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March 28, 2010 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

01:44:07

1624 Freedomain Radio Sunday Show, 28 March 2010

It turns out healthcare was a slippery slope, the value of examining early childhood dreams, and a listener talks about preparing for his Masters degree in therapy.

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	Okay, are we ready for our songs?
	The ants go marching two by two Hurrah!
	The ants go marching two by two Hurrah!
	The wheels on the bus go Round and round, round and round, round and round The wheels on the bus go All through the town.
	The horn on the bus goes.
	Beep, beep, beep.
	Beep, beep, beep, beep.
	The horn on the bus goes.
	Beep, beep, beep.
	All through the town.
	Beep, beep, beep.
	The bell on the bus goes.
	Ding, ding, ding.
	Ding, ding, ding, ding.
	The bell on the bus goes.
	All through the town.
	The people on the bus go.
	Up. Up and.
	Up. Up and.
	The people on the bus go all through the town.
	The rappers on the bus go all through the town.
	Yeah, it's more the dance moves than the rap.
	What's this song? London Bridge is falling.
	Falling. Falling.
	The London Bridge is falling.
	My fair lady.
	I'm bringing home a baby Bumble.
	Won't my mommy be so proud of me?
	I'm bringing home a baby Bumble.
	Oh, there were ten in the bed, and the little one said, Roll over.
	Roll over. There were nine in the bed, and everyone said, Roll over.
	Oh, boo-boo cakes.
	Magnificent. Oh, the operatic voice.
	It's too beautiful for words.
	Roll over. Roll over.
	All right.
	Time for Daddy to do his show.
	Bye-bye, boo-boo.
	Alright, well, we should probably get going with the show.
	That's the opening number.
	We've been working on that, of course, for quite some time.
	She seems to be getting it down quite well.
	So thanks everybody for joining us.
	This is the 28th of March, 2010, just after 4pm.
	Hey, we're starting relatively on time.
	Excellent, excellent, excellent stuff.
	So I hope you're having an absolutely wonderful week.
	And I just wanted to start off with something mildly philosophically technical, which I think would be worth remembering.
	When you get dragged into, I shouldn't say that, when you get invited into a debate with someone, it is very, very tempting.
	And Lord knows I succumb to this temptation too, so please don't imagine I'm coming from any higher ground.
	But... It is very tempting to dive straight into discussing the details rather than the form, discussing the conclusions and the evidence rather than the methodology.
	And the one thing that I would continually suggest, and have it pasted up on my wall along with all the other countless suggestions that I find of constant utility for me, the one thing I would suggest is to remember that the content of the argument implicitly contains the form of the argument.
	What I mean by that is, there was an argument that somebody posted on the board recently, where he said that he was having a conversation with his brother.
	I think it was. And his brother, no, it was someone on the web, who said, well, but human beings instinctively crave power, and if you get rid of the state...
	That would create a power vacuum and through that power vacuum we would simply get another state.
	So human beings continually crave power and will use agencies like the state to dominate others.
	Now I'm a big one, and I have been both praised and criticized for this, so take it as you like.
	But I'm a very big one for screw philosophy in the abstract.
	I mean, I could care less about philosophy in the abstract, in the Platonic sense.
	I am a base-of-the-spine empiricist.
	A Randian, you could say, an Aristotelian.
	A real empiricist.
	So what I mean by that is, if somebody's putting forward an argument that says human beings innately lust after power and will use evil and unjust means to achieve it, then they're making that as a universal statement.
	And so, I will ask the person who says to me, human beings instinctively crave power, and anytime there's a power vacuum, they will try to unjustly acquire power over the other, I will say to that person, well is that what you're trying to do to me right now?
	Right now. Bring philosophy out of the clouds, out of Platonism, out of Cartesian abstractions, into the here and now.
	Somebody says human beings are innately power-hungry and we use unjust means to gain power over others.
	They're saying that as a universal statement about human nature, which means it must apply to them.
	And so it can't be human nature to crave power, because if somebody says, yes, that's what I'm trying to do to you right now, then clearly they're saying that they're trying to dominate you in an unjust fashion.
	And therefore the argument is sort of pointless.
	And if they say, well, they're not trying to do that to you right now, then clearly it's not a universal statement of human nature.
	Now, somebody posted on the message board and said, well, couldn't you say that some people desire power?
	Well, of course you could.
	Absolutely. But if you say that some people crave power, then you are not saying that it's human nature, right?
	You're not saying that it's human nature.
	Some people really like power.
	Very spicy curries, but that's not human nature.
	That's just a local cultural preference.
	Some people like Vishnu as opposed to Jesus, but that's not human nature.
	And if they say, well, some people crave power, and they say, well, I'm not one of those people, right?
	So clearly, if somebody's debating with you, they are ostensibly using reason and evidence to make their point.
	Because if they're not using reason and evidence to make their point, do not dignify the interaction by pretending that it is rational.
	That's very, very important. Do not dignify an irrational interaction by pretending that it is rational.
	That's the essence of dealing with trolls, of course, right?
	Do not dignify. I mean, don't debate.
	Don't give somebody the illusion that what they're saying is rational by engaging in a debate with them when they're not being rational.
	Just don't do it.
	But yeah, you could say, well, some people crave power.
	It's like, well, but that's a truism.
	I mean, the sun will rise tomorrow and the world is round.
	I mean, that's scarcely saying that some people crave power is not a philosophical argument.
	All it is, is a completely banal argument.
	A statement, an observation.
	I mean, it's completely banal.
	It's like saying, you know, people seem to like sex, you know?
	Like, well, and some people don't.
	I mean, can you imagine saying that with any seriousness and thinking that you're adding anything to the debate?
	Some people like power. Well, of course some people like power.
	I mean, that's so obvious that it would be embarrassing.
	You know, like going up to Richard Dawkins and saying, you know, Dickie D., Life is different than non-life.
	I'm thinking you've added something profound to his understanding.
	It's just such a trite observation that it scarcely has any interest.
	And the thing that what they're saying to you, this is another thing that I find quite important, is that if somebody says something to you that is completely stone boring, stupid, obvious, I tend to get rather irritated myself, and I tend to not want to continue.
	Because if somebody says something to me like, some people crave power, I'm not saying this is the person on the board, he was just quoting as an example, a she.
	If somebody says to me, well, some people crave power, then I'm going to say, do you think that I genuinely am not aware of that?
	I mean, do you think that I am not aware of the fact that some people crave power?
	And if the person says to me, yes, I think that you are completely unaware that some people crave power, then I'll say, well, then I'm clearly not intelligent enough to have a coherent debate with.
	Because if I reach the ripe old age of 43 and have studied philosophy for a quarter century and have studied the world and done a true news series and, you know, I'm running the biggest, deepest, richest, most powerful philosophical conversation in history and I've not yet figured out that some people crave power...
	Then I'm so retarded, I make the stone golems on Easter Island look like Richard Dawkins.
	So then I just won't bother debating with someone, because if they genuinely think I'm that dumb after studying things for so long, then they're not rational.
	So I think it's really important to remember that if somebody says, here's how human beings operate, ask that person in the moment, is this how you're operating right now?
	And if they are, and it's about dominance through power, then you can dismiss their arguments because they're just a strategy to gain power over you.
	And if they're not doing what they say human beings always do, then...
	They clearly have just disproved their own thesis.
	Forget about arguing it.
	Look at the form of the argument that is coming to you.
	I just wanted to sort of mention that.
	Just to remember, focus on the form of the argument, not the content.
	The content comes later, but if you start to argue the content without understanding the form of the argument, then You're just not going to get anywhere.
	You're speaking a different language.
	And I think you're insulting the art of rational discourse quite a bit.
	Anyway, I just sort of wanted to mention that to start with.
	But let me not intrude upon your absolutely wonderful thoughts and comments on this Sunday show.
	Okay. Well, I had this dream when I was five.
	And it was probably one of the most terrifying dreams I had.
	Yeah. I'm sorry, I'm a bit nervous.
	It was about me and my mom.
	She was driving me and our van to this abandoned building, this old abandoned building.
	It's like in the middle of nowhere.
	I think the only thing that exists is the building, her and me.
	And right next to the building, there's this gigantic hole.
	It's right adjacent to the building.
	And we stopped the van and we walked outside to...
	To go in the building. My mom, she walks in the building and she has to go...
	She walks downstairs and I walk...
	I walk in the hole right next to the building.
	And I remember there...
	I remember being really scared because there's like...
	I was afraid there was going to be a gigantic monster at the bottom of the hole.
	And as I'm walking down the ladder, I can see my mom walking down the stairs inside the building through the windows.
	She's carrying buckets of water.
	I'm not sure why.
	But I go deeper down the hole.
	And I get really scared.
	And I climb back up the ladder.
	And I see my mom take off in the van, leaving me behind.
	and I was all alone and I just remember waking up and being really terrified.
	Do you have any thoughts or ideas about what the hole was?
	You mean metaphorically?
	No, I can't think of anything.
	What was particularly frightening about it?
	What was frightening about it?
	It was really dark. And the fact that I thought there was like a scary creature at the bottom.
	Right, right. And I guess you felt nervous that you had to go in alone, or were going in alone?
	Yes. Yes, I was in fact very nervous.
	And why weren't you going in?
	I think because...
	I think because my mom...
	Why did I go in?
	You may not remember. Yeah, you may not remember.
	I've always found it very important and helpful to you.
