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April 19, 2009 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:18:23
1335 Sunday Show April 19 2009

A variety of comments and questions from listeners.

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Well, good afternoon, everybody.
It's Steph, Christina, and Isavon Bellikens, who has just arisen from her nap and who has a very birthday today, doesn't she, sweetums?
She has a very birthday today.
Today, she is four, count them, four months old, even if we count February, which is shorter than my wife.
So, she is four months old today, and she is rolling...
And she had her very first giggle fit, didn't she?
And what was Daddy doing? Working out with little tasseled girlyweights.
And who can blame her, really, for giggling at that?
Now, she was giggling when I was making snorting sounds.
I will post a little video of that for those who are interested.
But it is an absolute joy to watch her with the giggles.
Isn't it Tweetums? And she's doing wonderfully.
She is now rolling on both sides.
So we kind of have to park her like a car on the hills of San Francisco with its wheels wedged one way.
We have to make sure we park her in such a way she doesn't roll off anywhere.
She's developing a wonderful Napoleon hairdo or a sort of mini gumless Dracula with that little peninsula of hair that I remember from my 20s.
And let us say, my early 20s.
She lost her unibrow, which of course is a great disappointment for us since we were hoping to rent her out as an extra in My Name is Earl.
But... Everything is going just swimmingly with her.
She has her four-month doctor appointment and there will be a few shots on Monday.
And she is doing just wonderfully.
Health is great. Spirits are great.
And she is sleeping so much better.
Absolutely. Since we switched her to Older Scotch, she really doesn't have a palette for the newer stuff.
So the Older Scotch is just doing fantastically for her.
Actually, we got a sleep doula in because we felt that doula plus droola would work out really well together and they did.
And the doula gave us a couple of tips on how to get her to sleep.
Nice, tight, straight jacket swaddling and some shushing at night and she's now sleeping...
What did she do? She did five hours the other night?
Five and a half? 10.15 until 4.45, which is just stunning.
And she's also going back to sleep now, which is great.
We found white noise helps.
We thought it just meant static.
It turns out it means my podcast, which is about the whitest noise around.
So that has really worked out wonderful.
She's not in her own room as yet.
I am. Daddy is sleeping in a spare room.
Because I am still, if we dare call it this, the primary income earner while Christina rolls around doing God knows what and eating bonbons.
Oh, soap operas. And running the household and the baby while I'm still doing some titular earning.
And so I'm still getting some decent sleep.
But I hope to move back into the bedroom next week, which should be quite exciting.
So she's also grabbing for her chins and her faces, which is really, really quite wonderful.
And she's just affectionate and wonderful and happy and smiling and the best girl ever.
And it's wonderful when she grabs for your ears and your nose, you really do get to find out exactly where her nails are, which is all very exciting.
I try to not look at it as a kind of vengeful ninja.
Yes, she's also grabbing at hair, which is very tough for Christina's hairdo and for my nose and some of my bushy ear parts.
So that is quite an exciting challenge.
All right. Well, I guess we can start with a little bit of news.
There's some good news, I think.
Rob at strike-the-root.com, that's strike-the-root.com, which is a voluntarist anarchist website, one of the more popular ones, I think.
He gets, as he says, 80,000 unique hits every month.
He and I have been in communication, I guess, over the past few years off and on.
He's published some of my stuff.
I've certainly sent people to his site.
And he contacted me last week.
And he wants to run Free Domain Radio videos, which is fantastic.
So, of course, I will be coming up with some expert dance moves and setting them to my own music, because I'm sure that's what he's looking for, which is Steph Bot throwing shapes to Bad Queen songs or Bad Queen renditions.
And so I've done a promo for the videos, which I'll just post a link to in the chat room and welcome everybody who's come by the chat room for all of the hyper-boring FDR business news.
And I will just pass this along.
And other than that, I still have to do some final numbers.
But let me tell you something that's quite interesting.
I believe... We have hit 10 million downloads of podcasts.
Yeah, Isabella was so shocked.
She dropped her binky.
She spat out her binky.
She's actually quite a little howitzer.
10 million podcast downloads.
You can add on to that 1.3 million video views.
About 60,000 book downloads.
And I cannot understand why I'm not living in a mansion eating peeled grapes.
But the reality is that we are doing just some fantastic, fantastic work.
It is the quality of what I'm doing, the quality of the conversations that I'm having, and thanks again to Nate for it.
FDR 1333, which is hatred, aka zombie suppositories.
I was going with two names, but I didn't want suppositories to show up in the search engines because then we would get an entirely different Kind of clientele.
Actually, maybe we wouldn't.
And so we've, you know, this is some fantastic stuff.
Just think, you know, 10 to 12 million nuggets of philosophical wisdom such as they are rolling over the mental landscape.
It is unprecedented in the history of philosophy, I think, for there to be this kind of reach, this kind of spread, this kind of quality, this kind of conversation.
And everyone here Who has been part of the conversation, who's posted on the board, who's listened to the podcast, who has faced down the skepticism of those around them to talk about their passion for philosophy and what we talk about here.
That is something to be entirely honored.
We are a promontory, a vanguard, a forward thrust.
We are the tip of the spear. To a new world.
And I think those of us who've been in it from the ground floor and those of us who've been supporting it, particularly the financial support, but also those who have sent around the free podcast, the free books, the links to the site, I think we just have an incredible amount to be proud of.
And I think that we're doing about the best good for the world that can be done.
And I just wanted to thank everyone, of course, as always, for the support, financial, emotional, intellectual, philosophical, Thank you so much to help build a better world for those who are coming and those who are here and relatively small.
So thank you again so much.
And I think that's it for the news and the weather of where things are at the moment.
I have a couple of podcasts which will be going out Silver Plus early this week.
There's been a sort of two-year conflict between two FDR members, which we, I think, resolved.
Tell me if you think that's not the case, you can whisper to me in the chat room.
If you think that we've not resolved it, but we had a great conversation about it, which I think was very helpful.
We'll post the prior and the post to that.
I'm going to keep that Silver Plus just for the time being.
So, if you do want to listen to any of those, it's $20 a month to subscribe for that upper limit, or Silver Plus is like $75 or more in terms of donations.
Thank you again so much.
I also wanted to mention this.
It's an interesting statistic.
And again, these are preliminary numbers.
But just out of curiosity, could you just, if you're here, I've got almost 50 people in the chat room, if you'd sort of like to take a stab at this, what percentage of listeners to Free Domain Radio do you think have donated at any time, I guess it was around...
I think it was April of 07 that I started asking for donations or that I started accepting donations.
April 06.
Right, so that's three years that we've been taking donations.
What percentage of listeners do you think have donated?
We're getting guesses. 1%, maybe not even that much.
