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July 18, 2010 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

01:48:43

1698 Sunday Call In Show July 18 2010

A UPB summary, the ethics of adultery, punishing evil, the four types of parents, and a response to Aaron's criticisms of the recent parenting convo with Stephan Kinsella.

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	Hi, everybody. Thank you so much for joining us on the 18th of July, 2010, just after four in the afternoon.
	And thank God it is not a video show because I have just finished mowing my lawn in what is approximately 12,000 degree heat.
	Barn dogs jumping around on the grass and slowly bursting into flames.
	So let's just be happy that you do not get to see a bald dishrag of infinite sweat.
	So be happy for the visual which I've now only planted in your brain.
	I hope you're having a wonderful week.
	I have got a couple of new speaking engagements, which I will mention.
	I will be speaking to the...
	I will be doing a speech to the Ontario Libertarian Party in September, along with a pub night series of questions.
	Please don't forget the barbecue at amiando.com forward slash FDR2010. If you can let us know if you are coming, that would be great.
	We already have... Over 40 people and guests coming, which means that we'll have to close the mothership helipad and convert it into a rather large philosophical jacuzzi made almost entirely of candy and jello, which I think will be just fantastic.
	So I'm going to go straight to the phone, such as they are.
	I have comments and things to talk about, but given that we have people who have issues to bring up, I am more than happy to hear them.
	So I think we have somebody who wants to start off.
	So start off, please, now.
	Hello. Hi.
	I had a question about UPB. Excellent.
	If I understand it correctly, is it like there's a universal preferable behavior for like people want to sleep, they want to eat, and then there's a moral theory?
	Like that basically like the logical proof of the non-aggression principle?
	Is that correct? Yeah, let me give you the two seconds on that, because some people are confused by that.
	And when I do either UPBU, the UPB University, or rewrite the book when I have time, in other words, when my daughter's a little older, I'll address this.
	But when I talk about UPB, I'm talking about a number of different things.
	And unfortunately, I haven't got a good nomenclature for discussing that.
	But When I say that universally preferable behavior is prevalent among human beings, I then have to provide some evidence of that.
	So if I say rocks fall down, I can provide some evidence of that.
	And so when I say that people generally express universal preferences, then I need to provide some examples of that.
	And that doesn't mean that everybody in the world expresses those preferences.
	So when I say people in general prefer eating to starvation, that doesn't mean that there aren't some people who are going to starve themselves to death as a political protest or people who have anorexia who prefer starving themselves to death to living.
	But in general, an example of fairly universally preferable behavior is eating when there's food available as opposed to starving yourself to death.
	So that's just evidence of the prevalence of universality.
	It is not absolute proof.
	of universality.
	It's just evidence. And more evidence is that when people wish to communicate to another human being, they tend to use comprehensible language in the material realm.
	Right? They don't use smoke signals in the brain.
	They don't use carrier pigeons from heaven.
	They use the internet.
	They use sense matter. They use comprehensible language.
	And that's not to say that there aren't some people who will pull a Pentecostal ridiculous stunt and start speaking in gibberish and call it speaking in tongues and so on.
	But then all they're communicating is that God speaks gibberish, not English.
	Whereas, of course, we all know God speaks Panjuri.
	So, that's just an example in the book of the prevalence of universality, but it's not certain proof, and people make that mistake.
	And I do say this quite clearly in the book.
	This doesn't prove that every human being expresses the same universal preferences.
	It just says that here's some evidence of universal preferences that are around in the world that are, you know, very close to universal.
	So, that's one example.
	And then what I do is I say, if you want to say something true about universal preferences...
	Then whatever you say has to be consistent with reason and evidence.
	And that is exactly the same in biology or the other sciences or in engineering or in mathematics or anything.
	If you want to say something true about, universally true about numbers, you need to use mathematics.
	If you want to say something that's universally true or valid about the behavior of matter, you need to use the scientific method.
	And if you want to say something that is true and valid about universally preferable human behavior, then you need to make statements that conform to reason and evidence.
	It's really nothing more complicated than that.
	And people find it very complicated.
	I can understand why.
	It's because there's a lot of propaganda to the contrary.
	But that's really all the theory comes down to.
	And then I use that universality.
	Right.
	So I say, well, I go with Aristotle who says that if you come up with a theory of ethics that can prove that murder is virtuous, you've gone wrong somewhere.
	It doesn't matter.
	You know, that's your way of knowing.
	Like if you build a bridge that you want to stand and it immediately falls down, you don't get to blame reality.
	You can only really blame your mathematics or your schema or your blueprint or your competence in building it or something.
	And so I take a couple of the generally accepted principles of morality the world over in the private sector.
	The public sector has no ethics other than pomposity, lies, falsehood, and grandiosity.
	But in the private sector, the ethics are, you know, don't steal, don't kill, don't rape, and the value of property rights.
	So I say, okay, if statements that are universally preferable have to conform to reason and evidence, can we...
	Can we make statements like, it is universally preferable to not initiate force?
	Can I make that statement conform to reason and evidence?
	Well, the evidence is that just about everybody believes that in the private sector, and the reasons behind it are explored in the book.
	So, universally preferable behavior is a description of Stuff in the world that is generally, like there's no ethical system I know of that says rape, kill, steal, and pillage.
	All ethical systems reject the initiation of force, and they reject rape, and they reject murder.
	And so that's evidence that these things are pretty common.
	Now, they're not consistent. They're universal, but they're not consistent.
	In other words, everyone believes that human beings shouldn't do it, except for soldiers, policemen, prison guards, the state, the DEA agents, customs officials, tax collectors, blah, blah, blah, blah, right?
	So all that UPB does is say, okay, if the statement, thou shalt not steal, is morally valid, and of course it does accord with the evidence of ethical systems around the world and the generally held beliefs of people, Then we need to universalize it if it's going to be valid.
	Because if it's not universal, then it's not ethics.
	And then the last part of the book is just to say what happens if people say there's no such thing as universal preferences.
	And that is a logically impossible statement to make.
	You can't say... There is no such thing as universally preferable behavior because you're making a universally preferable statement embedded in that, right?
	The universally preferable statement is, truth is better than falsehood.
	It is better to believe in truth and falsehood.
	You should reject false beliefs.
	Everyone should reject false beliefs for the sake of true beliefs.
	And the reason that we do it is reason and evidence.
	Or the method that we do it is reason and evidence because people will provide reason and evidence as to why you shouldn't believe in universally preferable behavior.
	In other words, there's so much that's universal in the statement, you should not believe in universally preferable behavior, or universally preferable behavior is invalid.
	There's so much that's universal in there, we could do hours and hours on it, but I'm not going to bother.
	I'll just simply point out, the statement is framed in a human language.
	It is communicated empirically through time and space to impact upon the sense organs and no other way is it ever communicated, whether it's typed on a message board or spoken on a Skype call or something like that.
	So somebody is using Words that have universal and relatively objective definitions.
	They are rejecting falsehood and approving truth.
	They are using reason and evidence to provide it.
	They are using the matter.
	They are accepting that they exist, that the other person exists, that there's a difference of opinion that should be resolved through reason and evidence according to universal standards.
	So there's simply no way that you can conceivably, rationally say That universally preferable behavior is not valid because you are displaying, exhibiting, relying on and transmitting the very principles that you are denying.
	It's like yelling in someone's ear that sound doesn't exist.
	It is a self-contradictory behavior.
	It is self-contradictory behavior.
	Your behavior is completely invalidating your stated argument.
	As I've said before, if I mail a letter to you saying that the mail never gets delivered, my actions contradict my argument.
	And this is a very fundamental thing that Freedom Aid Radio is all about, is I'm an empiricist, which means I look at people's actions first and foremost, and only inconsequentially, in a sense, do I look at their words.
	So I look at all of the premises that are embedded in somebody's actions.
	First, foremost, and to a large degree almost exclusively, I look at what somebody is doing and the philosophical premises embedded in his or her actions.
	That is the philosophy that is real.
	The words that they're using are relatively immaterial to me.
	And so I look at what somebody is doing.
	So if somebody says to me, how can you prove to me that you exist?
	Well, you're talking to me. You already accept that I exist.
	So we don't need to bother with that.
	And so I need to know, when I'm debating with somebody, if that person is aware that their actions are wildly contradicting their words.
	One of the biggest breakthroughs of this conversation has been to consistently, repetitively, annoyingly, persistently point this out.
	That there are so many philosophical premises embedded in somebody's tangible, physical, material, empirical actions.
	That the words are inconsequential and what most people who debate with people about ethics or truth or reason or virtue What they do is they try and tangle everyone up in a war of words.
	And I don't care about language.
	I don't care about words.
	Words are a complete after-effect of that which is empirical and measurable and testable and objective, which is a person's actions.
	So sorry for that long introduction, but you asked some excellent questions about it, and I hope that that's clarified it to some degree.
	Yeah, it kind of did.
	But concerning morals, the only moral theory for universally preferable behavior is violence, right?
	I'm sorry? Did you say the only moral theory for universally preferable behavior is violence?
	Yeah, or that's the only moral theory that proves to exist.
	Well, no, moral theories don't really exist.
	Existence is a word that needs to be clarified, right?
	Moral theories don't exist.
	Concepts in the mind don't exist in the real world, right?
	So, as I've said, trees exist, forests are a concept in the mind.
	Circles exist in the world, you can draw, but the concept of a perfect circle exists in our mind.
	The scientific method doesn't exist.
	The mathematics does not exist.
	Numbers don't exist.
	But things in the world, matter and energy, and the effects of matter and energy do exist.
	So moral theories don't exist in the world.
	But moral theories or universally preferable behavior...
	A moral theory is nothing more or less than this.
	It is a consistent way of describing...
	Actions relative to an ideal.
	An ideal.
	Actions relative to an ideal.
	So an ideal bridge is one that stands up.
	A bridge that falls down, I mean, the stones, bricks and mortar and girders in the bridge, they don't care whether they stand up or fall down.
	They don't care at all.
	They don't care if they crush a baby carriage with a baby in it or land on a rock.
	They don't care at all. Only human beings care whether a bridge stands up or it falls down.
	The bridge itself doesn't care, the animals don't care, maybe the birds nesting underneath care, but the bridge itself doesn't care.
	Human actions relative to a universal ideal is what morality is.
	Now, the universal ideal doesn't exist.
	I'm not a Platonist. The universal ideal does not exist.
	So UPB doesn't exist.
