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April 4, 2010 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:52:27
1631 Freedomain Radio Sunday Show, 4 April 2010

The power of mortality, and living your dreams now!

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Well, thank you everybody so much for joining us.
It is 4-4.
It is April the 4th, 2010, and I hope that you are doing magnificently.
And we have, I guess, a relatively limited number of people this Easter weekend.
We've had our ranks decimated by the worship of Carpenters Long Gone, I suppose.
So I wanted to say hello and thank you and welcome, everybody, to the Sunday Philosophy Freedom Aid Radio call-in show.
Thanks everybody so much again.
Wonderful support and the new subscribers.
And remember, if you don't feel like subscribing, we'd like to throw a few bucks our way.
I guess my way.
It is an exciting financial challenge to keep this kind of philosophical conversation propped up and funded.
So it does rely on you and your support.
And I really do appreciate everything that people do to help keeping this show.
To help keeping the show running.
And we are closing in on two and a half million video views.
And that, I think, is just fantastic.
Well, if it's alright, I'll just go first.
I mean, it's not so much of a question, although feel free to ask me any questions you like.
I was having trouble with doing the work that goes along with the voice acting thing.
I'm so sorry. Just before we start, I'm completely rude to interrupt you.
I completely forgot. Libertopia 2010 has been moved.
It is now October the 15th to 17th in Hollywood, California.
It formally was July 1st to 4th, and it is in San Francisco.
It's been moved to Hollywood, California to a much larger venue, October 15th to 17th.
Just go to libertopia.org to find out more.
I'm so sorry for any inconvenience.
They had some good reasons to move it, and it was not a decision that was taken lightly, so sorry for the inconvenience, but please go on.
So, yeah, so I was having trouble with the things that, you know, like the practicing and getting the contacts together and that sort of thing after an initial bit of excitement about it.
And I was trying to figure out why, you know, because, you know, just saying I should be doing it just doesn't really help, you know.
Right. You've been taking the course, right?
So what's happening with the...
Is that finished yet?
We got through the first quarter, and then the next step is we're going to be learning sort of the technical side of things to be able to edit and produce your own...
Learning the software and learning how audio stuff works as far as mixing and Compression and all that.
Right. But I was really – and even sort of talk about this, I'm feeling some anxiety about it.
But I was starting to think like, you know, I really don't – it's like I really – there's something in me that's like I really don't want to be doing this, you know?
This being what? The technical side or the voice stuff as a whole?
Like voice acting in particular.
Right. And after exploring it some, I said, well, what I really want and the dream, the original dream, is to get up on stage and get up and possibly film, you know? To do that kind of acting, not just voice acting, you know?
Right. And the feeling I was getting was that I was playing it safe doing voices, you know?
And I suppose I have just as much experience as one as in the other.
But, I mean, that's not even what comes into play if you think about the actual dream itself, if that makes any sense.
Yeah. Yeah, I think so, but go on.
So, yeah, so I was thinking about, or not even just thinking about, but just sort of exploring that the mountain I want to climb,
like the mountain that I want to, you know, climb up and be able to jump off to see if I soar or plummet, It's really getting up on stage and doing that, as opposed to sitting behind a microphone and doing voices.
Right. And of course, it doesn't have to be one or the other, right?
No, no, it really doesn't.
But I think it's more of like, at the moment, what I really want to focus on is doing the thing that's going to bring in the passionate energy.
Right. So that I can...
Really give it a serious go.
I have some skepticism about what you're saying.
Okay. And it doesn't mean anything other than, right, you know the standard mantra, right?
It just means, I'm just going to share with you my thoughts about it, right?
So you were very excited about doing the voice stuff, and now that you're moving along in the voice stuff, you've shifted focus, or you have this impulse to shift focus, right?
Yeah. Yeah. I'm a little concerned about that insofar as you were very excited about this thing and now you're shifting focus when the time is coming to really go for it, if that makes sense.
It's a possibility.
You could be entirely right, but I'm a little concerned about the shift in focus without the exploration of that which you were excited about madly like two months ago, right?
Do you want me to try taking a swing at what it might be?
Sure, go ahead. Well, you've overcome your inner critic, who is a particularly ferocious and challenging fellow.
You've overcome your inner critic to the point where you can train for something, but the actual execution of it may step onto that landmine again.
Hmm.
Okay, so, um...
This feels like the gears are slowly clicking.
Well, you knew, obviously, that when you were going to go and pursue your dream, that the inner critic was going to come up, right?
Mm-hmm. That's the reason why people stay small.
It's why they stay in cubicles, right?
It's why they stay as waiters.
It's why they stay in undemanding jobs.
It's why they stay in claustrophobic relationships.
It's why they stay fat.
It's why they stay unkempt.
They stay small. Because there's this fear that it is only the tall poppies that get cut down, right?
It is only the nails that stick out that get hammered down, right?
So we stay small, like we are rats running with other rats beneath the feet of dinosaurs, and we don't stand up to the T-Rex of the inner critic, but we run with the herd so that we don't face that kind of humiliation again.
I mean, I think that's true for a lot of people, if not most people.
And... And to stop and stand and pursue your dream is a great challenge.
It's a great challenge because all of the historical voices of mockery and negativity and amusement at our ambition, they start to rise up when we rise up, right?
Right, right.
Well, when the thought...
When the thought came to mind that...
When the thought came to mind that I was...
I was trying to think of how the...
Man, I'm just...
I'm fogging out completely here.
Right, right. Right.
Well, let me ask you this.
this, do you have any history in your life when you were growing up of being criticized for not following through?
Yeah, pretty regularly, actually.
Right. So this could be a kind of Simon the Boxer thing too, right?
Where to follow through is problematic, right?
Sorry, here we lost a little bit of audio, but I asked the listener to give me the lecture that he might have received if he had changed his mind about a course of action that his family was skeptical about when he was a child.
Give me that lecture.
You're unreliable.
We can't depend on you.
Go on. Believe me, I'm trying.
They're just ghosts, right?
We can talk about them now, right?
I have to clean up after all your mistakes.
I have to clean up after all your mistakes.
You leave so many things unfinished.
Right. Let me put fuel on the fire.
Imagine that your parents had paid for this course on the express promise that you would complete and follow through and whatever, right?
What would they be saying now that you said you wanted to switch to stage acting?
I hate to be really annoying, but actually shelling out the money never would have happened.
but...
No, that's totally valid, right?
I mean, your family in your head, right?
It's not mine to figure out.
But let's say that you were talking to your parents about, right, that they'd expressed maybe skepticism about the voice thing, and then you said, no, I want to switch to something else.
else, I mean, what would they say?
I don't really think that's for you.
I don't really see you doing that.
I think that you should do this.
This being what I'm doing now.
Right, right.
Something that has security, right?
I could even go back to specific examples, you know, specific things that were said, right?
So, you know, with what you know now, you could be making all kinds of money.
You know, with what you know now, you could be doing so good in your life.
You don't even have to go to college for this.
You could just do this right now.
And then, when I am stubborn, quote, stubborn enough, fine, do what you want.
Which would mean what in reality?
Fuck you. Fuck you and all you want to do.
That's what I mean.
Right, right.
And what was threatening about you wanting to do these things?
Like, why was that a problem?
You know, I... I'm drawing a blank, but it...
I mean, aside from the pat answer, I can't think of anything specific.
When pat, I mean like...
No, no, I understand. Like a cliched answer, right?
Yeah, like, oh, because me being big, but I don't...
You know, me not remaining small, me breaking out of the cage, but that doesn't feel like anything, you know?
So I don't know what specifically it would have been.
Right. Do you mind if I give you a short speech?
Go ahead. Friends, Romans, countrymen.
I was just thinking about this yesterday.
I hope I'm not layering on this to what you're saying, but I think it's related.
You know, parents who are abusive or dysfunctional or problematic or whatever...
When we're kids, then we're stuck in this shitbox, right?
I mean, we have to take everything personally.
Because the only thing that's more chilling than being attacked as a child is to recognize as a child that it's got nothing to do with you.
Because that's really chilling.
Because that is a feeling of complete invisibility.
Now, I'm just talking about dysfunctional parents in general.
You can see if this...
Dysfunctional people.
It's not even parents. Dysfunctional people in general.
I was just thinking last night, I was thinking like, what would it be like to go through life without feeling other people's needs?
Without feeling or really being aware of Other people's needs and preferences, to look at them just like their tools.
And I thought, you know, the closest that I could come to that would be to say, well, when I switch on TV and I watch a show, I don't sit there and say, I wonder what my TV wants to watch.
Because the TV to me is just a tool.
To satisfy my wants.
The TV doesn't have needs or wants of its own, if that makes sense.
I just switch on the TV, and I don't sit there and say, well, you know, I got to watch what I wanted last night, so, Mr.
TV, what do you want to watch tonight?
And, you know, I mean, because I would generally get that the TV doesn't have needs of its own, and it doesn't even cross my mind.
And I thought, gosh, what would it be like in life to have that, not just with TVs, but with everyone?
And I thought, wow, that would be...
I don't think about my recorder and say, well, maybe you want to do a podcast.
Maybe I'm hogging. It's a tool for me.
It's just an object. Now...
When we're around dysfunctional people, people who don't have that fundamental ability to process the needs and preferences of others and view others as equal human beings with rights and ideas and loves and hates all their own and to navigate and negotiate all that complexity of all of that.
For people like that, it's true that they may get upset with us, right?
So like if my TV keeps losing the signal, I'm going to get annoyed and upset, and I'll thump the TV. You know, like, thump, thump, fix, damn it.
Right? Or like, they used to do when back in the day, this is probably before your day, but back in the day when you had aerials, right?
You'd sit there trying to get the aerial, and then to get the picture, there'd be snow, and then you'd have to change it, adjust it, and so on.
You'd get annoyed, because the thing is not giving you what you want.
But it's not personal.
Like, if my TV keeps losing the signal, I'll get annoyed, and I might even thump it.
But it's not personal.
It's impersonal.
