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Feb. 7, 2010 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:53:46
1577 Sunday Show Feb 7 2010 - Freedomain Radio

Is 100 percent certainty possible? - a great debate. Selfishness and self-attack - and - fears of sexuality!?!

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Well, thank you everybody so much for joining us.
It is Super Bowl Sunday, so thank you for those who have issued watching tank-like men drive at each other and instead tickling their neurons with the boa of philosophy.
So thank you everybody.
I'm not going to do an intro because I know we have people here yearning and bursting.
With questions. So we have, I think, a gentleman and his brother who had some very interesting questions about language.
And unless you guys are the 100% truth dudes, in which case I would like to talk about that.
So if you'd like to, outsider.
Sprekenzi. Hi.
Hi. Can you hear me?
Yes. No loop?
No loop. No loop. Okay.
Should we start with the truth topic or...
Yeah, truth, that would be good.
And now you guys are Russian, right?
No, Lithuanian.
Lithuanian. Okay, sorry about that.
Sorry, go on. Maybe we can start with the language idea and then we talk about the truth.
I'd rather do the truth one if that's all right and if we have time to do the language.
Then I think you should talk to my brother.
All right. He's more with that idea.
Fantastic. Okay.
Hi, guys. Hi.
Do you hear me all right?
I hear you just fine. Thank you.
Okay. So we had a chat with my brother about truth.
Yes. And then we came to talk about truth.
What's possible and what's not possible.
The beginning of this session was about what is truth.
We defined truth as perfect correlation between concepts and Someone's head, the reality, external reality.
Right. Now, I had a question about that very definition, if you don't mind.
Okay. Now, this, I'm sure you're aware, this goes back to Plato, and this is also part of Kantian thinking and so on, that basically there are things in the world, and then there are things in our mind, right?
So you and I and everyone else, we're encased in In this skull.
And our brain is sitting in the skull.
And the brain cannot ever touch a tree.
Of course, if the brain ever does touch a tree, you're having a decidedly bad day.
So that's not really an option.
And so the only way that the brain can perceive the tree is through the evidence of the senses.
Now, a lot of philosophers have said, listen, if you can't directly interact with the tree, then you are receiving filtered information.
You're watching a movie of reality rather than actually interacting with reality.
So you require your five senses, which are prone to error.
And you have your memories, which are also prone to errors.
And you have manipulative people in the world who are trying to make you prone to errors.
And so there's a lot of things that kind of all come together to create this problem where you cannot perceive things.
You cannot directly interact with things in themselves.
Everything comes through the sort of narrow aperture of the senses and therefore the truth is always derived.
Like we don't think that watching a movie is the same thing as living a life or watching a human being.
That that is an artistic recreation.
And in a sense, what occurs within our minds is by many people considered to be a kind of artistic recreation of reality, which is prone to a lot of error.
And therefore, because everything we receive is filtered, we can't say that anything is 100% true with regards to reality.
Is that somewhat close to where you're coming from?
I see that like I'm building a model of reality in my head.
And my purpose is to build that model as close to reality as possible.
Yes. But because your brain is always receiving filtered information, you can't actually match reality.
Yes. Does that make sense?
Yes. Right.
So for you, there's no such thing as 100% true.
100% true would really be only possible by a god or some being that, in a sense, could directly interact with all of reality simultaneously, right?
It's a divine standard of truth.
Yes, that's right.
Now, I would quibble with the 100% there.
I mean, I would quibble with a lot of that, but I would disagree with the 100% standard.
And I'll tell you why.
Because 100% to me usually means...
The best that is possible, right?
So if I have a test with 100 questions, then somebody who gets it perfect gets 100%, right?
They answer every question right, so they get 100%.
Now, if I have a test that only has 90 questions, then clearly somebody who answers 90 questions right gets 100% on the test.
Would you agree with that? Yes.
Now, I think that having a standard of truth that is impossible to achieve does not give you the right to say that is 100%.
because it's completely impossible to achieve by any cognitive being that we could conceivably imagine to have a perfect and unified and flawless, direct, inhabited perception of reality is not possible inhabited perception of reality is not possible to any creature that can be conceived of.
Even, you know, I guess you could go supernatural and say God.
So I think what you have is you have a test that nobody can pass that has questions printed in invisible ink and in a language that you have made up completely.
And then you're saying, well, people fail this test because they don't get 100%.
But of course, it's impossible to get 100%.
So I would suggest that the 100% in terms of truth should be the greatest standard of truth that a human being is capable of, is capable of.
I mean, we could talk about other beings, but we're just really here talking about human beings.
That that should be your 100%.
Because to have a standard that is impossible and then say, well, we're all failing with regard to that, I think is not a reasonable way to use something like 100%, if that makes any sense.
I agree that it's not useful to call something false if you can't prove it 100%.
But the fact that it's not useful doesn't change reality, right?
Well, I'm not saying that it's not useful.
I'm saying it's not accurate, right?
I mean, you can't have something which says 100%, which is completely impossible.
Like, for instance, If I were writing a book on physical health, and I said that physical health involved absolutely no imperfections whatsoever anywhere in the body at any time, then clearly by that standard, everybody would be sick, right?
Because everybody's got a pimple or a blemish or heartburn or gas or, I don't know, polyps and, you know, just...
Or, you know, they've got indigestion or this, you know, something that's gone.
Their teeth are not quite perfect, right?
If I said that the physical standard of human health was something that no human being could ever attain, ever, then I think my standard of health would be open to question, right?
It would be inaccurate to have a standard and then say, well, look, everybody is sick.
Yeah, yeah. That's right.
That's right. Now, so let me ask you this.
We have a standard of health.
I mean, I guess human beings have a standard of health, which says, you know, everything's functioning well, again, relative to age, right?
I mean, when you're 90, things aren't going to be functioning that well, but you can still be relatively healthy or very healthy relative to other 90-year-olds.
So if we put as 100% the greatest...
What would that look like to you?
What would be the greatest standard of truth that human beings could reasonably achieve?
Like, I think that I'm looking at this truth question this way.
Like, I don't know.
We're buying some evidence about reality, facts about reality, and we're just making best guess about one person or another.
That best guess is made based on the evaluation of evidence we have.
If we have a lot of evidence, we can say that this thing is true.
But that means that theoretically it's not true.
It's very likely to be true.
And we have less convincing evidence.
we can say that it's a little bit less likely to be true and I don't know how how close to the truth we can get I don't know that. Okay, but it's not all equal, right?
Sorry, just to be clear, it's not all equal, like somebody who says, an invisible elf told me something is not the same as a rigorous scientist or logician, right?
Yes, of course. It's a big difference between almost false and almost true.
Sure. It's a very big difference.
But my point was that you can never get to the 100% truth or 100% false.
But what would you require?
Well, okay, 2 plus 2 is 5.
Is that only 99% false?
Mathematics, as I wrote in that topic, is a concept in our head.
It's not a concept about reality.
And in that concept, called mathematics, we can say that something is true 100%.
So in the concepts, you can say that something is true 100%, but in the real world, you can't, right?
I can't say that there's 100% that my concept in my head It's exactly the same as the real world.
Well, but we're talking about 100% true and false, so let me ask you something then.
And I appreciate your patience as I try to understand where you're coming from.
So let's say I look at three cars sitting in the street, and I say there are four cars sitting in the street.
Am I correct or incorrect?
Very likely you are incorrect.
When you say very likely, what do you mean?
I mean, in every language you are incorrect.
So, Ben, am I 100% incorrect?
I can't say that you are 100% incorrect, because there might be a possibility.
Indefinitely small that they are for cars.
And how is that possible? Maybe you don't see.
I don't know.
When I talked to my brother, we made another example.
No, no, let's stick with this example.
Sorry, because I really want to understand this example.
Let's make it easier then, right?
So let's say that you and I and your brother, he's welcome too, we're standing in a field and we walk all the way around the field and in the middle of the field there are three trees, you know, and they've been planted there and they're evenly spaced and I look and point at them and say, there are four trees there and there's no hidden trees, there's no trees inside the trees, we've walked all the way around and I say...
There are four big trees, so we don't even say that there's a sapling somewhere in the ground or whatever, right?
So there are three trees in reality, right?
Because there's no invisible trees or any tricks, right?
So there are three trees in reality, and I look and say there are four trees.
Are you saying that I'm not actually wrong?
I can't be said to be 100% wrong.
So I think that there's definitely a small possibility that...
We do not see the fourth tree.
The fourth tree is, and you see, and you don't.
How is it possible that we cannot see the fourth tree?
I mean, we assume that our eyes work because we can see three trees, right?
So... And again, I'm not trying to be difficult.
I'm just genuinely trying to understand.
I've never had that where I think there are only three trees and then I walk into an invisible fourth tree.
And even if I walk into an invisible fourth tree, I know that there's an invisible fourth tree, right?
I just say there are three visible trees and one invisible tree or whatever, right?
But I'm just trying to understand how somebody who points at three trees and says there are four trees is not 100% wrong.
And maybe there's a good argument.
I just can't think of one. I think it's highly unlikely that there are four trees, but...
No, but I'd like you to explain to me how it is possible that there are four trees.
How it might be possible?
Sure.
I know I've given you a tough question, but I think this is important.
Okay, there might be some, like for example, a small possibility that we are on some kind of drugs and we can't see the fourth tree.
And you aren't. And you see the fourth tree.
Or maybe someone tricked my head, my mind, and I can't see that fourth tree.
I know that it's a very small probability.
It's almost zero.
But it might be.
Why not? All right.
Well, let's try this then.
I'll go with you there.