	Virtue doesn't exist.
	Truth doesn't exist. But that doesn't mean that these things are completely subjective, right?
	So mathematics, numbers don't exist, but that doesn't mean that mathematics is somehow completely subjective.
	So when we talk about morality or virtue, what we're saying is that, or at least what I'm saying, is that the non-aggression principle is the only logically consistent moral theory that can be formulated.
	Every moral theory Which creates exceptions, right?
	We all understand that consistency is the hallmark of a better theory, right?
	So Einsteinian physics is more consistent with the behavior of matter than Newtonian physics, which means that Einsteinian physics is better because it's more accurate, it's more universal.
	In the same way that when you put the Sun at the center of the solar system, The movement of the planets makes a whole lot more sense than if you put the Earth at the center of the solar system.
	So consistency is better.
	And whenever a system creates artificial exceptions, it is a bad, bad system.
	So you won't hear a biologist saying, evolution is perfectly valid, except for the sparrow who was created by God.
	That would be a ridiculous thing to say.
	Because if... If evolution is universally how the species developed, then making an exception for the sparrow with God would be silly.
	Or like saying, all lizards are cold-blooded, except for this blue lizard named Stan, who's warm-blooded.
	Then he's not a lizard if he's warm-blooded.
	He's a mammal. And so if a theory has exceptions, it is a less good theory.
	And usually it's a theory that's invented after the fact to explain something that already exists.
	So for instance, people will say, it's bad to use force to get what you want.
	But the government has to, because it's virtuous, because the alternative is chaos and destruction and so on.
	So it's bad for Stan to use force until he puts on a blue costume and now he can use force to collect his salary and to collect the salary of his political masters and so on.
	And so the moment you have an ethical theory that starts creating exceptions, Then it's a bad ethical theory.
	And UPB is that which says the theory that has the fewest or no, ideally no, exceptions is the best theory.
	Right? So an engineering theory where 10 out of 10 bridges stand according to that theory is a better theory Than an engineering theory where six out of ten bridges stand.
	So the more consistent a theory is, the better a theory is.
	And the non-aggression principle, property rights, self-ownership, these are the only moral theories that are consistent.
	And they are consistent both internally, as I work out in the book, but they're also consistent with the accumulated wisdom and experience of mankind.
	Because according to statist or violence-advocating theories like statism, we should not be in a recession.
	Wages should not have stagnated for the past 20 years.
	There should not be a semi-permanent underclass of unemployed people and people in ghettos and people in public housing and people in shitty government schools.
	That theory says that the application of violence by the state makes society better and better and better.
	Whereas the non-aggression principle, if it is violated, will predict.
	When you violate the non-aggression principle, rational ethics predicts that society will not get better and better and better.
	And so we have proof in the empirical realm as well as validation in the rational realm.
	And that's all you're ever going to get as far as validation for moral theories.
	That makes sense. But how do you apply that to...
	How do you apply UPB to, like, theories?
	Like, you shall not commit adultery, or it's wrong to be gay.
	Okay, let's take that.
	Well, adultery is not the initiation of force, right?
	Because then we would call it rape.
	That's what you mean, right? Right?
	We agree on that, right? Now, UPB is specifically around force, because force is a non-avoidable behavior, and I won't get into all of the details about that.
	That's all in the book, which you can get for free at freedomainradio.com forward slash free, because I like my URLs to make sense.
	So I think we can all accept that adultery is not the initiation of force.
	But what it is, is fraud.
	And what it is is fraud.
	And that's a complicated topic when it comes to anarchistic legal theory, if you want to even call it that, sort of an oxymoron.
	But fraud is based on a falsehood.
	It's based on a lie. And so the reason it's called adultery is because...
	There is a victim, and the victim is the spouse who doesn't know.
	Because if it's an open marriage where sexual partners are openly admitted to, openly pursued, maybe invited into the bed for threesomes or twelvesomes or whatever goes on in those sorts of situations, then there's no adultery because it's honest.
	So the problem with adultery is the lying.
	Now the other problem with adultery is that it is an ex post facto rewriting Of an explicit contract of marriage, right?
	And if it's not explicit, it's pretty much implicit.
	Insofar as there is...
	Most people who get into marriage get into marriage with the assumption of monogamy.
	And that is the default position of marriage, is monogamy.
	And if you want to get into a marriage with someone and you don't want to be monogamous...
	Then clearly you need to state that up front.
	You need to work that out up front.
	Because the default position of marriage is monogamy.
	And so if you start sleeping around on your wife, let's say, and then you're breaking the contract that you have with her about your relationship...
	You are lying to her perpetually and continually, both in thinking about the affair and pursuing the affair and conservating the affair and continuing the affair.
	You are going through months and years of lying to someone about an explicit or implicit contract that you have with that person.
	That's fraud. That's fraud, and you're not giving her the choice.
	So in a sense, it becomes a sort of unavoidable situation for her, not quite in the same way as violence.
	And so UPB would classify that as aesthetically negative behavior.
	It's not the initiation of force.
	In other words, it's not...
	You can't shoot someone for having an affair because it's not the direct initiation of force, but it is a fraud, and fraud in a free society, I believe, is justly punished through ostracism, and that is what occurs through a divorce.
	So that's the first one.
	And you had another one that I can't remember what it was.
	It was how Christians say it's wrong to be gay.
	Oh, yeah. Well, I mean, that's just all nonsense.
	Look, the Christian hostility to homosexuality has nothing to do with homosexuality.
	It has everything to do with pedophilia, right?
	Because, I mean, we can all see...
	The Catholic Church, of course, is the oldest institution, and we can see, even in the 21st century...
	Just how ghastly some of the behavior of the Catholic priests is with regards to children, right?
	The oral and anal rape and molestations and so on.
	And so I think it's important to understand why Christians are hostile towards homosexuality.
	It's because many of them in history, all the way back through thousands of years, and many of them throughout history, would have been set upon by priests.
	I mean, we can't imagine that priests are somehow less predatory in the 21st century than they would have been in the 1st century, or the minus 1st century, or whatever.
	And so since so many of the Christian population Would have been sexually or physically abused by priests.
	But the sexual abuse, of course, then they would associate that with homosexuality, whereas pedophilia is not homosexuality.
	Repeat, pedophilia is not homosexuality any more than it is heterosexuality.
	So this is why there's such hostility towards homosexuals in most religions.
	It's because the priests are preying upon the population, and this is confused by the population with homosexuality.
	But homosexuality is not the initiation of force.
	It is not the initiation of fraud.
	And so it is not subject to moral behavior whatsoever.
	Homosexuality is a physical trait, like being tall or short or bald or hairy.
	These things are not subject to ethics at all.
	It is not virtuous to be homosexual.
	It is not a vice to be homosexual.
	But the one thing that I would say is that I believe I'm not saying this is enforceable in any way, but I believe that it is a positive thing to extend as much support and sympathy and compassion to homosexuals of either gender.
	Because it's a tough, tough life, even in the modern West and particularly elsewhere around the world.
	It is a tough, tough life.
	To be gay. I mean, I was in the theater world.
	I've had many gay friends over the years.
	I've had gay roommates, and they're just great people.
	But it is a very, very tough thing to be gay.
	And so I think that we should have a lot of sympathy and compassion for people without, of course, looking upon it as an affliction.
	But unfortunately, it is so often treated that way that I think it's good to be compassionate and understanding.
	But it's certainly not.
	It's not subject to an ethical evaluation.
	Okay. Yeah, that makes total, total sense.
	And the only things that are applicable to ethics is things that you can't avoid, like force, right?
	Yeah, I think that's right.
	So, I mean, it's definitely preferable for people to be on time, but you don't get to shoot someone who's late because they're not inflicting their behavior on you.
	It's still voluntary. You can choose to have that person as a friend.
	You can choose to be 20 minutes late knowing they're always going to be 20 minutes late.
	So, yeah, and I've got an article which I've been meaning to publish for some time about how self-defense fits into UPB, which was brought up by a very intelligent fellow whose nomenclature is economics junkie.
	that until just the other day.
	But yeah, it's the initiation of force is really where ethics should focus its attention, in my opinion.
	Thanks.
	Well, thank you.
	It's great.
	I do love me some good UPB talks.
	And I know, I know that it's a vicious bitch of a theory.
	It is. UPB will pwn you.
	And it is a very tough thing.
	And it's tough for me sometimes.
	So I certainly accept it.
	I don't think it's tough because it's so logically complicated.
	I think it's just tough because we have so much static in our head that's been put there about ethics.
	So thank you very much for bringing that up.
	Thanks, man. Alright, is our next person, Mr.
	B. I'm bringing home a baby, Mr.
	B. Hello?
	Hello. Hello, Steph, can you hear me?
	I sure can. Okay, fantastic.
	Yeah, I'm Mr.
	B, I guess. So yeah, just going off to that last caller about...
	How hard it is for gay people.
	I completely get that.
	I work in a restaurant and I work with a lot of homosexual guys and they talk about how they get a lot of crap for it.
	I live in a really liberal city.
	I live in Seattle. And the only thing that's kind of weird for me was the gay pride stuff.
	We just had a huge gay pride parade, and for me that was always kind of strange.
	I always kind of saw that like a white pride parade, you know?
	You can't really choose to be homosexual.
	It's kind of like being proud that you're white.
	I don't know. It's just weird for me.
	No, look, I hear you and I understand that.
	And I can tell you for sure that there are a lot of gay people who would completely agree with you that gay pride is kind of ridiculous and sort of embarrassing to them.
	But I think it's, you know, it's sort of important to remember that gay pride, to my knowledge, and I'm certainly not an expert, but this is sort of my understanding of it, it's a status thing, right?
	It's just, I mean, these groups get money from the government for Gay Pride Day, so they throw a big party, just as you and I would if we were status, and we're given a bunch of money to throw a big party, we'd probably throw a big party too, and you and I would probably be gyrating up there in assless chaps.
	LAUGHTER At the same time, right?
	I mean, why not? If you've got a million bucks to go on a party, go big time, man.
	You know, oil yourself up and, you know, put on some Gloria Gaynor and just get down.
	And so I think gay pride is just a status phenomenon.
	I don't know that it would specifically occur in the free market.
	I was just pointing that out.
	And I'm sorry. I absolutely want to apologize for the listenership in general for the enormous number of appalling images that I'm putting into your heads today.
	But nobody said that philosophy was easy.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	Well, as much as I'd love to talk about gyration, I do have some other questions, though.
