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Aug. 29, 2010 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

52:51

1740 Freedomain Radio Sunday Call In Show, August 29, 2010

A parenting update, asserting freedom when bullied by bosses, public sector pension disasters, self-knowledge versus religion, and Glenn Beck!

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	Good afternoon, everybody.
	It is the 29th of August.
	It's the last week, I guess, before the barbecue.
	I hope that you will be able to join our little version of Galt's Gulch North.
	We have, I don't know, I'm guessing probably close to 70 people are going to come, which at the rate that it's grown from the very first barbecue, we will have, in about nine years, the entire world's population, which means I'm going to have to pave more of the backyard.
	So... I hope that you'll be able to join us.
	If you have any special dietary needs or requirements, gluten-free, vegetarian, monkey hearts or brains, whatever it is that you've got going down or not going down or coming back up, if it goes down, please email hostoffreedomainradio.com.
	We have hired cooks.
	They will be bringing in barbecues and cooking up some sizzling Goodies for everyone.
	And it should be just an enormous amount of fun.
	We have booked a restaurant for Friday night.
	We have booked karaoke.
	Private karaoke for Saturday night.
	And this time we're going to go with a host.
	It's a friend of mine who's a great karaoke host.
	So he's going to be setting us up.
	And so it'll be a little less random scatter browse than it was last year.
	So I hope that you'll be able to make it.
	And thanks to everybody who signed up.
	We could probably take a person or two more, but it's pretty full right now.
	I'm dying to see everyone.
	I love these barbecues.
	I love it when people come by, so thank you so much for people who are making the trip, particularly people who are coming from...
	From some significant distances.
	We have people coming from overseas. And we have one person, interestingly enough, coming from the future who will tell us whether or not we're right about a free society or not.
	So he will be showing up.
	I think you'll recognize him with the tinfoil on his head.
	Keep your eyes peeled.
	He and I may not be in the same room at the same time.
	That's just coincidence. So, yeah, I just start off with a thing or two before we go on to callers.
	I just, you know, massive, exciting, proud parenting update.
	Izzy is just going through just a really cool phase with language.
	She's starting to put together three sentences.
	The first is, she says, So that's really cool.
	She's able to climb up her slide all the way.
	It's got these sort of steps and little, like, you know, when you go rock climbing, it's got those little things jutting out.
	So she's able to climb up that, which is really cool.
	She has completely rejected with great energy her...
	Kitty Swing. You know, the one with the little bucket seat where you strap someone in.
	And she is now doing an entire adult swing.
	Just a little band. And the entire time she's on the swing, she is like Sly and the Family Stone demanding that I take her higher.
	And higher! And higher!
	I feel that until she loops, she's just not going to be satisfied.
	So that is just too cool for school.
	I tell you, yesterday morning...
	No, sorry. It was yesterday afternoon.
	She woke up from her nap.
	And it was really interesting.
	She had her water bottle in her crib because she was thirsty when she went to bed.
	So she had a water bottle in her crib.
	And she sleeps with a bear.
	She has this bear that she's quite attached to.
	And she took her water bottle.
	And it's one of these kitty water bottles.
	So it's hard to get water out of it.
	But you can if you sort of shake it or whatever.
	And... It's very interesting.
	Amazing how smart kids are.
	So she started to shake the water bottle over her bear because she wanted the water to go out onto her bear.
	And I said, don't do that.
	Yeah, I just didn't want the bear to get all wet.
	I'm just concerned it might get moldy or something like that, right?
	So I don't even know if we can wash it.
	So I didn't want the bear to get too wet.
	And so I said, don't do that, right?
	So she looked at me for a long time, and I could see her mind feeling its way towards some way that she could put water on the bear without directly disobeying what I had said.
	It was a really clear communication that I could see her.
	She's like water coming down a mountainside trying to find some way to get down to the bottom.
	If one path is blocked, then it goes somewhere else.
	She finally figured it out.
	After about 30 seconds, she looked down and she said, bear drinking.
	And she took the water bottle and she poured, like she didn't pour it on the bear, but she took the water bottle and placed it to the bear's mouth and said, bear drinking.
	And she looked up at me with a certain kind of triumph.
	And I must say, I was completely bested.
	So this really, I've realized that in terms of my negotiating skills, anybody over 20 months has a pretty good chance of just beating the hell out of me because I simply could not say no to that.
	I could not say no, you should not give your thirsty bear some water.
	So her introduction of water to the bear was complete and I completely crumbled and just found that enormously amusing.
	She's doing that kind of stuff quite a bit.
	She wanted to look at Christina's belly and Christina said no because Isabella starts counting the moles and we sort of have to reboot her because she gets a bit obsessed.
	And so Isabella paused and then said...
	Belt? Can I look at your belt?
	Which, of course, makes Christina have to lift her top so she can see the belly.
	Anyway, it's just absolutely fascinating to see the way in which a child's will will attempt to achieve its object, even in the face of a parental negative.
	And, I mean, you just got to hand it to her.
	I just think it is...
	I just think it's fantastic.