I'm just frustrated.
It's not that the TV is doing something to me.
It's just not doing what I want it to do.
So I thump it. And the TV, if it had a consciousness, would take it personally.
Like, Steph's angry at me because I'm doing something wrong.
But from my standpoint, it's not personal.
It's not personal because the TV doesn't fundamentally have any needs that I recognize.
And I think that perspective is very important to liberating ourselves from critical caregivers.
That it wasn't personal to us.
And it's very hard to empathize with people who did not show us empathy.
And I'm not talking sympathy. I'm not talking blanket forgiveness or anything.
But to really try to understand people who never tried to understand us.
To really empathize with people who did not empathize with us.
I think it's a really important thing to do.
I think it's a really helpful thing to do.
But it's a great challenge.
Because... It's looking at, say, your parents or whoever was the genesis of your inner critic.
It's looking at that, at that person, impersonally, without the inevitable Stockholm Syndrome attachment that occurs to traumatized children.
Right, so when I ask you why was it a problem that you wanted to pursue your dreams, It's hard for you to figure that out because you're still taking it personally, like it was about you.
Like, I'm thumping the TV because I'm really mad at the TV's choices and morals.
It's like, no, it's just not doing what I want.
Thump, thump, right? Yeah.
I'll tell you. I don't even know when this began, but at some point my father got in his head that What would be best would be if I worked for him.
And he's pushing that, pushing that, pushing that, pushing that all the time.
And I just... I hated being there.
And he would do his own, you know, because people around him weren't going to call on it and or they were dependent on him, so it didn't fucking matter.
But he would yell and he would slam the desk.
Right. And you know why he wanted to work for you, right?
The thing that comes to mind is...
And I don't know if this is enough, but he wanted me to make him money.
So he'd just sit back on his laurels and let me do all the work and all that.
It doesn't feel complete, though.
It could be. It could be.
Obviously, you know your family infinitely better than I do.
I'd like to put forward another possibility.
Or a complimentary possibility, since it's really just one thing.
As an employee...
It feels like control. Who is more likely to put up with his shit?
You or some employee who has no history with him and can get a job anywhere?
As long as I'm there, it's...
I'm an easy shit man.
Yeah. Family is the communism of relationships.
And that doesn't mean that that's bad.
Communism to me is perfectly appropriate in a family when kids are young and so on.
But family is like the arranged marriage of relationships.
It is not a free market of relationships.
And people cling to unions because they don't think that they could get what they get in the union in the free market, right?
I mean, you don't see Bill Gates saying, man, I've really got to join a union, right?
So I can get some old age pensions and job security, right?
Well, of course not, right?
So people who can compete in the free market don't need involuntary relationships.
People who can get friends In the free market of relationships where you actually have to be a nice guy and you have to be helpful and you have to be positive to have a good friendship.
Those people, they don't need automatic, historical, involuntary relationships.
They don't need them. Just as Brad Pitt doesn't need someone to arrange his marriage, right?
Because you can get lots of women, right?
He can compete successfully in the free market of dating, and so he doesn't need someone, right?
To arrange it for him.
That is gross.
I was just...
As you were talking, I just remembered my father doesn't have any friends.
Right! Think of how these people would do In a system of voluntary relationships.
I mean, let's just say for a moment, it's just a mind game, it's a mind exercise, right?
Let's say that we were all born in pods, right?
Test tubes and pods, and we popped out with no family history at the age of 18.
It's magic, let's just say, right?
And so people didn't have any history to rely on As far as having relations with people.
You understand that for a lot of people, that would be terrifying.
That they would actually have to go out and contribute positively to the world, to people, to environments, to situations, to work situations, romantic, friendship situations.
They would have to be charitable and generous and curious and empathetic and brave and strong.
They would actually have to earn their goddamn relationships, right?
Oh my god.
It just...
You know, I never realized it until just this moment.
I was always thinking that My father thought good riddance when I left, right?
When I ejected it out of the family.
I'm just realizing that that's probably not the case.
I mean, consciously maybe, but unconsciously...
Because I did the free market, at least externally.
Yeah, if my parents weren't my parents, would I want to hang out with them?
That's the free market test for relationships.
No, never. Yeah, if the answer is run screaming, call the cops, well, that's a fact, right?
I'll try to do it for years anyway.
So, uh... Yeah.
But it's possible that your father's good riddance was not faked.
Well, he didn't say that.
No, I know, but this is the impression that you got, right?
Oh, yeah, yeah. And I have no reason to distrust your instincts, right?
But it's like, if my TV is just permanently broken...
It's just permanently broken.
I know it's never going to be repairable, right?
It's a smoking slag, and it's never going to show me the shows that I want.
It's never going to receive a signal.
I can't use it for anything.
And then the TV hops up on its little legs, and it says, I'm leaving.
I'm like, fine. I mean, you're not doing what I want.
Why would I want you?
Right. But there's an accept in there, in this case.
Go on. And, you know, this is, of course, just my experience with my own father here, but he constantly harangued me, saying that he knew I could do it.
Right? Right? And, like, at least in the example of the television which is broken, you know, and just never does anything and it hops up and gets out.
That's like, at least the difference between the metaphor, and I know it's a metaphor, but at least between the metaphor and my experience is...
Maybe not.
I was thinking it was the...
Because every time he'd be like, I know you can do the work, I know you can do the work, do the work, do the work, right?
He would never, of course, never ask me why.
Because it was not about me, right?
It was about him. Does that make sense?
That was very foggy and indirect.
No, it totally makes sense to me.
I mean, my analogy, which I've mentioned before, is that I would get report cards that said, if effort matched ability, Steph would be an A+. Right?
Yeah. I'm lazy.
That's what the teachers said and felt, right?
He's very bright, but it just doesn't apply himself.
Okay, so...
Well, and why were the teachers doing that?
I mean, I even understood this at the time.
I mean, why were the teachers doing that?
I'll put the responsibility on you.
Responsibility for what?
Well, as from an anecdote in my experience, it's not the teacher that's pouring, right?
It's the child that's lazy.
The responsibility for failure is on the person who's not there voluntarily.
Right.
And so saying that you can do it and then undermining your capacity to have self-confidence emotionally is just setting you up for further failure, right?
It's like me saying to Isabella, oh yeah, you can learn how to catch the ball and then I just throw it in the other direction.
Well, the whole point is saying she can and then making it impossible for her to do so.
It's just more dismantling, right?
There are people in the world, James, who take other people apart and will only reassemble them in a temporary manner in order to take them apart again.
The disassembling of a soul is a compulsion for a lot of people.
Build them up to break them down.
Build them up to break them down.
And we say, as the victims, we say, oh, that's confusing because he was encouraging.
But, well, not if you look at the pattern, right?
If you want to break something, there's no point just breaking.
If you like to break something, there's no point just breaking it permanently, right?
I mean, you have to have it reassemble itself so you can break it again.
You know, one of my first posts on the Freedom Mean Radio board was the subject was broken soul or turned ascender.
And these, in my opinion, these people who do want the world to burn, but never burn out, right?
They never want the world to burn out because then they don't get to watch it burn.
So they will... Set fire to the world, but then they will continue to add fuel and gasoline and fat to the flames, right?
Because they want the sizzle.
The popping eyeballs and all that kind of stuff, right?
Now, the question, of course, is why would anyone put up with that when they didn't have to, right?
If you're unfortunate enough to be born into this as a kid, most times you have to.
Well, it's the people who are the least appealing on the free market who will triumph the virtue of involuntary relationships.
Because they don't want to compete in the same way that union guys say, buy American, right?
Or whatever, right? Buy from the union.
Because they can't compete.
But they know they can't compete.
So they have to create a virtue out of involuntary relationships.
That's called unionism. That's called religion.
That's called patriotism.
We didn't choose where the hell you were born.
You didn't choose what crazy-ass cult superstition was inflicted upon you based on the culture you happen to be born into, whatever religion is inflicted on you.
So they have to make a virtue out of involuntary relationships.
Otherwise people get away, which is the normal human impulse, right?
And so it's the people who say family is everything.
Blood is thicker than water. Family is everything.
Well, why on earth would you need to say that?
Why would it cross your mind to repeatedly tell everyone that you could think of, everyone you came into contact with, why would it cross a culture's mind to obsessively repeat That family is virtue, family is everything, blood is thicker than water, but they're your family, they're your mother, they're your father.
Why would it conceivably occur to a culture to continue to repeat that stuff?
I mean, you don't see...
Brad Pitt's agent taking out endless ads saying that Brad Pitt is a good actor.
Or Matt Damon, he's like the biggest movie star in terms of return on investment for his movies.
You don't see his agent taking out all of these ads continually repeating to people over and over and over again that Matt Damon is a financially productive actor to work with.
Why? Because he is.
So you don't need the propaganda for what is.
You need the propaganda for the opposite.
So if families were, as a rule and in general, though some are, but if families were, in general, wonderful and positive and good things, right?
Then you wouldn't hear a word of propaganda about how great families were, or countries, or gods.
You wouldn't need threats of ostracism.
You wouldn't need This constant repetition of how great it all was, because it actually would be great.
And I'd have to wake up and say to my wife every morning, marriage is sacred.
Marriage is forever.
Right? Because I don't need to, because she really likes being married to me.
It would be crazy. It would be an admission of guilt for me to remind my wife of the sanctity of marriage.
Why would I need to remind my wife of the sanctity of marriage, of the holiness of our vows, of the virtue of staying together forever?
Because she didn't like being married to me, right?
And now you're moving into a realm of truly voluntary relations.
Which you're very passionate about.
Your dream, right? To work in the arts.
Right. And those parents who say to their kids, don't go into the arts, right?
They always say that and then they flip on the TV, right?
No UPB, right?
Oh, my.
Oh, man.
I'd love to finish this conversation, but Matlock is on.
If only Raymond Burrow had listened to his parents.
There'd be nothing but static right now.
Oh, man.
Oh, shit.
Thanks for that.
Yeah, no, but that's exactly right.
