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June 6, 2010 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

01:53:03

1676 Freedomain Radio Sunday Show June 6 2010

An analysis of Ayn Rand novels, the woe of a science teacher in the public school system, and I talk a parent out of spanking...

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	Hello, everybody.
	I hope you're doing magnificently.
	It's Steph-O-Rama-Lama-Ding-Dong on Sunday, June, the early something.
	And I hope that you're having a magnificent, magnificent day.
	And I just start off with a short vignette from parenting and all of the delights of being a dad.
	Two things. One, I was at...
	The mall with Izzy and Magic C on Friday.
	And something very interesting happened that gave me some, at least interesting insights, I thought, into conflict resolution.
	So we were in a store and we were picking up some clothes for Porkfest for Izzy.
	And in the store, they had those little Ikea tables and chairs when there was one of those...
	I don't know what I call them. Little toys for kids where you move the beads around the wires and so on.
	And Izzy wasn't quite sitting on the chair, but she was standing by the chair and playing with it.
	And an older girl, who was probably seven or eight, kind of came storming into the store, rushed in, and didn't push her aside, but just kind of slithered in, you know, in the way that certain kids can do.
	Just kind of slithered in to the...
	To the chair, and Izzy was quite shocked.
	And before I could do anything, Izzy let out a bit of a cry.
	And it wasn't angry, it wasn't aggressive, it was just, I'm upset.
	And again, before I could do anything, and I did want to see what was going to happen, the girl kind of shook her head, like she just kind of noticed something, and then gave Izzy back the chair.
	And I thought, wow, that was interesting.
	She wasn't aggressive. She just simply said, And she reversed it.
	And exactly the same thing happened later on when we went past Old Navy.
	I'm ridiculously low on t-shirts because that's kind of all I wear these days.
	So we went to go and get me some $5 t-shirts from Old Navy.
	And as I've mentioned before, there's a little plastic dog that Isabella likes very much because it doesn't run away from her.
	She's very friendly with animals, but she tends to drive them away, as she does others, due to her friendliness.
	And a boy kind of slithered in, in that kind of oily black smoke way, slithered in between her and the dog.
	And she did the same thing. I'm not even going to try to imitate her, but she let out this cry of upset.
	It wasn't manipulative, it wasn't aggressive, it wasn't whiny, it was just...
	I wish I'd got it on film, but maybe I'll try.
	And again, the boy just kind of shook his head like, oh, wait a minute, and he turned around as if he hadn't seen Izzy other than as a competitor for the dog or something to move out of the way, and because of what she did, he saw her as a person that he had just been rude to, and...
	He then took her hand and put her hand on the head of the dog, which is kind of what she wanted.
	I thought that was an amazing thing.
	It's such a cool thing to see how much better she is at conflict resolution than I am sometimes.
	That was really just fascinating.
	The second thing, which is just a bit of pure delight.
	Was that we went to a bread and cheese festival this morning.
	And she's fascinated by the concept of upside down.
	And there was a roller coaster that looped.
	And every time the people went on the roller coaster, upside down!
	She just yells it out because she's really fascinated by that concept.
	But... We hung around, and it was a bit wet and almost rainy, but we hung around until she loves to dance.
	I put music on, and we dance all the time.
	They had these dancers come on, and she wanted to squirm out of my arms.
	She went down, and she started hopping from leg to leg and spinning and twirling and trying to do a one-leg stand.
	And I gotta tell you, you may not believe me, and maybe I'll dig up the video that I took and show you, but she actually has pretty good rhythm.
	I think she's stolen all of mine.
	I think that's actually what's happened.
	But until you've actually seen...
	A 17-month-old baby girl tried to do a Middle Eastern belly dance, I think it's hard to say that you've actually lived.
	So that's just my suggestion to try and witness that.
	That should be on your bucket list.
	That is one thing that you absolutely need to see because it is beyond endearing and funny and amazing.
	And all these people were taking videos and I felt like she sort of upstaged the dancers because she was quite the performer.
	Though, of course, she's not conscious of performing at all.
	She was just moving to the music.
	And we stayed there for about an hour while various dancers and various songs came on, and she tried to imitate what the dancers are doing, and oh my god, it was just heart-meltingly beautiful.
	So anyway, I just wanted to share that with you as just one of these things.
	It's true what they say, you know, it's a real cliche, but it's really, really true that you do get to re-experience the world through the eyes of a child and see all of the wonders that you may have either missed or forgotten your first time through as a kid, and that is a solve that heals A whole lot of wounds.
	And it's not her job to heal anything in me, but it is a beautiful thing to re-experience the detail and novelty and beauty and surprise of the world just through her eyes.
	And that's a real gift that she's not conscious of giving me, but I will take anyway.
	So I just wanted to share that with you as just a, you know...
	Don't miss a thing. If there's any way that you can avoid missing a thing with your kids, just don't miss a thing because it is...
	Oh my God, it's just too beautiful.
	I get choked up just thinking about all of the gifts that she gives me without even knowing it.
	It's just an amazingly beautiful thing.
	Anyway, enough about my parental ramblings.
	Do we have... Mr.
	JJ, do we have anybody on the line with yearning burnings?
	Actually, we do have a couple of questions.
	Um... From a Mr.
	B in the chat, where does honesty with your family stop and personal privacy begin?
	Wow, that's a great question.
	Where does honesty with your family stop and personal privacy begin?
	Well, of course, as always, the short answer is I don't know, but I can give you some of my thoughts on the subject.
	I'm still in a pre-privacy state when it comes to my family, so to speak, but...
	I think that once self-consciousness about bodily functions begins to arise, and I think that's around four or five, I'm not exactly sure, then I think that privacy becomes important.
	I think that privacy, once your child can bathe himself or herself, privacy becomes very important.
	Obviously, when your child is older, you know, once they enter the masturbation years, which are 13 until I think about 12 minutes after you're dead for boys, I don't know what it is for girls, But obviously privacy is very, very important there.
	Honesty is one of these really, really tricky and interesting virtues to contemplate.
	So for instance, I could be honest and tell everyone about my bowel movements of the day.
	And I say bowel movements because I like Indian food.
	And that would be honest, but would it be particularly interesting or helpful or even pleasant?
	I would say precisely not.
	And so I think honesty is one of these things that it is a virtue, but it is not an absolute.
	You have to be honest about everything at all times.
	You obviously have to be honest about important things.
	And in particular, you have to be honest about that which affects other people, positively or negatively, they need to know.
	But I think that I'm not a big fan of closed doors in families until kids get a little bit older.
	But I think that I generally err on the side of privacy.
	Wherever the child can be safe, then I err on the side of privacy, because an excess of privacy is never a problem, in a sense, but a deficiency of privacy is a problem.
	And as long as the lines of communication are open, then I think privacy is not really a problem, because your child will come to you if He or she has issues that they want to share.
	But I don't think that any particular problems that arise from a lack of intimacy between parents and children are solved by a lack of intimacy.
	So if you have some kid and you suspect them of drinking or doing drugs or whatever in their teenage years, A lack of privacy I don't think is going to solve the problem.
	I think that opening up intimate and honest lines of communication is very important.
	And you have to really work to maintain lines of communication.
	I've noticed this being a parent with Christina.
	We really have to make sure that we have a date night and we go out.
	We really have to make sure...
	Because when you're parenting, and given that we both have fairly demanding careers...
	You can spend days exchanging maybe 10 or 20 sentences unrelated to things at the moment.
	And so I think it's really important to remember to maintain those lines of communication and then an access of privacy where there is A healthy level of intimacy, I don't think is a problem.
	And I think where in excess of privacy, where there's a feeling of a need to violate privacy for the sake of keeping your child safe, I would say first to work on opening up the lines of communication with your child, and then you shouldn't have to worry about privacy.
	In other words, if you have a great relationship with your kid, I don't think you need to worry about what they're doing behind closed doors, if that makes any sense.
	Okay, I've got one about Atlas Shrugged, if you're interested.
	Oh, I love that book. I'm totally fascinated.
	Okay. Real briefly, spoiler warning for anyone who hasn't read the book.
	I'm going to be talking about part of the end.
	So stop listening now, and I will type in the chat when I'm done.
	So my question is about the character of Eddie Willers.
	There are many little things in the book I don't understand, obviously.
	It's a massive book and it's very advanced.
	But the only one that really bugs me is I don't understand Rand's treatment of Eddie Willers.
	I can't find anything that is bad about him or that he's done wrong.
	It feels like she just doomed him to die in a dark, empty field because he just wasn't quite cool enough for the cool kids table.
	And I was hoping that you could explain to me either what I'm missing or validate me.
	Now, just to remind me, I mean, and just for those who haven't read the book, Eddie Willers is a man of competence, but not brilliance, who is Dagny Taggart's assistant, is that right?
	Yes. And childhood friend as well.
	And childhood friend. It's the three of them, right?
	It's Eddie and Francisco and Dagny who are friends.
	Right. That seemed to be a bit of a formula when it came to Rand's books,
	which is not particularly problematic, but I found a little bit vain.
	And then at the end of the book, he...
	Now, is it confirmed?
	I don't remember it being confirmed that he dies.
	I think he's just howling into the wilderness because the train has stopped.
	Is that right? That's correct.
	But I don't think it confirms that he dies.
	No, but...
	I mean, either he died, because there was no obvious way for him to survive at that point, or he just continued to live out a miserable existence during the apocalypse.
	So, either way...
	But remember, I mean, it was not more than 12 minutes later, I think, that they finally corrected all the errors in the Constitution and came back to build a brave new world.
	So maybe they came down in their, you know, massive, rational-powered spaceship and lifted him away to the new Earth, right?
	I mean... It's probably possible.
	It's possible, right? But it's not confirmed that he dies.
	He's just not doing well.
	He's alone.
	Well, not alone, but he's in the wilderness, and the train is stopped, and all that, right?
	Right. So, yeah, but he's not taken away to golf sculpture or anything like that.
	Exactly. Well, I can tell you what Rand was trying to do with the character, if that helps you.
	Sure. Sure. Mm-hmm.
	That's just the nature of the beast, right?
	But one of the things that she was criticized for in her writing was that to be a hero, you had to be brilliant, right?
	I mean, if you look at Kira in We the Living, she's a brilliant engineer and a brilliant speechifier and so on.