I don't know of any drugs that can selectively vanish things from your site.
In fact, that really is not possible, right?
There's no drug that will say you can only see three trees and not four trees.
And even if such a drug were possible, you would see the evidence of the missing tree because there'd be a flat hole in the ground Rather than the leaves of the earth, which would be undisturbed.
But let's go with that as a possibility.
And let's say then that we have an infrared device and we have sonar that can accurately map the trees that are there.
At some point, you understand, it's not going to be possible to say that there are maybe not three trees there.
Because maybe you can fool the site.
But if you've got a sonar device and an infrared device and so on, at some point there's going to be the maximum amount of information that you can have.
And you felt all the way through, right?
You have felt all the way through the forest and you've not come across any invisible trees and so on.
At some point there is going to be the maximum amount of information about the number of trees in the field.
And at that point, do you feel that it's fair to say there are three trees?
I don't think that human being is capable of having a complete amount of information.
location.
Like the idea that someone intentionally wants to trick me and they manipulated my mind in some bizarre way that I can't see the fourth tree.
Maybe someone made a spectrograph and All other stuff in such a way that they show only three trees, while there are four.
It's very unlikely.
Okay, I can see that you're going to hang on to this, and that's fine.
So, okay, let me ask you another question then, if you don't mind.
So, you say that When we compare our concepts to things in reality, we cannot make any statements of 100% certainty, right?
Right. That's what I came to.
Right. But the problem is that I see, even if we accept this, I don't know, somebody tampering with every conceivable instrument in the universe, let's say, but what you're arguing is that there's no way that concepts can describe reality with 100% accuracy, but truth Is a concept.
Right? So you can't say that we cannot...
Like, I think according to your own argument, you can't say...
We cannot say things about reality that are 100% true.
Because then you're comparing a concept in the mind called truth with external reality.
But you've already said that we can't do that with perfect accuracy.
So you cannot say...
You can say that it is highly likely that we cannot...
Yes. It's highly likely that we cannot describe the truth, but you cannot say it is impossible, because that is violating the very rule that you're setting up.
Yes, yes, that's right.
And so, is that your position, that you're not certain that 100% truth is impossible?
I think so, yes.
Okay. I think that it's very likely that 100% truth is not possible.
It's very likely that 100% truth is not.
It's very likely. Right, right.
Okay. Okay, and so you have a standard of truth that is outside the normal bounds of what human consciousness is capable of, right?
You have a standard of truth that essentially requires a god to achieve, right?
I'm looking at this that way, that...
In a practical sense, there's no need to pursue that 100% truth.
Sorry, no, no, you can't pursue it because it's not possible, right?
Yes, yes. In everyday life, you try to be as close to the truth as possible.
Right, but you can't pursue 100% truth.
That's like saying, I want to jump to the moon.
It's not possible. Yeah, yes.
Right, right.
I think so. Now, what are the standards that you hold that says something is more true than something else?
I think evidence.
Okay, so evidence is preferable to no evidence.
And what else? Yes.
I think evidence is the main thing.
Okay, so evidence.
I would assume that you would respect rationality as well, right?
I think rationality is based on evidence.
Sure, but it extrapolates evidence as well.
It goes further, right?
I mean, you extract principles from the evidence so that you can apply them to new situations like gravity or speed of light or whatever, right?
Yes. Human beings observed external reality and they saw that all the reality they saw is consistent.
Therefore, they made the concept which is called logic.
Right. No, I agree with you there.
And so why is evidence not subjected to, sorry, why is evidence more important than a lack of evidence?
Because if you have evidence, you have at least some information about truth, about external reality.
Thank you.
Well, sure, but if I understand it correctly, evidence requires that we interact with the external world, and I think that that's precisely what you're saying is the problem, right?
Like, everything could be a dream, it could all be manipulated, everything could be drugged, we could be drugged.
Like, I'm not sure how you get to place a primacy on external reality if your very premise is that we can't directly perceive reality.
So, for instance, every night...
We dream about crazy things and we fly and we do all these funky things.
And that is obviously, at least obviously to me, is not something that is occurring in reality or in an alternate dimension.
So you have to, I think, within your philosophy, you have to say that external reality exists and we can perceive it accurately.
Otherwise, I don't think it's valid for you to say that evidence is important.
All right, so...
I mean, you're creating a connection between the mind and reality when you say that evidence is important, right?
Because you're saying that evidence is something that exists independent of the mind and therefore has a greater truth value.
Rather than dreams or ideas which exist within our minds which have lesser truth value.
So I think you're automatically creating a connection between the mind and external reality through the senses and saying that that is a higher truth value than a lack of evidence.
Do you agree that senses are imperfect?
They are not perfect, our senses.
Well, that depends what you mean by perfect, right?
Again, this is compared to what?
Our senses are perfect compared to what?
I believe, I mean, I have to rely on my ears at the moment to understand your arguments, and I believe that given the limitations of language and so on, and that I believe that we're having an intelligent and, I hope, productive conversation, and I'm relying on the evidence of my senses in order to achieve that.
So... The senses are good enough, right?
So to me, it's like a road, right?
Like you want to drive from Pittsburgh to Detroit.
And, you know, what would a perfect road look like?
Well, I don't know, teleportation or some sort of magnetic thing.
But a road that is good enough to get you there in a reasonable amount of time, to me, is just fine.
So are the senses perfect?
I don't think that perfection applies to organic constructs.
You're Ears are slightly different from mine.
We don't hear exactly the same things, even if we both have good hearing.
But are the senses good enough for us to have this conversation?
Then yes, I don't think that perfection is a standard that can be applied to biological mechanisms.
So, I mean, our senses are not perfect because we're capable of error.
Wait, wait, wait.
I mean, first of all, I said that I don't think that perfection applies to the senses.
And when you say we are capable of error, what do you mean?
Like, for instance, if I'm standing in a desert and I think that there's a mirage, the light rays are actually being, or accurately being, put into my mind by my eyes and by my nerves, but I am saying that is a lake.
That is a conclusion that is in consciousness that is in error.
It is not that my eyes are faulty, it's that the conclusion that I'm drawing from the evidence of my senses is incorrect.
And I'm not sure which it is that you mean.
So there's only one of two possibilities...
Our senses are capable of error, or they're not capable of error.
Do you think that our senses I'm not capable of error.
Well, here's the thing.
If our senses were innately capable of error, how would we know?
Right? We would have to have a standard by which we understood the truth that superseded our senses.
And since you said that logic comes from the sense evidence of material reality, again, I think you're creating a standard that is outside the bounds of what it is that you're talking about.
Of course, the senses are capable of error.
I mean... We see things in dreams that don't really exist.
And if you put a pencil into a cup of water, it looks bent in the middle.
And, of course, the eyes are accurately transmitting the light waves that are being refracted through the surface tension of the water.
But if you say, well, the pencil is bent where it hits the water, you would be incorrect.
Now, that's not the problem of the eyes.
That is the problem of the mind, making an incorrect assumption based on the evidence of the senses.
Because the eyes don't transmit to you the pencil is straight or the pencil is bent.
The eyes only transmit to you the light waves, which they're doing accurately.
And of course, if you run your finger down the pencil, you'll realize that it's an optical illusion that the pencil is not bent.
So you would then say, well, I have made a mistake.
You wouldn't say, my eyes told me that the pencil was bent, right?
You would say, that's a visual trick.
My eyes were bent.
We're giving me the correct information, but I came to the wrong conclusion.
I think that the senses are excellent at perceiving reality, particularly the combination of the senses, not just one, but a number of them.
And I think that the perception of reality comes to its highest possibility of truth when all five senses and reason and memory are all working in the same way to confirm a hypothesis, right?
So, for instance, if I think that there's a lake in the desert and I go running towards it and I dive into where I think the lake is and there's just sand and I get sand in my mouth and in all other places that can't be mentioned, then I would say, well, there's no lake.
It was just an optical illusion.
I misinterpreted.
If, on the other hand, I go to the lake and I dive in and I swim around and I drink it and I, you know, whatever, then all of my senses are working, right?
So I can see the lake, I can smell the lake, the algae, I can feel the lake, I can taste the lake, I can drink the lake, I feel waterlogged when I come out if I've drunk a lot.
And so at that point, with all of my five senses working together, with the memory of how water should feel, so if it was some sort of sludge it would feel very different from water that I had experienced before, With all five senses working in concert with reason and with adherence to the memory of similar occurrences, that to me is the highest standard of truth.
That to me is 100%.
And to say that there's another standard beyond that I think is to invent a creature that doesn't exist and to have a test With 100 questions of which 50 are hidden, and say, well, the highest anyone can get is 50%.
Well, if the questions are hidden, then the highest anyone can get is 50, and that should be your 100%.
That's the approach that I take, and I hope that makes some sense.
That makes sense.
What about generalization of said facts?
For example, if I try to drop something down and it falls down, I can make a proposition that all things on all planets in the universe falls down.
Like I came up with the theory of gravity, right?
But it's impossible to test this proposition in every planet on the universe.
It's impossible to test that.
Therefore, you can never be absolutely certain That this proposition remains true in all times and all places.
You can test it anywhere on Earth and anywhere on the Moon, and you can...
In the method of induction, you can infer that it might be true anywhere in the Universe.
But you never can be set 100%.
Well, sorry to interrupt you, and I think I get the point.
But again, you're placing a standard that is impossible to achieve, right?
Obviously, we can't go everywhere in the universe and test gravity.
I mean, that's never going to happen, because even if we could fly everywhere in the universe at the speed of light, it would take...
You know, hundreds of millions, if not billions of years, and by the time we got to the end of the universe, it might have changed at the beginning.