	It's just delicious to see how strong-willed she is.
	I think it's wonderful. And how she will try to achieve her objective even in the face of a negative.
	I just think it's fantastic.
	So I don't want to bore everyone who's not a parent, but it really is just a beautiful, beautiful thing to see.
	And that's really it for my intro.
	I had a good and productive week.
	If you're interested in reading an advanced copy of Against the Gods, which is a new book that I've just finished up, at least the second draft, feel free to give me a shout or let me know in the chat room and I'll send you a copy if you'd like to give it a proofread or an edit.
	I'm really happy to lean upon the grammatical, spelling, and stylistic expertise of this gorgeous and talented community.
	So if you could just let me know, I would really appreciate that.
	Yeah, I've sort of expanded it from the very initial version that I put out to the donator.
	So if you'd like to read an advanced copy, give a chance to shape it and so on.
	I think that would be great because I'm very pleased with it.
	So I'd like to do one on determinism as well, but I might wait a little bit for that.
	And I have finished the text.
	For the self-detonating statements, the salvation of philosophy, part three, which is determinism.
	So I'm going to mull over whether or not I can enlist fabulous Think Twice productions to help me out on the video or to do the video.
	All right, that's it. I think we have a caller who's eager to chat or eager to be chatted at.
	Is that right? Okay, great, Steph.
	I just had one quick question for you.
	How much do I have to pay you to create another Death of the West video?
	Just name a price. We'll negotiate it here on the air.
	I would love to do another Death of the West video.
	I would love to do the 20th century.
	I have a bunch of notes for it.
	And of course, it was a lot that I focused on this a fair amount in my grad school studies.
	So I would absolutely love to do...
	Another Death of the West video.
	It's on the list, but it's time-consuming.
	And I know this sounds kind of ridiculous, but at the moment, it's a lot of preparation to have people come over for a couple of days, especially this number of people.
	So unfortunately, I've been a little bit consumed by that, and I've only been able to do those short videos where I can speak without a lot of research preparation and notes.
	But It takes a couple of days to get all my thoughts in order for one of those videos.
	So a century will come, but I haven't had a chance to get to it.
	But I appreciate that. I guess you like the series, right?
	Well, yeah. I'd be willing to pay just for another episode of it.
	So yeah, I definitely do.
	And again, if you want to name a price, we can still negotiate it.
	Let's see how far up we can move it on your list.
	Well, I'll tell you, let's do it this way.
	I'll do it, and then if you think it doesn't suck, you're welcome to donate whatever you think it might be worth.
	So let's hope that it has some reasonable quality to it, and I appreciate that.
	I really, you know, there's podcasts that really work for me on so many levels, and ones where...
	You know that line from, oh, I don't know, if you know that Han Solo line from Star Wars, one of the Star Wars movies where he says, you know, sometimes I even amaze myself.
	And I think Princess Leia says, well, that doesn't sound too hard.
	Hey, it's not that I didn't get any dates as a teenager.
	I just know that movie by heart.
	I think I had the LP of the movie.
	Anyway. And I think that the Death of the West series, I was very, very pleased with the amount of It's hard to say new stuff about history.
	It's hard to say new stuff about history because it's been combed over so much, particularly stuff as big as public education and the First World War and so on.
	So it is tough to come up with new stuff that has some credibility.
	I think that I was able to do that.
	I was pleased with the way that it came out.
	And so it was definitely a high point for me to work on that series.
	And I'm very, very keen to do the 20th century.
	And I think I have some very useful and original stuff to add to the 20th century.
	But I doubt that I would get to it for another month or two.
	Oh boy, okay. Well, I really appreciate it.
	You don't have an essay, do you?
	Because I sometimes get these requests.
	It's like, Steph, can you do a video on railroads in the 19th century?
	Because I have an essay, too.
	I will be perfectly honest.
	I will be a history teacher next semester, so there is definitely some alternate motives going on here.
	But... I just love hearing an anarchist's take on history, and it's certainly what I want to present to my students.
	Well, I appreciate that, and I certainly have been working on the 23rd century, so it makes only sense to circle back and work on the 20th century.
	No, I appreciate that.
	I really appreciate that feedback, and I will definitely move it up on the list two notches just for you, baby.
	Oh, wow. I really appreciate that.
	All right. I look forward to it. Thanks, Steph.
	You're welcome. And hey, if you want to have me Skype with your history class, I did this with Professor, I think, last year.
	So if you want to have a Q&A with your class, just let me know.
	Let's wait until I get tenure, just in case.
	You know what I'm saying? Yeah, that's a good point.
	That's a good point. Hey, Steph, I got a question.
	Yes. Well, right now I'm facing a problem where I'm working for a company that's pretty much taking advantage of a lot of their employees and making us work crazy hours.
	And part of it is that I want to assert myself and assert my freedom there.
	But one of the things is that, you know, with the economy the way it is, I was hearing that...
	Sorry? Are you in a funhouse?
	There's a huge amount of background noise there.
	Oh, sorry, I don't think that's you.
