All Episodes
Previous Next
May 23, 2010 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:19:22
1668 Freedomain Radio Sunday Show 23 May 2010

Love, need and patience in relationships!

| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Well, hello everybody. Welcome to the Freedom in Radio Sunday show.
It is the 23rd of May, 2010.
This is James. I will not be running the show.
I just have a quick announcement before we get started.
The group rates in Mississauga for the Freedom in Radio barbecue around the Labor Day in September...
Are all set. We got a rate, a great rate, $64.99.
That's Canadian. A night.
And we have 15 people already confirmed and we have 10 more extra room for space.
So if you are interested, please drop by the thread.
You can find the general messages.
It's sticky. And email me right away with your...
Everyone who's on the thread already, of course, gets dibs.
So, you know, these rooms, I imagine, will go pretty quickly.
So, yep, that's all I've got.
Well, thank you very much. I appreciate that, and thank you so much for setting that.
That's Labor Day weekend.
2010 for the BBQ slash General Chortlefest, which I hope that you will be able to come and join us with.
I guess a few items of minor housekeeping.
First of all, thank you so much to the people who stepped up with donations and subscriptions this week.
I can tell you, it just puts a spring in my step.
And staring down the abyss of purely voluntary philosophical relationships can be a bit of a challenge at times.
And I really do appreciate those of you who have really, you know, I hate to say stepped up because it's such a cliche, but you really have.
And thank you. Thank you so much.
I hope that I continue to provide value and insight and useful stuff.
I'm excited about the work that I'm doing now.
I've been doing a fair amount of research this week on causes of World War I. You can't really, I think, understand The modern world without understanding the First World War, and it's something that I've always had quite a fascination with.
Of course, my family history digs very deep into the First World War.
So it is very interesting for me to look at it, and I think it is something that's well worth exploring.
So I will, of course, be putting that out as a video, and I hope that it will be useful and interesting to you.
I don't really want to do a big intro, and I don't have any big intro to work with unless absolutely panicked, other than to say my daughter is the best amazing acute thing ever.
First of all, she's done her first three-syllable word, which is upside down.
It's close to a three-syllable word.
We were driving.
I was taking her for a swim, and there was a garbage that had been flipped over by, and I said, the garbage in the street is upside down.
And she got it. She got the word later.
And this is the amazing thing about concept development in babies.
Oh, my God. It's just the coolest thing to see up close.
She grabbed the rubber ducky later that day and said, upside down, and turned it over.
That's how quick...
A kid can learn a concept.
I mean, it's just amazing. And she's doing this thing now where she learns a word.
Like, you say it once, and she's got it.
And she just hangs on to it, and it never goes away.
Boy, don't you just wish it was that easy to learn a language when you were an adult now?
I mean, my goodness, that would just be too handy for words.
But she is cool.
It's sort of interesting when she gets upset with something, of course, as she does.
She, we say to her, okay, it's okay, it's okay, it's okay, because we want her to sort of get used to self-soothing, and I sort of say, you know, take a breath and slow down her breathing and so on.
And so now what she does is when she gets upset, she says, okay, okay, okay, okay, which is really, I mean, it's interesting because, I mean, it's the opposite use of the word, right?
So if we're putting her down on her change table, and she doesn't want to go down, she's not a big fan of being changed.
Well, who isn't? Who is, rather.
But, um, so when I'm putting her down on the change table, she'll, like, grip me with her legs and with her arms, and she'll say, okay, okay, okay, okay, because it's the last thing that she wants to do, so you have to kind of flip the phrase around in your head, but it's really, uh, it's really cool.
Uh, so, uh, yeah, and she's also, she hasn't, she hasn't put three words together yet, but she's definitely assembling two words, right?
So fall down, go down when she's in her arms, and she wants to go down to walk around.
Um, she does that.
She does fall down when something's, uh, fallen down.
And so she's starting to assemble.
She's hi, mama, and hi, dada, and she knows her neighbor's kids by name, and so she'll say hi to them.
And so she's starting to assemble two words, which is really cool, but she's still...
I'm trying to give her three words, you know, like bear fall down, because she loves throwing things out of her crib when she wakes up.
But hey, who doesn't, again?
So it's just a fantastic, fantastic phase of childhood.
It is just, I mean...
I've never seen anything like it.
I mean, I've spent a lot of time around kids, but I've never been this upfront for this kind of language development.
And of course, again, thanks to your generosity, I do have the immense privilege of being home with her.
And I try to get my work done when she's down or when she's asleep.
Or when she's sleeping during the day, or when the house is quiet at night, or when I'm at the gym or whatever.
So it is an immense privilege to see.
It's an incandescent volcano of language that comes out of a child at this age.
I mean, it's just astounding.
She just turned... 17 months.
And to me, the things that she can do, I mean, she can sing lines of a song.
And she actually, you know, if I change the key, she will follow the key.
I mean, I don't know if she's pitch perfect or who knows, right?
But she definitely knows the differences in keys and octaves and so on, which is kind of cool.
She really makes me laugh, too, because she can follow, you know, if you do like a song in Satan voice, just for laughs, right?
So if I say, twinkle, twinkle, little, she'd go, star!
She knows how to imitate that kind of voice, which is fine until you do.
There was an old lady who swallowed a fly.
I don't know why she swallowed a fly.
Perhaps she'll die. It's not always the coolest thing to come from a kid.
Maybe I'll just do the one second video of her going, die!
But she really, really makes me laugh.
And she does things where she'll open up her arms to give you a hug and you'll come in for a hug.
And then she'll turn away and laugh, like the tease.
And she does this amazing thing where if Christine and I are sort of sitting on the...
On the ground, and Isabella's between us, she'll spend, literally she can spend a few minutes going back and forth and hugging us, and oh my god, that just melts my heart.
I mean, getting a hug from the tiny little pudgy cute arms, oh my god, it is absolutely the sweetest, sweetest thing.
I mean, the love of a child, the affection of a child, the attachment of a child, whatever you want to call it.
I mean, it is the most delicious thing that is there, and I hope that I hope that you all will get a chance to experience it, if you haven't already.
I hope that you will consider it in the future, because it truly is A delicioso.
Big hunk of brutal cuteness.
That is Isabella.
Anyway, I just wanted to mention that.
But enough about family for me.
Let's talk about life for you, my friends.
How are things?
What is going on?
If you're one of the people who wanted a combo this week and you're here, by all means, we can turn the show over to you.
And feel free to bring it up.
So now, don't forget to unmute.
And if you're not talking, please to mute.
But if you would like to bring it up, whatever's on your mind, I am all ears.
Oh, Malaga! Yeah, James, do you want to talk about that?
I don't know much about it. I'll just read what's off in the chat.
There's a thread on the board.
It's the June 20th to 30th-ish, according to one person.
Ish. These philosophers.
There is a European get-together, Malaga-Spain.
I'm sure I'm saying that wrong.
Yeah, Malaga.
Okay, fine. And yeah, 20th, 27th, there's thread on the board.
I'll go and make it sticky so that it pops up to the top and I'll report on where it is so that people can find it easily.
Fantastic. And I will try to call in as much as possible to that, and I'm sorry again about not making it, but I think it's for the best, particularly with, I hope that people will be able to come down to New Hampshire to the Porcupine Freedom Festival.
