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Jan. 23, 2011 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:42:38
1838 Freedomain Radio Sunday Show, 23 January 2011

Universally Preferable Behaviour and spanking - the Tiger mother boomerang - voluntary adult relationships - defending a free society - and Isabella creates a playtime at a restaurant!

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Hi everybody, it's Stefan Molyneux.
I hope you're doing very well. It's Free Domain Radio Sunday, philosophy call-in show, January 23rd, 2011.
And I just wanted to start out with a little way of thinking about parenting and discipline and so on.
I get this question a lot, which is, well, children, you can't reason with children, so you have to use some kind of...
Forced to control them, to restrain them, they don't know what's best for them, they basically have cognitive deficiencies which necessitate the use of parental aggression in order to keep them safe and happy and on the right path and so on.
And to my mind that is not a reasonable or good argument and the way to best understand that is to understand that The principle is not parent to child.
The principle is more cognitively efficient to less cognitively efficient.
In other words, if it's just parent to child, then it's bigger and stronger.
And the key ingredient there is bigger and stronger, not cognitive deficiency.
But if we accept that parents have good brains and children have relatively not so good brains, then it is the good brains to not so good brains that really counts.
In other words, if you can think better or more clearly or more efficiently, Then somebody else, then you can use force or bullying or aggression or abuse in order to help them to think better.
Now, of course, the science clearly shows that stress inhibits the development of brain cells and impairs cognitive efficiency.
Just try doing a quadratic equation while you're running away from a bear and see how well that goes.
But the reality is that if this is a universal principle, better brain can bully Worse brain, in order to make worse brain better, then it's a universal principle.
It has nothing to do with parent-child.
So, if you remember this Amy Schwa, I think her name was, was writing about the battle hymn of the dragon mother, about how she sat her daughter down to drill her on a piano piece and refused to let her get up either to pee or to eat and screamed herself hoarse at her daughter and bullied her and called her names in order to get her to play the piano piece better.
Well, Here's the scenario that I would put forward about how this ethic is applied universally, and see how you feel about it, and then we'll see if the ethic can stand the test of universality.
Because if it can't, it's not an ethic.
It's just an excuse for bullying.
So, I don't know what Amy's kids' names are, but let's say one of her kids' names is Beth.
Amy is going to get older.
The dragon mom is going to get older.
And when you get older, you suffer almost inevitably from physical declines in terms of bone density, bone strength, muscle density, muscle strength.
And you suffer from cognitive declines as you age.
Now, I'm not talking dementia or Alzheimer's, just in the general process of aging.
You just become slightly more forgetful.
You may have trouble finding certain words and so on.
So let's say that Beth, her daughter, is forgetful.
30 and the mom is 60.
And the mom now is suffering from a relatively inefficient cognitive capacity relative to her daughter.
So now, the universal principle swings into play.
And let's say that they have to go somewhere, and they have to be there by a certain time.
They're going to go see a concert or something.
And the mom, the dragon mom, the Chinese dragon mom, forgets where her keys are.
Well, that's a big problem.
You know, she's forgotten where her keys are.
And that's because she suffers from cognitive impairment as a result of an aging process.
Now the mom should have absolutely no problem, in fact, should welcome something like the following coming from the daughter.
What do you mean you don't know where your keys are?
You are responsible for having your keys.
Where are your keys?
Mom, where are your keys?
I don't know. I thought I'd put them just here.
I don't want to hear your excuses, Mom.
I don't want to hear your excuses.
Now you sit down on these stairs and you stare at the ground until you remember where these keys are.
I don't want to sit down. Hey, no backtalk.
You sit on those goddamn stairs.
You stare at that floor until you tell me where those keys are.
But I have to pee. I don't care if you have to pee.
I'm glad you have to pee. I'm glad you have to pee.
I'm glad it's going to hurt your bladder.
Because that will help you to remember where your keys are and to help you stop being so forgetful, so irresponsible with your keys.
You sit there and you think about it.
Until you tell me where those keys are and stop being lazy about it.
And now this could go on and on, of course.
And I think that we can understand that this would probably be perceived As suboptimal by the ferocious dragon mother who was never exercising her power as the bigger and stronger, but rather was attempting to help improve her children's cognitive abilities while being sat and screamed at and not allowed to pee hour after hour.
I'm sure would be gratefully received by the mom because her daughter was more cognitively efficient as a very productive way to help her not be so forgetful and to help her to remember where her keys were.
The same thing, of course, goes true for spanking, right?
Spanking is considered to be a corrective for people who have cognitive inefficiencies like children.
It's a way of helping them, you see, to think better and think more clearly and to do things the right way.
So, if you had a parent who spanked, then I'm sure that when your parent gets old and suffers from relative cognitive decline, that your dad would be very, very helpful.
So if you're at the mall, you go shopping at the mall with your dad, and your dad is 65 or whatever, and your dad comes out of the mall and is like, oh, where the hell did I park that car?
People are like, Dad, where is the car?
Where is the car, Dad?
How many times have we lost the car in the mall?
How many times have I told you it is unacceptable, unacceptable to lose the car at the mall?
Now you have... I'm going to count to three, Dad.
I am going to count to three.
And when I count to three, you better tell me where that car is or there will be repercussions, old man!
One, two, three.
Oh, really? No car?
I have told you so many times to remember where the car is.
If you've forgotten, take your pants down.
You are going across my knee and I'm going to spank your liver-spotted old ass so that you stop forgetting where the car is.
Well, I'm sure that your dad would be very happy for you to do that and would have no problems and would say, afterwards, when you said to him, hey, I didn't really want to do that, Dad, it's for your good.
It's for your good so that you help...
It helps you to remember where you left your keys.
I hated to do that. It hurt me.
It hurt me more than it hurt you.
And I'm sorry that you can't sit in the car.
I'm sorry that you have to sit backwards, but...
But I'm really trying to help you.
Now, your dad may say, well, it's different, because you see, when you were a kid, your brain was growing, and I needed to shape it in the right way.
But now that I'm older, my brain is declining, so force is unreasonable.
But that's not true at all. That's like saying that exercise is important for children, but it's not important for old people.
That's not true at all. When you're in decline is actually when you need to get the most exercise of all.
So, I mean, you have to do weights, you have to do the treadmill, you have to exercise when you get older, because you're already in a state of decline.
So when your brain is in a state of decline when you're older, you need violent aggression and bullying and abuse even more than children do.
Because children are naturally going to get smarter and more intelligent with age, whereas cognitive abilities decline when you're old.
So the reversal is even more important to interrupt.
The downward spiral is even more important to interrupt and reverse.
So, if You try this with your parents and they object that it is humiliating, that it is abusive, that it is unnecessary, that it is counterproductive.
Well, I think then you can have a very helpful and positive and productive conversation about the way you were disciplined as a child and the universality of bullying cognitive inefficiencies with violence and aggression and abuse.
And maybe, just maybe, we can actually start to treat children like human beings and break this cycle of justified abuse.
Well, that's it for my intro.
I hope that it was helpful and useful.
Sorry, I just paused. I recorded the video because I'm a cheap lazy slut who doesn't want to record too many videos.
So, I am here and happy for questions and comments and criticisms and all other kinds of good philosophical yumminess.
So, James, do we have anybody on the line?
Hello. Hello.
Hello, Stefan. Hi.
Can you hear me? Oh, hi, Len.
How's it going? I'm doing good.
Can you hear me okay? Yeah, it's coming through good.
Okay, sorry. Oh, it's coming through good.
It's coming through well. This is my first time using Skype.
So can you see my video or is that not coming through?
I don't know. You should turn your video off because we don't do video recording on the show and it's just going to interfere with the audio quality.
So you might just be able to say hide my video or right click on the video image or something like that.
Oh, good to know. Okay. All right.
Okay, so thank you so much for calling in.
I really appreciate that. We had, just for those who don't know, and I guess that would be most of the people listening to this who don't frequent the board or my inbox, that you'd sent me an email, and I'm going to paraphrase, but tell me if it's way off the base, where you said, well, Steph, if you suggest that it can be productive or good to break with those who advocate the use of violence against you, if after a certain amount of time, you can't convince them to stop supporting that.
When your daughter grows up, if she becomes a statist, would you break with her according to that approach?
Is that a fair assessment of your original question?
Essentially, yes.
I mean, what level of status and what level of support of violence is, you know, is it appropriate for you to say, oh, I'm cutting off contact with this person because they're, you know, they're just, they're acting in such ways that I don't deem appropriate.
Right, right. And my response, and again, I'm just going to paraphrase it, but my response was something along the lines of that I do not believe that it could be justified for a parent to break with a child for philosophical differences because the parent is the instructor of the child.
And so if my daughter becomes...
I don't know, a fascist theologian or something like that, then it would be because of some error or deficiency in my parenting or my instruction as a parent, and therefore to break with her based upon the effects of my parenting would seem to me to be unjust.
Is that fairly, at least for my first response, right?
Yeah, that sounds right on the money.
And your response, if I remember rightly, and again, correct me if I'm wrong, your response was something like, well, she's going to have She's going to be influenced by things other than you, right?
So she might fall in with the wrong crowd.
She might have a bad LSD trip and emerge as a mystic or something like that.
And then would that then trigger the question of separation if over time that couldn't be repaired?
Is that what you said?
Yeah, I mean more in the lines of Not so much she's going to be, but more hypothetically, I mean, if something were to occur, if she were to act immorally, how would you react?
I mean, it's not so much the...
Do you think this hypothetical scenario is a good one?