It's true, too. And there's a poll, right?
Those of us who've been raised with the angry...
And abusive virtue of involuntary relationships.
And you understand, Isabella has an involuntary relationship to me, and I'm very aware of that, and I'm very sensitive to that.
That's why I need to add more value, even more value, than if it were a voluntary relationship.
Because if it was a voluntary relationship, the value would be assumed, right?
The value would be prior to the relationship.
She'd have to like me before she became my friend, right?
And so I'm not saying all involuntary relationships are wrong or immoral.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
I mean, if we didn't like involuntary relationships, there'd be no humanity, right?
Because we wouldn't have kids, right?
But given that it is involuntary, you need to add more value, not less, right?
If you get assigned a wife and you want her to love you, you have to treat her even better than if you had a voluntary wife, right?
And so you have in your head these polarities, right?
The virtue of involuntary relationships.
And with the virtue of involuntary relationships comes the justification for abuse, right?
It's automatic. If family relationships are always virtuous, then there can be no such thing as abuse, right?
It's impossible. Because abuse by definition is the opposite of virtuous, right?
My country, right or wrong, means that there's no such thing as right or wrong.
So you have this one template of involuntary relationships, which when that template rises in your head, you get the inner critic, you get the despair, you get the Bombay of the self opening up and our soul dropping to vanish into the jungle below, right?
On the other hand, you have your desire, your voluntary relationships, the value-add that you can bring based upon being truly and virtuously who you are.
And this is true, of course, even for people who come from pretty good families, because 13 years of public school, right?
Or 12 years these days. That's an involuntary relationship for the children.
And it is considered virtuous, right?
Or even if they had nice parents who, you know, supported them and encouraged them and so on, but exposed them to religion or patriotism or whatever, right?
Which are also earmarks of...
The involuntary relationship is everywhere, no matter what your family is.
But for those of us with bad families, it's omnipresent, right?
And to break out of that paradigm, to break out of that mind sphere into a different planet, it's like evolving from gills to lungs in a single lifetime.
And if we're raised in involuntary relationships and the virtue of involuntary relationships, in my experience, I was frightened of voluntary relationships.
It's why people take refuge in the semi-voluntary relationships, like they date people who are as traumatized as they are.
It's why drunks hang out with other drunks, and marijuana smokers hang out with other marijuana smokers, and gamblers hang out with other gamblers.
Those are semi-voluntary relationships in that they're hooking in from history, right?
And they're driven by history.
But to go to truly voluntary relationships is dizzying and frightening.
Like it's landing naked in a foreign country with no language skills or money, right?
And if you're pursuing your dream, then you have to bring value to skeptical others in a highly voluntary situation, right?
Right. Even more so in this particular case.
Yeah, even more so in this particular case, for sure.
And that is a challenging paradigm.
Well, I still have, not to get back to, not to completely jump, you know, short circuit to the content from the beginning of this conversation, but I've not been too happy with reading advertising copy.
I really want to get into doing character acting.
And that's been something that's been developing from pretty early on in the voice acting thing.
So I can still do that.
But I have to have a talk with the guy who's been running the thing to say, can I actually get some dialogue?
You could. You could do that.
But look, I mean, this is just a mere practical thing, right?
I mean, and I'll just say this from my years of experience in the acting world.
If you want to get into acting, nothing could be easier.
Nothing could be easier.
Acting is as easy as falling out of bed if you want to get in, if you really want to give it a shot.
Sure. In every reasonable-sized metropolis, there are about 12,000 amateur theater companies.
And they put on plays, dozens of plays a year.
And for most of them, it's an open audition.
So you just, you grab your monologues, you do your practice, you film yourself, you play it back, you get people to give you feedback on how believable it seems, and then you just go out and you audition.
And then you do amateur theatre.
You don't get paid, but you have a great community of nutty but fun people to work with who are usually fantastic storytellers.
Because that's their job, or at least that's their hobby.
So you just go and do it.
There's nothing complicated about breaking into acting.
And my approach, and this is just my approach, is that if you can't land a decent role in community theatre, then it may not be that it can be a career for you.
It doesn't mean for sure. Right?
But that's, you know, it's just my thought, right?
If you get sort of, if people are like, well, we could use you as man number three in the Daniel in the lion's den scene, right?
Then, you know...
You could be one of the lions. Yeah, you could be one of the lions.
You could be whatever, right?
then that's fine.
If you're doing Mother Courage and her children, you can be child number 12, right?
And that's fine.
You can go and do that.
It's a fun hobby and it's good practice and it's a good community of people to work with.
But to me, if you can't get a significant role, and I don't mean immediately, but over time, you give yourself a year or two, if you don't have the chops to get a significant role in amateur theater, then if you can't win the local karaoke contest, I wouldn't try out for American then if you can't win the local karaoke contest, I wouldn't I mean, that would be my approach to it.
I may be wrong in that.
Maybe there's exceptions to that rule, but I think it's a pretty good rule of thumb.
No, that makes a lot of sense.
It really does. You don't need to talk to anybody, right?
I mean, if the practical thing is you want to go do characters, then you can, I mean, depending on how dedicated, right?
You go to work during the day. You do your theater stuff at night.
And look, I ran some amateur theater.
I directed plays. I was in them.
And I loved it. I thought it was just great.
And it was a great deal of fun.
And it's something that you should just go and do.
You don't need to talk to anyone. You just need to, you know, crack the paper or start going through the online stuff for your city and where are your amateur players.
And that's even more anxiety-provoking.
That's what I'm saying, right? But this is what you don't want to do, is you don't want to veer off and say, well, even though I've never earned a living reading radio copy, I don't want to do radio copy.
I want to do characters, so I'm going to take some more classes.
I'm going to wait for a contact.
Whatever you're going to do, just do it.
Just do it. Pick up the phone and say, when are your next auditions?
I'd really like to get some friends to give you feedback on your audition.
Film yourself, play it back, as I said.
Whatever you're going to do, Do it.
And then you'll find out if it's right for you or not.
But don't stay in the null zone of planning and wondering and getting more training and making another call or waiting for somebody to call you.
Just go do it. Because we live sometimes, and I'm the same way, I understand.
I have to remind myself of this all the time.
But we live like we're going to live forever.
Like we have 10,000 years in which to push things off.
But we really don't.
Every day is one less day to live.
Every day is one day swept behind us Off the cliff edge into nothingness.
Every day is an inexorable step towards the last step where we fall over into a grave.
Right? So don't wait.
There is no such thing as next month.
There is no such thing as next week.
Tomorrow never comes, right?
So just whatever you're going to do.
And this is, look, this is all the stuff that I gave.
It's all the pep talks I gave myself when jumping off the cliff that was free domain radio a couple of years ago and hoping that somewhere along the way down, there was a parachute that I'd be able to grab, right?
Right. Because this whole thing was a total one-way ticket for me, right?
I mean, after you start going full-time into atheist, anarchist philosophy dude, you don't get a job in IT again.
Because everybody in IT will Google you, right?
And say, what?
You didn't. Are you crazy?
It's like, no, but I know 60-bit access.
Does that help? It was one way.
It was one way. But there was no doing it next week or next year, fundamentally.
I mean, I managed it.
I tried to make intelligent decisions.
I did some extra work to dig up some cash to start with.
But you just have to do it.
And you can do all of this without quitting your job, right?
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure.
I mean, I've done the thing.
I mean, I couldn't...
What was desperately needed with FDR was a way of moving past the endless debates we used to have around things like ethics, right?
So I needed to write UPB, or integrity, so I needed to write on truth, or the endless conversations and confusions that people had about a philosophical approach to relationships, which is why I needed to write these books...
So that we could hand them out to people who had questions and see if they were really interested or whether they were just throwing dust in our eyes, right?
That makes great sense.
you Yeah, there's no, you know...
That's the great danger, is that in the moment, we are distracted and anxious, and we postpone.
And we postpone. But you know, death is never postponed, and death is never in the future, fundamentally, because it could happen any time.
You and I could have an aneurysm tomorrow, and we don't want our last thoughts to be, damn it, I didn't get that done!
Right. And the other thing, too, that I think about...
When it comes to risks is, you know, at some point, at some point, I'm going to be sitting in a doctor's office, if I'm very lucky, right?
I'm going to be sitting in a doctor's office, and they're going to throw some x-ray up on the wall, and it's going to be like, I'm sorry, Steph, this thing's going to kill you.
Whatever it is, heart disease, cancer, whatever it's going to be.
Or just general old age slowdown, right?
At some point, they're going to, you know, flip that scrubs flickering light on and they're going to throw that x-ray up.
Hopefully it's when I'm 90. It could be in a month.
And they're going to say, I'm sorry, there's no coming back from this.
You might have a month, you might have six months, you might have a year, you might have a day, but you're not coming back.
Or I might have appendicitis, I might go under and never come back for whatever reason.
Just some weird first reaction to the...
Whatever. Could be anything. Could be anything.
Allergic to Canadian health.
Yeah. Could be. Socialism.
That's why I hated it, because it was going to get me, right?
It could be. It could be that all of these things...
Someday, they're going to happen.
And you know what's, to me, really interesting and powerful about that?
Is that...
I'm going to look at that...
X-ray or those lab results or whatever.
And I'm going to now know what is going to kill me and when to a relatively certain degree.
And that's going to be a terrifying moment, I'm sure.
Or maybe if I'm 95 and I'm, you know, creaky and done with it all, then it'll be like, woo, you know, I go find Jesus, right?
But I think that's going to be a scary moment because I think that this fear of death is a healthy part of life.
And I think what I'm going to do is, and I thought about this before FDR, right?
I was going to say, well, what if I hadn't done it?
If I'd kept FDR like a side hobby or let it sort of dwindle off or whatever, right?
Because I got busy with other things.
When I saw that shadow on the x-ray or those horrible numbers on the oncology report or whatever, right?