So that's a standard of truth that is completely impossible.
Like, even God couldn't do it, because he can't test everything.
He would have to move everything all at once, which would destroy the universe to test.
God can do everything.
Well, so you have a standard of truth that is not possible to achieve.
And a standard of certainty that is impossible for any being who is not, let's say, put God in there, any being who's not a God.
So all human beings could never achieve that standard of truth.
But I do believe that it is important for the practical application of truth to say, does it matter?
Right? So let's say there's some planet in a galaxy a hundred million or a billion light years away.
There's some planet which has a weird kind of matter That violates the standard laws of gravity.
I mean, just making some cluster of dark matter or some weird wormhole or whatever.
And it's a hundred million light years away and we will never get there and we will never know.
What practical difference is that going to make to the certainty that we have about every sphere which we can actually influence, right?
Right. There's no practical difference So if you limit the truth value to that which can be achieved, then you have the possibility, I would argue, of 100% certainty, because you simply calibrate the 100% certainty to that which can be verified and that which can be achieved by a human being in whatever combination of the five senses plus instrumentation and so on.
And wherever human beings have been, obviously gravity works and the speed of light is constant and so on, right?
And so that to me is 100%.
I think all you're doing is you're making the test impossible to pass and then saying, aha, right?
There's a shortcoming.
And I just don't think that's reasonable.
That's like saying that human beings should be 30 feet tall and therefore everyone is short, right?
I think we need to work empirically and say...
What is the highest standard of truth that human beings can achieve?
That's 100%.
And anything that's short of that should be double-checked and triple-checked and so on.
But I just don't think that inventing a standard of truth that is impossible for human beings to achieve and relies as the...
The mechanism which cracks the arch of certainty, the possibility that somewhere in the universe something might be different, which can never be verified.
That's my suggestion. I think you want to redefine your standards to that which is real, rather than that which is impossible.
What do you think about what's possible and what's not?
What do you mean? What is possible and what's not possible?
How do you think about what's the difference between possible and probable things?
What things are probable?
What are impossible?
I guess I've never really thought about that, but I'm certainly happy to hear why that's important.
Well, I would say that things which are Self-contradictory are not possible.
So a square circle is not possible.
2 plus 2 is 5. That is not possible as a true statement because it's self-contradictory.
Because 2 and 2 make 4 because 4 is just another way of saying 2.
They're synonyms. It's A is A. So I would say that things which are not possible based on the physical constraints of reality will not exist.
So for instance... You cannot have a spaceship made out of a soap bubble.
You cannot have a quarter-mile-long construction of a girded bridge that is put together with wheat and weeds without packing them down or anything.
So I think it's impossible for a human being to jump 100 feet into the air unaided.
I think that it's impossible for a human being to be 30 feet tall because their thigh bone would break every time they took a step.
So I think that things conceptually which are self-contradictory cannot exist.
Like consciousness without matter is like saying gravity without mass.
It doesn't work, right?
Gravity is an effect of mass and consciousness is an effect of matter.
That's why there's no such things as gods.
So I would say things which are self-contradictory and things which violate the known laws of physics would not be possible.
All right. I think that the standard is you can't hit the speed of light, because as you get closer and closer to the speed of light, your energy gets converted to mass, and so you end up getting ever closer, but never quite there.
I think that, again, it's impossible under our current understanding.
Maybe something will change in the future.
So I think those sorts of things, and I think those are pretty common sense and pretty scientific method-y and logic ways of approaching it.
That would be my suggestion. And I just...
I mean, the reason that I wanted to have this conversation is that...
And I really appreciate your feedback.
And I think it's been... It's certainly been productive for me.
I hope you've enjoyed it too. I just...
You know, I think happiness has something to do with certainty.
Because doubt is a bit of a curse.
It's a bit of a plague. And it's a balance, right?
We need to be certain enough to act with confidence.
But we need to retain the capacity for doubt...
To re-examine even our own most cherished conclusions.
And I say conclusions, not methodology.
So I will look at my own conclusions and they can all be overturned.
So for many, many years I've been very skeptical of global warming.
And so I think it's all a complete bunch of nonsense that's just invented to steal our money and keep us frightened.
And yet, if the evidence swings the other way, then I will, you know, I will change my conclusion because the facts or the reason has changed.
So I am always open to changing conclusions, but I am never open to changing methodology, right?
Someone sends me an email that says, Global warming is true because my house elf told me so.
I'm not going to be like, oh man, damn, now I have to get rid of global warming and the scientific method.
That's a bummer. It would take reason and evidence to overturn any of my conclusions.
So I am a skeptic when it comes to conclusions, but I am an absolutist when it comes to methodology.
And that has certainly given me a great deal of comfort and happiness because I don't have to keep re-examining everything that is in my mind all the time.
I'm just suggesting as a possibility that you might want to try redefining your standards to that which is possible and just see whether that makes you any happier or not.
I mean, I think that's important and I think it's a reasonable approach to take.
It's just a thought and whether you want to take it on or not, it's up to you.
But that would be my suggestion just as far as happiness goes and certainly your beliefs about what might happen on other planets with gravity won't change anything in your life.
life but I think that the certainty of methodology will in terms of happiness listen and I'm sorry I just want to make we've had a long chat on this I want to make sure if other people want to chime in we can continue and I really do appreciate your time and thank you so much for your thoughts.
Thank you very much.
I do appreciate that. We may get back to the language thing if we don't have other people who want to talk, but I think somebody else has a question.
Somebody has asked in the chat room.
Would you say the negative connotations of quote selfishness come from a misunderstanding of the nature thereof, being one of a priority order?
Good selfishness is to have your own needs as first priority at all times in accordance with biological imperatives.
Would you agree that though most people perceive selfishness to be exclusively concerned about your own needs in all levels of priority, which is absurd, would you not agree that selfishness is a type of humility to our biological nature?
That one's needs are like the BIOS on a computer, that it's the first basic thing that has to be on for the computer to function at all.
I think that's a very, very interesting question.
Let me just make sure that I understand it.
I'm going to rephrase it in ways that serve my argument.
I'm going to rephrase it in a way that hopefully is a way that still has fidelity to your question, but which I can sort of understand.
So, as biological creatures, we have basic needs, and those needs are very powerful.
Need for oxygen, need for food, need for shelter, need for drink, lesser order things which we can survive without, like need for sex and self-actualization and so on.
And that...
So we have those basic needs, and we can say that that is selfishness or not, but those are fundamental to us as biological creatures.
And... Selfishness is a type of humility to our biological nature.
Well, just type yes if I've roughly got what it is that you're saying.
And if not, I will try to get it further.
Yes, okay, so that's good.
I appreciate that. Thank you for letting me paraphrase in simpler language because, you know, my brain hurts sometimes.
I pulled it. Well, I certainly agree with you that...
Selfishness, if it is defined as our basic biological needs, has to take priority.
Because anything that we're going to do in life first requires that we be alive.
So if I want to do any good in this world, I have to have a pretty selfish desire for oxygen and food and, I guess, sleep and things like that.
So I agree with you.
But I don't think that is what most people usually mean by selfishness.
And selfishness is one of these words that...
Oh boy. It's like pride, right?
It is one of these words that is hijacked by every power-seeking group on the planet, right?
From priests to politicians to all too often parents.
It is one of these words that it's just a blanket condemnation with almost no standard behind it.
And I think I share your frustration with that, right?
So if... If I say to someone, you're a thief, that is something that is very specific.
It means that they've stolen something or whatever, right?
I think we sort of understand that.
If I say to someone, you're a murderer, that's even more specific.
They haven't just stolen something, they've killed someone, right?
So those things are condemnations or criticisms or negative judgments, you could say, that are very specific.
And I think those are very, very, very important.
When someone comes up to me and says, You're selfish.
I honestly have no idea what they're talking about.
And I think that's part of what you're talking about here.
It is one of these diffuse terms that is kind of inflicted on people in the hopes that they're going to self-attack.
It is nebulous in its essence, right?
It is inflicted on people in the hopes that they're just going to turn on themselves and say, I'm going to invent what the word means that's negative because of my own negative self-image or self-critical nature or whatever.
It is a nebulously defined word that is specifically designed to have the negative emotional content injected by the victim and thus used to attack people.
So if I say someone's a thief, I'm kind of hitting them with a club.
If I say you're selfish, what I'm doing is hoping I'm going to give you the club and hope that you'll just hit yourself with it by making something up that is negative towards you.
And there's lots and lots and lots of words that are like this in the English language, and perhaps for funsies one day we should all sit down and compile them.
Words that they're just...
I mean, nobody knows what they mean.
Fundamentally, they can be defined in so many different ways.
They're not about anything specific to But they are always designed to have you self-attack.
For instance, the word arrogant is another one of these words.
It's just, you know, people throw it at other people all the time, and I certainly get it myself.
And I don't know what the hell it means.
I mean, I'm not going to self-attack because somebody says a word that has negative connotations.
I want something specific about all of that, right?
I guess like the word cult, right?
It's just an empty label that is thrown at someone, I can't be bothered to fight you, but here's a pair of gloves.
If you could just hit yourself for me, that would be great.
Yeah, self-indulgent is another one to...
Pompous. Again, it's a label that has no specific content but a generally negative air.
And what it does, it just floats around like an eagle over a field looking for the rabbits that it can attack.
It has no specific content and it's just designed to get you to attack yourself.
And that's why it is usually said with such an emotional ferocity and venom and negativity that simply it's hoped that This empty word is going to carry all the pus of the other person's negative judgments and have you just drink deep from that bitter cup.
