Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool

All Episodes

Previous Next

Feb. 14, 2010 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

02:03:45

1583 Sunday Show 14th February 2010

More on parenting, two dreams - and the limits of philosophy in the workplace.

Large

Audio Only |

Scroll

Time	Text
	Well, thank you, everybody, so much for joining.
	It is 4 p.m.
	Happy Valentine's Day, my lovelies.
	I hope that you're having a wonderful day, and I hope that you have love in your life, if not from others, at least from yourself, which I believe is the route to love from others.
	So I hope that you're having a great day, and I hope that this coming year brings you even more love, joy, happiness, and great philosophical satisfaction.
	I guess I'll start off with a minor rant, and then I will take all the questions in the world from you fine listeners.
	I just wanted to say, you know, I so much look forward to these Sunday afternoon chats.
	I just wanted to, they're hugely, hugely important to me as sort of part of my week.
	I start looking forward to them on like Friday.
	It is such, such, such a deep pleasure and an honor to speak about ideas with you that I really do feel incredibly blessed and incredibly, as I say, honored.
	To be able to have these conversations with you, and I'm always, always impressed, even by people with whom I have significant disagreements with, I am always impressed by the degree of commitment and intelligence and energy and thought that is brought to bear on these particular challenges and issues.
	So I just wanted to say thank you so much for taking the time to join this conversation this afternoon.
	The Olympics is on. And I'm going to go out into serious, I guess, snow-suited Grinchland and just talk about my enormous distaste for the Olympics.
	And I'm going to say this while at the same time saying there are a few Olympic sports that if they're on, I won't turn them off.
	I don't sort of really go in pursuit of them.
	But I think some of the figure skating can be quite lovely and I think some of the gymnastics can be quite breathtaking.
	But I think it's worth talking for a few minutes about I think that there's a huge amount of cultural and creative energy that is poured into what I call the outsourcing of excellence.
	And the outsourcing of excellence is the idea that excellence is for others.
	That excellence requires years of devotion and self-sacrifice and getting up at 3 in the morning and training for 6 hours a day and government money and all that kind of stuff.
	I think about this in terms of Tiger Woods.
	And, you know, it's a real shame that I didn't do this when I first had the thought.
	I first had a thought on doing a podcast on Tiger Woods before his sex scanner broke.
	Just basically because I read somewhere that he'd broken a billion dollars in terms of his lifetime income as a sportsman.
	He had broken one billion.
	That's billion with an oh my god.
	And I was really struck by that.
	Without getting into any particular details of my princely income as a stay-at-home philosopher, I am earning considerably less than Tiger Woods, considerably less than Kobe Bryant, considerably less than I was in the software field.
	So I think it's interesting and it's impossible to miss the degree to which honor and publicity and money and endorsements and so on are given To people who can't provide you fundamentally any shred of happiness and who are merely a distraction and the idea that excellence is out there rather than the excellence that is possible for you in your life.
	I certainly had as a goal when I started and I've really tried to stick to it with this philosophical conversation.
	The goal that the excellence that we were talking about here or at least that I was talking about here, the excellence that I was talking about here, my central goal has always had it to be achievable by you.
	And that has been really, really fundamental to what it is that I'm doing.
	I've really tried to avoid the idea that there is excellence in self-knowledge and in philosophy and in integrity and ethics and so on, honesty.
	That the excellence that is out there, sorry, the excellence that is possible is only possible to other people out there.
	And this worship of athletes, and this also occurs in the moral realm, where people worship, you know, Gandhi or Martin Luther King Jr.
	and so on. And while the ethics of some of these men were questionable at best, Gandhi slept naked with young girls, and Martin Luther King Jr.
	had orgies and, you know, apparently plagiarized his PhD thesis and so on.
	So the ethics of these people are questionable at best.
	This is the case also, of course, with Tiger Woods and other kinds of moral heroes that are heroes, I guess, that people have.
	And I think that people, you know, what is it fundamentally that they're paying for?
	Why do they give Tiger Woods a billion dollars?
	Well, he gets most of his money, of course, from endorsements, as is the case with most athletes.
	And what they put forward is, you know, go on, be a Tiger, go on, achieve excellence, go on, pursue excellence.
	But that's excellence fundamentally, and I hate to put it in such a crass manner, but that is fundamentally the reality of the situation, is that that is excellence in putting a white Goddamn ball into a little goddamn hole.
	That is the excellence of Tiger Woods.
	And the excellence of basketball players is putting a larger brown ball into a slightly larger hole.
	And that really isn't excellence.
	That's training.
	That is reflexes.
	That is practice.
	That is not... Excellence, that is just, I mean, you can train a SEAL to do that.
	And anything you can train a SEAL to do, it's probably not going to give you a whole lot of happiness.
	And from that standpoint, it has always struck me, what is it that people are paying for when they get into sports to this degree?
	Well, I think that they're paying for the idea that excellence is out there.
	And excellence is inconsequential, fundamentally inconsequential physical abilities.
	The fact that Tiger Woods can very well put a ball in a hole is not...
	Of course, doing anything to end poverty or to end war or to end injustice or anything like that.
	He's a highly trained SEAL. And I'm not saying what he does is easy.
	Please understand that. I'm sure he's one in a million, if not one in a billion.
	But the reality is that a lot of this stuff is driven, of course, by parents, right?
	Andre Agassi, he's a tennis player.
	And he has now broke $100 million, that he's made $100 million over the course of his career.
	And why is he a great tennis player?
	Is it because he sort of magically devoted himself to this abstract concept of excellence?
	Well, no. Of course not.
	What happened was that his father, when he was about, I think, 18 months old, began strapping ping-pong paddles to the end of his hands and throwing balls at him.
	And I think Tiger Woods was on the Johnny Carson show at the age of two because his father had taught him, through immense amounts of repetition, to hit a golf ball in a hole, right?
	So it's... And Andre Agassi hated tennis in many ways, but as his father said, when he turned into sort of late teens, he said, well, of course you're going to be a tennis player.
	I mean, what the hell else are you good for?
	It's all you've been doing. It's all you're going to do.
	And he hated it to the point where he became addicted to drugs and his life spiraled out of control.
	And he just had a truly miserable time of it.
	And of course, if you look at the life of Tiger Woods...
	And this is always the case with these kinds of people, right?
	That they stimulate envy and then they crash, right?
	Because the envy is working in their unconscious in negative ways.
	Envy is a very destructive thing to aspire to, to create in others.
	Tiger Woods, you know, his serial betting of bimbos, his wife...
	I mean, how humiliating is it to offer to pay your wife...
	You have to offer to pay your wife millions of dollars to have her stay with you.
	Basically to turn the mother of your children into one of the more expensive prostitutes on the planet.
	That is really, really tragic and very, very sad.
	And yet society has shuffled a billion dollars at this fellow and what are they buying?
	Well, they're buying the idea. That excellence is out there.
	That excellence is for others.
	That excellence is something you watch and something you admire and maybe even something that you envy.
	But it's not something that you achieve because we can't all go back and have obsessive parents coaching us and perhaps bullying us from the age of 18 months onwards.
	So, I think it is genuinely tragic, and we see this with so, so, so many people, of course, like Michael Jackson.
	I mean, we see Tatum O'Neill, all of these people who just became drug addicted and exploited and manipulated and preyed upon and so on.
	It is genuinely awful and genuinely tragic, the degree to which we continue to pump money at these people for their excellence, and they turn out to be Enormously flawed and broken and destructive and dangerous human beings.
	I mean, Tiger Woods, he's got kids, right?
	I mean, what is going to happen to his children because of his behavior?
	That is just awful beyond words.
	So I just wanted to point that out.
	And people always say to me, well, what's wrong with sports?
	But see, sports is not what I'm talking about at all.
	I love sports myself.
	I've played, I don't know how many sports, soccer, tennis, water polo.
	I was a competitive swimmer in my I play squash, tennis.
	I play basketball, though, not very well.
	I mean, I love sports.
	I really do. I love to ski.
	So I really do love sports.
	But they're a freaking hobby.
	They are a hobby. This is not what people pay you to do, in my opinion.
	And in the free market, it seems relatively unlikely.
	The genuinely free market, it seems relatively unlikely that this would be so...
	So paid for. And now, with the exception of golf, which I think is largely a free market.
	So that's valid. But the Olympics simply would not occur without government money in the form of stadiums and subsidies and so on.
	And there is some private sponsorship of athletes, but that's not to be discounted or excluded.
	But it would not exist in its form.
	Either in ancient Greece or the modern form, which I think started in the late 19th century, it would not exist in its format without government subsidies.
	And of course, the government is subsidizing it so that people get excited about being part of an exploited club, right?
	The club calls tax livestock of Canada or the US or China or wherever, right?
	So the government is paying for you to cheer on the people that have stolen money from you to pay to cheer on.
	And that, of course, is a very humiliating thing to do, I think, fundamentally.
	And a very sad thing to do.
	And it's not going to change, of course, in the foreseeable future.
	But I just wanted to put some of those thoughts out there.
	I think sports are great. I think physical activity is a core aspect to happiness.
	But I think that this nonsense where people worship or get very excited about or admire or envy these athletes, I think it's just plain wrong.
	And it's self-abasing.
	Anytime you create heroes, anytime...
	That you create heroes, you are automatically debasing yourself.
	Whether those heroes are political, or in sports, or in religion.
	Whether you have a hero called Jesus.
	Every time you create a hero, you diminish your own capacity for greatness.
	And I think that is just a terrible thing.
	Every time you kneel, you fall.
	And every time you look up, the height is looking down upon you in your mind's eye.
	So I would strongly recommend to avoid hero worship of any kind.
	And strive to become the hero in your own mind with the excellence and in your own life with the excellence that is available to you.
	That really counts in terms of happiness and love, which is honor, integrity, generosity, courage, honesty.
	All of those things are very, very available to you in the here and now.
	And that's my strong suggestion.
	So I don't want to go on too long.
	Somebody has said, what is the difference between a hero in the corrupted status sense and a mentor or role model Whom you don't know personally.
	Well, it's interesting you should ask that.
	I've started listening to a biography of Ayn Rand that was written by somebody who's not an objectivist or in the inner circle or anything like that.
	And it's very interesting.
	I'm very keen, and I really should have done this sooner rather than later, but I'm very, very keen to do a series on Ayn Rand and objectivism.
	And I've done some in the premium section, but to do a really methodical series Really, a hymn of praise to Rand with, of course, accepting her limitations.
	But I think there's a line in a fairly bad film with Anthony Hopkins and the guy from 30 Rock.
	And they're fighting a bear or something like that.
	A bear is trying to get them. And Anthony Hopkins says, what one man can do, another man can do in terms of defeating the bear.
	And although the movie is pretty forgettable as a whole, It really was a great statement to have.
	I think that we can be inspired by people who've shown a lot of courage, but the very, very important thing to remember, the very important thing to remember when we're looking at heroes is that we're almost always looking at a mythology.
	We're almost always looking at mythology.
	I think that when we look at somebody like Ayn Rand, she wrote things that conformed to, I guess, A view of herself that she liked, but just weren't true, right?
	So she wrote at the end of Atlas Shrugged when she came to America, nobody helped me and I never thought it was anybody's duty to help me, or something like that.
	And I mean, factually, at least according to many contemporary accounts, it's just not true.
	It's just not true.
	The movie's called The Edge, yeah, I think.
	It's just not true. She got a lot of help.
	In fact, I think it was Cecil B. DeMille who got her started on her screenwriting career, and she had lots of people who helped her out.
	But... She, of course, didn't want to talk about that because she's got these heroes who completely invent themselves out of the ether, it would seem, and which is why all of her heroes have no families and no history and are fundamentally separate and either orphans or, you know, have no contact with their parents whatsoever.
	And this is to some degree Ayn Rand's life as well.
	But I think it's very important that when you look at the story of somebody you consider heroic, you are not getting the full story.
	You are not getting... The full facts.
	You are getting an interpretation.
	You are getting a story.
	You are getting a mythology and the degree, of course, to which people are profiting from that mythology, which is very much the case with Ayn Rand.