But, you know, if this hypothetical scenario were to occur, how would you apply the principles of defoeing, or I don't know if I'm pronouncing that right, but the principles of severing relationships, I guess?
Right. And my response was to say that, at least according to the research that I have performed and the experts that I've consulted, Things like drug use and, you know, falling in with seedy or bad people in terms of a crowd, that these result from child abuse.
These habits result from child abuse.
So child abuse coincides very, very closely statistically with child abuse.
Massive increases in the chances for drug use, if not a downright predetermination of it.
Which is not to say that everyone who's abused becomes a drug user, but everyone who abuses drugs, at least according to the statistics that I've read, just about everybody has been abused and also falling in with the wrong crowd.
And I said, look, violence is sort of like a language.
So I would no more expect her to end up speaking the language called violence if I never taught it to her than I would expect her to break into fluent Mandarin if she'd never taken a course or been exposed to it.
So I didn't consider the hypothetical to be something that was possible.
And then you said, so what you're saying is that human nature is sort of predetermined its childhood onwards like a ball rolling down a hill.
Was that sort of what your response was?
I think I was trying to say the opposite more, that human nature is not predetermined since we don't know the future.
And if you accept the future that is non-deterministic and humans have free will, then every human always has the choice to do Whatever they want.
I guess I'm of the belief that if I really wanted to right now, I wasn't physically abused as a child, but I feel like if I really wanted to, I could go out and shoot someone.
I guess I haven't learned the language of violence, but I'd say In the difference between Mandarin and violence, I mean, violence exists in the animal kingdom, right?
I mean, a fox kills a rabbit, you know, I mean, I've never seen a fox or, I mean, I guess lion's talk in the Bible and stuff, but aside from, you know, Christian theology, you know, there's no Mandarin, as far as I'm aware, in the animal kingdom.
Well, but I wouldn't equate the term violence, in a sense, in the animal kingdom with violence in humankind.
Because, I mean, a lion can't go vegetarian, right?
I mean, it doesn't really have the choice, and its instincts are running it.
So, for instance, bacteria invest in, you know, a bear.
I mean, I don't know. But it's not violence in the way that, I mean, this is why we don't put bears in jail, right?
Because they don't have the moral choice.
So, I think to use, to conflate the term violence in humankind with violence in the animal kingdom, I think, is to It's to put two things together that don't fit together because animals don't have moral responsibility in terms of what they do.
So, and I sort of understand, I really do understand...
Sorry, go ahead. Sorry to interrupt.
I'm fine with that. I mean, I'm not so much trying to elucidate the principles of, you know, is violence learned or not.
That kind of misses the point I'm trying to get at, which is, I mean...
Are there ever conditions conceivable, even if it's an imaginary universe, but are there actions that someone could do that would cause you to cut them off from you if they were, you know, your own child, if they were someone you loved with your entire heart?
And I guess that's what I'm trying to get at, is the principles of defuing.
Right. My answer would be that if I have loved the child with my entire heart, the child will not end up doing evil.
So let's say that my daughter sustains a head injury and ends up, I don't know, punching someone because she's had brain damage.
Well, that would not be a moral condition, right?
That would be someone who needed help and rehabilitation and so on.
So I don't believe that love produces evil.
I don't believe that true love produces evil at all.
In fact, I think that true love is the antidote to evil.
And so it's similar to this, right?
So my wife and I have been married.
We just had our eighth wedding anniversary and I guess nine years of knowing each other.
And we're both madly in love and overjoyed to be in the relationship.
And we talk about that sort of every day and check in with each other about could things be any better or could things be any different or how could you prefer it to be.
And we work through any difficulties or issues that we have and Our conflicts actually have almost always ended up bringing us closer together and so on.
And I'm just delighted to be living with her.
I consider it an extraordinary honor and a deep privilege to be in her life and have her in my life.
And I love the way she parents and I love the way that she's a wife and a friend and so on.
Now, you could say, well, what if she wakes up tomorrow and just wants to divorce you?
Yeah, okay. That's pretty unlikely.
I mean, there would be some… No, it's functionally impossible.
I mean, it's functionally impossible unless she sustains some sort of aneurysm.
If she has an aneurysm or something that wipes out her memory and increases, like permanently activates her fight-and-flight mechanism and makes her paranoid and so on… But then she needs help, right?
She doesn't need moral condemnation.
She needs help because she sustained some sort of injury.
But I don't wake up every morning saying, gosh, I hope my wife doesn't divorce me today because that's a real possibility.
It's not. Okay, but the scenario you describe happens to millions of people every day.
I mean, a lot of people think that they're totally and completely in love and then, boom, fall out of it just one day.
I mean, I've known many people personally who...
Had that scenario play out, and they never saw it coming.
I mean, maybe you've never been in that situation before, but it happens.
I mean, people believe...
And this is good, right?
And I appreciate us being able to talk about this, because my question to you, and I don't mean by this to dodge your questions to me, but I certainly answered them to the best of my ability, but my question to you is, okay, so tell me why this is so important to you.
Well... Were you able to read my responses on the forum?
I guess for me, I'll paraphrase my responses because a few other people had already asked me that.
And I think I've identified, I think, a lot of the reasons why it's important to me.
One of it, which is growing up in my family, just for little petty things that I did, I would be told, you know, I'm going to cut you off from my life, you know, from my dad, okay? And so, you know, that was, you know, not a fun experience.
Oh, that's terrifying. Yeah.
And how, sorry to interrupt, but how old were you when this was occurring?
I mean, this is kind of, you know, throughout my middle school, high school years.
I mean, middle school.
So sort of like puberty onwards?
Well, I mean, I don't know.
More like late high school, I guess.
It was more along...
I mean, it's not really early on.
It was more, I think, you know, funding my way through...
I mean, not when I was in middle school.
Not when I was really young, I guess.
But in high school and college.
I mean, it was basically, you know, you're out of my relationship if you don't act this way.
And I mean, that was, you know...
Something I thought about, of course.
And another thing is, I mean, that's one reason I think I'm interested in this topic.
Another reason is I'm a big fan of Ayn Rand and her works, but I look at her life and I see a lot of really great things.
I agree with her a lot of her philosophy, but I'm just aghast at how many people she loved And then completely cut off all contact.
It was like they didn't even exist because they had done one small thing wrong.
They had said the wrong comment.
They had questioned the wrong way.
And, you know, it's just a total cutoff of relationships.
And I think, to me, that seems like such a destructive way to live.
But that's just my opinion.
And so I'm trying to know For Freedom in Radio, I've only heard about you guys through YouTube and I've seen your podcasts and I enjoy a lot of the things you write or a lot of the work you do.
I haven't read your books, but your videos at least, some of them are just tremendous.
But at the same time, it seems like there's this common trend of, well, you know, if you don't like your parents, you know, Then cut them off from your life.
I don't know. I mean, that's kind of the impression I get from you.
Maybe that's wrong. Maybe I'm stating that.
I'm sorry. I can't remember a time where I've ever said, if you don't like your parents, just cut them off from your life.
Well, and that's just the impression.
I get more of the...
I mean, you say, I guess, live-only voluntary relationships.
But, I mean, is that...
That more akin to whatever, like, only voluntary relationships is what you should pursue, right?
Well, no, sorry, it's not that only voluntary relationships are what you should pursue, it's that adult relations are voluntary.
They are voluntary.
I mean, right, our relationship with the state is not voluntary, right?
I mean, yeah, so not all adult relationships are voluntary, but the good ones are.
Well, no, all adult relationships are voluntary, right?
So if you choose, let's say that your parents were just, you know, monstrous abusers and they yell at you and beat you up and whatever, right?
Then your adult relationship with them is still voluntary.
Because if it's, you know, to me, if relationships aren't voluntary, they're not relationships.
So if you sort of drag yourself off to Aunt Betty's house every Sunday for dinner, though you really hate being there, That's to me not a relationship.
That's just a dismal historical obligation and it doesn't have any life to it.
It's just a mechanical empty proximity, if that makes sense.
I think that to remind people that relationships are voluntary is to remind them that they're there by choice and that it's not – they shouldn't just go through the motions of having relationships with anyone, but they should, I think, be honest and self-expressed in those relationships.
But no, it's a statement of fact that outside of coercion like the state, adult relationships – Our voluntary, like in the same way that adult marriages are voluntary.
And if you say that adult marriages are voluntary, you're not saying everybody should get divorced.
What you're saying is that adult relationships are voluntary.
It's a statement of sort of fact.
Well, the state does it in a physical coercion.
I guess I would say that there are psychological forms of coercion, but if you don't identify with those, then okay, I'll agree.
But I mean, I guess for me, I would say that we are, you know, it depends on how you define relationships and how fluid we're being with this term.
But I mean, reality is we're interdependent creatures.
I mean, we are, I can't live without being dependent on the community that surrounds me, on the people who are going to make the food and the people who are going to cut my hair and the people who are going to pave the streets and You know, I mean, I'm not arguing for the government here.
I'm just saying...
No, I agree with that, for sure.
I don't grow my own food. Yeah, for sure.
Okay. So, I mean, and again, that's probably not the former relationship.
We're talking about deep, meaningful relationships, I take it.
And let me just ask you a question or two to make sure I sort of clarify where you're coming from, which has nothing to do with the rightness or wrongness of either of our arguments, just to sort of get the lay of the land.
Do you have kids yourself? I don't, no.
I'm... I recently graduated from college and no, I don't.
Has anyone ever told you that you have the voice of a 50-year-old radio announcer?
I just wanted to ask, based on this wonderful timber that you're bringing to the conversation, which is making my ears buzz in a truly delightful way, you have a voice.