	And the guy in We the Living, sorry, the guy in Anthem is brilliant.
	And of course, Howard Rourke is brilliant and all of that, right?
	So... So she was criticized for having a sort of Nietzschean Übermensch or Superman approach to morality, that virtue and integrity and ethics were not for the average or common man, but only for the Superman, only for the man who...
	He jumps out of his childhood like one of Jupiter's kids from his forehead.
	The one thing that's true about Ayn Rand's characters is that they have all of this massive integrity and they have no childhoods.
	They have no history. They have no parents.
	They have no history.
	And of course, this is one thing that she really needed to examine.
	Wherever you have a character whose family is around in Rand's books, that character tends to not be doing very well.
	If you look at the two major family analyses that she does in her mature novels is the Keating family in The Fountainhead and the Riordan family in Atlas Shrugged.
	And both of those families are parasitical and destructive in the extreme.
	And the only way, it seems, that she was able to create the kind of stone-faced, mercury-skinned, glorified hero that she wanted was to have them...
	And mysteriously, you know, they're orphans.
	They have no families. They just have these amazing abilities.
	They were not shaped by anyone.
	They just kind of pop out with this adamantine integrity as adults.
	And they have no family obligations.
	They have no family history.
	And that is very common.
	I think with Francisco, his father had died or something or wasn't around, but he had no family to deal with.
	And I think that it would have been better if she had examined that in herself, because I think then, if she had examined that in herself, and I'm still planning on doing a series on Rand, so I'll just touch on it very briefly here, but...
	Then I think she would have gotten closer to the issue around freedom and the family, around integrity in the family.
	I think it would have been, if she'd said to herself, why can't I create a credible hero who has a family, I think she would have been much closer to what we're talking about now, and I think would have been that much more effective in bringing about a more free world.
	But unfortunately, and for reasons that I think are psychologically probably pretty clear, if you read anything about her own life, she...
	Yeah, she had no example of it herself.
	Well, yeah, she had no example of it herself, but...
	She could not conceive of a family that was beneficial to her heroes.
	And so family ties, in a sense, were all very sticky and destructive for her.
	And I think that she avoided that by creating these heroes with no families.
	All of Rand's heroes are defood.
	That's the reality of it.
	And it's not in the way that we use the term, but they have no families.
	And that is something that is important to consider.
	It's one of the things that I began thinking about after I read her books.
	Sorry, that's a bit of a tangent, but the reality behind the Eddie Willis character was that she said that the Eddie Willis character was created to answer the critics who said that only the Superman could be moral in her story.
	So here she created a man who was not a Superman, who was not a brilliant genius, who...
	whatever... But was still moral.
	And so that was the purpose of the Eddie Willey character, was to answer those critics who said that if you're not a genius, if you're not in her super strata of moral heroes because of your amazing abilities, you can't be good.
	That was her answer. I'm not sure it was a particularly satisfying answer, because he did not seem to have a lot of personal integrity, he just seemed to be in lust with Dagli, and therefore you could argue that he just followed her along like a puppy dog, rather than having any integrity of his own.
	But that character, I agree with you, is unsatisfying, but the reason that I think he's unsatisfying is he was more of an answer to critics than he was something that was generated out of her own philosophy.
	And it's something that I've been...
	Pretty studious. I don't read my critics.
	I mean, I'll certainly read people who have questions or comments or criticisms of particular aspects of my philosophical arguments or reasoning, but I don't read critics as a whole because I don't want what I do to be driven by Criticism without rational basis.
	And so I think that she fell into that trap of trying to create something that answered a criticism implicitly, not explicitly, and didn't do a very good job of answering it.
	Because it's, you know, in the cast of thousands that is Atlas Shrugged, It seems that if you put one guy in there who's got some heroic traits or has some nobility or integrity, even though he's not a genius, that doesn't exactly answer the question.
	That's just throwing one person in.
	You don't have any black people on your board of 10,000.
	It's like, I'll hire one black guy.
	Well, I don't think you've really solved it.
	The problem from an institutional standpoint or any racism from an institutional, you've just hired one black guy.
	And to me, he's in a sense the token black guy because there were people who said her cast of characters wasn't, quote, diverse enough, if that makes any sense.
	Actually, it just occurred to me while you were saying that a similar problem is Cheryl.
	Cheryl Brooks winds up marrying Jim Taggart.
	She's sort of similar to Eddie in that she's also moral and competent but never rises to any great heights.
	And she has her commit suicide.
	So, there's another somewhat unsatisfying ending for one of the only two characters in the book that I think are actually relatable.
	Like, obviously, I'll never be a John Galt, but I could certainly be an Eddie Willers.
	I could be a moral, competent, and intelligent person who's just not quite good enough to single-handedly build a transcontinental railroad against all the forces of the world.
	Right, that wasn't Gal. But no, first of all, I wouldn't put yourself short on any category of possibility.
	I think that that's something that's still worth exploring.
	But I agree with you.
	I don't think she answered the problem of how you have integrity in your own life, because the only way that these people had a survival possibility at all was to attach themselves to one of these magical, family-less...
	People, right?
	I guess, well, Daphne had, her mother and father were dead, but her brother was a real parasite in the same way that Philip Reardon, Hank Reardon's brother, was also a real parasite.
	In the same way that Peter Keating's mother was also a real parasite.
	And so, in a sense, right, I mean, the thing that was unjust about the Randian universe, which I've certainly tried to address in my approach to philosophy, is that, I mean, have you read The Fountainhead?
	Yes. Okay, so let's just do a quick switcheroo, right?
	So let's say that Howard Rourke, genetically, was exactly the same, but was adopted by Peter Keating's mother.
	And let's say that Peter Keating was adopted by Howard Rourke's adoptive parents, right?
	So whatever Howard Rourke's parents did...
	You know, they obviously did some stuff that, at least according to Ayn Rand, was good, because Howard Rock was her hero, right?
	And so, yeah, maybe it wasn't so great that he blew up the housing development.
	Oops, spoiler. Anyway, I'm sure everyone's read this stuff by now or won't bother, won't be bothered too much.
	But... In the Rand universe, Rourke's parents did stuff right, which apparently involves not being around at all, which I don't quite agree with, but let's say that in Rand's universe, Rourke's parents did stuff right, and in Rand's universe, Peter Keating's mom did things really badly,
	right? She bossed him, she controlled him, she was neurotically attached, there was probably an eatable complex, she micromanaged everything, she lived through her son, she was obsessively cross-identified with him emotionally, and Probably.
	Yeah, well, the odds are quite likely.
	But if Peter Keating was...
	Who he was because of his mother, then why does he become a villain?
	Why is he so vilified and so damned in the Randian universe?
	Why is there no pity for his...
	For his mom, for what he had been exposed to through his pretty toxic mother.
	Well, I think that's a sort of significant problem.
	On the other hand, in Atlas Shrugged, you have people who rise to greatness, who achieve moral clarity and integrity.
	Like Hank Reardon and other people, but just focusing on Hank Reardon, well, Hank Reardon had a manipulative and toxic family that sort of undermined and used him and controlled him and exploited him and so on, and showed him no respect and all that.
	They weren't physically abusive, but they were verbally manipulative and destructive, it seemed fairly extreme.
	Well, the problem that arises from that is that Hank Reardon did not achieve moral clarity with regards to his own family, except through 1,100 pages of excruciatingly slow lessons and oblique lessons from other people, particularly from Francisco, but also from others.
	So I think it was Francisco who gave him the key to his own family.
	And... So, how does one develop integrity in the absence of following these magically defued, amazingly pure heroes?
	How does the average person have integrity without attaching themselves to somebody who's heroic?
	And I don't think that she answered that question.
	I've certainly tried to do my best to answer it, because I think it is the most important question when it comes to ethics.
	And so...
	It's like saying, well, you can't eat well unless you apprentice to a nutritionist for seven years.
	Well, that's not really a good argument if you want people to eat well.
	So I've really tried to focus on solving that, but I think it's a very, very interesting question that you've brought up around the role of Rand's heroes and how they achieve.
	They don't seem to achieve things through introspection.
	I mean, Ayn Rand was pretty resolutely against introspection, and I thought that was a really tragic flaw in her philosophy.
	She herself said that she had no conception of psychology, no understanding of psychology or of self-knowledge.
	Nathaniel Brandon's level of knowledge when he was associated with the Ayn Rand Institute is perhaps a debate for another time, and he did later apologize for his handling of psychology in those years.
	But without introspection, you don't have the power to grow on your own.
	You have to attach yourself to these other people.
	And by trying to talk up the value of introspection, of journaling, of therapy, of things that are under your control, of growth that you can achieve yourself, for yourself, with yourself, that's something that I've tried to give, which is the transition to hero without attaching yourself to somebody who's...
	Who I don't think even exists.
	Who's this kind of pure Randian hero.
	She didn't focus on introspection.
	She focused on the heroes will give you the answers slowly.
	As part of crucial plot points.
	To keep the mystery alive.
	And then you will see.
	But it was not through a process of introspection.
	And certainly none of her characters.
	You can't imagine any of her characters going through therapy.
	Or that being part of their dramatic process.
	Or journaling. Or looking at their dreams.
	Or any of those sorts of things.
	Which is around basics of self-knowledge.
	And that, I think, was a real omission and the reason, I think, fundamentally why the objective is philosophy did not fail because it was not reproducible in the absence of a leader.
	Hank and Dagny specifically try to block out any thoughts about trying to understand what's going on around them and just keep going forward.
	Yeah. Right.
	Those were all great.
	Hank Reardon says, specifically when he goes through the agony, I think when Dagny says that she's married Peter Keating, he looks at his own pain from a cold distance.
	He's, you know, okay, so this hurts, but I'm going to rise above it.
	I mean, this is all psychologically very unhealthy stuff, right?
	To sort of distance yourself from your own agony and look at it coldly and close it off and reject it and repress it and so on.
	And that happens repeatedly in her books.
	I mean, frankly, she was kind of macho, right?
	So she was not touchy-feely in that way.
	She had a real temper, a really vicious temper, and she certainly in her own private life did not follow the ethics that she proposed in her public persona or in her books.
	You know, she says, any man who fakes reality is fundamentally corrupt to the core.
	She had this absolutism where, like, if there's a sunspot, the whole sun goes out, which to me is nonsense, right?
	I mean, you can have sunspots and still get a good tan, right?