	I was going to say something. I'm sorry. Oh, sorry.
	Go ahead. Yeah, I was thinking of like, I remember there being like a treasure chest on the bottom.
	Maybe that's what I was going for.
	I mean, it sounds a little similar to one of the, I think, the first dream that I can remember in my life when I was about three, which was digging in a forest, in a dark and frightening forest, though I did not feel scared by it.
	It was a sort of frightening forest, but I did not feel scared.
	And I was digging by a light.
	I didn't see the source of the light, but there was a light.
	And I was digging into the wet earth and found a cave with gold.
	And I think this digging...
	It's a metaphor that I've read from some other people seems to be not uncommon in early dreams.
	And I mean, there are perhaps some echoes of the birth canal in it, though I'm not saying that's a conscious memory.
	But I think that children really do burrow into the psychology of the family.
	I mean, they just... I mean, they have to if it's a threatening environment just to be able to survive the environment.
	But if it's not a threatening environment, there still is a great deal of energy that children put into understanding their parents.
	And I think that dream may have been some way in which you were trying to conceptualize Your caregivers, your parents, right?
	And you were trying to figure out what was going on.
	And it does not seem to be a bonding dream, right?
	You're not sort of going hand in hand into the sunset or the sunrise.
	You're not face to face.
	You're not hugging. You're not touching.
	There is you kind of going down into the hole to find the treasure and your mom not Not doing that.
	And I think that there's such a degree of intuitive perception in children.
	And I think that this is something I've always thought, and fortunately, the research that I've been talking about with some of these experts is really bearing it out.
	That children can do statistical analysis, in a sense, by the age of 8 or 9.
	That children at the age of 12 to 16 months can begin to show empathy.
	And that children from 14 to 18 months can begin to really understand the difference between moral rules and cultural rules.
	Like we hang our coats on this hook, that's the rule, versus don't hit, which is a more universal rule.
	They understand the difference. Sorry, I think it's a little older than that.
	I think it's 16 to 24 months.
	But they can really understand the difference between these kinds of rules.
	And I think that...
	Children have an amazing ability to get to the heart of the matter when it comes to the family.
	And I think it is that very perceptiveness of children that makes them so dangerous to unstable caregivers, to caregivers who have emotional problems or who have fantasies or who have illusions or who are aggressive or destructive or abusive.
	It is that very innocence, curiosity and perceptiveness that Of young children that is such a danger, I think, to certain people.
	It causes them extraordinary anxiety.
	And I can tell you this, I mean, Isabella just turned 15 months, and she is a sponge.
	I mean, not just in terms of language and so on, but she absorbs everything that is going on around her.
	We can be driving back from somewhere, Christina and I, we can be driving back from somewhere.
	And we think that Isabella is either asleep or just staring out the window in the back.
	And we'll talk about something and we'll use a word that she's familiar with and she'll suddenly just repeat it back.
	Or that song that she sang at the beginning that, you know, there were 10 in the bed and the little one said, roll over.
	I sang that two or three times just to tell Christina that I'd heard this song that I thought would be kind of fun.
	And then the third time, Isabelle is saying, roll over, roll over.
	I wasn't singing to her, I was just singing to Christina.
	And so she absorbs everything that is going on around her.
	And that's something that, it's a little odd.
	It's not creepy, but it's definitely a little odd.
	It's like having a camera on you, sort of broadcasting at all times.
	Oh wait, that's actually not that odd for me.
	But it's a little strange.
	To get used to the degree to which she absorbs everything that is going on around her.
	And I think that when we think back to our very early memories and our early dreams and our early thoughts and feelings and experiences, I think that we...
	Have a lot of information back there to think about.
	And the fact that you were going into this hole where there's treasure in the bottom, I think, would be a pretty clear metaphor.
	And I think it's just as I was digging in the ground, which is creating another hole with treasure at the bottom.
	I think that is saying two things.
	One, I think it is saying that introspection or self-knowledge It has treasure, right?
	The digging, and it's frightening, and it's scary, and I think we've all experienced that when we go through personal growth, or self-knowledge, or self-examination, that it's scary, and it's upsetting, and it's frightening for us and for other people.
	But there's treasure at the bottom, and I think that's really, really powerful.
	The other thing that's true, I think, as well, is that why would it be, in a sense, going inwards, in a whole?
	It could be, metaphorically, and Nietzsche used this metaphor all the time, it could be Climbing a mountain.
	It's another way that you talk about self-growth.
	But going into a hole is going away from the world that is.
	It's going away from the world that is.
	And I think it's almost in a sense that your mom is heading in the opposite direction.
	So that's almost like...
	If you go inwards, if you dig into yourself, into your history, into your life, into your family, into the moral reality of your upbringing and your circumstances and the world you live in, the culture, the society, everything, that a lot of people will go the opposite direction,
	right? Because self-knowledge I think it's important to remember that Child abuse as a phenomenon that is understood in society is really new.
	It was 1962, it's less than 50 years ago, 1962, that the battered child syndrome was first published where a physician wrote, and this is something that had not been really conceived of before, he wrote that he suspected that a significant number of the injured children coming into his office had been injured by their own parents.
	And this was like unimaginable, it couldn't be thought of.
	And that's not very long ago at all.
	We've had nuclear weapons a lot longer than we've had the concept of child abuse in this sort of modern format.
	And it's something that is very new in the world.
	And that wasn't exactly popularized very often after that.
	So I think that there's a lot in that dream for you around self-knowledge and the treasure of self-knowledge.
	But also that often, though not always, when we go in towards self-knowledge, people kind of run the other way from us.
	Because... It is scary.
	So I'm sorry for a long and rambling response.
	I know that we're having a little trouble hearing each other, so I didn't want to get into too much of a back and forth, but is that a useful way to approach the dream?
	Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
	I think when I got...
	I think I almost got to the bottom of the hole and then I just got so scared and I I ran back up and I see my mom just driving off without me.
	But that's entirely right.
	I mean, if self-knowledge results in a hostility from your primary caregiver, and I think that you have found, at least to some degree, that that has been the case in the more recent past, if self-knowledge results in aggression or abandonment from your primary caregiver, You have to give it up.
	I mean, you have to. You have to give it up.
	And I do believe, and I remember this very vividly from my own childhood, I do believe that it is with the greatest sense of loss and tragedy that we have to abandon and reject the The pleasurable and curious exploration of our own thoughts and feelings because of the threats that it poses to brittle or unstable or dangerous families.
	I won't go into the details because it's really the course about you, but I remember this so clearly having to let that go because I really got at a very instinctual level, as I think most of us do when we're in that situation.
	I really got at a very deep level.
	That to continue down the path of trying to figure myself out and trying to learn about myself, that that was going to put me in danger in my family.
	And what has happened as an adult for me has only confirmed what I knew at the age of four or five, that self-knowledge was dangerous to others.
	So it makes perfect sense from a survival standpoint.
	Children want to Learn about themselves.
	They want to figure out what's going on.
	They're as curious about themselves as they are about the world.
	They want to know how to work their hands and they want to know how their souls work.
	That is instinctive and natural to the process of being a child as far as I remember it and from what I'm observing now and also what I observed when I worked in a daycare.
	But it's a dangerous hobby to have as a child.
	Hell, it's a dangerous hobby to have as an adult, right?
	So it is a dangerous hobby to have as a child.
	And we have to let that go.
	We have to, you know, like a child letting go of a treasured balloon, we have to let that go when we're in those kinds of family situations because the purpose is to survive.
	And if self-knowledge threatens even the remnant of the bond with the caregiver, we have to let it go.
	Right, right, right.
	So what that dream made me realize was that I had to let go of the treasure in order to be with my parents that I needed for them to take care of me.
	So I needed to let go of that treasure.
	And not forever, but at least for the time being.
	At least until I was old enough to take another run.
	And to realize how right you were in the past.
	I'm thinking of doing a podcast, and I won't go obviously into details right now, but I have on my list of podcasts to do.
	What would society look like if it just accepted that children were right?
	Because every time there's a conflict between culture, religiosity, various kinds of social fantasies that adults have, delusions really, any time there's a conflict between the natural empiricism, rationality and scientific nature of a child and the irrational destructiveness of cultural fantasies, it is the child who must conform.
	And I was just thinking the other day, what would happen if If society or parents or culture as a whole did not try to correct children but instead learned from them, how quickly would we advance as a society?
	I think it would be staggeringly fast.
	We could do a thousand years of development in one generation if we did not try to adjust the rationality of children to fit into the crazy shit that we have called culture.
	Man, wouldn't that be fantastic if we weren't just trying to change that natural beauty of a child's mind into the warped cloud-based fantasy hostility acid rain bullshit that is social pathology.
	My god, that would be fantastic!
	And children have so much to teach us because they are so elementally uninjured and unconstrained and I'm learning an enormous, enormous amount.
	From my daughter. And most of it is pleasurable.
	Some of it is very sad when I think about how smashed up I got as a child.
	But it is a beautiful thing to see.
	And we really could leap forward a thousand years in a generation if we learn from children rather than try to inflict our own craziness on them.
	Oh yeah, I completely agree.
	I mean, I have this niece that is...
	That is five years old.
	I had a close bond with her and it just made me cry just seeing how curious she was.
	It was a wonderful experience interacting with her.
	She kind of inspired me to leave my family.
	Well, so I think it's worth meditating on that dream.