Yeah, I gotta tell you, I think one of my, maybe my tenth thought, like after, you know, my wife, my family, all these other things, my tenth thought would be, you know, when I think back to when I was 40 or 41 or however old I was, when I think back, let's say I'm 90, I think back 50 years to when I was 40 and I didn't do that philosophy show that I really wanted to do because I was frightened of something.
I tell you, When I'm looking at that shadow that's going to kill me on that medical report, I guarantee you, James, I would never in a million years be able to remember exactly what I was so scared of when I was 40 and let my dreams slip through my fingers.
What was I so scared of?
It will make no sense to me, and that will be a terrible moment.
Because I have...
On an x-ray in front of me, the light of the thing that's going to kill me.
And it's all going to be over, and nothing's going to happen after that.
And I will remember the 22nd century about as well as I remember the 18th, which is to say not at all because I wasn't there.
And I literally will think back about why I didn't pursue my dreams, why I didn't risk everything for what I truly believed in and truly wanted.
Why didn't I ask out that girl that I was really attracted to?
Why didn't I take that risk for the reward that I really wanted?
Why didn't I intervene when I saw a child being hurt?
Why didn't I do the things that would give my life real meaning and power and depth and confidence and pride?
Why didn't I stand up to evil?
Why didn't I triumph virtue?
Why didn't I pursue my dreams?
Well, because I was scared and it was tough to make that phone call and I was afraid of rejection and this and that, right?
But none of those fears are going to be more than a fart in the wind when I'm looking at the x-ray of the thing that's going to kill me.
Because that is a real fear.
And I'll think back and say, man...
I gave up what I truly loved, what I truly wanted.
I did not reach out to grab the prize of life that I could have had.
Because I was afraid.
And now for the life of me, when I'm looking at what is going to end me, I cannot for the life of me remember what I was so scared of.
All that I will remember, James, is the loss of opportunity and pride and happiness.
Thanks.
Thank you.
Oh man, I just, you know, regret, the worst regrets are the ones too late, right?
And it is the nature of regret that it hides until you can't change it and then it rears its ugly head and consumes you whole.
You know, regret is like the snakes in those African rivers that just lie, those huge snakes.
I think they're boa constrictors.
They lie in the water and the antelopes come to drink.
The antelopes can't see a damn thing until the snake knows that it can swallow the antelope whole and then comes out and eats the whole ant.
That's regret. You don't see a damn thing.
Just, eh, I'm just drinking, right?
And then by the time regret strikes, it's too late.
And this doesn't mean that we act without, you know, I mean, I didn't, Hey, someone downloaded my first podcast.
I'm quitting! Right?
I mean, it is something, because then I would have regret, like, I'm starving to death.
That's not good, right? I cannot eat another thumb.
I'm full. Right?
So, I'm not saying, you know, quit.
It's not about taking crazy risks because life is short enough that we need to not procrastinate, but it's long enough that we need to act in a measured way.
It's an Aristotelian mean thing, right?
You want to take some risks because otherwise you live your life under fear completely, but you also don't want to take crazy risks because then the regret is just a different kind of thing, right?
So it is a balance, but I'm just really focusing on the do it aspect.
And also, I mean, you're not 20, right?
So, I mean, it's sort of now and never, right?
Because the never has already happened.
You've already lived the never, right?
For the past 28, 29 years, right?
So the never has already occurred.
You know all about the never.
Get what you want. The never. Be satisfied.
The never. Live your dreams. You already know that.
So it is literally now or the never wins and replicates forever.
And not to compare because it's – but compared to quitting everything to do FDR for you, I mean, this is – I go to an audition and I have my job the next day.
you know?
I mean, not that there's some sort of personal risk, but at the same time.
Well, and that's analogous to I'm putting out a podcast that I'm uneasy about because it's passionate or I'm tearful or...
It's challenging or it's going to piss people off or whatever, right?
Sure, sure. But there will come that moment.
I mean, very few people say, I'm quitting my J-job because I got an offer to star in a Steven Spielberg movie, right?
Most people are like, oh man, I got a gig.
It's going to pay me a little bit, but it's going to need me to be full-time and I can't use any more vacation days.
It's those kind of decisions that people always end up having to make.
The decision that I made around FDR, you will have to make at some point with any luck, right?
The only thing worse than having to make that decision is not getting to make that decision, right?
Yeah, for sure.
Like, I've always been one, like, I'd much rather try and fail than have failure taken away from me and success taken away from me and having inertia and procrastination and one more episode of Friends take away the decision for me, right?
I'd rather wear my own scars.
You know, I don't want to...
I've not wanted to live a life where I can't own the success and failures, the things that I've done right and the things that I've done wrong.
Because there is this fantasy.
We have this fantasy, like there's this alternative where I play it safe, and then I end up with fewer regrets.
That is not true. That is not true.
There is no greater regret, and I've seen this in people, there is no greater regret than having played it safe.
That is not a way to avoid anxiety and fear.
I mean, so, when FDR is stressful or difficult, I think to myself, well, if I hadn't done it, I'd still be an executive in the software field, or maybe the company would have gone under out of the recession, because most of the companies in Canada sell into the US, right? Maybe I would be out of a job.
It's like, ooh, donations are low at the moment.
It's like, well, but there's some coming in, and if I had been a software executive and had lost my job, then it would be 100% or zero, as opposed to the FDR thing when it sort of floats around kind of a bit, right?
So, I just remember that there is no magical alternative.
And also, if I knew that I had this potential to speak this way about life and truth, and I had continued to pump out software that was obsolete in two years and vanished into the sinkhole of history, would I be content with that, or would I be continually feeling like I had missed my calling?
The company I'm at is going through divestiture, so...
All the code I've done over the past year and a bit, it's gonna evaporate pretty soon.
Yeah. And there's nothing wrong with that.
I mean, it's not like...
I'm not going to eat because I'm just going to shit tomorrow morning.
We have to do that stuff, right?
That's part of it. I'm not going to shower because I'm just going to get dirty again tomorrow, right?
I mean, so we do those things that vanish.
But I think we do want to create those things in life that will give us pride.
And I guarantee you, you will go out and you will succeed sometimes and you will fail.
And that is the nature of life.
But there's no greater failure than not having tried.
That is a regret that can't be undone.
Things that you fail at, they hurt at the time.
But, I mean, they're just like a skinned knee, right?
Ow! But if you don't pursue your dreams, then the ashes just pile up in your blood and in your heart, and you can't get rid of them.
And I think that is a much worse thing in the long run.
Yeah.
I've definitely experienced the other side of the equation, not the risk and reward. - I heard about And this is why...
I'm sorry, please go on.
After my long speech, I hate to interrupt.
I apologize. No, I just...
I mean, I'm guessing that – well, not guessing.
I know that to do this, I'm just going to have to sort of, I don't know, bite down on the leather strap of anxiety, right?
Just to – until, like – until I can – At least get used to it enough where it's not like in the moment, right now.
But that's how you know you care about it.
If you weren't afraid, then you wouldn't care.
I mean, if someone paid you, to take a ridiculous example, if someone paid you a million dollars to pretend to ask out some senile old woman of 90, you wouldn't really care whether she said yes or no.
In fact, you'd probably be happy if she said no, right?
Yeah, probably. But you wouldn't care, right?
But if there's the woman of your dreams that you're going up to ask her out and you really think that you would be happier with her, then you would be terrified that she would say no because you had more to lose.
I mean, fear is how you know you care.
That's the North Star which says, hey, that shit that terrifies me, that's what I really care about.
So, that's what I've got to go for, right?
Right, right. I'm with you.
Like I said, I just got to bite down on that leather strap.
Just do it. Yeah.
Do it and deal with the consequences.
Right. Like back in the Civil War when they had to chop off a limb.
Well, I'm actually saying we grow a limb.
I know you're saying that, but that's what it feels like.
Right. Oh, yeah.
I mean, I was very frightened of failure.
I mean, and it still occurs, right?
I mean, this recession has been tough on everyone, right?
But it is scary to fail.
And again, I mean, I'm on a one-way street here.
You fail as an actor, you go back to IT. It's not so much for me anymore.
I'd have a lot of stuff to explain if I ever went for a job interview.
So... It is a scary thing, but that's only because I really, really wanted it to succeed.
You know, and not to belabor the point, but I just can't think of anything else I have.
I mean, aside from, you know, early childhood experience, I can't think of anything else that scares me more.
You know, it's funny, in a way.
And, you know, I tell you the other thing, too.
I'll just make this one last point, and we should move on in case anybody else has any other questions.
But this is a really, really important point, which has to do with the decisions that you've made in your relationships over the past few years, James, which is this.
That if you are trying to pursue your dreams, there are no more dangerous people to have around you than those who fail to pursue theirs.
Okay.
I totally understand.
I don't think we need to say anymore.
It's clear what they would undermine and all this and that.
So when I wanted to create the greatest and most powerful and most visceral philosophical conversation the world had ever seen, I couldn't be around people.
I could not be around people who thought that was ridiculous.
And that I was crazy, and it was, you know...
I couldn't be around people who did that if I wanted to succeed at that.
I couldn't. Or even if they didn't say that, but they had...
If they didn't care! Or if they didn't say they didn't care, or...
Even if they hadn't done it themselves, right?
I'm not sure that everyone has to achieve at the same level, right?
I mean, but they have to have at least pursued and achieved what they wanted in their life.
That's what I mean. That's what I mean.
Yeah, even if it was like, even if what they wanted to do was win a local karaoke contest, or at least enter it, right?
Whatever, right? Oh, okay, okay.
Like, it doesn't have to be the same.
You don't have to have these, you know, big goals that I have, but that's...
But they have to at least...
Or they have to at least respect that I want to do it.
So I had friends around, and it's crazy.
Most of my friends have never read anything.
Most of my friends in the past, they'd never read anything that I'd written.
They never listened to podcasts.
They never asked me about the show.
Or they'd say, you know, how's that web thing going?
How's that little web show going?
Or whatever, right? And I could not keep the people around me Who were indifferent, which is to say negative, towards what it is that I was doing.
I couldn't do it. I mean, I could have, but it would have just been a failure.