1% to 2%, 10%, 3%, 5%.
I'm going to be pessimistic and say 5%.
It's interesting.
And again, these are just preliminary numbers, but these are actually pretty accurate.
But it seems to be about 1%.
And that is something that's very interesting.
And I was thinking about this. I was at the gym today, and I was really, really thinking about this number, 1%.
And It's interesting that, of course, the group that is most passionate around voluntarism and who say that charity will help the poor and so on.
I'm not going to say that I'm poor, but I'm definitely dependent 100% on the generosity of strangers like Blanche Dubois.
It is interesting and I think it comes out of a certain depression and hopelessness about the forward progress of the conversation.
And so I think that's something which I'm going to mull over.
I'm certainly happy to hear suggestions.
I, of course, would like more money because it would help me publicize what it is that I'm doing.
But it is interesting.
Of course, when you look at something like organized religion, I bet you it's at least 80 percent, 70 to 80 percent of people who donate to organized religion.
If you look at registered Republicans and Democrats, it's probably about closer to 70 to 80 percent of registered, not everyone who's interested in politics.
It would be interesting to know the number of Ron Paul supporters who donated to the political campaign.
But I think it would probably be pretty high.
Registered Democrats or Republicans, sorry.
It would probably be pretty high, those who supported Ron Paul who donated to it.
Certainly, I would imagine, more than 1%.
So anyway, this is just something that's interesting.
And it's something to mull over. At least I'm going to be mulling it over.
Maybe it's no interest to you whatsoever.
It's something to think about.
It is a challenge about how we get people more engaged in a productive way in the conversation, either through donating time or money to help out and get the word out there, either through financial donations or time donations or whatever, right?
But it is interesting, the number of free riders On free domain radio, particularly those who talk about the free market, voluntarism, the exchange of value in a non-coercive situation.
And also, interestingly enough, of course, I would say that the majority of the listeners to free domain radio are against copyright.
And, of course, if this were copyrighted, I mean, it would very likely just be pirated anyway.
But if it were copyrighted, then they would have to pay for it.
And so it seems almost like they're against copyright because they don't want to pay for things.
But just remember, this is not...
A free situation.
Nothing is free. It is my time, my energy, the money that comes in from donators that I flow back through to Free Domain Radio to run the server, to run the bandwidth, to buy all of the technical equipment, the microphones, the video cameras, the computers, the internet, the incredible high-speed internet access that I need to get all of this stuff done.
The time and energy, of course, I have less income because of the books are now free.
So just remember, it's not free, and I think that if you do get a lot of value out of it, and you believe in the voluntary exchange of value, I think you know what the right thing to do is, as far as that goes.
I don't nag people.
I just mention donations from time to time, so I hope this doesn't come across as a nag, but I don't particularly mind if it does.
You really do need to do the right thing, I think, if you're this far up and haven't donated, or haven't donated in a while.
And to do the right thing, don't rely on other people to support the values that you are consuming.
That is kind of Parasitical, in my view.
Again, minorly and so on.
It's not evil or anything, right?
It's not even that corrupt. But I think that you do want to do the decent and honorable thing, especially if you're a fan of UPB. To rely on other people to pay for the value that you're consuming is kind of not a universal thing.
So that's just something I wanted to mention.
Other than that, everything here is great.
And I am all ears for your brilliant, gorgeous, and sultry advice.
Questions and comments and issues and problems.
Please, my friends, speak away.
Hello?
Yes, go ahead.
Hi. Yes, Steph.
I've got a You know, we had a chat a couple of weeks ago about overcoming fears and starting music teaching.
I think it was podcast 1326.
I certainly do remember.
Yeah. Well, I've been feeling quite a bit worse, actually, afterwards.
After I did the conversation, I felt quite a lot more sort of fear and sort of I felt quite sort of more sort of helpless in a way.
And recently I've sort of been having some fears about not being able to make it and have to go home and go back to my family.
I don't know why it's had...
I'm not quite sure why it's had that effect.
Is that surprising or is that sort of expected?
It's not surprising to me.
It's not a universal reaction, but it's not particularly surprising to me.
And I can tell you why I think.
Again, this is just my experience.
My opinion doesn't mean anything that's true, but I can tell you what I think or what I experienced.
Yeah. Yeah, go ahead.
Well... I sort of had the feeling after the call, because we talked for a good 90 minutes, and you didn't get the kind of emotional connection that you wanted to the topic, right?
Because you kind of got stuff intellectually, but it never quite got to you emotionally, right?
Yeah. And I think, and I'm not ascribing any motive to this, but I do think that what was occurring was that you were unconsciously attempting to recreate your own frustration and paralysis in me, And again, this would be unconscious, right?
But I think that you were trying to recreate your own experience in me by withholding, and again, I'm not saying consciously, but by withholding an emotional response to a very passionate conversation.
So I felt that there was a real distance and a real withholding and almost, you could say, stinginess.
Though again, I would not describe that as a conscious motive.
But a kind of stinginess to your reaction to the conversation.
I experienced you as not generous, which is, again, not a moral judgment at all, right?
Because I know that you were trying and striving to achieve that kind of emotional openness and connectivity.
But I think that it was an unconscious way of trying to recreate your own frustration and paralysis for me, which meant that this is a habit that you have with, I would assume, if this theory is even remotely true, which of course it may not be, That you would have recreated this with other people, if that makes any sense?
Like other people would have tried to help you and you would have ended up with them being, you know, maybe a little frustrated with you feeling kind of worse and so on, if that makes sense.
Yeah, I might do.
I'm not...
I can't...
Now you realize you're doing it again, right?
Yes. Yeah, okay.
I've just proved it then. And what that means is that you are not allowing the conversation, which doesn't mean allowing me to be right or wrong, because that's not the issue.
It means, I think, that you're not allowing the conversations that you're having with people, you're not opening your heart to them.
You're not allowing yourself to be vulnerable to the conversations that you're having with people.
You're really keeping a kind of intellectual distance.
Again, these are all just my theories, but I'm going to go with them, right?
And you can tell me if they make sense.
You're really keeping a kind of intellectual distance from conversations, certainly with me.
And I don't really get a feel that I have any access to your deep or real feelings, if that makes any sense.
Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, I was actually...
I'm generally less open with most people.
Right, right. So that's a kind of trap, right, that you're setting.
And again, I'm not ascribing any of this to conscious motives, right?
But it's kind of a trap you're saying, because it's like...
I'm unhappy, help me, and now I'm going to be emotionally distanced from your response and I'm not going to give you or me any emotional connections to the solutions that you have, right?
It's kind of like going to a doctor and saying, you know, doctor, it hurts when I do this, the doctor gives you pills, and you're like, well, I'll think about taking them.
It's kind of a trap, right?