	So she had this 100% or 0% absolutism, which is, to me, a fairly primitive way of thinking.
	You're talking about Rand right now, right?
	Yeah, Rand. And so she said, you know, a man who fakes reality even to the slightest degree is an utterly corrupt monster and so on.
	But of course she hid her affair with Brandon for like, what, 13 years from everyone involved?
	I mean, isn't that faking reality?
	Anyway, I mean, she just set up these standards that were impossible, I think, more for self-aggrandizement and for a sense of superiority and domination, and, of course, to unleash her temper on people for their supposed transgressions, rather than accept that, hey, you know, virtue like health is a struggle, and there's no easy answers, and nobody's purely good, and to...
	To have these absolute standards to me was just a way of her unleashing her punitive aggression on others.
	You know, with all due respect to her brilliance, her genius, artistic and philosophical, I think that the lack of self-knowledge is why her philosophy was unable to take root and grow without a central leader, which to me, if you need a central leader, it's not philosophy.
	Yeah. Yeah, I agree with that.
	I mean, that's all good stuff, but it's all somewhat tangential, so I'm going to try to bring it back down to the original question, just so we can close it with some kind of symmetry.
	Wait, wait. Any man who allows even 1% of a tangent is utterly corrupt.
	I'm sorry, go on. Given that novels are generally morality tales, and certainly this is one, would you agree that the ending of the Eddie Willers character was just?
	Well, now, do you mean just effectively or just by...
	No, I think you said it was unsatisfying.
	I don't remember the justice thing, but neither here nor there.
	Now, do you mean just within the Randian universe or do you mean just in, say, the context that I would describe?
	I guess you can make that distinction and they're both useful.
	I guess one is more about Rand and one is more about truth.
	If I had to pick one, I would take truth, but you can give me both.
	Alright, okay, well I'll try not to tangent and please rein me in if I do.
	Well, within the Randian universe, he was dependent for his integrity upon a more powerful personality.
	So in the absence of that personality, he's part of the engine that stops.
	And so his fate in the Randian universe seems quite within the argument that she's making.
	Okay, that engine metaphor just kind of really hit home for me.
	Got it.
	So, for instance, if there had been a scene in Atlas Shrugged where Dagny was about to do something really corrupt or bad or whatever, and Eddie Willers had taken control and reoriented her to something right, in other words, if the student had become the master, then he would have ended up in Galt's Galt's, if the student had become the master, then he would have Because he would have shown that kind of leadership.
	But he was dependent.
	And his dependence upon Dagny becomes all the more suspicious when you realize that he had an intense erotic attraction to her throughout the entire book.
	So we don't know whether he's acting with integrity or just, you know, following the ethically inclined leveling plane of his rolling gonads, right?
	So we don't know for sure.
	But we do know that he did not take a leadership position with his betters and therefore he was not...
	Since the mind is the motor, right?
	The 20th century motor is the mind, right?
	That's the magic thing that creates electricity out of the air.
	And so given that he was a second-hander, when the mind leaves and goes to Galt Gulch, the engine stops and he's got no motive power of his own.
	So I think that's fair within her context.
	And I think you could even say that objectively it's fair.
	So, for instance, if he had been a hero, then he would have taken a leadership position with regards to his own attraction towards Dagny, and he wouldn't have just kept it to himself in some noble, long-suffering way.
	He would have said, you know, Dagny, drop him, or something.
	And I don't know exactly how this would have occurred, although Dagny seemed to like it kind of rough, like all of Aran's heroines, but...
	He would have acted on that.
	He would have wooed her. He would have pursued her.
	He would have taken a leadership role, at least from his own desire standpoint.
	And then he would have ended up in Gold's Gulch, and he wouldn't.
	But he was dependent.
	He was a second-hander, even though that wasn't her intention with the role.
	I think that she could not sustain his own self-starting possibilities, and so he did end up inert at the end because she'd left.
	Okay, that makes sense. And that's probably why it's frustrating, because she had one aim for him but was unable to fulfill it, I think.
	Yes. Yes, that makes sense.
	I mean, if motive power is somewhat equated with morality in her world, then if she was trying to make a moral character who was not a superhero but did not give him motive power, then she clearly failed or was at least ambivalent about what she was attempting to do.
	Right. No, and I think that she was.
	I think that she was. And look, I mean, I understand this is all just amateur nonsense, right?
	As far as I don't know what her...
	I never met the woman, and I've read a couple of biographies, and this is all secondhand, and I've read some of her...
	I mean, I've read most of what she's written, I think.
	But I think that with Ayn Rand, the great challenge was vanity.
	And look, I mean, she was a ridiculously competent woman.
	I mean, she was ridiculously able.
	I mean, she was successful in her movie dressing career.
	She wrote some of the most successful novels in a language that she didn't even learn until she was in her teens, I think, right?
	I mean, imagine you and I going over and trying to write the great Russian novel.
	I mean, it's crazy.
	She was ridiculously competent.
	And with that ridiculous competence...
	There came some vanity, and I think that is the downfall.
	Now, with vanity, the problem with vanity, one of the many problems with vanity, is that vanity can't stand to be unnecessary.
	So you want people to be dependent upon you if you're vain.
	And so I think that she wanted to create a philosophy of liberation for others, and of creating the same motive power she had for herself in others.
	But the problem is that she could not take herself out of the equation, and that reflected itself in her novels.
	And it reflects itself in the idea that she appointed an intellectual heir, which to me is crazy.
	Everyone who's an objectivist should be an intellectual heir, because they should all be able to do, more or less, the philosophy themselves.
	And she was for the free market, and no one in the free market appoints an heir, right, in the free market.
	It would be like Einstein saying, now you're in charge of physics.
	Yeah, I mean, now you're the guy who's the great physicist.
	It's like, no, no, no, let the market determine that, right?
	But that level of control that she had, which I think came from her vanity and her need to remain essential to the philosophy that she created, for people to come to her for an answer.
	And I've been listening to, as sort of part of my series of getting ready for my series on RAND, which this may be a part of, I guess, but I've been listening to Ayn Rand answers.
	And when people ask her questions, she doesn't generally give them principles, she generally gives them answers.
	And I think, I mean, I'm sure people can come up with lots of examples of me doing that too, but I've really tried to focus on giving people the principles so they can figure stuff out for themselves.
	I really have focused on having learned as much as I can from A movement that I massively admire, like objectivism, is to make myself unnecessary and the equation is very, very important.
	I mean, that's why I say, you know, go to therapy, talk to people in your life, develop your circle of friends, learn how to introspect, learn how to understand yourself, because that gives the motive power to other people.
	And if they get all of that, I may be there as an informative resource, but I'm certainly not essential to the process.
	I would hate for what I'm doing to result in anyone saying, I have to go ask Steph.
	Right now, some people may say, Steph's opinion might be interesting or helpful here, but it's not essential by any means at all.
	And that the real freedom that is going to come from people's lives is going to come from having nothing to do with me, but from developing their own resources, their own Inner resources in terms of introspection and self-knowledge, outer resources in terms of therapy and a support group for their plan for gymnastic moral excellence.
	But it's not around...
	I don't want to be the center of the wheel.
	I don't want to be the hub, right?
	I don't want there to be anything to go through me or for me to be any kind of authority or for people to say, well, what does Steph say or anything like that.
	Other than, again, just other than as a resource that might be thought-provoking and helpful.
	And I think that she was unable to let go of the movement.
	She was unable to try to make herself obsolete.
	And this could be because she was not an entrepreneur.
	Certainly when I was an entrepreneur, my constant goal was to make myself obsolete, right?
	So I was a programmer, and my goal was to make tools to make other people program as effectively and efficiently as I was so that I could start managing.
	And then when I started managing, my goal was to, managing programmers, my goal was to develop team leads so that I could start, go out and do some selling.
	And once the selling, I was bored of the selling, then I wanted to develop other people to do the selling so that I could start on the marketing.
	And so I was constantly driven as an entrepreneur to make myself unnecessary.
	And of course, that's the goal of parenting as well in the long run.
	Sorry, go ahead. I was driven as an entrepreneur to make myself Sorry, that's really all I wanted to say, and I don't mean to malign Ms.
	Rand. I mean, obviously I have my problems with her, but again, this is sunspots on the sun, but I was very disappointed with where objectivism went, and I was very disappointed with how it turned out, and I've tried my best.
	If I'm going to make mistakes, I don't want to make the same mistakes.
	I don't mind making different mistakes.
	I would just feel like a real ass if I made the same mistakes that objectivism did.
	And I think this idea that there is a central authority with the answers, that objectivism is not something that you internalize, they don't give you the tools for self-knowledge through objectivism.
	And I think without that, you can't develop your own integrity.
	you remain dependent like Eddie Willers on other people for your integrity.
	And in a sense, you could see that the end of Atlas Shrugged is the end of objectivism, right?
	So one sign ran goes, the motor stops.
	And that really is what happens.
	And that to me is really tragic.
	Again, if she'd done a dream analysis of her own work before finishing it, which is what I always do with my novels, then I think she would have seen what she was predicting.
	I definitely like that interpretation.
	So what I'm going to take away from all this is vanity is bad.
	Steph can't stay on topic. I'm sorry.
	What? Vanity is bad.
	Vanity is bad. All right.
	No, this is great. Look, I could talk about objectivism all day because I find it an absolutely fascinating and brilliant, very successful disaster scenario.
	And so anytime you want to talk about it.
	I'll try to hold on for the series.
	Yeah, yeah, but call in.
	You know, if you have more, this is a good way for me to sort of finish, or finalize my thoughts about the series.
	And I do a lot of criticizing of Rand, and I just wanted to reiterate that, I mean, I have massive admiration for the woman.
	I mean, to do what she did when she did it was really astounding.
	I can even forgive the fact that she never quite outgrew her 30s dialogue, 30s movies dialogue, you dirty rats.
	But she was just a stone genius.
	And, you know, 90 percent of what I have, I owe to Rand.
	So I just wanted to be real clear on that.
	Yeah.
	I mean, to me, the fact that she's ignored by the feminists single handedly discredits the entire feminist movement.
	I mean, she was the greatest philosopher since Aristotle.
	Well, certainly she was the most popular philosopher and the most influential in the general populace.
	She's by far the most influential thinker of the 20th century.
