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Nov. 1, 2009 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

01:36:24

1496 Sunday Show Nov 1 2009

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	All right. Well, I guess we're set.
	Sorry for the delays. It is Stéphane Molyneux from Dear Free Domain Radioville on Sunday.
	Pinch-punch, first day of the month, November the 1st, 2009.
	It is time for our regular Sunday show.
	And I don't have any particular Brainiac introduction, as if I ever did.
	But we are happy to take questions or comments from y'all.
	That would be the listener of Brains.
	So I'll just pause now if anybody wants to jump in with a comment or question or issue or suggestion or brilliant marketing idea for Free Domain Radio.
	Whatever is rattling around like a stack full of peas in your gourd, I am more than happy to listen to.
	Somebody has said, send Richard Dawkins three copies of all of your books.
	Get an interview with him. I could certainly give that a shot, though I can't imagine that that would be time too productively spent.
	I think he may be a tad high up on the intellectual pecking order of Freedom Aid Radio for him to bother with us.
	I mean, people often send me books all the time.
	And in particular, if they haven't been published by some third party press, Let me send you my self-published book.
	I'm sure Richard Dawkins is even more busy than I am, and the odds that he's going to actually sit down and listen to a self-published book is very low.
	So I think that that will come in time, but I don't think it would be the best use of my time at the moment.
	I mean, anybody's welcome to send my books to him, of course.
	I don't think that it would be a great use of my time.
	I think we have to be a little bit more patient.
	Remember, this is only a full-time gig.
	It's two and a half years old. So it's very early in the flow of philosophy and recognition.
	And I think we're doing very well.
	But I think we should probably wait a little bit before trying to corner the most prominent atheist on the planet.
	We shall see and of course I'm sure he would be interested in UPB probably most of all but there wouldn't be much of a chance to interview him on UPB and I'm also not I would not say that I'm skilled enough in any kind of the sciences to give him a run for his money on the scientific side but I have been enjoying his book The Greatest Show on Earth.
	I think it's interesting and he starts off with a very core philosophical concept which is the degree to which Evolution as a concept was hampered by Platonic idealism, the idea that there is a perfect rabbit and a perfect camel, which of course evolution says that the perfection is in the survivability of the moment and the adaptation to the immediate environment and the ability to avoid being eaten and to eat others, which flies in the face of Platonic idealism, which was very popular with Christianity.
	Yeah, so I think that it's a very interesting, the degree to which he delves into philosophy as a barrier to the progress of science.
	I've also been reading something quite interesting, which is a book on infant development.
	It's really good.
	I'm just at this part where the woman is talking about the degree to which a scientist Has a similar set of problem-solving exploratory mechanics and capacities as a baby, right?
	The babies explore their environment, look for patterns, try to develop patterns, set up theories about the world, test those theories continually against what happens in the world and is constantly refining.
	The babies are constantly refining their theories based upon the empirical feedback that they get from their quote experiment.
	About the world and it's very interesting that I think if it's sort of babies are allowed to do that It seems to me much more likely that they would grow up to be empirical scientists or at least empirical thinkers and respect science So I might read that little chat or that little section from the book It's only about a page or two, but it's very interesting again I sort of really focus on the degree to which our greatest abstractions really reach right down into the core of our very first experiences and so I think That is very interesting.
	Again, anything which props up one of my particular theories, I will get behind 150%.
	Actually, I'm happy to put stuff out there that disagrees with them, but that I think was a particularly good example of it.
	I hope that you'll enjoy that and I will try to read that.
	Alison Gopnik is her name.
	She was actually on The Daily Show, I think, or The Colbert Rapport.
	A couple of weeks ago, and she's got some interesting lectures on iTunes, iTunes University, I think it is.
	I think somebody has posted the link to that.
	But it is interesting the degree to which she says that the pursuit of science as an adult is just a conceptualized expansion of what babies do in their exploration of the world and their formulation of theories.
	Alright, but this is your show, my friends, my brethren and sistren.
	So if you have your comments and questions, criticisms and calumnies, I am all with the ears.
	Somebody has asked me what my opinion is of a video posted with Lawrence Krauss and the RDF about the universe having been sprung from nothing.
	I haven't watched it yet, I'm sorry.
	I haven't had a chance to...
	I haven't had a chance to watch it yet.
	But, you know, my opinion would be that if it's good science, I'm all behind it.
	I certainly don't have any capacity to judge the science, but I think if it's good science...
	And to me, good science is, you know, where there's lots of physical evidence and so on, and where there's not a social conclusion that is brought out of it, right?
	So, I mean, global warming, there is a, you know, I consider it bad science, sort of my amateur opinion.
	I consider it bad science, Because it has a specific goal behind it, right?
	So it's funded for a specific goal, and it has a goal, obviously, status power.
	So that would be my criticism of that.
	Somebody's asked, Steph, when did you have your breakthrough moment with UPB? When did you first start writing ideas down about it?
	Was it pre-2006?
	No, it wasn't actually. I did not have the solution to UBB when I first began to sit down to write Proving Libertarian Morality.
	Which I probably think was published in late 06.
	But I knew that there was a solution.
	I knew that I could figure it out.
	I just basically sat down with a monster cup of coffee and I said to myself, basically, this is back before babies, of course.
	But I said to myself, I said, I'm not going to get back up from this table until I have sorted out the problem of ethics.
	And so I just sat there and, you know, I basically thought until my brain sort of slowly melted out my ears and came up with UPB after a certain amount of trial and error.
	But it really is just a man, I'm going to sit down here, I'm going to do this thing, and I'm not going to stop until it's done.
	I mean, sometimes that's the only way to get things done.
	And you just have to sort of sit down and say, I'm going to fix this and find a goddamn solution to this goddamn problem.
	And, of course, then it took a long time.
	And I've been meaning to gather together all the videos and so on because lots of people read UPB and go WGFFFMF. And so I'd be meaning to sort of gather together a UPB stream.
	And no, I didn't allow myself bathroom breaks.
	That was one of the major motivations.
	You know, these universally preferable bowel movements were very close.
	So, yeah, that's sort of how that came about.
	And then I sort of refined, of course, a lot from there.
	But that was UPBM. That's how it came about.
	And I'm sort of very glad that I did.
	The stuff around DROs and the first one, the Stateless Society and Examination of Alternatives, that came about out of a debate I was having with some people at work.
	Who were skeptical around a very small state society.
	And that was a real just, the answer just kind of hit me.
	And actually, it was one of these things.
	It was so cliched. I was up at a whiteboard trying to explain something.
	The idea hit me and I literally took five steps backwards and half collapsed in my chair.
	I was so excited by it.
	So that's how that came along, if that makes any sense.
	So it was very exciting indeed.
	Hello, Steph. Hello.
	Hi, this is Kyle.
	I just wanted to thank you for the quick turnover on the podcast for the projecting of virtue.
	Was it you who came up with the idea?
	Yeah, it was.
	Freaking great idea. I just wanted to compliment you on that.
	That's just freak me.
	I mean, sometimes I'm just trying to catch up with the listeners.
	That was a great, great idea.
	And it had not even crossed my mind.
	I don't mean to say that every idea which doesn't cross my mind, which anyone comes up with is a great idea, but it's an obvious one to do, which had never occurred to me whatsoever.
	So thank you so much for taking the time to post that.
	Oh, yeah. It hit me in the exact same way when I was reading it, and then...
	Jung talked about his patient, and I was just like, oh my god, of course you would project positive things along with the negative things.
	There's no reason why they would be divided.
	And I thought it was really interesting because it hadn't even occurred to me where you took the podcast in that it's the people exploiting.
	They kind of want you to...
	Oh, man.
	They want you to...
	Project your positive qualities into them because then that gives them power over you and also takes away any sort of power that you have or anything like that.
	Even when I had just been thinking about it, it was at the level of people just diminishing themselves.
	It was more, I guess, at the macro level.
	Sorry, I'm a little jumbled because I only just listened to the podcast.
	But if you have somebody...
	When it came up, when I talked to a friend, it was a quality that she had.
	She was projecting into the friend, it looked like to me, and was diminishing her own aspect of that.
	So it was like, oh, well, I'm not very good at feeling emotions, but my friend here is really good, and I admire that in them.
	And it was kind of a way to keep yourself from having to really be all that you can be.
	Not like the Army, but just your full potential, which is something that I've actually been sort of...
	Stepping into myself that I think that I'm starting to just through all this like self-work and philosophy and like thinking and introspection and talking with some like really great people like I'm starting to come up against my like what I think my true potential is and it's pretty it's kind of daunting to me like I feel sort of scared about about what it is that I want to do and where like I want to go like kind of the things that I'm hoping to be able to achieve with my life in the world and stuff And so that kind of idea just really struck me that you would want...
