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July 4, 2010 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

02:09:19

1690 Freedomain Radio Sunday Show 4 July 2010

Happy farm day! Oh, and agnosticism and determinism.

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	Well, hi everybody.
	Happy July the 4th to you.
	I hate to hijack a state holiday, but there it is.
	So I hope that you're having an absolutely wonderful weekend.
	I'm sorry that I forgot to cancel the show last week, but I'm sure as most of you were aware, I was working at Porkfest.
	So thanks to everyone.
	Thanks, of course, for the support which has helped me to go down there and hopefully spread the good word in a way that makes you happy and proud.
	And, of course, as always, if you had a chance to listen to the debate or watch...
	My opening speech.
	Or if you've had a...
	I guess nobody has really.
	They'll probably end up posting.
	I was asked to be a judge in a rant competition, which was really, really quite trippy.
	And so I hope that when that gets posted that you will enjoy that.
	And I guess that's it for speaking until I may be doing something.
	I think I have two up in October.
	And I've recommended...
	I'm starting a series on libertarian parenting.
	And Steph Kinsella was on the show last week.
	And we're going to try and rope in some more high-value libertarian parents.
	So if you're interested, please drop me a line.
	And we're going to have sort of a roundtable.
	Because, as you all know, that's my particular focus on freeing the world.
	So... I guess a few minor updates.
	Remember... Donations are always a bit of a challenge in the summer because people, I don't know, want to buy sunscreen or stuff like that.
	So if you have a few shackles rolling around, it's always appreciated at freedomainradio.com forward slash donate dot html because we're all about the friendly donation hyperlinks.
	Other than that, everybody's great.
	Izzy just passed her 18-month Birthday on June the 19th.
	And it was a great deal of fun.
	She has had this enormous growth spurt that is really quite startling.
	She, six months ago, was right in the 50th percentile.
	Of her height and weight.
	And now she's in the 75th and 80th percentile.
	In other words, she's grown 25 percentage points for those who have trouble with math, which is really quite remarkable.
	So I hope that you will...
	I posted some pictures in the chat room.
	I'll try and get some on Facebook later this week.
	But it really is quite remarkable.
	She is going through this enormous growth spurt.
	And she's really now... Like a little girl, right?
	She's no longer exactly a toddler.
	She's sort of late toddler, early little girl and is just doing fantastically.
	She's just learned the phrases in, out.
	Of course, she's known up, down for a while.
	On the weekend, was it the weekend?
	Lord, I can't tell. No, sorry, one day last week it was Canada Day.
	And this is a day where everyone in the world gets free healthcare and ridiculous tax bills.
	And we took her to a sort of Canada Day celebration, and she did her first set of stairs, unaided, of course, with obsessive parents hovering over, but she went up and down the stairs without...
	Without any assistance, which is really quite, not even a handrail.
	And that is too cool.
	So she's starting to put two words together.
	She can sing a line or two of a song.
	It's mind-blowing because particularly, I, of course, have had the privilege of being at home with her.
	And so seeing this kind of progression is really just astounding.
	And, boy, it's highly recommended, although I would strongly recommend, if you're ambivalent about children, to not have them, because, as I was chatting about with Christina the other day, they really are just an absolutely massive time sink.
	I was dying to have kids, so I'm drinking every moment of it up and enjoying it.
	But if you are ambivalent, I would say to hold off until the ambivalence clears, because...
	It's not something you step in and step away.
	This is concrete. It forms around your feet.
	So I just...
	Thanks to everyone, of course.
	And also thanks to the parents.
	I remember that we had a call last year.
	Was it last year or year before?
	Where parents gave us some great tips.
	And, of course, I hope to glean more from these parenting conferences.
	So just before we begin, I was following a thread that...
	It's been going on the FDR board about agnosticism.
	And, of course, I had this debate a week ago, Friday, with Johnson Rice from Free Talk Live, where he brought up a quote that I had made where I consider agnosticism to be cowardly.
	And as I mentioned in the debate, and I'll mention now, I don't consider agnosticism to be cowardly until one has been faced with better arguments, with the strong atheist arguments.
	Then I think the possibility of cowardice opens up.
	Agnosticism can seem like pseudoscientific modesty.
	In other words, a refusal to say things can't exist that might exist, which of course is perfectly reasonable than the scientific method.
	Once I get good quality audio of that debate, I'll post it.
	But I think once you hear the strong atheist arguments, and if you can't refute them but you continue to go along with agnosticism, then yeah, I do view that as cowardly.
	And one of the reasons that I have that position is agnosticism, like any philosophical principle, I mean agnosticism is It's fundamentally around epistemology.
	It is around the nature of what is possible to know, the nature of knowledge.
	And of course the agnostic position is we can't say that something doesn't exist because we haven't seen every inch of the universe.
	There might be an alternate universe where it does exist and so on.
	But see, that's a position that is...
	A principle. It is a universal position.
	The problem I have with agnosticism is that it's always and forever about gods.
	That is what I find ridiculous about the agnostic position.
	Like I've never heard an adult agnostic say that Santa Claus might exist because in another universe he might exist.
	Never heard that. Never heard that once.
	Never heard an agnostic say, I don't know why they put the word fiction on the DVD of Lord of the Rings or the book of Lord of the Rings because in another universe it might have all happened that way and therefore they can't say that it's fiction.
	Never heard an agnostic say that.
	And in my debate with Johnson Rice...
	I said to him, you believe that the state is evil?
	And he said, yes. And I said, but you can't really say that because in another universe, the state might be virtuous.
	And he said, no! That can't be the case.
	Why? Because states have properties.
	Well, so do gods, of course.
	I didn't follow it up at that point because I thought it might be a bit too esoteric.
	But I'll touch on it here because I think it's a very important point.
	I think it's a very important point.
	How can you be agnostic about the existence of gods, but not agnostic about the immorality of the initiation of force?
	Because if you apply the principle consistently, you end up not being able to open your mouth up about anything.
	So you use the word God, but you can't use the word God, because God might meet the exact opposite in another universe, or before time began.
	And He clearly is wed, as am I, to the proposition or the principle that the initiation of force is immoral.
	And we say that as an absolute, but of course, in another universe, it may be perfectly moral to initiate violence, and it may be perfectly immoral to not do so.
	I mean, if we can define non-existence as existence, surely we can define immorality as morality.
	But he understands that if he says, well, I can't say that the government is immoral because in another universe it might be moral, that his libertarianism shrivels, dries up, and blows away, right?
	So he can't say that.
	Because then every stand he takes is on the shifting sand of the opposite may be true in some other universe.
	It is not something that is confinable to God.
	It is not something that is confinable to God, yet forever and always, it always is confined to God.
	Why is that? Why is that?
	Why is it that agnosticism, which is a universal principle, Of epistemological knowledge, where no positive statement of knowledge can be made because in another universe the opposite might be true, why is that not universal?
	Well, I think we all know the answer to that.
	The reason it's not universal is because religious people can get upset.
	This is why agnosticism exists.
	It exists so that Richard Dawkins can sit down with the Archbishop of Canterbury and have a civilized chat.
	It exists because people don't like annoying or angering religious people.
	And I understand that. Look, I understand that.
	It's not a lot of fun to anger people.
	It's not something that any healthy human being wakes up with an urge to do on a regular basis.
	I understand that.
	In which case, say, I'm not so big on philosophy because it upsets people who are irrational.
	And get yourself off the field of combat.
	But don't be on the field of combat disarming the atheists and secretly arming the religious with bullshit, very specific agnosticism that only and forever creates a get-out-of-jail-free card for Zeus.
	And Set, and Loki, and Yahweh, and Jesus, and Santa Claus.
	Oh wait, no, it's never Santa Claus.
	Because when you say Santa Claus doesn't exist, people don't get that upset.
	Unless they're four, right?
	But when you say God doesn't exist, gods cannot exist.
	People get upset. And so...
	If you don't like upsetting people, and again, I'm not saying anybody does, but if you're not comfortable with upsetting people for the cause of truth, then say, I don't like talking about this.
	Because that's all agnosticism is.
	All agnosticism is, is a bunch of pretty words draped over, this topic makes me uncomfortable because I don't like upsetting people.
	And again, you don't have to upset people.
	You don't. But if you're not comfortable with people being upset, In the face of the truth, then just say, I don't like talking about religion.
	It makes me uncomfortable. Don't create a whole bunch of polysyllabic shrouds and fogs called agnosticism to cover up your discomfort.
	Because it just makes the cause of truth harder to have people out there claiming to be rational and providing solace, comfort, and ammunition to the irrational.
	Because as soon as you say nothing can be stated for certain because the opposite might be true in another universe, you've just destroyed rationality and armed the irrational.
	And the irrational surely do like to be armed.
	So that's my basic position.
	At the moment, an agnostic says to me, I had to argue very strongly the other day.
	That magical fairy unicorns exist, or might exist in another universe.
	The moment I heard somebody say at a physics conference that Santa Claus is ridiculous, and I brought them up short, saying, no, you cannot say that Santa Claus is ridiculous, because what is ridiculous in this universe might be perfectly sane and rational in another universe.
	The moment that I see learned agnostics write lengthy, passionate tracts, About how we cannot say that the world is not banana-shaped, because in another universe it might be banana-shaped, then I will at least have some respect for the consistency of the agnostic position.
	But of course, anybody who wrote or spoke such nonsense would find themselves laughed out of any civilized company, except in the realm of Of religious superstition.
	There, suddenly, everything changes.
	The rules change, everything becomes foggy, and you can't say anything for certain.
	Well, I think you need to accept that agnosticism must be applied universally, which means you can't say anything about anything, so get the hell off the field of philosophy.
	Or, the creation of bizarro opposite worlds where truth equals falsehood is no solution.
	To the problem of offending people.
	It's a cowardly way out.
	I don't see any other choice.
	And I'm certainly happy to be corrected.
	But I've just never heard.
	I've never heard an agnostic passionately defend the possibility of the existence of leprechauns.
	Because they realize that would be a ridiculous position to take.
	Well, One of the great things about philosophy is that cultural prejudice, long-standing superstitions, have no more weight in a philosophical conversation, have no more truth in philosophical conversations than dreams and drug-fueled fantasies and Grimm's fairy tales.
	Anyway, I just wanted to mention that.
	I just sort of wanted to point that out.
	That's why I hold the position that it's cowardly.
	And again, I don't mean that if you've just heard these arguments.
	But you need to really mull them over.
	If you're going to start talking about things like gods and existence and truth and falsehood, you should come up with these arguments.
	And if there's a flaw in them, let me know.
	And I will apologize for my slander of agnostics.
	But if you cannot find a flaw in them, in other words, if you're willing...
	To argue passionately for the truth of Lord of the Rings and the existence of leprechauns and unicorns and Santa Claus, then go for it.
	If you're not willing to argue for those things, then you have to stop arguing for the possible existence of God.
	And you just have to take the heat.
	I mean, the world is not going to move forward rationally and effectively until we stop fudging the edges of reason.
	All right.
	I am...
	Sorry, sorry for that hopefully not too lengthy intro.
	I am all ears.
	Questions, please. Hi, Steph.
	Hello. I want to talk to you about this problem I have with this female co-worker at work.
	Right. I'm not sure where to start exactly.
	I've been kind of like, throughout your intro there, like fogging up a bit and stuff.
	So, um...
	Well, just tell me about the problem that you're having from the most sort of specific thing, and we can abstract hopefully usefully from there.
	Okay, um...
	I work in a screen printing shop and there's like say we get ink on a shirt or a garment or something and then Then you have to spray it out and stuff.
	So there's these jackets that you're not supposed to ever spray because they're like a different material and they'll get holes in them and things.
	And so I've been told that once and after being told that I messed up and actually sprayed the jacket.