	That's fine.
	Okay, let's rethink again on a video show.
	Yeah, I'm a first-time caller, a long-time listener.
	I've got to say thank you for everything you've done.
	A lot of your philosophical concepts, especially the self-contradictory statements, have really helped clear up a lot of some confusing propaganda that I've been working under.
	It's gotten to the point, actually, that I started calling a self-detonating statement a Molyneux statement, just so I can sound It's kind of clever.
	You can feel proud that someone is spreading your name and attaching it to it.
	When you're predicting yourself, you're pulling them all in you.
	I might want to rethink that.
	That's all I'm saying.
	I want to say thank you for all the clarifications and for helping me out philosophically.
	It's been a wonderful ride and thank you for that.
	So, yeah, I just had a question.
	I work in a restaurant, and as you can imagine, I think you might have mentioned that you've worked in a restaurant, too.
	You get a lot of negative people.
	I get negative customers all the time.
	I get... My bosses are kind of snappy and mean people.
	I get coworkers that are really empathetic and don't really want to be there.
	Overall, it just becomes a sort of tidal wave of negativity.
	I always try to bring a positive, happy, relaxed home as much as possible, but I find myself Getting infected by these negative people more often than I would like to and I was just wondering what your thoughts were on that or if you have any similar experiences, maybe a way that you can just prevent yourself from getting infected.
	Do you have anything like that? Sure.
	Tell me a little bit about why you're working in a restaurant.
	How old are you?
	I'm 22. Yeah, I don't have any really marketable skills quite yet, and so all I can really apply for is, as far as the most money-earning job I can get given my skills, given how old I am, is a restaurant job.
	And I'm making really good money there, and that's part of the reason why I can't sort of leave this negative tidal wave that I get when I walk into work.
	Oh yeah, no, I think for those who have not worked in a restaurant environment, you can make some pretty good coin.
	Making the leap from restaurant to office for me involved a loss of income, so I can really understand that I worked at probably half a dozen restaurants in my teenage years, and it's a good gig.
	You know, your hours are pretty flexible.
	You've got a split shift so you can have a nap in the afternoon.
	It's lots of cash in your pocket at the end of the day.
	It's a pretty good gig, but it is something that I think you're probably going to want to outgrow at some point.
	So, I mean, my suggestion is in the long run, I think you want to not change the people in your environment, but change your environment, if that makes any sense.
	Could you elaborate on that a little bit more?
	Well, I mean, I don't know that you want to...
	Like, I'm going to assume that...
	I'm going to make a blanket statement here that may be offensive to some people.
	This is just my opinion based on my experience in the service industry, is that the service industry sucks.
	The service industry sucks on so many different levels because people don't really know how to handle power in the world.
	And... When people don't know how to handle power, they tend to take it out on anyone they have power over.
	And when you are in the service industry, everyone has power over you.
	Is that a fair way of putting it?
	Yeah, I feel like I'm like a bottom of the food chain.
	I mean, the customers take it out on me, the bosses take it out on me.
	I mean, I'm kind of the receptacle for everyone's sort of crap, you know?
	Yeah, and you're just the messenger, right?
	So if you bring the food and the food is not good, they don't go and talk to the cook, they talk to you, right?
	Yeah, that's what happens.
	If the kitchen is backed up and your food isn't coming, then they get mad at you.
	They don't go and talk to the manager and say, well, why are you short a cook, right?
	Yeah, I know. It's all directed towards me.
	And, I mean, the kitchen gets mad at us because, I mean, if we bring in too many orders or we don't taper them correctly, then the kitchen gets pissed at us, the managers get pissed at us.
	I mean, it's like servers really just get all the negativity from the entire restaurant, including customers.
	Yeah, it's a lot of stress.
	You know, you get three tables of food come up, you have to get it all out to them by the time it's still warm.
	Because if you bring out the food that's cold, then they send it back, they get pissed off, that affects your tip, and the manager doesn't like it, and the cooks don't like it.
	It is a cannon fodder position, right?
	Because you're just constantly in the line of fire.
	And there are nice customers, there are customers who are understanding and so on, but...
	Yeah, it definitely is a magnet for people who are frustrated and prone to abusing power because, I mean, they're giving you a $5 tip and they think they own your soul, right?
	And so they can get fairly aggressive.
	So I don't think you're going to be able to change...
	That environment. I think, you know, that's like...
	You can't drop down a copy of RTR and say, you need to read this before you order, right?
	Because it's not going to work overly well.
	So I don't think you're going to be able to change that environment.
	I think that most people...
	Try to outgrow the service industry.
	And that certainly was a goal of mine.
	By God, I really wanted to outgrow the service industry because of that issue.
	It requires a fair amount of emotional skill to stay positive.
	It requires a fair amount of negotiation.
	And I thought, well, geez, if I can do that, why don't I just work in an office where I don't have those kinds of issues?
	And also the people who worked with me.
	When you look at a waiter who's in his 30s, if you're in your 20s and you know waiters who are in their 30s, that is a chilling alley of time to look down, right?
	Because it's just like, oh man, I can tell you what I don't want to be in my 30s and that's being a waiter, right?
	So my suggestion would be to try and up your skills, night courses, join a computer club if you have any interest in that, anything.
	Anything that can up your skills to get you out of that environment.
	I've got long-term plans to get it.
	This is definitely not a long-term thing.
	In terms of school loans and in terms of a whole bunch of other things, I need money now and tips are a great way to get that.
	I guess maybe that's why I pay so well because you've got to put up with so much crap.
	Yes, you do. Sorry, let me ask you a question and then I'll give you the approach that worked for me and maybe it'll work for you.
	So tell me about the biggest asshole customer.
	Well, oh geez.
	You know, the customers really, you know, you can understand them.
	Can I just tell you about the biggest asshole in the actual restaurant itself, one of my managers?
	You can tell that he just recently got promoted after like 15 years of working as a server and he's got more power than I think he's ever had in his life.
	He's acting it out on everybody.
	He makes people cry.
	Some of the female waitresses and cocktail servers, they break down crying in the back and he's aggressive and he's mean and he loves hearing himself talk.
	I mean, he's just a really power-hungry guy.
	You know the type.
	He wears flashy suits and he thinks that he's a big deal.
	I work in a high-end steak restaurant like Morton's, that sort of thing.
	Like $300 tabs.
	And so, I mean, this guy, it's right in downtown Seattle.
	And so, you know, you're right next to all the banks and all that.
	And you get all these people who are obviously very wealthy and he dresses to impress and he barks orders like a drill sergeant.
	And it's really an uncomfortable, really aggressive feeling being around him.
	Yeah, that's the worst one.
	And do you know anything about his life outside the restaurant?
	He's single. He's in his 40s.
	I can't imagine people even associating him with him voluntarily.
	I just know that he's been single for a long time.
	I think he's vehemently single.
	I think he's very proud of that fact.
	I don't know much about him because it's difficult to even be around him professionally, much less anything else.
	But from the way he describes other people, it seems like he drives a lot of pleasure from going at the bars and getting drunk.
	And he talks about women in a sort of condescending way.
	So I assume he kind of like sleeps around and that sort of thing.
	He seems like, you know, a 40-year-old frat boy.
	Like, dumb 40-year-old frat boy is what he seems like.
	Right, right. Okay. Now, let me ask you this.
	I'm trying to think of a good way.
	It's a mental exercise, and it's going to sound kind of goofy, but this really helped me because I had jerky managers and managers who would say, oh, go home, I'll close up the bill for you.
	And then they'd say, oh, the guys with the $400 tab, unfortunately, they didn't leave you a tip.
	And you knew they'd left you a tip because you had a good relationship with them, but you can't prove anything, right?
	Because you just know the guy stole your tip.
	So, you know, that would happen from time to time.
	So I have some experience with this sort of people, but...
	But this is my approach, and maybe it'll help for you.
	Tell me, do you think that bad people get punished in life?
	Effectively, no.
	I get the feeling that this guy is, I mean, I guess not punished by an outside authority, but I think his life is not as good as it could be, you know?
	Well, look, you and I agree.
	Sorry, we agree that there's no outside authority.
	It's not illegal to be a 40-year-old pathetic player.
	And, of course, this is one of the things that's so comforting about religion.
	Because with religion, you can let go of your resentment.
	You can dump all of your resentment onto God and say, you know, this guy is going to get his when he stands before St.
	Peter. And so you can offload all of your desire for vengeance onto God.
	And that sort of takes a load off your mind.
	Whereas if you're unjustly treated in this world and you're an atheist, you have the problem of accumulated resentment.
	Because you know that there's no afterlife where this guy is going to end up being a succession of women he dated.
	He's going to inhabit their bodies and experience all of their disappointment, frustration, and disgust with him.
	And whatever hell would be invented for this sort of person, I don't know.
	But the problem is if you're not a believer in religion or religion, Divine punishment, then the relationship that we have with punishment is complicated.
	So that's why I asked you whether you think he's going to suffer.
	Maybe that's a better way. Do you think that people suffer for their wrong?
	Yeah, I'm sure he has...
	I'm trying to think of a way to phrase it.
	I know he's not happy, and I know because he expresses that he's only happy when he's going out to bars and when he's partying.
	For him, that's an exciting highlight.
	I just see his eyes light up when he explains that, when he talks about it.
	For me, I just get the feeling that, for him, His entire life is lived with the volume kind of turned down, you know, and the sort of blase existence of aggression and barking and all that, and that it just springs into life for his party life.
	I imagine that he's suffering, but he doesn't know it, which I don't know if that counts as suffering.
	Well, actually, I think that's the worst kind of suffering, because if you know it, you can do something about it, right?
	Right, yeah, that's true.
	So, I mean, I would rather have a toothache that hurt like hell than a toothache where my tooth was infected and it didn't hurt at all, right?
	Yeah, yeah. Because the first one takes me to a dentist where I get a root canal or whatever the hell they do, whereas the second one, the infection can just spread and spread and spread, right?
	Yeah. Yeah, that's true.
	True. Yeah, but you don't believe me.
	That's okay. I'm just making a case here.
	And I'm making a case for offloading your resentment.
	Because you can't change people, right?
	You can only change yourself.
	And so I'm trying to give you a way of looking at things.
	Because let me ask you this.
	Would it...
	Would it change your feelings about this boss?
	Would it change your feelings if you knew that he was suffering as much as could be imagined or conceived relative to his...
	You know, he's not an axe murderer, right?
	He's not a warlord.