It's what happens when you don't have anything specific to criticize about someone, but they're bothering you and you're getting angry.
You will just give them a label that hopefully will stick.
People just try these different keys in the lock and say, well, selfish didn't work.
Did arrogant work? Did self-indulgent work?
Did Whatever. You're oversensitive.
That's another one. I don't know what the hell that means.
What on earth does it mean?
Compare that to something like a thief.
You're a thief. You just keep trying these different words.
This is what abusers do. They just keep trying these different words on people until they get one that hurts.
And it's usually one that some other abuser has put in there before and may still be using.
But these people, they just try these negative words.
And they're just like, oh, that didn't work, Dan.
That didn't work, Dan. Oh, that one.
That got him. Okay, I'm going to keep going on that.
But it's not any kind of objective judgment.
Anyway, I hope that that helps.
But that's... Uncaring is another one.
Again, I don't know.
I don't know what that means.
And you will also notice, of course, that these words are completely non-UPB compliant, right?
So... So if somebody says to me, and I can read any particular sections of emails that I get on a daily basis, somebody says, oh, Steph, you're just so arrogant.
Now, to be fair, I do get a lot more positive than negative emails.
I'm not a victim of this stuff, but people will say, oh, Steph, you're arrogant, right?
Well, what is arrogant?
Well, I guess it would be to assert things without any evidence, right?
So I would ask someone, what is the evidence that I'm arrogant?
And they don't provide any.
In other words, it's pure projection.
And this is what you need to see when people criticize you.
And it's not to make you immune from criticism.
I think criticism is a good thing.
But it is really, really important to understand the motives of whoever is criticizing you.
And do not let everybody criticize you.
Because that is absolutely disrespectful to yourself.
Criticism is something that needs to be earned, right?
If people want to criticize me, they have to earn it.
They have to earn it. I'm not open to criticism from any random jagoff on the internet.
I mean, it just doesn't even ruffle my feathers.
It just blows right past me. So somebody says, you're arrogant.
And I say, well, what's the evidence that I'm arrogant and they don't provide any?
Well, then they're being arrogant, right?
If somebody says, oh, Steph, you're selfish.
And I say, well...
By what standard are you calling me selfish and so on and they don't have any?
Then I know that they're being selfish.
In other words, they are acting out against some stranger because they feel uncomfortable about something.
Well, that's a selfish thing, to inflict harm on other people for your own dysfunction.
That's acting selfishly.
So I think it's just really, really important.
I have a pretty high wall when it comes to criticism, in the same way that I have a high wall when it comes to things like love and trust and respect.
I think... I think barriers to entry are pretty good.
Otherwise, you're just open to any ask clan who wants to push your buttons.
So I find that whenever people give me these nebulous criticisms, all they're doing is talking to themselves.
They're putting a bald face in a mirror and thinking they're having a conversation, but they're not, and I don't usually respond to that.
Anyway, I hope that helps to some degree.
Next. Speak up if you have thoughts you wish to share.
Hey, Steph. Hey. It's Nate.
Hey. We talked the other day and you said to call in and I'm frankly a little anxious about having this conversation about my very strong emotional experience around Daniel Mackler.
Right. Oh, Danny boy?
Yes, go on. We're in response to.
I wouldn't say that really necessarily has anything to do with him.
I mean, I've kind of figured...
I've drawn that conclusion.
Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think it's anything to do with him in particular.
He's just some guy out there.
I think it's partially...
I've examined this.
I think it's...
In large part to do with my history around religion and sex and a lot of things, but also has to do with my fear, I think, about my goals and my desires.
So you had said that I agreed that he was an excellent example of someone who comes I don't know if that's what you meant by the opposite in terms of sex,
or if that was a response to that, or if Greg's response in that thread had anything Any relevance?
I wasn't sure if you were responding to Greg or just...
Yeah, no, sorry. And let me just explain just for those who...
Right, so Daniel was the guy who came in and I certainly enjoyed his...
I enjoyed my conversation with him and I recognized, at least I believe that I recognized, that he has some limitations.
And people did sort of say, well, his reasons were a little hard to follow and so on, right?
And... I completely agree.
That is entirely correct.
And to me, it's surprising that people are surprised by that.
I mean, he is not a trained philosopher.
He is, I think, somebody who has...
I mean, what I really admire him for is the degree to which the man has worked on self-knowledge.
I mean, that is to me just astounding.
And, you know, he's got years and years of journaling.
He himself has been through therapy.
I mean... He's worked the hardest of, I mean, just about anyone I can even think of is certainly harder than I have and I've worked pretty damn hard in terms of understanding himself.
And he's not a philosopher and I think he would be the first to admit that because he is, of course, an honest fellow.
And I thought it was very interesting the degree to which he had achieved things in his life.
And I think had achieved some good things in his life, right?
I think he has the strength to go against the norms of his profession.
That's not an easy thing to do.
He has the strength to put out controversial stuff, which is not always an easy thing to do.
He has the strength to speak his mind based on his experience and his ideas.
And to do so with courage and to put it right out there on the internet even, right?
And also to make his documentaries and so on.
He also has the courage to leave his profession at a relatively young age, which is not the easiest thing to do, I can tell you that.
It's not the easiest thing in the world to do.
So I thought that it was interesting that he has, to me, a lot of admirable qualities.
Are his arguments coherent from first principles?
Well, of course not, because he's not studied philosophy and he's not a philosopher.
And this, you know, he didn't know the term Platonism.
And of course, given his profession, there's no reason why he would have to know that.
But he obviously hasn't studied philosophy.
And so he has those limitations.
But that's one. So I just wanted to sort of put that in the context.
In fact, if through introspection, right, see, if through introspection alone, he was able to reason from first principles about philosophical concepts, then we would have made a massive error as a community, right, to focus on The scientific method and evidence and so on, right? That would be...
And reasoning from first principles.
We would not have applied logic.
We would not have appealed to evidence.
We wouldn't have done any of that.
We would have simply come up with UPB or arguments against determinism and so on simply through introspection.
But I think we all understand that we can't do that.
You cannot develop philosophy through introspection alone.
I don't think your philosophy can be very good.
It certainly can't be consistent without self-knowledge.
But it wouldn't, to me, make any sense if he'd come up with really great philosophical arguments without any training in philosophy or experience with philosophy simply through introspection.
That would be actually an argument for Platonism and Kantian philosophy rather than the Aristotelian, Randian scientific philosophy that we take, which is to say that the truth is derived from the external world.
So I just sort of wanted to put that out as a brief preface.
And I know that that's not the core of what it is That you're questioning.
And I also don't believe that that's – and I get this a lot, not from you, Nate, but I get this a lot from people who are like, you know, you interviewed Dean Baker?
He's a statist. It's like, yeah, but I'm not interviewing him about statism.
You interviewed Daniel Mackler?
He's not a philosopher.
It's like, of course he's not a philosopher.
But people don't say that about my listener conversations.
They don't say, you talk to a listener, but they're not a philosopher.
It's like, well, they're a human being who has important things to say.
Otherwise, all I'm doing is talking to myself.
And that would be kind of narcissistic, so to say.
So yeah, I thought that he was a very powerful example of the degree of strength and courage.
And healing that can occur through self-knowledge.
I don't believe that he has gotten as far as he could get.
And I'm sure he would say the same about me under certain circumstances.
But he hasn't gotten as far as he could get because he's not into philosophy, right?
And philosophy would be a big problem, right?
So when I was talking to Richard Schwartz, the internal family systems guy, he said...
Something like, you know, if we knew the secret history of even our worst enemies, we would have nothing but sympathy for them.
And yet he also says that all feelings and all perspectives, internal feelings and perspectives, are valid and have things to offer.
Those two, philosophically, are contradictory, right?
Because if we knew the secret history of our worst enemies...
We would not consider them enemies.
Then that's to say that all anger is immature.
All anger is a lack of empathy and a lack of curiosity and a lack of perspective.
And that contradicts the idea that anger is a healthy and valuable part of the personality.
But, I mean, if you're not trained in philosophy, I just don't think you would really understand those things.
And so I think that that's why self-knowledge plus...
Philosophy is such a potent brew here.
So again, I just wanted to put that in context for other people who hadn't been part of that exchange.
But I think your question was more around sexuality.
Is that right? Yeah, I think it did center around that.
Not in every aspect, because there were some...
As you mentioned, he's not a philosopher, and there are some logical...
He said something about being fully enlightened before having children.
It's like, well, what do you mean by fully enlightened?
And like, how do you know when you're fully enlightened?
Compared to what? Yeah, compared to what?
All that stuff. Yeah, fully enlightened. It's like the last caller's 100% truth standard.
It's like, bah-ha. And of course, the other thing too, logically, right, he would say that he's arguing for his own non-existence, right?
People should not have children until they're fully enlightened is to say, I don't want to live because my parents shouldn't have had me, right?
But if even those of us Who went through the most horrific childhoods still cling to life with a great deal of passion and joy, then you could even say to abusive parents, well, your kids might turn out to be happy if they survive you and work hard enough.
So he's arguing for his own non-existence.
If he says that fully enlightened parents, of which his obviously weren't, should not have children, that's a bit of a contradiction.
I want to live, but people shouldn't have children if they're not fully enlightened.
I think those two things are contradictory, but again, why would he have ever thought that without the UPB sledgehammer that comes through our most cherished illusions from time to time?
Right, and I think I had a little mind map where I followed that line of thinking like nobody should...
all the world is full of abused adults with a traumatic childhood who haven't been processing their childhood and none of those adults should have children and until they're fully enlightened and nobody's ever fully enlightened therefore the world should die from an attrition of the human race so it's kind of like the end result of that
But what he has is some very important points about the need for enlightenment in parenting.