I am obsessively going over what I'm going to say during the speech, and I'm really, really looking forward to it, so I hope to see you there.
Hi, I have a personal problem, if anybody...
I think the runway is clear, so go for it.
Okay. I've been having some big relationship problems.
I've sent you some emails about it and we talked a little bit.
Wow, all of a sudden now I'm getting really anxious and blanking out.
Okay, focus. Between this person and I, I will bring something that I want or need.
I will tell them that I want it or I feel something.
A lot of times I find that the person is not receptive to what I want or need.
A lot of times things between us shut down.
And, um, I have a lot of problems, personally, like, in my own childhood.
I think, um, out of people, like, uh, when the person ignores me, I think I get thrown back, like, I regress.
And when that happens, you know, like, when I can't, like, or I think, well, negotiating and talking doesn't work, so now I move, now I, then I move on to things like, like manipulating, like, I'll nag them or, you know, I'll pressure them.
And then they, then they draw away even more.
And So it's like two opposite forces getting ever more stronger, going in opposite directions.
To the point where I have had some instances where I was violent with the person, or vice versa.
And I want to get to the bottom of this.
Because I'm still in a relationship with the person, and you'd expect that once the negotiation breaks down, then you just don't associate with the person anymore.
But that's not how it is.
Okay, yeah.
I mean, I'm happy to keep listening if there's more you want to say.
I think I might have more, but what do you think about what I've said so far?
Well, I mean, first of all, I want to hugely applaud you for bringing this topic up.
It is a huge, huge important issue, and I absolutely promise you that you're not alone in facing this difficulty, this challenge.
I mean, I think it's fair to say, if it escalates to the point where aggression is involved, this heartbreak of having needs in a relationship, Of asking for your needs to be met, and is it my understanding that your partner then agrees to meet those needs?
No. I mean, sometimes.
I mean, that's why I think I still go for it.
Okay. So you say, I need X, and your partner either says, okay, I'll try to provide it, or they don't.
you can't relinquish your need.
You can't let go of your need for X.
But at the same time, X isn't being provided, which creates a situation of desperation and frustration.
And we end up, and look, I mean, I've been there, you're there.
Everybody who's got any kind of open heart is going to be there at some point or another, and hopefully not for too long, though it can certainly happen.
I was in this situation for years.
So I say that when I was a hell of a lot older than you.
So I say this with all humility.
It is a desperate thing because you want these needs to be met.
You need them. It's like oxygen.
The needs aren't being met, but you also can't relinquish the relationship.
So you're stuck in this kind of null zone where it's like you're a starving person and you're constantly reaching for a piece of food, but every time you reach for it, it moves further away.
And that just drives you mad with frustration, if that makes any sense.
Exactly. Right.
Right. Right.
Now, can you give me an example, if it's okay, something more concrete so we're not dealing with X, but rather something more specific?
Okay. The other day, my partner and I... I was...
Oh, okay, okay.
I even wrote this down.
Like, okay, my partner was at the library reading some books.
I was at home feeling like I wanted their attention and affection.
And when they got home, I wanted to show them things.
Like, you know, I wanted to show them, oh, I was listening to this song and I was singing this and...
I showed it to them, and they were completely...
They were like, I don't like that song.
And... And they had this thing where, like, they were telling me...
What's wrong with me listening to the song?
And I got really... What's wrong with you?
Like, there was an implication that there was something wrong with you because you were listening to that song?
Yeah, like, he said...
It was a sign of unhealth.
Wow. Okay, so you wanted attention, validation, and a positive feedback.
You played a song for your boyfriend or whatever partner, and he said, not only did he not give you the positive validation that you wanted, but he said that there's something wrong with you because the music is, what, negative or destructive or something?
Yeah, it's negative. Right.
Negative. Negative. And I was trying to tell him, but when I listen to this, I feel so good, and it sounds beautiful to me.
Right. And he said he was feeling more, and he said he was feeling pressured to like the song, and I was telling him, I'm not.
I just really like this song, and I want to share it with you.
Yeah. And he was also trying to convince me that I'm listening to the song because of something that's like...
Because I'm unhealthy for some reason, some historical thing.
Like, oh, right, to avoid anxiety.
Right. So this seemingly simple interaction, which is, check out the song, I like it, became something...
Very deep and very complex, very murky, very complicated, if I understand it rightly.
Correct. And it got to the point where he stopped talking to me.
Right, right. I understand.
I understand. I understand.
Yeah. Right.
Okay. And, I mean, I can talk about how it led to violence, if you want.
I don't think that's particularly important.
I do understand that you have these needs.
I mean, you kind of got the opposite of what you wanted, and that's a problem, right?
Without the kinda. I'm sorry?
Without the kinda. Yeah, you got the opposite of what you wanted, and that's a big problem.
Okay. So...
I'm going to, you know, this is obviously just, these are all just my opinions, so you can take them for whatever they're worth, as usual, and discard whatever you find to be nonsense.
These are all just my opinions, but this is what I experienced in this.
Okay. I was in a relationship, I mean, there was no violence, but there was definitely discontent and dissatisfaction and a feeling that we were always speaking, not always, we were often speaking at cross-purposes.
And it's going to sound weird to bring this in, but to me this is important.
At the time, I was deep in the entrepreneurial world and I was running the technical side of the software company and doing presentations and travel and all that.
And in my entrepreneurial life, like in my free market life, I realized that I was treating people in my entrepreneurial life far better.
That's a strange thing.
The free market is really threatening in so many ways to people's relationships.
The free market is threatening to religion.
It's threatening to abusive people.
And I'm not saying anything about your relationship.
I'm just talking in general principles here.
But the free market is really threatening to manipulative, controlling, and needy relationships because When I wanted to have a relationship with a potential customer, I couldn't bully them.
I couldn't get mad at them.
I couldn't manipulate them.
I couldn't say, you better give this sale to me because I really need it.
I really want it. I'm feeling anxious.
I feel insecure about the future of my company.
So you really need to give me the sale.
That would be viewed as...
It's really strange.
You can't imagine someone coming up to you in a store and saying, look, you really need to buy this sweater because I really need the commission.
The commission is really important to me.
So you really better buy this sweater.
I mean, you'd be like, whoa, what the hell are you doing?
You're reaching for your mace, right?
Except for maybe, I don't know, Haiti, charity in Haiti.
Yeah. Yeah, I mean, that would be a ridiculous thing to get, right?
Like the waiter saying, look, you know, my kid is hungry.
You know, you've got to order two desserts.
And look, if you could order some Spanish coffee, because that's all going to add to my tip.
It's really important for me that you do that.
You'd be like, what are you talking about, right?
You can offer me dessert.
You can say, would you like dessert?
And you can show me some attractive pictures of your wonderful desserts.
But you sure as hell can't tell me to buy a dessert because you need me to, right?
Right. Right, you've got to provide some kind of value.
Well, yeah, I mean, you have to provide the...
It's just an opportunity. When I go to dinner and the waiter says, would you like dessert?
Of course. They're going to bring out the dessert tray.
They're going to say, that Spanx you're wearing is extraordinarily slimming.