	He's not selling guns to gangsters or soldiers or anything, right?
	So he's not like stone evil incarnate or whatever, right?
	But if he was suffering...
	Exactly proportional to the injustices he was inflicting in the world.
	If there was never any need for punishment on your part, or never any need for vengeance, or never any need for retaliation, if that could be taken entirely off, if everybody got what they deserved, Would that make a difference for you in going to work knowing that every wrong that he did accumulated to him fundamentally and not to others in terms of his negative life experience?
	You know, it would.
	It wouldn't be as fulfilling as I'd want it to be, but I would know that I'm vindicated in a way, which is relieving.
	I feel like I'm not just sort of Being abused and no one's really doing anything about it, but that I know that he is getting his comeuppance in some way.
	That makes me feel vindicated. What I would prefer is that this guy, you know, sees the light and starts improving himself and, you know, surrounding himself in more positivity and just being a nice guy in general.
	I mean, I'd rather not go through the whole, you know, quid pro quo sort of thing where he abuses me and he gets his comeuppance.
	I'd rather just everyone be happy, you know?
	I agree with that.
	I agree with that. And I'm trying to sort of argue from a philosophical standpoint.
	But I can tell you that if someone could be an asshole until they were 40 and then just turn around and change, that would be a great argument for being an asshole until you're 40.
	Yeah, that's true.
	Do you know what I mean? Like, if you could smoke and drink and not exercise until you were 40, and then just stop smoking, stop drinking, start exercising, and have no ill health effects, that would be a great argument for smoking, drinking, and not exercising until you were 40, right? That's absolutely true, yeah.
	So I think it's important to notice that if he is unable to change his behavior in his 40s, that's a great argument for not being an asshole at all, right?
	Because you get locked into that position, right?
	Yeah, he's definitely locked in.
	I don't think you could pay him to change.
	No, I bet you couldn't.
	Now, let me ask you this.
	How much would you pay in money to not end up like this guy?
	I would pay everything I own.
	I would, you know, beg, borrow, and steal.
	I would mean any sum, you know.
	That's right. You need a kidney, here's a kidney.
	I'll even give a foot. Whatever you need, just don't let me end up like this guy, right?
	No, I mean, yeah, literally.
	I mean, I would give my legs and end up like this guy, because I would rather be a paraplegic and be happy than be this guy, you know.
	Right, right, right. No, I agree with you.
	Okay, so now we're getting somewhere really useful, and it's not like we haven't been so far, but now we're getting to the cracks of the matter.
	Which is that this guy is experiencing the maximum possible suffering relative to what he's doing that's jerky in the world.
	And we know that because you would pay any amount of money.
	Like, there's no limit on the amount of money that you would pay to avoid becoming like this guy, which means that it's a pretty god-awful life, right?
	Yeah. Yeah, it is.
	If someone said to you, how much money would you take to stub your toe?
	I don't know, a couple of hundred bucks?
	It hurts for a few minutes. Who cares, right?
	Yeah. How much would you pay, or how much would you need to be paid to sit in a dentist's waiting room for 20 minutes?
	I don't know, 20 bucks, 50 bucks, whatever, right?
	And so there's no amount of money that you would pay to end up like this guy.
	That you wouldn't pay to end up with this guy.
	It means that he has a seriously shitty life.
	Because what you're trying to avoid is a crappy existence like that, right?
	So he has that crappy existence.
	So the amount of money that you pay to avoid becoming like this guy is exactly the amount of suffering that his life is, right?
	I see. I see what you're saying.
	Yeah. And I feel a little bit better Sorry, I'm just trying to formulate how I'm experiencing this.
	I definitely see him in a little bit different of a light.
	Before, I kind of saw him as this menace of the restaurant, like this sort of ogre that you'd have to fight with every single day.
	But now I kind of see it as just still an ogre, but just an ogre that, I don't know, That had bad parents, I guess.
	I don't know. This is something that you can understand a little bit more.
	I definitely feel like I understand him a little bit more.
	I'm not saying that this perspective necessarily breeds forgiveness or empathy.
	Maybe it does. Maybe it doesn't.
	I don't know the details. And it's obviously finally that's up to you.
	But what I am saying is that as an atheist...
	I'm going to be annoying and pull the 20 years older card, right?
	And I know how annoying that is, but I'm just going to tell you what the view looks like from middle age, is that I'm old enough now that I'm, I guess, a little older than, a year or two older than this guy in the restaurant.
	Is that right? Yeah, I know.
	He never told us his age, but I would tag him 40, 45, something like that.
	I'm about the same age as this guy, right?
	So I've seen parents from their 30s to their 60s or 70s, right?
	So I've seen the arc of people's lives.
	I mean, I haven't seen the whole arc because I'm still only middle-aged, but I have seen the arc, and I have seen what happens when To people who treat other people badly, I have seen what happens in the long, grim hall called life.
	And I'll tell you, my friend, it is really ugly what accumulates to people who treat others badly.
	It is awful.
	It is just plain awful.
	I'm not by nature a cruel person at all.
	I mean, I can get mad, but I don't...
	You know there's some people who can say those things that just cut you to the core, and it's like, oh, and you think about it for days.
	I've never been able to come up with that kind of stuff.
	I just don't have that cruel streak.
	But I tell you this, even if I did have a cruel streak, even if I had the most horrible cruel streak in the universe, I could not come up with punishments That equal what happens to people who treat other people badly.
	Oh my god.
	Do their lives become miserable.
	Do their lives become miserable.
	And it's horrible.
	I mean, how much would you pay to not have a love life like Mel Gibson's, right?
	I mean, he seems to be just...
	Right? And, you know, his girlfriends get punched up.
	I mean, to have that level of violence and rage in your...
	I mean, that's not love.
	That's not peace. That's not comfort.
	That's not security. That's not...
	You can't just fall into the embrace of your lover with an open heart and be tenderly...
	I mean, you don't get any of that if you have that brittle, exploitive, destructive, abusive personality.
	You don't get any of that.
	I mean, the people I've known who were abusive towards their kids, oh my god, their older years are just horrible.
	And it's not because their kids have done anything to them, or it's just that the conscience, the conscience, the conscience, the irrevocable, immovable UPB at the base of our brain will fuck people up in just horrible ways.
	And I've not seen a single exception.
	I've not seen somebody over the years who mistreated other people who ended up Now, sometimes they end up successful.
	Materially, they'll make lots of money.
	I guess Mel Gibson did, right?
	Although I think he says he's broke now.
	But in terms of their personal relationships, it's in their personal relationships.
	Where you see a person's soul is in their personal relationships.
	And if this guy can only have, quote, relationships by getting drunk at bars, that's pretty sad.
	That's pretty pitiful. It means that he can only, quote, relate to people when everybody's self-erasing through alcohol abuse.
	That's a sad, empty, desperate, lonely existence that's on the verge of ending, right?
	The playboy bar hopping dude who's 50 is pretty sad.
	That's a pretty sad thing. And, you know, that's just like, that's just, you know, that's the old Danny Glover law.
	I'm getting too old for this shit, right?
	They have not prepared for the second half of their life.
	They haven't prepared for, I mean, you used to say he's a 45-year-old frat boy.
	But that's pretty sad. And he's working in a restaurant at the age of 45.
	That's not great, right?
	And so you'll pass through, you know, six months, a year, two years or whatever, you'll be out of that gig and you'll be onto something better and you have virtue and empathy and intelligence, I assume, because you're listening to this show, not to blow too much smoke up your ass, but that seems to be consistent with the people who listen to this show because it's challenging morally, intellectually and emotionally. And so you'll get all of that good stuff in life.
	You'll get love. You'll get self-respect.
	You'll get peace of mind.
	You'll get happiness. You'll get joy.
	You'll get all of those great things.
	And this guy isn't even going to get the scraps that fall off your table.
	You know, he's just going to live this life of increasing bitterness, increasing desperation, right, as he begins to look 50, and even a bar's dim lights can't hide that Lance Hendrickson cragginess of his own mortality, and he's going to just suddenly wake up one day and not be able to To pick up girls in a bar,
	and he's not going to be able to handle the alcohol, or maybe he's going to have negative health effects from the alcohol, and there won't be anyone there for him as he declines and gets sick, and nobody's going to want to spend time with him, and nobody's going to be there to hold his hand when he's dying.
	This is the future that awaits these sorts of people.
	And when you only see him at work in his flashy suit and so on, but look forward through the tunnel of time, look at the punishment, at the living hell that these people exist in down the road, everybody gets What they have earned, whether they have earned positive or negative, it all accumulates.
	We don't need God, we don't need hell.
	Everybody's a philosopher, everybody's a genius, and nobody gets away with anything.
	You know, I was just thinking while you were talking, I just think, you know, I was listening, too.
	I was just thinking, you know, I imagine this guy, like, 60, 70 years old, and he's not preparing at all, you know, for his future, like you said.
	I just can't imagine what he's going to do, because, I mean, you're right, he can't keep doing this kind of lifestyle, and I'm surprised that he's still doing it at this point, and it's like, It's going to come back.
	You're right. Yeah, it's going to come back in just like, not in retributive punishments, but in just the lack of preparedness for the future.
	And, you know, it kind of sucks to be around him now, which is kind of a heyday, I guess, if you want to call it that, where he gets the power and he gets the flashy suits and he gets all that stuff.
	But I mean, it's going to come to an end.
	And I guess that's It's nice to see that sort of indication.
	I wish it wouldn't happen to be this way.
	I'm going to just make one more case here, and I hope that I'm going to get this across to you.
	So you say it kind of sucks to see him now in his heyday.
	The heyday is the problem.
	The heyday is the problem.
	So it's like saying to somebody who's on heroin, the moment they get that heroin high, it's like, well, it's tough to see them so happy.
	Because I want to see them unhappy in a way.
	I mean, I sort of understand that, right?
	Because you want to see them unhappy so that they'll change.
	But the whole reason that he's so unhappy is because he believes in the heyday and also because you believe in the heyday.
	You believe that this is some positive, right?
	But what it is is the avoidance of a positive.
	A positive would be in your 40s is saying, well, shit, this is my last chance to settle down and get a meaningful relationship if I want to have kids or whatever, right?
	To find somebody of quality, to stop being an immature jerk and to grow the fuck up and start treating people well.
	You don't want to end up that guy in the house, right?
	He's in the house at the end of the street and he's wearing his shorts up around his nipples with these tiny suspenders and all he's doing is spending all day drinking bourbon on the porch and yelling at kids to get off my lawn!