It's like trying to win the Formula 500 with somebody blowing cigarette smoke into your eyes from the passenger seat.
You can't do it.
It's dangerous, in fact.
Right. Thanks so much, Steph.
So you understand that if you hadn't made the decisions that you made, you wouldn't have this possibility.
Because you'd have to hide it as a shameful secret, as something that you couldn't tell people about, and that would come out in your procrastination, and it would come out in your nervousness and anxiety about living a contradiction.
And then success would be a problem because you'd have to confess, and then people would say, well, why did you keep it from me?
It would just be all too complicated and messy for words.
And, you know, as we've talked about in the MECO system conversations, the people who are around us They set up radio stations in our head, whether we like it or not.
I don't just mean endless podcasts for me, but people who are around us, who are in our lives, who we talk about our hopes and dreams and fears with, we are automatically giving them full broadcast rights in our unconscious.
They set up radio stations in our head that broadcast 24-7.
And I am very careful and very particular.
About who I allow into my ecosystem.
Because everybody who's around me, who I'm intimate with, is automatically going to be in my ecosystem.
They get a seat at the table, whether I think they should or they think they shouldn't, whether I like it or they don't.
Right? They create impressions.
Right? We shake someone's hand in friendship.
Their soul travels up like a ghost through our arm into our own heart and mind and stays there and talks with us forevermore.
We possess each other perpetually and continually with every intimate interaction.
We get another ghost in the haunted house of the self.
Not a bad haunted house, but...
Right? And so, it's very, very important if you want to achieve something that you simply can't have people around you who are going to put it down.
Put it down because that's going to kill it in your head before it ever gets a chance to grow.
There's nothing we can't do with the rice of borders.
There's nothing we can do with the wrong support.
Right, right. I'm down.
I'm down. Okay.
Well, is there anything else you wanted to add or should we see if there's anybody else who has it?
Yeah. Taking up 75% of the Sunday show.
It's only fair. I mean, I appreciate all the work that you've done to keep the show running.
So this is more than helpful.
And I mean, the feedback from the chat room has been that it's been very useful.
So thank you. Yeah.
I don't really have anything to add.
I kind of think the dream I had the other night, last night, makes more sense in a certain way, but I still need to think about that a bit too.
Okay, well if we don't figure it out, just shoot it to me in an email and we can maybe knock heads about it.
No, I posted it on Diamond Plus.
Okay, fantastic. I'll think about it some more and see if I can figure it out.
Fantastic, well thank you so much.
Thank you. For another question, you can type it into the chat room or unmute and spreckens the app.
Hey, Steph. Hello.
Uh, yeah, I got a question.
It's kind of similar to what James was talking about.
I do this kind of, you know, it's like this Tyler Durden thing.
You know, I've got this part of me that's, you know, all gung-ho, anarchist, tell everyone about it, get all into it.
This other part of me that's really afraid and timid and, you know, prevents me from doing things, almost.
That makes sense. Go on.
Uh, well... A couple weeks ago, I went to New York over Spring Break to visit Carl and a bunch of other FDR people.
And that was kind of my Tyler Durden person coming out.
Just this kind of spontaneous trip.
But then I get back to school, and this part of me just procrastinated a lot.
I don't get my work done.
I've got a bunch of stuff coming up at the end of the semester in four weeks.
And I just can't seem to get it done.
I just kind of beat myself up internally almost about it.
I just can't motivate myself.
I don't know. And how is school serving your dreams?
Well, I'm studying computer science.
I'm really passionate about computers.
I think I'm doing what I want to be doing.
Not all the classes are exactly what I want.
They're just some gen eds I got to get out of the way.
But I acknowledge the fact that they're just a route on the way to what I want to do.
And what is it that you want to do?
I want to get into coding, work with computers, you know, and I think the degree will allow me to do that.
Maybe get into psychology eventually.
I'm not sure though, but I don't know if a bachelor's degree in psychology would be all that helpful, you know, because I could get this and then go get my master's.
Yeah, I think it's fair to say a bachelor's in psych doesn't do you much good unless you continue.
And then I'd be limited to where I am and I don't really want to practice psychology in Missouri.
I'm from Chicago, you know, so.
And where are you at in the arc of your degree?
I'm a freshman. Actually, I graduated high school a semester early to come here, so schools also represented kind of freedom for me.
Right, right. I actually just turned 18 a couple weeks ago.
Yeah, it's a four-year degree. Hey, happy birthday.
Thanks. A four-year degree.
And it's the work that you're doing in school.
Can you see in how it might fit with your long-term goals to get into coding?
Yeah, I'm taking a couple of computer science classes, obviously.
Those are involved with it.
But sorry, which of the topics that you're having procrastination problems with?
It's kind of the whole, almost everything.
I've got a couple of programs I've got to write for this one class and I've got to re-edit them and stuff.
I just can't get myself to do it.
And I got a speech to write for my speech class.
And, you know, I know... Because I'm pretty good at procrastinating.
I can get it done, you know, in the three, four days ahead of time.
I don't do my best job, but I can do it.
And I know I'm just... Right now, I'm just giving myself more work.
But why is it that you don't want to do these things, do you think?
I... I'm not sure if it's what I really want to do at the moment.
I had this thing, I mean, I always try to ask myself, you know, I've seen your procrastination video, you know, what do I want to do right now?
What do I want to do right now? And I don't always ask myself that, you know, when that Tyler Durden person comes out, you know, what do I want to do right now?
Do I want to be home at my parents' house for spring break?
Or do I want to, you know, meet 10 FDR people in New York?
It's hard for me to get that.
I just don't do it. I'll take a walk at night at like 10 o'clock and then I'll really get motivated to go and work and I'll get a couple programs knocked out.
And then I go to bed and I wake up in the morning and it's just gone.
Do you mean the motivation? Yeah.
I have it, but I can't keep it.
So what that means is that you're not taking pleasure in the coding itself.
But that's sort of important, right?
Yeah. Why is that important?
You sounded very confident when you agreed with me, so I'm just curious what your thoughts are on that.
Yeah, I'm not sure what I do now.
I thought so. I wasn't really...
I do that a lot.
Well, let's say that, you know, I say I want to be a butcher, you know, because I just love hacking up dead animals, right?
I want to be a butcher. That's a blast.
Right, so I'm going to go to butcher school, but I don't like cutting up dead animals in butcher school.
What would be the problem with that whole formulation?
You don't actually want to be a butcher.
Well, if I don't like cutting up animals in school, what makes me think I'm going to like cutting up animals in a butcher shop?
It's not just the coding, though.
I really do like computers, and I do enjoy coding.
The programs they're writing, they're not that interesting.
They're not that exciting. It's the simple stuff.
You mean the stuff you already know how to do?
Yeah, yeah. I took some classes in my high school, you know, and I just kind of have to knock this out of the way.
And I kind of self-taught myself a lot of things.
You know, and I acknowledge that fact.
I mean, I know next year I'm looking at my schedule.
I'm like, it's going to be more exciting.
It'll be more... It's more what I want to do.
And I'm still enjoying this infinitely more than what it was in high school.
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. You know, and I'm not sure...
No, but it would be more fun if you could figure this part out, right?
Yeah. Oh, yeah. Right.
You know, and I know this is...
I look at the coding thing.
It's a career that will get me other places.
My goal in life isn't to be a computer programmer.
It's not to be a software engineer to write code.
What? But this is what you're in school for.
No, it's not my end goal.
That's what I want to do for a career.
I enjoy it and I'll be able to support myself.
To do what? To live my life, to figure out more about myself.
No, but to do what, right?
So you're saying, what is the end?
Because procrastination is always about how you can't figure out how this serves your end.
And there may be good things that you can't figure out, which are good reasons why you can't figure it out, or maybe just you haven't made the connection.
Yeah. Yeah.
I mean, so, I hate doing all the technical bullshit on FDR. I mean, it's just, it's boring.
It's brain dead and XML files and this and that, right?
And I, you know, put off upgrading the website because blah, blah, blah, right?
But, you know, I have to sort of make that connection.
I have to sit there and, like, I have, when I have, like, six podcasts to compile and to edit and to normalize and to MP3 and to upload and to XML and to tag and to put in the database, right?
It's like two or three hours to do it, and it's really brain-dead work.
And it's just, it's not quite brain-dead enough that I can watch a show or do something else at the same, because I have to sort of be precise.
But of course, for me, it's like, well, I like to eat.
And as a result, it's usually quite important that I put out podcasts and podcasts, I think, do some real good.
So I try and, you know, that's how I overcome the procrastination is to remember that the connection between the means and the end, right?
Because if the connection is clear, right?
If I don't like taking the bus, I don't like taking the bus.
But if I have to take the bus to go and pick up a winning lottery ticket, I'll find a way to get on the bus, right?
Because the means and the end become that much clearer.
Well, it's like you in the butcher shop.
You don't like cleaning up after the animals, maybe, after you cut them up, but you enjoy cutting them up.
I don't particularly enjoy writing a program that checks if the date of the month is correct.
But what's the end?
I'm still not sure with your life what the end is.
Yeah, that's the thing.
It's like I've been in FDR for like a year and a half now.
You know, and I just, I don't...
Yeah, I've had trouble connecting that to what I do at school, almost.
I say things like, oh, I want to be able to put myself in a position where I can answer that question, but that's just a cop-out.
Yeah, I'm not sure what that means.
So what's the end? What's the end that you have in your head at the moment?
Like, what's your purpose of your life?
It doesn't have to be a career or whatever, but what's the main plot of your life going to be?
What's it all about?
Like, for me, it's around telling the truth.
I mean, that's the best that I can come out of.
I tell the truth. I try to tell the truth as honestly and as consistently as possible and as passionately and as hopefully entertainingly as possible.
And I've been doing that long before FDR, and that's why I could hit the FDR running and all that, right?
So I try to tell the truth to myself and to others, and I'm the truth teller.
That's my sort of Or head tattoo and Lord knows there's enough space.
But what's the thing for you?
What's life going to be about for you?