I'm sure you can eat three.
Whatever it is, right? They're going to...
They're going to put their best foot forward, and they're going to make it look all shiny and delicious, and they're going to describe...
When I used to work many years ago, I worked as a waiter in a seafood restaurant, and we had this dessert called the profiterole, and I had a way of describing it that just about every time I described it, people would order it, because it really is actually a really good dessert.
I found a way of poetically describing it and mouthwateringly Talking up its flavor to the point where people just ordered it.
They enjoyed it.
It was good for me, good for my tips.
But I couldn't say, you need to do it because I've got to pay rent.
Right. So I could not inflict my needs on others in a free market, right?
Right. And it struck me when I was thinking about, like, what the hell is wrong with my relationship?
That we're always getting into this mess about needs and satisfaction and promises and betrayal.
And you said you were going to do this and you promised to do that and you committed to do the other.
And I kept, you know, putting my needs on the table and they'd be made fun of or minimized or ridiculed or there'd be promises made that were never followed up.
And I thought, well, why is my business career working so well and my personal relationship is working so badly?
And I was so frustrated.
And it just suddenly struck me.
It's like, well, because in my business relationship, I'm not trying to manipulate.
I'm not using my own needs as the primary driver.
I'm not trying to control the other person.
I'm not trying to manipulate the other person.
I'm not trying to guilt them.
I'm not trying to... Put them in some particular position that works better for me.
I'm not playing games with them.
I'm not trying to level with them.
I'm just saying, I think you have this need.
Here's the software that I have.
Here's what I can do. Tell me if you're interested.
Give us an exchange of mutual value.
That's all it was. And I thought, why?
And I thought about reversing it.
I thought, well, what if I took the way that I'm doing things in my romantic relationship to work?
And I took the way that I'm doing things to work into my romantic relationship.
And I said to myself, well, I knew exactly what would happen, as does everyone.
The quality of those two relationships would exactly reverse, right?
Yeah. I wouldn't make any sales.
In fact, I'd get a really bad reputation in business.
And my personal relationship, if it had a chance of doing better, would do better, right?
Right. I'm sorry for the long and roundabout way of talking about it, but why should I treat some customer in China better than the woman I was with, right? Right.
So this is my suggestion.
Does this make sense to you? Yeah.
You know, you can't run a relationship based on your needs.
I mean, you can, but all you're going to do is run it into the ground.
You can't make your relationship work to meet your needs.
You can't turn your boyfriend into somebody who meets your needs or wants to meet your needs.
Any more than I can sell a minivan to a 22-year-old guy with no kids who just won the lottery.
I can sell a minivan to a 35-year-old guy with four kids who hasn't won the lottery, but I can't sell it.
I could bully him and berate him and say, well, I really need you to buy this minivan because I need to commit.
But that's all nonsense, right?
Right, right. And so the way that I did things in my relationship, you know, this is no template for anyone to do anything.
This is just what worked for me.
But I think there's some good principles in it.
First of all, I just assumed that my needs weren't crazy.
I had to assume that.
Because if my needs are crazy, then I shouldn't be in a relationship, right?
So I said, okay, well, let's just say my needs aren't crazy.
I'm going to sit down with this person.
I'm going to tell this person what I need.
But I'm also going to say, I have no expectation that you're going to meet these needs.
These are what I'm looking for in a relationship.
And I said, and I'm sorry, we didn't work this out before we got together.
But this is what I'm looking for in a relationship.
You don't have to meet these needs.
You can choose to meet them. If you want to meet them, then that's great.
If you don't want to meet them, that's fine.
But what I'm not going to do is I'm not going to bully you to meet my needs.
I'm not going to take that.
I am not going to bring aggression into this relationship because the moment I bring aggression into this relationship, it is no longer a relationship.
It is simply two people fighting for supremacy in a win-lose interaction.
I am not going to bring aggression into this relationship any more than I would bring aggression into a sales pitch.
Or aggression into a job interview.
You better hire me, man.
My mortgages do. I know where you live.
I'm not going to bring it in.
And so what I did was I stated my needs, and this is hard.
I'm not saying this is easy, but this is what worked for me.
Maybe it's something useful to think about with you.
Sit back and say, with curiosity, I have told this person what I need.
I have told them that I'm not going to aggress against her or him, in your case, to get what I need.
I'm going to see, in open curiosity, Whether this person wants to meet my needs.
Because that's the only thing that is sustainable in a relationship.
You can't sustain power games.
You can't sustain control.
You can't sustain aggression.
You can't sustain putting the other person down for not meeting your needs.
You can't sustain win-lose interactions.
You can't sustain them.
It's like running around with a big giant pole trying to hold up a tent where everything has collapsed.
You might hold up a little bit, but something else falls down.
You run over there, this part falls down, and you can end up wasting years of your life.
Yeah. So, you say, this is what I'm looking for in a relationship, and of course, this should all be done before the third date, in my opinion, right?
And this should all be done before you live together, it should all certainly be done before you get married, and it damn well better be done before you get kids, right?
Right. But you don't pick up that sword.
The sword is for enemies.
The sword is not for lovers.
The sword is not for friends.
With friends and with lovers, in my opinion, you are in a situation of curiosity.
Does this person want to meet?
Because if the person wants to meet my needs, my legitimate needs, right?
If the person wants to meet my needs, that's great.
I don't need to control them.
And that's sustainable, right?
But if the person doesn't want to meet my needs, if you have a plan B called aggression, that is a statist approach to a relationship.
Right? I know.
You should help the poor, but if you don't, we're going to take your money by force and put it into the welfare state.
Yeah. We should not have a plan B in our relationships called aggression.
It should not be there.
It should not be on the table.
Right? Right.
We should have curiosity.
We should have empathy.
We should have communication.
We should have honesty. But you have to put down the sword in your relationships.
Because otherwise, they're just not relationships.
All you're doing is fencing and dueling and exhausting yourselves.
Yeah. Yeah.
Okay. I have some...
I hear this, and I want to tie in some other things.
Like, I'm not sure how to...
So I'll just say them.
Please. Okay, when...
It happened again today, the him leaving, you know, and not talking to me.
So when that happened, I found that I felt like my life was on pause, if that makes sense.
Totally. And we...
I'm sorry, I mean, I know why that's happening.
At least I think I know why that's happening, and I can give you why I think it's happening, and if it's not, then you can tell me and we'll go back to it.
Yeah, yeah, okay. Well, our life feels on hold when we're not RTRing with ourselves, when we're not being honest with ourselves, because what you're doing is you're saying, I wonder what's going to happen to the relationship.
I wonder how it's going to be when he gets back.
I wonder if we're going to work it out.
I wonder what's going to happen.
I wonder what's going to happen, right?
Yeah. But that's, to me, that's having no power.
I don't mean power over, but power in the relationship.
Because in my opinion, what you should be doing, you know, hear me, hear me, I'm sort of, yeah, you should do this.
But in my opinion, right?
The useful thing to be doing when you've had a conflict, and if the person has left, is to say, how do I feel?
How do I feel? How do I feel?
How do I feel? Not what is going to happen, what is going to happen.
Because that is a way of avoiding how you feel in the moment.
Okay. Let me...
I'm writing this down.