Does he go too far and come up with logical problems?
I think so. But that's fine.
That doesn't mean to me that he's not welcome on the show.
I'm not bringing him on as an expert on philosophy.
I'm bringing him on as somebody who has made immense progress and developed, I think, a fair amount of significant courage as a result.
Of self-examination, and I think that's an impressive thing.
Yeah, and it also doesn't mean that everything he says is true and everything, you know, that he can't be wrong or anything like that.
I mean, that's not true of me, that's not true of you, that's not true of him, for sure, yeah.
I mean, having people on that we disagree with is no harm to our critical faculties, right?
Anyway, go on. Right, and there's been plenty of people that you've had on, statists and people that haven't gotten this emotional...
I haven't experienced a strong emotional reaction to.
I mean, I let Peter Schiff pimp for Senate seats, right?
You know, that's fine, right?
I don't agree with it, but I can survive people who don't agree with me.
I mean, that's fine. Yeah, and I can watch Battlestar Galactica without getting too annoyed.
Oh, yeah, yeah. I mean, all these status fantasies, right?
I mean, I can enjoy Lord of the Rings without thinking, my God, what a hymn to the violent aristocracy of history, right?
Anyway, that's pretty bad.
Right. So, you know, obviously, it's...
No, but I'm sorry.
Let me get to the point that I was making very briefly, and then I'll get to your response, right?
So when I said you kind of took an opposite approach, right?
In that you have had some issues with your own sexuality in the past, and I don't think I'm telling tales out of school because that's available to people who listen to the date casts, right?
And to some degree, your approach to sexuality was serial monogamous promiscuity, right?
In that you were almost never without a date, and that was a constant thing on your mind to find a partner to get a relationship going and so on.
And I say this as somebody who also in my 20s took that approach, that I was very much focused on being in relationships and so on.
And I wasn't promiscuous in that sense, and I'm not saying you were, but a relationship was something that was very hard to be without, to say the least.
Whereas he's taken quite a different approach.
I mean, he openly spoke about his own challenges with sexuality, that he got involved in some fairly grungy, though, to be fair, he said non-abusive sexual interactions.
And so he said, not for me, right?
And then he went further with masturbation and so on, right?
And those, to me, are just interesting things to hear about.
Like, this is what somebody has done.
Is it something I would do?
Well, hell no.
But it is something that somebody has done.
It's obviously no violation of the non-aggression principle.
It's no violation of property rights to refrain from flogging the pope, right?
So it's entirely in accordance with virtue, so to speak, as we talk about it here, right?
It does not violate the NAP. Do not have sex and do not masturbate, right?
Yeah, but on his website, and granted I had not listened to the Colin show until a couple of days ago, And I heard his response to it, which did bring some relief.
He was putting it forward as a should, as in you can't be fully enlightened until you refrain from masturbating.
And that, to me, provoked a lot in me.
Just to give you—I don't know how deep I want to go— You're in the wrong conversation for looking for a bottom here, right?
Yeah, I think we've all experienced this, but just to go over my history, when I was 13, puberty, I discovered masturbation like many, many, many, many guys do.
It's how we develop a firm handshake.
There's no other way to do it.
But when I discovered it, it was in shock and horror, and I thought, you know, what has just happened?
Shock and horror? What did you have, like a Deepo Elmo hand puppet or something like that?
What do you mean? No, no, no, no.
Well, no. I mean, it was shock and horror in terms of what just happened.
Did I just commit a sin?
Is God watching me?
Yeah. Oh, right.
So you actually enjoyed the masturbation, which I guess is sort of the point.
But at the same time, it's like, dear God, I'm going to burn in hell and that kind of stuff, right?
Right. And every time thereafter, I would have to pray to God, forgive me for doing what I just did.
And I still didn't really even know what it was that I was doing.
No, absolutely. And I think God does not view the prayer as more fervent if you're having trouble separating your palms.
But anyway, that's not particular.
But you had that tortured relationship with masturbation and guilt and that there's bad and so on, right?
Right. Right, right.
And I don't know anything about his upbringing, but let's just sort of focus on yours.
So you had this challenge with masturbation.
And so when he said that masturbation is, he didn't just say, and again, I'm sure he'll hear this.
I'll certainly send him a link since we're talking about him.
But I think he would say that, you know, masturbation, but masturbation to pornography involves a certain kind of dissociation.
And I think in particular, he was talking about, you know, those guys who are like just crazy, you know, masturbating 10 times a day kind of thing, right?
It's like, Part of me wants to shake their hand.
It's like, dude, that's impressive.
Part of me, like, I don't want to have anything to do with their hands.
So I'm really torn about that.
So I think he's really talking about the extremity and so on, and people who, in relationships, end up hurting people through masturbation, sexual addiction, masturbation, or whatever, right?
I don't think he's talking about, I don't know, a kid getting tennis elbow with a playboy.
I just don't think he's talking about that.
Right, and I think what I had...
At least part of, in theory, what I was re-experiencing was the strong sexual repression in my family history.
Sex is bad, sex is a sin, sex is something you only do when you're married, and even then it's, you know, for procreation only or...
Right. No, and I'm very much sure...
...and have some ceremony beforehand.
I don't know what I... Right, right.
And I'm more inclined towards the—I think he's a Greek theologian, G. Michael, who said— Sex is natural.
Sex is good. Not everybody does it, but everybody should.
I don't know the original Latin, but that's the verse that I remember most strongly from some of his more spinny works.
I think sex is a beautiful, joyful, happy part of life.
I think masturbation is good and healthy.
I think that pornography has significant risk elements to it.
Particularly, I think pornography that requires a continual escalation of stimulation is a problem.
It's like, well, naked women don't turn me on anymore.
I have to throw in goats and a combine harvester and, I don't know, a vat of jello.
I think that when you have that escalation, I think that is an indication that something needs to be looked at at a more fundamental, empathetic level.
But that's sort of my approach.
And even when he was explaining that, I was following his reasoning, and it made a lot of sense, and I agreed with the reasoning as far as porn goes.
And I've had a mixed relationship with that.
With that? With porn, you mean?
Yeah, just sort of part of me is questions, and part of me is following his line of thinking, and I've thought of that before I heard his explanation about that.
Porn and I think you've talked about it to some degree and I've been ambivalent about it, I guess.
Sure, and I think that's from a number of reasons.
There is, of course, also the social disapproval of pornography, right?
I mean, pornography is just one of the things that...
I think people should talk about more because it is very hard to come to a truthful and honest assessment of one's own relationship to pornography when we live in this completely bizarre world where pornography has a larger market share, I think, than movies, and yet nobody ever talks about it and nobody ever has it.
I mean, it's really bizarre when you think about it.
It's like this huge elephant thing.
In the room, so to speak, right?
I mean, that it is ubiquitous.
It is omnipresent.
It is the very reason that we have VCRs, let alone the internet.
And yet at the same time, nobody consumes it and it is a completely guilty secret.
And I think that that is not a good way to move the debate forward.
So I appreciate you talking honestly.
And I think that's part of where the ambivalence comes from.
That it is also new technology to a large degree, and I include in that even things like Playboy Penthouse from, I think, the 50s and 60s onwards.
It's pretty new technology to get a hold of this stuff.
I mean, Japanese weed cuts from the 18th century weren't exactly in the hands of every schoolboy.
And so this new technology, I don't think that we've caught up with a culture, as a culture, with the honesty around the challenges of pornography.
As I said in the show, I think that we're kind of programmed to be turned on by watching sexual acts because if there are sexual acts going on in the tribe, we obviously should get aroused from a biological standpoint because that means more seed, that kind of stuff.
And I can't believe – Sorry? Oh, absolutely. I bet you there are like four destroyed pictures of his own penis first and foremost.
And the first intercontinental communication over the telegraph was probably tapped out, you know, so, relax, tell me what you're wearing.
And after that, they started talking about the news and the weather.
That would be my guess.
But, you know, sexuality is something that we still have a lot of icky issues.
Religious residue, so to speak.
And I think that is a shame.
It is something that almost everybody does.
And pornography is often involved.
And again, it's just something that people don't talk about.
There is still a heavy burden of shame and guilt and secrecy and silence and all of that stuff.
So it is...
It is a challenging topic, and I appreciate the frankness with which he brought up his own, and I'm sure that he wasn't expecting on some philosophy show to be talking about this ritualized self-abuse with a handful of fur glove stuff that he did.
And I thought he bravely waded in, so to speak, and said his piece, and I'm glad that it's got people thinking about it and talking about it.
All right. Fur gloves.
So, were those all your thoughts?
Well, I think that shame and guilt and secrecy are the things that the ruling classes use to keep us down, right?
I wasn't thinking about this in terms of pornography.
I was just thinking about this in a variety of other contexts as I was starting to make notes for the next podcast series.
But I think that, you know, what would life be like if we did not feel shame and guilt?
And what would it be like?
I mean, wouldn't that be an amazing...
Place to live. If we didn't have all of these hangovers and hang-ups, you know, and does that mean, you know, breaking out penthouse and, you know, spanking the monkey on the public transit?
No, of course not, right?
But, you know, everybody knows that we all pee and take dumps and get hemorrhoids, at least a lot of us do or whatever.
And, you know, that doesn't mean that, you know, here's a picture of me taking a dump, but I don't feel guilt about the fact that I go to the bathroom.
And I just think that...
The way to depathologize the problematic areas of pornography, of which there are some significant areas.
I think that, you know, the shame and secrecy just doesn't, it just doesn't help in that.