	There's a lot of profit in keeping Ayn Rand's vision as a steadfast warrior of reason, a goddess of the free market, I think, as one of the books has it.
	I think it's tough.
	Yeah, she had an affair.
	Rape is a constant theme in her books, which is a huge problem, in my opinion, psychologically.
	And there seems to be some significant evidence that she was addicted to amphetamines.
	She certainly was a nicotine addict, a considerable nicotine addict.
	Does that have anything to do with the price of Qi in China or the validity of her philosophy?
	I don't think directly.
	I think indirectly it's something that's interesting to examine.
	But I would be very skeptical.
	I would be very skeptical.
	And I say this as a guy who's going to be 44 years old this year, that I have gone through a series of hero worshipping, followed by some pretty significant feelings of disappointment, to the point of really, really feeling quite tragic about it.
	That it's very, very important not to set up heroes to recognize that we are all flesh and blood, that we all put our pants on one leg at a time, and...
	For every hero that you hear about, there is a darkness or an underbelly to that mythology that is really, really worth exploring.
	So I would not worship anybody in that context.
	I would not worship anybody as a hero.
	I think that you can be inspired by some things, but it is also a very, very tough thing to...
	To follow some of the stuff and see the underbelly, right?
	So, again, not to pick on Ayn Rand, who is, you know, but definitely was a heroine of mine for many, many years, and who I still have a great, great deal of respect for.
	But, you know, she talked about, I wanted to become a writer since the age of eight, and it never changed, and I was 13, I just decided that there was no God, and so on, right?
	And as if, you know, you just sort of brush your hands and walk away from all of this kind of stuff.
	And I don't think that's really how it works in real life.
	But people who want to have your admiration will talk about, you know, well, I just dusted my hands and I walked away from all of this stuff and never looked back and my life was great.
	And I think that is, I think it's a lie.
	I'm not saying it's a conscious lie, but I think it's a lie.
	And I do believe that it is exploitive to talk about these things.
	I've certainly always been very, I've tried to be, you know, relentlessly honest About the difficulties of philosophy and the challenges.
	And I don't think I've ever said, well, I just came across this revelation.
	It changed everything.
	I never looked back. I marched onwards and so on.
	I think I've always tried to be humble and honest about the challenges of living a life of integrity in a world that is not such a fan of integrity in practice.
	In theory it is, but not so much in practice.
	And so I would be very careful about people's self-reporting and the reporting of others who profit From the industry of heroism to some degree.
	And I would, instead of worshipping others, I would just continue to work on self-knowledge and improvement within your own life for the sake of the achievement and maintenance of happiness.
	That would be...
	I mean, there was some... McChrystal was on 60 Minutes the other day, the guy who's running Afghanistan, the war in Afghanistan.
	And they're like, oh, he gets up at five in the morning and runs two miles or whatever, and he only has one meal a day because otherwise he feels sluggish and this and that.
	And it's like, What the hell does that have to do with anything, right?
	But what it is is a desire to have people go like, wow, that guy's really disciplined, military disciplined, and so on.
	Anyway, I've done a podcast recently, and thanks, Greg, for the suggestion.
	I've done a podcast recently on my thoughts about the role of discipline in philosophy, and I am very, very opposed to the idea of discipline in terms of self-knowledge and philosophy, so I'll put that out this week, and hopefully that will make some sense.
	Anyway, let me not take up your show with my thoughts.
	I am here to listen to you and to have the honor of I've conversed with you about ideas, so if you have a thought, a question, a comment, a criticism, I would really, really appreciate hearing from you.
	Do we just speak up?
	Yes, indeed. Okay, so this is Debbie, also known as The Tomboy.
	Oh, hi, Debbie. How's it going? I'm good.
	Sorry, I just wanted to thank you for your thoughts on the parenting series.
	I thought they were very stimulating, and I really do appreciate them.
	Well, thank you. And actually, I was in the process of writing an email response to that, and then I realized what time it was today, and I thought, well, why don't I just try doing it this way?
	Fantastic. Because your response was awesome, and it clarified some things for me, and it also brought up a few things that I wanted to explain further or ask about.
	Please. One is, when I did the offhand session, The concern about praise and the idea revolving around can a parent give too much praise or the wrong kind of praise?
	I think it was misconstrued in that, you know, I was really concerned about that way more than I was.
	And I also made a vague note that I read somewhere, which I thought was when I was typing, it wasn't the best way to do that.
	But I had been doing some searching to see where I found it because I've read lots and lots of parenting books.
	But I think I found it.
	There is a book that I don't know if you've heard of before or not.
	I will tell you that I don't know if everything in it fits in with what you're trying to do with all the philosophical parenting, but I will tell you that it's listed as a reference on nospank.com or.net or whatever that site is.
	Right, nospank.net. Yeah, so I'm guessing it fits in pretty well.
	Anyway, it's called How to Talk So Kids Will Listen and Listen So Kids Will Talk.
	I've not read it, but I've heard of it.
	Sorry, go on. Okay, I just want to let you know there's a chapter in there, chapter 5, and the title of the chapter is Praise.
	And I was skimming through that, and that's exactly, that's where I had first heard it.
	And I still, and I won't even try to explain that thought process of what they were explaining here in this chapter, but that is where it came from.
	So if anyone's interested in that or wondering what in the heck I was thinking when I wrote that, it's laid out in that chapter.
	And there is also, I think, to back up the point that you make on the message board, there are studies that show that if you praise a child for innate qualities, the child loses motivation.
	I think that comes out of the book called Nurture Shock, which is also worth a read, that if you praise a child like, oh, you're so intelligent, then what you create is an identity in the child that values innate qualities like intelligence, and what that actually makes them is afraid to try challenges that will question that core value.
	So it makes them actually averse to situations where a lack of intelligence might be, quote, revealed.
	But I think that's a very, very important aspect of parenting, which is important not to praise your child for innate qualities, because it does make them risk-averse.
	At least there's some studies that seem to say that.
	Okay. And actually, I think that thought that you just...
	I think that weaves into some of what they were saying in this chapter.
	So it's all along that same type of thing.
	And then the other point related to that was that I am, it's kind of got misconstrued that maybe I wasn't on board with really, you know, that full and complete parental support as much as we possibly can is a good thing.
	And there's no, I forget how you put it there, Aristotelian.
	There's no sort of Aristotelian mean there, right?
	Yeah, and I totally agree with that.
	And again, the way I wrote the message, I think it just kind of got misconstrued.
	As a matter of fact, I don't know if I'm right or not, but I may go even a step further than you do with that if I understand you to mean what I think you mean when you talk about sleep training.
	Because I'm more of a family bed proponent, and I don't know if you've heard of the family bed.
	Actually, I think you talked about it with my wife and I in one show where we had asked for advice about parenting before Isabella was born.
	And if I remember rightly, you were saying that your kids were family bedded.
	You have four kids, right? And they were family bedded for quite some time.
	That was the other thing.
	I don't know how much it matters, but I just have two kids, not four.
	Oh, two. Okay, right, right. But your point about sibling conflicts is entirely taken, and we may, I guess, find out about that, or we may not, given our age as parents.
	But that, I think, is a very good point, and one that I don't have any particularly intelligent answers to.
	Okay. Yeah, and I just wanted to throw that idea again out there about the ideas behind the family bed.
	The sleep issue is a very, it's so, I don't know, emotional and unique, and it affects all families differently.
	But for me, the other podcasts that you talked about where you were so, so clear, and it was so wonderful to hear, especially coming from the father and a father who's doing it, on how important it is to have someone...
	Really, really there for the child for those first few years, but not one person at least being able to stay home.
	That's, for me, even more important in regards to nighttime issues, because parenting is 24 hours a day, so there are ways that we need to deal with the fact that our kids need us at nighttime similarly than they do in the daytime, and that's where The sleep training and the family bed and all these things sort of mesh together.
	I think, and the family bed proponents actually put it this way too, that there is a need there, a dependency there for that touch and that closeness and stuff that lasts throughout, again, throughout the 24 hours.
	And the idea is that if you give them that when they need it, for as long as they need it, that they will gradually move out from that, just like you explained in other ways.
	That it's a process. Well, I'm saying that.
	I think that's why you said, too, that it's a gradual process and they will end up becoming very, very independent people because when they needed that, when they had that dependency, it was fulfilled for them.
	And I always fear that people that talk about, you know, sleep training or trying to let their child cry it out in order to have them conform to a schedule that, you know, adults think is going to work out better.
	There's just that, and it's a balance there because you need a parent also sane and not so tired that they can't take care of their child, which is where the family bed comes into play.
	It doesn't have to be like that if you use some of the family bed ideas and even tweak them for each family.
	I mean, for a while, we had our bed and we just put a twin bed right next to ours.
	And that's just what was in our bedroom.
	We had other rooms, too.
	So after a while, we didn't just even start them in there, but we may go lay down with them and start them in their other bed.
	And they knew with complete trust that if they got up at night, that they were welcome to just come in there and snuggle in wherever they wanted to.
	and then gradually, you know, they're not sleeping with us anymore.
	They're out on their own.
	So gradually they do move out.
	And that happens.
	I don't even remember.
	It's one of those things where something happens so gradually that it just sort of moves.
	And it was very natural and it worked very well.
	And I just wanted to throw that out as another idea for people to kind of investigate who are making their future plans on how they might deal with certain things as they come up.
	No, and that is an excellent, excellent point.
	And I really appreciate you bringing that up.
	And there's lots of books on the family bed stuff that I think is really, really important.
	I can say that we certainly tried it.
	I mean, Christina slept, basically, or tried to sleep on the couch for a while with Isabella, which is the only place where she would sleep for the first couple of months of her life.
	We tried having Isabella sleep in the bed with Christina for quite some time.
	I was just always concerned that I was going to roll on her or, you know, sort of flip my hand and clip her or something like that.
	So I didn't sleep in the same bed with Christina and Isabella when that was occurring.
	We certainly tried that and I would have been perfectly happy to have Isabella sleep with us.
	Our central goal in the whole process was what is going to help her sleep the best.
	And that really was the key.
	Unfortunately, when she slept with Christina, She didn't sleep.
	She would wake up every hour to 90 minutes and then she'd be awake for half an hour to 45 minutes and then she might doze a little bit again.
	But she just didn't sleep.
	Neither of them slept. And that was a big problem.
	We tried it for months and it didn't work.
	And we tried having the crib in the room.
	We tried having her sleep with us.
	We tried having her sleep in a bassinet by the bed.
	We tried having her sleep on the couch.
	We tried so many different things.
	But she just wasn't getting the sleep that she needed.
	And our goal was Simply to get her to sleep.
	And the only thing that worked was sleep training.
	And now she sleeps 10 or 11 hours a night.
	Maybe she'll let out one yelp at night.
	But for the most part, she just sleeps right through.
	And that, of course, is better for us.
	But that wasn't our primary motive.
	Our primary motive was just what is going to get her to sleep.
	I was very struck by what the Healthy Sleep App, It's Happy Child book Author wrote, which he said, you know, sleep is as essential to children as nutrition.
	You have to do whatever it takes to get them to sleep.
	And if having her in the family bed would have helped her sleep, then that would have been fantastic.
	But she just didn't. And her language was slow in developing because she was tired, because her brain was not getting the sleep that it needed to develop properly.
	And since we sleep trained her, she now sleeps very well, very well throughout the night.
	And her language skills are Leaping forward way ahead of her age group.
	So I agree with you that I think that the goal is not sleep training or the family bed or other ways of getting other approaches, because those are all means to the end.
	The end is whatever is going to help your child sleep the best, because sleep is so important.
	And there does seem to be a fair number of studies that say, as I mentioned in the cast, that If your children don't get good sleep when they're young and that's not dealt with, in some manner, whether that's the family bed or cry it out or something else, that is consistent and works, then they can end up going into their late teens and early twenties with significant sleep problems.
	And that really was our goal.
	We'll do whatever it takes.
	If she has to sleep on a hat on my head while I stand up for eight hours, and if that's the way she sleeps best, then that's what we'll do.
	But that really was our sort of guiding light, so to speak.