	I can see and understand wanting to project your good qualities out so that it's like, oh, well, I couldn't possibly do this because I just don't have the capabilities or the facilities to be able to achieve what I really want to, so I'll just have to settle for these things over here and be happy with that sort of thing.
	Right, and I appreciate that, and I think I mentioned something like that towards the end of the podcast, because for me it's mostly just an epileptic fic in a blur of leaves, so it's hard for me to remember everything that's in there, but you're saying that your potential is alarming to you.
	Is that because the very idea of what you want to do is alarming, or is it alarming relative to the potential that you were kind of ascribed when you were younger?
	I think that it's kind of both.
	The potential that I described when I was younger was always fairly low, just because my parents would always be trying to cut me down or try and diminish my ideas and thinking capacities and stuff like that.
	And so I definitely had that going on where it's like what I was expected to be able to accomplish and do has always been really low.
	But then even just kind of like approaching, just like everything that I've been doing, I hadn't had any idea for a long time what I really wanted to do.
	And I'd just been kind of sitting on that.
	I mean, do with my life.
	And I'd just been sitting on that And not really trying to push it forward because I've heard you talk to other people before and say things like you don't really know who you are on the other side of all of this stuff and what it is that you'll want to do and even what you'll be capable of doing once you have your full self behind you and all of your power going in wherever it is that it wants to go.
	Been kind of just sitting on the idea and something that kind of came up for me was potentially the research aspects of psychology, which was actually really surprising to me because when I had first considered When I was doing some kind of psychology before, I was like, no research, that doesn't sound good at all.
	I would much rather do just therapy with people.
	And then I sort of realized that when I was, because I had started to sort of plan things out for a while, like doing the research stuff and getting Having to go back to school and stuff like that.
	Then I realized when I was planning it out that I didn't even know why I wanted to do this.
	I just had this desire to go forward and try and do that.
	I sat down and had a conversation with myself about what it was that I wanted this, why I wanted this, why I wanted to accomplish this.
	So much of it seemed so big to me.
	I wanted to go in and Like, study a bunch of things that I think are, like, true.
	Like, any time that you have, like, one idea was, like, any time that you have something on the show that I totally make sense to me and agrees with, but it's like, I don't have any proof for this.
	It's like, I'm gonna go get proof for that and make that, like, so everybody knows it.
	And, like, I wanna, like, just, like, change...
	The idea was, like, change psychology in a way that betters the human race.
	And it's just, like, really huge, like...
	effects that I want to make on the world in a very positive way and that kind of idea like being that big and like it seems like such a daunting task and it's something that's sort of I kind of like bulk at when I think about it and it's actually really interesting the night after I did that I had a dream where it was just really short and there was a character in the dream who wasn't anybody that I knew,
	but I could hear him thinking.
	It was sort of like an episode of The Wonder Years where you can hear the kid talking and then you hear his internal voice going too.
	And he was at college and walking around and he knew that he was smarter than everyone around him and he had all these great ideas and he just felt really comfortable.
	Like, kind of powerful with his own abilities and I think that that was kind of like the part of me that wants this to go forward and go out and do all these like really great sounding things and it's like the kind of part that I need to get more in touch with I think to be more comfortable with like where I want to go.
	Right, right. Right, right.
	And What would be the most useful...
	I mean, there's lots of things to talk about with what you said.
	What do you think would be the most useful feedback I could give you?
	Or do you want any feedback at all?
	That's another question, right?
	If you can give me some kind of feedback, that would be great.
	I've actually been having...
	I've been sort of jumping around trying to think of...
	Because I feel like...
	I've been trying to do...
	I don't really know what it is that...
	I just felt like I wanted to talk about the podcast that you posted and the thoughts I had.
	And then I've been sort of thinking about trying to get a call with you about...
	Because I've been trying to do, like, journaling ecosystem conversations.
	And every time I do them, I have success.
	Like, I get responses that I'm not.
	I know that I'm not, like, just making up.
	I'm not talking to myself.
	And then I think this is part of it, too.
	Like, I'll have, like, a really good one.
	And I'll realize some stuff that's going on.
	And then I just won't journal again for like a week.
	And I'll just kind of avoid it.
	And I think that's part of trying to avoid my potential.
	Because if I really start going into that kind of stuff, I feel like I'll just start taking off and it'll start the whole process.
	If you were to keep journaling, your concern is that you would start to accelerate some factor or something within yourself that makes you feel anxious, is that right?
	Right, yeah. I think ultimately it's something good will accelerate.
	Good will come out of it, but there's Definitely a part of me that I haven't really had any success with talking to or getting in touch with that doesn't want that at all.
	Because then I just avoid after I have a really good sort of session.
	And the question that I had wanted to ask before was, I think not really at the heart of the issue, was what was the process that you came to get Sort of like characters like have distinguished thing because right now with me it's like I can talk to them and they definitely have a type of character but it's hard for me to distinguish one from another.
	But I think that that is just solved by like just continuing to do it and have it all get more developed and Like, just experienced more.
	And I think that the reason that I'm not getting to that is because I keep avoiding staying with the process.
	And I think that that's more at the heart of the issue.
	And that was something that I kind of come to when I was trying to think about why I even wanted to ask you the question that I had been planning to ask.
	When I was like, I've listened to these conversations and these podcasts about this so much before.
	Because I really love the idea of the mycosystem and talking to everybody and everybody having a seat at the table and all this stuff and I know that I understand it.
	It's not a lack of understanding that's preventing me from doing this so I don't think that it's actually like I don't understand the logistics of how this works but it's this like avoiding that I keep having and not being able to get to the like kind of the heart of the matter of why I am not sitting down and Really working with it and going with it and pushing past this kind of fear that I have with it.
	Pushing past? Not pushing past, that's right, because I want to explore that.
	But that's the word that you use, right?
	And I'm not trying to pick on your words, right?
	But I think the language is important.
	Well... My suggestion, first of all, I mean, I was doing 10 to 12 hours of ecosystem journaling just because I was in an extremity of psychological distress and I was doing three hours of therapy.
	I mean, it was a part-time job commitment to me.
	I was single. I had, you know, few responsibilities outside of my career and I was doing this therapy and because my therapy was expensive, right, three hours a week for, I guess, somewhat two years.
	It's not too cheap. And so I wanted to get as much money, get as much value added as possible.
	So I would go for dinner at a restaurant and I would bring my journal and I would eat and I would write and I would write at night and I would write at lunchtime and I would do all of that.
	It's not a suggestion to anyone.
	All I'm just saying is that, you know, how do you get good at it?
	Well, it's how you get good at anything is you just keep doing it, right?
	You just keep doing it.
	And then there are times when I wouldn't want to do it, right?
	And so the natural thing for me to do was to sit down and say, okay, who doesn't want me to write today, right?
	Because it's easy to get in touch with the chatty parts of yourself, so to speak, right?
	It's tougher to get in touch with the darker and more reticent or more avoidant parts of yourself, right?
	And you have to coach. It's like trying to get an angry squirrel to feed out of your hands, so to speak.
	So if you're feeling a resistance to doing it, A, you don't have to do it, of course.
	It's perfectly optional. Most people in their world don't.
	But if you did want to pursue that, my suggestion would be, instead of trying to will it and push through it, so to speak, would be to sit down and just ask yourself or roleplay with someone in your life or just jot it down and say, What part of me doesn't want me to,
	and why? And my guess, though I don't know for sure, but my guess would be that the greater that we grow, The more we threaten those who wanted to keep us small, you know, whether they're in our lives or just in our head, right?
	It's a pretty recognized thing within the field of sort of self-knowledge that there's growth anxiety.
	And you can go to psychohistory.com and, you know, DeMoss talks a lot about that.
	He considers to be war a form of growth anxiety, you know, when people get More free and so on, social restrictions get broken down as a retaliatory anxiety and hostility that comes from the elder generation, which sacrifices the younger generation in terms of war.
	I don't know the degree to which that's true.
	I have only read a little bit of it, but the idea of growth anxiety is, I think, very, very fundamental.
	To progress in society.
	And so my guess would be that there are parts of you that are used to conforming to people who wished to keep you small.
	Right? You're used to conforming to People who wish to keep you small.
	And when you grow, it provokes anxiety because growth in your childhood often would have meant, possibly, a form of retaliation from those who want to keep you small.
	There's so many phrases that people use to keep other people small.
	If you can think of any people In the chat room, type them in, but I'm talking about things like, oh, so you think you're all that, you know, or, you know, who the hell do you think you are, or you've got your head in the clouds, or don't be such a dreamer, or, you know, it's so important to have a plan B. It's okay to have a dream, but you've also got to have some practical things in your life.
	There's just so many phrases that people use to cut other people down.