	And so this female co-worker was like, Really snappy and like cutting towards me in like correcting me on this this mistake that I had made.
	And then so after she did that, like the rest of the day, I was just really anxious and shaken and like mulling it over and everything.
	Thinking about how my How do I deal with this?
	Because I don't exactly want to be talked to like that, but if she's working at this place, she's been working there for four years, it's not like really there's anybody besides her that I could talk to to deal with that situation.
	Because the boss has to kind of know how she is already.
	Right, right. Well, I think I understand the issue.
	I'm happy to listen more or I can start doing my usual asking of questions if that's helpful to you.
	Yeah, I think that would be great.
	What's the first question I'm going to ask?
	Let's see how up on the convo you are.
	What's the first question I'm going to ask?
	I'm not sure.
	How long have you been listening?
	Oh, since like last spring.
	All right. The first question I'm going to ask is, how were you corrected by your parents as a child?
	Yeah, so this is the first place to look, right?
	We are very much drawn to look at conflicts in the moment as cause and symptom of themselves, like self-contained things.
	But it's not the case.
	Where we are susceptible...
	Where we are susceptible to being verbally aggressed against in the workplace, it's inevitably because we have a long history and experience with verbal aggression in our histories.
	That's what makes us susceptible to that, if that makes any sense.
	Yeah. I guess that's kind of something I put together from listening to the podcast and stuff.
	I guess where I'm at is I don't I don't even know how to deal with it.
	Because I know, just from observing her and interacting with her for the time that I've been working here, that she's not really going to have a positive response to it at all, really.
	Sure, sure, I agree. She pretty much exactly reminds me of my mother.
	She even looks a lot like her.
	Now, you understand as well that you must be giving off signals.
	I'm not saying this is conscious and I'm certainly not criticizing you for it.
	I'm just pointing out. You must be giving off signals that she knew that she could get away with this.
	Do you know what I mean? Yeah, I think that's true, but I'm not really sure.
	And if you understand, it's not a criticism.
	It's not a criticism at all.
	I don't want to say, oh, damn it, I invited this.
	I'm not blaming you for it. I'm just pointing out that people who are bullies, and I'm just going to go with this terminology, right?
	Again, I don't know, but I'm going to accept what you're saying, right?
	So people who are bullies are constantly scanning the environment for people who are going to self-attack.
	Right? So if you want to push someone over, you always want to go and find the person who's standing on one leg, right?
	If you really end up pushing people over, you don't want to go to the sumo wrestler who's got his legs planted four feet apart, right?
	Because you're just going to look ridiculous because you're going to try and push the person over and you're probably going to fall over yourself, right?
	So bullies are always looking for people who are already unsteady on their feet, so to speak.
	And so in your body language, perhaps in a stutter or a stammer or in averted eyes or in some sort of way, you have communicated to this person, you like to push people over and I'm standing on one foot, right?
	Yeah, I think the averted eyes thing.
	I have a problem with eye contact with people.
	Right. And do you know where that came from?
	Just kind of, um, with my mother, long, um, long, like, uh, lectures where she was, um, like, yelling at me, kind of, and stuff, and just this, like, you could see this rageful, like, deep emotion on her face, um, and it'd be like, I'd look away, you know, because it's uncomfortable and everything, but then it'd be like, look at me!
	Um, So she would be yelling at you and you would avert your eyes because the rage in her eyes was terrifying and then she would say, look at me, damn it, or whatever, right?
	Yeah. Being disrespectful by looking away.
	Disrespectful, yeah. Because yelling at a child is not disrespectful, but for the child to avert their eyes because of the horror that he sees in his mother's eyes, that's disrespectful.
	Because somebody who yells at children is all about respecting people, right?
	Jesus. Anyway, go on.
	Sorry, I don't really know where to go on.
	I kind of lost a little bit there.
	Now, have you talked to your mother about, I mean, I don't know what your family situation is now, but have you talked to your mother about what occurred when you were a child or things that were troublesome to you, to say the least?
	Yeah, I've actually defood.
	My defood was kind of weird.
	Like right when I first started listening to your podcast, like really listening to them and getting into the whole personal relationship side of it.
	I like I've tended to be impulsive in the past.
	So I just started like trying to kind of act it all right away.
	And so.
	I tried talking to my mother about those things and everything.
	And then she didn't really respond well to that, of course.
	And then at one point, Like I've been kind of...
	Like I don't think I was...
	Like, bringing up blame to her or anything.
	Like, I was just kind of, at first, trying to get her into just the ideas of anarchy and stuff like that.
	But then one time, it was last fall, I just kind of exploded to her over the phone because I'd kind of been, like, my situation isn't the best financially and stuff, so I'd been kind of, like, I guess you could call it, like, Um, playing the game, um, that I've had to play my whole life basically, but just, um, pretending to be a certain way and everything.
	Um, but then through listening to FDR and thinking about the things more, I just, I guess, got too, too sickened with doing that anymore.
	So I just like exploded at her with all the, um, All the things that I was remembering that were really terrible from my childhood.
	In fact, I finished...
	In the conversation, she was trying to...
	Like kind of say things defensively about herself and at the end of the conversation, like I was kind of trying to listen to her, but at the end of the conversation I got just so upset that I just went to her, no back talking mom, no back talking, and I hung up the phone.
	Is that a phrase that you heard a lot when you were a kid?
	Yeah. Right.
	And then what happened? Then I didn't talk to her for a while, basically.
	Right, so that wasn't a defu, that was...
	No, that wasn't a defu.
	That was just like, take a breather, calm down, whatever, right?
	Yeah, the defu was pretty recently, like, last weekend or the weekend before that.
	Oh, boy. I'm happy to talk about the stuff at work.
	I'm happy to talk about that. Whatever would be the most helpful to you?
	I don't know. This is all fine so far.
	I don't know. I guess I'm kind of in the boat where I didn't know exactly what I wanted to talk about, but this thing at work was kind of, I don't know, like a nudge to get me to talk.
	Well, I tell you, I mean, first of all, I'm like, I'm totally sorry about your childhood.
	Oh, my God. I'm totally sorry about this yelling.
	I mean, it is so overwhelming for a child to have somebody five or seven or even ten times his size yelling.
	That, you know, as you say, that rage.
	It's completely terrifying.
	It is. It overwhelms the system.
	It floods the system. It seems to lead to things like dissociation.
	I mean, it's really tragic what it does to you, to your nervous system, to your brain development and all these kinds of things, right?
	And it ends up with a very shaky sense of self and the idea that standing up for yourself is crazy dangerous, right?
	When you're a kid. Because kids know when somebody's just out of control.
	I mean, we're fine-tuned to sense that, of course, right?
	Because it's kind of tough to survive if you don't notice that, right?
	If you just try standing up to somebody who's really committed to this bullying thing, then it's crazy dangerous, right?
	And that has really, really harmful effects.
	Now, not irreversible, as you know, right?
	And I'm going to make the pitch for therapy, which you've obviously heard before if you listen to the show, but I know you said your financial situation is tough.
	You might be able to find student therapists.
	You might be able to find people who will give you pro bono or highly reduced rates if you explain your circumstances.
	I'm just going to make that usual pitch.
	I'm sure you've heard it before, so I'll just make that pitch and we can move on.
	But My suggestion about the work situation is forget about the woman at work.
	She is not the cause of the problem.
	Right? If you go and try to...
	Let me see if I can phrase this the right way.
	I want to make sure that I'm precise in what I'm saying.
	When you have experienced a lot of setbacks in your life...
	Then you're like somebody with very few chips at a gambling casino.
	And what that means is you don't just throw those chips down.
	I really believe this.
	I'm not saying it's true. I'm not saying it's proven.
	But I really believe this.
	And you can take that for whatever it's worth.
	So when it comes to self-assertion, when it comes to standing up for yourself, you don't want to blow it again.
	Because that's only going to reinforce that you can't stand up for yourself.
	Do you know what I mean?
	Yeah. Yeah. So, if you're going to try and turn this thing around, and man alive, I just want to tell you how heroic it is that you are thinking about this kind of stuff, that you are working on this kind of stuff, that is heroic.
	I mean, if there were medals in the universe, they would rain down like comets of light on the people who are doing what you're trying to do in terms of turning around your history, talking about things with your mom, not allowing abuse to continue and hoping that it won't.
	And of course, if it does, getting yourself to a place of safety and security.
	I just think that is magnificent.
	and I just wanted to really Praise you for the stand that you're taking for your self-esteem.
	That is going to have a huge effect on who you marry, how you raise your children, how your life is going to go.
	So I wanted to put that front and center, just so you understand the respect, the massive respect that I have for the challenges that you're taking on.
	I just want to point that out front.
	Thanks for that. So you've made a lot of changes in your life over the last couple of years.
	And those changes...
	Should pay off.
	I mean, they will pay off in time, but you don't want to give yourself more failure at the moment because that's going to set you back.
	Because they'll be like, oh my god, I've made all these changes.
	It's like if you're 300 pounds and you think you've changed your diet and you think you've changed your lifestyle, but you keep gaining weight, part of you is going to say, fuck it.
	Dieting doesn't work for me and you just go back to eating a bunch of stuff, right?
	Yeah. So when you're really trying to turn things around, you have to be very careful, in my opinion, about the stands that you take.
	And we also have to remember, I don't know if you've read Real-Time Relationships, but this idea that we are addicted to repetition, that if we've been from dysfunctional histories, that we are addicted to this kind of repetition, to control over negative stimuli.
	It's the only control we could...
	We could come up with or maintain.
	So you also have to be careful that you're not going to invite another verbally aggressive person into your life, if that makes any sense.
	Yeah, it does. Now, is what I'm saying useful?
	I really want to make sure that I... Because I can't see you, right?
	So I want to make sure that what I'm saying is useful to you.
	So, your advice is to just kind of, with this person, almost Just kind of deal with it for now, like while I'm preparing myself to get into therapy and all that kind of stuff.
	Yeah, my advice is this, that you need to keep working on yourself.
	You know, if you can't get into therapy right now, at least, you know, do the journaling that is available in books by Nathaniel Brandon or, you know, other people who are out there.
	John Bradshaw has some good books about this kind of stuff.
	So keep journaling. Talk with friends that you have.
	You may want to talk with people who've gone through similar things who were involved in this community.
	They may be able to help. But you need to change yourself like deep down from the inside out to the point where this woman is going to back off of her own accord.
	You're not going to have to lift a finger, right?
	But you don't want to sit down and confront her while you're still going through such a challenging time emotionally, because I think it's going to set you back.
	And you don't want setbacks at this time in your life.
	Because too many setbacks, they'll be like, ah, I give up, nothing works, right?
	But protection from people, protection from people, protection from verbally abusive or aggressive people, it comes from the inside.
	If you work on yourself, if you work on your confidence, if you work on healing the pain of your past, what happens is these magic shields just come up.
	And bad people don't mess with you.
	But that's the way, in my opinion and experience, and Lord knows, I'm not saying this is easy, and I'm sure as hell not saying that I've done this consistently in my own life, but this is what I try to come back to for myself.
	That you don't confront your way into security from aggressive people.
	You grow your way past them.
	You know, like, think of virtue...
	Think of the world like a forest, and virtue is the sunlight that we all desperately need to get to, virtue and security and love and happiness.
	Well, if you're a shrub, you don't get to the sunlight by fighting with the other shrubs.
	You get to the sunlight by growing and growing and growing until you're higher than the canopy of leaves.
	If that makes any sense.
	I know it's a really bad metaphor, but I hope it makes some kind of sense.
	Yeah, that makes sense. I just had a thought that that's kind of what I would do is, like, not so much when I was a little kid, but when I was older, that would be a thing that I would do is just kind of confront and confront and confront until the other person just kind of, like, shut down. Like, my parents would just kind of, like, give that final, you know, shut up or whatever.