	Can you hear me now? Yeah, I feel like somebody's got...
	Hey, Mr. J. Can you just pick that person who's got the noise?
	How about now? Okay, we'll cancel the commuter.
	Alright, thanks. Sorry about that.
	It's just like, are you calling from a haunted house in an ice cream truck?
	I wasn't sure what was going on there, but it's okay.
	It does seem ridiculous.
	Wow. Okay.
	That's alright. Sounds great, great, great.
	Go ahead, head, head. Just kidding.
	You're killing me, Steph. I know.
	This is the kind of quality comedy you get from a philosophy show.
	Yeah. Okay, so my problem is I'm having a lot of problems with asserting my own freedom in the workplace because the way the economy is going lately, the bosses are kind of holding it all over our heads that we're expendable.
	So if we don't spend all these extra hours and all these extra sacrifices at work, then they're giving us the impression that they're just going to get rid of us and find somebody else.
	So do you have any advice on how to assert myself a little bit more?
	Yeah, make yourself less expendable.
	Okay. Does that make any sense?
	I mean, I know what you mean.
	The question is, are you expendable, or do your bosses just think that you're expendable?
	I think the bosses just think that I'm expendable.
	They're coming down to basically, I'm an architect and the projects I'm working on, if I don't, I'm the one that's managing all the information in the project, so if I go, then they're really screwed.
	So, I don't know, I guess maybe I'm just inventing this feeling that they're taking advantage of me.
	Do you think that they're bluffing?
	Yeah. Do you think if you call their bluff that they will feel, you know, some people bluff and then you call them and they had originally intended to bluff, but then they follow through anyway?
	I have a feeling that they would follow through because they seem very egotistical.
	So I feel like they're not used to people challenging them on anything.
	So if you challenge them, I get the impression that they might actually follow through with that.
	Right, right, right.
	And is the environment where you work, the field where you work, is it really flooded with unemployed people who need work and so on?
	Yes. Right, right.
	Well, if you...
	I think it's important to recognize situations where you just don't have a lot of power.
	And it sounds to me like...
	This may be one of those situations.
	There's no magical way to make people respect you.
	Trust me, I spent a lot of my 20s and 30s trying that.
	There's no magical way to make people respect you.
	You can act with honor and with courage and with dignity and do the best that you can, but there's no way to make people respect you, and there's certainly no way to make people behave well.
	That's just not – that's in nobody's power, apparently not even God's, right?
	So in this situation, if your bosses are – Negative in this way.
	If the field is flooded with people who work for less, if this is the case, then it might just be, you know, grit your teeth and wait for things to get better in the economy if they're going to get better or wait until your skill set is higher to the point where you can go somewhere else to get a job.
	But I don't think there's, you know, unfortunately, there's no silver magical philosophy bullet that can, you know, take down these sorts of problems.
	If there is a genuine imbalance between management and workers, in other words, management has a lot of power because the world is flooded with workers, then that is an economic reality, that you are, in a sense, lucky to have a job.
	And I don't mean that you should be grateful to have a job.
	I just mean that you're lucky to have a job.
	And if this imbalance is there, I don't think that there's any emotional or philosophical stuff that you can do to change that because that would be to say that you're responsible for making other people behave better.
	I do think that...
	What I would do in your situation is, and again, it's not to say what you should do, I'm just saying what I would do is I would work to try and extend and expand my skill set to the point where it became even more valuable.
	So for instance, in most technical fields, and of course architecture is a technical field, the people who seem to have the most value are the people who have technical skills combined with other skills.
	So for instance, I was a programmer, but I also knew how to do sales and I was also a good technical writer and a good marketing writer.
	So I did I did core coding and I did sales calls and I wrote marketing materials and I worked as a chief technical officer and a director of marketing.
	And so I worked hard to make sure that I was good at more than just the technical stuff.
	And I'm not, you know, maybe you are, maybe you aren't, but if I were in your shoes, I would work to try and extend the softer side of my skill set.
	So that I had more and more skills, particularly skills that weren't core to what I had studied but were very useful in business, like clear communications.
	So for instance, if you wanted to work more directly with clients or to do sales, you could take a course on sales.
	You could take a course on conflict resolution or negotiation.
	Those things can be very helpful.
	If you get known as the guy who can calm down irate clients or the guy who can go and make clients comfortable with a solution that's being presented That stuff can really help.
	It's a bit of a longer term strategy, but if you're in a situation where it's not just a personal thing that you're devalued, but because of the economic environment far beyond what you're able to control, you have less value.
	The only thing that I could think of to do is to try and find ways to increase whatever value I had and hopefully gain some options out of that.
	I mean, if you don't have options, you don't have negotiation.
	If you have an arranged marriage, you don't have to go and woo someone in a way.
	So if you don't have options, it's very tough to negotiate because then you'll be bluffing.
	So the best way to negotiate from a stronger position is to find some way to increase your skill set to the point where you have more options, if that makes any sense.
	That makes a lot of sense.
	Thank you very much. I'm sorry.
	I wish I could overturn the Fed so that we don't get this kind of stuff.