You're like the Rick Astley of Freedom Aid Radio Callers, because you've got this voice that is vastly outside your ears.
I just wanted to sort of mention that.
Thank you very much.
I'm actually half that age exactly.
I'm a quarter century now.
And, uh, I feel old, but, uh, you know, maybe I'm the next, uh, Ted Williams.
So we'll see. Yeah.
So sing with me now.
Never gonna give you a, never gonna, okay.
We'll, we'll have to put this, this, this little video here will be the Rick Rolled section of, uh, of, uh, Freedom Aid Radio.
But, okay.
Well, look, do you mind if I give you sort of my, my sort of very brief speech on, uh, you know, what, what it means, um, uh, in terms of human relationships?
Absolutely. Um, I think that breaking family ties is a huge, huge thing.
It is a very, very big thing.
Because, I mean, for emotional, psychological, and practical considerations, it is enormous.
And so I don't think it should ever be taken lightly.
I don't think that it should ever be performed without...
A therapist or even contemplated without a professional therapist overseeing it.
I've said that since day one.
It is a very big issue.
It should never, ever be taken lightly and should never be unilaterally inflicted on anyone.
If you have significant issues with your parents or your siblings or your friends, then you should sit down and talk with them for as long as you conceivably can.
You should be under the care of a therapist if you're even contemplating breaking significant long-term relationships to make sure that it's not just a reaction because if it's the wrong thing to do, it's a hugely damaging thing to do.
And if it's the wrong thing to do, the chances are you're simply going to replicate it in some other relationship, right?
If you don't get root causes and root issues, right?
Sorry, can I interrupt real quick?
No, no, please. When you say the wrong thing and the right thing to do, that's where I get confused.
I don't understand what you mean by that.
Well, so let's say that your friend tells you a truth about yourself that you don't like.
That is not a good reason to cut someone out of your life, in my opinion.
Absolutely. You don't pay him back, and he pesters you for the money back, and you cut him out of your life.
That is not a just and healthy reason to cut someone out of your life.
In fact, you've just stolen someone, stolen $1,000 from someone based upon his goodwill towards you, which I think is not a positive thing, right?
Right. I mean, I agree.
I'm simply saying I'm confused on the rights and the wrongs of when you cut someone off and when you don't.
And, you know, maybe it varies for each person.
And no one can tell.
I think no one can tell anybody else.
What is or isn't the right conditions?
I mean, I think that you can say that if you were repeatedly raped by your dad for 15 years when you were a kid, that this may be a good candidate for at least thinking about taking a break from...
I mean, I would hesitate to even call that a relationship.
So that may be sort of on the other extreme of things.
Right, and I completely get that.
I mean, there's obviously not going to be In terms of good memories you have, they're going to be surpassed by all the bad ones.
But at least from what I can tell, I mean, the people, and again, this is just from mild reading and mild glancing over, you know, a couple forums, but I mean, the people in your community who I guess did too, in some instances, seem like, I mean, one of my friends, the first introduction I had to you, he basically cut off relationships with his father.
This was way back in college and I really didn't, you know, I was not following your stuff at the time at all and I didn't know who you were, but he, you know, I asked him, I was like, don't you have some good memories with your parents?
And he's like, yeah, I got a lot of good memories, but You know, how they treated me I think is wrong and I really don't want them in my life.
I thought that was kind of sad.
I mean, because the guy had a lot of good memories and he decided to call out quits and I think that you more than anyone would, at least from your podcast or not, I guess not podcast, YouTube videos that you put out, the You would emphasize or you would agree with the feeling that we kind of are our parents.
They've kind of programmed our subconscious.
Oh, God, no. Oh, God, no.
Oh, no, no, no.
I wouldn't even come close to agreeing with that.
I mean, I have a visceral reaction to you saying that based upon how I was parented, the idea that I am My mother is...
You're angry with your parents, though, right?
I take it. You've cut them off from your life, right?
That anger stems from their relationship with you, right?
No. No.
Okay. I mean, I have relationships with lots of people I'm not angry at.
The key thing is not the relationship.
All right. But, I mean...
Let's go back to your friend, right?
Because I've already talked about this ad infinitum on my podcast.
What was your friend's issue with his dad?
What was... Why did he separate from his dad?
Sorry, why did he separate?
Yeah, what did he find so offensive in how he was raised?
What did his father do that he found so objectionable, or what series of things did his father do?
Oh, I think just the...
And I didn't talk with him very much on this, and I have lost contact with him, but it basically seemed to me that Well, my dad raised me, you know, religious, and I don't agree with the religion.
He raised me, you know...
I'm sorry, sorry. Look, you said it seems to me, right?
So you don't have any specific knowledge.
Because your seems to me about me was not...
Oh, absolutely. I don't mean to be overly skeptical, but I don't want you to surmise about your friend's relationship with his family if you don't have specific complaints.
No, I don't. But it's interesting that you didn't ask him, right?
Well, I mean, again, he's not a close contact of mine, so I don't really feel that I... Oh, but he's close enough that he talked about separating from his family, right?
Okay. Well, I guess for me, I don't feel like I've earned that.
I feel like you have earned that part of someone that, like...
Well, no, no. Look, sorry to interrupt again, and I hate to be annoying, but you did step in giving him feedback saying, well, you have good memories and this and that.
So you did get involved, right?
Well, I asked him, do you have good memories?
You know, and he said, yeah, I got some good memories.
That's a pretty leading question, though, right?
What you didn't ask him is, what are your bad memories, right?
Well, I mean, you know, I think that part is pretty obvious.
He clearly has bad memories.
I don't want him rehashing, you know, the word.
You see, I think that if you were to be really honest, and I'm not calling you dishonest, right?
But you gave him a very leading question without asking him what his actual experience was.
Your leading question was, but you have good memories too.
Okay, well, you're probably right.
I mean, I'm not saying you're wrong here.
Honestly, this was probably a two-minute conversation.
I am not making any judgment calls in this conversation.
I'm simply describing it as an event that happened that I remember.
How long had he been your friend?
This person I only knew from a class we had together, so I knew him for a term.
So a couple of months, right?
Yeah, a few months. Right, right.
Yeah, I mean, look, I think that if friendship is something to pursue, and I'm not saying that you should or shouldn't have been friends with this guy, what do I know, right?
But I think if someone comes to you and says, I'm doing this extraordinary, difficult, and culturally opposed thing...
Which is taking a break from my dad.
I think that it's kinder, in my opinion, right?
I think it's kinder to just say, well, you know, tell me more.
I mean, what a horrible and difficult decision.
I mean, what's going on?
What led to this? What's happening?
I think that's the greater part of wisdom in terms of trying to figure out what's going on.
And I have no doubt you're correct.
I just had to get to my next class.
Oh, come on. Come on.
Come on. Come on, please don't give me that.
Look, I'm not saying that at all.
Look, I'm not saying that at all.
I hope you don't get that.
What I'm saying is that it's a really, really difficult topic for people.
I'm saying that. I'm saying that I hugely sympathize with your reaction to this decision of your friends.
It is a very difficult topic, right?
So to... If you get a divorce from your husband because, you know, he beat you up for 10 years, people are like, go, right?
Good for you, right?
Like, they don't say, well, that's terrible.
You know, who's going to take care of your husband in his old age?
Well, that's terrible. He's your husband.
You made a vow. I guess unless you're a Mormon or something.
I mean, most people, if you've been in an abusive relationship, if a woman's been in an abusive relationship with a husband and she says, I'm going to leave him, And start taking care of myself and we've tried counseling and we've tried, you know, but he still keeps doing it and so on.
Most people would say that that's, they would not be happy that that was the situation, but they would surely feel some sense of a positive step on the part of the woman, right?
And, you know, I'm not disagreeing with anything you're saying here.
I hope you understand that. I just, for me, I know for me personally to access parts of my life, You've got to earn that.
You have to show that I can trust you.
And if you want me to reveal certain elements of myself, this is just for me personally, I really have to see that you're a trustworthy person.
I have to see that through your integrity, through your principles, through your...
I'm sorry to interrupt, and I appreciate that.
I did read that on the board, but we just kind of skipped over what I was saying.
Which is, I think, more evidence of what a difficult and dangerous topic it is for the world, right?
Which is that I was really trying to show some genuine empathy that I feel towards you about what emotions your friend's declaration must have kicked up in you.
Because, look, you're a caring guy, you're a sensitive guy, and you care about right and wrong.
I mean, obviously, you're interested in a philosophy show.
You're having this conversation, which I respect and admire you for, for what you care.
I'm just some guy on the internet, but just sort of wanted to mention it.
And so when I said that you didn't ask your friend more about what he was going through, you said, well, I must be a horrible person.
And I was really trying to prevent that train of thought from leaving the station by saying that it is a very, very difficult topic.
And this is not new, right?
So when feminists in the, I mean, geez, starting from the 19th century, started talking about the possibility of divorce, it was a very, very uncomfortable topic for society as a whole.
And of course, you know, every husband who got divorced as a result of feminists talking about this, not to say that it was causal, but, you know, there was some effects there.
They said, well, you know, I did nothing.
And, you know, feminists just want to break up the family and they want everyone to get divorced and this and that, because it's a volatile topic.
When you bring universal ethics...
To the parent-child relationship, as I was just sort of doing in the intro, I don't know if you heard it or not.
It's very volatile and it's a very difficult topic.
And it's sort of like trying to connect to it emotionally.
It's like trying to push two opposing magnets together.
It's really tough. So the fact that your friend revealed this to you and you kind of veered away from the conversation, I just wanted to point out, is to me an entirely natural reaction.