It's recorded, too.
Oh, yeah, yeah. It is useful.
I mean, it sounds silly, but it is absolutely useful to write things down.
I mean, it is very, very easy to forget things in the moment, particularly when emotions run high.
The other thing that I had was...
Well, no, never mind.
I don't think that I remember.
Okay, I'm gonna sit on that.
Thank you. Okay, no problem.
I just want to make sure that...
You don't think that...
I mean, I can go further, actually.
I can talk about my parents and how this affects it, if that's okay.
I certainly would be happy.
Let me just check on the board in case anybody else with a burning question.
And you don't have a template of this kind of voluntarism within your familial relationships, right?
Absolutely not. Right, so you don't know what it's like to let things be, and to be curious, and to be respectful, and not to use your needs to try.
The reason it doesn't work is that when you are trying to get someone else to meet your needs, what you're trying to do is to manage your own emotions, not actually get something from the other person.
So let's say I am three days away from losing my house and my car and everything, and I go for a job interview.
If I say to the guy, you better hire me because I know where you live, I'm fundamentally not trying to control him.
I'm trying to control my own panic about my impending bankruptcy, right?
Okay. I'm using him to manage my own emotions, right?
I'm not trying to control him, fundamentally.
I'm trying to control my own emotions, right?
Yeah. And in my opinion, this is probably why your boyfriend reacted negatively, is because he felt manipulated.
Because he felt that you were using his reaction to the song to manage some emotion within yourself, rather than being honest about why the song was important to you.
Oh, okay. Yeah, I think he does feel manipulated.
I think he's said that a few times.
Right, right. And it is, to me, it is not treating another person with full humanity to use them to manage your own emotions.
And look, I don't know whether this is what you're doing.
I'm just saying this is my opinion in general, right?
Oh, I would say that's what I'm doing, yeah.
Sorry? Yeah, I think that's what I've been doing.
People will almost always react negatively in the long run if we're using them to manage our own emotions.
Okay. Because we're not treating them with their full humanity and with full respect.
Because we're kind of using them, you know, sort of like we're in a ship and there's a hole in the side of the ship.
So we grab someone and we stuff them into the hole to stop the ship from sinking.
And they're going to feel like, hey, you're not exactly treating me like a human being.
You're treating me like a plug, right?
Right. Okay. You might end up repeating something.
I'm not sure, but I'm just going to try and I'm going to ask this question, which is like, so what I do is like, you know, I say, well, I want to hug.
And if the person doesn't want to give me, you know, the hug, then I mean, I still might want to hug, but I'll Oh yeah, I'll just ask, how do I feel?
And talk with myself about that.
It doesn't pass the UPB test, right?
Right, so let's say that you and I are dating some completely alternate universe, right?
So you and I are dating, and you come up to me, and I say that just because of our difference in age.
So you come up to me and you say, Steph, I want a hug.
And if there's a rule which says...
Your needs should be met in the moment, then it has to be a universal rule, right?
Yeah. Otherwise, it's just an opinion, right?
You have no right to inflict it on anyone else, right?
Right. I can walk up to you and say, I like ice cream.
That's no demand that you have to like ice cream.
It's just a statement of information.
If you say, I want a hug, then either it's I like ice cream or your needs and everyone's needs should be met in the moment, right?
But the reason it doesn't work from a UPB standpoint is if you come up to me and say, Steph, I want a hug, and I don't feel like giving you a hug in the moment, then neither of us will get our needs met by UPB, right? Because if everyone gets their needs met in the moment and you want a hug and I don't want to give you one, then we immediately have a conflict.
And of course philosophy should not be about creating irreconcilable conflicts, right?
Yeah, that's kind of how it's been with my partner.
It's like, I want to hug, and he doesn't want to hug, and then it's like this problem.
Yeah. Right, right.
Now, my suggestion would be that there's a reason that you want the hug.
And if you talk about the reason or the emotion underneath the desire for the hug, that is something that can be UPB compliant, right?
So if the UPB rule is, let's be honest about our feelings, I want a hug is not a feeling, right?
It's a desire for action.
It's not a feeling, right? So you can have a UPB statement which says...
Let's be honest about our feelings.
Let's be honest is a UPB statement.
Honesty is a virtue or whatever. Let's be honest about our feelings.
Now, if you then say, I am feeling really anxious and insecure, and I have a strong sensation or belief that a hug will solve it, which is, no, you don't have to give me a hug.
That's just what I'm experiencing.
And he says, you know, I normally love hugging you, but I feel this anxiety.
maybe it's because you're having this big need that I don't think is going to be solved with a hug or whatever, right?
Then you can both be honest about your feelings without having any conflict from a UPB standpoint.
But you can't get satisfaction of your immediate desires without a violation of UPB.
And I know that sounds very abstract, but...
Oh, a violation of UPB. Oh no, it's against UPB. But it's really important because UPB is something that if we don't follow, it ends up with irreconcilable conflicts.
And that is what you're dealing with or not able to deal with in your relationship, right?
Right. So if you say, I want a hug, like now you must give me a hug.
Then you're saying it's a universal...
Everyone should get what they want in the moment, but he doesn't want to give you a hug and you want a hug.
That's never going to work, right? So then you have to start manipulating and you have to create a...
You're wrong for not wanting to give me a hug.
I have a legitimate need for a hug and you're not giving it to me because you're this, that.
You have to immediately start manipulating.
The moment you violate UPB, the next thing, if you're not honest, is manipulation.
Because you have to create a moral rule that excludes yourself.
So you have to create a moral rule called murder is wrong except for cops and soldiers.
Theft is wrong except for government agents who have an IRS badge.
Right. So when you have a UPB violation, you either have to stop and think and say, okay, what the hell is going on here?
We can't both get our needs met at the same time.
I can't have it as a moral rule that we each get our needs met in the moment because that short circuits the whole interaction and it doesn't work logically.
And you have to stop in that moment of UPB violation, irreconcilable conflict, and say, what is really going on here?
Right. Because if you keep plowing forward to get your needs met from a UPB violation, you will immediately start manipulating.
And you'll do the relationship equivalent of talking about, oh, it's a social contract and you're born here and you can participate in the system and that's why taxation...
It's just manipulative bullshit from a political standpoint and we all understand that.
But exactly the same thing occurs in our personal relationships.
When we attempt to create a moral rule that serves only us at the expense of others, we are a state.
We are a state.
We are a religion.
And the irrevocable conflicts that arise from governments and gods come exactly the same way in our relationships.
I've been saying, if you are in a relationship with me, You want to meet my needs, and if you don't want to meet my needs, then you're not in a relationship with me.
Something like that. But I mean that...
No, and that's... Okay, so that's so...
But it's not with me, right?
You have to abstract it for it to be UPB. So then you have to say, in a relationship, each partner must want to meet the other person's needs, right?
Yeah. Well, that certainly can't be true universally, right?
Right. So if I have, I don't know, some horrible skin rash on my back and I'm desperate to have it scratched and I can't have it scratched because it will be bad for me, you should not meet my need, right?
Yeah. If I have diabetes and I want a piece of chocolate cake, you should not meet my need, right?
Right. If I'm an alcoholic and blah, blah, blah, right?
So it doesn't work very well logically, right?