	You know, like, there's a phrase in a, I guess it's a fairly old movie by now, Where a woman is trying to, a working girl with Melanie Griffith and Harrison Ford, I think.
	And she's a secretary who wants to become an executive.
	And the other secretaries kind of don't like it, right, because it threatens them.
	And so one of the girls says, hey, you want to be an executive?
	That's fine. Sometimes I dance around in my underwear.
	That don't make me Madonna.
	You know, there's just things that people will say that, oh, the odds are so tiny, you're never going to make it, you know, or to get a steady job or, you know, get something with security.
	They just want to keep you small.
	Now, having a plan B, having a job with security, it's not that these things are bad at all, fundamentally, right?
	It's the attitude or the way...
	The way that they are posed.
	And I can tell you with great, great agony on my side, it was great agony on my side that when I mean, it's not really like I made a decision to do this work that I'm doing now, but the decision was kind of made for me, if that makes any sense, right?
	And I can certainly understand how people would ascribe that to a kind of deity, you know, like, God told me what he wanted me to do with my life, and philosophy told me what it wanted me to do with my life.
	It's time for the world to grow, and goddammit, here's somebody who can be a mouthpiece for that, so go speak, you bald bastard, right?
	And so that was my call to arms, so to speak.
	And I was very aware that if I was going to step into this large role, this massive role, and I mean, let's not kid ourselves, right?
	I mean, what I'm trying to do here is huge.
	It's huge, huge, huge. Philosophy is what runs the world.
	You know, the guy said, I think it was Archimedes, give me a lever big enough and I can move the world.
	But the lever is philosophy always.
	And given the number of topics that we've tackled here, you know, everything from ethics to determinism versus free will, to art, to family, to mental health, to self-knowledge and relationship to mental health.
	I mean, lordy, lordy, lordy, it's just a million and one topics, which have been thorny challenges for philosophy throughout history.
	And even if we've solved 10% of them, it's a huge step forward.
	I think we've done a lot better than that.
	And I was very aware that if I was going to try and stride into this massive role, so to speak, that it's scary enough to do that even in and of yourself to say, well, who the hell am I to answer these questions or to try to answer these questions or to provide these perspectives or whatever?
	Who the hell am I to do it?
	It makes no sense, right? A software guy who went to acting school.
	Why would I consider myself able or competent to take a stab at the greatest questions of the species?
	And it was very clear to me very early on that I could not have diminishing people around me.
	I could have skeptics around me because skepticism is very good and very healthy.
	But I couldn't have people who would roll their eyes at my, quote, ambition.
	I just couldn't.
	Because it was such a fragile and incredible leap to make that, you know, it's like trying to do a huge, having the chronic doubters, the pathological doubters and diminishers around you.
	It's like trying to work on a big math problem with somebody whispering random numbers into your ears.
	You just can't do it.
	You can't do it. At least I couldn't, and I can't imagine how it could be done, how it could be wrong.
	But I think that is really, really important.
	Now, when I left the people behind who diminished, me, or ambition or philosophy or whatever, the who-do-you-think-you-are people, not people who had strong arguments against what it is that I was proposing, but people who just They wanted to place me in a skeptical and diminishing view of myself.
	They wanted me to look at myself as weird or obsessive or crazy or manipulative or whatever.
	Six million different pejoratives, I'm sure, have been floating around from various places.
	And I just couldn't...
	I couldn't do that.
	I can have real skeptics.
	I can have people who criticize solutions that I put forward.
	I think those are great people to have in an endeavor like this.
	I can't have people who say YouTube comments or those kinds of comments.
	You don't understand anything.
	You're just an embarrassment and you don't even know it.
	Or those kinds of things. Who are you?
	No intellectual content.
	No intellectual content, no logical or empirical rebuttals to arguments, but rather just it's like somebody wants to hold up a mirror to you in which you are tiny and get yourself to fall into that mirror and reduce yourself to an atom to hide among the herd, right? To hide among the sands, the grains of sand on the beach, to not attempt to grow, to not attempt to grow, because if you don't grow, they don't feel small, right?
	So they just want to keep you down.
	And when you make a significant growth or come up with a significant ambition, those voices or those people, if they're in your life and they are that way, they will try to...
	they will lightly mock you.
	They will try to give you an ironic and distant view of yourself.
	And they will try to make you feel about your ambitions or your ideals.
	I'm embarrassed or that it's childish or that it's crazy or whatever, right?
	I had one guy I worked with and we'd been friends for some time and he would sort of invite me over and when I began to become more ambitious about my thoughts and ideas and particularly When I was going through therapy, he actually had potential for growth.
	I mean, he read some Jung.
	We talked about some of his dreams from time to time.
	We would carpool sometimes together.
	And he had some real capacity for growth.
	But then he fell in with the wrong crowd, right, in my opinion.
	And they sort of drew him back to an empty frat boy drinking lifestyle, which he had had some of before.
	And I remember the head of that bad crowd saying to me, yeah, yeah, you and I are fighting for the soul of this guy.
	I mean, people are so clear if you just listen to them.
	And, unfortunately, he did make that choice to stay small, to stay in that sort of drinking arena.
	And then, when we would have social engagements, or he'd invite me over with some other people, he seemed to be compelled, almost against his will, to tell stories wherein I had done something foolish, right?
	He just couldn't stop himself.
	You could see it, and actually it was a bit uncomfortable for the room as a whole, because you could see he would just, oh yeah, and then there was this other thing that you did that worked out not well, or there was this other thing that you did that was foolish or failed or whatever.
	I mean, I just couldn't have that.
	I mean, he's welcome to say all of that stuff he wants, right?
	I just can't be around for it because it's just going to diminish.
	So I know that's a long answer, and maybe it's not even an answer, but I would be very aware of growth anxiety and be very aware of the voices in your head or the real voices in your life who are, if you were to confess your ambitions to, that they would say, forget if you were to confess your ambitions to, that they would It's not going to happen.
	You've got to be kidding me or it's okay to dream, blah, blah, blah, blah, if that makes any sense.
	Yeah, that does.
	And I think just in my own situation, I'm at the point where it's definitely the voices, the remnants of the people that were in my life because I have D-Food for my family, and I've had shortly after that, my family.
	my friends kind of went to, like, I had a conversation with one of them, and they all just kind of went when that didn't go well.
	And really right now, I think the reason why I am approaching this at this point is just because the friends that I, like, my wife and the friends that I do have are just so encouraging and awesome, and, like, we spend, like, last week we had, like, we spent three of the nights having, like, three-hour-long conversations that were just really, like, Like deep and insightful and.
	Just really amazing.
	I did bring these things up to them, and they were really encouraging.
	They had their own kind of things that came up also that we talked about.
	It was just really awesome.
	I have all these great experiences in my real life, and I think that some of that, too, is the kind of effect that I think that it might be having is that it sort of highlights the negative things that I used to have.
	Right. Just because these people, I've met them in person once or twice, and mostly all of our communications are electronic, and it's like we're having these rich, deep, honest, amazing relationships and conversations, and I spent my whole life before that with people and didn't even have an inkling of that.
	So I think that it is the...
	Those people projected into my head their aspects of myself that this stuff is coming from.
	And I think that that is why I've been having trouble with it because I was clearly able to see the people who were kind of bringing me down in real life outside of my head and I got them out.
	But I've been having a much harder time with the internal aspects of that.
	Oh yeah, absolutely. The internalization of the voices of those who have authority over us as children is a very foundational aspect of our identity, and it is the real challenge.
	This is why social change is so slow, because it's very hard to grow past these diminishing voices.
	There's a silent battle that goes on.
	When you try to grow those who are threatened by your growth, they won't attack you openly.
	Usually, what they'll do is they'll just create environments wherein you are portrayed to yourself as small, right?
	Through pauses, through eye-rolling, through, you know, well, that's interesting, but you want to watch American Idol?
	Like, whatever it is that's going to show a lack of, quote, interest in what it is that you're doing, but just in order to avoid the anxiety of you Gaining any real ambition.
	Now, the last thing that I wanted to say about this, and before I move on to another question, I appreciate you bringing this up, I mean, unless there are no other questions, we need to keep talking about this if people are interested, is that, look, I completely respect your ambition to achieve something great in the realm of psychology, and I have no doubt that you can do it if you want to.
	I really don't have any doubt that you can do it if you want to.
	Where there's a will, there's a way, and we're all geniuses, and we're all philosophers.
	My particular two cents worth is that I think it would be absolutely fascinating To do experiments where you could do scans of people's brains and then try and figure out, by looking at the scans, what kind of childhoods they had, right?
	So if they had problems with the empathy centers, you could see that in an MRI, you could find out what kind of childhoods and see the correlation that you could show for child abuse.
	And the reason for that is that For rape, assuming that there's no rape kit that's done when you collect the semen or look for bruises or tears, there's no rape kit for child abuse.