I think I want to surround myself with people who have similar values to me and I want to get the most out of life.
I see this world around me that can just be manipulated and changed and I can get a lot out of it.
There's so much around me and I just want to experience as much as I can of it.
Yeah. That's passive, right?
I mean, that's not an active thing.
And you understand, I'm not criticizing, and you don't have to come up with any answer now, but I'm just pointing out, I think without the end, the means are hard to do.
Yeah. Because that's more of a description than a goal.
Yeah. I want to be happy then, I guess.
Well, yeah, I think that's...
Yeah, I want to be. Everyone, yeah.
Yeah, I think that's, again, that's a wonderfully generic thing, and I agree with you.
But that's... I wouldn't be here if I didn't want to be.
But yeah, there are things that are necessary for you to be happy, or courage and integrity and virtue.
I think those things are all necessary to be happy.
But to be fulfilled...
and have a life that is satisfying to you as an individual, not just as a sort of philosophical template.
That's a different challenge, right?
So you can have courage and integrity as an accountant, but you couldn't pay me enough money to do the job, right?
So there's individual aspects that are – Virtue is a necessary but not sufficient condition for happiness, right?
So if you don't have virtue, you can't be happy, but just having virtue in the absence of knowing what your life is all about, I think, will not give you much continual happiness, if that makes sense.
Yeah. I feel like I'm fogging right now, because I've thought a lot about this, but it's not coming out.
Right. You know, because it's not like I haven't...
I'm sorry, go ahead. No, it's not like I haven't processed, but you know what I mean?
I feel like I've done this before, but I just can't.
Well, I'll give you a couple of tips that were helpful for me, right?
And of course, nobody can tell you what your life should be about, but I can give you a couple of approaches that I took that were helpful for me to clarify this, and maybe they'll be of use to you.
Now, what you were talking about in terms of your life goals was all about things for you, right?
Like, I want to surround myself.
I want to travel. I want to do this, right?
And now mine was about telling the truth, which is really about me acting towards others, inflicting myself upon others, so to speak.
Now, it seems to be fairly true, and scientifically this seems to be pretty valid, that we really can't be happy unless we're doing good in the world, right?
Unless we're helping others.
And so the first thing that I would ask is...
What kind of impact do I want to have in the world?
And you can have that impact as a psychologist, as a software engineer, as a waiter, as anything, right?
But the question is, what sort of impact do you want to have on the world?
What sort of influence do you want to have on the world?
In other words, at the end of your life, when you look back, What will be satisfying to you in terms not of what you have consumed, because what you have consumed goes with you to the grave, right?
So if you go backpacking throughout Thailand for 10 years, right, you will take that memory with you to the grave and it will leave nothing behind for others.
Yeah. Right?
Whereas if you have kids, if you generate things that are positive and helpful and challenging and good in the world...
Then you can look back and you can say, I radiated this stuff out from myself that made the world a better place.
Yeah. I got a couple friends to graduate high school early with me too.
They're going to community college now and they're really enjoying it.
They're getting a bunch of college credit.
It's pretty cheap. That made me feel pretty good.
Knowing I got a couple other kids who would have just sat in school for hours a day not learning anything.
That's good. So you get education and help sort of pursue their goals, right?
And that's a good thing.
That's satisfying. And you can do that.
So let's say, it's just complete spitballing here, right?
Nobody's trying to design your life.
It's just possibilities, right?
Oh yeah, I know. So you could say, well, what I really want to do is to create a fantastic creative and positive work environment.
I mean, again, I'm giving you my goals, right?
So when I became a soft dude and I was running a company, I had like, I guess, 25, 30 employees at one point.
And I really wanted them to look forward to coming to work every day.
I wanted them to not be afraid of authority, to not be nervous when I would call them into my office.
I wanted to remove...
When I built the company, I got to choose the people.
When I was hired into a company, I got rid of abusive people who were in the workforce because I really wanted people to...
To have a good time and to enjoy themselves and to feel confident in their own abilities.
And what happened was, I succeeded quite well in that everyone demanded a 30 or 40% raise because they were below market levels.
And I fought hard to get most of their raises for them.
And I was very pleased with that.
So, you know, they weren't feeling insecure and a lot of them came from sort of other cultures or cultures where authority was very top-down and so they were kind of insecure and nervous.
And I tried to, you know, not directly or explicitly, but I tried to create an environment where they could feel valued and valuable and positive.
And so they responded by gaining confidence and going for raises and Then some of them left to get better job opportunities, which I was also, I mean, I was sad to see them go, but I was happy that they had broken out of just being junior programmers and now had become sort of teen leads.
So I tried to sort of, even as a software guy, I was like, I can now, even if that's all I did, I can say, well, maybe 60 people worked under me, or 70 people, I don't know, a bunch of people worked under me, maybe 100 when you talk about the hires and fires.
So 100 people worked under me, and they experienced a boss who was funny and positive and not scary and all that kind of stuff, and yet decisive and would make those tough decisions that would be necessary.
So at least those people, the 100 people or whatever, who came through my work environment and left with a different sense of what a boss could be.
And that's, you know, maybe that has some influence over when they become bosses and it spreads that way.
That's a possibility, I think, that is not a bad way to spend your life at all.
Yeah. No, I'm just saying.
And then to get to that place where you can create a positive environment for others and have the satisfaction of doing that, I've got to write this program.
That's just, you know, I've got to get on the bus to go get the lottery ticket, right?
Yeah. There are not a lot of people who'll say, that bus ride was really horrible, right?
To go pick up that million dollar lottery ticket, that bus ride sucked, right?
They're not going to say that. I mean, if somebody did say that, they'd be like, too negative to breathe, right?
I hate oxygen. And so, if you have the goal to create positive and beneficial experiences for other people in this world, Then, if you keep that goal in mind, but when the goal fogs out, it's really hard to do any of the stuff that you have to do in the moment, if that makes sense. Yeah, it's hard to delay gratification.
Yeah, yeah, if there's no, I mean, yeah, you can't defer if there's no goal, right?
Mm-hmm. Yeah, that makes sense.
Yeah, and just looking at it differently from my point, I mean, not as much, you know, what can I do for myself by helping other people?
Do you have people in your life who, sorry to interrupt, do you have people in your life who have that as a template, helping other people?
Yeah, I think so. I think most of, you know, I've got one friend, she wants to be a teacher.
teacher.
I don't know how effective it'll be, but that's why she wants to do it.
You know, to help other people.
Right.
And I've been talking to her.
She's at, yeah, help kids.
We've been talking to me.
She's been talking about, you know, working in, you know, other countries that are less strict so she can really do what she wants with the kids.
Right.
Right.
That was interesting.
Because I was even, you know, I've always considered being a teacher, but I don't think I'd have, you know, the creative, you know, leeway to do what I wanted and really help the kids.
You know, look at all the teachers I've had, and they don't decide the curriculum.
It's really strict. You know, they can't do what they want.
They can't really help the kids.
They can't utilize the skills they want to use.
Ah, but being a boss is being a teacher.
Yeah. Right? Mm-hmm.
It is, yeah. Because you're leading by example.
Yeah, for sure. And you're modeling and demonstrating different and better ways to deal with things.
Yeah, I mean, so when those employees, you know, those junior programmers become leads, they become, you know, in management, they'll see how your way worked and how it inspired them, and they'll do that in turn.
Right, and I actually, because I was a reference for most of the people who ended up moving on to other things, I got to talk to the people who were going to hire them, and I did not come across one person who gave me a bad vibe, and what that means is that Although the boss I replaced at one company was, I think, not a particularly positive person, it meant that nobody was moving on to a work environment that, at least as far as I could tell, and my instincts are pretty good with this stuff, nobody was moving on to a work environment that was abusive.
And what that means is that they weren't going to be abused at work, which means they weren't going to come back and take it out on their families, right?
right, or being mean to their kids because they were frustrated about their work environment.
And so, in a sense, I'd move people in a different direction in terms of their relationship to authority from the person I replaced to the people who they moved on to.
And that's just having a huge positive effect.
And that's being a teacher in a very, very powerful way, I think.
Yeah.
And even in the terms of the free market, too, I mean, these qualified people won't work at abusive environments now.
So, all of a sudden, your way of running things is elevated, in a way.
Right.
And I would hope, and again, the boss isn't a dad, right?
But But I would hope that because I continually downplayed my own authority, such as it was, because if the authority is there, you don't need to reinforce it.
You only need to reinforce your authority if you don't feel you actually have it.
Angelina Jolie doesn't have to walk up to people and say, I'm pretty.
I'm totally pretty.
I'm really pretty.
I'm actually kind of thin, and I'm a pretty good actress.
She doesn't have to say that because it's obvious she's pretty, right?
If you like the lips the size of a Michelin man's ass, right?
But so – I hope that they would then translate that to their own future careers as bosses, since some of these people were very talented that way, that they would have the same thing with their own kids.
And it's just a way of spreading the meme, right?
And hopefully that will be something that would be of interest to you.
And I think it's an immensely satisfying thing to do.
Yeah.
Yeah, I see what you're saying.
I'm trying to think.
It's like I have something I want to say, but I can't.
You know, I feel satisfied.
Oh, sorry. Go on. What?
Is it in Mandarin? Is that why?
Because it's tough. Yeah, yeah.
My native tongue.
Right. No, yeah.
I feel, like, satisfied, but I also feel...
And I feel really confident right now, and I don't know why.
Sorry, did you say confident or competent?
Yeah, confident.
Confident, okay. Yeah. Yeah, like I'm talking to you about a confidence, and I don't know why.
I don't know. It feels strange, because all the other Sunday shows have been scared to say anything.
Right. And now all of a sudden, I feel, even like when I got on, I haven't been in one in a couple weeks, and I said, hey, I want to say something today.
Sorry. That's it.
We're cutting you off. Yeah, I think it's a good thing.
For me personally, anarchism isn't as much of a dirty word anymore.
I'm not afraid to say it in front of my friends, people who aren't.
I think that's been...