Right. Right.
But even if we accept your premise that it could work logically, you're not living that value.
Because you say that he's not meeting your needs, and you say, well, we either each have to meet each other's needs, or we should not be in this relationship.
But you're not meeting each other's needs, yet you're still in the relationship.
Exactly. Yes.
That's because you're using this UPB violation as a way of dominating, as a way of setting up a rule where he feels bad and you look better, right?
Okay. Okay.
That makes sense. Well, that's my thought.
I mean, tell me if it makes sense or not.
I mean, I don't want to, you know, I don't want my eloquence to say.
No, like, that's been the most exact thing.
Like, each time I've talked to you, this is the most exact thing that I've heard.
Like, I like this.
Thank you. Yeah, look, if you want to figure out whether a relationship rule is valid, try arguing it from his standpoint.
Right, so, I mean, I have a relationship rule called honesty, and I can argue it from my wife's standpoint, I can argue it from my daughter's standpoint, hopefully I can argue it from my listener's standpoint.
Yeah, Steph should be honest, that's his value, and we can all be honest, and that's for the best, right?
And so, if you have a rule which says...
You should want to meet my needs or we shouldn't be in a relationship, then what you should do is try switching chairs and argue it from his standpoint.
And he can play you and you can play him.
Because if you can't, either you can do that, in which case you'll learn a lot, or you can't do that, in which case you're missing some empathy, I think.
Okay. You don't have to tell me, but it would be like, okay, so what would he say are his needs that aren't being met and all of that sort of stuff so that you can figure out whether it can be universally applied.
Okay. Now I see why I get so enraged.
And now I see where the idea that I think that I deserve it comes from.
What do you mean? Like a...
The word escapes me right now, but I mean, I wouldn't be enraged if I didn't think that I deserved him meeting my needs.
Yeah. Well, I don't think that we deserve anybody meeting our needs.
I don't think that we...
I don't think anybody owes us meeting our needs.
I don't think anybody owes us that.
I don't think that we're entitled to demand it.
Yeah, and that's what I was saying.
I would be saying, oh, you don't have to, right?
You don't have to meet my needs.
But it was really convoluted, I guess.
Yeah. Yeah, I mean, and the short answer, which I'm sure you're perfectly aware of, is that in your family history, from what I recall, you just...
I mean, bad families are all about UPB violations, just as governments are, right, and gods are.
And you are not used, you don't have a template, you don't have a model in your head for mutually beneficial, win-win, curious, affectionate, open-ended relationships, right, with rational and consistent rules.
Yeah. Yeah. In fact, I think that's why I moved to Philadelphia.
Because I get to see what that template looks like.
So I'm not all alone and isolated with him in Hicktown, Illinois.
I don't know why you're trying to tempt me to make Illinois jokes, but I'm just not going to.
I kicked down Illinois, but I repeat myself.
No, no, I'm not going to go there.
I promise. I promise. I still have a listener in Illinois.
So listen, I mean, and to me, there's a humility that comes in this, right?
Which is that if you don't have a template for a good relationship, you probably shouldn't be telling your partner what is a good relationship.
Yeah. And I'm guessing he doesn't have a template for a good relationship.
And so he shouldn't be telling you what a good relationship is.
You should sit down and try and figure it out.
Because basically the way it looks is that there's this old comedian.
I don't even remember who.
Somebody will email me for sure to tell me.
I don't think it's racist or anything, but I don't know, maybe it is.
I don't know what the standards are these days.
But he sort of had a funny thing about how, you know, if you want to sound like you're speaking Chinese, right, then you sound cold, you sound constipated.
I'm not even going to try and imitate it.
I'm sure you can look it up, right?
And then you can end up sounding like you're speaking Chinese even to people, you know, like to anybody who doesn't speak Chinese.
And this used to be an old comedic bit where people would make up a language and would sit and talk and you'd have to try and figure out what they were saying where they would just make up a language that didn't exist.
And the reason that I bring that up is that if you don't have a template for a good relationship, then you have templates for bad relationships.
And therefore, you don't speak Chinese and therefore, you shouldn't be teaching Chinese.
Right, so you should not be teaching your partner about what a good relationship is And in a good relationship, you should beat my needs, and you should do this, and you should do that, and this is what a good relationship is.
Because you don't know, right?
Yeah. And so you should sit down with your partner and try and figure out what are good rules in a relationship.
Like, let's start studying some Chinese, and let's stop yelling at each other like we're cold and constipated and think that we're communicating, right?
Yeah. Yeah.
Exactly. And I think that humility is really important.
I mean, I certainly made massive improvements in my relationships when I said, I don't know what I'm doing.
I have no good template.
I mean, this doesn't work.
And when I got the humility of like, okay, I have to reinvent everything from scratch, which is sort of what happened for me philosophically and all of the other areas of knowledge that I'm interested in.
But I think it's important to recognize that if you come from a bad family, you don't speak.
The Chinese have good relationships, and so you shouldn't lecture others, right?
I mean, you should try and figure out what is a good relationship and try and enroll the other person into that discussion and see if you can figure it out.
But inflicting rules when you come from a bad history is just going to replicate where you came from, in my experience.
Okay. Thank you, Steph.
You're very welcome, and thank you for bringing it up.
It's a very, very important topic, and do let me know.
Somebody said, Billy T. James, learning Japanese, and it's given a YouTube, so you can look that up.
That's the guy. Okay, so yeah, you can look that up if you like.
But yeah, thank you. I appreciate that for bringing it up, and do let me know what happens if you can.
Okay. All right, thanks.
Bye. Bye.
All right. Ladies and gentlemen.
Gentlemen. Yeah, there's more than one.
No, there's two. No, there's one.
Somebody just left. All right.
We have time for another call or two if you would like to bring up whatever is on your mind.
Sure? Jealousy.
Oh, I'm going to break into a Queen song.
No, you can put your headphones off.
I won't. Oh, somebody, sorry, I thought this was going to be a convo.
He said, I'm wondering if jealousy can be good and if some form of it is necessary.
Well, necessary is a very tough word in philosophy.
I don't believe that there's anything that's necessary.
But, you know, I think that jealousy can be good.
I think jealousy, and I've got a podcast on jealousy, so I'll just touch on it very briefly here.
But I think jealousy can be very good.
If you see somebody who's doing something that you want to do and is doing it very well, then I think it can be quite motivating to be jealous of that person.
I mean, jealousy can go light and it can go dark, I guess like anger.
So jealousy...
Like, somebody is a really good runner.
Like, a really good runner. Like, as I was saying the other day, I had dinner with Will Dolson when he was jogging through town, or rather sprinting through eternity through town for a marathon.
Now, if I had always wanted to run a marathon and, you know, felt like I'd missed my chance, and, you know, he's quite a good deal older than me, shockingly, and...
If I felt real jealousy about him running the marathon and I said, okay, you know, I'm feeling jealous of this guy, so clearly it's something I want to do.
So let me sit down and get my butt in gear and start training for a marathon.
I think that could be healthy, right?
If, on the other hand, I pull a Tonya Harding on his...
Light Nancy Kerrigan-like legs.
And I take a pipe, like I take a little pipe to his legs because I'm so jealous of him doing well that I just want to stop him from doing well to make my feelings go away.