	I mean, nobody who wrote philosophy came even close to Rand in terms of sales.
	So, yeah, the fact that feminists dislike Rand or ignore Rand and the fact that they dislike Thatcher and ignore Thatcher because Thatcher was right-wing is, yeah, it's embarrassing and ridiculous.
	But, you know, as I've said before, it's...
	It's not about women. It's more about socialism.
	Alright, well, I want to yield the microphone.
	I'm sure we can talk more at Porkfest.
	Oh, you're going to be there? What's your name?
	Oh, yeah, definitely. This is Ofer in New Hampshire.
	Oh, hi, hi, hi. Well, I really look forward to meeting you.
	Certainly, our email correspondence over the years has always been very pleasurable, and so I really do look forward to meeting you there.
	Great. Awesome.
	I'll see you there. Well, hopefully people know something about objectivism.
	That wasn't just a whole bunch of babble like we were talking about, the monstrous dance in the fiend folio.
	So hopefully that was of interest to others.
	All right. We have a gap.
	Grab a mic. Grab a phone.
	Let's get ready to ramble.
	Hello? Hello.
	Hey, this is Joe.
	Joe? Maybe I shouldn't give my last name.
	I don't know. I'm a science teacher.
	Okay. I'm a science teacher in Iowa, and this is my first year teaching, and it's been fairly nerve-wracking, and it happens to be about one year since I started listening to you.
	So, you know, it feels like there's ropes pulling me in two directions, and, you know...
	My colleagues saying, teaching is tough, but we're helping these kids out, and that's all worth it in the end.
	And sort of the view that, well, what I'm doing may actually be harming them, and I've sort of been coming to that conclusion.
	And I guess what I've decided is I would like to stay in public education for two or three more years just to hone my own...
	Profession, but then I would like to either start a private school or join one that I agree with.
	That's just a little backstory.
	It doesn't necessarily relate to the question I had for you.
	You talked earlier, I forget which podcast it was, but this idea that people or Maybe adult isn't the right word, but I'll say adults are rational.
	But babies clearly can't make rational decisions.
	Maybe rational is not the word either, but adults can.
	They understand morality, and babies can't understand morality.
	And a question I've been wrestling with the last couple weeks is, Where, you know, where lies the boundary between those two?
	Because I think it's pretty important how you teach an adult from how you teach, well, you know, a toddler, someone developing.
	And I know that the transition between the two, you know, it changes for each person and, you You know, the brain continues to develop until the age around 25.
	So I guess I just want to hear your thoughts on, you know, what's the demarcation between an adult and a baby?
	Well, nothing but easy questions today.
	Okay, again, I don't know.
	The science is, I think, still inconclusive, obviously, and will never be perfectly precise, because it will vary from individual to individual.
	But I think it's important to clarify what I mean by morality.
	I think in the context that you're using it, and if I'm using it incorrectly, just let me know.
	Babies can't understand UPB, can't understand abstract arguments for morality, and I would say toddlers can't either.
	In the same way that my daughter can pick up and throw a ball, but she can't understand the physics and the equations that describe the motion of the ball, if that makes any sense.
	So she knows that things fall down, because she uses the phrase, fall down, at least 12,000 times a minute.
	In fact, when she was dancing today, and she fell down, she'd say, fall down!
	But she doesn't understand that objects accelerate towards the Earth at 9.8 meters per second per second.
	She obviously would have no understanding of the math, but she knows that things fall down.
	And I think that the science is fairly clear on this, that children as long as 9 to 12 to 15 months can understand some basic principles of empathy and what we would describe as morality.
	Children as young as 18 months, and sometimes even younger, can understand the difference between A standard of cultural politeness and a standard of morality, right?
	So they can say, well, I have to hang my coat on this hook because that has my name on it or whatever, maybe a little older than 18 months.
	But that's a different rule than don't hit.
	Don't hit is like a universal thing, which I have to do everywhere, but having to hang my coat on this hook with this color, that is a rule, but it's not a moral rule.
	It's just a convenience rule or a social rule or something.
	So children can very early differentiate.
	Now, can they describe in an abstract sense?
	No, of course not, right?
	But they do understand it.
	So, for instance, my daughter began feeding me, I think at about...
	Seven or eight months.
	I can't remember exactly. So she understood that daddy has a breathing hole which likes to eat food in the same way that she does.
	So I like to eat. My daddy likes to eat.
	If I give him food, he's happy in the same way that when I have food, I'm happy.
	And she started feeding me very early.
	Now, clearly that was an example of rudimentary empathy, that she understood that That my mouth was like her mouth, that I had preferences like she had preferences, so there was a mirroring and an understanding of that.
	And so, for instance, and she's been doing this for some months now, she will point to her own I and say I, and then she will point to my I and say I. So she understands that they're both I's.
	She's abstracted to that level.
	Now, she can't understand the definition of an I. She wouldn't know how biologically it originated or anything.
	But she does have...
	Some very basic empathy.
	She has an understanding of reciprocity and so on.
	She went through a brief phase where she would do things that would be painful because she's never experienced any pain from my wife or myself.
	We'd have to say, ow, that hurt, and then she would stop doing it.
	She's gone through that very brief phase of understanding that she can do things that are painful and that it's not pleasant, so she doesn't do that, of course.
	So I would say that she has some rudimentary aspects of morality already under her very tiny and cute belt.
	But that is not to say that she understands ethics from a philosophical standpoint and maybe the degree to which she can abstract them to new things I think is actually pretty good because she doesn't do anything to hurt others.
	She can point at another kid and say, you know, boy or girl or I or whatever.
	So she does abstract to new things.
	Now, of course, when we become adults, We can abstract these principles to really big general concepts that would apply to everyone at all times, to space aliens, to new circumstances, to other planets, and so on.
	She's obviously nowhere close to that, but she does have some ethical responsibility at the moment.
	And this doesn't mean anything to do with punishment, but it does mean that since she does understand these concepts, I do expect her to abide by them.
	And that doesn't mean, again, that sounds very punitive.
	It doesn't mean anything to do with punishment.
	But it does mean that I will correct her if she does something that is not right when it comes to...
	Like, if she hurts me, I will say, please don't do that.
	That's not nice. That's painful.
	And so I will correct her.
	It's nothing to do with punishment.
	It's just to do with correction.
	On the other hand, if she...
	She has the same word for strawberry as she does for butterfly, ba-ba, right?
	And belly button.
	She has the same word for belly button, strawberry, and butterfly.
	Now, if she points at a butterfly and says...
	Baba. I don't say, no, no, it's butterfly.
	I just say, yes, butterfly.
	And I sort of respond back to her with enthusiasm when she points to her belly button and says, Baba.
	I say, yes, that's the belly button.
	No, it's not Baba.
	It's belly button. So I don't correct her on things which she can't get yet.
	She can't get belly button.
	It's a complicated phrase. She did get apricot, which is really cool, just the other day.
	But she's not able to do those things, and so I don't hold her responsible for, and I will enthusiastically...
	I echo them back in a more precise format, but I don't correct her in the same way.
	So I do give her some moral responsibility at 17 months, but of course no sense of punishment or anything like that.
	When we get older, of course, we can abstract and we can understand the consequences of her actions much better.
	Although I will say this, again, I'm constantly surprised.
	She's very good at understanding the consequences of her actions.
	She almost never falls down.
	When she comes to a step that's just a little bit too big for her, she will always stop and hold up her hand until I come and help her down or my wife comes to help her down when she wants to climb up something.
	So she knows that if she steps on something that's too high, she might fall down and hurt herself, and so she will wait for help.
	On the other hand, if I try to help her with something that I'm anxious about but she's not, she will very assertively bat my hand away, right?
	So she's just learning how to climb down stairs, or as I like to call it, pouring herself down the stairs like a slow-motion slinky.
	And if I try to help her go down the stairs, she will push my hand away because she's like, I want to do it myself.
	And so she is aware of the consequences of her actions to some degree, but obviously it's still fairly rudimentary.
	So I don't want to go too much further, but those would be my major distinctions, and tell me if this even remotely answered anything that you may have had queries with.
	Well, I guess in an earlier podcast you mentioned that when your daughter was younger you had to change her diaper, even when She didn't want it changed, and your sort of take on this was that, well, you know, imagine it from her perspective, you know, in 10 or 20 years, looking back, of course, she would have wanted that diaper changed back then.
	And keep in mind, I'm asking these questions from the perspective of the teacher, so I'm trying to apply, you know, these ideas that we're talking about to students.
	The challenge I find myself in is what if for an older, you know, maybe seven or eight-year-old person, what if something...
	I mean, are they old enough to make abstract decisions?
	See, I don't think they are, just from a developmental point of view.
	And so I think there's something like...
	Um, us having to step in and change their diaper, um, that would have to happen even, you know, at that age.
	Um, and I guess I just wanted to hear what you had to say about specifically how the parent or teacher or adults would transition from, um, doing things like changing the diaper even when the kid doesn't want to do it to,
	um, I think, as you said with your last caller, making yourself obsolete and giving the reins over to the kid themselves.
	Well, I think it's a negotiation.
	Myself, I think that's been certainly how it's been with Isabella and myself.
	I speak for my wife, but it's been a negotiation, right?
	So I have tried to help her to achieve what she wants within the realm of safety.
	I've tried to help her achieve what she wants But at the same time, when she wants to start doing it herself, there's a transition point, right?
	So, again, I know you're talking about older kids, but I'll keep this very brief.
	And we'll see if it does any help, right?
	So, she wants to learn.
	She wants to feed herself, right?
	So, this is a basic thing that goes on.
	So, if I'm giving her some yoga...
	Originally she was very happy to be spoon-fed the yogurt and then she began to want to grab the spoon and feed herself.
	And originally this just meant it was like basically throwing an open cup of yogurt at a highly accelerated fan, right?
	It just splattered it everywhere because that's what happened.
	And sometimes that's okay, but sometimes you just don't really feel like cleaning everything up and changing her and giving her yet another bath.
	So there's times when you just, no, I know you want to feed yourself, but I'm going to feed you because we have to go and I don't want to clean everything up again.
	But at the same time, you do have to relinquish the control of the spoon and you do have to give the child the opportunity to learn how to feed themselves because if you keep doing it, they're never going to learn it.
	But at the same time, there are times when it's not convenient or whatever.