	And I think it's worth just having respect for all of the original knowledge that we had to hide, that we had to bury.
	I'm sure that most of you know this, but under communist Russia, up until Glasnost, under the last Soviet leader, Gorbachev, There was dissident literature.
	Some of it was Ayn Rand's and some of it was Solzhenitsyn's and some of it was more modern.
	Some of it was even Maxim Gorky and the older writers who were critical of bureaucracy and socialism.
	But they all circulated in Sort of badly photocopied, bound together by rubber bands, pieces of literature called Samizdat.
	I'm not sure if that pronunciation is great.
	I've only read it. And if I get one more person telling me I've mispronounced the word Keynes, I will be keen on not doing another show on Keynes.
	Anyway. And Samizdat was the way that dissident literature survived throughout Russia.
	It was all smuggled and passed around, handed in brown bags and so on.
	It was the brain porn of the communist era.
	And I really do believe that the True Self does survive even in tyrannical environments as children that we may face.
	It does survive. It does survive.
	The dissonant literature of the true self is handed around in the mycosystem deep down in the bowels of the brain and can survive and can come back and is always clamoring like a man trapped under ice is beating its fists against the ice to get back through to the crystal clear air.
	It's something that we are continually trying to get back to and continually trying to bite and scrape and fight and love our way back through to the air.
	So, even if we are driven underground as children, we are not driven underground to die.
	We are not driven underground like a corpse dropped in a hole.
	We are driven underground like a guilty and unacceptable thought to gather strength for a re-assault with reason in the future.
	That's my thought of it anyway.
	Well, listen, I'm going to move on to another caller, but thank you so much for bringing that up.
	I think it's a very powerful thing to think about.
	And I really would recommend for people to sit and listen to early dreams.
	Think about the first things that you thought about in your history.
	And your very earliest perceptions of the world, I think, is very, very important to figure out where some of your core beliefs may be coming from.
	Right. So thank you so much for bringing that up.
	Okay, you're welcome. Thank you.
	You're welcome. All right, we have another call.
	Do we have another caller? Hi, Steph.
	Hello. Hi.
	My name's Chris. I'm a long-time listener, first-time caller.
	I wish we had a cool sound for you.
	Okay, go on. Thanks.
	But basically, I just wanted to call and say thank you for absolutely everything you're doing here.
	Yeah, I was recently accepted into a master's program for marriage and family therapy, and I contribute a bit of that to you.
	Well, I really appreciate that.
	And trust me, if you're here to praise, you can have the rest of the show.
	I'm just going to lie here and eat some bonbons and scratch myself.
	And you deserve them, sir, definitely.
	So tell me how did you first start listening to the show, and what's your experience been?
	I really appreciate that feedback.
	I honestly can't remember how I first found the show.
	I've been listening on and off for, I think, the past, I don't know, five or so years.
	Only, you know, getting into it more in-depth recently, I guess.
	But, you know, I have a...
	Well, I work in a cubicle, so I get to listen to the podcast all day at work, which is spectacular.
	But... Yeah, I mean, I think you definitely just taught me to be more, well, logically consistent and, you know, helped iron out, well, my own thoughts on a lot of the topics you discuss on the show.
	Well, I'm completely thrilled.
	So thank you so much for the feedback.
	And did the show or did your sort of exploration of philosophy, did it change you more towards going to cancelling or was that the direction you were heading in already?
	I was kind of already heading that direction.
	I graduated from college two years ago, and I went for a psych major.
	I was going into some kind of therapy, but I think you definitely contributed toward the marriage and family therapy direction.
	I mean, I talked to a few MFTs before that, but I think just applying this philosophy into my own life, pretty much...
	The non-aggression principle, everybody is free to associate with whom they want.
	I feel like that's a message that just needs to get out into the public.
	And I think being a marriage and family therapist would be the best way to go about doing that.
	Oh, I think it's a very challenging way to do it, for sure.
	I mean, this is not me quoting, this is Dr.
	Phil, who, you know, although he's religiously nuttied, I think does have some useful stuff to say.
	He's continually talking about how, you know, parents bring in their kids and say, fix the kid, you know, the problem with the kid.
	And he's always saying, no, no, no, no.
	Not the kid, right? You're the parent.
	You don't get to blame the kid if you're the parent, right?
	I mean, that's like the dog owner blaming the dog, so to speak, right?
	I mean, it's just silly, but that's a natural reaction for some people.
	And so it's a challenge from that standpoint, getting the parents to accept responsibility in those situations.
	But I think it's a fantastic thing to do.
	And I mean, I think you will...
	Retire in your dotage, very satisfied with a life well lived that you've done a great deal of good in the world.
	So I think that's fantastic.
	Congratulations. Yeah, thank you.
	If you're setting up a private practice or someplace where you can take patients and you want to advertise, not even advertise, but just post any kind of information on the website, please let me know.
	I'd be very happy to...
	I think that there would be...
	I've sort of had requests to create a network of therapists who understand philosophy.
	Let me just snap my fingers from my little bedroom and do that.
	But I know that some people have asked for that.
	And if... Yeah, absolutely.
	That'd be great. I mean, you know, it's a two-year program, so I'll be in school for the next two years, and who knows how long after that until I can actually, well, when I would feel like I'd be able to set up a private practice.
	But I mean, any help I can get would definitely be appreciated.
	But yeah, absolutely.
	And again, just thank you so much for everything.
	Like I said, I was already on the track to be, you know, some sort of counselor before this, but just kind of through counseling of my own and through applying your philosophy to my life.
	I recently defood with my family recently also.
	Oh, I'm so sorry to hear that.
	Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
	And it was a rough situation, but I mean, I think what helped me the most was just realizing that I wasn't happy.
	I mean, previously, you know, I I've struggled with, you know, various depression in various forms in the past.
	But since I guess since realizing that I just have the option to defu, I mean, that was definitely a large step forward in my situation, at least.
	Yeah, I mean, it's choice, right?
	I mean, all that which is considered absolute and automatic is not a place where life can really flourish, I think.
	And to have a choice where no choice is deemed possible is something that is...
	I don't think you could really be in a relationship if you just have to be in a relationship and it's not chosen.
	I don't think that you can really be there in any meaningful way unless you're choosing to be there.
	Right. And I sort of say this around adults.
	I mean, obviously, my daughter can't exactly choose to switch daddies or whatever, at least not yet.
	So I think that's a little bit different.
	But when we become adults, I really do think that we need to review our relationships and say, you know, what's in it for me?
	What am I getting out of it?
	What am I contributing to it?
	How honest and authentic can I be in this situation?
	And, you know, make choices.
	And people can make choices to stay.
	And people can make choices to take a break or, you know, get therapy, which is always my recommendation.
	But man alive, you can't, I think, be in a relationship if it just has to be that way.
	And it's never a choice.
	And there's no because then there's no capacity for self-reflection for there's not much of a capacity for honesty.
	And there's really not much capacity for negotiation.
	So, anyway, sorry, I didn't mean to sort of go off on my own ramble when you would talk to your stuff, but I— Oh, no, definitely no problem.
	You know, I'm used to your ramblings, believe me.
	But, yeah, and— Obviously, I did everything I could to prevent having to defu with the family.
	I did what I could to resolve the issues.
	I went to therapy with my mother a few times also.
	But that's really what all of her arguments came back to, just that family is family.
	And no matter how hard I tried to explain that that just doesn't make any sense, she just wouldn't get it.
	And what was it that she wouldn't get?
	Well, I mean, just that...
	Well, you know, her argument was that, like I said, family is family, therefore that comes with these obligations.
	You have to do that. People just don't choose to disassociate with their families.
	And, I mean, as much as I tried to explain that, I mean, no, I really don't have to do these things.
	I'm an adult. I have freedom to associate with whom I want to associate.
	But then it all just came back to her.
	And like how...
	Just like how...
	What her desire...
	Well, basically that her desires were more important than my desires.
	Right. Right.
	And yeah, I mean, it was absolutely tragic.
	But I mean, since it's been, gosh...
	We had our last conversation.
	It was actually Christmas Day.
	You know, she and my brother had, well, showed up at my house in sort of kind of a standard intervention type situation, I guess.
	And, you know, that's just where I guess you could say that the shit hit the fan, I suppose.
	But, I mean, since then, I mean, I've I've been spectacularly more happy and just more grounded in myself.
	I've got a lot of thoughts going through my head.
	I want to make sure I keep listening.
	So if you want to keep talking, I will put those thoughts aside and continue to listen.
	But if you wanted to take a pause, I could share some of what I'm thinking.
	Oh no, please go ahead. I mean, this is not the concept that I talk about, no unchosen positive obligations and you need to be honest in your relationships and honest about yourself, about the nature of your relationships.
	This is not new.
	Of course, every time that it moves forward in society, there's a lot of turmoil, right?
	There's some people who get left behind, which I think is truly tragic.
	But the extension of choice and voluntarism within society, it always comes at a very large social cost for some, and for others, it's a large reward, right?
	And The last big thing that happened was, of course, that was, I think, similar to what you and I are talking about here, was feminism, right?
	Which was women kind of had to get married, and they kind of had to stay married.
	And it really wasn't a choice.
	And it wasn't a choice because they couldn't really get any education.
	They couldn't really get a job.
	And you might have a job. But marriage wasn't really a choice for women, being married and staying married.
	And the stigma associated with divorce was so huge that women stuck it out with some pretty grim situations or very grim situations.