Then that obviously would be the dark side.
So I think jealousy can be healthy as long as you recognize it for what it is, which is a desire.
A desire for something, right?
I mean, and I think that...
I think that could be really healthy.
I think the schadenfreude of wanting other people to fail who have done well is a really terrible thing.
I mean, this is going to sound kind of weird, right?
I was just thinking the other day.
Why? I don't know. I can't even remember.
But Chris de Bourgh, you know, Lady in Red and all that.
I haven't listened to it, but he apparently has another hit album out of covers, which he's first hit in 20 years or whatever, right?
And the man is a tour monkey.
All he ever does is tour. I think I've seen him twice.
And if you do get a chance to see Christeberg, he is a really good singer.
And I like a lot of his songs.
I haven't listened to him in a while, but he's got some quite lovely songs.
And his daughter won the Miss Universe, I think.
Anyway, it doesn't really matter.
But he grew up in Ireland, like myself.
And you've got to think, you know, back when he was starting out, right?
So he would start out, I don't know how he started out, but I assume the usual route, like coffee shops and, you know, do little concerts here and there or whatever, write songs.
You know, I bet you there were a couple of guys starting out with Christeberg who envied the way he sang or envied the way he wrote songs.
And some of them said, oh, I'm going to really up my game and I'm going to try and become a better songwriter, you know, work on my vocals or whatever.
But then there were probably other people who were like, ah, that Christeberg, he's such a pompous, arrogant asshole, you know.
He's so full of himself.
And they probably kept thinking this and there probably is still just a bunch of people around still who when Christeberg was starting out just hate him, you know, because maybe he opened a door of possibility that they couldn't follow through or didn't follow through, you know.
Everybody hates somebody, right?
When you gain any kind of prominence in this world, you recognize that.
There are people who are unbelievably passionate about hating Celine Dion.
I think it was Ben Stiller.
I saw an interview with him where he said, oh yeah, I gave up reading reviews after 2001 when Roger Ebert said that Zooland remarked the decline and the death of Western Australia.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah. It's just something that...
It can turn dark and it can consume people's lives to just get lost in this hatred of something which secretly they kind of envy, right?
I mean, you may hate Celine Dion, though I can't imagine why.
I mean, she's just a singer, right?
But boy, wouldn't it be fun to do a Vegas act for a week and get up there and sing and dance with the lights on you and bouquets being...
I mean, gosh, I can't imagine why that would be a bad thing at any time of the week.
So I think jealousy can go both ways.
Sorry about the Christopher Ramble, but...
It wasn't big enough for a podcast.
It says, at my philosophy club, we had a new member bring up where animal rights fit in, We had a discussion around this, but couldn't reach your conclusion.
Well, I will be...
I will be very quick on this.
You can do a search for...
I've talked about animal rights before.
I recently decided to become a vegetarian.
Some of the research that I was doing for a recent video led me to footage of slaughterhouses and so on, and they kind of haunted me.
I'm mostly veggie anyway because my wife's a vegetarian and my daughter doesn't really eat meat, so...
Anyway, so I've just decided to sort of cross the Rubicon, so to speak, and go for a veggie diet.
So, of course, if you have experience with this and have tips, of course, I checked on my doctor, and she said, hey, just eat your B12. So I'm doing that.
But I was a little hesitant to do it because of my exercise regime, but I've crossed over, and I'm just going to monitor and see how it goes.
But that is that.
So, just very, very briefly, I believe that animals are not able to enter into a social contract.
They're not able to process the consequences of their actions.
They don't have a conscience.
And so, I don't believe that they are recoverable under the UPB or my sort of approach to ethics.
That having been said, I do think that cruelty to animals is bad.
It's really bad. And I think that the best way that we can achieve...
I think the proper degree of kindness, respect, and peaceful behaviors between humans and animals is to raise children as peacefully and positively and, of course, non-violently as possible.
It is a pretty well-recognized...
I mean, I'm no psychologist, but it's a pretty well-recognized...
Indication of sociopathy is cruelty to animals as a child.
And when George Bush was blowing up, George Bush Jr.
was blowing up frogs as a kid, it wasn't too long before he ended up blowing up Iraqis as an adult.
And I would say that, you know, if we want animals to be treated as humanely as possible, then we need to treat our children as humanely as possible, and it will all naturally follow from there.
Bush really did do that. Yes, indeed.
He was violent and abusive towards animals as children, of course.
I mean, political leaders are all mental, right?
They're all insane. Somebody has asked, can you use self-attack to lessen anxiety?
I would say, again, this is just amateur hour, but I would say that self-attack is a way of lessening anxiety.
That is what self-attack is for.
When you are in a situation where you can control the harm that is done to you and control the timing of the harm that is done to you versus facing a random situation Amount of harm that you can't control and that you can't predict.
Most people I think will tend to choose to harm themselves in a predictable way rather than Allow harm to strike them randomly, right?
So if you think of an example, right?
So if you're chained to a wall and your torturer says, look, you can either push this button once an hour and you can get, I don't know, a 50 volt electric shock, or you can go about your day, walk around the prison or whatever, but there's going to be, you know, some wiring in your underpants and randomly you're going to get a shock that's between 10 and 100 volts randomly throughout the day.
Right. Most people will say, well, you know what?
Give me the presser, right?
I'm going to choose, like on the hour, I'm going to give myself a shock rather than wait for these random shocks.
And self-attack, in my opinion, is a way of replacing the random shocks with predictable shocks.
So to me, self-attack is a way of lowering anxiety.
It's just a way of lowering anxiety the way that...
Quaaludes is a way of lowering anxiety.
It will do it in the short run, but it exacerbates the problems in the long run.
So...
Somebody has asked a question.
I'm not going to read it in detail because it's fairly gruesome, and I apologize for that.
I just want to work with the principle of the question.
So this person, I don't know if it's a man or woman, but this person is asking the question, which is a very interesting question, which is...
If, let's say, your mother fed you food that you hated when you were a kid, this is sort of her example.
So let's say your mother fed you food that you hated when you were a kid, should you then avoid it for the rest of your life if it brings up very unpleasant memories and associations?
Well, I mean, as far as the should goes, I'm not sure, but I will say that I don't see any profit in In terms of cost-benefit analysis, I don't see any particular profit in...
Re-exposing yourself to traumatic things, if they can be avoided, right?
So, to take another example, since again I don't want to get into the details of this person's situation, to take another example, let's say that you had some sort of horrible caregiver and you were raised in some creepy old mansion on a hill, right?
And your childhood was just a long series of misery and horror and fear and all that.
And then you are willed this house, right?
Should you move into it?
I don't... I wouldn't.
I mean, you couldn't pay me a million dollars, a billion dollars to go and live in the neighborhood that I grew up in, either in England or in Canada.
Because there would just be these constant reawakenings and re-reminders and so on.
So I think that we do need to go back and deal with things that happened with us in the past.
And certainly if they were traumatic, it's a very difficult, though, important thing to do.
At the same time, I don't think...
That it's important, and in fact I think it's not helpful and seems to me sort of self-destructive, to repeatedly expose yourself to things which are going to involuntarily create or provoke trauma in you.