And does not mean that you're an uncaring bad friend or anything like that.
I just wanted to really empathize with how difficult it is to talk about these issues.
Let me just clarify. It wasn't me that ended the conversation.
It was my friend who walked away from it.
The emotions that you're saying that I'm feeling, I feel like you're projecting them on me because I personally, maybe this is me repressing things, but I personally can't identify with those emotions.
I remember what I felt and I mean, the emotions you're saying, I felt, I didn't feel.
And again, maybe that's me repressing these things and you have...
Sorry, what emotions am I saying you're feeling?
You said I had the emotion that this was a very difficult thing to deal with.
Is that correct? That's not an emotion, right?
An emotion is like, you know, mad, happy, sad, angry, or whatever, right?
But what I'm saying is that it must have been somewhat...
Sorry, go ahead.
It's a stressful thing to do.
You said emotion.
I don't know. I thought you said emotion.
I'm just saying it's a difficult topic.
I think that if your friend had been really upset and said, I think I'm going to break up with my girlfriend, which is a much less difficult topic for people.
It's much less primal. You probably wouldn't have had a two-minute conversation and never talked about it with him again.
I mean, I'm sure you would have sat down and said, oh man, that sucks.
Let's get a coffee and I'm happy to hear about it if it's helpful to you.
I mean, I'm sure that would have been something along the lines of what you would have done.
I'm just pointing out that the difference is not, and due to any deficiency on your part, in my opinion, it's just to do with the disappointment.
Okay, and I completely respect that.
In this case, he chose to end the conversation before we really got into the guts of it.
I can guarantee you, at least in my opinion, that he chose to end the conversation because he got that you weren't going to be sensitive to his issues because you asked him immediately about his positive memories, which tells him a lot about where you're coming from, right?
Like I said, I had to get to my next class.
I was not in the sensitivity mode at that point.
That's my bad, I guess.
You're right. That's completely correct.
I was not being a sensitive person.
I was in work mode.
Maybe that was the wrong choice.
Maybe I should have sat there and skipped the next class.
Well, no, no. You could have called him later, right?
I mean, you obviously had some way of contacting him.
I mean, you're on the same camp. Anyway, that's not particularly important.
I wanted to just address the last part of what you were saying about a trust.
Trust in someone in terms of accepting a philosophy.
Well, not so much, I mean, trust in philosophy, but I'm talking about trust in revealing your deep emotions and personal experiences.
Those are things that I think someone has to establish themselves Yeah, and I don't think that,
I mean, at least in the relationships I've had, Some guy who you know in class and talk to about philosophy on occasion.
I didn't feel like I had built up that trust.
I didn't feel like I had earned it yet.
Maybe I had.
Maybe the fact that he was telling me about that is evidence that I had earned that trust level with him and that he did trust me.
But again, it was such a short conversation that Yeah, so look, as far as trust goes, I mean, I agree with you to some degree and disagree with you to some degree.
I think that I used this analogy before.
It's just like you don't buy the diet book with the fat guy on the cover, right?
Sorry. You just don't, right?
You don't buy a diet book with a fat guy on the cover.
All I heard was fat guy on the cover.
Oh, sorry, shit. You don't buy a diet book with a fat guy on the cover, right?
Yes, yes. Now, it may be the best diet in the world.
It may be. But you don't have time to evaluate it.
All you know is that the people who are making the book don't understand that they need to put a thin guy on the cover, or at least a thinner guy than he was before, like a before and after picture.
And so they're not very bright in terms of how they present things, and therefore it's not worth investigating whether the diet is any good or not, right?
So external experiences are revealing, is that what you're saying?
Well, presentation has some value.
It's the first cut, if that makes any sense.
Yes. It's not the only cat, right?
So, I mean, every diet book has thin guys on the cover, right?
And so then you sort of have to go further and so on, right?
Now, so I agree with you that a philosopher's life has some relevance to the value of the philosophy.
I think it does.
Insofar as if the philosopher is unhappy or, you know, In jail or homeless or I don't know what, right?
Lonely and whatever.
Then either the philosopher is living his values, in which case it leads to that.
And that may be because the world is so insane and crazy that it isolates rational people.
But nonetheless, that is the result of living the philosophy, at least according to the philosophers originating of it.
Sorry, the originators living of it.
And that's a red flag if you don't want to go down that road.
And Or he's not living his philosophy.
So his values are really great, but he's not living them.
In other words, he doesn't believe in them.
And then it's like a fat guy trying to sell you a diet book, right?
He's either followed the diet and is still fat, or he thinks that being thin is a great value, but he's not following any kind of diet, in which case, why is he trying to sell it to you?
So I think that you're right, but I think that you wouldn't say, if you're a smoker, right?
You wouldn't say, well... My doctor has told me to quit smoking, but my doctor smokes, and therefore quitting smoking is not the right thing to do.
Somebody may not be living his values, but that doesn't mean that the values are necessarily false.
I agree with you that there's a first pass just in terms of efficiency, because there's 10 million people in the world telling you what to do, and you can't evaluate the claims of everyone.
I think from a first pass, look at the person's life.
But I think you wouldn't want to be trapped into a need for perfection on the part of the philosopher.
Otherwise, you can't follow the philosophy, if that makes sense.
It does. And I guess for me, I mean, it makes total sense.
And I guess part of that kind of leads me back to the idea of this need for perfection.
I mean, can you visualize perfection?
Can you conceive of a universe where your daughter acts immorally, where the philosophy that you impart upon her, something in your principles, in your premises that you built this philosophy upon, Something happens to go wrong.
Something isn't completely perfect, as you might have thought.
Well, look, I mean, I don't have to look at my daughter.
I can just look at myself.
I mean, there are things that I have...
I've written about in the past that I don't agree with anymore.
So perfection is not a standard I would even hold for myself.
Any philosopher who claims to have a perfect and ultimate answer is full of crap because it's claiming that there's no improvement in the future of that person's philosophy.
No new information, no new knowledge is going to affect that person's philosophy and that's just irrational, right?
I mean, there is, you know, I think it was some, I can't remember, Gore Vidal or someone Someone said, well, you changed your mind about this particular topic.
And he's like, well, yeah, that's what I do when I get new information and new facts.
What do you do, right?
And you don't want to throw them out.
So I think perfection is not a valid stance.
I don't believe that I can separate myself from my daughter's personality in the future.
Especially because I'm a stay-at-home dad, right?
So I am here 24-7.
with her and and guiding her and educating her and you know playing with her and raising her so I can't take a step backwards 20 years from now and say I am now going to judge you my daughter independent of me because I have mingled in with her and if there have if she does things that are bad or wrong and Then that is clearly because that has something to do with my parenting and it may have a lot to do with my parenting.
And so I can't remove myself from her personality like I can, you know, just you pour a food dye into a glass of water, you then can't judge the water outside of the food dye because it's all mixed in.
And so I don't think that I can take a step backwards from my daughter when she's older and say, well, I'm now going to judge you as if I were never there raising you from day one, or even I was singing to her in the womb when she was...
Two months old, right? So I can't step back from her as if I was never part of it and judge her as an independent person in the way that I could with other people.
I hope you don't take me as me saying, you know, I want you to step back from your daughter.
That's not what I'm saying at all.
I'm simply saying, I mean, you didn't answer my question in so much as, is it likely you think your daughter will act immorally?
Is that a likely? No, I consider it a virtual impossibility.
That having been said, she is obviously going to be her own person, right?
And so the last thing I'd want is for her to...
I mean, I don't want to teach her my conclusions.
I want to teach her how to think. She may come up with conclusions that will make me, quote, immoral, right?
So maybe in the future they will find out that plants...
I can't imagine what.
Like, I'm a vegetarian, right?
But I used to eat meat.
And maybe they'll find out that...
Animals are incredibly sentient and that meat eating them is like cannibalism.
Well, I mean, clearly I had no knowledge of that and I don't do it anymore, even if that did turn out to be the case.
But she may have ethical issues with me as far as that goes.
She may. In which case, you know, I'll have to sort of talk to her and sort of explain to her how I was approaching things.
And I think I could legitimately say with the best knowledge that I had, based on the information that was available, these were the decisions that I made.
And you can't sort of retrospectively create knowledge prior to it existing.
But she may have issues with things that I've done and so on, in which case she may criticize me morally, which I think is fantastic.
If I teach her how to think, she may come up with conclusions that I've completely missed.
Definitely. You're doing the best you can do.
I mean, you really are.
Right? I mean, you...
You run a philosophy show.
You talk about parenting.
I mean, you really are showing that you are making your best attempt.
And that's admirable.
And I think she would definitely see that.
But I guess maybe this is my Christian upbringing and the original sin concept.
But even past that, I got to say, I think pretty much everyone acts immorally.
And the idea that Your daughter will never act immorally?
I've never said that she would never act immorally.
Well, I asked the question just a few minutes ago, do you think it's likely your daughter will never act immorally?
And you said no.
Well, first of all, what I thought you meant was rape and murder and stuff like that.
Tell me what you mean by immorally.
Because earlier you said you didn't know what right and wrong was.
I mean, you're the philosopher.
You can define immorality. No, no, no.
You're using the term. You're using the term.
So you need to tell me what you mean by immorality.
Well, but I'm trying to apply your principles.
So I'm trying to understand your principles.
So in this case...
I want to know your definition of morality.
Whatever you consider to be morality is what this scenario is based on.
I can't conceivably define to you what morality is.
I've got a whole book on ethics if you want to read it.
But to me, it would be if she goes out and strangles some homeless guy.
If she goes out and...
I don't know. I mean, I don't even want to talk about this kind of stuff with my daughter.