Yeah, yeah. So why are you closing your heart off from help?
And you understand, by closing your heart off, I'm not talking about, Steph, you're right, or whatever, right?
But I feel like whenever I say stuff, I'm always talking to the security guard.
I never get to talk to the person who's actually there, if that makes sense.
Yeah, yeah.
I don't know. I was really trying to...
I felt quite guilty when I was in the call because I really wanted to feel...
I really wanted to...
Feel some more sort of motion, but it was sort of all of a sudden to dissociate and I couldn't stop doing it.
Well, but you understand that you don't try to feel, right?
You can't try to feel.
You can't try to be open, right?
This is sort of a...
I mean, I remember this from acting class, you know, which is not the best way of showing the difference.
But in acting class, you know, There was a guy there who would always kind of strain, we called it pumping, pump the emotions, right?
So whenever he would have to get angry in a scene, he'd just get generically angry, you know, just raise his voice and yell or whatever, right?
And it was never believable.
Or, you know, people who would have a scene where they had to cry, you know, they would do all the outward things, they'd screw up their eyes, you know, a kind of thing, right?
And it was never particularly believable, and of course I fell prey to this as an actor as well.
And we had this really brutal acting teacher who came out from New York, who was, you know, very harsh and very critical, and us hypersensitive Canadian hibiscus were really quite startled by this whole interaction.
And she said to one guy, she interrupted him while doing a scene, which is always very humiliating, right?
And she said, what are you doing?
And he's like, well, I'm trying to be angry.
And she said, okay, try to sit in that chair over there.
And he looked at her and he said, what?
And she said, look, try to sit in that chair over there.
So, of course, he went over and he pretended like the chair had some sort of negative gravity or some magnetic repulsion or something.
Try to sit and then look kind of ridiculous, right?
And then she said, okay, sit in the chair.
And then he just sat in the chair, right?
So, I think you get what I'm sort of talking about here, right?
You either are open or you're not.
But trying to be open will only make you more closed because it's like you're trying to lift a weight that you can't lift, right?
Yeah, that makes sense.
I'll say about that, because I know, and this is without any, you know, with great sympathy, right?
I know this is not how you want to be.
I know this is not how you want to live.
But openness, right?
Openness is a form of relaxation.
It is not a form of constipation, right?
You're not trying to push out feelings or emotional connection like some Massive Indian food-infused log, right, the next morning?
Yeah. That makes sense, actually, because when I'm like this, sometimes I really tense up.
I really sort of... Like I'm tensing up now.
And that might be a...
That might be a sort of actively stopping myself feeling the emotion.
All right. And, I mean, I'm happy to help you if you want, right?
I mean, if you want to get in touch with your feelings...
If you're capable of doing it at the moment, we can do it in about 30 or 40 seconds, but that's up to you if you want to know how to do it, rather than the way that you have been doing it, which I think is not working for you, right?
Yeah, well, 45. Yeah, I've got to...
Maybe it worked, maybe it doesn't.
It doesn't matter, right? But at least it'll give you a clue about how to approach it, at least in a way that I have found useful and other people have found useful.
Yeah. Okay. So, are you sitting down?
Yes. Okay.
So, the first thing that you need to do if you want to be emotionally open is you need to physically relax your body, right?
And that can be meditation, that can be going for a massage, that can be doing yoga, that can be doing stretching.
I mean, I stretch for like half an hour to 45 minutes every day just because I know that I need to keep myself intellectually and emotionally loose and open, if not downright slutty.
So, just physically try to relax your body because I would imagine That with this amount of repression and dissociation, you would keep a fair amount of physical tension in your body?
Yeah. Yeah, I've been very tense, yeah.
Right. So, first of all, you need to physically relax your body and at the same time, you need to slow down and deepen your breathing.
Right? Can you just try that?
Just think of physically relaxing.
And it amazes me every day.
I'll just be sitting there and I'll notice...
That my body is, or certain parts of my body, it could be my toes, it could be one of my legs, it's just tense, and I just have to work to relax those muscles.
So just think about your body, think about where your tension is, slow down your breathing, and physically just relax your muscles and your body.
Okay, I'm starting to, if I'm going to do this, my muscles start to still twitch.
Right. Well, just, again, keep the deep breathing.
My particular image, and everyone has their own, but my particular image is I think of warm oil going down the insides of my body like I'm a rusty machine, and the oil is soothing and opening up and...
I'm uncreaking my hinges and so on.
I think of this sort of warm oil, physical relaxation, deep breath.
I think of warmth. I think of, you know, whatever your happy place, some beach or some palm tree overhead or something like that.
But it really is the physical relaxation and the slower breathing that is the very first key.
Because if you're not comfortable in your own skin, your emotions remain like, you know, mice under the feet of brutal dinosaurs, right?
Always scattering, always running, always hiding.
You need to be physically relaxed.
Relaxation is where our strength comes from.
It's where our openness comes from.
Yeah. I don't think I can do it now.
Okay, I will just ask you one or two other questions.
We don't have to do it now.
If you feel that there's pressure doing it live, that's fine.
But the other thing that I would ask you is, when you do this, do you have any sense of physical feelings or emotions, I guess you could say, more than sensations?
Do you have any sense of physical feelings in your body or do you mostly just feel more tense when we talk about this?
Well, now I'm feeling quite chivalry for some reason.
Okay, okay, good. Now, where is the chivalry showing up in your body?
It's in my shoulders, mostly, I think.
Okay, and why do you think your shoulders are shivery?
What is the feeling that's in there?
Forget about everyone else.
We can cut this out of the podcast.
I don't care about that, right?
But just you and me, right?
What is going on in your shoulders?
Why do they feel shivery?
I don't know. Well, it's sort of the same thing.
It's tensing up, isn't it?
Okay. Let me ask you another question.
This is designed to bypass intellectual defenses, so you can either trust me and answer it or not, but I would hope that you will.
Okay.
If the feeling that's in your shoulder had a color, what color would it be?
Just answer.
It doesn't matter what you say.
What color would the feeling in your shoulder be?
It doesn't have a colour.
I can't. Sorry, I just really, I can't.
I'll just have to make something up and I don't think I'll be being honest.
Okay. That wouldn't be honest.
If the feeling in your shoulder had a time of day, what time of day would it be?
Would it be morning, evening, night time?
I don't.
Again, I don't.
The question doesn't make any sense to me.
I'm sorry, I know. No, that's totally fine.
That's totally fine. If the feeling in your shoulder, the shivering, if it had a song, if it had a favorite song, what would its song be?
Or what type of music? Would it be jazz?
Would it be blues? Would it be classical?
Would it be country? Would it be pop?
Would it be rock? Yeah, more like static.
Right, I think that's right.