	And he's got a big old mean dog and all the kids ride their bikes around his property and throw stones and eggs at him at Halloween.
	You don't want to be that guy.
	That guy is a miserable living hell of a last day's existence.
	And that's where this guy's headed.
	You don't get to make a whole bunch of great friends when you're 70 or 60 even.
	Yeah. You have to have accumulated people of quality in your life before then.
	He has not done that.
	Even the managers that he works with, they're all buddy-buddy at work.
	I know he goes home alone or he goes to the bars alone for the most part.
	They don't even hang out with him in his environment.
	I guess I don't even know why I use the word heyday.
	I don't know, maybe, I just don't like that he has power over me, you know?
	No, it's like, you know, let me just put it to you this way, hopefully this will get it through.
	If somebody has a disease that makes them feel good, that's the worst possible thing, right?
	Right, yeah. Because not only will they not go and get treatment, they will resist treatment for this disease that makes them feel good, right?
	Absolutely, yeah. And it's like you can't sell lithium to a manic depressive on a high, because he's like, I feel fabulous!
	I bestride the world like a colossus, right?
	So if somebody has a disease that makes him feel good, that is the worst disease you can get, because not only will the person not treat it, they will actively resist even the idea that they're ill.
	And so when you're looking at this guy, he's got a disease that makes him feel good.
	And you're looking at him saying, damn, he shouldn't feel good.
	He should feel bad. But you understand that it's the worst disease is the one that makes you feel good.
	Absolutely. So if you feel angry at the guy and want him to suffer, there's no better way for someone to suffer than to have a disease that makes them feel good.
	Because that is permanent, irrevocable suffering.
	So if you really hate someone, you will try to infect them with bad ideas that feel good.
	I'm not saying you're doing this, but that's the greatest punishment that you can give to someone.
	And so you're looking at this, well, he feels good and that's bad, but he feels good pursuing the wrong thing, which means he's going to keep pursuing the wrong thing, which means that his punishment, which has already started, is only going to continue and to get worse and to accelerate more.
	Yeah. Yeah, that's true.
	I mean, I really, I guess I can't, the last thing, I guess, is that I can't help but shake this feeling of pity for someone like that.
	And I really, like, I want him to turn around, you know?
	I get that this is all, like, he has this disease, and it's going to ruin his life, and he's going to think that it's not ruining his life when it actually is.
	And I just, you know, I don't want anyone to go through that.
	And, I mean, he can be a jackass, but I don't want him I guess, is this right for me to feel this kind of pity, or is that going to just prompt me into doing something that I'll regret, like trying to talk to him or something like that?
	Well, I'm not going to say whether your feelings are right or wrong.
	That's not for me to say. But what I will say is that as philosophers, we need to accept the inevitable results of people's actions.
	Well, I mean, we just need to.
	And that doesn't mean that we're not going to feel sympathy, right?
	So let's say that someone, your dad, someone you really love, he smoked for 40 years and then he quit.
	He smoked for 30 years and then he quit.
	But then when he's 70, he gets lung cancer because he smoked for so long or whatever, right?
	Well, it's not like you're going to say, good, right?
	That's punishment, right?
	You're going to feel like that's terrible, right?
	It's terrible. So to feel sympathy, for sure, we feel sympathy for people who do the wrong thing and then end up with terrible lives.
	I mean, I feel sympathy even for people who've harmed me terribly.
	Because I've seen the way that their lives have turned out and where they live and the kind of horror, daily horror that they live in.
	The sleepless nights, the paranoia, the fear, the alienation, the loneliness, the self-hatred, the disconsent.
	There's an abysmal gulf that arises like this black, inky, bottomless, black hole well that surrounds people who've done irreparable harm to others in their lives.
	There is a huge gulf.
	It rings them like the rings of Saturn and keeps everybody at a near infinite distance and they live in an isolation.
	They live in a horrible isolation of violations of universality, of empathy, of kindness.
	These kinds of violations isolate people and the reasons for that we don't have to get into.
	We can talk about that perhaps another time.
	There is an interstellar isolation that accrues to people who treat other people badly.
	And you and I don't wish that on people.
	My God, what a terrible thing.
	But I accept that that is the result of what they do.
	I accept that. I don't wish it on people.
	You're right. I would rather...
	That they do better. I would rather that people didn't smoke.
	I don't wish lung cancer on people, but I accept that if you smoke, you know, that's the risk, right?
	Now, of course, the difference is lots of people don't die from smoking, even if they smoke, but there's nobody I know or can conceive of who doesn't get this interstellar gulf between them and everybody else.
	Where humanity as a whole looks like ants from a tall building to them.
	This unbelievable isolation and detonation of the South that occurs from doing wrong to others.
	I accept that that's just what happens.
	I wish that people would do different, and I can feel some sympathy, but I also recognize that the degree of misery later in life seems to be pretty directly proportional to the degree of harm done to others.
	Because at least smoking, you're mostly harming yourself, right?
	Secondhand, who knows, right? And so when somebody is older and cranky and miserable and hostile and whatever, right?
	I can feel some sympathy for that person, but I also have to remember, if I am to live with the light of justice in my mind, I also have to remember that the holes in his souls are the holes he's drilled in the souls of others.
	I don't get to see all the harm he's done to others.
	I only get to see the negative effects on him.
	Absolutely. - Absolutely.
	I see.
	I see. And you know, that totally applies to everyone else in the restaurant, too.
	I mean, all the customers that give me, you know, snarky looks or complain when there's nothing to complain about.
	I mean, it applies across the board.
	Even to my fellow co-workers in their 20s and stuff.
	It sucks, but I mean, ultimately, it's their choice.
	It's their choice that they're going to continue this lifestyle and they're going to continue it.
	And it's like, You're right.
	It's like feeling sympathy for a 70-year-old lung cancer patient who's been smoking his entire life.
	It's like, you know, you kind of brought it on yourself.
	You know, I wish you hadn't, but you chose this life.
	Right. And there is an old poster, a motivational poster, a demotivational poster that I remember.
	Maybe somebody in the chatroom can pop it up if they can find it.
	Where there is a ship that's going down, like straight down in the ocean.
	And underneath it says, it may be that the only purpose of your life is to serve as a warning to others.
	Yeah, I remember that.
	You've seen that probably, right?
	And I saw that years ago and I was incredibly struck by the profundity of that statement.
	That in order for people to stop smoking, people have to die of lung cancer.
	Because if nobody died of lung cancer, if nobody got sick from smoking, everybody who liked smoking would just keep smoking.
	Yeah, totally. Right, so evil, and I'm not calling this guy evil, but we'll just use this as a generic statement, right?
	Immorality. Immorality must breed unhappiness, else nobody would be good.
	Being good is a bitch, right?
	Yeah. It completely sucks, right?
	Yeah, I mean, it seems like everyone's against you.
	I mean, I feel like, you know, you can't walk down the street without, you know, we can't walk down the street with a smile on your face and then look at people in the eyes without them just giving you weird looks.
	You know, it's just all over.
	Yeah. Being virtuous is like quitting smoking and drinking and crack and Cheetos all at the same time.
	It's hell.
	It's hell. And the only reason that we would quit all of those things is because they're going to kill us, right?
	And the only reason that we devote ourselves to virtue is because we don't want our souls to turn rancid and stink up the joint, right?
	Yeah. And so if this guy was able to turn on a dime and have a happy life with a happy, loving relationship and be a good person and so on, then it would really suck for us to work this hard at being virtuous, right?
	Yeah. I mean, it would be kind of a kick in the pants if it was easy to be virtuous, and then so all these people could just on a dime flip and be good, but they just choose not to.
	I mean, I have to go through a lot to...
	It gets where I am now, and I'm nowhere near done, but it just, it would really suck if it was easy, you know?
	Yeah, look, you and I are struggling to bench press the 500 pounds of virtue, right?
	And it takes a lot of work, it takes a lot of training, a lot of dieting, a lot of shitty 5am training sessions when you'd rather be sleeping in, to lift that 500 pounds called virtue.
	And of course it's 500 pounds because all the bad people in the world are jumping up and down on it, right?
	Yeah. And so it would really suck if somebody who'd never worked out, who was 98 pounds, who was a chain smoker, just came in and lifted it with one finger.
	Wouldn't we feel like complete idiots then?
	Yeah, I'd be re-evaluating my life.
	Maybe take up smoking if that's...
	Yeah, what the hell's wrong with me?
	I mean, why am I training when all you have to do is be a 98-pound smoker and you can bench 500 pounds without ever trying once?
	Easily, with one finger.
	Be like, what the hell am I doing, right?
	Exactly, yeah. Yeah, and you know, all this is nice.
	It's good to hear. I mean, I feel like I kind of knew it, you know, at the back of my head, but it's...
	Oh, I guarantee you knew it.
	I guarantee that you knew it.
	Yeah. I guess I just don't watch it.
	I mean, I could have given you some short-term, like, you know, think positive, you know?
	Imagine a unicorn's tail coming out of his mouth when he speaks.
	I could have given you stupid shit like that, but I really wanted to give you the long and deep view, because you're going to need that.
	You're a young man, and you have, obviously, you have been infected by the philosophy meme.
	God help you. So you're going to need that for the long haul.
	And I can tell you, I can tell you, I can tell you that it does work.
	It does work.
	If you keep working at it, you will be able to bench that 500 pounds.
	I can do it occasionally from time to time.
	But it does work.
	I say this at the ripe old age of 43.
	I'm the happiest guy that I know, other than some listeners.
	But it does work.
	It does work, but it's hard work.
	And... We would expect it to be hard work, because if it wasn't hard work, the world and its foolishnesses and violences and idiocies and abuses would make no sense at all, if it was just easy to be virtuous, right?
	It's hard. It's damn hard.
	It's hard to be virtuous, and it's even harder to spread virtue and to try and make other people enthusiastic for virtue as well, because it's very hard.
	But we have to look at the warning signs of where people are headed in order to help guide ourselves, right?
	So if we're trying to sail through a whole bunch of, like we're trying to sail through a reef, we want to look at every ship that's lying half smashed up on the side of a coral reef to say, okay, well, I'm not going to sail there and I'm not going to sail there and I'm not going to sail there.
	I'm not going to sail there.
	So we have to look at people's lives and say, do I want that life?
	No.
	Well, what's that person like?
	Because who they are is who we are is who we become, right?