	And of course, then when feminists came along and said, no, no, wait, I mean, this is not right.
	You can't have a good marriage if you just have to be married, if it's kind of arranged by culture and economic necessity.
	You can't have a really great marriage unless you're choosing to be there.
	And they also said, feminists said, and I think quite rightly so, they said, and abuse is a deal breaker in a relationship.
	Abuse is a deal breaker in a relationship.
	I don't know how many times I heard that in various forms growing up.
	I mean, this is what's so funny about some of the controversy and tragic comic about some of the controversy about this concept of voluntary family relations is that all I'm doing is saying to society, hey, I got it.
	You know, I heard what you told me six million times when I was growing up, you know, like in health class and every after school movie and every lecture that you get about gender relations, it would always be abuse is a deal breaker in a relationship.
	You do not stay in relationships where there is abuse.
	And so I'm like, yeah, I'm like, okay, I got it.
	Right? So they didn't just say, unless it's nobody ever said to me, unless it's your family.
	And nobody ever said that to me.
	It was like that's abuse is a deal breaker in every relationship.
	So I'm like, okay. And it took me a long while to get it.
	But, of course, when feminism came along and said to women, abuse is a deal-breaker, you don't have to stay married, some women looked at their husbands and said, you know, not so much, right?
	And, you know, they tried to work it out or whatever, but if it didn't change or whatever.
	And then, of course, lots of husbands said, those damn feminists, they broke up my marriage.
	You know, I hate feminism.
	And In a way, you can kind of understand that, right?
	I mean, because marriage had worked a certain way for thousands of years, where men could kind of do what they wanted and women didn't really have any choices.
	And so some men who maybe were cruel or mean or whatever, they kind of ran their marriages like the women could never leave.
	You know, like public sector workers, they kind of run their careers like they can never get fired.
	They're kind of right. But then when someone comes along and says, we are now going to talk about choice in a relationship that formerly was never considered to be fundamentally chosen, a lot of husbands kind of freaked out.
	They kind of hated it, right?
	They had to really evolve or lose and they really didn't like that particular choice.
	And so they got mad at the people who came along and said, abuse is a deal breaker and voluntary relationships are the way to go.
	And you can kind of understand why, but at the same time, it's like, come on, we have to evolve.
	I mean, we have to move forward.
	We can't hang back and let people get pounded on and yelled at and abused and put down and ignored and neglected.
	We can't just let that happen because to remind people of voluntarism makes people who've not treated them well feel bad.
	I mean... That's like canvassing all of the...
	I mean, to use an extreme metaphor, right?
	That's like canvassing all of the people who trade and buy and sell slaves about whether slavery should be abolished.
	They'd say, no, I've got all my investment in these manacles, right?
	I've got all my investments in these whips and these ships with all the...
	The chains in the galleys and so on, right?
	They'd say, well, no, it's going to be a huge amount of suffering for me if we evolve.
	And that's true of every evolution in human nature.
	I mean, it's always struck me that people who get mad at the concept of voluntary family relations, I mean, a lot of them are libertarians.
	I mean, how do they think public sector workers in, say, the postal union, of which 40% are ex-military, how do they think these people are going to react to If, you know, Ron Paul gets his way and they privatize the post office.
	You're going to get a horse's head in your bed.
	These people are going to freak out because you're bringing volunteers into a formally involuntary relationship.
	But do we then say, well, we don't want to upset the union workers, so let's not do it?
	I mean, we still have to move forward as a species.
	That's the goal.
	That's the point. That's why we get up in the morning, at least those of us who want that life.
	We have to move forward. We have to extend voluntarism, the non-aggression principle and peace and virtue and love.
	We have to extend those things.
	Because otherwise, you know, if the candle's not being lit, the candle is going out.
	And we've seen in the 20th century what happens when it really goes out.
	So although it does upset people, and I'm sure it's upset your parents, and I'm sorry about that.
	I mean, it's not my fault, and I don't think fundamentally it's your fault, since you're not the parent.
	But we do have to move forward in terms of virtue, and we hope that as many people will change and evolve and come along as possible.
	But we can't really control that.
	Anyway, sorry for the long speech.
	I just wanted to share what I was thinking about while you were talking.
	A little more background for me.
	I was raised Catholic, and so that comes with all the trappings that come with that.
	Mainly just being controlled through guilt and shame, which led to a great degree of self-attack, which I suppose is what They're really aiming for, you know, if I'll police myself, and that's, well, problem solved there.
	But I mean, once I, you know, through my own therapy, once I realized I was, you know, attacking myself for pretty much everything, then once I, you know, managed to rein that in, and then, you know, I essentially just took a step back from the situation, like, and I would realize, oh, my mom's doing that again.
	And so then, once I knew what she was doing, that just removed her power from the situation.
	And then that, I mean, it was essentially all downhill from there, unfortunately.
	But, yeah, I mean, I absolutely agree with everything you're saying about that.
	I mean, clearly, you know, the family is going to be upset when I choose to, you know, disassociate from them.
	But, I mean, that's just what we have to do.
	If it's not a healthy relationship and it can't be repaired, then, I mean, Ending it is the only option.
	Well, I mean, people stay.
	Lots of people do stay, right?
	And I'm sure some people go back.
	And that's, you know, hey, I mean, the whole point of voluntarism is you can choose to go back to be involuntary if you want.
	I mean, in a sense, you can be freed from slavery and you can go sell yourself back into slavery if you want, but at least you've made that choice, you know, born into it, right?
	Right, right. And again, I absolutely thank you for revealing that choice to me.
	Right. I mean, as it was revealed to me as well.
	I read a book called Divorcing Your Parents many, many years ago.
	The concept is not new.
	And I'm curious, and you don't have to share any of this, of course, right?
	But I'm just curious if you wouldn't mind.
	Okay. What was your therapist's perception of this process for you?
	Um...
	She was...
	She was supportive of it, kind of.
	Um...
	I mean, she was also a marriage and family therapist.
	And so, I mean, I can understand where she was coming from in that, you know, it is tragic when family relations do break down.
	And so I think she would have preferred I had not done it, but she understood that, you know, my happiness was essentially contingent on ending the relationship.
	I'm sorry, just to make sure I understand.
	When you said that she would have been happy if you had not done it, did she mean if the family relations could have been at least brought into the direction of repair?
	Yeah, that's what I meant.
	She definitely would have preferred that the family relationship could have been repaired, but given that it seemed like it wouldn't be possible, then she absolutely supported this option.
	Yeah, and I mean, I think that's definitely a truism.
	I mean, I think it is.
	I mean, wouldn't we all love for everyone to have a happy marriage?
	I mean, but some marriages don't work out.
	So, that's very interesting.
	And so you were saying that it was Christmas, and I guess it's been a couple of months now?
	Mm-hmm. Yep, yep.
	Yeah, and I mean, the...
	The only contact I've had from my mom came from, well, she sent me an email like the day following where she essentially said, you know, at least your brother and I have, you know, like my grandparents and, or yeah, by, yeah, at least my brother and her have, you know, like the other relations and, you know, like grandparents, cousins, aunts, uncles, whatever.
	But now I have nobody.
	Which, I mean, that's clearly not true.
	I don't have a family, in quotes there.
	But, I mean, that's essentially just another example of just kind of the passive-aggressive abuse that was going on there.
	I mean, that's clearly an attack on me.
	It's almost like a curse.
	Now you have nobody here.
	Right. And so, I mean, it's clearly an attack.
	And, you know, like previously, back in the day, before I had my own therapy, then, I mean, I would start attacking myself for that.
	And I mean, then I would just conform to what she would expect.
	Right. And so, I mean, now that I'm free of that cycle, I mean, I don't mean to laugh, but I mean, she just doesn't know what to do.
	Right. Right. And, I mean, wouldn't it be great?
	I mean, this is my fantasy.
	And it may be just...
	I don't know if it's a total fantasy.
	It may be with my family.
	But my fantasy is that people would...
	People would try their strategies to sort of keep me in the family structure.
	And the family structure in my family was not beneficial to me.
	I'm not saying it was never beneficial.
	There was never any use or never any positivity.
	There was. But overall, it was claustrophobic to me.
	And I could not grow in that.
	I had to keep the things that I was really passionate about away from my family because they would sort of be mocked and scorned and put down and all that.
	In a sense, I mean, this may sound weird, but I couldn't become the great soul that I felt was striving to get out of me in that.
	And I read, there was a black guy who wrote a book.
	He's a radio personality in New York.
	It's not Thomas Sowell. It's some other guy.
	And I read it about a year, a year and a half ago.
	And he said something quite profound.
	He said, I wanted to be greater than I was, or greater than I was when I grew up.
	And if people could accept my ambition and support me, then there was lots of room for them in my life.
	And if they couldn't, there was no room for them in my life.
	Because I had to grow.
	I had to reach out.
	I had to reach, in a sense, for the stars.
	People were either along for the ride or they were opposing me.
	And I had to choose about the people I kept in my life once I had that kind of ambition.
	And that certainly was the case for me.
	I wrote lots of books and nobody in my family ever read them and all that.
	So I couldn't sustain that belief that I could do great things in the face of those who claimed to care the most for me, who were completely indifferent or even hostile to what it is that I was doing.
	And I kind of had to make a choice.
	And my choice was either I stay In this little box of other people's preconceived notions and live out a small life because otherwise I might make other people uncomfortable.