	And that works in situations that are voluntary.
	But in the job, in where you work, you're not in a purely voluntary situation because you need the job, I assume.
	You said your finances are tough. It's a tough market out there.
	This woman is around, so you're kind of there with her.
	At least, I mean, you can look for other work, but no matter what, for the time being at least, you're there with her, right?
	Yeah. So, I, you know, there's that old saying, you've probably heard it, it's pretty commonplace, but it's worth thinking about, right?
	That, you know, don't get down into the shit to wrestle with a pig.
	All that happens is you get covered in shit and the pig enjoys it, right?
	Yeah. Right?
	You just, you have to outgrow the vehemence of dysfunctional and destructive people around you, getting down and fighting with them and, you know?
	It's going to put you right back into your childhood, in my opinion, right?
	This is all just my idiot opinion, right?
	But I hope that there's some useful stuff.
	Yeah, it totally makes sense.
	And look, let me tell you one more thing, if you don't mind.
	Hold on to your thought, and I'll keep this really brief, but I think this will – I really get a sense that this will help.
	You are going to outgrow this job.
	I mean, if you're listening to this show, you're in the top 3% of intelligence, if not half a percent.
	I don't know what it is. But people who listen to this show are really fucking smart, okay?
	I mean, I'm just going to put that out there because I've never seen an example to the contrary because people who aren't that smart or people who are immature, they don't last, right?
	They go to, I don't know, Ricky Gervais show or something, right?
	But... You're gonna outgrow this job.
	You're gonna move on. You're gonna move past.
	You're gonna grow. You're gonna have great things in life.
	This witch, with a capital B, who picks on a young guy with a history of abuse, and I'm not saying she knows it, but she knows it at some level, of course, otherwise she wouldn't be picking on you, right?
	She is going to be there in 10 years.
	She's going to be there in 20 years.
	She's going to be there in 30 years.
	She's not going to have satisfying relationships.
	She's not going to have love.
	She's not going to have joy.
	I mean, the conscience is the UPB principle within us that can't be fought.
	It can be ignored, but that's just like ignoring that smoking is bad for you.
	It doesn't make you immune to cancer.
	So you're going to outgrow this job.
	You're going to work on yourself.
	You know, the lowest become the highest.
	If you do the work.
	If you do the work. And you will, I know.
	So you're going to move past this woman like the space shuttle jet.
	Out taking a wounded bird.
	So right now, she's above, and she's putting you down, and you feel low, and you feel down, and I get that.
	I really do. But you keep working on yourself.
	You keep working on your history.
	You don't act it out against others in the way that this woman is doing.
	You will rise, and it will seem slow at first, and then it will get faster, and it will get faster, and you'll look back down and say, Oh my God, I can't believe this woman ever frightened me.
	It'll take time. And the last thing, I want to get your thoughts as well, but the last thing I'll say is I had a very similar situation when I was about 2015, I just got a job in a hardware store.
	It was a big hardware store.
	It was all complicated.
	They had 12 million things down every aisle.
	And I didn't know where the hell anything was.
	And so people would come in and they would say, I need such and such a combination X, Y, and Z, right?
	And I don't know where the hell.
	So I'd have to go and ask this guy.
	And I mentioned this before on the show, but it's so relevant.
	You may not have heard it. It's so relevant what you're saying.
	And after I asked this guy five things on my second night or whatever, he was like, you know, you really should just know this stuff.
	And I said to him, I said, dude, it's my second day.
	This is a big, complicated store.
	And I wasn't particularly assertive, and I was scared to even say it.
	And he backed off a little after that, but he was pretty mean and pretty caustic, right?
	So... 15 years later, right?
	You know where this is going, right?
	15 years later, I've got my master's degree.
	I've started a business.
	It's going well.
	I'm an entrepreneur. I'm, you know, it's great.
	And I'm in that neighborhood.
	I go back to that store.
	And who's there?
	That same fucking guy.
	He's still there telling people, Where the paint is.
	Because I did the work.
	And he didn't. He acted it out against vulnerable and hurt people.
	He was a bully. And so, what's his punishment?
	There's no God in the sky who's going to send you to heaven or who's going to send you to hell.
	We don't need that.
	Because people who treat other people badly end up locked in a little shit dungeon that falls its way to the molten, stupid, and worthless center of the planet.
	They get frozen in time.
	They get stuck.
	And their lives waste away like a piece of bad fruit that refuses to fall from a tree.
	It dries up, it blows away, and they live these miserable, pitiful, vile, pointless, wasted existences where the best they can do is some new guy.
	I'm sure there was some new 15-year-old kid who was in the store there who this guy was pretending to lord it over.
	And the price that he paid for that was being stuck like a prisoner in this dusty fucking hardware store until he was 60.
	That's the price you pay. It's not a price that God inflicts.
	It's a price that the conscience inflicts.
	So you'll move past this little bully.
	She's already spent four years working in this print shop.
	You're not going to spend four years in the same job, I guarantee it.
	So take some comfort in the future that the work that you're doing now is going to pay off.
	And the people who aggress against you, the people who put you down, the people who bully you, they're going to get theirs.
	They're going to get theirs because everybody gets what they deserve.
	It's a law of consciousness.
	So I know you feel down, you feel low now, and I totally sympathize.
	And I'm not saying this is going to make it all go away.
	But I just wanted to provide you that perspective from a guy who's been around the block, it sounds like, a few more times.
	This is what I've seen.
	I cannot think. And look, if you're in the chat room, we have a lot of people in the chat room.
	We have a lot of people listening in.
	Tell me if I'm wrong. Have you known somebody who's been mean and cruel or abusive or whatever, who's then end up with a flourishing and happy existence?
	I now have seen this arc so many times in people that I know that it's a law of nature.
	Expecting otherwise is like expecting that you're going to throw a rock upwards and it's going to start accelerating towards the sun.
	This arc is so predictable.
	The people who do wrong...
	Suffer, stagnate, wither, and die within their own bodies.
	They become dead souls in fleshy prisons from here to eternity.
	The hell is not in the hereafter.
	It's in the here and now for those who are cruel.
	So, sorry, I thought I was going to be short, but I wasn't.
	But I just wanted to... Yeah, somebody's saying a guy had to go at me at work.
	He's worked there 15 years, still in the same position.
	You know, violence freezes everything in time.
	The violence in public schools has public schools exactly the same as they were in 1870.
	Everything stops progressing when there's coercion and brutality and abuse.
	But sorry, now I'll be quiet.
	No, I just wanted to say that this has been helpful.
	Thanks. I don't know if I really have too much.
	I'm just kind of... I'm going to have to kind of go over it a little bit in my head and stuff.
	But not too much more to say for me.
	And look, I just wanted to say I'm so sorry about your family situation.
	I can't...
	I mean, as a parent myself now, I just...
	I've got to tell you, my friend, I cannot figure out people who put personal prejudices above their children.
	I can't fathom it.
	I mean, I was trying to figure out how this could work the other day.
	And maybe there'll be something. Maybe they'll find out that animals are truly sentient beings and eating them was genocide.
	It just makes something up.
	And then let's just say that my daughter has massive problems with my former meat-eating habits when she finds that out.
	I mean, I just, I mean, I'm so sorry.
	I'm so sorry. I'm trying to think what I could have done that would have upset her to the point where she'd have massive and fundamental criticisms of me.
	I would just, I would be on my knees apologizing.
	I mean, I would, you know, to recognize because she's my daughter.
	I mean, if my wife woke up and said, you know, you're just, you know, I don't like, I'm really mad at you about this instability of FDR. I liked it when you had a steady paycheck.
	I liked when we could have had predictable and so on.
	I'd be like, I'm so sorry.
	I'm so sorry that you feel that way.
	You know, tell me more. I mean, I wouldn't be like, well, we agreed on this, right?
	I would just be like, tell me. I'm so sorry.
	Tell me. I mean, I think I'm a damn good dad.
	I must apologize to my daughter 10 times a day, if not more.
	You know, like she wanted to be in the swing today.
	We had to bring her home because she was getting tired.
	She didn't want to come home. I'm so sorry that I have to take you home.
	I know it's the right thing to do because you're tired and you need your milk and you need to go to bed.
	And she ended up having like this...
	She napped for over three hours.
	She was exhausted. But she was crying, crying hard.
	And I'm so sorry that I have to do that.
	I'm so sorry. And if she gets mad at me down the road for doing that, I'd be like, I'm so sorry that I had to do that.
	I just... I can't understand people who put ideology...
	Above flesh and blood.
	But anyway, it's a strange thing to me that I just can't understand.
	Now, I mean, if somebody said, you know, I'm going to hate you if you don't believe that Jesus is your Lord and Savior, then it's like, well, I'm sorry, that one's out of my hands.
	I can't apologize for that because he's not, right?
	He's a creepy guy on sticks in a dark room, right?
	So I just wanted to, I mean, it's a very foreign thing to me as a parent.
	I just, I can't fathom it.
	So I just wanted to mention that and give you my sympathies again.
	Thanks. Alright.
	I'll try not to be so verbose in the next call, but...
	Thanks.
	And keep me posted if you can, and just grit your teeth with this person.
	She's just a symptom, and you will definitely outgrow their situation.
	Okay. Thanks.
	Bye. Thanks.
	Next! Hi, Steph.
	Hello. You can hear me.
	Yeah, sound ain't the best, but we'll struggle through.
	What's up? Hi.
	In the summertime, my income goes down to almost nothing, so my contribution won't be in danger, though, because for the first time this summer, I get old-age pension.
	So you're going to be supported by the state now.
	Well, you know, the grocery store around the corner relies on government roads to get my food, so it won't be the first time.
	That's all right. I won't decrease your purity too much, I hope.
	No, I think not.
	But anyway, what's on your mind?
	Well, we've been waiting.
	I've been reading various books that you recommended, and I've read all of your books, I think.
	And I've been looking forward to taking some psychotherapy.
	And I was sort of sent to a psychotherapist as a teenager.
	And just because it wasn't my idea, but it was kind of like authority's idea that I go there I didn't really, you know, I was like, it was just a very weird thing for me and I certainly didn't benefit from it, you know, just because it was imposed upon me and it wasn't, I didn't understand that this might help me at all.
	It was just one more adult imposition that just seemed to fill up my life at that time.
	Now, I've come around to seeing this could be really personally advantageous.
	And I think I've got a good idea from listening to your podcast and stuff, you know, like, this can just really be so helpful, you know, on sort of getting hold of your own character.
	And increasing your self-confidence and your self-esteem and that sort of thing, which I have a certain amount, but it can certainly use some increase and so on.
	And so it's been some months, but coincidentally just this month, my wife and I have a health plan together and they only allow you to make changes every so many months in the health plan.
	And even though we live in Canada, you know, there's a lot of the health plan guys are prospering, really.
	And this is the month that I'm first able to get the psychotherapist treatments on health plans.
	So I was going to go around and interview.
	I know you did address this topic a little bit before, but I was going to go around and interview some psychotherapists, starting with, you know, there's a A clinic just a couple of blocks down the street from where I live and just go from there and do some interviews.
	And I just wondered if I'm interviewing a psychiatrist or not psychiatrist, I'm probably going to go with psychotherapist.
	What would be a deal breaker in your estimation?
	What kind of answer would you get from somebody that you might say, okay, I'm going to move on and interview somebody else and this is a no-go?
	Wow, that's a great question.
	That's a great question. I like the fact that it's just, you know, what are your personal opinions about it?
	Because it is a very subjective, not entirely subjective, but largely subjective question about what makes a good therapist.
	It changes from person to person, situation to situation.