And I think it really keeps us, you know, frightened and nervous and edgy and self-attacky.
And it causes splits, right?
Because then it's like, oh, you know, I can talk about that.
You know, that's a shameful guilty thing or whatever, right?
Right. Right. And the media has taken some steps forward.
I think Friends had a couple of really – the Friends TV show had a couple of really brave episodes about pornography where, you know, the one guy – I think one of the girls was dating some guy who said – Oh, I don't, you know, I don't, I think pornography is just funny, not sexy, right? And the other guys just laughed and said, no, no, he thinks it's sexy, right?
I mean, like people say.
Or there was that show, I think, where Joey and Chandler got, the TV got stuck on the porn channel and they were afraid to turn it off for free porn, right?
And I think, you know, I think that ideally, ideally, you know, we should all be in loving relationships and there should be no pornography industry.
I mean, ideally, ideally.
Yeah. That having been said, you know, ideally there should be no hunger and, you know, everybody should get a gold unicorn as a bar mitzvah present.
But within the world that is, I think that the first step is simply to be honest with ourselves and not simply to reject things like masturbation as sort of shameful and guilty, but just look at them as, you know, these activities that we happen to share with every other creature that has opposable thumbs and some that don't.
And, you know, what's that old joke?
Why do dogs let their own balls?
Because they can. And, you know, I think that just self-RTR, self-honesty around this sort of stuff is the way to depathologize.
And perhaps even with the end goal in time of, you know, not needing pornography because of, you know, loving intimate relationship and so on.
I think that's the way to go.
And I think that, you know, I think that this is a tiny step in that direction, if that makes sense.
Yeah, I think so. I think it just helps to bring this out in the open after that call and after the last couple of interviews and the board conversations that have been going on.
And just to put this in a philosophical perspective, I think it's just helped in general to talk about this.
Yeah, look, self-attack is never the answer.
And Daniel would agree, I'm sure.
Self-attack is not the answer.
It's not the answer. But honest and open curiosity is, I think, the way to go.
You know, self-exploration and not in the tangible sense, but...
I think, you know, I don't want people, you know, to come out of a show where we talked about masturbation and things like that.
I just don't want people to come out thinking that it's been pathologized or, you know, all pornography is all necessarily abusive and so on.
I just, you know, even if that were true, I don't know.
That's another argument. But, you know, to look at it in that perspective is simply a self-attacky thing which is going to shut off self-empathy and self-curiosity.
So I hope that people won't do that.
Yeah, Greg asks, why is sexuality so closely connected to our moral view of ourselves, and why did religion pick that?
And I think you've answered this before, but it is an...
Well, I mean, look, to paralyze a human being, you take his strongest instincts and make them evil, right?
I mean, that's easy, right?
I mean, as far as why religion focuses on sexuality, you take a human being's strongest instincts and you make them evil.
And that way they will forever be wrestling with themselves over their supposed lack of virtue, right?
I mean, the government exists because we think that we're bad children.
I mean, that's why we have government, fundamentally.
I'm sort of getting into the next round of podcast series, but, you know, if we didn't think we were bad children, then we wouldn't need a government.
And I think you rightly helped me to understand one time that my mother had...
Turned my most basic desires, my attraction to the girls of my age during that time period to something that I should fear and feel bad about, feel guilty about.
Right. And it has translated into this part of myself, I think, that wants to say that I'm this creepy guy that's...
It's turned into a kind of self-attack.
Right, right. Right, and I did that, you know, whatever the answer is, it's not that, right?
It's not that at all.
It's not that at all.
Well, I think that clarifies it.
I think it just helps to talk about it.
No, I appreciate that, and you weren't alone in that, and I'm quite surprised at the degree to which my spam filters did not catch the word masturbation in the title line.
Off the emails that I got, but you weren't alone in that.
Right. Okay.
Well, that's all I had to say.
Someone has asked, could bulimia be another instance of programmed self-attack?
Well, I mean, I obviously can't answer that, you know, just as a guy who's podcasting, but I would really highly recommend Richard Schwartz's articles.
He developed the internal family systems therapy model from his work with Bulimix, and he would, I think, agree with you for sure.
Somebody's asked another question about sexuality, and if you don't mind, I'll hold off on that.
I think we've had a good old run at the naughty bits.
Somebody's asked, sorry, let me just see if there's anybody else who has questions or comments who would like to talk about anything just now.
We have a little bit more time. All right.
Somebody's asked, what are your thoughts on qualitative research, basically subjective research?
For example, ethnography, the study of culture by entering into it.
Or action research, actually seeking to change what you are investigating, which is not generalizable, small sample size, and usually not transferable results, cannot be reproduced, direct violations of the scientific method.
This is what I'm learning in graduate school in a research methods course.
This is from a guest. And I was wondering if you could just tell me what field of research you're in, or what you're studying.
And while I'm waiting for that...
Sorry, somebody just said sociology, but I think that's a question rather than a statement.
Education. Okay. You know, I have to start with a little bit of an anecdote, because direct answers apparently are...
I'm allergic.
But when there aren't any birds around that Isabella can see, I will put a bird up on YouTube.
And... I found a little YouTube video which was on crows.
And it was some documentary.
And the guy, the narrator was saying, you know, Jim Crowhead has spent the vast majority of his adult life studying crows in great detail.
Right? Yeah.
You know, when you hear statements like that, you can feel the gnarly, knuckly hands of the state rummaging around in your pocket.
You know, you just know that money is just flying out of your bank account because this douche wants to look at blackbirds, and not as a hobby, but as a job.
And you just know that that is not...
But that is not a market-driven situation.
Now, maybe I'm completely wrong.
Maybe there's some reason why somebody's going to want to study how intelligent crows really are.
Maybe there's some fantastic agricultural application.
I'd be very surprised.
So, that's ornithology, right?
This is the study of birds, right? So, I just thought, like, oh my god.
Like, what a ridiculous, ridiculous way to spend your life.
I'm fascinated by birds.
And hey, you want to be fascinated by birds?
Fantastic. Go in the woods, make yourself a sandwich, and look at the birds lovingly all day.
You just know that that's state-funded.
You just know that that is state-funded.
And so when people ask me questions around subjective research, where you're studying another culture and so on, my question is always, well, what is the market demand?
And if there isn't any market demand, and I mean a real market demand, not other people who want to study in that particular field, a real market demand.
If there isn't that, then I don't think there's any reason for it.
I just think it's nonsense and exploitive and so on.
There was a guy I knew in university.
He really bugged me because he was very flighty and very relativistic and so on.
And he, you know, put on student plays and so on.
So did I. That's not the core of my criticism.
But then afterwards, you know, all he did was he spent his life as he got close to graduation.
He was graduating with a theater degree.
He's like, oh, you know, I've got this grant to go and study theater in Germany, right?
And then I've got another grant to go up to Nunavut and put on a play about polar bears and, you know, shit like that, right?
And I didn't know.
I mean, I've always been a pretty practical...
And market-driven kind of guy.
And I couldn't sort of help but think, it's like, dear lord in heaven, like, can you actually look a customer in the eye at one point and say, do I have anything that you want, rather than just pilfering from these bureaucratic theft fests?
You know, and it really bothered me.
And I was like, well, I just said to him at one point, it's like, dude, it just sounds like you're planning your whole life to never have a real job.
And, okay, so that's obviously the arts in Canada, but it just...
To me, it just seemed like, oh man, you know, like, if you want to be Tennessee Williams, then write some great plays and put them on.
But just ferreting around in the public purse, it's just an embarrassing way for me to make a living.
So I don't have any particularly direct answer.
What I do want to say, though, is that, you know, think to yourself, would these fields exist?
Would these fields exist in the absence of the state?
And if these fields would not exist in the absence of the state...
I don't really care. I don't really care about the intricacies of them, because my whole point is to work to help eliminate them, not to study them, right?
To me, the details, since it's not market-driven, there is no reason behind it.
It's just all politics and nonsense and non-empirical and non-voluntary and And coerced in its essence.
So I just don't really care to study the entrails that spill out from the guts of the taxpayer in any great detail.
I just think that they should stop having those entrails hacked out of them by these special interest groups and these, I don't know, circle jerk academics who study birds and other cultures for no particular purpose other than to whisper unimportant secrets into each other's ears.
So anyway, that's my particular perspective on that.
All right.
I think we have time for another question or two.
Somebody has written, the Mackler interview was extremely liberating and validating for me because he said things that I felt haven't been voiced.
Most importantly, the condemnation of the practicing psych professionals and the suggestion that we learn to heal ourselves.
That really resonated with me, and I'm interested in your thoughts on that.
I'm not sure what...
He didn't practice, he didn't condemn all practicing psych professionals.
He just said that there are some, in fact, quite a lot who aren't particularly great.
In fact, who are actually quite bad.
And I think that's quite true, in my opinion.
So I would say, yeah, I would say that you should be cautious.
I mean, you're opening your heart to a professional.
I'd be very cautious when going to talk to them.
I'm sorry, James, I'm reading your question about RTR, but I'm not sure how to answer your question.
If something you want to bring to my attention, I'll look into it, but I don't know how to answer that.
All right. Is there a chance you will do a movie review of Darwin the movie?
Whenever it comes out.
Yeah, I like the movie reviews, so I probably will, yeah.
His question is, how much should you prepare before RTRing with your family?
Well, I would prepare, prepare, prepare.
I would not do it.
In the absence of a therapist, I would see a therapist from months beforehand.
I would role-play with the therapist.
I would rehearse with the therapist.
I would journal about it.
You can't prepare too much for that.
It is the Olympics of personal growth, honesty to your family, if that's not something that is part of your family habits already.