	Yeah. Okay.
	And like I said, I'm treading real carefully here because I know, like you just explained, there are so many variables that happen within each family and what's going on.
	And as you explained that, it makes perfect sense.
	And the only thing that I have left to ask or that I wonder about that is, How do you reconcile it?
	I don't understand.
	You help us understand the idea of crying it out for sleep training and why that's okay or that works when we also talk about the reason a child cries is because they need something and it's the parent's responsibility to kind of figure out what that is.
	So how can you put the crying it out working as a thing that fits into sleep training but yet Treat it differently.
	I'm hoping this makes sense.
	No, I think it's a fantastic question.
	And the way that I would approach it, and again, just to reinforce your point, I don't think that there's a single...
	I mean, I would tell parents to avoid sleep training as much as possible because it really is tough on the whole family, particularly, of course, on the kids.
	So if you can find some way to do it without sleep training, do that.
	But what I would say is that as a parent, I think you have to recognize...
	What your children's needs are versus what their wants are.
	I mean, she needs food.
	To take a silly example, which is not applicable to her because we don't really give her any sugar, but she needs food.
	She wants a candy bar.
	And I think to differentiate between the needs and the wants is important.
	When we put her to bed and she cried, I mean, she was well fed.
	She'd been played with by usually two parents for most of the day.
	She'd had an outing.
	She'd had a bath. She'd had a wonderful day.
	She was changed.
	She was clean. She was fed.
	And so she didn't need us.
	She wanted us. But I think the way that we processed it, right or wrong, was that we said she needs to learn how to fall asleep.
	Because if she doesn't learn how to do that, then her sleep is going to continue to be broken in these terrible ways.
	And so the need that we felt we were satisfying was for her to learn how to self-soothe and fall asleep.
	And that wasn't out of any sense of convenience to us.
	It was just that nothing else that we were doing was helping her to learn that.
	And then she did. She did learn that.
	And now she will cry very rarely when we put her down.
	And she will soothe herself back to sleep.
	And then when she wakes up in the middle of the night, she knows how to soothe herself back to sleep as well.
	So we were teaching her a skill that she really did need to have, which was self-soothing, as opposed to giving her what she wanted in the moment, which was us, which actually prevented her from learning how to self-soothe.
	And if our presence in the room had allowed her to fall asleep and stay asleep, then we would have done that for sure.
	But unfortunately, it just wasn't And a few times that we've sort of gone in for a variety of reasons, so she'll sort of cry, say, at midnight, right?
	She'll cry. And once she cried because she'd pooped at night, and so the next night or two we went in to check to make sure that she had not pooped.
	Unfortunately, when we would go in, all that would happen is that she would then cry even more the next night and even more the next night, and then we would just have to pull back.
	I mean, it's nothing that we wanted to do, but it was the only empirical way to Had that worked to get her to sleep as consistently as she's been?
	Okay. And that helps a lot, that explanation too.
	And I'm not going to take all the time on this, but it just brings up more things every time that we say something to each other because I would consider, like, sometimes the needs for me.
	And I understand that I came from a completely natural, trying to do everything that's completely naturally As much as we could, meaning I breastfed the kids and they decided when they were ready to stop that.
	And that was another big gradual process too that actually went differently with my second child because I was more able to do it than my first.
	So there's a whole other theory there on the needs part being that the touch and the human contact is that a child needs like having 10 or 12 hours a night go by isn't And again, just understand that I'm talking about other ideas and other theories,
	that having 10 to 12 hours that young of a child go by at night, that saying they don't need, that saying that they want it as opposed to needing that human contact isn't necessarily something that I think that I particularly buy or agree with, that I just feel like, again, it's a 24-hour thing.
	And again, we all have to make Lots and lots of decisions, and you have to do things so that you are the best parent you can be during the whole 24 hours.
	Sorry, just to reiterate, and I completely agree with you that it's not an ideal situation.
	If there's any other way to get the child to sleep, then that should be the case.
	If we could have given her the human contact and the sleep, We obviously would have been very happy to do both, but we just found that when we gave her the human contact, she no longer got to sleep, and to sleep was the key.
	That was like whatever we had to do to get her to sleep so that her sleep wasn't broken and jagged, and that she was sort of too tired to do anything productive the next day.
	And by productive, I mean sort of explore and learn.
	So, I agree with you that, and I appreciate your sensitivity, and I'm, you know, I'm a big fan of the family vet, and if that had worked out for us, I'd have been like, yay, you know, we'll do that till she's, you know, 10, if that's what works for her, but it didn't.
	I mean, we just, again, I'm an empiricist to the core, so we would have loved to give her the human contact, but whenever we gave her the human contact, all that she would do is wake up crying every hour, or every 90 minutes for, you know, 30 to 60 minutes, which meant that her sleep was really broken and it was not good for her.
	Okay, I'll just stop here and say, yeah, that I think this discussion has been long enough for people to understand that check out ahead of time, check out sleep training, check out the family bed and just You know, inform yourself on all these things and then when you hit those bumps that you're going to hit, you know, as the couple, you know, who already has a good relationship, okay, let's try this, let's see if this works and not.
	So I wanted to throw that other piece in there so that people just, you know, again, remind everybody that there was that other kind of piece out there that may or may not work for everybody.
	Yeah, absolutely. And I'm with you 100%, Debbie, that every alternative To that which is upsetting to the kid should be explored and tested for a good period of time before you do something that is going to be upsetting to your child.
	I completely agree with you on that and we certainly did try I think it was at about six or seven months we started to sleep train and we certainly did try these other things and we just found that the sleep is getting worse but I completely agree with you that it is very much a last resort and it certainly worked for us as a family very well but It really should be a last resort, because there's no question that it's upsetting to the kid for sure.
	Well, listen, I appreciate you letting me just sort of lay out a couple more things for people to take a look at, so I'll let somebody else talk.
	Thanks. Actually, just before that person does, I have a list.
	Oh my goodness, I have a list, Debbie reminded me.
	It's the Proud Father list.
	We have been keeping a record of the words that Isabella knows, and now she is 13...
	And I think three-quarter months.
	She'll be 14 on February the 19th.
	So 14 months, so I guess she's almost 14 months.
	And she has, so far, I'm sure we're missing a few, but she has 39 words, and I wanted to let you know what they are, because I'm going to be completely self-indulgent for a minute or two.
	So she knows, all done, all gone, bird, ball, bread, bang, bang.
	And that's a strange word for her to know, but she really enjoys the music video for Love Shack by the B-52s.
	And in it, there's that bit that goes, bang, bang, bang on the door, baby!
	And so she loves to sort of yell out, bang, bang, when that's occurring.
	She knows bear, car, car, because there's usually more than one, duck, duck, ear, airplane, hat, bye-bye, hi, mama, balloon, uh-oh, sky, we have a skylight in our house, and she knows that.
	Dada, she's got this great thing where she comes up and sort of pats me on the chest and says, Dada, Palomaikia, which is Greek for clapping.
	Owl for ouch. Up.
	Book. Egg.
	Oh well. Banana.
	Hot, hot, hot. She knows it's like the word for coffee is ah, because that's what I say when I drink it.
	Doggy. She knows. Bubbles, because we blow bubbles to her.
	Light. Fan.
	She's really good at spotting fans.
	Like if there's one fan in a warehouse 12 miles away, she'll see it.
	iPod. Tree. Glove.
	Bum bum. Sock.
	Cow. And spin for when she turns around and is the drunken baby waddling across the floor.
	Anyway, I just sort of wanted to mention that really it's just cool.
	We're going to get a list of her words and then we're going to put it in her memory box.
	And she's got 39 words, which I think is cool.
	And I'm sure, again, there's probably a few that we've forgotten.
	But I was trying to get a...
	I'd like to get a video of those together, but I think that's going to be quite an endeavor because she's not exactly a performing monkey.
	So... Anyway, that's where she's at.
	If you would like to bring up any other topic that is on your mind or anything which came out of Debbie and I's discussion, I would be more than happy to listen.
	Or do we have a short show today?
	And Ruth, rested.
	I have something that we can do, though I'm perfectly happy to hold off if you want to have a short show and or if anyone else has a question.
	No, no, please grab the going while the going is good.
	All right, so I had a dream.
	And one day all God's children...
	Sorry, go on. Yeah, exactly.
	One day all God's children, etc., and, you know, Forrest Gump is waiting across the pool or whatever.
	I could not make...
	Well, I had some ideas, but...
	Sorry, just before you start, what does it mean when he says life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're going to get?
	Does he not know that there is a guide that's printed in most box of chocolates that tells you exactly what you're going to get?
	I don't know why people like that became a famous statement.
	I mean, does he blindfolds himself and just reach into and have no sense of the shape and just jam things into his mouth?
	Anyway, it doesn't really matter. Go on.
	Yeah, but if your mama done taken the guide away, you know?
	If your mama done taken the guide away, that's a good point, yeah.
	I guess if you are cognitively challenged, life is like, or without philosophy, life is like a box of chocolates except there's, I guess, ogre eyes and Chinese hand traps and other things in there as well.
	But anyway, go on. Hilarious.
	All right, so I'm just going to read this to you out of my dream journal.
	I haven't written it down anywhere.
	When did you have the dream? Um, it was about, it was about a week ago.
	It was, well, no, it was longer than that.
	It was like two days after we had that chat, which I will send back to you tonight.
	So I had emailed this, this person, um, and she hadn't emailed me back yet.
	So that's basically the only thing that happened the day before.
	All right. So I'm at my mother's house in Texas.
	I'm exiting the front door.
	And an olive green door with like a pickle-shaped handle, which is not on the house in real life.
	I see a huge black roadside assistance truck in the driveway.
	The driver had been pulled over and parked in our driveway to talk to the police officer.
	I see him out of the corner of my eye.
	And... Oh, and I don't see the cop as I... Pull open the driver's side door of, you know, this huge black roadside assistance truck.
	But it's very high, and it looks scary to drive, and I'm wondering how I'm supposed to climb into this thing.
	The roadside assistance driver is sort of really tall and lanky, kind of 50s and graying, comes over and puts his hand on the door to stop me driving away in the truck.
	I then ask him for a ride to the train station.
	There isn't one in my mother's city.
	And he condescendingly tells me to get in on the passenger side.
	He's really nasty to me.
	He drives me into like a tiny medieval warren of a town.
	The streets are really narrow, almost too narrow for the truck.
	And I keep wondering how he's going to get us into this city.
	I ask him anxiously where the train station is from here, because although I'm familiar with the town, these narrow streets...
	And, like, the gift shops that are on them are very weird to me.
	Like, I know where the city is, but I don't know this part of town.
	He sort of, he toys with me, like he taunts me, kind of pointing to the quote-unquote station that I can't see.
	And he says it's out of sight around the corner.
	So I go to get out, and he says no, he wants me to...
	Kiss him before I leave.
	It's like a condition of getting out of the truck.
	So I go to kiss him on the cheek.
	But he prefers that I kiss him on the lips.
	So I do very quickly and I get out of the truck.
	Suddenly, I'm actually in my mother's hometown.
	I know where I am.
	But I'm walking down like an abandoned paved concrete road late at night in the middle of fields, like there are grass lawns on either side and just this abandoned highway goes through it.
	Let's see, it's late at night, so it's a warm night, but I have on my red...
	Sorry, is this the second chunk of the dream?
	It's not a separate dream, it's just a second...
	It's like there's a transition here, right?
	There's a transition.
	It's all the same dream.
	Okay, but there's a real transition, right?
	I didn't miss a joining part, right?
	Nope, there's a transition.
	Got it. So I have this red wool winter coat on, the one that I had in Canada, you saw it.
	But it's a warm night, so I take it off.
	There are children playing in and on and near the road and on the grass.
	Some of the children, like, see me and they either stare or they try to tease me, you know, like, why do you have a coat on, etc.
	Somebody, one of the children throws something at me.
	And I, like, you know, when you roll up and, like, flip a bath towel at somebody?
	I do that because I'm holding a bath towel.
	And I hit not the child who threw something at me, but the child behind him in the face.
	And I apologize profusely to this little kid and I keep on walking.