I think that's right. Okay, well listen, I don't want to, obviously, if you don't feel comfortable, there's no problem.
This is just sort of an exercise.
But I think...
If you work on the physical relaxation, there's a meditation that I adapted that's on the FDR board.
You might want to listen to that and follow that meditation because the feelings are all there and they're all in there and they're all trying to help you to connect with yourself, to connect with others.
I think that the sadness that occurred after our conversation was the sadness of a missed opportunity for self-intimacy.
And clearly it's a challenge, right?
For you. Because the reason that I ask you these silly questions is to bypass the intellectualization.
Because the kind of associations that occur within the unconscious are things like, what color is my sadness?
Because that's what shows up in dreams and so on.
You know, when you experience something in a dream, if there's music playing, the music is very specific.
Those are the kind of associations that occur in the unconscious.
But that makes you very stressed, right?
Because you want to answer it in a kind of conscious or rational way.
Yeah, I wanted to...
I didn't like the questions at all.
I wanted to understand what you meant.
I wanted to be able to...
Right, right. And there's a reason why you're not supposed to understand what I mean by that, right?
But simply to answer it in a spontaneous way.
And also there's no right answer to that, right?
Which is also what's kind of annoying to the conscious mind, right?
Yeah. So, yeah, I would just work on the physical relaxation, on the breathing, yoga, massages, and all that kind of stuff would be the way that I would work there.
I certainly do get the sense of a great tension, which is over usually a great sadness and a great anger, but that, of course, is just all of this, just my theory and my way of working with things.
So that would be my suggestion about how to approach it.
Yeah, yeah, thanks.
Oh, you're very welcome, and...
Let us know how it goes.
It is a great challenge and I hope you don't feel alone in this because you certainly are not the only person who is dealing with these challenges.
I deal with them sometimes. Lots of people in this conversation and of course in general deal with the same issues.
So I hope you don't feel freakier alone.
This is a very challenging and deep issue for all of us.
So I certainly do appreciate you stepping up and talking about it.
Yeah, I do.
Yeah, thanks. All right.
Take care. And let us know how it goes if you do work on this stuff.
All right. Well, anybody else want to be asked nonsensical questions like they're in a Lewis Carroll novel?
I'm absolutely happy. I have a stack of them.
yay verily almost as tall as a sequoia um hi can you hear me I sure can. How's it going?
I am... I have a, I don't know, problem or, well, question.
And it's regarding the against me argument.
And I was trying to, well, argue for anarchy with some of my friends.
And I tried that against me argument, but apparently it's not really working in my country.
I live in Switzerland and, well, if you try to use that argument, they can just say, well, you can use an initiative or a referendum.
So you can, well, get subscriptions.
I mean, you can get signatures and stuff.
And so you can, well, so that argument is not really valid here.
So it's pretty hard for me to argue for energy in here.
Look, I understand.
It's not just Switzerland, trust me.
It's easier in the United States, of course, and perhaps to some degree in Britain.
But countries that are more socialist and less warlike are harder to look at Clearly to look at the gun in the room, right?
I mean, so, you know, your country, Canada, Denmark, the Netherlands, I mean, these kinds of hippy-dippy, no war, lots of socialism, lots of welfare state kind of countries, they're very tough because the gun in the room is very hidden, right?
I mean, in America, highly armed and 700 military bases and so on, starting wars all over the place and CIA, those countries, those kinds of countries are much more They're much easier to see the guy in the room and to talk about it, but it's harder.
And of course, I get a lot of questions and comments from people in your neck of the woods about like, well, how on earth do I talk about this with people?
Because it's really hard to point it out.
Is that fair to say? Yeah, that's really true.
Well, the first thing that I would do...
If I were you, and I've done this before, I mean, it doesn't always work 100% of the time because it's not under our control, the degree to which people respond rationally to rational arguments.
You haven't happened to have a chance, have you, to listen to the book Everyday Anarchy?
I certainly did.
Oh, you did? Okay. So in there I talk about marriage, if you remember.
Yeah. And you might want to ask your friends...
We can do this roleplay if you like, or I can just sort of tell you the argument if you wanted to play one of your friends and I can play you.
Okay. Okay, so give me your friend's argument about this referendum nonsense.
Well, it's like, if the government makes a decision to pass a law or something, you can just get signatures Well, you need quite a lot, but you can get signatures, and if the signature stuff passes, if you have enough signatures, there is a nationwide vote for that matter.
So, yeah, it's like, you can say it's the voice of the people.
Right.
So if I understand what you're saying, and I'm playing you here, you're saying that it's moral to use force as long as a majority of people agree with the use of that force.
No, it's not.
But that's what you're saying, right?
If there's a referendum or if enough people approve of it or whatever, then it's okay, right?
Yeah.
Now, what would your friend say to that?
Well, they...
Some of them are pretty funny.
They get angry.
Some of them are just whatever.
It's pretty funny when I argue with them how they react.
Right. I'm going to just go a little further because, I mean, if they get angry and they won't be reasonable, then they're not interested in the truth.
And all they're doing is trying to get you to shut up because you're making them anxious.
So if people are really committed to that kind of nonsense, you know, you could go see movies or play pool with them.
But as far as intimacy, truth, and friendship goes, probably would not be very productive.
But if they're genuinely interested in the moral rule, whenever anybody puts forward—well, this is so important— Whenever anybody puts forward a solution, as they call it, to a problem, don't ever argue the solution.
Only argue the moral principle behind it.
Right? So they're going to say, well, you can get this referendum, and you say, well, the referendum is really hard, and blah, blah, blah.
But you're already accepting the referendum.
The referendum... It's the physical manifestation of a moral rule.
And if you argue the referendum, you're dealing with a symptom, not a cause.
And you always want to deal with the cause.
So when somebody says, oh, we should have a referendum, what you need to do is you need to abstract...
I'm not saying this is easy, but it's the only way that I know how to do it.
You need to abstract the moral principle behind the referendum...
Or the vote or whatever it is, call your congressman thing.
Extract the principle and apply it to some other situation to see if the principle holds.
Because if somebody says, well, a referendum makes it moral, then okay, so if a majority wants it, it's moral.
And if 49.99% of people don't want it, then it's immoral.
And then one guy changes his mind and it becomes moral for everyone.
That's a pretty hard thesis to sustain, right, without looking kind of silly.
Or say, okay, well, there are two guys in an alley who jump one guy, and they have a vote about whether they can take his wallet.
Of course, the two people are going to outvote the one guy, and therefore no crime has occurred.
In fact, it would be a crime for the guy to resist the majority who wants to take his money, right?
Or you could say, so we can give women the right to divorce...
But they have to get a majority of people in the city they live in to agree to the divorce.
Otherwise, they can't get a divorce.