	It's always like, well, the child says X and even as an adult, the adult child says X, the parent says opposite of X or whatever.
	I just think it would be completely fascinating to search for and map The physical effects of child abuse upon the brain that do seem to be very specific effects all the way down to the hypothalamus on the brain of child abuse.
	So that it's like a rape kit for child abuse.
	You could scan someone's brain and you could say, well, if this is what happened to you, here's what the effect has been.
	Now, first of all, I think that would be very helpful in terms of prosecuting parents, but even more importantly, it would be helpful in terms of helping people to understand that some of their deficiencies are not based upon But some of the deficiencies that people who've had abusive childhoods have are based on genuine physiological problems or deficiencies that are physical in the brain, can be masked, can be seen.
	I just think that would be a huge gift.
	And it would also help parents to understand the negative effects of child abuse in terms of what it does to their children.
	So anyway, But whatever it is that you want to do, I think would be perfectly fantastic.
	But I would like to put this out as a caveat.
	You don't have to do any of that in order to live a great life in the service of philosophy.
	You don't have to, if you don't want to, you don't have to get a doctorate in psychology or a master's in psychology.
	You don't have to spend five or ten years doing experiments.
	You don't have to. You can, obviously, and I think it would be a great thing if you did want to.
	But you don't have to.
	You can spread philosophy working as a cashier in a grocery store.
	You really can. And there's lots of ways that you could do it.
	We don't have to get into those. You can.
	And I'm not saying for a minute that that's where you should be or anything like that.
	But I think it's really important that you're incredibly excited by new ideas, new possibilities, a new life.
	And I think you damn well should be.
	And I think that there's no aim too high that you shouldn't get behind and try and do.
	But I think it's very important to remember that capacity is not have to.
	Capacity is not a contract.
	Because you can do great things in the world doesn't mean that you have to then, because that's not freedom then.
	It's like I'm now bound, in a sense, But as before, I was bound by my smallness.
	Now I'm bound by my greatness.
	You don't have to do any of these things.
	I mean, this is what I remind myself every day.
	I don't have to do this, especially when the job gets challenging or fractious, right, philosophy.
	I don't have to do this.
	I can do anything that I want.
	I can get a job as a house painter.
	I can get a job in software again.
	I can do whatever I want.
	So I would just remind you that I think that the ambition is great and I hope that I'm not diminishing that at all.
	I think the ambition is great and if you want to do it and you really want to do it, you should.
	But I'll tell you that the things that we really want to do in life We're not ambivalent about it.
	I mean, we're not ambivalent about it.
	When I first thought that I might be able to make a go of FDR as a job, I felt like my hands were shaking.
	I couldn't sleep. I was so hungry for it that I could have chewed my way through a fish tank full of piranhas to get to the other side.
	An aquarium full of piranhas, nay, an ocean full of them.
	There was no doubt, no hesitation.
	There was fear, right?
	Because the greater our desire, the greater the fear that we're not going to get it.
	So, you may want to wait for that kind of just all-consuming, got to do it.
	And I would not necessarily say that you have to do X, Y, and Z because you have this great new potential.
	You can enjoy the great new potential for quite some time, figure out what you want to do, or rather, in a sense, wait for orders from the ecosystem about what it is you want to do, which is kind of what happened to me.
	But you can do it all.
	You can do it all and you can do more than you can think of.
	But I would make sure that doesn't become an obligation.
	Like now I have all this knowledge and this philosophy, so I have to go and do X, Y, and Z with it.
	Again, the purpose is always freedom.
	And that would be where I would continue to focus my thoughts on.
	Yeah, and that makes a lot of sense.
	Like, even where I was coming from before, sort of my idea before, and it's not completely gone, but it has sort of moved farther back, was just to have, like, I wanted to open a restaurant with my wife and then just, like, talk to people there about philosophy and stuff like that.
	Like, definitely the more low-key thing.
	And this is only something that's been thinking about.
	I've just been having, like, I've had tons of ideas flying through my brain.
	I've had to constantly write things down just to keep track of everything.
	But yeah, that is something that I found, too, has been really helpful to keep in mind that it's not something I have to do.
	Because any time I've had that kind of sense, then I feel Then I start to push towards it and it starts to really weigh down on me and always seems to end up hampering anything that I'm trying to do if I feel like I have to do it rather than I really want to do it.
	Right. I mean, we don't want to turn Capacity into marching orders, right?
	I mean, if you have... I mean, you want to live philosophy.
	You don't want to do philosophy, if that makes...
	I mean, that's a sort of annoying distinction.
	But it's like, well, now I have this knowledge, what am I going to do with it?
	Well, I think if you're thinking immediately what am I going to do with it, then you're not quite there with the knowledge as yet.
	If you don't mind me being annoyingly condescending.
	Look, I mean, I face the same thing all the time, right?
	But... Philosophy is not something that you do something with, right?
	Like, I mean, an iPod, you pick up and you do something with, you play music or watch a video or whatever, right?
	But philosophy is not something that is a tool or a thing that you do or something that you have to give to the world or something like that.
	It's not bad.
	It is something that you immerse yourself in and you live in for the sake of the challenge and the excitement and the worthwhile fundamental meaningfulness of a life in pursuit of truth.
	But it's not something like, how do I then use this in some manner?
	At least it's never worked for me that way, and I think that's good reasons why.
	So I would just remind you that, yeah, I mean, look, if you want to open a restaurant and you are philosophically minded, Your philosophy will inform your restaurant.
	It will inform your food choices.
	It will inform your hiring practices, who you hire, what kind of environment they work in.
	And it will have a lot to do with who you are as a human being, but have a huge amount to do with who you are as a human being.
	And you don't kind of have to aim it because you are it.
	You don't have to do it because you are it, if that makes any sense.
	Yeah, that does. And thank you for your thoughts and time.
	Oh, you're absolutely welcome.
	And do keep this posted. It's a very exciting thing.
	It's a very exciting thing.
	And I genuinely believe that we can all do enormously more than we think.
	There's no such thing as reaching your potential.
	Oh, you've got to reach your potential.
	I don't think there's any such thing as reaching your potential.
	I think that's to say that there's a cap on what we're capable of.
	I just don't believe there is.
	Well, thank you. And I'll go off now.
	Alright, thanks, man. I appreciate it.
	Keep us posted. Alright, so we have time for another.
	If we have more questions, comments, issues, problems, criticisms, fonts, suggestions, hairstyle, ideas, I am wide open like a Dan Oyster.
	Last call. Last call for questions and or with the comments.
	Someone has asked Have you ever changed the mind of a statist or theist of your same age group?
	Yeah, I would say so.
	I get these comments, actually.
	I get these comments from people who seem to be highly offended and they say, why is it that you don't care about anyone over 40?
	One guy wrote to me and said, why is it that you don't care about anyone over 40?
	I mean, people get old and someone could leave you all their money, right?
	It's like, okay, I guess that's true.
	Not that I need all that money, but as Napoleon said, you can only eat dinner once.
	People sort of misunderstand.
	They say, well, I think that it's important to, you know, talk to people who are young, reasonably young, rather than, you know, try to convert people who are older, right, to the truth.
	And, I mean, I've always stood by that.
	I still do stand by that.
	I mean, I changed my mind about minarchism in my 30s, my, I guess, mid-30s.
	Actually, no, probably a little later than that.
	2005? No, it was late 30s.
	I changed my mind about the Iraq War in my mid to late 30s, I suppose.
	But I think that's part of a process of changing my mind about a lot of things that just happened to be the last couple of straws to go down, the last couple of dominoes to go down.
	So, I'm thrilled to talk to people who are older.
	Of course, people who are older generally have more resources.
	I mean, trying to live on the generosity of the young can be a challenge, right?
	And, of course, that makes perfect sense because, you know, it's more important for people to eat than donate.
	They completely understand that.
	So, yeah, I have no problem chatting with people.
	I don't have any age cap.
	Oh, you want a conversation with me?
	You can't be over 35.
	I mean, I'm happy to chat with anybody and there are a number of people who've been on the boards who are older who are, you know, great contributors and so on.
	So I don't have anything particularly against it.
	I think that just statistically you're going to get more luck helping people to give up their prejudices when those prejudices are They're newer right when they're younger.
	But yeah, people do get offended.
	They forget how old I am and how much I've changed and think that I reserve change and enlightenment for the young alone.
	And that's not the case.
	It's just that statistically you have to apply your resources where you think they're best.
	And I certainly have never targeted the young.
	I try not to do a lot of hip-hop and I haven't pierced any visible part of my body.
	So, it's there.
	It's my preference to speak to younger people rather than older people, but that's certainly not to say that older people can't change.
	Yeah, some people have.