	New transition.
	I make it to what looks like where the station might be.
	Let's see. Oh, I check the timetable in an abandoned gas station window.
	The cigarette ads, for some reason, are what tell the train times.
	I just missed the train.
	And I curse the MTA. The MTA is the train company that goes between New York and Connecticut.
	It's not down in Texas.
	Then I realized that I'm missing my coat.
	I'm so overtired.
	I'm exhausted. That the realization that I've...
	Lost my coat is just overwhelming.
	I just can't take anything else.
	I really want to cry when I consider thinking about walking all the way back to where I've come from to look for it.
	Besides, I think it's dark and I won't be able to find it in the dark.
	Maybe one of the kids has taken it.
	I mentally debate going back to look for it.
	Or coming back to look for it, you know, the next day when it's light out.
	But that doesn't really satisfy me either.
	I take out some money, and I think that I'll go to, like, the Exxon, the SS station on top of the hill in front of me to get some fast food and maybe, you know, feel better.
	I go inside, and the...
	The Esso station is lit up and there are people in there, but the fast food outlet is closed and it's behind a darkened glass partition and locked.
	I get the idea that the government has blocked the sale of fast food and gas stations and I think about all the wasted space in the stores.
	They have this fast food outlet, but now that the government's blocked it...
	I'm sorry, I'm finding this dream too long to keep track of.
	I'm doing my very, very best, but I'd like to start again from the beginning, just because I'm finding it...
	By the time I'm listening to this, I can't remember what's going on at the beginning, so it's too much for my old middle-aged brain to process.
	So, with your permission, I'd like to jump back to the beginning, because I think that the dream...
	Most dreams are the consequences of choices that we make at the beginning of the dream.
	This is sort of my opinion, of course, but...
	So, at the beginning...
	There's this black roadside assistance truck, and you try to get in it, and this mean guy stops you, right?
	Mm-hmm. And I hope it's not too big an issue to say that the call that you and I had was about a relationship that you had with somebody who you knew ahead of time was a mystic, and then you got involved in a relationship, not a romantic relationship, but another kind of relationship, and the mysticism, which was evident to you beforehand...
	I did prove to be correct in terms of dysfunction in the relationship, right?
	So that's sort of what you and I had talked about, if I remember rightly, in the call that you and I had.
	And then if you had this dream this night, I think that the dream is saying to you that if you...
	Because the question is, if the guy is mean and rude to you, why are you asking him for a ride?
	Right. It was a couple of nights after.
	I remember thinking in the dream that, like, I can't go anywhere on my own, which is, I mean, of course, what I had thought when I got involved with this woman.
	It's like, well, you know, she can maybe get me places that I just can't go on my own.
	So it's a parallel.
	Now, of course, you're not a kid in the dream because you're taking a train or you want to take a train, right?
	So you have money, you're an adult and so on.
	And so, obviously, in real life, if somebody treated you this way, you'd most likely say, you know, to hell with you, I'm taking a cab, right?
	Right. But you get into, right, despite the evidence, right?
	And I say this with all sympathy, right?
	Daniel, in the interview, Daniel Mackler asked me what my faults were, and of course there are many and various, but my major one is lack of integrity, right?
	I keep forgetting that values really mean stuff.
	Like, I keep forgetting that the principles that people hold predict with almost unerring accuracy the way that things turn out, right?
	The end is always embedded in the beginning, if there is to be an end, or the flourishing is also embedded in the beginning, if there is to be a flourishing.
	And we're not trained to do that.
	And that's a real shame. And there's very many reasons which we don't have to get into here.
	So why we're not trained to do that?
	To judge people's values by how they present themselves at the beginning in their introduction to us.
	Because in almost all cases that I can remember in my life, the problems that came up later in the relationship were entirely predicated in the very first time that we're That I spoke with a particular person.
	If the relationship went sour, there were problems.
	That's what was occurring.
	And again, we don't have to get into the wheres and whys if we ever release that chat.
	There's some stuff that's talked about it in there.
	But I think that if you look at it, the dream, all you want to do is use this guy to get to the train, right?
	Right. And on the way, you're humiliated by being forced to kiss this creep who's in his 50s, I think you said, to be able to Kiss this creep on the lips, right?
	Yeah. And you lose your coat and you hit a kid with a towel accidentally and you check out the schedule at the abandoned gas station and you miss the train anyway.
	Right. So this thing that you were doing, it's like, okay, well I'll make these sacrifices in my values in order to achieve this end, as if that actually works.
	Right. Because you did not act in a way that was self-protecting, because this guy was mean and creepy, and you get into the car with him.
	And it's hard to get out because it's so high, and he's driving in a way that is alarming.
	I think you said that it was narrow and you weren't sure how he was going to get through and so on, right?
	So you're in there, you're in his control, you're high up, you can't get out.
	And you say, well, but I'll make these sacrifices in order to get to the train.
	Put up with him scaring me, with him being mean, with kissing him on the lips, because at least after I compromise all these things, at least I will get to the train, right?
	Right. But what does the dream say?
	Well, that doesn't work, because, you know, not only do you not get to the train, but you, you know, lose stuff that's important to you, and, I don't know, like, accidentally hit children on the way.
	Which is not accidental either, right?
	I mean, in terms of the dream. No, no, it's not.
	Because the inner child in you, I would guess, is pretty much like, don't get into cab with creepy guy, right?
	Don't get into the truck with creepy guy, right?
	Right, totally. And I think that's really, really important.
	It's something I continually try to focus on regularly, which is, how am I feeling in this interaction?
	How is it working for me?
	What are the values that this person holds?
	What have they communicated to me in their conversation?
	What have they communicated me in the choice of the content of their communication with me?
	Because we know everything about people in the first 10 seconds or 50 seconds or, you know, the first certainly five minutes.
	We know everything that we need to know.
	But it's really hard to make choices as if that's true.
	Because we have this belief that if we make these compromises, we will do so and get rewards on the other side.
	But my lifelong experience and I think your experience and the experience of many other people I've had conversations with is The moment you make that compromise, you don't get to your goal anyway.
	It's not a means to an end.
	It simply is a means to a disaster.
	Right.
	Yeah, absolutely.
	And I know that I interrupted you in the conversation in sort of going further into the dream, but it seems to me that everything that occurs after you make the choice to get into the cab is bad, right?
	Yes. And I think that's what the dream is saying.
	If you make your compromises with your values in the beginning, it will not take you.
	It will not take you to a good place.
	You will not say, well, I'll hold my nose and eat this food that doesn't taste good, but at least it'll fill me up, right?
	All it does is, you know, give you food poisoning, right?
	So it's like, well, I held my nose, I ate this food that tasted really bad, and I'm now hungry and sick, right?
	Right, totally. Right.
	Yeah, I remember thinking that in the dream too, like, I don't really want to eat this anyway.
	Right, right. Yeah.
	Thank you. I mean, that's...
	Yeah, I mean, I know we danced over a lot of things, and perhaps someday we can talk about what pickles mean to you, but I think that's the content of the dream.
	And I have these dreams a lot where it's like, dude, come on, you're supposed to have all these values, you're supposed to have all this knowledge of philosophy, and yet you still take people at face value and fall into their craziness.
	In order to believe that you're going to achieve some positive end out of it.
	And it never works out, right?
	Yeah, and of course a large part of me doesn't want it to be that simple.
	Damn it. Oh, I know, I know.
	We really don't want it to be that simple.
	And look, I sympathize and really do appreciate that if it is that simple, life gets, in the short run at least, Pretty tough, right?
	Yes. It's like, well, who am I going to do business with, right?
	Right. It's like, I've been, for the last week, I've been, you know, examining all of these people, and it's like, really not a one of them.
	And not me, like, obviously.
	Yeah, well, look, I mean, having some knowledge of philosophy and self-knowledge and so on...
	As we're all struggling to pursue and to bring into our lives.
	And it's like raising the Titanic with a two-pound fishing line.
	It's just a horrendously challenging and exciting and lurid and difficult and frightening task.
	But values really matter.
	People's philosophical beliefs really matter.
	You cannot trust people who are irrational.
	You cannot trust people who are irrational.
	Thank you.
	And my sort of goal is to not have everybody have to learn these lessons quite as hard as I had to learn them.
	That's sort of my goal in talking about this.
	And that's why I appreciate the dream that you've brought up.
	But it also means, of course, that we can't really complain about...
	This is the challenging part, too, is that we can't really complain about the world not acting with integrity if we don't apply rational values to our interactions, right?
	Because it's us, then, who is not acting with integrity.
	And yet we'll say, well, you know, if you get involved in a relationship with a mystic or somebody who's superstitious or irrational...
	And then you get mad at them for not following their values.
	It's like, but they kind of are following their values, right?
	It's you who's not following your values.
	The lack of integrity is in the mirror, not in the world beyond.
	And that, I think, is the really challenging aspect of this.
	Yes. Yes, totally.
	Well, thank you so much.
	You're very, very welcome.
	You're very welcome. And I hope that that's useful to other people.
	And I'm sorry again for interrupting, but I think the dream had told us enough, so...
	Alright, somebody has a question, Mr.
	CJS. Hello, hello.
	Well, I have some pretty awesome news.
	I've just gotten through my first week of a new job and it's actually, a lot of that is largely due to you and the help that I received from listening to your podcast.
	It kind of gave me the confidence to Kind of go out on a limb and just jump into this commission job and something I never would have thought I would have done before.
	But I've been enjoying it so far and I should be getting my first paycheck pretty soon.
	Actually, I kind of have a question about – it sort of ties into what you – Wait, wait, wait.
	Talk about your job for a sec.
	That sounds too cool for school.
	So tell us a little bit more about it.
	Oh, well, it's a sales job.
	I'm selling insurance. It's something I never would have thought that I would have been doing.
	I don't know what I would have seen myself doing.
	Insurance is an important thing for people to have and it's something that people don't want to get but it is a very helpful and useful thing to do and the earlier you can get people to buy insurance if that's what they want and what is valuable to them, the better.
	It's a valid and helpful service that you're doing in my opinion.
	Right, yeah, and it's pretty fun.
	Like, I have a lot of freedom in it.
	You know, there's no time clock to clock into.
	I'm paid commission, so I just, you know, I get paid if I produce, and the harder I work, then the more I can get paid.
	Yeah, they call this, in the business world, sometimes it's called, eat what you kill.
	Yes. What am I going to eat this week?
	Well, what did I bring down with my bow and arrow of language, so...
	Well, and see, and what's funny about it is that it was actually kind of like an experiment to do a job like this for me.
	Because I wasn't even, you know, for a long time, I was actually into a lot of thinking about, I mean, I don't know, I explore all sorts of political ideas, like socialism, communism, all sorts of different stuff.
	And doing this was actually kind of like, I'm going to test the free market idea.
	You know, I'm going to like, just go do it myself and see if I like it and see if it's something that I actually think That I would recommend to people as a good system for how we should acquire resources to consume.
	And I think I speak for all of us when we say we're very glad that you took the free market route rather than, say, a communist coup d'etat.
	So I just want to mention that that's good for us all.
	So please, go on. Right.
	So, yeah, I mean, I've been enjoying it so far very much, and without saying too much, I hope to send something your way very soon, now that I actually can get some income going at a bit.
	It's not another course that's in my bed, is it?
	No? No, no, no.
	Well, I appreciate that.
	And listen, I mean, if you have a board name, and if people are interested in...
	In getting insurance and dealing with somebody who understands philosophy, you know, maybe you can mention your board name or you could create a board name or you could tell me a board name that you're going to create so that people can contact you if they're interested in insurance.
	I mean, I highly, highly recommend doing business within the community because, you know, a lot of shared values and that makes a huge, huge difference.
	So do you have a way that people can contact you if they're interested in this?
	Yeah, that's fine. I'm only licensed in Texas.
	That's kind of funny. In order to sell insurance, I have to be licensed by the state.
	And the whole test is actually over all the tax issues.
	Like, they want to make sure that I understand all of the tax laws that go into selling insurance before they let me go out and sell it to people.
	Right, and I think everybody understood the Texas connection when you said insurance rather than insurance, which is how I think the Queen's English goes.