But, you know, the standard evil stuff.
You know, she goes out and stabs someone.
She beats some person up in a legal situation.
We can say that a lie is wrong, right?
Well, no. I don't think we can say that at all.
So, lying...
Okay. Lying is not immoral by your standards.
No, I don't think we can say that either.
Lying is a complicated case, right?
Because there are times where it would be immoral to not lie, right?
So, some guy comes in and says...
Where's your wife? I want to kill her.
Right? I'm not going to say, well, I have to tell you the truth.
But that's not lying.
That's not lying, though.
I mean... Well, no, I'm telling a falsehood to someone.
Yeah, that's telling a falsehood.
But lying is...
You have a moral obligation to someone when you're lying to them, right?
If someone says, I'm going to kill your daughter, you no longer have that moral obligation.
They've already said, I'm going to kill your daughter.
You can say, hey...
I haven't seen her. You know, you're not lying to them.
They're a crazy person who has basically, you know, whatever moral obligation you had to that other person has been eradicated at that moment.
Would you agree with that? Well, sure.
But, I mean, I would say technically you are still telling a falsehood because you know where your daughter is, but you're saying that you don't.
But to me, that's perfectly justified.
That's in the realm of self-defense.
You can't go up and shoot someone, but you can shoot someone who's trying to kill you, right?
So that's more in the realm of self-defense where you're right.
The ethical obligation is not reciprocal because the other person is initiating force or fraud or theft or whatever, right?
Well, if you're talking true and false, I mean, the true right way to live is to not tell the murderer where your daughter is.
So in that sense, it's not a falsehood, I guess.
But the actual statement that you say is not accurate.
Yes. Right.
So I certainly don't expect my daughter to be morally perfect any more than I expect myself to be morally perfect.
I think that that would be a self-abusive standard that you would go insane trying to fulfill.
It's like saying, I want to be perfectly healthy.
I mean, what does that even mean?
Does that mean that you seal yourself up in a gym like Bubble Boy on Seinfeld?
I mean... What we want is reasonable standards of virtue.
What we want is reasonable standards of health.
So I think that, you know, yeah, my daughter will tell me lies.
I have no doubt whatsoever.
I think she's even starting to right now, right?
So I know I think she is, right?
So she remembers things from like a month or two ago.
But if I make a deal with her where I say, okay, we'll watch half a cartoon and then I can go and brush your teeth, right?
And she says, yes, okay.
And then if she doesn't want to brush her teeth, I'll say, do you remember telling me that you would let me brush your teeth?
And she says, no. I mean, so she's already negotiating and trying to maximize her resources because she's a primitive mammal and that's exactly what she should be doing.
And so I have no doubt.
Yeah, oh no, absolutely.
Of course they do. I mean, she's trying on a variety of strategies at the moment to maximize resources.
Her happiness, of course.
I mean, in a sense, that's what we always do in life.
It's just that her time frame is very short, right?
So she doesn't think, well, are there going to be long-term ramifications on my relationship with my father if I tell him a lie?
She's like, well, if I tell him that I didn't, I don't have to brush my teeth right now.
So, yeah, I mean, I'm sure that that is going to continue as she develops, and hopefully her time frame will expand with some encouragement in terms of the long-term effects of what she's doing, and so it's not so much in the immediate...
All those kinds of good things.
So I certainly don't expect her to be, you know, human brain doesn't finish maturing until you're 25.
Hey, congratulations. But I don't, I mean, I'm not expecting her to be morally perfect.
I have put out podcasts where I have violently disagreed with things that I said in the past.
And I've, you know, read entire shows where people have corrected me on stuff.
So I don't hold perfection, a moral perfection or a perfect intellectual correctness as any kind of standard.
Yeah, she's going to do all of those things.
And that's a natural part of development.
I'd like to move on to another caller because we spent quite a bit of time on this.
I certainly do appreciate you taking the time to call in.
It was very informative, and I certainly appreciate your input to the discussion.
I've really, really enjoyed that, and I really do appreciate you taking the time to call in.
All right. Excellent talking to you, Stefan.
Thank you very much. Thanks, man.
Have a good one. All right.
Who do we have next?
Hi, Steph. Are you there?
I certainly am. This is Sebastian from Costa Rica.
How are you doing today? Oh, hi, Sebastian.
How's it going? Going really good, and going so good that I'm actually sort of nervous about...
I'm sorry, I just missed the question, if you could repeat it.
She said we were talking about this law she's trying to get passed.
Right, okay, so the issue is that your friend is trying to get a law passed to ban depleted uranium weapons because they are so harmful...
I would love to see depleted uranium weapons banned.
I really would love to see all weapons banned.
And the best way to ban weapons is to ban taxation.
Because the destruction of property through war and other mechanisms is...
It's economically hideous, and the only way that it can conceivably be economically productive, even to the minority of war profiteers, is if the costs of the weapons can be passed along to the taxpayer.
That's the only reason that war can exist, is because the costs, as economics say, are externalized to the taxpayer.
So the profits are privatized, and the costs are socialized.
I wouldn't focus on just those.
I think let's ban war, and the way that we ban war Is to expose the immoralities of the state and the theft called taxation as a whole.
That's, to me, the way that you get to the root of the problem rather than trying to just deal with a symptom.
And also, if you could just slow down a little bit and enunciate, you're a little bit muffled.
So that would be helpful.
And congratulations on your new job and your success in all of that.
I really was quite thrilled to hear about that.
Alright, well, I want to be a surgeon.
My father was a doctor.
I am 25 years old and it's taken me like seven years to figure out what it is that I wanted to do and now I feel really, really, really challenged but I've decided that it's the only thing and I would like to have your advice.
Right, right.
It is an admirable goal, I think.
And certainly surgeons are among the heroes of mankind because we don't have to die of appendicitis anymore.
So I really do appreciate your desire.
I think that there's a number of things to do with Thank you.
try and talk to a surgeon, right?
So to look what life looks like on the other side of that tunnel.
So you can call up the medical school and ask if they have any career days.
You can see if you can tour the medical school facilities and then ask if they have any teaching surgeons, if you can spend 10 minutes bending their ear.
I think you want to get a sense of what it's going to be like on the other side.
That can be very motivating in terms of, you know, if the guy's like, it's the best life ever and all the wine you can drink at breakfast and whatever, right?
So I think it's important to talk and then you can say, well, you know, how did it come about?
How did you get to it?
How did you arrive at this destination?
And hopefully they can give you some useful and helpful things to say.
We individualists, for want of a better phrase, have a disconcerting habit of attempting to reinvent the wheel.
And I think that's a good thing in some ways.
Certainly my philosophical approach has been to attempt to reinvent the wheel.
In a number of different ways that I hope have been helpful in terms of ethics and epistemology and metaphysics and so on.
But I think it can go a little bit too far when it comes to practical matters and practical items.
So I would really try and find people...
You can even maybe sit in on a class of upper-year med students and say, listen...
Can I buy you guys a coffee and just pick your brains for 10 minutes?
What's it like? How did you do it?
What pitfalls did you avoid?
Go out and get information on how it is that...
When I started out in business, I did that.
I sought out people who were more experienced and asked their advice and all that.
And it really helped because we don't want to reinvent the wheel when the wheel's lying around and we just have to ask for it.
So I would do that kind of stuff.
I mean, there's other practical things, of course.
Look into bursaries and scholarships and And the things that you need to do to achieve that and so on.
And then you just have to draw out a plan.
You just have to draw out a map and say, okay, well what do I need to do in the next three months To get to the next step, right?
So you have a whole series of steps, the end one of which is called being a neurosurgeon, and you have to just work your way backwards.
So to be a neurosurgeon, I have to be board certified, I guess, I don't know, right?
In that case, I have to have a medical license and I have to have done my apprenticeship in some particular area or other and working back from that, I don't know, maybe I have to have two years of biology degree and working backwards from that, I need to get into college.
So You have an end goal which may be some years away and you work your way back and then just break it down into things that you need to do over the next week or month or three months and just you have to do that, right?
How do you get to the top of a ladder?
One step at a time. And that's the advice that I would have about breaking that down.
So I'm currently only about 4% along my journey of being the master of time, space, and dimension.
Dimension? Dementia. Sorry, I can't quite read that.
But it's going to be one of the two.
Let's see, shall we? But it's really just around get some mentoring, find people who can help you avoid pitfalls, talk to people who've already achieved it, and then just work your way back from the goal so that you break it down into the steps that you need to do.
Over the next little while. That's my advice, and I hope that helps.
You're writing that it does.
Excellent! Okay, good.
Well, we have time for another caller too.
If people have more questions, issues, comments, problems, whatever your heart desires.
You can also type questions into the chat room.
Thank you.
It seems there's a bit of confusion in the chat regarding banning weapons.
Would you like to sort of go back over that real quick, in regards to national defense as a possibility?
Well, yeah, I mean, banning offensive weapons, right?
I mean, that's a reasonable point to bring up, of course, as all listener points are.
Banning offensive weapons is the key, right?
I mean, America doesn't have a Department of Defense because since 1812, America has never been invaded.
It's protected by friendly neighbors to the north and south and massive oceans to the east and west.
So America does not have a Department of Defense because no one's going to invade America.
America has a Department of Offense.
And so to me, there's a difference between the funding of defensive weapons and the difference between funding massive offensive capabilities.
Offensive capabilities are much more expensive than defensive capabilities for reasons that are pretty obvious.
And so for instance, right, so it's $20 million to build a fighter jet and it's $20,000 to build a Stinger missile that takes it down, right?