In other words, if a woman is being beaten up by her husband or is just unhappy or miserable or whatever, then she can petition for a divorce and she has to go and spend months or years and hundreds of thousands of dollars going up and down the street getting people to sign a petition as to whether she can get divorced or not.
Would we consider that a just solution, a fair solution, a moral solution to the problem of divorce?
And if she just leaves her husband without getting this petition that takes her months or years and hundreds of thousands of dollars and tens of thousands of hours, if she just leaves her husband, can the police drag her off to jail for not going through the proper majority ratification of her divorce?
That's the argument. Thanks a lot.
Right, and if they don't like that as a solution to divorce, then clearly they have a problem with the principle, right?
Because a principle should work in just about every common situation.
I'm not, you know, lifeboat scenarios and crap like that.
Who cares, right? But the non-initiation of force should work in just about every situation, and it does.
And property rights should work in just about every situation, and they do.
But brute majority rule doesn't work in any situation, right?
And so the referendum thing is it's a design to give you a veneer of choice and therefore to rope you into agreement because you're supposed to have participated in some way.
But we would not accept, like if I want to quit my job, do I have to get everyone in the goddamn industry to sign off that it's okay for me to quit or at least a majority?
And if I can't get a majority of people in my industry to agree that I should quit, I have to keep working there or I get thrown in jail?
We would never accept that in our own personal lives.
So how can it possibly be a moral good in the organization of a great society?
Okay, let's see.
Does that help or is this just going to get you more in trouble?
That will help.
I bet. I will have to listen to it again.
It's recorded, right?
It is recorded. It will be out.
But just remember, abstract the principle and apply it to something else.
If you want to go and be a doctor, you have to get the majority of doctors to sign off and approve your petition to become a doctor.
Just bring it to a personal example in someone's life rather than some abstract social thing.
Okay. Thanks, man.
Well, do let us know how it goes.
And remember, you always have friends here.
Okay. All right, thanks.
Best of luck and keep us posted.
I think you have a great challenge in your country, more so than in many ways the United States.
Although, of course, you don't have the problem of religion, which is terribly common in the United States.
So six of one, half a dozen of the other, I suppose.
It's either the gun in the room or the ghost in the gun in the room.
Thank you very much.
We have time for Pi More questions.
Thank you.
Hi, Steph. Hi, we have a Somali pirate.
So we will be speaking in pirate-itude for the rest of the show.
Please, go on. Hello.
I had some questions that arose out of, I think, a little frustration.
After the latest podcast with Nate, the hatred one.
Go on. It was a difficulty in squaring two things, and I know that you wouldn't say something that's completely contradictory, so I'm sure it's internally generated for me, so that's why I wanted to start with my feelings.
Yeah. It was around, like, a few months ago you did a call-in show with Nate where you said something like you're not seeing a lot of referencing principles like honesty and things like that when acting in the community.
Yes, I recall. You're having trouble squaring that with the judiciousness with Who we're honest with, if that makes sense.
Go on. Like, I had trouble squaring with, I guess, being the hot woman at the bar, to use your metaphor.
Sorry, if you could just tell me a little bit more about what you see as contradictory.
Of course, it's certainly possible I've contradicted myself and I'd be happy to correct it, but...
I don't think it's contradictory, but it feels frustrating that it's hard for me to square those two, and I don't know exactly where it doesn't...
I mean, it's just... I don't know.
I'm actually kind of frustrated right now, having difficulty articulating what I'm...
Do you feel that...
We'll just beat the bushes and see what comes up.
Do you feel that there is a kind of dishonesty and manipulation in the metaphor of being picky, choosy, hot chick at the bar?
No, no. In fact, I... I think actually the frustration had more to do with the first one, right?
The first one in that...
Well, these are the thoughts.
These are the thoughts. It's a frustration of if...
Oh, man.
I don't know. I mean...
If we need to reference these principles and plow through the discomfort, then...
I swing between two pendulums of this whole thing of honesty as a rule.
But we can disengage.
Oh, I see. So if somebody says, if I understand this rightly, if somebody says, what do you think of Barack Obama, and you don't answer in one way or another, that that's being dishonest?
Right, right, right. So it would be like, I took your first Colin thing, and this could be my own misinterpretation, I took your first Colin thing just to mean that even if it's uncomfortable to talk about how Barack Obama is, Evil and corrupt and all that stuff.
We would be referencing honesty as a principle in that moment to talk about that?
Yes, absolutely.
Do you see what I'm saying?
Am I making more sense now?
No, I don't recall that particular show in any detail, but I'm certainly happy.
If you want to send me a link, I can listen to the relevant parts.
I'm sorry, go ahead.
Oh, I was just saying, it was the one with Nate and the bar, the margarita.
Right. I think that virtue must be...
Our integrity or our virtue must be earned by other people, if this makes any sense.
In other words, if somebody acts in a way that I would consider low or vile or despicable or whatever, then I'm not going to love that person, right?
Mm-hmm. And so my virtue is not a blank check for everyone else, right?
I've often said our desire is to be free with reference to principles, not to be a slave to principles, not to be a slave to philosophy, not to replace the state with UPB, right?
Right, right. And if we're not free...
I'm not saying lie, right?
And I don't think I said to Nate lie.
I love Barack Obama. I would love nothing more than to hump his shin, right?
I'm not saying that he would lie.
But I think that evasion is perfectly valid if you don't want to answer the question.
I mean, if you feel that the other person is malicious or negative, because I say don't engage, right?
Yeah, yeah. And that's a pretty common thing.
It's not what I say only.
It's a pretty common thing. So I think that we owe people justice, if that makes any sense.
So if people are honest with me, then I will be honest with others, with those people who are honest with me.
And I think I owe them that. It's not a rule.
I can break whatever rule I want.
There will be consequences to breaking those rules.
But I tell the truth to Christina because she tells the truth to me and so on.
And there are friends at FDR and other places that I have the same relationship with, right?
But if someone comes up, you know, this example, you say, well, honesty is a virtue.
This came up on the board recently.
Honesty is a virtue.
It's the first virtue, I say, right?
And when people say, well, some guys break into your house and put a gun to your head and say, where's your wife?
We want to shoot her. Are you obligated to tell the truth to those people, right?
You've heard these kinds of arguments before?
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, honesty is the first virtue.
But... But that doesn't mean that we are slaves to honesty, right?
And certainly the people who want to shoot my wife are not being virtuous, right?
So to say that I must have integrity to evil can scarcely be considered virtuous, right?
Would that not be the very recipe of corruption?
To have integrity to evil?
Right, right. Yeah, that makes sense.
Right, so people want to come in and shoot my wife.
They're evil. Do I owe these people perfect honesty and integrity and fealty?
Well, loyalty to evil.