	That's wonderful. I appreciate your help as always.
	Thank you very much, Steph. You're very welcome and best of luck.
	And I'm sorry that this situation...
	This is a shitty economic situation for a lot of people.
	I mean, there are, I think in the US, still five to six applicants for every job that is around.
	And that does not give people a lot of negotiating power.
	And that is not a good thing.
	There are bosses...
	I was one of these bosses, right?
	So I recognized that I had more power than my employees.
	I recognized that there were more people applying for the work.
	I would get 50 to 75 resumes for each position I would end up hiring.
	I recognized that and I was still very keen to hire people who wanted to negotiate with me because I knew if they wanted to negotiate with me about salary, given that they weren't dumb people, they wanted to negotiate with me about salary, I was willing to accept that and negotiate with them about salary because I wanted people who could do that.
	I wanted people who were assertive that way.
	I didn't want somebody who was just going to drag his coding carcass into the chair every day, sit there like a lump for eight hours and then go home.
	I wanted people who were assertive and who were confident and who would challenge me.
	and so on, so I could ban them from the workplace.
	No, I'm just kidding.
	But I wanted people like that.
	But there are bosses who don't appreciate that or who don't want that.
	So there is a lot of power in management at the moment, although management, of course, is facing its own challenges.
	If they lose their jobs, they're equally hosed, but they feel more secure, or at least they can feed off the less security they perceive from their workers.
	So it is a tough situation to be an employee at the moment.
	And I really, really just wanted to express real sympathy for that.
	It, of course, has nothing to do with your fault.
	You and I, right, we were told all of this stuff, right?
	We were told, hey, go to school and get a good degree, and you will be set...
	And the slowly rising helium balloon of the middle class.
	And it's just been insane in the workplace for about the last 10 to 15 years.
	It has been madness.
	I don't know what it's been like in architecture, but certainly in IT, it's just been, I mean, oh, it's just, it's insane.
	It's like, it's like you're in the It's like body surfing a kaleidoscope on acid.
	It's just lunatic. And it has been really, I think, quite traumatic for a lot of people.
	I certainly got a little tired of having to adapt to such unpredictable, crazy and changing circumstances all the time.
	I just, it was exhausting.
	And so I really, really do sympathize.
	Has it been like that in architecture?
	I guess it has been, right? Because there's been a boom and a bust, right?
	I mean, particularly with housing.
	It's like somebody from the Austrian school recently came up with the idea of the skyscraper index to discuss the way the economy is, and it pretty much reflects architecture.
	I mean, when the credit's really good, then all of a sudden the building is really good.
	Mark Thornton, thank you.
	And when the economy is really bad and the credit dries up, then there's no building.
	So yeah, it gets affected like a roller coaster, like anything I think worse than everything else because this whole industry is defined by that easy credit.
	Right, right, right, right.
	And of course, not only is there a huge glut of housing, but there's a huge glut of industrial, commercial real estate as well, right?
	So it is a crazy, crazy situation.
	And this is why, you know, a slight tangent if you don't mind, but I thought I'd mention it.
	It wouldn't be free domain radio without tangents.
	Without the tangents, right. If you could just mute for a sec.
	I'm just getting a little bit of background noise from you, but let me just do the tangent and then we'll see if it has any utility for you, even emotionally.
	I mean, as you may or may not know, there's huge, huge shortfalls in government pension schemes at the moment.
	I mean, trillions of dollars underfunded because, you know, they take all this money from public sector workers and then they go and blow it on whatever they blow it on.
	And then, and not just blow it, I mean, they repair bridges as well and all that, but they don't budget for it.
	And now, of course, a lot of these people are retiring, right?
	So, I mean, firefighters, sometimes they can retire in their 40s or their 50s.
	And so it's a Greek-style pension retirement scheme.
	And there's just not enough money to pay.
	There's just not enough money to pay.
	And these people are getting kind of angry and saying, well, I made all my choices.
	I made all my decisions based on getting this pension based on these benefits.
	And nobody has the right to take all of this away from me and so on.
	And to me, it's like, are you kidding me?
	Are you freaking kidding me?
	I mean, I sympathize.
	I really do. But this stuff was all obvious for years.
	Anybody who says I didn't know my pension was underfunded is...
	I mean, they're just not telling the truth.
	They're just not telling the truth.
	This stuff has been completely obvious and available for years.
	And so people say, well, I made all these decisions and now things have changed.
	It's like, dude, welcome to the free market for the last...
	Or the private sector remnant of the free market for the past 20 or 30 years.
	People have made assumptions based on X, Y, and Z and then found out that those assumptions are completely false and have invested in fields that were touted to be the next big thing and found that they weren't or have learned a particular skill set or programming language or methodology only to find that for various status reasons it just didn't come to fruition,
	it didn't come to pass. People have moved from one city to another to take a job that evaporated three days after they got there because some budget got cut from the government or some law changed or some damn thing happened.
	And so to me, it's just completely insane, fundamentally, that people would say, well, there's something fundamentally disastrous about me having to change my lifestyle because something I expected didn't occur.