I don't know. I think I'm having trouble shaping...
I'm just rambling now.
I don't know if, but all the experiences I've had into some kind of, you know, coherent goal or direction.
Right.
Right.
Look, it is a great challenge.
And look, I hate to be, you know, an old guy on the log, but you're a young guy to have it all sorted out.
I mean, sure, you're about 12 years ahead of where I was at the age of 18, so good for you, right?
But you don't have to have it sorted out right now.
I mean, you just turned 18, right?
Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, so I have no cultural references.
Please don't make me come up with a metaphor.
I will not be able to do it.
I'll say something about Green Day and you're like, I think my dad listens to Green Day or something.
Anyway. And they say, Lady Gaga, that's too mainstream.
Hey, your generation's music is a lot better than mine.
I'll give you that. Oh, don't get me started, man.
We'll be on here until the evening.
I was just talking about this with Christina yesterday.
It's like, when was the last time I turned on the radio and heard a song that was even remotely different or innovative?
It's all just freaky, breathy, sexy stuff.
And it's like... Anyway.
Yeah, there's no talent.
Yeah. Yeah, so you're a young guy.
If you had all of this sorted out, I can guarantee you it would change.
Just because, you know, you're 18.
And 18 is a great age.
And I think, you know, embrace the 18.
It is a beautiful time.
But with 18 comes some fog ahead.
I mean, if you didn't have fog ahead, I think you would be making decisions prematurely, right?
So there's a lot of exploratory stuff.
But my suggestion would be to try and figure out What kind of effect you want to have in the world.
And that can be...
You can then populate that with any number of things, right?
So if you want to sort of bring a virtue to the world or whatever and just make something up, right?
Then you can do that. You can do that as a teacher.
You can do that as a therapist.
You can do that in... You can do that at just about anything, right?
But have a goal of what effect you want to have on the world.
And, you know, then you can see whether the path you're on is going to allow you to do that.
And obviously, it is.
I mean, if you're interested in FDR, it means you have some emotional and social skills.
And if you combine that with technical skills, right, having EQ, IQ, and practical skills is a foundation for being a good manager or a good business owner or entrepreneur.
So you can do all of that sort of stuff.
So you're a rare breed, and I think you should be enormously confident about the benefits you can bring to the world as an IT guy with social skills who can talk about more than the plot twists of Babylon 5, right?
So that's good stuff.
Again, that's a recipe. That was very flattering.
Thank you. But I think that's really important.
So you can do an enormous amount of good with your skill set and your intelligence.
I mean, nobody who listens to this show is even remotely average in intelligence.
It's like the top 5% of brainiacs listen to this show because it's a really intellectually challenging show, right?
So you're obviously curious about lots of things.
You have technical skills.
You're developing or have emotional skills and interpersonal skills.
So really, the world is your oyster as far as what it is that you can do.
And I would be perfectly confident if I were in your shoes that I could do anything that I wanted.
And because of that, it means that there has to be a shape to your life that's more than just the content.
I'll be a software guy.
Because software guy, you could be evil Russian software guy, or you could be virtuous, I don't know, Belarus software guy or whatever.
But I think it's around the effect that you want to have.
What kind of wake do you want to leave behind in the world as you power through?
And I think that's something to mull over.
And I guess nobody can really answer that except for you.
Yeah, it's just weird because no one asked me that before.
Growing up Catholic, no one talks about that.
About what? What effect do you want to have on the world?
It's just strange that this guy from Canada would be the first person to ask me that.
I appreciate that, but isn't that a really important question?
Yeah, it is. Catholics are all about virtue in the world, at least supposedly, right?
You know, I think it's a really...
I mean, I wish somebody had asked me.
I had to sort of flounder around and figure it out on my own, which is a real pain in the ass.
I wish somebody had asked me when I was 18, you know, what kind of echoes do you want to leave after you've yelled into the canyon called life and vanished into the sky?
What kind of echoes do you want to leave behind?
What kind of effect do you want to have in the world?
That would have helped. And then when you bring this stuff up, how uncomfortable people get, especially older people, because I never asked that when they were younger.
They were never asked that.
They were never asked that. Most people's lives are accidentally inherited.
They're not planned.
There's no particular goal.
They just do X, Y, and Z because of inertia, because of a sort of vague impulse of the moment, or because it worked for somebody else that they knew, or their dad said they should do it, or whatever.
And so they do that and they stick with it and then they meet some person and then they then decide to have a relationship just because they're sexually attracted.
And I don't mean like a short fling.
It's like, you're sexy.
Let's get married.
And then they ended up in a sense with a hormonal, historical, accidental life.
And then I think for people to say, I think having some larger sense of what your life is about is important.
I think it's a bit, I mean, it's got to be pretty anxiety provoking, right?
Yeah, I was talking to my mom about that.
You know, just because my parents had their first child nine months right after they got And I'm like, what did you even want for your family then?
She's just, I didn't know. You know, that's just what people did.
You know, there was this, you know, they just never, it seems almost, almost pathetic.
It is, it is. It's like, why did you, why did you do that if you didn't even know what you wanted?
Right. You know, why would you...
But in a sense, you know, to give your mom some credit, right?
In a sense, what's the alternative?
If nobody's asking these questions, and in fact, people are anxious and hostile towards these questions...
Yeah, she was 30 and Catholic.
You know, she's supposed to have a family.
Right. Got to breathe, right?
Got to have new dues payers for the church, right?
But, I mean, it's almost like it's a miracle that she could even talk about it now, which I think is fantastic.
Yeah, no, I've been having...
Yeah, my parents actually want to go into therapy with me, and I've been really surprised by it because just from the FDR set of parents, it doesn't seem like they would.
My dad was relatively physically abusive.
He's a colonel in the military.
It surprised me that I did.
I've been having some pretty good conversations with my mom, and she was even questioning her $50,000 a year pension she'll get when she'll retire as a teacher.
Well, first of all, fantastic.
I mean, obviously, I think that's just fantastic.
Secondly, I mean, the really bad parental situations...
They make a lot of noise, but anybody who wants to look through can find lots of examples of families where better things have come out of this conversation, right?
But they don't tend to make a lot of noise, right?
So it is a little bit like look at the statistics rather than the smoke, but I think that's fantastic.
I mean, what a wonderful thing to occur.
Do give them, you know, if they can stand it from a godless anarchist, do give them my enormous appreciation and congratulations.
I think that's fascinating.
And I also think that it's going to happen to me too, right?
I mean, my daughter is going to be smarter and wiser and more successful than I am.
And I hope that she's going to bring some intelligent and useful things to me that I'm going to learn from as she gets older.
And so I don't expect to be any kind of final authority.
I'm the authority now because I know how to tie my shoes.
As far as that goes.
But that's not going to be... She's going to be instructing me and I think to learn from your kids means that you've been a good parent in some ways because you've given them that latitude and the growth to think for themselves and teach you back, which is great.
Yeah. Yeah, I don't know what I want.
I don't know if I should expect them to become these atheistic or anarcho-capitalists.
I don't know what I want out of that relationship.
I think that's a little far-flung for that to happen.
Relationships are not about ends.
They're about means, right?
So what I look for in relationships is not an agreement with every particular that I have, because even my particulars change, right?
Even my particulars do change, right?
I mean, if I'd look for somebody who was a pure objectivist 20 years ago or 10 years ago, then...
I've changed since then.
And so, if they didn't have the capacity to think for themselves, then we would no longer fit together because they'd be an objectivist and I'd not be an objectivist, right?
Still largely an objectivist, but, you know, objectivist plus 12 or something.
Objectivist with the hair extensions or something, right?
And so, it's not about the conclusions.
Will they match me in terms of conclusions?
But... Yeah, how do I feel when I'm around you?
Yeah, and this is a general thing, because I get this question a lot, right, or this request for, you know, what if the person's not an atheist?
It's like, it doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter whether they're an atheist or not.
Let's say you find somebody who's a poor atheist, and tomorrow God comes down in a fiery chariot.
Well, anybody with any brains will say, hey, I'm no longer an atheist, because God is here.
It didn't mean the... Yeah, it's not about the conclusions.
Yeah, yeah, it's not...
That was your whole, I accept anarchism part, you know, and it's not about the anarchism, it's about the methodology.
That's right. That's right.
And so if you can talk and think and reason together and learn from each other, look, religious people have some useful stuff to say.
And a lot of religious people are much more into – I'd rather have a conversation with a Christian than a postmodern.
Yeah. Myself, because at least the Christians are nominally interested in virtue and are interested in the deep questions in life, whereas the postmodernists are just passive-aggressive bit of shells.
So to me, it's just reasoning and being together and enjoying each other's company that is really, really important and not about, do they fit this particular template of belief?
Mm-hmm. No, it makes a lot of sense.
Yeah, thank you. I don't know if I have anything else.
But did you go through that kind of, you know, I feel like even my progression through, you know, philosophy, there's this, that Tyler, you mean like part of the time you're this anarchist, part of the time you're not.
I feel like I'm becoming more and more this true self than I'm not.
Did it kind of go like that for you?
You know, how did this progression go?
Just the way you thought and the way you acted.
I don't know. No, it's a great question.
Coincidentally, I guess it's part of the Borg brain, right?
It's a reference you won't get because you're too young.
I've watched Star Trek. Oh, you know that one.
Okay, good, good. Sorry. I'm trying to adjust myself, but it's just too far.
It's too far. There's a show called Burn Notice.
I don't even watch TV, dude.
So, oh God, then we're totally out of references.
No, I mean, I just did a podcast on this, the degree to which...
I mean, I learned all the ideals, and they existed in a separate space within my brain, right?
So I had a part of my brain that was philosophical and very abstract.
And unfortunately...
There was no link between the ideals that I was learning and the life that I had before I started in philosophy, right?
So the relationships that I developed after I got into philosophy followed that kind of template, virtue and support and all that sort of stuff.
But the relationships that I had, particularly from childhood, that preceded my development as a philosopher were...
Bizarrely, or perhaps not so bizarrely, immune to the principles that I was developing.