	But I mean, I've gone through firing a therapist, and I've gone through not firing a therapist, so to speak.
	So I can tell you what my experience was, and maybe it will help with you.
	Oh, that'd be great.
	Thanks. What was a deal breaker for me with the first therapist was two things.
	One was I perceived a lack of interest.
	I'm pretty sure if you ever watch somebody who's supposedly writing notes, I think you can tell if they're drawing little unicorns and hearts and things like that.
	I think you can tell just by looking at the back of the pencil.
	So I'm pretty sure that he was either making up a grocery list or drawing an epic battle between dwarves and goblins.
	But it was something like that. I really didn't get the feeling that he was listening.
	And I wasn't going to pay for refooing, so to speak.
	So that was one thing.
	The other thing was that the first therapist that I went to, he gave me his opinions.
	In the first session.
	And that to me was a deal breaker.
	And kind of insulting.
	You know, that was sort of my experience.
	My situation with my family is probably no more on that.
	Excuse me for interrupting, but you mean his opinions about your troubles or your state of mind or whatever?
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	First of all, I'm a smart guy.
	You're a smart guy. So...
	I'm not going to go and pay somebody who, after 40 minutes, is going to tell me what's what.
	Because that's to say that I'm so lost and confused that I can't understand my own life, but somebody else can get it and give me an answer in 40 minutes.
	I mean, that's ridiculous.
	Because he can't. I teach piano lessons, and I tell the parents that they sometimes want to know what's my curriculum, and I say, well, it's going to take me a few lessons just for piano students, you know, to learn who is this I'm teaching, because that involves, you know, a setting of the curriculum, you know, who is it there, you know?
	Yeah, you're not teaching piano, you're teaching a person, right?
	So you have to get to know that person, to know what motivates them, why they're even taking piano.
	If they're taking it because they want to be a jazz pianist, that's one thing.
	If they're taking it because they're pressured to or they need to get it on their college, whatever, then that's another reason.
	So you have to figure out the person.
	Even something as, quote, simple as teaching piano, and I certainly don't mean to say that it's simple or easy, but relative to something as wildly complex as psychotherapy, it's something that takes time to get to know the person.
	So I found that to be quite the turn-off.
	The second thing was...
	The second therapist that I went to...
	It gave me, I mean, within the first, I think it was the first week or two, just gave me an incredible insight where I went in with a dream that I was being chased by a woman through a dungeon and it was like a video game and she could crawl on the ceiling in those creepy spider kind of ways that you see sometimes in demon-haunted films.
	And I went on this big, I've mentioned this before, but I went on this big Waffle Burger tirade, which I'm sure you can all imagine is not a new habit to me with FDR. Where I was talking about this because I was really into Jung and this is my female side, this is my animus and so on.
	And she's like, you know, could be.
	Maybe it's just your mom.
	Right? And that was something that blew my mind for like months.
	Right? The idea that there weren't just aspects of me in me.
	There were people from the outside world inside me.
	And so we took that approach and it was the exact right approach.
	And so within the first week or two, I got something that was like, wow!
	Wow! Now, that therapist did have more trouble with my relationship with my brother than she did with my relationship with my mother, but that's true of everyone I know, myself included.
	So I couldn't fault her too much for that.
	But I wanted somebody who was going to listen, who was going to give me the respect of not providing obvious answers.
	Because if somebody's going to provide you a, quote, answer to your life, I think?
	It's like, well, it may sound better, but the other person hasn't learned anything.
	Right? So I wanted a therapist who was going to help me to develop the skills to solve my own problems in the long run.
	Not somebody who was going to, you know, if I'm trying to learn piano, was just going to sit down and play the piece beautifully and say, see?
	Like that. It's like, well, that doesn't really help me to watch somebody else do it well.
	And so I wanted somebody who was going to listen and to absorb and to give me the respect of understanding that these weren't simple issues to solve, who was going to give me nudging, who was going to give me principles that I could apply outside of therapy, who wasn't going to provide just answers and do this and do that.
	And that to me was very open-ended and rich.
	The first therapist I went to once, the second therapist I went to for three hours a week for over two years.
	So that was the big difference for me, where I felt that I was having a conversation with somebody who respected me, who listened, who absorbed, who would give feedback that opened up knowledge for me, that opened up avenues to pursue for me, that didn't kind of give me answers that deflated and demotivated me, if that makes sense.
	Oh yes, that's great.
	Thank you very much. Is that...
	I mean, and look, we've had conversations with listeners about this before.
	So if she's religious or he's the statist, which, you know, probably will be, I mean, to me that doesn't...
	That's not particularly relevant because we're talking about self-knowledge.
	We're not talking about God.
	And certainly if somebody says, you know, pray to Jesus, that'll be $150.
	Well, that's just a fraud.
	I can't imagine anybody would, but...
	Yeah, so, my second therapist, as I've mentioned before, was an out-and-out mystic.
	And yet, that wasn't...
	You know, it's like when I go to the dentist, I don't care if they vote conservative.
	I care that they drill my teeth well, because that's the area of knowledge that we're working in.
	And so, I don't need somebody to agree with me in everything, because I don't agree with me in everything.
	That would be a ridiculous standard.
	But I do require that the person have a deep respect for the process of self-knowledge, is a guide and a coach rather than somebody who just gives answers or provides do this or do that.
	I want patience.
	I want curiosity. I want us to be mutually excited about figuring out life.
	And I also, you know, a minor bonus is I want a therapist who's also willing to learn from me.
	Oh, yeah. That would be great.
	Yeah, because nobody has all the answers, of course, right?
	And, I mean, I learn so much from listeners.
	I mean, it's completely humbling to realize just how smart people are out there.
	And I get emails a day that just, like, they just, they make my jaw drop at how insightful and intelligent people are.
	And less so with YouTube comments, but more so with my inbox.
	And so I hope that everybody understands that I have the immense privilege of having a lot of people's intelligence focused on this conversation, which is what drives it, to such glitter and polish.
	And so I know for a fact that my second therapist grew through...
	Through our therapy. And I won't sort of get into the details of that because it's not relevant to what you're doing, I think.
	But that to me is ideal.
	I don't want a teacher who doesn't learn from me.
	Right. Well, it should be, I think, mutually very interesting in a sincere way, because it's new to me, what they'll uncover, I assume.
	And I'll be looking at my own subconscious in a new way, and I'll be, you know, it'll just be new information to me and to them too, I would hope.
	Right. And if you work, I mean, as I've always suggested, work as hard as you can.
	And given that you're about to retire, you'll have some time, right?
	But work as hard as you can in therapy.
	Write down your dreams.
	Talk about them with people. At least try and figure them out yourself.
	Bring in your dreams. I kept this completely, ridiculously voluminous journal while I was in therapy.
	And so I have no doubt that I worked harder than this therapist, any other patient this therapist had probably ever had.
	Partly because of my own particular interest in self-knowledge and partly because I was just in a privileged position of having the time.
	I wasn't in a relationship.
	My hobbies all fell by the wayside because I was in such desperate psychological straits.
	And so I had the time.
	I had the focus. I could do it.
	And so because I think I went deeper than patients she'd had before, or clients, whatever the name is these days, she had to go deeper to keep up, if that makes any sense.
	And that's what made it really mutual and exciting.
	Oh yes, the good old Protestant work ethic.
	I'll try and apply it.
	You see, I don't know if it's the Protestant work ethic or just I'm too cheap to pay for more than two years of therapy, so I'm going to get as much out of it as possible.
	Oh yeah, I identify with that also.
	Does that help?
	Is there anything else you'd like to ask?
	I confess that I also just wanted to call in because I'm usually doing lessons Sunday, every Sunday, and I never get a chance to call in.
	But it's just nice to talk to you because I think for most listeners, we form a kind of emotional bond, but we don't often get to talk to you personally.
	And it's just kind of...
	I don't know, some kind of confirming kind of thing, you know, like just to talk to you personally about some issue or other.
	And I just wanted to do that.
	Well, I appreciate that. And it is always such a great pleasure to chat with somebody I haven't chatted before, who's, I guess, you've listened for a while.
	So I really appreciate that.
	Obviously, your kind offer of support is gratefully accepted.
	And if you do get a chance, I mean, either you could post on the board or even just drop me a line.
	I'm curious to hear how your experiences with talking with somebody.
	I think it's fascinating.
	And the reason I wanted to, I mean, it's a big question, right?
	I mean, it is a very vulnerable and challenging relationship.
	And you really want to make sure that you get it with the right person and do it well.
	If it goes badly, it's expensive and can actually be a setback.
	So I appreciate your care and concern in making sure that you get the right person.
	Yeah, I've made plenty of posts, and I'll certainly do a post or two about, you know, any insights I have into starting up this psychotherapeutic relationship.
	Right. Fantastic.
	Fantastic. Well, good for you.
	I think it's a fantastic thing to be doing, and I think it's going to make your retirement that much richer.
	Oh, yeah. I hope so.
	We'll keep in touch, anyway.
	Please do. Please do. And thanks so much for listening.
	All right, look at that!
	We have 49 more minutes, my friends.
	Oh, I just want to tell you again, I must say, I look forward to these conversations so much.
	It is such a pleasure to chat with you guys.
	So thank you so much for your questions and comments.
	And you can type a question into the chat room, if you like.
	Hey, Steph, I have a relatively quick question, if no one else does.
	Go for it. Okay, and let me know if there's any problems with my sound.
	I'm on a wireless headset, so it might be spotty, but I can switch to a different one.
	So I'm thinking about, I've been studying the IFS system for a while now, and I'm thinking about...
	Sorry, just because other people may not be up on the acronyms, that's Richard Schwartz's Internal Family Systems Therapy, the idea that we are composed of a multiplicity of aspects or alter egos of ourselves.
	Right, right. And so I really like it.
	And I'm thinking about me creating some YouTube videos wherein I talk about how IFS My interface with philosophy, the idea being there that for people who are interested in philosophy, it would get them to be more familiar with some of the psychology stuff and this general idea of there being a multiplicity of personalities and stuff like that.
	And for people that are interested in IFS and don't know anything about Philosophy, it might help to give them some perspective on that and apply some rationality to some of the concepts.
	As I've been thinking about some of the topics that might be interesting for me to talk or write about, I've been thinking a bunch about moral responsibility and At some point I anticipate that I'll have to talk a little bit about the argument against determinism.
	And my problem there is that I've always had a hard time at sort of formulating good arguments that sort of put determinism to rest in a satisfying way.
	So I was wondering if you could help me out with that a little bit.
	I know the basic structure of what I think is your argument against determinism, but I've never been able to quite figure out exactly how it works.
	You mean sort of the clincher arguments against determinism?
	Yeah, yeah. There aren't any.
	That's probably why you have, you know, any debate that's gone on for a few thousand years is probably not something that is easy to resolve.
	That is the basic humility that I like to bring to my approaches.
	I mean, I'm trying to solve the problem of ethics.
	I'm trying to solve the problem of free will.
	I do at least accept that the answers can't be that simple because they're, you know, very intelligent people have debated many sides of it.
	But I don't know if you've watched.
	I did a YouTube debate on determinism.
	I also have a three-part series on it.
	I'm not just going to say go watch those, but if you have watched them, it makes it a little easier to reference.
	Yeah, no, I've seen all of that stuff.
	Okay, so the basic approach that I would take with determinants, which I've done before, is to say that complexity doesn't generate additional properties, right?
	So a human being is still meat, muscle, matter, and energy, and does not gain any magical properties called free will just by being a human being, right?
	So they have to say that, yes, complexity does not generate magical additional properties like free will, right?
	If you pour a bunch of sand into a bucket, it doesn't suddenly become an iguana, right?
	It doesn't magically take on different properties just when you aggregate a bunch of things together.
