1376 Thoughts About the 2009 Freedomain Radio Barbecue
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May 31, 2009 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
11:53
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| Hi, everybody. It's Steph. Hope you're doing well. | |
| It is June the 2nd. | |
| Monday, June the 2nd, 2009, I do believe. | |
| I do believe. | |
| And I just wanted to get driving for the final brunch of the barbecue, which is now, what, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, a five-day FDR social fest. | |
| Everybody's voice is still recovering from... | |
| The collective cat yowling of a staggeringly great karaoke evening where we rented a private amphitheater and regaled each other with enormously entertaining and sometimes imaginary lyrics to popular songs. | |
| And we had a pretty good turnout. | |
| We had, what, 36, 37 people? | |
| Which was great. | |
| First year, 12. Second year, supposed to be about 20, but a bunch of people couldn't make it at the last minute. | |
| And... This year, pushing 40! | |
| And next year, maybe 80. | |
| We'll see. It was a fantastic time. | |
| I was looking forward to it, of course, for quite some time. | |
| And it was everything that I wanted, and more, which was great. | |
| If you've not been to something like this, where you are surrounded by a community of like-minded, rational, empathetic, open, warm, and curious individuals, It is really something you should give a shot. | |
| And of course, I think that's FDR, some other place that I don't know about. | |
| But you really need to, in my strong opinion, spend some quality time with quality people. | |
| Because it's so relaxing. | |
| I mean, it's so fundamentally relaxing. | |
| To be in a group where, I mean, there was no conflict between people. | |
| um over five days you know 35 plus people over five days no conflict um if somebody found uh if somebody was emotional over something um i think we had two conversations on saturday and a conference two conversations on three conversations sunday night that were around more personal and philosophical topics which was great and uh But if that stuff comes up, | |
| it's no problem. Everybody is happy and curious and caring about what is going on for the individual who's talking about his or her issues. | |
| And that's a wonderful thing. | |
| To be in a community where feelings are not a problem, don't freak people out. | |
| And to be in a community where no one's going to say anything weird... | |
| You know, philosophically, ethically, morally, emotionally, relationally, weird stuff just doesn't come up. | |
| Why? Because there's a common framework of good old secular, rational, UPBRTR philosophy. | |
| And if you haven't experienced that, I really do strongly suggest that you kind of owe it to yourself to explore what it's like to be in that kind of environment where There's an enormous amount of good humor, | |
| an enormous amount of curiosity, an enormous amount of philosophical reality and so on, and nobody's going to talk about Jesus or Obama or statism or whatever, whatever, right? | |
| And if somebody brings up something problematic about relationships, there's curiosity and standards, right? | |
| Empathy, sympathy, curiosity, and standards of behavior, right? | |
| For people, that is sort of rational and universal. | |
| And if you haven't been around that kind of situation, I really strongly suggest that it's a great, great, great thing for you to do. | |
| For a number of reasons, not least of which is that it's fun, really enjoyable, and also that it gives us something to shoot for, right? | |
| I mean, we few, we happy challenged few We're facing an uphill battle, to say the least, about bringing rationality to this sad, cracked and mad world. | |
| And to have a brief glimpse of what a positive, happy, rational group can look like is a wonderful thing, in my very strong opinion. | |
| Because it gives us something to aim for, to build, to generate, to sustain, to nourish within our own personal lives. | |
| If this is what positive, benevolent, happy community can look like, that gives us something to shoot for, to aim for, to build within our own personal lives. | |
| I think that's wonderful. | |
| It's just wonderful. And so I really think you owe it to yourself to experience that. | |
| Even if it's only for a couple of hours, if longer, fantastic. | |
| But that is something I think you need to see, to see what is possible, to see what we're trying to To build. | |
| Is it a perfect community? Well, yeah, perfection is a sliding scale, right? | |
| And the pursuit of absolute perfection is the attainment of absolute anxiety. | |
| So, yeah, I think it's a perfect community. | |
| I really do. I really think it's a perfect community. | |
| In the same way that, you know, an utterly free market is a perfect free market. | |
| Why? Because it can't get any better than non-coercion. | |
| Does that mean everything's perfect about it? | |
| Well, compared to what, right? | |
| Yes, everything is perfect about it. | |
| So... The other thing that I'd suggest as well, obviously I think this, whether it's true or not remains to be seen, but I think we're doing something truly great, remarkable, unique, and unprecedented in philosophy and in relating and in psychology. | |
| And if we are doing this amazing, wonderful new thing, isn't it kind of cool to say you were there at the beginning? | |
| Who wouldn't want to see the Beatles in Hamburg or the Stones on their second gig or whatever? | |
| And so I would really recommend that it's a really memorable thing to get in on the ground floor of a philosophical movement that has some real potential to be an important thing in human culture. | |