Integrity to evil is itself corrupt or evil, right?
Mm-hmm. And so I've often said also, treat people the best you can the first time you deal with them, and after that, deal with them as they deal with you, right?
Right, right. And so if somebody wants...
Like, ask me about my opinions about things, then I will tell them honestly, but I will also watch their response, right?
Right, right. And if their response is irrational and hostile and abusive and this and that, then I don't owe them anything.
Right? It's like being on eBay.
On eBay, somebody buys your iPod, you ship them the iPod, and then Their PayPal thing bounces or whatever, right?
And then, do you owe them another iPod?
Right, absolutely not.
Of course not, because they have proven themselves to be untrustworthy.
And I view ethics as reciprocal.
We do not obey some Abstract form of ethics that are written in the sky in absolute terms like gravity, right?
Mm-hmm, right.
Because those things don't exist, right?
Right, not a rule.
Right, so virtue, and I'm not talking about our own personal integrity, but since this conversation was about us and the world...
Virtue, as we're talking about it, or as I think as you feel frustrated about it, is a relationship.
And it is a relationship where both parties need to bring value to the table.
Like any economic relationship, right?
Right. I mean, you wouldn't go to work where people didn't pay you and slapped you around, right?
Right. Because you're bringing a value and they're bringing kind of the opposite of a value, right?
Right, right. And so if you're in a relationship where the other person is acting in a base or dishonorable or unpleasant or ugly or abusive manner, I don't think you owe them virtue any more than if somebody steals something from your store, you owe them a return if they don't like it.
That makes sense.
Thank you.
That helps. And I'm feeling a lot less frustrated.
Right, right. I'm constantly, you know, it's a real challenge and the issues that you're bringing up I think are fantastic, fantastic, fantastic, fantastic.
This is a complicated thing to say there is UPB and we are not slaves to rules, right?
I mean, these are difficult things to reconcile.
I think that they're important things to reconcile because if there are no rules, there's no virtue, there's no truth and so on.
But if there are So to speak, like UPB, but we end up being programmed or enslaved by these rules, then we have not become free, right?
We are not authentic if we are following rules.
Even if those rules are rational, we are not authentic if we're following them because they are rules.
Then we're no different from Catholics or people who look up the Kabbalah or whatever, right?
Right, right.
The rules have to be alive, the rules have to be sensitive, the rules have to be reciprocal, the rules have to be relational.
Well, that actually...
...alive actually resonated the most.
Tell me what that means.
Well, I don't know. To me, it just struck me that, because you've always talked about UPV and ethics as more of a biological science rather than a hard, rigid physical science.
And that, using the term alive to describe it really, it made a lot of sense with how I see you, right?
In that you, it's much more free-flowing and, well, alive, right?
Rather than Right, and I would also say, and this is a really fascinating aspect that I've certainly seen over and over and over and over and over again, which is that the moment that bad people,
abusive people, nasty, ugly people, the moment that people sense you obey rules in a vacuum, They will absolutely try to use those rules to enslave you, to get you to do their bidding.
Right, exactly.
Oh, and I've seen that millions of times.
You see it on the board.
I see it in complicated situations at work.
I see it, oh my, so, so much.
Right, right. So I'll give you a brief example of this, right?
A guy, and this is just from memory, but I think it's pretty accurate.
So a guy was, after I did the debate with the recent socialist anarchist, was saying, I can disprove the UPB argument in 30 seconds, right?
And I said, well, UPB is not an argument, it's a methodology, right?
Mm-hmm. And he came back with something else, I can't remember.
I said, okay, well, we can debate it if you like.
And he said, great, I've got UVU when?
Mm-hmm. I said, well, read UPB and, you know, then we can debate, right?
And he's like, oh, I've read UPB, I'm ready to go now.
And I was like, well, either you've read UPB and you don't get that it's a methodology, in which case you really didn't read it very carefully, in which case you're not prepared for the debate, and I've just had three of these goddamn things, so I'm not going to have a fourth, right?
Or, you haven't read UPB, but you're just saying you have in order to get onto a chat, right?
I didn't go through all of that, but I just no longer wanted to interact with the guy, right?
And he started, well, but you're the one who brought it up.
You're the one who brought up the debate to begin with, and now you don't want to do it, right?
And he started doing all this 12-year-old stuff, you know, like, well, there's a rumor around the internet, you know, man, that you only debate people who can't match you intellectually.
I'm sure you don't want that rumor to continue.
All this kind of stuff, right?
But it's like, Steph, because you brought up this debate thing to begin with, you now must debate me.
It's like, no, I don't!
I really don't have to debate you.
Even if I said I wanted to, I've just changed my mind.
Because people will constantly try to put hooks in you based on their perception that you will obey abstract rules in a vacuum, despite what they do, no matter what they do.
It's like, yeah, I wanted to debate you.
Now I think you're just a dick and I don't want to debate you.
I brought it up. I mean, maybe that'll work on some 12-year-old.
It's not going to work on me because I could just change my mind.
Don't feel like it. Thanks, bud.
He's sending me emails.
It is like, I'm ready to debate.
How come you're not ready to debate? Block, block, spam, block, right?
And it's the freedom to change our minds is actually in accordance with UPV, right?
Yeah, because if I have some rule that says, well, if I propose a debate, I am now bound to follow through on it.
No matter what the other person does, I'm not free.
And all that's going to happen is people are going to be nice to me until they extract the promise of a debate.
And then they're going to be jerks knowing for sure that I have no capacity to reverse my position because I'm obeying these abstract rules, right?
That's just guaranteeing that people are going to be nasty to me.
It's feeding into the bad habits of bad people.
Right, right.
Thank you.
Thank you, but no, that's not what philosophy is designed to do, is to be a big, trembling wad of muffin-top flesh that people can sink their hooks into if they want to do us wrong, right?
It's not what my ethics are all about anyway.
My ethics are about freedom and integrity.
And integrity to rules, but also integrity to the situation, because I'm an empiricist first and foremost, right?
Rules bow to evidence. And if I've got a rule called, oh, I'll debate you, and then the evidence is that you're a dick...
I'm just going to go with the evidence, not the rule, because empiricism trumps abstractions every time, right?
Exactly. Right.
And you've seen me go for people from time to time, right?
I mean, it's not common, but yeah, if I'm pushed enough, I'll go for people.
And that's because I'm an empiricist, right?
And I'm bound by the rules of reality more so than the rules of abstractions.
And that's why people's behavior matters a lot more to me than what they say, right?
Which is why I talk about if you don't have the basic integrity, then don't talk to me about abstract ethics, right?
Right. But yeah, sensitivity to the situation.
The moment you put rules out there that you obey no matter what in a vacuum, other people will just use those rules to try to control you.