So offensive weapons and offensive capabilities are almost infinitely more expensive than truly defensive weapons and defensive capabilities.
And so in a DRO society, yeah, there may be some ways in which there are defensive capabilities to deter invasions, which may not even be necessary since maybe nobody will want to invade a – I think nobody would want to invade a state in this country because there's nothing really to invade.
But I don't think that there would be any real funding desire for offensive weapons because they'd be way too expensive and too likely to provoke retaliation.
We have another question and I'm not sure if you want to address this now, but somebody asks, you know, how would you go about exploring the suspicion of having been sexually abused of which no memory is available due to a very young age or memory dysfunction?
Okay.
That's a very tough question.
I don't have any particularly intelligent answers because it's not particularly a philosophical question, but it is a question around self-knowledge, which is definitely part of philosophy.
First of all, I'm I just want to say to anybody who's got this as a question how deeply, deeply sorry I am that this is even a question that comes up for you because it comes from a place of deep upset and disturbance and I just wanted to really express my empathy and sympathy for this even coming up as a question for you.
There does seem to be some pretty strong scientific evidence that trauma It destroys memories or at least drives them underground.
And I get lots of questions and comments from people around, well, I can't remember anything before the age of eight.
I don't know why I was such an exception to the rule.
I certainly experienced a lot of trauma, but I remember everything.
And I've done a podcast recently called Morality is Memory, which I think will be interesting or helpful in this area.
There's no truth serum, no magic pill, no wand to wave, as I'm sure everyone's aware of.
This is something that should be handled with a therapist.
I hate to say it. I mean, I always say it.
But it's true, nonetheless, that this is something that should be explored with a therapist.
You can't... If you can't access memories, you can't access memories.
If they're pre-memory, like if they're really primal, early things, then you may not be able to access them.
And you may have only somatized symptoms, which is to say that...
This used to be called hysteria because it was associated with women's wombs, which I think the Latin root is the same, which is why they're called hysterectomies when you remove the womb.
But there would be women who were blind, but there was nothing wrong with their eyes.
Their pupils were still dilated.
So there's women whose arms went numb, sort of in Freud's day, in 19th century Vienna.
And he traced these back to sexual abuse or extreme physical abuse or whatever, that this produced physiological symptoms, even though the women couldn't remember.
The body remembers. The body remembers.
And I don't think...
Yeah, hysteros is Greek for uterus.
Thank you. So there's no magic pill.
I think it is just a matter of finding a therapist who's got experience with helping people to figure out the truth about these kinds of histories and just being patient, doing the self-work that the therapist recommends and working on it from that standpoint.
Again, I'm so sorry that this is even coming up as a question because it is a very disturbing and difficult question.
And it does sort of roll around in your head for sure, for sure, for sure.
So, you know, I am in either the fortunate or unfortunate position of being able to clearly and easily remember the abuse that I suffered.
But if you don't, but you think it's there, I would really, really recommend it to talk about it with a therapist who's experienced in these kinds of issues.
Yeah, and I would just like to add...
In my own experience, I've had that question for myself as well.
And no memories around it.
So that is a really, just speaking from experience, I have not been able to get any traction on the outside of a therapist.
I mean, that's just not, not been possible.
And of course, there are still lots of questions come up.
There's a part of me that is constantly denying it, you know, constantly denying that anything of the sort happened.
And it's really difficult to explore that, or impossible, I say, to explore it on your own.
At least that's been my experience.
Yeah, and in the review I did of Black Swan, I listed off, and you can do a search for symptoms of survivors of sexual abuse.
And, you know, I mean, nobody's going to say I think that a reverse diagnosis is the same as an absolute fact.
But if you look at these symptoms, and you have a lot of them, then it at least doesn't weaken the diagnosis, so to speak.
So you can have a look online for those things.
But again, I wouldn't, I personally would not go rooting around in these issues without a therapist, because it can be very destabilizing if, you know, something comes to your mind.
Very suddenly it can be very destabilizing.
So please, please talk about it with a therapist before rooting around in this kind of cellar.
Yeah, and just to echo that, I can definitely corroborate that kind of occurrence for myself.
Yeah, like where stuff comes up and it's like, ah, right?
You can't even think straight.
You can't even feel straight, if that makes sense.
It's incredibly destabilizing.
So it's crucial to get in touch with somebody who has this Who has this training and experience and can also, I mean, act as that third party, you know, being able to be observing and being able to be able to take you out of being overwhelmed.
That is incredibly important.
And you can't do that on your own.
You just can't. Not without a lot of work.
Not without a lot of work.
Right, right. So, yeah, I think the word for the Y is for sure.
Somebody has posted.
An interesting question on the chat window.
I work for a private halfway house that is funded largely by you and me.
While I follow you and FDR and love the message and philosophy, I also love helping these men in the capacity I can at the present.
How do I rectify this contradiction?
Well, I'm assuming that this has some aspects of state funding to it.
Well, my argument is...
Live like there's no state, right?
Clearly, there would be places to help the poor if there's no state, there would be places to help the poor, and they will look, I'm sure, quite similar in many ways to what you have there.
And if you're helping people and the state is paying, you know, I mean, I think it's a reasonable idea to stay away from jobs that would never exist without the state, because I think that may be a little bit Down the darker side of the road.
But I would definitely say that it's very important to just live your life as if there's no government.
You know, there would be roads.
If the state ended tomorrow, the roads wouldn't all vanish, right?
So I used the roads. So those are just things that I would suggest.
Don't let the fact that there's a state interfere with a joyful life's calling that you have, right?
So don't let the shadow of the state...
Fall upon the sunlight of what gives you great pleasure in the world.
My wife and I had to register our marriage with the state.
Does that mean that that is going to make my marriage less joyful?
No, I'm not going to let the state take away that.
I'm not going to let the state take away the joy that I have in my marriage.
Just love what you do and forget about the state.
We out-yawn the state.
We don't out-fight it. We live like it's not there.
And that's the best way.
Zeitgeist moving forward.
Online release will be this Tuesday.
I am interested in the Zeitgeist movement.
I've done a little bit of research on it.
Not enough to say too much intelligent stuff about it, but I will definitely have a look at it.
And I would probably do a movie review, yes.
And good for them for releasing it online.
I think congratulations. Ah, the Phoenix Lecturer.
Yay! Thanks, Paul.
Yay! Phoenix Lecturer.
My belated attempts at stand-up libertarian comedy.
Let's see. I don't have much experience with different schools of anarchism.
I think that anybody who supports property rights and rejects the use of violence is a friend.
And I have no problem with people who want to set up communists in a free society.
If you all want to get together and reject or renounce your use of property, that's perfectly fine with me.
I think that's great.
I don't like it when people say to me that they're going to use force against me for the exercise of self-ownership.
That to me is a significant problem and one which can't be reconciled with, at least in the action.
Hopefully in the debate it can be.
But I'm still waiting for an articulate and knowledgeable anarcho-communist to come on the show.
I'd love to do a debate. I'd love to do a Q&A. I'd love even to just pick his brains and try and understand how things work.
Yeah, so the Phoenix speech will be up tomorrow or the day after.
So thank you so much to Paul for that.
Hi, Seth. Hello.
I have a question about when people are mocking with you, Alright, we'll wait for him to come back.
What do I think of pride?
Can one be proud of a son or daughter, for example, or is it simply mistaken admiration or happiness over the child's success?
Oh, I'm incredibly proud of my daughter.
I think she is absolutely magnificent.
And I'm incredibly proud of her.
She's such a hard worker.
And she's such a reasonable human being.
You know, she is such a reasonable human being.
You know, she expresses her needs so spontaneously, so delightfully, and so forcefully.
And she's open to negotiation, and she's open to the deferral of gratification.
She's open to meeting other people's needs.
She is... I mean, she's an incredible delight.
And she is such a beautiful spirit that...
I'm incredibly proud of what she does.
I'm proud of... How quickly she learns how to master new things.
I'm proud of her earnestness.
Her earnestness is a beautiful thing.
Children are incredibly earnest.
And people sometimes diminish that to something that's sort of cute.
You know, oh, she's so cute.
She's so earnest. But the earnestness, like when she wants to communicate something that she's passionate about.
And if I were to give one word to describe my daughter, it would be passionate.
I... Her earnestness and significant and deep desire to communicate is to me beautiful because it means she wants to speak.
She wants to be heard. She wants to communicate with us.
I think it's wonderful. Her engagement with others is another thing that I just think is extremely wonderful to see.
So we don't eat out that much, but we went to a restaurant the other day and Isabella, she's really started to get interested in playing with other kids.
So we're starting to arrange some play dates and stuff.
And there was a boy who was, I think, four who was sitting a table or two over and I had taken Isabella around the restaurant because, you know, she's too young to sit for a whole meal.
I took her around the restaurant and there was one of the fashion choices or I guess decor choices they'd made in the restaurant was to have holes in the ceiling.
It was part of the rustic charm, I think.
And I pointed out These holes in the ceiling.
And I said, oh, that's really cool.
And we counted the holes in the ceiling.
And she was very excited. Holes in the ceiling!
We have to fix them!
Get some Band-Aid data! Anyway, so when she saw this other boy, she jumped off her chair.
And she went over to the little boy.
And she's like, come!
Come see the holes in the ceiling!
And she really wanted to...
So the parents let their boy come down.
And we all went in to see the holes in the ceiling.
ceiling and we all started counting them and it was great.
And then she ran over to another table where there were two girls and she's like, come, come see, come dance, come see clap hands, come see the holes in the ceiling, bring your bandaid.
And so these girls who were a little bit old for this, right, but they were good sports.