	Now, she's at the phase where she can mostly feed herself an entire cup of yogurt without spilling.
	Now, it's still a little. You have to kind of hold your hand up sometimes because there's big globs and she still turns it around in the air occasionally and so on.
	But there has been a transition where she is the one who gets to do it.
	But she very much took the lead on that, right?
	So I would feed her and she grabbed the spoon from me.
	She wanted to. She was really insistent that she do it for herself.
	In the same way that when she is able to step down a particular step, she is very insistent that I not help her.
	And so to me, it's a negotiation.
	Obviously, there's times when a child can't do, a child can't feed herself.
	And then there's a time in the middle where they can kind of feed themselves.
	And then there's a time where they can mostly feed themselves.
	And there's just a negotiation.
	But to me, I can't think of an instance where Isabella has not taken the lead.
	we didn't teach her to walk by putting her on a ramp, right?
	I mean, she wanted to walk in the same way that she wants to feed herself, in the same way that she's now fascinated by the toilet because she wants to learn how to go to the washroom on the toilet because she wants to be like the adults in the same way that when she was watching the dancers today, I didn't have to move her legs for her and make in the same way that she's now fascinated by the toilet She wants to learn how to go to the washroom on the toilet because she wants to be like the adults in the same way that when she was watching the dancers today, I didn't have to move her legs for her and make her want to dance.
	She really wanted to dance.
	And so it's helping and then it's accepting when the child wants to do things for him or herself and keeping them safe and encouraging them to master that skill.
	So to me it was always a negotiation if that helps at all.
	Yeah, that helps.
	Your voice says yes, your tone says not so much, right?
	Because you're dealing with all the kids, right?
	Oh, no, no, no. I meant my tone to say that helps, but my head is still pretty tall.
	You know, I have a lot more questions, I guess.
	Tell me, do you mind answering a question of mine?
	Oh, certainly.
	I'd really like to know, this is your first year of teaching, right?
	Yes. I would love to know, and you can wax eloquent if you like, or take as long time.
	I would really like to know just what your experience has been like going in to teach.
	I mean, I taught at a daycare.
	I was an assistant teacher. I was an assistant teacher at a gifted kids program for high school students.
	It was never my full-time job, and I would love to know what your experience has been going in.
	The pluses, the minuses, the good, the bad, what the kids are like, what the environment is like, what the bureaucracy is like, and how it matches your expectations.
	Okay. I'd be happy to tell you.
	I do have to give you just a little bit of context.
	I went through a master's in science education program before becoming a teacher, and it was an outstanding program, and I think it gave me a pretty big head start on not just how kids learn and rationales for teaching, but also what you can kind of expect from kids.
	Colleagues and administration kind of how to dodge bullets, I guess, how to stay on everyone's good side.
	So it was how to be politically savvy.
	So the program I went through, I think, has a lot to do with my...
	Well, it helped me develop my passion for teaching, particularly science education.
	That said, my first month or two, I was guns a-blazing.
	I would, you know, lesson plan for maybe two hours and then teach and then stay after school, working with the student, then grading, then lesson planning again.
	My first year of teaching, it was not a 40-hour-a-week job.
	It was much more like between 60 and 80 hours a week.
	Very busy and Um, it, you know, there just wasn't much, uh, it just felt like a lot of failures, I guess.
	Um, you know, you get parents upset that I'm not, I, well, I shouldn't say you.
	I, I, I had parents who were upset that I weren't, that I wasn't, uh, going out of the book like most teachers do, that I was having them do labs and activities and, uh, Well, if it's not out of the book, it's not straightforward for the parent, and so they get a little anxious.
	So a couple months into teaching, the high stress from all the work combined with the parents contacting me and the administration saying, you know, the principal stopping me and saying, well, you know,
	know you could teach a bit more traditionally and traditional means lecture and book assignments and you know I think it hit me somewhere around October that I I don't know if I can survive this this This is just taking a beating voluntarily.
	Fortunately, I had colleagues who I graduated with who I called them almost every night just for moral support.
	The low was January, February.
	Most activities I did, especially in physics, we didn't have materials for.
	So I had to go to Walmart or Home Depot, these kind of stores, to buy the equipment myself.
	You know, and then build the lab and do the lab.
	I have no personal life, or I had none at that time.
	And finally, I caved around February and March.
	And teaching is a lot easier when you sort of sell your soul.
	And it's a lot easier to get along with colleagues.
	But it's, I mean, I decided I can't do this.
	I can't. Be in this profession, but then do it halfway.
	And so that's kind of why I decided I need to get out of an institution that claims it's helping kids, but certainly doesn't help someone who puts his heart into helping kids.
	So I guess that's my experience.
	That's very, very interesting.
	So... In what ways were the non-traditional teaching methods, why were they so much more work?
	Was it because you just weren't able to follow the standard curriculum?
	And also, what issues did you have with the standard curriculum?
	The issues were the standard curriculum.
	It's sort of a difference between teaching facts, or what I call teaching knowledge, versus teaching information.
	So, for instance, if I wanted to go the traditional route and I wanted kids to, say, understand acids and bases, what I would do is I would define an acid, define a base, define how they react.
	We might do what's called a cookbook lab where the kid can just do step-by-step like you would in a cookbook and then they have their finished product.
	And that's the traditional route and they learn a few trivia facts about acids and bases and the sad part for me is you know a year or two from them they know they remember very little the problem with the traditional approach is it's a you know poor information into the brain and hope it sticks model where This isn't my idea.
	Research supports that.
	That doesn't work.
	The research that I studied in the master's program supports what's called a constructivist view where kids essentially create their own knowledge.
	You can't just pour knowledge into kids' brains.
	I shouldn't even say kids. People think this way.
	You can't just... Declare knowledge and then have people believe it.
	And, you know, I'm glad that's the case.
	So the alternative way of teaching it would be to, well, just I'll take unit on the essence and basis for an example.
	You know, day one, I present the kids with 10 to 15 solutions.
	And then say, I want you to put a drop or two on these solutions on whatever materials you can think of.
	They just have to be materials that are tossed at the end.
	And so one good one is, if I had the strong acid and you drip it on to a hard-boiled egg, about 15 minutes later, it sort of burns itself through a good portion of the top of the egg.
	And so they get a sense of acids and bases without even knowing those words.
	and from there we can say okay well after this day or two lab of just looking at the effects of these different compounds what are some descriptions we can give them so then they define what what this type of chemical is what that type of chemical is and then at the very end of that I say okay this one we're going to call an acid this one we're going to call a base so the difference is The traditional route, you just say, here's an asset, here's a definition, here's a base, here's a definition.
	And the second route, they sort of build the definition, and at the very end you say, most people call this an asset.
	And what's nice about this is, I mean, there are plenty of benefits.
	The two big ones, for me at least, is it's more consistent with how science actually works.
	Scientists don't, when they want to study something, get it from a book.
	They have to go out and do experiments themselves and collect information from the labs that they do.
	You know, I guess this is more consistent with how people learn, so the odds of this sticking is a lot better.
	Oh, and I guess I should have said three things.
	This requires a bit more curiosity and creativity than the traditional route does.
	Right, right. How familiar do the students seem to be with the scientific method as a whole?
	Very, very familiar.
	So, I mean, I think they probably get it sixth or seventh grade.
	But, you know, it's kind of the same problem where when you tell kids that the scientific method is, you know, hypothesize, come up with a, oh, I don't know actually what the supposedly scientific method officially is, but something like observe, hypothesize, test, And then create a theory or a law, something like that.
	And the kids can rattle it off better than I can.
	But when it comes to applying that methodology, you know, at least for the first half of the year, the question is always, what am I supposed to do next?
	So I guess they know the theory, they just can't really apply it.
	Right. I remember my own scientific education in government schools was, it was very specific.
	It was like, you know, this is a frog.
	This is, you know, this is the inside of a frog.
	This is different kinds of plants.
	This is meiosis. Now, to me, what I always wanted, in hindsight, was for somebody to say, The scientific method is not about this.
	The scientific method is about how to think, how to understand the world.
	So, for instance, let's take the scientific method and figure out whether Santa Claus is real or not.
	How would we know, right? And then, let's do Jesus.
	And I know you wouldn't be able to do that.
	But that, to me, would be a way of teaching how to think that they could actually use for the rest of their lives, rather than, when do I use meiosis and mitosis?
	Never, right? But it was always around the specifics.
	As you say, acids and bases and the periodic table of the elements and gases expanding when heated and all that.
	But it was never around, here's how to think.
	And the scientific method is just one example of how to think.
	And you can apply this to other problems.
	Like, how do we know whether ghosts exist?
	What about UFOs? Well, UFOs are not self-contradictory entities, so they could exist, but ghosts are, so they can't.
	And, you know, all of this kind of stuff.
	That, to me, would have been much more helpful because that would have helped me to form a clear view of the world from a rational and empirical standpoint rather than memorizing more tables of the elements.
	And unfortunately, I mean, that's what school is.
	At least in the public school that I work at, it is largely memorization of facts.
	I think... You know, the math department gets hit pretty hard because what kids are taught there is not how to apply mathematical ideas to new situations.
	They're taught little tricks.
	There's this cross-multiplying trick that every kid knows, and then when they come to my chemistry class, I have to...
	Sort of un-teach them this trick because it can't apply to the more complex situations that we talk about.
	So they don't, I mean, what I would like is for them to know the deeper theory as to why that little trick works.
	Then they know when to apply it, but instead they just know the trick.
	And I think this is, although I haven't sat in every single class, this is probably true with most classes at this school.
	It's easier to teach trivia than it is to teach how to think.
	Sure, nobody gets offended by trivia.
	If I was a math teacher, the first thing I would do is say, okay, here's the national debt.
	Here's how many adults there are.
	Here's how many years to retirement.
	Here's how much we owe on everything.
	Let's try and figure out exactly how much you are completely screwed.
	That would be something that would be tangible for them, that would give them a motive.
	Here's the debt that your elders are leaving you with.
	That, to me, would be something that would be interesting.
	Yeah, and I have a friend who just came up with this idea, and I love it. Teaching math to very young kids by teaching them cooking.
	We're teaching them specifically baking, because let's say you want to double a recipe, you have to double each ingredient, and young kids, at least my young cousins, love to cook, especially when there's an adult there who's also excited about it.
	So I guess you can teach these ideas in interesting ways that apply to them.