	And they would have to say yes to that, right?
	And so you would say, well, the weather is very complex.
	You can't predict it exactly in the same way that human beings are very complex and you can't predict them exactly.
	But just because the weather is complex and somewhat unpredictable doesn't mean that the weather has a magical property called free will.
	And they would agree with that too, right?
	This is the standard argument, right?
	Yes. Yep. And so, basically, the determinists are saying that there is no difference between a human being and the weather.
	Right. Right?
	Yep. So, then you have to say, why are you arguing with me, rather than a rain cloud?
	Right. But when the determinists just simply say, well, I don't actually have any choice in the matter, like, my action of having this conversation and the way that it's going to go and all that is already...
	You know, it's all predetermined because things are deterministic.
	Well, sure, but then what they're saying is that debating, that the contents of consciousness don't change actions, don't change behavior, right?
	Because there is no such thing as consciousness.
	It's sort of a free will.
	It's an illusion. But they still have this basic problem of saying that If a human being is no different than the weather, but they only will ever, like it would be ridiculous to argue free will with a cyclone, right? I mean, that would be a bad comedy routine, right?
	Like some guy standing in front of a cyclone saying, but I think that when you look at the physical properties of matter, it's completely obvious that free will and consciousness is a mere illusion, and then, you know, you get sucked up into the funnel.
	Now, I'm not saying I wish that for all determinists.
	No, but I mean, it would be ridiculous, right?
	That would be a comedy, right?
	And not even good comedy, right?
	You know, when we see King Lear, and King Lear is out there raging at the storm in the middle of the play, we all understand that this is a sign of mental illness in King Lear, right?
	It is not a sign that he's actually having a debate with the storm, right?
	Right. Sorry, that's a completely geeky theater school reference.
	But we understand that a man yelling at thunder is not particularly well in the head, right?
	But if human beings are no different than weather, but you only ever argue with human beings and never with the weather, then you have a contradiction.
	Which is that human beings are exactly the same as weather, but I will only argue with human beings.
	So they're exactly the same, yet they're completely different.
	Now, if somebody says, well, contradictions don't matter to me, then what they're saying is that they have no concept of debating, of argument, of evidence, of better or worse positions, in which case you can say, well, then I believe in free will, and you can't correct me because there's no such thing as better or worse positions to hold.
	In fact, the whole concept of better or worse relies on free will, relies on our ability to choose.
	That which cannot be chosen cannot be better or worse.
	Yeah, I agree. As soon as you get rid of free will, then all sorts of things just become utterly relativistic and non-objective.
	Well, they become meaningless, right?
	As I sort of met before, it's like a boulder crashing down a hill.
	There's no better or worse place that it can land.
	It's not moral if it bounces left and immoral if it bounces right.
	It's just operating on the laws of physics, just like consciousness does to a determinist, right?
	So if there's no such thing as a better or worse position, then saying I believe in free will cannot be rationally corrected.
	Yeah, I guess so. Sorry, I know this came up in the debate, and you probably already addressed it.
	I probably just kind of forgot what your response to it was, but someone said that the reason that the reasonableness of talking to people about things, even if it's deterministic, is that humans, they will deterministically respond to things that other people say, so you can respond. You can convince them of things.
	Words come out of your mouth, they hear them, they process the thoughts, and their brain deterministically figures out that this makes sense and they're going to act accordingly in the future.
	So even if everything is pretty much predetermined, whereas talking with the weather doesn't actually have any physical significant impact on it.
	And so if you wanted to convince the weather of something...
	There's two things about that.
	The first thing is that then they're saying that human beings are fundamentally different than weather.
	Right. In which case they have to drop their original position.
	That complexity doesn't grant additional properties.
	Right? Because if you're saying, well, talking to the weather would be crazy.
	Human beings are exactly the same as the weather, but talking to human beings is the same.
	Well, then you can't hold those two positions mutually exclusive, right?
	Right. I'm not sure that that's obvious to me.
	I thought that the argument was that humans are not fundamentally different in their physical aspects, but they're different in the sense that they have ears and a brain that processes sound and can convert it into...
	Well, yeah, but everything is determined, right?
	So, for instance, if you say...
	If I say to you, I'm lost in the woods, you and I are walking in the woods, and I say, I have no idea which way we should go, I'm completely lost.
	And you say, I really want to go south.
	And I say, no.
	I will not go south.
	And you say, well, let's go east, let's go west.
	And say, no, no, no. I'm completely lost, I have no idea which way to go, but I'm only going to head north.
	Those are contradictory statements, right?
	If I only want to head north, then I can't say that I'm completely lost and have no idea which way we should go, right?
	Yes. And so if somebody says, there's nothing fundamentally different about human beings, but I'm only ever going to argue with human beings, it's exactly the same as saying, I have no preference about which way to go in the woods, but I'm only going to go north.
	And if somebody says, well, I'm going to debate with someone because their brain is going to be predetermined to respond to stimuli, then that's saying, I'm going to make a choice to debate with somebody based on the fact that their brain is going to respond to stimuli.
	But that's saying, I'm going to make a choice based on reason and evidence about who to talk to, a human being rather than a tree.
	But that's saying, I'm making a choice to talk to this person because of reason and evidence.
	That's assuming free will.
	Yeah, I guess I don't completely follow why that's the case.
	When we're talking about whether...
	Sorry, let me just rephrase that, right?
	So, somebody's saying, well, a human being is like a computer, and if you program a computer, it will do different things, right?
	If you load a virus in, it's going to go fat.
	If you load a word processor in, it's going to crash and take all your work with it, or whatever the hell word processors do.
	So, somebody's sitting there saying, well, a human being is like a computer, so you program it to get it to do different things, right?
	But if human beings are like computers, you have two computers facing each other.
	You don't have a human being programming a computer.
	Because human beings are both computers, right?
	And so nothing new is being created or added to the equation.
	You have to pretend one person is a human being and the other person is a computer in order for that analogy to work.
	But the reality is that if determinism is universal, both human beings are computers.
	And you have two television sets pointed at each other pretending to have a debate.
	Everything's pre-recorded, everything's pre-scripted, and nobody's making any choice whatsoever.
	So somebody who's a determinist can't say, well, I choose to debate with human beings because of these particular properties, because that's saying that human beings are like a computer except me, who gets to make these choices based on reason and evidence, right?
	I don't think that...
	My interpretation of the determinist argument is that they're not saying that I choose to talk to humans.
	They're saying that I'm a computer that is programmed to recognize that it only makes sense to talk to other computers.
	It doesn't make sense to try to talk to a chair or something like that.
	But why wouldn't it make sense to talk to a chair if everything is predetermined?
	Because there's no fundamental difference between a chair and a human being in the determinist universe.
	I guess because... Well, chairs don't have the input to process your output, right?
	Well, but we understand that debating with a computer, with a handheld microphone, computer has an input and can process what you're doing.
	It can do speech recognition and so on, right?
	So that doesn't solve the problem either, right?
	Nobody debates with a computer because a computer's responses are predetermined.
	Even though it has the input capacity and can recognize to some degree human speech and translate it to text.
	Yeah, I mean, I totally agree that the idea of debating when a determinist is talking about debating is completely ridiculous.
	Anytime that they say that they're trying to convince you of something, it just doesn't make any sense.
	As soon as a determinist says, I'm doing what I'm doing because of this particular reason and evidence, because of this particular argument, I'm doing what I'm doing because of this particular argument.
	Yeah. Then they're saying, I'm not programmed.
	Because the moment you come up with a why, you're saying, one state is preferable to another.
	So a determinist who says, I talk to human beings because human beings have inputs, is saying, it is preferable to talk to beings with inputs.
	But the moment that you have a deterministic universe, there's no such thing as preferable.
	There's no such thing as a better or worse state.
	And so, I mean, you understand that this can go round and round, right?
	Because determinism is not a problem to be solved.
	It's a disease to be cured.
	It is a mental problem.
	It is a problem, in my perspective, determinism comes from the people are deterministic when they have done things that they're deeply ashamed of, and they can't handle their own conscience, and so they want to strip free will out and pretend that they were only machines acting out when they beat up their little brother or did something.
	It's such an irrational position.
	It's such an embarrassing position intellectually that it has to be driven emotionally.
	It has to be driven emotionally.
	And you understand, when you were playing devil's advocate, right?
	I mean, it is a fundamentally frustrating argument because it doesn't matter what it says.
	People would just come up. They will create little pockets of free will to justify their own actions and then say that they're merely programmed.
	They will say that it's better for you not to believe In free will, and then say that there's no such thing as better or worse because everything is determined.
	It's exactly the same as the statist arguments.
	It goes round and round and round.
	So the statist says, I'm not putting you in this category, I'm not putting you in the determinist category, but the statist says, we are responsible for our society because we get to voluntarily participate in it through voting and blah blah blah, citizenship and so on.
	And then you say, well, but it's enforced.
	Right? It's a gun.
	And we're also propagandized for 13 or 12, over a decade or whatever, in public schools.
	And so they say, well, look, if it's a voluntary social contract, then let's get rid of the gun.
	Because that actually makes it voluntary and worthwhile.
	And then they say, well, we can't get rid of the gun.
	They say, okay, well, then it's not voluntary.
	And they say, no, it is voluntary because you get to vote.
	It's like voting who controls the gun does not make it voluntary.
	Voting who gets raped does not make it not rape.
	Right? Right? And understand, it's the same switcheroo.
	People will set up that it's voluntary because that gives you moral responsibility and gives you guilt, right?
	In the same way that you are somehow in the Catholic religion, you are responsible for the death of Jesus, though you weren't even there if he even was, right?
	So you are responsible for the death of Jesus.
	Original sin stains you.
	The sin of Adam stains you.
	So you're morally responsible and you're bad or whatever, right?
	Right. And so, it's the same thing with determinists.
	They say, well, this is preferable, you shouldn't believe in free will, determinism is better, but there's no such thing as a better and worse state.
	Right? Human beings are the same as everything else in the universe, but to argue with a cactus or a computer would be insane.
	So they'll create a little pocket of free will to make things better or worse so that you are in the wrong and they are in the right.
	And then when you point that out, they'll say, no, there's no such thing as free will.
	And you go round and round and round in the same way that people will say there's a social contract.
	Well, let's put down the guns then because that's voluntarism.
	No, we can't put down the guns.
	Well, then it's not a contract. It's not voluntary, right?
	You just go round and round and round.
	Right, yeah. So I guess as soon as you take the argument in favor of determinism, then you can't object to things like people disagreeing with you, not wanting to talk with you, anything like that, because it's all predetermined.
	Actually, there are no preferable states since there's no chance of preferability if things are predetermined, etc.
	So it's kind of a theater. Yeah, like if somebody...
	It's silly, right? If somebody doesn't understand the existential absurdity of saying to someone, you should change your mind to accept the position that you cannot change your mind.
	If somebody doesn't understand that fundamental madness, then they're either extremely subpar in terms of IQ, in which case it's embarrassing to debate with them, right?
	Right. I mean, I think a four-year-old could understand that.
	Probably even a three-year-old could understand.
	That's a ridiculous position.
	Or even if you disagree with me and say, well, no, determinism is valid, you at least have to understand that that's a pretty significant problem to overcome.
	Right? The thing that I try to do when I debate with people...
	Look, I understand that the problems that you need to explain about anarchism are significant.
	People say, well, why wouldn't DROs just become another government?
	Or, who's going to build the roads?
	Or, well, so you've just replaced one government with a whole bunch of other governments.
	It's not any better. DROs are just governments.
	Whatever, right? Whatever people come up with.
	How will the poor children be educated?
	When I talk about anarchism, I accept...