	There's this weird sense of entitlement.
	And again, I can really understand it.
	I can understand where people are coming from emotionally, but it's really hard to sympathize with that.
	When you've spent a lot of time in the free market and you've had to adapt to that, it's frustrating and it's weird.
	Again, I can understand it emotionally.
	It's just really hard to sympathize because it's like, hey, nobody came running to hand money to me when the economy changed rendering a whole bunch of skills that I had diligently acquired obsolete.
	Shit changes. Stuff happens.
	Society changes. So I'm sorry you don't get to retire when you're 48.
	Sorry, but things change.
	They've changed for me, they've changed for you, and now they're going to change for people in the public sector.
	It's just hard to have a lot of sympathy, though.
	Again, I can sort of understand it emotionally.
	Yeah, it's a tremendous hit emotionally, too, when you're dealing with all this.
	But I don't want to take up any more of your time, so thank you very much, Steph.
	All right. Hi.
	Hello. Hi.
	Did you just jump in out of the blue?
	Jump away. Okay, hi.
	I have an idea.
	I just wanted to run by you and see what you thought of it.
	Like, I know it's about atheism.
	So, you know, you've got a good, robust, sane mind that can switch, you know, to any degree of the compass, and that's what I hope, anyway.
	Seems like you do. You're always talking about things, you know, completely, you know, wired, weird angles off on tangents, I guess, is another tangent.
	My idea is that, you know, people have a lot of experiences of, quote, God, you know.
	And I wondered what you would think about putting these or filing these under ecosystem experiences, like...
	To me, when I listen empathetically to people talking about their experiences of the divine and so on, I believe that you could sort of say yes, yes, but mentally say, well, this is some kind of Miko experience for this person.
	And I just wondered what you think of this kind of line of thought, if it's going the wrong way or...
	Or what? No, I mean, I think you're entirely right, which means that we're either both right or both wrong.
	So if I understand what you're saying correctly, that this idea that is, I think it's becoming more and more common coinage in psychology circles from what I understand.
	alter egos that the sense that people have that there is another consciousness around that there are other consciousnesses around whether it's saints or angels or devils or gods that it may be something that they're experiencing because they have this these alter egos within their own consciousness is that what you mean yeah it's it's all happening inside in other words
	Although, you know, it's like as you think, so it is kind of thing.
	Like if you have a positive attitude, well, the whole world will open up for you.
	Same with a negative attitude.
	So it's like what goes on inside does relate to what happens to you in that sense.
	You know what I mean? Right, right, right, right.
	And the great challenge is how do you get people to understand this possibility that the consciousness that they're projecting outside of themselves may be another aspect of themselves.
	I think that's a real challenge.
	There has been studies that have shown that over 90% of people who are in the Royal Academy of Sciences, I think it's what it's called in England, are atheists, or at least they certainly don't believe in a god.
	And... I would be very interested about people who have done a lot of self-examination, who have worked very hard on self-knowledge, and have been exposed to and have understood these alter egos or other aspects or other identities within themselves, if they've sort of, in a sense, understood that process within themselves, the degree to which they remain religious.
	I can't imagine that it would be very high.
	And that's why I think that atheism has a lot to do with focusing on Self-knowledge and self-understanding so that you don't project parts of yourself out into the cosmos and think that there's a God out there.
	Yes, yeah, that's right.
	It's really quite interesting, I think, that this whole projection thing, you know, because, you know, in a sense, what you project conditions, at least what information you get back from at least what information you get back from reality.
	You know, like people are always, like you say about your daughter, you know, like she's always checking out what is, does this ball roll?
	Yes, consistently.
	Yes, and I, you know, I think that, like, your expectations are conditioned by your experiences, and your experiences are somewhat guided by or in some way conditioned by your expectations, you know.
	It's very interesting and complex.
	It is.
	It is. Where rational arguments fail to convince, it's my belief that rationality is discovered through introspection.
	Because through introspection, we discover the barriers within ourselves to rationality.
	And to me, the barriers always arise from external sources.
	So, if we're embedded in a rational culture, if we're embedded in an irrational family system, or in an irrational friend system, whatever our social environment is, if there's a lot of irrationality or anti-rationality in that system, Then we have very strong barriers to becoming rational.
	Of course we do. Because our achievement of rationality will come at the cost of the illusions of those around us.
	So whenever I have a hostility within myself or a barrier within myself towards something that I know is beneficial to me, you know, like rationality or something or some sort of good behavior...
	The first question I ask myself, and it's not always the last, but certainly the first question I ask myself is always, who in my history would benefit Or would have benefited from me not being rational about this particular whatever it is?
	Who in my history would benefit from me not being rational about this particular issue?
	Now, in the case of somebody who's in a religious culture, that's fairly obvious.
	If you remember, if you heard the conversation I had called Frankly Faithless, the conversation I had with the ex-Christian radio host, Well, clearly his acceptance of atheism came at personal cost, great personal cost to his family relations, to his friends' relationships, and so on, and his work relationships, too.