	But the other thing is, oh, somebody's asked what my original thoughts are about the Iraq War.
	You can do a search for the podcast or the video, Steph the War Hero, and that is all of my thoughts about it.
	It's very, very embarrassing.
	Yeah, somebody here says, I was converted to FDR in my late 50s.
	Hopefully that doesn't mean converted to FDR like you're in a wheelchair.
	I hope that that means enlightened by philosophy because there is no FDR. The other thing is that The other thing that I think that's important is that when people are older, they have more people invested in who they used to be, right?
	So if you're talking to a guy who's 45 or whatever, I used to think that sounded so old, not so much, right?
	So if you're talking to someone who's 45, he might have been married for 15 or 20 years.
	And I mean, it's possible, of course, that his wife We'll also be interested in enlightenment and growth and curiosity and questioning and all this sort of stuff.
	But the reality is that the odds of it happening to both parties at the same time, and then there's a ripple effect out from that, right?
	Which is that he and she may be interested, but what about their kids or their in-laws or their parents?
	What's happening? None of us grow in a vacuum, right?
	That's a Randian fantasy.
	You know, the Howard Rocks or John Galtz, they just magically grow in a vacuum.
	The only reason that those characters are believable is because they have no families.
	There's no mom and dad for Howard Rourke.
	There's no extended family. There's no Thanksgiving get-togethers.
	I mean, it would be silly to put that in the book.
	These are ideals of people who are separate from the social milieu that we all spring from and have around us and sometimes hanging onto us like a train of chains.
	So we're all part of, you know, no man lives alone.
	No woman lives alone. We are all, almost all of us, embedded into familial, romantic, or social, or friendship matrices, so to speak.
	And to change, the older people get, the harder it is not for them, I think, to grasp the ideas and change, but the greater the cost relative to their social, familial, and romantic or marital circles.
	We still have room for a question or two.
	Feel free to type them into the board, into the chat room.
	I'm sorry that we're having trouble with the server, but I just published a bunch of podcasts, and so 20,000 downloads all at once.
	I think I should remember to do that after the Sunday show.
	That's already before. Oh, the person who said, converted to philosophy to FDR, also starting therapy next week.
	Fantastic, fantastic, fantastic, fantastic.
	You know, therapy is, you know, it is more philosophical than philosophy in many ways, because it is really about digging into self-knowledge.
	And we all get the truth very easily.
	It is the resistance truth that is the great challenge, and therapy is hugely, hugely beneficial for that.
	Oh yeah, the Christmas get-together.
	My memory of it, and I'm so sorry, I've been meaning to post this all week, but I've been crazy busy getting this video together.
	And I'm sorry for the video. It took so long too, the video of the Philly debate.
	There is a beautiful, crisp, high-depth version with great sound, with close-ups and all that kind of stuff, which I was just dying to get my hot little hands on.
	But unfortunately, another guy simply is not returning.
	Emails and won't agree to a phone call and I've been waiting and waiting for months to arrange this and I just had to give up.
	So unfortunately we have this blurry distance shot.
	It's better than nothing I think, but it's a shame that The high-def version is not available.
	And it's just the other thing, right? Relying on people can be a challenge, right?
	I was supposed to get the video as part of my payment for being there.
	And, of course, then I wait to get the video, which means I don't work on the other one.
	And then all it caused was a huge delay.
	But sometimes that happens.
	So the Christmas Day get-together...
	I think it's sort of like 24th for a couple of days.
	People are absolutely welcome to come up and sump at our table and have Christmas with the cutest baby on the planet.
	Why would anyone go to Canada in the winter?
	Are you crazy? Have you never been skiing or skating or snowboarding or tobogganing?
	It's divine.
	It's divine. And you have to do a white Christmas at least once in your life.
	You just have to. That's not even an option.
	That's the only have to in the world.
	Somebody has asked, what would be your approach to changing the mind of somebody who's in their late 40s, particularly if they're not precisely statist or theist, but more on the left-wing relativistic side of things?
	I don't think I can answer that in any short way.
	You know, please refer to the podcast.
	What's a toboggan? Rosebud.
	Think rosebud. Amount of body fat on me, 0%.
	That can make for more challenging skiing, but don't worry.
	After a couple of days of eating at our table, you'll be fine.
	You'll be good to go. Someone asked, Steph, can I ask if it should be women for men and men for women in therapy?
	Sorry, is that what you mean?
	Like if you're a man, should you have a female therapist or should you have a male therapist?
	Is that your question?
	Just say yes if that is your question.
	Alfred is the name.
	Questions are the game.
	Yes. Well, you know, please understand I'm no expert on therapy, so I can just share with you my particular experience and thoughts.
	So, these are just my own personal amateur opinions, just so you're aware.
	My issue was with women.
	My issue was with women because of my mother, right?
	So for me, I wanted to have a female therapist.
	I just felt that was Really important.
	My relationship with men when I went into therapy was pretty good.
	I had friendships of almost 30 years standing.
	I had a number of friends I've been friends with for a decade or more.
	So my relationship with men was pretty good.
	It was my relationship with women that was technically what is known as the suck.
	So for me, I felt that it was important for me to have A female therapist, because my trust issues were with women, and one of the first books that my therapist gave me to read, she was a therapist who gave lots of homework, which was great with me, because I didn't have to pay for the homework time.
	But she gave me a book called Man's Fear of Women, which I would recommend to anybody who's grown up with an aggressive or unpleasant mother.
	It's a really, really good book to read.
	I can't remember the author, but I'm sure you can look it up.
	I felt that was important for me.
	Now, of course, if there was a woman who had a fractious or difficult relationship with her father, my suggestion would be to explore the thoughts or feelings around a male therapist.
	That was really what it was for me.
	My issues were with women, and so I wanted a female therapist in particular.
	So that I could feel confident that I had reoriented my perspective with regards to women.
	I just really felt that I needed a female therapist for that.
	Choose a good therapist over a bad therapist, no matter what the gender, or if they're transgender or wearing a Lambshade on their head, go for it.
	If they're a good therapist, it doesn't matter.
	But all of the things being equal, I would vaguely suggest looking at a therapist with a gender that's giving you the most problems in your life.
	That would be my suggestion. My issues are with both parents.
	Should I have one of each? Well, that's a good question.
	It's a little easier for me because I didn't grow up with a dad.
	Well, if you're a man, If your mom was your primary caregiver when you were younger and you have issues with your mom, I would go with that first.
	If you're a woman, it seems to be true that the person who has the most influence on your adult development is your No, let's just go with, I can't remember.
	I can't remember the exact quote or statistics, so forget about it.
	I know you're going to try it. But yeah, I mean, if you're a man, I would start with that, with your primary caregiver or the parent that you have the most issues for and look for the parent.
	And that's usually a woman, right? I mean, but it may not be.
	But that's where I would start.
	But again, you know, the quality of the therapist outweighs the gender by a factor of like 12 million in that.
	Yeah, and certainly don't hold off on, you know, if you find a good male therapist or you talk to someone on the phone who you get a good feeling about in terms of therapy, I wouldn't hold off until you got the right gender therapist again.
	I don't think it's crucial. For me, I think it was very helpful.
	For me, it was, I mean, I just had to...
	There's a... Marlon Brando wrote an autobiography which I've been meaning to pick up again.
	I read a borrowed copy many years ago where he talks about his problems with women, which I remember feeling quite...
	I just trust issues with women.
	I just found it hard to trust.
	Women and that was partly me and of course partly the women I was dating and all that so I just had issues with that so when I had a therapist who was trustworthy and there for me that that gave me something which doesn't fit the pattern right and that's the whole point of philosophy and therapy in many ways It's to screw up your pattern recognition by introducing things that don't fit, right? And that is, you know, we are pattern-making machines.
	We are meaning-making machines.
	And you want to introduce things that don't fit the pattern.
	And that's how we grow, although it is challenging.
	So that's why I wanted a female therapist I could really trust.
	So then I had a template for trusting a woman, which I had not been able to do, again, both because of myself and the women I was with.
	If I had the ultimate choice, I'd choose Steph as my therapist.
	Well, I think that would be an interesting choice because I'm not a therapist.
	I don't do therapy. I have no training.
	I just love conversations about self-knowledge.
	You know, I mean, therapy is, you know, I'll just give two seconds on that, right?
	I mean, this is not your misconception.
	It's a couple of people. Like, if you talk to people about their childhood, somehow you're doing therapy, or if you show them sympathy if they were harmed as children, that's that sort of therapy.
	That's not, right? I mean, you know, therapy is a long-involved Multi-month, sometimes multi-year process of sitting down with eye contact with someone who has specific training, usually in particular formats that you've experienced or trying to work through.
	It is, you know, with homework, it is entirely private, you know, one-on-one, face contact, you know, long continuity, long history, detailed histories, and so on.