	Or, I break out, I break free, I take flight, and there will be some people who it will upset.
	But, fundamentally and in the end, I'm the one who has to take responsibility for my own life and my own happiness.
	And I have to take responsibility for exercising the skills and abilities that I possess.
	And if it makes other people uncomfortable for me to speak the truths, reasoned out from first principles, or for me to have great ambitions to help the world, I'm sorry that it makes other people uncomfortable, but I can't, I can't, can't, can't piss on the flames of my own ambition because it hurts other people's eyes.
	I mean, that's just not... It's not something that I could do with good conscience.
	And if I had done that, I'm absolutely positive that I would be just depressed as a pile of horseshit right now, frankly.
	It would be wretched and I would be no good to myself or anybody else.
	So I can certainly understand that need to outgrow these preconceptions and to be sort of as deep and as rich as it sounds like you're heading towards or perhaps already are.
	And so I really do sympathize with that transition.
	And my hope was that there would be this storm and stress, you know, where I'd try and fix things, I'd try and fix things, I'd try and fix things, I'd be in therapy, I'd try and fix things.
	And then I'd say, you know what?
	I can't fix this. I can't fix this.
	Because I can't do this on my own.
	I mean, I can't fix a relationship on my own.
	That's the great fantasy, right?
	And it arises out of both insecurity and kind of megalomania, right?
	That you can fix things in a relationship all on your own.
	You can't. But it was sort of my fantasy that my family would be like, okay...
	So, clearly, you know, we tried to not change and hope that Steph would reconform back to the way things were.
	And that's, you know, that's...
	A dice that people roll.
	They take that risk.
	They say, well, if we just keep opposing him, he'll go back into where he was before and everything will be fine.
	But then when I did say, look, I need to take a break and I can't do this anymore.
	I thought, okay, so there'll be some time where it'll be...
	And then, because I've been told my whole life that family is everything, you know, and family, blood is thicker than water and the bonds that can't be broken and so on, I kind of thought, and it wasn't like it was a strategy on my part, but I did kind of think that people would say, wow, I did not realize he was that unhappy.
	I did not realize he was that unhappy, but since family is everything, clearly we are going to need to change.
	And that people would sort of come back and say, okay, so we thought that it wasn't that serious for you, but clearly it is, so let's reopen our conversation.
	That didn't happen with me at all.
	I mean, I hope it happens with you.
	I hope that your family sits there and says, wow, you know, this really is a big deal for him.
	It is very, very important to him.
	And so we're going to need to adapt because family is everything and blood is thick in the water.
	And blood should be thicker than gods and ideologies and politics and culture.
	Blood should be, I think, the most solid and strong bond of all.
	But I hope.
	I don't think it's ever going to happen with my family.
	In fact, I'm sure it won't. But I hope that with your family, they do get that it is very important to you to be self-expressed in the relationship and to be respected for who you are and that they do try and find some way to turn it around.
	Yeah, I mean, it would be wonderful if it could turn around.
	It doesn't seem like it will.
	When they came over on Christmas, I mean, after everything we had discussed, you know, I had done my best to RTR with them previously and, you know, going to therapy with my mom and things like that.
	But after all of that, and I mean, it had been going on for several months prior to that, after all of that, when they came over on Christmas, basically, it was all my problem.
	They asked, oh, do you need a new therapist?
	Do you need medication? Et cetera, et cetera.
	And they just couldn't realize that, I mean, it's not a problem with a specific person necessarily, but with the interactions between the people.
	And, I mean, yeah, if maybe someday we can reopen this discussion, then that would be great.
	You know, my mom asked, oh, so if I go see a therapist, will you go come with me?
	And I told her yes.
	But, you know, over the past four months, there has been no contact regarding that.
	Right. Yeah, I mean, empirically, the odds are not great.
	It is a hope to have for a while, but every day that passes, the odds diminish.
	I mean, I have a completely wonderful marriage and I'm the dad that I want to be.
	I always wanted to be. It doesn't mean that I'm a perfect dad and I'm certainly not going to be as good a parent as Isabelle is going to be in time.
	But this is what I have such a tough time understanding when it comes to these kinds of situations.
	I mean, I genuinely have stayed up nights trying to figure this one out, and I've only had some luck.
	But if my wife came to me one day and said, you know, I'm so unhappy that I'm thinking of leaving you, I mean, I would literally try to move heaven and earth to figure out What went wrong?
	Why things went wrong? How I could fix it?
	How I could make things better?
	I mean, I told her this the other day when I was thinking about it.
	If you tried to leave, it would be tough with me hanging on, sobbing to your ankle, you know, clinging to you like a baby chimpanzee or something, you know, and it would be tough to drive off with me hanging on to the windshield wipers of the car going back and forth like a song I'm singing to my daughter, you know, the wipers, the husband on the wiper goes swish, swish, swish, right?
	I mean, I would, I would do anything.
	I would do... Oh, you've got to go to therapy.
	I'm there. I'm there.
	I'm making the call right now.
	You know, whatever it was that needed to be done to repair the relationship with people that I really love...
	I would do. I mean, I would just do it.
	Because to me, that's what love is.
	I mean, I trust my wife enough that if she said there was a significant issue that needed to be fixed, I would just try to fix it.
	I mean, I'm not going to fight her on it. I mean, that's just the way it is, right?
	And that's what I... I really can't figure that out.
	I don't know if it's pride or indifference or coldness or what, but it's like, how can you let a day go by With a child who's found, like an adult kid who's found family life so unacceptable, how can you let a day go by without moving heaven and earth to fill?
	To fill the hole and fix the problem.
	Yeah, and instead we just get the sort of the whole, oh, how dare you even consider that?
	Yeah, I mean, talk about gasoline on a fire, right?
	I mean, of all the things you wouldn't want to do, right?
	I mean... When I was talking about things with my family, I'd always get back, oh, you're just playing the victim.
	To me, it's like, what?
	I'm saying that I have a significant problem with respect and support within this family, and I get back that I'm manipulative and playing the victim.
	I mean, does that not just exactly confirm the thesis that I'm putting forward?
	And I tried to sort of point that out.
	And it's like, it didn't matter.
	The story would just change, right?
	And so after a while, it's like, you know what?
	I kind of am playing the victim.
	I kind of am. Because I keep trying to fix a relationship where I'm the only one who's trying to fix the relationship and the other person, the other people, just putting more scorn on, right?
	So I kind of am playing the victim, so I'm going to stop.
	Right. Yeah.
	So, yeah.
	Anyway, thank you so much for everything.
	I really appreciate it.
	And, you know, I just thought I would throw that out there that, well, to everyone here, Steph's philosophy is great to get into a therapy school.
	So, have fun with that.
	Well, I appreciate that.
	And, again, I know what a difficult thing it is to go through.
	I'm glad your therapist was supportive.
	I really do sympathize with what you went through.
	I You know, every passing day makes the odds less likely, in my opinion, so I hope it's sooner rather than later, because I think later is more or less impossible, at least that's been what I've observed and experienced.
	So I hope that there's some turnaround, and I'm so sorry that this is what it came to, but you've got to be honest in your relationships.
	I think if they're going to be real relationships, and if that's not possible...
	I mean, I think that you've done the right thing for yourself, and I hope that it turns around, but if it doesn't, congratulations.
	Yeah, thank you.
	Thank you. All right.
	Is there anything else you want to talk about?
	Kind of go to another call? Yeah, that's about it.
	So I will pass the torch, I guess.
	All right. If you get a chance and you wanted to post on the board about how things are going for you in grad school, I would certainly be very curious.
	Or just drop me a line, if you can, every now and then to let me know how things are going.
	I would really like to know.
	Yeah, yeah, definitely.
	I'll be starting up fall semester next year.
	So excited for that.
	Congratulations, man. Yeah, thank you.
	All the best. Bye.
	Bye. All right.
	Do we have caller number two?
	I just wanted to mention, if you haven't seen it, I did, at least to me, a very interesting interview With Dr.
	John Omaha, who I believe the state is named after.
	No, sorry, it's the insurance company.
	And he is, I think, a very good writer and has some fantastic and powerful ideas about taking psychological diagnoses and applying it to the American character or the American nation.
	And I hope that you will check that out.
	You can go to the FDR podcast feed, and it shows 1623, PDSD Nation, Dr.
	John Omaha, interviewed on Freedom Aid Radio.
	It's also available on my YouTube channel.
	And I hope that you will check it out.
	He was a very gracious and eloquent host, and he had a good reminder for me to talk slower, which is something that I should always try to remember.
	And so I really do appreciate his time and appreciated his wisdom.
	Somebody has asked, I was wondering, what is it a therapist provides that can't be done on your own?
	What skills are they offering?
	I have some intellectual answers to that, but I was wondering if I could get an experienced response Well, you can get, I guess, a somewhat experienced amateur response.
	A therapist is...
	There's many schools, right?
	I'll just talk about my experience in therapy.
	I must say that until I went to therapy...
	I did not actually know what it was like, what it felt like, what the experience was of having somebody really interested in who I was and what I thought and what I experienced before.
	I had no real experience with that.
	It's not like my teachers were or my priests were or my family was or my friends to some degree, but I did not experience what it was like to have somebody really, really curious about and interested in me before, this is tragic, before I was in my mid-30s and in therapy.
	And that is a pretty unique experience.
	That changed what knowledge of another is.
	That changed what intimacy meant for me.