I think the initial frustration was that initially I was experiencing your quote, and I'll send you the quote and the link and the timestamp and whatever, just by the mile, I am it to you something later.
I was experiencing that, although you didn't mean it that way, as this rule that if we are this involved in philosophy and all that kind of stuff, We've got to bow to these principles, right?
And that's not what you were saying at all.
No, I don't think so.
Now, that doesn't mean that I didn't misstate things.
That doesn't mean that I wasn't ambiguous.
And because these two poles, that there are rules, but we are empiricists, right?
So if I'm focusing more on the rules, then it's going to sound like obey the rules.
And if I'm focusing more on the empiricism, then it's going to sound like do whatever you feel like in the moment, right?
But it's the tension between these two things that is the complexity of it, right?
Because if it was simple, it would have been solved thousands of years ago, right?
Right, right. Wow.
This is going to be a lot to chew on.
This is cool. It is.
It is a lot to chew on. And that's why, to me, I'm very suspicious either of the hedonism of do whatever you feel like in the moment, which to me is just nonsense, or...
A different kind of hedonism, which is the relief from anxiety that people who don't like ambivalence get when they just have a set of rules to follow, which ends up with them being enslaved to bad people who use those rules like strings on a puppet, right?
Right, right.
So you need the rules and you need the empiricism of the situation.
And that is the challenge, to me, that is the challenge of practical ethics, right?
The theoretical ethics is all UPB compliant, but Again, you know, I'm not out there stealing cars and nobody's trying to stick a shiv in me, so that kind of UPB stuff doesn't really affect my life.
What does affect my life is the challenging and complicated interactions with people who are all over the moral spectrum in the real world, right?
And that is a challenge, because I want to have rules, but I'll be goddamned if I'll be enslaved by those rules, because that's not the freedom that we're after.
Right, right. Or I could say that the final rule is the empiricism.
So if I say to someone, I would like to debate with you, and that person is respectful and positive and intelligent and prepared, then yeah, I feel that I'm somewhat bound by the promise to debate.
But if someone's nice, and then I promise to debate, and then they turn out to be ugly, unpleasant, and abusive in the resulting interactions, I feel not even remotely bound Because the empiricism takes place over the rule.
It takes precedence over the rule.
So it's the nimbleness in the situation that I think is important.
Yeah, that's it.
Nimbleness. It's the constant reciprocity of how the other person is treating you that is the challenge of ethics, right?
How is the other person treating me now?
Right? Because lots of people have a pretty convincing false front, right?
Which seems kind of reasonable.
And, you know, how is the person treating me now?
How is the person treating me now?
It is that constant reciprocity, right?
We don't say in a job, well, I got paid last year, so I don't need to get paid this year.
So if they start paying you, your obligation to work there is no longer there.
Right?
you So if somebody stops being nice to me, my obligation to honor my commitments evaporates along with their behavior, right?
If I order a coffee at a coffee shop and they don't give me a coffee but ask for my money, am I bound to give them my money?
Of course not. Of course not.
And they say, well wait, you ordered this coffee, so give me some money.
It's like, but I didn't get the coffee. I don't care if I ordered the coffee.
I didn't get the coffee, right?
So I'm not going to give you the money, right?
But you promised. There's an implicit commitment.
You made a commitment. You ordered the coffees.
It doesn't matter. I didn't get the coffee, right?
So if I order up a debate based on some assumptions of reasonable behavior and respectful, intelligent preparation, and then the person turns out to be a jerk, I'm no more obligated to follow through on my commitment to debate than I am to pay for a coffee I never received, even if I wanted that coffee originally.
Thanks. That makes total sense with regards to the two poles that I was sensing.
And thanks once again.
Your brilliance is scintillating, right?
Because there are these two poles.
We want the rules, but we have to be empirical to the situation.
And these are two, right, empirical to the situation devolves often to hedonism, and rules devolves often to a kind of, you know, look it up, and that's how I'm going to act.
I must be honest, so I'm programmed.
I will say everything that's on my mind, no matter what the empirical situation is.
And neither of those two things, to me, are alive, are alive.
Philosophy with a blood pumping in the moment, with reference to rules and with reference to the empiricism of the situation, I view philosophy as skiing down a particularly difficult slope with lots of moguls and trees and so on, right?
You don't just sit there and say, I'm going to go this way, and even if there's a tree in the way, you just plow straight into it and pull a full sunny boner, right?
That's not the way that I view philosophy.
I view philosophy as something that Is constantly adjusting and changing to the moment, the empiricism of the situation.
Oh shit, there's a tree. Oh, let me jump Natasha Richardson.
Oh my god, there's a set of moguls.
Oh my god, there's a slushy spot, right?
Ooh, cool, I love this bit where I go down very fast.
That's all constant adjustment in the motion.
Now, it's according to rules, skills, expertise, and so on, and of course the laws of physics, but it is a nimble moment-to-moment with reference to rules, a live, challenging, and exciting interaction, if that makes any sense.
That makes total sense.
So thank you so much.
That really, really does help.
And thanks for taking this question.
Thanks. And my apologies to Natasha Richardson's family for the poor taste joke.
But anyway, I appreciate that.
And do let us know, of course, whatever else you find annoying, because I think these kinds of clarifications are fantastic.
We'll do. We'll be sure to post more about that.
Alright, we have time for pie over two questions.
So if you have another comment or issue, please step up to the mickey phone.
Alright, while we're waiting, we're thinking, oh yes, oh yes we are.
We are thinking of renting a private karaoke bar for the barbecue.
How do people feel about them apples?
Because, you know, we've got a number of enthusiastic performers here.
And I certainly know that Greg has been practicing his I'm not a girl, not yet a woman version.
And I think it would be more fun to all sit and yell at each other rather than wait for the endless rotation of some public bar.
Fantastic. Fantastic.
I'm pretty sure Richard also has a rousing rendition of It's Raining Men, which I'm looking forward to not just seeing but participating on as a stage prop.
I will look into it.
It does seem to be that people are fairly enthusiastic and when you're among friends, it's a lot more fun sometimes than when you're staring at it.
A room full of people in a bar.
So that could be a lot of fun.
And of course, I haven't done karaoke in like two years other than the silly stuff for FDR. So it'd be a lot of fun for me to go out and do that too.
So that's the situation.
And James, if you could just put up the link to the BBQ sign-up.
Please do sign up before you come, just so we know...
tinyurl.com forward slash 2009 FDRBBQ We need to know by May the 20th because my wife said so.
Because we have to order the buffalo for the hunting party because it is going to be a very live red tooth meat bringing down on the prairie situation because that's Canada and that's how we roll.
Somebody has a question for Christina, and what they mean by that is that they're tired of listening to me talk.