If you think you need more preparation, prepare more.
That would be my particular approach.
How will a free society deal with overpopulation?
Well, I think that the best contraception is industrialization.
And I'm certainly not the first to think that.
But what you want to do to deal with overpopulation is to have the real costs of life born by the parents.
And the parents as a whole, the more complex a society gets, the more preparation and training children are going to need to succeed.
In that situation, right?
So you did not need to get a university education to get a decent job, quote, decent job in 1850, right?
You didn't even need to know how to read and write for many of those jobs.
But as society gets more complex, the amount of training that children need is going to get more and more complex, and therefore more and more expensive.
And so if you let the actual costs of raising children accrue to parents...
Then you will naturally find that parents will have fewer children and invest more into each child.
Whereas now, of course, we have subsidized energy, we have free roads, quote free, right?
We have a huge amount of subsidies that are pouring into families that are masking the true cost of raising children from parents, and therefore they will have more.
And of course, this doesn't even count, some of the stuff that goes on at the lower edges of the welfare state, where you have a significant amount of...
Of overbreeding, so to speak, of overpopulation.
And when parents actually have to pay the full costs of raising children themselves, then they will have fewer children.
And so I think freedom will very much result in a lower birth rate.
And I think that would be much for the better.
Do I have any thoughts about Christopher Hitchens or Richard Dawkins and their atheist movement?
Well, it would seem to me that...
Sam Harris more so, and Christopher Hitchens more so, and Dawkins, I think, to a slightly lesser extent.
What they're trying to do is they're trying to move England and America to Sweden.
That's fundamentally what they're trying to do, in that they are fans of interventionist social policies, and they are hostile towards religion.
And so they view places like Finland and Sweden and Denmark and so on, where the rates of atheism, you know, top 70 to 80, and as one person wrote to me, 85%, and religion is very much a minority and a not very well-respected minority.
I think that's how they sort of view the ideal society, that it is secular, it is highly statist, And it is anti-religious.
In other words, it's communism to some degree.
I mean, with some vestiges of the free market, I'm sure, because they seem to enjoy selling their books, right?
But it is on the socialist-slash-communist poll.
And this just goes back and forth throughout history, right?
I mean, you get this pendulum that goes back and forth to quasi-individualism-slash-Christianity, the sort of myth of the American Revolution model, all the way over to...
Insecure, materialistic, skeptical socialism on the other side.
All the way back to the Fabian socialists at the turn of the 20th century and earlier.
George Bernard Shaw was a prominent Fabian and they were very much into the social organization of the means of production and of the family and of reproduction by the state.
So this is the two poles that people swing back and forward, right?
That you can be...
You can be religious and at least talk the good talk about political liberty or you can be an atheist and you can want the state to run everyone else's life.
Never your own. I don't see these guys submitting themselves to any particular status doctrines themselves because UPB never includes people who advocate violations of UPB. They advocate UPB with always a magical exception for themselves.
I haven't... Sam Harris wants the government to run the economy, but I don't believe that he submitted his book to the government for review.
So it's always other people's labor and other people's products that have to be controlled and managed.
It's never the writers.
If you said to Christopher Hitchens, well, you should really send your manuscript past the government for approval and have a committee of bureaucrats, the same ones that you say should run the economy, have a committee of bureaucrats work over your taxed He would be completely horrified and viewed that as appalling, right? Because you see the slavery is always for the others.
It's never for yourself.
And you see this continually.
So I think it's a problem, frankly.
And I really think that these false dichotomies are tiresome.
And it's really a significant and boring problem to just see these polls go back and forward.
And I think that's something, at least, that I'm trying to bring to the mix, is that if you just...
Grit your fricking teeth and hang on to first principles, surrendering to no subterranean undertow of anxiety or fear.
If you just grit your fricking teeth and hang on to first principles all the way through, what comes out?
And I've been amazed and humbled and honored to see how much great stuff has come out of that process.
I don't think that these other thinkers are taking that approach.
But again, they're not really into philosophy as far as I can see.
So a follow-up question.
Do you not think this atheist movement is progress, even with the removal of religion comes more statism?
Well, I don't know.
In many ways, I view statism, like the sort of socialist view of statism, I view as far more dangerous than religion.
Because religion can be disproven fairly easily by anybody with any kind of integrity or understanding of science.
But disproving statism is a great challenge.
It is a great challenge.
And of course, if you're not religious, then you don't participate in religious corruption.
But if you live in a state of society, it's hard to escape the tendrils of the state even just by walking on the sidewalk.
You're sort of quite, quote, involved.
So it's much harder for people to dislodge the idea of the state Than it is for them to dislodge the idea of God.
So I'm not sure that replacing religion with the state is a step forward.
And I say this because I've had considerably more success prying God off people's throats than prying the state out of their hearts.
The difference, I think, the slight difference is that statism is inflicted upon children later than religion.
Children are baptized and religiosity starts very, very early for children.
They get the picture books with Jesus and all that kind of stuff.
So religion starts earlier, statism in general starts later, although that's changing.
As I talked about in my recent parenting podcast, states are really wanting to get a hold of children earlier and earlier.
And that's because I think a lot of movements are pointing out the errors in statism.
And whenever a movement that is highly profitable...
It's in danger of losing its credibility.
It doesn't obviously fight back against intelligent and skeptical and strong philosophers and critics.
What it does is say, well shit, the gig is almost up.
So what we do is we need to just get a hold of children younger because then we can screw with their heads and we can continue to profit by exploiting younger and younger children rather than debating with skeptical and intelligent and strong-willed adults, right?
This is the cowardice Of these scumbags.
Alright, last call for questions.
Hey, Steph.
Hey, hey. The comment you just made reminded me of the psycho-historical idea that I had.
And I was wondering if you'd want to talk a bit about that or...
Oh, yeah. It was great. Why don't you tell people about that?
It was a fantastic idea.
Oh, sure. Well, basically, after listening to Steph's philosophical parenting podcast, it sort of occurred to me...
Let's see if I can remember my idea now.
I'm glad I wrote it down, right?
Yeah. It's always important.
But basically, what's happening is that the primitive psychoclast, the more primitive psychoclast is...
Working to prevent the new cycle class from emerging on a large scale.
And the evidence for that was in terms of parents, parents can't parent their own children or find it very difficult.
And that the more primitive cycle classes are subsidized.
Elderly, poor, military, police, and all that.
So, yeah, I mean, that was a basic idea.
I was wondering if you... I had one question about it, and someone posted an answer to it about the mandatory leave that some countries have.
But from the response, I didn't get a sense that it was actually too damaging to the theory, you know?
Yeah, I mean, I don't have a lot to add to it.
I thought it was a very interesting insight, and I think that it is...
For sure, when more primitive psycho classes see more advanced psycho classes, more humane psycho classes, parenting better or whatever, or taking that different approach, it does cause a lot of anxiety and fear and hostility in the older people.
And the older people generally have the political power and the media power and so on.
And so you will get...
An inordinate amount of propaganda about, you know, family is family.
Family is good. Family is always good.
Family is family, right? There was a show on, there was a house on the other day that I watched, which a house separated from his family, I believe, and I think he showed up at his father's funeral.
And this guy, one of the doctors, the black guy, he has a brother who's just come out of prison for his, like, 55th drug arrest or something like that.
And, you know, House is like, has this seeming motivation to get them back together and the doctor, his friend says, well, it's because you didn't see your family and you don't want him to make that same mistake and this and that and the other, right?
So you do get this insistent propaganda about the virtue of the family or the necessity of the family for wholeness and completeness and closure and mental health and all this, that and the other.
And, I mean, it's exactly the same as patriotism, right?
I mean, you don't need a lot of propaganda to support the virtue of something that is virtuous.
You just don't, right?
In the same way that you don't need a lot of propaganda for that which comes naturally for people.
You don't need a lot of propaganda to tell teenagers that they should become interested in sex.
You will exploit that interest, but you don't need a lot of propaganda To say to people that junk food is tasty.
Why? Because junk food is tasty.
What you do need is a lot of information that's counter to our senses, right?
Like broccoli is good for you or whatever, right?
It just doesn't taste as good unless it's actually dipped in a Big Mac, right?
Or fruit juice is not a good idea.
Yeah, because it's tasty and all that, right?
So whenever I see a strong and repetitive and unreasoned argument, and the argument for the automatic virtue of family is It's no more sophisticated than the idea that if you don't bury your grandfather in the same way, he's going to come back and haunt you or put your curse on you or whatever, right?
The curse of the ancient people in your family is obviously something that we recognize as very silly and very primitive.
But I don't see how fundamentally it's different than the idea that if you decide to take a break from an abusive family...
That you will be cursed with mental problems for the rest of your life.
It's just voodoo shit.
I mean, it's just completely embarrassing non-argument.
It's just like putting a curse on someone.
It's like, ooh, they'll put a hex on you and you'll feel bad, you know?
And there's no scientific evidence for this whatsoever.
And I can tell you that I have significant personal evidence that quite the opposite is true.
That the curse was spending time with abusive people who wouldn't change.
Not living and standing by my values and changing.
My life has improved immeasurably, right?
It's just a complete opposite of what people think.
And so it is just a kind of...
It's a medieval boo-boo voodoo witch curse that is the best that they can come up with as to the argument as to why you should...
And you just know that's because it's a false argument, right?
In the way that you know that there's no such thing as a god because they have to invent hell, right?
I mean, that's just...
You just know, right? That there's no such thing as a god because of the hysterical voodoo curse punishment that's put upon you for disagreeing with it, right?
And it's the same thing that goes on with families.