They just existed in a completely separate sphere.
And bringing those two spheres together was a calamitous, terrifying, exhilarating, and ultimately liberating thing to do.
And so, for me, I learned all of the ideals.
I mean, I'll just give you a sort of simple and basic one that is different from your family, because your family sounds like they're doing the right thing, which is great.
But the initiation of force, I accepted that as wrong when I was 16.
I was 32 before I got that applied to my mom.
I mean, it's ridiculous how long it can take when you don't have people helping you out.
And of course, there weren't people who were helping me out in my life as far as that went.
Now I did, in my professional career, I did bring those values to bear because those were new relationships.
And yes, so I lived this double life, right?
In the future and in the present, I was a philosopher.
And in the past that was still part of the present, I did not have any integrity to speak of.
And that was a very strange aspect that I've since found, of course, is not singular to me at all.
Mm-hmm. I've been making a lot of progress with my mom, but I'm still deathly afraid to talk about it with my dad.
I've been able to tell him that much.
Which I think is a start.
But if you can go to therapy with them, I mean, a therapist can help that.
Yeah, I was thinking about that too, especially with him, because I know all this stuff.
He had a pretty rough child.
His dad was a third-generation colonel in the Army.
I was supposed to be the fourth, but I broke that mold.
Wow. I know there's a lot of stuff, even him and my mom, that went through.
And I think they kind of want to talk about it too, that I kind of get that sense that they know it's connected.
Yeah, I wouldn't want to talk to him about it without a therapist because I don't really know what I'm doing.
Right. No, I mean, I hear you.
I hear you. So, yeah, professional help will be, I think, very, very important to bring that up.
I would certainly trust my instincts with regards to your dad that if you feel anxiety about bringing it up, I would respect that.
And if he can join in a counselor's office, that would be my approach.
I would certainly suggest doing it in that environment.
It may be less threatening for him as well because then it's less a battle of will, so to speak, and more like there's a third party.
Yeah, yeah, that's the one.
Yeah, I want to remove that kind of, you know, someone's in charge relationship from it.
Because I think that'll, you know, you've got to make it voluntary.
You've got to make him feel that it's voluntary.
It is a tough thing to relinquish authority as a parent.
And I say this, you know, with my daughter's 15 months, right?
So I'm just saying that it's tough to let her do stuff now that she couldn't do a month ago.
It's tough to know at what pace to withdraw the security and the authority to let her go and do stuff, right?
So, I mean, I'll give you a stupid example, right?
So... Can she be around a bouncy dog without me being down there to protect her?
Can she run down a slight hill without building up too much speed and faceplanting?
Right? And a month ago, no.
Right? Six months from now, yes.
But at what point does it become safe enough that she may fall but she won't hurt herself, right?
Really? Yeah. So learning to relinquish, I mean, you start off with complete authority, so to speak, right?
Because they can't do anything for themselves.
And there is this progress of relinquishing authority as a parent and letting them, right?
I'll give you one other example which may be of interest.
I have a video of this I might post on the board which I thought was pretty funny but challenging.
There's a park nearby where Christine and I took Isabella yesterday to this park.
And it's a cool park because it's got sandpit and swings and slides, which she all loves.
And it's got a river.
And a big river.
And on the river are ducks and geese.
And she loves birds. And on the park itself, there are sometimes geese that just sort of walk around.
Canada geese, right? She loves to sort of introduce herself to them by running and screaming while they all fly away.
And so there weren't any geese around, but...
I sort of wanted to show her the river because she likes the water.
She loves the water. And so we took her down this sort of hill to the sort of woody area where there's this big river.
And there weren't any ducks or geese on the river.
So I just sort of said, you know, no ducks, no geese or whatever, right?
And then she started twisting in my arm like some electrocuted serpent, you know.
And she really, really wanted to run.
She wanted to go down. So I let her go down, and she started running towards the water.
Because she loves the water, right? Now, obviously, you can't let a 50-foot charge into the water.
That's not particularly safe, right?
I mean, you'd need to have a rope tied around a foot.
No, I'm just kidding. And so I picked her up, and I said, no, you can't run into the water.
And she got really, really upset.
She really started crying, and was really, really upset.
And so I was like, so what am I going to do, right?
So I talked about it with Christina, and we rolled her sleeves up, and I held her over my legs and let her put her hands into the water and make big splashes.
And she did that for, I don't know, five or seven minutes, and it was a pretty awkward position, so I ended up getting up, and her hands were getting cold, too, because the water was cold.
And I, you know, started to take her away.
And she got really upset because she, you know, she's, I think, like most kids, she wants to experience something until she is done with the experience.
And then, like, she'll want to be on the swing for, like, 20 minutes.
And if you try and take her out, she'll, like, be really upset.
And then when she's done, she'll, like, down, down, and she'll want to come down and she'll move on, right?
But until she gets her feel.
Yeah, I was a lifeguard for three summers.
Yeah, I've seen this a lot. Yeah, so if the kids, yeah, if they get their fill of it, they're totally fine to be done with it.
But if they don't get the fill of the experience, they're really upset, right?
Yeah. And so, you know, what happened was she, I put her back down to put her hands into the river.
face and wash her hair so what did she do she grabbed two big fistfuls of river mud sewage and plastered them all over her face because she wanted to wash her face and that was a little alarming right to say the least now she's dirty and we can't even clean her because we the river's all muddy and all right so so those kinds of things it's like uh you want to give her them you really want to give her the latitude but you can't give her too much and she doesn't know exactly what the limits are, of course, because she's 15 months, right?
So, you know, I know this isn't particularly helpful with your dad, but I just want to point out that it is tough, and in the military model, you don't ever relinquish that authority, right?
I mean, that's... Point of the military model is it's like the bad parent forever.
I don't mean your dad, but the military model as a whole.
And so he just may not have a lot of experience on that relinquishing of authority that goes along with parenting.
That's just my thoughts on it.
Yeah, it has been interesting with that New York thing too.
They just let me go.
I took a train by myself.
It was almost like I felt like I was subconsciously testing them almost to see how they'd react because they couldn't stop me.
But they trusted me.
They just said, call us when you get there.
Be safe. So I felt good about that.
I feel respected in their relationship.
No, that's fantastic.
That is fantastic. And it is tough.
It is tough for parents. It is stressful to let that go.
It is necessary, but it is a tough thing to do.
So, I mean, good for them for doing that.
And, you know, again, I apologize even for complimenting parents who've got much more experience than I do.
I just want to point out that I really get that it's a challenge.
Yeah, no, it's fine.
Yeah, and I've got a little brother and sister, too.
I hope that maybe if I can work with my parents, it'll get...
And it already has gotten better for them.
My older brother's had a lot of issues, and I think that's kind of woken up my parents.
Now they've been talking to me, they want it to be better for my little brother and sister.
They know things really went wrong.
Right. I'm sorry to hear that.
Yeah. No, thanks.
It's fine. Yeah.
Yeah. Alright, well, we're over a little bit.
If there's nothing else you're yearning and burning to do, to chat about, do you mind if we take the show to the end?
Yeah, it's fine. One last thing, though.
The barbecue, it's like my second week of school.
I would have loved to go, but I don't know.
I'm going to try, but I don't know if I can get there.
It's the second week of my school.
Oh, I'm so sorry. Yeah, it's a pain in the neck, and we were thinking of doing it earlier.
Yeah, because you got the Libertopia thing.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Well, we've sort of made the barbecue arrangements before the Libertopia thing changed to October, so yeah.
Where are you going to school? Just, I mean, the city?
It's Truman State University in Missouri.
It's a residential college.
Oh, right, right. I would have gone to an Illinois school, but they give you a lot of money to come to a Missouri school, and it's cheaper out-of-state than in-state for some reason.
Is that right? That seems quite different.
Yeah, they don't have three governors in jail, though, either.
Right, right. So, yeah.
Well, I'm sorry you can't make it, but I'm sure we'll see each other at some point.
Yeah, for sure. And, yeah, if you get a chance and you feel like it, I mean, you don't have to, of course, but if you get a chance, I'd like to hear, I'd love to hear actually how things went with your parents further going forward.
So if you get a chance and you feel like it, just you can drop me a private line if you like.
I'm just curious to know. Yeah, sure.
No problem. Yeah, I'll be home in like four weeks back in Chicago, so.
All right. Well, thanks.
I appreciate it. And just because this is the, you know, I guess the first time you've chatted in this Sunday show, how was it for you?
This is the second time I asked you a question like a year ago about like the Great Depression or something.
Oh, right. Okay. Not right.
Like I remember. Yeah, it's fine.
No, I really enjoyed it. I appreciated it.
Thanks for talking to me.
Oh, listen, my pleasure. Thanks for listening.
And thanks for, I mean, these are great questions.
And I really appreciate you bringing them up.
Yeah, no, I feel good that, you know, I said I felt obligated earlier.
I felt, I didn't feel obligated.
I felt a desire to contribute because I've gotten so much out of the show and what other people have shared.
So, you know, just want to be able to give back a little.
Hey, see, that's what we were talking about in terms of a life plan.
So this actually works really well.
Yeah, no, I feel good now. All right.
Thank you, Seth. Thanks, man.
Take care. Bye.
Well, I think that's it.
I'm just going to post up a picture of what I was talking about.
This won't mean much, of course, for the people who are listening in down the road, but I just wanted to post this picture.
Let me just... The picture of what I was talking about with Izzy in the water.
It's pretty funny. Let me just change this.
Oops, that's a bit too small.
I did try posting one up already, but instead it was too big.
You also might want to check out the show I did just recently on environmentalism as religion if you want to see two guys talking about how much they've read and hopefully some useful stuff as well.
The barbecue is Labor Day weekend.
It's early September. I can't remember.
The 4th? 6th? All right.
Well, time to get back to parenting. Thank you, everybody, so, so much.
I really do appreciate it.
And have yourselves an absolutely wonderful week.
And we will talk to you, I guess, same bad time, same bad channel next week.
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