	We go from habits to personality to identity to destination.
	And you can probably even drop out the third one there, right?
	So what's inflicted on us so often becomes our habit.
	Our habits then become our personality.
	Our personalities become our destiny in the absence of significant self-work.
	Although I guess you could say that self-knowledge is a habit as well.
	And so we just want to look at where everybody's habits take them and say, ooh...
	I don't want that, right?
	I don't want that, right? Like Marilyn Monroe, right?
	If being beautiful and talented and rich and famous was enough to make you happy, she'd maybe still be alive today, right?
	But that's not enough.
	There is no substitute for virtue.
	There is no way to be happy without virtue.
	Absolutely. Well, thank you so much.
	You know, I know this room might be going over time.
	I don't want to neglect anyone else.
	Thank you so much for your advice.
	There's always a shining, brilliant light of clarity.
	I'm really in your debt.
	Thank you so much for everything.
	Also, I have one other thing that I wanted to say.
	I guess I noticed this when you posted the pictures of Izzy.
	Izzy is the happiest baby I have ever seen in my entire life.
	I gotta say, I mean, I look at old baby pictures of myself or of my friends, and all the babies look confused or they look kind of sad, and you just get the sort of air of, I don't know, something's wrong.
	You can tell something's wrong, but with Izzy, it's just absolute delight and a joy.
	I go on the media and just look at Izzy pictures when I have a bad day or something, and it's absolutely incredible, and thank you for that, and thank you for everything.
	Oh, you're welcome. And I appreciate what you're saying.
	She is a complete delight to spend time with.
	I completely worship and adore that kid from every aspect of my being.
	And so I appreciate what you're saying.
	She certainly seems to be happy and it is quite a...
	I'll just put another picture up here.
	It does seem to be quite an interesting thing to see her relative to some of the other kids who are around.
	I mean, I agree with you for sure.
	I mean, we just took her to her first gymnastics this last week, gymnastics class, and I mean, she was just a complete delight.
	She is a true joy to be around, so I appreciate what you're saying, and I'm very happy that the parenting theories are working, because if they didn't, that would really suck.
	So I'm very glad that the theory is meshing with the practice, so I appreciate what you're saying.
	Cool. All right. More Izzy stories and I'm going to get off the phone.
	All right. Thanks, man.
	Bye-bye. James, do we have caller the third?
	Look at that. Only an hour per caller.
	Actually, 40 minutes maybe.
	Yeah. Can you hear me all right?
	I sure can. Okay, I got Skype telling me.
	It's quiet. Let's see.
	So I don't know if we have anybody, any callers just up just yet.
	There's one asking for some speculation.
	Which do you think will die, with die in quotes, which do you think will die first, religion or government?
	That's an interesting question.
	I think that chronologically it would have to be religion first, because...
	I mean, it depends what you mean by religion, of course.
	If it just means belief in God, well, that's died in some countries where there's still quite a lot of government.
	So, the death of religion does not mean the death of the government, because the human capacity to be addicted to error in order to protect bad upbringings is almost infinite.
	But I would say that chronologically, the illusions...
	That are inflicted on children will have to diminish before the illusions that are accepted by adults will ever diminish, right?
	That's the fundamental assumption, and I think more than assumption.
	I think it's scientifically pretty damn well established.
	That is the fundamental approach that I take here that is different, right?
	That the illusions that are inflicted on children will have to cease before the illusions that are accepted by adults will evaporate.
	And so whatever is taught to children...
	That is wrong. We'll have to stop being taught to children and then we'll have to be replaced by things that are correct before we will have a rational society.
	And that's why it's a multi-generational change situation.
	So since religion is taught to children much more than statism is taught to children, then I think that religion will have to go.
	but it's necessary but not sufficient to get rid of the state.
	If we don't have another, I do have something to talk about, but I'm happy to hear if anybody has any more questions.
	Thank you.
	There was another question.
	Oh, sorry, I think we have a caller.
	Sorry, let's hear the other question, and I think we do have a caller.
	Well, the question is, and if you know the names, then you'll be able to answer.
	Regarding education, does Stefan have any opinion on a pragmatist school such as Dewey and a neo-pragmatist such as Rorty?
	I don't have the expertise to answer that.
	I'm sorry. But if you want to send it to me in an email, I certainly would be happy to look it up.
	I mean, I know a little bit about Dewey.
	I don't know the other guy. But I don't have enough to provide anything useful there.
	Sorry. Hey, what's up?
	Hey, man. How's it going? Yeah, I'm fine, but I do have a question.
	It's like, what do you think is the most wrong in modern parenting?
	Let's start with that.
	Because I think my parenting was pretty regular and pretty normal.
	And most of the people that surround me have pretty normal childhoods too.
	So what do you think about normal parenting and how to address that?
	Right, right. I think that's a great question.
	I think that's a great question.
	There are...
	I mean, to me, there are a couple of categories of parents, right?
	And there are the parents...
	I mean, there are the parents who are just outright abusive.
	And I'm not saying that they're a majority.
	I don't know what the percentage is.
	But there are parents who, you know, they beat their kids.
	They hurt their kids in various nasty ways.
	They don't do it in public. They hide it.
	They cover it up. They frighten their children into not getting help.
	They're just downright abusive.
	And so that's obviously...
	Yeah, and a couple of these two... I just want to get that category out of the way.
	I'm going to move to your category, right?
	Now, the second category of parents for me are the parents who aren't outright abusive.
	But what they do is they substitute authority and power for honesty, curiosity, and negotiation.
	Right?
	So these are – maybe they don't hit their kids.
	They don't lock their kids in the basement.
	They don't beat them with bats or whatever.
	But what they do is they say, when you're in my house, you'll do as I say.
	Right?
	So they will say, because I said so.
	Or do as I say, not as I do.
	And those kinds of parents are all too common, and I think that's very bad for a child's development as well.
	So that's the second category of parents who substitute power.
	Now the third category of parents for me are the parents who don't use power But have the great challenge of trying to teach their children how to be good without a rational system of ethics.
	That's a huge problem for parents in the modern world.
	How, oh how, oh how, do I teach my children to be good when I cannot explain to them why they should be good?
	And that category of parents, I have a great deal of sympathy for.
	I have a great deal of sympathy for those parents.
	I think that they have been betrayed by philosophers throughout history.
	Philosophers who should be working on a rational system of ethics for parents that they can explain to their children why.
	Why they shouldn't steal, why they shouldn't push, why they shouldn't lie, all those kinds of things.
	Because parents have a huge problem.
	It's that society can't function if people don't at least have some interest or desire to be virtuous.
	And yet, we don't have any good reason, fundamentally, at least I would say until UPB, we don't have any really good reason as to why Children should be good.
	So this is a problem.
	Parents have this absolute, I must teach my children, my children must be good, but I have no rational way of explaining to them why they should be good.
	And so all I can do is stick and carrot them, right?
	So if they're bad, like if they, let's say, they push, then I disapprove of pushing.
	And if they share, then I approve of sharing.
	So if they share, I say, oh, that's really good.
	Good job. Thank you.
	And if they push, I say, no, we don't push.
	Yeah, well, all they're doing is they're saying, I like this.
	I like it when you do things that are virtuous, and I don't like it when you do things that are non-virtuous.
	But that doesn't teach the child anything.
	All it does is teach the child that the child must guide himself according to that which other people like or dislike.
	It turns the child into what Rand used to call a moral relativist.
	Yeah, a moral relativist.
	Yeah, well, I got praised when I did this.
	This is how we treat dogs.
	This is how we teach puppies, for Christ's sakes.
	This is how we train horses.
	This is not how we should train children.
	But, that having been said, I have great sympathy for parents who are like, well, I don't know why I should be good.
	And the reason that people don't know why they should be good is that society has gone so far away from virtue, if it was ever even there, that there's too much that needs to be rewritten in society for parents to be able to teach their children to be good.
	And so, I have sympathy for parents.
	Who are left with nothing else in their toolkit for helping their children to be good than to say, I don't like it when you do this thing.
	I do like it when you do that thing.
	And that just teaches the children to navigate by approval and disapproval.
	It doesn't teach them to think.
	It doesn't teach them to understand.
	It teaches them to conform to praise, to pursue praise and avoid...
	Displeasure. That is bad.
	That's culture. That's not philosophy.
	Philosophy is, fuck all that.
	What's true? Right?
	Fuck what people like and don't like.
	What's true? That's like science, right?
	The world is round. I don't care if you don't like it.
	I'm sorry that you don't like it.
	Maybe I do care that you don't like it, but the world is still round, right?
	I don't care if the Bible says the earth is fixed.
	The earth goes around the sun.
	I'm sorry if it offends you, right?
	But, of course, you can't have science if all you do is care about what offends people and what they like and what they don't like, right?
	Because what people like and don't like is fundamentally conservative.
	It's fixed in history and usually in the bullshit eras of history in the past.
	So to teach children, and it's not even teaching them, to condition children.
	To simply navigate approval and disapproval is really bad.
	Now, parents have been betrayed and left without the proper tools by philosophers.
	I mean, parents aren't going to invent UPP, right?
	I mean, it's...
	Yeah, or whatever, right?
	Some rational system of ethics, right?
	That's going to work. It's not their job.
	But, but...
	There's a fourth category of parents that I... So I have sympathy for these parents, but I'll tell you the parents I have real admiration for.
	This is the parents I have incredible admiration for, right?
	So I don't know if you read the book, Untruth?
	No. No, okay.
	Third way through RTR, so...
	Oh, good. Okay, well...
	I won't give you the whole untruth, obviously, thesis, but basically it's pointing a lot of this stuff out.
	So when you go to your parents, as I suggest, or you go to any authority figure and you say, well, you said that I should be good and I shouldn't be bad, so tell me what goodness is.
	Because you told me that I should be good and I shouldn't be bad, so you must have a deep knowledge.
	Right? If I say, listen, if you're lost in the woods, you go north, I should have some knowledge of where you are and where you should go, right?
	And so this is the parents that I hugely admire.
	And I do get emails from these parents.
	They're not hugely common, but I definitely get them.
	And these are the parents that I think have incredible courage.
	And these are the parents who, when their kids come to them and say, you taught me endlessly about good and bad, right and wrong, virtue and vice, So I need you to tell me by what theory you were teaching me.
	Like, wait, what? How do you know?
	How did you know what to teach me?
	What is goodness? What is right?
	What is wrong? Now, the really courageous parents...
	We'll start to answer that question.