	And I drunk deep from that still water for, well, years, in fact.
	I think that's really important.
	I think that's really an important experience in therapy, to have somebody really focused on you.
	And after you've gone through that experience with a great therapist...
	Or even a good therapist. After you've gone through that experience where somebody's really focused on you, it helped me to take myself more seriously when somebody else took me more seriously or took me seriously.
	And that was a not-to-be-returned gift that I got out of therapy.
	The other thing that I've mentioned before, which I'll just touch on briefly here, is that it's my belief that Most of what occurs that is tragic in human life occurs fundamentally out of a feeling of isolation, of solitariness, of being uninteresting to other people, of emptying out yourself because you no longer have depth and power as a human being.
	And I believe that, I mean, this arises out of trauma and isolation.
	And as Dr.
	Omaha said in our interview, it is, in fact, neglect is worse for children than abuse.
	Which is why children act out in order to get abused, rather than experience neglect.
	And ended the dream that the first caller talked about he was not being abused, he was being abandoned.
	And that is more terrifying. Neglect is more damaging to children than abuse.
	And so... Problems in self-knowledge, problems in self-relating, problems in impulse management, problems with addictions, problems with intimacy.
	If these arise out of solitude and abuse is the wall that goes around us if we've experienced it.
	If these things arise, if these problems arise out of solitude, I don't think they can be solved in solitude because that's more of the same.
	I think you need something that is different, something that is the opposite of what you have experienced before.
	And therapy is designed, in my opinion, therapy is really fundamentally designed to be the opposite of what came before.
	Whatever happened that caused these problems, therapy is supposed to be the opposite.
	It's the antidote, right? It's supposed to be the opposite.
	And I don't think that you can provide that to yourself on your own, if that makes anything.
	Somebody said, I want to know why a lot of things, but my therapist says why doesn't matter.
	It kind of matters to me, else I wouldn't be asking.
	But I think my suggestion is always to be as honest with the therapist as possible and say, it upsets me when you say this and here's why I think and what do you think and you just do that relentless.
	I mean, the therapy office is a fantastic place to practice RTR because the therapist, I think, should be good at that, at least accepting that honesty from a client.
	I was just wondering if I added my experience so far in therapy.
	Oh, I think that'd be great. Sure.
	Well, I mean, if this matters to anybody, if they find it helpful, then great.
	But I struggled for a long time with the whole concept of therapy, if that makes sense.
	There are lots of reasons around that, but when I finally...
	I finally got to taking it seriously, if that's a fair way to put it.
	I finally got the upper hand with the ecosystem, with help from Steph, because the critic was a huge hurdle for that.
	I've got a really good relationship with the therapist right now.
	There are things that I just never would have done.
	The things I couldn't do on my own to experience and integrate a trauma that just wasn't available to my consciousness, just as an example, I think that's impossible to do outside of therapy.
	I just don't think you can do it.
	I mean, I certainly never did it spontaneously, and I think it might be tricky if it's even possible to do it.
	Outside of therapy, if that makes sense.
	So, at least my experience has been, you know, the things that kind of like the, you know, things that are inflicted or, you know, problems that come about from isolation can't be resolved in isolation.
	Well, part of the reason is because the experience can be overwhelming or, you know, you're just not even aware or, you know, conscious that it's going on and have that To have the outside party who is interested in what's going on for you is valuable.
	It's crucial, I think, to actually dealing with these things.
	Right. I mean, there is a portrayal of children in our culture as they're cute, right?
	That they're little.
	They're cute. Yeah.
	I think that's kind of Unfair to the depth of children.
	And we experience this quite a lot.
	I can remember on the fingers of one hand the number of times when I was a kid that somebody actually asked me about my thoughts and feelings.
	It's hard to take yourself seriously if you've never really been listened to.
	And also, withdrawing projections, I mean, that's something that's really difficult to do on your own as well.
	I think that's an effect in a lot of ways more than something you actually, like you're trying to retract it like with a fishing reel or something like that.
	At least in my experience, it's been like I have a breakthrough or something in therapy and then the projection sort of withdraws because I realize...
	Something true about myself as opposed to something about the universe, right?
	Right. Sorry to interrupt, but I was also going to mention this at the beginning, but I forgot.
	So I'm glad that you brought that up.
	People want to dive into political debates a lot.
	They really want to dive into political debates.
	Or debates about abstract philosophy and so on.
	But I think that if there's one thing that we've gotten out over the years, and also with the recent interviews in the Bomb of the Brain series, we're just yelling scar tissue at each other, for the most part.
	I mean, I think people who've, you know, gone into self-knowledge, figured these things out, they're much better.
	I think most of us who are more advanced in this area.
	But most people that you're talking to, if they have not...
	Recognize the value of self-knowledge.
	And you don't have to have come from a difficult or bad family to have this problem because the culture is diluted as a whole.
	I mean, the culture is diluted as a whole because the culture is so fundamentally anti-reason that what is called normal is not going to be called normal in the future.
	And so people say, well, I get this objection to anarchy or I get this objection to freedom or this objection to the free market or this objection to UPB or whatever.
	I mean, the first question I'm sort of asking myself these days when I see a lot of, you know, a violent objection to something that's going on here is, why does the person care?
	Why does the person even care?
	Why is it important to them, right?
	So somebody who's posted, you can say, oh, I was having a conversation with my brother.
	My brother says he was emphatically, you cannot be 100% certain about anything.
	Well, we've seen that the science shows that ideology follows trauma.
	And so my question would be, what trauma does certainty provoke or reawaken in this person?
	And, you know, if I had to guess, it would be that they had an absolutist caregiver who said, it's my way or the highway, it's this way.
	Or nothing. And then when they see somebody who comes along who's certain about ethics or certain about voluntarism or whatever, that it evokes that and they have to kind of shut that down.
	But it's self-management.
	Ideology is the self-medication for trauma.
	And so if somebody's going to be honest about why something even matters to them, right?
	I, you know, if somebody can say, you know, when you bring up this certainty, I feel really anxious and upset.
	And I think it's because, you know, when I was a kid, blah, blah, blah, the priest was 150% certain that I was going to burn in hellfire.
	So certainty makes me feel really anxious.
	Well, that's somebody who's got, I think, at least a bronze medal in self-knowledge.
	And that's fantastic. I think that's great.
	That's mature. That's wonderful. And that's the beginning, hopefully, of a real friendship where you can actually explore truth without beating each other over the head with ideology.
	And you can see this all the time in internet forums, right?
	People just beating each other up with ideology.
	You can see this all the time in YouTube comments and so on, right?
	People just... Coming up with, you know, like there's a couple of things, of course, that are just designed to be annoying.
	You know, when somebody says, um, you know this, right?
	You know, it's this way, not that.
	You know, that um, it's just, it's annoying.
	And people do lots of different things like that.
	You know, the angry laugh out loud, and you know, all of that kind of stuff, right?
	These are people who just, what you're saying is really bothering them, but they don't know why, so they're just reacting.
	And they don't even know that it's bothering them.
	The challenge, of course, comes when When someone says to you, you can't ever be certain of anything, and they're really upset, and you say, I wonder why you're so upset about this?
	And then they say, oh, you're just trying to change the subject, or don't try and psychoanalyze me.
	We're here to talk about this philosophical issue, you know, stop doing this weird stuff about my, you know, that's...
	But then all they're saying is, I can't talk rationally about this.
	And so for me, it's like, well, I'm sorry, that goes into the pile.
	And it's a very large pile called Life's Too Short.
	I'm not going to waste my time battling scar tissue with someone.
	And in a sense, helping them manage their early trauma in a way that only maintains and exacerbates that problem.
	I mean, that's enabling.
	You're debating with somebody who's not rational.
	It's like giving a drink to a drunk.
	You're just enabling self-destructive behavior.
	And I choose not to do that.
	Somebody's asked, does it ever work that way?
	Does anyone ever actually get the mature emotional response for the ideological intellectual conclusions?
	I will occasionally get that.
	Sometimes it can take a little while.
	You know, when their fight or flight is activated, then they're not particularly open to reason, right?
	The amygdala swamps the frontal cortex.
	But sometimes it will happen.
	And I mean, what was it?
	About six months ago, I think I had a conversation with a guy who trawled FDR pretty hard.
	And I was happy to have that conversation with him.
	He thought about it. I've had emails from people who were like, oh man, I hated your stuff.
	I thought about it and it turns out you were right and so on.
	So people can turn around.
	They can think about things or maybe they just have to go through enough difficult stuff in their life before recognizing that reason and self-knowledge is the way to go.
	It does happen. It's nothing you want to hold your breath for and it is a very small minority of people.
	It does happen. And so it almost never happens in the moment unless somebody has a good degree of self-knowledge.
	It almost never happens in the moment.
	Or the other one that's really good is people who will post comments on videos or write to me and say, you know, your reasoning is so bad I'm embarrassed for you in this video.
	It's just ridiculous, right?
	And I'm like, oh, well, perhaps you'd like to tell me where my reasoning problems are, right?
	And then they're like, well, you know, if you can't figure it out, I'm not going to bother telling you, right?
	And of course, all that is is an invitation to a self-attack ball.
	I just don't show up, right?
	I don't go to that ball anymore, right?
	So this is another thing that you will get a lot of.
	Or people who willfully misunderstand what it is that you're saying and then they're inviting you to come in and fight about it.