	So, when people have barriers to rationality within themselves, first of all, they have to identify those barriers to rationality as barriers to rationality.
	I mean, if you don't identify those things within yourself, then you're just acting out and you don't have that self-knowledge and you just think the other person is wrong or whatever.
	So you say, okay, well, I have a resistance to this particular idea.
	I wonder what that resistance is.
	And then to me, the first place to say is, well, if I accept this position, who in my environment is going to be harmed or is going to be negatively affected by that acceptance?
	And that person within your own head is usually the person who's throwing sand in the approaching basilisk of reason or something.
	And so that's usually something.
	And that's why I think introspection and self-knowledge and therapy, if necessary, is so, so important, because it's very hard to be rational without knowing yourself very well and knowing who, in a sense, within you is opposed to that rationality.
	Yeah, it's a kind of a...
	You know, it's a bit appalling to look at the wide range of ideas about reality.
	It's like, oh my God.
	You know, people talk about God and it's like they mean a million different things.
	And they don't even know it sometimes.
	And they're just talking and they're not communicating at all.
	And I just like the idea that, you know, like inside of yourself, there are amazing things.
	There are really amazing intuitive things.
	You know, like they say, a lot of the great scientific ideas didn't, although they were processed by reason and logic, They actually arrived by intuition.
	I've heard the scientists report that consistently, fairly consistently, and that they just had this feeling that, you know, they wanted to check out this line and just kind of are guided also by intuition.
	So it's like...
	You know, it's just this whole thing is, you know, you don't want to have this kind of external inspiration because then that shuts you down.
	You want to look inside of yourself and And find that inspiration inside of yourself, which is totally legitimate.
	Even if it's beyond, you know, you have to be open to it inside of yourself.
	But I think, you know, all the warning flags go up once you hear somebody You know, intervening from outside and saying, yes, you know, this is sort of like that Buddhist tale that one of their slogans is, if you meet Buddha, quotes, I guess, Buddha, on the road, kill him.
	You know, like if you meet something that's proposing to be God outside of yourself, just forget it.
	You know, just write it off totally.
	I think that is, yeah, I think that's the gist of that story.
	So, yeah, it's like so important that, you know, inside of yourself, in your psychology, there are, I would just say, marvelous things.
	Really amazing intuitions that you can have, especially if you're an artist, you know, like I compose and write poems and all this stuff.
	That was me, by the way, playing the weird piano a little earlier.
	I forgot to unmute or mute or whatever my microphone.
	That was Gershwin's Concerto in F. I'm just kind of practicing it up a little bit because there's a piano right beside the computer.
	I apologize. No, no problem at all.
	Did we get to just a few questions?
	Do you mind if we move on to the next caller?
	Yeah, no problem. All right.
	Well, thank you very much. I believe we have somebody else.
	Hello. Yeah, this is Nima.
	So I was wondering if you had any thoughts on the rally yesterday in Washington, D.C., You mean the...
	I have a scheme, I think as John Stewart called it.
	I don't really know anything about it.
	I think that Glenn Beck is a disingenuous fraud.
	He is simply magnifying and reflecting back people's irrational biases to them.
	So I haven't really followed anything to do with what he is talking about.
	I think that there's...
	The vast majority of what passes for discourse in the public eye, particularly the mainstream media, is simply taking people's biases and reflecting them back amplified.
	And you don't actually need that done so much if your thoughts are in accordance with rationality.
	If your thoughts are in accordance with truth and reason and evidence, then you don't need a chorus of people baying back to you like a bunch of irrational gin-soaked bloodhounds.
	You don't need people baying back to you your own thoughts.
	Because they're reflected back to you by reality.
	They're firmly rooted in that which is.
	So you don't need... The Greek chorus of crazy irrationality to reflect back to you your words.
	Now, Glenn Beck talks about the Constitution as a religious document.
	He talks about the founding fathers.
	He talks about getting America back to its roots, which I'm sure is great for women, children, and other minorities like blacks.
	He talks about having faith in God and going to church and prayer and all of this sort of stuff.
	So he's just taking your average, you know, lower to middle class, fundamentalist Christian who has nothing but bizarre fantasies about the founding of America, like they all came here, found a completely empty continent and didn't leave five million or more smallpox-riddled blood-soaked holes in the forehead corpses around in order to make their new home.
	But, um... Has his fantasy.
	They live entirely in a world of mythology.
	They live in a world of mythology of the Bible.
	They live in a world of mythology of the Founding Fathers.
	They live in a world of mythology called the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and Minarchism as a whole.
	They know almost nothing about history in terms of what actually happened.
	All they do is they look at historical reenactments from propagandists and imagine that they're somewhere near the truth.
	And so Glenn Beck is not puncturing any of these He's an intelligent guy, clearly.
	He's a good speaker.
	He's a good educator in his own way.
	I mean, he's a personable guy.
	I'm sure he's got great broadcasting talents.
	And to me, if you have these great abilities, and he has great abilities.
	I mean, he's clearly a blindingly hard worker.