They, they came over and Christina and I were there and we were all counting.
And then Isabella said, clap hands.
And so we did the, you know, if you're happy and you know it, clap your hands.
And we did that.
We did the clap hands, to spin around, to sing hooray, all of that, stomp your feet and all of that.
And she was just having a ball.
And she was, you know, she's not shy of commandments.
And so she was, dance girls!
You know, all this kind of thing. I thought it was just great.
She, you know, through this hurricane of enthusiasm, she drew in these children into something that, you know, was a great deal of fun and I think pretty memorable.
And then she wanted to play hide-and-seek.
And so we did that for a while and all that.
So I think that she's just, you know, a firestorm of staggering beauty.
And I'm very proud of that.
Am I proud of myself as a parent?
Hell yeah! I'm not going to lie to you.
I am extremely proud of myself as a parent.
I, you know, given the templates, you know, a mom who was institutionalized and really deeply disturbed and abusive, a dad who was deeply disturbed and also institutionalized and absent for almost all of my childhood, abusive sibling.
I mean, I'm extremely proud Of the work that I have done and the efforts that I put into breaking the cycle of abuse.
I mean, it could be true.
I'm sure it is true. But I don't know of another instance where parenting has gone through such a radical revision in a single generation.
I just... I don't know.
So I'm enormously proud.
And it is the thing that I am the most proud of.
Because it was the thing that was the hardest.
It was to... Was to overcome these destructive habits, the effects of the abuse that I had received.
I am extremely proud of the freedom and love and joy and respect and independence and peace that my daughter is being raised in.
It was a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot of work.
I look back and I can't even conceive of the amount of work that it was.
And so yeah, it is a cathedral that I built to some degree on my own that is a beautiful thing that is sheltering her from the wild blood storms of my dismal history and I'm incredibly proud of that.
I'm proud of my marriage.
I'm proud of what I do.
I'm proud of the degree to which I can bring philosophy to help people.
I am proud of Of it all.
And I am incredibly relieved.
Relieved, relieved would be the most fundamental emotion that I can express.
I mean, just the idea that if I had made different choices, if I had not done the work, that I may have been a parent who truly harmed a child. that I may have been a parent who truly harmed That this amazing, precious gift of life and beauty that I may have.
Oh, I mean, I think about that like a bullet just whips past my head sometimes.
I think about the degree to which if my life had gone different, if I had made different choices, if I hadn't done the work, the kind of dismal water-soaked spiral into just a really hideous kind of existence.
It could have occurred for me if I had become a parent without this degree of self-knowledge and without this degree of working through my history.
I mean, talk about a life unlived, a bullet dodged a fork in the road, one of which leads up to the truly beautiful mountaintops I live in, and the other one leads down to a just dismal, sticky-in-abyss of defensiveness and destruction.
I am incredibly...
Relieved, relieved, relieved.
That is the most fundamental thing that I can say about the choices that I've made.
And grateful, of course, to you all whose support makes this example and this, in a sense, test possible.
So I just wanted to express my gratitude and thanks again for that.
Okay. Then I had also another question.
So when people mock with you, when do you take it lightly and you just mock back?
And when do you take it?
Seriously and you say that you're hurt and you take it to another level.
I'm asking it because I've seen that you respond in both ways.
Like last week someone called in about his girlfriend that complained that he couldn't fix lamps and he got laughed at on parties and you were advising him to, when they mock with him, to mock back. And I think it's a good way to keep it light.
But what I did last time with those friends that I'm godfather from...
Because they were mocking with me and I took it serious.
And I said that I was hurt by it.
And yeah, that was an explosion because they really couldn't handle that.
And actually half a fight broke out about that.
But I'm sure that if I would just have mocked back, that they would feel comfortable and nothing would have happened.
So when do you do what?
Well, you trust your feelings, I would say.
There's no objective answer, I think, that can clarify things in this way.
But I think that you can trust your feelings about what is occurring and whether good or bad things are occurring.
And I would trust your instincts as far as that goes.
Okay, okay.
I know that's not a hugely helpful answer, but hopefully it's somewhat helpful.
Yes, I think it's very helpful.
I believe you're right.
Thanks a lot, Stefan.
All right. And, you know, be open to correction, but I definitely would look at, trust your feelings on that.
Humor is, I mean, obviously a very complicated and powerful thing.
And humor can be a great liberator, but humor can also be very destructive.
So I would be very...
I would be very careful about both possibilities or be very aware of both possibilities.
So I certainly have some very laughable characteristics and I make fun of myself and I certainly don't complain when people make fun of me.
I've even posted videos of people mocking me and imitating my style and so on, which I think is all very delightful and very funny.
And there's a way of...
Making fun of people that is warm and empowering and positive and fun and all of that, which is great and a wonderful part of life.
Certainly, my wife and I can make fun of each other quite a bit and find it very enjoyable.
But there is, of course, there is a mechanism by which people will attempt to put other people down.
And the mechanism goes something like this, right?
So somebody makes a joke that is kind of ugly, kind of unpleasant, kind of at your expense, or...
It doesn't seem to have much of an other way of expressing himself or herself than making fun of you.
In which case, it crosses a line and starts to become unpleasant and destructive.
And then what happens is you say, I find that upsetting.
I don't like that. And then what you're told is that you need to lighten up because you don't have a sense of humor.
So you get insult to injury.
This is...
I would say not to be tolerated.
And that doesn't mean you just shut the other person down, but you need to have a conversation about it, right?
So I had a guy I knew, and over time, as I became sort of more successful and got more of what I wanted in life, his life was not improving.
And he began to find it...
He began to see me develop this compulsion, it seemed, to...
To make fun of me when we were in social situations.
To me, this was a form of leveling.
And I found it quite unpleasant.
And I do remember talking to him about it and saying that I was really finding it kind of monotonous and unpleasant that the only thing that he could say about me was to point out things that I'd done that were sort of foolish or silly or funny.
And again, it was like, well, you know, if you don't have a sense of humor about yourself, what do you have, right?
It's like, well... I can be accused of a lot of things, but not having a sense of humor is not one of them.
I did not appreciate that and did not like that because I got a sense that it was coming out of a compulsive place.
I got a sense that it was not coming out of a place of affection or love or respect or anything like that.
I trust my instincts.
Once you've done the work, you can trust your instincts, right?
Once you have done 10,000 scales, you can just let loose and go jazz, and you're not going to make huge cacophony, or at least quite rarely.
And so there's a phase of self-knowledge which is around self-control and self-criticism, or self-skepticism, I would say.
And then there is a phase after you've done the work that you can just let rip and enjoy yourself.
You don't see Bruce Springsteen looking down to make sure He's got his A, C, and E chords correct in his concerts.
He's just yelling at the audience and having a ball.
And so the whole purpose of the work, the whole purpose of self-knowledge is so that you don't have to do it anymore.
So you can just let go and have fun.
That's really the whole purpose and point behind it.
And so when you've done the work, you get to trust your instincts.
And I mean, that's what I'm doing in a lot of the shows that I do is just trusting my instincts.
And I think with some reasonable justification.
Yeah, look, if I don't think it's funny, it's not because I don't have a sense of humor.
So if somebody's making fun of you and you're not enjoying it, just trust that it's not because you're some defensive person who doesn't have a sense of humor.
Look, if you listen to this show, you have a sense of humor.
Not that this is the funniest show on the planet, but it's got some ingredients thereof.
So trust your instincts.
Trust your instincts. They're always going to be correct as long as you...
Continue to be in the conversations with people.
But yeah, there was a character in Bridget Jones' diary, the second one.
I think it was called The Edge of Reason.
I'm not proud that I saw it.
I was on a plane. Anyway, she calls it jellyfish because every time she compliments you, it's in a way that stings.
And, you know, those kinds of people are problematic because that's very unconscious stuff.
For somebody to be insulting you under the guise of humor or tearing you down under the guise of jokes is a very unconscious thing.
And that is a big challenge because people who are very unconscious of behavior tend to be very defensive when it's pointed out.
And it's a great opportunity for self-knowledge on your part or the part of the other person if you have those conversations.
Yeah. Alright, so somebody was unmuting.
I don't mean to talk over if you had something else to say.
No, it was just to say thanks, Vester.
Thanks. You are very welcome.
Alright, I think we have time for one more question.
Or I can go get something to eat.
Mmm, Dada, he's a bit hungry.
Or maybe we could do a couple of easy picks.
What do you think? Fan service.
What do I think about sexual fetishism?
Let me just see here.
That caught my eye.
I think that some fetishes, particularly the scenarios that people fantasize about, can be insightful in the same way their dreams are.
They definitely seem to have a lot of unconscious layers to them.
Well, I'll tell you what I think about sexual fetishism.
It's too damn expensive. All that machinery, the elves, the blindfolds, the whales filled with Jell-O. I mean, it is...
Oh, my goodness.
Getting those animatronic frogs, the robot wolves.
I mean, it's crazy expensive to get this stuff done.
But let's talk more about you than about me.
Yeah, I think sexual fetishes can be very instructive.
To do with helping somebody understand their personality.
I saw a documentary many years ago about a guy who had a fetish of being dressed up in a leather suit and having a woman put a nozzle in his mouth and prevent him from breathing.
And he talked about that one of his first sexual memories was being pinned down by some girls and being very excited by it and not being able to breathe because they were so big and heavy or whatever.
So obviously it's not just that, but there is, I think, a great deal of self-knowledge that can occur through an exploration.
Of sexual fetishes and that kind of understanding.
And just remember that your safety word in a sexual fetish situation should never be the Aztec nickname of a Welsh village because those syllables can be really tough to get out in times of great stress and excitement.