	You know, they say the opposite of sort of what it is that you mean and then they're kind of inviting you, you know, oh, so, you know, you're against the healthcare bill because...
	You hate the poor, you know, and it's like, okay, so if somebody genuinely believes that, then there's no point debating with someone you think is evil, right?
	Did you want poor people to be sick?
	I mean, that would be evil, right? I want poor people to die of cancer.
	I think that would be pretty evil, a pretty evil sentiment.
	And so I just wouldn't debate with somebody who thought I was evil.
	I mean, what would the point of that be?
	If they think I'm evil, there's no debate.
	If they don't think I'm evil, but they're using it, then they're just being an asshole, right?
	So they're being manipulative and destructive, so I'm not going to debate with them either.
	Somebody has said how I used my tools.
	Well, somebody made a mistake in a video that I did, where I talked about disabled somebody in a wheelchair getting rehab and getting out, who was very upset and angry and offended, because I think he thought that I was saying that everybody in a wheelchair is just kind of faking it and they can get better.
	And I just I mean, that was such a reaction.
	I mean, who knows what happened to this guy or this man or this woman?
	Forgive the gender stereotyping, but I assume angry emails on the internet are mostly coming from base of the brain, male fight-or-flight stuff.
	Who knows? Maybe this guy's kid was in a wheelchair because he was in a car accident two weeks ago and he was tortured with hope and he saw this accidentally and it blew up his circuitry, right?
	It wasn't abusive. I wouldn't respond to an abusive email.
	But I did it right back and said, listen, I'm sorry that it upset you.
	My intention was people who are in a wheelchair temporarily because of a broken leg or something that they can get where you have to get out.
	I obviously understand that there are people who are in wheelchairs permanently who can't get out of it.
	And so I will sort of write back if somebody's sparking off me and upset but not abusive, then I'll just sort of write back to say, you know, I'm sorry that this upset you.
	This certainly wasn't my intention and so on.
	But Oh yeah, I was thinking the other day, oh man, this is going way back.
	Back in my early 20s when I was working on, I wrote a manifesto, the Rationalist Manifesto, by golly it was called.
	Oh my god, it's 20 years ago.
	No, it's more than 20 years ago.
	Oh my god, I have to turn my microphone up because my ears are old and full of hair.
	I have hobbit ears.
	It's quite nice. No hair grows over 40 where you want it to and everywhere where you don't.
	So I think waiting would get hair on my elbow and one on my eyeball.
	But... I had a male correspondence, like a MAIL correspondence with some guy in Florida, and we just, you know, sparked off each other, and it got increasingly disrespectful until I stopped writing back to the guy.
	Somebody said it starts way before 40, but that guy's from New Jersey, so I think in New Jersey it starts way before puberty, but that's a little different.
	Hey, hey, see how brave I am when I'm up here in Canada?
	Somebody's asked, do I ever regress and remain there, Steph?
	Yes, I absolutely do.
	I absolutely do. You know, we build ourselves on every layer that's been there before.
	And there's no renovation, there's no self-scrubbing and starting over.
	We never have a blank slate.
	We are always building something on top of something else.
	I mentioned this to a listener the other day who was talking about change, change in the self.
	You know, like... When we first start to really understand and become curious about self-knowledge, it's like we suddenly have inherited this hotel.
	Oh, sorry. Let's just say we've inherited this old mansion.
	You know, one of those spooky old mansions on a hill with bats and lightning bolts and creaks in the cellar and rats running up and down the belfry.
	But we've inherited this old house.
	And we say, well, this old house is crappy and creaky and scary and all sorts of nasty things.
	And so what I want to do is I want to turn it into a modern, comfortable, spacious hotel with a spa and, you know, hot and cold running foot rubs and stuff.
	And so what we do is we sort of take out our plans and we start to renovate this hotel.
	Now, we don't have the option.
	So we renovate the mansion. We don't have the option of scrubbing the mansion and starting again.
	We just don't because we are who we are.
	We have been through what we've been through.
	And so every decision we make about renovating the old mansion is based upon the existing structure of the mansion.
	So we can say, well, I want to knock this wall out.
	Well, we're only saying that because there's a wall there, right?
	So we're making that decision based on what's already there.
	You say, well, I want to turn these five back rooms into suites, presidential suites or whatever.
	Say, well, we're only making that decision because there are five bedrooms in the back of the mansion.
	So everything that we're doing in this renovation It's based upon what is already there.
	And if you renovate without understanding what's already there, the whole thing just ends up falling down.
	So you need to study who you are in order to effectively change for the better.
	And so, yeah, I regress for sure.
	I will get some bitchy email or particularly if it's a public thing.
	And I will occasionally, not too often, but I will occasionally, I will have to like sit on my hands so that I don't type a response back.
	Because it's like, oh, don't engage!
	Don't engage!
	And so I have to really sit on my hands.
	And it's not easy.
	And not easy. I'll sit there and I'll grumble to myself for 10 minutes, you know, making my toast or whatever.
	I'm trying to think of the perfect response that's going to, you know, put the person back in their place and make them go, ow, snap, baby!
	Yeah, of course, we all want to hit those flaming tennis balls back into other people's faces.
	Sure, I shouldn't say we all.
	I do. But I just sort of remember what I'm all about.
	Listen to the Miko system, who are all saying, don't do it, don't do it.
	And you see this with...
	John's on the board, right?
	It's like, oh, please don't respond to people.
	Oh, there goes another one.
	Oh, there goes another one.
	Here we go. Stampede, right?
	I just have to not do it.
	I just have to not do it.
	It's just a matter of knowing where it leads and knowing that I'm never going to be somebody who's indifferent to that.
	It's just not possible based on who I am.
	It doesn't mean I have to respond.
	It means that responding to it is to put fuel on a very nasty fire.
	But, oh yeah, you just want to bam, you know, where you come back with the perfect zinger and you imagine this full hall of people who are like, yeah, you know, you got him and all that sort of stuff, right?
	And you just don't do it.
	Just don't do it. Because even if you win, you lose, right?
	Say you humiliate the other person, right?
	Well, you're just fulfilling their Simon the Boxer thing, right?
	That's not a role that I want or you want, I think.
	Yeah, just don't do it. It's the Nike, right?
	I think what Tiger Woods must have done is just looked at himself in the mirror too often with that just do it loco on his head.
	Ah dear. Tiger, tiger, birding bright in the waitress of the night.
	Anyway. Tiger, is he in you?
	Absolutely. Probably, if you bent over to tie your shoe.
	Absolutely. Have I started working on the objectivism stuff you said you wanted to address someday?
	I've got notes. Right now I am reading, and it's taking a bit of time, I'm reading a novel of mine.
	Actually, I'll throw it into the chat room in case people are interested and want to have a sort of listen.
	I've done the first, I don't know, 20 chapters or whatever.
	But I'm working on reading a historical novel of mine that I've always really liked.
	And actually, as I reread it, which I haven't done in many years, I like it even more now.
	And that's not always easy, you know, when you read some of the stuff that you've written before.
	Sometimes it's like, ooh, really?
	But this, you know, I really, really like it.
	I think it's a very complex and challenging novel.
	And so I've been working on that and...
	We will see what happens from there, but it'll take a little bit longer.
	I'm trying to get an objectivist on the show, but they don't like you to talk too much, at least not to me.
	Steph, do you see any reason to do a podcast on European socialism?
	I absolutely do see a need to do a podcast on European socialism.
	I think it would be fantastic because that is the Elysium Fields, right?
	That is the paradise that socialism scurries off to surviving, right?
	Whenever you talk about it, it's like, well, yes, but socialism in North America is bad.
	But boy, those socialists over there in Sweden or Norway or Denmark or whatever, those guys are having a great old time and Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
	So, yeah, I think it would be great.
	I'm trying to dig up, you know, it's on the list, right?
	Dig up a guy who really knows what he's talking about because it's a lot easier to ask questions than do all the research myself.
	So, I would like to, I would live to do that for sure.
	Oh, thank you for reminding me about makeup and earrings.
	I did think about it this week, but I haven't come up with anything intelligent yet.
	So, please remind me.
	Just put this in, feeds.feedburner.com forward slash justpour.
	That's the feed. You can put it in iTunes or whatever, and please let me know what you think.
	I'm always eager to get feedback.
	This is a novel I wrote in my 20s, and I do like it.
	Oh, and just a reminder that Revolutions is now available again at stores.lulu.com forward slash free domain radio.
	It's back, baby.
	Letters. People say, my God, you know, it's 90 bucks secondhand or whatever, right?
	So we're okay.
	All right, well I think we can finish a few minutes early.
	It sounds like the family's having fun downstairs.
	And fun though it is to listen to myself talk, I get enough of that during the week.
	So, unless anybody has any yearning burnings, you can hack them in.
	Or we can have a slightly shorter show.
	Oh, the luxury of anarchism.
	No, PeeCoff doesn't do interviews anymore, sadly.
	Bye.
	I did try. I did get another spectacular get for an interview, but it's going to take a little while.
	Ooh, look at that. I'm just teasing y'all.
	Boo-ah-ha-ha. Steph, any advice for someone who is working backwards in their career?
	I've applied to over 400 jobs in the past year and frequently visit places I'm interested in working.
	Well, I got my first interview and was hired on the spot.
	Unfortunately, it's something I was doing over 10 years ago, a big strike to the ego.
	Oh, yeah, look, I'm sorry.
