well, I decided not to confront this guy.
Why? Now, you and I have had a long conversation about all of this kind of stuff, which is great.
Yeah, I've been getting really good at that.
Yeah, no, you are, right?
I mean, which is why I always have time for our conversations, right?
Because they're very valuable to everyone and to me as well, right?
But when you have discomfort, right, about a particular thing, then you either do it anyway, or you think about it.
And then if you can't come to a resolution, you just do it again, right?
So if you didn't confront this Bob fellow, then you just, you either make yourself confront him to see what you're avoiding, right?
Right. So if you don't confront this bomb fellow, and then you do confront him, and he ends up yelling at you, being a total jerk, then it's like...
Okay, that's why.
That's why. You're validating your instincts, right?
Okay, not going to do that again, because I know why.
And if you can't make yourself do it or you're too nervous, then you don't put yourself back into that situation until you figure it out.
It's sort of like you were telling Charlotte a little while ago.
Don't jump into another therapist until you figure out what it was that...
Yeah, that made you stick with this person, right?
Why didn't I ask it?
What was my indication? Don't get married until you figure out why you got divorced, right?
Right. And why did I think Bob would get angry and attack me?
Right, because if you're in a situation and you don't act on your principles, but you say acting on principles makes you happy, then you're saying, I'm choosing to be unhappy.
And then you can't be a leader to anyone, right?
Right. You certainly can't say to people, you should live by principles because it'll make you happy, but I'm going to ditch them whenever I'm anxious in the moment, right?
I mean, that's like saying y'all should quit smoking unless you want to smoke, right?
Yeah, I want teeth to be strong and healthy.
But when it comes to having the pain of massaging my gums or whatever is required...
Yeah, I mean, it's not easy, right?
Because if it was easy, we wouldn't need philosophy, right?
Just like if nutrition was easy, we wouldn't...
If eating was easy, we wouldn't need nutrition, right?
And if exercise was like an orgasm, we wouldn't need any doctor to tell us to jump on a treadmill, right?
And actually, if you jump on a treadmill just right, you can merge the two.
but you will lose your gym membership.
So that's really all I had to say, right?
I mean, I think you have a desire for leadership because I think you understand what it is innately, but I think you have a template for leadership that is also causing you to shy away from it and put yourself into these kinds of situations where you're kind of a follower who's empty, right?
Right. And that's all that I wanted to say about this unless you have anything particularly pressing to ask.
No, I think I have a good idea of where to go next.
Okay, good. Well, listen, I really do appreciate you bringing this up.
It's a big issue and a big question, and as I say, I know that we've kind of had the laser spotlight on you following you around, but it is an issue that we're all dealing with, right?
When you have a new kind of...
I mean, what's new about this conversation, I think, is both the consistency and the depth, right?
Because it is the joining of philosophy and psychology, which is somewhat new.
And I think the depth and the consistency that we're pursuing is pretty amazing.
And of course, we have the technology, which is really what makes it all possible.
But if it's as new as we think it is, or if it's as new as I think it is, then...
Yeah, we're going to have to lead.
And there's not going to be any language out there that people are going to meet us with that we know, right?
Right. All right.
Well, let us know what happens with this group or with this situation, because I'm sure that everybody will be watching with bated breath about where you get to from here.
I'll let you know.
I'll post it on the board. Fantastic.
And thanks everyone for a great, great Sunday show.
And I look forward to your donations as always.
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