	And, I mean, that's not the same as You know, one public podcast usually with someone talking about their history.
	That's just not therapy.
	But people do get a little bit confused about it.
	Like anytime you ask anyone anything about their history or anytime that you jump into a role play or anytime that you ask someone or anytime you talk to someone about their dreams, That you're doing therapy.
	That's not the case at all, right?
	I mean, I used to talk to friends about my dreams, and we would sort of sit there and say, gosh, I wonder what this means, I wonder what that means.
	That doesn't mean that we were doing therapy on each other.
	Somebody's asked, do you think therapy alters the brain structure measurably?
	Look, I remember this vaguely enough to just be dangerously, annoyingly vague, but I do remember reading somewhere, I've not been able to find it again, that there are measurable results in the brain through therapy, through only talk therapy, not drug therapy.
	Yes, I do believe that.
	And I can tell you, I mean, the before and after therapy is just remarkable.
	And you can't explain it to people very easily.
	And that's why I just say, you know, trust me, go into therapy.
	And I think people who've gone through that process, and it is.
	It's like chemotherapy. That's why I get its word, I guess, because it feels a lot worse before it gets better.
	But the after is just fantastic.
	Oh, yeah. Somebody said, like, that amount of sustained eye contact is going to increase mirror neurons or hypothalamus function.
	I don't know. That would be much, much more technical to me.
	All right, any of the last questions?
	Yeah, I mean, somebody's saying this.
	Sorry, go ahead. Oh, sorry.
	No, please. I'm really nervous at the moment.
	Sorry. I had sort of a question about organizing or actually being disorganized, which I am.
	It's like... Oh wait, I'm getting ready for me here.
	No problem, take your time.
	Remember, I am in fact very scary, so it's a good thing to feel nervous because I am, frankly, terrifying.
	Yeah, indeed. I've been listening to your podcast for about a year now.
	I'm really terrified.
	My heart is beating. It's a good thing I'm lying down because, yeah.
	So, being disorganized.
	I'm having trouble with everything that has to do with organizing, like appointments, thoughts, ideas, wishes, like, yeah, talking to you right now.
	I'm certainly disorganized.
	And why, sorry, why is it a problem?
	Oh, um...
	It's, uh...
	Difficult to keep track of...
	Of my success in, I don't know, life, I guess.
	Well, that sounds like a disorganized question about disorganization, because what's wrong with being disorganized?
	I mean, compared to what, right?
	I mean, because what people will often do is, like, I'll give you an example, right?
	So this morning, I wanted to go and do a podcast, and I could not find my portable recorder, the one that takes the microphone.
	And... I found it eventually in the garage in my baby's carriage, which is a pretty retarded place to leave it and all.
	I was like, oh man, I'm so mad at myself.
	Why would I leave it down there? I made a commitment to myself.
	When I come in, I put my wallet here.
	I'm going to put my keys there so I don't end up looking for things.
	Anyway, when I calmed down to my own self-irritation and started speaking to myself a little more reasonably, it was like, well, I could do that, and that's going to take me a certain amount of time every day.
	You know, 10 minutes, right?
	And yet, I don't spend more than maybe 10 or 15 minutes a week looking for things that I can't find.
	And so, I'll actually lose out this way, right?
	Because I'll have to remember and I'll have to put things in a particular place.
	It's going to cost me an hour a week to do that, but I only spend 10 minutes a week looking for things that I can't find.
	So, outside of the emotional irritation, I'm actually better off to just put things down and then, you know, if I have to look for them, remember that I'm still way ahead.
	And so that's just, again, that's just a tiny example, but what's wrong with being disorganized?
	Why is it bad?
	bad, why is it a problem?
	I, um, the problem for me is, um, I feel lost a lot of the time.
	I, um, um, I don't know what I want.
	I, I just know what to do.
	Sorry, do you mean that you don't know what to do with your life?
	It's partly that.
	Partly, I don't know what to do in the moment.
	Like, I have things that I could be doing, but I just...
	I don't have a cue.
	I end up just wasting time.
	A lot of the time.
	What do you mean by wasting time?
	How do you know that the time is wasted?
	Compared to what? And just while you're thinking about it, I just sort of wanted to mention that We're often in life told that something is bad, something is a problem, you know? It's bad, it's a problem, it's negative.
	But we're often not told exactly why.
	It's a problem, right? I think it's important too, right?
	You know, time wasted.
	Well, compared to what?
	You know, if I spend an hour playing a video game, I can only dream of that these days, but if I spend an hour playing a video game, Yes, it's true.
	I could have been brushing up on Mandarin or something like that, you know, going to the gym.
	But I enjoyed the time I spent playing a video game.
	I think that actually video games, particularly the twitchy kind that I like, are pretty good for speeding up your brain.
	I just think they are good for that.
	I think one of the reasons that I can think very quickly, if not necessarily always accurately, is Partly because I've spent a lot of time off and on through the years playing video games, which are pretty twitchy and require very fast decision making and, you know, resources and weapons and all that kind of stuff.
	So, is it time wasted?
	I don't know. I don't know.
	Like, it's really hard to say compared to what.
	So, that's my sort of, the first question that I would ask is, well, why is it a problem?
	What problem exactly is it you're trying to solve?
	Or is it just people have told you that you waste time?
	Well, there's a general cultural belief that If you spend three hours watching television, that you've wasted your time because you haven't been out, I don't know, cooking turkeys for the homeless or something.
	But is it, right? I mean, if you enjoy it, if it's relaxing for you, if it's fun, you know, life has to have its fun elements, of course, quite essentially.
	In fact, I try to build my life around the fun elements.
	So that's my sort of question is, you say you have these problems, and I'm perfectly happy to accept that they are problems, but why are they problems?
	Well, I mean, empirically, I haven't really got anything done in my life yet.
	Of course, well, I'm still 21, time to go, but I haven't finished high school.
	And, well, that's a whole mess over there.
	And why haven't you finished high school?
	I haven't figured that out yet.
	I'm sorry? Also, I haven't figured that out yet.
	It's also in there, in the mess.
	Okay, let me just sort of understand a little bit here, because I think I'm starting to see a way in which the problem might be framed.
	Again, just my opinion, but it's possible.
	How is it that your parents have let you get to the age of 21 without you having a clear idea as to why high school should be finished or having finished high school?
	Well, in my case it's one parent, my mother.
	Alright, fair enough. How?
	Yeah, how's that possible?
	And the reason I asked that question is that, I mean, if my daughter doesn't want to finish high school, she's perfectly free to not finish high school, right?
	But I'm going to sit down and make sure that she really understands the choice and its consequences, right?
	So that if she wants to, you know, go and join the Merchant Marines or something and spend a year at sea, that's, you know, hey, I finished high school.
	I went to work as a gold planner for a year and a half before I went to university.
	I've got no problem with her not finishing high school.
	But she's going to be very clear.
	If somebody could ask her at the age of 21, why did you never finish high school?
	It's like, because I wanted to join the Merchant Marines and my dad went over all the things that was going to be plus and minus about it and the challenges and the negatives and the goods and all this.
	So here's why. But my question is, how have you been raised?
	You said your mother, right?
	How has your mother raised you that you don't know why you haven't finished high school?
	Like, did she not have any input?
	Or give you any feedback or advice on your choice about education or not finishing?
	Well, she did, of course.
	She had the option of talking to me all the time.
	But I wouldn't say that she had a big influence on me at the time I was supposed to be finishing high school.
	I'm not sure what that means.
	I mean, I'm terrified that I do know what it means, but if you could be a little more clear.
	No, that's okay. I was living in another town at the time, with roommates.
	She was supporting me.
	You were? Sorry, you were 16 or 17 years old and you were living in a town with roommates of your own age away from your mother?
	Yes.
	Why was that?
	I wanted to be in this town.
	It's basically my hometown.
	Well, the town I was born in and we lived in another town for three years and I hated it.
	And I wanted to go back to the town I was born in and I did get the chance by applying to an elite school there and I was accepted.
	And so my mom said, well, okay, you can go.
	And how old were you when you went to live in this other town?
	Let's see, 16.
	And how often did your mother see you when you were living there?
	Just to say, roughly about once a month, perhaps.
	Yeah.
	Alright, and how far away was this town from where your mother lived?
	About 200 kilometers.
	Okay, so a pretty easy drive, an hour or two on the train.
	And how often did you talk to your mother on the phone when you were 16 living in another town?
	I guess once a week.
	Alright.
	And was your relationship with your mother part of the reason why you wanted to go to another town?
	I wouldn't have said that so back then and I haven't really thought about it until just now when you ask that question.
	But You know, it could be.
	We never talked too much when we were living together.
	Anyway, so...
	I'm sorry, I'm not sure what that means, you never talk too much.