	Right. So is there a way that people can contact you if they're in Texas?
	I know we do have a number of listeners in Texas.
	Sure. Well, my name in the chat room is Artie.
	I'm that little jeering story man.
	How do you spell it? Artie, A-R-D-I. Okay, so if you're listening to this and you're interested in insurance, just send Artie a message through the message board and I'm sure that he will get back to you if he's hungry.
	Sure, wonderful. Yeah, especially if you're in Texas, no problem.
	I'd be happy to meet with him. Fantastic.
	Okay, so sorry. Congratulations on the job and congratulations on taking that step.
	It is a very – and it's great training to do this as an entrepreneur if in the future you wanted to take that route, which is the ultimate free market frontier, at least that which is left in the current system.
	So congratulations. Good for you.
	Right. And another thing that's weird about it is I've got a lot of opposition kind of from my family going into it.
	And a lot of this has to do with the fact that I don't want to be economically tied to them anymore.
	And so for a lot of it, they're like, oh no, you've got to stay in school and we'll help you and all this crap.
	And I'm just like, nope, I've done that.
	I've done that with you for many years now, and I'm just going to do something on my own and take charge in the best way I can.
	And it's working out very well so far.
	Yeah. Well, congratulations.
	Those are skills that will serve you well for the rest of your life, no matter what you do.
	So it gives you negotiation skills, which actually help in your personal relationships as well.
	I think that honorable sales is a hugely great training for many, many things in life.
	And so, you know, I'd highly recommend it to people who have an aptitude or a desire that way.
	And so, good for you.
	Now, I didn't want to miss your question, because I know you had one.
	I just wanted to...
	Yeah, it kind of relates to just how...
	Because you were talking about living your values all the time and not compromising on them and things like that.
	But my question kind of – and I'm trying to think of the best way to phrase it.
	But when you're in a workplace with – obviously, everybody in my workplace, I don't work with a bunch of anarcho-capitalists, right?
	And for example, when I was training under my manager and stuff, we spent a lot of time together driving around, going to the different appointments, trying to make sales, stuff like that.
	And in the course of that, you're talking with them and you're getting to know this person, and inevitably you kind of roll over political stuff or something.
	And so I'm kind of sitting here thinking, now how much do I want to reveal to my manager about the way that I... Think about all these things like this stupid road that hasn't been fixed for over a year and it's been working.
	And I just kind of make a jeering comment like, oh yeah, that government's slow at building that road there.
	So my question kind of centers around how do we deal as a community with With this issue of hiding, right?
	How much do you reveal and in what situation is it wise to reveal?
	Should you reveal to your boss and a bunch of people in the workplace, like, oh, by the way, I think the government is evil and taxation is forced, and you actually, why do you want to shoot me?
	Right, right, right. Well, what did your gut tell you in that moment?
	Well, my gut told me that...
	That if I had said more, then he – then I would have gotten into a long discussion with him about – I would have just gotten all the same bombarded questions of just how will we pay for this and this?
	How will we do this? How will we do that?
	And I just didn't really want to go down that road, and I also kind of thought to myself like I don't – Really care so much what he thinks like I'm kind of more interested in what he can teach me with regard to this job And I just don't really feel like having that kind of relationship with him So I mean my guts only hide like don't don't stir the waters because this is your workplace And this is how you eat.
	This is how you get money And so but see that's the thing is I don't want to separate You know, but hide is a pretty volatile word right and it's not a very respectful one to that decision.
	I I mean, you could be, you know, discretion is the better part of valor, right?
	I mean, that you could just say, well, I'm going to be discreet at this particular point for a variety of reasons.
	Hide is a kind of pejorative, if that makes sense.
	I'm going to hide, you know, like I'm hunted and I'm, you know, cowardly or whatever.
	I mean, but those are the associations that I get.
	I don't know if you listened to the last Sunday show that I posted.
	Yeah, I think so. You'll have to remind me.
	I had a conversation with a guy who said he was from Latvia or Estonia, I think.
	Very Russian-sounding anyway.
	And he was talking about perfect knowledge is impossible.
	And we had the argument about, you know, three trees, and I say there are two trees or something like that.
	And actually, I should have said, I'm male.
	Is that an argument that is open to debate, right?
	Because I have the dangly bits which shrivel in Canadian winter.
	But he had a standard.
	Which would require perfect omniscience in order for anything to be certain.
	And I was saying, no, no, no, no. You want to have a standard which is the greatest possible, and then you want to have that be your 100%, right?
	You don't want to do the spinal tap philosophy where you just change the numbers on the dial, right?
	And just, you know, now this one goes up to 11, right?
	And I would say the same thing you said that I had said to always live your values.
	And that's not...
	I think possible or realistic, right?
	So, for instance, I'm watching a movie.
	Am I living my values? I'm peeing.
	Am I living my values? Like, it doesn't really make any sense to say to be always living your values because I don't think that it's applicable, if that makes sense.
	It's like— Well, but okay, but when is it—what if, like, I was asked a question directly, like, if he had just said, like, well, you know, are you a Democrat?
	You know, I mean, is it okay for me to be like, well—I mean, like, do I just say no?
	Like, I actually don't believe in governments at all.
	I don't vote. You know what I mean?
	And it's—yeah, I mean, yeah, I guess I could, but it's just that— Well, there's no shoulds, right?
	You understand that you don't owe honesty.
	There's no shoulds in this, right?
	The whole point is to get away from the shoulds.
	Because then we just become like robots that produce lots of programs, right?
	Right, but I don't want to lie.
	Like, I want to actually be completely open about what I think and...
	No, you don't. No, because otherwise you would have.
	Empirically you don't, because you didn't in this example, right?
	And it's not a criticism.
	I'm not criticizing you.
	I'm just empirically, you don't always want to be open because otherwise you would have been, right?
	Right, right. Well, I guess what I mean is ideally.
	Like ideally, I want the world to be that way to where I don't have to.
	Come on, ideally, ideally, we wouldn't even be in this situation because there wouldn't be a government, right?
	So ideally is a word that doesn't make much sense to me.
	Like we have to live in the real world, right?
	It's funny because you're selling insurance and you're using the word ideally.
	Well, ideally, we wouldn't need any insurance, right?
	Because we never get sick. We get hit by a bus number 100 and fall into a grave and not need any funeral expenses, right?
	So there's no ideally in the business that you're in, right?
	So let's just throw that one right out the window and put that one right aside, right?
	Yeah, that's funny because I just got in a long conversation with someone last night trying to tell them how important it was to have this in case their husband died in a car accident or something.
	I don't know. It's a funny business to be in.
	There's a lot of occupational hazards.
	I find myself talking about death in sort of this way where it's like, well, death is the business.
	Although, actually, oh, another thing that's actually kind of fascinating about the job to me is that part of the Part of the idea behind insurance is that the insurance company has an insurable interest in you staying alive.
	I actually – there's a lot of things about this.
	Part of what attracted it to – was attractive about it to me is that the DRO model in a lot of ways comes down to this concept of insurable interest in people.
	The idea that you as a company, you have to have an insurable interest in this person being successful.
	Like my life insurance company, for example, we give you lots of liability insurance where if you get in an accident, we'll actually pay you to go to the hospital.
	And the idea being that you don't get into an accident and then let it fester and then hurt yourself later and die because then my client's gone and I don't want my client gone.
	And you lose money because – Right, exactly. Because the way they make money is we get premiums and then we invest it.
	And that's how insurance companies make profits.
	And it's the same thing is true in terms of checkups, right?
	The insurance company will make you go have a checkup.
	But in Canada, you can go 20 years without a checkup.
	Nobody gives a shit. Nobody calls you.
	It's the same reason why I can have...
	Theft insurance for my house and the deductibles will be reduced if I have an alarm system, which I do.
	Yet, my taxes to the cops don't go up or down.
	They don't come to my house and say, listen, we've worked out this great system where we put these electronics in your house and it automatically calls us.
	The cops don't do that because they get paid either way.
	There's no incentive for them.
	Cops, I was just looking at this the other day, and it's in practical anarchy, but...
	One of the things you have to watch out for when you're a kid, sorry, when you're a parent, is your kid grabbing something and running out of a store and setting off the alarm, right?
	Because they don't get that whole boundary property thing yet, right?
	And so Isabella does that. She grabs something and then she'll just make a beeline and she's really fast now, right?
	She runs. So I got to track her down and tackle her, so to speak, to get her from, you know, not leave the store with the stuff, right?
	And it just struck me that The cops didn't invent this, right?
	The cops did not invent these anti-theft devices because they have no economic incentive to do so.
	They don't care if you get robbed and they feel out of form and they get paid either way, right?
	Right. But in your business, right, if a DRO was the one you bought insurance from, then they would be inventing – they'd be like staying up nights inventing stuff to make sure you never got robbed.
	But that's – Yeah, exactly.
	And that's the thing that drives me nuts about talking to a lot of people where they're just like, oh, these evil companies, these evil capitalists.
	And I'm like, they're only as bad as they're allowed to be.
	Like a lot of companies have an interest in their clients being happy, you know, and – And that's kind of what I'm seeing now, actually being in the business world, which is part of what's so exciting to me about having this new job and doing all this stuff.
	Because I feel like not only am I now – I'm not just theorizing about it.
	I'm actually doing it and seeing it work.
	It gives me a lot of hope for the ideas that we're talking about here and the validity of it and how it could actually work.
	Yeah, it's just before we go on with the topic, another thought that occurred to me yesterday was that people are all terrified of private companies.
	And I don't mean the sort of fischistic companies that go on in the sort of mixed free market status situation that we have now.
	But, you know, DROs in the future, they're all terrified of them.
	And that's because, of course, most people have been pretty bullied by state companies.
	in organizations in their lives, right?
	So to use a crude metaphor, it's like if you've been raped 20 times, you're going to freak out when some guy asks you on a date, right?
	And so I think that they take that historical brutality that they've experienced in churches and schools and so on, and sometimes in status institutions, and then they project that forward and say, well, that's what companies in a free market would do.
	But all they're doing is asking you on a date.
	They're not holding you down, right?
	And that's the difference. But people, I think, take that trauma and project it forward and say, well, it would be exactly the same in the future.
	The guy's only asking me on a date so he can chloroform me and he'll end up wearing my face or something, right?
	So anyway, I just sort of wanted to point that out.
	But let's get back to your issue because it's a great issue.
	It really is. It's a very, very important issue.
	I got to tell you, I have no really great answers.
	I don't even have any good answers because I experience the same anxiety on a regular basis.
	So, I don't have any...
	There's no Zen master trick that I know of where it doesn't bother me, right?
	And this... It didn't really occur to me for quite some time, but now that I'm mingling with other parents, when I take Isabella places, you know, questions and comments and issues come up, right?
	Oh, your wife is a Greek.
	Where do you go to church, right?
	All these kinds of things, right?
	Yes, yes. And look, I don't have any...
	Any magical solutions.
	I don't, you know, let me sit here and diagram it to you as to why you're enmeshed in primitive superstition and blah blah blah, right?
	Well, how do you usually deal with it?
	I mean, do you kind of say what you believe or do you just like out and out?
	Like, I guess one of the questions is like, you know, how do I decide on the issue of lying?
	Like, you know, is it ever okay to just lie?
	Oh yeah, absolutely. For sure it's okay to lie.
	Sometimes. It's like saying, is it okay to shoot a guy in the knee?
	Well, sure, if he's running at you with a chainsaw, yes, right?
	So it is, you know, lying is like violence.
	There are times, you know, the old cliche about the guy who bursts into your house and says, where's your wife?
	I'm going to kill her, right?
	Well, I have to tell him the truth because honesty is a virtue.
	It was like, no, no, no, no, no, no.
	Because honesty is not a virtue in and of itself.
	Like nonviolence is not a virtue in and of itself because otherwise we would have no capacity for self-defense using...
	Using violence, right? So no, you don't always have to tell the truth, in my opinion.
	I think that you owe people what they have earned, right?
	I think you owe people what they have earned.
	So if you feel relatively comfortable taking the risk to tell somebody the truth about your beliefs, then I think you should consider it.