	And I think application, actually, a lot of teachers do try to get ideas to apply to kids.
	But I would still say that those ideas, even though they might apply in some way, if they're taught as knowledge instead of understanding, there's still that root problem.
	Yeah, I mean, kids love what affects them.
	Kids love, because they're more immediate than adults, right?
	So you and I can get all fussed about really abstract things, but kids are around tangible things.
	My daughter at the fair had the most fun when we were at a little game where ducks go around in a swirly pond, and she was grabbing the ducks, and she was lining up the ducks, and as my wife said, finally Isabella has all her ducks in a row, which I thought was sheer genius.
	She loved that more than looking at the rollercoaster, though she was interested in the rollercoaster, because she couldn't affect the rollercoaster, but she could affect the ducks.
	She could do something with the ducks.
	They could respond to her movement.
	So kids love stuff that is immediate to them.
	And the challenge, of course, is teaching abstract knowledge in a way that is immediate to children.
	And I think that that is...
	I mean, you could easily teach them about agnosticism by promising them a present and then giving them an empty box.
	That would be something that would be really immediate to them, though perhaps a little traumatic.
	You'd have to have backup presence for them.
	But you could teach them very tangible things, but it has to be immediate.
	It has to be something that is in their hands.
	And I think that's interesting, what you're talking about in terms of the acid and dropping it on various things, because that is something they can affect and something they can touch and change.
	In terms of teacher lingo, this is called...
	Learning concrete to abstract.
	The concrete stuff is the stuff you can hold on your hands or manipulate, and then the abstract are, you know, the stuff you can't manipulate hands on.
	I gotta tell you this because I think it's kind of a joke.
	And hopefully you can sort of understand why, because I certainly don't have any colleagues in my school sort of agreeing with me on this one.
	When I was in the master's program, we did this simple little experiment with high school kids.
	I had high school freshmen.
	And you hold a stick in front of them and then have them draw the stick.
	So if you hold it vertically, then on the paper they just draw a vertical line.
	Then you hold the stick horizontally, and they draw a horizontal line.
	Then you hold it diagonally, but then also sort of halfway pointing to them, halfway pointing to you.
	So it's sort of diagonally at this kind of weird off angle.
	And the kids can't really draw it.
	They can't quite abstract in three dimensions like adults can.
	And so what they draw instead is As though it were diagonal in only two dimensions, I guess.
	This is kind of hard to explain over the phone, but hopefully you get this idea.
	High school freshmen have terrible difficulty abstracting three-dimensional objects, and there's research out there supporting this.
	That said, in basic chemistry, in introductory chemistry, We have to teach them, according to our district standards, about electron shells.
	This is something that even I am not completely confident on.
	It is tremendously abstract.
	It's not just knowing three-dimensional modeling in your head.
	It's knowing that electrons behave in these really bizarre ways that nothing you can hold in your hand would behave.
	And, you know, this is what we're supposed to teach sophomores and juniors.
	You know, I'm just kind of disappointed, I guess, in these standards.
	You know, I teach it because I have to, but I do not think it's developmentally appropriate.
	I don't know if you listen to the School Sucks podcast, but I do like to pimp it wherever I can, particularly since Brett the Courageous is beginning to tackle early childhood and families, which I think is fantastic and, of course, is very much in accordance with what we're trying to do here, at least certain aspects of this conversation.
	I would definitely listen to him, and if you get a chance, I would try to talk with him.
	He's a very personable and a very pleasant fellow to chat with, because I think you and he would have some good stuff to talk about, for sure.
	He was in the public school system as a teacher as well, and he also did interview somebody recently who set up a private school, and I would not set my sights low as far as this I mean, the best thing to do rather than to join a private school would be to found a private school.
	If you're certainly entrepreneurial and interested enough to follow Freedom Aid radio podcasts, then I would not say, you know, after philosophy, everything is easy.
	That's been my experience.
	And so you may want to talk with him about that as a possibility or even get in touch with the person he interviewed and ask for some help in getting something like that started for down the road.
	Right.
	So that you could maybe start a school and and teach in a way that would be closer to to how you think it should be.
	And I would trust your instincts on this and trust your experience on this.
	So I because I mean, I certainly can't tell you how to make government curricula meaningful or interesting.
	And I'm not sure that you can do a lot to make it more interesting within the confines.
	But fundamentally, I'm not sure it's.
	Thank you. I do want to make sure I get to some other callers, and I don't mean to cut you off, and I'm sorry that, I mean, I certainly could talk about education all day because it is the most important thing in the world as far as the future of freedom goes, but I do also want to make sure I get to some other callers.
	Was there anything that I could jot down or mention that would be a yearning-burning that you had that would be a relatively short thing, or have you gotten at least something useful out of our chat?
	Yeah, I think this is a good conversation.
	I would like to, maybe I need to sort of write my question a little bit better.
	I just had a few questions I'd like to get out maybe over email about, you know, babies and adults and where that transition is.
	Specifically, you know, I would like to clarify for myself if this is something that I want to, you know, Starting or founding my own school is something I would like to do.
	I want to have the theory hammered into my brain.
	I want to know all the ins and outs, and this is one thing that I don't feel very confident about.
	Well, sorry, let me just interrupt you there.
	I would go back to your description of the scientific method, which is the first thing is to observe, right?
	If you observe children, then they will tell you when they're ready for the next phase of knowledge, when they're ready to take that step unaided, because they will actually not ask for your help.
	In fact, if you try to help them, they will reject your help.
	That, to me, is child-centered learning, which is to watch the child, to observe the child, and to have the child let you know when he or she is ready to do the next thing or wants to do the next thing.
	I think John Taylor Gatto says that about reading.
	Teaching a child how to read is less than 100 hours if you wait until the child is really interested and strike when the iron is hot.
	I think that's very true.
	Isabella now is becoming very fascinated by letters.
	She can do half the alphabet.
	And that's something that she's really getting interested in now.
	We couldn't interest her in it to save her life beforehand, but now she's really interested in it.
	And so now we're responding to that.
	It's a demand, you know, teaching children, as far as I can see, is exactly as demand-driven economy as the free market is.
	There's not any particular difference.
	It's absolutely client-centric.
	And the children, you observe what the children want, and you provide that with the understanding that what the children want is exactly what they should want.
	Well, thank you very much for the conversation.
	You know, my heart was racing at the beginning of this, and now, you know, I don't know how clear I was at the beginning.
	But I do appreciate the talk, and I have listened to the School Sucks podcast.
	I do enjoy that, so I'll have to get in contact.
	I'm bringing home my baby.
	Won't my mama be so proud of me?
	She's a bit shy of the microphone.
	I'm bringing home a bum.
	Bum. Bum. Bum.
	Bum. Bum. It stung me.
	Good girl. See, that's...
	What should we do with some ABCs?
	A. B. B. B. B. E. F. H. I. K. L. M. N. O. No, she's too squirmy.
	All right, another time. Bebo, itsy bitsy.
	Went up the water.
	It's yowling. She sees the computer and she wants to see her funny cats video.
	Anyway, sorry, I think we have another caller on the line.
	Mama, we'll be right back, boo boo.
	Hello? Hello?
	Stefan? Yes, Stefan.
	Okay, sorry, uh...
	I did not mean to interrupt you earlier.
	I'm not really familiar with calling into a show.
	It's anarchy, baby, so no problem.
	Right on. I wanted to call you, actually speak with you.
	I teach English in Eastern Europe, actually.
	And I've been using some of your videos in my classes.
	And I wanted to tell you that the response...
	I'm speaking of the story of your enslavement and the heroism videos.
	The response to your videos has been amazing, actually.
	And personally, I understood the things that you eloquently explained.
	I understood them intuitively.
	For a long time. That's actually why I left the States.
	But I just wanted to tell you that I appreciate very much your videos and your podcast.
	So you talk about truth in action.
	So I tried to do that.
	Thank you very much for your kind words.
	And I'm so happy that it's of use to your students.
	But please go on. It's difficult, actually, because I found out that the violence of the state is very personal.
	That's why I left.
	So, your podcast and your videos give me much strength and encouragement when I need it, very much.
	Anyway, I did have a philosophy question for you, if I may.
	And I cannot find anything about Alan Watts on your podcast or anything.
	I really enjoy Alan Watts.
	You're not going to change my mind if you don't like him, but I'm just curious about what your opinion of Alan Watts is.
	I have no opinion about Alan Watts.
	I've heard his name bandied about, and of course I began to poke around to see, hey, maybe I can interview the guy, but unless I'm...
	He's dead.
	I don't know enough about him to have an opinion.
	I haven't read anything, so I have to plead the fifth of ignorance on this one, though I certainly would be interested if you have recommendations of things to do.
	Yeah, there is a website, just alanwads.com, but actually he was a philosopher from Britain.
	I don't know exactly what universities...
	He studied that, but he studied during the 40s or the 50s.
	He studied comparative religions, and he traveled to Japan and China and lived there for many years, and he came back and lived in the United States, and he actually had a television show back in the 1960s and 70s.
	He's been kind of a...
	A bit of a phenomenon on YouTube in the last few years.
	But he speaks about, well, mainly Buddhism or Eastern philosophy.
	And talks about how you cannot understand your own culture if your own culture is the only culture that you know.
	So he does a lot of comparisons between Western civilization and Eastern civilization.
	He has a...
	His speaking voice is very pleasant to listen to.
	Same as yours. So, these videos are very popular.
	I've read some of his books.
	But he doesn't really...
	He just... How do I say it?
	He claims that his basic fundamental philosophical axiom is that existence is playful.
	The best way to put it is. Existence is playful?
	Yeah, that's what he says.
	Because he talks about...
	Come on, you want me to have some respect for the guy, right?
	I mean, he doesn't really mean that.
	Yeah, he does. Okay, well, help me understand what that means.
	Okay. Because he talks about the limits of language quite a bit.
	How you can't... No one can describe what reality is, because you have to use language.
	And... You know, there's...
	So, also it comes into with meditation.
	If you practice meditation, one of the purposes or the goals of meditation is to perceive the world as it is and not how it is described.
	So... Sorry, I don't understand that.
	Sorry, when I open my eyes and look at the world, I'm not seeing language, I'm seeing things, right?
	It's not described, it's sense data, right?
	Yes, but with meditation, the goal is to remove the chatter in our minds.