	Because I'm a sane human being with some rational perspective in the world, I accept that there are significant problems to overcome when explaining a voluntary society to people.
	I don't just say, come on, it's completely obvious how ridiculous for you to ask that question.
	Right? Right.
	And so, I mean, I would really respect determinists if they said, that is a significant problem.
	That is a great question.
	That is a big problem with determinism.
	I'm going to try and step you through what I think the solution to it is.
	I mean, you can see these on YouTube all the time.
	People say, well, they're just creating more governments, so you want it to be like Somalia, right?
	Well, what I do is I say, okay, I'll create a whole series of videos on Somalia and provide the reason and evidence as to why it's not anarchism, and even if it is, it's better than most of the other countries, and you compare apples to apples, not apples to oranges, and blah, blah, blah, right?
	So I at least accept that it's a good and reasonable and intelligent question, and I strive to provide a reasonable answer.
	To the question of ethics, right?
	I don't invoke the magic term rights and the constitution and limited government and all of these magical spells that people have come up with to try and ward off the evil demons called there are bad people with guns in the world, right?
	Right. I recognize that the problem of ethics is deep and problematic.
	And so when people come and say, ethics are subjective, they're cultural, it's like, I get what they're talking about.
	Because I'm trying to come up with a radical new argument for ethics, UPB, so I get.
	I don't just say, well, that's a ridiculous and stupid position.
	Ethics are obviously objective.
	End of discussion, right?
	Because that would be stupid, right?
	Right. And not respectful of the other person, and not respectful of the complexity of the issue.
	And so when a determinist comes to me when I point out, you're trying to get me to change my mind about whether I can change my mind, You understand that that's a fundamental contradiction.
	It's a self-detonating argument. If a determinist just says, no, no, no, no, you don't understand.
	You don't get it. It's like this.
	Then I just know that they're emotionally defended.
	They're psychologically messed up.
	Whereas if somebody comes and says, that is a really great objection.
	Let me tell you how I've tried to solve it, and you can let me know what you think.
	That, to me, would be somebody who's not messed up emotionally.
	Is it fair to say that...
	Yeah, and I totally agree that, like...
	Every determinist that I've come across was driven, as far as I can see, by emotional motivations.
	But I'm wondering, is it fair to say that arguing for determinism with another person is sort of a self-contradictory act, but it's not necessarily a proof that determinism is false universally?
	Is that fair to say? Yeah, no.
	What it tells me is that the person themselves does not believe in determinism.
	Right, right, right. And it also tells me that they don't know.
	That they don't know that they don't believe in determinism.
	Right? So they're not processing reality well at all.
	Right, so there were these three determinists who for months had been basically calling me an idiot, right?
	Right. For my free will position.
	And I mean, the hate mail that I got about my determinist position was second only to my position on hookers, right?
	And so the amount of abuse that came to me from determinists indicates to me that determinists tend to be abusive or destructive people, and that fits with the theory that they're determinists because they're really not proud of how they've been living, and so they need an excuse called determinism.
	Right, right.
	I'm not responsible for what I've done, for the damage I've done in the world.
	And so, I'm going to be really emotionally wed, because if I do have choice, then I'm morally responsible for the things that I've done, and that's going to make me feel like two tons of shit in a five-pound bag, right?
	Right. And so, it doesn't matter who, but I talked to a determinist after I'd had a debate with him months later.
	He was sort of saying, well, why aren't you responding to my emails or whatever, right?
	And I said, look... For months you called me an idiot, we had a debate, and you have to admit I at least held my own.
	And so if I call somebody an idiot for months, and then I debate with that person, and I can't refute their arguments, I owe that person a goddamn apology.
	That's bare minimum civilized human interaction standards, right?
	That's bare minimum of empathy.
	If I publicly call somebody a fool and an idiot and just doesn't get it and doesn't understand, right?
	If I publicly, on this person's forum, publicly call them an idiot for months, and then it's three to one in a debate, and they can't respond to my arguments, Then the bare minimum of civilized and decent human interaction would be to say, not to concede, right?
	Because, you know, it's just a debate, right?
	If they don't agree. But at least to say, your position is better than I thought.
	Right, right. I'm sorry for calling you an idiot when I couldn't refute your arguments.
	That's just bare minimum.
	Right? I agree.
	Yeah. Now, not one of them did it, and months later, so I said to this guy, I said, I thought, you know, I was at least owed an apology after you publicly on my website called me an idiot for months and then couldn't refute my arguments in our debate.
	At the bare minimum, I was owed an apology, and he wrote me back to me and said, well, don't worry, it didn't exactly get lost in the email, trust me.
	Which I thought was a particularly jerky thing to say.
	Yeah, don't worry. I didn't apologize.
	It didn't hit your inbox.
	I never did. Right?
	That's rude, right? That's being kind of jerky, right?
	Right. And so, either determinism gives people the excuse to act like jerks, which I think it does.
	Right, right, right. But much more likely is that jerks, for want of a better phrase, jerks are drawn towards determinism because fundamentally they're not very happy with how they behave.
	Mm, mm.
	And I think that's an important point for me to keep in mind since I'm going to be talking about this interface between psychology and philosophy as best as I can as an absolute amateur, of course.
	So what I'm trying to figure out is that those are great observations about people who believe in determinism, but does that tell us I see.
	determinism must be false or is there some kind of subtlety that says that determinism might be true but you can't argue in favor of it i see no but if determinism were true there are tests right obviously if determinism were true which and the test would be to predict people's behavior exactly right Yes. I mean, so there are tests, of course, right?
	It's not completely esoteric.
	Yeah. So, yeah, so there would be tests.
	You're right in saying that it doesn't axiomatically mean that the position is false if it's always self-contradictory to argue in favor of it, right?
	I agree with you that that doesn't absolutely prove that it's false.
	There's no question in my mind that it may be that at some point in the future it could be theoretically possible to prove determinism through an exact prediction of people's behavior.
	Yes. Absolutely. For sure.
	For sure. I agree.
	And my question would be, would that then change people's behavior?
	And the answer would be, well, of course, right?
	Of course it would. If everybody suddenly accepted that everything was deterministic, human behavior would change.
	Right. Now, I don't think that's ever going to happen.
	I think that the amazing thing that a brain can do is to create ideals and absolutes which we can compare reality to.
	I think that's the fundamental free will is fundamentally the ability to compare reality to ideals, compare things in the world to the scientific method, to compare reality.
	Words in the ear to the rigorous of logical analysis to compare what happens to an ideal.
	And there's a choice about whether you want to do that or not.
	But we have that choice. We have that capacity.
	We can focus on that.
	And that is something that determinists have to accept as well.
	Because they're saying determinism is truth.
	Truth is more valuable than error.
	You should change your mind to determinism.
	I want to compare the contents of your mind to an ideal standard called truth equals determinism equals good.
	And you need to focus on that to change your mind.
	So you're asking the human being to focus on the ideal and the reality and to close the gap.
	That to me fundamentally is using free will.
	Now, am I absolutely convinced that at no point in the future will determinism ever be proven beyond a shadow of a doubt?
	I don't think that I am.
	I'm convinced of that 100% because I think that would be hubris.
	I guess you could say I'm as close to a strong atheist agnostic free willer as you could.
	Right, right, right.
	But... But that's sort of my position.
	Certainly the default position at the moment is free will.
	The default rational position is free will.
	Because I can't argue using a fundamental contradiction.
	That to me is embarrassing as a thinker.
	I can't put forward an argument that says, you should change your mind to stop believing that you can change your mind.
	I can't do that. I can't do it.
	I mean, determinism would be great in so many ways, for sure.
	But I can't do it, because it's just ridiculous, right?
	Right, yeah, I guess you can't really have a determinist philosopher, because you just, I mean, he doesn't have a job anymore.
	I would no more debate with human beings than I would debate with trees and rocks.
	I just wouldn't.
	I wouldn't love my wife.
	I certainly wouldn't love my daughter.
	None of these, because love is the belief in virtue.
	And virtue is impossible in a deterministic universe.
	So, I mean, and I've said this openly before, I mean, I wouldn't love the truth.
	I wouldn't love, there would be no such thing as philosophy, because philosophy is about preferring truth to falsehood.
	There'd be no such thing as truth, no such thing as falsehood, and no such thing as preferences.
	So my life would be completely shredded.
	I would lose love, I would lose passion, I would lose drive, I would lose desire, I would lose courage, I would lose everything that I treasure and value about myself in a deterministic universe.
	And I won't give that stuff up for a fundamental logical contradiction, right?
	Like, I can't do that. I could give up all of that stuff if it were true.
	If determinism were proven beyond a shadow of a doubt to be true, then I would give up all of that stuff, for sure.
	In the same way that I gave up religion, and I gave up objectivism, and I gave up minarchism, and I gave up all these other things that at the time were very important to me.
	But I'm not going to give up all that is great, deep, beautiful, and wonderful in life for the sake of arguing a logical contradiction.
	That would just be ridiculous, I think.
	Right. Yeah, no, I think that's quite helpful for me because I know you've said all of this stuff a million times, so I hope I'm not frustrating the crap out of you by making you repeat yourself.
	But yeah, I think that's helpful because I think it's interesting to focus on this idea that...
	Like, okay, well, you can continue to debate in favor of determinism, but here are all the results of arguing in favor of that.
	This is the effect that it has on virtue of love, on love, all these positive things.
	And certainly from a psychological standpoint, that's not favorable at all.
	So, yeah, I think that's quite helpful.
	You know, the thing I would ask too, if you're going to get involved in determinist debates, is try and figure out what the person's relationship is to their own virtue, to their own integrity, to their own ethics.
	Because if I'm right, determinism is a response to unethical behavior that you're too vainglorious to change, then it's worth knowing because you want to make sure you're talking about the real thing.
	If determinism is just a cover for a bad conscience, there's no point talking about determinism because it's an effect of a bad conscience.
	You either talk about the bad conscience or you don't talk at all.
	Right. And I think it would be easy to do sort of a video about kind of talking a little bit about how you might get to know a part of yourself that sort of argues in favor of determinism, how you might find elements in your history that led you to that kind of disposition.
	So I think it would fit nicely with IFS. The other thing that I would mention as well is that if determinists have rejected self-knowledge, and in my experience they have, because a lack of self-knowledge leads to being a jerk, right?
	Or being a jerk leads to a lack of self-knowledge.
	It's a chicken and egg thing, right?
	If a determinist has rejected self-knowledge and an understanding of history, then determinism feels real.
	Because it is only through introspection and self-knowledge that we gain the capacity to really choose a different path than the one that we were programmed to follow as children.
	So if you reject self-knowledge, determinism feels pretty damn real.
	Because you kind of don't have choice in the absence of self-knowledge.
	So if you steadfastly, like you don't have the choice to lose weight if you steadfastly reject any and all knowledge of nutrition and just eat whatever tastes good.
	Right. You fundamentally don't have the choice to lose weight if you reject all knowledge of nutrition and exercise.
	Right. Because we want to sit on the couch and eat bonbons.
	I mean, that's what we're programmed to do biologically, right?
	We don't want to haul our ass to the gym and eat bonbons.
	Carrots, right? And so if you reject self-knowledge, then history wins and you do become a programmed history bot, right?
	You just act out, right?
	Like this woman at the beginning of the call who was mean to this first caller.
	Does she have the choice to not be mean?
	Well, no. He has the choice because he's trying to figure out his past, he's standing up for himself, for doing the right thing, and so on, right?
	So he is developing the choice muscle through self-knowledge.
	Somebody who just acts out and is destructive and abusive, do they have the choice not to be?
	No. So it feels real to them.
	Determinism feels real because they've rejected self-knowledge, which is really where choice comes from.
	In IFS, they have this idea of sort of the seat of consciousness, which is this idea that at any given point, either the true self or some other part will be occupying the seat.