	I mean, everywhere you turn, the guy is opening his own university.
	He's on TV. He's on the radio.
	He's three steps down from Martin Luther's ghost.
	He's everywhere. So clearly he's a very, very hard worker.
	And I also read somewhere, if it's true or not, I don't know if he might be going blind in one eye or two.
	Anyway, it doesn't matter. So he's clearly got great gifts as an orator, great gifts as a communicator, great gifts as a speaker and an educator in his own way.
	And I believe, for better or for worse, I believe that with great power comes great responsibility.
	And if you have...
	Abilities to convince.
	If you have language abilities, then you are a sophist.
	You have the power to make the worst argument appear the better.
	That is one of the most fundamental powers in the universe, really, as far as we know, right?
	And I do not believe that the man is using his powers for good.
	I don't know.
	I mean, I've never watched one of his shows end to end.
	I've just caught snippets here and there.
	So forgive me for any inaccuracies.
	But I think that he's not using his gifts to challenge the beliefs of his listeners.
	I think he's using them to reinforce.
	And I think that that is not the job.
	And I think that's actually counter to the job of a great communicator.
	Yeah. I don't know if this is accurate, but I think he used the word God about 5,000 times in his speech.
	So he also said that, and this is what kind of bugged me, he said that politics is not the way, but God is.
	He seems to be taking a pretty smart route by trying to get people out of the political process and facilitating a new movement from sort of a different angle.
	I'm just wondering where you think this whole thing might be going.
	Look, he's saying to people, politics is not the answer, because nobody believes that politics is the answer anymore.
	I mean, he's not telling them something that they don't.
	He's just reflecting back to them what they already believe.
	But few people in the mainstream do that.
	I'm sorry? But few people in the mainstream have taken that route, I think.
	And that's what I find so... Well, sorry, he is in the mainstream, but he's speaking to a very specific group of people.
	Now, these are, you know, traditional, conservative, fundamentalist Christians who almost all believe that there's a devil who walks the earth, who almost all believe that, or sorry, I shouldn't say, I would imagine a significant majority of them believe that we're living in the end times.
	That they will not hit the dirt before God punctures the sky with his great whipcord of rapture.
	Right? Right. So for him to say that politics is not the answer, it's not radical to that crowd.
	It's not radical to that crowd.
	And I do believe that, and I said this, gosh, I can't remember, a year and a half ago or whatever, that Obama was the last hope that people were going to have for politics.
	Because if nothing changed after Obama, from Bush to Obama, then nothing was going to change.
	And clearly nothing has changed.
	In fact, things have just gotten worse.
	So for him to say to people, give up on politics, it may not be as radical as you think it is, given his audience.
	And again, I'm no expert on this audience.
	This is my thoughts about it.
	Well, but he got very positive responses, not just from that radical crowd.
	I mean, it's almost like the entire conservative movement from the neocon nutjobs to Ron Paul supporters was A very significant percentage of people are supportive of this, in particular of the speech that he held yesterday.
	I just find it unfortunate to see that.
	It destroys, in my opinion, it destroys the movement, or at least in the wrong direction.
	Well, anybody who had any sort of hope, anybody who was more supportive of more liberties and a smaller government, who might have been on the route toward, you know, voluntarism, I think he's sort of, he's getting a lot of support from these kind of people.
	Right, you mean the people who were into Ron Paul and now have sort of given up on politics and are looking for something else, which I guess Jesus stands in for Ron Paul.
	As a history since Ron Paul seems to be getting his own bunch of attacks from the media.
	Yeah, so I was just wondering where this is going.
	But why, tell me why this is important to you, or is it something that is surprising to you?
	I'm just wondering, because it seems like these people have figured out, obviously, that the government is unsustainable, and so they're trying to fill that gap.
	So I'm just wondering what your thoughts are on how successful these people are going to be.
	I'm not sure what you mean by fill that gap.
	Well, if the government goes away, for example, the government as we know it, Like, for example, in Iraq, when the central government was defeated, you know, people took to the mosques and a completely new power structure developed.
	So, I was just wondering where you think this whole thing might be going?
	Well, I mean, as you know, I believe that the state is an effect of child abuse.
	I also believe that religion is child abuse.
	Which means to teach children that they're sinners, that they're always being watched, that God is judging them, and the devil is trying to tempt them and that they're going to burn forever if they disobey the priest.
	That is abusive. And anybody who doubts that that is abusive should just imagine if somebody ran a home for people who were mentally challenged and told them the same stuff, he would be up on torture charges in about five minutes.
	So it is abusive.
	And so... An abused citizenry can never, ever, ever get a free society.
	Can't happen.
	Can't work because society is a reflection of what happens in childhood.
	And, in particular, what is unacknowledged that happens within childhood.
	And, again, this is, you know, for people who maybe listened to this for the first time, this is not just my theory.
	This is a fair amount of scholarship and research that's gone into this, and it seems to be chugging along very well in terms of credibility.
	So, people can check out psychohistory.com if they want more information about this approach.