	You mean like you'd eaten dinner in front of the TV and wouldn't say anything to each other?
	Is that what you mean? Or eat in silence?
	Yeah, kind of like that.
	I guess we exchanged some sentences.
	We exchanged some sentences?
	That just sounds like the most hallmark card in the world, you know?
	Happy Mother's Day. I'm glad to have exchanged some sentences with you over the past.
	I'm sorry I shouldn't laugh because it's sad, of course, but you have a very diplomatic way of putting it.
	Okay, go on.
	I'm having trouble figuring out how much we actually talk compared to others.
	You know that I don't I don't ever believe those answers.
	Not that I think that you're lying to me, but I think that you know exactly how much you talked, and I think you know exactly the degree to which your relationship with your mother may have played a role in you wanting to go to another town.
	I don't believe that you have a relationship for 16 years with someone and not know just about everything there is to know about it.
	I can't be married to my wife for 16 years and say, well, I don't really know what our relationship is like.
	So, I mean, and so what I'm asking is, I mean, I think that you know, and again, I'm not saying that you're being dishonest with me at all.
	I think you're being diplomatic, and that's perfectly fine, but it will go a lot faster, and I think you'll get a lot more value out of the conversation if you just don't hedge, but are just frank.
	I mean, there are no names. Who knows?
	I don't even know where you live or what country you're from.
	It doesn't matter. But I think that you do know all of these things, if you don't mind me saying so.
	And I don't mean this in a negative way.
	I know that I didn't talk about my problems to her.
	I get that, which is why you're 21 and you haven't finished high school, right?
	Yeah. Okay, and I'm just going to keep peppering you with questions, if you don't mind.
	And if you want me to stop, just, you know, tell me to stop.
	I'll stop. But when was the last time that you recall getting useful and good advice from your mother?
	It's taking me a while to recall the first.
	Just roughly. I mean, we can start with, don't touch the stove because it's hot, right?
	I mean, that's useful advice from your mother, but there must be something after that.
	Or maybe there isn't, but I just want to know.
	You know, not in the last years.
	Let's say roughly five years.
	So when you were 16, you got good advice from your mother?
	Yeah.
	And what was that good advice?
	Well, I think you just picked a number out of a hat.
	Yeah, yeah. You know, you're right.
	You made me do it.
	Yeah, yeah, no. Look, I really sympathize.
	I did. What is the last good advice that you can remember?
	And it's okay if you can't remember any.
	That's fine, too. I'm just curious.
	At the moment, I can't recall any.
	All right. Okay.
	And that's, I think, I think that's...
	I think that's...
	I mean, I think that's an honest answer.
	And I mean, again, I'm not trying to imply that you're being dishonest in any way, shape, or form here.
	I just think that you're not used to these questions, right?
	That's right. And I think that's really tragic.
	Like, I think that it's completely tragic.
	And you can relax now if you like, because I'm going to talk for a little bit, and then you can tell me if I'm completely half my noggin, right?
	So, you said you were lying down, so you can just lie down and relax.
	I'll talk about some things that I think, and you can tell me if my amateur nonsense means anything to you.
	Well, it sounds to me like you kind of dropped in the wilderness of life without a compass, without a map, without astronomy, without a north star to guide you, without feedback, without guidance, without wisdom, without advice, without interest in your success or failure, your future choice, your current choices and your future possibilities.
	It sounds like you've had to invent Life for yourself with very little feedback, with very little.
	That's why I asked about the advice.
	And there's a line, Alice Miller quotes it in one of her books from Schiller, I think, where he says, I got so little feedback from my parents, I had to raise myself.
	And like almost everybody who has to raise themselves, I did a very bad job.
	And I think that's a cruel way of putting it because I think if you have to raise yourself, so to speak, it's impossible to do a good job.
	And if you have to raise yourself and you end up not in prison, I think you've done a great job.
	If you have to raise yourself and you end up not addicted to something or promiscuous or with 12 tattoos on your forehead, I think you've done a great job.
	So I assume that none of the above applies to you.
	I hope that it doesn't.
	But it sounds to me like you have had to Invent an enormous amount in your life, which is an incredibly exhausting thing to do, because you have not been getting the kind of advice and guidance and feedback that a parent damn well should be giving her son.
	And so, to me, the fact that you've been allowed, in a sense, as you say, to drift in a disorganized and you say time-wasting kind of way, To the age of 21, without completing high school, though, you're obviously very intelligent.
	I mean, if you're listening to these podcasts, you're in the top 5% because of intelligence.
	I just genuinely and generally believe that.
	I can't prove it, but advanced topics that aren't of interest to people who are into, I don't know, WWF. So you're very, very intelligent, verbally skilled to follow the arguments and so on.
	You obviously have a thirst for knowledge.
	You enjoy learning because, I mean, these podcasts aren't a stroll in the park, right?
	I mean, they're challenging. And yet you haven't finished high school.
	So the only way that I can imagine that that could have occurred for you, my friend, is because you have been living without guidance.
	You have been living without advice.
	You've been living without feedback.
	You've been living without advice.
	To put it as frankly as possible, you've been living without love, in my opinion.
	Because when people love us, they notice that we're drifting.
	And they say, hey, you seem to be drifting.
	How are you doing? What's happening?
	You know, your life, I can see, is maybe not that satisfying to you.
	So what's going on?
	How can I help? Right?
	I think that's quite tragic, right?
	So you were saying you were living with roommates.
	Did these roommates have parents?
	Yes. I mean of course they did, but were the parents around at all?
	Yeah. I seldom got to see them.
	I guess just a couple of times during the whole couple of years.
	Right, so it sounds like in a sense you're a bunch of lost boys who were without Feedback, without advice, without help, right?
	Yeah. And I mean, you know, I'm trying to obviously separate my experience from yours because, I mean, I went through, I mean, something very similar, though, a little bit different.
	I wasn't sent away. My brother and I sent my mom away.
	But I think I really do understand the incredible challenge That it is to live a life where you have to invent everything all the time because you're not getting any feedback or any guidance.
	You know, people who get this kind of feedback and this guidance from helpful and productive parents, they don't know how advanced they are relative to us lust boys.
	You know, they just don't know what it's like to have to wake up in the morning like you're in a foreign culture and have to invent and understand the language almost every single day.
	The degree to which people have The paths ahead of them cleared by concerned parents with good advice.
	They don't understand. They just stroll through the woods and they see us getting all tangled up in the bushes.
	And they're like, well, why don't you stick on the path?
	It's like, because for us, there is no path.
	For us, there is no path.
	For us, we have to carve and chew and bite and hack our way through everything.
	Because we don't have guidance.
	We are the lost boys. We must invent.
	Every brick that we lay down in front of our feet has to be carved from a mountain.
	Whereas you're driving along a goddamn road that was built by your forefathers.
	It's a little easier. So...
	I just wanted to point that out, that it seems like you're living a life that is spiritually isolated, that you don't have people around you who are caring enough about you and your future to ask you these kinds of questions.
	You know, it always astounds me, though I hear it enough that it shouldn't, but it always does astound me the degree to which nobody's asked you these questions.
	I mean, these are basic and very important questions.
	And there's no reason why you would have asked them of yourself, because you're just trying to get through the day, right?
	And so on, right?
	And there's also no particular reason, if you've never had these kinds of questions, why you would notice them being gone.
	But I think they are really, really important questions to understand your life.
	So you can't change your life until you understand it, right?
	You can't get somewhere until you know where you are.
	And I think at your age in particular, to know where you are means to look back at where you came from.
	And if you didn't have that kind of love, where people are very invested in your happiness and are more than willing and happy to guide you, to give you feedback, to ask you questions, elemental questions about who you are and what you want and what you love and what you hate and what you fear and where you came from and where you're going and what your day is like today and how you want your next five years to go and all of those basic questions, which if you don't get them, you don't miss them, but the missing them shows up in the general vagueness.
	Of your life, right?
	That you're flying through a kind of fog which means you kind of stop and grope around because you can't see, you have no radar.
	And that would be my, again, completely off-the-cuff amateur speech about where I think you might be and that the problem is not disorganization or wasting time.
	The problem is that it doesn't sound to me Like you have the people in your life who love you enough to get down in the trenches with you and help you to sort out what's missing in your life, which is love and care and concern and feedback and interest in how your day is going and how your next year can be.
	And I think it's really important to be gentle with yourself about that because you sound pretty self-critical, right?
	I'm disorganized.
	I waste my time. Well, I think you should be more proud of yourself if you've gotten to where you are with so little positive advice and feedback.
	I mean, your mom sounds less proactive in a sense than my mom, and my mom was useful insofar as she was a massive template of what everything not to do with your life.
	Don't go this way, don't do this, whatever you do.