	And whoever is in the seat sort of has a very significant impact on the thoughts that you're having, your disposition, your behavior, and stuff like that.
	And so my thoughts on...
	And sort of moral responsibility and free will and stuff like that were sort of based on that idea.
	Part of the fundamental thing about IFS is that you can have the self occupy the seat and it can sort of inspect the other parts and communicate with them and that kind of thing.
	And so a lot of the free will that you have comes from That choice of sort of training yourself to be, training your true self to be the one that occupies the seat the most and does all this work of examining the other parts.
	And you sort of give up a lot of that free will when you decide not to do that and you just let the other parts sort of take over and govern you unconsciously.
	Right, right. I mean, to take a silly and extreme example, was Hitler free to not hate Jews?
	Given that he relentlessly avoided an examination of his own brutalized childhood?
	Well, no. Not at all.
	He wasn't free. I mean, you could say existentially, but I would say fundamentally he was no more free to not hate Jews than he was free to fly, because he just didn't have the musculature that we have to develop.
	And most people, it's better usually to try and develop it when you're younger than when you're older, just as it's better to not gain weight than it is to try and lose weight, so...
	The other thought that I had about this is that I guess the implication for that that I just thought of is that when child abusers, what they do is they end up creating all these sort of negative parts in people and they kind of take free will away from the child that's being abused because suddenly the child has to do all this work to get back into the driver's seat.
	Before he or she can start making really conscious decisions again.
	That's a very interesting point.
	It certainly raises the barrier to free will.
	The other thing that just struck me as you were talking, and I don't mean to say that I wasn't listening, it just popped into my head, is that people who abuse anyone, we were just talking about kids, people who abuse children can only do it by pushing free will onto the children.
	Because you punish a child for that which is chosen, right?
	Yes. And so you have to say to the child, you chose to do X, and therefore I'm going to punish you for making a bad choice.
	So in a sense, that is a way of making people hostile to the idea of free will, because it is used to punish you as a child.
	Yeah, that's quite true.
	Which might be another reason why people are hostile to the idea of free will.
	Right. Anyway, I'm so sorry.
	I think we have a yearning burning from a listener.
	Thanks for bringing it up.
	And I think your project, for what it's worth, is absolutely worthy and a great, great project.
	And if you'd like to post a link, I think it would be very good.
	All right. I'll keep you posted.
	Thanks. Thanks.
	All right.
	We had another caller. I'm seeing if we can add her to the call.
	Ah, okay. So just bear with me.
	Somebody just posted, is free will real?
	Better believe it, even if it's not.
	I think that's an interesting argument.
	I haven't read the actual article in question, but I would hesitate because there's sort of an argument from a fact, which is, well, if you could say, well, people who believe in God are happier, therefore we should believe in God even if he's not real, so I would avoid that.
	Anyway, sorry, we have a caller.
	You just joined us. I'm sorry, I'm hearing two voices at once.
	Do I need to close the chat?
	Yes. Okay.
	Oh, you can mute. I think you can mute it.
	Okay, I think I've got it working now.
	So, I'm sorry, I made me kind of nervous.
	No problem at all. Well, my question is about therapy and how much time that you need to devote to that.
	Like I said in my question, typed out, my father committed suicide in April.
	And as you can imagine, all the other emotional baggage that comes along with that from the kind of person that would do such a thing.
	But My mother has offered to pay for these services, and she takes care of me financially because I'm a student, and that's really difficult to pay for.
	But I also try, like, I scramble, I work hard to make very good grades and get as many scholarships as I can, and Try to make whatever money I can to pay for as much as I can for myself because I don't feel like that should be her responsibility to pay for my school.
	But with this coming into light and how intense my course load is, I'm not really certain that I can devote the amount of time to fixing my own emotional problems.
	Right. Whenever I have to work so hard to...
	I start off and I go to work and then I go to classes and I'm in these art classes which are twice as long as a regular class as far as class time plus all of the work that I have to do to maintain my skills and produce work.
	So it's like...
	Where does therapy fit into this and how am I, you know, and like you were saying, you wanted to really devote a lot of attention to it and researching on your own and bringing your own insights back into that.
	I want to be that kind of active person in therapy and I've already thought about that even, you know, that's kind of what set me up for asking this question whenever you were talking about that earlier.
	So Is it a reasonable thing to expect of my mother?
	Right. Sorry, did I just lose you?
	Oh, sorry, go ahead. Sorry, it just went quiet.
	I want to make sure that you're still on. So it's your question, is it reasonable to ask your mother to pay for both school and therapy, or is it more around what I think the impact of therapy might be on a very demanding course load and so on?
	Well, it's more of like, should...
	Should I allow her to pay for my living situation and let all of my courses and all that stuff, the money that goes along with school and the therapy, if she's willing to do that, and then...
	Not work. Basically, my question is, should I quit working in order to focus on therapy?
	Is it that important or is that being lazy?
	Sorry, quit working?
	I'm sorry. Are you in school and working?
	Is that right? Yes.
	I have two part-time jobs and that adds up to be about 20 hours a week.
	It's kind of important to my career path.
	Like, I work at an advertising agency as kind of an intern assistantship.
	Right. Right.
	That's a big question.
	That's a big question. First of all, I'm incredibly sorry to hear about your father.
	I'm just... Suicide is so savagely devastating that I just...
	I just wanted to express incredibly deep and heartfelt sympathy about that situation.
	It leaves... You know, such an enormous amount of emotional challenges for the people left behind.
	I just really wanted to just give you basic mammal-to-mammal sympathy about that.
	It hasn't been easy. No, my God.
	I'm sure that's the understatement of the decade.
	It is... I mean, I assume that it wasn't like he was terminally ill and took a graceful exit, like it was something more traumatic?
	Well, we...
	We think he might have attempted suicide maybe a couple months prior, and it was just kind of like a terminal depression, bipolar neurosis kind of thing, I guess.
	Just unwilling to get help and unwilling to pull himself out of it.
	Oh, God, I'm so sorry.
	I'm so sorry. My God, I mean, just how...
	I mean...
	It's so devastating, and it leaves so many questions unanswered, so many could-have, should-have, what-if kind of thing.
	So I just wanted to just tell you how incredibly sorry I am that this happened to you, to your family, obviously to your father, but his problems are over, right?
	I mean, so for you, and your mom, of course, the aftermath is...
	It's very hard, and I just wanted to sympathize with that and just give you massive sympathies for having to deal with that.
	Yes, so kind of strangely enough, this is kind of a scheduling question.
	I'm kind of a person who tends to overload myself, and then I find myself...
	It works out fine whenever I'm feeling better and healthier mentally, but...
	And I can handle that kind of rigorous schedule, but it doesn't work whenever I'm having emotional problems, which come more and more often in light of these events.
	Right. Okay, and let me ask a couple of questions, because I get that you really want to sort of figure out the scheduling thing.
	And obviously, I don't know what you should do.
	Nobody, I think, can tell you, but these are the questions that I would ask myself in your situation.
	Now, I haven't had to deal with a suicide, but...
	I did enter therapy when I had just broken up from a seven-year relationship when I was an entrepreneur with all of the ridiculous workload challenges that that has when I was having conflicts with my family.
	And so I'm not going to say that I'm in the same situation because I'm not, but I think I've been close enough to it.
	Yeah, I think I've been close enough to it that the questions that I asked myself maybe have helped you.
	I just sort of wanted to establish that ahead of time, okay?
	This is what I asked myself and I won't pretend to ask myself, I'll just ask you.
	What is going to happen To your energy, focus, concentration, creativity, and work ethic if you don't get help in dealing with these recent tragedies and whatever preceded it?
	Well, I'm going to spend a lot of time upset and not a lot of time working.
	Right. I mean, that obviously would be the worst situation.
	So you say, well, I don't want to go to therapy because it's going to interfere and take time away.
	And then because you don't go to therapy, you end up spending even more time upset and self-managing and worrying.
	And so that's the worst because at least therapy, it's a committed amount of time.
	It's an investment. And then you're done, at least for the most part.
	Whereas this other thing could just go on and on, right?
	Where you don't have the energy that you need to do your courses, but you're not expending that energy in therapy, if that makes any sense.
	Yes. Well, I can have the time to go to therapy.
	I just am not sure if loading all of this stuff is going to be very productive towards making therapy as productive as possible.
	Well, look, I think I get it.
	And I think you bring up a very, very important point.
	So, sorry to interrupt. So, there's a perfection, and I guess you're not entirely unfamiliar with the phrase perfectionism, right?
	Because the first thing, if you hear me talk about therapy, the first thing you come to is, well, my therapy should be perfect, right?
	It should be the maximum efficient, invested therapy that there could be, right?
	Yes. Well, maybe that's not the best idea, but that's what...
	Yeah, that's what I was shooting for.
	Yeah, yeah. Well, it doesn't have to be that way.
	Therapy can serve many purposes.
	Now, I entered therapy because I couldn't sleep.
	So for me, I was in such a desperate situation that I just, I had to, right?
	Now, if you're able to function, and it sounds like you are, and I certainly was able to function at work, but certainly that was declining because lack of sleep is not good for cognitive abilities or much emotional stability, I suppose.
	But you can do therapy to deal with a more immediate situation.
	So there wasn't a single traumatic event that happened like the suicide of my dad or whatever.
	There wasn't a single event that happened to me that I was like, damn it, I've got to go to therapy, right?
	For me, it was an accumulation of things throughout my whole life that began to coalesce.
	Within my life. A sense of my own mortality.
	A sense that I was wasting time in a relationship.
	A sense that I was not standing up for myself in my career.
	All of these sorts of things. They just began to coalesce.
	And I didn't know what the hell was going on.
	I just knew that I wasn't sleeping.
	And so I thought, well, geez, I better talk to someone because I don't want to go take sleeping pills.
	I just don't think that's the way.
	It's not going to solve my problems. So because I didn't have a specific thing, I had to do a lot of beating around the bush and exploration in order to figure out What was wrong?
	But you have something that's much more specific, if that makes any sense.
	Like, I'm not just going to the doctor saying, I feel tired, right?
	Like, you're going to the doctor saying, my foot fell off, can you put it back on, please?
	Does that make any sense?
	So, I mean, if you go to a therapist and you say, my father committed suicide in April, you're immediately starting to work on something that's very specific.
	Not just, I can't sleep and I don't know why.
	It took months for me to even figure out what the problem was.
	That's not going to be exactly the same with you, if that makes sense.
	Yes. So, it may not...
	Like, if you were saying to me, oh, Steph, you know, I want to go to therapy.
	I feel this generalized anxiety.
	I'm having trouble sleeping, but I don't know what's wrong.
	I'd say, well, that's going to be an investment, right?
	Well, that's part of, like, generalized anxiety and, you know, other various emotional problems I have.
	That's part of why I'm going to therapy.
	This is just kind of like the catalyst of...
	But it's a very specific catalyst that you can start working on very quickly.
	I mean, again, this is my idiot opinion, right?
	But it's something that you can begin working on much more quickly.
	And my concern would be, and look, you understand, just because it's my concern, there's no truth in it.
	It's just this is where my mind goes, which is that it takes help to process it.
	Something like a suicide. I mean, oh my god.
	I mean, oh my god. What a terrible and terrifying thing to experience.
	And so my concern would be, what's going to happen to you if you say, well, I don't have time for therapy?
	Might you then end up with either insomnia or more anxiety or something so that it then interferes even more so than therapy would, but without an end point or a healing point, if that makes sense?
	Yeah. Let me give you a metaphor.
	I see what you're saying.
	Let me give you a very quick metaphor, and more for the other listeners who I think probably I'm not explaining myself very well.
	To say, I don't have time to go to a nutritionist.