So I will hand the Mickey Von Ricrophone over to...
Yeah, Christina has mommy brain, so try and keep it slow and monosyllabic.
Here is Mike. Hello.
Hi, Christina. How are you today?
I'm well, thank you. How are you?
I'm fine. Today I have a question about...
I think it's a tendency that children develop when they're traumatized by abuse in their childhood.
And I'm trying to look for some real information about it.
It's something that I experienced as a kid.
It was my relationship to numbers.
And when I was learning numbers, the only way that I could remember them or find them interesting was if I attached some kind of personality to them.
Color and...
Like just some kind of like personality and also I used to use formulas that would represent people it was very odd and I don't know like my therapist hasn't had much interaction with young children with this kind of thing and I was wondering if you had any idea any information on that?
I frankly I don't I don't think this is something I can help you with Steph is saying math phobia is that is that sort of what you're describing?
It doesn't sound like it to me, but maybe I'm mistaken.
I don't know what mathphobia is per se, but it doesn't...
I wasn't afraid of math, I guess.
It was more like...
I guess it was a very powerful association or something rather than a challenge for myself to get into math itself.
I've just heard different opinions and different stories behind it, and I'm kind of just looking for some real facts around it.
I'm so sorry.
This isn't something I can help you with.
I haven't run across anything like this myself, and I haven't worked with children in a very, very long time.
And certainly I haven't had any adults in my practice who have presented with this issue.
I'm sorry, you know, I'm very sorry that I don't have any knowledge or information about this for you to help you out on it.
I don't even know where I could direct you to, to go with something like this.
You said it's related to trauma and you couldn't remember numbers Unless you associated them with either a color or some factual information or something?
Yeah. Well, it was not like...
I guess it was like, as I was learning the number, as I was learning the relationship numbers had, it was like, oh, of course they relate, because it's purple or something.
It was very unique, and nobody else understood me when I talked about it, so I didn't talk about it for a long time.
But, yeah, I don't think it was the only way that I could learn them.
I think it was just a natural...
It was natural for me.
But, hey, I'll do some more research.
If I do find anything, I'll share it with you guys.
Oh, I would love to hear it, for sure.
And does your therapist have any...
Like you said, she doesn't have a lot of experience with it, but does she have any insight at all about it?
No, other than that...
We discussed how the brain develops differently during trauma in the early years of a child.
If a child is sexually abused, they're hypersexual or hypersensitive to sexual zones in their body.
They have this...
Just, you know, hypersensitive activity to some things and the way they process information is different.
I'm sorry, just to interrupt you for one second, we're going to play a baby giggle.
All right, sorry about sorry about that.
I had a thought to add to that, if that's alright.
Sure. I do have, and this is a personal pet theory, which means very likely completely wrong, but I do find that people who've gone through a lot of childhood stressors tend to be more drawn towards the arts than the sciences.
And by sciences, I would include disciplines like engineering, physics, chemistry, and mathematics.
And the reason for that is that, again, all nonsense theory, but the reason for that, I think, is because in abusive families, absolutes are incredibly dangerous.
And the best thing that can usually be done as a defensive strategy for children in abusive, and by that I mean violent families, is to fog, right?
Which is a defense that we've all experienced and most of us have performed if we've come from those kinds of backgrounds.
So in tyrannical or abusive families, absolutes are very dangerous.
They're used to abuse, right?
You're absolutely bad.
What you did was absolutely wrong.
You know, certainty and absolutes are things that are terrifying because they're always associated with abuse.
And so, I know that for myself, when I... I mean, I was...
Again, this is me extrapolating from my own personal experiences.
So, this is a theory based more on my experiences than any kind of truth.
So, with all the, you know, caveats to do with that.
But... I shied away from math because math had an absolute answer, right?
I mean, the math at least that I was dealing with at sort of, you know, junior high school and high school level, I would get anxious around math because there would be a right or wrong answer.
And I was so associated with if I got things wrong, I would be attacked that where I was in a situation of right and wrong, I got very scared and very tense.
And yet, when I was in situations where I could do creative things, writing and poetry and so on, and acting and that, it's more diffuse, right?
It's less clear right and wrong.
I mean, there's still standards of quality and it's not entirely subjective, but it's not like right and wrong in that way.
Because the interesting thing is that I had the same experience with math with grammar.
Because I'm a pretty good writer, and yet I would get anxious around grammar as a kid, because grammar has a right and wrong answer.
And so I found that I shied away from disciplines where there was that absolute right and wrong.
And, of course, I've managed to, I think, rectify that to some degree with philosophy.
But that was my experience.
And I don't know if that strikes anyone else as valid for themselves.
But I just sort of throw that out there that I think it may have something to do with that.
Well, I can very much relate.
So, um, It's interesting because I have always kind of leaned toward the arts, but I could not discipline myself within an art form.
I've talked to you before about singing, but every time, you know, every time I want to take a class or something, it just doesn't work out because I'm not willing to do the work or something.
Yeah. And there can be great benefits to the focus on the more sort of, quote, Creativity, but it doesn't tend to make us very good engineers, right?
It doesn't tend to make us very good mathematicians.
And I can think of exceptions to this rule, if you can even call it a rule, to this vague tendency that I've observed.
I can certainly think of exceptions.
But what I would say is that the people that I know who both went through abusive histories and became scientists or mathematicians of some kind, they tended to not deal with the abuse.
In fact, not just tended.
I don't know if a single person who went through, and I'm thinking of like everyone I knew in high school, I can't think of a single person who ended up in the sciences who dealt with his or her abusive history if that was what they experienced.
And I think that what that means is that for me, the rigidity of their own approach to their own histories, which is I'm not going to deal with this, these kinds of rigid walls.
They actually internalized the absolutes of their abusive histories, and that's why they could work in an absolutist field, because they'd become kind of dictatorial to themselves.
And nobody I know who's really worked hard to deal with the abuse has ended up in one of those kinds of.
Absolutely. When I think of the people I know who are strictly into engineering and things like that, They're not very emotional.
Well, I'm sorry, I can't really make that assertion, but I do really relate to what you're saying.
I actually think it's a very valid opinion, even though it's not proven or anything.
Yeah, it's just a way of exploring or looking at things.
I mean, there's no way that I would ever call this anything.
You couldn't ever prove that, right?
Discover certain tendencies and I just throw that out there as a general observation that I've had and it just means to focus on strengths rather than that which is the most challenging to some degree based on our histories.
Thank you so much.
You are absolutely welcome and thank you.
That was a very interesting question and do let us know if you find out anything more about that.
All right.
We have time for one more question.
I think, yes, we do.
So if you would like to add in your 2.2 cents worth, we are all ears.
Thank you.
Last call for questions.
Last call for questions.
You can't go home.
You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here.
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