	And if the adult children are persistent, and I think in this case should be respectful if the parents were, you know, were doing their best with incomplete ethics, let's say, at some point the parents are going to say, holy shit.
	Well, maybe not holy shit.
	At some point the parents are going to say, golly gee, I don't really know what virtue is.
	And I'm sorry, I conditioned you to follow all of these rules, which obviously claims, it makes the implicit claim that I know a good deal, if not a huge amount about this.
	But when you ask me some basic questions, I don't really know what virtue is.
	So let's talk about that.
	That, that to me, is incredibly important.
	Brave and mature parenting.
	That is allowing your children to take a leadership role when they're adults.
	That is negotiation in the extreme.
	That is respect for your children rather than respect for defending your past actions without cause, without justification.
	So those are the sort of four categories of parents.
	And I would say that the last category is few.
	I hope that the parents who listen to philosophy, at least this philosophy here, won't be in that category.
	But that to me is the last category of parenting, if that helps.
	Yeah, I pretty much was raised in this third category.
	So, pretty much, yeah.
	And so I see I went through the wrong strategy of speaking about states and abstract moralities.
	So I really should have gone about what's bad and what's not and what's good.
	And probably... Yeah, what is virtue?
	It's the fundamental question.
	If philosophy can't answer that, it's not philosophy.
	It's just culturally manipulative religion of some kind, right?
	So philosophy can answer that question, right?
	Yes, I assume they would answer that, well, my parents taught me what's good and what's bad, and so I teach you the same, because empirically I saw that it worked in my life.
	So... Well, that's pragmatism.
	That's not virtue, right? It worked in my life is not virtue, right?
	And your parents didn't teach you and said, this is practical, right?
	Your parents said, this is virtue.
	I don't know.
	They didn't really pretend to teach me virtue.
	Well, no, they did, for sure.
	Yeah, they told me don't hit and don't...
	I surely didn't hit that many people as a child, so I don't think they ever had the need to teach me any moral stuff.
	Like, not a lot.
	Not that much.
	Not that many moral...
	But I assume that they also...
	I mean, I'm going to assume that they also weren't aggressively violent people themselves, right?
	They weren't pushing each other around, right?
	Yeah. Not really.
	So that's good.
	I mean, because, of course, ethics is fundamentally not taught.
	It's shown, right?
	Yeah. Your parents...
	I mean, I think I mentioned this the other day, but I'll just sort of mention it again briefly here, right?
	So I was at the... At the mall and I saw some mom who was like down in her child's face, like leaning over, like a colossus, like a giant, like one of those statues from Lord of the Rings, leaning over her child who was like four and saying, why are you being so rude and difficult, right?
	And I thought, well, leaning over and intimidating a four-year-old is rude and difficult.
	And this was just a complete UPB short circuit, right?
	Because she was saying to a four-year-old, you should not be rude and difficult, but I, as a 35-year-old, can be rude and difficult.
	So I have infinitely higher moral standards for a four-year-old than I do for myself at 35.
	Is that kid going to grow up respecting integrity and ethics and virtue?
	No. He's going to have all kinds of complicated and messed up relationships with this sort of stuff.
	Whereas if she had respectfully talked to the child about whatever, whatever, and then she could have said whatever.
	You need to be more respectful or whatever.
	But even then, she has to look at her own behavior.
	If she wants, I think, to be a really good parent, she has to look at her own behavior and say, what have I modeled that my child acts in this way?
	What have I modeled? What is my child picking up on that my child is acting in this way?
	I think it's fairly well established, again, scientifically, that genetics have very little to do with personality development.
	It's almost all environments.
	So if your child is doing something that you dislike, first thing you need to do is look in the mirror and not look at your child.
	So I get that if you went out there hitting other kids, it's because you grew up in a household where violence wasn't used to solve problems.
	So that's good.
	At least then you've got the empirical example.
	Yeah, probably. Thank you.
	I don't know if it answered some deeper question that I might have, but I'd need to process that for asking that later, maybe.
	I don't know. Well, I appreciate that.
	And I'm always happy to talk about parenting.
	So if you want to bring a deeper question back, I will be happy to take a swing at it.
	And thank you so much.
	It's a great, great... I mean, I love you guys so much.
	I can't tell you just how amazing your questions are and how much I enjoy these conversations.
	It is an incredible privilege.
	So thank you so much. It was a great, great question.
	Thank you. Alright.
	I think we have time for one more.
	Or do I do my Aaron posted critique of my discussion with Steph Kinsella?
	Question.
	Questions.
	Last call. For alcohol.
	More Izzy stories.
	Really? Critique. More Izzy stories.
	Critique! I don't know. I don't know what you mean.
	Why? Critique.
	Okay. Let's do the critique. Get Izzy to critique it.
	Get Izzy to critique it, right?
	My daddy at the moment is rather smelly.
	Okay, so this is...
	He was on the show once, I think, way back.
	His name's Aaron, and he has Aaron0883, which I would assume is his birthday.
	He's on YouTube, and he's written some stuff that's been both quite positive and quite critical.
	He's recorded some stuff that's been both quite positive and quite critical.
	Of OFDR. And unfortunately, I can't take the praise or the criticism because it's so general, right?
	So he says, Steph sometimes used manipulative debating techniques.
	And as is always the case, you know, and I love criticism.
	I, you know, I can improve without a doubt for sure.
	But I must tell you that when people criticize me without examples, like when it's just the argument from adjective, you know, Steph is rude.
	I like ice cream.
	I don't think that has anything to do with me.
	They know that I'm an empiricist, which means that I don't care what people say.
	I care about the facts.
	If people critique me without providing examples...
	Just to prepare for this, I watched a couple of videos of his where he was critiquing me.
	He's a smart fella, and he's a very articulate fella, and I think it's well worth watching some of his videos.
	But, you know, it was all like, I heard someone had a bad experience in the FDR chatroom, and therefore there's lots of banning.
	And, you know, that stuff's just all funny.
	I mean, we've got over 8,000 members.
	I've been there a few dozen bans over the past five years.
	It's really not significant.
	But, of course, those people who are banned immediately will automatically say...
	I was banned for no reason or I was banned just because I disagreed with Steph and he doesn't allow people to disagree with him.
	The fact that there are soldiers and religious people and minarchists and statists and all that posting on the board, well, that has nothing to do with anything.
	It's just that one guy said that Steph banned him for no reason and therefore, you know, it's an intolerant community, right?
	So... I mean, I appreciate the interest, and it's always, you know, I go with Oscar Wilde.
	The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.
	So I appreciate the interest, but I couldn't go with any of his...
	I couldn't go with his praise, because his praise seemed kind of unspecific, though it was obviously nicer.
	But the criticisms are just, you know, so if people want to criticize, you know, go for it.
	But you need to include some, you know, some facts, right?
	Because otherwise it's just a bunch of adjectives which don't amount to a fart in a windstorm, so...
	Alright, so he wrote, I'm not going to read the whole thing, but I had a chat with Stef Kinsella on parenting, and it was a pretty informal chat, and so he says, the first question Molyneux asks Stef Kinsella is, how do you manage the behavior of a pre-rational creature?
	And he says, one of my strategies in sniffing out unequal or one-sided relationships is always to shift the players around.
	Let's say a politician asks the question, how do you manage the behavior of the people?
	Your response would likely be something like, Who are you?
	I am not your subject to be managed.
	Of course, you are probably thinking, Well, this is the difference between a young child who lacks experience in mental capabilities and an adult.
	I would somewhat agree, but also have strong disagreement.
	There is a little bit more subtlety at work.
	If a person is okay with how they are and live with their own happiness, they don't need to be managed.
	Let me give an example. If I'm assisting my grandmother as she goes on the internet to look for an image of a happy chicken and starts typing gay cock in Google, I think we've all been there, I don't need to manage her emotions because they're perfectly fine.
	What might help her is information and guidance from someone more knowledgeable, not emotional management.
	When we decide to manage someone else's emotions, it's assuming that their emotions are problematic, are in need of control.
	Children's emotions are perfectly natural and healthy and don't require management.
	What they do need is someone to offer them guidance and information that they don't have.
	So, a problem that I have with this is that he's...
	I mean, I never quite know how people manage to do this, but they do, right?
	So, this fellow is saying...
	That it's not good to manage the emotions of another human being.
	But not two paragraphs up.
	The actual quote from the podcast is, How do you manage the behavior of pre-rational creatures?
	Not the emotions.
	The behavior.
	So what's amazing to me is he actually typed out the quote from the podcast.
	The quote is, How do you manage the behavior of pre-rational creatures?
	And then he gets offended because he says...
	We shouldn't want to manage other people's emotions.
	But he just typed behavior.
	This is what's so amazing to me about people.
	Anyway, what am I going to say, right?
	So let's see. Later on, Kinsella introduced the concept of positive discipline in commenting on the Montessori system.
	And he writes,"...to me the concept that a child must be controlled and managed has yet changed.
	They have a less blatant attempt at controlling people." But it has yet to leave the discussion.
	I don't know what that means. Anyway, curiosity and empathy towards the child is not the main focus in positive discipline, but rather controlling the child to be what you think it should be, albeit in a less abrasive way.
	It is still assuming the child is dysfunctional and has behavior problems that need to be controlled rather than understood and worked with at a deeper level.
	To see what causes the behavior.
	In researching positive discipline for this blog, it seems like the authors use more friendly language to disguise controlling disrespectful behavior On the parent's behalf.
	And, of course, again, we're talking pre-rational.
	Pre-rational means pre-language.
	Pre-language.
	Pre-rational means pre-language.
	And he should know this, because it's no secret that my daughter is, you know...
	Nine. Well, she's 18 months old, right?
	So she's not somebody that you can have a rational discussion with about the intrinsic motivations of her actions, right?
	I can't say to her, why did you have an impulse to do that?
	And what was your thought before?
	I mean, she doesn't understand any of that because she's a year and a half old, right?
	And I mentioned that in the podcast, my daughter is very young.
	So pre-rational means you can't reason with them, right?
	You can't reason, you can't have a conversation.
	And so then when he says that, he says, sorry, let me just find, oh yeah, the child is dysfunctional and has behavior problems that need to be controlled rather than understood and worked with at a deeper level to see what causes the behavior.
	But of course, when I talk about pre-rational, I'm talking about pre-conversational, pre-introspection, pre-understanding the word like emotions and thoughts and so on.
	And so, again, I don't know how people get to their own thing from what is actually said.