	I don't think you have to. I don't think you have not to.
	Because it's not going to make a damn bit of difference to the price of tea in China, whether you do or you don't, right?
	I mean, this is not going to change the world one way or the other, right?
	And it's not your job, right, to go around and illuminate everybody, right?
	Because basically, mostly what it'll do is just mess with their heads and make them weird and hostile, right?
	Right, right. So I know, I don't think that you are obligated.
	I know that, I think Ayn Rand had a thing, you know, well, you should say that you disagree and quite firmly, but you don't have to get into details and so on.
	But I don't, you know, we're just trying to navigate this world.
	And we philosophers, we're like, The new shrew mammals at the feet of the dinosaurs of history, you know, we don't take on Tyrannosaurus rexes, you know, we don't put up our little fists and say, stomp on me, please, brother, right?
	Because it's not an equal fight.
	I mean, they have the full weight of history and tradition and patriotism and culture and religiosity and family and school and church.
	I mean, they have the full weight.
	I mean, the existing society is a T-Rex and I don't really feel like I can take on a T-Rex.
	I really don't. I really, really don't.
	So I'm very cautious. I'm very cautious.
	And I also don't have the right to interfere with my daughter's experience of playing with other children for the sake of my values.
	I know that's not the situation with you, but that's just something to consider.
	But no, I don't feel an obligation.
	This is my approach, and you can call it whatever we're craving, and maybe it is, right?
	But my approach is this. I will not lie.
	I will not say something that is not true.
	So when I'm asked, you know, where do you go to church?
	I say, well, we're not particularly religious.
	Mm-hmm. But you just aren't religious.
	I mean, you aren't just... I don't say I'm an out-and-out atheist and I consider religion to be child abuse.
	Yeah, yeah. Because there's no context, right?
	I mean, there's a reason why there are 1500 podcasts, because you need to build these arguments up slowly.
	You can't just dump the conclusions, right?
	Because it's like, if the guy's interested in the reasoning, fantastic.
	But you can't dump conclusions on people, in my opinion.
	Now, if she says, well, that's very interesting.
	Tell me a little bit more about that.
	Then I'm happy to talk further.
	Well, not happy, but I will cautiously say a little bit more.
	Yes. But I don't feel...
	I think it is actually kind of nasty to dump conclusions onto people.
	So if you just say, and I'm not saying you would, but if you were to just say, the state is evil, right?
	Then obviously you're calling this guy a supporter of evil.
	And to me, if you don't lead somebody through the reasoning, it's kind of abusive to just dump the conclusions on them.
	Because it's not important to them.
	They don't understand anything.
	What's the saying?
	It's like, honesty without compassion is brutality?
	Or something like that? It's something like that, but it's the old thing like, give a man a fish he eats for a day, teach him how to fish he eats for a year.
	But what we're basically doing, if you just completely dump conclusions on people, is you just...
	Walking up to him and whapping him on the face with a 200-pound tuna, right?
	I mean, it's just going to knock him over and he's going to be upset.
	Philosophy is not about conclusions, right?
	Philosophy is not about conclusions.
	That's why people say, well, are you an anarchist?
	It's like, that is a terrible way to describe what I am, right?
	I'm a philosopher, which means that I reason from first principles.
	Yeah, how do we deal also with that word?
	I mean, I have a lot of problems with that word because I don't ever want to use that word when I talk to people because I know that it flares up all these images in their mind of like Molotov cocktails and stuff.
	And I'm like, no. You're an anarchist?
	But you're not an anarchist.
	I'm not an anarchist. You're not an anarchist.
	You're not. Right. Just like I'm not an anarchist.
	But that's like calling Richard Dawkins an evolutionist.
	Yeah. As if he just took that conclusion by throwing a dart at a dartboard.
	Oh, it landed on evolution, so that's what I'm going to believe, which is, of course, how most people's political beliefs develop, just out of circumstance, history, family, or whatever, right?
	Their particular emotional bent.
	But saying that doesn't mean anything to somebody that doesn't already understand it.
	I mean, if you say that to someone else, it's kind of like, oh, well, you're just doing what I'm doing.
	I think the most honest thing to say is that is a very long conversation, which I'm sure is not something that is...
	I'm sure you would be completely bored.
	It's a really long conversation, and I don't think we have time for it right now.
	If you're ever really interested, I'd be happy to sit down and step you through it, but...
	But just to say, I'm a huh, right, is to give them a whole bunch of conclusions without any methodology.
	And to me, that is fundamentally religious.
	Like, the people say God exists, right?
	They just give you a conclusion.
	To me, it is as religious to say God doesn't exist as it is to say God does exist.
	Because there's no reasoning in either statement.
	And if you just inflict conclusions on people, they'll either agree with you, and you have no idea why, or So you haven't actually communicated anything of value, or they won't agree with you, but they still won't know why and neither will you.
	Right. Also, what do you think about small talk?
	For example, when I'm in the office, there's a lot of little conversations like, oh gee, it sure is cold out there today.
	The thing that gets me is that when I don't do that, people seem to get uncomfortable.
	If I don't engage in just little office chit-chatter.
	But when I do, people are like, oh.
	People like it. It's weird.
	People like it when you just are talking about nothing or just jeering and I don't know.
	I mean, my solution is just to say, but under anarchism, it would rain kittens gold and candy.
	And then they don't bite me back into those conversations.
	Just kidding.
	No, look, small talk is tough.
	I used to be much better at it, but I'm really not very good at it now.
	And I remember when I would go on business trips with, you know, salesmen, or I went on the business trip with the CEO of the company that I was last at.
	And, I mean, it's pretty exhausting.
	And he was talking all about, you know, I'm now on the board of this company, and he was telling me all about it, and I'm just like, you know, feigning interest, you know?
	And, you know, by the time coming back on the plane, we both just basically, I think he found it kind of exhausting, too, because we both just kind of dove into watching videos on the plane, and they're quite relieved enough to each other anymore.
	I, you know, I don't have any good answers for that either.
	I think that, you know, we do these late night shits and giggles here sometimes, and I think it's fun to just sort of, you know, loosen your necktie philosophy, so to speak, and just have some fun.
	And if you can enjoy that aspect of things with people like Smalltalk and so on, I can't concentrate on it.
	I'm just not very good at it.
	But I think it's not a bad skill to have, if that makes any sense.
	Right, but what do you think the roots of, like, why is it so widespread?
	Is it a mechanism that people use to avoid having real connections with other people?
	Is it a way to get social conformity?
	I mean, it's like... No, it's because we as a society, we have no way to resolve disputes.
	We have no way to resolve disputes.
	And because we have no way to resolve disputes, conflicts escalate very rapidly into very dangerous territory for people.
	And so everybody tiptoes around this brain goo of empty small talk because we have no way to resolve disputes.
	And so, like, scientists can disagree with each other and it comes down to what does the data say and what does the experiment say, right?
	Right. But in politics, I mean, there's no way to resolve disputes.
	I mean, you just, you gang up on each other and sometimes the Democrats and sometimes the Republicans have the upper hand.
	They force, right?
	I saw this interview with Barney Frank the other day.
	He's saying, well, you know, you can't force anyone to do anything.
	It's like, what?
	Yeah. You're in the government.
	What do you mean you can't? Why do you think we're paying our taxes because we like the cut of your jib, sir?
	I mean, anyway, but we don't have a way of resolving disputes in society, and we won't until philosophy becomes more widespread.
	And because of that, we are stuck in empty-headed, you know, men living lives of quiet desperation, dumbass small talk that drives people into the grave in a sort of flurry of atoms that they've been so split up and atomized.
	So, um... You know, that's why people are addicted to it.
	And that's why there's sports.
	And that's why there's celebrity gossip.
	And that's why there's politics.
	And that's why... It's because people can't talk about anything real because they don't have any way of resolving differences of opinion.
	Right, yeah. And sports is a huge part of it.
	That's always in there.
	Like, how about that game there with that throw?
	And the thing is, here's the thing.
	I find myself...
	Yeah. They were throwing, I believe.
	Yeah. Oh, yeah. And I always had a big problem with that in business because sports, I mean, I was in a pretty dude-dominated field when I was in environmental sciences.
	And, oh, yeah, these guys are just constantly talking about sports.
	And I would just go to my happy place.
	I'd just sort of glaze over. And I'd sometimes even play video games in my head.
	You know, you can do that if you've played a game long enough.
	You know, left or rocket launcher.
	I mean, I just couldn't follow them.
	People would say, well, what do you think? I said, I don't know.
	I don't follow colonial sports.
	Colonial sports. And that would bring up a whole other discussion.
	I say, it's not cricket, hey, what?
	And I'd stroke my imaginary mustache and adjust my monocle.
	Awesome. Awesome.
	You don't owe people the excavation of your soul.
	You don't owe people the hardest one nuggets of truth from the mining of yourself.
	You don't owe people that.
	They have to earn it from you, right?
	Don't think of being cornered like Tyrannosaurus Rex about to step on a field mouse, though I think I did just use that, right?
	I try to look at it like, is this person worth getting into a conversation with?
	About anything. Right. But Steph, what about my delusions of grandeur?
	I can save the world.
	Wait, wait, wait.
	Are you coming to me for advice on delusions of grandeur?
	I don't really think that's a very good idea.
	That's like coming to advice from me on how best to center part your hair.
	I'm not sure that that would really be the right approach.
	Alright, well thank you.
	That was good.
	Don't let philosophy interfere with your enjoyment of your job.
	Don't feel that you have to owe people and that you're fundamentally committing a breach of integrity if you dodge a question.
	The world is a dangerous place for philosophers.
	We have to live in the world that we did not create.
	I think we have to look at the odds and we have to look at the realities of what can be achieved.
	And you'll know when somebody's good to talk to, because you will have a strong desire to talk to them.
	But if you feel caution, if you feel anxiety, if you feel that it's dangerous, do not force yourself to do it.
	That is to honor a kind of abstract integrity at the expense of what your emotions and your gut is actually telling you.
	And I think that's a lot of integrity in the gut.
	Okay, okay.
	That's good. That's very helpful.
	Thank you. And see, that's the thing.
	That's weird, because that's kind of what I gathered.
	Because I have been enjoying my job, and I have been enjoying it, even though I'm not having philosophical conversations with people.
	In fact, a lot of what I think is valuable about what's being done here at FDR is that it helps you deal with those issues of how to just How to just live on.
	How to just get on with your life.
	And that's kind of what I've been trying to do with a lot of the stuff and a lot of the new things I've been trying.
	So thanks so much.
	It's entirely to your honor and to your credit that you're raising these issues.
	So I really appreciate it.
	And again, I don't have any simple answers.
	I just try to avoid the shoulds.
	I try to avoid the rules that are imposed from outside.
	I don't think that's what philosophy is supposed to be all about.
	It's just these rules that we have to follow like robots, you know?
	I think that it's much more challenging.
	Integrity is more challenging than following rules and connecting the dots.
	I think it is more of a lived, experiential, curious, and empirical thing.
	And so I would live with the ambivalence of wanting to speak the truth in a world that will fuck you over for speaking the truth very often, right?
	And don't do anything self-destructive for the sake of an abstract principle that In many ways, I think philosophy, we should try to be efficacious with philosophy.
	I think that you are going to make people a lot more curious about your beliefs if you're happy and positive than if you're just dumping conclusions on them without context.
	I think that you want to be happy, you want to be positive, you want to be enthusiastic.
	And then, I mean, if it's there, I'm for real.
	And then people might ask you, you know, what's your secret, right?
	And you may then want to talk to them about a little bit.
	You know, give them a taste and see if they like it or not, right?
	You know, I don't thrust the whole life tuna down my daughter's gullet.
	I give her a little taste and see if she likes it or not.
	And then if she likes it, I will give her a little more and then I won't give her very much because I want to see if she gets indigestion.
	Well, philosophy is exactly the same process.
	You don't just dump food down people's gullet.
	You give them a taste and see...
	Yeah, yeah.
	It makes a lot of sense.
	I've seen that happen.