	But if your mother was just kind of vague and absent, you don't even have that template of what not to do, which at least I was able to bounce off and go the opposite direction from.
	Anyway, those are my thoughts.
	I don't want to give you the big tsunami of potentially useful stuff, but does this stuff ring true?
	Does it make any sense?
	It does. It does, and I don't have anything to add at the moment.
	Oh, you want to just sort of sit and mull this over?
	Again, I don't have any desire to sort of follow this up if you want to just sort of sit with it.
	I'm certainly happy if you want to talk again in the future.
	But my suggestion is always, which I'm not going to give you any more of my sort of two-bit insights, but...
	My strong suggestion would be that get into school, right?
	Get into school, A, to finish your high school.
	I think that's really important.
	I think it's really tough to make a go of it in life without that, and you're clearly, clearly intelligent enough to do it.
	So I think you should organize yourself to do that.
	And when you're in school, you should probably, you should, again, I don't know even what country you live in, and it doesn't matter, don't tell me, but Most schools that you're in will have some access to student counseling.
	And my strong, strong, strong suggestion, urging, is that you need to get a hold of a therapist, a counselor, somebody who can help you to process what seems to me, again, I don't know for sure, and this is something that you need to talk about with a professional, but a big void, a big vacuum, a big kind of interstellar space that you've been navigating without the kind of feedback that we all need.
	To be successful. You can't succeed in life without the advice of those who came before who are wise.
	You just, you can't.
	I can't. You can't.
	I don't think anyone can. There's so much that we lean on from the advice of those wiser around us that without that, it is almost impossible to get anything done in life.
	And it makes perfect sense that you are where you are.
	So, I mean, I think the high school thing is really important.
	But most importantly, it would be to get into talk to a counselor and just start to look at The effects of this parental non-involvement in your life and where it's led you to in life.
	And to change that, the sky's the limit in terms of what you can achieve.
	But I think that that would be my advice.
	Very, very strong advice. And if you can't get to school, at least get to a therapist.
	Right. Thanks.
	You're welcome. Sorry, go ahead.
	I think that's helpful. I'll have to listen to that again.
	Yeah, it's not that questions haven't been asked.
	They have, not too often.
	And they haven't been the right questions, I suppose.
	They're more like, why haven't you done this?
	What's going on for you?
	Why haven't you done this?
	Yeah, yeah. I mean, this sort of, I think I understand, impatient sort of rhetorical questions.
	Like, you know, you haven't finished high school, why not?
	As opposed to, wow, what is it in your history that led you to the place where not finishing high school was something that became possible?
	I mean, those are two very, very different questions.
	Because the first one isn't even really a question, it's just a criticism, right?
	Right. Right.
	Yeah, I gotta tell you, I feel a huge amount of sympathy for you.
	And I think that, I mean, to me, it makes perfect sense that you are where you are, right?
	I mean, it took me until I was 27 to graduate from a master's program because it's hard.
	It's hard to invent all of this stuff.
	You know, I was constantly broke.
	I had to keep stopping to get jobs and work.
	I had to work while I was in school.
	It's a really, really tough road to invent yourself every time.
	A friend of mine became a professor of economics.
	He's a smart guy and worked hard and more power to him.
	One of the reasons that he did that was that his father had been a professor of engineering, had run an engineering department.
	When my friend wanted to go through school, he had someone who gave him advice and feedback and guidance all the way through.
	And that's not the case for a lot of other people.
	And it certainly wasn't the case for me.
	And I'm very happy that I didn't follow that road.
	But I feel an enormous amount.
	I feel no criticism whatsoever.
	In fact, I feel an extraordinary amount of gentleness and compassion and sympathy for where you are.
	Because it just sounds to me like you've done a magnificent job, I think, on where you are relative to just not having the kind of feedback that you should be getting.
	From your mom, from your caregivers.
	And I just, I feel a huge amount of sympathy and gentleness towards your plight.
	I hope that that comes across.
	I mean, I really feel for you, brother.
	It is a difficult, difficult thing to have gone through, all the more so because it's not violent, it's not anything.
	I'm assuming that there's not, right?
	But that just, that kind of absence is really, really hard.
	It's hard to miss what you don't have, but we ache for it deep down.
	Yeah, I do.
	It's the old thing. With your intelligence, and you're obviously driven to listen to podcasts, and that's why I say you've never wasted your time, as long as you've been listening to podcasts.
	Yes, I have. That's one of the things I've, quote-unquote, wasted my time on.
	Well, I hope it's not too much of a waste.
	No, not at all.
	I don't think so. I hope not.
	But I'm just, you know, this is the, I think it's, you know, what I used to ache for at the time, and maybe this is the same for you, I wouldn't presume, but I'll just share it in case it is, is, I mean, you're obviously intelligent, you're obviously great language skills and so on.
	You know, who could you have been at the age of 21 if you had been Richard Dawkins' son or whoever, you know, whoever would be a great parent for you.
	If you had been that person's child at the age of 21, you might be graduating from a master's degree in a field that you just loved with every expectation of confidence in getting a job and navigating wherever it is you need to get to and getting a PhD if that's what you wanted.
	That's where you could be, right?
	Rather than feeling like, oh shit, I'm 21, I haven't even finished high school, I'm wasting time and I think that's the ache that we have.
	Who could I have been with some good coaching and decent feedback and involved caregiving?
	That is a huge tragedy and that's what I feel such an enormous amount of sympathy for.
	I haven't really thought about that before.
	You probably have, but just not consciously.
	I mean, I think you wouldn't feel like there was a problem if you weren't capable of these sorts of things.
	And I'm fully convinced, you know, and again, I don't know who you are, but I'm fully convinced that you are capable of these things.
	Again, it's hard to listen to philosophy podcasts for a long time unless you're bright.
	But if you'd had people who had given you advice and sat you down and run through your career options and run through your life options and helped you choose and helped you decide it and maybe even helped you fund it and really given you that kind of guidance and feedback and got the brochures and gone on the tours of the universities with you and made sure that you finished high school and you know, you shouldn't be inventing your life As a teenager, it's not possible.
	There are too many options and there's too much to survive in the everyday.
	And frankly, you know, a lot of us are pretty shallow when we're teenagers, right?
	So it's like, do I have a pimple?
	Usually supersedes where should I be at my postgraduate level, right?
	But if you'd had that kind of committed, invested, affectionate, loving, guidance, You know, you would be in an entirely different place.
	I absolutely guarantee it.
	And that is something to mourn.
	I really think that is something to mourn.
	That is a great tragedy.
	It's not a tragedy that you can't turn around.
	I mean, you're young. You're not 31, you're not 51, right?
	I know. So you can turn it around.
	But I think you need to mourn what has not been present for you.
	And then you can really start to build, with the knowledge of what was missing, a different kind of future.
	Right.
	Thanks, Jeff.
	How are you feeling?
	You're a little tough to read, and of course I can't see you, right?
	So I'm just trying to go from what, but just tell me if you don't mind, what are you feeling at the moment?
	Because I guess it's been a somewhat important call, at least I hope it's been somewhat important now.
	How are you feeling? I'm calm.
	I'm feeling quite sad at the moment.
	Quite sad? Yeah, well, about the missed opportunities, I guess.
	But, well, I'm hopeful, and I actually have been hopeful.
	But, yeah, I do believe that I can turn this around and make a success of myself.
	You can. You can.
	Look, I wouldn't consider myself an iota smarter than you.
	And given that you're younger, I can almost guarantee you that you're smarter than me.
	Statistically, genetically, biologically, that is just the trend, that every generation gets smarter.
	So let's go with the you're smarter than I am and I was able to do it from being a lost boy to to getting some success going in my life and I have no doubt no doubt whatsoever that you can do it as well but again you know my suggestion is you know go back to school get some free counseling and and really start to work with it that way I think a counselor can really help you deal with the sadness That I think has got you stuck.
	Because you sound sad to me.
	Again, I have no capacity to make any kind of diagnosis as an amateur, right?
	But you sound very sad to me.
	And you do sound kind of lost.
	And I think that you can absolutely find yourself, turn it around and get the kind of life that you want.
	And quicker and more intelligently than I did.
	Because it took me a long time, but I know you can do it.
	But I think that you need to have sympathy and gentleness with yourself and where you came from and not blame yourself or compare yourself to others who had a much easier time.
	All right. Well, thank you everybody so much.
	I'm sorry if I lost your audio, but thank you so much for your time.
	I really do appreciate it.
	It was a great show. I really do appreciate, you know, people opening their lives and their hearts to this conversation.
	And have yourselves a wonderful week.
	I have finished part two of the video, which I hope to post later tonight or tomorrow, the video of my debate with Michael Badnarik.
	And I hope that you have a wonderful, wonderful week, everybody.
	Thank you so much for your continued support.

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