	All these words that we're always using.
	Alright. Sorry.
	It does apply to what you are actually doing, I think.
	Because with your videos, what you're doing is your explanation It just changes the language to describe a situation that is not very good, but most people don't perceive it as good because the language is changed.
	So, yeah.
	I'd certainly try to look into it.
	I guess my concern is that it's sort of like the Zeitgeist project or like the Venus project that if I spend time trying to figure out a guy who's a thinker and he turns out to not be much of a thinker at all, then I'm sort of in a bind because people who are into rational philosophy won't be that interested and people who are really into Alan Watts will just get all kinds of trolley because I'm pointing out the limitations in his thinking.
	So it's kind of a non-win scenario for me in that sense.
	But that having been said, if you want to send me an article either by him or by somebody who knows his thinking well, I would certainly be happy to...
	I'm always happy to be exposed to new thinkers.
	So if you have an article you want to send, then please do.
	Yeah, well, sorry, I can't really do him justice.
	I'm not a philosopher, so I can't...
	Alright, well listen, if you have something to talk about other than Alan Watts, I certainly would be happy to chat about it, but I don't think we can do much with him because I'm just, you know, big ignorant of what his thinking is about.
	Okay, I do understand.
	I do have something to say maybe about the violence in childhood.
	Please? These are two.
	Violence in childhood.
	This is something that I know about quite personally.
	So, what I have a question for you is, I've heard some of your podcasts about parenting, and I am a parent myself.
	I'm obviously against all violence in any context, for whatever reason.
	There's never a justification.
	But in my own family and my friends as well, we do have a parenting style that when the children are two or three, when they're very young, before they can speak, when they misbehave or when they do something that's possibly dangerous or something, You are very firm with them and you say no, and you give them a smack on their hand or on their bottom.
	Not to cause any injury, but just to set up like a Pavlonian conditioning in their mind that no is pain.
	Right, it's sort of an aversive thing like you would, I guess, with a puppy you might train them the same way.
	I'm not saying fairly, but that's the approach, right?
	Yeah, because they can't understand.
	You can't reason with them. You can't explain.
	No, you cannot be by the stairs.
	Because if you're by the stairs, then, you know, if you don't have a cave...
	Yeah, sorry, give me a concrete example, if you can, about where this would occur.
	Okay, at home. The child reaches up to the stove while you're cooking.
	You're cooking on the stove and the child comes up and wants to see what's going on and he puts his hand up near the stove to, you know, kind of...
	Okay, so, sorry, let me just make sure I understand.
	So, you would be using the back elements of the stove, right, so the child couldn't reach anything hot, right?
	Well, sometimes you have to use three or four at a time, so...
	Why do you have to use three or four at a time?
	If you're a good cook.
	Well, look, obviously the quality of the food doesn't matter, right?
	I mean, if you have a meal that's 10% worse or 20% worse, but the alternative is you don't have to hit your child, that seems to me like a pretty good trade-off, wouldn't you say?
	I mean, you could, if you were paid a million dollars, you could arrange it so that you would cook in a way that your child could not hurt himself or herself, right?
	Yeah. Okay, so give me another example.
	Because that one's avoidable, right?
	So give me another example. Okay.
	The child is near a dog or a cat and is...
	This happened to me when I was a child.
	I started to play with a dog or cat that did not want to play, or I was playing in a manner in which the dog was going to be defensive.
	Okay, so you picked the child up.
	What else? You pick the child up and you take the child away from any interaction with an animal that might be problematic, right?
	So what else have you got?
	I understand. I don't know.
	I guess with my friends and I, we believe this is useful for having a disciplined child, not meaning when you tell them to do something.
	Oh, I'm sorry. No, no. Language is important.
	You don't have a disciplined child.
	You have a frightened child. Right?
	I mean, the child is not disciplined because discipline is an internal thing.
	Discipline is when you understand that it's important that you're going to do what you're going to do.
	Like, I didn't want to go to the gym today, but I went to the gym because I hadn't been since last week.
	And so that's discipline, is knowing that it's important for me to do it and making myself do it, not out of any fear, but just because it's something that I sort of generally, it's a habit I commit myself to.
	But you don't have a disciplined child.
	You have a child who's frightened of physical pain, right?
	I mean, to be precise, your child is frightened, it's not disciplined.
	Yeah.
	Okay, so your goal is to frighten your child?
	On a small level, I think.
	No, no, no, no. Let's be precise.
	If you're going to hit your child, your goal is to frighten your child.
	I don't mean to be a hard-ass here, but let's at least be honest about what we're talking about, right?
	It's not in a small level.
	That's the purpose, right?
	You're inflicting pain and surprise on the child for aversion.
	Not injured. No, I understand.
	Not injured physically, but the child becomes frightened.
	Because we're not just talking physical injury.
	So for instance, and I'm not saying this is you, but just for an example, right?
	Somebody who is a verbal abuser We'll usually create more damage in the long run to a child than somebody who's a physical abuser because the verbal abuse goes into the brain and sits there and becomes an inner voice that self-criticizes and so on, right?
	So physical injury is not the standard, right?
	So a child can fall accidentally and break his arm and suffer no ill psychological effects, right?
	So physical injury is not the standard of care For parenting, but the mental health of the child and the preparation of the child for independent adulthood is the standard of care, I think, for parenting.
	And if you frighten your child, it doesn't matter whether you injure the child or not.
	I mean, I'm not saying it's unimportant, and I'm certainly not saying that you're hitting your child with a 2x4.
	I understand that. But the method of discipline that you're taking is entirely predicated upon the child being frightened of a physical pain, of a minor, although it probably isn't very minor to a child, physical attack, right?
	I mean, look, tell me if I'm wrong.
	I mean, this is the way I see it.
	I mean, you can tell me if I'm way out of base, but I can't see it any other way, but I'm certainly willing to have my mind changed.
	No, I do understand your point.
	I just think that it is a different style.
	And it is effective.
	Well, there's no question that it's effective.
	Look, I have no doubt that it's effective.
	I have no doubt that it's effective for the parent, right?
	Because it has the child not do what the parent doesn't want the child to do because the child is frightened, right?
	Yes, but the parent is in a position to make decisions for the child.
	Well, you're not making a decision for the child.
	You're frightening your child. Like me, I can make a decision for my child that I'm not going to feed her chocolate.
	And I-C-E-C-R-E-A-E-M, because she's in the room, right?
	But I have to make that decision for her, but that's not causing her any fear or pain, right?
	So, I mean, I just, you don't seem very comfortable with the reality of what you're doing, that's all I'm saying.
	And I think that's important. What about children with misbehavior, though?
	Well, okay, tell me, how old are you talking?
	Two or three. How could a child of two misbehave?
	I don't understand that. Again, give me an example of a child of two who's misbehaving.
	Okay, maybe four or five.
	Okay, give me an example of a child of four who's misbehaving.
	Speaking when they're not supposed to be speaking.
	Can you give me an example?
	Like in church. I know, this is a really bad example.
	Okay, can you give me another example?
	Okay. Stefan, I understand your point.
	I do understand your point.
	What is my point? That using physical pain as an inversion is not maybe the best.
	No, that's not my point. My point is it's a bad method.
	And look, this is not just me talking.
	The science is pretty clear on this.
	That if you use physical aggression against your child, you drop their IQ points.
	You generally cause more of the behavior that you're trying to prevent.
	Not only is it, in my view, wrong and bad parenting, but it doesn't work.
	And it does the opposite of working.
	It makes that which you're trying to prevent worse.
	And look, if you've got a kid who's two years old, you can use that kind of aggression, but that's going to sit in your kid's brain.
	How do you think they're going to deal with you when they get to be 12 or 13 or 14 or 15 or 16, and they're bigger and they're stronger and they're tougher?
	And you've laid down this premise that whoever's bigger and stronger and tougher can use aggression to inflict their will upon somebody else.
	You are laying down a foundation of resistance and rebellion and aggression that will be a bitter crop to reap in the future.
	I'm trying to appeal to you as a parent for the future, right?
	Everybody says, oh my god, the terrible twos, and then it's the terrible teenage years.
	It doesn't have to be that way.
	It doesn't have to be that way. I think, and I would strongly, strongly urge you to just look into the science, look into the facts, watch my Bomb and the Brain series, and I'm not putting you in the category of like, oh my god, you're beating your kids.
	I understand that. I really understand that, and I hugely respect you for bringing this up, because you absolutely know what I'm going to say, right?
	I mean, you know, right? There's no doubt that you brought this up because you wanted me to tell you this.
	And I gotta tell you, I massively respect you for doing that.
	Because I also know that in Eastern Europe, you come from a culture where you are probably the least aggressive parent.
	No, actually, I'm an American.
	I just live here because I cannot live in the States.
	Oh, okay. But in the Eastern European culture, I mean, you would probably be one of the lesser aggressive parents, if not the least aggressive parent around, right?
	Yeah. So for that, you should be praised.
	I'm trying to give you a possibility, offer you a possibility.
	Look, if you could get what you wanted in terms of your child without making your child afraid of you in those moments, you would prefer that, right?
	I mean, if you could. Maybe you don't believe me that you can, but if you could, get what you wanted in terms of keeping your child safe and happy without making them afraid and hurt.
	That would be better, right?
	Okay, so all I'm saying is that those possibilities do exist, and I also think that by introducing aggression and fear into your relationship with your child, you are creating a paradigm within the relationship that is going to really bite you down the road, right? And I'm just saying, from my experience, right, and my experience is not a proof, but it's a proof of a possibility.
	I, of course, have never raised my voice.
	I've never hit my child.
	I've never smacked her. I've never withdrawn affection from her.
	I just don't use that approach with her.
	And I'm telling you, she is one of the most cautious and safety-conscious children you can imagine.
	She has hurt herself a grand total of two or three times her entire childhood of 17 months so far.
	And these, of course, are the big dangerous months, right?
	She is very cautious.
	We have a wireless keyboard for a computer downstairs.
	She used to want to do it.
	Hi, boo-boo. We kept saying no to the wireless keyboard.
	And I actually came up with a song, right?
	So when I didn't want her to touch something, I'd say...
	And she would start dancing instead of touching whatever she was going to touch.
	And now she walks right past that wireless keyboard, even if it's on the ground, and she doesn't have any interest in it whatsoever.