I mean, it's embarrassing to hear once you sort of see it for what it is.
It's like, what, really?
Elves in my head will make me feel bad?
That's all you've got?
I mean, come on.
I mean, at least try to work a little harder than that, right?
So anyway, I think it was a great idea.
I just wanted to mention that.
Well, thanks.
Thanks so much. I didn't know if there was any more to explore with it or if it was just something to consider.
Because it's not like anyone's consciously doing it like you've mentioned before.
It's all completely unconscious.
I don't know. I mean, I don't know whether it is or it isn't.
I mean, I don't think it really matters.
No, no. I don't think there's any way to know for sure.
It may be more conscious than we think.
It may be less conscious than we think.
But to me, it fundamentally doesn't matter.
If somebody runs me over in a car, I fundamentally don't care whether they've been drinking or not.
I just don't want to be hit by a car.
I don't care whether it's unconscious or not.
Right, right. So the only other thought I had on that was kind of keying off of your part four.
For people that, like me, who, you know, kids are going to be probably in a good couple years future, you know, several years future.
And also keeping in mind that inflation is likely to continue to be really nasty, at least if you're living in America.
And I've never really ever gotten into this before, but it really made an impression on me about saving for your children's future.
And I'm thinking...
Like children's future meaning the first five years of their life.
Yeah, yeah, for sure. And my thought was that that's why it's important maybe to get more information and more knowledge on securities and more standard or more stable kinds of value or wealth, if that makes sense.
And even if I just save however much money, I haven't ran up any numbers, but to take it out of the currency, because if I just left it in a savings account, In 10 years, it's going to be worth half its value or whatever the depreciation is.
There's only so much that you can do with that stuff.
I think the important thing is just to recognize that living less well is worth it.
There will be some stuff you can do about that, but there's a lot more that's under your control.
The number of houses isn't going to vanish, so if the people who can afford them goes down, then It's just going to be cheaper, right?
To get a house or whatever, right?
But I think that that's just the kind of sacrifice that it doesn't even really feel like a sacrifice after a while.
But I think that is the kind of sacrifice that is necessary, right?
That's something that you can actually do is take time off.
And if it's not the full five years, at least the first year or two, you can take that time off.
You can really have that great relationship with your kids.
And that is a huge thing.
That you can do to make the world a better place.
And that's something I think that's just often not really talked about.
Everybody wants to move to New Hampshire, and not a lot of people want to change diapers, right?
No, no, right. Exactly, exactly.
Nope, that's pretty much it.
That's all I had on that. Well, thanks, man.
Sure, sure. All right.
Question. Has Steph had any thoughts on how his daughter will be educated?
Homeschool public alternative.
Well, it's not public. I can tell you that for sure.
It's definitely, definitely not public school.
I will homeschool before public school.
That having been said, I'm not wildly keen to homeschool for a variety of reasons I've talked about in other shows.
But my major goal would be to get her into a school that I think is appropriate to her capacities and to a reasonable...
And, I guess, liberty-oriented view of education.
That would sort of be my goal with her.
So, we'll see. I mean, it's all open to change, except, you know, unless it's absolutely impossible, it won't be public school.
Yeah, Montessori.
There's a Montessori school down the road.
We've already gone to a day visit there and talked to the teachers and had a look at a variety of the approaches that they take.
take.
So yeah, Montessori, I think, is a pretty good alternative, and that's what we're looking at.
And I've heard good things about Montessori schools, so hopefully that's not all a stinky lie.
Yeah.
Somebody, will a child that age prefer homeschooling with the parents of a Montessori with peers?
I can tell you this, that I would consider it Quite surprising if she preferred anything to her parents.
She just loves spending time with us.
She really, really does. But at some point, we do have to get her out into the world.
It's a tough call, but I can tell you that she absolutely loves and treasures It is not going to be something that's going to be naturally something that she wants to do, but I think it's something that may be important for her.
Somebody asked, is life insurance a good investment?
Well, I don't know. But I will say that I think if you're going to get life insurance, buy it young and pay a little extra so that it becomes self-sustaining when you get older.
You can pay so that by the time you're 30 or 35, you don't have to pay life insurance anymore because it's been put into a bank or put into investment and you're guaranteed to not need that in the future.
And I think that's worthwhile. Have I got life insurance?
Yes, I do. Yeah, I bought my life insurance when I was in my 20s.
Any plans for How to Achieve Freedom book still?
Oh, yeah, that reminds me.
I'm very sad to say that it is off the table for the time being.
I have reviewed it.
It's been through, I guess, its second draft.
I have reviewed it. And I don't believe that it is an appropriate book at the moment.
I'm going to wait for a little while until the MECO system is all on board.
So I'm afraid that it is off the table for the foreseeable future, and I don't know exactly how long that will be.
And I also wanted to say, and I say this with a great deal of regret and with many, many apologies, that it seems unlikely that I'm going to be able to make it to Spain with the family, the reason being that I have a speaking engagement in San Francisco that's relatively close to it.
I made the commitment to come to Spain before I went on vacation with my daughter.
Oh man, I'm telling you, it is brutal to go on vacation with her.
I mean, it's great fun and she's wonderful company, but she does not sleep very well in hotel rooms at all.
And it is going from, you know, the West Coast of America to To Spain, it would be jet lag, plus bad sleep, plus, plus, plus.
I just think I would not be even slightly coherent company at that point.
Now, that having been said, I know that I had said that I would come, and it certainly wasn't my intention to, and I'm very, very sorry for changing this, but I will certainly make myself available at any time, day or night, for endless Skype calls, if people are at all interested.
So if you all are having dinner, Set up a computer with a webcam, and I will join you virtually and be very happy to do that any time, day or night, so that if people did want to have a chat, I'm there, just a bit more digitally than in person.
I'm afraid you'll have to go with hologram Kenobi rather than step in the flesh.
But I just don't think that it's...
I think it would just be...
I'd just be face-planted in my soup and babbling incoherently.
Well, more incoherently, so...
I hope that you will forgive me for that, but I will make myself available.
But I just don't think it's going to be a wise thing to come.
Is there a date for San Francisco?
Yes, I will post it on the message board.
I will post it tonight.
Thank you for the reminder. I can't remember what it is, but it's in my email.
Oh, Richard, I got the DVDs.
Thank you so much. I have a speaking engagement in San Francisco.
So I'm being flown out there and we'll have a chance to do another rousing live rendition of Philosophy in the Flesh.
I have a couple of different topics that I can speak about, but I promise you it will not be anything that you've heard before.
I sort of make that I'm not a greatest hits kind of band, so to speak.
Experimental, Spinal Tap, Jazz Fusion.
I really want to do in my live appearances such as they are, because they're pretty few.
But when I do have a live appearance, I want to make sure that when people come, they don't get to hear, ooh, I heard this podcast three years ago, and this is the same thing.
I want to always make sure that I'm putting out new stuff, new ideas that people haven't heard before.
So I have a couple of different topics and I can talk about that with interested parties a little closer to the time.
Somebody has asked, is there any chance in the future you can either be invited to or set up a debate at a university or other public function?
I would absolutely love to.
I have talked about this with a variety of people, a sort of university tour, and I think that I could get people to come out and see me speak.
The problem is I want a parent, right?
I mean, so I think that's going to have to wait a little bit.
And I'm still a young man, relatively.
So I think that we'll just have to wait.
I don't think it's a good idea, particularly to drive all over the place with the whole family.
And of course, my wife has her job, and I don't want to go for significant periods.
Like, the only way to really make it work, I think, is to do a tour, and that is going to have to wait, because I just...
That's why I don't take too many speaking engagements, because I just want to parent, right?
I mean, that's the thing, right?
I mean, even these Sunday shows, I mean, I miss my daughter already, so...
Yeah, definitely.
Look, if you can come, I mean, just...
If you can come to San Francisco, come.
I mean, not even to see me.
I mean, if you see me, great. But, you know, just come to meet other people who are interested in philosophy.
You know, FDR people or other people.
Just come and have, you know, the face-to-face community.
I think that's really, really important.
So, I think that's highly recommended.
I mean... Come to San Francisco and, you know, hang out with other people who are interested in talking philosophy.
You don't even come to see me speak.
I mean, come if you can and if you want to, but it's not that important because you all can hear me to speak anytime.
Endless drivel of me all over the place, but I would really, really focus on talking with people.
It's a good chance to form friendships, to get to know people in the flesh, so to speak.
But thank you everybody so much for your support and for your enthusiasm and your excitement about philosophy and for your continued financial support, which of course makes all of this possible.
And I hope that I'm doing right by you in terms of how the show has grown.
I've done some analysis of over the last year and we've grown about 25%, which I think is really good.
I think that is really good.
And I'm sort of very proud of that.
And I think that is... Something which we can be extremely happy about as a community.
Because remember, people come, they listen to some podcasts, they look at the board, they listen to the Sunday shows, and that is a very good thing.
And it's been a little tight because of the recession.
Of course, a lot of my donators are in the U.S. And of course, a number of people have canceled subscriptions or not donated because of financial hardship.
So if you do have a job and you feel like it's possible for you, If you could kick in a little bit extra, that would be most appreciated.
But yeah, that is good.
That is good. So couldn't be better.
I'm very happy with the way that everything is, and that has a lot to do with you.
So have yourselves a fantastic, fantastic week, and I have a good series coming up this week and some good interviews coming up with some very, very interesting people.
And thanks for all the positive feedback.
And, oh, I'm also, I'm just in the process, and I've got about four and a half hours in, I'm in the process of reading one of my novels as an audiobook, which I hope that you will enjoy when I get it out.
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