From what I've read, it seems that the associations of trauma and memory and physiological response are hardwired.
They are hardwired within our brains.
And so I don't think that there's a way of overcoming the past as if it never happened, right?
So you could go and live in that creepy old mansion where you experienced all this terrible stuff and not experience it as traumatic on a daily basis.
I think those associations are just too hard to undo.
I think they're impossible to undo.
A metaphor would be something like this.
You know, I always find metaphors are helpful.
They're not perfect, but they're helpful.
Um, if, if you grew up speaking English and, uh, you were fluent and, and then when you were 18, you moved to some, I don't know, some country where Northern Tibet or something where you're never going to speak English, let's say.
And let's say that you spend 20 years or 30 years not speaking English.
If somebody comes and speaks English next to you after 20 or 30 years of not speaking English, it's my belief that you will still be able to understand what they're saying because that language, even though you haven't used it for some time, is hardwired.
So I think that to re-expose yourself to direct trauma reminders from the past And expecting to surmount it is like expecting to not understand an English sentence when you grow up speaking it, even if you haven't spoken it for a number of years.
I think that it's involuntary.
Our processing of language is involuntary.
Our processing of traumatic reminders is involuntary.
And again, the science may disagree.
Sorry, as far as I know, the science agrees with me on this.
That may change, in which case I'll certainly post it, but that's my understanding of where things stand at the moment.
So I hope that helps.
Somebody said, you can choose to try replacing the wiring still, though, right?
I don't think that you can replace the wiring.
I don't think you can.
I think that you can make alterations to the house that you grew up in, so to speak, like your mental house, but you can't get rid of it and start from scratch.
Memory doesn't work that way.
History doesn't work that way.
The brain doesn't work that way.
So, you can't unlearn what you have learned, but you can learn better.
You can learn better.
I mean, if you grew up speaking the language of abuse in the same way that you grew up speaking, say, English, you can say to yourself, I'm not going to speak English, right?
I'm not going to speak abuse in the future.
I'm not going to act in that manner.
I'm not going to do that stuff.
But that doesn't mean that you didn't learn English, you didn't learn that language.
It's still there within you.
You just have to make different choices about how you can exercise that.
But you can't unlearn the English that you've learned.
You can, in a sense, only choose not to speak it.
Yeah, there is a...
And I've mentioned this before, so I'll keep this brief.
There is... And I'm actually making notes for a video on this.
But there is this belief...
It's always bugged me so much that philosophy has gotten its skinny ass kicked up and down the beach for the last 2,500 years.
One of the fundamental things about this conversation is that philosophy is not going to back down anymore.
And the way that philosophy, at least for me, the way philosophy has been neutered, the way it's been emasculated, is two ways.
The first is that people who are philosophical, who are interested in ethics and virtue, Are given the temptation that Satan gave to Jesus, which is, you can have the whole world if you give up your soul.
And what that translates to me is that people will say, if you're interested in virtue, you need to get involved in the government or religion.
And virtuous people.
And the reason that you're encouraged, if you're interested in virtue, to get involved in the government and religion is that will neutralize your virtue, because the government and religion are corrupt and abusive institutions, and so your virtue will be snatched up and eaten like a firefly floating its way through a nest of frogs on lily pads.
And so that is how you are neutered.
If you're interested, you're told to try and control the world through manipulation and force, through your involvement in religion and government, and that neuters your virtue and your capacity to effect real good in the world.
And the second thing is that if you're not interested in that, you're told to rise above everything in your personal life.
Take the high road. Rise above.
That is what you're told to do in your life.
In your personal life.
And in neither situation are you allowed to actually bring virtue and courage and integrity to bear on the areas that you can affect.
So you're told, well, you can be courageous in the areas you can affect, right?
So you can go vote for Ron Paul or Rand Paul, who's currently getting his own sausage mincing from the media, which is completely predictable.
Or, if you really are interested in philosophy and its effects on personal things, then your philosophy must be to dissociate, to float above, to rise above, to take the high road, and to never let your values actually touch your decisions in your life.
To judge not lest you be judged, to have nothing but sympathy and empathy for those who have done you wrong, which is the way that you get neutered in your personal relationships.
And I'm not a fan of either of those.
Overcoming phobias isn't gradual exposure a method used In CBT. Sorry, this was a question back to something else.
Yes, I do believe that gradual exposure is a way of dealing with these sorts of things, and I think that's great.
I'm not a big fan of, I mean, if the phobia is not interfering with your life, like for instance, I'm sure I would have a phobia, I don't like spiders.
And tarantulas give me the complete willies.
I don't particularly care to enter a process to overcome my fear of tarantulas because I don't ever have to deal with tarantulas.
So I think that if it's something you do have to deal with, then I think that's great.
I don't think that there's a way that gradual exposure can help you overcome something like child abuse or whatever.
I think that if there's something specific that you develop phobia about, that can help.
But I don't think that's the case with long-term trauma and all that.
Somebody has said, what are my ideas on bringing therapeutic conversations into personal relationships?
Would you consider this dangerous territory as an untrained doctor?
I'm not sure what untrained doctor means.
Or do you see this type of interaction as beneficial in personal relationships?
Is it something we can learn from and worth pursuing even if we have no plans on becoming a doctor?
And I assume by doctor you mean a psychologist or a psychiatrist?
Well, philosophy is a lot older than psychology, and psychology came out of philosophy, although I think that philosophy has benefited enormously from the work done in the field of psychology.
So when it comes to...
I think what it means is, should we play therapist to our friends?
I don't know what that means exactly, because...
It's a tough thing.
Should we be curious about what makes us tick and what makes other people tick?
Yeah, I think we should. I think that is the definition of friendship, love and intimacy.
Should we listen?
Yes, I think we should listen.
Should we be honest about what we think and feel?
Yes, I think we should be honest about what we think and feel.
Should we sit people down and charge them $150 an hour and have them talk about their childhoods while we do doodles?
I mean, I'm caricaturing therapy of course, but No, I don't think that you can be a therapist for your friends.
But I think if you're not a therapist, I don't think that even comes up, right?
Like, I'm not a dentist to my friends.
That doesn't mean that I can't say to a friend with a sore tooth, you should go and see a dentist, right?
I'm not a dentist to my friends.
That doesn't mean if somebody has really bad breath, I say, you might want to go and see a dentist.
So I think that if you're not a therapist, you can't play therapy to others because you haven't got the skills, you haven't been trained.
But I do think that honesty and curiosity and openness and vulnerability are essential ingredients to friendship and love.
I don't consider that therapy.
People are very confused about therapy.
I think the only way to not be confused about therapy is to go through therapy, in my opinion.
People get very confused. They think if you ask someone about their history or you say, hey, my thoughts about your dream are this.
Oh, it's therapy!
Well, that's not therapy.
Of course not, right? I think unless you're a therapist, you don't really have to worry about it, but I do think that honesty and openness and curiosity are essential ingredients to any close relationship.
What is the first thing I should bring up with a therapist?
Is self-attack good to start with?
I don't know what you should bring up with a therapist, but I will say that I think that the more honest you can be with your therapist, the better your therapy will go.
I mean, I don't know much about therapy.
At all, other than the more honest you are, the faster things will go.