	And so, I think you're quite right that if the state would have vanished tomorrow, we'd just get another one.
	And people, I mean, people write to me all the time and they say, well, you know, you get rid of one government, you're just going to get another one.
	Or you get rid of this government, you put DROs in place, you're just going to get another government.
	And in some ways they're completely right.
	Except that once we get rid of the government, that will have happened because people have been raised peacefully and well.
	So they don't live their lives oscillating between rapture, fear, terror, anger, guilt, shame...
	I don't know.
	I don't know.
	People live in superstitious terror.
	We used to be frightened of the devils, and now we're frightened of everybody else.
	Like, if the government goes away, they're all just going to come and strangle us and kill us.
	So people will not be raised in fear.
	They will be raised in peace and love and plenty.
	And so the government will decay in that way, in the same way that the church is shut down in an increasingly secular society.
	It just fades away over time.
	So once the state is gone, it's because people will have been raised well, so they won't create another state.
	If the state would have magically vanished tomorrow, then yeah, we'd get another state right away, but they don't understand.
	And it's not an easy thing to understand, the relationship between childhood trauma and social institutions.
	It's not an easy thing to understand.
	It's the theory of relativity of philosophy and progress.
	But just because it's hard to understand doesn't mean that people shouldn't try and familiarize themselves with it when they get a hold of it.
	But society will be free when children are raised peacefully, which is not happening anytime soon, but we're certainly on the right path.
	Thank you.
	You're very welcome.
	You're very welcome. Did we have anybody else who wants to sneak in in the last minute or two?
	Just one real quick question that came from the chat.
	I think you might have covered this in the podcast, although I'm not sure where to find it right now.
	The question is, do you mention several times that you kept a dream journal to help speed up your therapy sessions?
	How does this work, and is it possible to interpret your own dreams?
	I know you've addressed this, but I don't know.
	Yeah, just touching it briefly.
	I mean, what you do is you just write your dreams down, and you try and figure them out.
	I have a great deal of difficulty Trying to figure out my own dreams.
	It's really hard.
	So I recommend talking about your dreams with someone.
	Sometimes even just the act of talking about them can help clarify them.
	But I find it very hard to figure out my own dreams.
	I can do it sometimes if I sort of really sit and sort of melt my brain in concentration.
	But this is why, you know, I mean, if your dreams are startling or alarming or you have repetitively negative or difficult dreams, talk to a therapist about it.
	You know, just start to work through those kinds of issues.
	So yeah, first thing to do is to write them down because otherwise they evaporate and you just keep something by your bed or whatever, just write them down.
	Or you can get a little $20 MP3 recorder and record them verbally or whatever.
	But I mean, maybe other people have more luck with it than I do.
	I've never really had much luck trying to figure out my own dreams.
	Occasionally I can do it, but not very often.
	So I think a third party, particularly a train party, is the way to go.
	Cool. Well, sorry, somebody says, why is it so hard to figure out our own dreams?
	It's because dreams represent repressed material, right?
	Dreams represent repressed material.
	This is, again, a pretty old theory, but I think it's a pretty true one.
	And so what we have accepted and understood...
	We don't dream about, right?
	So dreams are like the truth bubbling up that we are rejecting.
	And by we, I mean sort of the ecosystem.
	In other words, the truth that is threatening to other people in our lives is kept repressed and comes out in the form of dreams.
	So it's metaphorical because it can't be communicated directly.
	So I think that's why it's so hard to figure them out.
	And listen, I mean, it's been a while since we've done a dream.
	Look, if you're having a really tough dream to figure out, I mean, just you can have my amateur swing at it if you like.
	I really enjoy doing the dream stuff.
	So if you wanted to, you know, we'll send it to me.
	We'll have a convo about it and we can talk about them because I think it's something I really do want to keep that aspect of things alive at FDR. We veer off on various topics from time to time.
	But if you have dreams, let me know and we'll talk about them.
	Well, it looks like that helped out the person asked.
	There's also sort of a logistical question.
	Someone's coming from New Hampshire.
	Do you have an opinion or an experience on the best border crossing between Canada and the U.S. over in that area?
	I'm afraid I don't.
	I've never had any trouble going across the border, so I don't really have any particular suggestions that way.
	Okay. And then there's one other question.
	What is talent? What is talent?
	Well, I guess native ability combined with damn hard work.
	That would be my, you know, like you may have a very nice singing voice, but if you don't train it, it's hard to keep it sustainable and to keep it sort of at a professional caliber.
	So I think talent is native ability plus, you know, huge amounts of practice.
	All right, that's it for the Q. All right.
	And, okay, well, I guess that's it for the show.
	Thank you very, very much.
	I really do appreciate everybody driving by.
	I'm absolutely dying to meet everybody next week.
	And I hope you have a completely wonderful week.
	Thank you so much for your time and for your continued support.
	If you're not coming to the barbecue, it's close to the end of the month.
	If you feel free to go to freedomaderadio.com and drop a few dollar-allar-allars into the change jar, it's not the cheapest thing in the world to have.
	Thanks, everybody, so much.

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