| I mean, to say that you were there at the beginning is... | |
| I mean, there's some bragging rights, I think. | |
| There's some insight rights. | |
| And I really think that's something to think about. | |
| If you don't come, and I mean, if you don't come, you don't come, right? | |
| But if you do come, then you will remember the weekend for years. | |
| No question you will remember the weekend for years because it's out of the ordinary, right? | |
| Out of the everyday, muddy, eddy flow of social interactions. | |
| And so... Think five years, ten years down the road, you'll look back and say, shit, I remember that weekend. | |
| It was really funny. We had some wild weather on Saturday. | |
| It was warm and sunny, then cold, then it started to rain, then it stopped, and then the wind hit like you wouldn't believe, and we're chasing the lawn furniture all over the yard, trying to stop it from spiraling over in some cows-in-the-air manner into our neighbor's yard. | |
| I mean, it was pretty funny from that standpoint. | |
| And... You'll remember it, right? | |
| Whereas, you know, five, ten years from now, whatever you do in the weekend, unless it's something equally memorable, in which case more power to you, of course, but you won't remember it. | |
| And I think that, you know, life is like a thread, and there are pearls on the thread, and the pearls are things that are different, that you can remember, that are unusual, that are new, that are fascinating, that are inviting. | |
| And I think it's important to build a life that you sort of look back, and you see these pearls on the string. | |
| The string is the everyday. I don't know what I was doing in February 12th last year. | |
| I don't know. I don't know, but I sure know what I was doing when I was in Miami doing the symposium. | |
| Hopefully that wasn't February the 12th. | |
| I don't think it was. Right, so I remember the barbecue, the last couple of barbecues that we've had in the summer. | |
| I remember, obviously, where I was December the 19th, 2008, which was watching Isabella pop into this planet. | |
| And I think you want to have a life where you do things that are different and positive. | |
| So that you can remember them later on. | |
| Look back in your life and it's not just sort of a dull plodding series of everyday inconsequentialities. | |
| And there's a lot of life that is included in that. | |
| I don't remember all the times that I've ground through fixing up a podcast, updating a feed, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right? | |
| And I think that is something that's worth planning for. | |
| It's a general thing that I think is useful. | |
| It doesn't mean that every single day has to be... | |
| You have to have a string to put the pearls on, so to speak. | |
| But... I think that it is really worth trying to plan your life to have those things that you remember in your life. | |
| And I mean, I think the barbecue is really one of them because it is a very different, exciting, unusual thing to participate in, right? | |
| The start of a philosophical movement is not an everyday occurrence, right? | |
| And I think that you'll really remember it. | |
| And of course, the other thing too is that it can be the founding of good and great friendships, right? | |
| Because you'll meet people face-to-face who you have pretty free, cheap and easy access to Through internet communications technologies, and that can be really worthwhile. | |
| Friends are a true gold in this world of pyrite. | |
| Fool's gold! Oh, that was so close to being a pithy thing. | |
| But friends are a true gold, and to meet someone face to face is a wonderful thing when it comes to developing a friendship, a body language, good humor, A sense of who the person is, is really helpful and important, in my opinion, towards developing that kind of stuff. | |
| And that's another plus and positive. | |
| You know, good food, great conversation. | |
| Usually great weather, certainly interesting weather this year. | |
| All of these things are there, and it's no charge, right? | |
| I mean, this is a monstrous and massive and deeply grateful thank you. | |
| To you, the wonderful listeners who have made what I'm doing and what we're doing possible and helped it to flourish through, I mean, generosity of your time, your donations, your openness, your warmth, your empathy, and your strength has made all of this possible. | |
| And it is our big, massive MonsterFest thank you to everyone who has made this all possible. | |
| And so, it's a no charge. | |
| You know, we'll provide the... | |
| Food and shelter, and we hope that you will be able to come up and experience the beauty of a warm, relaxed, open, and fun group. | |
| So, hopefully you'll plan. | |
| We're going to do one at Christmas this year. | |
| A year is too long to go without seeing great friends. | |
| And so, we're going to do another one this Christmas. | |
| If you can come up, it will be fantastic. | |
| There will be great things to do. | |
| We can go skiing. | |
| It's almost guaranteed To be a white Christmas. | |
| And so we'll have tobogganing, skiing, snowball fights, snowmen, all these kinds of fun stuff. | |
| We'd certainly love to have lots of people around for Isabella's first slightly less drooling Christmas. | |
| And so we hope that you'll be able to come up or certainly to plan for next summer. | |
| And we're not sure what we're going to do next summer because if it grows the way it's been growing, it'll be too big for our house. | |
| But we will figure something out, fun and cool. | |
| So thank you so much for listening. | |
| Thank you to those who came up. |
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