So you should...
If you can't decide what to bring up in therapy, then my suggestion would be to sit down with your therapist and say, I can't decide what to bring up in therapy, and here's what I'm thinking, and here's why.
Whatever you're honest about with your therapist, I'm sure your therapist will help you with it if they're a good therapist.
It is a shame, I think, that...
The simple act of honesty, curiosity, and intimacy has been turned into, by some people, has been turned into therapy.
You know, I mean, therapy is a very specific and well-trained and it takes a long time to become good at.
You have to be supervised.
You have, I mean... It is a very detailed and challenging and lengthy and entirely one-sided process.
And it's private.
It's a very, very detailed and specific process.
I think it's a shame Though I can certainly understand why it happens.
I think it's a shame that there are some people in the world who think that anytime you ask someone, how do you think you became who you are, that it's therapy.
I mean, that's just not true.
It's not even close to true. But what happens is the word is sort of thrown around like other silly words in the language, right?
Which is just, it's a scare word.
It's a... Oh, you know, you're doing therapy on someone if you ask them or you share some thoughts about how they may have come to be the way they are.
That's not therapy.
And people make that wrong.
But people who are really upset by those questions will launch that around in hopings of shutting down those conversations.
All right, so we'll take this as the last question.
This is a good question. You mentioned in one podcast, says this fine listener...
You mentioned in one podcast that it is inconsistent to be advocating the free market and yet be under the reins of the government, working for the government.
In another podcast, you mentioned that working for the government isn't necessarily immoral as everyone works for the state, whether they want to or not.
Income taxes. How far removed does one have to be consistent in advocating the free market?
If your primary customer is the government, can one still advocate for the free market consistently?
How far removed does one have to be to be consistent?
That's a great question. And I've touched on it a few times.
Throughout podcasts, but I will give you some, yeah, I think I could will some brief thoughts just as we end up the show.
Well, the first thing that I would ask is not how close are you to working for the government, but how public are you in your praise of the free market?
So that would be my first right thing.
So very public free market intellectuals, economists, right?
I mean, this is my begaboo, right?
So forgive me for repeating it, but a free market economist who works for a state university and enjoys legally protected tenure and works two hours a week and pulls in six and a half figures or whatever.
And while this is somebody who is very public, In their advocacy of the free market and who is staying away from the free market as much as humanly possible.
So if somebody is a very public advocate of the free market, then I would expect them to live by their own values.
If somebody just, you know, you like reading economics and maybe it'll come up once in a while at a dinner party or whatever, I don't think, you know, I don't think it's a big deal.
So I think that that has something to do with it, the degree to which you are out there.
Now, the degree to which you tell other people to subject themselves to the free market is the degree to which I think you should subject yourself to the free market.
That's just a UPB thing.
The degree to which you say other people should submit themselves to the discipline of the free market is the degree to which you should do that yourself.
So, of course, free market economists are always saying we should privatize this and we should privatize that.
And yes, it's going to be very difficult and painful for people, but in the long run, it's much better for the economy, and it produces more quality, and it's more sustainable, and so on.
And so the principle there is people should give up their status privileges, and they should submit themselves to the free market, because it's virtuous and it's productive.
Well, take your own advice, free market economist, quit your tenure jobs, and I think I've proven that you can survive fairly well on podcasting, but you have to be market-driven, right?
So, to me, the degree to which you're instructing other people...
Like if I said to everyone, you should all quit your government jobs and you should all go live on the land while I was working for the government and living in a mansion, that would be ridiculous, obviously, right?
So I think it's the degree to which you're public, the degree to which you're telling other people to give up their status privileges and submit themselves to the free market and so on.
I think those are all elements that are important.
But in the end, it just becomes sort of a...
It's a line. Sorry, it's not a clear line.
This is sort of a fuzzy gray area.
I think if you can look yourself in the mirror and say, I'm doing as much as I reasonably can given my responsibilities to further the course of knowledge, wisdom, truth, and freedom, that is an answer that everybody has to...
That's a 3 a.m.
thing that everybody has to do for themselves.
Am I doing as much as I reasonably can Given that I have responsibilities, you may have a family to feed, you may have a roof over your head, particularly up here in Canada.
Am I doing as much as I reasonably can to live the values that I think other people should live?
Right? I mean, if you just think the free market is only good for you and no one else should submit themselves to it, well, that's fine.
In a sense, you're not telling anybody else how to live, so you don't have to be bound by anything, right?
Right? But the moment that you have an opinion about how society should work, the first society you should test it out on should be yourself.
And to me, if you don't do that, that to me is entirely fine.
I don't demand, not that I could demand anything, but I don't demand integrity.
I just demand honesty.
So if free market economists, you know, just because they're an example we all know, but if free market economists...
Decide that, you know what, I really like my six-figure salary.
I really like working a couple hours a week.
I really like having tenure.
I really like having summers off.
I really like my sabbaticals and my conferences and my pension and, you know, my benefits and all that.
Then that's fine. Then what they should say is that other people should not submit them.
Just be honest. Say, look, I'm not going to do it.
So if I'm not going to do it, if I'm not going to submit myself to the free market, it's ridiculous for me to say that other people should do it.
So I'm going to stop doing that.
I mean, nobody has to go and martyr themselves for the truth, but if you're not going to martyr yourself for the truth, at least don't tell other people to do it.
That's my only, you know, you can't ask people as a whole to have more integrity and courage than you're displaying yourself.
That is, to me, a ridiculous place to be, so I hope that helps.
Sorry, somebody else has also mentioned, maybe an important question is whether your job would exist in the free market, but has been taken over by the government, or if the job is a product of the state.
Yeah, I mean, if you're a construction worker who builds roads, you have to work for the government.
Maybe you just had a childhood dream to build roads, and only the government allows you to build roads, and so that's what you do.
And I think that's perfectly reasonable as well, right?
You may want to be an engineer and you have to go through these government hoops to become an engineer or a doctor.
And so, yeah, I think those are all reasonable.
But I think it's just important to be upfront, right?
So if you are a road builder and you say the roads should be privatized, then you say, yeah, I know it's a contradiction, but here's why and here's my thinking, right?
Just be honest about it.
Yeah, if you're a postal worker and complain about welfare recipients, well, yeah, of course, right?
Yeah, I think it's just really important to be upfront about, you know, as soon as you evade, right, then it becomes a problem, right?
And I've not seen any free market.
I've not seen, and please let me know if I've missed something, of course.
Listen, a whole bunch of econ talks, right?
I've not heard... I've not heard free market economists...
Attempt to reconcile their addiction to market avoidance with their advocation of the free market to others.
And if I miss something, I would be more than happy to read it.
I would be even more happy to interview somebody, just in case I have missed something obvious.
But so far, it just seems to be something which is completely ignored.
And that makes me more than suspicious.
That kind of closes it for me.
I think if you can hold on Mr.
J for next week we can bring that up but I should probably get back to a little bit of parenting here and there.
So thank you everybody so much.
It is just a wonderful delight to chat with everyone these Sundays.
I look forward to it all week and it is a real highlight of my week to have these conversations with you.
So I thank you so much for your support, for your interest, for doing what you do in the realm of philosophy.
▲
Export Selection