	It's actually pretty awesome to watch a person come into your life that had all sorts of certain beliefs, and just through a process of being around you, they start changing those beliefs.
	And it's actually fascinating to me how much social...
	Social things, just like little social habits, come about as people sort of imprint on each other.
	I don't know. I'm trying to formulate what I'm...
	Oh, you're right. I completely agree with you.
	Philosophy is spread 90% through osmosis and 10% through argument.
	Philosophy is spread 90% through osmosis and 10% through argument because 90% of communication is nonverbal.
	90% of communication is nonverbal.
	And so philosophy is demonstrated.
	Philosophy is not debated.
	Philosophy is shown. It is not argued.
	And, I mean, I think that people can understand that, because why do people listen to this show?
	Well, because it's great conversations, because, you know, I'm honest about my struggles living the values, because I'm funny, because I'm engaging, because I'm happy, because it's working, because, you know, everything is going as well, and because I have lived...
	I think pretty well I've lived the values that I preach, and so I'm speaking with the kind of authority that comes from experience and so on.
	That's why people listen now, because it's like they put up with the philosophy because I'm an engaging speaker, right?
	And the way that the voice is animated and happy and so on, and none of that's fake or anything...
	But that's what provides the channel, right?
	Like, your actions are a big riverbed, and the arguments are a little trickle coming through the riverbed.
	And people want to focus on the arguments because it is easier to debate than it is to live values, right?
	And so I would just say, you know, live your values, and the people who want to live those values and are capable of living those values...
	We'll open up conversations with you, but it is not a push economy yet.
	It is a long way from a push economy.
	It is very much a pull economy.
	In other words, the need has to be present in the other person.
	We can't push it out.
	It's just way too early for that.
	Oh, that would be so cool if it was like that.
	It would be so cool. And that's exactly what a generation or two from now will say.
	They'll listen back to that and say, damn, for those people, it was like pushing string.
	Now we're pushing a big freaking girder, and that's great.
	We've got some leverage, but right now...
	We are mice at the feet of dinosaurs, and I think that is not a push economy, in my opinion.
	Now, we evolve a little bit, you know, we get some bears, we get, you know, then that's great, and we can do that, but I don't think I'll, maybe in your lifetime, I don't think in mine, but I think we need to be empirical, and we need to recognize that the world is a long way, a long way from being able to reason about these things, and the only way to communicate it is, in my mind, fundamentally, Is through osmosis rather than argument.
	And I did, I talked about this a little bit more after Michael Bettnarek left the debate.
	He had, I think, a plane to catch, but a guy asked me the similar question.
	You might want to listen to the end of that debate if you haven't had to talk about it a bit more.
	The one where you debated with him when you were walking around and he had the suit and you were the non-suit?
	Yeah. Yeah, I watched that one.
	I watched that, yeah. Well, no, listen to it, because I don't think the video caught the very end, but listen to the last, like, 40 minutes or so, because I talk a little bit more about this there, and I think that will help.
	Okay, okay. Very good.
	Oh, there was one.
	I'm not trying to take up all the time.
	I mean, if someone else wants to jump in, please do.
	But also, I was thinking a lot about one conversation that went on a long time ago.
	When we were talking about the idea of hope and the idea of, like, how are we doing?
	How is this whole thing coming along?
	And one of the conclusions that I was kind of gathering was that there's a sentiment among most people that That the world may be too sick to be healed.
	Sorry, was this a two-hour conference call which has never seen the light of day on Despair?
	Is it the one you're talking about? That's it, yes.
	Yes. Because that one really stuck with me.
	I still to this day think about that a lot because that was a really tough question to deal with because if If it really is hopeless, then what does that mean for my actions?
	Obviously philosophy is helpful either way, so it doesn't mean anything with regard to me just personally, but it does mean things to me as far as what I'll choose to spend my time doing.
	For example, if in 10 or 20 years I'm done working.
	I've made enough money and I just want to do something in my spare time like help run a website like this or something like that.
	But if I really think that it's hopeless and I'm just going to get a bunch of flack for doing it and it's just not going to work out, like I'm going to be trying to resuscitate a dead body, then I'm going to make other decisions with my life.
	And so to me, the issue of whether or not There is any hope in what we're doing is a very important question, because if there is hope, then I'm going to probably work to spend a lot more time I'm trying to make it work.
	And if there's not, then I'm going to spend a lot more time just sort of trying to make my own self happy and just trying to get...
	So I was wondering if you could comment on that or what your feelings are on the hopefulness of things or whether or not that even matters if it's hopeful.
	No, it matters. It really does matter because we want to be empirical and we don't want to attempt to achieve the impossible.
	That would be disreputable to the basis of the philosophy that we are trying to bring to the world.
	It's a big topic, and I'll just touch on it here, because there is this two-hour chat that I may do something with at some point, which we can talk more about if it's published.
	But I will say this.
	I will say this. I don't think that anybody can say for certain whether there's hope for real change or not.
	Obviously, the world is getting worse.
	The debts are increasing.
	Governments are beginning to... I mean, I'm going to do a True News on Greece this week.
	It's just completely insane.
	Right. The world is getting worse.
	And the question is, to what degree is the mad race for philosophy going to overtake the mad race towards the world getting worse?
	Now, I think it's fairly clear that the problems of statism and its forward plunge into fiscal chaos is not going to be arrested by philosophy.
	I think that's pretty empirical.
	I think that's pretty obvious.
	And I can say that because, I mean, Atlas Shrugged sells 300,000 copies a year and has sold, I think, 12 million copies in the U.S. and was published in 1957, I think it was.
	And so, what, 53 years ago?
	That is...
	43? That is 53.
	So that is...
	And it predicted all of this and it didn't do anything to stop it.
	That we know of. It may have done something to slow it.
	There's no real way to know for sure.
	And so if the most popular book, which completely accurately predicted what was going to happen, was unable to stop it with a 50-year head start, there's no way that I can see that, for instance, this philosophy podcast is going to turn things around in the few years that it's been running.
	That would be my argument.
	But I will also say this.
	That... I don't think anybody can make for anybody else the fundamental decision about whether there's hope or not and in what context.
	Because I think that is something that needs to be explored empirically for individuals themselves.
	So I think you need to live your values for yourself as a lighthouse beacon and see which ships you draw in from the darkness, right?
	Not go out chasing them in your dinghy and, you know, getting swamped and then getting run over by some freaking supertanker.
	But you need to live your values for yourself, for your life, like a Lighthouse Beacon, and see which ships come in from the dark.
	And through that process, through recognizing that it is not a push economy, it is a pull economy, through that process, you will come to some determination about the degree of effect that you're going to have in the world today.
	In the sphere that you can manage in what you can do in your life, given that you've got to eat and all that sleep.
	I don't think that anyone else can tell you whether there's hope or not.
	I think that that's something that needs to be explored by each individual.
	I obviously have my own thoughts about it, which we don't have to get into right here, because those would be my thoughts and not your experience.
	And I think the question of hope versus rational despair, right?
	Rational despair is a healthy thing, right?
	I mean, I don't hope to live to 200, right?
	It would be irrational to have that hope.
	So having rational despair, like at some point, I'm going to get injured or I'm going to get some horrible disease and I'm going to be terminal, one way or the other, right?
	Hopefully it's when I'm 100 or whatever, right?
	But I'm going to...
	And at that point, right, so you have stage 4 something awful cancer...
	And I'm 95, and it's inoperable, and chemo is not going to work.
	At that point, despair is rational.
	I'm not going to live.
	I'm not going to make it past this.
	I'm not going to make it past this.
	And hopefully it's down the road, but with all due honor to your profession, it may not be.
	It could be tomorrow. So rational despair is a healthy acceptance of an impossibility, in my opinion.
	But I don't think that we have enough information I don't think that each individual has enough information to make that intensely personal decision about the degree to which hope is going to win out over despair, whether hope is more rational, whether despair is more rational.
	I don't think that each individual has enough information as yet.
	I'm also concerned that if I or somebody else were to make a great case for despair, that it might in fact become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
	Right, right. Everyone says, well, we're screwed.
	We're going to ride into fascism.
	I'm going to shut down all my blogs.
	I'm going to hopefully erase it all so that when they kick in my door, I'm not going to be identified as one of these crazy people.
	Then it certainly does become self-fulfilling, whether that's prudence or whether that's withdrawing from the fight before you get a chance to discharge your musket.
	I don't know. I don't know.
	I have my own thoughts and opinions about it, but I genuinely recommend to everybody to explore the question.
	Within your own heart, within your own experience, within your own life, but really focus not on the results of making arguments, but on the results of living your values for yourself.
	Turning on the lighthouse beacon and see how many ships you can lure in from the dark and storm-tossed seas.
	That would be my recommendation.
	Through that process, I think that people, we will get more information about what is possible.
	I'm absolutely certain that nothing is possible in the existing power generation structure.
	I'm convinced of that.
	I could be wrong.
	But I think what happens, and this is the problem with politics, I think what happens is the ruling class provokes people who want to resist hierarchical power into focusing on what the ruling class is doing in the moment.
	In other words, let's get Peter Schiff or Ron Paul into Washington and change the way that things work there.
	And I think that's a massive mistake, as I've always argued.
	It is an intergenerational thing.
	We need to raise children better.
	We need to raise children more peacefully without punishment.
	In order for the state to be ridiculous and show up as anachronistic in their psychology.
	That's been my argument from the very beginning.
	And so I think that the focus on attempting to alter those who are already in power is not realistic.
	To me, that's like opening a grade school and saying only people over 65 can attend.
	No. If you want to teach people reason, you don't.
	Focus on those who have every financial and power-based incentive to avoid and reject reason.
	You focus on those who have the most to benefit from it, which is, you know, the next generation.
	And that's going to mostly come, nothing to do with this show, that's mostly going to come through Better Parenting.
	That's my argument. I don't believe that there's anything productive to be done in the realm of politics.
	I think that is a complete distraction from what actually needs to be done.
	And I will get, hopefully this week, if not this week, the next The Bomb in the Brain part.
	Five, I think, done, which is the biological argument behind this, so people can accept at least that I'm not just pulling these opinions out of my armpit.
	So I think that hope and despair is a very personal decision that has to do with an exploration of the degree to which you can inspire people in your life.
	Not with the purpose of inspiring them, but with the purpose of being inspired yourself.
	And I think that we can gather more information about that and have more of a collective decision about it.
	Or a collective conversation about it because we also may be doing things wrong.
	We may not have a chance because we're doing something incorrect.
	Maybe my theory about the need to raise children better is completely incorrect and there's something else that needs to be achieved.
	But I think it's something that we need to each explore within our own lives and our own hearts.
	Okay.
	Anything else?
	All right.
	Well, I guess we do have time for another brief question.
	ready?
	Somebody has said, but what causes people to become better parents?
	Well, I don't have any particularly great answers for that.
	I've done some podcasts on it.
	You can have a look at that.
	But to me, it is simply the pursuit of self-knowledge.
	I think speaking to a therapist, taking parenting courses, all of these things Very powerful and helpful in becoming better.
	Somebody's asked, Steph, do you think that a body cart can be represented in the MECO system?
	I believe that would be entirely possible.
	I had one character in my MECO system that was a shark fin.
	So it was a body part and not even a human body part.
	So yes, I do think that's possible.
	All right. Type in the chat window.
	window, last call for questions?
	We can go over if you've got a big question.
	Oh yeah, there's a talking shop in there.
	Can your own body part be represented?
	I'm sure that would be the case.
	Like your eyes.
	Yeah, absolutely.
	Do you know, I can't remember if I've mentioned this before, but since we have a short pause, I will, um, I will mention this, One of the things that I found very powerful in my therapy was one of the top five moments in my therapy was I had a dream About being in a dungeon, looking around, and finding, like I opened a door, and it bumped up against something,
	and I looked behind it, and there was a little boy with just beautiful blue eyes and blonde hair, and I think it was a representation of myself, as a child.
	And my therapist, with great intensity, leaned forward and said, Does he have legs?
	Does he have legs?
	Tell me, does he have legs? And I thought that was just an amazing question to ask.
	And the degree of seriousness to which she gave that question was very, very important.