	I don't have time to diet.
	And then you get diabetes, which costs you a hell of a lot more time than just going to a nutritionist or changing your diet habits or whatever, right?
	So that would be my concern.
	Okay. Well, I'm not sure exactly.
	So... Well, I see what you're saying.
	I'm not saying that I'm going to avoid going to therapy.
	I'm just saying is cramming a whole bunch of stuff in there with therapy a really bad idea whenever I'm going to be getting like four hours of sleep during the semester?
	Yeah, look, I certainly don't think it's good.
	Is there any way that you can, say, even just for a semester, cut back on your course load by a course or two?
	I can't because then I'll lose scholarships.
	Oh boy, yeah.
	Of course, yeah. I'm sure you've thought of that.
	What a silly question to ask somebody so obviously intelligent, but I just thought I'd put it out there.
	Let me ask you this.
	Again, I'm no expert on all therapy or even any therapy in particular.
	Is there a chance that you could go to see a therapist and say...
	What you just told me.
	Look, I'm concerned that therapy could be a time sink.
	Do you have experience on...
	It's almost like battlefield medicine.
	Just patch me up, Doc, so I can get through the fight, right?
	Yeah. So somebody who has more experience in helping you to deal with this tragedy from April, but not...
	In a sense, cast you into the deep end to the point where it would interfere with your studies, so somebody who was more into triage, I suppose, than lifestyle renovation, if that makes sense?
	Yeah, somebody said like a grief counselor or somebody who might be more focused on that.
	Yeah, that's a possibility.
	I've started with someone who's willing to work with me on money, and he was a professor at the university I'm attending.
	He retired from that, but It seems to be going pretty well.
	I'm just concerned that while I'm going through whatever emotional therapy, I'm not going to be able to handle continuing doing all of these things.
	Right. I guess this is a little bit beyond your expertise, I guess.
	No, listen, I mean, so if you're already seeing a therapist, what does your therapist say about this?
	I assume you've brought these concerns up with him?
	Well, he said that he's already really concerned about me getting enough sleep.
	That's why this has become an issue for me to go and seek outside.
	Can you drop at least one of your part-time jobs?
	I know I'm giving you idiot questions that I'm sure you've asked yourself a million times already.
	Even if you end up borrowing or taking some more money from your mom, can you ditch one of the part-time jobs to give you some flexibility there?
	Yeah, I think I could do that.
	Yeah, if you can handle it financially.
	I'm just saying, is this like a question of is this being lazy by trying to, you know, By saying that...
	Oh my lord. No, listen, listen, listen.
	I mean, I get the self-talk that may be going on in your head.
	Please, by the light of all the totally in this world, try as much as possible not to apply negative self-talk to yourself during this time.
	Like, seriously, obviously an excess of negative self-talk was not very good for your father.
	It won't be any better for you.
	Lazy, lazy, lazy.
	I would not, my God, I mean, you're working two jobs, you're taking a full-time course, you're seeing a therapist, you are dealing with the suicide of your father.
	Lazy is the last word that I would imagine would come to anyone's mind, with a heart, would come to anyone's mind.
	Massive sympathy, empathy.
	I mean, talk about piling more and more on somebody who's Legs are already trembling.
	I mean, it's incredibly tragic.
	It's a very difficult situation.
	School should be... I mean, I had to work a couple of jobs during school.
	It's a great regret.
	I mean, I wish I'd had a more carefree time in college.
	But, you know, I didn't have anybody paying the bills other than a bit of money for the government.
	So... No.
	Lazy? No. Absolutely not.
	Will your therapy be as good and as rich as if you could devote more time to it?
	No, it won't be. But the important thing is that you keep your scholarships, that you set up the basis for your career, that you maintain the context that you need to within the work environment, that you deal with the grief.
	That's so much to do that it's not all going to be perfect.
	And this might be a lesson in humility for you around the possibilities of perfection.
	Because perfection, for anybody who's got ambition and brains, perfection is a constant torture and desire and failure, right?
	I mean, every time I do a podcast, I have a vision of how the podcast is going to go, that every word is going to be precise and powerful and perfect and so on.
	And it never, ever comes out the way it is in my head.
	I think that some of them are good, but it's never.
	Like, after I did my speech in Porkfest, I was like, eh, it was okay.
	I don't think it was great. I thought it was an okay speech and blah, blah, blah.
	And then I watched the speech and I was like, damn, that's a good speech.
	You know, like, that's good.
	That's a good speech. And so recognizing that what we want and what we achieve are never the same thing.
	They're never going to be the same thing.
	And thank heavens, because if I did the perfect speech, I'd probably never talk again.
	Well, I've just been getting criticisms about receiving help from my mother and stuff from a close friend of mine.
	But what's wrong with receiving help from your mother?
	Well, this person doesn't get any help from their parents, so I'm not working on an even playing field with them because of our competitive...
	I'm sorry to interrupt.
	Is your friend criticizing you for taking help from your mother after she knows about the suicide of your father?
	No, he knows about it.
	And he's criticizing you after the suicide of your father for taking help from your mother?
	Yes, well...
	How does that strike you in the light of this conversation?
	Well, I thought it was pretty terrible too, but this person is very persuasive and they seem to think that because my mother has been manipulative and abusive in the past to me that And because they're into what you're saying about the defoeing, they say that I shouldn't be maintaining this kind of relationship with my mother because she is able to exert power over me.
	And is that what she's doing?
	To an extent, but she says she's going to go to therapy too.
	Look, if you're both in therapy...
	She said she's really sorry about the things that have happened to me in my childhood and she's trying to do better.
	I mean, I don't understand what's wrong if she's trying to do better.
	Yeah, I mean, look, if you, I mean, my opinion, right?
	I mean, there is occasionally this very broad brush that is painted, you know, like I don't like families and everybody should separate.
	And I mean, that's all nonsense, right?
	I mean, this is not what I've said in any way, shape or form.
	But of course, people like to exaggerate and get all worked up and so on.
	But... No, look, I mean, I'm sorry if you've had this kind of history with your mom, but if you've talked about it with her, if you get that she's sorry, and if she's willing to pay for your therapy, go to therapy herself, I mean, that's about as good an outcome as you're going to get, I think.
	And I think that's, in my opinion, I don't know any details, but in my opinion...
	If the best that you can get is not good enough, then yeah, you can say goodbye if you want.
	All adult relationships are voluntary.
	But I don't think you're going to get a better response than, I'm genuinely sorry, let me help out, I'm going to go to therapy.
	That, to me, is about as good a response as you're going to get.
	And I think that's a pretty damn good response myself.
	And I would be cautious...
	About a friend who's critical at this time.
	Because, I mean, unless your mom is firing bazookas into your bedroom, I think that support is key at this point.
	Well, she's just been a little bit helicopter-ish, but that's kind of her natural behavior, and I've learned to deal with it to an extent.
	Right, and of course her husband killed himself as well as your father, right?
	So it's a hell of a time for everybody, right?
	Yes, and they were still together whenever that happened.
	Right, right, right.
	Well, I guess that kind of answers my question.
	It's kind of the morality of accepting money from people.
	Help from other people, you know, is that okay?
	And I guess it is, you know, if they're willing to offer it.
	Yeah, look, I mean, we need help.
	We all, you know, all of us need help.
	I mean, I don't know if you've read any Ayn Rand, but she's got this, you know, nobody helped me and I did it all by myself.
	Well, she wasn't telling the truth about that.
	I mean, I just finished reading a biography of hers and She took loans and money and sometimes she never even paid them back.
	People helped her out. She didn't come off the boat and start working in a sweatshop.
	She was put up for months in people's homes with no rent and no cost and people lent her money to go out to California and try and get her movie career started.
	People gave her an enormous amount of help when she came over and she downplayed all of that because I guess she wanted to portray herself as the ultimate self-made woman and I think that's really tragic.
	Well, that's really interesting because this friend of mine has very similar behaviors.
	I've loaned them a lot of money because I've been in a financially better situation because my parents and my own work ethic, that they would portray themselves as the self-made person even though they loan money from friends and get support in other ways whenever.
	Right. I mean, I think that I would have some right to call myself a self-made man, given where I came from.
	And I obviously take some pride in the choices that I've made and what I've done with my life.
	But I'm not going to pretend that I did it all by myself.
	Good heavens. I mean, I certainly don't pretend that intellectually.
	I don't pretend that in terms of my career.
	People gave me opportunities.
	People gave me support. People forgave mistakes.
	People stood up for me when I was being knocked down.
	I borrowed money from people.
	I've taken emotional support from people.
	I in no way, shape, or form have done any of this alone, and there's no such thing as a self-made man.
	Even the language that we use, self-made man, was invented by other people, right?
	The whole language that we live in.
	So, I think that the illusion of being able to do it all by yourself is not healthy.
	It's not good. And, of course, it's economically impossible to live in the woods and grow your own food.
	Of course not, right? I know people who've tried.
	Yeah, it's all fun and games until you get a toothache, right?
	So, I would, yeah.
	I mean, but there is a great temptation.
	I think people have a certain amount of vanity in, I did it all by myself.
	And I know that my mother used to say that about me.
	Oh, you raised yourself.
	You did it all by yourself.
	And you're a completely self-made man and so on.
	And I was never particularly tempted by that as a story or as an illusion just because I think that interdependence and relationships are so foundational and so important to our success.
	And anybody who says that they're a self-made man is just making it up.
	So I would be just a little careful about that.
	Well, I guess that answers my question.
	Sorry, there's a cat.
	I was going to say either your cat is hungry or you have a baby.
	They want out, but I can't get away from the earphones to avoid the feedback loop.
	But I guess that answers my question.
	And thank you for your time, Steph.
	Yeah, and listen, just again, I'm so sorry.
	What a bitter pill to have to swallow during a time of hopefully exciting intellectual challenges of college and all of that.
	So I'm so sorry that you have to deal with it.
	It sounds like you've got yourself a great therapist.
	I certainly wish your mom Godspeed, so to speak, in getting into therapy herself.
	And I certainly wish you the best with school and your relationships.
	All right. Thank you. You're very welcome.
	And I believe that brings us to the close of today's show.
	And thank you everybody so much for these very exciting and challenging questions.
	I hope that everybody understands I'm just sort of putting out thoughts that I have about it.
	I certainly don't have any answers as to how other people should live.
	I have a few answers as to how they shouldn't live with aggression and so on.
	But I hope that the complexity of the questions and the measured response is useful to people.
	And I'm glad that it has been to the callers who've called in.
	Have yourself a great show. It's great to see a bunch of people back who have been away for a while.
	It's really nice to see you all again, and I hope that the show is worth sticking around for.
	Have yourselves a wonderful week.
	I've got some great material to come out this week, and I look forward to your feedback.
	I will talk to you next week, if not sooner.
	Oh, and I'm going to be on the radio.
	On the radio.
	Let me just get the details about that.
	On the radio.
	Yeah, I met a guy.
	I met a guy. At Porkfest.
	So I'm going to be...
	Ernest...
	Ernie Hancock, who is not the rap pianist that you're thinking of.
	Ernie Hancock has got a radio show, which I'm going to be on Thursday from 9 a.m.
	to 11 a.m. Pacific Time.
	So I guess that's 12 to 2 on Eastern Standard Time, New York time.
	So I hope that you will.
	He used to be chairman of, I think he was chairman of the United States Libertarian Party.
	And he's a big fan of our show and was very excited to get us on board and So you can go to freedomsphoenix.com and I'm certainly interested to find out what we have to chat about.
	So I'm looking to that.
	Looking forward to that. And I hope that you will join us or at least listen in afterwards.
	And have yourselves a great week.
	Everybody, so much appreciation for everything that we can do here in this conversation.

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