So that would be my suggestion.
Alright, so my daughter is in the meat grinder of public education.
Without a diploma, it will be impossible to get a job or go to university.
She's gifted in English, but she's been held back for years.
The educational system in where I am holds the class back to the level of the slowest instead of trying to elevate the class to the level of the highest.
What should I do? Well, that's a no-easy-answer question.
Excellent! Lots of those today, but...
You have to educate your children despite the state.
I mean, the state gets them for 15,000 hours or whatever it is, but you're going to have to educate your children despite the state.
Now, I think, right, I think that if you have to have your kids in public school, which I can completely understand for certain situations, if you have to have your kids in public school, then I suggest that telling them that it's a coercive institution that they're by force and mommy and daddy are going to get dragged off to jail if they don't pay, not so helpful. Not so helpful.
I think that there are certain truths that it's okay to withhold from children while they're in the process of experiencing them and have no opportunity to get out of them.
So I think the grin and bear it thing is important, and you can do as much as you can to teach them critical thinking skills at home.
I don't think there's anything you can do to fix the government school system.
I don't think that getting involved in PTA associations or getting on the school board, I don't think that's going to do any good at all.
But I think that there's stuff that you can do outside the home.
I mean, look, all the interesting education in life occurs outside the classroom fundamentally.
I can remember maybe three things that I got a value in a classroom.
There's so much that occurs outside the classroom.
The best time I ever had in university was when I didn't have to take any classes and got to write a thesis.
That was entirely self-directed library work that I frankly didn't need.
A university system to help me with.
But, you know, unfortunately, university has become a cash cow for universities and for governments and for professors' unions and all these kinds of things.
And it has become a sort of minimum necessity for a lot of occupations.
And if you don't have that, there are questions raised.
And if you do have it, there are questions answered.
And there are economic indicators that having a university degree in a relevant field is beneficial economically in the long run.
And it can be a lot of fun.
So, you know, I think on the balance, it's worth going.
And to do that, you have to finish your college.
Although, David Friedman, in my interview with him about homeschooling or unschooling, he did talk about his daughter being able to get into college without having a high school diploma because she'd been homeschooled.
And you might want to check that out.
And I'm sure he'd be happy to answer a question or two if you fired them his way.
So there may be ways to get into higher education without a high school diploma, but, you know, what do I know?
Don't take anything I'm saying here with any level of seriousness, but look into it, of course, for yourself.
But, yeah, just, you know, try and teach as much as possible about critical thinking, reason and evidence, philosophy, all that kind of good stuff, the value of self-knowledge and being in touch with your instincts and feelings and all the stuff that makes us strong and powerful.
And that will to some degree be to swim against the current, but I would do that implicitly with the child rather than explicitly, because if you can't change the child's situation, enlightening to them as to its moral failings, I don't think is particularly helpful and might in fact be sort of negative.
Yeah, somebody's recommended how to think in introduction.
I think to logic or in logic.
But yeah, again, it's a tragedy to even have to face these kinds of situations.
But... I will say that government school is better than medieval theology school.
So, you know, this is the kind of progress we have to call ourselves content with, that modern secular education is better than religious indoctrination.
So, you know, this is the progress that we have to content ourselves with, I would say.
Another thought that just came to mind, and this may or may not be, this is one of those suggestions that is like, you know, I mean, it's not like I think it's easy or anything, but if You know, you can always look around and see if there are better schools, you know, and try to get your children to them.
And I know it's not an easy thing, but, you know, if you have to move and you can't otherwise, you know, do it, that might be an option as well.
Yeah, I can certainly see that.
I don't know. I've never tried any of this sort of stuff, so...
Yeah, I'm not even a parent, so...
Yeah, yeah, so, you know, this is a possibility, but, you know, you can find things out.
I'm sure there are better or worse schools, for sure.
And there may be things...
You know, there are people in England who have to set up fake addresses and pretend to move, so...
But how do you know they're actually in England?
My definition of choice, I think that human beings have the choice to focus...
On the long-term effects of their actions or not.
And, you know, that to me is a choice that can be trained and conditioned.
You have to be aware of that as a choice, and then you have to strengthen that muscle, so to speak.
But I think that people have the choice to focus on long or short-term effects.
And I can see this developing in my daughter.
She's able to think in terms of longer-term consequences and so on, and that's great.
She's still not at the point where she understands why she has to brush her teeth, but she can certainly think in terms of consequences, and that can be very helpful.
Oh, yeah. I mean, parents are completely desperate in the public.
I mean, any parent with half a brain, and you don't have to be an anarchist or a libertarian, but any parent with half a brain knows that the best that they can hope for in the public school system is to minimize the harm that is done to the children.
That is... That is the best that can be hoped for.
Hopefully they can just wound the leg rather than the head in the public school system.
And there's a lot of just moving around to try and minimize the damage.
And it's completely hideous.
But a natural result, inevitable result of that.
Of this coercive system.
Violence doesn't produce virtue in children or society.
Thanks, Steph, for everything you've done and are doing for truth and reason.
Well, I really appreciate that.
And I know that I may be a bit of a blazing forehead figurehead, but it is really the community that is making all of this possible.
And it is the gorgeous brain brilliance of the community that makes this conversation possible.
And of course, the generosity of the community.
So, you know, this...
I am the tip of a very long spear, and everything that you praise about me deserves to go to the community, I think, first and foremost, and to yourself for your interest in philosophy, first and foremost, because it's not like we're trained to be interested in reason.
In fact, we're trained to be averse to reason, because it is not helpful to the ruling classes.
What is my thoughts on agorism?
Agorism, I believe, that is...
Agorism is the idea that you can work outside of the existing economic system to undermine it.
I don't have any objection to it.
It certainly doesn't violate property rights or the non-aggression principle.
I think that it's great. It's not my choice about what to do.
I think that libertarians and anarchists come up with a whole lot of stuff to do that is not around better parenting and intervening in situations of child abuse, which is, of course, my continual focus.
But I'm not certainly going to trash talk The trash talk people who are aiming in the same direction, I mean, time will tell who's right and who's wrong, and maybe it will be both of us.
Yeah, sorry, somebody's saying I used the word choice in the definition.
Yeah, the choice is the ability of human beings to focus on the long-term or short-term consequences of actions or decisions.
Yeah, you're right, sorry.
It's tough to come up with the stuff off the top of your head, at least without preparation.
Sorry I haven't had any solo casts.
I do actually have some coming up.
I actually have some recorded that I haven't released yet, but I do have some solo casts coming up that I'm quite happy about.
I've also been spending some time looking into non-violent communications, which completely enrages me.
No, it is something that is quite interesting.
I think there are some strengths and weaknesses in it, as I'm sure there are in most systems of thought, perhaps including my own.
But I did a chat with some more experienced People with nonviolent communication did a conference call yesterday, and we will go on.
Get on the, John. Look, please, I mean, I appreciate that.
There's no chance that I'm going to go on the mainstream media in the foreseeable future.
There's no chance whatsoever.
There's no benefit. And the word anarchist is so, you know, people forget that, you know, Chomsky's an anarchist.
Russian writers that people really respect are...
Anarchists, Tolstoy, and so on.
It's just not something that people can...
You know, anarchist is like racist.
It's just a word with nothing but negative connotations.
And you can't get a racist on a show in the media except for people to use them as a foil to beat up.
And you can't get an anarchist on the mainstream media except as a foil for someone to beat up on.
And that's just the reality of where things are.
So I appreciate that.
But it's not something that I would...
Hold my breath on. Oh yeah, listen, if you've got this, I appreciate the suggestions of people I can talk to.
Just send them to me, host at freedomainradio.com.
I really enjoy the interviews despite the gruesome amounts of preparation that they sometimes require.
So you just send me your thoughts and I would be very happy to look into them and hopefully get them set up.
I mean, I had some great suggestions.
Doug Casey was a really enjoyable guy to interview.
And, uh, that came out of a listener.
So, you know, it's, it's your show.
It's your show.
And, uh, whoever you want me to talk to, uh, I will be more than happy to consider.
So, yeah, I thought the love police interview, uh, our conversation was great.
I really enjoyed it. Hey, Steph, do you have any upcoming, um, upcoming in person appearances?
Uh, what's going on with that?
No, I've turned down one or two for a variety of reasons, but I don't have anything coming up until the summer.
I mean, I guess I just did one, the Students for Liberty webinar on UPB, which should be out in a day or two.
But no, I don't have anything upcoming.
Please remember to look at the Liberty Cruise, which is in November.
I'm at Porkfest in the summer.
I'm back at Libertopia as both a featured speaker and the Master of Ceremony, so it'll be more staff- Yeah, there's nothing coming up at the moment.
Things are pretty quiet as far as conferences go in the winter.
Nobody wants to go places in the winter.
And then there's the barbecue.
And the barbecue, that's right.
When was the day for that again? The 30th of June.
Wait, is that a question? Yeah, I know.
I'm sorry about that. Could have been July.
I'm so sorry. I shouldn't have said anything.
No, no, no. Can I edit this damn stuff now?
30th of July, because it was a Saturday.
30th of July. You can go to mendo.com forward slash fdr2011.html.
Please, to sign up sooner is easier than later for us to start to make plans.
If there is a significant number of people coming, we may need to hold it elsewhere than our house, but please go to that.
And figure it out. You can also go to fdrurl.com forward slash fdr2011.
But ameander.com will also work.
Well, I'll do this last enough bit.
Thank you everybody so much for listening.
I really do appreciate it. Have yourselves a perfectly wonderful week.
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