	It was very important. And she was so enormously relieved when I said that he has legs.
	He has legs. That the degree of seriousness to which you can look at these inner images, I think, should always be present in your mind.
	take it very, very seriously.
	And I think she was basically asking, is your true self recoverable?
	Can it be recovered? Has it mutated beyond the human?
	Does he have tentacles? Am I salvageable?
	And it really helped me to take myself very seriously, which was a huge step forward.
	Yeah, she was a great therapist.
	Yeah, the shock fin character was my own capacity for sociopathy, somebody has asked.
	And I think it was a guy, he was a really rough looking character.
	He had a shark fin where his mohawk, where a mohawk would be on a punk.
	Am I planning a book on the MECO system?
	I am not.
	If I were ever to publish something on the MECO system, I would just publish my therapy journal because that's where it all came together for me.
	The MECO system podcasts are for subscribers at the moment.
	I may release them to the general stream at some point.
	I haven't made that decision yet, but they are available at the moment for subscribers.
	I send them out a couple of times a year when I send out podcasts to thank subscribers.
	Because, I mean, the subscribers, I tell you, I mean, it is a fantastic thing.
	The donations that occur, sort of the cash donations are great, but they're very spotty, but it is the subscribers that let me make rational and intelligent business decisions about FDR. So I'm massively appreciative and enthralled to the subscribers.
	So if you are a subscriber and there's anything that I can do to make your subscription more palatable, more enjoyable, a feel that it is doing as much as you want, then please, please just let me know.
	Question is, what if one discovers that one is apparently irredeemable?
	Well, I don't know.
	I don't know. I don't know.
	I think anybody who's in this conversation, that's not the case.
	Somebody's asked, subscriber to the website, do you mean constant donators?
	No, I mean people who have signed up for like $10 a month or $20 a month or $50 a month, people who have...
	Who have done that. And, you know, people sign up and people drop off, but it's generally quite stable.
	And it is kind of the bedrock that the show sits on as far as decisions that I can make about bandwidth, about server upgrades and this kind of stuff.
	Yes, if you donate via PayPal...
	Well, if you donate via PayPal and your email that you use to donate is the same as one on the message board...
	Then I will update it for you.
	And if it's not, then yes, please just send me an email telling me what you have subscribed to or donated, and I will upgrade your board account.
	Well, somebody has written here, I had a dream once about my brother being mutilated, but only his head left in a sort of cyborg.
	I'm sorry.
	Again, I'm no therapist, right?
	So this is just my amateur opinion hour, but I would not consider that to be any kind of disaster for your own true self.
	Because it's not you, right?
	It's not you that you're dreaming about.
	It's somebody else. When I looked behind that door in the dungeon and I saw this boy who was me, that was a dream about me and my inner self, my true self, my inner child.
	And that's why it was so important.
	If you're dreaming about somebody else, I don't think that is a final judgment.
	I think that's more the view of your true self than the view of your true self.
	Somebody has asked, isn't it said that everyone in a dream is you?
	I think some people have said that.
	I don't hold that particular opinion.
	I think that it's simpler than that.
	I think that people that you meet in dreams who you know in the real world are those people in the real world.
	I think people that you meet in dreams who are not part of the real world or have no confluence with people in the real world may be aspects of yourself.
	That would be my explanation for that.
	If somebody said, if the boy behind the door didn't have legs, just longer therapy, Again, I don't know. I don't want people to become alarmed.
	This was just an experience or a moment that I had in therapy.
	I don't know. I would imagine that it would be longer therapy.
	Sure, Greg, if you'd like to talk about your dream, that would be great.
	I'm just waiting for somebody to type in a question.
	Hey, I'm on.
	All right.
	Sorry about that.
	So, um, so I had this dream.
	I think it was Wednesday or Thursday.
	And it goes like this.
	So my left hand is being held...
	It's a little girl.
	I look down, I see a little girl that's holding it.
	She's very thin, maybe six or seven years old.
	Jet black hair, matted and dirty, and about neck length.
	She's wearing an ankle length yellow sundress.
	It's smudged all over with dirt and grime.
	She's barefoot and her feet are dirty.
	The expression on her face seems very sad to me.
	She's not frowning or crying, but there's a kind of stiff intensity about the expression that fills me with sorrow and despair for her.
	We're standing together on a narrow street at night.
	It's too narrow for cars, so it looks like it might be an alley or something like that.
	The darkness is tinted navy blue, and there's just enough ambient light to make out the outline of buildings lined up along the street.
	Instead of houses, though, there are rows of self-storage sheds.
	Each shed has its door missing and yellow light is emanating from the open doors.
	The little girl tugs at my hand and leads me down the street.
	We stop at the first storage shack and she points into it and shows me something that I know is very important.
	I take a moment to look at it and when she is sure I've seen it, we move on to the next shed and then we repeat that process two or three times down the street.
	I can't recall, this is from my notes, I can't recall now what actually was in the shed I only know that what she was showing me was important and that I was supposed to remember what it was.
	I wish I could, but I'm also wondering if it was so important, why can't I remember?
	Right. And when did you have the dream?
	This was the 10th.
	The morning of the 10th, so three days ago.
	Sounds like Mary. Hmm.
	To me. Oh, from the book?
	Yeah. I hadn't even thought of that.
	And sorry, just for those who don't know, I've been reading a novel of mine, and I must say that it's really good.
	It's a good book. It's got really, really great characters, and reading it has sort of reminded me.
	It's a historical novel, and in it there's a young girl who I guess we first sort of meet when she's about the age of the girl that you first sort of really meet or hear dialogue from.
	It's about the same age as the girl in your dream.
	Would that be fair to say?
	Yeah. Well, I thought the girl in the book was older.
	But we first see her sitting with Lady when she's that age, right?
	And she's described as dirty, right?
	Yeah. I say something like, Lady's hair was adorned with roses, Mary's hair was adorned with the material they grew in, right?
	So there's some things.
	And she's trying to point...
	To try to point out to people things that are important and failing, right, for a variety of reasons.
	Yeah, yeah, that's quite right.
	Yeah, and getting really angry about it.
	Right, because she does get angry, right?
	Yeah. And some people had, and it's a few people, I'm just getting a chance and just asking them to listen to the audiobook to see if, you know, it sounds all right, volume's okay, and all that, before I sort of release it, but...
	That would be where I would first go, because that's the only young girl that I know of that you've been introduced to lately.
	So that would be my first place to go, is to see if there's some sort of resonance in the depictions of her when she's younger.
	Before she comes back as this sort of alienated, exciting, scary, slightly dangerous person that she comes back with later in the book, right?
	Yeah, it's a little disorienting.
	Right, right. And there is, of course, a kind of sadness and desperation to her early in the book, right?
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	Not dissociation, but a kind of distance.
	Right, it sort of grows as she grows up, right?
	Yeah, yeah.
	Yeah, yeah, quite right.
	I mean, I don't have any particular answers other than that I would say that you might want to, I can send you a PDF if you'd like to reread that or relisten to that.
	There's a few scenes there for when she's very young and see if there's anything.
	I mean, I think that the reason why Mary is a powerful character for us, and I got some emails about this from people who've listened, is that she is desperate to share her wisdom and is rejected by a world that is defended and blind.
	Quite right. And I think that we've all had that where she, because she's, you know, in the 18th century, she curses God, which is probably not something that we did.
	I mean, I guess some of us did, but there's some curse that we want to lash out at the universe for when we have great gifts that many people spurn, right?
	Or it seems like sometimes everybody spurns.
	There is an anger that we have such wonderful things.
	I mean, if you have great music and you know it's great music and everybody...
	Thinks it's ridiculous. That is incredibly painful.
	And I think that she has great music in her soul.
	And I think seeing what becomes of her as the novel progresses, I don't want to give any spoilers about.
	I think that's the question, right?
	Is that if the geniuses are rejected, what do they do?
	And I think that it's a tough question for us.
	And I would just look into that.
	Because I think that's part of what the novel is all about.
	Well, that's... That's an interesting approach.
	I hadn't even thought of it.
	It did sort of resonate because I was in the middle of reading it at the time or listening to the audio version.
	Yeah, and I think you sent some messages to me about the scenes when she was trying to make friends with John Lutter.
	Yeah, yeah.
	That reaching out that is so inconsequentially spurned.
	And I think I said somewhere in the book when she's trying to reach out to this guy that when he rejects and attacks, this little boy rejects and attacks her as a little girl, that her smile just vanishes like a shadow under a cloud.
	And that's kind of chilling, right?
	She doesn't even get upset about it.
	It's almost like it was so predictable and the degree to which that predictability has caused her actions is ambiguous, right?
	So it is a tough thing, right?
	To what degree are we responsible for the rejections that we experience as children?
	It's very, very tough.
	Yeah, it was a really interesting scene because there's like a part of her that's like, you can tell that there's a part of her that's sort of hoping that he'll respond positively, right? But then when he predictably doesn't, she doesn't Sort of get angry at the false expectation.
	She just sort of resumes business as usual is sort of the thought that came into my head, right?
	Like she was already kind of not expecting anything from him, but...
	But she almost had to try for the sake of the experiment.
	But then the degree to which she's only trying for the sake of experiment, does that condition how he responds?
	Again, I'm sorry for those who haven't read the book, but it'll be out shortly.
	That is a big challenging question that the book doesn't really give a clear answer to, at least not in the parts that you've heard.
	Right. Right. Quite right.
	And the degree... I mean, I think about this a lot, right?
	I mean, I really do think about this a lot.
	Which is, you know, to what degree...
	Are we responsible for the negative opinions that people have of us?
	It's a big, deep and important question.
	I don't have any clear answers because I don't think there are any clear answers.
	I think it's something that has to be pondered.
	But as our friend earlier was talking about, it is a big question, right?
	I mean, if he spills his guts philosophically and then people end up disliking him, to what degree is he responsible for their dislike?
	To what degree does he own that?
	To what degree has he caused it and why?
	I think those are all very, very important and deep questions for which I don't have any particular answers, but I certainly was exploring them because I was writing this book during a time when I was in graduate school and so on, and facing a lot of challenges with professors and students based upon my political and philosophical ideas.
	And it is a great challenge, right?
	Because if we simply say, well, people hate the truth teller, Then we're sort of castrating ourselves and dooming ourselves to a monk-like life of isolation and hopelessness.
	If we say, on the other hand, though, that we are responsible for how people respond to us, then we're not giving credence to the facts of reality, which is that other people have their own thoughts and beliefs and are responsible for their actions, right?
	So we can't either be not responsible or 100% responsible.
	Because if we're not responsible, then nobody's responsible.
	And for anything, there's no such thing as philosophy.
	If we're 100% responsible, that strikes me as somewhat narcissistic.
	We have the capacity to magically alter anybody's opinions about anything based on how we present things.
	And the truth is in between, I believe, but it is a very, very tough question.
	If we take too much ownership for the responses that other people have to us, then we are too easily manipulated by them.
	If we take too little ownership for how people respond to us, we're not open to changing when things don't work.
	So I think that it is a very tough question, and I think that's part of what the book touches on early on.
	Yeah, I think that's quite right.
	Well, that was definitely helpful.
	Thanks. I appreciate that.
	All right. Well, I think that we have had a great show, and again, thank you guys so much.
	You're just the most magnificent people that I know outside of my home, and I just, it's, again, I hope that you understand that.
	So I will try to get the book out in the next week or two.
	It's a bit of a long read for me.
	I mean, I'm really, really enjoying reading it.
	I haven't read it in some years.
	And it's really, it comes alive, I think, particularly in the dialogue.
	So I will get the book out. I don't think it's going to be donated.
	I think I just want to put it out to anybody who might like historical novels, or as I think of it, Dickens for grown-ups.
	But we'll see what people's response to that is.
	Thank you for All of your support and interest and for helping this show to grow.
	For those who haven't heard, I mean, we grew 40% to 60% last year as a show, as a community, downloads, site visits, and so on.
	And that is something enormous, enormous to contemplate.
	And that is something to do with me, but it is a lot to do with everybody else.
	So thank you so much.
	Have a wonderful week.

▲