	And it is to me quite amazing that someone types it out, types it out, and then goes on their own thing, which has nothing to do with what they just typed out.
	It really is a truly, truly remarkable talent.
	So the greatest education that could be given to a child, or better put, not taken away, is foremost to have respect for his own desires and thoughts.
	In a system where a child must subjugate his thoughts to the desire of parents or teachers, he might learn some stuff, but it will be at the cost of his own self-respect.
	Again, I don't remember any time in that conversation where we were talking about rejecting a child's thoughts.
	And so when I talk about managing the...
	It's so important. I'm precise with language.
	I've had a lot of experience working with language.
	I don't often make mistakes in terminology.
	I'm sure I do sometimes. But this is not a case where I'm making mistakes in terminology.
	I say very clearly, how do you manage the behavior of pre-rational creatures?
	In other words, when my daughter wants to walk down the stairs at the age of 11 months...
	How do you manage that without any kind of aggression or any kind of disapproval or blah, blah, blah, right?
	That's a challenge for parents.
	And I think he works with kids, but I don't think he has kids, so he just may not have been through.
	But that's why I say, how do you manage the behavior, what they're actually doing of pre-rational creatures?
	Not, how do you control the thoughts and emotions of perfectly articulate young adults, right?
	I mean, It just amazes me how people can go off on their own thing rather than just deal with what was actually said.
	I don't think that's...
	What can I say?
	Let's see. If I said I believe in letting my wife experience consequences, that would sound like I am teaching my wife in an unequal relationship.
	If I had information that she would like and I didn't share it with her and she experiences consequences as a result and finds out that I could have provided it, she will naturally think I'm an ass.
	A child doesn't have to learn every mistake on their own.
	We all try to learn information from other people.
	Let them know the stove is hot.
	But if they're persistent, you don't need to nag.
	You can say another warning if you are that worried, but otherwise give them the freedom and don't be a jerk if he does get burned.
	Sometimes we want to experiment despite the warnings for various reasons.
	I don't agree with that.
	I can't stomach the idea of Isabella learning by being hurt.
	I just can't. Now, that doesn't mean that I don't let her do things that are risky.
	So just this last week, I took her to a park.
	Christina was working. I took her to a park.
	And there's this long, curly slide, right, that loops around once or twice.
	And she wanted to go on the slide.
	Now, what I've been doing before is I would sort of lift her up, put her on the slide near the top, and then she would go down.
	But she wanted to go up the slide, to walk up the slide, because we'd been practicing that at home.
	And then she wanted to sit down at the top of the slide, scooch her legs forward, scooch her bum forward, and go down the slide on her own.
	Now, I was at the top, and so I couldn't be there at the bottom to catch her if she went too fast and went shooting off the slide.
	Now, it was on the sand, so it wasn't a huge deal if she'd fallen or whatever, right?
	But that was nerve-wracking.
	And the reason that I let her do it was because she was confident she could do it.
	So when she's confident that she can do something, if I try to help her, she'll push my hand away and she'll say no.
	And that's when I know that she is confident that she can do something.
	So she was confident that she could do the whole slide thing on her own, right?
	Could sit down, scooch forward, stay sitting, go down, navigate the drop at the bottom and so on.
	She was confident that she could do that.
	And because she was confident, even though it was uncomfortable, highly uncomfortable for me, because you have all these disaster scenarios as a parent and so on.
	And I think you should, right?
	Because there are lots of them out there. And so she went down the slide and she did a beautiful job.
	A beautiful job. And then I went down the slide right after her and, you know, we giggled and she had a great deal of fun.
	So... Managing the behavior is I can't...
	There have been times that she wants to do stuff that I simply won't let her do.
	So she's now pretty good at going down the stairs.
	She still has to hold on to the banister, but she's good at going down the stairs, facing forward step by step.
	And in fact, two weekends ago, she did her first set of stairs without any banister or any help, which was just fantastic.
	But prior to that, what she did was she went up and down the curb 40 or 50 times to practice, right?
	So she knows. She really wants to master the stairs.
	She really wants to do what the adults want to do.
	And her decisions are getting much better about these things.
	But in the past, she used to go down the stairs on her belly, right?
	So she'd go down on her belly, sliding down, like sort of body surfing down the stairs.
	And sometimes she would stop in the middle and she would try and stand up and turn around.
	And she was not...
	I'm not competent to be able to do that yet.
	And so I would be there to hold her.
	And sometimes, even if she didn't want me to, I would pick her up.
	Because I had to trust my own instincts with regards to this as well.
	I'm not going to put her in a situation where she's going to fall down a flight of stairs.
	That is just not going to happen.
	She could break her nose. She could experience a concussion.
	I mean, I'm just not going to do that.
	There's just no way. And even if she's kicking, right?
	And there are times where she doesn't want her diaper changed and she's kicking and unfortunately I just have to change her diaper.
	I won't get into what happened last night, but we ended up in the bath together because she really didn't want to take a bath.
	And once she had her massive poop, I found out why.
	It was very exciting. Let's play submarine.
	You sunk my battleship!
	Right? So...
	When it comes to managing that behavior, I actually, for the most part, I rely on what Isabella is comfortable with doing, with some limitations.
	And she's getting much better at that.
	So I think that there are times where consequences will occur, and there are times when consequences should not occur.
	Particularly when, I think Kinsella was talking about not doing homework and then it all piling up and so on.
	And so he's saying, well, you wouldn't treat your wife that way.
	And that certainly is true, but my wife doesn't wear diapers unless we're role-playing.
	And so it's...
	I mean, I don't know how to explain this to somebody who's Who's comparing, say, an 18-month-old to my wife.
	I don't know how to explain that other than to say one of them is shorter than the other.
	One of them has a brain that is still a third the size of an adult brain.
	One of them has no particular capacity to process long-term consequences.
	The other one does. The physical human brain does not mature until one's early to mid-twenties.
	And it is well established that children have a tough time with understanding the consequences of their actions.
	That's a scientific fact, right?
	That's a scientific fact is the fact that children are shorter.
	And so, the fact that children's brains, physical brains, do not have the capacity to project long-term consequences, whereas an adult brain does, means that you simply cannot apply the same standards of relationships to a child brain.
	There's a reason we don't let Isabella drive.
	Anything other than her little red car, right?
	So there's a reason that we don't let children sign contracts when they're three years old, right?
	Because they don't have that.
	And so to compare a child relationship to an adult relationship is just to miss the basic biological fact of the child's brain.
	So I don't really know about that.
	Anyway, I won't go into...
	Unless people are really fascinated by this, I won't go into that.
	That would be... I don't really want to go into that much more, but it really does quite blow my mind how people...
	Somebody's asked, can't you teach Isabella by letting her feel the consequences, by letting her have her way for a few hours?
	Well, but you see, it's a good question.
	It's important to reinforce that...
	I mean, this is a conservative estimate.
	I would say that on any given day...
	I probably limit Isabella's behavior maybe twice, maybe three times.
	So we were out at the mall yesterday, and Isabella was on the sidewalk, and Isabella wanted to run into the parking lot.
	Right? And I'm sorry, she's not going to run into the parking lot.
	She's not. Because that's clearly, we don't want her to understand how big and powerful cars are by getting hit by one.
	Right? And a child's running out from between parked cars into a busy parking lot.
	I mean, clearly, I mean, there's nothing, nobody who could ever say otherwise.
	Right? And so I think she does get her way almost the entire day.
	Almost the entire day.
	It's exceedingly rare at any point during the day that I'm limiting her behavior.
	And, you know, that's something that's very important to me.
	And that's why it is very easy to limit her behavior because it is very much the exception.
	All right. Hey, we might finish a little bit early.
	Any last questions or comments?
	I'll just type this in the chat room. Somebody said, so you talked to her about the dangers of cars because you didn't want her to test it out physically.
	No, I didn't talk to her about the danger of cars because she's too young to understand that.
	I picked her up and I wouldn't let her go into the parking lot.
	And then I found something fun to her to play with that she could enjoy without going on the parking lot, right?
	I mean, she's 18 months old, right?
	She doesn't understand it's dangerous where there are cars yet.
	I have got her to the point where when I say car car, if we're on the street and there's a car coming, she will run to my arms.
	But, yeah, that's, I mean, it's just something I think that you will have to...
	Can I explain the definition of existence?
	Well, existence is, very briefly, existence is two things.
	Existence is everything that is and is not.
	Like the universe, the planets in the space between, the stars in the space between, and so on, the galaxies in the space between.
	And then there is existence, in other words, that which exists versus something that does not exist.
	And that is the presence of matter, energy, or the effects, right?
	So, where there is a moon, there is a thing, right?
	There is matter, there is the energy that is simultaneous to matter, and there is the gravity well around the moon, which is the effect of matter, and all of those things can be said to exist.
	Relative to the space around the moon, which doesn't, where there is not something that exists.
	So that would be my definition.
	All right. Well, thank you everybody so much.
	It is massively, massively enjoyable to chat with you all.
	It is a highlight of my weekend, and I hugely appreciate it.
	Thank you so much to everybody who is supporting this conversation today.
	I do have another TV appearance, another radio show appearance.
	I have more speeches that are accumulating.
	I now have Three or four public speaking engagements for the fall.
	And so things are moving well and in the right direction.
	And I once again just wanted to say how much I appreciate your trust in, I guess, having me represent our community to the degree that I do.
	I always hope that I'm doing you proud.
	I want to get your feedback.
	You are my bosses.
	And I always want to know that I'm pleasing you and doing the right thing because that's how it was raised.
	You follow whoever is giving me approval.
	I follow whoever is giving me approval.
	And if you have some, you know, 10 bucks a month, 30 cents a day, you can subscribe.
	All of that money is hugely appreciated.
	If you have more, if you have more, that's fantastic.
	50 Cents a podcast is requested.
	Server bandwidth costs, blah, blah, blah.
	I've got to eat. And Isabella does like clothes when she's cold.
	So don't worry about Isabella.
	I'm just kidding. So yeah, if you have any cash to support the show, it's hugely appreciated.
	There is a time where there's more costs, more travel costs, more hardware costs.
	I had to get a new camera for the TV stuff.
	So, yeah, so if you have any cash, I would appreciate that.
	If you don't but want to support, there's lots of ways you can do it by sharing links, by promoting videos and so on.
	That's all hugely helpful.
	And thank you everybody so much for your support and your enthusiasm and your absolutely fantastic questions.

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