	I know, my God, is it ever tough out there these days.
	And, you know, living through the brutal death throes of fascistic corporate statism is not a pretty thing.
	I... You know...
	The only thing that I can suggest, and this is not going to make...
	All of the pain and humiliation go away, which I completely understand.
	The only thing that I can suggest, my friend, is to recognize two things.
	The first is that it is not your fault.
	It's not your fault. It's not your fault that ass clowns have wrecked the economy.
	The trillions and trillions of dollars have been wiped out.
	By the ruling classes for their own fun and profit.
	It's not your fault.
	It's not that you've made a massive failure for your life.
	It's not like you got addicted to, you know, crack and hookers and ended up face down in a gutter in Vegas with some sort of disco bondage headgear on your face.
	You just caught up in the downdraft Caught up in the downdraft.
	What a great mix of metaphors. You're sucked down in the undertow of a recessive economy.
	I don't believe that there's going to be a recovery in the U.S. This is not true.
	I understand. This is my opinion.
	I don't have any proof for this.
	I mean, there's some statistical evidence.
	And Richard D. posted something on the board that's very important, a very important graph about the diminishing returns on investment.
	I don't believe there's going to be a recovery in the US, unless some magical thing is invented, like the computer.
	The computer is what saved statism in the 80s through to now.
	The computers and the internet is what has saved statism, otherwise it would have collapsed years ago.
	The computer and the internet is that sort of Static machine, static air electricity machine from the 20th century motor company in Atlas Strike.
	It's what has allowed statism to survive.
	Otherwise, it would have collapsed.
	You know, 20 years after they put in the big social programs, it would have collapsed in the 80s, except for computers and all of that.
	So unless something amazing is invented in the next few years, which I don't think is going to be the case, certainly nothing that big.
	And it will take, it took a while for computers to, I mean, personal computers to even Get into the workforce in any significant numbers.
	So I think it's too late for that.
	But unless something just mind-blowing comes into existence, like free energy or teleportation or something like that, I mean, statism is dead.
	So there's not going to be a recovery.
	The debt level is too high.
	The American manufacturing center has been too gutted.
	Public sector unions are too powerful.
	Yeah, the iPad is not going to cut it.
	Not quite. There's not going to be a recovery.
	This is the new reality.
	Even if there was a recovery within a couple of years, the boomers are going to hit the retirement So this is the new normal.
	It's not your fault. It really isn't.
	It's really important that we not take personally that which is inflicted on us, particularly by evil people.
	You just can't take it personally.
	The natural reaction is to take it personally, because we are self-actualized people who want to believe that we're in control of our own lives, and in many ways we are.
	But the problem is that if you allow bad people to define Your relationship with yourself, which is really what you're talking about here, then you're giving them more power than they deserve and certainly more power than they've earned.
	And the only people that you should give control over your self-esteem is other virtuous people.
	And so this is the new normal.
	So that's the first thing that I would say, just don't give the power away to bad people.
	That's an easy thing to say, and I'm not saying...
	I struggle with it too, right?
	I'm not saying that it's easy.
	But the second thing that I would say is that, and I know this sounds a lot like there are starving kids in India, but there are people in the world who would kill to be where you are.
	I mean, there are 99% of the population in the world would kill to have a job doing what you did 10 years ago and have the kind of security and...
	Vestiges of freedom that are significant left that you have and you are an incredibly lucky human being when you look at two things.
	I look at two things. I look at human beings throughout history and I look at human beings across the world.
	And whenever I start to get down on my circumstances or problems in my life, I remember 100 years ago, Some third world country.
	You know, what are my choices?
	So I would really, really recommend that.
	You know, you can also think of your deathbed, right?
	How much would you give when you're on your deathbed to come back and get to relive the part of your life from this part onwards?
	Well, you'd give anything to be where you are right now.
	And so it's not perfect.
	It doesn't solve all your problems, but it's a perspective that I find gives me a great deal of comfort in these challenges.
	Yeah, it is tough.
	It is tough. I got a little tired of the rollercoaster.
	You know, particularly as an entrepreneur, you get a little tired of the randomness of the business world.
	And I think if you've only been an employee, you experience it to some degree.
	But when you've been sort of at the top of an organization, It's really exhausting to the randomness of what goes on in the economy based upon, oh, the government's raised this tax.
	Oh, the government's changed this rule.
	Oh, the government allows this R&D program.
	Oh, the government doesn't allow this R&D program.
	I mean, I worked at a company and I was in charge of getting the R&D tax credits here.
	And this company had gotten R&D tax credits for many years and had made the whole hiring decision based on that.
	And then the auditor was switched.
	The new auditor came in and disallowed everything.
	Well, I mean, that's crazy.
	It's like there are no rules, right?
	I mean, we did the same thing that we did the year before, the same thing we did the year before, and it all just changed because we got some new guy in who was, you know, whatever, different interpretation of the rules.
	That kind of randomness, you just get kind of sick of, right?
	Or like, some public sector union goes on strike and the whole deal collapses.
	I mean, these things are going to happen in a free market as well.
	But, I mean, I got just a little bit tired of these random electric shocks and benefits.
	And it's like a rat in a cage where it's just raining electrodes.
	There's no escape from the randomness of it.
	And I got kind of tired of that kind of stuff.
	And in business, you have to plan, at least at the level that I was at, you have to plan at least two years out.
	And two to five years out was the time frame that I was working in.
	And I got tired of...
	I mean, anybody who wants to guess what's going on in two years is mental.
	It's like asking what the weather's going to be like in two...
	Oh wait, people do that because they get paid to, global warming climatologists.
	But I just got a little bit tired of the randomness.
	And FDR was a little bit my way of going on strike, for sure.
	I mean, I think that it was better for the world and certainly better for me in many ways to do it.
	I mean, I do miss the income and I do miss the expense account and all that sort of stuff.
	But I did get a little bit tired.
	It is a crazy ship to be on during going through these rapids, so I really do sympathize.
	There's no particularly easy solution that makes it all go away.
	I would not want to be born in the future and I would not want to be born in the past.
	To be even a small part of this fulcrum that is tilting the world from historical hierarchy to future anarchy is such an unbelievably exciting honor and venture to be associated with that I would not want any Any other time to be alive and to be doing what I'm doing.
	There is such great excitement and honor in what we're doing here right now.
	The opportunity will never come again to be as powerful in changing the world as is now.
	Because in the future there will always be the internet and in the past this was not even possible.
	So there is no greater glory and no greater excitement than to be doing what we're doing right now.
	So with all of the hardships, remember that you are associated with and involved in a very, very powerful philosophical movement that already has changed the world and people in it and will continue to do so.
	Again, I'm not saying that makes getting up to do a job you did 10 years ago, a song and dance routine, but It is a very exciting thing to be part of this growth of philosophy.
	The only thing I can suggest is that in the absence of that, it might be even worse for you.
	Yeah, some people say about buying a property rather than keeping money in the bank.
	It's a tough call.
	I'm no financial advisor or financial expert.
	In general, I would say that fixed assets like cars and houses, things that are tradable, food and so on, that those things are better than currency.
	The currency is definitely going to take a hit.
	To say the least. And stocks and bonds as well, to some degree.
	But I think that, you know, get out of debt.
	Pay off as much as you can.
	Try to get as much stuff around that is tangible.
	So convert your currency into stuff.
	Because stuff doesn't devalue in the same way the currency does.
	It's impossible. So that would be my suggestion.
	I mean, I drive a car that's 12 years old and I'm not going to get a new car for the next decade.
	I'm happy to be driving a 20-year-old car.
	I'm just not going to do it because I'm not going to trade the security of having a fixed asset for the insecurity of going back into debt.
	I'm just not going to do it.
	Yeah, my wife's car is like nine years old.
	You know, three steps away from a vintage car rally or a Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.
	Oh yeah, mine's 18 years old, that's good.
	Well, mine's a Volvo, so it should last at least 20 years, and that's the goal, right?
	I bought it. I mean, I bought the car back, oh, back in the heady days when I had a significant car allowance, so it was a good car to buy back then, because a good chunk of it was paid off by the company I was working for.
	Oh, those days.
	Not those people who think I made it for the money.
	That's too funny. All right.
	Well, I guess we have hit our 6 o'clock cutoff date.
	Thank you again so much for all of your support.
	I'm going to give your absolutely general and greatly appreciative shout-out of thanks.
	There we go. There is your shout-out.
	Thanks. If you do speak Wookie, you will really understand what a beautiful poem that is.
	So thank you so much, and I hope that you have an absolutely wonderful week.
	And remember to let me know what you think of the novel if you get a chance.
	And I will, I guess, see people in September at the barbecue.
	I hope that you will be able to make it.
	Bring your appetite. We will stuff you full of food and drink and great conversation.
	So have an absolutely fantastic week.
	It is near the end of the month, so if you have a few dollars rolling around, give them to me before they're completely devalued by the Fed.
	Ha ha ha! I would really appreciate it if you would do what you can to support the show.
	It is great. It has been exciting with the U.S. downturn, you know, given the number of listeners in the U.S. Some European listeners have stepped up to help, and I really do appreciate that.
	And so if you do have some money to throw my way, you know the website, freedomaderadio.com forward slash donate is the place to go.
	And if you can subscribe, so much the better.
	You do get some bonus goodie podcasts and some disco bondage headgear, I think, this week.
	So if you could do that before the end of the month, that would be great.

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