	That's with no aggression, with no withdrawal of affection, with good humor.
	Pop goes the weasel!
	And she is very, you could say, obedient, but I don't really think of it that way.
	It's just that with gentleness, with good humor, with positivity, with no aggression whatsoever, she is an incredibly careful, incredibly safe girl who...
	She does not fight with us, does not do things which she shouldn't or very rarely does.
	And of course, it's our responsibility to protect her.
	It's not her responsibility to protect herself.
	She's still that young. So I'm just telling you that this is a possibility that is proven in the pudding.
	And she really respects when we say no now, because we say no so rarely.
	Because we say no so rarely and it's our job to keep her safe, she doesn't mind when we say no.
	She doesn't fight us. She doesn't resist us.
	She doesn't, you know, fight back.
	So I'm just putting this out as a possibility.
	Look up the science of spanking and see what the effects are in the long run.
	It's an IQ drop and it's rebellious behavior and it's an exacerbation of aggressive behavior.
	So if you spank now, then she's going to hit other kids and you're going to have to spank her even more and she's going to hit other kids even more and then she's going to have trouble in school and she's going to not want to do her homework which is going to require more aggression from you and more punishment and there's not going to be an end to it In its escalation.
	You know, violence is like...
	In the family... And again, I'm sensitive to the...
	I'm not saying you're being really violent and aggressive with your kids, but I'm just saying this is the beginning of it.
	This is the beginning of the snowball going down the mountain.
	This is the beginning of the avalanche.
	If you take this path, it will only escalate from here.
	Because every behavior that you're punishing your child for will only escalate down the long run.
	And she will only reproduce this behavior with her siblings or with other children.
	And which will require more punishment, which will end up with more acting out and more avoidance in school and homework, which will require more punishment.
	Until he or she, your kid, gets big and surly and malcontented and teenaged, in which case the balance of power will shift.
	And you won't have any moral ground to stand on when you ask for respectful behavior because you're not being respectful yourself towards your child by using fear and pain as a management technique.
	And so, what I'm trying to caution you about is it's exactly the same in the family as it is in the government.
	Everyone thinks, well, we'll just pass a little bit of welfare to deal with the very poorest of the poor.
	We'll just tax it one or two percent and we'll solve the whole problem.
	You know, we're just going to ban a couple of drugs.
	We're just going to make people stop doing that.
	And what happens is it escalates and it escalates and it escalates because it changes the dynamic within society when force is legitimized.
	Between citizen and state.
	It changes the dynamic between parent and child when force or withdrawal is legitimized as a management technique.
	And I'm just trying to give you the speech to give you the possibility to change this path.
	Because where it leads is not the same as where it starts.
	And it just gets worse and worse.
	And I really, really don't want that to happen to your family.
	My daughter is eight years old now, so...
	Maybe. It's not too late.
	It's not too late. It's not too late.
	It's not too late. It's not too late.
	It's not too late. Right?
	If you realize you've done something wrong as a parent...
	These are not techniques I use now, but...
	But you can apologize to her for before, right?
	You can say, this was something I did that I didn't know any better, and I now know better, right?
	Apologies will only raise your stature in the eyes of your children.
	And it demonstrates behavior that you want from them, which is to apologize if they've done something wrong, right?
	If there's a problem, at the time there's no problem, but if I may put this in...
	Oh, absolutely. Your argument is absolutely correct, and I was wrong.
	But most people I know, where I grew up in Midwest Protestant America, most people I know were raised with this philosophy.
	Their parents gave them, you know, small spankings or whatnot.
	And most of them had, you know, rather good lives.
	I think...
	I can understand how the...
	Because what I was taught was...
	If you do use corporal punishment, then you must not use emotion while you do it.
	You cannot be angry.
	So most of the people I grew up with, my friends and most of my family, this was the philosophy they were taught with, and they had some problems when they were teenagers, but nothing particularly serious.
	Most went to university and became productive citizens.
	But I think it is important to say that now it's a different time.
	Well, look, first of all, I just wanted to reiterate that I really, really respect you for bringing this up.
	I know what a really, really tough thing it is to bring up, and you may minimize that to yourself, but I hugely respect that you're bringing it up, and I hugely respect that you admit that it was not the best thing to do.
	That is a manly, courageous, virtuous...
	Fantastic thing to do, so I just wanted to push out some cosmic kudos to you for that.
	As far as what goes on in people's lives after they have received corporal punishment as children, well look, I agree with you that some of these people may be doctors, they may be lawyers, they may be successful professionals, they may be mechanics who have decent lives and they're two-story homes or whatever, right? But you need to look at the bigger picture.
	The earlier that you look at what is occurring to a child, the bigger picture you need to look at in society.
	That which happens very early tends to be the most abstract thing that occurs within society.
	So America, to take an example, and you could look at any country, but you brought up America.
	So, these people received corporal punishment as children, and they still believe in a system where aggression can lead to virtue, i.e., they're statists, and they believe that punishing drug criminals will get rid of drug problems, and they believe that taking money from the rich and giving it to the poor will solve and they believe that taking money from the rich and giving So they still believe, at the most abstract level, that violence is how you achieve virtue.
	That negotiation and voluntarism and peace will not achieve that.
	And why do they believe that?
	Why do they believe that?
	They believe that fundamentally because of their very early childhood experiences.
	Secondly, America is a country that is currently involved in two wars and has 300 plus military bases, 700 or more military bases overseas and is currently the largest and most powerful Why do they believe that violence can be used to solve problems?
	Why do they believe that violence can be used to solve problems both internationally and domestically?
	It's not innate for our belief as a child, right?
	I mean, my daughter was mildly aggressed against them all and she did not use any violence or aggression in her response and it worked beautifully.
	Why do they believe that wars and social programs and taxation and aggression and violence and prisons and jails can all solve social problems?
	It's because of how they were raised or rather because they haven't confronted the injustice of how they were raised.
	So while an individual in America may seem to have a good life and a decent life and so on, you have to look at the society as a whole.
	If you're looking at very early childhood experiences, that's where it all shows up.
	And I think we can all look at that and say that is certainly not optimal.
	You should make a video about that idea right there.
	Alright, I think I will.
	Have I moved your mind and heart a little bit in this area?
	Yeah, no, that makes...
	I hadn't connected...
	Read or listen to, I did this audiobook reading of the origins of war and child abuse.
	I mean, again, I'm not putting you in this category.
	I want to be very clear on that, right?
	And you are manning up in a hugely impressive way in talking about these issues and being open to criticism about your parenting.
	People are very sensitive to criticism about their parenting.
	Massive kudos to you for bringing it up.
	I just want to be really, really clear on that.
	However much I might criticize your use of aggression, I just want to praise you for that.
	And I'm not putting you in the category of the origins of war and child abuse or anything like that, but if you want to look at how early childhood experiences can dictate longer-term social policies, I think that that book is not a bad place to start.
	How long...
	How many generations...
	Do you have the...
	Do you have any hope for the...
	Okay. Now this is gonna go off topic, but honestly, I live in Eastern Europe because I cannot economically raise my family after the economic crisis in the United States.
	So that's why I'm here.
	So I'm obviously...
	A bit pessimistic, but sometimes I go in between.
	Sometimes I like to joke that I'm just sitting back and watching the world burn, like a George Carlin joke or something.
	And then sometimes I go between that and kind of depression between like...
	Wow.
	Like, I lost everything.
	Right. Nothing.
	Yeah, no. World War III is coming, so...
	or something like this, so...
	Anyway, um...
	Can I ask you how...
	Like... For myself, I worked...
	I worked within healthcare, so...
	I'm quite familiar with dark humor.
	And it's rather useful.
	So... But the current state of affairs, which does not look to be improving anytime soon...
	Uh...
	Other than dark humor...
	Are there any good coping techniques?
	Look, that's a very big question.
	I won't be able to do it justice.
	I think we have somebody else hanging off the line.
	But I will tell you this.
	This is what I would suggest that you think of.
	Because this is something we can all participate in to one degree or another.
	Most of us, anyway. The magical term is five years.
	We are, at any given time in history, five years away from a peaceful and free society around the world.
	We are five years away at any given time.
	So, if tomorrow...
	I'm not saying it's going to happen, but if tomorrow every parent listened to this or something like it and said, that's it.
	I'm not going to use aggression against my children.
	I'm not going to use aggression. I just had a beautiful new baby boy, baby girl.
	I'm not going to use aggression against my children.
	Then, by the time that child is five, they simply won't have the wiring for aggression.
	They just won't. And the entire world will be transformed, and we are only ever five years away from a peaceful, free, secure, happy, permanently progressing society.
	Five years. That's all it ever is.
	It's 2010 now, 2015, we could have a society that was destined to have no war, no jails, no punishment, no violence, except for possibly some mentally ill people, which would be a tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny minority.
	Five years, five years, five years.
	That is the only bridge we need to cross for a peaceful and happy world in the future.
	It's only ever five years away.
	It's only ever five years away.
	Now, you can't wave a magic wand and you can't say to everybody, stop using aggression against your children and we build...
	The case and the basis for a happy, free and peaceful world.
	But what you can do is you can do it within your own family.
	And what you can do is you can intervene when you see a child being maltreated publicly.
	And what you can do is continue to pass out videos, whether it's mine or others, that constantly talk about the value and virtue of the peaceful raising of children, of the nonviolent raising of children, of the non-aggression against children.
	And you can create five years in someone else's family.
	You can create five years in your own family.
	You might create those five years in 20 people or 50 people or 1,000 people you send a video to or a podcast to.
	That replication of five years in every household that we can imagine, that replication of five years is the only thing that we can do.
	It's the only thing that is going to work.
	And it's something that we can actually achieve, either with our own families or in families we have influence over and people we know who are parents or other people around the world who we may never meet, who just come across whatever work we're doing to promote this idea.
	Five years, that's all you've got to think about.
	Five years is enough to turn a family, a city, a county, a country, a world away from violence.
	You're an optimist.
	All right. I won't take any more time.
	I appreciate you talking with me.
	All right. Thanks, man. Best of luck.
	Best of luck. And sorry, here we did lose some of the audio from the Sunday show, so it ends a little bit abruptly.
	If you'd like to call in, sorry for the listener who lost his question.
	If you'd like to call in next week, I'd be happy to take you first and foremost.
	And thank you, everybody, so much for listening, as always.

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